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Artistic features of fables and Krylov. Fable as a literary genre and its characteristic features

It was the language of Krylov’s fables that became a true discovery for Russian literature, paving the way for further development of prose, drama and poetry. Before him, no one wrote so simply, accessiblely and accurately. The basis of the language of Krylov’s fables is a folk colloquial language with a plentiful inclusion of vernacular (“bawls nonsense”, “not for the future”, “breath stole”), phraseological units, proverbs and sayings (“The master’s work is afraid”, “A swallow alone does not make spring”). . It is not for nothing that Belinsky saw in Krylov’s fables a trait generally characteristic of the Russian person, “the ability to express himself briefly, clearly and at the same time in a curly manner.” The great Russian fabulist replenished the Russian language with many aphorisms and catchphrases (“I didn’t even notice the elephant,” “But the casket just opened,” “Yes, the cart is still there”), which have firmly entered into speech and enriched the modern Russian language.

Artistic features of Krylov's fables

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The most famous epic genre studied in elementary school is the fable. A fable is:

1. A short story, usually poetic, is usually satirical in nature.

2. A moralizing and satirical short story in prose and verse, in which human shortcomings are depicted under the guise of pictures from the life of animals.

3. The genre of didactic poetry, a short narrative form complete with a plot and subject to allegorical (allegorical, visual, pictorial expression of abstract concepts through a specific image) interpretation as an illustration of a well-known everyday or moral rule.

4. Literary genre; a short, usually poetic story, in an allegorical form, satirically depicting human actions and relationships.

Origin of the genre

Fable is one of the oldest literary genres. In Ancient Greece, Aesop (VI-V centuries BC) was famous, who wrote fables in prose; in Rome - Phaedrus (1st century AD). The most prominent fabulist of modern times was the French poet J. Lafontaine (17th century).

In Russia, the development of fables dates back to the mid-18th - early 19th centuries. and is associated with the names of A.P. Sumarokova (“parables”), I.I. Khemnitsera, A.E. Izmailova, I.I. Dmitriev, although the first experiments in poetic fables were back in the 17th century. with Simeon of Polotsk and in the 1st half of the 18th century. at A.D. Cantemira. In Russian poetry, fable free verse is developed, conveying the intonations of a relaxed and crafty tale.

Fables by I.A. Krylov, with their realistic liveliness, common sense humor and excellent language, marked the flowering of this genre in Russia. In Soviet times, the fables of D. Bedny, S. Mikhalkov, F. Krivin and others gained popularity.

There are two most famous concepts of the origin of the fable. The first is represented by the German school of Otto Crusius, A. Hausrath and others. According to this concept, in a fable the narrative is primary, and morality is secondary; the genre comes from the animal tale, and the animal tale comes from myth. The second concept was put forward by the American scientist B.E. Perry. According to her, morality is primary in a fable; the fable is close to comparisons, proverbs and sayings; like them, this genre arises as an auxiliary means of argumentation.

Purpose of the fable - making fun of human shortcomings, vices, negative social phenomena. The characters in works of this genre are animals, plants, and things. Characteristics of the characters are not given in detail. It is realized not through actions, but through such detailing on the part of the author.

In a fable, a distinction is made between a narration and a conclusion from it, i.e. a certain provision (moral conclusion, aphorism, rule, advice, instruction) attached to the narrative. This conclusion - the so-called moral - is usually added to the fable at the end, sometimes at the beginning. Most often it is contained in a hidden form, as easily implied in connection with the events and conversations described. Morality can be expressed as explicitly, i.e. the author of the fable, and implicitly, that is, it is deduced by the reader himself. In Russian literature, Krylov brought the fable to the greatest artistic perfection. His fables are distinguished by the accuracy of folk sayings, a cheerful and mocking tone, and the practicality of the general spirit. The moral of Krylov's fables belongs to the field of worldly wisdom, aimed at encouraging skills useful in life.

The fable, in terms of the role that animals have in it, goes back to the legends of primitive times, when the animation of animals was imagined to be completely identical with human animation and conscious will, reason, etc. were attributed to animals.

The fable, as a rule, is built on the basis of contrasting paired characteristics with opposite meanings: intelligence - stupidity, greed - generosity, hard work - laziness, simplicity - cunning, etc.

Having studied and analyzed scientific literary sources, we summarized the information received, putting everything in Table 1.

a trait generally characteristic of the Russian person, “the ability to express himself briefly, clearly and at the same time in a curly manner”;. The great Russian fabulist replenished the Russian language with many aphorisms and catchphrases (“I didn’t even notice the elephant”;, “But the casket just opened”; “Yes, the cart is still there”);), which firmly entered into speech and enriched the modern Russian language .

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features of Krylov's fables
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artistic features of the fable
features of Krylov's fable
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The name of the great Russian fabulist I. A. Krylov stands among the names of the people’s favorite poets, the founders of Russian literature. Many generations have been and are being raised on them.

Krylov's fables have gained worldwide recognition. They combine harsh truth with the deep mental picturesqueness of language. Krylov’s short and apt sayings have long since become proverbs and sayings, and have become national property during the life of the fabulist.

The fame of the fabulist has largely pushed aside in our perception Krylov the playwright, prose writer, and lyricist, although Krylov’s works of the late 18th century are of outstanding interest, because along with Radishchev, Novikov, Fonvizin, the young Krylov is one of the most significant representatives of the satirical movement in Russian literature of the second half of the 18th century century.

But only in the fable was it considered possible to use colloquial language, vernacular and dialecticisms, which I. A. Krylov defended. He used spoken language not for the sake of rudeness, but for the sake of accuracy and special expressiveness.

The main compositional feature of the fable as a genre is its duality. A fable consists of obligatory two parts (they may be unequal in volume): a story and a moral conclusion (morality, edification). This duality forms a combination of two principles in the fable genre: aesthetic and logical. One is expressed in artistic form (paintings, images), the other - in the form of an idea, conclusion, thought.

The organization of speech in the fable is based on the author’s lively address to the reader, on the one hand, and on the dialogue of the characters, on the other. Dialogue in a fable is almost always present.

The fables created by Krylov were written in a free (fable) rhythm, iambic in different feet. This rhythm allows you to pause, say something quickly, highlight something in your speech, that is, convey the changing intonations of live speech.

As for Krylov’s language, we all speak this language from childhood, we easily learn it and - it turns out! - We know him little and can say almost nothing about him. What is language? How is it built? How is it developing? What parts does it consist of? How do these parts interact? How is it related to human activity? Is it possible to improve a language? We will try to answer all these and many other questions in this work.

Many people want to see Krylov as a fabulist, but there is something more in him. Fables are only a form; What is important is the spirit that would also be expressed in another form. Krylov's fables are, of course, fables, but moreover, they are something more than fables. . . Krylov's fables are not just fables, they are stories, a comedy, a humorous essay, an evil satire - in a word, whatever you want, just not just fables.

Krylov himself, by reading his fables, emphasized the simplicity, naturalness of their folk speech, their realism. All the memories of his performance of his fables speak of this. So, S. Zhikharev, after listening to Krylov’s reading, wrote down: “And how this Krylov reads! Clearly, simply, without any pretentiousness and yet with extraordinary expressiveness; Every verse is etched into the memory. After him, really, I’m ashamed to read.”

The naturalness and simplicity of his reading were so great that his performance of his fables was sometimes not called “reading,” but was said to be “telling his fables.”

Krylov's fables do not age. Each new generation is brought up on them; they have become part of the national culture fund. The lines of Krylov’s fables, their very names, have become familiar, entered into speech, are quoted in newspapers, and are familiar to both young and old.

Krylov's fables paved the way for Pushkin, Gogol, Koltsov, Nekrasov and many other poets, introducing them to the pure source of folk speech, showing an example of realistic painting and verbal mastery. That is why the Krylov tradition does not die out to this day.

Krylov's knowledge as a fabulist lies in the fact that he was able to combine poetry and simplicity based on colloquial speech in his work. Before Krylov, in the era of classicism, spoken language was allowed only in low genres. Krylov proved the possibility of using spoken language in poetic speech. He managed to create an image of folk speech that was not confined to any one style, but could be freely used in various stylistic layers. Krylov's main merit was that he expanded the genre boundaries of the fable, giving it philosophical and social content, incorporating the advanced ideas of the century into a small form. “The poet and the sage merged into one,” wrote N.V. Gogol. Krylov's fable work anticipated and prepared the transition of Russian literature to realism (thus, the connection between Krylov's fables and the first realistic comedy by A. S. Griboyedov, “Woe from Wit” is obvious). Realistic images in Krylov's fables could only arise because the author created a poetic language that allowed these realist tendencies to be embodied.

