Composition
The playwright almost did not put in his work political and philosophical problems, facial expressions and gestures, through playing with the details of their costumes and everyday environment. To enhance the comic effects, the playwright usually introduced minor persons into the plot - relatives, servants, accustomers, random passers-by - and side circumstances of everyday life. Such, for example, are Khlynov’s retinue and the gentleman with a mustache in The Hot Heart, or Apollo Murzavetsky with his Tamerlane in the comedy Wolves and Sheep, or the actor Schastlivtsev under Neschastlivtsev and Paratov in The Forest and The Dowry, etc. The playwright, as before, sought to reveal the characters of the characters not only in the very course of events, but to no lesser extent through the peculiarities of their everyday dialogues - "characterological" dialogues, aesthetically mastered by him in "His People ...".
Thus, in the new period of creativity, Ostrovsky acts as an established master with a complete system of dramatic art. His fame, his social and theatrical connections continue to grow and become more complex. The very abundance of plays created in the new period was the result of an ever-increasing demand for Ostrovsky's plays from magazines and theaters. During these years, the playwright not only worked tirelessly himself, but found the strength to help less gifted and novice writers, and sometimes actively participate with them in their work. So, in creative collaboration with Ostrovsky, a number of plays by N. Solovyov were written (the best of them are “The Marriage of Belugin” and “Wild Woman”), as well as P. Nevezhin.
Constantly contributing to the staging of his plays on the stages of the Moscow Maly and St. Petersburg Alexandria theaters, Ostrovsky knew well the state of theatrical affairs, which were mainly under the jurisdiction of the bureaucratic state apparatus, and was bitterly aware of their glaring shortcomings. He saw that he did not depict the noble and bourgeois intelligentsia in its ideological quest, as did Herzen, Turgenev, and partly Goncharov. In his plays, he showed the everyday social life of ordinary representatives of the merchant class, bureaucracy, the nobility, a life where personal, in particular love, conflicts manifested clashes of family, monetary, property interests.
But Ostrovsky's ideological and artistic awareness of these aspects of Russian life had a deep national and historical meaning. Through the everyday relations of those people who were the masters and masters of life, their general social condition was revealed. Just as, according to Chernyshevsky's apt remark, the cowardly behavior of a young liberal, the hero of Turgenev's story "Asya", on a date with a girl was a "symptom of illness" of all noble liberalism, its political weakness, so the everyday tyranny and predatory behavior of merchants, officials, and nobles acted a symptom of a more terrible disease of their complete inability to at least to some extent give their activities a nationwide progressive significance.
This was quite natural and natural in the pre-reform period. Then the tyranny, arrogance, predation of the Voltovs, Vyshnevskys, Ulanbekovs was a manifestation of the "dark kingdom" of serfdom, already doomed to be scrapped. And Dobrolyubov correctly pointed out that although Ostrovsky's comedy "cannot provide a key to explaining many of the bitter phenomena depicted in it," nevertheless "it can easily lead to many analogous considerations related to that life, which it does not directly concern." And the critic explained this by the fact that the "types" of petty tyrants, bred by Ostrovsky, "not infrequently contain not only exclusively merchant or bureaucratic, but also nationwide (i.e., nationwide) features." In other words, Ostrovsky's plays of 1840-1860. indirectly exposed all the "dark kingdoms" of the autocratic-feudal system.
In the post-reform decades, the situation changed. Then "everything turned upside down" and the new, bourgeois system of Russian life began to gradually "fit in". to take part in the struggle for the destruction of the remnants of the "dark kingdom" of serfdom and the entire autocratic-landowner system.
Almost twenty new plays by Ostrovsky on contemporary themes gave a clear negative answer to this fatal question. The playwright, as before, depicted the world of private social, household, family and property relations. Not everything was clear to him in the general tendencies of their development, and his "lyre" sometimes made not quite, "correct sounds" in this respect. But on the whole, Ostrovsky's plays contained a certain objective orientation. They exposed both the remnants of the old "dark kingdom" of despotism, and the newly emerging "dark kingdom" of bourgeois predation, money hype, the death of all moral values in an atmosphere of general buying and selling. They showed that Russian businessmen and industrialists are not capable of rising to the realization of the interests of national development, that some of them, such as Khlynov and Akhov, are only capable of indulging in gross pleasures, others, like Knurov and Berkutov, can only subordinate everything around them to their predatory, “wolf” interests, and for third parties, such as Vasilkov or Frol Pribytkov, the interests of profit are only covered by outward decency and very narrow cultural demands. Ostrovsky's plays, in addition to the plans and intentions of their author, objectively outlined a certain prospect of national development - the prospect of the inevitable destruction of all remnants of the old "dark kingdom" of autocratic serf despotism, not only without the participation of the bourgeoisie, not only over its head, but along with the destruction of its own predatory "dark kingdom"
The reality depicted in Ostrovsky's everyday plays was a form of life devoid of a nationwide progressive content, and therefore easily revealed internal comic inconsistency. Ostrovsky devoted his outstanding dramatic talent to its disclosure. Based on the tradition of Gogol realistic comedies and stories, rebuilding it in accordance with the new aesthetic demands put forward by the "natural school" of the 1840s and formulated by Belinsky and Herzen, Ostrovsky traced the comic inconsistency of the social and everyday life of the ruling strata of Russian society, delving into the "world of details", examining the thread behind thread "the web of daily relationships." This was the main achievement of the new dramatic style created by Ostrovsky.
Introduction
Alexander Nikolayevich Ostrovsky... This is an unusual phenomenon. The significance of Alexander Nikolaevich for the development of Russian dramaturgy and the stage, his role in the achievements of all Russian culture are undeniable and enormous. Continuing the best traditions of Russian progressive and foreign dramaturgy, Ostrovsky wrote 47 original plays. Some constantly go on stage, filmed in films and on television, others are almost never staged. But in the minds of the public and the theater there lives a certain stereotype of perception in relation to what is called "Ostrovsky's play". Ostrovsky's plays are written for all time, and it is not difficult for the audience to see our current problems and vices in it.
Relevance:His role in the history of the development of Russian dramaturgy, performing arts and the entire national culture can hardly be overestimated. He did as much for the development of Russian dramaturgy as Shakespeare did in England, Lope de Vega in Spain, Molière in France, Goldoni in Italy, and Schiller in Germany. Ostrovsky appeared in literature in a very difficult conditions literary process, on his creative path there were favorable and unfavorable situations, but in spite of everything, he became an innovator and an outstanding master of dramatic art. The influence of the dramatic masterpieces of A.N. Ostrovsky was not limited to the theatrical stage. It also applied to other forms of art. The national character inherent in his plays, the musical and poetic element, the colorfulness and clarity of large-scale characters, the deep vitality of the plots have aroused and continue to arouse the attention of outstanding composers of our country. Ostrovsky, being an outstanding playwright, a remarkable connoisseur of stage art, also showed himself as a public figure of a large scale. This was greatly facilitated by the fact that the playwright throughout his life was "on a par with the century." 1. Russian dramaturgy and playwrights preceding A.N. Ostrovsky
.1
Theater in Russia before A.N. Ostrovsky
The origins of Russian progressive drama, in line with which Ostrovsky's work arose. The national folk theater has a wide repertoire, consisting of buffoon games, interludes, Petrushka's comedic adventures, farcical jokes, "bear" comedies and dramatic works of a wide variety of genres. The folk theater is characterized by a socially pointed theme, freedom-loving, accusatory satirical and heroic-patriotic ideology, deep conflict, large, often grotesque characters, a clear, clear composition, colloquial vernacular, skillfully using the most diverse means of comedy: omissions, confusion, ambiguity, homonyms, oxymorons. “By its character and manner of playing, the folk theater is a theater of sharp and clear movements, sweeping gestures, extremely loud dialogue, powerful song and daring dance - here everything is heard and seen far away. By its very nature, the folk theater does not tolerate an inconspicuous gesture, words rendered in an undertone, everything that can easily be perceived in theater hall with complete silence on the part of the audience. Continuing the traditions of oral folk drama, Russian written drama has made great strides. In the second half of the 18th century, with the overwhelming role of translation and imitative dramaturgy, writers of various trends appeared, striving to depict domestic customs, taking care of creating a nationally original repertoire. Among the plays of the first half of the 19th century, such masterpieces of realistic dramaturgy as Griboyedov's Woe from Wit, Fonvizin's Undergrowth, Gogol's The Government Inspector and Marriage stand out. Pointing to these works, V.G. Belinsky said that they "would do honor to any European literature". Most appreciating the comedies "Woe from Wit" and "The Government Inspector", the critic believed that they could "enrich any European literature." The outstanding realistic plays by Griboedov, Fonvizin and Gogol clearly outlined the innovative trends in Russian dramaturgy. They consisted in topical social topics, in a pronounced public and even socio-political pathos, in a departure from the traditional love and household plot that determines the entire development of the action, in violation of the plot and compositional canons of comedy and intrigue drama, in the setting for the development of typical and at the same time individual characters, closely related to the social environment. These innovative tendencies, manifested in the best plays of progressive domestic drama, writers and critics began to realize theoretically. So, Gogol connects the emergence of Russian progressive dramaturgy with satire and sees the originality of comedy in its true public. He rightly noted that "comedy has not yet taken such an expression from any of the peoples." By the time A.N. Ostrovsky, Russian progressive dramaturgy already had world-class masterpieces. But these works were still extremely few in number, and therefore did not determine the face of the then theatrical repertoire. A great damage to the development of progressive domestic drama was that the plays of Lermontov and Turgenev, delayed by censorship, could not appear in time. The vast majority of the works that filled the theatrical stage were translations and adaptations of Western European plays, as well as the stage experiences of domestic writers of the protective sense. The theatrical repertoire was not created spontaneously, but under the active influence of the gendarme corps and the watchful eye of Nicholas I. Preventing the appearance of accusatory-sateric plays, the theatrical policy of Nicholas I in every possible way patronized the production of purely entertaining, autocratic-patriotic dramatic works. This policy proved unsuccessful. After the defeat of the Decembrists, vaudeville came to the fore in the theatrical repertoire, which had long lost its social sharpness and turned into a light, thoughtless, sharply effective comedy. Most often, a one-act comedy was distinguished by an anecdotal plot, playful, topical, and often frivolous couplets, punning language and ingenious intrigue woven from funny, unexpected incidents. In Russia, vaudeville gained momentum in the 1910s. The first, though unsuccessful, vaudeville is considered to be “The Cossack Poet” (1812) by A.A. Shakhovsky. A whole swarm of others followed him, especially after 1825. Vaudeville enjoyed the special love and patronage of Nicholas I. And his theatrical policy had its effect. Theater - 30-40s of the XIX century became the realm of vaudeville, in which attention was mainly given to love situations. “Alas,” Belinsky wrote in 1842, “like bats, a beautiful building has taken possession of our stage by vulgar comedies with gingerbread love and an inevitable wedding! This is what we call "plot". Looking at our comedies and vaudevilles and taking them as an expression of reality, you will think that our society is only engaged in love, only lives and breathes, that it is love! The distribution of vaudeville was also facilitated by the system of benefit performances that existed at that time. For a benefit performance, which was a material reward, the artist often chose a narrowly entertaining play, calculated to be a box office success. The theatrical stage was filled with flat, hastily sewn works, in which the main place was occupied by flirting, farcical scenes, anecdote, mistake, chance, surprise, confusion, dressing up, hiding. Under the influence of social struggle, vaudeville changed in its content. According to the nature of the plots, his development went from love-erotic to everyday life. But compositionally, he remained mostly standard, relying on the primitive means of external comedy. Describing the vaudeville of this time, one of the characters in Gogol's "Theatrical Journey" aptly said: "Go only to the theater: there every day you will see a play where one hid under a chair, and the other pulled him out by the leg." The essence of the mass vaudeville of the 30-40s of the 19th century is revealed by such titles: "Confusion", "They came together, got mixed up and parted." Emphasizing the playful and frivolous properties of vaudeville, some authors began to call them vaudeville farce, joke vaudeville, etc. Having fixed "insignificance" as the basis of the content, vaudeville became an effective means of distracting viewers from the fundamental issues and contradictions of reality. Entertaining the audience with stupid situations and cases, vaudeville "from evening to evening, from performance to performance, inoculated the viewer with the same ridiculous serum, which was supposed to protect him from the infection of superfluous and unreliable thoughts." But the authorities sought to turn it into a direct glorification of Orthodoxy, autocracy, and serfdom. Vaudeville, which took over the Russian stage in the second quarter of the 19th century, as a rule, was not domestic and original. For the most part, these were plays, in the words of Belinsky, "forcibly dragged" from France and somehow adapted to Russian customs. We observe a similar picture in other genres of dramaturgy of the 1940s. Dramatic works that were considered original turned out to be largely disguised translations. In pursuit of a sharp word, for effect, for a light and funny plot, the vaudeville-comedy play of the 30s and 40s was most often very far from depicting the true life of its time. People of reality, everyday characters were most often absent in it. This was repeatedly pointed out by the then critics. Regarding the content of vaudeville, Belinsky wrote with displeasure: “The scene is always in Russia, the characters are marked with Russian names; but neither Russian life, nor Russian society, nor Russian people will you recognize or see here.” Pointing to the isolation of the vaudeville of the second quarter of the 19th century from concrete reality, one of the later critics rightly noted that it would be "a stunning misunderstanding" to study the then Russian society on the basis of it. Vaudeville, developing, quite naturally showed a desire for the specificity of the language. But at the same time, the speech individualization of characters in it was carried out purely externally - by stringing unusual, funny morphologically and phonetically distorted words, introducing incorrect expressions, ridiculous phrases, sayings, proverbs, national accents, etc. In the middle of the 18th century, melodrama was very popular in the theatrical repertoire along with vaudeville. Its formation as one of the leading dramatic types occurs at the end of the 18th century in the context of the preparation and implementation of Western European bourgeois revolutions. The moral and didactic essence of Western European melodrama of this period is determined mainly by common sense, practicality, didacticism, the moral code of the bourgeoisie, going to power and opposing their ethnic principles to the depravity of the feudal nobility. And vaudeville and melodrama in the vast majority were very far from life. However, they were not merely negative phenomena. Some of them, not shy of satirical tendencies, made their way progressive tendencies- liberal and democratic. Subsequent dramaturgy, undoubtedly, used the art of vaudeville in the conduct of intrigue, external comedy, sharply honed, elegant pun. She did not pass by the achievements of melodramatists in the psychological depiction of characters, in the emotionally intense development of the action. While melodrama historically preceded romantic drama in the West, in Russia these genres appeared simultaneously. At the same time, most often they acted in relation to each other without a sufficiently precise accentuation of their features, merging, passing one into another. About the rhetoric of romantic dramas, using melodramatic, falsely pathetic effects, Belinsky spoke sharply many times. “And if you,” he wrote, “want to take a closer look at the“ dramatic performances ”of our romanticism, you will see that they are kneaded according to the same recipes that pseudo-classical dramas and comedies were composed of: the same hackneyed plots and violent denouements, that the same unnaturalness, the same "decorated nature", the same images without faces instead of characters, the same monotony, the same vulgarity and the same skill. Melodramas, romantic and sentimental, historical-patriotic dramas of the first half of the 19th century were mostly false not only in their ideas, plots, characters, but also in language. Compared with the classicists, the sentimentalists and romantics undoubtedly took a big step in terms of the democratization of the language. But this democratization, especially among the sentimentalists, often did not go beyond the colloquial language of the noble drawing room. The speech of the unprivileged strata of the population, the broad working masses, seemed to them too rude. Along with the domestic conservative plays of the romantic genre at this time, translated plays close to them in spirit also widely penetrate the theater stage: “romantic operas”, “romantic comedies” are usually combined with ballet, “romantic performances”. The translations of the works of progressive playwrights of Western European romanticism, such as Schiller and Hugo, also enjoyed great success at this time. But in rethinking these plays, the translators reduced their work of "translation" to arousing sympathy in the audience for those who, experiencing the blows of life, retained meek resignation to fate. In the spirit of progressive romanticism, Belinsky and Lermontov created their plays during these years, but none of them were staged in the theater in the first half of the 19th century. The repertoire of the 1940s does not satisfy not only progressive critics, but also artists and spectators. The remarkable artists of the 40s Mochalov, Shchepkin, Martynov, Sadovsky had to waste their strength on trifles, on playing in non-fiction one-day plays. But, recognizing that in the 1940s plays "are born in swarms, like insects", and "there is nothing to see", Belinsky, like many other progressive figures, did not look hopelessly at the future of the Russian theater. Not Satisfied flat humor vaudeville and the false pathos of melodrama, the advanced spectator has long lived with a dream that original realistic plays would become defining and leading in the theatrical repertoire. In the second half of the 1940s, the dissatisfaction of the advanced audience with the repertoire began to be shared to some extent by the mass theater visitor from noble and bourgeois circles. In the late 40s, many viewers, even in vaudeville, "were looking for hints of reality." They were no longer satisfied with melodramatic and vaudeville effects. They wanted the plays of life, they wanted to see ordinary people on the stage. The progressive spectator found an echo of his aspirations only in a few, rarely appearing productions of plays by Russian (Fonvizin, Griboyedov, Gogol) and Western European (Shakespeare, Molière, Schiller) dramatic classics. At the same time, every word associated with protest, free, the slightest hint of feelings and thoughts that disturbed him, acquired a tenfold value in the perception of the viewer. Gogol's principles, which were so clearly reflected in the practice of the "natural school", contributed to the establishment of realistic and national identity in the theater. Ostrovsky was the clearest exponent of these principles in the field of dramaturgy. 1.2 From early creativity to mature
