The ideological and artistic originality of Belkin's stories. Thesis: The image of the narrator and the features of narration in “Belkin’s Tales” by A.S. Pushkin. List of used literature
“Belkin's Stories” are built on the principle of climactic tensions with “shooting” endings.
Russian prose of the 18th century, and especially the end of the century, gravitates towards moralizing, love and adventure novels,
Pushkin's prose was a qualitatively new stage in the development of Russian literature in general and Russian prose in particular.
Pushkin became an innovator in the Boldino autumn and as the author of the cycle “The Tale of the Late Ivan Petrovich Belkin” (five stories): “The Shot”, “The Blizzard”, “The Undertaker”, “The Station Agent” and “The Young Lady-Peasant”. But can it be said that the “naked simplicity” of style characteristic of these stories is an absolute innovation in Pushkin? Even in the Lyceum passage “My Thoughts about Shakhovsky,” one is struck by Pushkin’s purely laconicism: clarity, simplicity. Thoughts and thoughts - all this is already in his letters to friends, in the unfinished story “Arap of Peter the Great”. Of course, in “Belkin’s Stories” these qualities are brought to the highest level; Pushkin assures that Belkin did not compose these stories, but only wrote them down from other people, whose initials would have been a waste of effort to decipher. The caretaker was told by titular adviser A.G.N., Shot by Lieutenant Colonel I.L.P., Undertaker by clerk B.V., Blizzard and Young Lady by maiden K.I.T. These are random people, but their relationship with the subject of the story is clearly not random. And their voice is heard, as well as the voice of Belkin and Pushkin himself.
In these stories, the reader has to deal with all the narrators at once, and he cannot remove a single one. “Reality appears in changing forms of understanding” (V.V. Vinogradov). The plot and the process of telling it itself are told (S.G. Bocharov). Pushkin's main goal is to make the very lives of ordinary people who adhere to simple, common sense speak in prose. Gogol would soon resort to the same manner as the author of “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka,” stories allegedly told not by himself, but by the deacon of the Dikan Church, Foma Grigorievich, preceded by a preface by “the beekeeper Rudy Panka.”
The success of Belkin's Tales was extraordinary. Pushkin hid his authorship for a long time, and to the question of a later graduating lyceum student who adored him: “Whose stories are these?” - He answered that he didn’t know, but emphasized at the same time: the story should be written exactly like this: “briefly, simply, clearly.”
We can say that Pushkin reformed Russian prose. Karamzin’s prose was considered the best before him, but it was already outdated. Marlinsky’s prose did not have much future either - patterned, pompous, verbose.
Unlike “Little Tragedies,” where everything begins happily and ends unhappily, in “Belkin’s Tales,” on the contrary, events unfold with obstacles, troubles, and end happily. Pushkin uses romantic plots and reduces them to everyday endings, thereby wanting to say that no romantic fantasy can compete with the entertainingness of simple life situations, which it is time for literature to learn to appreciate.
The image of the ingenuous storyteller - Ivan Petrovich Belkin - is a whole event in literature. The birth of such a perspective on life will be picked up by the “natural school” and especially by Dostoevsky. And the image of Samson Vyrin in “The Station Agent”, a “little man” experiencing the tragedy of lonely old age, full of his insecurity, is continued in Gogol’s “The Overcoat”, in Dostoevsky’s “Poor People” and will become the subject of heated debate in literature for many years.
The problems of a work of art are always connected with the goal that the author sets for himself and with the genre of the work of art. Pushkin, as a transformer of Russian prose, was interested in both specific problems of Russian life and universal problems. Moreover, when developing more specific problems, Pushkin uses the genre of the short story, and more general ones - the genres of the novel and story. Among such problems it is necessary to name the role of the individual in history, the relationship between the nobility and the people, the problem of the old and new nobility (“The History of the Village of Goryukhina”, “Dubrovsky”, “The Captain’s Daughter”).
Pushkin's hero is, first of all, a living person with all his passions; moreover, Pushkin demonstratively refuses the romantic hero. Alexey from “The Young Lady-Peasant Woman” appears to have all the features of a romantic hero: “He was the first to appear gloomy and disappointed in front of them (the young ladies), the first to tell them about lost joys and about his faded youth; Moreover, he wore a black ring with the image of a death’s head.”
