(1843 – 1886).
Alexander Nikolaevich “Ostrovsky is a “giant of theatrical literature” (Lunacharsky), he created the Russian theater, an entire repertoire on which many generations of actors were brought up, the traditions of stage art were strengthened and developed. His role in the history of the development of Russian drama and the entire national culture can hardly be overestimated. He did as much for the development of Russian drama as Shakespeare in England, Lope de Vega in Spain, Moliere in France, Goldoni in Italy and Schiller in Germany.
“History has reserved the title of great and brilliant only for those writers who knew how to write for the whole people, and only those works have survived the centuries that were truly popular at home; such works over time become understandable and valuable for other peoples, and finally, and for the whole world." These words of the great playwright Alexander Nikolaevich Ostrovsky can be attributed to his own work.
Despite the oppression 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 increasing sympathy every year both among democratic spectators and among artists.
Developing the best traditions of Russian dramatic art, using the experience of progressive foreign drama, tirelessly learning about the life of his native country, constantly communicating with the people, closely connecting with the most progressive contemporary public, Ostrovsky became an outstanding portrayer of the life of his time, embodying the dreams of Gogol, Belinsky and other progressive figures literature about the appearance and triumph of Russian characters on the Russian stage.
Ostrovsky's creative activity had a great influence on the entire further development of progressive Russian drama. It was from him that our best playwrights came and learned from him. It was to him that aspiring dramatic writers in their time gravitated.
The power of Ostrovsky’s influence on the young writers of his day can be evidenced by a letter to the playwright of the poetess A.D. Mysovskaya. “Do you know how great your influence was on me? It was not love for art that made me understand and appreciate you: but on the contrary, you taught me to both love and respect art. I owe it to you alone that I resisted the temptation to fall into the arena of pathetic literary mediocrity, and did not chase after cheap laurels thrown by the hands of sweet and sour half-educated people. You and Nekrasov made me fall in love with thought and work, but Nekrasov gave me only the first impetus, while you gave me the direction. Reading your works, I realized that rhyming is not poetry, and a set of phrases is not literature, and that only by cultivating intelligence and technique will an artist be a real artist.”
Ostrovsky had a powerful impact not only on the development of domestic drama, but also on the development of Russian theater. The colossal importance of Ostrovsky in the development of Russian theater is well emphasized in a poem dedicated to Ostrovsky and read in 1903 by M. N. Ermolova from the stage of the Maly Theater:
On the stage life itself, from the stage the truth blows,
And the bright sun caresses us and warms us...
The living speech of ordinary, living people sounds,
On stage there is not a “hero”, not an angel, not a villain,
But just a man... A happy actor
Hastens to quickly break the heavy shackles
Conventions and lies. Words and feelings are new,
But in the recesses of the soul there is an answer to them, -
And all lips whisper: blessed is the poet,
Tore off the shabby, tinsel covers
And shed a bright light into the dark kingdom
The famous artist wrote about the same thing 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 the insulted.”
The realistic direction, muted 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 the theater life as a national, Russian, folk theater.
“You have donated a whole library of works of art to literature and created your own special world for the stage. You alone completed the building, at the foundation of which Fonvizin, Griboyedov, Gogol laid the cornerstones.” This wonderful letter was received, among other congratulations, on the year of the thirty-fifth anniversary of literary and theatrical activity by 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 the elegant and sensitive observer V. F. Odoevsky wrote: “If this is not a momentary flash, not a mushroom squeezed out of the ground by itself, cut by all kinds of rot, then this man has enormous talent. I think there are three tragedies in Rus': “The Minor”, “Woe from Wit”, “The Inspector General”. On “Bankrupt” I put number four.”
From such a promising first assessment to Goncharov’s anniversary letter - a full life, rich in work; labor, and which led to such a logical relationship of assessments, because talent requires, first of all, great work on itself, and the playwright did not sin before God - he did not bury his talent in the ground. Having published his first work in 1847, Ostrovsky has since written 47 plays, and translated more than twenty plays from European languages. And in total there are about a thousand characters in the folk theater he created.
Shortly before his death, in 1886, Alexander Nikolaevich received a letter from L.N. Tolstoy, in which the brilliant prose writer admitted: “I know from experience how people read, listen to and remember your works, and therefore I would like to help ensure that You have now quickly become in reality what you undoubtedly are - a writer of the entire people in the broadest sense.”
Even before Ostrovsky, progressive Russian drama had magnificent plays. Let’s remember Fonvizin’s “The Minor,” Griboyedov’s “Woe from Wit,” Pushkin’s “Boris Godunov,” Gogol’s “The Inspector General,” and Lermontov’s “Masquerade.” Each of these plays could enrich and decorate, as Belinsky rightly wrote, the literature of any Western European country.
But these plays were too few. And they did not determine the state of the theatrical repertoire. Figuratively speaking, they towered above the level of mass drama like lonely, rare mountains in an endless desert plain. The overwhelming majority of the plays that filled the theater stage of that time were translations of empty, frivolous vaudevilles and heartbreaking melodramas woven from horrors and crimes. Both vaudeville and melodrama, terribly far from life, were not even its shadow.
In the development of Russian drama and domestic theater, the appearance of A.N. Ostrovsky’s plays constituted an entire era. They sharply turned drama and theater towards life, towards its truth, towards what truly touched and worried people of the unprivileged segment of the population, working people. By creating “plays of life,” as Dobrolyubov called them, Ostrovsky acted as a fearless knight of truth, a tireless fighter against the dark kingdom of autocracy, a merciless denouncer of the ruling classes - the nobility, the bourgeoisie and the bureaucrats who faithfully served them.
But Ostrovsky did not limit himself to the role of a satirical exposer. He vividly and sympathetically portrayed victims of socio-political and family-domestic despotism, workers, lovers of truth, educators, warm-hearted Protestants against tyranny and violence.
The playwright not only made the positive heroes of his plays people of labor and progress, bearers of people's truth and wisdom, but also wrote in the name of the people and for the people.
Ostrovsky depicted in his plays the prose of life, ordinary people in everyday circumstances. Taking the universal human problems of evil and good, truth and injustice, beauty and ugliness as the content of his plays, Ostrovsky survived his time and entered our era as its contemporary.
Creative path A.N. Ostrovsky lasted four decades. He wrote his first works in 1846, and his last in 1886.
During this time, he wrote 47 original plays and several plays in collaboration with Solovyov (“The Marriage of Balzaminov”, “Savage”, “It shines but does not warm”, etc.); made many translations from Italian, Spanish, French, English, Indian (Shakespeare, Goldoni, Lope de Vega - 22 plays). His plays have 728 roles, 180 acts; all of Rus' is represented. A variety of genres: comedies, dramas, dramatic chronicles, family scenes, tragedies, dramatic sketches are presented in his dramaturgy. He acts in his work as a romantic, everyday writer, tragedian and comedian.
Of course, any periodization is to some extent conditional, but in order to better navigate the entire diversity of Ostrovsky’s work, we will divide his work into several stages.
1846 – 1852 – the initial stage of creativity. The most important works written during this period: “Notes of a Zamoskvoretsky Resident”, the plays “Picture of Family Happiness”, “Our People – Let’s Be Numbered”, “Poor Bride”.
1853 – 1856 - the so-called “Slavophile” period: “Don’t get into your own sleigh.” “Poverty is not a vice,” “Don’t live the way you want.”
1856 – 1859 - rapprochement with the Sovremennik circle, return to realistic positions. The most important plays of this period: “A Profitable Place”, “The Pupil”, “At Someone Else’s Feast there is a Hangover”, “The Balzaminov Trilogy”, and, finally, created during the revolutionary situation, “The Thunderstorm”.
1861 – 1867 – deepening the study of national history, the result is the dramatic chronicles Kozma Zakharyich Minin-Sukhoruk, “Dmitry the Pretender” and “Vasily Shuisky”, “Tushino”, the drama “Vasilisa Melentyevna”, the comedy “The Voivode or the Dream on the Volga”.
1869 – 1884 – plays created during this period of creativity are dedicated to social and everyday relations that developed in Russian life after the reform of 1861. The most important plays of this period: “Every Wise Man Has Enough Simplicity”, “Warm Heart”, “Mad Money”, “Forest”, “Wolves and Sheep”, “The Last Sacrifice”, “Late Love”, “Talents and Admirers”, “ Guilty without guilt."
Ostrovsky's plays did not appear out of nowhere. Their appearance is directly related to the plays of Griboedov and Gogol, which absorbed everything valuable that the Russian comedy that preceded them achieved. Ostrovsky knew the old Russian comedy of the 18th century well, and specially studied the works of Kapnist, Fonvizin, and Plavilshchikov. On the other hand, there is the influence of the prose of the “natural school”.
Ostrovsky came to literature in the late 40s, when Gogol's dramaturgy was recognized as the greatest literary and social phenomenon. Turgenev wrote: “Gogol showed the way how our dramatic literature will go over time.” From the first steps of his activity, Ostrovsky recognized himself as a successor to the traditions of Gogol, “ natural school", he considered himself one of the authors of a "new direction in our literature."
The years 1846 - 1859, when Ostrovsky worked on his first big comedy, “We Will Be Numbered Our Own People,” were the years of his formation as a realist writer.
The ideological and artistic program of Ostrovsky, the playwright, is clearly set out in his critical articles and reviews. Article “Mistake,” Mrs. Tour’s story” (“Moskvityanin”, 1850), unfinished article about Dickens’s novel “Dombey and Son” (1848), review of Menshikov’s comedy “Whims” (“Moskvityanin” 1850), “Note on the situation dramatic art in Russia at the present time" (1881), "Table talk about Pushkin" (1880).
Ostrovsky’s social and literary views are characterized by the following basic principles:
Firstly, he believes that drama should be a reflection of people's life, people's consciousness.
For Ostrovsky, the people are, first of all, the democratic masses, the lower classes, ordinary people.
Ostrovsky demanded that the writer study people's life, the problems that concern the people.
“In order to be a people’s writer,” he writes, “love for the homeland is not enough... you need to know your people well, get along with them, become akin to them.” The best school for talent is the study of one’s nationality.”
Secondly, Ostrovsky talks about the need for national identity for drama.
The nationality of literature and art is understood by Ostrovsky as an integral consequence of their nationality and democracy. “Only art that is national is national, for the true bearer of nationality is the popular, democratic mass.”
In “The Table Word about Pushkin” - an example of such a poet is Pushkin. Pushkin is a national poet, Pushkin is a national poet. Pushkin played a huge role in the development of Russian literature because he “gave the Russian writer the courage to be Russian.”
And finally, the third point is about the socially accusatory nature of literature. “The more popular a work is, the more accusatory element it contains, because the “distinctive feature of the Russian people” is “aversion from everything that has been sharply defined,” a reluctance to return to “old, already condemned forms” of life, a desire to “look for the best.”
The public expects art to expose the vices and shortcomings of society, to judge life.
Condemning these vices in his artistic images, the writer arouses disgust for them in the public, forces them to be better, more moral. Therefore, “the social, accusatory direction can be called moral and public,” Ostrovsky emphasizes. Speaking about the socially accusatory or moral-social direction, he means:
accusatory criticism of the dominant way of life; protection of positive moral principles, i.e. protecting the aspirations of ordinary people and their desire for social justice.
Thus, the term “moral-accusatory direction” in its objective meaning approaches the concept of critical realism.
Ostrovsky’s works, written by him in the late 40s and early 50s, “Picture of Family Happiness”, “Notes of a Zamoskvoretsky Resident”, “Our People – We Will Be Numbered”, “Poor Bride” are organically connected with the literature of the natural school.
“The Picture of Family Happiness” is largely in the nature of a dramatized essay: it is not divided into phenomena, there is no conclusion to the plot. Ostrovsky set himself the task of depicting the life of the merchants. The hero is interested in Ostrovsky solely as a representative of his class, his way of life, his way of thinking. Goes beyond the natural school. Ostrovsky reveals the close connection between the morality of his heroes and their social existence.
He places the family life of the merchants in direct connection with the monetary and material relations of this environment.
Ostrovsky completely condemns his heroes. His heroes express their views on family, marriage, education, as if demonstrating the wildness of these views.
This technique was common in satirical literature of the 40s - the technique of self-exposure.
The most significant work of Ostrovsky in the 40s. - the comedy “Our People - Let's Be Numbered” (1849) appeared, which was perceived by contemporaries as a major achievement of the natural school in drama.
“He started out in an extraordinary way,” Turgenev writes about Ostrovsky.
The comedy immediately attracted the attention of the authorities. When the censorship submitted the play to the Tsar for consideration, Nicholas I wrote: “It was printed in vain! It’s forbidden to play, in any case.”
Ostrovsky's name was included in the list of unreliable persons, and the playwright was placed under secret police surveillance for five years. The “Case of the writer Ostrovsky” was opened.
Ostrovsky, like Gogol, criticizes the very foundations of relationships that dominate society. He is critical of contemporary social life and in this sense he is a follower of Gogol. And at the same time, Ostrovsky immediately identified himself as an innovating writer. Comparing the works of the early stage of his creativity (1846 -1852) with the traditions of Gogol, we will trace what new things Ostrovsky brought to literature.
The action of Gogol’s “high comedy” takes place as if in the world of unreasonable reality - “The Inspector General”.
Gogol tested a person in his attitude to society, to civic duty - and showed - this is what these people are like. This is the center of vices. They don't think about society at all. They are guided in their behavior by narrowly selfish calculations and selfish interests.
Gogol does not focus on everyday life - laughter through tears. For him, the bureaucracy acts not as a social layer, but as a political force that determines the life of society as a whole.
Ostrovsky has something completely different - a thorough analysis of social life.
Like the heroes of the essays of the natural school, Ostrovsky’s heroes are ordinary, typical representatives of their social environment, which is shared by their ordinary everyday life, all its prejudices.
a) In the play “Our People – We Will Be Numbered,” Ostrovsky creates a typical biography of a merchant, talks about how capital is made.
Bolshov sold pies from a stall as a child, and then became one of the first rich people in Zamoskvorechye.
Podkhalyuzin made his capital by robbing the owner, and, finally, Tishka is an errand boy, but, however, already knows how to please the new owner.
Here are given, as it were, three stages of a merchant's career. Through their fate, Ostrovsky showed how capital is composed.
b) The peculiarity of Ostrovsky’s dramaturgy was that he showed this question - how capital is composed in a merchant environment - through consideration of intra-family, daily, ordinary relationships.
It was Ostrovsky who was the first in Russian drama to examine, thread by thread, the web of daily, everyday relationships. He was the first to introduce into the sphere of art all these little things of life, family secrets, small household affairs. A huge amount of space is occupied by seemingly meaningless everyday scenes. Much attention is paid to the poses, gestures of the characters, their manner of speaking, and their speech itself.
Ostrovsky's first plays seemed unusual to the reader, not stage-like, more like narrative rather than dramatic works.
The circle of Ostrovsky’s works, directly related to the natural school of the 40s, is closed with the play “The Poor Bride” (1852).
In it, Ostrovsky shows the same dependence of a person on economic and monetary relations. Several suitors seek the hand of Marya Andreevna, but the one who gets it does not have to make any effort to achieve the goal. The well-known economic law of a capitalist society works for him, where money decides everything. The image of Marya Andreevna begins in Ostrovsky’s work a new theme for him about the position of a poor girl in a society where everything is determined by commercial calculation. (“Forest”, “Nurse”, “Dowry”).
Thus, for the first time in Ostrovsky (unlike Gogol) not only a vice appears, but also a victim of vice. In addition to the masters of modern society, there appear those who oppose them - aspirations whose needs are in conflict with the laws and customs of this environment. This entailed new colors. Ostrovsky discovered new sides of his talent - dramatic satirism. “We will be our own people” - satirical.
Ostrovsky's artistic style in this play is even more different from Gogol's dramaturgy. The plot loses all its edge here. It is based on an ordinary case. The theme that was heard in Gogol’s “Marriage” and received satirical coverage - the transformation of marriage into buying and selling, here acquired a tragic sound.
But at the same time, it is a comedy in terms of its characters and situations. But if Gogol’s heroes evoke laughter and condemnation from the public, then in Ostrovsky the viewer saw their everyday life, felt deep sympathy for some, and condemned others.
The second stage in Ostrovsky’s activity (1853 – 1855) was marked by Slavophile influences.
First of all, this transition of Ostrovsky to Slavophile positions should be explained by the strengthening of the atmosphere, the reaction, which was established in the “gloomy seven years” of 1848 - 1855.
Where exactly did this influence appear, what ideas of the Slavophiles turned out to be close to Ostrovsky? First of all, Ostrovsky’s rapprochement with the so-called “young editorial staff” of Moskvityanin, whose behavior should be explained by their characteristic interest in Russian national life, folk art, and the historical past of the people, which was very close to Ostrovsky.
But Ostrovsky failed to discern in this interest the main conservative principle, which manifested itself in the existing social contradictions, in a hostile attitude towards the concept of historical progress, in admiration for everything patriarchal.
In fact, the Slavophiles acted as ideologists of the socially backward elements of the petty and middle bourgeoisie.
One of the most prominent ideologists of the “Young Editorial Board” of “Moskvityanin”, Apollon Grigoriev, argued that there is a single “national spirit” that forms the organic basis of people’s life. Capturing this national spirit is the most important thing for a writer.
Social contradictions, class struggle are historical layers that will be overcome and which do not violate the unity of the nation.
The writer must show the eternal moral principles of the people's character. The bearer of these eternal moral principles, the spirit of the people, is the “middle, industrial, merchant” class, because it was this class that preserved the patriarchy of the traditions of old Rus', preserved the faith, morals, and language of their fathers. This class has not been affected by the falsehood of civilization.
The official recognition of this doctrine of Ostrovsky is his letter in September 1853 to Pogodin (editor of Moskvityanin), in which Ostrovsky writes that he has now become a supporter of the “new direction,” the essence of which is to appeal to the positive principles of everyday life and national character.
The old view of things now seems to him “young and too cruel.” Exposing social vices does not seem to be the main task.
“There will be correctors even without us. In order to have the right to correct the people without offending them, you need to show them that you know the good in them” (September 1853), writes Ostrovsky.
