On a rainy, nautical morning, our guns struck - artillery preparation began, the ground swayed under our feet, the last fruits fell from the trees in the park, and the leaf spun up above.
The platoon leader ordered me to break up the communications and follow them on the attack with a coil and a telephone set. I merrily rushed along the line to rewind the wires: although it was cozy in the master's hut and manor, I was still tired of it - it's time and honor to know, it's time to go ahead, to joke a German to Berlin is still far away.
Shells rushed over me with discordant screams, kurlykans and whistles. The Germans answered rarely and anywhere - I was already an experienced soldier and knew: the German infantry was lying now, with its nose buried in the ground, and prayed to God that the Russians' stock of shells would soon run out. “It won't end! They will hammer for an hour and ten minutes until they make a mess of you, who are daring, ”- I reflected with feverish elation. During artillery preparation it is always like this: it is scary, it shakes everything inside and at the same time, passions flare up in the soul.
As I ran with a reel around my neck, I stumbled, and my thoughts were cut off: the goddess Venus stood without her head, and her hands were torn off, only her palm remained, with which she covered her shame, and Abdrashitov and a Pole were lying near the fountain covered with earth, covered with white splinters and plaster dust. Both of them were killed. Before the morning, the Germans, disturbed by the silence, made an artillery attack on the front line and fired a lot of shells into the park.
The Pole, I ascertained, was the first to be wounded - a piece of plaster had not yet dried up in his fingers and had not crumbled. Abdrashitov tried to pull the Pole into the pool, under the fountain, but did not manage to do this - they were covered again, and both of them calmed down.
A bucket lay on its side, and a gray plaster of paris fell out of it, the broken head of the goddess lay and with one unseen eye looked at the sky, screaming with a crooked hole punched below her nose. There was a mutilated, disfigured goddess Venus. And at her feet, in a pool of blood, lay two people - a Soviet soldier and a gray-haired Polish citizen, trying to heal the beaten beauty.

The Dome Cathedral

Home ... Home ... Home ...
Dome Cathedral, with a cock on the spire. Tall, stone, it sounds over Riga.
The vaults of the cathedral are filled with organ singing. From the sky, from above floats now a rumble, now thunder, now the gentle voice of lovers, now the call of the Vestals, now the roulades of the horn, now the sounds of the harpsichord, now the sound of a rolling brook ...
And again, with a formidable wave of raging passions, it blows everything away, again a roar.
Sounds sway like incense smoke. They are thick, tangible. They are everywhere, and everything is filled with them: soul, earth, world.
Everything froze, stopped.
Mental confusion, the absurdity of a vain life, petty passions, everyday worries - all of this remained in another place, in a different light, in another life that was distant from me, there, somewhere.
“Maybe all that came before was a dream? Wars, blood, fratricide, supermen playing with human destinies in order to establish themselves above the world.
Why do we live so intensely and difficult on our land? What for? Why?"
House. House. House…
Blagovest. Music. The gloom was gone. The sun rose. Everything is changing around.
There is no cathedral with electric candles, with ancient molding, with glass, toy and candy depicting paradise life. There is a world and I, calmed with awe, ready to kneel before the greatness of beauty.
The hall is full of people, old and young, Russian and non-Russian, party and non-party, evil and kind, vicious and light, tired and enthusiastic, all sorts of things.
And no one is in the hall!
There is only my serene, disembodied soul, it oozes with incomprehensible pain and tears of quiet delight.
It is cleansing, the soul is something, and it seems to me that the whole world held its breath, this seething, formidable world of ours was thinking, ready to fall on its knees with me, to repent, to fall with its withered mouth to the holy spring of good ...
And suddenly, like an obsession, like a blow: and yet at this time, somewhere, someone is targeting this cathedral, this great music ... with cannons, bombs, missiles ...
It can't be! Must not be!
And if there is. If we are destined to die, burn out, disappear, then let now, even at this moment, fate punish us for all our evil deeds and vices. Since we are unable to live freely, together, let at least our death be free, and the soul will go to another world, lightened and bright.
We all live together. We die separately. This has been the case for centuries. It was so until this moment.
So let's go now, let's rather, while there is no fear. Don't turn people into animals before you kill them. Let the vaults of the cathedral collapse, and instead of crying about the bloody, criminally folded path, people will carry the music of a genius into their hearts, and not the bestial roar of a murderer.
The Dome Cathedral! The Dome Cathedral! Music! What have you done to me? You are still trembling under the vaults, you are still washing your soul, chilling the blood, illuminating everything around with light, knocking on your armored chests and sick hearts, but already a man in black comes out and bows from above. A small man trying to assure that it was he who did the miracle. A wizard and a songwriter, a nonentity and God, to whom everything is subject: both life and death.
There is no applause here. Here people cry from the tenderness that overwhelmed them. Everyone cries about his own. But together everyone cries about the end, a wonderful dream subsides, that magic is brief, deceptively sweet oblivion and endless torment.
The Dome Cathedral. The Dome Cathedral.
You are in my shuddering heart. I bow my head to your singer, thank you for the happiness, albeit a short one, for the delight and faith in the human mind, for the miracle created and sung by this mind, thank you for the miracle of the resurrection of faith in life. Thank you for everything, for everything!

Cemetery

As the steamer passes a luxurious territory with houses, teremkas, a countryside for bathers, with tenacious signs on the shore: "Forbidden zone of a pioneer camp" - a cape is visible ahead at the confluence of the Chusovaya and Sylva rivers. It is washed away by water that rises in the spring and falls in the winter.
Opposite the cape, on the other side of Sylva, dry poplars stand in the water.
Young and old poplars, all black and with broken branches. But on one birdhouse hangs down the roof. Some poplars bent down, others still hold straight and gaze with fear into the water, which washes away everything and washes away their roots, and the shore keeps creeping, crawling, and soon it has been twenty years since the sea has been overflowing, but there is still no real shore, everything is crumbling. Earth.
On the day of the Forgiveness, people come from the surrounding villages and from a brick factory, throw cereals into the water, crush an egg, pinch a bread.
Under the poplars, under the water is a cemetery.
When the Kama reservoir was filled, there was a big assault. Many people and machines raked up the forest, houses, orphaned buildings and burned them. The bonfires were hundreds of miles away. At the same time, the deceased were moved to the mountains.
This is a cemetery near the village of Lyady. Not far from here, in the village of Troitsa, the once free, daring poet Vasily Kamensky lived and worked.
At the Lyadovskoye cemetery, work was also carried out before filling the free sea. Fast work. The builders dragged about a dozen fresh houses up the hill, assured themselves with a certificate from the village council about the fulfilled obligation, the magarych, on the occasion of the successfully completed business, drank it and left. The cemetery poplars went under the water, and the graves went under the water. Then a lot of bones turned white at the bottom. And the fish stood there in a school. Big bream. The locals did not catch fish and did not allow the strangers to catch. They feared sin.
And then the dried poplars fell into the water. The first to fall was the one with the birdhouse, he was the oldest, the most bony and the most woeful one.
A new cemetery was formed on the mountain. It has long been covered with grass. And there is not a single tree there, not even a single bush. And there is no fence. Polo around. The wind is coming from the reservoir. Grasses stir and whistle at night in crosses, in wooden and iron pyramids. Lazy cows and skinny goats with thorns graze here. They chew grass and chew wreaths of fir from the graves. Among the graves, on the frail grass, knowing neither trembling nor fear, a young shepherd is lying around and sleeping sweetly, blown by the breeze from the big water.
And they began to fish where the poplars fell. While strangers, unknowing people are catching, but the locals will soon start.
It's very cool in the evenings in steamy weather to take bream at this place ...

