What is the merit of A.N. Ostrovsky? Why, according to I.A. Goncharov, only after Ostrovsky we could say that we have our own Russian national theater? (Refer to the epigraph of the lesson)
Yes, there were “The Minor”, “Woe from Wit”, “The Inspector General”, there were plays by Turgenev, A.K. Tolstoy, Sukhovo-Kobylin, but there were not enough of them! Most of the theaters' repertoire consisted of empty vaudevilles and translated melodramas. With the advent of Alexander Nikolaevich Ostrovsky, who devoted all his talent exclusively to drama, the repertoire of theaters changed qualitatively. He alone wrote as many plays as all the Russian classics combined: about fifty! Every season for more than thirty years, theaters received new play, or even two! Now there was something to play!
Arose new school acting, new theatrical aesthetics, the Ostrovsky Theater appeared, which became the property of all Russian culture!
What determined Ostrovsky’s attention to the theater? The playwright himself answered this question like this: “Dramatic poetry is closer to the people than all other branches of literature. All other works are written for educated people, but dramas and comedies are written for the whole people...” Writing for the people, awakening their consciousness, shaping their taste is a responsible task. And Ostrovsky took her seriously. If not exemplary theater, the common public may mistake operettas and melodramas, which irritate curiosity and sensitivity, for real art.”
So, let us note the main services of A.N Ostrovsky to the Russian theater.
1) Ostrovsky created the theater repertoire. He wrote 47 original plays and 7 plays in collaboration with young authors. Twenty plays were translated by Ostrovsky from Italian, English, and French.
2) No less important is the genre diversity of his dramaturgy: these are “scenes and pictures” from Moscow life, dramatic chronicles, dramas, comedies, the spring fairy tale “The Snow Maiden”.
3) In his plays, the playwright depicted various classes, characters, professions, he created 547 characters, from the king to the tavern servant, with their inherent characters, habits, and unique speech.
4) Ostrovsky’s plays cover a huge historical period: from the XVII to the XΙX centuries.
5) The plays take place in landowners' estates, in inns and on the banks of the Volga. On the boulevards and on the streets of county towns.
6) Ostrovsky’s heroes - and this is the main thing - are living characters with their own characteristics, manners, with their own destiny, with a living language unique to this hero.
A century and a half has passed since the first performance was staged (January 1853; “Don’t Get in Your Own Sleigh”), and the playwright’s name remains on theater posters; performances are performed on many stages around the world.
Interest in Ostrovsky is especially acute in troubled times when a person is looking for answers to the most important issues life: what is happening to us? Why? what are we like? Perhaps it is precisely at such times that a person lacks emotions, passions, and a sense of the fullness of life. And we still need what Ostrovsky wrote about: “And a deep sigh for the whole theater, and unfeigned warm tears, hot speeches that would pour straight into the soul.”
The playwright almost never included political and philosophical problems, facial expressions and gestures, through playing out the details of their costumes and household furnishings. To enhance comic effects the playwright usually introduced minor persons into the plot - relatives, servants, hangers-on, random passers-by - and incidental circumstances of everyday life. Such, for example, is Khlynov’s retinue and the gentleman with a mustache in “A Warm Heart,” or Apollo Murzavetsky with his Tamerlane in the comedy “Wolves and Sheep,” or the actor Schastlivtsev with Neschastlivtsev and Paratov in “The Forest” and “Dowry,” etc. The playwright continued to strive to reveal the characters’ characters not only in the course of events, but no less through the peculiarities of their everyday dialogues - “characterological” dialogues, which he aesthetically mastered in “His People...”.
Thus, in the new period of creativity, Ostrovsky appears as an established master, possessing a complete system of dramatic art. His fame and his social and theatrical connections continue to grow and become more complex. The sheer abundance of plays created in the new period was the result of an ever-increasing demand for Ostrovsky's plays from magazines and theaters. During these years, the playwright not only worked tirelessly, but also found the strength to help less gifted and novice writers, and sometimes actively participate with them in their work. Thus, in the creative collaboration with Ostrovsky, a number of plays were written by N. Solovyov (the best of them are “The Marriage of Belugin” and “Savage”), as well as by P. Nevezhin.
Constantly promoting the production of his plays on the stages of the Moscow Maly and St. Petersburg Alexandria theaters, Ostrovsky knew well the state of theatrical affairs, which were mainly under the jurisdiction of the bureaucratic state apparatus, and was bitterly aware of their glaring shortcomings. He saw that he did not depict the noble and bourgeois intelligentsia in their ideological quests, as Herzen, Turgenev, and partly Goncharov did. In his plays, he showed the everyday social life of ordinary representatives of the merchants, bureaucrats, and nobility, life where personal, particularly love, conflicts revealed clashes of family, monetary, and property interests.
