main topic, main plot Shalamov’s biography, all the books of his “Kolyma Stories” are a search for the answer to the question: can a person survive in extreme conditions and remain human? What is the price and what is the meaning of life if you have already been “on the other side”? Revealing his understanding of this problem, Varlam Shalamov helps the reader more accurately understand the author's concept, actively applying the principle of contrast.

The ability to “be combined in a single material as a contradiction, mutual reflection of different values, destinies, characters, and at the same time represent a certain whole” - one of the stable properties artistic thought. Lomonosov called this “conjugation of distant ideas,” P. Palievsky - “thinking with the help of living contradiction.”

Contradictions are rooted within the material and are extracted from it. But from all their complexity, from the threads cleverly intertwined by life itself, the writer isolates a certain dominant, a driving emotional nerve, and it is this that he makes the content of a work of art based on this material.

Both paradox and contrast, so abundantly used by Shalamov, contribute to the most active emotional perception of a work of art. And in general, “the imagery, freshness, and novelty of his works largely depend on how strong an artist’s ability is to combine heterogeneous and incompatible things.” .

Shalamov makes the reader shudder, remembering the lieutenant of the tank forces Svechnikov (“Domino”), who at the mine “was caught eating the meat of human corpses from the morgue.” But the effect is enhanced by the author due to purely external contrast: this cannibal is a “gentle, rosy-cheeked young man”, calmly explaining his passion for “non-fat, of course” human flesh!

Or the narrator’s meeting with the Comintern figure Schneider, a most educated man, an expert on Goethe (“Typhoid Quarantine”). In the camp he is in the retinue of thieves, in the crowd of beggars. Schneider is happy that he has been entrusted with scratching the heels of the leader of the thieves, Senechka.

Understanding the moral degradation and immorality of Svechnikov and Schneider, victims of the Gulag, is achieved not by verbose arguments, but by using the artistic technique of contrast. Thus, contrast performs communicative, meaningful, and artistic functions in the structure of a work of art. It makes you see and feel the world around you in a sharper, new way.

Shalamov attached great importance to the composition of his books and carefully arranged the stories in a certain sequence. Therefore, the appearance side by side of two works contrasting in their artistic and emotional essence is not an accident.

The plot basis of the story '' Shock therapy“is paradoxical: a doctor, whose vocation and duty is to help those in need, directs all his strength and knowledge to exposing a malingering prisoner who experiences “horror of the world from which he came to the hospital and where he was afraid to return.” The story is filled with a detailed description of the barbaric, sadistic procedures carried out by doctors in order to prevent the exhausted, exhausted “goner” from being “free”. Next in the book is the story “Stlanik”. This lyrical novella gives the reader the opportunity to take a break, to move away from the horrors of the previous story. Nature, unlike people, is humane, generous and kind.

Shalamov’s comparison of the natural world and the human world is always not in favor of man. In the story “Bitch Tamara” the head of the site and the dog are contrasted. The boss put the people subordinate to him in such conditions that they were forced to inform on each other. And next to him is a dog, whose “moral firmness especially touched the inhabitants of the village who had seen the sights and been in all troubles.”

In the story “Bears” we encounter a similar situation. In the conditions of the Gulag, each prisoner cares only about himself. The bear encountered by the prisoners clearly took the danger upon itself,ort, a male, sacrificed his life to save his girlfriend, he distracted death from her, he covered her escape.”

The camp world is essentially antagonistic. Hence Shalamov’s use of contrast at the level of the image system.

The hero of the story “Aortic Aneurysm,” doctor Zaitsev, a professional and humanist, is contrasted with the immoral head of the hospital; In the story “The Descendant of the Decembrist”, essentially contrasting characters constantly collide: the Decembrist Mikhail Lunin, “a knight, a clever man, a man of immense knowledge, whose word did not diverge from deeds”, and his direct descendant, the immoral and selfish Sergei Mi -Khailovich Lunin, doctor at the camp hospital. The difference between the heroes of the story “Ryabokon” is not only internal, essential, but also external: “The huge body of the Latvian looked like a drowned man - blue-white, swollen, swollen from hunger... Ryabokon did not look like a drowned man. Huge, bony, with withered veins.” People of different life orientations collided at the end of their lives in a common hospital space.

