A. Griboedov “Woe from Wit” System of comedy images

Division of the play's image system

Traditionally, the system of images in the play “The Cherry Orchard” is divided into three groups, symbolizing the present, future and past, which include all the characters. In the process of staging the play, Chekhov gave the actors precise instructions and recommendations on how to play each character; it was very important for him to convey to the viewer the characters of the characters, because it was through their images that Chekhov tried to show the comedy of what was happening. In addition, each character is assigned a certain socio-historical role. The author seems to be saying that it is possible to adjust their personality, relationships with the outside world and people around them, but they cannot change their place in general history.

The heroes of the past include Ranevskaya and her brother and the old servant Firs: they are so mired in their memories that they are unable to adequately assess either the present or the future. Lopakhin is a bright representative of today, a man of action. Well, Petya is an idealist, an eternal student, thinking about the common good that undoubtedly awaits in the future. It is clear that Chekhov built the characters in The Cherry Orchard according to his favorite principle of “bad good people.” And in fact, it is impossible to single out any of the heroes as a villain, a victim, or absolutely ideal. Everyone has their own truth, and the viewer just needs to decide which of them is closer to him.

Features of the play's images

One of the features of Chekhov's images is the combination of positive and negative properties. Thus, Ranevskaya is characterized by impracticality and selfishness, but at the same time she is capable of sincere love, has a broad soul and generosity, she is beautiful both externally and internally. Gaev, despite his infantilism and sentimentality, is very kind. Brother and sister are characterized by those moral and cultural principles of hereditary nobility, which have already become an echo of the past. “Eternal student” Petya Trofimov argues very correctly and beautifully, but, like the old owners of the garden, he is absolutely divorced from reality and is not adapted to life. With his speeches, he also captivates Anya, who embodies the symbol of youth and hope for a better future, but is absolutely helpless in independent life. Her opposite is Varya, whose earthiness may interfere with her happiness.

Undoubtedly, in the play “The Cherry Orchard” the system of images is headed by Lopakhin. Chekhov insisted that Stanislavsky himself play him, and the playwright tried to convey to the performer the psychology of this character. Perhaps he is the only one whose internal beliefs are as close as possible to actions. Another striking feature of all the characters in this play is their inability and unwillingness to hear each other; everyone is so busy with themselves and their personal experiences that they are simply unable to understand others’. And instead of going through the ongoing test together - deprivation of home - they live with ideas about their future, in which everyone will be on their own. This is especially evident in the first act: Ranevskaya is so immersed in her memories that she is completely detached from what is happening, Anya is also busy with her thoughts, although Varya is trying to talk about what is happening in the house in her absence.

Brief characteristics of the characters in the play “The Cherry Orchard”

The characteristics of the images of “The Cherry Orchard” show how different people are gathered in one place. This is especially evident in the current characters. Ranevskaya Lyubov Andreevna is one of the central characters of the play; the fate of the entire estate depends on her decision; her favorite tactic for solving all problems is escape. This happened after the tragic death of her youngest son, which coincided with a destructive passion for an unworthy person, “and I went abroad, completely left, never to return.” After an unsuccessful suicide attempt because of the love that tormented her, “... she was suddenly drawn to Russia,” and after the sale of the estate, Lyubov Andreevna returned to Paris again, leaving her daughters to choose their own path in life. Anya dreams of getting an education that will help her get a job, but her adopted daughter Varya’s prospects are less rosy. Ranevskaya’s weak attempts to marry her to Lopakhin were not crowned with success, and Ranevskaya simply did not think of allocating funds to fulfill Varina’s dream - to devote herself to God, since the interests of those around her did not really care or excite her. But meanwhile, she does not refuse financial assistance to her friend Pishchik, giving her last money to a random passer-by, although she is well aware of her plight. Another female character in the play is the maid Dunyasha, a peasant girl accustomed to life in a manor’s house, striving to demonstrate her “subtle” nature, not through actions, but through constant voicing. She dreams of love and marriage, but pushes away Epikhodov, who proposed to her.

Her brother Gaev Leonid Andreevich is in many ways similar to his sister. But he is characterized by idle talk, and perhaps that is why no one takes him seriously (even the lackey Yasha treats him with extreme disrespect) and is openly considered unadapted to life. This is especially evident when he tells his sister that he was offered a position at the bank “Where are you!” Just sit there…”, but meanwhile everyone is waiting for him to find the money to pay off his debts. He naively believes that fifteen thousand sent by his aunt will be enough to save the estate.

The only sane person in the play is Lopakhin, who offers a real way to save the estate, but he is perceived by the owners as “vulgarity.” Although Ranevskaya’s neighbor Simeonov-Pishchik, who is in the same position, constantly looking for money to pay interest on his debts, at the end of the play says that he leased his land to the British for the extraction of rare clay. Thus showing that it is not so scary to use your land to generate income. It is Lopakhin who is the representative of the new era that has come. Petya compares him to a predator: “that’s how a predatory beast is needed... that’s how you are needed.” He sincerely tries with all his might to help Ranevskaya, but her lack of understanding of obvious things angers him: “I’m babysitting you.” It is Lopakhin who, with his plan, breathes new life into the old estate.

But, perhaps, only the cherry orchard occupies a truly central place in the system of images of Chekhov’s play. Through the attitude towards it and its perception, the author shows the inner content of each of the main characters, reflecting their time and their historical era, and the garden itself becomes the image and symbol of all of Russia.

The article analyzed the system of images of Chekhov's play and gave a brief description of the main characters of the comedy. The main objective of this article is to help 10th graders write an essay on the topic “The system of images in the play “The Cherry Orchard”.”

