Family chronicle. Autobiographical Tale (1856)

In the 60s XVIII century Stepan Mikhailovich Bagrov, the narrator’s grandfather (it’s easy to guess that Aksakov is talking about his own grandfather), “lived crowded” in the diverse Simbirsk “fatherland.”

Stepan Mikhailovich did not receive an education, but "his natural mind was healthy and bright," he is certainly fair and an excellent master: the peasants loved him.

In the Ufa governorate (later the Orenburg province), many received the richest lands for next to nothing, for treating the Bashkir elders; Bagrov did not want to take advantage of the simplicity of the Bashkirs and honestly bought five thousand acres of land in Buguruslan. Aksakov describes the Orenburg province of that time, “not crushed” by people, with enthusiasm and detail; already in the middle of the 19th century. she was not the same.

It is difficult for the peasants of Bagrov to move from their father’s graves to the Busurman side; but the incredible harvest gathered in the new place soon consoled them. They immediately set up the mill: the whole village had not slept the night before, “there was something <...> solemn on all their faces,” dozens of people occupied the site together, with “continuous screaming”...

Both the landowner and the peasants fell in love with New Bagrovo. Old Troitskoye was waterless: people had already managed to destroy the forest lakes and the Maina River. With the light hand of Bagrov, the resettlement increased, neighbors appeared, for whom Bagrov became a "true benefactor", helping with bread in famine years, resolving quarrels. And this kind man sometimes became a "wild beast" during outbursts of anger, caused, however, by serious reasons, for example, deceit: he, almost insane, could not be recognized when he severely beat his wife Arina Vasilievna, courtyards and even daughters.

An entire chapter is devoted to the life of the Bagrovs’ house on one of Stepan Mikhailovich’s bright days: Aksakov admires the smallest details, describes his grandfather’s room and the structure of an ancient frame, the squeak of mosquitoes, which the author even loves because they remind him of his childhood... His wife and daughters are glad that the owner woke up cheerful: their love for Bagrov is mixed with fear, they subserviently before him and immediately deceive him not like relatives, but almost like servants. The owner spends the day in the field, at the mill and is satisfied; in the evening on the porch he looks at the dawn that does not fade for a long time and crosses himself before going to bed at the starry sky.

The second excerpt from the "Family Chronicle" - "Mikhail Maksimovich Kurolesov" - is dedicated to the dramatic story of Praskovya Ivanovna Bagrova, Stepan Mikhailovich's cousin. The wealthy fourteen-year-old orphan was courted by Major Kurolesov, "a hoofed goose, a striped beast," as his subordinates called him. Kurolesov is handsome, intelligent, amiable, and charmed both the girl and her relatives; Stepan Mikhailovich, Parasha's guardian, with whom she lived, is alarmed by rumors about the major's debauchery: "although he himself was hot to the point of rage, he could not stand unkind, evil and cruel people without anger." In the absence of Stepan Mikhailovich, Parasha is given out as Kurolesov, helped by Bagrov's wife and daughters; the anger of the returned Bagrov is such that "the older daughters were ill for a long time, and my grandmother lost her braid and for a whole year she walked with a band-aid on her head."

In marriage, Praskovya Ivanovna is obviously happy, she suddenly matured and, among other things, unexpectedly fell in love with her cousin; Kurolesov became an exemplary landowner, one could only hear that he was "strict".

When Kurolesov finally arranged his household and he had free time, his bad inclinations wake up in him: leaving his wife for the Ufa villages, he drinks and debauches; worst of all, it becomes his need to torment people; many died from his torture. With his wife, Kurolesov is quiet and amiable; she suspects nothing. Finally, one relative tells her the truth about her husband and about the serfs tortured by him, who, according to the law, belonged to Praskovya Ivanovna. A brave woman, taking with her only a maid, goes to her husband, sees everything and demands that he return her power of attorney to the estate and henceforth would not look into any of her villages. A recent affectionate husband beats her and throws her into the basement, wanting to force her to sign a deed of sale for the estate. Faithful courtyards with difficulty get to Bagrov; having armed the peasants and yard servants, Stepan Mikhailovich frees his sister; Kurolesov does not even try to keep the prey. He dies a few days later, poisoned by the servants. To everyone's surprise, Praskovya Ivanovna is very sad about him; forever remaining a widow, she led a "original" and independent life; he promises to leave his estate to his brother's children

