Alexander Nikolayevich Ostrovsky is one of the most prominent Russian playwrights, whose work has become an important stage in the development of Russian literature and the national theater. We can safely say that it was the works of Ostrovsky that laid the foundation for the Russian repertoire in the theater.

Ostrovsky's plays are known and loved by many generations of Russian viewers and readers. Feature films were shot on them, the questions that Ostrovsky raises in his works are still relevant today.

Childhood and youth

The Russian playwright was born on March 13, 1823 in Moscow, in the family of a court official. The mother of the future playwright died early, the family had six children. Ostrovsky's father really wanted his son to follow in his footsteps. After graduating from the Moscow gymnasium, Alexander enters the law faculty of Moscow University. Ostrovsky never finished it.

In 1843, Ostrovsky was hired as a court clerk and worked in various Moscow courts until 1851. This period of life helped Ostrovsky a lot in his future work. Working in the courts, he perfectly studied the world of the Russian merchant class and the petty-bourgeois class, which he later brilliantly described in his works. Many characters, characters are taken by the playwright from his real life.

First plays

In 1847, Ostrovsky's essays were published in the Moscow City Leaf newspaper under the title "Notes of a Zamoskvoretsky Resident". However, the playwright gained wide popularity after the publication of the play “Our people - we will settle down”. This work, written in the comedy genre, was enthusiastically received by the public and received excellent reviews from critics. Gogol and Goncharov spoke favorably of this play.

However, the representatives of the merchant class did not like the work very much, and after their complaint to the authorities, the play was forbidden to be staged, and its author was fired from his job. "Our people - let's settle" was allowed to be staged only after the death of Emperor Nicholas, in 1861. With the second play, Alexander Nikolayevich was much more fortunate. “Don’t get into your sleigh” was written by him in 1852 and already in 1853 appeared on the stage of theaters. Since 1856, Ostrovsky has been constantly working in the Sovremennik magazine.

Since 1853, every year Moscow and St. Petersburg theaters staged new plays by the playwright, and all of them were favorably received by both the public and domestic critics.

At the peak of popularity

In 1856, Alexander Nikolayevich Ostrovsky went to the Volga region to study the life and life of the inhabitants of the region. It was after this trip that Ostrovsky wrote one of his most striking plays, The Thunderstorm. In 1859, the first collected works of Ostrovsky were published, which was enthusiastically received by critics. In 1860, Ostrovsky began to study Russian history, he was especially interested in the period of the Time of Troubles.

In 1863 he was awarded the Uvarov Prize and became a corresponding member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. In the 60s, the playwright founded the Artistic Circle, which gave a start in life to many future stars of the Russian stage. In 1874, on the initiative of Ostrovsky, the Society of Russian Dramatic Writers and Opera Composers was founded. In 1885, Alexander Nikolaevich became the head of the repertoire of all Moscow theaters.

Ostrovsky worked hard all his life, this seriously undermined his health. In June 1886 he died on his estate in the Kostroma province. Emperor Alexander III granted a large sum for the funeral of the playwright, and also assigned a pension to his widow and allocated funds for the education of his children.

Ostrovsky's plays show the life and everyday life of ordinary people, his works are very realistic, but at the same time they pose deep and eternal problems for the viewer.

Ostrovsky can be called the founder of the Russian theater, he created a new theater school and a new concept of acting.

A.N. Ostrovsky was born on March 31 (April 12), 1823 in Moscow, in the family of a clergyman, an official, and later a lawyer of the Moscow Commercial Court. The Ostrovsky family lived in Zamoskvorechye, a merchant and petty-bourgeois district of old Moscow. By nature, the playwright was a homebody: he lived almost all his life in Moscow, in the Yauza part, regularly leaving, except for several trips around Russia and abroad, only to the Shchelykovo estate in the Kostroma province. Here he died on June 2 (14), 1886, in the midst of work on the translation of Shakespeare's play Antony and Cleopatra.

In the early 1840s. Ostrovsky studied at the law faculty of Moscow University, but did not complete the course, having entered in 1843 to serve in the office of the Moscow Conscientious Court. Two years later he was transferred to the Moscow Commercial Court, where he served until 1851. Legal practice gave the future writer extensive and varied material. In almost all of his first plays about modernity, criminal plots are developed or outlined. Ostrovsky wrote his first story at the age of 20, and his first play at the age of 24. After 1851 his life was connected with literature and theater. Its main events were litigation with censorship, praise and scolding of critics, premieres, disputes between actors over roles in plays.

For almost 40 years of creative activity, Ostrovsky created the richest repertoire: about 50 original plays, several pieces written in collaboration. He was also engaged in translations and adaptations of plays by other authors. All this makes up the "Ostrovsky Theater" - this is how I.A. Goncharov defined the scale of the theater created by the playwright.

Ostrovsky passionately loved the theater, considering it the most democratic and effective form of art. Among the classics of Russian literature, he was the first and remained the only writer who devoted himself entirely to dramaturgy. All the plays he created were not "plays for reading" - they were written for the theater. Stage performance for Ostrovsky is an immutable law of dramaturgy, therefore his works belong equally to two worlds: the world of literature and the world of theater.

Ostrovsky's plays were published in magazines almost simultaneously with their theatrical performances and were perceived as bright phenomena of both literary and theatrical life. In the 1860s they aroused the same lively public interest as the novels of Turgenev, Goncharov and Dostoevsky. Ostrovsky made dramaturgy "real" literature. Before him, in the repertoire of Russian theaters there were only a few plays that, as it were, came down to the stage from the heights of literature and remained lonely (“Woe from Wit” by A.S. Griboedov, “The Inspector General” and “Marriage” by N.V. Gogol). The theatrical repertoire was filled with either translations or works that did not differ in noticeable literary merit.

In the 1850s -1860s. the dreams of Russian writers that the theater should become a powerful educational force, a means of shaping public opinion, found real ground. Drama has a wider audience. The circle of literate people has expanded - both readers and those to whom serious reading was still inaccessible, but theater is accessible and understandable. A new social stratum was being formed - the Raznochinskaya intelligentsia, which showed an increased interest in the theater. The new public, democratic and variegated in comparison with the public of the first half of the 19th century, gave a "social order" for social dramaturgy from Russian life.

