The life of Leva Odoevtsev, a descendant of the Odoevtsev princes, proceeds without any particular shocks. The thread of his life flows steadily from someone’s divine hands. He feels more like a namesake than a descendant of his glorious ancestors. Leva's grandfather was arrested and spent his life in camps and exile. In infancy, Leva, conceived in the fateful year of 1937, also moved with his parents towards the “depths of the Siberian ores”; however, everything turned out well, and after the war the family returned to Leningrad.
Levin's father heads the department at the university where his grandfather once shone. Leva grows up in an academic environment and since childhood dreams of becoming a scientist - “like her father, but bigger.” After graduating from school, Leva enters the Faculty of Philology.
After ten years of absence, the former neighbor Dmitry Ivanovich Yuvashov, whom everyone calls Uncle Dickens, a man “clear, poisonous, not expecting anything and free,” returns to the Odoevtsevs’ apartment after ten years of absence. Everything about him seems attractive to Leva: his disgust, dryness, harshness, thieves' aristocracy, sober attitude towards the world. Leva often visits Uncle Dickens, and even the books he borrows from his neighbor become a replenishment of his childhood.
Soon after the appearance of Uncle Dickens, the Odoevtsev family is allowed to remember their grandfather. Lyova learns for the first time that her grandfather is alive, and looks at his handsome young face in photographs - one of those that “stung an absolute distinction from us and undeniably belonging to man.” Finally, news comes that the grandfather is returning from exile, and the father is going to meet him in Moscow. The next day the father returns alone, pale and lost. From unfamiliar people Leva gradually learns that in his youth his father abandoned his father, and then completely criticized his work in order to get a “lukewarm” department. Returning from exile, the grandfather did not want to see his son.
Lyova is working on the “grandfather’s hypothesis” for herself. He begins to read his grandfather's works on linguistics and even hopes to partially use his grandfather's system for course work. Thus, he derives some benefit from the family drama and cherishes in his imagination a beautiful phrase: grandfather and grandson...
Grandfather is given an apartment in a new house on the outskirts, and Leva goes to him “with a brand new beating heart.” But instead of the person he created in his imagination, Leva is met by a disabled person with a red, stiff face, which amazes with its lack of spirituality. Grandfather drinks with friends, confused Leva joins the company. The elder Odoevtsev does not believe that he was imprisoned undeservedly. He has always been serious and does not belong to those insignificant people who were first undeservedly imprisoned and now deservedly released. He is offended by the rehabilitation; he believes that “all this” began when the intellectual first entered into a conversation with the boor at the door, instead of driving him into the neck.
Grandfather notices immediately main feature his grandson: Leva sees from the world only that which fits his premature explanation; the unexplained world leads him into panic, which Leva takes for mental suffering, characteristic only of a feeling person.
Uncertainty arises from the very beginning - the time of action is unclear: 196.. year. The origin of the hero is unclear: is he a descendant of the Odoevskys or is he just their namesake?
“If his parents still had to remember and determine their attitude towards their surname, then this was in those ancient years, when Leva was not yet alive or he was in the womb. But Leva himself, since he could remember, no longer had the need for this, and he was more of a namesake than a descendant. He was Leva"
Who is the real father of the main character? (And once again the double father, when retribution comes, when he is crushed by his own betrayal, when the image of Uncle Dickens expands and obscures his father... Because although the author laughs at Leva for her youthful play of imagination, he himself has not yet finally decided that Uncle Dickens he is not his father. What doesn’t happen?..”). Despite the fact that the author seems to give unambiguous answers to these questions, there remains a feeling of understatement - hence "cult of ambiguity", generated by the era itself.
Leva Odoevtsev grows up in an artificially illusory world, where everything seems to breathe decency and nobility, but in fact is based on lies and selfishness. The true state of affairs has been hidden from Leva since childhood. Raising Leva on abstract ideals, his parents teach him to “aristocratically” not notice the surrounding reality. Lyova is a disoriented person who does not know life, who grew up on myths about her own country and her own family, who has absorbed the required rules of the game with her skin.