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Comedy image system. The problem of prototypes (A.S. Griboyedov “Woe from Wit”)

The main characters of the play include Chatsky, Molchalin, Sophia and Famusov. The plot of the comedy is based on their relationship. The interaction of these characters with each other drives the play.

The secondary characters - Lisa, Skalozub, Khlestova, Gorichi and others - also participate in the development of the action, but have no direct relation to the plot.

The images of masked heroes are extremely generalized. The author is not interested in their psychology; they interest him only as important “signs of the times” or as eternal human types. Their role is special, because they create a socio-political background for the development of the plot, emphasize and clarify something in the main characters. Their participation in comedy is based on the “distorting mirror” technique. Masked heroes include Repetilov, Zagoretsky, Messrs. N and D, and the Tugoukhovsky family. The author is not interested in the personality of each of the six princesses; they are important in the comedy only as a social type of “Moscow young lady”. These are truly masks: they all look the same, we cannot distinguish the remark of the first princess from the statement of the second or fifth:

3rd. What a charm my cousin gave me!

4th. Oh! yes, barezhevoy!

5th. Oh! lovely!

6th. Oh! how sweet!

These young ladies are funny to Chatsky, the author, and the readers. But they don’t seem funny to Sophia at all. For with all her merits, with all the complexities of her nature, she is from their world, in some ways Sophia and the “chirping” princesses are very, very close. In their society, Sophia is perceived naturally - and we see the heroine in a slightly different light.

Unlike the princesses, whom Griboyedov only numbered, without even considering it necessary to give them names in the poster, their father has both a first name and a patronymic: Prince Pyotr Ilyich Tugoukhovsky. But he is also faceless, and he is a mask. He doesn’t say anything except “uh-hmm”, “a-hmm” and “uh-hmm”, doesn’t hear anything, is not interested in anything, is completely devoid of his own opinion... In him the features of a “husband” are brought to the point of absurdity, to the point of absurdity. a boy, a husband-servant,” constituting “the high ideal of all Moscow husbands.” Prince Tugoukhovsky is the future of Chatsky’s friend, Plato. Mikhailovich Gorich. At the ball, gossip about Chatsky's madness is spread by Messrs. N and D. Again, no names or faces. The personification of gossip, living gossip. These characters focus all the base traits of Famus society: indifference to the truth, indifference to personality, passion for “washing bones,” hypocrisy, hypocrisy... This is not just a mask, it is rather a mask-symbol.

Masked heroes play the role of a mirror placed opposite the “high society”. And here it is important to emphasize that one of the author’s main tasks was not just to reflect the features of modern society in comedy, but to force society to recognize itself in the mirror.

This task is facilitated by off-stage characters, that is, those whose names are mentioned, but the heroes themselves do not appear on stage and do not take part in the action. And if the main characters of “Woe from Wit” do not have any specific prototypes (except for Chatsky), then in the images of some minor heroes and off-stage characters the features of the author’s real contemporaries are completely recognizable. Thus, Repetilov describes to Chatsky one of those who “make noise” in the English Club:

You don’t need to name it, you’ll recognize it from the portrait:

Night robber, duelist,

He was exiled to Kamchatka, returned as an Aleut,

And he is firmly unclean in his hand.

And not only Chatsky, but also the majority of readers “recognized from the portrait” the colorful figure of that time: Fyodor Tolstoy - the American. It’s interesting, by the way, that Tolstoy himself, having read “Woe from Wit” in the list, recognized himself and, when meeting with Griboedov, asked to change the last line as follows: “He’s dishonest when it comes to cards.” He corrected the line in this way with his own hand and added an explanation: “For the fidelity of the portrait, this amendment is necessary so that they do not think that he is stealing snuff boxes from the table.”

The collection of scientific works "A. S. Griboyedov. Materials for the biography" contains an article by N. V. Gurov "That little black one..." ("Indian Prince" Visapur in the comedy "Woe from Wit")." Remember, at the first meeting with Sophia, Chatsky, trying to revive the atmosphere of former ease, goes through old mutual acquaintances, with whom they both made fun of three years ago. In particular, he remembers a certain “darkie”:

And this one, what’s his name, is he Turkish or Greek?

That little black one, on crane legs,

I don't know what his name is

Wherever you turn: it’s right there,

In dining rooms and living rooms.

So, Gurov’s note talks about the prototype of this “passing” off-stage character. It turns out that it was possible to establish that during the time of Griboyedov there was a certain Alexander Ivanovich Poryus-Vizapursky, who quite fits the description of Chatsky.

Why did you need to look for a prototype of the “black one”? Isn't he too small a figure for literary criticism? It turns out - not too much. For us, a century and a half after the publication of “Woe from Wit,” it makes no difference whether there was a “black one” or Griboyedov invented him. But the modern reader (ideally, the viewer) of the comedy immediately understood who he was talking about: “he recognized it from the portrait.” And the gap between the stage and the audience disappeared, the fictional characters talked about people known to the public, the viewer and the character turned out to have “mutual acquaintances” - and quite a lot. Thus, Griboedov managed to create an amazing effect: he blurred the line between real life and stage reality. And what is especially important is that the comedy, while acquiring an intense journalistic sound, did not lose one iota in artistic terms.

