Research work Formation of Nikita’s character (based on the story by A. N.
While in exile in France and immensely dreaming of returning to his homeland, Count Alexei Nikolaevich Tolstoy created his most poetic work, “Nikita’s Childhood.”
The idea of an autobiographical work
He lived on the estate of his stepfather A. A. Bostrom, whom he loved like his own father, near Samara, in the Sosnovka estate. The writer endowed the main character, the boy Nikita, with his own rich imagination and impressionability. The writer created the images of his parents based on his own types. Moreover, Nikita’s mother’s name is the same as Alexei Tolstoy’s mother - Alexandra Leontievna. The image of teacher Arkady Ivanovich was created based also on real personality- tutor Arkady Slovokhotov. The author, without renaming, introduced into the narrative outline his childhood friends - Mishka Koryashonka and Styopka Karnaushkin. The story "Nikita's Childhood" is rich in various characters. The summary of the work can be expressed very briefly as the reader’s immersion in fairy world childhood.
The fascinating world of Nikita
The work gives a detailed description of the house itself, its outbuildings, the barn and stables, the garden, the pond, and the dam.
Children's allowance is given enthusiastic description its mysterious rooms and the cramped bindings of ancient books in the library. This house keeps family legends about the tormented great-grandfather African African. He, according to Nikolina’s mother, led a strange lifestyle. He read and wrote at night and slept during the day. Grandfather abandoned the farm, the servants fled from him, grass grew in the fields...
The work "Nikita's Childhood" is decorated with many colorful and lush scenes of contemplation of nature. The summary of the story can be reduced to this unity of the boy with nature. He not only feels like a part of it, but also perceives it through the images he has fantasized. For example, the starling in Nikita’s perception is endowed to such an extent that he received the nickname Zheltukhin. Kota main character he calls him nothing less than Vasily Vasilich, he waxes poetic about his stepfather’s horses and every bird he sees, be it a bright oriole or a vociferous lark.
The beginning of the story
“Nikita’s Childhood” begins with the chapter “Sunny Morning”. The summary of the story is about games with village children in the midst of the charm of snowdrifts covering the huts right up to the chimneys; a wild stream of spring waters; a dark garden illuminated by July lightning; September fogs as dense as milk. The boy saw how the whole life of people in the midst of this repeating round dance of the seasons passes organically and naturally, and birth and death are like the rising and setting of the sun.
The specific children's logic of the narrative in this work cannot but be noted by what we wrote summary. Tolstoy’s “Nikita’s Childhood,” while working on it, put him in a special enthusiastic and nostalgic mood, which he himself noted in his memoirs. The author very tenderly tells the story of how he, who cared about his sister Lila, together with her discovered in an empty room of the estate a ring that his great-grandfather had once given to his beloved. The ring lay inside a vase with lion heads that had been on the wall clock for several decades. Moreover, Lilya herself (Nikita put a ring on her finger) surprisingly resembled her great-grandmother, whose portrait in a habit with a veil hung on the wall in the secret room. Alexei Tolstoy wrote insightfully about this episode.
A work of autobiographical nature
What will we notice if we extract a concise, brief summary from the author’s narrative about the most romantic year of the protagonist’s life? Tolstoy's "Nikita's Childhood", following the rules of the genre, continued the tradition of Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy ("Childhood, adolescence, youth"), M. Gorky ("Childhood", "In People."), S. Aksakov ("Childhood of Bagrov's Grandson" ).
All of these books are valuable reading for adults, especially parents. They are autobiographical and help to understand how a child thinks and explain the motives for his actions. However, if we talk about the author’s style of these artistic autobiographies, it should be pointed out that Alexei Tolstoy is the only one of all the above-mentioned classics who narrated about his childhood in the third person.
A boy's poeticization of the seasons
The description of spring and awakening nature is also included in the summary of the book “Nikita’s Childhood”, since it occupies a significant place in the book. After all, the main character himself identifies himself with nature, sincerely believing, at the behest of his soul, that all the natural resources around him are dear to him. He is delighted by the tens of thousands of streams from the melting snow in the steppe in March. He enjoys breathing deeply the spring “sharp and clean” air. And the icebreaker on the river seemed like something very significant when it showed its violent temper, rising above the dam, and noisily falling into the pools.
And then Alexey Tolstoy writes with childish enthusiasm about the May honey trills of the oriole. Nikita's Childhood tells us about a steppe eagle swimming in the hot summer sky. The very brief content of this work invariably indicates the connection between the developing personality of the protagonist and the world around him. Isn't this the defining feature of childhood? Perhaps Alexey Tolstoy is leading us to realize this nuance?
