Since the minister was a very obese man, prone to apoplexy, he was warned with all sorts of precautions, avoiding causing dangerous excitement, that a very serious attempt was being prepared on his life. Seeing that the minister greeted the news calmly and even with a smile, they also reported the details: the assassination attempt should take place the next day, in the morning, when he leaves with a report; Several terrorists, already betrayed by the provocateur and now under the watchful eye of detectives, must gather at one o'clock at the entrance with bombs and revolvers and wait for his exit. Here they will be captured.
- Wait, - the minister was surprised, - how do they know that I will go at one o'clock in the afternoon with a report, when I myself learned about it only the third day?
The security chief threw up his hands vaguely.
“At one o'clock in the afternoon, your excellency.
Somewhat surprised, not even approving of the actions of the police, who had arranged everything so well, the minister shook his head and smiled gloomily with thick dark lips; and with the same smile, obediently, not wishing to interfere with the police in the future, he quickly packed up and left to spend the night in someone else's hospitable palace. They were also taken away from a dangerous house, near which bombers, his wife and two children will gather tomorrow.
While the lights were burning in a strange palace and friendly familiar faces bowed, smiled and were indignant, the dignitary felt a feeling of pleasant excitement - as if he had already been given or will now be given a large and unexpected reward. But the people dispersed, the lights went out, and through the mirrored windows the lacy and ghostly light of electric lamps fell on the ceiling and walls; a stranger to the house, with his paintings, statues and the silence that entered from the street, himself quiet and indefinite, he awakened a disturbing thought about the futility of locks, guards and walls. And then at night, in the silence and loneliness of someone else's bedroom, the dignitary became unbearably scared.
He had something with the kidneys, and with every strong excitement, his face, legs and arms poured and swelled, and from this he seemed to become even larger, even thicker and more massive. And now, towering over the crushed springs of the bed with a mountain of swollen flesh, he felt his swollen face with the anguish of a sick man and was persistently thinking about the cruel fate that people were preparing for him. He recalled, one after another, all the recent terrible cases when bombs were thrown at people of his dignified and even higher position, and the bombs tore the body to shreds, sprayed the brain on the dirty brick walls, knocked teeth out of the nests. And from these recollections, his own obese, sick body, spread out on the bed, seemed already alien, already experiencing the fiery force of the explosion; and it seemed as if the arms in the shoulder were separating from the body, the teeth were falling out, the brain was splitting into particles, the legs were numb and lie submissively, fingers up, like a dead man's. He stirred vigorously, breathed loudly, coughed so as not to sound like a dead man, surrounded himself with the lively noise of ringing springs, rustling blankets; and to show that he is completely alive, not a bit dead and far from death, like any other person, he bass loudly and abruptly in the silence and loneliness of the bedroom:
- Well done! Well done! Well done!
It was he who praised the detectives, the police and the soldiers, all those who guard his life and so timely, so cleverly prevented the murder. But moving, but praising, but grinning a violent crooked smile to express his mockery of the stupid terrorists-losers, he still did not believe in his salvation, in the fact that life would not suddenly, immediately, leave him. The death that people had planned for him and which was only in their thoughts, in their intentions, as if it had already stood here, and will stand, and will not leave until they are captured, their bombs are taken away from them and they are not imprisoned ... Over there, in that corner, she stands and does not leave - she cannot leave, like an obedient soldier, put on guard by someone's will and order.
- At one o'clock in the afternoon, your excellency! - the spoken phrase sounded, poured over all voices: now cheerfully mocking, now angry, now stubborn and stupid. It was as if they had put a hundred running gramophones in the bedroom, and all of them, one after the other, with the idiotic diligence of the machine, shouted the words ordered to them:
“At one o'clock, your excellency.
And this "tomorrow hour of the day", which until so recently did not differ from others, was only a calm movement of the hand on the dial of a gold watch, suddenly acquired an ominous persuasiveness, jumped out of the dial, began to live separately, stretched out like a huge black pillar, all my life cutting in two. As if no other hours existed either before him or after him, and he was only one, arrogant and arrogant, had the right to some kind of special existence.
- Well? What do you want? - through clenched teeth, the minister asked angrily.
The gramophones shouted:
- At one o'clock in the afternoon, your excellency! And the black pillar grinned and bowed.
Gritting his teeth, the minister got up on the bed and sat down, resting his face on his palms - positively he could not fall asleep on this disgusting night.
