The symbol of which is the female image in literature. The image of a Russian woman in classical literature

Among the wise men was an eccentric:
“I think,” he writes, “so,
I certainly exist."
No! you love and that's why
You exist - I understand
Rather, this is the truth.

(E.A. Baratynsky).

Introduction.

Since prehistoric times, a woman has become an object of "male art". This is what the so-called "venuses" tell us - stone figurines of pregnant women with large breasts. Literature for a long time remained masculine, because they wrote something about women, trying to convey their image, to preserve the valuable that is and what a man saw in a woman. The woman was and is still the object of worship (from the ancient mysteries to the Christian veneration of the Virgin Mary). Gioconda's smile continues to excite the minds of men.

In our work, we will consider a number of literary female images, consider their independent artistic world and the author's attitude towards them. The arbitrariness of the choice of this or that heroine is explained by the desire to give a contrast, to sharpen the erotic paradigms of the author-male relationship.

There is one more thing to note in this introduction. The image of a woman is often an alienation from the woman herself. So the medieval troubadours sang hymns very little to the familiar ladies of the heart. But the power of real love must also have something artistic in it. Otto Weininger wrote that the image of a woman in art is more beautiful than the woman herself, and therefore an element of adoration, dreams and consciousness of the beloved woman's sympathy are needed. A woman often makes herself a work of art, and this beauty cannot be explained. "Why is that woman beautiful?" - once they asked Aristotle, to which the great philosopher answered in the vein that beauty is obvious (unfortunately, Aristotle's essay “On Love” has not come down to us).

And further. Philosophy has developed several concepts of erotic love. If Vladimir Solovyov speaks of a loving attitude towards a woman-personality, then such writers as, for example, Vasily Rozanov, saw in a woman only an object of sexual desire and an image of a mother. We will encounter these two lines in our analysis. Naturally, these two contradictory concepts do not contradict, but they cannot be combined due to the conventional nature of the analysis (separation into elements) of the sexual feeling itself. On the other hand, two more opinions are important, the opinions of two other great Russian philosophers are important. So Ivan Ilyin says that it is simply impossible to live without love, and that it is necessary to love not just the sweet, but the good, and in the good there is also the sweet. Nikolai Berdyaev, continuing the line of Vladimir Solovyov, says that the beauty of a woman and her freedom are in her - female - personality.

Thus we come to two examples of pre-Pushkin literature.

First part.
1.
Cry of Yaroslavna and Svetlana.
In "The Lay of Igor's Campaign" there is one of the most poetic parts: "Lament of Yaroslavna". This part (like the entire work) dates back to the 12th century. The image of Yaroslavna is also well noticed in the famous painting by Vasily Perov, where “crying” is a prayer selflessly addressed to the sky.

At dawn in Putivl lamenting,
Like a cuckoo in early spring
Yaroslavna calls young,
On the wall sobbing urban:

“... Cherish the prince, lord,
Save on the far side
So that I forget my tears from now on,
So that he returns to me alive!

A young wife is waiting for her husband from a military campaign. She refers to the wind, to the sun, to all nature. She is faithful and cannot imagine her life without her husband. But there is no hope of his return.

This plot is somewhat repeated in "Svetlana" by V. A. Zhukovsky.

How can I, girlfriends, sing?
Dear friend is far away;
I am destined to die
In lonely sadness.

Svetlana, waiting for the groom, sees a dream where her groom is shown as a dead man. However, when she wakes up, she sees the groom safe and sound. Zhukovsky at the end of the ballad calls not to believe in dreams, but to believe in Providence.

Both Yaroslavna's crying and Svetlana's sadness are very religious, they are imbued with prayer, great love. Zhukovsky generally enriched Russian culture with moral ideas.

Tatiana.

“This is a positive type, not a negative one, this is a type of positive beauty, this is the apotheosis of a Russian woman ...” This is how Dostoevsky interprets the image of Tatyana Larina.

Pushkin, somewhat similar in appearance to Zhukovsky (both were curly and wore whiskers), used two motifs of "Svetlana": in "The Snowstorm" and in Tatyana's dream
("Eugene Onegin"). Because of a snowstorm in Pushkin's story of the same name, a girl marries a stranger. Silence of Svetlana Pushkin conveys to his Tatyana. Svetlana dreams about how she gets into a snowstorm. Tatyana dreams of a bear carrying her away in winter, dreams of various devilry, at the head of which beloved Onegin presides (the motif of "Satan's ball" appears already here). "Tatiana loves not jokingly." Onegin did not understand the feelings of young Tatiana, but at the same time he did not want to use these feelings, about which he read a whole sermon in front of Tatiana.

“He was unable to distinguish completeness and perfection in the poor girl, and indeed, perhaps, he took her for a “moral embryo”. This is she, an embryo, this is after her letter to Onegin! If there is anyone who is a moral embryo in the poem, it is, of course, himself, Onegin, and this is indisputable. Yes, and he could not recognize her at all: does he know the human soul? This is a distracted person, this is a restless dreamer in his whole life. - We read in the famous Pushkin speech of Dostoevsky in 1880.

Due to some kind of Russian stupidity, Onegin, because of an invitation to the Larins, was offended and offended Lensky, whom he killed in a duel, killed Tatiana's sister's fiancé, Olga.
Onegin is a man tired of the games of society, of the intrigues of the world, spiritually empty. This is what Tatyana saw in his "abandoned cell", in the books that he read.
But Tatyana changes (See illustration by M.P. Klodt, 1886), gets married, and when Onegin suddenly falls in love with her, she tells him:

"...I got married. You must,
I will forgive you, leave me;
I know that there is in your heart
And pride and direct honor.
I love you (why lie?),
But I am given to another;
And I will be faithful to him forever.

It is this fidelity, this imperative that Pushkin admires. Onegin's mistake is that he did not understand a woman, like many other heroes of Russian literature, as real men do not understand women.

Vladimir Nabokov comments: “Tatyana as a “type” (a favorite word of Russian criticism) became the mother and grandmother of countless female characters in the works of many Russian writers - from Turgenev to Chekhov. Literary evolution turned the Russian Eloise - Pushkin's combination of Tatyana Larina with Princess N - into the "national type" of a Russian woman, passionate and pure, dreamy and straightforward, steadfast friend and heroic wife. In historical reality, this image became associated with revolutionary aspirations, which in the course of subsequent years brought to life at least two generations of tender, highly educated and, moreover, incredibly brave young Russian noblewomen, ready to give their lives to save the people from government oppression. A lot of disappointments awaited these pure Tatyana-like souls, when life confronted them with real peasants and workers, ordinary people, whom they tried to educate and enlighten, did not believe them and did not understand them. Tatyana disappeared from Russian literature and from Russian life just before the October Revolution, when realist men in heavy boots took power into their own hands. In Soviet literature, the image of Tatyana was replaced by the image of her younger sister, who has now become a full-breasted, lively and red-cheeked girl. Olga is the right girl of Soviet fiction, she helps get the factory running, exposes sabotage, makes speeches and radiates absolute health.”

