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Analysis of the poem by N.A. Nekrasov "Who Lives Well in Rus'"
In January 1866, the next issue of the Sovremennik magazine was published in St. Petersburg. It opened with lines that are now familiar to everyone:
In what year - calculate
In what land - guess...
These words seemed to promise to introduce the reader into an entertaining fairy-tale world, where a warbler bird speaking in human language and a magic tablecloth would appear... So N.A. began with a sly smile and ease. Nekrasov his story about the adventures of seven men who argued about “who lives happily and freely in Russia.”
He devoted many years to working on the poem, which the poet called his “favorite brainchild.” He set himself the goal of writing “ folk book”, useful, understandable to the people and truthful. “I decided,” said Nekrasov, “to present in a coherent story everything that I know about the people, everything that I happened to hear from their lips, and I started “Who Lives Well in Russia.” This will be epic peasant life" But death interrupted this gigantic work; the work remained unfinished. However, uhThese words seemed to promise to introduce the reader into an entertaining fairy-tale world, where a warbler bird speaking human language and a magic tablecloth would appear... So, with a sly smile and ease, N. A. Nekrasov began his story about the adventures of seven men, who argued about “who lives happily and freely in Russia.”
Already in the “Prologue” a picture of peasant Rus' was visible, the figure of the main character of the work stood up - the Russian peasant, as he really was: in bast shoes, onuchakh, an army coat, unfed, having suffered grief.
Three years later, publication of the poem resumed, but each part was met with severe persecution by the tsarist censors, who believed that the poem was “notable for its extreme ugliness of content.” The last of the written chapters, “A Feast for the Whole World,” came under especially sharp attack. Unfortunately, Nekrasov was not destined to see either the publication of “The Feast” or a separate edition of the poem. Without abbreviations or distortions, the poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'” was published only after the October Revolution.
The poem takes central place in Nekrasov’s poetry, is its ideological and artistic peak, the result of the writer’s thoughts about the fate of the people, about their happiness and the paths that lead to it. These thoughts worried the poet throughout his life and ran like a red thread through all his poetic work.
By the 1860s, the Russian peasant became the main character of Nekrasov's poetry. “Peddlers”, “Orina, the soldier’s mother”, “ Railway", "Frost, Red Nose" are the most important works of the poet on the way to the poem "Who Lives Well in Rus'."
He devoted many years to working on the poem, which the poet called his “favorite brainchild.” He set himself the goal of writing a “people's book”, useful, understandable to the people and truthful. “I decided,” said Nekrasov, “to present in a coherent story everything that I know about the people, everything that I happened to hear from their lips, and I started “Who Lives Well in Russia.” This will be an epic of peasant life.” But death interrupted this gigantic work; the work remained unfinished. However, despite this, it retains ideological and artistic integrity.
Nekrasov revived the genre in poetry folk epic. “Who Lives Well in Rus'” is a truly folk work: both in its ideological sound and in the scale of its epic depiction of modern folk life, posing fundamental questions of the time, both in heroic pathos, and in the widespread use of poetic traditions of oral folk art, proximity poetic language to living speech forms of everyday life and song lyricism.
At the same time, Nekrasov’s poem has features characteristic specifically of critical realism. Instead of one central character The poem depicts, first of all, the folk environment as a whole, the living conditions of different social circles. The people's point of view on reality is expressed in the poem already in the very development of the theme, in the fact that all of Russia, all events are shown through the perception of wandering peasants, presented to the reader as if in their vision.
The events of the poem unfold in the first years after the reform of 1861 and the liberation of the peasants. The people, the peasantry, are the true positive heroes of the poem. Nekrasov pinned his hopes for the future on him, although he was aware of the weakness of the forces of peasant protest and the immaturity of the masses for revolutionary action.
In the poem, the author created the image of the peasant Savely, the “hero of the Holy Russian”, “the hero of the homespun”, who personifies the gigantic strength and fortitude of the people. Savely is endowed with traits legendary heroes folk epic. This image is associated by Nekrasov with central theme poems - the search for ways to people's happiness. It is no coincidence that Matryona Timofeevna says about Savely to wanderers: “He was also a lucky man.” Savely’s happiness lies in his love of freedom, in his understanding of the need for active struggle of the people, who can only achieve a “free” life in this way.