OSTROVSKY Alexander Nikolaevich, Russian playwright. Ostrovsky was addicted to reading as a child. In 1840, after graduating from the gymnasium, he was enrolled in the law faculty of Moscow University, but left in 1843. Then he entered the office of the Moscow Constituent Court, later served in the Commercial Court (1845-1851). This experience played a significant role in the work of Ostrovsky. He entered the literary field in the second half of the 1840s. as a follower of the Gogol tradition, focused on the creative principles of the natural school. At this time, Ostrovsky created the prose essay "Notes of a Resident from the Moscow Region", the first comedies (the play "Family Picture" was read by the author on February 14, 1847 in the circle of Professor S.P. Shevyrev and approved by him). The playwright was widely known satirical comedy"Bankrut" ("Our people - let's settle", 1849). The plot (the false bankruptcy of the merchant Bolshov, the deceit and heartlessness of his family members - the daughter of Lipochka and the clerk, and then the son-in-law of Podkhalyuzin, who did not redeem the old father from the debt hole, Bolshov's later insight) were based on Ostrovsky's observations on the analysis of family litigations, obtained during service in the conscience court. The strengthened mastery of Ostrovsky, a new word that sounded on the Russian stage, affected, in particular, in a combination of spectacularly developing intrigue and vivid everyday descriptive inserts (speech of a matchmaker, squabbles between mother and daughter), which slow down the action, but also make you feel the specifics of life and mores of the merchant environment. A special role here was played by the unique, at the same time class, and individual psychological coloring of the characters' speech. Already in "Bankrut" a cross-cutting theme of Ostrovsky's dramatic work was identified: patriarchal, traditional life how it was preserved in the merchant and petty-bourgeois environment, and its gradual degeneration and collapse, as well as the complex relationships that a person enters into with a gradually changing way of life. Having created fifty plays over forty years of literary work (some of them co-authored), which became the repertoire basis of the Russian public, democratic theater, Ostrovsky presented the main theme of his work in different ways at different stages of his career. So, having become in 1850 an employee of the Moskvityanin magazine known for its soil trend (editor M.P. Pogodin, employees A.A. Grigoriev, T.I. Filippov, etc.), Ostrovsky, who was a member of the so-called "young editorial board", tried to give the magazine a new direction - to focus on the ideas of national identity and identity, but not the peasantry (unlike the "old" Slavophiles), but the patriarchal merchant class. In his subsequent plays “Don’t get into your sleigh”, “Poverty is not a vice”, “Don’t live as you want” (1852-1855), the playwright tried to reflect the poetry of folk life: “To have the right to correct the people without offending them , you need to show him that you know good behind him; this is what I am doing now, combining the lofty with the comic,” he wrote in the “Muscovite” period. At the same time, the playwright got along with the girl Agafya Ivanovna (who had four children from him), which led to a break in relations with his father. According to eyewitnesses, she was a kind, warm-hearted woman, to whom Ostrovsky owed much of his knowledge of Moscow life. The “Muscovite” plays are characterized by a well-known utopianism in resolving conflicts between generations (in the comedy “Poverty is no vice”, 1854, a happy accident upsets the marriage imposed by the tyrant father and hated by the daughter, arranges the marriage of a rich bride - Lyubov Gordeevna - with a poor clerk Mitya) . But this feature of Ostrovsky's "Muscovite" dramaturgy does not negate the high realistic quality of the works of this circle. The image of Lyubim Tortsov, the drunken brother of the tyrant merchant Gordey Tortsov, in the play “Hot Heart” (1868), written much later, turns out to be complex, dialectically connecting seemingly opposite qualities. At the same time, Love is the herald of truth, the bearer of folk morality. He makes Gordey see clearly, having lost a sober view of life because of his own vanity, passion for false values. In 1855, the playwright, dissatisfied with his position in the Moskvityanin (constant conflicts and meager fees), left the magazine and became close to the editors of the St. Petersburg Sovremennik (N.A. Nekrasov considered Ostrovsky "undoubtedly the first dramatic writer"). In 1859 the first collected works of the playwright were published, which brought him both fame and human joy. Subsequently, two trends in the coverage of the traditional way of life - critical, accusatory and poetic - fully manifested and merged in Ostrovsky's tragedy The Thunderstorm (1859). The work, written within the genre framework of social drama, is endowed with tragic depth and historical significance of the conflict at the same time. The clash of two female characters - Katerina Kabanova and her mother-in-law Marfa Ignatievna (Kabanikha) - in its scale far exceeds the conflict between generations, traditional for the Ostrovsky theater. The character of the main character (called by N.A. Dobrolyubov “a ray of light in a dark kingdom”) consists of several dominants: the ability to love, the desire for freedom, a sensitive, vulnerable conscience. Showing the naturalness, inner freedom of Katerina, the playwright at the same time emphasizes that she is, nevertheless, the flesh of the flesh of the patriarchal way of life. Living by traditional values, Katerina, having betrayed her husband, surrendering to her love for Boris, takes the path of breaking with these values and is acutely aware of this. The drama of Katerina, who denounced herself in front of everyone and committed suicide, turns out to be endowed with the features of the tragedy of an entire historical order, which is gradually being destroyed, becoming a thing of the past. The stamp of eschatologism, the feeling of the end, is also marked by the attitude of Marfa Kabanova, the main antagonist of Katerina. At the same time, Ostrovsky's play is deeply imbued with the experience of "poetry folk life”(A. Grigoriev), song and folklore elements, a sense of natural beauty (the features of the landscape are present in the remarks, stand up in the replicas of the characters). The subsequent long period of the playwright's work (1861-1886) reveals the closeness of Ostrovsky's searches to the development paths of the contemporary Russian novel - from M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin to the psychological novels of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. Powerfully sounds in the comedies of the "post-reform" years the theme " crazy money”, grabbing, shameless careerism of representatives of the impoverished nobility, combined with the richness of the psychological characteristics of the characters, with the ever-increasing art of plot construction of the playwright. So, the "anti-hero" of the play "Enough Stupidity for Every Wise Man" (1868) Egor Glumov is somewhat reminiscent of Griboyedov's Molchalin. But this is Molchalin new era: for the time being, Glumov's inventive mind and cynicism contribute to his dizzying career that had begun. These same qualities, the playwright hints, in the finale of the comedy will not let Glumov fall into the abyss even after his exposure. The theme of the redistribution of life's goods, the emergence of a new social and psychological type- a businessman ("Mad Money", 1869, Vasilkov), and even a predatory businessman from the nobles ("Wolves and Sheep", 1875, Berkutov) existed in Ostrovsky's work until the end of his writing career. In 1869 Ostrovsky entered into a new marriage after the death of Agafya Ivanovna from tuberculosis. From his second marriage, the writer had five children. Genre and compositionally complex, full of literary allusions, hidden and direct quotations from Russian and foreign classical literature (Gogol, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Molière, Schiller), the comedy The Forest (1870) sums up the first post-reform decade. The play touches on themes developed by Russian psychological prose - the gradual ruin of the "noble nests", the spiritual decline of their owners, the stratification of the second estate and those moral collisions in which people are involved in new historical and social conditions. In this social, domestic and moral chaos, the bearer of humanity and nobility is a man of art - a declassed nobleman and provincial actor Neschastlivtsev. In addition to the “folk tragedy” (“Thunderstorm”), the satirical comedy (“Forest”), Ostrovsky at the late stage of his work also creates exemplary works in the genre of psychological drama (“Dowry”, 1878, “Talents and Admirers”, 1881, “Without Guilty Guilty", 1884). The playwright expands and psychologically enriches the stage characters in these plays. Correlating with traditional stage roles and with commonly used dramatic moves, characters and situations turn out to be able to change in an unforeseen way, thereby demonstrating the ambiguity, inconsistency of a person’s inner life, the unpredictability of every everyday situation. Paratov is not only a "fatal man", the fatal lover of Larisa Ogudalova, but also a man of simple, rough worldly calculation; Karandyshev is not only a "little man" who tolerates cynical "masters of life", but also a person with immense, painful pride; Larisa is not only a heroine suffering from love, ideally different from her environment, but also under the influence of false ideals ("Dowry"). The character of Negina (“Talents and Admirers”) is psychologically ambiguously resolved by the playwright: the young actress not only chooses the path of serving art, preferring it to love and personal happiness, but also agrees to the fate of a kept woman, that is, she “practically reinforces” her choice. The fate of the famous actress Kruchinina (“Guilty Without Guilt”) intertwined both the ascent to the theatrical Olympus and a terrible personal drama. Thus, Ostrovsky follows a path that is comparable with the paths of contemporary Russian realistic prose - the path of an ever deeper awareness of the complexity of the inner life of the individual, the paradoxical nature of the choice she makes. 2. Ideas, themes and social characters in the dramatic works of A.N. Ostrovsky
.1 Creativity (Ostrovsky's democracy) In the second half of the 1950s, a number of major writers (Tolstoy, Turgenev, Goncharov, Ostrovsky) entered into an agreement with the Sovremennik magazine on preferential provision of their works to it. But soon this agreement was violated by all writers except Ostrovsky. This fact is one of the testimonies of the great ideological closeness of the playwright with the editors of the revolutionary democratic journal. After the closure of Sovremennik, Ostrovsky, consolidating his alliance with the revolutionary democrats, with Nekrasov and Saltykov-Shchedrin, published almost all of his plays in the journal Fatherland Notes. Ideologically maturing, the playwright reaches the heights of his democracy, alien Westernism and Slavophilism by the end of the 60s. In my own way ideological pathos Ostrovsky's dramaturgy is the dramaturgy of peaceful-democratic reformism, ardent propaganda of enlightenment and humanity, protection of working people. The democracy of Ostrovsky explains the organic connection of his work with oral folk poetry, the material of which he so wonderfully used in his artistic creations. The playwright highly appreciates M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin. He speaks of him "in the most enthusiastic way, declaring that he considers him not only an outstanding writer, with incomparable methods of satire, but also a prophet in relation to the future." Closely associated with Nekrasov, Saltykov-Shchedrin and other leaders of the revolutionary peasant democracy, Ostrovsky, however, was not a revolutionary in his socio-political views. In his works there are no calls for a revolutionary transformation of reality. That is why Dobrolyubov, completing the article "The Dark Kingdom", wrote: "We must confess: we did not find a way out of the" dark kingdom "in the works of Ostrovsky." But in the totality of his works, Ostrovsky gave fairly clear answers to questions about the transformation of reality from the standpoint of peaceful reformist democracy. Ostrovsky's characteristic democratism determined the enormous strength of his sharply satirical guise of the nobility, the bourgeoisie and the bureaucracy. In a number of cases these guises were raised to the level of the most resolute criticism of the ruling classes. The accusatory satirical power of many of Ostrovsky's plays is such that they objectively serve the cause of the revolutionary transformation of reality, which Dobrolyubov spoke about: “The modern aspirations of Russian life in the most extensive dimensions find their expression in Ostrovsky, as in a comedian, from the negative side. Drawing to us in a vivid picture false relationships, with all their consequences, he through the very same serves as an echo of aspirations that require a better device. Concluding this article, he said, and even more definitely: "Russian life and Russian strength are called by the artist in The Thunderstorm to a decisive task." In the very last years, Ostrovsky has a tendency to improve, which is reflected in the substitution of clear social characteristics for abstract moralizing ones, in the appearance of religious motives. For all that, the tendency to improve does not violate the foundations of Ostrovsky's work: it manifests itself within the boundaries of his inherent democracy and realism. Each writer is distinguished by his curiosity and observation. But Ostrovsky possessed these qualities to the highest degree. He watched everywhere: on the street, at a business meeting, in a friendly company. 2.2 Innovation A.N. Ostrovsky
Ostrovsky's innovation manifested itself already in the subject matter. He sharply turned dramaturgy to life, to its everyday life. It was with his plays that the content of Russian dramaturgy became life as it is. Developing a very wide range of topics of his time, Ostrovsky mainly used material from the life and customs of the upper Volga region and Moscow in particular. But regardless of the place of action, Ostrovsky's plays reveal the essential features of the main social classes, estates and groups of Russian reality at a certain stage of their historical development. "Ostrovsky," Goncharov rightly wrote, "scribbled the whole life of the Moscow, that is, the Great Russian state." Along with covering the most important aspects of the life of the merchants, dramaturgy XVIII centuries did not pass by such private phenomena of merchant life as a passion for a dowry, which was prepared on a monstrous scale (“The Bride under a Veil, or the Petty-bourgeois Wedding” unknown author 1789) Expressing the socio-political demands and aesthetic tastes of the nobility, vaudeville and melodrama, which flooded the Russian theater in the first half of the 19th century, greatly muted the development of everyday drama and comedy, in particular drama and comedy with merchant themes. The theater's keen interest in plays with merchant themes emerged only in the 1930s. If in the late 30s and at the very beginning of the 40s the life of the merchants in dramatic literature was still perceived as a new phenomenon in the theater, then in the second half of the 40s it already becomes a literary cliché. Why did Ostrovsky turn to the merchant theme from the very beginning? Not only because the merchant life literally surrounded him: he met with the merchant class in his father's house, in the service. On the streets of Zamoskvorechye, where he lived for many years. Under the conditions of the disintegration of feudal-serf relations, landlord Russia was rapidly turning into capitalist Russia. The commercial and industrial bourgeoisie was rapidly advancing onto the public stage. In the process of transforming landowner Russia into capitalist Russia, Moscow becomes a commercial and industrial center. Already in 1832, most of the houses in it belonged to the "middle class", i.e. merchants and townspeople. In 1845, Belinsky stated: “The core of the indigenous Moscow population is the merchant class. How many old noble houses have now passed into the ownership of the merchants! A significant part of Ostrovsky's historical plays is devoted to the events of the so-called "Time of Troubles". This is no coincidence. The turbulent time of the “troubles”, clearly marked by the national liberation struggle of the Russian people, clearly echoes the growing peasant movement of the 60s for their freedom, with the sharp struggle of reactionary and progressive forces that unfolded during these years in society, in journalism and literature. Depicting the distant past, the playwright had in mind the present. Exposing the ulcers of the socio-political system and the ruling classes, he scourged the contemporary autocratic order. Drawing in plays about the past images of people boundlessly devoted to their homeland, reproducing the spiritual greatness and moral beauty of the common people, he thereby expressed sympathy for the working people of his era. Ostrovsky's historical plays are an active expression of his democratic patriotism, an effective realization of his struggle against the reactionary forces of modernity, for its progressive aspirations. Ostrovsky's historical plays, which appeared during the years of a fierce struggle between materialism, idealism, atheism and religion, revolutionary democratism and reaction, could not be raised to the shield. Ostrovsky's plays emphasized the importance of the religious principle, and the revolutionary democrats waged irreconcilable atheistic propaganda. In addition, advanced criticism negatively perceived the very departure of the playwright from the present into the past. Ostrovsky's historical plays began to find more or less objective evaluation later. Their true ideological and artistic value begins to be realized only in Soviet criticism. Ostrovsky, depicting the present and the past, was carried away by his dreams into the future. In 1873. He creates a wonderful fairy tale play "The Snow Maiden". This is a social utopia. It has a fabulous plot, characters, and setting. Profoundly different in its form from the playwright's social plays, it organically enters the system of democratic, humanistic ideas of his work. IN critical literature about "The Snow Maiden" it was rightly pointed out that Ostrovsky draws here a "peasant kingdom", a "peasant community", once again emphasizing his democracy, his organic connection with Nekrasov, who idealized the peasantry. It is with Ostrovsky that the Russian theater in its modern sense begins: the writer created a theater school and a holistic concept of acting in the theater. The essence of Ostrovsky's theater is the absence of extreme situations and opposition to the actor's gut. The plays of Alexander Nikolaevich depict ordinary situations with ordinary people whose dramas go into everyday life and human psychology. The main ideas of the theater reform: · the theater should be built on conventions (there is a 4th wall separating the audience from the actors); · invariability of attitude to language: mastery of speech characteristics, expressing almost everything about the characters; · betting on more than one actor; · "People go to see the game, not the play itself - you can read it." Ostrovsky's theater demanded a new stage aesthetics, new actors. In accordance with this, Ostrovsky creates an ensemble of actors, which includes such actors as Martynov, Sergei Vasilyev, Evgeny Samoilov, Prov Sadovsky. Naturally, innovations met opponents. They were, for example, Shchepkin. The dramaturgy of Ostrovsky demanded from the actor detachment from his personality, which M.S. Shchepkin did not. For example, he left the dress rehearsal of The Thunderstorm, being very dissatisfied with the author of the play. Ostrovsky's ideas were carried to their logical end by Stanislavsky. .3 Socio-ethical dramaturgy of Ostrovsky
Dobrolyubov said that Ostrovsky "extremely fully exposed two types of relations - family relations and property relations." But these relations are always given to them in a broad social and moral framework. Ostrovsky's dramaturgy is socio-ethical. It raises and solves the problems of morality, human behavior. Goncharov rightly drew attention to this: “Ostrovsky is usually called a writer of everyday life, morals, but this does not exclude the psychic side ... he does not have a single play where this or that purely human interest, feeling, life truth is not affected.” The author of "Thunderstorm" and "Dowry" has never been a narrow everyday worker. Continuing the best traditions of Russian progressive dramaturgy, he organically fuses in his plays family and everyday, moral and everyday motives with deeply social or even socio-political ones. At the heart of almost any of his plays is the main, leading theme of great social resonance, which is revealed with the help of subordinate private themes, mostly everyday ones. Thus, his plays acquire a thematically complex complexity, versatility. So, for example, the leading theme of the comedy "Own people - let's settle!" - unbridled predation, which led to malicious bankruptcy - is carried out in an organic interweaving with its subordinate private topics: education, relationships between elders and younger, fathers and children, conscience and honor, etc. Shortly before the appearance of "Thunderstorm" N.A. Dobrolyubov published the articles "Dark Kingdom", in which he argued that Ostrovsky "possesses a deep understanding of Russian life and is great at portraying its most essential aspects sharply and vividly." The Thunderstorm served as new proof of the correctness of the propositions expressed by the revolutionary-democratic critic. In The Thunderstorm, the playwright so far showed with exceptional force the clash between old traditions and new trends, between the oppressed and the oppressors, between the aspirations of the oppressed people for the free manifestation of their spiritual needs, inclinations, interests and the social and family-household orders that dominated in the conditions of pre-reform life. Solving the urgent problem of illegitimate children, their social powerlessness, Ostrovsky in 1883 created the play Guilty Without Guilt. This problem was touched upon in the literature both before and after Ostrovsky. Democratic fiction paid particular attention to it. But in no other work did this theme sound with such penetrating passion as in the play Guilty Without Guilt. Confirming its relevance, a contemporary of the playwright wrote: "The question of the fate of the illegitimate is a question inherent in all classes." In this play, the second problem is also loud - art. Ostrovsky skillfully, justifiably tied them into a single knot. He turned a mother looking for her child into an actress and unfolded all the events in an artistic environment. Thus, two heterogeneous problems merged into an organically inseparable life process. Ways to create a work of art are very diverse. The writer can come from a real fact that struck him or a problem or idea that excited him, from a glut of life experience or from imagination. A.N. Ostrovsky, as a rule, started from the concrete phenomena of reality, but at the same time he defended a certain idea. The playwright fully shared Gogol's judgment that “idea, thought governs the play. Without it, there is no unity in it.” Guided by this position, on October 11, 1872, he wrote to his co-author N.Ya. Solovyov: “I worked on “The Savage Woman” all summer, and I thought for two years, I not only have not a single character or position, but there is not a single phrase that would not strictly follow from the idea ... " The playwright has always been an opponent of frontal didactics, so characteristic of classicism, but at the same time he defended the need for complete clarity of the author's position. In his plays, one can always feel the author-citizen, a patriot of his country, a son of his people, a champion of social justice, acting either as a passionate defender, lawyer, or as a judge and prosecutor. Ostrovsky's social, ideological, and ideological position is clearly revealed in relation to the various depicted social classes and characters. Showing the merchants, Ostrovsky reveals with particular fullness his predatory egoism. Along with selfishness, an essential feature of the bourgeoisie portrayed by Ostrovsky is acquisitiveness, accompanied by insatiable greed and shameless cheating. The acquisitive greed of this class is all-consuming. Kindred feelings, friendship, honor, conscience are exchanged here for money. The glitter of gold overshadows in this environment all the usual concepts of morality and honesty. Here, a wealthy mother gives her only daughter to an old man only because he “doesn’t peck for money” (“Family Picture”), and a rich father is looking for a groom for his, also only daughter, considering only that he has “ there were money and a smaller dowry ache "(" "Own people - let's settle!"). In the trading environment portrayed by Ostrovsky, no one takes into account other people's opinions, desires and interests, considering only their own will and personal arbitrariness as the basis of their activity. An integral feature of the commercial and industrial bourgeoisie portrayed by Ostrovsky is hypocrisy. The merchants strove to hide their fraudulent nature under the mask of sedateness and piety. The religion of hypocrisy professed by the merchants became their essence. Predatory egoism, acquisitive greed, narrow practicality, a complete lack of spiritual inquiries, ignorance, tyranny, hypocrisy and hypocrisy - these are the leading moral and psychological features of the pre-reform commercial and industrial bourgeoisie portrayed by Ostrovsky, its essential properties. Reproducing the pre-reform commercial and industrial bourgeoisie with its pre-construction way of life, Ostrovsky clearly showed that in life the forces opposing it were already growing, inexorably undermining its foundations. The ground under the feet of self-indulgent despots became more and more shaky, foreshadowing their inevitable end in the future. The post-reform reality has changed a lot in the position of the merchants. The rapid development of industry, the growth of the domestic market, and the expansion of trade relations with foreign countries have turned the commercial and industrial bourgeoisie not only into an economic but also into a political force. The type of the old pre-reform merchant began to be replaced by a new one. A merchant of a different fold came to replace him. Responding to the new that the post-reform reality introduced into the life and customs of the merchants, Ostrovsky even more sharply poses in his plays the struggle of civilization with patriarchy, of new phenomena with antiquity. Following the changing course of events, the playwright in a number of his plays draws a new type of merchant, who was formed after 1861. Acquiring a European gloss, this merchant hides his selfish and predatory essence under external plausibility. Drawing representatives of the commercial and industrial bourgeoisie of the post-reform era, Ostrovsky exposes their utilitarianism, narrow-mindedness, spiritual poverty, preoccupation with the interests of hoarding and domestic comfort. “The bourgeoisie,” we read in the Communist Manifesto, “tore away their touchingly sentimental veil from family relations and reduced them to purely monetary relations.” We see a convincing confirmation of this position in the family and everyday relations of both the pre-reform and, in particular, the post-reform Russian bourgeoisie, depicted by Ostrovsky. Marriage and family relations are subordinated here to the interests of entrepreneurship and profit. Civilization has undoubtedly streamlined the technique of professional relations between the commercial and industrial bourgeoisie and has imparted to it the gloss of an external culture. But the essence of the social practice of the pre-reform and post-reform bourgeoisie remained unchanged. Comparing the bourgeoisie with the nobility, Ostrovsky prefers the bourgeoisie, but