The problem of the prototype of the comedy protagonist requires special discussion. First of all, because it is impossible to speak about Chatsky’s prototype with the same certainty and unambiguity as about the prototypes of off-stage characters. The image of Chatsky is least of all a portrait of this or that real person; This is a collective image, a social type of the era, a kind of “hero of the time.” And yet it contains the features of two outstanding contemporaries of Griboedov - P.Ya. Chaadaev (1796-1856) and V.K. Kuchelbecker (1797-1846). A special meaning is hidden in the name of the main character. The surname “Chatsky” undoubtedly carries an encrypted hint to the name of one of the most interesting people of that era: Pyotr Yakovlevich Chaadaev. The fact is that in the draft versions of “Woe from Wit” Griboedov wrote the hero’s name differently than in the final version: “Chadsky”. Chaadaev’s surname was also often pronounced and written with one “a”: “Chadaev”. This is exactly how, for example, Pushkin addressed him in the poem “From the seashore of Taurida...”: “Chadaev, do you remember the past?..”

Chaadaev took part in the Patriotic War of 1812, in the anti-Napoleonic campaign abroad. In 1814, he joined the Masonic lodge, and in 1821 he suddenly interrupted his brilliant military career and agreed to join a secret society. From 1823 to 1826, Chaadaev traveled around Europe, comprehended the latest philosophical teachings, and met Schelling and other thinkers. After returning to Russia in 1828-1830, he wrote and published a historical and philosophical treatise: “Philosophical Letters.” The views, ideas, judgments - in a word, the very system of worldview of the thirty-six-year-old philosopher turned out to be so unacceptable for Nicholas Russia that the author of the Philosophical Letters suffered an unprecedented and terrible punishment: by the highest (that is, personally imperial) decree he was declared crazy. It so happened that the literary character did not repeat the fate of his prototype, but predicted it.

Bibliography

Monakhova O.P., Malkhazova M.V. Russian literature of the 19th century. Part 1. - M.-1994

To prepare this work, materials from the site http://www.gramma.ru were used

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Comedy heroes can be divided into several groups: main characters, secondary characters, masked characters and off-stage characters. All of them, in addition to the role assigned to them in the comedy, are also important as types that reflect certain characteristic features of Russian society at the beginning of the 19th century. The main characters of the play include Chatsky, Molchalin, Sophia and Famusov. The plot of the comedy is based on their relationship. The interaction of these characters with each other drives the play. The secondary characters - Lisa, Khlestova, Gorichi and others - also participate in the development of the action, but have no direct relation to the plot. The images of masked heroes are extremely generalized. The author is not interested in their psychology; they interest him only as important “signs of the times” or as eternal human types. Their role is special, because they create a socio-political background for the development of the plot, emphasize and clarify something in the main characters. Their participation in comedy is based on the “distorting mirror” technique. Masked heroes include Repetilov, Zagoretsky, Messrs. N and D, and the Tugoukhovsky family. The author is not interested in the personality of each of the six princesses; they are important in the comedy only as a social type of “Moscow young lady”. These are truly masks: they all look the same, we cannot distinguish the remark of the first princess from the statement of the second or fifth: 3rd. What a charm my cousin gave me! 4th. Oh! yes, barezhevoy! 5th. Oh! lovely! 6th. Oh! how sweet! These young ladies are funny to Chatsky, the author, and the readers. But they don’t seem funny to Sophia at all. For with all her merits, with all the complexities of her nature, she is from their world, in some ways Sophia and the “chirping” princesses are very, very close. In their society, Sophia is perceived naturally - and we see the heroine in a slightly different light. Unlike the princesses, whom Griboyedov only numbered, without even considering it necessary to give them names in the poster, their father has both a first name and a patronymic: Prince Pyotr Ilyich Tugoukhovsky. But he is also faceless, and he is a mask. He doesn’t say anything except “uh-hmm”, “a-hmm” and “uh-hmm”, doesn’t hear anything, is not interested in anything, is completely devoid of his own opinion... In him the features of a “husband” are brought to the point of absurdity, to the point of absurdity. a boy, a husband-servant,” constituting “the high ideal of all Moscow husbands.” Prince Tugoukhovsky is the future of Chatsky’s friend, Plato. Mikhailovich Gorich. At the ball, gossip about Chatsky's madness is spread by Messrs. N and D. Again, no names or faces. The personification of gossip, living gossip. These characters focus all the base traits of Famus society: indifference to the truth, indifference to personality, passion for “washing bones,” hypocrisy, hypocrisy. .. This is not just a mask, it is rather a mask-symbol. Masked heroes play the role of a mirror placed opposite the “high society”. And here it is important to emphasize that one of the author’s main tasks was not just to reflect the features of modern society in comedy, but to force society to recognize itself in the mirror. This task is facilitated by off-stage characters, that is, those whose names are mentioned, but the heroes themselves do not appear on stage and do not take part in the action. And if the main characters of “Woe from Wit” do not have any specific prototypes (except for Chatsky), then in the images of some minor heroes and off-stage characters the features of the author’s real contemporaries are completely recognizable. Thus, Repetilov describes to Chatsky one of those who are “making noise” in the English Club: You don’t need to name him, you’ll recognize him from the portrait: Night robber, duelist, Was exiled to Kamchatka, returned as an Aleut, And has a strong hand in dishonesty. And not only Chatsky, but also the majority of readers “recognized from the portrait” the colorful figure of that time: Fyodor Tolstoy - the American. It’s interesting, by the way, that Tolstoy himself, having read “Woe from Wit” in the list, recognized himself and, when meeting with Griboedov, asked to change the last line as follows: “He’s dishonest when it comes to cards.” He corrected the line in this way with his own hand and added an explanation: “For the fidelity of the portrait, this amendment is necessary so that they do not think that he is stealing snuff boxes from the table.”

