What is the meaning of the word "arabesque"? In life, we often come across this concept. The word is often used in accordance with its traditional characteristics, but is used as a figure of speech, as a common noun or in figurative meaning, when it means something cunningly intertwined or whimsically ornate, in another version - very crushed and mixed or very openwork, light.

What is an arabesque?

The word has Italian origin. In translation, the term arabesque - arabesco - means "Arabic". However, this ornamental style is used in cultures different countries and in various forms of art. There is no exact and unified definition of an arabesque. We are faced with a completely different use of the concept, it would seem. There are several meanings of what an arabesque is.

Initially, a type of oriental (Arabic) ornament was called an arabesque. In the future, this term began to be used as the name of a certain type of musical piece.

There is another way to use the word - in the masculine gender. What is "arabesque" in this case? In this case we are talking about a dance move or type of dance.

Let's look at each use case of the concept separately.

Arabic pattern in Europe

It is this use of the term that is really connected with its Arabic meaning, since it is a type of ornament that arose in the medieval era in the culture of nomadic Arabs.

What is an arabesque in art? Initially, the structure of the pattern included both geometric and plant motifs, but later only geometric ones were included.

At a later time, text components began to be introduced into the floral pattern. That is why such a concept as "Arabic script" arose - a type of writing whimsically ornate, similar to an arabesque in appearance.

In the heyday of the Middle Ages, the arabesque ornament was used to decorate handwritten books, and in Byzantium and Italy - in majolica and engraving. At this stage in the development of the arabesque, it carried, first of all, a symbolic meaning and was the main element of architectural structures.

The most popular type of ornament "arabesque" became in the Renaissance. Thanks to Giovanni da Udine, the pattern becomes the basis and connecting thread of the semantic component of fresco paintings and decorative and symbolic elements in architecture.

In the era of classicism, the "arabesque" ornament received the appointment of an independent decorative element, abstracted from the semantic component.

Arabic pattern in the countries of the Muslim world

In the Arab world, over time, the arabesque ornament became a whole science that was in the service of the church. After all, Arabic arabesque patterns served as a connecting thread between Heaven - the abode of God and Paradise - and Man as a representative of the Earthly House. If you think about it, then the Underworld, which, according to Muslims, consists of two parts: the grave as the threshold of Paradise or Hell and Hell itself. Thus, it is possible to express the version that the Muslim arabesque can be the image of the "World Tree". Arabesque ornaments can completely cover the walls of the mosque. In the interweaving of their elements, you will never find animals, birds, fish, humans and other living beings, since no one can compete with God - their creator.

Arabesque in the arts and crafts of the East

There is also a non-religious way of using the arabesque ornament in Eastern cultures. One of the most common is the Arabic patterned carpet. In this case, the creation of a pattern implies greater freedom of creativity: images of animals and people can be used as elements, weaving them into a ligature of stems, petals and leaves.

On the basis of the Arabic traditional ornament in the art of carpet weaving, a special direction emerged - Islami - a decorative ornament consisting only of bindweed and spiral elements. In addition, six additional types of Islami are distinguished: "shekasti" - with open ornaments; "bandi" or "vagire" - the elements of the pattern are repeated both horizontally and vertically, and intertwined with each other; "dakhane azhdar", whose arabesques resemble the mouth of a dragon; "toranjdar", in it, along with traditional patterns, such an element as a medallion is used; "lochak-toranj", where a composition of medallions in triangles is placed in the corners of the carpet; "mari" - with spiral-shaped arabesques.

Arabesques in the "bandy" style also have a number of subspecies: "islimi" - in the form of fastened arabesques; "pichak" - in the form of connected weaves; "shekaste" - in the form of untied arabesques; "katibei" - in the form of an associated inscription; "varamin"; "caleb-hashti" in the form of connected square frames; "derakhti" - in the form of intertwining trees; "sarvi" - the main element - cypress; "adamaki" - in the form of a pattern of human figures; "bakhtiyari"; "khushe-anguri" from intertwined bunches of grapes; "shahae gavazne kheyvandar" from linked figurines of deer; "hatame shirazi", reminiscent of inlays; "dastegul" from intertwined bouquets.

In addition to creating unique carpet products, the arabesque motif is used to create models of clothes, dishes, interiors, and even in landscape design.

