Novel by Ivan Aleksandrovich Goncharov " An ordinary story", written in one thousand eight hundred and forty-four - one thousand eight hundred and forty-six, became a significant event in Russian literature.
“Goncharov’s story created a sensation in St. Petersburg - an unheard-of success!” - Belinsky reported in one of his letters.
The novel is a typical everyday phenomenon: young Alexander Aduev, who grew up in the village, among peasants, raised by his tenderly loving mother, full of romantic hopes for eternal love, noble spiritual impulses, leaves for St. Petersburg in order to “make a career and fortune.” He didn’t even care what business he chose for himself: be it a literary field or government activity. There is a lot of naive provincial gullibility in Alexander. He was used to seeing a friend in every person he met, he was used to seeing people whose eyes radiated human warmth and sympathy. He believes in kindred feelings, he thinks that his uncle in St. Petersburg will meet him with open arms, as is customary in the village, but... his uncle does not allow him to hug him, he keeps him at some distance. “So it’s like here, in St. Petersburg,” Alexey thinks, “if my uncle is like this, what about the others?..”
“The first impressions of a provincial in St. Petersburg are difficult. He feels wild and sad; no one notices him; he is lost here; neither news, nor variety, nor crowd amuses him. His provincial egoism declares war on everything he sees in himself.” He declares war, first of all, on his uncle Pyotr Ivanovich Aduev. This is a person completely different from Alexander. He is endowed with the ability to look at things soberly and efficiently. However, over time, dryness and prudence in his character become noticeable. He despises idleness, useless daydreaming, and calls his nephew to action.
He kills Alexander's hopes for eternal love. Sonechka is completely forgotten by Alexander, he is in love with Nadezhda Lyubetskaya. The uncle insists that love is not eternal, that, in the end, Nadenka will cheat on Alexander. But he doesn't believe it. “How is she, this angel?” - he asks his uncle. But time passes, and the uncle turns out to be right: Nadenka falls in love with the count. For Alexander it was a heavy blow, from which he barely recovered.
Alexander fails in everything: in love, in friendship, in work. After he saw his friend Pospelov, he became disillusioned with people, he hated them, mistook them for animals. And all this was due to the fact that he could not look into his soul, understand himself.
Alexander quit his job; it did not give him pleasure. He also changed in appearance. From slender young man with beautiful blond curls, he turns into a plump, sagging, bald man.
But what are the reasons for these terrible changes, what is the source of all Alexander’s troubles? Where is the truth? I think that Alexander could not use his uncle’s advice without harming himself. I had to listen to him, rid myself of excessive daydreaming and violent manifestations of feelings. You can’t live only by feelings! But also with the mind. How to live? The novel does not give a direct answer to this question. It is precisely that “golden mean” that is needed, an example of which in the novel is Lizaveta Aleksandrovna. In life, a person needs work, love, harmony with himself and with the world, spiritual harmony, and this was not enough for Alexander to live in peace.
Goncharov's first novel was published on the pages of the magazine \\\\\\\"Contemporary\\\\\\\" in the March and April issues of 1847. At the center of the novel is the clash of two characters, two philosophies of life, nurtured on the basis of two...
Ivan Aleksandrovich Goncharov’s novel “Ordinary History” was one of the first Russian realistic works telling about Everyday life ordinary people. The novel depicts pictures of Russian reality in the 40s of the 19th century, typical...
Goncharov's work took a lot of time, and he was not a prolific writer at all. Many years passed before he appeared new novel. In 1847, “Ordinary History” was published, in 1859, “Oblomov”. And finally, in 1869 - “The Cliff”, in...
The hero of the novel, Alexander Aduev, lives in that transitional time when the serene tranquility of the noble estate was disturbed. The sounds of city life with its feverish pace break into the lazy silence of Manilov's nests more and more insistently and awaken...
I. A. Goncharov’s first novel, “Ordinary History,” was published on the pages of the Sovremennik magazine in the March and April issues of 1847. At the center of the novel is the clash of two characters, two philosophies of life, nurtured on the basis of two social...