But Ostrovsky’s ideological and artistic awareness of these aspects of Russian life had a deep national-historical meaning. Through the everyday relationships of those people who were the masters and masters of life, their general social condition was revealed. Just as, according to Chernyshevsky’s apt remark, the cowardly behavior of the young liberal, the hero of Turgenev’s story “Asya,” on a date with a girl was a “symptom of the disease” of all noble liberalism, its political weakness, so the everyday tyranny and predation of merchants, officials, and nobles appeared a symptom of a more terrible disease is their complete inability to at least in any way give their activities national progressive significance.
This was quite natural and logical in the pre-reform period. Then the tyranny, arrogance, and predation of the Voltovs, Vyshnevskys, and Ulanbekovs were a manifestation of the “dark kingdom” of serfdom, already doomed to be scrapped. And Dobrolyubov correctly pointed out that, although Ostrovsky’s comedy “cannot provide the key to explaining many of the bitter phenomena depicted in it,” nevertheless, “it can easily suggest many analogous considerations related to everyday life that it does not directly concern.” And the critic explained this by the fact that the “types” of tyrants drawn by Ostrovsky “are not. rarely contain not only exclusively merchant or bureaucratic, but also national (i.e. national) features.” In other words, Ostrovsky's plays of 1840-1860. indirectly exposed all the “dark kingdoms” of the autocratic-serf system.
In the post-reform decades, the situation changed. Then “everything turned upside down” and a new, bourgeois system of Russian life gradually began to “establish itself.” And the question of how exactly this was “fitted” was of enormous, national significance. new system, to what extent the new ruling class, the Russian bourgeoisie, could take part in the struggle for the destruction of the remnants of the “dark kingdom” of serfdom and the entire autocratic-landowner system.
Almost twenty new plays by Ostrovsky on modern themes gave a clear negative answer to this fateful question. The playwright, as before, depicted the world of private social, household, family and property relations. Not everything was clear to him about the general trends of their development, and his “lyre” sometimes made not quite the “right sounds” in this regard. But in general, Ostrovsky's plays contained a certain objective orientation. They exposed both the remnants of the old “dark kingdom” of despotism and the newly emerging “ dark kingdom” bourgeois predation, money rush, death of all moral values in an atmosphere of general buying and selling. They showed that Russian businessmen and industrialists are not capable of rising to the level of awareness of the interests of national development, that some of them, such as Khlynov and Akhov, are only capable of indulging in crude pleasures, others, like Knurov and Berkutov, can only subjugate everything around them with their predatory, “wolf” interests, and for still others, such as Vasilkov or Frol Pribytkov, the interests of profit are only covered up by external decency and very narrow cultural demands. Ostrovsky's plays, in addition to the plans and intentions of their author, objectively outlined a certain perspective of national development - the prospect of the inevitable destruction of all remnants of the old “dark kingdom” of autocratic-serf despotism, not only without the participation of the bourgeoisie, not only over its head, but along with the destruction of its own predatory "dark kingdom"
The reality depicted in Ostrovsky's everyday plays was a form of life devoid of nationally progressive content, and therefore easily revealed internal comic inconsistency. Ostrovsky dedicated his outstanding dramatic talent to its disclosure. Based on the tradition of Gogol’s realistic comedies and stories, rebuilding it in accordance with the new aesthetic demands put forward by “ natural school” of the 1840s and formulated by Belinsky and Herzen, Ostrovsky traced the comic inconsistency of the social and everyday life of the ruling strata of Russian society, delving into the “world of details,” examining thread by thread the “web of daily relationships.” This was the main achievement of the new dramatic style created by Ostrovsky.
Essay on literature on the topic: The significance of Ostrovsky’s work for the ideological and aesthetic development of literature
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What is the significance of the work of A. N. Ostrovsky in world drama.
- The significance of A. N. Ostrovsky for the development of Russian drama and stage, his role in the achievements of all Russian culture are undeniable and enormous. He did as much for Russia as Shakespeare did for England or Moliere for France.
Ostrovsky wrote 47 original plays (not counting the second editions of Kozma Minin and Voevoda and seven plays in collaboration with S. A. Gedeonov (Vasilisa Melentyeva), N. Ya. Solovyov (Happy Day, The Marriage of Belugin, Savage, It Shines, but Doesn’t Warm) and P. M. Nevezhin (Blazh, Old in a new way). In the words of Ostrovsky himself, this is a whole. folk theater.
