Astafiev “Sad detective” - analysis. Astafiev

Sad detective
V. P. Astafiev
Sad detective

Forty-two-year-old Leonid Soshnin, a former criminal investigation operative, returns home from a local publishing house to an empty apartment, in the worst mood. The manuscript of his first book, “Life is More Precious than Everything,” after five years of waiting, has finally been accepted for production, but this news does not make Soshnin happy. A conversation with the editor, Oktyabrina Perfilyevna Syrovasova, who tried to humiliate the author-policeman who dared to call himself a writer with arrogant remarks, stirred up Soshnin’s already gloomy thoughts and experiences. “How to live in the world? Lonely? - he thinks on the way home, and his thoughts are heavy.

He served his time in the police: after two wounds, Soshnin was sent to a disability pension. After another quarrel, Lerka’s wife leaves him, taking with her his little daughter Svetka.

Soshnin remembers his whole life. He cannot answer his own question: why is there so much room in life for grief and suffering, but always close to love and happiness? Soshnin understands that, among other incomprehensible things and phenomena, he has to comprehend the so-called Russian soul, and he needs to start with the people closest to him, with the episodes he witnessed, with the destinies of the people with whom his life encountered... Why are Russian people ready to regret a bone breaker and bloodletter and not notice how a helpless war invalid is dying nearby, in the next apartment? Why does a criminal live so freely and cheerfully among such kind-hearted people?

In order to escape from his gloomy thoughts at least for a minute, Leonid imagines how he will come home, cook himself a bachelor’s dinner, read, sleep a little so that he has enough strength for the whole night - sitting at the table, over a blank sheet of paper. Soshnin especially loves this night time, when he lives in some kind of isolated world created by his imagination.

Leonid Soshnin's apartment is located on the outskirts of Veysk, in an old two-story house where he grew up. From this house my father went to war, from which he did not return, and here, towards the end of the war, my mother also died from a severe cold. Leonid stayed with his mother's sister, Aunt Lipa, whom he had become accustomed to calling Lina since childhood. Aunt Lina, after the death of her sister, went to work in the commercial department of Veyskaya railway. This department was “judged and replanted at once.” My aunt tried to poison herself, but she was saved and after the trial she was sent to a colony. By this time, Lenya was already studying at the regional special school of the Internal Affairs Directorate, from where he was almost kicked out because of his convicted aunt. But the neighbors, and mainly Lavrya’s father’s fellow Cossack soldier, interceded for Leonid with the regional police authorities, and everything turned out okay.

Aunt Lina was released under an amnesty. Soshnin had already worked as a district police officer in the remote Khailovsky district, from where he brought his wife. Before her death, Aunt Lina managed to nurse Leonid’s daughter, Sveta, whom she considered her granddaughter. After Lina's death, Soshniny passed under the protection of another, no less reliable aunt named Granya, a switchwoman on the shunting hill. Aunt Granya spent her whole life taking care of other people’s children, and even little Lenya Soshnin learned in a unique way kindergarten the first skills of brotherhood and hard work.

Once, after returning from Khailovsk, Soshnin was on duty with a police squad at a mass celebration on the occasion of Railway Worker's Day. Four guys who were drunk to the point of losing their memory raped Aunt Granya, and if it weren’t for his patrol partner, Soshnin would have shot these drunken fellows sleeping on the lawn. They were convicted, and after this incident, Aunt Granya began to avoid people. One day she expressed to Soshnin the terrible thought that by convicting the criminals, they had thereby ruined young lives. Soshnin shouted at the old woman for feeling sorry for non-humans, and they began to avoid each other...

In the dirty and spit-stained entrance of the house, three drunks accost Soshnin, demanding to say hello and then to apologize for their disrespectful behavior. He agrees, trying to cool their ardor with peaceful remarks, but the main one, a young bully, does not calm down. Fueled by alcohol, the guys attack Soshnin. He, having gathered his strength - his wounds and hospital “rest” took their toll - defeats the hooligans. One of them hits his head on the heating radiator when he falls. Soshnin picks up a knife on the floor, staggers into the apartment. And he immediately calls the police and reports the fight: “One hero’s head was split on a radiator. If so, don’t look for it. The villain is me."

Coming to his senses after what happened, Soshnin again remembers his life.

He and his partner were chasing a drunk on a motorcycle who had stolen a truck. The truck rushed like a deadly ram through the streets of the town, having already ended more than one life. Soshnin, the senior patrol officer, decided to shoot the criminal. His partner fired, but before he died, the truck driver managed to hit the motorcycle of the pursuing policemen. On the operating table, Soshnina’s leg was miraculously saved from amputation. But he remained lame; it took him a long time to learn to walk. During his recovery, the investigator tormented him for a long time and persistently with an investigation: was the use of weapons legal?

Leonid also remembers how he met his future wife, saving her from hooligans who were trying to take off the girl’s jeans right behind the Soyuzpechat kiosk. At first, life between him and Lerka went in peace and harmony, but gradually mutual reproaches began. His wife especially did not like his literary studies. “Such Leo Tolstoy with a seven-shooter pistol, with rusty handcuffs in his belt...” she said.

Soshnin recalls how one “took” a stray guest performer, a repeat offender, Demon, in a hotel in the town.

And finally, he remembers how Venka Fomin, who was drunk and returned from prison, put a final end to his career as an operative... Soshnin brought his daughter to his wife’s parents in a distant village and was about to return to the city when his father-in-law told him that a drunk man had locked him up in a neighboring village in the barn of old women and threatens to set them on fire if they do not give him ten rubles for a hangover. During the detention, when Soshnin slipped on manure and fell, the frightened Venka Fomin stabbed him with a pitchfork... Soshnin was barely taken to the hospital - and he barely escaped certain death. But the second group of disability and retirement could not be avoided.

At night, Leonid is awakened from sleep by the terrible scream of the neighbor girl Yulka. He hurries to the apartment on the first floor, where Yulka lives with her grandmother Tutyshikha. Having drunk a bottle of Riga balsam from the gifts brought by Yulka’s father and stepmother from the Baltic sanatorium, Grandma Tutyshikha is already fast asleep.

At the funeral of grandmother Tutyshikha, Soshnin meets his wife and daughter. At the wake they sit next to each other.

Lerka and Sveta stay with Soshnin, at night he hears his daughter sniffling behind the partition, and feels his wife sleeping next to him, timidly clinging to him. He gets up, approaches his daughter, straightens her pillow, presses his cheek to her head and loses himself in some kind of sweet grief, in a resurrecting, life-giving sadness. Leonid goes to the kitchen, reads “Proverbs of the Russian People” collected by Dahl - the section “Husband and Wife” - and is surprised at the wisdom contained in simple words.

“Dawn was already rolling in like a damp snowball through the kitchen window, when, having enjoyed the peace among the quietly sleeping family, with a feeling of long-unknown confidence in his capabilities and strength, without irritation or melancholy in his heart, Soshnin stuck to the table and placed a blank sheet of paper in the spot of light and froze over him for a long time.”