So, the topic of our thesis is “Linguistic features of I. A. Krylov’s fables.” The relevance of this topic is undeniable, since:

- firstly, the linguistic features of I. A. Krylov’s fables have not been sufficiently studied and require further special study. After all, change is an inevitable companion of linguistic history. The modern Russian literary language did not appear suddenly; it reflected imperceptible accumulations and shifts that occurred over many centuries;
- secondly, a more complete and deeper understanding of the ideological and figurative content of fables is facilitated not only by literary, but also by linguistic analysis of a literary text. Understanding the state of linguistic thought is at the core of our work. All sections of the thesis are characterized by a multidimensional approach to linguistic units, which makes it possible to identify the relationships and transition of linguistic phenomena and trends in their development, as well as features of functioning in various sociolinguistic conditions.

In accordance with this approach, we analyzed the literature: monographs, textbooks; works that have become classics and represent the Russian linguistic tradition; studies of recent years, reflecting modern trends, where the most valuable information is available on the problems studied.

Thanks to the research of A. V. Desnitsky, S. F. Eleonsky, M. N. Morozov, we understand a lot better, as we have come closer to a historical understanding of Krylov’s work as a whole and to a correct idea of the various stages of his creative path, the linguistic features of Krylov’s fables .

The author of the book “Ivan Andreevich Krylov” A.V. Desnitsky (10) introduces the reader to the fascinating world of literary research. He tries, using contradictory printed sources, memoirs, documents, works of art, to recreate the biography of the great Russian fabulist, playwright, journalist and poet I. A. Krylov, which remains largely unclear and “mysterious” for modern researchers; outline the socio-political, ideological, moral and cultural atmosphere in Russia at the end of the 18th - beginning of the 19th centuries. On a number of issues not studied in literary science, the author expresses his original point of view.

The books by S. F. Eleonsky “Literature and Folk Art” (12) highlight the problem of the interrelations and mutual influences of literature and folk art, and are given in a sequential historical and literary order of analysis of the works of Russian fiction that are closest to folklore. Krylov drew proverbs, sayings and jokes not so much from books as directly from the people, and widely used them in the verbal painting of his fables. When creating images of animals, for example, the crafty Fox or the hardworking Bear: “The Fox will hide from the rain and under the harrow”, “The Fox will not dirty its tail”, “Rules like a bear bends an arc in the forest”, “Opression does not soar, but breaks - doesn’t bother.” S. F. Eleonsky said: “all this is expressed in such original images, inexpressible in any language in the world, that Pushkin himself is not complete without Krylov.”

In the book by M. N. Morozova “Poetics and Stylistics of Russian Literature,” the language of Krylov’s fables is examined in various, sometimes bizarre, forms; in other words, each fact, each linguistic phenomenon is considered on its own, in isolation from others and from the general course of linguistic development. The author in this book sets the task of giving a complete and systematic description of the morphological analysis of words as parts of speech, focusing on difficult cases of qualification of linguistic phenomena due to polysemy and homonymy.

Artistic features. Krylov's skill as a fabulist remains unsurpassed. He managed to turn the conventionally didactic genre into a form of truly realistic works, anticipating many of the discoveries of Griboyedov and Pushkin. In his fables, Krylov used all his previous literary experience: from dramaturgy he takes the sharpness and dynamism of the plot, skill in constructing dialogue, and speech characteristics of the characters; from prose - the simplicity and naturalness of the story, the psychological authenticity of the motivation for the characters’ behavior; from folklore - folk images and language. It was the language of Krylov’s fables that became a true discovery for Russian literature, paving the way for further development of prose, drama and poetry. Before him, no one wrote so simply, accessiblely and accurately. The basis of the language of Krylov’s fables is a folk colloquial language with a rich inclusion of vernacular (“bawls nonsense”, “not for the future”, “breath stole”), phraseological units, proverbs and sayings (“The master’s work is afraid”, “A swallow alone does not make spring” ). It is not for nothing that Belinsky saw in Krylov’s fables a trait generally characteristic of the Russian person, “the ability to express himself briefly, clearly and at the same time in a curly manner.” The great Russian fabulist replenished the Russian language with many aphorisms and catchphrases (“I didn’t even notice the elephant,” “But the little chest just opened,” “Yes, the cart is still there”), which have firmly entered into speech and enriched the modern Russian language.

A fable is a short story, most often in verse, mainly of a satirical nature. A fable is an allegorical genre, so moral and social problems are hidden behind the story about fictional characters (most often animals).

The emergence of the fable as a genre dates back to the 5th century BC, and its creator is considered to be the slave Aesop (VI–V centuries BC), who was unable to express his thoughts differently. This allegorical form of expressing one’s thoughts was later called “Aesopian language.” Only around the 2nd century BC. e. fables began to be written down, including Aesop's fables. In ancient times, a famous fabulist was the ancient Roman poet Horace (65–8 BC).

In the literature of the 17th–18th centuries, ancient subjects were processed.

In the 17th century, the French writer La Fontaine (1621–1695) again revived the fable genre. Many of Jean de La Fontaine's fables are based on the plot of Aesop's fables. But the French fabulist, using the plot of an ancient fable, creates a new fable. Unlike ancient authors, he reflects, describes, comprehends what is happening in the world, and does not strictly instruct the reader. Lafontaine focuses more on the feelings of his characters than on moralizing and satire.

In Germany in the 18th century, the poet Lessing (1729–1781) turned to the fable genre. Like Aesop, he writes fables in prose. For the French poet La Fontaine, the fable was a graceful short story, richly ornamented, a “poetic toy.” It was, in the words of one of Lessing's fables, a hunting bow, so covered with beautiful carvings that it lost its original purpose, becoming a drawing-room decoration. Lessing declares literary war on La Fontaine: “The narrative in a fable,” he writes, “... must be compressed to the utmost possible; deprived of all decorations and figures, it must be content with clarity alone” (“Abhandlungen uber die Fabel” - Discourses on a Fable , 1759).

In Russian literature, the foundations of the national fable tradition were laid by A.P. Sumarokov (1717–1777). His poetic motto was the words: “Until I fade into decrepitude or death, I will not stop writing against vices...”. The pinnacle in the development of the genre were the fables of I.A. Krylov (1769–1844), which absorbed the experience of two and a half millennia. In addition, there are ironic, parody fables by Kozma Prutkov (A.K. Tolstoy and the Zhemchuzhnikov brothers), revolutionary fables by Demyan Bedny. The Soviet poet Sergei Mikhalkov, whom young readers know as the author of "Uncle Styopa", revived the fable genre and found his own interesting style of modern fable.

One of the features of fables is allegory: a certain social phenomenon is shown through conventional images. Thus, behind the image of Leo, traits of despotism, cruelty, and injustice are often discerned. Fox is a synonym for cunning, lies and deceit.

It is worth highlighting such features of the fable:
a) morality;
b) allegorical (allegorical) meaning;
c) the typicality of the situation being described;
d) characters;
d) ridicule of human vices and shortcomings.

V.A. Zhukovsky in the article “On the fable and fables of Krylov” indicated four main features of the fable.
First feature of the fable - character traits, the way in which one animal differs from another: “Animals represent a person in it, but a person only in certain respects, with certain properties, and each animal, having with itself its own integral permanent character, is, so to speak, ready and clear for everyone the image of both a person and the character that belongs to him. You force a wolf to act - I see a bloodthirsty predator; bring a fox onto the stage - I see a flatterer or a deceiver..." Thus, the Donkey personifies stupidity, the Pig - ignorance, the Elephant - clumsiness, and the Dragonfly - frivolity. According to Zhukovsky, the task of a fable is to help the reader, using a simple example, understand a complex everyday situation
Second The peculiarity of the fable, writes Zhukovsky, is that “transferring the reader’s imagination into new dreamy world, you give him the pleasure of comparing the fictional with the existing (of which the former serves as a likeness), and the pleasure of comparison makes morality itself attractive." That is, the reader can find himself in an unfamiliar situation and live it together with the heroes.
Third feature of the fable - moral lesson, a moral that condemns a character's negative quality. "There is a fable moral lesson which you give to man with the help of animals and inanimate things; presenting to him as an example creatures that are different from him in nature and completely alien to him, you spare his pride“, you force him to judge impartially, and he insensitively pronounces a strict sentence on himself,” writes Zhukovsky.
Fourth peculiarity - instead of people in the fable, objects and animals act. “On the stage on which we are accustomed to seeing man acting, you bring, by the power of poetry, such creations that are essentially removed from it by nature, a miraculousness that is just as pleasant for us as in an epic poem the action of supernatural forces, spirits, sylphs, gnomes and others like them. The strikingness of the miraculous is in some way communicated to the morality that is hidden beneath it by the poet; and the reader, in order to reach this morality, agrees to accept the miraculousness itself as natural.”

