“Enchanted Place”, analysis of the story by Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol. Retelling of the story “The Enchanted Place” by N.V. Gogol Gogol the Enchanted Place Characteristics of the Grandfather

Is our summary"Enchanted Place" can be used for reader's diary. Even more brief retelling works are in Gogol’s article “Evenings on a farm near Dikanka”. On our website you can read the full text of this story, as well as the full text of the collection “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka”, in which it is included

« Enchanted place"- the fourth and final story of the second part of Gogol's Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka. It is told again by the deacon of the local church, Foma Grigorievich. The main character of the story is his grandfather, already familiar to readers from the story “The Missing Letter”.

One summer, when Foma Grigorievich was still a small child, his grandfather planted a garden with melons and watermelons along the road and sold the fruits from it to passing merchants. One day, about six carts stopped at the garden, in which old friends of my grandfather were traveling. Delighted by the meeting, the grandfather treated his old friends well, and then started dancing to celebrate. Making, despite his old age, various intricate knees, he reached one place near a bed of cucumbers - and there his grandfather’s legs suddenly became like wood and stopped serving him. Moving back, he accelerated again, but in the same place he again stood as if under a spell. Cursing Satan, the grandfather suddenly heard someone laughing behind him. He looked around and saw that he was not at all where he had stood a moment before, but on the other side of his village. And it was no longer day, but night.

At a distance, the grandfather noticed a grave. A candle suddenly flashed on it, followed by another. According to popular legend, such things happened in places where treasures were buried. The grandfather was very happy, but he had neither a spade nor a shovel with him. Noticing a place with a large branch of treasure, the grandfather returned home.

The next day he went with a spade to dig for treasure. It turned out, however, that the place he noticed did not look quite the same as the day before. The view of the surrounding area was different, and the grandfather could not find the branch he had left yesterday. Turning back, he walked through the garden to the enchanted place where he could not dance, in his anger he hit the ground with a spade - and again found himself on the same outskirts of the village where he had been the day before. Now she looked the same as then. The grandfather immediately saw the grave there and the branch left on it.

The grandfather began to dig in search of treasure and soon came across a cauldron in the ground. “Ah, my dear, that’s where you are!” - the grandfather cried, and these words of his were suddenly repeated in human voices by a bird that flew in from nowhere, a ram’s head hanging from a tree, and a growling bear. A terrible mug appeared from the stump of a neighboring tree, and suddenly the grandfather seemed to see a deep hole nearby, and behind him a huge mountain. Somehow overcoming his fear, he pulled the cauldron with the treasure out of the ground, grabbed it and ran as fast as he could. From behind, someone is lashing his legs with rods...

Gogol "Enchanted Place". Illustration

Meanwhile, in the garden, Thomas, his brothers and their mother, who had come to feed them dinner, wondered: where had grandfather gone again? Having collected the slops in a bucket after dinner, the mother was looking for where to pour it, and suddenly she saw: a tub was moving towards her, as if by itself. The mother thought that the guys were joking and splashed the slop into the tub, but then there was a scream, and instead of the tub she saw in front of her a drenched grandfather with a large cauldron in his hands. However, instead of the gold that the old man hoped to find, there was rubbish and squabbles in the cauldron...

And no matter how much later they sowed, writes Gogol, that enchanted place in the middle of the garden, nothing worthwhile ever grew there. Something sprang up in this place that you can’t even make out: a watermelon is not a watermelon, a pumpkin is not a pumpkin, a cucumber is not a cucumber... the devil knows what it is!

N.V. Gogol "Enchanted Place"

Retelling plan

1. Rudy Panko recalls a story from his childhood.
2. Grandfather goes to the bashtan (melon tree) with his grandchildren to chase sparrows and magpies.
3. Arrival of the Chumaks (peasants who traded salt and fish).
4. The guys and the old grandfather are dancing.
5. The hero finds himself in an enchanted place where he thinks there is a treasure.
6. Search for the enchanted place the next day.
7. An old man’s meeting with evil spirits.
8. The treasure turned out to be a hoax.
9. Grandfather decided never to trust the devil again.

Retelling
The main character, Rudy Panko, a famous storyteller of tales, begins his next narration, confirming the belief: if “the devilish force wants to faint, it will faint; By God, he’ll faint.” He remembers an old story that happened to his grandfather.

