Conclusions of famous critics on Ostrovsky's play "The Thunderstorm". "Dark Kingdom" in drama A

Kalinov... A town on the Volga. Maybe this is Samara or Kostroma? Maybe Tver or Torzhok? Yes, this is not so important. The main thing is the merchant world that A. N. Ostrovsky so talentedly reflected in the play “The Thunderstorm”. This town is located on a high bank, from which a wonderful view opens. Kuligin says he’s lived for half a century, but he’s never seen such beauty. The Volga and open spaces are truly Levitan's places. Harmony, beauty, triumph of nature. What about in people's lives? Where is this harmony and beauty? merchant storehouses, an old church, a ruined gallery, high fences, a public garden above the river, where on holidays, having drunk tea “until the third day of melancholy,” ordinary people come for a sedate walk. How do these people live, what are they interested in?
Their ideas about nature are absurd and stupid. We learn about this from Dikiy’s lips when he scolds Kuligin: “A thunderstorm is sent to us as punishment, so that we can feel it, but you want to defend yourself, God forgive me, with poles and some kind of rods.”
The owners of the city are rich merchants - representatives of the “dark kingdom”. “Cruel morals, sir, in our city, cruel...” says Kuligin. Relationships in families are based on fear, tyranny and despotism. Dikoy tyranns his family, humiliates his nephew, he doesn’t even want to talk to ordinary people: “Maybe I don’t want to talk to you. You should have first known whether I was in the mood to listen to you or not. Am I your equal, or what?”
The rich merchant Kabanikha is also one of the owners of the city. This is a powerful mistress, accustomed to unquestioning obedience. She pesters her loved ones with eternal reproaches and complaints about disrespect and disobedience. All her words have a touch of piety, but in her soul she has a rough, unbridled nature. All innovations are hostile and hateful to her. Kabanikha is a staunch defender of the “dark kingdom.”
The power of the Wild and Boars is still great, but they already feel fear, because another life is growing nearby, it is still far away, barely visible, unclear, but makes itself felt. They are already afraid when they feel pushback and resistance. But this inner weakness and cowardice indicate that the reign of the Wild Ones is coming to an end.
The drama “The Thunderstorm” made a huge impression on the reader and viewer. The play was criticized or praised, but no one was indifferent. After all, at the center of the work was the original Russian character, Katerina Kabanova, who was perceived by contemporaries as a symbolic image striving for change, for a new life. Namely, this was the atmosphere that reigned in society on the eve of the abolition of serfdom (remember that the play was written in 1859 and staged already in 1860). Two contemporaries of Ostrovsky, N.A. Dobrolyubov and D.I. Pisarev, having analyzed Ostrovsky’s drama, wrote critical articles. Critics differed in their assessment of Katerina Kabanova’s action. N.A. Dobrolyubov, in the article “A Ray of Light in a Dark Kingdom,” writes about the determination, integrity and strength of character of Katerina, who, in his opinion, although she grew up in the conditions of the “dark kingdom,” is an extraordinary nature, “breaking out” from her environment. She is sensitive, romantic, capable of real feeling. It is not for nothing that Kudryash immediately recognizes who he is talking about when Boris tells him about the woman he saw in the church during a prayer service. Katerina is different from everyone (even from Kuligin, although these heroes have common points) of the inhabitants of the city of Kalinov. “There is nothing outwardly alien in this character,” writes Dobrolyubov, “everything somehow comes out from within him; every impression is processed in it and then grows organically with it.” Katerina Kabanova is a creative, loving, ideal character. “Rough, superstitious stories and senseless ravings of wanderers turn into golden, poetic dreams of the imagination, not frightening, but clear, kind.” But what motivates Dobrolyubov for Katerina’s decisive step, her suicide? In his