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Real and fantastic in the story of N. V. Gogol "The Enchanted Place"
The story of Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol "The Enchanted Place" is the story of a deacon about an incident from his life. It is wonderfully written and interesting. With each line, reading this story is more and more captivating. Even the deacon himself, who reluctantly began the story, was so carried away by his narration that he reproached the listeners for inattention: “What really! .. Listen to listen like that!”
The main character of the story is the deacon's grandfather. His image is very bright and memorable. Telling us the story that happened to the grandfather, the deacon tries to give us all the details, and this makes the story more reliable.
It is impossible not to notice the humor with which the deacon leads his story. He calls his grandfather “old crap”, laughs at how his grandfather danced, how he tried to find a treasure, how his mother poured slop on him. The grandfather, in turn, called his grandchildren "dog children", scolded them. But we feel that the characters truly love and appreciate each other.
According to the deacon, most of all, grandfather liked to listen to the stories of the Chumaks passing by: “But for grandfather, it’s like a hungry dumpling.” And we understand that the hero himself was a cheerful, interesting person, it’s not in vain that the deacon says: “It used to happen, he decides ...”
But the best way to understand the character of the grandfather is to describe the search for the treasure. His speech and thoughts are full of unusual expressions: “What a disgusting face!”, “Well, lads, now you will have bagels!”.
Gogol did not accidentally give the story such a name - "The Enchanted Place". After all, the work combines two worlds: real and fantastic. Everything fantastic is connected with the grave, the treasure and the power of the devil.
The real world is life. Depicting ordinary life people, Gogol uses Ukrainian words, such as "chumaks", "kuren". An interesting description of the way of life of the heroes, how the grandfather grows watermelons, "covers them with burdock", digs "a new bed for late pumpkins." Or about how he defines the weather: ““Tomorrow there will be a big wind!” thought the grandfather.” Gogol admires the paintings of this folk life, the creative work of their heroes.
The whole story is written very brightly and colorfully. Sometimes it seems that you yourself are among the deacon's listeners, because the narration is interrupted by his comments. From the speech of the narrator it becomes clear that he himself has already grown old. But the deacon, like the grandfather, in his soul remains the same young, interesting and unusual person.
At the end of the story, the deacon says that instead of the treasure, the grandfather brought "litter, squabbles ...". After that, the hero began to believe only in Christ, and "... that damned place where they didn’t dance, blocked it with a wattle fence, ordered to throw everything that was indecent ...". We can say that with these lines the author is making fun of his grandfather. Indeed, in this story, Gogol says that good can be acquired only by one's own labor. In addition, using the grandfather as an example, he teaches us to believe in the bright, pure: “So this is how the evil spirit of a person fools!”
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- an essay on the topic of real and fantastic in the story of NV Gogol The Enchanted Place
The story "The Enchanted Place" N.V. Gogol is included in the cycle of stories "Evenings on a farm near Dikanka". At the beginning of the whole cycle, N.V. Gogol says that he did not invent these stories himself. The beekeeper Panko told him about them. And the beekeeper heard these stories from different people. It turns out that the true narrator of the story about the enchanted place is the beekeeper. But when you start reading the story, you will find out that this was told to the beekeeper Panko by one deacon. Himself
the clerk was also not a participant in the events. Everything that happens in the story was told to him by his grandfather. After all, when all this happened, the deacon was only eleven years old. The story is about an enchanted place. One day, grandfather Maxim was dancing and accidentally ended up in an enchanted place. He immediately thought that there was a treasure. Several times he tried to dig it out. When he managed to do this, grandfather Maxim ran home. He climbed over the wattle fence, and they doused him with slop. But he was still pleased. After all, he found a treasure. But when the boiler was opened, there was all sorts of nonsense. Grandfather Maxim has since bequeathed to everyone not to play with the devil. I think that if there were no hero-narrator-grandfather Maxim in this story, then it would turn out that all events are true. And so it turns out that the author talks about them as if in a third person. First, grandfather Maxim told the deacon, then the deacon told the beekeeper Panko, and only then Gogol wrote a story about it. It seems to me that the author does not believe in the truth of this story. But he shows us the thoughts of the heroes of the story, what they believe in. That's why he came up with the figure of the beekeeper Panko. The fact that the story "The Enchanted Place" is built as a "story within a story" allows not only to convey the thoughts and feelings of the characters, but also to recreate the atmosphere in which such stories were invented and told. It seems as if you hear the voice of the narrator and plunge into the world of the heroes of the story by N.V. Gogol.