nowhere, except for three plays - “Do not sit in your sleigh”, “Poverty is not a vice”, “Do not live as you want”, - does not idealize it as an estate. It is clear to Ostrovsky that the moral foundations of the representatives of the bourgeoisie are determined by the conditions of their environment, their social existence, which is a particular expression of the system, which is based on despotism, the power of wealth. The commercial and entrepreneurial activity of the bourgeoisie cannot serve as a source of spiritual growth of the human personality, humanity and morality. The social practice of the bourgeoisie can only disfigure the human personality, instilling in it individualistic, anti-social properties. The bourgeoisie, historically replacing the nobility, is vicious in its essence. But it has become a force not only economic, but also political. While the merchants of Gogol were afraid of the mayor like fire and wallowed at his feet, the merchants of Ostrovsky treat the mayor in familiarity. Depicting the affairs and days of the commercial and industrial bourgeoisie, its old and young generation, the playwright showed a gallery of images full of individual originality, but, as a rule, without soul and heart, without shame and conscience, without pity and compassion. The Russian bureaucracy of the second half of the 19th century, with its inherent properties of careerism, embezzlement, and bribery, was also subjected to harsh criticism by Ostrovsky. Expressing the interests of the nobility and the bourgeoisie, it was in fact the dominant socio-political force. “Tsarist autocracy is,” Lenin said, “the autocracy of officials.” The power of the bureaucracy, directed against the interests of the people, was uncontrolled. Representatives of the bureaucratic world are the Vyshnevskys ("Profitable Place"), the Potrokhovs ("Labor Bread"), the Gnevyshevs ("The Rich Bride") and the Benevolenskys ("The Poor Bride"). The concepts of justice and human dignity exist in the bureaucratic world in an egoistic, extremely vulgar sense. Revealing the mechanics of bureaucratic omnipotence, Ostrovsky paints a picture of the terrible formalism that brought to life such dark businessmen as Zakhar Zakharych (“Hangover at a Strange Feast”) and Mudrov (“Hard Days”). It is quite natural that the representatives of autocratic-bureaucratic omnipotence are stranglers of any free political thought. Embezzling, bribery, perjury, whitewashing the evil and drowning the just cause in a paper stream of casuistic cunning gossip, these people are morally devastated, everything human in them is weathered, there is nothing cherished for them: conscience and honor are sold for profitable places, ranks, money. Ostrovsky convincingly showed the organic merging of the bureaucracy, the bureaucracy with the nobility and the bourgeoisie, the unity of their economic and socio-political interests. Reproducing the heroes of the conservative bourgeois bureaucratic life with their vulgarity and impenetrable ignorance, carnivorous greed and rudeness, the playwright creates a magnificent trilogy about Balzaminov. Looking ahead in his dreams to the future, when he marries a rich bride, the hero of this trilogy says: “Firstly, I would sew myself a blue cloak with a black velvet lining ... I would buy myself a gray horse and a racing droshky and drive along the Hook, mother, and he ruled ... ". Balzaminov is the personification of vulgar petty-bourgeois bureaucratic limitations. This is a type of great generalizing power. But a significant part of the petty bureaucracy, being socially between a rock and a hard place, itself endured oppression from the autocratic-despotic system. Among the petty bureaucracy there were many honest workers who stooped and often fell under the unbearable burden of social injustice, deprivation and want. Ostrovsky treated these workers with ardent attention and sympathy. He dedicated a number of plays to the little people of the bureaucratic world, where they act as they were in reality: good and evil, smart and stupid, but both of them are destitute, deprived of the opportunity to reveal their best abilities. More acutely felt their social infringement, more deeply felt their futility people in one way or another outstanding. And so their lives were mostly tragic. Representatives of the working intelligentsia in the image of Ostrovsky are people of spiritual vivacity and bright optimism, goodwill and humanism. Principled directness, moral purity, a firm belief in the truth of one's deeds and the bright optimism of the working intelligentsia find ardent support from Ostrovsky. Depicting the representatives of the working intelligentsia as true patriots of their fatherland, as carriers of light, designed to dispel the darkness of the dark kingdom, based on the power of capital and privileges, arbitrariness and violence, the playwright puts his cherished thoughts into their speeches. Ostrovsky's sympathies belonged not only to the working intelligentsia, but also to ordinary working people. He found them among the philistinism - a motley, complex, contradictory class. By their own aspirations, the petty-bourgeois are attached to the bourgeoisie, and by their labor essence, to the common people. Ostrovsky portrays from this estate mainly working people, showing obvious sympathy for them. As a rule, ordinary people in Ostrovsky's plays are carriers of natural intelligence, spiritual nobility, honesty, innocence, kindness, human dignity and sincerity of the heart. Showing the working people of the city, Ostrovsky penetrates with deep respect for their spiritual merits and ardent sympathy for the difficult situation. He acts as a direct and consistent defender of this social stratum. Deepening the satirical tendencies of Russian dramaturgy, Ostrovsky acted as a merciless denunciator of the exploiting classes and, thereby, of the autocratic system. The playwright depicted a social system in which the value of the human personality is determined only by its material wealth in which poor workers experience heaviness and hopelessness, while careerists and bribe-takers prosper and triumph. Thus, the playwright pointed out his injustice and depravity. That is why in his comedies and dramas all positive characters are predominantly in dramatic situations: they suffer, suffer and even die. Their happiness is accidental or imaginary. Ostrovsky was on the side of this growing protest, seeing in it a sign of the times, an expression of a nationwide movement, the beginnings of what was to change all life in the interests of working people. Being one of the brightest representatives of Russian critical realism, Ostrovsky not only denied, but also affirmed. Using all the possibilities of his skill, the playwright attacked those who oppressed the people and disfigured their souls. Permeating his work with democratic patriotism, he said: “As a Russian, I am ready to sacrifice everything I can for the fatherland.” Comparing Ostrovsky’s plays with his contemporary liberal-accusatory novels and stories, Dobrolyubov rightly wrote in the article “A Ray of Light in the Dark Kingdom”: “It is impossible not to admit that Ostrovsky’s work is much more fruitful: he captured such general aspirations and needs that permeate the entire Russian society whose voice is heard in all the phenomena of our life, whose satisfaction is a necessary condition for our further development. Conclusion The vast majority of Western European dramaturgy of the 19th century reflected the feelings and thoughts of the bourgeoisie, which dominated all spheres of life, praised its morals and heroes, and affirmed the capitalist order. Ostrovsky expressed the mood, moral principles, ideas of the working strata of the country. And this determined the height of his ideology, that strength of his public protest, that truthfulness in his depiction of the types of reality with which he so clearly stands out against the backdrop of all the world drama of his time. The creative activity of Ostrovsky had a powerful 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. Ostrovsky had a tremendous impact on the further development of Russian drama and theatrical art. IN AND. 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 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. Ostrovsky became an ally and comrade-in-arms of playwrights, directors, and actors in their struggle for nationality and the high ideology of Soviet art. Bibliography Ostrovsky dramatic ethical play 1.Andreev I.M. “The creative path of A.N. Ostrovsky "M., 1989 2.Zhuravleva A.I. “A.N. Ostrovsky - comedian "M., 1981 .Zhuravleva A.I., Nekrasov V.N. “Theater A.N. Ostrovsky "M., 1986 .Kazakov N.Yu. “The life and work of A.N. Ostrovsky "M., 2003 .Kogan L.R. “Chronicle of the life and work of A.N. Ostrovsky "M., 1953 .Lakshin V. “Theater A.N. Ostrovsky "M., 1985 .Malygin A.A. “The Art of Drama by A.N. Ostrovsky "M., 2005 Internet resources: .#"justify">9. Lib.ru/ classic. Az.lib.ru .Shchelykovo www. Shelykovo.ru .#"justify">. #"justify">. http://www.noisette-software.com
Target:The influence of the dramaturgy of A.N. Ostrovsky in the creation of the national repertoire.
Task:trace creative way A.N. Ostrovsky. Ideas, path and innovation of A.N. Ostrovsky. Show the significance of A.N. Ostrovsky.
In connection with the 35th anniversary of Ostrovsky’s activity, Goncharov wrote to him: “You alone built a 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 dramaturgy 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 was further developed. acting. A whole galaxy of remarkable Russian actors based 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 drama is a problem that has gone through all of Russian classical literature: the conflict of man with the adverse conditions of life opposing him, the diverse forces of evil; assertion of the individual's right to free and all-round development. A broad panorama of Russian life is revealed to readers and viewers of the great playwright's plays. This is, in essence, an encyclopedia of life and customs of an entire historical era. Merchants, officials, landlords, peasants, generals, actors, businessmen, 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 Russian classics. The playwright exalts strong, wholesome natures, which in a number of cases turn out to be morally superior to a weak, insecure hero. These are Katerina (“Thunderstorm”), Nadya (“The Pupil”), Kruchinina (“Guilty Without Guilt”), Natalia (“Labor Bread”), and others. Reflecting on the originality of Russian dramatic art, about its democratic basis, Ostrovsky wrote: “ Folk writers want to try their hand in front of 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 "The 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 Dobrolyubov's apt definition. The action of his works is often carried out on a wide living space. The noise and talk of life burst into action, becoming one of the factors determining the scale of events. Family conflicts develop into social ones.
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, a proverb or saying become the title of the play.
The creative experience of Ostrovsky had a tremendous 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 Theatre, 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.
Alexander Nikolayevich Ostrovsky (1823--1886) rightfully occupies a worthy place among the largest representatives of world drama.
The significance of the activities of Ostrovsky, who for more than forty years annually published in the best magazines in Russia and staged plays on the stages of the imperial theaters of St. Petersburg and Moscow, many of which were an event in the literary and theatrical life of the era, is briefly but accurately described in the famous letter of I. Goncharov, addressed to the playwright himself. “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 you laid the cornerstones of Fonvizin, Griboyedov, Gogol. But only after you we are Russians, we can proudly say: "We have our own Russian, national theater." It, in fairness, should be called the "Ostrovsky Theater".
Ostrovsky began his career in the 40s, during the lifetime of Gogol and Belinsky, and completed it in the second half of the 80s, at a time when A.P. Chekhov was already firmly established in literature.
The conviction that the work of a playwright, creating a theater repertoire, is a high public service permeated and directed Ostrovsky's activity. He was organically connected with the life of literature. In his younger years, the playwright wrote critical articles and participated in the editorial affairs of Moskvityanin, trying to change the direction of this conservative magazine, then, publishing in Sovremennik and " Domestic notes”, became friendly with N. A. Nekrasov, L. N. Tolstoy, I. S. Turgenev, I. A. Goncharov and other writers. He followed their work, discussed their works with them and listened to their opinion about his plays.
In an era when state theaters were officially considered "imperial" and were under the control of the Ministry of the Court, and provincial entertainment institutions were given to the full disposal of business entrepreneurs, Ostrovsky put forward the idea of a complete restructuring of theatrical business in Russia. He argued the need to replace the court and commercial theater with a folk one.
Not limited to the theoretical development of this idea in special articles and notes, the playwright fought for its implementation for many years. The main areas in which he realized his views on the theater were his work and work with actors.
dramaturgy, literary basis Ostrovsky considered the performance to be its defining element. The theatre's repertoire, which gives the viewer the opportunity to "see Russian life and Russian history on stage", according to his concepts, was addressed primarily to the democratic public, "for which people want to write, and are obliged to write folk writers." Ostrovsky defended the principles of the author's theater. He considered the theaters of Shakespeare, Moliere, and Goethe to be exemplary experiments of this kind. The combination in one person of the author of dramatic works and their interpreter on stage - the teacher of actors, the director - seemed to Ostrovsky a guarantee of artistic integrity, the organic activity of the theater. This idea, in the absence of directing, with the traditional orientation of the theatrical spectacle to the performance of individual, "solo" actors, was innovative and fruitful. Its significance has not been exhausted even today, when the director has become the main figure in the theater. It is enough to recall B. Brecht's theater "Berliner Ensemble" to be convinced of this.
Overcoming the inertia of the bureaucratic administration, literary and theatrical intrigues, Ostrovsky worked with actors, constantly directing productions of his new plays at the Maly Moscow and Alexandria Petersburg theaters. The essence of her idea was to implement and consolidate the influence of literature on the theater. Fundamentally and categorically, he condemned the more and more felt from the 70s. subordination of dramatic writers to the tastes of the actors - favorites of the stage, their prejudices and whims. At the same time, Ostrovsky did not conceive of dramaturgy without the theatre. His plays were written with the direct expectation of real performers, artists. He emphasized: in order to write good play, the author must have full knowledge of the laws of the stage, the purely plastic side of the theater.
Far from every playwright, he was ready to hand over power over stage artists. He was sure that only a writer who created his own uniquely original dramaturgy, his own special world on the stage, has something to say to the artists, has something to teach them. Ostrovsky's attitude to modern theater was determined by his artistic system. The hero of Ostrovsky's dramaturgy was the people. The whole society and, moreover, the socio-historical life of the people appeared in his plays. Not without reason, critics N. Dobrolyubov and A. Grigoriev, who approached Ostrovsky’s work from mutually opposite positions, saw in his works complete picture the existence of the people, although they differently assessed the life depicted by the writer. This orientation of the writer to the mass phenomena of life corresponded to the principle of ensemble play, which he defended, the consciousness inherent in the playwright of the importance of unity, the integrity of the creative aspirations of the team of actors participating in the performance.
In his plays, Ostrovsky portrayed social phenomena that had deep roots - conflicts, the origins and causes of which often date back to distant historical epochs. He saw and showed the fruitful aspirations arising in society, and the new evil rising in it. The carriers of new aspirations and ideas in his plays are forced to wage a hard struggle against the old, traditionally consecrated customs and views, and the new evil collides in them with the centuries-old ethical ideal of the people, with strong traditions of resistance to social injustice and moral untruth.
Each character in Ostrovsky's plays is organically connected with his environment, his era, the history of his people. At the same time, the ordinary person, in whose concepts, habits and very speech his kinship with the social and national world is imprinted, is the focus of interest in Ostrovsky's plays. The individual fate of a person, the happiness and unhappiness of an individual, ordinary person, his needs, his struggle for his personal well-being excite the viewer of dramas and comedies of this playwright. The position of a person serves in them as a measure of the state of society.
Moreover, the typical personality, the energy with which individual characteristics the life of the people “affects” a person, in the dramaturgy of Ostrovsky it has an important ethical and aesthetic significance. The characterization is wonderful. Just as in Shakespeare's dramaturgy the tragic hero, whether he is beautiful or terrible in terms of ethical assessment, belongs to the sphere of beauty, in Ostrovsky's plays characteristic hero to the extent of its typicality, it is the embodiment of aesthetics, and in a number of cases, spiritual wealth, historical life and culture of the people. This feature of Ostrovsky's dramaturgy predetermined his attention to the play of each actor, to the performer's ability to present a type on stage, to vividly and captivatingly recreate an individual, original social character. Ostrovsky especially appreciated this ability in the best artists of his time, encouraging and helping to develop it. Addressing A. E. Martynov, he said: “... from several features sketched by an inexperienced hand, you created the final types, full of artistic truth. This is why you are dear to the authors” (12, 8).
Ostrovsky ended his discussion about the nationality of the theater, that dramas and comedies are written for the whole people with the words: “... dramatic writers must always remember this, they must be clear and strong” (12, 123).
The clarity and strength of the author's creativity, in addition to the types created in his plays, finds its expression in the conflicts of his works, built on simple life incidents, reflecting, however, the main collisions of modern social life.
In his early article, positively evaluating the story of A.F. Pisemsky “The Mattress”, Ostrovsky wrote: “The intrigue of the story is simple and instructive, like life. Because of the original characters, because of the natural and highly dramatic course of events, a noble thought, acquired by worldly experience, shines through. This story is truly a work of art” (13, 151). The natural dramatic course of events, original characters, the depiction of the life of ordinary people - listing these signs of true artistry in Pisemsky's story, the young Ostrovsky undoubtedly proceeded from his reflections on the tasks of drama as an art. Characteristically, Ostrovsky attaches great importance to the instructiveness of a literary work. The instructiveness of art gives him a reason to compare and bring art closer to life. Ostrovsky believed that the theater, gathering within its walls a large and diverse audience, uniting it with a sense of aesthetic pleasure, should educate society (see 12, 322), help simple, unprepared spectators "to understand life for the first time" (12, 158), and educated to give "a whole perspective of thoughts that you can't get rid of" (ibid.).
At the same time, abstract didactics was alien to Ostrovsky. “Anyone can have good thoughts, but only the elect are given to own minds and hearts” (12, 158), he recalled, ironically at writers who replace serious artistic problems with edifying tirades and naked tendency. Knowledge of life, its truthful realistic depiction, reflection on the most pressing and complex issues for society - this is what the theater should present to the public, this is what makes the stage a school of life. The artist teaches the viewer to think and feel, but does not give him ready-made solutions. Didactic dramaturgy, which does not reveal the wisdom and instructiveness of life, but replaces it with declaratively expressed common truths, is dishonest, since it is not artistic, while it is precisely for the sake of aesthetic impressions that people come to the theater.
These ideas of Ostrovsky found a peculiar refraction in his attitude to historical dramaturgy. The playwright argued that "historical dramas and chronicles" ... "develop people's self-knowledge and bring up a conscious love for the fatherland" (12, 122). At the same time, he emphasized that not the distortion of the past in favor of one or another tendentious idea, not calculated on the external stage effect of melodrama on historical plots and not the transcription of scientific monographs into a dialogic form, but a truly artistic recreation of the living reality of bygone centuries on the stage can be the basis patriotic performance. Such a performance helps society to know itself, encourages reflection, giving a conscious character to the immediate feeling of love for the motherland. Ostrovsky understood that the plays that he creates every year form the basis of the modern theatrical repertoire. Defining the types of dramatic works, without which an exemplary repertoire cannot exist, he, in addition to dramas and comedies depicting modern Russian life, and historical chronicles, named extravaganzas, fairy-tale plays for festive performances, accompanied by music and dances, designed as a colorful folk spectacle. The playwright created a masterpiece of this kind - the spring fairy tale "The Snow Maiden", in which poetic fantasy and picturesque setting are combined with deep lyrical and philosophical content.
Ostrovsky entered Russian literature as the heir of Pushkin and Gogol - a national playwright, intensely reflecting on the social functions of theater and drama, transforming everyday, familiar reality into an action full of comedy and drama, a connoisseur of language, sensitively listening to the living speech of the people and making it a powerful tool artistic expression.
Ostrovsky's comedy "Our people - let's settle!" ( original name"Bankrupt") was assessed as a continuation of the line of national satirical dramaturgy, the next "number" after "The Government Inspector", and although Ostrovsky did not intend to preface it with a theoretical declaration or explain its meaning in special articles, circumstances forced him to determine his attitude to the activities of the dramatic writer.
Gogol wrote in Theatrical junction":" It's strange: I'm sorry that no one noticed the honest face that was in my play "..." This honest, noble face was laughter"..." I am a comedian, I served him honestly and therefore I should become his intercessor.
“According to my notions of elegance, considering comedy to be the best form for achieving moral goals and recognizing in myself the ability to reproduce life mainly in this form, I had to write a comedy or write nothing,” says Ostrovsky in the request from him about his play explanation to the trustee of the Moscow educational district V.I. Nazimov (14, 16). He is firmly convinced that talent imposes duties on him to art and the people. Ostrovsky's proud words about the meaning of comedy sound like a development of Gogol's thought.
In accordance with the recommendations of Belinsky to writers of the 40s. Ostrovsky finds a little-studied sphere of life, not previously depicted in literature, and devotes his pen to it. He himself proclaims himself a "discoverer" and researcher of Zamoskvorechye. The writer's declaration about life, with which he intends to acquaint the reader, resembles the humorous "Introduction" to one of Nekrasov's almanacs "The First of April" (1846), written by D. V. Grigorovich and F. I. Dostoevsky. Ostrovsky reports that the manuscript, which “sheds light on a country that has not been known to anyone in detail until now and has not been described by any of the travelers”, was discovered by him on April 1, 1847 (13, 14). The very tone of the appeal to the readers, preceded by the "Notes of the Zamoskvoretsky Resident" (1847), testifies to the author's orientation towards the style of humorous everyday life of Gogol's followers.
