Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev. Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev Turgenev two landowners main characters

Allow me to introduce you to two landowners with whom I often hunted. The first of them is retired Major General Vyacheslav Illarionovich Khvalynsky. Tall and once slender, he was no longer decrepit. True, the once-correct features of his face have changed a little, his cheeks have sagged, wrinkles have appeared, but Vyacheslav Illarionovich speaks smartly, laughs loudly, tinkles his spurs and twists his mustache. He is a very kind person, but with rather strange habits. He cannot treat poor nobles as equals, even his speech changes.

He was a troublemaker and lived a terrible life, and a bad owner: he took a retired sergeant major, an unusually stupid person, as his manager. Khvalynsky is a great lover of women. He likes to play cards only with people of lower rank. When he has to play with superiors, he changes a lot and does not even complain about losing. Vyacheslav Illarionovich reads little, while reading he constantly moves his mustache and eyebrows. In the elections, he plays a significant role, but he refuses the honorary title of leader out of avarice.

General Khvalynsky does not like to talk about his military past. He lives alone in a small house and is still considered a profitable groom. His housekeeper, a plump, fresh, black-eyed and black-browed woman of about 35, wears starched dresses on weekdays. At large dinner parties and public celebrations, General Khvalynsky is at ease. Khvalynsky does not have a special gift for words, so he does not tolerate long disputes.

Mardariy Apollonych Stegunov is similar to Khvalynsky in only one thing - he is also a bachelor. He did not serve anywhere and was not considered handsome. Mardarius Apollonitch is a short, chubby old man, bald, with a double chin, soft arms and a paunch. He is a hospitable and joker, lives for his own pleasure. Stegunov deals with his estate rather superficially and lives in the old way. His people are dressed in the old-fashioned way, the steward from the peasants is in charge of the household, and the house is run by a shriveled and stingy old woman. Mardariy Apollonych welcomes guests cordially and treats them to glory.

Once I came to him on a summer evening, after the vigil. After Stegunov released the young priest, having treated him to vodka, we sat down on the balcony. Suddenly he saw strange chickens in the garden and sent the yard Yushka to drive them out. Yushka and three other courtyards rushed at the chickens, and the fun began. It turned out that these were the chickens, Ermila the coachman, and Stegunov ordered them to be taken away. Then the conversation turned to settlements, which were given a bad place. Mardary Apollonitch said that disgraced muzhiks lived there, especially two families who could not be succeeded in getting rid of them. In the distance I heard strange sounds. It turned out that Vaska the barman, who served us at dinner, was being punished.

A quarter of an hour later I said goodbye to Stegunov. Passing through the village, I met Vasya and asked why he was punished. He replied that they were punished for the deed, and you will not find such a gentleman as they have in the whole province.

I read the story "Two Landowners" from Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev's "Notes of a Hunter" cycle.

The story tells about two landowners who were bachelors and only this, as if they converged among themselves. The first of them - Vyacheslav Ilarionovich Khvalynsky - was in his youth an adjutant to some significant person. "Imagine a man tall and once slender, now somewhat flabby, but by no means decrepit, moreover, not obsolete, a man in adulthood, in the very, as it is written, time." "...Vyacheslav Ilarionovich speaks briskly, laughs loudly, tinkles his spurs, twists his mustache, finally calls himself an old cavalryman..." "He is a very kind person, but with rather strange concepts and habits." He cannot communicate with people who are not rich and ignoble, as with his equals; looks at them somehow from the side, speaks quickly in an orderly, condescending tone. "Before the highest persons, Khvalynsky is mostly silent." "... An amazing change takes place in him: he smiles, and nods his head, and looks into their eyes - it smells like honey from him ...". General Khvalynsky is especially good at large dinner parties, at solemn and public acts, exams, meetings and exhibitions. "...Here, one can say, he is completely at ease," full of patronage and independence, full of self-esteem and importance. However, he lives in a small house, alone, reads little, does not receive anyone at home, lives as a miser. "He was troublesome and lived a terrible life, and a bad owner: he took to his stewards ... an unusually stupid person."

Another landowner, Mardariy Apollonych Stegunov, was, at first glance, the opposite of Vyacheslav Ilarionovich. He never served anywhere and was never considered handsome. "Mardarius Apollonich is a short, plump, bald old man, with a double chin, soft arms and a decent belly. He is a big hospitable and joker; lives, as they say, for his pleasure ...". "Mardary Apollonych lives in a completely old way. And his housing is of an old building: in the hallway, as it should, it smells of kvass, tallow candles and leather; ... in the dining room there are family portraits, flies, a large pot of erani and sour fortopianes; ... in the study there are cabinets with smelly books, spiders and black dust ... In a word, everything is as usual. Mardary Apollonitch takes care of the household superficially, and only occasionally goes out into the fields to look at bread and pick cornflowers. The threshing machine is locked in a barn, a bearded man in a sheepskin coat is in charge of the household, a shriveled, stingy old woman is in charge of the house. The landowner himself never does anything, and moreover, "Dream Interpretation" stopped reading. However, he receives guests very cordially and treats them to glory, moreover, he is too persistent and importunate. For example, he forces a young priest to drink vodka, who does not dare to refuse the owner. For fun, he arranges a real persecution of three chickens in his garden, and then takes them away. He listens with pleasure to the sounds of Vasya's spanking of the barman. But he is absolutely not interested in the fate of his own peasants. The argument is one and completely convincing: "If a master is a master, and if a peasant is a peasant."

