Vasya Terkin. The history of the creation of the image.
Before starting a story about the most famous satirical fighter of the Leningrad Front - Vasya Terkin, I would like to return to the origins of his appearance on the pages of the newspaper On Guard of the Motherland. This happened during the Soviet-Finnish war, in the winter of 1939/40. The first time Vasya Terkin appeared in the newspaper as one of its correspondents. It was with this name that the satirical feuilleton "Gray gelding in his repertoire" was signed. This happened thanks to Nikolai Shcherbakov, who was on duty at that moment, who replaced D.S. Berezin, the name of the author of the feuilleton Kaufman to the "more sounding" Terkin.
The next time he appeared in the newspaper with "A short dictionary to help the reader", published under his editorship. The "dictionary" is written skillfully, it is impossible not to understand it. It explained the meaning of the terms that were relevant at that political moment. They still make you smile. Partly for its simplicity, naivety. But that's how it should be. This means that he made the necessary impact on the reader, a Leningrad warrior, with his simplicity and intelligibility.
In the issue of December 31, 1939, a portrait of Vasya Terkin was placed. It was also reported here: “The special correspondent of our Direct Fire department, Vasya Terkin, who is at the forefront, is preparing material that will be printed with us in the near future. By the way, we place the last portrait of Vasya Terkin. The figure shows a slyly smiling fighter in Budyonovka, girded with a belt. Behind him is a rifle, a pencil and an artist's brush. This publication should be considered the birth of a legendary hero. Thus, Vasya Terkin is already 75 years old.
However, already in the next publication, Vasya Terkin turned from a newspaper correspondent into a hero that others write about. Artists Veniamin Briskin And Vasily Fomichev drew a series of drawings that matched the poems Nikolay Shcherbakov(pseudonym "Sniper").
It was Tvardovsky who advised giving headlines to both the first and subsequent series that would begin the same way: "How Vasya Terkin ..." did this and that, did this and that. So the series were made: “How Terkin got the “language””, “How Terkin saved a soldier from a non-commissioned officer”, “How Terkin captured the arsonists”, “How Terkin delivered the report”, etc.
The first biography of Vasya Terkin belongs to the pen Samuil Marshak, who, at the request of A. Tvardovsky, also joined this creative process in the editorial office of "On Guard for the Motherland".
A large team of authors worked on the image of Vasya Terkin during the Soviet-Finnish war. This is the staff of the newspaper "On Guard of the Motherland" Nikolai Tikhonov(pseudonym "Nikolai Semenych"), Caesar Solodar(pseudonym "Ivan Solyony"), Sergey Vashentsev(pseudonym "Sergei Vash"), and Sergei Mikhalkov, who arrived in Leningrad in March 1940 as one of the authors of the script for the film "Frontline Friends", as well as ordinary commanders of the Red Army - deputy political officer Kutko And military engineer 3rd rank S. Rybakov.
During the Soviet-Finnish war, which lasted from November 30, 1939 to March 13, 1940, about 30 publications about Vasya Terkin were published. In a short article it is difficult to tell everything that is connected with the appearance of this image and its development on the pages of the newspaper. This is described in more detail in the book of a member of the Union of Writers of Russia, captain of the 2nd rank O.V. Shcheblykin "Vasya Terkin? Who is this?”, published in 2009 and the second edition of which is currently being prepared for publication.
By the next anniversary of the Red Army, in February 1940, the Art publishing house released the album Vasya Terkin at the Front in a circulation of 5,000 copies as a gift to soldiers and commanders who distinguished themselves in battles with the White Finns. This album includes 16 series of drawings, a poem by A. Tvardovsky and a biography of Vasya Terkin by S. Marshak.
The main author of the series of poems about Terkin
during the period 1939/40. was N. Shcherbakov. At the end of the Soviet-Finnish war, Nikolai Alexandrovich Shcherbakov was presented for a government award, but did not receive it.The work of Alexander Tvardovsky is widely known in Russia and abroad. It was the poem "Vasily Terkin" that became his hallmark, brought great fame and recognition. The poem is studied in grade 8, in preparation for literature lessons, a detailed analysis of the work according to the plan and additional information about the biography and history of the creation of Vasily Terkin by Tvardovsky will be required. In Vasily Terkin, the analysis is specific due to the autonomy of the chapters and the lack of a common plot, so we suggest that you familiarize yourself with the full analysis of the literary text in our article.
Brief analysis
Year of writing – 1942-1945.
History of creation- The main character is a completely fictional character, the author finished the story about him along with the victory of the Russian army in the Great Patriotic War.
Subject- the feat of a simple soldier, the Russian character, the moral strength of a Russian person.
Composition- 30 chapters with a prologue and an epilogue, autonomous, but united by a common goal and the image of the main character.
Genre- a poem, a lyrical epic work, “a book about a fighter”.
Direction- realism.
History of creation
The main character of the poem - a fictional character - was invented and named by the editorial board of the Leningrad newspaper "On Guard of the Motherland", which included, in addition to the author himself, artists and poets. Vasily was supposed to become the main character in small feuilleton poems. However, the character became so popular that Alexander Tvardovsky decided to write a larger work.
In 1942, the first chapters of the legendary poem were written and published. Until 1945, it was published in newspapers in parts, in 1942 the first edition of the poem was published, still incomplete. Thus, Tvardovsky worked on the poem for three years. It turned out to be so in demand that the news that work on it was completed caused a lot of letters with a request to write a continuation of the story about Vasily Terkin.
Intention poems came to Tvardovsky during the Russian-Finnish war in 1939, when he participated in military events as a war correspondent. The Great Patriotic War, in which the author himself took part, became the impetus for writing a work in which real events: the battle on the Volga, the crossing of the Dnieper River, the capture of Berlin. In 1942, after participating in the most heated battles, the author returned to Moscow and began work on the poem.
Subject, which Tvardovsky chose is multifaceted and diverse, everything in his work rests on humor and optimism - just like in the real life of fighters in military field conditions. Despite pressure from the authorities for the lack of mention in the poem of the significance of the party, its contribution to victory and struggle, the writer did not include ideological moments in the narrative. They, according to the author, were completely incompatible with the general tone of the work, its idea and goals. Despite the fact that censorship required editing of essays, "Vasily Terkin" was reprinted by all known publications ("Znamya", "Pravda", "Izvestia"), its popularity grew. Each schoolboy knew the lines from the poem by heart, they recited it on the radio, read it to the soldiers at the front, and gave publications as a token of special military merit.
Subject
subject Tvardovsky's immortal poem can be described as follows: faith in victory, the strength of the Russian character, the feat of a simple soldier. The poem tells about a simple guy who lives, laughing, does not lose heart, believes in victory and holds on to life. His character, humor and exploits have become a real legend for the fighters at the front. People believed that Vasily was a real person, looked up to him, dreamed of seeing the hero and shaking his hand.
Such a “live image” was obtained by the writer thanks to his front-line experience, artistic means and the power of talent. The main idea of the work is to believe in victory, continue to live and fight in any situation, even in the face of death (as Terkin does in one of the chapters). Criticism and censorship were dissatisfied with what the poem teaches the reader, it was necessary to emphasize the role of the party in defeating the enemy. But the general direction of the narrative, its style and character were alien to ideology, therefore Problems raised in the poem are devoid of partisanship and ideological overtones.
The protagonist becomes close and dear to the reader, he is a friend, comrade, a guy from a neighboring company, but neither a charismatic leader, nor a mentor, nor a government servant. Due to disputes and pressure from censorship, Tvardovsky experienced a serious creative crisis in 1942-43, but was able to get around the bans and embody the original idea of \u200b\u200bthe work.
Composition
In the structure of the poem 30 chapters, prologue and epilogue. It is not subject to geographical or certain historical dates. The time of action - the Great Patriotic War, the place - front-line roads - it was this universality and generalization of the image of Terkin that made the work immortal. “War has no plot,” said the author of the poem himself.
It is this feature that is characteristic of the composition of the work - it brought together several stories, combining them with the image of the protagonist. Another feature of the construction of a literary text is the dialogue of the author himself with his character - they are fellow soldiers, countrymen. The author presents many important points in the form of disputes or conversations with his hero. Each chapter of the poem can be considered a separate poem - they are all complete and have a weak connection, relative autonomy. This is due to the fact that the poem was printed in separate chapters, and the reader might not be familiar with the content of the previous parts.
Main characters
Genre
The genre of the work is defined as a poem. In essence, it is rather a lyrical epic work, since it contains many plot narratives, but lyrical digressions are equivalent to an epic beginning. The author himself calls the genre a “book about a fighter”, since he failed to fit into the traditional structures and components. His story about the guy-shirt Vasily turned out to be too special, original, to fall within the framework of a certain genre. The problems raised by the author are very large-scale in order to fit into the genre of a poem or a story in verse.
Artwork test
Analysis Rating
Average rating: 4.5. Total ratings received: 420.
Open lesson of a young specialist of school No. 11 in Kaliningrad Zharkova Maria Alexandrovna.
Lesson learning new material. Acquaintance with the personality of A.T. Tvardovsky: life and stages of the poet's work.
Analysis of the compositional features of the poem "Vasily Terkin".
The work is of a group nature, search and creative activity
Download:
Preview:
To use the preview of presentations, create a Google account (account) and sign in: https://accounts.google.com
Slides captions:
Preview:
Date : 15.04.
Lesson topic : A.T. Tvardovsky is a poet-citizen. The history of the creation of the poem "Vasily Terkin". Genre-style and plot-compositional features of the poem.
Goals :
1) reveal the civil courage of the poet; show the role of the poem and the hero during the war years; help students understand the origins of our victory;
2) improve the ability to analyze a lyrical work; compose a coherent text on the questions asked;
3) arouse interest in the history of the war, the history of one's family; evoke an emotional response when talking about the war; contribute to the development of patriotic feelings.
Type of lesson : Lesson learning new material (mixed: conversation, research)
Forms of student work:conversation, oral work, group work, search activity.
1. Organizing time: Greetings ; voicing the plan and setting the goals of the lesson by students; work in class notebooks: write down the date, the topic of the lesson.
Forming the objectives of the lesson: What do you think, what goals will we pursue in today's lesson? (to reveal the civil courage of the poet; to show the role of the poem and the hero during the war years; to improve the ability to analyze a lyrical work)
I stage of the lesson (17 min):
2. Acquaintance with the personality of Tvardovsky (message of the groups)
Before starting to get acquainted with the life and creative path of A.T. Tvardovsky, I want to read you a poem by the Soviet poet Mikhail Dudin “In memory of A.T. Tvardovsky "(1988)
He was at the front
That regimental reconnaissance in battle,
Where there is no possibility
For the retreat of the heroes.
Poetry apart
Gave him insight.
His free language
The Element of Life spoke.
Empathy burdened
And in the song, true to self-will,
He accepted the pain of times with his heart
And made it my own pain.
Let the memory, like a dream, in a dream
Keeps for honor and reproach
All the depth in the blue
His baby eyes.
Exercise: Write down the abstracts of the speeches of classmates in a notebook. Answer the questions:
Student messages and presentations ( 12 min)
1. Biography of A. T. Tvardovsky (1st group).
A.T. Tvardovsky was born on June 8, 1910 on a farm in the depths of the Smolensk region, into a peasant family. The poet said that he was drawn to literature and especially to poetry from childhood. He began to compose poetry even before mastering the initial reading and writing: “I remember well that I tried to write down my first poem, denouncing my peers, the destroyers of bird nests, without knowing all the letters of the alphabet and, of course, had no idea about the rules of versification ... I clearly remember that there was a passionate, heart-beating desire ... and harmony, Row, and music - the desire to give birth to them - immediately, a feeling that accompanies to this day any new idea.
To form the personality of the future poet, great importance his father's erudition, love for the book, which his father brought up in children. “Whole winter evenings were often devoted to reading a book aloud,” Tvardovsky wrote in his autobiography. He got acquainted early with the works of Pushkin, Gogol, Lermontov, Nekrasov.
