Victor Petrovich Astafyev did not seek to become a writer. Once, after the victory, the front-line soldier had to hear the invited writer reading false military stories to the workers. Astafyev, who was awarded the "Order of the Red Banner" and the medal "For Courage", deeply insulted the words of untruth. On the same night, the story “Sibiryak” is born, and with it - the kneeling classic of Russian and Soviet literature. Astafiev’s work “Tsar-fish” will be written by him later - in 30 years. And for another 10 years, seriously wounded and shell-shocked, he will dream of a war in peacetime.
Before the service were: repressed father, tragically dead mother, orphanage. The classic deeply comprehended the war as a front-line soldier, objectively, without "political department tales" - from a retreat along the Zhytomyr highway with "dispersed" corpses of "his" in liquid mud to the mediocre and bloody crossing of the Dnieper in the fall of 1943. Without respite, without preparation, without watercraft , developing the success of the Kursk. (Then only every seventh of ordinary soldiers sailed to the other side, most of the 300,000 ordinary men who died during the crossing simply drowned).
However, in his spiritual disposition, the aspects of the interaction of nature and man, good and evil, were much closer than the topic of war. "Something very important in the balance of" Nature - Man - Society "is broken," Astafyev intuitively understood. “King fish” summarizes its content non-linear, multivariate. That's the genre - a philosophical
short story! This is a story about a fisherman and not about a fisherman, about fish and not about fish. Let's figure it out! After all, Astafiev’s work is about us all! In an almost fabulous epic manner, against the background of rural life, the author gradually brings the thoughtful reader to the idea of ​​repentance. The central character is the wealthy owner Ignatich, a lucky fisherman who does not disdain poaching. Seeing once a huge sturgeon, he understands: one cannot cope with such a thing. But greed prevails. That sturgeon is the "King of fish." The summary of the Astafyevsky work further brings us to the plot situation, when sturgeons and Ignatich, entangled in nets and in hooks, risk their lives equally. The situation is allegorical. Death equally threatens both. And only then the fisherman, trying to escape, remembers his sin - an unjust act at the woman Glasha. When there is almost no strength left, he repents from the bottom of his heart, in absentia asking for forgiveness. After that, suddenly the fishing lines weaken, and mutual liberation sets in.
Do you think this is written about fishing in a country where the KGB vigilantly monitors dissidents? What does the classic write in Aesopian language? What is important not to miss, trying to accurately reflect the short stories of "King Fish"?
Astafyev in the era of stagnation, the instinct of a classic is the first to find a solution to the global urgent question: "How do we live on?" (After all, there is nothing ahead. It is obvious that the communism promised in 5 years by Khrushchev will not come.) What prevents us from moving on, which is holding us back? And then an inspiration comes to the writer: we need to repent. And Astafyev, as a front-line soldier, as a citizen, does not hesitate to present this idea to society in Tsar-Fish in the only form in which it is possible so as not to become an outcast.
Later, in their “Picnic by the Road”, the Strugatsky brothers in the aching final scene will also put into the mouth of the protagonist, who is in the grip of the anomalous zone, saving words of remorse and blessings to all people. It is noteworthy that in the future the growing contradictions led to the fact that the topic of repentance was even more relevant than in the form that we introduced in the "King of the Fish." Summary
Astafyevsky's work certainly inspired the third classic, Victor Pelevin, to an episode of tormenting soul in his phantasmagoric novel The Werewolf's Holy Book. Having turned into a lame and miserable wolf, Mikhalych (the Russian people), realizing the worthlessness of his condition and still repenting, sobbingly asks Petra Cow (Russian Earth) for him oil in order to survive and pay off parasites. Pelevin finds for this really soulful and touching words ...
Let's get back to the short story. Her main idea is the vital need for repentance. Only in this way will Man and the King of Fish survive. A summary of the Astafyevsky work leads us to an understanding of the relevance of repentance, which is fundamentally important for both every person and society as a whole. Classics need to be heard on time. They, being the salt of the earth, beat the alarm one decade before the cataclysm. Perhaps then, in the 70s, having resolved the contradictions in a civilized manner and becoming a democratic country, exposing our unpleasant historical pages and repenting, we would have warned the collapse of the superpower. We would become more open and understandable, without giving R. Reagan a chance in 10 years to force the Western World to simultaneously impose financial sanctions on us, declaring us the “Empire of Evil”. Indeed, in 1974, the USSR was not yet doomed.