The Golden Age of literature is rich in a variety of motifs and locations, which the authors write about in their works. So, for example, we already had an article about the importance of suburban space in Chekhov’s prose. Another important place, often found in the literature of the XIX century, oddly enough, is a cemetery.
The cemetery is not only the last place of a person’s stay in his earthly life, but also one of the key spaces in popular culture. Cemetery and near-cemetery (cemetery-related) motifs are often used in Gothic literature as a means of intimidating the reader and inspiring him with an atmosphere of gloom. However, mainly in the Russian prose of the XIX century, the picture of the cemetery is different – often writers depict it as a blissful resting place of the human soul, his reunion with God and the most real holy space. Let’s take a look at vivid examples with similar symbols in some of the most significant works of the golden literary era.
“The Brothers Karamazov”
In F. M. Dostoevsky’s novel “The Brothers Karamazov”, the cemetery gets a vivid development in the penultimate chapter “The Funeral of Ilyushechka”, where the boy’s death can be considered as self-sacrifice in the struggle for the spoiled honor of his father and family, which subsequently leads to the transformation of the rest of the characters. With the help of this, one of the main moral dilemmas in the “Karamazovs” is realized – namely, such an expression as “a teardrop of a child”, in the context of which Ivan Karamazov speaks of his rejection of God allowing the suffering of innocent children, contrasting the “teardrop of a child” with the coming world harmony and rejecting harmony achieved at such a price – that is, the goal, not justifying the means. In this light, the example of Ilyushechka proves quite the opposite.
In the story of Snegirev (Ilyushechka’s father) about the sufferings of his son, the motive of the cemetery, connected directly with the funeral of the boy, is first indicated in one of the chapters earlier with such words as: “to that huge stone over there, which lies an orphan on the road by the fence.” This very “big stone” in the epilogue, firstly, is connected with the emotional expression of the father, who wanted to bury his son at this very stone, which in itself gives him a symbolic function: “I don’t want to bury in the fence! Snegirev suddenly shouted, “I’ll bury you at the stone, at our pebble!” That’s what Ilyusha ordered. I won’t let you carry it!” Secondly, it seems to combine all the stones that the boys threw at Ilya when they teased him: “And six stones flew out of the group at once. One hit the boy in the head, and he fell, but immediately jumped up and furiously began to respond to the group with stones.”
It can be assumed that in this way this stone embodies a kind of “orphanhood” of Ilyushechka and his loneliness with the burden that he has to bear because of his father, as well as endure the bullying of the guys due to the fact that Snegirev did not want to come into conflict with Dmitry Karamazov and disgrace the family. In “Ilyushechka’s Funeral”, under the influence of Alyosha Karamazov, the younger brother, the role of the orphan is rethought and changed under the weight of “active love”, as it is called in the manuscripts of Alyosha, the boys to Ilyushechka, where orphanhood is denied by the very episode of his funeral, because it says that he was not forgotten and not abandoned: “For though the righteous from paradise would have forgiven them, contemplating their torments, and would have called them to themselves, loving them infinitely, but thereby they would have multiplied their torments even more, for they would have aroused in them even more the flame of thirst for reciprocal, active and grateful love, which is no longer possible…”
“Father’s Grief”, illustration by A. Paramonov
This is expressed primarily by the fact that not only schoolchildren sympathize with and help Snegirev. This is also indicated, for example, by the abundance of flowers at the children’s coffin, and Katerina Ivanovna’s help to parents with money: “… and the whole coffin was already cleaned from the outside and inside with flowers…” It is noteworthy that the maximum manifestation of fraternal mutual assistance is shown in relation to the same “huge stone”, because now it is it begins to be perceived as “filthy”, and all the heroes insist on burying the boy as it should be, in the church land: “You see what I invented, to bury a filthy stone, just like a strangled man,” the landlady was indignant. Alyosha, Krasotkin, the landlady’s sister, and all the boys supported her and insisted on burying Ilyusha in the church fence: There is land with a cross in the fence. They will pray for him there. You can hear singing from the church…”
At the end of the third chapter of the epilogue, the symbolism of the image of this “stone” changes again, which is primarily associated with Alyosha’s speech at this stone, where it acquires a certain archetypal appearance. Here, the mise en scene of “Ilyushin’s pebble” in combination with the number of boys, of whom there were 12, as well as the apostles, is comparable to the gospel legend about the “cornerstone” as the foundation of a new temple – a future, righteous life that boys are preparing to enter, and the biggest stone becomes a symbol-divider of past and future life. the future.