But Ostrovsky's dramaturgy is pure Russian phenomenon, although his work,
certainly influenced the drama and theater of the fraternal peoples,
included in the USSR. His plays have been translated and staged
scenes of Ukraine, Belarus, Armenia, Georgia, etc.Ostrovsky's plays gained fans abroad. His plays are staged
in theaters of former people's democracies, especially on stages
Slavic states(Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia).
After the Second World War, the playwright's plays increasingly attracted the attention of publishers and theaters in capitalist countries.
Here they were primarily interested in the plays The Thunderstorm, There is Enough Simplicity for Every Wise Man, The Forest, The Snow Maiden, Wolves and Sheep, and The Dowry.
But such popularity and such recognition as Shakespeare or Moliere, Russian
the playwright has not earned any accolades in world culture. - Everything I described great playwright, has not been eradicated to this day.
Alexander Nikolaevich Ostrovsky (1823-1886) rightfully occupies a worthy place among largest representatives world drama.
The significance of the activities of Ostrovsky, who for more than forty years annually published in the best magazines of Russia and staged plays on the stages of the imperial theaters of St. Petersburg and Moscow, many of which were events in the literary and theatrical life of the era, is briefly but accurately described in the famous letter of I.A. . Goncharov, addressed to the playwright himself.
“You have donated a whole library of works of art to literature, and you have created your own special world for the stage. You alone completed the building, at the foundation of which Fonvizin, Griboedov, and Gogol laid the cornerstones. But only after you, we Russians can proudly say: “We have our own Russian, national theater.” It, in fairness, should be called the Ostrovsky Theater.”
Ostrovsky began his creative path in the 40s, during the lifetime of Gogol and Belinsky, and completed it in the second half of the 80s, at a time when A.P. Chekhov was already firmly established in literature.
The conviction that the work of a playwright creating a theater repertoire is a high public service permeated and directed Ostrovsky’s activities. He was organically connected with the life of literature.
In his youth, the playwright wrote critical articles and participated in the editorial affairs of Moskvityanin, trying to change the direction of this conservative magazine, then, publishing in Sovremennik and Otechestvennye Zapiski, became friendly with N. A. Nekrasov, L. N. Tolstoy, I. S. Turgenev, I. A. Goncharov and other writers. He followed their work, discussed their works with them and listened to their opinions about his plays.
In an era when state theaters were officially considered “imperial” and were under the control of the Ministry of the Court, and provincial entertainment institutions were placed at the complete disposal of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs, Ostrovsky put forward the idea of a complete restructuring of the theatrical business in Russia. He argued for the need to replace the court and commercial theater with a folk one.
Not limiting himself to the theoretical development of this idea in special articles and notes, the playwright during many years practically fought for its implementation. The main areas in which he realized his views on theater were his creativity and work with actors.
Drama, literary basis Ostrovsky considered the performance its defining element. The theater’s repertoire, which gives the viewer the opportunity to “see Russian life and Russian history on stage,” according to his concepts, was addressed primarily to the democratic public, “for whom they want to write and are obliged to write folk writers" Ostrovsky defended the principles of author's theater.
He considered the theaters of Shakespeare, Moliere, and Goethe to be exemplary experiments of this kind. Connection in one person author dramatic works and their interpreter on stage - the actors' teacher, the director - seemed to Ostrovsky a guarantee artistic integrity, organic activity of the theater.
This idea, in the absence of direction, with the traditional focus of theatrical performance on the performance of individual, “solo” actors, was innovative and fruitful. Its significance has not been exhausted even today, when the director has become the main figure in the theater. It is enough to recall B. Brecht’s theater “Berliner Ensemble” to be convinced of this.
Overcoming the inertia of the bureaucratic administration, literary and theatrical intrigues, Ostrovsky worked with actors, constantly directing the productions of his new plays at the Maly Moscow and Alexandrinsky St. Petersburg theaters.
The essence of his idea was to implement and consolidate the influence of literature on the theater. He fundamentally and categorically condemned what was becoming more and more apparent since the 70s. the subordination of dramatic writers to the tastes of actors - favorites of the stage, their prejudices and whims. At the same time, Ostrovsky could not imagine drama without theater.
His plays were written with real performers and artists in mind. He emphasized: in order to write good play, the author must have full knowledge of the laws of the stage, the purely plastic side of the theater.