I think the writer is making fun of these landlords. Both of them are not engaged in household or any other business. Both lead a worthless, empty life. General Khvalynsky reminds me of an important, pompous and self-satisfied turkey-cock, and Mardary Apollonitch reminds me of a stupid, lazy pig who loves to have fun and overeat.

Ivan Sergeevich Aksakov, a talented publicist who adhered to Slavophile views, saw in I.S. Turgenev "a harmonious series of attacks, a whole battle fire against the landlord life of Russia." The censor who let the book go to print was removed from his post, although all the stories in the collection (except for "Two Landowners") had previously gone through the censorship committee separately. Turgenev, who had long been annoying the authorities, was exiled to Spasskoe-Lutovinovo, which, although in fact, only added to his popularity.

The story "Two Landowners" from the cycle "Notes of a Hunter" was supposed to be published in Sovremennik No. 10, 1847, but was not passed by the censors. So he only appeared in a separate edition of The Hunter's Notes (1852).

The original title is "Two Neighbors". The story was rejected by censorship twice more in 1851 in the "Illustrated Almanac" and in the collection "Comet". The censor Lvov, who allowed the publication of "Two Landowners", was dismissed "for negligence in office."

Literary direction and genre

The story is written in Gogol's tradition of realism. Not without irony and even with a certain amount of sarcasm, Turgenev describes two "remarkable people" who, in fact, turn out to be morally insignificant. Their personalities became a natural product of serfdom.

The story has features of a portrait sketch. The images of the two landowners are connected only by their proximity to the narrator-hunter. They show their true character in communication with a neighbor-landlord.

Issues

The main problem of the story is the influence of serfdom, which kills human dignity not only in serfs, but also in landlords, who either strive for honors or live the old fashioned way, thoughtlessly adopting the tyranny of their fathers.

Plot and composition

The story begins with the narrator addressing the readers. He immediately announces his intention to tell about the two landowners and begins with a story about the retired Major General Khvalynsky. Turgenev first lists the features of the landowner, sweet and even funny, such as, for example, the lilac color of Khvalynsky's hair, who dyed it with a composition bought from a swindler (“a Jew posing as an Armenian”). In this initial deception lies the whole essence of the duality of the heroes of the story.

The reader learns about Khvalynsky that he speaks differently with people who are more or less rich and bureaucratic, reads only in front of guests, and has never been to war, although he is a general. The story about the housekeeper is very close to the story about one of Gogol's Ivanovs, who was not married, but his housekeeper had many children who called him aunts.

In general, General Khvalynsky corresponds to his speaking surname, that is, he wants to appear much better than he really is, but he is an empty person.

The second landowner, Stegunov, is at first opposed to the first in everything, including appearance, life and occupations. It already seems to the reader that this landowner will be more likeable. But here the hunter tells how he stayed with the sweetest hospitable Stegunov, and "we still have quite a few such landowners in Rus'." Upon closer acquaintance, the kind-hearted landowner turns out to be inhumanly cruel, capable of poisoning a person like a forest animal, not caring about his serfs. He cracks down on the serfs for the slightest offense and gets real pleasure from it.

Thus, the second landowner turns out to be much worse than the first, because, although he does not show his contempt for the rootless peasants, he humiliates their human dignity.

The climax and denouement of the story is a conversation with the just whipped barman Vasya, who considers his master the best in the whole province. His human dignity has already disappeared, botched by a kind gentleman.

The last words of the story - the narrator's thought about old Rus' - were offensive to many contemporaries, who believed that the heroes of the story were a rarity.

Heroes

Turgenev gives a detailed description of his characters, describing their appearance, home, habits, actions, character and speech. Like Gogol, who created a gallery of landowners in Dead Souls, Turgenev, proceeding from his task, makes the second landowner more lost and hopeless in moral terms than the first. It is even difficult to understand whether Turgenev uses the grotesque as a technique to ridicule the landlords, or whether such outlandish people were really found in Rus' in the middle of the 19th century.

The appearance of Khvalynsky is ambivalent. On the one hand, the author calls him a man “in adulthood, at the very ... time”, on the other hand, it is reported that he does not have some teeth, his cheeks sagged, he himself is flabby, and his sparse hair has changed color. From the clothes of the hero, we can conclude that he seeks to look like a dandy.

Khvalynsky is called a very kind person, but his habits speak differently: in a conversation with lower ranks, he contemptuously swallows words, strives for honor, but refuses the title of leader, because it requires action! In a word, the general is strong where it is necessary to impress.

Turgenev is skeptical about the mind of Khvalynsky, who reads books only in front of guests, and avoids disputes, especially with young people. Khvalynsky is a miser, he does not know how to run a household, but his neighbors consider him an excellent landowner, a disinterested man, "with rules."

Against his background, Stegunov (his last name is also telling, he whips his serfs with pleasure) seems open and sincere. He is naturalness itself, does not try to appear as something else. Stegunov did not serve anywhere, he is a short, chubby old man with a paunch. His clothes are a striped dressing gown on wadding. His life is patriarchal. His house is similar to many houses of other landowners, where books are consigned to oblivion, people are dressed in the old fashion, traditionally turn to guests. Stegunov is hospitable.