Interestingly, before the appearance of such a hero as Ilyushenka in the novel, the cemetery rather embodied a place of silence. For example, Alyosha is constantly depicted silent in the cemetery, even during sobs: “He was sitting with his back to the hermitage, facing the fence and, as it were, hiding behind the monument. When Father Paisii came up, he saw that he was covering his face with both hands, though silently, but bitterly crying, shaking his whole body with sobs.” Whereas after the funeral of the boy, a huge tombstone, on the contrary, becomes a symbol of rebirth and a new life, and it can be assumed that this is some kind of image of an earthly paradise, given that Snegirev described the location of the stone as deserted and beautiful: “… to that huge stone over there, which lies like an orphan on the road by the fence and where the pasture of the city begins: the place is deserted and beautiful-with”. Thus, Ilyushechkin’s tombstone is the foundation of the divine temple.
“Cherry Orchard”
If in the “Karamazovs” a stone becomes a tombstone, then Chekhov’s picture is reversed – at first we are presented with large stones that once upon a time were tombstones, but now have lost this function and, having turned, have turned into ordinary boulders: “A field. An old, crooked, long-abandoned chapel, near it a well, large stones that once were, apparently, tombstones, and an old bench. The road to Gaev’s estate is visible. To the side, towering, poplars darken: there begins a cherry orchard. In the distance there is a row of telegraph poles, and far, far away on the horizon a large city is indistinctly marked, which is visible only in very good, clear weather. The sun will set soon. Charlotte, Yasha and Dunyasha are sitting on a bench; Epikhodov is standing near and playing the guitar; everyone is sitting thinking. Charlotte is wearing an old cap: she has taken the gun off her shoulders and is adjusting the buckle on her belt.” Approximately the same thing happens with the estate itself at the end of the play, which is abandoned by its owners and ceases to be the meaning of Ranevskaya’s life.
It is impossible to fully talk about Chekhov’s near cemetery without taking into account the reception of the “Cherry Orchard”. First of all, the idea arises to refer to the production of Anatoly Efros, in which the stenographer Valery Leventhal depicted the space of the cherry orchard as a metaphor for the cemetery.: we see crosses, fences, portraits of family members, similar to tombstones and a grave hill on which cherry trees bloom. The cherry orchard is used here as a cemetery, where not only the deceased members of the Ranevskaya family are buried, but also the cherry trees themselves, which became something unnecessary after the family left the estate. And in general, the whole landscape is the embodiment of the end of not only the century, its culture and generation, but of all life in general, because we know that for Ranevskaya this possession was the main thing in life.
“Cherry Orchard”, V. Leventhal
If we consider this hill as a kind of generalized picture of the world, since it focuses on things used by the family in everyday life every day (furniture, tea set, curtains, cherry itself), then at the same time we can talk about the inevitable outcome of life – death, which is indicated by the image of this life through a metaphor cemeteries.
If we talk about the text of the play, then as an example of the inevitable end of culture and the century, we can offer the last scene with Firs:
“F and R S. (goes to the door, touches the handle.) . Locked. They left… (He sits down on the sofa.) They forgot about me… Nothing… I’m going to sit here… and Leonid Andreevich probably didn’t put on a fur coat, he went in a coat… (Sighs anxiously.) I didn’t look… Young and green! (He mutters something that cannot be understood.) Life has passed, as if he did not live … (Lies down.) I’ll lie down… you don’t have the strength, there’s nothing left, nothing… Oh, you… klutz!.. (He lies motionless.)
A distant sound is heard, as if from the sky, the sound of a broken string, sad. There is silence, and only you can hear how far away in the garden an axe is being knocked on a tree”
Many researchers consider this character as the very spirit of the estate. First of all, it becomes obvious that according to the remark (“lies motionless”), it is clear that Firs dies along with the abandoned estate, which no longer needs to play the role of a house, and, consequently, Firs himself no longer needs to serve anyone. At the same time, Chekhov builds the last mise en scene according to an interesting chronotopic principle: first he outlines the silence that has come, following a distant sound from the sky, but after that immediately breaks this silence with the knock of axes on trees. That is, the whole description is based solely on auditory images – there is nothing visible here. If we add up the theme of death (and, consequently, the direct death of the character), darkness and knocks on wood, which are heard at the same time, as if in a vertical plane, then the image of the coffin is visible here, the lid of which is currently being nailed up.
In the future, this sound allusion to the coffin in the “Cherry Orchard” in the context of the fate of Russia was noted in his work by other writers, for example, in his poem “How white it is in Russia now!” Inna Alexandrovna Kabysh uses such lines as “we, like Firs, are nailed alive” and “in wooden Russia, in the closet.”
How white it is in Russia now! —
the yard is like a Chekhov decoration:
it’s wound up, flooded, swept away:
a wild place, a wild nation.