A distinctive feature of Ostrovsky’s Russian people at this stage seems to be not its willingness to renounce outdated standards of life, but patriarchy, commitment to unchanging, fundamental conditions of life. Ostrovsky now wants to combine “the sublime with the comic” in his plays, understanding the sublime as positive features merchant life, and by “comic” - everything that lies outside the merchant circle, but exerts its influence on it.
These new views of Ostrovsky found expression in three so-called “Slavophile” plays by Ostrovsky: “Don’t get on your own sleigh,” “Poverty is not a vice,” “Don’t live the way you want.”
All three Slavophile plays by Ostrovsky have one defining beginning - an attempt to idealize the patriarchal foundations of life and family morality of the merchants.
And in these plays Ostrovsky turns to family and everyday subjects. But behind them there are no longer economic and social relations.
Family and everyday relationships are interpreted in a purely moral sense - everything depends on the moral qualities of people, there are no material or monetary interests behind this. Ostrovsky is trying to find a way to resolve contradictions in morally, in the moral regeneration of heroes. (The moral enlightenment of Gordey Tortsov, the nobility of the soul of Borodkin and Rusakov). Tyranny is justified not so much by the existence of capital, economic relations, but by the personal characteristics of a person.
Ostrovsky depicts those aspects of merchant life in which, as it seems to him, the national, the so-called “national spirit” is concentrated. Therefore, he focuses on the poetic, bright sides of merchant life, introduces ritual and folklore motifs, showing the “folk-epic” beginning of the heroes’ lives to the detriment of their social certainty.
Ostrovsky emphasized in the plays of this period the closeness of his merchant heroes to the people, their social and everyday ties with the peasantry. They say about themselves that they are “simple” people, “ill-mannered”, that their fathers were peasants.
From an artistic point of view, these plays are clearly weaker than the previous ones. Their composition is deliberately simplified, the characters are less clear, and the endings are less justified.
The plays of this period are characterized by didacticism; they openly contrast light and dark principles, the characters are sharply divided into “good” and “evil,” and vice is punished at the denouement. The plays of the “Slavophile period” are characterized by open moralizing, sentimentality, and edification.
At the same time, it should be said that during this period Ostrovsky, in general, remained on a realistic position. According to Dobrolyubov, “the power of direct artistic feeling could not abandon the author here, and therefore particular situations and individual characters are distinguished by genuine truth.”
The significance of Ostrovsky’s plays, written during this period, lies primarily in the fact that they continue to ridicule and condemn tyranny in whatever forms it manifests itself / We love Tortsov /. (If Bolshov is a rude and straightforward type of tyrant, then Rusakov is softened and meek).
Dobrolyubov: “In Bolshov we saw a vigorous nature, subjected to the influence of merchant life, in Rusakov it seems to us: but this is how even honest and gentle natures turn out with him.”
Bolshov: “What am I and my father for if I don’t give orders?”
Rusakov: “I will not give it up for the one she loves, but for the one I love.”
The praise of patriarchal life is contradictorily combined in these plays with the formulation of pressing social issues, and the desire to create images that would embody national ideals (Rusakov, Borodkin), with sympathy for young people who bring new aspirations, opposition to everything patriarchal and old. (Mitya, Lyubov Gordeevna).
These plays expressed Ostrovsky's desire to find a bright, positive beginning in ordinary people.
This is how the theme of folk humanism arises, the breadth of nature of the common man, which is expressed in the ability to boldly and independently look at the environment and in the ability to sometimes sacrifice one’s own interests for the sake of others.
This theme was then heard in such central plays by Ostrovsky as “The Thunderstorm”, “Forest”, “Dowry”.
The idea of creating a folk performance - a didactic performance - was not alien to Ostrovsky when he created “Poverty is not a vice” and “Don’t live the way you want.”
Ostrovsky sought to convey the ethical principles of the people, the aesthetic basis of their life, and to evoke a response from a democratic viewer to the poetry of their native life and national antiquity.
Ostrovsky was guided by the noble desire to “give the democratic viewer an initial cultural inoculation.” Another thing is the idealization of humility, obedience, and conservatism.
The assessment of Slavophil plays in the articles by Chernyshevsky “Poverty is not a vice” and Dobrolyubov “The Dark Kingdom” is interesting.
Chernyshevsky came up with his article in 1854, when Ostrovsky was close to the Slavophiles, and there was a danger of Ostrovsky moving away from realistic positions. Chernyshevsky calls Ostrovsky’s plays “Poverty is not a vice” and “Don’t sit in your own sleigh” “false,” but then continues: “Ostrovsky has not yet ruined his wonderful talent, he needs to return to the realistic direction.” “In truth, the power of talent, the wrong direction destroys even the strongest talent,” concludes Chernyshevsky.
Dobrolyubov's article was written in 1859, when Ostrovsky freed himself from Slavophile influences. It was pointless to recall previous misconceptions, and Dobrolyubov, limiting himself to a vague hint on this score, focuses on revealing the realistic beginning of these same plays.
The assessments of Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov mutually complement each other and are an example of the principles of revolutionary-democratic criticism.
At the beginning of 1856 it begins new stage in the works of Ostrovsky.
The playwright is getting closer to the editors of Sovremennik. This rapprochement coincides with the period of the rise of progressive social forces, with the maturation of a revolutionary situation.
He, as if following Nekrasov’s advice, returns to the path of studying social reality, the path of creating analytical plays that give pictures of modern life.
(In a review of the play “Don’t Live the Way You Want,” Nekrasov advised him, abandoning all preconceived ideas, to follow the path along which his own talent would lead: “to give free development to your talent” - the path of depicting real life).
Chernyshevsky emphasizes “Ostrovsky’s wonderful talent, strong talent. Dobrolyubov - “the power of artistic flair” of the playwright.
During this period, Ostrovsky created such significant plays as “The Pupil”, “Profitable Place”, the trilogy about Balzaminov and, finally, during the revolutionary situation - “The Thunderstorm”.
This period of Ostrovsky’s work is characterized, first of all, by an expansion of the scope of life phenomena and an expansion of themes.
Firstly, in the field of his research, which included the landowner, serf environment, Ostrovsky showed that the landowner Ulanbekova (“The Pupil”) mocks her victims just as cruelly as the illiterate, shady merchants.
Ostrovsky shows that in the landowner-noble milieu, as in the merchant milieu, the same struggle is going on between rich and poor, older and younger.
In addition, during the same period, Ostrovsky raised the topic of philistinism. Ostrovsky was the first Russian writer to notice and artistically discover the philistinism as a social group.
The playwright discovered in the philistinism a predominant and eclipsing all other interests interest in material things, what Gorky later defined as “a monstrously developed sense of property.”
In the trilogy about Balzaminov (“Holiday sleep - before lunch”, “Your own dogs are biting, don’t pester someone else’s”, “What you go for is what you will find”) /1857-1861/, Ostrovsky denounces the bourgeois way of existence, with its mentality and limitations , vulgarity, thirst for profit, absurd dreams.
The trilogy about Balzaminov reveals not just ignorance or narrow-mindedness, but some kind of intellectual wretchedness, the inferiority of the bourgeoisie. The image is built on the opposition of this mental inferiority, moral insignificance - and complacency, confidence in one’s right.
This trilogy contains elements of vaudeville, buffoonery, and features of external comedy. But internal comedy predominates in it, since the figure of Balzaminov is internally comic.
Ostrovsky showed that the kingdom of the philistines is the same dark kingdom of impenetrable vulgarity, savagery, which is aimed at one goal - profit.
The next play, “Profitable Place,” indicates Ostrovsky’s return to the path of “moral and accusatory” dramaturgy. During the same period, Ostrovsky was the discoverer of another dark kingdom - the kingdom of officials, the royal bureaucracy.
During the years of the abolition of serfdom, denunciation of bureaucratic orders had a special political meaning. Bureaucracy was the most complete expression of the autocratic-serf system. It embodied the exploitative and predatory essence of autocracy. This was no longer just everyday arbitrariness, but a violation of common interests in the name of the law. It is in connection with this play that Dobrolyubov expands the concept of “tyranny”, understanding by it autocracy in general.
“A Profitable Place” is reminiscent of N. Gogol’s comedy “The Inspector General” in terms of its themes. But if in The Inspector General the officials who commit lawlessness feel guilty and fear retribution, then Ostrovsky’s officials are imbued with the consciousness of their rightness and impunity. Bribery and abuse seem to them and those around them to be the norm.
Ostrovsky emphasized that the distortion of all moral norms in society is a law, and the law itself is something illusory. Both officials and the people dependent on them know that the laws are always on the side of the one who has power.
Thus, for the first time in literature, Ostrovsky shows officials as a kind of merchants of the law. (The official can turn the law the way he wants).
A new hero also came into Ostrovsky’s play - a young official, Zhadov, who had just graduated from university. The conflict between representatives of the old formation and Zhadov acquires the force of an irreconcilable contradiction:
a/ Ostrovsky was able to show the inconsistency of illusions about an honest official as a force capable of stopping the abuses of the administration.
b/ fight against “Yusovism” or compromise, betrayal of ideals - Zhadov was given no other choice.
Ostrovsky denounced the system, the living conditions that give rise to bribe-takers. The progressive significance of the comedy lies in the fact that in it the irreconcilable denial of the old world and “Yusovism” merged with the search for a new morality.
Zhadov is a weak person, he cannot stand the fight, he also goes to ask for a “lucrative position.”
Chernyshevsky believed that the play would have been even stronger if it had ended with the fourth act, i.e., with Zhadov’s cry of despair: “We’re going to uncle to ask for a lucrative position!” In the fifth, Zhadov faces the abyss that almost destroyed him morally. And, although Vyshimirsky’s end is not typical, there is an element of chance in Zhadov’s salvation, his words, his belief that “somewhere there are other, more persistent, worthy people” who will not compromise, will not reconcile, will not give in, talk about the prospect of further development of new social relations. Ostrovsky foresaw the coming social upsurge.
The rapid development of psychological realism, which we observe in the second half of the 19th century, also manifested itself in drama. The secret of Ostrovsky's dramatic writing lies not in the one-dimensional characteristics of human types, but in the desire to create full-blooded human characters, the internal contradictions and struggles of which serve as a powerful impulse for the dramatic movement. G.A. Tovstonogov spoke well about this feature of Ostrovsky’s creative style, referring in particular to Glumov from the comedy “Simplicity is Enough for Every Wise Man,” a far from ideal character: “Why is Glumov charming, although he commits a number of vile acts? After all, if “He is unsympathetic to us, then there is no performance. What makes him charming is his hatred of this world, and we internally justify his way of paying it off.”
Interest in the human personality in all its states forced writers to seek means for their expression. In drama, the main such means was the stylistic individualization of the characters’ language, and the leading role in the development of this method belonged to Ostrovsky. In addition, Ostrovsky made an attempt to go further in his psychologism, along the path of providing his characters with the maximum possible freedom within the framework of the author’s plan - the result of such an experiment was the image of Katerina in “The Thunderstorm”.
In “The Thunderstorm,” Ostrovsky rose to the level of depicting the tragic collision of living human feelings with the deadening domestic life.
Despite the variety of types of dramatic conflicts presented in Ostrovsky's early works, their poetics and their general atmosphere were determined, first of all, by the fact that tyranny was presented in them as a natural and inevitable phenomenon of life. Even the so-called “Slavophile” plays, with their search for bright and good principles, did not destroy or disturb the oppressive atmosphere of tyranny. The play “The Thunderstorm” is also characterized by this general coloring. And at the same time, there is a force in her that decisively resists the terrible, deadening routine - this is the element of the people, expressed both in folk characters (Katerina, first of all, Kuligin and even Kudryash), and in Russian nature, which becomes an essential element of dramatic action .
The play "The Thunderstorm", staged difficult questions modern life and appeared in print and on stage just before the so-called “liberation” of the peasants, testified that Ostrovsky was free from any illusions regarding the paths of social development in Russia.
Even before publication, "The Thunderstorm" appeared on the Russian stage. The premiere took place on November 16, 1859 at the Maly Theater. The play featured magnificent actors: S. Vasiliev (Tikhon), P. Sadovsky (Dikoy), N. Rykalova (Kabanova), L. Nikulina-Kositskaya (Katerina), V. Lensky (Kudryash) and others. The production was directed by N. Ostrovsky himself. The premiere was a huge success, and subsequent performances were a triumph. A year after the brilliant premiere of "The Thunderstorm", the play was awarded the highest academic award - the Great Uvarov Prize.
In "The Thunderstorm" he sharply denounces social order Russia, and the death of the main character is shown by the playwright as a direct consequence of her hopeless situation in the “dark kingdom.” The conflict in “The Thunderstorm” is built on the irreconcilable collision of the freedom-loving Katerina with the terrible world of wild and wild boars, with animal laws based on “cruelty, lies, mockery, and humiliation of the human person. Katerina went against tyranny and obscurantism, armed only with the power of her feelings, consciousness the right to life, to happiness and love. According to Dobrolyubov’s fair remark, she “feels the opportunity to satisfy the natural thirst of her soul and cannot continue to remain motionless: she strives for a new life, even if she has to die in this impulse.”
From childhood, Katerina was brought up in a unique environment, which developed in her romantic dreaminess, religiosity and a thirst for freedom. These character traits later determined the tragedy of her situation. Brought up in a religious spirit, she understands the “sinfulness” of her feelings for Boris, but cannot resist the natural attraction and gives herself entirely to this impulse.
Katerina speaks out not only against “Kabanov’s concepts of morality.” She openly protests against immutable religious dogmas that affirm the categorical inviolability of church marriage and condemn suicide as contrary to Christian teaching. Bearing in mind this fullness of Katerina’s protest, Dobrolyubov wrote: “This is the true strength of character, which in any case you can rely on! This is the height to which our national life reaches in its development, but to which very few in our literature were able to rise, and no one knew how to stay at it as well as Ostrovsky.”
Katerina does not want to put up with the deadening environment around her. “I don’t want to live here, I won’t, even if you cut me!” she says to Varvara. And she commits suicide. “Sad, bitter is such liberation,” Dobrolyubov noted, “but what to do when there is no other way out” Katerina’s character is complex and multifaceted. This complexity is most eloquently evidenced, perhaps, by the fact that many outstanding performers, starting from the seemingly completely opposite dominants of the main character’s character, have not been able to fully exhaust all these different ones. the interpretations did not fully reveal the main thing in Katerina’s character: her love, to which she surrenders with all the spontaneity of her young nature. Her life experience is insignificant; most of all, her nature has a developed sense of beauty, a poetic perception of nature. However, her character is given in movement, in development. Contemplation of nature alone, as we know from the play, is not enough for her. Other areas of application of spiritual forces are needed. Prayer, service, myths are also means of satisfying the poetic feeling of the main character.
Dobrolyubov wrote: “It’s not the rituals that occupy her in the church: she doesn’t even hear what they sing and read there; she has different music in her soul, different visions, for her the service ends imperceptibly, as if in one second. She is occupied by trees, strangely depicted in images, and she imagines a whole country of gardens, where all the trees are like this, and everything is blooming, fragrant, everything is full of heavenly singing. Otherwise, on a sunny day, she will see how “such a bright pillar is coming down from the dome, and smoke is moving in this pillar, like clouds,” and now she sees, “as if angels are flying and singing in this pillar.” Sometimes she will present herself - why shouldn’t she fly? And when she’s standing on a mountain, she’s drawn to fly: just like that, she’d run up, raise her arms, and fly...”
A new, yet unexplored sphere of manifestation of her spiritual powers was her love for Boris, which ultimately became the cause of her tragedy. “The passion of a nervous, passionate woman and the struggle with debt, the fall, repentance and difficult atonement for guilt - all this is filled with the liveliest dramatic interest, and is conducted with extraordinary art and knowledge of the heart,” I. A. Goncharov rightly noted.
How often the passion and spontaneity of Katerina’s nature are condemned, and her deep spiritual struggle is perceived as a manifestation of weakness. Meanwhile, in the memoirs of the artist E. B. Piunova-Schmidthof we find Ostrovsky’s curious story about his heroine: “Katerina,” Alexander Nikolaevich told me, “is a woman with a passionate nature and a strong character. She proved this with her love for Boris and suicide. Katerina, although overwhelmed by her environment, at the first opportunity gives herself over to her passion, saying before this: “Come what may, I will see Boris!” In front of the picture of hell, Katerina does not rage and scream, but only with her face and whole figure must depict mortal fear. In the scene of farewell to Boris, Katerina speaks quietly, like a patient, and only the last words: “My friend! My joy! Goodbye!" - pronounces as loudly as possible. Katerina's situation became hopeless. You can’t live in your husband’s house... There’s nowhere to go. To your parents? Yes, at that time they would have tied her up and brought her to her husband. Katerina came to the conclusion that it was impossible to live as she lived before, and, having a strong will, she drowned herself...”
“Without fear of being accused of exaggeration,” wrote I. A. Goncharov, “I can say in all conscience that there was no such work as a drama in our literature. She undoubtedly occupies and will probably for a long time occupy first place in high classical beauties. No matter from which side it is taken, whether from the side of the creation plan, or the dramatic movement, or, finally, the characters, it is everywhere captured by the power of creativity, the subtlety of observation and the grace of decoration.” In “The Thunderstorm,” according to Goncharov, “a broad picture of national life and morals has settled down.”
Ostrovsky conceived The Thunderstorm as a comedy, and then called it a drama. N. A. Dobrolyubov spoke very carefully about the genre nature of “The Thunderstorm”. He wrote that “the mutual relations of tyranny and voicelessness are brought to the most tragic consequences.”
By the middle of the 19th century, Dobrolyubov’s definition of a “play of life” turned out to be more capacious than the traditional division of dramatic art, which was still experiencing the burden of classicist norms. In Russian drama, there was a process of bringing dramatic poetry closer to everyday reality, which naturally affected their genre nature. Ostrovsky, for example, wrote: “The history of Russian literature has two branches that have finally merged: one branch is grafted and is the offspring of a foreign, but well-rooted seed; it goes from Lomonosov through Sumarokov, Karamzin, Batyushkov, Zhukovsky and others. to Pushkin, where he begins to converge with another; the other - from Kantemir, through the comedies of the same Sumarokov, Fonvizin, Kapnist, Griboyedov to Gogol; both were completely merged in him; dualism is over. On the one hand: laudable odes, French tragedies, imitations of the ancients, the sensibility of the late 18th century, German romanticism, frantic youthful literature; and on the other: satires, comedies, comedies and “Dead Souls”, Russia seemed at the same time, in the person of its best writers, to live, period after period, the life of foreign literature and educate its own to universal significance.”