A boy's need to feel this unity is extremely important to his personality. Therefore, even the teacher Arkady Ivanovich does not scold him when he runs away from class to look at the river. It is no coincidence that the author in the chapter “On the Cart” used such a romantic comparison: “On the cart, as if in a cradle, Nikita sailed under the stars, looking at distant worlds.”
Conclusion
The original title of the work was “A Tale of Many Excellent Things.” It is obvious that it was written by the author in a single creative impulse, on the same inspiration.
The last chapter of the story has a short title - “Departure”. Its ending begins with the message that Nikita managed to pass the exam for admission to the second grade. And the book ends sad phrase: “This event ends his childhood.”
Story by A.N. Tolstoy's The Childhood of Nikita (originally titled A Tale of Many Excellent Things) was first published in a separate edition in 1922. The story was written in 1919–1920. In the fall of 1918, he emigrated abroad. In 1920, the writer was still in exile and was very homesick for Russia. Living in Paris and Berlin, Tolstoy alienated the emigrant environment and began to delve more deeply into the meaning of historical events. Memories of the homeland, of the irrevocable days of childhood, of Russian nature caused the appearance of the story. “Nikita’s Childhood” is a work full of captivating lyricism, irresistible charm and truth, high poetry folk life, living perception of nature, beauty native language. The author devotes all his attention to the embodiment of the poetic principles of the charm of the irrevocable time of childhood. The writer said: “I will give all my previous novels and plays for this book! The book is Russian and written in Russian!” The story was written for the Parisian magazine “Green Stick” - for emigrant children who, like the son of A.N. Tolstoy's Nikita, to whom the work is dedicated and after whom the main character is named, was in dire need of Russian impressions. He was interested real life, he wanted to rely on the experience of his personal observations: “I started - and it was as if a window opened into the distant past with all the charm, gentle sadness and acute perceptions of nature that happen in childhood” (Poln. sobr. soch., vol. 13, p. 563). Unlike most of A. Tolstoy’s works, the plot, the sequential chain of events, plays almost no role here, because everything in the world is excellent. Children's writer K. Chukovsky wrote about this in 1924: “This is the Book of Happiness, it seems, the only Russian book in which the author does not preach happiness, does not promise it in the future, but immediately emanates it from himself.”
"Nikita's Childhood" is an autobiographical story. The location of the action quite accurately reproduces the setting of the small estate of the writer’s stepfather A. A. Bostrom, where Tolstoy grew up. Even the name of the estate is preserved in the story - Sosnovka. Childhood impressions and A. Tolstoy’s memories of his early life in the Samara province were included in the content of his work. In one of his autobiographical notes, A. Tolstoy wrote about himself this way: “I grew up alone, in contemplation, in dissolution, among the great phenomena of earth and sky. July lightning over a dark garden; autumn mists like milk; a dry twig sliding in the wind on the first ice of the pond; winter blizzards covering the huts with snowdrifts; the sound of the spring waters; the cry of rooks flying to last year’s nests; birth and death, like the rising and setting of the sun, like the fate of animals and birds; ; boogers with red faces living in the cracks of the earth; the smell of a ripe apple, the smell of a fire in a twilight hollow; winter evenings under the lamp, books, daydreaming..." (Poln. sobr. soch., vol. 13, pp. 557–558). Pictures of the Russian winter, vast snowy plains, ringing spring days, summer suffering, golden autumn replace one another naturally, like the movement of time itself, conveyed in living images. The change of seasons is depicted not as a passive contemplative movement, but as an active one, affecting all aspects of the existence and activity of people. It is in such an atmosphere that the little hero of A. Tolstoy’s story, Nikita, grows and is formed. Nikita largely repeats the real features of the writer’s stepfather and mother. Nikita’s mother’s name is the same as the writer’s mother - Alexandra Leontyevna. The prototype for the image of the teacher was the seminarian-tutor, Arkady Ivanovich Slovokhotov, who prepared the future writer for admission to secondary school. educational institution. Nikita's relationship with the village children - Mishka Koryashonok and Styopka Karnaushkin, their friendship and friendly games are also autobiographical, as well as a number of other details. It should be noted that the narration is not told in the first person, which allows the author to really, after many years, evaluate the happy time of his childhood.
Chapter 2. Formation of Nikita’s character in the story “Nikita’s Childhood”
§ 2.1. Parental love is the basis of raising a child
“Nikita’s Childhood” tells about the childhood of a Russian boy from a noble landowner family, once rich and noble, but already on the verge of ruin, living out last days in the village. In depicting the development of the character of the main character A.N. Tolstoy puts the reality surrounding the child in the first place.
