To the question Write a description of Ekaterina Lvovna from Leskov's story "Lady Macberet. Mtsensk District". given by the author Alexey Selyutin the best answer is It is very difficult for Katerina Izmailova to endure life in her husband's house, mainly because the life of a woman in a merchant's house is boring. What to do with the wife of a rich merchant? Katerina wanders from corner to corner in her big house, sleeping and toiling from idleness.
Katerina is tormented by unfair accusations. The silent reproach to the heroine is that she does not have children from her elderly husband, although the Izmailov family is looking forward to heirs. The writer emphasizes that married life behind locked doors "strangles" the heroine, destroys her potential, all the good that is in her. Izmailova regretfully tells what she was like as a girl - cheerful, full of joy of life, energy, happiness. And how unbearable it is for her to live in marriage.
Katerina Izmailova does not even think about treason. All of her is completely absorbed in feeling for the clerk Sergei and is ready for anything for him. This passionate nature completely surrendered to her feeling, which knows no boundaries: neither physical, nor moral, nor moral.
Katerina Izmailova dies - trying to drown her happier rival: “Katerina Lvovna was trembling. Her wandering gaze focused and became wild. Hands once or twice, it is not known where, stretched out into space and fell again. Another minute - and she suddenly swayed all over, not taking her eyes off the dark wave, bent down, grabbed Sonetka by the legs and in one fell swoop threw herself overboard with her on the ferry.
The heroine understands that she will die along with another girl, but this does not stop her: why should she live if Sergey no longer loves her?
In her animal, godless love, Izmailova reaches the limit: the blood of three innocent people, including a child, is on her conscience. This love and all crimes devastate the heroine: “... for her there was no light, no darkness, no evil, no good, no boredom, no joys; she did not understand anything, she did not love anyone and did not love herself.
Katerina Izmailova lived with passions, obeying only the call of her flesh.
Answer from Ўliya[guru]
Izmailova Katerina Lvovna is a young (twenty-three years old) wife of a wealthy merchant Zinovy Borisovich Izmailov. In the portrait of I., the attractiveness and sensuality of the heroine are expressed: “in appearance, the woman is very pleasant.<...>She was not tall, but slender, her neck was carved as if made of marble, her shoulders were round, her chest was strong, her nose was straight, thin, her eyes were black, lively, her high white forehead and black, even blue-black hair. Passionately in love with the worker Sergei, I., fearing exposure and separation from her beloved, kills her father-in-law and husband with his help, and then takes the life of her husband's minor relative, Fedya Lyamin. Heartlessness and willpower, readiness for the sake of their goals to transcend all moral norms are combined in the character of I. with insane passion and selfless devotion to his beloved. The inhumanity of I. is emphasized thanks to the methods of contrast: I., who is expecting a child from Sergei, calmly strangles little Fedya, committing murder on the eve of the great Christian holiday of the Entry into the Church of the Most Holy Theotokos.
The fate of I. after the arrest is presented as a terrible retribution for the crime committed; I. loses the most precious thing in life - the love of Sergei, who at the hard labor stage converges with another convict, Sonetka. At the crossing, I. dumps Sonetka into the river, drowns her and drowns herself.
In the title of the story, Leskov likens I. Lady Macbeth, the heroine of Shakespeare's tragedy "Macbeth", prompting her husband to commit treacherous murders. The image of I. is polemically correlated with the image of the heroine of the drama by A. N. Ostrovsky "Thunderstorm" by Katerina Kabanova. Both heroines have the same name, both are merchants, both cheat on their husbands with lovers. The difference lies in the fact that I. does not experience family oppression, is not a victim in her husband's house.
The heroine Leskov has a significant name. On the one hand, I., seized by a dark, "infernal" passion, is opposed to the "bright" and "quiet" Katerina from Ostrovsky's Thunderstorm. At the same time, the very name "Catherine" in Greek means "always pure" and, as it were, personifies the sacrificial principle in the love of Leskov's heroine. I.'s patronymic emphasizes the firmness and masculine strength of her character. The surname I. testifies to the black, demonic sources of the heroine's passion: "Ismaelites" in ancient Russian literature were called eastern, Turkic peoples who professed Islam. The story of I. served as the basis for the opera Katerina Izmailova by D. D. Shostakovich.
Sergei is a young worker, lover, and then the husband of Katerina Lvovna Izmailova, who, together with her, kills her relatives. The last of the three crimes (the murder of the boy Fedya Lyamin, who received the main part of the Izmailovs' fortune), Katerina Izmailova commits for the sake of S., who longed to become the sole heir. Willpower, selfless passion and Katerina's concern for S. are opposed to his weak will and selfish and shallow nature. During the investigation, he calls I. an accomplice in all crimes, at the hard labor stage he neglects I.'s love, mocks her and converges with Sonetka.
