“For even peasant women know how to love...”
N.M. Karamzin
Sentimentalism is a direction of literature of the 18th century. It contradicts the strict norms of classicism and, first of all, describes the inner world of a person and his feelings. Now the unity of place, time and action does not matter, the main thing is the person and his state of mind. N.M. Karamzin is probably the most famous and talented writer who actively worked in this direction. His story “Poor Liza” reveals to the reader the tender feelings of two lovers.
Features of sentimentalism are found in N. Karamzin’s story in every line. The lyrical narrative is conducted smoothly, calmly, although the work feels the intensity of passion and the power of emotions. The characters experience a new feeling of love for both of them - tender and touching. They suffer, cry, part: “Lisa was sobbing - Erast was crying...” The author describes in great detail the state of mind of the unfortunate Lisa when she accompanied Erast to the war: “... abandoned, poor, lost feelings and memory.”
The entire work is permeated lyrical digressions. The author constantly reminds of himself, he is present in the work and comments on everything that happens to his characters. “I often come to this place and almost always meet spring there...”, the author says about the place near the Si...nova monastery, where Lisa and her mother’s hut was located. “But I throw down the brush...”, “my heart bleeds...”, “a tear rolls down my face,” - this is how the author describes his emotional state when he looks at his heroes. He feels sorry for Lisa, she is very dear to him. He knows that his “beautiful Lisa” is worthy best love, honest relationships, sincere feelings. And Erast... The author does not reject him, because “dear Erast” is a very kind, but by nature or upbringing a flighty young man. And Lisa's death made him unhappy for the rest of his life. N. M. Karamzin hears and understands his heroes.
A large place in the story is given landscape sketches. The beginning of the work describes the place “near the Si..nova monastery”, the outskirts of Moscow. Nature is fragrant: a “magnificent picture” is revealed to the reader, and he finds himself in that time and also wanders through the ruins of the monastery. Together with the “quiet moon” we watch the lovers meet and, sitting “under the shade of an old oak tree,” we look into the “blue sky.”
The name “Poor Liza” itself is symbolic, where in one word both social status, and the state of the human soul. The story by N. M. Karamzin will not leave any reader indifferent, it will touch thin strings souls, and this can be called sentimentality.
N. M. Karamzin’s story “Poor Liza” was one of the first sentimental works of Russian literature of the 18th century.
Sentimentalism proclaimed primary attention to the private life of people, to their feelings, which are equally characteristic of people from all classes. Karamzin tells us the story of the unhappy love of a simple peasant girl Lisa and a nobleman Erast, in order to prove that “peasant women also know how to love.”
Lisa is the ideal of nature. She is not only “beautiful in soul and body,” but she is also capable of sincerely loving a person who is not entirely worthy of her love. Erast, although he certainly surpasses his beloved in education, nobility and material condition, turns out to be spiritually smaller than her. He also has intelligence and kind hearted, but is a weak and flighty person. He is unable to rise above class prejudices and marry Lisa. After losing at cards, he is forced to marry a rich widow and leave Lisa, which is why she commits suicide. However, sincere human feelings did not die in Erast and, as the author assures us, “Erast was unhappy until the end of his life. Having learned about Lizina’s fate, he could not console himself and considered himself a murderer.”
For Karamzin, the village becomes a center of natural moral purity, and the city becomes a source of temptations that can destroy this purity. The writer's heroes, in full accordance with the precepts of sentimentalism, suffer almost all the time, constantly expressing their feelings with abundantly shed tears. Karamzin is not ashamed of tears and encourages readers to do the same. He describes in detail the experiences of Lisa, left behind by Erast, who had gone into the army; we can follow how she suffers: “From that hour, her days were days of melancholy and sorrow, which had to be hidden from her tender mother: the more her heart suffered! Then it only became easier when Lisa, secluded in the dense forest, could freely shed tears and moan about separation from her beloved. Often the sad dove combined her plaintive voice with her moaning.”
The writer is characterized by lyrical digressions; at every dramatic turn of the plot, we hear the author’s voice: “my heart is bleeding...”, “a tear is rolling down my face.” It was essential for the sentimentalist writer to appeal to social issues. He does not blame Erast for the death of Lisa: the young nobleman is as unhappy as the peasant woman. The important thing is that Karamzin is perhaps the first in Russian literature to discover “ living soul"in representatives of the lower class. This is where the Russian tradition begins: to show sympathy ordinary people. It can also be noted that the title of the work itself carries special symbolism, where, on the one hand, Lisa’s financial situation is indicated, and on the other, the well-being of her soul, which leads to philosophical reflection.
The writer turned to no less interesting tradition Russian literature - to poetics speaking name. He was able to emphasize the discrepancy between the external and internal in the images of the heroes of the story. Lisa, meek and quiet, surpasses Erast in the ability to love and live by love. She does things. requiring determination and willpower, contradicting the laws of morality, religious and moral norms of behavior.