The great Russian classic N. V. Gogol, although he was a very religious person, he had a certain predilection for writing stories about all sorts of deeds of the “unclean” - horror stories that old people liked to tell in the evening on a farm, under a torch or near a fire, yes so that later all who listened to them, both old and young, shuddered with horror.
Gogol knew such stories in great numbers. “The Enchanted Place” (a brief summary of this work will be presented a little lower) is one of these works. It is included in the cycle of stories in the two-volume book Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka. This one was first printed in 1832 in the second volume.
Gogol, "The Enchanted Place". Heroes and plot
Old grandfather Foma was still a storyteller, and everyone pestered him: tell me, tell me. It was impossible to get rid of them. And so he began his next story with the fact that if the devilish power wants to fool someone, he will definitely do it. When he was still a boy of about eleven, his father, taking with him his three-year-old brother, went to the Crimea to sell tobacco. Grandfather, mother, Foma and his two brothers remained to live on the chestnut (a field with watermelons, melons and various vegetables). A road stretched nearby, and one evening chumaks-wagonists passed by, who were going to the Crimea for goods - salt and fish. Grandfather recognized among them his old acquaintances. The guests settled down in a hut, lit up cradles and began to treat themselves to melons. And then they began to remember the past. In the end, it all came down to dancing.
Continuation of Gogol's work "The Enchanted Place"
Grandfather forced his grandchildren to dance - Foma and his brother Ostap, and even started dancing himself and wrote out a pretzel, but as soon as he reached a smooth place where there was a bed of cucumbers, his legs stopped obeying him and stood up, he could not move them. Then the grandfather began to swear at the unclean, believing that these were her tricks. And then someone giggled behind him, he looked back, and behind him there were no chumaks, no fields with vegetables.
What is Gogol talking about next? The “enchanted place” has the following summary: the grandfather began to look more closely at the area, and recognized the priest’s dovecote and the fenced plot of land of the volost clerk. Having orientated himself a little, he went to his garden, but saw that not far from the road there was a grave, in which the light of a candle was burning. Grandfather immediately thought that this was a treasure, and regretted that he did not have a shovel. He spotted this place in order to return later, put a branch on the grave and went home.
cherished treasure
Interestingly, Gogol continues "The Enchanted Place". Summary tells that the next day, already in the late afternoon, as soon as it got dark, main character went to look for the treasured grave with a mark. On the way, he saw the priest's dovecote, but for some reason there was no clerk's garden. When he stepped aside, the dovecote immediately disappeared. He realized that all this was the machinations of the evil one. And then it began to rain, grandfather returned to his place.
In the morning he went to work on the beds with a shovel and, passing by that mysterious place where his legs stopped obeying in the dance, he could not restrain himself and hit him with a shovel. And lo and behold, he is again at the place where his mark and grave are. Grandfather was delighted that now he had a tool and would definitely dig up his treasure now. He went to the grave, and there was a stone. The old man moved it and wanted to sniff the tobacco. But then someone sneezed nearby and even splashed him. Grandfather realized that the devil did not like his tobacco. He began to dig and came across a bowler hat. He exclaimed with joy: "There you are, my dear." And then these words echoed, the bird's beak, the ram's head and the bear's snout from the tree screamed. Grandfather immediately threw a shiver. He decided to run away, but he still took the bowler hat with him.
Gogol's "The Enchanted Place" leads to an intriguing moment. The summary is gaining momentum.
The machinations of the evil one
All the family members have lost their grandfather, they have already sat down for dinner. The mother went out to pour the slop into the yard, and then she saw how the boiler was moving along the path, she, out of fright, splashed all the hot slop on it. In fact, this grandfather was walking with a cauldron, and all the slop in the form of skins of melons and watermelons hung on his head. Mother, of course, got it from him, but then the grandfather, having calmed down, told his grandchildren that soon they would walk in new caftans. However, when he opened the cauldron, he found no gold there.
