One of the most common and
leading to the biggest
disasters of temptations
there is a temptation to say:
“Everyone does it.”

L.N. Tolstoy

Lesson objectives:

Educational:

• learn to analyze text through subject details;
• consolidate students’ ideas about plot, composition, episode, grotesque.

Developmental:

• develop the ability to determine the boundaries of an episode;
• find causal connections between episodes;
• develop verbal communication skills.

Educational:

• cultivate a sense of responsibility for one’s actions.

Brief information about the publication of the story by N.V. Gogol “The Nose” (1836).

In 20-30 years. In the 19th century, the theme of the “nose” gained unexpected popularity. Impromptu and feuilletons, stories and vaudevilles, panegyrics and lyrical opuses were dedicated to the nose. Not only third-rate journalists, but even famous writers, such as Bestuzhev-Marlinsky, N.V. Gogol, wrote about the nose. The supposed lightness of “The Nose” gave it the reputation of Gogol’s most mysterious work.

Today’s lesson is an attempt to unravel what idea the writer encrypted in the story about Major Kovalev’s unfortunate nose.

1) Who is Kovalev?

2) For what purpose did Kovalev come to St. Petersburg?

3) What is Kovalev’s portrait?

4) Why did Kovalev walk along Nevsky Prospect every day and pay visits to his acquaintances?

5) Why, being a collegiate assessor, does he call himself a major?

6) Name the details that convince the reader of the reality of what is happening:

• name the time of action (March 25th - loss of the nose, April 7th - return of the nose);
• name the location (St. Petersburg is the capital of the Russian state. Kovalev lives on Sadovaya Street. The Barber lives on Voznesensky Prospekt. The meeting with the Nose took place in the Kazan Cathedral. Nevsky Prospekt of the capital is a kind of stage on which everyone plays their role);
• name the hero of the story (Kovalyov is a petty employee who dreams of a vice-governor’s position).

7) Why did Gogol need to convince everyone of the reality of what was happening? (Kovalyov himself does not see anything fantastic in what happened - no pain, no blood from the loss of his nose. And we, readers, also perceive fantasy as reality. Bringing the situation to the point of absurdity, Gogol expands the scope of the story that happened “in the northern capital of our vast state", to the history of all of Russia. And not only. The philosophical meaning of the story is addressed to descendants.

What does N.V. Gogol warn us about? What kind of mask do we wear in society? What are we hiding underneath? Does a person’s inner content correspond to his actions?

Group I of students works with questions on the card.

1. How do others react to the misfortune that happened to Kovalev?
2. Who did Kovalev turn to first about his missing nose? Why not see a doctor?
3. Why do you think so many people are drawn into this story?

II group of students:

1. Tell us about the advertisements in the newspaper.
2. What is their absurdity?
3. Why do you think Gogol is distracted from the main plot and sets out in detail the content of these announcements?

III group of students:

1. What is the composition of the story?
2. Why does the story begin with Chapter I, which tells the story of the barber Ivan Yakovlevich?
3. What inconsistencies have you found in the barber's behavior?
4. What does Ivan Yakovlevich have in common with Kovalev?
5. Why doesn’t Ivan Yakovlevich have a last name?

1. Did Kovalev's behavior change after the loss of his nose and after its return?
2. How do you understand the phraseology “Stay with your nose”?
3. What does the author do to destroy the mask of “decency” of the society he depicts?
4. What does Gogol warn us about?
5. Why does the author create a grotesque situation?
6. Why did Gogol introduce a fantastic plot into a completely realistic narrative?

Creating a grotesque situation, N.V. Gogol shows the ordinary in an unusual light, what everyone is accustomed to and does not notice - he tears off the mask from the ugly phenomena of reality.

Calls on the reader to look into his soul and answer, first of all, to himself, whether his behavior, his mental makeup corresponds to generally accepted norms of morality and morality.

Kovalev is not who he claims to be: not a real major, not suitable for the vice-governor’s position, and insincere with his acquaintances. He becomes honest, active, ready to cry only when trouble happens to him, when he loses his nose.

And when the nose returned, its old mask returned: the same habits, the same acquaintances. It took the intervention of evil spirits to tear off his mask and reveal his true face.

All heroes have a mask: the barber, the private bailiff, the doctor, the police chief - all of Russia... Beneath the external decency lies indifference, deceit, rudeness, bribery, servility, vanity, flattery, envy. To tear off the mask from the vices of society is N.V.’s task. Gogol.

What does the author do to destroy this convention, to tear off the mask of “decency” from society? He too...puts on the Mask. The mask of a naive and simple-minded narrator, surprised by what happened, even at the end of the story, reproaching himself for the fact that such an absurdity became the subject of his story. And this technique allows N.V. Gogol satirically outlines the vices of contemporary Russia.

What is the main idea encrypted in the story “The Nose”? What does Gogol warn us about? What literary device helps Gogol create an unusual situation? Grotesque is an artistic technique with which the author depicts people and events in a fantastically exaggerated, ugly-comic form.

2009 is the year when the entire literary country will celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of the great writer.

This work was prepared primarily to help students and is a literary analysis of works that reveal the basic concepts of the topic.

The relevance of the topic is demonstrated by the selection of works by the great Russian science fiction writer.

This work is dedicated to the works of N.V. Gogol - “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka”, “Nose”, “Portrait”. To understand Gogol’s method of presenting a text, where the main role is played by fantastic plots and images, it is necessary to analyze the structure of the work.

The selection of texts is based on the “school curriculum +” principle, that is, a small number of texts necessary for general humanitarian development are added to the school curriculum

This work is based on sections from the book by Yu. V. Mann “Gogol’s Poetics”.

The purpose of the work: to understand, see the complexity and versatility of the writer, to identify and analyze the features of poetics and various forms of the fantastic in his works.

In addition to materials devoted to Gogol’s work, the work contains a kind of literary glossary: ​​for the convenience of the student, the main terms and concepts are highlighted for each work.

We hope that our work will help students explore works from the point of view of a fantastic worldview.

Fiction in literature is the depiction of implausible phenomena, the introduction of fictional images that do not coincide with reality, a clearly felt violation by artists of natural forms, causal relationships, and laws of nature.

The term fantasy comes from the word “fantasy” (in Greek mythology, Phantasus is a deity who causes illusions, apparent images, brother of the god of dreams Morpheus).

All works of N.V. Gogol, in which fantasy is present in one way or another, are divided into two types. The division depends on what time the action of the work belongs to - the present or the past.

In works about the “past” (five stories from “Evenings” - “The Missing Letter”, “Evening on the Eve of Ivan Kupala”, “The Night Before Christmas”, “Terrible Revenge”, “Enchanted Place”, as well as “Viy”) there is fantasy has common features.

Higher powers openly interfere with the plot. In all cases, these are images in which the unreal evil principle is personified: the devil or people who entered into a criminal conspiracy with him. Fantastic events are reported either by the author-narrator or by a character acting as a narrator (but sometimes relying on a legend or on the testimony of ancestors - “eyewitnesses”: grandfather, “my grandfather’s aunt”).

All of these texts lack a fantastic backstory. It is not needed, since the action is homogeneous both in time captivity (the past) and in relation to fantasy (not collected in any one time period, but distributed throughout the work).

The development of Gogol’s fiction is characterized by the fact that the writer pushed the bearer of fiction into the past, leaving his influence, a “trace,” in modern time.

Gogol's fiction contains:

1. Alogism in the narrator’s speech. (“Portrait” - “First of all, he took up finishing the eyes,” “as if the artist’s hand was driven by an unclean feeling,” “You just hit him not in the eyebrow, but in the very eyes. Eyes have never looked into life like they they are looking at you”, etc.).

2. Strange and unusual in terms of what is depicted. Strange animal intervention in the action, bringing objects to life. (“Nose” - the nose is a living character, “Portrait” - “someone’s convulsively distorted face was looking at him, leaning out from behind the set canvas. Two terrible eyes stared directly at him, as if preparing to devour him; written on his lips there was a threatening order to remain silent")

3. Unusual names and surnames of characters. (Solokha, Khoma Brut, etc.; “Portrait” - in the first edition - Chertkov, in subsequent editions - Chatrkov).

Let us pay attention, first of all, to the fact that such concepts as “line and “border” appear quite often in the story. The semantics of the name Chertkov includes not only associations with the bearer of unreal (not existing in reality) force, with the devil, but also with the trait both in the artistic sense (stroke, stroke) and in a broader sense (border, limit).

This may be the boundary of age, separating youth and maturity from withering and old age, separating artistic creativity from mechanical labor.

Under the name of Chartkov lies lies, idealization, adaptation to the tastes and whims of his rich and noble customers; work without internal and creative insight, without an ideal; there is a self-exaltation of the hero, who destroys his spiritual purity, and at the same time his talent.

4. Involuntary movements and grimaces of the characters.

In folk demonology, involuntary movements are often caused by a supernatural force.

The story “The Nose” is the most important link in the development of Gogol’s fiction. The medium of fantasy has been removed, but the fantastic remains; the romantic mystery is parodied, but the mystery remains.

In “The Nose” the function of the “form of rumors” changes, which no longer serves as a means of veiled fiction, it acts against the background of a fantastic incident presented as reliable.

In “Portrait,” as in “Sorochinskaya Fair” and “May Night,” the fantastic is presented in such a way that supernatural forces in their “tangible” guise (witches, devils, etc.) are relegated to the background, “yesterday.” plan.

In today's time plan, only a fantastic reflection or some fantastic residue is preserved - the tangible result of strange events that took place in reality: “He saw how the wonderful image of the deceased Petromichali went into the portrait frame.”

Only this portrait passes into reality, and personified fantastic images are eliminated. All strange events are reported in a tone of some uncertainty. After the portrait appeared in his room, Chertkov began to assure himself that the portrait was sent by the owner, who found out his address, but this version, in turn, is undermined by the narrator’s remark: “In short, he began to give all those flat explanations that we use when we want, so that what happened would certainly happen the way we think” (but that it didn’t happen “the way” Chertkov thought is definitely not reported).

Chartkov’s vision of the wonderful old man is given in the form of half-sleep, half-waking: “he fell into sleep, but into some kind of half-oblivion, into that painful state when with one eye we see the approaching dreams of dreams, and with the other we see surrounding objects in a vague cloud.” It would seem that the fact that this was a dream is finally confirmed by the phrase: “Chartkov became convinced that his imagination presented him in a dream with the creation of his own indignant thoughts.”

But here a tangible “remnant” of the dream is revealed - money (as in “May Night” - the lady’s letter), which, in turn, is given a real-life motivation (in “the frame there was a box covered with a thin board”).

Along with dreams, such forms of veiled (implicit) fiction as coincidences and the hypnotizing effect of one character (here, a portrait) on another are generously introduced into the narrative.

Simultaneously with the introduction of veiled fiction, the real-psychological plan of Chertkov the artist emerges. His fatigue, neediness, bad inclinations, and thirst for quick success are noted. A parallelism is created between the fantastic and real-psychological concepts of the image. Everything that happens can be interpreted both as the fatal influence of the portrait on the artist, and as his personal capitulation to forces hostile to art.

In “Portrait” the epithet “hellish” is applied several times to Chertkov’s actions and plans: “the most hellish intention that a person has ever harbored was revived in his soul”; “a hellish thought flashed in the artist’s head” Here this epithet was correlated with Petromichali, a personified image of an unreal evil force (“The victims of this hellish spirit will be countless,” it is said about it in the second part).

So, in his searches in the field of fantasy, N.V. Gogol develops the described principle of parallelism between the fantastic and the real. Gogol's priority was prosaic, everyday, folklore and comic fiction.

We see that the writer, introducing in parallel with the “scary” comic treatment of “devilry,” implemented a pan-European artistic trend, and the devil from “The Night Before Christmas”, blowing on his burnt fingers, dragging after Solokha and constantly getting into trouble.

In “Portrait”, the religious painter says: “I have long wanted to give birth to the Antichrist, but he cannot, because he must be born supernaturally; and in our world everything is arranged by the Almighty in such a way that everything happens in a natural order.

But our land is dust before its creator. According to his laws, it must be destroyed, and every day the laws of nature will become weaker and therefore the boundaries that hold back the supernatural will become more criminal.”

Chertkov’s impressions of the portrait completely coincide with the words of the religious painter about the loosening of world laws. "What is this"? - he thought to himself. - “Art or supernatural, what kind of magic that peeks past the laws of nature?”

The Divine in Gogol’s concept is natural, it is a world that develops naturally.

On the contrary, the demonic is the supernatural, the world going out of its way.

By the mid-1930s, the science fiction writer especially clearly perceived the demonic not as evil in general, but as an alogism, as a “disorder of nature.”

The role of a fantastic backstory is played by the story of the artist’s son.

Some of the fantastic events are presented in the form of rumors, but some are covered by the introspection of the narrator, who reports the miraculous events as if they actually took place.

The fantastic and the real often go into one another, especially in art, because it does not simply depict life, but reveals, objectifying, what is happening in the human soul.

Gogol's fantastic story "The Nose". First of all, we note that the fantastic should not and cannot give illusions here. Not for a minute will we imagine ourselves in the position of Major Kovalev, whose nose was completely smooth. It would be a big mistake, however, to think that the fantastic is used here in the sense of an allegory or allusion in a fable or some modern pamphlet, in a literary caricature. It serves neither instruction nor denunciation here, and the author’s goals were purely artistic, as we will see in further analysis.

The tone and general character of the fantastic in the story "The Nose" is comic. Fantastic details should enhance the funny.

There is an opinion, very widespread, that “The Nose” is a joke, a kind of game of the author’s imagination and author’s wit. It is incorrect, because in the story one can discern a very specific artistic goal - to make people feel the vulgarity that surrounds them.

“Every poet, to a greater or lesser extent, is a teacher and preacher. If a writer doesn’t care and doesn’t want people to feel the same as he does, to want the same as he does, and to see good and evil where he is, he is not a poet, although he may be a very skillful writer. "(Innokenty Annensky "On the forms of the fantastic in Gogol").

Therefore, the poet’s thought and the images of his poetry are inseparable from his feeling, desire, his ideal. Gogol, when drawing Major Kovalev, could not treat his hero like a beetle that an entomologist would describe or draw: look at it, study it, classify it. He expressed in his face his animated attitude towards vulgarity, as a well-known social phenomenon that every person must take into account.

Vulgarity is pettiness. Vulgarity has only one thought about itself, because it is stupid and narrow and does not see or understand anything but itself. Vulgarity is selfish and selfish in all forms; she has arrogance, and fanaberia (arrogance), and arrogance, but there is no pride, no courage, and nothing noble at all.

Vulgarity has no kindness, no ideal aspirations, no art, no God. Vulgarity is formless, colorless, elusive. This is a muddy sediment of life in every environment, in almost every person. The poet feels the terrible burden of hopeless vulgarity in the environment and in himself.

“The fantastic is that drop of aniline that colors the cells of organic tissue under a microscope - thanks to the extraordinary position of the hero, we better see and understand what kind of person he was.” (Innokenty Annensky “On the forms of the fantastic in Gogol”).

Kovalev is neither an evil nor a good person - all his thoughts are focused on himself. This person is very insignificant, and so he tries in every possible way to enlarge and embellish her. “Ask, darling, Major Kovalev.” "Major" sounds more beautiful than "collegiate assessor". He does not have an order, but he buys an order ribbon; wherever possible, he mentions his secular successes and his acquaintance with the family of a staff officer and a civil councilor. He is very busy with his appearance - all his “interests” revolve around his hat, hairstyle, smoothly shaved cheeks. He is also especially proud of his rank.

Now imagine that Major Kovalev would have been disfigured by smallpox, that his nose would have been broken by a piece of cornice while he was looking at pictures through the mirror glass or at another moment of his idle existence. Surely someone would laugh? And if there were no laughter, what would be the attitude towards vulgarity in the story. Or imagine that Major Kovalev’s nose would disappear without a trace, so that he would not return to his place, but would continue to travel around Russia, posing as a state councilor. Major Kovalev's life would have been ruined: he would have become both unhappy and a useless, harmful person, he would have become embittered, he would have beaten his servant, he would have found fault with everyone, and maybe he would have even started to lie and gossip. Or imagine that Gogol would have portrayed Major Kovalev as reformed when his nose returned to him - a lie would be added to the fantastic. And here the fantastic only intensified the manifestation of reality, colored the vulgarity and increased the funny.