“Sherry Brandy,” a story about the last days of Osip Mandelstam’s life, is permeated with contrasts. The poet dies, but life enters him again, giving birth to thoughts. He was dead and became alive again. He thinks about creative immortality, having already crossed, in essence, the life line.

A dialectically contradictory chain is built: life - death - resurrection - immortality - life. The poet remembers, writes poetry, philosophizes - and immediately cries that he didn’t get the crust of bread. The one who just quoted Tyutchev “bite bread with scurvy teeth, his gums were bleeding, his teeth were loose, but he did not feel pain. With all his might he pressed the bread to his mouth, stuffed it into his mouth, sucked it, tore it, gnawed it...” Such duality, internal dissimilarity, and inconsistency are characteristic of many of Shalamov’s heroes who find themselves in the hellish conditions of the camp. Zeka often recalls with surprise himself - different, former, free.

It’s scary to read the lines about the camp horse-driver Glebov, who became famous in the barracks for “forgetting the name of his wife a month ago.” In his “free” life, Glebov was... a professor of philosophy (the story “The Funeral Oration”).

In the story “The First Tooth” we learn the story of the sectarian Peter the Hare - a young, black-haired, black-browed giant. The “lame, gray-haired old man coughing up blood” met by the storyteller some time later—that’s him.

Such contrasts within the image, at the level of the hero, are not only an artistic device. This is also an expression of Shalamov’s conviction that a normal person is not able to withstand the hell of GU-LAG. The camp can only be trampled and destroyed. In this, as is known, V. Shalamov disagreed with Solzhenitsyn, who was convinced of the possibility of remaining a man in the camp.

In Shalamov’s prose, the absurdity of the Gulag world is often manifested in the discrepancy between a person’s real situation and his official status. For example, in the story “Typhoid Quarantine” there is an episode when one of the heroes achieves an honorable and very profitable job... as a barracks sanitation worker.

The plot of the story “Aunt Polya” is based on a similar contrasting discrepancy. The heroine is a prisoner taken as a servant by the authorities. She was a slave in the house and at the same time “a secret arbiter in quarrels between husband and wife,” “a person who knows the shadow sides of the house.” She feels good in slavery, she is grateful to fate for the gift. Aunt Polya, who is ill, is placed in a separate ward, from which “ten half-dead corpses were first dragged out into a cold corridor to make room for the orderly chief.” The military and their wives came to Aunt Polya in the hospital asking her to put in a good word for them. forever. And after her death, the “all-powerful” Aunt Polya deserved only a wooden tag with a number on her left shin, because she was just a “prisoner,” a slave. Instead of one orderly, another will come, equally familyless, with only a personal file number behind her. Human personality in the conditions of the camp nightmare it costs nothing.

It has already been noted that the use of contrast activates the reader’s perception.

Shalamov, as a rule, is stingy with detailed, detailed descriptions. When they are used, for the most part they are a detailed opposition.

Extremely indicative in this regard is the description in the story “My Trial”: “There are few sights as expressive as the red-faced figures of the camp authorities standing side by side, red-faced from alcohol, the well-fed, overweight, heavy with fat, figures of the camp authorities in shiny new clothes like the sun.” , stinking sheepskin short fur coats, in fur-painted Yakut malakhai and “gaiters” mittens with a bright pattern - and the figures of “goners”, tattered “wicks” with “smoking” shreds of cotton wool from worn padded jackets, “goners” with the same dirty, bony faces and the hungry gleam of sunken eyes.”

The hyperbole and emphasis on negatively perceived details in the guise of the “camp authorities” are especially noticeable in comparison with the dark, dirty mass of “goons.”

There is a similar kind of contrast in the description of the bright, colorful, sunny Vladivostok and the rainy, gray-dull landscape of Nagaevo Bay (“Hell’s Pier”). Here the contrasting landscape expresses differences in internal state the hero is hope in Vladivostok and expectation of death in Nagaevo Bay.

An interesting example of a contrasting description is in the story “Marcel Proust.” A small episode: the imprisoned Dutch communist Fritz David was sent velvet trousers and a silk scarf in a parcel from home. Exhausted Fritz David died of hunger in these luxurious, but useless clothes in the camp, which “even for bread at the mine could not be exchanged.” This contrasting detail in the strength of its emotional impact can be compared with the horrors in the stories of F. Kafka or E. Poe. The difference is that Shalamov did not invent anything, did not construct an absurd world, but only remembered what he witnessed.