Comedy, thus, turned out to be closest to the everyday phenomena of Russian life; it responded sensitively to everything that worried the Russian public, and reproduced life in its dramatic and tragic manifestations. That is why Dobrolyubov so stubbornly clung to the definition of “play of life,” seeing in it not so much a conventional genre meaning, but the very principle of reproducing modern life in drama. Actually, Ostrovsky also spoke about the same principle: “Many conventional rules have disappeared, and some more will disappear. Now dramatic works are nothing more than dramatized life." This principle determined the development of dramatic genres throughout the subsequent decades of the 19th century. In terms of its genre, “The Thunderstorm” is a social and everyday tragedy.
A. I. Revyakin rightly notes that the main feature of the tragedy - “the depiction of irreconcilable life contradictions that determine the death of the main character, who is an outstanding person” - is evident in “The Thunderstorm”. The depiction of the people's tragedy, of course, entailed new, original constructive forms of its implementation. Ostrovsky repeatedly spoke out against the inert, traditional manner of constructing dramatic works. “The Thunderstorm” was also innovative in this sense. He spoke about this, not without irony, in a letter to Turgenev dated June 14, 1874, in response to a proposal to publish “The Thunderstorm” in a French translation: “It doesn’t hurt to print “The Thunderstorm” in a good French translation, it can make an impression with its originality; but whether it should be put on stage is something to think about. I highly value the ability of the French to make plays and am afraid of offending their delicate taste with my terrible ineptitude. From the French point of view, the construction of the “Thunderstorm” is ugly, and I must admit that it is not very coherent at all. When I wrote “The Thunderstorm,” I became carried away with the finishing of the main roles and “treated the form with unforgivable frivolity, and at the same time I was in a hurry to be in time for the benefit performance of the late Vasiliev.”
A.I. Zhuravleva’s reasoning regarding the genre uniqueness of “The Thunderstorm” is interesting: “The problem of genre interpretation is the most important when analyzing this play. If we turn to the scientific-critical and theatrical traditions of interpretation of this play, we can identify two prevailing trends. One of them is dictated by the understanding of “The Thunderstorm” as a social and everyday drama; it attaches special importance to everyday life. The attention of the directors and, accordingly, the audience is distributed equally among all participants in the action, each person receives equal importance.”
Another interpretation is determined by the understanding of “The Thunderstorm” as a tragedy. Zhuravleva believes that such an interpretation is deeper and has “greater support in the text,” despite the fact that the interpretation of “The Thunderstorm” as a drama is based on the genre definition of Ostrovsky himself. The researcher rightly notes that “this definition is a tribute to tradition.” Indeed, the entire previous history of Russian drama did not provide examples of tragedy in which the heroes were private individuals, and not historical figures, even legendary ones. The “thunderstorm” remained a unique phenomenon in this regard. The key point for understanding the genre of a dramatic work in this case is not the “social status” of the characters, but, first of all, the nature of the conflict. If we understand Katerina’s death as the result of a collision with her mother-in-law, and see her as a victim of family oppression, then the scale of the heroes really looks too small for a tragedy. But if you see that Katerina’s fate was determined by the collision of two historical eras, then the tragic nature of the conflict seems quite natural.
A typical feature of a tragic structure is the feeling of catharsis experienced by the audience during the denouement. By death, the heroine is freed from both oppression and the internal contradictions tormenting her.
Thus, the social and everyday drama from the life of the merchant class develops into a tragedy. Through love and everyday conflict, Ostrovsky was able to show the epoch-making change taking place in the popular consciousness. The awakening sense of personality and a new attitude to the world, based not on individual expression of will, turned out to be in irreconcilable antagonism not only with the real, everyday reliable state of Ostrovsky’s contemporary patriarchal way of life, but also with the ideal idea of morality inherent in the high heroine.
This transformation of drama into tragedy also occurred thanks to the triumph of the lyrical element in “The Thunderstorm.”
The symbolism of the play's title is important. First of all, the word “thunderstorm” has a direct meaning in its text. The title character is included by the playwright in the development of the action and directly participates in it as a natural phenomenon. The thunderstorm motif develops in the play from the first to the fourth act. At the same time, Ostrovsky also recreated the image of a thunderstorm as a landscape: dark clouds filled with moisture (“as if a cloud is curling in a ball”), we feel the stuffiness in the air, we hear the rumble of thunder, we freeze before the light of lightning.
The title of the play also has a figurative meaning. A thunderstorm rages in Katerina’s soul, is reflected in the struggle between creative and destructive principles, the collision of bright and dark forebodings, good and sinful feelings. The scenes with Grokha seem to push forward the dramatic action of the play.
The thunderstorm in the play also takes on a symbolic meaning, expressing the idea of the entire work as a whole. The appearance of people like Katerina and Kuligin in the dark kingdom is a thunderstorm over Kalinov. The thunderstorm in the play conveys the catastrophic nature of existence, the state of a world split in two. The diversity and versatility of the play's title becomes a kind of key to a deeper understanding of its essence.
“In Mr. Ostrovsky’s play, which bears the name “The Thunderstorm,” wrote A.D. Galakhov, “the action and atmosphere are tragic, although many places excite laughter.” “The Thunderstorm” combines not only the tragic and the comic, but, what is especially important, the epic and the lyrical. All this determines the originality of the composition of the play. V.E. Meyerhold wrote excellently about this: “The originality of the construction of “The Thunderstorm” is that Ostrovsky gives the highest point of tension in the fourth act (and not in the second scene of the second act), and the intensification noted in the script is not gradual (from the second act through the third to the fourth), but with a push, or rather, with two pushes; the first rise is indicated in the second act, in the scene of Katerina’s farewell to Tikhon (the rise is strong, but not yet very strong), and the second rise (very strong - this is the most sensitive shock) in the fourth act, at the moment of Katerina’s repentance.
Between these two acts (staged as if on the tops of two unequal, but sharply rising hills), the third act (with both scenes) lies, as it were, in a valley.”
It is not difficult to notice that the internal scheme of the construction of “The Thunderstorm”, subtly revealed by the director, is determined by the stages of development of Katerina’s character, the stages of development of her feelings for Boris.
A. Anastasyev notes that Ostrovsky’s play has its own, special destiny. For many decades, “The Thunderstorm” has not left the stage of Russian theaters; N. A. Nikulina-Kositskaya, S. V. Vasiliev, N. V. Rykalova, G. N. Fedotova, M. N. Ermolova, became famous for playing the main roles. P. A. Strepetova, O. O. Sadovskaya, A. Koonen, V. N. Pashennaya. And at the same time, “theater historians have not witnessed complete, harmonious, outstanding performances.” The unsolved mystery of this great tragedy lies, according to the researcher, “in its multi-ideational nature, in the strongest fusion of undeniable, unconditional, concrete historical truth and poetic symbolism, in the organic combination of real action and deeply hidden lyrical principles.”
Usually, when they talk about the lyricism of “The Thunderstorm,” they mean, first of all, the system of worldview of the main character of the play that is lyrical in nature; they also talk about the Volga, which in its most general form is opposed to the “barn” way of life and which evokes Kuligin’s lyrical outpourings . But the playwright could not - due to the laws of the genre - include the Volga, the beautiful Volga landscapes, or nature in general, into the system of dramatic action. He showed only the way in which nature becomes an integral element of stage action. Nature here is not only an object of admiration and admiration, but also main criterion assessments of everything that exists, allowing one to see the illogicality and unnaturalness of modern life. “Did Ostrovsky write The Thunderstorm? Volga wrote “Thunderstorm”!” - exclaimed the famous theater expert and critic S. A. Yuryev.
“Every true everyday person is at the same time a true romantic,” the famous theater figure A. I. Yuzhin-Sumbatov would later say, referring to Ostrovsky. A romantic in the broad sense of the word, surprised by the correctness and severity of the laws of nature and the violation of these laws in public life. This is exactly what Ostrovsky discussed in one of his early diary entries after arriving in Kostroma: “And on the other side of the Volga, directly opposite the city, there are two villages; “One is especially picturesque, from which the most curly grove stretches all the way to the Volga; the sun at sunset somehow miraculously climbed into it, from the roots, and created many miracles.”
Starting from this landscape sketch, Ostrovsky reasoned:
“I was exhausted looking at this. Nature - you are a faithful lover, only terribly lustful; no matter how much I love you, you are still dissatisfied; unsatisfied passion boils in your gaze, and no matter how much you swear that you are unable to satisfy your desires, you do not get angry, you do not move away, but you look at everything with your passionate eyes, and these gazes full of expectation are execution and torment for a person.”
The lyricism of “The Thunderstorm,” so specific in form (Ap. Grigoriev subtly remarked about it: “... as if it was not a poet, but a whole people who created here...”), arose precisely on the basis of the closeness of the world of the hero and the author.
Orientation towards a healthy natural beginning became in the 50s and 60s the social and ethical principle not of Ostrovsky alone, but of all Russian literature: from Tolstoy and Nekrasov to Chekhov and Kuprin. Without this peculiar manifestation of the “author’s” voice in dramatic works, we cannot fully understand the psychologism of “The Poor Bride,” and the nature of the lyrical in “The Thunderstorm” and “Dowry,” and the poetics of the new drama of the late 19th century.
By the end of the sixties, Ostrovsky's work thematically expanded extremely. He shows how the new is mixed with the old: in the familiar images of his merchants we see polish and worldliness, education and “pleasant” manners. They are no longer stupid despots, but predatory acquirers, holding in their fist not only a family or a city, but entire provinces. A wide variety of people find themselves in conflict with them; their circle is infinitely wide. And the accusatory pathos of the plays is stronger. The best of them: “Warm Heart”, “Mad Money”, “Forest”, “Wolves and Sheep”, “The Last Victim”, “Dowry”, “Talents and Admirers”.
The shifts in Ostrovsky’s work during his last period are very clearly visible if we compare, for example, “Warm Heart” with “Thunderstorm”. Merchant Kuroslepov is a famous merchant in the city, but not as formidable as Dikoy, he is rather an eccentric, does not understand life and is busy with his dreams. His second wife, Matryona, is clearly having an affair with the clerk Narkis. They both rob the owner, and Narkis wants to become a merchant himself. No, the “dark kingdom” is no longer monolithic. The Domostroevsky way of life will no longer save the willfulness of Mayor Gradoboev. The unbridled revelry of the wealthy merchant Khlynov is a symbol of wasted life, decay, and nonsense: Khlynov orders the streets to be watered with champagne.
Parasha is a girl with a “warm heart”. But if Katerina in “The Thunderstorm” turns out to be a victim of an unrequited husband and a weak-willed lover, then Parasha is aware of her powerful spiritual strength. She also wants to “fly up”. She loves and curses her lover’s weak character and indecisiveness: “What kind of guy is this, what kind of crybaby has forced himself on me... Apparently, I have to think about my own head.”
The development of Yulia Pavlovna Tugina’s love for the unworthy young reveler Dulchin in “The Last Victim” is shown with great tension. In Ostrovsky's later dramas there is a combination of action-packed situations with detailed psychological characteristics of the main characters. Great emphasis is placed on the vicissitudes of the torment they experience, in which the struggle of the hero or heroine with himself, with his own feelings, mistakes, and assumptions begins to occupy a large place.
In this regard, "Dowry" is typical. Here, perhaps for the first time, the author’s attention is focused on the very feeling of the heroine, who has escaped from the care of her mother and the ancient way of life. In this play, there is not a struggle between light and darkness, but the struggle of love itself for its rights and freedom. Larisa herself preferred Paratova to Karandysheva. The people around her cynically violated Larisa’s feelings. She was abused by a mother who wanted to “sell” her “dowryless” daughter for a moneyed man who was vain that he would be the owner of such a treasure. Paratov abused her, deceiving her best hopes and considering Larisa’s love one of the fleeting joys. Both Knurov and Vozhevatov abused each other, playing a toss with each other.
We learn from the play “Wolves and Sheep” what cynics the landowners in post-reform Russia turned into, ready to resort to forgery, blackmail, and bribery for selfish purposes. The “wolves” are the landowner Murzavetskaya, the landowner Berkutov, and the “sheep” are the young rich widow Kupavina, the weak-willed elderly gentleman Lynyaev. Murzavetskaya wants to marry her dissolute nephew to Kupavina, “scaring” her with her late husband’s old bills. In fact, the bills were forged by the trusted attorney Chugunov, who also serves as Kupavina. Berkutov, a landowner and businessman, arrived from St. Petersburg, more vile than the local scoundrels. He instantly realized what was going on. He took Kupavina with her huge capital into his hands without talking about his feelings. Having deftly “scared” Murzavetskaya by exposing the forgery, he immediately concluded an alliance with her: it was important for him to win the election for leader of the nobility. He is the real “wolf”, everyone else next to him is “sheep”. At the same time, in the play there is no sharp division between scoundrels and innocents. There seems to be some kind of vile conspiracy between the “wolves” and the “sheep”. Everyone plays war with each other and at the same time easily makes peace and finds common benefit.
One of the best plays in Ostrovsky’s entire repertoire, apparently, is the play “Guilty Without Guilt.” It combines the motifs of many previous works. The actress Kruchinina, the main character, a woman of high spiritual culture, experienced a great tragedy in her life. She is kind and generous, warm-hearted and wise. At the pinnacle of goodness and suffering stands Kruchinina. If you like, she is a “ray of light” in the “dark kingdom”, she is the “last victim”, she is a “warm heart”, she is a “dowry”, there are “fans” around her, that is, predatory “wolves”, money-grubbers and cynics. Kruchinina, not yet assuming that Neznamov is her son, instructs him in life, reveals her unhardened heart: “I am more experienced than you and have lived more in the world; I know that there is a lot of nobility in people, a lot of love, self-sacrifice, especially in women.”
This play is a panegyric to the Russian woman, the apotheosis of her nobility and self-sacrifice. This is also the apotheosis of the Russian actor, whose real soul Ostrovsky knew well.
Ostrovsky wrote for the theater. This is the peculiarity of his talent. The images and pictures of life he created are intended for the stage. That’s why the speech of Ostrovsky’s heroes is so important, that’s why his works sound so vivid. No wonder Innokenty Annensky called him an “auditory realist.” Without staging his works on stage, it was as if his works were not completed, which is why Ostrovsky took the banning of his plays by theater censorship so hard. (The comedy “We Will Be Numbered Our Own People” was allowed to be staged in the theater only ten years after Pogodin managed to publish it in the magazine.)
With a feeling of undisguised satisfaction, A. N. Ostrovsky wrote on November 3, 1878 to his friend, artist of the Alexandria Theater A. F. Burdin: “I have already read my play in Moscow five times, among the listeners there were people hostile to me, and that’s all.” unanimously recognized "The Dowry" as the best of all my works."
Ostrovsky lived with the “Dowry”, at times only on it, his fortieth thing in a row, he directed “his attention and strength”, wanting to “finish” it in the most careful way. In September 1878, he wrote to one of his acquaintances: “I am working on my play with all my might; it seems that it will not turn out badly.”
Already a day after the premiere, on November 12, Ostrovsky could find out, and undoubtedly learned, from Russkiye Vedomosti how he managed to “tire the entire audience, right down to the most naive spectators.” For she - the audience - has clearly “outgrown” the spectacles that he offers her.
In the seventies, Ostrovsky's relationship with critics, theaters and audiences became increasingly complex. The period when he enjoyed universal recognition, which he won in the late fifties and early sixties, was replaced by another, increasingly growing in different circles of cooling towards the playwright.
Theatrical censorship was stricter than literary censorship. This is no coincidence. In its essence, theatrical art is democratic; it addresses the general public more directly than literature. Ostrovsky, in his “Note on the State of Dramatic Art in Russia at the Present Time” (1881), wrote that “dramatic poetry is closer to the people than other branches of literature. All other works are written for educated people, and dramas and comedies are written for the whole people; dramatic works writers must always remember this, they must be clear and strong. This closeness to the people does not in the least degrade dramatic poetry, but, on the contrary, doubles its strength and does not allow it to become vulgar and crushed.” Ostrovsky talks in his “Note” about how the theatrical audience in Russia expanded after 1861. Ostrovsky writes about a new viewer, not experienced in art: “Fine literature is still boring and incomprehensible for him, music too, only the theater gives him complete pleasure, there he experiences everything that happens on stage like a child, sympathizes with good and recognizes evil, clearly presented." For a “fresh audience,” Ostrovsky wrote, “a strong drama, major comedy, defiant, frank, loud laughter, hot, sincere feelings are required.” It is the theater, according to Ostrovsky, which has its roots in the folk farce, that has the ability to directly and strongly influence the souls of people. Two and a half decades later, Alexander Blok, speaking about poetry, will write that its essence lies in the main, “walking” truths, in the ability to convey them to the reader’s heart.
Ride along, mourning nags!
Actors, master your craft,
So that from the walking truth
Everyone felt pain and light!
("Balagan"; 1906)
The enormous importance that Ostrovsky attached to the theater, his thoughts about theater arts, about the situation of theater in Russia, about the fate of actors - all this was reflected in his plays.
In the life of Ostrovsky himself, the theater played a huge role. He took part in the production of his plays, worked with the actors, was friends with many of them, and corresponded with them. He put a lot of effort into defending the rights of actors, seeking the creation of a theater school and his own repertoire in Russia.
Ostrovsky knew well the inner, behind-the-scenes life of the theater, hidden from the eyes of the audience. Starting with "The Forest" (1871), Ostrovsky develops the theme of the theater, creates images of actors, depicts their fates - this play is followed by "Comedian XVII century"(1873), "Talents and Admirers" (1881), "Guilty Without Guilt" (1883).
The theater as depicted by Ostrovsky lives according to the laws of the world that is familiar to the reader and viewer from his other plays. The way the destinies of artists develop is determined by morals, relationships, and circumstances of “general” life. Ostrovsky's ability to recreate an accurate, vivid picture of time is fully manifested in plays about actors. This is Moscow in the era of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich ("Comedian of the 17th Century"), a provincial city contemporary with Ostrovsky ("Talents and Admirers", "Guilty Without Guilt"), a noble estate ("Forest").
