In the summer of 1956, a passenger disembarked at the one hundred and eighty-fourth kilometer from Moscow along the railway line to Murom and Kazan. This is a storyteller, whose fate resembles the fate of Solzhenitsyn himself (he fought, but from the front "he was documents "groped"). He dreams of working as a teacher in the depths of Russia, away from urban civilization. But it did not work to live in the village with the wonderful name Vysokoe Pole, because they did not bake bread there and did not sell anything edible. And then he is transferred to a village with a monstrous name for his hearing Peatproduct. However, it turns out that "not everything is around peat extraction" and there are also villages with the names Chaslitsy, Ovintsy, Spudnya, Shevertni, Shestimirovo ...
This reconciles the narrator with his share, for it promises him a "perfect Russia." He settled in one of the villages called Talnovo. The owner of the hut in which the narrator lives is called Matryona Vasilyevna Grigorieva or simply Matryona.
The fate of Matryona, about which she did not immediately, not considering it interesting for a "cultured" person, sometimes in the evenings tells the guest, bewitches and at the same time stuns him. He sees in her fate a special meaning, which Matryona's fellow villagers and relatives do not notice. The husband went missing at the beginning of the war. He loved Matryona and did not beat her, like the village husbands of their wives. But Matryona herself hardly loved him. She was supposed to marry her husband's older brother, Thaddeus. However, he went to the front in the First World War and disappeared. Matryona was expecting him, but in the end, at the insistence of the Thaddeus family, she married her younger brother, Efim. And then suddenly Thaddeus returned, who was in Hungarian captivity. According to him, he did not hack to death Matryona and her husband with an ax only because Yefim is his brother. Thaddeus loved Matryona so much that he found a new bride for himself with the same name. The "second Matryona" gave birth to six children to Thaddeus, but the "first Matryona" had all of Yefim's children (also six) dying before they even lived three months. The whole village decided that Matryona was “spoiled,” and she herself believed it. Then she took up the daughter of the "second Matryona" - Kira, raised her for ten years, until she got married and left for the village of Cherusti.
Matryona lived her whole life as if not for herself. She constantly works for someone: for a collective farm, for neighbors, while doing "muzhik" work, and never asks for money for her. Matryona has tremendous inner strength. For example, she is able to stop a rushing horse on the run, which cannot be stopped by men.
Gradually, the narrator realizes that it is precisely on people like Matryona, who give themselves to others without a trace, that the whole village and the entire Russian land still rests. But this discovery hardly pleases him. If Russia rests only on selfless old women, what will happen to her next?
Hence - the absurdly tragic end of the story. Matryona dies, helping Thaddeus and his sons to drag a part of their own hut, bequeathed to Kira, across the railway on a sleigh. Thaddeus did not want to wait for Matryona's death and decided to take the inheritance for the young during her lifetime. Thus, he unwittingly provoked her death. When relatives bury Matryona, they cry, rather out of duty than heartily, and think only about the final division of Matryona's property.
Thaddeus doesn't even come to the commemoration.
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Solzhenitsyn's Matrynin's Dvor is a story about the tragic fate of the open woman Matryona, who is not like her fellow villagers. Published for the first time in the magazine "New World" in 1963.
The story is told in the first person. The main character becomes Matryona's lodger and tells about her amazing fate. The first title of the story "A village is not worth a righteous man" well conveyed the idea of a work about a pure, unselfish soul, but was replaced in order to avoid problems with censorship.
The narrator- a middle-aged man who has served lines in prison and wants a quiet, calm life in the Russian outback. He settled with Matryona and tells about the fate of the heroine.
Matryona Is a single woman in her sixties. She lives alone in her hut and is often sick.
Thaddeus- Matryona's former lover, a tenacious, greedy old man.
Sisters Matryona- women who are looking for their benefit in everything, treat Matryona as a consumer.
One hundred and eighty four kilometers from Moscow, on the road to Kazan and Murom, train passengers were always surprised by a serious decrease in speed. People rushed to the windows and talked about the possible repair of the tracks. Passing this section, the train again picked up the previous speed. And the reason for the slowdown was known only to the machinists and the author.
In the summer of 1956, the author returned from the "blazing desert just at random to Russia." His return "dragged on for ten years," and he had no rush to see anyone. The narrator wanted to go somewhere in the Russian outback with forests and fields.