The third excerpt from “Family Chronicle” is “The Marriage of Young Bagrov.” The narrator's mother, Sofya Nikolaevna Zubina, was an extraordinary woman: she lost her mother in adolescence; the stepmother hated her stepdaughter, smart and beautiful, and “swore that the impudent thirteen-year-old girl, the idol of her father and the whole city, would live in the maiden’s room, wear a printed dress and carry out uncleanness from under her children; the kind, but weak father obeyed his wife; the girl was close to suicide. The stepmother died young, and seventeen-year-old Sofya Nikolaevna became the mistress of the house; she was left with five brothers and sisters and a father broken by paralysis; Nikolai Fedorovich did not leave the service - he was a comrade of the governor - and the daughter, in essence, did the work for her father. Having found teachers for her brothers, Sofya Nikolaevna herself studied very diligently; Novikov himself sent her “all the wonderful works in Russian literature"; lively, charming and powerful, she was the soul of Ufa society. The narrator’s father, Alexey, Stepan’s son Mikhailovich, who entered the service of the Ufa Upper Zemsky Court in the 1780s, was the complete opposite of Sofya Nikolaevna - shy, weak-willed and “completely ignorant,” although kind, honest and intelligent, passionately fell in love with Sofya Nikolaevna at first sight and finally decided to ask her hands and went to Bagrovo to obtain parental consent; Meanwhile, Alexei’s sisters, who had heard about Alexei’s love and did not want to see a new mistress in the house, managed to turn Stepan Mikhailovich against Alexei’s possible marriage to a city fashionista, proud, poor and ignorant. Stepan Mikhailovich demanded that Alexei forget about Zubina; the meek son, submitting to the will of his father, fell ill with a nervous fever and almost died; Having returned to Ufa, he sent his parents a letter threatening suicide (as his son assumed, the letter was both completely sincere and taken from some novel); the frightened old man gave up.

The city did not believe that the brilliant Sofya Nikolaevna could become Bagrov's wife. She was not in love with Alexei Stepanovich, but appreciated his kindness and love for her; anticipating the imminent death of her father, she thought about the future with fear and needed support. All this she frankly expressed to the young man before giving her consent. The moral inequality between the groom and the bride was revealed many times even before the wedding, and Sofya Nikolaevna bitterly realized that she would not be able to respect her husband; she was supported only by the ordinary female hope of re-educating him to her liking.

A week after the wedding, the young went to her husband's parents. In the "too simple house of rural landowners" the guests were waited with anxiety, fearing that the city's daughter-in-law would "condemn, ridicule." The father-in-law and daughter-in-law immediately liked each other: the old man loved smart and cheerful people, and Sofya Nikolaevna of all Stepan Mikhailovich’s relatives was the only one capable of fully appreciating him: the daughter of a weak father, she had not met before a man who not only always acted directly, but always spoke the truth ; she fell in love with her husband even more, seeing in him the son of Stepan Mikhailovich.

Meanwhile, the difference in the natures of Alexei Stepanovich and Sofya Nikolaevna was revealed: for example, a husband's love for nature, a passion for hunting and fishing irritates his wife; passionate and lively, Sofya Nikolaevna often falls upon her husband with unfair reproaches and just as passionately then repents and caresses her husband; and the husband soon begins to frighten both outbursts of anger and tears of repentance of his wife; finally, jealousy, "still without a name, without an object," begins to torment Sofya Nikolaevna. Stepan Mikhailovich notices this and tries to help both of them with advice.

Returning to Ufa, Sofia Nikolaevna realizes that she has become pregnant; this brings great joy to Stepan Mikhailovich, who dreams of continuing the ancient family of the Bagrovs. Sofya Nikolaevna endures pregnancy painfully. At the same time, the footman Kalmyk, who went after her paralyzed father, decides to get the mistress out of the house in order to freely rob the sick old man; Kalmyk insults her in cold blood, Sofya Nikolaevna demands from her father: "Choose who to expel: me or him"; and the father asks to buy another house. The shocked woman loses consciousness. Here for the first time it turns out that the weak and simple Aleksei Stepanovich, who in ordinary times is not able to "satisfy the subtleties of the demands" of his wife, can be a support in difficult times.

A daughter is born. Sofya Nikolaevna in love for her comes to insanity; in the fourth month the child dies from a relative, from grief the mother herself is dying: in the summer in the Tatar village she is cured with koumiss.

A year later, a woman who has recovered is easily born a long-awaited son - Sergei, the narrator of the "Family Chronicle" (Aksakov himself). Even the servants of the Bagrovs "became drunk with joy, and then with wine"; the German doctor says of him: "What a happy boy! how happy everyone is for him!" The grandfather counts the days and hours until the birth of his grandson, the messenger jumps to him on variables. Having learned the news, the grandfather solemnly enters the name of Sergei in the Bagrov family tree.

The Chronicle ends with an explanation of the author's creative principles; he addresses his characters: “You are not great heroes <...> but you were people <...> You were the same actors in the great world spectacle <...>, like all people, and you are just as worthy of memories ".