The philosophy adopted by Karamzin made Nature one of the main characters of the story. Not all heroes in the story have the right to intimate communication with the world of Nature, but only Lisa and the Narrator.
In “Poor Liza,” N. M. Karamzin gave one of the first examples of a sentimental style in Russian literature, which was oriented toward the colloquial speech of the educated part of the nobility. It assumed elegance and simplicity of style, a specific selection of “harmonious” and “not spoiling the taste” words and expressions, and a rhythmic organization of prose that brought it closer to poetic speech. In the story “Poor Liza” Karamzin showed himself to be a great psychologist. He managed to masterfully reveal the inner world of his characters, primarily their love experiences.
Not only the author himself got along with Erast and Lisa, but also thousands of his contemporaries - readers of the story. This was facilitated by good recognition not only of the circumstances, but also of the place of action. Karamzin quite accurately depicted in “Poor Liza” the surroundings of the Moscow Simonov Monastery, and the name “Lizin’s Pond” was firmly attached to the pond located there. ". Moreover: some unfortunate young ladies even drowned themselves here, following the example main character stories. Lisa became a model that people sought to imitate in love, not by peasant women, however, but by girls from the nobility and other wealthy classes. The rare name Erast became very popular among noble families. “Poor Liza” and sentimentalism responded to the spirit of the times.
Having established sentimentalism in Russian literature with his story, Karamzin took a significant step in terms of its democratization, abandoning the strict, but far from living life, schemes of classicism.
Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin became the most prominent representative in Russian literature of a new literary trend - sentimentalism, popular in Western Europe at the end of the 18th century. The story “Poor Liza,” created in 1792, revealed the main features of this trend. Sentimentalism proclaimed primary attention to the private life of people, to their feelings, which were equally characteristic of people from all classes. Karamzin tells us the story of the unhappy love of a simple peasant girl Liza and a nobleman Erast, in order to prove that “peasant women also know how to love.” Lisa is the ideal of the “natural person” advocated by the sentimentalists. She is not only “beautiful in soul and body,” but she is also capable of sincerely loving a person who is not entirely worthy of her love. Erast, although superior to his beloved in education, nobility and wealth, turns out to be spiritually smaller than her. He is unable to rise above class prejudices and marry Lisa. Erast has a “fair mind” and a “kind heart,” but at the same time he is “weak and flighty.” After losing at cards, he is forced to marry a rich widow and leave Lisa, which is why she commits suicide. However, sincere human feelings did not die in Erast and, as the author assures us, “Erast was unhappy until the end of his life. Having learned about Lizina’s fate, he could not console himself and considered himself a murderer.”
For Karamzin, the village becomes a center of natural moral purity, and the city - a source of debauchery, a source of temptations that can destroy this purity. The writer's heroes, in full accordance with the precepts of sentimentalism, suffer almost all the time, constantly expressing their feelings with abundantly shed tears. As the author himself admitted: “I love those objects that make me shed tears of tender sorrow.” Karamzin is not ashamed of tears and encourages readers to do the same. As he describes in detail the experiences of Lisa, left behind by Erast, who had gone into the army: “From that hour, her days were days
melancholy and sorrow, which had to be hidden from the tender mother: all the more did her heart suffer! Then it only became easier when Lisa, secluded in the dense forest, could freely shed tears and moan about separation from her beloved. Often the sad dove combined her plaintive voice with her moaning.” Karamzin forces Liza to hide her suffering from her old mother, but at the same time he is deeply convinced that it is very important to give a person the opportunity to openly express his grief, to his heart’s content, in order to ease the soul. The author examines the essentially social conflict of the story through a philosophical and ethical prism. Erast sincerely would like to overcome class barriers on the path of his idyllic love with Lisa. However, the heroine takes a much more sober look at the state of things, realizing that Erast “cannot be her husband.” The narrator is already quite sincerely worried about his characters, worried in the sense that it is as if he lives with them. It is no coincidence that at the moment when Erast leaves Lisa, the author’s heartfelt confession follows: “My heart is bleeding at this very moment. I forget the man in Erast - I’m ready to curse him - but my tongue does not move - I look at the sky, and a tear rolls down my face.” Not only the author himself got along with Erast and Lisa, but also thousands of his contemporaries - readers of the story. This was facilitated by good recognition not only of the circumstances, but also of the place of action. Karamzin quite accurately depicted in “Poor Liza” the surroundings of the Moscow Simonov Monastery, and the name “Lizin’s Pond” was firmly attached to the pond located there. Moreover: some unfortunate young ladies even drowned themselves here, following the example of the main character of the story. Liza herself became a model that people sought to imitate in love, though not peasant women who had not read Karamzin’s story, but girls from the nobility and other wealthy classes. The hitherto rare name Erast became very popular among noble families. “Poor Liza” and sentimentalism were very much in keeping with the spirit of the times.
