Color in the works of M. M. Prishvin and Yu. P. Kazakov about the North: "Behind the Magic Ball" and "The Northern Diary"

Zykova Galina Vladimirovna ORCID: 0000-0002-1453-2791 Doctor of Philology Professor; Faculty of Philology; Lomonosov Moscow State University 119421, Russia, Moscow, Novatorov str., 36, building 1, sq. 97 gzykova1966@gmail.com Other publications by this author

Lyu Yun' Postgraduate student; Faculty of Philology; Lomonosov Moscow State University 119234, Russia, Moscow, Ramenki district, ter. Leninskie Gory, 1 liuyun0209@gmail.com

1. Question statement

As you know, Yuri Kazakov's interest in the Russian North, manifested primarily in the Northern Diary, arose under the influence of readers' impressions of M. M. Prishvin's book "Beyond the Magic Bun": "... At that time I was very fond of Prishvin, in particular, one of his best things, "Beyond the Magic Bun". And so, I think I'll follow in Mikhail's footsteps. Mikhailovich and I'll see what's left, what's changed" ^{[1, p. 213]}.

The Northern Diary was created over several years and captures the experience of Kazakov's various trips to the North; Prishvin (who also visited the North several times) describes one trip in the book "Beyond the Magic Bun", so it is not easy to compare the routes of the writers. It is clear, however, that Arkhangelsk was an important frontier for both of them, that both had visited Solovki, both had to walk along the White Sea, both had seen the indigenous inhabitants of the North, the Karelians (Kazakov also talks about the experience of communicating with the Nenets; Prishvin, unlike Kazakov, traveled to the foreign Norwegian North).

For modern researchers, the works of Prishvin and Kazakov are part of the so-called "northern text" ^[2]. The correlation of Prishvin's and Kazakov's northern essays in the minds of later readers is also evident, for example, in the fact that the title of Kazakov's book ("The Northern Diary") can be transferred to Prishvin's prose (for example, E. Ya. Fesenko writes about the "northern diaries" of Prishvin and Kazakov ^{[3, p. 4]}. However, we did not find a detailed comparison of the northern prose of Prishvin and Kazakov.

Of course, Kazakov does not describe the North in exactly the same way as Prishvin: firstly, the human world could not but change over the past half century since Prishvin's journey (the social system has changed), and secondly, Prishvin, as a writer of the modern era, tends to mythopoeic understanding of the world (for the poetics of Prishvin's early northern prose, see, for example.^[4], and Kazakov, as an author of the Soviet era, should talk about the social world, portraying it in an optimistic way). And, of course, the style of great artists has its own individual characteristics.

We will consider one particular, but expressive, aspect, as it seems to us, the color painting in the "Northern Diary" and in "Behind the magic bun". Let's clarify that we chose the book "Behind the Magic Bun" from Prishvin's works precisely because Kazakov loved it; a comparison of the texts is possible also because their size is comparable.

2. Background and research methodology

Although there are not many works on color meanings in Prishvin's works, researchers nevertheless turned to this aspect of his poetics: I. S. Kulikova compared Prishvin's stylistic manner with certain styles in painting, while comparing Prishvin with Paustovsky in this aspect and contrasting them ^[5]; Yu. A. Nelzina analyzed in detail the designation of blue and light blue in qualitative adjectives and verbs ^[6]; the connection of color with myth, including individual and religious beliefs, was discussed (^[7],[8]); A.M. Timofeeva considered vocabulary with the meaning of green, comparing Prishvin with J. Darrell ^[9].

The dissertations of G. M. Huseynova ^[10] and Ho Kanin ^[11], methodologically linguistic, were devoted to the color designation in Kazakov's works. Ho Kanin, describing the history of the issue, comes to the conclusion that Kazakov's coloristics has not yet been properly studied, although some significant observations have already been expressed in works devoted to Kazakov's poetics as a whole or certain aspects of his work (see, for example: ^[12]); about the story "Autumn in oak Forests" — ^[13]). Ho Kanin explores in detail and systematizes the ways of forming units of the color field in Kazakov's stories.

Being a methodological support for us to a large extent, Ho Kanin's work, however, dissolves the material of the "Northern Diary" that interests us among Kazakov's other works; apparently, this is due to the fact that Ho Kanin's dissertation is linguistic, and, unlike a literary critic, this researcher does not set himself the task of describing and evaluating an individual work. as a special artistic whole.