Sonetka is a young convict with whom Sergei converges at the stage, leaving Katerina Izmailova. Izmailova drowns S, in the river, dying with her. Selfish S., receiving gifts from Sergei, contrasts with selflessly loving Izmailova. Cruelly mocking the humiliated Izmailova, S. is opposed to the soldier Fiona, Sergei's fleeting mistress, compassionate Katerina. Evidence of a cruel, evil disposition is a miniature figure, thinness of S. (Thinness is presented as a sign of an evil character in some other works of Leskov.)
Izmailova Ekaterina Lvovna - the main character of the essay by N.S. Leskov "Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District".
A 24-year-old woman of pleasant appearance and character, which "you will never remember without spiritual awe." While still a peasant girl, she was married not out of love to the merchant Zinovy Borisovich, who was twice her age. In the house of Boris Timofeevich's father-in-law, Ekaterina Lvovna, suffering from boredom and loneliness, wanders around empty rooms all day, because her husband and father-in-law are constantly busy with work, and there was no child in the family.
The former cheerfulness and energy of Catherine gave way to melancholy and monotony of life, creating an atmosphere "from which it is fun even to hang yourself."
The complete lack of love and affection on the part of her husband pushes the merchant to accept the courtship of the young clerk Sergei. Interest in a handsome man gradually develops into an insane passion, which, combined with an ardent and impudent character, is able to overcome any obstacles on the way to long-awaited happiness.
This love is immoral and merciless, it is deprived not only of high emotional experiences, but also of common sense (refuses its own child).
The fear of being separated from her beloved takes over Katerina, and therefore she easily commits murders of loved ones who somehow interfered with her happy life. After Sergei's betrayal and ridicule, unhealthy love gives way to jealousy and resentment, which becomes a decisive blow for the hostess. So, she commits her last murder, which finally destroys her personality.
Thus, Katerina Lvovna, a woman who dreams of love and family happiness, becomes a victim of her own feelings. Love, which turned into passion and insanity, swallowed up the heart of the young merchant, forced her to transgress human dignity and commit suicide in the name of her own happiness.
Bailiff Sergei
The hero of the essay by N.S. Leskov “Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk district”. A young clerk in the Izmailovs' house. Outwardly handsome and charming, he easily seduces women with sweet speeches, based on his own selfish interests. He amuses himself by playing with the feelings of poor girls tormented by boredom, pushing them to the lowest and most terrible deeds. So, the merchant's wife, Katerina Lvovna, is forced to kill her own husband and father-in-law, and he himself becomes an accomplice in this process. Deception and intrigues entirely make up his life, because. he got to the Izmailovs for an affair with the former mistress.
Despite the vows of love and fidelity, Sergei is alien to the highest feeling. Betrayal, ridicule, cruelty towards the "beloved person" confirm the essence of his true nature.
He could safely lie about his own feelings only when he saw the goal of a carefree and rich life in front of him. At that moment, when all prospects were lost, it was no longer necessary to play the game.
Thus, Sergei is a vile, low, cruel and selfish person, driven solely by his own selfish desires.
Speaking about the golden age of Russian literature, one cannot fail to mention the work of N.S. Leskov. He wrote about a simple Russian man endowed with a beautiful soul and aesthetic responsiveness. Heroes with such qualities can be found in Leskov's famous stories "The Enchanted Wanderer" and "Lefty". But the artistic world of Leskov does not consist of schismatics alone. It also found a place for one of the most original heroines of all world literature - Katerina Izmailova, the main character of the story "Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District". It is not for nothing that she is compared with the main character of Shakespeare's tragedy, who, for the sake of power, was ready for any sacrifice, even murder.
Katerina Izmailova is the wife of the wealthy merchant Zinoviy Borisovich Izmailov, who "was only twenty-four years old." "Katerina Lvovna was not born a beauty, but she was a very pleasant woman in appearance."
