Kuligin (Groza Ostrovsky A.N.)

The play "Thunderstorm" became the pinnacle of creativity of the great Russian playwright A.N. Ostrovsky. The action of the tragedy described in the play takes place in the small town of Kalinovo, freely spread out on the banks of the Volga. The main characters live in a state of conflict, the old order is shaken, a protest is brewing in society.
We meet Kuligin at the very beginning of the play. He is not the main character, but the author gives him a very important role. This self-taught mechanic is a realist, but at the same time, he is a dreamer and a romantic. For the first time we see him sitting on a bench on the banks of the Volga. He admires the beauty of nature from the bottom of his heart and sings. "Delight! Miracles, beauty! The soul rejoices!" - says Kuligin strolling Kudryash and Shapkin. But they do not share his joys and are immersed in worldly problems.
In the "dark kingdom" of Kalinov, Kuligin appears as a good person. He is outraged by the foundations and customs of the city, he does not agree with the reigning injustice. Kuligin talks about it this way, referring to Boris: "Cruel morals, sir, in our city, cruel! Whoever has money, he tries to enslave the poor. They undermine each other's trade ... They are at enmity with each other ..." morals, Kuligin replies: "How can you, sir! They will eat it, they will swallow it alive." In this, his indecision is manifested: "I already get it, sir, for my chatter." He avoids loud and decisive protest, and perhaps even fears it. Realizing that nothing can be changed, Kuligin advises "to please somehow."
On the other hand, Kuligin is a noble dreamer and romantic. He subtly feels the beauty of nature, reads poetry, sings, strives to make people's lives better, to expand their horizons. Kuligin dreams of inventing a perpetuum mobile and getting a million for it, which would be spent on giving work to the bourgeoisie. "And then there are hands, but there is nothing to work."
He wants to make a sundial in the city park, for this he needs ten rubles and he asks Diky for them, but is met with complete misunderstanding. Kuligin's concerns about the safety of the city do not leave Kuligin: "We have frequent thunderstorms, but we will not start lightning rods!". To which Dikoy replies: “The storm is sent to us as a punishment, so that we feel, and you want to defend yourself with poles ...”. Only one Kuligin we see clear goals in life, but, unfortunately, he can change life in the city.
At the end of the play, when the dead Katerina is taken out of the Volga, Kuligin is the first to tell Kabanikha: “Here is your Katerina. Do with her what you want! Her body is here, take it; and the soul is now not yours; she is now before a judge who is more merciful !" After these words, he leaves because he can no longer be near these people.

Ostrovsky's "Thunderstorm" (see its summary and analysis) was appreciated by those critics who saw the "beam of light" illuminating the "dark kingdom" in "knowledge", in "education" ... Only it can defeat the "dark kingdom" , with gloomy remnants of antiquity. The representative of such knowledge, which is already beginning to fight against darkness, is Kuligin in the play, a self-taught mechanic. The most ridiculous embodiment of the old darkness is represented by wanderer Feklusha.

A. N. Ostrovsky. Storm. Play

Kuligin is a supporter of knowledge, a supporter of culture; he has already grown out of that gloomy "naturalism" that makes even the tyrant Wild a "slave of nature", like a miserable, primitive savage. Wild is afraid of a thunderstorm: he sees in it a manifestation of the wrath of God and therefore he considers it a “sin” to fight a thunderstorm with a lightning rod. An admirer of Lomonosov, Kuligin adopted his point of view, which reconciled "science" and "religion", and sought to prove the greatness of God through the study of the natural sciences. In his Message on the Benefits of Glass, Lomonosov expresses this, new for Russia, attitude of man to nature. He attacks the “weak mind” of his contemporaries, who considered it a “sin” to try to explain what hail and lightning are, who explained the “harvest failure” as the “wrath of God” and considered it “sin” to give it natural explanations:

When in Egypt contented bread was not born,
Is it a sin to say that the Nile did not spill there?

Kuligin, a passionate admirer of Lomonosov, like his teacher, poeticized his scientific and religious understanding of the life of nature. An artist at heart, a man devoted to religion and to those miserable sparks of knowledge that fate gave him, he soberly looks at reality and fights against it in the name of public interests. He is naive with the belief that he will be able to invent a "perpetual mobile" (perpetual motion machine) - but he is touching with this belief in his own strength. Peter the Great himself ordered craftsmen from abroad to invent this fantastic machine, in the possibility of which he believed as naively and firmly as later Kuligin, this, in the 19th century, a representative of Peter's Rus'.