Pattern creation technology

When creating an "arabesque" ornament, an ideal mathematical calculation is required, which is used to form absolutely accurate compositional elements of its elements and their alternation in an ornamental chain. The elements of the pattern are very complex in composition, often fit into each other. At the same time, it is also necessary to use mathematical knowledge, because the elements of arabesques are difficultly combined variants of various geometric shapes- circles, ovals, rectangles, hexagons, octagons, trapezoids, triangles, rhombuses, etc. Moreover, each type of element has its own color. With such a mathematical pattern, the background is never used for it.

Musical composition

In music, the term "arabesque" was first introduced in relation to a proper name for his work famous composer Robert Schumann. Later, the concept of "arabesque" began to be applied to a certain genre of instrumental music, as a rule, a work of small size, but very diverse, light, with an openwork interweaving of elements, rhythms, intonations, tempo, fragments of a melody. The intertwining melody of the arabesque was used in the work of the amazing French impressionist and symbolist composer Claude Debussy. Of the domestic composers, Alexandra Lyadova turned to this genre.

dance movement

What is "arabesque" in dance art? The arabesque, or rather the arabesque, is one of the main movements in classical choreography. In the classification of Agrippina Yakovlevna Vaganova, we meet four types of arabesque, and the Italian choreographer Enrico Cecchetti has five. These movements have a similar setting of the body, head, but differ in the position of the raised and retracted arms and legs.

From classical choreography, the modified arabesque was transferred to sports ballroom dancing and figure skating. It has a fairly long tradition of application in Indian belly dance.

Arabesque- a collection of works by Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol in two parts, compiled by the author. Published in the first half of January 1835 (censored permission - November 10, 1834). The collection is very diverse in content, hence the name: "arabesques" - a special type of ornament from geometric shapes, stylized leaves, flowers, animal elements, which arose in imitation of the Arabic style. The collection combined articles on annals, geography, art, as well as several works of art.

In the articles included in the collection "Arabesques" Gogol sets out his historical views and his views on literature and art. In the article "A few words about Pushkin", Gogol expressed his view of Pushkin as a great Russian national poet; in the fight against romantic aesthetics, Gogol outlines here the tasks facing Russian literature. In the article “On Little Russian Songs”, Gogol gave an assessment of folk art as an expression folk life and popular consciousness. In an article about Karl Bryullov's painting The Last Day of Pompeii, Gogol made a fundamental assessment of the phenomena of Russian art.

Part one

• Preface (1835)
• Sculpture, painting and music (1835)
• On the Middle Ages (1834)
• About teaching world history (1834)
• A Look at the Compilation of Little Russia (An Excerpt from the History of Little Russia. Volume I, Book I, Chapter 1) (1834)
• A few words about Pushkin (1835)
• On the architecture of the present time (1835)
• Al-Mamun (1835)

Arabesques. Various works by N. Gogol. Parts 1-2. St. Petersburg, printing house of the widow Plushard with her son, 1835. Censored permission of the collection - November 10, 1834.

Part 1:, 287 pages

Part 2:, 276 pages.

In one color coded brown cover of the era with embossed spine. Format: 21x13 cm. Rarity!

Bibliographic sources:

1. Smirnov–Sokolsky N.P. My Library, V.1, M., "Book", 1969, No. 606.

2. The Kilgour collection of Russian literature 1750-1920. Harvard-Cambridge, 1959, No. 342.

3. Books and manuscripts in the collection of M.S. Lesman. Annotated directory. Moscow, 1989, No. 616.

4. Collection of S.L. Markov. St. Petersburg, publishing house "Globus", 2007, No. 329.

5. Library D.V. Ulyaninsky. Bibliographic description. Volume III. Russian literature predominantly of the 19th century until the 80s. Moscow, 1915, No. 4146.