Poor Lisa.

Nikolai Karamzin is a typical romantic, a writer of his generation. "Nature", for example, he called "nature", here and there he has the interjection "Ah!" Lisa's story seems to us funny, flat, theatrical. But this is all from our deepening of hearts. For teenagers, such a story is quite useful and remarkable.
Lisa is the daughter of a prosperous peasant, "after his death, his wife and daughter were impoverished." We find her at the age of fifteen. “Liza, not sparing her tender youth, not sparing her rare beauty, worked day and night - weaving canvases, knitting stockings, picking flowers in the spring, and picking berries in the summer - and selling them in Moscow.” “The meadows were covered with flowers, and Lisa came to Moscow with lilies of the valley. A young, well-dressed, pleasant-looking man met her on the street. He bought flowers from her and promised to buy flowers from her every day. Then she waits for him all day, but he does not come. However, he will find her home and meet her widowed mother. Their daily meetings began, full of the pathos of love and big, loud words. “Flaming cheeks”, “eyes”, “sighs”, “bad dream”, “image of a loved one”, “drooping blue eyes” - all this has become clichés in our days, and in the years of Karamzin it was also a discovery that “ peasant women love it too.” Relations began. “Oh, Liza, Liza! What happened to you? Until now, waking up with the birds, you had fun with them in the morning, and a pure, joyful soul shone in your eyes, like the sun shines in drops of heavenly dew. The dream came true. Suddenly Lisa heard the noise of oars - she looked at the river and saw a boat, and Erast was in the boat. All the veins in her throbbed, and, of course, not from fear. Lisa's dream came true. “Erast jumped ashore, went up to Liza and - her dream came true in part: for he looked at her with an affectionate look, took her by the hand ... And Liza, Liza stood with downcast eyes, with fiery cheeks, with a trembling heart - not she could take her hands away from him - she could not turn away when he approached her with his pink lips ... Ah! He kissed her, kissed her with such fervor that the whole universe seemed to her on fire! "Dear Lisa! Erast said. - Dear Liza! I love you, ”and these words echoed in the depths of her soul, like heavenly, delightful music; she hardly dared to believe her ears and ... ”At first their relationship was pure, exuded trembling and purity. “There, the often quiet moon, through the green branches, silvered Lisa's blond hair with her rays, which were played with marshmallows and the hand of a dear friend; often these rays illuminated in the eyes of tender Liza a brilliant tear of love, which is always drained by Erast's kiss. They embraced - but the chaste, bashful Cynthia did not hide from them behind a cloud: their embraces were pure and blameless. But the relationship became more intimate and closer. “She threw herself into his arms - and in this hour, purity should have perished! - Erast felt an extraordinary excitement in his blood - Lisa had never seemed so charming to him - her caresses had never touched him so much - her kisses had never been so fiery - she knew nothing, suspected nothing, was not afraid of anything - the darkness of the evening nourished desires - not a single star shone in the sky - no ray could illuminate delusions. The words "delusion" and "harlot" - in Russian, these are words of the same root.
Lisa lost her innocence and took it painfully. ““It seemed to me that I was dying, that my soul ... No, I don’t know how to say this! .. Are you silent, Erast? Do you sigh?.. My God! What's happened?" Meanwhile, lightning flashed and thunder roared. Lisa trembled all over. "Erast, Erast! - she said. - I'm scared! I'm afraid the thunder will kill me like a criminal!" From this one spark in the sky, the future Thunderstorm by Ostrovsky will be born. The relationship continued, but Erast's soul was already satiated. The fulfillment of all desires is the most dangerous temptation of love. Here is what Karamzin tells us. Erast left Lisa, citing that he was going to war. But one day she will meet him in Moscow. And this is what he will say to her: “Liza! Circumstances have changed; I begged to marry; you must leave me alone and for your own peace of mind forget me. I loved you and now I love you, that is, I wish you every good. Here is a hundred rubles - take them, - he put the money in her pocket, - let me kiss you for the last time - and go home "" ... He really was in the army, but instead of fighting the enemy, he played cards and lost almost all of his estate. Soon they made peace, and Erast returned to Moscow, burdened with debts. He had only one way to improve his circumstances - to marry an elderly rich widow who had long been in love with him.

Lisa drowned herself. And all because of a mixture of high feelings with some kind of innocent, but still lust.

Tatyana Larina and Anna Karenina.

V.V. Nabokov, in his lectures on Russian literature, asked himself the question: how would Pushkin perceive Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina?

Tatyana loves, but does not dare to change. Anna, on the other hand, easily goes on a betrayal with Vronsky. She is burdened by her unloved husband (both her husband and lover are called Aleksei). Anna challenges the hypocritical world, where everything "secretly lascivious" is hidden behind conventions. Anna goes to the end, torn between love for her son and love for a man. "Russian Madame Bovary", she comes to death, to suicide. In the world of "Eugene Onegin" and "Svetlana" fidelity in marriage is glorified. In the world of the novel "Anna Karenina" there is a complete revelry: "everything is mixed up ..."

"... With the usual tact of a secular person, one look at
appearance of this lady, Vronsky determined her belonging
to the higher world. He apologized and went to the car, but felt
the need to look at her again - not because she was very
beautiful, not for that grace and modest grace that were visible in
her whole figure, but because in the expression of her pretty face, when she
walked past him, there was something especially tender and tender. When he looked back, she turned her head too. Shiny, looked dark from thick eyelashes,
gray eyes amiably, attentively rested on his face, as if she recognized him, and immediately transferred to the approaching crowd, as if looking for someone. In this short glance Vronsky managed to notice the restrained liveliness that played in her face and fluttered between her sparkling eyes and a barely perceptible smile that curved her ruddy lips. It was as if an excess of something so overwhelmed her being that, against her will, it was expressed either in a gleam of a look, or in a smile. She deliberately put out the light in her eyes, but it shone against her will in a barely perceptible smile. "

“Anna Karenina is an unusually attractive and sincere woman, but at the same time unhappy, guilty and pathetic. The fate of the heroine was significantly influenced by the laws of society of those times, the tragic disunity and misunderstanding in the family. In addition, the novel is based on folk moral ideas about the role of a woman. Anna cannot be happy by making other people unhappy and violating the laws of morality and duty.

Tatyana does not change, but Anna does. Why? Because Tatyana has moral principles, there is a grudge against Eugene. Tatyana is religious, respects her husband, respects the very institution of marriage, calls for honor and honesty. Anna Karenina despises her official husband and is fond of Vronsky, she is not religious, she sees all the conventions of secular morality, easily indulges in passions and emotions, her marriage means nothing to her. There are two philosophies, two ways of life: Kant's imperative meets again in the battle with F. Nietzsche's attitude to morality.

