How good life is in Russia. Nikolay Nekrasov - who lives well in Russia
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In what year - count
In which land - guess
On a pole track
Seven men came together:
Seven temporarily liable
Tightened province,
Terpigorev County,
Empty parish,
From adjacent villages:
Zaplatova, Dyryavina,
Razutova, Znobishina,
Gorelova, Neyolova -
Bad harvest too,
Agreed - and argued:
Who has fun
Is it at ease in Russia?
The novel said: to the landowner,
Demyan said: to the official,
Luke said: ass.
To the fat-bellied merchant! -
The brothers Gubins said,
Ivan and Mitrodor.
Old man Pakhom strained
And he said, looking into the ground:
To the noble boyar,
To the Sovereign Minister.
And Prov said: to the king ...
A man that is a bull: will be blown
What a whim in the head -
Colom her from there
You can't knock it out: they rest,
Everyone stands their ground!
Was such a dispute started,
What do passersby think -
To know, the guys found the treasure
And divide among themselves ...
On the case, everyone in their own way
I left the house before noon:
I kept that path to the forge,
He went to the village of Ivankovo
Call Father Prokofy
To christen the child.
Groin honeycomb
Carried to the market in Velikoye,
And the two bros of Gubin
So easy with a halter
To catch a stubborn horse
They went to their own herd.
It would be high time for everyone
Return on your own path -
They go side by side!
They walk as if they are chasing
Behind them are gray wolves,
What is far away is sooner.
They go - they are reproaching!
They shout - they will not come to their senses!
And time does not wait.
They did not notice the dispute,
As the sun went down red
As the evening came.
Probably a whole night
So they walked - where they did not know,
When a woman meets them,
Gnarled Durandikha,
She did not shout: "Honorable ones!
Where are you looking at night
Have you thought of going? .. "
She asked, laughed,
Whipped, witch, gelding
And galloped off ...
"Where? .." - exchanged glances
Here are our men
They are standing, silent, looking down ...
The night is long gone
Frequent stars lit up
In the high skies
A month has surfaced, shadows are black
The road was cut
Zealous walkers.
Oh shadows! the shadows are black!
Who won't you catch up?
Whom won't you overtake?
Only you, black shadows,
You can't catch - hug!
To the forest, to the path-path
Looked, Pakhom was silent,
I looked - scattered with my mind
And finally he said:
"Well! The devil is a glorious joke
He made fun of us!
After all, we are almost
We have gone thirty versts!
Home now toss and turn -
Tired - we won't get there
Let's sit down - there is nothing to do.
We'll rest until the sun! .. "
Dumping trouble on the devil,
Under the forest by the path
The men sat down.
We lit a fire, folded up,
Two ran for vodka,
And the others are pokudova
The glass was made,
Birch barks are piled up.
Vodka came soon.
Has come and a snack -
The peasants are feasting!
The kosushki drank three at a time,
Have eaten - and argued
Again: who has fun to live,
Is it at ease in Russia?
The novel shouts: to the landowner,
Demian shouts: to the official,
Luka shouts: ass;
To the fat-bellied merchant, -
Brothers are shouting Gubins,
Ivan and Metrodor;
Groin shouts: to the most luminous
To the noble boyar,
To the Minister of the Tsar,
And Prov shouts: to the king!
Visor more than ever
Playful men
They swear swearingly
No wonder they will grab onto
In each other's hair ...
Look - we’ve already clung to it!
Roman plays with Pakhomushka,
Demian tricks Luka.
And the two bros of Gubin
Iron Prova hefty, -
And everyone shouts his own!
A resounding echo woke up,
I went for a walk, for a walk,
I went to shout, shout,
As if to provoke
Stubborn men.
To the king! - to the right is heard,
Responds to the left:
Pop! ass! ass!
The whole forest was alarmed,
With flying birds
By swift beasts
And creeping reptiles, -
And moan, and roar, and hum!
Before everyone is a gray hare
From a nearby bush
Suddenly jumped out, as if disheveled,
And he took off running!
Behind him the little ones grumble
At the top of the birch trees raised
Disgusting, sharp squeak.
And then there is the chiffchaff
With fright, a tiny chick
I fell from the nest;
The chiffchaff chirps, cries,
Where is the chick? - will not find!
Then the old cuckoo
I woke up and made up my mind
Cuckoo for someone;
It was taken ten times,
Yes, every time I got confused
And she started again ...
Cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo!
The bread will be pricked
You will choke on an ear -
You will not cuckoo!
Seven owls flew together,
Admire the carnage
From seven big trees,
Laughing, night owls!
And their eyes are yellow
They burn like an ardent wax
Fourteen candles!
And a raven, a smart bird,
Has come, sits on a tree
By the fire itself.
Sits and prays to the devil
To be smacked to death
Someone!
A cow with a bell
That fought back in the evening
From the herd, I barely heard
Human voices -
Came to the fire, set
Eyes on the men
I listened to crazy speeches
And the beginning, heart,
Moo, moo, moo!
The stupid cow hums,
The little ones are squealing.
The violent guys are shouting,
And the echo echoes to everyone.
One care for him -
To tease honest people
Scare guys and women!
Nobody saw him
And everyone has heard
Without a body - but it lives,
Without a tongue - screams!
Owl - zamoskvoretskaya
The princess is mooing right there,
Flies over the peasants
Shuffling on the ground
That about the bushes with a wing ...
The fox itself is cunning,
By the curiosity of a woman,
Sneaked up to the men
Listened, listened
And she walked away, thinking:
"And the devil won't understand them!"
Indeed: the debaters themselves
We hardly knew, remembered -
What are they making noise about ...
Humping the sides decently
Each other, come to their senses
The peasants finally
Drank from a puddle
Have washed, refreshed,
The dream began to roll them ...
At that time, a tiny chick,
Little by little, half a plant,
Low flying,
I got close to the fire.
Pakhomushka caught him,
Brought to the fire, looked
And he said: "Little bird,
And the marigold is awesome!
I breathe - you will roll off the palm,
I sneeze - you will roll into the fire,
I click - you roll dead,
But all the same, you, little bird,
Stronger than a man!
The wings will get stronger soon,
Huh! wherever you want
You will fly there!
Oh you, little birdie!
Give us your wings
We will fly around the whole kingdom,
Let's see, taste,
We will ask - and we will find out:
Who lives happily
Is it at ease in Russia? "
"Wouldn't even need wings,
If only we had bread
Half a day a day, -
And so we would be Mother Russia
We measured it with our feet! "-
Said the gloomy Prov.
"Yes, a bucket of vodka," -
Increased the desire
Before the vodka, the Gubin brothers,
Ivan and Mitrodor.
Under these under the pines
The box is buried.
Get her, -
The box is that magic:
There is a self-assembled tablecloth in it,
Whenever you want
Feed, give water!
Just say quietly:
"Hey! The tablecloth is self-assembled!
Treat the men! "
According to your desire,
At my behest
Everything will appear immediately.
Now - let the chick go! "
- Wait! we are poor people
We go on a long road, -
Pakhom answered her. -
I see you are a wise bird
Respect - old clothes
Bewitch us!
- So that the Armenians are peasants
Was worn, not worn! -
Roman demanded.
- So that linden lapotts
They served, did not break, -
Demian demanded.
- That louse, nasty flea
In shirts did not multiply, -
Luke demanded.
- Wouldn't they be deceived by the girls ... -
Gubina demanded ...
And the bird answered them:
"All the tablecloth is self-assembled
Repair, wash, dry
You will ... Well, let it go! .. "
Once, seven peasants - recent serfs, and now temporarily liable from adjacent villages - Zaplatov, Dyryavin, Razutov, Znobishin, Gorelova, Neyolova, Neurozhayka, too, converge on the high road. Instead of going their own way, the peasants start a dispute about who in Russia lives happily and freely. Each of them judges in his own way who is the main lucky person in Russia: a landowner, an official, a priest, a merchant, a noble boyar, a sovereign minister or a tsar.
During the dispute, they do not notice that they gave a hook thirty miles. Seeing that it is too late to return home, the men make a fire and continue the argument over vodka - which, of course, gradually develops into a fight. But the fight does not help to resolve the issue that worries the men.
The solution is found unexpectedly: one of the men, Pakhom, catches the chick of the warbler, and in order to free the chick, the warbler tells the men where to find a self-assembled tablecloth. Now the men are provided with bread, vodka, cucumbers, kvass, tea - in a word, everything they need for a long journey. Besides, the self-assembled tablecloth will repair and wash their clothes! Having received all these benefits, the peasants give a vow to inquire, "who lives happily, freely in Russia."
