Quite often, exams in Belarusian or Soviet literature in philological universities mention works of the Belarusian writer Andrei Mriy on tickets. The most popular of his works was a satirical sketch, received from the author the title “Notes of Samson Samasuy”. The work was first published in 1929. To successfully pass the exam, it is not at all necessary to read the work in full, you can study the "Notes of Samson Samasuy" briefly. With our help, this is done as simple as possible.
Acquaintance with the "author" of the novel
The novel is written in the first person. It is a personal diary of the incompetent head of the cultural department of the district executive committee Samson Samasuya. In order to raise the level of culture in the region, the protagonist organizes a lot of random absurd cultural events, which is described in detail in his diary. In parallel with the tireless social activities, Samson is also actively trying to establish his personal life.
Justification for Using First-Person Storytelling
In his revelations, Samson Samasuy (summary) honestly, openly and without exaggeration tells of events characteristic of Soviet reality of the 20s. The form of the "diary" allows you to cover and present much more, in comparison with the usual story, the field for Samson Samasuy to express personal observations and opinions. "Notes by Samson Samasuya" (a brief summary of the novel also reflects this fact) was written in the form of a story about the daily ordeals of the protagonist.
Samson Samasuy also expresses in his reasoning the point of view on the question of choosing a form of narration. He says that he hung in his room a picture depicting the statement of a famous scientist who preferred to think that if people all knew about the details of the life of a single insect, they could have avoided many wrong decisions and actions. From the above, it is clear that from the very beginning of the novel, Andrei Mryy allows the author of the diary not only to narrate, but also to explain phenomena and events.
Andrei Mriy so successfully coped with the task, he portrayed the protagonist of the novel so vividly that the reader believed: Samasuy Samson is a real person. And, as the summary states, A. Mryy published Samson Samasuya's Notes for the first time not on the territory of the union state, but abroad. In his letter to a friend of the workers, I.V. The writer tells Stalin about an interesting fact: a lot of letters came to the editorial office of the magazine that published Notes of Samson Samasuya demanding the exclusion of Samasuy, the henchman of Soviet power, from the party.
The life of the protagonist before starting a diary
The reader will learn very little about Samson’s previous life. The author is allegedly trying to show that there was nothing significant in it, everything important in the life of the author of the diary will happen in the future. About Samasuya’s past life, only that which directly testifies to his characteristic features of behavior is told. Samson is from a family of peasants, but he treats the work of the peasant contemptuously, as to something humiliating and shameful.
The head of the cultural department of the district executive committee prefers to search for light bread. Because of this trait of his character, Samson is forced to regularly change his occupation, because there is no light legal bread, and he prefers exclusively delicious food and high-quality expensive clothes. So to speak, “is ill with a pan-sickness.” That's exactly what Samson's father characterizes aptly.
"Notes of Samson Samasuya" (summary). The phenomena described by the hero - absurdity or reality?
Only at first glance the reality described by the main character looks absurd. Of course, the author could not do without deliberate exaggeration, but they perform an exclusively artistic function. It is impossible to deny that in the 1920s in the Soviet country, in fact, there was total control over social and political life and all its manifestations and ostentatiously ideal people, phenomena and facts.
With the help of a carefully created image of Samson Samasuy, Andrei Mriy sarcastically talks about the whole horde of Soviet bureaucrats who took several posts under their responsibility at once. And they did it with such strong zeal that in the end they did not answer at all for anything. The official propaganda of that time explained what was happening due to the lack of personnel for the cultural revolution, which they wanted to carry out with a cavalry charge and which eventually turned into ordinary show-offs and the substitution of specific activities with empty talking rooms at various meetings, meetings and rallies.
The same Samasuy manages to combine the position of head of the children's commission, the partnership “Down with unconsciousness”, the district labor inspector and a member of the RVC. The hero’s “ebullient activity” doesn’t seem so stupid to him himself, he has a specific goal - to spin in such a way as to draw attention and necessarily check out the leadership, and, accordingly, fly up the career ladder of the bureaucratic pyramid.
Samson realizes: the system prevailing in the country is able to forgive him absolutely everything, but not independence and self-willed behavior. The chairman of the district executive committee, Som, characterizing Samasuya, says that people like him are needed by the system, if only to plug a hole in them in a certain situation. The main thing is to hold such a person in his hands, and he will turn into an ideal weapon to destroy the trends of the past.
Samasuy as a common name
On the one hand, Samson is a funny and funny person, he is cheerful and just sparkles with energy. But a poorly cultured, incompetent and uneducated employee of the Soviet bureaucratic machine is Samasuy. The whole lot of his vaunted energy is directed solely to destruction, not creation. In addition, he absolutely does not tolerate dissent, is excessively self-confident and intolerant of criticism from the outside. And how many similar samasuys and samasuychiki were there at that time who kept under inquisitive supervision all public life in the country of Soviets! Should we be surprised today at the cultural decline that we see?
Such cogs as Samasuy were needed by the Stalinist totalitarian machine as air fish, to be such a cog meant to live easily, not to be responsible for anything and for no one. The protagonist of the novel immediately correctly captures the basic principles of the activity of the authorities: everything built earlier is subject to destruction and ruin, and unwritten (including moral) laws should be thrown away as unnecessary; build a new one, and it’s absolutely unimportant that, or at least depict the activity in the right way.
He changed his own manner of speaking, having adopted the clericalism style so much that he even talks to himself mentally, using high-flown protocol-clerical vocabulary, among which the expression-stamps such as “unrelenting energy”, “shark of imperialism”, were always eternal all-union scale "," battle with temperament "," make a resolution ".
Not because, but contrary to
It should be noted that in this work of Andrei Mry there is not a single character who would be positive. Perhaps the author did so deliberately, contrary to the vulgar criticism of the time, which required the presence of a good character in the work. In addition, it was believed that the Soviet system was the golden dream of mankind, that under it no negative phenomena could exist.
“Notes by Samson Samasuy” is a foresight novel. The pinnacle of Soviet satirical prose
The novel "Notes by Samson Samasuya" (a brief summary of the novel clearly testifies to this) is the pinnacle of not only the Belarusian, but also the literary satire of the entire union state in general. The most important features of the work are the power of artistic generalization, a diverse palette of techniques of the satirical literary genre, the choice of satirical material, the way it is presented and the stylistic identity.
The work of Andrei Mrya foresees the emerging global problem of the cult of personality, which was still emerging at that time. And it is simply amazing how predictive, looking into the future he turned out to be. Creating his novel at the very beginning of the ill-fated Stalinist repressions in 1929, Andrei Mriy seemed to foresee what the construction of communism in the Soviet Union would turn out to be.
Thus, it is quite fair to call Samson Samasuy's Notes (a brief summary of the novel illustrates this as well as possible) social and political foresight. In full form, the novel was published for the first time only in 1988, since Soviet criticism considered it a vicious libel on reality. Shortly after its publication, Samson Samasuy's Notes were made into films.