In connection with the 35th anniversary of Ostrovsky's activity, Goncharov wrote to him: “You alone built the building, at the base of which you laid the cornerstones of Fonvizin, Griboyedov, Gogol. But only after you, we, Russians, can proudly say: "We have our own, Russian, national theater." It, in fairness, should be called the Ostrovsky Theater.
The role played by Ostrovsky in the development of Russian theater and drama may well be compared with the importance that Shakespeare had for English culture, and Molière for French. Ostrovsky changed the nature of the Russian theater repertoire, summed up everything that had been done before him, and opened up new paths for dramaturgy. His influence on theatrical art was exceptionally great. This is especially true of the Moscow Maly Theatre, which is also traditionally called the Ostrovsky House. Thanks to the numerous plays of the great playwright, who affirmed the traditions of realism on the stage, the national school of acting was further developed. A whole galaxy of remarkable Russian actors on the material of Ostrovsky's plays was able to vividly show their unique talent, to affirm the originality of Russian theatrical art.
At the center of Ostrovsky's dramaturgy is a problem that has gone through all of Russian classical literature: the conflict of man with the unfavorable conditions of life opposing him, the diverse forces of evil; assertion of the individual's right to free and all-round development. Before readers and spectators of the plays of the great playwright, a wide panorama of Russian life is revealed. This is, in essence, an encyclopedia of life and customs of an entire historical era. Merchants, officials, landlords, peasants, generals, actors, merchants, matchmakers, businessmen, students - several hundred characters created by Ostrovsky gave a total idea of Russian reality in the 40-80s . in all its complexity, diversity and inconsistency.
Ostrovsky, who created a whole gallery of wonderful female images, continued the noble tradition that had already been defined in the Russian classics. The playwright exalts strong, integral natures, which in a number of cases turn out to be morally superior to a weak, insecure hero. These are Katerina (“Thunderstorm”), Nadya (“Pupil”), Kruchinina (“Guilty Without Guilt”), Natalia (“Labor Bread”), and others.
Reflecting on the originality of Russian dramatic art, on its democratic basis, Ostrovsky wrote: “Folk writers want to try their hand at a fresh audience, whose nerves are not very pliable, which requires strong drama, big comedy, causing frank, loud laughter, hot, sincere feelings, lively and strong characters. In essence, this is a characteristic of the creative principles of Ostrovsky himself.
The dramaturgy of the author of "Thunderstorm" is distinguished by genre diversity, a combination of tragic and comic, everyday and grotesque, farcical and lyrical elements. His plays are sometimes difficult to attribute to one particular genre. He wrote not so much drama or comedy as "plays of life", according to the apt definition of Dobrolyubov. The action of his works is often carried out on a wide living space. The noise and talk of life burst into action, become one of the factors determining the scale of events. Family conflicts develop into social ones. material from the site
The skill of the playwright is manifested in the accuracy of social and psychological characteristics, in the art of dialogue, in apt, lively folk speech. The language of the characters becomes for him one of the main means of creating an image, an instrument of realistic typification.
A great connoisseur of oral folk art, Ostrovsky made extensive use of folklore traditions, the richest treasury of folk wisdom. The song can replace his monologue, proverb or saying and become the title of the play.
The creative experience of Ostrovsky had a huge impact on the further development of Russian drama and theatrical art. V. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko and K. S. Stanislavsky, the founders of the Moscow Art Theater, sought to create “a folk theater with approximately the same tasks and in the same plans as Ostrovsky dreamed of.” The dramatic innovation of Chekhov and Gorky would have been impossible without mastering the best traditions of their remarkable predecessor.
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A. V. Lunacharsky, in his famous article “On Alexander Nikolayevich Ostrovsky and about him,” made an appeal: “Back to Ostrovsky!” This polemically sharpened appeal at the same time provoked quite a few polemical protests. However, time has shown that Lunacharsky was right, and not those who accused him of conservatism.
Lunacharsky himself warned that "just to imitate Ostrovsky would mean dooming yourself to death." He urged to go "back to Ostrovsky, but only in order to cordon off the correctness of the main bases of his theater, but also in order to learn from he has some aspects of skill. On proceeded from the fact that "the theater of the proletariat cannot but to be household literary and ethical”, from the fact that “we need art capable of assimilating our current way of life, we need art that would appeal to us with the preaching of current, only still growing ethical values”. It is absolutely clear that, in solving these problems, Soviet dramaturgy cannot ignore the experience of Ostrovsky, the great poet of the theater and the great worker of literature, who wrote! "The whole Russian theater."
It is only necessary to remember that the masterful reproduction of everyday life was never an end in itself for Ostrovsky. You just need to be able to see behind all these thick beards, long frock coats, cloth undershirts, oiled boots, outlandish caps, the most colorful shawls and wide coats - you just need to be able to discern the living passions of living people behind all this dense layer of everyday life. You just need to be able to hear the groan of the soul of Katerina Kabanova, the heartfelt word of Gennady Neschastvittsev, the hot denunciation of Pyotr Meluzov. One must see in him not a genre painter, but a poet.
In this regard, it is appropriate to recall the words of the playwright's brother, P. N. Ostrovsky: “What strikes me in the reviews of critics about Alexander Nikolayevich is the narrow everyday standard with which his works are usually approached. They forget that first of all he was a poet, and a great poet, with real crystal poetry, which can be found in Pushkin. We must not forget about Ostrovsky the poet if we want to take lessons from this wonderful master of everyday theater.
Ostrovsky's mastery as the creator of ethical theater is extremely instructive for us now, when art is faced with the task of instilling in the audience the high moral qualities of the builders of communism. Especially close to us today is one of the most important ethical themes of Ostrovsky's dramaturgy - a compromise in life and an uncompromising consequence of one's path.
This moral idea varies infinitely in Ostrovsky's work, but in order to clarify our thought, we will name only two plays, two destinies, two images: "Talents and Admirers" and "Dowry"; compromise and uncompromisingness; Alexandra Negina And Larisa Ogudalova.
