While working on the poem "Gypsies" (1824), Pushkin created characters and described the life of gypsies not from other people's words - he carefully studied their life and even lived in a gypsy camp for several days. In 1823-1824, which Pushkinists call the time of Pushkin's worldview crisis, he faced a number of acute life and creative questions. They primarily concerned the choice of life path (Pushkin thought about leaving Russia) and literary style (the poet experienced deep doubts about the prospects of the romantic style). In this difficult atmosphere of reflection and choice, Gypsies, the elegy To the Sea (1824) were created, and work continued on the first chapters of the novel in verse Eugene Onegin.
The plot of "Gypsy" may seem very far from real life. Why did Pushkin turn to such an exotic and unrealistic story? Of course, at the time of the creation of the work, the poet lives in the south of Russia and meets a lot of unusual things, and the mores of the nomadic people are interesting to the reader from distant capitals. However, the description of gypsy life is not the first place in importance in the poem. At the heart of the conflict of the poem is the clash of two opposite ways of life of people - civilization and primitive culture. At the beginning of the poem, Pushkin depicts a gypsy camp and describes the appearance of the hero Aleko in it.
The plot of the conflict of the poem is outlined in Zemfira's story about Aleko's desire to stay with the gypsies. It is indicated by contrasting the free life of the gypsies:
Like a liberty, their lodging for the night is cheerful
And peaceful sleep under heaven
and the reasons that led Aleko to them:
He wants to be like us, a gypsy;
He is being pursued by the law...
In the conventional language of a romantic poem, Zemfira's words that Aleko "pursues the law" should not be understood as meaning that he committed a crime. The hero is a voluntary exile, this is the main type of romantic hero, such is Byron's Childe Harold, the prisoner in Pushkin's Prisoner of the Caucasus, and others. Aleko runs away from a culture where law and coercion rule, personality, freedom of conscience, thoughts and words are suppressed - Aleko expresses all this in his passionate monologue to Zemfira.
Aleko's flight is an unconditional protest against the unacceptable order for a nobleman in Russia, which has a political basis, because it was in 1824 that the discontent of the progressive part of society increased and secret political societies became more active. In 1824 A.S. Griboedov finished the comedy Woe from Wit, in which he sharply ridiculed the inert and conservative society of that time.
Aleko's flight is also a protest against civilization, which deprives a person of natural freedom, simple feelings and relationships - friendship and love. The hero hopes to find a decent and free life among free gypsies, whose life is not touched by either civilization or culture with its conditional laws and limitations of the individual. The image of Aleko, of course, contains biographical features - it is not for nothing that Pushkin gives the hero his name, it is possible that someone called Pushkin that way during his stay in the camp. Moreover, the fate of the literary hero Aleko resembles the fate of Pushkin, who is in exile.
Meanwhile, one should not simplify the situation of the conflict, since the hero does not just run away from the “stuffy cities” of his own free will, he is forced by circumstances. There are two main romantic motives in the poem, which the poet resorts to when creating the image of the hero - the motive of flight and the motive of exile.
Pushkin does not dwell on the simple opposition of nature, the free life of the camp, and the "bondage of stuffy cities." If the poet did not distinguish between romantic fiction and reality, then he would probably leave Aleko among the gypsies and thereby resolve the conflict in favor of a simple, natural life without laws, without a developed culture. The "poetic wildness" of the gypsies, in the words of Vyazemsky, attracted Pushkin as a vivid background for depicting the conflict. But will Aleko be able to accept not only life, but also the customs themselves, the unwritten rules of the life of gypsies? What does their freedom mean?
The development of the plot leads to the fact that after two years of Aleko's life in the "peaceful crowd" of gypsies, an event occurred that became a disaster for him, but for gypsy customs and their natural "philosophy" it was only a natural episode: Zemfira lost interest in Aleko and cheated on him, moreover, just as easily and thoughtlessly as she had previously led him to the camp.
Zemfira sings a song, calling Aleko an “old husband”, but this expression should not be taken literally: Aleko is not old in age, he is a husband who lives with her for a long time, that is, a bored husband. Now she has met another, "fresher than spring, hotter than a summer's day," and, like a young plant, she reaches out to him. Aleko rages, goes mad, but this does not evoke sympathy in Zemfira, but fear. Zemfira's father, in order to console the jealous, tells Aleko his story.