Stars and Christmas trees

In Nikolsky district, in the homeland of the late poet Yashin, for the first time I saw stars nailed to the ends of the corners of rural huts, and decided that it was Timurov's pioneers who had decorated the village in honor of some holiday ...
We went into one hut to drink some water. She lived in that wooden hut, with low rafters and narrowly, in one glass, cut through windows, a friendly woman whose age could not be immediately determined - her face was so mournful and dark. But then she smiled: “Avon, how many suitors fell to me at once! If only they took me with them and lost my way in the forest ... ”And we recognized in her a woman who had passed the middle of the century, but was not crushed by life.
The woman joked well, her face brightened and, not knowing what to treat us, she offered everything pea whites, and when she found out that we had never tried such concoctions, she naturally presented us with dark pretzels, sprinkling them from a sheet of tin on the car seat, assuring us that Such a pretzel in a peasant has a strong spirit, and a sinful one pulls him into a funeral.
I am never tired of being amazed at how people, and especially women, and especially in the Vologda region, despite any adversity, preserve and carry through life an open, cheerful soul. You will meet a Vologda peasant or a woman at a crossroads, ask about something, and they will smile at you and speak as if you have known you for a hundred years and you are their closest relatives. And it really is relatives: after all, they were born on the same land, some troubles wept. Only some of us began to forget about it.
Tuned into a cheerful wave, I cheerfully asked what the stars were on the corners of the hut, in honor of what such a holiday?
And again the face of the old woman darkened, the giggles disappeared from her eyes, and her lips stretched out in a strict thread. Lowering her head, she answered in a dull voice, with worn-out dignity and sorrow:
- Holiday?! God forbid anyone such a holiday ... Five did not return from the war: myself, three sons and brother-in-law ... - She looked at the stars, cut out of tin, painted with crimson student paint, wanted to add something else, but only suppressed in herself sigh, closed the gate behind her, and from there, already from the yard, smoothing out the awkwardness made by me, added: - Go with God. If there is nowhere to sleep, turn to me, the hut is empty ...
“The hut is empty. The hut is empty ... "- it was beating in my head, and I was looking at everything steadily - in the village streets stars flashed in red specks on dark corners, sometimes singly, sometimes in bulk, and a difficult war, probably not a single family remained in Russia that would not have lost someone ...
And how many unfinished and aged huts are in the Vologda region! The residents of Vologda loved to build thoroughly and beautifully. Houses were erected with mezzanines, decorated with carvings - wooden lace, made a porch under the tower. The work is so painstaking, it takes time, diligence and skill, and usually the owner of the house moved in with his family in a warm, businesslike, or something, half of the hut, where there was an entrance hall, a kut and a Russian stove, and he finished the house, mezzanine, and so on slowly, efficiently so that the "clean" half is always festive and light.
It was these light halves of the huts that remained unfinished. The cracks in the windows, in some places already cut through, were again hastily taken away with logs. On some houses, the decoration of mezzanines, window frames and gates has already begun. But the war broke out, the owner wiped the sweat from his forehead, shook off the shavings from his shirt and, carefully hiding the entire "structure" in the closet, postponed the work for later, until after the war ...
I put it aside and could not return to her. A Russian peasant lies in the Salsk or Don steppes, near Lvov or Warsaw, lies on the Seelow Heights or near Prague - he sleeps soundly in our and foreign land, and in his homeland, in the villages, eaten by rye is crumbled, but still stored just in case women are “strument”, women themselves are getting old, huts that have not lightened up are getting old, and the Russian proverb “Without a master and an orphan's house” has acquired some very woeful meaning.
"The hut is empty ..."
The ancient land, difficult to give birth to bread, inhabited by talented people, brisk in language and work, stretches between swamps and forests. Outside the outskirts of the villages, flax shimmers with pure greenery, reminding with its unspotted light a withered beauty of a widow; the heavy rye slopes down; wheat is ringing like an ear; piebald oats rustle.
The earth lives and works, like a hundred or a thousand years ago, and, as in antiquity, in the late clover meadow - women with Lithuanians, in colorful sundresses, with bright ribbons along the hem of aprons, with frills on sweaters and in white shawls.
- Help, guys! - they wave their hands. And we twist, laughing stiffly, take the braids and, trying not to shame the masculine gender, we hasten to close up the swath wider. And someone already had a piece of Lithuanian crunching like a splinter - a painfully sweeping Lithuanian thrust into a twisted clover wire with a wire.
- Such a clover should be shaved narrowly, smoothly, - women teach us and pretend to lament: - Oh you, trouble! The lithuania has been violated! Who will make it out to us? We have one man for the whole artel, and even that one does not get off the poveta for three days - after the name day ...
And they immediately begin to console the embarrassed mower, assuring that the Lithuanian was broken and they, the women, slipped it in for fun.
- Call in the evening! they invite. - Together we will begin to repair the Lithuanian! - the mischievous girls laugh, as in youth, and stretch out in a colorful chain along the clover, dropping its crimson-green shafts to his feet.
It seems such work is easy, and like it or not, you can compare these eternal workers with those who snort at the words "village", "sundress" and other similar things.
On one of the houses, high, under a jam, I saw a Christmas tree in ribbons, in rags and asked: what, they say, again for quirks?
And the companions explained to me that it was not quirks, but a Vologda custom that has come down to our days from antiquity: if they take a guy as a soldier, then his bride dresses his Christmas tree with ribbons and colored rags and nails it to the mezzanine or eaves of the betrothed's hut. The groom, returning from the soldiers, takes off the Christmas tree himself and solemnly, under the joyful lamentation and lamentation of the women, carries it in one hand, and with the other he brings the bride into the house, who knew how to wait and was faithful.
But if the guy for some reason does not return from the army, the nailed Christmas tree will dry up, and no one, mournful and reproachful, dares to take it off, except for the bride herself.
Alas, on many Vologda houses, Christmas trees are now mourning black and crumbling, and ribbons and rags have faded, frowned - the guys do not return to their native villages, under their fatherly roofs, to faithful and clean brides. They settle in cities or at construction sites, marry random companions and then go to waste with divorces, orphan children, yearning for their native land and regretting their easily lost faithful love.
Fields and villages. Fields and villages.
The cloudy sky above them in blue openings, forests and copses are touched by the first cold weather, crimson leaves, like stars at the corners of black huts; the Christmas trees that jumped to the side of the edge, as if waiting for them to be dressed up with ribbons; the white, wisely silent temple behind the hill; a motley herd on the green aftermath; a horse covered in dust with a cart on a bumpy country road; the first light flickering in the village; rook soda on old poplars; a girl's cry, thinly cutting through the silence of the village street: "Mom, mom, they brought white bread to the store! .."
And again the quiet serenity of the nursing mother earth, as usual, a day lived in labor, the usual twilight creeping over the hills, the usual distance, enveloped in peace.