Dear friends, the program “One Hundred Years - One Hundred Books” has reached 1986, to the small novel “The Sad Detective” by Viktor Astafiev.

It must be said that just as Russia had two thaws, relatively speaking, 1953-1958 and 1961-1964, so there were two perestroikas, Soviet and post-Soviet. Relatively speaking, they are divided into perestroika and glasnost, or there is even another division - glasnost and freedom of speech. First, perestroika was announced, glasnost came only later. At first, they carefully began to return forgotten Russian classics, Gumilev, for example, they began to publish Gorky’s “Untimely Thoughts”, Korolenko’s letters, then gradually they began to touch upon modernity. And the first two texts about modernity, which were sensational and determined a lot, were Rasputin’s story “Fire” and Astafiev’s novel “The Sad Detective”.

It must be said that Astafiev’s novel played a rather sad role in his fate. One of his best books, and in my opinion, the best, before the novel “Cursed and Killed,” was for some time, I won’t say that it was persecuted, I won’t say slandered, but it gave rise to very sad and very dark episodes, almost to the extent of the persecution to which Astafiev was subjected. The reason was that in the story “Catching Minnows in Georgia” and, accordingly, then in “The Sad Detective”, xenophobic attacks were found. The story about catching minnows, or crucian carp, I don’t remember exactly now, was considered Georgian-phobic, anti-Georgian, and the novel “The Sad Detective” contained a mention of “Jewish children,” which the historian Nathan Eidelman did not like, and he wrote a furious letter to Astafiev.

The letter was correct, the rage was hidden in the depths. They entered into a correspondence, this correspondence circulated widely, and Astafiev in it appeared, perhaps, somewhat irritable, perhaps over-the-top, but in general, he looked like an anti-Semite, which in life, of course, he was not. Real anti-Semites happily took advantage of this and tried to attract Astafiev to themselves, but nothing came of it. Astafiev remained that absolutely honest and lonely artist who, in general, did not join anyone and until the end of his life continued to say things that quarreled him with one or the other. But in any case, it was not possible to turn him into such a Russo-anti-Semitic.

Of course, “The Sad Detective” is not a book about the Jewish question or perestroika, it is a book about the Russian soul. And this is its amazing feature: then, at the beginning of the first perestroika, Soviet Union he was still looking for ways of salvation, he was not yet doomed, no one considered him a clear loser, clearly subject to, let’s say, historical disposal, there were non-obvious options for continuation on the board. No matter what anyone says today about the doom of the Soviet project, I remember well that in 1986 this doom was not yet obvious. In 1986, the Union had not yet had a funeral service, was not buried, no one knew that it had five years left, but they were trying to find ways of salvation. And Astafiev, with his unique flair, was the only person who proposed the image of a new hero - a hero who could somehow hold on to this spreading country.

And here it is main character, this Leonid Soshnin, this sad detective, a policeman, who is 42 years old, and who has been retired with the second group of disabilities, he is an aspiring writer, he is trying to publish some stories in Moscow in thin police magazines, now he may be able to book at home. He lives in Veisk, he once almost lost his leg when he was saving the population from a drunken truck driver hometown, this truck was rushing, and managed to hit many, and with difficulty he made the decision to liquidate, the decision to shoot this drunken driver, but he managed to push the police truck, and the hero’s leg was almost amputated. Then, after that, he somehow returned to duty, he was tormented for a long time with inquiries about why he shot, although his partner did, and whether the use of weapons was justified.

He serves for some time, and then as a result he saves the old women, who were locked in a hut by a local alcoholic and threatens to set fire to the barn if they don’t give him ten rubles to cure his hangover, but they don’t have ten rubles. And then this Leonid bursts into this village, runs to the barn, but slips on the manure, and then the drunk manages to plunge a pitchfork into him. After that, he was miraculously pumped out, and, of course, after that he could not serve, he was sent into retirement with the second group of disability.

He also has a wife, Lerka, whom he met when they took off her jeans behind a kiosk; he miraculously managed to save her. He has a daughter, Lenka, whom he loves very much, but Lerka leaves him after another quarrel because there is no money in the house. Then she returns, and everything ends almost idyllic. At night, this Leonid is awakened by the wild scream of a girl from the first floor, because her old grandmother died, not from an overdose, but from overdose, and at the wake for this grandmother, Lerka and Lenka return. And in the pitiful shack, in the pitiful apartment of this Soshnin, they fall asleep, and he sits over a sheet of blank paper. The novel ends with this rather pitiful idyll.

Why do people constantly die in this novel? Not only from drunkenness, not only from accidents, from neglect of one’s own life, not only from wild mutual anger. They are dying because there is universal brutality, loss of meaning, they have reached their apogee, there is no point in living. There is no need to take care of each other, there is no need to work, there is no need to do everything, this is...

You see, I recently watched a large selection of modern Russian films at a film festival. All this looks like a direct adaptation of episodes from The Sad Detective. We had a short period when, instead of “chernukha,” they started making stories about bandits, then melodramas, then TV series, and now again there is this wild wave of “chernukha.” I'm not complaining, because, listen, what else is there to show?

And now Astafiev for the first time unfolded before the reader the entire panorama of perestroika plots. There they drank themselves to death, here they kicked them out of work, here a disabled person has nothing to earn extra money, here there is a lonely old woman. And there is a terrible thought that this Leonid thinks all the time: why are we such beasts to each other? This is what Solzhenitsyn expressed later, many years later, in the book “Two Hundred Years Together” - “we Russians are worse than dogs to each other.” Why is this so? Why is this, any kind of internal solidarity, completely absent? Why don’t you feel that the person living next to you is, after all, your fellow tribesman, peer, relative, he is your brother, in the end?

And, unfortunately, we can only rely on the conscience of people like this Leonid, this former operative. Where he got it from is not very clear. He grew up an orphan, his father did not return from the war, his mother fell ill and died. He is raised by Aunt Lipa, whom he calls Aunt Lina. Then they imprisoned her on false charges, she did not live long after that when she was released. And as a result, he went to another aunt, and this other aunt, the younger sister in the family, when he was already a young operative, she was raped by four drunken scum, he wanted to shoot them, but they didn’t let him. And she, here’s an amazing episode, when they were imprisoned, she cries that she ruined the lives of four young guys. This kind of somewhat foolish kindness, like that of Solzhenitsyn’s Matryona, which this hero cannot understand at all, he keeps calling her an old fool when she cries for them.

It is, perhaps, at this strange intersection of kindness, reaching the point of foolishness, and the feeling for a long time, reaching the point of fanaticism, which sits in this hero, it is probably at this intersection that the Russian character is maintained. But Astafiev’s book is about the fact that this character died, that he was killed. This book is perceived, oddly enough, not as hope, but as a requiem. And Astafiev, in one of the last entries in his probably spiritual will, said: “I came into a good world, full of warmth and meaning, but I am leaving a world full of cold and anger. I have nothing to say to you goodbye." These are terrible words, I saw the late Astafiev, knew him, spoke with him, and this feeling of despair that sat in him could not be masked by anything. All hope, all hope was in these heroes.