The poem contains many memorable images of peasants. Here is the smart old mayor Vlas, who has seen a lot in his lifetime, and Yakim Nagoy, a typical representative of the working agricultural peasantry. However, Yakim Naga portrays the poet as not at all like the downtrodden, dark peasant of the patriarchal village. With a deep consciousness of his dignity, he ardently defends the people's honor and makes a fiery speech in defense of the people.
An important role in the poem is occupied by the image of Yermil Girin - a pure and incorruptible “protector of the people”, who takes the side of the rebel peasants and ends up in prison.
In beautiful female image Matryona Timofeevna, the poet draws the typical features of a Russian peasant woman. Nekrasov wrote many moving poems about the harsh “female share,” but he had never written about a peasant woman so fully, with such warmth and love as is depicted in the poem Matryonushka.
Along with the peasant characters of the poem, who evoke love and sympathy, Nekrasov also depicts other types of peasants, mainly courtyards - lordly hangers-on, sycophants, obedient slaves and outright traitors. These images are drawn by the poet in the tones of satirical denunciation. The more clearly he saw the protest of the peasantry, the more he believed in the possibility of their liberation, the more irreconcilably he condemned slavish humiliation, servility and servility. Such are the “exemplary slave” Yakov in the poem, who ultimately realizes the humiliation of his position and resorts to pitiful and helpless, but in his slavish consciousness, terrible revenge - suicide in front of his tormentor; the “sensitive lackey” Ipat, who talks about his humiliations with disgusting relish; informer, “one of our own spy” Yegor Shutov; Elder Gleb, seduced by the promises of the heir and agreed to destroy the will of the deceased landowner about the liberation of eight thousand peasants (“Peasant Sin”).
Showing the ignorance, rudeness, superstition, and backwardness of the Russian village of that time, Nekrasov emphasizes the temporary, historically transitory nature of dark sides peasant life.
The world poetically recreated in the poem is a world of sharp social contrasts, clashes, and acute contradictions in life.
In the “round”, “ruddy-faced”, “pot-bellied”, “mustachioed” landowner Obolte-Obolduev, whom the wanderers met, the poet reveals the emptiness and frivolity of a person who is not used to thinking seriously about life. Behind the guise of a good-natured man, behind the courteous courtesy and ostentatious cordiality of Obolt-Obolduev, the reader sees the arrogance and anger of the landowner, barely restrained disgust and hatred for the “muzhich”, for the peasants.
The image of the landowner-tyrant Prince Utyatin, nicknamed by the peasants the Last One, is marked with satire and grotesquery. A predatory look, “a nose with a beak like a hawk,” alcoholism and voluptuousness complete the disgusting appearance typical representative landowner environment, an inveterate serf owner and despot.
At first glance, the development of the plot of the poem should consist in resolving the dispute between the men: which of the persons they named lives happier - the landowner, the official, the priest, the merchant, the minister or the tsar. However, developing the action of the poem, Nekrasov goes beyond the plot framework set by the plot of the work. Seven peasants are no longer looking for happiness only among representatives of the ruling classes. Going to the fair, in the midst of the people, they ask themselves the question: “Isn’t he hiding there, who lives happily?” In "The Last One" they directly say that the purpose of their journey is to search for people's happiness, the best peasant share:
We are looking, Uncle Vlas,
Unflogged province,
Ungutted parish,
Izbytkova village!..
Having begun the narrative in a semi-fairy-tale humorous tone, the poet gradually deepens the meaning of the question of happiness and gives it an increasingly acute social resonance. The author's intentions are most clearly manifested in the censored part of the poem - “A feast for the whole world.” The story about Grisha Dobrosklonov that began here was to take a central place in the development of the theme of happiness and struggle. Here the poet speaks directly about that path, about that “path” that leads to the embodiment of national happiness. Grisha’s happiness lies in the conscious struggle for a happy future for the people, so that “every peasant can live freely and cheerfully throughout all holy Rus'.”
