Oatmeal. Museum complex V.P.
This year Viktor Petrovich Astafiev would have turned ninety years old. His fate was inextricably linked with Igarka. Having first arrived here in 1935 as an eleven-year-old teenager and after some time, being kicked out of the family by his stepmother, he ended up in the Igarsky orphanage. Orphanhood, homelessness, a craving for reading and the special spirit of creativity that reigned in Igar schools in the mid-thirties awakened literary abilities in the teenager. Only ironically, he did not become the author of the book “We are from Igarka”. As he himself explained later: “There was a ton of materials in the book, and the selection was extremely severe. They put one material behind the name V. Astafiev and thought - that’s enough, two, they say, it will be fat. And this was my namesake, from a completely different school - Vasya Astafiev.”
(“The Firmament and the Staff”, correspondence between Viktor Petrovich Astafiev and Alexander Nikolaevich Makarov, 1962-1967, Irkutsk, 2005, pp. 223-224)
And yet one of his first school essays entitled “Alive” about how a boy got lost in and what helped him get out, formed the basis of one of the now famous children’s stories by the writer “Vasyutkino Lake”. Igarka, its inhabitants, what they saw were invariably present in some of the works of the great Russian writer, who thus immortalized the distant northern town.
That’s why he was always drawn to the city of his childhood to clarify or refute the memories living in his mind. And as soon as the opportunity arose, he came to Igarka. How many times did Viktor Petrovich visit our city after the end of the war? Perhaps the museum workers managed to ask him about this, I don’t have such data, so I set about searching on my own, counting a total of up to nine visits.
As you know, Viktor Astafiev left Igarka in 1941, earning his first independent income. Then there was a war. And after its completion, the young family of front-line soldiers Viktor and Maria Astafiev settled in the Urals in the small town of Chusovoy. But as soon as the first opportunity arose, Viktor Petrovich went to Siberia. His grandmother Ekaterina Petrovna Potylitsyna, the mother of his mother who passed away early, lived in Ovsyanka, as well as other relatives on his mother’s side.
And in Igarka, “throughout the war, his other grandmother, Maria Egorovna Astafieva, nee Osipova, was in trouble with her son” Nikolai. “Grandmother from Sisim” - that’s what he called her, the next young wife of his grandfather Pavel Yakovlevich Astafiev, who found a bride in this remote village called Sisim. The head of the family drowned in Igarka on June 7, 1939 at the age of 57 years. In addition to her own son, six more remained in the care of the young widow. Maria Egorovna’s adopted sons, Ivan and Vasily, who went to the front, died.
“In 1947, I finally took her out of Igarka, which had become disgusting to her, by this time she was left completely alone, because her beloved son was taken into the army and, out of “smart” habit, as a person seasoned in the North, they were sent to the north,” he wrote Viktor Petrovich later wrote in his biography “I’ll Tell You About Myself.”
For us, this information is important as accurate evidence of his first visit to Igarka - 1947.
By that time, the “peaceful” biography of the former front-line soldier was not easy to develop: an unsettled life, the inability, due to shell shock, to work in his specialty as a railway worker acquired before the war, a complex relationship with his brother-in-law, the quartermaster, who brought a bunch of different junk from the front and established his own order in the family. All this became the reason for his first trip to Siberia in the spring of 1946. Who knows how things could have turned out then. Maria Semyonovna later wrote in her autobiographical story “Signs of Life”: “And my Vitya left. He did not assure that he would return soon, but he probably thought, like the poet Rubtsov in his farewell song: “Maybe I can return, maybe I will never be able to.” (“Signs of Life”, M.S. Astafieva-Koryakina, Krasnoyarsk, 2000, pp. 230-231)
However, on that visit, Astafiev limited himself to only visiting Ovsyanka, and soon returned to Chusovoy. Family life gradually improved, the young people moved into the outbuilding. Victor moved from the position of duty officer at the railway station to work at the Metalist artel, where food cards were more valuable. On March 11, 1947, a daughter was born into the Astafiev family, named Lidochka, at Victor’s insistence, in honor of his mother. On September 2 of the same year, Lidochka died from dyspepsia.
Unfortunately, I found very little documentary evidence of Viktor Petrovich’s first trip to Igarka. Maria Semyonovna writes in “Signs of Life”: “And soon after our first daughter was born, Viktor Petrovich, I don’t know why, called his step-grandmother Maria Egorovna from Siberia... still quite young - about fifty years old.” Soon after Lidochka's death, Maria Egorovna asked to return to Siberia.