Genre peculiarity and artistic originality of the fable by Ivan Andreevich Krylov. In his fables, Krylov acts not only as a satirist, but also as a student of the principles of the 18th century Enlightenment, on the conviction that through teaching and satire one can correct morals and educate society.

His fables inevitably contain teaching and morality. In a number of cases, this teaching is devoid of life-like, realistic colors, and then the fable turns into didactic reasoning. Such lifeless, didactic fables most often arose when the fabulist wrote under the influence of the need to prove his good intentions, and are his artistic failures (“Atheists”, “Divers”, “Horse and Rider”, “Writer and Robber”). Krylov ridiculed laziness, idleness, vanity, boasting, conceit, ignorance, hypocrisy, greed, cowardice - all those negative qualities that are especially hated by the people. The fabulist castigates not only those who like to profit from the labor of others, but also all sorts of lazy people and bunglers.

Here is the unlucky Trishka, who absurdly recut his caftan (“Trishkin’s caftan”), and the careless Miller, whose “water has sucked through the dam,” and the bear, incapable of useful work, who has destroyed “a countless number of hazel, birch and elm trees.” These images retain all their significance and satirical sharpness in our time, venomously ridiculing the hapless bunglers and slackers who carelessly treat the people's property.

The little things in everyday life, the characters, and especially the specific brightness of linguistic colors make Krylov’s fables works of realistic art, although limited by the genre framework of the fable, which is one of the favorite genres of classicism. Preserving the fundamental structural features of the genre construction of the fable, its didactic orientation, the combination of real and allegorical principles, and moralistic purposefulness.

At the same time, Krylov overcame its abstract rationalism, its schematic nature. Krylov’s morality is not abstract, timeless wisdom, but arises from practical, social necessity, from a specific life situation. Here is a fable about indifference to someone else’s misfortune - “The Peasant in Trouble.” In this fable, selfishness, possessive psychology, the so common “kindness” in words, but in reality, complete indifference to the misfortune of one’s neighbor, are condemned by Krylov not in pompous words and rhetorical denunciations, but with clever, destructive irony. Consider the “friendly” advice of Foka, who recommends the Peasant to take any puppy from him: “I would be glad to give my dear neighbor something to drown them with from my heart!” Result: There are a thousand useful tips.

Whoever could. But not a single one helped the poor thing. The fable is a genre particularly firmly rooted in tradition.

Many fable plots are repeated in the works of fabulists of different times and peoples. It's all in the way they are told. The same plot takes on different meanings and national flavor. This especially applies to Krylov, who reworked the plot of Aesop or La Fontaine in his own way, immersed it in Russian life, and created national characters. The artistic originality of Krylov’s fables lies in the fact that he was able to combine in the images of animals the features inherent in them as representatives of the animal world with those typically characteristic properties that distinguish people. In this subtle combination, in the realistic truthfulness and integrity of each image, lies the remarkable skill of the fabulist.

In the characters of his fables - Lions, Wolves, Foxes, Donkeys, etc. - their natural animal nature is invariably visible, and at the same time they are endowed with those typical human traits that in their “animal” appearance appear especially sharply and satirically pointed . Krylov achieved the greatest specificity and expressiveness in fables in which the characters are people. Fables such as: “Demyan’s ear”; "Two Men"; "The Peasant in Trouble"; “The Peasant and the Worker” and many others anticipate Nekrasov with their realistic expressiveness.

Krylov very subtly and deeply reveals the social side of their character, their psychology (“Miron”, “Poor Rich Man”, “Sack”). Krylov is wonderfully able to show vitally truthful, typical characters in short, meager assessments (“The Picky Bride”). In the fables “The Peasant and the Snake”, “The Peasant and the Fox”, “The Peasant and the Horse”, “The Gardener and the Philosopher” and others, Krylov emphasizes hard work, prudence, sedateness, and common sense.

It is into the mouth of the Peasant that he puts sober, positive morality, usually making him an exponent of folk wisdom, and not a comic character, like the fabulists of the 18th century. Pushkin highly appreciated the national originality of Krylov’s fables and, comparing him with La Fontaine, noted in their work the expression of the “spirit” of both peoples.

In contrast to the “simplicity” of the French fabulist, Pushkin saw the main character of Krylov’s fables in “some kind of cheerful cunning of the mind, mockery and a picturesque way of expression.” Pushkin was the first to call Krylov a “true people's poet.” Krylov's fables grew from folk origins, from the wisdom of Russian proverbs and sayings with their sharp and apt humor. “the people's poet wrote about Krylov, Belinsky... always relies on a solid foundation - on the nature of his people...” The use of proverbs and sayings gives the language and style of Krylov’s fables a folk character and flavor.

In proverbs he found picturesque, laconic formulas that contributed to the expression of the fabulist’s views. Fables by Ivan Andreevich Krylov (list) Crow and Fox Myron Lamb Oak and Cane Peasant and Fox Council of Mice Musicians Dog and Horse Miller Crow and Chicken Owl and Donkey Cobblestone and Diamond Casket Snake Mot and Swallow Frog and Ox Wolf and Cat Pig under the Oak The Picky Bride Breams Spider and Bee Parnassus Waterfall and Stream Fox and Donkey Oracle Lion Fly and Bee Grove and Fire Shepherd Snake and Sheep Wolf and Lamb Mice Cauldron and Pot Monkeys Fox Wild Goats Tit Wolves and Sheep Nightingales Donkey Peasant and Dog Fallow Deer and Dervish Monkey and Glasses Two Boy Dog Two Pigeons Robber and Cabby Eagle and Mole Chervonets Slanderer and Snake Quartet Tripartite Fortune and Beggar Leaves and Roots Eagle and Chickens Frog and Jupiter Wolf and Fox Golik Fox the Builder Paper Kite Peasant and Sheep Napraslin Swan, Pike and Cancer Stingy Fortune visiting Starling Wolf and Mouse Wolf and Shepherds Pond and River Two Men Cuckoo and Dove Trishkin's caftan Kitten and Starling Comb Fire and Diamond Two Dogs Miser and Chicken Hermit and Bear Cat and Nightingale Two Barrels Flowers Fish Dance Alcides Peasant and Robber Parishioner Apelles and Donkey Curious Crow Hunter Lion catching Motley Sheep Boy and Snake Peasants and River Lion aged Swimmer and the Sea Good Fox Lion, Chamois and Fox Donkey and Man Demyanov's ear Squirrel Wolf and Crane Mouse and Rat Pike Bee and Flies Siskin and Pigeon Cuckoo and Eagle Shepherd and Sea Stone and Worm Razor Fox and Grapes Mosquito and Shepherd Falcon and Worm Sheep and Dogs Lion and Wolf Poor Rich Man Bear in Nets Lion and Fox Damask Steel Boy and Worm Dog, Man, Cat and Falcon Merchant Funeral Wolf in the kennel Cannons and Sails Hardworking Bear Dragonfly and Ant Monkey Cat and Cook Sack Gardener and Philosopher Geese Tree Pig Fly and Road Eagle and Spider Master and Mice Raising a Lion Elephant in the Voivodeship Wagon Train Farmer and Shoemaker Liar Wolf and Cuckoo Wolf and Little Wolf Crow Peasant in Trouble Elephant and Pug Rooster and Pearl Seed Pike and Cat Hare on the hunt Eagle and Bee Fox and Marmot Stream Barrel Section Dog friendship Pestilence of animals Lion and Leopard Nobleman and Philosopher Frogs asking for the Tsar Worldly gathering Divers Lady and two Maids Bear with the bees Mirror and Monkey Peasant and Death Knight Shadow and Man Peasant and Ax Gout Spider Hops Elephant in case Cloud

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Ivan Andreevich Krylov

A bold satirist in his prose works, a subtle lyrical poet, a witty author of funny and evil comedies - such is Krylov - the writer of the end... Having neither fortune nor patrons, he barely achieved the rank of captain. V.. During the Pugachev uprising, the father of the future fabulist, already in the rank of captain, took part in hostilities, and..