The first possible “lucky man” he met along the way is a priest. (It wasn’t the soldiers and beggars we met to ask about happiness!) But the priest’s answer to the question of whether his life was sweet disappoints the peasants. They agree with the priest that happiness lies in peace, wealth and honor. But the priest has none of these benefits. In haymaking, in harvesting, in a deep autumn night, in severe frost, he must go where there are sick, dying and born. And every time his soul hurts at the sight of funeral sobs and orphan grief - so that the hand does not rise to take copper dimes - a pitiful reward for demand. The landowners, who previously lived in family estates and got married here, baptized children, buried the dead, are now scattered not only throughout Russia, but also in distant foreign lands; there is no hope for their retribution. Well, about the priest's honor, the peasants themselves know: they feel embarrassed when the priest blames obscene songs and insults to priests.
Realizing that the Russian priest is not one of the lucky ones, the men go to the festive fair in the trading village of Kuzminskoye to ask the people about happiness there. In a rich and dirty village there are two churches, a tightly boarded-up house with the inscription "school", a medical assistant's hut, and a dirty hotel. But most of all in the village there are drinking establishments, in each of which they barely manage to cope with the thirsty. Old man Vavila cannot buy goat shoes for his granddaughter, because he drank himself to a penny. It is good that Pavlusha Veretennikov, a lover of Russian songs, whom everyone for some reason calls "master", is buying the coveted present for him.
Peasants-wanderers watch the farcical Petrushka, watch as ofeni pick up book goods - but by no means Belinsky and Gogol, but portraits of unfamiliar fat generals and works about "stupid my lord." They also see how a brisk trading day ends: rampant drunkenness, fights on the way home. However, the peasants are outraged by Pavlusha Veretennikov's attempt to measure the peasant by the master's measure. In their opinion, it is impossible for a sober person to live in Russia: he will not withstand either backbreaking work or peasant misfortune; without the booze, a bloody rain would fall from the angry peasant soul. These words are confirmed by Yakim Nagoy from the village of Bosovo - one of those who "works to death, drinks to death." Yakim believes that only pigs walk on the ground and do not see the sky for centuries. During the fire, he himself did not save money accumulated in his entire life, but useless and beloved pictures that hung in the hut; he is sure that with the cessation of drunkenness, great sadness will come to Russia.
The wanderers do not lose hope of finding people who live well in Russia. But even for the promise to give water to the lucky ones for free, they fail to find those. For the sake of gratuitous booze, both an overstrained worker and a paralyzed former courtyard who licked plates with the best French truffle at the master's for forty years, and even tattered beggars are ready to declare themselves lucky.
Finally, someone tells them the story of Yermil Girin, the steward in the patrimony of Prince Yurlov, who has earned universal respect for his fairness and honesty. When Girin needed money to buy out the mill, the peasants lent it to him without even demanding a receipt. But Yermil is now unhappy: after the peasant revolt, he is in prison.
About the misfortune that befell the nobles after the peasant reform, the ruddy sixty-year-old landowner Gavrila Obolt-Obolduev tells the peasant wanderers. He recalls how in the old days everything amused the master: villages, forests, cornfields, serf actors, musicians, hunters, who completely belonged to him. Obolt-Obolduev tells with affection how he invited his serfs to pray at the master's house on the twentieth holidays, despite the fact that after that they had to drive women from all over the estate to clean the floors.
And although the peasants themselves know that life in serf times was far from the idyll drawn by the Obolduevs, they nevertheless understand: the great chain of serfdom, having broken, hit both the master, who at once lost his usual way of life, and the peasant.
Desperate to find a happy one among the men, the wanderers decide to ask the women. Nearby peasants remember that Matryona Timofeevna Korchagina lives in the village of Klinu, whom everyone considers to be a lucky woman. But Matryona herself thinks differently. In confirmation, she tells the pilgrims the story of her life.
Before marriage, Matryona lived in a teetotal and prosperous peasant family... She married a stove-maker from a strange village, Philip Korchagin. But the only happy night was for her when the groom persuaded Matryona to marry him; then the usual hopeless life of a village woman began. True, her husband loved her and beat her only once, but soon he went to work in St. Petersburg, and Matryona was forced to endure grievances in her father-in-law's family. The only one who felt sorry for Matryona was grandfather Savely, who in the family lived out his life after hard labor, where he ended up for the murder of the hated German manager. Savely told Matryona what Russian heroism is: it is impossible to defeat a peasant, because he "bends, but does not break."
The birth of the first-born Demushka brightened up Matryona's life. But soon the mother-in-law forbade her to take the child into the field, and the old grandfather Savely did not keep track of the baby and fed him to the pigs. In front of Matryona's eyes, the judges who came from the city performed an autopsy on her child. Matryona could not forget her first child, although after she had five sons. One of them, Fedot the shepherd boy, once allowed the she-wolf to carry the sheep away. Matryona took upon herself the punishment assigned to her son. Then, being pregnant with her son Liodor, she was forced to go to the city to seek justice: her husband, bypassing the laws, was taken into the army. Matryona was then helped by the governor's wife Elena Alexandrovna, for whom the whole family is now praying.
By all peasant standards, Matryona Korchagina's life can be considered happy. But about invisible mental storm that passed through this woman, it is impossible to tell - as well as about unpaid mortal grievances, and about the blood of the firstborn. Matryona Timofeevna is convinced that a Russian peasant woman cannot be happy at all, because the keys to her happiness and free will are lost from God himself.
In the midst of haymaking, wanderers come to the Volga. Here they witness a strange scene. On three boats a noble family swims up to the shore. The mowers, who have just sat down to rest, immediately jump up to show the old master their zeal. It turns out that the peasants of the village of Vakhlachina help the heirs to hide the abolition of serfdom from the out-of-mind landowner Utyatin. Relatives of the Evident-Utyatin promise the peasants floodplain meadows for this. But after the long-awaited death of the Follower, the heirs forget their promises, and the whole peasant performance turns out to be in vain.
Here, near the village of Vakhlachina, pilgrims listen to peasant songs - corvée, hungry, soldier's, salty - and stories about serfdom. One of these stories is about an exemplary serf Jacob the faithful. Yakov's only joy was the gratification of his master, the small landowner Polivanov. The tyrant Polivanov, in gratitude, beat Yakov in the teeth with his heel, which aroused even greater love in the lackey's soul. By old age, Polivanov lost his legs, and Yakov began to follow him like a child. But when Yakov's nephew, Grisha, decided to marry the serf beauty Arisha, Polivanov out of jealousy gave the guy to recruits. Yakov began to drink, but soon returned to the master. And yet he managed to take revenge on Polivanov - the only way he could, in a lackey's way. Having brought the master into the forest, Yakov hanged himself directly above him on a pine tree. Polivanov spent the night under the corpse of his faithful slave, driving away birds and wolves with groans of horror.
Another story - about two great sinners - is told to the peasants by God's wanderer Jonah Lyapushkin. The Lord awakened the conscience of the ataman of the robbers Kudeyar. The robber forgave his sins for a long time, but they were all forgiven him only after he killed the cruel Pan Glukhovsky in a rush of anger.
Peasants-pilgrims also listen to the story of another sinner - Gleb the elder, who for money hid last will the late widower admiral who decided to free his peasants.
But not only wanderers think about people's happiness... The son of a sexton, a seminarian Grisha Dobrosklonov, lives in Vakhlachina. In his heart, love for his deceased mother merged with love for all of Vakhlachina. For fifteen years Grisha knew firmly to whom he was ready to give his life, for whom he was ready to die. He thinks of all mysterious Russia as of a wretched, abundant, powerful and powerless mother, and expects that the invincible strength that he feels in his own soul will still be reflected in her. Such strong souls as those of Grisha Dobrosklonov, the angel of mercy himself calls to fair way... Fate prepares Grisha “a glorious path, a loud name people's defender, consumption and Siberia ”.
If the peasant wanderers knew what was going on in the soul of Grisha Dobrosklonov, they would probably understand that they could already return to their home, because the goal of their journey has been achieved.
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✪ Who lives well in Russia. Nikolay Nekrasov
✪ N.A. Nekrasov "Who Lives Well in Russia". Summary poems.