And here’s another: “Maria Egorovna didn’t live with us for long, but we didn’t have a good family relationship with her, it’s cramped together, it’s sickening to be apart. Now it’s a thing of the past: Maria Egorovna has long been dead. And then... She has character, I have character, it used to be that if I said or did something wrong, she would certainly complain to Vikhtor, but I had no one to complain to. I was relieved to part with her. She began to live with her own son...” (“Earthly memory and sadness”, M.S. Koryakina-Astafieva, Krasnoyarsk, 1996, p. 8)
What is important for us to know? Most likely, Viktor Petrovich was in Igarka in the first half of June, arriving by the first ship. He stayed in Igarka for a very short time, took a relative and left the city. Naturally, I would like to know in more detail where he was, who he met, and whether there is any evidence of this. Astafiev himself once mentioned that Maria Egorovna lived in the second barracks on the outskirts of the new city. But further information about the place of residence varies. In the information about the death of Ivan Pavlovich Astafiev, the address of his mother Maria Astafieva is indicated at Igarskaya Ordzhonikidze Street, building 17 “b”. And Vasily Pavlovich Astafiev’s mother’s address is: Kuibysheva Street, building 14 “a”. Comparing that the first document is dated September 1942, and the second April 1947, we can assume that the “grandmother from Sisima” changed her place of residence, at the end of the war she lived as a nanny for one of the Igarans, and Viktor Petrovich, taking her, stopped at Kuibyshev street. Unfortunately, this house has not survived to this day.
But an episode of his first visit to Igarka has been preserved, and not just anywhere, but in the most famous novel “The Fish King” (a narrative in stories, as the writer himself defined the genre of the work), in its first chapter “Boye”.
Bearing in mind that fiction is allowed in a work of fiction, documentary events are not always depicted, and, quite likely, fictional characters are present, however, the fact of Astafiev’s arrival in Igarka is confirmed, and his goal is to pick up his grandmother, and the time of action is summer - the hero arrives by boat using order tickets.
“I expected a lot from this trip,” writes the author of “The Tsar Fish,” “but the most significant thing about it was that I disembarked from the ship at the moment when something was burning in Igarka again, and it seemed to me that I didn’t go anywhere... (“Tsar Fish”, V.P. Astafiev, Collected Works in 15 volumes, volume 6, Krasnoyarsk, 1996, p. 9).
It is likely that the author, as described in the novel, sawed wood with his grandmother’s “employer” in Medvezhye Log, met his brother, and even went to the Sushkovo camp to see his father and his expanded family. But just one stroke from the story, and everything told can be called into question - the grandmother’s son in the novel is called not Kolka, as in reality, but Kostka. So in “The Last Bow” in the chapter “Magpie” Astafiev describes an episode of his meeting with the dead uncle Vasily, which did not happen in real life.
The fate of Maria Egorovna was sad. And in Krasnoyarsk, not having her own home, she was forced, while waiting for her son to return from the army, to live as a servant with a military professor-surgeon. Nikolai returned from the army a complete alcoholic and homosexual. He didn’t stay in any of his jobs for long, and his family life. They lived in an apartment in Pokrovka with their mother on his odd jobs and money sent by his conscientious grandson Victor, who was gaining fame as a writer. It got to the point that one day, after beating his mother, Nikolai hanged himself. And Viktor Petrovich was left with the burden of placing his grandmother in the Invalid Home, and then burying her at the newly opened Badalyk cemetery in Krasnoyarsk.
On his last visit to Igarka in August 1999, he may have recalled his first post-war visit to Igarka, “the grandmother from Sisim.” Subsequent events confirm this.
It so happened that I met him on his return in Krasnoyarsk.
- What are you doing tomorrow? – he asked me. I want to invite you to the cemetery to visit your grandmother.
I agreed. And we: Viktor Petrovich, his son Andrei and the head of the regional department of culture Vladimir Kuznetsov, having refused to accompany the team of St. Petersburg documentary filmmakers who had previously filmed the writer’s last visit to Igarka, went to that part of the cemetery that was already considered “Old Badalyk”. The churchyard filled up so quickly. The sun was shining brightly. September. Indian summer. Viktor Petrovich could not find the grave that was dear to him. Having assessed the situation, the three of us younger tried to walk in different directions from him. And after a long search, they finally found her last refuge, overgrown with perennial grass that hid a low fence. I took home-baked pancakes, a bottle of mineral water, and glasses out of the bag. Viktor Petrovich was pleased, but quietly grumbled, they say, they would now film the “magazines” with “their fucking camera” and then tell the whole world how the grandson was “taking care” of his grandmother’s grave... Seeing that I was handing him a pancake and a glass of water, I was surprised, and when it was you, the girl managed...
And I looked at him with sympathy and admiration. I felt sorry for this 75-year-old “grandson”, and I thought that the younger generation may no longer feel such affection for their relatives. Maria Egorovna was almost the same age as Viktor Petrovich’s mother; for some time the women communicated with each other, courting the large Astafyev family. Perhaps he secretly transferred his unspent filial love, the natural need of an adult to take care of his elderly parents, to her, and suffered, and worried without guilt about her not entirely successful life...
We never found Nikolai's grave. On the way back to the city, Viktor Petrovich told me the above details about their death.
“I carried and carry a huge feeling of guilt in my heart before my grandmother from Sisima, Maria Egorovna, and her son, and before all my relatives, who are diminishing every year,” he wrote in his “Autobiography” on October 17, 2000, a year before of his death.
In 1951, Viktor Petrovich wrote his first story, became a professional writer, and came to Igarka again. But that is another story.
Photo from the family archive of the Astafiev family:
Viktor Petrovich and Maria Semenovna, the city of Chusovoy, 1946.
Grandfather Pavel Yakovlevich (left) and Maria Egorovna, father Pyotr Pavlovich and Lydia Ilyinichna Astafiev, Ovsyanka village, early 30s.
