Creativity Ostrovsky today is included in school curriculum, he is known and loved by many of our compatriots. Alexander Nikolayevich Ostrovsky is a playwright, a native of Moscow, the son of a lawyer and the grandson of an Orthodox priest. He studied at Moscow University law school(did not finish), served in the Moscow courts, then became a professional theater figure and writer-dramatist.
In comparison with the plays of Turgenev or A.K. Tolstoy, which are primarily works of literature, Ostrovsky's dramaturgy has a different nature. It is intended not so much for reading as for theatrical embodiment, and should be studied, first of all, within the framework of the history of the theater. However, the history of literature cannot underestimate the work of the greatest Russian playwright of the second third of the 19th century.
Considering the work of Ostrovsky, we note that among his youthful experiences there are essays and poems. The comedy that made him famous was The Bankrupt, which was renamed The Bankrupt (and later renamed The Bankrupt). Our people - let's count!”), appeared in the magazine Moskvityanin (1850), although it was not allowed to be staged at that time. The false bankruptcy that the merchant Bolshov declares in this play is a collision based on facts. real life(a wave of bankruptcies that swept through business circles on the eve of writing a comedy). However, the plot basis of the comedy, which is close to an anecdote, by no means exhausts its content. The plot takes an almost tragic turn: the false bankrupt was abandoned in a debtor's prison by his son-in-law Podkhalyuzin and his own daughter Lipochka, who refuse to redeem him. Shakespearean allusions (the fate of King Lear) were understood by many contemporaries.
After literary success"Bankrut" in the work of Ostrovsky in the 1850s, an interesting "Slavophile" period began, which brought a wonderful comedy called " Do not sit in your sleigh"(1853) - his first play, immediately and with great success staged - as well as the drama" Don't live the way you want"(1855) and one of the playwright's best plays" Poverty is not a vice» (created in 1854). Vice (images of Vikhorev, Korshunov) is invariably defeated in them by high morality, based on Orthodox Christian truths and folk-patriarchal foundations (images of Borodkin, Rusakov, Malomalsky). A beautifully written literary character - Lyubim Tortsov from "Poverty is not a vice", who managed to bring his brother Gordey to repentance and unite the lovers - the clerk Mitya and Lyubov Gordeevna (Gordey Tortsov's instant spiritual revival was called "improbable" many times, but the author clearly did not strive for plausibility in a naive-realistic sense - depicting Christian repentance, which is just capable of immediately making the sinner "a different person"). The action “Poverty is not a vice” takes place at Christmas time, the action “Do not live as you want” - at Shrovetide, and jubilant fun, a festive atmosphere intones both plays (however, in “Do not live as you want” there is also the motive of the devilish temptation, which involves Peter the buffoon Yeryomka).
Somewhat apart stands in con. 1850 - early. 1860s the so-called "Balzamin's" trilogy, dedicated to collisions from the life of the province: " Festive sleep - before lunch"(1857)," Your dogs are biting - don't pester strangers" (written in 1861) and " What you go for is what you will find", better known as Balzaminov's marriage» (1861).
Rapprochement A.N. Ostrovsky with the camp of the authors of Nekrasov's Sovremennik was marked by an immediate sharp aggravation of socially accusatory motives in his work. This should include, first of all, the comedy "Profitable Place" (1857), dramas " pupil" (1859) and " Storm» (1859). Complex collision " Thunderstorms”, where in the center the adultery of the heroine, which took place in a patriarchal merchant family characterized by extreme strictness of moral rules, led by a despotic mother-in-law, was one-sidedly perceived in the spirit of the “emancipatory” theses of the “democratic” journalism of that time. The suicide of the main character (from the point of view of Orthodoxy, which is a terrible sin) was interpreted as an act of "noble pride", "protest" and a kind of spiritual victory over the "inert" "house-building" moral and social (as it was implied, and religious Christian) norms. When the highly talented democrat critic N.A. Dobrolyubov in the article of the same name declared the main character "A ray of light in dark kingdom”, this metaphor of his quickly turned into a template according to which, even a century later, this play by Ostrovsky was interpreted in Russian high school. At the same time, an equally important component of the problematic of The Thunderstorm was missed, and even today it is often missed: the “eternal” theme for literature of the collision of love and duty. Meanwhile, it is largely due to the presence of this theme in the work that the play retains its dramatic liveliness to this day (however, outside of Russia it has always been staged in theaters a little).
The merchant milieu, which the playwright portrayed during the period of his slavophile hobbies as one of the most morally stable and spiritually pure components of the Russian social organism, was presented in Groz as a terrible “dark kingdom”, oppressing the youth, based on the senseless tyranny of the elders, malicious and ignorant. Katerina feels so harassed that she repeatedly talks throughout the play about suicide as her only way out. On the other hand, this drama by Ostrovsky, which came out about two years earlier than “Fathers and Sons” by I.S. Turgenev, encourages us to state: the theme of "fathers and children" in its sharp social turn, as it were, hung in the literary atmosphere of that time. Depicted in The Thunderstorm, young people from merchant circles (Katerina and Boris, Varvara and Kudryash) understand and accept life's values, in general, the worldly truth of the older generation no more than Evgeny Bazarov and Arkady Kirsanov.
The main character, Katerina Kabanova, was discharged by the playwright with great sympathy for her. This is the image of a poetic, sentimental and deeply religious young woman, married not for love. The husband is kind, but timid and is subordinate to the imperious mother-widow Marfa Kabanova (Kabanikha). It is significant, however, that Katerina falls in love at the behest of the author, not in any internal strong man, "a real man" (which would be psychologically natural), but in the merchant's son Boris, in many respects similar to her husband like one drop of water to another (Boris is timid and in complete submission to his imperious uncle Diky - however, he is noticeably smarter Tikhon Kabanov and is not devoid of education).
In the early 1860s Ostrovsky created a kind of dramatic trilogy about the Time of Troubles, compiled by poetic "chronicles" Kozma Zakharyevich Minin, Sukhoruk"(in 1862)," Dmitry Pretender and Vasily Shuisky" (year of creation - 1867) and " Tushino» (1867). About this time in the XVIII century. wrote A.P. Sumarokov ("Dimitri the Pretender"), and in the first half of the 19th century. A.S. Pushkin ("Boris Godunov"), who caused many imitations among his contemporaries both in prose, and in verse, and in dramaturgy. The central work of Ostrovsky's tragedy ("Dmitry the Pretender and Vasily Shuisky") is dedicated to the period, chronologically shortly before which the plot of Pushkin's "Boris Godunov" ends. Ostrovsky, as it were, emphasized their connection, choosing a poetic form for his work - moreover, a white iambic pentameter, as in Boris Godunov. Unfortunately, the great playwright did not show himself as a master of verse. Taking a "historical" roll in creativity; Ostrovsky also wrote the comedy " Governor"(1865) and psychological drama" Vasilisa Melentyeva"(1868), and a few years later the comedy" 17th century comedian».
Ostrovsky firmly returned to the path of socially accusatory dramaturgy already in the 1860s, creating one after another comedies that remain in the theater repertoire to this day, such as “ Enough simplicity for every sage"(year of creation - 1868)," Warm heart"(1869)," crazy money"(1870)," Forest"(1871)," Wolves and sheep"(1875), etc. It has long been noticed that there are positive characters only in one of the listed plays - in " Lese"(Aksyusha and actor Gennady Neschastlivtsev) - that is, these works are sharply satirical. In them, Ostrovsky acted as an innovator, applying in major dramatic forms the conventional techniques of the so-called vaudeville dramaturgy, for which he was criticized by reviewers who did not understand the meaning of his efforts. He tried to resume his work in the spirit of his comedies, published in the 1850s by the Slavophile Moskvityanin. These are, for example, such plays as "Not All the Cat's Carnival" (written in 1871), "Truth is good, but happiness is better" (created in 1876), etc. But "folk" motifs here acquired an outwardly ornamental, in somewhat artificial.
In addition to The Forest, some of Ostrovsky's other best works refract the theme of the difficult fate of the people of the theater. Such are his later dramas" talents and fans" (1882) and " Guilty without guilt"(Written in 1884), in the center of each of which is the image of a talented actress who, at a certain point in her life, is forced to step over something personal, human (in the first play, Negina breaks up with her beloved fiancé Meluzov, in the second, Otradina-Kruchinina gives the child to be raised by Galchikha ). Many of the problems posed in these plays, unfortunately, do not depend much on this or that particular social structure, although the audience of the XIX century. might seem topical. But, on the other hand, their eternal character helps the very plots of the plays to remain alive and relevant to this day.
The latter can also be attributed to Ostrovsky's drama " Dowry”(year of creation - 1878) - one of the indisputable peaks of A.N. Ostrovsky. Perhaps this is his best work. Larisa is a beautiful girl, for whom, however, there is no dowry (that is, marrying her, from the point of view of people of a certain psychology, was economically “unprofitable”, and according to the concepts of that time, simply “not prestigious” - by the way, the same dowry Otradina will be made in "Without Guilt of the Guilty"). At the same time, Larisa is clearly not one of those who solved this problem by going to a monastery. As a result, she arouses a purely carnal and cynical interest in the men who curl around her and compete. However, Karandyshev, who is not rich and not brilliant, who is ready to marry her and is considered her fiancé, she openly despises. On the other hand, Larisa, who is primitively hitting on the effects of Paratov with his “broad gestures”, is girlishly naive for a long time enthusiastically considers the “ideal of a man” and sacredly believes him. When he rudely deceived her, she loses ground under her feet. Going on a scandalous boat trip with Paratov, Larisa says goodbye at home: “Either you rejoice, mom, or look for me in the Volga.” True, Larisa did not have a chance to drown herself - she, who had belatedly become disillusioned with the "ideal of a man", was shot dead by her fiancé, miserable Karandyshev, who had finally been rejected by her, so that she "won't get to anyone."
The writing of A.N. Ostrovsky plays-tales " Snow Maiden"(1873) - conceived as an extravaganza, but full of high symbolism (Ostrovsky also wrote a fairy tale play" Ivan Tsarevich"). A craving for symbols is generally characteristic of Ostrovsky's style. Even the titles of his works either resemble proverbs (“Do not live as you want”, “The truth is good, but happiness is better”, etc.), or look like meaningful symbols (“Thunderstorm”, “Forest”, “Wolves and Sheep” and etc.). The Snow Maiden depicts the conditionally fabulous kingdom of the Berendeys - a kind of fantasy on the themes Slavic mythology. The plot of the folk tale underwent a complex turn under the pen of the master. Doomed to melt with the advent of summer, the Snow Maiden managed to recognize love, and her death turns out to be a kind of "optimistic tragedy."
The Snow Maiden testifies, of course, not so much to the author's deep actual knowledge of Slavic mythology, ancient rituals and folklore, but to an intuitive penetrating understanding of their spirit. Ostrovsky created a magnificent artistic image of the Slavic fairytale antiquity, which soon inspired N.A. Rimsky-Korsakov to his famous opera and later repeatedly gave impetus to the artistic imagination of other authors (for example, the ballet The Rite of Spring by I.F. Stravinsky). In The Snow Maiden, as well as in many other plays (Poverty is not a vice, Thunderstorm, Dowry, etc.), songs are heard on the stage - genuine folk or written in the "folk spirit".
The great importance of A.N. Ostrovsky gave color to speech, showing himself to be a supporter of what Dostoevsky called writing "essences". His characters usually speak, scattering words and phrases in abundance, designed to depict the language of a certain social environment, as well as to characterize the personal cultural and educational level of this particular character, the characteristics of his psychology and the sphere of vital interests. Thus, the language of the pretentious and ignorant heroine of The Bankrut, Lipochka, who, for example, reproaches her mother, “became famous” in this regard: “Why did you refuse the groom? Why not an incomparable party? Why not a capidon? She calls the mantilla “mantella”, the proportion “portion”, etc. and so on. Podkhalyuzin, whom the girl marries, is a match for her. When she, coyly, asks him: “Why don’t you speak French, Lazar Elizarych?” He answers bluntly: “But for the fact that we have nothing to do.” In other comedies, the holy fool is called "ugly", the consequence is "means", the quadrille is "quadrel", etc.
A.N. Ostrovsky is the largest Russian playwright of the 19th century, who gave the national theater a first-class repertoire, and Russian literature classical works, preserving a huge artistic value and for our modern times.
Ostrovsky was the first Russian classical playwright. There were poets before him. Writers...but not playwrights
Ostrovsky wrote 48 of his own plays, several with his students, translated several plays (The Taming of the Shrew and Goldoni's Coffee House). IN total he gave the theater 61 plays.
Before Ostrovsky, two of his parents' children died in infancy. Their whole family was spiritual. My uncle is a priest, my father also graduated from the seminary and the theological academy, but became a lawyer. And mother, daughter, prosvir. Uncle advised to name the child Alexander (protector of life). All the characters in Ostrovsky's plays have symbolic names! There are invented ones, and there are ordinary ones. Katerina (eternally pure, immaculate) he believes in her innocence! Although she commits 2 deadly sins. And in the dowry, he will name the heroine Larisa (seagull). Only through the names can one already understand the character of the characters and the attitude of the author towards him.
Another bathroom moment of his life is his work in the courts. He did not finish university and aspired to a free life. The father protested. He was rich and bought houses and wanted his son to follow in his footsteps. But Ostrovsky dreamed only of the theatre. And when he left the university, his father did not let him mess around and got him a scribe in a conscientious (arbitration) court. (The one who paid the most won.) And then a small clerk in a commercial one. He saw enough of different cases and this pushed him to creativity. "Bankrupt" is such a play that was born in this way.
"The Picture of Family Happiness" - the first play published in 1847
this is a sketch of a merchant's life. The world of deceit and hypocrisy on which the whole society is built. After the two-volume playbook, Dobrolyubov will say that all relationships in Ostrovsky's plays are built on two principles - the beginning of the family (the head is the oppressor) and the material one (the one who owns the money)
end of lecture 56.41
Ostrovsky is not the way we used to imagine him in a dressing gown with fur. They had a company of 5 people. (Apollon Grigoriev - poet, prose writer, theorist; Tertius Filippov, Almazov, Edelson). All of them worked for Pogodin (university professor) in the Moskvityanin magazine Apollon Grigoriev wrote an epigram on Ostrovsky: Half Falstaff, half Shakespeare, debauchery with genius is a blind combination.
He was very loving. Agafya Ivanovna - an unmarried wife, an illiterate woman did not want to marry him, so as not to dishonor. They had children. But at this time he fell in love with the Nikulina-Kositskaya actress. He even proposed to her, but she refused. Then he started an affair with a young actress Vasilyeva. And she also had children. Agafya Ivanovna could not bear this and died, and then he married Vasilyeva.
And he liked to drink with friends and sang great together. have been successful in this
1849 wrote "Bankrupt" a play tough in tradition natural school. It is more earthly than Gogol's plays. It was read at Pogodin's house. This reading was arranged by Countess Rostopchina and invited Gogol there. There is a legend that Gogol later said that talent is felt in everything. There were some technical shortcomings, but it will come with practice, but in general it's all talented. And the censorship did not let the play through, citing the fact that there is not a single positive person. All rascals. Pogodin said. So that Ostrovsky would redo it a little, rename it and submit it again. He did just that. renamed it “Own people, let's settle”, and smallly signed Bankrupt and indeed the play was allowed. And in the year 50, in the 5th issue of the Moskvityanin magazine, it was printed. It immediately began to be staged in a small theater. Shumsky - Podkholyuzin, Prov Sadovsky - Bolshov. But before the premiere came a ban on staging. She was put off for 11 years! for the first time it was put in 61. The composition has changed. Prov Sadovsky played Podkholyuzin (Shumsky fell ill), Tishka was played by his son Mikhal Provovich, Shchepkin played the Bolshoi.
Three images of Podkholyuzin, Bolshov and Tishka - three different stages in the development of capitalism in Russia
Bolshov - semi-literate, gray, not thinking about anyone, turns out to be a victim of his darkness
Podkholyuzin - understands that it is impossible to steal just like Bolshov, and he arranges a marriage with Lipochka and legally appropriates the capital of the Bolshoi.
Tishka is a servant boy. He has 3 coins. And he manages these coins. One is sweets, one is to lend at interest, the third is hidden just in case. This is the disposal of coins, this is the distant future of Russia
This play stands alone. This is the only one so spicy where everyone is bad. Life broke the author and he wrote various plays. He understood that both good and bad are mixed in a person and began to write more voluminously, taking the characters out of life. He will say later. That there is no need to invent stories, they are all around us. His plays will be based on the stories of actors, friends, litigation in kinesh e Moscow court where his estate Shchelyk O in. There he wrote all his plays.
Winter is when I conceive the plot, spring and summer is when I process it, and in autumn I bring it to the theater. Sometimes more than a play a year. Burdin is his high school friend, who has become a bad actor, but a good politician passed through the censorship of his plays in St. Petersburg, played there leading role and then the play freely passed to Moscow. If they set it up in St. Petersburg, there is no longer any need to obtain censorship in Moscow.
The second play, The Poor Bride, was also censored. He wrote it for 2 years.
After the ban on “we will count our people”, Ostrovsky came under double supervision (3 branches of the Buturlin Committee - political supervision and police supervision - monitored Ostrovsky’s morality) It was the reign of Nicholas 1. These were difficult years and his plays did not go on stage.
53-55 years is 3 years when Ostrovsky made a certain tactical move that saved him as a playwright. He wrote 3 plays with such a Slavophile bias (Slavophiles (Aksakov, Pogodin,) and Westerners (Herzen, Ogarev, Raevsky) - two currents that fought in the 1st half of the 19th century for the future of Russia.)
“Do not sit in your sleigh”, “Poverty is not a vice”, “do not live as you want.” These 3 pieces are not very deep, but they give the author a path to the stage.
Ostrovsky has 2 types of plays - proverb titles, and then it’s clear how they will develop and how things will end, and with an unpredictable title, which makes it difficult to figure out the play right away (Thunderstorm, Dowry, Mad Money)
"Poverty is not a vice"
Gordey Tortsov (proud) - ashamed of his brother
We love Tortsov (beloved) - a drunkard, a fence, he has nowhere to live.
The play is played during Christmas time. Korshunov arrives to marry Gordey's daughter and Lyubim helps Lyubushka avoid this terrible fate. (Korshunov killed his previous wife, ruined whom?) Proud tyrant. To the question, for whom will you give your daughter? He answers - Yes, even for Mitka! (This is a clerk who has mutual love with Lyubushka) This seems to be a joke, but Lyubim helps young people find happiness. This play was a resounding success.
“Don’t get into your sleigh” is the first play that came out. They played in the big theater with a large gathering. Nikulina-Kositskaya played Avdotya Maksimovna, Prov Sadovsky played the Bolshoi.
It was unusual to see the actress in a simple cotton dress. Usually actresses came out in luxurious outfits. The success was complete.
The next premiere was "Poverty is not a vice" (1854) was a deafening premiere. The audience liked P. Sadovsky so much that Apollon Grigoriev wrote in the article: Wider road, Lyubim Tortsov is coming!
But he also wrote a whole poem about Sadovsky in this role.
In the literature, you can find the statement. That Schepkin did not accept Ostrovsky. They had complicated relationship. Ivanova does not believe in this. Shchepkin could not be on bad terms with anyone at all. Two eras collided here. Herzen wrote that Shchepkin was not theatrical at the theater. We must understand. What is the degree of non-theatricality, it is dialectical and mobile. When we listen to the recordings of the Moscow Art Theater today, we hear theatricality, exaggeration. Each generation puts forward its own measure of simplicity. Shchepkin, being not theatrical at the theater, still lives in a romantic era. And his style of perception of life is romantic.