And with terrifying brightness, clutching his face with plump, perfumed palms, he imagined how he would get up tomorrow morning without knowing anything, then drink coffee without knowing anything, then dress in the hallway. And neither he, nor the doorman who served the fur coat, nor the footman who brought coffee, would know that it is completely pointless to drink coffee, to put on a fur coat, when in a few moments all this: the fur coat, and his body, and the coffee that is in it, will be destroyed by the explosion, taken by death. Here is a doorman opening a glass door ... And it is he, dear, kind, gentle doorman, who has blue soldier's eyes and orders in full chest, he himself, with his own hands, opens the terrible door - he opens it because he does not know anything. Everyone smiles because they don't know anything.
- Wow! He suddenly said loudly and slowly took his palms away from his face.
And, looking into the darkness, far in front of him, with a fixed, tense gaze, just as slowly stretched out his hand, groped for the horn and turned on the light. Then he got up and, without putting on his shoes, walked around the unfamiliar bedroom with bare feet on the carpet, found another horn from the wall lamp, and lit it. It became light and pleasant, and only the agitated bed with the blanket falling to the floor spoke of some horror that had not yet passed away.
In his nightclothes, with a tousled beard from restless movements, with angry eyes, the dignitary looked like any other angry old man who has insomnia and severe shortness of breath. As if the death that people were preparing for him exposed him, tore him away from the splendor and imposing splendor that surrounded him - and it was hard to believe that he had so much power, that this his body, such an ordinary, simple human body, should have it is terrible to die, in the fire and roar of a monstrous explosion. Without dressing and without feeling cold, he sat down in the first chair he came across, propped his tousled beard on his hand, and with concentration, in deep and calm thought, stared at the stucco unfamiliar ceiling.
So that's the thing! So that was why he was so frightened and so excited! So that's why she stands in the corner and does not go away and cannot go away!
- Fools! He said contemptuously and gravely.
- Fools! - he repeated louder and slightly turned his head towards the door so that those to whom it refers could hear. And this applied to those whom he recently called good fellows and who, with too much zeal, told him in detail about the impending assassination attempt.
“Well, of course,” he thought deeply, suddenly getting stronger and with a smooth thought, “after all, now that I’ve been told, I know and I’m scared, but then I would not know anything and calmly drink coffee. Well, and then, of course, this death - but am I so afraid of death? My kidneys hurt, and I’ll die someday, but I’m not afraid because I don’t know anything. And these fools said: at one o'clock, your excellency. And they thought, fools, that I would be happy, but instead she stood in the corner and did not leave. It does not go away, because this is my thought. And not death is terrible, but the knowledge of it; and it would be completely impossible to live if a person could quite accurately and definitely know the day and hour when he will die. And these fools warn: "At one o'clock, your excellency!" "
It became so easy and pleasant, as if someone had told him that he was completely immortal and would never die. And, again feeling himself strong and smart among this herd of fools that so senselessly and brazenly burst into the mystery of the future, he reflected on the bliss of ignorance with the heavy thoughts of an old, sick, experienced person. Nothing living, neither man nor beast, is given to know the day and hour of his death. He was sick recently, and the doctors told him that he was going to die, that the last orders had to be made - but he did not believe them and really survived. And in his youth it was like this: he got entangled in life and decided to commit suicide; I prepared the revolver, wrote the letters, and even set the hour for the suicide - and just before the very end I suddenly changed my mind. And always, at the very last moment, something may change, an unexpected accident may appear, and therefore no one can say to himself when he will die.
“At one o'clock, Your Excellency,” these amiable donkeys told him, and although they said only because death was averted, the mere knowledge of its possible hour filled him with horror. It is quite possible that one day they will kill him, but tomorrow this will not happen - tomorrow it will not happen - and he can sleep peacefully, like an immortal. Fools, they did not know what a great law they had turned from their place, what hole they had opened when they said with that idiotic courtesy of theirs: "At one o'clock, your excellency."
“No, not at one o'clock, Your Excellency, but no one knows when. It is not known when. What?
“Nothing,” the silence replied. - Nothing.
- No, you say something.
- Nothing, nothing. I say: tomorrow, at one o'clock.
And with a sudden acute anguish in his heart, he realized that he would not have any sleep, no peace, no joy, until this damned, black hour snatched from the dial had passed. Only a shadow of knowledge about what no living creature should know about stood there in the corner, and it was enough to obscure the light and overtake an impenetrable darkness of horror on a person. Once disturbed, the fear of death spread throughout the body, took root in the bones, pulled a pale head from every pore of the body.