Maria Egorovna Astafieva, grandmother from Sisim.
Fragment of Igarka street.
Viktor Petrovich Astafiev(05/01/1924 - 11/29/2001) - outstanding Soviet and Russian writer. Hero of Socialist Labor, Laureate of the USSR State Prize (1978, 1991), Triumph Prize, State Prize of Russia (1995, 2003 (posthumously)), Pushkin Prize of the Alfred Tepfer Foundation (Germany; 1997).
He was awarded the Order of the Red Star, medals “For Courage”, “For the Liberation of Warsaw”, “For Victory over Germany”.
Astafiev’s work equally belongs to two directions of modern literature that declared themselves in the 1960s-1970s. On the one hand, Astafiev’s work marks the beginning of the so-called village prose, which little by little revealed the true picture of collectivization and its long, consistent and ruinous results. On the other hand, there is a war seen through the eyes of a Russian village man. In the novel “Cursed and Killed” (1994), the life of the training regiment is very reminiscent of a prison. The stories “The Shepherd and the Shepherdess” (1971) and “So I Want to Live” (1995) make clear the harsh assessment that Astafiev gave to victory in one of the articles: “... we simply overwhelmed them (the Germans. - Ed. .) with their corpses and drowned in our own blood.” Ambiguous attitude towards the Great Patriotic War manifested itself in many of his journalistic speeches.
http://chtoby-pomnili.com/page.php?id=1183- here is a very detailed and interesting story about the life of Viktor Petrovich. I couldn't find anything better on the Internet.
Memorial Complex Astafiev in Ovsyanka opened on May 1, 2004. This is a branch of the Krasnoyarsk Regional Museum of Local Lore.
The complex includes: the museum of the story “The Last Bow” (better known as the House of Grandmother E.P. Potylitsyna), the Church of St. Innocent of Irkutsk, the library-museum of V.P. Astafiev and the house-museum of V.P. Astafieva.
Library-Museum of V. P. Astafiev.
Built in 1975 according to the design of architect A.S. Demirkhanov with money from Viktor Petrovich.
The writer’s personal collection is kept here: manuscripts, autographed books, photographs, videos and other documents. The library's book collection numbers more than 33 thousand volumes; its pride is the unique collection of the Divnogorsk artist and bibliophile V.I. Nabokov, including rare books on art and autographs of 20th century writers. Since 1999 the library is maintained scientific work on the study and preservation of the history of the village of Ovsyanka.
House-Museum of V.P. Astafieva.
The writer's house, in which he lived from 1980 to 2001, stands on the narrow Shchetinkina street. An upper room, an office, a small garden. To a person spoiled by city life, such conditions will seem uncomfortable, but this small house once again confirms that it is true great person modest. Viktor Petrovich lived in this house every summer (the rest of the time Viktor Petrovich and Maria Semyonovna lived in their apartment in Akadmgorodok). The following were written here: “The Sad Detective” (1987), “The Seeing Staff” (1988), “Cursed and Killed” (1993-1994), “So I Want to Live” (1995), numerous stories, “The Cheerful Soldier”, “Overtone” " In total, he created 373 works. This little house has seen many guests. Presidents Gorbachev, Yeltsin, writers Solzhenitsyn and Rasputin, director Mikhalkov, and many other famous people drank tea here.
In the courtyard, surrounded by cedars and apple trees planted by Viktor Petrovich, a bronze sculptural composition (authors - sculptor V. Zelenov and artist V. Girich) is installed on a low pedestal: the writer sits with his wife and friend Maria Semyonovna on a bronze bench in front of the house. Maria Semyonovna looks at her husband enthusiastically - being in the shadow of her brilliant husband, she wrote her books. The master himself is smiling, open-minded, broad, accessible and simple, thoughtful from the outside - just as his friends knew him.
Near the sculpture there is a wide cedar tree, which the writer planted and cared for with all his soul. Viktor Petrovich died in late November, and the following spring the cedar tree planted by his hands fell ill. No matter how hard the caretakers of the house tried, they could not save the sad tree until a small bronze monument to Viktor Petrovich and Maria Semyonovna appeared next to it. And the cedar came to life, turned green again, and began to bear fruit.
In Astafiev’s house, the writer’s office and upper room were carefully recreated. The original furnishings and personal belongings of the writer are preserved here.
Guest house (just one small room, but very bright and cozy):
On the occasion of the 90th anniversary of Astafiev’s birth, in the spring of 2014, another reconstruction was completed in the memorial complex: two additional buildings were opened, which housed an exhibition and auditorium with a performance area, a play area and a relaxation area with gazebos (this is where the festival I attended was held)
House of grandmother E.P. Potylitsyna
The writer was not yet seven years old when his grandmother, the “general,” as she was called in the village, Ekaterina Petrovna Potylitsyna, took up his upbringing. Astafiev’s brightest book, “The Last Bow,” is dedicated to childhood memories. Grandmother taught Vitya to work: they cultivated a huge breadwinner garden, which Viktor Petrovich immortalized in “Ode to the Russian Garden.” As Viktor Petrovich described this garden, this is how they tend it: two or three beds for onions, the closest bed for the children’s treat - carrots, a tomato bed in the sunniest place, and for some reason a cucumber bed closer to the gate.