In "Eugene Onegin" and "Anna Karenina" there are examples of "love that succeeded": these are Lensky and Olga, these are Levin and Katya, respectively. In contrast to the main lines, we see examples and happy ones. Pushkin and Tolstoy paint two pictures for us: how it should and how it should not.

Tatyana continues in "Turgenev's girl", Anna finds something in common with Katerina from Ostrovsky's "Thunderstorm" and with Chekhov's "lady with a dog".

Turgenev girl.

The type of the so-called "Turgenev girl" comes out of the ideal image of Tatyana Larina. In Turgenev's books, this is a reserved, but sensitive girl who, as a rule, grew up in nature in a remote estate (without the pernicious influence of secular and city life), clean, modest and well educated.

In the novel "Rudin":

"... Natalya Alekseevna [Lasunskaya], at first glance, she might not have liked her. She had not yet had time to develop, she was thin, dark, kept a little stooped. But her features were beautiful and regular, although too large for a seventeen-year-old girl. Especially good was her clean and even forehead over thin, as if broken in the middle eyebrows. She spoke little, listened and looked attentively, almost intently, as if she wanted to give an account of everything to herself. She often remained motionless, lowered her hands and thought; her face expressed then the inner workings of thoughts... A barely perceptible smile suddenly appears on the lips and disappears; large dark eyes quietly rise... "

The "Scene in the Garden" between Onegin and Tatyana is somewhat repeated in Rudin. Both men show their cowardice, while the girls wait and languish in deep love, Evgeny speaks haughtily about his fatigue, and Dmitry Rudin admits that he does not dare to go against the will of Natalya's mother.
And here is a portrait of the heroine of "Spring Waters":

“A girl of about nineteen impetuously ran into the confectionery, with dark curls scattered over her bare shoulders, with outstretched bare arms, and, seeing Sanin, immediately rushed to him, grabbed him by the arm and dragged him along, saying in a breathless voice: “Hurry, hurry , here, save! Not out of unwillingness to obey, but simply out of an excess of amazement, Sanin did not immediately follow the girl - and, as it were, rested on the spot: he had never seen such a beauty in his life. She turned to him and with such desperation in her voice, in her eyes, in the movement of her clenched hand convulsively raised to her pale cheek, she said: “Go on, go on!” - that he immediately rushed after her through the open door.

"Her nose was somewhat large, but of a beautiful, aquiline fret, her upper lip was slightly set off by fluff; but her complexion, even and matte, ivory or milky amber, wavy gloss of hair, like Allorieva Judith in the Palazzo “Pitti,” and especially the eyes, dark gray, with a black border around the pupils, magnificent, triumphant eyes, “even now, when fear and grief darkened their brilliance ... Sanin involuntarily remembered the wonderful land from which he returned ... Yes, he is in Italy "I've never seen anything like it! The girl's breathing was slow and uneven; it seemed that she was always waiting for her brother to start breathing?"

And here is a portrait of Asya from the story of the same name:

“The girl whom he called his sister, at first glance seemed to me very pretty. There was something of her own, special, in the make-up of her swarthy, round face, with a small, thin nose, almost childlike cheeks, and black, bright eyes. She was gracefully built, but as if not yet fully developed. (...) Asya took off her hat; her black hair, cut and combed like a boy's, fell in large curls around her neck and ears. At first she was shy of me. (...) I have not seen a creature more mobile. Not for a moment did she sit still; she got up, ran into the house and ran again, sang in an undertone, often laughed, and in a strange way: it seemed that she laughed not at what she heard, but at various thoughts that came into her head. Her large eyes looked straight, bright, bold, but sometimes her eyelids squinted slightly, and then her gaze suddenly became deep and gentle.

In the story "First Love" we see a love triangle: Turgenev's girl, father and son. We see the reverse triangle in Nabokov's Lolita: Humbert, mother, daughter.
"First love" is always unhappy.

On the whole, the Turgenev girl can be briefly described as follows: young, sometimes laughing, sometimes thoughtful, sometimes calm, sometimes indifferent, and always attractive.

Turgenev's girl is chaste, her emotionality is not the emotionality of Anna Karenina.

Sonya Marmeladova, images of women by Nekrasov and Katerina from Ostrovsky's Thunderstorm.

Sonya Marmeladova (“Crime and Punishment” by Dostoevsky) is a harlot, but a penitent harlot, atoning for her sin and the sin of Raskolnikov. Nabokov did not believe in this image.

“And I see, at about six o’clock, Sonya got up, put on a handkerchief, put on a burnous coat and left the apartment, and at nine o’clock she came back ... She laid out thirty rubles. She didn’t utter a word at the same time ... but took only ... a handkerchief ... completely covered her head and face with it and lay down on the bed against the wall, only her shoulders and body were trembling ... "

Dostoevsky radicalized this image, trying to "dig everything up". Yes, Sonya is a prostitute with a yellow ticket, but she takes sin on her soul to feed her family. This is a complete female character. She is the bearer of the gospel truth. In the eyes of Luzhin and Lebezyatnikov, Sonya appears as a fallen creature, they despise "such", they consider a girl of "notorious behavior."

Reading the Raskolnikov Gospel, the legend of the resurrection of Lazarus, Sonya awakens faith, love and repentance in his soul. "They were resurrected by love, the heart of one contained endless sources of life for the heart of the other." Rodion came to what Sonya urged him to, he overestimated life and its essence, as evidenced by his words: “Can her convictions now not be my convictions? Her feelings, her aspirations at least...”

Sonya covers her face, because she is ashamed, ashamed in front of herself and God. Therefore, she rarely comes home, only to give money away, she is embarrassed when meeting Raskolnikov’s sister and mother, she feels awkward even at the wake of her own father, where she was so shamelessly insulted. She repents, but this repentance, to which the text of the Gospel calls, is inaccessible to Anna Karenina. Tatyana Pushkina and Svetlana Zhukovsky are religious, but they do not allow themselves to sin. All Sonya's actions surprise with their sincerity and openness. She does nothing for herself, everything for the sake of someone: her stepmother, stepbrothers and sisters, Raskolnikov.

Sonya does not belong to the caste of "sacred prostitutes" that Rozanov speaks of. This is a harlot, after all a harlot, but none of the readers will dare to throw a stone at her. Sonya calls Raskolnikov to repentance, she agrees to carry his cross, to help come to the truth through suffering. We do not doubt her words, the reader is sure that Sonya will follow Raskolnikov everywhere, everywhere and always will be with him. But all this is not clear, for example, to Vladimir Nabokov. He does not believe in the image of a murderer, nor in the image of a harlot. “We do not see” (Dostoevsky does not describe) how Sonya is engaged in her “craft”, such is the logic of Nabokov's denial of the image of Marmeladova.

The Christian sacrifice of the “Nekrasov girls” is more clear. These are the wives of the Decembrists who go to Siberia for their revolutionary spouses. This is the girl being whipped in the square. It is suffering, pitying love. Nekrasov sympathizes with compassion. His muse is a woman who is flogged in public.