It is not for nothing that Turgenev emphasizes several times that his hero does nothing. Such idleness leads to moral perversions, which are manifested in catching other people's chickens on their plot (the landowner asks five times in a row whose chickens walk around his plot), persecution of serfs or corporal punishment.

Stylistic features

In the story "Two Landowners" Turgenev showed himself as an admirer and follower of Gogol's traditions. The story was supposed to make readers laugh through tears. In describing the landlords, Turgenev uses hyperbole, irony, and the grotesque. Or maybe there really were such landowners in his time? It is to this conclusion that the reader must come and be horrified.

I have already had the honor of introducing to you, sympathetic readers, some of my neighbors; allow me now, by the way (everything is in order for our brother the writer), to introduce you to two more landowners, with whom I often hunted, people who are very respectable, well-intentioned and enjoying the universal respect of several counties. First, I will describe to you the retired Major General Vyacheslav Illarionovich Khvalynsky. Imagine a tall and once slender man, now somewhat flabby, but not at all decrepit, not even obsolete, a man in adulthood, in the very, as they say, time. True, the once correct and now still pleasant features of his face have changed a little, his cheeks have sagged, frequent wrinkles are radiantly located near the eyes, there are no other teeth, as Saadi said, according to Pushkin; blond hair, at least all that remained intact, turned into purple thanks to the composition bought at the Romen horse fair from a Jew who pretended to be an Armenian; but Vyacheslav Illarionovich speaks briskly, laughs loudly, tinkles his spurs, twists his mustache, and finally calls himself an old cavalryman, while it is known that real old people never call themselves old people. He usually wears a frock coat, buttoned up to the top, a high necktie with starched collars, and gray trousers with a sparkle, military cut; He wears his hat directly on his forehead, leaving the entire back of his head out. He is a very kind person, but with rather strange concepts and habits. For example: he cannot treat nobles who are not wealthy or not official in any way, as with people equal to themselves. When talking to them, he usually looks at them from the side, leaning his cheek strongly on a hard and white collar, or suddenly he will take it and illuminate them with a clear and motionless look, keep silent and move all the skin under the hair on his head; he even pronounces words differently and does not say, for example: “Thank you, Pavel Vasilyich”, or: “Come here, Mikhailo Ivanovich”, but: “Bolldaryu, Pall Asilich”, or: “Pa-azhalte here, Michal Vanych”. With people on the lower levels of society, he treats them even more strangely: he does not look at them at all and, before explaining his desire to them or giving them an order, several times in a row, with a preoccupied and dreamy look, he will repeat: “What is your name ?. What is your name?”, striking unusually sharply on the first word “how”, and pronouncing the rest very quickly, which gives the whole proverb a rather close resemblance to the cry of a male quail. He was a troublemaker and lived a terrible life, but the owner was a bad one: he took a retired sergeant major, a Little Russian, an unusually stupid person, as his steward. However, in the business of management, no one among us has yet outdone one important St. sheaves into the barn until the fire is completely extinguished. The same dignitary took it into his head to sow all his fields with poppies, as a result of, apparently, a very simple calculation: poppy, they say, is more expensive than rye, therefore it is more profitable to sow poppies. He also ordered his serf women to wear kokoshniks according to the pattern sent from St. Petersburg; and indeed, women still wear kokoshniki on his estates...only on top of kichek... But let us return to Vyacheslav Illarionovich. Vyacheslav Illarionovich is a terrible hunter of the fair sex, and as soon as he sees a pretty person in his county town on the boulevard, he immediately sets off after her, but immediately limps - that's what a wonderful circumstance. He likes to play cards, but only with people of lower rank; they are something to him: “Your Excellency,” and he pushes them and scolds them as much as his heart desires. When he happens to play with the governor or with some official, an amazing change takes place in him: he smiles, and nods his head, and looks into their eyes - it smells of honey from him ... He even loses and doesn't complain. Vyacheslav Illarionich reads little, while reading he constantly moves his mustache and eyebrows, first his mustache, then his eyebrows, as if sending a wave from bottom to top over his face. Especially remarkable is this undulating movement on Vyacheslav Illarionich's face when he happens (in front of guests, of course) to run through the columns of the Journal des Débats. In the elections, he plays a rather significant role, but he refuses the honorary title of leader out of avarice. “Gentlemen,” he usually says to the nobles approaching him, and speaks in a voice full of patronage and independence, “I am very grateful for the honor; but I decided to devote my leisure to solitude. And, having said these words, he will move his head several times to the right and to the left, and then with dignity he will put his chin and cheeks on the tie. In his younger years he was an adjutant to some significant person, whom he does not call otherwise than by name and patronymic; they say that he took on more than just adjutant duties, as if, for example, dressed in full dress uniform and even fastening the hooks, he soared his boss in the bath - but not every rumor can be trusted. However, General Khvalynsky himself does not like to talk about his service career, which is generally quite strange; He didn't seem to have been in the war either. General Khvalynsky lives in a small house, alone; he did not experience marital happiness in his life, and therefore is still considered a groom, and even an advantageous groom. But he has a housekeeper, a woman of about thirty-five, black-eyed, black-browed, plump, fresh