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The system of images and principles of their depiction in the comedy of A.S. Griboyedov "Woe from Wit".

The success of “Woe from Wit,” which appeared on the eve of the Decembrist uprising, was extremely great. “There is no end to the thunder, noise, admiration, curiosity,” - this is how Griboyedov himself described the atmosphere of friendly attention, love and support that surrounded the comedy and its author among the progressive Russian people of the twenties.

According to Pushkin, the comedy “produced an indescribable effect and suddenly placed Griboyedov alongside our first poets.” In world literature one can not find many works that, like"Горю от умаʼʼ, в короткий срок снискали бы столь несомненную всенародную славу. При этом современники в полной мере ощущали социально-политическую актуальность комедии, воспринимая ее как злободневное произведение зарождавшейся в России новой литературы, которая ставила своей главной задачей разработку ʼʼсобственных богатствʼʼ (то есть материала национальной истории и современной русской жизни) - и собственными, оригинальными, не заемными средствами. Сюжетную основу ʼʼГоря от умаʼʼ составил драматический конфликт бурного столкновения умного, благородного и свободолюбивого героя с окружающей его косной средой реакционеров. Этот изображенный Грибоедовым конфликт был жизненно правдив, исторически достоверен. С юных лет вращаясь в кругу передовых русских людей, вступивших на путь 6орьбы с миром самодержавия крепостничества, живя интересами этих людей, разделяя их взгляды и убеждения, Грибоедов имел возможность !} close and to observe every day the most important, characteristic and exciting phenomenon of the social life of his time - the struggle of two worldviews, two ideologies, two ways of life, two generations.

After the Patriotic War, during the years of the formation and rise of the socio-political and general cultural movement of the noble revolutionaries-Decembrists, the struggle of the new - emerging and developing - with the old - obsolete and hindering the movement forward - was most acutely expressed in the form of just such an open clash between young heralds "free life" and the militant guardians of the Old Testament, reactionary orders, as depicted in "Woe from Wit". Griboedov himself, in a widely known, constantly quoted letter to P. A. Katenin (January 1825, with the utmost clarity revealed the content and ideological meaning of the dramatic collision set in the basis of "Woe from Wit": "... in my comedy there are 25 fools for one sane person; and this person, of course, is contrary to his society to those around No one understands him, no one wants to forgive him, why is he a little higher than others?

And then Griboyedov shows how systematically and uncontrollably, becoming more and more aggravated, Chatsky’s “contradiction” with Famus society is growing, how this society betrays Chatsky with an anathema, which has the character of a political denunciation - Chatsky is publicly declared a troublemaker, a carbonari, a man , encroaching on the “legitimate” state and social system; how, finally, the voice of universal hatred spreads vile gossip about Chatsky’s madness: “At first he is cheerful, and this is a vice: “To joke and joke forever, how will you get on with it!” - Lightly goes over the oddities of former acquaintances, what to do if there is no noblest noticeable feature in them! His ridicule is not sarcastic, as long as it does not infuriate him, but still: “Happy to humiliate, prick, envious! proud and angry!" Does not tolerate meanness: "ah! “Oh my God, he’s a carbonari.” Someone out of anger thought up about him that he was crazy, no one believed it and they kept repeating it, the voice of general unkindness reaches him, and, moreover, the dislike of the girl for whom he only appeared to Moscow, it is completely explained to him, he didn’t give a damn to her and everyone and was like that.” Griboyedov told in his comedy about what happened in one Moscow house during one day. But what breadth in this story! The spirit of the times, the spirit of history breathes in it. Griboyedov, as it were, pushed aside the walls of Famusov's house and showed the whole life of the noble society of his era - with the contradictions that tore this society apart, the boiling of passions, the enmity of generations, the struggle of ideas. Within the framework of the dramatic picture of the hero’s collision with the environment, Griboedov included the enormous socio-historical theme of the turning point that has emerged in life - the theme of the turn of two eras - the “present century” and the “past century.”

Hence the extraordinary richness of the ideological content of the comedy. In some form and to some extent, Griboyedov touched upon in “Woe from Wit” many of the most serious issues of social life, morality and culture, which had the most relevant, most topical significance in the Decembrist era. These were questions about the position of the Russian people, oppressed by the oppression of serfdom, about the future destinies of Russia, Russian statehood and Russian culture, about the freedom and independence of the human person, about the social calling of man, about his patriotic and civic duty, about a new understanding of personal and civil honor, about the power of human reason and knowledge, about the tasks, ways and means of education and upbringing. The genius of Griboyedov responded to all these questions, and this response was filled with such an ardent civic-patriotic passion, such indomitable indignation at evil and untruth, that the comedy could not fail to make the deepest and most striking impression both in the progressive circles of Russian society and in reactionary camp.

Here, in this society, there were “noble scoundrels” and petty scoundrels, notorious swindlers and “sinister old women”, bigots and informers, united, like a mutual guarantee, by irreconcilable hostility to “free life”, to culture, to enlightenment, to the slightest manifestation of independent thought and freedom. feelings. In this world, without a shadow of embarrassment, they exchanged serf slaves for greyhounds, obtained wealth and honors through obvious robbery, “were indulged in feasts and extravagance,” and considered learning a “plague,” a harmful and flammable invention of the “cursed Voltairians.” The people of this cruel world lived according to the precepts and legends of the “past.” centuries" - "centuries of obedience and fear." "Their morality" was based on groveling before the strong and on the oppression and humiliation of the weak. The ideal of a person was for them the successful nobleman of blessed feudal times - Uncle Famusov Maxim Petrovich, who reached "famous degrees" thanks to his shameless servility and buffoonery in the royal palace .