Ostrovsky with tender affection draws us a pure and whole image of Sasha Negina and, it would seem, for everything that happened, he blames not her, but life itself. The playwright, however, does not justify his heroine at all. He scolds her. And it is precisely this reproach that constitutes the ethical pathos of Talents and Admirers.
Negina had just expelled Dulebov from the house, had just rejected the temptation of an easy life offered by the prince, had just quarreled with her mother, who did not sympathize with her noble thoughts. Heroine? And at that moment, when we are ready to believe that she is truly a heroine, Velikatov with Smelskaya rolls up to the house. Negina clung to the window: "What horses, what horses!" This remark contains the grain of her future solution. It is not so easy, it turns out, to renounce temptations. And now Negina is jealous of Smelskaya, all at the same window: “How they rolled! What a delight! Happy this Nina; Here is an enviable character! It was no coincidence that at that very moment the bear hugs of the student Meluzov seemed to her: “I don’t love to death ...”
If Negina had to choose between Meluzov and Dulebov, she probably would have preferred the poor student to the impudent prince without hesitation. But an obliging life offers a third solution: Velikatov. In essence, this is the same Dulebov's version, but in a less offensive, more plausible form - is there a significant difference between Dulebov's proposal to move to a new apartment and Velikatov's proposal to move to his estate?
Ostrovsky, of course, could put Negina in completely exceptional circumstances, in a completely hopeless situation, choose a completely decisive motive - violence, deceit, insinuation; could emphasize that only despair tore her away from her beloved and threw her into the arms of the rich Velikatov. This, perhaps, would elevate the heroine in our eyes, but it would be to the detriment of vital truth. Ostrovsky's is scarier precisely because there is nothing special, out of the ordinary Not happened. It was not an everyday hurricane that broke the heroine, but the most ordinary - and therefore the author's position with the help of "chorus", "leaders", "persons from the author", etc. In cases where such a structure of the play is dictated by the peculiarities of its content, this technique can be artistically effective and ideologically effective. But it would be dangerous to see in this device some universal principle of modern drama. It would be wrong to believe that drama as an objective form of reproduction of life has become obsolete.
The history of the theater knows many attempts to overcome the objective nature of the drama by introducing into it a subjective element - lyrical or ironic, pathetic or satirical. Enriching the experience of the drama, expanding its possibilities, these attempts, however, constantly threaten the disintegration of the dramatic form, or, in any case, the violation of artistic harmony. And then the pathos turns the heroes into direct mouthpieces of the author's ideas, the lyrics turn into sentimentality, irony corrodes the immediacy of aesthetic perception, and even satire, this powerful means of artistic influence, can turn into a libel for life.
It often happens that the more active, it would seem, the author himself, the more passive he dooms the audience, depriving them of the opportunity - and the need to independently develop their attitude to what they see on stage. The playwright in these cases teases, prompts, explains, explains, instead of convincing the audience by the very logic of the characters and the event. It is this great ability to express one's position, while remaining faithful to the objective nature of the drama, that one should learn from Ostrovsky.
Ostrovsky always had his own position. But this was precisely the position of the playwright, that is, the artist, who, by the very nature of the form of art he has chosen, reveals his attitude to life not directly, but indirectly, in an extremely objective form, avoiding direct self-expression, avoiding the author's interference in the events of the drama, refusing to any kind of commentary on what is happening on the stage, without abusing the possibilities of direct expression of one's position, which, it would seem, the title of the play itself or the choice of names presents to the author. In this sense, we are instructive not only Ostrovsky's masterpieces, in which he followed these principles, but also his failures, in which he deviated from these principles. Even with such a great artist as Ostrovsky, the wrong starting position, which he adhered to during the period of Slavophile passions, although it is corrected by his organic instinct for truth, cannot but affect the integrity and artistic perfection of some of his plays. The unlawful interference of the author in the course of action violates artistic harmony, the drama inevitably begins to lose its inherent objective character and acquires features of didacticism and moralizing that are unusual for it.
The ideological and creative evolution of Ostrovsky serves as an eloquent confirmation of the pattern, open revolutionary democratic aesthetics: in truth, the power of talent. As we have seen, there is no reason to oppose the views of Dobrolyubov and Chernyshevsky on Ostrovsky's work. The unified positions of Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov on the issue of “the relationship of artistic talent to the writer’s abstract ideas” help Marxist aesthetics today in the struggle both with revisionists, who are trying to belittle the role of an advanced worldview in the artist’s work, and with dogmatists, who discount the originality of art as a specific form knowledge of life and influence on life.
Analyzing the principles of constructing a single dramatic action, the deployment of a dramatic conflict, the speech characteristics of the characters, we saw with what skill and consistency Ostrovsky subordinates all the elements of the dramatic form to revealing his author's position, his attitude to life. He had every reason to say about his plays: "Not only do I not have a single character or position, but there is not a single phrase that would not strictly follow from the idea."
Ostrovsky in his "plays of life" gravitates toward open composition. This determined both the principles for the selection of actors and the ways of organizing the action in time and space. The playwright, as we have seen, did not consider the restrictive rules of normative aesthetics obligatory for himself and boldly violated them when the vital material, the plot, the ideological concept of the play demanded it. But at the same time, in determining the circle of characters and grouping them, deciding how long the action of the play would last and where it would unfold, Ostrovsky never lost sight of the requirement for unity of action. Only he understood this demand not dogmatically, but broadly and creatively.
It is extremely important to remember this for anyone who would like to learn the mastery of composition from Ostrovsky. For behind the seeming optionality of compositional decisions, which gives his plays the charm of unintentionality and naturalness (and therefore very tempting for superficial imitation), Ostrovsky always hides a deep inner necessity, an iron artistic logic.
Ostrovsky, for example, creates only the appearance of "free access" of characters - in reality, his plays, which usually give the impression of being crowded, are populated, as we could see, very sparingly; characters who seem superfluous actually turn out to be necessary from the point of view of the embodiment of the idea in a single dramatic action. Further, no matter how long the action of the play lasts, this time is never in his plays amorphous, indefinite, indifferent to the action; behind ease and smoothness in the deployment of action, internally tense, and sometimes even impetuous rhythms that get faster and faster as the action progresses towards the denouement. Finally, the spatial solutions proposed by Ostrovsky, which give the impression of being completely unintentional and even accidental, are in fact deeply thought out and internally dramatic (recall the contrasting contrasting and conflicting interiors; Always significant alternation of exterior and interior ; the technique of encircling the play with one and the same place of action, etc.).