P. Sadovsky creates Tortsov very naturalistically (dirty, drunk, not good) and Apollon Grigoriev praises him for this. And Shchepkin does not accept such Tortsov.
In 1954, Shchepkin is strong and may well say to a younger actor - move over, I myself will play Lyubim Tortsov. But he doesn't. He writes to Nizhny Novgorod and asks to be taken on a bike. Post Ostrovsky's play, learn it, and I will come and play Lyubim Tortsov. And so it happens. He rides and plays. For P. Sadovsky it is important to social. Tortsov's position, his filth, for Shchepkin his moral height and inner purity are important. He romantically plays this image. He raises him above the world that Sadovsky opens up.
Shchepkin also played the Bolshoi. He softens, justifies it. Feel sorry for him at the end. In 1961, censorship, which allowed the production, required the punishment of negative characters, and the theater brought in a policeman who, in the finale, came to arrest Podkholyuzin. And Sadovsky takes the policeman by the elbow, leads him to the forefront and gives him a wad of money. This is an actor's mise-en-scène, but in this way he corrects the intervention of censorship, the government, the directorate of the imperial theaters, who wanted to reduce the sound of the play.
In 1855, Nikolai-1 dies and Ostrovsky plays into this. And the oppression of his reign from 25 to 55 years will subside. After the Decembrist uprising, he saw a conspiracy everywhere and in everything. Arrests, strict supervision, everything will pass now. His son Alexander -2 comes to power. A lot is changing. Ostrovsky is released from supervision and goes to St. Petersburg. He is met by all writers (among them are Tolstoy and Kraevsky and Nekrasov and Saltykov-Shchedrin), they arrange a gala dinner. They lay a wreath, the ribbons of which are held by Goncharov and Turgenev. He is invited to publish in " Domestic notes”, “Contemporary”. Then Ostrovsky goes on an expedition along the Volga, organized by the Russian Geographical Society (He compiled a dictionary of Volga words, collected plots and conceived a trilogy, but he will write only one play “Dream on the Volga”) In general, there is a Volga in many of Ostrovsky’s plays. (Invented by Mr. Kalinov in Thunderstorm, Dowry and Warm Heart)
In the 19th century, there were many playwrights-drama models who composed a certain plot around a love triangle. All of these plays were the same. They were composed.
Ostrovsky made it possible for the material to develop, gave volume coming from life, even in proverb plays.
In the play "Not All the Cat's Shrovetide" the author will complete the development of the image of a tyrant merchant. He reveals such a trait. For the first time, he will talk about her in the play “In a Strange Feast of a Hangover” Tit Titovich Bruskov, the main character, an illiterate rich merchant, does not allow his son Andrei to study, because he does not see the need for it. O1.28.31 it is in this play that the very concept of a petty tyrant will appear. Then Ostrovsky uses this theme of tyranny in various social groups. In the "Pupil" of the tyrant noblewoman Ulanbekova, in the "Forest" Gurmyzhskaya, in the "Profitable Place" Yusov, in the "Thunderstorm" Wild. But the main tyrants are merchants. Kuroslepov and Khlynov are wonderful figures in Hot Heart. Kuroslepov - revenge on Prov Sadovsky. In "Dream on the Volga" there is a place when the governor falls asleep. And once Sadovsky actually fell asleep in this place. Ostrovsky ridiculed him in Kuroslepov and assigned him this role. Kuroslepov only sleeps and eats.
Khlynov is a wealthy man who drinks and plays games. He dresses up his people as robbers, goes on the high road to frighten passers-by.
Developing this image of such a merchant comes to the play "Shrovetide is not everything for a cat" 01.31.54
There is a merchant-tyrant Akhov. This is Ostrovsky's last petty-tyrant merchant.
He proposes to the poor dowry Agnia, she refuses and marries his nephew Hippolyte. And the nephew, threatening him with a knife, takes the money in order to marry Agnia. And the concubine and maid says that he got lost in his own room and began to bliss. This is such a hyperbole, very important. He seems to be the ruler and can achieve nothing. He asks the young people to sweep the yard. He is ready to pay for the wedding, just submit to me. And they refuse. And he's confused...
The next play is Crazy Money and the merchant Vasilkov, who combines love for Lydia Cheboksarova with profit. It is important for him to marry her in order to rise to another social circle (she is a noblewoman).
Knurov and Vozhevatov in "Dowry" play Larisa in a toss to take her to Paris. These are no longer illiterate merchants. These are no longer petty tyrants, but capitalists. They are going to an industrial exhibition in Paris.
« Last victim» merchant-capitalist Pribytkov. He collects pictures. Yulia Tukina.
His paintings are only originals, he is going to listen to Pati (Italian soprano superstar) at the opera. In the 80s for Russia, this is already a familiar level. 01.35.50
Tretyakov collects Russian painting. Shchukin collects paintings by the Impressionists. Ryabushinsky publishes the magazine "Golden Fleece"1.36.51 For this edition, Rus. artists paint portraits of playwrights and actors (Serov - a portrait of Blok, Ulyanov - Meyerhold in the role of Pierrot from "Balaganchik"). Bakhrushin collects theatrical relics. Mamontov will create a private Russian opera and educate Chaliapin. Morozov is associated with art theatre. He is a shareholder of the theater that was just born in 1998. In 1902, he built a building for them in Kamergersky Lane.
In Pribytkovo, Ostrovsky outlined the features of these merchants-philanthropists. They spend money wisely. Set up Russia. Ultimately, all this goes to the state.
Most of Ostrovsky's plays are about merchants. But great attention he devotes to the theme - the fate of a young woman. Starting with The Poor Bride, Ostrovsky explores the position of women in Russian society. Marya Andreevna is so poor that she is about to lose her shelter and food. She is in love with Meric. He is weak-willed, lacking initiative, he loves her, but he cannot help, he has no money. And as a result, she marries Benivalyavsky, who chooses a girl who has nothing as his wife. This means that she will be completely dependent on him and he will tyrannize her. Marya Andreevna understands this, but she has no way out.
Nadia in "The Pupil" is also forced to marry. Ulanbekova gave her everything, and therefore disposed of her as property. Tyranila. She destines her as a wife for the monster drunk, and thinks that Nadia's high morality will benefit him and correct him. But Nadia flees to the island with her son Ulanbekova and spends the night there. Then she says: there will be no more life. Everything is over.
Next on this list is Katerina in The Thunderstorm. She was born out of friendship with Nikulina-Kositskaya (about how she sailed away in a boat without oars and how she saw angels in a pillar of light - these are the stories of N-Kositskaya). But the actress herself is more versatile than Katerina. There is a lot from Barbara in it. She sings and has humor in her and she has a huge talent. Katerina was written for her by Ostrovsky. Barbara and Katerina are two sides of the same character. Katerina was given away without love. And it is difficult for her to love her husband. Tikhon under the power of the Boar And hee mute. If there was a child, Boris would not have appeared in her life. But from a drunkard and a weakling, she could not get pregnant. And Boris appears from misfortune and hopelessness. Kabanikhs were called huge stones that were placed at the crossroads. So that the triplets do not collide. So is Katerina's mother-in-law. On the way, you can’t go around everyone, you can’t get around. She crushes with her weight. Katerina throws herself into the water not from the pressure of her mother-in-law, but from Boris's betrayal. He leaves her, cannot help, does not love her.
Who, lovingly, wishes his beloved a speedy death? And he says that she would die soon, so that she would not suffer so much.
Katerina is a pious person. She falls to her knees in front of the fresco doomsday during a thunderstorm and repents. And maybe having committed the first mortal sin, she punishes herself by committing the second mortal sin in order to receive punishment from God in full. Although Ostrovsky gives her a name, meaning - purity.
Thunderstorm is a multifunctional name. She is present in everything. Not only in nature.
Next Larisa. She is unable to kill herself. She chooses between dying her or becoming a thing. Karandyshev wants to get married in order to rise in the eyes of society. Both Knurov and Vozhevatov play it as a thing. And in the end, she will make a decision - if a thing is an expensive thing. Ostrovsky saves Larisa by giving death at the hands of Karandyshev. And when he kills her, he treats her like a thing (so don't get it to anyone).
Yulia Tugina is a widow who marries Pribytkov.
19 century - woman must get married to survive. At the end of the 19th century, she had the opportunity to become a governess, to become a companion. But this is also not good ... a beggarly existence. Addiction... these are already Chekhov's themes.
Ostrovsky finds another way out for theater women. In the 19th century, actresses appeared in the theater. But there is such a law - if a nobleman becomes an actor, then he loses his nobility. And the merchant drops out of the merchant guild. And the life of an actress is always doubtful. It can be bought. In "Talents and Admirers" Ostrovsky will show the life of Negina in this way.
True, in the last play "Guilty Without Guilt", he writes a melodrama with a happy ending. There, the actress rises above all. becomes great and dictates its own rules. But it's 84 year end 19th century.
"Snegurochka" was born in Shchelykovo. There is nature, untouched forest. This is a play about the joy of life. About harmony in life. About the objective course of life. Harmony should brighten up all the tragedies. At the end, the heroes die. The Snow Maiden melted, Mizgir rushed into the lake, disharmony just left this settlement. The Snow Maiden was a foreign, unusual beginning that invaded the suburb from a fairy tale. But Mizgir is a traitor, he abandoned Kupava. And when they die, harmony, peace and happiness come. The play was written for Fedotova. Ostrovsky often wrote plays for certain actors. Tolstoy laughed at him, and then he began to do it himself.
"Vasilisa Milentiev" he also wrote for Fedotova 01.58.26
This play was invented by Gideon Jr. (director of the imperial theaters). Ostrovsky helped him bring this play to perfection. As well as in "The Marriage of Belugin" and "Wild One" there should be 2 names of authors. These are plays written with students. For the most part with Solovyov.
Ostrovsky has a line of a young man with a university education. who comes into life. This is Zhadov in Profitable Place. In The Poor Bride, Ostrovsky tried to bring out such an image of Merich. But this is his failure. Ostrovsky at one time tried to live in two projections of the realistic theater that he created and looked back at the romantic theater, through Merich. Two directions collided in the play and it became heavy.
Zhadov is a man without silver, walks a clean path. Ostrovsky says about him that he is like a discharged Christmas tree. He has nothing of his own. He took all these ideals out of the university, but did not suffer through them. That's why he does stupid things. Firstly, he marries Polina without a dowry, having nothing for his soul. In the 19th century, this is even a crime. Officials were given permission to marry. The husband must take responsibility for his wife. And Zhadov honestly tells Polina that they will honestly get their own bread, but she does not know how it is. She seeks to quickly leave the protection of her mother and is getting married. And from this all tragedy is born.
Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov reproached Ostrovsky for saving Zhadov by writing such a finale - the arrest of Yusov and Vyshnevsky.
In the play "Abyss" Ostrovsky continues the theme of such a young man. Kiselnikov, unlike Zhadov, who managed to get married and have children, is forced to sacrifice himself for the well-being of the family. He commits a crime for which he receives money. He will die, he will be imprisoned.
The theme of Glumov from “Enough Simplicity for Every Wise Man” continues the Proteus man - smart, evil. Able to take care of himself. But in this case, university education will play a trick on him. If he had been simpler, like Zhadov, or as evil and smart, he would not have written this diary. And Glumov, understanding his position and wanting to get out of this situation, takes care of his aunt, flatters, etc., and in the end pierces himself. And forever parted with dreams of a better life. He will never carry out this scam of his again.
Glumov Ostrovsky will show us back in "Mad Money" and we understand that he has not achieved anything.
Ostrovsky has a play “The Characters Didn’t Agree” where the young man Paul marries a rich merchant’s wife in the hope of managing her wealth. But she quickly makes it clear that he won't get the money. And they run away.
And in order for Glumov to have this happiness, he needs to be Balzaminov and marry the fool Belotelova, who agrees to bathe him in gold. But this is vaudeville. Fantasy game. And it is no coincidence that Ostrovsky introduces Glumov in Crazy Money to show that he will not be happy. And in contrast to Vasilkov, who offers to multiply money and make it work, Glumov is going to marry money and, of course, nothing good awaits him.
And there is one more young man, this is Petya Meluzov in "talents and admirers" - Negina's teacher. He's left with nothing and walks away so invincible. Telling the fans. That you corrupt and I enlighten.
Speaking of Meluzov, Petya Trofimov comes to mind. They are very similar and have such an impression. That Chekhov quotes Ostrovsky. Petya Trofimov is like the future of Petya Meluzov. He is an idealist and therefore will never achieve a positive result.
Ostrovsky plays with images, and as he writes new plays, one can trace the development of these images.
Wolves and Sheep (1868) is a play from life. Ostrovsky took him out of the court chamber, where the case of Abbess Mitrofania, nee Baroness Rosen, was being decided. She, like Murzavetskaya, was engaged in forgery and practically robbed stupid merchants. This case was dealt with by a civil court, although usually the clergy did not allow their own to the state court. They had their own spiritual court. But the case was so high-profile that it was impossible to do otherwise. Ostrovsky dreamed of writing about the monastery, but the censors would not let it through. Spiritual persons cannot be brought to the stage. And he arranges such a monastery in a figurative sense. Murzavetskaya herself is in black, her hangers-on too. And the conditions there are so strict monastic.
This is the law of life. Some are wolf, some are sheep. And at some point they can change roles (dialectical changes). Glafira from a sheep turns into a wolf. We think about Lynyaev like a sheep, but in the end he unravels all the crime of Murzavetskaya and finds the source of all the atrocities taking place around Kupavina. On all the wolves in the play, the most important wolf Berkut appears. Murzavetskaya understands that she has become a sheep, she asks Berkutov to leave her at least a poor wolf.
Ostrovsky has many themes. Lots of theater plays. By these plays we can judge the theater of the 19th century. What is the theater like in the province. ("Forest", "Talents and Admirers", "Guilty Without Guilt")
Talent cannot break through, because fans buy it and try to humiliate and addict it, and only in the melodrama Guilty Without Guilt does Kruchinina turn from a young suffering woman, Lyubov Ivanovna Otradina, into a brilliant actress, tk. will go through the path of losses and tragedies and eventually gain the talent of an actress for whom nothing is scary. And in the end he will find his son. Ostrovsky understands that the theater is in a deplorable state, that three rehearsals are not enough for a production. He tried to help in some way. Make comments, but it's all crumbs. Once he asked to replace a torn backdrop for the play “Dream on the Volga” and on the day of the premiere he saw a backdrop with a winter landscape, and he has summer in his play ...
Martynov (the first performer of Tikhon Kabanov), Prov Sadovsky (Ostrovsky's closest friend) and Nikulina-Kositskaya are actors who developed in the 1st half of the 19th century and came to the theater before Ostrovsky. They idolized him for his plays.
Savina, Strepetova, Davydov, Varlamov, Lensky, Yuzhin, Shchepkin - become actors in the imperial theaters, being once provincial actors. Then they asked for a debut in the theater (they didn’t pay for the debut) and stayed in the capitals.
Ostrovsky does not like this situation. People without school, not even trained for the role. In 1738 a school was opened (ballet and choir). and such schools appear in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Children from the age of 8.9 were taken there and taught ballet. Ballet became the basis of the imperial school. (Ermolova, Fedotova, Semenova, Martynov went this way). After that, you could choose 3 ways - to ballet, to drama actors or to become a theater artist (there were painting classes)
Tuberculosis is a common illness among actors in the 19th century. Dust, open fire. Dancing in vaudeville… at 40, actors die.
Ostrovsky observed this and devoted his articles to actresses. In one of them, he compares Savina and Strepetova and writes that Savina, who can play up to 15 roles per season, is quite beneficial for the theater, while Strepetova, who lives on stage and after the performance, she is taken away and then she comes to her senses for 2 weeks , it is not beneficial for the imperial theater. The public in the 19th century went to see the actor. And when the actor was ill, the performance was filmed. There were no substitutions. In 1865, Ostrovsky created an artistic circle. MP Sadovsky and his wife Olga Osipovna Lazareva (Sadovskaya) will be brought up in this circle. Those actors who were brought up on his dramaturgy, he will try to give a school. Ostrovsky struggles with the theatrical monopoly. He takes part in meetings, soon becomes convinced that everything is meaningless. There, everyone is looking for their own benefit, and does not care about the theater. And he comes to the idea to create his own theater.
In 1881, he received permission to create a folk theater. Private theater cannot be created. The theatrical monopoly does not allow this in Moscow. He is looking for a sponsor. And in 1982, the monopoly was abolished and private theaters grew in huge numbers and became competitors for Ostrovsky, so he abandoned the idea of a folk theater. And the only way he could help the theater was to go there to work. He becomes the head of the repertoire and the theater school. But he's having a hard time. They do not like him, he is not convenient, not affectionate, principled. But he nevertheless begins to rebuild the theater, but in the summer of 86 he suddenly dies and the theater returns to its old habits. And the Moscow Art Theater, which was born 12 years later, will largely rest on the reforms that Ostrovsky intended to implement. First of all, he dreamed of a repertory theater. He wanted to create a Russian national theater because it is a sign of the coming of age of the nation.
The pinnacle of Russian dramaturgy of the period under review is the work of Alexander Nikolayevich Ostrovsky (1823-1886). Ostrovsky's first "big" comedy "Our people - let's settle!" (1850) gave a clear idea of the new original theater, Ostrovsky's theater. Evaluating this comedy, contemporaries invariably recalled the classics of Russian comedy - Fonvizin's "Undergrowth", Griboedov's "Woe from Wit", Gogol's "Inspector General". With these "landmark" works of Russian dramaturgy, they put the comedy "Bankrupt" ("Our people - we'll settle!") on a par.
Taking Gogol's view of meaning public comedy, being attentive to the range of topics he set in dramaturgy and the plots he introduced into this genre, Ostrovsky, from the first steps of his literary path, showed complete independence in interpreting modern collisions. The motives that Gogol treated as secondary are already in early works Ostrovsky become the nerve that determines the action, come to the fore.
In the early 1950s, the playwright believed that modern social conflicts were the most
degrees make themselves felt in a merchant environment. This class seemed to him a layer in which past and present societies merged into a complex, contradictory unity. Merchants, who have long played a significant role in the economic life of the country, and sometimes took part in political conflicts, are connected by many threads of kinship and business relations, on the one hand, with the lower strata of society (peasantry, philistinism), on the other hand, with the upper classes, in second half of the 19th century changed its shape. The vices that affect the merchant environment and which the writer exposes in his plays, he analyzes, revealing their historical roots and foreseeing their possible manifestations in the future. Already in the title of the comedy “Own people - let's settle!” the principle of homogeneity of its heroes is expressed. The oppressors and the oppressed in comedy not only constitute a single system, but often change places in it. A wealthy merchant, a resident of Zamoskvorechye (the most patriarchal part of patriarchal Moscow), convinced of his right to implicitly control the fate of his family members, tyrannizes his wife, daughter and employees of his "institutions". However, his daughter Lipochka and her husband Podkhalyuzin, Bolshov's former clerk and favorite, "repay" him in full. They embezzle his capital and, having ruined the "tyatenko", cruelly and cold-bloodedly send him to prison. Podkhalyuzin says about the Bolshovs: “It will happen to them - they have thought in their lifetime, now it’s time for us!” This is how relationships develop between generations, between fathers and children. Progress here is less tangible than continuity, and besides, Bolshov, for all his crude simplicity, turns out to be psychologically less primitive in nature than his daughter and son-in-law. Accurately and vividly embodying in his characters the image of “modern vices and shortcomings noticed in the century”, the playwright sought to create types that have universal moral significance. “I wanted,” he explained, “so that the public stigmatizes vice in the name of Podkhalyuzin in the same way that it stigmatizes with the name of Harpagon, Tartuffe, Undergrowth, Khlestakov and others.” Contemporaries compared Bolshov with King Lear, and Podkhalyuzin was called "Russian Tartuffe".
