The pinnacle of N.A. Nekrasov is the poem "To whom in Rus' it is good to live." All his life, Nekrasov nurtured the idea of a work that would become a folk book, that is, a book “useful, understandable to the people and truthful”, reflecting the most important aspects of his life. Nekrasov gave the poem many years of his life, investing in it all the information about the Russian people, accumulated, as the poet said, “by word of mouth” for twenty years. Serious illness and death interrupted Nekrasov's work, but what he managed to create puts the poem "Who Lives Well in Rus'" on a par with the most remarkable works of Russian literature.
With all the variety of types derived in the poem, its main character is the people. “The people are free. But are the people happy? - this main question, which worried the poet all his life, stood before him when creating the poem. Truly depicting the plight of the people in post-reform Russia, Nekrasov posed and resolved the most important questions of his time: who is to blame for the people's grief, what should be done to make the people free and happy? The reform of 1861 did not improve the situation of the people, and it is not for nothing that the peasants say about it:
You are good, royal letter,
Yes, you are not written about us ...
Some gentleman round;
mustachioed, pot-bellied,
With a cigar in your mouth...
Diminutive suffixes, traditional in folk poetry, here enhance the ironic sound of the story, emphasize the insignificance of the “round” little man. He speaks with pride about the antiquity of his kind. The landowner recalls the blessed old times, when "not only Russian people, Russian nature itself subdued us." Recalling his life under serfdom - "like in Christ's bosom", he proudly says:
You used to be in a circle
Alone like the sun in the sky
Your villages are humble,
Your forests are dense
Your fields are all around!
The inhabitants of the “modest villages” fed and watered the gentleman, provided with their labor his wild life, “holidays, not a day, not two - a month”, and he, ruling unlimitedly, established his own laws:
Whom I want - I have mercy,
Whomever I want, I will execute.
The landowner Obolt-Obolduv recalls his heavenly life: luxurious feasts, fat turkeys, juicy liqueurs, his own actors and “a whole regiment of servants”. According to the landowner, the peasants brought them "voluntary gifts" from everywhere. Now everything has fallen into decay - "the noble class seems to have hidden everything, died out!" Landowner houses are broken down into bricks, gardens are cut down, timber is stolen:
Fields - unfinished,
Crops - undersown,
There is no trace!
Peasants greet Obolt-Obolduev's boastful story about the antiquity of his family with frank mockery. He's not good for anything on his own. The irony of Nekrasov sounds with particular force when he forces Obolt-Obolduev to confess his complete inability to work:
I smoked the sky of God
He wore the livery of the king.
Littered the people's treasury
And I thought to live like this for a century ...
The peasants sympathize with the landowner and think to themselves:
The great chain is broken
Torn - jumped:
One end on the master,
Others for a man! ..
Contempt is caused by the feeble-minded "last child" Prince Utyatin. The very title of the chapter "Last Child" has a deep meaning. We are talking not only about Prince Utyatin, but also the last landowner-serf. Before us is a slave owner who has lost his mind, and little human remains even in his appearance:
Nose with a beak, like a hawk,
Mustache gray, long
And different eyes
One healthy - glows,
And the left one is cloudy, cloudy,
Like a pewter!
The steward Vlas tells about the landowner Utyatin. He says that their landowner is “special” - “he has been acting weird all his life, fooling around, and then suddenly a thunderstorm broke out.” When he learned about the abolition of serfdom, he did not believe at first, and then he fell ill with grief - the left half of his body was taken away from him. The heirs, fearing that he would deprive them of their inheritance, begin to indulge him in everything. When the old man felt better, he was told that the peasants had been ordered to return to the landowner. The old man was delighted, ordered to serve a prayer service, to ring the bells. Since then, the peasants begin to play a comedy: to pretend that serfdom has not been abolished. The old order went on in the estate: the prince gives stupid orders, orders, gives orders to marry a widow of seventy years old to his neighbor Gavril, who was only six years old. The peasants laugh at the prince behind his back. Only one peasant, Agap Petrov, did not want to obey the old rules, and when his landowner caught him stealing wood, he told Utyatin everything directly, calling him a pea jester. The duckling took the second blow. The old gentleman can no longer walk - he sits in an armchair on the porch. But he still shows his noble arrogance. After a hearty meal, Utyatin dies. The latter is not only scary, but also ridiculous. After all, he has already been deprived of his former power over the peasant souls. The peasants agreed only to "play serfs" until the "last child" dies. The intractable peasant Agap Petrov was right when he revealed the truth to Prince Utyatin:
... You are the last one! By grace
Peasant our stupidity
Today you are in charge
And tomorrow we will follow
Pink - and the ball is over!