He dreamed of "teaching" away from the bustle of the city, and he was sent to a town with the poetic name of Vysokoe Pole. The author did not like it there, and he asked to be redirected to a place with the creepy name "Peatproduct". Upon arrival in the village, the narrator understands that it is "easier to come here than to leave later."
In addition to the hostess, the hut was inhabited by mice, cockroaches, and out of pity a lame cat that was picked up.
Every morning the hostess woke up at 5 in the morning, fearing to oversleep, as she did not really trust her watch, which had been going on for 27 years. She fed her "dirty white crooked goat" and cooked a simple breakfast for the guest.
Somehow Matryona learned from rural women that "a new pension law has been issued." And Matryona began to seek a pension, but it was very difficult to get it, the different offices to which the woman was sent were dozens of kilometers from each other, and the day had to be spent because of one signature.
People in the village lived in poverty, despite the fact that peat bogs spread for hundreds of kilometers around Talnovo, the peat from them "belonged to the trust." Rural women had to carry sacks of peat for the winter, hiding from the raids of the guards. The land here was sandy, and the harvest was poor.
People in the village often called Matryona to their garden, and she, leaving her business, went to help them. The Talnov women almost lined up to take Matryona to their garden, because she worked for pleasure, rejoicing in someone else's good harvest.
Once every month and a half, the hostess had a turn to feed the shepherds. This dinner "drove Matryona into a big expense," because she had to buy sugar, canned food, butter. The grandmother herself did not allow herself such a luxury even on holidays, living only by what she gave her a miserable vegetable garden.
Matryona once told about the horse Volchok, which got scared and "carried the sleigh into the lake." "The peasants jumped away, but she grabbed the bridle and stopped." At the same time, despite the seeming fearlessness, the hostess was afraid of a fire and, to the point of trembling in her knees, of a train.
By the winter, Matryona was retired. The neighbors began to envy her. And grandmother finally ordered new felt boots, a coat from an old greatcoat, and hid two hundred rubles for the funeral.
One day, three of her younger sisters came to see Matryona at Epiphany evenings. The author was surprised because he had not seen them before. I thought maybe they were afraid that Matryona would ask them for help, so they didn't come.
With the receipt of the pension, my grandmother seemed to come to life, and work was easier for her, and her illness worried less often. Only one event darkened my grandmother's mood: for Epiphany in church, someone took her pot of holy water, and she was left without water and without a pot.
The Talnovsk women asked Matryona about her guest. And she passed the questions to him. The author told the hostess only that he was in prison. He himself did not ask about the old woman's past, did not think that there was anything interesting there. I only knew that she was married and came to this hut as a mistress. She had six children, but they all died. Later, her pupil Kira was with her. And Matryona's husband did not return from the war.
Once, having come home, the narrator saw an old man - Faddey Mironovich. He came to ask for his son - Antoshka Grigoriev. The author recalls that for this insanely lazy and insolent boy, who was transferred from class to class only so as not to “spoil the statistics of progress,” sometimes for some reason Matryona herself asked. After the petitioner left, the narrator learned from the hostess that it was the brother of her missing husband. On the same evening, she said that she was supposed to marry him. As a nineteen-year-old girl, Matryona loved Thaddeus. But he was taken to the war, where he disappeared without a trace. Three years later, Thaddeus's mother died, the house was left without a mistress, and the youngest brother of Thaddeus, Efim, came to woo the girl. No longer hoping to see her beloved, Matryona got married in the hot summer and became the mistress of this house, and in winter Thaddeus returned from “Hungarian captivity”. Matryona threw herself at his feet, and he said that “if it hadn’t been for my dear brother, I would have chopped both of you”.
He later married "another Matryona" - a girl from a neighboring village, whom he chose as a wife only because of her name.
The author remembered how she came to the hostess and often complained that her husband beats and offends her. She gave birth to six children to Thaddeus. And Matryona's children were born and almost immediately died. It was all the fault of the "spoilage," she thought.
Soon the war began, and Yefim was taken away from where he never returned. Lonely Matryona took little Kira from "Second Matryona" and raised her for 10 years, until the girl married a machinist and left. Since Matryona was very ill, she early took care of the will, in which she ordered to give the pupil a part of her hut - a wooden extension room.
