Depiction of the life of the Russian people in the works of Nekrasov. Depiction of folk life in the lyrics of Nikolai Nekrasov. The Russian people as depicted by N.A. Nekrasov
Poem by N.A. Nekrasov’s “Who Lives Well in Rus'” immerses us in the world of Russian peasant life. The author, who saw his main artistic task as depicting the “bitter lot of the people,” gives in the poem a complete and multifaceted picture of the Russian peasantry. That is why in “Who Lives Well in Rus'” we meet such a variety of peasant types, we learn about the worldview, lifestyle, traditions, and problems of the Russian people.
It must be said that Nekrasov’s depiction of the peasantry is most closely connected with the problem of happiness. It is to search for the happy that seven men set off on their journey across Rus', which gives us the opportunity to get acquainted with all aspects of Russian life on an epic scale.
It is important that the answer to the question “Who can live well in Rus'?” It doesn’t work out right away. The author uses the “spiral principle” in his work, where at each “turn” a new character appears with his own understanding of happiness. It is this representation that reveals the hero - shows us his character and essence.
Thus, it seems to the truth-seekers themselves that to be happy it is enough to simply be well-fed: “If only we had some bread, half a pound a day...” However, they soon begin to understand that man does not live by bread alone. At a rural fair, “folk” heroes appear before them, each of whom has their own idea of happiness. So, for many characters, the main thing in life is health and strength - physical and moral. Otherwise, you simply won’t survive, you won’t be able to cope with your bitter burden.
This is evidenced, for example, by a skinny sexton who has lost his job. He is convinced that a person is happy “not in sables, not in gold, not in expensive stones,” but only in “compassion” and faith in God. Only this, according to the hero, can strengthen and give strength for earthly life.
In contrast to this opinion, another heroine speaks out - an old woman whose garden yielded “up to a thousand turnips.” This is the happiness of this woman, who is glad that she will be full, that mother earth took care of her and did not leave her hungry.
Then we meet a soldier who is happy that he was in twenty battles and not killed, was beaten with sticks and starved, and did not die. Another hero, a stonecutter, is convinced that his happiness lies in great strength, because thanks to it he earns food for himself and feeds his family.
With the appearance of Yakima Nagogo in the poem, the work includes the idea of higher, moral values, incommensurable with material wealth (remember that the Yakima family first of all takes out icons and “pictures” from the burning hut).
At the next “turn” in the work, Ermila Girin appears. With his “help,” the poem outlines the image of a people’s protector and another condition for happiness appears—people’s respect:
An enviable, true honor,
Not bought with money,
Not with fear: with strict truth,
With intelligence and kindness!
Old man Savely “complements” this image: he is the people’s avenger and hero. Freedom-loving and proud, this man is able to fight for his happiness (killing the German manager). However, his strength does not bring any positive results (hard labor, an unhappy old age in his son’s house, guilt in the death of his great-grandson) or happiness for the hero. As a result, at the end of his life, Savely is completely immersed in faith in God, in which he finds consolation. The powerful personality of this character is too contradictory for him to be considered happy.
Matryona Timofeevna is on the next “turn” - she is a kind of female version of “happy” with her own interpretation of the problem: “It’s not a matter of looking for a happy one among women.”
This beautiful, intelligent woman has endured and suffered so much that no man could endure. She suffered humiliation and beatings in her husband's family, from the authorities, who considered the serf woman not a person, but a powerless beast. Matryona experienced terrible hunger, the loss of her breadwinner husband, and the loss of her children. However, despite all the adversities, this heroine retained her strength - physical and moral. Perhaps that is why people consider her happy.
At the end of the poem, another hero appears, who, according to Nekrasov, is the undisputed “lucky one.” This is the “peasant son” Grisha Dobrosklonov, who “for about fifteen years... already knew firmly that he would live for the happiness of his wretched and dark native corner.” This character is ready to give his life in the name of the triumph of an “honest cause”, so that “his fellow countrymen and every peasant can live freely and cheerfully throughout all holy Rus'.”
Thus, in the poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'” Nekrasov presents us with a wide range of peasant types - he shows men and women different ages, with different characters, different outlooks on life, different problems. The question about happiness, which the truth-seekers ask all of them, reveals each of them, allows us to understand the essence of each character.
The poet shows that, despite all the differences and diversity of peasant types, they all have one thing in common - unsettled life, downtrodden conditions, poverty and lack of rights.
Left a reply Guru
In the early 60s of the 19th century, it seemed that with just a little effort, the people would overthrow serfdom, and with it the autocracy, and a happy time would come. But serfdom was abolished, but freedom and happiness never came. Hence the poet’s real awareness that this is a long historical process, the final result of which neither he nor the younger generation (in the poem he is personified by Vanya) will live to see. Why is the poet so pessimistic? In the work, the people are depicted in two forms: a great worker, deserving universal respect and admiration for his deeds, and a patient slave, whom one can only pity without offending with this pity. It is this slavish obedience that makes Nekrasov doubt that people’s life will soon change for the better. The narrative opens with a picture of nature, painted lushly, plastically and visibly. Already the first, peasant-like word, “vigorous,” which is so unusual for landscape lyricism, gives a special feeling of freshness and the taste of healthy air and turns out to be a daring bid for democracy and the people of the work. The beauty and harmony of nature are a reason to start talking about the human world.
Glorious Autumn! Frosty nights
Clear, quiet days... .
There is no ugliness in nature!
Unlike nature, human society is full of contradictions and dramatic clashes. In order to talk about the severity and feat of national labor, the poet turns to a technique quite well known in Russian literature - a description of the dream of one of the participants in the story. Vanya’s dream is not only a conventional device, but the real state of a boy, in whose disturbed imagination the story of the suffering of road builders gives birth to fantastic pictures with the dead revived under the moonlight.