The crowning achievement of N. A. Nekrasov is the folk epic poem “Who should live well in Rus'”. In this monumental work, the poet sought to show as fully as possible the main features of contemporary Russian reality and reveal the deep contradictions between the interests of the people and the exploitative essence of the ruling classes, and above all the local nobility, which in the 20-70s of the XIX century had already completely outlived itself as an advanced class. and began to hinder the further development of the country.
In a dispute between men
About “who lives happily, freely in Rus',” the landowner was declared the first contender for the right to call himself happy. However, Nekrasov significantly expanded the plot framework outlined by the plot of the work, as a result of which the image of the landowner appears in the poem only in the fifth chapter, which is called “The Landowner”.
For the first time, the landowner appears to the reader as the peasants saw him: "Some gentleman is round, mustachioed, pot-bellied, with a cigar in his mouth." With the help of diminutive forms, Nekrasov conveys the condescending, contemptuous attitude of the peasants towards the former owner of living souls.
The following author's description of the appearance of the landowner Obolt-Obolduev (Nekrasov uses the meaning of a surname) and his own story about his "noble" origin further enhances the ironic tone of the narration.
The basis of the satirical image of Obolduev is a striking contrast between the significance of life, nobility, scholarship and patriotism, which he attributes to himself with “dignity”, and the actual insignificance of existence, extreme ignorance, emptiness of thoughts, baseness of feelings. Grieving about the pre-reform time dear to his heart, with “every luxury”, endless holidays, hunting and drunken revelry, Obolt-Obolduev takes the ridiculous pose of a son of the fatherland, the father of the peasantry, who cares about the future of Russia. But let us remember his confession: "He littered the people's treasury." He makes ridiculous "patriotic" speeches: "Mother Rus', willingly lost her chivalrous, warlike, majestic appearance." The enthusiastic story of Obolt-Obolduev about the life of landlords under serfdom is perceived by the reader as an unconscious self-exposure of the insignificance and meaninglessness of the existence of former serfs.
For all his comicality, Obolt-Obolduev is not so harmlessly funny. In the past, a convinced serf-owner, even after the reform he hopes, as before, "to live by the labor of others", in which he sees the purpose of his life.
However, the times of such landlords are over. This is felt both by the feudal lords themselves and by the peasants. Although Obolt-Obolduev speaks to the peasants in a condescending, patronizing tone, he must endure the unequivocal peasant mockery. Nekrasov also feels this: Obolt-Obolduev is simply unworthy of the author's hatred and deserves only contempt and unfriendly ridicule.
But if Nekrasov speaks of Obolt-Obolduev with irony, then the image of another landowner in the poem - Prince Utyatin - is described in the chapter "Last Child" with obvious sarcasm. The very title of the chapter is symbolic, in which the author, sharply sarcastically using to some extent the technique of hyperbolization, tells the story of a tyrant - a "last child" who does not want to part with the feudal orders of landlord Rus'.
If Obolt-Obolduev nevertheless feels that there is no return to the old, then the old man Utyatin, who has gone out of his mind, even in whose appearance there is little human left, over the years of lordship and despotic power, has become so imbued with the conviction that he is a "divine grace" master, to whom "on it is written to the family to watch over the stupid peasantry”, that the peasant reform seems to this despot something unnatural. That is why it was not difficult for relatives to assure him that "the peasants were ordered to turn back the landowners."