The most typical representative of this world is Famusov himself, a militant obscurantist, a bigot and a despot, threatening his slaves with Siberian hard labor. All his relatives, friends and guests match Famusov.

In the image of Colonel Skalozub, Griboedov recreated the type of Arakcheevite, a stupid, narcissistic and ignorant “hero” of parade exercises, shagistics and cane drills, a sworn enemy of free thought. This “wheezer, a strangled man, a bassoon, a constellation of maneuvers and mazurkas,” chasing ranks, orders and a rich bride, embodies the spirit of reactionary “Prussianism,” which was artificially implanted by tsarism in the Russian army and aroused the hatred of all advanced officers, guarded who lived Suvorov and Kutuzov traditions ( in the draft edition of “Woe from Wit” Skalozub himself speaks about himself: “I am the school of Friedrich....”).

All the other characters of lordly Moscow depicted in “Woe from Wit” are outlined with sharp, typical features: the imperious serf-lady old woman Khlestova, Countess Khryumina, the princely family of Tugoukhovskys, Zagoretsky - a social sharper, a swindler and an informer, according to all sources - a secret one an agent of the political police, Repetilov - the “soul” of noble society, a jester, a gossip and a windbag, who, in order to keep up with fashion, got into the circle of some pseudo-liberal talkers, Platon Mikhailovich Gorich - a former friend of Chatsky, a degraded person, inert, internally reconciled with Famusov's world.

How Famusov’s “rootless” secretary is accepted in this world, Molchalin. In his person, Griboedov created an exceptionally expressive generalized image of a scoundrel and a cynic, a “low-worshipper and a businessman,” still a petty scoundrel who, however, will be able to reach “the known degrees.” The entire lackey “philosophy of life” of this bureaucrat and sycophant, who does not dare to “have his own judgment,” is revealed in his famous confession:

My father bequeathed to me:

Firstly, to please all people without exception -

The owner, where he will live,

The boss with whom I will serve,

To his servant who cleans dresses,

Doorman, janitor, to avoid evil,

To the janitor's dog, so that it is affectionate.

The gallery of typical images of old noble, lordly Moscow, created by Griboyedov, includes those who do not directly act in the comedy, but are only mentioned in the cursory characteristics given to them by the characters. Among them are such bright, relief, complete images as the “dark-skinned” one who always attends all the balls and dinners, and the feudal theater-goer, and the obscurantist member of the “Scientific Committee”, and the deceased chamberlain Kuzma Petrovich, and the influential old woman Tatyana Yuryevna, and the impudent “fraternal” ntzuzik from Bordo, and Repetilov's club friends, and many others - right up to Princess Marya Aleksevna, the guardian of public opinion in the Famus world, with whose name the comedy significantly ends. All these faces do not appear on stage, but, nevertheless, they are very important for revealing the content of “Woe from Wit” - and this constitutes one of the innovative features of the comedy.

Griboyedov’s social criticism, developed in “Woe from Wit,” by its very breadth and concreteness was an exceptional phenomenon in the literature of the early 19th century. If satirical-moralistic comedians writing in the traditions of classicism followed conventional and abstract criteria legitimized by its aesthetics, and ridiculed, as a rule, any one, separately taken social “vice” or abstract moral category (for example, only covetousness, only ignorance, only stinginess, only hypocrisy, etc.), then Griboyedov in his comedy touched upon and exposed in the spirit of social -political ideas of Decembrism, a wide range of very specific phenomena of social life in feudal Russia.

The topical meaning of Griboyedov's criticism is now, of course, not felt with such acuteness as it was felt by Griboyedov's contemporaries. But at one time the comedy sounded, among other things, topical. And the issues of noble education in “boarding houses, schools, lyceums”, and the question of “Lankart mutual education”, and debates about the parliamentary system and judicial reform, and individual episodes of Russian public life in the period after the Napoleonic wars, reflected in Chatsky’s monologues and in the remarks of Famusov’s guests, - all this had the most urgent significance, in particular in the Decembrist environment, precisely in those years when Griboyedov wrote his comedy.

The richness and specificity of the social content embedded in “Woe from Wit” gives the comedy the meaning of a broad and holistic picture of Russian social life of the late 1810s - early 1820s, depicted in all its historical accuracy and authenticity.

At one time (in 1865), D.I. Pisarev drew attention to this meaning of comedy, claiming that “Griboedov, in his analysis of Russian life, reached that extreme limit beyond which a poet cannot go without ceasing to be a poet and without turning into scientific researcher. And in this regard, Pisarev quite rightly noted that in order for a writer or poet to be able to paint such a reliable and accurate historical picture, he “needs to be not only an attentive observer,” but also, in addition, a remarkable thinker; from the diversity of faces, thoughts, words, joys, sorrows, stupidities and meannesses that surround you, you need to choose exactly what concentrates in itself the whole meaning of a given era, what leaves its stamp on the whole mass of secondary phenomena, what squeezes into its framework and modifies with its influence all other sectors of private and public life. Such a huge task was truly accomplished for Russia in the twenties by Griboedov.

“The nature of all events” - such was, in Griboedov’s words, the life material that he studied so carefully, so thoroughly. But he did not scatter his investigative powers of observation over the vast variety of “all sorts of events”, over the details and trifles of everyday life. No, he gathered his attention, as it were, into one ray of light and directed it to those phenomena of life in which the very essence was revealed with the greatest completeness and clarity the main socio-historical conflict of the era. Being a truly remarkable, deep and courageous thinker, armed with the most progressive ideas of the century, he chose from the boundless and colorful material of the real life that surrounded him exactly what the meaning of his era was concentrated in: a struggle that with the unprecedented bitterness flared up between the deadening “spirit of slavery”, which penetrated everything and everyone in the Arakcheev-Famusov world, and the life-giving “spirit of the time”, which inspired the younger generation of patriots and freedom lovers.