Ostrovsky's experience is opposed to handicraft drama delusion, prudent adjustment by variety alive reality to the tried and tested canons and methods, volume (the standard of a “well-made play” that was given by the dramatic cuisine of Scribe and Sardou. It is no secret that even today there are many plays made according to the recipes of this cuisine, plays that are modern only in appearance, but infinitely distant The free composition of Ostrovsky's "plays of life" shows what opportunities open up for the artist when he does not adjust life to the usual dramatic schemes, but, on the contrary, subordinates all elements of dramatic poetics to the task of the widest possible coverage of contemporary reality.
Ostrovsky's experience also opposes the anarchic disregard for the laws of drama, the first of which is the unity of action (with Belinsky's clarification: "in the sense of the unity of the main idea"). How many more plays appear, "overpopulated" like communal apartments, with obviously superfluous characters who can be "evicted" from the play without any damage to it. How many more plays appear, the duration of which is infinitely extended, in which the action is continually transferred from one place to another without any need, in which both the time and place of the action are completely indifferent to the very essence of the action. Ostrovsky's skill lay in the fact that the extremely free composition of his "plays of life" is invariably based on a deep understanding of the specifics of drama as a reproduction of a single action.
As we have seen, all the features of the emergence, the development and resolution of the dramatic conflict in Ostrovsky's "life plays" are rooted in the laws of reality itself, which he depicts. What, then, should modern playwrights learn from Ostrovsky, who face fundamentally different conflicts and a completely different - socialist - reality? First of all, to look for the most appropriate compositional solutions every time not in the scholastic rules of normative aesthetics and not in mechanical copying of classical models, but V deep comprehension of the patterns of contemporary playwright reality.
Let the sad lesson of Ostrovsky's detractors, who did not understand the originality of his dramaturgy and arrogantly lectured the playwright throughout his work and reproached him with either the sluggishness of the action, the protracted exposition, or the randomness of its outsets and denouement, serve as a warning to modern criticism. Does our criticism always compare dramaturgy with life, does it always sufficiently sensitively note and support the birth of the new in drama, which grows out of the new in reality itself?
But let the sluggish and inactive dramaturgy not invoke in its justification Ostrovsky, who allegedly gives "only a static position" and in whose plays the action allegedly does not develop. Ostrovsky never really strives to artificially complicate dramatic action, but, as acquaintance with his manuscripts confirms, even in his early plays he sought and found solutions that would create the necessary dramatic tension. The evolution of Ostrovsky's work testifies to an increasingly confident and masterful mastery of the art of developing dramatic action. At the same time, the development of the action, the movement from the plot to the denouement in each Ostrovsky's play takes place in different ways; the nature of this movement - and this is extremely instructive - depends mainly on the character of the actors, on the readiness for struggle and on the energy of the opposing sides.
Ostrovsky, with exceptional skill, was able to convey in his plays the feeling of the continuous flow of life. In this sense, its exposition and complication can only conditionally be considered the beginning, and its denouement - the end of dramatic action. With the rise of the curtain, the action of his plays does not begin, but, as it were, continues; when the curtain falls for the last time, the action does not end: the author, as it were, gives us the opportunity to look into the post-stage life of his characters. And although the element of drama is the present, in Ostrovsky's plays the present incorporates both the past and the future. Needless to say, the wider, fuller and more diverse the past of the characters and their future are introduced into the drama, the wider, fuller and more diverse it will be able to reflect life.
Ostrovsky's experience teaches further, the fact that the skill of deploying a dramatic conflict does not at all consist in avoiding a wide exposure and arriving as quickly as possible at the outset. Expanded expositions appear in Ostrovsky's plays because the playwright invariably interested that social and everyday soil on which the very possibility of one or another dramatic collision arises. Ostrovsky is not content with stating the fact that it happened. With the inquisitiveness of a sociologist, with the thoroughness of a writer of everyday life, with the penetration of a psychologist, he seeks out the root cause. Wednesday? Custom? Circumstances? Family? Upbringing? Characters? It is precisely on the share of exposition in Ostrovsky's plays that the task of recreating typical circumstances largely falls. This determines the exceptionally important ideological and artistic function of the exposition in his dramaturgy.
A wide exposition in Ostrovsky's plays unfolds, however, by no means to the detriment of the plot. And the point is not only that the exposition prepares the plot, but also that the exposition already contains the plot, though only as a possibility. The composition of "plays of life" in this case reflects the pattern of life itself. After all, in life each phenomenon is contradictory and, therefore, concludes a wide variety of possibilities. Only as a result of the struggle of contradictions one of the possibilities is realized and becomes a reality. So it is in Ostrovsky's plays: the exposition conceals the most various possibilities, but the playwright gradually (and not immediately!) realizes those of them that ultimately form the plot of a dramatic action.
Ostrovsky's plots are always deeply substantiated socially and psychologically; the randomness of the occasion in some of his plays only sets off the regularity of the reasons that gave rise to the plot of a dramatic collision. In the same way, the unexpected outcomes in a number of his plays allow us to better understand the uniqueness of social patterns embodied by the playwright. The ingenious realist artist intuitively comprehended in his work the contradictory dialectical unity of chance And patterns. Randomness for him is only a special form of manifestation of regularity, which allowed him to embody life in all the diversity of its cause-and-effect relationships.
Meanwhile, in modern plays one often comes across either a schematic reproduction of the most general patterns of life in equally general forms, or, on the contrary, the abuse of accidents, behind which there is no social pattern, the depiction of only the external immediate cause of events, without any attempt to get to the bottom of the causes. social phenomenon. It must be said that our critics, in their demands on dramaturgy, are sometimes too rigorous, not recognizing the artist's right to allow an element of chance into the development of the action, even when a particular case allows us to better comprehend the general pattern.