Nekrasov and admires the Woman:

There are women in Russian villages
With calm gravity of faces,
With beautiful strength in movements,
With a gait, with the eyes of queens -

And he sees all the injustice of the position of women in society:

But early the bonds weighed down on me
Another, unkind and unloved Muse,
The sad companion of the sad poor,
Born for work, suffering and shackles, -
That Muse weeping, grieving and aching,
Always thirsty, humbly asking,
Whose gold is the only idol...
To the delight of a new stranger in God's world,
In a wretched hut, before a smoky torch,
Bent by labor, slain by grief,
She sang to me - and was full of longing
And the eternal lamentation of her simple melody.
Women are clearly not one of those "who live well in Rus'."

“The fact is that the character of Katerina, as he is portrayed in The Thunderstorm, is a step forward not only in Ostrovsky’s dramatic activity, but in all of our literature. It corresponds to the new phase of our people's life, it has long demanded its implementation in literature, our best writers circled around it; but they could only understand its need and could not comprehend and feel its essence; Ostrovsky managed to do this. Not one of the critics of The Thunderstorm wanted or was able to present a proper assessment of this character ...
... The field in which Ostrovsky observes and shows us Russian life does not concern purely social and state relations, but is limited to the family; in a family, who bears the yoke of tyranny most of all, if not a woman? What clerk, worker, servant of Dikoy can be so driven, downtrodden, cut off from his personality as his wife? Who can boil so much grief and indignation against the absurd fantasies of a tyrant? And at the same time, who less than she has the opportunity to express her grumbling, to refuse to do what is disgusting to her? Servants and clerks are connected only materially, in a human way; they can leave the tyrant as soon as they find another place for themselves. The wife, according to the prevailing concepts, is inextricably linked with him, spiritually, through the sacrament; no matter what her husband does, she must obey him and share a meaningless life with him ... Being in such a position, a woman, of course, must forget that she is the same person, with the same rights as a man. She can only become demoralized, and if the personality in her is strong, then she will get a tendency to the same tyranny from which she suffered so much ... In general, in a woman who has even reached the position of independent and con amore practicing tyranny, her comparative impotence is always visible, a consequence of its centuries of oppression: it is heavier, more suspicious, soulless in its demands; she no longer succumbs to sound reasoning, not because she despises it, but rather because she is afraid of not being able to cope with it: keeps to antiquity and various instructions communicated to her by some Feklusha ...
It is clear from this that if a woman wants to free herself from such a situation, then her case will be serious and decisive ... home remedies of the good old days will lead to obedience. A woman who wants to go to the end in her rebellion against the oppression and arbitrariness of her elders in the Russian family must be filled with heroic self-denial, she must decide on everything and be ready for everything.

Katerina is in some ways the woman of Nekrasov's poetry, according to the interpretation of "Thunderstorm" in Dobrolyubov's article "A Ray of Light in a Dark Kingdom." Here Dobrolyubov writes about the revolution, predicts the emergence of feminism:

“Thus, the emergence of a female energetic character fully corresponds to the position to which tyranny has been reduced in Ostrovsky's drama. It has gone to the extreme, to the denial of all common sense; more than ever, it is hostile to the natural requirements of mankind and, more fiercely than before, is trying to stop their development, because in their triumph it sees the approach of its inevitable death. Through this, it still more causes grumbling and protest even in the weakest beings. And at the same time, tyranny, as we have seen, lost its self-confidence, lost its firmness in actions, and lost a significant part of the power that consisted for it in instilling fear in everyone. Therefore, the protest against him is not silenced at the very beginning, but can turn into a stubborn struggle.

But Katerina is neither a feminist nor a revolutionary:

“First of all, you are struck by the extraordinary originality of this character. There is nothing external, alien in him, but everything comes out somehow from within him; every impression is processed in it and then grows organically with it. We see this, for example, in Katerina's ingenuous story about her childhood and about life in her mother's house. It turns out that her upbringing and young life did not give her anything: in her mother's house it was the same as at the Kabanovs - they went to church, sewed with gold on velvet, listened to the stories of wanderers, dined, walked in the garden, again talked with pilgrims and they themselves prayed... Having listened to Katerina's story, Varvara, her husband's sister, remarks with surprise: "Why, it's the same with us." But the difference is determined by Katerina very quickly in five words: “Yes, everything here seems to be from bondage!” And further conversation shows that in all this appearance, which is so common with us everywhere, Katerina was able to find her own special meaning, apply it to her needs and aspirations, until the heavy hand of Kabanikha fell upon her. Katerina does not at all belong to violent characters, never satisfied, loving to destroy at all costs. On the contrary, this character is predominantly creative, loving, ideal.

A 19th-century woman had to endure a lot:

“In the gloomy atmosphere of the new family, Katerina began to feel the lack of appearance, which she had thought to be content with before. Under the heavy hand of the soulless Kabanikh there is no scope for her bright visions, just as there is no freedom for her feelings. In a fit of tenderness for her husband, she wants to hug him - the old woman shouts: “What are you hanging around your neck, shameless? Bow down at your feet!" She wants to be left alone and mourn quietly, as she used to, and her mother-in-law says: “Why don’t you howl?” She is looking for light, air, wants to dream and frolic, water her flowers, look at the sun, the Volga, send her greetings to all living things - and she is kept in captivity, she is constantly suspected of impure, depraved plans. She still seeks refuge in religious practice, in church attendance, in soul-saving conversations; but even here he does not find the former impressions. Killed by daily work and eternal bondage, she can no longer dream with the same clarity of angels singing in a dusty column illuminated by the sun, she cannot imagine the gardens of Eden with their unperturbed look and joy. Everything is gloomy, scary around her, everything breathes cold and some irresistible threat: the faces of the saints are so strict, and the church readings are so formidable, and the stories of the wanderers are so monstrous ... "

“About her character, Katerina tells Varya one trait from her childhood memories: “I was born so hot! I was still six years old, no more - so I did it! They offended me with something at home, but it was in the evening, it was already dark, - I ran out to the Volga, got into the boat, and pushed it away from the shore. The next morning they found it, ten versts away...” This childish ardor was preserved in Katerina; only, together with her general maturity, did she also have the strength to withstand impressions and dominate them. An adult Katerina, forced to endure insults, finds in herself the strength to endure them for a long time, without vain complaints, semi-resistance and all sorts of noisy antics. She endures until some interest speaks in her, especially close to her heart and legitimate in her eyes, until such a demand of her nature is offended in her, without the satisfaction of which she cannot remain calm. Then she won't look at anything. She will not resort to diplomatic tricks, to deceptions and swindles - she is not like that.

As a result, Dobrolyubov writes:

“But even without any lofty considerations, simply for humanity, it is gratifying for us to see Katerina's deliverance - even through death, if it is impossible otherwise. In this regard, we have terrible evidence in the drama itself, telling us that living in the "dark kingdom" is worse than death.