Characterizing different ways using the artistic principle of contrast in Shalamov’s stories, it is appropriate to consider its implementation at the word level.

Verbal contrasts can be divided into two groups. The first includes words whose very meaning is contrasting, opposed and out of context, and the second includes words whose combinations create a contrast, a paradox, already in a specific context.

First, examples from the first group. “They immediately transport prisoners in neat, orderly batches up into the taiga, and in dirty heaps of discards from above, back from the taiga” (“Conspiracy of Lawyers”). The double opposition (“clean” - “dirty”, “up” - “from above”), aggravated by the diminutive suffix, on the one hand, and the reduced phrase “heap of garbage”, on the other, creates the impression a picture of two oncoming human streams seen in reality.

“I rushed, that is, trudged to the workshop” (“Handwriting”). Obviously contradictory lexical meanings are equal to each other here, telling the reader about the extreme degree of exhaustion and weakness of the hero much more clearly than any lengthy description. In general, Shalamov, recreating the absurd world of the Gulag, often combines, rather than contrasts, words and expressions that are antinomic in their meaning. Several works (in particular, the stories “Brave Eyes” and “Resurrection of the Larch”) equatesmoldering, moldAndspring, lifeAnddeath:”...the mold also seemed to spring, green, seemed alive too, and the dead trunks gave off the smell of life. Green mold ... seemed like a symbol of spring. But in fact it is the color of decrepitude and decay. But Kolyma asked us more difficult questions, and the similarity of life and death did not bother us”.

Another example of contrasting similarity: 'Graphite is eternity. The highest hardness turned into the highest softness” (“Graphite”).

The second group of verbal contrasts are oxymorons, the use of which gives rise to a new semantic quality. The “upside down” world of the camp makes possible such expressions: “a fairy tale, the joy of solitude”, “a dark cozy punishment cell”, etc.

The color palette of Shalamov's stories is not very intense. The artist sparingly paints the world of his works. It would be excessive to say that a writer always consciously chooses one color or another. He uses color in an unintentional, intuitive way. And, as a rule, the paint has a natural, natural function. For example: “the mountains turned red from lingonberries, blackened from dark blue blueberries, ... large, watery rowan trees filled with yellow...” (“Kant”). But in a number of cases, color in Shalamov’s stories carries a meaningful and ideological load, especially when a contrasting color scheme is used. This is what happens in the story “Children’s Pictures”. While clearing out a garbage heap, the prisoner narrator found in it a notebook with children's drawings. The grass on them is green, the sky is blue, the sun is scarlet. The colors are clean, bright, without halftones. Typical palette children's drawing But: “People and houses... were fenced off with smooth yellow fences entwined with black lines of barbed wire.”

The childhood impressions of a little Kolyma resident run into yellow fences and black barbed wire. Shalamov, as always, does not lecture the reader, does not indulge in reasoning on this matter. The clash of colors helps the artist to enhance the emotional impact of this episode, to convey the author’s idea about the tragedy not only of the prisoners, but also of the Kolyma children who became adults at an early age.

The artistic form of Shalamov’s works is also interesting for other manifestations of the paradoxical. I noticed a contradiction, which is based on a discrepancy between the manner, pathos, “tonality” of the narrative and the essence of what is being described. This artistic technique is adequate to Shalamov’s camp world, in which all the values ​​are literally upside down.

There are many examples of “mixing styles” in stories. A characteristic technique for the artist is to speak pathetically and sublimely about everyday events and facts. For example, about eating. For a prisoner, this is by no means an ordinary event of the day. This is a ritual action that gives a “passionate, selfless feeling” (“At Night”).

The description of the breakfast at which herring is distributed is striking. Artistic time here it is stretched to the limit, as close to the real as possible. The writer noted all the details and nuances of this exciting event: “While the distributor was approaching, everyone had already calculated which piece would be held out by this indifferent hand. Everyone has already become upset, rejoiced, prepared for a miracle, reached the brink of despair if he was mistaken in his hasty calculations” (“Bread”). And this whole range of feelings is caused by the anticipation of the herring ration!