The father wanted to give his children a good education. Preparation for high school began early. Trifon Gordeich even specially brought a tutor from Smolensk, his distant relative, and Alexander was immediately enrolled in the 2nd grade. Studying continued until 1924 in different schools. Tvardovsky becomes an active participant in the social life of the village. He, "an ordinary rural Komsomol member", sent "small notes to the editorial offices of Smolensk newspapers. He wrote about uncorrected bridges, about Komsomol subbotniks, about the abuse of local authorities. And on July 19, 1925, the first poem "New Hut" was published in the newspaper "Smolenskaya village" with the signature "Alexander Tvardovsky". Thus began the creative path of the poet.
In 1932 - 1939, Tvardovsky studied at the Smolensk Pedagogical Institute at the Faculty of Humanities, then at the Moscow Institute of History, Philosophy and Literature, wrote and published fruitfully.
K. Simonov recalls this period in the following way: “The fame that came to him did not in the least shake his serious and strict attitude to the concept of education necessary for a writer, in which he invested a lot ... Having become an outstanding poet, he remained an outstanding student, with perseverance continuing the path to the cherished goal and brilliantly completing his education in the best humanitarian institution of higher education in the country at that time.
Life has made its own adjustments to the creative plans of Tvardovsky. The war with Finland began, and he became a correspondent for the front-line newspaper On Guard for the Motherland. Then the Great Patriotic War...
2. Tvardovsky at war. (2nd group.)
"Life is one and death is one"
The first morning of the Great Patriotic War caught Tvardovsky in the Moscow region in the village of Gryazi, Zvenigorod district, at the very beginning of his vacation. On the evening of the same day, he was in Moscow, and a day later he was sent to the headquarters of the South-Western Front, where he was to work in the front-line newspaper Red Army.
Some light on the life of the poet during the war is shed by his prose essays "Motherland and Foreign Land", as well as the memoirs of E. Dolmatovsky, V. Muradyan, E. Vorobyov, O. Vereisky, who knew Tvardovsky in those years, V. Lakshin and V. Dementiev , to whom Alexander Trifonovich later told a lot about his life. So, he told V. Lakshin that “in 1941 near Kiev ... he barely got out of the encirclement. The editorial office of the newspaper of the South-Western Front, in which he worked, was located in Kyiv. It was ordered not to leave the city until the last hour ... The army units had already retreated beyond the Dnieper, and the editorial office was still working ... Tvardovsky escaped by a miracle: the regimental commissar took him into his car, and they barely jumped out of the closing ring of German encirclement. In the spring of 1942, he was surrounded for the second time - this time near Kanev, from which, according to I.S. Marshak, came out again as a “miracle”. In the middle of 1942, Tvardovsky was moved from the Southwestern Front to the Western Front, and now, until the very end of the war, the editorial office of the front-line newspaper Krasnoarmeyskaya Pravda became his home. It became the home of the legendary Terkin.
According to the memoirs of the artist O. Vereisky, who painted portraits of Tvardovsky and illustrated his works, “he was surprisingly good-looking. Tall, broad-shouldered, with a thin waist and narrow hips. He held himself straight, walked with his shoulders straight, stepping softly, moving his elbows as he walked, as wrestlers often do. The military uniform suited him very well. His head sat proudly on a slender neck, soft blond hair, combed back, parted to the sides, framing a high forehead. His very bright eyes looked attentively and sternly. The movable eyebrows sometimes raised in surprise, sometimes frowned, converging to the bridge of the nose and giving severity to the facial expression. But there was some feminine softness in the outlines of the lips and the rounded lines of the cheeks.
Alexander Trifonovich always kept himself naturally, calmly, a little closed. He really did not like to share the "secrets" of his "creative laboratory" and got angry when someone tried to unceremoniously penetrate them. He never lost his temper, did not allow himself to "break loose", did not even allow the thought of somehow abusing his position as a literary celebrity, but with his immediate superiors he behaved completely independently, without a shadow of servility or fawning. The writer E. Vorobyov, who lived side by side with Tvardovsky for almost three war years, testifies: “When Tvardovsky was faced with a disrespectful attitude towards himself or his comrades, with callousness, formalism, rudeness, he responded with silent contempt, restrained indignation. In three years, I don’t remember a case when he spoke impolitely to subordinates, to those who were lower in rank than him. But in conversations with superiors, when there was injustice, tactlessness or someone's thoughtlessness, he did not hide his discontent. In such cases, he was very harsh, could be rude and did not hesitate to teach a lesson to a martinet who revels in power, from the category of those about whom he once said: "He who manages his own body."
During the war, another characteristic Tvardovsky: not only did he never flaunt his courage, but, on the contrary, he often emphasized those moments when he experienced feelings of fear. Here, for example, is his entry about a trip to Grodno: “The cape lasted for two hours in the city, pretending to be in front of each other as much as possible, which is not very scary for us. And it was very scary, tiring to the point of exhaustion. You no longer feel the slightest curiosity, you languish in your own restlessness, idleness here, where there is a difficult business that people are engaged in direct duty. And in the note about the capture of Vilnius, it is said, not without even some self-irony: “... We, the correspondents, were sitting three or four kilometers away at the headquarters of the division, waiting with professional shamelessness when it would be possible to leave for Vilnius, take pictures and rush back.”
In fact, he was a man of remarkable personal courage. According to A. Aborsky, who in 1952 rested with the poet in Gagra, during a six-point storm, Tvardovsky “thrown into the muddy, roaring waves, swam a kilometer and a half from the shore, while others, and excellent swimmers, were afraid to even approach the water ". E. A. Dolmatovsky, who knew Tvardovsky closely in the first year of the war, writes about him: “He calmly and with dignity went under fire when circumstances required it.”
Along with courage, Alexander Trifonovich also possessed a fair amount of physical strength (it is clear that he did not spend time in his father's forge in vain), the firmness of his hand and the fidelity of his gaze. No wonder he became the garrison champion in the game of towns. O. Vereisky recalls: “He was very fond of showing his remarkable physical strength, that is, not showing it, but simply releasing it. Either he chopped firewood for the kitchen, or he dug a new dugout, he never missed an opportunity to push, pull a stuck car out of the mud, or he fought with a few hunters to measure his strength with him, he readily took part in feast gatherings, at which he sang with willingness and diligence folk songs".
In 1944, the entire editorial board of Krasnoarmeyskaya Pravda became part of the 3rd Belorussian Front. Together with the soldiers and officers of this front, Tvardovskaya met Victory Day.
3. The creative path of the poet. (3rd group).
The creative path of A. T. Tvardovsky began in the 30s. He wrote poems and poems glorifying socialism, despite the fact that his family in the Smolensk region was subjected to unreasonable repressions (the poems "The Path to Socialism", "Country of the Ant").
About the years of unloving youth, its cruel troubles.
That was the father, then suddenly he is the enemy.
And the mother? But it is said: two worlds, and nothing
About mothers...
During the war he was a front-line correspondent. Created in 1941-1945. the poem "Vasily Terkin" became one of the most popular works about the war.
After the war, A. Tvardovsky, returning to the impressions of the war years and the unfading grief for the dead, wrote heartfelt poems “I was killed near Rzhev” and “I know it’s not my fault / that others did not come from the war ...”. The first poem is built as a monologue of a nameless soldier who died in the very first year of the war, defending Moscow: "And the dead, the voiceless / There is one consolation: / We fell for the Motherland, / But she was saved." In the second poem, written in 1966, the poet talks about how deep in his heart lies the responsibility to the dead.
The poems “For the distance - the distance” and “By the right of memory” contain a lyrical confession of a poet who has experienced shocks due to a reassessment of what happened to the country and to himself. The basis of the plot of the poem "Beyond the distance - the distance" is the poet's journey on the train "Moscow - Vladivostok" across the country and at the same time understanding what the country has experienced for last years. This is a journey through space and time (10 years and 10 thousand miles). The poem "By the Right of Memory", dedicated to the memory of his father, who was repressed during the years of collectivization, speaks of a revision of the author's position in relation to the policy of the Bolshevik Party in the 1930s-1940s. The poem, written in the 60s, was banned even by the censorship, which was quite liberal in those years, and was released only in the 80s, after the death of the poet.
Since 1958, Tvardovsky has headed the Novy Mir magazine and made it the center around which forces were grouped, striving for an honest depiction of reality, the path traveled by the country after October 1917. Tvardovsky - editor supports many aspiring writers. “Lord of thoughts”, “spiritual shepherd”, “stronghold of truth and fearlessness”, “master”, “great worker”, “hero” - such characteristics are scattered across the pages of the memoirs of his contemporaries. In F. Abramov we read: "Tvardovsky and my generation." Share some 10-15 years - not much, but he was the father of our souls... We idolized. Chief Editor. Organizer of all forces. God. Unsurpassed authority. Some kind of walking legend... Tvardovsky's fame was immortal... We idolized, and it was considered a great honor to be published in Novy Mir.
Novy Mir became the leading body for the democratic renewal of society. No other press organ at that time told so much of the bitter truth about the Stalin era, about Stalin's personality cult, as Novy Mir did.
Many of the contemporaries can testify: “We were waiting for every number. Prose. Criticism. And always level. As an original phenomenon, Novy Mir has made itself known since the publication of Ovechkin's essays, followed by Solzhenitsyn's prose. And then - a whole series of brilliant talents: F. Abramov, K. Vorobyov, V. Shukshin, F. Dombrovsky, 3. Zalygin. In the writer's fate of each of them, Tvardovsky played a brilliant role.
The novels of B. Pasternak "Doctor Zhivago", A. Solzhenitsyn's "Cancer Ward", "In the First Circle" were prepared for publication, but banned. A. Tvardovsky was uncompromising in his reassessment of the past and in the struggle for true freedom of creativity. In 1970, during the beginning of the so-called "stagnation", he was removed from the leadership of the journal, which hastened his untimely death.
- What else can be added about the poet based on this article?
Reflection : answers to questions asked at the beginning of the lesson; read abstracts
- What did you learn about Tvardovsky as a poet and a person?
- How did Tvardovsky's fate strike you?
3. Physical education minute: "imitation of rain". Creating an emotional mood, preparing for the analysis of the poem ( 3 min ).
II stage of the lesson:
4. The history of the creation of the poem "Vasily Terkin" ( 7 min)
Teacher's word: “Crossing, crossing ... Left bank, right bank ...” - these are lines from one of the most legendary works of the Great Patriotic War, “Vasily Terkin”. During the Second World War, the voice of Soviet poetry was the voice of the courage of the people, confident in the inevitable victory over fascism. Poetry helped to see the sun through the hanging clouds. Do not lose faith in the triumph of victory. The pen was equated with a bayonet. Poetry put on a front-line overcoat and stepped into battle.
Collective work on the textbook article “How Vasily Terkin was written” (pp. 89-90): draw up a citation plan
1) "Vasily Terkin ... - a fictional person from beginning to end, a figment of the imagination, a creation of fantasy."
2) The principle of composition and style is “this is the desire for a certain completeness of each separate part, chapter ...”, because “... this reader could not wait for my next chapter; he was where the hero is - in the war.
3) Since the appearance of the first part of the poem "Terkin" has become my main work at the front.
4) "... My work was well received, and this gives me strength to continue it."
5) "Terkin" was for me ... my lyrics, my journalism, a song and a lesson, an anecdote and a saying, a heart-to-heart talk and a remark to the occasion ".
A short message about the history of the creation of the poem(summarizing)
5. Genre-style and plot-compositional features of the poem
Reading the epigraph for this stage of the lesson
"Vasily Terkin" is the best of all,
written about a war within a war.
And to write like this
as it is written,
none of us have.
K. Simonov
Do you agree with his opinion? (you must first get acquainted with the poem in order to confirm or refute the statement - the goal of the lesson)
Teacher's word:
The poem "Vasily Terkin" is a truly innovative work in its genre-stylistic and plot-compositional features. In this regard, I suggest you solve a small problem:you need to find the optimal composition and prove its optimality(literary theory, group work, 3 min )
METHODS OF COMMUNICATION: 1) none; 2) chain (consistent development of events); 3) parallel (the same object is in the center of the story)
Student responses
Teacher's word:
Life, as it were, suggested the topics of the author's "conversation" with the front-line reader. This is how the structural principle of the internal completeness of each conversation - chapter was born: front-line readers could not know the previous chapter or not wait for the next one, dying or being wounded in the next battle, before which the front-line newspaper with the next chapter fell into his hands. But he still got a holistic view of what was told. The poem consists of 25 internally completed chapters.