“He himself mastered the phenomenon of ready-made behavior, ready-made explanations, ready-made ideals”
Leva's world is illusory.
There are many omissions in the novel, which the author himself points out, for example, a description of Leva’s school years.
Hints: Leva was supposed to testify in one case in which a comrade was involved, but left; when he returned, he discovered that the case had been hushed up, and his comrade had disappeared - he was arrested:
“He was deprived of the opportunity to attend all these proceedings, and when he could, everything was decided and his friend was no longer there. That is, he was there, but somewhere, no longer at the institute, and having met once on the street, he didn’t shake hands with Leva and didn’t seem to notice.”
2. At the level of axiology
Decanonization: firstly, literature and literary criticism; secondly, the image of a positive hero; thirdly, the Soviet era.
The halo surrounding literary criticism and philological sciences in general is dispelled by the ironic description of the “Pushkin House” and the description of the “academic environment,” as well as by the “retelling” of Levina’s article.
Motifs, heroes and plot points characteristic of Russian classical literature are played out in a new way, reduced, even vulgarized. This trend is most clearly revealed in the use of such cultural signs of Russian classical literature, as “prophet”, “hero of our time”, “masquerade”, “duel”, “demons”, “Bronze Horseman”, “shot”.
The image of the “Positive Hero” is being debunked, which Leva may seem to be. His entire character reveals duality, instability, and amorphous malleability. Odoevtsev is not a scoundrel - but not a decent person either; not a mediocrity - but not a knight of science either; not a plebeian, rather a refined person - but not an aristocrat of spirit either. The hero’s thoughts, feelings, and behavior are, as it were, caught in a hoop of the requirements of the existing system.
The Soviet era is ridiculed and belittled, while the “Pushkin” era is exalted.
However, Leva is positive person in the eyes of others - has some “reputation”. The boundaries between good and evil, between “ideal” and “anti-ideal” in the consciousness of the era are blurred.
Love and hate are mixed - love for Faina is full of contradictions. Leva submits to Faina, who makes him jealous “of everything that moves,” and revels in Faina’s submission, his power over her, acquired after the “story with the ring.”
The oppositions “laughter-horror”, “beautiful-disgusting”, “high-low” are also blurred. Particularly striking is the polylogue between Mitishatiev, the “two” Leva and Blank in the section “Poor Horseman” (in particular, the episode of the polylogue about Pushkin the Arab: Pushkin is a black Semite).
The ontological opposition “Life-death” also does not exist: the author resurrects Leva after his death.
3. At the composition level
Fragmentation and the principle of arbitrary installation: despite the undoubted symmetry and ring-like structure of the “Pushkin House”, the composition of the work has a large degree of freedom. If we omit one of the “inserted” parts (lyrical digressions in the spirit of Gogol and Chernyshevsky, works of “outside authors” - articles by Leva and short stories by Uncle Dickens, etc.), the novel will not lose its inherent completeness, but will become unilinear. Refusing a solid, continuous, undivided narrative with a chronological sequence, Bitov builds the main sections from relatively complete and independent chapters that could be swapped without destroying the work. The novel has multiple endings, including mutually exclusive ones.
The triumph of the deconstructionist principle: the artistic space and time of Bitov’s novel are open, heterogeneous, alternative, old connections are destroyed and new connections are established in chaos, mainly with the help of the author’s digressions and comments on what is happening, and not by means of plot and composition.
Disproportionality often th: the action of the first and second sections takes place at the same time, but the events practically do not overlap (the first section is “dialectics of the soul”, the second is “a description of Leva’s love, the cult of the body”) and covers several decades in scope. The artistic time of the third section takes only a few days, the artistic place is limited to the Pushkin House and the surrounding area. This is disharmony, a violation of the proportions of the chronotope.
The description of events does not correspond to the logical development of events; the plot is controlled not by external events, but by the will of the author. WITH combination of incongruous: poet + alcoholic, scientist + alcoholic, philosophy + drinking alcohol, various endings, novel and “post-novel” space.