Continuing the accusatory anti-serfdom tradition introduced into Russian literature by the great revolutionary Radishchev, developing and deepening the fruitful traditions of Russian social satire of the 18th century - the satire of Fonvizin, Novikov and Krylov, Griboedov created a work, the entire content of which testified to its socio-political orientation.

It is not for nothing that criticism of the 1820s - 1830s immediately and rightly assessed “Woe from Wit” as the first “political comedy” in Russian literature. In this sense, bringing it closer to Beaumarchais’s comedy “The Marriage of Figaro”, which at one time (in 1784) caused the strongest a blow to absolutism and feudal remnants in pre-revolutionary France, criticism pointed out that “Beaumarchais and Griboedov... with equal caustic satire brought onto the stage the political concepts and habits of the societies in which they lived, measuring with a proud gaze the folk morality of their fatherlands.” And later the historian V.O. Klyuchevsky even called

""Library for reading", 1834, vol. 1, no. 1, department VI, p.
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44. Also, A. I. Herzen, speaking about the socio-historical significance of “Woe from Wit,” recalled in this regard the comedy of Beaumarchais, which, according to Herzen, had the meaning of a “coup d’etat.”

Griboedov's comedy is "the most serious political work of Russian literature of the 19th century."

There were, in fact, very good reasons for such an assessment. And not only because “Woe from Wit” is one of the most remarkable monuments of Russian and world accusatory-satirical literature, but also because comedy has a rich positive, positive content, which, in turn, has acquired an equally strong social political sound, as well as an angry denunciation of the feudal world.

Woe from Wit, of course, remains one of the masterpieces of punitive social satire. But true satire is never one-sided, because a satirist, if he stands at the forefront of ideological and artistic positions, always denounces evil and vices in the name of goodness and virtues, in the name of establishing a certain positive ideal - social, political , moral. Also, Griboyedov in “Woe from Wit” not only exposed the world of serf owners, but also affirmed his positive ideal, full of deep socio-political meaning. This ideal found artistic embodiment in the image of the only true hero of the play - Chatsky.

As a national and popular writer, Griboyedov, naturally, could not limit himself to one image of Famus’s world, but he certainly had to reflect in his historical picture the other side of reality - the ferment of young, fresh, progressive forces, undermining the strongholds of the autocratic-serf system.

This task was also brilliantly accomplished by Griboyedov. The ideological content of “Woe from Wit”, of course, is not limited to exposing the orders and morals of feudal society. The comedy gives a truly broad and in every detail correct historical picture of all Russian life in Griboyedov’s time - both its shadow and light sides. The comedy reflected not only the life and customs of the old noble Moscow, which lived according to the Old Testament legends of the “times of the Ochakovskys and

"V. Klyuchevsky. Course of Russian history, vol. V, M., Gospolitizdat, 1958, p. 248.

the conquest of Crimea, but also the social ferment of the era - that struggle of the new with the old, in the conditions of which the Decembrist movement arose and revolutionary ideology took shape in Russia.

Famusism is a reaction, inertia, routine, cynicism, a stable, once forever defined way of life. Here, most of all, they are afraid of rumors ("sin is not a problem, rumor is not good") and they keep silent about everything new, alarming, that does not fit into the norm and ranking.
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The motif of “silence” runs like a red thread through all the scenes of the comedy dedicated to Famus’s world, where “Silent people are blissful in the world.” And into this musty world, like a discharge of a refreshing thunderstorm, Chatsky bursts in with his anxiety, dreams, thirst for freedom and thoughts about the people. - a real troublemaker in the circle of the Famusovs, Skalozubovs and Molchalins; they are afraid even of his laughter. He spoke openly, publicly, about what was diligently kept silent in their circle - about freedom, about conscience, about honor, about nobility, - and his passionate speech was picked up by all the advanced Russian literature of the 19th century.

Portraying Chatsky as an intelligent and noble man, a man of “lofty thoughts” and progressive beliefs, a herald of “free life” and a zealot for Russian national identity. Griboyedov solved the problem facing progressive Russian literature of the twenties of creating the image of a positive hero. The tasks of civic, ideologically oriented and socially effective literature in the writer’s understanding of the Decembrist movement were not at all limited to just a satirical denunciation of the orders and morals of serf-dominated society. This literature set itself other, no less important goals: to serve as a means of revolutionary socio-political education, to arouse love for the “public good” and to inspire the fight against despotism. This literature was supposed to not only condemn vices, but also praise civic virtues.

Griboyedov responded to both of these demands put forward by life itself and the course of the liberation struggle.

Returning to the remarkably correct thought of D.I. Pisarev that “Woe from Wit” gives an almost scientific analysis of the Russian historical reality of the Decembrist

era, it should be emphasized for complete clarity that Griboedov entered history and our lives not as a scientist-researcher and not as a thinker, even a remarkable one, but as a brilliant poet. Studying reality as an inquisitive analyst, he reflected it as an artist, and as a brave innovator.
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He painted his own accurate and reliable picture, using the techniques, means and colors of artistic depiction. He embodied the meaning of what he noticed and studied in artistic images. And because of this, the picture he painted of ideological life in the Decembrist era turned out to be much brighter, deeper, more voluminous than even the most attentive research scientist could have done.