Pushkin's prose is characterized by a variety of plots: from the everyday descriptive “Arap of Peter the Great” to the fantastic “Undertaker” and “Queen of Spades”. The principle of depicting reality in Pushkin’s prose was objectivity. If a romantic, describing this or that event, seemed to pass it through the prism of his own imagination, thus enhancing the tragic or heroic effect of the work, then for Pushkin such a path was unacceptable. Therefore, he abandons the romantic plot and turns to everyday material. But at the same time, he does not follow the path of the authors of moralizing novels of the 18th century, sentimentalists or “didactics”; he refuses any sentimentalist plot.
: “If I had only obeyed my desire, I would certainly have begun to describe in all detail the meetings of young people, the growing mutual inclination and gullibility, activities, conversations; but I know that most of my readers would not share my pleasure with me. These details should generally seem cloying, so I’ll skip them...” (“The Young Lady-Peasant”). Thus, Pushkin, as a rule, refuses a detailed depiction of the feelings of the heroes, so characteristic of the prose of his predecessors. Pushkin is interested in life not only in any of its individual manifestations, but in all of life as a whole. That is why the plots of Pushkin’s prose are so far from the plots of the “didactics” and romantics. Most of Pushkin’s prose works tend to have an acute plot “with accumulation of weight towards the denouement”
Yu. N. Tynyanov even notes that the basis of some of Pushkin’s prose works is an anecdote (“Belkin’s Tales”, “The Queen of Spades”). But at the same time, Pushkin deliberately slows down the development of the plot, using a complicated composition, the image of the narrator, and other artistic techniques. All this is necessary to create a special tense atmosphere in the work, in which the effect of surprise is even stronger.
The conciseness of the plot presupposes the conciseness of the work itself. Indeed, Pushkin does not have large works: the largest, “The Captain's Daughter,” takes up just over a hundred pages. Most of Pushkin's prose works are characterized by clarity of composition: they are divided into chapters or these works can be easily divided into several parts, each of these parts can be perceived as a complete passage. This division is often carried out using special storytelling techniques. For example, “The Station Agent” can easily be divided into parts based on the narrator’s three meetings with the station agent Samson Vyrin. Often in Pushkin's prose one can distinguish an introduction and a conclusion. The introduction gives either the background history of the work or the characteristics of the main characters (in the first case - “Dubrovsky”, in the second - “The Young Lady-Peasant”). The conclusion always tells about the further fate of the heroes.
It has already been said that Pushkin opposed descriptiveness in prose. But nevertheless, descriptions of nature and interiors appear repeatedly in Pushkin’s prose. There is no doubt that Pushkin needs them to create a special atmosphere in the story, to characterize the hero’s state of mind. It should be noted that descriptions of nature in Pushkin’s prose always correspond to the general mood of the narrative.
II.1. The story "Shot".
II.2. The story "Blizzard".
II.3. The story "The Undertaker".
II.4. The story “The young lady is a peasant woman.”
II.5.The story “The Station Agent”
- CONCLUSION.
- Bibliography.
INTRODUCTION
Less than a year before his marriage, Pushkin spends autumn in Boldin, which went down in the history of literature under the name “Boldino”. It marked the most fruitful period in Pushkin’s creative life.
In August 1830, Pushkin went from St. Petersburg through Moscow to the Nizhny Novgorod province, to the family estate of his father Boldino to take it into his possession. It cannot be said that Pushkin did not attach importance to matters of this kind, but in practice he avoided them more than dealt with them. He had this even despite his desire. He only knew how to truly engage in poetry. It was the same this time. On August 31, the day of departure for Boldino, he wrote to Pletnev: “Autumn is approaching. This is my favorite time - my health usually gets stronger - the time for my literary works is coming.” Along with Pushkin’s new works, “Belkin’s Tales” were written in Boldin. Pushkin wrote them not just easily, but with pleasure, fun, enthusiasm, experiencing the joy of quick inspiration. Speaking about Krylov, Pushkin once remarked: “... a distinctive feature in our morals is some kind of cheerful cunning of the mind, mockery and a picturesque way of expressing ourselves” (VI, 14). This also sounds like his self-characterization. She approaches the author of "Belkin's Tales" in the most direct way.