✪ N.A. Nekrasov "Who Lives Well in Russia" (meaningful analysis) | Lecture number 62
Subtitles
History of creation
NA Nekrasov began work on the poem "Who Lives Well in Russia" in the first half of the 1860s. The mention of the exiled Poles in the first part, in the chapter "Landowner", suggests that work on the poem was begun no earlier than 1863. But sketches of the work could have appeared earlier, since Nekrasov had been collecting material for a long time. The manuscript of the first part of the poem is dated 1865, however, it is possible that this is the date of completion of work on this part.
Soon after finishing work on the first part, the prologue of the poem was published in the January issue of the Sovremennik magazine for 1866. The printing lasted for four years and was accompanied, like the entire publishing activity of Nekrasov, by censorship persecution.
The writer began to continue working on the poem only in the 1870s, having written three more parts of the work: "The Last One" (1872), "Peasant Woman" (1873), "A Feast for the Whole World" (1876). The poet was not going to limit himself to the written chapters, he thought about three or four more parts. However, the developing disease interfered with the author's ideas. Nekrasov, sensing the approach of death, tried to give some "completeness" to the last part, "Feast for the whole world."
The poem "Who Lives Well in Russia" was printed in the following sequence: "Prologue. Part One ”,“ The Last One ”,“ The Peasant Woman ”.
The plot and structure of the poem
It was assumed that the poem will have 7 or 8 parts, but the author managed to write only 4, which, perhaps, did not follow one after the other.
The poem is written with iambic tricotto.
Part one
The only part that has no name. It was written shortly after the abolition of serfdom (). According to the first quatrain of the poem, we can say that Nekrasov originally tried to anonymously describe all the problems of Russia at that time.
Prologue
In what year - count
In which land - guess
On a pole track
Seven men came together.
They got into an argument:
Who has fun
Is it at ease in Russia?
They offered 6 answers to this question:
- Novel: to the landowner;
- Demyan: to an official;
- the Gubin brothers - Ivan and Mitrodor: to the merchant;
- Pakhom (old man): minister, boyar;
The villagers decide not to return home until they find the right answer. In the prologue, they also find a self-assembled tablecloth that will feed them, and hit the road.
Chapter I. Pop.
Chapter II. Rural fair.
Chapter III. Drunken night.
Chapter IV. Happy.
Chapter V. Landlord.
The last one (from the second part)
In the midst of haymaking, wanderers come to the Volga. Here they witness a strange scene: a noble family swims up to the shore on three boats. The mowers, who have just sat down to rest, immediately jump up to show the old master their zeal. It turns out that the peasants of the village of Vakhlachina help the heirs to hide the abolition of serfdom from the out-of-mind landowner Utyatin. For this, the relatives of the last-born Utyatin promise the peasants floodplain meadows. But after the long-awaited death of the Follower, the heirs forget their promises, and the whole peasant performance turns out to be in vain.
Peasant woman (from the third part)
In this part, the wanderers decide to continue their search for someone who “live happily, at ease in Russia” among women. In the village of Nagotino, women told the peasants that there is a "governor's wife" in Klin Matryona Timofeevna: "Smarter and smoother - there is no woman." There, seven men find this woman and convince her to tell her story, at the end of which she reassures the men in her happiness and in women's happiness in Russia as a whole:
Keys to women's happiness,
From our free will
Abandoned, lost
With God himself! ..
- Prologue
- Chapter I. Before marriage
- Chapter II. Songs
- Chapter III. Savely, bogatyr, Holy Russian
- Chapter IV. Darling
- Chapter V. Wolf
- Chapter VI. Difficult year
- Chapter VII. Governor's wife
- Chapter VIII. Woman's parable
A feast for the whole world (from the fourth part)
This part is a logical continuation of the second part ("The Last One"). It describes a feast that the men threw after the death of the old man. The adventures of the wanderers do not end in this part, but at the end one of the feasting - Grisha Dobrosklonov, the son of a priest, the next morning after the feast, walking along the river bank, finds the secret of Russian happiness, and expresses it in a short song "Rus", by the way, used by V. I. Lenin in the article “ the main task of our days ". The work ends with the words:
To be our wanderers
Under my own roof
If they could know,
What happened to Grisha.
He heard in his chest
The forces are immense,
Pleased his hearing
The sounds are blessed
Radiant sounds
Anthem of the noble -
He sang the incarnation
Happiness of the people! ..
Such an unexpected ending arose because the author was aware of his imminent death, and, wishing to finish the work, logically completed the poem in the fourth part, although at the beginning N.A.Nekrasov conceived 8 parts.
List of heroes
Temporarily liable peasants who went to look for someone who lives happily, freely in Russia:
Ivan and Metrodor Gubin,
Old man Pakhom,
Peasants and slaves:
- Artyom Demin,
- Yakim Nagoy,
- Sidor,
- Egorka Shutov,
- Klim Lavigne,
- Vlas,
- Agap Petrov,
- Ipat is a sensitive slave,
- Jacob is a faithful servant,
- Gleb,
- Proshka,
- Matryona Timofeevna Korchagina,
- Savely Korchagin,
- Ermil Girin.
Landowners:
- Obolt-Obolduev,
- Prince Utyatin (the last one),
- Vogel (Little information on this landowner)
- Shalashnikov.
Other heroes
- "Governor" Elena Alexandrovna,
- Altynnikov,
- Grisha Dobrosklonov.
© Lebedev Yu.V., introductory article, comments, 1999
© Godin I.M., heirs, illustrations, 1960
© Design of the series. Children's Literature Publishing House, 2003
* * *
Yu Lebedev
Russian odyssey
In his "Diary of a Writer" for 1877, F. M. Dostoevsky noted a characteristic feature that appeared in the Russian people of the post-reform period - “this is a multitude, an extraordinary modern multitude of new people, a new root of Russian people who need truth, one truth without conventional lies, and who, in order to attain this truth, will give everything decisively. " Dostoevsky saw in them "the advancing future Russia."
At the very beginning of the 20th century, another writer, V. G. Korolenko, took away from his summer trip to the Urals a discovery that struck him as hot-air balloon to the North Pole, - in the distant Ural villages there were rumors about the Belovodsk kingdom and their own religious and scientific expedition was being prepared. " Among ordinary Cossacks, the conviction spread and grew stronger that “somewhere out there,“ beyond the distant weather, ”“ beyond the valleys, beyond the mountains, beyond the wide seas ”there is a“ blessed country ”in which by the providence of God and the fortunes of history has been preserved and flourishes throughout inviolability is a complete and complete formula of grace. This is real Dreamland of all ages and peoples, colored only by the Old Believer mood. In it, planted by the Apostle Thomas, blooms true faith, with churches, bishops, patriarchs and pious kings ... The kingdom knows neither thief, nor murder, nor self-interest, since true faith engenders true piety there. "
It turns out, back in the late 1860s Don Cossacks were written off with the Urals, collected a fairly significant amount and equipped for the search for this the promised land Cossack Varsonofy Baryshnikov with two comrades. Baryshnikov set off through Constantinople to Asia Minor, then to the Malabar coast, and finally to the East Indies ... The expedition returned with disappointing news: she could not find Belovodye. Thirty years later, in 1898, the dream of the Belovodsk kingdom flares up with renewed vigor, funds are found, a new pilgrimage is equipped. On May 30, 1898, the "deputation" of the Cossacks sits on a steamer, sailing from Odessa to Constantinople.
“From that day, in fact, the trip of the deputies of the Urals to the Belovodskoe kingdom began, and among the international crowd of merchants, military men, scientists, tourists, diplomats traveling around the world out of curiosity or in search of money, fame and pleasure, three people got mixed up, as it were from another world, looking for ways to the fabulous kingdom of Belovodsk. Korolenko described in detail all the vicissitudes of this unusual journey, in which, with all the curiosity and strangeness of the planned enterprise, the same Russia of honest people, noted by Dostoevsky, "who need only the truth", whose "desire for honesty and truth is unshakable and indestructible, and for the word of truth each of them will give his life and all his advantages. "
Not only the top of Russian society was drawn into the great spiritual pilgrimage towards the end of the 19th century, the whole of Russia, all of its people rushed to it.
"These Russian homeless wanderers," Dostoevsky remarked in his speech about Pushkin, "continue their wanderings to this day and, it seems, will not disappear for a long time." For a long time, "for the Russian wanderer needs exactly the world happiness in order to calm down - he will not be reconciled cheaper".