3. The results of the study

The use of color designations by Prishvin and Kazakov has some common features.

In both authors, the indication of color is common. So, in "Hunting Tales" A.M. Timofeeva found 140 cases of using words that somehow indicate color ^[9]; "Behind the magic bun", according to our calculations, contains 406 such cases (299 of them in descriptions of nature).

According to our calculations, there are 505 color indications in the Northern Diary.

In both Prishvin and Kazakov, the word for color is usually accompanied in the text by other words indicating some other colors (and/or the degree of illumination). Here are some examples from Prishvin: "The village has crumbled into black lumps on the sand, pink eyes are following us... The black wet end of something big is showing out of the white foam. The midnight red glow of dawn glows on it... now I look ahead into the distance at the dark water, then at the golden sparkling wake of the boat" ^{[14, pp. 15, 41, 57]}. Different colored spots appear separately, but they exist in the same space; due to the connection of objects associated with them, different colors have an internal connection (a boat on the water, a golden color covers dark waters). Such a picturesque task is also solved in the Northern Diary: "... in the black walls of the huts, the windows shone high and yellow ... Salmon is a magnificent, large and powerful fish with a dark back, silvery sides and a white belly" ^{[15, pp. 9, 77]}.

The development of this trend at the linguistic level is manifested in the use of complex adjectives denoting color.

Kazakov's such complex adjectives were analyzed by Ho Kan, who classified them according to the semantic principle and provided an exhaustive list of them for 40 texts of the writer. The researcher explains the frequency of complex adjectives in Kazakov, in particular, by the writer's attention to semitones; among the examples cited by Ho Kan, however, there are also cases of collisions of different colors within the same complex adjective. Note that the blurriness of tones, as well as the harsh combinations of colors in Kazakov, can be compared with the painting style of the Impressionists; this closeness of Kazakov's aesthetics and those of Impressionist artists has already been noted (see, for example: ^[12]). Ho Kanin also notes the frequency of the complex adjective "black and white", which conveys "monochrome, graphic worldview" (^{[11, p. 57]}).

Prishvin also has complex adjectives that convey color, but there are much fewer of them: if there are 50 cases of complex adjectives in the Northern Diary, then there are only 7 in Prishvin's book: "Either it's still shallow, or the water is very transparent, but I see something dark green in the depths... Trickles of water trickle down from his dark bluish forehead, golden drops glisten on his mustache… I'm shooting at this yellow and white spot. <a bird>, like a fairy-tale witch... A forest below, and here a tundra covered with yellow-green yagel, like a moonlit clearing... A large sea gull with dark wings and a snow-white neck stumbles in the air and falls into the water... Suddenly in front of me I notice two slender women in bright blue-red-yellow suits Scandinavian lapps... of transparent green water" ^{[14, p. 55, 57, 107, 144, 166, 252, 271]}.

Prishvin's compound adjectives, as noted by I. S. Kulikova, combine mostly pure colors, only the illumination and intensity vary (something dark green, with a dark bluish forehead). Prishvin's compound adjectives can simply indicate multicolored objects: a yellow-white spot, a yellow-green yagel, in bright blue-red-yellow suits.

The desire to combine colors in one space is especially evident in Prishvin's special lexical complexes, where adjectives are connected into a whole by means of hyphens.: "But the steamer is running fast, the purple cups turn dark against the background of the flaming red sky, against the background of this green trail across the blue-crimson-blue water" ^{[14, p. 272]}.

Kazakov, like Prishvin (and, perhaps, more often than Prishvin) combines different colors in complex adjectives ("A terrible roll, cloudy white and yellow ... The water turned blue, thickened, and became so dense blue-green that it seemed opaque..." ^{[15, pp. 26, 152]}. Kazakov prefers shades to pure colors ("And the horizon is still clear, but already dark red - a narrow strip under a bluish-brown cloudy sky... And already in the gaps between those clouds, a delicate bluish—pink sky shines at an incredible height… Below is a light brown-black moving mass of bodies, and above is an endless tangle of horns, like a dwarf forest" ^{[15, pp. 27, 64, 110]}.