She was given in marriage at the age of nineteen to the merchant Izmailov, who was already fifty years old. Zinovy Borisovich kept hoping that from his marriage with Katerina he would have a long-awaited heir, but now the fifth year of marriage, and Katerina is childless, which upset the entire Izmailov family. "Katerina Lvovna lived a boring life in a rich mother-in-law's house for five whole years of her life with an unkind husband." Katerina Lvovna lost her freedom, which she had before marriage, and she did not have a child with whom she could be coddled. Therefore, acquaintance with the young handsome clerk Sergei completely turned her life around. For his sake, the main character became the one "who you never remember without spiritual awe." Katerina Izmailova has turned into a cold-blooded killer, ready to do everything for the sake of love and a happy life with her beloved Sergei. Her first victim was the father-in-law Boris Timofeevich, whom Katerina Lvovna poisoned. This was followed by an unloved husband - the main obstacle to the happiness of the main character. She already committed this crime with Sergei, strangling Zinovy Borisovich and hiding his body in the cellar. The third murder is the most cruel of all, namely, the death of Katerina's co-heir, the "adolescent" Fedya Lyamin, whom the heroine strangled with a pillow. Knowing perfectly well what she did, Katerina Lvovna does not worry about her crimes in any way, for her the well-being of Sergei and his love is more important. But retribution comes for everything, and Katerina Lvovna and Sergey are sent to a prison in Siberia, on the way to which the heroine also does not think about what she has done at all; she is only concerned about her “Seryozhechka”: “a person gets used to every disgusting situation as much as possible ... but Katerina Lvovna had nothing to adapt to: she sees Sergei again, and with him her hard labor blooms with happiness.” However, Sergei himself is no longer faithful to Katerina, he noticed the pretty convict Sonetka. She became the last victim of Katerina Izmailova, with whom she drowned herself in the Volga.
So, can the heroine be considered a criminal? Without a doubt, yes, since the cold-blooded murder of four people cannot be forgiven. But we can justify Katerina Lvovna as a woman devoid of love and human participation. The main character of the story is imbued with hatred for the merchant world and takes revenge on him. Love played a cruel joke with Katerina Izmailova: she made her merciless, following the lead of her lover. For the sake of Sergei's promotion up the social ladder and ensuring him and her comfortable living, the heroine killed three people. And how did Sergey repay her? Seeing that Katerina Lvovna no longer had the power of a merchant, he cooled towards her, mocked, mocked, and at the end of the story he declared: faces." Therefore, for me, Katerina Izmailova is a victim of circumstances. Unhappy marriage, passionate. but crushing love can induce a woman to do a lot. It is all the sadder that many women of that era, like Katerina Izmailova, did not have the right to build their own lives on their own, but only to hope for the dictates of fate, which, as you know, is rarely favorable to people.
Updated: 2018-08-17
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Composition
Two Katerinas
Plan
I. Women's theme in the drama of A.N. Ostrovsky "Thunderstorm" and in the story of N.S. Leskov "Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk district".
II. Two Katerinas - two heroines, two destinies. Their similarities and differences are:
1. In character and appearance.
2. In marriage.
3. In the way of life, in memories, thoughts, dreams.
4. In forbidden love.
5. In the punishments that have occurred in life and conscience.
6. In gaining death in the water element.
III. Portrait of a Russian woman in the fates of two Katerina N.S. Leskov and A.N. Ostrovsky.
Alexander Nikolaevich Ostrovsky in the drama "Thunderstorm" and Nikolai Semenovich Leskov in the story "Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District" presented the female soul and love, the share of a woman in a merchant environment. These writers showed that a woman from the merchant class, like any other woman, is also capable of suffering, experiences, feelings and passions.
Two Katerinas became the main characters of the works: Katerina Kabanova by A.N. Ostrovsky and Katerina Lvovna Izmailova by N.S. Leskov. Both heroines have both similarities and differences in destinies, in characters, in relations with other people, in dreams, thoughts, speech, in the manifestation of feelings.
Both Katerinas are young and beautiful. Katerina Izmailova “was a very pleasant woman in appearance”, “she was not tall, but slender, her neck was turned as if made of marble, her shoulders were round, her chest was strong, her nose was straight, thin, her eyes were black, lively, a high white forehead and black, even blue black hair". Katerina Kabanova is a poetic, light, sublime nature, “she has an angelic smile on her face, but it seems to glow from her face.”
Both women did not marry for love. Katerina Lvovna was given "to marry the merchant Izmailov with Tuskari from the Kursk province, not out of love or any attraction, but because Izmailov was courting her, and she was a poor girl, and she did not have to sort out suitors." The marriage of Katerina Kabanova was also not according to her desire, not out of love. Her husband was the son of a rich merchant's wife - Tikhon Ivanovich Kabanov, who loves Katerina in the depths of his soul, is even able to forgive her offense. Feeling fear of his mother, he cannot protect Katerina and help her in difficult times.
