Roman kys summary. “Kys” Tatyana Tolstaya

The city was renamed in honor of the current chief. Ordinary people are called darlings, who praise their leader for everything he gives them. And Fyodor Kuzmich took on a lot of work. He passes off all the achievements of the past as his own, becoming the owner of a unique library. While the main people were thrown back by the Explosion into the early Middle Ages. This is the plot of Tatyana Tolstoy’s novel “Kys”. The summary describes how Fyodor Kuzmich invented the wheel, came up with letters, taught mere mortals to catch mice, and even rewrote the classics, again passing them off as his own novels.

It is noteworthy that all chapters of the novel are named with letters of the Old Russian alphabet.

Consequences of the Explosion

The consequences after the Explosion are one of those inevitable troubles that manifests itself in the majority of surviving darlings. The summary of “Kysi” describes various flaws that appear among residents after the cataclysm.

For example, some people have ears covering their whole body, some people have grown cockscombs, and some people have one and a half faces.

A separate caste in this new world is the Former. These are the ones who survived the Explosion. In Tolstoy’s “Kysi” (this is always mentioned in the chapter summaries), these people became practically immortal. At the same time, they don’t age one bit.

Stoker Nikita

One of the key positions in the new world is a stoker. On the pages of Tolstoy’s novel “Kys”, a brief summary of which is described here, his role is played by Nikita Ivanovich. He is also one of the Old Ones. Shortly before the Explosion, he was a very old man who believed that he did not have much time left. But after the cataclysm he was transformed. Now the whole city depends on him.

The main character of the novel is Benedict. Nikita patronizes him. By the way, he also wanted to become a stoker, but his mother insisted that he take an easier job. Scribe. Almost every day on his way to work, Benedict meets Reborns. This is another caste of the new world, which is also described in the summary of Tolstoy’s novel “Kys”. Moreover, it is unknown whether they are considered people or not. Their face is human, but their entire body is covered with fur, and they run on all fours. And on each foot they wear a real felt boot.

But most of all, the inhabitants of this new world are afraid of Kysi. This is an unknown monster that supposedly can suddenly attack. For example, in the forest, and destroy a person at once. Having torn the main vein known only to her, she draws out her entire mind. The person returns back - outwardly without any changes. However, internally it is completely different. Begins to walk in his sleep, especially under the moon.

True, some in this world claim that Kysi does not exist. The summary of the book describes how the stoker Nikita makes such conclusions.

Working day

An important part of the novel is the description of the traditional working day. Benedict's job is to copy the works of Fyodor Kuzmich on birch bark. Tatyana Tolstaya describes this work in detail in “Kysi”. The summary of the chapters mentions that fairy tales, for example, about Kolobok, as well as poems and more serious works, have to be rewritten.

At the same time, Benedict dreams of the girl Olga, whom he sees every morning. She is carried in a sleigh to work. Admiring her beauty, he sometimes draws her.

It is interesting that the society also preserved old books that existed before the Explosion. But they say that they glow as if from radiation. Therefore, if someone’s house is found, the Orderlies on the Red Sleigh immediately go after him. They are the most feared. After treatment, no one ever returned to them.

At lunch everyone goes to the dining room. The menu is familiar - mouse soup.

An important event in the life of Benedict and his colleagues is the visit of Fyodor Kuzmich himself, who somehow comes to their hut. At that time, the head of state presented the employees with his own painting “Demon”.

New Year

In the summary of "Kysi" it should be mentioned that by the middle of the story, Benedict and all the other residents are preparing to celebrate the New Year. According to the new decree, it should be celebrated on March 1. To celebrate the holiday with dignity, Benedict catches mice throughout the house, and then exchanges them for all sorts of goodies. A special deficiency is plaques. You need to stand behind them at night, the main thing is not to oversleep your place.

But just before the New Year, Benedict becomes seriously ill. At first he sees Kys in the window. Then Nikita Ivanovich appears on the threshold and saves him from harm. For a week Benedict lies in a fever, and the stoker takes care of him.

By March 8, the main character is recovering. And then a new decree comes out. Celebrating March 8 is a women's holiday. Benedict congratulates all the women at work, and asks Olenka for her hand in marriage. She agrees.

Meanwhile, Nikita Ivanovich and his friend the woman with scallops invite Benedict to visit, where they show him old books. They turn out to be completely harmless. But most importantly, it turns out that all the works that they are rewriting were not composed by Fyodor Kuzmich, but by other people who lived before the Explosion.

Pushkin is our everything

Nikita Ivanovich has high hopes for Benedict. He hopes that the son of an educated woman will also show inclinations. The stoker asks him to hew wood from a tree unknown to the main character, Pushkin.

Benedict does not understand much, but begins to show interest in what the Formers tell. While working on Pushkin, he discovers one of the consequences. Small, barely noticeable tail. I have to agree to cut him off.

At this time, his personal life was improving. He meets Olya's parents. It turns out that her father is the Chief Orderly, and the whole family is scratching with its claws under the table. This is their Consequence.

Wedding

Benedikt and Olya are getting married. The main character moves to a large mansion with the parents of his new wife. Gradually he sinks and becomes more and more lazy. He stops going to work because he lives well. He has a huge library at his disposal. He reads everything - from the classics to books on gardening.

When all the romances in the father-in-law's house end, he is at a loss as to what to do next. He has fun with his young wife for a week, and then starts to get bored again. This is how Tatyana Tolstaya describes the family life of the main character. "Kys", a summary of which is given in this article, tells that Benedict finds himself a new occupation. He goes with the Orderlies to seize books that are kept by people. Benya himself inadvertently kills one of the darlings with a terrible hook.

Revolution

Meanwhile, Benedict's father-in-law is inciting him to start a revolution. Together they overthrow the power of Fyodor Kuzmich by killing him. The tyrant is overthrown, and Olya's father, having become the Chief Orderly, writes his first decree. In it, he decides that from now on he will live in the Red Tower, doubles his security, and forbids anyone to approach him within 100 arshins. And anyone who violates this order is ordered to be killed immediately with a hook. The city is renamed after him.

Benedict is hopeful at first, hoping for change to come. For example, he wants to allow everyone to read books printed before the Explosion. But he quickly changes his mind. Begins to fear that people will start tearing out pages and ruining books. And he refuses this idea.

Discord in the family

A happy event occurs in Benedict's family. Olya gives birth to triplets. But one of the cubs immediately disappears. Having fallen out, it rolls into some kind of crevice. Nobody saw him again. There is a serious quarrel with his father-in-law, who calls him Kysya. Many are beginning to notice that Benya really looks like this monster. He even had a tail.

As a result, the Chief Orderly decides to execute Nikita Ivanovich, since one of the degenerates finds out where gasoline can be obtained from. They tie the stoker to the Pushkin statue and try to set it on fire, but he spews out flames and burns the entire city to the ground.