“There was, approximately, such a case: I knew one person who believed in the righteous land,” said another wanderer in our literature, Luke, from M. Gorky's play “At the Bottom”. - There must, he said, be a righteous country ... in that, they say, land - special people inhabit ... good people! They respect each other, they help each other - very easily - they help ... and everything is gloriously good with them! And so the man was still going to go ... to seek this righteous land. He was - poor, he lived - badly ... and when it was already so difficult for him that even lie down and die, he did not lose his spirit, and everything happened, he only grinned and said: “Nothing! I will endure! A few more - I’ll wait ... and then I’ll give up this whole life and - I’ll go to the righteous land ... “He had one joy - this land ... And to this place - in Siberia it was something - they sent an exiled scientist ... with books, with plans he, a scientist, and with all sorts of things ... The man says to the scientist: “Show me, do mercy, where is the righteous land and how is the road there?” Now the scientist opened the books, laid out plans ... looked and looked - no nowhere righteous land! "Everything is true, all the lands are shown, but the righteous one is not!"
The man does not believe ... It must, he says, be ... look better! And then, he says, your books and plans are useless if there is no righteous land ... The scientist is offended. My plans, he says, are the most faithful, but there is no righteous land at all. Well, then the man got angry - how so? He lived and lived, endured, endured and believed everything - there is! but according to the plans it turns out - no! Robbery! .. And he says to the scientist: “Oh, you ... a bastard! You are a scoundrel, not a scientist ... “Yes, in his ear - once! Moreover! .. ( After a pause.) And after that I went home - and hanged myself! "
The 1860s marked a sharp historical turning point in the destinies of Russia, which from now on broke with the subordinate, "homebody" existence and the whole world, the whole people set off on a long path of spiritual quest, marked by ups and downs, fatal temptations and deviations, but the righteous path is precisely in passion , in the sincerity of his inescapable desire to find the truth. And perhaps, for the first time, Nekrasov's poetry responded to this deep process, which engulfed not only the “top”, but also the “bottom” of society.
1
The poet began work on a grandiose plan " folk books"In 1863, and ended up mortally ill in 1877, with a bitter consciousness of incompleteness and incompleteness of his plans:" One thing that I deeply regret is that I did not finish my poem "Who Lives Well in Russia". It “had to include all the experience given to Nikolai Alekseevich by studying the people, all the information about him accumulated“ by word ”over twenty years,” GI Uspensky recalled about his conversations with Nekrasov.
However, the question of the "incompleteness" of "Who lives well in Russia" is very controversial and problematic. First, the poet's own confessions are subjectively exaggerated. It is known that a writer always has a feeling of dissatisfaction, and the larger the plan, the sharper it is. Dostoevsky wrote about The Brothers Karamazov: "I myself think that even one tenth of the part failed to express what I wanted." But do we dare, on this basis, to regard Dostoevsky's novel as a fragment of an unrealized plan? The same is with “Who lives well in Russia”.
Secondly, the poem "Who Lives Well in Russia" was conceived as an epic, that is piece of art, depicting with the maximum degree of completeness and objectivity an entire era in the life of the people. Since people's life is boundless and inexhaustible in its countless manifestations, an epic in any of its varieties (epic poem, epic novel) is characterized by incompleteness, incompleteness. This is its specific difference from other forms of poetic art.
"This tricky song
He will sing to the word,
Who is the whole earth, Russia baptized,
It will pass from end to end. "
Her Christ's saint himself
Didn't finish - asleep eternal sleep -
this is how Nekrasov expressed his understanding of the epic intention in the poem "The Peddlers". The epic can be continued indefinitely, but it is also possible to put an end to some high segment of its path.
Until now, researchers of Nekrasov's work argue about the sequence of the arrangement of the parts "Who lives well in Russia", since the dying poet did not have time to make final orders on this score.
It is noteworthy that this dispute itself unwittingly confirms the epic character of "Who lives well in Russia." The composition of this work is built according to the laws of the classical epic: it consists of separate, relatively autonomous parts and chapters. Outwardly, these parts are connected by the theme of the road: seven men-truth-seekers wander around Russia, trying to resolve the question that haunts them: who lives well in Russia? In the "Prologue", as it were, a clear scheme of the journey is outlined - meetings with a landowner, an official, a merchant, a minister and a tsar. However, the epic lacks a clear and unambiguous purposefulness. Nekrasov does not force the action, is in no hurry to bring it to an all-decisive result. As an epic artist, he strives to fully recreate life, to reveal all the diversity folk characters, all indirectness, all the winding of folk paths, paths and roads.
The world in the epic narrative appears as it is - disordered and unexpected, devoid of rectilinear movement. The author of the epic admits "retreats, trips into the past, jumps somewhere to the side, to the side." According to the definition of the modern literary theorist GD Gachev, “the epic is like a child walking through the cabinet of curiosities of the universe. Here his attention was attracted by one hero, or a building, or a thought - and the author, forgetting about everything, plunges into him; then he was distracted by another - and he just as completely surrenders to him. But this is not just a compositional principle, not just the specificity of the plot in the epic ... The one who, while narrating, makes "digressions", unexpectedly long lingers on this or that subject; the one who succumbs to the temptation to describe both this and that and chokes with greed, sinning against the pace of the narrative - he thereby speaks of the extravagance, the abundance of being, that he (being) has nowhere to rush. Otherwise: it expresses the idea that being reigns over the principle of time (whereas the dramatic form, on the contrary, emphasizes the power of time - it’s not for nothing that, it would seem, only a “formal” requirement for the unity of time was born there). ”
The fabulous motives introduced into the epic "Who Lives Well in Russia" allow Nekrasov to freely and naturally handle time and space, easily transfer action from one end of Russia to another, slow down or speed up time according to fabulous laws. What unites the epic is not an external plot, not a movement towards an unambiguous result, but an internal plot: slowly, step by step, the contradictory but irreversible growth of the people's self-awareness, which has not yet come to a conclusion, is still in the difficult paths of searching, becomes clear in it. In this sense, the plot-compositional looseness of the poem is not accidental: it expresses with its incompleteness the diversity and diversity folk life, who thinks about herself in different ways, differently evaluates her place in the world, her mission.
In an effort to recreate the moving panorama of folk life in its entirety, Nekrasov also uses all the wealth of oral folk art... But the folklore element in the epic also expresses the gradual growth of national self-awareness: the fairy-tale motives of the "Prologue" are replaced by an epic epic, then lyrical folk songs in "Krestyanka" and, finally, the songs of Grisha Dobrosklonov in "A Feast for the Whole World", striving to become popular and already partially accepted and understood by the people. The men listen to his songs, sometimes nod in agreement, but last song, "Rus", they have not yet heard: he has not yet sung it to them. And therefore the ending of the poem is open to the future, is not allowed.
Our pilgrims should be under the same roof,
If only they could know what happened to Grisha.
But the pilgrims did not hear the song "Rus", which means they still did not understand what the "embodiment of the happiness of the people" is. It turns out that Nekrasov did not finish his song, not only because death prevented him. The folk life itself did not finish his songs in those years. More than a hundred years have passed since then, and the song begun by the great poet about the Russian peasantry is still being sung. In "The Feast" only a glimpse of the future happiness is outlined, of which the poet dreams of, realizing how many roads lie ahead before its actual incarnation. The incompleteness of "Who lives well in Russia" is principled and artistically significant as a sign of a folk epic.
"Who lives well in Russia" and in general, and in each of its parts, resembles a peasant worldly gathering, which is the most complete expression of democratic people's self-government. At such a gathering, the inhabitants of one village or several villages that were part of the "world" decided all issues of common worldly life. The meeting had nothing to do with a modern meeting. The chairperson leading the discussion was absent. Each member of the community, at will, entered into a conversation or skirmish, defending his point of view. Instead of voting, the principle of general agreement was used. The dissatisfied were persuaded or retreated, and in the course of the discussion a "worldly sentence" was ripening. If there was no general agreement, the meeting was postponed to the next day. Gradually, in the course of heated debates, a unanimous opinion matured, agreement was sought and found.