Alien to any kind of exaggeration, avoiding idealization, the author clearly outlines the contours of the figures depicted by him, determines their scale. Bolshov's horizons are limited by Zamoskvorechye, in his limited world he experiences all the feelings that a ruler experiences on a different scale, whose power is unlimited. Power, strength, honor, greatness not only satisfy his ambition, but also overwhelm his feelings and tire him. He is bored, weighed down by his power. This mood, combined with a deep faith in the steadfastness of patriarchal family foundations, in his authority as the head of the family, gives rise to a sudden outburst of Bolshov's generosity, giving everything he has acquired "down to the shirt" of his daughter and Podkhalyuzin, who has become her husband.
In this plot twist, the comedy about a malicious bankrupt and a cunning clerk approaches Shakespeare's tragedy "King Lear" - the collision of the pursuit of profit develops into a conflict of deceived trust. However, the viewer cannot sympathize with Bolshov's disappointment, experience it as tragic, just as he cannot sympathize with the disappointment of the matchmaker and the lawyer, who resold their services to Podkhalyuzin and made a mistake in their calculations. The play is in the genre of comedy.
Ostrovsky's first comedy played a special role both in the creative life of the author and in the history of Russian drama. Subjected to strict censorship after its publication in the Moskvityanin magazine (1850), it was not staged for many years. But it was this comedy that opened a new era in understanding the "laws of the stage", heralded the emergence of a new phenomenon in Russian culture - the Ostrovsky theater. Objectively, it contained the idea of a new principle stage action, the behavior of the actor, a new form of recreating the truth of life on stage and theatrical entertainment. Ostrovsky appealed primarily to the mass audience, the “fresh public”, “which requires strong drama, big comedy, causing frank, loud laughter, hot, sincere feelings, lively and strong characters.” The immediate reaction of the democratic audience was the playwright's criterion for the success of his play.
The first comedy struck with its novelty to a greater extent than Ostrovsky's subsequent plays, which made their way onto the stage and forced Ostrovsky to be recognized as a "repertory playwright": "Poor Bride" (1852), "Don't get into your sleigh" (1853) and "Poverty is no vice" (1854).
In The Poor Bride, if not a change in the writer's ideological position, then the desire to approach the problem of public comedy in a new way. The dramatic unity of the play is created by the fact that in the center of it stands the heroine, whose position is socially typical. She, as it were, embodies the general idea of the position of a young lady without a dowry. Each "line" of action demonstrates the attitude of one of the contenders for the hand and heart of Marya Andreevna
to her and represents a variant of the relationship of a man to a woman and the following from such an attitude female destiny. The generally accepted traditional forms of family relations are inhuman. The behavior of the "suitors" and their view of the beauty, who does not have a dowry, do not promise her a happy fate.
Thus, The Poor Bride also belongs to the accusatory direction of literature, which Ostrovsky considered the most appropriate for the character and mindset of Russian society. If Gogol believed that the “narrowness” of the “love plot” contradicts the tasks of public comedy, then Ostrovsky evaluates his condition precisely through the depiction of love in modern society.
In The Poor Bride, while working on which Ostrovsky, by his own admission, experienced great creative difficulties, he managed to master some new construction techniques dramatic action, which were subsequently applied by him mainly in plays of dramatic or tragic content. The pathos of the play is rooted in the experiences of the heroine, who is gifted with the ability to feel strongly and subtly, and in her position in an environment that cannot understand her. Such a construction of the drama required a careful development of the female character and a convincing depiction of the typical circumstances in which the hero finds himself. In "The Poor Bride" solve this creative task Ostrovsky has not succeeded yet. However, in the secondary line of the comedy, an original image was found, independent of literary stereotypes, embodying the specific features of the position and mentality of a simple Russian woman (Dunya). The capacious, diversely outlined character of this heroine opened in the work of Ostrovsky a gallery of images of ingenuous women, the wealth of the spiritual world of which is "worth a lot."
To give a voice to a representative of the lower, “non-Europeanized” social strata, to make him a dramatic and even tragic hero, to express the pathos of experiences on his behalf in a form that meets the requirements of a realistic style, i.e. so that his speech, gesture, behavior are recognizable, typical , - such was the difficult task facing the author. In the work of Pushkin, Gogol, and especially the writers of the 40s, in particular Dostoevsky, artistic elements accumulated that could be useful to Ostrovsky in solving this specific problem.
In the early 50s, a circle of writers, ardent admirers of his talent, formed around Ostrovsky. They became employees, and over time, the "young editors" of the Moskvityanin magazine. The neo-Slavophile theories of this circle contributed to the playwright's interest in traditional forms. national life and culture, inclined him to the idealization of patriarchal relations. His ideas about social comedy, its means and structure have also changed. So, stating in a letter to Pogodin: “It is better for a Russian person to rejoice at seeing himself on stage than to yearn. Correctors will be found even without us, ”the writer, in fact, formulated a new attitude to the tasks of comedy. The world comedy tradition, which Ostrovsky carefully studied, offered many samples of a cheerful humorous comedy, affirming the ideals of direct, natural feelings, youth, courage, democracy, and sometimes freethinking.
Ostrovsky wanted to base a life-affirming comedy on folklore motifs and folk-gaming traditions. The fusion of folk poetic, ballad and social plots can already be noted in the comedy "Don't get into your sleigh." The plot about the disappearance, "disappearance" of a girl, most often a merchant's daughter, her abduction by a cruel seducer was borrowed from folklore and popular with romantics. In Russia, it was developed by Zhukovsky ("Lyudmila", "Svetlana"), Pushkin ("Groom", Tatyana's dream in "Eugene Onegin", "The Stationmaster"). The situation of the "abduction" of a simple girl by a person of a different social environment - a nobleman - was sharply socially interpreted by the writers of the "natural school". Ostrovsky took into account this tradition. But the folklore-legendary ballad aspect was no less important for him than the social one. In subsequent plays of the first five-year period of the 1950s, the importance of this element grows. In "Poverty is no vice" and "Do not live as you want" the action takes place during calendar holidays, accompanied by numerous rituals, the origin of which goes back to ancient, pagan beliefs, and the content is fed by myths, legends, fairy tales.
And yet, in these plays by Ostrovsky, the legendary or fairy-tale plot "sprouted" contemporary issues. In "Don't get into your sleigh," the conflict arises as a result of an outside invasion of the patriarchal environment, which is thought of as not knowing significant internal contradictions, a nobleman - a "hunter" for merchant brides with a rich dowry. In "Poverty is no vice" the playwright already depicts the merchant environment as a world not free from serious internal conflicts.
Next to the poetry of folk rituals and holidays, he sees the hopeless poverty of workers, the bitterness of the dependence of the worker on the owner, children on their parents, an educated poor man on an ignorant moneybag. Ostrovsky also notes socio-historical shifts that threaten the destruction of the patriarchal way of life. In “Poverty is not a vice”, the older generation is already criticized, demanding unquestioning obedience from children, its right to unquestioned authority is being questioned. The young generation acts as representatives of the living and ever-renewing tradition of folk life, its aesthetics and ethics, and the old, repentant sinner, troublemaker in the family, who squandered the capital "meteor" with the expressive name "Lubim" acts as the herald of the youth's rightness. The playwright “instructs” this character to tell the words of truth to the unworthy head of the family; he assigns him the role of a person who miraculously unties all the tightly drawn-out knots of conflicts.
The apotheosis of Lyubim Tortsov at the end of the play, which delighted the public, brought many reproaches and even ridicule to the writer. literary critics. The playwright entrusted the role of the bearer of noble feelings and the preacher of goodness to a man who not only fell in the eyes of society, but also a “jester”. For the author, the feature of "buffoonery" in Lyubim Tortsov was extremely important. In the Christmas event, which is being played out on stage at the time when the tragic courtship of the rich villain, who is separating the lovers, takes place, Lyubim Tortsov plays the role of a traditional joker grandfather. At the moment when the mummers appear in the house and the orderly order of life of a closed, impenetrable merchant's nest, impervious to prying eyes, is violated, Lyubim Tortsov, the representative of the street, the outside world, the crowd, becomes the master of the situation.
The image of Lyubim Tortsov combined two elements of folk drama - comedy, with its jokes, wit, farcical tricks - "knees", buffoonery, on the one hand, and tragedy, generating an emotional outburst, allowing pathetic tirades addressed to the public, direct, open expression grief and indignation - on the other.
Later, contradictory elements, the inner drama of the moral principle, folk truth Ostrovsky, in a number of his works, embodied in “paired” characters leading a dispute, dialogue, or simply “in parallel” setting out the principles of harsh morality, asceticism (Ilya - “Do not live as you want”; Afonya - “Sin and trouble does not live on anyone” ) and the precepts of folk humanism, mercy (Agafon - “Do not live like this ...”, grandfather Arkhip - “Sin and trouble ...”). In the comedy The Forest (1871), the universal moral principle of kindness, creativity, fantasy, love of freedom also appears in a dual guise: in the form of a high tragic ideal, the bearer of real, “grounded” manifestations of which is the provincial tragedian Neschastlivtsev, and in its traditionally comedic forms - denial, travesty, parodies, which are embodied in the provincial comedian Schastlivtsev. The notion that the people's morality itself, the very lofty moral concepts of goodness, are the subject of dispute, that they are mobile and that, existing forever, they are constantly being updated, determines the fundamental features of Ostrovsky's dramaturgy.
The action in his plays, as a rule, takes place in one family, among relatives or in a narrow circle of people associated with the family to which the characters belong. At the same time, since the beginning of the 1950s, conflicts in the playwright's works are determined not only by intra-family relations, but also by the state of society, the city, and the people. The action of many, perhaps most, plays takes place in the pavilion of a room, at home (“Our people - let's settle!”, “Poor Bride”). But already in the play “Out of Your Sleigh...” one of the most dramatic episodes is transferred to a different setting, takes place in an inn, as if embodying the road, the wandering that Dunya doomed herself to when she left her home. The inn has the same meaning in "Do not live as you want." Wanderers coming to Moscow and leaving the capital meet here, whom grief, dissatisfaction with their position and concern for loved ones “drives” from home. However, the inn is depicted not only as a refuge for wanderers, but also as a place of temptation. Here comes the revelry, reckless fun, opposing the boredom of a decorous merchant family home. The suspicions of the inhabitants of the city, the impenetrable isolation of their homes and families, is contrasted with open, open to all winds and festive freedom. Shrovetide "whirling" in "Do not live like this ..." and Christmas divination in "Poverty is not a vice" predetermine the development of the plot. The dispute between the old and the new, which is important side dramatic conflict in the plays of Ostrovsky in the early 50s, is interpreted by him ambiguously. Traditional forms of life are seen as ever-renewing, and only in this the playwright sees their viability. As soon as the tradition loses the ability to “deny itself”, to respond to
Illustration:
Illustrations by P. M. Boklevsky for the comedies of A. N. Ostrovsky
Lithographs. 1859
the living needs of modern people, so it turns into a dead, fettering form and loses its own living content. The old enters into the new, into modern life, in which it can play the role of either a “fettering” element, oppressing its development, or stabilizing, providing strength to the emerging novelty, depending on the content of the old that preserves the people's life.
The clash of the militant defenders of traditional forms of life with the bearers of new aspirations, the will to free self-expression, to assert their own, personally developed and hard-won concept of truth and morality, is the core of the dramatic conflict in The Thunderstorm (1859), a drama that was evaluated by contemporaries as a masterpiece of the writer and the most vivid embodiment of the public mood of the era of the fall of serfdom.
Dobrolyubov in his article "Dark Kingdom" (1859) described Ostrovsky as a follower of Gogol, a critically thinking writer who objectively showed all the dark aspects of life in modern Russia: the lack of legal awareness, the unlimited power of elders in the family, the tyranny of the rich and those in power, the silence of their victims, and interpreted this picture of universal slavery as a reflection of the political system that prevails in the country. After the appearance of The Thunderstorm, the critic supplemented his interpretation of Ostrovsky’s work with an essential proposition about the awakening of protest and spiritual independence among the people as an important motive for the playwright’s work at a new stage (“A Ray of Light in a Dark Kingdom”, 1860). He saw the embodiment of the awakening people in the heroine of "Thunderstorm" Katerina - a creative, emotional nature and organically unable to put up with the enslavement of thoughts and feelings, with hypocrisy and lies.
Disputes about Ostrovsky's position, about his attitude to patriarchal life, to antiquity and new trends in folk life, began at the time of the writer's collaboration in Moskvityanin and did not stop after Ostrovsky became a permanent collaborator of Sovremennik in 1856. However, even an ardent and consistent supporter of the view of Ostrovsky as a singer ancient life and patriarchal family relations, A. Grigoriev in the article “Art and Morality” admitted that “the artist, responding to the questions of the time, sharply turned first to his former
in a negative manner ... Then there was a step to protest. And a protest for a new beginning of the life of the people, for the freedom of the mind, will and feelings ... this protest broke out boldly like a “Thunderstorm”.
Dobrolyubov, like A. Grigoriev, noted the fundamental novelty of The Thunderstorm, the completeness of the embodiment in it of the features of the writer's artistic system and the organic nature of his entire creative path. He defined Ostrovsky's dramas and comedies as "plays of life".
Ostrovsky himself, along with the traditional designations of the genres of his plays as “comedy” and “drama” (he, unlike his contemporary Pisemsky, did not use the definition of “tragedy”) gave indications of the originality of their genre nature: “pictures from Moscow life” or “ pictures of Moscow life”, “scenes from village life"," scenes from the life of the outback. These subtitles meant that the subject of the image is not the story of one hero, but an episode of the life of an entire social environment, which is defined historically and territorially.
In The Thunderstorm, the main action takes place between members of the Kabanov merchant family and their entourage. However, the events are elevated here to the rank of phenomena of a general order, the characters are typified, the central characters are given bright, individual characters, numerous secondary characters take part in the events of the drama, creating a wide social background.
Features of the poetics of the drama: the scale of the images of its heroes, driven by convictions, passions and adamant in their manifestation, the significance in the action of the "choral principle", the opinions of the inhabitants of the city, their moral concepts and prejudices, symbolic and mythological associations, the fatal course of events - give "Thunderstorm" genre features of tragedy.
The unity and dialectics of the relationship between home and city are expressed in the drama in a plastic way, by changing, alternating pictures taking place on the high bank of the Volga, from which distant fields beyond the Volga are visible, on the boulevard, and scenes that convey a closed family life, enclosed in the stuffy rooms of a boar's house, meetings of heroes in a ravine near the shore, under the night starry sky - and at the closed gates of the house. Closed gates that do not allow outsiders to enter, and the fence of the Kabanovs' garden behind the ravine separate the free world from the family life of a merchant's house.
The historical aspect of the conflict, its correlation with the problem of national cultural traditions and social progress in "Thunderstorm" are expressed especially tensely. Two poles, two opposite tendencies of people's life, between which the "power lines" of the conflict in the drama run, are embodied in the young merchant's wife Katerina Kabanova and her mother-in-law - Marfa Kabanova, nicknamed Kabanikha for her tough and stern disposition. Marfa Kabanova is a convinced and principled keeper of antiquity, once and for all found and established norms and rules of life. It legitimizes the habitual forms of life as an eternal norm and considers it its highest right to punish those who have violated any customs as the laws of being, since for it there is no big or small in this single and unchanging, perfect structure. Having lost an indispensable attribute of life - the ability to change and die, all the customs and rituals in the interpretation of Kabanova turned into an eternal, frozen, empty form. Her daughter-in-law Katerina, on the contrary, is unable to perceive any action outside of its content. Religion, family and kinship relations, even a walk over the Volga - everything that among the Kalinovites, and especially in the Kabanovs' house, has turned into an outwardly observed ritual, for Katerina either full of meaning, or unbearable. Katerina carries the creative beginning of development. She is accompanied by the motive of flight, fast driving. She wants to fly like a bird, and she dreams about flying, she tried to sail away in a boat along the Volga, and in her dreams she sees herself racing in a troika. This desire to move in space expresses her readiness for risk, the bold acceptance of the unknown.
The ethical views of the people in The Thunderstorm appear not only as a dynamic, internally contradictory spiritual sphere, but as a region of irreconcilable struggle, tragically torn apart by antagonism, entailing human sacrifices, giving rise to hatred that does not subside even over the coffin (Kabanova speaks over the corpse of Katerina : “It’s a sin to cry about her!”).
The monologue of the tradesman Kuligin about cruel morals precedes the tragedy of Katerina, and his reproach to the Kalinovites and appeal to the highest mercy serve as her epitaph. He is echoed by the desperate cry of Tikhon, Kabanova’s son, Katerina’s husband, who realized too late the tragedy of his wife’s position and his own impotence: “Mamma, you ruined her! .. Good for you, Katya! Why am I left to live in the world and suffer!”
The dispute between Katerina and Kabanikha in the drama is accompanied by a dispute between the self-taught scientist Kuligin and the wealthy merchant-tyrant Wild. Thus, the tragedy of desecration of beauty and poetry (Katerina) is complemented by the tragedy of enslavement
science that seeks thought. The drama of the slavish position of a woman in the family, the trampling of her feelings in the world of calculation (Ostrovsky's constant theme is "Poor Bride", "Hot Heart", "Dowry") in "Thunderstorm" is accompanied by an image of the tragedy of the mind in the "dark kingdom". In The Thunderstorm, this theme is carried by the image of Kuligin. Before "Thunderstorm" she sounded in "Poverty is not a vice" in the image of the self-taught poet Mitya, in "Profitable Place" - in the story of Zhadov and dramatic stories about the fall of the lawyer Dosuzhev, the poverty of the teacher Mykin, the death of the intellectual Lyubimov, later in the comedy "True is good but happiness is better” in the tragic position of the honest accountant Platon Zybkin.
In Profitable Place (1857), as in The Thunderstorm, the conflict arises as a result of incompatibility, mutual total rejection of two forces that are unequal in their capabilities and potential: a force that has established itself, endowed with official power, on the one hand, and an unrecognized force, but expressing the new needs of society and the requirements of people interested in meeting these needs, on the other.
The hero of the play “Profitable Place” Zhadov, a university student who invaded the environment of officials and denies in the name of the law and, most importantly, his own moral sense, the relations that have long been established in this environment, becomes the object of hatred not only of his uncle, an important bureaucrat, but also the head of the office, Yusov , and the petty official Belogubov, and the widow of the collegiate assessor Kukushkina. For all of them, he is a daring troublemaker, a freethinker encroaching on their well-being. Abuses for mercenary purposes, violation of the law are interpreted by representatives of the administration as state activity, and the requirement to comply with the letter of the law as a manifestation of unreliability.
"Scientist", university definition of the meaning of laws in political life society, assimilated by Zhadov, as well as his moral sense, the main opponent of the hero Yusov opposes the knowledge of the actual existence of the law in the then Russian society and the attitude to the law, “sanctified” by age-old everyday life and “practical morality”. The "practical morality" of society is expressed in the play in the naive revelations of Belogubov and Yusov, the latter's confidence in his right to abuse. The official actually appears not as an executor and not even as an interpreter of the law, but as a bearer of unlimited power, although divided among many. In his later play “Hot Heart” (1869), Ostrovsky, in the scene of a conversation between the mayor Gradoboev and the townsfolk, demonstrated the peculiarity of such an attitude to the law: “Gradoboev: It’s high up to God, but far from the tsar ... and a judge ... If we judge you according to the laws, then we have many laws ... and the laws are all strict ... So, dear friends, as you wish: should I judge you according to the laws or according to my soul, as God is in my heart put?..
In 1860, Ostrovsky conceived the historical verse comedy Voyevoda, which, according to his plan, was to be included in the Nights on the Volga cycle of dramatic works, combining plays from modern folk life and historical chronicles. Voevoda shows the roots of modern social phenomena, including the “practical” attitude to law, as well as the historical traditions of resistance to lawlessness.