When the idea was born to turn my grandmother’s house into a museum, it turned out that it could not be restored. It was decided to demolish it and rebuild a typical manor house from the 1920s and 1930s. The estate was restored to the smallest detail based on the memories of eyewitnesses and the writings of the writer. Baba Katya's house stood for 200 years, the wood was rotten through and through. The builders built an exact copy of the old house using ancient technologies: as expected, the first four crowns were cut from Siberian larch, the rest from pine.
Although there are practically no genuine items belonging to the Potylitsyn family here, the furnishings of the house have been restored based on the story “The Last Bow” by Viktor Astafiev. There are exactly 28 steps on the stairs leading to the basement - once Vitya got tired of sorting through the potatoes here and out of boredom counted the steps.
Grandmother's house: (in the photographs - on the street and in the barn - tables are set for festival participants)
And when I approached the bedroom, I shuddered: the furnishings in the room seemed so familiar and close. My grandmother had exactly the same Singer machine. And the valances, pillowcases, patchwork blankets, embroideries and homemade runners seem to have returned from my childhood (all this was in my grandparents’ house)
There is a winter hut in the yard, flocks for livestock, sheds and a large shed. To the left of the gate is a cellar:
Numerous tools and household items of peasants of the last century are collected under the canopy. Most of these things are still used in villages:
For the first time (!) I saw a village sleigh
and I haven’t seen a cart many times in my life
The museum complex is headed by Viktor Petrovich’s cousin, Galina Nikolaevna Krasnobrovkina (née Potylitsyna). I had the opportunity to meet and talk with this amazing woman, the true custodian of Astafiev’s legacy.
Victor Astafiev was born on May 1, 1924 in the village of Ovsyanka, near Krasnoyarsk, in the family of Lydia Ilyinichna Potylitsina and Pyotr Pavlovich Astafiev. He was the third child in the family, but his two older sisters died in infancy. A few years after the birth of his son, Pyotr Astafiev goes to prison with the wording “sabotage.” During Lydia's next trip to her husband, the boat in which she, among others, was sailing, capsized. Lydia Potylitsina fell into the water, caught her scythe on a floating boom and drowned. Her body was found only a few days later. Victor was then seven years old. After the death of his mother, Victor lived with her parents - Ekaterina Petrovna and Ilya Evgrafovich Potylitsin. Viktor Astafiev spoke about his childhood spent with his grandmother Katerina Petrovna and which left bright memories in the writer’s soul in the first part of his autobiography “The Last Bow”.
After leaving prison, the father of the future writer married for the second time. Deciding to go after the “northern wild money”, Pyotr Astafiev with his wife and two sons - Victor and newborn Nikolai - goes to Igarka, where the dispossessed family of his father, Pavel Astafiev, was sent. The following summer, Victor’s father entered into an agreement with the Igarsk fish factory and took his son on a commercial fishing trip to a place between the villages of Karasino and Poloy. After the end of the fishing season, returning to Igarka, Pyotr Astafiev ended up in the hospital. Abandoned by his stepmother and relatives, Victor ended up on the street. For several months he lived in an abandoned hairdresser's building, but after a serious incident at school he was sent to an orphanage.
In 1942 he volunteered for the front. He studied military affairs at the infantry school in Novosibirsk. In the spring of 1943 he was sent to the active army. He was a driver, artillery reconnaissance officer, and signalman. Until the end of the war, Viktor Astafiev remained a simple soldier. In 1944, he was shell-shocked in Poland[source?].
After demobilization in 1945, he went to the Urals, to the city of Chusovoy, Perm Region.
In 1945, Astafyev married Maria Semyonovna Koryakina. They had three children: daughters Lydia (born and died in 1947) and Irina (1948-1987) and son Andrei (born in 1950).
In Chusovoy, Astafiev worked as a mechanic, auxiliary worker, teacher, station attendant, and storekeeper.
In 1951, Astafiev’s first story, “Civilian Man,” was published in the Chusovskoy Rabochiy newspaper. Since 1951, he worked in the editorial office of this newspaper, writing reports, articles, and stories. His first book, “Until Next Spring,” was published in Perm in 1953.
Monument to the writer near the Krasnoyarsk-Abakan highway
In 1958, Astafiev was admitted to the Union of Writers of the USSR. In 1959-1961 he studied at the Higher Literary Courses in Moscow.
From 1989 to 1991, Astafiev was a People's Deputy of the USSR.
In 1993 he signed the “Letter of the 42”.
Hero of Socialist Labor, Laureate of the USSR State Prize (1978, 1991), Triumph Prize, State Prize of Russia (1996, 2003 (posthumously)), Pushkin Prize of the Alfred Tepfer Foundation (Germany; 1997).
Born into a simple working-class family. At the age of seven he was left without parents. The father was convicted of “sabotage.” Mother drowned in the Yenisei River. Vitya’s grandmother, Katerina Petrovna, was involved in raising Vitya for some time. She became his guardian angel. The grandmother noticed the boy’s writing abilities and his boundless imagination and called him a “liar.” This was a bright and happy period in V. Astafiev’s childhood, which he described in his autobiographical story “The Last Bow.”