When the truth of life becomes the content of art, the power of its influence on people’s thoughts and feelings increases even more. This is the “secret” of art, that it allows people to see even what they know well more clearly, more distinctly, and sometimes from a new, not yet familiar side. The phenomenon of life, visible to everyone, known to everyone, even familiar, being transformed by the great generalizing power of art, often appears as if in a new light, grows in its meaning, reveals itself to contemporaries with such completeness that was previously inaccessible to them.

“Woe from Wit” is, of course, one of the most tendentious works of Russian world literature. Griboyedov set himself a completely definite moral and educational goal and was concerned with to this goal became clear to the reader and viewer of the comedy. He wrote “Woe from Wit”, which ridiculed and stigmatized the serfdom world, at the same time important The task was for Griboyedov to reveal his positive ideal to the reader and viewer, to convey to them his thoughts and feelings, his moral and social ideas.

Griboyedov did not retreat in “Woe from Wit” in the face of open tendentiousness, and it did not cause any damage to his creation, for no correct, historically justified tendency will ever harm art, if it is artistically implemented, if it flows logically and naturally from the essence and content of the conflict underlying the work, from the clash of passions, opinions, characters.

“Woe from Wit” embodies a whole system of ideological views in connection with the most acute, most pressing topics and issues of our time, but these views are expressed with the greatest artistic tact - not in the form of direct declarations and maxims, but in images, in composition, in the plot in speech characteristics, in short - in the very artistic structure of comedy, in its very artistic fabric.

Related to this is the important question of how Griboyedov solved the main problem of “emerging artistic realism” - the problem of typicality.

The task of creating a typical character in typical circumstances, which realistic art sets for itself, involves revealing the meaning of the phenomenon of socio-historical reality on which the artist’s attention focused. In “Woe from Wit,” the socio-historical situation itself is typical, since it truly and deeply reflects the conflict that is quite characteristic of this era. It is in this regard that all human images created by Griboyedov are typical. In this regard, we need to dwell first of all on the image of Chatsky. In the individual and special embodiment of his character, the essence of that new, progressive social force, which in Griboyedov’s time entered the historical stage in order to enter into a decisive struggle with the reactionary forces of the old world and win in this struggle, is clearly and clearly expressed. The realist artist keenly discerned this then still maturing force in the reality around him and realized that the future belonged to it.

During the time of Griboyedov, the cause of the liberation struggle was carried out by a few “best people from the nobility” (according to V.I. Lenin’s characterization), far from the people and powerless without the support of the people. But their cause was not lost, because, as Lenin said, they “...helped awaken the people,” because they prepared the further rise of the revolutionary movement in Russia.

The system of images and principles of their depiction in the comedy of A.S. Griboyedov "Woe from Wit". - concept and types. Classification and features of the category "The system of images and principles of their depiction in A.S. Griboedov's comedy "Woe from Wit." 2017, 2018.

The ideological content and system of images of the play "Woe from Wit"

2. Typical character of Griboedov’s characters

The uniqueness of Griboyedov's heroes consisted not only of everyday and psychological traits, as in the comedies of Shakhovsky or Khmelnitsky, but was given in the social content of the image.

“Griboedov’s Moscow” is not only a broad frame for the psychological drama of Chatsky - Sophia. On the contrary, the intimate drama of the individual is interpreted as a result of the social drama. The comparison of Chatsky and lordly Moscow is not only a contrast of a given individual character and environment. This is a collision of the decrepit feudal world with new people. Along with individual images, the playwright creates another - a collective, image of lordly society. This was a great achievement of social, politically oriented realism. Griboyedov brilliantly depicted Famusov's everyday Moscow. In “Woe from Wit” another Moscow is also recreated, social, lordly, serfdom, militant and not at all comic. It was this Moscow, with its special morality, with its educational system, with its everyday ideals, that spiritually crippled Sofya Pavlovna. Her father, Pavel Afanasyevich Famusov, is a vivid example of lordly feudal Moscow, growing to the level of leader of a large and powerful social group. In the struggle between two worlds, which is revealed in the third act, Famusov reveals himself as a militant representative of the old world, the leader of an inert nobility. In his monologues, he combines lordly Moscow with noble St. Petersburg. And Chatsky interprets the collision as a struggle between two worlds: the one where “submission and fear” are, and the one in which “everyone breathes more freely.” The clash of these two social groups at Famusov's ball is depicted by Griboyedov with remarkable power of realism. In the living room there is a kind of flying meeting, a whole trial of Chatsky. The trial of Chatsky and his like-minded people mentioned in his remarks is the culmination of the social drama. In 1824, when Griboyedov portrayed this enmity between two social groups, he did not yet know (but, undoubtedly, had a presentiment) how friendly and viciously the reactionary circles of noble society would support the tsarist government in 1826 in its brutal reprisal against the rebels and the defeated Decembrists.

The confrontation between Chatsky and Moscow is not a contrast between a high personality and a meager everyday environment, but a clash of the decrepit, but still strong feudal lordly world with new people and a new world that is replacing it, which we will call democratic. In "Woe from Wit", as in a social drama, the struggle of social forces in Russian society before December 14 is recreated. At the same time, the struggle was revealed and comprehended by Griboyedov not only as a political struggle of the reactionary government with opposition circles, but as a social struggle, within society itself - between an inert feudal society and a group of democratically minded people. The realist playwright not only showed a deep understanding of the connections between the past and the present, but also foresaw the near future, determined by the relationship of contending forces: at the next stage of the struggle, the Chatskys will be broken by the Famusovs and Skalozubs.