“Belkin's Tales,” written in September-October 1830, were works of mature talent, feeling their strength and capable of creating in conditions of complete inner freedom. At the same time, it was precisely this folk, this Pushkin’s “cheerful cunning of the mind” that gave the character of poetic freedom to the stories. It is remarkable that this quality of the stories was immediately noted by readers - Pushkin’s contemporaries: both Baratynsky, who, according to Pushkin, “neighed and fought” while reading the stories, and Kuchelbecker, who wrote in his diary under the date May 20, 1833: “I read I read four stories by Pushkin... - and, reading the last one, I could already laugh with a good heart. I would like my friend to know about this someday; he would probably be pleased to hear that the works of his playful imagination sometimes dispelled the melancholy of his unfortunate friend.”.
The “Belkin” cycle itself was conceived by Pushkin in a fundamentally free manner; the combination of stories in it does not have a binding character; these are truly diverse and different types of Pushkin’s experiments in prose.
II. Ideological and artistic originality
"Tales of Belkin"
"Belkin's Tales" were published in October 1831. Pushkin published them anonymously, attributing their authorship to Ivan Petrovich Belkin, a modest, poorly educated man, the owner of the poor village of Goryukhin. One of Pushkin's acquaintances, seeing the newly published "Tales" on his desk and not suspecting that their author was Alexander Sergeevich himself, he asked him: who is this Belkin? “Whoever he is,” Pushkin answered, “you need to write stories this way: simply, briefly and clearly.” No one had ever written prose like this before Pushkin. The truth of life in his stories merged with high poetic art, revealed itself in a tangible way. real images and paintings. Pushkin resolutely rejected the “magic of red fiction” of sentimental prose with its sugary sweet affectation.
The creator of realistic prose, its flexible, precise, transparently clear language, was Pushkin himself. In the first Boldino autumn, he opened a new era in the development of our literature with “Belkin’s Tales”. Belinsky rated the “Tales” as a whole below their dignity, but he spoke enthusiastically about their poetic mastery: “these stories are entertaining, they cannot be read without pleasure; this comes from a charming style, from the art of storytelling”...
In terms of its mastery of a lively, fascinating and at the same time simple and extremely concise story, the “Tales” remained an excellent model for all subsequent Russian writers. Simplicity and conciseness - these two words expressively define the main features of the style of “Belkin’s Tales”. The plot of each story is outlined strictly and clearly, the development of action in them is vital and logical. Pushkin skillfully uses the technique of understatement and silence that captivates the reader, sometimes adding mystery to the events depicted, but nowhere does he violate the truth of life, does not contradict the “truth of passions.”
Pushkin eliminates everything that could slow down the development of the action and weaken the reader’s interest. Despite all the depth and breadth of their content, sometimes filled with acute drama, the stories are distinguished by extreme conciseness, so the action develops rapidly in them, without losing the naturalness of the course of events. Pushkin eliminates everything that could slow down the development of the action and weaken the reader’s interest. Refusing to give a detailed depiction of the clothing of Adrian and his daughters, he says, not without irony, that in this he deviates “from the custom adopted by modern novelists.” He limits himself to only noting that Adrian was dressed in a Russian caftan, and the girls wore yellow hats and red shoes , and the reader clearly sees the heroes of the story from these laconic strokes.
Sketching a portrait of a hero or a picture of nature, Pushkin achieves brightness and completeness with few, but bold and expressive strokes. Pictures of nature occupy him not in themselves, but in connection with the action of the story and the experiences of the hero. “The whole world revolves around man,” said Pushkin, and human destinies, first of all, attracted his attention. Depicting a raging snowstorm, he does not for a minute take the reader’s gaze off the hero of the story, wandering in the snowy darkness. The sad picture of autumn depicted in the epilogue “The Station Agent” intensifies the nagging feeling of pain for the fate of a lonely, abandoned old man.
Pictures of life unfold vividly and visibly before the reader, and it seems that the verbal shell disappears, and he sees living figures and hears their voices. Pushkin achieves this palpability of the image with a subtle and careful finishing of the form, and exactingly strict work on the word.
He always finds the most expressive and apt definition. His phrases are transparently clear, complete, every word in them is necessary: “Lisa entered the darkness of the grove. A dull, rolling noise greeted the girl. Her gaiety has subsided,” - not a single phrase, as from a song, can you remove a word. And for the first time in the history of Russian prose, in “Belkin’s Tales” the gems of the folk language sparkled so brightly, a bright, picturesque sound sounded, now slyly mocking, now dramatically tense, but always expressive, accurate and simple folk speech. The peasant, the artisan, the soldier, the serf girl - everyone spoke in their own language. The speech of each of them is unique, not a single false note disturbs its natural, truthful coloring.