Talking about the wild antics of the "last child" - the last feudal lord Utyatin (which seem especially wild in the changed conditions), Nekrasov warns of the need for a decisive and final eradication of all remnants of serfdom. After all, it was they, preserved in the minds of not only former slaves, who ultimately killed the “intractable” peasant Agap Petrov: “If it were not for such an opportunity, Agap would not have died.” Indeed, unlike Obolt-Obolduev, Prince Utyatin, even after serfdom, remained in fact the master of life (“It is known that it was not self-interest, but arrogance that cut him off, he lost Mote”). Ducks are also feared by wanderers: “Yes, the master is stupid: sue later ...” And although Posledysh himself - the “holy fool landowner”, as the peasants call him, is more ridiculous than scary, Nekrasov’s ending of the chapter reminds the reader that the peasant reform did not bring a genuine liberation to the people and real power still remains in the hands of the nobility. The prince's heirs shamelessly deceive the peasants, who eventually lose their water meadows.
The whole work is imbued with a sense of the inevitable death of the autocratic system. The support of this system - the landlords - are depicted in the poem as "last-born", living out their lives. The ferocious Shalashnikov has long been gone from the world, Prince Utyatin died a "landowner", the insignificant Obolt-Obolduev has no future. The picture of the deserted manor estate, which is taken away brick by brick by the servants, has a symbolic character (chapter "Peasant Woman").
Thus, opposing in the poem two worlds, two spheres of life: the world of the gentlemen of the landowners and the world of the peasantry. Nekrasov, with the help of satirical images of landowners, leads readers to the conclusion that the happiness of the people is possible without Obolt-Obolduev and the Utyatins, and only when the people themselves become the true masters of their lives.
Satirical depiction of landlords. In the poem “To whom it is good to live in Rus',” Nekrasov, as if on behalf of millions of peasants, acted as an angry exposer of the socio-political system of Russia and pronounced a severe sentence on him. The poet painfully experienced the humility of the people, their downtroddenness, darkness.
Nekrasov looks at the landlords through the eyes of the peasants, without any idealization and sympathy, drawing their images.
Nekrasov satirically angrily talks about the parasitic life of the landowners in the recent past, when the landlord's chest breathed freely and easily.
The master, who owned "baptized property", was a sovereign king in his patrimony, where everything "subdued" him:
None of the contradictions
Whom I want - I have mercy,
Whomever I want, I will execute.
The landowner Obolt-Obolduev recalls the past. In conditions of complete impunity and uncontrolled arbitrariness, the rules of behavior of the landlords, their habits and views were formed:
Law is my wish!
The fist is my police!
sparkling blow,
a crushing blow,
Cheekbone blow! ..
The abolition of serfdom struck "one end at the master, / with the other at the peasant." The master cannot and does not want to adapt to the conditions of life of growing capitalism - the desolation of estates and the ruin of masters becomes inevitable.
Without any regret, the poet talks about how the master's houses are sorted out "brick by brick". Nekrasov's satirical attitude towards bars is also reflected in the names he gives them: Obolt-Obolduev, Utyatin ("Last Child"). Particularly expressive in the poem is the image of Prince Utyatin - the Last. This is a gentleman who "has been acting weird all his life, fooling around." He remained a cruel feudal despot even after 1861.
Completely unaware of his peasants, the Last gives ridiculous orders on the patrimony, orders “to marry Gavrila Zhokhov to the widow Terentyeva, to fix the hut again so that they live in it, multiply and rule the tax!”
The men greet this order with laughter, since “that widow is under seventy, and the groom is six years old!”
The latter appoints the deaf-mute fool as a watchman, orders the shepherds to calm the herd so that the cows do not wake up the master with their mooing.
Not only the orders of the Last One are absurd, even more absurd and strange is he himself, stubbornly refusing to come to terms with the abolition of serfdom. Caricature and his appearance:
Nose with a beak, like a hawk,
Mustache gray, long And - different eyes:
One healthy glows
And the left one is cloudy, cloudy,
Like a pewter!