He was no longer afraid of tomorrow's killers - they disappeared, forgotten, mingled with the crowd of hostile faces and phenomena surrounding his human life - but of something sudden and inevitable: an apoplectic stroke, a ruptured heart, some kind of thin, stupid aorta, which suddenly will not withstand the pressure of blood and will burst like a tightly pulled glove on plump fingers.
And the short, thick neck seemed terrible, and it was unbearable to look at the swollen short fingers, to feel how short they were, how they were full of deadly moisture. And if earlier, in the darkness, he had to move so as not to resemble a dead man, now, in this bright, cold-hostile, terrible light, it seemed terrible, impossible to move in order to get a cigarette - to call someone. Nerves strained. And each nerve seemed like a rearing curved wire, on top of which a small head with eyes madly goggled in horror, a convulsively gaping, suffocated, silent mouth. I can not breathe.
And suddenly in the darkness, among the dust and cobwebs, an electric bell came to life somewhere near the ceiling. The small metal tongue convulsively, in horror, beat against the edge of the ringing cup, fell silent - and again trembled in continuous horror and ringing. It was His Excellency calling from his room.
People were running around. Here and there, in the chandeliers and along the wall, individual bulbs flashed - there weren't many of them for light, but enough for shadows to appear. They appeared everywhere: they stood in the corners, stretched out along the ceiling; anxiously clinging to each elevation, they lay down to the walls; and it was difficult to understand where all these countless ugly, silent shadows, voiceless souls of mute things were located before.
2. To death by hanging
It turned out just as the police had planned. Four terrorists, three men and one woman, armed with bombs, hellish cars and revolvers, were seized at the very entrance, the fifth was found and arrested in a safe house, of which she was the mistress. At the same time, they seized a lot of dynamite, half-loaded bombs and weapons. All those arrested were very young: the eldest of the men was twenty-eight, the youngest of the women was only nineteen. They were tried in the same fortress where they were imprisoned after their arrest, they were tried quickly and dully, as was done at that merciless time.
At the trial, all five were calm, but very serious and very thoughtful: their contempt for the judges was so great that no one wanted to emphasize their courage with an extra smile or feigned expression of fun. They were exactly as calm as needed in order to protect their soul and its great dying darkness from someone else's, evil and hostile gaze. Sometimes they refused to answer questions, sometimes they answered - shortly, simply and precisely, as if they were not answering the judges, but statisticians to fill in some special tables. Three, one woman and two men, gave their real names, two refused to name them and remained unknown to the judges. And to everything that happened at the trial, they discovered that softened, through a haze, curiosity, which is characteristic of people who are either very seriously ill, or who are captured by one huge, all-consuming thought. They glanced quickly, caught on the fly some word more interesting than the others - and again continued to think, from the same place where the thoughts stopped.
The first to be placed from the judges was one of those who identified themselves - Sergei Golovin, the son of a retired colonel, himself a former officer. He was still a very young, blond, broad-shouldered youth, so healthy that neither prison nor the expectation of imminent death could erase the colors from his cheeks and expressions of young, happy naivety from his blue eyes. All the time he energetically pinched his shaggy blond beard, to which he was not yet accustomed, and relentlessly, squinting and blinking, looked out the window.
This happened at the end of winter, when, amid snow storms and dull frosty days, the near spring sent, like a forerunner, a clear, warm sunny day, or even just one hour, but such a spring, so eagerly young and sparkling that the sparrows on the street went crazy with joy and people seemed to be drunk. And now, in the upper dusty window, which had not been wiped since last summer, a very strange and beautiful sky could be seen: at first glance it seemed milky gray, smoky, and when you looked longer, blue began to appear in it, it began to turn blue deeper, everything brighter, everything is infinite. And the fact that it did not open all at once, but lurked chastely in the haze of transparent clouds, made him sweet, like the girl you love; and Sergei Golovin looked at the sky, pinched his beard, screwed up one or the other eye with long fluffy eyelashes and was thinking hard about something. Once he even quickly wiggled his fingers and frowned naively with some kind of joy - but he looked around and went out, like a spark that has been stepped on by his foot. And almost instantly an earthy, deathly blue appeared through the color of the cheeks, almost without turning into pallor; and the fluffy hair, painfully pulling out of the nest, clenched, as in a vice, in the whitened at the tip of the fingers. But the joy of life and spring was stronger - and in a few minutes the old, young, naive face was reaching for the spring sky.