In 1936, the father became seriously ill, and the stepmother did not take care of her stepson. The boy felt abandoned and began to wander. In 1937 he was sent to an orphanage.
At the boarding school, teacher Ignatiy Dmitrievich Rozhdestvensky noticed Victor’s literary abilities and helped develop them. An essay about his favorite lake, written by Astafiev, was published in the school magazine. It formed the basis of the first story “Vasyutkino Lake”.
I. Rozhdestvensky wrote about V. Astafiev’s childhood and teenage years: “... he was a mischievous and reckless teenager, he loved to read books, sing, chat, invent, laugh and ski.”
Parents
Father - Pyotr Pavlovich Astafiev
Mother: Lydia Ilyinichna Potylitsyna
Grandfather (maternal) - Ilya Evgrafovich
Grandmother (maternal) – Ekaterina Petrovna
Education
He received his primary six-year education in the city of Igarka, where he lived with his father and stepmother. Studied at a boarding school. In Krasnoyarsk he graduated from a factory training school. He worked at a railway station as a train compiler.
V. Astafiev did not receive a literary education. But throughout his life he improved his professionalism by studying at the Moscow Higher Literary Courses. Victor Astafiev is considered a self-taught writer.
Family
Wife – Koryakina Maria Semenovna
V. Astafiev met his future wife at the front in 1943. She was a nurse. Together we survived all the hardships of military life. They got married after the war, in 1945, and did not separate for 57 years.
Children: daughters – Lydia and Irina, son – Andrey. The first daughter died in infancy. The second daughter died suddenly in 1987, leaving little grandchildren Vitya and Polya. The grandchildren were later raised by grandmother Maria and grandfather Vitya.
Activity
In 1942, V. Astafiev voluntarily went to the front. He was a simple ordinary soldier. In 1943 he was awarded the medal "For Courage". In battle, under heavy artillery fire, he restored telephone communication four times.
In the post-war years he ended up in the town of Chusovoy, Perm Territory. There he attended a literary circle at the Chusovskoy Rabochiy newspaper. Once, in a fit of inspiration, I wrote the story “A Civilian” in one night. That's how it began literary work in the newspaper.
At the end of the 50s, the first book of stories for children was published. Essays and stories began to be published in almanacs and magazines. In 1954, the writer’s favorite story, “The Shepherd and the Shepherdess,” was published. This period was marked as the flowering of lyrical prose in the work of V. Astafiev and the beginning of his wide fame and popularity.
In the 60s, the Astafiev family moved to Perm, and later to Vologda. These years were especially fruitful for the writer. By 1965, the “Zatesi” cycle had developed - lyrical miniatures, reflections on life, which are united by one thought of the author - “to convince the reader to hear everyone’s pain.” The following stories are being written: “The Pass”, “Starodub”, “Theft”, “The Last Bow”.
In the 70s, the writer increasingly turned to childhood memories. Publishes the stories “The Feast After the Victory”, “The Crucian Carp’s Death”, “Without Shelter”, “Burn, Burn Clearly”, etc. Begins work on the story “The Sighted Staff”. During this period, V. Astafiev created vivid works: the stories “Ode to the Russian Vegetable Garden” and “The Tsar Fish”.
The uniqueness of the story “The King Fish” shocked critics of that time with the depth of the environmental problems posed in the work. In 1973, the magazine “Our Contemporary” began publishing individual stories and chapters from “The Tsar Fish,” but with great limitations in the text. Strict censorship distorted the author’s original plan, which upset V. Astafiev. The writer put the story aside for many years. Only in 1977, “The Tsar Fish” was published by the publishing house “Young Guard” in the complete version of the author.
In 1980, V. Astafiev decided to return to his native land in Krasnoyarsk.
In the 80s and 90s, being in places dear to his heart, V. Astafiev created with great enthusiasm. Many new stories about childhood have been created: “Stryapukhina’s Joy”, “Pestrukha”, “Zaberega”, etc. Work continues on the story “The Sighted Staff”, first published in 1988 and awarded the USSR State Prize in 1991.
Chapters of the story about childhood “The Last Bow” are being written, and in two books it is published by the Sovremennik publishing house. In 1989, the story, supplemented by new chapters, was published by the Young Guard publishing house in three books.
In 1985 – 1989 the plan of the novel “The Sad Detective” and such stories as “Bear's Blood”, “Living Life”, “The Blind Fisherman”, “The Smile of the She-Wolf” and many others are realized.
In 1991 – 19994 Work is underway on the novel “Cursed and Killed.” Demonstrating the senseless cruelty of a repressive wartime system, this novel evokes a strong emotional outburst among readers. The courage and realism of V. Astafiev surprises society, but at the same time recognizes his truthfulness. For the novel, the writer receives a well-deserved award - the State Prize of Russia in 1994.
In 1997 – 1998 An edition of the Collected Works of V. Astafiev appears in 15 volumes.
- V. Astafiev and his wife Maria Semyonovna looked at life completely differently. He loved country life, but she did not. He created prose from his soul, and she created it from a sense of self-affirmation. He liked to drink, and was not indifferent to other women, she did not understand this and was jealous. She wanted his devotion to the family, and he left her. He returned, and she forgave, because she loved devotedly.