Reporting that the subject of his depiction will be a certain “part” of everyday life, delimited from the rest of the world territorially (by the Moscow River) and fenced off by the conservative isolation of his way of life, the writer thinks about what place this isolated sphere occupies in the integral life of Russia.
Ostrovsky correlates the customs of Zamoskvorechye with the customs of the rest of Moscow, contrasting, but even more often bringing them closer. Thus, the pictures of Zamoskvorechye, given in Ostrovsky's essays, stood in line with the generalized characteristics of Moscow, opposed to St. Petersburg as a city of traditions to a city embodying historical progress, in Gogol's articles "Petersburg Notes of 1836" and Belinsky "Petersburg and Moscow".
The main problem that the young writer puts as the basis of his knowledge of the world of Zamoskvorechye is the correlation in this closed world of tradition, the stability of being and the active principle, the trend of development. Depicting Zamoskvorechye as the most conservative, immovable part of the observing tradition of Moscow, Ostrovsky saw that the way of life that he paints, in its outward lack of conflict, may seem idyllic. And he resisted such a perception of the picture of life in Zamoskvorechye. He characterizes the routine of existence beyond Moscow: "... the power of inertia, numbness, so to speak, hindering a person"; and explains his thought: “It was not without reason that I called this force Zamoskvoretskaya: there, beyond the Moscow River, is her kingdom, there is her throne. She drives a man into a stone house and locks the iron gates behind him, she dresses a man with a cotton robe, she puts a cross on the gates from an evil spirit, and from evil people she lets dogs through the yard. She arranges bottles at the windows, buys annual proportions of fish, honey, cabbage, and salts corned beef for future use. She makes a man fat and with a caring hand drives away every disturbing thought from his forehead, just as a mother drives away flies from a sleeping child. She is a deceiver, she always pretends to be “family happiness”, and an inexperienced person will not soon recognize her and, perhaps, envy her” (13, 43).
This remarkable characterization of the very essence of life in Zamoskvorechye is striking in its juxtaposition of such seemingly mutually contradictory images-assessments as a comparison of “Zamoskvoretskaya strength” with a caring mother and a hobbled noose, numbness - a synonym for death; the combination of such far-flung phenomena as the procurement of products and the way of thinking of a person; the convergence of such different concepts as family happiness in a prosperous home and vegetating in prison, strong and violent. Ostrovsky leaves no room for confusion, he directly declares that well-being, happiness, carelessness are a deceitful form of enslaving a person, killing her. way of life patriarchal life subordinated to the real tasks of providing a closed, self-sustaining cell-family with material well-being and comfort. However, the very system of the patriarchal way of life is inseparable from certain moral concepts, a certain worldview: deep traditionalism, submission to authority, a hierarchical approach to all phenomena, mutual alienation of houses, families, estates and individual people.
The ideal of life in such a way is peace, the immutability of the ritual of everyday life, the finality of all ideas. Thought, to which Ostrovsky, not by chance, constantly assigns the definition of "restless", is expelled from this world, outlawed. Thus, the consciousness of the Zamoskvoretsky townsfolk turns out to be firmly merged with the most concrete, material forms of their life. The fate of the restless, searching for new paths in life thought is shared by science - a concrete expression of progress in consciousness, a refuge for an inquisitive mind. She is suspicious and, at best, tolerant as a servant of the most elementary practical calculation, science is “like a serf who pays his master dues” (13, 50).
Thus, Zamoskvorechye from a private sphere of life studied by the essayist, a “corner”, a remote provincial district of Moscow, turns into a symbol of patriarchal life, an inert and integral system of relations, social forms and concepts corresponding to them. Ostrovsky shows a keen interest in mass psychology and the worldview of the entire social environment, in opinions that are not only long-established and based on the authority of tradition, but also “closed”, creating a network of ideological means of protecting their integrity, turning into a kind of religion. At the same time, he is aware of the historical concreteness of the formation and existence of this ideological system. Comparison of Zamoskvoretsky practicality with feudal exploitation does not arise by chance. It explains the Zamoskvoretsky attitude to science and the mind.
In his earliest, still student imitative story, The Tale of How the Quarterly Overseer Started to Dance... (1843), Ostrovsky found a humorous formula expressing an important generalization of the generic features of the “out of Moscow” approach to knowledge. The writer himself, obviously, recognized it as successful, since he transferred, albeit in an abridged form, the dialogue containing it to the new story "Ivan Erofeich", published under the title "Notes of a Zamoskvoretsky Resident". “The watchman was “…” such an eccentric that you don’t ask him, he doesn’t know anything. He had such a saying: "But how to know him, what you don't know." Right, like a philosopher” (13, 25). Such is the proverb in which Ostrovsky saw a symbolic expression of the “philosophy” of Zamoskvorechye, who believes that knowledge is primordially and hierarchically, that everyone is “released” a small, strictly defined share of it; that the greatest wisdom is the lot of spiritual or "God-inspired" persons - holy fools, seers; the next step in the hierarchy of knowledge belongs to the rich and older in the family; the poor and subordinates, by their very position in society and the family, cannot claim “knowledge (the watchman “stands on one thing, that he knows nothing and cannot know” - 13, 25).
Thus, studying Russian life in its concrete, particular manifestation (life of Zamoskvorechye), Ostrovsky thought hard about the general idea of this life. Already at the first stage of his literary activity, when his creative personality was just taking shape, and he was intensely looking for his own writing path, Ostrovsky came to the conclusion that the complex interaction of the patriarchal traditional way of life and the stable views formed in its bosom with the new needs of society and moods reflecting the interests historical progress, is the source of the endless variety of contemporary social and moral collisions and conflicts. These conflicts oblige the writer to express his attitude towards them and thereby intervene in the struggle, in the development of dramatic events that make up the inner being of an outwardly calm, sedentary flow of life. Such a view of the tasks of the writer contributed to the fact that Ostrovsky, starting with work in the narrative kind, relatively quickly realized his vocation as a playwright. The dramatic form corresponded to his idea of the peculiarities of the historical existence of Russian society and was "consonant" with his desire for enlightenment art of a special type, "historical and educational" as it could be called.
Ostrovsky's interest in the aesthetics of drama and his peculiar and deep look at the dramatic nature of Russian life bore fruit in his first major comedy "Our people - we will settle!", Determined the problematics and stylistic structure of this work. Comedy "Own people - let's settle!" was perceived as a great event in art, a completely new phenomenon. This was the point of convergence of contemporaries standing on very different positions: Prince V. F. Odoevsky and N. P. Ogarev, Countess E. P. Rostopchina and I. S. Turgenev, L. N. Tolstoy and A. F. Pisemsky, A A. Grigoriev and N. A. Dobrolyubov. Some of them saw the significance of Ostrovsky's comedy in denouncing one of the most inert and depraved classes of Russian society, others (later) in the discovery of an important social, political and psychological phenomenon of public life - tyranny, others - in a special, purely Russian tone of heroes , in the originality of their characters, in the national typicality of the depicted. There were lively disputes between listeners and readers of the play (it was forbidden to stage it), but the very feeling of the event, the sensation, was common to all its readers. Its inclusion in a number of great Russian social comedies ("Undergrowth", "Woe from Wit", "The Government Inspector") has become a commonplace of talk about the work. At the same time, however, everyone noticed that the comedy “Own people - let's settle!” fundamentally different from its famous predecessors. "Undergrowth" and "Inspector General" raised national and general moral problems, depicting a "reduced" version of the social environment. With Fonvizin, these are middle-class provincial landowners who are taught by officers of the guard and a man of high culture, the rich Starodum. Gogol has officials of a remote, deaf town, trembling before the ghost of the St. Petersburg auditor. And although for Gogol the provincial nature of the heroes of The Inspector General is a “dress” in which meanness and meanness, which is everywhere, “dressed up”, the public sharply perceived the social concreteness of the depicted. In Griboyedov's Woe from Wit, the "provinciality" of the Famusovs' society and others like them, the Moscow mores of the nobility, which are in many respects different from those in St. ideological and plot aspect of comedy.
In all three famous comedies, people of a different cultural and social level invade the normal course of life of the environment, destroy the intrigues that arose before their appearance and created by local residents, carry with them their own, special conflict, forcing the entire depicted environment to feel its unity, to show its properties and engage in a fight with a foreign, hostile element. In Fonvizin, the “local” environment is defeated by a more educated and conditionally (in the deliberately ideal image of the author) close to the throne. The same “assumption” exists in the “Inspector General” (cf. in “Theatrical Journey” the words of a man from the people: “I suppose the governors were quick, but everyone turned pale when the royal reprisal came!”). But in Gogol's comedy, the struggle is more "dramatic" and variable, although its "illusion" and the ambiguous meaning of the main situation (due to the imaginary nature of the auditor) lend comicality to all its vicissitudes. In Woe from Wit, the environment wins over the "outsider". At the same time, in all three comedies, a new intrigue introduced from outside destroys the original one. In The Undergrowth, the exposure of Prostakova's illegal actions and the taking of her estate under guardianship cancels Mitrofan and Skotinin's encroachments on marriage with Sophia. In Woe from Wit, Chatsky's intrusion destroys Sofia's romance with Molchalin. In The Inspector General, officials who are not accustomed to letting go of "what floats into their hands" are forced to abandon all their habits and undertakings due to the appearance of the "Auditor".
The action of Ostrovsky's comedy unfolds in a homogeneous environment, the unity of which is emphasized by the title "Our people - let's settle!".
In the three great comedies, the social environment was judged by an "alien" from a higher intellectual and partly social circle, but in all these cases, national problems were posed and solved within the nobility or bureaucracy. Ostrovsky makes the merchant class the focus of solving national problems - a class that had not been portrayed in literature before him in such a capacity. The merchant class was organically connected with the lower classes - the peasantry, often with the serf peasantry, raznochintsy; it was part of the "third estate", the unity of which had not yet been destroyed in the 40-50s.
Ostrovsky was the first to see in the peculiar life of the merchants, different from the life of the nobility, an expression of the historically established features of the development of Russian society as a whole. This was one of the innovations of the comedy "Own people - let's settle!". The questions that it raised were very serious and concerned the whole society. “There is nothing to blame on the mirror, if the face is crooked!” - Gogol addressed the Russian society with rude frankness in the epigraph to The Inspector General. "Own people - let's settle!" - Ostrovsky slyly promised the audience. His play was designed for a wider, more democratic audience than the dramaturgy that preceded it, for a viewer for whom the tragicomedy of the Bolshov family is close, but who is able at the same time to understand its general significance.
Family relations and property relations appear in Ostrovsky's comedy in close connection with a whole range of important social issues. Merchants, a conservative class that preserves ancient traditions and customs, are depicted in Ostrovsky's play in all the originality of their way of life. At the same time, the writer sees the significance of this conservative class for the future of the country; the depiction of the life of the merchants gives him reason to raise the problem of the fate of patriarchal relations in the modern world. Outlining an analysis of Dickens' novel Dombey and Son, a work whose main character embodies the morals and ideals of the bourgeoisie, Ostrovsky wrote: “The honor of the company is above all, let everything be sacrificed to it, the honor of the company is the beginning from which all activity flows. Dickens, in order to show the whole untruth of this beginning, puts it in contact with another beginning - with love in its various manifestations. Here it would be necessary to end the novel, but this is not how Dickens does it; he forces Walter to come from across the sea, Florence to hide with Captain Kutl and marry Walter, makes Dombey repent and fit into Florence's family ”(13, 137-138). The belief that Dickens should have ended the novel without resolving the moral conflict and without showing triumph human feelings over "merchant honor" - a passion that arose in bourgeois society, is characteristic of Ostrovsky, especially during his work on the first big comedy. Fully realizing the dangers of progress (which Dickens showed), Ostrovsky understood the inevitability, inevitability of progress and saw the positive principles contained in it.
In the comedy "Own people - let's settle!" he portrayed the head of a Russian merchant house, just as proud of his wealth, renounced simple human feelings and interested in the company's income, like his English counterpart Dombey. However, Bolshov not only is not obsessed with the fetish of the "honor of the company", but, on the contrary, is alien to this concept in general. He lives on other fetishes and sacrifices all human attachments to them. If Dombey's behavior is determined by the code of commercial honor, then Bolshov's behavior is dictated by the code of patriarchal family relations. And just as for Dombey serving the honor of the company is a cold passion, so for Bolshov a cold passion is the exercise of his power as a patriarch over the household.
The combination of confidence in the sanctity of their autocracy with the bourgeois consciousness of the obligation to increase profits, the paramount importance of this goal and the legitimacy of subordinating all other considerations to it, is the source of the daring plan of false bankruptcy, in which the features of the hero’s worldview are clearly manifested. Indeed, the complete absence of legal concepts that arise in the field of commerce as its importance grows in society, the blind faith in the inviolability of the family hierarchy, the substitution of commercial and business concepts for the fiction of kinship, family relations - all this inspires Bolshov with the idea of simplicity and ease of enrichment for account of trade partners, and confidence in the obedience of her daughter, in her consent to marriage with Podkhalyuzin, and confidence in this latter, as soon as he becomes a son-in-law.
Bolshov's intrigue is that "original" plot, to which in "The Undergrowth" there corresponds an attempt to seize Sophia's dowry on the part of Prostakovs and Skotinin, in "Woe from Wit" - Sophia's romance with Silent, and in "The Government Inspector" - abuses of officials, which are revealed (as if in inversion) in the course of the play. In The Bankrupt, the destroyer of the original intrigue, who creates the second and main collision within the play, is Podkhalyuzin, Bolshov's "own" person. His behavior, unexpected for the head of the house, testifies to the disintegration of patriarchal-family relations, to the illusory nature of any appeal to them in the world of capitalist entrepreneurship. Podkhalyuzin represents bourgeois progress to the same extent as the Bolshoi represents a patriarchal way of life. For him, there is only a formal honor - the honor of "justifying the document", a simplified semblance of the "honor of the company."
In the play by Ostrovsky in the early 70s. “Forest” already and the merchant of the older generation will stubbornly stand on positions of formal honor, perfectly combining claims to unlimited patriarchal power over households with the idea of the laws and rules of trade as the basis of behavior, i.e. about the “honor of the company”: “If I I justify the documents - that's my honor and "..." I'm not a man, I'm a rule, ”the merchant Vosmibratov says about himself (6, 53). Pushing the naively dishonest Bolshov against the formally honest Podkhalyuzin, Ostrovsky did not suggest an ethical decision to the viewer, but raised the question of the moral state of modern society. He showed the doom of the old forms of life and the danger of the new that spontaneously grows out of these old forms. The social collision expressed through a family conflict in his play was essentially of a historical nature, and the didactic aspect of his work was complex and ambiguous.
The associative connection of the depicted events with Shakespeare's tragedy "King Lear" provided for in his comedy contributed to the identification of the author's moral position. This association arose among contemporaries. The attempts of some critics to see in the figure of Bolshov - the "merchant king Lear" - features of high tragedy and to assert that the writer sympathizes with him, met with strong resistance from Dobrolyubov, for whom Bolshov is a tyrant, and in his grief remains a tyrant, a dangerous and harmful personality. for society. Dobrolyubov's consistently negative attitude towards Bolshov, excluding any sympathy for this hero, was mainly due to the fact that the critic acutely felt the connection between domestic tyranny and political tyranny and the dependence of non-compliance with the law in private business on the lack of legality in society as a whole. "Merchant King Lear" interested him most of all as the embodiment of those social phenomena that give rise to and maintain the silence of society, the lack of rights of the people, stagnation in the economic and political development of the country.
The image of Bolshov in Ostrovsky's play is certainly interpreted in a comedic, accusatory way. However, the suffering of this hero, unable to fully understand the criminality and unreasonableness of his actions, is subjectively deeply dramatic. The betrayal of Podkhalyuzin and his daughter, the loss of capital bring Bolshov the greatest disappointment in the ideological order, a vague feeling of the collapse of age-old foundations and principles, and strike him like the end of the world.
The fall of serfdom and the development of bourgeois relations are foreseen in the denouement of the comedy. This historical aspect of the action "strengthens" the figure of Bolshov, while his suffering evokes a response in the soul of the writer and viewer, not because the hero, in his own way, moral character did not deserve retribution, but because the formally right-wing Podkhalyuzin tramples not only Bolshov’s narrow, distorted idea of family relations and the rights of parents, but also all feelings and principles, except for the principle of “justifying” a monetary document. Violating the principle of trust, he (a student of the same Bolshov, who believed that the principle of trust exists only in the family), precisely because of his antisocial attitude, becomes the master of the situation in modern society.
Ostrovsky's first comedy, long before the fall of serfdom, showed the inevitability of the development of bourgeois relations, the historical and social significance of the processes that took place among the merchants.
“The Poor Bride” (1852) differed sharply from the first comedy (“His People ...”) in its style, in types and situations, in dramatic construction. The Poor Bride was inferior to the first comedy in the harmony of the composition, the depth and historical significance of the problems posed, the sharpness and simplicity of the conflicts, but it was permeated with the ideas and passions of the era and made a strong impression on the people of the 50s. The suffering of a girl for whom marriage of convenience is the only possible "career", and the dramatic experiences of the "little man", whom society denies the right to love, the tyranny of the environment and the individual's striving for happiness, which does not find satisfaction for himself - these and many others the collisions that worried the audience were reflected in the play. If in the comedy "Own people - let's settle!" Ostrovsky in many ways anticipated the problems of narrative genres and opened the way for their development; in The Poor Bride, he rather followed the novelists and short story writers, experimenting in search of a dramatic structure that makes it possible to express the content that narrative literature was actively developing. In the comedy, there are noticeable responses to Lermontov's novel "A Hero of Our Time", attempts to reveal one's attitude to some of the questions raised in it. One of central characters wears characteristic surname- Meric. Contemporary criticism of Ostrovsky noted that this hero imitates Pechorin and claims to be demonic. The playwright reveals the vulgarity of Merich, unworthy of standing next to not only Pechorin, but even Grushnitsky due to the poverty of his spiritual world.
The action of The Poor Bride unfolds in a mixed circle of poor officials, impoverished nobles and commoners, and Meric's "demonism", his tendency to have fun, "breaking the hearts" of girls who dreamed of love and marriage, gets social definition: a rich young man, a “good groom”, deceiving a beautiful dowry, exercises the master’s right, which has been established in society for centuries, “to joke free with pretty young women” (Nekrasov). A few years later, in the play The Pupil, which originally had the expressive title “Toy Cat, Tears to Mouse”, Ostrovsky showed this kind of intrigue-entertainment in its historically “original” form, as “lordly love” - a product of serf life (compare wisdom, expressed through the lips of a serf girl in "Woe from Wit": "Bypass us more than all sorrows and lordly anger and lordly love!"). At the end of the XIX century. in the novel "Resurrection" L. Tolstoy will again return to this situation as the outset of events, evaluating which he will raise the most important social, ethical and political questions.
Ostrovsky responded in a peculiar way to problems, the popularity of which was associated with the influence of George Sand on the minds of Russian readers in the 1940s and 1950s. The heroine of The Poor Bride is a simple girl who yearns for modest happiness, but her ideals are tinged with Georgesandism. She tends to reason, think about general issues, and is sure that everything in a woman's life is resolved through the implementation of one main desire - to love and be loved. Many critics found that Ostrovsky's heroine "theorizes" too much. At the same time, the playwright "reduces" from the heights of idealization characteristic of the novels of George Sand and her followers, his woman, striving for happiness and personal freedom. She is presented as a Moscow young lady from the circle of middle-ranking officials, a young romantic dreamer, selfish in her thirst for love, helpless in judging people and not able to distinguish genuine feeling from vulgar red tape.