Summary for the 19th century.

Starting with Zhukovsky and ending with L. Tolstoy, we are given a whole evolution of the images of women in literature and in society. In the 19th century, there was some kind of breakdown in the "women's issue". Bright, ideal images of young ladies were replaced by images of "traitors and prostitutes", not "traitors and prostitutes" in themselves, but made such by society. All their betrayal, repentance, death loudly cried out about themselves, that a woman can no longer live in a patriarchal order that has reached the point of "tyranny". Nevertheless, there are bright images of "Turgenev's girls", some of them are foreigners, and they are the ray of light that "men's literature" then carried.

A double yoke, a double serfdom dominated the woman. In a woman they saw a slave of everyday life, she was a toy in the hands of male lust. It should be noted that Pushkin and L. Tolstoy were great womanizers, offended many ordinary Russian women, offended cynically, disgustingly, and only with their creativity, they could only atone for their guilt before them. (For example, in one of his letters, Pushkin admits that his "Wonderful Moment" was just an excuse to seduce Anna Kern. In Raphael L. Tolstoy's "Sistine Madonna" he saw only a simple "girl who gave birth").

The point here is not in the suppression of "female sexuality", but in the degraded general attitude that was assigned to a woman. There is a double alienation here: alienation in an ideal image, likening a woman to an angel, and on the other hand, trampling her into the mud by “tyrants”.

Second part.

The philosophy of Vladimir Solovyov and the poetry of Alexander Blok.

In his series of articles “The Meaning of Love”, Vladimir Solovyov refuted Western theories (Schopenhauer) of sexual love. The Russian philosopher showed that the need for procreation, the birth instinct is inversely related to the feeling of love (using the example of an ascending ladder in the living world). It was in sexual love that he saw love itself, that is, love between a man and a woman, since it is possible only between equally loving, is something more than friendship, love for the Fatherland and motherly love. Only a person who sees a person in another, in the object of his adoration, can love. The selfishness of men - this is the non-recognition of the personality in the "beloved woman". Onegin did not see the personality in Tatyana, neither when she opened her girlish heart to him, nor in her marriage. Katerina from Ostrovsky's Thunderstorm, Anna Karenina has a personality, but this personality is tragic. The Turgenev girl also has a personality, and it is precisely this presence that captivates.

A. Blok was married to the daughter of Dmitry Mendeleev, whom he idolized. In his work, the poet sang the image of the "Stranger" in Christian tones. (Compare the famous "Stranger" by I. Kramskoy).

... And slowly, passing between the drunks,
Always without companions, alone
Breathing in spirits and mists,
She sits by the window.

And breathe ancient beliefs
Her elastic silks
And a hat with mourning feathers
And in the rings a narrow hand.

And chained by a strange closeness,
I look behind the dark veil
And I see the enchanted shore
And the enchanted distance.

Deaf secrets are entrusted to me,
Someone's sun has been handed to me,
And all the souls of my bend
The tart wine pierced.

And ostrich feathers bowed
In my brain they sway
And bottomless blue eyes
Blooming on the far shore.

There is a treasure in my soul
And the key is entrusted only to me!
You're right, drunk monster!
I know: the truth is in wine.

The appearance of the "stranger" and the end of the poem are tied to alcohol. This is the vision of a drunk.
The very phenomenon of the "Stranger" tells us that a man knows nothing about a woman, did not know and is not able to know her, that a woman is a sacred secret. This is a mystical attitude towards a woman, also alienated.

And the heavy dream of worldly consciousness
You will shake off, longing and loving.
Vl. Solovyov

I anticipate you. Years pass by
All in the guise of one I foresee You.
The whole horizon is on fire - and unbearably clear,
And silently I wait, longing and loving.

The whole horizon is on fire, and the appearance is near,
But I'm afraid: you will change your appearance,
And daringly arouse suspicion,
Replacing the usual features at the end.

Oh, how I fall - both sadly and lowly,
Not having overcome deadly dreams!
How clear is the horizon! And radiance is near.
But I'm afraid: you will change your appearance.
Blok is a knight of the Beautiful Lady. Christian knight. Often he turns to God through the prism of the philosophy of Vladimir Solovyov. But there is also a place for mysticism, superstition, divination. Love again, as it was with Zhukovsky, burrows between pagan mysticism and Christian truth.
2.

Yesenin and Mayakovsky.

Yesenin is also inclined to mysticism. So in the image of a Russian birch, he sees a girl. “Like a young wife he kissed a birch tree.” Or here:

green hair,
Maiden chest.
O thin birch,
What did you look into the pond?

What is the wind whispering to you?
What is the sound of the sand?
Or do you want to braid-branches
Are you a moon comb?

Reveal, reveal to me the secret
Your tree thoughts
I love sad
Your pre-autumn noise.

And a birch answered me:
"O curious friend,
Starry night tonight
Here the shepherd shed tears.

The moon cast shadows
Shone green.
For bare knees
He hugged me.

And so, taking a deep breath,
Said under the sound of branches:
"Farewell, my dove,
Until the new cranes."

At the same time, Yesenin loves some oriental secret about a woman:

Shagane you are mine, Shagane!


About wavy rye in the moonlight.
Shagane you are mine, Shagane.

Because I'm from the north, or something,
That the moon is a hundred times bigger there,
No matter how beautiful Shiraz is,
It is no better than Ryazan expanses.
Because I'm from the north, or something.

I'm ready to tell you the field
I took this hair from the rye,
If you want, knit on your finger -
I don't feel any pain at all.
I'm ready to tell you the field.

About wavy rye in the moonlight
You can guess by my curls.
Darling, joke, smile
Do not wake up only the memory in me
About wavy rye in the moonlight.

Shagane you are mine, Shagane!
There, in the north, the girl too,
She looks a lot like you
Maybe he's thinking about me...
Shagane you are mine, Shagane.

Yesenin is a hooligan, or rather gives the image of a hooligan, whom only female love can save.

From the cycle "LOVE OF A HOOLIGAN"
* * *
A blue fire swept
Forgotten relatives gave.

I was all - like a neglected garden,
He was greedy for women and potion.
Enjoyed singing and dancing
And lose your life without looking back.

I would just look at you
To see the eye of a golden-brown whirlpool,
And so that, not loving the past,
You couldn't leave for someone else.

Tread gentle, light camp,
If you knew with a stubborn heart,
How does a bully know how to love,
How can he be humble.

I would forever forget taverns
And I would give up writing poetry,
Just to gently touch the hand
And your hair color in autumn.

I would follow you forever
At least in their own, even in others they gave ...
For the first time I sang about love,
For the first time I refuse to scandal.
A contemporary of Blok and Yesenin, Vladimir Mayakovsky notices that in relation to a woman, a man turns into a "cloud in his pants." Mayakovsky's hopes are connected with the "future communist world", with the triumph of Marxism-Leninism. But this turns out to be just a change of sign: the “new woman” is looking for a style with a “hammer and sickle” for the sake of a new fashion.