Chu! menacing exclamations were heard!
Stomping and gnashing of teeth;
A shadow ran across the frosty glass... .
What's there? Crowd of the dead!
In the dream picture, labor appears both as unprecedented suffering and as a feat realized by the people themselves (“God’s warriors”). Hence the highly pathetic manner in which they speak of people who brought the barren wilds to life and found a grave in them. The picture of fresh and beautiful nature that opens the poem not only contrasts with the picture of the dream, but is also correlated with it in grandeur and poetry.
...Brothers! You are reaping our benefits!
We are destined to rot in the earth... .
Do you all remember us poor people kindly?
Or have you forgotten a long time ago?..
The biggest problem revealed by Leskov in the tale “Lefty” is the problem of the lack of demand for the talents of the Russian people.
Leskov is filled not only with feelings of love and affection for his people, but also with pride in the talents of his compatriots, for their undisguised sincere patriotism.
The main character Lefty refers to all the poor, talented people of that time who did not have the opportunity to develop their talent and apply their skills. These people, possessing a natural gift, accomplished things that the vaunted Englishmen never dreamed of. If Lefty had even a little knowledge of arithmetic, the flea would still be dancing. If Lefty had been more selfish and lazy, he could have stolen the flea and sold it, because he was not paid a penny for his work.
However, the sovereign, amazed at the art of overseas masters, did not even remember the talents of his people. And even when Platov proved that the weapon was made by Tula craftsmen, the tsar felt sorry that they had embarrassed the hospitable British.
At the same time, Lefty, while abroad, did not forget about his homeland and parents for a minute. He refused all tempting offers from the British: “We are committed to our homeland...”
N. Nekrasov, for the first time in Russian poetry, revealed to the reader folk life in its entirety - with its beauty and wisdom, with its bottomless grief and torment. Before him, the almost dominant opinion in literature was that, for example, the writer and journalist A. Druzhinin bluntly expressed it. He convinced Nekrasov, then a young publisher of the Sovremennik magazine: “The magazine’s subscribers are educated people.
Well, is it interesting for an educated reader to know that Erema eats chaff, and Matryosha howls over a fallen cow. Really, everything that is written about the Russian peasant is exaggerated. What needs might he have for another life? He is completely satisfied and happy if on a holiday he manages to get drunk on mash or to a bestial state with vodka.”
Nekrasov not only refuted the lies about the Russian peasant; he saw the people's soul as a great soul: pure and sublime, sympathetic and merciful, suffering and patient, strong and rebellious. For no author before has the “base”, ordinary life of a simple person, crushed by poverty and slavery, been the main, constant subject of poetry.
Thanks to the truth, merciless and burning, of which Nekrasov was capable, thanks to his gift of masterfully painting this “base” life with precise and sharp colors, the poet’s poems turned out to be previously unknown literature, an artistic discovery. I. Turgenev, having read one of the first “truly Nekrasov” poems in a magazine, “Am I Driving Down a Dark Street at Night...”, wrote from abroad to V. Belinsky: “Tell Nekrasov from me that his poem is in the 9th book of Sovremennik ” drove me completely crazy; I repeat this amazing work day and night - and I’ve already learned it by heart.” In fact, how could it be more expressive to draw something like this:
Do you remember the day when, sick and hungry,
Was I depressed, exhausted?
In our room, empty and cold,
The steam from the breath came in waves.
Do you remember the mournful sounds of trumpets,
Splashes of rain, half light, half darkness?
Your son cried and his hands were cold
You warmed him with your breath.
He did not stop talking - and the bell rang piercingly
There was his cry... It was getting darker;
The child cried a lot and died...
Poor thing! Don't shed foolish tears!
………………………………………………..
IN different angles we sat gloomily.
I remember you were pale and weak,
A secret thought is ripening in you,
There was a struggle in your heart.
I dozed off. You left silently
Having dressed up as if for a crown,
And an hour later she brought it hastily
A coffin for a child and dinner for a father.
We have satisfied our painful hunger,
A light was lit in a dark room,
They dressed the son and put him in a coffin...
Did chance help us out? Did God help?
You were in no hurry to make a sad confession,
I didn't ask anything
Only we both looked with sobs,
I was just gloomy and embittered...
How many purely Russian pictures we find in Nekrasov’s poems and poems - and they are always painted in the color of sadness, they are always in tune with peasant need, recruit tears, a sad coachman’s song, a sad lullaby... “Again,” the poet says, as if apologizing, “again I’m talking about sad motherland,” and this “again” is tragically repeated now, as if a century and a half had not passed and the world, man, the Russian land had not changed.
How long-lasting the poet’s feeling turned out to be, what a persistently painful chord he touched, if the echo from his poems still flies over our open spaces and cannot die out either in the dense Russian forests, or in the all-worldly Russian distances, or in the Russian souls that have experienced a lot:
Again deserted, quiet and peaceful
You, Russian path, familiar path!
Nailed to the ground by tears
Recruit wives and mothers,
The dust is no longer standing in pillars
Over my poor homeland.
Again you send to my heart
Relaxing dreams
And you hardly remember
What were you like during the war?
When above serene Russia
The silent creaking of the cart arose,
Sad as a people's groan!
Rus' has risen from all sides,
I gave everything I had
And sent for protection
From all the country roads
Your obedient sons.
