What features are characteristic of Ostrovsky's plays? Dramaturgy A
Ostrovsky’s work is now included in the school curriculum; many of our compatriots know and love him. Alexander Nikolaevich Ostrovsky is a playwright, a native of Moscow, the son of a lawyer and the grandson of an Orthodox priest. He studied at Moscow University, at the Faculty of Law (did not graduate), served in Moscow courts, then became a professional theatrical figure and writer-playwright.
In comparison with the plays of Turgenev or A.K. Tolstoy, which are primarily works of literature, Ostrovsky’s dramaturgy has a different nature. It is intended not so much for reading as for stage execution, and should be studied, first of all, within the framework of the history of the theater. However, the history of literature cannot underestimate the work of the greatest Russian playwright of the second thirds of the XIX V.
Considering Ostrovsky’s work, we note that among his youthful experiences there are essays and poems. The comedy “Insolvent Debtor” that made him famous, which was renamed “Bankrupt” (and later renamed “Bankrupt”) Our people - let's count!”), appeared in the magazine “Moskvityanin” (1850), although it was not allowed to be staged at that time. The false bankruptcy that the merchant Bolshov declares in this play is a collision based on facts of real life (a wave of bankruptcies that swept through business circles on the eve of the writing of the comedy). However, close to a joke plot basis Comedy by no means exhausts its content. The plot undergoes an almost tragic turn: the false bankrupt found himself abandoned in a debt prison by his son-in-law Podkhalyuzin and his own daughter Lipochka, who refused to ransom him. Shakespeare's allusions (the fate of King Lear) were understood by many contemporaries.
After the literary success of "The Bankrupt" in Ostrovsky's work in the 1850s, an interesting "Slavophile" period began, which brought a wonderful comedy called " Don't get in your own sleigh"(1853) - his first play, immediately and with great success staged - as well as the drama " Don't live the way you want"(1855) and one of best plays playwright Poverty is not a vice"(created in 1854). Vice (the images of Vikhorev, Korshunov) is invariably defeated in them by high morality, based on Orthodox Christian truths and national patriarchal foundations (the images of Borodkin, Rusakov, Malomalsky). Beautifully written literary character— We love Tortsov from “Poverty is not a vice,” who managed to bring his brother Gordey to repentance and unite the lovers - the clerk Mitya and Lyubov Gordeevna (the instant spiritual revival of Gordey Tortsov was called “implausible” many times, but the author clearly did not strive for verisimilitude in a naively realistic sense - depicting Christian repentance, which is precisely capable of immediately making the sinner a “different person”). The action of “Poverty is not a vice” takes place at Christmas time, the action of “Don’t live as you want” takes place at Maslenitsa, and jubilant fun, a festive atmosphere intones both plays (however, in “Don’t live as you want” there is also a motif of devilish temptation, in which the buffoon Eremka involved Peter).
Stands somewhat apart in the con. 1850 - early 1860s the so-called “Balzamin” trilogy, dedicated to collisions from the life of the province: “ Holiday sleep - before lunch"(1857), " Your own dogs are biting - don’t pester others"(written in 1861) and " What you go for is what you will find", better known as " Balzaminov's marriage"(1861).
The rapprochement of A.N. Ostrovsky with the camp of the authors of Nekrasov’s Sovremennik was marked by an immediate sharp aggravation of socially accusatory motives in his work. This should include, first of all, the comedy “Profitable Place” (1857), the drama “ Kindergarten" (1859) and " Storm"(1859). Complex collision " Thunderstorms“, where in the center the adultery of the heroine, which took place in a patriarchal merchant family characterized by extreme strictness of moral rules, led by a despotic mother-in-law, was one-sidedly perceived in the spirit of the “emancipatory” theses of the “democratic” journalism of that time. The suicide of the main character (from the point of view of Orthodoxy, which is terrible sin) was interpreted as an act of “noble pride”, “protest” and a kind of spiritual victory over the “inert” “domostroevsky” moral and social (as was implied, religious Christian) norms. When the highly talented democratic critic N.A. Dobrolyubov, in an article of the same name, declared the main character “a ray of light in a dark kingdom”; this metaphor of his quickly turned into a template according to which, a century later, this play by Ostrovsky was interpreted in Russian high schools. At the same time, an equally important component of the problematic of “The Thunderstorm” was missed, and even today is often missed: the “eternal” theme for literature of the clash of love and duty. Meanwhile, it is largely thanks to the presence of this theme in the work that the play still retains its dramatic vivacity (however, it has always been rarely staged by theaters outside of Russia).
The merchant milieu, which during the period of Slafianophile hobbies the playwright portrayed as one of the most morally stable and spiritually pure components of the Russian social organism, was presented in “The Thunderstorm” as a terrible “dark kingdom”, oppressing youth, based on the senseless tyranny of elders, evil and ignorant. Katerina feels so persecuted that she repeatedly speaks throughout the play about suicide as her only way out. On the other hand, this drama by Ostrovsky, released about two years earlier than Fathers and Sons by I.S. Turgenev, prompts us to state: the theme of “fathers and sons” in its acute social turn seemed to hang in the literary atmosphere of that time. The young people from merchant circles depicted in “The Thunderstorm” (Katerina and Boris, Varvara and Kudryash) understand and accept life values, in general, the everyday truth of the older generation, no more than Evgeny Bazarov and Arkady Kirsanov.
The main character, Katerina Kabanova, was written by the playwright with great sympathy for her. This is the image of a poetic, sentimental and deeply religious young woman who was not married for love. The husband is kind, but timid and is subordinate to his domineering mother-widow Marfa Kabanova (Kabanikha). It is significant, however, that Katerina, at the author’s will, falls in love not with some internally strong person, a “real man” (which would be psychologically natural), but with the merchant’s son Boris, who in many respects is as similar to her husband as one drop of water to another. (Boris is timid and completely subservient to his domineering uncle Dikiy - however, he is noticeably smarter than Tikhon Kabanov and is not devoid of education).
In the early 1860s. Ostrovsky created a kind of dramatic trilogy about the Time of Troubles, composed of poetic “chronicles” “ Kozma Zakharyich Minin, Sukhoruk"(in 1862), " Dmitry the Pretender and Vasily Shuisky"(year of creation - 1867) and " Tushino"(1867). About this time in the 18th century. written by A.P. Sumarokov (“Dimitri the Pretender”), and in the first half of the 19th century. A.S. Pushkin (“Boris Godunov”), who evoked many imitations among his contemporaries in prose, poetry, and drama. Central work Ostrovsky’s tragedy (“Dmitry the Pretender and Vasily Shuisky”) is dedicated to the period chronologically shortly before which the plot of Pushkin’s “Boris Godunov” ends. Ostrovsky seemed to emphasize their connection by choosing a poetic form for his work—moreover, white iambic pentameter, as in “Boris Godunov.” Unfortunately, the great playwright did not prove himself as a master of verse. Taking a “historical” turn in creativity; Ostrovsky also wrote the comedy " Voivode"(1865) and the psychological drama " Vasilisa Melentyeva"(1868), and a few years later the comedy " 17th century comedian».
Ostrovsky firmly returned to the path of socially accusatory drama in the 1860s, creating one after another comedies that remain in the theater repertoire to this day, such as “ Simplicity is enough for every wise man"(year of creation - 1868), " Warm heart"(1869), " Mad money"(1870), " Forest"(1871), " Wolves and sheep"(1875), etc. It has long been noted that there are positive heroes in only one of the listed plays - in " Lesya"(Aksyusha and actor Gennady Neschastlivtsev) - that is, these are sharply satirical works. In them, Ostrovsky acted as an innovator, using conventional techniques of the so-called vaudeville dramaturgy in large dramatic forms, for which he was criticized by reviewers who did not understand the meaning of his efforts. He also tried to resume creativity in the spirit of his comedies, published in the 1850s by the Slavophile “Moskvityanin”. These are, for example, plays such as “Maslenitsa is not for everyone” (written in 1871), “Truth is good, but happiness is better” (created in 1876), etc. But “folk” motifs here acquired an outwardly ornamental, somewhat artificial.
In addition to “The Forest,” some of Ostrovsky’s other best works refract the theme of the difficult destinies of theater people. These are his later dramas" Talents and fans" (1882) and " Guilty without guilt"(written in 1884), in the center of each of which is the image of a talented actress who is forced at a certain point in her life to step over something personal, human (in the first play Negina breaks up with her beloved fiancé Meluzov, in the second Otradina-Kruchinina gives the child to be raised by Galchikha ). Many of the problems posed in these plays, unfortunately, have little to do with any particular social structure, although nineteenth-century audiences could seem topical. But, on the other hand, their eternal character helps the very plots of the plays remain alive and relevant to this day.
The latter can also be attributed to Ostrovsky’s drama “ Dowryless"(year of creation - 1878) - one of the indisputable peaks of A.N.’s creativity. Ostrovsky. Perhaps this is his best work. Larisa - beautiful girl, for whom, however, there is no dowry (that is, marrying her, from the point of view of people of a certain psychology, was economically “unprofitable”, and according to the concepts of that time, simply “not prestigious” - by the way, Otradina will be made the same dowryless "Without the guilt of the guilty"). At the same time, Larisa is clearly not one of those who solved this problem by going to a monastery. As a result, she arouses a purely carnal and cynical interest in the men hovering around her and competing with her. However, she herself openly despises the poor and not brilliant Karandyshev, who is ready to marry her and is considered her fiancé. But Larisa, like a girl, naively and enthusiastically considers Paratov’s primitive effects with his “broad gestures” for a long time to be the “ideal man” and sacredly believes him. When he grossly deceived her, she loses ground under her feet. Going on a scandalous boat trip with Paratov, Larisa says goodbye at home: “Either you are happy, mom, or look for me in the Volga.” Larisa, however, did not have the chance to drown herself - she, who had belatedly become disillusioned with the “ideal man,” was shot by her finally rejected groom, the pitiful Karandyshev, so that she “wouldn’t go to anyone.”
What a sharp switch from topical “modern” issues looks like is A.N.’s writing. Ostrovsky's fairy tale plays " Snow Maiden"(1873) - conceived as an extravaganza, but full of high symbolism (Ostrovsky also wrote the fairy tale play " Ivan Tsarevich"). A craving for symbols is generally characteristic of Ostrovsky’s style. Even the titles of his works either resemble proverbs (“Don’t live the way you want”, “Truth is good, but happiness is better”, etc.) or look like meaningful symbols (“Thunderstorm”, “Forest”, “Wolves and Sheep” and etc.). “The Snow Maiden” depicts the conventionally fairy-tale kingdom of the Berendeys - a kind of fantasy on the themes of Slavic mythology. The plot of the folk tale underwent a complex twist under the master's pen. Doomed to melt with the arrival of summer, the Snow Maiden managed to recognize love, and her death turns out to be a kind of “optimistic tragedy.”
“The Snow Maiden” testifies, of course, not so much to the author’s deep factual knowledge of Slavic mythology, ancient rituals and folklore, but rather to an intuitive, insightful understanding of their spirit. Ostrovsky created a magnificent artistic image of Slavic fairy-tale antiquity, which soon inspired N.A. Rimsky-Korsakov on his famous opera and later repeatedly gave impetus to the artistic imagination of other authors (for example, the ballet “The Rite of Spring” by I.F. Stravinsky). In “The Snow Maiden”, like many other plays (“Poverty is not a vice”, “The Thunderstorm”, “Dowry”, etc.), songs are heard on stage - genuine folk songs or written in the “folk spirit”.
The enormous importance of A.N. Ostrovsky added color to speech, showing himself to be a supporter of what Dostoevsky called writing “essences.” His characters usually speak, scattering an abundance of words and phrases designed to depict the language of a certain social environment, as well as characterize the personal cultural and educational level of this particular character, the characteristics of his psychology and sphere of life interests. Thus, the language of the pretentious and ignorant heroine of “Bankrut” Lipochka, who, for example, reproaches her mother: “Why did you refuse the groom? What is not an incomparable party? Why not capidon? She calls the mantilla “mantella”, the proportion “porportia”, etc. and so on. Podkhalyuzin, whom the girl marries, is a match for her. When she, coyly, asks him: “Why don’t you, Lazar Elizarych, speak French?”, he answers bluntly: “And because we have no reason.” In other comedies, the holy fool is called “ugly,” the consequence “means,” the quadrille “quadrille,” etc.
A.N. Ostrovsky is the largest Russian playwright of the 19th century, who gave the national theater a first-class repertoire, and gave classical works to Russian literature that retain enormous artistic significance for our modern times.
Introduction 3-8
Chapter 1. General characteristics of A.N.’s creativity Ostrovsky.
Milestones in the life of a playwright. 9-28
Chapter 2. The history of the creation of the play "The Deep". 29-63
§ 1. Analysis of the most important discrepancies in the original
and final handwritten versions. 34-59
§ 2. Work by A.N. Ostrovsky on stage directions. 60-63
Conclusion 63-72
Bibliography 73-76
From whatever side we look at
activities of Mr. Ostrovsky, we must
let us recognize her as the most brilliant,
the most enviable activity in modern
Russian literature that is important to us.
/A.Druzhinin/
Introduction .
The work of Alexander Nikolaevich Ostrovsky is an exceptional phenomenon in the history of Russian literature and theater. In terms of the breadth of coverage of life phenomena and the variety of artistic means, A.N. Ostrovsky has no equal in Russian drama. He wrote about 50 plays. A contemporary of the playwright I.A. Goncharov believed that A.N. Ostrovsky created his own special world, created the Russian national theater.
The role of Alexander Nikolaevich Ostrovsky in the history of the development of Russian drama can hardly be overestimated. His contribution to Russian culture is compared with such well-known names as Shakespeare (England), Lope de Vega (Spain), Moliere (France), Goldoni (Italy), Schiller (Germany).
Among the plays of the first half of the 19th century, such masterpieces of realistic drama as “Woe from Wit” by Griboyedov, “Boris Godunov” and “little tragedies” by Pushkin, “The Inspector General” and “Marriage” by Gogol, especially stood out. These outstanding realistic plays clearly outlined innovative trends in Russian drama.
The overwhelming number of works that filled theater stage, compiled translations and adaptations of Western European plays. Now no one knows the names of M.V. Kryukovsky (“Pozharsky”, 1807), S.I. Viskovaty (“Ksenia and Temir”, 1810?)
After the defeat of the Decembrists (A.N. Ostrovsky, the future famous playwright, was only two years old), hastily stitched works appeared in the theatrical repertoire, in which the main place was occupied by flirting, farcical scenes, anecdote, mistake, accident, surprise, confusion, dressing up, hiding. Under the influence of social struggle, vaudeville changed in its content. At the same time, along with vaudeville, melodrama was extremely popular.
The melodrama by V. Ducange and M. Dunod “Thirty Years, or the Life of a Gambler,” translated from French, was first staged in Russia in 1828. This melodrama, enjoying success, was often staged in both the capital and provincial theaters. Her exceptional popularity was also evidenced by Ostrovsky in the drama “The Deep”. Guardians moral purity from the “Northern Bee” and other organs of the reactionary press were outraged by the fact that the melodrama broke the usual moral norms: the crime was justified, and sympathy was evoked for seemingly negative characters. But it could not be banned. It further strengthened the autocratic-serf order.
In the 19th century great success translations of the works of progressive playwrights of Western European romanticism were also used, for example Schiller (“Intrigue and Love”, 1827, “Carlos”, 1830, “William Tell”, 1830, “The Robbers”, 1828, 1833, 1834) and V. Hugo (“Angelo , Tyrant of Padua”, 1835-1836, the play was staged in translation by M.V. Samoilova under the title “Venetian Actress”). Belinsky and Lermontov created their plays during these years, but in the first half of the 19th century they were not performed in the theater.