"Ordinary History", published in 1847 in Sovremennik, was the first a work of art I.A. Goncharov, which appeared in print. The writer worked on “An Ordinary Story” for three years. In an autobiographical article “An Extraordinary History” (1875-1878), he wrote: “it was conceived in 1844, written in 1845, and in 1846 I had a few chapters left to write.”
Goncharov read his “Extraordinary History” to Belinsky for several evenings in a row. Belinsky was delighted with the new talent, who performed so brilliantly. Before giving his work “to be judged” by Belinsky, Goncharov read it several times in a friendly manner. literary circle Maykovs. Before appearing in print, the novel underwent many corrections and alterations.
Recalling the late 40s, the dark time of Nicholas’s reign, when advanced Russian literature played a huge role in the fight against feudal-serf reaction, Goncharov wrote: “ Serfdom, corporal punishment, oppression of the authorities, lies of prejudices of public and family life, rudeness, savagery of morals among the masses - this is what stood in line in the struggle and what the main forces of the Russian intelligentsia of the thirties and forties were directed towards.”
“Ordinary History” showed that Goncharov was a writer sensitive to the interests of his time. The work reflects the changes and shifts that took place in the life of feudal Russia in 1830-1840. Calling for the fight against “all-Russian stagnation”, for work for the good of the fatherland, Goncharov passionately searched around him for those forces, those people who could carry out the tasks facing Russian life.
The essence of the pseudo-romantic worldview inherent in a significant part of the idealistic intelligentsia of the 1930s, divorced from reality, is revealed by Goncharov in the image of the main character of the novel, Alexander Aduev. I saw the soil on which this phenomenon grew in the noble and local serfdom life, in the lordly landowner upbringing.
Romantic perception of life, sublime abstract dreams of glory and exploits, of the extraordinary, poetic impulses - who did not, to some extent, go through all this in their youth, in the “era of youthful unrest.” But Goncharov’s merit as an artist is that he showed how these youthful dreams and illusions were distorted and disfigured by lordly-serf education.
Young Aduev knows about grief and troubles only “by ear” - “life is smiling at him from the very beginning.” Idleness and ignorance of life “prematurely” developed “heartfelt inclinations” and excessive daydreaming in Aduev. Before us is one of those “romantic sloths,” barchuks who are accustomed to blithely living off the labor of others. Young Aduev sees the purpose of life not in work and creativity (work seemed strange to him), but in an “exalted existence.” “Silence... stillness... blessed stagnation” reigns on the Aduev estate. But in the estate he does not find a field for himself. And Aduev leaves “to seek happiness”, “to make a career and look for fortune - to St. Petersburg.” All the falsity of Aduev’s everyday concepts begins to be revealed in the novel already in the first clashes between his dreamer nephew, spoiled by laziness and lordship, and his practical and intelligent uncle, Pyotr Ivanovich Aduev. The struggle between uncle and nephew also reflected the then, just beginning, breakdown of old concepts and mores - sentimentality, caricatured exaggeration of feelings of friendship and love, poetry of idleness, family and home lies of feigned, essentially unprecedented feelings, waste of time on visits, on unnecessary hospitality etc. In a word, all the idle, dreamy and affective side of old morals with the usual impulses of youth towards the high, great, graceful, towards effects, with a thirst to express this in crackling prose, especially in verse.
Aduev Sr. at every step mercilessly ridicules the feigned, groundless dreaminess of Aduev Jr. “Your stupid enthusiasm is no good”, “with your ideals it’s good to sit in the village”, “forget these sacred and heavenly feelings, and take a closer look at the matter.” But the young hero does not give in to moral teaching. “Isn’t love a thing?” - he answers his uncle. It is characteristic that after the first failure in love, Aduev Jr. complains “about the boredom of life, the emptiness of the soul.” The pages of the novel devoted to the description of the hero’s love affairs are an exposure of the egoistic, possessive attitude towards a woman, despite all the romantic poses that the hero takes in front of the chosen ones of his heart.