In The Poor Bride, the commonplace concepts of well-being and happiness collide with love in its various manifestations, but love itself appears not in its absolute and ideal expression, but in the form of time, the social environment, the concrete reality of human relations. The dowry Marya Andreevna, suffering from material need, which with fatal necessity pushes her to give up feelings, to reconcile with the fate of a domestic slave, experiences severe blows from people who love her. The mother actually sells her to win a lawsuit; devoted to the family, honoring her late father and loving Masha as if he were his own, the official Dobrotvorsky finds her a "good fiancé" - an influential official, rude, stupid, ignorant, who has amassed capital by abuse; Merić, who is playing with passion, cynically amuses himself with an "affair" with a young girl; Milashin, who is in love with her, is so passionate about the struggle for his rights in the girl’s heart, the rivalry with Merich, that he doesn’t think for a minute about how this struggle responds to the poor bride, what she should feel. The only person who sincerely and deeply loves Masha - descended in the middle class environment and crushed by her, but the kind, intelligent and educated Khorkov - does not attract the attention of the heroine, there is a wall of alienation between them, and Masha inflicts on him the same wound that is inflicted on her surrounding. Thus, from the interweaving of four intrigues, four dramatic lines (Masha and Merich, Masha and Khorkov, Masha and Milashin, Masha and the groom - Benevolensky), the complex structure of this play is formed, in many respects close to the structure of the novel, consisting of interlacing storylines. At the end of the play in two brief appearances a new dramatic line appears, represented by a new, episodic person - Dunya, a bourgeois girl who was Benevolensky's unmarried wife for several years and left by him for the sake of marriage with an "educated" young lady. Dunya, who loves Benevolensky, is able to feel sorry for Masha, understand her and sternly say to the triumphant groom: “Only will you be able to live with such a wife? You look, do not ruin someone else's century in vain. It will be a sin for you “…” It’s not with me: they lived, lived, and that’s how it was” (1, 217).
This "little tragedy" of philistine life attracted the attention of readers, viewers and critics. It depicted a strong female folk character; the drama of women's fate was revealed in a completely new way, in a style that, with its simplicity and reality, opposed the romantically elevated, expansive style of George Sand. In the episode, the heroine of which is Dunya, the original understanding of tragedy inherent in Ostrovsky is especially noticeable.
However, apart from this "interlude" "The Poor Bride" began a completely new line in Russian drama. It was in this, in many respects still not quite mature play (the author's miscalculations were noted in the critical articles of Turgenev and other authors) that Ostrovsky later developed in a number of works - right up to his late masterpiece "Dowry" - the problems of modern love in her complex interactions with material interests that enslaved people, one can only marvel at the creative courage of the young playwright, his daring in art. Having not yet staged a single play on the stage, but having written a comedy before The Poor Bride, recognized as exemplary by the highest literary authorities, he completely departs from its problematics and style and creates an example of modern drama inferior to his first work in perfection, but new in type.
Late 40s-early 50s. Ostrovsky became close to a circle of young writers (T. I. Filippov, E. N. Edelson, B. N. Almazov, A. A. Grigoriev), whose views soon took a Slavophile direction. Ostrovsky and his friends collaborated in the Moskvityanin magazine, the conservative convictions of whose editor, MP Pogodin, they did not share. An attempt by the so-called "young editors" of The Moskvityanin to change the journal's direction failed; moreover, the material dependence of both Ostrovsky and other Moskvityanin employees on the editor increased and sometimes became unbearable. For Ostrovsky, the matter was also complicated by the fact that the influential Pogodin contributed to the publication of his first comedy and could to some extent strengthen the position of the author of the play, which was officially condemned.
The well-known turn of Ostrovsky in the early 50s. towards Slavophile ideas did not mean a rapprochement with Pogodin. The heightened interest in folklore, in the traditional forms of folk life, the idealization of the patriarchal family - features that are tangible in the works of Ostrovsky's "Muscovite" period - have nothing to do with Pogodin's official-monarchist convictions.
Speaking about the shift that took place in Ostrovsky's worldview in the early 50s, they usually quote his letter to Pogodin dated September 30, 1853, in which the writer informed his correspondent that he did not want to bother about the first comedy anymore, because he did not want to " make "..." displeasure", admitted that the view of life expressed in this play now seems to him "young and too tough", for "it is better for a Russian person to rejoice at seeing himself on stage than to yearn", argued that the direction his “begins to change” and now he combines “high with comic” in his works. He himself considers “Do not get into your sleigh” as an example of a play written in a new spirit (see 14, 39). When interpreting this letter, researchers, as a rule, do not take into account that it was written after the ban on the production of Ostrovsky’s first comedy and the big troubles that accompanied this ban for the author (up to the appointment of police supervision), and contained two very important requests addressed to to the editor of "Moskvityanin": Ostrovsky asked Pogodin to petition through St. Petersburg to be given a place - service at the Moscow Theater, which was subordinate to the Ministry of the Court, and to petition for permission to stage his new comedy "Don't get into your sleigh" on the Moscow stage . Outlining these requests, Ostrovsky gave Pogodin, thus, assurances of his trustworthiness.
The works written by Ostrovsky between 1853 and 1855 are really different from the previous ones. But The Poor Bride was also very different from the first comedy. At the same time, the play Do Not Get into Your Sleigh (1853) continued in many respects what had been started in The Poor Bride. She painted the tragic consequences of the routine relations prevailing in a society divided into hostile social clans alien to each other. Trampling the personality of simple, gullible, honest people, desecrating the selfless, deep feeling of a pure soul - this is what the master's traditional contempt for the people turns into in the play. In the play “Poverty is not a vice” (1854), the image of tyranny arose again in all its brightness and specificity - a phenomenon that was discovered, although not yet named by name, in the comedy “Own People ...”, and the problem of the relationship between historical progress and the traditions of national life was posed . At the same time, the artistic means by which the writer expressed his attitude to these social issues have changed markedly. Ostrovsky developed more and more new forms of dramatic action, opening the way for enriching the style of a realistic performance.
Plays by Ostrovsky 1853-1854 even more frankly than his first works, they were focused on a democratic audience. Their content remained serious, the development of problems in the playwright's work was organic, but the theatricality, the folk festivity of such plays as "Poverty is not a vice" and "Do not live as you want" (1854), opposed the everyday modesty and reality of "Bankrupt" and "Poor Bride" Ostrovsky, as it were, "returned" the drama to the square, turning it into "folk entertainment." The dramatic action played out on the stage in his new plays approached the life of the spectator in a different way than in his first works, which painted harsh pictures of everyday life. The festive splendor of the theatrical performance, as it were, continued the folk Christmas or Shrovetide festivities with its age-old customs and traditions. And the playwright makes this riot of fun a means of posing great social and ethical questions.
In the play “Poverty is not a vice”, there is a noticeable tendency to idealize the old traditions of family and life. However, the portrayal of patriarchal relations in this comedy is complex and ambiguous. The old is interpreted in it both as a manifestation of the eternal, enduring forms of life in modern times, and as the embodiment of the power of inert inertia, “hindering” a person. The new - as an expression of the natural process of development, without which life is unthinkable, and as a comic "imitation of fashion", superficial assimilation outside parties culture of a foreign social environment, foreign customs. All these heterogeneous manifestations of the stability and mobility of life coexist, fight and interact in the play. The dynamics of their relationships is the basis of the dramatic movement in it. Its background is an old ritual festive festivities, a kind of folklore act, which is played out at Christmas time by a whole people, conditionally discarding the “mandatory” relations in modern society in order to take part in the traditional game. A visit to a rich house by a crowd of mummers, in which it is impossible to distinguish the familiar from the stranger, the poor from the noble and those in power, is one of the “acts” of the old amateur comedy game, which is based on popular ideal utopian ideas. “In the carnival world, all hierarchy has been abolished. All classes and ages are equal here,” M. M. Bakhtin rightly asserts.
This property of folk carnival holidays is fully expressed in the image of the Christmas fun, which is given in the comedy "Poverty is not a vice." When the hero of a comedy, the rich merchant Gordey Tortsov, ignores the conventionality of the "game" and treats the mummers the way he used to treat ordinary people on weekdays, this is not only a violation of traditions, but also an insult to the ethical ideal that gave rise to the very tradition. It turns out that Gordey, who declares himself a supporter of novelty and refuses to recognize the archaic rite, insults those forces that are constantly involved in the renewal of society. In insulting these forces, he relies equally on a historically new phenomenon - the growth of the importance of capital in society - and on the old house-building tradition of the unaccountable power of the elders, especially the "master" of the family - the father - over the rest of the household.
If in the system of family and social collision of the play Gordey Tortsov is denounced as a tyrant, for whom poverty is a vice and who considers it his right to push around a dependent person, wife, daughter, clerk, then in the concept of folk action he is a proud man who, having dispersed the mummers, he himself performs in the mask of his vice and becomes a participant in the folk Christmas comedy. Another hero of the comedy, Lyubim Tortsov, is also included in the dual semantic and stylistic series.
In terms of the social problems of the play, he is a ruined poor man who has broken with the merchant class, who in his fall acquires a new gift for him of independent critical thought. But in the series of masks of the festive Christmas evening, he, the antipode of his brother, the “disgraceful”, who in ordinary, “everyday” life was regarded as the “shame of the family”, appears as the master of the situation, his “stupidity” turns into wisdom, simplicity - insight, talkativeness - amusing jokes, and drunkenness itself turns from shameful weakness into a sign of a special, broad, irrepressible nature, which embodied the riot of life. The exclamation of this hero - "Wider road - Lyubim Tortsov is coming!" - enthusiastically picked up by the theatrical public, for which the production of the comedy was a triumph of national drama, expressed the social idea of the moral superiority of a poor, but internally independent person over a tyrant. At the same time, it did not contradict the traditional folklore stereotype of the behavior of the Christmas hero - a joker. It seemed that this mischievous character, generous with traditional jokes, had come from the festive street to the theatrical stage, and that he would again retire to the streets of the festive city covered in fun.
In “Don't Live As You Want,” the image of Shrovetide fun becomes central. The atmosphere of the national holiday and the world of ritual games in "Poverty is no vice" contributed to the resolution of social collisions in spite of the everyday routine of relations; in "Don't Live the Way You Want" Shrovetide, the atmosphere of the holiday, its customs, the origins of which lie in ancient times, in pre-Christian cults, start a drama. The action in it is relegated to the past, to the 18th century, when the way that many of the playwright's contemporaries considered primordial, eternal for Rus' was still a novelty, not fully established order.
The struggle of this way of life with a more archaic, ancient, half-destroyed and turned into a festive carnival game system of concepts and relations, an internal contradiction in the system of religious and ethical ideas of the people, a “dispute” between the ascetic, harsh ideal of renunciation, submission to authority and dogma, and “practical” , a family economic principle that implies tolerance, form the basis of the play's dramatic conflicts.
If in “Poverty is not a vice” the traditions of the people’s carnival behavior of the heroes act as humane, expressing the ideals of equality and mutual support of people, then in “Do not live as you want”, the culture of the carnival carnival is drawn with a high degree of historical concreteness. In “Don’t Live As You Want,” the writer reveals both the life-affirming, joyful features of the ancient worldview expressed in it, and the features of archaic severity, cruelty, the predominance of simple and frank passions over a more subtle and complex spiritual culture, corresponding to the later ethical ideal.
Peter's "falling away" from patriarchal family virtue takes place under the influence of the triumph of pagan principles, inseparable from Shrovetide merriment. This predetermines the nature of the denouement, which seemed to many contemporaries implausible, fantastic and didactic.
In fact, just as the Maslenitsa Moscow, engulfed by the whirling of masks - “mug”, the flashing of decorated triplets, feasts and drunken revelry, “spun” Peter, “dragged” him from home, made him forget about family duty, so the end a noisy holiday, the morning blessing, according to the legendary tradition, resolving spells and destroying power evil spirits(here it is not the religious function of the evangelism that is important, but the “appearance of a new term” marked by it), returns the hero to the “correct” everyday state.
Thus, the folk-fiction element accompanied the depiction of the historical variability of moral concepts in the play. Collisions of life of the XVIII century. "anticipated", on the one hand, modern social conflicts, the genealogy of which is, as it were, established in the play; on the other hand, beyond the distance of the historical past, another distance opened up - the most ancient social and family relations, pre-Christian ethical ideas.
The didactic tendency is combined in the play with the depiction of the historical movement of moral concepts, with the perception of the spiritual life of the people as an eternally living, creative phenomenon. This historicism of Ostrovsky's approach to the ethical nature of man and to the tasks arising from it of enlightening, actively influencing the viewer, the art of drama made him a supporter and defender of the young forces of society, a sensitive observer of newly emerging needs and aspirations. Ultimately, the historicism of the writer's worldview predetermined his divergence from his Slavophil-minded friends, who staked on the preservation and revival of the original foundations of folk customs, and facilitated his rapprochement with Sovremennik.
The first small comedy in which this turning point in Ostrovsky's work was reflected was "Hangover at a Strange Feast" (1856). The basis of the dramatic conflict in this comedy is the opposition of two social forces corresponding to two trends in the development of society: enlightenment, represented by its real bearers - workers, poor intellectuals, and the development of a purely economic and social, devoid, however, cultural and spiritual, moral content, bearers which are rich tyrants. The theme of the hostile confrontation between bourgeois morals and the ideals of enlightenment, outlined in the comedy "Poverty is not a Vice" as moralistic, in the play "A Hangover at a Strange Feast" acquired a socially accusatory, pathetic sound. It is this interpretation of this theme that then passes through many of Ostrovsky's plays, but nowhere does it determine the most dramatic structure to such an extent as in a small but "turning point" comedy "Hangover at a Strange Feast". Subsequently, this “confrontation” will be expressed in “Thunderstorm” in Kuligyn’s monologue about the cruel customs of the city of Kalinov, in his dispute with Wild about the public good, human dignity and a lightning rod, in the words of this hero concluding the drama, calling for mercy. The proud awareness of one’s place in this struggle will be reflected in the speeches of the Russian actor Neschastlivtsev, who smashes the inhumanity of the baro-merchant society (“Forest”, 1871), will be developed and substantiated in the arguments of the young, honest and sensible accountant Platon Zybkin (“Truth is good, but happiness is better”, 1876), in the monologue of the student-educator Meluzov (“Talents and Admirers”, 1882). In this last of the listed plays, the main theme will be one of the problems posed in the comedy "In a strange feast ..." (and before that - only in Ostrovsky's early essays) - the idea of the enslavement of culture by capital, of the dark kingdom's claims to patronage, claims, behind which is the striving of the brute force of petty tyrants to dictate their demands to thinking and creative people to achieve their complete submission to the power of the owners of society.
Observed by Ostrovsky and becoming the subject of artistic comprehension in his work, the phenomena of reality were depicted by him both in the old, original, sometimes historically obsolete form, and in their modern, modified appearance. The writer drew inert forms of modern social life and sensitively noted the manifestations of novelty in the life of society. So, in the comedy “Poverty is not a vice”, a petty tyrant tries to discard his peasant habits inherited from the “young man”: modesty of life, directness of expression of feelings, similar to that which was characteristic of Bolshov in “Our people - let's settle!”; he expresses his opinion about education and imposes it on others. In the play “A Hangover at a Strange Feast”, having first defined his hero with the term “tyrant”, Ostrovsky confronts Tit Titych Bruskov (this image has become a symbol of tyranny) with enlightenment as an irresistible need of society, an expression of the future of the country. Enlightenment, which for Bruskov is embodied in specific persons - the poor eccentric teacher Ivanov and his educated daughter without a dowry - takes away from the rich merchant, as it seems to him, his son. All the sympathies of Andrei - a lively, inquisitive, but downtrodden and confused by the wild family way of life - are on the side of these impractical people, far from everything he is used to.
Tit Titych Bruskov, spontaneously but firmly aware of the power of his capital and firmly believing in his indisputable power over his household, clerks, servants and, ultimately, over all the poor dependent on him, is surprised to find that Ivanov cannot be bought and even intimidated, that his intelligence is a social force. And he is forced for the first time to think about what courage and a sense of personal dignity can give to a person who does not have money, a rank, who lives by work.
The problem of the evolution of tyranny as a social phenomenon is posed in a number of Ostrovsky's plays, and tyrants in his plays in twenty years will become millionaires going to the Paris Industrial Exhibition, fine merchants listening to Patty and collecting original paintings (probably by Wanderers or Impressionists), - after all, this already "sons" of Tit Titych Bruskov, such as Andrey Bruskov. However, even the best of them remain bearers of the brute force of money, which subjugates and corrupts everything. They buy, like the strong-willed and charming Velikatov, the benefit performances of actresses along with the "hostesses" of the benefit performances, since the actress cannot, without the support of a wealthy "patron", resist the arbitrariness of petty predators and exploiters who have seized the provincial stage ("Talents and Admirers"); they, like the respectable industrialist Frol Fedulych Pribytkov, do not interfere in the intrigues of usurers and Moscow business gossips, but willingly reap the fruits of these intrigues, obligingly presented to them in gratitude for patronage, a monetary bribe or out of voluntary servility (“The Last Victim”, 1877). From play to play by Ostrovsky, the audience with the heroes of the playwright came close to Chekhov's Lopakhin, a merchant with the thin fingers of an artist and a delicate, unsatisfied soul, who, however, dreams of profitable dachas as the beginning of a "new life". Lopakhin self-foolishly, in the heat of joy over the purchase of a manor estate, where his grandfather was a serf, demands that the music play “distinctly”: “Let everything be as I wish!” he shouts, shocked by the realization of the strength of his capital.
The compositional structure of the play is based on the opposition of two camps: carriers of caste egoism, social exclusivity, posing as defenders of traditions and moral norms, developed and approved by the age-old experience of the people, on the one hand, and on the other hand, "experimenters", spontaneously, at the behest of the heart and the demand of the disinterested mind of those who have taken the risk of expressing social needs, which they feel as a kind of moral imperative. The heroes of Ostrovsky are not ideologists. Even the most intelligent of them, to which Zhadov belongs, the hero of "Profitable Place", solve the immediate life problems, only in the process of their practical activity "bumping" on the general patterns of reality, "bruising", suffering from their manifestations and coming to the first serious generalizations.
Zhadov fancies himself a theoretician and connects his new ethical principles with the movement of world philosophical thought, with the progress of moral concepts. He proudly says that he did not invent the new rules of morality himself, but heard about them at the lectures of leading professors, read them in "the best literary works of ours and foreign" (2, 97), but it is precisely this abstraction that makes his convictions naive and lifeless. Zhadov acquires real convictions only when, having gone through real trials, he turns to these ethical concepts at a new level of experience in search of answers to the tragic questions posed to him by life. “What a man I am! I am a child, I have no idea about life. All this is new to me “…” It's hard for me! I don't know if I can take it! Debauchery all around, little strength! Why did they teach us! - Zhadov exclaims in despair, faced with the fact that “social vices are strong”, that the struggle against inertia and social egoism is not only difficult, but also harmful (2, 81).
Each environment creates its everyday forms, its ideals, corresponding to its social interests and historical function, and in this sense, people are not free in their actions. But the social and historical conditionality of the actions of not only individual people, but also of the whole environment does not make these actions or entire systems of behavior indifferent to moral assessment, "out of jurisdiction" of the moral court. Ostrovsky saw historical progress, first of all, in the fact that, abandoning the old forms of life, humanity becomes more moral. The young heroes of his works, even in those cases when they commit acts that, from the point of view of traditional morality, can be regarded as a crime or a sin, are essentially more moral, honest and purer than the guardians of “established concepts” who reproach them. This is the case not only in The Pupil (1859), The Thunderstorm, The Forest, but also in the so-called "Slavophile" plays, where inexperienced, inexperienced and mistaken young heroes and heroines often teach their fathers tolerance, mercy, force them for the first time to think about the relativity of their indisputable principles.
Ostrovsky's educational attitude, faith in the importance of the movement of ideas, in the influence of mental development on the state of society, was combined with the recognition of the importance of spontaneous feeling, expressing the objective tendencies of historical progress. Hence - the "childhood", immediacy, emotionality of the young "rebellious" heroes of Ostrovsky. Hence their other peculiarity - non-ideological, everyday approach to essentially ideological problems. This childish immediacy is lacking in Ostrovsky's plays, young predators who cynically adapt to the untruth of modern relations. Next to Zhadov, for whom happiness is inseparable from moral purity, stands the careerist Belogubov - illiterate, greedy for material wealth; his desire to turn the public service into a means of gain and personal prosperity meets with sympathy and support from those who are at the highest levels of state administration, while Zhadov’s desire to work honestly and be content with modest remuneration without resorting to “tacit” sources of income is perceived as freethinking, overthrowing the foundations .
While working on "Profitable Place", where for the first time the phenomenon of tyranny was put in direct connection with the political problems of our time, Ostrovsky conceived a cycle of plays "Nights on the Volga", in which folk poetic images and historical theme should have been central.
Interest in historical issues of the existence of the people, to revealing the roots of modern social phenomena, not only did not dry up in these years with Ostrovsky, but acquired explicit and conscious forms. Already in 1855 he began work on a drama about Minin, in 1860 he was working on Voyevoda.
