Retold by G. V. Zykova

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

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

With every memory of Seryozha, “the constant presence of his mother merges,” who came out to him and loved him, perhaps for this reason, more than her other children.

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

The mother, exhausted by Seryozha’s illness, was afraid that she herself had fallen ill with consumption; the parents went to Orenburg to see a good doctor; The children were taken to Bagrovo, to their father’s parents. The road amazed the child: crossing Belaya, collecting pebbles and fossils - “pieces”, large trees, spending the night in the field and especially fishing on the Dema, which immediately drove the boy crazy less reading, fire produced with flint, and fire from torches, springs, etc. Everything is curious, even “how the earth stuck to the wheels and then fell off from them in thick layers.” The father rejoices in all this together with Seryozha, but his beloved mother, on the contrary, is indifferent and even disgusted.

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

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

After Bagrov, returning home had such an effect on the boy that he, again surrounded by common love, suddenly grew up. The mother’s young brothers, military men who graduated from the Moscow University Noble Boarding School, are visiting the house: from them Seryozha learns what poetry is, one of his uncles draws and teaches this to Seryozha, which makes the boy seem like a “superior being.” S.I. Anichkov gives new books: “Anabasis” by Xenophon and “Children’s Library” by Shishkov (which the author very much praises).

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

At Seryozha’s request, they begin to teach him how to write, inviting a teacher from a public school. One day, apparently on someone’s advice, Seryozha is sent there for a lesson: the rudeness of both the students and the teacher (who was so kind to him at home), the spanking of the guilty really frightens the child.

Seryozha’s father buys seven thousand acres of land with lakes and forests and calls it “Sergeevskaya wasteland,” which the boy is very proud of. The parents are going to Sergeevka to treat their mother with Bashkir kumiss in the spring, when Belaya opens. Seryozha cannot think about anything else and tensely watches the ice drift and the river flood.

In Sergeevka, the house for the gentlemen is not completed, but even this is amusing: “There are no windows or doors, but the fishing rods are ready.” Until the end of July, Seryozha, father and uncle Yevseich are fishing on Lake Kiishki, which the boy considers his own; Seryozha sees rifle hunting for the first time and feels “some kind of greed, some unknown joy.” Summer is spoiled only by guests, albeit infrequent ones: strangers, even peers, are a burden to Seryozha.

After Sergeevka, Ufa became disgusted. Seryozha is only entertained new gift neighbor: the collected works of Sumarokov and the poem “Rossiada” by Kheraskov, which he recites and tells his family various details about his favorite characters, invented by him. The mother laughs, and the father worries: “Where do you get all this from? Don't become a liar." News arrives about the death of Catherine II, the people swear allegiance to Pavel Petrovich; The child listens carefully to conversations of worried adults that are not always clear to him.

The news arrives that grandfather is dying, and the family immediately gathers in Bagrovo. Seryozha is afraid to see his grandfather dying, he is afraid that his mother will get sick from all this, that in winter they will freeze on the way. On the way, the boy is tormented by sad premonitions, and faith in premonitions takes root in him from then on for the rest of his life.

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

The behavior of Bagrov's relatives unpleasantly surprises the boy: four aunts howl, falling at the feet of their brother - “the real master of the house”, the grandmother emphatically cedes power to the mother, and the mother is disgusted. At the table, everyone except Mother is crying and eating with great appetite. And then, after lunch, in the corner room, looking at the ice-free Buguruslan, the boy first understands the beauty of winter nature.

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

Having become the owner of Bagrovo after the death of his grandfather, Serezha’s father retires, and the family moves to Bagrovo to live permanently. Rural work(threshing, mowing, etc.) keep Seryozha very busy; he doesn’t understand why his mother and little sister are indifferent to this. A kind boy tries to pity and console his grandmother, who quickly became decrepit after the death of her husband, whom he essentially did not know before; but her habit of beating servants, very common in the life of a landowner, quickly turns her grandson away from her.

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

Returning to Bagrovo, Serezha truly sees spring for the first time in his life in the village: “I […] followed every step of spring. In every room, in almost every window, I noticed special objects or places on which I made my observations...” From excitement, the boy begins to experience insomnia; To help him fall asleep better, the housekeeper Pelageya tells him fairy tales, and among other things - “ Scarlet flower"(this tale is included in the appendix to "Childhood Years ...").

In the fall, at the request of Kurolesova, the Bagrovs visit Churasovo. Seryozha's father promised his grandmother to return to Pokrov; Kurolesova does not let guests go; on the night of Intercession the father sees bad dream and in the morning he receives news of his grandmother’s illness. The autumn road back is hard; crossing the Volga near Simbirsk, the family almost drowned. Grandmother died on the very Intercession; This terribly affects both Seryozha’s father and the capricious Kurolesova.

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

Sergei Timofeevich Aksakov

Childhood years of Bagrov-grandson

(Chapters)

Introduction

I myself don’t know whether I can fully believe everything that my memory has preserved? If I remember the events that actually happened, then these can be called memories not only of childhood, but even of infancy. Of course, I remember nothing in connection, in continuous sequence; but many incidents still live in my memory with all the brightness of colors, with all the vividness of yesterday’s event. When I was three or four years old, I told those around me that I remember how they took me away from my nurse... Everyone laughed at my stories and assured me that I had heard them enough from my mother or nanny and thought that I had seen it myself. I argued and sometimes cited as evidence circumstances that could not be told to me and that only I and my nurse or mother could know. We made inquiries, and it often turned out that this was indeed the case and that no one could tell me about it. But not everything that seemed to me to be seen, I actually saw; the same certificates sometimes proved that I could not see much, but could only hear.

So, I will begin to tell from the prehistoric, so to speak, era of my childhood only what I cannot doubt in reality.

Fragmentary memories

The very first objects that survived in the dilapidated picture of a long time ago, a picture that was greatly faded in other places from time and the flow of the sixties, objects and images that still float in my memory - a nurse, a little sister and mother; then they had no specific meaning for me and were only nameless images. The nurse seems to me at first to be some kind of mysterious, almost invisible creature. I remember myself lying at night, sometimes in a crib, sometimes in my mother’s arms, and crying bitterly: with sobs and screams, I repeated the same word, calling for someone, and someone appeared in the darkness of a dimly lit room, took me to I put my hands on my chest... and I felt good. Then I remember that no one came to my cries and calls, that my mother, holding me to her chest, singing the same words of a soothing song, ran with me around the room until I fell asleep. The nurse, who loved me passionately, again appears several times in my memories, sometimes in the distance, furtively looking at me from behind others, sometimes kissing my hands, face and crying over me. My nurse was a peasant peasant and lived thirty miles away; she left the village on foot on Saturday evening and arrived in Ufa early on Sunday morning; Having looked at me and rested, she returned on foot to her Kasimovka to catch up on her corvee. I remember that she came once, and maybe even came sometime, with my foster sister, a healthy and red-cheeked girl.

At first I loved my sister more than all the toys, more than my mother, and this love was expressed by an incessant desire to see her and a feeling of pity: it always seemed to me that she was cold, that she was hungry and that she wanted to eat; I constantly wanted to dress her with my dress and feed her with my food; Of course, I was not allowed to do this, and I cried.

My mother's constant presence merges with my every memory. Her image is inextricably linked with my existence, and therefore it does not stand out much in the fragmentary pictures of the first time of my childhood, although it constantly participates in them.

Here follows a long gap, that is, a dark spot or a faded place in the picture of the long past, and I begin to remember myself as already very sick, and not at the beginning of the illness, which lasted for more than a year and a half, not at the end of it (when I was already recovering), no, I remember being in such weakness that every minute they feared for my life. One day, early in the morning, I woke up or woke up and didn’t know where I was. Everything was unfamiliar to me: a high, large room, bare walls made of very thick new pine logs, a strong resinous smell; bright, it seems like a summer sun, the sun is just rising and through the window on the right side, on top of the single canopy that was lowered above me, it is brightly reflected on the opposite wall... Beside me, my mother sleeps anxiously, without pillows and undressed. How now I look at her black braid, disheveled across her thin and yellow face. The day before I was transported to the foothill village of Zubovka, about ten miles from Ufa. Apparently, the road and the calm sleep produced by the movement strengthened me; I felt good and cheerful, so for several minutes I looked through the canopy at the new objects surrounding me with curiosity and pleasure. I didn’t know how to save my poor mother’s sleep, I touched her with my hand and said: “Oh, what sunshine! it smells so good!” Mother jumped up, frightened at first, and then rejoiced, listening to my strong voice and looking at my refreshed face. How she caressed me, what names she called me, how joyfully she cried... I can’t tell you this! - The canopy was raised; I asked for food, they fed me and gave me half a glass of old Rhine wine to drink, which, as they thought then, was the only thing that strengthened me. Reinwine was poured for me from some strange bottle with a flattened, wide, round bottom and a long, narrow neck. Since then I have not seen such bottles. Then, at my request, they got me pieces or pendants of pine resin, which was drowning, dripping, even flowing everywhere on the walls and doorposts, freezing and drying on the road and hanging in the air as small icicles, completely similar in appearance to ordinary ice icicles. I really loved the smell of pine and spruce resin, which was sometimes smoked in our children's rooms. I smelled, admired, and played with the fragrant and transparent resin icicles; they melted in my hands and glued my thin long fingers together; my mother washed my hands, wiped them dry, and I began to doze off... Objects began to get in the way in my eyes; It seemed to me that we were traveling in a carriage, that they wanted to give me medicine and I didn’t want to take it, that instead of my mother, Agafya’s nanny or nurse was standing next to me... How I fell asleep and what happened after - I don’t remember anything.