In 1832 literary activity Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol paused somewhat for all sorts of household and personal chores; but already in 1833 he again worked hard, and the result of the intensive creative work of these years were two literary collections. First came out "Arabesques" (two parts, St. Petersburg, 1835), where several articles of popular scientific content on history and art were placed, but at the same time three new stories, and three months later - "Mirgorod" (two parts, SPb., 1835), containing four stories. "Arabesques" were printed on January 20-22, 1835. The 1st part included: "Sculpture, painting and music"; "On the Middle Ages"; "Chapter of historical novel»; "On the Teaching of World History"; "Portrait"; "A look at the compilation of Little Russia"; "A few words about Pushkin"; "On the architecture of the present time"; "Al-Mamun". The 2nd part included: "Life"; "Schlozer, Miller and Herder"; "Nevsky Avenue"; "On Little Russian Songs"; "Thoughts on Geography"; "The last day of Pompeii"; "Prisoner"; "On the movement of peoples at the end of the 5th century"; "Diary of a Madman". For the first time, only Notes of a Madman appeared in this collection. Everything else was published earlier in various periodicals. From the end of 1833, Gogol was carried away by an idea as unrealizable as his previous plans for the service were: it seemed to him that he could act in the academic field. At that time, the opening of Kiev University was being prepared, and he dreamed of taking the department of history there, which he taught to girls at the Patriot Institute. Maksimovich was invited to Kyiv; Gogol thought of settling with him in Kyiv, he wanted to invite Pogodin there as well; in Kyiv, he finally imagined Russian Athens, where he himself thought of writing something unprecedented in world history, and at the same time studying Little Russian antiquity. To his chagrin, it turned out that the chair of history had been given to another person; but on the other hand, he was soon offered the same chair at St. Petersburg University, of course, thanks to the influence of his high literary friends. He really took this pulpit; once or twice he managed to give a spectacular lecture, but then the task turned out to be beyond his strength: he was discouraged by the indifference of students, the behind-the-scenes intrigues of professors who envied him, and most importantly, he was again carried away by work on Arabesques and Mirgorod.

Teaching became a burden for him. Gogol showed up sick and came to class with a bandaged silk scarf, complaining of constant toothache, often missed lectures, and then listened to the mocking and sour remarks of his superiors in his address ... Nikolai Vasilyevich hardly completed the course, took the exams and in early April 1835 , having asked for a vacation, he left for his family estate Vasilievka. Upon his return, in the autumn he submitted his resignation and permanently abandoned the professorship. It was, of course, a great presumption; but his guilt was not so great, if we recall that Gogol's plans did not seem strange either to his friends, among whom were Pogodin and Maksimovich, the professors themselves, or to the Ministry of Education, which found it possible to give a professorship to a young man who had finished the course of the gymnasium with sin in half ; the entire level of university science at that time was still so low. “I spat with the university,” he wrote to Pogodin on December 6, 1835, “and a month later I was again a carefree Cossack. Unrecognized, I ascended the pulpit, and unrecognized, I descend from it. But in these one and a half years - the years of my infamy, because the general opinion says that I did not take up my own business - in these one and a half years I took a lot out of there and added to the treasury of the soul. It was no longer childish thoughts, not the limited former circle of my information, but lofty thoughts full of truth and terrifying grandeur that agitated me ... "

Yes, the university was a school for Gogol himself. He plunged into the world of history with his characteristic passion, without any compromises and concessions. He opened there new world- the world of people's destinies, incessant movement, heroic deeds and events. This enriched him as a writer. But Gogol the historian, Gogol the scientist could not push Gogol the writer. The result of his study of history was a series of brilliant articles: “On the Middle Ages”, “On the Teaching of General History”, “Al-Mamun”, “Schlozer, Miller and Herder”, “On the Movement of Nations at the End of the 5th Century”, “A View of the Compilation Little Russia". The fact that the three stories appeared in Arabesques, surrounded by various articles and studies, obviously had to demonstrate that the author is at the level of European thinking in all areas - both as an artist and as a theorist, interpreting the problems of beauty, art, separation its various branches (“Sculpture, painting and music”), the correlation of religious epochs - paganism and Christianity (“Life”) - to this we must add numerous discussions on historical topics proper. These articles testify to Gogol’s many-sided erudition and advanced according to that time, views on history as a process of development and progress of peoples. But above all they are poetry. Like everything that Gogol wrote, his historical articles are animated by a brilliant, burning style, filled with that inextinguishable poetic pathos, which even now makes them a model of high verbal art. The cycle of the "Petersburg" stories of the writer is rooted in the mystical-romantic works of Hoffmann and Schiller, Maturin's "Melmoth the Wanderer" and Balzac's "The Human Comedy". Referring to the pictures of demonic life in Nevsky Prospekt, Gogol comprehends the reasons for her obsession and emptiness. "Nevsky Prospekt" is a metaphor for the hell that Satan builds on earth. The demon is trying to give the appearance of a light presence, and this was obeyed by a person who took deception for truth. The quirks of evil are unlimited in the illusion city. Once Gogol turned off Nevsky Prospekt and, passing by an uncurtained window of one of the houses, accidentally looked into it. In the back of a narrow, dimly lit room, a pale young man with curly blond hair sat motionless. His face expressed suffering, he thoughtfully looked ahead of him, as if not daring to move. Some paintings hung on the walls, an easel darkened in the corner. "Probably a poor artist," thought Gogol. It seemed to him that the fate of this young man, who probably came to the damp cold capital in a thirst for glory from some distant country, resembled his own fate. After all, he is as lonely as this young artist. During the years spent in St. Petersburg, he had to face bitter need, humiliation, envy, and experience a lot of grief and hostility. A picture of Nevsky Prospekt rose before my eyes, now unusually lively, teeming with smartly dressed regulars, with shining carriages rushing by, harnessed by hot, slender as an arrow horses, now plunging into an unfaithful twilight, in which need, suffering were hidden.