The uniqueness of the position of Ostrovsky as a playwright is that, creating plays based on new material, he not only met the expectations of new audiences, but also fought for the democratization of the theater: after all, the theater - the most massive of spectacles - in the 1860s. still remained elitist, there was no cheap public theater yet. The repertoire of theaters in Moscow and St. Petersburg depended on the officials of the Directorate of Imperial Theaters. Ostrovsky, reforming Russian dramaturgy, reformed the theater as well. The audience of his plays, he wanted to see not only the intelligentsia and enlightened merchants, but also "owners of craft establishments" and "artisans". The brainchild of Ostrovsky was the Moscow Maly Theater, which embodied his dream of a new theater for a democratic audience.

There are four periods in the creative development of Ostrovsky:

1) First period (1847-1851)- the time of the first literary experiments. Ostrovsky began quite in the spirit of the time - with narrative prose. In essays on the life and customs of Zamoskvorechie, the debutant relied on Gogol's traditions and the creative experience of the "natural school" of the 1840s. During these years, the first dramatic works were created, including the comedy "Bankrut" ("Our people - we will settle!"), Which became the main work of the early period.

2) Second period (1852-1855) called "Moskvityaninsky", since during these years Ostrovsky became close to the young employees of the magazine "Moskvityanin": A.A. Grigoriev, T.I. Filippov, B.N. Almazov and E.N. Edelson. The playwright supported the ideological program of the "young editors", which sought to make the journal an organ of a new trend in social thought - "pochvennichestvo". During this period, only three plays were written: “Do not sit in your sleigh”, “Poverty is not a vice” and “Do not live as you want”.

3) Third period (1856-1860) marked by Ostrovsky's refusal to seek positive beginnings in the life of the patriarchal merchant class (this was typical of plays written in the first half of the 1850s). The playwright, who sensitively perceived the changes in the social and ideological life of Russia, became close to the leaders of the raznochinskaya democracy - the staff of the Sovremennik magazine. The creative result of this period was the plays “Hangover in someone else’s feast”, “Profitable place” and “Thunderstorm”, “the most decisive”, according to N.A. Dobrolyubov, the work of Ostrovsky.

4) Fourth period (1861-1886)- the longest period of Ostrovsky's creative activity. The genre range expanded, the poetics of his works became more diverse. For twenty years, plays have been created that can be divided into several genre-thematic groups: 1) comedies from merchant life (“Not everything is Shrovetide for a cat”, “Truth is good, but happiness is better”, “The heart is not a stone”), 2) satirical comedies (“There is Enough Simplicity in Every Wise Man”, “Hot Heart”, “Mad Money”, “Wolves and Sheep”, “Forest”), 3) plays, which Ostrovsky himself called “pictures of Moscow life” and “scenes from the life of the outback ”: they are united by the theme of “little people” (“An old friend is better than two new ones”, “Hard Days”, “Jokers” and a trilogy about Balzaminov), 4) historical chronicle plays (“Kozma Zakharyich Minin-Sukhoruk”, “Tushino” etc.), and, finally, 5) psychological dramas (“Dowry”, “The Last Victim”, etc.). The fairy-tale play "The Snow Maiden" stands apart.

The origins of Ostrovsky's work are in the "natural school" of the 1840s, although the Moscow writer was not organizationally connected with the creative community of young St. Petersburg realists. Starting with prose, Ostrovsky quickly realized that his true vocation was dramaturgy. Already early prose experiments are "staged", despite the most detailed descriptions of life and customs, characteristic of the essays of the "natural school". For example, the basis of the first essay, “The Tale of How the Quarter Warden Started to Dance, or One Step from the Great to the Ridiculous” (1843), is an anecdotal scene with a completely finished plot.

The text of this essay was used in the first published work - "Notes of a Zamoskvoretsky resident" (published in 1847 in the newspaper "Moscow city sheet"). It was in the Notes... that Ostrovsky, called by his contemporaries "Columbus of Zamoskvorechye", discovered a "country" previously unknown in literature, inhabited by merchants, petty bourgeois and petty officials. “Until now, only the position and name of this country has been known,” the writer noted, “as for its inhabitants, that is, their way of life, language, customs, degree of education, all this was covered with the darkness of obscurity.” An excellent knowledge of life material helped Ostrovsky the prose writer to create a detailed study of merchant life and farming, which preceded his first plays about the merchant class. Two characteristic features of Ostrovsky's work were outlined in Notes of a Resident from Zamoskvoretsk: attention to the everyday environment, which determines the life and psychology of characters "written off from nature", and a special, dramatic, character of the depiction of everyday life. The writer was able to see in everyday life stories potential, unused material for the playwright. The first plays followed the essays on the life of Zamoskvorechie.

Ostrovsky considered February 14, 1847, the most memorable day in his life: on this day, at the evening at the famous Slavophile Professor S.P. Shevyrev, he read his first short play, The Family Picture. But the real debut of the young playwright is the comedy "We'll Settle Our Own People!" (original title - "Bankrut"), on which he worked from 1846 to 1849. Theatrical censorship immediately banned the play, but, like "Woe from Wit" by A.S. Griboedov, it immediately became a major literary event and with success was read in Moscow houses in the winter of 1849/50. by the author himself and major actors - P.M. Sadovsky and M.S. Shchepkin. In 1850, the comedy was published by the Moskvityanin magazine, but only in 1861 was it staged.