The sadness of the ages

Among the mountains of heroic Bosnia, more than all the republics of Yugoslavia, which lost people in the war and suffered the most from the war, in a quiet village where no one is in a hurry, where life after battles, streams of blood, suffering and tears seems to be balanced once and for all. a mosque with a white minaret.
Noon. The sun bakes. On the slopes of the mountains there are still forests. The distance is covered with a haze, and in this haze the passes of the snow-capped mountains swing silently and majestically.
And suddenly, into this silence, into the eternal calmness of the mountains, into a measured life, a drawn-out, sad voice enters.
Cars, buses are racing, peasants are riding on bulls. At the cafe, people are pushing, children are running from school, and above them, like a hundred and a thousand years ago, a distant voice is heard. In a shady, cool valley, deep in the Bosnian mountains, it sounds somehow especially soulful.
What is he talking about? About eternity? Or a fast moving life? About our vanity and frailty? About a restless human soul?
Words cannot be understood. Yes, and there are almost no words in the midday prayer. There is boundless sadness, there is the voice of a lonely singer, as if he knew the truth of being.
Here, below, there were wars, people killed people, aliens took and occupied this land; the Nazis smashed the kids' heads against the sides of the cars, but he still sounded high above - gutturally, drawn out, timelessly and remotely.
The voice floating from the white rocket minaret aimed at the sky has already become familiar, and the unbelieving local residents simply do not hear or notice it. But in the morning, noon and evening hours of sunset, a lonely singer sends greetings to the sky, people, earth, preaching some kind of already incomprehensible, lost truth, suffering for us and for those who were before us, healing mental ailments with tranquility and otherworldly the wise sadness of centuries, which seemed to have not touched the rust of time and the terrible, stormy centuries of human history passed by the singer in a crush and anger.
Below, at the foot of the minaret, everyone is rushing and racing cars, always busy people are in a hurry somewhere and laughter is heard at the source of "man's water".

My dear

In the evening, the resort town of Dubrovnik smelled of blooming jasmine. From the docked white ships and yachts, the soft singing of mandolins echoed. The sea was lazily stirring in the bay, the ledges of the rocks dissolved in the twilight, and somewhere behind them, behind these rocks covered with pine forests and lush southern vegetation, was Italy, and once, long ago, Dalmatians swam to the Italian coast - to visit to the lords, and they liked to sail there so much that until they were forty they forgot to marry.
How beautiful is this southern land in Yugoslavia! The evening is beautiful and the music is beautiful.
I wander along the seaside boulevard, inhale the delicate scent of flowers, listen to the sea. The embankment is emptying. Fewer and fewer people. Quieter the sea. Quiet music. And only from the restaurant the voice of a partying port loader rushes: "Lyubova, Lyubova ..."
And under a bush of acacia, already littering with white, two are sitting: he and she. Both he and she are eighteen years old. She, in a yellow sports blouse, clung to his shoulder, hair, yellow from the light of the lanterns, fell on her face, overshadowed her eyes. He hugged her and gently stroked her slender, still angular shoulder and hummed something of his own to her, hummed softly, and only she could hear him. Heard his song, his heart. They did not notice neither the sea, nor rare passers-by, nor music, nor the acacia color that sprinkled them. They did not care about anyone, and no one prevented them from being alone in this thick, warm, dark southern night.
It seemed to me that I was guessing the song that he was singing to her, perhaps her casual companion, be it a beloved, a young carefree husband, or a friend of life forever connected to her.
It came from somewhere and wanders through our intelligent companies a song, in general, a waste, but there is a woeful, unpretentious vulnerability in it. The late Vasily Makarovich Shukshin loved this song and began his little-known film "Strange People" with it.

My dear, take me with you,
And there, in a distant land, call me ...

Quietly, on my toes, I walked past the young couple, guessing that they were unemployed, by the sponge sticking out of the pocket of my jacket, thrown on the bench - with these sponges young guys wash tourists' cars, earning themselves a piece of bread. One unemployed guy in the port canteen in the afternoon, angrily and perplexedly told us Soviet people: “My dad is disabled. He was mutilated by the Germans, and I wash the cars of German tourists. What is it like?"
And we didn’t know what to answer him. And he, an unemployed guy, pressed on us as if we and only we are responsible for him and for everything that happens to him.
Restlessness, loneliness, detachment emanated from this couple, and an incomprehensible feeling of guilt, as in a conversation with an unemployed, seized me - I fed the unemployed, gave him ten dinars from my poor foreign capital, and what can you say with this, what is their fate make it easier, how will you warm when by morning it will pull from the sea with dampness and cold?
They cuddled up to each other, warming themselves with their bodies in a luxurious resort town, on a rainbow-painted bench, and he sings his song to her, of course, not at all the one that I had imagined, but something very, very similar to her, simple-minded and absurd, like a village love story, invented by an ingenuous village head.
Roshad Dizdarovich, an old guerrilla and a wise man, told me that young people in their country are in opposition, behave defiantly until they get a "place in the sun", that is, they do not decide on a job. Our young people do not know such a misfortune, and, having received a job, having a wife and children, they often behave like reckless children.
But why, why from generation to generation in many lands it is so difficult to achieve this "place in the sun?" Did we, first of all, we - citizens of international duty, live, fought, shed blood not so that people entering life were sure that there is a place and space for them on earth? Why, why are the young men so lonely in their longing, in their dreams and in love? What are we missing? What have you overlooked? What have you misunderstood? Perhaps our mind is busy with other thoughts and deeds, completely unnecessary for this guy and girl? Why do they need bombs, rockets, choking gases, infectious bacteria? They just need a job, just bread, they need a "place in the sun."
The sea is getting quieter and quieter. The music on the ships fades. The lights go out. The resort town calmed down until the morning in order to wake up tomorrow from a multilingual dialect and open the gates to the sea, to beauty and joy.
And in the seaside park, under the blossoming acacia, until the morning, shivering from the cold, everyone will sit those two, detached from people and from the world, and he will sing a song to her that neither his wife nor his sister will take her away. country ...

Window

Nothing brings such spatial sadness to me, nothing plunges me into such a feeling of helplessness, like a lonely glowing window in an abandoned village, and even in a cluster of modern houses.
You drive up to a big city early in the morning, enter this stone corridor that has become familiar, but still blowing with cold and alienation - and the feeling is as if you are slowly, slowly drowning in a deaf, bottomless well. Modern dwellings with flat roofs, with dark squares of windows, faceless masses rallying in the distance, indifferently and motionlessly stand. The outskirts were thrown into a heavy sleep - not a light, not a sigh.
A working man sleeps, having driven himself into concrete hives, he sleeps in five or six villages in one multi-entrance house, a parish or a whole region sleeps in one crowded micro-district, and only dreams connect people with the past world: horses in a meadow, yellow hay shafts in the middle green lines of swaths, a birch in a field, a barefoot boy dumping in a river, a reaper floating at a slow pace in the wheat, raspberries along the edges, saffron milk caps in pine forests, sleds rushing down the mountain, schools with warm smoke over the chimney, wood goblins behind the mountain, brownies behind the stove ...
“Dreams are AWOL,” as one poetic soldier said.
And suddenly the red-hot tip of a needle pierces the light from the dark heaps, begins to move, take the shape of a window - and squeezes the heart with pain: what is there, behind this glowing window? Whom and what alarmed, raised from the bed? Who was born? Who died? Maybe it hurts someone? Maybe joyfully? Maybe a person loves a person? Maybe it hits? ..
Go find out! This is not for you in the village, where the cry for help is heard from the outskirts to the outskirts. Far from the stone window, and the car cannot be stopped. She leaves faster and faster, but for some reason the eyes cannot tear themselves away from the vigilant light, and the consciousness torments my head that you will get sick just like that, you will begin to die and call no one - no one and nothing around, soullessly around.
What happened to you, my brother? What alarmed you? What got you out of bed? I’ll think it’s not a problem. It's easier for me. I will hope that troubles will pass by your government house, will fly past your standard window. So I'm calmer. Calm down too. Everyone around is asleep and not thinking about anything. Sleep too. Turn off the light.