I often remember myself in a carriage, not always drawn by horses, not always on the road. I remember very well that my mother, and sometimes the nanny, holds me in her arms, dressed very warmly, that we are sitting in a carriage standing in the barn, and sometimes taken out into the yard; that I was whining, repeating in a weak voice: “Soup, soup,” which they gave me little by little, despite the painful, excruciating hunger, which was sometimes replaced by a complete aversion to food. I was told that in the carriage I cried less and was generally much calmer. It seems that the gentlemen doctors treated me poorly at the very beginning of the illness and finally healed me almost to the point of death, leading to complete weakening of the digestive organs; or it may be that suspiciousness, excessive fears of a passionate mother, incessant changes in medications were the cause of the desperate situation in which I found myself.

Sometimes I lay in oblivion, in some kind of intermediate state between sleep and fainting; my pulse almost stopped beating, my breathing was so weak that they put a mirror to my lips to find out if I was alive; but I remember a lot of what they did to me at that time and what they said around me, assuming that I no longer see, hear or understand anything, that I was dying. Doctors and everyone around me long ago condemned me to death: the doctors - based on undoubted medical signs, and those around me - on undoubted medical grounds. bad omens, the groundlessness and falsity of which affected me very convincingly. It is impossible to describe my mother’s suffering, but her enthusiastic presence of mind and hope to save her child never left her. “Mother Sofya Nikolaevna,” Cheprunov’s distant relative, devoted to her soul, said more than once, as I myself heard her say, “stop torturing your child; after all, both the doctors and the priest told you that he was not a tenant. Submit to the will of God: place the child under the icon, light the candle and let his angelic soul leave his body in peace. After all, you only interfere with her and disturb her, but you cannot help...” But my mother greeted such speeches with anger and answered that as long as the spark of life smoldered in me, she would not stop doing everything she could for my salvation, and she again put me, unconscious, in a fortifying bath, poured rhine wine or broth into my mouth, rubbed my chest and back with her bare hands for whole hours, and if this did not help, then she filled my lungs with her breath - and after a deep sigh I began to breathe harder, It was as if he was waking up to life, gaining consciousness, beginning to eat and speak, and even getting better for a while. This happened more than once. I could even play with my toys, which were placed next to me on a small table; Of course, I did all this while lying in my crib, because I could barely move my fingers. But my most important pleasure was that they brought my dear sister to me, let me kiss her, pat her on the head, and then the nanny sat with her opposite me, and I looked at my sister for a long time, pointing at one or another of my toys. and ordering them to be served to my sister.

The formation of a child’s personality, the education of the soul - this is the main theme of the autobiographical story by S. T. Aksakov.

From the series: School library (Children's literature)

* * *

by liters company.

The Becoming of Man

The idea of ​​a book for children arose from Sergei Timofeevich Aksakov in 1854. In a humorous poem written for his granddaughter’s birthday, he promises to send her his book in a year “about young spring, about field flowers, about little birds... about the forest Bear.” But two years pass, and Sergei Timofeevich tells Olya: “... God grant that she will be ready for your next birthday. And the book turns out completely different from what I promised you.” It had clearly outgrown the initial plan: its content, purpose, and scope had changed.

“The childhood years of Bagrov the grandson” - that’s how Aksakov titled his work - appeared on the pages of the magazine “Russian Conversation” in excerpts, and a year later, in 1858, as a separate book. Two years earlier, Aksakov published “Memoirs,” where he talked about his adolescence and his youth, which he spent at the Kazan gymnasium and university. “Memoirs” was published together with “Family Chronicle” - a chronicle of the life of the older generation of the Bagrovs. All the magazines, noted N.A. Dobrolyubov, “were full of enthusiastic praise for Mr. Aksakov’s artistic talent, which he discovered in the Family Chronicle.” The authority of S. T. Aksakov has since been established unshakably. Some have made him the head of modern Russian literature.” And now, when “The Childhood Years of Bagrov the Grandson” appeared, the life of the main character of all three books found the missing chronological link, and an artistic-autobiographical trilogy was formed. In the history of Russian literature, it stands next to – even chronologically – Leo Tolstoy’s “Childhood”, “Adolescence” and “Youth”.

By that time, Sergei Timofeevich was well over sixty. Why does his creative biography, the biography of a realist writer, begin so late? And this is all the more surprising since everything in it promised a much earlier debut as a writer. But decades had to pass before Aksakov firmly and finally appreciated the unique possibilities inherent in the nature of his talent. Comparing himself with those writers who have the talent of “pure” fiction, Aksakov is convinced: “I am not able to replace... reality with fiction. I tried several times to write fictitious incidents and fictitious people. What came out was complete rubbish, and I myself felt funny... I’m just a transmitter and a simple storyteller: I don’t have an invention in sight... I can’t invent anything: I don’t have a soul for something invented, I can’t take a living part in it.”

Long life, preceding the start of work on the trilogy, a life closely connected with literature, leads Aksakov to another, perhaps the most important, conclusion - to the idea of ​​​​the exceptional fruitfulness of the realistic and humanistic aspirations of Russian literature. He will respond to them with his trilogy.

Sergei Timofeevich was born in 1791 in Ufa. His father served as a prosecutor, his mother belonged to the official aristocracy. He spent his early years on the steppe estate of his grandfather, a well-born, although not very rich, nobleman. After his death, this estate - New Aksakovo - passes to the father of the future writer. In 1800, Seryozha was placed in the Kazan gymnasium, where Derzhavin once studied, and from the fall of 1804 he was a student at Kazan University.

During his childhood, his mother Maria Nikolaevna had an exceptional influence on the formation of the future writer. A friendly relationship, rare in its confessional trust, was established between them. The mother shares both the sorrows and joys of her son, dispels his doubts and perplexities, acts as his adviser, strengthening him in decisions and warning him against rash actions.

Belonging to a privileged class, Dobrolyubov noted, freed the nobles from the need to get involved early in “practical life,” and the lively, receptive boy turned “exclusively to nature and his inner feeling and began to live in this world.”

Seryozha surrenders to the experience of nature with such strength and spiritual dedication that it even frightens his mother. The boy puts into his love for nature not only passion, but also the talent of a naturalist, which he undoubtedly possessed: rejoicing at the arrival of spring, he notices its signs, inquisitively watches how birds build nests and raise their offspring. In the gymnasium, natural science, or “natural history,” became his favorite subject, which, of course, later helped Aksakov write interesting books about fishing and various hunts.

Comes in early spiritual world boy and folk poetry: songs, historical legends, ritual games. Spellbound, he listens on long winter evenings to the storyteller Pelageya, the housekeeper from the serfs. Her remarkable memory contained both Russian fairy tales and many oriental ones. Seryozha not only learned one of them - “The Scarlet Flower” by heart, but also “said it himself, with all the jokes, antics, groans and sighs of Pelageya.” And joint family readings in the evenings made Seryozha more inclined to read books.

Reading, igniting Seryozha’s imagination, already precociously developed, directs him in a new direction: I “went into various inventions and told various adventures that had never happened to me, some basis or example of which were incidents I had read in books or heard.” Moreover, he enters into competition... with Scheherazade, inserting into her fairy tales "additions... of his own imagination." Seryozha was convicted, he was puzzled, worried and perplexed. Meanwhile, these “additions” were created not by the usual child’s imagination, but by the creative imagination awakening in him. “I was a very truthful boy then and could not stand lies; and here I myself saw that I had definitely lied a lot about Scheherazade. I myself was surprised not to find in the book what it seemed to me that I had read in it and what was completely established in my head.”