The image of Grisha is the final one in the series of “people's intercessors” depicted in Nekrasov’s poetry. The author emphasizes in Grisha his close proximity to the people, lively communication with the peasants, in whom he finds complete understanding and support; Grisha is depicted as an inspired dreamer-poet, composing his “good songs” for the people.
The poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'” is the highest example folk style Nekrasov's poetry. The folk-song and fairy-tale element of the poem gives it a bright national flavor and is directly related to Nekrasov’s faith in the great future of the people. The main theme of the poem - the search for happiness - goes back to folk tales, songs and other folklore sources, which talked about the search for a happy land, truth, wealth, treasure, etc. This topic expressed the most cherished thought masses, their desire for happiness, the age-old dream of the people about a fair social system.
Nekrasov used in his poem almost the entire genre diversity of Russian folk poetry: fairy tales, epics, legends, riddles, proverbs, sayings, family songs, love songs, wedding songs, historical songs. Folk poetry provided the poet with rich material for judging peasant life, life, and the customs of the village.
The style of the poem is characterized by a wealth of emotional sounds, a variety of poetic intonation: the sly smile and leisurely narration in the “Prologue” is replaced in subsequent scenes by the ringing polyphony of a seething fair crowd, in “The Last One” - by satirical ridicule, in “The Peasant Woman” - by deep drama and lyrical emotion, and in “A Feast for the Whole World” - with heroic tension and revolutionary pathos.
The poet subtly feels and loves the beauty of the native Russian nature of the northern strip. The poet also uses the landscape to create an emotional tone, for a more complete and vivid characterization state of mind character.
The poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'” has a prominent place in Russian poetry. In it, the fearless truth of pictures of folk life appears in an aura of poetic fabulousness and the beauty of folk art, and the cry of protest and satire merged with the heroism of the revolutionary struggle. All this was expressed with great artistic force in immortal work ON THE. Nekrasova.
Poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'” - pinnacle piece creativity N.A. Nekrasova. He nurtured the idea of this work for a long time, working on the text of the poem for fourteen years (from 1863 to 1877). In criticism, it is customary to define the genre of a work as an epic poem. This work is not finished, however, despite the incompleteness of the plot, it embodies deep social meaning.
The poem consists of four chapters, united by a plot about how the men argued: who is happy in Rus'. Among possible options The search for the happy ones were: landowner, official, priest, merchant, boyar, minister and the tsar himself. However, the men refused to meet with some categories of “lucky” people, since in fact they (like the author) were interested in the question of people’s happiness. The location of the last three parts also remains not fully clarified in the author’s instructions.
The plot of the poem is in the form of a journey. This kind of construction helps to include different pictures. Already in the Prologue, the writer’s subtle irony about Russian reality is heard, expressed in the “telling” names of the villages (“Zaplatova, Dyryavina, Razutova, Znobishina, Gorelova, Neelova, Neurozhaika, etc.”).
The poem has strong conversational intonations. Its text is filled with dialogues, rhetorical questions and exclamations, anaphoric repetitions (“In what year - calculate, In what land - guess”, “How the red sun set, How the evening came...”), repetitions within lines (“Oh, shadows! Black shadows!”). Presented in the poem are small landscape sketches also made as stylizations of folklore: “Night has long since passed, frequent stars have lit up in the high skies. The moon has surfaced, black shadows have cut the road to Zealous walkers.” Numerous inversions, constant epithets, personifications, mention of images from Russian folk tales (“Well! The goblin played a nice joke on us!”) and even riddles (“Without a body, but it lives, Without a tongue, it screams!” (echo)) - all these artistic details also give the poem a folkloric flavor.
ON THE. Nekrasov needs this artistic effect in order to emphasize that the main character of the work is the people. It is no coincidence that there are so many Russian folk names in the novel.
Men's dreams of happiness are simple, their requirements for the joys of life are real and ordinary: bread, vodka, cucumbers, kvass and hot tea.