Already from the first pages of the story, we see what a friendly, normal atmosphere surrounded Nikita, how his first ideas about life took shape. “It was so quiet in the warm office that a barely audible ringing began in my ears. What extraordinary stories could be invented alone, on the sofa, to the sound of this ringing. White light poured through the frozen glass. Nikita was reading Cooper...” So we plunge into the world of Nikita’s childhood, into a world surrounded by books, classes with a teacher, in an atmosphere of kindness and care for a nine-year-old boy. Nikita's relationships with his mother, father, and teacher are of such a nature that they instill in the boy a sound mind, directness and honesty.
Nikita's family and the home environment in the house were always very kind and dear, it was clear how all family members took care of Nikita and everyone tried to give a piece of their love to the boy, to educate him a good man. All family members are very different in character, temperament, many have different views on life, but despite this, this is a friendly, loving family. By example, sincerely loving friend friend of Nikita’s parents, one can see how much family upbringing means for the formation of a child’s character. Nikita's father is cheerful, with a subtle sense of humor, combined with extraordinary intelligence, kindness and spiritual nobility, happy with his wife, who is very different from him. She is a well-mannered, intelligent, stately woman with gentle beauty, who is in the spirit folk traditions embodies the image of the keeper of the family hearth. The prototype of this image was A. Tolstoy’s mother. Nikita's mother misses her husband very much when he leaves, worries about him with all her heart and is worried that Nikita might forget him. One day, my father’s life hung in the balance when he almost died in a ravine during a spring flood. This misfortune showed the cohesion of the family, caring for each other, the common thing that unites a real family - love. Sometimes conflicts arose between the boy’s parents over the extravagance of her husband, sometimes there were disagreements in Nikita’s upbringing, the mother was very kind to her son and was too worried about him and saw him only as a little boy, while the father insisted on raising the child as a man - brave, strong , hardened. But at the same time, they met each other halfway and found a common solution that did not harm Nikita, but, on the contrary, developed it. For example, the episode with Klopik. His mother was very afraid that it was too early for Nikita to ride a horse on his own: he might crash, he might not be able to cope with an unbroken horse. My father, on the contrary, was convinced that only in this way, by introducing Nikita to independence, closeness to the life of the people, and participation in the common cause, could a strong, strong man be raised.
Nikita's family was always very hospitable and happy to have guests. One of these visits of guests became a real event in Nikita’s life, then he met his first love. The house has always loved holidays. One of the brightest was wonderful New Year. In the description of preparations for the holiday, homemade crafts, decorations, long-awaited pine needles, waiting for long-awaited gifts, a lush table with treats, round dances around the Christmas tree with invited village children, one can feel the author’s love for the traditions of the ancient noble way of life. So brightly, visibly noticed by A.N. Thick details of children's preparations for the New Year.
In this house, even simple workers are treated very well, despite the fact that there are masters and peasants. Nikita's father is a very simple person in communication and behavior, he was friendly towards the servants, and they respected their owners, tried to please them, and paid them with loyalty and care. The carpenter Pakhom, who makes Nikita’s bench, the sensible boy, the assistant shepherd Mishka Koryashonok, and the teacher Arkady Ivanovich evoke sympathy. Nikita considers Mishka Koryashonka, a shepherd who works in the barnyard, to be the most authoritative person. This is a serious and reasonable guy who, in imitation of adults, speaks with feigned indifference. "Nikita looked at Koryashonok with great respect." Although Mishka is small, the Russian mentality and Russian character are already clearly visible in his comments, advice and actions. Another acquaintance of Nikita is the curly-haired, snub-nosed and large-mouthed Styopa Karnaushkin with a “charmed fist”. Nikita's company of village friends is completed by Semka, Lenka, Artamoshka the smaller, Nil, Vanka Black Ears and Bobylev's nephew Petrushka. All day long Nikita spins around in the yard, at the well, in the carriage house, in the servants' room, on the threshing floor... For him, Mishka Koryashonok's judgments are most understandable. But less important is what the carpenter Pakhom, the worker Vasily, and the stooped Artem said or did. Nikita is curious about the life of the village, peasant children, peasant activities, not understanding the difficulties and hardships of village life, but at the same time spontaneously, instinctively, not separating himself from it, feeling himself somehow inextricably linked with the village.