Comedy "Voevoda", depicting Russian life XVII century, represented a kind of addition to "Profitable Place" and other plays by Ostrovsky, exposing the bureaucracy. From the confidence of the heroes of "Profitable Place" Yusov, Vyshnevsky, Belogubov that the public service is a source of income and that the position of an official gives them the right to impose tribute on the population, from their conviction that their personal well-being means the well-being of the state, and an attempt to resist their dominance and arbitrariness - an encroachment on the holy of holies, a direct thread stretches to the mores of the rulers of that distant era, when the governor was sent to the city "for feeding". The bribe taker and rapist Nechay Shalygin from Voyevoda turns out to be the ancestor of modern embezzlers and bribe takers. Thus, while confronting the audience with the problem of corruption of the state apparatus, the playwright did not push them to the path of a simple and superficial solution to it. Abuses and lawlessness were treated in his works not as a product of the last reign, the shortcomings of which could be eliminated by the reforms of the new king, but they appeared in his plays as a consequence of a long chain of historical circumstances, the struggle against which also has its own historical tradition. The legendary robber Khudoyar is depicted as a hero embodying this tradition in Voivode, who:
“... the people did not rob
And he did not bleed his hands; but on the rich
Lays dues, servants and clerks
He does not favor us, the local nobles,
It frightens hard ... "(4, 70)
This folk hero in the drama is identified with a runaway townsman, hiding from the harassment of the governor and uniting the offended into the dissatisfied around him.
The end of the play is ambiguous - the victory of the inhabitants of the Volga city, who managed to "fall down" the governor, entails the arrival of a new governor, the appearance of which is marked by a collection from the townsman's "commemoration" in order to "honor" the newcomer. Dialogue of two folk choirs about governors testifies that, having got rid of Shalygin, the townspeople did not “get rid” of trouble:
"Old townspeople
Well, the old one is bad, some new one will be.
Young townspeople
Yes, one must be the same, if not worse" (4, 155)
The last remark of Dubrovin, answering the question of whether he will remain in the suburb, with the recognition that if the new governor “pressures the people”, he will again leave the city and return to the forests, opens up an epic perspective of the historical struggle of the zemshchina with bureaucratic predators.
If Voevoda, written in 1864, was in its content a historical prologue to the events depicted in Profitable Place, then the play Enough Simplicity for Every Wise Man (1868) in its historical concept was a continuation of Profitable Place. The hero of the satirical comedy "For every wise man ..." - a cynic who only allows himself to be frank in a secret diary - builds a bureaucratic career on hypocrisy and renegade, on indulgence of stupid conservatism, which he laughs at in his heart, on servility and intrigues. Such people were born of an era when reforms were combined with heavy backward movements. Careers often began with a demonstration of liberalism, with denunciation of abuses, and ended with opportunism and cooperation with the blackest forces of reaction. Glumov, in the past, apparently close to people like Zhadov, contrary to his own reason and feeling expressed in a secret diary, becomes an assistant to Mamaev and Krutitsky, the heirs of Vishnevsky and Yusov, an accomplice of the reaction, because the reactionary meaning of the bureaucratic activity of people like Mamaev and Krutitsky in early 60s. revealed in full. The political views of officials are made in the comedy the main content of their characterization. Ostrovsky notices historical changes even when they reflect the complexity of the slow movement of society forward. Describing the mentality of the 1960s, the democratic writer Pomyalovsky put into the mouth of one of his heroes the following witty remark about the state of reactionary ideology at that time: "This antiquity has never happened before, it is new antiquity."
This is exactly how Ostrovsky paints the “new antiquity” of the era of reforms, the revolutionary situation and the counteroffensive of reactionary forces. The most conservative member of the “circle” of bureaucrats, who talks about the “harm of reforms in general,” Krutitsky, finds it necessary to prove his point of view, make it public through the press, publish projects and notes in journals. Glumov hypocritically, but in essence thoroughly, points out to him the “illogicality” of his behavior: asserting the harm of any innovations, Krutitsky writes a “project” and wants to express his militantly archaic thoughts in new words, i.e., makes “a concession to the spirit of the times”, which itself but considers it "an invention of idle minds." Indeed, in a confidential conversation with a like-minded person, this arch-reactionary recognizes over himself and other conservatives the power of the new, historically established social situation: "The time has passed" ... "If you want to be useful, know how to wield a pen," he states, however, willingly joining in the vowel discussion (5, 119).
This is how political progress manifests itself in a society that is constantly experiencing the icy winds of a lurking, but lively and influential reaction, forced progress, wrested from the top of the government by an irresistible historical movement of society, but not relying on its healthy forces and always "ready to turn back. Cultural and moral development of society , its true spokesmen and supporters are constantly under suspicion, and at the threshold of the “new institutions”, which, as the very influential Krutitsky confidently declares, “will soon close”, there are ghosts and guarantees of a complete regress - superstition, obscurantism and retrograde in everything that concerns culture, science, art. Smart, modern people who have their own, independent opinion and incorruptible conscience, are not allowed a mile away from the "renovating" administration, and liberal figures in it are people who "simulate" free-thinking, who do not believe in anything, cynical and interested only in egg success.This cynicism, venality and make Glumov "the right person" in the bureaucratic circle.
Gorodulin is the same, taking nothing seriously, except for comfort and a pleasant life for himself. This figure, influential in the new, post-reform institutions, believes least of all in their significance. He is a greater formalist than the Old Believers around him. Liberal speeches and principles are for him a form, a conventional language, which exists to alleviate the "necessary" public hypocrisy and lends a pleasant secular streamlining to words that might be "dangerous" if false rhetoric did not devalue and discredit them. Thus, the political function of people like Gorodulin, to which Glumov was also involved, consists in the amortization of concepts that arise again in connection with the irresistible progressive movement of society, in the bleeding of the very ideological and moral content of progress. There is nothing surprising that Gorodulin is not frightened, that he even likes Glumov's sharply accusatory phrases. After all, the more resolute and bolder the words, the more easily they lose their meaning when they are behaved inappropriately. Nor is it surprising that the "liberal" Glumov is his own man in the circle of old-style bureaucrats.
“Enough Simplicity for Every Wise Man” is a work that develops the most important artistic discoveries made by the writer before, at the same time it is a comedy of a completely new type. The main problem that the playwright poses here is again the problem of social progress, its moral consequences and historical forms. Again, as in the plays "Own People ..." and "Poverty is not a Vice", he points out the danger of progress that is not accompanied by the development of ethical ideas and culture, again, as in "Profitable Place", he draws the historical invincibility of the development of society, the inevitability of the destruction of the old administrative system, its deep archaism, but at the same time the complexity and painfulness of the liberation of society from it. Unlike "Profitable Place", the satirical comedy "For every wise man, ..." is devoid of a hero who directly represents the young forces interested in the progressive change of society. Neither Glumov nor Gorodulin actually oppose the world of reactionary bureaucrats. However, the fact that the hypocrite Glumov has a diary, where he expresses sincere disgust and contempt for the circle of influential and powerful people, to whom he is forced to bow, speaks of how rotten rags of this world contradict modern needs, the minds of people.
Enough Simplicity for Every Wise Man is Ostrovsky's first openly political comedy. It is undoubtedly the most serious of the political comedies of the post-reform era that hit the stage. In this play, Ostrovsky posed to the Russian audience the question of the significance of modern administrative transformations, their historical inferiority, and the moral state of Russian society at the time of the breakdown of feudal relations, which was carried out under the government's "containment", "freezing" of this process. It reflected the whole complexity of Ostrovsky's approach to the didactic and educational mission of the theatre. In this regard, the comedy "For every wise man ..." can be put on a par with the drama "Thunderstorm", representing the same focus of the lyrical-psychological line in the work of the playwright as "For every wise man ..." - satirical.
If the comedy Enough Stupidity in Every Wise Man expresses the moods, questions and doubts that Russian society lived in in the second half of the 1960s, when the nature of the reforms was determined and the best people Russian society experienced more than one serious and bitter disappointment, then The Thunderstorm, written a few years earlier, conveys the spiritual upsurge of society in the years when a revolutionary situation developed in the country and it seemed that serfdom and the institutions generated by it would be swept away and the entire social reality will be renewed. Such are the paradoxes of artistic creativity: a cheerful comedy embodies fears, disappointments and anxiety, while a deeply tragic play embodies an optimistic faith in the future. The action of The Thunderstorm unfolds on the banks of the Volga, in an ancient city where, as it seems, nothing has changed for centuries, and cannot change, and it is in the conservative patriarchal family of this city that Ostrovsky sees manifestations of an irresistible renewal of life, its selflessly rebellious beginning. In The Thunderstorm, as in many of Ostrovsky's plays, the action "flashes" like an explosion, an electric discharge that has arisen between two oppositely "charged" poles, characters, human natures. The historical aspect of the dramatic conflict, its correlation with the problem of national cultural traditions and social progress in The Thunderstorm is especially pronounced. Two "poles", two opposite forces of people's life, between which the "power lines" of the conflict in the drama run, are embodied in the young merchant's wife Katerina Kabanova and her mother-in-law, Marfa Kabanova, nicknamed "Kabanikha" for her tough and stern disposition. Kabanikha is a convinced and principled keeper of antiquity, once for all found and established norms and rules of life. Katerina is an eternally searching, taking a bold risk for the sake of the living needs of her soul, a creative person.
Not recognizing the admissibility of changes, development and even diversity of the phenomena of reality, Kabanikha is intolerant and dogmatic. It “legitimizes” habitual forms of life as an eternal norm and considers it its highest right to punish those who have violated the laws of everyday life in a big or small way. Being a staunch supporter of the immutability of the entire way of life, the "eternity" of the social and family hierarchy and the ritual behavior of each person taking his place in this hierarchy, Kabanova does not recognize the legitimacy of individual differences between people and the diversity of peoples' lives. Everything that distinguishes the life of other places from the life of the city of Kalinov testifies to "infidelity": people who live differently from Kalinovtsy should have dog heads. The center of the universe is the pious city of Kalinov, the center of this city is the house of the Kabanovs, - this is how the seasoned wanderer Feklusha characterizes the world in favor of a harsh mistress. She, noticing the changes taking place in the world, argues that they threaten to “belittle” time itself. Any change appears to the Kabanikha as the beginning of sin. She is a champion of a closed life that excludes the communication of people. They look out the windows, in her opinion, from bad, sinful motives, leaving for another city is fraught with temptations and dangers, which is why she reads endless instructions to Tikhon, who is leaving, and makes him demand from his wife that she does not look out the windows. Kabanova listens with sympathy to stories about the "demonic" innovation - "cast iron" and claims that she would never have traveled by train. Having lost an indispensable attribute of life - the ability to change and die, all the customs and rituals approved by Kabanova turned into an "eternal", inanimate, perfect in its own way, but empty form.
From religion she derived poetic ecstasy and a heightened sense of moral responsibility, but she is indifferent to the form of ecclesiasticism. She prays in the garden among the flowers, and in the church she sees not a priest and parishioners, but angels in a beam of light falling from the dome. From art, ancient books, icon painting, wall painting, she learned the images she saw on miniatures and icons: “golden temples or some kind of extraordinary gardens“ ... ”and the mountains and trees seem to be the same as usual, but as they write on the images” - everything lives in her mind, turns into dreams, and she no longer sees a painting and a book, but the world into which she has moved, hears the sounds of this world, smells it. Katerina carries within herself a creative, ever-living principle, generated by the irresistible needs of the time, she inherits the creative spirit of that ancient culture, which seeks to turn into a meaningless form Kabanikh. Throughout the action, Katerina is accompanied by the motive of flight, fast driving. She wants to fly like a bird, and she dreams about flying, she tried to swim away along the Volga, and in her dreams she sees herself racing on a troika. She turns to both Tikhon and Boris with a request to take her with her, to take her away.
However, all this movement, with which Ostrovsky surrounded and characterized the heroine, has one feature - the absence of a clearly defined goal.
Where did the soul of the people migrate from the inert forms of the ancient life, which became the "dark kingdom"? Where does it take the treasures of enthusiasm, truth-seeking, magical images of ancient art? The drama does not answer these questions. It only shows that the people are looking for a life that corresponds to their moral needs, that the old relations do not satisfy them, they have moved from the centuries of a fixed place and have begun to move.
In The Thunderstorm, many of the most important motifs of the playwright's work were combined and given a new life. Contrasting the "hot heart" - a young, courageous and uncompromising heroine in her demands - with the "inertness and numbness" of the older generation, the writer followed the path, the beginning of which were his early essays and on which, even after The Thunderstorm, he found new, endlessly rich sources of exciting, burning drama and "big" comedy. As defenders of two basic principles (the principle of development and the principle of inertia), Ostrovsky brought out heroes of a different temperament. It is often believed that "rationalism", Kabanikh's rationality is opposed to Katerina's spontaneity, emotionality. But next to the judicious "guardian" Marfa Kabanova, Ostrovsky placed her like-minded person - "ugly" in his emotional irrepressibility Savel Diky, and expressed in an emotional outburst aspiration for the unknown, Katerina's thirst for happiness "supplemented" with a thirst for knowledge, Kuligin's wise rationalism.
The "dispute" of Katerina and Kabanikha is accompanied by the dispute between Kuligin and Dikiy, the drama of the slavish position of feeling in the world of calculation (Ostrovsky's constant theme - from "The Poor Bride" up to "Dowry" and last play playwright "Not of this world") is accompanied by an image of the tragedy of the mind in the "dark kingdom" (the theme of the plays "Profitable place", "Truth is good, but happiness is better" and others), the tragedy of the desecration of beauty and poetry - the tragedy of the enslavement of science wild "philanthropists" (cf. "Hangover in someone else's feast").
At the same time, The Thunderstorm was a completely new phenomenon in Russian dramaturgy, an unprecedented folk drama that attracted the attention of society, expressed its current state, and alarmed it with thoughts about the future. That is why Dobrolyubov devoted a special large article to her, "A Ray of Light in the Dark Kingdom."
The vagueness of the future fate of the new aspirations and contemporary creative forces of the people, as well as tragic fate the heroines, not understood and passed away, do not remove the optimistic tone of the drama, permeated with the poetry of love of freedom, glorifying a strong and integral character, the value of direct feelings. The emotional impact of the play was not aimed at condemning Katerina and not at arousing pity for her, but at the poetic exaltation of her impulse, justifying it, elevating it to the rank of a feat. tragic heroine. showing modern life like a crossroads, Ostrovsky believed in the future of the people, but could not and did not want to simplify the problems facing his contemporaries. He awakened the thought, feeling, conscience of the audience, and did not lull them to sleep with ready-made simple solutions.
His dramaturgy, evoking a strong and direct response from the viewer, sometimes made the not very developed and educated people sitting in the hall participants in a collective experience. public conflicts, general laughter at social vice, general anger and reflection generated by these emotions. In the Table Oration, spoken during the celebrations on the occasion of the opening of the monument to Pushkin in 1880, Ostrovsky stated: “The first merit of a great poet is that through him everything that can become wiser becomes wiser. In addition to pleasure, in addition to forms for expressing thoughts and feelings, the poet also gives the very formulas of thoughts and feelings. The rich results of the most perfect mental laboratory are being made public property. The highest creative nature attracts and equalizes everyone to itself” (13, 164).
With Ostrovsky, the Russian spectator wept and laughed, but most importantly, he thought and hoped. His plays were loved and understood by people of different education and preparedness, Ostrovsky served as an intermediary between the great realistic literature Russia and its mass audiences. Seeing how Ostrovsky's plays were perceived, writers could draw conclusions about the moods and abilities of their reader.
A number of authors have references to the impact of Ostrovsky's plays on the common people. Turgenev, Tolstoy, Goncharov wrote to Ostrovsky about the nationality of his theatre; Leskov, Reshetnikov, Chekhov included in their works the judgments of artisans, workers about Ostrovsky's plays, about performances based on his plays ("Where is it better?" Reshetnikova, Leskov's "Squanderer", Chekhov's "My Life"). In addition to this, the dramas and comedies of Ostrovsky, relatively small, laconic, monumental in their problems, always directly related to the main question of the historical path of Russia, the national traditions of the country's development and its future, were an artistic crucible that forged poetic means which proved to be important for the development of narrative genres. Outstanding Russian word artists closely followed the work of the playwright, often arguing with him, but more often learning from him and admiring his skill. Having read Ostrovsky's play abroad, Turgenev wrote: “And Ostrovsky's Voivode brought me tenderness. No one had ever written in such a glorious, tasty, pure Russian language before him! “…” What poetry, smelling in places, like our Russian grove in summer! “…” Ah, the master, this bearded man's master! He and books in his hands "..." He strongly stirred up a literary vein in me!
Goncharov I. A. Sobr. op. in 8 volumes, vol. 8. M., 1955, p. 491-492.
Ostrovsky A.N. Full coll. soch., vol. 12. M, 1952, p. 71 and 123. (The following references in the text are to this edition).
Gogol N.V. Full coll. soch., vol. 5. M., 1949, p. 169.
Ibid, p. 146.
Cm.: Emelyanov B. Ostrovsky and Dobrolyubov. -- In the book: A. N. Ostrovsky. Articles and materials. M., 1962, p. 68-115.
On the ideological positions of individual members of the "young edition" circle of "Moskvityanin" and their relationship with Pogodin, see: Vengerov S. A. The young edition of "Moskvityanin". From the history of Russian journalism. -- West. Europe, 1886, No. 2, p. 581--612; Bochkarev V. A. On the history of the young edition of "Moskvityanin". - Learned. app. Kuibyshev. ped. in-ta, 1942, no. 6, p. 180--191; Dementiev A. G. Essays on the history of Russian journalism 1840-1850. M.--L., 1951, p. 221--240; Egorov B.F. 1) Essays on the history of Russian literary criticism mid-nineteenth V. L., 1973, p. 27--35; 2) A. N. Ostrovsky and the “young edition” of The Moskvityanin. -- In the book: A. N. Ostrovsky and the Russian writer. Kostroma, 1974, p. . 21--27; Lakshin V. A. N. Ostrovsky. M., 1976, p. 132-179.
"Domostroy" was formed as a set of rules that regulated the duties of a Russian person in relation to religion, church, secular power and family in the first half of the 16th century, was later revised and partly supplemented by Sylvester. A. S. Orlov stated that the way of life, erected by "Domostroy" into the norm, "survived to the Zamoskvoretsky epic of A. N. Ostrovsky" ( Orlov A. S. Ancient Russian literature of the XI-XVI centuries. M.--L., 1937, p. 347).
Pomyalovsky N. G. Op. M.--L., 1951, p. 200.
On the reflection in the play “Enough Simplicity for Every Wise Man” of the actual political circumstances of the era, see: Lakshin V. Ostrovsky's "wise men" in history and on the stage. -- In the book: Biography of the book. M., 1979, p. 224--323.
For a special analysis of the drama "Thunderstorm" and information about the public outcry aroused by this work, see the book: Revyakin A.I."Thunderstorm" by A. N. Ostrovsky. M., 1955.
On the principles of organizing action in Ostrovsky's drama, see: Kholodov E. Mastery Ostrovsky. M., 1983, p. 243--316.
Turgenev I. S. Full coll. op. and letters in 28 volumes. Letters, vol. 5. M.--L., 1963, p. 365.
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Life and work of A.N. Ostrovsky
The role of Ostrovsky in the history of the development of Russian drama 4
Life and work of A.N. Ostrovsky 5
Childhood and youth 5
First passion for theater 6
Training and service 7
First hobby. First plays 7
Conversation with father. Ostrovsky's wedding 9
The beginning of a creative journey 10
Traveling in Russia 12
Thunderstorm 14
The second marriage of Ostrovsky 17
The best work of Ostrovsky - "Dowry" 19
Death of a great playwright 21
Genre originality of A.N. Ostrovsky. Significance in world literature 22
Literature 24
The role of Ostrovsky in the history of the development of Russian drama
Alexander Nikolaevich Ostrovsky... This is an unusual phenomenon. It is difficult to overestimate his role in the history of the development of Russian dramaturgy, stage art and the entire national culture. 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 life home country, constantly communicating with the people, closely contacting 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 literary figures about the appearance and triumph of Russian characters on the national stage.
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 General”. 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.