By the way, I asked him then: ““The Sad Detective” still gives the impression of some condensation, some exaggeration. Was it really like that?” He says: “There’s not a single episode that didn’t happen. Everything that they accuse me of, everything that they say, I made up, it happened before my eyes.” And indeed, yes, it probably happened, because some things you can’t make up.

Astafiev finally, in his last years, this is a very rare case, reached incredible creative heights. He wrote everything he dreamed of, what he wanted, he told the whole truth about the time and about the people among whom he lived. And, unfortunately, I am afraid that his diagnosis is confirmed today, today that Leonid, on whom everything rests, that sad detective, twice wounded, almost killed and abandoned by everyone, he continues to hold on to himself, to the only, by the way, real vertical, continues to bear the brunt of Russian life. But how long it will last, I don’t know who will replace him, it’s still unclear. There is some hope for a new wonderful generation, but it is very difficult to say whether they connect their lives with Russia.

What cannot fail to be mentioned here is the incredible plasticity and incredible visual powers of this Astafievsky novel. When you read it, you feel this stench, this risk, this horror with your entire skin. There is a scene where Soshnin comes home from the publishing house, where he was just nearly kicked out, but they said that maybe he would have a book, he goes in a disgusting mood to eat his bachelor's dinner, and he is attacked by three mocking drunken teenagers . They just mock, they say that you are impolite, apologize to us. And this infuriates him, he remembers everything he was taught in the police, and begins to thrash them, and throws one so that he flies head-first into the corner of the battery. And he calls the police himself and says that it looks like one of them has a broken skull, don’t look for the villain, it’s me.

But it turned out that nothing broke there, everything ended relatively well for him, but the description of this fight, these mocking types... Then, when Astafiev wrote the story “Lyudochka”, about this same mocking drunken bastard, who produced so many, I think that Rasputin did not achieve such strength and fury. But this book, which all simply shines with white heat, with the inner trembling, rage, hatred that is in it, because this is a person who is truly well-mannered kind people, people of duty, and suddenly in front of him are those for whom there are no moral rules at all, for whom there is only one pleasure - to demonstratively be rude, mock, and constantly cross the border separating the beast from the man. This wild cynicism and this constant smell of shit and vomit that haunts the hero, it does not let the reader go for a long time. This is written with such graphic power that you can’t help but think about it.

You see, the generally accepted idea of Russian literature is that it is kind, loving, somewhat leafy, such as, remember, Georgy Ivanov wrote, “the sentimental onanating Russian consciousness.” In fact, of course, Russian literature wrote its best pages with boiling bile. It was with Herzen, it was with Tolstoy, it was with the terrible, icy mocker Turgenev, with Saltykov-Shchedrin. Dostoevsky had so much of this, needless to say. Kindness in itself is a good incentive, but hatred, when mixed into ink, also gives literature some incredible power.

And to this day the light of this novel, I must say, is still going on and on. Not only because this book is still moderately optimistic, because it still has a struggling hero, but the main thing about it is that it brings joy, you won’t believe it, from a long silence finally resolved by speech. The man endured and endured, and finally said what he felt obliged to say. In this sense, “The Sad Detective” is the highest achievement of perestroika literature. And that’s why it’s so unfortunate that Astafiev’s hopes associated with his hero were dashed in the very near future, and perhaps not completely crushed.

Well, next time we’ll talk about the literature of 1987 and the novel “Children of the Arbat,” which separates glasnost from freedom of speech.

Astafiev. “The Sad Detective” In Astafiev’s novel “The Sad Detective,” the problems of crime, punishment and the triumph of justice are raised. The theme of the novel is the current intelligentsia and the current people (80s of the 20th century). The work tells about the life of two small towns: Veisk and Khailovsk, about the people living in them, about modern morals. When people talk about small towns, the image of a quiet, peaceful place appears in the mind, where life, filled with joys, flows slowly, without any special incidents. A feeling of peace appears in the soul. But those who think so are mistaken. In fact, life in Veisk and Khailovsk flows in a stormy stream.

Young people, drunk to the point where a person turns into an animal, rape a woman old enough to be their mother, and the parents leave the child locked in the apartment for a week. All these pictures described by Astafiev terrify the reader. It becomes scary and creepy at the thought that the concepts of honesty, decency and love are disappearing. The description of these cases in the form of summaries is, in my opinion, important artistic feature. Hearing every day about various incidents, we sometimes don’t pay attention, but collected in the novel, they force us to take off our rose-colored glasses and understand: if it didn’t happen to you, it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t concern you.

In the novel "The Sad Detective" Astafiev created a whole system of images. The author introduces the reader to each hero of the work, talking about his life. The main character is an operational police officer Leonid Soshnin. He is a forty-year-old man who received several injuries in the line of duty - must leave retirement. Having retired, he begins to write, trying to figure out where there is so much anger and cruelty in a person. Where does it accumulate in him? Why, along with this cruelty, does the Russian people have pity for prisoners and indifference to themselves, to their neighbors - disabled person of war and labor?

Astafyev contrasts the main character, an honest and brave operative worker, with policeman Fyodor Lebed, who quietly serves, moving from one position to another. On especially dangerous trips, he tries not to risk his life and gives the right to neutralize armed criminals to his partners, and it is not very important that his partner does not have a service weapon, because he is a recent graduate of a police school, and Fedor has a service weapon.

A striking image in the novel is Aunt Granya, a woman who, without children of her own, gave all her love to the children who played near her house on the railway station, and then to the children in the Children's Home. Often the heroes of a work, who should cause disgust, cause pity. Urna, who has transformed from a self-employed woman into a drunkard without a home or family, evokes sympathy. She screams songs and pesters passers-by, but she becomes ashamed not for her, but for the society that has turned its back on the Urn. Soshnin says that they tried to help her, but nothing worked, and now they simply don’t pay attention to her.

Soshnin wanted to go to the market to buy apples, but near the market gate with lopsided plywood letters on the arc “Welcome”, a drunken woman nicknamed Urna was squirming and getting attached to passers-by. For her toothless, black and dirty mouth she received a nickname, no longer a woman, some kind of isolated creature, with a blind, half-insane craving for drunkenness and disgrace. She had a family, a husband, children, she sang in an amateur performance at a railway recreation center near Mordasova - she drank everything away, lost everything, became a shameful landmark of the city of Veisk... She behaved in public places shamefully, ashamedly, with an insolent and vindictive defiance towards everyone. It is impossible and there is nothing to fight with Urn; even though she was lying on the street, sleeping in attics and on benches, she did not die or freeze.