§ 2.2. Friendship with village kids
Nikita communicated with the village children, and in the traditions of village childhood there was always confrontation between one courtyard and another, fights, snow battles, games of war - all this also made up his childhood, happy childhood, tempered character, put it to the test.
Nikita never had problems communicating due to his different social status; on the contrary, he believed that his village friends would never replace a single noble boy for him, which he was convinced of after communicating with a second-grade high school student, Victor, who was visiting Nikita on Christmas. Victor also made friends with the villagers, tried to be one of them, but never did. But Nikita was one of the guys, he wasn’t afraid to walk
Nikita sighed, waking up, and opened his eyes. The sun was shining through the frosty patterns on the windows, through the wonderfully painted stars and palmate leaves. The light in the room was snowy white. A bunny slithered from the wash cup and trembled on the wall.
Opening his eyes, Nikita remembered what the carpenter Pakhom told him last night:
So I’ll lubricate it and water it thoroughly, and when you get up in the morning, sit down and go.
Yesterday evening, Pakhom, a crooked and pockmarked man, made Nikita, at his special request, a bench. It was done like this:
In the carriage house, on the workbench, among the ring-twisted, odorous shavings, Pakhom planed two boards and four legs; the bottom board from the front edge - from the nose - is cut off so that it does not get stuck in the snow; turned legs; There are two cutouts for the legs in the top board to make it easier to sit. The lower board was coated with cow dung and watered three times in the cold - after that it was made like a mirror, a rope was tied to the upper board - to carry the bench, and when going down the mountain, to straighten it.
Now the bench, of course, is ready and stands by the porch. Pakhom is such a person: “If, he says, what I said is the law, I will do it.”
Nikita sat down on the edge of the bed and listened - the house was quiet, no one must have gotten up yet. If you get dressed in a minute, without, of course, washing or brushing your teeth, then you can escape through the back door into the yard, and from the yard - to the river. There are snowdrifts on the steep banks - sit down and fly...
Nikita crawled out of bed and tiptoed across the hot, sunny squares on the floor...
At this time, the door opened slightly, and a head with glasses, protruding red eyebrows, and a bright red beard poked its head into the room. The head winked and said:
Are you getting up, robber?
ARKADY IVANOVICH
The man with the red beard, Nikitin’s teacher, Arkady Ivanovich, got wind of everything in the evening and purposely got up early. This Arkady Ivanovich was an amazingly efficient and cunning man. He entered Nikita's room, laughing, stopped at the window, breathed on the glass, and when it became transparent, he adjusted his glasses and looked out at the yard.
There is, he said, a wonderful bench by the porch.
Nikita remained silent and frowned. I had to get dressed and brush my teeth, and wash not only my face, but also my ears and even my neck. After that, Arkady Ivanovich put his arm around Nikita’s shoulders and led him to the dining room. Mother sat at the table at the samovar in a warm gray dress. She took Nikita by the face, looked into his eyes with clear eyes and kissed him.
Did you sleep well, Nikita?
Then she extended her hand to Arkady Ivanovich and asked affectionately:
How did you sleep, Arkady Ivanovich?
“I slept well,” he answered, smiling for some reason, with a red mustache, sat down at the table, poured cream into the tea, threw a piece of sugar into his mouth, grabbed it with his white teeth and winked at Nikita through his glasses.
Arkady Ivanovich was an unbearable person: he always had fun, always winked, never spoke directly, but in such a way that his heart skipped a beat. For example, my mother seems to have clearly asked: “How did you sleep?” He replied: “I slept well,” which means this needs to be understood: “But Nikita wanted to run away to the river from tea and classes, but yesterday Nikita instead German translation I sat for two hours on Pakhom’s workbench.”
Arkady Ivanovich never complained, that’s true, but Nikita had to keep his ear to the ground all the time.
Over tea, mother said that it had been very frosty at night, the water in the tub in the entryway had frozen, and when they went for a walk, Nikita needed to put on a cap.
Mother, honestly“It’s terrible heat,” Nikita said.
I ask you to put on your hood.
My cheeks are stinging and suffocating, I, mother, will catch a worse cold in my head.
Mother silently looked at Arkady Ivanovich, at Nikita, her voice trembled:
I don’t know who you have become unheard of.
“Let’s go study,” said Arkady Ivanovich, stood up decisively and quickly rubbed his hands, as if there was no greater pleasure in the world than solving arithmetic problems and dictating proverbs and sayings that make your eyes stick together.
In a large, empty and white room, where a map of the two hemispheres hung on the wall, Nikita sat down at the table, covered in ink stains and drawn faces. Arkady Ivanovich opened the problem book.