Nekrasov can be called a chronicler of the people's grief. Re-read his poems “Who Lives Well in Rus'” and “Peddlers”, “Frost, Red Nose” and “Peasant Children”, “Sasha” and “Orina, Soldier’s Mother”, “Railroad” and “Unhappy”, “Russian Women” ” and “Grandfather”, “Contemporaries” and “Belinsky”, and many poems that have sunk into memory - “Reflections at the front entrance”, “Yesterday, at six o’clock ...”, “Elegy” (“Let the fickle one speak to us fashion..."), "Prayer", "Uncompressed Strip" - together they present a living and detailed picture of peasant Russia, its needs, draining labor, barbarity and slavery. But there were so many prose writers, poets, playwrights, lively journalists around - and none of them tore off the veil behind which hid the terrifying disorder of Russian life. Nekrasov did this with all the passion of a people’s mourner and intercessor:
Motherland!
Name me such an abode,
I've never seen such an angle
Where would your sower and guardian be?
Wherever a Russian man moans.
He moans across the fields, along the roads,
He groans in prisons, in prisons,
In the mines, on an iron chain;
He groans under the barn, under the haystack,
Under a cart, spending the night in the steppe;
Moaning in his own poor house,
I am not happy with the light of God's sun;
Moans in every remote town,
At the entrance of courts and chambers...
“Muse of revenge and sadness,” Nekrasov said about his song. Why “sadness” is understandable. And why - “revenge”? Russian poets have never sung revenge, except perhaps revenge on the enemy. Any of the Christian feelings could be evoked in the reader’s heart by the poems of Russian poets: pain, pity, participation, compassion, but revenge...
It seems to me that this feeling of the poet will be explained by a similar state of Leo Tolstoy, expressed by him a quarter of a century after the death of Nekrasov. Receiving angry letters from dispossessed compatriots every day, the author of War and Peace fully agreed with the warning that his correspondents addressed to the rulers on the eve of the first Russian revolution: “There can only be one answer to what the authorities are doing to the people: revenge, revenge and revenge. !
Nekrasov was not only wounded in childhood and youth by horrific violence against forced people. And later, he, a journalist, a public person, eagerly followed events in Russia and was acutely worried about any cruelty. And news of violence and retaliatory popular anger were not so rare.
In the report of the third police department to Nicholas I for 1841, for example, it was said: “The investigation into the murder of the Mogilev landowner Svadkovsky by his servants revealed that the reason for this atrocity was his unusually cruel treatment of the peasants for 35 years...”. “... disobedience was shown in 27 estates and for the most part it seemed necessary to use military assistance to pacify; on the estates of Count Borch and Demidova, the authorities were forced to act with force of arms, and in the former 21 were killed and 31 were wounded, and in the latter 33 were killed and up to 114 were wounded.”
In a report for 1843, Benckendorf’s department reported: “An unnamed denunciation was received about the beating of a ten-year-old yard girl, Firsova, by the landowner of the Tver province Postelnikov. It was discovered that Firsova actually died from hunger and beatings. In three provinces, state-owned peasants... met the military teams sent there with arms in their hands, and only reinforced detachments were brought into obedience, and 43 people were wounded and killed...”
Could Nekrasov, knowing this, write differently, without anger and indignation:
Here he is, our gloomy plowman,
With a dark, murdered face, -
Bast shoes, rags, cap,
Torn harness; barely
The nag is pulling the roe deer,
I'm barely alive from hunger!
The eternal worker is hungry,
I'm hungry too, I promise!
………………………………………
Spectacle of national disasters
Unbearable, my friend.
The well-known “literary informer” Thaddeus Bulgarin reported to the third police department in 1848: “Nekrasov is the most desperate communist; It’s worth reading his poems and prose in the St. Petersburg Almanac to verify this. He cries out terribly in favor of the revolution.”
But who is preparing the revolution? Not at all those who “cry out” against slavery and violence, but precisely those who mock their own country. The instigators of uprisings are people in power. It is they who are pushing the people towards revolutions, pushing them with their cruelty, corruption, and inability to provide their fellow citizens with a tolerable life. Today, over Nekrasov’s poems, you remember with bewilderment the verbiage of the Pharisees: “The limit has been reached on the revolution.” Gentlemen, the limit has been reached for mockery of the muzzled people. You won't have to do this with impunity for long. Listen to the poet:
Every country comes
Sooner or later it's time
Where there is no dull obedience -
Friendly strength is needed;
A fatal disaster will strike -
The country will tell in an instant.
The passionate desire for people's freedom was a living seed in the poetry of Pushkin, Lermontov, and Koltsov. But only in Nekrasov’s lyrics did this grain sprouted and become an ear, and if you look at all of Russian poetry, then it was this ear that laid the foundation for a ripened field of hope. Russia remembered Nekrasov as a herald of freedom, and after him, Russian literature could no longer be perceived otherwise than as a light in any bad weather, in the surrounding darkness, in temporary darkness. It was previously unheard of for a fearless and justified call for revenge to sound in poetry:
Unbridled, wild,
Enmity towards the oppressors
And great power of attorney
Towards selfless work.
With this right hatred,
With this faith the saint
Over the evil untruth
You will burst out with God's thunderstorm...
One of the St. Petersburg newspapers wrote then: “Not by the sonority of the verse, not by the poetic treatment of the form, but by the content itself, close to every heart, involuntarily touching a nerve, by the burning interest of thought, by its humanity, by compassion for the suffering, by humor , sometimes bilious and even somewhat painful, due to its passionate dramatism - Nekrasov’s works enjoy general love, warm sympathy, and even when they were published separately in magazines, many learned them by heart or wrote them out in special notebooks.”
Nekrasov thought a lot about the singer’s own lot; Having defined it for himself, he left the following legacy to the next generations of lyricists:
And you, poet! chosen one of heaven,
Herald of age-old truths,
Do not believe that he who has no bread
Not worth it prophetic strings yours!..