The detail of the impostor of the nose, which poses as a state councilor, is extremely characteristic. For a Caucasian collegiate assessor, the rank of civil councilor is something unusually high, enviable and offensive in its unattainability, and suddenly this rank goes to the nose of Major Kovalev, and not to the major himself, the rightful owner of the nose.

Here, in fantastic forms, a phenomenon very close to us and the most ordinary is depicted. The Greeks made him a goddess - Rumor, daughter of Zeus, and we call him Gossip.

Gossip is a condensed lie; everyone adds and adds a little, and the lie grows like a snowball, sometimes threatening to turn into a snowfall. In gossip, no one is often guilty individually, but the environment is always to blame: better than Major Kovalev and Lieutenant Pirogov, gossip shows that pettiness, empty thoughts and vulgarity have accumulated in a given environment. Gossip is a real substrate of the fantastic.

In general, the power of the fantastic in the story “The Nose” is based on its artistic truth, on its graceful interweaving with the real into a living, bright whole.

At the end of the analysis, we can define the form of the fantastic in “The Nose” as everyday.

And from this side, Gogol could not choose a better, more vivid way of expression than the fantastic.

We will take “Viya” as a representative of another form of the fantastic from Gogol. The main psychological motive of this story is fear. Fear comes in two forms: fear of the strong and fear of the mysterious - mystical fear. So here it is mystical fear that is depicted. The author’s goal, as he himself says in the note, is to tell the heard legend about Viya as simply as possible. The legend is indeed conveyed simply, but if you analyze this so naturally and freely developing story, you will see the complex mental work and see how immeasurably far it is from tradition. A poetic creation is like a flower: simple in appearance, but in reality it is infinitely more complex than any locomotive or chronometer.

The poet had, first of all, to make the reader feel that mystical fear that served as the mental basis of the legend. The phenomenon of death and the idea of ​​life beyond the grave have always been especially readily colored by fantasy. The thought and imagination of several thousand generations focused intently and hopelessly on eternal questions about life and death, and this intent and hopeless work left in the human soul one powerful feeling - the fear of death and the dead. This feeling, while remaining identical in its essence, changes endlessly in the forms and grouping of those ideas with which it is associated. We must be introduced into a region that, if not the one that produced the legend (its roots often go too deep), then at least supports and feeds it. Gogol points at the end of the story to the ruins, a memory of the death of Khoma Brut. Probably, these decayed and mysterious ruins, overgrown with forest and weeds, were precisely the impetus that prompted the imagination to produce the legend about Viya in this form.

The first part of the story appears to constitute an episode within a story. But this is only apparently - in fact, it is an organic part of the story.

Here we are presented with the environment in which the tradition was supported and flourished.

This environment is bursa. Bursa is a kind of status in statu*, Cossacks on the school bench, always half hungry, physically strong, with courage tempered with a rod, terribly indifferent to everything except physical strength and pleasure: scholastic science, incomprehensible, sometimes in the form of some unbearable appendage to existence , then transporting into the metaphysical and mysterious world.

On the other hand, the student is close to the people: his mind is often, under the crust of learning, full of naive ideas about nature and superstitions; Romantic vacation wanderings further maintain the connection with nature, with the common people and legend.

Khoma Brut believes in devilry, but he is still a scientist.

A monk, who had seen witches and unclean spirits all his life, taught him spells. His imagination was nurtured under the influence of various images of hellish torment, devilish temptations, painful visions of ascetics and ascetics. Into the environment of naive mythical legends among the people, he, a bookish person, introduces a bookish element - a written legend.

Here we see a manifestation of that primordial interaction between literacy and nature, which created the motley world of our folk literature.

What kind of person is Khoma Brut? Gogol loved to portray average, ordinary people, like this philosopher.

Khoma Brut is strong, indifferent, carefree, loves to eat heavily and drinks cheerfully and good-naturedly. He is a straightforward person: his tricks, when, for example, he wants to take time off from his business or run away, are rather naive. He lies without even trying; There is no expansiveness in him either - he is too lazy even for that. N.V. Gogol, with rare skill, placed this indifferent man at the center of his fears: it took a lot of horrors for them to finish off Khoma Brut, and the poet could unfold the whole terrible chain of devilry before his hero.

* State within a state (Latin).

The greatest skill of N.V. Gogol was expressed in the gradualness with which the mysterious is conveyed to us in the story: it began with a semi-comic ride on a witch and, with proper development, reached the terrible denouement - the death of a strong man from fear. The writer makes us experience step by step with Khoma all the stages of development of this feeling. At the same time, N.V. Gogol had two paths to choose from: he could go analytically - talk about the hero’s state of mind, or synthetically - talk in images. He chose the second path: he objectified the mental state of his hero, and left the analytical work to the reader.

From here came the necessary interweaving of the fantastic into the real.

Starting from the moment when the centurion sent to Kiev for Khoma, even the comic scenes (for example, in the chaise) are sad, then there is the scene with the stubborn centurion, his terrible curses, the beauty of the dead, the chatter of the servants, the road to the church, the locked church, the lawn in front of it , bathed in the moon, vain efforts to cheer herself up, which only further develop the feeling of fear, Khoma’s morbid curiosity, the dead woman wags her finger. Our tense feeling relaxes somewhat during the day. Evening - heavy forebodings, night - new horrors. It seems to us that all the horrors have already been exhausted, but the writer finds new colors, that is, not new colors - he thickens the old ones. And at the same time, no caricature, no artistic lies. Fear gives way to horror, horror to confusion and melancholy, confusion to numbness. The boundary between myself and the environment is lost, and it seems to Khome that it is not he who is speaking the spells, but the dead woman. Khoma's death is the necessary end of the story; If you imagine for a moment his awakening from a drunken sleep, then all the artistic meaning of the story will disappear.

In "Viya" the fantastic developed on mystical soil - hence its special intensity. A characteristic feature of the mystical in N.V. Gogol in general is the major tone of his supernatural creatures - the witch and the sorcerer - vengeful and evil creatures.

Thus, the first stage in the development of Gogol’s fiction is characterized by the fact that the writer pushed the bearer of fiction into the past, leaving his influence, a “trace,” in modern time.

The writer, parodying the poetics of romantic mystery, refused to give any explanation of what was happening.

Reading the works of N.V. Gogol, you involuntarily show your imagination, ignoring its boundaries between the possible and the impossible.

Turning to the works of N.V. Gogol, one can be a priori sure that we will find many elements of science fiction in it. After all, if the latter determined a whole type of folk culture, then, as emphasized by M. Bakhtin, its influence extends over many eras, almost right up to our time.

The story "The Nose" is one of the most fun, original, fantastic and unexpected works of Nikolai Gogol. The author did not agree to publish this joke for a long time, but his friends persuaded him. The story was first published in the Sovremennik magazine in 1836, with a note by A.S. Pushkin. Since then, heated debates have not subsided around this work. The real and the fantastic in Gogol's story "The Nose" are combined in the most bizarre and unusual forms. Here the author reached the pinnacle of his satirical skill and painted a true picture of the morals of his time.

Brilliant grotesque

This is one of N.V.’s favorite literary devices. Gogol. But if in early works it was used to create an atmosphere of mystery and mystery in the narrative, then in a later period it turned into a way of satirically reflecting the surrounding reality. The story "The Nose" is a clear confirmation of this. The inexplicable and strange disappearance of the nose from Major Kovalev’s face and his incredible independent existence separately from his owner suggest the unnaturalness of the order in which a high status in society means much more than the person himself. In this state of affairs, any inanimate object can suddenly acquire significance and weight if it acquires the proper rank. This is the main problem of the story "The Nose".

Features of realistic grotesque

In the late work of N.V. Gogol is dominated by realistic grotesque. It is aimed at revealing the unnaturalness and absurdity of reality. Incredible things happen to the heroes of the work, but they help to reveal the typical features of the world around them, to reveal the dependence of people on generally accepted conventions and norms.

Gogol's contemporaries did not immediately appreciate the writer's satirical talent. Only having done a lot for a correct understanding of Nikolai Vasilyevich’s work, he once noticed that the “ugly grotesque” that he uses in his work contains “an abyss of poetry” and “an abyss of philosophy”, worthy of “Shakespeare’s brush” in its depth and authenticity.

“The Nose” begins with the fact that on March 25, an “extraordinarily strange incident” happened in St. Petersburg. Ivan Yakovlevich, a barber, discovers his nose in freshly baked bread in the morning. He throws him off the St. Isaac's Bridge into the river. The owner of the nose, the collegiate assessor, or major, Kovalev, waking up in the morning, does not find an important part of the body on his face. In search of the loss, he goes to the police. On the way he meets his own nose in the garb of a state councilor. Pursuing the fugitive, Kovalev follows him to the Kazan Cathedral. He tries to return his nose to its place, but he only prays with “the greatest zeal” and points out to the owner that there can be nothing in common between them: Kovalev serves in another department.

Distracted by an elegant lady, the major loses sight of the rebellious part of the body. After making several unsuccessful attempts to find the nose, the owner returns home. There they return what was lost to him. The police chief grabbed his nose while trying to escape using someone else's documents to Riga. Kovalev's joy does not last long. He cannot put the body part back in its original place. The summary of the story "The Nose" does not end there. How did the hero manage to get out of this situation? The doctor can't help the major. Meanwhile, curious rumors are creeping around the capital. Someone saw the nose on Nevsky Prospekt, someone saw it on Nevsky Prospect. As a result, he himself returned to his original place on April 7, which brought considerable joy to the owner.

Theme of the work

So what is the point of such an incredible plot? The main theme of Gogol's story "The Nose" is the character's loss of a piece of his self. This probably happens under the influence of evil spirits. The organizing role in the plot is given to the motive of persecution, although Gogol does not indicate the specific embodiment of supernatural power. The mystery captivates readers literally from the first sentence of the work, it is constantly reminded of it, it reaches its climax... but there is no solution even in the finale. Covered in the darkness of the unknown is not only the mysterious separation of the nose from the body, but also how he could exist independently, and even in the status of a high-ranking official. Thus, the real and the fantastic in Gogol’s story “The Nose” are intertwined in the most unimaginable way.

Real plan

It is embodied in the work in the form of rumors, which the author constantly mentions. This is gossip that the nose regularly promenades along Nevsky Prospect and other crowded places; that he seemed to be looking into the store and so on. Why did Gogol need this form of communication? Maintaining an atmosphere of mystery, he satirically ridicules the authors of stupid rumors and naive belief in incredible miracles.

Characteristics of the main character

Why did Major Kovalev deserve such attention from supernatural forces? The answer lies in the content of the story "The Nose". The fact is that the main character of the work is a desperate careerist, ready to do anything for a promotion. He managed to receive the rank of collegiate assessor without an exam, thanks to his service in the Caucasus. Kovalev’s cherished goal is to marry profitably and become a high-ranking official. In the meantime, in order to give himself more weight and significance, he everywhere calls himself not a collegiate assessor, but a major, knowing about the superiority of military ranks over civilian ones. “He could forgive everything that was said about himself, but he did not forgive in any way if it related to rank or title,” the author writes about his hero.

So the evil spirits laughed at Kovalev, not only taking away an important part of his body (you can’t make a career without it!), but also endowing the latter with the rank of general, that is, giving it more weight than the owner himself. That's right, there is nothing Real and fantastic in Gogol's story "The Nose" makes you think about the question "what is more important - the personality or its status?" And the answer is disappointing...

Hints from a brilliant author

Gogol's story contains many satirical subtleties and transparent hints at the realities of his contemporary time. For example, in the first half of the 19th century, glasses were considered an anomaly, giving the appearance of an officer or official some inferiority. In order to wear this accessory, special permission was required. If the heroes of the work strictly followed the instructions and corresponded to the form, then the Nose in the Uniform acquired for them the importance of a significant person. But as soon as the police chief “logged out” of the system, broke the strictness of his uniform and put on glasses, he immediately noticed that in front of him was just a nose - a part of the body, useless without its owner. This is how the real and the fantastic intertwine in Gogol’s story “The Nose”. No wonder the author’s contemporaries were engrossed in this extraordinary work.

Many writers noted that “The Nose” is a magnificent example of fantasy, Gogol’s parody of various prejudices and people’s naive belief in the power of supernatural forces. Fantastic elements in the works of Nikolai Vasilyevich are ways of satirically displaying the vices of society, as well as affirming the realistic principle in life.

Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol is a completely unique writer, unlike other Russian masters of words. There is a lot of amazing and amazing things in his work: the funny is intertwined with the tragic, the fantastic with the real.

Reading Gogol's works, each time you become convinced that the basis of his works is comic. This is a carnival, when everyone puts on masks, displays unusual properties, changes places, and everything gets mixed up.

In the story “The Overcoat,” Gogol tells the story of the difficult life of the “little man” Akaki Akakievich Bashmachkin, whose life is subordinated to tradition and content with the automatism of his life. This work intertwines the comic and the tragic, the real and the fantastic. The story of his birth and the choice of the hero’s name make me smile. He got the position of an official whom no one ever respected or noticed. Only when his colleagues pestered him too much did he ask: “Leave me alone, why are you hurting me?” The author writes with bitterness about how much inhumanity there is in man, how much hidden ferocious rudeness and refined, cruel secularism are hidden. Bashmachkin’s poverty evokes, of course, sympathy, but the goal of his life (to buy a new overcoat) is too insignificant for a person. And then a happy day came: Akaki Akakievich’s dream came true. The colorless and resigned “little man,” whose life was reduced to fulfilling his position, felt like a hero in his new overcoat, and even received an invitation to visit a fellow official, where he was going to celebrate a joyful event. How little a person needs to be happy!

The theft of the overcoat turned into torment for the hero. He tried to find protection from the authorities, but “a significant person stamped his foot” - and Bashmachkin was thrown out. The callousness of a high-ranking official is disgusting.

Protected by no one, Akaki Akakievich dies. A creature disappeared and disappeared, no one was dear to anyone, no one was interested in it. Gogol depicted retribution in a fantastic way. The fantastic ending of the story is justified by the writer’s attitude towards his offended “brother”.

The dead man Bashmachkin appeared to a “significant person” on the street and took off his overcoat. This incident somehow softened the boss’s despotic temper; he even began to say to his subordinates less often: “How dare you, do you understand who is in front of you?” Gogol either sympathizes with his hero, or condemns him for the baseness of his goals, for his dumbness and slavish obedience.

In the story “The Overcoat,” I did not immediately determine exactly what was reality and what was fiction. The poverty and wretchedness of the life of Akaky Akakievich Bashmachkin is brought by the author to the point of absurdity and fantasy (walking along the street, he stepped very carefully on stones and slabs, almost did not touch them), as well as the ability of the “little man” to see characters in letters, and street - a country with people - letters and words. In contrast, a few days of noisy life after the death of Bashmachkin - a clear unreality - can always be an exorbitant fantasy and fear of one of the department officials, a significant person and the Kolomna watchman. Each individual character is the truth, but the totality of them, the society they form and the adventures that follow from this, is their fantastic and implausible side.

In “The Overcoat,” if we talk about fooling associated with something unreal, there are rumors about the noisy life of Akaki Akakievich after death. The climax, leading to the denouement, in one case to the material death of Bashmachkin, and in the other case to the disappearance of his ghost, is the robbery scene. This scene is repeated twice. In both cases, the overcoat is taken away, but one robbery is completely real, and the other is associated with mysticism. In “The Overcoat” the world of things is of great importance in the development of the plot; they, one might say, are personified, personified. The most extraordinary incidents are associated with things. In “The Overcoat,” outerwear, the overcoat, becomes the ultimate dream. For Bashmachkin, this is not only a wardrobe item, but also an object of love. The new overcoat was the last dream to keep warm in the cold world of St. Petersburg - this symbol of the eternal hellish cold. The overcoat gives rise to conflict, the tragic grotesque develops into fantasy. In “The Overcoat,” the heroes of the work do not have their own faces, but things and material values ​​are animated. The general tone in “The Overcoat” is not very optimistic, despite the fact that Gogol’s irony is also present in the scene of Akaki Akakievich’s baptism.

In the work “The Overcoat” there are scenes of everyday life everywhere, laughter through tears, the comic is revealed here only with the advent of science fiction.

ki. The world of things and related incidents are a vivid addition to their spiritual life. For Bashmachkin, the overcoat is his world, love, dream, meaning of life. Bashmachkin could not bear the theft of his overcoat, the futility of his dream. And the kindly petty official, possessing spiritual strength and opposing the soullessness of society, dies.