We are terrible because we are sinful:
we have shredded the estate into dachas, into
dust: and all we would have is the power of the foreman —
Satan: y, slaves, Asiatic!..
What are the shadows in the crowns of thorns?
What kind of time: is it death? is there a birth?
We ate the house on lollipops,
sold the estate for soup.
And, unnecessary to anyone today,
we, like Firs, are boarded up alive,
forgotten by God in the house,
in the garden, where the felling has not healed,
in wooden Russia, in the closet:
we can be saved, that a camel
can get into a needle’s eye: so we fight in a stanza,
as in the quadrangular window.
Chekhov also has an interesting association “wardrobe-coffin” in the same text.
In the first act of the play there is an episode in which Gaev addresses an old bookcase with a welcoming speech, while mentioning its centenary age:
“G a e V. Do you know, Lyuba, how old is this closet? A week ago, I pulled out the bottom drawer, I look, and there are numbers burned out. The cabinet was made exactly a hundred years ago. What’s it like? And? It would be possible to celebrate the anniversary. An inanimate object, but still, after all, a bookcase.
P and sch and K. (surprised). A hundred years… Just think!..
G a e V. Yes… This is a thing… (Feeling the closet.) Dear, much-respected closet! I welcome your existence, which for more than a hundred years has been directed towards the bright ideals of goodness and justice; your silent call for fruitful work has not weakened for a hundred years, supporting (through tears) cheerfulness, faith in a better future in the generations of our kind and educating us in the ideals of goodness and social self-consciousness.”
On the one hand, it is said that the cabinet is an inanimate object, and on the other hand, Gaev begins to address him as a living person, and in addition to this, Chekhov uses here such a turn of speech as “and yet, after all, a bookcase”, as if this is a natural explanation of his animateness. Considering that the cabinet is exactly a bookcase and that it is exactly a hundred years old, it turns out that it accommodates all the Russian literature of the nineteenth century, the beginning of which was marked by the birth of Pushkin, and the end by the death of Chekhov. Russian Russian literature of the XIX century and spirituality characteristic of it are meant in the light of this metonymy (that is, instead of the cabinet), Gaev’s speech in honor of the anniversary of the cabinet has a parody character, since it is a mockery of the moral and educational mission carried by the Russian literature of the golden age, because if the speech is addressed specifically to an inanimate object, then it turns out that the mission is also dead along with the cabinet that accommodates it.
“Crime and punishment”
Continuing to reflect on the parallel between the wardrobe and the coffin, of course we should return to F. M. Dostoevsky, from whom it came.
In the text of Crimes and Punishments, it can be traced directly when Raskolnikov’s room is first compared to a closet (“His closet was under the very roof of a high five-story house and looked more like a closet than an apartment”; “… this yellow closet, similar to a closet or a chest …”), and then his mother compares it with a coffin (“What a bad apartment you have, Rodya, just like a coffin,” Pulcheria Alexandrovna suddenly said, breaking the painful silence”).
“Raskolnikov in his room”, illustration by D.A. Shmarinov
Interestingly, according to M. M. Bakhtin, Rodion’s coffin-like place of residence is a threshold space, which, purely from a geographical point of view, he considers as an unclosed internal space, because his closet opens directly onto the landing of the stairs, and when leaving, the hero does not even lock the door. But Dostoevsky’s threshold chronotope is also realized through the symbolic relationship of life and death.
“Stairs in Raskolnikov’s house”, illustration by D.A. Shmarinov
In his dream, Raskolnikov sees himself as a little boy walking with his father along the road that passes near the tavern and goes around the city cemetery and the church with a green dome: “Near the tavern, the road, a country lane, is always dusty, and the dust on it is always so black. It goes, twisting, further and about three hundred paces to the right it bends around the city cemetery. There is a stone church with a green dome in the middle of the cemetery.” At the same time, the church is opposed to the tavern: on the one hand, Rodion loves the church, while the tavern frightens him: “A few steps from the last city garden there is a tavern, a large tavern, which has always made an unpleasant impression on him and even fear.” At the same time, the space of the church is opposed not only to the tavern, but also to the cemetery, the center of which it is. Both the church and the cemetery here are borderline threshold spaces, since they connect the real world and the otherworldly.
At the same time, this cemetery seems to continue the city, being in itself a “city of the dead”. If the appearance of the church in the novel makes us understand that Raskolnikov tends to God, then the appearance of a cemetery on the way to the church suggests that he only has to belong to the world of the dead. That is, this road along which Rodion and his father walk past the pub to the cemetery literally represents the path through the world of the living to the world of the dead.
Thus, the cemetery can appear in completely different roles.
Author of the article: Varvara Kartushina