4. At the genre level
a) Marginality manifests itself as a result of the destruction of traditional novel genres; before us is a form of “intermediate literature” that includes literature, literary theory, philosophy, cultural studies and has lost its genre specificity. It is impossible to single out the leading genre feature - genre syncretism. At the same time, this is a literary work, and a literary and even cultural study, in which the author himself reflects on what is written.
b) In the novel declaration of renunciation of edification, seriousness, the author himself repeatedly points out this - fictionalization of the work.
V) On the intertextual nature of the work I indicate the inclusion in it, along with the author’s text, of numerous quotes from Russian and foreign classics. Quoted by A. Pushkin, M. Lermontov, N. Gogol, I. Turgenev, L. Tolstoy, F. Dostoevsky, F. Tyutchev, A. Fet, N. Chernyshevsky, A. Ostrovsky, A. Chekhov, A. Blok, F Sologub, I. Bunin, V. Khlebnikov, V. Mayakovsky and others. Borrowings and citations from foreign literature: A. Dumas, C. Dickens, Mark Twain, E. Remarque. The peculiarity of citation is that most citations do not go beyond school curriculum(this is also noted by the author in the “Comments”).
Along with literary ones, the text contains quotes from “Soviet folklore”, Soviet cliches and cliches. Often quotes are used for the purpose of irony and parody.
The text is saturated extra-textual allusions on the events of the Soviet era, reminiscences on the works of Russian classics, which is emphasized by the names of sections, parts, chapters and epigraphs to them.
The title of the first section is “Fathers and Sons (Leningrad Novel)” is a reference to Turgenev’s novel. The title of the second section, “A Hero of Our Time (Version and Variants of the First Part),” refers us to Lermontov’s novel. The title of the third section “The Poor Horseman (Poem about Petty Hooliganism)” is a pun, which is a “mixture” of the titles of the works of Pushkin and Dostoevsky “The Bronze Horseman” and “Poor People”, the epilogue “The Morning of Revelation, or the Bronze People” is the same.
“Prologue, or Chapter written later than the others” has the title “What to do?” and reproduces the titles of two novels by Chernyshevsky. In general, the compositional structure of “Pushkin House” is partly reminiscent of the composition “What is to be done?”: the narrative begins with a description of a mysterious death, then an excursion into the past is made (the prehistory of “death”), then it turns out that “death” was not death (or was - depends on the ending).
The texts of the chapters within sections and appendices refer us either to “The Prophet” by Pushkin and Lermontov and “Madness” by Tyutchev, then to “Fatalist” and “Masquerade” by Lermontov, then to “Demons” by Pushkin and Dostoevsky and “The Small Demon” by Sologub, then to “The Shot” and “The Bronze Horseman” by Pushkin, then to “Poor People” by Dostoevsky, then to “The Three Musketeers” by Dumas (Ms. Bonacieux), then to ancient mythology (“Achilles and the Tortoise”). Their presence in the work widely expands the cultural space of the novel, activating the reader’s thought and imagination, and also helps to save linguistic resources. – the presence of a broad cultural context.
5. At the level of man, personality, hero, character and author
Leva is irrational in his deeds and actions, he lives “with the flow”, he is characterized by an apocalyptic worldview and escapism. Leva is a tragic character. His negative actions outweigh the positive ones - hence the deheroization of the character, lack of ideal.
6. At the aesthetic level
Underlined anti-aesthetic, shock, shocking, challenge, brutality, cruelty of vision, craving for pathology, anti-normativity, protest against classical forms of beauty, traditional ideas about harmony and proportionality;
Anti-aesthetic and shocking: use of profanity, description of drinking bouts, description of the toilet in the hallway of Uncle Dickens.
Challenge: Leva’s articles are a challenge to modern literary criticism.
Violation of traditional ideas about the harmony of form and content: the writer does not try to preserve the illusion in the reader’s eyes: this is life, but, on the contrary, constantly emphasizes: this piece of art, subject to its own laws, is a text.
7. At the level of artistic principles and techniques
a) Inversion: reversing the titles of classic works of domestic and foreign authors, inverting the image of Dickens - from the sublime (writer) to the mundane (Uncle Mitya, also, however, a writer).
b) Irony: description of the Pushkin House, the author’s frequent ridicule of Leva, irony about his actions.