Note that both Zemfira and her mother Mariula leave their husbands with their little daughters, that is, they act according to their own will, obeying only the call of nature, knowing neither responsibility nor duty. Zemfira's father accepts this liberty resignedly, as a natural law of life. Such is the gypsy life that Aleko could not comprehend, no matter how long he lived among this tribe. He is irreconcilable, bringing his demands, laws and will into the life of the gypsies. Thus, the main moral conflict of the poem is associated with a different understanding of the will: "will" as desire and its free fulfillment and "will" as the suppression of another, coercion. This conflict is also unresolvable. The culmination of the conflict in the poem is traditional for romantic poetics, taking place in an atmosphere of violent passions and dramatic actions. So, in the midst of Zemfira's nightly meeting with a young gypsy, Aleko appears. Zemfira dies unconquered, true to her natural liberty, in her feeling there is no shade of eternal love and devotion, which were endowed with their heroines of romance. She is free to love anyone who captivates her imagination, while the depths of her soul remain untouched.
Thus, the incompatibility of culture and wild liberty, high spirit and gross naivety, and, as a result, the insolubility of the conflict, are shown by Pushkin through a love situation. The denouement of the poem is the expulsion of Aleko from the camp.
Pushkin's idea is that neither escape from real life, nor the most decisive change of place and way of life, nor philosophy or beliefs will protect a person from himself, from "fatal passions", that is, it is impossible to guess the future and isolate yourself from it, " there is no protection from the fates," we must boldly move forward. This explains why Pushkin obeyed the will of the Tsar and went into exile in Mikhailovskoye, and did not choose to flee. The poem also reflects the departure from romanticism and the formation of a new artistic style of the poet.
Source (abbreviated): Moskvin G.V. Literature: Grade 9: in 2 hours. Part 2 / G.V. Moskvin, N.N. Puryaeva, E.L. Erokhin. - M.: Ventana-Graf, 2016
"Gypsies" is considered to be Pushkin's last romantic poem. The cycle of poems written during the period of southern exile, along with the poems "Brothers Robbers", "Prisoner of the Caucasus" and "The Fountain of Bakhchisaray", is also called "Byronic". But whether the poem "Gypsies" is romantic, and even more so "Byronic" poem, is a debatable question.
According to the official version, Pushkin began writing this poem after spending several days in a camp with Bessarabian gypsies. It is difficult to say whether this is true or just another semi-literary anecdote from his life. In any case, in most biographies this is said in passing, without details. It is also curious that, unlike the rest of the southern poems, "Gypsies" were completed not in the south, but already in Mikhailovsky. The involuntary loneliness and the point of growth associated with a life crisis certainly helped to make this poem wiser.
The plot, or rather its outer side, at first glance, is as simple as, for example, in "Prisoner of the Caucasus". If you don’t read this poem, but simply retell the plot, then it will seem like another romantic work among many similar ones: the hero runs away from civilization to the “children of nature”, they cannot accept him, and he himself cannot live in this society. But in "Gypsies" not everything is as simple as it might seem at first glance.
Let us recall with what large strokes Pushkin sketches the inner portrait of the protagonist in The Prisoner of the Caucasus:
He knew people and light
And he knew the price of an unfaithful life,
In the hearts of friends found treason,
In the dreams of love - a crazy dream.
In "Gypsies" Pushkin no longer depicts Aleko with such thick and inaccurate colors. Moreover, the description of Aleko is not separately displayed in the poem, and he himself is revealed through dialogues and plot, so he is a completely living character, not a literary one. As is quoted in all school essays, he escaped "from the captivity of stuffy cities", but this escape is the result of a search, reflection, and not a pose, as in the same "Prisoner of the Caucasus".
Zemfira deserves special attention. Often it is positioned as a free savage. There are serious doubts about her inner freedom. Here is what she says with such enthusiasm:
But there are huge chambers,
There are multi-colored carpets,
There are games, noisy feasts,
The dress of the maidens there is so rich.
One gets the impression that if Aleko offered her to run away to these very stuffy cities, she would immediately agree, if only to live in the wards among multi-colored carpets. Aleko does not notice this, but lies to himself and idealizes Zemfira. Even the most intelligent people are not immune from such a classic mistake (how can one not recall the personal drama of the poet associated with Natalia Goncharova). Trying to keep the romantic phantom, Aleko appeals to her beloved: "Do not change, my gentle friend!". If he says so, then there are grounds for it. It is as if Pushkin himself is sorry to be disappointed in the heroine, but the truth of art and life take their toll. Needless to say, he himself will follow the path of Aleko, marrying Goncharova.