Life and work of A.N. Ostrovsky
Childhood and youth
Alexander Nikolayevich Ostrovsky was born in Moscow into a cultural, bureaucratic family on April 12 (March 31, old style), 1823. The family had its roots in the clergy: the father was the son of a priest, the mother was the daughter of a sexton. Moreover, his father, Nikolai Fedorovich, himself graduated from the Moscow Theological Academy. But he preferred the career of an official to the craft of a clergyman and succeeded in it, as he achieved material independence, a position in society, and a noble rank. This was not a dry official, closed only in his service, but a well-educated person, as evidenced by at least his passion for books - the Ostrovskys' home library was very solid, which, by the way, did not play a role. last role and in the self-education of the future playwright.
The family lived in those wonderful places in Moscow, which then found authentic reflection in Ostrovsky's plays - first in Zamoskvorechye, at the Serpukhov Gates, in a house on Zhitnaya, bought by the late father Nikolai Fedorovich on the cheap, at auction. The house was warm, spacious, with a mezzanine, with outbuildings, with an outbuilding that was rented out to the tenants, and with a shady garden. In 1831, grief befell the family - after giving birth to twin girls, Lyubov Ivanovna died (she gave birth to eleven children in total, but only four survived). The arrival of a new person in the family (his second marriage, Nikolai Fedorovich married the Lutheran Baroness Emilia von Tessin), naturally, brought some European innovations to the house, which, however, benefited the children, the stepmother was more caring, helped the children in learning music, languages, formed a social circle. At first, both brothers and sister Natalya shunned the newly-minted mother. But Emilia Andreevna, good-natured, calm in character, attracted their children's hearts to herself with care and love for the remaining orphans, slowly achieving the replacement of the nickname “dear aunt” with “dear mother”.
Now everything is different with the Ostrovskys. Emilia Andreevna patiently taught Natasha and the boys music, French and German, which she knew perfectly, decent manners, and social etiquette. Wound up in the house on Zhitnaya musical evenings, even dancing to the piano. There were nannies and wet nurses for newborn babies, a governess. And now they ate at the Ostrovskys, as they say, in a nobility way: on porcelain and silver, with starched napkins.
Nikolai Fedorovich liked all this very much. And having received, according to the rank achieved in the service, hereditary nobility, whereas earlier he was listed "from the clergy", he grew his sideburns with a cutlet and now accepted the merchants only in the office, sitting at a vast table littered with papers and plump volumes from the code of laws of the Russian Empire.
First passion for theater
Everything then pleased, everything occupied Alexander Ostrovsky: and cheerful parties; and conversations with friends; and books from papa's extensive library, where, of course, Pushkin, Gogol, Belinsky's articles and various comedies, dramas, and tragedies were read in magazines and almanacs; and, of course, the theater with Mochalov and Shchepkin at the head.
Everything then delighted Ostrovsky in the theater: not only the plays, the acting, but even the impatient, nervous noise of the audience before the start of the performance, the sparkle of oil lamps and candles. a marvelously painted curtain, the very air of the theater hall - warm, fragrant, saturated with the smell of powder, makeup and strong perfumes that sprayed the foyer and corridors.
It was here, in the theater, in the gallery, that he met one remarkable young man, Dmitry Tarasenkov, from the newfangled merchant sons, who passionately loved theatrical performances.
He was not small in stature, a broad-chested, stocky young man five or six years older than Ostrovsky, with blond hair cut in a circle, with a sharp look in his small gray eyes and a stentorian, truly deacon's voice. His powerful shout of "bravo", as he met and saw off the famous Mochalov from the stage, easily drowned out the applause of the stalls, boxes and balconies. In his black merchant's undercoat and blue Russian shirt with a slanting collar, in chrome accordion boots, he strikingly resembled the good fellow of old peasant tales.
They left the theater together. It turned out that both live not far from each other: Ostrovsky - on Zhitnaya, Tarasenkov - in Monetchiki. It also turned out that both of them compose plays for the theater from the life of the merchant class. Only Ostrovsky is still just trying on and sketching comedies in prose, while Tarasenkov writes five-act poetic dramas. And, finally, it turned out, thirdly, that both fathers - Tarasenkov and Ostrovsky - were resolutely against such hobbies, considering them empty pampering, distracting their sons from serious studies.
However, father Ostrovsky did not touch his son’s stories or comedies, while the second guild merchant Andrei Tarasenkov not only burned all Dmitry’s writings in the stove, but invariably rewarded his son with fierce blows of the stick for them.
From that first meeting in the theater, Dmitry Tarasenkov began to drop in more and more often on Zhitnaya Street, and with the Ostrovskys moving to their other property, in Vorobino, on the banks of the Yauza, near the Silver Baths.
There, in the quiet of a garden pavilion overgrown with hops and dodder, they used to read together for a long time not only modern Russian and foreign plays, but also tragedies and dramatic satires by ancient Russian authors...
“My great dream is to become an actor,” Dmitry Tarasenkov once said to Ostrovsky, “and this time has come to finally give my heart without a trace to theater, tragedy. I dare it. I must. And you, Alexander Nikolaevich, will either soon hear something beautiful about me, or mourn my early death. I don't want to live the way I've lived until now. Away with all vain, all base! Farewell! Today at night I leave my native penates, I leave this wild kingdom for an unknown world, for sacred art, for my beloved theater, for the stage. Farewell, friend, let's kiss on the path!
Then, a year or two later, recalling this farewell in the garden, Ostrovsky caught himself in a strange feeling of some kind of awkwardness. Because, in essence, there was in those seemingly sweet farewell words of Tarasenkov something not so much false, no, but as if invented, not quite natural, or something, similar to that lofty, ringing and strange recitation with which dramatic products are filled notebooks of our geniuses. like Nestor Kukolnik or Nikolai Polevoy.
Training and service
Alexander Ostrovsky received his initial education at the First Moscow Gymnasium, entering the third grade in 1835 and completing his course of study with honors in 1840.
After graduating from the gymnasium, at the insistence of his father, a wise and practical man, Alexander immediately entered Moscow University, the Faculty of Law, although he himself wanted to engage mainly in literary work. After studying for two years, Ostrovsky left the university, having quarreled with Professor Nikita Krylov, but the time spent within its walls was not wasted, because it was used not only for studying the theory of law, but also for self-education, for students' hobbies for social life, for communication with teachers. Suffice it to say that K. Ushinsky became his closest student friend, he often visited the theater with A. Pisemsky. And the lectures were given by P.G. Redkin, T.N. Granovsky, D. L. Kryukov ... In addition, it was at this time that the name of Belinsky thundered, whose articles in the “Notes of the Fatherland” were read not only by students. Carried away by the theater and knowing the entire repertoire going on, Ostrovsky all this time independently re-read such classics of drama as Gogol, Corneille, Racine, Shakespeare, Schiller, Voltaire. After leaving the university, Alexander Nikolaevich decided in 1843 to serve in the Constituent Court. This happened again at the firm insistence with the participation of the father, who wanted a legal, respected and profitable career for his son. This also explains the transition in 1845 from the Constituent Court (where cases were decided “according to conscience”) to the Moscow Commercial Court: here the service - for four rubles a month - lasted five years, until January 10, 1851.
Having heard enough and seen enough in court, every day the clerk Alexander Ostrovsky returned from public service from one end of Moscow to the other - from Voskresenskaya Square or Mokhovaya Street to Yauza, to his Vorobino.
A blizzard blew through his head. Then the characters of the stories and comedies invented by him made noise, scolded and cursed each other - merchants and merchants, mischievous fellows from the trading rows, dodgy matchmakers, clerks, rich merchant daughters, or for everything ready for a stack of iridescent banknotes judicial lawyers ... To this unknown country , called Zamoskvorechye, where those characters lived, was only slightly touched once by the great Gogol in “The Marriage”, and he, Ostrovsky, may be destined to tell everything about it thoroughly, in detail ... head fresh stories! What ferocious bearded faces loom before my eyes! What a juicy and new language in literature!
Having reached the house on the Yauza and kissed the hand of his mother and father, he sat down impatiently at the dinner table, ate what he was supposed to. And then he quickly went up to his second floor, to his cramped cell with a bed, a table and a chair, in order to sketch two or three scenes for a play he had long conceived, “A Petition of Claim” (that was originally, in drafts, the first play by Ostrovsky “The Picture of a Family” was called). happiness").
First hobby. First plays
It was already late autumn of 1846. City gardens, groves near Moscow turned yellow and flew around. The sky darkened. But it didn't rain. It was dry and quiet. He walked slowly from Mokhovaya along his favorite Moscow streets, enjoying the autumn air filled with the smell of fallen leaves, the rustle of carriages rushing past, the noise around the Iverskaya chapel of a crowd of pilgrims, beggars, holy fools, wanderers, wandering monks who collected alms "for the splendor of the temple", priests, for some misdeeds of those who were dismissed from the parish and are now “staggering between the yards”, peddlers of hot brisket and other goods, dashing fellows from the trading shops in Nikolskaya ...
When he finally reached the Ilyinsky Gate, he jumped on a carriage passing by and drove it for a while for three kopecks, and then again with a cheerful heart walked towards his Nikolovorobinsky Lane.
Then youth and hopes that had not yet been offended by anything, and faith in friendship that had not yet deceived, rejoiced his heart. And the first hot love. This girl was a simple philistine from Kolomna, a seamstress, a needlewoman. And they called her in a simple, sweet Russian name - Agafya.
Back in the summer, they met at a walk in Sokolniki, near a theater booth. And since then, Agafya has been frequenting the white-stone capital (not only for her own and her sister Natalyushka’s business), and now she is thinking of leaving Kolomna and settling in Moscow, not far from Sashenka’s dear friend, at Nikola’s in Vorobin.
The sexton had already beaten four hours on the bell tower when Ostrovsky finally approached the spacious father's house near the church.
In the garden, in a wooden arbor, braided with already dried hops, Ostrovsky saw, still from the gate, brother Misha, a law student, leading a lively conversation with someone.
Apparently, Misha was waiting for him, and when he noticed, he immediately informed his interlocutor about this. He impetuously turned around and, smiling, greeted the “friend of infancy” with a classic wave of the hand of the theatrical hero leaving the stage at the end of the monologue.
It was the merchant's son Tarasenkov, and now the tragic actor Dmitry Gorev, who played in theaters everywhere, from Novgorod to Novorossiysk (and not without success) in classical dramas, in melodramas, even in the tragedies of Schiller and Shakespeare.
They hugged...
Ostrovsky spoke about his new idea, about a multi-act comedy called “Bankrupt” and Tarasenkov offered to work together.
Ostrovsky considered. Until now, everything - and his story and comedy - he wrote alone, without comrades. However, where are the grounds, where is the reason for refusing to cooperate with this dear person? He is an actor, a playwright, he knows and loves literature very well, and just like Ostrovsky himself, he hates untruth and all kinds of tyranny...
At first, of course, something did not go well, there were disputes and disagreements. For some reason, Dmitry Andreevich, and for example, at all costs wanted to slip into the comedy another fiance for Mamselle Lipochka - Nagrevalnikov. And Ostrovsky had to spend a lot of nerves in order to convince Tarasenkov of the complete uselessness of this worthless character. And how many catchy, obscure, or simply unknown words Gorev tossed actors comedies - even to the same merchant Bolshov, or his stupid wife Agrafena Kondratyevna, or the matchmaker, or the daughter of the merchant Olympiada!
And, of course, Dmitri Andreevich could not come to terms with Ostrovsky's habit of writing a play not at all from the beginning, not from its first picture, but, as it were, randomly - now one thing, now another phenomenon, now from the first, then from the third, say, act.
The whole point here was that Alexander Nikolayevich had been thinking about the play for so long, knew it in such minute details, and now saw it in its entirety, that it was not difficult for him to snatch out of it that particular part that seemed to him, as it were, to bulge all the others.
In the end, this worked out, too. Having argued slightly among themselves, they decided to start writing the comedy in the usual way - from the first act ... Gorev worked with Ostrovsky for four evenings. Alexander Nikolayevich dictated more and more, striding back and forth across his small cell, while Dmitry Andreevich took notes.
However, of course, Gorev sometimes threw, grinning, very sensible remarks or suddenly offered some really funny, incongruous, but juicy, truly merchant's phrase. So they wrote together four small phenomena of the first act, and that was the end of their collaboration.
Ostrovsky's first works were "The Tale of How the Quarterly Overseer Started to Dance, or Only One Step from the Great to the Ridiculous" and "Notes of a Zamoskvoretsky Resident". However, both Alexander Nikolayevich and the researchers of his work consider the play “The Picture of Family Happiness” to be the true beginning of his creative biography. It is about her towards the end of his life that Ostrovsky will remember: “The most memorable day for me in my life: February 14, 1847. From that day on, I began to consider myself a Russian writer and, without doubts or hesitations, believed in my vocation.”
Yes, indeed, on this day, the critic Apollon Grigoriev brought his young friend to the house of Professor S.P. Shevyrev, who was supposed to read his play to the audience. He read well, talentedly, and the intrigue was captivating, so the first performance was a success. However, despite the juiciness of the work and the good reviews, it was only a test of myself.
Conversation with father. Ostrovsky's wedding
Meanwhile, papa Nikolai Fedorovich, having acquired four estates in various Volga provinces, finally looked favorably at the tireless request of Emilia Andreevna: he quit his service in the courts, the practice of law and decided to move with his whole family to permanent residence in one of these estates - the village of Shchelykovo.
It was then, while waiting for the carriage, that papa Ostrovsky called to the already empty office and, sitting down on an upholstered chair left as unnecessary, said:
For a long time I wanted, Alexander, for a long time I wanted to preface you, or simply to express my displeasure to you at last. You dropped out of the university you serve in court without proper zeal; God knows who you know - shop assistants, innkeepers, philistines, other petty riffraff, not to mention all sorts of gentlemen feuilletonists ... Actresses, actors - so be it, although your writings do not console me at all: I see a lot of trouble , but there is little sense! .. This, however, is your business. - not a baby! But think for yourself what manners you learned there, habits, words, expressions! After all, you do what you want, and from the nobles and the son, I dare to think, a respectable lawyer - then remember ... Of course, Emilia Andreevna, due to her delicacy, did not make a single reproach to you - it seems so? And he won't. Nevertheless, to put it bluntly, your masculine manners and these acquaintances offend her! .. That is the first point. And the second point is this. I have learned from many that you started an affair with some bourgeois woman, a seamstress, and her name is something like that ... too in Russian - Agafya. What a name, have mercy! However, this is not the point ... The worse thing is that she lives in the neighborhood, and, apparently, not without your consent, Alexander ... So, remember this: if you don’t leave all this or, God forbid, get married, or just bring that Agafya to yourself, then live as you know, but you won’t get a penny from me, I’ll stop everything once and for all ... I don’t expect an answer, and be silent! What I say is said. You can go and get ready... However, wait, here's another thing. All your and Mikhail's little things and some furniture you needed, I ordered the janitor, as soon as we leave, to transport to our other house, under the mountain. You will live there as soon as you return from Shchelykovo, on the mezzanine. Come on, enough of you. And Sergey will live with us for the time being... Go!
Throwing Agafya Ostrovsky cannot and will never do ... Of course, it will not be sweet for him without his father's support, but there is nothing to do ...
Soon he and Agafya were completely alone in this little house on the banks of the Yauza, near the Silver Baths. Because, not looking at papa's anger, Ostrovsky finally moved “that Agafya” and all her simple belongings to his mezzanine. And brother Misha, having decided to serve in the State Control Department, immediately left first for Simbirsk, then for St. Petersburg.
The father's house was quite small, with five windows along the facade, for warmth and decency it was sheathed with a board painted in dark brown. And the house was nestled at the very foot of the mountain, which rose steeply in its narrow alley to the church of St. Nicholas placed high on its top.
From the street it looked like a one-story house, but behind the gate, in the courtyard, there was also a second floor (in other words, a three-room mezzanine), looking through the windows into the neighboring courtyard and onto the wasteland with the Silver Baths on the river bank.
The beginning of the creative path
Almost a whole year has passed since papa and his family moved to the village of Shchelykovo. And although Ostrovsky was then often tormented by insulting need, nevertheless, their three small rooms greeted him with sunshine and joy, and even from afar he heard, climbing the dark, narrow stairs to the second floor, a quiet, glorious Russian song, of which his fair-haired, vociferous Ganya knew a lot. . And in this very year, in need, tormented by service and daily newspaper work, alarmed, like everyone around after the Petrashevsky case, and sudden arrests, and the arbitrariness of censorship, and “flies” buzzing around writers , It was in this difficult year that he finished the comedy “Bankrupt” that had not been given to him for such a long time (“Own people - let's settle”).
This play, completed in the winter of 1849, was read by the author in many houses: at A.F. Pisemsky, M.N. Katkov, then at M.P. to listen to “Bankrupt”, Gogol came a second time (and then came to listen and again - already at the house of E. P. Rostopchina).
The performance of the play in Pogodin's house had far-reaching consequences: "Our people - we will settle" appears. in the sixth issue of Moskvityanin for 1850, and since then once a year the playwright publishes his plays in this journal and participates in the editorial work until the publication was closed in 1856. Further printing of the play was forbidden, Nicholas I's handwritten resolution read: "Printed in vain, play is forbidden." The same play was the reason for the secret police supervision of the playwright. And she (as well as the very participation in the work of "Moskvityanin") made him the center of controversy between Slavophiles and Westerners. The author had to wait more than a decade for this play to be staged: in its original form, without the intervention of censorship, it appeared in the Moscow Pushkin Theater only on April 30, 1881.
The period of cooperation with Pogodin's "Moskvityanin" for Ostrovsky is both rich and difficult at the same time. At this time, he writes: in 1852 - “Do not sit in your sleigh”, in 1853 - “Poverty is not a vice”, in 1854 - “Do not live as you want” - plays of the Slavophile direction, which , despite conflicting reviews, everyone wished a new hero to the domestic theater. So, the premiere of “Don’t Get into Your Sleigh” on January 14, 1853 at the Maly Theater delighted the public, not least thanks to the language and characters, especially against the backdrop of a rather monotonous and meager repertoire of that time (the works of Griboedov, Gogol, Fonvizin were given extremely rare; for example, The Inspector General went only three times throughout the season). A Russian folk character appeared on the stage, a man whose problems are close and ionic. As a result, Kukolnik’s “Prince Skopin-Shuisky” that had previously made noise in the 1854/55 season was played once, and “Poverty is not a vice” - 13 times. In addition, they played in the performances of Nikulina-Kositskaya, Sadovsky, Shchepkin, Martynov ...
What is the complexity of this period? In the struggle that unfolded around Ostrovsky, and in his own revision of some of his convictions ”In 1853, he wrote to Pogodin about revising his views on creativity: : 1) that I do not want to make myself not only enemies, but even displeasure; 2) that my direction is beginning to change; 3) that the outlook on life in my first comedy seems young and too harsh to me; 4) that it is better for a Russian person to rejoice at seeing himself on stage than to yearn. Correctors will be found even without us. In order to have the right to correct the people without offending, it is necessary to show them that you know the good behind them; this is what I am doing now, combining the lofty with the comic. The first sample was “Sled”, the second one I am finishing”.
Not everyone was happy with it. And if Apollon Grigoriev believed that the playwright in the new plays “sought not to give a satire of tyranny, but a poetic image of the whole world with very diverse beginnings and buckthorn”, then Chernyshevsky held a sharply opposite opinion, inclining Ostrovsky to his side: “In the last two works Mr. Ostrovsky fell into sugary embellishment of that which cannot and should not be embellished. The works came out weak and false”; and immediately gave recommendations: they say, the playwright, “having thereby damaged his literary reputation, has not yet ruined his beautiful talent: it can still appear as fresh and strong if Mr. Ostrovsky leaves that muddy path that led him to “Poverty no vice."
At the same time, vile gossip was spreading around Moscow, as if “Bankrupt” or “Own People We Get Together” was not Ostrovsky’s play at all, but, to put it simply, it was stolen by him from the actor Tarasenkov-Gorev. They say that he, Ostrovsky, is nothing but a literary thief, which means that he is a swindler among swindlers, a man without honor and conscience! The actor Gorev is the unfortunate victim of his trusting, most noble friendship...