Analysis of the novel by Tatyana Tolstoy

T. Tolstaya in “Kysa,” a summary of which you just read, links the main issue with the image of an unknown monster. What kind of Kys this is, no one knows for sure. Some researchers of the work are convinced that Kys is a combination of all the base instincts that exist in the human soul.

Others argue that Tolstaya was trying to portray the image of a restless Russian soul, which poses insoluble questions and cannot find answers to them. This version is confirmed by the fact that Kys creeps up on Benedict every time he thinks about the meaning of life.

Problems of the novel

The main problem of the novel is the characters’ search for their lost spirituality, as well as inner peace and harmony. The continuity of generations is gone, and because of this, many historical connections are broken.

According to most literary scholars, this is a novel about unfulfilled hopes and unfulfilled expectations in life that collide with the cruel truth of life. Tolstaya argues in her work that no matter how lofty the final goal may be, not all means are acceptable to achieve it.

It is also a novel about compassion, justice and human sensitivity. Respect of people for each other, self-sacrifice. The author ensures that the reader, satiated with literary delights, turns to elementary truths and again explores the basic laws of human existence. She suggests giving up snobbery, seeing the bottomless truth under the flowery foam.

"Kys" is considered one of the key novels in the work of this Russian writer. This is a post-apocalyptic utopia, imbued with sarcasm and irony. The language of the work looks special - it is full of colloquial and rude expressions, as well as obscene language. The characters themselves communicate with each other in a fictitious cartoon dialect. The language of the heroes is one of the author's inventions. There are also many neologisms in the novel, specially invented by Tatyana Tolstaya for this book.

Ekimtseva Olga

This work is the result of work at the Khabarovsk Research and Production Complex

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Non-state educational institution

"Secondary school "Rosna"

Essay

Genre originality and stylistic features of the novel “Kys” by T. Tolstoy

Completed by: Ekimtseva Olga

9th grade student

Scientific supervisor: Travina N. O.

teacher of Russian language and literature

NOU secondary school "Rosna"

Khabarovsk

2010

Introduction……………………………………………………………………………….3

Tatiana Tolstaya. The evolution of creativity: from essay to novel……………….8

Genre originality and stylistic features of the novel “Kys”...19

The ideological content of the novel……………………………………………...19

Poetics of the novel……………………………………………………………..22

Symbolistic images of the novel………………………………………..26

Stylistic features……………………………………………………………31

Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………….36

References………………………………………………………...38

Introduction

The choice of the topic of our essay, related to the definition of genre and consideration of the stylistic originality of one of the most original works of modern literature, is not accidental. The novel “Kys” has been little studied. A relatively small number of works are devoted to it, in which researchers in various aspects approach both the definition of the genre and the analysis of the style of the novel.

An object - genre diversity and stylistic features of the novel “Kys”.

Item - studying the genre diversity and stylistic features of Tatyana Tolstoy’s novel “Kys”.

Target - analyze a little-studied work of modern Russian literature.

The relevance of the study is due to the fact that one of the main problems of the 20th century is the rethinking of human life in the coordinates of a non-classical worldview. The latter in literature corresponds to certain genre forms, radically new or evoked at the call of history from the depths of cultural memory. Such an iconic genre is undoubtedly dystopia, which enjoyed increased popularity in the past century, especially in the initial and final stages of the Soviet era.

“Kys” is an unusual book; it touches on real problems. And the way in which these problems are presented is unique. There is a lot of fiction and fantasy here. But all this is cleverly disguised under the cover of humor and some indifference to everything that is happening. There is no authorial intervention in the plot here. There is a kind of childish, fairy-tale spontaneity going on throughout the entire book, and the absurdities of the plot make us smile. The story is similar to a fairy tale, but as they say: “A fairy tale is a lie, but there is a hint in it...”. The book is specific, it concentrates three times: from the past through the present to the future. The light of past days is extinguished, nothing is visible in the darkness of the present, and obscurity preserves the road to the future.

Tatiana Tolstoy's novel looks like a dystopia, but in reality it is a formal encyclopedia of Russian life. The plot, a story about ancient Rus' re-emerging from the nuclear wreckage of Moscow some year, is clearly inspired by Chernobyl - “Kys” began in 1986. However, this traditionally fantastic move for Tolstoy is just a method of so-called detachment, an opportunity to look at the whole truth of Russian life as if from the outside. The result was great.

First of all, Tolstaya highlights such an important component of Russian reality as constant mutation, imaginary, fragility of the supposedly solid order of things. In Russia, as in the novel “Kys”, there are certainly some “former”, “former” ones - because the ground keeps slipping away from under one’s feet, going crookedly and downwards. Tolstoy's heroes cannot in any way coincide with the changeable nature, not only of the environment but also of their own. They are left with only the names of things, but not the things themselves.

One of the main stylistic features of the novel is its intertextuality.

The intertextuality of the novel “Kys” is also manifested in its appeal to the genres of folk verbal creativity (legends, folk tales). Tolstoy creates a special fairy-tale world.

The main feature of this world is that the fantastic here smoothly turns into the natural, while, however, losing the symbol of “miracle”. The miracle here is the natural.

The fantastic beginnings intertwined with reality in “Kysi” are reminiscent of Bulgakov’s “The Master and Margarita,” where the real world is not separated from the fantastic world; they are one whole.

Also, according to rumors from the residents of Fedora-Kuzmichsk, far in the east lives a white princess, Bird Paulin, with half-face-length eyes and a “human red mouth,” who loves herself so much that she turns her head and kisses herself all over. The images of these two creatures remain outside the main plot narrative, but are mentioned so often that the inquisitive reader begins to guess: isn’t Kys an unmaterialized embodiment of unconscious human fears, and the princely Bird Paulin a reflection of their hopes and subconscious thirst for the beauty of life?

Intertextuality is also embodied in the linguistic plane of the text, in which almost all language levels are present: high, neutral, colloquial and vernacular. According to N. Ivanova, in the novel the author’s speech is deliberately supplanted by the words of the characters. There are often monster words, such as PHILOSOPHY, ONEVERSTETSKE ABRAZAVANIE RINISSANCE and the like, words are fragments of the “old language”. In our opinion, here we can see a warning, concern for the state of the modern Russian language, which can turn into the same monster without norms and rules.

This essay is dedicated to such a multifaceted work. “Kys” is also interesting as Tatyana Tolstoy’s first romantic experience.