and with a mustache, on weekdays she walks in starched dresses, and on Sundays she puts on muslin sleeves. Vyacheslav Illarionovich is good at big dinner parties given by landlords in honor of governors and other authorities: here he, one might say, is completely at ease. He usually sits in such cases, if not at the right hand of the governor, then not far from him; at the beginning of dinner, he more adheres to self-esteem and, throwing himself back, but without turning his head, looks down from the side at the round backs of the heads and standing peaks of the guests; but by the end of the table he cheers up, begins to smile in all directions (in the direction of the governor he smiled from the beginning of dinner), and sometimes even offers a toast in honor of the fair sex, the decoration of our planet, according to him. Also, General Khvalynsky is not bad at all solemn and public acts, exams, meetings and exhibitions; the master also comes under the blessing. At sidings, crossings, and other similar places, Vyacheslav Illarionich's people do not make noise or shout; on the contrary, pushing the people apart or calling for a carriage, they say in a pleasant throaty baritone: “Let me, let me, let General Khvalynsky pass,” or: “General Khvalynsky’s crew ...” The crew, however, Khvalynsky’s uniform is rather old; on the lackeys the livery is rather shabby (it seems hardly necessary to mention that it is gray with red piping); the horses, too, have lived quite well and have served their time, but Vyacheslav Illarionich has no pretensions to panache and does not even consider it proper for his rank to splurge. Khvalynsky does not have a special gift for words, or, perhaps, does not have the opportunity to show his eloquence, because he does not tolerate not only disputes, but generally objections, and he carefully avoids all long conversations, especially with young people. It is indeed truer; otherwise the trouble is with the current people: it will just come out of obedience and lose respect. Khvalynsky is mostly silent in front of higher people, and to lower people, whom he apparently despises, but with whom he only knows, he keeps his speech abrupt and sharp, incessantly using expressions like the following: “This, however, is empty. -ki say "; or: “I finally find myself compelled, my dear friend, to show you”; or: “Finally, you must, however, know with whom you are dealing,” etc. Postmasters, indispensable assessors and stationmasters are especially afraid of him. At home, he does not receive anyone and lives, as you hear, a miser. With all that, he is a fine landowner. “An old campaigner, a disinterested man with rules, vieux grognard,” the neighbors say about him. One provincial prosecutor allows himself to smile when the excellent and solid qualities of General Khvalynsky are mentioned in his presence—but what does envy do!... But let us now pass on to another landowner. Mardariy Apollonitch Stegunov in no way resembled Khvalynsky; he hardly served anywhere and was never considered handsome. Mardarius Apollonich is a short, plump, bald old man with a double chin, soft hands and a decent paunch. He is a big hospitable and joker; lives, as they say, for his own pleasure; winter and summer goes in a striped dressing gown on wadding. In one thing he only agreed with General Khvalynsky: he is also a bachelor. He has five hundred souls. Mardary Apollonitch takes care of his estate rather superficially; In order to keep up with the times, I bought a threshing machine from Butenop in Moscow ten years ago, locked it in a barn, and calmed down. Is it on a good summer day that he orders to lay down a racing droshky and go to the field to look for bread and pick cornflowers. Mardariy Apollonitch lives in a completely old way. And his house is of an old construction: in the hall, as it should, it smells of kvass, tallow candles and leather; immediately to the right is a sideboard with pipes and washbasins; in the dining-room there are family portraits, flies, a large pot of erani, and sour fortepianos; in the living room there are three sofas, three tables, two mirrors and a hoarse clock, with blackened enamel and carved bronze hands; in the office there is a table with papers, bluish-colored screens with pasted pictures cut out from various works of the past century, cupboards with stinking books, spiders and black dust, a plump armchair, an Italian window and a tightly boarded door to the garden ... In a word, everything is as usual. There are many people at Mardary Apollonitch's, and they are all dressed in the old fashion: in long blue caftans with high collars, pantaloons of dull color, and short yellowish waistcoats. They say to the guests: "father." His housekeeping is managed by a steward made of peasants, with a full beard; home - an old woman, tied with a brown scarf, wrinkled and stingy. In the stable of Mardarius Apollonich there are thirty different-sized horses; he leaves in a home-made carriage of one and a half hundred pounds. He receives guests very cordially and treats them to glory, that is: thanks to the stupefying properties of Russian cuisine, he deprives them until the very evening of any opportunity to do anything other than preference. He himself never does anything, and even the Dream Interpretation stopped reading. But we still have quite a few such landowners in Rus'; one may ask: why on earth did I start talking about him and why?.. But instead of answering, allow me to tell you one of my visits to Mardarius Apollonitch. I came to him in the summer, at seven o'clock in the evening. Vigil had just departed from him, and the priest, a young man, apparently very timid and recently out of the seminary, was sitting in the living room near the door, on the very edge of his chair. Mardary Apollonitch, as usual, received me extremely affectionately: he genuinely rejoiced at each guest, and he was generally a kind person. The priest stood up and took up his hat. "Wait, wait, father," Mardary Apollonitch spoke, without letting go of my hand, "don't go away... I ordered you to bring vodka." "I don't drink, sir," the priest muttered in confusion, and blushed to his ears. - What nonsense! How not to drink in your rank! answered Mardary Apollonitch. - Bear! Yushka! vodka