Ostrovsky's skill in unfolding dramatic action is instructive in yet another respect.. What tricks do some playwrights resort to in order to hide the true state of affairs from the audience for as long as possible and to amaze them with surprise all the more effectively. Ostrovsky, as we have seen, never hides anything from the audience; the viewer of his plays always knows more than each individual character, and often even more than all the characters put together; the viewer usually knows not only how the hero acted, but also how he is going to act; not infrequently the playwright even allows us to anticipate the denouement. Does this reduce the audience's interest in what is happening on stage? In no way. On the contrary, the technique of anticipating the denouement, in a certain sense, even stirs up the interest of the audience - only the interest is transferred to how, in what way, the expected will come true and whether it will come true.
“The most difficult thing for novice dramatic writers,” Ostrovsky argued, “is to arrange a play; not a skillfully written script harms the success and destroys the dignity of the play. These words seem to be directly addressed to our young playwrights. The study of the precious experience of Ostrovsky himself will undoubtedly help them in mastering the difficult art of unfolding dramatic action.
Ostrovsky with remarkable skill creates lively, unique and at the same time typical characters. He subordinates to this goal all means of artistic expression, starting with the selection and grouping of characters and the choice of names, and ending with the disclosure of character in the actions of the characters and in their way of expression. Ostrovsky's skill in speech characterization actors is universally recognized and instructive.
Ostrovsky, as we have seen, characterizes his heroes, firstly, by their commitment to a certain social speech style and, secondly, by their desire to go beyond this style and master the vocabulary and phraseology of neighboring social speech styles. In both cases, the playwright reproduces the real processes that took place in the language of Russian society and which, in turn, reflected the deepest social changes.
Ostrovsky's experience teaches that a dramatic writer cannot vividly and truthfully reflect the life of modern society without capturing the processes that take place in the language of this society. And we saw with what sensitivity the playwright listened throughout his life to the constantly changing living speech, with what close attention he studied the vocabulary and phraseology of various social strata, with what zeal he collected precious placers of the national language. This continuous artistic work of studying the language is captured in Ostrovsky's diaries, in his letters, notebooks, in the materials he collected for the dictionary of the Russian folk language, but mainly, of course, in the work on the language of the plays themselves, in the persistent search for the exact word, vivid, figurative expressive and characteristic.
The language of Ostrovsky's "plays of life" can be all the more instructive for modern dramatic literature because the process of language integration, which he observed and which he reflected, has not only not been interrupted in our time, but, on the contrary, continues with unprecedented intensity.
In fact, the liquidation of antagonistic classes, the moral and political unity of the people, the destruction of opposites, and then the gradual erasure of the essential differences between town and country, between mental and physical labor, accelerate the process of language integration to an unprecedented degree and bring colloquial speech of various social strata and various regions of the country to the national norms of the literary language. This is an objective fact, one of the most encouraging facts of the socialist cultural revolution in our country.
Will not this process, however, lead to the fact that the speech of all members of society will become exactly the same? In this case, will not dramatic literature have to abandon language as a means of social typification and the creation of individual and at the same time typical characters? No, of course not. But let's not guess what will happen in the distant future, when the process of language integration is completed. Now it is much more important to emphasize that this is a process and that the very reflection of this process opens up the richest possibilities for the embodiment of language in movement for dramatic literature.
This is where the wonderful experience of Ostrovsky can come in handy, who in his plays is able not only to record the result of a complex process of mutual influence and convergence of various social and speech styles, but also to trace how this process itself proceeds. In his plays we see how a person first encounters a new word for himself; learns its meaning; evaluates - approvingly or condemningly; at first it comes to his passive vocabulary; then, as it were, tries out a new word; then he begins to use this word in his speech routine - at first in the form of a kind of "quote" from someone else's social and speech style; finally masters this new word completely and includes it in his active vocabulary. This amazing art of transferring language in motion should be learned from Ostrovsky.
Ostrovsky's experience, further, warns against overindulgence in jargon and local expressions. Various socio-speech styles as varieties of the national language are widely represented in the "plays of life"; as for social jargon proper, the playwright used them very and very circumspectly; as the skill and experience of the playwright increase, elements of jargon usage are found less and less in his works; in the same infrequent cases when the playwright nevertheless uses slang paint, he usually takes care that the audience understands the meaning of the slang expression encountered.
Local sayings also play a comparatively minor role in Ostrovsky's plays; familiarity with the playwright's manuscripts shows that the op, working on the language of his plays, often abandoned the dialectisms found in draft editions; as a rule, the dialectal features of speech reproduced by the playwright are formed due to specific local stresses or minor morphological variations, while these words themselves belong to the commonly used folk vocabulary.
If Ostrovsky was so reserved in his use of local sayings, then there is even less reason to be carried away by dialectisms among modern playwrights. The process of enriching the national language at the expense of dialectisms, which was already nearing completion in the time of Ostrovsky, in our time, according to the authoritative testimony of linguists, has almost completely ended. The dialectal features of colloquial speech are steadily being erased, they are less and less able to convey the specificity of the language of contemporaries.
Ostrovsky is our ally in the fight against the clogging of the language with jargon and dialect expressions. But Ostrovsky's artistic experience also helps us in the struggle for the richness, brilliance and diversity of the language of our dramatic literature. His plays are a lively and convincing argument in those disputes about the language of drama that are ongoing today; they actively oppose the purist hypocrisy of the adherents of the sterile "purity" of the language, which in fact turns into its impoverishment and depersonalization.
The reproaches that our playwrights often have to listen to are surprisingly similar to the reproaches of crude naturalism and clogging of the language that accompanied Ostrovsky throughout his creative life. Meanwhile, Ostrovsky, reproducing in his “plays of life” the living speech element, including also its temporary, fragile, capricious elements, up to vulgarisms, did not at all litter the literary language with these sayings, but, on the contrary, contributed to getting rid of the speech practice of society as a whole. what is contrary to the spirit and order of the native language.
Dramatic literature influences the formation of the language of society in that it introduces some words and expressions into the spoken language, and removes others from use. But we should not forget that in both cases she uses them. The remarkably rich and vivid language of Ostrovsky's "plays of life" is an eloquent and convincing confirmation of this.