Nekrasov's employee Patriotic notes", The populist writer N. N. Zlatovratsky described the original peasant life in the following way:" For the second day now, we have been gathering after gathering. You look out the window, now in one or the other end of the village, the owners, old people, children are crowding: some are sitting, others are standing in front of them, hands behind their backs and attentively listening to someone. This someone waves his hands, bends his whole body, shouts something very convincingly, pauses for a few minutes and then again begins to convince. But then suddenly they object to him, they object somehow at once, the voices rise higher and higher, shout at full throat, as befits for such a vast hall, which are the surrounding meadows and fields, everyone says, not embarrassed by anyone or anything, as befits a free a bunch of equal persons. Neither the slightest sign formality. Sergeant Major Maksim Maksimych himself stands somewhere on the side, as the most invisible member of our community ... Here everything goes clean, everything becomes an edge; if someone, out of cowardice or from calculation, decides to get away with silence, he will be mercilessly taken out into the open. Yes, and these faint-hearted, at especially important gatherings, there are very few. I have seen the most meek, most unrequited men who<…>at gatherings, in moments of general excitement, they were completely transformed and<…>gained such courage that they managed to outstrip the obviously brave men. In the moments of its climax, the gathering is made simply by open mutual confession and mutual exposure, a manifestation of the broadest publicity. "
The whole epic poem of Nekrasov is a worldly gathering that is flaring up, gradually gaining strength. It reaches its pinnacle in the final Feast for the Whole World. However, a general "worldly judgment" is still not passed. Only the path to it is outlined, many of the initial obstacles have been removed, and on many points there has been a movement towards a general agreement. But there is no result, life has not been stopped, the gatherings have not been stopped, the epic is open to the future. For Nekrasov, the process itself is important here, it is important that the peasantry not only thought about the meaning of life, but also embarked on a difficult, long path of seeking truth. Let's try to take a closer look at it, moving from the "Prologue. Part One "to" The Peasant Woman "," The Last One "and" A Feast for the Whole World. "
2
The Prologue tells of the meeting of seven men as a great epic event.
In what year - count
In which land - guess
On a pole track
Seven men got together ...
So the epic and fairy-tale heroes for a battle or for a feast of honor. Time and space acquire an epic scope in the poem: the action is carried over to the whole of Russia. The tightened province, Terpigorev uyezd, Empty volost, the villages of Zaplatovo, Dyryavino, Razutovo, Znobishino, Gorelovo, Neyelovo, Neurozhaina can be attributed to any of the Russian provinces, counties, volosts and villages. The general sign of post-reform ruin has been seized. And the question itself, which agitated the peasants, concerns the whole of Russia - peasant, noble, merchant. Therefore, the quarrel that arose between them is not an ordinary event, but great controversy... In the soul of every grain grower, with his own private destiny, with his everyday interests, a question has awakened that concerns everyone, the entire world of the people.
On the case, everyone in their own way
I left the house before noon:
I kept that path to the forge,
He went to the village of Ivankovo
Call Father Prokofy
To christen the child.
Groin honeycomb
Carried to the market in Velikoye,
And the two bros of Gubin
So easy with a halter
To catch a stubborn horse
They went to their own herd.
It would be high time for everyone
Return on your own path -
They go side by side!
Each peasant had his own path, and suddenly they found a common path: the question of happiness united the people. And therefore we are no longer ordinary peasants with their own individual destiny and personal interests, but protectors for the entire peasant world, truth-seekers. The number "seven" in folklore is magical. Seven Wanderers- an image of a large epic scale. The fabulous coloring of "Prologue" raises the narrative above everyday life, above peasant life and gives the action an epic universality.
The fabulous atmosphere in "Prologue" is ambiguous. Giving the events a nationwide sound, it also turns into a convenient method for the poet to characterize the people's self-consciousness. Note that Nekrasov is playful with the fairy tale. In general, his treatment of folklore is more free and relaxed in comparison with the poems "Peddlers" and "Moroz, Red Nose." And he treats the people differently, often making fun of the peasants, provoking readers, paradoxically sharpening the people's view of things, laughing at the limited peasant world outlook. The intonation system of the narrative in "Who Lives Well in Russia" is very flexible and rich: here is a good-natured author's smile, and condescension, and a slight irony, and a bitter joke, and lyrical regret, and sorrow, and meditation, and an appeal. The intonational-stylistic polyphonic nature of the narrative reflects in its own way new phase folk life. Before us is the post-reform peasantry, which has broken with an immobile patriarchal existence, with an age-old everyday and spiritual settled life. This is already a wandering Russia with awakened self-awareness, noisy, discordant, prickly and uncompromising, prone to quarrels and disputes. And the author does not stand aside from her, but turns into an equal participant in her life. He then rises above the disputants, then imbued with sympathy for one of the disputing parties, then touched, then indignant. As Russia lives in disputes, in search of truth, so the author is in an intense dialogue with her.
In the literature about "Who lives well in Russia" one can find the assertion that the dispute of the seven pilgrims that opens the poem corresponds to the original compositional plan, from which the poet subsequently retreated. Already in the first part, there was a deviation from the intended plot, and instead of meeting with the rich and noble truth-seekers began to question the crowd of people.
But this deviation immediately occurs at the "upper" level. Instead of the landowner and the official, whom the peasants had scheduled for questioning, for some reason there was a meeting with the priest. Is this a coincidence?
Let us first of all note that the "formula" of the dispute proclaimed by the peasants signifies not so much original design how much the level of national self-awareness is manifested in this dispute. And Nekrasov cannot but show the reader his limitations: men understand happiness primitively and reduce it to a well-fed life, material security. What is worth, for example, such a candidate for the role of a lucky man as the "merchant" is proclaimed, and even "fat-bellied"! And behind the dispute between the peasants - who lives happily, freely in Russia? - Immediately, but still gradually, muffled, another, much more significant and important question, which constitutes the soul of the epic poem - how to understand human happiness, where to look for it and what does it consist of?
In the final chapter "A Feast for the Whole World" through the mouth of Grisha Dobrosklonov, the following assessment is given current state popular life: "The Russian people are gathering strength and learning to be a citizen."
In fact, this formula contains the main pathos of the poem. It is important for Nekrasov to show how the forces that unite him are ripening in the people and what kind of civic orientation they acquire. The idea of the poem by no means boils down to making the pilgrims carry out successive meetings according to the program they have outlined. Much more important here is a completely different question: what is happiness in the eternal, Orthodox Christian understanding of it, and is the Russian people capable of uniting peasant "politics" with Christian morality?
therefore folk motives in "Prolog" they play a dual role. On the one hand, the poet uses them to give the beginning of the work a high epic sound, and on the other, to emphasize the limited consciousness of the disputants, who deviate in their idea of happiness from the righteous to the evil ways. Let's remember that Nekrasov spoke about this more than once for a long time, for example, in one of the versions of "Song of Eremushka", created back in 1859.
Change pleasures
Living does not mean eating and drinking.
A better world has aspirations
There are nobler blessings.
Despise evil ways:
There is debauchery and vanity.
Honor the Covenants Forever Right
And learn them from Christ.
The same two paths, sung over Russia by the angel of mercy in "A Feast for the Whole World", are now opening up for the Russian people, who are celebrating commemoration on the fortifications and faced with a choice.
In the midst of the world
For a free heart
There are two ways.
Weigh the proud strength,
Suspension of solid will:
Which way to go?
This song sounds over Russia coming to life from the mouth of the messenger of the Creator himself, and the fate of the people will directly depend on which path the pilgrims will take after long wanderings and looping along Russian country roads.
Current page: 1 (total of the book has 13 pages)
Nikolay Alekseevich Nekrasov
Who lives well in Russia
© Lebedev Yu.V., introductory article, comments, 1999
© Godin I.M., heirs, illustrations, 1960
© Design of the series. Children's Literature Publishing House, 2003
* * *
Yu Lebedev
Russian odyssey
In his "Diary of a Writer" for 1877, F. M. Dostoevsky noted a characteristic feature that appeared in the Russian people of the post-reform period - “this is a multitude, an extraordinary modern multitude of new people, a new root of Russian people who need truth, one truth without conventional lies, and who, in order to attain this truth, will give everything decisively. " Dostoevsky saw in them "the advancing future Russia."
At the very beginning of the 20th century, another writer, V.G. Korolenko, took from a summer trip to the Urals his discovery that astonished him: The North Pole, - in the distant Ural villages there were rumors about the Belovodsk kingdom and their own religious and scientific expedition was being prepared. " Among ordinary Cossacks, the conviction spread and grew stronger that “somewhere out there,“ beyond the distant weather ”,“ beyond the valleys, beyond the mountains, beyond the wide seas ”there is a“ blessed country ”in which by the providence of God and the fortunes of history has been preserved and flourishes throughout inviolability is a complete and complete formula of grace. This is a real fabulous country of all ages and peoples, colored only by the Old Believer mood. In it, planted by the Apostle Thomas, true faith blooms, with churches, bishops, patriarchs and pious kings ... The kingdom does not know this, neither murder, nor self-interest, since true faith engenders true piety there. "
It turns out that back in the late 1860s, the Don Cossacks were written off with the Ural Cossacks, collected a fairly significant amount and equipped the Cossack Varsonofy Baryshnikov with two comrades to search for this promised land. Baryshnikov set off through Constantinople to Asia Minor, then to the Malabar coast, and finally to the East Indies ... The expedition returned with disappointing news: she could not find Belovodye. Thirty years later, in 1898, the dream of the Belovodsk kingdom flares up with renewed vigor, funds are found, a new pilgrimage is equipped. On May 30, 1898, the "deputation" of the Cossacks sits on a steamer, sailing from Odessa to Constantinople.