It is also obvious that the “Tales” were written as independent works, not associated with Belkin’s authorship, which is why sometimes the narrator in the story speaks about himself as its author, for example: “I now intend to talk with kind readers.” These words are spoken by the titular adviser A.G.N., on whose behalf the story in the story “The Station Warden” is told. It is clear that in this case Belkin’s role as the author is eliminated. But, wanting to publish the story anonymously, Pushkin used the name and biography of the modest Goryukhin chronicler , the image of which, in all likelihood, arose after the stories were written.
"Belkin's Tales" are conceived as a parody of the canons of romantic literature. Pushkin takes common romantic plot cliches and “turns” them around. The conflict in The Stationary Caretaker is deliberately banal. A military man visits the permanent yard, seduces the daughter of the station superintendent and takes her away with him. According to all the canons of romantic literature, the story must certainly end tragically. Pushkin follows this tragedy almost to the very end, intensifying the tragedy. But at the very end it turns out that Dunya is happy, she has children and a loving husband. In “The Peasant Young Lady,” another common plot is taken - the enmity of two families. The situation is escalated, but then also resolved in a completely non-romantic way - everything turns out to be as good as possible. In Belkin's Tales, the romantic view of reality is contrasted with real life and common sense. Pushkin ridicules the “romantic inclinations” of his heroes, contrasts them with a normal life, in which there is joy, pleasant everyday things, and “rich estates”, and “connections”, which is not so little for a normal, fulfilling life.
II.1. The story "Shot"
In the story "Shot" the main character Silvio comes from the bygone era of romanticism. This is a handsome, strong, brave man with a solid, passionate character and an exotic non-Russian name, reminiscent of the mysterious and fatal heroes of the romantic poems of Byron and the young Pushkin. But he has to serve in an army hussar regiment in a boring province, it’s hard to row in Russian, drink, play cards with not very smart and educated officers, fight duels, until the proud Silvio met and entered into an unequal fight with a handsome, rich and a noble colleague who was happy in everything - service, rank, money, cards, love, even in a duel to the death. And the poor and humble brave Silvio had only the great, but poorly suited for ordinary life, art of marksmanship with a pistol. This is the inequality that leads to unhappiness.
And so the great shooter spent his whole life trying to turn happiness towards himself, change his fate, take revenge on the count, and defend his primacy and dignity. He is a lonely romantic, and all his means and methods are spectacular, fatal, romantic: revenge, a postponed duel, a sudden appearance with pistols to the lucky count, a new mortal duel and a double shot into the picture, beautifully putting an end to this story. Silvio defended his dignity under the count's pistol, stepped over his tragic romanticism and generously forgave the enemy.
But there is no place for this exotic romantic in the new everyday Russian life, and Silvio commits his last heroic act - he participates in the liberation uprising of the Greeks and dies in the battle with the Turks. Pushkin here parodies a romantic story common for that time, but the story of the persistent struggle of a brave, proud man for his happiness and dignity turned out to be very realistic and serious.
II.2. The story "Blizzard"
In the story "Blizzard" Zhukovsky's romantic ballad is parodied: unequal love, parental prohibition, night, winter, blizzard, secret wedding in a remote church, a sleigh along a snowy road carrying a rich bride to a poor groom, fatal confusion, the death of the groom. The district noblewoman Marya Gavrilovna fights for her happiness according to the schemes of French novels and German ballads. But everywhere reality overcomes the romantic book scheme and shines through it: the rich bride runs away from home in a warm hood, with a jewelry box and two bundles, cruel parents easily agree to an unequal marriage, the poor groom dies from wounds received in the Battle of Borodino; A wonderful description by a contemporary of this great Russian victory and the return of our heroic troops, joyful Russian women, the effervescence of new life and love. Real life is richer and more interesting than a romantic ballad; it constantly complements and corrects it. However, she is also much more severe and prosaic. And Marya Gavrilovna finally finds her real destiny. Life is the kingdom of chance. An old comic confusion with suitors leads the heroine of the story to a new, hard-won happiness.
II.3. The story "The Undertaker".