There, in the sky, looked a young pale girl, unknown, nicknamed Musya. She was younger than Golovin, but she seemed older in her severity, in the blackness of her straight and proud eyes. Only a very thin, delicate neck and the same thin girlish hands spoke of her age, and even that elusive thing that is youth itself and that sounded so clear in her voice, pure, harmonious, flawlessly tuned like an expensive instrument, in every simple word , an exclamation opening its musical content. She was very pale, but not deathly pallor, but that special hot whiteness, when a huge, strong fire was kindled inside a person, and the body glowed transparently, like thin Sevres porcelain. She sat almost without moving, and only from time to time, with an imperceptible movement of her fingers, felt the deepened strip on the middle finger of her right hand, the trace of some recently removed ring. And she looked at the sky without affection and joyful memories, only because in the entire dirty state hall this blue piece of the sky was the most beautiful, pure and truthful - it did not pry anything out of her eyes.
The judges pitied Sergei Golovin, but they hated her.
Also, without moving, in a somewhat prim position, with her hands folded between her knees, sat her neighbor, an unknown, nicknamed Werner. If the face can be locked like a blind door, then the unknown person closed his face like an iron door, and hung an iron lock on it. He looked motionless down at the dirty plank floor, and it was impossible to understand whether he was calm or worried endlessly, thinking about something or listening to what the detectives were showing before the court. He was not tall; his facial features were delicate and noble. Delicate and beautiful so much that it reminded me of a moonlit night somewhere in the south, on the seashore, where cypresses and black shadows from them, at the same time awakened a feeling of enormous calm strength, irresistible firmness, cold and daring courage. The very politeness with which he gave short and precise answers seemed dangerous in his lips, in his half-bow; and if on all the others the prisoner's robe seemed ridiculous buffoonery, then it was not visible on it at all - so alien was the dress to the man. And although bombs and hellish machines were found on other terrorists, and Werner only had a black revolver, the judges considered him the main one for some reason and treated him with some deference, just as briefly and efficiently.
Following him, Vasily Kashirin, all consisted of one continuous, unbearable horror of death and the same desperate desire to contain this horror and not show it to the judges. From the very morning, as soon as they were taken to court, he began to choke from a rapid heartbeat; sweat appeared all the time on my forehead, just as sweaty and cold were my hands, and a cold sweaty shirt stuck to the body, linking his movements. With a supernatural effort of will, he forced his fingers not to tremble, his voice to be firm and distinct, his eyes calm. He saw nothing around him, voices were brought to him as if from a fog, and into this fog he sent his desperate efforts - to answer firmly, to answer loudly. But, having answered, he immediately forgot both the question and his answer, and again fought silently and terribly. And death appeared in him so clearly that the judges avoided looking at him, and it was difficult to determine his age, like that of a corpse that had already begun to decompose. According to his passport, he was only twenty-three years old. Once or twice Werner softly touched his knee with his hand, and each time he answered in one word:
- Nothing.
The most terrible thing for him was when he suddenly had an intolerable desire to scream - without words, an animal desperate cry. Then he softly touched Werner, and he, without raising his eyes, answered him softly:
- Nothing, Vasya. It will be over soon.
And, embracing everyone with a mother's caring eye, the fifth terrorist, Tanya Kovalchuk, languished in alarm. She never had children, she was still very young and red-cheeked, like Sergei Golovin, but she seemed like a mother to all these people: so caring, so infinitely loving were her views, her smile, her fears. She did not pay any attention to the trial, as to something completely foreign, and only listened to how others answered: was her voice trembling, was she afraid, not to give water.
She could not look at Vasya out of melancholy and only quietly wrung her plump fingers; she looked at Musya and Werner with pride and respect and made her face serious and focused, and to Sergei Golovin she tried to convey her smile.
“Darling, looking at the sky. Look, look, darling - she thought about Golovin. - And Vasya? What is it, my God, my God ... What am I to do with him? To say something - you will make it even worse: suddenly cry? "
And, like a quiet pond at dawn, reflecting every running cloud, she reflected on her plump, sweet, kind face every quick feeling, every thought of those four. She did not think at all that she was also being tried and also be hanged - she was deeply indifferent. It was in her apartment that they opened a warehouse for bombs and dynamite; and, oddly enough, it was she who met the police with shots and wounded one detective in the head.