Thus, based on the above, in our work we will use methods and techniques of linguistic (philological) text analysis, the purpose of which is to find out how a work of art is created with the help of figurative means of language, to identify the aesthetic, philosophical, informational significance of the text. 1

1. A method of putting forward a hypothesis that is confirmed or refuted by expressed imagery and stylistic devices;
2. Analysis of the means of creating imagery and artistic decisions of the author, which allow us to derive a certain hypothesis of understanding

1 The use of knowledge from different areas of life in the analysis is currently used quite widely; it is no coincidence that linguistic analysis of a literary text is gradually being renamed philological analysis, which is emphasized by the commonality of sciences in the search for truth.

1. The method is semantic-stylistic, which takes into account deviations from language rules, combinations of subject and connotative 2 elements of the text, the possibility of contextual polysemy of words, building up the semantic elements of words using special stylistic devices;
2. Causal 3 a method that is based on the principle of causal explanation of phenomena and includes all the diversity of relationships of a single work with socio-historical reality and the biographical situation of the time of creation.

Since methods are rarely used in their “pure” form, we will combine them as necessary. And since linguistic analysis can also include other components based on facts from history, literary criticism, and psychology, we will introduce into the structure of our abstract:

- Dating. History of the text.

- Biographical situation.

– Perception and responses of contemporaries.

So, let us formulate the main objectives of this work:

1. To study the characteristic features of Tatyana Tolstoy’s work using the example of her first novel;
2. Consider the novel as a dystopia during the Soviet era;
3. Determine whether a work belongs to postmodernism;
4. Consider the stylistic originality of the novel;

_____________________________

2 Connotation is a peripheral part of the lexical meaning, optional, containing information about the personality of the speaker, including his emotional state, communication situation, character, attitude of the speaker to the interlocutor and the subject of speech. In the sphere of connotation, various components are distinguished - connotants, differing in functional orientation (to the inner world of a person, to language and to reality external to language), and therefore they are divided into main types: emotional, evaluative, figurative, expressive.

3 Causal - from lat. Causa - reason.

1. Explore the features of the author’s narrative language.

You may like “Kys” or not (many prefer simple plots without allegories and stylizations), but it will definitely surprise and delight - this book is very skillfully and cleverly written.

1. Tatiana Tolstaya. The evolution of creativity: from essay to novel

Tatyana Nikitichna Tolstaya was born on May 3, 1951 in Leningrad. Granddaughter on one side - the writer A.N. Tolstoy and poetess N.V. Krandievskaya, according to another - translator M.L. Lozinsky, daughter of academician-philologist N.I. Tolstoy.

Graduated from the Department of Classical Philology at Leningrad University.

Having married a Muscovite, she moved to Moscow and worked as a proofreader. T. Tolstoy's first story "They were sitting on the golden porch..." was published in the magazine "Aurora" in 1983. Since then, 19 stories have been published, including the short story "Plot". Thirteen of them compiled a collection of stories “They sat on the golden porch...” (Fakir, “Circle”, “Potere”, “Dear Shura”, “Okkervil River”, etc.) In 1988 - “Somnambulist in the Fog”.

Tolstoy is referred to as a “new wave” in literature, called one of the bright names of “artistic prose”, which has its roots in the “game prose” of Bulgakov and Olesha, which brought with it parody, buffoonery, celebration, and the eccentricity of the author’s “I.”

He says about himself: “I am interested in people “from the margins,” that is, to whom we are usually deaf, whom we perceive as ridiculous, unable to hear their speeches, unable to discern their pain. They pass away from life. ", having understood little, often not receiving something important, and leaving, they are perplexed like children: the holiday is over, but where are the gifts? And life was a gift, and they themselves were a gift, but no one explained this to them."

In recent years, Tatyana Tolstaya has been living and working in Princeton (USA), teaching Russian literature at universities.

Any texts by Tolstoy are complete, detailed works. Whatever she writes about, everything is seen through the prism of the writer’s subjective view. She is equally interested in everyday life, history, any human face, and any banal object. In one interview, Tatyana Tolstaya says: “...for me the only way to cope with the despondency of any reality is to poeticize it.”

Dense, densely populated women's prose juxtaposes with masterly subjunctive historical stories and caustic essays about life. In one case this“...young people of unknown occupations, and an old man with a guitar, and ninth-grader poets, and actors who turned out to be drivers, and drivers who turned out to be actors, and one demobilized ballerina... and ladies in diamonds, and unrecognized jewelers, and nobody’s girls with requests in their eyes , and half-educated philosophers, and a deacon from Novorossiysk ... ". In a different - “...the bird of God...poops on the hand of the villain. Klyak!and Pushkin is alive. Yes, he’s not just alive, but with an old, trembling hand he hits a nasty red-haired, burry boy on the head. Clack! History took a different path. Little Volodenka grew into a loyal citizen. In his old age he loved to visit noble maidens. He especially patronized the big-eyed ones and for some reason called them all Nadka. Well, essays are, well, essays. Portraits of contemporaries and reflections on various things.

The author of the preface to the collection “If you love - you don’t,” Vladimir Novikov wrote: “The design of all the stories is universal, delicately honed, but the same. This, of course, is also a skill and a considerable one, but such skill is confusing, raising suspicions of insincerity, of writing the same story with different characters taking turns appearing on the same stage. At the second minute of each story by Tatyana Tolstoy, a slight half-smile appears on the reader’s face, at the fourth minute he, unable to restrain himself, laughs out loud, at the sixth he becomes sad, and at the eighth he takes a deep and long breath, holding back a tear.

Of course, it’s powerfully written and a pleasure to read, but – I’ll go back to where I started – truly Russian literature has always been suffering from the intuitive, eager to reveal the meaning of being, and sensual literature for the pleasure of reading is not quite a Russian tradition.” .

In the book "Two. Miscellaneous." (2001)turned out to be those essays of hers that for some reason were not included in The Day. Namely: "Gribbby from here!" - about how Tatyana Nikitichna bought salted milk mushrooms; “The country needs currency” - about how Tatyana Nikitichna was arrested; “About Grisha and Masha” - this is how Tatyana Nikitichna tried to bake a cake. Have you noticed that she makes up jokes about herself? You noticed, of course. But there were also in “The Day” jokes. But what was not there were lyrical investigations, which are the texts about the Titanic and Princess Anastasia. These are not reviews, stories or essays, but a “story” for an ideal glossy magazine (which we didn’t have, that’s why the writer composed them for the Russian Telegraph). What does she care about these passengers of the Titanic or the dead princess? But no, since she writes, she loves them not at the “dollar-line” rate, but for real. This is perhaps the most amazing thing property of Tatiana Tolstoy.

When these essays by Tolstoy appeared in periodicals, they evoked mixed feelings among readers. I didn’t want to agree with everything she said. There was a general feeling that this was not her genre. There is nothing surprising in this, of course: who would evaluate, say, Blok’s poems on the same scale as his newspaper articles. Now this idea has changed significantly, and for the better: collected in one book, Tolstoy’s essays are winning. How, by the way, Blok’s articles won in the collected works: it is clear that they were not accidental. And one more circumstance played a role: calling the collection of her essays “Day,” Tolstaya gave it a subtitle: “Personal,” which introduced an appropriate note, so to speak, of the necessary secondary nature of what was collected. Like, in prose, in my art, I am a poet, but here I am a citizen, and in this capacity I also have an indisputable right to vote.

The voice of Russian citizen Tatyana Tolstoy, of course, sounds in its own way and cannot be confused with anyone else. One of the themes of Tolstoy's journalism is the denunciation of post-Soviet life in its cultural, or rather anti-cultural, manifestations. The notorious new Russians are the heroes of these articles by Tolstoy (the article is called “What open space: a look through the fly”):

“The world of a man, offered by publishers, is sad and simple: a desert, and in the middle there is a pillar that always falls, even if you prop it up with a stick. This “man” was never a boy, did not put anything together from cubes, did not leaf through picture books, did not write poetry, and did not tell ghost stories to his friends in the pioneer camp. He never cried over the frailty of the world - “small, his throat is sore” - and dad accordingly did not read to him “the prophetic Oleg.” And he didn’t have a dad, and now he doesn’t have to take oranges to the hospital across the city. He has neither sisters nor brothers..."

When reading this text, it is worth remembering, however, that the magazine for men is published in Russian in Moscow, but its publishers are Americans who are simply exporting their product through the line of so-called cultural imperialism. In Tolstoy’s book, it’s not so much the philippics that are interesting addressed to the new Russians, how many of her statements are about America. There is a certain philosophy here .

The fact is that Tolstoy’s essays and her very pathos may seem extremely anti-American. Yes, judging solely by the text, it is so. One can, of course, say that Tatyana Tolstaya does not condemn and ridicule America, but American popular culture. But the fact is that (judging at least from this book) in it, in America, Tolstaya finds nothing but mass culture, that there is nothing else there. And much more poison was poured on America, and much more concentrated, than on the insignificant, for all their money, new Russians.

Articles such as “Nikolaevskaya America” - about the war against smoking in the States, “There will be no cinema” - about Monica Gate, “I will sue, torture, like Pol Pot Kampuchea” - about the passion of Americans for lawsuits - are quite caustic, but they could have been written by Americans - not the way Tolstaya writes (for only she writes that way), but still written, and from the same satirical angle. But the article “Ice and Fire” is no longer something anti-, but, so to speak, super-American. She, in a way, encroaches on sacred things. And this shrine is the mouse Mickey Mouse, the emblematic hero of Disney cartoons.

On one occasion, now not worth mentioning, Tatyana Tolstoy, when she was a teacher at an American university, had the occasion to speak mockingly about this beloved American emblem, “the national rodent,” as she writes. An unexpected reaction followed:

"Don't touch the mouse!" - the student shouted in a ringing voice, clenching her fists. - “Do you love this stuffed animal?” - I was inadvertently surprised. - “Yes!” - all 15 people shouted. - “National pride, we won’t allow anyone!” ... “Disney is our childhood!” Thinking it was funny, I told my friend, an American liberal professor, about it. He didn't laugh, but became stern. “Don’t offend Mickey Mouse,” he said reproachfully. - “But you, as a liberal...” - “Don’t! Mickey Mouse is the foundation of our democracy, the cementing mortar of the nation.” I tried to incite him into treason: “Well, what if it’s between us... To be honest?... Do you love him?” The professor thought about it. Sixty-five years of his life had clearly passed before his inner gaze. Something flashed in his face... He opened his mouth... “Yes!” I love him! I love!" .

It is clear that this text is hyperbole and grotesque. It is clear that the object of satire is not the national mouse (called, among other things, a monster and a reptile), but the conformity of consciousness, stamped by mass culture, which is completely commercialized. It is also known that mass consciousness, governed by collective myths, can become a social danger of catastrophic proportions, and it is not without reason that at the end of this Tolstoy’s article an image of Soviet people appears, unanimously condemning the Trotskyist-Bukharin gang of imperialist mercenaries. All this is true, but the word “myth” can also be used in another sense - not alien to Tatyana Tolstoy herself.

Here we need to return from Tolstoy the essayist and publicist to Tolstoy the writer. Here is what academic researchers Leiderman and Lipovetsky write about her prose:

“The demonstrative fabulousness of her poetics is noteworthy. In Tolstoy's prose there is a metamorphosis of cultural myths into cultural fairy tales. ...the demythologization of the myth of Culture and the remythologization of its fragments are being consistently carried out. The new myth, born as a result of this operation, knows about its conditionality and optionality, about its creation - and hence its fragility. This is no longer a myth, but a fairy tale: the harmony of the mythological world order here looks extremely conditional and is replaced by a purely aesthetic attitude towards what, in the context of the myth, was seen as a negation of order, chaos.” .

This is where the main question arises in connection with Tolstoy’s American - or anti-American - articles: how, having so masterfully used the poetics of fairy tales, playing with myth in her own work, does she not want to see myth and fairy tales in the culture of another country, even denies this culture right to mythological roots? Yes, in fact, it is impossible to talk at all about any other countries and other myths, because the mythological space is one and indivisible. The American Mickey Mouse is the same Ivanushka the Fool, that is, the strong defeating the weak, this is Charlie Chaplin, this is, finally, David against Goliath!

We can say that Tolstaya is demythologizing American culture, but she doesn’t come up with anything from the wreckage of it. And it’s clear why: American life cannot serve as the basis for her artistic work - Tolstaya is a Russian writer, not an American one. She is unable to creatively sublimate her irritation with America. Russia causes her no less irritation (to say the least), but this is her own, familiar from childhood - just like from childhood. A person who has not had an American childhood - be he a poet or just a herald - will remain indifferent to Mickey Mouse.

Yes, but Tatyana Tolstaya is by no means indifferent to this very national mouse: she is indignant, not to say angry. There are, in my opinion, two reasons for this. That's what we'll talk about.

The first reason for a Russian writer’s repulsion from the West (in this case, Tatyana Tolstoy from America): a certain national complex. Dostoevsky noticed this in one of his best works, “Winter Notes on Summer Impressions.” There he wrote in particular:

“The Frenchman has no reason, and even to have it would be considered the greatest misfortune for himself.” This phrase was written by Fonvizin back in the last century. All similar phrases that endear foreigners, even if they still occur today, contain something irresistibly pleasant for us Russians. Here you can hear some kind of revenge for something past and bad. What is the reason for this not so strange phenomenon, Dostoevsky does not directly say, but he partly blurts it out. It seems that this secret dislike comes from the disappointment of the Russian person in Europe, in the West in general. But this disappointment presupposes, by definition, a previous fascination. This process stems from absentee, behind-the-eye admiration - and from the inevitable, at every opportunity, attempts to imitate and reproduce. As Dostoevsky immediately writes: “Squealing and lying with delight is our very first thing; look, after two years we go our separate ways, hanging our noses.”

Do we need to remind you that the closest experience of such delight was the post-Soviet period, with its illusions and collapses? Time for the reproduction, in the new Russian way, of Western democracy and market economy. But the result, frankly speaking, is more than mediocre, leaving an intelligent person with nothing but writing poisonous feuilletons about the new Russians, their morals, customs and tastes.

And the main thing is that an intelligent Russian person found out, having directly become acquainted with the West itself, having learned its, so to speak, humble prose, that democracy and a market economy there, of course, exist, but the presence of such did not at all lead to the flourishing of a high-brow, “high-browed” culture. Disneyland and its main inhabitant, Mickey Mouse, are considered the highest cultural achievement. The real West is not the same as it was imagined in Westernizing Russian dreams. And when a Russian person meets the real, real West, he comes to the conclusion that the West, strictly speaking - his, the Westernized West - did not exist and does not exist.

Herzen wrote about this in “The Past and Thoughts.” In our time, the most impressive example of such annihilation West a priori and the West a posteriori gave S.S. Averintsev, who saw with horror that the Ring of the Nibelungs was being staged incorrectly in Vienna.

Therefore, in Tatyana Tolstoy’s novel “Kys” the following dialogues occur:

Need a photocopier. - This is Lev Lvovich, gloomy.

Right, but the irony is...

The irony is that there is no West.

What do you mean no! - Lev Lvovich got angry. - The West is always there.

But we cannot know about this.

Well, what do you think, - Nikita Ivanovich asks, - well, if you had a fax and a photocopier... What would you do with them? How are you going to fight for freedom by fax? Well?

Have mercy. Yes, very simple. I take Durer's album. This is for example. I take a photocopier and make a copy. I reproduce. I take a fax and send a copy to the West. There they look: what is it! Their national treasure. They faxed me: return the national treasure this minute! And I tell them: come and take it. Volodya. So much for international contacts, diplomatic negotiations, and whatever you want! Coffee, paved roads.... Shirts with cufflinks. Conferences...

Confrontations...

Humanitarian rice polished...

Porn video...

Jeans...

Terrorists...

Necessarily. Complaints to the UN. Political hunger strikes. International Court of Justice in The Hague.

There is no Hague.

Lev Lvovich shook his head violently, even the candle flame began to flicker:

Don't upset me, Nikita Ivanovich. Don't say such terrible things. This is Domostroy.

No Hague, my dear. And it wasn't.

What’s also remarkable about this dialogue is that it parodies the conversations of intellectuals from “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”: Caesar explains to the captain the artistic delights of “Battleship Potemkin,” and the captain in response expresses his complete readiness to devour the worm-eaten meat that started the famous sailor rebellion.

Let us immediately note that “Kys” at the lexical level reproduces the verbal fabric of Solzhenitsyn’s story, and plot-wise it reproduces Nabokov’s novel “Invitation to Execution”.

There is, it seems to me, another reason for Tolstoy’s repulsion from the Western mouse diet. This is precisely her intense and almost organic Westernism. She is worried and, perhaps, seduced by Nabokov's fate. Her stories masterfully reproduce Nabokov's intonations, and, perhaps, plots as well. The ghosts of some enticing possibilities are revealed to Tolstoy by this bilingual snake.

What convinces most of this, oddly enough, is Tolstoy’s article - no, not about Nabokov, but about the phenomenon of Andrei Makin - that same Russian who, having learned a foreign language from a French grandmother stuck in Soviet Russia, managed to become French in France writer. In any case, a successful French writer.

Tatyana Tolstaya pays special attention to this bastard (or, in Western terms, bastard) - a large, forty-page article entitled “Russian man at a rendezvous.” By God, Makin himself is of no artistic interest. Much more interesting is Tolstoy’s interest in him. She writes:

“Makin is not Nabokov. Different scale, different requests, different background. It is strange and interesting - there are no words - to see for us, writing Russians... how the fate of one of us is shaping up at the next turn in the fate of Russian literature. It’s strange to see how, leaving the sphere of attraction of Russian literature, a Russian person, putting on a costume of a foreign language that is alien to him, not by washing, but by rolling, not by shouting, but by whispering, forces the attention of completely strangers and essentially indifferent people, so that, by desperately gesticulating , explain where, how, with what and why he came to us. He came with the same baggage of a traveling circus performer: a moth-eaten hare from a top hat, a woman cut in half, trained dogs: “Siberia”, “Russian sex”, “steppe”, cardboard Stalin, cardboard Beria (how would we live without him), cardboard camps, “He came, and he got attention, and he collected all the fair prizes.”

Can this whole story be called instructive? Characteristic? I’m almost sure that in Russia - if we talk about awards - Makin would not have received Logovaz’s ponderous “Triumph”.

The good thing, however, is that Tolstaya herself deserved this Triumph (so the new Russians were good for something). And that she does not need copiers or faxes - that she is self-sufficient and exists in addition to translation.

And we will gladly excuse her feminine weakness - the fear of mice.

1. Genre originality and stylistic features of the novel “Kys”

1. The ideological content of the novel

Let's start from the end - it's more convenient. Tatyana Tolstaya concludes her novel like this: “- Understand it as you know! Moscow is the name, the penultimate one is the fictional Fedor-Kuzmichsk, where the action of "Kysi" takes place.

Let us clarify right away that this city, shortly before the end of the story, was renamed as a result of the coup d'etat. And this revolution was carried out by the main character of the book - the simple-minded and narrow-minded intellectual of the first generation, Benedict, a passionate bookworm, completely obsessed with books. Since the novel Fedor-Kuzmichsk was once called Moscow, a simple conclusion can be made - the events described in the book refer not to the future, but to the past. Moscow was Moscow, then it became Fedor-Kuzmichsky, and now again it’s itself.

The book describes life after an atomic explosion. The people there are not people - they’re all kind of freaks. The effects of radiation affected everything around. Darlings with their Consequences (some have udders, some have horns, or even a tail), flying hares, mice as food and general illiteracy. Here it is, the standard of the present in the book. The past is indicated by special characters and things. Those who lived before the Explosion keep the history and memory of what happened. They cry over the lost blessings of civilization, mourn the loss of national values.

City residents are divided into three types:

1) The former are people of the past. Educated and not receiving any Consequences. They honor bygone times and grieve not so much about the loss of everyday life as about the degradation of all living things around and the disappearance of culture and art. These people are the intelligentsia of the past, who barely found a place in the present, but will never live to see the future.

2) The degenerates are also people from the past, but unlike the first ones, these adapted to living conditions and eventually sank even lower than ordinary townspeople, becoming slaves of the local authorities. It is difficult to consider them as people. They run on all fours and swear.

3) Those who were born after the explosion. These people are accustomed to what surrounds them; they were born in this environment and have never seen or imagined another life. This category reflects the modern, post-Soviet (and perhaps post-revolutionary) generation.

However, they are still the same: they still hope for help from the West, they are still afraid of the East.

For the authorities they are like plasticine. You can suggest anything you want. These are simple workers who are not interested in anything from their past life. They will eat mice and worms, fight, steal, laugh at other people's misfortunes, be driven by lust, languish in fear of the authorities, and especially of the Orderlies (Secret Police) and of the unknown beast - the Kys, who lives in the forest, rushes at the darlings, vomits the main vein, and the mind leaves the person.

The main character of the novel is named Benedict. His mother was the Former, and therefore the boy learned to read and write (although his father was against it) and went to work as a scribe in the Worker's Hut. He rewrote various books, poems and believed that Fyodor Kuzmich wrote all this. And he believed that he was living as he should, until an old friend of his mother came to him for a holiday (New Year, which was also invented by Fyodor Kuzmich) - also the former, Nikita Ivanovich - the Chief Stoker.

It was he who gradually began to talk with Benedict on philosophical topics, as if in passing, revealing to him the “world of art.”

And one day another old woman invited him to her place and showed him an old printed book. Benedict ran out into the yard in horror. Meeting reality was a cruel blow for him.

The danger of interpreting books is precisely one of the themes of “Kysi”, and a plot-forming one at that. Unhappy Benedict tried so passionately to understand what he read, so desperately sought to find the main book about the meaning of life, that he reached the point of complete brutality and murder. Because he did not know the world in which these books were written and the beautiful stanzas were composed. This world existed, according to the text, before the Explosion, but what this Explosion was - a criminal mistake of the atomic scientists, a revolution or Adam's fall from grace - is not answered.

The fantastic world described in "Kysi" is creepy and unsightly. He is especially frightening in the first chapters of the novel: people live in huts among endless fields, not only do not know electricity, but also do not know wheels, they catch mice (for food and natural exchange), drink and smoke some kind of rust, dig up worms, do not read books - printed books are prohibited, listen to the Greatest Murza - Fyodor Kuzmich. People in “Kysi” speak in a strange vernacular, clever words are remembered only by the “former” who lived before the Explosion - intellectuals and dissidents. The former argue more and more among themselves and openly despise other people. They are not positive heroes, although in the end, it seems, they are forgiven by the author. Perhaps this has already happened in Russian literature: the only positive hero of the book is the author. But this, in general, is a stretch.

The desire to cover almost all aspects of our existence makes “Kys” a significant phenomenon in the literary process of the late 20th - early 21st centuries. Based on the above, “Kys” can be considered as a kind of “novel of the beginning”: not only as a possible beginning of a new stage in the author’s creative activity, but also as a reflection of the mental, spiritual beginning of Russian society. This maxim is also confirmed by the fact that T. Tolstaya introduces the “beginning of beginnings” - the alphabet - into the table of contents of the novel. The book consists of chapters named after the letters of the Church Slavonic alphabet: Az, Buki, Vedi, Verb, up to the final Izhitsa. The entire micro- and macrocosm of Russian history, culture, literature (first of all), that specific phenomenon, which is called the word “spirituality”, which is unpleasant in its semantic overtones, national psychological and mental types, strata, political formations, secret police, patriotic and liberal intelligentsia - all this makes up the “blood and flesh”, bones and muscle tissue of the novel “Kys”. A few words about the title of the novel: “Kys” is a sacred animal that, feeding on human blood, becomes a zombie.

The book is an “encyclopedia of Russian life”, a kind of “universe”, “thesaurus” . The words of the “furious Vissarion” about Pushkin’s novel in verse migrate from review to review of Tatyana Tolstoy’s novel.

1. Conclusion

In conclusion of our work, the purpose of which was to determine genre affiliation and consider stylistic originality, the following conclusions can be drawn:

1. The novel is, of course, a “dystopia.” In this genre, for example, such excellent books have been written as “The Master of Smoky Rings” by V. Khlumov, “Justification” by D. Bykov, “The Lost House, or Conversations with My Lord” by A. Zhitinsky. Russian literature has a dangerous tendency: not just to “reflect reality,” but to change and modify it, to adapt it to suit itself. Thus, the poet V.Ya. Bryusov at the beginning of the century wrote a number of “dystopian” works, in particular, the short story “The Last Martyrs” (he predicted the October Revolution with all its consequences) and the story “Good Ald” (he foresaw the emergence of Soviet and Nazi death camps) . I called, and everything came true letter for letter. No matter how a new “Explosion” occurs. However, we have already survived our “Explosion” - the collapse of the Soviet Union, now we are experiencing the “Consequences” first hand, having been divided into “Formers” and “Degenerates” (read the book!).
2. The novel is totally literary-centric, because everything in life is fiction of all sorts, and life itself is a multi-volume novel written by the Lord God. While working on the book, the writer, if not in her mind, then in her subconscious, kept, among countless others, the works of her grandfather A.N. Tolstoy (early), Andrei Bely, A.M. Remizov, F. Sologub (Fyodor Sologub in the world was Fyodor Kuzmich Teternikov (actually Tyutyunnikov). From Sologubov’s “Nedotykomka” from the novel “Little Demon” to the “kiss” creature is just a stone’s throw away.) and, of course, “The History of One City” by M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin (Shchedrinskys “ Foolovites", the inhabitants of the "city of Foolov", are very reminiscent of the inhabitants of the book by T. Tolstoy, and the "Foolov chronicler", in particular, is the main character of the novel Benedict, whose adventures he himself describes are plot-forming). “Kys” can be interpreted as a verbal and conceptual treasure, consisting of many caskets, each with secret compartments.
3. Tatyana Tolstaya in the novel “Kys” depicted that cruel, cheerful, eternal, almost prehistoric, on the basis of which both the city of Foolov and the city of Gradov grow. Here it is - eternal, undying, stone, nightmare... Are you going to admire it because it is eternal? – Tatyana Tolstaya seems to be asking. But what is beautiful and admirable is not eternal, but fragile and weak, something that can be destroyed by an explosion.
4. The language of the novel amazes and shocks: a waterfall, a whirlpool, a storm, a tornado of neologisms, “folk etymology,” a subtle, no, the most subtle, play of the mind and taste. This is something unprecedented and difficult to express conceptually. "Kys" is a verbal treasure. Let us fall silent in embarrassment, bowing our heads before the linguistic mastery of Tatyana Tolstoy. Let's just say that the St. Petersburg-Moscow-American writer increased the glory of her proud family-surname, her City, her University. Everything in Russia will get better, everything will go “the way,” because the “old” and “new” Russian literature being created before our eyes is the universal Russian hope and guiding star. Let it be so!

Answer from Dmitry Martynov[guru]
The novel takes place after a nuclear explosion, in a world of mutated plants, animals and people. Among the masses, the old culture has died out, and only those who lived before the explosion (the so-called “former”) preserve it. The main character of the novel, Benedict, is the son of the “former” woman Polina Mikhailovna. After her death, Benedict is taken in by another “former” - Nikita Ivanovich. He tries to accustom him to culture, but to no avail...
The image of Kysi - some kind of terrible creature - runs through the entire novel, periodically appearing in Benedict’s imagination and thoughts. Kys herself does not appear in the novel, probably being a figment of the characters’ imagination, the embodiment of fear of the unknown and incomprehensible, of the dark sides of her own soul. In the minds of the novel's heroes, Kys is invisible and lives in the dense northern forests.
Source: Wikipedia

Answer from Yoyler[guru]
It's about Benedict, who was putting on his felt boots;))

Answer from Asagi Tsukino[active]
Not short, but still. Read it, don’t be lazy 😉
and when will people start using Google. =_=

On the eve of the repeatedly predicted possible end of the world, many people became interested in the topic of post-apocalypse. After all, it is quite likely that the world will not disappear, but will be reborn in a new quality. What a post-apocalyptic world could be like is described in the novel “ Kys» Tatiana Tolstaya.

The action in the novel takes place a couple of centuries after a nuclear war in the town of Fedor-Kuzmichsk, before the nuclear disaster was called simply Moscow. After the nuclear attack, a lot changed. People, animals, plants mutated, and the previous culture was forgotten. And only a small group of people who lived before the Explosion (“the former”) remember everything. Having survived the Explosion, they live for centuries, but cannot change this new world in any way.

And the ordinary “reborn” people are simple people. They live in huts and eat mice, worms and swamp rust. They earn little by little for food and are afraid of the formidable kitty. Kys is an invisible monster that lives in dense forests. No one has ever seen her, but everyone knows that if you meet a kis, then you’re screwed. So they live quietly and peacefully, they are afraid of the cat and do not strive for anything special.

The main character of the novel "Kys" - Benedict. His mother is Polina Mikhailovna, one of the “former ones”. After her death (“the former”, although they live for centuries, can still die), Benedict is taken in by his mother’s friend, another “former” named Nikita Ivanovich. Benedict works as a copyist of old books. One day Benedikt gets lucky and marries Olenka, a census taker, the daughter of the local bigwig Kudeyar Kudeyarovich. Then Benedict’s measured life begins to change...

"Kys" is dystopian novel, a mutated world of total ignorance in the popular frame of a Russian folk tale. It is difficult to imagine how life is for the “former” people who look at how everything became after the Explosion, and at the same time still remember how everything was. The entire novel is permeated with irony and even sarcasm. At times the world described by Tolstoy seems funny, at times frightening, but it certainly makes you think.

Worthy of attention and unusual language of the novel(which, however, is what repels many people). All of his characters speak an unusual dialect, a kind of “hodgepodge” of outdated and dialect words, as well as neologisms invented by Tolstoy herself. And only the “former” ones speak the familiar Russian language, which distinguishes them even more from the “degenerates”.

Quotes from the book

“In those forests, old people say, a lynx lives. She sits on the dark branches and screams so wildly and pitifully: yay! Whoops! - and no one can see her. A man will go into the forest like this, and she will fall on his neck from behind: hop! and the backbone with your teeth: crunch! “And with his claw he will find the main vein and tear it, and all the mind will come out of the person.”

“You, Book! You alone will not deceive, you will not hit, you will not offend, you will not leave! Quiet, but you laugh, scream, sing; submissive - you amaze, tease, lure; small - and in you there are nations without number; a handful of letters, that’s all, but if you want to, you’ll turn your head, confuse, spin, cloud, tears will bubble, your breath will become stifled, your whole soul, like a canvas in the wind, will agitate, rise in waves, flap its wings!”

“- So I want to ask you everything, Benedict. Here I am, thank him, whitewashing Fyodor Kuzmich’s poems. And there everything is: horse, horse. What is a “horse”, don’t you know?
Benedict thought. I thought some more. He even blushed from the effort. How many times have I written this word myself, but somehow I haven’t thought about it.
- It must be a mouse.
- Why do you think so?
- Because: “either I don’t pamper you, or you don’t eat enough oats.” That's right, mouse.
- Well, what about then: “the horse runs, the earth trembles”?
- So, a large mouse. After all, once they start fiddling around, you won’t be able to sleep another time.”

In a nutshell: A satirical tale about a peculiar Russian hut “paradise” that appeared after the Explosion in the twentieth century. The explosion destroyed the bonds of civilization and caused the mutation of the Russian language and the people themselves.

All chapters are named with letters of the Old Russian alphabet.

The action takes place in Moscow after the Explosion in the twentieth century. More than two hundred years have passed since then. The capital is called by the name of the main boss - the Greatest Murza, now Fedor-Kuzmichsk. The simple darlings have everything, thanks to Fyodor Kuzmich, glory to him: he invented letters, a wheel, to catch mice, a rocker. Behind him are the little murzas, above the little darlings.

Many who were born after the Explosion have Consequences: for example, one and a half faces, or ears all over the body, or cockscombs, or something else. The Former ones remained after the Explosion - those who were still there before it. They have already lived for three centuries and have not aged. Look, like Mother Benedicta: she lived for two hundred and thirty years, and was still young until she was poisoned. The main stoker, who brings fire to every house, Nikita Ivanovich, is also from the Former Ones. Before the Explosion, he was already quite an old man, he kept coughing. And now it breathes fire, and it will be warm in the houses: the whole of Fedor-Kuzmichsk depends on it. Benedict also wanted to become a Stoker, but his mother insisted that her son become a scribe: she had the ONEVERSETE ABRASION, even if Benya knew how to read and write. The father almost pulls the mother by the hair, “and the neighbors don’t say a word: that’s right, the husband teaches his wife.”

Benedict sometimes asked his mother: why and why there was an explosion? Yes, she didn’t really know. It’s as if people were playing and finishing the game with ARGUY.

On the way to work, Benedict meets the degenerates: “They are scary, and you can’t understand whether they are people or not: their face looks like a person’s, their body is covered with fur, and they run on all fours. And on each foot there is a felt boot. They say they lived even before the Explosion, they were reincarnated.”

But the worst thing is Kys: “A man will go into the forest like this, and she will fall on the back of his neck: hop! and the backbone with your teeth: crunch! - and with his claw he will find the main vein and sever it, and the whole mind will come out of the person. This one will come back, but he is not the same, and his eyes are not the same, and he walks without understanding the road, as happens, for example, when people walk in their sleep under the moon, with their arms outstretched, and move their fingers: they themselves are sleeping, but they themselves are walking.” True, Nikita Ivanovich says that there is no Kysi, they say it was invented out of ignorance.

They hit the mallet - the working day begins in the Izba. Benedict rewrites on birch bark the works of the Greatest Murza, Fyodor Kuzmich, glory to him. About Kolobok or Ryaba. Or some poetry. The drawings are drawn by Olenka, a beloved beauty, “dressed in a hare’s fur coat, she goes to work in a sleigh - it’s obvious that she’s a noble family.”

There are also old books that were printed in ancient times. In the dark they glow, as if from radiation. The disease, God forbid, God forbid, may come from them: when they find out that the darling is holding some old printed book, the Orderlies are following him on the Red Sleigh. Everyone is terribly afraid of the orderlies: after their treatment, no one returned home. Benya's mother had an old printed book, but her father burned it.

They hit the Mallet - lunch. Everyone goes to the Dining Hut to eat mouse soup. The employee is a scary little darling with cockscombs! - having lunch with Benedict at the table. She loves art and knows a lot of poetry. He asks about the “horse” that is mentioned in Fyodor Kuzmich’s poems - an unfamiliar word. It's probably a mouse, Benedict answers. She says that Fyodor Kuzmich, thank him, seems to have different voices in different poems.

Once Fyodor Kuzmich came to Rabochaya Izba, glory to him. The largest Murza Bene is knee-deep - small in stature. Jump on Olenka's knees! And everyone listens and is in awe. And in the Izba, as luck would have it, the fire went out - no longer there. They sent for the Chief Stoker. Fyodor Kuzmich, thank him, donated his painting to the Izba - it’s called “Demon”. Then Nikita Ivanovich appeared - he breathed fire to make it warm. He is not afraid of anyone, and the light is always with him. At least he can burn the whole damn thing on earth!

The Decree of the Greatest Murza is issued to celebrate the New Year on March 1. Benedict gets ready: he catches mice at home, then exchanges them at the market for various goodies. You can also exchange mice for birch bark books. You can buy it for plaques. They stand in queues all night long to get plaques - they get paid for their work. If someone falls asleep, they will take him under the mikitka and drag him to the end of the line. And when they wake up, they don’t know anything. Well, there are screams, fights, all sorts of injuries. Then pay tax to the state from the received plaques, in another window.

But it’s impossible to enjoy the goodies: already in the hut Benya imagines that Kys is approaching. And just then Nikita Ivanovich is knocking on the door - saving, darling, from Kysya. Benedict spends the week in a fever and misses the New Year. Nikita Ivanovich is with him all the time - preparing food, caring for him. Eh, Ben needs a family, woman. So as not to be distracted by “philosophy”. True, he goes to the women to spin and somersault. But that's not it.

Here a new decree comes out: on March 8, congratulate all women and do not beat them up. Benedict congratulates all the women at work on this day, including Olenka, and asks for her hand in marriage. “I’ll take it,” the sweetheart answers with agreement.

The woman with scallops invites you to visit. In her hut, she shows Benya an old printed book. What they are rewriting was not written by Fyodor Kuzmich, but by various former people - Nikita Ivanovich said. And there is no disease from old books. The frightened Benedict runs away.

Nikita Ivanovich pins his hopes on Benya - they say, his mother was educated, and her son also has the makings. He asks him to hew some kind of Pushkin out of wood. Pushkin is our everything, he says. Benedict does not understand much - these Formers swear with unfamiliar words, or they don’t like jokes. And what wonderful games there are! Jumping ropes, for example. One in the dark jumps on others from the stove. He will break something for someone, and if he doesn’t jump on anyone, he will hurt himself:

If someone hurts my member or causes damage to my body... it’s not funny... But that’s if it’s for me. And if it’s different, then it’s funny.

Little by little Benya begins to work on Pushkin. It turns out that Benya has a ponytail: is this a consequence? A normal person shouldn't have it. I have to agree to cut him off.

He meets Olenka's parents. It turns out that her father is the Chief Orderly. The whole family has claws, scratching under the table: The consequence is this.

After the wedding, he moves into a huge mansion with his wife’s parents. I stopped going to work: why? His father-in-law enlightens him: people burn printed books out of ignorance. Now Benedict uses a huge library of old books and reads everything avidly. “Iliad”, “Ass is a fool. Color it yourself,” “Electric Traction,” “Black Prince,” “Cipollino,” “Beekeeping,” “Red and Black,” “Blue and Green,” “Crimson Island” are at his disposal. After reading all the books, he is horrified: what to do now?! Finally he notices his wife: he plays tricks with Olenka for a week, and then starts to get bored again.

Benya and his father-in-law ride on a Sanitary Sleigh among people to confiscate books. Benedict accidentally kills one darling with a hook. Looking for everyone. Desperate, Benya comes to ask Nikita Ivanovich. But the Stoker doesn’t give the book: he says he hasn’t mastered the alphabet of life yet.

Father-in-law encourages Benedict to make a revolution. They kill Fyodor Kuzmich, glory to him, they overthrow the tyrant. The father-in-law becomes the boss - the General Orderly, writes the first decree: “I will live in the Red Tower with double security,” “Don’t come within a hundred arshins, whoever comes up will immediately take a detour without talking.” The city will henceforth be called by his name. Second decree on freedoms:

... freedom on the left... or again... I can’t tell.

We decided: there will be freedom of assembly - in groups of three, no more. Benedict at first wants to allow his darlings to read old printed books, but then changes his mind: probably, the pages will be torn out or the books will be thrown. Necha!

Olenka gives birth to triplets. One of the offspring is a lump, immediately falls and rolls into some kind of crevice. And so it disappears. Benedict and the father-in-law are quarreling, the son-in-law keeps moving away from the Chief Orderly: his breath smells bad. The father-in-law calls Benya Kysya in revenge. But it’s true: Benya even had a tail! And I found a vein in a man!

The General Orderly decides to execute Nikita Ivanovich; the Stoker is no longer needed. One reincarnation knows where gasoline can be obtained, the orderly will let a spark from the ray come out of his eyes - and there will be fire.

The stoker is tied to Pushkin and they want to set him on fire. But he releases a flame and burns the entire Fedor-Kuzmichsk. Benedict escapes from the fire in a pit and asks: “Why didn’t you get burned?” - “But I’m reluctant.” Nikita Ivanovich and a comrade from the Former Ones rise into the air.