The city of Veisk has its own Dobchinsky and Bobchinsky. Astafiev does not even change the names of these people and characterizes them with a quote from Gogol’s “The Inspector General,” thereby refuting the well-known saying that nothing lasts forever under the sun. Everything flows, everything changes, but such people remain, exchanging clothes of the 19th century for a fashionable suit and shirt with gold cufflinks of the 20th century. The city of Veisk also has its own literary luminary, who, sitting in his office, “enveloped in cigarette smoke, twitched, squirmed in his chair and littered with ashes.” This is Oktyabrina Perfilyevna Syrovasova. It is this man, whose description brings a smile, that moves local literature forward and further. This woman decides what works to print.

Aunt Granya worked as a switchwoman on the shunting hill and the adjacent tracks. The switch box stood almost outside the station, at the rear of it. There was a built and long abandoned tunic with two wooden tables, overgrown with weeds. Lying under the slope were several rusty wheel pairs, the skeleton of a two-axle carriage, someone had once unloaded a stack of round timber, which Aunt Granya did not allow anyone to take away and for many years, until the forest rotted, she waited for the consumer, and, without waiting, She began to saw off short logs from logs with a hacksaw, and the guys, who were in a herd near the switch post, sat on these logs, rode around, and built a locomotive out of them. Having never had children of her own, Aunt Granya did not have scientific abilities children's teacher. She simply loved children, did not single out anyone, did not beat anyone, did not scold anyone, treated the children as adults, guessed and tamed their morals and characters, without applying any talents or subtleties of a pedagogical nature, which the moralizing modern culture has insisted on for so long. seal.

Men and women simply grew up near Auntie Granya, gained strength, railway experience, ingenuity, and underwent labor hardening. For many children, including Lena Soshnina, the nook with the switch box was a kindergarten, a playground, and a labor school, for whom a home was also a substitute. The spirit of hard work and brotherhood reigned here. The future citizens of the Soviet state with the largest length of railways, not yet capable of the most responsible movement work in transport, hammered in crutches, laid sleepers, screwed and unscrewed nuts at the dead end, rowed handfuls of canvas. The “movers” waved a flag, blew a trumpet, helped Aunt Grana throw the pointer balance, carry and install brake shoes on the tracks, kept records of railway equipment, swept the ground near the booth, and in the summer they planted and watered marigold flowers, red poppies and tenacious daisies. Aunt Granya did not hire very young children who soiled their diapers and were not yet capable of strict railway discipline and work; she did not have conditions for them in her booth.

One day, after returning from Khailovsk, Soshnin was on duty with a squad of LOM - line police - behind the railway bridge, where a mass celebration was taking place on the occasion of Railway Worker's Day. Mowed country meadows, yellowed willows, purple bird cherry trees and bushes that comfortably covered the Veiki oxbow were desecrated during the days of festivities, or, as they were called here - “nurseries” (one must understand - picnics), coastal bushes, nearby trees were burned in bonfires. Sometimes, out of excitement of thought, they set fire to haystacks and rejoiced at the big flame, scattered cans, rags, stuffed glass, littered with paper, foil wrappers, polyethylene - the usual pictures of mass cultural revelry in the “bosom of nature.” The duty was not very troublesome. Against other merrymaking groups, say, metallurgists or miners, the railway workers, who have long known their high value, behaved more sedately.

Look, look, from the nearby lake, from the bushes comes a woman in a torn cotton dress, dragging a scarf around the corner along the trail, her hair is knocked down, disheveled, stockings have fallen to her ankles, canvas shoes are dirty, and the woman herself is somehow very and very familiar, all covered in greenish-dirty mud. - Aunt Granya! – Leonid rushed towards the woman. - Aunt Granya? What happened to you? Aunt Granya collapsed to the ground and grabbed Leonid by the boots: “Oh, shock!” Oh, stram! Oh, what a shock!.. - What is it? What? - Already guessing what was going on, but not wanting to believe it, Soshnin shook Aunt Granya. Aunt Granya sat down on the back, looked around, picked up her dress on her chest, pulled the stocking over her knee and, looking to the side, without a roar, with long-standing consent to suffering, said dully: “Yes, here... they raped you for something...

- Who? Where? - I was dumbfounded, in a whisper - I broke down, my voice disappeared somewhere, - Soshnin asked again. - Who? Where? - And he swayed, groaned, lost his grip, ran to the bushes, unbuttoning his holster as he ran. - Re-str-r-rel-a-a-ay-u-u! His patrol partner caught up with Leonid and with difficulty tore the pistol out of his hand, which he could not cock with his fumbling fingers. - What are you doing? What are you doing? ! Four young men slept crosswise in the crushed mud of an overgrown oxbow, among broken and trampled currant bushes, on which ripe berries that had not fallen off in the shade, so similar to Aunt Granya’s eyes, were black. Trampled into the mud, Aunt Granya's handkerchief had a blue border - she and Aunt Lina had been crocheting handkerchiefs since their village youth, always with the same blue border.

Four young men could not later remember where they were, with whom they drank, what they did? All four cried out loud during the investigation, asked to forgive them, all four sobbed when the judge of the railway district, Beketova, is a fair woman, especially harsh towards rapists and robbers, because under the occupation in Belarus, as a child, she had seen enough and suffered from the revelry of foreign rapists and robbers, – she gave all four voluptuous people eight years of strict regime. After the trial, Aunt Granya disappeared somewhere, apparently, and was ashamed to go out into the street. Leonid found her in the hospital. Lives in a gatehouse. It’s white here, cozy, like in that unforgettable switch box. Dishes, a teapot, curtains, a “wet Vanka” flower was red on the window, the geranium was burning out. Aunt Granya did not invite Leonida to go to the table, or rather, to the large nightstand; she sat with her lips pursed, looking at the floor, pale, haggard, her hands between her knees.

“You and I have done something wrong, Leonid,” she finally raised her out-of-place and never so brightly glowing eyes, and he pulled himself up and froze in himself - she called him by his full name only in moments of strict and unforgiving alienation, and That’s how he’s been Lenya for her all his life. -What's wrong? – They ruined young lives... They cannot withstand such terms. If they stand it, they’ll turn into gray-haired men... And two of them, Genka and Vaska, have children... Genka had one after the trial...

A criminal lives freely, cheerfully, and comfortably among such kind-hearted people, and he has lived like this in Russia for a long time. Good fellow, twenty-two years old, having had a drink in a youth cafe, went for a walk along the street and casually stabbed three people to death. Soshnin was patrolling that day in the Central District, got on the hot trail of the killer, and chased after him in a duty car, hurrying the driver. But the good butcher had no intention of running or hiding - he stood outside the Oktyabr cinema and licked ice cream - cooling off after a hot job. In a sports jacket of a canary, or rather parrot color, with red stripes on the chest. "Blood! - Soshnin guessed. “He wiped his hands on his jacket and hid the knife under the lock on his chest.” Citizens shied away and walked around the “artist” who had smeared himself with human blood. With a contemptuous grin on his lips, he finishes the ice cream, takes a cultural rest - the glass is already tilted, scrapes the sweetness with a wooden spatula - and, by choice or without choice - as his soul dictates - he will kill someone else.