Voice from across the sea

I lived in the south with an old friend and listened to the radio, probably Turkish, and maybe Arabic ... There was a quiet voice of a woman speaking across the sea; quiet sadness reached me and was understandable to me, although I did not know the words of a foreign language. Then, also quiet, as if endless, music sounded, complained, ached all night, and the singer stepped in imperceptibly, and he also led and led the complaint on one note, became completely inseparable from the darkness of the sky, from the firmament of the earth, with the rolling of sea waves and noise foliage outside the window - everything, everything merged together. Someone's pain became my pain, and someone's sorrow became my sorrow. At such moments, the consciousness that we, people, are really united in this heavenly world, was quite clearly manifested.

Vision

A thick morning fog fell on Lake Kubenskoye. Not to see the shores, not to see the white light - everything was swaddled with an impenetrable pillowcase. You sit, sit over the hole, and you will feel the ice under you in order to feel support, and to feel yourself, or else it seems that you yourself have floated into space, covered with fog, dissolved in a white dream.
Fishermen wander at this time on the lake, shouting obscene words or, loudly gasping for good spirits, chopping the ice with ice picks, driving away the confused silence.
This is my first time at Lake Kubenskoye. Everything here is amusing and a little eerie for me, but I do not admit to myself and only look around, glad that the figure of a comrade looms three steps away from me. It does not even loom, but appears in tatters in the flowing fog, and then it will completely fade, then it is indicated more clearly.
But here the comrade approached. I can already see the head on it, the hand twitching the fishing rod with a spoon, and a white box under it. Next came the figure of a fisherman, more, more - there are people, they live, breathe and curse the ruffs, which overwhelm the fishermen with an insatiable horde, do not allow the good fish to approach, for which they are called here Red Guards, fascists and whatever. Any obscene words are considered suitable, and none of them affects the ruff, he pecks at himself and pecks at anything and whenever.
I, too, pulled out a ruff, spread out, unperturbed, and threw it into a spring puddle that had formed on the ice. In a puddle, my perch and paths were already swimming. Ruff, as soon as he caught his breath and rolled over on his belly, immediately felt like a master in a puddle, drove out to the edges and knocked over the tracks, rammed the perch. He drifted, fell on his side, splashed in panic.
While we watched the ruff, which behaved in a puddle, as if a peasant had gone for a walk in a women's hostel: having dispersed the entire "audience", he wiggled his wings and thorns in satisfaction - the fog parted even wider, a buoy flashed in the distance with a glare of flame, frozen into the ice; near the puddles, a noisy battle between seagulls and crows was opened because of the ruffs scattered by the fishermen. More and more people were designated - and the soul became more cheerful, and the fish began to take more often. Exclamations of surprise, delight, disappointment were heard from everywhere, then fishermen suddenly broke loose and ran in a crowd to one hole to help fish out a large fish and, lowering it, laughed, swore cheerfully and, consoling the owner of the hole, gave him a smoke or drink a glass.
How and when the sun rose in the sky - I did not notice. It was found high already and at first appeared in the fog only as a ghostly light, and then designated itself, as in an eclipse, with a bright rim. The mists moved away to the shores, the lake became wider, the ice on it seemed to float and sway.
And suddenly above this moving, white in the distance and gray near the ice, I saw a temple floating in the air. He, like a light toy made of papier-mâché, swayed and bounced in the haze of the sun, and the mists melted him down and swayed on their waves.
This temple floated towards me, light, white, fabulously beautiful. I put my rod aside, mesmerized.
Behind the fog, the brush of the forests emerged with sharp peaks. Already the distant factory chimney became visible, and the roofs of the houses along the corners. And the temple was still hovering over the ice, sinking lower and lower, and the sun played in its dome, and it was all illuminated by light, and a haze shone under it.
Finally, the temple sank onto the ice, established itself. I silently pointed a finger at him, thinking that I had a dream, that I really fell asleep and I had a vision from the fog.
- Spas-stone, - my comrade said shortly, for a moment looking up from the hole, and again took up the fishing rod.
And then I remembered, as my Vologda friends told me, when gearing me up for fishing, about some kind of Spas-stone. But I thought that a stone is just a stone. In my homeland, in Siberia, there is Magnetic, and Marked, and Karaulny - these are stones either in the Yenisei itself, or on its banks. And here the Savior Stone is a temple! Monastery! Without taking his eyes off the fishing rod, the comrade muttered to me the story of this diva. In honor of the Russian warrior-prince, who fought for the unification of the northern lands, this monument-monastery was erected. Tradition says that the prince, who was saving by swimming from enemies, began to drown in heavy armor and went to the bottom, when suddenly he felt a stone under his feet, which saved him. And in honor of this miraculous salvation, stones and earth from the shore were piled on the underwater ridge. On boats and on a drawbridge, which every spring was rolled up by breaking ice on the lake, the monks dragged the whole island and set up a monastery on it. The famous Dionysius painted it.
However, already in our time, in the early thirties, construction began on the collective farm and a brick was required. But the monks were builders - not like the present ones, and they made a monolith out of bricks: they had to blow up the monastery. They pulled - and still they did not take the bricks: it turned out to be a pile of ruins and nothing more. Only one bell tower and a living room remained from the monastery, in which nets are now kept and fishermen take refuge from the weather ...

But they haven’t survived yet ...
Along the coast, along the fertile sand or grub, in the crumb of the stone, bright, large flowers grow, in bulk - bilberry, blueberry and the wondrous berry of the north - the prince. This sissy, blooming with an inconspicuous pink flower, grows everywhere in islets, fenced off with thin perches and branches, over the thin stumps there are perches connected by a triangle. There were different people here, they whipped a sparse, persistent forest thoughtlessly, which is closer, which is more convenient for an ax, bare the cape, but nature does not give up. In the opening of stumps, which are often not thicker than a human fist, a part-bird chick will suddenly move, the shoot of larch - the main tree here, suitable for building materials, for fuel, for firewood, for poles, for blocks for traps, will tremble with the fluff of needles, and that sprout and a forest-tundra chick, fated more often than to survive.
The first settlers put triangles over each shoot - look, man and beast, do not step on the forest baby, do not trample it - the future life of the planet is in it.
“A good sign of life - there are so few of them left and even fewer are reappearing,” looking at those pole triangles under which small trees grow, I thought. - To make them an ecological sign of our Siberian region, maybe the whole country, maybe the whole world. "
Meanwhile, the guys are being trampled down on the sly, they are being squeezed from their places - they stopped taking fish from them, they threaten not to conclude a contract for furs. The guys are thinking of giving up to Canada, settling in a taiga or tundra place, and some silently and evil, some kindly and sympathetically push in the back: “So go further, don't irritate our people with your disinterestedness, this independence, it is not to our hearts”.
"And not in the mind!" - I will add on my own.