In the life of the Russian theater, which Ostrovsky knew so well, the actor was a forced person, repeatedly dependent. “Then it was the time of favorites, and all the managerial orders of the repertoire inspector consisted of instructions to the chief director to take every possible care when compiling the repertoire so that the favorites, who receive large payments for the performance, played every day and, if possible, in two theaters,” Ostrovsky wrote in “Note on draft rules for imperial theaters for dramatic works" (1883).
In Ostrovsky's portrayal, the actors could turn out to be almost beggars, like Neschastlivtsev and Schastlivtsev in "The Forest", humiliated, losing their human appearance due to drunkenness, like Robinson in "Dowry", like Shmaga in "Guilty Without Guilt", like Erast Gromilov in "Talents" and fans”, “We, artists, our place is at the buffet,” says Shmaga with challenge and evil irony.
Theatre, the life of provincial actresses in the late 70s, around the time when Ostrovsky wrote plays about actors, also showed M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin in the novel "The Golovlevs." Judushka’s nieces Lyubinka and Anninka become actresses, escaping Golovlev’s life, but end up in a den. They had neither talent nor training, they were not trained in acting, but all this was not required on the provincial stage. The life of the actors appears in Anninka’s memoirs as hell, as a nightmare: “Here is a stage with smoky, captured and slippery from damp scenery; here she herself is spinning on stage, just spinning, imagining that she is acting... Drunken and pugnacious nights; passers-by landowners hastily taking out a little green card from their skinny wallets; merchants cheering on the “actors” almost with a whip in their hands.” And the life behind the scenes is ugly, and what is played out on stage is ugly: “...And the Duchess of Gerolstein, stunning with a hussar’s cap, and Cleretta Ango, in a wedding dress, with a slit in front right up to the waist, and Beautiful Helena, with a slit in the front, from behind and from all sides... Nothing but shamelessness and nakedness... that’s how life was spent!” This life drives Lyubinka to suicide.
The similarities between Shchedrin and Ostrovsky in their depiction of the provincial theater are natural - they both write about what they knew well, they write the truth. But Shchedrin is a merciless satirist, he thickens the colors so much that the image becomes grotesque, while Ostrovsky gives an objective picture of life, his “dark kingdom” is not hopeless - it was not for nothing that N. Dobrolyubov wrote about a “ray of light”.
This feature of Ostrovsky was noted by critics even when his first plays appeared. “...The ability to depict reality as it is - “mathematical fidelity to reality”, the absence of any exaggeration... All of this is not the distinctive features of Gogol’s poetry; all of these are the distinctive features of the new comedy,” wrote B. Almazov in the article “A Dream According to occasion of a comedy." Already in our time, literary critic A. Skaftymov in his work “Belinsky and the Drama of A.N. Ostrovsky” noted that “the most striking difference between the plays of Gogol and Ostrovsky is that in Gogol there is no victim of vice, while in Ostrovsky there is always a suffering victim vice... By portraying vice, Ostrovsky protects something from it, protects someone... Thus, the entire content of the play changes. The play is colored with suffering lyricism, it enters into the development of fresh, morally pure or poetic feelings; "to sharply highlight the inner legality, truth and poetry of true humanity, oppressed and expelled in an environment of prevailing self-interest and deception." Ostrovsky’s approach to depicting reality, different from Gogol’s, is explained, of course, by the originality of his talent, the “natural” properties of the artist, but also (this also should not be missed) by changing times: increased attention to the individual, to his rights, recognition of his value.
V.I. Nemirovich-Danchenko in the book “The Birth of the Theater” writes about what makes Ostrovsky’s plays especially scenic: “an atmosphere of goodness,” “clear, firm sympathy on the side of the offended, to which the theater hall is always extremely sensitive.”
In plays about theater and actors, Ostrovsky certainly has the image of a true artist and wonderful person. In real life, Ostrovsky knew many excellent people in the theatrical world, highly valued them, and respected them. L. Nikulina-Kositskaya, who brilliantly performed Katerina in “The Thunderstorm,” played a big role in his life. Ostrovsky was friends with the artist A. Martynov, had an unusually high regard for N. Rybakov, G. Fedotov and M. Ermolov played in his plays; P. Strepetova.
In the play “Guilty Without Guilt,” actress Elena Kruchinina says: “I know that people have a lot of nobility, a lot of love, selflessness.” And Otradina-Kruchinina herself belongs to such wonderful, noble people, she is a wonderful artist, smart, significant, sincere.
“Oh, don’t cry; they are not worth your tears. You are a white dove in a black flock of rooks, so they peck at you. Your whiteness, your purity is offensive to them,” Narokov says in “Talents and Admirers” to Sasha Negina.
The most striking image of a noble actor created by Ostrovsky is the tragedian Neschastlivtsev in “The Forest.” Ostrovsky portrays a “living” person, with a difficult fate, with a sad life story. Neschastlivtsev, who drinks heavily, cannot be called a “white dove.” But he changes throughout the play; the plot situation gives him the opportunity to fully reveal the best features of his nature. If at first Neschastlivtsev’s behavior reveals the posturing inherent in a provincial tragedian and his predilection for pompous declamation (at these moments he is ridiculous); if, while playing the master, he finds himself in absurd situations, then, having realized what is happening on the Gurmyzhskaya estate, what rubbish his mistress is, he takes an ardent part in Aksyusha’s fate and shows excellent human qualities. It turns out that the role noble hero for him it is organic, this is truly his role - and not only on stage, but also in life.
In his view, art and life are inextricably linked, the actor is not an actor, not a pretender, his art is based on genuine feelings, genuine experiences, it should have nothing to do with pretense and lies in life. This is the meaning of the remark that Gurmyzhskaya throws at her and her entire company of Neschastlivtsev: “...We are artists, noble artists, and you are the comedians.”
The main comedian in the life performance that is played out in “The Forest” turns out to be Gurmyzhskaya. She chooses for herself the attractive, sympathetic role of a woman of strict moral rules, a generous philanthropist who devotes herself to good deeds (“Gentlemen, do I really live for myself? Everything I have, all my money belongs to the poor. I’m just a clerk with my money, but every poor, every unfortunate one is their master,” she inspires those around her). But all this is acting, a mask hiding her true face. Gurmyzhskaya is deceiving, pretending to be kind-hearted, she didn’t even think of doing anything for others, helping anyone: “Why did I get emotional! You play and play a role, and then you get carried away.” Gurmyzhskaya not only plays a role that is completely alien to her, she also forces others to play along with her, imposes on them roles that should present her in the most favorable light: Neschastlivtsev is assigned to play the role of a grateful nephew who loves her. Aksyusha is the role of the bride, Bulanov is Aksyusha’s groom. But Aksyusha refuses to put on a comedy for her: “I won’t marry him; so why this comedy?” Gurmyzhskaya, no longer hiding the fact that she is the director of the play being staged, rudely puts Aksyusha in her place: “Comedy! How dare you? Even if it’s a comedy, I’ll feed you and clothe you, and I’ll make you play a comedy.”
The comedian Schastlivtsev, who turned out to be more insightful than the tragedian Neschastlivtsev, who first took Gurmyzhskaya’s performance on faith, figured out the real situation before him, says to Neschastlivtsev: “The high school student is apparently smarter; he plays the role here better than yours... He’s the lover plays, and you are... a simpleton."
The viewer is presented with the real Gurmyzhskaya, without the protective pharisaical mask - a greedy, selfish, deceitful, depraved lady. The performance she performed pursued low, vile, dirty goals.
Many of Ostrovsky's plays present such a deceitful "theater" of life. Podkhalyuzin in Ostrovsky's first play "Our People - Let's Be Numbered" plays the role of the most devoted and faithful person to the owner and thus achieves his goal - having deceived Bolshov, he himself becomes the owner. Glumov in the comedy “Every Wise Man Has Enough Simplicity” builds a career for himself on a complex game, putting on one mask or another. Only chance prevented him from achieving his goal in the intrigue he started. In "Dowry" not only Robinson, entertaining Vozhevatov and Paratov, introduces himself as a lord. The funny and pathetic Karandyshev tries to look important. Having become Larisa’s fiancé, he “... raised his head so high that, just behold, he would bump into someone. Moreover, he put on glasses for some reason, but never wore them. He bows and barely nods,” says Vozhevatov. Everything that Karandyshev does is artificial, everything is for show: the pitiful horse he got, the carpet with cheap weapons on the wall, and the dinner he throws. Paratov is a man - calculating and soulless - plays the role of a hot, uncontrollably broad nature.
Theater in life, impressive masks are born from the desire to disguise, to hide something immoral, shameful, to pass off black as white. Behind such a performance there is usually calculation, hypocrisy, and self-interest.
Neznamov in the play “Guilty Without Guilt”, finding himself a victim of the intrigue that Korinkina started, and believing that Kruchinina was only pretending to be a kind and noble woman, says with bitterness: “Actress! actress! Just play on stage. There they pay money for good pretense.” And to play in life over simple, gullible hearts, who do not need a game, who ask for the truth... we must be executed for this... we don’t need deception! Give us the truth, the pure truth! The hero of the play here expresses a very important idea for Ostrovsky about the theater, about its role in life, about the nature and purpose of acting. Ostrovsky contrasts comedy and hypocrisy in life with art on stage full of truth and sincerity. Real theater and an artist’s inspired performance are always moral, bring goodness, and enlighten people.
Ostrovsky's plays about actors and theater, which accurately reflected the circumstances of Russian reality in the 70s and 80s of the last century, contain thoughts about art that are still alive today. These are thoughts about the difficult, sometimes tragic fate of a true artist who, in realizing himself, spends and burns himself out, about the happiness of creativity he finds, about complete dedication, about the high mission of art that affirms goodness and humanity. Ostrovsky himself expressed himself, revealed his soul in the plays he created, perhaps especially openly in plays about theater and actors. Much in them is consonant with what the poet of our century writes in wonderful verses:
When a line is dictated by a feeling,
It sends a slave to the stage,
And this is where the art ends,
And the soil and fate breathe.
(B. Pasternak " Oh, I wish I knew
that this happens...").
Entire generations of wonderful Russian artists grew up watching productions of Ostrovsky’s plays. In addition to the Sadovskys, there are also Martynov, Vasilyeva, Strepetova, Ermolova, Massalitinova, Gogoleva. The walls of the Maly Theater saw the living great playwright, and his traditions are still being multiplied on the stage.
Ostrovsky's dramatic mastery is the property of modern theater and the subject of close study. It is not at all outdated, despite the somewhat old-fashioned nature of many techniques. But this old-fashionedness is exactly the same as that of the theater of Shakespeare, Moliere, Gogol. These are old, genuine diamonds. Ostrovsky's plays contain limitless possibilities for stage performance and acting growth.
The main strength of the playwright is the all-conquering truth, the depth of typification. Dobrolyubov also noted that Ostrovsky depicts not just types of merchants and landowners, but also universal types. Before us are all the signs of the highest art, which is immortal.
The originality of Ostrovsky's dramaturgy and its innovation are especially clearly manifested in typification. If ideas, themes and plots reveal the originality and innovation of the content of Ostrovsky’s dramaturgy, then the principles of character typification also concern its artistic depiction and its form.
A. N. Ostrovsky, who continued and developed the realistic traditions of Western European and Russian drama, was attracted, as a rule, not by exceptional personalities, but by ordinary, ordinary social characters of greater or less typicality.
Almost every Ostrovsky character is unique. At the same time, the individual in his plays does not contradict the social.
By individualizing his characters, the playwright discovers the gift of the deepest penetration into their psychological world. Many episodes of Ostrovsky's plays are masterpieces of realistic depiction of human psychology.
“Ostrovsky,” Dobrolyubov rightly wrote, “knows how to look into the depths of a person’s soul, knows how to distinguish nature from all externally accepted deformities and growths; That’s why external oppression, the weight of the whole situation that oppresses a person, is felt in his works much more strongly than in many stories, terribly outrageous in content, but with the external, official side of the matter completely overshadowing the internal, human side.” In the ability to “notice nature, penetrate into the depths of a person’s soul, capture his feelings, regardless of the depiction of his external official relationships,” Dobrolyubov recognized one of the main and best properties of Ostrovsky’s talent.
In his work on characters, Ostrovsky constantly improved the techniques of his psychological mastery, expanding the range of colors used, complicating the coloring of images. In his very first work we have bright, but more or less one-line characters of the characters. Further works provide examples of a more in-depth and complex disclosure of human images.
In Russian drama, the Ostrovsky school is quite naturally designated. It includes I. F. Gorbunov, A. Krasovsky, A. F. Pisemsky, A. A. Potekhin, I. E. Chernyshev, M. P. Sadovsky, N. Ya. Solovyov, P. M. Nevezhin, I. . A. Kupchinsky. Studying from Ostrovsky, I. F. Gorbunov created wonderful scenes from the life of the bourgeois merchant and craftsman. Following Ostrovsky, A. A. Potekhin revealed in his plays the impoverishment of the nobility (“The Newest Oracle”), the predatory essence of the rich bourgeoisie (“The Guilty One”), bribery, the careerism of the bureaucracy (“Tinsel”), the spiritual beauty of the peasantry (“A Sheep’s Fur Coat - the human soul”), the emergence of new people of a democratic bent (“The Cut Off Chunk”). Potekhin’s first drama, “The Human Court is Not God,” which appeared in 1854, is reminiscent of Ostrovsky’s plays, written under the influence of Slavophilism. At the end of the 50s and at the very beginning of the 60s, the plays of I. E. Chernyshev, an artist of the Alexandrinsky Theater and a permanent contributor to the Iskra magazine, were very popular in Moscow, St. Petersburg and the provinces. These plays, written in a liberal-democratic spirit, clearly imitating Ostrovsky’s artistic style, impressed with the exclusivity of the main characters and the acute presentation of moral and everyday issues. For example, in the comedy “Groom from the Debt Branch” (1858) it was about a poor man trying to marry a wealthy landowner; in the comedy “Money Can’t Buy Happiness” (1859) a soulless predatory merchant was depicted; in the drama “Father of the Family” (1860) a tyrant landowner, and in the comedy “Spoiled Life” (1862) they depict an extremely honest, kind official, his naive wife and a dishonestly treacherous fool who violated their happiness.
Under the influence of Ostrovsky, such playwrights as A.I. Sumbatov-Yuzhin, Vl.I. were formed later, at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. Nemirovich-Danchenko, S. A. Naydenov, E. P. Karpov, P. P. Gnedich and many others.
Ostrovsky's unquestioned authority as the country's first playwright was recognized by all progressive literary figures. Highly appreciating Ostrovsky’s dramaturgy as “national”, listening to his advice, L. N. Tolstoy sent him the play “The First Distiller” in 1886. Calling Ostrovsky “the father of Russian drama,” the author of “War and Peace” asked him in an accompanying letter to read the play and express his “fatherly verdict” about it.
Ostrovsky's plays, the most progressive in dramaturgy of the second half of the 19th century century, constitute a step forward in the development of world dramatic art, an independent and important chapter.
The enormous influence of Ostrovsky on the dramaturgy of Russian, Slavic and other peoples is undeniable. But his work is connected not only with the past. It actively lives in the present. By its contribution to the theatrical repertoire, which is an expression of current life, great playwright- our contemporary. Attention to his work does not decrease, but increases.
Ostrovsky will for a long time attract the minds and hearts of domestic and foreign viewers with the humanistic and optimistic pathos of his ideas, the deep and broad generalization of his heroes, good and evil, their universal human properties, and the uniqueness of his original dramatic skill.
Since the late 40s. Ostrovsky devotes himself entirely to drama. We can say that he did not have any separate, private biography. He worked for the theater, lived for the theater, its interests, pains, joys. All his life he wrote plays, he wrote constantly, all year round - without vacations, without rest, with thoughts weighing on him about money, about the livelihood of his ever-increasing family. One day he was asked to write memoirs, memories of his life. Ostrovsky replied: “For over 30 years I have been working for the Russian stage, I have written more than 40 original plays, now not a single day of the year goes by without my plays being performed at several theaters in Russia, only to the imperial theaters I have brought in more than 2 million and still I I am not well off enough to allow myself to rest for two months a year. All I do is either work for the theater, or think about and finalize the plots in advance, in constant fear of being left for the season without new plays, that is, without bread, with a huge family - so what’s the point of memories!”
At the end of the 40s. Ostrovsky is working hard on his first major dramatic work, which is called “Our People - We Will Be Numbered!” The genre is comedy. It is about the Bolshov merchant house, where everything is built on deception. Bolshov does not commit his fraud out of extreme need: for him it is a kind of way of self-affirmation. The thirst for profit, the passion for accumulation distort normal life relationships, explode from within that patriarchal structure, in the inviolability of which Bolshov naively believes. Hence the title of the play, which conveys his conviction in the firmness and stability of some - albeit distorted - moral norms, which must be observed by those close to them, especially relatives: “We are our own people - we will be numbered!” However, Bolshoy, who, despite all his rudeness and tyranny, was still characterized by some illusions, is forced to experience a bitter moment of “epiphany” for him. And the comedy, ridiculing the insignificance of life’s goals, the extreme misery of the inner world of the head of the merchant’s house himself, and his clerk Podkhalyuzin, and the boy-servant Tishka, standing on the lowest rung of the same social ladder, turns towards the end into the tragedy of a man, a father. , cynically deceived, betrayed by his own daughter and son-in-law. Already among the playwright’s contemporaries, in this case, associations arose with Shakespeare’s tragedy “King Lear”.
Ostrovsky's first play was enthusiastically received by readers (its production on stage was prohibited). Continuing the traditions of his great predecessors, the young playwright created a social comedy built not on external intrigue, not on the victory of virtue over vice, but on a deep and thoughtful analysis of distorted human relationships in a world where money, profit, profit becomes more important than duty, conscience and love. Material from the site
Mid 50's XIX century was marked by important changes in the political and spiritual life of Russian society. In the second half of the 50s. the playwright expands the thematic range of his works. He turns to the world of bureaucracy (“Profitable Place”, 1857), to the world of the nobility (“Pupilnitsa”, 1859), trying to embrace the main forces of pre-reform Russia.