In search of happiness, men turn to the bird: “Oh, you little birdie! Give us your wings, We’ll fly around the whole kingdom, We’ll look, we’ll explore, We’ll ask and we’ll find out: Who lives happily, at ease in Rus'?” This also shows adherence to the folk poetic tradition. In ancient times, the ability of birds to fly, to be carried long distance was regarded as having them supernatural powers, special closeness to God. In this regard, the men’s request to the bird to borrow its wings emphasizes the symbolic level of perception of the topic: is the kingdom organized fairly? Traditions folk tale embodies in the poem the image of a self-assembled tablecloth: “Hey, self-assembled tablecloth! Treat the men!
According to your desire, according to your command, everything will appear immediately.” The image of the road in the poem emphasizes the vast expanses of Russia, which once again emphasizes the immense expanses of Russia, which once again demonstrates the importance of the question raised by the author: how do the inhabitants of a huge country endowed with natural resources live?
Another genre of Russian folklore, to which N.A. Nekrasov addresses in the poem, there is a conspiracy: “You, I see, are a wise bird, Respect - cast a spell on us with old clothes!” Thus, the work also emphasizes spiritual potential people, a bizarre interweaving of Christian and pagan principles in their worldview. The fairy-tale form helps the author somewhat veil the severity of the social problems he understands. According to N.A. Nekrasov, controversial issues should be resolved “according to reason, in a divine way.”
Drawing a gallery in front of the reader social types, ON THE. Nekrasov starts with the priest. This is natural, because a church minister should, logically, understand the idea of the divine world order and social justice better than anyone else. It is no coincidence that men ask the priest to answer “according to conscience, according to reason,” “in a divine way.”
It turns out that the priest simply carries his cross through life and does not consider himself happy: “Our roads are difficult, Our parish is large. The sick, the dying, the one born into the world do not choose time: In the harvest and in the haymaking, In the dead of autumn night, In winter, in severe frosts, And in the spring floods Go
Where is the name? The priest had a chance to see and hear everything, to support people in the most difficult moments of life: “There is no heart that can endure without some trembling the death rattle, the funeral sob, the orphan’s sadness.” The priest's story raises the problem of happiness with social level perception to the philosophical. I never dream of peace and honor for my butt. And the former wealth of the parishes is lost with the beginning of the disintegration of noble nests. The priest does not see any spiritual return from his mission (it’s also good that in this parish two-thirds of the population lives in Orthodoxy, while in others there are only schismatics). From his story we learn about the poverty of peasant life: “Our villages are poor, And in them there are sick peasants, And sad women, Nurses, water-maids, Slaves, pilgrims, And eternal workers, Lord, add strength to them! It’s hard to live on pennies with such labor!”
However, the peasant has a different view of the priest’s life: one of the men knows about this well: “for three years he lived with the priest as a worker and knows that he has porridge with butter and pie with filling.
N.A. has it. Nekrasov in the work and original poetic discoveries in the field of figurative and expressive means of language (“...rainy clouds, Like milk cows, Walk across the skies”, “The earth is not dressed in green bright velvet And, like a dead man without a shroud, lies under the cloudy sky Sad and naga").
A fair in the rich trading village of Kuzminskoye sheds light on folk life in Rus'. There is dirt everywhere. One detail is noteworthy: “The house with the inscription: school, 11 standing, packed tightly. A hut with one window, with a picture of a paramedic Bleeding.” Nobody cares about public education and healthcare in the state. ON THE. Nekrasov paints a colorfully dressed peasant crowd. It seems like this picture should be festive mood. However, through this atmosphere of elegance and apparent prosperity, a dark peasant self-awareness clearly peeks through. The angry Old Believer angrily threatens the people with hunger, seeing fashionable outfits, since, in her opinion, red calicoes are dyed with dog’s blood. Complaining about the lack of education of men, N.A. Nekrasov exclaims with hope: “Eh! eh! Will the time come, When (come, the desired one!..) They will make it clear to the peasant, That a portrait is rose for a portrait, That a book is a rose for a book? When will a man carry not Blucher and not my stupid lord - Belinsky and Gogol From the market?
The fair fun ends in drunkenness and fights. From the stories of women, the reader learns that many of them feel sick at home, as if they were in hard labor. On the one hand, the author is offended to look at this endless drunkenness, but on the other hand, he understands that it is better for the men to drink and forget themselves between hours of hard work than to understand where the fruits of their work go: “And as soon as the work is over, look, they are standing three shareholders: God, king and master!