“From that day, in fact, the trip of the deputies of the Urals to the Belovodskoe kingdom began, and among the international crowd of merchants, military men, scientists, tourists, diplomats traveling around the world out of curiosity or in search of money, fame and pleasure, three people got mixed up, as it were from another world, looking for ways to the fabulous kingdom of Belovodsk. Korolenko described in detail all the vicissitudes of this unusual journey, in which, with all the curiosity and strangeness of the planned enterprise, the same Russia of honest people, noted by Dostoevsky, "who need only the truth", whose "desire for honesty and truth is unshakable and indestructible, and for the word of truth each of them will give his life and all his advantages. "
Not only the top of Russian society was drawn into the great spiritual pilgrimage towards the end of the 19th century, the whole of Russia, all of its people rushed to it. "These Russian homeless wanderers," Dostoevsky remarked in his speech about Pushkin, "continue their wanderings to this day and, it seems, will not disappear for a long time." For a long time, "for the Russian wanderer needs exactly the world happiness in order to calm down - he will not be reconciled cheaper".
“There was, approximately, such a case: I knew one person who believed in a righteous land,” said another wanderer in our literature, Luke, from M. Gorky's play “At the Bottom”. - There must, he said, be a righteous country ... in that, they say, land - special people inhabit ... good people! They respect each other, they help each other - very easily - they help ... and everything is gloriously good with them! And so the man was still going to go ... to seek this righteous land. He was - poor, he lived - badly ... and when it was already so difficult for him that even lie down and die, he did not lose his spirit, and everything happened, he only grinned and said: “Nothing! I will endure! A few more - I’ll wait ... and then I’ll give up this whole life and - I’ll go to the righteous land ... “He had only joy - this land ... And to this place - in Siberia it was something - they sent an exiled scientist ... with books, with plans he, a scientist, and with all sorts of things ... The man says to the scientist: “Show me, do mercy, where is the righteous land and how is the road there?” Now the scientist opened the books, laid out plans ... looked and looked - no nowhere righteous land! "Everything is true, all the lands are shown, but the righteous one is not!"
The man does not believe ... It must, he says, be ... look better! And then, he says, your books and plans are useless if there is no righteous land ... The scientist is offended. My plans, he says, are the most faithful, but there is no righteous land at all. Well, then the man got angry - how so? He lived and lived, endured, endured and believed everything - there is! but according to the plans it turns out - no! Robbery! .. And he says to the scientist: “Oh, you ... a bastard! You are a scoundrel, not a scientist ... “Yes, in his ear - once! Moreover! .. ( After a pause.) And after that I went home - and hanged myself! "
The 1860s marked a sharp historical turning point in the destinies of Russia, which from now on broke with the subordinate, "homebody" existence and the whole world, the whole people set off on a long path of spiritual quest, marked by ups and downs, fatal temptations and deviations, but the righteous path is precisely in passion , in the sincerity of his inescapable desire to find the truth. And perhaps, for the first time, Nekrasov's poetry responded to this deep process, which engulfed not only the “top”, but also the “bottom” of society.
1
The poet began work on the grandiose concept of a "people's book" in 1863, and ended up mortally ill in 1877, with a bitter consciousness of incompleteness, incompleteness of his plans: "One thing I deeply regret is that I did not finish my poem" To whom to live well". It “had to include all the experience given to Nikolai Alekseevich by studying the people, all the information about him accumulated“ by word ”over twenty years,” GI Uspensky recalled about his conversations with Nekrasov.
However, the question of the "incompleteness" of "Who lives well in Russia" is very controversial and problematic. First, the poet's own confessions are subjectively exaggerated. It is known that a writer always has a feeling of dissatisfaction, and the larger the plan, the sharper it is. Dostoevsky wrote about The Brothers Karamazov: "I myself think that even one tenth of the part failed to express what I wanted." But do we dare, on this basis, to regard Dostoevsky's novel as a fragment of an unrealized plan? The same is with “Who lives well in Russia”.
Secondly, the poem "Who Lives Well in Russia" was conceived as an epic, that is, a work of art depicting, with the maximum degree of completeness and objectivity, an entire era in the life of the people. Since people's life is boundless and inexhaustible in its countless manifestations, an epic in any of its varieties (epic poem, epic novel) is characterized by incompleteness, incompleteness. This is its specific difference from other forms of poetic art.
"This tricky song
He will sing to the word,
Who is the whole earth, Russia baptized,
It will pass from end to end. "
Her Christ's saint himself
Didn't finish it - sleeps in eternal sleep -
this is how Nekrasov expressed his understanding of the epic intention in the poem "The Peddlers". The epic can be continued indefinitely, but it is also possible to put an end to some high segment of its path.
Until now, researchers of Nekrasov's work argue about the sequence of the arrangement of the parts "Who lives well in Russia", since the dying poet did not have time to make final orders on this score.
It is noteworthy that this dispute itself unwittingly confirms the epic character of "Who lives well in Russia." The composition of this work is built according to the laws of the classical epic: it consists of separate, relatively autonomous parts and chapters. Outwardly, these parts are connected by the theme of the road: seven men-truth-seekers wander around Russia, trying to resolve the question that haunts them: who lives well in Russia? In the "Prologue", as it were, a clear scheme of the journey is outlined - meetings with a landowner, an official, a merchant, a minister and a tsar. However, the epic lacks a clear and unambiguous purposefulness. Nekrasov does not force the action, is in no hurry to bring it to an all-decisive result. As an epic artist, he strives for the completeness of the recreation of life, for the identification of the entire variety of folk characters, all indirectness, all the winding of folk paths, paths and roads.
The world in the epic narrative appears as it is - disordered and unexpected, devoid of rectilinear movement. The author of the epic admits "retreats, trips into the past, jumps somewhere to the side, to the side." According to the definition of the modern literary theorist GD Gachev, “the epic is like a child walking through the cabinet of curiosities of the universe. Here his attention was attracted by one hero, or a building, or a thought - and the author, forgetting about everything, plunges into him; then he was distracted by another - and he just as completely surrenders to him. But this is not just a compositional principle, not just the specificity of the plot in the epic ... The one who, while narrating, makes "digressions", unexpectedly long lingers on this or that subject; the one who succumbs to the temptation to describe both this and that and chokes with greed, sinning against the pace of the narrative - he thereby speaks of the extravagance, the abundance of being, that he (being) has nowhere to rush. Otherwise: it expresses the idea that being reigns over the principle of time (whereas the dramatic form, on the contrary, emphasizes the power of time - it’s not for nothing that, it would seem, only a “formal” requirement for the unity of time was born there). ”
The fabulous motives introduced into the epic "Who Lives Well in Russia" allow Nekrasov to freely and naturally handle time and space, easily transfer action from one end of Russia to another, slow down or speed up time according to fabulous laws. What unites the epic is not an external plot, not a movement towards an unambiguous result, but an internal plot: slowly, step by step, the contradictory but irreversible growth of the people's self-awareness, which has not yet come to a conclusion, is still in the difficult paths of searching, becomes clear in it. In this sense, the plot-compositional looseness of the poem is not accidental: it expresses with its incompleteness the diversity and diversity of folk life, which thinks over itself in different ways, differently evaluates its place in the world, its purpose.
In an effort to recreate the moving panorama of folk life in its entirety, Nekrasov also uses all the wealth of oral folk art. But the folklore element in the epic expresses the gradual growth of national self-awareness: the fairy-tale motifs of the Prologue are replaced by the epic epic, then the lyrical folk songs in The Peasant Woman, and, finally, the songs of Grisha Dobrosklonov in The Feast for the Whole World, striving to become folk and already partially accepted and understood by the people. The peasants listen to his songs, sometimes nod in agreement, but they have not yet heard the last song, "Rus": he has not sung it to them yet. And therefore the ending of the poem is open to the future, is not allowed.