The completeness of the poem is given objectively - by the historical chronological framework: all the events described in it take place during the harsh time of the Great Patriotic War, and the facts known to every reader, feelings empathized by everyone, contribute to a deeper emotional perception of the poem as a whole and each of its individual parts. .
teacher's word
Tvardovsky himself said "This is a book about a fighter without beginning or end." Why?(Problem question) (each chapter should be a fragment that is complete in meaning so that you can read it at any time, since the poem was published in separate issues of front-line newspapers. The chapters should be united by the main character - Terkin).
Plot from the movie (answer to the question)
So, we know what to write about, we know in what form. And on what or on whom does the book rest? (On the hero).
Do you think Vasily Terkin is a real person?(Vasily Terkin is a collective image. There really was no such person. But there were fighters who were somewhat similar to him).
What do you think it should be?I suggest that each group now fill out the questionnaire of our main character Vasily Terkin, using the text of the poem, and present it to their classmates and our guests. Justify answers. And also, looking at the portraits of Terkin, write down the character traits that you think he should have (Cheerful, Likes to eat, Prepossessing (easily finds a common language with people), Courageous, brave, courageous, brave warrior, Hardy, persistent , Skillful, Resourceful, Tactful, delicate, knows how to behave, Simple, Ordinary, typical, such as there are many)
Who is the book for? What should be the language? (“Here are the verses, and everything is clear, Everything is in Russian”). Both the content and the form of the poem are truly folk. Therefore, the poem became one of the most significant works not only of military, but of all Russian literature of the second half of the 20th century.
Reflection: Let's go back to the epigraph of the lesson. Have we proven or disproved his opinion? Do we know enough to most fully answer this question? (You need to read and analyze the poem further).
Homework:
- Read the chapter "Crossing";
- Learn by heart a passage from this chapter;
- Compare the chapters "On a halt" and "Crossing"(style, language, mood, image of the protagonist).
Vasily Terkin is a character in the poetic poem about the war of the same name, created by the writer. The image of the protagonist embodied the features of the common people. The author endowed the soldier with a cheerful disposition, ingenuity, the ability not to lose heart in difficult situations, courage and courage. For these qualities, the character fell in love with readers. Tvardovsky's book raised the morale of the Soviet soldiers, instilled in them optimism and faith in victory.
Character Creation History
The image of a Soviet soldier was created several years before the Great Patriotic War. Thinking through the nature of the character, Tvardovsky endowed Terkin with resourcefulness, inexhaustible positive and a sense of humor. The authorship of the image belongs to a team of journalists, which included Alexander Trifonovich.
In 1939, two feuilletons about Vasily Terkin were published. In the view of publicists, he was a successful and strong representative of the common people. Tvardovsky began to work out the character of the main actor future book during the years of the Soviet-Finnish war. The good-natured and courageous hero of the feuilletons gained popularity among the readership. This convinced the writer that the theme needed to be developed in a larger literary form.
The author set out to create a poetic poem, but the beginning of the Great Patriotic War changed his creative plans. Only in 1942 were the first lines of the work written, which Alexander Trifonovich originally called "The Book of a Fighter." The image of Vasily Terkin has no prototype. However, the writer, being on the battlefields as a war correspondent, managed to give the image "liveness" and realism, which allowed readers to perceive the hero of the poem as a real person.
View this post on Instagram
The first chapters of the book were published in a front-line newspaper. Then it began to be published by such printed publications as Pravda, Izvestia and others. Readers were inspired by the image of a worker saving his native lands. The chapters reached both the front-line soldiers and the citizens who remained in the rear. "The book about a fighter" enjoyed the love of the public.
In 1943, having ended up in a military hospital after being wounded, the writer decided that he had approached the end of the poem. Subsequently, he had to continue working until 1945. The book was continued thanks to the requests of readers. Completing work on the work, Alexander Trifonovich begins to write the next poem with the unusual title "Terkin in the Other World." It was originally planned that this would be the last chapter of the essay about the Russian soldier. However, the idea grew into a separate book. The new work became an anti-Stalinist pamphlet.
In terms of genre, Tvardovsky's poem resembled folk tales about folk heroes. Therefore, in the text, the writer deliberately abandoned the ideological principle. Alexander Trifonovich noted that an appeal to the party theme, the image of Joseph Stalin would violate the idea and "figurative structure of the poem about the people's war." This fact later created difficulties for the writer when publishing the poem - the work was subjected to numerous revisions and proofreading.
Tvardovsky's book became very popular during the war years. The work was not only published in newspapers, but also read out on the radio by such announcers as. The artist Orest Vereisky created wonderful illustrations for the poem about Terkin. The author of the essay himself visited hospitals and labor collectives, where he introduced the public to the history of the Soviet soldier.
View this post on Instagram
Rest after the battle (based on the poem by A. Tvardovsky "Vasily Terkin")
Phrases from a poem of steel famous quotes. In the lines about the battle, which is not for the sake of glory, but for the sake of life on Earth, the main idea and theme of the work is expressed. The image of the protagonist was later captured in sculpture - in Smolensk, Orekhovo-Zuevo, Gvardeysk, monuments were erected to the bright character of Russian literature.
Biography of Vasily Terkin
Tvardovsky's poem does not have a consistent plot. Each chapter is a separate episode from the life of a soldier. Little is known about the biography of Vasily Terkin. The text says that the hero was born in a village near Smolensk. The character is young and not yet married. The guy wants to go to the front to save the Fatherland from the encroachments of the enemy.
The cheerful and straightforward character demonstrates remarkable courage and courage, despite the difficulties of front-line life. The soul of the company, from whom you can always get support, Terkin was a role model. In battle, the soldier was the first to attack the enemy, at his leisure he entertained his comrades by playing the accordion. A charming and charismatic guy is the location of readers.
The first acquaintance of readers with the hero occurs when he, together with his colleagues, crosses the river. The operation takes place in winter, but the river is not completely frozen over, and the crossing is disrupted due to an enemy attack. The image of the road becomes central in the poem - this is the path of the Soviet army to victory over the invaders. In the episode with the crossing, Terkin demonstrates courage and ingenuity - thanks to the efforts of the hero, the soldiers can continue the campaign. However, the character himself is injured and ends up in a military hospital.
Monument to Vasily Terkin in Gvardeysk
After recovering from his wound, Terkin decides to catch up with the platoon. The chapter "Accordion" is dedicated to his ability to find an approach to the team and win their respect and trust.
The soldier becomes a participant in the battles and provides all possible assistance to those with whom he serves in the same detachment, and to civilians. Having received leave, Terkin refuses to travel to his native village, captured by the Germans, in order to be useful at the front. For a feat in battle - the hero shoots down an enemy plane - Vasily Terkin is awarded a medal, which during the war becomes not the only award of the character.
One day, entering a village, the hero finds himself in a house where an old man lives with his wife. Vasily repairs watches and saws for the old people and encourages them in every possible way. In another episode, a warrior gives a personal pouch to a soldier who has lost his. At the same time, Terkin recalls that when he was in the hospital and lost his hat, the young nurse gave the character her hat. Since then, Vasily carefully kept this gift.
During the battle for the village, the soldier has to take on the functions of a young lieutenant killed. The hero leads the platoon, leads to the attack. The village was taken by Russian soldiers, but Vasily was seriously wounded. When a fighter lies on the snow, Death appears to him and asks him to submit to her. But the character finds the strength to resist the intruder. Soon other employees find the wounded man and send him to the sanitary battalion. After spending some time in the hospital, the soldier returns to his native company, where he finds many new faces.
I'll start in order - from the first question, which generally most often arises among readers regarding the hero of a particular book.
"Does Terkin really exist?", "Is he a type or one known to you, a living person?", "Does he really exist?" - here are the wordings of this question taken selectively from the letters of the front-line soldiers. It arose in the mind of the reader even at the time when I had just begun to publish The Book about a Fighter in newspapers and magazines. In some letters, this question was posed with an obvious assumption of an affirmative answer, and from others it was clear that the reader had no doubts about the existence of a “living” Terkin, but it was only a question of “is he serving in our division, such and such?” ?". And the cases of letters being addressed not to me, the author, but to Vasily Terkin himself are also evidence of the prevalence of the idea that Terkin is a "living person".
In a word, there was and still is such a reader's idea that Terkin is, so to speak, a personal person, a soldier living under this or that name, listed behind the number of his military unit and field mail. Moreover, the prose and poetic messages of readers speak of the desire that this be so, that is, that Terkin be a non-fictional person. However, I could not and cannot, to the satisfaction of this simple-hearted, but highly valued reader's feeling, declare (as some other writers could and can do) that my heroes are not an imaginary person, but live or lived there and met me then and under such and such circumstances.
No. Vasily Terkin, as he is in the book, is a fictional person from beginning to end, a product of the imagination, a creation of fantasy. And although the features
expressed in it, were observed by me in many living people - none of these people can be called the prototype of Terkin.
But the fact is that it was conceived and invented not only by me, but by many people, including writers, and most of all not by writers, and to a large extent by my correspondents themselves. They actively participated in the creation of "Terkin", from its first chapter to the completion of the book, and to this day they continue to develop this image in various forms and directions.
I explain this in order to consider the second question, which is posed in an even larger part of the letters, the question: how was "Vasily Terkin" written? Where did such a book come from?
"What served as material for it and what was the starting point?"
"Wasn't the author himself one of the Terkins?"
This is asked not only by ordinary readers, but also by people who are specially involved in the subject of literature: graduate students who have taken Vasily Terkin as the theme of their works, teachers of literature, literary critics and critics, librarians, lecturers, etc.
I'll try to tell you about how "Terkin" was "formed".
"Vasily Terkin", I repeat, has been known to the reader, primarily to the army, since 1942. But "Vasya Terkin" has been known since 1939-1940 - from the period of the Finnish campaign. At that time, a group of writers and poets worked in the newspaper of the Leningrad Military District "On Guard of the Motherland": N. Tikhonov, V. Sayanov, A. Shcherbakov, S. Vashentsev, Ts. Solodar and the writer of these lines. Somehow, discussing with the editorial staff the tasks and nature of our work in a military newspaper, we decided that we needed to start something like a "humor corner" or a weekly collective feuilleton, where there would be poems and pictures. This idea was not an innovation in the army press. Following the model of the propaganda work of D. Bedny and V. Mayakovsky in the post-revolutionary years, newspapers had a tradition of printing satirical pictures with poetic
signatures, ditties, feuilletons with continuations with the usual heading - "At leisure", "Under the Red Army accordion", etc. There were sometimes conditional characters, passing from one feuilleton to another, like some kind of merry cook, and characteristic pseudonyms, like Uncle Sysoya, Grandfather Yegor, Machine Gunner Vanya, Sniper and others. In my youth, in Smolensk, I was involved in similar literary work in the district "Krasnoarmeyskaya Pravda" and other newspapers.
And so we, the writers who worked in the editorial office of On Guard for the Motherland, decided to choose a character who would appear in a series of amusing pictures, provided with poetic captions. It was supposed to be a kind of cheerful, successful fighter, a conditional figure, popular print. They began to come up with a name. They came from the same tradition of the "corners of humor" of the Red Army newspapers, where their Pulkins, Mushkins and even Protirkins were then in use (from the technical word "rubbing" - an object used when lubricating weapons). The name had to be meaningful, with a mischievous, satirical undertone. Someone suggested calling our hero Vasya Terkin, namely Vasya, and not Vasily. There were proposals to name Vanya,
Fedey, somehow, but settled on Vasya, This is how this name was born. Here I must dwell, by the way, on one private reader's
question, just about the name Vasily Terkin.
Major M. M-v, a Muscovite, writes in his letter:
“Recently I read the novel by P. D. Boborykin “Vasily Terkin”. And, frankly, I felt very embarrassed: what is there in common between him and your Vasily Terkin? time of the Great Patriotic War and defending his Soviet Motherland with great patriotism - to the merchant-swindler, burnout and hypocrite Vasily Ivanovich Terkin from Boborykin's novel? So why did you choose such a name for your (and our) hero, behind which a certain type and which has already been described in our Russian literature?
already described, type and created by you? But this is an insult to the seasoned soldier Vasya Terkin! Or is it a coincidence?"