Author of the retelling: G. V. Zykova

The childhood years of Bagrov the grandson. Autobiographical Tale (1858)

The book, essentially a memoir, describes the first ten years of a child's life (1790s) spent in Ufa and the villages of the Orenburg province.

The author reproduces children's perception, for which everything is new and everything is equally important, events are not divided into major and minor: therefore, in "Children's Years" the plot is practically absent.

It all begins with incoherent but vivid memories of infancy and early childhood - a person remembers how he was taken away from his nurse, remembers a long illness from which he almost died - one sunny morning when he felt better, a strangely shaped bottle of Rhine wine, pendants pine resin in a new wooden house, etc. The most common image is the road: travel was considered medicine. (A detailed description of moves of hundreds of miles - to relatives, to visit, etc. - takes up most of the "Childhood Years".) Seryozha recovers after he becomes especially ill on a long journey and his parents, forced to stop in the forest, lay down gave him a bed in the tall grass, where he lay for twelve hours, unable to move, and “suddenly woke up as if.” After an illness, the child experiences “a feeling of pity for everyone who suffers.”

With every memory of Seryozha, "the constant presence of the mother merges", who went out and loved him, perhaps for this reason, more than her other children.

Sequential memories begin at age four. Seryozha with his parents and younger sister live in Ufa. The disease “brought the boy’s nerves to extreme sensitivity.” According to the nanny, he is afraid of the dead, the dark, etc. (Various fears will continue to torment him). He was taught to read so early that he doesn’t even remember it; He had only one book, he knew it by heart and read it aloud to his sister every day; so when neighbor S.I. Anichkov gave him Novikov’s “Children’s Reading for the Heart and Mind,” the boy, carried away by the books, was “just like crazy.” He was especially impressed by articles explaining thunder, snow, metamorphoses of insects, etc.

The mother, exhausted by Seryozha’s illness, was afraid that she herself had fallen ill with consumption, the parents gathered in Orenburg to see a good doctor; The children were taken to Bagrovo, to their father’s parents. The road amazed the child: crossing Belaya, collected pebbles and fossils - "stuffs", large trees, spending the night in the field and especially - fishing on the Dema, which immediately drove the boy crazy no less than reading, fire mined with flint, and the fire of a torch, springs, etc. Everything is curious, even “how the earth stuck to the wheels and then fell off from them in thick layers.” The father rejoices in all this together with Seryozha, but his beloved mother, on the contrary, is indifferent and even disgusted.

The people met along the way are not only new, but also incomprehensible: the joy of the ancestral Bagrov peasants who met their family in the village of Parashin is incomprehensible, the relationship of the peasants with the “terrible” headman, etc., is incomprehensible; The child sees, among other things, the harvest in the heat, and this evokes an “inexpressible feeling of compassion.”

The boy doesn’t like patriarchal Bagrovo: the house is small and sad, his grandmother and aunt are dressed no better than the servants in Ufa, his grandfather is stern and scary (Seryozha witnessed one of his crazy fits of anger; later, when his grandfather saw that “mama’s boy” loves not only mother, but also father, their relationship with their grandson suddenly and dramatically changed). The children of the proud daughter-in-law, who “disdained” Bagrov, are not loved. In Bagrov, so inhospitable that even the children were poorly fed, the brother and sister lived for over a month. Seryozha amuses himself by scaring his sister with stories of unprecedented adventures and reading aloud to her and his beloved “uncle” Yevseich. The aunt gave the boy a “Dream Book” and some kind of vaudeville, which greatly influenced his imagination.

After Bagrov, returning home had such an effect on the boy that he, again surrounded by common love, suddenly matured. Young brothers of the mother, military men, who graduated from the Moscow University noble boarding school, are visiting the house: from them Seryozha learns what poetry is, one of the uncles draws and teaches this to Seryozha, which makes the boy seem to be a "higher being". S. I. Anichkov donates new books: "Anabasis" by Xenophon and "Children's Library" by Shishkov (which the author praises very much).

Uncles and their friend adjutant Volkov, playing, tease the boy, among other things, because he cannot write; Seryozha is seriously offended and one day he rushes to fight; he is punished and demanded that he ask for forgiveness, but the boy considers himself right; alone in a room, placed in a corner, he dreams and, finally, falls ill from excitement and fatigue. Adults are ashamed, and the matter ends with a general reconciliation.

At the request of Serezha, they begin to teach him to write, inviting a teacher from a public school. One day, apparently on someone's advice, Seryozha is sent there for a lesson: the rudeness of both the students and the teacher (who was so affectionate with him at home), the spanking of the guilty scares the child very much.