The enthusiastic reception of the first comedy from merchant life was caused not only by the fact that Ostrovsky, "Columbus of Zamoskvorechye", used completely new material, but also by the amazing maturity of his dramatic skill. Having inherited the traditions of Gogol the comedian, the playwright at the same time clearly defined his view on the principles of depicting characters and the plot and compositional embodiment of everyday material. The Gogol tradition is felt in the very nature of the conflict: the fraud of the merchant Bolshov is a product of merchant life, proprietary morality and the psychology of rogue heroes. Bolynov declares himself bankrupt, but this is a false bankruptcy, the result of his collusion with the clerk Podkhalyuzin. The transaction ended unexpectedly: the owner, who hoped to increase his capital, was deceived by the clerk, who turned out to be an even greater swindler. As a result, Podkhalyuzin received both the hand of the daughter of the merchant Lipochka and capital. The Gogolian beginning is palpable in the homogeneity of the comic world of the play: there are no positive characters in it, as in Gogol's comedies, the only such "hero" can be called laughter.

The main difference between Ostrovsky's comedy and the plays of his great predecessor is in the role of comedic intrigue and the attitude of the characters towards it. There are characters and entire scenes in "Inside Your Own People" that are not only not needed for the development of the plot, but, on the contrary, slow it down. However, these scenes are no less important for understanding the work than the intrigue based on the imaginary bankruptcy of Bolshov. They are necessary in order to more fully describe the life and customs of the merchants, the conditions in which the main action takes place. For the first time, Ostrovsky uses a technique that is repeated in almost all of his plays, including The Thunderstorm, The Forest, and The Dowry, an expanded slow-motion exposure. Some characters are not introduced at all to complicate the conflict. These "setting persons" (in the play "Our People - Let's Settle!" - the matchmaker and Tishka) are interesting in themselves, as representatives of the domestic environment, mores and customs. Their artistic function is similar to the function of household details in narrative works: they complement the image of the merchant's world with small, but bright, colorful touches.

The everyday, the familiar, interests Ostrovsky the playwright no less than something out of the ordinary, for example, the scam of Bolshov and Podkhalyuzin. He finds an effective way of dramaturgically depicting everyday life, making the most of the possibilities of the word that sounds from the stage. The conversations of mother and daughter about outfits and suitors, the quarrel between them, the grumbling of the old nanny perfectly convey the usual atmosphere of a merchant family, the range of interests and dreams of these people. The oral speech of the characters has become an accurate "mirror" of life and customs.

It is the conversations of the characters on everyday topics, as if “turned off” from the plot action, that play an exceptional role in all Ostrovsky’s plays: interrupting the plot, retreating from it, they immerse the reader and viewer into the world of ordinary human relations, where the need for verbal communication is no less important. than the need for food, food and clothing. Both in the first comedy and in subsequent plays, Ostrovsky often consciously slows down the development of events, considering it necessary to show what the characters are thinking about, in what verbal form their reflections are clothed. For the first time in Russian dramaturgy, the dialogues of characters became an important means of moral description.

Some critics considered the extensive use of everyday details to be a violation of the laws of the stage. The justification, in their opinion, could only be that the novice playwright was the discoverer of merchant life. But this "violation" became the law of Ostrovsky's dramaturgy: already in the first comedy, he combined the sharpness of intrigue with numerous everyday details and not only did not abandon this principle later, but also developed it, achieving the maximum aesthetic impact of both components of the play - a dynamic plot and static "colloquial » scenes.

"Own people - let's settle!" - accusatory comedy, satire on manners. However, in the early 1850s the playwright came to the idea of ​​the need to abandon the criticism of the merchants, from the "accusatory direction". In his opinion, the outlook on life expressed in the first comedy was "young and too tough." Now he substantiates a different approach: a Russian person should rejoice at seeing himself on stage, and not yearn. “Reformers will be found even without us,” Ostrovsky stressed in one of his letters. - In order to have the right to correct the people without offending them, it is necessary to show them that you know the good behind them; this is what I am doing now, combining the high with the comic. "High", in his view, is the people's ideals, truths, obtained by the Russian people during many centuries of spiritual development.

The new concept of creativity brought Ostrovsky closer to the young employees of the Moskvityanin magazine (published by the famous historian M.P. Pogodin). In the works of the writer and critic A.A. Grigoriev, the concept of “pochvennichestvo”, an influential ideological trend of the 1850s-1860s, was formed. The basis of “pochvennichestvo” is attention to the spiritual traditions of the Russian people, to traditional forms of life and culture. Of particular interest to the "young edition" of "Moskvityanin" was the merchant class: after all, this class has always been financially independent, did not experience the pernicious influence of serfdom, which the "pochvenniki" considered the tragedy of the Russian people. It was in the merchant environment, in the opinion of the “Muscovites”, that one should look for genuine moral ideals developed by the Russian people, not distorted by slavery, like the serfs, and separation from the people’s “soil”, like the nobility. In the first half of the 1850s. Ostrovsky was strongly influenced by these ideas. New friends, especially A.A. Grigoriev, pushed him to express in his plays about the merchant class "the fundamental Russian outlook."

In the plays of the “Muscovite” period of creativity - “Do not sit in your own sleigh”, “Poverty is not a vice” and “Do not live as you want” - Ostrovsky's critical attitude towards the merchants did not disappear, but was greatly softened. A new ideological trend emerged: the playwright portrayed the mores of modern merchants as a historically changeable phenomenon, trying to find out what was preserved in this environment from the richest spiritual experience accumulated by the Russian people over the centuries, and what was deformed or disappeared.

One of the peaks of Ostrovsky's work is the comedy "Poverty is not a vice", the plot of which is based on a family conflict. Gordey Tortsov, a domineering tyrant merchant, the predecessor of Diky from Groza, dreams of marrying his daughter Lyuba to Afrikan Korshunov, a merchant of a new, "European" formation. But her heart belongs to another - the poor clerk Mitya. Gordey's brother, Lyubim Tortsov, helps to upset the marriage with Korshunov, and the self-righteous father, in a fit of anger, threatens to give his rebellious daughter in marriage to the first person he meets. By a happy coincidence, it turned out to be Mitya. A successful comedy plot for Ostrovsky is only an eventful “shell” that helps to understand the true meaning of what is happening: the clash of folk culture with the “semi-culture” that developed among the merchants under the influence of the fashion “for Europe”. Korshunov, the defender of the patriarchal, "soil" principle, Lyubim Tortsov, the central character of the play, is the spokesman for the merchant's false culture in the play.