The merchant environment, its orders and customs are reflected in the way of life of the heroines. Katerina Kabanova cannot get used to the traditional ideas of merchant life, and the constant reproaches of her mother-in-law make her life cramped. She is consoled only by dreams and memories of girlhood, when she lived "like a bird in the wild." Before her marriage, Katerina loved to go to church, had beautiful, vivid dreams and dreamed. Here is how she says about it: “And to death I loved to go to church! For sure, it used to happen that I would enter paradise, and I didn’t see anyone, and I didn’t remember the time, and I didn’t hear when the service was over; “And what dreams I had…!… Or golden temples or some extraordinary gardens, and invisible voices sing all the time and smell of cypress…”. If Katerina Kabanova calms and entertains herself with dreams, then Katerina Izmailova lives a boring life. She cannot entertain herself with anything, does not read books, does not think, does not dream. Her life is full of melancholy, boredom and monotony: she only yawned, walked around the house, in the garden, around the yard, rested, lay on her high bed, drank tea - this is how her life in the merchant's house passed day after day.
Both girls did not have children, which saddened and upset them a lot. Katerina Lvovna from a boring and dreary life was glad to have a child: “when I gave birth to a baby, I would have fun with him.” Katerina Kabanova talks about children like this: “I don’t have children”, “I love talking with children very much - they are angels, after all.”
There is sinful and forbidden love in the life of two Katerinas. In the feelings of both there is passion, their feelings are deep, but this manifests itself in each of them in different ways. Katerina Kabanova's feeling for Boris is bright, sincere, albeit sinful. She understands the gravity of this feeling, but she cannot help herself. The heroine's "heart hurts", she feels guilty, she is afraid of punishment, because this sin "will fall like a stone on the soul." In her love there is poetry, purity, hope, but there is also pain, and suffering, and mental anguish. Passion and love for Sergei in Katerina Izmailova destroyed all moral boundaries. For the sake of love she kills, for the sake of love she abandons her child, for the sake of love she even goes to hard labor. She performed all her dirty deeds in cold blood, cruelly, with animal strength and indifference. From her hand she dies a “rat death”, quietly and simply, father-in-law, with calmness and indifference, she kills her husband, kills an innocent, pure soul, her husband’s nephew, Fedenka. Refuses the born child, not being interested in his future fate, as he thinks only of Sergey. With Sergei, hard labor did not become a punishment for her.
Katerina Kabanova was punished with pangs of conscience, since there are moral principles in her soul, first of all, Christian laws, to which she was faithful, which did not allow her to calmly endure this sinful feeling. She punishes herself, not waiting for life to punish her. Katerina Izmailova, on the contrary, does not feel any remorse, does not suffer and does not understand the gravity and guilt of the crimes committed due to the fact that godless and animal love for Sergei has eclipsed her eyes, heart and soul.
Both heroines became victims of their strong feelings. Boris left Katerina alone against the dark merchant kingdom. To reconcile, to return to the house to her husband, she could not stay with her mother-in-law. Another woman, perhaps, could do it, but not Katerina, created by Ostrovsky. Suicide is the logical and only way out. Katerina Kabanova passes away without accepting the world of Kabanikh, Tikhon, Wild, the world of the dark merchant kingdom. Life punished Katerina Izmailova not with hard labor, but with Sergei's betrayal. And this heroine also could not come to terms with this. Betrayed by Sergei. Humiliated by him, she found no other way out than to die and take the life of her rival - an obstacle to her happiness. Her predatory, animal nature remains with her until her death: "... Katerina Lvovna rushed at Sonetka, like a strong pike at a soft-finned raft, and both no longer showed up."
Another similarity of fates is that both Katerinas die in the Volga, in the water. And water is a symbol of freedom, it led the heroines to liberation from torment, their love filled with sincere feelings led to death. A light fall, like a bird's flight, into the water of Katerina Kabanova and the bestial revenge of Katerina Izmailova in the water are two properties of their characters that were characteristic of them in life.
N.S. Leskov and A.N. Ostrovsky showed in their works two souls, two destinies - two Katerinas. In their judicial similarities, the properties of a Russian woman are manifested: determination, love, full of passion, deep and strong feelings, care, love of freedom and spiritual responsibility. Therefore, Katerina Leskova and Katerina Ostrovsky are a portrait of a woman who lives, dreams, suffers, worries, rejoices and loves.
Russian literature
Viktor Eremin
Katerina Lvovna Izmailova
Nikolai Semyonovich Leskov is a man of great passion, great contradictions, great Conscience and great patriotism. No wonder A.M. Gorky, who read in 1909-1911. on the island of Capri, a series of lectures under the general title “History of Russian Literature”, stated then that Leskov wrote “not about a peasant, not about a nihilist, not about a landowner, but always about a Russian person, about a person of this country. Each of his heroes is a link in the chain of people, in the chain of generations, and in every Leskov story you feel that his main thought is not about the fate of a person, but about the fate of Russia.
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* IMLI RAN. Archive A.M. Gorky. T.1. History of Russian literature. Moscow: Goslitizdat, 1939.