The color complexity and diversity of the world are often conveyed to the Cossacks with the help of occasional tropes containing references to certain substances, materials, etc. Complex adjectives are often based on comparison: "The football players all undressed together, began to swim in the pool, their bodies bronzed through the tea-brown water.... Almost everyone is naked to the waist, coffee-tanned..." (brown as tea, tan similar to the color of coffee) ^{[15, p. 17]}. But there are cases when the comparison in a complex adjective is combined with an indication of some other color: "The first hour of the night, the water overboard is soapy blue ... [blue and similar to soap] But all of them, the whole mass of fish is flooded with the diffused gray-milky light of a white night... [gray and at the same time similar to milk] An evening liquid mist rose over the reddish-oily marshes" ^{[15, pp. 155, 159, 273]}.

Kazakov likes to include an element in the composition of complex adjectives that indicates the emotional perception of color: "Then the sparkling, freshly blue expanse of the Dvina strikes our eyes, and all that many ships appear at once."… There is a poisonous green cabin on the motordoor, there is a compass and a steering wheel.… The light of the lamps sparkles on the ice, on the salt, on the dull yellow piles of it… I kept turning to the left, walked along the sand far from the port, passed a row of long, dull-gray barns and went ashore... Five, ten minutes passed and suddenly a dazzling white back with a sharp arched ridge appeared out of the water right in front of us..." ^{[15, pp. 44, 67, 163, 170, 245]}.

Among the common features of Prishvin and Kazakov is that green plays a very important role in their descriptions of the North. "Behind the magic bun" contains 69 references to the green color, there are 45 in the "Northern Diary".

In Prishvin, green is primarily the color of vegetation (including algae). Of the 61 cases of references to green, 25 refer to vegetation, and most often without clarification, the most common word here is generalizing: "greenery" (and there is also the adjective "green": green fir trees, green leaves). Here is a complete list: green birch trees in spring, green fir trees covered with yellow-green yagel, green grass, green underwater leaf, a country flashed through the luminous greenery, green forests, green leaves, intense green color in plants, dense greenery, green leaves, green forest, plants with wide green leaves, green fields, green moss, surrounded by greenery, there is not the slightest trace of greenery below, the foothills of black mountains without greenery, at least some greenery, there is not a trace of greenery, down between tall green trees, around these last green leaves, in view of this greenery, various green areas, bushes, trees, something dark-green.

Prishvin's greenery is not only the greenery of the North, but also the greenery of the forest of the middle belt, his homeland, which he compares with the North. Within the same book, "Beyond the Magic Bun," the word "green" is found in comparisons of the North and the motherland that are very different in meaning and mood, comparisons that convey the changing state of the traveler. Then the narrator notices that in the North, where the growing season is shorter, plants that rush to live have a more "intense green color": "I notice that everything lives differently here, plants have such a tense green color: they don't rest at all, hammers of light knock on green leaves day and night" ^{[14, p. 104]}. Sometimes he is overwhelmed by the severity of the northern nature: "This forest at the foot of the mountains is much more mysterious and gloomy. They're dead, but the forest is alive, and yet it feels like it's dead. We dock at the shore, enter the forest: deathly silence! There is no green joyful heart in it, which a tramp longs for, there are no birds, no grass, no sun spots, green gaps" ^{[14, p. 141]}. Let's pay attention to the image of the "green joyful heart", which probably points most directly to the forest of the middle lane and symbolizes the energy of life.

Prishvin's green leaves appear in his memories, connecting with the beginning of life, the time of hope: "On a winter night, at a time when people had not yet had time to notice the transition to spring that had already begun, there are visions: the sun will sparkle, a bridge of glowing green leaves will span across to the forest.

The green edge, the grass with wide leaves, the trees are gigantic, resting against the sky, unprecedented flowers, animals and birds are smart, kind" ^{[14, p. 101]}.

For Prishvin, the green color symbolizes the philosophical idea of the energy of life. In the northern nature, he strongly felt the relationship between death and life: "[C] the northern nature worries and longs for it because it has a deep old age, almost death stands close to the green youth, whispering with it" ^{[14, p. 106]}.

And, as in the phrase quoted above, the green color can sometimes be associated not only with describing travel experiences, but also with "visions." In the preface to his book, Prishvin says this about childhood dreams of traveling: "I would like to remind you of that country without a name, without a territory, where we fled as children...

I tried to escape there as a child. There were a few moments of such freedom, such unforgettable happiness... A country without a name flashed by in the glowing greenery and disappeared" ^{[14, p. VII]}. Prishvin's words are very significant: "It is not about this external, visible side of the journey that I would like to tell my readers" [Ibid.]. They show that an accurate description of the outside world is less important for a writer than creating a symbolic image. It can be seen that in the child's imagination freedom and happiness were associated with this green country.