- in 2004 on the Krasnoyarsk-Abakan highway, near the village. Sliznevo, Krasnoyarsk Territory, on an observation deck near the Yenisei River, a sculpture of a mighty sturgeon was erected on the top of a cliff. This monument is called “The Fish King” in honor of the story of the same name by V. Astafiev.
- V. Astafiev invented a new literary form: “zatesi” - a kind of short stories.
- in 2009, a decision was made to posthumously award V. Astafiev the Alexander Solzhenitsyn Prize. The event took place in Moscow at the “Russian Abroad” library-fund. The prize was 25 thousand dollars. Literary critic Pavel Basinsky stated that the diploma and money will be given to the writer’s widow at the “Astafiev Readings” on the occasion of V. Astafiev’s 85th birthday. The wording of the award is interesting: “To Viktor Petrovich Astafiev, a writer of global scale, a fearless soldier of literature, who sought light and goodness in the mutilated destinies of nature and man.”
An unfortunate fact from the life of a writer
In 2001, V. Astafiev became seriously ill and spent a lot of time in hospitals in Krasnoyarsk. A lot of money was required for treatment abroad. The writer's friends and comrades turned to the Krasnoyarsk Regional Council of Deputies for help. In response, we received a refusal to allocate Money and unfair accusations against the writer of betrayal and distortion Russian history in his works. All this worsened V. Astafiev’s well-being. The writer died on November 29, 2001.
Famous sayings about Viktor Astafiev
“He writes only what he lives by, what is his day and life, his love and hate, his own heart.”(V. Kurbatov)
“You cannot find such a bright, clear understanding of national, moral norms as Astafiev’s, which never become outdated, enter our soul, shape it, teach us to appreciate absolute values.”(V.M. Yaroshevskaya)
“Astafiev is a writer of the purest tones of truth, no matter how alarming and even terrible it may be.” (A. Kondratovich)
The reason for the fame of Viktor Astafiev
In the works of V. Astafiev one could clearly hear the global nature of the problems of society and humanity as a whole. Wartime events were reflected truthfully and realistically. The writer's literary presentation touched the soul ordinary people and even critics.
Literature Awards
1975 – State Prize of the RSFSR named after. M. Gorky for the stories “The Pass”, “Theft”, “The Last Bow”, “The Shepherd and the Shepherdess”
1978 – USSR State Prize for the story “The Tsar Fish”
1991 – USSR State Prize for the novel “Sighted Staff”
1994 – Triumph Award
1995 – State Prize of the Russian Federation for the novel “Cursed and Killed”
1997 – Pushkin Prize of the Hamburg Alfred Tepfer Foundation for total literary merit
2009 – Alexander Solzhenitsyn Prize /posthumously/
It is generally accepted that the work of Viktor Astafiev is autobiographical. There is certainly a reason for this. Any work, in essence, is unthinkable outside the circumstances and events of the life of its author, even if it is dedicated historical theme. But it would be more than strange to consider the image of Bagrov’s grandson or Vitya Potylitsyn an exact copy of one character - the writer himself who created them. And the stories in which these heroes act are different from one another, and the heroes themselves, who embody different author’s goals, are different and if they are similar in any way, then perhaps in their lyricism.
Astafiev's heroes are overwhelmingly his contemporaries. Their spiritual growth, their experiences and shocks naturally corresponded life experience their creator, but were never limited to this experience, did not exhaust it, since these heroes were included in literature for different stages our history and different periods writer's life
The manners of Russian literature are to write characters and circumstances of life, and not to force shocking, “postmodern” plots out of nothing, out of much reflected light, in literary salons.
The appeal to the work of V. P. Astafiev is due to the extraordinary personality of the writer himself, as well as the increased interest in Lately to his works, which teach us wisdom, mutual understanding and forgiveness.
Chapter 1. Grandmother - an artistically convincing type of Russian life
In the narratives of Russian writers about childhood, V. P. Astafiev’s book “The Last Bow” occupies a worthy place. Organically absorbing the achievements of Russian prose from Aksakov to Shmelev, it at the same time represents a special, unique poetic world. In “The Last Bow,” Tolstoy’s dialectic of the soul, the “purity of moral feeling,” Gorky’s “cruel” realism, Bunin’s subtle lyricism, and Shmelev’s spirituality of objects and everyday details are perceptible. But the plot and compositional structure of the book, the breadth and depth of coverage of life material indicate an original artistic phenomenon.
In returning to childhood, in touching a child’s soul, responsive, trusting and open to the world, perceiving it as something extraordinary, fabulous, Astafiev sees the best and, perhaps, the only opportunity to become human.
The most charming, most significant, convincing and captivating image that runs through the entire story “The Last Bow” is, of course, the image of grandmother Ekaterina Petrovna. It is extremely multifaceted in V. Astafiev’s depiction, three-dimensional and plastic.
Ekaterina Petrovna, as her grandson once discovered, “is a very respected person in the village.” Noisy, brawling, and in her own way a unique village socialite, Ekaterina Petrovna, cool when necessary, stern and decisive, but invariably full of kindness and inexhaustible optimism.
In the story “The Horse with a Pink Mane”, having dishonored his grandmother by deceit (the strawberry incident), Vitka awaits fair punishment. And indeed, Ekaterina Petrovna, justifying the nickname “general,” desperately scolds Vitka. The shamed and offended grandson feels remorse.