N.V. Gogol contributed to the establishment of realistic and national identity in the theater, and A.N. Ostrovsky in the field of drama. The playwright not only made working people, bearers of people's truth and wisdom, positive heroes of his plays, but also wrote in the name of the people and for the people.
Welcoming the playwright on his 35th birthday creative path, Goncharov wrote that A.N. Ostrovsky brought a whole library of works of art as a gift to literature, and created his own special world for the stage. The writer also appreciated the significant role of the playwright in the creation of the Russian national theater.
A.N. Ostrovsky influenced not only the development of domestic drama and theater, the great talents of A.E. Martynov, L.P. Kositskaya-Nikulina, K.N. Rybakov, M.N. Ermolova and many others.
N.S. Vasilyeva recalled: “Ostrovsky gave each character in the play such an outline that it was easy for the actor to reproduce the author’s intention. The characterization was clear. And how figuratively, with what enthusiasm and variety of intonation he read folk scenes! The artists listened to him reverently!”
For almost half a century, A.N. Ostrovsky was a chronicler of Russian life, quickly responding to newly emerging social phenomena, and bringing to the stage characters that were just emerging.
Reading his plays, one becomes interested in the history of their creation. As you know, L.N. Tolstoy rewrote his works many times, F.M. Dostoevsky also did not immediately build the plots of his novels. How did A.N. Ostrovsky work?
In the Russian State Library, in the Department of Manuscripts, manuscripts of many plays by A.N. Ostrovsky are stored, such as “The Thunderstorm”, “Our People - We Will Be Numbered”, “Dowry”, “Wolves and Sheep” and others, including the manuscript of the drama “The Deep”, the most significant among A.N. Ostrovsky’s plays about modernity after “The Thunderstorm”.
The purpose of this work is, in the process of analyzing the manuscript of the play “The Abyss,” to first of all show the path that the playwright took, making changes and additions to the original text of the play, and to determine its place in the dramaturgy of A.N. Ostrovsky.
Before moving on to the characteristics of the manuscript, a few words should be said about A.N. Ostrovsky’s work on the plays. The playwright's work is divided into three stages. At the first stage, A.N. Ostrovsky observed the people around him and their relationships. I didn’t make any sketches, I kept everything in my head. Almost all the main characters in many of A.N. Ostrovsky’s plays have at least two prototypes, and he himself pointed to them. This once again emphasizes the fact that the playwright did not invent his characters and situations, but was guided by life’s collisions. For example, the prototype of Neschastlivtsev in the play “Forest” was the actor N.H. Rybnikov. Provincial actors, in whom A.N. Ostrovsky saw talent, were also prototypes.
After accumulating sufficient information, A.N. Ostrovsky moved on to comprehend everything he saw, believing that a writer should be at the level of the advanced requirements of the era. It should be noted that at this stage of his creative work the playwright also did not make sketches of plays.
Only after organizing his impressions did A.N. Ostrovsky move on to drawing up a script. Almost always there was only one draft, but in the process of work new thoughts always appeared. Therefore, when revising the draft, insertions appeared, certain points were crossed out, and a fully formed and well-thought-out work went into print.
Having turned to literary studies and research works about the work of A.N. Ostrovsky by such authors as L.R. Kogan, V.Ya. Lakshin, G.P. Pirogov, A.I. Revyakin and others, the author of this work did not find enough complete information about the drama “The Deep”, not to mention the fact that its manuscript was left without attention and was not described from a research point of view in any work.
Of great interest is the work of N.P. Kashin “Sketches about A.N. Ostrovsky,” which provides an analysis of the manuscripts of such plays as “Our people - we will be numbered,” “Don’t sit in your own sleigh,” “Thunderstorm,” “Poverty - not a vice” and many others. But this author also ignored the play “The Deep”, although in its dramatism and psychological characteristics of the images, as well as in its idea, it is in no way inferior to the plays of A.N. Ostrovsky, which have already become textbooks. It is no coincidence that in 1973, on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of A.N. Ostrovsky, the theater bearing his name staged the play “The Abyss”, as one of the most significant and undeservedly forgotten works great playwright. The play was a huge success and ran for several seasons at the Maly Theater.
The author of this work took upon himself the trouble of “walking together with A.N. Ostrovsky” the creative path of creating the play “The Deep” from conception to the final version and determining its place in the playwright’s work. So, step by step, page by page opened creative laboratory creating a play.
When working on the manuscript, the textual research method described in the works of D.S. Likhachev, E.N. Lebedeva and others was used. This method allows you to identify discrepancies, understand the movement of the author’s thought from the idea to its implementation, that is, to trace the gradual formation of the text.
There are two purposes of textual study:
1.Preparation of the text for publication.
2. Literary analysis of the text.
The purpose of studying in this work is literary analysis text of the play “The Deep”, associated with elucidating its history of creation for a deeper understanding of the author’s intention, the content and form of the work, and the playwright’s technique of working on the play manuscript.
Textual analysis involves the following stages:
1. Study of the creative history of the creation of a work.
2. Comparison of all draft options.
3. Familiarization with responses, if the work was read before publication.
4. Comparison of plans, sketches, draft and white manuscripts.
In this work, only the first stage of textual analysis was used, since there is only a single draft of A.N. Ostrovsky’s play “The Deep,” which became the subject of the study.
The result of this painstaking, but very interesting work became this work, which is an attempt at the first (perhaps the only) study of the manuscript of A.N. Ostrovsky’s play “The Deep”.
Chapter 1 General characteristics of the work of A.N. Ostrovsky.
Milestones in the life of a playwright.
Alexander Nikolaevich Ostrovsky was born in Moscow on March 31 (April 12), 1823, in the family of official Nikolai Fedorovich Ostrovsky. He was the eldest in the family. Alexander Nikolaevich's father was an educated man, he graduated from the theological academy, quickly advanced in his career and was successfully engaged in private practice: he was a lawyer, leading the affairs of merchants. This gave him the opportunity to build his own house in Zamoskvorechye, where he could invite home and visiting teachers for his children.
In 1825, he first became a full-time secretary of the 1st Department of the Moscow Chamber of Civil Court, then he was promoted to titular adviser, and eventually received the rank of collegiate assessor. This gave him the right to hereditary nobility.
Nikolai Fedorovich, who wrote poetry in his youth and followed the latest literature, subscribed to all the leading magazines: Moscow Telegraph, Otechestvennye Zapiski, Library for Reading, Sovremennik. He compiled a substantial library, which Alexander Nikolaevich later used. An important event in the life of the young playwright was the appearance of his stepmother, Baroness Emilia Andreevna von Tessin, in the house. Together with her, new tastes and habits entered the Ostrovsky household; special attention was paid to teaching children music, languages, and social manners.
In 1835, Alexander Nikolaevich entered the third grade of the first Moscow gymnasium, and in 1840 he graduated with honors. Then, in the same year, at the insistence of his father, he applied for admission to the Faculty of Law of Moscow University.
The future playwright listened and successfully passed general education courses taught by brilliant professors: D.L. Kryukov (ancient history), P.G. Redkin (history of Russian law), T.N. Granovsky (middle and modern history) and many others.
In the second year, highly specialized subjects were taught, which did not interest Ostrovsky. Having received a negative score when entering the third year, the young playwright dropped out of university.
The father was upset and designated his son as an official of the Commercial Court.
The service did not captivate Alexander Nikolaevich, but it gave him rich material for creativity.
In the 40s, A.N. Ostrovsky began performing his first works. It was during this decade that realism finally emerged and triumphed as a leading literary movement.
“Formed in the 40s under the influence of Belinsky and Herzen, who defended the ideas of negating the then dominant feudal-serfdom regime, Ostrovsky saw the highest expression of nationality in the accusatory and satirical direction, in the works of Kantemir, Fonvizin, Kapnist, Griboedov and Gogol. He wrote: “The more elegant the work, the more popular it is, the more of this accusatory element it contains... The public expects art to clothe its judgment on life in a living, elegant form, expects the combination of modern vices and shortcomings noticed in the century into complete images.”
The first dramatic works of A.N. Ostrovsky - “Family Picture” (1847) and “Our People - We Will Be Numbered!” (1850) are devoted mainly to negative types and criticism of despotic tyranny in family and everyday relations.
Dobrolyubov wrote that A.N. Ostrovsky “found the essence of the general (requirements) of life at a time when they were hidden and expressed very weakly.”
The ideas of utopian socialism, atheism and revolution enjoyed particular success among young people during these years. This was a manifestation of the liberation movement associated with the fight against serfdom.
Like his closest friends, A.N. Ostrovsky in the second half of the 40s was influenced by the views of his time.
At this time, the public danger was bankruptcy, the struggle for money, neglecting both family ties and moral rules. All this was reflected in the plots of works such as “Our people - we will be numbered!”, “Poverty is not a vice”, “The Abyss”, “Wolves and Sheep”, “Labor Bread”, “Profitable Place”.
A clear expression of A.N. Ostrovsky’s deep admiration for the people is his love for oral poetry, aroused in childhood by his nanny’s fairy tales and songs. Subsequently, it strengthened and developed under the influence of the playwright’s general aspirations and his interest in the peasantry. A.N. Ostrovsky subsequently shared some of his recordings of folk songs with P.I. Yakushkin, P.V. Shein and other folklore collectors.
Giving primary attention to Russian literature, the playwright was also interested in the best examples foreign literature: in the gymnasium he read Sophocles, and in 1850-1851 he translated “Asinaria” by Plautus and “Hippolytus” by Seneca. Also A.N. Ostrovsky closely followed current Western European literature. At the end of the 40s, he read the novels “The Misdemeanor of M. Antoine” by George Sand, “Martyn the Foundling” by E. Sue and “Dombey and Son” by Charles Dickens.
In his youth, A.N. Ostrovsky became acquainted not only with Russian and foreign literature, but also with works devoted to the history of culture and aesthetics. The articles of Belinsky and Herzen gave him especially much to develop his literary and aesthetic tastes. Following Belinsky, Ostrovsky considered a serious study of cultural history and the latest aesthetic theories mandatory for a writer.
At the end of the 40s, A.N. Ostrovsky collaborated in “Moskvityanin”, where he wrote critical articles about the stories of E. Tur and A.F. Pisemsky, in which he defended the principles of realism. The playwright did not conceive of realism outside of nationality, and therefore the defining principle of A.N. Ostrovsky’s aesthetics was nationality in its democratic understanding. Based on the realistic traditions of progressive literature, demanding modern writers truthful reproduction of life, he defended the principle of historicism in his judgments.
A.N. Ostrovsky considered the first condition for the artistry of a work to be meaningful. With the totality of his ideological and aesthetic principles, the playwright affirmed his view of literature as a wonderful “school of morals”, as a powerful moral transformative force.
A.N. Ostrovsky entered literature immediately as an established writer: the comedy “Our People - Let’s Be Numbered!”, originally called “Bankrupt” and published in 1850 in the magazine “Moskvityanin”, brought him all-Russian fame.
In the 1850s, A.N. Ostrovsky began organizing literary evenings in his house, where he read his own plays. At first, such evenings took place in a close circle of friends, but then the number of guests increased. As a rule, they gathered on Saturdays, when there were no performances in the theaters. These readings began back in 1846 with scenes from the comedy “Our People - Let's Be Numbered!”, but the circle of listeners expanded only in the 50s.
N.F. Ostrovsky was often dissatisfied with his son, but even greater displeasure was caused by the fact that Alexander Nikolaevich, having fallen in love a simple girl from a bourgeois environment, he brought her into his house as his wife. The angry father deprived his son of all financial assistance. From that time on, a difficult life began for the playwright, in material terms.
The difficult situation of the family (A.N. Ostrovsky already had four children by that time) constituted the main content of the playwright’s life in the 1850s. Thanks to Agafya Ivanovna, “with limited material resources, there was contentment in the simplicity of life. Everything that was in the oven was put on the table with playful greetings and affectionate sentences,” notes writer S.V. Maksimov. She, according to Maksimov, well understood “Moscow merchant life in its particulars, which, undoubtedly, served her chosen one in many ways. He himself not only did not shy away from her opinions and reviews, but willingly met them halfway, listened to advice and corrected many things after he read what was written in her presence and when she herself had time to listen to the contradictory opinions of various connoisseurs. A large share of participation and influence is attributed to her by probable rumors in the creation of the comedy “Our People - Let’s Be Numbered!”, at least regarding the plot and its external setting.”
In the mid-60s, A.N. Ostrovsky was captivated by the theme of “power and people.” He devoted his historical works to this topic: the chronicle “Kozma Zakharyich Minin - Sukhoruk”, “Dmitry the Pretender and Vasily Shuisky” and “Tushino”. In his letters, the playwright noted that he created these works under the impression of Pushkin’s “Boris Godunov.”
By the end of the 60s, productions of twenty-two plays by A.N. Ostrovsky were a huge success in all Russian theaters. The plays were not staged in their entirety, since the censors cut out pieces of text from the works, “cut them to the quick,” as L.A. Rozanova notes.
A terrible blow awaited the playwright: all the children born in this marriage died. In 1867, the playwright’s beloved wife, Agafya Ivanovna, died, and in 1869 he married the artist of the Moscow Maly Theater Maria Vasilyevna Vasilyeva.
In 1867, the playwright, together with his brother Mikhail, bought the Shchelykovo estate from his stepmother. “Special mention should be made about Shchelykov in Ostrovsky’s fate. Just as it is impossible to imagine the life and work of A.S. Pushkin without Mikhailovsky, L.N. Tolstoy without Yasnaya Polyana, I.S. Turgenev without Spassky-Lutovinov, so the life of A.N. Ostrovsky is inseparable from the Shchelykovo estate, located near Kostroma and Kineshma".
The playwright was first struck by the beauty of this land back in 1848 and every year he came to stay with his father and stepmother. He spoke about the house as follows: “The house is amazingly beautiful both from the outside with the originality of the architecture and the interior convenience of the premises... The house stands on a high mountain, which to the right and left is dug with such delightful ravines, covered with curly pines and lindens, that you can’t imagine anything like it.” Every year, from spring to late autumn, A.N. Ostrovsky lived in Shchelykovo with his family and friends. Here he could afford to wear Russian costume: trousers, an untucked shirt and long boots.
These memorable places for the playwright were reflected in his works. For example, in “The Snow Maiden” the village of Subbotino and the adjacent meadow were described. Some of the most significant plays were written in Shchelykov: “Simplicity is enough for every wise man”, “There was not a penny, but suddenly Altyn”, “Warm Heart”, “Forest”, “Dowry”, “Talents and Admirers”, “Without guilty" and many others.
“Ostrovsky called his appointment happiness, as he received a practical opportunity to implement changes in life. Such vigorous activity in less than a year undermined Ostrovsky’s strength.”
“In his declining years, Alexander Nikolaevich Ostrovsky left in the album of M.I. Semevsky, editor of the magazine “Russian Antiquity,” a record of the most significant facts and events that he experienced. “The most memorable day of my life: February 14, 1847,” he wrote. “From that day on, I began to consider myself a Russian writer and, without doubt or hesitation, believed in my calling.” On this day, A.N. Ostrovsky finished the comedy “Pictures of Family Happiness,” his first complete and complete work.
Then they created: “Our People - We Will Be Numbered”, “Poor Bride”, “Profitable Place”, “Thunderstorm” and many, many other plays.