It is in these words that the essence of modern misunderstanding of Leskov's work is revealed. Nikolai Semyonovich is a writer of the fate of the Fatherland, and today in his works they often look for the quintessence of the Russian character, moreover, the image of the Russian people. And this is deeply wrong. Leskov is the brightest representative of raznochin literature, therefore, in his books (in continuation of the aristocratic literature of the 19th century) a predominantly aristocratic idea of the Russian people is given, although richly decorated with great knowledge of the inner world of a simple person. Unfortunately, knowledge is not truth, and the Russian people in Leskov's works remain, on the one hand, a romantic dream, and on the other hand, the writer's gloomy idea of him. Let us note that the works of all the heresiarchs of Great Russian literature suffer from this disease.
Leskov is often called the most Russian, the most national writer of all the writers of our land. This comes from that part of the domestic intelligentsia, which is usually called patriotic, professing mainly the Uvarov formula "Autocracy, Orthodoxy, nationality", and therefore recognizing and even proclaiming the people's passive subordination in relation to irresponsible autocracy (in general, any power) and Orthodoxy (church hierarchy).
Nikolai Semyonovich himself repeatedly emphasized that positive characters were best for him. However, the writer's positive features (especially over the years) are dominated by such human qualities as humility, readiness to suffer forgivingly from a powerful villain, humility before the prepared fate. That is, in continuation of aristocratic literature, Leskov welcomed the feminized face of the Russian person. After all, from time immemorial, the Orthodox intelligentsia of Russia has proclaimed that, unlike the God-chosen people - the Jews, the Russian people are a God-bearing people, under the Protection of the Mother of God, and Russia is her vale *, therefore, the Divine face of the Russian people is humbly suffering and trusting only in God woman.
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* Vale - a place of suffering.
Let's face it, such an understanding of the Russian people is a purely aristocratic and intellectual fiction that has nothing to do with reality. Intellectuals wanted and still want to see the people in such a way that gradually they fully feel like masters, supermen and saviors, but the pretext for this, as always, was God and faith in him. Russian history itself, and even more so its most important part - Russian literature (despite many of its great creators) and its heroes, a thousand times refuted the image of obedient, praying and silent Russians imposed on us. The heroes of Leskov were no exception, in whose works even eldership is a form of active struggle against earthly villainy for the triumph of God's goodness.
Nikolay Semyonovich Leskov
Nikolai Semyonovich Leskov was born on February 4, 1831 in the village of Gorokhove, Oryol province. His mother, Maria Petrovna Leskova (née Alferyeva) (1813-1886), was from the Oryol impoverished nobles. Father, Semyon Dmitrievich Leskov (1789-1848), came from a priestly environment, served as a noble assessor of the Oryol Criminal Chamber (criminal investigator). Nikolai became the eldest of the seven Leskov children.
In 1839, the father resigned with a scandal, and the family moved to live in a recently purchased estate - the Panin farm in Kromsky district. In 1841, Nikolai entered the Oryol gymnasium, but he studied unevenly and in 1846 he did not pass the transfer exams. However, by the time he was expelled from the gymnasium, he was already moonlighting as a clerk in the Oryol State Chamber and actively rotated in the circle of the Oryol intelligentsia.
It was then that Leskov met the exiled Little Russian writer, ethnographer and folklorist Afanasy Vasilievich Markevich (1824-1867), under whose influence the young Leskov chose his life path - the young man firmly decided to become an ethnographer.
After the sudden death of his father in 1849, Nikolai was transferred to Kyiv as an official of the Treasury. There he lived in the family of his maternal uncle, professor-therapist of Kyiv University Sergey Petrovich Alferyev (1816-1884).
In Kyiv, in 1853, Nikolai Semyonovich married the daughter of a wealthy Kyiv landlord and businessman, Olga Vasilievna Smirnova (c. 1831-1909). And soon the Crimean War (1854-1856) began, which turned all the foundations of the life of Russian society upside down.
In May 1857, Leskov retired and got a job in the private firm "Shkott and Wilkens", which was headed by the husband of his aunt Alexandra Petrovna (1811-1880), the Russified Englishman Alexander Yakovlevich (Dzheymsovich) Shkott (c. 1800-1860). Nikolai Semyonovich was engaged in the resettlement of peasants to fertile lands, the organization of enterprises in the provinces, and agriculture. The writer himself subsequently called three years of service in his uncle's firm the happiest time of his life. Then Leskov traveled almost the entire European part of Russia, saw and understood a lot, the material collected from life was enough for him for many years of fruitful literary work.