The taste of melted snow

Years already ... many years, it seems, a century ago, I was sitting on the slope of the Urals, in old clearings with a gun among the stumps and roots, listening and could not hear enough of the spring wild choir of birds, from which the sky swayed. The earth and everything on it froze, did not move, did not swing a single branch, marveling at that miracle, that holiday, which she herself was the creator of.
The morning flew by, the mists had settled, the sun rose high, but the birds did not calm down, and between the stumps, roots and bushes, all hissed, all the purr and militarily fluffed mowers jumped up and down.
Having risen from the ambush, I immediately sagged with a hacked donkey - my legs became numb. I sat for many hours, from dark to the sun, and did not notice the time. And as soon as I took a step, from under my feet, fluttering wings, a black bombshell rolled like a black bomb, poked into a lonely birch and stared at me.
I fired. The kosach, hitting the branches, swirling a feather, rolled down, slammed under the birch, and as soon as I stretched out my hand to take the bird, I heard a small rash and clicks of rain above my head. I raised my head - the sky was clear, sunny, but drops were falling and falling into my face, thickening, licking my lips, I felt the taste of melted snow, a weak, delicate sweetness on my lips, and I realized that it was sap, birch sap.
Falling down, the kosach knocked a birch out of its bosom, tore off a branch from the trunk, and shot through the white bark, and the tree immediately began to cry, often with tears, as if it had a presentiment with its gut and skin that next spring they would sprinkle powder on these endless fellings, this land, where nature has almost managed to heal wounds and give birth to animals, birds and various animals.
The hunter himself will walk in the half-killed young thickets, ankle-deep in feathers and cry, hearing the fragile bones crunch under his boots, and with confusion in his heart think about the future. Will birch sap sprinkle in the face of our children and grandchildren, will they feel the frothy sweetness of melted pure snow on their lips, will they hear the singing of birds, and such that even the sky sways from it and the drunken earth is forgotten, stunned by spring daring and boldness?

Melody

A variegated leaf. Red rosehip. Sparks of peeled viburnum in gray bushes. Yellow coniferous litter from larch trees. Black land, bare in the fields, under the mountain. Why so soon ?!

Line

Winter has come again. Coldly. I dreamed about this line on a warm summer night.

Hello word

Coldly. It's windy. The end of spring, and I have to hide in the forest for a walk.
I'm coming. I cough. I creak. Above me, birch trees rustle desertedly, not giving birth to leaves, only hung with earrings and shaded with pinches of green buds. The mood is gloomy. Thinking mostly about the end of the world.
But now a girl in a red jacket and a red cap is scratching on a trampled path on a tricycle. After her, mom rolls a stroller with the baby. - Stop, uncle! - shining with blackened eyes, the girl shouts and jokes on.
“Hello, little one! Hello, my child! " - I want to shout and me, but I do not have time.
Mother in a blue cloak, buttoned up tightly, is afraid to chill her chest, leveling with me, smiled wearily:
“For her, all people are still brothers!
I looked around - a girl in an open red jacket was racing along the spring birch forest, welcoming everyone, rejoicing at everything.
Does a man need much? So it became easier for me in my soul.

Book 2

How the goddess was treated

The Dome Cathedral

Cemetery

Stars and Christmas trees

Viktor Petrovich Astafiev, the author of the story "The Dome Cathedral", was born in troubled times and swallowed in full all the troubles and misfortunes that fate could have prepared for him. From an early age, life did not spoil him: at first his mother died, and Victor could not accept it until the end of his life, later his father brought a new wife into the house, but she could not stand the boy. So he ended up on the street. Later, Viktor Petrovich wrote in his biography that he began an independent life suddenly and without any preparation.

A master of literature and a hero of his time

V.P. Astafiev's literary life will be quite eventful, and his works will be loved by all readers, from the smallest to the most serious.

Astafiev's story "The Dome Cathedral" undoubtedly took one of the most honorable places in his literary biography, and even years later it never ceases to find connoisseurs among the modern generation.

V. Astafiev, "Dome Cathedral": a summary

In the hall filled with people, organ music sounds, from which the lyric hero has various associations. He analyzes these sounds, compares them with high and sonorous sounds of nature, then with hissing and low peals of thunder. Suddenly, his whole life appears before his eyes - his soul, the earth, and the world. He recalls the war, pain, losses and, struck by the sound of the organ, is ready to kneel before the greatness of beauty.

Despite the fact that the hall is full of people, the lyric hero continues to feel lonely. Suddenly a thought flashes through his mind: he wants everything to collapse, all the executioners, the murderers, and music sounded in the souls of people.

He talks about human existence, about death, about the path of life, about the importance of a small person in this big world and understands that the Dome Cathedral is a place where gentle music lives, where all applause and other exclamations are prohibited, that this is a house of silence and tranquility. ... The lyrical hero bows his soul before the cathedral and thanks him from the bottom of his heart.

Analysis of the work "Dome Cathedral"

Now let's take a closer look at the story written by Astafiev ("Dome Cathedral"). Analysis and comments to the story can be presented as follows.

From the very first lines, the reader observes the author's admiration for the majestic piece of architectural art - the Dome Cathedral. Viktor Petrovich more than once had to visit this cathedral, which soon came to his liking.
The building of the Dome Cathedral itself, located in Riga, has survived to this day only in part. Made in the Rococo style, the cathedral was built according to the project of foreign sculptors and architects, who were specially invited to erect a new structure that would have sounded for centuries and remained an excellent reminder to subsequent generations of bygone times.

But it was the organ with incredible acoustic power that made the cathedral a real attraction. Great composers-virtuosos wrote their works especially for this majestic organ and gave concerts there, in the cathedral. Thanks to the assonances and dissonances that V.P. Astafiev skillfully uses at the beginning of the story, the reader can feel himself in his place. Organ melodies, compared with the thunder and the rumble of the waves, with the sounds of the harpsichord and a resounding stream, reach us seemingly through space and time ...

The writer tries to compare the sounds of the organ with his thoughts. He understands that all those terrible memories, pain, grief, worldly vanity and endless problems - all disappeared in an instant. The sound of the organ has such a majestic power. This passage confirms the author's point of view that solitude with high, time-tested music can work miracles and heal mental wounds, and this is exactly what Astafyev wanted to say in his work. "Dome Cathedral" is rightfully one of his deepest philosophical works.

The image of loneliness and soul in the story

Loneliness is not a fact, but a state of mind. And if a person is lonely, then even in society he will continue to consider himself so. Organ music sounds through the lines of the work, and the lyric hero suddenly realizes that all those people - evil, kind, old and young - have all disappeared. In a crowded room he feels only himself and no one else ...

And then, like a bolt from the blue, the hero is pierced by a thought: he realizes that at this very moment someone, perhaps, is trying to destroy this cathedral. Endless thoughts swarm in his head, and the soul healed by the sounds of the organ is ready to die overnight for this divine melody.

The music stopped sounding, but left an indelible imprint on the soul and heart of the author. He, being impressed, analyzes every sound that sounded and cannot help but say “thank you” to him.

The lyrical hero received healing from the accumulated problems, grief and the killing bustle of the big city.

Genre "Dome Cathedral"

What else can you say about the story "Dome Cathedral" (Astafiev)? It is difficult to define the genre of the work, because it has the designations of several genres. "Dome Cathedral" is written in the genre of an essay, reflecting the inner state of the author, impressions from one life event. For the first time Viktor Astafiev published "The Dome Cathedral" in 1971. The story was included in the cycle "Zatesi".