On May 31, 1886, terminally ill A.N. Ostrovsky began working on a translation of Shakespeare’s “Antony and Cleopatra.”
The burial took place at the Nikolo-Berezhki cemetery. Above the open
Kropachev made an emotional farewell speech from the grave, and his last words were: “ Your premonition has come true: “the last act of your life drama is over”!”... A cross was installed on the grave with the inscription: “Alexander Nikolaevich Ostrovsky.”
travelers not described...,” the great playwright wrote in his “Notes of a Zamoskvoretsky Resident.”
“...This country, according to official news, lies directly opposite the Kremlin... Until now, only the position and name of this country was known; as for its inhabitants, that is, their way of life, language, morals, customs, degree of education - all this was covered in the darkness of the unknown.”
A.N. Ostrovsky spent his childhood, adolescence and youth in Zamoskvorechye. He knew its inhabitants well and, even as a child, could observe the morals, customs and characters of the heroes of his future plays. When creating images of the “dark kingdom,” A.N. Ostrovsky used his childhood, long-remembered impressions.
And who, if not A.N. Ostrovsky, was destined to remove the veil of uncertainty from this part of Moscow - Zamoskvorechye.
A.N. Ostrovsky’s introduction to the literary word began mainly with his native literature. The first comedy he read and which made an indelible impression on him was N.R. Sudovshchikov’s comedy “An Unheard-of Miracle, or the Honest Secretary.” Of the Russian playwrights of the 18th century, A.N. Ostrovsky especially appreciated Ablesimov, the creator of the comic opera “The Miller the Sorcerer, the Deceiver and the Matchmaker.”
How did the playwright conceive the ideas for his works?
For several years, A.N. Ostrovsky wrote down only words characteristic of the bourgeois-merchant environment with which he had to encounter: “himself” (master, head of the family), “lover”, “rusak” and others. The playwright then showed interest in writing down proverbs, discovering their deeper meaning. This is reflected in the titles of his works: “Don’t get on your own sleigh,” “It’s not all Maslenitsa for the cat.”
The first of A.N. Ostrovsky’s famous works in prose is “The Tale of How the Quarterly Warden Started to Dance, or There’s Only One Step from the Great to the Ridiculous.” You can feel Gogolian influences in it, especially in the pictures of everyday life.
In 1864 - 1874, A.N. Ostrovsky portrayed as the main characters people who were unable to fight the “well-fed”, but who had a sense of human dignity. Among them: clerk Obroshenov (“Jokers”), honest official Kiselnikov (“Abyss”) and hardworking teacher Korpelov (“Labor Bread”). The playwright sharply contrasted the main characters with the environment in which they live in order to force the reader and viewer to think and draw conclusions about the existing order.
In his plays, A.N. Ostrovsky describes the reality of the time in which he lived. The playwright believed that reality is the basis of art, the source of the writer’s creativity.
Living in Zamoskvorechye, A.N. Ostrovsky not only managed to sufficiently study the characters of merchants, merchants and their families, but also truthfully show them in his works.
In total, A.N. Ostrovsky created 47 original plays, wrote 7 together with other writers, and translated more than 20 dramatic works from other languages. Back in 1882, I.A. Goncharov wrote to him: “You alone completed the building, at the foundation of which Fonvizin, Griboedov, Gogol laid the cornerstones... I greet you as the immortal creator of the endless structure of poetic creations... where we see with our own eyes and We hear the original, true Russian life..."1
The first period of creativity of A.N. Ostrovsky (1847 - 1860).
The literary activity of A.N. Ostrovsky began in 1847 with the publication in the “Moscow City List” of stories and essays under the general title “Notes of a Zamoskvoretsky Resident”; the dramatic excerpt “Pictures of Moscow Life” (“Insolvent Debtor” and “Picture” also appeared here). family happiness"). However, the earliest literary experience A.N. Ostrovsky dates back to 1843 - this is “The Tale of How the Quarterly Warden Started to Dance, or From the Great to the Ridiculous There is Only One Step.” The first literary publications were prosaic - the unfinished story “They Didn’t Get Along” (1846), essays and stories “Biography of Yasha”, “Zamoskvorechye on a Holiday” and “Kuzma Samsonych” (1846-1847). "Notes from Zamoskvoretsko
1 Goncharov I.A. Collection op. in 8 vols., vol. 8., M.: 1980, p. 475
“Acquaintance with the Maly Theater, its repertoire, personal friendship with many of the actors contributed to Ostrovsky leaving prose studies and beginning to write plays.”
A.N. Ostrovsky was serving in a commercial court when he began to think about a new work. The fruit of long-term internal work was the play “Bankrupt,” which later received the name “Our People - Let’s Be Numbered!” The driving force is the conflict between fathers and children on the basis of “enlightenment”, “education”. It is surprising that the play had not yet been published, and rumors about it spread throughout Moscow. It was read in Moscow literary salons and home circles, and the first author's reading took place in the second half of 1849 at the apartment of M.N. Katkov, in Merzlyakovsky Lane. (At that time M.N. Katkov was an adjunct at the Department of Philosophy at Moscow University). The young playwright was just beginning his journey and could not yet get used to the praise that pleasantly excited him. Among the listeners of A.N. Ostrovsky’s new play were S.P. Shevyrev, A.S. Khomyakov, T.N. Granovsky, S.M. Soloviev, F.I. Buslaev and many others. The reviews were unanimously enthusiastic.
In 1849, A.N. Ostrovsky was invited to read a new play by M.P. Pogodin, editor and publisher of “Moskvityanin”. M.P. Pogodin liked A.N. Ostrovsky’s new play so much that he soon (1850) published it in his magazine, in the “Russian Literature” section. From that moment on, the playwright’s collaboration with this magazine began.
Soon after reading his play from M.P. Pogodin, A.N. Ostrovsky decided to introduce his friends to him. And so in the literary circles of Moscow and St. Petersburg they started talking about the “young editors” of “Moskvityanin”, which was then already in its tenth year. Among the authors were the names of A.N. Ostrovsky, A.A. Grigoriev, T.I. Filippov and others, along with N.V. Gogol, V.A. Zhukovsky, P.A. Vyazemsky, K.S. Aksakov and many others.
Communication with M.P. Pogodin and his Slavophile friends did not pass without a trace for A.N. Ostrovsky; it had an impact on the playwright’s work (the plays “Don’t Get in Your Own Sleigh,” “Poverty is not a Vice,” “Don’t Live Like That,” as you wish"). But there were also contradictions between the publisher and the “young editors” who wanted to have greater independence. M.P. Pogodin did not believe that young people could preserve the legends of Karamzin and Pushkin in the journal. In the early 50s, Moskvityanin published such plays as “The Poor Bride” (1852), “Don’t Get in Your Sleigh” (1853), “Don’t Live the Way You Want” (1855). A valuable acquisition of “Moskvityanin” was the collaboration of P.I. Melnikov and Pisemsky.
Soon M.P. Pogodin began to point out the magazine’s weaknesses. One of his friends advised in a friendly manner: “You always have a lot of typos. Even other magazines began to imitate you in this. Appearance Moskvitian not elegant, the fonts are hackneyed and ugly: not at all
It would be bad for you to imitate in this case Contemporary, the most dandy Russian magazine."
In October 1857, Apollon Grigoriev was approved as the editor of Moskvityanin, but by that time he was already in Italy, and Moskvityanin had to be closed.
On January 14, 1853, the comedy “Don’t Sit in Your Sleigh,” the first play to be performed in the theater, was presented. The leading role was agreed to be played by the already well-known actress - Love Pavlovna Kositskaya. The lively speech, rich in everyday colors, amazed the audience. M.P. Lobanov writes about it this way: “But what followed was what was already the pinnacle of the performance, what remained forever, for the rest of their lives, in the memory of those who had the good fortune to see Sergei Vasiliev. In a conversation with Rusakov, who asks why he, Ivanushka, is sad, Borodkin replies: “I felt a little sad.” He said this as if by chance, but with an indescribable feeling,” as criticism later noted, unable to find words to express the melancholy that was heard in Borodkin’s voice. Modest, seemingly ordinary remarks suddenly lit up with such significance and depth of feeling that it was a whole revelation for the audience, striking them and causing a stunning impression.”
“The artists entered into their roles so enthusiastically, with such self-forgetfulness, that they created the impression of complete vitality of what was happening on stage. There was what Ostrovsky himself would later call a “school natural And expressive games".
Ivan Aksakov wrote to Turgenev that the impression made by the play
A.N. Ostrovsky on stage, “can hardly be compared with any previously experienced impression.”
Khomyakov wrote: “The success is enormous and well deserved.”
This success of the playwright opened the doors to the nascent Ostrovsky Theater.
With the arrival of A.N. Ostrovsky at the Maly Theater, the theater itself changed. Ordinary people appeared on the stage in undershirts, oiled boots, and cotton dresses. Actors of the older generation spoke negatively about the playwright. From the plays of A.N. Ostrovsky, the principles of realistic national-original dramaturgy are established in the Russian theater. “The viewer should not have a play in front of him, “but life, so that there is a complete illusion, so that he forgets that he is in the theater” - this is the rule that the playwright followed. The high and the low, the comic and the dramatic, the everyday and the unusual were realistically combined in his plays.”
A new stage in the playwright’s work was collaboration with the Sovremennik magazine. A.N. Ostrovsky's frequent trips from Moscow to St. Petersburg brought him together with the literary salon of I.I. Panaev. It was here that he met L.N. Tolstoy, I.S. Turgenev, F.M. Dostoevsky, N.A. Nekrasov, N.A. Dobrolyubov and many other authors of the magazine, which at that time was edited by N.A. Nekrasov . For quite a long time A.N. Ostrovsky collaborated with Sovremennik, which published the plays “A Festive Sleep Before Dinner” (1857), “The Characters Didn’t Get Along” (1858), “An Old Friend Is Better Than Two New Ones” (1860), “Kozma” Zakharyich Minin-Sukhoruk" (1862), "Hard Days" (1863), "Jokers" (1864), "Governor" (1865), "On a Lively Place" (1865). After the closure of the magazine in 1866, the playwright published almost all of his plays in the journal Otechestvennye zapiski, which became his successor, which was edited by N.A. Nekrasov, and then by M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, G. Eliseev and N. Mikhailovsky.
In 1856, A.N. Ostrovsky took part in the Ethnographic Expedition of the Maritime Ministry, and he went to study the life, living conditions, culture, and fishing of the Volga cities from the upper Volga to Nizhny Novgorod. The trip along the Volga provided such rich material that A.N. Ostrovsky decided to write a cycle of plays under the general title “Nights on the Volga.” The main idea of the cycle was supposed to be the idea of continuity in the life and culture of the Russian people, but these plans remained unrealized. At the same time, A.N. Ostrovsky began work on the Volga Dictionary, which later grew into the Dictionary of the Russian Folk Language. After the death of the playwright, his dictionary research was transferred to the Academy of Sciences and partially used in the academic dictionary of the Russian language, published since 1891 under the editorship of J.K. Grot.
The second period of creativity of A.N. Ostrovsky (1860 - 1875).
If at the first stage of his creative path A.N. Ostrovsky painted mainly negative images(“Poverty is not a vice”, “Don’t live the way you want”, “Our people - we’ll be numbered!” and others), then on the 2nd - mostly positive (falling into a cloying idealization of merchants, patriarchy, religion; on 3 stage, starting in 1855, he finally comes to the need for an organic fusion in his plays of negation and affirmation) - these are people of labor.
The second period of 60-75 includes such plays as “An old friend is better than two new ones”, “Hard days”, “Jokers”, “It’s not all Maslenitsa for cats”, “ Late love”, “Labor Bread”, “In a busy place”, “There was not a penny, but suddenly there was an altyn”, “Trilogy about Balzaminov”, “Dogs are biting” and “The Abyss”.
The themes of A.N. Ostrovsky’s plays expanded; he becomes the representative of all the main classes of his era.
“Educated Moscow of the 40s had two favorite creations of which it was proud, with which it connected its main hopes and sympathies: the university and the theater. At the Bolshoi Theater they reigned supreme: in tragedy - Mochalov, in comedy - the great Shchepkin.” A.N. Ostrovsky was also scorched by the whirlwind of his passion for Mochalov. Later he expressed the idea that the need for tragedy among the “young public” is greater than the need for comedy or family drama: “She needs a deep sigh on stage, for the whole theater, she needs unfeigned, warm tears, hot speeches that would pour straight into the soul " 20 years later, in the drama “The Abyss”, A.N. Ostrovsky will depict a walk in the Neskuchny Garden, familiar to him firsthand, and will put into the mouths of strolling merchants and students his stormy approval of Mochalov’s performance in Ducange’s melodrama “Thirty Years, or the Life of a Gambler”:
"Merchant. Oh yes Mochalov! Respected.
Wife. It’s just that these performances are just too much to watch.
pitifully; so even too much.
Merchant. Well, yes, you understand a lot!”
“In “The Abyss” the devilish temptation of a bribe will be described especially strongly and somehow personally: life pushes the judge’s clerk under the arm and leaves him no clue to maintain honesty. Here is the clear evidence that “everyone takes”, and the mother’s lamentation that the family is disappearing from hunger, and the reasoning of the merchant-father-in-law in the spirit that whoever needs to go to court still prepares money: “You won’t take it.” , so someone else will take it from him.” All this, as one would expect, ends with the hero making a small cleanup in the case and taking a large sum from the client, and then going crazy from remorse.”
“In the year of the liberation of the peasants (1861), A.N. Ostrovsky completed two plays: a small comedy “What you go for is what you will find,” where he finally married his hero, Misha Balzaminov, and thus completed the trilogy about him; and the fruit of 6 years of labor - the historical drama in verse “Kozma Zakharyich Minin-Sukhoruk”. Two things are polar in genre, style and objectives. It would seem, what relation do they have to what society lives and breathes?” Some heroes act, while others only reason and, in a very Russian way, they all dream that happiness will fall on their heads.
About the people national character A.N. Ostrovsky ponders over the pages of the manuscript of “Minin” how it developed and manifested itself in history. The playwright, checking history and poetic instinct, wanted to show a man of conscience and inner duty, capable of raising the people to heroic deeds in difficult times. It was a fresh topic at the time.
Following “Minin,” A.N. Ostrovsky wrote a drama in verse from the life of the 17th century Voivode, or a dream on the Volga” (1865). It contained amazingly successful pages, and after reading it, I. S. Turgenev exclaimed: “What poetry, odorous in places, like our Russian grove in summer! Oh, master, master, this bearded man!”
This was followed by the chronicles “Dmitry the Pretender and Vasily Shuisky” (1866) and “Tushino” (1867).
“I never knew how to bow and run around and flatter my superiors; They say that with age, under the pressure of circumstances, the consciousness of one’s own dignity disappears, that need will teach the kalachi to eat - with me, thank God, this did not happen,” wrote A.N. Ostrovsky in a letter to Gedeonov. The playwright realized that Russian theater and Russian literature stood behind him.
No matter what autumn, a new play matured, was written, and was performed in the theater, marking the following dates:
1871 - “There wasn’t a penny, but suddenly there was an altyn”;
1872 - “Rabbit of the 17th century”;
1873 - “The Snow Maiden”, “Late Love”;
1874 - “Labor Bread”;
1875 - “Wolves and Sheep”, “Rich Brides” and so on...
The third period of creativity of A.N. Ostrovsky (1875 - 1886).