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It is no coincidence that he chooses this genre. The fact is that it is he who is closest and most understandable to the people, and it was for the people that the writer worked. A “peasant” attitude towards the world around us and ridicule of human shortcomings - these are the features of Krylov’s fables.

Artistic and genre features of Krylov's fables

Usually Ivan Andreevich chose animals as images. Its main characters are the Fox, the Wolf and others. Behind the images of animals were hidden specific individuals, distinguished by greed, stupidity, anger and other vices that most irritated the author. It was them who he exposed and ridiculed in his works.

The main artistic features of Krylov's fables are the approach of the works to large genres, namely the novel and comedy, while the characteristic style has been preserved - teaching and morality.

The role of the author in the work belongs to the narrator. The characters in the fable create a story, and then its denouement occurs. Ivan Andreevich presents the moral of the text in the form of proverbs and sayings that are close and understandable to the common people.

One of the main themes of the author’s works is work. He believes that only professionalism and mutual understanding in a team can give a positive result. This idea can be seen especially clearly in the mini-stories “Quartet” and “Swan, Crayfish and Pike”.

Another favorite topic of Ivan Andreevich is the weak and the strong. Usually in such works he ridicules the authorities. A phrase from one work has become a catchphrase - “with the strong, the powerless are always to blame!”

Another feature of Krylov’s fables is simply the language of presentation, which is close to the common people. For this reason, his works are easy to read “in one breath.”

Krylov's skill as a fabulist remains unsurpassed. He managed to turn the conventionally didactic genre into a form of truly realistic works, anticipating many of the discoveries of Griboyedov and Pushkin. In his fables, Krylov used all his previous literary experience: from dramaturgy he takes the sharpness and dynamism of the plot, skill in constructing dialogue, and speech characteristics of the characters; from prose - the simplicity and naturalness of the story, the psychological authenticity of the motivation for the characters’ behavior; from folklore - folk images and language. It was the language of Krylov’s fables that became a true discovery for Russian literature, paving the way for further development of prose, drama and poetry. Before him, no one wrote so simply, accessiblely and accurately. The basis of the language of Krylov’s fables is a folk colloquial language with a rich inclusion of vernacular (“bawls nonsense”, “not for the future”, “breath stole”), phraseological units, proverbs and sayings (“The master’s work is afraid”, “A swallow alone does not make spring”). . It is not for nothing that Belinsky saw in Krylov’s fables a trait generally characteristic of the Russian person, “the ability to express himself briefly, clearly and at the same time in a curly manner.” The great Russian fabulist replenished the Russian language with many aphorisms and catchphrases (“I didn’t even notice the elephant,” “But the little chest just opened,” “Yes, the cart is still there”), which have firmly entered into speech and enriched the modern Russian language.

Since childhood, we have known Krylov's fables. Clear, easy, wise poems sink into the soul. The moral teaching - and it is necessarily present in the fable - is gradually absorbed, and the power of its influence is enormous. Fables teach to be honest, to love the Fatherland, to work for the good...

The powerful always have the powerless to blame. This expression begins the fable “The Wolf and the Lamb” (1808). The work itself by Ivan Krylov was written based on a traveling plot popular in world literature, to which the most prominent fabulists of the world turned: Aesop,...

Krylov belonged to the Russian enlighteners of the 18th century, led by Radishchev. But Krylov was unable to rise to the idea of uprising against autocracy and serfdom. He believed that the social system could be improved through moral re-education...

The events of the Patriotic War were also reflected in the fable “The Crow and the Hen”. It can be interpreted in two ways: one can think that the Crow, who remained in Moscow when the French entered, is Napoleon. The emperor, who dreamed of great glory and booty, “was caught like a Crow...

Krylov's fables contain the life and customs of the Russian people, their everyday experience, and folk wisdom. According to V. G. Belinsky, the fables expressed “a whole side of the Russian national spirit: the Russian practical mind... with sharp teeth that bite painfully. In them...

Fables in reading by preschool children. Features of the genre.

The picture of the development of literature for children at the beginning of the 19th century would be incomplete without the fable genre. A fable is a short allegorical story containing a moral lesson. All three elements of the fable (story, allegory, or allegory, morality) are merged into a single artistic whole, and the more closely, the more expressive the fable. From the beginning of the 19th century. fables by I.A. Krylov (1769-1844) are included in children's reading - almost immediately after the appearance of the first collections (in 1809, 1811,1815).

At the beginning of the century, Russian readers were familiar with the fables of Aesop, La Fontaine, and domestic authors: A. P. Sumarokov, V.I. Maykova, I.I. Khemnitser, I.I. Dmitriev. Ivan Andreevich Krylov brought this genre to perfection. He wrote about 200 fables, which he compiled into 9 books. Each magazine considered Krylov's new fable as its decoration.

Krylov's fables contain a whole moral code on which children were raised generation after generation. Of Krylov’s many fables, at least a dozen are remembered from his earliest years. Basically, these are those whose embossed lines contain simple but important everyday truths. “And you, friends, no matter how you sit down, / Are still not fit to be musicians” - what is this about? Yes, of course, about unlucky people who don’t know business, replacing it with vanity and chatter. Science for kids - without annoying moralizing and fun.

In his fables, the child opens up a whole world of life phenomena and images. The heroes of simple, ingenuous, naive and simple-minded stories are people, animals, birds, and various objects. As in fairy tales, wolves, lions, foxes, monkeys, and ants are surprisingly similar to people and embody their qualities and morals.

The fables ridicule human vices, condemn boasting, flattery (“The Crow and the Fox,” “The Cuckoo and the Rooster”), ignorance and stupidity (“The Monkey and the Glasses,” “The Rooster and the Grain of Pearl,” “The Pig under the Oak,” “The Donkey and Nightingale"), inconsistency in affairs ("Swan, Pike and Cancer"), brute, treacherous force ("Wolf and Lamb").

Krylov teaches everyday lessons clearly, vividly, and picturesquely. Here, “at Lisitsyna’s friendly words”, greedy for flattery, “The Crow croaked at the top of its lungs” - and she no longer has cheese (“The Crow and the Fox”). The Fox herself became greedy, spared “pinches of hairs” and was left without a tail at all (“Fox”). The moral maxim only completes the meaning and generalizes a specific episode:

How many times have they told the world,

That flattery is vile and harmful; but everything is not for the future,

And a flatterer will always find a corner in the heart.

Most often, the fable text is crowned with a figurative phrase that sounds at the same time as a generalization: “Ay, Moska! know she is strong/That she barks at the Elephant!”

Krylov's fables are witty and ironic. Children, by reading and listening to them, develop observation skills, learn to notice the funny, comical in people, in their relationships. The Monkey stringing glasses on its tail, or the Cuckoo and the Rooster praising each other immoderately, are comical.

The younger the reader, the closer and more attractive the event side is to him - this is a normal feature of children's perception. The allegorical meaning in all its depth will be revealed later, as life experience grows. It is worth noting that the possibilities of children's reading are sometimes very unexpected. Thus, the heroine of Sasha Cherny’s “Ruddy Book”, the girl Lucy, really did not like Krylov’s Ant, and she conducts the following dialogue with his creator about this:

“The ant, in my opinion, is a ruthless rude man. What is it that the Dragonfly “sang the whole summer”? And the nightingales sing... Why did he drive the Dragonfly away and force her to dance? I dance too, grandpa... What's wrong with that? I hate your Ant!..”

To this the imaginary Krylov replies:

“And dance, my friend, to your health. I don’t entirely approve of Ant either. And I even think that when he drove Dragonfly away, he felt ashamed. He ran after her, returned her, fed her and sheltered her until spring...

Really? - Lucy was delighted. - So the morality will be different then? “Sometimes there are ants who have a good heart.” That’s good!”

Krylov’s fables are a storehouse of folk wisdom; they widely use proverbs, sayings, and apt folk expressions: “Though the eye sees, the tooth is numb,” “They bend over backwards.”

In turn, many of Krylov’s lines became popular and enriched popular speech. Here are just a few of them: “But the little chest just opened!”, “I didn’t even notice the elephant”, “Why should godmothers work, isn’t it better to turn to yourself, godfather”, “And Vaska listens and eats”, “ Why, smart one, are you delirious, head?” Even the names of some fables and individual images from them have become part of our speech: “Trishkin’s caftan”, “Demyan’s ear”, “a disservice”, “it’s in the bag”. And we consume them without even thinking about the source. They are also active in children's speech.