Elements of the surreal and unusual are present in almost all of Gogol’s works. Hyperbole, grotesque, “veiled” and obvious fantasy helped the writer make the viewer and reader laugh, and with laughter, according to Gogol, all illnesses in society can be cured - both of the people and of individuals.

Review

In the essay about the hero of the story “The Overcoat,” the theme is fully and purposefully revealed, it is shown how reality and fantasy are intricately intertwined in the story of the unfortunate “little man” Akaki Akakievich Bashmachkin, for whom a new overcoat was the last dream to keep warm in the cold world of St. Petersburg - a symbol of eternal hell. cold. The material is strictly selected, the text of the story and its most significant facts are used correctly, revealing the role of fiction in a work of art. There are clear logical connections in the work.

But what exactly interested Pushkin so much in such a primitive, at first glance, work? What features of it provoked the poet’s sincere delight?

The fact is that Nikolai Vasilyevich’s story, with its intricate plot, entirely based on a completely fantastic incident, exposes many of the vices of the author’s contemporary society.

People's lives are fully revealed here using the techniques of satire and grotesque, literally screaming about Gogol's attitude towards people and their vices. It is also noteworthy that the grotesque here is often built on a combination of real signs of life and their fantastic perception, which speaks of the author’s unusually developed writing skills. In this regard, when reading the text of a work, we mentally distinguish the signs described above, but we cannot clearly separate them: they seem to be intertwined, hiding in one another, but still “do not give themselves away.”

However, through this system one can still discern the main thoughts of Nikolai Vasilyevich. Which ones exactly? From the very beginning of the story, Gogol describes gray, gloomy Petersburg with its center, Nevsky Prospekt, along which all sorts of people invariably scurry about. And here is the main character, Major, as he calls himself, Kovalev, a dandy and a fashionista, looking for a “warm place” in the capital that corresponds to his freshly invented rank. There is nothing fantastic in this situation - sheer prose of life!

The most interesting thing begins a little later. A series of unusual and even strange, in my opinion, events lead to an outcome that is absolutely fantastic in every sense. This includes the barber’s discovery of a human, and very familiar, nose in his own breakfast, and attempts to get rid of it, which were not crowned with success for objective reasons, and the posting of a missing person’s notice in the local newspaper, and, in the end, Kovalev’s meeting with his own nose. However, the disappearance is no longer the same - the modest, seemingly meaningless nose of a minor official himself has become nothing other than a state councilor, an official of the highest rank.

Such an unexpected move is filled with revealing, castigating irony - satire - Gogol directly expresses his attitude towards the bureaucracy. Kovalev, who tried with all his might to elevate himself at the expense of a fictitious rank, as it seems to the character, worth his personality, remains “with a nose,” although in fact it is precisely he who lacks it.

Using this technique and the combination of two worlds, fantastic and real, Nikolai Vasilyevich tries to convey to the reader the idea of ​​​​the insolvency of the existing bureaucratic system, where everyone, under the mask of good nature, hides a callous, hypocritical and insidious personality by nature.

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The story "The Nose" is one of the most fun, original, fantastic and unexpected works of Nikolai Gogol. The author did not agree to publish this joke for a long time, but his friends persuaded him. The story was first published in the Sovremennik magazine in 1836, with a note by A.S. Pushkin. Since then, heated debates have not subsided around this work. The real and the fantastic in Gogol's story "The Nose" are combined in the most bizarre and unusual forms. Here the author reached the pinnacle of his satirical skill and painted a true picture of the morals of his time.

Brilliant grotesque

This is one of N.V.’s favorite literary devices. Gogol. But if in early works it was used to create an atmosphere of mystery and mystery in the narrative, then in a later period it turned into a way of satirically reflecting the surrounding reality. The story "The Nose" is a clear confirmation of this. The inexplicable and strange disappearance of the nose from Major Kovalev’s face and his incredible independent existence separately from his owner suggest the unnaturalness of the order in which a high status in society means much more than the person himself. In this state of affairs, any inanimate object can suddenly acquire significance and weight if it acquires the proper rank. This is the main problem of the story "The Nose".

Features of realistic grotesque

In the late work of N.V. Gogol is dominated by realistic grotesque. It is aimed at revealing the unnaturalness and absurdity of reality. Incredible things happen to the heroes of the work, but they help to reveal the typical features of the world around them, to reveal the dependence of people on generally accepted conventions and norms.

Gogol's contemporaries did not immediately appreciate the writer's satirical talent. Only having done a lot for a correct understanding of Nikolai Vasilyevich’s work, he once noticed that the “ugly grotesque” that he uses in his work contains “an abyss of poetry” and “an abyss of philosophy”, worthy of “Shakespeare’s brush” in its depth and authenticity.

“The Nose” begins with the fact that on March 25, an “extraordinarily strange incident” happened in St. Petersburg. Ivan Yakovlevich, a barber, discovers his nose in freshly baked bread in the morning. He throws him off the St. Isaac's Bridge into the river. The owner of the nose, the collegiate assessor, or major, Kovalev, waking up in the morning, does not find an important part of the body on his face. In search of the loss, he goes to the police. On the way he meets his own nose in the garb of a state councilor. Pursuing the fugitive, Kovalev follows him to the Kazan Cathedral. He tries to return his nose to its place, but he only prays with “the greatest zeal” and points out to the owner that there can be nothing in common between them: Kovalev serves in another department.

Distracted by an elegant lady, the major loses sight of the rebellious part of the body. After making several unsuccessful attempts to find the nose, the owner returns home. There they return what was lost to him. The police chief grabbed his nose while trying to escape using someone else's documents to Riga. Kovalev's joy does not last long. He cannot put the body part back in its original place. The summary of the story "The Nose" does not end there. How did the hero manage to get out of this situation? The doctor can't help the major. Meanwhile, curious rumors are creeping around the capital. Someone saw the nose on Nevsky Prospekt, someone saw it on Nevsky Prospect. As a result, he himself returned to his original place on April 7, which brought considerable joy to the owner.

Theme of the work

So what is the point of such an incredible plot? The main theme of Gogol's story "The Nose" is the character's loss of a piece of his self. This probably happens under the influence of evil spirits. The organizing role in the plot is given to the motive of persecution, although Gogol does not indicate the specific embodiment of supernatural power. The mystery captivates readers literally from the first sentence of the work, it is constantly reminded of it, it reaches its climax... but there is no solution even in the finale. Covered in the darkness of the unknown is not only the mysterious separation of the nose from the body, but also how he could exist independently, and even in the status of a high-ranking official. Thus, the real and the fantastic in Gogol’s story “The Nose” are intertwined in the most unimaginable way.

Real plan

It is embodied in the work in the form of rumors, which the author constantly mentions. This is gossip that the nose regularly promenades along Nevsky Prospect and other crowded places; that he seemed to be looking into the store and so on. Why did Gogol need this form of communication? Maintaining an atmosphere of mystery, he satirically ridicules the authors of stupid rumors and naive belief in incredible miracles.

Characteristics of the main character

Why did Major Kovalev deserve such attention from supernatural forces? The answer lies in the content of the story "The Nose". The fact is that the main character of the work is a desperate careerist, ready to do anything for a promotion. He managed to receive the rank of collegiate assessor without an exam, thanks to his service in the Caucasus. Kovalev’s cherished goal is to marry profitably and become a high-ranking official. In the meantime, in order to give himself more weight and significance, he everywhere calls himself not a collegiate assessor, but a major, knowing about the superiority of military ranks over civilian ones. “He could forgive everything that was said about himself, but he did not forgive in any way if it related to rank or title,” the author writes about his hero.

So the evil spirits laughed at Kovalev, not only taking away an important part of his body (you can’t make a career without it!), but also endowing the latter with the rank of general, that is, giving it more weight than the owner himself. That's right, there is nothing Real and fantastic in Gogol's story "The Nose" makes you think about the question "what is more important - the personality or its status?" And the answer is disappointing...

Hints from a brilliant author

Gogol's story contains many satirical subtleties and transparent hints at the realities of his contemporary time. For example, in the first half of the 19th century, glasses were considered an anomaly, giving the appearance of an officer or official some inferiority. In order to wear this accessory, special permission was required. If the heroes of the work strictly followed the instructions and corresponded to the form, then the Nose in the Uniform acquired for them the importance of a significant person. But as soon as the police chief “logged out” of the system, broke the strictness of his uniform and put on glasses, he immediately noticed that in front of him was just a nose - a part of the body, useless without its owner. This is how the real and the fantastic intertwine in Gogol’s story “The Nose”. No wonder the author’s contemporaries were engrossed in this extraordinary work.

Many writers noted that “The Nose” is a magnificent example of fantasy, Gogol’s parody of various prejudices and people’s naive belief in the power of supernatural forces. Fantastic elements in the works of Nikolai Vasilyevich are ways of satirically displaying the vices of society, as well as affirming the realistic principle in life.

1st slide. Real and fantastic in N.V. Gogol’s story “The Nose”

Portrait of Gogol by an unknown artist.

You can draw children's attention to the writer's gaze, as if penetrating through and through what he is directed at.

Children are invited to look at another cover created by the artist V. Masyutin (the book with his illustrations was published in 1922 in Berlin). Children's impressions of this cover. (The cover seems to be posing a puzzle: it seems that the letter “N” is winking slyly, the naive “O” is surprised, looking at everything with goggling “eyes”, “S” seems to be flirting, having fun, only “B” is serious; he believes that “Such incidents happen in the world - rarely, but they do happen”).

After the conversation, the teacher names the topic of the lesson. If students already know that the originality of Gogol’s work is manifested in the combination of the real and the fantastic, then they can determine it themselves.

Vocabulary work . Reality –

Fantastic -

“Gogol’s fantasy is very diverse and is distinguished by terrible power, and therefore the examples are vivid, - this is, secondly. Finally, it is difficult to find in Russian literature a closer interweaving of the fantastic with the real than in Gogol. The terms “fantastic” and “real” apply equally to life and creativity. What is fantastic? Fictional, which does not happen and cannot exist. A hero drinking one and a half buckets of green wine for a single spirit. Shadow of Banquo, nodding his bloody head. A dog writing a letter to a friend. What is real? In life, what can be, in creativity, is, moreover, typical.” (Innokenty Annensky “On the forms of the fantastic in Gogol”). You can suggest listening to the introduction to D. Shostakovich’s opera “The Nose”. 2nd slide.Before showing the slide " The one who has the longest nose knows best."

Checking homework: what proverbs and sayings about the nose the children remembered or found in dictionaries.

What proverbs and sayings shown on the slide were unknown to them?

Which of these proverbs and sayings will be found in the text of the story?

What proverbs and sayings are played out in one way or another in Gogol’s story?

The one who has the longest nose knows better.

Don't raise your nose - you'll stumble.

The nose turns up, and the wind blows through your head.

Pulled out the nose - the tail got stuck, pulled out the tail - the nose got stuck.

Don’t go to the governor with only one nose, go with something to bring.

hack on your nose; stay with your nose; leave with nose; lead by the nose; wipe your nose.

3rd slide. The story “The Nose” was first published in the Sovremennik magazine in 1836

4th slide. On March 25, an unusually strange incident happened in St. Petersburg

A comment to the slide. A memorial granite plaque with the image of Major Kovalev’s nose was installed on house number 38 on Voznesensky Prospekt, near Sadovaya Street. (In the story, Major Kovalev says that he lives on Sadovaya Street).

Draw students' attention to real St. Petersburg addresses and exact dates. But it would be appropriate to explain the date “March 25” a little later.

5th slide.“Isn’t he sleeping? doesn't seem to be sleeping"

Working with the text of the story. Task: 1. Find in the text the episode for which the illustration presented on the slide was made. 2. Read. After this, the text can be shown on the slide.

“Collegiate assessor Kovalev woke up quite early. Kovalev stretched and ordered himself to hand over the small mirror that was on the table. He wanted to look at the pimple that had popped up on his nose last night.”

"But, to the greatest amazement, I saw that instead of a nose he had a completely smooth place! Frightened, Kovalev rubbed his eyes: exactly, no nose!

“Collegiate assessor Kovalev jumped out of bed and shook himself: no nose!..»

“He ordered him to immediately get dressed and flew straight to the chief of police.”

Vocabulary work: Chief of Police , police chief (from German: Polizeimeister) - head of the city police in pre-revolutionary Russia. The position of police chief was created in 1718 in St. Petersburg (police chief general). The police chief headed the deanery administration. All police ranks and institutions of the city were subordinate to the police chief, with the help of which “decency, good morals and order” were carried out, the execution of orders of higher authorities and court sentences.

6th slide. Something must be said about Kovalev

The task for students is to find in the text of the story what the author tells about this hero.

“Major Kovalev came to St. Petersburg out of necessity, namely to look for a place decent for his rank: if possible, then a vice-governor, or else an executor in some prominent department.”

Vocabulary work : lieutenant governor – a position that appeared in Russia under Peter I, with the first establishment of provinces in 1708. According to the Establishment on Governorates of 1775, vice-governors were chairmen of state chambers;

executor– h an innovnik in charge of economic affairs and supervision of external order in a state institution (in the Russian state until 1917)

department(from the French departement), before 1917 a department of a ministry or other government agency.

“Major Kovalev was not averse to getting married, but only in such a case when it happened to the bride two hundred thousand capital."

Kovalev(Ukrainian koval - blacksmith; “smith of his own happiness”).

What is the name of Major Kovalev? Where is his name mentioned?

In Ms. Podtochina’s letter, which begins with an appeal: "Your Majesty Platon Kuzmich!»

Plato(Greek: broad-shouldered, broad-shouldered, strong);

Kuzma(Russian) from Cosmas (Greek - decoration). How does the hero's name relate to his character?

7th slide. “He could forgive everything that was said about himself, but he did not forgive in any way if it related to rank or title.”

What does Gogol say about Kovalev’s rank?

“Kovalev was a Caucasian collegiate assessor. The collegiate assessors who receive this title with the help of academic certificates cannot in any way be compared with those collegiate assessors who were made in the Caucasus.”

To explain what a “Caucasian” collegiate assessor means, we can quote lines from A.S. Pushkin’s “Travel to Arzrum”:

« Young titular councilors come here(to Georgia) for the rank of assessor, so coveted».

Vocabulary work : titular councilor – 9th grade official,

A collegiate assessor was an 8th class official, corresponding to a major, and gave the right to hereditary nobility.

Disposable nobles serving as officials, but unable to pass the necessary examination in world history and mathematics for the rank of collegiate assessor, according to the law could still make a profitable career by deciding “to be Argonauts, to ride postal to Colchis for the golden fleece, that is, to the Caucasus for the rank of collegiate assessor." (Bulgarin F. « A civic mushroom or life, that is, vegetation, and the exploits of my friend, Foma Fomich Openkov.” 1836). One thing could stop their sense of ambition: the thought of the Tiflis cemetery, which received the name “assessorsky”. The Bulgarin official was afraid of the Tiflis cemetery, and Gogol’s Platon Kuzmich Kovalev, on the contrary, got what he wanted in the Caucasus. (Plato is “broad-shouldered, plump”; Gogol’s hero is a big man who withstood the hardships of the Caucasian climate).

You can cite individual articles from the Code of Laws of the Russian Empire of 1835:

“To prevent a shortage of capable and worthy officials in the Caucasus region, officials assigned there are granted exceptional benefits:

Ø promotion to the next rank out of turn (Code, Article 106);

Ø award to the rank of the eighth class, giving the right of hereditary nobility - collegiate assessor - without tests and certificates required from other civil officials (Code, Article 106);

Ø grant of land according to the statute on pensions (Code, Article 117)

Reducing the period for receiving the Order of St. Vladimir, IV degree” (Code, Article 117).

Major Kovalev, having become a collegiate assessor without special education, also knew about the advantage of the military over civilian officials:

“To give himself more nobility and weight, he never called himself a collegiate assessor, but always a major.”

The Code of Laws of the Russian Empire stated: “Civil officials are prohibited from calling themselves military officials” (Article 119).

Thus, Kovalev breaks the law, is an impostor, and this should entail punishment.

These articles of the Code of Laws also explain the action of the hero at the end of the story: “Major Kovalev was seen stopping once in front of a shop in Gostiny Dvor and buying some kind of order ribbon, it is unknown for what reasons, because he himself was not a holder of any order.” The nose returning to its place returns Major Kovalev's hope of receiving the order.