It should be noted that the plays of the playwright of the third period are dedicated to the tragic fate of women in harsh conditions Russia 70-80s. This theme includes such plays as “The Last Victim” (1877), “Dowry” (1878), “The Heart is Not a Stone” (1879), “Slave Women” (1880), “Guilty Without Guilt” (1883) and others. The heroines of A.N. Ostrovsky's plays of the third period represent the image of slaves. The heroines experience torment unfulfilled hopes, unrequited love... Only a few of these women manage to rise above their environment. A striking example of such a strong personality is the heroine of the play “Guilty Without Guilt” - Kruchinina.
Once someone remarked to A.N. Ostrovsky that in his plays he idealized women. To this the playwright replied: “How can one not love a woman, she gave birth to God for us.” Also in the plays of the third period, the image of a predator appears before the reader - a predator after women. A.N. Ostrovsky reveals behind the noble appearance of such a predator the spiritual emptiness, cold calculation and selfishness. In the plays of the last period, many cameo characters appear, helping to convey the atmosphere of, for example, a noisy fair.
In the playwright’s latest play, “Not of This World,” as in the previous ones, important moral and psychological questions are raised—love, the relationship between husband and wife, moral duty, and others.
At the end of the 70s, A.N. Ostrovsky created a number of plays in collaboration with young playwrights: with N.Ya. Solovyov - “Happy Day” (1877), “The Marriage of Belugin” (1877), “Savage” (1879), “It shines, but does not warm” (1880); with P.M. Nevezhin - “Whim” (1880), “Old in a new way” (1882).
In the 70s, A.N. Ostrovsky willingly turned to the subjects of criminal chronicles. It was at this time that he was elected an honorary justice of the peace in the Kineshma district, and in Moscow in 1877 he served as a juror in the District Court. The trials provided a lot of stories. There is an assumption that the plot of “Dowry” was suggested to the playwright by a case of murder out of jealousy, heard in the Kineshma Magistrate’s Court.
In 1870, through the efforts of A.N. Ostrovsky, a meeting of Russian dramatic writers was established, of which he was the chairman. For understanding aesthetic positions playwright, it is important to note that A.N. Ostrovsky tried to stop the decline theatrical arts in Russia. Many recalled with admiration A.N. Ostrovsky’s reading of his plays and his work with the actors on the role. A.Ya. Panaeva, P.M. Nevezhin, M.I. Pisarev and others wrote about relationships with Moscow actors, about their warm feeling for the playwright
Chapter 2. The history of the creation of the play “The Deep”.
Thanks to hard work, A.N. Ostrovsky created every year new play However, back in 1857, critics assured readers that there was nothing more to expect from A.N. Ostrovsky, that his talent had faded. The inconsistency of such statements was refuted by the appearance of new talented plays, in particular, the play “The Deep”.
In May 1865, A.N. Ostrovsky made a trip along the Volga. Returning from his trip, he finishes a new play, “On a Lively Place,” continues to translate from W. Shakespeare, and is working on the historical play “Dmitry the Pretender and Vasily Shuisky.” In the second half of December, he finishes the play “The Abyss,” summing up the theme of Zamoskvorechye in the 60s.
From the above it is clear that during this period the literary activity of A.N. Ostrovsky was versatile and extremely intense.
The play “Abyss” was first published in the newspaper “St. Petersburg Vedomosti” in January 1866 (Nos. 1, 4, 5, 6, 8). Some of its prints required preliminary censorship. In January of the same year, A.N. Ostrovsky read the play at the Artistic Circle, and in March “The Abyss” was already approved by the Theater Censorship. In April, the audience saw A.N. Ostrovsky’s new play on the stage of the Maly Theater, and in May the play “The Abyss” was first presented at the Alexandrinsky Theater in the benefit performance of Vasilyev the 1st.
The audience greeted the play with loud approval. It should be noted that during this period, A.N. Ostrovsky’s relations with the management of the imperial theaters were more tense. This is also noted by F. Burdin in one of his letters to A.N. Ostrovsky: “In general, you need to explain with great chagrin that Higher Spheres they do not favor your works. They are disgusted by their accusatory pathos, their ideology... it has come to the point that “The Abyss” has aroused enormous displeasure among the authorities and they are afraid to stage it.”
This is confirmed by the table of productions of A.N. Ostrovsky’s plays from 1887 to 1917. It is interesting that the first place in this table is occupied by the play “Forest” - 160 performances per year. The play “The Abyss” has less than 15 performances a year. The plays “There wasn’t a penny, but suddenly it was altyn”, “Warm heart”, “Simplicity is enough for every wise man” were subjected to the same “discrimination”.
In his work, A.N. Ostrovsky, following N.V. Gogol, continued the theme of the “little man”. This is confirmed by the main character of the play “The Abyss” - Kiselnikov. He is unable to fight and floats with the flow of life. Finally, the abyss of life sucks him in. Through this image A.N. Ostrovsky shows that in the existing
In reality, you cannot remain a passive observer, you must fight, otherwise the abyss will swallow you up and it will be impossible to get out of it. The plays of A.N. Ostrovsky both educate and make the viewer think about the surrounding reality. As A.I. Revyakin notes in his work, the playwright believed that any type of art must necessarily educate and be a weapon in the social struggle.
A.N. Ostrovsky not only draws the types of inhabitants of Zamoskvorechye, he maximally reveals to readers and viewers the social system that determined the behavior of these people. How
noted A.V. Lunacharsky: “... his creative eyes quickly penetrated the souls of crippled, sometimes proud, sometimes humiliated creatures, full of deep feminine grace or sadly flapping the broken wings of high idealism. ... From the depths of their mighty breasts sometimes bursts forth, almost comical in its formal eccentricity, but such an infinitely human cry for a straightened life...”
The playwright did not consider such a bold and truthful reflection of reality to be his merit. For A.N. Ostrovsky, life’s truth is not a virtue, but a prerequisite for a work of art. This is the most important principle of artistry.
In the play “The Deep” A.N. Ostrovsky did not deviate from the main theme of his works and showed the “bottom” of post-reform life. At the same time, the play turned out to be unusual for the author in terms of genre: not a drama - an episode, but a drama - fate, a kind of novel in persons. Many researchers of A.N. Ostrovsky spoke about the influence of Western European literature on him, especially about his plot borrowings from foreign sources. A.I. Revyakin draws attention to ²... the influence of Schiller (“Robbers” - and “The Voevoda”, “Dmitry the Pretender” - and “Dmitry the Pretender”), R.B. Sheridan (“School of Scandal” - and “On Everyone the sage is quite simple"), Shakespeare ("A Midsummer Night's Dream" - and "The Snow Maiden"), V. Ducange and Dino ("Thirty Years, or the Life of a Gambler" - and "The Deep")."
The hero of the play, Kiselnikov, goes from an idealistic student in the 30s to a minor judicial official in the 40s. Each action of the play takes place after 5 - 7 years and depicts the path of a young man who graduated from university and enters life with hopes and hopes for a bright future. What is the result? Having married a Zamoskvoretskaya girl, he falls into everyday life as if into the abyss. Purity of thoughts ends in a crime - a large bribe, which the hero sees as the only opportunity to escape from poverty.
Almost every play by A. N. Ostrovsky was banned by theatrical censorship, since the playwright again and again raised questions about the pressing problems of our time. But nothing could force the playwright to change the themes of his plays.
It is necessary to give a general description of the manuscript of the play “The Deep”.
The manuscript of the play, stored in the Manuscripts Department of the Russian State Library, contains 54 sheets. The text is written with a simple pencil. Some passages are difficult to read, as time has left its mark on the text of the manuscript (the result of long-term storage and repeated reference to the text). The manuscript has no margins. All notes were made by A.N. Ostrovsky in free places. When reviewing the manuscript it is discovered a large number of insertions and additions, most often they are made directly in the text. Large inserts are placed in free spaces or are marked “F” at the bottom. There are few crossed out places in the manuscript; the original version is most often crossed out with a bold line. There are also crossed out pieces of text. There are sheets in which there are no corrections.
It can be assumed that these fragments were found by A.N. Ostrovsky immediately. However, it is possible that after a large number of changes and amendments, these sheets could have been rewritten. It is impossible to make a categorical statement in favor of the first or second assumption.
The entire manuscript is written in smooth, small handwriting. As for the inserts, they can often be disassembled only with the help of a magnifying glass, since there was no special place for them, and Ostrovsky was forced to place them in the scanty free spaces.
Noteworthy are the numbers placed above the words, which allowed the author to achieve great expressiveness of the text.
For example:
Glafira
Now I will not be afraid of you, because you will come into our house.
Of particular interest for characterizing the manuscript is its first page.
After the first three lines:
“Abyss”
“Scenes from Moscow life.”
Scene I.”
Immediately there are columns of text, written in small, illegible handwriting, “for yourself.” Upon careful examination, some words from these recordings were readable. In these notes, A.N. Ostrovsky arranged the main events of the play by scene. During final processing, all these entries were crossed out, since they subsequently became unnecessary. In general, there are a lot of author’s notes and sketches on the first sheet. All of them are also crossed out. This is a general brief description of the appearance of the manuscript of A.N. Ostrovsky’s play “The Deep”.
Now let's move on to the additions and changes made by A.N. Ostrovsky during the final edition, of which there are a lot in the manuscript. Since the nature of this work does not provide for a full and thorough study of the manuscript, only those places that have undergone changes during the creation of the play will be analyzed. It is necessary to analyze and establish the purpose and meaning of these amendments, some of which make significant changes in the character of the characters, others help to better reveal the situation in the play.
§ 1. Analysis of the most important discrepancies in the original and final handwritten versions.
Researchers (A.I. Revyakin, G.P. Pirogov, V.Ya. Lakshin and others) of A.N. Ostrovsky’s work have established that the playwright rarely succeeded in starting the play right away. He worked long and hard on the first lines, the placement characters. A.N. Ostrovsky strove to ensure that the first remarks of the characters in the play were similar to an ongoing dialogue.
Very often his plays begin with a response line that makes it easy to imply previous actions that took place before the curtain went up. This is precisely the beginning that is observed in “The Abyss”.
SceneI.
The action begins with a discussion of Ducange’s new translated play “Thirty Years, or the Life of a Gambler.” The discussion is led by merchants and their wives.
A.N. Ostrovsky succeeded in the first phenomenon immediately, since the playwright studied the merchants very well and he more than once had to hear the judgments of such “connoisseurs of art.”
The second appearance of “The Deep” was originally conceived as a discussion of the same play, but by students. A.N. Ostrovsky contrasted the opinion of the merchants with the opinion of the students. In the first version, students not only talked about the play, but also talked about theater “as the highest pleasure.” “A Gambler's Life” was discussed by three students and two other characters who were not included in the play. These characters are listed by A.N. Ostrovsky under the names Alb and Galosh. Apparently, the author gave their surnames in an abbreviated version.
This phenomenon has perhaps the greatest number of corrections. A.N. Ostrovsky almost completely reworks the text of this phenomenon: he removes the first student’s statement about the theater, instead of three students, only two participate in the conversation; a new face is introduced - Pogulyaev.
True, Pogulyaev utters only one phrase, but his thoughts are developed by the students. The author also removes the lengthy arguments of Alb and Galosh.
Thus, after the changes made, two students and Pogulyaev remain in the second phenomenon.
What could have caused such a rethinking of this phenomenon? Yes, apparently, because A.N. Ostrovsky himself did not consider it necessary to talk much about the play “The Life of a Gambler,” especially since the statement by Pogulyaev and the students gives a fairly complete assessment of this play.
Pogulyaev
And how good Mochalov was today. It's just a pity that the play is bad.
1st student
Dry play. Naked morality.
..................................................... .
What a play this is! This is nonsense that is not worth talking about.
Long and general arguments could only distract the viewer’s attention.
In the third phenomenon, initially there were only two characters: Kiselnikov and Pogulyaev. The conversation went on between friends throughout the entire phenomenon. Kiselnikov’s life did not turn out very well and therefore it is not surprising that Kiselnikov willingly tells his friend Pogulyaev about everything.
With this arrangement of characters, the action turned out to be somewhat monotonous. The conversation “tete a tete” does not suit A.N. Ostrovsky and in the new edition he introduces two more students who studied with Kiselnikov. Now three people are asking questions, and Kiselnikov only has time to answer them.
The fact that Kiselnikov talks about his life not only to Pogulyaev, but also to the students present, characterizes him as an open and sociable person. When editing, A.N. Ostrovsky does not redo phrases belonging to Pogulyaev and does not add new text. The playwright breaks these phrases into lines. Now, in the new version, students are already pronouncing them.
In the original version, A.N. Ostrovsky does not indicate how long Pogulyaev did not see Kiselnikov; this clarification appears only in the corrected version.
It is interesting that in the original version Kiselnikov himself talked about his life. With the introduction of two more characters, the number of questions increases and, consequently, Kiselnikov’s long answers are broken down into smaller ones. Kiselnikov now more often answers in monosyllables. By this A.N. Ostrovsky seems to make it clear that after all great desire Kiselnikov doesn’t talk about himself.
A new phrase appears, with which Kiselnikov tries to justify himself in everything he said.
Kiselnikov
However, I can still do it all.
But, since there is no real action behind this phrase, the subsequent dialogue moves on to another topic.
Kiselnikov
My father was a strict, capricious old man...
The constant presence of his father depressed Kiselnikov.
The fourth and fifth phenomena were left by A.N. Ostrovsky in their original form. In the fifth phenomenon, new characters appear. Their speech characteristics were immediately found by the playwright.
In the sixth phenomenon, inserts with the “F” icon appear for the first time, and there are many changes and additions to the text itself. Noteworthy is the insertion in Glafira’s answer to Pogulyaev’s question about her activities.
In the original version, when asked by Pogulyaev what she does, Glafira answered:
Glafira
I do embroidery.
In the final version, A.N. Ostrovsky adds:
Glafira
What do young ladies usually do? I do embroidery.
In her opinion, all the young ladies do is embroider and are not interested in anything else.
There is no doubt that A.N. Ostrovsky, with this additional phrase in Glafira’s answer, emphasizes the narrowness of her interests. Perhaps with this additional phrase the playwright simultaneously contrasts Kiselnikov’s education and the limitations of his bride.
Now let's turn to another scene in which Kiselnikov convinces Pogulyaev that there is no better family than the Borovtsovs, that nothing can be better than their family pleasures. In the original version of the manuscript, Pogulyaev silently listens to Kiselnikov and thereby seems to largely agree with him. But when editing the original text, A.N. Ostrovsky is not satisfied with this behavior of Pogulyaev, and a new line appears in which the author, through the mouth of his old comrade Kiselnikov, expresses his attitude towards the Borovtsovs’ lifestyle.
Pogulyaev
Well, no, there is something better than this.
Instead of silent consent, Pogulyaev’s protest is visible.
To show the limitations of Borovtsova’s interests and views, A.N. Ostrovsky immediately introduces her remark.
Borovtsova
This is dancing, isn't it? Well, well them. My husband can't stand it.
Thus, in the sixth scene of the first scene, the two short inserts given (Glafira’s words and Borovtsova’s words) significantly reveal the characteristics of the Borovtsov family, emphasizing their individuality and contrast with Kiselnikov.
In the seventh and last scene of the first scene there are no significant changes in the text.
SceneII
Seven years pass. Kiselnikov’s life after marriage changes far from for the better. His father-in-law does not give him the promised inheritance, Glafira turns from a meek girl into a greedy and hysterical woman.
The first phenomenon of the second scene begins with a scandal between Kiselnikov and Glafira.