Kira came to visit and said that in Cherusty (where she lives), in order to get land for the young, it is necessary to build some kind of building. For this purpose, the room bequeathed to Matryona was very suitable. Thaddeus began to come often and persuade the woman to give her away now, during her lifetime. Matryona was not sorry for the upper room, but she was afraid to break the roof of the house. And so, on a cold February day, Thaddeus came with his sons and began to separate the upper room, which he had once built with his father.
For two weeks the room was lying near the house, because a blizzard covered all the roads. And Matryona was not herself, besides, her three sisters came and scolded, for allowing them to give up the upper room. On the same days, “the cat-footed cat shaved off the yard and disappeared”, which greatly upset the hostess.
Once, returning from work, the narrator saw how old Thaddeus drove a tractor and loaded the dismantled room on two makeshift sledges. After that we drank moonshine and, in the dark, drove the hut to Cherusti. Matryona went to see them off, but she never returned. At one o'clock in the morning, the author heard voices in the village. It turned out that the second sleigh, which Thaddeus had attached to the first out of greed, got stuck on flights and crumbled. At that time, a steam locomotive was going, because of the hillock it was not visible, because of the tractor engine it was not audible. He ran into a sleigh, killed one of the machinists, the son of Thaddeus and Matryona. In the middle of the night, Matryona's friend Masha came, told about it, grieved, and then told the author that Matryona bequeathed her "bundle" to her, and she wanted to take it back in memory of her friend.
In the morning they were going to bury Matryona. The narrator describes how the sisters came to say goodbye to her, crying "for the show" and blaming Thaddeus and his family for her death. Only Kira sincerely grieved for the deceased adoptive mother, and "Second Matryona", the wife of Thaddeus. The old man himself was not at the commemoration. When they were transporting the ill-fated room, the first sledges with boards and armor remained standing at the crossing. And, at a time when one of his son died, his son-in-law is under investigation, and his daughter Kira almost loses her mind with grief, he worried only about how to bring the sleigh home, and begged all his acquaintances to help him.
After Matryona's funeral, her hut was “beaten until spring”, and the author moved to “one of her sister-in-law”. The woman often recalled Matryona, but all with condemnation. And in these memories a completely new image of a woman appeared, which was so strikingly different about the people around. Matryona lived with an open heart, always helped others, did not refuse help to anyone, even though her health was weak.
AI Solzhenitsyn ends his work with the words: “We all lived next to her, and did not understand that she was the very righteous man, without whom, according to the proverb, not a village is worth. Neither the city. Not all our land. "
The work of Alexander Solzhenitsyn tells about the fate of a sincere Russian woman, who "had fewer sins than a bent-legged cat." The image of the main character is the image of the very righteous person without whom the village does not stand. Matryona devotes her whole life to others; there is not a drop of anger or falsehood in her. The people around take advantage of her kindness, and do not realize how holy and pure this woman's soul is.
Since the short retelling of "Matryona's Dvor" does not convey the original author's speech and the atmosphere of the story, it is worth reading it in full.
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In the summer of 1956, a passenger disembarked at the one hundred and eighty-fourth kilometer from Moscow along the railway line to Murom and Kazan. This is a storyteller, whose fate resembles the fate of Solzhenitsyn himself (he fought, but from the front "he was documents "groped"). He dreams of working as a teacher in the depths of Russia, away from urban civilization. But it did not work to live in the village with the wonderful name Vysokoe Pole, because they did not bake bread there and did not sell anything edible. And then he is transferred to a village with a monstrous name for his hearing Peatproduct. However, it turns out that “not everything is around peat extraction” and there are also villages with the names Chaslitsy, Ovintsy, Spudnya, Shevertni, Shestimirovo ...
This reconciles the narrator with his share, for it promises him a "perfect Russia." He settled in one of the villages called Talnovo. The owner of the hut in which the narrator lives is called Matryona Vasilievna Grigorieva or simply Matryona.