father! Yushka, a tall and thin old man of about eighty, came in with a glass of vodka on a dark painted tray spotted with flesh-colored spots. The priest began to refuse. “Drink, father, don’t break, it’s not good,” the landowner remarked reproachfully. The poor young man obeyed. - Well, now, father, you can go. The priest began to bow. "Well, all right, all right, go on... A fine man," continued Mardary Apollonitch, looking after him, "I am very pleased with him; one is still young. He holds all his sermons, but he does not drink wine. But how are you, my father?.. What are you, how are you? Let's go to the balcony - you see, what a glorious evening. We went out to the balcony, sat down and started talking. Mardaria Apollonitch looked down and suddenly became terribly agitated. - Whose chickens are these? whose chickens are these? he shouted, “whose chickens are they walking in the garden? Yushka! Yushka! Go and find out now whose chickens are walking in the garden? Whose chickens are they? How many times have I forbidden, how many times have I spoken! Yushka ran. - What a riot! - repeated Mardary Apollonitch, - this is horror! The unfortunate chickens, as I remember now, two speckled and one white with a crest, calmly continued to walk under the apple trees, occasionally expressing their feelings with prolonged grunting, when suddenly Yushka, without a hat, with a stick in his hand, and three other adult courtyards, all rushed together in unison. on them. The fun has gone. The hens screamed, flapped their wings, jumped, clucked deafeningly; courtyard people ran, stumbled, fell; the gentleman from the balcony shouted like a frenzy: “Catch, catch! catch, catch! Catch, catch, catch! .. Whose chickens are these, whose chickens are they? Finally, one yard man managed to catch a crested hen, pressing it to the ground with his chest, and at the same time, a girl of about eleven years old, all disheveled and with a twig in her hand, jumped over the fence of the garden, from the street. — Ah, those are the chickens! exclaimed the landowner triumphantly. - Yermila-coachman chickens! Look, he sent his Natalka to drive them away ... I suppose he didn’t send Parasha, ”the landowner added in an undertone and grinned significantly. - Hey Yushka! throw the chickens: catch Natalka for me. But before the out of breath Yushka could run to the frightened girl, out of nowhere the housekeeper grabbed her hand and slapped the poor thing on the back several times... "Here's a tack, here's a tack," picked up the landowner, "those, those, those!" Those, those, those!.. And take away the chickens, Avdotya,” he added in a loud voice and turned to me with a bright face: “What, father, was the persecution, eh? Even sweat, look. And Mardary Apollonitch burst out laughing. We stayed on the balcony. The evening was really unusually good. We were served tea. "Tell me," I began, "Mardariy Apollonitch, have your yards been evicted, over there, on the road, beyond the ravine?"- My ... what? "How are you, Mardary Apollonitch?" After all, it is wrong. The huts allotted to the peasants are nasty, cramped; you won't see trees around; there is not even a planter; there is only one well, and even that one is no good. Couldn't you have found another place?.. And, they say, you even took away the old hemp-growers from them? - And what will you do with the disengagement? answered Mardary Apollonitch. - I have this demarcation here where it sits. (He pointed to the back of his head.) And I do not foresee any benefit from this delimitation. And that I took hemp plants from them and planters, or something, I didn’t dig up from them there - I myself know about this, father. I'm a simple man - I do it the old way. In my opinion: if a master is a master, and if a peasant is a peasant ... That's what. Of course, there was nothing to answer such a clear and convincing argument. “And besides,” he continued, “they are bad, disgraced peasants. Especially there are two families; even the deceased father, God grant him the kingdom of heaven, did not complain about them, did not complain painfully. And I, I will tell you, have such a sign: if the father is a thief, then the son is a thief; as you wish... Oh, blood, blood is a great thing! I, to confess to you frankly, from those two families, and without a queue, gave in to the soldiers and stuffed them like that - in some places; Yes, they are not translated, what will you do? Fruitful, damned. Meanwhile, the air was completely still. Only occasionally did the wind come in streams and, dying for the last time near the house, brought to our ears the sound of measured and frequent blows that were heard in the direction of the stables. Mardary Apollonitch had just brought a full saucer to his lips and was already widening his nostrils, without which, as you know, not a single native Russian draws tea into himself, but he stopped, listened, nodded his head, took a sip and, putting the saucer on the table, uttered with with the kindest smile and as if involuntarily echoing the blows: “Chuki-chuki-chuk! Chucky-chook! Chucky-chook!" - What is it? I asked in amazement. - And there, on my orders, the rascal is punished ... Would you like to know Vasya the barman?- Which Vasya? - Yes, that's what he served us at dinner the other day. He also walks with such big sideburns. The most fierce indignation could not resist the clear and meek gaze of Mardarius Apollonitch. What are you, young man, what are you? he said, shaking his head. - What am I, a villain, or something, that you are staring at me like that? Love and punish: you yourself know. A quarter of an hour later I said goodbye to Mardarius Apollonitch. Passing through the village, I saw the barman Vasya. He walked down the street and ate nuts. I told the driver to stop the horses and called him. “What, brother, were you punished today?” I asked him. — How do you know? Vasya answered. “Your master told me.- The barin himself? Why did he order you to be punished? - And rightly so, father, rightly so. We do not punish for trifles; we don’t have such an institution - no, no. Our master is not like that; we have a master ... you will not find such a gentleman in the whole province. — Went! I said to the coachman. “Here it is, old Rus'!” I thought on my way back.