In the 1960s and 1970s, the satirical element intensified in Ostrovsky's work. He creates a number of comedies in which a satirical approach to reality prevails. The most significant of them are “Each wise man is quite simple” (1868) and “Sheep and Wolves” (1875). Returning to Gogol's principle of "pure comedy", Ostrovsky revives and rethinks some of the structural features of Gogol's comedy. Characteristics of society and the social environment are of great importance in comedy. A “stranger” penetrating this environment in moral and social terms cannot be opposed to a society into which, due to misunderstanding or deceit, he falls (“For every wise man ...” cf. “Inspector”). The author uses a plot scheme about "rogues" deceived by a "rogue" or misled by him ("Players" by Gogol - cf. "For every wise man ...", "Wolves and sheep").
“For every wise man...” depicts the time of reforms, when timid innovations in the field of public administration and the very abolition of serfdom were accompanied by containment, “freezing” of the progressive process. In an atmosphere of distrust of democratic forces, the persecution of radical figures who defended the interests of the people, renegade became a common phenomenon. The renegade and hypocrite becomes the central character in Ostrovsky's public comedy. The hero is this careerist, penetrating the environment of high-ranking officials, Glumov. He scoffs at the stupidity, tyranny and obscurantism of "statesmen", at the emptiness of liberal phrase-mongers, at the hypocrisy and debauchery of influential ladies. But he betrays and desecrates his own
beliefs, perverts his moral sense. In an effort to make a brilliant career, he bows to the "masters of society" he despised.
Ostrovsky's artistic system assumed a balance between the tragic and the comedic, negation and the ideal. In the 1950s, such a balance was achieved by depicting, along with the bearers of the ideology of the "dark kingdom", petty fools, young people with pure, warm hearts, fair old people - the bearers of folk morality. In the following decade, at a time when the image of tyranny in a number of cases acquired a satirical and tragic character, the pathos of selfless striving for will, a feeling freed from conventions, lies, coercion, intensified (Katerina - "Thunderstorm", Parasha - "Hot Heart" , Aksyusha - “Forest”), the poetic background of the action acquired special significance: pictures of nature, the Volga expanses, the architecture of ancient Russian cities, forest landscapes, country roads (“Thunderstorm”, “Voivode”, “Hot Heart”, “Forest”).
The manifestation in Ostrovsky's work of a tendency to intensify satire, to develop purely satirical plots, coincided with the period of his turning to historical and heroic themes. In historical chronicles and dramas, he showed the formation of many social phenomena and state institutions, which he considered the old evil of modern life and pursued in satirical comedies. However, the main content of his historical plays is the depiction of the movements of the masses in the crisis periods of the country's life. In these movements, he sees deep drama, tragedy and high poetry of patriotic deeds, mass manifestations of selflessness and disinterestedness. The playwright conveys the pathos of the transformation of the "little man", immersed in everyday prosaic concerns about his well-being, into a citizen who consciously commits acts of historical significance.
The hero of Ostrovsky's historical chronicles, whether Kozma Zakharyich Minin-Sukhoruk (1862, 1866), Dmitry the Pretender and Vasily Shuisky (1867), Tushino (1867), is the masses, suffering, seeking truth afraid of falling into "sin" and lies, defending their interests and their national independence, fighting and rebelling, sacrificing their property for the sake of common interests. "Disorganization of the land", strife and military defeats, intrigues of power-hungry adventurers and boyars, abuses of clerks and governors - all these disasters primarily affect the fate of the people. Creating historical chronicles depicting "the fate of the people", Ostrovsky focused on the traditions of the dramaturgy of Shakespeare, Schiller, Pushkin.
On the eve of the 60s, Ostrovsky's work appeared new topic, which increased the dramatic intensity of his plays and changed the very motivation of the action in them. This is the theme of passion. In the dramas “Thunderstorm”, “Sin and trouble does not live on anyone”, Ostrovsky made the central character a bearer of an integral character, a deeply feeling person, capable of reaching tragic heights in his emotional response to lies, injustice, humiliation of human dignity, deceit in love. In the early 70s, he created the dramatic fairy tale The Snow Maiden (1873), in which, depicting various manifestations and “forms” of love passion against the backdrop of fantastic circumstances, he compares it with the life-giving and destructive forces of nature. This work was an attempt by the writer - a connoisseur of folklore, ethnography, folklore - to base the drama on the reconstructed plots of ancient Slavic myths. Contemporaries noted that in this play Ostrovsky consciously follows the tradition Shakespearean theater, especially such plays as "A Midsummer Night's Dream", "The Tempest", the plot of which is symbolic and poetic in nature and is based on the motifs of folk tales and legends.
At the same time, The Snow Maiden by Ostrovsky was one of the first in European drama at the end of the 19th century. attempts to interpret modern psychological problems in a work whose content conveys ancient folk ideas, and artistic structure provides for the synthesis of the poetic word, music and plasticity, folk dance and ritual (cf. Ibsen's Peer Gynt, Wagner's musical dramas, Hauptmann's Drowned Bell).
Ostrovsky experienced an urgent need to expand the picture of the life of society, to update the "set" of modern types and dramatic situations from the beginning of the 70s, when the post-reform reality itself changed. At this time, in the work of the playwright, there was a tendency to complicate the structure of plays and the psychological characteristics of the characters. Prior to that, the heroes in Ostrovsky's works were distinguished by their integrity, he preferred the well-established characters of people whose beliefs corresponded to their social practice. In the 1970s and 1980s, such faces were replaced in his works by contradictory, complex natures, experiencing diverse influences, sometimes distorting their inner appearance. During the events depicted in the play
they change their views, become disappointed in their ideals and hopes. Remaining merciless to the adherents of routine, portraying them satirically both when they show stupid conservatism, and when they claim the reputation of mysterious, original personalities, the “title” of liberals, Ostrovsky draws with deep sympathy the true bearers of the idea of enlightenment. and humanity. But even these beloved heroes in his later plays he often displays in a dual light. These heroes express high “chivalrous”, “Schillerian” feelings in a comic, “reduced” form, and their real, tragic situation is softened by the author’s humor (Neschastvitsev - “Forest”, Korpelov - “Labor Bread”, 1874; Zybkin - “True - good, but happiness is better", 1877; Meluzov - "Talents and Admirers", 1882). The main place in the later plays of Ostrovsky is occupied by the image of a woman, and if before she was portrayed as a victim of family tyranny or social inequality, now she is a person who makes her demands on society, but shares its delusions and bears her share of responsibility for the state of public morals. The woman of the post-reform period ceased to be a "terem" recluse. In vain the heroines of the plays The Last Victim (1877) and The Heart Is Not a Stone (1879) try to “shut themselves” into the silence of their home, and here they are overtaken by modern life in the form of prudent, cruel businessmen and adventurers who consider the beauty and the very personality of a woman as application to capital. Surrounded by successful businessmen and losers dreaming of success, it cannot always distinguish between real values and imaginary ones. The playwright peers with condescending sympathy at the new attempts of his contemporaries to gain independence, noting their mistakes and worldly inexperience. However, subtle, spiritualized natures are especially dear to him, women striving for creativity, moral purity, proud and strong in spirit Kruchinina - “Guilty Without Guilt”, 1884).
In the writer's best drama of this period, The Dowry (1878) modern woman, who feels like a person who independently makes important life decisions, is faced with the cruel laws of society and can neither reconcile with them nor oppose them with new ideals. Being under the charm of a strong man, a bright personality, she does not immediately realize that his charm is inseparable from the power that wealth gives him, and from the merciless cruelty of the "collector of capital." The death of Larisa is a tragic way out of the insoluble moral contradictions of the time. The tragedy of the heroine's situation is aggravated by the fact that in the course of the events depicted in the drama, experiencing bitter disappointments, she herself changes. The falsity of the ideal is revealed to her, in the name of which she was ready to make any sacrifices. In all its ugliness, the position to which it is doomed is revealed - the role of an expensive thing. For its possession, the rich are fighting, confident that beauty, talent, a spiritually rich personality - everything can be bought. The death of the heroine of "Dowry" and Katerina in "Thunderstorm" mark the verdict on a society that is not able to preserve the treasure of a spiritual personality, beauty and talent, it is doomed to moral impoverishment, to the triumph of vulgarity and mediocrity.
In Ostrovsky's later plays, comedic colors gradually fade, which helped to recreate social spheres separated from each other, the life of different classes, differing in their way of life and way of speech. Wealthy merchants, industrialists and representatives of commercial capital, landowning nobles and influential officials constituted a single society at the end of the 19th century. Noting this, Ostrovsky at the same time sees the growth of the democratic intelligentsia, which is presented in his latest works no longer as lonely eccentric dreamers, but as a certain established environment with its own way of working life, its ideals and interests. Ostrovsky attached great importance to the moral influence of representatives of this milieu on society. Serving art, science, education, he considered the high mission of the intelligentsia.
Ostrovsky's dramaturgy in many respects contradicted the cliches and canons of European, especially modern French, dramaturgy with its ideal of a "well-made" play, complex intrigue and a tendentiously unambiguous solution to straightforwardly posed topical problems. Ostrovsky had a negative attitude towards sensational "actual" plays, to the oratorical declarations of their heroes and theatrical effects.
Chekhov rightly considered “smooth, smooth, ordinary life as it really is” as plots characteristic of Ostrovsky. Ostrovsky himself has repeatedly argued that the simplicity and vitality of the plot is the greatest merit of any literary work. The love of young people, their desire to unite their destinies, overcoming material calculations and class prejudices, the struggle for existence and the thirst for spirituality.
independence, the need to protect one's personality from the encroachments of those in power and the torment of self-esteem of the humiliated "
(1843 – 1886).
Alexander Nikolaevich "Ostrovsky is a "giant of theatrical literature" (Lunacharsky), he created the Russian theater, a whole repertoire on which many generations of actors were brought up, the traditions of stage art were strengthened and developed. It is difficult to overestimate his role in the history of the development of Russian drama and the entire national culture. He did as much for the development of Russian dramaturgy as Shakespeare did in England, Lope de Vega in Spain, Molière in France, Goldoni in Italy, and Schiller in Germany.
"History left the name of the great and brilliant only for those writers who knew how to write for the whole people, and only those works survived the centuries that were truly popular at home; such works eventually become understandable and valuable for other peoples, and finally, and for the whole world." These words of the great playwright Alexander Nikolayevich Ostrovsky can be attributed to his own work.
Despite the harassment inflicted by the censorship, the theatrical and literary committee and the directorate of the imperial theaters, despite the criticism of reactionary circles, Ostrovsky's dramaturgy gained more and more sympathy every year both among democratic spectators and among artists.
Developing the best traditions of Russian dramatic art, using the experience of progressive foreign dramaturgy, tirelessly learning about the life of his native country, constantly communicating with the people, closely connecting with the most progressive contemporary public, Ostrovsky became an outstanding depiction of the life of his time, who embodied the dreams of Gogol, Belinsky and other progressive figures. literature about the appearance and triumph on the national stage of Russian characters.
The creative activity of Ostrovsky had a great influence on the entire further development of progressive Russian drama. It was from him that our best playwrights studied, he taught. It was to him that aspiring dramatic writers were drawn in their time.
The strength of Ostrovsky's influence on the writers of his day can be evidenced by a letter to the playwright poetess A. D. Mysovskaya. “Do you know how great was your influence on me? It was not love for art that made me understand and appreciate you: on the contrary, you taught me to love and respect art. I am indebted to you alone for the fact that I withstood the temptation to fall into the arena of miserable literary mediocrity, did not chase after cheap laurels thrown by the hands of sweet and sour half-educated. You and Nekrasov made me fall in love with thought and work, but Nekrasov gave me only the first impetus, you are the direction. Reading your works, I realized that rhyming is not poetry, and a set of phrases is not literature, and that only by processing the mind and technique, the artist will be a real artist.
Ostrovsky had a powerful impact not only on the development of domestic drama, but also on the development of the Russian theater. The colossal importance of Ostrovsky in the development of the Russian theater is well emphasized in a poem dedicated to Ostrovsky and read in 1903 by M. N. Yermolova from the stage of the Maly Theater:
On the stage, life itself, from the stage blows the truth,
And the bright sun caresses and warms us ...
The live speech of ordinary, living people sounds,
On stage, not a “hero”, not an angel, not a villain,
But just a man ... Happy actor
In a hurry to quickly break the heavy fetters
Conditions and lies. Words and feelings are new
But in the secrets of the soul, the answer sounds to them, -
And all the mouths whisper: blessed is the poet,
Tore off the shabby, tinsel covers
And shed a bright light into the kingdom of darkness
The famous artist wrote about the same in her memoirs in 1924: “Together with Ostrovsky, truth itself and life itself appeared on the stage ... The growth of original drama began, full of responses to modernity ... They started talking about the poor, the humiliated and insulted.”
The realistic direction, muffled by the theatrical policy of the autocracy, continued and deepened by Ostrovsky, turned the theater onto the path of close connection with reality. Only it gave life to the theater as a national, Russian, folk theater.
“You brought a whole library of works of art as a gift to literature, you created your own special world for the stage. You alone completed the building, at the foundation of which you laid cornerstones Fonvizin, Griboyedov, Gogol. This wonderful letter was received among other congratulations in the year of the thirty-fifth anniversary of literary and theatrical activity, Alexander Nikolaevich Ostrovsky from another great Russian writer - Goncharov.
But much earlier, about the very first work of the still young Ostrovsky, published in Moskvityanin, a subtle connoisseur of elegance and a sensitive observer V. F. Odoevsky wrote: this man is a great talent. I consider three tragedies in Rus': “Undergrowth”, “Woe from Wit”, “Inspector General”. I put number four on Bankrupt.
From such a promising first assessment to Goncharov's anniversary letter - a full, busy life; labor, and led to such a logical relationship of assessments, because talent requires, first of all, great labor on itself, and the playwright did not sin before God - he did not bury his talent in the ground. Having published the first work in 1847, Ostrovsky has since written 47 plays, and translated more than twenty plays from European languages. And in total, in the folk theater he created, there are about a thousand actors.
Shortly before his death, in 1886, Alexander Nikolayevich received a letter from L. N. Tolstoy, in which the brilliant prose writer admitted: “I know from experience how people read, listen and remember your things, and therefore I would like to help you have now quickly become in reality what you are, undoubtedly, a writer of the whole people in the broadest sense.
Even before Ostrovsky, progressive Russian dramaturgy had magnificent plays. Let us recall Fonvizin's "Undergrowth", Griboedov's "Woe from Wit", Pushkin's "Boris Godunov", Gogol's "Inspector General" and Lermontov's "Masquerade". Each of these plays could enrich and embellish, as Belinsky rightly wrote, the literature of any Western European country.
But these plays were too few. And they did not determine the state of the theatrical repertoire. Figuratively speaking, they towered above the level of mass dramaturgy like lonely, rare mountains in an endless desert plain. The vast majority of the plays that filled the then theater scene were translations of empty, frivolous vaudeville and sentimental melodramas woven from horrors and crimes. Both vaudeville and melodrama, terribly far from life, were not even its shadow.
In the development of Russian dramaturgy and domestic theater, the appearance of plays by A.N. Ostrovsky constituted a whole era. They sharply turned dramaturgy and theater back to life, to its truth, to what truly touched and excited people of the unprivileged stratum of the population, working people. Creating "plays of life", as Dobrolyubov called them, Ostrovsky acted as a fearless knight of truth, a tireless fighter against the dark kingdom of autocracy, a merciless exposer of the ruling classes - the nobility, the bourgeoisie and the officials who faithfully served them.
But Ostrovsky was not limited to the role of a satirical accuser. He vividly, sympathetically depicted the victims of socio-political and domestic despotism, workers, truth-seekers, enlighteners, warm-hearted Protestants against arbitrariness and violence.
The playwright not only made people of labor and progress, bearers of the people's truth and wisdom, the positive heroes of his plays, but also wrote in the name of the people and for the people.
Ostrovsky portrayed in his plays the prose of life, ordinary people in everyday circumstances. Taking the universal problems of evil and goodness, truth and injustice, beauty and ugliness as the content of his plays, Ostrovsky outlived his time and entered our era as her contemporary.
The creative path of A.N. Ostrovsky lasted four decades. He wrote his first works in 1846, and his last in 1886.
During this time, he wrote 47 original plays and several plays in collaboration with Solovyov (“Balzaminov's Marriage”, “Savage”, “Shines but does not warm”, etc.); made many translations from Italian, Spanish, French, English, Indian (Shakespeare, Goldoni, Lope de Vega - 22 plays). There are 728 roles, 180 acts in his plays; all Rus' is represented. Variety of genres: comedies, dramas, dramatic chronicles, family scenes, tragedies, dramatic sketches are presented in his dramaturgy. He acts in his work as a romantic, householder, tragedian and comedian.
Of course, any periodization is to some extent conditional, but in order to better navigate the diversity of Ostrovsky's work, we will divide his work into several stages.
1846 - 1852 - the initial stage of creativity. The most important works written during this period are: “Notes of a Zamoskvoretsky Resident”, the plays “A Picture of Family Happiness”, “Own People - Let's Settle”, “The Poor Bride”.
1853 - 1856 - the so-called "Slavophile" period: "Don't get into your sleigh." "Poverty is not a vice", "Do not live as you want."
1856 - 1859 - rapprochement with the circle of Sovremennik, a return to realistic positions. The most important plays of this period: "A Profitable Place", "The Pupil", "A Hangover in Someone else's Feast", "The Balzaminov Trilogy", and, finally, created during the period of a revolutionary situation, "Thunderstorm".
1861 - 1867 - deepening in the study of national history, the result is the dramatic chronicles of Kozma Zakharyich Minin-Sukhoruk, Dmitry the Pretender and Vasily Shuisky, Tushino, the drama Vasilisa Melentievna, the comedy Voyevoda or Dream on the Volga.
1869 - 1884 - the plays created during this period of creativity are devoted to social and domestic relations that developed in Russian life after the reform of 1861. The most important plays of this period: “Enough simplicity for every wise man”, “Hot Heart”, “Mad Money”, “Forest”, “Wolves and Sheep”, “Last Victim”, “Late Love”, “Talents and Admirers”, “ Guilty without guilt."
Ostrovsky's plays did not appear out of nowhere. Their appearance is directly connected with the plays of Griboedov and Gogol, which absorbed everything valuable that the Russian comedy that preceded them achieved. Ostrovsky knew the old Russian comedy of the 18th century well, he specially studied the works of Kapnist, Fonvizin, Plavilshchikov. On the other hand - the influence of the prose of the "natural school".
Ostrovsky came to literature in the late 1940s, when Gogol's dramaturgy was recognized as the greatest literary and social phenomenon. Turgenev wrote: "Gogol showed the way how our dramatic literature will go with time." Ostrovsky, from the first steps of his activity, realized himself as a successor to the traditions of Gogol, the "natural school", he considered himself among the authors of "a new trend in our literature."
The years 1846 - 1859, when Ostrovsky worked on his first big comedy "Our People - Let's Settle", were the years of his formation as a realist writer.
The ideological and artistic program of Ostrovsky, the playwright, is clearly set out in his critical articles and reviews. The article "Mistake", the story of Madame Tour" ("Moskvityanin", 1850), an unfinished article on Dickens' novel "Dombey and Son" (1848), a review of Menshikov's comedy "Fads", ("Moskvityanin" 1850), "Note on the situation Dramatic Art in Russia at the Present Time" (1881), "A Table Word on Pushkin" (1880).
Ostrovsky's socio-literary views are characterized by the following main provisions:
First, he believes that drama should be a reflection of people's life, people's consciousness.