In Griboedov's play, attention is drawn to the repeated references to the free-thinking common intelligentsia. This ridiculed obscurantism, hostility towards new people, Famusov’s attacks on the spread of education (“learning is the plague, learning is the reason...”, “... take all the books and burn them,” “... now it’s worse, than ever, crazy people, and affairs, and opinions were divorced"). Famusov probably had in mind the universities, against which persecution began precisely then and in which the majority of professors and students were commoners. Famusov is echoed by the old Moscow lady Khlestova: “You really will go crazy from these, from boarding houses, schools, lyceums, you name it; yes from lankartachny mutual trainings.” Many soldiers were trained in Lancaster schools at that time. Princess Tugoukhovskaya takes up arms against the professors of the Pedagogical Institute, who “practice in schisms and lack of faith.” The comedy is filled with echoes of the public life of that time: mention is made of the “scientific committee” that pursued books and the spread of education, the Italian Carbonari, talk about the “chambers”, that is, about the Chambers of Deputies, about Byron, “Voltairianism” and much more. There are sharp attacks against the abuses of serfdom, against “Nestor of the noble scoundrels,” who exchanged “a crowd of servants” for “three greyhounds”; against the theater master who drove “rejected children from their mothers and fathers” into the serf ballet. A lot of sarcasm is directed against the “nobles in the case” - the favorites, against the “ardent servility” of the courtiers “hunters of indecency everywhere”, against the “fathers of the fatherland”, “robbery of the rich”. There are many denunciations of the bureaucratic bureaucracy, to which one must “listen”, before which one “should not dare to have one’s judgment” and which is guided by rules like: “it’s signed, off your shoulders” and “how not to please your loved one.”

The creation of the literary type of Molchalin was a major acquisition of social thought. No less significant is the Skalozub type, in which military careerism and a passion for the uniform are branded. Skalozubovism and silence as social and everyday formulas have absorbed a wide range of phenomena. In both cases, Griboyedov showed great power of journalistic generalization. The author elevated the little official, Famusov’s secretary, vividly depicted by his individual traits, into a symbol of a significant socio-political group, tightly linking silence with Famusovism. The same with Skalozub. A colorful individual portrait of a narrow-minded, rude army colonel is generalized into the meaning of a broad symbol. The existence of Skalozubovism in life itself—Arakcheevism—exacerbated the significance of this image as a political satire on the characteristic features of the military-bureaucratic regime that had developed by the early 20s. With the image of Repetilov, the playwright responded satirically to the petty liberalism that had proliferated around Decembrism.

Some reticence and ambiguity remained in the image of Sophia, which gave reason to many critics, starting with Pushkin, to understand her in a simplified way. The character of Sophia was conceived by the playwright boldly and complexly - as a combination of superficial sentimentality with deep nature.

In addition to the characters appearing on stage, in “Woe from Wit” there is also a string of images recreated in conversations and monologues; Without them, the picture of Griboyedov’s Moscow would not have been completed, the ideological composition of the play would not have been complete: Madame Rosier, dance master Guillaume, noble Maxim Petrovich, Skalozub’s brother, Moscow old men and ladies, the consumptive “enemy of books,” Princess Lasova, Tatyana Yuryevna and Foma Fomich , Lakhmotyev Alexey and, finally, “Princess Marya Aleksevna”, who keeps all of Moscow in fear. Using a masterful technique of replicas and cursory references, the playwright draws out these fleeting images one after another and saturates our consciousness with them. Some of these images are developed superbly and in their significance exceed other “acting” ones.

“Woe from Wit” is also a realistic everyday play. The life of a large manor house in Moscow, from early morning, when “everything in the house rose,” “knocking, walking, sweeping and cleaning,” and until late at night, when “the last lamp goes out” in the front vestibule, is depicted with amazing completeness and truthfulness. And not only the everyday life of one lordly mansion is recreated in “Woe from Wit”; with the ingenious accumulation of everyday life through all four acts, and especially in the third, in the picture of the Moscow ball, the playwright gradually reproduces before us the entire life of the Moscow nobility: the education of noble youth, Moscow “lunches, dinners and dances”, business life - civilian and military, Frenchmania, feigned liberalism, poverty and emptiness of interests. The historical and educational significance of “Woe from Wit” is enormous; For a historian, it can serve as a source for studying the life of the Moscow nobility.

Griboyedov's work is also precious as a psychological drama. Psychological realism in “Woe from Wit” manifests itself constantly and in a variety of ways: in the characterization of Famusov, in Chatsky’s dialogue with Natalya Dmitrievna Gorich, in Repetilov’s talkativeness, etc. But it is most deeply and concentratedly applied in revealing the intimate drama of Chatsky and Sophia. Dialogue between Sophia and Lisa, dialogue between Chatsky and Sophia in the first act; the episode of Sophia's fainting in the second act and her brewing hostility towards Chatsky; the playwright’s brilliantly created explanation of Chatsky and Sophia at the beginning of the third act, Chatsky’s short monologue at the beginning of the fourth act about the results of the Moscow day; finally, the scene of Molchalin’s exposure, when the mistake of Sophia’s heart is revealed, her insight and spiritual strength are the elements and episodes of this intimate drama. Griboyedov was the first in Russian literature to create a psychological drama.

A. Griboedov “Woe from Wit” System of comedy images

Division of the play's image system

Features of the play's images

Brief characteristics of the characters in the play “The Cherry Orchard”

Comedy image system. The problem of prototypes (A.S. Griboyedov “Woe from Wit”)

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