The revival of the social movement, the pre-storm atmosphere, which was clearly felt in Russian life on the eve of 1861, the accumulated creative experience - all this led Ostrovsky to the creation of “The Thunderstorm”.
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On this page there is material on the following topics:
- our people - let's reckon together analysis
- description of Ostrovsky's creative path
- we will consider our people to be ridiculed by the comedy
- Ostrovsky the beginning of his literary career
- the beginning of Ostrovsky's creative path
Ostrovsky is the first Russian classical playwright. There were poets before him. Writers...but not playwrights
Ostrovsky wrote 48 of his own plays, several with his students, and translated several plays (The Taming of the Shrew and Goldoni's Coffee House). In total, he gave the theater 61 plays.
Before Ostrovsky, two children of his parents died in infancy. Their whole family was spiritual. My uncle is a priest, my father also graduated from the seminary and theological academy, but became a lawyer. And mother and daughter, make some bread. My uncle advised me to name the child Alexander (defender of life). All the heroes of Ostrovsky's plays have iconic names! There are invented ones, and there are also ordinary ones. Katerina (eternally pure, immaculate) he believes in her innocence! Although she commits 2 mortal sins. And in the dowry he will name the heroine Larisa (the seagull). Only through names can one understand the character of the characters and the author’s attitude towards him.
Another important moment of his life was his work in the courts. He did not graduate from university and strived for a free life. The father protested. He was rich and bought houses and wanted his son to follow in his footsteps. But Ostrovsky dreamed only of the theater. And when he left the university, his father did not let him idle and got him a job as a scribe in a conscientious (arbitration) court (the one who paid the most won.) And then as a small clerk in a commercial office. He had seen enough of different things and this pushed him to creativity. “Bankrupt” is a play that was born in this way.
“The Picture of Family Happiness” - the first play published in 1847
This is a sketch of merchant life. A world of deception and hypocrisy on which the entire society is built. After the two-volume set of plays, Dobrolyubov will say that all relationships in Ostrovsky’s plays are built on two principles - the family principle (the head is the oppressor) and the material one (the one who owns the money)
end of lecture 56.41
Ostrovsky is not the way we are used to imagining him in a robe with fur. They had a company of 5 people (Apollo Grigoriev - poet, prose writer, theorist; Tertsy Filippov, Almazov, Edelson). They all worked for Pogodin (a university professor) in the magazine “Moskvityanin.” Apollo Grigoriev wrote an epigram to Ostrovsky: Half Falstaff, half Shakespeare, dissipation and genius are a blind combination.
He was very loving. Agafya Ivanovna, an unmarried wife and an illiterate woman, did not want to marry him so as not to disgrace him. They had children. But at this time he fell in love with the actress Nikulina-Kositskaya. And he even proposed to her, but she refused. Then he started an affair with the young actress Vasilyeva. And she also had children. Agafya Ivanovna could not bear this and died, and then he married Vasilyeva.
And he loved to drink with his friends and sing together great. Had success with this
In 1849 he wrote “Bankrupt,” a tough play in the tradition of the natural school. It is more earthly than Gogol's plays. It was read at Pogodin’s house. Countess Rostopchina arranged this reading and invited Gogol there. There is a legend that Gogol later said that talent can be felt in everything. There were some technical shortcomings, but this will come with practice, but in general they are all talented. But the censorship did not allow the play to pass, citing the fact that there was not a single positive person. All are scoundrels. Pogodin said. So that Ostrovsky would change it a little, rename it and submit it again. He did just that. renamed it “Our People, We Will Be Numbered,” and finely signed Bankrupt, and indeed the play was allowed. And in 1950, in the 5th issue of the Moskvitian magazine, it was published. They immediately began to stage it in the Maly Theater. Shumsky - Podkholuzin, Prov Sadovsky - Bolshov. But before the premiere, a ban on the production came. It was delayed for 11 years! It was first staged in 1961. The composition has changed. Prov Sadovsky played Podkholuzin (Shumsky fell ill), Tishka was played by his son Michal Provovich, Shchepkin played Bolshoi.
Three images of Podkholuzin, Bolshov and Tishka - three different stages of the development of capitalism in Russia
Bolshov, semi-literate, gray, not thinking about anyone, turns out to be a victim of his darkness
Podkholuzin understands that you can’t just steal (like Bolshov) and he arranges a marriage with Lipochka and legally appropriates the capital of the Bolshoi.
Tishka is a servant boy. He has 3 coins. And he manages these coins. One for sweets, one to lend on interest, the third to hide just in case. This kind of disposal of coins is already the distant future of Russia
This play stands apart. This is the only spicy one where everyone is bad. Life broke the author and he wrote different plays. He understood that a person contains both good and bad and began to write more voluminously, bringing characters out of life. He'll tell you later. There is no need to invent stories, they are all around us. His plays will be based on the stories of actors, friends, court proceedings in cinema e Moscow court where is his estate Shchelyk O in. There he wrote all his plays.
Winter is when I conceive the plot, spring and summer are when I process it, and in the fall I bring it to the theater. Sometimes more than a play a year. Burdin, his high school friend, who became a bad actor, but a good politician, got his play through the censorship in St. Petersburg, played the main role there, and then the play was freely shown in Moscow. If it was staged in St. Petersburg, there is no need to obtain censorship in Moscow.
The second play, “The Poor Bride,” also came under a censorship ban. He wrote it for 2 years.
After the ban on “we will count our own people,” Ostrovsky came under double supervision (3 departments - the Buturlinsky Committee - political supervision and police supervision - monitored Ostrovsky’s morality) This was the time of the reign of Nicholas 1. These were difficult years and his plays did not appear on stage.
53-55 is 3 years when Ostrovsky made a certain tactical move that saved him as a playwright. He wrote 3 plays with such a Slavophile slant (Slavophiles (Aksakov, Pogodin) and Westerners (Herzen, Ogarev, Raevsky) - two movements that fought in the 1st half of the 19th century for the future of Russia.)
“Don’t get into your own sleigh,” “Poverty is not a vice,” “don’t live the way you want.” These 3 plays are not very deep, but they give the author a path to the stage.
Ostrovsky has 2 types of plays - the names of the proverbs and then it is clear how they will develop and how things will end and with an unpredictable name, by which it is difficult to figure out the play right away (Thunderstorm, Dowry, Mad Money)
"Poverty is not a vice"
Gordey Tortsov (proud) - ashamed of his brother
We love Tortsov (beloved) - a drunkard, a fence-sitter, he has nowhere to live.
The play is performed during Christmas time. Korshunov arrives to marry Gordey’s daughter and Lyubim helps Lyubushka avoid this terrible fate. (Korshunov killed his previous wife, ruined whom?) Gordey is a tyrant. To the question - who will you give your daughter to? He answers - Yes, at least for Mitka! (this is the clerk who has mutual love with Lyubushka) It seems like a joke, but Lyubim helps young people find happiness. This play was a resounding success.
“Don’t sit in your own sleigh” was the first play that came out. They played in a large theater with a large gathering. Nikulina-Kositskaya played Avdotya Maksimovna, Prov Sadovsky played the Bolshoi.
It was unusual to see the actress in a simple chintz dress. Usually the actresses came out in luxurious outfits. It was a complete success.
The next premiere was “Poverty is not a Vice” (1854) and it was a deafening premiere. The audience liked P. Sadovsky so much that Apollo Grigoriev wrote in his article: Wider the road, Love Tortsov is coming!
But he also wrote a whole poem about Sadovsky in this role.
In the literature you can find a statement. That Shchepkin did not accept Ostrovsky. They had difficult relationships. Ivanova doesn't believe this. Shchepkin could not be on bad terms with anyone at all. Here two eras collided. Herzen wrote that Shchepkin was not theatrical at the theater. We must understand. That the degree of non-theatricality is dialectical and flexible. When we listen to recordings of the Moscow Art Theater today, we hear theatricality and exaggeration. Each generation puts forward its own measure of simplicity. Shchepkin, although not a theatrical person at the theater, still lives in a romantic era. And his style of perceiving life is romantic.
P. Sadovsky creates Tortsov in a very naturalistic way (dirty, drunk, not good) and Apollo Grigoriev praises him for this. But Shchepkin does not accept such a Tortsov.
In 1954, Shchepkin is in power and may well say to a younger actor, move over, I myself will play Lyubim Tortsov. But he doesn't. He writes to Nizhny Novgorod and asks to take a bike. Post Ostrovsky’s play, learn it, and I’ll come and play Lyubim Tortsov. This is what happens. He goes and plays. For P. Sadovsky, social is important. Tortsov’s position, his dirt, for Shchepkin his moral height and inner purity are important. He plays this character romantically. He raises him above the world that Sadovsky reveals.
Shchepkin also played the Bolshoi. He softens and justifies him. In the finale I feel sorry for him. In 1961, the censorship, which allowed the production, demands the punishment of negative characters and the theater introduces a policeman, who in the finale comes to arrest Podkholuzin. And Sadovsky takes the policeman by the elbow, leads him to the front of the stage and gives him a wad of money. This is an actor’s mise-en-scène, but in doing so he corrects the interference of censorship, the government, and the management of the imperial theaters, who wanted to reduce the sound of the play.
In 1855, Nikolai-1 died and Ostrovsky benefited from this. And the oppression of his reign from 25 to 55 will subside. After the Decembrist uprising, he saw conspiracy everywhere and in everything. The arrests and strict supervision will all pass now. His son Alexander -2 comes to power. A lot is changing. Ostrovsky is released from supervision and goes to St. Petersburg. He is met by all the writers (among them Tolstoy and Kraevsky and Nekrasov and Saltykov-Shchedrin), and a gala dinner is arranged. They lay a wreath, the ribbons of which are held by Goncharov and Turgenev. He is offered to publish in Otechestvennye zapiski and Sovremennik. Then Ostrovsky goes on an expedition along the Volga, organized by the Russian Geographical Society (He compiled a dictionary of Volga words, collected plots and conceived a trilogy, but he would write only one play, “Dream on the Volga”) In general, in many of Ostrovsky’s plays there is the Volga. (fictional by Mr. Kalinov in Thunderstorm, Dowry and Warm Heart)
In the 19th century there were many playwrights who created a plot around a love triangle. All these plays were of the same type. They were composed.
Ostrovsky gave the material the opportunity to develop, gave a volume that comes from life, even in proverb plays.
In the play “It’s not all Maslenitsa for cats,” the author will complete the development of the image of a tyrant merchant. He reveals such a character trait. The first time he talks about her is in the play “At Someone Else’s Feast, a Hangover” by Tit Titovich Bruskov - main character An illiterate merchant who has become rich does not allow his son Andrei to study, because he does not see the need for it. O1.28.31 it is in this play that this very concept will arise - tyrant. Then Ostrovsky uses this theme of tyranny in various social groups. In “The Pupil” the tyrant noblewoman Ulanbekova, in “The Forest” by Gurmyzhskaya, in “Profitable Place” by Yusov, in “The Thunderstorm” by Dikaya. But the main tyrants are the merchants. In “Warm Heart” Kuroslepov and Khlynov are wonderful figures. Kuroslepov - revenge on Prov Sadovsky. In “Dream on the Volga” there is a place when the governor falls asleep. And one day Sadovsky actually fell asleep in this place. Ostrovsky ridiculed him in Kuroslepov and assigned him this role. Kuroslepov only sleeps and eats.
Khlynov is a rich man, drinks, organizes games. He dresses up his people as robbers and goes out onto the highway to scare passers-by.
Developing this image of such a merchant comes to the play “Not everything is Maslenitsa for the cat” 01.31.54
There is a tyrant merchant Akhov. This is Ostrovsky's last tyrant merchant.
He woos poor dowry Agnia, she refuses and marries his nephew Hippolytus. And his nephew, threatening him with a knife, takes the money to marry Agnia. And his roommate and maid says that he got lost in his own room and began to misbehave. This is such a hyperbole, very important. He seems to be the ruler and cannot achieve anything. He asks the young people to sweep the yard. He’s ready to pay for the wedding, just submit to me. But they refuse. And he is confused...
The next play is “Mad Money” and the merchant Vasilkov, who combines his love for Lydia Cheboksarova with profit. It is important for him to marry her in order to rise into another social circle (she is a noblewoman).
Knurov and Vozhevatov in “The Dowry” play Larisa at toss in order to take her to Paris. These are no longer illiterate merchants. These are no longer tyrants, but capitalists. They are going to an industrial exhibition in Paris.
“The last victim” is the merchant-capitalist Pribytkov. He collects paintings. Yulia Tukina.
His paintings are only originals; he is going to listen to Pati (Italian calarature soprano superstar) at the opera. In the 1980s, this was already a familiar level for Russia. 01.35.50
Tretyakov collects Russian paintings. Shchukin collects impressionist paintings. Ryabushinsky publishes the magazine “Golden Fleece” 1.36.51 For this publication Russian. artists paint portraits of playwrights and actors (Serov - a portrait of Blok, Ulyanov - Meyerhold in the role of Pierrot from “The Showcase”). Bakhrushin collects theatrical relics. Mamontov will create a private Russian opera and educate Chaliapin. Morozov is associated with art theater. He is a shareholder of the theater that was just born in 1998. In 1902, he built a building for them on Kamergersky Lane.
In Pribytkov, Ostrovsky outlined the features of these merchants and patrons of the arts. They spend money wisely. They are setting up Russia. Ultimately, all this goes to the state.
Most of Ostrovsky's plays are about merchants. But he pays a lot of attention theme - fate young woman. Beginning with The Poor Bride, Ostrovsky explores the position of women in Russian society. Marya Andreevna is so poor that at any moment she will lose her shelter and food. She is in love with Meric. He is weak-willed, lacking initiative, he loves her, but he cannot help, he has no money. And as a result, she marries Benivalyavsky, who chooses a girl who has nothing as his wife. This means that she will be completely dependent on him and he will tyrannize her. Marya Andreevna understands this, but she has no choice.
Nadya in The Kindergarten is also forced to get married. Ulanbekova gave her everything, and therefore disposed of her as property. Tyranila. She destined her to be the wife of a monster drunk, and thinks that Nadya’s high morality will benefit him and correct him. But Nadya runs to the island with Ulanbekova’s son and spends the night there. Then she says: there will be no further life. It's over.
Next on this list is Katerina in The Thunderstorm. She was born out of friendship with Nikulina-Kositskaya (about how she sailed away in a boat without oars and how she saw angels in a pillar of light - these are N-Kositskaya’s stories). But the actress herself is more multifaceted than Katerina. There is a lot of Varvara in her. She sings and has humor and enormous talent. Ostrovsky wrote Katerina for her. Varvara and Katerina are two sides of the same character. Katerina was given away without love. And it is difficult for her to love her husband. Tikhon under the rule of Kaban And hee speechless. If there had been a child, Boris would not have appeared in her life. But she could not get pregnant from a drunkard and a weakling. And Boris appears out of trouble and hopelessness. Kabanikhs were the name given to huge stones that were placed at crossroads. So that the triplets don't collide. So is Katerina’s mother-in-law. On the way you can’t go around everyone, you can’t go around them. She presses down with her weight. Katerina throws herself into the water not from pressure from her mother-in-law, but from Boris’s betrayal. He leaves her, cannot help, does not love her.
Who, lovingly, would wish his beloved a quick death? And he says that she should die quickly, so that she doesn’t suffer so much.
Katerina is a pious person. She falls to her knees in front of the fresco of the Last Judgment during a thunderstorm and repents. And maybe, having committed the first mortal sin, she punishes herself by committing the second mortal sin, in order to receive full punishment from God. Although Ostrovsky gives her a name that means purity.
Thunderstorm is a multifunctional name. She is present in everything. Not only in nature.
Next Larisa. She is unable to commit suicide. She chooses between dying or becoming a thing. Karandyshev wants to get married in order to rise in the eyes of society. Both Knurov and Vozhevatov play it like a thing. And in the end she will make a decision - if it’s a thing, then an expensive thing. Ostrovsky saves Larisa by dying at the hands of Karandyshev. And when he kills her, he treats her as a thing (so don’t get it from anyone).
Yulia Tugina is a widow who marries Pribytkov.
19th century - a woman must get married in order to survive. At the end of the 19th century, she had the opportunity to become a governess and become a companion. But this is also not good... a miserable existence. Dependency... these are already Chekhovian themes.
Ostrovsky finds another way out for women theater. In the 19th century, actresses already appeared in the theater. But there is such a law - if a nobleman becomes an actor, then he loses his affiliation with the nobility. And the merchant leaves the merchant guild. And the life of an actress is always questionable. You can buy it. In “Talents and Admirers” Ostrovsky will show Negina’s life in this way.
True, in his last play, “Guilty Without Guilt,” he writes a melodrama with a happy ending. There the actress rises above everyone. becomes great and dictates its own rules. But this is 1984, the end of the 19th century.
“The Snow Maiden” was born in Shchelykovo. There is nature, untouched forest. This is a play about the joy of life. About harmony in life. About the objective flow of life. Harmony should brighten up all tragedies. In the end, the heroes die. The Snow Maiden melted, Mizgir threw himself into the lake, disharmony just left this settlement. The Snow Maiden was a foreign, unusual beginning that invaded the settlement from a fairy tale. And Mizgir is a traitor, he abandoned Kupava. And when they die, harmony, peace and happiness come. The play was written for Fedotova. Ostrovsky often wrote plays for certain actors. Tolstoy laughed at him, and then he began to do the same himself.
He also wrote “Vasilisa Milentyev” for Fedotova 01.58.26
This play was invented by Gedeonov Jr. (director of the imperial theaters). Ostrovsky helped him bring this play to mind. Just like in “The Marriage of Belugin” and “Savage” there should be 2 names of the authors. These are plays written with students. Mostly with Solovyov.
Ostrovsky has the line of a young man with a university education. Which comes into life. This is Zhadov in “Profitable Place”. In “The Poor Bride,” Ostrovsky tried to create such an image of Merich. But this is his failure. Ostrovsky at one time tried to live in two projections of the realistic theater that he created and looked back into the romantic theater, through Merich. Two directions collided in the play and it became difficult.
Zhadov is a man without money, he follows a pure path. Ostrovsky says about him that he is like a decorated Christmas tree. He has nothing of his own. He brought all these ideals from the university, but did not suffer for them. That's why he does stupid things. Firstly, he marries Polina without a dowry, having nothing to his name. In the 19th century it was even a crime. Officials were given permission to marry. The husband must take responsibility for his wife. And Zhadov honestly tells Polina that they will earn their bread honestly, but she doesn’t know how. She strives to quickly leave the protection of her mother and gets married. And from this the whole tragedy is born.
Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov reproached Ostrovsky for saving Zhadov by writing such an ending - the arrest of Yusov and Vyshnevsky.
In the play “The Deep” Ostrovsky continues the theme of such a young man. Kiselnikov, unlike Zhadov, who managed to get married and have children, is forced to sacrifice himself for the well-being of his family. He commits a crime for which he receives money. He will die, he will be imprisoned.
Continuing the theme of Glumov from “Simplicity is enough for every wise man”, the man is a proteus - smart, evil. He knows how to stand up for himself. But in this case, a university education will play a cruel joke on him. If he were simpler, like Zhadov, neither so evil and smart, he would not have written this diary. And Glumov, understanding his situation and wanting to get out of this situation, takes care of his aunt, flatters him, etc., and in the end gets pierced. And he gives up his dreams of a better life forever. He will never carry out this scam of his again.
Ostrovsky will show us Glumov in “Mad Money” and we understand that he has achieved nothing.
Ostrovsky has a play, “The Characters Didn’t Mesh,” where a young man, Paul, marries a rich merchant’s wife in the hope of managing her wealth. But she quickly makes it clear that he will not receive the money. And they run away.
And for Glumov to have this happiness, he needs to be Balzaminov and marry the fool Belotelova, who agrees to bathe him in gold. But this is vaudeville. Fantasy game. And it is no coincidence that Ostrovsky introduces Glumov in “Mad Money” to show that he will not be happy. And in contrast to Vasilkov, who offers to multiply money and make it work, Glumov is going to marry money and of course nothing good awaits him.
And there is one more young man, Petya Meluzov in “talents and admirers” - Negina’s teacher. He is left with nothing and leaves so invincible. Declaring to fans. That you corrupt, and I enlighten.
Speaking about Meluzov, I remember Petya Trofimov. They are very similar and that is the impression. That Chekhov quotes Ostrovsky. Petya Trofimov is like the future of Petya Meluzov. He is an idealist and therefore will never achieve a positive result
Ostrovsky plays with images and as he writes new plays, one can trace the development of these images.
"Wolves and Sheep" (1868) is a play from life. Ostrovsky carried him out of the court chamber, where the case of Abbess Mitrophania, née Baroness Rosen, was being decided. She, like Murzavetskaya, was involved in forgery and practically robbed stupid merchants. This case was tried by a civil court, although usually the clergy did not allow their own to the state court. They had their own spiritual court. But the case was so loud that it was impossible to do otherwise. Ostrovsky dreamed of writing about the monastery, but censorship would not allow it. Clergy cannot be brought on stage. And he sets up such a monastery in a figurative sense. Murzavetskaya herself is in black, as are her hangers-on. And the conditions there are so strict and monastic.
This is the law of life. Someone is a wolf, someone is a sheep. And at some point they can switch roles (dialectical changes). Glafira turns from a sheep into a wolf. We think of Lynyaev as a sheep, but in the end he unravels all the crime of Murzavetskaya and finds the source of all the outrages happening around Kupavina. For all the wolves present in the play, the most important wolf, the Golden Eagles, appears. Murzavetskaya realizes that she has become a sheep and asks Berkutov to leave her, even if she’s a bad wolf.
Ostrovsky has many themes. There are many plays about theatre. From these plays we can judge the theater of the 19th century. What is theater like in the provinces? (“Forest”, “Talents and Fans”, “Guilty Without Guilt”)
Talent cannot break through, because fans buy it and try to humiliate and make it dependent, and only in the melodrama “Guilty Without Guilt” Kruchinin turns from a young suffering woman Lyubov Ivanovna Otradina into a brilliant actress, because will go through the path of loss and tragedy and ultimately gain the talent of an actress for whom nothing is scary. And in the end he will find a son. Ostrovsky understands that the theater is in a deplorable state, that three rehearsals are not enough for a production. He tried to help somehow. Make comments, but these are all crumbs. Once he asked to replace a torn backdrop for the play “Dream on the Volga” and on the day of the premiere he saw a backdrop with a winter landscape, and in his play it was summer...
Martynov (Tikhon Kabanov's first performer), Prov Sadovsky (Ostrovsky's closest friend) and Nikulina-Kositskaya are actors who formed in the 1st half of the 19th century and came to the theater before Ostrovsky. They idolized him for his plays.
Savina, Strepetova, Davydov, Varlamov, Lensky, Yuzhin, Shchepkin - become actors in imperial theaters, having at one time been provincial actors. Then they asked for a debut in the theater (they didn’t pay for the debut) and stayed in the capitals.
Ostrovsky does not like this situation. People without school are not even trained for the role. In 1738 a school (ballet and choir) was opened. Such schools are appearing in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Children from 8.9 years old were taken there and taught ballet. Ballet became the basis of the imperial school (this path was followed by Ermolova, Fedotova, Semenova, Martynov). Afterwards, you could choose 3 paths - ballet, drama acting, or becoming a theater artist (there were painting classes)
Tuberculosis was a common disease of 19th century actors. Dust, open fire. Dancing in vaudeville... actors die at the age of 40.
Ostrovsky observed this and dedicated his articles to actresses. In one of them, he compares Savina and Strepetova and writes that Savina, who can play up to 15 roles per season, is quite profitable for the theater, while Strepetova, who lives on stage and after the performance is carried away and then takes 2 weeks to come to her senses , it is not beneficial for the imperial theater. The public in the 19th century went to see the actor. And when the actor was ill, the play was filmed. There were no replacements. In 1865, Ostrovsky created an artistic circle. M.P. Sadovsky and his wife Olga Osipovna Lazareva (Sadovskaya) will be brought up in this circle. He will try to give schooling to those actors who were brought up on his dramaturgy. Ostrovsky is fighting the theatrical monopoly. He takes part in meetings and soon becomes convinced that everything is pointless. There everyone is looking for their own benefit, and not caring about the theater. And he comes up with the idea of creating his own theater.
In 1881 he received permission to create folk theater. Private theater cannot be created. The theatrical monopoly does not allow this in Moscow. He is looking for a sponsor. And in 1982 the monopoly was abolished and private theaters grew in huge numbers and became competitors for Ostrovsky, so he abandoned the idea of a folk theater. And the only way he could help the theater was to go work there. He becomes the head of the repertoire and theater school. But it's hard for him. They don’t like him, he’s not comfortable, he’s not affectionate, he’s not principled. But he still begins to rebuild the theater, but in the summer of 86 he suddenly dies and the theater returns to its old habits. And the Moscow Art Theater, born 12 years later, will largely rely on the reforms that Ostrovsky intended to implement. First of all, he dreamed of a repertory theater. He wanted to create a Russian national theater because it is a sign of the coming of age of the nation.
The pinnacle of Russian drama of the period under review is the work of Alexander Nikolaevich Ostrovsky (1823-1886). Ostrovsky’s first “big” comedy “Our own people - we will be numbered!” (1850) gave a clear idea of a new original theater, the Ostrovsky Theater. Evaluating this comedy, contemporaries invariably recalled the classics of Russian comedy - “The Minor” by Fonvizin, “Woe from Wit” by Griboyedov, “The Inspector General” by Gogol. With these “landmark” works of Russian drama, they put on a par the comedy “Bankrupt (“Our own people - we’ll be numbered!”).
Accepting Gogol's view on the meaning of social comedy, being attentive to the range of themes he posed in dramaturgy and the plots he introduced into this genre, Ostrovsky from the first steps of his literary path showed complete independence in the interpretation of modern conflicts. The motives that Gogol interpreted as secondary already in Ostrovsky’s early works become the nerve that determines the action and come to the fore.
In the early 50s, the playwright believed that modern social conflicts at its greatest
degrees make themselves felt in the merchant environment. This class seemed to him to be a layer in which the past and present of society merged into a complex, contradictory unity. The merchant class, which has long played a significant role in the economic life of the country, and sometimes took part in political conflicts, is connected by many threads of family and business relations, on the one hand, with the lower strata of society (peasantry, philistinism), on the other, with the upper classes, in second half of the 19th century changed its appearance. He analyzes the vices that plague the merchant environment and which the writer exposes in his plays, revealing their historical roots and anticipating their possible manifestations in the future. Already in the title of the comedy “Our own people - we will be numbered!” the principle of homogeneity of its heroes is expressed. The oppressors and the oppressed in comedy not only form a single system, but often change places in it. A wealthy merchant, a resident of Zamoskvorechye (the most patriarchal part of patriarchal Moscow), convinced of his right to unaccountably control the fate of his family members, tyrannizes his wife, daughter and employees of his “institutions.” However, his daughter Lipochka and her husband Podkhalyuzin, a former clerk and favorite of Bolshov, “reward” him in full. They appropriate his capital and, having ruined his little brother, cruelly and cold-bloodedly send him to prison. Podkhalyuzin says about the Bolshovs: “It will be enough for them - they’ve done wonders in their lifetime, now it’s time for us!” This is how relationships develop between generations, between fathers and children. Progress here is less noticeable than continuity, and besides, Bolshov, for all his crude simplicity, turns out to be psychologically less primitive than his daughter and son-in-law. Accurately and vividly embodying in his characters the appearance of “modern vices and shortcomings noticed in the century,” the playwright sought to create types that have universal moral significance. “I wanted,” he explained, “for the public to brand vice with the name of Podkhalyuzin in the same way as they brand with the name of Harpagon, Tartuffe, Minor, Khlestakov and others.” Contemporaries compared Bolshov to King Lear, and Podkhalyuzin was called the “Russian Tartuffe.”
Alien to any kind of exaggeration, avoiding idealization, the author clearly outlines the contours of the figures he depicts and determines their scale. Bolshov’s horizons are limited to Zamoskvorechye; in his limited world he experiences all the feelings that a ruler, whose power is unlimited, experiences on a different scale. Power, strength, honor, greatness not only satisfy his ambition, but also overwhelm his feelings and tire him. He is bored, burdened by his power. This mood, combined with a deep belief in the steadfastness of patriarchal family foundations, in his authority as the head of the family, gives rise to a sudden impulse of Bolshov’s generosity, who gives everything he has acquired “to the shirt” to his daughter and Podkhalyuzin, who became her husband.
In this plot twist, the comedy about a malicious bankrupt and a cunning clerk comes close to Shakespeare's tragedy "King Lear" - the conflict of the pursuit of profit develops into a conflict of betrayed trust. However, the viewer cannot sympathize with Bolshov’s disappointment, experience it as tragic, just as he cannot sympathize with the disappointment of the matchmaker and the solicitor, who resold their services to Podkhalyuzin and made a mistake in their calculations. The play is in the comedy genre.
Ostrovsky's first comedy played special role both in the creative fate of the author and in the history of Russian drama. Subjected to a strict censorship ban after its publication in the magazine Moskvityanin (1850), it was not staged for many years. But it was this comedy that opened a new era in the understanding of the “laws of the stage” and heralded the emergence of a new phenomenon of Russian culture - Ostrovsky’s theater. Objectively, it contained the idea of a new principle of stage action, the behavior of an actor, a new form of recreating the truth of life on stage and theatrical entertainment. Ostrovsky appealed primarily to the mass audience, the “fresh public”, “which requires strong drama, major comedy, evoking frank, loud laughter, hot, sincere feelings, lively and strong characters.” The immediate reaction of the democratic spectator served as the playwright's criterion for the success of his play.
The first comedy amazed with its novelty to a greater extent than Ostrovsky’s subsequent plays, which made their way onto the theatrical stage and forced Ostrovsky to be recognized as a “repertoire playwright”: “The Poor Bride” (1852), “Don’t Get in Your Own Sleigh” (1853) and “Poverty is no vice” (1854).
“The Poor Bride” reflected, if not a change in the writer’s ideological position, then a desire to take a new approach to the problem of social comedy. The dramatic unity of the play is created by the fact that at its center stands a heroine whose position is socially typical. She seems to embody the general idea of the position of a young lady without a dowry. Each “line” of action demonstrates the attitude of one of the contenders for Marya Andreevna’s hand and heart
to her and represents a variant of the relationship of a man to a woman and the female fate that follows from such a relationship. Commonly accepted traditional forms are inhumane family relations. The behavior of the “suitors” and their view of the beauty who has no dowry does not promise her a happy life.
Thus, “The Poor Bride” also belongs to the accusatory direction of literature, which Ostrovsky considered most consistent with the character and mentality of Russian society. If Gogol believed that the “narrowness” of the “love plot” contradicts the tasks of social comedy, then Ostrovsky assesses its condition precisely through the depiction of love in modern society.
In “The Poor Bride,” while working on which Ostrovsky, by his own admission, experienced great creative difficulties, he managed to master some new techniques for constructing dramatic action, which he later applied mainly in plays with dramatic or tragic content. The pathos of the play is rooted in the experiences of the heroine, gifted with the ability to feel strongly and subtly, and in her position in an environment that cannot understand her. This construction of the drama required careful development feminine character and a convincing depiction of the typical circumstances in which the hero finds himself. In The Poor Bride, Ostrovsky has not yet succeeded in solving this creative problem. However, in the secondary line of the comedy an original image was found, independent of literary stereotypes, embodying the specific features of the position and mentality of a simple Russian woman (Dunya). The capacious, diversely outlined character of this heroine opened up in Ostrovsky’s work a gallery of images of simple-minded women, the wealth of whose spiritual world is “worth a lot.”
Give a voice to a representative of the lower, “non-Europeanized” social strata, to make him a dramatic and even tragic hero, to express the pathos of experiences on his behalf in a form that meets the requirements of the realistic style, that is, so that his speech, gesture, behavior are recognizable, typical - this was difficult task, standing in front of the author. In the works of Pushkin, Gogol, and especially the writers of the 40s, in particular Dostoevsky, artistic elements accumulated that could be useful to Ostrovsky in solving this specific problem.
In the early 50s, a circle of writers, ardent admirers of his talent, formed around Ostrovsky. They became employees, and over time, the “young editorial staff” of the Moskvityanin magazine. The neo-Slavophile theories of this circle contributed to the playwright’s increased interest in traditional forms of national life and culture and inclined him to idealize patriarchal relations. His ideas about social comedy, its means and structure. So, declaring in a letter to Pogodin: “It is better for a Russian person to rejoice, seeing himself on stage, than to be sad. Correctors will be found even without us,” the writer, in fact, formulated a new attitude to the tasks of comedy. The world comedy tradition, which Ostrovsky carefully studied, offered many examples of cheerful humorous comedy that affirmed the ideals of immediate, natural feelings, youth, courage, democracy, and sometimes freethinking.
Ostrovsky wanted to base a life-affirming comedy on folklore motifs and folk play traditions. The fusion of folk poetic, ballad and social plots can already be noted in the comedy “Don’t Get in Your Own Sleigh.” The plot about the disappearance, “disappearance” of a girl, most often a merchant’s daughter, and her abduction by a cruel seducer was borrowed from folklore and popular among romantics. In Russia it was developed by Zhukovsky (“Lyudmila”, “Svetlana”), Pushkin (“The Groom”, Tatyana’s dream in “Eugene Onegin”, “The Station Agent”). The situation of the “abduction” of a simple girl by a person from a different social environment - a nobleman - was interpreted acutely in social terms by the writers of the “natural school”. Ostrovsky took this tradition into account. But the folklore and legendary ballad aspect was no less important for him than the social one. In subsequent plays of the first five years of the 50s, the importance of this element increases. In “Poverty is not a vice” and “Don’t live as you want,” the action takes place during calendar holidays, accompanied by numerous rituals, the origin of which goes back to ancient pagan beliefs, and the content is fed by myths, legends, and fairy tales.
And yet, in these plays by Ostrovsky, the legendary or fairy tale plot“sprouted” with modern problems. In “Don’t Get in Your Own Sleigh,” a collision arises as a result of an external invasion of a patriarchal environment, which is conceived as ignorant of significant internal contradictions, of a nobleman - a “hunter” for merchant brides with a rich dowry. In “Poverty is not a Vice,” the playwright already depicts the merchant environment as a world not free from serious internal conflicts.
Next to the poetry of folk rituals and holidays, he sees the hopeless poverty of workers, the bitterness of the worker’s dependence on the owner, children on their parents, the educated poor man on the ignorant moneybag. Ostrovsky also notes socio-historical changes that threaten the destruction of the patriarchal structure. In “Poverty is not a vice,” the older generation is already criticized, demanding unquestioning obedience from children; its right to unquestioned authority is called into question. The younger generation acts as representatives of the living and ever-renewing tradition of folk life, its aesthetics and ethics, and the old, repentant sinner, a disturber of peace in the family, who squandered capital “meteor” with the expressive name “Love”, acts as the herald of the rightness of youth. The playwright “instructs” this character to tell the words of truth to the unworthy head of the family; he assigns him the role of the person who miraculously unties all the tightly drawn knots of conflicts.
The apotheosis of Lyubim Tortsov at the end of the play, which aroused delight among the audience, brought upon the writer many reproaches and even ridicule literary critics. The playwright entrusted the role of a bearer of noble feelings and a preacher of goodness to a man who was not only fallen in the eyes of society, but also a “clown.” For the author, the trait of “buffoonery” in Lyubim Tortsov was extremely important. In the Yuletide action, which plays out on stage at the time when the tragic matchmaking of the villainous rich man takes place, separating the lovers, Lyubim Tortsov plays the role of a traditional joker grandfather. At the moment when the mummers appear in the house and the decorous order of life in the closed, impervious to prying eyes of the merchant's nest is disrupted, Lyubim Tortsov, a representative of the street, the outside world, the crowd, becomes the master of the situation.
The image of Lyubim Tortsov combines two elements folk drama- comedy, with its buffoonery, wit, farcical techniques - "knees", buffoonery, on the one hand, and tragedy, generating an emotional explosion, allowing pathetic tirades addressed to the public, direct, open expression of grief and indignation - on the other.