Early on, the boy also awakens “an irresistible, unconscious desire to convey to others his impressions with the accuracy and clarity of evidence, so that the listeners receive the same concept about the objects being described” as he himself had about them. Seryozha apparently inherited this desire, so important and necessary for a future writer, from his mother, who possessed a rare gift of speech.

At the Kazan gymnasium, young Aksakov, as he himself recalls, “began to pee slowly,” warmly supported by his literature teacher. And soon, the writer continues, “he made his debut with verses without rhymes... in the literary arena of our gymnasium.” When Aksakov was transferred to a student at the university established in Kazan, his passion for theater came. Very soon he is recognized as the premier of the student theater and is even chosen as director and director. “I had strong stage talent, and now I think that theater was my real calling,” Aksakov wrote in his declining years. In any case, his fame as a reader was so widely known that Derzhavin was looking forward to his arrival in St. Petersburg in order to “listen to himself,” that is, to listen to his works read by Aksakov.

And when the young Aksakov reached the zenith of his fame, it became obvious that both the works that Aksakov considered exemplary and the acting style that he followed were clearly lagging behind the movement towards realism that had emerged in literature.

In Russian literature, a movement for its renewal is developing and strengthening, and a struggle is flaring up against classicist aesthetics, which is holding back the artistic exploration of Russian reality and its original characters. Aksakov, on the other hand, is carried away by A. S. Shishkov’s “Discourses on the Old and New Syllables,” aimed against all those yearning for this renewal. In dramaturgy, on stage, classicism with its strict rules begins to give way to the principles of life authenticity and naturalness. Aksakov admires and is carried away by the extremely sentimental and melodramatic plays of August Kotzebue! And Aksakov needed to see the play of P. A. Plavilshchikov, a famous playwright and actor, one of those who destroyed classicist canons, in order to understand that he was being carried somewhere away from the main aspirations of Russian literature: “The bright light of stage truth, simplicity , naturalness then first illuminated my head.”

Later, in “Memoirs,” Aksakov repentantly admits both his “Old Belief in literature” and the correctness of his gymnasium mentor Grigory Ivanovich Kartashevsky, who kept him from imitative precociousness.

But Aksakov’s life develops in such a way that, having left the university in 1807, he moves even further away from “ good examples”, and its appearance in realistic literature is delayed for decades. In St. Petersburg, where he comes to serve, he meets Shishkov and visits his house. Here, before his eyes, the society “Conversation of Lovers of the Russian Word” emerged, which included mainly literary Old Believers. Communication with them seriously hindered the “education of one’s taste.”

Having moved from St. Petersburg to Moscow, Aksakov got married in 1816 - his wife was the daughter of Suvorov’s general O. S. Zaplatin - and decided to settle permanently in the village to engage in agriculture. But, unlike his grandfather and father, Sergei Timofeevich turned out to be a bad master, and in 1826 he and his expanded family reappeared in Moscow and entered the service of the Moscow Censorship Committee.

Aksakov became close to writers and playwrights. Sharing some more tenets of classicist aesthetics, Aksakov at the same time shows a keen interest in the realistic play of M. S. Shchepkin and, concerned about the future of Russian theater, calls for “the creation new theater, folk To hell with all frameworks and conditions!” When a wave of reactionary criticism directed against Pushkin rises in magazines, Aksakov appears in print with an open “Letter”. Defending Pushkin from attacks, he reveals the enduring significance of his poetry: Pushkin, in his opinion, “has a kind of dignity that no other Russian poet-poet has ever had: strength and accuracy in the images of not only visible objects, but also instantaneous movements of the soul human." Pushkin, recalls Aksakov, was “very pleased” with his “Letter.”

A decisive turn in Aksakov’s literary and aesthetic development occurred in the 1830s.

The atmosphere in the Aksakov family - and his wife Olga Semyonovna played a big role in this - has always been rich in spiritual and intellectual interests. The largest literary and theatrical figures of Moscow regularly gathered for Aksakov’s “subbotniks” for many years - actor M. S. Shchepkin, composer A. N. Verstovsky, historian M. P. Pogodin, writers M. N. Zagoskin, N. F. Pavlov, professors of Moscow University S.P. Shevyrev and N.I. Nadezhdin. In the spring of 1832, Gogol began to visit the Aksakovs’ house. When the sons grew up, V. G. Belinsky, N. V. Stankevich and other comrades of the eldest son Konstantin at Moscow University appeared in the Aksakovs’ house. Sergei Timofeevich takes the most active and lively part in their conversations and heated debates on acute and topical historical, philosophical, and aesthetic topics. Sergei Timofeevich is imbued with and inspired by the interests that captivated his sons and their comrades and which largely determined the ideological life of Russian society for entire decades.

Aksakov is finally freed from conservative literary and aesthetic ideas and tastes, and Gogol, following Pushkin, now takes the place of former authorities. Aksakov was one of the first to welcome Gogol’s powerful artistic talent, which manifested itself in a realistic depiction of Russian social life, calling Gogol “a writer of reality” (for Belinsky, “a poet of real life”). At the same time, we emphasize that, despite the reverent attitude towards Gogol established in the Aksakovs’ house, Sergei Timofeevich is trying to dissuade Gogol from publishing his new book “Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends,” and when the book does appear, he defines it as “ extremely harmful."

In 1834, Aksakov published his essay “Buran” in one of the almanacs. The truthful description of a snow squall, as if drawn from nature, anticipates the description of a snowstorm in Pushkin’s “The Captain’s Daughter,” who, we note, highly appreciated this essay. "Buran" testified that realistic principles prevailed not only in Aksakov's literary and aesthetic beliefs, but also in his writing.

In those same years, Aksakov had the opportunity to devote himself entirely to literary creativity, to which he (a brilliant storyteller of true stories and family legends) was encouraged by Gogol and numerous other friends. Having become a fairly wealthy man after the death of his father in 1837, he bought the Abramtsevo estate near Moscow, which very soon turned into one of the cultural and art centers Russia. Here Aksakov begins to work on the “Family Chronicle,” which, however, is interrupted in the most unexpected way: he, a passionate hunter and “naturalist,” is suddenly seized by the desire to describe all his hunting vicissitudes and observations, and he devotes himself to working on hunting books.

“Notes on Fishing,” which appeared in 1847, quickly won recognition from both readers and critics. Truthful depiction, precise, expressive speech made the book a noticeable phenomenon not only in the “special”, but also in fiction. Inspired by the success of the book, Aksakov begins “Notes of a Gun Hunter.” Gogol follows the work on them with keen interest: he gets acquainted with individual fragments in the manuscript, makes comments, gives advice, and praises the author. “Notes of a Gun Hunter” was rated even higher than the first book. I was captivated by the authenticity of the descriptions, the desire to show the way of life of fish, and Aksakov’s magnificent language. “I like his style extremely,” Turgenev wrote. “This is real Russian speech, good-natured and direct, flexible and dexterous.”

But the significance of a work of art, the depth and authenticity of realism are determined by the depiction of social life, by how deeply the writer penetrates into the essential features and characteristics of social relations and circumstances. And Gogol understood this perfectly well when, while supporting the plans of hunting books, at the same time persistently persuaded Aksakov to write the story of his life. After an excerpt from “Family Chronicle” appeared in print, Gogol writes to the author: “It seems to me that if you began to dictate to someone (since the early 1840s, Aksakov began to develop a progressive eye disease. - V.B.) memories old life your and meeting with all the people you happened to meet, with correct descriptions of their characters, you would have enjoyed a lot with this last days yours, and meanwhile they would give their children many useful lessons in life, and all their compatriots a better knowledge of the Russian people. This is not a trifle and not an unimportant feat in the present time, when we so need to know the true beginnings of our nature...” This letter is in the future creative biography S. T. Aksakov can be considered - without exaggeration - programmatic.

Aksakov appears as a deeply consistent realist already in “Family Chronicle”. In 1856, when it appeared, Russian society lives in anticipation of the abolition of serfdom. This established a strictly defined perspective for the perception of the chronicle by critics and readers. Then primary attention was paid to the depiction of serfdom in it. But Aksakov appears in “Family Chronicle” not only as a truthful writer of everyday life and morals, but even more as a mature and subtle writer-psychologist. Following Pushkin, Aksakov achieves accuracy in the depiction of both “visible objects” and “movements of the human soul.” True, there is still little movement, much less dialectics of the soul here. But psychological portraits heroes, the collisions that arise in their inner life are reproduced expressively and vividly in the chronicle. And the psychological painting is much more perfect in “The Childhood Years of Bagrov the Grandson,” where the author sometimes rises to the level of his great contemporary, Leo Tolstoy.

