Summary of “Kys” by Tolstoy
T. Tolstaya was in fact recognized as one of the most brilliant authors of the new literary generation. To date, the volume written about Tolstoy is several times greater than the volume of her prose. It is interesting that Tolstoy struck readers not with the content of their stories, but with the exquisite complexity and beauty of their poetics. The demonstrative fairy tale of the world of her works attracts attention.
The main feature of this world is that the fantastic here goes smoothly into the natural, while, however, losing the symbol of the “miracle.” It is a miracle here is natural for the reader. For example, in the novel “Kys” “unusual” hens Anfisa Terentyevna were strangled by the inhabitants of Fedor-Kuzmichsk, although the reader realizes that they were completely normal. Fantastic beginnings, intertwined with reality in the “Kysi”, resemble the “Masters and Margarita” of Bulgakov, where the real world is
Fedor-Kuzmichsk is impregnable to the outside world. In this one hears an echo of Soviet society with an iron curtain. At the same time, in Kysi there are also realities of modern domestic political life in Russia (mention of Chechens).
In the invented Tolstoy world, society is on a primitive scientific level. As a result of the explosion, the language itself was damaged, literacy disappeared, all words with abstract meaning and foreign origin are distorted. In Fedor-Kuejmichsk, there are ancient mythological ideas about the world (faith in goblin, mermaid, lyoko conspiracy, Rylo, poetic myth about Princess Paulin Pauline).
Analogy with the Soviet times can be seen in the image of Kudeyar Kudeyarych, who in the middle of the day takes away people who are supposedly undergoing medical treatment, and who shine through people with X-rays.
But the main character of the novel is Benedikt. Its image is ambiguous. On the one hand, Benedikt is a young man, quick and inquisitive, trying to find out why the explosion was. Sometimes he ponders
But from his reflections Benedikt runs: it’s not a philosophy, it’s Kys in his back looking. The origin of the mother (with university education), he is worthy, in his darling – from simple. He pushes to knowledge, goes to the service in the Workhouse, rewrites, whitens the tales, or teachings, or the decrees of Fedor Kuzmich himself. Typical, it seems, is the hero of Russian prose. And Akaky Akakievich copied, and Lev Nikolayevich Myshkin was a fine calligrapher.
But, having married the obviously nomenclature Olenka, Benedikt becomes the son-in-law of Kudeyarov, the Chief Medical Officer, and his life is gradually changing, and new features of his character are revealed with it.
Benedict in the library of the father-in-law learns the true authors of the books stored there, but inadequately understands the meaning of classical painting and literature and therefore absurdly systematizes books and periodicals. It turns out that the interrupted cultural tradition is not recoverable.
A new stage in the moral degradation of Benedict comes after he read the entire library of his father-in-law. If during the first time in the family of Kudeyarov Benya with horror refused the work of the orderly, but now he is ready for it.
Books – the main delight in the life of Benedict. He was immersed in reading completely, he hated anyone who tore him from the book. He was not touched by the changes that happened so quickly with his wife, the beautiful Olenka, who suddenly turned into a swollen and capricious woman, who led a lover from the reincarnates, “bouncing around” strange creatures.
The main problem of the novel is connected with the image of Kysi, an unknown animal, which creeps up to a man and cuts off his life-giving vein. What is this Kys and how she looks, no one knows. Nikita Ivanovich says that all the legends about Kysi are the result of the ignorance of the population of Fedor-Kuzmich. May be so. Some researchers believe that Kys is a combination of all low-lying instincts in the human soul. Others say that Kys is the prototype of the Russian rebellious soul, which eternally poses questions and always looks for answers to them. It is no coincidence that in the moments when Benedikt starts to think about the meaning of being, it seems to him that Kys sneaks up to him. Probably, Kys is something between a prototype of eternal Russian melancholy (and Kys screams in the novel very sadly, sadly) and human ignorance.
The main problem of “Kysi” is the search for lost spirituality, inner harmony, lost continuity of generations. Very insistently in the novel shows the broken connection of generations.
This is a novel about the failed expectations and unfulfilled hopes that have come up against the brutal reality of fear for their well-being and an unrestrained desire for power over their own kind. It is a novel that the goal, no matter how sublime it may be, can not justify the means of achieving it. It is a novel that sensitivity, compassion, justice, honesty, spiritual vigilance, mutual aid, respect for another person, self-sacrifice, even if these concepts are (or are already) inaccessible to the heroes of the novel, are immortal. Tolstoy returns a spoiled and fed-up reader to elementary truths, to the evidence of the laws of human existence. The author suggests to rake off the all-embracing snobbery of fashionable reasoning and inferences, to see under the flowery foam the depth and bottomlessness of truth.
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