In the original version of the manuscript, when the scandal reaches its peak, we read:
Kiselnikov(covers ears)
In the final version:
Kiselnikov(clutching ears, screams)
You are my tyrants, you!
Just one remark, and how the character of the image changes! In the first version, Kiselnikov is a passive nature in which all ability to fight has been destroyed. In the final version, we have before us a man whom fate forced to live among hated people, he has to adapt, but the hero is not afraid to say his opinion about those around him. At the end of the phenomenon, A.N. Ostrovsky introduces a long monologue by Kiselnikov, in which he almost repents of his behavior.
With this remark from Kiselnikov, reinforced by the addition of just one word to the remark: “screams” and an additionally introduced monologue at the end of the phenomenon, A.N. Ostrovsky shows that in the soul of the main character of the play, who has already lived for seven years in the kingdom of merchant obscurantism, has not yet died out the struggle between the passive and active principles of his nature, but the passive principle begins to take over and suck him into the abyss of a merchant's life.
A.N. Ostrovsky did not get the image of Glafira right away. In the final version, the playwright draws the readers' attention to her rudeness and greed. In the original version of the manuscript we read:
Glafira
How many times have I told you to sign the house in my name...
Kiselnikov
After all, this is her house, her own?...
Glafira
So what's her? I give her my dresses, I don’t regret it for
It turned out that Glafira treats Kiselnikov’s mother well - she gives her her dresses. But these words contradicted the character of the greedy Glafira.
When editing the manuscript, A.N. Ostrovsky corrects this discrepancy. But at the same time, the playwright does not change the text of the characters’ speech, but only in last words Glafiry inserts the definition “old” before the word “dresses”. Now Glafira’s answer looks like this:
Glafira
So what's her? I give her my old dresses, I don’t regret it for her...
So, with just one word added during editing, A.N. Ostrovsky reveals Glafira’s insignificant soul and reveals new features in her character: soullessness, callousness.
In the second scene, the Borovtsovs come to visit Kiselnikov. It’s Glafira’s name day, and her parents congratulate her. It turns out that Kiselnikov has already pawned Glafira’s earrings, which were given to her as a dowry. Glafira's parents are indignant. But Kiselnikov had no other choice. The money he receives from the service is too little to feed a large family. Borovtsov teaches Kiselnikov to take bribes. He paints him a rich life.
In the original version, Borovtsov’s teaching does not completely reveal his views on life. In the final version, A.N. Ostrovsky adds:
Borovtsov
You live for your family - here you be good and honest, and fight with others as if in war. What you managed to grab, take it home, fill it and cover your hut...
In these added words, the reader is presented with the image of a greedy predator who cares only about his own good. If this is the head of the Borovtsov family, then so are the rest of its members. A.N. Ostrovsky once again emphasizes the impossibility and incompatibility of the views on life of Kiselnikov and Borovtsov.
In the third phenomenon, A.N. Ostrovsky does not make any special changes when editing.
In the fourth scene of the second scene, when editing the first version of the manuscript, in order to most fully reveal the characters, A.N. Ostrovsky makes additions to their speech.
Guests are gathering at Kiselnikov's house. Pereyarkov and Turuntaev come to Glafira’s name day. In the first version of the manuscript, when Anna Ustinovna delays tea for the guests and Glafira shouts at her mother-in-law in front of everyone, we read:
Glafira
Why did you fail with tea!
................................................
Just hang around in the house, but there’s no point.
Borovtsova
Well, be quiet, be quiet! Hello, matchmaker!
In the final version, A.N. Ostrovsky emphasizes Borovtsova’s duplicity.
Borovtsova
Well, be quiet, be quiet! Don't shout in front of people! Not good. Hello, matchmaker!
From this addition it becomes clear that Borovtsova only cares about external decency; she is not at all against Glafira shouting at her mother-in-law, but not in public. The conclusion involuntarily suggests itself that the new phrase in Borovtsova’s speech was added by A.N. Ostrovsky not only to promote her character, but also the character of Glafira. It becomes clear that Glafira’s meekness before the wedding was ostentatious, and by her nature and upbringing she was rude and greedy.
This small addition reveals the character of two characters at once.
In the original version, when Pogulyaev arrives, Glafira greets him quite kindly.
Pogulyaev (Glafire)
I have the honor to congratulate you. (bows to everyone)
Glafira
Thank you humbly.
From the dialogue it is clear that Glafira accepts Pogulyaev without joy, but purely outwardly her behavior does not go beyond the bounds of decency. In the final version, A.N. Ostrovsky adds one more phrase to Glafira’s speech:
Pogulyaev (Glafire)
I have the honor to congratulate you. (bows to everyone).
Glafira
Thank you humbly. Only today we weren’t waiting for strangers, we want to spend time among our own.
In the final version, the meaning of Glafira’s response to Pogulyaev’s greeting changes dramatically. She pronounces the first phrase as if with mockery, and then emphasizes that Pogulyaev is a stranger to them. This reveals another character trait of Glafira: indifference to “unnecessary” people.
When talking with Pogulyaev, Pereyarkov emphasizes that they (the Borovtsovs, Pereyarkov and Turuntaev) have tenderness among themselves; that “they live in perfect harmony.” But as soon as Pereyarkov looks at his neighbor’s cards (he does this without a twinge of conscience), Turuntaev calls him a robber in front of everyone.
A skirmish begins. Each of those present is trying to insult his companion worse. When editing, A.N. Ostrovsky adds new lines. Now all these “nice” people look like market squabblers.
Pereyarkov
Pawnbroker! Koschey! Judas!
Turuntaev
Thief, day thief!
Borovtsov
Why are you barking!
Turuntaev
What are you, arshinnik!
To these remarks, introduced at the end of the quarrel between Borovtsov and Turuntaev, when editing A.N. Ostrovsky adds Pogulyaev’s phrase, which is the conclusion to this scene.
Pogulyaev
So much for your soul!
At the end of the phenomenon, Pogulyaev gives Kiselnikov a loan. Kiselnikov is very grateful to him. In the original version it looked like this:
Kiselnikov
Thank you, brother, thank you, I borrowed it! That's a friend, that's a friend! If it weren’t for him, I would have completely embarrassed myself in front of my father-in-law.
After editing the original version we read:
Kiselnikov
That's a friend, that's a friend! What to do here if it weren’t for him! Where to go? God sent him to me for my truth and meekness. If only there were more friends like this, it would be easier to live in the world! If it weren’t for him, I would have completely embarrassed myself in front of my father-in-law.
What does A.N. Ostrovsky want to draw our attention to? Does the meaning of Kiselnikov’s words change in the final version?
In the first version, A.N. Ostrovsky does not reveal the word “friend” in Kiselnikov’s understanding. In the final version, it becomes clear that for him a friend is someone who can lend money. The playwright emphasizes that need dulls all other feelings in Kiselnikov.
At the beginning of the play, Kiselnikov still tries to protest. Even if these were only words, they could turn into deeds. Gradually, A.N. Ostrovsky leads the reader and viewer to the tragic ending of the play. At the end of the second scene, Kiselnikov is a weak, weak-willed person, incapable of protest, taking credit for his meekness and patience.
SceneIII
In the manuscript, A.N. Ostrovsky begins to write the third scene of “The Deep” from the second appearance. Apparently, the playwright was not ready to present the first phenomenon and left it “for later.” The first phenomenon follows the second, then the third phenomenon, and so on.
In the first scene of the third scene, A.N. Ostrovsky talks about Kiselnikov’s life over the past five years.
Another five years pass. Glafira died. The children are sick, but Kiselnikov has no money for their treatment. The father-in-law, on whom Kiselnikov had placed his last hope, “was declared insolvent.” But Kiselnikov continues to hope that Borovtsov will return him at least part of the money taken. In order not to upset his mother, Kiselnikov tries to instill in her at least a little hope.
Kiselnikov
I'll go see my father-in-law tomorrow morning. I won’t salute you, I’ll just grab you by the collar.
Anna Ustinovna
Ask nicely...
The mother advises her son to ask nicely first, and then he can go straight to the gate. By nature, Kiselnikov is a weak-willed person. He will never be able to “take it by the collar.” Anna Ustinovna knows this very well. After all, Kiryusha will give in more easily than use force and pressure, even in matters concerning his own money. In confirmation of this, A.N. Ostrovsky adds:
Anna Ustinovna
Well, where are you! You better ask nicely...
This inserted phrase once again, through the words of the mother, very figuratively reveals the weak-willed character of her son.
We need to dwell on the second phenomenon in more detail. It is perhaps the most dramatic place in the play. In the second phenomenon, main events occur that change Kiselnikov’s character, which will then become guiding in his subsequent actions.
Borovtsov and Pereyarkov come to Kiselnikov. Borovtsov is now poorly dressed, and he himself came to his son-in-law with a request. In the final version, A.N. Ostrovsky introduces the appeal “BROTHER” into Borovtsov’s words. The father-in-law calls Kiselnikov this way not because he loves him, this is just a new trick by Borovtsov to carry out the vile plan he has conceived. A.N. Ostrovsky makes significant changes to the speech of Pereyarkov, who directs all Borovtsov’s actions in this meeting.
In the original version we read:
Pereyarkov
Cry! After all, you will cry in front of other creditors.
In the new edition, Pereyarkov gives Borovtsov more detailed and sophisticated advice:
Pereyarkov
Cry! Why aren't you crying? Your business now is like an orphan. After all, you will cry in front of other creditors. You will have to bow at your feet.
In the new version, A.N. Ostrovsky emphasizes Pereyarkov’s cunning. Such words can make any person feel sorry for him, especially Kiselnikov. Borovtsov knows in advance that after everything that has been said and played out, Kiselnikov will agree to help him and sign the necessary document.
The ingenuous Kiselnikov is ready to believe Borovtsov and give up his own money. To emphasize Borovtsov’s generosity “in words,” a new line appears in the final version.
Borovtsov
How can you not believe it, eccentric! I’ll give you some money later... I’ll make you rich later...
A.N. Ostrovsky focuses attention on “later,” which here borders on “never.”
In the original version of the manuscript, A.N. Ostrovsky ended the second phenomenon with a successful deal. In an effort to reveal the mental state of the protagonist, his despair and fear of life, in the new version A.N. Ostrovsky introduces Kiselnikov’s monologue.
Kiselnikov
My children, my children! What have I done to you! You are sick, you are hungry; you are robbed, and your father helps. The robbers came and took the last piece of bread, but I didn’t fight with them, didn’t cut myself, didn’t gnaw them with my teeth, but I gave it away, with my own hands I gave away your last food. If I could rob people myself and feed you, people would forgive me, and God would forgive me; and I, together with the robbers, robbed you. Mama, mamma!
In the third appearance, Kiselnikov tells his mother about everything that happened. Both are excited. In the final edition, A.N. Ostrovsky introduces short remarks that add dynamism to their conversation and further enhance the drama of the situation.
Anna Ustinovna
Don’t complain, Kiryusha, don’t complain!
Kiselnikov
Oh, I wish I could die now!
Anna Ustinovna
And the children, the children!
Kiselnikov
Yes, children! Well, what's lost is gone.
The last remark testifies to Kiselnikov’s prudence. He understands that tears cannot help his grief.
In the original version of the manuscript, A.N. Ostrovsky puts into Kiselnikov’s mouth only the following words:
Kiselnikov
When to rest! The matter cannot be tolerated. Come sit with me! I won't be so bored; and even worse than that, the longing for the heart sucks.
But from these words it is not clear how Kiselnikov is going to get out of this situation. Therefore, when editing the text, A.N. Ostrovsky inserts several new phrases into the above statement by Kiselnikova and thereby shows that he is not going to sit with his hands folded.
Kiselnikov
When to rest! The matter cannot be tolerated. Well, mummy, let them use it! They won't get rich with our money. I'll get to work now. I will work day and night. Come sit with me! I won't be so bored; and even worse than that, the longing for the heart sucks.
It seems interesting to trace how Kiselnikov’s life developed.
Kiselnikov studied at the university, but did not graduate. I hoped to continue my studies. He meets Glafira, marries her for love and is sure that Glafira loves him too. Kiselnikov dreams of a happy and rich new life, since his father-in-law promises six thousand for Glafira.
However, in life everything turned out completely differently. Glafira turns into a scandalous and greedy merchant's wife. Kiselnikov not only does not receive the promised six thousand, but also loses his savings, given to his father-in-law against a credit receipt.
Glafira dies. Kiselnikov still has four sick children in his arms. Kiselnikov has no money for treatment. All the children, except Lisa, die. In addition to everything, the rich father-in-law is “declared insolvent.” Kiselnikov has his last hope that his father-in-law will return him at least part of his own money, but circumstances are such that Kiselnikov himself, out of pity for his father-in-law, “gives” him this last money. This is the position of the desperate Kiselnikov before the fourth phenomenon.
The events of the fourth apparition foreshadow the denouement of the play. An unknown person incites Kiselnikov to forge a document. For this he offers a large amount. By nature, Kiselnikov is a very honest and noble person. He could never afford to accept a bribe, even in a critical situation, although others did it without a twinge of conscience. But now the last hope collapses. His father-in-law “robs” him. There is no money and there never will be, but there is an elderly mother and daughter in their arms, who still need to be put back on their feet. In desperation, Kiselnikov commits forgery of a document. When editing the manuscript, wanting to emphasize the unconsciousness of Kiselnikov’s act, A.N. Ostrovsky adds the following statements of his hero to the original version after his official crime:
Kiselnikov
God! What am I doing? (cries.)
...........................................................................
You won't destroy me. Family, sir!
In the fifth scene, we see Kiselnikov rushing about, with eyes full of fear. His speech and actions are disordered. His condition is close to that of a feverish patient. Most of all, Kiselnikov is afraid of losing the money he just got.
Kiselnikov
Oh my god! Well, along the cracks, behind the wallpaper, wrap it in rags.
In an effort to emphasize that Kiselnikov cares about money not for himself, but for his family, when working on this point, A.N. Ostrovsky expands the above remark more widely.
Kiselnikov
Oh my god! Well, along the cracks, behind the wallpaper, wrap it in rags. So that you have some money left over, so that you can live with your children after me.
At the end of the fourth final phenomenon of the third scene, when editing A.N. Ostrovsky adds Kiselnikov’s exclamation.
Kiselnikov
Mama, I’m on the verge of hard labor... Tomorrow, maybe
This is Kiselnikov’s last sober exclamation.
SceneIV
In the first scene of the fourth scene we see a completely bankrupt Borovtsov and a mad Kiselnikov.
Another five years pass. The lives of the characters change, and their position also changes. Now Kiselnikov and Borovtsov sell old things together on the square. A powerful merchant, Kiselnikov's father-in-law, Borovtsov finds himself in the position of his poor son-in-law. That is life.
Anna Ustinovna, aged five years, remains the same devoted mother, trying to protect her beloved Kiryusha from any excitement. A.N. Ostrovsky emphasizes this character trait when editing the text in the new edition.
In the first version, when Borovtsov reminds Anna Ustinovna about her former life, we read:
Anna Ustinovna
Oh, shut up!
In the second version, after editing, we have:
Anna Ustinovna
Oh, shut up! Why are you with him? Well, he will wake up and remember...
Anna Ustinovna is constantly worried about Kiryusha. She believes that Kiryusha can wake up.
When editing the original version of the manuscript, A.N. Ostrovsky adds words about “talan - share” to Borovtsov’s speech. Why is this? The playwright shows us that even Borovtsov, who lives for himself and “wages war with those around him,” tries to make Kiselnikov’s life easier. He comes up with this proverb so that Kiselnikov can believe in something.