Be a citizen! serving art,
Live for the good of your neighbor,
Subordinating your genius to feeling
All-embracing Love...
Nekrasov’s poems seem to echo everyday peasant conversation, a sincere folk song. It seems that his poetry was initially characterized by a national cast. He discovered the world of our everyday life as a spiritual and moral world, finding true, priceless beauty in this combination of Russian life and spirituality.
In Russian, and even in world, lyric poetry there are few poets who, like Nekrasov, would tell so many everyday stories that together make up what we call folk life; discovered so many human destinies, which together made up the people's destiny. And all these stories and destinies are illuminated by the light of earthly beauty and healing compassion. Since school, we have memorized the sad lines from the poem “Frost, Red Nose”:
...Savrasushka, touch it,
Pull your tug tight!
You served your master a lot,
Serve one last time!
Chu! two death blows!
The priests are waiting - go!..
Murdered, mournful couple,
Mother and father walked ahead.
Both guys and the dead man
We sat, not daring to cry,
And, ruling Savraska, at the tomb
With the reins their poor mother
She was walking... Her eyes were sunken,
And he was no whiter than her cheeks
Worn on her as a sign of sadness
A scarf made of white canvas...
But we were hardly aware that the story of poor Proclus, his unfortunate wife Daria and restless children would remain in our memory for the rest of our lives, taking on everyday truth, like a tragedy that seemed to have happened before our eyes and shook us - we hardly realized we believe that it will be imprinted as a living picture in our destiny, largely because of the wonderful, unforgettable lines that accompany it about peasant labor and Russian nature. For example, these:
It is not the wind that rages over the forest,
Streams did not run from the mountains,
Moroz the voivode on patrol
Walks around his possessions.
Looks to see if the snowstorm is good
The forest paths have been taken over,
And are there any cracks, crevices,
And is there any bare ground somewhere?
Are the tops of the pines fluffy?
Is the pattern on oak trees beautiful?
And are the ice floes tightly bound?
In great and small waters?
He walks - walks through the trees,
Cracking on frozen water
And the bright sun plays
In his shaggy beard...
Probably, in his ancestral Greshnev and later in the places where Nekrasov hunted, he not only saw human grief, but also heard plenty of juicy conversations, playful exchanges, intricate words, saw enough of ancient rituals, skillful practical jokes. All this went into the poet’s books:
Oh! light, light box,
The strap doesn't hurt your shoulders!
And the sweetheart took everything
Turquoise ring.
I gave her a whole piece of calico,
Scarlet ribbon for braids,
Belt - white shirt
Belt into haymaking -
The beloved put everything
In the box, except for the ring:
“I don’t want to go dressed up
Without a hearty friend!
Nekrasov revealed many such common folk customs, many rituals - whether matchmaking, funerals, the beginning of the harvest, or the end of the suffering - rituals that have developed in Russian life over the centuries, he brought to light, as if saying: “Admire your native wealth, Russians.” people, marvel at the talent and wisdom of your ancestors!” In the poem “Who Lives Well in Rus',” almost every hero talks about his life or the hardships of the rural world, not in erased words, but with a special verbal outlet, with his own sentence and saying. For example, the peasant woman Matryona Timofeevna decided to tell the wanderers about her life in detail, with details, and began her story from her youth, from the time before her marriage. A guy came to her with matchmakers - the bride did not sleep all night, mentally admonishing the groom:
Oh! what are you, guy, about a girl,
Did you find any good in me?
Where did you spot me?
Is it about Christmas time, I'm like crazy
With guys, with friends
Rolling around laughing?
You are mistaken, father's son!
From playing, from riding, from running,
It flared up in the cold
The girl has a face!
Is it a quiet conversation?
I was dressed up there
Portliness and prettiness
I saved up over the winter,
Blooming like poppies!
Should you look at me?
I shake like flax, like sheaves
I’m milking in Riga...
Is it in the parents' house?..
Oh! If only I knew! I would send
I'm going to the city of brother falcon:
“Dear brother! silk, garus
Buy - seven colors,
Yes, a blue set!”
I would embroider in the corners
Moscow, the Tsar and Queen,
Yes Kyiv, yes Constantinople,
And in the middle is the sun,
And this curtain
I would hang it in the window,
Maybe you should take a look, -
He would have missed me!..
From attention to colloquial peasant suits the tongue and Nekrasov’s courage in the artistic use of any word. It is known that people can place a current word in such proximity that no talker would dream of:
The grass was lying under the scythe,
Under the sickle was burning rye…
…………………………………….
Already a sheep pubescent,
Feeling the cold coming...
……………………………………
Over the swamp turned blue,
Hanging over dew…
……………………………………
Is it going to rain?
They walk across the sky bulls…
……………………………………
Titus home. Fields not orans,
The house was torn to pieces...
And how much poetry is spilled across the pages of this “social” work!
Silent night is falling
Already out into the dark sky
Luna is already writing a letter
Lord is red gold
On blue on velvet,
That tricky letter,
Which neither wise men,
Neither fools can read it.
In the spring, when the grandchildren are small,
With the ruddy sun-grandfather
The clouds are playing:
Here's the right side
One continuous cloud
Covered - clouded,
It got dark and cried:
Rows of gray threads
They hung to the ground.
And closer, above the peasants,
From small, torn,
Happy clouds
The red sun laughs
Like a girl from the sheaves.
One can cite colorful lines from Nekrasov’s poems over and over again - they refute the popular opinion that our classic is supposedly a poet of the idea that the artistic, aesthetic was alien to him. It is not true. Nekrasov always carried in his soul that ideal that distinguishes a true artist. Once he convinced Turgenev: “... go into yourself, into your youth, into love, into the vague and beautiful in its madness impulses of youth, into this melancholy without melancholy - and write something in this tone. You yourself don’t know what sounds will flow when you once manage to touch these strings of a heart that has lived as much as yours - with love, suffering and all ideality.”