8th slide. I had a distant hope in my soul
To become a collegiate assessor...

The title of the slide includes lines from N.A. Nekrasov’s poem “The Official,” which emphasize the special significance for poorly educated, empty, worthless people of receiving the rank of collegiate assessor. It is appropriate to tell (or remind) about another Gogol hero - Khlestakov. This character from the comedy “The Inspector General”, being an official of the 14th grade - a collegiate registrar - a copyist of papers (“ It would be good if there really was something worthwhile, otherwise elistratishka simple!“- the servant Osip speaks disdainfully of him), dreams of the rank of collegiate assessor, which is revealed in the scene of lies: “You may think that I am only rewriting; no... They even wanted me collegiate assessor do it, yes, I think why.”

It is appropriate to compare Gogol’s two heroes, defining the “philosophy” of their lives: “After all, you live to pick flowers of pleasure.”

(in the name of Major Kovalev one can easily discern an ironic allusion to the ancient Greek philosopher Plato).

9th slide. After all, you live to pick flowers of pleasure

Scene in the Kazan Cathedral.

Kovalev came closer, stuck out the cambric collar of his shirtfront, straightened his signets hanging on the gold chain and, smiling around, drew attention to the light lady who, like a spring flower, bent slightly and raised her little white hand with translucent fingers to her forehead.

Khlestakov appears in the place of Major Kovalev:

“You’ll approach some pretty daughter:

“Madam, how am I...”

(He rubs his hands and shuffles his feet.)

10th slide. "It is impossible for the nose to disappear; unbelievable in any way"

Working with text and illustrations . "My God! My God! Why is this such misfortune? If I were without an arm or without a leg, all this would be better; If I were without ears, it would be bad, but everything would be more bearable; but without a nose a person is the devil knows what: a bird is not a bird, a citizen is not a citizen - just take it and throw him out the window! Disappeared for nothing, for nothing, wasted for nothing, not for a penny!..”

“This is probably either a dream, or just a daydream.”

11 slide. “That is, not in the eyebrow, but straight in the eye!”

From the Code of Laws of the Russian Empire of 1835:

· It is prohibited to employ crippled people who have

· a painful situation, although not due to wounds, but due to its incurability, does not allow one to enter into any position;

· obvious lack of intelligence;

· bad behavior (Code, Article 47).

Assignment to students: Find in the text of the story how the narrator comments on the words of the private bailiff: “They won’t tear off a decent person’s nose, there are many majors in the world who hang around all sorts of obscene places.”

Narrator's comment « That is, not in the eyebrow, but straight in the eye!” appears in the title of the slide. Children are encouraged to reflect on these words.

12 slide. March 25 (April 7) – Feast of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Annunciation (C.-Sl. Annunciation; lat. Annuntiatio - announcement).

“And then the day came when the Lord commanded the Archangel Gabriel to announce the good news to Mary - it was she who was destined to become the Mother of the Savior of the world. God's Messenger appeared to the Virgin Mary and said:

“Rejoice, O Blessed One! Blessed are you among women!”

Why exactly this date is indicated in the story will be revealed later.

One of the articles in the Code of Laws explains the date indicated at the beginning of the story: “ Be in festive uniform at the All-Night Vigil on Palm Saturday, Palm Sunday and other Orthodox holidays.”

Annunciation Day- an official holiday on which a Russian official, by state decree, was obliged to be in church at a service in decent form in order to testify to his devotion and deanery to the government. In St. Petersburg, such an official and at the same time accessible religious building was the Kazan Cathedral. That's why on March 25 the hero had to meet his nose in the Kazan Cathedral. Their meeting is full of topical content. Gogol's story plays out legalized forms of bureaucratic behavior. It is on March 25, when everything should be in its place, that Kovalev’s appearance does not correspond to the letter of the law. Consequently, the hero's panic is caused by another failure to comply with the law.

13th slide. “An inexplicable phenomenon occurred”

Working with the text of the story. Exercise 1. Find in the text the episode for which the illustration presented on the slide was made. 2. Read. After this, the text can be shown on the slide.

“A carriage stopped in front of the entrance; the doors opened; a gentleman jumped out, bent over, in a uniform embroidered with gold, with a large stand-up collar; he was wearing suede trousers; there is a sword at his side. From his plumed hat one could conclude that he was considered V rank State Councilor".

Vocabulary work : State Councilor - 5th class official. This is already the rank of general.

Plume - feathers for decorating a headdress.

“What was Kovalev’s horror and at the same time amazement when he learned that it was his own nose!»

"Poor KovalevI almost went crazy. How is it really possible to nose, which just yesterday was on his face, could not ride or walk - was in his uniform! For a Caucasian collegiate assessor, the rank of civil servant there is something unusually high, enviable and offensive in its unattainability, and suddenly this rank goes to the nose of Major Kovalev, and not to the major himself, the rightful owner of the nose. "All in all, the power of the fantastic in the story "The Nose" is based on its artistic truth, on a graceful weave his with real into a living, bright whole." (I. Annensky). Slide 14 “He didn’t know how to think about such a strange incident.”

Working with the text of the story . Task: 1. Find in the text the episode for which the illustration presented on the slide was made. 2. Read. After this, the text can be shown on the slide. “It was obvious from everything that the general was going somewhere on a visit. He looked at both sides and shouted to the coachman: “Bring it on!” - sat down and left.

Kovalev ran after the carriage"

15th slide.“The carriage stopped in front of the Kazan Cathedral.”

16th slide. "He entered the church"

Ongoing working with the text of the story.

“Kovalyov felt in such an upset state that he was in no way able to pray, and with his eyes he looked for this gentleman in all corners. Finally I saw him standing to the side. Nose completely hid his face in a large standing collar and prayed with an expression of the greatest piety.”

Using animation, the illustration and title of the slide change.

Dear sir... - said Kovalev (with self-esteem), - you must know your place. I'm a major. It is indecent for me to walk without a nose... if you look at it in accordance with the rules of duty and honor... After all, you are my own nose!

(The nose looked at the major, and his eyebrows frowned somewhat):

You are mistaken, dear sir. I am on my own. Moreover, there cannot be any close relations between us. Judging by the buttons on your uniform, you must serve in another department.

Having said this, the nose turned away and continued to pray.

Discuss the dialogue read, check the author's remarks in the text of the story. Listener comments. You can repeat reading the dialogue.

P. A. Vyazemsky shared with A. I. Turgenev his impression of Gogol’s reading of “The Nose” (he was well aware of the cult of hierarchical relations in the bureaucratic environment, enshrined in regulations and everyday life): “On the last Saturday he read to us the story about the nose, which disappeared and found himself in the Kazan Cathedral in the uniform of the Ministry of Education. Hilariously funny. Collegiate Assessor, meeting your nose to his own, says to him: “I’m surprised that I find you here, it seems you should know your place.”

17th slide. “Major Kovalev used to walk along Nevsky Prospect every day”

“Soon they began to say that the nose of the collegiate assessor Kovalev was walking along Nevsky Prospect at exactly three o’clock.”

Here you can suggest listening to “Interlude” from the opera

D. Shostakovich "Nose". It can be played while the next two slides are shown: 18th and 19th.

18th slide. Then a rumor spread that Major Kovalev’s nose was walking not on Nevsky Prospekt, but in the Tauride Garden

19th slide.Perfect nonsense is happening in the world

“Meanwhile, rumors about this extraordinary incident spread throughout the capital. At that time, everyone’s minds were precisely tuned to the extraordinary: recently the public had just been occupied with experiments on the action of magnetism. The story of the dancing chairs on Konyushennaya Street was still fresh.

Someone said that the nose was supposedly in Juncker's store.

A lot of curious people flocked every day.” Here, in fantastic forms, a phenomenon very close to us and the most ordinary is depicted. (I. Annensky). Historical commentary . The incident at Konyushennaya happened in 1833. Gogol's contemporaries left notes about him. From P. A. Vyazemsky we read: “Here they talked for a long time about a strange phenomenon in the house of the court stable: in the house of one of the officials, chairs, tables danced, tumbled, glasses filled with wine were thrown at the ceiling, they called for witnesses, a priest with holy water, but ball didn’t let up.” The diaries of A. S. Pushkin say the same thing: “In the city they talk about strange incident. In one of the houses belonging to the court stables, the furniture decided to move and jump; things went according to the authorities. One of the officials called the priest, but during the prayer service the chairs and tables did not want to stand still. N said that the furniture was court furniture and was requested to be sent to Anichkov.” Another testimony from Muscovite A. Ya. Bulgakov: “What kind of miracles did you have with some official’s chairs? I don’t believe whatever the details are, but I’m very curious to know the outcome of the case that, as they say, came to the attention of the Minister of the Court.” And finally, the remark of M. N. Longinov: “Gogol’s stories were hilarious; I remember now how comically he conveyed, for example, city rumors and rumors about dancing chairs.”

These records record not only the incident itself as a fantastic fact of life of the era, but also the street and city rumors associated with it. In Gogol's story, the fantastic flight of the Nose is stylized as everyday reality fantasy, the narrative becomes clearly parodic. Investigated the case with the chairs " Minister of the Court" was drawn to the story of Nose police, but "well-meaning people were waiting for intervention government."

20th slide.“Have you deigned to lose your nose?”

“In a strange incident, he was intercepted almost on the road. He was already boarding a stagecoach and wanted to leave for Riga. And the passport had long been written in the name of one official. And the strange thing is that I myself mistook him at first for a gentleman. But, fortunately, I had glasses with me, and I immediately saw that it was a nose.”

Historical commentary : glasses- a certain anomaly in the general appearance of an officer or official, violating the severity of the uniform, a detail of inferiority. Wearing glasses was formalized by a special order as an exception to the rules.

It is enough to follow the instructions, conform to the form, and the Nose in the uniform of a state councilor acquires the meaning of a face. The nose in the uniform of a state councilor, as prescribed, ends up on March 25 in the Kazan Cathedral, where he prays devoutly, rides around in a carriage, makes visits, forces Kovalev to observe the chain of command, the boundaries of official position and rank. But it’s worth “exiting” the system, breaking the order, put on glasses, as one police official does, how the nose corresponds to its direct meaning.

It is impossible not to pay attention to other realities of reality:

“Kovalyov, grabbing a red note from the table, thrust it into the hands of the warden, who, shuffling, walked out the door, and at that same almost minute Kovalev already heard his voice on the street where he exhorted in the teeth of one stupid man who drove his cart right onto the boulevard.”

Vocabulary work : exhorted - choose synonyms. (To exhort, to exhort someone, to sniff, to sniff (to smell), to admonish, to instruct, to persuade for good, to teach with advice. -sya, to be admonished. || church. to make peace by agreement. Dahl's Explanatory Dictionary ). How does this word sound in this fragment? - Ironically.

21st slide. Satirical depiction of the world and man

These slides may have musical accompaniment - "Gallop" from the opera "The Nose".

Satire(lat. Satira ) – poetic derogatory denunciation of phenomena using various comic means:

irony, sarcasm, hyperbole, grotesque, allegory.

Irony(Greek - pretense) - depiction of a negative phenomenon in a positive form in order to ridicule and show the phenomenon in true form form; an allegory in which a word or statement takes on an opposite meaning in the context of speech.

Sarcasm(Greek - “tear meat”) - caustic mockery, the highest degree of irony.

22nd slide. Hyperbola - deliberate exaggeration aimed at enhancing expressiveness.

23rd slide. Grotesque(French grotesque, Italian grottesco - whimsical, from grotta - grotto) The concept of "grotesque" owes its origin to archaeological excavations that were carried out in Rome in the 15-16 centuries on the site where the public baths of Emperor Titus were once located. In rooms covered with earth, the famous Italian artist Raphael and his students discovered a peculiar painting called "grotesque"(“grotto, dungeon”).

24th slide. Grotesque - deviation from the norm, convention, exaggeration, deliberate caricature . Grotesque - This is an unprecedented, special world, opposing not only everyday life, but also the real, actual one. The grotesque borders on the fantastic. It shows how absurdly the scary and the funny, the absurd and the authentic collide, real and fantastic.

25th slide. Absurd(lat. absurdus - “discordant, absurd”) - something illogical, absurd, contrary to common sense

26th and 27th slides. Phantasmagoria ( from Greek phantasma - ghost and agoreuō - I say) - 1. whimsical, fantastic vision (book).

2. trans. Nonsense, an impossible thing (colloquial).

3. a ghostly, fantastic image obtained through various optical devices (special).

28th slide. Perfect nonsense is happening in the world

"Nose" - dream or reality? To present the fantastic, Gogol uses a unique technique, as if inverting the generally accepted one - a dream similar to reality, but the result is reality similar to a dream: Initially, the fantastic nature of the events described in it was motivated by the dream of Major Kovalev. Despite the change in plan, the dream motif in the story is palpable. Kovalev, in connection with the fantastic disappearance of his nose, raves in reality as if in a dream: “This is probably either a dream, or just a dream.” “The major pinched himself. This pain completely assured him that he was acting and living in reality. . ." The author-narrator emphasizes the authenticity, the reality of what is happening, at the same time, in the story the imaginary nature of this reality is felt; it is difficult to distinguish the boundary where the fantastic begins, where the real continues. With the central event of his story - the missing nose - Gogol “sets up” the reader for the interpretation of dreams: “Losing a nose in a dream is a sign of harm and loss”. The real losses that could await the noseless Major Kovalev have already been mentioned.

29th slide. This is what happened in the northern capital of our vast state!

And yet, as you think about it, there really is something in all this.”

Conversation.With what intonation does the writer pronounce the final phrases of his story? What are your impressions of the story you read? Famous critic of the 40-50s XIX century Apollo Grigoriev called the "Nose" "deep fantastic" a work in which "a whole life, empty, aimlessly formal, restlessly moving, stands before you with this wandering nose - and, if you know it, this life - and you cannot not know it after all those details that the great artist unfolds before you," then "miracle life"causes not only laughter in you, but also chilling horror." “Art comes closer to life not at all in reality, but in truth, that is, in the distinction between good and evil. The triumph of truth fantastic serves as long, and maybe even better, than real. In the story one can discern a very specific artistic goal - to make people feel the vulgarity that surrounds them. And here the fantastic only intensified the manifestation of reality, colored the vulgarity and increased the funny." (I. Annensky). 31st slide. Who knows better who has the longer nose?

Which of these proverbs and sayings most suits the events told in the story “The Nose”?

32nd slide. Arrogance is not according to man. The nose is out of order.

Arrogance -pride, arrogance, arrogance, pout; swagger, vanity.

Arrogance is stupid self-satisfaction, taking credit for dignity, rank, and external insignia.

Arrogance inflates, humility exalts.

Arrogance loves honor.

Boyar arrogance is growing in the very heart.

What honor would we have, if only we had arrogance!

Arrogance is not lordship, stupid speech is not a proverb...

There is no such thing as smart arrogance.

You can't lift your nose wisely.

Pride goes before a fall. There is a proverb about your arrogance.

Final work.

Essay-reflection:

What and how does N.V. Gogol laugh at in the story “The Nose”?

One of the most common and
leading to the biggest
disasters of temptations
there is a temptation to say:
“Everyone does it.”

L.N. Tolstoy

Lesson objectives:

Educational:

• learn to analyze text through subject details;
• consolidate students’ ideas about plot, composition, episode, grotesque.

Developmental:

• develop the ability to determine the boundaries of an episode;
• find causal connections between episodes;
• develop verbal communication skills.

Educational:

• cultivate a sense of responsibility for one’s actions.

Brief information about the publication of the story by N.V. Gogol “The Nose” (1836).

In 20-30 years. In the 19th century, the theme of the “nose” gained unexpected popularity. Impromptu and feuilletons, stories and vaudevilles, panegyrics and lyrical opuses were dedicated to the nose. Not only third-rate journalists, but even famous writers, such as Bestuzhev-Marlinsky, N.V. Gogol, wrote about the nose. The supposed lightness of “The Nose” gave it the reputation of Gogol’s most mysterious work.

Today’s lesson is an attempt to unravel what idea the writer encrypted in the story about Major Kovalev’s unfortunate nose.

1) Who is Kovalev?

2) For what purpose did Kovalev come to St. Petersburg?

3) What is Kovalev’s portrait?

4) Why did Kovalev walk along Nevsky Prospect every day and pay visits to his acquaintances?