“Well,” he said cheerfully, “where did you stop?” - And with a sharpened pencil he underlined the task number.
“The merchant sold several arshins of blue cloth at 3 rubles 64 kopecks per arshin and black cloth...” Nikita read. And now, as always, this merchant from the problem book introduced himself to him. He was in a long, dusty frock coat, with a yellow, sad face, all dull and flat, withered. His shop was as dark as a crack; on a dusty flat shelf lay two pieces of cloth; the merchant stretched out his skinny hands to them, took pieces from the shelf and looked at Nikita with dull, lifeless eyes.
Well, what do you think, Nikita? - asked Arkady Ivanovich. - In total, the merchant sold eighteen arshins. How much blue cloth was sold and how much black cloth?
Nikita wrinkled his face, the merchant completely flattened himself, both pieces of cloth entered the wall and were covered in dust...
Arkady Ivanovich said: “Ai-ai!” - and began to explain, quickly writing numbers in pencil, multiplying them and dividing them, repeating: “One in the mind, two in the mind.” It seemed to Nikita that during multiplication, “one in the mind” or “two in the mind” quickly jumped from the paper to the head and were tickled there so that they would not be forgotten. It was very unpleasant. And the sun sparkled in the two frosty windows of the classroom, luring: “Let's go to the river.”
How long have I been waiting for a high-quality re-release of this wonderful story! It is based on the memories of Alexei Nikolaevich Tolstoy about his own childhood, and the author dedicated it to his son. It begins with a touching dedication: “I dedicate it to my son Nikita Alekseevich Tolstoy with deep respect.” It is the writer’s deep respect for the inner world little man and we observe his feelings in the book. He managed to penetrate into the essence of the child’s experiences, into the very depths of the child’s soul, to find such simple, but most Right words, who managed to convey the fragile, touching world of childhood filled to the brim with feelings and sensations, bright events and impressions.
This is wonderful, kind and bright story about one year in the life of a little nine-year-old boy Nikita. It is about childhood joys and sorrows, discoveries and adventures, about growing up, doubts and overcoming one’s own fears, about the first manifestation of feelings. In one of the chapters, the boy had just turned ten, and the father gave his son a “sea” holiday, congratulating him so playfully and sweetly: “I have the honor, Your Excellency, to inform you that according to the Gregorian calendar, as well as according to the calculation of astronomers around the globe , today you are ten years old, in fulfillment of which I have to give you this penknife with twelve blades, very suitable for maritime affairs, and also for losing it.”
The language of the narrative is clean and easy, the style is beautiful - it is magnificent prose, permeated with a lyrical, poetic sense of beauty. And how magical Tolstoy’s descriptions of nature are! Nikita is very attentive to the changes taking place in nature, he feels like an integral part of it, it fascinates him and makes him happy. This is how Tolstoy describes the moment when Nikita went to accompany the village children home who were celebrating Christmas in their house: “Nikita went to accompany the children to the dam. When he returned home alone, the moon was burning high in the sky, in a rainbow-colored pale circle. The trees on the dam and in the garden stood huge and white and seemed to have grown and stretched out under the moonlight. To the right the white desert stretched into the incredible frosty darkness. A long, big-headed shadow was moving its legs at Nikita’s side. It seemed to Nikita that he was walking in a dream, in an enchanted kingdom. Only in an enchanted kingdom can it be so strange and so happy in the soul.”
The book so interestingly and wonderfully describes the life of the estate, the celebration of Easter, Christmas Eve and the children's Christmas tree in a noble house, the fun and games of the village children with whom Nikita is friends. Reading is a pleasure!
Illustrations by Nina Alekseevna Noskovich are a good visual representation of the story. They are unusual, dim, they use shades of only three colors - yellow, blue and brown. But they are so intelligent and modest, delicate and romantic. In my opinion, the drawings wonderfully convey the lyrical mood of the story and emphasize the difference between modern world and the world of a noble estate of the 19th century, people’s perception of that culture and today’s - nature, the passage of time, life in general.
The book is made with high quality: hard cover, stitched binding, thick offset, medium-sized, but light readable font. Obsolete words are explained in the footnotes at the bottom of the page.
I was somewhat upset by the typos, because you always expect only impeccable quality from Rech. On page 43, an unnecessary letter “p” crept into the word “runners”, turning them into “crawlers,” and on page 13, somehow the proofreader didn’t work out at all - there were two errors there at once:
“But there’s no glass in the case...”
“There are two frosty windows in the room; Through the glass one can see a strange moon, larger than usual.”
Because of this, I have to lower my rating for the book.