I confess that I heard about the existence of the Boborykin novel, when a significant part of "Terkin" was already published, from one of my senior literary friends. I took out the novel, read it without much interest, and went on with my work. I did not and do not attach any importance to this coincidence of the name of Terkin with the name of the Boborykin hero. There is absolutely nothing in common between them. It is possible that some of us, who were looking for the name of a character for feuilletons in the newspaper "On Guard of the Motherland", turned up this combination of a first name with a surname by chance, as they had sunk into memory from Boborykin's book. And then I doubt it: we needed Vasya then, and not Vasily; You can’t name the Boborykin hero Vasya in any way - this is completely different. As for why I later began to call Terkin more Vasily,
than Vasya, this is again a special matter. In a word, there was not and is not a shadow of "borrowing" here. It’s just that there is such a Russian surname Terkin, although it seemed to me earlier that we “constructed” this surname, starting from the verbs “rub”, “grind”, etc. And here is one of the first letters from my correspondents on the “Book about a fighter”, when it was published in the newspaper of the Western Front:
"To the editors of Krasnoarmeiskaya Pravda, to the poet Comrade A. Tvardovsky.
Tov. Tvardovsky, we ask you: is it possible to replace the name Vasily with Viktor in your poem, since Vasily is my father, he is 62 years old, and I am his son - Viktor Vasilyevich Terkin, platoon commander. I am on the Western Front, serving in the artillery. And therefore, if possible, then replace it, and I ask you to inform me of the result at the address: payment order 312, 668 art. regiment, 2nd division, Viktor Vasilyevich Terkin.
Probably, this is not the only one of the namesakes of the hero of the "Books about a fighter"
(In 1964, a number of newspapers ("Nedelya", "Evening Moscow", "Soviet Trade") published extensive correspondence about Terkin Vasily Semenovich, a counter worker, a former front-line soldier, in which the "Terkin" features of appearance, character and life fate were emphasized this person. (Author's note.)).
But I return to the "Terkin" during the fighting in Finland.
I was instructed to write an introduction to the proposed series of feuilletons - I had to give at least the most general "portrait" of Terkin and determine, so to speak, the tone, the manner of our further conversation with the reader. Before that, I published in the newspaper "On Guard of the Motherland" a small poem "On a Halt", written under the direct impression of a visit to one division.
This poem contained, among other things, the following lines:
Delicious, what to say
There was the same old man
What did he come up with to cook soup ...
Wheels straight.
For me, who until that time had not served in the army (except for the short time of the liberation campaign in Western Belarus) and did not
who wrote nothing "military", this poem was the first step in mastering a new subject, new material. I was still very unsure here, I kept my usual rhythms, tonality (in the spirit of, say, "Grandfather Danila"). And in my introduction to the collective "Terkin" I turned to this previously found intonation, which, when applied to new material, to a new task, seemed to me the most suitable.
Here are some stanzas of this "beginning" of "Terkin":
Vasya Terkin? Who it?
Let's be frank:
The man is himself
Unusual.
With a surname like this,
At all unprepossessing
Glory loud - hero -
I got along with him quickly.
And let's add here
If asked:
Why is his name Vasya - not Vasily!
Because everyone is dear
Because people
Get along with Vasya like no one else,
Because they love.
Bogatyr, fathom in the shoulders,
Well-tailored small,
Joyful by nature
Experienced man.
Though in battle, at least where you know, -
But this is for sure:
First of all, Vasya must eat firmly,
But it doesn't save
Heroic strength
And takes enemies on a bayonet,
Like sheaves on a pitchfork.
And yet, no matter how strict
In appearance, Vasya Terkin, -
He couldn't live without a joke
Yes, without a saying ... ("Vasya Terkin at the front." - Front-line library
newspaper "On Guard of the Motherland", ed. "Art", L. 1940.)
I note that when I came to grips with my current "Terkin", the features of this portrait changed dramatically, starting with the main
stroke:
Terkin - who is he?
Let's be frank:
Just a guy himself
He is an ordinary...
And one could say that this alone determines the name of the hero in the first case, Vasya, and in the second, Vasily Terkin.
All subsequent illustrated feuilletons, made by a team of authors, bore uniform headings: "How Vasya Terkin ..." I will cite in full, for example, the feuilleton "How Vasya Terkin got the language":
The snow is deep and the pine trees are rare.
Vasya Terkin on reconnaissance.
Snow-white, without patches
Camouflage coat.
Terkin sees, Terkin hears -
Belofinn flies on skis:
To know that he does not feel trouble, he
Climbs right on the rampage.
Terkin, weighing the situation,
Applies disguise:
He buried himself face down in the snow -
It looked like a snowball.
View of a tempting "springboard"
Attracts the White Finn.
He rushes with a swing at the "snowdrift" ...
Got the language terkin
And delivered to the headquarters of the regiment.
It may seem that I chose a particularly weak example, but also stories about "how Vasya Terkin captured the arsonists", whom he "covered everyone one by one with barrels and, satisfied, lit a cigarette on an oak barrel"; about how he "delivered a report on skis", "flying forests above, over a turbulent river", "through mountains, waterfalls rushing forward without restraint"; about how from the cockpit of an enemy aircraft he pulled a Shutskor soldier "by the leg" with a "cat", and others - all this now gives the impression of naivety of presentation, the extreme implausibility of Vasya's "exploits" and not such an excess of humor.
I think that the success of "Vasya Terkin", which he had in the Finnish war, can be explained by the need of the soldier's soul to have fun with something that, although it does not correspond to the harsh reality of military everyday life, at the same time somehow clothes precisely them, and not abstract fairy-tale material in almost fairy-tale forms. It also seems to me that a considerable share of success should be attributed to the drawings by V. Briskin and V. Fomichev, performed in a kind of cartoon style and often really funny.
By the way, it has been repeatedly noted that O. Vereisky's illustrations for the "Book of a Fighter" are very consistent with its style and spirit. This is true. I just want to say that, unlike "Vasya Terkin", not a single line of "Vasily Terkin", illustrated by my front-line comrade artist O. Vereisky, was written as a text for a finished drawing, and it's even hard for me to imagine how it could be . And with "Vasya Terkin" this was exactly what happened, that is, the theme of the next feuilleton was conceived, the artists "carried" it into six cells, performed it in drawings, and only then the signature verses appeared.
Having paid tribute to "Vasya Terkin" with one or two feuilletons, most of its "initiators" took up, each according to their inclinations and abilities, other work in the newspaper: some wrote military-historical articles, some front-line essays and sketches, some poems, some what. The main author of "Terkin" was A. Shcherbakov, a Red Army poet, a longtime editorial worker. And Terkin had more success with the Red Army reader than all our articles, poems and essays, although at that time we all treated this success somewhat condescendingly, condescendingly. We rightly did not consider it literature. And after the end of the war in Finland, when one of my comrades working in the military press heard from me - in response to a question about what I was now working on - that I was writing "Terkin", he slyly shook his finger at me; so, they say, I believed you that you would now do this.
But right now I was thinking, working, fighting on "Terkin". “Terkin,” I felt, turning to this work in a new way, “must get off
columns of "corners of humour", "direct pickups", etc., where he still performed under this or that name, and occupy not some small part of my forces, as a task of a highly specialized "humorous" sense, but all of me without a trace. It is difficult to say on what day and hour I came to the decision to rush into this matter with all my might, but in the summer and autumn of 1940 I was already living with this plan, which rejected all my previous intentions and plans. One thing is clear, that this was determined by the sharpness of the impressions of the experienced war, after which it was no longer possible to simply return to one's usual literary work.
"Terkin", according to my then plan, was to combine accessibility, unpretentiousness of form - direct purpose
feuilleton "Terkin" - with the seriousness and, perhaps, even the lyricism of the content. Thinking of "Terkin" as a kind of whole work, a poem, I now tried to unravel, to grasp that "necessary moment of exposition" (as one of the readers recently put it in a letter to me), without which it was impossible to move on.
The insufficiency of the "old" "Terkin", as I now understand it, was that it came out of the tradition of ancient times, when the poetic word,
addressed to the masses, was deliberately simplified in relation to a different cultural and political level of the reader, and when this word was not yet at the same time the most self-cherished word for its creators, who believed their true success, saw their real art in another, postponed for a while "real" creativity.
Now it was different. The reader was different - they were the children of those fighters of the revolution for whom D. Bedny and V. Mayakovsky once wrote their songs, ditties and satirical couplets - people without exception are literate, politically developed, attached to many of the benefits of culture, who grew up under Soviet power .
First of all, I took up, so to speak, mastering the material of the war that I had experienced, which was not only the first war for me, but also the first
really close meeting with the people of the army. During the days of the battles, I deeply understood to myself, what is called a feeling, that our army is not a special world, separate from the rest of the people of our society, but simply these are the same Soviet people, placed in the conditions of army and front-line life. I whitewashed my pencil notes from the notebooks into a clean notebook, re-recorded something from memory. In this new material for me, everything was dear to me to the smallest detail - some kind of picture, a turn of phrase, a separate word, a detail of front-line life. And most importantly - I was dear to the people with whom I managed to meet, get acquainted, talk on the Karelian Isthmus.
Driver Volodya Artyukh, blacksmith-artilleryman Grigory Pulkin, tank commander Vasily Arkhipov, pilot Mikhail Trusov, coastal infantry soldier Alexander Poskonkin, military doctor Mark Rabinovich - all these and many other people with whom I talked for a long time, spent the night somewhere in a dugout or surviving in the front line of a crowded house, were not for me a fleeting journalistic acquaintance, although I saw most of them only once and not for long. I have already written something about each of them - an essay, poems - and this, of course, in the process of that work, forced me to sort out my fresh impressions, that is, in one way or another, "assimilate" everything connected with these
people.
And, while hatching my idea of "Terkin", I continued to think about them, to understand their essence for myself as people of the first post-October generation.
“It was not this war, whatever it was,” I wrote in my notebook, “that gave birth to these people, but more that was before the war. The revolution,
collectivization, the whole system of life. And the war revealed, brought to light these qualities of people in a bright form. It's true, she did something."
And further:
“I feel that the army will be just as dear to me as the theme of reorganizing life in the countryside, its people are just as dear to me as the people of the collective farm village, and then after all, they are mostly the same people. The task is to penetrate their spiritual inner world, to feel them as their generation (the writer is the same age as any generation). Their childhood, adolescence, youth passed under the conditions of Soviet power, in factory schools, in a collective farm village, in Soviet universities. Their consciousness was formed under the influence, by the way and our literature.
I was delighted with their spiritual beauty, modesty, high political awareness, readiness to resort to humor when it comes to the most difficult trials that they themselves had to face in combat life. And what I wrote about them in verse and prose - all this, I felt, as it were, this, but not that. Behind these iambs and choreas, behind the phraseological turns of newspaper essays, there were somewhere in vain, there was only for me the peculiar lively manner of speech of the blacksmith Pulkin or the pilot Trusov, and the jokes, and habits, and tricks of other heroes in kind.
I re-read everything that appeared in the press relating to the Finnish war - essays, stories, memoirs of participants in the battles. He enthusiastically engaged in any work that, in one way or another, even if not in the actual literary plan, concerned this material. Together with S. Ya. Marshak, I processed the memoirs of Major General V. Kashuba, Hero of the Soviet Union, which later appeared in Znanie. On the instructions of the Political Directorate of the Red Army, he went with Vasily Grossman to one of the divisions that came from the Karelian Isthmus in order to create its history. By the way, in the manuscript of the history of this division, we set out, according to the participants in one operation, an episode that served as the basis
to write the chapter of the future "Terkin".
In the autumn of 1940, I went to Vyborg, where the 123rd division was stationed, in which I was in the days of the breakthrough of the "Mannerheim Line": I needed
see the battlefields, meet my acquaintances in the division. All this - with the thought of "Terkin".
I was already beginning to "test the verse" for it, groping for some beginnings, introductions, refrains:
... There, beyond that river Sister,
At war, in chest-deep snow,
Golden Hero Star
Many have been marked the way.
There, in the battles of the semi-unknown,
In the pine forest of deaf swamps,
Death of the brave, death of the honest
Many of them have fallen..