5) Why, being a collegiate assessor, does he call himself a major?

6) Name the details that convince the reader of the reality of what is happening:

• name the time of action (March 25th - loss of the nose, April 7th - return of the nose);
• name the location (St. Petersburg is the capital of the Russian state. Kovalev lives on Sadovaya Street. The Barber lives on Voznesensky Prospekt. The meeting with the Nose took place in the Kazan Cathedral. Nevsky Prospekt of the capital is a kind of stage on which everyone plays their role);
• name the hero of the story (Kovalyov is a petty employee who dreams of a vice-governor’s position).

7) Why did Gogol need to convince everyone of the reality of what was happening? (Kovalyov himself does not see anything fantastic in what happened - no pain, no blood from the loss of his nose. And we, readers, also perceive fantasy as reality. Bringing the situation to the point of absurdity, Gogol expands the scope of the story that happened “in the northern capital of our vast state", to the history of all of Russia. And not only. The philosophical meaning of the story is addressed to descendants.

What does N.V. Gogol warn us about? What kind of mask do we wear in society? What are we hiding underneath? Does a person’s inner content correspond to his actions?

Group I of students works with questions on the card.

1. How do others react to the misfortune that happened to Kovalev?
2. Who did Kovalev turn to first about his missing nose? Why not see a doctor?
3. Why do you think so many people are drawn into this story?

II group of students:

1. Tell us about the advertisements in the newspaper.
2. What is their absurdity?
3. Why do you think Gogol is distracted from the main plot and sets out in detail the content of these announcements?

III group of students:

1. What is the composition of the story?
2. Why does the story begin with Chapter I, which tells the story of the barber Ivan Yakovlevich?
3. What inconsistencies have you found in the barber's behavior?
4. What does Ivan Yakovlevich have in common with Kovalev?
5. Why doesn’t Ivan Yakovlevich have a last name?

1. Did Kovalev's behavior change after the loss of his nose and after its return?
2. How do you understand the phraseology “Stay with your nose”?
3. What does the author do to destroy the mask of “decency” of the society he depicts?
4. What does Gogol warn us about?
5. Why does the author create a grotesque situation?
6. Why did Gogol introduce a fantastic plot into a completely realistic narrative?

Creating a grotesque situation, N.V. Gogol shows the ordinary in an unusual light, what everyone is accustomed to and does not notice - he tears off the mask from the ugly phenomena of reality.

Calls on the reader to look into his soul and answer, first of all, to himself, whether his behavior, his mental makeup corresponds to generally accepted norms of morality and morality.

Kovalev is not who he claims to be: not a real major, not suitable for the vice-governor’s position, and insincere with his acquaintances. He becomes honest, active, ready to cry only when trouble happens to him, when he loses his nose.

And when the nose returned, its old mask returned: the same habits, the same acquaintances. It took the intervention of evil spirits to tear off his mask and reveal his true face.

All heroes have a mask: the barber, the private bailiff, the doctor, the police chief - all of Russia... Beneath the external decency lies indifference, deceit, rudeness, bribery, servility, vanity, flattery, envy. To tear off the mask from the vices of society is N.V.’s task. Gogol.

What does the author do to destroy this convention, to tear off the mask of “decency” from society? He too...puts on the Mask. The mask of a naive and simple-minded narrator, surprised by what happened, even at the end of the story, reproaching himself for the fact that such an absurdity became the subject of his story. And this technique allows N.V. Gogol satirically outlines the vices of contemporary Russia.

What is the main idea encrypted in the story “The Nose”? What does Gogol warn us about? What literary device helps Gogol create an unusual situation? Grotesque is an artistic technique with which the author depicts people and events in a fantastically exaggerated, ugly-comic form.

The study of fiction in Gogol’s story “The Nose” has gone in different directions in literary studies. Firstly, a broad literary context has been established for the motives of the story, which are a kind of artistic response to “topical conversations and lively literary themes.” 1 Secondly, the subject of science fiction is defined - sociality, its method is realistic, 2 its function is satirical. 3 Thirdly, the study of the poetics of the fantastic began, attention was drawn to the “fundamental change that tradition has undergone”: Gogol demonstrated in “The Nose” a rethinking of romantic fiction, its artistic techniques in general, openly parodying them. 4

It has become a “commonplace” in science to note the connection between the fantasy of St. Petersburg stories and real life, to see in this connection the peculiarity of their poetics. 5

Nevertheless, the questions of how everyday material comes into contact with a literary text, how it “plays” in it, what role it plays in constructing a fantastic plot, were not raised. Moreover, the everyday material used in constructing the plot of “The Nose” was not identified, and therefore the problem of correlation between everyday fact and literary text, their interaction, and artistic interpretation of everyday behavior did not arise. 6

Everyday life in its diverse, many-sided expression becomes not so much the background of the story, something external in relation to the development of the plot, to the development of the characters’ characters, i.e., beyond the plot action, but rather it enters into the plot, determines the essence of the characters’ characters, their behavior , their consciousness, determines the originality of the narrative, makes clear the polysemy of meanings hidden behind emphasized everyday phenomena, shows how the social context becomes an artistic text.

The story about the official, which satirically proclaims the “apotheosis” of rank, is imbued with various allusions, primarily caused by the decrees of the unified Code of Laws of the Russian Empire of 1835. The special influence of this Code on Russian life and the bureaucratic environment gave rise to a social phenomenon of the time. Disposable nobles serving as officials, but unable to pass the necessary examination in world history and mathematics for the rank of collegiate assessor, according to the law could still make a profitable career by deciding “to be Argonauts, to ride postal to Colchis for the golden fleece, that is, to the Caucasus for the rank of collegiate assessor." 7 One thing could stop their sense of ambition: the thought of the Tiflis cemetery, which received the name “assessorsky”. 8

The everyday experience of mastering the Code of Laws in life in literature was refracted by reflected light. This noticeable social phenomenon received different interpretations in the works of Bulgarin and Gogol: the Bulgarin official was afraid of the Tiflis cemetery, and Gogol’s Platon Kuzmich Kovalev, on the contrary, got what he wanted in the Caucasus. In this regard, it is important to remember that the name of the hero - Plato - means “broad-shouldered, plump”, 9 Gogol’s hero is a big man who withstood the hardships of the Caucasian climate.

The writer introduces his hero as a Caucasian collegiate assessor. 10 The Code of Laws says: “To prevent shortages! in capable and worthy officials. . . in the Caucasus region. . . officials assigned there are granted exclusive rights and benefits.” 11 Namely these: promotion to the next rank out of turn; award to the rank of the eighth class, giving the right of hereditary nobility - collegiate assessor - “without the tests and certificates required of other civil officials” (Code, p. 106). To say about Kovalev: “Caucasian collegiate assessor” means to reveal a certain ambiguous inferiority of the hero as a government official, to open the play of different plans in the characterization of Kovalev - direct and imaginary, legal and illegal, generally valid and constituting an exception.

Another privilege for the Caucasian collegiate assessor, specified in the resolutions, reveals to the reader the social well-being of the hero and the reasons for his complacency: such officials had their pensions increased or were granted land “according to the statute on pensions” (Code, p. 117). Finally, the Code of Laws explains the unmotivated behavior of the major in the plot of the story. The regulations for a Caucasian official determined “a reduction in the period for receiving the Order of St. Vladimir, IV degree” (Sod, p. 117): in the plot of the story, Kovalev buys an order ribbon, although, as it is said, “he himself was not a holder of any order” (III , 75). It turns out that the Code of Laws and its immediate direct impact on real life is the hidden plan being parodied in Gogol's work.

It cannot be said that correlating the text of the story with the Code of Laws would be arbitrary. The author identified the hero as a justice official.

In this regard, we can recall another Gogol hero - an official from the play “The Morning of a Business Man”, who begins his day by reading the Code of Laws. And the hero of Bulgarin - Pankraty Fomich Tychkov, a clerk, dissatisfied with the emergence of a new Code, stopping his “leftist” income with the help of chicanery. 12 According to Bulgarin, the new Code is a benefit, “the light of legality”; according to Gogol, it is another way of generating an adventurer and an ambitious person.

Kovalev, having used one exception to the rules, becoming a collegiate assessor without special education, knew about another exception: the advantage of the military over civilian officials. In the Nicholas era, as E. Karnovich writes, in practice it was established that “military personnel who had the ranks major's and above were renamed to the corresponding civil ranks. . . In public opinion, military service at that time was considered much more honorable than civilian service.” 13 (Italics are mine, - O.D.).

As you know, Gogol’s hero never called himself a collegiate assessor, but always major(III, 53). Firstly, according to the standards of the time, this is prestigious, as it raises the hero in public opinion, and secondly, it comically de-veils Kovalev’s character. It is significant that such social behavior was provoked by the laws “Civil officials in various ranks. . . give way to the military, at least one of them was older by the time of award to that rank” (Sod, p. 119). The same decree specifically stipulates: “Civil officials are prohibited (the hero is a civil official - O.D.) be called military ranks (Code, p. 119). It turns out that Kovalev’s frivolity can be regarded as a violation of the law, as imposture, as a crime against government regulations, which entailed punishment and reprisals. This violation in Gogol's story is comically punished: the careerist's nose runs off. Kovalev complains: “Why is this such a misfortune? If I had no arm or no leg, everything would be better. . . but without but ca . . . citizen is not citizen"(III, 64), (i.e., the hero found himself in the position of a person without rights, without citizenship. The nose disappearing is not patriotic, not like a nobleman: “let him be chopped off in a war, or in a duel” (III, 64), - then it would be possible to explain the injury by the defense of the fatherland and claim to be assigned “to the civil service of wounded officers who are in the department of the Committee...” (Code, p. 46). The hero’s grief and frustration stem from the fact that he cannot use this point law in his own interests: his nose disappeared “for no reason, for no reason, wasted in vain, not for a penny!" (III, 64). On the contrary, the absence of a nose threatens him with official troubles, losses, and disrupts his plans to become a vice-governor or an executor In the same decree it was categorically forbidden to hire cripples who: “...b) have a painful condition, although not due to wounds, but due to incurability, do not allow them to take up any position; c) obvious lack of intelligence; d) bad behavior” (Sod, p. 47). Everything carefully hidden by the hero is suddenly revealed, becomes obvious, his “libelous”, “stupid”, noseless appearance hints at a lack of intelligence and bad behavior, compromising the official. And according to the law, as it turns out, these reasons are so important that the hero’s career is in danger of collapse.

The author-narrator is ironically surprised: “How did Kovalev not realize that. . . announce the nose. . . indecent, awkward, bad! (III, 73). The story also plays out the motive of bad behavior. “They won’t take away a decent person’s life,” says a private bailiff, “there are many majors in the world who... . . they hang around in all sorts of obscene places” (III, 63). The author-narrator emotionally confirms his full agreement with the opinion of the private bailiff: “That is, not in the eyebrow, but straight in the eye!” (III, 63). And immediately after this, the theme of the offended rank and title, and not the personality of the hero, arises in the text, i.e., a game of imaginary meanings.

Thus, government regulations as an everyday fact of the era help to clarify the psychology of a careerist, gripped by the general disease of time, the “electricity of rank,” to understand the “poetics of rank,” 14 the motives of the hero’s behavior, the reasons for deviations from the norms of naturalness, rooted in reality itself with its incongruities. It turns out that, as it were, accomplices of this social illness were government laws that instilled bureaucratic mania and were even forced to restrain the abnormal passion for rank imposture with a number of restrictions and fines (Code, pp. 120-121). The code of laws as an everyday fact is present in the story as if in a “removed” form, scattered with small details, connected, however, by the main theme of the plot - the theme of rank.

In the fiction of “The Nose,” the reality of the subtext, its genetic everyday roots are felt everywhere. An everyday detail allows us to decipher the poetics of numbers in the story, and in connection with this, the logic of the hero’s behavior.

Kovalev discovered his loss on March 25 (in the draft editions it was “23rd of 1832”, in another place: “this February 23rd” (III, 380-381)). The named number evoked a social association among contemporaries. Annunciation Day is an official holiday on which a Russian official, by state decree, was obliged to be in church at the service in decent form in order to testify to his devotion and deanery to the government. In St. Petersburg, such an official and at the same time accessible religious building was the Kazan Cathedral. The decree says: “ INbe in festive uniform at the divine service in the presence of their imperial majesties March 25, the day of the Annunciation, at the All-Night Vigil on Palm Saturday, on Palm Sunday. . ." 15 (Italics are mine, - O.D.). That's why the hero had to meet his nose on March 25 in Kazanskycathedral. Their meeting is full of topical content. P. A. Vyazemsky, sharing with A. I. Turgenev his impression of Gogol’s reading of “The Nose,” well understood the meaning of this meeting, knowing the cult of hierarchical relations in the bureaucratic environment, enshrined in the regulations and everyday life: “On the last Saturday he read to us the story of nose that disappeared. . . and found himself in the Kazan Cathedral in the uniform of the Ministry of Education. Hilariously funny. . . The collegiate assessor, meeting his nose, says to him: “I’m surprised that I find you here, it seems you should know your place.” 16 In Gogol's story, legalized forms of bureaucratic behavior are played out. It is on March 25, when everything should be in its place, that Kovalev’s appearance does not correspond to the letter of the law. Consequently, the hero’s panic is caused by another failure to comply with the law. Thus, the indicated day reveals not only the poetics of number, but also the poetics of rank associated with it.

In addition to the everyday facts that are substantively fixed in the subtext, but not directly indicated, in the story there is a case of open quotation: “. . .recently. . . The public was fascinated by experiments on the effects of magnetism. Moreover, the story about the dancing chairs in Konyushennaya Street was still fresh. . ." (III, 71). Indeed, the incident at Konyushennaya happened in 1833. 17 Gogol’s contemporaries left notes about him. From P. A. Vyazemsky we read: “Here they talked for a long time about a strange phenomenon in the house of the court stable: in the house of one of the officials, chairs, tables danced, tumbled, glasses filled with wine were thrown at the ceiling, they called for witnesses, a priest with holy water, but the ball didn’t let up.” 18 In the diaries of A.S. Pushkin it is said about the same thing: “In the city they are talking about a strange incident. In one of the houses belonging to the court stables, the furniture decided to move and jump; things went according to the authorities. Book V. Dolgoruky organized an investigation. One of the officials called the priest, but during the prayer service the chairs and tables did not want to stand still. . . N said that the furniture was court furniture and was requested to be sent to Anichkov.” 19 Another testimony from Muscovite A. Ya. Bulgakov: “What kind of miracles did you have with some official’s chairs? I don’t believe whatever the details are, but I’m very curious to know the outcome of the case that, as they say, came to the attention of the Minister of the Court.” 20 And finally, the remark of M. N. Longinov: “. . .his stories (Gogol, - O.D.) were hilarious; I remember now how comically he conveyed, for example, city rumors and rumors about dancing chairs. . ." 21

These records, obviously, record not only the incident itself as a fantastic fact of life of the era, but also the street and city rumors associated with it, the reaction of private individuals, Moscow ladies, and official authorities; in addition, they express the attitude of their authors to the incident. This evidence also shows that anything out of the ordinary, even an everyday phenomenon, is taken into account by the authorities, which gives absurdity and trifle special significance. The painful reaction of Nicholas I to any deviation from the rules and form of the ball is known to everyone. Yu. M. Lotman says: “Nicholas was convinced that he had the right to demand unconditional execution of any orders from the country under his control. . . a simple violation of the symmetry of the ideals of barracks beauty seemed to him. . . offensive." 22 The researcher gives an example of a meeting on Nevsky between the emperor and a boy in an unbuttoned school uniform. The case of the arrested boy, as a state matter, was handled by the military governor-general of the capital. The detainee turned out to be hunchbacked, but the Minister of Education received a reprimand: the students were not in uniform. 23 In this regard, it becomes clear why A. Ya. Bulgakov is “curious to know the outcome of the case,” that is, who suffered this time.

The story about the chairs quoted by the writer is essentially identical and parallel to the story of the Nose. His fantastic escape is stylized as everyday fantasy of reality, focused on the type of consciousness of a contemporary, only a different social topic was chosen for conversation with the reader. At the same time, in Gogol's history, the rudiments of an everyday plot, the details of which were known to contemporaries, became part of the general poetics of the work.