Unfortunately, the company's business did not go well, and in April 1860 it had to be closed. Leskov returned to Kyiv and entered the service - in the office of the Governor-General. At the same time, he took up journalism. On June 18, 1860, his first article was anonymously published in the journal Economic Pointer, on booksellers' speculation with the Gospel. However, Leskov himself considered the beginning of his literary activity to be the publication in February 1861 on the pages of Otechestvennye Zapiski of Essays on the Distillery Industry (Penza Province).
It was a turning point in the life of an aspiring writer. Leskov left his wife, he moved to live in St. Petersburg, was recognized as a talented publicist ...
And in 1862, Nikolai Semyonovich for the first time had to feel his foreignness in St. Petersburg society. In the spring, a wave of fires swept through the capital. Rumor attributed the arson to nihilist students. Outraged by these rumors, Leskov published an article in Severnaya Pchela, where he urged the St. Petersburg mayor to look into this issue and, if the students are guilty, punish them, and if not, stop the slanderous chatter. The writer found ill-wishers who began to spread gossip around St. Petersburg, as if Leskov was calling for reprisals against progressive-minded youth. Few people read the article itself, but the condemnation of an innocent journalist turned out to be universal. Even Alexander II was indignant against Nikolai Semyonovich. Serfdom had just been abolished (1861), democratic reforms were being actively introduced, and society was in a state of delight from its own liberalism. The freedom fighters craved the retrograde victim. And as such, a provincial journalist who so successfully turned up under the arm was chosen.
Poor Leskov was shocked both by the slander and by such a monstrously general rejection of an article that no one had read. No one wanted to hear his explanations - guilty and that's it! In the end, Nikolai Semyonovich was forced to go abroad for a while - as a correspondent for the Northern Bee, he visited Austria (Bohemia), Poland, France ...
And when he returned, contrary to many expectations, he not only did not repent - there was nothing to repent of, but he had the audacity to rush into battle against Petersburg society with its liberal demagoguery. In 1863, the writer published his first stories - "The Life of a Woman" and "Musk Ox", Leskov published the collection "Three Stories by M. Stebnitsky *", which was followed in 1864 by the anti-nihilistic novel "Nowhere".
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* M. Stebnitsky is a pseudonym for the first years of the literary work of N.S. Leskov.
To say that this novel has become a social bomb is to say nothing. For the first time in Russian literature (great prophetic works on this subject were written much later), albeit slightly, albeit only in some features, only in the third part of the novel, however, the revolutionary movement was condemned (!) The hysteria of the democratic press, which at that time was actually exercising a dictatorship in the literary field of Russia, knew no bounds. The apogee of the scandal was the article of the idol of the revolutionary youth of those years, Dmitry Ivanovich Pisarev (1848-1869) “A walk through the gardens of Russian literature”, composed by him in the cell of the Peter and Paul Fortress, which gave the writings of the mentally ill critic a special aura of the sufferer. It was in this article that there were famous words that have become a shameful stain forever in the history of Russian and world literature: “I am very interested in the following two questions: anything in their pages coming from the pen of Mr. Stebnitsky and signed with his name? 2) Is there at least one honest writer in Russia who will be so careless and indifferent to his reputation that he will agree to work in a magazine that adorns itself with stories and novels by Mr. Stebnitsky? “These questions are very interesting for the psychological assessment of our literary world.”* In fact, Pisarev cried out: - Atu! - at Leskov, and the democratic crowd rushed to persecute him.
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* D. I. Pisarev. Literary criticism in 3 volumes. T. 2. Articles 1864-1865. L., "Artist. literature", 1981.
However, to our common happiness, there were also magazines and writers for whom the absurd Pisarev was not a decree. And the first among them was the journal of the recent convict Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky. Pisarev's article appeared in Russky Vestnik in March 1865, and in the same month the last issue of the Dostoevsky brothers' periodical Epoch was published, on the pages of which Nikolai Semyonovich Leskov's masterpiece was published - the essay "Lady Macbeth of our county" *.
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* Only in the 1867 edition of “Tales, essays and stories by M. Stebnitsky”, vol. I, did the essay for the first time receive its current name: “Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk district”.
Essays in the 19th century called purely works of art. "Lady Macbeth ..." was the first essay from the intended cycle. Leskov himself wrote to the famous Russian philosopher and literary critic, and at the same time to the leading contributor to Epoch, Nikolai Nikolaevich Strakhov (1828-1896): “... I ask you for your attention to this small work. “Lady Macbeth of Our County” is the first of a series of essays on exclusively typical female characters of our (Oka and part of the Volga) area. I propose to write twelve such essays…”*.
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* V.A. Goebel. N.S. Leskov. In the creative lab. Moscow: Soviet writer, 1945.