The principles of the speech characterization of actors, which Ostrovsky asserted in his "plays of life", can now be considered universally recognized. However, there are often plays, sometimes even written by experienced dramatic writers, in which “the first condition of artistry in the image of this type” is not observed - “the correct transmission of its image of expression”.
The requirement of individualization of characters' speech is sometimes understood too elementarily. Some playwrights believe that for this it is enough to give the character some favorite word, being content, at best, with the fact that the “image of expression” of the hero does not conflict with the essence of his character.
Ostrovsky was never satisfied with this. He, as we have seen, sought to ensure that the speech of the characters was extremely expressive, expressive, actively characteristic. He, as we know, "eavesdropped" on his heroes both at rest and in a state of emotional upsurge or, on the contrary, depression; a sharp change in contrasting emotional states allowed him to reveal the "image of expression" of his characters with the greatest completeness. The individual features of speech, as we could see, were by no means added to one or another social speech style in his plays, but were a concrete manifestation of this style. Mastery of Ostrovsky Thus, it is reflected not only in the fact that he is able to vividly characterize the speech practice of a certain environment, but also in the fact that he surprisingly subtly captures various currents in line with the same speech element; the individual features of the speech of the characters in his plays appear primarily as typical varieties of one or another social and speech style.
It is especially important for those who would like to learn from Ostrovsky the art of speech portrait that the "image of expression" of this or that character in Ostrovsky's plays is not something stable, immovable, always equal to itself. Depending on the given circumstances, V Depending on the interlocutor, depending on the emotional state of the given character, the "image of expression" undergoes greater or lesser changes. In Ostrovsky's plays, as a rule, the speech of the characters presented not only by their most characteristic and stable elements, but also their modification in a diverse speech practice. At the same time, the relative stability of the image of expression or, on the contrary, its flexibility and dynamism are in themselves important features for characterizing the character.
Changes in the "image of expression" of the character can be associated either with a change in character, or with the manifestation - sometimes unexpected - of one or another character trait. In the first case, these changes are irreversible; in the second case, they represent only a temporary deviation from the usual speech norm for a given character. But no matter how the image of the character's expression changes throughout the play, no matter what speech masks the characters change, depending on changing circumstances and changing interlocutors, Ostrovsky never violates the principle of the artistic integrity of the speech portrait. This integrity is given to the speech portrait by a certain constant speech dominant, which holds together the image of the character's expression at all stages traced by the playwright.
Such are the principles of the speech characterization of the characters in Ostrovsky's "plays of life", which are extremely instructive for modern drama.
Four decades have passed since Lunacharsky called: "Back to Ostrovsky!" Did the young Soviet dramatic literature heed this call? Dramaturgy, of course, did not go back, and it was not called for this. She went forward, but she went forward, adopting the traditions of Ostrovsky, the experience of Ostrovsky, the skill of Ostrovsky. There was no shortage of epigone imitations over these decades, many superficial and pseudo-ethical works appeared; but they did not determine the true tradition of Ostrovsky. Plays were created resolutely seemingly contradicting his style, polemically opposed to his traditions; but their appearance was also prepared for by the revolution in dramatic literature that Ostrovsky accomplished in his time.
It would be senseless and harmful to use references to Ostrovsky's authority to slow down the innovative searches of modern drama. But it would be just as senseless and just as harmful to believe that the experience of the great playwright, the realistic principles of his creative work, can be discarded in solving the new problems now facing dramaturgy.
Even today we can repeat after Ostrovsky: "Now dramatic works are nothing but dramatized life." Of course, life has changed drastically since the time of Ostrovsky, new socialist relations have also given rise to a new understanding of drama. But the principle put forward by the great Russian playwright has retained its force: modern realistic drama is "dramatized life." That is why the possibilities inherent in the type of drama discovered by Ostrovsky are far from being exhausted. That is why the experience of the creator of "plays of life" is so precious to us.
“All decent people live either in ideas, or hopes, or, perhaps, dreams; but everyone has their own task. My task is to serve the Russian drama theatre.” This was said by Alexander Nikolaevich Ostrovsky. Of the 64 years of his life (born in 1823, died in 1886), 41 years were devoted to dramaturgy. Of these, 35 - theater. 48 plays. In practice, he created the repertoire of the Russian theater.
Ostrovsky said: “The national theater is a sign of the coming of age of the nation, just like the academy, universities, museums.
The theater before Ostrovsky was going through a difficult time. There were no good, real plays. The public was entertained in the cheapest and easiest way. A playwright was needed who would help restore moral content to the theater, because it is dramaturgy that is the basis of the theater.
On February 14, 1847, a group of Moscow writers gathered in the house of Professor Shevyrev, and an unknown 23-year-old official of the Commercial Court, Alexander Ostrovsky, read the first play to the audience: “The Family Picture”. Ostrovsky recalled: “The most memorable day for me in my life is February 14, 1847. From that day on, I began to consider myself a Russian writer and already, without doubts and hesitations, believed in my vocation.
The playwright discovered a country that has not been known in detail to anyone until now and has not been described by any of the travelers. This country was called Zamoskvorechye, the Moscow merchant district.
How does the theme of merchants develop, the main theme of the playwright's work throughout his life?
Let's turn to the play "Thunderstorm". It is studied in detail in the lessons, so we will only note how the Ostrovsky city of Kalinov, a merchant city, draws. The main characters are his merchants, there are only a few characters from other classes: Kuligin, Shapkin, a crazy lady. Let's leave Katerina aside for now. Who stands out from the merchant environment? Savel Prokofievich and Marfa Ignatievna Kabanova, Kabanikha, as she is called in the city .. Imagine for a moment that they became poor. Will their characters, their manner of behaving remain the same? As for Wild, it is quite clear that his strength is in money. Money will go away - power will go too ... And Marfa Ignatievna Kabanova is the ideologist of this world. She should not be perceived as an evil woman or a bad mother-in-law. She is the bearer of superhuman evil. She herself does not feel evil towards Katerina, the widow Kabanova simply wants everything to be as it should be: when parting, the wife should howl and bow to her husband at the waist; guests should be greeted like this, and thanked - that way. Her power is stronger and more inevitable, it is not for nothing that the scolder of the Wild is afraid of her. There is even tragedy in Marfa Ignatyevna, because her world is leaving, she herself feels it, her time is running out, literally running out. Feklusha: Days and hours have remained the same: and time is becoming shorter and shorter for our sins...