Two sidekicks sat with their backs to the street on a colorful iron railing and were also eating ice cream. The sweet tooths were talking overexcitedly about something, laughing, bullying passers-by, hitting on girls, and from the way their jackets bounced on their backs and the bombs rolled on their sports caps, you could guess how carefree they were. The butcher doesn’t care about anything anymore, you have to take him firmly right away, hit him so that when he falls, he hits the back of his head against the wall: if you start spinning among the crowd, he or his friends will stab him in the back. Jumping out of the car as it moved, Soshnin jumped over the railing, knocked the Canary into the wall, the driver knocked the two merry fellows over the railing by their collars and pinned them to the gutter. Then help arrived - the police dragged the bandits where they needed to go. The citizens murmured, huddled, huddled together, surrounded the police, and hid them for nothing, not allowing them to offend the “poor boys.” “What are they doing! What are they doing, the bastards? ! “- a man weathered to the bones was shaking in a spacious jacket, powerlessly knocking his disabled cane on the sidewalk: “W-well, cops! W-well, the police! Well, they protect us!..” “And this is in broad daylight, in the middle of the people And if you get there with them..." "Such a boy! Curly-haired boy! And he, the beast, has his head against the wall..."

Soshnin read a lot and voraciously, indiscriminately and systematically, at school, then he got to what they “didn’t go through in schools,” he got to “Ecclesiastes” and, oh, horror! If only the political officer of the regional department of internal affairs found out, he learned to read German, got to Nietzsche and was once again convinced that, denying anyone or anything, especially a great philosopher, and even an excellent poet, one must certainly know him and only then deny or fight his ideology and teachings, not fight blindly, tangibly, demonstrably. And Nietzsche, perhaps crudely, but right in the face, sculpted the truth about the nature of human evil. Nietzsche and Dostoevsky almost reached the rotten womb of the little man, to the place where the most terrible, self-devouring beast hides under the cover of thin human skin and fashionable clothes, hides, matures, accumulates stench and grows fangs. And in Great Rus', a beast in human form is not just a beast, but a beast, and it is most often born from obedience, irresponsibility, carelessness, the desire of the chosen ones, or rather, those who have counted themselves among the chosen ones, to live better, to feed their neighbors, to stand out among them, to stand out , but most often - to live as if swimming down a river.

A month ago, in wet November weather, a dead man was brought to the cemetery. At home, as usual, the children and relatives cried for the deceased, drank heavily - out of pity, at the cemetery they added: damp, cold, bitter. Five empty bottles were later found in the grave. And two full ones, with mumbling, are now a new, cheerful fashion among highly paid hard workers has appeared: with force, richly not only free time to see off, but also to bury - burn money over the grave, preferably a pack, throw a bottle of wine after the departing person - maybe the unfortunate man will want to have a hangover in the next world. The grieving children threw bottles into the hole, but they forgot to lower the parent into the dugout. They lowered the lid of the coffin, buried it, covered a mournful hole in the ground, created a mound above it, one of the children even rolled on the dirty mound and cried out. They piled up fir and tin wreaths, set up a temporary pyramid and hurried to the funeral.

For several days, no one remembered how long, the orphan lay dead, covered in paper flowers, in a new suit, wearing a holy crown on his forehead, with a brand new handkerchief clutched in his blue fingers. The poor fellow was washed out by the rain, and a whole lot of water rushed over him. Already when the crows, having settled on the trees around the house, began to take aim at where to start the orphan, shouting “guard” at the same time, the cemetery watchman, with his experienced scent and hearing, sensed something was wrong.

What is this? Still the same, spatial Russian character that plunges everyone into emotion? Or a misunderstanding, a twist of nature, an unhealthy, negative phenomenon? Why were they silent about it then? Why should we learn about the nature of evil not from our teachers, but from Nietzsche, Dostoevsky and other long-dead comrades, and even then almost secretly? At school they sorted flowers by petals, pistils, stamens, who pollinated what and how, they understood, on excursions they exterminated butterflies, they broke and sniffed bird cherry trees, they sang songs to the girls and read poems. And he, a swindler, a thief, a bandit, a rapist, a sadist, somewhere nearby, in someone’s stomach or in some other dark place, hiding, sat, patiently waited in the wings, came into the world, sucked his mother’s warm milk, wet himself in diapers , went to kindergarten, graduated from school, college, or university, became a scientist, engineer, builder, worker. But all this was not the main thing in him, everything was on top. Under a nylon shirt and colored panties, under a matriculation certificate, under papers, documents, parental and pedagogical instructions, under moral standards, evil was waiting and preparing for action.

And one day a window opened in a stuffy chimney, the devil in human form flew out of the black soot on a broomstick like a cheerful woman-yaga or a nimble demon and began to move mountains. Now take him, the police, the devil, - he is ripe for crimes and fighting good people, tie him up, take away his vodka, knife and free will, and he rushes across the sky on a broom, does what he wants. Even if you serve in the police, you are all entangled in rules and paragraphs, buttoned up, tied down, limited in actions. Hand to the visor: “Please! Your documents". He throws a stream of vomit at you or a knife from his bosom - for him there are no norms or morals: he gave himself freedom of action, he created a morality for himself and even composed boastful and tearful songs to himself: “O-fuck-up!” a-a-atnitsam will have a date, Taganskaya prison - r-rya-adimai do-o-o-om...”

A young guy, who had recently graduated from a vocational school, drunkenly climbed into the women’s dormitory of the flax mill; the gentlemen “chemists” who were visiting there did not let the young man in. A fight ensued. The guy got punched in the face and sent home, dammit. He decided to kill the first person he met for this. The first person they met was a beautiful young woman, six months pregnant, successfully graduating from a university in Moscow and coming to Veisk for the holidays to join her husband. Peteushnik threw her under a railway embankment and for a long time, persistently smashed her head with a stone. Even when he threw the woman under the embankment and jumped after him, she realized that he would kill her and asked: “Don’t kill me! I’m still young, and I’ll have a baby soon...” This only infuriated the killer. From prison, the young man sent only one message - a letter to the regional prosecutor's office - complaining about poor nutrition. At the trial, in his last word he muttered: “I would still kill someone. Is it my fault that I got such a good woman?..”

Mom and Dad are book lovers, not children, not young people, both over thirty, had three children, fed them poorly, looked after them poorly, and suddenly the fourth appeared. They loved each other very passionately, even three children bothered them, but the fourth was of no use at all. And they began to leave the child alone, and the boy was born tenacious, screaming day and night, then he stopped screaming, only squeaked and pecked. The neighbor in the barracks couldn’t stand it, she decided to feed the child porridge, climbed through the window, but there was no one to feed - the child was being eaten by worms. The child’s parents were not hiding somewhere, not in a dark attic, in the reading room of the regional library named after F. M. Dostoevsky, in the name of that very greatest humanist who proclaimed, and what he proclaimed, shouted with a frantic word to the whole world that he did not accept any revolution , if at least one child suffers...