Lyubim Tortsov, a drunkard who defends moral values, attracts the viewer with his buffoonery and foolishness. The whole course of events in the play depends on him, he helps everyone, including contributing to the moral "recovery" of his tyrant brother. Ostrovsky showed him the "most Russian" of all the actors. He has no claims to education, like Gordey, he just thinks sensibly and acts according to his conscience. From the author's point of view, this is quite enough to stand out from the merchant environment, to become "our person on the stage."

The writer himself believed that a noble impulse is able to reveal simple and clear moral qualities in every person: conscience and kindness. He contrasted Russian “patriarchal” morality with the immorality and cruelty of modern society, therefore the world of plays of the “Muscovite” period, despite the accuracy of everyday “instrumentation” usual for Ostrovsky, is largely conditional and even utopian. The main achievement of the playwright was his version of a positive folk character. The image of the drunken herald of truth, Lyubim Tortsov, was by no means created according to stencils that set the teeth on edge. This is not an illustration for Grigoriev's articles, but a full-blooded artistic image; it is not for nothing that the role of Lyubim Tortsov attracted actors of many generations.

In the second half of the 1850s. Ostrovsky again and again refers to the theme of the merchant class, but his attitude towards this class has changed. From the "Muscovite" ideas, he took a step back, returning to sharp criticism of the inertia of the merchant environment. A vivid image of the merchant-tyrant Tit Titych ("Kita Kitych") Bruskov, whose name has become a household name, was created in the satirical comedy Hangover at a Strange Feast (1856). However, Ostrovsky did not limit himself to "satire on faces." His generalizations became broader: the play depicts a way of life that fiercely resists everything new. This, according to critic N.A. Dobrolyubov, is a “dark kingdom” that lives according to its cruel laws. Hypocritically defending patriarchy, petty tyrants defend their right to unlimited arbitrariness.

The thematic range of Ostrovsky's plays expanded; representatives of other estates and social groups appeared in his field of vision. In the comedy Profitable Place (1857), he first turned to one of the favorite themes of Russian comedians - the satirical depiction of bureaucracy, and in the comedy The Pupil (1858) he discovered landowner life. In both works, parallels with "merchant" plays are easily seen. Thus, the hero of “Profitable Place” Zhadov, an accuser of the venality of officials, is typologically close to the truth-seeker Lyubim Tortsov, and the characters of “The Pupil” — the petty landowner Ulanbekova and her victim, pupil Nadya — resemble the characters of Ostrovsky’s early plays and the tragedy Thunderstorm written a year later. »: Kabanikh and Katerina.

Summing up the results of the first decade of Ostrovsky's work, A.A. Grigoriev, who argued with the Dobrolyubov interpretation of Ostrovsky as an accuser of tyrants and the "dark kingdom", wrote: "The name for this writer, for such a great writer, despite his shortcomings, is not a satirist, but folk poet. The word for unraveling his activities is not "tyranny", but "nationality". Only this word can be the key to understanding his works. Anything else - more or less narrow, more or less theoretical, arbitrary - restricts the circle of his creativity.

The Thunderstorm (1859), which followed three accusatory comedies, became the pinnacle of the dramaturgy of Ostrovsky's pre-reform period. Turning again to the image of the merchant class, the writer created the first and only social tragedy in his work.

Ostrovsky's work in the 1860s-1880s extremely diverse, although in his worldview and aesthetic views there were no such sharp fluctuations as before 1861. Ostrovsky's dramaturgy is striking in the Shakespearean breadth of problems and the classical perfection of artistic forms. Two main trends can be noted that are clearly manifested in his plays: the strengthening of the tragic sound of comedy plots traditional for the writer and the growth of the psychological content of conflicts and characters. The "Ostrovsky Theatre", declared "obsolete", "conservative" playwrights of the "new wave" in the 1890s-1900s, actually developed exactly those trends that became leading in the theater of the early 20th century. It was by no means accidental that, beginning with The Thunderstorm, Ostrovsky's everyday and moralistic plays were rich in philosophical and psychological symbols. The playwright acutely felt the insufficiency of stage "everyday" realism. Without violating the natural laws of the stage, maintaining the distance between actors and spectators - the basis of the foundations of classical theater, in his best plays he approached the philosophical and tragic sound of novels created in the 1860s-1870s. by his contemporaries Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, to the wisdom and organic power of the artist, of which Shakespeare was a model for him.

Ostrovsky's innovative aspirations are especially noticeable in his satirical comedies and psychological dramas. Four comedies about the life of the post-reform nobility — Enough Stupidity for Every Wise Man, Wolves and Sheep, Mad Money, and The Forest — are linked by a common theme. The subject of satirical ridicule in them is an uncontrollable thirst for profit, which seized both the nobles, who lost their foothold - the forced labor of serfs and "mad money", and people of a new formation, businessmen who make their capital on the ruins of the collapsed serfdom.

In comedies, vivid images of “business people” are created, for whom “money does not smell”, and wealth becomes the only life goal. In the play Enough Simplicity for Every Wise Man (1868), such a person was the impoverished nobleman Glumov, who traditionally dreams of receiving an inheritance, a rich bride and a career. His cynicism and business acumen do not contradict the way of life of the old noble bureaucracy: he himself is an ugly product of this environment. Glumov is smart in comparison with those before whom he is forced to bend - Mamaev and Krutitsky, he is not averse to mocking their stupidity and arrogance, he is able to see himself from the outside. “I am smart, angry, envious,” Glumov confesses. He does not seek the truth, but simply profits from someone else's stupidity. Ostrovsky shows a new social phenomenon characteristic of post-reform Russia: not the "moderation and accuracy" of the Molchalins lead to "mad money", but the caustic mind and talent of the Chatskys.