The "country without a name", that is, another, unfamiliar world, in Prishvin's imagination, however, gets the familiar features of the Russian forest ("glowing greenery"). The same way of thinking — when the unknown, the new, takes on the features of the familiar, reminds of the familiar, is understood through the familiar — is also evident in Prishvin when he describes the White Sea passing into the Arctic Ocean.

Associated with the energy of life, Prishvin's green color is also the color of the eyes of a living being, dangerous, aggressive, the color of a shark's eyes; describing it, Prishvin mentions the green color three times: "I look closely, and in a huge gray mass I distinguish a mouth and a tiny green glowing eye... He just moves his fin and looks with his a small green eye... it's scary out there on the ocean floor, dark gray, just the right color to sneak up on prey unnoticed and immediately appear as a huge gray shadow with a green glowing eye" ^{[14, pp. 193-196]}. Like Prishvin, Kazakov also has a green—eyed living being, both a predator and a human victim, "a fiery, green-eyed fox, locked to death with curved brackets" ^{[15, p. 106]}. Green is associated with ideas about a blossoming life, about youth in the language itself, and Kazakov in a special way shows the reader the dialectal word "zelenets" (seal cub).: it is repeated three times in the character's line: "The first seal that was born, baby, will fit in the palm of your hand — this is a greenie for you. Zelenets is... zelenets..." ^{[15, p. 88]}. (The maturation of the seal is then described through a change in color: "white... then the white coat comes off, black is shown, and it also seems to be gray.")

The second type of indication of green in Prishvin's book in terms of frequency of mentions is the description of the water (14 cases in total): "A light breeze does not cool, a slight disturbance, the tops of the waves glow, turning green... The waves are lapping at the sides of the steamer... they run up to the side and scatter in white and show that there is something green inside them... as if the cups are eager to drink this light transparent-green water of the fjord ... birds ... fall on the green ocean wake of the steamer, falling like a fabulous silver fountain… "This is probably," the captain explains to me, "a branch of the Gulf Stream, the water in it differs from the green ocean water in blue... the steamer runs fast, the purple cups turn dark against the background of the flaming red sky, against the background of this green trail across the blue—crimson—blue water... the reflection of light on the green keel water" ^{[14, with . 171, 184, 271, 266, 188, 272]}).

Sometimes the water itself turns out to be green, sometimes it is colored green by what is in it, for example, algae; sometimes, on the contrary, what is in the water appears green. The things of the human world, once in the northern water, acquire its color: "The Churochka is slowly sinking and turning green."… The waves... roll out of the fog black, run up to the side and scatter white and show that there is something green inside them... the net, black above the water, turns green in the water and glows in the depths… I take out a small coin and put it in the water. It turns into a green glowing leaf... Then further down, in the depths, it glows with an emerald light... her green eye looks out from there, from flooded gardens and forests... the net, black above the water, turns green in the water and glows in the depths... because in the depths a moth is shown, huge, green… We drive forward, one by one the baited hooks sink behind us and glow in the depths with a green light..." ^{[14, p. 181, 184, 111, 192, 193, 223]}.

And here it's not just about the shades that water can actually take on, but above all that Prishvin is looking for similarities with his familiar, that is, with the forest of central Russia, in a new, even alien and dangerous place. The metaphor of an underwater forest appears: "I look closely, and I discover a whole dense, green underwater forest there. I love the forest like a tramp: for me it is native, it is dearer to me than anything, dearer than the sea and the sky. I really want to enter there, into this green mysterious world. But it's not real, it's a fairy forest, you can't go in there, we're too rude for that. And it would be nice to go down into this sea forest, hide and listen to the fish whispering by the algae twig" ^{[14, p. 55]}.

Prishvin's comparisons and metaphors are juxtaposed with precise references to specific details and properties of the material world; nevertheless, "Beyond the magic bun" reflects not only childhood dreams of escape, but also the real experience of travel. Here is a fragment that is very revealing in this regard: "— "Water?" - "Oceanic." — "How is oceanic?!"— "So, oceanic, green..." We're going upstairs. The same black waves are still rolling out of the gray fog. The captain takes a white wooden chopper, ties a nail to it and puts it into the water. The Churochka slowly sinks and turns green, and the further it goes, the brighter, and finally, somewhere very deep, it glows with a wonderful, fabulous overseas light. — "The ocean water is green," says the captain and is perplexed" ^{[14, pp. 180-181]}. Here, on the one hand, the green color is accompanied by the epithets characteristic of Prishvin: "wonderful", "fabulously overseas"; on the other hand, the described procedure itself is an attempt to determine the location of the ship (how close it came to the Arctic Ocean) by the color of the water.