He himself, in many, many works - from the first poems about love: “Let the dreamers be ridiculed long ago...” and “When from the darkness of error...” to the last dying poem, as if interrupted by sobs, about his mother - he poured out so much tenderness, gratitude to life and people that he became the favorite poet of his compatriots.
This revolutionary democrat, as our literary studies imagined him in the twentieth century, had a truly Christian soul. In the poem "Silence" he exclaimed at the sight Orthodox Church on the poor Russian land:
Temple of sighing, temple of sorrow -
Poor temple of your land:
Harder moans have never been heard
Neither the Roman Peter, nor the Colosseum!
Here are the people you love,
Your insurmountable melancholy
He brought a holy burden -
And he left relieved!
Come in! Christ will lay on hands
And he will remove it by the will of the saint
From the soul there are shackles, from the heart there is torment
And ulcers from the patient’s conscience...
We talked about the pain that the endless patience of the people echoed in Nekrasov’s soul. But looking at the Russian people, the poet never confused his humility with kindness, responsiveness, and perseverance in trouble. Remember the heroes of his poems, remember how they relate to God’s commandments, by what moral laws they live. For example, Orina, a soldier’s mother, answers the question why her hero son died when he returned home after serving as a soldier:
I didn’t like to tell you, sir.
He's talking about his military life,
It’s a sin to show the laity
A soul doomed to God!
To speak is to anger the Almighty,
To please the damned demons...
So as not to say unnecessary words,
Don't be annoyed with your enemies,
Dumbness before death
Befits a Christian.
God knows what hardships
They crushed Vanina's strength!
According to Nekrasov, a commoner is not considered a human being by those who do not have God in their soul. And the tormentor, and the money-grubber, and the bribe-taker, for whom there is no earthly judgment and who are not afraid of heavenly judgment, evoke sarcastic lines from the poet:
Happy is he who loves the road
Acquisitions, who was faithful to her
And not once in my life
I didn’t feel it in my empty chest.
The poet himself always “felt God in his chest.” His soul softened when he spoke about God's council, about church bells, about righteous people. Here he often reached the point of merging earthly and heavenly songs:
Chu! cranes are flying in the sky,
And their cry is like a roll call
Keeping the dream of their native land
The Lord's sentries are rushing
Above dark forest, above the village,
Over the field where the herd is grazing,
And a sad song is sung
In front of a smoking fire...
So now we have to discover the “new” Nekrasov, who well felt the rare beauty of the pure soul, its closeness to the image of God. And the poet who wrote:
The temple of God flashed on the mountain
And a childishly pure sense of faith
Suddenly the smell hit my soul.
Particular cordiality and some kind of guilt towards another soul, unprotected and suffering, were embodied in Nekrasov’s poems addressed to women. I don’t know if any other Russian poet had the right to say at the end of his journey, like Nekrasov:
But all my life I have suffered for a woman.
The path to freedom is denied her;
Shameful captivity, all the horror of a woman’s lot,
Left her little strength to fight...
It seemed that the poet was in a hurry to capture in poetry the luminous characters of his contemporaries, no matter what class - “low” or “noble” - they were. Peasant Daria from the poem “Frost, Red Nose”, Sasha from the story of the same name, Orina, the soldier’s mother, the wives of the Decembrists - princesses Volkonskaya and Trubetskaya from the poetic duology “Russian Women”, finally, the heroines of Nekrasov’s lyrical confessions - all these images are deposited in our hearts like relatives, dear ones. Why? Maybe because in the poet’s poems we are touched by the extraordinary understanding of the female soul, empathy with it and gratitude for the light and kindness. This note sounds with particular force in the poem “Mother”:
And if I easily shake off the years
There are noxious traces from my soul
Having trampled everything reasonable with her feet,
Proud of the ignorance of the environment,
And if I filled my life with struggle
For the ideal of goodness and beauty
And carries the song composed by me,
Living love has deep features, -
O my mother, I am moved by you!
You saved the living soul in me!
In Nekrasov's love poems there is no traditional romanticism with which the lyrical hero usually envelops his feelings. In Nekrasov’s intimate lyrics, as in other works, there are many everyday details. The object of his worship is not an ephemeral, sublime image, but an earthly woman living in the same everyday environment as the poet. But this does not mean that his love turns out to be deliberately mundane, devoid of high worship and pure poetry. Happiness and Suffering loving people, daily in contact with the prose of life, with everyday adversities, are conveyed by Nekrasov in lines as tragic and serene, aloofly cold and fiery passionate, like the immortal lines of other famous singers:
You are always incomparably good,
But when I'm sad and gloomy,
Comes to life so inspirationally
Your cheerful, mocking mind;
You want to laugh so brightly and sweetly,
This is how you scold my stupid enemies,
Then, hanging his head sadly,
You make me laugh so slyly;
You are so kind, stingy with affection,
Your kiss is so full of fire,
And your beloved eyes
So they dove and stroke me, -
What's wrong with you?
I bear it wisely and meekly
And forward - into this dark sea -
I look without the usual fear...
All the recipients of Nekrasov’s poems about love are women who supported him in life’s hardships and selflessly shared the trials of fate with him. In 1848, Avdotya Yakovlevna Panaeva, a real Russian beauty, a woman with literary talent, became the poet’s common-law wife.