From the story about Yakima Nagy, we learn about the fate of people who are trying to defend their rights: “Yakim, a wretched old man, once lived in St. Petersburg, but ended up in prison: He decided to compete with a merchant! Like a stripped piece of velcro, he returned to his homeland and took up his plow.” Saving paintings, Yakim lost money during the fire: preserving spirituality, art is higher for him than everyday life.
As the plot of the poem develops, the reader learns about social inequality and social prejudices that N.A. Nekrasov is mercilessly castigated and ridiculed. “Prince Peremetyev had me as a favorite slave. The wife is a beloved slave, And the daughter, together with the young lady, learned French, And all sorts of languages, She was allowed to sit down in the presence of the princess...”
The yard servant declares.
The funniest thing about his monologue is that he believes that he has an honorable disease - gout. Even illnesses in Russia are divided by class: men suffer from hoarseness and hernia, and privileged classes gout. The disease is considered a noble disease because in order to get it, you need to drink expensive wines: “Champagne, Burgon, Tokay, Wengen You have to drink for thirty years...”. The poet writes with admiration about the feat of the peasant Yermil Girin, who ran the orphan mill. The mill was put up for auction. Yermil began to bargain for it with the merchant Altynnikov himself. Girin did not have enough money; the peasants in the market square lent him money. Having returned the money, Yermil discovered that he still had a ruble. Then the man gave it to the blind: he didn’t need someone else’s. Ermil’s impeccable honesty becomes a worthy response to the trust that the people showed in him by collecting money for him: “They put on a hat full of Tselkoviks, foreheads, Burnt, beaten, tattered Peasant banknotes. He took it sweetly - he didn’t disdain And a copper nickel. He would have become disdainful when he came across another copper hryvnia worth more than a hundred rubles!”
Yermil worked as a clerk in an office and willingly helped peasants write petitions. For this he was elected mayor. He worked regularly: “At seven years old I didn’t squeeze a worldly penny under my fingernail, At seven years I didn’t touch the right one, I didn’t let the guilty one go, I didn’t bend my soul...”.
His only sin was that he shielded his little brother Mithria. Yes, then his conscience tormented him. At first Yermil wanted to hang himself, then he asked him to judge him. They imposed a fine on him: “Fine money for the recruit, a small part for Vlasyevna, a part for the world for wine...”. Finally, a gray-haired priest enters the story about Ermil Girin, who emphasizes that the honor that Girin had was bought not by fear and money, but by “strict truth, intelligence and kindness!” This is how the image emerges in the poem people's defender- an honest and decent person. However, in the end it turns out that Yermil, after a popular riot, is in prison. Surnames play an important meaningful function in the poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'”: Girin sounds weighty and reliable, but the names of landowners (Obrubkov, Obolt-Obolduev) indicate their limitations and inability to support the Russian people.
The landowner in Rus', too, as it turns out, does not feel happy. When Obolt-Obolduev talks about his “family tree,” we learn that the feats that his ancestors performed can hardly be called such. One of them received a certificate for entertaining the empress on the day of the royal name day. And Prince Shchepin with Vaska Gusev In general, they were criminals: they tried to set fire to Moscow and rob the treasury. N.A. Nekrasov also describes that part of the life of landowners, which is former beauty manor houses with greenhouses, Chinese gazebos and English parks, traditions of hound hunting. However, all the ego is a thing of the past: “Oh, you crazy hunt! All the landowners will forget, But you, original Russian Fun! You will not be forgotten forever and ever! We are not sad about ourselves, We are sorry that you, Mother Rus', willingly lost your knightly, warlike, majestic appearance!”
Obolt-Obolduev yearns for the time of serfdom, remembering how voluntary gifts were brought to him and his family in addition to the corvee. ON THE. Nekrasov shows that the landowners found themselves in a difficult situation: they were accustomed to living on the labor of others and did not know how to do anything.
Obolt-Obolduev talks about this in his confession: “Work hard! Who did you think of reading such a sermon? I am not a peasant lapatnik - I am, by God’s grace, a Russian nobleman! Russia is not a foreigner, We have delicate feelings, We are instilled with pride! We have noble classes They don’t learn to work. We have a poor official And he won’t sweep the floors, He won’t start to light the stove... I’ll tell you, without bragging, I’ve been living almost forever in the village for forty years, And I can’t tell a barley ear from a rye ear, And they sing to me: “Work !