“This,” wrote Aksakov, completing work on the book, “should be (well, if it is) an artistic reproduction of my childhood years, from the third to the ninth year of my life" (emphasis added - V.B.). Memories of childhood formed the basis of the book, which is therefore a link in both the biography and creativity of Aksakov.

And it would seem that critics and readers had every reason to consider “The Childhood Years of Bagrov the Grandson” only the memoirs of Aksakov, to note the identity of Aksakov and Bagrov, although from his own, in the first person, the author tells the story only in “Memoirs”, and in the other two parts trilogy, he, according to Dobrolyubov, “hidden behind” the name of Bagrov.

But why did Aksakov, telling about his childhood, about the life of his family and friends, “hide behind” a pseudonym? But why did Aksakov preface the book with a special “warning” to readers, in which he categorically denied the identity between himself, the author, and Bagrov the grandson, this of course fictional narrator?

One of the reasons is, according to Ivan Aksakov, youngest son the writer, the desire to stop the “talk and gossip” that was unpleasant for the Aksakovs and Kuroyedovs, which the “Family Chronicle” could cause: the older representatives of these families look like typical serf owners in it. Aksakov had to overcome the strong “opposition” of his family and relatives, who objected to the publication of the incriminating scenes of the Chronicle.

But there was also a more important, strictly artistic reason, which turned the author to the help of pseudonyms. As we remember, the writer did not have a soul for fiction. His works are extremely autobiographical. But the writer now strives not only to maintain authenticity, but also to artistic generalizations. In living persons, he reveals, in the spirit of Gogolian traditions, characters. And the book is called “The Childhood Years of Bagrov the Grandson.” Aksakov, in other words, followed the same path as Leo Tolstoy, who entitled his first story, also autobiographical, “Childhood.” And Tolstoy was very unhappy that the editors of the magazine arbitrarily changed the title. “The Story of My Childhood” contradicts the idea of ​​the essay. Who cares about history my childhood?...” he wrote to Nekrasov.

Striving to identify what is generally significant and generally interesting, Aksakov typifies what is depicted both by weakening some connections between real, “Aksakov’s” facts and persons and emphasizing others, and by strengthening the narrator’s voice, making him not only a transmitter of what happened, but also a thoughtful interpreter events. Thus, the author was captivated by fairy tales as a child, captivating his ardent imagination for a long time: “Where is the secret of such charm hidden?” And he sees this secret “in the passion for the miraculous, which is, more or less, innate to all children"(emphasis added - V. B). So, Seryozha liked that the village his father bought was named Sergeevka in advance. The author explains the sense of ownership that awoke in him so early with the general properties of child psychology: “The feeling of ownership, exclusive ownership of anything, although not completely, is very well understood by children and is a special pleasure for him.”

Aksakov shows primary interest in the inner world of his hero. That is why he follows with such close attention the emergence and development of mental movements, even the most insignificant, even the most vague, sometimes beyond definition.

“My head was older than my years,” Seryozha Bagrov complains. He complains because such a head sometimes deprived him of his childish spontaneity and fenced him off from his peers. This mental maturity, surpassing his age, developed in Seryozha the habit of analyzing his own feelings and thoughts. He not only lives by impressions. He makes them the subject of analysis, “stopping” them, looking for interpretations and concepts that correspond to them, and consolidating them in his memory. When he, the hero of the story, does not succeed in such an operation, Bagrov, matured and remembering, comes to the rescue. And throughout the book we hear two narrating voices.

First, the child masters the world of objects and external phenomena. Ready and stable for adults, this world is new to Seryozha every time, as if being born before his eyes, and therefore dazzlingly bright and mysterious. About crossing the Belaya River, he recalls: “I was depressed not so much by fear as by the news of the objects and the greatness of the picture, the beauty of which I felt, although, of course, I could not explain.” And that is why even those events and details that may seem small and unnecessary to the reader are filled with important meaning for the hero of the book. How thoroughly he talks about making almond cake! How could it be otherwise? After all, the cake is prepared by his adored mother, and Seryozha jealously watches what effect it will have among the guests.

Seryozha is not only amazed, admired or indignant, he also thinks about this world: “Oh, what a tree!” And then: “What is it called?” He asks adults what lightning is, what land surveying is, constantly expanding his “explanatory dictionary.” And in it there is a steppe (this is a treeless and undulating plain), and a stall (this is a room for horses), and white huts (these are those with pipes), and an urema (a floodplain place)... Bagrov will later be proud of his childish inquisitiveness: “Not understanding some of the answers to my questions, I did not leave them dark and unresolved for myself, but always explained them in my own way.”

Knowledge about the outside world expands and deepens - and more and more often the desire to practically master it comes. And even though Seryozha was not burdened by the need for physical labor, even if Seryozha’s mother with her noble prejudices turned him away from it: “Get this nonsense out of your head. Arable land and harrowing are not your business,” the need for labor, inherent in human nature, powerfully awakens in our hero. Seryozha “loved to look attentively and for a long time at the living work of joiners and carpenters,” he was delighted with the “harmoniousness and regularity” with which buckwheat was threshed with flails, and finally he was allowed to try his hand at it himself: “It turned out that I was no good.” : I don’t know how to walk on plowed ground, I don’t know how to hold the reins and control a horse, I don’t know how to make it obey. A peasant boy walked next to me and laughed.”

Seryozha admired not only the delights of field work. He also noticed how unbearably difficult they were for the serfs. And, having matured, he not only sympathizes, he is convinced of the “importance and holiness of work”, that “peasants and peasant women are much more skillful and dexterous than us, because they know how to do things that we cannot.”

By conveying the story of the growth and organization of his hero’s character, Aksakov does not confine him to the boundaries of a special children’s world. Enriched by the experience of realistic literature, the writer also foresees the powerful influence of social phenomena and relationships on the formation of a child, on the formation of a Man in him. And this process appears, under the pen of Aksakov, to be complex and contradictory. The world of children's impressions and experiences is created in intense, sometimes very dramatic for both sides, contacts with the world of adults.

The wider the horizons of Seryozha’s children’s world expand, the more persistently facts invade it, violating its harmony. Seryozha’s mind just doesn’t fit why the evil headman Mironych, who drives the peasants out to corvee even on holidays, is considered by the peasants themselves to be a good man, why punishing students with rods is not only allowed, but also legitimized by the position of a teacher. Moreover: “The very parents of the flogged boys thank the teacher for his strictness, and the boys will thank them over time.” Why Easter cake for the Bagrovs “was much whiter than how the courtyard people broke their fast”? Some of these many “whys” remained unanswered. Even his beloved mother, whose “reasonable court” Seryozha is used to verifying his impressions and thoughts, will even reprimand him: “It’s none of your business.” Other “whys” affected relationships that children, with their innate justice, could not understand at all, much less justify: “Why do they (the peasants. - V.B.) Are we welcome and why do they love us? What is corvée? Who is Mironych? and so on. and so on. My father somehow found it difficult to satisfy all my questions, my mother helped him... What is the headman Mironych - I understood well, but what corvee is - at my age it was difficult for me to understand.” All this, Bagrov later recalled, led to a “confusion of concepts,” produced “some kind of discord in my head,” and disturbed “the clear silence of my soul.” The world of adults, which is not always understandable to children, begins to shine through with a direct, natural, purely human child’s gaze. And many things in him begin to look not only strange, but also abnormal, worthy of condemnation.

On the other hand, the desire to understand and comprehend the actions and relationships of adults, to somehow reconcile them with one’s ideas about what is proper and good, changes and enriches children’s experiences and thoughts. No matter how contemplative Seryozha was, it was external impressions that became for him, as he says, “lessons” that had a decisive influence on the formation of his inner world.

Seryozha, we remember, was a very truthful boy. And in his memoirs, Bagrov does not hide from the reader even what he obviously considers reprehensible to talk about. He admits his cowardice (during horseback riding, fear overcame even his pride, which is so strong in children); he, with all his love for living things in nature, rejoices at the sight of shot partridges; he takes pleasure in the sense of ownership awakened in him: “I, being not at all a stingy boy, really valued the fact that Sergeevka - my; without it possessive pronoun I never called her.”

Experiencing the disharmony of the external world, Seryozha comes to the consciousness of his own imperfection: a critical attitude towards himself awakens in him, “clear silence” is replaced in his soul by childishly exaggerated doubts and searches for a way out.

But Seryozha’s inner world does not split, does not fall apart. It changes qualitatively: it is filled with socio-psychological content, it includes situations and collisions, in overcoming which the formation of a person takes place, preparing him for equal participation in life.