"Nevsky Prospekt" is a story about St. Petersburg, about cruel contrasts big city, about the death of the honest, gifted artist Piskarev and the well-being of the vulgar and self-satisfied lieutenant Pirogov. Gogol first called his artist Palitrin, but then changed his last name to Piskarev, thus emphasizing his modesty, his inconspicuous place in life, like a small inconspicuous fish. These semi-poor eccentrics Gogol met during his visits to the Academy of Arts. They were usually kind and shy, loved their art, naively believed in the justice and purity of the people around them. With heartache, Gogol excitedly told the tragedy of an artist who became a victim of his all-consuming passion. His Peruginova Bianca, so beautiful in the transparent glow of the evening artificial light, in fact turned out to be a rude and vulgar whore. The hero of the story, Piskarev, struck by the transformation of a beauty into an inhabitant of a brothel, thinks about the duality of a person, about the preference given to the "hellish spirit" and, in despair, commits suicide. Gogol painted a sad and, in its truth, harsh picture of his funeral, the funeral of a beggar, nobody right person. The story "Portrait" Gogol considered his unsuccessful attempt and later significantly revised it. In a new edition, it was published in the third book of the Sovremennik magazine for 1842. The prototype of the artist, who sent his painting from Italy to an exhibition in St. Petersburg, was A. A. Ivanov, who worked all his life on one painting - “The Appearance of Christ to the People”. His features were also reflected in the image of the artist who had gone to the monastery. In the article “Historical painter Ivanov”, included in the book “Selected passages from correspondence with friends”, Gogol wrote: “What an incomprehensible fate of this man! Already his case was, at last, explained to everyone. Everyone was convinced that the picture he was working on was an unprecedented phenomenon, they took part in the artist, they are fussing from all sides so that he would be given the means to finish it, so that the artist would not starve to death over it ... and still not a rumor spirit from St. Petersburg ... Ridiculous rumors have come here that the artists and the entire professorship of our academy of arts, fearing that Ivanov’s painting would not kill with itself everything that has hitherto been produced by our art, out of envy, they try to prevent him from being given funds for ending. It's a lie, I'm sure of it. Our artists are noble, and if they knew everything that poor Ivanov endured because of his unparalleled selflessness and love of work, at the risk of really starving to death, they would fraternally share their own money with him, and not just inspire others to do such a thing. cruel thing. And why should they be afraid of Ivanov? He goes his own way and is not a hindrance to anyone. He not only does not seek a professorial position and worldly benefits, but even simply does not seek anything, because he has long since died for everything in the world, except for his work ... No, until a true conversion to Christ has occurred in the artist himself, it is impossible to depict him the one on the canvas. Ivanov prayed to God to send him such a complete conversion, shed tears in silence, asking Him for the strength to fulfill the thought inspired by Him; and at this time they reproached him with slowness and hurried him! Ivanov asked God to incinerate in him with the fire of grace that cold callousness, which many of the best and the kindest people , and would inspire him to depict this appeal in such a way that even a non-Christian would be touched by looking at his picture; and at that time even people who knew him, even friends, reproached him, thinking that he was simply being lazy, and they seriously thought about whether it was possible to force him to finish the picture by starvation and taking away all means. The structure of the Notes of a Madman, which is in the form of a diary that consistently records the stages of the madness of the protagonist Poprishchin, is divided into a comic story of a titular adviser, a comic story of a madman who imagined himself a “found” heir to the Spanish throne, and a final entry, a passionate monologue of a tortured man. The tragedy of the hero, passed through the comic style of his monologue, is that in his ambitions he aims for something higher than the social and spiritual framework in which he is forced to exist. "I spit on everyone!" This is the height of misanthropy and hatred, the blackest envy. An impotent thirst for revenge. Fury in the desire to humiliate the whole world. And at the same time, a cry for help. Gogol's hero is feverishly looking for a way out of his unfortunate situation (he and his love are ridiculed), looking for a way out in exaltation above the one who offended him, in a purely material, class, visual leap. He cannot even pick up a title in order to avenge himself harder. So he grows up to the king. The king is not only a mockery of the table of ranks (there is no such rank), but also the mystery of poprishchi's thinking, its allegoricalness, because the king is Spanish, but there is no king in Spain, and the throne is empty. For the Russian reader, this fact was already a fairy tale, a myth, an incomprehensible dream, and it was into this dream (which was a reality for Europe in 1833) that Gogol's hero was transported. Reality breaks into Gogol's story and pushes Poprishchin's imagination, tells him: go for it! The throne in Spain is empty. You are the king! You are the true heir to the throne, you are the