He was not ready to give power over stage artists to not every playwright. He was sure that only a writer who created his own unique dramaturgy, his own special world on stage, has something to say to the artists, has something to teach them. Ostrovsky's attitude towards modern theater determined by his artistic system. The hero of Ostrovsky's dramaturgy was the people.
The whole society and, moreover, the socio-historical life of the people were represented in his plays. It was not without reason that critics N. Dobrolyubov and A. Grigoriev, who approached Ostrovsky’s work from mutually opposite positions, saw in his works a holistic picture of the existence of the people, although they assessed the life depicted by the writer differently.
This writer’s orientation towards the mass phenomena of life corresponded to the principle of ensemble acting, which he defended, the inherent awareness of the playwright of the importance of unity, the integrity of the creative aspirations of the group of actors participating in the play.
In his plays Ostrovsky portrayed social phenomena, which have deep roots - conflicts, the origins and causes of which often go back to distant historical eras.
He saw and showed the fruitful aspirations arising in society, and the new evil rising in it. The bearers of new aspirations and ideas in his plays are forced to wage a difficult struggle with old conservative customs and views, sanctified by tradition, and in them new evil collides with the ethical ideal of the people that has evolved over centuries, with strong traditions of resistance to social injustice and moral injustice.
Each character in Ostrovsky's plays is organically connected with his environment, his era, the history of his people. At the same time, an ordinary person, in whose concepts, habits and very speech his kinship with the social and national peace, is the focus of interest in Ostrovsky's plays.
The individual fate of the individual, the happiness and misfortune of the individual, ordinary person, his needs, his struggle for his personal well-being excite the viewer of the dramas and comedies of this playwright. The position of a person serves in them as a measure of the state of society.
Moreover, the typical personality, the energy with which individual characteristics a person is “affected” by the life of the people, in Ostrovsky’s dramaturgy it has an important ethical and aesthetic value. The character is wonderful.
Just like in Shakespeare's drama tragic hero, whether beautiful or terrible in terms of ethical assessment, belongs to the sphere of beauty in Ostrovsky’s plays character hero to the extent of its typicality, it is the embodiment of aesthetics, and in a number of cases, spiritual wealth, historical life and culture of the people.
This feature of Ostrovsky’s dramaturgy predetermined his attention to the performance of each actor, to the performer’s ability to present a type on stage, to vividly and captivatingly recreate an individual, original social character.
Ostrovsky especially appreciated this ability in the best artists of his time, encouraging and helping to develop it. Addressing A.E. Martynov, he said: “...from several features sketched by an inexperienced hand, you created final types full of artistic truth. This is what makes you so dear to the authors.”
Ostrovsky ended his discussion about the nationality of the theater, about the fact that dramas and comedies are written for the whole people with the words: “...dramatic writers must always remember this, they must be clear and strong.”
The clarity and strength of the author's creativity, in addition to the types created in his plays, is expressed in the conflicts of his works, built on simple life incidents, which, however, reflect the main conflicts of modern social life.
In his early article, positively assessing A.F. Pisemsky’s story “The Mattress,” Ostrovsky wrote: “The intrigue of the story is simple and instructive, like life. Because of the original characters, because of the natural and highest degree The dramatic course of events reveals a noble thought, gained from everyday experience.
This story is true work of art" The natural dramatic course of events, original characters, depiction of the life of ordinary people - by listing these signs of true artistry in Pisemsky’s story, young Ostrovsky undoubtedly came from his reflections on the tasks of dramaturgy as an art.
It is characteristic that Ostrovsky attaches great importance to instructiveness literary work. The instructiveness of art gives him the basis to compare and bring art closer to life.
Ostrovsky believed that the theater, gathering within its walls a large and diverse audience, uniting it with a sense of aesthetic pleasure, should educate society, help simple, unprepared spectators “understand life for the first time,” and give the educated “a whole perspective of thoughts that cannot be escaped.” (ibid.).
At the same time, abstract didactics was alien to Ostrovsky. “Anyone can have good thoughts, but control of minds and hearts is given only to a select few,” he reminded, ironizing about writers who replace serious artistic issues edifying tirades and naked tendency. Knowledge of life, its truthful realistic depiction, reflection on the most relevant for society and complex issues- this is what the theater should present to the public, this is what makes the stage a school of life.
The artist teaches the viewer to think and feel, but does not give him ready-made solutions. Didactic dramaturgy, which does not reveal the wisdom and instructiveness of life, but replaces it with declaratively expressed truisms, is dishonest, since it is not artistic, while it is precisely for the sake of aesthetic impressions that people come to the theater.