It is characteristic that in Karamzin’s work Liza and her mother, although they are stated to be peasant women, speak the same language as the nobleman Erast and the author himself. The writer, like Western European sentimentalists, did not yet know the speech distinction of heroes representing classes of society that were opposite in terms of their conditions of existence. All the characters in the story speak Russian literary language, close to the real one. spoken language that circle of educated noble youth to which Karamzin belonged. Also peasant life in the story is far from genuine folk life. Rather, it is inspired by the ideas about “natural man” characteristic of sentimentalist literature, whose symbols were shepherds and shepherdesses. Therefore, for example, the writer introduces an episode of Lisa’s meeting with a young shepherd who “was driving his flock along the river bank, playing the pipe.” This meeting makes the heroine dream that her beloved Erast would be “a simple peasant, a shepherd,” which would make their happy union possible. The writer, after all, was mainly concerned with truthfulness in the depiction of feelings, and not with the details of folk life that was unfamiliar to him.
Having established sentimentalism in Russian literature with his story, Karamzin took a significant step in terms of its democratization, abandoning the strict, but far from living life, schemes of classicism. The author of “Poor Liza” not only sought to write “as they say,” freeing literary language from Church Slavonic archaisms and boldly introducing into it new words borrowed from European languages. For the first time, he abandoned the division of heroes into purely positive and purely negative, showing a complex combination of good and bad traits in the character of Erast. Thus, Karamzin took a step in the direction in which he moved the development of literature in mid-19th century realism, which replaced sentimentalism and romanticism.
In the story by N.M. Karamzin’s “Poor Liza” tells the story of a peasant girl who knows how to love deeply and selflessly. Why did the writer portray such a heroine in his work? This is explained by Karamzin’s belonging to sentimentalism, which was then popular in Europe literary direction. In the literature of sentimentalists it was argued that not nobility and wealth, but spiritual qualities, the ability to feel deeply are the main human virtues. Therefore, first of all, sentimentalist writers paid attention inner world man, his innermost experiences.
The hero of sentimentalism does not strive for exploits. He believes that all people living in the world are connected by an invisible thread and for loving heart there are no barriers. Such is Erast, a young man of the noble class who became Lisa’s heartfelt chosen one. Erast “it seemed that he had found in Liza what his heart had been looking for for a long time.” It didn’t bother him that Lisa was a simple peasant girl. He assured her that for him “the most important thing is the soul, the innocent soul.” Erast sincerely believed that over time he would make Lisa happy, “he would take her to him and live with her inseparably, in the village and in the dense forests, as in paradise.”
However, reality cruelly destroys the illusions of lovers. Barriers still exist. Burdened with debts, Erast is forced to marry an elderly rich widow. Having learned about Lisa’s suicide, “he could not be consoled and considered himself a murderer.”
Karamzin created a touching work about insulted innocence and trampled justice, about how in a world where people’s relationships are based on self-interest, natural individual rights are violated. After all, the right to love and be loved was given to a person from the very beginning.
In Lisa’s character, resignation and defenselessness attract attention. In my opinion, her death can be regarded as a quiet protest against the inhumanity of our world. At the same time, “Poor Liza” by Karamzin is a surprisingly bright story about love, imbued with a soft, gentle, meek sadness, turning into tenderness: “When we see each other there, in a new life, I will recognize you, gentle Liza!”
“And peasant women know how to love!” - with this statement Karamzin made society think about moral principles life, called for sensitivity and leniency towards people who remain defenseless before fate.
The impact of “Poor Liza” on the reader was so great that the name of Karamzin’s heroine became a household name and acquired the meaning of a symbol. The ingenuous story of a girl, seduced unwittingly and deceived against her will, is the motive underlying many plots. literature of the 19th century century. The theme started by Karamzin was subsequently addressed by major Russian realist writers. Problems " little man"reflected in the poem" Bronze Horseman" and the story " Stationmaster» A.S. Pushkin, in the story “The Overcoat” by N.V. Gogol, in many works by F.M. Dostoevsky.
Two centuries after writing the story by N.M. Karamzin’s “Poor Liza” remains a work that primarily touches us not with its sentimental plot, but with its humanistic orientation.
We will talk about the next era after the Enlightenment and how it manifested itself in the Russian cultural space.
The Age of Enlightenment was built on the education of feelings. If we believe that feelings can be educated, then at some point we must admit that it is not necessary to educate them. You need to pay attention and trust them. What was previously considered dangerous will suddenly turn out to be important, capable of giving us an impetus for development. This happened during the transition from the Enlightenment to sentimentalism.
Sentimentalism– translated from French as “feeling”.