Three years ago, when these rumors spread, Alexander Nikolaevich still believed in the high, honest convictions of Dmitry Tarasenkov, in his decency, in his incorruptibility. Because a man who loved the theater so wholeheartedly, who read Shakespeare and Schiller with such excitement, this actor by vocation, this Hamlet, Othello, Ferdinand, Baron Meinau, could not even partly support those gossip poisoned by malice. But Gorev, however, was silent. Rumors crawled and crawled, rumors spread, spread, but Gorev was silent and silent ... Ostrovsky then wrote a friendly letter to Gorev, asking him to finally appear in print in order to finish off these vile gossip at once.
Alas! There was neither honor nor conscience in the soul of the drunkard-actor Tarasenkov-Gorev. In his cunning answer, he not only admitted that he was the author of the famous comedy “Our people - we will settle,” but at the same time hinted at some other plays that he allegedly transferred to Ostrovsky for preservation six or seven years ago. So now it turned out that all the works of Ostrovsky - with perhaps a small exception - were stolen by him or copied from the actor and playwright Tarasenkov-Gorev.
He did not answer Tarasenkov, but found the strength to sit down again to work on his next comedy. Because at that time he considered all the new plays he was composing to be the best refutation of Gorev's slander.
And in 1856, Tarasenkov again emerged from oblivion, and all these Pravdovs, Alexandrovichs, Vl. Zotov, “N. A." and others like them again rushed at him, at Ostrovsky, with the same abuse and with the same passion.
And Gorev, of course, was not the instigator. Here that dark force rose up against him that once drove Fonvizin and Griboyedov, Pushkin and Gogol, and now drives Nekrasov and Saltykov-Shchedrin.
He feels it, he understands. And that is why he wants to write his answer to the libelous note of the Moscow police leaflet.
Calmly, he now outlined the history of his creation of the comedy “Our people - we will settle” and the insignificant participation in it of Dmitry Gorev-Tarasenkov, which had long been printed certified by him, Alexander Ostrovsky.
“Gentlemen feuilletonists,” he finished his answer with icy calm, “are carried away by their unbridledness to the point that they forget not only the laws of decency, but also those laws in our fatherland that protect the person and property of everyone. Do not think, gentlemen, that a writer who honestly serves the literary cause will allow you to play with your name with impunity! And in the signature, Alexander Nikolayevich identified himself as the author of all nine plays he has written so far and have long been known to the reading public, including the comedy “Our people - let's get it right”.
But, of course, Ostrovsky's name was known first of all thanks to the comedy Don't Get in Your Sleigh staged by the Maly Theatre; they wrote about her: “... from that day on, rhetoric, falsehood, gallomania began to gradually disappear from Russian drama. The actors spoke on the stage in the same language as they really speak in life. A whole new world began to open up for the audience.”
Six months later, The Poor Bride was staged in the same theater.
It cannot be said that the entire troupe unambiguously accepted Ostrovsky's plays. Yes, this is impossible in a creative team. After the performance of Poverty is Not a Vice, Shchepkin declared that he did not recognize Ostrovsky's plays; several more actors joined him: Shumsky, Samarin and others. But the young troupe understood and accepted the playwright immediately.
The St. Petersburg theatrical stage was more difficult to conquer than the Moscow one, but it soon submitted to Ostrovsky's talent: over two decades, his plays were presented to the public about a thousand times. True, this did not bring him much wealth. The father, with whom Alexander Nikolayevich did not consult when choosing his wife, refused him financial assistance; the playwright lived with his beloved wife and children in a damp mezzanine; besides, Pogodinsky's "Moskvityanin" paid humiliatingly little and irregularly: Ostrovsky begged for fifty rubles a month, bumping into the stinginess and stinginess of the publisher. Employees left the magazine for many reasons; Ostrovsky, in spite of everything, remained faithful to him to the end. His last work, which saw the light on the pages of "Moskvityanin", - "Don't live the way you want to." On the sixteenth book, in 1856, the magazine ceased to exist, and Ostrovsky began working in Nekrasov's magazine Sovremennik.
Traveling in Russia
At the same time, an event occurred that significantly changed Ostrovsky's views. The chairman of the Geographical Society, Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolayevich, decided to organize an expedition with the participation of writers; the purpose of the expedition is to study and describe the life of the inhabitants of Russia involved in navigation, about which to write essays for the Marine Collection published by the ministry, covering the Urals, the Caspian, the Volga, the White Sea, the Sea of \u200b\u200bAzov ... Ostrovsky in April 1856 began a journey along the Volga: Moscow - Tver - Gorodnya - Ostashkov - Rzhev - Staritsa - Kalyazin - Moscow.
And so Alexander Nikolaevich Ostrovsky was brought to the provincial city of Tver, to the merchant of the second guild Barsukov, and trouble immediately overtook him.
Sitting on a rainy June morning, in a hotel room at the table and waiting for his heart to finally calm down, Ostrovsky, now rejoicing, now annoyed, went over in his soul one after another the events of the last months.
In that year, everything seemed to succeed. He was already a friend in Petersburg, with Nekrasov and Panaev. He has already stood on a par with the famous writers who were the pride of Russian literature - next to Turgenev, Tolstoy, Grigorovich, Goncharov ... The most excellent actors and actresses of both capitals endowed him with their sincere friendship, honoring him as if theatrical art.
And how many other friends and acquaintances he has in Moscow! It is impossible to count ... Even on a trip here, to the Upper Volga, he was accompanied by Gury Nikolayevich Burlakov, a faithful companion (both a secretary and a scribe, and a voluntary intercessor for various road affairs), silent, blond, with glasses, still quite a young man. He joined Ostrovsky from Moscow itself, and since he ardently worshiped the theater, then, in his words, he wanted to be “at the stirrup of one of the mighty knights of Melpomene (in ancient Greek mythology, the muse of tragedy, theater) Russian”
To this, grimacing at such expressions, Alexander Nikolayevich immediately replied to Burlakov that, they say, he does not at all look like a knight, but that, of course, he is sincerely glad to his kind friend-comrade on his long journey ...
So everything was going great. With this sweet, cheerful companion, making his way to the sources of the beautiful Volga, he visited many coastal villages and cities of Tver, Rzhev, Gorodnya or once Vertyazin, with the remains of an ancient temple, decorated with frescoes half-erased by time; the most beautiful city of Torzhok along the steep banks of the Tvertsa; and further, farther to the north - along the piles of primitive boulders, through swamps and bushes, along bare hills, among deserted and wildness - to the blue Lake Seliger, from where Ostashkov, almost drowned in spring water, and the white walls of the hermitage of the Nile, were already clearly visible, sparkling behind the thin net of rain, like the fabulous city of Kitezh; and, finally, from Ostashkov - to the mouth of the Volga, to the chapel called the Jordan, and a little further to the west, where our mighty Russian river flows out from under a fallen birch overgrown with mosses in a barely noticeable stream.
Ostrovsky's tenacious memory greedily grabbed everything he saw, everything he heard that spring and that summer of 1856, so that later, when the time comes, either in a comedy or in a drama, all this suddenly came to life, moved, spoke in its own language, boiled with passions. .
He was already sketching in his notebooks ... If only there was a little more time free from worldly needs, and most importantly - more peace in the soul, peace and light, it would be possible to write at once not only one, but four more plays with good for actors roles. And about the sad, truly terrible fate of a serf Russian girl, a landowner's pupil, cherished by a whim of a master, and ruined by a whim. And a comedy could be written, long conceived according to the bureaucratic tricks he once noticed in the service, “Profitable Place”: about the black lies of Russian courts, about the old beast-thief and bribe-taker, about the death of a young, unspoiled, but weak soul under the yoke of vile worldly prose. Yes, and recently, on the way to Rzhev, in the village of Sitkovo, at night near the inn, where gentlemen officers were drinking, he flashed an excellent plot for a play about the diabolical power of gold, for which a person is ready to rob, to kill, to do anything. betrayal...
He was haunted by the image of a thunderstorm over the Volga. This dark expanse, torn apart by the sparkle of lightning, the sound of rain and thunder. These foamy shafts, as if in a rage, rushing to the low sky littered with clouds. And anxiously screaming seagulls. And the rattle of waves rolling stones on the shore.
Something every time arose, was born in his imagination from these impressions, deeply sunk into his sensitive memory and ever awakening; they have long blunted and shielded by themselves resentment, insult, ugly slander, washed his soul with the poetry of life and aroused insatiable creative anxiety. Some obscure images, scenes, fragments of speeches had tormented him for a long time, had long pushed his hand to paper in order to capture them at last either in a fairy tale, or in a drama, or in a legend about the violent antiquity of these steep banks. After all, he will never forget now the poetic dreams and sorrowful everyday life that he experienced in his many months journey from the sources of the Volga nurse to Nizhny Novgorod. The charm of the Volga nature and the bitter poverty of the Volga artisans - barge haulers, blacksmiths, shoemakers, tailors and boat craftsmen, their exhausting work for half a week and the great untruth of the rich - merchants, contractors, dealers, barge owners who make money on labor bondage.
Something must have really ripened in his heart, he felt it. He tried to tell in his essays for the "Sea Collection" about the hard life of the people, about the merchant's lies, about the deaf peals of a thunderstorm approaching the Volga.
But such was the truth there, such sadness in these essays, that, having placed four chapters in the February issue of the fifty-ninth year, the gentlemen from the naval editorial office no longer wished to print that seditious truth.
And, of course, the point here is not whether he was paid well or badly for essays. It's not about that at all. Yes, he now does not need money: “Library for Reading” recently published his drama “The Pupil”, and in St. Petersburg he sold the two-volume collection of his works to the eminent publisher Count Kushelev-Bezborodko for four thousand silver. However, those deep impressions that continue to disturb his creative imagination cannot, in fact, remain in vain! excited and what the high-ranking editors of the "Sea Collection" did not deign to make public ...
“Storm"
Returning from the Literary Expedition, he writes to Nekrasov: “Dear Emperor Nikolai Alekseevich! I recently received your circular letter on leaving Moscow. I have the honor to inform you that I am preparing a whole series of plays under the general title Nights on the Volga, of which I will deliver one to you personally at the end of October or at the beginning of November. I don't know how much I can do this winter, but two by all means. Your most obedient servant A. Ostrovsky.”
By this time, he had already connected his creative fate with Sovremennik, a magazine that fought to attract Ostrovsky to its ranks, whom Nekrasov called “our, undoubtedly, the first dramatic writer. To a large extent, the transition to Sovremennik was facilitated by acquaintance with Turgenev, Leo Tolstoy, Goncharov, Druzhinin, Panavy. agreed on the characters ”and other plays; readers are already used to the fact that Nekrasov’s magazines (first“ Sovremennik ”, and then“ Domestic Notes ”) open their first winter issues with Ostrovsky’s plays.
It was June 1859. Everything bloomed and smelled in the gardens outside the window in Nikolovorobinsky Lane. The grasses smelled, dodder and hops on the fences, rose hips and lilac bushes, jasmine flowers swelled with unopened jasmine flowers.
Sitting, lost in thought, at the desk, Alexander Nikolayevich stared out the wide-open window for a long time. His right hand still held a sharpened pencil, and the plump palm of his left continued, as an hour ago, to lie calmly on the finely written pages of the manuscript of the comedy he had not finished.
He remembered the humble young woman who walked side by side with her unsightly husband under the cold, condemning and stern look of her mother-in-law somewhere on a Sunday festivity in Torzhok, Kalyazin or Tver. I recalled dashing Volga guys and girls from the merchant class who ran out at night into the gardens above the extinguished Volga, and then, which happened often, hid with their betrothed, who knows where, from their native unsweet home.
He himself knew from childhood and youth, living with his father in Zamoskvorechye, and then visiting familiar merchants in Yaroslavl, Kineshma, Kostroma, and more than once heard from actresses and actors what it was like for a married woman to live in those rich, behind high fences and strong locks of merchant houses. They were slaves, slaves of her husband, father-in-law and mother-in-law, deprived of joy, will and happiness.
So this is the kind of drama that ripens in his soul on the Volga, in one of the county towns of the prosperous Russian Empire ...
He pushed aside the manuscript of an unfinished old comedy and, taking a blank sheet from a pile of paper, began to quickly sketch out the first, still fragmentary and unclear, plan for his new play, his tragedy from the cycle “Nights on the Volga” he had planned. Nothing, however, in these short sketches satisfied him. He tossed away sheet after sheet and again wrote either separate scenes and pieces of dialogue, or thoughts that suddenly came to mind about the characters, their characters, about the denouement and the beginning of the tragedy. There was no harmony, certainty, precision in these creative attempts - he saw, he felt. They were not warmed by some single deep and warm thought, some one all-encompassing artistic image.
The time has passed past noon. Ostrovsky got up from his chair, threw a pencil on the table, put on his light summer cap, and, having told Agafya, went out into the street.
He wandered along the Yauza for a long time, stopping here and there, looking at the fishermen sitting with fishing rods over the dark water, at the boats slowly sailing towards the city, at the blue desert sky above.
Dark water... a steep bank over the Volga... the whistling of lightning... a thunderstorm... Why does this image haunt him so much? How is he connected with the drama in one of the Volga trading towns, which has been worrying and worrying him for a long time? ..
Yes, in his drama cruel people tortured a beautiful, pure woman, proud, tender and dreamy, and she rushed into the Volga from longing and sadness. It's like that! But a thunderstorm, a thunderstorm over the river, over the city...
Ostrovsky suddenly stopped and stood for a long time on the bank of the Yauza, overgrown with stiff grass, looking into the dull depths of its waters and nervously pinching his round reddish beard with his fingers. Some new, amazing thought, suddenly illuminating the whole tragedy with poetic light, was born in his confused brain. A thunderstorm!.. A thunderstorm over the Volga, over a wild abandoned city, of which there are many in Rus', over a woman restless in fear, the heroine of a drama, over our whole life - a killer thunderstorm, a thunderstorm - a herald of future changes!
Here he rushed straight across the field and wastelands, quickly to his mezzanine, to the study, to the table and paper.
Ostrovsky hurriedly ran into the office and, on some piece of paper that came to hand, finally wrote down the title of the drama about the death of his rebellious Katerina, who was thirsting for freedom, love and happiness - “Thunderstorm”. Here it is, the reason or the tragic reason for the denouement of the whole play is found - the mortal fright of a woman weary of the spirit from a thunderstorm that suddenly burst over the Volga. She, Katerina, brought up from childhood with a deep faith in God - the judge of man, must, of course, imagine that sparkling and thundering thunderstorm in the sky as the punishment of the Lord for her impudent disobedience, for her desire for will, for secret meetings with Boris. And that is why, in this spiritual confusion, she will throw herself on her knees in front of her husband and mother-in-law in order to cry out her passionate repentance for everything that she considered and will consider to the end as her joy and her sin. Rejected by everyone, ridiculed, all alone, having not found support and a way out, Katerina will then rush from the high bank of the Volga into the pool.
So much has been decided. But much remained unresolved.
Day after day he worked on the plan of his tragedy. He began it with a dialogue between two old women, a passer-by and a town, in order to tell the viewer about the city, about its wild customs, about the family of the merchant-widow Kabanova, where the beautiful Katerina was married, about Tikhon, her husband, about the richest tyrant in the city, Savel Prokofich Wild and about other things that the viewer should know. So that the viewer can feel and understand what kind of people live in that provincial Volga town and how the heavy drama and death of Katerina Kabanova, a young merchant, could have happened in it.
Then he came to the conclusion that it was necessary to unfold the action of the first act not somewhere else, but only in the house of that tyrant Savel Prokofich. But this decision, like the previous one - with the dialogue of the old women - he abandoned after a while. Because neither in either case did it turn out to be worldly naturalness, ease, there was no true truth in the development of action, and after all, a play is nothing but a dramatized life.
And indeed, after all, a leisurely conversation on the street between two old women, a passer-by and a city one, about exactly what the spectator sitting in the hall should definitely know, will not seem natural to him, but will seem deliberate, specially invented by the playwright. And then there will be nowhere to put them, these talkative old women. Because subsequently they will not be able to play any role in his drama - they will talk and disappear.
As for the meeting of the main characters at Savel Prokofich Diky's, there is no natural way to gather them there. Truly wild, unfriendly and gloomy throughout the city, the well-known scolder Savel Prokofich; what kind of family meetings or fun gatherings can he have in the house? Decidedly none.
That's why, after much deliberation, Alexander Nikolayevich decided that he would start his play in a public garden on the steep bank of the Volga, where everyone can go - take a walk, breathe clean air, cast a glance at the open spaces beyond the river.
It is there, in the garden, that the town's old-timer, self-taught mechanic Kuligin, will tell what the viewer needs to know to his recently arrived nephew Boris Grigoryevich Savel Diky. And there the viewer will hear the undisguised truth about the characters in the tragedy: about Kabanikh, about Katerina Kabanova, about Tikhon, about Varvara, his sister, and about others.
Now the play was structured in such a way that the viewer would forget that he was sitting in the theatre, that before him were the scenery, the stage, not life, and the actors in disguise spoke of their sufferings or joys in words composed by the author. Now Alexander Nikolayevich knew for sure that the audience would see the very reality in which they live from day to day. Only that reality will appear to them illuminated by the author's high thought, his sentence, as if different, unexpected in its true essence, not yet noticed by anyone.
Alexander Nikolaevich never wrote so sweepingly and quickly, with such quivering joy and deep emotion, as he now wrote “Thunderstorm”. Unless another drama, “The Pupil”, also about the death of a Russian woman, but completely disenfranchised, tortured by a fortress, was written once even faster - in St. Petersburg, with her brother, in two or three weeks, although she was almost thought of over two years.
So the summer passed, September flashed imperceptibly. And on October 9, in the morning, Ostrovsky finally put the last point in his new play.
None of the plays had such success with the public and critics as The Thunderstorm. It was printed in the first issue of the Library for Reading, and the first presentation took place on November 16, 1859 in Moscow. The performance was played weekly, or even five times a month (as, for example, in December) with a crowded hall; the roles were played by the favorites of the public - Rykalova, Sadovsky, Nikulina-Kositskaya, Vasiliev. And to this day this play is one of the best known in Ostrovsky's work; It's hard to forget Wild, Boar, Kuligin, Katerina - it is impossible, just as it is impossible to forget will, beauty, tragedy, love. Having heard the play in the author’s reading, Turgenev wrote to Fet the very next day: “A most amazing, magnificent work of a Russian, powerful, completely self-mastered talent.” Goncharov rated it no less highly: “Without fear of being accused of exaggeration, I can honestly say that there has never been such a work as a drama in our literature. She undeniably occupies and probably will for a long time occupy the first place in high classical beauties. Everyone also became aware of Dobrolyubov's article on Groza. The grandiose success of the play was crowned with a large Uvarov Academic Prize for the author of 1,500 rubles.
He has now truly become famous, the playwright Alexander Ostrovsky, and now all of Russia is listening to his word. That is why, one must think, censorship finally allowed his beloved comedy, which had been scolded more than once, which had once worn out his heart, to the stage, “Our people - we will settle down.”
However, this play appeared before the theatrical audience crippled, not the same as it was once published in The Moskvityanin, but with a hastily attached well-intentioned end. Because three years ago, when publishing his collected works, the author had to, albeit reluctantly, albeit with bitter pain in his soul, nevertheless bring to the stage (as they say, under the curtain) the quartermaster, who, in the name of the law, takes the clerk under judicial investigation Podkhalyuzin “in the case of concealing the property of the insolvent merchant Bolshov”.
In the same year, a two-volume edition of Ostrovsky's plays was published, which included eleven works. However, it was the triumph of The Thunderstorm that made the playwright a truly popular writer. Moreover, he then continued to touch upon this topic and develop it on other material - in the plays “Not everything is Shrovetide for a cat”, “The truth is good, but happiness is better”, “Hard days” and others.
Quite often in need himself, Alexander Nikolaevich at the end of 1859 proposed the creation of a “Society for Assistance to Needy Writers and Scientists”, which later became widely known as the “Literary Fund”. And he himself began to conduct public readings of plays in favor of this fund.
Ostrovsky's second marriage
But time does not stand still; everything runs, everything changes. And Ostrovsky's life changed. A few years ago, he married Marya Vasilyevna Bakhmetyeva, an actress of the Maly Theater, who was 2 years younger than the writer (and the romance dragged on for a long time: five years before the wedding, their first illegitimate son had already been born), - one can hardly call it completely happy: Marya Vasilievna she herself was nervous in nature and did not really delve into the experiences of her husband