The trial ended at eight o'clock, when it was already dark. The blue sky was gradually extinguished before the eyes of Musya and Sergei Golovin, but it did not turn pink, did not smile quietly, as on summer evenings, but became clouded, gray, suddenly became cold and wintry. Golovin sighed, stretched, looked out the window twice more, but there was already cold night darkness; and, continuing to pinch his beard, he began to look at the judges, soldiers with guns with childish curiosity, smiled at Tanya Kovalchuk. Musya, when the sky went out, calmly, without lowering her eyes to the ground, took them to a corner where a cobweb quietly swayed under the imperceptible pressure of the brass heating; and so it remained until the announcement of the verdict.
After the verdict, having said goodbye to the defenders in tailcoats and avoiding their helplessly bewildered, pitiful and guilty eyes, the accused collided for a minute at the door and exchanged short phrases.
- Nothing, Vasya. It will be over soon, ”said Werner.
- Yes, I, brother, nothing, - Kashirin answered loudly, calmly and even as if cheerfully.
Indeed, his face turned slightly pink and no longer seemed like the face of a decaying corpse.
“So the devil take them, after all, they did hang them,” Golovin cursed naively.
“As expected,” Werner replied calmly.
“Tomorrow the verdict will be announced in the final form, and we will be put together,” said Kovalchuk, consoling. - We will sit together until the execution.
Musya was silent. Then she moved forward decisively.
For the first time - in the "Literary and Artistic Almanac" publishing house "Rosehip", book. 5 (St. Petersburg: 1908), with a dedication to L.N.Tolstoy. In 1909, the story was included in the sixth volume of the Collected Works of L. Andreev, published by the publishing house "Rosehip", and at the same time it was published as a separate edition by IP Ladyzhnikov in Berlin.
An old, obese person, exhausted by illness, sits in someone else's house, in someone else's bedroom, in someone else's chair and examines his body in bewilderment, listens to his feelings, struggles and cannot completely master the thoughts in his head: “Fools! They think that by informing me of the impending assassination attempt, telling me the hour when I was to be blown to pieces by a bomb, they saved me from the fear of death! They, fools, think they saved me by secretly bringing me and my family to this strange house, where I am saved, where I am safe and peaceful! Death is not terrible, but the knowledge of it. If someone, probably, knew the day and hour when he should die, he would not be able to live with this knowledge. And they say to me: "At one o'clock, your excellency! .."
The minister, on whom the revolutionaries were preparing an assassination attempt, thinks on that night, which could be his last night, about the bliss of not knowing the end, as if someone had told him that he would never die.
The intruders, detained at the time set by the denunciation with bombs, hellish cars and revolvers at the entrance of the minister’s house, spend the last nights and days before being hanged, to which they will be hastily sentenced, thinking just as painful.
How can it be that they, young, strong, healthy, will die? And is it death? “Am I afraid of her, the devil? - thinks about death one of the five bombers, Sergei Golovin. - I feel sorry for my life! Great thing, no matter what the pessimists say. And what if the pessimist is hanged? And why did I have a beard? I didn’t grow, didn’t grow, and then suddenly I grew up - why? .. "
In addition to Sergei, the son of a retired colonel (his father, at the last meeting, wished him to meet death, like an officer on the battlefield), there are four more in the prison cell. The merchant's son Vasya Kashirin, giving all his strength not to show the horror of death crushing him to the executioners. Unknown by the nickname Werner, who was considered the instigator, who has his own mental judgment about death: it does not matter at all whether you killed or did not kill, but when you are killed, thousands are killed - you are alone, they are killed out of fear, it means that you won, and death for you are no more. Unknown by the nickname Musya, looking like a teenage boy, thin and pale, ready at the hour of execution to join the ranks of those bright, saints, the best who have been going through torture and execution to the high sky for centuries. If she had been shown her body after her death, she would have looked at it and said: “This is not me,” and the executioners, scientists and philosophers would have retreated with a shudder, saying: “Do not touch this place. It is holy! " The last among those sentenced to be hanged is Tanya Kovalchuk, who seemed like a mother to her like-minded people, so caring and loving were her eyes, smile, fears for them. She paid no attention to the trial and the verdict, completely forgot about herself and thought only of others.