In the comedy "Mad Money" (1870), Ostrovsky continued his "Moscow Chronicle". Egor Glumov reappeared in it with his epigrams “for the whole of Moscow”, as well as a kaleidoscope of satirical Moscow types: secular dudes who lived through several fortunes, ladies ready to go to be kept by “millionaires”, lovers of free booze, idlers and voluptuaries. The playwright created a satirical portrait of a way of life in which honor and integrity are replaced by an unbridled desire for money. Money determines everything: the actions and behavior of the characters, their ideals and psychology. The central character of the play is Lydia Cheboksarova, who sells both her beauty and her love. She does not care who to be - a wife or a kept woman. The main thing is to choose a thicker money bag: after all, in her opinion, “you cannot live without gold.” Lydia's venal love in Crazy Money is the same means for making money as Glumov's mind in the play Enough Simplicity for Every Wise Man. But the cynical heroine, who chooses a richer victim, finds herself in the most stupid position: she marries Vasilkov, seduced by gossip about his gold mines, is deceived with Telyatev, whose fortune is just a myth, does not disdain the caresses of "daddy" Kuchumov, knocking him out of money. The only antipode of the catchers of "mad money" in the play is the "noble" businessman Vasilkov, who talks about "smart" money obtained by honest labor, saved and spent wisely. This hero is a new type of “honest” bourgeois guessed by Ostrovsky.

The comedy "Forest" (1871) is dedicated to the popular in Russian literature of the 1870s. the theme of the extinction of the “noble nests”, in which the “last Mohicans” of the old Russian nobility lived.

The image of the "forest" is one of Ostrovsky's most capacious symbolic images. The forest is not only the backdrop against which events unfold in the estate, located five miles from the county town. This is the object of a deal between the elderly lady Gurmyzhskaya and the merchant Vosmibratov, who buys their ancestral lands from the impoverished nobles. The forest is a symbol of spiritual backwaters: the revival of the capitals almost never reaches the Penki forest estate, “secular silence” still reigns here. The psychological meaning of the symbol is revealed if we correlate the “forest” with the “wilds” of coarse feelings and immoral acts of the inhabitants of the “noble forest”, through which nobility, chivalry, and humanity cannot break through. “... - And really, brother Arkady, how did we get into this forest, into this dense damp forest? - says the tragic Neschastlivtsev at the end of the play, - Why did we, brother, frighten away the owls and owls? What's to stop them! Let them live how they want! Everything is in order here, brother, as one should be in the forest. Old women marry high school students, young girls drown themselves from the bitter life of their relatives: forest, brother ”(D. 5, yavl. IX).

The Forest is a satirical comedy. The comedy manifests itself in a variety of plot situations and turns of action. The playwright created, for example, a small but very topical social caricature: almost Gogol's characters talk about the activities of zemstvos, popular in post-reform times - the gloomy misanthropic landowner Bodaev, reminiscent of Sobakevich, and Milonov, as good-hearted as Manilov. However, the main object of Ostrovsky's satire is the life and customs of the "noble forest". The play uses a tried-and-tested plot move - the story of a poor pupil Aksyusha, who is oppressed and humiliated by the hypocritical "benefactor" Gurmyzhskaya. She constantly talks about her widowhood and purity, although in reality she is vicious, and voluptuous, and vain. The contradictions between Gurmyzhskaya's claims and the true essence of her character are the source of unexpected comic situations.

In the first act, Gurmyzhskaya puts on a kind of show: to demonstrate her virtue, she invites her neighbors to sign her will. According to Milonov, “Raisa Pavlovna adorns our entire province with the severity of her life; our moral atmosphere, so to speak, is fragrant with its virtues. “We were all afraid of your virtue here,” Bodaev echoes him, recalling how several years ago they expected her arrival at the estate. In the fifth act, the neighbors learn about an unexpected metamorphosis that has taken place with Gurmyzhskaya. The fifty-year-old lady, who spoke languidly about bad forebodings and imminent death (“if I don’t die today, not tomorrow, at least soon”), announces her decision to marry the half-educated high school student Alexis Bulanov. She considers marriage to be a self-sacrifice, "in order to arrange the estate and so that it does not fall into the wrong hands." However, the neighbors do not notice the comedy in the transition from the dying testament to the marriage union of "unshakable virtue" with "tender, young industry of a noble nursery." “This is a heroic feat! You are a heroine!" - Milonov exclaims pathetically, admiring the hypocritical and depraved matron.

Another knot in the comedy plot is the story of a thousand rubles. The money went around in circles, which made it possible to add important touches to the portraits of a wide variety of people. The merchant Vosmibratov tried to pocket a thousand, paying for the purchased timber. Neschastlivtsev, having conscientiously and “enjoyed” the merchant (“the honor is endless. And you don’t have it”), prompted him to return the money. Gurmyzhskaya gave the “crazy” thousand to Bulanov for a dress, then the tragedian, threatening the unlucky youth with a fake pistol, took away this money, intending to squander it with Arkady Schastlivtsev. In the end, a thousand became Aksyusha's dowry and ... returned to Vosmibratov.

The quite traditional comedic situation of the “shifter” made it possible to oppose the sinister comedy of the inhabitants of the “forest” with a high tragedy. The miserable "comedian" Neschastlivtsev, Gurmyzhskaya's nephew, turned out to be a proud romantic who looks at his aunt and her neighbors with the eyes of a noble man, shocked by the cynicism and vulgarity of "owls and owls". Those who treat him with contempt, considering him a loser and a renegade, behave like bad actors and public jesters. "Comedians? No, we are artists, noble artists, and you are the comedians, - Neschastsev angrily throws them in the face. - If we love, we love so much; if we don’t love, we quarrel or fight; if we help, so the last penny of labor. And you? All your life you have been talking about the good of society, about love for humanity. What did you do? Who was fed? Who was comforted? You amuse only yourself, you amuse yourself. You are comedians, jesters, not us” (D. 5, yavl. IX).