The narrative in “Childhood Years” ends on the eve of the most important event in Seryozha’s life - he is about to enter the gymnasium. Childhood is over. But, closing the book, let us remember Seryozha from its first chapters, compare him with Seryozha on the threshold of his adolescence. How spiritually and morally he has grown and matured! And this happened completely unnoticed for us, as happens when a person grows up before our eyes, as happened in this case: Aksakov’s leisurely, detailed narration created the illusion of the flow of our hero’s life itself.

The image of a growing, mature person with his own eventful and spiritual-emotional world, constantly and qualitatively changing, is the main pathos of the book “The Childhood Years of Bagrov the Grandson.” And perhaps Aksakov himself expressed it more accurately and completely than others: “A person’s life in childhood, children's world, created under the influence of daily new impressions... A person’s life is in a child.”

The last years of the life of Sergei Timofeevich Aksakov were marked by amazing creative activity. Despite the illness - and blindness was inexorably approaching the aging writer - he, having completed the autobiographical trilogy, created the story “Natasha” adjacent to it, and prepared a series of memoirs. And if we add to this the story “Kopytyev,” which, unfortunately, remained unfinished, then we can say that Aksakov overcame the “extreme one-sidedness” of his talent, which he saw in his inability for “pure creativity.” The story “Kopytyev” is remarkable because it is, in the words of Aksakov himself, a “fictional story”, it is the fruit of creative imagination, free from any autobiographical motives.

During these years, Aksakov maintained an extensive correspondence, and his circle of literary acquaintances expanded widely. Artists, performers, and writers come to Abramtsevo, where he spends most of the year. Here above the second volume " Dead souls" Gogol works. Turgenev hurries to get here when he comes to Moscow. Leo Tolstoy also began to visit Aksakov. They met in January 1856. “He is smart and serious,” Aksakov writes to Turgenev. “I rate him very highly for the talents he has given us, and, having gotten to know him personally, I have even more hope for his future literary activity.” Tolstoy responds to Aksakov with mutual sympathy. And after listening to excerpts from the “Family Chronicle” and “Childhood Years of Bagrov the Grandson” in the author’s reading, he writes in his diary: “Reading S. T. Aksakov’s “Childhood” is delightful!”

Sergei Timofeevich Aksakov died at the sixty-eighth year of his life, on the night of April 30, 1859, in Moscow. In the obituary that appeared in Sovremennik, next to the solemnly sad words about the death of an “honest and useful citizen,” there were also prophetic words: “The name of S. T. Aksakov will take an honorable page in the history of Russian literature!”

V. A. Bogdanov

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The given introductory fragment of the book The childhood years of Bagrov the grandson (S. T. Aksakov, 2001) provided by our book partner -

© AST Publishing House LLC

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To my granddaughter

OLGA GRIGORIEVNA AKSAKOVA

To the readers

I wrote excerpts from the “Family Chronicle” based on the stories of the Messrs. family. The Bagrovs, as my generous readers know. In the epilogue to the fifth and last passage, I said goodbye to the personalities I described, not thinking that I would ever have the opportunity to talk about them. But a person often thinks wrongly: the grandson of Stepan Mikhailovich Bagrov told me in great detail the story of his childhood years; I wrote down his stories as accurately as possible, and how they serve as a continuation of the “Family Chronicle,” which so happily attracted the attention of the reading public, and how these stories represent quite full story children, a person’s life in childhood, a child’s world, which is gradually created under the influence of daily new impressions - then I decided to publish the stories I had written down. Wanting, if possible, to convey the vividness of the oral narrative, I speak everywhere directly on behalf of the narrator. The former faces of the “Chronicle” again appear on the stage, and the older ones, that is, grandfather and grandmother, as the story continues, leave it forever... Once again I entrust my Bagrovs to the favorable attention of the readers.

S. Aksakov

Introduction

I myself don’t know whether I can fully believe everything that my memory has preserved? If I remember the events that actually happened, then these can be called memories not only of childhood, but even of infancy. Of course, I remember nothing in connection, in continuous sequence; but many incidents still live in my memory with all the brightness of colors, with all the vividness of yesterday’s event. When I was three or four years old, I told those around me that I remember how they took me away from my nurse... Everyone laughed at my stories and assured me that I had heard them enough from my mother or nanny and thought that I had seen it myself. I argued and sometimes cited as evidence circumstances that could not be told to me and that only I and my nurse or mother could know. We made inquiries, and it often turned out that this was indeed the case and that no one could tell me about it. But not everything that seemed to me to be seen, I actually saw; the same certificates sometimes proved that I could not see much, but could only hear.

So, I will begin to tell from the prehistoric, so to speak, era of my childhood only what I cannot doubt in reality.

Fragmentary memories

The very first objects that survived in the dilapidated picture of a long time ago, a picture that was greatly faded in other places from time and the flow of the sixties, objects and images that still float in my memory - a nurse, a little sister and mother; Then they had no definite meaning for me and were only nameless images. The nurse seems to me at first to be some kind of mysterious, almost invisible creature. I remember myself lying at night, either in a crib or in my mother’s arms, crying bitterly: with sobs and screams, I repeated the same word, calling for someone, and someone appeared in the darkness of a dimly lit room, took me in his arms, laid me down. to my chest... and I felt good. Then I remember that no one came to my cries and calls, that my mother, holding me to her chest, singing the same words of a soothing song, ran with me around the room until I fell asleep. The nurse, who loved me passionately, again appears several times in my memories, sometimes in the distance, furtively looking at me from behind others, sometimes kissing my hands, face and crying over me. My nurse was a noble peasant woman and lived thirty miles away; she left the village on foot on Saturday evening and arrived in Ufa early on Sunday morning; Having looked at me and rested, she returned on foot to her Kasimovka to catch up on her corvee. I remember that she came once, and maybe even came sometime, with my foster sister, a healthy and red-cheeked girl.

At first I loved my sister more than all the toys, more than my mother, and this love was expressed by an incessant desire to see her and a feeling of pity: it always seemed to me that she was cold, that she was hungry and that she wanted to eat; I constantly wanted to dress her with my dress and feed her with my food; Of course, I was not allowed to do this, and I cried.

My mother's constant presence merges with my every memory. Her image is inextricably linked with my existence, and therefore it does not stand out much in the fragmentary pictures of the first time of my childhood, although it constantly participates in them.

There follows a long gap, that is dark spot or a faded place in the picture of the long past, and I begin to remember myself already very sick, and not at the beginning of the illness, which lasted for more than a year and a half, not at the end of it (when I was already recovering), no, I remember myself in such weakness, that every minute they feared for my life. One day, early in the morning, I woke up or woke up and didn’t know where I was. Everything was unfamiliar to me: a tall, large room, bare walls made of very thick new pine logs, a strong resinous smell; bright, it seems like a summer sun, the sun is just rising and through the window on the right side, on top of the single canopy that was lowered above me, it is brightly reflected on the opposite wall... Beside me, my mother sleeps anxiously, without pillows and undressed. How now I look at her black braid, disheveled across her thin and yellow face. The day before I was brought to the suburban village of Zubovka, about ten miles from Ufa. Apparently, the road and the calm sleep produced by the movement strengthened me; I felt good and cheerful, so for several minutes I looked through the canopy at the new objects surrounding me with curiosity and pleasure. I didn’t know how to save my poor mother’s sleep, I touched her with my hand and said: “Oh, what sunshine! it smells so good!” Mother jumped up, frightened at first, and then rejoiced, listening to my strong voice and looking at my refreshed face. How she caressed me, what names she called me, how joyfully she cried... I can’t tell you this! The canopy was raised; I asked for food, they fed me and gave me half a glass of old Rhine wine to drink, which, as they thought then, was the only thing that strengthened me. Reinwine was poured for me from some strange bottle with a flattened, wide, round bottom and a long narrow neck. Since then I have not seen such bottles. Then, at my request, they got me pieces or pendants of pine resin, which was drowning, dripping, even flowing everywhere on the walls and doorposts, freezing and drying on the road and hanging in the air as small icicles, completely similar in appearance to ordinary ice icicles. I really loved the smell of pine and spruce resin, which was sometimes smoked in our children's rooms. I smelled, admired, and played with the fragrant and transparent resin icicles; they melted in my hands and glued my thin, long fingers together; my mother washed my hands, wiped them dry, and I began to doze off... Objects began to get in the way in my eyes; It seemed to me that we were traveling in a carriage, that they wanted to give me medicine and I didn’t want to take it, that instead of my mother, Agafya’s nanny or nurse was standing next to me... How I fell asleep and what happened after - I don’t remember anything.