The people for Ostrovsky are, first of all, the democratic mass, the lower classes, ordinary people.
Ostrovsky demanded that the writer study the life of the people, those problems that concern the people.
"In order to be folk writer", - he writes," love for the motherland is not enough ... you need to know your people well, get along with them shorter, become related. The best school for talent is the study of one's nationality.
Secondly, Ostrovsky talks about the need for national identity for dramaturgy.
The nationality of literature and art is understood by Ostrovsky as an integral consequence of their nationality and democracy. "Only that art is national, which is popular, for the true bearer of nationality is the popular, democratic mass."
In the "Table Word about Pushkin" - an example of such a poet is Pushkin. Pushkin is a people's poet, Pushkin is a national poet. Pushkin played a huge role in the development of Russian literature because he "gave the courage to the Russian writer to be Russian."
And, finally, the third provision is about the socially accusatory nature of literature. “The more popular the work, the more accusatory element in it, because the “distinctive feature of the Russian people” is “aversion from everything that is sharply defined”, unwillingness to return to the “old, already condemned forms” of life, the desire to “seek the best”.
The public expects art to denounce the vices and shortcomings of society, to judge life.
Condemning these vices in his artistic images, the writer arouses disgust in the public, makes them be better, more moral. Therefore, “the social, denunciatory direction can be called moral and public,” Ostrovsky emphasizes. Speaking of the social accusatory or moral-public direction, he means:
accusatory criticism of the dominant way of life; protection of positive moral principles, i.e. protecting the aspirations of ordinary people and their pursuit of social justice.
Thus, the term "moral accusatory direction" in its objective meaning approaches the concept of critical realism.
The works of Ostrovsky, written by him in the late 40s and early 50s, “A Picture of Family Happiness”, “Notes of a Zamoskvoretsky Resident”, “Our People - Let's Settle”, “The Poor Bride - are organically connected with the literature of the natural school.
“The picture of family happiness” is largely in the nature of a dramatized essay: it is not divided into phenomena, there is no completion of the plot. Ostrovsky set himself the task of depicting the life of the merchants. The hero interests Ostrovsky solely as a representative of his estate, his way of life, his way of thinking. Goes beyond the natural school. Ostrovsky reveals the close connection between the morality of his characters and their social existence.
He puts the family life of the merchants in direct connection with the monetary and material relations of this environment.
Ostrovsky completely condemns his heroes. His heroes express their views on the family, marriage, education, as if demonstrating the wildness of these views.
This technique was common in the satirical literature of the 40s - the method of self-exposure.
The most significant work of Ostrovsky 40-ies. - came the comedy "Our people - let's settle" (1849), which was perceived by contemporaries as a major conquest of the natural school in drama.
"He started out extraordinary," Turgenev writes of Ostrovsky.
The comedy immediately attracted the attention of the authorities. When the censorship submitted the play to the tsar for consideration, Nicholas I wrote: “Printed in vain! To play same ban, in any case.
Ostrovsky's name was put on the list of unreliable persons, and the playwright was placed under covert police surveillance for five years. The “Case of the writer Ostrovsky” was opened.
Ostrovsky, like Gogol, criticizes the very foundations of relations that dominate society. He is critical of contemporary social life and in this sense he is a follower of Gogol. And at the same time, Ostrovsky immediately defined himself as a writer - an innovator. Comparing the works of the early stage of his work (1846-1852) with the traditions of Gogol, let's see what new things Ostrovsky brought to literature.
The action of Gogol's "high comedy" takes place as if in a world of unreasonable reality - "The Government Inspector".
Gogol tested a person in his attitude to society, to civic duty - and showed - that's what these people are like. This is the center of vices. They don't care about society at all. They are guided in their behavior by narrowly selfish calculations, selfish interests.
Gogol does not focus on everyday life - laughter through tears. The bureaucracy for him acts not as a social stratum, but as a political force that determines the life of society as a whole.
Ostrovsky has something completely different - a thorough analysis of social life.
Like the heroes of the essays of the natural school, Ostrovsky's heroes are ordinary, typical representatives of their social environment, which is shared by their ordinary everyday life, all its prejudices.
a) In the play "Our people - we'll settle" Ostrovsky creates a typical biography of a merchant, talks about how capital is accumulated.
Bolshov sold pies from a stall as a child, and then became one of the first rich men in Zamoskvorechye.
Podkhalyuzin made his capital by robbing the owner, and, finally, Tishka is an errand boy, but, however, he already knows how to please the new owner.
Here are given, as it were, three stages of a merchant's career. Through their fate, Ostrovsky showed how capital is made up.
b) The peculiarity of Ostrovsky's dramaturgy was that he showed this question - how capital is made up in a merchant environment - through consideration of intra-family, daily, ordinary relations.
It was Ostrovsky who was the first in Russian drama to consider thread by thread the web of daily, everyday relationships. He was the first to introduce into the sphere of art all these trifles of life, family secrets, petty economic affairs. A huge place is occupied by seemingly meaningless everyday scenes. Much attention is paid to the poses, gestures of the characters, their manners of speaking, their very speech.
Ostrovsky's first plays seemed to the reader to be unusual, not for the stage, more like narrative rather than dramatic works.
The circle of Ostrovsky's works, directly related to the natural school of the 40s, closes with the play The Poor Bride (1852).
In it, Ostrovsky shows the same dependence of a person on economic, monetary relations. Several suitors seek the hand of Marya Andreevna, but the one who gets it does not need to make any effort to achieve the goal. The well-known economic law of a capitalist society works for him, where everything is decided by money. The image of Marya Andreevna begins in the work of Ostrovsky, a new theme for him, the position of a poor girl in a society where everything is determined by commercial calculation. ("Forest", "Pupil", "Dowry").
So, for the first time in Ostrovsky (unlike Gogol) not only vice appears, but also a victim of vice. In addition to the masters of modern society, there are those who oppose them - aspirations whose needs are in conflict with the laws and customs of this environment. This entailed new colors. Ostrovsky discovered new aspects of his talent - dramatic satirism. “Own people - we will count” - satire.
The artistic manner of Ostrovsky in this play is even more different from Gogol's dramaturgy. The plot loses its edge here. It is based on an ordinary case. The theme that was voiced in Gogol's "Marriage" and received satirical coverage - the transformation of marriage into a purchase and sale, here acquired a tragic sound.
But at the same time, this is a comedy in terms of characterization, in terms of positions. But if the heroes of Gogol cause laughter and condemnation of the public, then in Ostrovsky the viewer saw his daily life, felt deep sympathy for some - condemned others.
The second stage in the activities of Ostrovsky (1853 - 1855) is marked by the seal of Slavophile influences.
First of all, this transition of Ostrovsky to Slavophile positions should be explained by the intensification of the atmosphere, the reaction that is established in the "gloomy seven years" of 1848-1855.
In what specific way did this influence appear, what ideas of the Slavophiles turned out to be close to Ostrovsky? First of all, Ostrovsky’s rapprochement with the so-called “young editors” of The Moskvityanin, whose behavior should be explained by their characteristic interest in Russian national life, folk art, and the historical past of the people, which was very close to Ostrovsky.
But Ostrovsky was unable to distinguish in this interest the main conservative principle, which manifested itself in the prevailing social contradictions, in a hostile attitude towards the concept of historical progress, in admiration for everything patriarchal.
In fact, the Slavophils acted as ideologists of the socially backward elements of the petty and middle bourgeoisie.
One of the most prominent ideologists of the "Young Edition" of "Moskvityanin" Apollon Grigoriev argued that there is a single "national spirit" that constitutes the organic basis of people's life. Capturing this national spirit is the most important thing for a writer.
Social contradictions, the struggle of classes - these are historical stratifications that will be overcome and that do not violate the unity of the nation.
The writer must show the eternal moral principles of the people's character. The bearer of these eternal moral principles, the spirit of the people, is the “middle, industrial, merchant” class, because it was this class that preserved the patriarchy of the traditions of old Rus', preserved the faith, customs, and language of the fathers. This class has not been touched by the falsity of civilization.
Ostrovsky's official recognition of this doctrine is his letter in September 1853 to Pogodin (the editor of Moskvityanin), in which Ostrovsky writes that he has now become a supporter of the "new direction", the essence of which is to appeal to the positive principles of everyday life and folk character.
The former view of things now seems to him "young and too cruel." The denunciation of social vices does not seem to be the main task.
“Correctors will be found even without us. In order to have the right to correct the people without offending them, one must show them that one knows the good behind them” (September 1853), writes Ostrovsky.
A distinctive feature of the Russian people of Ostrovsky at this stage is not his willingness to renounce the outdated norms of life, but patriarchy, adherence to the unchanged, fundamental conditions of life. Ostrovsky now wants to combine the “high with the comic” in his plays, understanding by the high the positive features of merchant life, and by the “comic” - everything that lies outside the merchant circle, but exerting its influence on it.
These new views of Ostrovsky found their expression in three so-called "Slavophile" plays by Ostrovsky: "Do not sit in your sleigh", "Poverty is not a vice", "Do not live as you want."
All three Slavophile plays by Ostrovsky have one defining beginning - an attempt to idealize the patriarchal foundations of life and the family morality of the merchant class.
And in these plays, Ostrovsky turns to family and everyday subjects. But behind them there are no longer economic, social relations.
Family, domestic relations are interpreted in purely moral terms - everything depends on the moral qualities of people, there are no material, monetary interests behind this. Ostrovsky tries to find a way to resolve the contradictions in moral terms, in the moral rebirth of the characters. (The moral enlightenment of Gordey Tortsov, the nobility of the soul of Borodkin and Rusakov). Tyranny is justified not so much by the existence of capital, economic relations, but by the personal properties of a person.
Ostrovsky depicts those aspects of merchant life, in which, as it seems to him, the national, the so-called "national spirit" is concentrated. Therefore, he focuses on the poetic, bright sides of merchant life, introduces ritual, folklore motifs, showing the "folk-epic" beginning of the life of the heroes to the detriment of their social certainty.
Ostrovsky emphasized in the plays of this period the closeness of his heroes-merchants to the people, their social and domestic ties with the peasantry. They say about themselves that they are “simple”, “ill-mannered” people, that their fathers were peasants.
From the artistic side, these plays are clearly weaker than the previous ones. Their composition is deliberately simplified, the characters turned out to be less clear, and the denouement less justified.
The plays of this period are characterized by didacticism, they openly contrast light and dark principles, the characters are sharply divided into “good” and “evil”, vice is punished at the denouement. The plays of the "Slavophile period" are characterized by open morality, sentimentality, and edification.
At the same time, it should be said that during this period, Ostrovsky, in general, remained on a realistic position. According to Dobrolyubov, "the power of direct artistic feeling could not leave the author here either, and therefore private positions and individual characters are distinguished by genuine truth."
The significance of Ostrovsky's plays written during this period lies, first of all, in the fact that they continue to ridicule and condemn tyranny in whatever form it manifests /Lubim Tortsov/. (If Bolshov - rudely and straightforwardly - is a type of tyrant, then Rusakov is softened and meek).
Dobrolyubov: “In Bolshov we saw a vigorous nature, influenced by merchant life, in Rusakov it seems to us: but this is how even honest and gentle natures come out with him.”
Bolshov: “What am I and my father to do if I don’t give orders?”
Rusakov: "I will not give for the one whom she loves, but for the one whom I love."
The glorification of the patriarchal life in these plays is contradictory combined with the formulation of acute social issues, and the desire to create images that would embody national ideals (Rusakov, Borodkin), with sympathy for young people who bring new aspirations, opposition to everything patriarchal, old. (Mitya, Lyubov Gordeevna).
In these plays, Ostrovsky's desire to find a bright, positive beginning in ordinary people was expressed.
This is how the theme of folk humanism arises, the breadth of the nature of a simple person, which is expressed in the ability to boldly and independently look at the environment and in the ability to sometimes sacrifice one's own interests for the sake of others.
This theme was then sounded in such central plays by Ostrovsky as "Thunderstorm", "Forest", "Dowry".
The idea of creating a folk performance - a didactic performance - was not alien to Ostrovsky when he created "Poverty is not a vice" and "Do not live as you want."
Ostrovsky sought to convey ethical principles people, the aesthetic basis of his life, to evoke a response from the democratic audience to the poetry of their native life, national antiquity.
Ostrovsky was guided in this by the noble desire "to give the democratic spectator an initial cultural inoculation." Another thing is the idealization of humility, humility, conservatism.
The assessment of Slavophile plays in Chernyshevsky's articles "Poverty is no vice" and Dobrolyubov's "Dark Kingdom" is curious.
Chernyshevsky published his article in 1854, when Ostrovsky was close to the Slavophiles, and there was a danger of Ostrovsky departing from realistic positions. Chernyshevsky calls Ostrovsky's plays "Poverty is not a vice" and "Do not sit in your own sleigh" "false", but further continues: "Ostrovsky has not yet ruined his wonderful talent, he needs to return to a realistic direction." “In truth, the power of talent, an erroneous direction destroys even the strongest talent,” concludes Chernyshevsky.
Dobrolyubov's article was written in 1859, when Ostrovsky freed himself from Slavophile influences. It was pointless to recall previous misconceptions, and Dobrolyubov, limiting himself to a dull hint on this score, focuses on revealing the realistic beginning of these same plays.
The assessments of Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov complement each other and are an example of the principles of revolutionary democratic criticism.
At the beginning of 1856, a new stage began in the work of Ostrovsky.
The playwright approaches the editors of Sovremennik. This rapprochement coincides with the period of the rise of progressive social forces, with the maturing of a revolutionary situation.
He, as if following the advice of Nekrasov, returns to the path of studying social reality, the path of creating analytical plays in which pictures of modern life are given.
(In a review of the play “Don’t Live the Way You Want,” Nekrasov advised him, abandoning all preconceived ideas, to follow the path that his own talent would lead: “give free development to your talent” - the path of depicting real life).
Chernyshevsky emphasizes Ostrovsky's "wonderful talent, strong talent. Dobrolyubov - "the power of artistic flair" of the playwright.
During this period, Ostrovsky created such significant plays as "The Pupil", "Profitable Place", the trilogy about Balzaminov and, finally, during the period of the revolutionary situation - "Thunderstorm".
This period of Ostrovsky's work is characterized, first of all, by the expansion of the scope of life phenomena, the expansion of topics.
Firstly, in the field of his research, which includes the landlord, serf environment, Ostrovsky showed that the landowner Ulanbekova (“The Pupil”) mocks her victims just as cruelly as illiterate, ignorant merchants.
Ostrovsky shows that the same struggle between the rich and the poor, the older and the younger, is going on in the landowner-noble environment, as well as in the merchant one.
In addition, in the same period, Ostrovsky raises the topic of philistinism. Ostrovsky was the first Russian writer to notice and artistically discover philistinism as a social group.
The playwright discovered in philistinism a predominating and overshadowing all other interests interest in the material, what Gorky later defined as "an ugly developed sense of ownership."
In the trilogy about Balzaminov (“Festive sleep - before dinner”, “Your own dogs bite, don’t pester someone else’s”, “What you go for, you will find”) / 1857-1861 /, Ostrovsky denounces the petty-bourgeois way of existence, with its mentality, limitations , vulgarity, greed, ridiculous dreams.
In the trilogy about Balzaminov, not just ignorance or narrow-mindedness is revealed, but some kind of intellectual wretchedness, the inferiority of a tradesman. The image is built on the opposition of this mental inferiority, moral insignificance - and complacency, confidence in one's right.
In this trilogy there are elements of vaudeville, buffoonery, features of external comedy. But internal comedy prevails in it, since the figure of Balzaminov is internally comical.
Ostrovsky showed that the realm of the philistines is the same dark realm of impenetrable vulgarity, savagery, which is directed towards one goal - profit.
The next play - "Profitable Place" - testifies to the return of Ostrovsky to the path of "moral and accusatory" dramaturgy. In the same period, Ostrovsky was the discoverer of another dark kingdom - the kingdom of officials, the royal bureaucracy.
During the years of the abolition of serfdom, the denunciation of bureaucratic orders had a special political meaning. The bureaucracy was the most complete expression of the autocratic-feudal system. It embodied the exploitative-predatory essence of the autocracy. It was no longer just domestic arbitrariness, but a violation of common interests in the name of the law. It is in connection with this play that Dobrolyubov expands the concept of "tyranny", understanding it as autocracy in general.
“Profitable Place” reminds N. Gogol's comedy “Inspector General” in terms of issues. But if in The Inspector General the officials who commit lawlessness feel guilty and fear retribution, Ostrovsky's officials are imbued with the consciousness of their rightness and impunity. Bribery, abuse, seem to them and others the norm.
Ostrovsky emphasized that the distortion of all moral norms in society is the law, and the law itself is something illusory. Both officials and people dependent on them know that the laws are always on the side of those who have power.
Thus, officials - for the first time in literature - Ostrovsky are shown as a kind of dealers in the law. (The official can turn the law however he wants).
He came to Ostrovsky's play and new hero- A young official Zhadov, who has just graduated from the university. The conflict between the representatives of the old formation and Zhadov acquires the force of an irreconcilable contradiction:
a / Ostrovsky managed to show the failure of the illusions about an honest official as a force capable of stopping the abuses of the administration.
b/ fight against "Yusovism" or compromise, betrayal of ideals - Zhadov has no other choice.
Ostrovsky denounced that system, those living conditions that give rise to bribe-takers. The progressive significance of comedy lies in the fact that in it the irreconcilable denial of the old world and "Yusovism" merged with the search for a new morality.
Zhadov is a weak man, he cannot stand the fight, he also goes to ask for a "lucrative position".
Chernyshevsky believed that the play would have been even stronger if it had ended with the fourth act, i.e., with Zhadov’s cry of despair: “Let’s go to uncle to ask for a profitable job!” In the fifth, Zhadov is confronted with the abyss that nearly ruined him morally. And, although the end of Vyshimirsky is not typical, there is an element of chance in Zhadov’s salvation, his words, his belief that “somewhere there are other, more persistent, worthy people” who will not compromise, will not reconcile, will not give in, talk about the prospect of further development of new social relations. Ostrovsky foresaw the coming social upsurge.
The rapid development of psychological realism, which we observe in the second half of the 19th century, also manifested itself in dramaturgy. The secret of Ostrovsky's dramatic writing lies not in one-dimensional characteristics human types, but in the desire to create full-blooded human characters, the internal contradictions and struggles of which serve as a powerful impetus for the dramatic movement. G.A. Tovstonogov spoke well about this feature of Ostrovsky’s creative manner, referring, in particular, to Glumov from the comedy Enough Simplicity for Every Wise Man, a far from ideal character: “Why is Glumov charming, although he commits a number of vile deeds? he is unsympathetic to us, then there is no performance. What makes him charming is hatred of this world, and we inwardly justify his way of retribution with him.
Interest in the human personality in all its states forced writers to look for means to express them. In the drama, the main such means was the stylistic individualization of the characters' language, and it was Ostrovsky who played the leading role in the development of this method. In addition, in psychologism, Ostrovsky made an attempt to go further, along the path of giving his characters the maximum possible freedom within the framework of the author's intention - the result of such an experiment was the image of Katerina in The Thunderstorm.
In "Thunderstorm" Ostrovsky rose to the image of a tragic collision of living human feelings with the deadly house-building life.
Despite the variety of types of dramatic conflicts presented in Ostrovsky's early works, their poetics and their general atmosphere were determined, first of all, by the fact that tyranny was given in them as a natural and inevitable phenomenon of life. Even the so-called "Slavophile" plays, with their search for bright and good principles, did not destroy and did not violate the oppressive atmosphere of tyranny. The play "The Thunderstorm" is also characterized by this general coloring. And at the same time, there is a force in her that resolutely opposes the terrible, deadly routine - this is the folk element, expressed both in folk characters (Katerina, first of all, Kuligin and even Kudryash), and in Russian nature, which becomes an essential element of dramatic action. .