Kabanova: And worse than that, my dear, it will be.
Feklusha: We just wouldn't live to see it.
Kabanova: Maybe we'll live.
And the fact that her world is falling apart, cracking is obvious. Musty, stuffy, unenlightened, wild world, afraid of everything, and most of all - fresh air, wind, flight. No wonder Kuligin will say angrily: “Thunderstorm! Yes, everything is a thunderstorm!” Melnikov-Pechersky drew attention to the fact that Kuligin's protest was the strongest. This is a protest of enlightenment, which is already penetrating into the dark masses of the Domostroy life.
And what will change, how will enlightenment affect the merchants?
This question is answered by the play "Mad Money" (1870, it is separated from "Thunderstorm" by eleven years). In it, we meet Vasilkov, Ostrovsky's new hero, who caused bewilderment among critics and readers. Yes, and the characters of the play, the Moscow bar Telyatev, Princess Kuchumov, Glumov, are trying to unravel this person. Who is he, this provincial, talking like a sailor from a Volga ship, and shaking hands in such a way that his interlocutor is ready to scream? Who is this person who writes down all expenses in a book, and at the same time, apparently, is not stingy and carries in his pocket a thick wallet about half an arshin, which leads the ruined noblemen to awe? This peasant - a kerzhachok is rude and awkward, even uncouth, his simple name Savva makes Glumov laugh ... But it immediately turns out that Vasilkov is educated as a philologist - he understands both Greek and English, he knows Tatar. He comes from somewhere in a remote province, but meanwhile he traveled all over the world: he came to the Crimea from London, through Suez, where he was interested in "engineering structures".
Vasilkov is so businesslike and rationalistic that he even chooses his wife, in accordance, as he thinks, solely with the arguments of reason. He constantly assures that, no matter how he gets carried away, but "it will not work out of the budget." But compared to Wild, with Kit Kitichs, he wins a lot. His efficiency is the efficiency of an honest entrepreneur; there is no Asian licentiousness, deceit, lies, dirty trickery in him. True, Vasilkov is honest because “a lie is not economically profitable,” he says directly: “In a practical age, being honest is not only better, but also more profitable.” His money is smart money. He knows their value, but they are not everything to him. No wonder Ostrovsky emphasizes the nobility of his nature, makes him even with a touch of sentimentality talk about his “infant soul” and the “good heart” insulted by Lydia. And, as Vladimir Lakshin, a researcher of Ostrovsky’s work, correctly notes, “Vasilkov forgets all his methodological calculations and calculations, and in a fit of jealousy, like a real romantic hero, calls Telyatev to the barrier: “Oh, I can’t tell you what is happening in my chest ... You see, I'm crying ... Here are the pistols! And can the author not sympathize with him when, after Lydia's mockery of his good impulse, he puts into his mouth such a lyrical, such an "island" phrase: "My soul is killed"
We will see something from Vasilkov later in Vozhevatov and Knurov (“The Dowry”). In this play, Ostrovsky's two main themes converged - the merchant class and the theme of "hot heart". Lydia Cheboksarova and Glafira from the play "Sheep and Wolves" are a rarity for Ostrovsky. Usually his young heroine - the main female role in the play - is a noble, passionate, courageous and defenseless woman with a warm heart. One of Ostrovsky's plays is called "A Warm Heart".
Katerina is the first of this gallery of beautiful female images. She is more tragic than dramatic. As a tragic heroine is supposed to, Katerina transgresses the ban, the play even has a “choice scene”, a necessary accessory for every tragedy. Katerina wants a lot - she craves love and pays for it.
But Larisa, the heroine of The Dowry, a play written twenty years after The Storm, no longer dreams of love. She knows that she, a dowry, has nothing to dream about marriage for love. She wants only one thing - to leave for the village, beyond the Volga, with her unloved husband Karandyshev, but only to be left alone. And even in this smallness, society refuses her. Larisa - in Greek means "seagull", a swift white bird among animals: Knurova (knur-boar), Vozhevaty, a young predator, Paratov (paratai - daring, dexterous, fast). Not only Paratov, but all of them "have nothing cherished." There are no traditions, there is no conscience, there is no god, and there is no formerly constrained authority of the “seniors”. What is there? Money and goods. “Every product has a price,” says Vozhevatov, and this is absolutely correct, but it’s scary when a person turns out to be a product. Everyone talks about Larisa, admires her, claims her attention, decides her future for her, and she herself all the time seems to be on the sidelines: her desires, her feelings do not seriously interest anyone. Larisa will have to admit the correctness of Karandyshev's insulting, like a slap in the face, words: “They do not look at you as a woman, as a person - a person controls his own destiny; they look at you like a thing."
But in this world - all things. Knurov with his European scope, Vozhevatov with his only moral principle - the "honest merchant's word", which he cannot violate under any circumstances - does not have what Vasilkov has. They don't have a soul. Their souls were eaten by money. That's why they are drawn to Larisa because she has a soul. And talent. But talent cannot awaken good feelings in them, because they do not exist. And Larisa's divine singing evokes completely different feelings in them, dark, heavy ... In Larisa there is no integrity of Katerina, there is no desperate determination of the heroine of "Hot Heart"; the thought of suicide comes to her, but something, contrary to her despair, does not let her in, keeps her alive.
“A pitiful weakness: to live, at least somehow, but to live ... when you can’t live and don’t need to. What a miserable, unfortunate I am…” says Larisa, standing over the cliff near the grate.