Ostrovsky confronts the crude farce played out by Gurmyzhsky and Bulanov with the truly tragic perception of the world that Neschastlivtsev represents. In the fifth act, the satirical comedy is transformed: if earlier the tragedian defiantly behaved with the "jesters" in a buffoonish way, emphasizing his disdain for them, maliciously mocking their actions and words, then in the finale of the play the stage, without ceasing to be a space for a comedy action, turns into a tragic theater of one actor, who begins his final monologue as a "noble" artist mistaken for a jester, and ends as a "noble robber" from F. Schiller's drama - in the famous words of Karl Moor. The quotation from Schiller again speaks of the "forest", more precisely, of all the "bloodthirsty inhabitants of the forests." Their hero would like to "be furious against this infernal generation", which he encountered in a noble estate. The quote, not recognized by Neschastlivtsev's listeners, emphasizes the tragicomic meaning of what is happening. After listening to the monologue, Milonov exclaims: “But excuse me, for these words you can be held accountable!” “Yes, just to the camp. We are all witnesses, ”Bulanov,“ born to command ”, responds like an echo.

Neschastlivtsev is a romantic hero, he has a lot of Don Quixote, "a knight of a sad image." He expresses himself pompously, theatrically, as if not believing in the success of his battle with the "windmills". “Where are you talking to me,” Neschastvetsev turns to Milonov. “I feel and speak like Schiller, and you like a clerk.” Playing comically on Karl Moor's just-uttered words about "bloodthirsty forest dwellers," he reassures Gurmyzhskaya, who refused to give him her hand for a farewell kiss: "I won't bite, don't be afraid." He can only get away from people who, in his opinion, are worse than wolves: “Hand, comrade! (Gives his hand to Schastlivtsev and leaves). The last words and gesture of Neschastlivtsev are symbolic: he gives his hand to his friend, the “comedian”, and proudly turns away from the inhabitants of the “noble forest”, with whom he is not on the way.

The hero of "The Forest" is one of the first "break out", "prodigal children" of his class in Russian literature. Ostrovsky does not idealize Neschastlivtsev, pointing out his worldly shortcomings: he, like Lyubim Tortsov, is not averse to carousing, is prone to cheating, and behaves like an arrogant gentleman. But the main thing is that it is Neschastlivtsev, one of the most beloved heroes of the "Ostrovsky theatre", who expresses high moral ideals, completely forgotten by the jesters and Pharisees from the forest estate. His ideas about the honor and dignity of a person are close to the author himself. As if breaking the "mirror" of comedy, Ostrovsky, through the mouth of a provincial tragedian with a sad surname Neschastlivtsev, wanted to remind people of the danger of lies and vulgarity, which easily replace real life.

One of Ostrovsky's masterpieces, the psychological drama The Dowry (1878), like many of his works, is a "merchant" play. The leading place in it is occupied by the playwright's favorite motifs (money, trade, merchant's "courage"), traditional types that are found in almost every of his plays (merchants, a petty official, a marriageable girl and her mother, seeking to "sell" her daughter at a higher price, a provincial actor ). The intrigue is also reminiscent of previously used plot moves: several rivals are fighting for Larisa Ogudalova, each of whom has his own “interest” in the girl.

However, unlike other works, such as the comedy "Forest", in which the poor pupil Aksyusha was only a "situational person" and did not take an active part in the events, the heroine of "Dowry" is the central character of the play. Larisa Ogudalova is not only a beautiful “thing” shamelessly put up for auction by her mother Harita Ignatievna and “bought” by wealthy merchants in the city of Bryakhimov. She is a person richly gifted, thinking, deeply feeling, understanding the absurdity of her position, and at the same time, a contradictory nature, trying to chase “two hares”: she wants both high love and a rich, beautiful life. Romantic idealism and dreams of philistine happiness coexist in it.

The main difference between Larisa and Katerina Kabanova, with whom she is often compared, is freedom of choice. She herself must make her own choice: to become the kept woman of the wealthy merchant Knurov, a participant in the daring entertainment of the “brilliant gentleman” Paratov, or the wife of a proud nonentity - an official “with ambitions” Karandyshev. The city of Briakhimov, like Kalinov in The Thunderstorm, is also a city "on the high bank of the Volga", but this is no longer the "dark kingdom" of an evil, tyrannical force. Times have changed - the enlightened "new Russians" in Bryakhimov do not marry homeless women, but buy them. The heroine herself can decide whether or not to participate in the bargain. A whole “parade” of suitors passes in front of her. Unlike the unrequited Katerina, Larisa's opinion is not neglected. In a word, the “last times”, which Kabanikha was so afraid of, have come: the former “order” collapsed. Larisa does not need to beg her fiancé Karandyshev, as Katerina begged Boris (“Take me with you from here!”). Karandyshev himself is ready to take her away from the temptations of the city - to the remote Zabolotye, where he wants to become a justice of the peace. The swampland, which her mother imagines as a place where, apart from the forest, wind and howling wolves, there is nothing, seems to Larisa a village idyll, a sort of swampy "paradise", a "quiet corner". In the dramatic fate of the heroine, the historical and worldly, the tragedy of unfulfilled love and petty-bourgeois farce, subtle psychological drama and pathetic vaudeville intertwined. The leading motive of the play is not the power of the environment and circumstances, as in The Thunderstorm, but the motive of a person's responsibility for his own destiny.

“Dowry” is primarily a drama about love: it was love that became the basis of the plot intrigue and the source of the heroine’s internal contradictions. Love in "Dowry" is a symbolic, polysemantic concept. “I was looking for love and did not find it” - such a bitter conclusion does Larisa make at the end of the play. She means love-sympathy, love-understanding, love-pity. In Larisa's life, true love was supplanted by "love" put up for sale, love is a commodity. Bargaining in the play goes precisely because of her. Only those who have more money can buy such “love”. For the “Europeanized” merchants Knurov and Vozhevatov, Larisa’s love is a luxury item that is bought in order to furnish their lives with “European” chic. The pettiness and prudence of these "children" of Diky is manifested not in selfless abuse because of a penny, but in an ugly love bargain.