The Estonian Janson, who can barely speak Russian, convicted of the murder of the owner and the attempted rape of the mistress (he did all this foolishly after hearing that something similar happened on a neighboring farm), are awaiting hanging on the same bar with five "political" ones, and Mikhail Golubets the nickname Gypsy, the last in a series of atrocities was the murder and robbery of three people, and the dark past - went into a mysterious depth. Misha himself with complete frankness calls himself a robber, flaunts both what he has done and what now awaits him. Janson, on the other hand, is paralyzed both by what he has done and by the verdict of the court and repeats the same thing to everyone, putting into one phrase everything that he cannot express: “I don’t need to be hanged”.
The hours and days pass. Until the moment when they are brought together and then taken together out of town, into the March forest - to be hanged, the condemned one by one master the thought that seems wild, ridiculous, incredible to each in his own way. The mechanical man Werner, who treated life as a complex chess problem, will instantly be cured of contempt for people, disgust even for their appearance: he will, as it were, rise above the world in a balloon - and be touched by how beautiful this world is. Musya dreams of one thing: so that people, in whose kindness she believes, would not regret her and would not be declared a heroine. She thinks of her comrades, with whom she is destined to die, as friends, into whose house she will enter with greetings on laughing lips. Seryozha exhausts his body with the gymnastics of the German doctor Müller, conquering fear with a keen sense of life in a young flexible body. Vasya Kashirin is close to insanity, all people seem to him like puppets, and, like a drowning man at a straw, he clutches at the words that come up in his memory from somewhere from early childhood: “Joy to all those who grieve,” he utters them sweetly ... but the emotion evaporates at once, he barely remembers the candles, the priest in a cassock, the icon and the hated father bowing down in the church. And he gets even more scared. Janson turns into a weak and stupid animal. And only Tsyganok swears and scoffs until the very last step to the gallows. He felt horror only when he saw that everyone was being led to death in pairs, and he would be hanged alone. And then Tanechka Kovalchuk gives way to him in a pair with Musya, and Tsyganok leads her by the arm, cautioning and feeling the way to death, as a man should lead a woman.
In "The Tale of the Seven Hanged" by L.N. Andreev examines the psychological state of the heroes sentenced to death. Each character of the work experiences the closeness of the hour of death in its own way. First, L.N. Andreev talks about the torment of an obese minister fleeing an assassination attempt by terrorists, which was reported to him. At first, while there were people around him, he experiences a feeling of pleasant excitement. Left alone, the minister plunges into an atmosphere of animal fear. He recalls recent incidents of assassination of high-ranking officials and literally identifies his body with those scraps of human flesh that he once saw at crime scenes.
L.N. Andreev does not spare artistic details for depicting naturalistic details: "... From these memories, his own fat, sick body, spread out on the bed, seemed to be a stranger, already experiencing the fiery force of an explosion." Analyzing his own psychological state, the minister realizes that he would calmly drink his coffee. The idea arises in the work. that death itself is not terrible, but its knowledge, especially if the day and hour of your end is indicated. The minister understands that there will be no rest for him until he survives this hour, at which the alleged assassination attempt is scheduled. The tension of the whole organism reaches such a force that he thinks that the aorta will not be able to withstand and that he may not physically cope with the growing excitement.
Further in the story of L.N. Andreev examines the fate of seven prisoners sentenced to death by hanging. Five of them are exactly the same terrorists who were caught in an unsuccessful assassination attempt. The writer gives them detailed portraits, in which, already during the trial scene, signs of approaching death are visible: sweat appears on the prisoners' foreheads, fingers tremble, there is a desire to scream, break fingers.
For prisoners, the special torture also becomes not so much the execution itself, during which they hold themselves courageously and with dignity, support each other, but a long wait.
L.N. Andreev consistently presents the reader with a whole gallery of images of terrorists. These are Tanya Kovapchuk, Musya, Werner, Sergei Golovin and Vasily Kashirin. The most difficult test before death for the heroes is a meeting with their parents. "The very execution in all its monstrous unusualness, in the madness that amazes the brain, seemed easier to the imagination and did not seem so terrible as these few minutes, short and incomprehensible, standing as if outside of time, as if outside of life itself" - this is how feelings convey Sergei Golovin before the execution of L.N. Andreev. The writer conveys the excited state of the hero before the date through a gesture: Sergei walks furiously around the camera, pinching his beard, frowning. However, the parents are trying to behave courageously and support Sergei. The father is in a state of tortured desperate firmness. Even my mother only kissed and sat down silently, did not cry, but smiled strangely. Only at the end of the date, when the parents zealously kiss Sergei, tears appear in their eyes. However, at the last minute, the father again supports his son and blesses him to die. In this artistically expressive scene, the writer glorifies the power of parental love, the most disinterested and selfless feeling in the world.