But what a stunning surprise the wonderful fairy-tale picture was for him: “A white horse with a pink mane was galloping on pink hooves across a scraped kitchen table, as if across a vast land, with arable lands, meadows, and roads.”
The dream gingerbread promised by grandma in exchange for strawberries, which Vitka, for obvious reasons, has already said goodbye to. If we translate the grandmother’s behavior (she still gives the gingerbread) into the language of “unofficial pedagogy,” as A. Lanshchikov does, then the grandmother punishes her grandson with kindness. Indeed, Vitka learns a lesson in “high ethics.” And it’s not just about understanding that you can’t deceive or betray loved ones, but about realizing the need to forgive. And grandmother forgives Vitya both out of her natural kindness and pity, and out of her ability to sensitively and subtly understand the orphan soul of the child. That’s why: “How many years have passed! How many events have passed? My grandfather is no longer alive, my grandmother is no longer alive, and my life is coming to an end, but I still can’t forget my grandmother’s gingerbread - that marvelous horse with a pink mane.”
In order to better understand the awareness of students at our school on the issue of associations associated with the word “grandmother,” we conducted a survey. As a result, a generalized portrait was created. So, grandmother - kindness, care, old age, neatness, wisdom, knowledge of medicinal herbs, wrinkles, in a scarf, pies, affectionate, fair, with glasses, prayer, gray hair, kind wrinkled, hard-working hands, fairy tales, a lullaby, mittens, felt boots, woolen socks.
Let's correlate the associations with the specific image of the heroine (external portrait, internal qualities, author's attitude).
Grandma Astafieva Ekaterina Petrovna combines many of these qualities and appears as a guardian in the stories “Grandma’s Holiday”, “Photo in Which I’m Not in”, “Horse with a Pink Mane” folk wisdom. Let us remember how she treated the boy, how she steamed him in the bathhouse (the “caring” association). Grandmother knew many remedies for various diseases (the association “wisdom”). “At home, my grandmother gave me a spoonful of nasty vodka infused with borax to warm up my insides, and pickled lingonberries.”
Note that the grandmother, having returned from the city, nevertheless gave the boy the treasured horse with a pink mane (the association “wisdom”). Let us remember how she accommodated guests (the “care” association), and the grandmother with great diligence “knitted rolls, cut nuts” (the “pies” association).
Everything about his grandmother is dear to Viktor Petrovich, which is why he “builds” her image so diligently, so carefully, bit by bit.
V. Astafiev can suddenly concentrate in one small episode all the simple and majestic beauty of Ekaterina Petrovna’s “big heart” - in an episode that organically echoes the chapter - the introduction, where it is openly said about the purpose of art and the sanctity of a great feeling for the homeland. Here - in the chapter “Grandma’s Holiday” - about the same thing, but passed through the grandmother’s soul:
“The song about the river is drawn-out, majestic. Grandmother takes her out more and more confidently, making it more convenient for her to be picked up. And in the song she makes sure that the children feel good, that everything fits them well, and that the song awakens an indelible memory of their home, of the nest from which they flew, but which is not and will not be better.
The writer’s skill in identifying the hidden springs of the actions and deeds of numerous characters in the story is revealed in all its internal completed episodes, but most fully, perhaps, where we're talking about about the songs that were performed at the holiday.
The songs perceived by the boy are so physically tangible that they cannot but be transmitted to us, and his poetic mode itself speaks of the boy’s emotionality and of the true place of song art in the peasant environment:
“For some reason, my back immediately began to ache, and a chill ran through my whole body like a scattering of thorns from the enthusiasm that arose around me. The closer my grandmother brought the song to a common voice, the more intense her voice became and the paler her face, the thicker the needles pierced me, it seemed as if the blood thickened and stopped in my veins.”
We also noticed one feature: the author very sweetly describes grandma’s flower pots. Ekaterina Petrovna loves beauty, flowers bring her joy: “Flowers sprinkled the windows, the bulb folded dark gramophones, dropped dried petals on the window, waited in the wings to please people.”
Here is V. Kurbatov’s opinion in relation to the image of Ekaterina Petrovna: “ main character“Bow” - Vitka’s grandmother Ekaterina
That is why Petrovna will become our common Russian grandmother, who will gather in herself, in a rare living completeness, everything that still remains in native land strong, hereditary, native, which we recognize within ourselves by some kind of extra-verbal instinct as our own, as if it was shining for all of us and given in advance and forever. He will not embellish anything in it, he will leave behind his storm of character, his grumpiness, and his indispensable desire to be the first to point out everything and to give orders to everyone in the village (one word – General). And she fights and suffers for her grandchildren,
10 bursts into anger and tears, and begins to talk about life, and now, it turns out, there are no hardships in it for grandma.”
Behind the ethical sketches, so innocently charming, deep philosophy emerges. The material world (a marvelous gingerbread or new tights pants), like poetic pictures of nature, are not valuable in themselves for the author. They act as some kind of mediators of warm human communication, spiritual contact between people, introducing the child to true values being. And, becoming spiritualized in this process, the thing already acquires a certain moral meaning, lingering in the memory for a long time.