Kazakov's sea water is also sometimes described as turning green, and the color of the water in the Northern Diary may indicate the location of the ship.: "The water turned blue, thickened, and became so dense blue-green that it seemed opaque, but in fact it was clear as glass, and the light of the sun penetrated hundreds of meters into the depths. We have entered the Gulf Stream" ^{[15, p. 152]}. There are eight references to the green color of water in the "Northern Diary"; in addition to the above, there is the following: "And now we see only a black flat strip of coast under a greenish-scarlet sky and clouds.… Overboard, touching the boat caused green-blue spots the size of saucers to flash in the depths and slowly move away.… The cells are already shining through the green water... [N]e was pitching, the low crimson moon was shining, green sparks flashed and flickered at the side… It was as if you were rushing in a boat between rocks along thundering rapids with water mists and rainbows, then stopped in the lake and looked into its green-yellow depths... Even under lowered eyelashes, reflected by the turquoise water and the ice washed by it, the sun breaks through and blinds the eyes... the splendor of the waters… <belugas > came out ... from the water to breathe air and again plunged into the green abyss ..." ^{[15, p. 32, 57, 142, 170, 179, 218, 241, 245]}.

Let's compare the above: if Prishvin's water color is pure green, and instead of indicating shades, evaluative epithets are given, then Kazakov tries to describe the specific color of the water as accurately as possible, forming a complex adjective ("dense blue-green"), and also distinguishes between what is visible to the observer ("seemed opaque") and the actual ("but in fact she was as clean as glass").

Of course, green is also the color of plants for Kazakov. However, there are few indications of greenery in the Northern Diary compared to Prishvin's book (only 12 cases): Apparently, the difference in routes has an effect. In 6 cases, this is the color of grass and trees, and only 4 relate to the image of the North — just like Prishvin, and perhaps, after him, Kazakov includes fragments devoted to memories of the middle belt in the story of his northern journey. In the fragments where Kazakov recalls the middle lane, there are both greenery and the first greenery that overshadowed it ^{[15, pp. 208, 200]}.

In the "Northern Diary" there are indications of the green color of the moss characteristic of the tundra, there is a generalized one: "the green strip of the tundra coast ... to the distant green-gray tundra ... all this is green and gray... a dozen scattered gray specks all over the green" ^{[15, pp. 218, 317, 32, 175]}. But unlike Prishvin, Kazakov does not mention the greenery of the forest (although it is mentioned in the Northern Diary, it is colored differently, and most often it is not colored at all).

The Northern Diary describes several times the green color of the sky, which can be a harbinger of terrible phenomena, although it symbolizes hope in culture: "And one day at midnight the silent northern lights flashed, at midnight an abundance of fantastic light burst from the sky, everything lit up, lit up with red, lemon and green fire. "To the storm!" — the fishermen said in one voice. And on the same night, a storm fell... The puddles reflect the light from the green-blue streak above the horizon under cloudy clouds..." ^{[15, p. 26]}.

And, of course, in the Northern Diary, which describes human labor in the North (the first part of this book, as you know, is close to the genre of an industrial essay), green is not only a natural color, but also the color of artifacts: "I write by the light of... greenish ceiling portholes.… Rotating installation with alternating green and red lights... dead green light <about the lighthouse, twice>... dora with a green booth... a poison-green booth… There were red, white and green lights on the buoys, on the sides and stern of the ships... green cartridges... blue-green smoke <from the furnace>... people at the green tables of the sleeve... with a green green ray <the radar mentioned twice > circled the screen" ^{[15, p. 9, 27, 29, 32, 115, 121, 160, 257, 222]}. In Prishvin's book, things made by man and painted green are not mentioned once (except for nets and other things that look green in deep water), which is probably not accidental and is explained by the fact that Prishvin's green color always has a complex symbolic meaning.

3. Conclusion

So, Kazakov's colors indicate the exact characteristics of the object. For example, the green color, which Prishvin so often has a symbolic meaning, may be associated with a variety of qualities in Kazakov (for example, spoiled flour is mentioned in the Northern Diary, it is "all green", that is, moldy), which does not exclude the presence of connotations, emotional coloring of the word (for more information, see: ^[16]).