For eight years, my uncle worked with Alexander. In the end, his nephew becomes a business man, a brilliant career and a profitable marriage of convenience await him. Not a trace remained of the former “heavenly” and “sublime” feelings and dreams. The evolution of the character of Alexander Aduev, shown in “Ordinary History,” was “ordinary” for some of the noble youth of that time. Having condemned the romantic Alexander Aduev, Goncharov contrasted him in the novel with another, undoubtedly more positive in a number of traits, but by no means ideal person - Pyotr Ivanovich Aduev. The writer, who was not a supporter of the revolutionary transformation of feudal-serf Russia, believed in progress based on the activities of enlightened, energetic and humane people. However, the work reflected not so much these views of the writer, but only the contradictions that existed in reality, which were carried with them by the bourgeois-capitalist relations that replaced the “all-Russian stagnation”. Rejecting the Aduev-type romanticism, the writer at the same time felt the inferiority of the philosophy and practice of bourgeois “common sense”, the selfishness and inhumanity of the bourgeois morality of the elder Aduevs. Pyotr Ivanovich is smart, businesslike and in his own way a “decent person.” But he's in highest degree“indifferent to a person, to his needs, interests.” “They look at what a person has in his pocket and in the buttonhole of his coat, but they don’t care about the rest,” his wife Lizaveta Aleksandrovna says about Pyotr Ivanovich and others like him about her husband: “What was the main goal of his work? Did he work for a common human goal, fulfilling the lesson given to him by fate, or only for petty reasons, in order to acquire official and monetary importance among people, or, finally, so that he would not be bent into an arc by need and circumstances? God knows. He didn’t like to talk about lofty goals, he called it nonsense, but he said dryly and simply that things had to be done.”
Alexander and Pyotr Ivanovich Aduev are contrasted not only as a provincial romantic nobleman and a bourgeois businessman, but also as two psychologically opposite types. “One is enthusiastic to the point of extravagance, the other is icy to the point of bitterness,” says Lizaveta Aleksandrovna about her nephew and husband.
Goncharov sought to find an ideal, that is, a normal type of person, not in Aduev Sr. and not in Aduev Jr., but in something else, a third, in the harmony of “mind” and “heart.” A clear hint of this is already contained in the image of Lizaveta Aleksandrovna Adueva, despite the fact that the “age” has “eaten” her, as Belinsky rightly noted, Pyotr Ivanovich.
Among these wonderful images, one should include not only Lizaveta Alexandrovna, but also Nadenka.
The daughter is a few steps ahead of her mother. She fell in love with Aduev without asking and almost does not hide it from her mother or is silent only for the sake of decency, considering that she has the right to dispose of her own things in her own way. inner world and Aduev himself, whom, having studied him well, she mastered and commands. This is her obedient slave, gentle, spinelessly kind, promising something, but pettyly proud, a simple, ordinary young man, of which there are many everywhere. And she would have accepted him, gotten married - and everything would have gone as usual.
But the figure of the count appeared, consciously intelligent, dexterous, and brilliant. Nadenka saw that Aduev could not stand comparison with him either in mind, or in character, or in upbringing. In her everyday life, Nadenka did not acquire consciousness of any ideals of male dignity, strength, and what kind of strength? All she had to do was see what she had seen a thousand times in all the other young men with whom she danced and flirted a little. She listened to his poetry for a minute. She expected that strength and talent lay there. But it turned out that he only writes passable poetry, but no one knows about them, and he is also sulking to himself at the count because he is simple, smart and behaves with dignity. She went over to the side of the latter: this was the conscious step of the Russian girl so far - silent emancipation, a protest against the authority of her mother, which was helpless for her.
“An Ordinary Story” by I.A. Goncharova
In “”, every person at any stage of his development will find the necessary lesson for himself. The naivety and sentimentality of Sashenka Aduev is funny in a business atmosphere. His pathos is false, and the loftiness of his speeches and ideas about life are far from reality. But the uncle cannot be called an ideal either: a efficient breeder, a respected person in society, he is afraid of sincere living feelings and in his practicality goes too far: he is afraid to show sincere warm feelings for his wife, which will lead her to nervous disorder. There is a lot of irony in the uncle’s teachings, but the simple-minded nephew takes them too directly - first arguing with them, and then agreeing.