The records show that in the house official the tables and chairs began to dance - "courtiers" they called a priest and did prayer service. In the story: collegiate assessor nose ran away - "State Councillor", heroes meet at the All-Russian prayer service in the Kazan Cathedral. The incidents themselves are unprecedented, and the authorities responsible for order have been involved. Investigated the chair case minister of the court, who suppressed any desire for absurd inventions, was drawn to the history of the nose police, but well-meaning people were waiting for intervention "governments"(III, 72, italics mine, - O.D.). The reconstruction of everyday history in the text of the story is obvious, dissolving its details in the plot about the nose with some “displacement” according to the law of parody. 24 The author, mentioning in the story only the bare fact of the incident in Konyushennaya, did not say a word about either the minister of the court or the court furniture, but left characteristic features that transform a special case into a natural phenomenon of social life in St. Petersburg. The fact about the chairs “played out” in Gogol’s plot, programmatically taking into account the observation of the contemporary reader, who should connect the “inconsistencies and implausibility” of the story with social and everyday anomalies.

It is quite obvious that Gogol used the real-life material of the era not in order to reduce the function of the fantastic, but precisely through fantasy to reveal the absurdity and awkwardness of reality itself, based on state laws and regulations, the bureaucratic hierarchy, bureaucratic rules, the once and for all unchangeable order , unnaturally fettering a willful, unpredictably developing life. The fantastic is born not only on the verge of the real and the absurd, the logical and the illogical, but in the collision of the motionless, inert, commonplace with the demand for movement, change, renewal.

The missing nose from Major Kovalev’s face brings the hero out of a state of idle complacency, moral numbness, and compliance with the law. However, the “movement” of the hero only emphasizes the fantastic immobility of the plot action and, ultimately, the immutability of the hero himself. Fantastic, oriented towards everyday life, renews not the existence of the hero, but the reader’s view of the familiar, everyday reality that has become familiar and suddenly revealed an unexpected side. More on this later.

Real-everyday allusions, combinations of real-everyday motifs that “drum” 25 in a fantastic plot, create a second parodied plan, hidden and at the same time announced, known to everyone, which is indicated in one way or another in the narrative. The reliable, which lies in the subtext of the 26th story, conceals the absurd, thereby deepening the significance of the fantastic images of the work of art. In addition, as we have seen, specific everyday details, directly named in the narrative, organize the conical game plan of the story.

In this regard, another area of ​​social and everyday associations that permeates the plot of “The Nose” is interesting.

Correlating with the flavor of the era is the fact that the nose disappeared fantastically on the night of the 24th to the 25th. According to the fortune-telling book, the nose means “24.” This was pointed out by Gogol himself, who in “Rome” used the same plot elements as in “The Nose” in a different variation (III, 255). It is interesting that in popular beliefs, according to V.I. Dahl, the list of witchcraft counts 33 days a year, “when magicians perform their spells,” one of the days - March 24. 27 It is equally important that March 25 is the feast of the Virgin Mary, the day of fortune telling. S.V. Maksimov reports that “not a single day of the year has so many signs and fortune-telling as on the day of the Annunciation. . ." 28

Apparently, the fact that the day the story takes place is Friday is also connected with everyday superstitions. In any case, this is also what the “game” is based on in a fantasy sense - in connection with the loss of a nose. Kovalev reflects: “It was in no way possible to assume that the nose was cut off: no one entered his room; the barber Ivan Yakovlevich shaved him on Wednesday, and throughout the entire Wednesday and even the whole quarter his nose was intact - he remembered and knew this very well” (III, 65).

So, the nose disappeared on the night from Thursday to Friday. As you know, in Russian folk demonology, Friday was considered an unlucky day, associated with evil spirits. 29 On Friday, according to popular monasticism, dreams should come true. An everyday feature of the era is to look up the meaning of dreams from a dream book. Pushkinskaya Tatyana Larina is looking for the answer to her wonderful dream in Martyn Zadek’s dream book. 30 In A. F. Veltman’s story “The Manuscript of Martyn Zadek” there is a scene in which the old woman asks the heroine: “Look in the dream book, what does it mean to hear about a dead person in a dream?” 31

With the central event of his story - the missing nose - Gogol “attunes” the reader’s association to the interpreter of dreams: “Losing a nose in a dream is a sign of harm and loss.” 32 The real losses that could await the noseless Major Kovalev were discussed above.

In a dream book of another type it is said: to see “diseases” in a dream. . . wounds. . . doctors. . . barber shop" on Thursday - "illness cannot be avoided, on Friday - to greet guests." 33 In the same dream book: to see in a dream “deprivation of a bodily member, loss” on Thursday - “give money”, on Friday - to “joy.” . . and from what? . . You’ll find out about that later.” 34

Gogol, as we remember, chose a unique technique for presenting the fantastic, as if inverting the generally accepted one - a dream similar to reality. In any case, the dream motif (perhaps as a vestige of the first edition) is palpable in the story. Kovalev, in connection with the fantastic disappearance of his nose, raves in reality as if in a dream: “This is probably either a dream, or just a dream. . . The major pinched himself. . . This pain completely assured him that he was acting and living in reality. . ." (III, 65). The motif of reality, similar to a dream, permeates the entire plot of the story.

The author-narrator emphasizes the authenticity and reality of what is happening, but at the same time, the imaginary nature of this reality is felt in the story: it is expressed in the bewilderment of the barber, in Kovalev’s uncertainty. Yu. V. Mann convincingly examined this motive in the relationship between the real and the fantastic. 35 In this case, it is important for us to emphasize that this motif has support in the life of the era.

The writer not only directed the reader to the dream book, but skillfully wove details from it into his plot, interpreted them artistically, parodying the “legislators” and broadcasters of palmistry truths, the superstitious ideas of his contemporaries. In Gogol’s story, following the motif of an imaginary dream, the motif of an imaginary illness, an imaginary wound (“the wound could not heal so quickly” - III, 65), an imaginary bodily injury, an imaginary doctor, an imaginary barber, imaginary losses and an unexpected, crowning joy are discovered.

The real and imaginary plans of the story penetrate each other in such a way that it is difficult to distinguish the boundary where the fantastic begins and where the real continues. This is precisely what the poetics of the dream-like reality motif in “The Nose” is built on. The author gives this motif a playful comic function without losing sight of the everyday consciousness of the reader, who must connect the artistic elements of the story with everyday allusions. 36

The everyday consciousness of Gogol's hero is identical to the everyday consciousness of a contemporary of the 30s of the 19th century. Kovalev perceives what happened, empirically inexplicable, in the spirit of his era." . .considering all the circumstances (Kovalev, - O.D.), He assumed, perhaps closest to the truth, that the culprit for this should be none other than staff officer Podtochina, who wanted him to marry her daughter. He himself loved to be dragged after her, but avoided the final cutting. . . and therefore the staff officer, probably out of revenge, decided to spoil him and hired some witch women for this” (III, 65).

As we see, the motive of corruption, the motive of witchcraft appear in the hero’s mind as a result of an everyday reason - the revenge of the mother, whom Kovalev “leads by the nose” in connection with his marriage to her daughter; marriage, in turn, like the motive of rank, begins to sparkle with metaphorical meanings, emerging
from contact with the everyday culture of the time.

It is remarkable that, in connection with popular, superstitious ideas, these motives correlate with the named date of the story - March 25, the day of the Annunciation and the Virgin Mary, and with the day of the week - Friday. The number and day of the week become peculiar centers towards which associations from different spheres are oriented - social and everyday superstitions.

In connection with the motive of rank, the meaning of March 25 in the conditions of a socially programmed life helped to decipher the logic of the behavior of the hero-official; this same number serves as a kind of justification for a fantastic incident, as a day of fortune-telling, in connection with which the motive of marriage appears and is played out in the plot of the story. According to popular beliefs, the day of the week “spot” had its own patroness - Paraskeva Pyatnitsa, who was considered a woman’s saint, 37 the organizer of marriages. 38 It is interesting that in everyday understanding the images of Paraskeva Pyatnitsa and the Mother of God merged on the basis of one function - defenders of women's honor, organizing marriages. 39 It was on Friday, March 25, 40 that Major Kovalev, cynical about the issue of marriage, was pursued by incomprehensible revenge.

It is likely that the specific date and day of the story indicated by Gogol are designed for the everyday perception of a contemporary, for whom it is enough to mention damage, marriage, so that the real details, artistic details in the story are illuminated with additional meanings. Thus, the story makes clear the meanings days and numbers, their poetics and symbolism.

Gogol constructs “The Nose” in such a way that in the external plot all the indicated artistic details are torn apart, emphasizing the fantastic nonsense of what is happening, in the internal they are connected, restoring artificially broken connections, filling in some imaginary gaps in the text, clarifying the subtext of the game line of the story, revealing the author’s comic techniques , the second parodied plan, enrich the external plot with meaning contained in the depths of folk beliefs, legends, superstitions, and ideas essential to the fantastic consciousness of the heroes of Gogol and his contemporaries. At the same time, it is clear that there is a kind of “joining” of elements of cultures - social and everyday and folk. Noseless Kovalev is “included” in both at the same time. For example: “He made plans in his head: whether to formally call the staff officer to court or to appear before her himself and incriminate her” (III, 65). That is, the hero also thinks in social categories - “call the culprit to court,” and is confident in something else - that, when he appears, he will catch Podtochina red-handed - with a nose obtained by witchcraft. In the correlation of these two cultures, polysemy of meanings is born, a fantastic effect that reveals the illogicality of social reality.

The fact that contemporaries reacted sharply to the social layer (and therefore understood it) was indicated by Gogol: “If you say about one collegiate assessor, then all collegiate assessors, from Riga to Kamchatka, will certainly take it personally” (III, 53) . There is also no doubt that the reader of the 30s of the 19th century effortlessly perceived everyday superstitions, distinguishing them in Gogol’s story. This is evidenced by the stylization of I. Vanenko “Another Nose” published in 1839, 41 made in the spirit of the fantastic, directly focused on Gogol’s “The Nose”. V.V. Vinogradov correlates this story by Ivan Vanenko with Gogol’s in nosological motives. 42 It is important for us to emphasize that for both authors a fantastic event evokes no less fantastic interpretations that have support in everyday life.

Aksinya Petrovna, not knowing how to explain the strange behavior of the two-nosed Artamon Dosifeevich, resorts to the usual interpretation: “by sight, or something - who knows!” 43 - exactly the same as Gogol’s Kovalev.

The social and everyday fantasy of Gogol's story finds explanation and justification in the mythological consciousness, superstitious fantastic ideas of heroes and readers. The writer needs these associations, firstly, in order to create illusoryness, instability, ambiguity of the plot action, secondly, in order to support the fantastic situation of “The Nose” with no less fantastic, but actually existing concepts, thirdly, in order to the use of emerging allusions to deepen the allegorical potential of a fantastic incident, contributing to the “work” of symbolic subtext.

Therefore, for example, the hero gives an everyday and at the same time fantastic explanation for the motive of damage associated with the motive of marriage. Let’s compare in folk medicine: 44 “The class of diseases is extensive, the basis of which is damage produced out of hatred, out of malice towards the sick person, at the request of others, for money.” 45 But the incident with the nose evokes another assessment from Kovalev: “The devil wanted to play a joke on me!” (III, 60). Let’s compare: if “the illness occurs at night, then this undoubtedly indicates that in this case the brownie was playing a joke” (Popov, p. 22). In the story, the disappearance of the hero's nose is connected with bread. The barber discovers Kovalevsky’s nose in the bread: “The devil knows how it happened, whether I came back drunk yesterday or not. . . And for everyone omens It must be an impossible incident. . ." (III, 50, italics mine, - O.D.) Like an echo, the barber’s explanation will echo in Kovalev’s reasoning about his illness: “The devil wanted to play a joke on me!” (III, 60); or: “Maybe I somehow made a mistake and drank vodka instead of water” (III, 65). 46 Let’s compare: in folk medicine it is indicated that in case of individual spoilage, “some unknown drugs and drinks are mixed into the bread. . . and vodka. . ." (Popov, p. 27). As we see, the plausibility of their own motivations nevertheless confuses the heroes: there is no other explanation for the illogical irrational incident and illness in the minds of the characters other than the mythological, surreal, from the sphere of superstition.

In “The Nose,” the writer fundamentally abandoned the use of unreal images, 47 however, he constructed the everyday consciousness of his heroes in such a way that it allowed for all kinds of fantastic absurdity and devilry. This, in fact, also organizes the comic ambiguity of the story and makes possible the appearance of allegory in constructions with a fundamentally incomplete meaning. For example, having mentioned “unrealistic omens,” the barber is perplexed: “Bread is baked, but the nose is not at all the same. . ." (III, 50). Kovalev is indignant: “You must agree, it’s not decent for me to walk around without a nose. . . some merchant. . . you can sit without a nose” (III, 56). Ta to the story intentionally, the motif of bread is correlated with the motif of spoilage, the motif of the major’s bad illness, a hint of which is palpable. The understatement, the “gap” of meanings is restored by the associative thinking of the reader, but the heroes are not able to comprehend it. Let’s compare: in folk medicine, for such a bad disease, a recipe is indicated: a bottle of drugs is sealed and “kneaded into raw bread, which goes into the oven. When the bread is baked, remove the vial and its contents. . ." (Popov, p. 320). It was customary to treat such a disease with water or vodka, but it was recommended to avoid eating “hot bread” (Popov, p. 320).

In connection with the motif of disease-damage, the figure of a doctor appears in the story. The doctor’s unusual “magnetic” behavior can be explained by the cultural tradition of folk ideas and folklore tradition. The mode of action of Gogol's character is guessed in the style of behavior of the comic, beating doctor, hero of the folk theater and popular prints. The medic “lifted Major Kovalev by the chin and gave him a thumb click in the very place where his nose had been, so that the major had to throw his head back with such force that he hit the back of his head against the wall. The doctor said it was nothing. . .And in conclusion, he again gave him a click with his thumb, so that Major Kovalev jerked his head, like a horse that is being looked in the mouth” (III, 68). V. Ya. Propp rightly brings together the character of Gogol and the farcical performer of the medical profession in the folk theater, concluding that “Gogol ridicules the routine in the medical art.” 48 It should be added that the image of the doctor, as the text of the story shows, is comically correlated with the figure of the healer. The treatment methods of the ultra-modern Gogol doctor-official are in the spirit of folk medicine, in which there is a way to “scare the disease,” i.e., “a method of beating” (Popov, p. 209). In addition to this, the doctor writes Kovalev not just an abstractly ignorant prescription: “Wash more often with cold water. . . and without a nose, be as healthy as if you had one” (III, 69, italics mine, - O.D.), and in the style of healer techniques for removing damage using water, “washing the patient.” 49 It can also be pointed out that the motive of the doctor’s “selflessness” echoes that of the healer according to folk legends. 50 These allusions only enhance the effect of imaginaryness, “unreality,” a presence equal to the absence of defective reality, reflected in the appearance of Gogol’s physician. In his image, the real, materially tangible becomes thinner, blurs, leaving, as it were, a flat outline not of a person, but of a costumed doll without a face, from the sleeves of whose black tailcoat “sleeves of a shirt as white and pure as snow” peek out (III, 70). The grotesque doubling of the image is deepened by the cultural and historical tradition of folk theater and lubok and the tradition of Russian folk medicine.

According to the rules of Gogol’s poetics, fantastic meaning is born from the collision of the opposite: for example, in a doctor one can see a professional without professionalism. This principle of the fantastic is not only immanently found in every image, but it forms pairs, “doubles,” each member of which complements the other by contrast and is temporarily connected with the other by the contiguity of functions. On the ridiculous sign of the barber Ivan Yakovlevich’s establishment, his last name is not displayed, but it is indicated: “. . .and the blood is opened” (III, 49). In folk medicine, another healer’s method of removing damage was known - bloodletting (Popov, p. 78). The phrase “and the blood is opened” is associated with a feature of everyday life, indicating the method of hypertensive patients, but in an atmosphere of superstition it shifts its meaning, seeming to be taken out of another context. From the very beginning of the story, the main motive of the missing nose is prepared in the interpretation of witchcraft damage. Both the strange sign of the barber and the strangely discovered nose in the bread, which are in no way connected in the external plot action, are correlated with each other in the light of the motif of damage. Comic alogisms are loaded with additional allegorical meaning, the real-everyday is placed on the verge of the fantastic-everyday, mythological. In the absence of surreal images, the story retains an atmosphere of witchcraft: the transcendental in “The Nose” is hidden in everyday life and generated by everyday life. This principle of the poetics of the fantastic justifies the indirect multi-layered significance of each image in the story. Ambiguity provokes the emergence of an internal plot that explains the semantic connections of the external one, correlating distant characters, such as, for example, the barber and the doctor. Ambiguity lies not only in the composition, the plot parallelism of the stories with a nose in which the barber and Kovalev are involved, it underlies the depiction of the characters.