Love (Adult)
Vladimir Mayakovsky

Adults have things to do.
In rubles pockets.
Be in love?
Please!
Rubles for a hundred.
And I,
homeless,
hands
in tattered
put in pocket
and wandered around, big-eyed.
Night.
Put on your best dress.
You rest your soul on wives, on widows.
Me
Moscow strangled in the arms
ring of their endless Garden.
Into the hearts
into cups
lovers are ticking.
The partners of the love bed are delighted.
Capitals heartbeat wild
I caught
Passionate area lying.
Unleashed -
the heart is almost outside -
I open myself to the sun and the puddle.
Enter with passion!
Get in love!
From now on, I am not in control of my heart.
For others, I know the hearts of the house.
It is in the chest - anyone knows!
On me
anatomy is crazy.
solid heart -
buzzing all over the place.
Oh how many there are
only spring,
for 20 years it has been dumped into the inflamed!
Their unspent load is simply unbearable.
Unbearable not so
for the verse
but literally.

Appears philistine love, "lust without love." "The boat of love" not only breaks about everyday life. Love is broken along with the decline of morals. A grotesque variant of the decline of morals in the "new world" is shown in "WE" by Zamyatin. They give tickets-coupons for sexual intercourse. Women cannot give birth. People do not wear names, not affectionate female names, for example, but numbers.

The phenomenon of Alexander Green.

Assol is a scandal in Russian literature. The "scarlet sails" of communism were painted in a romantic color. The attitude to achieve dreams “with your own hands” is correct. But should Assol wait for her Gray? For this love, for this romance, they throw stones at Green and even hate him. The romantic, young dream of love, however, does not reveal anything wrong with itself. In the vulgar world, in the world of debauchery, in the world of the soulless, the heroines of Alexander Grin carry the truth about love. This is only a project of love, a project of love, which Vladimir Solovyov also described. They laugh at Assol, but faith saves her. Gray just granted her wish, not just appeared out of nowhere. He was the first to fall in love with Assol and for her sake he hired a scarlet canvas for the sails of his ship Secret. Green's woman is romantic and chaste
"Running on the Waves" is a more complex work. The protagonist starts chasing a certain Bice Saniel, but ends up in the arms of Daisy, a cheerful girl who also believes in "running on the waves." It was Christ walking on the waves. It's a secret. Sacrament, faith - that's what unites the heroes and heroines of Green's extravaganzas. A person needs faith in a dream. “Love is possible in reality,” not “happiness was so possible.” Greene and his works testify to the citizenship of the world, a break with the Russian tradition. Grinevsky became Green. The question of a woman's fidelity is not raised at all, and the question of sexuality itself is not raised either. Alexander Green is a knight of the Beautiful Lady in the 20th century. Misunderstood, he remained almost a storyteller. But the ideals that he expounds are undeniably useful to youth.

Soviet woman in Soviet literature.

Characteristic here in our conversation is the image of the heroine from the story "The Viper" by Alexei Tolstoy. Such heroines are well described by Vladimir Nabokov in the article "The Triumph of Virtue." “The situation is even simpler with female types. Soviet writers have a genuine cult of women. She appears in two main varieties: a bourgeois woman who loves upholstered furniture and perfumes and suspicious specialists, and a communist woman (a responsible worker or a passionate neophyte) - and a good half of Soviet literature is spent on her image. This popular woman has elastic breasts, is young, cheerful, participates in processions, and is amazingly able-bodied. She is a cross between a revolutionary, a sister of mercy and a provincial young lady. But above all, she is a saint. Her occasional love interests and disappointments don't count; she has only one suitor, the class suitor - Lenin.
In Sholokhov's "Virgin Soil Upturned" there is an invariably vulgar moment: the main character agrees to extramarital sex with the heroine Lushka, justifying himself: "What am I a monk, or what?" Here is the "virgin soil raised" for you.
Now let's talk about another Nobel laureate (besides Sholokhov, who was the only socialist realist who received the highest literary award). Let's look at the heroines of Ivan Bunin.

The heroines of Ivan Bunin are happier than his own wife and mistress. They always have "easy breathing". If she cheats on her beloved, then this is only a preemptive blow, as in the story "Mitina's Love". The protagonist falls into treason, and then finds out that he was cheated on. Ivan Bunin is trying to bring us the "Grammar of Love", but it turns out some kind of "Kama Sutra" (I have nothing against this cultural monument). Yes, Bunin's girl can become a nun, but the night before she dedicates herself to God, she gives herself to a man, knowing that this will be the first and last time in her life. The opportunity to satisfy your passion is always preferable to some kind of dream, some kind of alienation, expectation (“Natalie”). Bunin echoes the "amorous philosophy" of Vasily Rozanov. "Sex is good!" - this is their common pathos slogan. But Bunin is still a real poet of love lyrics, his eroticism does not clash with morality, his erotica is beautiful. "Dark alleys", they have not yet been revealed, the grammar of love does not turn into obsessive pornography. Bunin is looking for the "Formula of Love".
Bunin's women are more emotional than Turgenev's girls, they are more relaxed, but also simpler, because they are not so "strange". But the girls of Turgenev are chaste, for them there is almost no question of sexual intimacy, while for Bunin, sex is very important for a woman. Bunin's male heroes are even more frivolous: this is how the story "Tanya" opens:
“She served as a maid for his relative, the petty landowner Kazakova, she was in her seventeenth year, she was small in stature, which was especially noticeable when, gently waving her skirt and slightly raising her small breasts under her blouse, she walked barefoot or, in winter, in felt boots, her simple little face was only pretty, and her gray peasant eyes were beautiful only in youth. In that distant time, he spent himself especially recklessly, led a wandering life, had many accidental love meetings and connections - and how he reacted to an accidental connection with her ... "
For the writer Ivan Bunin, in the words of the philosopher Ivan Ilin, the principle "cute, therefore, good" is stronger than the principle "good, therefore, lovely."
The place of a young girl is not at her desk, but in bed, according to Eduard Limonov; Obviously, this opinion is already rooted in the works of Bunin.

But Bunin has other merits. This is the singer of autumn, the end of life, the end of love. Under him, the terrible First World War and the collapse of the Romanov dynasty, the death of old Russia, the death of "Holy Rus'" and the accession of "resefeser" began. How does the woman of Bunin's works mourn? Should I sob or sing at the top of my voice? -
the heroine of the story "Cold Autumn" is recognized. Isn't Yaroslavna crying here? Russia is constantly at war in its history and modernity, and Russian women cry, cry in a singsong voice: "The girls are crying, the girls are sad today."
Moments of love, true love, that's what makes life worth living. Life is measured by such moments. Human life is short and meaningless without love (“Mr. from San Francisco”). It's not necessarily something sexy, but something affectionate, something sensitive. Spring and autumn are equivalent. The past moments of love are "... that magical, incomprehensible, incomprehensible either by mind or heart, which is called the past."