IN "Undertaker" Pushkin once again returned to Mozart's opera Don Giovanni. Adrian Prokhorov also invites the dead to visit him, but this unexpected party at the undertaker’s is not connected with love adventures, but with his gloomy craft, which leads to everyday communication with death and the dead. That is, Pushkin here, from the everyday and even comic side, unexpectedly approaches the very serious topic of “A Feast in the Time of Plague.” A living person devotes himself to death, funerals, the dead; he is offended to hear the reproaches of the living and easily invites his dead clients to his housewarming party. Mozart's opera and the terrible stories of the romantics are parodied.
But all these romantic horrors are mundane, they have become ordinary life in St. Petersburg, part of profession and commerce. The kulak-merchant soul of the undertaker has become so coarsened in sad occupations that it does not even feel horror at the appearance of otherworldly guests. Adrian only remembers in what category and in what coffins he buried them, what his profit was. And the appearance of the dead does not at all change the thoughts, conscience and life of the undertaker; he was only glad to learn that it was a drunken heavy dream, and calmly began to live on and just as successfully engage in his gloomy profession. Such is the undertaker’s happiness, which allowed us not only to look into his calloused soul, but also to see a picturesque corner of real St. Petersburg life.
II.4. The story “The young lady is a peasant woman.”
Young Peasant Lady"- a small elegant sitcom with dressing up in the French style, unfolding in a Russian noble estate. But she kindly, funny and witty parodies the famous tragedy - Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. For two rich Russian neighbor gentlemen, Muromsky and Berestov, one a pompous Anglomaniac, the other a bearish admirer of everything Russian, have long been at odds over some trifle. Meanwhile, their beloved children, young beautiful Alexey Berestov and Liza Muromskaya, are the same age and rich heirs. According to all worldly wisdom, they should get married and unite the fortunes and lands of their fathers.
But stubborn Russian enmity prevents such a simple solution, and the young people have to secretly meet and fall in love through an intricate comedy and masquerade of dressing up the young lady Liza as the peasant Akulina. However, their real happiness depends not on this fascinating village romance, but on the timidity of the scanty filly, who threw old Muromsky onto the frozen ground while hunting. The old people made peace, became friends and decided everything for the young people. There was no need for all these vaudeville disguises, correspondence, secret love meetings between the young master and the imaginary peasant woman. All these complex romantic moves of the love of the new Romeo and Juliet were canceled by a simple happy coincidence. Their happiness was ordinary, and there was no Shakespearean tragedy or romanticism in it.
II. 5. The story “The Station Agent”
In the cycle of “Belkin’s Tales” the center and peak are "The Station Agent". In essence, in terms of its plot, expressiveness, complex, capacious theme and ingenious composition, in terms of the characters themselves, this is already a small, condensed novel that influenced subsequent Russian prose and gave birth to Gogol’s story “The Overcoat.” The people here are depicted as simple, and their story itself would be simple if various everyday circumstances had not interfered with it. Famous German engravings with the story of a prodigal son who left his old father, squandered all his money, went into poverty, returned home and was joyfully met and forgiven by his kind father, show in which direction the plot of the story could develop. However, the action has its own very real logic, which contradicts flat worldly wisdom and biblical moral teaching.
The above stories were... the first
His experience. They...for the most part
They are fair and heard from different people.
A. Pushkin. Belkin's stories
“The Stories of the Late Ivan Petrovich Belkin” were written by A. S. Pushkin in 1830 during the famous Boldino Autumn and include five stories: “The Shot,” “The Blizzard,” “The Undertaker,” “The Station Warden,” and “The Young Lady-Peasant.” This cycle is preceded by a preface “From the Publisher”, from which we learn that these works are based on real events that were told to Ivan Petrovich Belkin by “various persons”.
In fact, "Belkin's Tales" were conceived by A. S. Pushkin as a parody of the canons that had developed in romantic literature. Having laughed, the writer chooses the most common romantic plots, carefully builds them, and in the end discourages the reader with a completely unexpected ending. So in the stories “The Shot” and “The Young Lady-Peasant” in the finale, through the efforts of Pushkin, we expect a real tragedy, which should serve as a logical outcome of the events escalated during the plot, but in fact everything ends surprisingly happily.
