2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25
Rasputin's works are known and loved by many. Rasputin Valentin Grigorievich is a Russian writer, one of the most famous representatives of "village prose" in literature. The sharpness and drama of ethical problems, the desire to find support in the world of peasant folk morality were reflected in his stories and stories dedicated to his contemporary rural life. In this article, we will cover the main works created by this talented writer.
Money for Mary
This story was created in 1967. It was from her that Rasputin (his photo is presented above) entered literature as an original writer. The story "Money for Mary" brought the author wide fame. In this work, the main themes of his further work were identified: being and life, man among people. Valentin Grigorievich considers such moral categories,like cruelty and mercy, material and spiritual, good and evil.
Rasputin raises the question of how other people are touched by someone else's grief. Is anyone capable of refusing a person who is in trouble and leaving him to perish without supporting him financially? How can these people, after rejection, be able to calm their conscience? Maria, the main character of the work, suffers not only from the shortage discovered, but, perhaps, to a greater extent from the indifference of people. After all, yesterday they were good friends.
The Tale of the Dying Old Woman
The main character of Rasputin's story "The Deadline", created in 1970, is the dying old woman Anna, who recalls her life. A woman feels that she is involved in the cycle of life. Anna experiences the mystery of death, feeling it as the main event in human life.
Four children are opposed to this heroine. They came to say goodbye to their mother, to see her off on her last journey. Anna's children are forced to stay with her for 3 days. It was for this time that God delayed the departure of the old woman. The preoccupation of children with everyday worries, their fussiness and fussiness are in sharp contrast to the spiritual work that takes place in the fading consciousness of the peasant woman. The narrative includes large layers of text, reflecting the experiences and thoughts of the characters in the work, and above all Anna.
Main Topics
The topics that the author touches on are more multifaceted and deep than a cursory reading might seem. Relationship between children and parentsbetween different family members, old age, alcoholism, the concepts of honor and conscience - all these motives in the story "Deadline" are woven into a single whole. The main thing that interests the author is the problem of the meaning of human life.
The inner world of eighty-year-old Anna is filled with worries and worries about children. All of them have already parted for a long time and live separately from each other. The main character wants only the last time to see them. However, her children, who have already grown up, are busy and businesslike representatives of modern civilization. Each of them has their own family. They all think about many different things. They have enough time and energy for everything except their mother. For some reason, they almost never remember her. And Anna only lives with thoughts about them.
When a woman feels the approach of death, she is ready to endure a few more days, just to see her family. However, the children find time and attention for the old woman only for the sake of decency. Valentin Rasputin shows their lives as if they even live on earth for the sake of decency. Anna's sons are mired in drunkenness, while the daughters are completely absorbed in their "important" affairs. All of them are insincere and ridiculous in their desire to give a little time to their dying mother. The author shows us their moral decline, selfishness, heartlessness, callousness, which took possession of their souls and lives. What do these people live for? Their existence is dark and unspiritual.
At first glance it seems that the deadline is the last days of Anna. However, in fact, this is the last chance for her children to fix something, to see their motherworthy. Unfortunately, they were not able to use this chance.
The Tale of the Deserter and His Wife
The work analyzed above is an elegiac prologue to the tragedy captured in the story called "Live and Remember", created in 1974. If the old woman Anna and her children gather under their father's roof in the last days of her life, then Andrei Guskov, who deserted from the army, is cut off from the world.
Note that the events described in the story "Live and Remember" take place at the end of the Great Patriotic War. The symbol of Andrei Guskov's hopeless loneliness, his moral savagery is a wolf hole located on an island in the middle of the Angara River. The hero hides in it from people and authorities.
Nastena's tragedy
The name of this hero's wife is Nastena. This woman secretly visits her husband. Every time she has to swim across the river to meet him. It is no coincidence that Nastena overcomes a water barrier, because in myths it separates two worlds from each other - the living and the dead. Nastena is a truly tragic heroine. Valentin Grigorievich Rasputin confronts this woman with a difficult choice between love for her husband (Nastena and Andrei are married in the church) and the need to live among people, in the world. The heroine cannot find support or sympathy in any person.
The surrounding village life is no longer an integral peasant cosmos, harmonious and closed within its limits. The symbol of this cosmos, by the way, is Anna's hut fromworks "Deadline". Nastena commits suicide, taking with her into the river the child Andrei, whom she so desired and whom she conceived with her husband in his wolf den. Their death becomes an atonement for the deserter, but she is unable to return this hero to human form.
The story of the flooding of the village
The themes of parting with whole generations of people who lived and worked on their land, the themes of parting with the world of the righteous, with the mother-ancestress are already heard in the "Deadline". In the story "Farewell to Matera", created in 1976, they are transformed into a myth about the death of the peasant world. This work tells about the flooding of a Siberian village located on an island, as a result of the creation of a "man-made sea". The island of Matera (from the word "mainland"), in contrast to the island depicted in "Live and Remember", is a symbol of the promised land. This is the last refuge for those who live in conscience, in harmony with nature and God.
The main characters of "Farewell to Matera"
The head of the old women living out their days here is the righteous Daria. These women refuse to leave the island, to move to a new village, symbolizing the new world. The old women depicted by Valentin Grigoryevich Rasputin remain here until the very end, until the hour of death. They guard their shrines - the pagan Tree of Life (royal foliage) and a cemetery with crosses. Only one of the settlers (named Pavel) comes to visit Daria. He is driven by a vague hope to join the true meaning of being. Thisthe hero, in contrast to Nastya, floats into the world of the living from the world of the dead, which is a mechanical civilization. However, the world of the living in the story "Farewell to Matera" dies. At the end of the work, only its Owner, a mythical character, remains on the island. Rasputin ends the story with his desperate cry, which is heard in the dead void.
Fire
In 1985, nine years after the creation of Farewell to Matera, Valentin Grigorievich decided to write again about the death of the communal world. This time he does not die in water, but in a fire. The fire covers the trading warehouses located in the timber industry settlement. In the work, a fire breaks out on the site of a previously flooded village, which has a symbolic meaning. People are not ready for a joint struggle with trouble. Instead, one by one, competing with each other, they begin to take away the good snatched from the fire.
Image of Ivan Petrovich
Ivan Petrovich is the main character of this work by Rasputin. It is from the point of view of this character, working as a driver, that the author describes everything that happens in the warehouses. Ivan Petrovich is no longer the righteous hero typical of Rasputin's work. He is in conflict with himself. Ivan Petrovich is looking for and cannot find "the simplicity of the meaning of life." Therefore, the author's vision of the world depicted by him is disharmonized and complicated. From this follows the aesthetic duality of the style of the work. In The Fire, the image of burning warehouses, captured by Rasputin in every detail, is adjacent to various symbolicallegorical generalizations, as well as journalistic sketches of the life of the timber industry.
In closing
We have considered only the main works of Rasputin. You can talk about the work of this author for a long time, but it still does not convey all the originality and artistic value of his stories and short stories. Rasputin's works are definitely worth reading. In them, the reader is presented with a whole world full of interesting discoveries. In addition to the works mentioned above, we recommend that you familiarize yourself with Rasputin's collection of stories "A Man from the Other World", published in 1965. The stories of Valentin Grigorievich are no less interesting than his stories.
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