Love is incomprehensible, it is mysterious, it is in the moonlight, it is in nature, which Fet sang, it is in silence, which Tyutchev sang. Semyon Frank writes that the heights of heaven and the depths of Sodom are equally incomprehensible. And it's all about love. On one side of the scale, Green's ideal, faith in "true love", faith in a love place, falling in love, and on the other, the Sodomic depths that Dostoevsky's characters reach. The angel of love and the demon of debauchery always fight for every soul of a person: both men and women, primarily women.

I am happy when you are blue
You raise your eyes to me:
Young hopes shine in them -
Cloudless skies.
It's bitter for me when you, dropping
Dark eyelashes, shut up:
You love without knowing it
And you shyly conceal love.
But always, everywhere and always
Near you my soul is bright ...
Dear friend! Oh be blessed
Your beauty and youth!

"Loneliness"

And the wind, and the rain, and the haze
Above the cold desert water.
Here life died until spring,
Until spring, the gardens are empty.
I am alone at the cottage.
I'm dark
Behind the easel, and blowing through the window.

Yesterday you were with me
But you're already sad with me.
In the evening of a rainy day
You seem like a wife to me...
Well, goodbye!
Sometime before spring
I will live alone - without a wife ...

Today they go on without end
The same clouds - ridge after ridge.
Your footprint in the rain at the porch
Fluffed up, filled with water.
And it hurts me to look alone
In the late afternoon gray darkness.

I wanted to shout out:
Come back, I'm related to you!
But for a woman there is no past:
She fell out of love - and became a stranger to her.
Well! I'll light the fireplace, I'll drink...
It would be nice to buy a dog.

Master and Margarita.

"Follow me, reader! Who told you that there is no true, true, eternal love in the world? May the liar be cut off his vile tongue!" - this is how the second part of Bulgakov's novel opens. The famous love that appeared to the heroes, “like a killer from the gateway”, requires its own analysis.
The master and Margarita met in a deserted lane and immediately realized that they loved each other: “She, however, later claimed that this was not so, that we loved each other, of course, a long time ago, without knowing each other, never without seeing…”
But...
First, Margarita is cheating on her husband with the Master.
Secondly, she sells her soul to the devil, goes naked to the “ball of Satan”, for the sake of her Master.
Thirdly, the Master and Margarita in the novel "do not deserve light", but peace.
And yet, the main male image in the novel is not the Master, not Yeshua and not Pilate, but Woland himself, Satan. This is the sex symbol of our time, the image of a successful and attractive man.
But back to Margaret.
“First of all, let's reveal the secret that the master did not want to reveal to Ivanushka. His [Master's] beloved was called Margarita Nikolaevna. Everything the master said about her was absolutely true. He described his beloved correctly. She was beautiful and smart. One more thing must be added to this - we can say with confidence that many women would give anything they want to exchange their lives for the life of Margarita Nikolaevna. The childless thirty-year-old Margarita was the wife of a very prominent specialist, who, moreover, made the most important discovery of national importance. Her husband was young, handsome, kind, honest and adored his wife.
Mikhail Bulgakov poses the eternal question: what does a woman need? And does not know the answer:
"Gods, my gods! What did this woman need? What did this woman, in whose eyes some incomprehensible light always burned, what did this witch, slightly squinting in one eye, need, who then adorned herself with mimosas in the spring? Don't know. I don't know. Obviously, she was telling the truth, she needed him, the master, and not at all a Gothic mansion, and not a separate garden, and not money. She loved him, she spoke the truth. Even I, a truthful narrator, but an outsider, shrinks at the thought of what Margarita experienced when she came to the master’s house the next day, fortunately without having time to talk with her husband, who did not return at the appointed time, and found out that the master is no longer... She did everything to find out something about him [the Master], and, of course, found out absolutely nothing. Then she returned to the mansion and lived in the same place.
Margarita is a frivolous lady, but without "easy breathing".
Margarita is the muse and inspirer of the Master, it was she who first appreciated the Master's novel about Pilate. She admires the talent of her lover. This is the kind of love that every writer wants. It was she who, after reading the first pages of his novel, called her lover a master (and sewed him a hat with the letter "M"). It is she who takes revenge on critics who did not accept the novel, so similar to the Gospel.
The writer's wife, Elena Sergeevna Bulgakova, was with M. Bulgakov to the end, experienced all the persecutions with him and always instilled faith and hope in her husband.
Margarita is faithful to the Master and his novel. But she hardly understood Jesus Christ, whose reflection was Yeshua from the novel about Pilate. "Invisible and free! Invisible and free!” confesses the witch Margarita. She appreciates the Master's novel only artistically, the gospel truth is completely opposite to her way of life. Sonya Marmeladova feels the sacred story from the New Testament more and more deeply. Perhaps M. Bulgakov succumbed to the following concept of Nikolai Berdyaev. In The Meaning of Creativity, Berdyaev writes that if the Old Testament is the covenant of law, the New Testament is the covenant of redemption, then the New Testament is coming - the covenant of creativity and freedom. And what kind of creativity can there be after Christ? - Creativity on the theme of the Gospel. The love of the Master and Margarita bears "Berdyaev's motives": freedom, artistic creativity, the high role of the individual and mysticism.
(Andrei Kuraev believes that the novel about Pilate is a caricature of Tolstoyism, of Leo Tolstoy's reading of the Gospel).

7.
Happy couples: Assol and Gray, Master and Margarita.
Do we believe in the happiness of Gray and Assol? As teenagers, we all believed Green. But is such a reality possible? Vladimir Nabokov, criticizing Freud, says that it is poetry that forms sexuality, and not sexuality - poetry. Yes, perhaps these happy stories are impossible, but they give us an ideal, an example. "Scarlet Sails" is Kant's categorical imperative in Russian love literature. A man is not a prince on a horse, a man is someone who is able to realize a woman's dream of happiness out of love.
The Master and Margarita are happy in a different way. The Light of Love is not available to them, this is not a bright story. They only get peace. They do not have access to the Christian sacrament of marriage, they do not know the true canonical history of Christ, Yeshua is only a philosopher for them. Moreover, the central place in this "apocrypha" is given to Pilate, a simple Roman bureaucrat who played so strongly in the sacred history of mankind.
The protest is caused by vulgar pop songs about the love of the Master and Margarita, about Gray and Assol. It is mass culture that kills the meaning that love brings to these couples. M. Bulgakov saw the fall of "Holy Rus'", his "Apocrypha" became a gospel breeze for the Soviet intelligentsia. The atheistic power, which erected monuments to Judas, tends in its vector to the point opposite to the divine, to the satanic point. Woland and his entire retinue came to Moscow, as the Bolsheviks came to "take power." The godlessness of the first years of Soviet power allows Woland to roam like that.
But why is Satan necessarily a man? In the story of V.V. Nabokov's "Fairy Tale" Satan acquires a woman's face, tempts the hero with the opportunity to spend the night with a dozen women at once. The Witch-Margarita continues the traditions of the “pannochka” from Gogol’s Viy and his other Little Russian heroines.