Kuligin is an exception in the town of Kalinovo in his thirst for education, in his interest in the world of culture. This nature is soft, enthusiastic and sensitive. He loves nature, loves poetry, he senses the possibility of a different, more noble and meaningful life and cannot reconcile himself with the rudeness and cruelty of the mores of his city. Gifted with the talent of an inventor, intellectually inquisitive, Kuligin is an indicator of those wonderful vital forces that ripen in the Russian people and will be powerfully revealed when the power of the dark kingdom of despotism and violence ends.

If only he unconsciously feels the beauty of nature, then Kuligin acts as her inspired singer. With his enthusiastic words about the beauty of the Volga, the action begins in. Kuligin ardently sympathizes with poor and unfortunate people, but he has neither the strength nor. funds to help them. .He only dreams of inventing a perpetual motion machine, getting a million for it and using this money to help those in need - "for the common good."

Condemning the inhuman morals of the "dark kingdom", he is afraid of decisive action. Curly, who answers Diky with rudeness for rudeness, ‘Kuligin advises: “From him, perhaps, to take an example! Better be patient." And he makes useless attempts to "enlighten", in 'he hears only one answer - insults. This timidity of Kuligin is not his personal defect. He is also a victim of the "dark kingdom". Despite. consciousness and self-esteem, he cannot overcome the slavish obedience that has been brought up among the people for centuries. He says to Boris: “What to do, sir! You have to try to please somehow." The loneliness of the semi-educated Kuligin among the completely ignorant Kalinovites is typical of pre-reform Russia.

The playwright is also right in the fact that intelligent young people, people “expecting an inheritance”, are in no hurry to help the talents of the people. Boris knows that a perpetual motion machine is not feasible, and could explain this to Kuligin, but Kuligin's public interests are alien to Boris, he considers them empty dreams and prefers not to "disappoint" a good person.

In The Thunderstorm, according to I. A. Goncharov, “the picture of national life and customs subsided. with unparalleled artistic completeness and fidelity. The action of the play does not go beyond the limits of a family, domestic conflict, but this conflict is of great socio-political significance. was a passionate indictment of despotism and ignorance that reigned in pre-reform Russia, an ardent call for freedom and light.

The rest of the faces in the drama are surprisingly full and vital. All of them are new, but some of them shine with special novelty in our literature. For example, Kuligin, a self-taught mechanic, or a lady with two lackeys. The latter, however, stops our attention not as a person, not as a character: it is only outlined by the author. It strikes you, rather, at the thought of bringing such a face to the stage and giving it a certain meaning. In fact, without him, the drama would be somehow incomplete. She would lose some colors, very necessary for the general tone of the picture.

Kuligin another thing. He is one of the main supporting characters in the play. Although he appears to us only from one side, from the side of a good-natured and dreamer, the author nevertheless puts a lot of life into him. He is remembered for his cuteness. On the stage you meet him with pleasure, you say goodbye to him with regret. This is a self-taught mechanic, a poet at heart, a dreamer. He looks for a perpetuum mobile and raves about it, admires the beauties of nature and recites Lomonosov's poems, starts philanthropic undertakings like sundials and lightning rods, and he is persecuted for this, and he is happy for it. Good people love him, but he goes away from the evil ones in his perpetuum mobile, in his lightning rods - look for him there. His character is related to the character of Katerina. And he, in all likelihood, not without storms and not without heart wounds, lived to gray hair. And it is bitter for him to live among people who do not understand him and for whom he is "an antique, a chemist." But he has a perpetuum mobile, which Katerina did not have - if only he could "get some money on a model", and he will certainly find a perpetuum mobile. And when he finds it, he will receive a whole million rubles from the British and do something good. In the meantime, it’s better for you and don’t talk about this mobile: he will immediately slip away from you, either because he is already tired of talking with the profane about this, or he is simply afraid of disbelief and ridicule. Probably afraid.

Along with the old woman Kabanova, an elderly, callous and terrible formalist woman, stands another tyrant, an eminent face of the town, wealthy merchant of the Wild Uncle Boris. A face captured in an unusually artistic way. He is always fooling around and getting angry, but not because he was naturally angry. On the contrary, he is a wet chicken. Only family members tremble before him, and even then not all. Curly, one of his clerks, knows how to talk to him; that word, and this ten. Wild is afraid of him. When, in the first scene of his appearance, Boris answered him rather sharply, he only spat, and left. He is angry because a bad custom has started: all his workers need money and everyone climbs to him for them. Don’t even stutter about his salary: “No one here dares to utter a word about salary,” says Kudryash, “he will scold what the world is worth. You, he says, how do you know what I have in mind? Somehow you can know my soul! maybe I will come to such an arrangement that five thousand ladies will be given to you. Only he had never come to such a position before. He also gets angry not because he could be angry all the time, because his bile continually spilled over or his liver was spoiled. No, and so, for a warning, so that they don’t ask for money under an angry hand. It is not even easy for him to get angry; he will take into his head the suspicion that today they will ask him for money, so he finds fault with his family, boil his blood and go for the whole day: he will set such a joke that everyone is hiding from him in the corners and money, maybe not will be asked. He likes to drink, and if a Russian person drinks, then he is not an evil person.