The chapter “Peasant Woman” is devoted to the position of the Russian woman. This is a cross-cutting theme in the work of N.A. Nekrasov, which indicates her importance in the writer’s worldview. main character- Matrena Timofeevna (a dignified woman of about thirty-eight). Drawing her portrait, the author admires the beauty of the Russian peasant woman: “Beautiful; gray hair, large, stern eyes, rich eyelashes, stern and dark.” When asked by men about happiness, the woman at first refuses to answer at all, saying that there is labor suffering going on. However, the men agree to help her reap rye, and Timofeevna still decides to tell about herself. Before her marriage, her life was happy, although it was spent in labor (she had to get up early, bring breakfast to her father, feed ducklings, pick mushrooms and berries). The chapter is interspersed folk songs. During her marriage, Matryona endured beatings and barbs from her husband’s relatives.
The whole life of a peasant woman is spent in hard work, in an attempt to divide her time between work and children: “Week after week, in one order, they walked, Every year, then the children: there is no time Neither to think nor to grieve, God willing to cope with the work Yes, cross your forehead You will eat - when will remain From the elders and from the children, You will fall asleep when you are sick...” Monotony, the inability to even think calmly about one’s life, the need to constantly spend it in endless labor - this is the lot of the Russian woman of the lower classes in Russia.
Soon Matryona lost her parents and child. Submitting to her father-in-law in everything, Timofeevna lives, essentially, for the sake of her children. The story she told about how some wanderer ordered fast days don't feed milk infants. I remember here the wanderer Feklusha from the play by A.N. Ostrovsky's "The Thunderstorm" with its stupid fables. From this comparison, a general picture of the morals existing in Russia emerges. The scene described in the poem when, during a hungry year, a woman is killed with stakes just because she put on a clean shirt at Christmas, eloquently testifies to darkness and ignorance. By folk signs, this leads to crop failure.
Once Timofeevna accepted punishment with rods for her son, who did not save a sheep from a she-wolf. Describing this story, N.A. Nekrasov writes with admiration about strength and selflessness mother's love. Timofeevna is a typical Russian woman with a “downcast head” and an angry heart. Emphasizing the strength of character of the heroine, N.A. Nekrasov shows her even in moments of weakness: Matryona, like Alyonushka, famous painting artist V.M. Vasnetsova goes to the river, sits on a gray pebble of a broom bush and sobs. Another way out for a woman is to pray.
The description of the difficult life of a peasant woman lifts the curtain on the general picture of people's life in Russia. Hunger, need, recruitment, lack of education and lack of qualified medical care - these are the conditions in which the Russian peasantry finds itself. It is no coincidence that crying and tears are the most frequently used motifs in the poem.
The inserted plot is a fragment of the chapter entitled “Savely, the hero of the Holy Russian” about how the rebellious workers buried the owner. Then Savely suffered penal servitude and a settlement; only in old age was he able to return to his native place.
In the chapter “The Last One,” old Vlas talks about his landowner, who constantly scolded the peasants, not realizing that they were no longer working on the lord’s land, but on their own land. The master issues absurd orders, which make everyone laugh. It doesn’t take long for people to realize that the master has gone crazy. One day the man Agap could not stand it and scolded the master himself. They decided in the presence of the landowner “to punish Agap for his unprecedented insolence.” However, in reality, this punishment turns into a farce: the steward Klim takes Agap to the stable, gives him a glass of wine and orders him to scream and moan so that the master can hear: “How four men carried Him out of the stable, dead drunk, So the master even took pity: “It’s his own fault, Agapushka.” !
He said kindly." This scene eloquently indicates that the time of noble rule has irrevocably passed. The same idea is emphasized by the scene of the death of the old prince at the end of the chapter: “The amazed peasants looked at each other... crossed themselves... Sighed... Never had such a friendly sigh, Deep, deep, been emitted by the poor Village of Vakhlaki of the Illiterate province...”.