The play "Thunderstorm", which raised the complex issues of modern life and appeared in print and on stage just on the eve of the so-called "liberation" of the peasants, testified that Ostrovsky was free from any illusions about the ways of social development in Russia.
Even before the publication of "Thunderstorm" appeared on the Russian stage. The premiere took place on November 16, 1859 at the Maly Theatre. Magnificent actors were involved in the play: S. Vasiliev (Tikhon), P. Sadovsky (Wild), N. Rykalova (Kabanova), L. Nikulina-Kositskaya (Katerina), V. Lensky (Kudryash) and others. The production was directed by N. Ostrovsky himself. The premiere was a huge success, and subsequent performances were triumphant. A year after the brilliant premiere of The Thunderstorm, the play was awarded the highest academic award - the Great Uvarov Prize.
In "Thunderstorm" he sharply denounces social order Russia, and the death of the main character is shown by the playwright as a direct consequence of her hopeless situation in the "dark kingdom". The conflict in Groz is built on an irreconcilable clash between the freedom-loving Katerina and scary world wild and boar, with bestial laws based on "cruelty, lies, mockery, humiliation of the human person. Katerina went against tyranny and obscurantism, armed only with the power of her feelings, the consciousness of the right to life, happiness and love. According to the fair remark of Dobrolyubov, she "feels the opportunity to satisfy the natural thirst of her soul and can no longer remain motionless: she is eager for a new life, even if she had to die in this impulse."
From childhood, Katerina was brought up in a peculiar environment that developed in her romantic dreaminess, religiosity and a thirst for freedom. These character traits further determined the tragedy of her position. Brought up in a religious spirit, she understands all the "sinfulness" of her feelings for Boris, but she cannot resist the natural attraction and completely surrenders to this impulse.
Katerina opposes not only "Kabanov's concepts of morality." She openly protests against the immutable religious dogmas that affirmed the categorical inviolability of church marriage and condemned suicide as contrary to Christian teaching. Bearing in mind this fullness of Katerina’s protest, Dobrolyubov wrote: “Here is the true strength of character, which in any case you can rely on! This is the height to which our folk life reaches in its development, but to which very few in our literature have been able to rise, and no one has been able to hold on to it as well as Ostrovsky.
Katerina does not want to put up with the surrounding deadly situation. “I don’t want to live here, so I won’t, even if you cut me!” she says to Varvara. And she commits suicide. Katerina's character is complex and multifaceted. This complexity is most eloquently evidenced, perhaps, by the fact that many outstanding performers, starting from seemingly completely opposite dominants of the main character's character, have not been able to exhaust it to the end. All these various interpretations did not fully reveal the main thing in Katerina's character: her love, to which she gives herself with all the immediacy of a young nature. Her life experience is negligible, most of all in her nature a sense of beauty, a poetic perception of nature is developed. However, her character is given in movement, in development. One contemplation of nature, as we know from the play, is not enough for her.We need other areas of application of spiritual forces.Prayer, service, myths are also means of satisfying the poetic feelings of the main character.
Dobrolyubov wrote: “It is not rituals that occupy her in the church: she does not hear at all what they sing and read there; she has other music in her soul, other visions, for her the service ends imperceptibly, as if in one second. She is occupied with trees strangely drawn on images, and she imagines a whole country of gardens, where all such trees are, and everything is in bloom, fragrant, everything is full of heavenly singing. Otherwise, on a sunny day, she will see how “such a bright pillar goes down from the dome, and smoke is walking in this pillar, like clouds,” and now she already sees, “as if angels are flying and singing in this pillar.” Sometimes she will introduce herself - why shouldn't she fly? And when she stands on a mountain, she is drawn to fly like that: like this, she would run away, raise her hands, and fly ... ".
A new, yet unexplored sphere of manifestation of her spiritual powers was her love for Boris, which ultimately became the cause of her tragedy. “The passion of a nervous passionate woman and the struggle with debt, falling, repentance and heavy atonement for guilt - all this is filled with the liveliest dramatic interest, and is conducted with extraordinary art and knowledge of the heart,” I. A. Goncharov rightly noted.
How often is the passion, the immediacy of Katerina's nature, condemned, and her deep spiritual struggle is perceived as a manifestation of weakness. Meanwhile, in the memoirs of the artist E. B. Piunova-Schmidthoff, we find Ostrovsky’s curious story about his heroine: strong character. She proved this with her love for Boris and suicide. Katerina, although overwhelmed by the environment, at the first opportunity gives herself up to her passion, saying before that: “Come what may, but I will see Boris!” In front of the picture of hell, Katerina does not rage and hysteria, but only with her face and whole figure must portray mortal fear. In the scene of farewell to Boris, Katerina speaks quietly, like a patient, and only the last words: “My friend! My joy! Goodbye!" - He speaks as loudly as possible. Katherine's position became hopeless. You can’t live in your husband’s house ... There is nowhere to go. To parents? Yes, by that time they would have tied her up and brought her to her husband. Katerina came to the conclusion that it was impossible to live as she lived before, and, having a strong will, drowned herself ... ".
“Without fear of being accused of exaggeration,” wrote I. A. Goncharov, “I can honestly say that there was no such work as a drama in our literature. She undoubtedly occupies and probably will for a long time occupy the first place in high classical beauties. From whatever side it is taken, whether from the side of the creation plan, or the dramatic movement, or, finally, the characters, it is everywhere imprinted with the power of creativity, the subtlety of observation and the elegance of decoration. In The Thunderstorm, according to Goncharov, "a broad picture of national life and customs subsided."
Ostrovsky conceived The Thunderstorm as a comedy and then called it a drama. N. A. Dobrolyubov spoke very carefully about the genre nature of The Thunderstorm. He wrote that "the mutual relations of tyranny and voicelessness are brought in it to the most tragic consequences."
By the middle of the 19th century, Dobrolyubov’s definition of the “play of life” turned out to be more capacious than the traditional subdivision of dramatic art, which was still under the burden of classicistic norms. In Russian drama, there was a process of convergence of dramatic poetry with everyday reality, which naturally affected their genre nature. Ostrovsky, for example, wrote: “The history of Russian literature has two branches that have finally merged: one branch is grafting and is the offspring of a foreign, but well-rooted seed; it goes from Lomonosov through Sumarokov, Karamzin, Batyushkov, Zhukovsky, and so on. to Pushkin, where he begins to converge with another; the other - from Kantemir, through the comedies of the same Sumarokov, Fonvizin, Kapnist, Griboedov to Gogol; in him both are completely merged; dualism is over. On the one hand: laudatory odes, French tragedies, imitations of the ancients, the sensibility of the late eighteenth century, german romanticism, violent youthful literature; and on the other: satires, comedies, comedies and " Dead Souls”, Russia, as if at the same time, in the person of its best writers, lived period after period the life of foreign literatures and raised its own to universal human significance.
Comedy, thus, turned out to be closest to the everyday phenomena of Russian life, it sensitively responded to everything that worried the Russian public, reproduced life in its dramatic and tragic manifestations. That is why Dobrolyubov so stubbornly held on to the definition of "the play of life", seeing in it not so much a conventional genre meaning as the very principle of reproducing modern life in drama. Actually, Ostrovsky spoke about the same principle: “Many conditional rules have disappeared, and some more will disappear. Now dramatic works are nothing but a dramatized life. "This principle determined the development of dramatic genres throughout the subsequent decades of the 19th century. In terms of its genre, The Thunderstorm is a social tragedy.
A.I. Revyakin rightly notes that the main feature of the tragedy - "the image of irreconcilable life contradictions that cause the death of the protagonist, who is an outstanding person" - is evident in The Thunderstorm. The depiction of the folk tragedy, of course, led to new, original constructive forms of its embodiment. Ostrovsky repeatedly spoke out against the inert, traditional manner of constructing dramatic works. Thunderstorm was also innovative in this sense. He spoke about this, not without irony, in a letter to Turgenev dated June 14, 1874, in response to a proposal to print "Thunderstorm" translated into French: “It does not interfere with printing The Thunderstorm in a good French translation, it can impress with its originality; but whether it should be put on stage - one can think about it. I highly appreciate the ability of the French to make plays and I am afraid of offending them. discriminating taste his terrible incompetence. From the French point of view, the construction of the Thunderstorm is ugly, but it must be admitted that it is generally not very coherent. When I wrote The Thunderstorm, I was carried away by finishing the main roles and, with unforgivable frivolity, "reacted to the form, and at the same time I was in a hurry to keep up with the late Vasiliev's benefit performance."
A.I. Zhuravleva’s reasoning about the genre originality of “Thunderstorm” is curious: “The problem of genre interpretation is the most important in the analysis of this play. If we turn to the scientific-critical and theatrical traditions of the interpretation of this play, we can distinguish two prevailing trends. One of them is dictated by the understanding of "Thunderstorm" as a social and domestic drama, it attaches special importance to everyday life. The attention of the directors and, accordingly, the spectators is, as it were, equally distributed among all participants in the action, each person receives equal importance.
Another interpretation is determined by the understanding of "Thunderstorm" as a tragedy. Zhuravleva believes that such an interpretation is deeper and has "greater support in the text", despite the fact that the interpretation of "Thunderstorm" as a drama is based on the genre definition of Ostrovsky himself. The researcher rightly notes that "this definition is a tribute to tradition." Indeed, the entire previous history of Russian dramaturgy did not provide examples of a tragedy in which the heroes would be private individuals, and not historical figures, even legendary ones. "Thunderstorm" in this respect remained a unique phenomenon. The key point for understanding the genre of a dramatic work in this case is not the "social status" of the characters, but, above all, the nature of the conflict. If we understand the death of Katerina as the result of a collision with her mother-in-law, to see her as a victim of family oppression, then the scale of the heroes really looks small for a tragedy. But if you see that the fate of Katerina was determined by the clash of two historical eras, then the tragic nature of the conflict seems quite natural.
A typical sign of a tragic structure is the feeling of catharsis experienced by the audience during the denouement. By death, the heroine is freed both from oppression and from internal contradictions that torment her.
Thus, the social drama from the life of the merchant class develops into a tragedy. Ostrovsky was able to show the epoch-making turning point that is taking place in the common people's consciousness through a love-everyday collision. The awakening sense of personality and a new attitude to the world, based not on individual will, turned out to be in irreconcilable antagonism not only with the real, worldly reliable state of Ostrovsky's modern patriarchal way of life, but also with the ideal idea of morality inherent in a high heroine.
This transformation of drama into tragedy was also due to the triumph of the lyrical element in The Thunderstorm.
The symbolism of the title of the play is important. First of all, the word "thunderstorm" has a direct meaning in her text. The title image is included by the playwright in the development of the action, directly participates in it as a natural phenomenon. The motive of a thunderstorm develops in the play from the first to the fourth act. At the same time, the image of a thunderstorm was also recreated by Ostrovsky as a landscape: dark clouds filled with moisture (“as if a cloud is curling in a ball”), we feel stuffiness in the air, we hear thunder, we freeze before the light of lightning.
The title of the play also has a figurative meaning. The storm is raging in Katerina's soul, it is reflected in the struggle of creative and destructive principles, the collision of bright and gloomy forebodings, good and sinful feelings. The scenes with Grokha seem to push forward the dramatic action of the play.
The thunderstorm in the play also acquires a symbolic meaning, expressing the idea of the whole work as a whole. The appearance in the dark kingdom of such people as Katerina and Kuligin is a thunderstorm over Kalinov. The thunderstorm in the play conveys the catastrophic nature of life, the state of the world split in two. The many-sidedness and versatility of the title of the play becomes a kind of key to a deeper understanding of its essence.
“In Mr. Ostrovsky’s play, which bears the name “Thunderstorm,” wrote A. D. Galakhov, “the action and atmosphere are tragic, although many places excite laughter.” The Thunderstorm combines not only the tragic and the comic, but, what is especially important, the epic and the lyrical. All this determines the originality of the composition of the play. V.E. Meyerhold wrote excellently about this: “The peculiarity of the construction of the Thunderstorm is that Ostrovsky gives the highest point of tension in the fourth act (and not in the second picture of the second act), and the strengthening is noted in the script is not gradual (from, the second act through the third to the fourth), but with a push, or rather, with two pushes; the first rise is indicated in the second act, in the scene of Katerina's farewell to Tikhon (the rise is strong, but not yet very), and the second rise (very strong - this is the most sensitive push) in the fourth act, at the moment of Katerina's repentance.
Between these two acts (set as if on the tops of two unequal, but sharply rising hills) - the third act (with both pictures) lies, as it were, in a valley.
It is easy to see that the internal scheme of the construction of The Thunderstorm, subtly revealed by the director, is determined by the stages of development of Katerina's character, the stages of her development, her feelings for Boris.
A. Anastasiev notes that Ostrovsky's play has its own special destiny. For many decades, "Thunderstorm" has not left the stage of Russian theaters, N. A. Nikulina-Kositskaya, S. V. Vasilyev, N. V. Rykalova, G. N. Fedotova, M. N. Ermolova became famous for their performances of the main roles, P. A. Strepetova, O. O. Sadovskaya, A. Koonen, V. N. Pashennaya. And at the same time, "theater historians have not witnessed integral, harmonious, outstanding performances." The unsolved mystery of this great tragedy lies, according to the researcher, "in its many ideas, in the strongest alloy of undeniable, unconditional, concrete historical truth and poetic symbolism, in the organic combination of real action and a deeply hidden lyrical beginning."
Usually, when they talk about the lyricism of "Thunderstorm", they mean, first of all, the lyrical system of the worldview of the main character of the play, they also talk about the Volga, which is opposed in its most general form to the "barn" way of life and which causes Kuligin's lyrical outpourings . But the playwright could not - by virtue of the laws of the genre - include the Volga, the beautiful Volga landscapes, in general, nature in the system of dramatic action. He showed only the way in which nature becomes an integral element of the stage action. Nature here is not only an object of admiration and admiration, but also the main criterion for evaluating everything that exists, allowing you to see the alogism, the unnaturalness of modern life. “Did Ostrovsky write Thunderstorm? "Thunderstorm" Volga wrote! - exclaimed the famous theater critic and critic S. A. Yuryev.
“Every true everyday worker is at the same time a true romantic,” the well-known theater figure A. I. Yuzhin-Sumbatov will later say, referring to Ostrovsky. Romantic in the broad sense of the word, surprised by the correctness and severity of the laws of nature and the violation of these laws in public life. Ostrovsky talked about this in one of his early diary entries after arriving in Kostroma places: “And on the other side of the Volga, directly opposite the city, there are two villages; one is especially picturesque, from which the curliest grove stretches all the way to the Volga, the sun at sunset somehow miraculously climbed into it, from the root, and did many miracles.
Starting from this landscape sketch, Ostrovsky reasoned:
“I'm exhausted looking at this. Nature - you are a faithful lover, only terribly lustful; no matter how you love you, you are still dissatisfied; unsatisfied passion boils in your eyes, and no matter how you swear that you are unable to satisfy your desires, you do not get angry, do not move away, but look at everything with your passionate eyes, and these eyes full of expectation are execution and torment for a person.
The lyricism of The Thunderstorm, so specific in form (Ap. Grigoriev subtly remarked about it: “... as if not a poet, but a whole people created here ...”), arose precisely on the basis of the closeness of the world of the hero and the author.
In the 1950s and 1960s, orientation toward a healthy natural beginning became the social and ethical principle of not only Ostrovsky, but of all Russian literature: from Tolstoy and Nekrasov to Chekhov and Kuprin. Without this peculiar manifestation of the "author's" voice in dramatic works, we cannot fully understand the psychologism of "The Poor Bride", and the nature of the lyric in "Thunderstorm" and "Dowry", and the poetics of the new drama of the late 19th century.
By the end of the 1960s, Ostrovsky's work was expanding thematically. He shows how the new is mixed with the old: in the usual images of his merchants, we see gloss and secularity, education and "pleasant" manners. They are no longer stupid despots, but predatory acquirers, holding in their fist not only a family or a city, but entire provinces. In conflict with them are the most diverse people, their circle is infinitely wide. And the accusatory pathos of the plays is stronger. The best of them: "Hot Heart", "Mad Money", "Forest", "Wolves and Sheep", "Last Victim", "Dowry", "Talents and Admirers".
The shifts in the work of Ostrovsky of the last period are very clearly visible, if we compare, for example, "Hot Heart" with "Thunderstorm". Merchant Kuroslepov is an eminent merchant in the city, but not as formidable as Wild, he is rather an eccentric, he does not understand life and is busy with his dreams. His second wife, Matryona, is clearly having an affair with the clerk Narkis. They both rob the owner, and Narkis wants to become a merchant himself. No, the “dark kingdom” is not monolithic now. The Domostroevsky way of life will no longer save the self-will of the mayor Gradoboev. The unbridled revelry of the wealthy merchant Khlynov is a symbol of the burning of life, decay, nonsense: Khlynov orders the streets to be poured with champagne.
Parasha is a girl with a "hot heart". But if Katerina in The Thunderstorm turns out to be a victim of an unrequited husband and a weak-willed lover, then Parasha is aware of her powerful spiritual strength. She also wants to fly. She loves and curses the weakness of character, the indecisiveness of her lover: “What kind of guy is this, what kind of crybaby imposed on me ... Apparently, I myself should think about my own head.”
With great tension, the development of Yulia Pavlovna Tugina's love for her young reveler Dulchin, unworthy of her, is shown in The Last Victim. In the later dramas of Ostrovsky, there is a combination of action-packed situations with a detailed psychological description of the main characters. Great emphasis is placed on the vicissitudes of the torment they experience, in which the struggle of the hero or heroine with himself, with his own feelings, mistakes, and assumptions begins to occupy a large place.
In this regard, "Dowry" is characteristic. Here, perhaps, for the first time, the author focuses on the very feeling of the heroine, who has escaped from the care of her mother and the old way of life. In this play, there is not a struggle between light and darkness, but the struggle of love itself for its rights and freedom. Larisa Paratova herself preferred Karandysheva. The people around her cynically abused Larisa's feelings. The mother who wanted to “sell” her daughter, a “dowryless” for a money man, conceited that he would be the owner of such a treasure, was outraged. Paratov abused her, deceiving her best hopes and considered Larisa's love one of the fleeting pleasures. Knurov and Vozhevatov also abused, playing Larisa in toss among themselves.
What kind of cynics, ready to go for forgeries, blackmail, bribery for selfish purposes, landowners turned into in post-reform Russia, we learn from the play "Sheep and Wolves". The “wolves” are the landowner Murzavetskaya, the landowner Berkutov, and the “sheep” are the young rich widow Kupavina, the weak-willed elderly gentleman Lynyaev. Murzavetskaya wants to marry her dissolute nephew to Kupavina, "scaring" her with the old bills of her late husband. In fact, the bills were forged by a trusted solicitor, Chugunov, who equally serves Kupavina. Berkutov swooped in from St. Petersburg, a landowner - and a businessman, more vile than local scoundrels. He instantly realized what was the matter. Kupavina with its huge capitals took over, without talking about feelings. Deftly "parroting" Murzavetskaya by exposing the forgery, he immediately concluded an alliance with her: it is important for him to win the ballot in the elections for the leaders of the nobility. He is a real "wolf" and is, all the rest next to him are "sheep". At the same time, there is no sharp division into scoundrels and innocents in the play. Between the "wolves" and "sheep" as if there is some kind of vile conspiracy. Everyone plays war with each other and at the same time easily put up and find a common benefit.