Another thing is the old woman Kabanova. This exact woman with character. The same beliefs that evoke such bright images in Katerina's poetic soul completely dried up the already dry heart of the old woman by nature. Life has nothing living for her: for her it is a series of some strange and absurd formulas, before which she reveres and urgently wants others to revere them. Otherwise, in her opinion, the light will turn upside down. The most insignificant act in life is understandable for her and is permissible only in this case, if it takes the form of a certain ritual. Saying goodbye, for example, to a wife and husband, is not something as simple as everyone says goodbye. Save God; she has various ceremonies about this incident in which no place is given to feeling. A wife, after seeing off her husband, cannot simply cry and mourn in her room: in order to maintain decency, it is necessary to howl, so that everyone hears and praises. “I really love, dear girl, to listen, if someone howls well!”, - says the wanderer Feklusha (here is another main person in this drama).

Meanwhile, the old woman Kabanova also cannot be called an evil woman. She loves her son very much, but is jealous of his daughter-in-law. She sharpens everyone in the house: she has such a habit of sharpening, and most importantly, she is convinced that this is how the house is held together and that as soon as she stops keeping order, the whole house will fall apart. She looks at her son and daughter-in-law as children who cannot be released from custody. There will be no order then, they will get completely confused "to the obedience, but to the laughter of good people." In one of her monologues (appearance VI, act II) she draws herself very aptly and sharply:

“But stupid people also want to go free: but when they go free, they get confused in obedience and laughter to good people. Of course, who will regret it, but everyone laughs more. they know how, and even, look, they will forget one of their relatives. Laughter and nothing more!

So that's what she's busy with, that's why she eats her son and daughter-in-law. True, she feels more than hostility towards the latter, but this is because, in her opinion, the son loves his wife more than her mother. This jealousy is very common in mothers-in-law. Pure in her opinion, in her life, which she narrowed down to the indispensable observance of various conditions and ceremonies of her life, she is inexorable to the weaknesses of others, and even more so to the weaknesses of her daughter-in-law; She only despises and admonishes the wild. He hates Katerina, but, again, not from anger, but from jealousy. She does not express the slightest pity at the sight of the poor drowned woman, but at the same time she is afraid for her son and does not let him go a step away from her. Kuligin in one place calls her a hypocrite. He is obviously wrong. She is not even a hypocrite, because she is sincere; at least the play does not show her to be cunning or hypocritical about her beliefs and habits.

In contrast to these two women, a third female face is extremely boldly and boldly placed in the drama - Varvara, daughter of the old woman Kabanova. This is a daring Russian girl, sometimes frank, sometimes sly, always cheerful, always ready to take a walk and have fun. And she loves, perhaps, the most daring guy in the town, Curly, the clerk Diky. This daring couple only makes fun of oppression and oppressors. Varvara seduces Katerina, arranges nightly dates for her and leads all the intrigue, but she is not the culprit of the disaster. Sooner or later, Katerina would have done the same without her. The barbarian in the play is needed only for Katerina's fate to be completed in a dramatic way (taking this word not in the sense of tragedy, but in the sense of a stage and entertainment). And in this respect, this person is necessary in the play. In general, in Mr. Ostrovsky's drama, all the characters, even the most secondary ones, are needed, because they are all entertaining, original and characteristic in the highest degree. Their dramatic processing is the height of perfection. Throw out one of them, the most insignificant, for example, even Feklusha, and it will seem to you that you have cut out a piece from the most lively part of the drama, and that the drama without this face does not represent a more harmonious whole. So the author was able to legitimize all these images.

Not only that, all the faces of his new drama are not in the least similar, they do not even in the least resemble the faces he had previously drawn. These are completely new characters and types. This quality of not being repeated anywhere, of deducing more and more new images with each new play, belongs, if we are not mistaken, among our contemporary writers, only to one Mr. Ostrovsky. If we consider his writings only from the side of types and characters<…>, then criticism will have to admit that it is not dealing with the Gostinodvorsky Kotzebue, not with a writer who can not be denied talent or speak of him carelessly, but with our most remarkable modern poet, who has great creative power, which at the present time can boast of very few European writers.