"Dome Cathedral": composition plan

The Dome Cathedral is the abode of music, silence and peace of mind.
An atmosphere filled with music that evokes many associations.
Only the sounds of music can so subtly and deeply touch the strings of the human soul.
Getting rid of the burden, mental heaviness and accumulated negativity under the influence of a miraculous medicine.
Gratitude of the lyric hero for healing.

Finally

It is worth noting that the author undoubtedly possesses because not everyone can feel the music so much, heal under its influence and with subtle tender words convey their inner state to the reader. Victor Astafiev as a phenomenon of our time deserves respect. And by all means, everyone should read the work of Viktor Astafiev "The Dome Cathedral".

The narrator is convinced that only music will save the world and each of us from internal decay, help to better understand ourselves.

K. Paustovsky "The Old Chef"

For the blind hero of this story, Mozart's music recreated a visible picture, helped to return to the past, to see the happiest events of his life.

V. Korolenko "The Blind Musician"

Petrus was born blind, and music helped him survive and become a truly talented pianist.

A.P. Chekhov "Rothschild's Violin"

Yakov Matveyevich, the hero of the story, the melody he found, amazing in beauty, touching and sad, makes him make philosophical generalizations of a humane nature: if there were no hatred and anger between people, the world would become beautiful, no one would interfere with each other. For the first time, he felt ashamed of having offended those around him.

Leo Tolstoy "Albert"

The main character of the story is a brilliant musician. He plays the violin mesmerizingly, and it seems to the listeners that they are re-experiencing what has been lost forever, that their souls are warming up.

L.N. Tolstoy "War and Peace"

With her singing, Natasha Rostova is able to influence the best in a person. This is how she saved her brother Nikolai from despair after he lost a large amount of money.

The role of fiction in the development of personality

M. Gorky "My universities"

Alyosha, the hero of the story, believed that only the books he had read helped him to withstand the hardest trials of life, to become a man ...

Roles of reading in human life

R. Bradbury "Fahrenheit 451".

The science fiction writer believed that a common man could see only one hundredth with his own eyes, and the remaining ninety-nine percent he learns through a book.

R. Bradbury "Memories"

“Libraries raised me. I don't believe in colleges and universities, I believe in libraries ... I was educated in a library, not in a college. "

The moral value of fiction

R. Bradbury "Fahrenheit 451"

There are no social problems in the utopian world of the future. They were defeated by the destruction of books - after all, literature makes you think. Bonfires from works of art symbolize the death of human spirituality, the transformation of people into hostages of primitive mass culture.

Yu. Bondarev "A rare gift"

In his article, the writer discusses how, from childhood, the tales and poems of Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky instill in readers the great qualities of humanity: nobility, love of life, hatred of evil, cowardice, cruelty.

V. Shukshin

"Literature should help us understand what is happening to us."

Roles of painting in human life

B. Ekimov "Music of the Old House"

Sketches by Shishkin and Serov in the Russian Museum helped the narrator to see the beauty of the earth, people, and life.

Roles of art in human life

V. Tendryakov "Date with Nefertiti"

Preservation of culture

D.S. Likhachev "Letters about the good and the beautiful"

Political epochs are changing, but in our country the attitude of the authorities to the monuments of national culture, to churches, museums, libraries has never inspired optimism. The ecology of culture should become one of the most important tasks of our time: after all, it is the source of morality, without which a person is unthinkable.

R. Bradbury "Smile"

During the next "Cultural Revolution" the boy Tom, risking his life, takes away and hides the canvas on which the Gioconda is depicted. He wants to preserve it in order to later return it to people: Tom believes that real art can ennoble even a wild crowd.

The relationship of power and personality, power and artist

The master in the novel was not created for the fierce struggle to which society condemns him and does not understand that, having become a writer, he thereby turns into a competitor of mediocrities and demagogues who have seized the “literary field” and consider it their fiefdom. They are mediocre and therefore hate talented people; among them, opportunists and lackeys, a person who is internally free, who says only what he thinks, evokes a terrible anger. And they are trying to destroy it.

A.I. Herzen "Magpie-thief"

The main heroine of the story, Aneta, is a talented serf actress of the rich prince Stalin. One of the prince's favorites

Y. Golovanov "Studies of Scientists"

The life of the famous Russian inventor Ivan Kulibin is a stern accusation of ignorance and bureaucracy. His largest projects never entered our lives: they remained in the bureaucratic folders. When serious work required the help of the authorities, a wall of indifference arose before the inventors.

OTHER PROBLEMS

Personalities and powers

M. Zamyatin "We"

A single state with its totalitarian power destroyed the personality in everyone: there are no people in the country, but there are “numbers” similar to programmed people.

The reign of evil in the world (just retribution)

M. Bulgakov "The Master and Margarita"

Evil reigns because there is no force in society capable of exposing and punishing it, but punishment, according to Bulgakov, is necessary: the writer is clearly not a supporter of the idea of non-resistance to evil by violence, on the contrary, in his opinion, it is possible only by force and even violence, fear, because these people behave humanly only when they are afraid to behave differently. Woland's retinue thus embodies the principle of justice and retribution in the novel.

Text no. 1

(1) Dome Cathedral. (2) House ... (W) House ... (4) House ..

(5) The vaults of the cathedral are filled with organ singing. (b) From the sky, from above floats now a rumble, now a thunder, now the gentle voice of lovers, now the call of the Vestals, now the roulades of the horn, now the sounds of the harpsichord, now the sound of a rolling stream ...

(7) Sounds sway like incense smoke. (8) They are thick, tangible, (9) They are everywhere, and everything is filled with them: the soul, the earth, the world.

(10) Everything froze, stopped.

(11) Mental confusion, the absurdity of a vain life, petty passions, everyday worries - all-all this remained in another place, in a different light, in a different life, distant from me, there, somewhere.

“(12) Maybe all that came before was a dream? (13) Wars, blood, fratricide, supermen playing with human destinies in order to establish themselves above the world ... (14) Why do we live so intensely and difficult on our land? (15) Why? (16) Why? "

(17) House. (18) House. (19) House ...

(20) Blagovest. (21) Music. (22) The darkness has disappeared. (23) The sun rose. (24) Everything is changing around.

(25) There is no cathedral with electric candles, with ancient molding, with glass, toy and candy, depicting paradise life. (26) There is a world and I, subdued with reverence, ready to kneel before the greatness of beauty.

(27) Zal is full of people, old and young, Russian and non-Russian, evil and kind, vicious and bright, tired and enthusiastic, all sorts of things.

(28) And no one is in the hall!

(29) There is only my serene, disembodied soul, it oozes with incomprehensible pain and tears of quiet delight.

(30) It is purified, the soul is something, and it seems to me that the whole world held its breath, this bubbling, formidable world of ours was thinking, ready to fall on its knees with me, to repent, to fall with its withered mouth to the holy spring of good ...

(31) Dome Cathedral. (32) Dome Cathedral.

(33) 3 There is no applause here. (34) 3Here people cry from the tenderness that overwhelmed them.

(35) Everyone cries about his own. (36) But together everyone cries about the end, a beautiful dream subsides, that magic is brief, deceptively sweet oblivion and endless torment.

(37) Dome Cathedral. (38) Dome Cathedral.