I often remember myself in a carriage, not always drawn by horses, not always on the road. I remember very well that my mother, and sometimes the nanny, holds me in her arms, dressed very warmly, that we are sitting in a carriage standing in the barn, and sometimes taken out into the yard; that I was whining, repeating in a weak voice: “Soup, soup,” which they gave me little by little, despite the painful, excruciating hunger, which was sometimes replaced by a complete aversion to food. I was told that in the carriage I cried less and was generally much calmer. It seems that the gentlemen doctors treated me badly at the very beginning of the illness and finally healed me almost to death, leading to complete weakening of the digestive organs; or it may be that suspiciousness, excessive fears of a passionate mother, incessant changes in medications were the cause of the desperate situation in which I found myself.

I sometimes lay in oblivion, in some kind of intermediate state between sleep and fainting; my pulse almost stopped beating, my breathing was so weak that they put a mirror to my lips to find out if I was alive; but I remember a lot of what they did to me at that time and what they said around me, assuming that I no longer see, hear or understand anything - that I was dying. Doctors and everyone around me had long ago condemned me to death: the doctors - based on undoubted medical signs, and those around me - based on undoubted bad omens, the groundlessness and falsity of which turned out to be very convincing for me. It is impossible to describe my mother’s suffering, but her enthusiastic presence of mind and hope to save her child never left her. “Mother Sofya Nikolaevna,” Cheprunov’s distant relative, devoted to her soul, said more than once, as I myself heard, “stop torturing your child; after all, both the doctors and the priest told you that he was not a tenant. Submit to the will of God: place the child under the icon, light the candle and let his angelic soul leave his body in peace. After all, you only interfere with her and disturb her, but you cannot help...” But my mother greeted such speeches with anger and answered that as long as the spark of life smoldered in me, she would not stop doing everything she could for my salvation, and she laid me down again. , unconscious, into a strengthening bath, she poured Rhine wine or broth into my mouth, rubbed my chest and back with her bare hands for whole hours, and if this did not help, then she filled my lungs with her breath - and after a deep sigh, I began to breathe harder, like It was as if he was waking up to life, gaining consciousness, beginning to eat and speak, and even getting better for a while. This happened more than once. I could even play with my toys, which were placed next to me on a small table; Of course, I did all this while lying in my crib, because I could barely move my fingers. But my most important pleasure was that they brought my dear sister to me, let me kiss her, pat her on the head, and then the nanny sat with her opposite me, and I looked at my sister for a long time, pointing at one or another of my toys. and ordering them to be served to my sister.

Noticing that the road seemed to be useful to me, my mother traveled with me constantly: either to the suburban villages of her brothers, or to visit familiar landowners; Once, I don’t know where, we made a long journey; father was with us. Dear, quite early in the morning, I felt so bad, I was so weak that I was forced to stop; They carried me out of the carriage, made a bed in the tall grass of a forest clearing, in the shade of trees, and laid me down almost lifeless. I saw everything and understood what they were doing around me. I heard how my father cried and consoled my despairing mother, how fervently she prayed, raising her hands to the sky. I heard and saw everything clearly and could not say a single word, could not move - and suddenly I seemed to wake up and feel better, stronger than usual. I liked the forest, the shade, the flowers, the fragrant air so much that I begged them not to move me from my place. So we stood here until the evening. The horses were unharnessed and released onto the grass not far from me, and I was pleased with that. Somewhere they found spring water; I heard people talk about it; they lit a fire, drank tea, and they gave me disgusting Roman chamomile and rhine wine to drink, they prepared food, had dinner, and everyone rested, even my mother slept for a long time. I did not sleep, but I felt extraordinary vigor and some kind of inner pleasure and calmness, or, more accurately, I did not understand what I felt, but I felt good. Quite late in the evening, despite my requests and tears, they put me in a carriage and transported me to the nearest Tatar village on the road, where they spent the night. The next morning I also felt fresher and better than usual. When we returned to the city, my mother, seeing that I had become a little stronger, and realizing that I had not taken ordinary potions and powders for a week, prayed to God and decided to leave the Ufa doctors, and began to treat me according to Bukhan’s home medicine. I got better hour by hour, and after a few months I was almost healthy: but all this time, from feeding in a forest clearing to real recovery, was almost completely erased from my memory. However, I remember one incident quite clearly: it happened, according to those around me, in the very middle of my recovery...

During the first period of my recovery, the feeling of pity for everyone who suffered reached the point of painful excess. First of all, this feeling turned to my little sister: I could not see or hear her tears or screams and now I began to cry myself; She was unwell at that time. At first, her mother ordered to move her to another room; but, noticing this, I became so excited and sad, as they told me later, that they hastened to return my sister to me. Slowly recovering, I did not soon begin to walk and at first, for whole days, lying in my crib and placing my sister with me, I amused her with various toys or showing pictures. Our toys were the simplest: small smooth balls or pieces of wood, which we called chorochki; I built some kind of cages out of them, and my friend loved to destroy them by waving her little hand. Then I began to wander and sit on the window, which opened directly into the garden. Every bird, even a sparrow, attracted my attention and gave me great pleasure. My mother, who spent all her free time from visiting guests and doing household chores around me, now got me a cage with birds and a pair of tame pigeons that spent the night under my bed. They told me that I was so delighted by them and expressed it in such a way that it was impossible to look at my joy with indifference. Once, sitting on the window (from that moment on I remember everything firmly), I heard some kind of plaintive squealing in the garden; the mother heard him too, and when I began to ask to be sent to see who was crying, that, “surely, someone is in pain,” the mother sent a girl, and a few minutes later she brought a tiny, still blind puppy in her handfuls, who, trembling all over and not firmly leaning on his crooked paws, poking his head in all directions, squealed pitifully, or missed you as my nanny put it. I felt so sorry for him that I took this puppy and wrapped him in my dress. The mother ordered warm milk to be brought on a saucer, and after many attempts, pushing the blind kitten into the milk with its snout, they learned to lap it. From then on, the puppy did not leave me for hours at a time; feeding him several times a day became my favorite pastime; they named him Surka, he later became a small mongrel and lived with us for seventeen years, of course, no longer in the room, but in the yard, always maintaining an extraordinary affection for me and my mother.

My recovery was considered a miracle, according to the doctors themselves. His mother attributed it, firstly, to God’s infinite mercy, and secondly, to Bukhan’s clinic. Bukhan received the title of my savior, and my mother taught me as a child to pray to God for the repose of his soul during morning and evening prayers. Subsequently, she somewhere took out an engraved portrait of Buhan, and four poems printed under his portrait on French, were translated by someone into Russian poetry, written beautifully on paper and pasted on top of the French ones. All this, unfortunately, has long disappeared without a trace.

I attribute my salvation, in addition to the first reason above, without which nothing could have happened, to vigilant care, unrelenting care, the boundless attention of my mother and the road, that is, movement and air. The attention and care was this: constantly in need of money, living, as they say, from penny to penny, my mother got old Rhine wine in Kazan, almost five hundred miles away, through an old friend of her late father, it seems Dr. Reislein, paid an unheard-of price for wine then the price, and I drank it little by little, several times a day. In the city of Ufa there were no so-called French white breads at that time - and every week, that is, every post, a generously rewarded postman brought three white breads from Kazan. I said this as an example; exactly the same was observed in everything. My mother did not allow the dying lamp of life in me to go out; As soon as he began to fade away, she nourished him with the magnetic outpouring of her own life, her own breath. Whether she read about it in some book or whether the doctor said it, I don’t know. The wonderful healing effect of the road is beyond doubt. I knew many people who were abandoned by doctors and owed their recovery to her. I also believe that lying in the grass in a forest clearing for twelve hours gave the first beneficial impetus to my relaxed bodily organism. More than once I heard from my mother that it was from that time that a small change for the better took place.

Sequential Memories

After my recovery, I begin to remember myself as a child, not strong and playful as I later became, but quiet, meek, unusually compassionate, a great coward and at the same time constantly, although slowly, already reading a children's book with pictures called “Mirror” virtue." How and when I learned to read, who taught me and by what method, I absolutely don’t know; but I learned to write much later and somehow very slowly and for a long time. We then lived in the provincial city of Ufa and occupied a huge Zubin wooden house, bought by my father, as I later learned, at an auction for three hundred rubles in banknotes. The house was upholstered with planks, but not painted; it was darkened by the rains, and this whole mass had a very sad appearance. The house stood on a slope, so that the windows into the garden were very low from the ground, and the windows from the dining room to the street, on the opposite side of the house, rose three arshins above the ground; the front porch had more than twenty-five steps, and from it the Belaya River could be seen almost its entire width. Two children's rooms in which I lived with my sister, painted over plaster blue, located near the bedroom, had windows overlooking the garden, and the raspberries planted under them grew so high that they looked into our windows for a whole quarter, which greatly amused me and my inseparable comrade, my little sister. The garden, however, was quite large, but not beautiful: here and there there were berry bushes of currants, gooseberries and barberries, two or three dozen skinny apple trees, round flower beds with marigolds, saffrons and asters, and not a single big tree, no shadow; but this garden also gave us pleasure, especially to my sister, who knew neither mountains, nor fields, nor forests; I traveled, as they said, more than five hundred miles: despite my painful condition, the greatness of the beauties of God's world imperceptibly fell on the child's soul and lived without my knowledge in my imagination; I could not be satisfied with our poor city garden and constantly told my sister, like an experienced person, about various miracles I had seen; She listened with curiosity, fixing her beautiful eyes on me, full of intense attention, which at the same time clearly expressed: “Brother, I don’t understand anything.” And what’s strange: the narrator has only just entered his fifth year, and the listener is only in her third.