From that time on, grandfather taught the children not to believe the devil, since he will always deceive, and that he has not a penny of truth. Now every time he crossed places that seemed strange to him. And the grandfather fenced that enchanted plot and no longer cultivated it, only he threw all kinds of garbage there. Then, when other people sowed watermelons and melons on it, nothing worthwhile grew there anymore. This is where Gogol's story "The Enchanted Place" ended.
Drafts of Gogol's story "The Enchanted Place" have not been preserved, therefore exact date its creation is unknown. Most likely it was written in 1830. The story "The Enchanted Place" was included in the second book of the collection "Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka".
The works of this collection have a complex hierarchy of narrators. The subtitle of the cycle indicates that “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka” was published by a certain beekeeper, Rudy Panko. The stories "The Evening on the Eve of Ivan Kupala", "The Missing Letter" and "The Enchanted Place" are told
Deacon of one church. This removal of the author from the participant in the events allowed Gogol to achieve a double effect. Firstly, to avoid the accusation of writing "fables", and secondly, to emphasize the folk spirit of the story.
The plot of the story is really based on the traditions of folklore, which were well known to the writer from childhood. Tales about "cursed places" and treasures are characteristic of the myth-making of many peoples. In Slavic legends, treasures were often sought in cemeteries. The right grave was indicated by a suddenly flashed candle. Traditional for folk stories and the motive of turning ill-gotten wealth into
Trash.
The originality of the story is manifested in a bright and juicy language, which is generously dotted with Ukrainian words: “chumaks”. "chicken". "tower". "lads". .. The extremely accurate depiction of folk life, as well as the writer's sparkling humor create a special Gogolian atmosphere, full of poetic fantasy and slyness. It seems to the reader that he himself is among the deacon's listeners. This effect is achieved through apt comments by the narrator.
The protagonist of the story is grandfather Maxim. The author describes it with good irony. This is a lively, cheerful and active old man who loves to brag, dances dashingly and is not afraid of the devil himself. Grandfather really likes to listen to the stories of the Chumaks. He scolds his grandchildren, calls them "dog children". but it is clear that the old man does not have a soul in tomboys. And they play a friendly joke on the grandfather.
An important element of the story is the enchanted place itself. In our time, it would be called an anomalous zone. Grandpa accidentally discovers a "bad spot" while dancing. As soon as the old man gets to his border "near the cucumber patch." so the legs themselves stop dancing. And inside the enchanted place, strange things happen with space and time, which the grandfather attributes to the action of evil spirits.
The transition between the real and unreal world is depicted as a distorted space. Landmarks that the grandfather notes for himself in the anomaly zone do not appear in the real world. He can't manage to find a point from which the priest's dovecote and the threshing floor of the haired clerk are visible.
The cursed place has "its own character". It does not like strangers, but does not harm uninvited guests, but only frightens them. There is no particular damage from the penetration of irrational forces into the real world either. The land in the anomalous zone just does not produce a crop. The enchanted place is not averse to playing with grandfather. That does not allow to itself, despite all efforts, then it suddenly opens easily. In the arsenal anomalous zone many unusual means: suddenly spoiled weather, the disappearance of the moon from the sky, monsters. Fear makes the old man abandon the find for a while. But the thirst for profit turns out to be stronger, so otherworldly forces decide to teach grandfather a lesson. In the cauldron, which was obtained with such difficulty in a cursed place, there were not jewels, but “rubbish, squabbles and ashamed to say what it is.”
After such a science, the hero of the story became very religious, swore himself to deal with evil spirits and punished all those close to him. Grandfather peculiarly takes revenge on the devil who confused him so much. The old man fences off the enchanted place with a wattle fence and throws all the rubbish from the tower there.
Such an ending is natural. Gogol shows that such treasures do not bring good. Grandfather receives as a reward not a treasure, but a mockery. So the writer affirms the idea of the illusory nature of any wealth that is acquired by dishonest labor.
Pushkin. Herzen, Belinsky and other Gogol's contemporaries enthusiastically received The Enchanted Place. And today, with a smile and great interest, readers are immersed in an amazing world where wit, poetry and fantasy reign, the very soul of the people comes to life.
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