ORTHODOX EVENING. Garotos

Celebrating the winter solstice, the devil roams the world, the undisputed secret of the twelve nights, to counteract the activities of Evil (terrible attack in Istanbul, but the Black Joker has already warned Putin, the Russian plane was shot down?, Putin's ambassador in Constantinople is killed from behind... Negro Zumbon leaves with bloody hands, Satanic sects are widespread in the United States, and at Christmas they worship Bacchus, Venus and Moloch, transformed into consumerism and bacchanalia.

Meanwhile, licking my wounds with the ointment of literature, I reread "The Night Before Christmas" - a wonderful story by Nikolai Gogol, which instills hope and carries a hidden message: evil will be defeated and, in the end, will escape to hell with its tail ... between its legs. an eternal message. However, "we are not monks, we are attracted by the forbidden," says one of the Cossacks.

U there is a certain part of us who have wives but do not live with them. "Some have them in Ukraine, some in Poland, and some even in Turkey." In a speech by a Cossack to his "zapar" (centuries-old elder or senten), it is noted that "among the darkness shines the glory of Christ, born to save people."

The author of "Dead Souls" uses sarcasm as a whip, and the blows of the whip run through this entire magical story. This is how to write, walking on a razor's edge.

In this literary work, Gogol wants to pay tribute to Dikanka in the Poltava region, the village where he was born on the banks of the Dnieper, in the east of the country. He was Ukrainian, but wrote in Russian. Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol (1809-1852) spent most of his life in Petrograd. He was a civil servant, a tax collector or excise inspector, like Cervantes. His mission was to visit the estates of the nobility before the emancipation of the slaves to petition the treasury, and this work served as a model for one of the greatest works of world literature (Miorti Dushi), poorly translated into Spanish. , since the lords had to pay contributions for the dead servants. It should have been called "Many Blessings".

It turns out that on Christmas Eve the devil stole the moon and the world was plunged into darkness. In a village in the depths of Ukraine there lived a blacksmith and icon painter who fell in love with a girl, the daughter of a witch. He knocks on her door from under the window, but Oksana, that is the name of the girl, despises him because she considers her admirer very rude.

Vakula's husband does not give in and, since Oksana has no shoes to go to the party, promises her his love in exchange for the impossible:

"I will marry you if you bring me the queen's shoes."

Since love is blind, the young man goes to the devil and makes a deal with evil.

"If you give me your soul, I will get what you ask for," answers Pateta.

In the village, too, a deal was made, while the Cossacks ate traditional Christmas borscht, danced carols to the balalaika, dragged their heavy fur coats through the snow and drank vodka and lit their pipes, Satan, grabbing the blacksmith by the hair, carried him through the air to the imperial court, where Chancellor Potemkin granted him an audience with the queen.

She listened enthusiastically to the story of a poor man dying of love and fulfilled his wish by giving him the long-awaited gold and crystal slippers. Meanwhile, in modest Dikanka, events are taking place: the deacon, secretly from his wife, goes to visit Sala, another local beauty, "a useful friend, like Dolores in Calatayud"...

"Please, virtuous Sala, give me a glass of brandy," says the priest, but at the moment he says this, there is a knock at the door.

"Oh, mother, maybe my husband is hiding in this bag."

But it was not a man at the party, but the mayor himself... The beating still took place...

This time, the Cossack Chub knocked on the door. He got lost and asked for hospitality, because the night was terrible and a storm was raging.

The incomparable lady decides to put him in a sack of coal in the woodshed.

The situation, misunderstandings and stupidities are repeated with other characters.

Gogol uses his satirical whip to criticize the customs of Tsarist Russia with a dose of humor.

Meanwhile, Christmas carols are heard throughout the city, the bells are ringing, and the devil returns from the imperial city with a blacksmith on his shoulders, who, full of joy, brought the queen's shoes in a bag.

The plot is complicated by incredible twists, because Gogol's "The Night Before Christmas" is a fairy tale reminiscent of some legends of the Indo-European oral tradition, when the devil

RASDENNYA