Sergei Sergeevich Paratov, the most extravagant and reckless among the merchants depicted in the play, is a parodic figure. This is the "merchant Pechorin", a heartthrob with a penchant for melodramatic effects. He considers his relationship with Larisa Ogudalova a love experiment. “I want to know how soon a woman forgets a passionately loved person: the next day after parting with him, a week or a month later,” Paratov confesses. Love, in his opinion, is suitable only for "household use." Paratov's own "ride to the island of love" with the dowry Larisa was short-lived. She was replaced by noisy sprees with gypsies and marriage to a rich bride, or rather, to her dowry - gold mines. “I, Moky Parmenych, have nothing cherished; I’ll find a profit, so I’ll sell everything, anything” - such is the life principle of Paratov, the new “hero of our time” with the manners of a broken clerk from a fashionable shop.

Larisa's fiancé, the "eccentric" Karandyshev, who became her killer, is a pitiful, comical and at the same time sinister person. It mixes in an absurd combination of "colors" of various stage images. This is a caricature of Othello, a parody of the "noble" robber (at a costume party he "dressed himself as a robber, took an ax in his hands and cast brutal glances at everyone, especially Sergei Sergeyich") and at the same time "a tradesman in the nobility." His ideal is a "carriage with music", a luxurious apartment and dinners. This is an ambitious official who fell into a rampant merchant feast, where he got an undeserved prize - the beautiful Larisa. The love of Karandyshev, the “reserve” groom, is love-vanity, love-protection. For him, Larisa is also a “thing”, which he boasts of, presenting to the whole city. The heroine of the play herself perceives his love as a humiliation and an insult: “How disgusting you are to me, if only you knew!... For me, the most serious insult is your patronage; I didn’t get any other insults from anyone.”

The main feature that emerges in the appearance and behavior of Karandyshev is quite “Chekhovian”: it is vulgarity. It is this feature that gives the figure of the official a gloomy, sinister flavor, despite his mediocrity compared to other participants in the love bargain. Larisa is killed not by the provincial Othello, not by the pitiful comedian who easily changes masks, but by the vulgarity embodied in him, which - alas! - became for the heroine the only alternative to a love paradise.

Not a single psychological trait in Larisa Ogudalova has reached completion. Her soul is filled with dark, vague impulses and passions that she herself does not fully understand. She is not able to make a choice, accept or curse the world in which she lives. Thinking about suicide, Larisa was never able to rush into the Volga, like Katerina. Unlike the tragic heroine of The Thunderstorm, she is just a participant in a vulgar drama. But the paradox of the play is that it was the vulgarity that killed Larisa that made her, in the last moments of her life, also a tragic heroine, towering over all the characters. No one loved her the way she would like - she dies with words of forgiveness and love, sending a kiss to people who almost forced her to renounce the most important thing in her life - love: “You need to live, but I need to ... die. I don’t complain about anyone, I don’t take offense at anyone ... you are all good people ... I love you all ... everyone ... love ”(Sends a kiss). Only the “loud gypsy choir”, a symbol of the entire “gypsy” way of life in which she lived, responded to this last, tragic sigh of the heroine.

Alexander Nikolaevich Ostrovsky V.G. Perov. Portrait of A.N. Ostrovsky (1877) Date of birth: March 31 (April 12) 1823 (18230412) Place of birth ... Wikipedia

Ostrovsky, Alexander Nikolaevich- Alexander Nikolaevich Ostrovsky. OSTROVSKY Alexander Nikolaevich (1823-86), Russian playwright. Creativity Ostrovsky laid the foundation for the national repertoire of the Russian theater. In comedies and socio-psychological dramas, Ostrovsky brought a gallery ... Illustrated Encyclopedic Dictionary

Ostrovsky, Alexander Nikolaevich, famous dramatic writer. Born March 31, 1823 in Moscow, where his father served in the civil chamber, and then engaged in private advocacy. Ostrovsky lost his mother in childhood and no ... ... Biographical Dictionary

Russian playwright. Born in the family of a lawyer official; mother - comes from the lower clergy. He spent his childhood and early youth in Zamoskvorechye - special ... ... Great Soviet Encyclopedia

Ostrovsky Alexander Nikolaevich- (18231886), playwright. He came to St. Petersburg repeatedly from 1853, was closely connected with the social, literary and cultural life of the capital. Most of Ostrovsky's plays were first published in St. Petersburg in the journals Sovremennik, ... ... Encyclopedic reference book "St. Petersburg"

- (1823 86) Russian playwright, corresponding member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences (1863). Creativity Ostrovsky laid the foundation for the national repertoire of the Russian theater. In comedies and socio-psychological dramas, Ostrovsky brought out a gallery of types from those covered by ... ... Big Encyclopedic Dictionary

- (1823 1886), playwright. He came to St. Petersburg repeatedly from 1853, was closely connected with the social, literary and cultural life of the capital. Most of O.'s plays were first published in St. Petersburg in the journals Sovremennik and Vremya. In the magazine… … St. Petersburg (encyclopedia)

Dramatic writer, head of the repertoire of the Imperial Moscow Theater and director of the Moscow Theater School. A. N. Ostrovsky was born in Moscow on January 31, 1823. His father, Nikolai Fedorovich, came from a spiritual rank, and according to ... ... Big biographical encyclopedia

- (1823 1886), Russian playwright, corresponding member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences (1863). Brother of M. N. Ostrovsky. Creativity Ostrovsky laid the foundation for the national repertoire of the Russian theater. In comedies and socio-psychological dramas, Ostrovsky brought out ... ... encyclopedic Dictionary

OSTROVSKY Alexander Nikolaevich- (182386), Russian playwright. Organizer and Prev. About va rus. dramatic writers and opera composers (since 1870). Plays (comedies and dramas): in prose "Family Picture" (1847, post. 1855), "Our people let's get along" (1850, post. 1861), ... ... Literary Encyclopedic Dictionary

Books

• Not all cat Shrovetide, Ostrovsky, Alexander Nikolaevich. Alexander Nikolayevich Ostrovsky was born and raised in Moscow, in the very center of Zamoskvorechye, which at that time was a very special world. The people who lived there, their relationships, their way of life, alive and…
• Plays: Ostrovsky A. N., Chekhov A. P., Gorky M., Gorky Maxim, Ostrovsky Alexander Nikolaevich, Chekhov Anton Pavlovich. A. Ostrovsky, A. Chekhov and M. Gorky are brilliant reformers and innovators of the stage, who radically changed the theater. This book includes five famous plays by great playwrights - "Thunderstorm", ...