V.A. Zhukovsky and V.G. Belinsky admired Krylov’s artistic skill and style. N.V. Gogol wrote about Krylov: “The poet and the sage merged into one in him.” The expressiveness of Krylov’s fable lines is amazing. So, for example, the cuckoo’s cuckooing is conveyed: “The cuckoo cuckooed sadly at the bitch.”

Krylov's fable verse is dynamic, the plot is swift, there is nothing superfluous. Each character has its own face, its own character, its own language. Belinsky called Krylov's fables “little comedies.” Indeed, they are easy to dramatize and read “by role,” which children do with pleasure.

Krylov did not initially address his fables to children, but did not exclude them from the number of possible readers. When asked why he writes not something else, but fables, he replied: “This kind is understandable to everyone; both servants and children read it.”

In 1811 (after the release of the second collection of fables) I.A. Krylov was elected a member of the Russian Academy. To the glory of his fables he owes the no less honorable and very homely, humane popular title of “Grandfather Krylov.”

Krylov's fables began to penetrate children's reading immediately after the publication of his first collections (1809, 1811, 1815). Works of this genre were included in collections, almanacs for children, and children's magazines.

In 1847, the collection “Krylov’s Fables” was published with a biography written by P.A. Pletnev. Belinsky highly valued this publication, designed for a wide segment of the people, accessible to children. “There is no need to talk about the great importance of Krylov’s fables for raising children: children are unconsciously and directly imbued with the Russian spirit from them, master the Russian language and are enriched with wonderful impressions of almost the only poetry available to them,” wrote Belinsky.

In the 60s, Krylov’s fables were widely presented in his educational books for elementary schools, “Children’s World” and “Native Word” by K.D. Ushinsky. Since then, the works of the outstanding Russian fabulist have invariably been present in the educational and free reading of Russian children. Krylov's role in the history of Russian literature is unique. With his fables, he brought literary creativity closer to the life of Russian society. He boldly introduced the riches of folk speech into the literary language, so that, according to V.G. Belinsky, “Pushkin himself is not complete without Krylov in this regard.”

Fables have successfully passed through several historical eras without losing popularity and confirming their need for society. This is a phenomenon of art that has earned the right to teach.

Whoever could. But not a single one helped the poor thing. The fable is a genre particularly firmly rooted in tradition.

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Ivan Andreevich Krylov

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Composition

The well-known fable “The Cuckoo and the Rooster” was written by Krylov for a specific reason. Its publication in the collection was accompanied by an illustration in which the writers F. Bulgarin and N. Grech were caricatured, indecently praising each other in print. Now this fact is known only to specialists, and the everyday rule has adopted a refined formulation of human wisdom and decency:

“Why, without fear of sin,
Does the Cuckoo praise the Rooster?
Because he praises the Cuckoo"

(“The Cuckoo and the Rooster.”) So decide whether this is good or bad.

But there is another side that limits the advantages of the allegorical genre - the multivariate interpretation of a specific plot, its duality both in depiction and in perception.

It turns out that even the seemingly very specific fable “The Picky Bride,” which describes a capricious beauty, has a second, deeper meaning. According to Krylov himself, he meant himself here. In the famous fable “Quartet,” the highest body of tsarist Russia, the State Council, established in 1810 and consisting of four departments, was ridiculed. Its members could not fit into departments and were endlessly transferred from one to another.

The fable “The Crow and the Fox” should not be understood only as a praise of the cunning, resourcefulness and intelligence of the Fox, who understands very well that she cannot take away the cheese by force. That is why she decides to lure him away from Vorona by cunning and says “so sweetly, barely breathing.” And Crow, not a stupid bird at all, falls for shameless flattery:

My dear, how beautiful!
Well, what a neck, what eyes!
Telling fairy tales, really!
What feathers! what a sock!

The fox deftly and skillfully goes to the goal: “And, surely, there must be an angelic voice!” The author condemns not only the one who flatters, but also the one who succumbs to flattery, the one who “got his head turned” and “his breath was taken away from his goiter with joy.” Flattery reigns in society (“a flatterer will always find a corner in the heart”), and this is a fact, but you should not succumb to flattery, overestimating your strength (“after all, you would be our king bird!”, that is, you would be an eagle), no matter how tempting this flattery may be. The Fox at first seems to flatter in a believable way, but then, speaking of her “angelic” voice, she simply mocks the Crow. Let us remember that in Russian the verb croak is used not only in the meaning of “to make a sharp, guttural sound (about the cry of a crow)”, but also in a figurative meaning - “to predict failure, misfortune.” The author does not comment on the denouement: “The cheese fell out - there was a trick with it.” Everyone knows “that flattery is vile and harmful,” a lot is said about this (“they have told the world so many times”), but people still fall into this trap to this day.

The fable “The Crow” talks about a Raven wearing peacock feathers:

“she fell behind the Crows,
But it didn’t stick to Peahens (i.e., peacocks)”

and it became “Neither Pava nor Crow.” This phrase has become a phraseological unit and is used when they say “about a person who has moved away from his environment and does not associate with others.”

It was Krylov “as a man of genius who instinctively guessed the aesthetic laws of the fable” and “created the Russian fable,” as Belinsky noted. What allowed the critic to reach this conclusion? The most famous fabulist then was I.I. Dmitriev, who blessed the first experiments of the novice Krylov. Famous fabulists adhered to the classicist or sentimentalist tradition. Krylov went his own way, without entering into various kinds of discussions and polemics with his contemporaries. He freed the fable, on the one hand, from sweetness and rudeness, and on the other, from abstract moralizing. This is his historical merit.

Krylov's fables are replete with many specific details and interesting observations. So, for example, many poets described the nightingale’s singing, but no one managed to convey “a thousand modes” with such a vivid semantic range (here are verbs and adverbs) as given in Krylov’s fable “The Donkey and the Nightingale”, when the Nightingale “began to show his art” :

Clicked and whistled
On a thousand frets, pulled, shimmered;
Then gently he weakened
And the languid sound of the pipe echoed in the distance,
Then it suddenly scattered in small fractions throughout the grove.

Krylov’s peculiarity is that he does not teach, but observes his heroes and brings his observations to the reader’s judgment. Let’s take for example the fable “Two Boys” (1833), now almost forgotten, which is a shame, since it belongs to the category of fables that form the moral character of a young man (the “philosophy of behavior” cycle). The plot of the fable is extremely simple: two boys run to a tree to eat chestnuts, but the tree is very high, then one boy helps the other, but the one who ends up on the tree forgets about the other and eats the chestnuts alone. The plot is not a fable at all, and if it were not for the moral at the end, then one could consider this story a small story in verse from the lives of children, a private, isolated case. The moral is separated from the story and placed at the end of the fable, transforming a particular case into a generalization. The moral allows for no ambiguity, making it clear where the narrator stands. In addition, from the moral it becomes clear to the reader, firstly, that this is a real, but, unfortunately, not an isolated case (“I have seen Fedyush in the world”) and, secondly, that this applies not only to children, but also to adults too:

I have seen Fedush in the world, -
Which their friends
They diligently helped me climb up,
And after that, they didn’t even see the shell again!

Black ingratitude in this fable is merely stated, but not condemned in any way, although it is completely clear whose side the author (poor Senya) is on. This follows from the description of the actions of Fedya, who, having climbed a tree, found many chestnuts there:

But Fedya began to eat them alone, forgetting about his friend:

“Fedyusha was not dozing at the top
I picked the chestnuts myself by both cheeks” (in the draft version)

“Fedya started eating chestnuts,
He filled both his mouth and his pockets” (in the draft version).

The final version remains:

“Fedyusha himself was harvesting chestnuts upstairs,
And he threw only shells from the tree to his friend.”

Sena had to make an effort to help his friend:

“Puffed, sweated all over
And Fedya finally helped him climb up.”

The drafts describe these efforts in more detail than the final version. Apparently, Krylov wanted to show that it was not the intensity of these efforts that mattered, but the very desire to help a friend. Senya expected that he would be rewarded for his efforts, but was deceived in his expectations:

Well! For Sena, the profit from that was small:
He, poor thing, was only licking his lips on the bottom;
Fedyusha himself was harvesting chestnuts upstairs,
And he threw some shells from a tree to his friend.

Thus, without condemning either one or the other hero, Krylov shows readers whose side he is on and which of the heroes is doing wrong. Krylov is a defender of universally binding morality, a moral judge.