Together with Nikolai Alekseevich she wrote the novel “Three Sides of the World”; her memoirs became an interesting story about the literary life of Russia in the mid-nineteenth century. Many of the poet’s poems are dedicated to A. Panaeva, which have become an adornment of Russian poetry. Reading them, you note the peculiarity of Nekrasov’s lyrical revelations: there are no poetic conjectures or exaggerations in his confessions; here the fact of biography, family, everyday history are raised to high art. Here is a poem from 1855, when the poet was struck by an illness that seemed fatal to him:
She suffered a heavy cross:
Suffer, be silent, pretend and don’t cry;
Who has passion, youth, and will -
She gave everything - he became her executioner!
She hasn't met anyone for a long time;
Depressed, fearful and sad,
Crazy, sarcastic speeches
Must listen without complaint:
“Don’t say that youth ruined
You, tormented by my jealousy;
Don't talk!.. my grave is close,
And you are a fresh spring flower!..”
N. Chernyshevsky rightly called Nekrasov’s poems about love “poetry of the heart.” From the depths of the heart, enthusiastic and sober, grateful and exhausted, lines of such amazing poems emerged as “I don’t like your irony...”, “Farewell”, “You sent me far...”, “Oh letters from a woman dear to us...”, “You and I are stupid people...” I can’t help but cite the first of them.
Everything here: the tension of lyrical feeling, the noble intonation, the stylistic refinement of the lines, and the philosophical understanding of what is said - everything is subordinated to ensuring that the song in praise of love is poetically lofty and at the same time everyday close to any reader:
I don't like your irony.
Leave it obsolete and unlived,
And you and I, who loved so dearly,
Still retaining the remnant of feeling, -
It’s too early for us to indulge in it!
Still shy and tender
Do you want to extend the date?
While rebelliousness is still boiling inside me
Jealous worries and dreams -
Don't rush the inevitable outcome!
And without that she is not far away:
We are boiling more intensely, full of the last thirst,
But there is a secret coldness and melancholy in the heart...
So in autumn the river is more turbulent,
But the raging waves are colder...
The last years of his life and especially the dying months were brightened up for the poet by another woman - Fekla Anisimovna Viktorova. The daughter of a soldier, an orphan, she was thirty years younger than Nikolai Alekseevich. “She exuded spiritual kindness and deep affection for Nekrasov,” wrote the writer A. Koni. The poet called her in his own way - Zina, Zinaida Nikolaevna. Shortly before his death, Nekrasov married her to ensure her right to inheritance.
And in the poems addressed to Zina, there is still the same lyrical hero: suffering from a cruel illness, he understands that he is involuntarily tormenting a close woman, and therefore strives to support her with his gratitude, with his consolation:
Don't cry in secret! - Believe in hope
Laugh, sing as you sang in the spring,
Repeat to my friends, as before,
Every verse you wrote down.
Say that you are happy with your friend:
In the celebration of victories won
Over your tormentor-illness
Your poet has forgotten about death!
Once V. Belinsky rightly noted: “For a true artist, where there is life, there is poetry.” Nekrasov knew how to find poetry in ordinary life, and even in times when for millions of Russian people it was subservient and gloomy. But despondency and hopelessness seemed worse to him than death. The poet left us many testimonies of his unshakable faith: “The Russian people are gathering their strength…”, “They will endure everything - and pave a wide, clear path for themselves…”, “That land that brings out so many glorious people from the people has not yet perished, then you know... »
5 / 5. 3
The theme of the people and the problem of national character has become one of the main ones in Russian literature since the times of Griboyedov with his comedy “Woe from Wit” and Pushkin, who in the novels “The Captain’s Daughter” and “Dubrovsky”, in the lyrics and “Eugene Onegin” raises the question of what constitutes the basis of the Russian national character, how noble culture and folk culture relate.
Gogol’s concept of the Russian person is complex and multifaceted. In the poem “ Dead Souls“It consists of two layers: the ideal, where the people are heroes, brave and strong people, and the real, where the peasants turn out to be no better than their owners, the landowners.
Nekrasov’s approach to the theme of the people is very different from its presentation in the works of his predecessors. The poet expressed ideals in his work democratic movement Russia in the mid-19th century, and therefore his concept of the people is distinguished by its harmony and precision: it is entirely subordinate to its social and political positions.
One of the striking features of Nekrasov’s work is that the people appear in it not as some kind of generalization, but as many living people with their own destinies, characters and concerns. All of Nekrasov’s works are densely “populated”, even their titles speak of this: “Grandfather”, “Schoolboy”, “Mother”, “Orina, the Soldier’s Mother”, “Kalistrat”, “Peasant Children”, “Russian Women”, “Song” Eremushka." All of Nekrasov’s heroes, even those for whom it is now difficult to find real prototypes, are very specific and alive. The poet loves some of them with all his heart, sympathizes with them, and hates others.
Already in Nekrasov’s early work, the world was divided into two camps:
Two camps, as before, in God's world;
Slaves in one, rulers in the other.
Many of Nekrasov’s poems represent a kind of “confrontation” between the strong and the weak, the oppressed and the oppressors. For example, in the poem “Ballet” Nekrasov, promising not to write satire, depicts luxurious boxes, the “diamond row”, and with a few strokes sketches portraits of their regulars:
I will not touch any military ranks,
Not in the service of the winged god
The civil aces sat down on their feet.
A starched dandy and a dandy,
(That is, the merchant is a reveler and a spendthrift)
And a mouse stallion (so Gogol
Calls the young elders)
Recorded supplier of feuilletons,
Officers of the Guards regiments
And the impersonal bastard of the salons -
I am ready to pass everyone by in silence!
And right there, before the curtain had even fallen on the stage where the French actress dances the trepak, the reader is confronted with scenes of village recruitment. “Snowy, cold, hazy and foggy,” and gloomy trains of peasant carts pull by.