V) Game as a way of existence in reality and art: the entire novel can be likened to a literary game. The author constantly reminds us that we are not reading about events real life, but about fictional ones, that you should not sympathize with the hero, because... he is fictional. The form of interaction between literature and reality is unique: the reality depicted in the novel and literature as a way of reflecting reality are so intertwined that the text of the novel itself becomes reality, and reality becomes text. We can say that the text represents reality, because reality cannot exist without this text.
The ability to hide true thoughts and feelings: the author does not delve into the psychology of the characters, does not explain the motives of their actions, we do not know their thoughts - all this helps him form “plot mysteries”.
Destruction of pathos: the ironic tone of the narration, constant reminders that we are reading “just a literary work,” playing with meanings, including literary reflections and digressions in the text, reflection on what is written destroy the novel’s pathos, and the work is no longer perceived as a traditional literary novel.
Literature used:
1. A. Bitov. Pushkin House. – St. Petersburg: ABC: Azbuka-Classic, 2000.
2. I.S. Skoropanova. Russian postmodern literature: Textbook. allowance. – M.: Flinta: Science, 2001.
Other examples of text analysis:
And an analysis of I. Brodsky’s poem “From Nowhere with Love”
The work begins the narrative of the life of Leva Odoevtsev. The ancestors of our main character belonged to the ancient family of princes Odoevsky. Accordingly, Leva was also one of them. His grandfather was in exile and prison all his life, and Leo, starting from his birth, also lived in distant Siberia. However, this did not last long, and after the war he began to live in Leningrad. His father works as the head of a department at the university where his grandfather used to work. Leva is obsessed with the dream of devoting his life to science, and therefore, after graduating from school, he enters higher education. educational institution to the philological department. Soon after a long absence, their neighbor returns, who for some reason is called Uncle Dickens and he really likes harsh judgments and a sober attitude towards the world. He often stops by to borrow books to read.
Soon the family starts talking about grandfather more and more often. Levushka examines old photographs with particular curiosity. One day they receive news that their grandfather is returning home, and their father is going to meet him. However, when he returns the next day, he returns in no mood. It turns out that his father did not want to see his son because he abandoned him only in order to make a career for himself. But our hero is interested in his grandfather’s linguistic works and wants to apply his system in his test work. Soon he visits him in the new apartment that he was given after his return, and sees a completely different person than he imagined in his thoughts. This was a man with poor health, a little rude. Moreover, when Leva paid him a visit, he was drinking with friends. He joins the conversation, from where he hears the grandfather being offended by the rehabilitation. And of course, it all started when he, an intelligent man, argued with a rude man. The grandfather drives away his grandson, who tried to accuse his father of treason.
Time passed. After graduating from university, Leva becomes a graduate student, after which he works at the Pushkin House at the Academy of Sciences. He had an excellent reputation in society. One day he has an unpleasant incident where a colleague signed the wrong papers, and Leva needs to report. However, numerous events helped to avoid this episode. There are both happy and bitter moments in his life. And after his return from Moscow, he learns that his friend quit, and Levin’s reputation was ruined. But he did not pay attention to this, because he believed that it was safer to work and live unnoticed. On the love front, he has everything under control. Of the three women who sympathize with him, he prefers to date Faina. She is older than him, but this does not push Leva away from her. He borrows money from Uncle Dickens to take his girlfriend to a restaurant. Although Faina cheats on him, he cannot leave her. One day he quietly takes a ring from a woman in the hope of selling it. Having learned from the jeweler that the jewelry is not worth a lot of money, he returns it to Faina, saying that he bought it second-hand for next to nothing. Soon Leva stops dating her.
One day, his sworn enemy, classmate Mitishatiev, Blank, Gottikh and Leva, after drinking, began to have a conversation on various topics. During the conversation, they began to argue about whether Natalya loved Pushkin, during which Mitishatiev began to insult Faina. Leva could not stand it and challenged him to a duel. After they shoot, our hero sees what a mess they made. It’s good that the local technician and Uncle Dickens cleaned up the premises. Grigorovich's inkwell, which had been thrown out of the window, was found and put in its place, and a copy of Pushkin's mask was brought. The management has no idea about anything and Leva is invited to the office only so that he becomes an accompaniment on the trip of the American writer. While giving a tour of Leningrad to a foreigner, he, standing on the bridge over the Neva, feels that he is tired. The novel teaches us to develop spiritually, and not to forget the origins of spiritual culture.