Sentimentalism suggested not just cultivating feelings, but taking them into account and trusting them.
The cross-cutting theme of classicism in European culture- the struggle between duty and feelings.
The cross-cutting theme of sentimentalism is that reason is not omnipotent. And it’s not enough to cultivate feelings, you need to trust them, even if it seems that this is destroying our world.
Sentimentalism primarily manifested itself in literature as classicism in architecture and theater. This is no coincidence, because the word “sentimentalism” is associated with the transmission of shades of feelings. Architecture does not convey shades of feelings; in the theater they are not as important as the performance as a whole. Theater is a “fast” art. Literature can be slow and convey nuances, which is why the ideas of sentimentalism were realized with greater force.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau's novel “The New Heloise” describes situations that were unthinkable in previous eras - the friendship of a man and a woman. This topic has only been discussed for a couple of centuries. For the era of Rousseau, the question was colossal, but there was no answer then. The era of sentimentalism is focused on those feelings that do not fit into theory and contradict the ideas of classicism.
In the history of Russian literature, the first bright sentimentalist writer was Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin (see Fig. 1).
Rice. 1. Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin
We talked about his “Letters of a Russian Traveler”. Try to compare this work with “Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow” by Alexander Nikolaevich Radishchev. Find what is common and what is different.
Pay attention to the words with “with”: sympathy, compassion, interlocutor. What do the revolutionary Radishchev and the sentimental Karamzin have in common?
Having returned from his trip and having written “Letters of a Russian Traveler,” which was published in 1791, Karamzin began publishing the “Moscow Journal,” where in 1792 he appeared short story"Poor Lisa." The work turned all Russian literature upside down and determined its course. for many years. The story of several pages was reflected in many classical Russian books, from “ Queen of Spades"before Dostoevsky's novel Crime and Punishment (the image of Lizaveta Ivanovna, the sister of the old money-lender).
Karamzin, having written “Poor Liza,” entered the history of Russian literature (see Fig. 2).
Rice. 2. G.D. Epifanov. Illustrations for the story “Poor Lisa”
This is the story of how the nobleman Erast deceived the poor peasant woman Lisa. He promised to marry her and did not marry, he tried to get rid of her. The girl committed suicide, and Erast, saying that he had gone to war, tied the knot with a rich widow.
There have never been such stories before. Karamzin changes a lot.
IN literature XVIII centuries, all heroes are divided into good and bad. Karamzin begins the story with the fact that everything is ambiguous.
Perhaps no one living in Moscow knows the surroundings of this city as well as I do, because no one is in the field more often than me, no one more than me wanders on foot, without a plan, without a goal - wherever the eyes look - through the meadows and groves , over hills and plains.
Nikolay Karamzin
We meet the narrator's heart before we see the characters. Previously, in literature there was a connection between characters and places. If this is an idyll, the events took place in the lap of nature, and if it is a moral tale, then in the city. From the very beginning, Karamzin places the heroes on the border between the village where Liza lives and the city where Erast lives. The tragic meeting of city and village is the subject of his story (see Fig. 3).
Rice. 3. G.D. Epifanov. Illustrations for the story “Poor Lisa”
Karamzin introduces something that has never existed in Russian literature - the theme of money. In constructing the plot of “Poor Lisa,” money plays a colossal role. The relationship between Erast and Lisa begins with the fact that a nobleman wants to buy flowers from a peasant woman not for five kopecks, but for a ruble. The hero does this with a pure heart, but he measures feelings in money. Further, when Erast leaves Lisa and when he accidentally meets her in the city, he pays her off (see Fig. 4).
Rice. 4. G.D. Epifanov. Illustrations for the story “Poor Lisa”
But before Lisa commits suicide, she leaves her mother 10 imperials. The girl has already caught the city habit of counting money.
The ending of the story is incredible for that time. Karamzin talks about the death of heroes. Both in Russian and European literature about death loving heroes has been said several times. The cross-cutting motif is that lovers united after death, like Tristan and Isolde, Peter and Fevronia. But for the suicide Lisa and the sinner Erast to reconcile after death was incredible. The last phrase of the story: “Now, perhaps, they have been reconciled.” After the finale, Karamzin talks about himself, about what is happening in his heart.
She was buried near a pond, under a gloomy oak tree, and a wooden cross was placed on her grave. Here I often sit in thought, leaning on the receptacle of Liza’s ashes; a pond flows in my eyes; The leaves rustle above me.
The narrator turns out to be no less important a participant in the literary action than his heroes. It was all incredibly new and fresh.
We said that Old Russian literature valued not novelty, but adherence to rules. New literature, of which Karamzin turned out to be one of the conductors, on the contrary, values freshness, an explosion of the familiar, a rejection of the past, and movement into the future. And Nikolai Mikhailovich succeeded.