The landowner Shalashnikov is also shown as a cruel tyrant-oppressor, who subjugated his own peasants by "military force".
Saveliy says that the German manager Vogel is even more cruel. Under him, “penal servitude came to the Korez peasant - he ruined it to the skin!”
The peasants and the master are irreconcilable, eternal enemies. “Praise the grass in a haystack, and the master in the coffin,” says the poet. As long as gentlemen exist, there is no and cannot be happiness for the peasant - this is the conclusion to which Nekrasov leads the reader of the poem with iron consistency.
How is the principle of self-disclosure of a character implemented in the presented fragment?
In this fragment, Obolt-Obolduev exposes himself and the landlord system through his monologue. He mourns the loss of a feudal paradise, when the landlords lived in luxury and "not a day, not two - a month" feasted and considered themselves the masters of Rus': "Not only Russian people, Russian nature itself Subdued us." Ironically, Nekrasov describes the landlord's vision of animals that allegedly approve of gluttony and the rampant lifestyle of his life: “Fat-fat before the time!”, “Walk-walk until autumn!”. But in fact, the landlords amassed wealth at the expense of quitrent peasants, and without them they can only "twist" and "fall face down in a pillow."
In what works of Russian literature are images of landlords presented and how can they be compared with the character of Nekrasov's work?
The images of the landowners are presented in the comedy by D.
I. Fonvizin "Undergrowth" and in the novel by N. V. Gogol "Dead Souls".
Like Obolt-Obolduev, in conditions of complete impunity, the hero of Fonvizin, the landowner Skotinin, became a petty tyrant. Self-will in Obolt-Obolduev is expressed through his remarks: “Whoever I want, I will pardon, Whom I want, I will execute”, “The law is my desire, the Fist is my police!”. Skotinin, a proud nobleman, believes that he is free to beat the servant when he wants.
Gogol's landowner Manilov, like Obolt-Obolduev, considers himself a bearer of spiritual culture. Manilov considers himself an educated person, although for two years in a row there has been a book with a bookmark on page 14 in his office, and he adds the Latin ending “yus” to the Greek name of his son. Obolt-Obolduev also considers himself a learned nobleman, but in fact, like Manilov, he is not, and therefore the images of these two heroes are ridiculous.
The author's attitude to Grisha Dobrosklonov is undoubtedly positive. He calls his hero a messenger marked with the “seal of the gift of God” and foreshadows him “a glorious path, a loud name”, because. Grisha is destined for the fate of the people's intercessor. Like the author, Dobrosklonov stands up for the liberation of the peasants from the oppression of the landlords and wants to see in the Russian people real citizens who think and are useful to society. Drawing the image of Grisha, Nekrasov shows what a Russian person should be: selfless (Grisha is not afraid of consumption or Siberia), who believes in the future of Russia and serves for its benefit.
In what works of Russian writers do songs play an important role, and in what ways can these works be compared with the work of N.A. Nekrasov "Who is it good to live in Rus'"?
Songs play an important role in such works as M. Yu. Lermontov's poem "The Song about ... the Merchant Kalashnikov" and the epic novel "War and Peace" by L. N. Tolstoy.
Like Dobrosklonov's song, the song of Lermontov's guslars expresses a folk thought: if Grisha sings about a change in the people's fate, then the guslars praise the image of a brave, truth-loving Russian man, embodied in the merchant Kalashnikov.
The song of Natasha Rostova, like Grisha, makes a strong impression on others. Grisha's brother, having heard a song written by a people's intercessor with the aim of raising the spirit of the peasants, comforting them in grief, exclaims: "Divine!" myself.
Updated: 2018-05-08
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In the dispute between the peasants about "who lives happily, freely in Rus'", the landowner turns out to be the first contender for the title of happy. The poet of the revolutionary struggle, who painfully experienced the obedience of the people, their darkness and downtroddenness, decides to look at the happiness of the landlords through the eyes of the bonded peasants themselves.
Here is a portrait of the first landowner:
... round,
mustachioed, pot-bellied,
With a cigar in my mouth.