The chapter “A feast for the whole world” was subject to serious censorship edits. In front of it there is a dedication to S.P. Botkin, a famous doctor who treated N.A. Nekrasova.
The most striking episode of the chapter is the fragment “About the exemplary slave - Yakov the Faithful.” It poses the problem of servility. "People serf rank“Sometimes real dogs: The more severe the punishment, the dearer the gentlemen are to them,” writes N.A. Nekrasov. The poet convincingly shows that some peasants even like the feeling of servility. They have developed such a strong slave psychology, that they even like humiliation: “Yakov had only joy: to groom, protect, please the Master.”
The landowner, in response to Yakov’s concerns, paid with black ingratitude. He didn’t even allow his nephew Grisha to marry his beloved girl and sent him into conscription. Yakov was offended and took the master to the Devil's Ravine, but did not commit reprisals, but hanged himself in front of the owner. The legless gentleman lay all night in the ravine, seeing the crows pecking dead body Jacob. A hunter found him in the morning. Returning home, the master realized what a sin he had committed.
Another important image in the poem is the image of the people's intercessor Grisha Dobrosklonov. Only he smiled in the poem to experience happiness. Grisha is still young, but “at the age of fifteen, Gregory already knew firmly that he would live for the happiness of his wretched and dark native corner.” The song “Rus”, composed by the young poet, is a genuine call for a revolutionary reorganization of the world: “The army is rising - Innumerable, the Power in it will be indestructible!” Thus, N.A. Nekrasov, as a poet-citizen, convincingly shows that happiness lies in serving other people, in the struggle for people's cause. “I don’t need either silver or gold, but God grant, so that my fellow countrymen and every peasant may live freely and cheerfully throughout all holy Rus'!” - exclaims the hero. In the image of G. Dobrosklonov N.A. Nekrasov embodied the collective image of a revolutionary, young man, capable of devoting his life to the fight for a bright future for Russia.
On February 19, 1861, a long-awaited reform took place in Russia - the abolition of serfdom, which immediately shook up the entire society and caused a wave of new problems, the main of which can be expressed in a line from Nekrasov’s poem: “The people are liberated, but are the people happy?..”. The singer of folk life, Nekrasov did not stand aside this time either - in 1863, his poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'” began to be created, telling about life in post-reform Rus'. The work is considered the pinnacle of the writer’s work and to this day enjoys the well-deserved love of readers. At the same time, despite its seemingly simple and stylized fairy tale plot, it is very difficult to understand. Therefore, we will analyze the poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'” in order to better understand its meaning and problems.
History of creation
Nekrasov created the poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'” from 1863 to 1877, and individual ideas, according to contemporaries, arose from the poet back in the 1850s. Nekrasov wanted to present in one work everything that, as he said, “I know about the people, everything that I happened to hear from their lips,” accumulated “by word” over 20 years of his life. Unfortunately, due to the death of the author, the poem remained unfinished; only four parts of the poem and a prologue were published.
After the death of the author, the publishers of the poem were faced with the difficult task of determining in what sequence to publish the disparate parts of the work, because Nekrasov did not have time to combine them into one whole. The problem was solved by K. Chukovsky, who, relying on the writer’s archives, decided to print the parts in the order in which they are known to the modern reader: “Last One,” “Peasant Woman,” “Feast for the Whole World.”
Genre of the work, composition
There are many different genre definitions“Who lives well in Rus'” - they talk about it as a “travel poem”, “Russian Odyssey”, even such a confusing definition is known as “the protocol of a kind of all-Russian peasant congress, an unsurpassed transcript of the debate on a pressing political issue.” However, there is also author's definition genre that most critics agree with: the epic poem. An epic involves depicting the life of an entire people at some decisive moment in history, be it a war or other social upheaval. The author describes what is happening through the eyes of the people and often turns to folklore as a means of showing the people's vision of the problem. An epic, as a rule, does not have one hero - there are many heroes, and they play more of a connecting role than a plot-forming role. The poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'” fits all these criteria and can safely be called an epic.