(39) You are in my shuddering heart. (40) I bow my head in front of your singer, thank you for happiness, albeit a short one, for delight and faith in the human mind, for the miracle created and sung by this mind, I thank you for the miracle of the resurrection of faith in life. (41) 3a everyone, thank you for everything!

(According to V. Astafiev)

Sample composition

Music.

Introduction	Music is the greatest of the arts, accompanying humanity throughout its centuries-old history. The sounds of music make you freeze with delight and tenderness, inspire the human soul, bring peace and tranquility to the vain human life.
Formulation of the main problem of the text	It is about the ability of music to transform the world around us, to heal human hearts that V. Astafyev writes in his text.
Commentary on the main problem of the text	The author, reflecting on the power of music, is based on his personal impressions of the "organ singing" he heard in the Dome Cathedral. “Before great music,“ spiritual turmoil, the absurdity of a vain life, petty passions, everyday worries receded, ”the author recalls. "Before the greatness of the beautiful," the people who filled the cathedral were ready to bow their knees, crying from "the tenderness that overwhelmed them." Everything, except the music, seemed ridiculous and meaningless.
Determination of the author's position	The position of the author is obvious, the reader understands that V. Astafiev wants to emphasize the ability of music to transform the world around him, to revive faith in life. "For everything, for everything, thank you!" - the author exclaims.
Statement of own position	I agree with the opinion of the writer and believe that music has tremendous power, it can make a person happy, if only for a moment, fill his soul with kindness and peace.
1st argument	Let us recall the distant war years, besieged Leningrad and Shostakovich's music played in the besieged city. She gave strength to exhausted people, made them live and fight.
2nd argument	More recently, symphonic music was performed on the ruins of Tskhinvali. It was the best gift for people who survived the tragedy and lost their loved ones. V. Gergiev and his orchestra with their art healed the suffering hearts of the Ossetian inhabitants.
Conclusion	Music is necessary for humanity at all times. This great art is the key to a person's deepest passions and emotions.

Text no. 2

(1) Clutching a pitchfork in her hand, Maria threw back the manhole cover and recoiled. (2) On the earthen floor of the cellar, leaning against a low tub, sat a live German soldier. (3) In some elusive moment, Maria noticed that the German was frightened by her, and realized that he was unarmed.

(4) Hatred and hot, blind anger overtook Mary, squeezed her heart, rushed to her throat with nausea. (5) A scarlet fog obscured her eyes, and in this thin fog she saw a silent crowd of farmers, and Ivan swaying on a poplar branch, and Feni's bare feet hanging on a poplar, and a black noose around Vasya’s children's neck, and them, fascist executioners, dressed in gray uniforms with a black ribbon on their sleeves. (6) Now here, in her, Marya's, cellar, lay one of them, half-crushed, an unfinished bastard, dressed in the same gray uniform, with the same black ribbon on the sleeve, on which the same strange, incomprehensible, hooked letters were silvered ...

(7) This is the last step. (8) Mary stopped. (9) She took another step forward, the German boy moved.

(10) Maria raised her pitchfork high, slightly turned away so as not to see the terrible thing that she had to do, and at that moment she heard a quiet, stifled cry, which seemed to her like thunder:

Mama! Ma-a-ma! ..

(11) A faint cry of a multitude of red-hot knives bit into Mary's chest, pierced her heart, and the short word "mother" made her shudder from unbearable pain. (12) Mary dropped her pitchfork, her legs buckled. (13) She fell to her knees and, before losing consciousness, close-up saw the light blue, wet with tears, boy's eyes ...

(14) She woke up from the touch of the damp hands of the wounded. (15) Choking with sobs, he stroked her palm and said something in his own language, which Mary did not know. (16) But by the expression on his face, by the movement of his fingers, she understood that the German was talking about himself: that he had not killed anyone, that his mother was the same as Maria, a peasant woman, and his father had recently died near the city of Smolensk, that he himself, having barely finished school, was mobilized and sent to the front, that he had never been in a single battle, only brought food to the soldiers.

(17) Maria silently cried. (18) The death of her husband and son, the hijacking of the farmers and the death of the farm, the days and nights of martyrdom in the corn field - everything that she experienced in her heavy loneliness broke her down, and she wanted to cry out her grief, tell about it to a living person, the first, whom she has met in all the last days. (19) And although this man was dressed in a gray, hated enemy uniform, he was seriously wounded, moreover, he turned out to be quite a boy and - apparently from everything - could not be a murderer. (20) And Mary was horrified that a few minutes ago, holding a sharp pitchfork in her hands and blindly submitting to the feeling of anger and revenge that gripped her, she could kill him herself. (21) After all, only the holy word "mother", the prayer that this unfortunate boy put into his quiet, choking cry, saved him.

(22) With a careful touch of her fingers, Maria unbuttoned the bloody shirt of the German, slightly tore it, bared her narrow chest. (23) There was only one wound on the back, and Maria realized that the second fragment of the bomb did not come out, sat somewhere in the chest.

(24) She squatted down next to the German and, supporting his hot nape with her hand, gave him milk to drink. (25) Without releasing her hand, the wounded man sobbed.

(26) And Mary understood, could not help but understand that she was the last person whom a German doomed to death sees in his life, that in these bitter and solemn hours of his farewell to life in her, in Mary, everything else is connects him with people - mother, father, sky, sun, native German land, trees, flowers, the whole vast and beautiful world, which is slowly leaving the consciousness of a dying person. (27) And his thin, dirty hands stretched out to her, and a fading look full of supplication and despair - Maria understood this too - express the hope that she is able to defend his passing life, drive away death ... (According to V. Zakrutkin)

Sample composition

Introduction

Insulted human dignity, cruelty can cause a response - revenge. What is revenge? This is a deliberate infliction of evil in order to repay the insult, the offense. But not everything is so simple, because revenge is the most complex and contradictory phenomenon in the life of society.

Main part

Revenge or refusal to take revenge - this is the main problem of the text I read.

“A scarlet fog covered her eyes, and in this thin fog she saw ... Ivan swaying on a poplar branch, and Feni's bare feet hanging on a poplar, and a black noose on Vasyatka’s child’s neck.” After reading this sentence, I understand that the author considers the desire to avenge the death of loved ones a feeling that is difficult to resist. And his heroine raises the pitchfork ...

But at the last moment Maria hears a strangled cry: "Mom!" Why did the author put this word in the mouth of a wounded German? Of course, this was not done by accident. Only a scared boy can scream like that. At the same time, Maria, having heard the word “mother,” realizes that she is facing a helpless person who needs help.

And the heroine makes a choice. And this choice coincides with the position of the author: a defeated, and therefore no longer dangerous, enemy has the right to a humane attitude.

This position is close to me even from the time when I read the book by L.N. Tolstoy's "War and Peace".

Russian soldiers warm and feed Rambal and Morel, and they embrace them and sing a song. And it seems that the stars are happily whispering to each other. Perhaps they admire the nobility of the Russian soldiers, who chose sympathy for the defeated enemy instead of revenge.

The same is the position of the writer Grossman in the work "Life and Fate". Yes, war brings death. But even during a war, a person can overcome the desire to take revenge on a former enemy who is unarmed and suffering.

Conclusion

1) Revenge or refusal to take revenge is a choice that each of us may face.