Later, in a number of his works, Ostrovsky embodied the contradictory elements, the internal drama of the moral principle, and folk truth in “paired” characters leading an argument, dialogue, or simply “in parallel” setting out the principles of harsh morality and asceticism (Ilya - “Don’t live the way you want”; Afonya - “Sin and misfortune do not live on anyone”) and the precepts of folk humanism, mercy (Agathon - “Don’t live like that...”, grandfather Arkhip - “Sin and misfortune...”). In the comedy “The Forest” (1871), the universal moral principle of kindness, creativity, fantasy, love of freedom also appears in a dual guise: in the form of a high tragic ideal, the bearer of real, “grounded” manifestations of which is the provincial tragedian Neschastlivtsev, and in its traditionally comedic forms - denials, travesties, parodies, which are embodied in the provincial comedian Schastlivtsev. The idea that folk morality itself, the very highest moral concepts of good, are the subject of dispute, that they are mobile and that, existing forever, they are updated all the time, determines the fundamental features of Ostrovsky’s dramaturgy.
The action in his plays, as a rule, takes place in one family, among relatives or in a narrow circle of people associated with the family to which the characters belong. At the same time, since the beginning of the 50s, in the playwright’s works, conflicts are determined not only by intra-family relations, but also by the state of society, the city, and the people. The action of many, perhaps most, plays takes place in the pavilion of a room or a house (“We’ll count our own people!”, “Poor Bride”). But already in the play “Not on My Sleigh...” one of the most dramatic episodes is transferred to a different setting, taking place in an inn, as if embodying the road, the wandering to which Dunya doomed herself after leaving her native home. The inn in “Don’t Live the Way You Want” has the same meaning. Here you meet wanderers coming to Moscow and leaving the capital, who are “driven” from home by grief, dissatisfaction with their situation and concern for loved ones. However, the inn is depicted not only as a refuge for travelers, but also as a place of temptation. There is revelry here, reckless fun, opposing the boredom of a decorous merchant family home. The suspicion of the city's inhabitants and the impenetrable isolation of their homes and families is contrasted with an open, windswept and festive freedom. The Maslenitsa “circling” in “Don’t Live That Way...” and the Christmas divination in “Poverty is not a Vice” predetermine the development of the plot. The dispute between antiquity and newness, which constitutes an important aspect of the dramatic conflict in Ostrovsky's plays of the early 50s, is interpreted ambiguously by him. Traditional forms of life are considered as eternally renewed, and only in this does the playwright see their viability. As soon as a tradition loses its ability to “deny itself”, to react to
Illustration:
Illustrations by P. M. Boklevsky for the comedies of A. N. Ostrovsky
Lithographs. 1859
living needs of modern people, so it turns into a dead, constraining form and loses its own living content. The old enters the new, into modern life, in which it can play the role of either a “fettering” element, oppressing its development, or a stabilizing element, ensuring the strength of the emerging novelty, depending on the content of the old that preserves the people’s life.
The clash between militant defenders of traditional forms of life and bearers of new aspirations, the will to free self-expression, to assert one’s own, personally developed and hard-won concept of truth and morality forms the core of the dramatic conflict in “The Thunderstorm” (1859), a drama that was assessed by contemporaries as a masterpiece of the writer and the most vivid embodiment of the public sentiment of the era of the fall of serfdom.
Dobrolyubov in his article “The Dark Kingdom” (1859) described Ostrovsky as a follower of Gogol, a critically thinking writer who objectively showed everything dark sides life of modern Russia: lack of legal consciousness, unlimited power of elders in the family, tyranny of the rich and powerful, the voicelessness of their victims, and interpreted this picture of universal slavery as a reflection of the political system dominant in the country. After the appearance of “The Thunderstorm,” the critic supplemented his interpretation of Ostrovsky’s work with a significant point about the awakening of protest and spiritual independence among the people as an important motive for the playwright’s work at a new stage (“A Ray of Light in a Dark Kingdom,” 1860). He saw the embodiment of the awakening people in the heroine of “The Thunderstorm” Katerina - a creative, emotional nature and organically incapable of putting up with the enslavement of thoughts and feelings, with hypocrisy and lies.
Disputes about Ostrovsky's position, about his attitude to patriarchal life, to antiquity and new trends in people's life began during the writer's collaboration in Moskvityanin and did not stop after Ostrovsky became a permanent contributor to Sovremennik in 1856. However, even an ardent and consistent supporter of the view of Ostrovsky as a singer of ancient life and patriarchal family relationships, A. Grigoriev, in the article “Art and Morality” admitted that “the artist, responding to the questions of the time, first turned sharply to his former
in a negative manner... Now there was a step towards protest. And the protest for a new beginning of people’s life, for freedom of mind, will and feelings... this protest broke out boldly with the “Thunderstorm.”
Dobrolyubov, like A. Grigoriev, noted the fundamental novelty of “The Thunderstorm,” the completeness of its embodiment of the features of the writer’s artistic system and the organic nature of his entire creative path. He defined Ostrovsky's dramas and comedies as “plays of life.”
Ostrovsky himself, along with the traditional designations of the genres of his plays as “comedy” and “drama” (he, unlike his contemporary Pisemsky, did not use the definition of “tragedy”) gave indications of the uniqueness of their genre nature: “pictures from Moscow life” or “ pictures of Moscow life”, “scenes from village life”, “scenes from the life of the outback”. These subtitles meant that the subject of the image was not the story of one character, but an episode in the life of an entire social environment, which was determined historically and territorially.
In “The Thunderstorm,” the main action takes place between members of the Kabanov merchant family and their entourage. However, the events here are elevated to the rank of phenomena of a general order, the heroes are typified, the central characters are given bright, individual characters, and numerous people take part in the events of the drama. minor characters, creating a broad social background.
Features of the poetics of the drama: the scale of the images of its heroes, driven by convictions, passions and adamant in their manifestation, the significance of the “choral principle” in the action, the opinions of the city residents, their moral concepts and prejudices, symbolic and mythological associations, the fatal course of events - give “The Thunderstorm” genre features tragedy.
The unity and dialectic of the relationship between the house and the city are expressed in the drama plastically, by changing, alternating scenes taking place on the high bank of the Volga, from which the distant Trans-Volga fields are visible, on the boulevard, and scenes conveying the closed family life, enclosed in the stuffy rooms of the Kabanovsky house, meetings of heroes in a ravine near the shore, under the starry night sky - and at the closed gates of the house. Closed gates that do not allow outsiders to enter, and the fence of the Kabanovs’ garden behind the ravine separate the free world from family life merchant's house.
The historical aspect of the conflict, its correlation with the problem of national cultural traditions and social progress in “The Thunderstorm” are expressed especially intensely. Two poles, two opposing trends in people's life, between which the “lines of force” of 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. Marfa Kabanova is a convinced and principled keeper of antiquity, once and for all found and established norms and rules of life. She legitimizes customary forms of life as an eternal norm and considers it her highest right to punish those who have violated any customs as the laws of existence, since for her there is nothing big or small in this single and unchanging, perfect structure. Having lost an indispensable attribute of life - the ability to change and die, all customs and rituals in Kabanova’s interpretation turned into an eternal, frozen, meaningless form. Her daughter-in-law Katerina, on the contrary, is unable to perceive any action outside of its content. Religion, family and kinship relationships, even a walk over the Volga - everything that among the Kalinovites, and especially in the Kabanovs’ house, has turned into an outwardly observed ritual, for Katerina it is either full of meaning or unbearable. Katerina carries within herself creativity development. It is accompanied by the motif of flying and driving fast. She wants to fly like a bird, and she dreams about flying, she tried to sail away in a boat along the Volga, and in her dreams she sees herself racing in a troika. This desire to move in space expresses her willingness to take risks and boldly accept the unknown.
The ethical views of the people in “The Thunderstorm” appear not only as a dynamic, internally contradictory spiritual sphere, but as a split, tragically torn by antagonism area of irreconcilable struggle, entailing human sacrifices, giving rise to hatred that does not subside even over the grave (Kabanova utters over the corpse of Katerina : “It’s a sin to cry about her!”).
Monologue of the tradesman Kuligin about cruel morals precedes the tragedy of Katerina, and his reproach to the Kalinovites and appeal to higher mercy serve as her epitaph. He is echoed by the desperate cry of Tikhon, Kabanova’s son, Katerina’s husband, who realized too late the tragedy of his wife’s situation and his own powerlessness: “Mama, you ruined her!.. Good for you, Katya! Why did I stay in the world and suffer!”
The dispute between Katerina and Kabanikha in the drama is accompanied by the dispute between the self-taught scientist Kuligin and the rich tyrant merchant Dikiy. Thus, the tragedy of the desecration of beauty and poetry (Katerina) is complemented by the tragedy of enslavement
science searching for thoughts. The drama of a woman’s slavish position in the family, the trampling of her feelings in the world of calculation (Ostrovsky’s constant theme - “Poor Bride”, “Warm Heart”, “Dowry”) in “The Thunderstorm” is accompanied by a depiction of the tragedy of the mind in the “dark kingdom”. In “The Thunderstorm” this theme is carried by the image of Kuligin. Before “The Thunderstorm”, it was heard in “Poverty is not a vice” in the portrayal of the self-taught poet Mitya, in “A Profitable Place” - in the story of Zhadov and dramatic stories about the fall of the lawyer Dosuzhev, the poverty of the teacher Mykin, the death of the intellectual Lyubimov, and later in the comedy “The Truth Is Good” , but happiness is better” in the tragic situation of the honest accountant Platon Zybkin.
In “A Profitable Place” (1857), as in “The Thunderstorm,” the conflict arises as a consequence of incompatibility, mutual total rejection of two forces unequal in their capabilities and potential: an established force endowed with official power, on the one hand, and an unrecognized force, but expressing the new needs of society and the demands of people interested in meeting these needs, on the other.
The hero of the play “Profitable Place” Zhadov, a university student who intrudes into the environment of officials and denies, in the name of the law and, most importantly, his own moral sense, the relationships that have long been established in this environment, becomes the object of hatred not only of his uncle, an important bureaucrat, but also of the head of the office, Yusov. , and the petty official Belogubov, and the widow of the collegiate assessor Kukushkina. For all of them, he is a daring troublemaker, a freethinker who encroaches on their well-being. Abuses for selfish purposes, violation of the law are interpreted by administration representatives as government activity, and the requirement to comply with the letter of the law is a manifestation of unreliability.
The main opponent of the hero, Yusov, contrasts the “scientific”, university definition of the meaning of laws in the political life of society, assimilated by Zhadov, as well as his moral sense, with the knowledge of the actual existence of the law in the then Russian society and the attitude towards the law, “sanctified” by centuries-old everyday life and “practical morality” . The “practical morality” of society is expressed in the play in the naive revelations of Belogubov and Yusov, the latter’s confidence in his right to abuse. The official actually appears not as an executor or even as an interpreter of the law, but as a bearer of unlimited power, although divided among many. In his later play “Ardent Heart” (1869), Ostrovsky, in the scene of the conversation between the mayor Gradoboev and ordinary people, demonstrated the originality of such an attitude towards the law: “Gradoboev: It’s high to God, but it’s far from the Tsar... And I’m close to you, so I’m to you and the judge... If we judge you according to the laws, we have many laws... and the laws are all strict... So, dear friends, as you wish: should I judge you according to the laws or according to my soul, as God is in my heart put it down?..
In 1860, Ostrovsky conceived a historical verse comedy“The Voevoda”, which, according to his plan, was to be included in the cycle of dramatic works “Nights on the Volga”, combining plays from modern folk life and historical chronicles. “Voevoda” shows the roots of modern social phenomena, including the “practical” attitude to law, as well as historical traditions of resistance to lawlessness.
In the 60-70s, the satirical element intensified in Ostrovsky’s work. He creates a number of comedies in which a satirical approach to reality prevails. The most significant of them are “Simplicity is Enough for Every Wise Man” (1868) and “Wolves and Sheep” (1875). Returning to the Gogolian principle of “pure comedy,” Ostrovsky revives and rethinks some structural features Gogol's comedies. In comedy, the characteristics of society and the social environment become of great importance. A “stranger” who penetrates into this environment, in moral and social terms, cannot be opposed to the society into which he ends up through misunderstanding or deception (“For every wise man...” cf. “The Inspector General”). The author uses a plot scheme about “rogues”, deceived by the “rogue” or misled by him (“Players” by Gogol - cf. “For Every Wise Man...”, “Wolves and Sheep”).
“For every wise man...” depicts the time of reforms, when timid innovations in the field of public administration and the very abolition of serfdom were accompanied by containment, “freezing” of the progressive process. In an atmosphere of distrust in democratic forces and persecution of radical figures who defended the interests of the people, renegadeism became common. The renegade and hypocrite becomes the central character of Ostrovsky's social comedy. The hero is a careerist who infiltrates the environment of major officials, Glumov. He mocks the stupidity, tyranny and obscurantism of “statesmen”, the emptiness of liberal phrase-mongers, and the hypocrisy and debauchery of influential ladies. But he betrays and abuses his own
beliefs, distorts his moral sense. In an effort to make a brilliant career, he bows to the “masters of society” he despises.
Ostrovsky's artistic system presupposed a balance of tragic and comedic principles, negation and ideal. In the 50s, such a balance was achieved by depicting, along with the bearers of the ideology of the “dark kingdom”, tyrants, young people with pure, warm hearts, and fair old men - bearers of folk morality. In the next decade, at a time when the depiction of tyranny in a number of cases acquired a satirical-tragic character, the pathos of a selfless desire for will, a feeling freed from conventions, lies, and coercion intensified (Katerina - “The Thunderstorm”, Parasha - “Warm Heart” , Aksyusha - “Forest”), the poetic background of the action acquired special significance: pictures of nature, the Volga expanses, the architecture of ancient Russian cities, forest landscapes, country roads (“Thunderstorm”, “Voevoda”, “Warm Heart”, “Forest”).
The manifestation in Ostrovsky’s work of a tendency to intensify satire and to develop purely satirical plots coincided with the period of his turning to historical and heroic themes. In historical chronicles and dramas, he showed the formation of many social phenomena and state institutions, which he considered an old evil of modern life and pursued in satirical comedies. However, its main content historical plays- depiction of the movements of the masses during crisis periods in the life of the country. In these movements he sees deep drama, tragedy and high poetry of patriotic feat, mass manifestations of selflessness and selflessness. The playwright conveys the pathos of the transformation of a “little man,” immersed in ordinary prosaic concerns about his well-being, into a citizen consciously committing actions of historical significance.
The hero of Ostrovsky’s historical chronicles, be it “Kozma Zakharyich Minin-Sukhoruk” (1862, 1866) “Dmitry the Pretender and Vasily Shuisky” (1867), “Tushino” (1867), is the masses of the people, suffering, seeking the truth, afraid of falling into “sin” and lies, defending their interests and their national independence, fighting and rebelling, sacrificing their property for the sake of common interests. “The disorder of the land,” discord and military defeats, the intrigues of power-hungry adventurers and boyars, the abuses of clerks and governors - all these disasters primarily affect the fate of the people. Creating historical chronicles depicting “the destinies of the people,” Ostrovsky was guided by the traditions of the dramaturgy of Shakespeare, Schiller, and Pushkin.
On the eve of the 60s, a new theme appeared in Ostrovsky’s work, which increased the dramatic tension of his plays and changed the very motivation of the action in them. This is a theme of passion. In the dramas “The Thunderstorm”, “Sin and Misfortune”, Ostrovsky made the central character a bearer of an integral character, a deeply feeling person, capable of reaching tragic heights in his emotional response to lies, injustice, humiliation of human dignity, deception in love. In the early 70s, he created the dramatic fairy tale “The Snow Maiden” (1873), in which, depicting various manifestations and “forms” love passion against the background of fantastic circumstances, compares it with the life-giving and destructive forces of nature. This work was an attempt by the writer - an expert in folklore, ethnography, folkloristics - to base a drama on reconstructed plots of ancient Slavic myths. Contemporaries noted that in this play Ostrovsky consciously follows the tradition of Shakespearean theater, especially such plays as “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, “The Tempest”, the plot of which is symbolic and poetic in nature and is based on motifs from folk tales and legends.
At the same time, Ostrovsky’s “The Snow Maiden” was one of the first in European drama at the end of the 19th century. attempts to interpret modern psychological problems in a work whose content conveys ancient folk ideas, and the artistic structure provides for synthesis poetic word, music and plastics, folk dance and ritual (cf. Ibsen’s Peer Gynt, Wagner’s musical dramas, Hauptmann’s The Sunken Bell).
Ostrovsky experienced an urgent need to expand the picture of the life of society, to update the “set” of modern types and dramatic situations from the beginning of the 70s, when the post-reform reality itself changed. At this time, there was a tendency in the playwright’s work to complicate the structure of plays and psychological characteristics heroes. Before that, the heroes in Ostrovsky’s works were distinguished by their integrity; he preferred the well-established characters of people whose beliefs corresponded to their social practice. In the 70-80s, such persons were replaced in his works by contradictory, complex natures, experiencing heterogeneous influences, sometimes distorting their inner appearance. During the events depicted in the play
they change their views, become disappointed in their ideals and hopes. Remaining as before merciless towards supporters of routine, depicting them satirically both when they show stupid conservatism and when they lay claim to the reputation of mysterious, original personalities, to the “title” of liberals, Ostrovsky depicts with deep sympathy the true bearers of the idea of enlightenment and humanity. But even these beloved heroes in later plays he often displays in dual light. These heroes express high “knightly”, “Schiller” feelings in a comic, “lowered” form, and their real, tragic situation is softened by the author’s humor (Neschastlivtsev - “Forest”, Korpelov - “Labor Bread”, 1874; Zybkin - “Truth - good, but happiness is better”, 1877; Meluzov - “Talents and Admirers”, 1882). The main place in Ostrovsky's later plays is occupied by the image of a woman, and if previously she was portrayed as a victim of family tyranny or social inequality, now she is a person who presents her demands to society, but shares its delusions and bears her share of responsibility for the state of public morals. The woman of the post-reform era ceased to be a “temple” recluse. In vain do the heroines of the plays “The Last Sacrifice” (1877) and “The Heart is Not a Stone” (1879) try to “seclude themselves” in the silence of their home, and here they are overtaken by modern life in the form of prudent, cruel businessmen and adventurers who consider the beauty and very personality of a woman as "application" to capital. Surrounded by successful businessmen and losers dreaming of success, she cannot always distinguish true values from imaginary ones. The playwright peers with condescending sympathy at the new attempts of her contemporaries to gain independence, noting their mistakes and everyday inexperience. However, he is especially dear to subtle, spiritual natures, women striving for creativity, moral purity, proud and strong in spirit Kruchinina - “Guilty Without Guilt”, 1884).