Why does Pushkin include an episode about Ovid in his poem? It is known that, being in the south, Pushkin liked to compare himself with him. Ovid, like Aleko, like Pushkin, is the son of civilization. They are related by a common longing for that natural environment for them. Probably, this story is a turning point for Aleko, even though after that he wanders with the camp for two more years: the chimera about happiness in alleged freedom still lives in him, but the denouement is already inevitable.
Old husband, formidable husband,
Cut me, burn me!
These are the songs Zemfira sang. Yes, and Aleko says: "I don't like wild songs." Apparently, he never loved. Immediately after their skirmish follows a very intriguing scene of Aleko's nocturnal delirium. At first, in a dream, he pronounces the name of Zemfira, but after a while he begins to pronounce another name. Whose? It's hard to say, but this name is obviously from that past life. A very meaningful and mysterious episode.
Pushkin worked on the poem from January 1824 until October, that is, he finished it at Mikhailovsky. The characters and events in many ways resemble the "Prisoner of the Caucasus". The same European hero, falling into the environment of an almost primitive tribe. And here his intrusion into the life of this tribe entails the death of the heroine. And here the passions of the hero are the source of the catastrophe. Aleko is shown with a very unclear past, but it is known for sure that he is completely in the grip of passions:
But God! How the passions played
His obedient soul!
With what excitement seethed
In his tortured chest!
The poem contrasts the world of passions and the ideal primitive way of life. The concept of primitive society was based more on the poetic myth of the golden age. The era of enlightenment, on the contrary, was understood as a vicious society of people. In an enlightened society, man indulges in his passions, which pervert the healthy instincts of primitive people. Pushkin offers a solution to the problem of passions - all salvation is in the mind, in wisdom, which in the poem appears in the form of an old gypsy (limit unbridled passions with clarity of mind). So Pushkin showed the tragic situation of modern man, for whom it is impossible to live in a society of "educated debauchery" and it is impossible to escape from this society, since nowhere can he take root with his unbridled passions. "Gypsies" is not only the last of Pushkin's "southern" poems, but also the final, most mature one. In The Gypsies, Pushkin puts his hero in ideal conditions: having fled from the yoke of slavery that fetters the entire cultural European society, he finds himself in an absolutely free environment. Pushkin creates in the poem pictures of an ideally free society, the features of which far do not coincide with the true features of the nomadic Bessarabian gypsies familiar to Pushkin. It is not for nothing that researchers emphasize Pushkin's digressions in The Gypsies from the real ethnographic truth. However, the reproaches of Pushkin for violating the truth of life, and his defense against these reproaches, are equally untrue. You can not judge the poem "Gypsies" from the standpoint of realism. Pushkin did not set out in it the task of giving a realistic, true picture of the life of a gypsy tribe. His task was to place his hero in an environment where he could fully satisfy his passionate thirst for freedom. Pushkin chose the gypsy camp as the environment closest to the ideal of a completely free society he needed. In the gypsy camp, Aleko finds himself in an atmosphere of complete freedom; he meets no obstacle to his desires and actions. Leaving the “bondage of stuffy cities”, “despite the shackles of enlightenment”, Aleko meets Zemfira in the steppe and falls in love with her. She brings him to the camp, to her tent. The old father does not object at all to Zemfira's rapprochement with Aleko and does not ask him about anything:
I'm glad. Stay until the morning Under the shade of our tent Or stay with us and share, As you wish ...
Taking Aleko into his camp, the old gypsy does not demand anything from him in relation to society either:
Take up any craft: Iron kui il sing songs And go around the villages with a bear.