Deprived of false ideals, Alexander Aduev does not acquire genuine ideals - he simply becomes a calculating vulgarity. Goncharov’s irony is aimed at the fact that such a path is no exception. Youthful ideals disappear like “hairs” from a son’s head, which Aduev Jr.’s mother so laments. This is an “ordinary story.” There are not many people who can withstand the pressure big city and bourgeois society on their mind and soul. At the end of the novel, we see that the cynic uncle is much more humane than his capable student nephew. Alexander Aduev turned into business man, for whom nothing is more important than career and money. And St. Petersburg expects new victims - naive and inexperienced.
Analysis of the novel “An Ordinary Story”
In “Ordinary History,” every person at any stage of his development will find the necessary lesson for himself. The naivety and sentimentality of Sashenka Aduev is funny in a business atmosphere. His pathos is false, and the loftiness of his speeches and ideas about life are far from reality. But the uncle cannot be called an ideal either: a efficient breeder, a respected person in society, he is afraid of sincere living feelings and in his practicality goes too far: he is afraid to show sincere warm feelings for his wife, which leads her to a nervous breakdown. There is a lot of irony in the uncle's teachings, but the simple-minded nephew takes them too directly - first arguing with them, and then agreeing.
Deprived of false ideals, Alexander Aduev does not acquire genuine ideals - he simply becomes a calculating vulgarity. Goncharov’s irony is aimed at the fact that such a path is no exception. Youthful ideals disappear like “hairs” from a son’s head, which Aduev Jr.’s mother so laments. This is an “ordinary story.” There are not many people who can resist the pressure of the big city and bourgeois society on their mind and soul. At the end of the novel, we see that the cynic uncle is much more humane than his capable student nephew. Alexander Aduev has turned into a business man, for whom nothing is more important than career and money. And St. Petersburg expects new victims - naive and inexperienced.
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The appearance of Goncharov's first novel in print was preceded by several small experiments in poetry and prose. On the pages of a handwritten almanac" Moonlit nights", published by the Maykov circle, four of his poems are published (later these are the poems of Sashenka Aduev from "Ordinary History"), stories "Dashing pain"(1838) and "Lucky Mistake"(1839). In these early works one can feel the influence of Pushkin's prose. Thus, in “A Happy Mistake,” which is reminiscent of a secular story in genre, the ardent passions of the romantic characters already have a psychological motivation. Feature article "Ivan Savvich Podzhabrin"- the only thing early work young writer, published during Goncharov’s lifetime in Sovremennik in 1848. This is a typical physiological essay exploring morals, in which the features of Gogol’s style are noticeable: the narrative in it is focused on fabulous manner, enough great place occupy lyrical digressions, and Ivan Savvich and his servant Avdey were created, undoubtedly, under the influence of “The Inspector General”.
Already by the beginning of the 1840s. Goncharov’s creative positions are determined, his unconditional interest in Russian reality, in what has “stayed” but has not become a thing of the past, and in what is new that has made its way into life.
Novel "An Ordinary Story" was the first Russian work that explored the forms of social progress in Russia. Goncharov's innovation lay in the fact that he tried to see the manifestation of social patterns in the fate of an individual. In the novel we have the ordinary story of the transformation of the young romantic Alexander Aduev into a representative of the new bourgeois formation. Already in the first attempt of the novel, certain plot-compositional principles for the structure of the conflict are developed, which will subsequently be used by Goncharov in his other works.
Externally, the plot of "An Ordinary History" has a clearly chronological character. Goncharov carefully and leisurely tells the story of the life of the Aduevs in Rrach, creating in the reader’s imagination an image of a noble province dear to the author’s heart. At the beginning of the novel, Sashenka Aduev is passionate about Pushkin, he writes poetry himself, listening to what is happening in his heart and soul. Alexander is exalted, smart, confident that he is an exceptional being, who should belong not last place in life. Throughout the course of the novel, Goncharov debunks the romantic ideals of Aduev. As for the social revelations of romanticism, they are not directly declared anywhere in the novel. Goncharov leads the reader to the conviction that the historical time of romanticism has passed through the entire course of the novel’s events.