Our pilgrims should be under the same roof,
If only they could know what happened to Grisha.
But the pilgrims did not hear the song "Rus", which means they still did not understand what the "embodiment of the happiness of the people" is. It turns out that Nekrasov did not finish his song, not only because death prevented him. The folk life itself did not finish his songs in those years. More than a hundred years have passed since then, and the song begun by the great poet about the Russian peasantry is still being sung. In "The Feast" only a glimpse of the future happiness is outlined, of which the poet dreams of, realizing how many roads lie ahead before its actual incarnation. The incompleteness of "Who lives well in Russia" is principled and artistically significant as a sign of a folk epic.
"Who lives well in Russia" and in general, and in each of its parts, resembles a peasant worldly gathering, which is the most complete expression of democratic people's self-government. At such a gathering, the inhabitants of one village or several villages that were part of the "world" decided all issues of common worldly life. The meeting had nothing to do with a modern meeting. The chairperson leading the discussion was absent. Each member of the community, at will, entered into a conversation or skirmish, defending his point of view. Instead of voting, the principle of general agreement was used. The dissatisfied were persuaded or retreated, and in the course of the discussion a "worldly sentence" was ripening. If there was no general agreement, the meeting was postponed to the next day. Gradually, in the course of heated debates, a unanimous opinion matured, agreement was sought and found.
An employee of Nekrasov's "Otechestvennye zapiski", the populist writer N. N. Zlatovratsky described the original peasant life in the following way: “For the second day now, we have been gathering after gathering. You look out the window, now in one or the other end of the village, the owners, old people, children are crowding: some are sitting, others are standing in front of them, hands behind their backs and attentively listening to someone. This someone waves his hands, bends his whole body, shouts something very convincingly, pauses for a few minutes and then again begins to convince. But then suddenly they object to him, they object somehow at once, the voices rise higher and higher, shout at full throat, as befits for such a vast hall, which are the surrounding meadows and fields, everyone says, not embarrassed by anyone or anything, as befits a free a bunch of equal persons. Not the slightest sign of formality. Sergeant Major Maksim Maksimych himself stands somewhere on the side, as the most invisible member of our community ... Here everything goes clean, everything becomes an edge; if someone, out of cowardice or from calculation, decides to get away with silence, he will be mercilessly taken out into the open. Yes, and these faint-hearted, at especially important gatherings, there are very few. I have seen the most meek, most unrequited men who<…>at gatherings, in moments of general excitement, they were completely transformed and<…>gained such courage that they managed to outstrip the obviously brave men. In the moments of its climax, the gathering is made simply by open mutual confession and mutual exposure, a manifestation of the broadest publicity. "
The whole epic poem of Nekrasov is a worldly gathering that is flaring up, gradually gaining strength. It reaches its pinnacle in the final Feast for the Whole World. However, a general "worldly judgment" is still not passed. Only the path to it is outlined, many of the initial obstacles have been removed, and on many points there has been a movement towards a general agreement. But there is no result, life has not been stopped, the gatherings have not been stopped, the epic is open to the future. For Nekrasov, the process itself is important here, it is important that the peasantry not only thought about the meaning of life, but also embarked on a difficult, long path of seeking truth. Let's try to take a closer look at it, moving from the "Prologue. Part One "to" The Peasant Woman "," The Last One "and" A Feast for the Whole World. "
2
The Prologue tells of the meeting of seven men as a great epic event.
In what year - count
In which land - guess
On a pole track
Seven men got together ...
So epic and fairy-tale heroes converged for battle or for a feast of honor. Time and space acquire an epic scope in the poem: the action is carried over to the whole of Russia. The tightened province, Terpigorev uyezd, Empty volost, the villages of Zaplatovo, Dyryavino, Razutovo, Znobishino, Gorelovo, Neyelovo, Neurozhaina can be attributed to any of the Russian provinces, counties, volosts and villages. The general sign of post-reform ruin has been seized. And the question itself, which agitated the peasants, concerns the whole of Russia - peasant, noble, merchant. Therefore, the quarrel that arose between them is not an ordinary event, but great controversy... In the soul of every grain grower, with his own private destiny, with his everyday interests, a question has awakened that concerns everyone, the entire world of the people.
On the case, everyone in their own way
I left the house before noon:
I kept that path to the forge,
He went to the village of Ivankovo
Call Father Prokofy
To christen the child.
Groin honeycomb
Carried to the market in Velikoye,
And the two bros of Gubin
So easy with a halter
To catch a stubborn horse
They went to their own herd.
It would be high time for everyone
Return on your own path -
They go side by side!
Each peasant had his own path, and suddenly they found a common path: the question of happiness united the people. And therefore we are no longer ordinary peasants with their own individual destiny and personal interests, but protectors for the entire peasant world, truth-seekers. The number "seven" in folklore is magical. Seven Wanderers- an image of a large epic scale. The fabulous coloring of "Prologue" raises the narrative above everyday life, above the peasant life and gives the action an epic universality.
The fabulous atmosphere in "Prologue" is ambiguous. Giving the events a nationwide sound, it also turns into a convenient method for the poet to characterize the people's self-consciousness. Note that Nekrasov is playful with the fairy tale. In general, his treatment of folklore is more free and relaxed in comparison with the poems "Peddlers" and "Moroz, Red Nose." And he treats the people differently, often making fun of the peasants, provoking readers, paradoxically sharpening the people's view of things, laughing at the limited peasant world outlook. The intonation system of the narrative in "Who Lives Well in Russia" is very flexible and rich: here is a good-natured author's smile, and condescension, and a slight irony, and a bitter joke, and lyrical regret, and sorrow, and meditation, and an appeal. The intonational and stylistic polyphonic nature of the narrative, in its own way, reflects a new phase of folk life. Before us is the post-reform peasantry, which has broken with an immobile patriarchal existence, with an age-old everyday and spiritual settled life. This is already a wandering Russia with awakened self-awareness, noisy, discordant, prickly and uncompromising, prone to quarrels and disputes. And the author does not stand aside from her, but turns into an equal participant in her life. He then rises above the disputants, then imbued with sympathy for one of the disputing parties, then touched, then indignant. As Russia lives in disputes, in search of truth, so the author is in an intense dialogue with her.
In the literature about "Who lives well in Russia" one can find the assertion that the dispute of the seven pilgrims that opens the poem corresponds to the original compositional plan, from which the poet subsequently retreated. Already in the first part, there was a deviation from the intended plot, and instead of meeting with the rich and noble truth-seekers began to question the crowd of people.
But this deviation immediately occurs at the "upper" level. Instead of the landowner and the official, whom the peasants had scheduled for questioning, for some reason there was a meeting with the priest. Is this a coincidence?
Let us first of all note that the "formula" of the dispute proclaimed by the peasants signifies not so much the initial intention as the level of national self-awareness, which is manifested in this dispute. And Nekrasov cannot but show the reader his limitations: men understand happiness primitively and reduce it to a well-fed life, material security. What is worth, for example, such a candidate for the role of a lucky man as the "merchant" is proclaimed, and even "fat-bellied"! And behind the dispute between the peasants - who lives happily, freely in Russia? - immediately, but still gradually, muffled, another, much more significant and important question arises, which is the soul of the epic poem - how to understand human happiness, where to look for it and what does it consist of?
In the final chapter "A Feast for the Whole World" through the mouth of Grisha Dobrosklonov, the following assessment is given to the current state of people's life: "The Russian people are gathering strength and learning to be a citizen."
In fact, this formula contains the main pathos of the poem. It is important for Nekrasov to show how the forces that unite him are ripening in the people and what kind of civic orientation they acquire. The idea of the poem by no means boils down to making the pilgrims carry out successive meetings according to the program they have outlined. Much more important here is a completely different question: what is happiness in the eternal, Orthodox Christian understanding of it, and is the Russian people capable of uniting peasant "politics" with Christian morality?
Therefore, folklore motifs in the Prologue play a dual role. On the one hand, the poet uses them to give the beginning of the work a high epic sound, and on the other, to emphasize the limited consciousness of the disputants, who deviate in their idea of happiness from the righteous to the evil ways. Let's remember that Nekrasov spoke about this more than once for a long time, for example, in one of the versions of "Song of Eremushka", created back in 1859.
Change pleasures
Living does not mean eating and drinking.
A better world has aspirations
There are nobler blessings.
Despise evil ways:
There is debauchery and vanity.
Honor the Covenants Forever Right
And learn them from Christ.