It was this size - the four-foot trochee - that more and more felt like a poetic size, with which you need to write a poem. But there were other trials as well. Often the four-foot trochaic seemed to bring this work of mine too close to the primitiveness of the verse of the "old" "Terkin". “The sizes will be different,” I decided, “but basically one will “flow around.” There were sketches for “Terkin” and iambs, from these “blanks” a poem was somehow formed later: “When you pass through the columns ...”
The "crossing" began, by the way, and so:
To whom is death, to whom is life, to whom is glory,
The crossing began at dawn.
That shore was like a stove, steep,
And, sullen, jagged,
The forest was black high above the water,
The forest is alien, unfinished.
And under us lay the right bank, -
Snow rolled, trampled into the mud -
Level with the edge of the ice. Crossing
Started at six o'clock...
There are many words here, from which the beginning of the "Crossing" was formed, but this verse did not work for me. "Obviously, this meter did not come from words, but 'got drunk' like that, and it's no good," I wrote, refusing to start this chapter. I still think, generally speaking, that the size should be born not from some kind of wordless "rumble", which, for example, V. Mayakovsky speaks of, but from words, from their meaningful combinations inherent in living speech. And if these combinations find a place for themselves within the framework of any of the so-called canonical sizes, then they subordinate it to themselves, and not vice versa, and they are already not just such-and-such an iambic or such-and-such a chorea (counting percussion and unstressed ones is extremely
conditional, abstract measure), but something completely original, as it were, a new size.
The first line of the "Crossing", the line that developed into its, so to speak, "leitmotif", penetrating the entire chapter, was the very word - "crossing",
repeated in intonation, as if anticipating what is behind this word:
Crossing, crossing...
I thought about it for so long, imagined in all its naturalness the episode of the crossing, which cost many sacrifices, the enormous moral and physical stress of people and was remembered, probably, forever by all its participants, so I "got used" to all this, that suddenly, as if, I said to myself this sigh exclamation:
Crossing, crossing...
And "believed" in him. I felt that this word could not be pronounced otherwise than I had pronounced it, having to myself all that it
means: battle, blood, losses, the deadly cold of the night and the great courage of people going to death for their homeland. Of course, there is no "discovery" here at all. The technique of repeating a particular word in the beginning was widely used and is used both in oral and in
written poetry. But for me, in this case, it was a godsend: a line appeared, without which I could no longer do. I forgot to think whether it was a trochee or not, because there was no such line in any trochee in the world, but now it was and it itself determined the structure and mode of further speech.
So the beginning of one of the chapters of "Terkin" was found. At about this time, I wrote two or three poems, which most likely did not even
were perceived as "blanks" for "Terkin", but subsequently partially or completely entered the text of the "Book about a fighter" and ceased to exist as separate poems. For example, there was such a poem - "Better not." In the war, in the dust of the march ... and so on until the end of the stanza, which became the initial stanza of "Terkin".
There was a poem "Tank", dedicated to the tank crew of the Heroes of the Soviet Union comrades D. Didenko, A. Krysyuk and E. Krivoy. Some of his stanzas and lines were needed when working on the chapter "Terkin is wounded." A tank going into battle is terrible... Some diary entries from the spring of 1941 tell about searches, doubts, decisions and re-decisions in the work, maybe even better than if I talk about this work from the point of view of my current attitude towards it.
"Hundred lines have already been written, but everything seems to be that there is no" electricity ". Everyone is deceived that it will go by itself and will be fine, but in reality it has not yet developed in the head. You don't even know exactly what you need. The ending (Terkin, who swam across the channel in his underpants and thus established contact with the platoon) is clearer than the transition to it. It is necessary that the appearance of the hero be joyful. This needs to be prepared. I thought I would replace this place with dots for the time being, but, having not coped with the most difficult, you do not feel the strength for the easier one either. Tomorrow I'll break again."
“I started with an uncertain determination to write“ simply ”, somehow. The material seemed to be such that, no matter how you write, it would be good. It seemed that
he even demands a certain indifference to form, but it only seemed so. So far, there has been nothing about this, except for essays ... But even they have already taken away from me, in part, the opportunity to write "simple", to surprise with the "severity" of the topic, etc.
And then other things appear, the book "Fighting in Finland" - and this already obliges more and more. The "color" of front-line life (external) turned out to be
public. Frost, hoarfrost, shell explosions, dugouts, frosty raincoats - both A. and B have all this. But what I don’t have either, or only in a hint, is a person in an individual sense, “our guy” - not abstract (in the plane of the "epoch" of the country, etc.), but alive, expensive and difficult."
"If you do not carve real sparks from this material, it is better not to take it. It is necessary that it be good not in accordance with some kind of conscious "simplicity" and "rudeness", but simply good - at least for anyone. But this does not mean that you need to "refine "everything from the very beginning (B., by the way, is bad because he internally wonders not about the reader, but about his circle of friends with his pitiful aesthetic signs)".
“The beginning can be semi-lubok. And there this guy will go more and more difficult. But he should not be forgotten, this “Vasya Terkin”.
"More should be the previous biography of the hero. It should appear in every gesture, deed, story. But you don't need to give it as such. It's enough to think it over well and imagine it for yourself."
"The difficulty is that such "funny", "primitive" heroes are usually taken in pairs, for contrast to the real, lyrical, "high" hero. More digressions, more of himself in the poem.
“If you don’t excite yourself, don’t please, sometimes don’t surprise at least what you write, it will never excite, please, surprise another: the reader,
expert friend. It needs to be felt well again first. No discounts to yourself for "genre", "material", etc.".
June 22, 1941 interrupted all my searches, doubts, assumptions. All this was that normal literary life of peacetime, which had to be left immediately and freed from all this in the performance of the tasks that now confronted each of us. And I left my notebooks, sketches, notes, intentions and plans. It never occurred to me then that this work of mine, interrupted by the outbreak of a great war, would be needed in the war.
Now I explain to myself this irrevocable break with the idea, with the working plan, and so on. In my work, in my searches and efforts, no matter how deep the impression of the past "small war" was, there was still a sin of literature. I wrote in peacetime, no one really expected my work, no one hurried me, the specific need for it seemed to be absent outside of me. And this allowed me to regard form as such as a very essential aspect of the matter. I was still to some extent preoccupied and troubled by the fact that the plot did not seem ready to me; that my hero is not what literary ideas should be main character poems; that there has not yet been an example of large things being written in such a "undignified" size, like a four-foot trochee, etc.
Subsequently, when I suddenly turned to my plan for peacetime, proceeding from the immediate needs of the masses of the people at the front, I waved my hand at all these prejudices, considerations and fears. But for the time being, I just turned off my whole writing economy in order to
to do what is urgent and immediately required by the situation.
As a special correspondent, or more precisely, as a "writer" (there was such a full-time position in the military press system), I arrived on the South-Western Front, at the editorial office of the Red Army newspaper, and began to do what everyone did then writers at the front. I wrote essays, poems, feuilletons, slogans, leaflets, songs, articles, notes - everything. And when the idea arose in the editorial office to start a permanent feuilleton with
pictures, I suggested "Terkin", but not mine, left at home in notebooks, but one that had been quite famous in the army since the days of the Finnish campaign. That Terkin had many "brothers" and "peers" in various front-line publications, only they had other names. Our front-line editorial staff also wanted to have "their own" hero, they named him Ivan Gvozdev, and he existed in the newspaper along with the "Direct fire" section, it seems, until the end of the war. I wrote several chapters of this "Ivan Gvozdev" in co-authorship with the poet Boris Paliychuk, again without linking this work of mine with the peacetime intentions regarding "Terkin".
At the front, a comrade gave me a thick notebook in a black oilcloth binding, but made of "pencil-like" paper - poor, rough, ink-permeable. In this notebook, I pasted or pinned up my daily "production" - newspaper clippings. In the atmosphere of front-line life, moving, spending the night on the road, in conditions when every hour it was necessary to be ready for relocation and always be assembled, this notebook, which I kept in my field bag, was for me a universal item that replaced briefcases, archive folders , boxes
desk, etc. She maintained in me a very important in such a life, at least a conditional sense of the safety and orderliness of the "personal household".
I have not looked into it, perhaps, since that very time, and, leafing through it now, I see how much in that newspaper work, diverse in genres,
which I was engaged in, was made for the future "Terkin", without thinking about it, about any other life of these poems and prose, except for the one-day term of a newspaper page.
"Ivan Gvozdev" was, in terms of literary performance, perhaps better than "Vasya Terkin", but did not have that success. First, this was not
a novelty, and secondly, and this is the main thing, the reader was in many ways different. The war was not positional, when the leisure of a soldier, even in the harsh conditions of military life, is conducive to reading and re-reading everything that somehow meets the interests and tastes of a front-line soldier. The newspaper could not regularly hit units that were, in fact, on the march. But even more importantly, the mindset of the readership was determined not just by the difficulties of the soldier’s life itself, but by the entire immensity of the terrible and sad events of the war: the retreat, the abandonment of relatives and friends by many soldiers in the rear of the enemy, the harsh and concentrated thought inherent in all about the fate of the motherland,
endured the greatest trials. But still, even during this period, people remained people, they had a need to relax, have fun, have fun with something at a short halt or in a break between artillery fire and bombing. And "Gvozdev" was read, praised, the newspaper was watched, starting from the corner of "Direct fire". It was a feuilleton dedicated to a certain episode of the combat practice of the "Cossack Gvozdev" (unlike V. Terkin, an infantryman, Gvozdev was - perhaps, due to the conditions of saturation of the front with cavalry units - a Cossack).
Here, for example: "How to cook dinner skillfully, so that it is tasty and on time" ("From the military adventures of the Cossack Ivan Gvozdev");
The battle that day was in full swing.
The chef is injured. How to be here?
And Gvozdev has to
For the fighters, cook dinner ...
He took everything hastily:
As one verse says,
For seasoning peppers, onions
And a parsley root.
Work is going well
The water boils with a bang.
Only suddenly from mortars
The German began to beat here.
Fight - fight, lunch - lunch,
Nothing else.
Are the mines bursting? I'm leaving
I'll save the cauldron with borscht.
Borsch is full, tea to sweat
Will be ready on time.
Look - they covered the planes -
Get in the crack, Gvozdev.
Take a basket with you -
Fighters-friends are waiting for borscht.
Let the bombing, but the potatoes
With the husk in the boiler - it is impossible.
And happen so for laughter,
To the hindrance it happened -
In the forest where Gvozdev drove off,
From the sky - lope! - skydiver.
Gvozdev spied on a fascist,
Hastened to cover the boiler,
I kissed. Shot fired...
- Don't bother cooking dinner.
The borscht is ripe, the grits are ripe,
Not even half an hour had passed.
And Gvozdev finishes the job:
Borscht ready - in a thermos.
Nothing that mines whistle
The hot battle does not subside.
Turned the driver around
And let's go to the front.
On our front line
Perched behind a hillock,
Borscht pours excellent
The cook is a good ladle.
Who is so skillful today
Hearty, on time and tasty
Did you manage to feed the fighters?
Here he is: Ivan Gvozdev.
There were also statements on behalf of Ivan Gvozdev on various topical issues of front-line life. Here, for example, is a conversation about the importance of keeping military secrets: "About language" ("Sit down and listen to the word of the Cossack Gvozdev"):
Everyone must know
Like a bolt and a bayonet
What is tied for?
He has a tongue...
Or "Welcoming speech to the guys from the Ninety-ninth from the Cossack Gvozdev" on the occasion of awarding the named division for successful combat
actions. And here is a feuilleton on the topic "What is Sabantuy" ("From the conversations of the Cossack Gvozdev with the fighters who arrived at the front"):
To those who came to fight with the German,
It is necessary, no matter how you interpret it,
By the way, figure it out:
What is "sabantuy"...
It was a lesson, quite similar in form and meaning to the corresponding conversation by Terkin, on the same topic in the future "Book about a fighter."
Where does this word come from in "Terkin" and what exactly does it mean? - such a question is very often posed to me both in letters and in notes on literary
evenings, and just by word of mouth when meeting with various people.