The plot of the story “The Station Warden” develops completely in the spirit of sentimental novels: the hussar wins the trust of the stationmaster and by deception takes his young beautiful daughter with him to the capital. The subsequent experiences, illness, search and death of the old man are undoubtedly tragic. Thinking that we have guessed the author’s intention, we expect that Dunya will eventually end up on the capital’s street, abandoned by her former lover, useless to anyone, but everything turns out differently. Only on the last page do we learn that the girl is happy, rich, she has a loving husband and three wonderful children.
The story "The Undertaker" is a parody of the common plot cliches of novels full of mysticism and secrets of the afterlife. The undertaker Adrian Prokhorov, offended by the hint of unscrupulousness in his work, rashly decides to invite not his fellow artisans to the housewarming, but the “Orthodox dead.” Naturally, those invited accepted the offer, and Adrian had a hard time among the dead. whom he once buried - they are very proud and touchy. And again the writer laughs at the reader (or with the reader?), who has fallen for the bait of his expectations. Everything that happened to Adriyan turns out to be a dream.
The actions of the heroines of the stories "Blizzard" and "The Young Lady - Peasant" are largely determined by reading French novels, and this also explains their aspirations and hopes. In Belkin's Tales, Pushkin contrasts real life and common sense with a romantic view of reality. No books can replace the brightness and diversity of real life: its joys and sorrows, everyday little things and global conflicts, patterns and surprises. The writer claims that life is not only completely incomprehensible, but also incredibly interesting, but only those who trust it can understand this, and will not try to build their existence according to the cliches and cliches of romantic literature.
Belkin's stories (1830) are Pushkin's first completed prose works, the cycle consists of five works: “The Shot”, “The Station Agent”, “The Blizzard”, “The Undertaker”, “The Young Lady - Peasant”. They are preceded by a preface “From the publisher.” In the preface, Pushkin took on the role of publisher and publisher of the Tales, signing his initials “A.P.” He attributed the authorship of the ideas for the stories to the provincial landowner Ivan Petrovich Belkin. Belkin, in turn, put on paper the stories that other people told him - “The Caretaker” was told to him by a titular adviser, “The Shot” by a lieutenant colonel, “The Undertaker” by a clerk, and “Blizzard” and “Peasant Woman” by the girl K .I.T. Pushkin creates the illusion of the reality of the events taking place, documenting that the stories are not the fruit of Belkin’s own invention, but actually happened. Having outlined the connection between the narrators and the content of the stories (the girl told two love stories, the lieutenant colonel about military life), Pushkin motivated the nature of the narrative and its style. However, the figure of Belkin, which unites all the stories, unites them all. Belkin himself was once a military man, retired, settled in the village, occasionally traveling to the city on business and stopping at post stations. Belkin is generally a characteristic face of Russian life. Ivan Petrovich's horizons are limited; by nature he is a meek and unsociable person. Like any village old-timer, Belkin develops boredom by hearing about incidents that bring something poetic into his monotonously prosaic existence. That is why the events that Belkin narrates look truly romantic in his eyes - they have everything: duels, secret love, passions. Belkin is attracted by a bright, varied life. Extraordinary events occurred in the destinies of the heroes; Belkin himself did not experience anything similar, but this does not cancel his desire for romance. Trusting, however, the role of the main narrator to Belkin, Pushkin is not removed from the narrative. Due to the fact that the presence of both Pushkin and Belkin is revealed in the stories, their diversity clearly appears. The stories can be considered a “Belkin” cycle, because it is impossible to read them without taking into account the figure of Belkin. However, Pushkin, as it were, “hides behind” the figure of Belkin, but still does not give him a word. Belkin's role is to romanticize characters and situations, while the author, on the contrary, reveals the real content and dual meaning of events. So Silvio in the mouth of one is a romantic devil, and for the other he is a low avenger. For the sake of an insignificant goal, for the sake of humiliating another and his own self-affirmation, Silvio ruins his own life.
Slyly refusing authorship, Pushkin created a multi-stage stylistic structure, two opposing stylistic layers - going back to sentimentalism, morality, romanticism and a refuting, parodying layer. At the same time, Pushkin remains a supporter of objectivism - the hero is known from his words, from the words of his antagonist and from the observer-narrator.
In connection with the combination of stories into one cycle, the question of genre originality arises here. Researchers are inclined to believe that the genre is close to the novel; some consider it to be a story genre. However, the stories themselves represent 5 unique short stories. The difference between Pushkin's and the traditional Western short story is that in the first the folk-epic tendency prevailed, while in the latter the epic and the European short story are little consistent with each other.