The fate of Matryona, about which she did not immediately, not considering it interesting for a "cultured" person, sometimes in the evenings tells the guest, bewitches and at the same time stuns him. He sees in her fate a special meaning, which Matryona's fellow villagers and relatives do not notice. The husband went missing at the beginning of the war. He loved Matryona and did not beat her, like the village husbands of their wives. But Matryona herself hardly loved him. She was supposed to marry her husband's older brother, Thaddeus. However, he went to the front in the First World War and disappeared. Matryona was expecting him, but in the end, at the insistence of the Thaddeus family, she married her younger brother, Efim. And then suddenly Thaddeus returned, who was in Hungarian captivity. According to him, he did not hack to death Matryona and her husband with an ax only because Yefim is his brother. Thaddeus loved Matryona so much that he found a new bride for himself with the same name. The "second Matryona" gave birth to six children to Thaddeus, but the "first Matryona" had all of Yefim's children (also six) dying before they even lived three months. The whole village decided that Matryona was “spoiled,” and she herself believed it. Then she took up the daughter of the "second Matryona" - Kira, raised her for ten years, until she got married and left for the village of Cherusti.
Matryona lived her whole life as if not for herself. She constantly works for someone: for a collective farm, for neighbors, while doing "muzhik" work, and never asks for money for her. Matryona has tremendous inner strength. For example, she is able to stop a rushing horse on the run, which cannot be stopped by men.
Gradually, the narrator realizes that it is precisely on people like Matryona, who give themselves to others without a trace, that the whole village and the entire Russian land still rests. But this discovery hardly pleases him. If Russia rests only on selfless old women, what will happen to her next?
Hence - the absurdly tragic end of the story. Matryona dies, helping Thaddeus and his sons to drag a part of their own hut, bequeathed to Kira, across the railway on a sleigh. Thaddeus did not want to wait for Matryona's death and decided to take the inheritance for the young during her lifetime. Thus, he unwittingly provoked her death. When relatives bury Matryona, they cry, rather out of duty than heartily, and think only about the final division of Matryona's property.
Thaddeus doesn't even come to the commemoration.
Title of the piece: Matrenin dvor
Genre: story
Year of writing: 1959
After the war and the camps, the author-storyteller finds himself in the depths of Russia, in a small village called Talnovo, where he gets a job as a teacher and stands on a post with a local resident Matryona Vasilyevna Grigorieva. Matryona had a difficult fate: she loved Thaddeus, and married his younger brother Efim. All her children died in infancy, so in the village they did not like her and considered her "spoiled." She loved her husband's nephews very much and took up the girl Kira, whom she kept until her marriage.
Matryona does not think about herself, all her life she has been working for someone, she tries to help everyone without demanding a reward or even a kind word for it. Perhaps for this she is considered blessed in the countryside. And the end of the story is tragic: Matryona dies on the railroad tracks, helping the same Thaddeus to move half of her house, which she bequeathed to Kira. Nobody really grieves about Matryona in the village, the relatives think only about the property left behind.
The story is told in the first person, the author himself introduces himself as a storyteller and shows in the story the elements of his own destiny. The meeting with Matryona opened his eyes to such simple and, at first glance, ordinary women, on whom the whole world rests.
Solzhenitsyn began writing the story "Matrenin's Dvor" in the period from July-August 1959, and he finished it in December of the same year. The story is based on the stories of the woman Matryona Timofeevna Zakharova, whom the author met during his stay in the Vladimir region. The first publication of the story was in 1963 in the magazine "New World". The first title of the story was “A village is not worth a righteous man” and was changed under the editorship to “Matrenin Dvor”. The editor considered the original title too edifying for the reader.Important! Ignatyevich describes a Russian village - poor, crumbling and half-starved. Even the nearest peat processing plant "Torfoprodukt" did not influence rural life in any way. All the money from processing went to the bosses, the workers secretly carried the peat away from the plant.The villagers loved Matryona Vasilievna, they often asked her to help. The woman was snapped up when the work in the garden came up - everything that was planted by Matryona always grew and gave a good harvest. Matryona also helped the shepherds - once a month and a half she brought them canned food, butter and sugar, although she never allowed herself such a luxury. After long walks through the authorities, Matryona managed to get a pension, her neighbors began to envy the old woman.Matryona, did not take offense at them, bought boots and a coat from her first pension. For Epiphany, her younger sisters came to Matryona Vasilyevna. The narrator thinks that they only came because of the pension, since he had not seen them before. After receiving her pension, the old woman became more cheerful, stopped complaining about her illnesses, she was upset only by one moment, that during the service someone took her bowler hat with consecrated water from the church.
Important! On the way to another village, a tragedy happened, which claimed the lives of the son of Thaddeus, Matryona and the tractor driver. This happened due to the fact that the cable to which the sled was tied could not withstand the load and burst right on the railway tracks. At this time, unmarked, two steam locomotives approached backwards.