The word "sabantuy" exists in many languages and, for example, in the Turkic languages it means the holiday of the end of field work: saban - plow, tui -
holiday. I first heard the word "sabantuy" at the front in the early autumn of 1941, somewhere in the Poltava region, in one unit that held the defense there. This word, as is often the case with affectionate words and expressions, was used by both staff commanders, and artillerymen on the front line battery, and residents of the village where the unit was located. It also meant a false intention of the enemy in some sector, a demonstration of a breakthrough, and a real threat on his part, and our readiness to arrange a "treat" for him. Last thing
closest to the original meaning, and the soldier's language is generally characterized by the ironic use of the words "treat", "snack", etc. In the epigraph to one of the chapters " captain's daughter"A. S. Pushkin quotes the lines of an old soldier's song:
We live in a fort
We eat bread and drink water;
And how fierce enemies
They will come to us for pies,
Let's give the guests a feast,
Let's load the cannon.
The word "sabantuy" and I brought with my fellow newspaper worker S. Vashentsev from this trip to the front, and I used it in the feuilleton, and S. Vashentsev - in the essay, which was called "Sabantuy". In the first weeks of the war, I once wrote a feuilleton "It was early in the morning."
Together with the feuilleton about "Sabantuy" and the poem "On a Halt", written at the beginning of the Finnish campaign, it subsequently served as a draft for the chapter of "Terkin", also entitled "On a Halt".
It was early in the morning
I'll take a look...
- So what?
- A rod of German tanks a thousand .. "
- A thousand tanks? Are you lying?
- Why should I lie to you, my friend?
- You're not lying - your tongue is lying,
- Well, let yourself not a thousand,
There were only five hundred...
This is a rhyming adaptation of the old fable about a liar out of fear, in a front-line mode, an example of that poetic improvisation, which was most often performed in one sitting, according to the plan for tomorrow's newspaper issue. This is how Gvozdev was made by me and B. Paliychuk together. Then the series "About Grandfather Danila" - by me alone, by right, so to speak, the first author, then a series about a German soldier - "Willy Muller in the East", in which I participated very little, transcriptions of popular songs - "Katyusha", "On the military road "and all kinds of other
poetic trivia. True, some of the live oral soldier's humor, born and becoming widespread catchphrases, etc., fell into these writings.
But in general, all this work, like "Vasya Terkin", far from corresponded to the capabilities and inclinations of its performers and themselves.
was considered not the main one, not the one with which they associated more serious creative intentions. And in the editorial office of the "Red Army", as in its time in the newspaper "On Guard of the Motherland", along with all the special poetic production, there appeared poems by poets involved in "Direct Fire", but already written with the installation of "full artistry". And a strange thing - again, those poems did not have such success as "Gvozdev", "Danila", etc. And to be honest - both "Vasya Terkin" and "Gvozdev", like everything similar to them in the front-line press, were written hastily, carelessly, with such assumptions in the form of poetry, which none of the authors of this production would have tolerated in their "serious" poems, not to mention the general tone, manner, designed, as it were, not for adult literate people, but for some fictional village mass.
The latter was felt more and more, and finally it became unbearable to speak in such a language with the reader, whom it was impossible not to respect, not to love. And suddenly stop, start talking to him in a different way, there was no strength, there was no time.
I was more satisfied with work in prose - essays about the heroes of the battles, written on the basis of personal conversations with people at the front. Although these short, two hundred or three hundred newspaper lines, essays did not contain everything that communication with the person in question gave, but, firstly, it was a fixation of living human activity, a consolidation of the real material of front-line life, secondly, here it was not necessary to joke at all costs, but simply and reliably state the essence of the matter on paper, and, finally,
we all knew how much the heroes themselves valued these essays, which made their exploits known to the entire front, entering them, as it were, into some kind of chronicle of the war. And if a feat was described, or, as they said then, a combat episode where the hero died, then it was important to dedicate your description to his memory, once again mention his name in the printed line. The essays were most often titled with the names of the fighters or commanders whose combat work they were dedicated to:
"Captain Tarasov", "Battalion Commissar Pyotr Mozgovoy", "Red Army Said Ibragimov", "Sergeant Ivan Akimov", "Battery Commander Ragozyan", "Sergeant Pavel Zadorozhny", "Hero of the Soviet Union Pyotr Petrov", "Major Vasily Arkhipov" and etc.
Of the poems written during this period, not for the Direct Fire department, I still include some in new editions of my books. These are "Ballad of Moscow", "Tankman's Tale", "Sergeant Vasily Mysenkov", "When You Fly", "To the Soldier of the Southern Front", "House of the Soldier", "Ballad of Abdication" and others. Behind each of these poems was a vivid front-line impression, a fact, a meeting that I still remember. But even at that time I felt that the actual literary moment somehow alienated the reader from the reality and vitality of these impressions, facts, human destinies.
In a word, the feeling of dissatisfaction with all kinds of our work in the newspaper gradually became a personal misfortune for me. Thoughts also came that maybe your real place is not here, but in the ranks - in a regiment, in a battalion, in a company - where the most important thing is done, what needs to be done for the Motherland. In the winter of 1942, in our editorial office, the idea arose to expand the "Direct Fire" section to a separate weekly leaflet - an appendix to the newspaper. I undertook to write, as it were, a programmatic editorial in verse for this publication, which, by the way, did not last long for various reasons. Here is the introductory part of this poem:
In war, in harsh life,
In the difficult life of combat,
In the snow, under a chilly roof -
There is no better simple, healthy,
Durable frontline food.
And any warrior is old
He will simply say about her:
If only she were with a fat
Yes, it would be from the heat, from the heat -
Get it hot.
To keep you warm
Gave, went into the blood,
So that your soul and body
Climb together boldly
For good deeds.
To go forward, to attack,
Feeling strength in the shoulders
Feeling cheerful. However
It's not just about the...
You can live without food for days
You can do more, but sometimes
In a one minute war
Do not live without a joke.
The jokes of the most unwise ...
Before the spring of 1942, I arrived in Moscow and, looking into my notebooks, suddenly decided to revive Vasily Terkin. The introduction was immediately written about water, food, joke and truth. The chapters "At rest", "Crossing", "Terkin wounded", "About the award", which were in rough drafts, were quickly completed. "Accordion" has remained basically in the same form as it was printed in its time. A completely new chapter, written on the basis of the impressions of the summer of 1941 on the Southwestern Front, was the chapter "Before the battle." The movement of the hero from the situation of the Finnish campaign to the situation of the front of the Great Patriotic War gave him a completely different meaning than in the original plan. And it was not a mechanical solution to the problem. I have already had to say in the press that the actual military impressions, the battle background of the war of 1941-1945 for me were largely preceded by work at the front in Finland. But the fact is that the depth of the national historical disaster and the national historical feat in the Patriotic War from the first day distinguished it from any other
wars and especially military campaigns.
I did not long languish with doubts and fears about the indeterminacy of the genre, the lack of an initial plan that embraces the whole work in advance, and the weak plot connection of the chapters with each other. Not a poem - well, let yourself not a poem, I decided; there is no single plot - let yourself not, do not; there is no very beginning of a thing - there is no time to invent it; the culmination and completion of the whole story is not planned - let it be, it is necessary to write about what is burning, not waiting, and then we will see, we will figure it out. And when I decided so, breaking all internal obligations to the conventions of form and waving my hand at one or another possible assessment by the writers of this work of mine, I felt cheerful and free. As if in a joke on myself, on my plan, I sketched the lines that this "book is about a fighter, without beginning, without end."
Indeed, it was "not enough time to start it all over again": the war was going on, and I had no right to put off what needs to be said today, immediately, until the time when everything would be stated in order, from the very beginning.
Why no end?
I just feel sorry for the young man.
Such an explanation seemed understandable to me in a war situation, when the end of the story about the hero could mean only one thing - his death. However, in the letters of comrades, not just readers of "Terkin", but considering it, so to speak, in scientific terms, there was some kind of bewilderment about these lines: shouldn't they be understood in some other way? Do not do it! But I won’t say that the questions of the form of my essay didn’t bother me.
I have more since the minute I ventured to write "without form", "without beginning or end". I was concerned about the form, but not the one that is generally thought of in relation to, say, the genre of the poem, but the one that was needed and gradually in the process of work
guessed for this particular book.
And the first thing I took as a principle of composition and style is the striving for a certain completeness of each individual part, chapter, and within a chapter, of each period, and even stanza. I should have had in mind the reader who, even though he was unfamiliar with the previous chapters, would find in this chapter published today in the newspaper something whole, rounded. In addition, this reader could not wait for my next chapter: he was where the hero is - in the war. This exemplary completion of each chapter was what I was most concerned about. I did not keep anything to myself until another time, trying to speak out on every occasion - the next chapter - to the end, to fully express my mood, to convey a fresh impression, a thought, a motive, an image. True, this principle was not immediately determined - after
the first chapters of "Terkin" were printed in a row one after another, and then new ones appeared as they were written. I believe that my decision to print the first chapters before the book was completed was correct and largely determined the fate of "Terkin". A reader helped me to write this book as it is, I will talk about this below.
The genre designation of "Books about a fighter", which I settled on, was not the result of a desire to simply avoid the designation "poem", "story", etc. This coincided with the decision to write not a poem, not a story or a novel in verse, that is, not something that has its legalized and, to a certain extent, obligatory plot, compositional and other features. These signs did not come out of me, but something did come out, and I designated this something as the "Book about the fighter." What mattered in this choice was that special, familiar to me from childhood, the sound of the word "book" in the mouths of the common people, which, as it were, suggests the existence of a book in a single copy. If it was said, sold, among the peasants that, they say, there is such and such a book, and in it this and that is written, then it did not mean at all that there could be another exactly the same book. One way or another, but the word "book" in this popular sense sounds in a special way, as a serious, reliable, unconditional subject.
And if I thought about the possible successful fate of my book while working on it, then I often imagined it published in cloth softcover, as military manuals are published, and that it would be kept by a soldier behind the bootleg, in the bosom, in a hat. And in terms of its construction, I dreamed that it could be read from any open page. Since the chapters of the first part of "Terkin" appeared in print, he
became my main and main work at the front. None of my works was so difficult for me at first and did not go so easily then, as "Vasily Terkin". True, I rewrote each chapter many times, checking it by ear, worked for a long time on any one
stanza or line. For example, remember how the beginning of the chapter "Death and the Warrior" developed, in the poetic sense "formed" from the lines of an old song about a soldier:
Don't wind, black raven,
Over my head.
You can't wait for prey
I'm a soldier still alive...
At first there was a recording where poetry was interspersed with a prose presentation - it was important to "cover" the whole picture:
A Russian wounded lay...
Terkin lies on the snow, bleeding.
Death sat down at the head, says:
- Now you're mine. Answers:
- No, not yours, I'm a soldier still alive.
- Well, - he says, - he's alive! Move at least your hand. - Terkin quietly answers:
I keep calm...
Then came the opening line:
In an open field on a hill,
Alone, and weak, and small,
In the snow Vasily Terkin
Unselected lay.
But here there was not enough sign of the battlefield, and the result was too conventionally songlike picture: "In an open field ..." - and then the words were asked:
"under the willow ..." And I needed, with the intonation coming from the well-known song, the reality of the current war. In addition, the second line was not good - it was not simple, it had more fiction than song characteristics.
Then came the stanza:
For distant hills
The battle fever was gone.
In the snow Vasily Terkin
Unselected lay.
This is not very good, but it gives greater certainty of place and time: the battle is already far away, the wounded man has been lying on the snow for a long time, he is freezing. And the next stanza naturally develops the first:
Snow under him, swollen with blood,
Took a pile of ice.
Death bowed to the head;
- Well, soldier, come with me.
But on the whole, this chapter was written easily and quickly: its main tone and composition were immediately found (Chapter "Death and the Warrior" in the "Book about a fighter"
belongs, by the way, also to the role that it closely connects "Vasily Terkin" with "Terkin in the Other World" published many years later. It, this chapter, contains the external plot scheme of my last poem: Terkin, half-dead picked up on the battlefield, returns to life from non-existence, "from the other world", whose pictures constitute the special, modern content of my "second" Terkin ". (Note . of the author.)) And how many lines were written, forwarded dozens of times only then sometimes to throw them away in the end, while experiencing the same joy as when writing new successful lines.