In the second scene, we first meet Kiselnikov’s eldest daughter, Liza, and meet Pogulyaev again. In the first version, A.N. Ostrovsky does not specify who Pogulyaev has become over the past five years. But when comparing his life with the life of Kiselnikov, this becomes necessary. In the new edition, A.N. Ostrovsky introduces the following addition to Pogulyaev’s dialogue:
Pogulyaev
Now I'm a lawyer, I do cooking.
From this insert it is clear that Pogulyaev achieved a good position in society and received a place in court. Anna Ustinovna tells him the story of Kiselnikov. It is noteworthy that in the original version her story began with the words:
Anna Ustinovna
The service did not work out for him - somehow he did not get used to it; ...
In the new version we read:
Anna Ustinovna
Family, father, and relatives ruined Kiryusha. The service did not work out for him - somehow he did not get used to it; ...
In the new words of Anna Ustinovna, A.N. Ostrovsky once again emphasizes that the main reason for Kiselnikov’s current position is not in the service, but in his environment.
Anna Ustinovna tells Pogulyaev that Kiryusha is crazy. When editing A.N. Ostrovsky adds: “out of fear.” What kind of fear is this? This is the fear of an honest person before the law, the fear of the head of the family for his daughter and mother.
In the conversation between Liza and Pogulyaev, A.N. Ostrovsky changes almost nothing. Only the final version touches on the theme of happiness. It turns out that Pogulyaev has everything except happiness.
Pogulyaev is quite well off financially, and he is happy to help his friend’s family. In memory of an old acquaintance, he gives Anna Ustinovna a banknote. Kiselnikov’s mother is very grateful to him.
Anna Ustinovna
We humbly thank you for remembering us orphans. You visit.
In order to reveal the psychology of a poor person, A.N. Ostrovsky makes an addition to the quoted words of Anna Ustinovna.
Anna Ustinovna
- If you don’t have happiness, then you have money; it means you can still live.
We humbly thank you for remembering us orphans. You visit.
For a poor person, happiness is sometimes not necessary when
have money.
When constructing the fourth phenomenon, A.N. Ostrovsky makes semantic amendments to the arrangement of events.
In the original version, the fourth phenomenon began from the moment Kiselnikov arrived with a ten-ruble banknote, which his neighbor gentleman gave him for poverty. In the modified version, the action begins with Kiselnikov’s incoherent words, which he had just heard from the master and haunted his shaken psyche.
Kiselnikov
Kennel, kennel...
...................................
A kennel, he says, a dog kennel...
Kiselnikov ponders the words he heard, he is going to go to the master again. Lisa immediately understands what we are talking about. She's desperate. Lisa can save her family if she goes to support her rich neighbor. What should she do?
At the end of the apparition, Lisa utters words full of despair:
Lisa
Who will help me! I'm standing over an abyss, I have nothing to hold on to. Kind people!
In the process of editing the text, A.N. Ostrovsky makes changes to this part of the manuscript. Modified version:
Lisa
Who will help me now! I'm standing over an abyss, I have nothing to hold on to. Oh, save me, good people! Grandma, say something to me!
In the first version, Lisa talks about help in general, and in the final version, about help in this moment. This cry of a drowning man: “Save me!” - the culminating moment in the current situation. Lisa asks for help, but from whom? Even her grandmother does not speak to her, because she is afraid to give her bad advice and deprive the family of possible salvation. In the modified version, A.N. Ostrovsky enhances the drama of the current situation.
In the fifth scene Pogulyaev appears again. In the original version of the manuscript, the phenomenon begins with Lisa’s exclamation addressed to Pogulyaev:
Lisa
Help me!
This could be regarded as an unexpected straw that Lisa clutches at in despair. She didn't care who she asked for help.
When editing the manuscript, A.N. Ostrovsky rejected this option. Of all the people around Lisa, only Pogulyaev can help her. Therefore, in the new edition, he specifies Lisa’s appeal.
Lisa
Oh, how on time you are! I need to ask advice, not from anyone. Help me.
Pogulyaev proposes to Lisa, and she agrees. He reports this to Kiselnikov. Kiselnikov's reaction to this message undergoes a change when editing the manuscript.
In the first option:
Kiselnikov
Mama!
Anna Ustinovna
True, Kiryusha, true!
What does this exclamation from Kiselnikov mean? Fear, joy? From this exclamation, Kiselnikov’s reaction is not entirely clear.
When practicing this scene, A.N. Ostrovsky feels that it is important for Kiselnikov to come to his senses and realize, at that moment, what happiness befell his daughter. If A.N. Ostrovsky had only changed Kiselnikov’s words, then this would also not have been enough. Therefore, a new phrase appears in Anna Ustinovna’s speech, testifying to Kiselnikov’s sound mind at this crucial moment.
Kiselnikov
Mama! Lisa! Is he getting married? Is it true?
Anna Ustinovna
Thank God I woke up! True, Kiryusha, true!
Anna Ustinovna's response: “Thank God, I woke up!” - emphasizes the mother’s double joy. Firstly, Kiryusha has come to his senses and can be happy for his daughter, and secondly, she is glad that Lisa is getting married so successfully.
In the sixth scene of the drama, we see that common sense does not leave Kiselnikov until the very end of the play. When Pogulyaev invites everyone to move in with him, Kiselnikov openly says that it’s not worth it, that he’s a fraud, and now only his father-in-law can keep him company.
When editing the sixth phenomenon, the playwright makes a change to Kiselnikov’s final monologue, strengthening it with the exclamation:
Kiselnikov
No, Pogulyaev, take them, take them; God will not leave you; and drive us away, drive us away! ...
Kiselnikov is afraid that his daughter will be sucked into the abyss. His life is already broken, so let Lisa not repeat his mistakes.
When considering and studying the manuscript of A.N. Ostrovsky “The Abyss”, it is easy to establish two versions of its writing: the original and the final.
IN compositional construction The play is conceived as follows.
Young Kiselnikov meets his old friend Pogulyaev. From Kiselnikov's story we learn how he lived Lately. Here we learn that Kiselnikov is going to marry Glafira. All these events are the exposition of the play.
Kiselnikov got married. His life changed. A.N. Ostrovsky talks about all the misfortunes that befell him. Kiselnikov's marriage is the beginning of the play.
A.N. Ostrovsky brings us gradually to the climax. First, Kiselnikov is deprived of the promised inheritance, then he gives his own money to his father-in-law. The highest point of climax is the forgery of a document.
The play has a dramatic denouement - Kiselnikov loses his mind.
Which fragment of the play did A.N. Ostrovsky work on more carefully? Leafing through the manuscript again, it is clear that A.N. Ostrovsky had to make changes to all parts of the play in equal numbers. If we take into account that the exposition is the smallest in volume, and there are a large number of corrections and additions in it, then we can say that A.N. Ostrovsky worked more carefully on the exposition.
The playwright's work on the main characters is noteworthy. All images are almost immediately outlined by the author in their final form. In the speech of some characters, A.N. Ostrovsky adds phrases and remarks that emphasize new character traits. This is especially true for the images of Kiselnikov and Glafira. Pogulyaev’s image remains in its original form, and new phrases in Anna Ustinovna’s speech do not affect her image in any way. They serve to reveal the images and characters of other heroes. A.N. Ostrovsky also makes changes to the characterization of the images of Borovtsov and Borovtsova.
§ 2. A.N. Ostrovsky’s work on stage directions.
A.N. Ostrovsky’s work on stage directions deserves special mention. First, you should turn to S.I. Ozhegov’s explanatory dictionary and find out the meaning of the word “REMARK”:
In the plays of A.N. Ostrovsky, and in this case in the play “The Abyss,” stage directions play important role. And this follows, first of all, from the fact that in the process of work the playwright made significant changes not only to the main text of the work, but also to the stage directions.
In the play "The Abyss" there are three types of remarks: remarks relating to the characters, remarks revealing the circumstances of the characters' lives, and remarks revealing the characters through speech and emotional state.
There are few remarks related to the characters in the manuscript.
In the final version of the play, A.N. Ostrovsky replaces the surname Gulyaev with Pogulyaev. It is difficult to say what could have caused such a change. The author adds to Pogulyaev’s description: “completed the course.”
After editing the list of characters, A.N. Ostrovsky removes Borovtsova’s maiden name; in the play she appears not as Firsova, but as Borovtsova.
After making changes to the cast of characters in the play, A.N. Ostrovsky crosses everything out, apparently in the hope of returning to this again. However, the manuscript does not contain a new version of the characters, therefore, the original version was given for publication.
There are no changes in the actors' remarks before the second scene.
In the third scene, Glafira was included in the cast of characters in the original version. It is not in the final version.
A.N. Ostrovsky attached great importance to the description of the situation surrounding the heroes on stage. great importance. The playwright paid a lot of attention to working on stage directions of this type.
In the first scene, after the description of the characters in the initial version of the manuscript, we read:
"Boring Garden".
This is the setting in which the first scene should take place.
Such a short remark does not satisfy the playwright. In the final version, A.N. Ostrovsky reveals to the viewer a panorama of a not boring garden.
“A boring garden. A meadow between the trees; in front there is a path and a bench; in the depths there is a path, behind the path there are trees and a view of the Moscow River...” Why does the author reveal to the readers a panorama of the boring garden, near which the merchants lived? It can be assumed that A.N. Ostrovsky is trying to achieve greater imagery, he pays attention to details: bench, paths, trees... The nature of Zamoskvorechye appears before the reader and viewer (abundance of trees, view of the Moscow River). These descriptions are also given by the author to make the action more reliable.
In the 2nd scene of the play, there are no stage directions in the original version. When processing and editing the manuscript, a remark appears in the text:
"A small room in Kiselnikov's apartment."
This remark alarms the reader and viewer. After all, Kiselnikov hoped to get rich, but the setting of the second scene suggests the opposite. This remark very clearly and frankly introduces the content of the unfolding action.
In the third scene in the original version there was a short remark:
"Poor room"
But what does A.N. Ostrovsky mean by this definition?
In the new edition, after the changes and additions made, A.N. Ostrovsky reveals the concept of “poor”. The playwright gives this definition a specific and univariate interpretation:
"A poor room; a painted table and several chairs; on the table there is a tallow candle and a pile of papers..."
This clarification shows that the main character of the play, Kiselnikov, is already on the verge of poverty. Again A.N. Ostrovsky pays attention to details, rather than looking at the overall picture. The candle on the table is “greasy”, which evokes empathy for the hero in the reader; the disorder is emphasized: “a pile of papers” on the table.
The cases considered show that stage directions related to the design of the scene help to reveal the content and create a certain mood.
Finally, the third type of remarks: emotional remarks and remarks indicating who the character is specifically addressing.
So, for example, in a dialogue with Glafira (scene II, scene one), Kiselnikov, unable to bear the insults, covers his ears. In the original version, after editing, A.N. Ostrovsky endows Kiselnikov’s passive behavior with an answer emanating from the depths of his soul and expands the remark with the word “SHOUTS”.
In the fifth scene of the second scene, when Kiselnikov, being in distress, tells Pogulyaev a dream with consolation and the hope of getting rich, A.N. Ostrovsky adds:
"through tears"
These tears reveal Kiselnikov’s state of mind, his despair. The playwright educates the reader and viewer using the example of his hero and teaches empathy.
In the scene where Kiselnikov receives a bribe for forging a document, to Kiselnikov’s words:
“Lord! What am I doing!”
A.N. Ostrovsky adds the remark "(cries)".
Based on all of the above, we can conclude: all the new remarks introduced by the author when editing the first version of the manuscript carry a great psychological and emotional load in the play and help the reader, audience and actors better understand the characters, look into their soul, and evoke sympathy for the main character .
Conclusion.
In the play “The Deep” A.N. Ostrovsky reveals life to the reader and viewer merchant family. Taking off the usual external gloss, the author shows that behind the external attractiveness of rich families in their lives lies rudeness, humiliation and deception.
A.N. Ostrovsky asserted the principle of a truthful depiction of reality.
In the play “The Abyss” he paints the image of a typical representative of the Russian merchants - Borovtsov. The life story of Borovtsov is the story of the life of a greedy and stingy merchant, who began with exorbitant wealth and ended in poverty.
In the play, A.N. Ostrovsky poses a big social question, the question of life in the merchant class. A.N. Ostrovsky was able to deeply reveal and broadly paint pictures of merchant life only thanks to personal acquaintance and observations of the life of this society.
The depiction of merchants remained a paramount theme in his work. However, A.N. Ostrovsky did not limit himself to this and depicted the life of the bureaucracy (“We’ll count our own people,” “Poor Bride,” “The Abyss”), the nobility (“Don’t get into your own sleigh”) and the philistinism (“Don’t live like that , as you wish").
As A.I. Revyakin rightly noted: “The versatility of thematic interests, the development of the most important current problems of his era made A.N. Ostrovsky a national writer of enormous social significance.”
Among the petty bureaucrats, A.N. Ostrovsky always singled out honest workers who were bent over from backbreaking work. The playwright treated them with deep sympathy.
Experiencing extreme material deprivation, feeling their lack of rights, these heroic workers tried in word and deed to bring goodness and truth into life. Not sharing Kiselnikov’s intention to live on Glafira’s dowry and on interest on capital, the student from the play “The Abyss” confidently declares: “But in my opinion, there is nothing better than living on your labor.” (sc. 1, appearance 3).
In “The Abyss” A.N. Ostrovsky specifically brings to the fore an unremarkable personality. Main negative traits The author makes the main character passivity and inability to fight the environment and its morals.
According to the Borovtsovs and others like them, Kiselnikov’s main shortcomings are honesty and poverty.
The work of A.N. Ostrovsky is consonant with the work of F.M. Dostoevsky, in revealing the problem of the moral quest of the individual. Dostoevsky's heroes Svidrigailov and Stavrogin languish in the emptiness of existence and, in the end, commit suicide. Their search leads them to the problem of the internal moral “abyss.” In “Hard Days,” one of A.N. Ostrovsky’s heroes remarks: “In a word, I live in the abyss,” and to the question: “Where is this abyss?” - answers: “Everywhere: you just need to go down.” It borders to the north with the northern ocean, to the east with the eastern ocean, and so on.”
The playwright revealed the depth of these words in the play “The Deep.” And with such artistic force he revealed that the reserved Anton Pavlovich Chekhov wrote with an enthusiasm unusual for him: “The play is amazing. The last act is something that I wouldn't have written in a million. This act is a whole play, and when I have my own theater, I will stage only this one act.”2
Like Zhadov from “Profitable Place” and other people who emerged from “university life” with its “concepts” and “advanced convictions,” Kiselnikov begins to realize that he is “no better than others” since he agrees to forge a document. Starting with the accusation of bribe takers, Kiselnikov ends with a moral decline, as he says about himself: “We sold everything: ourselves, conscience...” and the reason for this is seen in the ideal that people like Kiselnikov strived for in their youth.
The ideal was just loud declarations, but not actions. At the first life test The Kiselnikovs are ready to serve any idea, as long as it is profitable.
“... the playwright does not burn with hatred,” notes A.I. Revyakin, “but sympathizes, regrets, gently grieves, seeing the ruined human life, because the “blessed power” sees further, and it forgives more, because it loves more deeply.”
Kiselnikov perishes in the abyss of a merchant's life. For weak personality such an end is inevitable.