The uniqueness of the fabulist’s work is that the author-storyteller is always next to his characters, but not above them. Even when his characters do obvious stupid things, the author does not directly condemn them, but only shows the absurdity of their behavior. But this does not mean that Krylov sympathizes equally with all his heroes. His position is socially charged. He supports ordinary people living in a world of natural values, sympathizes with his heroes, without idealizing or embellishing them, but does not become touched or coy. It is this sobriety of analysis that makes the fabulist a teacher and mentor. Thanks to the characteristic details, we immediately imagine Krylov’s heroes: the capricious beautiful bride (“The Picky Bride”), the funny Trishka (“Trishkin Kaftan”), and poor Foku (“Demyanov’s Ukha”), and other heroes.

The structure of the fables is varied. But morality is a necessary component of the fable, which Krylov places either at the beginning

“It doesn’t happen very often for us
And work and wisdom to see there,
Where you just have to guess
Just get down to business"
(“Casket”)

or at the end of the fable

“Envious people, no matter what they look at,
They will bark forever;
And you go your own way:
They’ll bark and leave you alone”
(“Pedestrians and Dogs\”)

Most often, a fable is built in the form of a dialogue, where the author and characters each speak their own language. This was the discovery of the fabulist, in which his previous experience as a playwright helped him. The dramatic structure of the fables made them more lively and vibrant, conveying the intonations of a casual, lively conversation.

“Gossip, this is strange to me:
Did you work during the summer?” -
Ant tells her.
“Was it before that, my dear?
In the soft ants we have Songs, playfulness at every hour,
So much so that my head was turned.” -
“Oh, so you...” - “I sang the whole summer without a soul.” -
“Did you sing everything? this is the case:
So come and dance!”

(“Dragonfly and Ant”)

Everyday details seem to unobtrusively lead the reader to an understanding of the social character of the hero and, behind a particular case, allow him to see the system of social relations. So, for example, in the fable “The Peasant and Death” the plight of the peasants in Russia is easily guessed by the characteristics of the main character:

“How poor am I, my God!
I need everything; Besides, he has a wife and children.”

And then comes the famous phrase: “And there is poll tax, boyars, quitrent...”, which specifically and accurately takes the reader to post-reform Russia at the beginning of the 19th century, when the serfs were crushed by numerous exactions.

“And has there ever been a day in the world
At least one happy day for me?” - asks the peasant.

“In such despondency, blaming fate...
He calls Death...”

Laconically, with just a few strokes, the fabulist depicts the unbearably difficult fate of the peasants. Krylov's peasant in this fable is not a conventional image symbolizing old age, but a social type. This is a typical Russian serf peasant, crushed by various exactions. Finding no way out, the Peasant calls on Death, which “appeared in an instant.” The specificity of the image is so great that it is with Krylov that one can trace the beginning of a realistic depiction of reality in Russian literature. Here is another example from the fable “Little Raven”.

“Just take it, take it,
Or even get your claws dirty!”

This depiction of bribery is quite comparable to Gogol’s description from the comedy “The Inspector General” (act 1, scene 4). Mayor (taking the sword to the policeman):
“What did you do with the merchant Chernyaev, huh? He gave you two arshins of cloth for your uniform, and you stole the whole thing. Look! You’re not taking it according to rank!”

Already from the first collections of fables, the range of problems that attracted the attention of the fabulist was clearly outlined. Universal human shortcomings and vices are ridiculed, but the way they are depicted and their manifestation immediately reveals the makeup of the Russian mind, the Russian character. It was precisely the nationality of fables that allowed Krylov to make the cosmopolitan fable genre almost the leading one in Russian literature of the first half of the 19th century.

A fable does not require an original plot. As a rule, it is traditional and comes from Antiquity, but when developed by individual authors, the plot can be transformed. Krylov has many fables with such a traditional plot: these are “The Crow and the Fox”, and “Dragonfly and Ant”, and “Wolf and Lamb”, and “Fox and Grapes”, and “Peasant and Death”, and many others. A special group of fables consists of fables with an original plot. Some of them were written under the influence of the most important historical events that the writer himself witnessed. Thus, during the period of Napoleon’s invasion of Russia, Krylov created two fables - “The Wolf in the Kennel” and “The Crow and the Hen”, dedicated to the most tragic episodes of the Patriotic War. The fabulist understood the peculiarities of the historical situation and acted as a “chronicler” of terrible events. Researchers recognize the fable “The Wolf in the Kennel” as one of the outstanding achievements of the fabulist. “This most amazing of Krylov’s fables has no equal either in the overall emotional impression it produces or in the external structure to which it is subordinated. There is no morality or conclusions in it at all,” wrote L.S. Vygotsky in “Psychology of Art”.

The reason for writing the fable “The Wolf in the Kennel” was the events associated with the attempts of Napoleon, who was at that time in defeated Moscow, to enter into peace negotiations. These attempts were made both by Napoleon himself and through his intermediary Lauriston, but they were rejected by M.I. Kutuzov. Soon after this, Kutuzov defeated the enemy troops at Tarutino (October 6).

This is how S.N. describes it. Glinka wrote about this event in his “Notes on 1812”: “Neither the weapons of the sons of Russia, nor the prayers and tears of mothers saved Moscow. We saw the entry of the conqueror’s regiments into it, we saw the fire of Moscow, we also see the grief of the giant of our century. He asks for a truce and peace. Lauriston, his ambassador, is conferring with Kutuzov. And our smart leader, amusing Ambassador Napoleon with dreams of peace, is waiting for the auxiliary troops sent by northern nature, waiting for the frosts and winter storms. He is also waiting for new regiments from the banks of the quiet Don” (“1812 in Russian poetry and memoirs of contemporaries”).

The fable “Wolf in the Kennel” was written in early October 1812 and published in the magazine “Son of the Fatherland” (1812, part 1, no. 2). The topicality and relevance of the fable required immediate publication. This was the first response to events of such historical importance, which subsequently worried more than one generation of Russian people. The author understood this very well and deviated from his rules: he usually did not publish his fables right away, but worked for several years to improve the text. In this case, permission from the censorship committee had already been obtained

October 7. But work on the text of the fable continued even after publication. The result of this painstaking work were changes to the printed text, published in the same magazine (No. 4, part 1 of the same year). This is a unique case. But Krylov did not stop there, continuing to work on the text. Reprinted in a separate edition of the fables in 1815, this fable also underwent certain changes. Krylov continued to work on it after that. The text was finally formed only in the 1825 edition.

The plot basis of the fable is the dialogue between the Hunter and the Wolf. The fable begins with the author's narration: “The wolf, at night, thinking of getting into the sheepfold, ended up in the kennel.” This is an exposition of a fable. Vivid emotional remarks from the hounds heat up the situation. The hounds shout: “Wow, guys, thief!” This phrase appeared later (1815-1819).

The description of the worst enemy of the hounds - the Wolf, the gray “bully” - is remarkable. The epithet gray is a traditional characteristic of a wolf in Russian folk tales: it is a constant epithet. The antithesis gray - gray-haired did not appear to the author immediately, but as a result of hard work on the text - only in 1825, when the great commander was no longer alive (Kutuzov died in 1813). Before this, the Wolf had the epithet old, which, of course, was less impressive. In Krylov’s fables, the fairy-tale tradition in relation to the wolf, known to us from childhood, is preserved, but here, among other things, he is also cunning and impudent. Even backed against the wall, “pressed into the corner with your butt,”

With his eyes, it seems like he would like to eat everyone.”

The wolf still hopes to get out (“I came to make peace with you, not at all for the sake of a quarrel”) through peaceful negotiations, empty, false promises

“And not only will I not touch the local herds in the future,
But I’m happy to fight for them with others”

The wolf, over which mortal danger looms, is still trying to maintain the appearance of greatness, promising protection in words, but in reality it has already been hunted down by dogs. But who will believe the “wolf oath”? In any case, not the gray-haired, wise Lovchiy, in whom contemporaries recognized the famous people's commander Kutuzov. Recognition of his merits in this war in wide public circles directly opposed the official version, which attributed the glory of the victory to Alexander I.

The description of the kennel is remarkable (surprisingly capacious and laconic, but extremely specific), which “in a minute” “became hell”:

“They run: another with a club,
Another with a gun” - i.e. they run with clubs, stakes, sticks.

Krylov uses the collective noun dubyo. Isn’t this where Tolstoy’s “club of the people’s war” arose!? “Fire! - they shout, “fire!” It is known that wolves are afraid of fire. Here the fire performs another function - it illuminates the kennel: “They came with fire.” Before this, the Wolf was not visible, only one could hear how “the dogs were flooded in the barns and were eager to fight.” When they came with the fire, they saw that the Wolf was “sitting with his butt pressed into the corner.” Then again auditory associations:

“Clicking teeth and bristling fur,
With his eyes, it seems like he would like to eat everyone.”