And all this, even if it was difficult, but not tedious, was always done in great spiritual uplift, with joy, with confidence. I must say in general: in my opinion, what is good is what is written as if easily, and not what is typed with excruciating painstakingness line by line, word by word, which either fall into place or fall out - and so on ad infinitum. But the whole point is that it is very difficult to get to this "lightness", and it is these difficulties of approaching "lightness" that we are talking about when we say that our art requires labor. And if you still haven’t experienced “lightness”, joy when you feel that it’s “gone”, you haven’t experienced working on a thing for the whole time, but only, as they say, dragging the boat on dry land without launching it, it is unlikely that the reader will experience the joy of the fruit of your painstaking efforts.
At that time, I was no longer working on the Southwestern, but on the Western (3rd Belorussian) Front. The troops of the front were then, roughly speaking, on
land of the eastern regions of the Smolensk region. The direction of this front, which was to liberate the Smolensk region in the near future, determined some of the lyrical motifs of the book. Being a native of the Smolensk region, connected with it by many personal, biographical ties, I could not help but see the hero as my countryman.
From the first letters I received from readers, I realized that my work was well received, and this gave me the strength to continue it. Now I was no longer alone with her: I was helped by the warm, sympathetic attitude of the reader towards her, his expectation, sometimes his “hints”: “I wish I could reflect this and that” ... etc.
In 1943, it seemed to me that, in accordance with the original plan, the "history" of my hero was coming to an end (Terkin is fighting, wounded,
returns to service), and I put an end to it. But from letters from readers, I realized that this can not be done. In one of these letters, Sergeant Shershnev and the Red Army soldier Solovyov wrote:
"We are very upset by your final word, after which it is not difficult to guess that your poem is over, and the war continues. We ask you to continue the poem, because Terkin will continue the war to a victorious end."
It turned out that I, the storyteller, encouraged by my front-line listeners, suddenly left them, as if I had not said something.
And besides, I did not see the possibility for myself to move on to some other work that would capture me so much. And out of these feelings and many
reflections was the decision to continue the "Book about the fighter." I once again neglected the literary convention, in this case the convention
completeness of the "plot", and the genre of my work was defined for me as a kind of chronicle, not a chronicle, a chronicle is not a chronicle, but a "book", a living, mobile, free-form book, inseparable from the real cause of protecting the Motherland by the people, from their feat in the war . And with new enthusiasm, with full consciousness of the necessity of my work, I set to work on it, seeing its completion only in the victorious conclusion of the war and its development in accordance with the stages of the struggle - the entry of our troops into new and new lands liberated from the enemy, with their advancement to borders, etc.
Another confession. Approximately in the middle of my work, I was carried away by the temptation of "plotting". I began to prepare my hero for
crossing the front line and operations in the rear of the enemy in the Smolensk region. Much in this turn of his fate could seem organic, natural, and seemed to make it possible to expand the field of activity of the hero, the possibility of new descriptions, etc. The chapter "General" in its first printed form was devoted to Terkin's farewell to the commander of his division before leaving for back to the enemy. Other excerpts were published, where it was already about life behind the front lines. But I soon saw that this reduced the book to some private
history, makes it smaller, deprives it of that front-line "universality" of content that has already been outlined and has already made the name of Terkin a household name in relation to living fighters of this type. I resolutely turned away from this path, threw out what belonged to the enemy rear, reworked the chapter "General" and again began to build the fate of the hero in the plan that had developed earlier.
Speaking about this work as a whole, I can only repeat the words that I have already said in print about the "Book about a fighter":
“Whatever its actual literary significance, for me it was true happiness. It gave me a sense of the legitimacy of the artist’s place in the great struggle of the people, a sense of the obvious usefulness of my work, a sense of complete freedom in dealing with verse and word in a naturally formed, unconstrained form of presentation. "Terkin" was for me in the relationship of the writer with his reader my lyrics, my journalism, song and teaching, anecdote and saying, a heart-to-heart talk and a remark to the occasion.
A front-line reader, whom I used to consider during our face-to-face and correspondence, through the pages of print, communication, as if my co-author - according to the degree of his interest in my work - this reader, for his part, also considered "Terkin" our common cause.
“Dear Alexander (I don’t know how it is by patronymic,” wrote, for example, fighter Ivan Andreev, “if you need material, I can do a favor. A year on the front line and seven battles taught me something and gave me something” .
"I heard a soldier's story at the front about Vasya Terkin, who did not read in your poem," K. V. Zorin from Vyshny Volochok reported. "Perhaps he interests you?"
“Why was our Vasily Terkin wounded?” D. Kaliberdy and others asked me in a collective letter. “How did he get to the hospital? our Terkin is not that kind of guy. It's not good, don't write like that about Terkin. Terkin should always be with us on the front lines, a cheerful, resourceful, brave and determined fellow ... Greetings! We are waiting soon from Terkin's hospital. "
And there are many such letters, where the reader's participation in the fate of the hero of the book develops into involvement in the very cause of writing this book.
Long before the completion of Terkin, the editorial offices of newspapers and magazines, where the next parts and chapters of the book were printed, began to receive "continuations"
"Terkina" in verse, written almost exclusively by people who are trying their hand at such a thing for the first time. One of the first experiments was the "third part" of "Terkin", sent to the guards by senior sergeant Kondratiev, who wrote in his letter to the editor of the newspaper "Krasnoarmeyskaya Pravda":
"Comrade editor!
I earnestly apologize if I take a few minutes of your time for my poem "Vasily Terkin", part 3. Please, of course, agree with Comrade. Tvardovsky, as the author of this poem. Being at the front, over the past 8-10 months I have not had to read the latest in our literature. It was only in the hospital that I saw a poem about Terkin, although I had not read the first part. Not knowing the intention of the author and the future of Terkin, I dared to try to portray him as a Red Army soldier, assuming that he was not in the forefront at the time of the capture of the village, but he had to show himself as at least a temporary commander and become an example ... "
Cadet V. Ugryumov tells in a letter about his "plan" to describe the second Terkin, the hero of labor ...
“A soldier comes from the war,” he writes, “but rest (even a month of rest after all the troubles) is not to his liking. From the first day he starts work.
He meets with the deputy battalion commander, and together they begin to lead and work. From the foreman of the field brigade, Terkin comes to the director of the MTS. For valiant work presented to the highest award ... Here, approximately, in brief, such a plot ... "
In addition to the "continuations" of "Terkin", a large place among the letters of readers, especially in the post-war period, is occupied by poetic messages to Vasily Terkin, with urgent wishes that I continue the "Book about a fighter".
It remains for me to dwell on this, perhaps the most difficult, point of the three that I outlined at the beginning.
In May 1945, the final chapter of "Terkin" - "From the Author" was published. She evoked many responses in poetry and prose. Ninety-nine percent of them boiled down to the fact that readers want to know Terkin in a peaceful working life. I still receive such letters, and sometimes they are addressed not to me, but to the editorial offices of various publications, the Writers' Union, that is, organizations that, in the opinion of the authors of the letters, should influence me, so to speak, in public order. V. Minerov from the Prechistensky district in the Smolensk region, in a postscript to one of the Moscow editorial offices accompanying his poems "Search for Terkin" writes: "I beg you to skip these careless and rude lines. I'm not a poet, but I had to work hard: to call Tvardovsky to work" .
In wishes and advice to continue "Terkin" the field of activity of the hero in peaceful conditions is usually determined by the occupation of the authors of the letters. Some would like Terkin, who remained in the ranks of the army, to continue his service, teaching the young replenishment of the fighters and serving as an example for them. Others want to see him return to the collective farm without fail and work as a fore-collective farm or foreman. Still others find that the best development of his fate would be in working on one of the great post-war construction projects, for example, on the construction of the Volga-Don Canal, etc. Here are the stanzas taken from a message in verse to the hero of the book on behalf of the people of the Soviet Army :
Where are you, our Vasily Terkin,
Vasya Terkin, our hero?
Or are you now not Terkin,
Or has it become completely different?
We often remember you
We remember the past
About the war, how they fought,
How did you end the enemy...
But it's been four years
How the war ended
How did you not become among us,
What happened to you, brother?
Maybe you went to construction
Fighting five-year plan?
But do you remember our address?
He is still the same - field ...
But we knew your character
And we are sure that
that you will be with us
After all the war
Work in our Army
As in your own family,
You can help her
You have experience...
N. Matveev
The author of the message expresses confidence that the hero of the "Book about a fighter" is in the ranks of the army. Another correspondent, cadet Zh. Yagupov, on behalf of
Terkin himself claims this not without a clear reproach to the author of the book:
I'm ready to answer you
My creator, my poet
Let me just point out
Where have you been for so many years?
Something the Army forgot.
And it hurts me a lot:
After all, once we served
Together with you in the war...
I am a soldier, although not proud,
But it's a shame to me, poet ...
So, Terkin, grated in battles,
Suddenly resign? You're kidding. No!
I, brother, became related to the Army,
And I can't retire...
And so I'm sorry
What, I didn’t ask you
Became a cadet. As you wish,
I was advised by an asset.
Soldiers want to live with me
They tell me: they say, respect ...
I remain guilty
in front of you
Terkin
Your.
V. Litavrin from Chita, also concerned about the post-war fate of Terkin, admitting its various possibilities, asks:
Maybe he's on the run now
Fulfills the norm three times,
What do they give him according to the plan?
Maybe coming to the camp,
And with a cheerful saying,
Everyone knows Vasya Terkin,
Formerly a valiant soldier
He gives steel rolling? ..
What does your Terkin do:
Does he go to parties?
Has he been married for a long time?
All write - all the same.
Maybe he, cherishing a dream,
Quiet morning in the middle of the alley
Listen to the song of the nightingale?
Or a long time ago a judge?
Or is he a hero of our days?
Does he play hockey?
Maybe he became a combine operator?
Or rules over the choir
And he leads a drama club?
Where are you, our dear friend?
But A. I. Makarov, in his letter like a detailed instruction, resolutely suggests that I "let" Terkin "on the front of agriculture."
“Let him,” recommends A. I. Makarov, “seriously and with humor tell and point out to collective farmers and collective farmers, tractor drivers and workers of MTS, state farms:
1. That food in all forms ... is the physical strength of the people, the vigorous spirit of the people ...
2. That an abundance of food can be achieved by the timely sowing of all crops with good seeds, good soil cultivation, fertilization, the introduction of correct multi-field crop rotations ...
The next section... a critique of shortcomings... that needs to be hit... with Terkin's sharp words:
1. For dishonest work ...
2. Poor quality of agricultural machinery and spare parts for them.
3. By ... careless ... care of agricultural machinery, equipment, workers
cattle and harness.
4. For agronomists who ... did not make plans for the correct multi-field
crop rotations.
5. According to the culprits who have more weeds in the fields than ears.
6. By the Ministry of Forestry.
7. According to the leaders of the fishing industry".
Etc.
AI Makarov imagines this work in the form of a voluminous brochure-collection ... "Terkin in agriculture." With illustrations under
separate headings (chapters): "Terkin on a collective farm, on a state farm, on a dairy farm, in a poultry house, on tobacco plantations, beets, in an orchard, in a vegetable garden, on melons, in vineyards, in Zagotzerno - on an elevator, on fish crafts, etc., etc. It is worth, of course, to invite assistants to this business and travel around the collective farms and state farms of different regions and fisheries ... I am ready to help you in this matter in everything and always, in whatever way I can.
In itself, such a variety of wishes regarding the specific fate of the "post-war" "Terkin" would put me in an extremely difficult position. But, of course, that's not the point.
I answered and continue to answer my correspondents that "Terkin" is a book that was born in a special, unique atmosphere of the war years, and that, completed in this special capacity, the book cannot be continued on other material, requiring a different hero, other motives. I refer to the lines from the final chapter:
We need a new song.
Give it time, it will come.
However, new and new letters with proposals and urgent advice to write a "peaceful" "Terkin", and each correspondent naturally imagines that he was the first to open such an opportunity for me, force me to explain this matter to readers in a little more detail. “In my opinion,” writes I.V. Lenshin from the Voronezh region, “you yourself feel and you yourself are sorry that you have finished writing Terkin. You should still continue it ... write what Terkin is doing now ...”
But even if it were so that I would regret parting with "Terkin", I still could not "continue" it. It would mean "exploit"
ready, formed and already somehow imprinted in the minds of readers, the image, to increase the number of lines under the old title, without looking for a new quality. Such things in art are impossible. I will give one example.