IN best drama writer of this period “Dowry” (1878) a modern woman, who feels like an individual, independently makes important life decisions, is faced with the cruel laws of society and can neither reconcile with them nor oppose new ideals to them. Being under the charm of a strong man, a bright personality, she does not immediately realize that his charm is inseparable from the power that wealth gives him, and from the merciless cruelty of the “capital collector.” Larisa's death is a tragic way out of the insoluble moral contradictions of the time. The tragedy of the heroine’s situation is aggravated by the fact that during the events depicted in the drama, experiencing bitter disappointments, she herself changes. The falsity of the ideal, in the name of which she was ready to make any sacrifices, is revealed to her. In all its ugliness, the position to which it is doomed is revealed - the role of an expensive thing. The rich are fighting for its possession, confident that beauty, talent, a spiritually rich personality - everything can be bought. The death of the heroine of “The Dowry” and Katerina in “The Thunderstorm” mark a verdict on a society that is unable to preserve the treasure of an inspired personality, beauty and talent; it is doomed to moral impoverishment, to the triumph of vulgarity and mediocrity.
In Ostrovsky's later plays, the comedic colors that helped to recreate social spheres separated from each other, the life of different classes, differing in their way of life and way of speech, gradually faded. Wealthy merchants, industrialists and representatives of commercial capital, noble landowners and influential officials formed a single society at the end of the 19th century. Noting this, Ostrovsky at the same time sees the growth of the democratic intelligentsia, which is represented in his latest works no longer in the form of lonely eccentric dreamers, but as a certain established environment with its own way of working life, its own ideals and interests. Ostrovsky attached great importance to the moral influence of representatives of this environment on society. He considered serving art, science, and education to be the high mission of the intelligentsia.
Ostrovsky's dramaturgy in many respects contradicted the cliches and canons of European, especially modern French, dramaturgy with its ideal of a “well-made” play, complex intrigue and a tendentiously unambiguous solution to straightforwardly posed topical problems. Ostrovsky had a negative attitude towards sensational and “topical” plays, towards the oratorical declarations of their heroes and theatrical effects.
Chekhov rightly considered the plots characteristic of Ostrovsky to be “even, smooth, ordinary life, as it really is.” Ostrovsky himself has repeatedly argued that the simplicity and vitality of the plot are the greatest merit of any literary work. The love of young people, their desire to unite their destinies, overcoming material calculations and class prejudices, the struggle for existence and the thirst for spiritual
independence, the need to protect one’s personality from the encroachments of those in power and the pangs of pride of the humiliated “
Ostrovsky’s work is now included in the school curriculum; many of our compatriots know and love him. Alexander Nikolaevich Ostrovsky - playwright, native of Moscow, son of a lawyer and grandson Orthodox priest. He studied at Moscow University, at the Faculty of Law (did not graduate), served in the Moscow courts, then became a professional theater figure and writer-playwright.
In comparison with the plays of Turgenev or A.K. Tolstoy, which are primarily works of literature, Ostrovsky’s dramaturgy has a different nature. It is intended not so much for reading as for stage execution, and should be studied, first of all, within the framework of the history of the theater. However, the history of literature cannot underestimate the work of the greatest Russian playwright of the second thirds of the XIX V.
Considering Ostrovsky’s work, we note that among his youthful experiences there are essays and poems. The comedy “Insolvent Debtor” that made him famous, which was renamed “Bankrupt” (and later renamed “Bankrupt”) Our people - let's count!”), appeared in the magazine “Moskvityanin” (1850), although it was not allowed to be staged at that time. The false bankruptcy that the merchant Bolshov declares in this play is a collision based on facts of real life (a wave of bankruptcies that swept through business circles on the eve of the writing of the comedy). However, the plot basis of the comedy, which is close to an anecdote, in no way exhausts its content. The plot undergoes an almost tragic turn: the false bankrupt found himself abandoned in a debt prison by his son-in-law Podkhalyuzin and his own daughter Lipochka, who refused to ransom him. Shakespeare's allusions (the fate of King Lear) were understood by many contemporaries.
After literary success“Bankrut” in Ostrovsky’s work in the 1850s, the most interesting “Slavophile” period began, which brought a wonderful comedy called “ Don't get in your own sleigh"(1853) - his first play, immediately and with great success staged - as well as the drama " Don't live the way you want"(1855) and one of best plays playwright Poverty is not a vice"(created in 1854). Vice (the images of Vikhorev, Korshunov) is invariably defeated in them by high morality, based on Orthodox Christian truths and national patriarchal foundations (the images of Borodkin, Rusakov, Malomalsky). Beautifully written literary character— We love Tortsov from “Poverty is not a vice,” who managed to bring his brother Gordey to repentance and unite the lovers - the clerk Mitya and Lyubov Gordeevna (the instant spiritual revival of Gordey Tortsov was called “implausible” many times, but the author clearly did not strive for plausibility in a naively realistic sense - depicting Christian repentance, which is precisely capable of immediately making the sinner a “different person”). The action of “Poverty is not a vice” takes place at Christmas time, the action of “Don’t live as you want” takes place at Maslenitsa, and jubilant fun, a festive atmosphere intones both plays (however, in “Don’t live as you want” there is also a motif of devilish temptation, in which the buffoon Eremka involved Peter).
Stands somewhat apart in the con. 1850 - early 1860s the so-called “Balzamin” trilogy, dedicated to collisions from the life of the province: “ Holiday sleep - before lunch"(1857), " Your own dogs are biting - don’t pester others"(written in 1861) and " What you go for is what you will find", better known as " Balzaminov's marriage"(1861).
The rapprochement of A.N. Ostrovsky with the camp of the authors of Nekrasov’s Sovremennik was marked by an immediate sharp aggravation of socially accusatory motives in his work. This should include, first of all, the comedy “Profitable Place” (1857), the drama “ Kindergarten" (1859) and " Storm"(1859). Complex collision " Thunderstorms“, where in the center the heroine’s adultery, which took place in a patriarchal merchant family characterized by extreme strictness of moral rules, led by a despotic mother-in-law, was one-sidedly perceived in the spirit of the “emancipatory” theses of the “democratic” journalism of that time. The suicide of the main character (from the point of view of Orthodoxy, a terrible sin) was interpreted as an act of “noble pride”, “protest” and a kind of spiritual victory over the “inert” “domostroevsky” moral and social (as was implied, religious Christian) norms. When the highly talented democratic critic N.A. Dobrolyubov, in an article of the same name, declared the main character “A ray of light in a dark kingdom,” this metaphor of his quickly turned into a template according to which, a century later, this play by Ostrovsky was interpreted in Russian high school. At the same time, an equally important component of the problematic of “The Thunderstorm” was missed, and even today is often missed: the “eternal” theme for literature of the clash of love and duty. Meanwhile, it is largely thanks to the presence of this theme in the work that the play still retains its dramaturgical liveliness (however, it has always been rarely staged by theaters outside of Russia).
The merchant environment, which during the period of Slafianophile hobbies the playwright portrayed as one of the most morally stable and spiritually pure components of the Russian social organism, was presented in “The Thunderstorm” as a terrible “dark kingdom”, oppressing youth, based on the senseless tyranny of elders, evil and ignorant. Katerina feels so persecuted that she repeatedly speaks throughout the play about suicide as her only way out. On the other hand, this drama by Ostrovsky, released about two years earlier than Fathers and Sons by I.S. Turgenev, prompts us to state: the theme of “fathers and sons” in its acute social turn seemed to hang in the literary atmosphere of that time. The youth from merchant circles depicted in “The Thunderstorm” (Katerina and Boris, Varvara and Kudryash) understand and accept life values, in general, the everyday truth of the older generation, no more than Evgeny Bazarov and Arkady Kirsanov.
The main character, Katerina Kabanova, was written by the playwright with great sympathy for her. This is the image of a poetic, sentimental and deeply religious young woman who was not married for love. The husband is kind, but timid and is subordinate to his domineering mother-widow Marfa Kabanova (Kabanikha). It is significant, however, that Katerina, at the author’s will, falls in love not with some internally strong person, a “real man” (which would be psychologically natural), but with the merchant’s son Boris, who in many respects is as similar to her husband as one drop of water to another. (Boris is timid and completely subservient to his domineering uncle Dikiy - however, he is noticeably smarter than Tikhon Kabanov and is not devoid of education).
In the early 1860s. Ostrovsky created a kind of dramatic trilogy about the Time of Troubles, composed of poetic “chronicles” “ Kozma Zakharyich Minin, Sukhoruk"(in 1862), " Dmitry the Pretender and Vasily Shuisky"(year of creation - 1867) and " Tushino"(1867). About this time in the 18th century. written by A.P. Sumarokov (“Dimitri the Pretender”), and in the first half of the 19th century. A.S. Pushkin (“Boris Godunov”), who evoked many imitations among his contemporaries in prose, poetry, and drama. The central work of Ostrovsky’s tragedy (“Dmitry the Pretender and Vasily Shuisky”) is dedicated to the period chronologically shortly before which the plot of Pushkin’s “Boris Godunov” ends. Ostrovsky seemed to emphasize their connection by choosing a poetic form for his work—moreover, white iambic pentameter, as in “Boris Godunov.” Unfortunately, the great playwright did not prove himself as a master of verse. Taking a “historical” turn in creativity; Ostrovsky also wrote the comedy " Voivode"(1865) and the psychological drama " Vasilisa Melentyeva"(1868), and a few years later the comedy " 17th century comedian».
Ostrovsky firmly returned to the path of socially accusatory drama in the 1860s, creating one after another comedies that remain in the theater repertoire to this day, such as “ Simplicity is enough for every wise man"(year of creation - 1868), " Warm heart"(1869), " Mad money"(1870), " Forest"(1871), " Wolves and sheep"(1875), etc. It has long been noted that there are positive characters in only one of the listed plays - in " Lesya"(Aksyusha and actor Gennady Neschastlivtsev) - that is, these are sharply satirical works. In them, Ostrovsky acted as an innovator, using the conventional techniques of the so-called vaudeville dramaturgy in large dramatic forms, for which he was criticized by reviewers who did not understand the meaning of his efforts. He also tried to resume creativity in the spirit of his comedies, published in the 1850s by the Slavophile “Moskvityanin”. These are, for example, plays such as “Maslenitsa is not for everyone” (written in 1871), “Truth is good, but happiness is better” (created in 1876), etc. But “folk” motifs here acquired an outwardly ornamental, somewhat artificial.
In addition to “Forest”, some others best works Ostrovsky refracts the theme difficult destinies theater people. These are his later dramas" Talents and fans" (1882) and " Guilty without guilt"(written in 1884), in the center of each of which is the image of a talented actress who is forced at a certain point in her life to step over something personal, human (in the first play Negina breaks up with her beloved fiancé Meluzov, in the second Otradina-Kruchinina gives the child to be raised by Galchikha ). Many of the problems posed in these plays, unfortunately, have little to do with any particular social structure, although nineteenth-century audiences could seem topical. But, on the other hand, their eternal character helps the very plots of the plays remain alive and relevant to this day.
The latter can also be attributed to Ostrovsky’s drama “ Dowryless"(year of creation - 1878) - one of the indisputable peaks of A.N.’s creativity. Ostrovsky. Perhaps this is his best work. Larisa - beautiful girl, for whom, however, there is no dowry (that is, marrying her, from the point of view of people of a certain psychology, was economically “unprofitable”, and according to the concepts of that time, simply “not prestigious” - by the way, Otradina will be made the same dowryless "Without the guilt of the guilty"). At the same time, Larisa is clearly not one of those who solved this problem by going to a monastery. As a result, she arouses a purely carnal and cynical interest in the men hovering around her and competing with her. However, she herself openly despises the poor and not brilliant Karandyshev, who is ready to marry her and is considered her fiancé. But Larisa, like a girl, naively and enthusiastically considers Paratov’s primitive effects with his “broad gestures” for a long time to be “the ideal of a man” and sacredly believes him. When he grossly deceived her, she loses ground under her feet. Going on a scandalous boat trip with Paratov, Larisa says goodbye at home: “Either you are happy, mom, or look for me in the Volga.” Larisa, however, did not have the chance to drown herself - she, who had belatedly become disillusioned with the “ideal man,” was shot by her finally rejected groom, the pitiful Karandyshev, so that she “wouldn’t go to anyone.”
What a sharp switch from topical “modern” issues looks like is A.N.’s writing. Ostrovsky's fairy tale plays " Snow Maiden"(1873) - conceived as an extravaganza, but full of high symbolism (Ostrovsky also wrote the fairy tale play " Ivan Tsarevich"). A craving for symbols is generally characteristic of Ostrovsky’s style. Even the titles of his works either resemble proverbs (“Don’t live the way you want”, “Truth is good, but happiness is better”, etc.) or look like meaningful symbols (“Thunderstorm”, “Forest”, “Wolves and Sheep” etc.). “The Snow Maiden” depicts the conventionally fairy-tale kingdom of the Berendeys - a kind of fantasy on the themes of Slavic mythology. The plot of the folk tale underwent a complex twist under the master's pen. Doomed to melt with the arrival of summer, the Snow Maiden managed to recognize love, and her death turns out to be a kind of “optimistic tragedy.”
“The Snow Maiden” testifies, of course, not so much to the author’s deep factual knowledge of Slavic mythology, ancient rituals and folklore, but rather to an intuitive, insightful understanding of their spirit. Ostrovsky created a magnificent artistic image of Slavic fairy-tale antiquity, which soon inspired N.A. Rimsky-Korsakov on his famous opera and later repeatedly gave impetus to the artistic imagination of other authors (for example, the ballet “The Rite of Spring” by I.F. Stravinsky). In “The Snow Maiden”, like many other plays (“Poverty is not a vice”, “The Thunderstorm”, “Dowry”, etc.), songs are heard on stage - genuine folk songs or written in the “folk spirit”.
The enormous importance of A.N. Ostrovsky added color to speech, showing himself to be a supporter of what Dostoevsky called writing “essences.” His characters usually speak, scattering an abundance of words and phrases designed to depict the language of a certain social environment, as well as characterize the personal cultural and educational level of this particular character, the characteristics of his psychology and sphere of life interests. Thus, the language of the pretentious and ignorant heroine of “Bankrut” Lipochka, who, for example, reproaches her mother: “Why did you refuse the groom? What is not an incomparable party? Why not capidon? She calls the mantilla “mantella”, the proportion “porportia”, etc. etc. Podkhalyuzin, whom the girl marries, is a match for her. When she, coyly, asks him: “Why don’t you, Lazar Elizarych, speak French?”, he answers bluntly: “And because we have no reason.” In other comedies, the holy fool is called “ugly,” the consequence “means,” the quadrille “quadrille,” etc.
A.N. Ostrovsky is the largest Russian playwright of the 19th century, who gave national theater a first-class repertoire, and classical works of Russian literature that retain enormous artistic significance for our time.
Parents. His father, Nikolai Fedorovich, was the son of a priest, he himself graduated from the Kostroma Seminary, then the Moscow Theological Academy, but began to practice as a lawyer, dealing with property and commercial matters; rose to the rank of titular councilor, and in 1839 received the nobility.
Education year - Alexander Ostrovsky was sent to the 1st Moscow Gymnasium year - Ostrovsky graduates from high school and enters the Faculty of Law of Moscow University, but did not complete the courses. His father wants Alexander to become a lawyer, but his desire for literary creativity and his passion for theater turn out to be stronger.
1843 service in the office of the Moscow Conscientious Court. Work in the Moscow Commercial Court.
In 1853 he entered into a civil marriage with Agafya Ivanovna Ivanova, who had four children from him. In 1869, after the death of Agafya Ivanovna from tuberculosis, Ostrovsky entered into new marriage with Maly Theater actress Maria Vasilyeva. From his second marriage the writer had five children.
After the death of the writer, the Moscow Duma established a reading room named after A.N. in Moscow. Ostrovsky. On May 27, 1929, in Moscow, on Teatralnaya Square in front of the Maly Theater, a monument to Ostrovsky was unveiled (sculptor N.A. Andreev, architect I.P. Mashkov). A.N. Ostrovsky is listed in the Russian Divo Book of Records as “the most prolific playwright” (1993).
Work in the judiciary greatly helped Ostrovsky as a writer and provided rich material for future creativity, because he was exposed to unimagined stories from private life ordinary people. The result is 48 works, in which 547 characters act.
On January 14, 1853, the curtain rose on the first performance of the comedy “Don’t Get in Your Own Sleigh” at the Maly Theater.
First period () The time of the first literary experiments. He relied on Gogol’s traditions and the creative experience of the “natural school” of the 1840s. During these years the first dramatic works, including the comedy “Bankrut” (“We will count our own people!”), for which the author was dismissed from service and placed under police supervision.
The second period () is called “Moscow”. Ostrovsky became close to the young employees of the Moskvityanin magazine: A.A. Grigoriev, T.I. Filippov, B.N. Almazov and E.N. Edelson. During this period, only three plays were written: “Don’t get into your own sleigh,” “Poverty is not a vice,” and “Don’t live the way you want.”
Third period () I became close to the leaders of the Raznochinsky democracy by the staff of the Sovremennik magazine. The creative outcome of this period were the plays “At Someone Else’s Feast There’s a Hangover,” “A Profitable Place,” and “The Thunderstorm.”
Fourth period () The genre range expanded, the poetics of his works became more diverse. 1) comedies from merchant life (“Maslenitsa is not for everyone”, “The truth is good, but happiness is better”, “The heart is not a stone”), 2) satirical comedies (“Simplicity is enough for every wise man”, “Warm heart”, “Mad money”, “Wolves and Sheep”, “Forest”), 3) plays about “little people” (“An old friend is better than two new ones”, “Hard Days”, “Jokers” and the trilogy about Balzaminov), 4) historical plays- chronicles (“Kozma Zakharyich Minin-Sukhoruk”, “Tushino”, etc.), 5) psychological dramas (“Dowry”, “The Last Victim”, etc.). The fairy-tale play “The Snow Maiden” stands apart.