It is worth paying attention to the fact that there is no moral in this fable - a necessary component of any fable. This is explained by the fact that the action-packed narrative is so specific and vivid and at the same time simple and unambiguous, the characters of the characters are extremely clear that no comments are required, the author seems to withdraw himself. The art of Krylov’s speech characterization takes on a bright, refined form in this fable. The irony of the old Hunter - “you are gray, and I, friend, am gray” - as well as the end of his speech:

“And therefore my custom is:
There is no other way to make peace with wolves,
As if they had taken the skin off of them,” backed up by the action: “And then he released a pack of hounds on the Wolf,” as if they replace morality and give the author’s assessment of what is happening.

Krylov’s wolf is proud and majestic - “he came to make peace with you not at all for the sake of a quarrel” - he has not yet been defeated. He offers friendship (“let’s establish a common harmony”) and promises in the future not to touch the “local herds” and even to protect them. The Wolf's speech is solemn and sublime. Krylov's brilliant insight was that Napoleon had not yet been defeated at that time. He was in Moscow, which he occupied. But the outcome of events was already clear to the fabulist - “And he immediately released a pack of hounds against the Wolf.”

According to contemporaries, Krylov rewrote the fable “The Wolf in the Kennel” with his own hand and gave it to Kutuzov’s wife, who sent it to her husband in a letter. Kutuzov read the fable after the battle of Krasny to the officers gathered around him and, at the words “and I, friend, am gray,” took off his cap and shook his bowed head. “All those present were delighted by this spectacle, and joyful exclamations were heard everywhere,” wrote the first commentator of Krylov’s fables, V. Kinewich, in “Bibliographical and Historical Notes to the Fables of I.A. Krylov” (1878).

This fable was unanimously recognized by all researchers as one of the best in Krylov’s creative heritage.

Also in 1812, the fable “The Crow and the Hen” was created. This was a period of enormous patriotic impulse of the entire Russian people. Let us cite just one excerpt from “Notes on 1812” by S.N. Glinka: “The Russian spirit fully came to life in the second cherished twelfth year. If Russian eyes cry, then they surely cry at the same time with their souls. The thunder of the invasion aroused from the Russian soul sadness for the Fatherland, and along with it, self-denial, unconditional, boundless, flew out of it; the matter was then “to be or not to be the Russian land on the face of the earth.” In our twelfth year, no condition even occurred to anyone; there was only one condition: either die for the Fatherland, or live for the Fatherland and give everything to the Fatherland. In the first twelfth year, in the year of our ancestors, there were conditions not about saving personal life, but about who should save the existence of Russia?”

It was during the period of such patriotic upsurge that the fable “The Crow and the Hen” was created. In it, Kutuzov is called the “Prince of Smolensk,” from which it follows that the fable was written after the battle of Krasnoye, when he received this honorary title, i.e. November 6, 1812 The reason for writing the fable, apparently, was a note in the magazine “Son of the Fatherland,” which said that the French went hunting every day to shoot crows and could not boast enough about their aux corbeaux soup.

Now we can give up the old Russian proverb: “I got caught like chickens in cabbage soup,” or better to say: “I got caught like a crow in French soup.” This issue of the magazine was accompanied by a cartoon by I.I. Terebenev’s “French Crow Soup,” which depicted four ragged French grenadiers tearing a crow apart. The fable begins with the words:

“When the Smolensk prince,
Arming myself against insolence with art...”

What kind of “art” did Kutuzov arm himself against Napoleon’s “insolence”? The famous Denis Davydov in his notes “Did frost destroy the French army in 1812?” shows that no, it was a famine, since Kutuzov forced the French to leave Moscow the same way they entered it, i.e. along a devastated edge, and not “along an unharmed edge and abounding in food supplies, and to be pursued by our army from the rear, and not from the side, as happened.” The French army was forced to return along the route it had devastated, on which only devastated and robbed villages were encountered. The French army, surrounded by Russian cavalry, which exterminated everything that dared to separate from the main road, died from cold and hunger. And then D. Davydov continues: “What is the reason for this? The point chosen for the camp at Tarutino, the removal of the enemy army from the region, abounding in food supplies, forcing him to go along the Smolensk devastated path, the capture of enemy convoys with food by our light cavalry, the encirclement of the French columns from Maloyaroslavets to the Neman, not allowing a single soldier to leave from the high road to find food and shelter.” This is the “net” the commander laid out for the “new Vandals,” i.e. barbarians, destroyers. In just a few lines, the fabulist shows the national-patriotic feelings of the Russian people, when Muscovites (“all residents, both small and large”) left their cozy city, “without wasting an hour,” and compares the city to a hive left by bees. This happened according to the plan of Kutuzov, who, “against the insolence” of Napoleon, armed himself with “art,” hoping that cold and hunger would not allow robbers and destroyers (“new vandals”) to stay in Moscow for a long time. A description of this tragic event can be found in the epic novel JI.H. Tolstoy’s “War and Peace”, which picks up and expands the comparison of Moscow, abandoned by its inhabitants, with a disturbed hive. It is interesting that for some the French are enemies, adversaries (remember Natasha Rostova), for others they are guests. “This whole anxiety” seems funny to some people, they look at it from the outside, going about their daily activities (“cleaning your nose” is a very characteristic crow gesture). But it turns out that they don’t just look “calmly”, they intend to use the tragic situation “when our adversary is on the doorstep” to their advantage:

So to me [crow. - R.K.] it’s not hard to get along with guests,
Or maybe you can still make some money
Cheese, or a bone, or something.

The enemies in the fable are called adversaries. Now this is archaism, but in the literature of the 19th century. this word was used quite often. For example, from Pushkin:

Where can you compete with me?
With me, with Balda himself?
What a foe he sent!
Wait a minute for my little brother.

(“The Tale of the Priest and His Worker Balda”, 1830)

Vice must be punished, but in life this does not always happen - this does not always happen in Krylov’s fables either. Here it’s a different matter! Please note: the adversary is “ours”, i.e. This is the enemy not only of the Chicken, but also of the author, behind whom stands the whole people, the whole nation.

Following the historical truth, the fabulist philosophically notes:

So often a person is blind and stupid in his calculations.
It seems that you are on the heels of happiness:
How will you actually get along with him?
Caught like a crow in soup!

The moral is clear and simple, it begins with a philosophical maxim and ends with a comparison of an everyday nature (“like a crow in soup”). The moral of this fable is generalized to the limit: “so often a person...” - mind you, any person, - therefore further: “it seems that you are rushing on the heels of happiness” (you, that is, every person, including the author and the reader ). According to K. Batyushkov, “in the army they read all fables by heart.” It was an unprecedented success. Another contemporary, S.N. Glinka wrote: “In our extraordinary year and under the pen of our fabulist Krylov, living fables turned into living history” (“Notes on 1812”).

The cycle of fables about the Patriotic War of 1812 is Krylov’s greatest service to the entire nation. The innovation of the fabulist lies in the fact that he gave the story a scale unusual for the fable genre and, in addition, introduced a real historical figure into the number of fable characters - the Russian commander Kutuzov, who carried out the historical mission of saving the state from invaders and acted as an exponent of the patriotic spirit and moral strength of the Russian army and of the entire Russian people.

Krylov was one of the most widely read authors of the 19th century. During his lifetime he became famous, and after his death he became a legend. Almost all his contemporaries appreciated the moral and educational role of his fables, which were constantly included in the circle of home (family) reading. “His parables are the heritage of the people and constitute the book of wisdom of the people themselves,” wrote N.V. Gogol. Krylov created his fables for a wide range of readers: for children and adults, for people of different classes, they were interesting to everyone. Already in the 19th century, children memorized his fables by heart: Krylov was for them an attractive interlocutor and mentor in moral issues. For us, Krylov’s fables are a book of public morality, in modern language, a moral code of human behavior. He became a popularly known and beloved fabulist, but he was never a court poet, despite all the efforts of the royal court.