Picture or drawing of Bits - Pushkin House
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Andrey Bitov
Pushkin House
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But what will happen is that we won’t exist either.
Pushkin, 1830(Draft epigraph to “Belkin’s Tales”)Name of Pushkin House
Academy of Sciences!
The sound is clear and familiar,
Not an empty sound for the heart!..
Blok, 1921What to do?
Prologue, or Chapter written later than the rest
On the morning of July 11, 1856, the servants of one of the large St. Petersburg hotels near the Moskovskaya station railway I was perplexed, and partly even alarmed.
N.G. Chernyshevsky, 1863Somewhere, towards the end of the novel, we were already trying to describe that clear window, that icy heavenly gaze that looked point blank and without blinking on the seventh of November at the crowds that took to the streets... Even then it seemed that this clarity was not without reason, that it was almost not forced by special planes, and also in the sense that it will soon have to pay for it.
And indeed, the morning of November 8, 196... more than confirmed such premonitions. It blurred over the extinct city and floated amorphously with the heavy tongues of old St. Petersburg houses, as if these houses were written with diluted ink, fading as the dawn came. And while the morning was finishing writing this letter, once addressed by Peter “to spite an arrogant neighbor,” and now no longer addressed to anyone and not reproaching anyone for anything, not asking for anything, the wind fell on the city. He fell so flat and from above, as if he had rolled down some smooth celestial curvature, accelerating unusually and easily and coming into contact with the ground. It fell like that same plane, having flown... As if that plane had grown, swollen, flying yesterday, devoured all the birds, absorbed all the other squadrons and, fattened with metal and the color of the sky, crashed to the ground, still trying to glide and land, crashed into touch. A flat wind, the colors of an airplane, blew across the city. The children's word "Gastello" is the name of the wind.
It touched down on the streets of the city like a landing strip, bounced again during a collision somewhere on the Spit of Vasilievsky Island, and then rushed strongly and silently between damp houses, exactly along the route of yesterday’s demonstration. Having thus checked the desertion and emptiness, he rolled into the front square, and, picking up a small and wide puddle on the fly, slammed it into the toy wall of yesterday's stands with a running start, and, pleased with the resulting sound, flew into the revolutionary gateway, and, again taking off from the ground , soared wide and steeply up, up... And if this were a movie, then in the empty square, one of the largest in Europe, yesterday’s lost children’s “scatterer” would still be catching up with it and would crumble, having become completely damp, would burst, revealing as it were the underside of life: its secret and pitiful structure made of sawdust... And the wind straightened out, soaring and triumphant, high above the city it turned back and quickly rushed through freedom to again glide towards the city somewhere on the Strelka, describing something, a Nesterov loop...
So he ironed the city, and behind him, through the puddles, a heavy courier rain rushed - along the embankments so famous for its avenues, along the swollen gelatinous Neva with oncoming rippling spots of countercurrents and scattered bridges; then we mean how he rocked dead barges and a certain raft with a piledriver off the coast... The raft rubbed against unfinished piles, soaking the damp wood; opposite stood the house we were interested in, a small palace - now a scientific institution; in that house on the third floor, an open and broken window slammed, and both rain and wind easily flew in...
He flew into the large hall and chased the handwritten and typewritten pages scattered all over the floor - several pages stuck to the puddle under the window... And the whole appearance of it (judging by the glass photographs and texts hung on the walls, and the glass tables with unfolded books) of the museum, exhibition hall presented a picture of an incomprehensible defeat. The tables were moved from their own, suggested by the geometry, right places and they stood here and there, this way and that, one was even knocked over with its legs up, in a scattering of broken glass; The wardrobe lay face down, its doors open, and next to it, on the scattered pages, a man lay lifelessly with his arm bent under him. Body.