Ostrovsky wrote to the actress Savina that all his best plays were "written for some strong talent and under the influence of this talent." He once dedicated “Thunderstorm” to Kositskaya, an actress of reckless sincerity, who had the gift of bringing the experiences of a whole, open soul into the hall - these features are partly captured in Katerina. Larisa was meant for the young Savina, an intelligent, highly talented actress, famous not so much for her charm of openness, but for her modern “nerve”, bewitching transitions from spiritual coldness to hot passion. But the best Larisa was Vera Fedorovna Komissarzhevskaya. The actress played the eternal female soul, for which in this world there were no faithful and strong male hands that could accept, hold, protect this beauty. But Larisa Komissarzhevskaya is a poetic, painful, attractive, not benign character. Here is how a contemporary describes the scene at the bars:
“Larisa-Komissarzhevskaya approaches the cliff and looks down into the destructive and saving abyss. She wants to put an end to everything at once, because Katerina managed to save herself in her death. And here the way out is not to become a thing, to leave this terrible, dirty life ... But the hands so greedily clutched the bars of the bars, but the body, young, alive, so resists death - and Larisa departs from the abyss, destroyed and despising herself.
"Dowry" was the last drama created by Ostrovsky.
Two years after Ostrovsky's death, Chekhov would write the play Ivanov, and soon The Seagull would appear. And in this same Alexandrinsky Theater, the same actress who played the white bird Larisa in The Dowry, Vera Fyodorovna Komissarzhevskaya, will play the Seagull Nina Zarechnaya in Chekhov's play. And a new stage in the history of the Russian theater will begin, a stage that would not have happened if the great Russian playwright Alexander Nikolayevich Ostrovsky had not devoted his entire life to the Russian theater.
The Ostrovsky Theater is considered one of the very first in Russia, which has survived and is fully functioning to this day. It staged foreign and domestic classical works.
Origins
The Ostrovsky State Theater opened its doors to the public in 1808. Then Kostroma was a rich city, where merchants lived. Even today you can find old houses that have survived from those times. They traded various utensils, and barkers were actively working nearby.
At this time, Fyodor Grigoryevich Volkov was born in Kostroma, in a family of wealthy merchants. Later he became the founder of the theater in Russia. The city has discovered a completely new art. In 1863, another theatergoer, Konstantin Sergeevich Stanislavsky, was born in Moscow. And in the interval between them, in 1823, Alexander Nikolayevich Ostrovsky was born, a playwright who showed Russia the true life of merchants.
The merchants liked the new art form very much. Since the merchants were not poor people, they could support the undertakings of young talented playwrights and help the actors. Performances began to be arranged even before the Ostrovsky Theater was opened. Kostroma became the center of art. The first performances were shown during private receptions in residences and country cottages. Serfs played in them. Over time, they were replaced by professional actors.
Early history
The Kostroma Drama Theater was first mentioned in 1808. It may have existed before, but there is no official information. Scenes were played on the territory of a modern hospital - a special arena was built there. For the first time, the performance "Melnik - a sorcerer, matchmaker and deceiver" was shown there. This building welcomed guests from the Imperial Moscow Theater, who were forced to leave their homes in 1812. Each performance they played so impressed both the audience and the local actors themselves that a new round began in the history of the Kostroma stage. Famous actors of that time were Kartsov, Anisimov, Chagin, Glebov, Sergeev, Obreskov.
New shelters for the temple of Melpomene
Soon the small building was not enough, and the theater was forced to look for a stage that was suitable in size. She was found on the Lower Debra. This street became famous for the first stone theater building. Previously, the tannery of Syromyatnikov, a merchant from the second guild, was located in this place. Both the actors and the audience are so accustomed to this in a merchant city that they were not at all surprised by the fine line between art and industry. Nothing has survived from the building to this day. Only notes from past times with a description of the premises were left. Eyewitnesses mentioned that from the street it seemed that only the wall was standing. It was necessary to go downstairs in order to then go up to the theater premises. But his courtyard opened a beautiful view of the Volga.
In this building, Shchepkin, who played the role of Tortsov in the play "Poverty is not a vice", gave performances. Potekhin and Pisemsky were present in the auditorium. And 1863 became a significant year for the Kostroma theatre. It was then that a special building was erected for him on Pavlovskaya Street. All the townspeople threw themselves at him. It became the crowning achievement of architectural art in Kostroma at that time. The one-story theater looked more like a Greek temple, with many columns, a semi-circular facade and semi-rotundas near the porch.
The legend in action
Local residents are still sure that this building was overtaken by a supernatural attack. When it was just beginning to be built, the bricks were taken from the former monastery of the Epiphany, which burned down a little earlier. Builders bought materials and didn't care too much about superstitions. In 1865 the theater burned down almost to the ground. It was restored in two years.
Update
The acting troupe was recruited with the help of professional entrepreneurs. They updated the entire line-up quite often. Until 1917, Neverin, Zolotarev-Belsky, Ivanov, Chaleev-Kostromskoy played in the theater. Entrepreneurs were faced with the task of choosing not only actors, but also determining the repertoire. More than ten performances could be played in one theatrical season. Actors roles rarely learned to the end, often improvised and always waiting for clues from the prompter who was sitting in the booth.
In 1898, actors from the Maly Theater visited the Kostroma stage, including the famous Sadovsky family. From 1899 to 1900, the auditorium was remodeled by a new entrepreneur, more space was allocated for the stalls by reducing the number of boxes. But in 1900, the floor in the lobby burned down.
War time
In 1914-1915, Varlamov and Davydov from St. Petersburg performed on the stage. The actor Mammoth Dalsky also came from there. He stayed in Kostroma from 1915 to 1917.
The theater was almost destroyed by the October year. In 1918, a performance based on Gorky's play "At the Bottom" was brought to it from Moscow. Every movement of the theater-goers was recorded in the city party branch. Some of the actors moved to St. Petersburg, some stayed and showed the best plays from a small list to choose from.
In 1923, the institution was named after the great playwright. From now on it was the Kostroma Drama Theatre. Ostrovsky. Plays that could be shown were necessarily coordinated with party leaders.
When the Second World War began, the troupe was offered to disperse, it was planned to close the Ostrovsky Theater. Kostroma at that time experienced a real tragedy. But the actors refused. The inspectors who arrived did not expect to see Ostrovsky's "live" theater, the performances in which were sold out to the audience. After watching the productions, they gave the Kostroma stage the go-ahead to continue their activities.