Each publication of his fables became a notable event in the spiritual life of Russia. He was called a great teacher, “the sage of the people” (A.V. Nikitenko). How did Krylov deserve such a high title? People of all classes acted in the fables - nobles, gentlemen, men, peasants. Or their masks - wolves, bears, lions, eagles, foxes. Fables, continuing the folklore tradition, exposed the same thing as satirical folk tales, punishing evil and allowing good to triumph, understanding it as a simple person would perceive it. The perception of animals in his fables is determined by the emotional coloring, the mask that is constantly assigned to each of the heroes. These were realistic scenes, as if seen through the eyes of a simple person, but there was nothing cruel, vulgar, rude, or immoral in them. People, animals, plants (roots, leaves, flowers) and even inanimate objects (stone, diamond, damask steel, kite, etc.) that acted in the fables spoke in a clear and understandable language, colorful and rich. “Common people” is created through the choice of plot, development of action, its comprehension and evaluation. But the master’s hand is felt everywhere: Krylov’s forms of expression and style are bright and individual. Lightness and simplicity are purely external. The merits of Krylov’s fables are especially clearly revealed when comparing fables written by different authors on the same plot (for example, the fable “The Crow and the Fox” was translated and revised in Russia by many fabulists). Krylov does not have bookish, archaic, solemn forms of high style, since the fable genre did not require this. Krylov was perhaps one of the first to understand this and strictly adhered to this rule, despite accusations of deliberate “common people.” In his fables the voices of real Russian life are heard. Krylov does not have different stylistic elements in one fable, i.e. elements of high and low styles do not collide either in lexical composition or in grammatical forms. The apparent ease of style, the form of speech expression, the emotional coloring - all this is very organic for the fabulist. According to the apt expression of Academician V.V. Vinogradov, “it seemed that the Russian language itself became the main character of Krylov’s fables.” “The poet and the sage merged into one,” as Gogol noted. It is the perfection of fables, their naturalness and organic nature that make them so ordinary, familiar, and recognizable. The mindset of the Russian person, his lively and lively mind, his sorrows and joys, misfortunes and sorrows, all the originality of the Russian character is reflected in the heroes of Krylov’s fables.

In the language of fables there are constant epithets coming from folklore: summer is red

“Jumping Dragonfly
The red summer sang.” - “Dragonfly and Ant”

open field
(“A large crowd gathered
The animals caught the bear;
Run over in an open field
And they share it among themselves.” - “Hare on the hunt”

cheese land
“Who knows: maybe your hour is closer
And that the earth will cover the cheese before you.” - “An Old Man and Three Young Men”, etc.

It is interesting to note that in Russian the names of animals themselves often serve to characterize people. This lexical feature of the Russian language was also used by the great fabulist: a cowardly hare, a cunning fox, a mighty lion, a strong but clumsy bear; sometimes even the very names of animals and birds (without definitions) carry expression: snake, donkey, chicken, crow (see above), peacock, etc. The animals and birds of Krylov’s fables, according to Gogol’s apt remark, “think and act too much in a Russian way,” they seem to have been born and live here in Russia, having Russian morals and customs, they have “everything that moves and tugs at the living.” Each animal has its own specific mask, which comes from folklore tradition. The fox in all fables is cunning and crafty (“The Crow and the Fox,” “The Fox and the Grapes,” etc.), the monkey and the monkey are known for their cunning tricks, ability to imitate, and stupid pranks (“The Monkey and the Glasses,” “Monkeys”), donkey is stupid, stubborn, ambitious (“Donkey and Nightingale”, “Donkey”, etc.), lions and eagles - bearers of power, kings (“Eagle and Bee”, “Eagle and Hens”, “Lion and Mosquito”), bees - a symbol of hard work (“Eagle and Bee”), etc. If you look at the members of the “Quartet” from this point of view, then just listing them is worth it:

“Naughty Monkey,
Donkey,
Goat
Yes, clubfooted Mishka
We decided to play a Quartet.”

It is absolutely clear that with such a composition it is impossible for the music to “go forward.”

Krylov quite often uses folk proverbs and sayings: “Even though the eye sees, the tooth is numb” (“The Fox and the Grapes”), “Poverty is not a vice” (“The Farmer and the Shoemaker”), “From the frying pan into the fire” (“The Lady and two Maids”), “Don’t spit in the well - you’ll need to drink the water” (“Lion and Mouse”), etc. He himself also creates his own aphorisms. These catchphrases have been completely assimilated into the Russian language, allowing them to be used in completely different contexts and even time parameters of the life of the language. om were assimilated into the Russian language, allowing them to be used in completely different contexts and even time parameters of the life of the language. Taking fables away from specific everyday situations, they are easily superimposed on the events of the life of even a modern person.

“The trouble is, if the shoemaker starts baking pies,
And the boots are made by the pie,”

Here is the everyday rule set out by Krylov in the fable “Pike and the Cat”, applied to Pike, who decided to catch mice with the Cat and asked to go hunting with him. And now this aphorism is applied to people who mind their own business. Another example: the specific story of Trishkin’s caftan, which is endlessly altered to the ridicule of others, turns out to be easily applicable to all everyday situations when a person tries to change something not radically, but through minor alterations. A single specific situation described in a fable as a special case is generalized, i.e. an allegory, framed in the form of a maxim, turns into an aphorism.

There are almost no outdated words in Krylov's fables, and those that occur are easily understood from the context. Thus, in the fable “The Cat and the Cook,” the “literate” cook runs away from the cookery to the tavern. The word povarnya is an archaism; in modern Russian it is synonymous with kitchen. But the modern reader of the fable understands this archaism due to the fact that the nest with this root is very fully represented in the modern Russian language: cook, cook, cook, cook (cook's cap), cook (cookbook), ladle, cook and some others. The word rhetorician is also familiar to modern people in relation to the noun rhetoric (theory of eloquence, oratory) and the adjective rhetorical (rhetorical question), but Krylov does not use this word neutrally: it has a slight ironic connotation:

Here is my rhetorician, giving free rein to his words.
There was no end to the moralizing.
But what? While he was singing it,
Vaska the cat ate all the roast.

We can say that from a high or stylistically neutral word turns into an emotional, stylistically reduced one, probably equal in meaning to the word rubbish. Changing the stylistic coloring of the word allowed the fabulist to create an expressive, colorful image of a talkative cook. The neutral word literate (“a person who knows literacy,” i.e., knows how to read and write) also acquires an evaluative meaning. Thus, changing the stylistic coloring of the word allows the master to create a lively and vivid image.

What becomes Krylov’s catchphrase? Most often, of course, this is morality:

When a coward is afraid of someone,
Then he thinks that
The whole world looks through his eyes.
(“The Mouse and the Rat”)

But this doesn't always happen. Sometimes this is some successful phrase in the main part of the fable, for example in the same fable - “There is no stronger beast than a cat!” or “And Vaska listens and eats” (“The Cat and the Cook”), etc. Sometimes this is just the ending of a fable: “And the Casket just opened” (“Casket”) or

“Ay, Moska! know she's strong
What barks at the Elephant!”
(“Elephant and Moska”)

In some cases, the very name of the fable becomes an aphorism: “Trishkin’s caftan”, “Demyan’s ear”, “Swan, Pike and Cancer”. This is an allegory, which is a necessary element of a fable.

During the solemn celebration of the centenary anniversary of Ivan Andreevich Krylov on February 2, 1868, His Eminence Macarius, Archbishop of Kharkov, later Metropolitan of Moscow, said: “What did he say? He said what a man of the most common sense, a practical sage, and especially a Russian sage, can say. Brothers compatriots! Should we say what else the immortal fabulist bequeathed to us? He bequeathed love, boundless love for everything domestic, for our native word, for our native country and for all the beginnings of our national life... So, develop your young strengths and abilities, educate and strengthen them in everything beautiful, enrich yourself with diverse knowledge , wherever they come from, try to assimilate for yourself all the fruits of pan-European, pan-human education. But why? Then, remember, so that all this good that you have acquired can be sacrificed to her - your own mother, Russia.”

This call is still relevant today.

The naturalness and simplicity of his reading were so great that his performance of his fables was sometimes not called “reading,” but was said to be “telling his fables.”

So, the topic of our thesis is “Linguistic features of I. A. Krylov’s fables.” The relevance of this topic is undeniable, since:

- firstly, the linguistic features of I. A. Krylov’s fables have not been sufficiently studied and require further special study. After all, change is an inevitable companion of linguistic history. The modern Russian literary language did not appear suddenly; it reflected imperceptible accumulations and shifts that occurred over many centuries;
- secondly, a more complete and deeper understanding of the ideological and figurative content of fables is facilitated not only by literary, but also by linguistic analysis of a literary text. Understanding the state of linguistic thought is at the core of our work. All sections of the thesis are characterized by a multidimensional approach to linguistic units, which makes it possible to identify the relationships and transition of linguistic phenomena and trends in their development, as well as features of functioning in various sociolinguistic conditions.

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Artistic features of fables and Krylov. Fable as a literary genre and its characteristic features

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