The same two paths, sung over Russia by the angel of mercy in "A Feast for the Whole World", are now opening up for the Russian people, who are celebrating commemoration on the fortifications and faced with a choice.
In the midst of the world
For a free heart
There are two ways.
Weigh the proud strength,
Suspension of solid will:
Which way to go?
This song sounds over Russia coming to life from the mouth of the messenger of the Creator himself, and the fate of the people will directly depend on which path the pilgrims will take after long wanderings and looping along Russian country roads.
In the meantime, the poet is pleased only by the very desire of the people to seek the truth. And the direction of these searches, the temptation of wealth at the very beginning of the path cannot but cause a bitter irony. therefore fabulous plot The "Prologue" is also characterized by a low level of peasant consciousness, spontaneous, vague, with difficulty making its way to universal questions. People's thought has not yet acquired clarity and clarity, it is still merged with nature and is sometimes expressed not so much in words as in action, in deed: instead of thinking, fists are used.
The peasants still live according to the fabulous formula: "Go there - I don't know where, bring that - I don't know what."
They walk as if they are chasing
Behind them are gray wolves,
What is far away is sooner.
…
Probably b, kiss the night
So they walked - where, not knowing ...
Isn't that why an alarming, demonic element is growing in the Prologue? "The woman on the counter", "the clumsy Durandikha", in front of the men turns into a laughing witch. And Pakhom is scattering his mind for a long time, trying to understand what happened to him and his companions, until he comes to the conclusion that the "devil is a glorious joke" made a joke on them.
In the poem, a comic comparison of the dispute between the peasants with a bullfight in a peasant herd arises. And the cow, lost in the evening, came to the fire, stared at the peasants,
I listened to crazy speeches
And the beginning, heart,
Moo, moo, moo!
Nature responds to the destructiveness of the dispute, which develops into a serious fight, and in the person of not so much good as its sinister forces, representatives of folk demonology, enrolled in the category of forest evil. Seven eagle owls flock to the arguing wanderers: from seven large trees "the midniters are laughing."
And a raven, a smart bird,
Has come, sits on a tree
By the fire
Sits and prays to the devil
To be smacked to death
Someone!
The commotion grows, spreads, covers the entire forest, and it seems that the “spirit of the forest” itself laughs, laughs at the peasants, responds to their skirmish and carnage with malevolent intentions.
A resounding echo woke up,
I went for a walk, for a walk,
I went to shout, shout,
As if to provoke
Stubborn men.
Of course, the author's irony in "Prologue" is good-natured and condescending. The poet does not want to strictly judge the peasants for the wretchedness and extreme limitation of their ideas about happiness and happy person... He knows that this limitation is associated with the harsh everyday life of a peasant, with such material deprivations, in which suffering itself sometimes takes on soulless, ugly, perverted forms. This happens every time the people are deprived of their daily bread. Let us recall the song "Hungry" sounded in the "Feast":
There is a man -
Sways
There is a man -
Can't breathe!
From his bark
Uncoiled,
Longing misfortune
Exhausted ...
3
And in order to highlight the limited peasant understanding of happiness, Nekrasov brings the wanderers together in the first part of the epic poem not with a landowner or an official, but with a priest. A priest, a spiritual person who is closest to the people in his way of life, and who is called upon to preserve a thousand-year-old national shrine in his duty, very accurately compresses the ideas of happiness, vague for the pilgrims themselves, into a capacious formula.
- What is happiness, in your opinion?
Peace, wealth, honor -
Isn't that so, dear friends? -They said: "So" ...
Of course, the priest himself ironically removes himself from this formula: "This, dear friends, is happiness in your opinion!" And then, with obvious persuasiveness, he refutes life experience the naivety of each hypostasis of this triune formula: neither "peace", nor "wealth", nor "honor" can be taken as the basis of a truly human, Christian understanding of happiness.
The priest's story makes men think about many things. The widespread, ironically condescending assessment of the clergy reveals its untruth here. According to the laws of the epic narrative, the poet trustingly gives himself up to the story of the priest, which is structured in such a way that the life of the entire spiritual estate rises and stands up to its full height behind the personal life of one priest. The poet is not in a hurry, not in a hurry with the development of the action, giving the hero the full opportunity to pronounce everything that lies in his soul. Behind the life of a priest, on the pages of an epic poem, the life of all Russia in its past and present, in its different classes, opens. Here are the dramatic changes in noble estates: the old patriarchal-noble Russia, who lived a sedentary life, in manners and customs close to the people, is becoming a thing of the past. The post-reform burning of life and the ruin of the nobles destroyed its age-old foundations, destroyed the old attachment to the ancestral village nest. "Like a Jewish tribe," the landowners scattered all over the world, adopted new habits that were far from the Russians moral traditions and legends.
In the story of the priest, a "great chain" unfolds before the eyes of savvy men, in which all links are firmly connected: if you touch one, it will respond in another. The drama of the Russian nobility pulls the drama into the life of the clergy. To the same extent, this drama is aggravated by the impoverishment of the peasant after the reform.
Our villages are poor
And in them the peasants are sick
Yes, women are sad women,
Nurses, drinkers,
Slaves, worshipers
And eternal workers
Lord give them strength!
The clergy cannot be calm when the people, their drinker and breadwinner, are in poverty. And the point is not only in the material impoverishment of the peasantry and the nobility, entailing the impoverishment of the spiritual estate. The main trouble a priest in another. The peasant's misfortunes bring deep moral suffering to sensitive people from the clergy: "It's hard to live with such pennies toil!"
It happens to the sick
You will come: not dying,
The peasant family is terrible
The hour she has to
To lose the breadwinner!
Parting with the deceased
And support the rest
Trying to the best of your ability
The spirit is cheerful! And here to you
The old woman, the mother of the deceased,
Lo and behold, stretches with bony,
Calloused hand.
The soul will turn over
How they ring in this little hand
Two copper dimes!
The priest's confession speaks not only of those sufferings that are associated with social "disorder" in a country in a deep national crisis. These "disorders" lying on the surface of life must be eliminated, against them a righteous social struggle is possible and even necessary. But there are also other, deeper contradictions associated with the imperfection of human nature itself. It is these contradictions that reveal the vanity and cunning of people who strive to present life as sheer pleasure, as a thoughtless rapture with wealth, ambition, complacency, which turns into indifference to their neighbor. Pop, in his confession, inflicts a crushing blow on those who profess such a morality. Talking about parting words to the sick and dying, the priest speaks of the impossibility peace of mind on this earth for a person who is not indifferent to his neighbor:
Go - where's the name!
You go unreservedly.
And even if only the bones
Broke alone, -
No! every time he will
The soul will overpower.
Do not believe, Orthodox,
There is a limit to the habit:
No heart to endure
Without a certain thrill
Death wheeze
Funeral sob
Orphan sorrow!
Amen! .. Now think
What is the rest of the ass? ..
It turns out that a person who is completely free from suffering, living “freely, happily” is a dumb, indifferent, morally defective person. Life is not a holiday, but hard work, not only physical, but also spiritual, requiring self-denial from a person. After all, the same ideal was affirmed by Nekrasov himself in the poem "In Memory of Dobrolyubov", the ideal of high civic consciousness, surrendering to which it is impossible not to sacrifice oneself, not to deliberately reject "worldly pleasures". Isn't that why the priest looked down on hearing the peasants' question, far from the Christian truth of life, “is the life of a priest sweet?” And with the dignity of an Orthodox minister turned to the pilgrims:
... Orthodox!
To murmur against God is a sin,
I bear my cross with patience ...
And his whole story is, in fact, an example of how every person who is ready to lay down his life "for his friends" can carry the cross.
The lesson taught to the pilgrims by the priest has not yet gone to their future use, but nevertheless brought confusion into the peasant consciousness. The men unanimously took up arms against Luka:
- What, took it? stubborn head!
Village club!
There he gets into a dispute!
"Bell nobles -
The priests live like a prince. "
…
Well, here's your vaunted
Popov's life!
The irony of the author is not accidental, because with the same success it was possible to "trim" not only Luka, but each of them separately and all of them together. The peasant abuse is again followed by the shadow of Nekrasov, who laughs at the limitedness of the people's initial ideas about happiness. And it is no coincidence that after meeting the priest, the character of behavior and the way of thinking of the pilgrims change significantly. They are becoming more and more active in dialogues, more and more energetically intervening in life. And the attention of the wanderers is increasingly beginning to capture not the world of masters, but the people's environment.