BRIEF BIOGRAPHY OF ALEXANDER OSTROVSKY

Ostrovsky Alexander Nikolaevich (1823-1886), playwright

Alexander Nikolaevich Ostrovsky was born on April 12, 1823 in Moscow in the family of a judicial official. He received a good education at home. At the age of 12, he was sent to the 1st Moscow Gymnasium, from which he graduated in 1840. Then he entered the law faculty of Moscow University. In 1843, he left the university: legal sciences ceased to interest him, and decided to seriously engage in literature. However, at the insistence of his father, he entered the service of the Moscow Conscientious Court, and then (1845) moved to the office of the Moscow Commercial Court.

His father's law practice and court service for almost eight years provided the future playwright with rich material for his plays. In 1849, the Moskvityanin magazine published the comedy “Our people - let's settle”, and Ostrovsky became an employee of the magazine. In 1851, he left the service to devote himself to literary creativity.

Ostrovsky created about 50 plays (Profitable Place, 1856; Thunderstorm, 1859; Mad Money, 1869; Forest, 1870; Snow Maiden, 1873; Dowry ”, 1878, and many others). A whole era in the development of the Russian theater is associated with the name of Ostrovsky. He is the author of translations from Cervantes, Shakespeare, Terence, Goldoni. His work covers a huge period of development of Russia in the 19th century. - from the era of serfdom in the 40s. before the development of capitalism in the 80s.

Ostrovsky's dramaturgy played a decisive role in establishing an original and vibrant repertoire on the Russian stage, and contributed to the formation of a national stage school. In 1865, Ostrovsky founded an artistic circle in Moscow and became one of its leaders. In 1870, on his initiative, the Society of Russian Dramatic Writers was created, of which he was the permanent chairman from 1874 until the end of his life.

In 1881-1884. Ostrovsky took part in the work of the commission for the revision of the statutes on the Imperial Theatres. On January 1, 1886, he was appointed head of the repertoire of Moscow theaters. But the playwright's health had already deteriorated greatly by this time, and on June 14, 1886, Ostrovsky died at the Shchelykovo estate in Kossush, Tromsk province.

A.N. Ostrovsky is one of the most popular playwrights in Russia, and it is worth considering some interesting facts from the life of Ostrovsky. He was the founder of the Russian theater school, as well as the teacher of the widely known Stanislavsky and Bulgakov. Ostrovsky's life is as interesting as his work.

1. The playwright was born on April 12, 1823 in Moscow, in a family of clergymen and studied at home. His mother died when the future pioneer of the Russian theater was seven years old and his father married Baroness Emilia von Tessin. The stepmother took an active part in the upbringing and education of the future writer with his brothers.
2. Ostrovsky was a polyglot, and from an early age he knew many foreign languages, including: French, Greek and German. He later learned more Spanish, Italian and English. Throughout his life, he made translations of his plays into foreign languages, honing his mastery of them.

   

3. Ostrovsky entered the university, but was forced to drop out due to conflicts with one of the teachers.

   

4. After leaving school, Alexander got a job at the Moscow Court as a scribe, where litigation between relatives was dealt with.

   

5. In 1845, the future playwright went to work in the office of the commercial court.. This stage of his career gave Ostrovsky many vivid impressions that were useful to him in the future for his works.

   

6. The released comedy “Own people - let's settle!” gave the playwright recognition and popularity. But along with a huge success, this play almost became the last in the writer's work. She angered the bureaucrats she denounced. Alexander Nikolaevich was removed from service and taken under close police surveillance.

   

7. An unenviable fate could also expect the play "Thunderstorm". This work could not have been born at all, if not for the intervention of the Empress, who liked it. Dobrolyubov called this play "A ray of light in a dark kingdom."

   

8. Despite the fact that Ostrovsky was from the upper class, he knew the customs of the common people very well.. This is the merit of his wife, who was a commoner. This union was not approved by the parents of Alexander Nikolaevich, and opposed his marriage with a representative of the lower class. Therefore, he lived for 20 years in an unofficial marriage with his first wife. They had five children, but they all died early. The second marriage was with actress Maria Bakhmetyeva, with whom they had 2 daughters and 4 sons.

   

9. In 1856, he worked in the Sovremennik magazine, and went on an expedition along the upper reaches of the Volga, where he did research. The materials on language and customs collected during the expedition will be very useful to the playwright later on in order to make his works more realistic.

   

10. Many do not realize that the opera P.I. Tchaikovsky's "The Snow Maiden" is a joint work of the eminent composer and the great playwright. The opera was based on folk tales and legends.

    

11. As the founder of the Russian theatre, Ostrovsky played a big role in Stanislavsky's career.. We can say that Alexander Nikolayevich was a pioneer of Russian acting. He created a school in which he taught actors expressive and emotional acting without losing authenticity. This approach has gained immense popularity. But there were also clear opponents of this technique. Shchepkin, a well-known actor at that time, openly criticized this method of acting and left the rehearsal of the play The Thunderstorm.

    

12. Even by modern standards, it should be recognized that Ostrovsky was a genius. Polyglot, outstanding playwright, founder of Russian theatrical art. An outstanding, educated and inquisitive person.

    

13. After many years of hard work, the writer's health deteriorated, and on June 14, 1886, Alexander Nikolayevich passed away and was buried in the Kostroma region.

    

14. For 40 years spent in art, he had a strong influence on a whole layer of Russian theater.. For his achievements in art he was awarded the Uvarov Prize. At that time, he was a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg, led the Artistic Circle, where he helped future talents grow.

    

15. Ostrovsky wrote that the audience comes to watch the acting, not the play..