one whom everyone is waiting for and everyone is looking for, and who must finally take his place under the sun. And here is the first entry in the diary of the hero who found himself. “Today is the day of the greatest celebration! Spain has a king. He was found. That king is me!" Poprishchin makes his leap. As P.V. Annenkov, he once found an elderly man in Gogol's Petersburg apartment on Malaya Morskaya Street, talking about the habits of crazy people, a strict, almost logical sequence, seen in the development of their ridiculous ideas. Gogol sat down to him, listened attentively to his story, and when one of his friends began to call everyone home, Gogol objected, alluding to his visitor: “You go. .. They already know their hour and, when necessary, they will leave.” Most of the materials collected from the stories of an elderly man were later used by Gogol in the Notes of a Madman. The elderly stranger was probably an experienced psychiatrist. In any case, as modern experts point out, the “Letters of a Madman” clinically accurately describe the origin and development of schizophrenic delirium, focusing on one extraneous idea that has grown to a manic idee fixe. Important role the story features the "correspondence of dogs" borrowed from Hoffmann, which, along with the emancipation of the consciousness of the "madman", allows us to see the world of familiar phenomena in a naturally naked form. "Arabesques" are Arabic patterns that are a combination heterogeneous elements. Gogol declared the lack of unity, discord, discord both in the preface to the book, and then in the letters accompanying the gift copies. The Gogol collection brought together articles on history, geography, literature and art, as well as St. Petersburg stories. In the preface to Arabesques, Gogol emphasized: “This collection consists of plays written by me in different eras of my life. I didn't write them to order. They spoke from the heart, and I chose as the subject only that which struck me greatly. Between them, readers will no doubt find many young ones. I confess that I might not have admitted some plays to this collection at all if I had published it a year earlier, when I was more strict with my old works. But instead of sternly judging your past, it is much better to be inexorable to your present pursuits. It seems as unfair to destroy what we have written before, as to forget the bygone days of our youth. Moreover, if an essay contains two or three truths that have not yet been said, then the author has no right to hide it from the reader, and for two or three correct thoughts one can forgive the imperfection of the whole. In the evenings, Gogol usually stood at the desk and wrote. He liked to write on large sheets of office books, made of plain paper with leather spines, which are usually used to record incoming and outgoing papers in the offices. In these notebooks, Gogol sketched out draft, initial texts of his works, plans, ideas. In small, indistinct, somewhat feminine handwriting, he wrote very closely, leaving neither margins nor a scrap of free space, the entire page, without any system, without numbering, with reddish, as it were, somewhat faded ink. The letters were woven into long, monotonous lines, which sometimes rose or fell slightly, as if expressing the inner rhythm of the phrase. He made blots and corrections in thin, almost imperceptible letters above the line. Ideas and plans overtook each other, collided on the same page. Here is the beginning of the article "Sculpture, Painting and Music" sketched on the sheet, interrupted on the seventh line. Immediately carefully deduced “A story from a book called; "Moonlight in a broken attic window on Vasilyevsky Island in line 16." A few lines of an unfinished story about a street illuminated by the strange brilliance of a solitary lamp. And then the opening phrases of Nevsky Prospekt: ​​“There is nothing better than Nevsky Prospekt, at least in St. Petersburg ...” A few pages later, an outline of the article “Schletser, Miller and Herder”, followed by four lines from the end of “Diary of a Madman”. We seem to see here how generously Gogol's ideas swarmed, how inexhaustible his creative impulse, redundancy, and creative richness of the writer were. Along with work on works of art, he devoted a lot of time and effort to history, reading sources, scientific research, and monographs. In his notebooks there are extracts from rare books and sources, notes, notes of his own thoughts. Here is a discussion about the place of residence of the Slavic peoples, and notes “On the Varangians”, “Unions of European sovereigns with Russians”, “The Age of Louis XIV”, outlines of lectures - about Media and Persians, about “The spread of the Normans”, about “Italy before the Visigoths” and much more. How much selfless labor, tireless work, and careful study were needed to accumulate this mass of materials! In a lyrical note dedicated to the new, coming 1834, Gogol wrote: “Mysterious, inexplicable 1834! Where shall I mark you with great labors? Is it among this heap of houses piled one on top of the other, thundering streets, seething commercialism, this ugly heap of fashions, parades, officials, wild northern nights, brilliance and low colorlessness? Is it in my beautiful, ancient, promised Kyiv, crowned with multiple gardens, surrounded by my southern, beautiful, wonderful sky, intoxicating nights, where the mountain is strewn with shrubs with its seemingly harmonic cliffs, and my clean and fast, my Dnieper, washing away it ... » Gogol dreams of getting away from the commercialism of St. Petersburg, its tenement houses, glaring