The meek barber, according to Praskovya Osipovna’s description, is a “beast”, a “swindler”, a “robber”, a “drunkard”, a storm of noses, according to the policeman - a “thief” and a criminal. In this context, the phrase on its sign “and the blood is opened” takes on another meaning. Despite all the evidence, the barber’s innocence in the story of the missing nose is called into question. However, in the text of the story there are no hints as to how the barber could have participated in the misadventure with his nose major. Apparently, the choice of profession itself
makes sense, it contains some game semantics. In this regard, it is interesting that the profession of a barber,
just like the profession of a doctor, as mentioned above, is focused, for example, on the literature of anecdotes.

The writer’s special ability to use anecdotal collisions in his works of art, to build a situation, intrigue, conflict, image on an anecdote is well known. Anecdotes about the nose, 51 about dancing chairs, about lunar inhabitants, about machine officials, about madmen, etc., varying differently in the text of the St. Petersburg stories, speak of a fundamental feature of Gogol’s poetics, which has not yet really been the subject close attention in science. Moreover, this literature of anecdotes has not been studied, not discovered, and therefore not correlated with Gogol’s texts. Allusions to similar literature in the story “Hoc,” heavily mixed with anecdote, are natural.

For example, one 18th-century joke told how “a certain barber wanted to laugh at a chimney sweep. He shouted to him: “Listen, brother, what’s new in hell and what is your master the devil doing?” “He needs to leave the yard,” answered the chimney sweep, “and now he is only waiting for you to shave him.” 52 The anecdotal situation when it is the barber who unwittingly finds himself in the service of the unclean - hence the comic ambiguity of his position - could have been known to Gogol. Of course, one cannot insist on direct connection or borrowing. However, it is difficult not to see a peculiar orientation to the anecdote of the ambiguous behavior of the barber Ivan Yakovlevich. It is revealed in details, for example, in the contrast of the shaving scene at the beginning and at the end of the story. Kovalev usually remarked to the barber: “Your hands, Ivan Yakovlevich, always stink!” Ivan Yakovlevich cynically answered this with a question: “Why would they stink?” (III, 51). As a result of the twists and turns, the barber’s “unclean” hands turn into “clean” ones. At the end of the story, in response to the major’s biased question: “Are your hands clean?” - Ivan Yakovlevich answers with particular sincerity: “By God, sir, they are clean, sir” (III, 73) - and his fearful appearance resembles a cat, “which was just whipped for stealing lard” (III, 73). The everyday antinomy “pure-impure” in the atmosphere of fantasy, everyday superstition and magnetism shifts its meaning, just like, for example, the antinomy “right-left”.

In the scene when Kovalev finds himself at a crossroads: “- Go straight!” - “How straight? Is there a turn here: right or left?” (III, 58), I think, one should not see an echo of a fairy-tale motif, 53 since in the story there are no images in a folk poetic interpretation; rather, this is also a manifestation of an everyday feature of the era and can be attributed to everyday signs. Gogol did not directly determine the hero’s choice of side - right or left, but the three directions named in the story - straight, right, left - one after another, sequentially, appear in Kovalev’s reasoning. “Straight” - go to the deanery council, “right” - seek satisfaction from the authorities, where the nose declared itself an employee, “left” - contact the newspaper editorial office with an announcement of acceptance of the impostor and a demand for a search. The antinomy “right-left” - “success-failure” 54 in the plot action seems to predict the outcome of the hero’s choice: his failure. This is another example of the writer’s consistent orientation towards everyday culture.

We saw that mythological and folklore motifs literally permeate the cells of the fantastic plot of the story, imbuing them with comic allegorical meanings. The motif of spoilage, the motif of bread, the motif of vodka, the motif of an imaginary illness, the motif of dream interpretations, the motif of the “professional” behavior of the doctor and barber, the “mystical” date and day of the week - all this is a parodic reflection of elements of folk culture, social mores, prejudices and superstitions of the time . It is known that Gogol, who had a special gift for peering into everyday life, also studied it closely. He admitted more than once that the artistic image in his mind acquired completeness when everyday material was collected around the hero down to the smallest detail. The writer was invariably interested in historical and modern life in all the details of social life. Gogol is a writer who knew how to synthesize the most diverse elements of national life; “the acute modernity of his works was combined with the ability to penetrate the deep layers of archaic folk consciousness.” 55 Yu. M. Lotman’s opinion is correct that the works. Gogol “can serve as the basis for the reconstruction of the mythological beliefs of the Slavs, dating back to ancient times.” 56 Mythological allusions at the same time create in the text of the story a tense difference in potential between the social, the real, the commonplace, the everyday and the fantastic; specific, particular and generalized in the depths of folk beliefs and superstitions, which contributes to the emergence of allegories and ambiguity. The mythological subtext “becomes one of the structural elements of the poetics” of the symbolic and “thereby serves to increase its polysemy.” 57

The problem of parallels of nosological themes and motifs in Gogol's story has been fruitfully studied for a long time. 58 It seems, however, that the writer was guided not only by fiction, the literature of anecdotes, but also by folklore.

When G. A. Gukovsky wrote that the fantasy of St. Petersburg stories “in principle. . . anti-folklore, opposed to folklore,” 59 he meant that in these stories folk-poetic subjects are indistinguishable. V. I. Eremina comes to a similar conclusion: “At the last stage of creativity. . . It is not possible to find any folklore sources in “Dead Souls” or “Petersburg Tales.” 60 This is probably true only of the poetic tradition of folklore. Indeed, the motives of epics, fairy tales, songs, legends are indistinguishable in the story, but the motives of grassroots, “mass” folklore in “The Nose”. It can probably be said that Gogol’s appeal to the folklore tradition in “Petersburg Tales” and “Dead Souls” is qualitatively different than in his previous work.

For example, the entire plot of “The Nose” can be covered by the proverb: “Arrogance is not according to man. The nose is not up to par.” 61 Or the image of the nose itself can be focused on the themes of popular prints, the poetics and technique of performing this image in popular print.

In “Portrait”, in the description of the shop at Shchukin’s yard and its “heterogeneous collection of curiosities” (III, 79), the narrator’s gaze lingers on paintings of folk art: “The doors of such a shop are usually hung with bundles of works printed in popular prints on large sheets, which testify to the native talent of the Russian person. On one was Princess Miliktrisa Kirbitevna, on the other the city of Jerusalem. . . there are usually few buyers of these works, but there are a lot of spectators” (III, 79). The artist Chartkov, looking at the ugly art products displayed in the shop, wonders who needs these works. He understands why “the Russian people look at Eruslanov Lazarevich, on ate And drank, on Thomas And Yeremu. . . the depicted objects, according to Chartkov, were very accessible and understandable to the people” (III, 80). Chartkov's view of the art of folk painting is the view of Gogol himself, who, apparently, not only the main characters of popular prints, but carefully peered into this type of artistic creativity of the people, sympathetically understanding the opinion and aesthetic taste of the masses.

It is remarkable that the nose, like Eruslan Lazarevich, Miliktrisa Kirbitevna, Foma and Erema, the “eaters” and “drinkers,” was the hero of the popular print. Moreover, the nose turned out to be the hero of frivolous pictures - with brawls, boasting, arrogance, shame, and various obscenities. The comedy in pictures about marriage, fights, etc. is based precisely on playing with the nose. For example, a dandy groom in a jester's suit boasts to the matchmaker: “. . .I want to get married. . . and I, as you can see for yourself, am not a good fellow, and I have a nose the size of a considerable cucumber.” 62 Or in another picture “Prokhor and Boris quarreled and fought”: “Boris argues strongly: my nose is bigger than yours. And Prokhor will entice him: at least measure my fate” (Rovinsky, I, no. 205). Terebenev’s talented popular caricatures of Napoleon, who left Russia with a huge frostbitten nose dotted with warts, were also known at that time (Rovinsky, II, no. 397).

The nose in popular prints appeared as an independent hero, that is, as a nose in itself. In popular "parables": about a braggart - "The Adventure of the Nose and Severe Frost" (Rovinsky, I, no. 183), as well as about jesters - "Farnos, the red nose" and "Jester Gonos" (Rovinsky, I, no. 209a, 209b) - the nose appears like a mummer, like a jester, disgraced and disgraced.

Among the popular prints, the real interlude “The Nose Grinder” stands out. This is not so much an image, but precisely a depicted action, accompanied by verbal commentary and replicas of the characters. The master grinder grinds the noses of proboscis monkeys on a huge grindstone, onto which apprentices pour water (and in another, obscene version, excrement) (Rovinsky, I, no. 212a, 212b). The “theatricality” of this picture is emphasized by D. A. Rovinsky: “The sharpening of the noses, as can be seen from the text of the picture itself, represents one of. . . interludes, which were given during the intervals between the actions of a real drama or comedy" (Rovinsky, IV, p. 315). The “theatricality” of popular print, its focus on playful behavior, on everyday life, on real newspaper reports, its responsiveness to “hot”, topical topics of our time was noted by Yu. M. Lotman. 63

For Gogol’s fantastic story, the material of the Russian popular print, at the same time everyday and fantastic, comically “playful”, fraught with obscene ambiguities, publicly available, brightly theatrical, switching “the consumer from an ordinary state to a state of playful activity”, 64 was extremely close to the creative characteristics of the writer, his artistic goals in "The Nose". It seems that Gogol in his story could take into account not only the “nosological” motifs of the lubok, but, what is important, in constructing the image of the nose he could rely on the technique and poetics of the lubok.

Popular prints were of different types. For example, those in which the image, if turned over, turns into its opposite: from a young man to an old man and vice versa. The “nose line” in this kind of pictures, as it were, regulates this transformation, this phantasmagoria, this optical effect. A significant role in such werewolf pictures is played by the design of their bottom and top, which, when turned over, turns a cap of hair or a woman’s hat into a beard, a chin into a bare skull: “My person and my chin are a lady, But I will appear before you as an old man” (Rovinsky, I, No. 284). The change of bottom and top, the “nose line” transforms the content of the picture. The transformations can also be more exotic, to match Apuleius’s “Golden Donkey”: when turned over, either a human face in a hat or a donkey’s muzzle is revealed (Rovinsky, I, no. 284). It is also important to point out that the meaning of the image is also determined by the choice of the viewer’s point of view and depends on the position of the viewer. Two people looking at the same picture, but from different angles, will see different content in it.

This grotesque principle of the comic “bottom and top”, “choice of point of view”, reincarnating a certain essence, the principle of werewolf and duality, the clarity and materiality of the image could attract Gogol, who in “The Nose” translated the language of painting into the language of literature. In the depiction of the state councilor as a double of Kovalev, as the realization of the hero’s ambitious dreams, as a reality concealing its absurd opposite, when meaning is compromised by nonsense, the effect of these artistic principles of the popular print was revealed. It is also characteristic that in Gogol’s story it is “along the line of the nose” that visible reality is capable of turning into fantastic reality and acquiring a new meaning each time in a new form. One has only to change the “point of view” a little, “come from the other side,” and the nose will appear as a disguised state councilor, and the collegiate assessor will turn into something that “just take it and throw it out the window!” (III, 64), something absurd will appear in it: “a bird is not a bird,” 65 “a citizen is not a citizen,” a person is not a person, an official is not an official - something that easily turns into nothing. But as soon as the situation is changed again, the optical illusion will disappear: the nose will correspond to its objective meaning and perform its biological functions, and the collegiate assessor will perform its social functions. So to speak, both will return to their original image, which at the same time presupposes metamorphosis.

It seems that the “theatricality” of the popular print was to some extent reflected in Gogol’s story, although one should not exclude other forms of spectacular folk culture - the rajka, the booth, individual features of which are palpable in “The Nose”. 66 However, this issue is sufficiently independent and complex to be connected to our work. In this case, in connection with the assumptions made, it is impossible not to note the principle of “theatricality” inherent in the popular print and Gogol’s story, which requires the viewer, involving him in its action.

Rumors of a nose walking “at exactly three o’clock. . . along Nevsky Prospekt" (III, 71), evoke a theatrical reaction from the city crowd, eager for an accessible, universal, street performance. Despite the deception and mockery of the gullible man in the street, “numerous curious people flocked every day. . . one speculator of venerable appearance. . . who sold various dry pastry pies at the entrance to the theater, deliberately made beautiful wooden durable benches, which he invited the curious to stand on for eighty kopecks” (III, 71 - 72). In Gogol, the spectacle turns into an anti-spectacle. But its absurdity is meanwhile reinforced by materialized reality: the enterprise of the speculator. It is also remarkable that the writer, following the tradition of lubok, during the development of the plot of the story, switches the reader from passive to a state of playful activity, evoking the necessary social associations, such as, for example, the story of the dancing chairs in Konyushennaya Street.

Thus, the analysis showed that the fantastic in the story “The Nose” arises at the intersection of two types of cultures - social and everyday cultures. This justifies the internal plot in the story, which gives rise, depending on the reader’s activity, to various social and mythological allusions directly caused by the text of the story, which, in turn, create the basis for increasing the ambiguity of a social incident, phenomenon, image, detail. In addition, we have shown that the fantasy of the story in its themes, motifs, images, as well as in their technical implementation, is focused not only on the literature of modern times, but also on folklore and popular prints.

The fantastic, born at the junction of two everyday cultures, seems to integrate a social and everyday phenomenon. At the same time, this integrated essence can be decomposed into an endless series of meanings that give the fantastic image symbolic meaning.

Real life itself, with its strictly regulated, symbolic, bureaucratic system, legal regulations for each social group, contributes to the emergence of ritual forms of thinking and behavior: formalizes, stereotypes them, distinguishes them as a kind of social-symbolic behavior and thinking. A kind of “social symbolism” is visible in Gogol’s story. 67

Above we showed how government regulations determined the social and symbolic behavior of the collegiate assessor Kovalev, his psychology, his consciousness, his “passions.” A formalized, mechanical, strictly regulated system of relations does not respond to essence, but only to form. In this regard, the symbol of such a system becomes the cult of form, the magic of rank. It is enough to follow the instructions, to conform to the form, so that the nose in the uniform of a state councilor acquires the meaning of a face; with the help of the uniform, the part is embodied in the whole. The Nos State Councilor, by order, ends up on March 25 in the Kazan Cathedral, where he prays devoutly, rides around in a carriage, makes visits, forces Kovalev to observe the chain of command, the boundaries of official position and rank. But as soon as you “log out” of the system, break the order, put on glasses, 68 as one police official does, the nose corresponds to its direct meaning.

The bureaucratic system of relations provokes symbolic polysemy, which arises because the essence does not coincide with the form. On par with a civilian nose As an adviser, a “black poodle” appears as a stable expression of the system - “the treasurer of some institution.” 69 In the image of a nose, researchers have long noted either a “symbol of vulgarity,” 70 or “a symbol of decency and good intentions,” 71 however, social symbolism as the principle of the artistic method, the writer’s vision of the world in “The Nose” has not been the focus of attention of scientists.

The ambiguity of the image of the nose is revealed in detail by Yu. V. Mann, 72 but the researcher does not set out to study the poetics of this artistic phenomenon as a symbol. It is quite obvious, however, that the image of a nose is not only a symbol of vulgarity or bureaucratic decency. The meaning of this image is not reducible to any one feature of sociality or everyday life; a number of these meanings multiply, since the nose integrates social generalization from different social spheres of life: the nose symbolizes rank, the hierarchy of relations in a bureaucratic society, and the social success of the form in the absence of content, and an important person, a face, and a sign of male dignity, and a symptom of a bad illness, and a method of fooling, and a phantom of a ghostly illusion, etc. A broad generalization of sociality and the ambiguity of meanings contained in the image of a nose reveal at the same time time in relation to the real, living, existing, moving, changing is a universal absurdity. The symbolic image of the nose, like a “black hole,” instantly likens everything to itself, turns it into fiction, and in different ways captures into its orbit the emptiness and the collegiate assessor, who without a nose has become nothing—neither an official nor a groom; and a barber with a lost surname; and a faceless, nameless doctor. All the characters in the story bear the same stamp of impersonality, a discrepancy between form and content, the meaning of which is concentrated in the symbolic image of a nose, expressing a grandiose generalization of social absurdity and fiction.