The narrative in the novel begins with a presentation of the story of Yevsey and Agrafena - the Aduev serfs, an ordinary story of landowner tyranny, told in an everyday, calm tone. Sending her son to St. Petersburg, Anna Pavlovna is focused only on her experiences, and she does not care about the feelings of Yevsey and Agrafena, whom she separates for a long time. However, as the author says, addressing the reader, she “did not prepare her son for the fight against what awaited him and awaits everyone ahead.” Goncharov reveals the world of the provincial nobility, living in a completely different dimension, in three letters brought by his nephew to his uncle. Each of them is associated with one of the plot motives that will be implemented in the novel. Thus, in Zaezzhalov’s letter Kostyakov is mentioned - “ wonderful person- the soul is wide open and such a joker,” communication with which will constitute one of the “epochs” of the development of the younger Aduev. The aunt’s letter also represents a kind of anticipation of one of the plot twists of the novel. The ardent enthusiasm of Marya Gorbatova’s memories of the yellow flower and ribbon as a symbol of tender feelings for Peter Ivanovich is replaced by a completely reasonable request for English wool for embroidery. This letter is a kind of “summary” of the image of Sashenka’s future, to which the hero will come in the finale. In the final phrase to his mother, “Do not leave him, dear brother-in-law, with your advice and take him into your care; I pass it on to you from hand to hand." The most important principle of constructing the system of images of the work is "programmed." The role of Sashenka's mentor passes to his uncle, but his philosophy of life is just as little taken into account by young Aduev as his mother's words. One of the functions of the uncle's image in the novel becomes a debunking romantic ideals nephew
The fate of Pyotr Ivanovich is a clear example of the benefits of abandoning romantic illusions. This hero does not deny reality and does not oppose himself to it; he recognizes the need for active inclusion in life, familiarization with the harsh everyday work. The hero of the novel, which appeared in print in 1846, became an artistic generalization of a phenomenon that was just “erupting” in Russian reality, but did not escape the attentive Goncharov. Many of the writer’s contemporaries went through the harsh school of everyday work: Gogol, Dostoevsky, Nekrasov, and Saltykov, who overcame social romanticism, but did not lose faith in the ideal. As for the image of the elder Aduev, Goncharov shows what a terrible moral disaster the desire to evaluate everything around him from the standpoint of practical benefit can turn into for a person.
The assessment of the romantic as the most important personality quality is far from unambiguous. Goncharov shows that the “liberation” of a person from the ideals of youth and the associated memories of love, friendship, and family affections destroys the personality, occurs unnoticed and is irreversible. Gradually, the reader begins to understand that an ordinary story of familiarization with the prose of life has already happened to Pyotr Ivanovich Aduev, when, under the influence of circumstances, a person is freed from romantic ideals of goodness and becomes like everyone else. It is this path that Alexander Aduev takes, gradually becoming disillusioned with friendship, love, service, and family feelings. However, the end of the novel - Alexander's profitable marriage and borrowing money from his uncle - is not the end of the work. The ending is a sad reflection on the fate of Pyotr Ivanovich, who succeeded on the basis of real practicality. The depth of the moral catastrophe that has already befallen society with the loss of faith in romanticism is revealed precisely in this life story. The novel ends happily for the younger one, but tragically for the older one: the latter is sick with boredom and the monotony of the monotonous life that has filled him - the pursuit of a place in the sun, fortune, rank. These are all quite practical things, they generate income, give a position in society - but for what? And only a terrible guess that Elizaveta Alexandrovna’s illness is the result of her devoted service to him, service that killed her living soul, makes Pyotr Ivanovich think about the meaning of his life.
In studies of Goncharov’s work, it was noted that the originality of the novel’s conflict lies in the collision of two forms of life presented in the dialogues between uncle and nephew, and that dialogue is the constructive basis of the novel. But this is not entirely true, since the character of Aduev Jr. changes not at all under the influence of his uncle’s beliefs, but under the influence of circumstances embodied in the twists and turns of the novel (writing poetry, infatuation with Nadenka, disappointment in friendship, meeting with Kostikov, leaving for the village, etc. ). The circumstances “alien” to the hero are concretized by the image of St. Petersburg given in the second chapter of the novel against the background of the memories of the “provincial egoist” Aduev about the peace of rural life. The turning point in the hero occurs during his meeting with the Bronze Horseman. Aduev turns to this symbol of power “not with a bitter reproach in his soul, like poor Evgeny, but with an enthusiastic thought.” This episode has a pronounced polemical character: Goncharov’s hero “argues” with Pushkin’s hero, being confident that he can overcome circumstances and not submit to them.