contradictions of brilliance and colorlessness, luxury and poverty. He turns to his genius, to the dream of universal harmony, beauty, human bliss: “Oh, do not be separated from me! Live on earth with me for at least two hours every day, like my beautiful brother. I will... I will! Life boils in me. My work will be inspired. A deity inaccessible to the earth will blow over them! I will do... Oh, kiss and bless me!” This lyrical confession, this poet's dream of a harmonious world, of human happiness, was all the more agitated and penetrating, the darker and more hopeless was all that unfair, base, corrupt that surrounded him. The dream of universal harmony, of the liberation of man from the vulgarity of his surroundings, was also reflected in a number of articles written with the same inspired pathos and soon included in the collection Arabesques. These articles are infused passionate love to a person, anxious concern for his fate in this mercantile world of ranks and gold, universal venality and fall: “Everything is conspiring against us,” wrote Gogol, “all this seductive chain of sophisticated inventions of luxury is trying harder and harder to drown out and lull our feelings. We yearn to save our poor soul, to escape from these terrible deceivers...”. Gogol first mentioned "Arabesques" in letters to M.P. Pogodin dated November 2 and December 14, 1834: "...terribly busy ... printing some things!" and “I print all sorts of things. All the writings and passages and thoughts that sometimes occupied me. Between them there are historical, already known and unknown. - I ask only you to look at them indulgently. They have a lot of young people." In early January 1835, Gogol sent a preface to A.A.S. Pushkin: “I am sending you a preface. Do me a favor, look through and if anything, then correct and change immediately with ink. After all, as far as you know, I have not yet written serious prefaces, and therefore I am completely inexperienced in this matter. It is not known whether Pushkin made any corrections to the text of his younger brother in literature. On January 22, 1835, Gogol sent a copy to A.A.S. Pushkin, noting in a letter: “Subtract ... and do me a favor, take a pencil in your pens and do not stop your indignation at the sight of mistakes, but the same hour they are all on your face. - I need it very much". On the same day copies of the Arabesques were sent to M.P. Pogodin and M.A. Maksimovich. M.P. Gogol wrote to Pogodin: “I am sending you all my stuff. Stroke her and pat her: there is a lot of childishness in her, and I quickly tried to throw her out into the light, in order to throw everything old out of my office at the same time, and, shaking myself off, start new life . Express your opinion on historical articles in some magazine. Better and more decent, I think, in an enlightenment magazine. Your word will help me. Because I also seem to have some scientific enemies. But fuck their mother!” M.A. Maksimovich Gogol informed: "I am sending you a confusion, a mixture of everything, porridge, in which there is butter, judge for yourself." V.G. Belinsky, in his article “On the Russian story and the stories of Mr. Gogol” (1835), did not highly appreciate the articles of the Arabesques devoted to history: “I don’t understand how you can compromise your literary name so thoughtlessly. Is it possible to translate, or, better to say, to paraphrase and re-parody some passages from the history of Miller, to mix them up with your own phrases, to write a scholarly article? in which case they are not comparable, also scholarship? .. ”The Arabesques did not have commercial success. In this regard, on March 23, 1835, Gogol wrote to M.P. Pogodin: “... Please print an announcement about Arabesques in Moskovskie Vedomosti, that this book aroused general curiosity, that the expense for it is terrible (No. 6, not a penny of profit has been received so far) and the like.” The publisher of "Arabesques" was Nikolai Vasilyevich himself. In his letters, he speaks irritably about Smirdin, complains about the booksellers. On October 7, 1835, Gogol complained to A.S. Pushkin: “Neither my “Arabesques” nor “Mirgorod” work at all. The devil knows what that means. Booksellers are the kind of people who, without any conscience, can be hung on the first tree. Subsequently, Gogol did not value most of the works included in the Arabesques very highly. On November 16 (28), 1836, he wrote from Paris to M.P. Pogodin: “I’m scared to remember all my dirty tricks. They appear to my eyes in a kind of formidable accusers. Oblivion, long oblivion asks the soul. And if such a moth appeared that would suddenly eat all the copies of The Inspector General, and with them Arabesques, Evenings and all other nonsense, and for a long time, no one would say anything about me, either in print or orally. words - I would thank fate. Only glory after death (for which, alas, I have done nothing so far) is familiar to the soul of a genuine poet. And modern glory is not worth a penny. In the article "Russian literature in 1841" V.G. Belinsky noted that in A. “Gogol moves from merry comedy to“ humor ”, which for him consists in the opposite of contemplation of true life, in contrast to the ideal of life - with the reality of life. And therefore his humor makes only simpletons or children laugh; people who have looked into the depths of life look at his paintings with sad reflection, with heavy anguish ... Because of these monstrous and ugly faces, they see other, fine-looking faces; this dirty reality leads them to the contemplation of ideal reality, and what is, more clearly represents to them what should be ... "