Aleko among the gypsies enjoys complete freedom. Even when he commits a double murder, the gypsies do not encroach on his freedom in any way. They do not even expel him from their camp, but simply leave him. To test the essence of Aleko's passionate love for freedom, Pushkin contrasted Aleko's freedom with the freedom of his beloved woman. The romantic hero - a freedom lover turned out to be an egoist and a rapist. Freedom was his "idol" as long as he was deprived of it. Having achieved freedom for himself, he is not able to recognize it for others if someone else's freedom violates his personal interests. The ideological line of the poem "Gypsies" is a deep exposure of the selfish essence of a romantic hero. It is usually assumed that the exposure of the romantic hero in The Gypsies is being carried out by Pushkin from a higher position, both moral and social, and literary, that is, from the positions of realism and nationality. Does freedom make a person happy? Pushkin poses this most important question for the romanticist in The Gypsies - and resolves it in the negative. Complete "freedom", the complete absence of obstacles to the realization of one's desires, is possible only at the cost of suppressing someone else's freedom, violating the free manifestation of the desires and needs of another. Aleko's freedom and happiness collide with Zemfira's freedom and happiness. Having severely punished the violators of his happiness, Aleko does not return it to himself. He even, as can be seen from the poem, does not feel pleasure from the revenge carried out. Aleko is unhappy. Freedom by itself does not bring happiness. - This is what Pushkin wants to say in the poem "Gypsies". Pushkin's gypsies are free, wild, that is, free from "shackles enlightenment”, they are lazy, do not work. Pushkin draws them cowardly, timid. When in the morning the gypsies learned that a stranger who had come to their camp had killed Zemfira and a young gypsy, they almost did not react to this terrible crime: they only became alarmed and timid. Shyness is a characteristic feature of Pushkin's gypsies. Pushkin repeats this characterization of theirs again through the mouth of an old gypsy, directly contrasting the timid and kind gypsies with the bold, proud and evil Aleko. Pushkin's gypsies have no laws, so they don't organize Aleko's trial. But if they are "wild", it would be natural for them to simply deal with him without trial. However, they not only do not kill Aleko, they do not touch him with a finger, they do not even scold, do not reproach him ... And this is not at all for any lofty reasons of principle, but simply because they are "timid and kind in soul." Violence is alien to them to such an extent that they do not even expel Aleko from their environment, but just themselves leave him. The twice repeated words of the old gypsy - "Leave us, proud man" and "leave us" - obviously do not mean a demand for Aleko to leave the camp, but a request not to follow them when they leave him. "Gypsies" was completed in October 1824, and published for the first time only three years later, in 1827.
The main conflict of the poem "Gypsies" lies in the confrontation of ideas about the life of two worlds - the world of the city, civilization and the world of nomadic primitiveness, not burdened by the difficult conditions of survival. Civilization gives a person a certain stability and external diversity of life, but to a large extent reduces the initial freedom of a person with complex rules - not only written laws, but also rituals, beyond which it is also virtually impossible to go beyond. The life of the gypsies in the poem is uncomplicated and unstressed, the number of events in it per unit of time is significantly less. A simple nomadic life in the bosom of nature with a minimum expenditure of energy for survival (there are civilized neighbors around who are ready to pay for gypsy exoticism) imposes minimal requirements on the responsibility of each member of such a community. The motive of Aleko's flight from the city and coming to the gypsies Aleko flees from the city, because for his ardent heart with powerful passions, life in artificial restrictions is unbearable, where everything is permeated with falsehood and hypocrisy and where the essence of a person is hidden, draped with many conventions. He understands that, with his sincerity, he is doomed to misunderstanding and persecution in a world full of deceit and luxury, which at all times has been synonymous with spiritual emptiness. To put it very briefly, Aleko chooses the content, despising the form. Liberty of the Gypsies. Lack of freedom of a person in a civilized society The freedom of the gypsies is ensured by the fact that they are in demand by civilized neighbors. Gypsies earn their livelihood with songs, dances and games, which is why these aspects of life are so well developed among them. Otherwise, they would have to seriously engage in cattle breeding and carefully guard against attacks by their own neighbors, which would require the creation of a military organization and strict discipline, which in fact distinguished all nomadic peoples. Pushkin, of course, spoke somewhat differently. He used the then exotic gypsies in Russia in order to express the idea that one cannot look for harmony and the dream of a Golden Age in the past. Despite the seeming lack of conflict and simplicity of morals, that life was also full of disappointments, and the desired will of one became the cause of drama for the other. Even more Pushkin criticized his contemporary civilized society. He well understood that people in him for imaginary external benefits even give up the freedom to express their feelings and generally lose themselves, being forced to arrange almost every manifestation of them with complex rituals. This is an anticipation of Gogol's masks, fused tightly with a person. He also understood that the luxury of the civilized world inevitably carries chains in which a person chains himself, and gypsy liberty just as inevitably implies poverty. Gypsies are much more wholesome, because their simple desires are not constrained by rules and laws, but are realized immediately. The disadvantage is the low level of consciousness of such people, which does not allow them to control their desires, as a result of which they are primitive and fraught with conflicts. That is, the point is the lack of conscious social discipline among the gypsies. Civilized peoples have such a discipline, but only on the outside - in the form of laws. Ideally, it would be to combine the internal discipline of the senses with external freedom.
Time of creation of the poem "Gypsies"
The poem began in 1823, finished in 1824 in southern exile.
The conflict of the poem "Gypsies"
The main conflict of the poem "Gypsies" lies in the confrontation of ideas about the life of two worlds - the world of the city, civilization and the world of nomadic primitiveness, not burdened with difficult conditions of survival. Civilization gives a person a certain stability and external diversity of life, but to a large extent reduces the original freedom of a person by complex rules - not only written laws,
but also rituals, beyond which it is also virtually impossible to go.