Theme and idea of the work, characters, issues
The plot of the poem is simple: “on a high street” seven men meet and argue about who has the best life in Rus'. To find out, they go on a journey. In this regard, the theme of the work can be defined as a large-scale narrative about the life of peasants in Russia. Nekrasov covered almost all spheres of life - during his travels the men would become acquainted with different people: priest, landowner, beggars, drunkards, merchants, a cycle will pass before their eyes human destinies- from a wounded soldier to a once all-powerful prince. The fair, the prison, hard work for the master, death and birth, holidays, weddings, auctions and elections of the burgomaster - nothing escaped the gaze of the writer.
The question of who should be considered the main character of the poem is ambiguous. On the one hand, formally it has seven main characters - men wandering in search of happy person. The image of Grisha Dobrosklonov also stands out, in whose person the author portrays the future people's savior and educator. But besides this, the poem clearly shows the image of the people as the image of the main actor works. The people appear as a single whole in scenes of fairs and mass celebrations (“ drunken night", "Feast for the whole world"), haymaking. The whole world makes various decisions - from the help of Yermil to the election of the burgomaster, even a sigh of relief after the death of the landowner escapes from everyone at the same time. The seven men are not individualized either - they are described as briefly as possible, do not have their own individual traits and characters, pursue the same goal and even speak, as a rule, all together. Minor characters(servant Yakov, village headman, Savely) are described by the author in much more detail, which allows us to talk about the special creation of a conditionally allegorical image of the people with the help of seven wanderers.
The lives of the people are, in one way or another, affected by all the problems raised by Nekrasov in the poem. This is the problem of happiness, the problem of drunkenness and moral degradation, sin, the relationship between the old and new way of life, freedom and lack of freedom, rebellion and patience, as well as the problem of the Russian woman, characteristic of many of the poet’s works. The problem of happiness in the poem is fundamental and is understood different characters differently. For the priest, the landowner and other characters endowed with power, happiness is represented in the form of personal well-being, “honor and wealth.” A man's happiness consists of various misfortunes - a bear tried to kill him, but could not, they beat him in the service, but did not kill him to death... But there are also characters for whom there is no personal happiness separate from the happiness of the people. This is Yermil Girin, the honest burgomaster, who appears in last chapter seminarian Grisha Dobrosklonov. In his soul, love for his poor mother outgrew and merged with love for his equally poor homeland, for the happiness and enlightenment of which Grisha plans to live.
From Grisha’s understanding of happiness arises the main idea of the work: true happiness is possible only for those who do not think about themselves, and are ready to spend their whole life for the happiness of everyone. The call to love your people as they are and to fight for their happiness, without remaining indifferent to their problems, sounds clearly throughout the poem, and finds its final embodiment in the image of Grisha.
Artistic media
The analysis of “Who Lives Well in Rus'” by Nekrasov cannot be considered complete without considering the means artistic expression used in the poem. Basically, this is the use of oral folk art - at the same time as an object of image, to create more reliable picture peasant life, and as an object of study (for the future people's defender, Grisha Dobrosklonov).
Folklore is introduced into the text either directly, as stylization: stylization of the prologue as a fairy-tale beginning (the mythological number seven, the self-assembled tablecloth and other details eloquently speak about this), or indirectly - quotes from folk songs, references to various folklore stories(most often to epics).
The speech of the poem itself is stylized as a folk song. Let us pay attention to the large number of dialectisms, diminutive suffixes, numerous repetitions and the use of stable constructions in descriptions. Thanks to this, “Who Lives Well in Rus'” can be perceived as folk art, and this is not accidental. In the 1860s, there was an increased interest in folk art. The study of folklore was perceived not only as scientific activity, but also as an open dialogue between the intelligentsia and the people, which, of course, was close to Nekrasov in ideological terms.
Conclusion
So, having examined Nekrasov’s work “Who Lives Well in Rus',” we can confidently conclude that, despite the fact that it remained unfinished, it still represents a huge literary value. The poem remains relevant to this day and can arouse interest not only among researchers, but also among ordinary readers interested in the history of problems of Russian life. “Who Lives Well in Rus'” has been repeatedly interpreted in other forms of art - in the form of a stage production, various illustrations (Sokolov, Gerasimov, Shcherbakova), as well as popular print for this story.
Work test