Serezha's father buys seven thousand acres of land with lakes and forests and calls it "Sergeevskaya wasteland", which the boy is very proud of. Parents are going to Sergeevka to treat their mother with Bashkir koumiss in the spring, when Belaya opens up. Seryozha can't think of anything else and watches with tension the ice drift and the flood of the river.

In Sergeevka, the house for gentlemen has not been completed, but even this amuses: "There are no windows and doors, but the fishing rods are ready." Until the end of July, Seryozha, father and uncle Evseich are fishing on Lake Kiishki, which the boy considers his own; Serezha sees gun hunting for the first time and feels "some kind of greed, some unknown joy." Summer is spoiled only by guests, though infrequent: outsiders, even peers, burden Seryozha.

After Sergeevka, Ufa "got sick of it." Seryozha is entertained only by the neighbor's new gift: Sumarokov's collected works and Kheraskov's poem "Rossiada", which he recites and tells his relatives various details invented by him about his favorite characters. The mother laughs, and the father worries: "Where does all this come from? You don't become a liar." News comes about the death of Catherine II, the people swear allegiance to Pavel Petrovich; the child listens attentively to the conversations of worried adults, which are not always clear to him.

The news comes that the grandfather is dying, and the family immediately gathers in Bagrovo. Seryozha is afraid to see his grandfather dying, he is afraid that his mother will fall ill from all this, that in winter they will freeze on the way. On the road, the boy is tormented by sad forebodings, and the belief in forebodings takes root in him from now on for life.

The grandfather dies a day after his relatives arrive, the children have time to say goodbye to him; “all of Seryozha’s feelings are “suppressed by fear”; His nanny Parasha’s explanations of why his grandfather does not cry or scream are especially striking: he is paralyzed, “he looks with all his eyes and only moves his lips.” “I felt the infinity of torment, which cannot be told to others.”

The behavior of the Bagrovskaya relatives unpleasantly surprises the boy: four aunts howl, falling at the feet of their brother - "the real master in the house", the grandmother expressly yields to the power of the mother, and this is disgusting to the mother. Everyone at the table, except Mother, weeps and eats with great appetite. And then, after dinner, in the corner room, looking at the non-freezing Buguruslan, the boy for the first time understands the beauty of winter nature.

Returning to Ufa, the boy again experiences a shock: while giving birth to another son, his mother almost dies.

Becoming the owner of Bagrov after the death of his grandfather, Serezha's father retires, and the family moves to Bagrovo for permanent residence. Rural work (threshing, mowing, etc.) is very busy with Seryozha; he does not understand why his mother and little sister are indifferent to this. The kind boy tries to feel sorry for and comfort his grandmother, who quickly became decrepit after the death of her husband, whom he had not known before, in fact; but her habit of beating the servants, very common in landlord life, quickly turns her grandson away from her.

Seryozha's parents are invited to visit by Praskovya Kurolesov; Seryozha's father is considered her heir and therefore does not contradict this smart and kind, but domineering and rude woman in anything. The rich, albeit somewhat clumsy house of the widow Kurolesova at first seems to the child a palace from the fairy tales of Scheherazade. Having made friends with Serezha's mother, the widow for a long time does not agree to let her family go back to Bagrovo; meanwhile, the bustling life in a strange house, always filled with guests, tires Seryozha, and he impatiently thinks of Bagrov, who is already dear to him.

Returning to Bagrovo, Seryozha truly sees spring for the first time in his life in the village: “I <...> followed every step of spring. In every room, almost in every window, I noticed special objects or places, according to with whom I made my observations...” From excitement, the boy begins to experience insomnia; To help him fall asleep better, the housekeeper Pelageya tells him fairy tales, and among other things, “The Scarlet Flower” (this fairy tale is included in the appendix to “Childhood Years...”). In the fall, at the request of Kurolesova, the Bagrovs visit Churasovo. Seryozha's father promised his grandmother to return to Pokrov; Kurolesova does not let guests go; On the night of Intercession, the father sees a terrible dream and in the morning receives news of his grandmother’s illness. The autumn road back is hard; crossing the Volga near Simbirsk, the family almost drowned. Grandmother died on the very Intercession; This terribly affects both Seryozha’s father and the capricious Kurolesova.

The following winter, the Bagrovs are going to Kazan, to pray to the miracle workers there: not only Seryozha, but also his mother has never been there. In Kazan, they plan to spend no more than two weeks, but everything turns out differently: Seryozha is waiting for the “beginning of the most important event” in his life (Aksakov will be sent to the gymnasium). Here the childhood of Bagrov-grandson ends and adolescence begins.

Author of the retelling: G. V. Zykova

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