opinion, Katerina had no way out of the current life situation. She could submit, become a slave, an unquestioning victim of her mother-in-law and never dare to express her desires or discontent. But this is not Katerina’s character. “...It was not then that the new type created by Russian life was reflected in it, only to be reflected in a fruitless attempt and perish after the first failure.” The heroine decided to die, but she is not afraid of death, since “she is trying to prove to us and herself that she can be forgiven, since it is very difficult for her.” As a result, Dobrolyubov writes: “In Katerina we see a protest against Kabanov’s concepts of morality, a protest brought to the end, proclaimed both under domestic torture and over the abyss into which the poor woman threw herself. She doesn’t want to suffer, doesn’t want to take advantage of the miserable vegetation that they give her in exchange for her living soul.” Katerina died, but her death, like a ray of sunshine, even if only for a moment, dispersed the impenetrable darkness of the old world. Her act shook the foundations of the “dark kingdom.” N.A. Dobrolyubov comes to this conclusion.
D.I. Pisarev makes completely different conclusions in his article “Motives of Russian Drama.” He agrees that “passion, tenderness and sincerity are truly the predominant properties in Katerina’s nature.” But he also sees some contradictions in this image. Pisarev asks himself and the reader the following questions. What kind of love arises from the exchange of a few glances? What kind of stern virtue is it that gives in at the first opportunity? He notices the disproportion between causes and consequences in the heroine’s actions: “The boar grumbles - Katerina languishes”; “Boris Grigorievich casts tender glances - Katerina falls in love.” He does not understand Katerina’s behavior. She was pushed to confess to her husband by quite ordinary circumstances: a thunderstorm, a crazy lady, a picture of fiery hell on the wall of the gallery. Finally, according to Pisarev, Katerina’s last monologue is illogical. She looks at the grave from an aesthetic point of view, while completely forgetting about fiery hell, to which she was previously partial. As a result, Pisarev concludes: “The cruelty of a family despot, the fanaticism of an old bigot, the unhappy love of a girl for a scoundrel, impulses of despair, jealousy, fraud, violent revelry, educational rod, educational affection, quiet daydreaming - all this motley mixture of feelings, qualities and actions.. ... comes down, in my opinion, to one common source, which cannot arouse in us exactly any sensations, neither high nor low. These are all various manifestations of inexhaustible stupidity.” Pisarev does not agree with Dobrolyubov in assessing the image of Katerina. In his opinion, Katerina cannot be called “a ray of light in a dark kingdom,” since she was unable to do anything to alleviate her own and others’ suffering, to change life in the “dark kingdom.” Katerina’s action is meaningless, it did not change anything. This is a barren, not a bright phenomenon, Pisarev concludes.
What causes such opposing opinions about the same image among critics? What prompted Pisarev to argue with Dobrolyubov’s article almost three and a half years after its appearance in Sovremennik, two years after the death of the author of the article? The main reason is that Pisarev evaluates the character of the heroine from the perspective of another historical time, filled with great events, when “ideas grew very quickly, so many things and events were accomplished in a year that in other times would not happen in ten to twenty years.”
I understand why Dobrolyubov perceives Katerina so warmly, pointing out new human phenomena in the world of tyrants, in the world of the “dark kingdom”. He saw in Katerina’s character signs of a national awakening and growth of self-awareness. Pisarev focused his main attention on something else: the thunderstorm did not start, the people did not wake up.
The opinions of critics are in many ways contradictory, but the more strongly the character is highlighted, capable of attracting the opinion of those whom we call “masters of thoughts.”