Only his mother comes to see Vasily Kashirin. As if in passing, we learn that his father is a rich merchant. Parents do not understand what their son is doing and condemn him. However, the mother still came to say goodbye. During the meeting, she does not seem to understand the current situation, asks why her son is cold, reproaches him in the last minutes of the meeting.
It is symbolic that they cry in different corners of the room, even in the face of death, talking about something empty and unnecessary. Only after the mother leaves the prison building, she clearly understands that her son will be hanged tomorrow. L.N. Andreev emphasizes that the mother's torment is, perhaps, a hundred times stronger than the experiences of the most doomed to execution. The old woman falls, crawls on the ice crust, and it seems to her that she is feasting at a wedding, and everyone is pouring and pouring wine on her. In this scene, where grief borders on an insane vision, all the power of despair of the heroine is conveyed, who will never attend her son's wedding, will not see him happy.
Tanya Kovalchuk worries primarily about her comrades. Musya is happy to die as a heroine and a martyr: “There is no doubt, no hesitation, she is accepted into the bosom, she is rightfully
2-10738 joins the ranks of those of the light who have been going through the fire, torture and executions to the high sky for ages ”. Bathing in her romantic dreams, she mentally stepped into immortality. Musya was ready for insanity for the sake of the triumph of a moral victory, for the sake of euphoria from the madness of her "feat". “I would even like to: go out alone in front of a whole regiment of soldiers and start shooting at them from a Browning. Let me be alone, and there are thousands of them, and I will not kill anyone. It is important that there are thousands of them. When thousands kill one, it means that this one won, ”the girl argues.
Sergei Golovin feels sorry for his young life. His fear was especially acute after exercise. While in the wild, he felt at these moments a special rise in cheerfulness. In the last hours, the hero feels that he seems to have been exposed: “There is no death yet, but there is no longer life, but there is something new, strikingly incomprehensible, and something completely devoid of meaning, or even meaningful, but so deep, mysterious and inhuman that it is impossible to open it. " Every thought and every movement in the face of death seems to the hero to be madness. Time for him seems to stop, and at this moment he immediately sees both life and death at the same time. However, Sergei, with an effort of will, still forces himself to do gymnastics.
Vasily Kashirin rushes about the cell, suffering as if from a toothache. It is noteworthy that he held up better than others when preparing for a terrorist attack, as he was inspired by the feeling of affirmation of "his daring and fearless will."
In prison, he is overwhelmed by his own impotence. Thus, L.N. Andreev shows how the situation with which the hero approaches death affects the person's very perception of this event.
The most intelligent member of the terrorist group is Werner, who speaks several languages, has an excellent memory and a strong will. He decided to treat death philosophically, since he did not know what fear is. At the trial, Werner does not think about death or even about life, but plays a difficult chess game. At the same time, he is not at all stopped by the fact that he may not finish the game. However, before being executed, he still mourns his comrades.
Together with the terrorists, two more murderers were sentenced to death: Ivan Yanson, the worker who sent his master to the next world, and the robber Mishka Tsyganka. Before dying, Janson closes in on himself and keeps repeating the same phrase: “I don’t need to be hanged”. The gypsy woman is offered to become an executioner himself and thereby buy himself a life, but he hesitates. Depicts in detail L.N. Andreev, the torment of the hero, who now presents himself as an executioner, then is horrified by these thoughts: "... It was getting dark and stuffy, and the heart was becoming a piece of non-melting ice, sending a fine dry shiver." Once, in a moment of extreme mental weakness, Tsyganok howls with a trembling wolf howl. And this animal howl strikes with horror and grief reigning in the soul of the Gypsy. If Janson is constantly in the same detached state, then the Gypsy, on the contrary, is haunted by contrasts: he either begs for mercy, then swears, then invigorates, then he is overwhelmed by wild cunning. “His human brain, placed on a monstrously sharp line between life and death, disintegrated into pieces like a lump of dry and weathered clay,” writes L.N. Andreev, thereby emphasizing the idea that the personality of a person sentenced to death begins to disintegrate during his lifetime. The recurring detail in the story is symbolic: “Janson constantly straightens a dirty red scarf around his neck. Tanya Kovalchuk invites the freezing Vasily Kashirin to tie a warm scarf around his neck, and Musa rubs a woolen collar on his neck. "
The main idea of the story is that each of us should think in the face of death about the main thing, that even the last minutes of human existence have a special meaning, perhaps the most important in life, revealing the essence of our personality. "The Tale of the Seven Hanged" is written in line with the mood of the early 20th century, when the theme of fate, fate, the opposition of life and death comes to the fore in literature. Cutting-edge, catastrophic, loss of social support - all these features determined the relevance of the story's problematics.