Summing up the work on the analysis of the manuscript of A.N. Ostrovsky’s drama “The Deep,” it should be noted that the material contained in the draft manuscript made it possible to comprehensively trace the birth of the play and the finishing of its images.
All noted changes and additions were made by A.N. Ostrovsky to enhance the emotional impact of the play, with the desire to evoke compassion in the reader and viewer for the main character - Kiselnikov.
The fact that in the process of creative work A.N. Ostrovsky did not have to rewrite the draft manuscript twice or several times, and all the changes, insertions and additions were made by him in the first version of the manuscript, indicates that the author knew the material presented well, the images were They thought that they only needed to be artistically designed and conveyed to the reader and viewer. Classics do not oppose modernity, but give us the opportunity to see ourselves from a historical perspective. As E. Kholodov noted: “without a sense of the past there is no sense of the present - one who is indifferent to the past is indifferent to the future, no matter how much he verbally swears allegiance to the ideals of this very bright - bright future. Classics precisely cultivate in us a sense of personal involvement in the historical movement of humanity from the past to the future.”
Plays acquire a modern sound depending on how much the theater managed to convey to the audience what can excite everyone today. It should be noted that in one era the interest of theaters and spectators is attracted by certain classical plays, and in other eras by other classical plays. This is due to the fact that classics enter into complex ideological and aesthetic mutual relations with modernity. In our theater studies, there is the following periodization of A.N. Ostrovsky’s repertoire:
1 period- years of civil war. Ostrovsky is staged and played the old fashioned way.
2nd period- 20s. A formalistic experiment on Ostrovsky's dramaturgy.
3rd period- late 20s and 1 half 30s. The influence of sociology. In Ostrovsky's work, only satirical colors are emphasized.
4th period- the years of the Second World War and the first post-war years. In Ostrovsky's dramaturgy, they looked for both the dark and light sides of the depiction of life.
In 1923, the country widely celebrated the 100th anniversary of the birth of the great Russian playwright. This year, a monument to the great Russian playwright was laid in front of the facade of the Maly Theater. Also this year, 10 volumes of the first Soviet Collected Works of A.N. Ostrovsky, completed in 1923, were published. During the anniversary year, more than a dozen books were published in Moscow, Petrograd, Ivanovo-Voznesensk, and Vladikavkaz. dedicated to life and the work of the playwright. And, of course, performances by the great playwright were staged.
In the 60s, Ostrovsky again began to win the attention of theaters and critics. Performances were staged during these years not only in Moscow and Leningrad, but also in many other cities: in Kiev, Gorky and Pskov - “For Every Wise Man...”, in Novosibirsk and Sverdlovsk - “The Thunderstorm”, in Minsk and Kaluga - “ The last victim”, in Kaunas - “Profitable Place”, in Vilnius - “The Marriage of Balzaminov”, in Novgorod - “The Abyss”, in Tambov - “Without the Guilt of the Guilty”. It should be noted that each era brought its own new vision of Ostrovsky’s dramaturgy, so those issues that interested the modern viewer came to the fore.
A.N. Ostrovsky has several plays in the center of which is the image of a young man choosing his path in life. The most popular plays are “A Profitable Place”, “Enough Simplicity for Every Wise Man” and “The Abyss”. These plays trace the three paths of a young intellectual in A.N. Ostrovsky’s contemporary reality. What unites the main characters (Zhadov, Glumov and Kiselnikov) is that they are young people, that is, people starting their lives, choosing life paths.
“The ideals of Zhadov from “Profitable Place” are crushed not by some “terrible, soul-shattering drama” - they are undermined day by day, day by day by the vile prose of life, tirelessly repeating the irresistibly vulgar arguments of common sense - today, as yesterday tomorrow is like today."
The play “The Deep” reminds the modern viewer of the old theater, not even from the time of Ostrovsky, but from an era even more distant. Let us remember that the first scenes take place, according to the author’s remark, “about 30 years ago,” and the play itself was written in 1865. The play begins with the audience talking about Ducange’s melodrama “Thirty Years Later, or the Life of a Gambler” with the participation of Mochalov himself.
Kholodov notes that “the presentation of the melodrama “Thirty Years Later, or the Life of a Gambler” is, as it were, contrasted with the presentation of the drama of Kiselnikov’s life, which could be entitled “Seventeen Years, or the Life of a Loser.” The essence of “The Deep” is that, taking as a basis a plot scheme typical of melodrama, the playwright, with the entire logic of his play, refutes the melodramatic concept of the individual and society. A.N. Ostrovsky contrasts life with theater.
“The Abyss” is the only one of A.N. Ostrovsky’s plays that is based on a biographical, “hagiographic” principle - we meet Kirill Filipovich Kiselnikov when he is 22 years old, then
We meet him at 29 years old, at 34 years old and finally at 39 years old. In relation to Zhadov and Glumov, the viewer can only guess how their lives will turn out, while Kiselnikov’s life unfolds before the viewer over the course of 17 years. Kiselnikov is aging before our eyes - at 39 years old, he is already an old man.
In the plays “The Deep” and “Profitable Place” the same metaphor appears - the image of a cornered horse. Zhadov: “ Need, circumstances, lack of education of relatives, surrounding debauchery can drive me like a post horse..." Kiselnikov: " You know, mamma, they are driving in a mail horse, it trudges along leg by leg, hanging its head, not looking at anything, just to drag itself somehow to the station; that's how I became" Circumstances “may still drive Zhadov”, but they have already driven Kiselnikov (“that’s what I’ve become”). Kiselnikov, as Kholodov notes, is Zhadov, driven by life.
The role of Kiselnikov is usually assigned to experienced actors closer in age to Kiselnikov last scenes, therefore, in the performance of the first scene by such actors, when the hero is only 22 years old, some tension is always felt.
“Kiselnikov’s trouble lies in Kiselnikovism,” notes Kholodov, “in mental inertia, inactive beauty, spinelessness, lack of will. Trouble or guilt? The playwright himself poses this question at the beginning of the play. After the presentation of Ducange’s melodrama “Thirty Years, or the Life of a Gambler,” the audience exchanges opinions about the tragic fate of the hero. The viewer is presented with several points of view:
« Whoever you are with, you will be like that too»
« Everyone is to blame for himself... Stand firm, because you will be the only one to answer».
One position: " It's a pity" Another position: " I don't feel sorry for anything. Know the edge, don't fall! That's why man is given reason».
“The Deep” is an amazing play because the playwright does not give an exact answer: whether the main character is guilty or not. The theater, following A.N. Ostrovsky, answers that this is the hero’s misfortune, but also his fault.
Unlike Zhadov, Kiselnikov commits a crime, and we witness the final fall of the hero.
It should be noted that the drama “The Deep” currently attracts more spectators than readers and researchers. I dare say that researchers are not happy great interest study the only version of the manuscript with all the corrections and additions made to it. In artistic terms, “The Abyss” is weaker than the drama “The Thunderstorm,” for example.
Well, the reader is not interested in this drama, in my opinion, because he cannot find a love affair, and the theme of the “little man” is no longer interesting, since it was comprehensively explored in the works of N.V. Gogol, F.M. Dostoevsky, A.P. Chekhov.
However, the play “The Deep” is always present in the repertoire of the Maly Theater, which bears the name of the great playwright.
Until 2002, the play was staged by Yuri Solomin, and now it is being staged new production- Korshunova.
The play is relevant in our time, as it raises an acute psychological question - how to survive in this world if you are an honest person? In my opinion, each reader should find for himself the answer to the question posed by A.N. Ostrovsky.
Excerpts from “Memoirs of the artist N.S.Vasilkva.” “Yearbook of the Imperial Theaters”, 1909, No. 1, p.4.
Revyakin A.I. “Dramaturgy of A.N. Ostrovsky” (To the 150th anniversary of his birth), M.: Znanie, 1973, p.36
Lakshin V.Ya. “Alexander Nikolaevich Ostrovsky” - 2nd ed., revised. and additional - M.: Art, 1982, p. 63.
Kholodov E.G. "A playwright for all times"; All-Russian Theater Society, M., 1975, p. 260-261.
3 ibid p. 321
There with. 321General characteristics of the work of A.N. Ostrovsky. General characteristics of A.N.’s creativity Ostrovsky.
Ostrovsky drama dowry psychological
Ostrovsky's services to Russian drama and to the Russian theater are enormous. For almost forty years of creative activity of A.N. Ostrovsky created a rich repertoire: about fifty original plays, several plays written in collaboration. He was also involved in translations and adaptations of plays by other authors. At one time, greeting the playwright on the occasion of the 35th anniversary of his creative career, I.A. Goncharov wrote: “You brought a whole library of works of art as a gift to literature, you created your own special world for the stage. You alone completed the building, the foundation of which was laid by Fonvizin, Griboyedov, Gogol. But only after you, we Russians can proudly say: “We have our own Russian, national theater. It should rightly be called “Ostrovsky Theater” Zhuravlev A.I., Nekrasov V.N. Theater A.N. Ostrovsky. - M.: Art, 1986, p. 8..
The talent of Ostrovsky, who continued the best traditions of classical Russian drama, affirming the drama of social characters and morals, deep and broad generalization, had a decisive influence on all subsequent development of progressive Russian drama. In greater or to a lesser extent Both L. Tolstoy and Chekhov studied with him and came from him. It is precisely with that line of Russian psychological dramaturgy, which Ostrovsky so magnificently represented, that Gorky’s dramaturgy is also connected. Modern authors are learning and will continue to study Ostrovsky’s dramatic skills for a long time.
It would be fair to note that even before Ostrovsky, progressive Russian drama had magnificent plays. Let’s remember Fonvizin’s “The Minor,” Griboyedov’s “Woe from Wit,” Pushkin’s “Boris Godunov,” Gogol’s “The Inspector General,” and Lermontov’s “Masquerade.” Each of these plays could enrich and decorate, as Belinsky rightly wrote, the literature of any Western European country.
But these plays were too few. And they did not determine the state of the theatrical repertoire. Figuratively speaking, they rose above the level of mass drama like lonely, rare mountains in an endless desert plain. The overwhelming majority of the plays that filled the theater stage of that time were translations of empty, frivolous vaudevilles and heartbreaking melodramas woven from horrors and crimes. Both vaudevilles and melodramas, terribly far from real life, especially from the real Russian reality, were not even its shadow.
The rapid development of psychological realism, which we observe in the second half of the 19th century, also manifested itself in drama. Interest in the human personality in all its states forced writers to seek means for their expression. In drama, the main such means was the stylistic individualization of the characters’ language, and the leading role in the development of this method belonged to Ostrovsky.
In addition, Ostrovsky made an attempt to go further in psychologism, along the path of providing his characters with the maximum possible freedom within the framework of the author’s plan - the result of such an experiment was the image of Katerina in “The Thunderstorm”. Alexander Nikolaevich Ostrovsky considered the beginning of his literary journey to be 1847, when he read the play “Family Picture” with great success in the house of the professor and writer SP. Shevyreva. His next play, “Our People – Let’s Be Numbered!” (original title “Bankrupt”) made his name known throughout reading Russia. Since the early 50s. he actively collaborates in the journal of the historian M.P. Pogodin “Moskvityanin” and soon, together with A.A. Grigoriev, L.A. Me and others formed the “young editorial board” of “Moskvityanin”, which tried to make the magazine an organ of a new trend of social thought, close to Slavophilism and anticipating pochvenism. The magazine promoted realistic art, interest in folk life and folklore, Russian history, especially the history of the unprivileged classes.
Ostrovsky came to literature as the creator of a nationally distinctive theatrical style, based in poetics on the folklore tradition. This turned out to be possible because he began with the depiction of the patriarchal strata of the Russian people, who preserved the pre-Petrine, almost non-Europeanized family, everyday and cultural way of life. This was still a “pre-personal” environment; to depict it, the poetics of folklore could be used as widely as possible with its extreme generality, with stable types, as if immediately recognizable to listeners and spectators, and even with a repeating main plot situation - the struggle of lovers for their happiness. On this basis, Ostrovsky’s type of folk psychological comedy was created. Russian literature of the 19th-20th centuries / Comp. B.S. Bugrov, M.M. Golubkov. - M.: Aspect Press, 2000, p. 202..
It is important to understand what predetermined the presence of psychological drama in the work of Alexander Nikolaevich Ostrovsky. First of all, in our opinion, by the fact that he initially created his works for the theater, for stage implementation. The performance was for Ostrovsky the most complete form of publishing a play. Only during stage performance does the author’s dramatic fiction receive a completely finished form and produces exactly the psychological impact that the author set as his goal. Kotikov P.B. The voice of the viewer - a contemporary. (F.A. Koni about A.N. Ostrovsky) // Literature at school. - 1998. - No. 3. - pp. 18-22..
In addition, in Ostrovsky’s era, the theater audience was more democratic, more “variegated” in its social and educational level than readers. According to Ostrovsky’s fair opinion, to perceive fiction you need a certain level of education and the habit of serious reading. A spectator can go to the theater simply for entertainment, and it is up to the theater and the playwright to make the performance both a pleasure and moral lesson. In other words, a theatrical performance should have the maximum psychological impact on the viewer.
The focus on the stage existence of drama also determines the author’s special attention to psychological characteristics each character: both main and secondary characters.
The psychologism of the description of nature predetermined the future scenery of the scene.
A.N. Ostrovsky assigned a significant role to the title of each of his works, also focusing on further stage production, which in general was not typical for Russian literature of the era of realism. The fact is that the viewer perceives the play at once; he cannot, like the reader, stop and think, or return to the beginning. Therefore, he must immediately be psychologically tuned by the author to this or that type of spectacle that he is about to see. The text of the play, as is known, begins with a poster, that is, a title, a definition of the genre and a list of briefly described characters. Already the poster, thus, told the viewer about the content and “how it will end,” and often also about the author’s position: who the author sympathizes with, how he evaluates the outcome of the dramatic action. Traditional genres in this sense were the most defined and clear. Comedy means that for the characters with whom the author and the viewer sympathize, everything will end well (the meaning of this well-being can, of course, be very different, sometimes at odds with public perception) Zhuravleva A.I. Plays by A.N. Ostrovsky on the theater stage//Literature at school. - 1998. - No. 5. - pp. 12-16..
But as the life depicted in the play became more complex, it became increasingly difficult to give a clear genre definition. And often refusing the name “comedy”, Ostrovsky calls the genre “scenes” or “pictures”. “Scenes” - this genre appeared in Ostrovsky in his youth. Then he was associated with poetry " natural school"and was a kind of dramatized essay, depicting characteristic types in the plot, which is a separate episode, a picture from the life of the characters. In the “scenes” and “pictures” of the 1860s and 1870s we see something different. Here we have before us a fully developed plot, a consistent unfolding of dramatic action leading to a denouement that is completely exhaustive. dramatic conflict. The line between “scenes” and comedy is not always easy to determine during this period. Perhaps, we can point out two reasons for Ostrovsky’s refusal of the traditional genre definition. In some cases, it seems to the playwright that the funny incident discussed in the play is not typical and “large-scale” enough for deep generalization and important moral conclusions - and this is exactly how Ostrovsky understood the essence of comedy (for example, “It’s not all Maslenitsa for the cat”). In other cases, in the lives of the heroes there was too much sad and difficult, although the ending turned out to be prosperous (“Abyss”, “Late Love”) by A.I. Zhuravleva. Plays by A.N. Ostrovsky on the theater stage//Literature at school. - 1998. - No. 5. - pp. 12-16..