Kalinov... A town on the Volga. Maybe this is Samara or Kostroma? Maybe Tver or Torzhok? Yes, this is not so important. The main thing is the merchant world that A. N. Ostrovsky so talentedly reflected in the play “The Thunderstorm”. This town is located on a high bank, from which a wonderful view opens. Kulitin says he has lived for half a century, but has never seen such beauty. The Volga and open spaces are truly Levitan's places. Harmony, beauty, triumph of nature. What about in people's lives? Where is this harmony and beauty? ^good storehouses, an old church, a ruined gallery, high fences, a public garden above the river, where on holidays, having drunk tea “until the third day of melancholy”, ordinary people come for a sedate walk. How do these people live, what are they interested in?

Their ideas about nature are absurd and stupid. We learn about this from the lips of Dikiy, when he scolds Kuligin: “A thunderstorm is sent to us as punishment, so that we feel, and you want to defend yourself, God forgive me, with poles and some kind of rods.”

The owners of the city are rich merchants - representatives of the “dark kingdom”. “Cruel morals, sir, in our city, cruel...” says Kuligin. Relationships in families are based on fear, tyranny and despotism. Dikoy tyranns his family, humiliates his nephew, he doesn’t even want to talk to ordinary people: “Maybe I don’t want to talk to you. You should have first known whether I was in the mood to listen to you or not. Am I your equal, or what?”

The rich merchant Kabanikha is also one of the owners of the city. This is a powerful mistress, accustomed to unquestioning obedience. She pesters her loved ones with eternal reproaches and complaints about disrespect and disobedience. All her words have a touch of piety, but in her soul she has a rough, unbridled nature. All innovations are hostile and hateful to her. Kabanikha is a staunch defender of the “dark kingdom.”

The power of the Wild and Boars is still great, but they already feel fear, because another life is growing nearby, it is still far away, barely visible, unclear, but makes itself felt. They are already afraid when they feel pushback and resistance. But this inner weakness and cowardice indicate that the reign of the Wild Ones is coming to an end.

The drama “The Thunderstorm” made a huge impression on the reader and viewer. The play was criticized or praised, but no one was indifferent. After all, at the center of the work was the original Russian character, Katerina Kabanova, who was perceived by contemporaries as a symbolic image striving for change, for a new life. Namely, this was the atmosphere that reigned in society on the eve of the abolition of serfdom (remember that the play was written in 1859 and staged already in 1860). Two contemporaries of Ostrovsky, N.A. Dobrolyubov and D.I. Pisarev, having analyzed Ostrovsky’s drama, wrote critical articles. Critics differed in their assessment of Katerina Kabanova’s action. N.A. Dobrolyubov, in the article “A Ray of Light in a Dark Kingdom,” writes about the determination, integrity and strength of character of Katerina, who, in his opinion, although she grew up in the conditions of the “dark kingdom,” is an extraordinary nature, “breaking out” from her environment. She is sensitive, romantic, capable of real feeling. It is not for nothing that Kudryash immediately recognizes who he is talking about when Boris tells him about the woman he saw in the church during a prayer service. Katerina is different from everyone (even from Kuligin, although these heroes have common points) of the inhabitants of the city of Kalinov. “There is nothing outwardly alien in this character,” writes Dobrolyubov, “everything somehow comes out from within him; every impression is processed in it and then grows organically with it.” Katerina Kabanova is a creative, loving, ideal character. “Rough, superstitious stories and senseless ravings of wanderers turn into golden, poetic dreams of the imagination, not frightening, but clear, kind.” But what motivates Dobrolyubov for Katerina’s decisive step, her suicide? In his opinion, Katerina had no way out of the current life situation. She could submit, become a slave, an unquestioning victim of her mother-in-law and never dare to express her desires or discontent. But this is not Katerina’s character. “...It was not then that the new type created by Russian life was reflected in it, only to be reflected in a fruitless attempt and perish after the first failure.” The heroine decided to die, but she is not afraid of death, since “she is trying to prove to us and herself that she can be forgiven, since it is very difficult for her.” As a result, Dobrolyubov writes: “In Katerina we see a protest against Kabanov’s concepts of morality, a protest brought to the end, proclaimed both under domestic torture and over the abyss into which the poor woman threw herself. She doesn’t want to suffer, doesn’t want to take advantage of the miserable vegetation that is given to her in exchange for her living soul.” Katerina died, but her death, like a ray of sunshine, even if only for a moment, dispersed the impenetrable darkness of the old world. Her act shook the foundations of the “dark kingdom.” N.A. Dobrolyubov comes to this conclusion.