The can of condensed milk the narrator saw in a dream is grandiose and majestic, and he compared it to the night sky. ''The milk seeped and flowed in a wide stream of the Milky Way. And I easily reached with my hands to the sky and ate thick, sweet, star milk” (“Condensed Milk”). Not only comparison, but also inversion (“and I got it easily”) help here to create solemn pathos.

A similar example is in the story “How It Began”, where the guess that “shoe lubricant is fat, oil, nutrition” is compared with Archimedes’ “eureka”.

Sublime and delightful description of the berries touched by the first frost (“Berries”).

Awe and admiration in the camp are caused not only by food, but also by fire and warmth. In the description in the story “The Carpenters” there are truly Homeric notes, the pathos of the sacred rite: “Those who came knelt before the open door of the stove, before the god of fire, one of the first gods of humanity... They stretched out their hands to the warmth...”

The tendency to elevate the ordinary, even the low, is also manifested in those stories by Shalamov, where we're talking about about deliberate self-harm in the camp. For many prisoners, this was the only, last chance to survive. Making yourself a cripple is not at all easy. Long preparation was required. ''The stone should have fallen and crushed my leg. And I am forever disabled! This passionate dream was subject to calculation... The day, hour and minute were appointed and came” (“Rain”).

The beginning of the story “A Piece of Meat” is full of sublime vocabulary; Richard III, Macbeth, Claudius are mentioned here. The titanic passions of Shakespeare's heroes are equated with the feelings of prisoner Golubev. He sacrificed his appendix to escape the hard labor camp in order to survive. “Yes, Golubev made this bloody sacrifice. A piece of meat is cut from his body and thrown at the feet of the almighty god of the camps. To appease God... Life repeats Shakespearean plots more often than we think.”

In the writer's stories, the elevated perception of a person is often contrasted with his true essence, usually low status. A fleeting meeting with “some former or current prostitute” allows the narrator to talk “about her wisdom, about her great heart,” and compare her words with Goethe’s lines about mountain peaks (“Rain”). The distributor of herring heads and tails is perceived by the prisoners as an almighty giant (“Bread”); The doctor on duty at the camp hospital is likened to an “angel in a white coat” (“The Glove”). In the same way, Shalamov shows the reader the camp world of Kolyma that surrounds the heroes. The description of this world is often elevated, pathetic, which contradicts the essential picture of reality. “In this white silence I did not hear the sound of the wind, I heard a musical phrase from the sky and a clear, melodic, ringing human voice...” (“Chasing the locomotive smoke”).

In the story “The Best Praise” we find a description of the sounds in the prison: “This special ringing, and also the rattling of the door lock, which is locked twice, ... and the clicking of the key on the copper belt buckle ... these are the three elements of the symphony.” “concrete” prison music that is remembered for a lifetime.”

The unpleasant metallic sounds of a prison are compared to the rich sound of a symphony orchestra. I note that the above examples of the “sublime” tone of the narrative are taken from those works whose hero either has not yet been to the terrible camp (prison and loneliness are positive for Shalamov), or is no longer there (the narrator has become a paramedic). In works specifically about camp life, there is practically no room for pathos. The exception is, perhaps, the story of Bogdanov. The action in it takes place in 1938, the most terrible year for both Shalamov and millions of other prisoners. It so happened that the NKVD commissioner Bogdanov tore into shreds the letters of his wife, from whom the narrator had no information for two terrible Kolyma years. To convey his strong shock, Shalamov, recalling this episode, resorts to pathos that is, in general, unusual for him. An ordinary incident grows into a true human tragedy. “Here are your letters, fascist bastard!” “Bogdanov tore into shreds and threw into the burning oven letters from my wife, letters that I had been waiting for for more than two years, waiting for in blood, in executions, in beatings of the gold mines of Kolyma.”

In his Kolyma epic, Shalamov also uses the opposite technique. It consists of an everyday, even reduced tone of narration about exceptional facts and phenomena, tragic in their consequences. These descriptions are marked by epic calm. “This calmness, slowness, inhibition is not only a technique that allows us to take a closer look at this transcendental world... The writer does not allow us to turn away, not to see” .

It seems that the epically calm narrative also reflects the prisoners’ habit of death, of the cruelty of camp life. To what E. Shklovsky called “ordinary agony” }