More. Mom and dad had a fight, mom ran away from dad, dad left home and went on a spree. And he would have walked, choked on wine, damned, but the parents forgot at home a child who was not even three years old. When they broke down the door a week later, they found a child who had even eaten dirt from the cracks of the floor and learned to catch cockroaches - he ate them. In the Orphanage the boy was taken out - they defeated dystrophy, rickets, mental retardation, but they still cannot wean the child from grasping movements - he still catches someone...

One mother very cunningly decided to get rid of the suckling - she put it in an automatic storage room at the railway station. The Wei Lomovites were confused - it’s good that we always and everywhere have a bunch of lock specialists, and one seasoned burglar who lived next door to the station quickly opened the chest of his camera, snatched out a package with a pink bow, and raised it in front of the indignant crowd. "Girl! Tiny child! I dedicate life! Live! To her! - the burglar announced. - Because... A-ah, s-su-ki! Little child!..” This many times convicted, caught, imprisoned sufferer could not speak further. He was choked by sobs. And the most interesting thing is that he really devoted his life to this very girl, learned furniture making, worked at the Progress company, where he found himself a compassionate wife, and so they both tremble over the girl, so cherish and decorate her, do they rejoice in her and themselves? , that at least also write a note about them in the newspaper entitled “Noble Deed.”

Not a male and a female, copulating at the behest of nature in order to last in nature, but man with man, united in order to help each other and the society in which they live, to improve, to transfuse their blood from heart to heart, and together with the blood that there is good in them. From their parents, they were passed on to each other, each with their own life, habits and characters - and now from dissimilar raw materials it is necessary to create building material, to mold a cell in a centuries-old building called Family, to be born into the world again, and, together reaching the grave, to tear ourselves away from each other with unique, unknown suffering and pain.

Ekaya great mystery! It takes millennia to understand it, but, just like death, the mystery of the family is not understood, not resolved. Dynasties, societies, empires turned to dust if the family began to collapse in them, if he and she fornicated without finding each other. Dynasties, societies, empires that did not create a family or destroyed its foundations began to boast about the progress achieved and rattle weapons; in dynasties, empires, in societies, along with the collapse of the family, harmony fell apart, evil began to overcome good, the earth opened up under our feet to swallow the rabble, already without any reason calling themselves people.

But in today’s hasty world, the husband wants to get a ready-made wife, and the wife, again, wants a good, or better yet, a very good, ideal husband. Modern wits who have made the most sacred thing on earth - family ties - a subject of ridicule, who have corrupted ancient wisdom with ridicule about a bad woman dissolved in all good wives, presumably know that a good husband is also widespread in all bad men. A bad man and a bad woman would be sewn into a bag and drowned. Just! Here’s how to get to it, to that simplicity, on a fragile family ship, very dry, battered by everyday storms, and having lost its reliable buoyancy. “Husband and wife are one Satan” - that’s all the wisdom that Leonid knew about this complex subject.

But not everything is so bad, because if there is evil, then there is also good. Leonid Soshnin makes peace with his wife, and she returns to him again along with her daughter. It’s a little sad that the death of Soshnin’s neighbor, Tutyshikha’s grandmother, forces them to make peace. It is grief that brings Leonid and Lera closer together. The blank sheet of paper in front of Soshnin, who usually writes at night, is a symbol of the beginning of a new stage in the life of the protagonist’s family. And I want to believe that their future life will be happy and joyful, and they will cope with grief, because they will be together.

The novel "The Sad Detective" is an exciting work. Although it is difficult to read, because Astafiev describes too terrible pictures. But such works need to be read, because they make you think about the meaning of life, so that it does not pass colorlessly and empty.

Year of writing:

1985

Reading time:

Description of the work:

Victor Astafiev is an outstanding literary figure; he wrote novels, stories and plays. One of his stories is called "The Sad Detective", which he wrote in 1985. We invite you to read the summary of the story "The Sad Detective".

Astafiev became popular thanks to his lively literary language and realistic depiction of village and military life. His books gained popularity both in Soviet Russia and abroad.

Summary of the novel
Sad detective

He served his time in the police: after two wounds, Soshnin was sent to a disability pension. After another quarrel, Lerka’s wife leaves him, taking with her his little daughter Svetka.

Soshnin remembers his whole life. He cannot answer his own question: why is there so much room in life for grief and suffering, but always close to love and happiness? Soshnin understands that, among other incomprehensible things and phenomena, he has to comprehend the so-called Russian soul and he needs to start with the people closest to him, with the episodes he witnessed, with the destinies of the people his life encountered... Why are Russian people ready to take pity on the bone crusher and bloodletter and not notice how a helpless war invalid is dying nearby, in the next apartment?.. Why does a criminal live so freely and cheerfully among such kind-hearted people?..

Leonid Soshnin's apartment is located on the outskirts of Veysk, in an old two-story house where he grew up. From this house my father went to war, from which he did not return, and here, towards the end of the war, my mother also died from a severe cold. Leonid stayed with his mother's sister, Aunt Lipa, whom he had become accustomed to calling Lina since childhood. Aunt Lina, after the death of her sister, went to work in the commercial department of the Wei Railway. This department was “judged and replanted at once.” My aunt tried to poison herself, but she was saved and after the trial she was sent to a colony. By this time, Lenya was already studying at the regional special school of the Internal Affairs Directorate, from where he was almost kicked out because of his convicted aunt. But the neighbors, and mainly Lavrya’s father’s fellow Cossack soldier, interceded for Leonid with the regional police authorities, and everything turned out okay.

Aunt Lina was released under an amnesty. Soshnin had already worked as a district police officer in the remote Khailovsky district, from where he brought his wife. Before her death, Aunt Lina managed to nurse Leonid’s daughter, Sveta, whom she considered her granddaughter. After Lina's death, Soshniny passed under the protection of another, no less reliable aunt named Granya, a switchwoman on the shunting hill. Aunt Granya spent her whole life taking care of other people’s children, and even little Lenya Soshnin learned the first skills of brotherhood and hard work in a kind of kindergarten.

Coming to his senses after what happened, Soshnin again remembers his life.

Leonid also remembers how he met his future wife, saving her from hooligans who were trying to take off the girl’s jeans right behind the Soyuzpechat kiosk. At first, life between him and Lerka went in peace and harmony, but gradually mutual reproaches began. His wife especially did not like his literary studies. “What a Leo Tolstoy with a seven-shooter pistol, with rusty handcuffs in his belt!..” - she said.

Soshnin recalls how one “took” a stray guest performer, a repeat offender, Demon, in a hotel in the town.