D.I. Pisarev draws completely different conclusions in his article “Motives of Russian Drama.” He agrees that “passion, tenderness and sincerity are truly the predominant properties in Katerina’s nature.” But he also sees some contradictions in this image. Pisarev asks himself and the reader the following questions. What kind of love arises from the exchange of a few glances? What kind of stern virtue is it that gives in at the first opportunity? He notices the disproportion between causes and consequences in the heroine’s actions: “The boar grumbles - Katerina languishes”; “Boris Grigorievich casts tender glances - Katerina falls in love.” He does not understand Katerina’s behavior. She was pushed to confess to her husband by quite ordinary circumstances: a thunderstorm, a crazy lady, a picture of fiery hell on the wall of the gallery. Finally, according to Pisarev, Katerina’s last monologue is illogical. She looks at the grave from an aesthetic point of view, while completely forgetting about fiery hell, to which she was previously partial. As a result, Pisarev concludes: “The cruelty of a family despot, the fanaticism of an old prude, the unhappy love of a girl for a scoundrel, impulses of despair, jealousy, fraud, riotous revelry, educational rod, educational affection, quiet daydreaming - all this motley mixture of feelings, qualities and actions... ... comes down, in my opinion, to one common source, which cannot arouse in us exactly any sensations, neither high nor low. These are all various manifestations of inexhaustible stupidity.” Pisarev does not agree with Dobrolyubov in assessing the image of Katerina. In his opinion, Katerina cannot be called “a ray of light in a dark kingdom,” since she failed to do anything to alleviate her own and others’ suffering, to change life in the “dark kingdom.” Katerina’s action is meaningless, it did not change anything. This is a barren, not a bright phenomenon, Pisarev concludes.

What causes such opposing opinions about the same image among critics? What prompted Pisarev to argue with Dobrolyubov’s article almost three and a half years after its appearance in Sovremennik, two years after the death of the author of the article? The main reason is that Pisarev evaluates the character of the heroine from the perspective of another historical time, filled with great events, when “ideas grew very quickly, so many things and events were accomplished in a year that in other times would not happen in ten to twenty years.”

I understand why Dobrolyubov perceives Katerina so warmly, pointing out new human phenomena in the world of tyrants, in the world of the “dark kingdom.” He saw in Katerina’s character signs of a national awakening and growth of self-awareness. Pisarev focused his main attention on something else: the thunderstorm did not start, the people did not wake up.

The opinions of critics are in many ways contradictory, but the more strongly the character is highlighted, capable of attracting the opinion of those whom we call “masters of thoughts.”

Feb 04 2016

“The Dark Kingdom” in A. N. Ostrovsky’s drama “The Thunderstorm”: Wild and Kabanikha The curtain opens. And the viewer sees the high bank of the Volga, the city garden, the residents of the charming town of Kalinova walking and talking. The landscape evokes poetic delight and is in amazing harmony with the free-spirited Russian folk song. The conversation of city inhabitants flows slowly, in which Kalinova, hidden from prying eyes, is already slightly revealed. A talented, self-taught mechanic calls his morals “cruel.”

How does he see this manifested? First of all, in the poverty and rudeness that reigns in the middle class. The reason is very clear: the dependence of the working population on the power of money concentrated in the hands of the rich merchants of the city. But, continuing the story about Kalinov’s morals, Kuligin by no means idealizes the relationship between the merchant class, which, according to him, undermines each other’s trade, writes “malicious slander.” The only educated Kalinova draws attention to one important detail, which clearly appears in the funny story about how Dikoy explained to the mayor about the men’s complaint against him.

Let us remember Gogol's "The Inspector General", in which the merchants did not dare to make a word in front of the mayor, but meekly put up with his tyranny and endless exactions. And in “The Thunderstorm”, in response to the remark of the main person of the city about his dishonest act, Dikoy only condescendingly pats the representative of the owner! Asti is up to the task, without even considering it necessary to justify himself. This means that money and power have become synonymous here.

Therefore, there is no justice for a person who insults the entire city. No one can please him, no one is immune from his frantic abuse. Dikoy is self-willed and tyrannical because he does not meet resistance and is confident in his own impunity.