• The collection is very diverse in content, hence the name: " arabesque" - a special type of ornament from geometric shapes, stylized leaves, flowers, animal elements, which arose in imitation of the Arabic style.

In the articles included in the collection "Arabesques" Gogol sets out his historical views and his views on literature and art. In the article "A few words about Pushkin", Gogol expressed his view of Pushkin as a great Russian national poet; in the fight against romantic aesthetics, Gogol outlines here the tasks facing Russian literature. In the article "On Little Russian Songs" Gogol gave an assessment of folk art as an expression of folk life and folk consciousness. In an article about Karl Bryullov's painting The Last Day of Pompeii, Gogol made a fundamental assessment of the phenomena of Russian art.

Part one.

• Preface (1835)

• Sculpture, painting and music (1835)

• On the Middle Ages (1834)

• Chapter from a historical novel (1835)

• On the Teaching of General History (1834)

• Portrait (story)

• A Look at the Compilation of Little Russia (An Excerpt from the History of Little Russia. Volume I, Book I, Chapter 1) (1834)

• A few words about Pushkin (1835)

• On the architecture of the present time (1835)

• Al-Mamun (1835)

Hetman (novel)

The action of the novel takes place in the middle of the 17th century. Main character- Stepan Opage - historical person, Nizhyn colonel, information about which Gogol learned from "History of the Rus". Gogol worked on the novel in -1832, but was dissatisfied with what he had written and burned his work, sparing only two chapters. Several draft handwritten extracts from the novel have also survived, containing many inaccuracies.

In The Flowers of the North for 1831, an excerpt from the novel was printed under the title "Chapter from a historical novel." This passage, along with another passage - "The Bloody Bandura Player" Gogol placed in the collection "Arabesques", however, the end of the "Bloody Bandura Player" was not censored, so Gogol wrote a different ending. The original version was published according to the surviving author's proofreading, in the Niva magazine, 1917, No. 1

A look at the composition of Little Russia

• Historical Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol, written in -1834. Included in the collection "Arabesques".

• This article was supposed to precede the historical work of Gogol "History of Little Russia", unknown to this day. Gogol's biographers have never been able to find manuscripts or any material indicating that The History of Little Russia was written at all.

• In a letter to Mikhail Maksimovich dated November 9, 1833, Gogol wrote about his work: “Now I set about the history of our only poor Ukraine. Nothing is more soothing than history. My thoughts begin to flow quieter and leaner. It seems to me that I will write it, that I will say a lot of things that have not been said before me.

On January 30, 1834, Gogol placed in Severnaya pchela "Announcement about the publication of the history of Little Russia", asking him to send him materials on the history of Ukraine for the great work he had begun. However, by the beginning of March 1834 (despite the fact that even in a letter to M.A. Maksimovich dated February 12, Gogol promises to write the entire History of Little Russia "from beginning to end", "in six small or four large volumes") Gogol began to gradually lose interest in the work he had begun.

