Abstract: "Paradox" - unexpected conclusion and prediction of the future

A short essay by Vladimir Galaktionovich Korolenko came to Russian literature from memories of his native Ukraine. He gives portraits of actors in a certain light. It is this that achieves sharpness and contrast. The sketch gives a clash of two worlds - prosperous and well-fed and beggarly, wretched - this is its brief content. The paradox of the work is that an outcast hero carries through his bitter life a belief in happiness.

Halcyon days

Somewhere in a provincial town in Western Ukraine on a summer day, two young brother-panchas play. They are eight - ten years old. The back yard, where they spend hours spending time, is filled up with unnecessary trash. But most of all they are attracted by the ruins of an old carriage with the remains of a coat of arms on a broken door and a barrel filled with water, in which floats something like tadpoles. The carriage is full of charm - you can dream of it, meet bandits, fight with them, furiously shoot from wooden pistols on them from windows, save foggy female figures that never open their beautiful faces, stop and enter the inn. Or spend hours sitting with self-made fishing rods near the barrel and hoping to catch a silvery real live fish. Both classes were very tempting, but they had to be left when they called for dinner or evening tea. "Ponichi! To go to rest! "- suddenly the call of the servant Paul will interrupt their game. After the call of the servant, the serenity of their cozy little world, their children's games, will suddenly explode / This is the beginning of the work's summary. "Paradox", a small essay, will show how children will first encounter real life and how it will make them think.

What was happening in the yard?

A crowd of people gathered in the courtyard, a beautiful mother sat on the porch, and there was a beautiful mother, and at the porch stood a small cart carrying a strange, sickly man-a big head, a small, narrow body, legs long and thin like the spider's paws. This creature was accompanied by a tall subject with a mustache. He presented the public sitting in a cart as a nobleman Jan Krishtof Zaluski - a man who has no birth from birth. But this man's eyes were extremely sharp and intelligent. Zalusky, at the direction of his companion, greeted the gentlemen, taking off one foot of the boot from the other and lifting the cap with a mocking gallantry over his head, combing his hair with a comb, sending an air kiss to the young ladies sitting at the windows, threading the needle. Finally, Zaluski ordered his Matvei to serve paper and a pen. Easily and beautifully wrote her name on it. "And now," he asked mockingly, "who is ready for an aphorism?" Everyone was confused, and Zaluski, piercing the boys with intelligent cynical black eyes, called them to him. Then he quickly wrote something, and the boys aloud read an unexpected phrase: aphoristic and paradoxical together. "Man is created for happiness, like a bird for flight." And his eyes were pinched by inner pain. It was Zaluski's injury, combined with a deep mind, to express his cherished idea (its concise content) - the paradox-aphorism about happiness.

What happened then?

After collecting the money, Zaluski and Matvei left the yard. The boys looked at them from behind the fence and heard a scrap of conversation. "You, Matvey, have only an empty head, which does not represent anything, so, an empty pumpkin. But I forgot to attach my hands, but man is created for happiness, but happiness is not always created for him, "- this warped creature calmly and bitterly sums it up. The phrase written to children by a person who has no illusions, does not close his eyes to reality, opens the eyes of well-fed people who never knew what happiness is. Zaluski himself, by the wicked irony of fate, is deprived of the opportunity to exist independently and is forced to maintain a dependent state. This is indicated by a brief summary. "Paradox" shows readers that the aphorism about happiness, written to children, sounds in Zalusky's exposition as a thought he personally received.

It's hard to be happy when there is a lot of struggle, persecution, loss of loved ones, so many hungry and beggars without shelter. But the laws of paradox exist even where there are the worst, most inadequate conditions for its manifestation. VG Korolenko, the story "Paradox" written, claims that any person has the right to happiness. "And happiness is everywhere," the great I. Bunin followed after Korolenko.