At the funeral of grandmother Tutyshikha, Soshnin meets his wife and daughter. At the wake they sit next to each other.

Lerka and Sveta stay with Soshnin, at night he hears his daughter sniffling behind the partition, and feels his wife sleeping next to him, timidly clinging to him. He gets up, approaches his daughter, adjusts her pillow, presses his cheek to her head and loses himself in some kind of sweet grief, in a resurrecting, life-giving sadness. Leonid goes to the kitchen, reads “Proverbs of the Russian People” collected by Dahl - the section “Husband and Wife” - and is surprised at the wisdom contained in simple words.

You have read the summary of the novel "The Sad Detective". We also invite you to visit the Summary section to read the summaries of other popular writers.

Lesson objectives: to give short review the life and work of the writer; reveal the problems posed in the novel; to interest students in the work of V.P. Astafiev; develop the ability to conduct a discussion.

Lesson equipment: portrait and exhibition of the writer’s books, photographs.

Preliminary task: preparation of individual tasks (message, expressive reading of passages).

During the classes

Teacher's opening speech

The work of any writer cannot be considered separately from his biography, because without life’s difficulties, without experience, without sorrows and joys, no artist grows. The environment in which a person was born and lived undoubtedly leaves an imprint on his character, worldview, and, for a creative person, on his works. Viktor Petrovich Astafiev is one of prominent representatives Russian literature of the second half of the 20th century, whose writing activity constantly came into contact with his fate.

Student message

Viktor Petrovich Astafiev was born in Siberia, in the village of Ovsyanka, Krasnoyarsk Territory, on the night of May 2, 1924. He lost his mother early (she drowned in the Yenisei), and was raised in the family of his grandparents, then in an orphanage. He ran away from there, wandered, went hungry... The boy found himself an orphan with a living father, who, after the death of his wife, soon started another family and did not care about his son. The years of Astafiev's childhood and adolescence were similar to the destinies of his peers. The books that the teenager read avidly saved his soul. The writer will talk about this in the stories “Theft” and “The Last Bow”.

Shortly before the Great Patriotic War He will graduate from the FZO school, work at the railway station, and in the fall of 1942 he will go to the front. Wounded three times, shell-shocked, he will still survive and start a family. He will tell about the difficult post-war years in the story “The Cheerful Soldier”. During these difficult years, V.P. Astafiev and his family lived in the Urals - it was easier to find work there.

He wrote his first story while on duty at night at a sausage factory. The story about the fate of signalman Moti Savintsev was praised and published in the Chusovskoy Rabochiy newspaper. This happened in 1951. And from that moment on, V.P. Astafiev devoted his entire life to writing, about which he will say this: “Writing is a constant search, complex, exhausting, sometimes leading to despair. Only mediocrity, accustomed to using “secondary raw materials,” lives an easy and comfortable life. I am the author of short stories, novels, among which there are some that have received recognition from readers, translated into many languages, every time I approach a new thing with fear, then I “accelerate, enter” into it until I finish - I don’t know any peace.”

This attitude towards one’s work indicates high responsibility.

Viktor Astafiev's prose developed in the classical traditions of Russian literature by L.N. Tolstoy and F.M. Dostoevsky. Philosophical understanding of life, the role of man on earth, love for the motherland and home, good and evil in relation to the world, especially to its defenseless representatives - children, women, old people, animals, nature, the role of family - these are not all moral questions , which Viktor Astafiev solves in his works.

The poet N. Novikov has the following poems:

Nothing can ever be returned
How not to etch spots in the sun,
And, on the way back,
Still won't come back.
This truth is very simple,
And she, like death, is immutable,
You can return to the same places
But go back
Impossible…

Yes, it is impossible to return thoughtlessly destroyed nature - the home of man. She will repay with devastation of the soul. Viktor Astafiev is well aware of this and wants to warn about the impending disaster. This desire is the writer’s pain, his melancholy and bitter anxiety. Listen to an excerpt from the final chapter “There is no answer for me” of the novel “The King Fish”.

Student performance

“Mana! I looked for the red comb of the Mansky bull. No! The hydrobuilders brushed it off. And the beautiful river itself is bristling with hummocks of rafted timber. A bridge has been built across Manu. When they drilled soil for supports at the mouth of the river, wood was found in the samples at a depth of eighteen meters. Drowned and buried forest, more and more larch - it almost does not rot in water. Maybe our descendants will also thank us for at least the wood reserves made for them in such a cunning way?
Goodbye Mana! And forgive us! We tortured not only nature, but also ourselves, and not always out of stupidity, more out of necessity...
My native Siberia has changed. Everything flows, everything changes - hoary wisdom testifies. It was. That's it. It will be so.
There is an hour for everything and a time for every task under heaven;
A time to be born and a time to die;
There is a time to plant and a time to pluck out what is planted;
A time to kill and a time to heal;
A time to destroy and a time to build;
A time to cry and a time to laugh;
A time to scatter stones and a time to gather stones;
A time to be silent and a time to speak.
So what am I looking for? Why am I suffering? Why? For what? There is no answer for me.”

Each time gives rise to its own questions that we must answer. And today we must torment ourselves with these questions and answer them in order to preserve our lives. This is also discussed in the novel “The Sad Detective”.

Student message

“The Sad Detective” was published in the 1st issue of “October” magazine for 1986. The atmosphere of those years was the beginning of perestroika. The authorities have taken a course towards transparency in all spheres of public life. In many works there was an appeal to the material of modern life and an activity unprecedented in the literature of previous years, even sharpness in expressing the author’s position. Unsightly pictures of modern life and the spiritual impoverishment of man were revealed to the reader. Such material also determined the genre of the “Sad Detective” - a variant of a journalistic accusatory diary. It was in the journalism of the 80s of the 20th century that the signs of a new literary and social situation clearly manifested themselves. Is it possible to consider it a coincidence that the style of Astafiev’s novel “The Sad Detective” echoes the writing principles of the writers of the sixties of the 19th century, who proclaimed their goal and purpose of literature to be the education in a person of freedom, responsibility and consciousness. That is why the novel “The Sad Detective” requires thoughtful reading and deep understanding.

Analytical conversation

Try to convey the emotional perception of this work. What feelings did you have?

(Feeling of heaviness, depression due to a string of senselessly cruel acts, due to the fact that human dignity is violated).

How do you understand the title of the novel, why is it a sad detective story? What is the reason for the author’s sadness?

(With the fact that the lives of people dear to him are being destroyed, villages are dying, that life in the city and in the countryside is limited and closed. It’s sad because the foundations on which human kindness has eternally rested are collapsing).

In many of Astafiev’s works, do the characters express his aesthetic ideal and moral position? Are there such heroes in the novel “The Sad Detective”?

(Yes, first of all, this is Leonid Soshnin, a former police detective. His sad story about his own misadventures and troubles environment confirms the capacious significance of the novel's title. Leonid Soshnin is a caring, honest, principled, selfless person. He resists evil out of conscience, not out of service.