Chapter 2. Folk sayings as artistic and expressive means that make up the image of the grandmother in the stories “Grandma’s Holiday”, “Photograph in which I am not”, “Horse with a Pink Mane”
The homeland is dear to the heart not for its local beauty, not for its clear sky, not for its pleasant climate, but for its captivating memories surrounding, so to speak, the morning and the cradle of humanity.
N. Karamzin
It is known that sometimes works of art provide more material, factors for thought, for understanding the historical period than other scientific studies. “The Last Bow” belongs to such books. This is a kind of encyclopedia of the Siberian village of the thirties of this century. Almost the entire range of problems that the Siberian peasant had to face in those years is covered.
There is a bright face in our soul that always attracts, is always infinitely dear. For the writer, this light was the grandmother. He considers her his main educator. The image of Ekaterina Petrovna runs through the entire book and is its core. Everything about this woman is touching: rare hard work, a gentle disposition, boundless kindness, high justice, tears of tenderness and hope for reward in the next world, for earthly torment. And most importantly - ineradicable active love for the orphan - grandson. Almost everything in the book - native Oatmeal, its people, the land of the writer’s fathers and grandfathers. He visibly and recognizably transferred much of what he saw and heard from his fellow countrymen into “The Last Bow.”
Perhaps it would not be worth dwelling in such detail on the meaning of folk sayings if they were not so organically connected with the general image of the grandmother in the stories of V.P. Astafiev.
The ethical completeness and completeness of the stories “rests” on the beauty of the grandmother’s character - this is indisputable, but also on the charm of the narrator himself, who is present everywhere, participates in events or acutely experiences them. The narrator's memory and eye for detail captivates.
Ten years after the appearance of the story “Grandma’s Holiday,” the author returned to it in print—no, he didn’t rewrite it, but edited it, thereby achieving great expressiveness. Nothing changed significantly, but something was removed or added, and the picture became different in lighting, in tempo, in unity with everything else previously found.
The heroes of the story more often than before began to speak with proverbs, proverbs, sayings, aphorisms, or decorated their speech with fancy verbal figures.
It was not in vain that the demanding artist returned to the text of ten years ago: an edit, inconspicuous at first glance, enriched the story, made it more perfect in form and deeper.
The grandmother's speech is expressive in all the stories. For example, the sayings “he looks at the forest - the forest withers”, “the navel is a knot, the legs are round, the spirit of bread is a plowman, a plowman!”, “A husband and wife are one Satan” (“Grandma’s Holiday”). Distorted commonly used, dialect words, peculiar folk expressions, signs, sayings: “rematism” (rheumatism), “pretty” (better), “tutoka” (here, here), “andelas”
(angels), “don’t get cold” (don’t catch a cold), “molchi” (be silent), “robenok” (child), “baushka” (grandmother); “it was twisted with a hook”, “the moss sucks up the dampness”, “the ember does not allow the glass to freeze” (“Photograph in which I am not”); “eroplan” (airplane), “hot” (want), “headquarters” (so that), “kulturnay” (cultural), “now” (now) (“Horse with a pink mane”).
Having gone to the festival “Astafievskaya Spring - 2008, 2009, 2010”, we interviewed workers of the library - museum of V.P. Astafiev in Ovsyanka, residents of the village itself about the role of folk sayings as artistic and expressive means that make up the image of the grandmother in the stories “Grandma’s Holiday” , “Photograph in which I am not”, “Horse with a pink mane.” They are all unanimous in their opinion that the image of the grandmother is the leading image in the stories “Grandma’s Holiday”, “The Photograph in which I am not”, “The Horse with a Pink Mane”. Having visited the house-museum of grandmother Ekaterina Petrovna and talked with the writer’s cousin G.N. Krasnobrovkina, we seemed to feel the presence of the mistress of the house with her orders and covenants, so we wanted to see our grandmothers with their jokes, teachings, which we sometimes take offense at without any reason reason. It’s a pity that my grandmother is no longer here, but when reading the stories of V.P. Astafiev, I imagine her eyes, the little laughs in the corners of her mouth when reading fairy tales to me before bed.
Conclusion
Having studied the material on the work of V. P. Astafiev, it should be noted that:
In the writer’s works “Grandma’s Holiday”, “Photograph in which I am not in”, “Horse with a Pink Mane”, the image of the grandmother is one of the leading images;
The grandmother’s peculiar language, filled with proverbs, proverbs, sayings, aphorisms or fancy verbal figures that decorate her speech, reveals to us, the readers, the beauty and unique language of Siberia.
Viktor Petrovich Astafiev presented his grandmother in his works as one of the main characters of his stories. It seems that the memory itself, which so pampered him, so tenacious and capacious, awakened precisely after the death of his mother, when he was already called “Vitka Katerinin” in Ovsyanka.
The image of the grandmother, which runs like a red line through the prose of V.P. Astafiev, does not leave anyone indifferent, and in the thoughts of the readers a sweet image of the grandmother of their childhood appears. Thus, the writer’s stories have a practical orientation, awakening in the heart of every reader feelings of deep respect and admiration for herself. main woman- to a grandmother who is able to forgive any sins, scold for disobedience and immediately caress and warm with a kind word.
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