The same newspaper Krasnoarmeyskaya Pravda, where Terkin was printed, also published New Adventures of the Good Soldier Schweik. This thing was written by my friend at the front, the writer M. Slobodskoy. It was a "continuation" of the work of J. Hasek, created on the material of the First World War. The success of The New Adventures of the Good Soldier Schweik is explained, in my opinion, firstly, by the great need for this kind of entertaining and entertaining reading, and secondly, of course, by the fact that the familiar image was satirically attributed to the conditions of the Nazi army.
But no one, I think, would have thought to continue this "continuation" of "Schweik" in the post-war period. Moreover, the author of "New Schweik" after the last war did not even find it necessary to publish it as a separate book - there is no such book, but there was and is a book by J. Hasek "The Adventures of the Good Soldier Schweik". Because Hasek's book was a creative discovery of the image, and the work of M. Slobodsky in this case was a more or less skillful use of a ready-made image, which, generally speaking, cannot be the task of art.
True, the history of literature knows examples of "the use of ready-made images", as we find, for example, in Saltykov-Shchedrin, who transferred Griboyedov's Molchalin or Gogol's Nozdrev to conditions of a different reality - from the first to the second half of the 19th century. But this was justified by the special tasks of the satirical and journalistic genre, which was not so concerned, so to speak, with the secondary full-blooded life of these images as such, but using their characteristic features familiar to the reader in application to other material and for other purposes ... (Approximately this can be explained now the appearance of "Terkin in the next world", which is by no means a "continuation" of "Vasily Terkin", but a completely different thing, due precisely to the "special tasks of the satirical-journalistic genre".
there is still a special conversation with readers ahead. (Author's note))
Perhaps for individual readers all these explanations are superfluous, but I have in mind here mainly those readers who insistently demand a continuation of Terkin. By the way, my “silence” is all the more incomprehensible to them because “continuation” does not seem so difficult to them.
In the above-quoted message of V. Litavrin, it says so directly:
Where is your Terkin, where is Vasily, -
You will find effortlessly
Because, I know, for a poet
Small work - this task.
And Litavrin, like others who think so, is absolutely right. "To continue" "Terkin", to write several new chapters in the same plan, in the same verse, with the same "nature" of the hero in the center - really "small work - this task." But the fact is that it was precisely this apparent ease of the task that deprived me of the right and desire to carry it out. This would mean that I gave up new searches, new efforts, in which it is only possible to do something in art, and would begin to rewrite myself.
And that this task, obviously, is not difficult, the "sequels" of "Vasily Terkin" themselves, which are still widely used, serve as proof of this.
"I recently read your poem" Vasily Terkin "... - seventeen-year-old Yuri Moryatov writes to me, - and I decided to write the poem" Vasily
Terkin", only:
You wrote about how Vasya
Fought with the Germans in the war
I'm writing about five years
And about Vasya's work .. "
Another young poet, Dmitry Morozov, writes "Vasily Terkin's Open Letter to Former Fellow Soldiers" in terms of highlighting precisely the post-war fate of the hero:
In the arsenal of my machine gun
Passed under grease lubrication.
I'm not a soldier in uniform
Passed as they say
To a new, peaceful life.
Our ancient land - wilderness and forest -
All changed,
That said, great progress.
Showed up in life.
We strengthened in the spring
Lived richly.
Like in an attack, like in a fight,
Soldiers went to work.
I am demobilized
During the first term of the Decree,
He rebuilt the house, and his
Now the family has started
Or, say, the base.
Glory to peaceful labor!
Be vigilant today.
If so, then I'll come!
Sending hello. V. Terkin.
From the "continuations" and "imitations" of "Terkin" known to me, it would be possible to compile a book, perhaps no less in volume than the existing "Book about a fighter." I know cases of printed sequels of "Terkin". For example, in several issues of the Zvezda newspaper at a plant in Perm
"Vasily Terkin at the Factory" by Boris Shirshov was printed:
In a new summer tunic
(Vacation to take the turn has come)
Front-line soldier Vasily Terkin
Decided to visit the plant.
They say Vasily Terkin
From the Smolensk side,
And others argue: "In the assembly
He worked before the war."
Well, the third is not joking,
Seriously they say:
"Vasya Terkin! Yes, in the foundry
Together for many years
Worked." In short,
In order not to argue, let's say this:
Terkin was our worker,
Everything else is rubbish..
The chapters "Terkin in the Assembly Shop", "Terkin in the Tool Shop", "Terkin in the Foundry Shop" and others tell about the participation of a visiting soldier in factory affairs, about his meetings with workers; proper names and specific facts of industrial life - the texture of the usual strophic and intonation of the verse "Terkin".
Arguing with the reader is a disadvantageous, hopeless business, but you can and should explain yourself to him if necessary. In order to explain this, I will give another example.
When I wrote "The Land of the Ant" and published it in the form it is to this day, not only I, in my youth, but also many other comrades believed that this was the "first part." Two more parts were supposed, in which Nikita Morgunka's journey would extend to the collective farms of the south of the country and the regions of the Ural-Kuzbass. It seemed obligatory, and most importantly - and the work, it seemed, did not amount to large: the narrative unfolded, its style and character were determined - let's move on. But this obvious ease and obligation of the task alerted me. I refused to "continue" the poem and still do not regret it.
"Vasily Terkin" came out of that semi-folklore modern "element" that is made up of newspaper and wall newspaper feuilleton, pop repertoire, ditty, joke song, raek, etc. Now he himself has generated a lot of similar material in the practice of newspapers, special editions, pop music, oral use. From where he came, he goes there. And in this sense, "The Book of a Fighter", as I already partly said, is not my own work, but a collective authorship. I consider my share of participation in it fulfilled. And this does not infringe on my author's feeling in any way, but, on the contrary, it is very pleasant for him: I managed to work on identifying the image of Terkin, which, as evidenced by written and oral reviews of readers, has become quite widespread among the people.
In conclusion, I want to thank my correspondents from the bottom of my heart for their letters about "Terkin", both those that contain questions, advice and comments, and those that simply express their good attitude towards this work of mine.
Over the years since the publication of this article, "Terkin mail" has brought many new reader responses. They came and come on the occasion of either a new edition of "Books about a fighter", or another radio program "Vasily Terkin" performed by the late D.N. Orlov, or staging a performance of the same name in professional theaters (stage composition by K. Voronkov) and on the stage of army amateur performances , finally, on the occasion of the appearance in print of my other books.
Among these responses, a large place is occupied by such an active form of reader participation in the fate of the book as numerous "amateur"
dramatizations, scripts or their libretto based on "Terkin", not to mention urgent proposals of this kind to the author of the book. But, perhaps, an even more active form of the reader's attitude towards the hero of the book is the desire to prolong his current life, to transfer
him from the front-line situation to the conditions of peaceful post-war labor. The article explaining why the author refrains from "continuing" this book of his on new material has by no means lessened such reader demands and wishes. But the poetic messages - calls for the continuation of "Terkin" by its author decisively gave way to the "continuations" of the "Book about a Fighter" by the readers themselves, even if people with some hidden or obvious literary claims, but, in any case, not professional writers.
Following Terkin, a cadet of a military school, appear: Terkin, an air defense anti-aircraft gunner; Terkin - demobilized, going to the construction of the Bratsk hydroelectric station; Terkin in the electric forging shop; Terkin on virgin soil; Terkin - a policeman ... Terkin's "sons" and "nephews" appear - the years go by, and even the age of the hero, in accordance with the interests of young readers, undergoes such "corrections".
Some of these "Terkins" were published: "Vasily Terkin in Air Defense" by Senior Lieutenant E. Chumakov - in the newspaper "On a combat post"; "Yasha Terkin"
M. Ivanova - "Labor reserves" (Alma-Ata); "Terkin in the Fire Troops" - "Alarm" (Kharkov), etc. (Over the past two or three years, in connection with the publication of "Terkin in the Other World", the number of imitations and continuations in my "Terkin archive" doubled, and their subject matter and polemical or other orientation was already determined by the content of this second "Terkin" (Author's note.))
The literary merits of these "continuations", both printed and handwritten, sometimes very large in volume, are, of course, conditional - their direct dependence on the "Book about a fighter" is obvious not only in borrowing the main image, but also in the entire texture of the verse. Yes, it is not disguised by their authors, it is not presented as anything other than newspaper, wall newspaper or pop material of local or "industry" purpose. In any case, the motives of these authors are touching and disinterested. In a word, exactly like this: the image of Terkin "from where he came - he goes there" - into the modern semi-folklore poetic "element". And such a collective "continuation" of "Terkin" can only please me and evoke in me a feeling of friendly gratitude towards my numerous, so to speak, co-authors on "Terkin".
But, of course, completely different feelings are caused by one special case of the "continuation" of "The Book of a Fighter" - for purposes deeply alien to the image of Terkin, and
in a way that has not even a remote resemblance to the generally accepted concepts of the literary business. I am referring to the book published in New York by a certain S. Yurasov "Vasily Terkin after the war" with the designation in brackets: "According to A. Tvardovsky." This "co-author" is by no means an inexperienced beginner, and this work of his is not an ingenuous "test of the pen" - he owns, for example, the declared
on the cover of this edition is the autobiographical novel "Enemy of the People", which depicts "a portrait of the Soviet major Fyodor Panin, who decided to break with Bolshevism and become an emigrant."
S. Yurasov pretends that he quite literally understood my words in the "Response to Readers" that in a certain sense "The Book of a Fighter" is not my own work, but of collective authorship. He writes there: “Part of the book“ Vasily Terkin after the war ”consists of what I heard in the army and in the Soviet Union. Some places in this part coincide with certain places in A. Tvardovsky, but have a completely different meaning. What is here imitation of the nameless "Terkins" to the poet, and what, on the contrary, belongs to folklore and was used by A. Tvardovsky, it is difficult to say.
“It can be said,” Yurasov continues, “that Vasily Terkin is the way he lives and is still being created in the midst of soldiers and the masses, is
free folk art". Having presented the case in this way, Yurasov arrogates to himself the right to complete "freedom" in handling the text of my "Vasily Terkin". We open the first page of the book:
On which river to swim, -
To create glory and glory ...
From the first days of the bitter year,
In the difficult hour of the native land,
Not joking, Vasily Terkin,
We made friends with you.
But I didn't know yet, right,
What's with the printed column
Everyone will like you
And you will enter the hearts of others ...
And so on, and so on - stanza after stanza, everything is exactly "according to Tvardovsky", except that, for example, the line "From the first days of the year
bitter" was replaced by the unpronounceable "From the days of the war, from the bitter time", and the line "But I didn't know yet, right" - "And no one thought, right ..." So until the third page, where, after my line "Maybe Is there trouble with Terkin?" suddenly comes a stanza entirely of Yurasov's production:
- Maybe they put them in the camp
- Today Terkin can't...
- In the forty-fifth, - they said,
- What went to the West ...
This blasphemous attempt to liken the fate of the honored Soviet warrior, the victorious hero - at least presumably - to his despicable
biography of a defector, a traitor to the motherland, of course, can only cause disgust, which does not allow us to dwell on all the methods of this shameless falsification.
The work is rough. For example, from the chapter "Duel" the whole, so to speak, technical side of Terkin's hand-to-hand combat with a German is taken, and with the help of lines and stanzas somehow stuck together from himself, he is passed off as Terkin's hand-to-hand combat with ... a policeman. Compared to this, painting a stolen car in a different color by motorist thieves and changing the license plate seems to be a much more plausible matter.
Yurasov "quotes" me in stanzas, periods and whole pages, but he does not put quotation marks anywhere, believing that his "additions" and "replacements" give him the right to use the well-known, so many times reprinted text of a Soviet book in his own low anti-Soviet goals. It is indicative that this man, who went "to the service" of the bourgeois world, where the highest deity is private property, completely neglected the principle of literary property, which in our socialist society is just protected by law, being primarily a moral concept.
However, why be surprised if the publishers of Yurasov's anti-artistic concoction do not hesitate to name their institution in New York after one of the greatest and noblest Russian writers - A.P. Chekhov, as indicated on the cover of S. Yurasov's thieves' fake book.