These ideas of Ostrovsky found a peculiar refraction in her attitude to historical drama. The playwright argued that “historical dramas and chronicles<...>develop people’s self-knowledge and cultivate conscious love for the fatherland.”
At the same time, he emphasized that it is not the distortion of the past for the sake of one or another tendentious idea, not the external stage effect of melodrama on historical subjects, and not the transposition of scholarly monographs into a dialogical form, but a truly artistic recreation of the living reality of bygone centuries on stage can be the basis patriotic performance.
Such a performance helps society to understand itself, encourages reflection, giving a conscious character to the immediate feeling of love for the homeland. Ostrovsky understood that the plays he created annually formed the basis of the modern theatrical repertoire.
Defining the types of dramatic works, without which an exemplary repertoire cannot exist, he, in addition to dramas and comedies depicting modern Russian life, and historical chronicles, named extravaganzas, fairy tale plays for festive performances, accompanied by music and dance, designed as a colorful folk spectacle.
The playwright created a masterpiece of this kind - spring fairy tale“The Snow Maiden”, in which poetic fantasy and a picturesque setting are combined with deep lyrical and philosophical content.
History of Russian literature: in 4 volumes / Edited by N.I. Prutskov and others - L., 1980-1983.
sound. It’s not for nothing that 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.
“I have already read my play in Moscow five times, among the listeners there were people hostile to me, and everyone unanimously recognized “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 like it won’t turn out bad.” Already a day after the premiere, on November 12, Ostrovsky could, and undoubtedly did, learn 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 accident. 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; 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. To a new viewer, not experienced in art, Ostrovsky writes: “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, provocative, frank, loud laughter, hot, sincere feelings are required."
about poetry, he will write that its essence is in the main, “walking” truths, in the ability of theater to convey them to the heart of the reader:
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. Contemporaries perceived Ostrovsky as a successor of Gogol's dramatic art. But the novelty of his plays was immediately noted. Already in 1851, in the article “A Dream on the Occasion of a Comedy,” the young critic Boris Almazov pointed out the differences between Ostrovsky and Gogol. Ostrovsky’s originality lay not only in the fact that he portrayed not only the oppressors, but also their victims, not only in the fact that, as I. Annensky wrote, Gogol was primarily a poet of “visual”, and Ostrovsky of “auditory” impressions.
Ostrovsky's originality and novelty were also manifested in the choice of life material, in the subject of the image - he mastered new layers of reality. He was a pioneer, a Columbus not only of Zamoskvorechye - who we don’t see, whose voices we don’t hear in Ostrovsky’s works! Innokenty Annensky wrote: "... This is a virtuoso of sound images: merchants, wanderers, factory workers and Latin teachers, Tatars, gypsies, actors and sex workers, bars, clerks and petty bureaucrats - Ostrovsky gave a huge gallery of typical speeches..." Actors, The theatrical environment is also a new vital material that Ostrovsky mastered - everything connected with the theater seemed very important to him.
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 in Russia theater school, own repertoire. Maly Theater artist N.V. Rykalova recalled: Ostrovsky, “having become better acquainted with the troupe, became our man. The troupe loved him very much. Alexander Nikolaevich was unusually affectionate and courteous with everyone. Under the serfdom regime that reigned at that time, when the artist’s superiors said “you,” when most of the troupe were serfs, Ostrovsky’s treatment seemed to everyone like some kind of revelation. Usually Alexander Nikolaevich himself staged his plays... Ostrovsky assembled a troupe and read the play to them. He could read amazingly skillfully. All characters came out of him as if they were alive... Ostrovsky knew well the inner, hidden from the eyes of the audience, behind the scenes life theater 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 position of the actors in the theater and their success depended on whether or not the rich audience who set the tone in the city liked them. After all, provincial troupes lived mainly on donations from local patrons, who felt like masters in the theater and could dictate their terms. Many actresses lived off expensive gifts from wealthy fans. The actress, who took care of her honor, had a hard time. In “Talents and Admirers” Ostrovsky portrays such life situation. Domna Panteleevna, Sasha Negina’s mother, laments: “There is no happiness for my Sasha! He maintains himself very carefully, and there is no goodwill between the public: no special gifts, nothing like the others, which... if...”
But despite the difficult life, adversity and grievances, as depicted by Ostrovsky, many people who dedicated their lives to the stage and theater retain kindness and nobility in their souls. First of all, these are tragedians who on stage have to live in a world of high passions. Of course, nobility and generosity of spirit are not limited to tragedians. Ostrovsky shows that genuine talent, selfless love they raise and elevate people to art and theater. These are Narokov, Negina, Kruchinina.