"was written in the period 1847 - 1874. The collection was first published as a separate edition in 1852.

I have already had the honor of introducing to you, sympathetic readers, some of my neighbors; allow me now, by the way (everything is in order for our brother the writer), to introduce you to two more landowners, with whom I often hunted, people who are very respectable, well-intentioned and enjoying the universal respect of several counties.

First, I will describe to you the retired Major General Vyacheslav Illarionovich Khvalynsky. Imagine a tall and once slender man, now somewhat flabby, but not at all decrepit, not even obsolete, a man in adulthood, in the very, as they say, time. True, the once correct and now still pleasant features of his face have changed a little, his cheeks have sagged, frequent wrinkles are radiantly located near the eyes, there are no other teeth, as Saadi said, according to Pushkin; blond hair, at least all that remained intact, turned into purple thanks to the composition bought at the Romen horse fair from a Jew who pretended to be an Armenian; but Vyacheslav Illarionovich speaks briskly, laughs loudly, tinkles his spurs, twists his mustache, and finally calls himself an old cavalryman, while it is known that real old people never call themselves old people. He usually wears a frock coat, buttoned up to the top, a high necktie with starched collars, and gray trousers with a sparkle, military cut; He wears his hat directly on his forehead, leaving the entire back of his head out. He is a very kind person, but with rather strange concepts and habits. For example: he cannot treat nobles who are not wealthy or not official in any way, as with people equal to themselves. When talking to them, he usually looks at them from the side, leaning his cheek strongly on a hard and white collar, or suddenly he will take it and illuminate them with a clear and motionless look, keep silent and move all the skin under the hair on his head; he even pronounces words differently and does not say, for example: “Thank you, Pavel Vasilyich”, or: “Come here, Mikhailo Ivanovich”, but: “Bolldaryu, Pall Asilich”, or: “Pa-azhalte here, Michal Vanych”. With people on the lower levels of society, he treats them even more strangely: he does not look at them at all and, before explaining his desire to them or giving them an order, several times in a row, with a preoccupied and dreamy look, he will repeat: “What is your name ?. What is your name?”, striking unusually sharply on the first word “how”, and pronouncing the rest very quickly, which gives the whole proverb a rather close resemblance to the cry of a male quail. He was a troublemaker and lived a terrible life, but the owner was a bad one: he took a retired sergeant major, a Little Russian, an unusually stupid person, as his steward. However, in the business of management, no one among us has yet outdone one important St. sheaves into the barn until the fire is completely extinguished. The same dignitary took it into his head to sow all his fields with poppies, as a result of, apparently, a very simple calculation: poppy, they say, is more expensive than rye, therefore it is more profitable to sow poppies. He also ordered his serf women to wear kokoshniks according to the pattern sent from St. Petersburg; and indeed, women on his estates still wear kokoshniki… only on top of kichek… But let us return to Vyacheslav Illarionovich. Vyacheslav Illarionovich is a terrible hunter of the fair sex, and as soon as he sees a pretty person in his county town on the boulevard, he immediately sets off after her, but immediately limps - that's what a wonderful circumstance. He likes to play cards, but only with people of lower rank; they are something to him: “Your Excellency,” and he pushes them and scolds them as much as his heart desires. When he happens to play with the governor or with some official, an amazing change takes place in him: he smiles, and nods his head, and looks into their eyes - it’s like honey from him... He even loses and doesn’t complains. Vyacheslav Illarionich reads little, while reading he constantly moves his mustache and eyebrows, first his mustache, then his eyebrows, as if sending a wave from bottom to top over his face. Especially remarkable is this undulating movement on Vyacheslav Illarionich's face when he happens (in front of guests, of course) to run through the columns of the Journal des Débats. In the elections, he plays a rather significant role, but he refuses the honorary title of leader out of avarice. “Gentlemen,” he usually says to the nobles approaching him, and speaks in a voice full of patronage and independence, “I am very grateful for the honor; but I decided to devote my leisure to solitude. And, having said these words, he will move his head several times to the right and to the left, and then with dignity he will put his chin and cheeks on the tie. In his younger years he was an adjutant to some significant person, whom he does not call otherwise than by name and patronymic; they say that he took on more than just adjutant duties, as if, for example, dressed in full dress uniform and even fastening the hooks, he soared his boss in the bath - but not every rumor can be trusted. However, General Khvalynsky himself does not like to talk about his service career, which is generally quite strange; He didn't seem to have been in the war either. General Khvalynsky lives in a small house, alone; he did not experience marital happiness in his life, and therefore is still considered a groom, and even an advantageous groom. But he has a housekeeper, a woman of about thirty-five, black-eyed, black-browed, plump, fresh and with a mustache, on weekdays she walks in starched dresses, and on Sundays she puts on muslin sleeves. Vyacheslav Illarionovich is good at big dinner parties given by landlords in honor of governors and other authorities: here he, one might say, is completely at ease. He usually sits in such cases, if not at the right hand of the governor, then not far from him; at the beginning of dinner, he more adheres to self-esteem and, throwing himself back, but without turning his head, looks down from the side at the round backs of the heads and standing peaks of the guests; but by the end of the table he cheers up, begins to smile in all directions (in the direction of the governor he smiled from the beginning of dinner), and sometimes even offers a toast in honor of the fair sex, the decoration of our planet, according to him. Also, General Khvalynsky is not bad at all solemn and public acts, exams, meetings and exhibitions; the master also comes under the blessing. At sidings, crossings, and other similar places, Vyacheslav Illarionich's people do not make noise or shout; on the contrary, pushing the people apart or calling the carriage, they say in a pleasant throaty baritone: “Let me, let me, let General Khvalynsky pass,” or: “General Khvalynsky’s crew ...” The crew, however, Khvalynsky’s uniform is rather old; on the lackeys the livery is rather shabby (it seems hardly necessary to mention that it is gray with red piping); the horses, too, have lived quite well and have served their time, but Vyacheslav Illarionich has no pretensions to panache and does not even consider it proper for his rank to splurge. Khvalynsky does not have a special gift for words, or, perhaps, does not have the opportunity to show his eloquence, because he does not tolerate not only disputes, but generally objections, and he carefully avoids all long conversations, especially with young people. It is indeed truer; otherwise the trouble is with the current people: it will just come out of obedience and lose respect. Khvalynsky is mostly silent in front of higher people, and to lower people, whom he apparently despises, but with whom he only knows, he keeps his speech abrupt and sharp, incessantly using expressions like the following: “This, however, is empty. -ki say "; or: “I finally find myself compelled, my dear friend, to show you”; or: “Finally, you must, however, know with whom you are dealing,” etc. Postmasters, indispensable assessors and stationmasters are especially afraid of him. At home, he does not receive anyone and lives, as you hear, a miser. With all that, he is a fine landowner. “An old campaigner, a disinterested man, with rules, vieux grognard (old grumbler (French. )),” neighbors say about him. One provincial prosecutor allows himself to smile when the excellent and solid qualities of General Khvalynsky are mentioned in his presence—but what does envy do!...