Students also celebrate such heroes as Aunt Granya, Aunt Lina, Markel Tikhonovich, Pasha Silakova. Giving examples from the text, they conclude that these heroes are the ideal of a person for Astafiev, and note that Aunt Granya is the ideal of kindness and compassion. How many children did she replace their mother with, instilling a love of work, honesty, and kindness. But she herself lived very modestly, without income. And she didn’t have children of her own, but only kindness was born from her kindness. When cruel people offended Aunt Granya, and she forgave them, Leonid Soshnin was tormented by the pain of the injustice of what had been done. Every time he wanted to run after Aunt Granya and shout at the whole people so that she would forgive him “and all of us”).

In our difficult times, there are also many orphans and orphanages. Are those people who help orphanages and take in children doing the right thing? Can only wealthy people do this?

(In answering this topical question, the guys give examples from their life observations (street children, the state of orphanages, the sale of children abroad, etc.). When solving a difficult issue, they naturally think positively, understanding that it is not a matter of material the situation of those people who want to give the warmth of their heart to a child. Will they ever be able to do this? There is no definite answer. But the conversation that took place is a grain of goodness thrown into their souls).

Why, appreciating the kindness and generosity of Aunt Granya, does the author state: “It’s easy... comfortable for a criminal to live among such kind-hearted people”?

(This is probably one of the most complex issues in the novel. This is an attempt by both the writer and readers to comprehend the Russian soul with merciless truth. It becomes bitter because kindness develops into forgiveness. Many critics reproached Astafiev for speaking disrespectfully about the Russian character, that forgiveness comes from the breadth of the soul of the Russian person. But that's not true. Through the mouth of his hero Leonid Soshnin, the writer says that we ourselves invented the riddle of the soul and that forgiveness comes from the inability to respect ourselves. The writer is right in asserting that one cannot celebrate Easter without experiencing fasting. The sobriety of the author's view does not detract from his compassion for those who, through their own fault and ours, find themselves on the brink of an abyss. The novel acutely poses the problem of the deformation of good and evil. V.P. Astafiev values good-heartedness, emotional sensitivity, readiness to defend the weak, and argues that it is necessary to actively resist evil).

But how to make sure that human evil does not have the opportunity to ripen?

(This idea is very important for the writer. Answering this question, students note that the basis of relationships between people should be love, kindness, respect, and conscience will remind you of responsibility for everyone living nearby. A person who knows how to prevent evil with kindness is writer's ideal).

Astafiev wrote: “How often we throw around lofty words without thinking about them. Here is a doldonim: children are happiness, children are joy, children are light in the window! But children are also our torment! Children are our judgment on the world, our mirror, in which our conscience, intelligence, honesty, neatness are all visible.” How do you understand the writer's words? Can we say that the theme of family in the novel is also one of the main ones?

(As a result of reasoning, we come to the conclusion that the writer talks with great sorrow about cases of family discord, inferiority human relations. He draws our reader's attention to how they are brought up and what is taught in the family, to the “spirit” of the family).

How do Oktyabrina Syrovasova, the alcoholic Urna, Leonid Soshnin’s mother-in-law, Soshnin’s wife raise their children, how do Yulka’s mother and grandmother Tutyschikha raise them?

(Students tell episodes from the novel, analyze them and come to the conclusion that Astafiev is writing about a dangerous type of women who strive to become like men. Oktyabrina Syrovasova, an activist from the cultural front, is disgusting, who believes that only she is able to choose whose works to publish and whose no. The alcoholic Urn is disgusting. She, unfortunately, is a phenomenon of our reality. A woman who is a drunkard is worse than a man. Those who replace spiritual education with material well-being are also disgusting).

Listening to your answers, I want to note that V.P. Astafiev in many of his works speaks about the woman-mother with special sensitivity. Left an orphan, he lovingly carried her bright image with him throughout his life. In his autobiographical article “Participating in all living things...” the writer calls on us, readers, to treat a woman, a mother, with care. He will write a wonderful story about his mother, “The Last Bow.”

Student’s speech (excerpt from the article by V.P. Astafiev “Participating in all living things...”)

“...Sometimes I cried from the tenderness that gripped me, unconsciously regretting that my mother was not there and she did not see this whole living world and could not rejoice in it with me.

If I were given the opportunity to repeat my life, I would choose the same one, very eventful, joys, victories and defeats, delights and sorrows of loss, which help to feel kindness more deeply. And I would ask only one thing from my fate - to leave my mother with me. I have missed her all my life and miss her especially acutely now, when age seems to compare me with all older people, and that calm comes that mothers patiently wait for, hoping at least in old age to lean against their child.

Take care of your mothers, people! Take care! They come only once and never come back, and no one can replace them. This is being told to you by a person who has the right to trust – he outlived his mother.”

Why did V.P. Astafiev capitalize only two words at the end of the novel: “Earth and Family”?

(The family in the novel is spoken of as the foundation not only of the state, but also of civilization. These two family houses cannot be destroyed. If you destroy the family, the Earth house will collapse, and then the person will die. The world of the family and the world of nature are always in an eternal, inseparable, although and contradictory unity, the violation of which threatens degeneration and death).

Astafiev will develop this idea in his novel “The Fish Tsar,” with which we began our conversation about the writer’s work. Thus, Viktor Petrovich Astafiev helps us think about many moral problems, and most importantly, he talks about lack of spirituality not in the sense of a lack of cultural interests (although about that), but in the sense of a lack of responsibility, when a person forgets to ask himself and shifts responsibility for everyone: school, team, state.

Optional homework

An essay on the topic “The theme of family in V.P. Astafiev’s novel “The Sad Detective.”
An essay on the topic “How is the theme of good and evil revealed in V.P. Astafiev’s novel “The Sad Detective”?”
An essay on the topic “What similarities with Russian classics did you notice in the novel “The Sad Detective”?”
Read one of the named works by Astafiev and give a brief review about it.

Literature

Astafiev V.P. Stories. Stories. M.: Bustard, 2002 (Library of Russian classical fiction).
Astafiev V.P. “Participated in all living things...” // Literature at school. 1987, no. 2.
Russian literature of the 20th century. 11th grade, in two parts. Edited by V.V. Agenosov. M,: Bustard, 2006.
Zaitsev V.A., Gerasimenko A.P. History of Russian literature of the second half of the 20th century. M., 2004.
Ershov L.F. History of Russian Soviet literature. M.: graduate School, 1988.
Egorova N.V., Zolotareva I.V., Lesson developments in Russian literature of the 20th century. Grade 11. M.: Vako, 2004.
Petrovich V.G., Petrovich N.M. Literature in basic and specialized schools. 11th grade: Book for teachers. M.: Sfera, 2006.

Astafiev “Sad detective” - analysis. Astafiev

Summary of the novel Sad detective

Summary of the novel
Sad detective