This hero, with his rudeness, greed and ignorance, personifies the main features of Kalinov’s “dark kingdom”. Moreover, his anger and irritation especially increase in cases when it comes either to money that needs to be returned, or to something inaccessible to his understanding. That is why he scolds his nephew Boris so much, because his very appearance reminds of the inheritance that, according to the will, must be divided with him. That’s why he attacks Kuligin, who is trying to explain to him the principle of the lightning rod’s operation.

Wild is outraged by the idea of ​​a thunderstorm as an electrical discharge. He, like all Kalinovites, is convinced that a thunderstorm is coming! people as a reminder of responsibility for their actions.

This is not just ignorance and superstition, it is a folk mythology passed down from generation to generation, before which the logical mind falls silent. This means that even in the violent, uncontrollable tyrant Dikiy this moral truth lives, forcing him to publicly bow at the feet of the peasant whom he scolded during Lent. Even if Dikiy has bouts of repentance, then at first the rich merchant widow Marfa Ignatievna Kabanova seems even more religious and pious. Unlike the Wild One, she will never raise her voice or rush at people like a chained dog.

But the despotism of her nature is not at all a secret for the Kalinovites. Even before this heroine appears on stage, we hear biting and apt remarks from the townspeople addressed to her. “Prude, sir. She gives money to the poor, but completely eats up her family,” Kuligin tells Boris about her.

And the very first meeting with Kabanikha convinces us of the correctness of this characterization. Her tyranny is limited to the sphere of the family, which she mercilessly tyrannizes. Kabanikha crippled her own son, turning him into a pathetic, weak-willed man who does nothing but justify himself to her for non-existent sins. The cruel, despotic Kabanikha turned the life of her children and daughter-in-law into hell, constantly torturing them, tormenting them with reproaches, complaints and suspicions.

Therefore, her daughter Varvara! , a brave, strong-willed girl, is forced to live by the principle: “...do what you want, as long as it’s sewn and covered.” Therefore, Tikhon and Tikhon cannot be happy. A feeling like love is incompatible with the hateful walls of the Kabanovsky house, with its oppressive, stuffy atmosphere.

Kabanikha defends ancient customs and rituals with enviable tenacity. As an experienced director, she organizes the scene of Tikhon’s farewell, assigning Katerina the role of a silent extra. Tikhon presents a funny and pitiful spectacle here when, stuttering and embarrassed, he pronounces teachings to his wife under the dictation of his mother. After her son’s departure, Marfa Ignatievna expresses dissatisfaction with the fact that her daughter-in-law, after seeing her husband off, did not howl on the porch for an hour and a half, thereby expressing her love.

Despite her absolute power over the children, Kabanikha is constantly dissatisfied with something. She feels that young people internally do not agree with her, that they want freedom and independence. She cannot even instill in her weak-willed son the simple idea that the basis of family relationships should be fear, and not love and trust.

In the scene of Katerina’s public repentance, the playwright showed her inner triumph with one laconic phrase from Kabanikha: “What, son! Where will the will lead? Kalinovsky’s world is cruel and heartless towards those who dare to reject his morality, his moral principles. This was confirmed by the tragic fate of Katerina, who chose death over life in the Kabanovsky house. , told in the drama, highlights the same cruelty of Kalinov’s morals, where “invisible and inaudible” tears flow behind tightly locked gates, where families are tyrannized, where orphans are robbed, drunkenness and debauchery take place.

But the pillars on which the old order rests have already been shaken. After all, people appeared who expressed their protest against the outdated, ossified way of life. Even in the soul of the meek, uncomplaining Tikhon, indignation rises against the despotism of his mother, whom he openly blames for the death of his wife. Varvara also flees from the Kabanovsky house, not wanting to endure domestic tyranny. Kuligin tries in every possible way to soften Kalinov’s cruel morals, naively hoping to enlighten the tyrant Dikiy and direct him to the path of truth.

Thus, “The Thunderstorm” fully and deeply reflected a turbulent time, full of contradictions and disasters, when the old patriarchal world began to collapse, awakening in people hope for a better future for the country and people.