Left a reply Guru

In the early 60s of the 19th century, it seemed that a small effort was enough and the people would overthrow serfdom, and with it autocracy, a happy time will 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 the imminent change folk life for the better. The narrative opens with a picture of nature, painted lushly, plastically and visibly. Already the first word “vigorous” rolled out like a peasant, so unusual for landscape lyrics, 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.
In the main character Lefty, everyone who is not rich is implied. 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...”

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 lucky ones 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 her he earns food for himself and feeds his family.
With the appearance of Yakim Nagoy in the poem, the work includes the idea of ​​higher, moral values, incommensurable with material benefits(remember that the Yakima family first of all takes out icons and “pictures” from a 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 " peasant son" Grisha Dobrosklonov, who "for about fifteen years... already knew for sure 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 of 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.

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 Griboedov with his comedy “Woe from Wit” and Pushkin, who in the novels " 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 relates to folk culture.

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 one, 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 in his work the ideals of the democratic movement in Russia in the mid-19th century, and therefore his concept of the people is distinguished by its harmony and accuracy: 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 hunting"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 not able to share the fun of the gentlemen, because for him their hunt often turns into trampled fields, bullied cattle and thereby complicates it even more even without that life 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.”

In this poem, the ghosts of the peasants who died during the construction of the railway stand 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 an argument 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 can 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 labor is a natural state and urgent need people, without it a person cannot be considered worthy or 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.

1. The Russian people as depicted by N.A. Nekrasov

Nekrasov is often called a people's poet, and this is true. He, like no one else, often addressed the topic of the Russian people.

Nekrasov still lived under serfdom and could personally observe pictures of the life of enslaved people who did not dare raise their heads. The vast majority of Nekrasov’s poems (especially the famous ones) are dedicated to the Russian peasant. After all, wherever you look, there is suffering. Are you going along railway— outside the window stand invisibly thousands of nameless people who laid down their lives for its construction. If you stand at the front entrance, you see the unfortunate, ragged, despairing, waiting for an answer to their petitions (and they often only waited for them to be pushed out). Do you admire the beauty of the Volga - barge haulers moaning along it pull a barge.

Neither in the city nor in the village is there a simple man who would be truly happy. Although they are looking for happiness. Nekrasov talks about this in the poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'.” The men came together with a seemingly simple goal: to find happiness, to find out who has a good life and why. But it turns out that there is no man who would have a good life. He has no rights; he cannot resist the rudeness and arbitrariness of his superiors. It turns out that only gentlemen can live freely, who don’t know how to do anything, but have unearned money and undeserved power.

The conclusion that Nekrasov comes to is simple and obvious. Happiness is in freedom. And freedom is still just a dim light glimmering ahead. We need to get there, but it will take many years.

Yes, life is hard for the Russian people. But in any hopeless existence, there are bright glimpses. Nekrasov expertly describes village holidays, when everyone, young and old, starts dancing. After all, those who know how to work also know how to rest. True, unclouded fun reigns here. All worries and labors are forgotten. And going to mass is a whole ritual. The best clothes are taken from the chests, and the whole family, from children to the elderly, decorously goes to church.

In general, Nekrasov pays special attention to peasant religiosity. From time immemorial, religion has supported the Russian people. After all, it was impossible to count on anyone’s help except God’s. That is why they fled in case of illness and misfortune to the miraculous icons. Every person has the right to hope; it is the last thing he has left even in times of the most difficult trials. For the peasants, all hope, all light was concentrated in Jesus Christ. Who else will save them if not him?

Nekrasov created a whole galaxy of images of ordinary Russian women. Perhaps he romanticizes them somewhat, but one cannot help but admit that he managed to show the appearance of a peasant woman in a way that no one else could. For Nekrasov, a serf woman is a kind of symbol. A symbol of the revival of Russia, its defiance of fate.

The most famous and memorable images of Russian women depicted by Nekrasov are, of course, Matryona Timofeevna in “Who Lives Well in Rus'” and Daria in the poem “Frost, Red Nose”. What unites these two women is their main grief - they are serf peasants:

Fate had three hard parts,

And the first share is to get married to an Arab,

The second is to be the mother of a slave's son,

And the third is to submit to the slave until the grave,

And all these heavy shares lay down

To a woman of Russian soil.

The peasant woman is doomed to suffer until her death and remain silent about her suffering. No one will listen to her complaints, and she is too proud to confide her grief to anyone. In the poem “Who Lives Well in Rus',” men seeking happiness come to Matryona Timofeevna. And what do they hear from her? The life story of a serf woman. She was happy, protected, loved by her parents before her marriage. But you can’t stay with the girls for long, the groom is there, and a hard life begins in someone else’s house. You have to work from morning to night, and you won’t hear a kind word from anyone. The husband works, but his family does not favor his daughter-in-law. Matryona Timofeevna's first son dies in infancy, the other was taken as a recruit. There is no light ahead, there is nothing to hope for. Matryona Timofeevna says to the men:

Not a matter - between women

Happy searching!..

One thing remains for a woman: to endure until the end of her days, to work and raise children, slaves like their father.

Daria also had a hard share (“Frost, Red Nose”). Her family life At first things turned out happier: the family was friendlier, and the husband was with her. They worked tirelessly, but did not complain about fate. And then grief falls on the family - Daria's husband dies. For peasants, this is the loss of not only a loved one, but also a breadwinner. Without it, they will simply die of hunger. No one will be able to go to work anymore. The family was left with old people, children and a single woman. Daria goes into the forest to get firewood (formerly a man's responsibility) and freezes there.

Nekrasov has another interesting peasant image. This is Pear from the poem “On the Road”. She grew up in a manor house and was not trained in hard village labor. But fate decreed that she married a simple man. The pear begins to wither, and its end is very near. Her soul languishes, but her husband, of course, is unable to understand her. After all, instead of working, she “looks at some kind of rubbish and reads some book...” Peasant labor is beyond her strength. She would be happy to work and help, but she’s not accustomed to it. In order to endure all this hard labor, you need to get used to it from childhood. But many generations of peasants grew up in precisely such an environment. Since childhood, we have worked tirelessly. But all this did not go well: they worked for the masters, and they themselves fed from hand to mouth, just so as not to fall off their feet.

This is how the people appear humiliated but proud in Nekrasov’s works. The Russian man bends his neck, but does not break. And he is always supported by a woman, strong and patient. Nekrasov sees his destiny in describing the present of the Russian people without embellishment and giving them hope for a bright future. The poet believes that it will come, and he will contribute to this great change.