A special brigade of fifteen people went from the theater to the front. They played Ostrovsky's performance "Truth is good, but happiness is better" for the soldiers.
In 1944, the anniversary of the theater was celebrated and it was given the status of a regional one. The celebration, despite the wartime, was held magnificently and brightly.
After the war
From 1957 to 1958, the building began to be reconstructed. It was partially restored to its former appearance, and inside, changes were made according to the project of the architect Iosif Sheftelevich Shevelev.
In 1983, the Ostrovsky Drama Theater was awarded an honorary
In 1999, it acquired the status of a state institution.
Ostrovsky Theatre: repertoire
The playwright Ostrovsky, beloved in the city, became the basis for the Kostroma stage. They were staged both during the life of the writer, and are played to this day. Also among the classical productions you can see the dramas of William Shakespeare, Alexander Pushkin, Leo Tolstoy, Moliere, John Patrick, Jiri Gubach, Alejandro Cason and others. Along with well-known works, author's adaptations of young screenwriters are also shown.
The Ostrovsky Theater often invites troupes from other cities to visit. Actors from the capital often bring original productions. In addition, the institution is the owner of dozens of various awards at international and all-Russian festivals.
The most popular pieces in the repertoire:
- The Odd Mrs. Savage is a comedy based on the novel by John Patrick.
- "Woe from Wit" Griboyedov.
- "While she was dying" by Natalia Ptushkina.
- "Boris Godunov" Pushkin.
- A modern adaptation of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.
- "Thunderstorm" Ostrovsky.
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Composition
Alexander Nikolaevich Ostrovsky... This is an unusual phenomenon. His role in the history of the development of Russian dramaturgy, performing arts and the entire national culture can hardly be overestimated. For the development of Russian drama he did as much as Shakespeare in England, Lone de Vega in Spain, Molière in France, Goldoni in Italy and Schiller in Germany. Despite the harassment inflicted by the censorship, the theatrical and literary committee and the directorate of the imperial theaters, despite the criticism of reactionary circles, Ostrovsky's dramaturgy gained more and more sympathy every year both among democratic spectators and among artists.
Developing the best traditions of Russian dramatic art, using the experience of progressive foreign dramaturgy, tirelessly learning about the life of his native country, constantly communicating with the people, closely connecting with the most progressive contemporary public, Ostrovsky became an outstanding depiction of the life of his time, who embodied the dreams of Gogol, Belinsky and other progressive figures. literature about the appearance and triumph on the national stage of Russian characters.
The creative activity of Ostrovsky had a great influence on the entire further development of progressive Russian drama. It was from him that our best playwrights studied, he taught. It was to him that aspiring dramatic writers were drawn in their time.
The strength of Ostrovsky's influence on the writers of his day can be evidenced by a letter to the playwright poetess A. D. Mysovskaya. “Do you know how great was your influence on me? It was not love for art that made me understand and appreciate you: on the contrary, you taught me to love and respect art. I am indebted to you alone for the fact that I withstood the temptation to fall into the arena of miserable literary mediocrity, did not chase after cheap laurels thrown by the hands of sweet and sour half-educated. You and Nekrasov made me fall in love with thought and work, but Nekrasov gave me only the first impetus, you are the direction. Reading your works, I realized that rhyming is not poetry, and a set of phrases is not literature, and that only by processing the mind and technique, the artist will be a real artist.
Ostrovsky had a powerful impact not only on the development of domestic drama, but also on the development of the Russian theater. The colossal importance of Ostrovsky in the development of the Russian theater is well emphasized in a poem dedicated to Ostrovsky and read in 1903 by M. N. Yermolova from the stage of the Maly Theater:
On the stage, life itself, from the stage blows the truth,
And the bright sun caresses and warms us ...
The live speech of ordinary, living people sounds,
On stage, not a “hero”, not an angel, not a villain,
But just a man ... Happy actor
In a hurry to quickly break the heavy fetters
Conditions and lies. Words and feelings are new
But in the secrets of the soul, the answer sounds to them, -
And all the mouths whisper: blessed is the poet,
Tore off the shabby, tinsel covers
And shed a bright light into the kingdom of darkness
The famous actress wrote about the same in 1924 in her memoirs: “Together with Ostrovsky, truth itself and life itself appeared on the stage ... The growth of original drama began, full of responses to modernity ... They started talking about the poor, the humiliated and insulted.”
The realistic direction, muffled by the theatrical policy of the autocracy, continued and deepened by Ostrovsky, turned the theater onto the path of close connection with reality. Only it gave life to the theater as a national, Russian, folk theater.
“You brought a whole library of works of art as a gift to literature, you created your own special world for the stage. You alone completed the building, at the foundation of which the cornerstones of Fonvizin, Griboyedov, Gogol were laid. This wonderful letter was received among other congratulations in the year of the thirty-fifth anniversary of literary and theatrical activity, Alexander Nikolaevich Ostrovsky from another great Russian writer - Goncharov.
But much earlier, about the very first work of the still young Ostrovsky, published in Moskvityanin, a subtle connoisseur of elegance and a sensitive observer V. F. Odoevsky wrote: this man is a great talent. I consider three tragedies in Rus': “Undergrowth”, “Woe from Wit”, “Inspector”. I put number four on Bankrupt.
From such a promising first assessment to Goncharov's anniversary letter, a full, busy life; labor, and led to such a logical relationship of assessments, because talent requires, first of all, great labor on itself, and the playwright did not sin before God - he did not bury his talent in the ground. Having published the first work in 1847, Ostrovsky has since written 47 plays and translated more than twenty plays from European languages. And all in all, in the folk theater he created, there are about a thousand actors.
Shortly before his death, in 1886, Alexander Nikolayevich received a letter from L. N. Tolstoy, in which the brilliant prose writer admitted: “I know from experience how people read, listen and remember your things, and therefore I would like to help you have now quickly become in reality what you undoubtedly are - a writer of the whole people in the broadest sense.