However, it is worth noting that the problem of revenge is not only related to military events and exists not only in the world of adults. Revenge or refusal to take revenge is a choice that each of us can face. In this regard, I recall the story

V. Soloukhin "The Avenger". In the soul of the hero-narrator, there is a struggle between the desire for revenge and the unwillingness to beat the gullible friend. As a result, he manages to break the vicious circle, and his soul becomes easy.

So take revenge or refuse revenge? I think that a defeated, obeyed enemy should be forgiven, remembering that "to dry one tear is more valor than to shed a whole sea of blood."

Text no. 3

Most people imagine happiness very specifically: two rooms - happiness, three - more happiness, four - just a dream. Or a beautiful appearance: although everyone knows about "don't be born beautiful ...", yet deep down in our hearts we firmly believe that with a different ratio of waist and hips, our life could have turned out differently.

Desires can come true. There is always hope, if not for slender hips, then at least for an extra room, and if you are very lucky, then for a house with a sea view. But what if our houses and shapes have nothing to do with feeling blissful at all? What if each of us has a greater or lesser capacity for happiness from birth, like an ear for music or mathematical abilities?

This is exactly the conclusion reached by psychologist Robert McCray after a ten-year study he conducted that covered about 5,000 people. At the beginning and end of the experiment, the participants were asked to tell about the events of their lives and to characterize themselves. Are they smiling or gloomy? Do they see the glass half full or half empty?

Strikingly, the degree of satisfaction with their own lives was almost the same at the beginning and at the end of the study, regardless of what happened in the lives of its participants. People rejoiced, grieved, grieved, but over time they returned to their starting point. Each person's level of happiness was associated mainly with their personality, and not with the circumstances of life.

Then they decided to measure this elusive constant. Psychologist Richard Davidson used a special technology - positron emission tomography - to measure the neural activity of the brain in different states. It turned out that people are naturally energetic, enthusiasts and optimists have high activity in a certain area of the cerebral cortex - the left prefrontal zone, which is associated with positive emotions. The activity of this zone is a surprisingly constant indicator: scientists took measurements with an interval of up to 7 years, and the level of activity remained the same. This means that some people are literally born happy. Their desires come true more often, and even if this does not happen, they do not dwell on failures, but find bright sides in the situation.

But what about someone whose left prefrontal zone is not so active? It's a shame to live and know that even a crystal palace on a tropical island won't bring you happiness! Why then all the efforts? Why make a career and build houses, go on a diet and sew clothes, if the amount of happiness is measured out to you already at birth and will not change one iota?

(According to N. Korshunova)

________________________________________________________________________

Sample composition

In this text, Korshunova raises a problem that must have worried each of us. How to relate to the surrounding reality, if it is quite possible that you do not have physiological signs that will make you happy? Resign yourself to your fate, be a pessimist, or be optimistic about the world and strive, in spite of everything, for happiness?

The author introduces us to the scientific work of such scientists as Robert McCray and Richard Davidson. McCray, analyzing the results of a ten-year study, came to the conclusion that a person's level of happiness is associated with his personality, and not with life events. Davidson, with the help of special technology, was able to establish that the more active the left prefrontal zone of the brain, the happier the person is. These studies show that, it turns out, a person is naturally happy or unhappy.

N. Korshunova herself does not express a specific opinion on this issue, but encourages us to think, asking a series of questions at the end of the story. However, one can feel some pessimism of the author. She doubts the need for efforts, which, in her opinion, will not help in any way to find happiness, and firmly notes that each of us has already meted out a share of happiness, and this share cannot be changed.

I do not fully share the point of view of N. Korshunova. In my opinion, happiness and joy can always be found in our world and you need to remain optimistic. "Optimism is the religion of revolution," Banville said. That is, belief in the best can turn and change everything in the world, including, perhaps, our innate misfortune. Alain Chartier is also positively disposed, who said that "pessimism is a mood, and optimism is a will." In business, for example, a person who listens to his mood will achieve little, but a strong-willed person is capable of anything. Therefore, even knowing that there is a certain amount of happiness in us, we must remain optimistic. And if we show our will, we can believe that man was created for happiness, then it is quite possible that our desire can push the physiological causes of unhappiness to the background and make us happy.

Text no. 4

(1) Relatively recently, the American scientist Edward de Bono, in his book "The Birth of a New Idea", devoted a special chapter to chance. (2) He showed how a free "play of the mind" and a happy chance best help to make a scientific discovery, to express an unexpected, witty, correct thought that did not enter the heads of dozens, hundreds of specialists engaged in persistent and systematic searches for it. (3) What's the matter?

(4) Let's remember a fairy tale. (5) The peasant had three sons. (6) "The eldest was a smart fellow, the middle son was so and so, the youngest was a fool at all." (7) The eldest and middle sons, despite all their tricks (and even precisely because of their tricks) are left with nothing, and the younger receives a full measure of happiness. (8) Maybe this is where the optimistic adage came from: a fool is happy. (9) Negative option: grief from the mind.

(10) Ivanushka is favored by "his majesty the chance", the ruler of our world. (11) But this is not the only point.

(12) Remember: Ivanushka went at night to guard the thief in the field. (13) Simplicity! (14) The clever brothers contrived to do nothing, to lie well and, in addition, to receive gratitude from their father. (15) And this one took up a difficult task, made a lot of troubles and ... finally became a prince!

(16) Moving from fairy tales to were, let us recall Fleming, the discoverer of the saving penicillin. (17) When he stubbornly strove to achieve a goal, overcoming a combination of undesirable circumstances, it is not an accident, but a manifestation of his character. (18) When Fleming investigated a mold-contaminated drug in the hope of luck, he thereby sought to subdue randomness, to use it to solve his problem. (19) And this is also a manifestation of his character, mentality.

(20) Chance tends to "choose" the most worthy scientists from among the scientists, helping them to achieve their goals, to make important discoveries. (21) One must be able to use unexpected circumstances. (22) This is not given to everyone. (23) As de Bono rightly remarked, "the world of science is full of hardworking scientists who possess an abundance of logical thinking, great conscientiousness in their work, and yet they are forever deprived of the ability to come up with new ideas."

(24) Why is this happening?

(25) According to de Bono, knowledge prevents a scientist from discovering something new, unexpected. (26) The scientist loses the ability to wonder. (27) So children eventually lose their world of fairy tales and secrets, receiving in return ready-made standard explanations for everything in the world - like labels for every thing. (28) The bright world of childhood dims, becomes gray and boring. (29) Lost spontaneity, liveliness, greed of perception. (ZO) That is why those who believe that discoveries themselves “find” the lucky ones are wrong. (31) No, in science it is “lucky” for those who have retained a clear and sharp-sighted look, who have not lost their lively striving for truth and are not tired of being surprised with childlike spontaneity at the mysterious beauty of the world.

(according to R. Balandin)

Sample and analysis of an essay based on the text of R. Balandin

Introduction

Are you familiar with the concept of brainstorming? To solve a problem, specialists in various fields of sciences gather and begin to "sketch" solutions. And in the end, someone comes up with an absolutely correct idea, often a simple idea. As a rule, this is done by a person who does not "get hung up" on one thing, but retains clear and versatile thinking. It is about the preservation of a lively and clear view of the world, in my opinion, the text of R. Balandin.

Formulation of one of the problems

Reflecting on the role of chance in scientific discoveries, the author seems to be asking questions: “Why can't many experienced and very smart people make discoveries? What is the real solution to scientific achievements? "