One day, the grandfather took him and his brother, then just boys, to chase sparrows and magpies on the tower. Familiar Chumaks drove by. Their grandfather began to treat them to melons, and asked his grandchildren to dance a Cossack dance. Yes, he couldn’t sit still and started dancing. And some kind of devilry happened here. Only the grandfather wanted to “take a walk and throw some of his things into the whirlwind with his feet - his legs wouldn’t rise, and that’s all.” He started up again, but didn’t dance, looked around, didn’t see anything familiar, but only a smooth field. I started looking closer and came across a path in the dark. A candle flared on a grave to the side of the path. He decided that it was a treasure, but there was nothing to dig with. To avoid losing this place, he knocked down a large tree branch.

The next day, when it began to get dark in the field, the grandfather took a spade and shovel and went to look for the treasure. But he never found it, only the rain got it wet. Grandfather cursed Satan and returned with nothing. The next day, the grandfather, as if nothing had happened, went to the bashtan to dig a bed for late pumpkins. And when he passed by that enchanted place, he walked into its middle and struck the hearts with a spade. And suddenly I found myself in the same field again. I found a hiding place, pushed away a stone, and decided to sniff some tobacco. Suddenly someone sneezed from behind. I looked around - no one. I started digging and saw a boiler. Then the evil spirits began to frighten him: a bird’s nose, a ram’s head and a bear alternately appeared in front of him. It was so scary that my grandfather wanted to give up everything, but it was a pity to part with the treasure. He somehow grabbed the cauldron and “let’s run as far as the spirit could; He only hears something behind him and scratches his legs with rods...”

A long time ago, mother came from the farm with a pot of hot dumplings, everyone had dinner, mother washed the dishes, but grandfather was still not there. She washed the pot and went into the kitchen, and grandfather was there. He boasted, opened the boiler, and there: “What did you think was there? Well, at least after thinking carefully, eh? gold? This is what is not gold: rubbish, squabbles... it’s a shame to say what it is.”

From that time on, the grandfather told his grandchildren not to believe the devil: “And it happened that when he heard that there was trouble in another place, he himself would be baptized and force us. And he blocked off the enchanted place with a fence and threw all the weeds and rubbish that he raked out of the chestnut there. So nothing good ever grew in this place.”

They say that people can cope with an unclean spirit. You shouldn't say that. If evil spirits want to deceive, so be it.

The narrator was 11 years old. In total, the father had 4 children. In early spring my father went to Crimea and brought tobacco for sale. He took his 3-year-old brother with him, and the narrator stayed at home with his mother and 2 brothers. Grandfather sowed a vegetable garden right next to the road and went to live in the kuren.

Grandfather liked the fact that about 50 carts passed by him a day, and everyone could tell him something.

One day 6 carts were driving past Maxim’s grandfather; these were his grandfather’s old comrades. They sat in a circle, ate and talked. The grandfather took the narrator and his brother to play the pipe and dance. Unable to resist, the grandfather himself began to dance right on the path between the cucumber beds. This is where the unclean thing happened: as soon as the grandfather reached the middle of the path, his legs immediately stopped rising. He started again from the beginning of the path, danced to the middle and again his legs became stiff. It was some kind of enchanted place. The grandfather immediately began to swear and called this place devilish.

Immediately behind the grandfather, someone laughed. The grandfather turned around and looked - and the place was unknown, the field around was unfamiliar. I took a closer look and recognized the threshing floor of one of the volost clerks. This is where the unclean force took my grandfather.

Then the grandfather decided to go out onto the road, and to the side on one of the graves he saw a candle flashing. Soon it went out and a second light came on, a little further away. The grandfather thought that a treasure was hidden in this place. I thought about digging right away, but I didn’t have a shovel with me. Then he decided to remember the place and return here later. With these thoughts he walked home.

Towards the evening of the next day, the grandfather took a shovel and a spade and went to the place of the treasure. But, having reached the place, he was surprised - if there is a threshing floor, then there is no dovecote, but if a dovecote is visible, then there is no threshing floor. Suddenly there was a heavy downpour, and the grandfather wandered back home.

The next day, the grandfather walked through his garden to the enchanted place with a spade in his hands. Hitting the place where his legs were stiff with a spade, he immediately found himself in the field where he had seen the candles. Only now he had a spade.

He got to the place indicated by the candles and began to dig. Soon he dug out the cauldron. While digging, the grandfather talked to himself, and someone repeated his words several times. The grandfather thought that this was the devil who didn’t want to give up the treasure. Then he left the treasure and ran to the house, and there was silence all around. Then he returned, took the pot and ran as fast as he could. So he got to the priest's garden.