In the plays of the 1860-1870s, there was a gradual accumulation of drama and the formation of a hero necessary for the genre of drama in the narrow sense of the word. This hero, first of all, must have a developed personal consciousness. As long as he does not internally, spiritually feel opposed to the environment, does not separate himself from it at all, he can evoke sympathy, but cannot yet become the hero of a drama, which requires an active, effective struggle of the hero with circumstances. The formation of personal moral dignity and the extra-class value of a person in the minds of poor workers and the urban masses attracts the keen interest of Ostrovsky. The rise in the sense of individuality caused by the reform, which captured fairly wide layers Russian population, provides material and provides the basis for drama. IN art world Ostrovsky, with his bright comedic gift, a conflict of a dramatic nature often continues to be resolved in a dramatic structure. “Truth is good, but happiness is better” turns out to be a comedy literally standing on the threshold of drama: the next “big play”, which is discussed in the letter quoted above, is “Dowry.” Having initially conceived “scenes” to which he did not attach much importance, Ostrovsky, in the course of his work, felt the importance of characters and conflict. And I think the point here is primarily in the hero - Platon Zybkin.
A friend of Ostrovsky's youth, a wonderful poet and critic A.A. Grigoriev saw “one of the highest inspirations” of Ostrovsky in Chatsky. He also called Chatsky “the only heroic figure in our literature” (1862). At first glance, the critic’s remark may surprise you: Griboyedov and Ostrovsky portrayed very different worlds. However, at a deeper level, the unconditional correctness of Grigoriev’s judgment is revealed.
Griboedov created in Russian drama the type of “high hero,” that is, a hero who, through a direct word lyrically close to the author, reveals the truth, evaluates the events occurring in the play and influences their course. He was a personal hero who had independence and resisted circumstances. In this regard, Griboedov's discovery influenced the entire further course of the Russian literature of the 19th century century and, of course, on Ostrovsky.
The focus on a broad viewer, immediate in his perceptions and impressions, determined the pronounced originality of Ostrovsky’s dramaturgy. He was convinced that the public audience in dramas and tragedies needed “a deep sigh throughout the entire theater, they needed unfeigned warm tears, hot speeches that would pour straight into the soul.”
In light of these requirements, the playwright wrote plays of great ideological and emotional intensity, comic or dramatic, plays that “captivate the soul, making you forget time and place.” When creating plays, Ostrovsky proceeded mainly from the traditions of folk drama, from the requirements of strong drama and great comedy. “Russian authors want to try their hand,” he declared, “in front of a fresh audience, whose nerves are not very pliable, which requires strong drama, great comedy, causing frank, loud laughter, hot, sincere feelings, lively and strong characters."
Famous theater critic F.A. Kony, famous for his impartiality and courage, immediately appreciated the high quality of Ostrovsky’s works. Koni considered one of the advantages of a dramatic work to be the simplicity of the content, and he saw this simplicity, elevated to artistry, in Ostrovsky’s comedies in the depiction of faces. Koni wrote, in particular, about the play “The Muscovites”: “The playwright made me fall in love with the characters he created. made me fall in love with Rusakov, Borodkin, and Dunya, despite their characteristic external clumsiness, because he was able to reveal their inner human side, which could not but affect the humanity of the audience.” Koni A.F. For the play “Muscovites” // Repertoire and pantheon of the Russian stage. - 1853. - No. 4. - P. 34//See. Kotikova P.B. The voice of the viewer - a contemporary. (F.A. Koni about A.N. Ostrovsky) // Literature at school. - 1998. - No. 3. - pp. 18-22..
Also A.F. Koni noted the fact that before Ostrovsky, “even contrasts (psychological) are not allowed in Russian comedy: all faces are on the same block - all, without exception, are scoundrels and fools.” Koni A.F. What is the Russian nationality? // Repertoire and pantheon of the Russian stage. - 1853. - No. 4. - P. 3//See. Kotikova P.B. The voice of the viewer - a contemporary. (F.A. Koni about A.N. Ostrovsky) // Literature at school. - 1998. - No. 3. - pp. 18-22..
We can thus say that already in Ostrovsky’s time, critics noted the presence in his dramatic works of subtle psychologism that could influence the audience’s perception of the characters in the plays.
It should be noted that in his comedies and dramas Ostrovsky did not limit himself to the role of a satirical accuser. He vividly and sympathetically portrayed victims of socio-political and family-domestic despotism, workers, lovers of truth, educators, warm-hearted Protestants against tyranny and violence. These heroes of his were “light rays” in the dark kingdom of autocracy, heralding the inevitable victory of justice Lakshin V.Ya. Ostrovsky Theater. - M.: Art, 1985, p. 28..
Punishing those in power, the “oppressors”, tyrants with a terrible judgment, sympathizing with the disadvantaged, drawing heroes worthy of imitation, Ostrovsky turned drama and theater into a school of social morals.
The playwright not only made the positive heroes of his plays people of labor and progress, bearers of people's truth and wisdom, but also wrote in the name of the people and for the people. Ostrovsky depicted the prose of life in his plays, ordinary people in everyday circumstances. But he elevated this prose of life into the framework of artistic types of enormous generalization.
1. A. N. Ostrovsky is one of the most prominent representatives of Russian realistic theater. He created his own special style, which can be called “Ostrovsky’s theater.” Some other playwrights also belong to this school, for example A.V. Sukhovo-Kobylin. Ostrovsky's life was closely connected with the theater: for many years he fruitfully collaborated with the Maly Theater. His name is important not only for the literary, but also for the theatrical tradition. 2. Ostrovsky’s favorite genre is comedy. “According to my concepts of grace, considering comedy the best form for achieving moral goals and recognizing in myself the ability to perceive life primarily in this form, I had to write a comedy or write nothing” (Ostrovsky about his first comedy, “Bankrupt”, aka “Our people - we will be numbered”). The comedic element is invariably present in those plays by Ostrovsky that are not comedies. In Ostrovsky's plays, the funny is organically combined with the sublime, the grotesque with pathos, crude comedy with high civic rhetoric.3. Most of Ostrovsky’s plays depict the patriarchal Russian world: merchants, Zamoskvoretskoe (“Bankrupt”) and provincial (“Thunderstorm”, “Dowry”), officials (“Profitable Place”), landowners (“Forest”), actors (“Forest”, "Talents and fans"). Sometimes the theme of the play became historical (“Kuzma Minin”) or even mythological (“Snow Maiden”) plots.4. The patriarchal world is revealed, as a rule, from two perspectives: social-topical and folklore-mythological. Ostrovsky's early plays show with great sympathy the life of the provincial merchants, who retained the features of pre-Petrine "antiquity", a non-Europeanized way of life and way of life. Later plays depict new trends in social life (e.g. the growing power of the power of money) and the crisis of the patriarchal world is captured, the theme of “tyrants” and “victims” appears more often. A striking example of such a tendency is the play “The Thunderstorm”, where the folklore-mythological, idealized view of the patriarchal world (“You live in the promised land”) belongs to the caricatured, grotesque character - Feklusha.5. The plots of Ostrovsky’s plays, as a rule, have a simple structure, situations (for example: the young are looking for their happiness) and some functions of the characters, something like a role (for example: a parent preventing the young from reuniting), are preserved from play to play (Kabanikha in “The Thunderstorm” ", Gurmyzhskaya in the comedy "Forest"). 6. Ostrovsky combines the apparent simplicity of the language, the influence of popular popular theater and folklore in general (proverbs in the titles of many plays and the “proverbial” sound of the characters’ remarks) with a subtle play of psychological and cultural subtexts. 7. In many of Ostrovsky’s plays, a separate city (often provincial) is depicted as a certain specific, closed and self-sufficient place, the image of which is mythologized and at the same time is the embodiment of Russia. This tradition goes back to Pushkin (the village of Goryukhino), Gogol (Dikanka, Mirgorod, St. Petersburg) and has many other examples in Russian literature. A similar role can be played not by a city, but by a village or a closed, isolated part of the city. Such are the cities of Kalinov in “The Thunderstorm”, Bryakhimov in “Dowry”, the village of Penki in “The Forest”, Zamoskvorechye in Ostrovsky’s early comedies.8. In many of Ostrovsky’s plays, complex and multifaceted symbolic images (“thunderstorm”, “forest” and “road through the forest”, “wolves and sheep” in plays of the same name) and cross-cutting motives (“sin”, “judgment” in “The Thunderstorm”, the motive of “theater” in “The Forest”). Often such images and motifs are already indicated in the titles of plays. 9. In Ostrovsky’s plays, the dialogues of the characters, created with great poetic skill (verbal individualization of the characters’ images), are of particular importance. 10. The traditions of classicism in Ostrovsky’s plays are manifested in a certain orientation toward didacticism, aphoristic statements of the characters, and the presence of an ideological hero-reasoner expressing the author’s line.
For 1847 – 1886 Alexander Nikolaevich Ostrovsky (see his brief and biography on our website) wrote about forty plays in prose and another eight in blank verse. They are all of different merits, but on the whole they undoubtedly represent the most remarkable collection of dramatic works that exists in the Russian language. Griboedov and Gogol wrote great and completely original plays, and their genius surpassed Ostrovsky, but it was Ostrovsky who was destined to create the Russian dramatic school, the Russian theater worthy of standing next to the national theaters of the West, if not as equal, then as comparable to them.
Portrait of Alexander Nikolaevich Ostrovsky. Artist V. Perov, 1871
The limitations of Ostrovsky's art are obvious. His plays (with a few exceptions) are neither tragedies nor comedies, but belong to the middle, bastard genre of drama. The dramatic plan of most of them, sacrificed to the “slice of life” method, lacks the solid consistency of classical art. With few exceptions, there is no poetry in his dramas, and even where it is present, as in Thunderstorm, this is the poetry of atmosphere, not words and texture. Ostrovsky, although an amazing master of typical and individualized dialogue, is not a master of language in the sense that Gogol and Leskov were. In a sense, even his very rootedness in Russian soil is limited, because his plays are always narrowly local and do not have universal significance. If not for this limitation, if he had been universal while remaining national, his place would have been among the greatest playwrights.
Russian literature of the 19th century. Alexander Nikolaevich Ostrovsky. Video lecture
However, the breadth, scope, and diversity of his vision of Russian life are almost limitless. He is the least subjective of Russian writers. His characters are in no way an emanation of the author. These are genuine reflections of “others.” He is not a psychologist, and his characters are not Tolstoy’s, into whose inner world we are led by the powerful force of the author’s intuition - they are simply people as other people see them. But this superficial realism is not the external, picturesque realism of Gogol and Goncharov, it is truly dramatic realism, because it represents people in their relationships with other people, which is the simplest and in the most ancient way characteristics adopted in both narrative and drama - through speech and action; only here this method is enriched with a huge abundance of social and ethnographic details. And, despite this superficiality, Ostrovsky’s characters have individuality and uniqueness.
These general remarks relate mainly to Ostrovsky's early and most characteristic works, written approximately before 1861. The plots of these plays are taken, as a rule, from the life of the Moscow and provincial merchants and the lower strata of the bureaucracy. The broad, diverse picture of the Old Testament, non-Europeanized life of the Russian merchants most struck Ostrovsky’s contemporaries in his work, because they were interested in reality embodied in literary creativity, and not in its transformation in art. Critics of the 1850s spilled a lot of ink, clarifying Ostrovsky’s attitude towards the Old Testament Russian merchants. He himself provided abundant food for such discussions and for any interpretations, because his artistic sympathies are distributed differently in different plays. Any interpretation, from the most enthusiastic idealization of unshakable conservatism and patriarchal despotism to the furious denunciation of the merchants as an incorrigible dark kingdom, could find support in the text of his plays. Ostrovsky’s true attitude to all this simply was not always the same; the moral and social position were essentially secondary circumstances for him. His task was to construct plays from elements of reality as he saw it. Questions of sympathy and antipathy were for him a matter of pure technique, of dramatic expediency, for, although he was an “anti-artist” and a realist, he very keenly felt those internal laws according to which, and not according to the laws of life, he had to construct each new play. Thus, for Ostrovsky, the moral assessment of the merchant father of the family, tyrannizing his loved ones, depended on his dramatic function in this play. But apart from this, it is extremely difficult to get an idea of Ostrovsky’s social and political worldview. He was the most objective and impartial of writers, and the interpretation that his friend and propagandist Apollo Grigoriev gives to his plays - “unbridled delight in the organic forces of undefiled national life” - is as alien to the real Ostrovsky as the anti-traditional and revolutionary propaganda that he squeezed out of which Dobrolyubov.
Technically, the most interesting plays by Ostrovsky are the first two: Bankrupt(written 1847–1849 and published under the title Our people - let's count in 1850) and Poor bride(published in 1852 and staged in 1853). The first was the most amazing and sensational beginning of the young author’s activity that has ever happened in Russian literature. Gogol in Marriage set an example of a characteristic image of the merchant environment. In particular, the type of matchmaker who practices in merchant environment, has already been widely used. By portraying only unpleasant characters, Ostrovsky followed in the footsteps of Gogol in Inspector. But he went even further and discarded the most venerable and ancient of comedic traditions - poetic justice punishing vice. The triumph of vice, the triumph of the most shameless of the characters in the play gives it a special note of daring originality. This is precisely what outraged even such old realists as Shchepkin, who found Ostrovsky's play cynical and dirty. Ostrovsky's realism, despite the obvious influence of Gogol, is essentially the opposite of him. He is alien to expressiveness for the sake of expressiveness; he does not fall into either caricature or farce; it is based on a thorough, deep, first-hand knowledge of the life described. Dialogue strives for life's truth, and not for verbal wealth. The ability to use realistic language unobtrusively, without falling into the grotesque, is an essential feature of the art of Russian realists, but in Ostrovsky it reached perfection. Finally, the non-theatrical construction of the plays is completely non-Gogolian, and, having consciously abandoned all tricks and calculations for stage effect, Ostrovsky reaches the top from the very beginning. The main thing in the play is the characters, and the intrigue is completely determined by them. But the characters are taken from a social aspect. These are not men and women in general, these are Moscow merchants and clerks who cannot be separated from their social situation.
IN Bankrute Ostrovsky almost fully demonstrated the originality of his technique. In his second play, he went further in the direction of de-theatricalization of the theater. Poor bride both in tone and atmosphere is not at all similar to Bankruta. The environment here is not merchants, but petty bureaucrats. The unpleasant feeling she evokes is redeemed by the image of the heroine, strong girl, which is not at all lower and much more lively than Turgenev’s heroines. Her story has a characteristic ending: after her ideal romantic suitor leaves her, she submits to fate and marries the successful boor Benevolensky, who alone can save her mother from inevitable ruin. Each character is a masterpiece, and Ostrovsky’s ability to build the action entirely on characters is at its best here. But the last act is especially remarkable - a bold technical innovation. The play ends with a mass scene: the crowd is discussing Benevolensky's marriage, and here an amazingly new note is introduced with the appearance of his former mistress in the crowd. The restraint and inner content of these last scenes, in which the main characters hardly appear, were truly a new word in dramatic art. Ostrovsky's strength in creating a poetic atmosphere first manifested itself in the fifth act Poor bride.
Ostrovsky never stopped and always continued to look for new ways and methods. In his last plays ( Dowryless, 1880) he tried a more psychological method of creating characters. But in general, his last plays indicate a certain drying up of creative forces. By the time of his death he dominated the Russian stage by the sheer quantity of his works. But the heirs he left behind were average and uncreative people, capable only of writing plays with “thankful roles” for excellent actors and actresses raised in the school of Shchepkin and Ostrovsky, but unable to continue the living tradition of literary drama.