It cannot be said that the social contrast in the description of pictures of folk life was Nekrasov’s discovery. Even in Pushkin’s “Village,” the harmonious landscape of rural nature is intended to emphasize the disharmony and cruelty of human society, where oppression and serfdom exist. In Nekrasov, the social contrast has more definite features: these are rich slackers and powerless people, who through their labor create all the blessings of life that the masters enjoy.
For example, in the poem “Hound Hunt,” the traditional fun of the nobles is presented from two points of view: the master, for whom it is joy and pleasure, and the peasant, who is unable to share the fun of the masters, because for him their hunt often turns into trampled fields, killed cattle, and so on. This further complicates his life, which is already full of hardships.
Kory in the novels “The Captain’s Daughter” and “Dubrovsky”, in the lyrics and “Eugene” Among such “confrontations” of the oppressed and oppressors, a special place is occupied by the poem “The Railway”, in which, according to K.I. Chukovsky, “precisely those most typical features of his (Nekrasov’s) talent are concentrated, which together form the only Nekrasov style in world literature.”
This poem contains the ghosts of those who died during construction. railway peasants stand up as an eternal reproach to passing passengers:
Chu! Menacing exclamations were heard!
Stomping and gnashing of teeth;
A shadow came across the frosty glass
What's there? Crowd of the dead!
Such works were perceived by censors as a violation of the official theory of social harmony, and by democratic layers as a call for immediate revolution. Of course, the author’s position is not so straightforward, but the fact that his poetry was very effective is confirmed by the testimony of his contemporaries. Thus, according to the recollections of one of the students of the military gymnasium, after reading the poem “The Railway,” his friend said: “Oh, I wish I could take a gun and go fight for the Russian people.”
Nekrasov's poetry demanded certain actions from the reader. These are “poems - appeals, poems - commandments, poems - commands,” at least this is how they were perceived by the poet’s contemporaries. Indeed, Nekrasov directly addresses young people in them:
Bless the work of the people
And learn to respect a man!
In the same way he calls upon the poet.
You may not be a poet
But you have to be a citizen.
Nekrasov even addresses those who do not care at all about the people and their problems:
Wake up! There is also pleasure:
Turn them back! Their salvation lies in you!
With all his sympathy for the troubles of the people and his kind attitude towards them, the poet does not at all idealize the people, but accuses them of long-suffering and humility. One of the most striking embodiments of this accusation can be called the poem “The Forgotten Village.” Describing the endless troubles of the peasants, Nekrasov each time cites the answer of the peasants, which has become a saying: “When the master comes, the master will judge us.” In this description of the patriarchal faith of the peasants in the good master, the good king, notes of irony slip through. This reflects the position of Russian Social Democracy, to which the poet belonged.
The accusation of long-suffering is also heard in the poem “The Railway”. But in it, perhaps, the most striking lines are devoted to something else: the topic of people's labor. Here a genuine hymn to the peasant worker is created. It is not for nothing that the poem is constructed in the form of a dispute with the general, who claims that the road was built by Count Kleinmichel. This was the official opinion - it is reflected in the epigraph to the poem. Its main text contains a detailed refutation of this position. The poet shows that such a grandiose work is “not up to one person.” He glorifies the creative work of the people and, turning to the younger generation, says: “This noble habit of work / It wouldn’t be a bad thing for us to adopt with you.”
But the author is not inclined to harbor illusions that any positive changes may happen in the near future: “The only thing to know is to live in this wonderful time / Neither I nor you will have to.” Moreover, along with glorifying the creative, noble labor of the people, the poet creates pictures of painful, difficult labor, stunning in their power and poignancy, which brings death to people:
We struggled under the heat, under the cold,
With an ever-bent back,
They lived in dugouts, fought hunger,
They were cold and wet, suffered from scurvy, -
These words in the poem are spoken by the dead - peasants who died during the construction of the railway.
Such duality is present not only in this poem. Hard work, which became the cause of suffering and death, is described in the poem “Frost, Red Nose”, the poems “Strada”, “On the Volga” and many others. Moreover, this is not only the labor of forced peasants, but also barge haulers or children working in factories:
The cast iron wheel turns
And it hums and the wind blows,
My head is burning and spinning,
The heart is beating, everything is going around.
This concept of people’s labor already developed in Nekrasov’s early work. Thus, the hero of the poem “The Drunkard” (1845) dreams of freeing himself, throwing off the “yoke of heavy, oppressive labor” and giving his whole soul to another work - free, joyful, creative: “And into another work - refreshing - / I would droop with all my soul.”
Nekrasov argues that work is a natural state and an urgent need of the people, without it a person cannot be considered worthy or be respected by other people. So, about the heroine of the poem “Frost, Red Nose,” the author writes: “She doesn’t feel sorry for the poor beggar: / It’s free to walk without work.” The peasant love of work is reflected in many of Nekrasov’s poems: “Hey! Take me as a worker, / My hands are itching to work!” - exclaims the one for whom work has become an urgent, natural need. It’s not for nothing that one of the poet’s poems is called “Song of Labor.”
In the poem “The Uncompressed Strip” an amazing image is created: the earth itself calls for the plowman, its worker. The tragedy is that a worker who loves and values his work, who cares about the land, is not free, downtrodden and oppressed by forced hard labor.
In the second half of the 19th century, a movement called the “natural school” dominated in Russian literature. Such writers as Grigorovich and Nekrasov were born within its walls. The main thing that was required from a follower of this school was fidelity to the truth of life, an image of unadorned reality; at the same time, the works of these writers are characterized by a social connotation, an emphasis on political and, so to speak, political and moral problems of the modern world.