L. Andreev's story "The Tale of the Seven Hanged" is a very deep, psychological work. It tells the story of seven prisoners who were sentenced to death by hanging. All of them are real criminals, one of whom was a thief and rapist, the second was a robber, and five were political prisoners and terrorists.
The main task of the author is to show all the complexity and tragedy of the "path" from trial to execution, to analyze the existential experiences of these people, so different, but at the same time united by a common drama. The writer is not interested in their actions in the external world, for him something else is important - their inner life, their awareness that the end is near. Thus, the story turns into a kind of philosophical reflection of L. Andreev about death as such, its manifestations and essence, about how deep its connection with life is.
One of the main characters of the story was the terrorist Sergei Golovin, a young, strong and cheerful man. He loved life with all his heart in all its diversity. He knew how to enjoy every moment, every new day. He was warmed by the thought that he still had so many new and interesting things ahead of him, a long life full of joy and happiness, which he was going to devote to a big and important cause, to do something great and meaningful for himself and other people.
Oddly enough, but a man who devoted himself to the fight against the tsarist regime was the son of a retired colonel, and he himself also held a position directly related to the civil service, since he was an officer and took an oath of allegiance to the emperor. Given Golovin's romantic disposition and his desire to accomplish something sublime and worthy, one can explain his adherence to the ideas of terrorism. But now he is forced to pay harshly for the deeds he has committed, must go to death.
While the trial was going on, Golovin remained surprisingly calm, being in some kind of detached from reality. He gazed thoughtfully out the window, holding his gaze for a long time at the spring sun and the clouds slowly floating across the blue sky. He tried not to hear or notice what was happening in the courtroom. However, in some moments, he still lost control of himself and returned to a terrible reality. And at the same moment, the love of life awakened in his soul with renewed vigor, and Golovin's gaze was again filled with joy.
Towards the end, the hero begins to embrace the fear of death, no matter how diligently he tried to drown it out. And in those moments he began to think about the great value of life. Just before his execution, Golovin felt a strange state when a person had not yet died, but life had already left him. It was a state of emptiness and detachment. There was a feeling that the hero's body did not belong to him at all. After Golovin reached a new state - a kind of insight, he seemed to have touched something incomprehensibly high and unattainable until now. And then he felt calm, the joy of life returned to him. So, until the very execution, Golovin kept calm, purity of soul and love of life.
The ending of the story is terrible and beautiful at the same time. Life around him continued to go on as usual. Dawn came, the sun rose over the sea, and at the same moment the corpses of the hanged prisoners were taken away from the place of execution. Life went on, but the heroes will never be able to enjoy its beauty.
Several interesting compositions
- Composition of Proverbs and sayings - the seeds of folk wisdom reasoning
How often we hear from others, and we ourselves often use in speech, a lot of sayings and proverbs. No wonder they are called the seeds of the wisdom of the people. After all, it's true: the statements are short - the grains are also small, and the fruit grows from the grain
- Alexander 1 in the novel War and Peace characterization image
At the beginning of the novel, Alexander is 28 years old. He is still young, but not young and immature for a long time. The appearance of the sovereign is described by a pleasant appearance, full of youth and imperial grandeur. By nature, he is a noble knight
- Village prose Astafiev composition
The writer's active civic stance is reflected in the cycle of village prose. This is the author's desire to tell the whole world about the problems of the village, morality, nature. It is an aspiration to show the beauty of the patriarchal Russian countryside.
- Composition description of the painting After the massacre of Igor Svyatoslavich with the Polovtsy Vasnetsov
The idea of painting the painting "After the Battle of Igor Svyatoslavich with the Polovtsy" came to V.M. Vasnetsov, being in St. Petersburg, during his passion for the genre of folk legends. The plot of the monumental canvas is taken from authentic events.
- Analysis of the story of Chekhov Kashtanka essay
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov wrote the story "Kashtanka" in 1887. It was published in the Novoye Vremya newspaper. The main character of the work is the dog Kashtanka. Cute creature - a cross between a dachshund and a mongrel, with a fox's face