The dialogue plays an essential function in clarifying the author's point of view, which is not identical to either the position of the uncle or the position of the nephew. It manifests itself in a dialogue-dispute that continues without stopping almost until the end of the novel. This is a debate about creativity as a special state of mind. The theme of creativity first appears in a letter from young Aduev to Pospelov, in which the hero characterizes his uncle as a man of the “crowd,” always and equally calm in everything, and completes his analysis moral qualities Pyotr Ivanovich with the words: “...I think he hasn’t even read Pushkin.” The serious conclusion that vegetating “without inspiration, without tears, without life, without love” can destroy a person will turn out to be prophetic: having added prose to Pushkin’s lines (“And without hair”), the uncle, without suspecting it, pronounces a sentence on himself. Sashenka’s romantic poems, which he destroyed with his criticism, from the position of Pyotr Ivanovich are an expression of reluctance to “pull the burden” of daily work, and his remark “writers are like others” can be seen as the hero’s conviction that unprofessional pursuit of literature is self-indulgence and a manifestation of lordly laziness . Confronting the positions of his heroes, Goncharov himself is arguing with an invisible enemy, because the poems of Aduev Jr. are the poems of the young Goncharov, which he never published, apparently feeling that this is not his kind of creativity. However, the fact of their inclusion in the text of the novel is very significant. Of course they are weak artistically and may seem like a parody of romantic daydreaming, but the lyrical pathos of the poems is caused not only by Goncharov’s desire to expose idealism: Sashenka’s romanticism is aimed at criticizing the depersonalization of man by the bureaucratic reality of St. Petersburg and at criticizing the moral slavery of women.
The theme of the poet and the crowd - one of the cross-cutting themes of the novel - manifests itself in a unique way. Its detailed interpretation is given by the young Aduevs in Chapter IV, which reveals the state of the hero who has reached the apogee of happiness in love. Dreams about Nadenka and dreams of poetic glory merge together, but the author accompanies this enthusiastic monologue with his own commentary. From it, the reader learns about a comedy, two stories, an essay, and a “trip somewhere” created by Sashenka, but not accepted for publication, and gets acquainted with the plot of a story from American life, which Nadenka listened to with delight, but was not accepted for publication. Failures are perceived by Aduev in the spirit of the romantic conflict between the poet and the crowd; he recognizes himself as a person capable of “creating a special world” without difficulty, easily and freely. And only at the end of the monologue the position of the author-narrator, who doubts the success of this kind of creativity, is indicated.
Dialogue, as the most important substantive element of the genre form of Goncharov’s novel, turns out to be a form of expression of the author’s point of view in other novels, where its dialectical character increases. The writer’s task was to strive to indicate his position without insisting on it as the only reliable one. This, apparently, can explain the “absurdities” of the artistic structure, the contradictory characters of the heroes of “Oblomov” and “Cliff”, for which Druzhinin, Dobrolyubov, and many others reproached the author. Goncharov, due to his character, temperament, and worldview, could not and did not want to write out ideas that were not thought through and not suffered through personal experience recipes for correcting damaged morals. Like his young hero Aduev, he took up elegant prose when “the heart beats more evenly, the thoughts come into order.”
In the 1840s Goncharov saw the conflict between the individual and society as developing in several directions at once, two of which he evaluates in Ordinary History, and the other two he outlines as possible: the hero’s involvement in the life of the St. Petersburg petty bureaucracy and philistinism (Kostyakov) - this conflict has already been partially revealed in " Bronze Horseman"(in the fate of Evgeniy) - and immersion in the physical and moral dream, from which Aduev sobered up. Philistinism and sleep are intermediate stages of the hero’s evolution, which in artistic structure"Oblomov" will be fully realized and will develop into independent storylines.
The theme, ideas and images of "Oblomov" and "Cliff" already existed hidden in art world“Ordinary history”, the measured life of Goncharov the official went on as usual. By the will of fate and by one's own will he was destined to experience what he dreamed and dreamed about as a teenager.