I have already said that I was timid and even a coward; Probably, a serious and prolonged illness weakened, refined, and brought my nerves to extreme sensitivity, and perhaps I did not have courage by nature. The first sensations of fear instilled in me the stories of the nanny. Although she, in fact, looked after my sister, and only looked after me, and although her mother strictly forbade her to even talk to me, she sometimes managed to tell me some news about the beech tree, about the brownies and the dead. I began to be afraid of the darkness at night and even during the day I was afraid of dark rooms. In our house there was a huge hall, from which two doors led into two small rooms, quite dark, because the windows from them looked out into long vestibules that served as a corridor; in one of them there was a buffet, and the other was locked; it once served as a study for my mother's late father; All his things were collected there: a desk, an armchair, a bookcase, etc. The nanny told me that sometimes they see my late grandfather Zubin there, sitting at the table and sorting out papers. I was so afraid of this room that I always closed my eyes when passing by it. Once, walking along the long hallway, having forgotten myself, I looked out the office window, remembered the nanny’s story, and it seemed to me that some old man in a white dressing gown was sitting at the table. I screamed and fainted. My mother was not at home. When she returned and I told her about everything that had happened and everything I had heard from the nanny, she became very angry: she ordered my grandfather’s office to be unlocked, took me there, trembling with fear, forcibly and showed that there was no one there and that there was something hanging on the chairs. something underwear. She made every effort to explain to me that such stories were nonsense and inventions of stupid ignorance. She sent my nanny away and for several days did not allow her to enter our nursery. But extremity forced us to call this woman and assign her to us again; Of course, they strictly forbade her to tell such nonsense and took an oath from her to never talk about common people’s prejudices and beliefs; but this did not cure me of fear. Our nanny was a strange old woman, she was very attached to us, and my sister and I loved her very much. When she was sent to the people's quarters and was not even allowed to enter the house, she sneaked up to us at night, kissed us sleepily and cried. I saw this myself, because once her caresses woke me up. She followed us very diligently, but, due to her inveterate stubbornness and ignorance, she did not understand my mother’s demands and slowly did everything against her. A year later she was completely sent to the village. I was sad for a long time: I could not understand why my mother was so often angry with her kind nanny, and I remained in the conviction that my mother simply did not love her.

Every day I read my only book, “The Mirror of Virtue,” to my little sister, never realizing that she still did not understand anything except the pleasure of looking at pictures. I knew this children's book by heart then; but now only two stories and two pictures out of a whole hundred remain in my memory, although they, compared to the others, have nothing special. These are "The Appreciative Lion" and "The Boy Who Dresses Himself." I even remember the face of the lion and the boy! Finally, “The Mirror of Virtue” ceased to absorb my attention and satisfy my childish curiosity; I wanted to read other books, but there was absolutely nowhere to get them; those books that my father and mother sometimes read, they did not allow me to read. I started to read Buchan’s Home Medicine, but for some reason my mother considered this reading inconvenient for my age; however, she selected some places and, marking them with bookmarks, allowed me to read them; and it was really interesting reading, because it described all the herbs, salts, roots and all the medicinal drugs that are only mentioned in the medical book. I re-read these descriptions much later in life and always with pleasure, because all this is presented and translated into Russian very sensibly and well.

Beneficial fate soon sent me an unexpected new pleasure, which made a strong impression on me and greatly expanded the then range of my concepts. Opposite our house lived in his own house S.I. Anichkov, an old, rich bachelor, reputed to be a very smart and even learned man; this opinion was confirmed by the fact that he was once sent as a deputy from the Orenburg region to the famous commission assembled by Catherine the Second to consider existing laws. Anichkov was very proud, as I was told, of his deputyship and boldly talked about his speeches and actions, which, however, by his own admission, did not bring any benefit. They did not like Anichkov, but only respected him and even liked his harsh language and inflexible disposition. He favored my father and mother and even lent money, which no one dared to ask him for. He once heard from my parents that I was a diligent boy and really liked to read books, but that there was nothing to read. The old deputy, being more enlightened than others, was naturally the patron of all curiosity. The next day he suddenly sends a man for me; My father himself took me. Anichkov, having asked carefully what I had read, how I understood what I read and what I remember, was very pleased; He ordered a bunch of books to be given and gave me... oh happiness! I was so happy that I almost threw myself on the old man’s neck in tears and, not remembering myself, jumped up and ran home, leaving my father to talk with Anichkov. I remember, however, the host’s benevolent and approving laughter, which thundered in my ears and gradually fell silent as I moved away. Fearing that someone would take my treasure, I ran straight through the hallway into the nursery, lay down in my crib, closed the curtains, unfolded the first part - and forgot everything around me. When my father returned and laughingly told his mother everything that had happened at Anichkov’s, she was very alarmed, because she did not know about my return. They found me lying with a book. My mother told me later that I was like a madman: I didn’t say anything, didn’t understand what they were saying to me, and didn’t want to go to dinner. They had to take the book away, despite my bitter tears. The threat that the books would be taken away completely forced me to hold back tears, get up and even have lunch. After lunch I grabbed the book again and read until the evening. Of course, my mother put an end to such frenzied reading: she locked the books in her chest of drawers and gave me one part at a time, and then at certain hours appointed by her. There were twelve books in total, and they were not in order, but scattered. It turned out that this is not full meeting"Children's Reading", which consisted of twenty parts. I read my books with delight and, despite my mother’s reasonable thrift, I read them all in just over a month. A complete revolution took place in my childhood mind, and a new world opened up for me... I learned in the “discussion about thunder” what lightning, air, clouds are; learned the formation of rain and the origin of snow. Many phenomena in nature, which I looked at meaninglessly, although with curiosity, received meaning and significance for me and became even more curious. Ants, bees and especially butterflies with their transformations from eggs to a worm, from a worm to a chrysalis and, finally, from a chrysalis to a beautiful butterfly - captured my attention and sympathy; I received an irresistible desire to observe all this with my own eyes. The actual moralizing articles made less of an impression, but how the “funny way of catching monkeys” and the fable “about the old wolf,” whom all the shepherds drove away from them, amused me! How I admired the “goldfish”!

For some time I began to notice that my mother was unwell. She did not lie in bed, but she was losing weight, turning pale and losing strength every day. The ill health began a long time ago, but I didn’t see it at first and didn’t understand the reason why it was happening. Only later did I learn from the conversations of the people around me that my mother became ill from physical exhaustion and mental suffering during my illness. The constant danger of losing her passionately beloved child and the efforts to save him strained her nerves and gave her unnatural strength and a kind of artificial vivacity; but when the danger was over, the general energy dropped, and the mother began to feel weakened: her chest, side ached, and, finally, a feverish state appeared; the same doctors who had treated me so unsuccessfully and whom she had abandoned began to treat her. I heard her tell my father that she was beginning to suffer from consumption. I don’t know to what extent this was true, because the patient was, as everyone said, very suspicious, and I don’t know whether it was feigned or sincere, but my father and the doctors assured her that this was not true. I already had a vague idea that consumption was some kind of terrible disease. My heart sank with fear, and the thought that I was the cause of my mother’s illness tormented me incessantly. I began to cry and feel sad, but my mother knew how to somehow reassure me and calm me down, which was not difficult given her boundless moral power over me.