The fantastic image also increases its symbolic significance by the fact that the writer in the story resorts to the help of rumors and rumors, creating a social myth about the nose on the most prosaic material. 73

The meaning of symbolic fiction 74 does not disappear even when the nose ends up between the cheeks of the contented and prosperous Major Kovalev, since the artistic experiment carried out by the writer revealed behind the appearance not just vulgarity, but a tragic discrepancy with the truth, 75 showed a dramatic situation in which a person deceived by the external truth remains captive of his illusions and is completely satisfied with them.

Symbolic fiction is also supported at the level of typification of artistic images. The images of Kovalev, the barber, the doctor in the cross-section of the two cultures mentioned above appeared in an ambiguous sense. In a doctor-official with “magnetic” manners we can distinguish both a jester and a healer, in a barber - a thief, a robber, an unwitting accomplice of “evil spirits”, in a major - either a man, or a bird, or a citizen, or “the devil knows” what" (III, 64). Such a discrepancy in meaning gives rise to a special effect: it creates the preconditions for universalization, the reflection of many in one. No wonder V. G. Belinsky exclaimed about the hero of “The Nose”: “He is not Major Kovalev, but majorsKovalevs" 76 The critic’s definition highlights not just the concept of typification, but typification raised to a degree. Following “Nevsky Prospekt” in “The Nose,” this principle of typification, in the depths of which the basis for universal generalizations is formed, is just being formalized, outlined, and receives further development in “The Overcoat” and “Dead Souls.” 77

Gogol knew how to “write in such a way that the reader could grasp the symbolic meaning of what was written between the lines.” 78 Above we showed how a writer “keeps” the reader in suspense by connecting the associative consciousness of a contemporary. The reader follows the fantastic vicissitudes of the story, distinguishing in it very specific, real facts, everyday signs of his time, which involuntarily connects a fantastic incident, literary fiction with the factual everyday side of reality, makes him perceive the identity of social anomalies in literature and everyday life, criticism of the alogisms of living life.

At the end of the story, the author-narrator, in a kind of dialogue with the “mass” reader, checks the “benefits” of his fantastic work. And here we see not just a game with the reader, but unique conditions for nurturing the reader’s perception are created, a unique stimulus is visible, forcing the reader to think about what he read, about the game, about the images-symbols, calling for an understanding of the deep content in a seemingly comic work. The style of comic puns, the irony of rhetorical questions, the position of comic bewilderment is replaced by a style of serious reflection, an intonation in which, in contrast to the previous one, a tinge of bitterness is clearly felt: “And yet, how to think about it, in all this, there is something right. No matter what you say, such incidents do happen in the world—rarely, but they do happen” (III, 75). The negative pathos of the story in the finale is contrasted with the affirming pathos of the experiment carried out by the writer, which exposed the social anomalies of reality hidden behind the mask of decency. Social symbolism in a fantastic plot, a fantastic image-symbol, symbolic subtext allowed the writer not only to reunite the world as a whole existence, to create images containing the prerequisites for universal generalizations, but to influence the reader’s perception with them, to conduct a “school of education.”

Notes

1 Vinogradov V.V. Naturalistic grotesque. The plot and composition of Gogol’s story “The Nose.” - In the book: Poetics of Russian Literature. M., 1976, p. 21.

2 See, for example: Gukovsky G. A. R Gogol's realism. M.-L., 1959, p. 268-300.

3 See, for example: Stepanov N. L. N.V. Gogol. M., 1955, p. 254-255.

4 Mann Yu.V. Gogol's poetics. M., 1978, p. 85-100.

5 Annensky I. F. About the forms of the fantastic in Gogol. - Russian school. General pedagogical magazine for school and family, 1890, vol. 2, no. 10, p. 100; Mashinsky S. I. Artistic, the world of Gogol. M., 1979, p. 162; Mann Yu.V. Grotesque in literature. M., 1966, p. 47-48.

6 For more information, see: Dilaktorskaya O. G. N.V. Gogol's story “The Nose” (everyday fact as a structural element of fantasy). - Bulletin of Leningrad State University, 1983, issue. 3. History. Language. Literature, No. 14. The proposed article focuses on something else: on the relationship between the real-fantastic-symbolic and its role in the formation of Gogol’s realism.

7 Bulgarin F.V. Collection op. in 3 parts, part 2. Civil mushroom or life, that is, vegetation, and the exploits of my friend, Foma Fomich Openkov. St. Petersburg, 1836, p. 318.

9 Petrovsky N. A. Dictionary of Russian personal names. M., 1980, p. 180.

10 Gogol N.V. Full collection cit., vol. III. [M.-L.], 1938, p. 53. Further references to this publication are given in the text.

11 Code of Laws of the Russian Empire. St. Petersburg, 1835, p. 105. Further, see in the text: Code. . .

12 Bulgarin F.V. Decree, op., .4.1 p. 285-296.

13 Karnovich E. Russian officials in the past and present. St. Petersburg, 1897, p. 94-95.

14 Yu. M. Lotman first used this term in his article. Cm.: Lotman Yu. M. The Tale of Captain Kopeikin (reconstruction of the plan and ideological and compositional function). - In the book: Semiotics of the text. Transactions on Sign Systems, XI, no. 467. Tartu, 1979, p. 27.

15 Description of changes in the uniform for ranks of the civil department and the rules for wearing this uniform. St. Petersburg, 1856, p. 9. The need for the presence of employees on official holidays in church during divine services as an everyday feature of the era is confirmed in Pushkin’s diaries: “When I returned, I found it on my table. . . order to appear before Count Litte. I guessed that the matter was that I did not appear at the court church either for Vespers on Saturday or for mass on Palm Sunday, and so it happened: Zhukovsky told me that the sovereign was dissatisfied with the absence of many chamberlains and chamber cadets, and said: “If it is difficult for them to fulfill their duties, then I will find a way to relieve them.” (Pushkin A.S. Collected works in 10 volumes, vol. 7. M., 1976, p. 284).

16 Ostafevsky archive book. Vyazemsky, book. 3. St. Petersburg, 1899, p. 313-314.

17 This fact was first noted in an article by O. A. Kudryavtseva, but considered differently.
Cm.: Kudryavtseva O. A. Petersburg stories by Gogol. - In the book: Gogol at school. M., 1954, p. 262.

18 Ostafevsky archive book. Vyazemskikh, s. 254-255.

19 Pushkin A. S. Collection op. in 10 volumes, vol. 7, p. 273.

20 Russian archive, 1902, book. 1, p. 626.

21 Longinov M. N. Works, vol. I. M., 1915, p. 7.

22 Lotman Yu. M. A. S. Pushkin. L., 1982, p. 137.

23 Ibid., p. 138.

24 Tynyanov Yu. N. Poetics. History of literature. Movie. M., 1977, p. 201.

25 Veselovsky Al. N. Collection soch., vol. 2. St. Petersburg, 1913, p. eleven.

26 The theoretical concept of subtext and the definition of its function were introduced by T. I. Silman. Cm.: Silman T.I. Subtext is the depth of the text. - Questions of literature, 1969, No. 1, p. 89-94.

27 Dal V.I. About beliefs, superstitions and predictions of the Russian people. St. Petersburg - M., 1880, p. 37-38.

28 Maksimov S. V. Collection op. in 20 volumes, vol. 17. St. Petersburg, 1912, p. 96.

29 Slavic language modeling systems. M., 1965, p. 90; Uspensky B. A. Philological research in the field of Slavic antiquities. M., 1982, p. 135.

30 Pushkin A. S. Collection op. in 10 volumes, vol. 4, p. 94.

31 Veltman A.F. MMMCDXLVIII year. Manuscript of Martyn Zadek, book. 2. M., 1833, p. 65.

32 New and detailed dream book. . . St. Petersburg, 1818, p. 179.

33 The newest dream interpreter, telling the truth. M., 1829, p. 3.

34 Ibid., p. 15-16.

35 Mann Yu.V. Gogol's poetics, p. 95-97.

36 “Market literature” about fortune-telling and dream interpretations was published at that time in considerable editions, was accessible to everyone, aroused the interest of the average person, and even required additional exposure with
side of the promoters of real art. (See for example: Belinsky V. G. Full collection cit., vol. III. M., 1953, p. 43-44; Nekrasov N. A. Full collection op. and letters, vol. 9. M., 1950, p. 140). In my own way
Gogol does the same in “The Nose.”

37 Maksimov S. V. Collection op. in 20 vol. 17, p. 25.

38 Chicherov V.I. Winter period of the Russian agricultural calendar of the 16th - 19th centuries. M., 1957, p. 41.

40 Pre-realistic culture, the culture of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance developed their own symbolism of numbers. Cm.: Levy-Bruhl L. Primitive thinking. M., 1930, p. 145; Hegel. Works, vol. 12. Lectures on aesthetics, book. I. M., 1938. p. 361, etc. Gogol creates the social symbolism of numbers.

41 Vanenko I. Adventures with my friends. Stories, part 2. M., 1839.

42 Vinogradov V.V. Decree, op., p. 39-41.

43 Vanenko I. Decree, op., p. 112.

44 The term “folk medicine” was introduced by G. Popov. It is also accepted in modern folklore.

45 Popov G. Russian folk medicine. St. Petersburg, 1903, p. 25. Further, see in the text: Popov. . .

46 Probably, in the vodka motif there is hidden a parody of a broader plan, not only a romantic device, as Yu. V. Mann believes. Cm.: Mann Yu.V. Gogol's poetics, p. 93.

47 See: Ibid., p. 98.

48 Propp V. Ya. Problems of comedy and laughter. M., 1966, p. 61-62.

49 Sakharov I. P. Tales of the Russian people. St. Petersburg, 1841, p. 51; Popov G. Decree. cit., p. 54, 78.

50 Maksimov S. V. Collection op. in 20 volumes, vol. 18, p. 187.

51 Chernyshevsky N. G. Full collection op. in 15 volumes, vol. 3. M., 1947, p. 115.

52 GPB, f. 865 (Shlyapkin I.A.), units. hr. 274, No. 62 (“Collection of anecdotes of the 18th century”).

53 Vinogradov V.V. Decree, op., p. 34.

54 On the meaning of the “right - left” antinomy, see: Ivanov Vyach. Vs., Toporov V. N. Decree, op., p. 91-100.

55 Lotman Yu. M. Gogol and the correlation of “laughter culture” with the comic and serious in the Russian national tradition. - In the book: Proceedings on sign systems, vol. V. Tartu, 1973, p. 132.

57 Auer A. P. O poetics of symbolic images of Saltykov-Shchedrin. Author's abstract. for the Candidate of Science degree. Philol. Sci. M., 1981, p. 13.

58 See: Vinogradov V.V. Decree. cit., p. 5-21, 24-25; Gippius V.V. Gogol. L., 1924, p. 91; Grossman L.P. Gogol is an urbanist. - In the book: Gogol N.V. Stories. M., 1935, p. 318-319; Mann Yu.V. Grotesque in literature, p. 35.

59 Gukovsky G. A. Decree, op., p. 272.

60 Eremina V.I. N.V. Gogol. - In the book: Russian literature and folklore. First half of the 19th century. L., 1976, p. 288.

61 Dal V.I. Proverbs of the Russian people. M., 1862, p. 699. As noted, the proverb will become one of the artistic means of characterizing the characters in “Dead Souls.” Cm.: Voropaev V. On the role of proverbs in creating the characters of Dead Souls. - In the book: Problems of literary development. (Based on Russian and foreign literary artistic traditions). M., 1982, p. 48-59.

62 Rovinsky D. A. Russian folk pictures in 4 volumes, volume I. St. Petersburg, 1881, No. 137. Further see: Rovinsky. . . D. A. Rovinsky points out that the four volumes of descriptions and pictures he collected included only those that were published before 1839.

63 Lotman Yu. M. The artistic nature of Russian folk pictures. - In the book: Folk engraving and folklore in Russia in the 17th - 19th centuries. (To the 150th anniversary of the birth of D. A. Rovinsky). M., 1976, p. 251-255; 262-263.

64 Ibid., p. 263.

65 It is interesting that one of the popular prints with the theme of condemnation and humility of pride depicts a crane pinching a human nose with its beak, painted on the crane’s chest. The caption reads: “Pinch your own nose.” (Rovinsky, I, No. 248).

66 M. M. Bakhtin notes: “The images and style of “The Nose” are associated, of course, with Stern and with Sternian literature. . . But at the same time, Gogol found both the most grotesque nose and the nose striving for independent life, and the themes of the nose in the booth of our Russian Pulcinella, in Petrushka.” (Bakhtin M. M. Rabelais and Gogol. The art of words and folk culture of laughter. - In the book: Questions of literature and aesthetics. M., 1975, p. 488).

67 On social symbolism, see: Basin E.Ya., Krasnov V.M. Social symbolism. (Some issues of interaction of social culture). - Questions of Philosophy, 1971, No. 10, p. 164-168.

68 Glasses are a certain anomaly in the general appearance of an officer or official, violating the severity of the uniform, a detail of inferiority. Wearing glasses was formalized by special order as an exception. Cm.: Vasiliev N.V. Pocket book of generals, staff and chief officers and civil officials and their families. St. Petersburg, 1889, p. 28.

69 V.V. Vinogradov rightly sees here a manifestation of symbolic ambiguity. Cm.: Vinogradov V.V. Uka z. cit., p. 35.

70 Gramzina T. Types of the fantastic in Gogol's works. - In the book: Scientist. zap. Kyrgyz. University, vol. 5. Frunze, 1958, p. 127.

71 Stepanov N. L. Decree. cit., p. 254.

72 Mann Yu.V. Gogol's poetics, p. 99-100.

73 See: KLE, vol. 4. M., 1967, st. 880.

74 Term G. P. Makogonenko. Cm.: Makogonenko G. P. A. S. Pushkin in the thirties. (1830-1833). L., 1982, p. 177-184.

75 This motif of fatal duality in “The Nose” was defined by D. S. Likhachev. Cm.: Likhachev D. S., Panchenko A. M.“The Laughing World” of Ancient Rus'. L., 1976, p. 52.

76 Belinsky V. G. Full collection soch., vol. 3. M., 1953, p. 105.

77 See: Markovich V. M. I. S. Turgenev and the Russian realistic novel of the 19th century. L., 1982, p. 29-30.

78 Vengerov S. A. Collection soch., vol. 2. St. Petersburg, 1913, p. 99.

Thus, I can conclude that fantasy and reality go hand in hand in the story and serve one thing: to depict the monstrous power of veneration, to show the absurdity of human relationships in conditions of despotic-bureaucratic subordination, when the individual, as such, loses all meaning.

The story “The Nose” is included in the third cycle of works by N.V. Gogol called “Petersburg Tales”. The capital of the Russian Empire, St. Petersburg, appears before the reader. In the story, people's lives in their typical manifestations are revealed using the techniques of satire and grotesque. The latter technique is often based on a combination of real signs of life and their fantastic perception.

What real do we see in the story? Before us is St. Petersburg, Nevsky Prospekt, along which people are scurrying about. And here is the main character, Major Kovalev, a dandy and fashionista, looking for a warm place in the capital. Nothing fancy! Complete prose of life!

Science fiction begins at the moment when the major on Nevsky Prospekt suddenly sees... his nose! The hero is stunned and amazed! And how could one not experience this if his own nose “was in uniform”, drove around in a cab, prayed in church... Kovalev “almost went crazy.” He chases his nose, tries to persuade it to return to its place... Where is it! The nose behaves independently and denies belonging to Major Kovalev. Fantastic! Pure fantasy! Who is responsible for the mysterious separation of Kovalev’s nose is not indicated in the story. There is no pursuer or culprit, but the persecution is felt all the time. The mystery captures the reader literally from the first sentence, it is constantly reminded of it, it reaches a climax, but there is no resolution to this mystery. It is not only the separation of the nose that is mysterious, but also how it existed independently. Do you think that at the end of the story we will find out how this entertaining story ended? No! The ending of the story retains a fantastic intrigue: “But here the incident is obscured by fog, and absolutely nothing is known what happened next.”

1st slide. The real and the fantastic in N.V. Gogol’s story “The Nose” Portrait of Gogol by an unknown artist. You can draw children’s attention to the writer’s gaze, as if piercing right through...