The main character Katerina Lvovna Izmailova does not have a prototype, although they do not stop looking for one. "Lady Macbeth ..." is a purely artistic work composed by the author "from the head", and rumors that such a tragedy occurred in Leskov's childhood are groundless.
The writer worked on the essay in Kyiv, in a difficult state of mind caused by widespread public obstruction, which inevitably affected the work itself. In a later conversation with the famous writer Vsevolod Vladimirovich Krestovsky (1839-1895), Nikolai Semyonovich recalled: “But when I wrote my Lady Macbeth, under the influence of overwrought nerves and loneliness, I almost reached delirium. At times I felt unbearably terrified, my hair stood on end, I froze at the slightest rustle, which I made myself by moving my foot or turning my neck. Those were hard moments that I will never forget. Since then, I have avoided describing such horrors.
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* How Leskov worked on "Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District". Sat. articles for the production of the opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District by the Leningrad State Academic Maly Theatre. L.: 1934.
The essay turned out to be millions of times more anti-nihilistic and anti-revolutionary than any other work by Leskov. But no one noticed or understood this - after all, Nikolai Semyonovich himself Pisarev (!) Was declared an outlaw by a reactionary. "Lady Macbeth of our district" chose not to notice!
And in vain, although it must be admitted that Katerina Izmailova is still not recognized by our literary criticism. But it is she who is the central connecting thread that stretches from The Captain's Daughter and Nekrasov's peasant women to the great Pentateuch of Dostoevsky, to Anna Karenina and The Quiet Don; it was she who, having absorbed all the willfulness and unbridled unbridledness of Pushkin's Emelka Pugachev and the power of the one that "stops a galloping horse, Enters a burning hut" from the poem "Frost, Red Nose", has become an inseparable, if not the main component of almost each hero of the latest novels by Fyodor Mikhailovich (primarily Nastasya Filippovna, Parfyon Rogozhin, Dmitry and Ivan Karamazov) or Sholokhov's Grigory Melekhov and Aksinya.
Why? Yes, because it was in the image of Katerina Izmailova for the first time in history (in the most artistically perfect form) that an individual, personal embodiment of the very nationwide, purely national philosophical thought of A.S. Pushkin: “God forbid to see a Russian rebellion, senseless and merciless!”*. After Katerina Izmailova, the theme of a personal, merciless, very selfish, and often senseless Russian rebellion became almost the main one in our national literature and replaced the theme of an extra person. And it was this personal rebellion on the pages of Great Russian literature that involuntarily created the idea of the Russian people as a people living on a constant anguish, a people inseparably soldered by irrepressible prowess and recklessness, spiritual expanse and naive, but unjustified cruelty, etc. In our days, mediocre intellectuals from the cinema, in a different way, the Russian people do not know how to show something, except as candy-rolling, reckless victims of their own boundless passions. This is already a stable stencil, a brand of belonging to everything Russian.
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* A.S. Pushkin. Sobr. op. in 10 volumes. T.5. Moscow: State publishing house of fiction, 1960.
However, in Russian literature, personal rebellion always has a great underlying reason: no matter what form it takes, initially it is always directed against injustice, and it is always preceded by a long-suffering expectation of Justice.
Katerina Izmailova was married from the poor with one goal - to give birth to a baby and bring an heir to the Izmailovs' house. The whole way of her life, as was customary in Russian merchant families, was built and organized for the cultivation of the successor of the family. But Katerina remained a non-native for five (!) years. Many years of barrenness became the root cause of her rebellion: on the one hand, the woman innocently turned out to be the hardest hindrance for her husband, since the absence of an heir for a merchant is a catastrophe of his whole life, and Katerina was constantly blamed for this; on the other hand, for a childless young merchant's wife, loneliness in a golden cage is a mortal boredom, from which it is just right to go berserk. Katerina rebelled, and her rebellion spontaneously turned into an insane passion for the insignificant handsome clerk Sergei. The worst thing is that Katerina Lvovna herself would never have been able to explain what she was rebelling against, she simply went berserk with a dark carnal passion provoked by a non-malicious fort *, and then events developed against anyone's will, in full accordance with the epigraph-saying prefaced by the essay "Blushing to sing the first song."
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* Firth (obsolete) - a dashing, dapper and cheeky, self-satisfied person.
The crimes were committed by the merchant's wife on the rise: at first Katerina sinned; then she secretly poisoned her old father-in-law with rat poison, who found out about her adultery; then she forced her lover to participate in the murder of her husband, so as not to interfere with their free life; and only then, together, for the sake of capital, they strangled the husband’s little nephew, on which they were caught and exposed by people ...