The mother waited for the grandfather until the evening. We’ve already had dinner, but he’s still nowhere to be seen. The mother washed the pot and began to look for where to dump the slops. Suddenly she saw a kukhla floating in the air in the dark. The mother took the hot slop and poured it there. Immediately there was a loud cry from the grandfather. The grandfather told about the treasure he had found and hoped that now all the children would have bagels and bagels.

Hoping for gold, the grandfather opened the pot, and there was something that was embarrassing to even talk about.

After this incident, my grandfather lost all his trust. And he often told his grandchildren that they should never trust the devil - he would definitely deceive. And if I heard something turbulent going on somewhere, I immediately began to be baptized and shouted to my grandchildren to be baptized.

The grandfather fenced off that enchanted place on the path where his legs grew stiff with a fence, and threw all the garbage and weeds there.

Kukhlya* is a vessel for transporting liquids over short distances.

The story “The Enchanted Place” by Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol is part of the collection of stories “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka”. The story is told from the point of view of the sexton - about the story that happened to his grandfather Maxim, when the sexton himself was only 11 years old.

N.V. Gogol is the author of stories - he is a real person living in real world. He comes up with the plot of the story, the characters, gives them names, endows them with certain abilities, makes the characters evil or good. The author gives a name to his creation, breaks the story into chapters and parts, and comes up with endings.

In the story “The Enchanted Place,” the role of the narrator is played by a beekeeper, who was told about what happened by the sexton, in the same way as the author N.V. Gogol does not appear in this story. Grandfather Maxim told the story to the sexton himself.

This story tells how grandfather Maxim, dancing in front of his familiar Chumaks, near a bed of cucumbers, felt that his legs were becoming stiff and, unknown how, he ended up in an enchanted place, while he heard someone laughing behind him. Grandfather called this place devilish. He thought that there must be a treasure hidden there, he even saw the light of a flickering candle on one of the graves. Grandfather Maxim wanted to dig up the ground, but he had neither a shovel nor a spade with him. He decided to return with a shovel, but when he arrived, he could not find exactly the place where, in his opinion, the treasure was hidden. Since it started to rain, the grandfather wandered home empty-handed.

The next day, the grandfather took a spade and went to the very place in his garden where he could not dance, and hit the ground with the spade. Grandfather Maxim again found himself where the treasure was, started digging and found a pot. From time to time he spoke to himself, and someone repeated his own words after him. The grandfather was frightened and thought that the unclean one did not want to give up the treasure, but still brought the pot to his grandchildren. As a result, it turned out that there was not gold in the pot, but all sorts of rubbish. Since then, the grandfather fenced off the enchanted place with a fence and threw weeds and all sorts of waste there, and there was never a good harvest in that part of the garden. And if the grandfather noticed something unusual, he began to be baptized.

N.V. Gogol seemed to isolate himself from this story and thereby entrusted its telling to another person. I believe that in this way the writer wanted to show that he did not particularly believe in the authenticity of the story, but at the same time, the story conveys Russian folklore - what people believed in, what they were afraid of and how they fought against it. Reading this story, you feel like you are part of the story that happened and as if you hear the voice of the narrator himself.

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The story “The Enchanted Place” ( fourth), the second part of “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka” ends. It was first published in 1832 in the second book of Evenings. The lack of a manuscript makes it impossible to determine the exact dating of the writing of the story. It is assumed that it refers to the early works of N.V. Gogol and dates back to the period 1829 - 1830.

The storyline intertwines two main motives: the search for treasure and the outrages committed by devils in enchanted places. The story itself originates in folklore stories, in which the main leitmotif is the idea that wealth obtained from evil spirits does not bring happiness. In some ways it has something in common with “The Evening on the Eve of Ivan Kupala.” The author denounces the thirst for enrichment, the irrepressible passion for money, which clearly leads to catastrophic consequences, and turns acquired money into trash. The story is based on folk beliefs and legends about enchanted “deceptive places.”

Analysis of the work

The plot of the work

Based on folklore, with whom Nikolai Vasilyevich was very familiar since childhood. Legends and beliefs about “enchanted places” and treasures exist among most peoples of the world. The Slavs had a belief that treasures could be found in cemeteries. A candle flared above the grave with the treasure. It is a traditional and popular belief that ill-gotten wealth turns into trash.