Not having full confidence in the art of Ufa doctors, the mother decided to go to Orenburg to consult there with Doctor Deobolt, who was famous throughout the region for his miraculous cures of the desperately ill. She herself told me about this with a cheerful look and assured me that she would return healthy. I completely believed it, calmed down, even cheered up and began to pester my mother so that she would go faster. But for this trip it was necessary to have money, and what to do with it, and who to leave two small children with? I listened to the incessant conversations about this between my father and mother and finally learned that the matter had been settled: my book benefactor S.I. Anichkov gave the money, and they decided to take the children, that is, my sister and I, to Bagrovo and leave them with my grandmother and grandfather. I was very pleased to learn that we would ride on our own horses and that we would feed in the field. I have a vague, but most pleasant memory of the road, which my father loved very much; his stories about her and even more about Bagrov, which promised many new, still unknown to me, pleasures, ignited my childish imagination. I also wanted to see my grandparents, because although I saw them, I could not remember: on my first visit to Bagrovo I was eight months old; but my mother said that grandfather was very glad to see us and that he had been calling us to him for a long time and was even angry that we had never visited him at four years old. My long illness, slow recovery and then my mother’s ill health were the reason for this. However, my father went to Bagrovo last year, but for the most short time. As usual, due to my natural ability to share my impressions with others, I told and tried to explain all my dreams and pleasant hopes to my little sister, and then explain them to everyone around me. The preparations have begun. I got ready first of all: I packed my books, that is, “Children's Reading” and “The Mirror of Virtue,” which, however, I had not looked at for a long time; I also didn’t forget the little chicks to play with my sister with them; I left two “Children’s Reading” books, which I was re-reading for the third time, on the road and with a joyful face ran to tell my mother that I was ready to go and that I was only sorry to leave Surka. The mother sat in an armchair, sad and tired of getting ready, although she managed them without getting up from her seat. She smiled at my words and looked at me in such a way that although I could not understand the expression of this look, I was amazed by it. My heart sank again and I was ready to cry; but my mother caressed me, calmed me down, encouraged me and ordered me to go to the nursery - read my book and keep my sister busy, adding that she now has no time to be with us and that she instructs me to look after my sister; I obeyed and slowly walked back: some kind of sadness suddenly poisoned my gaiety, and even the thought that they were entrusting me with my sister, which at another time would have been very pleasant and flattering to me, now did not console me. The preparations continued for several more days, and finally everything was ready.

Sergei Timofeevich Aksakov

“Childhood years of Bagrov the grandson”

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

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

With every memory of Seryozha, “the constant presence of his mother merges,” who came out to him and loved him, perhaps for this reason, more than her other children.

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

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

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

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

After Bagrov, returning home had such an effect on the boy that he, again surrounded by common love, suddenly grew up. The mother’s young brothers, military men who graduated from the Moscow University Noble Boarding School, are visiting the house: from them Seryozha learns what poetry is, one of his uncles draws and teaches this to Seryozha, which makes the boy seem like a “superior being.” S.I. Anichkov gives new books: “Anabasis” by Xenophon and “Children’s Library” by Shishkov (which the author very much praises).

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

At Seryozha’s request, they begin to teach him how to write, inviting a teacher from a public school. One day, apparently on someone’s advice, Seryozha is sent there for a lesson: the rudeness of both the students and the teacher (who was so kind to him at home), the spanking of the guilty really frightens the child.

Seryozha’s father buys seven thousand acres of land with lakes and forests and calls it “Sergeevskaya wasteland,” which the boy is very proud of. The parents are going to Sergeevka to treat their mother with Bashkir kumiss in the spring, when Belaya opens. Seryozha cannot think about anything else and tensely watches the ice drift and the river flood.

In Sergeevka, the house for the gentlemen is not completed, but even this is amusing: “There are no windows or doors, but the fishing rods are ready.” Until the end of July, Seryozha, father and uncle Yevseich are fishing on Lake Kiishki, which the boy considers his own; Seryozha sees rifle hunting for the first time and feels “some kind of greed, some unknown joy.” Summer is spoiled only by guests, albeit infrequent ones: strangers, even peers, are a burden to Seryozha.

After Sergeevka, Ufa became disgusted. Seryozha is entertained only by a new gift from his neighbor: the collected works of Sumarokov and the poem “Rossiada” by Kheraskov, which he recites and tells his family various details about his favorite characters he has invented. The mother laughs, and the father worries: “Where do you get all this from? Don't become a liar." News arrives about the death of Catherine II, the people swear allegiance to Pavel Petrovich; The child listens carefully to conversations of worried adults that are not always clear to him.

The news arrives that grandfather is dying, and the family immediately gathers in Bagrovo. Seryozha is afraid to see his grandfather dying, he is afraid that his mother will get sick from all this, that in winter they will freeze on the way. On the way, the boy is tormented by sad premonitions, and faith in premonitions takes root in him from then on for the rest of his life.

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

The behavior of Bagrov’s relatives unpleasantly surprises the boy: four aunts howl, falling at the feet of their brother - “the real master of the house”, the grandmother emphatically cedes power to the mother, and the mother is disgusted. At the table, everyone except Mother is crying and eating with great appetite. And then, after lunch, in the corner room, looking at the ice-free Buguruslan, the boy first understands the beauty of winter nature.

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

Having become the owner of Bagrovo after the death of his grandfather, Serezha’s father retires, and the family moves to Bagrovo to live permanently. Rural work (threshing, mowing, etc.) keeps Seryozha very busy; he doesn’t understand why his mother and little sister are indifferent to this. A kind boy tries to pity and console his grandmother, who quickly became decrepit after the death of her husband, whom he essentially did not know before; but her habit of beating servants, very common in the life of a landowner, quickly turns her grandson away from her.

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

Returning to Bagrovo, Serezha truly sees spring for the first time in his life in the village: “I<…>watched every step of spring. In every room, in almost every window, I noticed special objects or places on which I made my observations...” From excitement, the boy begins to experience insomnia; To help him fall asleep better, the housekeeper Pelageya tells him fairy tales, and among other things, “The Scarlet Flower” (this fairy tale is included in the appendix to “Childhood Years...”).

In the fall, at the request of Kurolesova, the Bagrovs visit Churasovo. Seryozha's father promised his grandmother to return to Pokrov; Kurolesova does not let guests go; On the night of Intercession, the father sees a terrible dream and in the morning receives news of his grandmother’s illness. The autumn road back is hard; crossing the Volga near Simbirsk, the family almost drowned. Grandmother died on the very Intercession; This terribly affects both Seryozha’s father and the capricious Kurolesova.

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

In a memoir book we're talking about about the child’s first ten years (1790s), spent in Ufa. The book depicts the perception of a child who is interested in learning about unfamiliar things, objects, etc. This is important and necessary for him. The process of remembering in children starts from an early age. He remembers absolutely everything: the smell of his mother’s milk, his illness and his new wooden home.

As you know, a child’s constant image is the road. On the way home, Seryozha feels pretty bad. His parents decide to stop in the forest so he can gain strength. Overcoming an illness, the child begins to feel pity for the people who suffer. Every memory he has is associated with his mother’s love and care.

Gradual memory comes to children at the age of four. Serezha lives with his parents and sister in Ufa. The disease has taken so much of his strength that he begins to perceive the world differently. Fear of the dead and darkness awakens in him. He had only one comfort - reading books.

The mother, who was very worried about her son’s illness, thought about how she would not catch consumption from Seryozha. Having gone to his father's parents, Seryozha received a lot of pleasure: he loved spending the night in the field and fishing, just as he loved reading books.

At the same time, many things become incomprehensible to the boy. He feels sorry for the people who work hard on the field, he suffers with them. The grandmother's hospitality and her sad house do not impress the boy; he is in constant tension.

In Bagrov he is surrounded by love and affection, here he feels like an adult. He is given new books, which the author persistently praises. At Seryozha’s request, the boy is taught to write, and later he is sent to a lesson, where he sees a completely different, rather rude attitude of his teacher and other students. He is frightened by the behavior of the teacher who beats the children.

Serezha's father buys a new house, which is located near a lake and a forest. They call the forest “Sergeevskaya wasteland”. This event exalts the boy, he understands that all this belongs to him. However, he is irritated by the large crowd of people in this house, the constant noise and bustle. After Sergeevka, Ufa became something different.

Soon Seryozha learns about the death of his grandfather, the family goes to Bagrovo. The boy is not ready to see him; on the road he constantly imagines something. The relationship between his relatives is unpleasant for Seryozha; he can’t figure out why they fight, scream and cry. The only thing that pleases him in this environment is the beauty of winter nature.

Subsequently, Seryozha is drawn to the field, to the harvest, he feels sorry for people, his grandmother after the death of her husband, whom he practically did not know. Kindness and pity settled in his heart at the same time. In the fall, at the request of Kurolesova, the Bagrovs visit Churasovo. However, they were supposed to return to Pokrov, but on the way home something unexpected happened to them - they almost drowned. The death of my grandmother had an impact on Pokrov negative impact for the whole family.

The family gathers to pray to the miracle workers there. Seryozha is sent to a gymnasium, which completely changes his life. During this period, Bagrov’s grandson’s childhood ends and adolescence begins.