One of the best plays in Ostrovsky's entire repertoire, apparently, is the play Guilty Without Guilt. It combines the motifs of many previous works. The actress Kruchinina, the main character, a woman of high spiritual culture, experienced a great life tragedy. She is kind and generous hearted and wise Kruchinina stands at the pinnacle of goodness and suffering. If you like, she and the “ray of light” in the “dark kingdom”, she and the “last victim”, she and the “hot heart”, she and the “dowry”, around her are “admirers”, that is, predatory “wolves”, money-grubbers and cynics. Kruchinina, not yet assuming that Neznamov is her son, instructs him in life, reveals her non-hardened heart: “I am more experienced than you and have lived more in the world; I know that in people there is a lot of nobility, a lot of love, selflessness, especially in women.
This play is a panegyric to the Russian woman, the apotheosis of her nobility and self-sacrifice. This is the apotheosis of the Russian actor, whose real soul Ostrovsky knew well.
Ostrovsky wrote for the theatre. This is the peculiarity of his gift. The images and pictures of life he created are intended for the stage. That is why the speech of Ostrovsky's characters is so important, that is why his works sound so bright. No wonder Innokenty Annensky called him a "realist-auditor". Without staging on stage, his works were as if not completed, which is why Ostrovsky took the prohibition of his plays by theatrical censorship so hard. (The comedy "Our People - Let's Settle" was allowed to be staged in the theater only ten years after Pogodin managed to publish it in a magazine.)
With a feeling of undisguised satisfaction, A. N. Ostrovsky wrote on November 3, 1878 to his friend, artist of the Alexandrinsky Theater A. F. Burdin: "The Dowry" was unanimously recognized as the best of all my works.
Ostrovsky lived "Dowry", at times only on her, his fortieth item, directed "his attention and strength", wanting to "finish" her in the most thorough way. In September 1878, he wrote to one of his acquaintances: "I am working on my play with all my might; it seems that it will not turn out badly."
Already a day after the premiere, on November 12, Ostrovsky could find out, and undoubtedly learned from Russkiye Vedomosti, how he managed to "tire out the entire audience, even the most naive spectators." For she - the audience - has clearly "outgrown" those spectacles that he offers her.
In the 1970s Ostrovsky's relationship with critics, theaters and audiences became more and more complicated. The period when he enjoyed universal recognition, won by him in the late fifties and early sixties, was replaced by another, which was growing more and more in different circles of cooling towards the playwright.
Theatrical censorship was more severe than literary censorship. This is no coincidence. In essence, theatrical art is democratic, it is more direct than literature, it is addressed to the general public. Ostrovsky in his "Note on the situation of dramatic art in Russia at the present time" (1881) wrote that "dramatic poetry is closer to the people than other branches of literature. All other works are written for educated people, and dramas and comedies - for the whole people; dramatic writers must always remember this, they must be clear and strong. This closeness to the people does not in the least humiliate dramatic poetry, but, on the contrary, doubles its strength and prevents it from becoming vulgar and petty." Ostrovsky speaks in his "Note" about how the theatrical audience in Russia expanded after 1861. Ostrovsky writes about a new spectator, not experienced in art: “Fine literature is still boring for him and incomprehensible, music too, only the theater gives him complete pleasure, there he experiences everything that happens on the stage like a child, sympathizes with good and recognizes evil, clearly presented." For a "fresh audience," Ostrovsky wrote, "strong drama, big comedy, defiant, frank, loud laughter, hot, sincere feelings are required." It is the theater, according to Ostrovsky, which has its roots in the folk show, has the ability to directly and strongly influence the souls of people. Two and a half decades later, Alexander Blok, speaking about poetry, will write that its essence lies in the main, "walking" truths, in the ability to convey them to the reader's heart.
Move on, mourning nags!
Actors, master the craft,
To from the walking truth
Everyone felt sick and light!
("Balagan"; 1906)
The great importance that Ostrovsky attached to the theater, his thoughts about theatrical art, about the position of the theater in Russia, about the fate of the actors - all this was reflected in his plays.
In the life of Ostrovsky himself, the theater played a huge role. He took part in the production of his plays, worked with actors, was friends with many of them, corresponded. He put a lot of effort into defending the rights of actors, seeking to create a theater school in Russia, his own repertoire.
Ostrovsky knew well the inner, hidden from the eyes of the audience, backstage life of the theater. Starting with "The Forest" (1871), Ostrovsky develops the theme of the theater, creates images of actors, depicts their fate - this play is followed by "Comedian of the 17th century" (1873), "Talents and Admirers" (1881), "Guilty Without Guilt" ( 1883).
The theater in the image of Ostrovsky lives according to the laws of that world, which is familiar to the reader and the viewer from his other plays. The way the fates of the artists are formed is determined by the customs, relationships, circumstances of the "common" life. Ostrovsky's ability to recreate an accurate, lively picture of time is also fully manifested in plays about actors. This is Moscow of the era of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich ("Comedian of the 17th century"), a provincial city modern to Ostrovsky ("Talents and Admirers", "Guilty Without Guilt"), a noble estate ("Forest").
In the life of the Russian theater, which Ostrovsky knew so well, the actor was a forced person, who was in multiple dependence. “Then there was a time for favorites, and all the managerial diligence of the repertoire inspector consisted in instructions to the chief director to take every possible care when compiling the repertoire so that favorites who receive large pay per performance play every day and, if possible, at two theaters,” Ostrovsky wrote in “A Note on Draft Rules on Imperial Theaters for Dramatic Works" (1883).
In the portrayal of Ostrovsky, the actors could turn out to be almost beggars, like Neschastlivtsev and Schastlivtsev in The Forest, humiliated, losing their human form due to drunkenness, like Robinson in The Dowry, like Shmaga in Guilty Without Guilt, like Erast Gromilov in Talents and admirers", "We, the artists, our place is in the buffet", - Shmaga says with defiance and malicious irony.
Theater, the life of provincial actresses in the late 70s, at about the time when Ostrovsky wrote plays about actors, shows M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin in the novel "Gentlemen Golovlyov". Yudushka's nieces Lyubinka and Anninka become actresses, escaping Golovlev's life, but end up in a nativity scene. They had no talent, no training, they had not studied acting, but all this was not required on the provincial stage. The life of actors appears in Anninka's memoirs as hell, like a nightmare: "Here is a scene with scenery sooty, captured and slippery from dampness; here she herself is spinning on the stage, just spinning, imagining that she is playing ... Drunk and pugnacious nights; passers-by landowners hurriedly taking out a green one from their skinny wallets; merchant-grip cheering the “actors” almost with a whip in their hands. And backstage life is ugly, and what is played out on stage is ugly: "... And the Duchess of Gerolstein, stunning with a hussar mentic, and Cleretta Ango, in a wedding dress, with a slit in front to the very waist, and Beautiful Elena, with a slit in front, behind and from all sides ... Nothing but shamelessness and nakedness ... that's what life has been like!" This life drives Lubinka to suicide.
The coincidences between Shchedrin and Ostrovsky in depicting the provincial theater are natural - both of them write about what they knew well, they write the truth. But Shchedrin is a merciless satirist, he exaggerates so much, the image becomes grotesque, while Ostrovsky gives an objective picture of life, his "dark kingdom" is not hopeless - it was not for nothing that N. Dobrolyubov wrote about a "ray of light".
This feature of Ostrovsky was noted by critics even when his first plays appeared. "... The ability to depict reality as it is - "mathematical fidelity to reality", the absence of any exaggeration ... All these are not the hallmarks of Gogol's poetry; all these are the hallmarks of the new comedy," B. Almazov wrote in the article "Dream by occasion of a comedy. Already in our time, the literary critic A. Skaftymov in his work "Belinsky and the dramaturgy of A.N. Ostrovsky" noted that "the most striking difference between the plays of Gogol and Ostrovsky is that Gogol does not have a victim of vice, and Ostrovsky always has a suffering victim vice... Depicting vice, Ostrovsky protects something from it, protects someone... Thus, the entire content of the play changes. in order to sharply put forward the inner legitimacy, truth and poetry of genuine humanity, oppressed and driven out in an atmosphere of dominant self-interest and deceit. Ostrovsky's approach to depicting reality, which is different from that of Gogol, is explained, of course, by the originality of his talent, the "natural" properties of the artist, but also (this should not be overlooked) by the changed time: increased attention to the individual, to his rights, recognition of his value.
IN AND. Nemirovich-Danchenko in his book "The Birth of the Theatre" writes about what makes Ostrovsky's plays especially scenic: "the atmosphere of kindness", "clear, firm sympathy on the side of the offended, to which the theater hall is always extremely sensitive."
In plays about the theater and actors, Ostrovsky certainly has the image of a true artist and beautiful person. In real life, Ostrovsky knew many excellent people in the theater world, highly appreciated and respected them. An important role in his life was played by L. Nikulina-Kositskaya, who brilliantly performed Katerina in The Thunderstorm. Ostrovsky was friends with the artist A. Martynov, he highly appreciated N. Rybakov, G. Fedotova, M. Yermolova played in his plays; P. Strepetova.
In the play Guilty Without Guilt, actress Elena Kruchinina says: "I know that people have a lot of nobility, a lot of love, selflessness." And Otradina-Kruchinina herself belongs to such beautiful noble people, she is a wonderful artist, smart, significant, sincere.
“Oh, don’t cry; they are not worth your tears. You are a white dove in a black flock of rooks, so they peck at you. Your whiteness, your purity is offensive to them,” Narokov says to Sasha Negina in Talents and Admirers.
The most vivid image of a noble actor created by Ostrovsky is the tragedian Neschastlivtsev in The Forest. Ostrovsky depicts a "living" person, with a difficult fate, with a sad life story. Neschastlivtsev, who drinks heavily, cannot be called a "white dove". But he changes throughout the play, the plot situation gives him the opportunity to fully reveal the best features of his nature. If at first Neschastlivtsev's behavior shows through the posturing inherent in the provincial tragedian, a predilection for pompous recitation (at these moments he is ridiculous); if, playing the master, he finds himself in ridiculous situations, then, having understood what is happening in the Gurmyzhskaya estate, what rubbish his mistress is, he takes an ardent part in the fate of Aksyusha, shows excellent human qualities. It turns out that the role of a noble hero is organic for him, this is really his role - and not only on stage, but also in life.
In his view, art and life are inextricably linked, the actor is not a hypocrite, not a pretender, his art is based on genuine feelings, genuine experiences, it should have nothing to do with pretense and lies in life. This is the meaning of the remark that Gurmyzhskaya and her entire company of Neschastlivtsev throws: "... We are artists, noble artists, and comedians are you."
Gurmyzhskaya turns out to be the main comedian in the life performance that is played out in The Forest. She chooses for herself an attractive, pretty role of a woman of strict moral rules, a generous philanthropist who has dedicated herself to good deeds(“Gentlemen, do I live for myself? Everything that I have, all my money belongs to the poor. I am only a clerk with my money, and every poor, every unfortunate owner is their owner,” she inspires others). But all this is hypocrisy, a mask that hides her true face. Gurmyzhskaya is deceiving, pretending to be kind-hearted, she did not even think of doing something for others, helping someone: “Why did I get emotional! Gurmyzhskaya not only plays a role that is completely alien to her, she also forces others to play along with her, imposes on them roles that should present her in the most favorable light: Neschastlivtsev is assigned to play the role of a grateful, loving nephew. Aksyusha - the role of the bride, Bulanov - Aksyusha's groom. But Aksyusha refuses to break a comedy for her: "I won't marry him, so why this comedy?" Gurmyzhskaya, no longer hiding the fact that she is the director of the play being played, rudely puts Aksyusha in her place: "Comedy! How dare you? But even a comedy; I feed and clothe you, and I will make you play a comedy."
The comedian Schastlivtsev, who turned out to be more perceptive than the tragic Neschastlivtsev, who at first accepted Gurmyzhskaya’s performance on faith, figured out the real situation before him, tells Neschastlivtsev: “The high school student, apparently, is smarter; he plays a better role here than yours ... He’s a lover plays, and you are ... a simpleton.
Before the viewer appears the real, without a protective pharisaic mask, Gurmyzhskaya - a greedy, selfish, deceitful, depraved lady. The spectacle that she played pursued low, vile, dirty goals.
Many of Ostrovsky's plays present such a false "theatre" of life. Podkhalyuzin in Ostrovsky's first play "Our People - Let's Settle" plays the role of the most devoted and faithful owner of a person and thus achieves his goal - having deceived Bolshov, he himself becomes the owner. Glumov in the comedy "Enough Stupidity for Every Wise Man" builds his career on a complex game, putting on one or another mask. Only chance prevented him from achieving his goal in the intrigue he had started. In "Dowry" not only Robinson, entertaining Vozhevatov and Paratov, appears as a lord. The funny and pitiful Karandyshev tries to look important. Having become Larisa's fiancé, he "... raised his head so high that he would stumble upon someone. And he put on glasses for some reason, but he never wore them. He bows - barely nods," says Vozhevatov. Everything that Karandyshev does is artificial, everything is for show: the miserable horse he got, and the carpet with cheap weapons on the wall, and the dinner he arranges. Paratov's man - prudent and soulless - plays the role of a hot, unrestrainedly broad nature.
Theater in life, imposing masks are born of the desire to disguise, hide something immoral, shameful, pass off black for white. Behind such a performance is usually calculation, hypocrisy, self-interest.
Neznamov in the play "Guilty Without Guilt", being a victim of the intrigue that Korinkina started, and believing that Kruchinina only pretended to be a kind and noble woman, bitterly says: "Actress! actress! so play on stage. They pay money for a good pretense And to play in life over simple, gullible hearts that don't need a game, who ask for the truth... they should be executed for this... we don't need deceit! Give us the truth, the pure truth!" The hero of the play here expresses a very important idea for Ostrovsky about the theater, about its role in life, about the nature and purpose of acting. Ostrovsky contrasts comedy and hypocrisy in life with art full of truth and sincerity on stage. A real theater, an inspired play by an artist is always moral, brings good, enlightens a person.
Ostrovsky's plays about actors and theater, which accurately reflected the circumstances of Russian reality in the 1970s and 1980s, contain thoughts about art that are still alive today. These are thoughts about the difficult, sometimes tragic fate of a true artist, who, while realizing himself, spends, burns himself, about the happiness he finds in creativity, complete self-giving, about the lofty mission of art, which affirms goodness and humanity. Ostrovsky himself expressed himself, revealed his soul in the plays he created, perhaps especially frankly in plays about the theater and actors. Much in them is consonant with what the poet of our century writes in wonderful verses:
When the feeling dictates the line
It sends a slave to the stage,
And this is where the art ends.
And the soil and fate breathe.
(B. Pasternak " Oh I would know
what happens... ").
Entire generations of remarkable Russian artists grew up on the productions of Ostrovsky's plays. In addition to the Sadovskys, there are also Martynov, Vasiliev, Strepetov, Yermolov, Massalitinov, Gogolev. The walls of the Maly Theater saw the great playwright live, and his traditions are still growing on the stage.
The dramatic skill of Ostrovsky is the property of the modern theater, the subject of close study. It is not at all outdated, despite some old-fashionedness of many techniques. But this old-fashionedness is exactly the same as in the theater of Shakespeare, Moliere, Gogol. These are old, genuine diamonds. Ostrovsky's plays contain limitless possibilities for stage performance and acting growth.
The main strength of the playwright is the all-conquering truth, the depth of typification. Dobrolyubov also noted that Ostrovsky depicts not just types of merchants, landowners, but also universal types. Before us are all the signs of the highest art, which is immortal.
The originality of Ostrovsky's dramaturgy, its innovation is especially clearly manifested in typification. If ideas, themes and plots reveal the originality and innovation of the content of Ostrovsky's dramaturgy, then the principles of typification of characters already relate to its artistic depiction, its form.
A. H. Ostrovsky, who continued and developed the realistic traditions of Western European and Russian drama, was attracted, as a rule, not by exceptional personalities, but by ordinary, ordinary social characters of greater or lesser typicality.
Almost any character of Ostrovsky is original. At the same time, the individual in his plays does not contradict the social.
Individualizing his characters, the playwright discovers the gift of the deepest penetration into their psychological world. Many episodes of Ostrovsky's plays are masterpieces of realistic depiction of human psychology.
“Ostrovsky,” Dobrolyubov rightly wrote, “knows how to look into the depths of a person’s soul, knows how to distinguish nature from all externally accepted deformities and growths; that is why the external oppression, the heaviness of the whole situation that crushes a person, is felt in his works much more strongly than in many stories, terribly outrageous in content, but the external, official side of the matter completely obscures the inner, human side. Dobrolyubov recognized one of the main and best properties of Ostrovsky's talent in the ability to "notice nature, penetrate into the depths of a person's soul, catch his feelings, regardless of the image of his external official relations."
In working on the characters, Ostrovsky constantly improved the methods of his psychological skill, expanding the range of colors used, complicating the colors of the images. In his very first work, we have before us bright, but more or less one-linear characters of the characters. Further works are examples of a more in-depth and complicated disclosure of human images.
In Russian dramaturgy, the school of Ostrovsky is quite naturally designated. It includes I. F. Gorbunov, A. Krasovsky, A. F. Pisemsky, A. A. Potekhin, I. E. Chernyshev, M. P. Sadovsky, N. Ya. Soloviev, P. M. Nevezhin, and A. Kupchinsky. Learning from Ostrovsky, I. F. Gorbunov created wonderful scenes from the petty-bourgeois merchant and craft life. Following Ostrovsky, A. A. Potekhin revealed in his plays the impoverishment of the nobility (“The Newest Oracle”), the predatory essence of the wealthy bourgeoisie (“Guilty”), bribery, the careerism of bureaucracy (“Tinsel”), the spiritual beauty of the peasantry (“Sheep’s Fur Coat - the human soul”), the emergence of new people of a democratic warehouse (“Cut off chunk”). Potekhin's first drama, The Judgment of Man Not God, which appeared in 1854, is reminiscent of Ostrovsky's plays written under the influence of Slavophilism. At the end of the 1950s and at the very beginning of the 1960s, the plays of I. E. Chernyshev, an artist of the Alexandrinsky Theater and a permanent contributor to the Iskra magazine, were very popular in Moscow, St. Petersburg and the provinces. These plays, written in a liberal-democratic spirit, clearly imitating Ostrovsky's artistic style, made an impression with the exclusivity of the main characters, the sharp formulation of moral and domestic issues. For example, in the comedy The Bridegroom from the Debt Office (1858) it was told about a poor man who tried to marry a wealthy landowner, in the comedy Happiness Is Not in Money (1859), a soulless predator-merchant is depicted, in the drama Father of the Family (1860) tyrant-landlord, and in the comedy "Spoiled Life" (1862) depicts an extremely honest, kind official, his naive wife and a dishonorably treacherous veil that violated their happiness.
Under the influence of Ostrovsky, later, at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, such playwrights as A.I. Sumbatov-Yuzhin, Vl.I. Nemirovich-Danchenko, S. A. Naidenov, E. P. Karpov, P. P. Gnedich and many others.
Ostrovsky's indisputable authority as the country's first playwright was recognized by all progressive literary figures. Highly appreciating the dramaturgy of Ostrovsky as “nationwide”, listening to his advice, L. N. Tolstoy sent him the play “The First Distiller” in 1886. Calling Ostrovsky the "father of Russian dramaturgy," the author of "War and Peace" asked him in a cover letter to read the play and express his "father's verdict" about it.
Ostrovsky's plays, the most progressive in the dramaturgy of the second half of the 19th century, constitute a step forward in the development of world dramatic art, an independent and important chapter.
The enormous influence of Ostrovsky on the dramaturgy of the Russian, Slavic and other peoples is indisputable. But his work is connected not only with the past. It lives actively in the present. By his contribution to the theatrical repertoire, which is an expression of current life, the great playwright is our contemporary. Attention to his work does not decrease, but increases.