Not all adherents of "natural"
"Schools" became widely known - like, for example, Nekrasov or Gogol (who, by the way, was a kind of teacher for them). The latter gained fame as a master of detail: the subject-life characteristics in his works have no equal. Nekrasov's peculiarity is " weakness for the sick and humiliated" He is traditionally called national poet, and, in particular, the pictures of village life are especially true in his depiction; however, the poem “The Railway” (1864) proves that Nekrasov’s attention was also drawn to the workers (in this case, the builders of the railway connecting Moscow and St. Petersburg).
Usually the theme of Nekrasov’s poetry is defined as “the suffering of the people”; This is undoubtedly true, but it is too general a statement. If we expand on the issues in more detail, more specific issues will emerge. Firstly, the social base, the conditions for the impoverishment of the masses: serfdom, after its abolition - the general lack of opportunity to improve in any way their own position among people at the lower levels of society. This leads to a question, successfully formulated by the poet: “Who lives happily and freely in Rus'?” Thirdly, the humiliation of the working and subordinate class, which is expressed either in slavish submission to fate, or in silent patience, which, according to Nekrasov, must eventually burst. An important topic that no other writer or poet occupies to such an extent is the female lot. Only Nekrasov dedicated so many poems to her.
In Nekrasov’s works, it seems, what attracts people is not so much what issues they address, but the means by which he achieves a realistic image and what the people’s life ultimately turns out to be in his interpretation. In order to analyze this, it is enough to consider several works from different years.
One of early poems Nekrasova - “Troika” (1846). It is entirely devoted to women's fate, monotonous and inevitable for every village girl. The very atmosphere of a peasant house and family is clearly depicted here: “from work, both menial and difficult,” not only the girl changes, but also her husband and mother-in-law - they become unreasonably cruel, from fatigue, always swearing and waving their fists. Here Nekrasov first formulated the “life credo” of the Russian people - “dull patience” and “senseless eternal fear.” It is more or less clearly reflected in almost all of the poet’s poems. Nekrasov even hinted at the most likely reason for this state: what is happening is not what you dream about, but what is inevitable, historically, should happen. In addition, peasant women were practically powerless and silently submissive, as evidenced by the lines of another, later poem - “Yesterday, at about six o’clock...”.
The same patience and resignation are present in the 1855 poem “The Forgotten Village.” The situation described here well reflects the “slave psychology” of the Russian serf peasantry. Long-term slavery has weaned the peasants away from independence, and now you can hear everywhere:
When the master arrives, the master will judge us...
………………………………
The master will say a word...
Constantly waiting for the master to express his will leads to misfortunes for the peasants themselves:
Nenila died; on someone else's land
The rogue neighbor has a hundredfold harvest...
A free farmer ended up as a soldier,
And Natasha herself is no longer raving about the wedding...
But the master, in fact, does not care about his serfs: as long as he receives money, he lives in peace, their problems do not bother him. On the other hand, the peasants also do not care about this question regarding their owner, but in their opinion, since he is the owner, he is obliged to protect them. This is how mutual misunderstanding between serfs and landowners arises, which, in turn, leads to wilderness and desolation in the villages. If help is really needed, then you have to beg for it, beg it from the “owners of luxurious chambers” (“Reflections at the Main Entrance,” 1863), but they don’t know anything, they don’t know, and they don’t want to. The poem symbolizes that the one to whom the petitioners came is sleeping. Indeed, the least of all concerns him about their problems; he seems to be in a constant sleep - Nekrasov even calls on him: “Wake up!” The poem evokes an atmosphere of complete hopelessness. And yet the people do not remain silent, their grief is “blatant.” “Where there are people, there is a groan,” - this, by the way, is another detail of the people’s portrait. The “endless groan” not only helps him live, but also serves, to some extent, as a manifestation of discontent: the former “dumb” workers are no longer silent.
Nekrasov allows opinions contrary to his own to be voiced. The exponent of this is the general in the poem “The Railway”. In a dispute with a fellow traveler (or author), the general denies the workers' merit in building the railway and attributes it to Count Kleinmichel (who financed this project). In his opinion, a dirty and uneducated peasant is not capable of creating anything; From his lips the reader hears the phrase: “Or is Apollo Belvedere worse than a stove pot for you?” It is addressed to the author-fellow traveler, but because... the general equated him, due to his views, to builders, then this conclusion may well be applied to them. This is true: the people are driven by practicality, they are not in the conditions where they can admire works of art:
We struggled under the heat, under the cold,
With an ever-bent back,
They lived in dugouts, fought hunger,
They were cold and wet and suffered from scurvy.
The literate foremen robbed us,
The authorities flogged me, the need was pressing...
Nekrasov advocated not hiding the horrors of poverty and saw nothing shameful for those who knew them. He considered it quite natural not to hide this from women, which is why in his lyrics there is so often a combination of the intimate and the social, which would seem to be incompatible. One striking example is the poem “Morning” (1874). It is structured as a monologue addressed to a friend, where the author reveals and explains her depressed state: “it’s hard not to suffer here.” Here Nekrasov combines a gray, dull village (“a nag with a drunken peasant” is a characteristic detail) and a “rich city” that is motley in terms of events (although its landscape does not differ from the village one in terms of color): the convict is led to the “shameful square”, the prostitute returns home, officers are galloping to a duel, someone died, someone committed suicide. Everything is wretched, disgusting, dirty, terrible... But, according to Nekrasov, this is precisely what deserves to be “glorified” in poetry:
Let changing fashion tell us,
That the topic is old - “the suffering of the people”
And that poetry should forget her, -
Don't believe it, boys! she doesn't age.
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