And here Leskov brought us to another topic given only to the Russian world (apparently, as a general philosophical national one) - the topic of the torment and violent death of an innocent baby. In real history, the death of two boys, terrible and unjustified, became the mystical root cause of the two greatest Russian troubles - the mysterious death of Tsarevich Dimitri Ivanovich on May 15, 1591 became the impetus for the Troubles of 1605-1612; the popular hanging in 1614 at the Serpukhov Gates of the Moscow Kremlin of the three-year-old Ivashka Vorenok, the son of Maria Mnishek and False Dmitry II, became an unrepentant curse of the reigning house of the Romanovs, the mystical retribution for which was the extermination and expulsion of the family in 1917-1918.
In Russian literature, A.S. was the first to raise this topic. Pushkin in "Boris Godunov":
...And the boys are bloody in the eyes...
And I'm glad to run away, but there's nowhere ... terrible!
Yes, pitiful is the one in whom the conscience is unclean.
The murdered boy in Pushkin's drama is the Supreme Judge, Conscience and the inevitability of the Supreme Retribution.
Leskov put this question differently. For Katerina Izmailova, the murder of a child became the lowest point of the fall, beyond which earthly retribution began, and much more terrible than the human court. The woman suffered from her lover, seemingly refuting previous accusations that she was a non-native. But in fact, she only confirmed her infertility in an even more monstrous form: “... in a prison hospital, when her child was given to her there, she only said “Well, it’s completely!” and, turning away to the wall, without any groan, without any complaint, she collapsed with her chest on a hard bunk. She already had a chance on earth to be convinced of the senselessness and monstrosity of what she had done, not without reason, Katerina’s last earthly words, instead of a prayer, became a shameful lament for her former lover who mocked her: “how we walked with you, we sat through the long autumn nights, with a fierce death from the wide world of people we saw off” . And Leskov described the last earthly moments of this impenitent, godless murderous monster with absolutely terrible, terrible: “... but at the same time, from another wave, Katerina Lvovna rose almost to her waist above the water, rushed at Sonetka, like a strong pike at a soft-feathered raft, and both didn't show up anymore."
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* N.S. Leskov. Sobr. op. in 11 volumes. T.1. M.: State Publishing House of Fiction, 1956. Further text is cited from this edition.
However, Katerina Lvovna is completely terrible not by her deeds, but by the fact that she has become a mirror of the soul of the Russian intelligentsia of our days - a great mirror for black souls of blurred morality.
Creating "Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District", Leskov showed a dead end path of personal rebellion for the sake of satisfying his own passions and nihilism as such in general, in contrast to the general rebellion for Justice. If a popular rebellion is an earthly judgment on those who have gone too far in power, then a personal rebellion is a dead end of barrenness, a deadly noose of narcissistic egoism, which has no justification either in other people's atrocities or in one's own misfortune. It was this terrible all-consuming difference that was later most fully revealed by F.M. Dostoevsky in Ivan Karamazov's great monologue about a tortured child and a mother embracing a torturer who tore her son to pieces by dogs.
Through the efforts of the modern creative intelligentsia, Katerina Izmailova is now presented as the bearer of “innocent” and “underestimated” female love, as a victim-sufferer, but not because of the terrible atrocities she committed and infanticide, but because the beloved, to whom she devoted her whole life betrayed her boundless passion. Comments are unnecessary: the preachers of this nonsense managed to fall spiritually even lower than Katerina herself.
In 1930, Dmitri Dmitrievich Shostakovich (1906-1975) wrote based on the essay the brilliant opera Katerina Izmailova, a growing cacophony of reckless Russian revolt, which was never understood by the domestic intelligentsia. To this day, the opera is interpreted as a story about the opposition of a free, passionately loving person - Katerina - to the dictates of an ordinary-minded crowd! Leskov and Shostakovich must be turning over in their graves from such a high flight of thought of modern intellectuals.
The first film adaptation of the story called "Katerina the gas chamber" was made in 1916. Director A.A. Arkatov.
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* Alexander Arkadyevich Arkatov (Mogilevsky) (1888-1961) - classic director of world silent cinema. In 1922, he emigrated from Soviet Russia to the United States and ended his film career. Films about the fate of Jews in pre-revolutionary Russia brought glory to Arkatov.
The last adaptation of Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District was made in 1989 by director R.G. Balayan. The role of Katerina Izmailova was performed by the actress N.E. Andreichenko.
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* Roman Gurgenovich Balayan (b. 1941) - a well-known domestic film director; creator of 14 films, including "Flying in a dream and in reality", "Keep me, my talisman", "Filer", etc.
** Natalya Eduardovna Andreichenko (b. 1956) is a domestic theater and film actress. She played the leading roles in many classic works of our cinema, but is best known for the role of Mary Poppins in the TV movie "Mary Poppins, Goodbye!".