The life of the gypsies in the poem is uncomplicated and unstressed, the number of events in it per unit of time is significantly less. A simple nomadic life in the bosom of nature with a minimum expenditure of energy for survival (there are civilized neighbors around who are ready to pay for gypsy exoticism) imposes minimal requirements on the responsibility of each member of such a community.
The motive of Aleko's flight from the city and coming to the gypsies
Aleko flees from the city, because for his ardent heart with powerful passions, life in artificial restrictions is unbearable, where everything is imbued with falsehood and hypocrisy and where the essence of a person is hidden, draped with many conventions. He understands that, with his sincerity, he is doomed to misunderstanding and persecution in a world full of deceit and luxury, which at all times has been synonymous with spiritual emptiness. In the shortest possible time, Aleko chooses content over form.
Liberty of the Gypsies. Unfreedom of a person in a civilized society
The freedom of the gypsies is ensured by the fact that they are in demand by civilized neighbors. Gypsies earn their livelihood with songs, dances and games, which is why these aspects of life are so well developed among them. Otherwise, they would have to seriously engage in cattle breeding and carefully protect themselves from attacks by their neighbors, which would require the creation of a military organization and strict discipline, which in fact distinguished all nomadic peoples.
Pushkin, of course, spoke somewhat differently. He used the then exotic gypsies in Russia in order to express the idea that harmony and the dream of a Golden Age cannot be sought in the past. Despite the apparent lack of conflict and simplicity of morals, that life was also full of disappointments, and the desired will of one became the cause of drama for the other.
Even more Pushkin criticized his contemporary civilized society. He well understood that people in him for imaginary external benefits even give up the freedom to express their feelings and generally lose themselves, being forced to arrange almost every manifestation of them with complex rituals. This is an anticipation of Gogol's masks, fused tightly with a person.
He also understood that the luxury of the civilized world inevitably carries chains in which a person shackles himself, and gypsy liberty just as inevitably implies poverty.
Gypsies are much more wholesome, because their simple desires are not constrained by rules and laws, but are realized immediately. The downside can be considered a low level of consciousness of such people, which does not allow them to control their desires, as a result of which they are primitive and fraught with conflicts. That is, the point is the lack of conscious social discipline among the gypsies. Civilized peoples have such discipline, but only on the outside - in the form of laws. Ideally, it would be to combine the internal discipline of the senses with external freedom.
The role of digression about the moon
When Pushkin wrote about the moon “entering the mists” and the “false light” of slightly glimmering stars, he wanted to show by this the cloudy state of the Soul of the awakened Aleko, its obscurity. The description of nature is here an indirect description of what is happening inside the hero.
The artistic role of the image of Mariula, the wife of the Old Gypsy, in the conflict and composition of the poem
The image of Mariula, of course, was not created by chance. The appearance of this character in the story of the Old Man sets a certain chronological depth, the vector of the narration, shows the non-randomness of what is happening to the main characters, and typifies a specific event. And at the same time, he shows Pushkin as a connoisseur of human souls, because he actually makes it clear to us that Zemfira is fulfilling the birth program laid down by her mother.
It should be noted that the decision of the Old Man - not to take revenge - shows the way of solving the problem that is diametrically opposed to the one chosen by Aleko, that is, this inserted plot is of great importance for better determining the difference between the rules of the civilized and wild world. And he clearly shows at the same time that relations within this wild world are also far from perfect, and the freedom of gypsies has its other side.
Pushkin harshly criticizes the society of his day and sets up a thought experiment, plunging a person from this society into an environment of wild liberty. And he answers: in the freedom of the gypsies, there is also no true happiness. Therefore, striving for a non-binding nomadic lifestyle is also pointless.
The artistic meaning of the final scene. Role of the epilogue
The final scene is a symbolic demonstration of how alone Aleko was left with his duality - like an abandoned cart in the middle of the steppe. Not a house, but a barren place - that's what this man has in his soul.
The epilogue ties the story to real time and place. People can live in completely different ways. Powerful Russia smashed the Turks, the Gypsies peacefully roamed the steppe. The meanings of their existence were completely different, although they were carried out simultaneously. These two so different worlds were connected only by the fact that both there and there there is no escape from fate and fatal passions.
Glossary:
- how Aleko's flight from the city and coming to the gypsies is motivated
- gypsy poem
- what is the conflict of the gypsy poem
- gypsy poem essay
- the history of the creation of the gypsy poem
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