... ruddy,
portly, squat,
sixty years;
Mustache gray, long,
Good fellows...
Round and ruddy Obolt-Obolduev, who ended his story-memoirs with suffering sobs, for all his comicality, is not at all harmless. In the chapter “The Landowner”, the author of the poem was able to satirically show the valiant tricks of this portly despot. At the same time, Obolt-Obolduev exposes himself not only at the moment of regrets about the past days, when “the chest of the landowner breathed freely and easily”: ... Whoever I want, I will have mercy,
Whomever I want, I will execute.
Law is my wish!
The fist is my police!
sparkling blow,
The blow is crushing.
Cheekbone blow!..
No less terrible is Obolt-Obolduev in his enthusiastically absurd pose of a patriot who cares about the future of Russia.
We are not sad about ourselves
We are sorry that you, Mother Rus',
Lost with pleasure
His chivalrous, warlike,
Majestic view!
Russia is not German.
We have delicate feelings
We are proud!
Noble estates
We do not learn how to work.
We have a bad official
And he won't sweep the floors...
Obvious ignorance, embezzlement, emptiness of thoughts, baseness of feelings of Obolt-Obolduev, his ability to live only by the labor of others against the backdrop of talk about the benefits for Russia, that “the fields are unfinished, the crops are undersown, there is no trace of order!”, allow the peasants to do sympathetic mocking conclusion:
The great chain is broken
Torn - jumped:
One end on the master,
Others for a man! ..
No less expressive is the image of another landowner with the same "speaking" surname - Prince Utyatin the Last. The attitude of the author of the poem towards this character is already felt in the caricature description of his appearance:
Nose with a beak, like a hawk,
Mustache gray, long
And - different eyes:
One healthy - glows,
And the left one is cloudy, cloudy,
Like a pewter!
The very title of the chapter about this old landowner who has gone out of his mind is symbolic - "Last Child". The gentleman, presented in the poem with great sarcasm, who “has been acting weird, fooled all his life”, is ready to accept on faith and for his own pleasure the performance that his former serfs play for him for a reward. The very idea of any peasant reform does not fit in Utyatin's head so much that it is not difficult for his relatives-heirs to assure him that "the peasants were ordered to turn back the landowners." Therefore, the words of the steward, perceived without realizing their sarcastic essence, sound like sweet music to him:
It's written for you
Watch over the stupid peasantry,
And we work, obey,
Pray for the Lord!
Now the orders are new
And he's fooling around...
What are the last truly wild orders of this “holy fool landowner” over which the people make fun: “to marry Gavrila Zhokhov to the widow Terentyeva, fix the hut again so that they live in it, be fruitful and rule the tax!”, While “that widow - under seventy, and the groom is six years old! a deaf-mute fool is appointed watchman of the landowner's estate; the shepherds are ordered to calm the cows so that they do not wake up the master with their mooing.
But it is not the foolish heirs of Prince Utyatin who shamelessly deceive the peasants, depriving them of the water meadows promised to them. So nothing, in fact, changes between nobles and peasants: some have power and wealth, while others have nothing but poverty and lack of rights.
In the chapter “Savelius, the Holy Russian Bogatyr” there is an image of another landowner-serf-owner-cruel Shalashnikov, “by military force” conquering the peasants, knocking out quitrent from them:
Shalashnikov fought excellently.
Judging by the story about him, this inhuman landowner could not do anything else. That's why "he received not so hot great incomes."
Looking at Obolt-Obolduev, Prince Utyatin, hard-hearted Shalashnikov, the reader understands that if happiness is possible in Rus', then only without such “divine grace” of gentlemen who do not want to part with the feudal orders of landlord Rus'.
The satirical orientation of the poem “To whom it is good to live in Rus'” is confirmed by the symbolic picture of the deserted manor estate, which the servants are pulling apart brick by brick. It is consonant with the author's idea that all kinds of "last-born" depicted in the poem live out their lives, just as, according to Nekrasov, the autocratic structure of Russia, which gave birth to such landowners-serfs, lives out its life.