But let us now pass on to another landowner.

Mardariy Apollonitch Stegunov in no way resembled Khvalynsky; he hardly served anywhere and was never considered handsome. Mardarius Apollonich is a short, plump, bald old man with a double chin, soft hands and a decent paunch. He is a big hospitable and joker; lives, as they say, for his own pleasure; winter and summer goes in a striped dressing gown on wadding. In one thing he only agreed with General Khvalynsky: he is also a bachelor. He has five hundred souls. Mardary Apollonitch takes care of his estate rather superficially; In order to keep up with the times, I bought a threshing machine from Butenop in Moscow ten years ago, locked it in a barn, and calmed down. Is it on a good summer day that he orders to lay down a racing droshky and go to the field to look for bread and pick cornflowers. Mardariy Apollonitch lives in a completely old way. And his house is of an old construction: in the hall, as it should, it smells of kvass, tallow candles and leather; immediately to the right is a sideboard with pipes and washbasins; in the dining-room there are family portraits, flies, a large pot of erani, and sour fortepianos; in the living room there are three sofas, three tables, two mirrors and a hoarse clock, with blackened enamel and carved bronze hands; in the office there is a table with papers, bluish-colored screens with pasted-on pictures cut out from various works of the past century, cupboards with stinking books, spiders and black dust, a plump armchair, an Italian window and a tightly boarded door to the garden ... In a word, everything is as usual. There are many people at Mardary Apollonitch's, and they are all dressed in the old fashion: in long blue caftans with high collars, pantaloons of dull color, and short yellowish waistcoats. They say to the guests: "father." His housekeeping is managed by a steward made of peasants, with a full beard; home - an old woman, tied with a brown scarf, wrinkled and stingy. In the stable of Mardarius Apollonich there are thirty different-sized horses; he leaves in a home-made carriage of one and a half hundred pounds. He receives guests very cordially and treats them to glory, that is: thanks to the stupefying properties of Russian cuisine, he deprives them until the very evening of any opportunity to do anything other than preference. He himself never does anything, and even the Dream Interpretation stopped reading. But we still have quite a few such landowners in Rus'; one may ask: why on earth did I start talking about him and why?.. But instead of answering, allow me to tell you one of my visits to Mardarius Apollonitch.

I came to him in the summer, at seven o'clock in the evening. Vigil had just departed from him, and the priest, a young man, apparently very timid and recently out of the seminary, was sitting in the living room near the door, on the very edge of his chair. Mardary Apollonitch, as usual, received me extremely affectionately: he genuinely rejoiced at each guest, and he was generally a kind person. The priest stood up and took up his hat.

“Wait, wait, father,” said Mardary Apollonitch, without letting go of my hand, “don’t go away… I ordered you to bring vodka.”

"I don't drink, sir," the priest muttered in confusion, and blushed to his ears.

- What nonsense! How not to drink in your rank! answered Mardary Apollonitch. - Bear! Yushka! vodka father!

Yushka, a tall and thin old man of about eighty, came in with a glass of vodka on a dark painted tray spotted with flesh-colored spots.

The priest began to refuse.

“Drink, father, don’t break, it’s not good,” the landowner remarked reproachfully.

The poor young man obeyed.