<…>"Thunderstorm" is, without a doubt, one of his best [ Ostrovsky] works. In it, the poet took several new aspects from Russian life, which had not yet been opened before him. In this drama, in our opinion, he took a broader look at the life he portrayed and gave us full poetic images from it. If there are flaws in his play, they are completely redeemed by first-class beauties. In "Thunderstorm" new motives are heard, the charm of which is doubled precisely because they are new. Ostrovsky's gallery of Russian women has been adorned with new characters, and his Katerina, the old woman Kabanova, Varvara, even Feklusha will occupy a prominent place in it. In this play, we noticed another new feature in the talent of its author, although his creative methods remained the same as before. This is an attempt at analysis. It is difficult to judge by one work whether it is good or bad. We only doubt that analysis can get along with the dramatic form, which by its very nature is already alien to it. That is why we have not yet mentioned this new feature in Mr. Ostrovsky's drama. Perhaps we are mistaken in mistaking an accidental event for intention.

Dostoevsky M.M. ""Storm". Drama in five acts by A.N. Ostrovsky"

In 1859 A.N. Ostrovsky wrote the play "Thunderstorm", in which he raised the problem of a turning point in public life, the problem of changing social foundations, penetrated into the very essence of the contradictions of his time, painted colorful images of petty tyrants, their way of life and customs. In opposition to tyranny, two images come forward - Katerina and Kuligin. This essay is dedicated to the second.

Kuligin is a tradesman, a self-taught mechanic. In the first act, in a conversation with Kudryash, he appears before us as a poetic connoisseur of nature, Kuligin admires the Volga, calls the unusual view a miracle. A dreamer by nature, he nevertheless understands the injustice of the system, in which everything is decided by the brute power of force and money: "Cruel morals, sir, in our city, cruel!" - he says to Boris Grigorievich: "And whoever has money, sir, he tries to enslave the poor, so that he can make even more money for his free labors." Kuligin himself is not at all like that, he is virtuous and dreams of the well-being of the people: “If only I, sir, could find a perpeta-mobile! .., I would use all the money for society ...”

The next time Boris meets Kuligin is in the third act on an evening stroll. Kuligin again admires nature, air, silence. At the same time, he is upset that they made a boulevard in the city, and people don’t walk, he says that everyone’s gates have been locked for a long time and not from thieves: “... but so that people don’t see how they eat their household food and tyrannize their families. And what, sir, behind these locks is the debauchery of the dark and drunkenness! Kuligin seems to be outraged by all the foundations of the "dark kingdom", but immediately after his angry speech he says: "Well, God be with them!" as if retreating from his former words. His protest is almost silent, and is expressed only in objections; he is not ready, like Katerina, for an open challenge. When Boris offered to write poetry, Kuligin immediately exclaimed: “How can you, sir! Eat, swallow alive. I already get the sir for my chatter. However, it is worth giving him credit for the persistence and at the same time courtesy he asks Diky for money for materials for a sundial on the boulevard: “... for the common good, your degree. Well, what does ten rubles mean for society! God be with you, Savel Prokofich! I'm not doing any rudeness to you, sir; You have a lot of strength, your degree; If only there was a will for a good deed.”

Unfortunately, Kuligin only stumbles upon rudeness and ignorance on the part of Diky. Then he tries to persuade Saveliy Prokofich to at least take lightning rods, since thunderstorms are a frequent occurrence in their city. But having not achieved any success, Kuligin has no choice but to leave, waving his hand. dreamer protest tyranny society

Kuligin is a man of science who respects nature, subtly feels its beauty. In the fourth act, he addresses the crowd with a monologue, trying to explain to people that there is no need to be afraid of thunderstorms and other natural phenomena, on the contrary, they should be admired, admired: “This is not a thunderstorm, but grace! .. one should admire and marvel at wisdom ... But people do not want to listen to him, all of them, according to old customs, continue to believe that all this is a disaster, that this is God's punishment.

Kuligin is well versed in people, capable of empathy and can give the right, practical advice - he perfectly showed all these qualities in a conversation with Tikhon: “You would forgive her, but never remember ... She would be a good wife to you, sir; look - it’s better than anyone ... It’s time for you, sir, to live with your own mind ... Enemies must be forgiven, sir!

It was Kuligin who pulled the dead Katerina out of the water and brought her to the Kabanovs: "Here is your Katerina. Do with her what you want! Her body is here, take it; and the soul is not yours now; she is now before the Judge, who is more merciful than you!". After these words, Kuligin runs away, he experiences this grief in his own way and is unable to share it with the people who are responsible for the poor girl's suicide.

Personally, I really like the image of Kuligin. He is like a kind of white crow in the city of Kalinov, he differs sharply from the rest of the inhabitants in the way of his thoughts, reasoning, values, aspirations. Kuligin is aware of the injustice of the foundations of the "dark kingdom", tries to fight them, dreams of improving the lives of ordinary people. He thinks about the social reconstruction of the city. And perhaps, if Kuligin had found at least a few like-minded people and material support, he would have been able to significantly change Kalinov for the better. This is what I like most about Kuligin - his desire for the well-being of the people.