On the reasons for his cooling, Gogol wrote on March 6, 1834 to Izmail Sreznevsky, who expressed a desire to help with the materials: “I lost interest in our chronicles, trying in vain to find in them what I would like to find. Nowhere is there anything about that time, which should have been richer than all events. A people whose whole life consisted of movements, whom involuntarily (even if they were completely inactive by nature) neighbors, the position of the earth, the danger of being led to deeds and feats, this people ... I am dissatisfied with Polish historians, they say very little about these feats … And that's why every sound of the song speaks to me more vividly about the past.

Part two.

• Life (1835)

• Schlozer, Miller and Herder (1835)

• Nevsky Prospekt (1835)

• On Little Russian Songs (1834)

• Thoughts on Geography (A Few Thoughts on Teaching Geography to Children) (1831)

• The Last Day of Pompeii (1835)

• In 1835, two collections appeared in print: "Arabesques" and "World-City". From that time on, Gogol devoted himself entirely to writing.

  These stories are combined into one whole, first of all common theme, defined by Gogol as "a collision of dreams with essentiality" (reality). They are also related by the place of action - St. Petersburg, the capital city, in which social contradictions were especially prominent already in the 30s of the XIX century, during the development in the capital of "mercantile spirit", the pursuit of profit, predation, soulless calculation.

  In Nevsky Prospekt, Gogol tells the story of the artist Piskarev, an enthusiastic dreamer, before whose eyes appeared "the whole low, all the despicable life - a life full of emptiness and idleness ...". And Piskarev perishes as a tragic victim of the discord between dreams and reality.

  The story "Portrait" was later (in 1841) revised by Gogol, especially the second part. This is a sad story about the artist Chartkov, who ruined his talent in pursuit of wealth. "Gold became his passion, ideal, fear, pleasure, goal." Under the influence of gold, human qualities die in Chartkow, and the artist perishes in it, since the exploiting classes do not need genuine, realistic art; they need handicraft embellishment of themselves and the life in which they dominate.

  In Notes of a Madman and in the adjoining, although written later (in 1841), The Overcoat, Gogol refers to the theme raised by Pushkin in The Stationmaster, the theme " little man”, a poor petty official living in a society that regards people by rank and wealth.

  The senseless clerical service - copying papers - killed in Akaky Akakievich Bashmachkin every living thought and every human aspiration. But even in this downtrodden, humiliated petty official, a person wakes up when the goal of life appears in him - a new overcoat. “He,” writes Gogol, “has somehow become more alive, even firmer in character, like a man who has already defined and set himself a goal. From his face and from his actions doubt, indecision disappeared by itself ... "

  Did not have happier than a man than Akaky Akakievich when, finally, the tailor brought him a new overcoat. But the joy was short-lived. At night, when he was returning from a colleague, he was robbed: they took off his overcoat. In vain Akaky Akakievich sought help from a private bailiff, from a "significant person"; everywhere he met either complete indifference, or contempt and menacing shouts. Frightened by the reception at the " significant person”, the timid and downtrodden Akaki Akakievich fell ill with a nervous fever, which carried him to the grave. “A creature disappeared and disappeared,” Gogol notes, “unprotected by anyone, dear to no one, not interesting to anyone ...”.

  With great sympathy, Gogol showed a downtrodden “little man,” who answered the evil mockery of his colleagues with “penetrating” words: “Leave me. Why do you offend me, ”and in these penetrating words other words rang out:“ I am your brother.

  Two collections of Gogol's ("Mirgorod" and "Arabesques") served as the reason for the appearance of Belinsky's remarkable article "On the Russian story and Gogol's stories", published in the magazine "Telescope" for 1836. material from the site

  Defining the features of Gogol's work, Belinsky writes: “The excellent character of Mr. Gogol's story is simplicity of fiction, nationality, the perfect truth of life, originality and comic animation, always overcome by a deep feeling of sadness and despondency. The reason for all these qualities lies in one source: Mr. Gogol is a poet, a poet of real life. And if the first four qualities are inherent, according to Belinsky, "to all fine works”, then the latter - a special humor - is the originality of Gogol the writer.

  Belinsky sees in Gogol a realist writer, strong in his fidelity in portraying life. Each story by Gogol “makes you say: “How simple, ordinary, natural and true it all is, and, together, how original and new!”.

  Didn't find what you were looking for? Use the search

  On this page, material on the topics:

  • summary arabesques
  • arabesque goldeneye characteristic
  • goldeneye arabesque summary
  • what is the peculiarity of the stories mirgorod and arabesques
  • in 1835, two collections of N.V. Gogol appeared in print: