I. S. Turgenev wrote: “From childhood, Krylov was a typical Russian person all his life: his way of thinking, views, feelings and all his writings were truly Russian, and it can be said without any exaggeration that a foreigner who thoroughly studied Krylov’s fables will have a clearer idea of the Russian national character than if he reads many works treating this subject.”
In this lesson you will learn about another vice of Russian society, exposed by the great fabulist.
The fable that will be discussed was written more than a hundred years ago, but has not lost its relevance to this day.
Rice. 1. O. A. Kiprensky. “Portrait of I.A. Krylova", 1816 ()
The reason for the creation of the fable was an incident from the life of Krylov (Fig. 1): “Some nobleman (according to some - Count Razumovsky, according to others - Prince A. N. Golitsyn), perhaps following the example of the imp. Maria Fedorovna, who patronized the poet, and perhaps sincerely wishing to make his acquaintance, invited him to her place and asked him to read two or three fables. Krylov artistically read several fables, including one borrowed from La Fontaine. The nobleman listened to him favorably and thoughtfully said: “That’s good, but why don’t you translate like Ivan Ivanovich Dmitriev?” “I can’t,” the poet answered modestly. That was the end of the conversation. Returning home, the fabulist, touched to the quick, poured out his bile in the fable “The Donkey and the Nightingale.” Kenevich V.F. From “Bibliographical and Historical Notes on Krylov’s Fables”
After the publication of Krylov’s fable, they began to call him “The Nightingale.” This nickname entered the literature.
Let's turn to the text of the fable.
Donkey and Nightingale (Fig. 2)
Rice. 2. Still from an animated film based on the fables of I.A. Krylov “In the world of fables” ()
The donkey saw the nightingale
And he says to him: “Listen, buddy!
You, they say, are a great master of singing.
I would really like
Judge for yourself, having heard your singing,
How great is your skill?
Here Nightingale began to show his art:
Clicked and whistled
On a thousand frets, pulled, shimmered;
Then gently he weakened
And the languid sound of the pipe echoed in the distance,
Then it suddenly scattered in small fractions throughout the grove.
Everyone was paying attention then
To Aurora's favorite and singer:
The winds have died down, the choirs of birds have fallen silent,
And the herds lay down.
Breathing a little, the shepherd admired him
And only sometimes
Listening to the Nightingale, he smiled at the shepherdess
The singer has died. Donkey, staring at the ground with his forehead;
“Pretty much,” he says, “it’s not false to say,
I can listen to you without getting bored;
It's a pity that I don't know
You are with our rooster;
If only you had become more alert,
If only I could learn a little from him.”
Hearing this judgment, my poor Nightingale
He took off and flew to distant fields.
God, save us from such judges.
Vladislav Feofilovich Kenevich, a contemporary and the first systematic researcher of Krylov’s literary activity, wrote in “Bibliographical and Historical Notes on Krylov’s Fables”: “It is known that Krylov was incomparably stricter with himself than his readers: he rewrote the same fable many times , rewrote it every time and was satisfied only when there was not a single word left in it, which, as he put it, “had become boring to him.” That is why we can claim that every word in I.A.’s fable. Krylova carries a certain semantic load.
So, there are two key images in the fable: the Donkey and the Nightingale.
What words and expressions does the fabulist use to create the image of the Donkey? Let's turn to the dictionary.
"Buddy"- a familiar address to a friend (note that the Nightingale was not a friend of the Donkey, which gives his address even more familiarity and negligence, which allows us to conclude that the Donkey is ill-mannered).
Next is the word "workshop" seems to convey admiration. A craftsman is a master, a virtuoso in his field, and even to a superlative degree. But the consonance with the word “buddy”, and even the obvious tautology “great master” again negatively characterizes the Donkey, indicating his ignorance.
TAUTOLOGY(from the Greek tauto - “the same” and logos - “word, concept”) - repetition of the same thing in different words. As a stylistic device, it refers to a type of pleonasm (excess).
"Considerably",- says the Donkey, after listening to the Nightingale’s singing. “Fairly” means “considerably, excellently.” However, in explanatory dictionaries this word is always accompanied by the mark “colloquial,” which means “colloquial.” The same can be said about words "staring" And "perked up."
Participial turnover "staring at the ground with his forehead" reminds us of donkey stubbornness. And immediately after this is the advice to “learn a little” how to sing from the rooster, which, judging by the pronoun “our,” is a close friend of the Donkey. Now let us remember the famous proverb: “Tell me who your friend is, and I will tell you who you are.” The limited rooster is a friend of the equally ignorant Donkey.
The image of the Donkey makes the reader laugh. This image is called COMIC.
By what artistic means does Krylov convey the beauty and charm of the Nightingale’s singing?
The Nightingale's singing resembles a whole concert. To do this, Krylov uses a number of homogeneous members: verbs “clicked”, “whistled”, “gave”, “crumbled”. And also a comparison with a pipe, a metaphor "scattered into small fractions", epithet "languid" pipe.
The Nightingale's singing has a wonderful effect on everyone who hears it. He charmed everyone with his singing. He brought calm to both nature and people’s lives: “the winds died down,” “the birds fell silent,” “the herds of animals lay down,” “the shepherd admired the singing.”
Everyone was paying attention then
To Aurora's favorite and singer...
AURORA- goddess of the dawn (ancient Roman mythology).
Let us pay attention to one detail: the Nightingale does not speak at all, he only sings, by this the author shows that the ignorant (colloquial and colloquial) is alien to this hero, unlike the Donkey, who constantly says something, while using mainly colloquial and colloquial vocabulary.
The author uses the technique antitheses, contrasting the Nightingale, a master of his craft, a true singer of nature, who enchants with his singing, and the Donkey, stupid, ignorant, ill-mannered, who understands nothing of real art.
ANTITHESIS- a stylistic device based on a sharp contrast of concepts and images.
The fable describes a situation that often arises in real life. Someone self-confident and ignorant undertakes to judge something about which he has no idea.
The moral of the fable lies in the words: “God deliver us from such judges.” Using the technique of allegory, the fabulist conveys to his reader the idea that if real art is often judged by those who do not understand anything about it, like the Donkey, then true masters, like the Nightingale, have a hard time.
MORALITY- This is an instructive conclusion from the main narrative, which is given at the beginning or end of the fable.
ALLEGORY- allegory - depiction of an abstract concept through a concrete image.
The fable “The Donkey and the Nightingale” was written by Ivan Andreevich Krylov more than a hundred years ago, but has not yet lost its relevance, because such stupid judges as the Donkey can be found in life in our time.
- Krylov's fables [Electronic resource]. - Access mode: http: ().
- Librarian.RU. Writers of the 19th century. Ivan Andreevich Krylov [Electronic resource]. - Access mode: ().
- Ivan Krylov. 1769-1844 [Electronic resource]. - Access mode: ().
- Krylov Ivan Andreevich [Electronic resource]. - Access mode: ().
- Krylov Ivan Andreevich. Memoirs of Contemporaries [Electronic resource]. - Access mode: ().
- Russian literature of the 19th century. Ivan Andreevich Krylov. 1760-1844 [Electronic resource]. - Access mode: ().
Homework
- Prepare for an expressive reading of I.A.’s fable. Krylov "Donkey and Nightingale".
- * Create an illustration for I.A.’s fable. Krylov “Donkey and Nightingale”, using some techniques for creating comic Images. For example grotesque (exaggeration): the huge head of the Donkey, as a sign of a “great” mind, but the exaggeratedly small figure of the Nightingale, emphasizing that his significance is not in his appearance, but in his ability to sing. Or detail. For example, Donkey has glasses, which he doesn’t need, because he can see perfectly well without them, so he doesn’t look into the glasses, but over them.
- * Suppose that the Donkey, because of his stubbornness, nevertheless decided to introduce the Nightingale to his friend the Rooster and wrote about it in a letter. The Nightingale is well-mannered and polite, so he answers Donkey’s letter. A small correspondence ensues. Come up with this correspondence (save the peculiarities of speech of each of the characters).
Donkey and nightingale drawing
Read text online
The donkey saw the nightingale
And he says to him: “Listen, buddy!
You, they say, are a great master of singing.
I would really like
Judge for yourself, having heard your singing,
How great is your skill?"
Here Nightingale began to show his art:
Clicked and whistled
On a thousand frets, pulled, shimmered;
Then gently he weakened
And the languid sound of the pipe echoed in the distance,
Then it suddenly scattered in small fractions throughout the grove.
Everyone was paying attention then
To Aurora's favorite and singer;
The winds have died down, the choirs of birds have fallen silent,
And the herds lay down
Breathing a little, the shepherd admired him
And only sometimes
Listening to the Nightingale, he smiled at the shepherdess.
The singer has died. The donkey, staring at the ground with his forehead,
“Pretty much,” he says, “it’s not false to say,
I can listen to you without getting bored;
It's a pity that I don't know
You are with our rooster;
If only you had become more alert,
If only I could learn a little from him."
Hearing this judgment, my poor Nightingale
He took off and flew far away.
God save us from such judges.
Moral of Ivan Krylov's fable The Donkey and the Nightingale
God save us from such judges
Moral in your own words, the main idea and meaning of the fable The Donkey and the Nightingale
You cannot judge without knowing the matter. You cannot listen to judges who do not understand the issue or are simply stupid. Sometimes it is impossible to correctly assess an event or action if all the circumstances are unknown.
The donkey met the nightingale and asked him to sing. He sang and was beautiful. Everyone listened. But the donkey advised him to learn from the rooster. The nightingale flew away.
Analysis of the fable The donkey and the nightingale, the heroes of the fable
The main characters of the fable are a donkey and a nightingale. The fable begins directly with the development of events. Each of the heroes is an indicator of opposing qualities.
Nightingale- This is a beautifully singing bird. Everyone likes his singing. His voice was given to him by nature. In the form of a nightingale, Krylov shows a man, a master of his craft. The nightingale is proud of his voice, because everyone who hears his singing highly appreciates his talent. Krylov chose the words well to describe the situation around the nightingale, as well as the reactions of other animals.
U donkey on the contrary, there is neither hearing nor voice. Despite this, he believes that he has the right to evaluate the nightingale’s talent. Because he has no ear for music, he says that even a rooster could sing better. Comparing the nightingale and the rooster, this makes us even more convinced of how stupid the donkey is. By this he offends the nightingale, because everyone admires his singing. By comparing the nightingale and the rooster, the donkey thereby shows that he has no idea about the real art of singing.
In the role of the donkey, on the contrary, there is a person who has no idea about this craft. Despite the fact that the donkey does not understand anything about singing, he tells the nightingale that he sings poorly. This often happens among people. A person who doesn’t understand anything about the profession tells the master what to do and how to do it. In this fable, the donkey is portrayed as an ignoramus.
The meaning of the fable is that often people who do not understand any profession give advice to masters. They criticize and point out that they are doing something wrong. But real criticism can be given by a professional like this person. In this case, the professional is the nightingale. And only nightingales like him can give criticism.
The author ridicules the donkey's disrespect for the nightingale. He makes it clear that you can’t judge someone if you don’t understand it yourself. But here we are talking not only about them, but also about ordinary people. The same thing happens to people in everyday life.
Before judging someone, you need to think about whether you can do it yourself. If a person has no idea about this craft, then he cannot judge it either.
To do this, you will need to prove that the judging person cannot do something like a professional. In this case, if the nightingale asked the donkey to sing as well, then naturally he would not be able to. Thus, he would be able to prove that the donkey has no right to judge his singing.
We are amazed at the naturalness of Krylov's fables, elegant simplicity and wit, depth of thought and artistic decoration of details. The donkey is a frequent guest of Krylov’s fables; a character who is not very intelligent.
"Donkey and Man"
Man, go to the garden for the summer
Having hired Donkey, he assigned
Ravens and sparrows are chased by an impudent race.
The donkey had the most honest rules:
I am unfamiliar with neither rapacity nor theft;
He didn’t profit from the owner’s leaf
And it’s a shame to give the birds a treat;
But the peasant’s profit from the garden was bad:
The donkey, chasing the birds, with all the donkey's legs,
Along all the ridges, both along and across,
Such a gallop has risen,
That he crushed and trampled everything in the garden.
Seeing here that his work was wasted,
Peasant on the back of a donkey
He took out the loss with a club.
“And nothing! - everyone shouts, - serves the beast right:
With his mind
Let’s take on this matter!”
And I will say, not to stand up for the Donkey:
He is definitely to blame (and a settlement has been made with him) -
But it seems that he is also wrong
Who instructed the Donkey to guard his garden.
The poet and fabulist, Ivan Ivanovich Dmitriev, was the first to convince Krylov to write fables after reading three of La Fontaine’s fables translated by Krylov. Having overcome a certain psychological threshold and drowned out his passion for dramatic poetry, Krylov began to take a closer look at the “fable” genre.
"Donkey and Nightingale"
The donkey saw the nightingale
And he says to him: “Listen, buddy!
You, they say, are a great master of singing!
I would really like
Judge for yourself, having heard your singing,
How great is your skill?
Here Nightingale began to show his art:
Clicked and whistled
On a thousand frets, pulled, shimmered;
Then gently he weakened
And the languid sound of the pipe echoed in the distance,
Then it suddenly scattered in small fractions throughout the grove.
Everyone was paying attention then
To Aurora's favorite and singer;
The winds have died down, the choirs of birds have fallen silent,
And the herds lay down.
Breathing a little, the shepherd admired him,
And only sometimes
Listening to the Nightingale, he smiled at the shepherdess.
The singer has died. Donkey, staring at the ground with his forehead:
“Pretty much,” he says, “it’s not false to say,
I can listen to you without getting bored;
It's a pity that I don't know
You are with our rooster;
If only you had become more alert,
If only I could learn a little from him,”
Hearing this judgment, my poor Nightingale
He took off and flew far away.
God save us from such judges!
Most often, Krylov read his fables in the house of A.N. Olenin in the brilliant society of lovers of the Russian word. Here the impression made by his short creations was enormous. People crowded around the poet, stood on chairs, listened, without uttering a word. The effect of Krylov's fables was incredible. As a contemporary noted, “the fables read by the author himself were equal to the effect of Catalani’s arias.”
"The Fox and the Donkey"
“Where are you, smart one, are you delusional?” -
The Fox, having met the Donkey, asked him.
“Now only from Leo!
Well, gossip, where did his strength go:
It used to growl, the forest around would groan,
And I'm running without memory
Wherever your eyes look, from this freak;
And now in old age he is decrepit and frail,
Completely exhausted
Lying in the cave like a log.
Would you believe it, in animals
All the former fear disappeared from him,
And he paid off with ancient debts!
Whoever walked past Leo, everyone took it out on him.
In your own way:
Some with teeth, some with horns..." -
“But you didn’t dare touch Lev, of course?” -
Fox Donkey interrupts.
“Here you go!” - The donkey answers her, -
Why should I be timid? and I kicked him:
Let the donkey’s hooves know!”
So low souls, be noble, strong,
They don’t dare raise their gaze to you;
But only fall from a height,
Expect resentment and annoyance from the first ones.
Zhukovsky highly valued Krylov's fables. He was among Krylov's best friends and celebrated his creations. Ivan Andreevich enjoyed spending time in his apartment, at evenings, in the company of Pushkin, Batyushkov, Prince Vyazemsky, Gnedich, Uvarov, Karamzin.
"Owl and Donkey"
Blind Donkey lost his way in the forest
(He was about to set off on a long journey.)
But by nightfall my madness wandered into the thicket,
That he could not move either backwards or forwards.
And a sighted person wouldn’t be able to get out of trouble here;
But the owl in the vicinity, fortunately, happened
And he undertook to be the Donkey's guide.
Everyone knows that eagle owls are vigilant at night:
Rapids, ditches, mounds, hillocks -
My Owl could discern all this, as if during the day,
And by morning he got out on a smooth path with the Donkey.
Well, how to part with such a guide?
So Donkey Owl asks to stay with him,
And he decided to go with Owl all over the world.
My owl is master
He sat down on the ridge of Donkey,
And they began to keep the path; Is it just happy? - No:
Only the sun began to sparkle in the sky in the morning,
Owl’s eyes became darker than night.
However, my Owl is stubborn:
He advises the donkey at random.
“Beware! - he shouts, “to the right we’ll be in a puddle.”
But there was no puddle, and to the left it turned out worse.
“Take it even more to the left, step even more to the left!”
And - the Donkey boomed, and with the Owl, into the ravine.
The Imperial Public Library once housed scattered sheets pinned together. On a special sheet of paper, Gnedich’s hand made a note: “A copy of the fables, pinned together with a pin, which Ivan Andreevich Krylov had with him in this form when he read to Empress Maria Feodorovna in the Winter Palace in 1813, being with me.” He usually wrote on scraps of paper and kept the crumpled sheets of paper in his pocket.
"Apelles and the Donkey"
Who is overly infected with pride,
He is sweet to himself and in the ways in which he is funny to others;
And often he happens to boast about this,
Why should he be ashamed?
Having met the Donkey's Colt, Apelles
He invites Donkey to visit him;
The dice began to play in Donkey's Colt;
The foal is choking the whole forest with boasting
And he says to the animals: “How boring Apelles is to me!
I'm tormented by them:
Well, everything calls to him, wherever I meet him.
It seems to me that my friends
He intends to paint Pegasus from me.”
“No,” Apelles said, happening close here:
Intending to write a Midas judgment,
I wanted to copy your ears for Midas;
And if you come to me, I will be glad:
I've come across a lot of donkey ears,
But such as you are rich,
Not only in donkeys,
I’ve never even seen donkeys.”
The fable “The Donkey and the Nightingale” was written no later than 1811. She was born thanks to one story that happened with Krylov. Ivan Andreevich was well aware of his strength in the fable genre. One nobleman decided to personally meet the fabulist. He called him to his place and asked him to read two or three fables. Krylov artistically read several fables and between them one, borrowed from La Fontaine. The nobleman listened favorably to the fables and thoughtfully asked why Krylov does not translate fables like Ivan Dmitriev? The wounded Krylov replied that he could not, but upon returning home, he, touched to the quick, wrote the fable “The Donkey and the Nightingale,” in which he poured out the bile that remained from the nobleman’s visit.
The fable tells how the Donkey, having listened to the wonderful singing of the Nightingale, complained that the Nightingale was unfamiliar with the Rooster, from whom, according to the Donkey, the Nightingale could learn the skill of singing. By Nightingale in this fable, Krylov understood himself. There are several versions about Donkey. Some believed that Donkey meant a nobleman who placed Dmitriev above Krylov. Someone talked about Prince A.N. Golitsin. Still others were inclined towards the candidacy of Count Razumovsky. But it is not known for certain which of the nobles served as the prototype for the Donkey. It is possible that this is a collective image.
But not only this story became the reason for writing the fable. Krylov had previously met people who self-confidently judged matters and things about which they had not the slightest idea. Such “judges” are characterized by a certain contradiction in behavior. They are self-confident, but, as a rule, ignorant. Such a contradiction causes ridicule from any outside observer. It is with ridicule that Krylov treats this kind of people in his fable.
Krylov, having decided to ridicule a similar phenomenon that occurs in our lives, chose an allegorical way to depict it. He represents a skilled artist in the image of the Nightingale. The choice was made successfully, since Nightingale, more than anyone else, can be likened to a talented artist. The judge in the fable is the Donkey, with whom readers associate the concept of stupidity and stupidity.
Since the characters' personalities are clear to the reader, the author begins the fable directly with the development of the action. The donkey wants to check other people's rumors about the nightingale's singing and calls the singer to him. Since the whole power of the story should lie in the contradiction between the ignorant judgment of the Donkey and the wonderful art of the nightingale, Krylov describes the nightingale's art in detail, emphasizing how beautiful it is. Then he shows the impression that the Nightingale made on everything around him, and finally moves on to the donkey’s judgment. The judge speaks condescendingly about the singing and only regrets that the Nightingale is unfamiliar with the rooster. The rooster is chosen here in order to depict, without further ado, the taste of a donkey: what could be more opposite than in the singing of the Nightingale and the crowing of a cock? The writer’s irony is mainly concentrated in this opposition, which is further strengthened by the Nightingale’s advice to learn a little from the rooster. What could Nightingale do with such advice? That’s what he did: “He took off and flew to distant fields.”
Allegory and irony are the basis of the literary treatment of this plot. Allegory is based on similarity, irony on opposites. Since the action of the fable is taken from real life, the expressions of the characters are borrowed from the same place.
Krylov is a great master of expressing himself in the folk spirit; but then, next to such expressions as “friend, master,” he also encounters others that do not in any way go in tune with them, for example, “everyone then listened to Aurora’s favorite and singer.”
Speaking further about the impression that the Nightingale made on everything around him with his singing, Krylov allows for a certain exaggeration: “the winds died down, the choirs of birds fell silent and the herds lay down.” Also, the images of a shepherdess and a shepherdess are taken from the imaginary happy life of a shepherd, which was described in various works of that time. The so-called “shepherd” poetry developed in the literature of Western peoples, passed on to us and caused imitation.
The moral of the fable “The Donkey and the Nightingale” is: “God, deliver us from such judges.”
What is the main meaning of the fable “The Donkey and the Nightingale”?
It is unlawful for an ignoramus to begin to judge matters in which he does not understand and is not an expert. Only a specialist in this topic can criticize constructively and give advice.
What shortcomings does Krylov ridicule in the fable “The Donkey and the Nightingale”?
Criticism, incompetence, ignorance, inability to be objective, stupidity, biased preaching.