The story is rich in rich, vibrant, original folk Ukrainian language, which is showered with Ukrainian words: “bashtan”, “kuren”, “chumaks”. Folk life is depicted as accurately as possible, Gogol's humor creates a unique atmosphere. The story is structured in such a way that you get a feeling of personal presence, as if you yourself are among the sexton’s listeners. This is achieved through the narrator's precise comments.

The plot is based on the story of the deacon of the local church, Foma Grigorievich, familiar to many readers from the story “The Missing Letter,” about an incident in the life of his grandfather. His story, vivid and memorable, is full of humor. It was no coincidence that the author gave the story the title “Enchanted Place.” It intertwines two worlds: reality and fantasy. The real world is represented by the way of life of people, the fantasy world is represented by a grave, treasure and devilry. The sexton's memories take him back to childhood. The father and his eldest son went to sell tobacco. A mother with three children and a grandfather remained at home. One day, having gone on a spree with visiting merchants, the grandfather began to dance in the garden until he reached one place in the garden and stopped, rooted to the spot, near a bed of cucumbers. I looked around and didn’t recognize the place, but realized that it was located behind the clerk’s threshing floor. Somehow I found a path and saw a candle flare up on a nearby grave. I noticed another grave. A candle flashed on it too, followed by another.

According to folk legend, this happens where the treasure is buried. Grandfather was happy, but he had nothing with him. Having marked the place with a large branch, he went home. The next day he tried to find this place, but found nothing, only accidentally hitting the cucumber bed with a spade, he again found himself in the same place, near the grave on which the stone lay.

And then the real devilry began. Before the grandfather had time to take out the tobacco to smell it, someone sneezed behind his ear. He started digging and unearthed a pot. “Ah, my dear, that’s where you are!” And after him the same words were repeated by a bird, a ram's head from the top of a tree, and a bear. The grandfather got scared, grabbed the cauldron and ran away. At this time, his mother and children began to look for him. After dinner, the mother went out to pour out the hot slop and saw a barrel crawling towards her. Deciding that these were naughty children, the woman poured slop on her. But it turned out that it was my grandfather who was walking.

We decided to see what kind of treasure the grandfather had brought, opened the pot, and there was garbage “and it’s a shame to say what it is.” From then on, the grandfather began to believe only in Christ, and fenced off the enchanted place with a fence.

Main characters

Grandfather Maxim

The hero of the story is Grandfather Maxim. Judging by the sexton’s words, his grandfather was a cheerful and interesting person. In the author's ironic description, he is a cheerful, lively old man who loves to have fun, joke, and brag somewhere. A big fan of listening to Chumakov stories. He refers to his grandchildren only as “dog children,” but it is clear that they are all his favorites. His grandchildren respond to him with the same love.

Enchanted place

The enchanted place itself can be called the hero of the story. By modern concepts it can be called an anomalous place. Grandfather Maxim discovers this place by chance while dancing. Inside the zone, space and time change their properties, which the old man attributes to evil spirits. The anomalous zone itself also has its own character. It doesn’t show much love to strangers, but it doesn’t overtly harm, only frighteningly. There is no great harm from the presence of this place in the real world, except that nothing grows here. Moreover, it is ready to play with the old man. Sometimes it hides from him, sometimes it opens up easily. In addition, he has many means of intimidation at his disposal: the weather, the disappearing moon, talking ram heads and monsters.

The demonstration of all these miracles frightens the old man for a while and he abandons his find, but the thirst for the treasure turns out to be stronger than the fear. For this, the grandfather receives punishment. The cauldron he had obtained with such difficulty turned out to be filled with rubbish. Science served him well. The grandfather became very pious, swore to associate with evil spirits and punished all his loved ones for this.

Conclusion

With this story, Gogol shows that only wealth that is acquired honestly is useful for future use, and that wealth acquired dishonestly is illusory. Using the example of the story with his grandfather, he gives us the opportunity to believe in good and bright. The writer's contemporaries, including Belinsky and Pushkin Herzen, received the story with rave reviews. For more than 150 years, this story has made the reader smile, immersing him in the amazing Gogol world of wit, fantasy, and folk poetry, in which the very soul of the people comes to life.

"The Enchanted Place" is unique in its skillful use of folklore and folk legends. Even the evil spirit introduced into the story has nothing to do with mysticism. Folk fiction is attractive to us for its everyday simplicity, naive and spontaneous. Therefore, all Gogol’s heroes are saturated with bright colors of life, full of enthusiasm and folk humor.