Ostrovsky will long attract the hearts and minds of domestic and foreign viewers with the humanistic and optimistic pathos of his ideas, the deep and broad generalization of his heroes, good and evil, their universal human properties, the uniqueness of his original dramatic skill.
1. Brief biographical information.
2. The most famous plays by Ostrovsky; characters and conflicts.
3. The value of Ostrovsky's work.
The future playwright A. N. Ostrovsky was born in 1823. His father served in the city court. Ostrovsky lost his mother at the age of eight. The father married a second time. Left to himself, the boy became interested in reading. After graduating from the gymnasium, A. N. Ostrovsky studied for several years at the Faculty of Law of Moscow University, then served in the judiciary. It should be noted that the acquired professional experience played big role in the subsequent literary work of Ostrovsky. The deep knowledge of folk life, which we find in Ostrovsky's plays, is connected with childhood impressions; apparently, the playwright owes much to his unmarried wife, Agafya Ivanovna, with whom he became friends in the mid-1950s, with the expansion of ideas about the life of Muscovites. After her death, Ostrovsky remarried (1869).
Ostrovsky during his lifetime achieved not only fame, but also material prosperity. In 1884 he was appointed head of the repertoire of the Moscow theaters. A. N. Ostrovsky died in 1886 in his estate Shchelykovo. However, interest in the works of Ostrovsky did not fade after his death. And until now, many of his plays are successfully performed on the stages of Russian theaters.
What is the secret of the popularity of Ostrovsky's plays? Probably, in the fact that the characters of his heroes, despite the color of a certain era, at all times remain modern in their basis, in their deepest essence. Let's look at this with examples.
One of the first plays that brought wide popularity to Ostrovsky is the play "Our People - Let's Settle", which was originally called "Bankrupt". As already mentioned, Ostrovsky at one time served in court. The plot of "Bankrut" was developed on the basis of real cases from judicial practice: the fraud of the merchant Bolshov, who declared himself insolvent in order not to pay his debts, and the retaliatory fraud of his son-in-law and daughter, who refused to redeem the "tyatenko" from the debt hole. Ostrovsky in this play clearly shows the patriarchal life and customs of the Moscow merchants: “Mama has seven Fridays a week; Auntie, if not drunk, is so silent, but if he is drunk, he will beat him, just look. The playwright reveals a deep knowledge of human psychology: the portraits of the petty tyrant Bolshov, the rogue Podkhalyuzin, Lipochka, who imagines herself to be "an educated young lady," and other characters are very realistic and convincing.
It is important to note that in the play "Our People - Let's Settle" Ostrovsky raised a theme that became a cross-cutting one for all his work: this is the theme of the destruction of the traditional patriarchal way of life, a change in the essence of human relations, a change in value priorities. Interest in folk life also manifested itself in a number of plays by Ostrovsky: “Do not sit in your sleigh”, “Poverty is not a vice”, “Do not live as you want”.
It should be noted that not all of Ostrovsky's plays have a plausible, realistic ending. A happy resolution of the conflict sometimes looks deliberate, not quite corresponding to the characters of the characters, as, for example, in the plays “Poverty is not a vice”, “Bulk apples”. However, such utopian "happy endings" do not reduce the high artistic level of Ostrovsky's plays. However, one of the most famous works of Ostrovsky was the drama "Thunderstorm", which can be called a tragedy. In fact, this play is deeply tragic, not only because of the death of the main character in the finale, but because of the insolubility of the conflict shown by Ostrovsky in The Thunderstorm. It can even be said that in The Thunderstorm there are not one, but two conflicts: the antagonism of Katerina and her mother-in-law Marfa Ignatievna (Kabanikha), as well as Katerina's internal conflict. Usually, literary critics, following N. A. Dobrolyubov, call Katerina “a ray of light in the dark kingdom”, contrasting her with Kabanikha and other heroes of the play. Undoubtedly, there are worthy qualities in the character of Katerina. However, these qualities become the cause of the internal conflict of Ostrovsky's heroine. Katerina is not able to resign herself to her fate, patiently waiting for the time when she could become the second Kabanikha and give free rein to her character, or enjoy secret meetings with her beloved, outwardly showing a model of obedience to her husband and mother-in-law. The main heroine of "Thunderstorm" surrenders to her feelings; however, in her heart she considers this a sin and is tormented by remorse. Katerina lacks the strength to refrain from a step that she herself considers sinful, but her voluntary confession of her misdeed in the eyes of her mother-in-law does not at all reduce her guilt.
But are the characters of Katerina and her mother-in-law so different? Kabanikha, of course, is a type of complete tyrant who, despite ostentatious piety, recognizes only his own will. However, after all, one can say about Katerina that in her actions she does not take into account anything - neither with decency, nor with prudence, or even with the laws of religion. “Oh, Varya, you don’t know my character! Of course, God forbid this happens! And if I get sick of it here, they won’t hold me back by any force, ”she sincerely admits to her husband’s sister. The main difference between Katerina is that she does not want to hide her actions. “You are kind of tricky, God bless you! But in my opinion: do what you want, if only it was sewn and covered, ”Varvara is surprised. But it is unlikely that the girl herself came up with it. Obviously, she caught this worldly "wisdom" in the hypocritical atmosphere of her mother's house. The theme of the collapse of the traditional way of life in The Thunderstorm sounds especially sharp - both in the ominous forebodings of Katerina, and in the melancholy sighs of Kabanikh, dedicated to the outgoing "old times", and in the formidable prophecies of the crazy lady, and in the gloomy stories of the wanderer Feklusha about the approaching end of the world. Katerina's suicide is also a manifestation of the collapse of the patriarchal values that she betrayed.
The theme of the collapse of the values of "old times" in many of Ostrovsky's plays is refracted into the theme of careerism and greed. The hero of the play “Enough Stupidity for Every Wise Man”, the cunning cynic Glumov, is even charming in his own way. In addition, one cannot fail to recognize his intelligence and ingenuity, which, of course, will help him get out of unpleasant situation formed as a result of the exposure of his machinations. Images of prudent businessmen are found more than once in Ostrovsky's plays. This is Vasilkov from " crazy money”, and Berkutov from Wolves and Sheep.
In the play "The Forest" the theme of decline again sounds, but not the patriarchal merchant way of life, but the gradual destruction of the foundations of the life of the nobles. We see the nobleman Gurmyzhsky in the image of the provincial tragedian Neschastlivtsev, and his aunt, instead of taking care of the fate of her nephew and niece, thoughtlessly spends money on the object of her late love interest.
It should be noted Ostrovsky's plays, which can rightfully be called psychological dramas, for example, "Dowry", "Talents and Admirers", "Guilty Without Guilt". The characters of these works are ambiguous, multifaceted personalities. For example, Paratov from "Dowry" is a brilliant gentleman, a secular man who can easily turn the head of a romantic young lady, the "ideal of a man" in the eyes of Larisa Ogudalova, but at the same time he is a prudent businessman and a cynic for whom nothing is sacred: me, Moky Parmenych, there is nothing cherished; I will find a profit, so I will sell everything, anything. Karandyshev, Larisa's fiancé is not just a petty official, " small man”, “A straw”, which Larisa tried to grasp in desperation, but also a person with a painfully hurt pride. And about Larisa herself, we can say that she is a subtle, gifted nature, but she does not know how to soberly assess people and treat them calmly, pragmatically.
In conclusion, it should be noted that Ostrovsky firmly entered literature and stage art as a writer who laid down realistic traditions in the Russian theater, a master of everyday and psychological prose of the 19th century. The plays of Columbus Zamoskvorechye, as Ostrovsky was called by critics, have long become classics of Russian literature and theater.
Ostrovsky drama dowry psychological
The merits of Ostrovsky before Russian dramaturgy, before the national theater are enormous. For almost forty years of creative activity A.N. Ostrovsky created the richest repertoire: about fifty original plays, several pieces written in collaboration. He was also engaged in translations and adaptations of plays by other authors. At one time, welcoming the playwright in connection with the 35th anniversary of his career, I.A. Goncharov wrote: “You brought a whole library of works of art as a gift to literature, you created your own special world for the stage. You alone completed the building, at the foundation of which you laid the cornerstones of Fonvizin, Griboyedov, Gogol. But only after you, we, Russians, can proudly say: “We have our own Russian, national theater. It should rightly be called the "Ostrovsky Theater" Zhuravlev A.I., Nekrasov V.N. Theater A.N. Ostrovsky. - M.: Art, 1986, p. 8..
The talent of Ostrovsky, who continued the best traditions of classical Russian dramaturgy, affirmed dramaturgy social characters and mores, deep and broad generalization, had a decisive influence on the entire subsequent development of progressive Russian drama. To a greater or lesser extent, L. Tolstoy and Chekhov both learned from him and proceeded from him. It is precisely with the line of Russian psychological dramaturgy that Ostrovsky represented so splendidly that Gorky's dramaturgy is connected. Ostrovsky's dramatic skill is being studied and will be studied for a long time by modern authors.
It is fair to say that even before Ostrovsky, progressive Russian dramaturgy had magnificent plays. Let us recall Fonvizin's "Undergrowth", Griboedov's "Woe from Wit", Pushkin's "Boris Godunov", Gogol's "Inspector General" and Lermontov's "Masquerade". Each of these plays could enrich and embellish, as Belinsky rightly wrote, the literature of any Western European country.
But these plays were too few. And they did not determine the state of the theatrical repertoire. Figuratively speaking, they towered above the level of mass dramaturgy like lonely, rare mountains in an endless desert plain. The vast majority of the plays that filled the then theater stage, compiled translations of empty, frivolous vaudeville and sentimental melodramas woven from horrors and crimes. Both vaudeville and melodrama, terribly far from real life, especially from real Russian reality, were not even its shadow.
The rapid development of psychological realism, which we observe in the second half of the 19th century, also manifested itself in dramaturgy. Interest in the human personality in all its states forced writers to look for means to express them. In the drama, the main such means was the stylistic individualization of the characters' language, and it was Ostrovsky who played the leading role in the development of this method.
In addition, in psychologism, Ostrovsky made an attempt to go further, along the path of giving his heroes the maximum possible freedom within the framework of the author's intention - the result of such an experiment was the image of Katerina in The Thunderstorm. Alexander Nikolaevich Ostrovsky considered the beginning of his literary path in 1847, when he read the play " family picture» in the house of professor and writer SP. Shevyreva. His next play “Own people - let's settle!” (original name "Bankrupt") made his name known to all reading Russia. From the beginning of the 50s. he actively collaborates in the journal of the historian M.P. Pogodin "Moskvityanin" and soon, together with A.A. Grigoriev, L.A. Meem and others formed the “young editorial board” of Moskvityanin, which attempted to make the journal an organ of a new trend in social thought, close to Slavophilism and anticipating the soil movement. The magazine promoted realistic art, interest in folk life and folklore, Russian history, especially the history of the underprivileged classes.
Ostrovsky came to literature as the creator of a nationally distinctive theatrical style, based in poetics on the folklore tradition. This turned out to be possible because he began with the image of the patriarchal layers of the Russian people, who preserved the pre-Petrine, almost non-Europeanized family and cultural way of life. It was still a “pre-personal” environment, for its depiction, the poetics of folklore could be used as widely as possible with its extreme generalization, with stable types, as if immediately recognizable by listeners and viewers, and even with a recurring main plot situation - the struggle of lovers for their happiness. On this basis, the type of Ostrovsky's folk psychological comedy was created Russian literature of the 19-20th centuries / Comp. B.S. Bugrov, M.M. Golubkov. - M.: Aspect Press, 2000, p. 202..
It is important to understand what predetermined the presence of psychological drama in the work of Alexander Nikolayevich Ostrovsky. First of all, in our opinion, by the fact that he originally created his works for the theater, for stage incarnation. The play was for Ostrovsky the most complete form of publishing a play. Only when performed on stage does the author's dramatic fiction take on a completely finished form and produce precisely that psychological effect, the achievement of which the author set himself as the goal of Kotikova P.B. The voice of the viewer - a contemporary. (F.A. Koni about A.N. Ostrovsky) / / Literature at school. - 1998. - No. 3. - S. 18-22 ..
In addition, in the era of Ostrovsky, the theater audience was more democratic, more "variegated" in its social and educational level than readers. According to Ostrovsky, for the perception fiction some level of education and the habit of serious reading is needed. The spectator can go to the theater simply for entertainment, and it is up to the theater and the playwright to make the performance both a pleasure and a moral lesson. In other words, the theatrical action should have the maximum psychological impact on the viewer.
Orientation to the stage existence of the drama also determines the author's special attention to the psychological characteristics of each character: both the main and the secondary character.
The psychologism of the description of nature predetermined the future scenery of the scene.
A.N. Ostrovsky assigned a significant role to the title of each of his works, also focusing on the subsequent stage production, which in general was not typical for Russian literature of the era of realism. The fact is that the viewer perceives the play at once, he cannot, like the reader, stop and think, return to the beginning. Therefore, he must immediately be psychologically attuned by the author to one or another type of spectacle that he is about to see. The text of the performance, as you know, begins with a poster, that is, the name, the definition of the genre and the list of multiple characterized characters. Already the poster, thus, told the viewer about the content and about “how it ends”, and often also about the author’s position: who the author sympathizes with, how he evaluates the outcome of the dramatic action. Traditional genres in this sense were the most definite and clear. Comedy means that for the characters whom the author and the viewer sympathize with, everything will end happily (the meaning of this well-being can, of course, be very different, sometimes at odds with the public idea) Zhuravleva A.I. Plays by A.N. Ostrovsky on the theater stage//Literature at school. - 1998. - No. 5. - S. 12-16 ..
But with the complication of life depicted in the play, it became more and more difficult to give a clear genre definition. And often refusing the name "comedy", Ostrovsky calls the genre "scene" or "picture". "Scenes" - such a genre appeared with Ostrovsky in his youth. Then he was associated with the poetics of the "natural school" and was something like a dramatized essay depicting characteristic types in the plot, which is a separate episode, a picture from the life of the characters. In the "scenes" and "pictures" of the 1860s and 1870s, we see something else. Here we have a fully developed plot, a consistent development of dramatic action leading to a denouement that completely exhausts the dramatic conflict. The line between "scenes" and comedy is not always easy to define during this period. Perhaps there are two reasons for Ostrovsky's rejection of the traditional genre definition. In some cases, it seems to the playwright that the amusing incident referred to in the play is not typical and “large-scale” enough for deep generalization and important moral conclusions - namely, Ostrovsky understood the essence of the comedy in this way (for example, “Not all carnival for a cat”). In other cases, in the life of the heroes there was too much sad and difficult, although the ending turned out to be prosperous (“Abyss”, “Late Love”) Zhuravleva A.I. Plays by A.N. Ostrovsky on the theater stage//Literature at school. - 1998. - No. 5. - S. 12-16 ..
In the plays of the 1860s and 1870s, a gradual accumulation of drama takes place and a hero is formed, which is necessary for the genre of drama in the narrow sense of the word. This hero, first of all, must have a developed personal consciousness. As long as he does not internally, spiritually feel himself opposed to the environment, does not separate himself from it at all, he can evoke sympathy, but he cannot yet become the hero of a drama that requires an active, effective struggle of the hero with circumstances. The formation of personal moral dignity and the extra-class value of a person in the minds of poor workers, the urban masses attracts Ostrovsky's keen interest. The upsurge in the feeling of personality caused by the reform, which captured quite a wide section of the Russian population, provides material and forms the basis for the drama. In the artistic world of Ostrovsky, with his bright comedic gift, a conflict that is dramatic in nature often continues to be resolved in a dramatic structure. “Truth is good, but happiness is better” just turns out to be a comedy, literally standing on the threshold of drama: the next “big play”, referred to in the letter quoted above, is “Dowry”. Initially conceived of "scenes", which he did not attach much importance to, Ostrovsky in the course of work felt the importance of characters and conflict. And it seems that the point here is primarily in the hero - Platon Zybkin.
A friend of Ostrovsky's youth, a remarkable poet and critic A.A. Grigoriev saw "one of the lofty inspirations" of Ostrovsky in Chatsky. He also called Chatsky "the only heroic person in our literature" (1862). At first glance, the critic's remark may surprise: very much different worlds depicted Griboyedov and Ostrovsky. However, for more deep level the unconditional correctness of Grigoriev's judgment is revealed.
Griboyedov created in Russian drama the type of "high hero", that is, a hero, through a direct, lyrically close word to the author, revealing the truth, evaluating the events taking place in the play and influencing their course. It was personal hero who had independence and resisted circumstances. In this respect, Griboedov's discovery influenced the entire subsequent course of Russian literature of the 19th century and, of course, Ostrovsky.
The focus on a wide audience, direct in their perceptions and impressions, determined the pronounced originality of Ostrovsky's dramaturgy. He was convinced that the people's audience in dramas and tragedies needs "a deep sigh, for the whole theater, they need unfeigned warm tears, ardent speeches that would flow straight into the soul."
In the light of these requirements, the playwright wrote plays of great ideological and emotional intensity, comic or dramatic, plays that "capture the soul, make one forget time and place." Creating plays, Ostrovsky proceeded mainly from the traditions of folk drama, from the requirements of strong drama and big comedy. “Russian authors want to try their hand,” he said, “in front of a fresh audience, whose nerves are not very pliable, which requires strong drama, big comedy, causing frank, loud laughter, hot, sincere feelings, lively and strong characters.”
The famous theater critic F.A. Koni, famous for his open-mindedness and courage, immediately appreciated the high quality of Ostrovsky's works. Koni considered simplicity of content to be one of the merits of a dramatic work, and he saw this simplicity, elevated to artistry, in Ostrovsky's comedies in the delineation of faces. Koni wrote, in particular, about the play “The Muscovites”: “The playwright made me fall in love with the characters he created. made me fall in love with Rusakov, and Borodkin, and Dunya, despite their inherent clumsiness, because he managed to reveal their inner human side, which could not but affect the humanity of the audience ”Koni A.F. On the play "Moskvitians" // Repertoire and pantheon of the Russian stage. - 1853. - No. 4. - S. 34//See. Kotikova P.B. The voice of the viewer - a contemporary. (F.A. Koni about A.N. Ostrovsky) / / Literature at school. - 1998. - No. 3. - S. 18-22 ..
Also A.F. Koni noted the fact that, before Ostrovsky, “even contrasts (psychological) are not allowed in Russian comedy: all faces are on the same block - without exception, all scoundrels and fools” Koni A.F. What is the Russian nationality? // Repertoire and pantheon of the Russian stage. - 1853. - No. 4. - S. 3//See. Kotikova P.B. The voice of the viewer - a contemporary. (F.A. Koni about A.N. Ostrovsky) / / Literature at school. - 1998. - No. 3. - S. 18-22 ..
Thus, we can say that already in the time of Ostrovsky, critics noted the presence in his dramatic works of subtle psychologism, which could influence the audience's perception of the heroes of the plays.
It should be noted that in his comedies and dramas, Ostrovsky was not limited to the role of a satirical accuser. He vividly, sympathetically depicted the victims of socio-political and domestic despotism, workers, truth-seekers, enlighteners, warm-hearted Protestants against arbitrariness and violence. These heroes of his were in the dark realm of autocracy "bright rays" announcing the inevitable victory of justice Lakshin V.Ya. Ostrovsky Theatre. - M.: Art, 1985, p. 28..
Punishing those in power, "oppressors", petty tyrants with a formidable court, sympathizing with the disadvantaged, drawing heroes worthy of imitation, Ostrovsky turned dramaturgy and theater into a school of social morals.
The playwright not only made people of labor and progress, bearers of the people's truth and wisdom, the positive heroes of his plays, but also wrote in the name of the people and for the people. Ostrovsky portrayed in his plays the prose of life, ordinary people in everyday circumstances. But he framed this prose of life artistic types great generalization.