- Well, now, father, you can go.

The priest began to bow.

"Well, all right, all right, go on... A fine man," continued Mardary Apollonitch, looking after him, "I am very pleased with him; one is still young. He holds all his sermons, but he does not drink wine. But how are you, my father?.. What are you, how are you? Let's go to the balcony - you see, what a glorious evening.

We went out to the balcony, sat down and started talking. Mardaria Apollonitch looked down and suddenly became terribly agitated.

- Whose chickens are these? whose chickens are these? he shouted, “whose chickens are they walking in the garden? Yushka! Yushka! Go and find out now whose chickens are walking in the garden? Whose chickens are they? How many times have I forbidden, how many times have I spoken!

Yushka ran.

- What a riot! - repeated Mardary Apollonitch, - this is horror!

The unfortunate chickens, as I remember now, two speckled and one white with a crest, calmly continued to walk under the apple trees, occasionally expressing their feelings with prolonged grunting, when suddenly Yushka, without a hat, with a stick in his hand, and three other adult courtyards, all rushed together in unison. on them. The fun has gone. The hens screamed, flapped their wings, jumped, clucked deafeningly; courtyard people ran, stumbled, fell; the gentleman from the balcony shouted like a frenzy: “Catch, catch! catch, catch! Catch, catch, catch! .. Whose chickens are these, whose chickens are they? Finally, one yard man managed to catch a crested hen, pressing it to the ground with his chest, and at the same time, a girl of about eleven years old, all disheveled and with a twig in her hand, jumped over the fence of the garden, from the street.

— Ah, those are the chickens! exclaimed the landowner triumphantly. - Yermila-coachman chickens! There he sent his Natalka to drive them away ... I suppose he didn’t send Parasha, ”the landowner added in an undertone and grinned significantly. - Hey Yushka! throw the chickens: catch Natalka for me.

But before the out of breath Yushka had time to run to the frightened girl, out of nowhere the housekeeper grabbed her hand and slapped the poor thing on the back several times...

"Here's a tack, here's a tack," picked up the landowner, "those, those, those!" Those, those, those!.. And take away the chickens, Avdotya,” he added in a loud voice and turned to me with a bright face: “What, father, was the persecution, eh? Even sweat, look.

And Mardary Apollonitch burst out laughing.

We stayed on the balcony. The evening was really unusually good.

We were served tea.

"Tell me," I began, "Mardariy Apollonitch, have your yards been evicted, over there, on the road, beyond the ravine?"

- My ... and what?

"How are you, Mardary Apollonitch?" After all, it is wrong. The huts allotted to the peasants are nasty, cramped; you won't see trees around; there is not even a planter; there is only one well, and even that one is no good. Couldn't you have found another place?.. And, they say, you even took away the old hemp-growers from them?

- And what will you do with the disengagement? answered Mardary Apollonitch. - I have this demarcation here where it sits. (He pointed to the back of his head.) And I do not foresee any benefit from this delimitation. And that I took hemp plants from them and planters, or something, I didn’t dig up from them there - I myself know about this, father. I'm a simple man - I do it the old way. In my opinion: if a master is a master, and if a peasant is a peasant ... That's what.

Of course, there was nothing to answer such a clear and convincing argument.

“And besides,” he continued, “they are bad, disgraced peasants. Especially there are two families; even the deceased father, God grant him the kingdom of heaven, did not complain about them, did not complain painfully. And I, I will tell you, have such a sign: if the father is a thief, then the son is a thief; as you wish... Oh, blood, blood - a great thing! I, to confess to you frankly, from those two families, and without a queue, gave in to the soldiers and stuffed them like that - in some places; Yes, they are not translated, what will you do? Fruitful, damned.

Meanwhile, the air was completely still. Only occasionally did the wind come in streams and, dying for the last time near the house, brought to our ears the sound of measured and frequent blows that were heard in the direction of the stables. Mardary Apollonitch had just brought a full saucer to his lips and was already widening his nostrils, without which, as you know, not a single native Russian draws tea into himself, but he stopped, listened, nodded his head, took a sip and, putting the saucer on the table, uttered with with the kindest smile and as if involuntarily echoing the blows: “Chuki-chuki-chuk! Chucky-chook! Chucky-chook!"

- What is it? I asked in amazement.

- And there, on my orders, the rascal is punished ... Would you like to know Vasya the barman?

- Which Vasya?

- Yes, that's what he served us at dinner the other day. He also walks with such big sideburns.

The most fierce indignation could not resist the clear and meek gaze of Mardarius Apollonitch.

What are you, young man, what are you? he said, shaking his head. - What am I, a villain, or something, that you are staring at me like that? Love and punish: you yourself know.

A quarter of an hour later I said goodbye to Mardarius Apollonitch. Passing through the village, I saw the barman Vasya. He walked down the street and ate nuts. I told the driver to stop the horses and called him.

“What, brother, were you punished today?” I asked him.

— How do you know? Vasya answered.

“Your master told me.

- The barin himself?

Why did he order you to be punished?

- And rightly so, father, rightly so. We do not punish for trifles; we don’t have such an institution - no, no. Our master is not like that; we have a gentleman ... you will not find such a gentleman in the whole province.

— Went! I said to the coachman. “Here it is, old Rus'!” I thought on my way back.