Girls of Dostoevsky and Nabokov. Question about age in love.

Now let's talk about little women - about girls - in Russian literature. So clearly and distinctly we will compare Lolita Nabokov and Matryosha Dostoevsky. And then consider a girl from the country of the Soviets.

In "Demons" F.M. Dostoevsky has the so-called "forbidden chapter" - the chapter "At Tikhon's". In it, Stavrogin comes to Father Tikhon (bishop) with a certain paper, a note that he wants to publish publicly. This note is of a confessional nature. There Stavrogin writes that he indulged in debauchery, "in which he did not find pleasure." In particular and mainly, he writes how he seduced the maiden - a girl of ten years old - Matryosha. After that, Matryosha hanged herself.

“She was blond and freckled, her face was ordinary, but there was a lot of childishness and quietness in it, extremely quiet.”

Here is how the crime itself is described:

“My heart started beating fast. I got up and started walking towards her. They had a lot of geraniums on the windows and the sun shone very brightly. I sat down quietly on the floor. She shuddered and at first was incredibly frightened and jumped up. I took her hand and kissed it, bent her down again on the bench and began to look into her eyes. The fact that I kissed her hand suddenly made her laugh like a child, but only for one second, because she quickly jumped up another time and already in such a fright that a spasm passed over her face. She looked at me with terribly motionless eyes, and her lips began to move in order to cry, but still she did not scream. I kissed her hand again and took her on my knees. Then all of a sudden she drew back and smiled, as if from shame, but with a kind of crooked smile. Her whole face flushed with shame. I whispered something to her and laughed. Finally, suddenly such a strange thing happened, which I will never forget and which led me to surprise: the girl wrapped her arms around my neck and suddenly began to kiss me terribly herself. Her face expressed complete admiration.

To all this, the girl will then say: “I killed God.” And here is how she will look at Stavrogin after “this”: “There was no one but Matreshcha. She was lying in the closet behind the screens on her mother's bed, and I saw how she looked out; but I pretended not to notice. All windows were open. The air was warm, it was even hot. I walked around the room and sat on the sofa. I remember everything until the last minute. It definitely gave me pleasure not to speak to Matryosha. I waited and sat for a whole hour, and suddenly she jumped up herself from behind the screen. I heard both her feet hit the floor as she jumped out of bed, then rather quick steps, and she stood on the threshold to my room. She looked at me silently. In those four or five days, in which I have never seen her up close since that time, I really lost a lot of weight. Her face seemed to have dried up, and her head must have been hot. The eyes became large and looked at me motionless, as if with dull curiosity, as it seemed to me at first. I sat in the corner of the sofa, looked at her and did not move. And then suddenly I felt hatred again. But very soon I noticed that she was not afraid of me at all, but, perhaps, rather, she was delirious. But she wasn't delirious either. She suddenly nodded her head at me often, as they nod when they are very reproached, and suddenly raised her little fist at me and began to threaten me with it from her place. At first, this movement seemed ridiculous to me, but then I could not bear it: I got up and moved towards her. There was such despair on her face that it was impossible to see in the face of a child. She kept waving her fist at me with a threat and kept nodding, reproaching.

Further, Stavrog has a dream about a paradise island, as if from a painting by Claude Lorrain, Assis and Galatea. This dream clearly anticipates Nabokov's Humbert's dream of an island where only nymphets live (See about Nabokov below). Such is Stavrogin's dream: “This is a corner of the Greek archipelago; gentle blue waves, islands and rocks, blooming coastline, a magical panorama in the distance, the setting inviting sun - you can’t convey in words. European humanity remembered its cradle here, here are the first scenes from mythology, its earthly paradise... Wonderful people lived here! They rose and fell asleep happy and innocent; the groves were filled with their merry songs, a great excess of untapped strength went into love and ingenuous joy. The sun poured its rays over these islands and the sea, rejoicing at its beautiful children. Wonderful dream, lofty delusion! A dream, the most incredible of all that has been, to which all of humanity has given all its strength all its life, for which it has sacrificed everything, for which people died on crosses and prophets were killed, without which peoples do not want to live and cannot even die. All this feeling I seemed to have lived in this dream; I don’t know what exactly I was dreaming about, but the rocks, and the sea, and the slanting rays of the setting sun - I still seemed to see all this when I woke up and opened my eyes, for the first time in my life, literally wet with tears. A feeling of happiness, still unknown to me, passed through my heart even to the point of pain. Father Tikhon says to Stavrogin: “But there is, of course, no greater and more terrible crime than your act with the maiden and cannot be.” And a little earlier: “I won’t hide anything from you: I was horrified by a great idle force that deliberately went into abomination.”
Berdyaev admires the image of Stavrogin. But one question is important in our conversation: why do women like such bastards like Stavrogin so much? So Lolita likes the pornographer Quilty, although his vileness is hundreds of times greater than that of Humbert.

Nabokov did not like Dostoevsky for his "neglect of the word." Nabokov gives us his Matryosha.

But when talking about Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (1899-1977), the question always arises whether he is a Russian writer or an American one, because he wrote in two languages ​​(not counting French). Nabokov is a Renaissance man: a writer of all genres and styles, all types of literature, a researcher of butterflies, a skilled chess player and a compiler of chess problems. He is a global man. He is both a Russian and an American writer. But, they will ask me, "Lolita" is the English-language work of Nabokov. Yes, but the translation into Russian was made by the author himself, and much has changed in the translation (a whole paragraph has disappeared), so the translation of Lolita into Russian belongs to Russian literature. Why was there such a translation? - So that Soviet and post-Soviet vulgarities would not kill the novel, where, according to the author, “high morality” triumphs.

In a postscript to the Russian edition, Nabokov writes: “I console myself, first of all, with the fact that not only the translator, who has become unaccustomed to his native speech, but also the spirit of the language into which the translation is being made, is to blame for the clumsiness of the proposed translation. During the six months of work on the Russian Lolita, I not only became convinced of the loss of many personal trinkets and irreplaceable language skills and treasures, but also came to some general conclusions about the mutual translatability of two amazing languages.

The head of "At Tikhon's" was banned. "Lolita" was also banned and still raises questions. Nabokov, on the other hand, defended his novel "to the last drop of ink."

What a bad thing I did


about my poor girl?

Oh, I know people are afraid of me
and burn people like me for magic,
and, like poison in a hollow emerald,
dying from my art.

But how funny that at the end of the paragraph,
proofreader and eyelid contrary,
the shadow of the Russian branch will fluctuate
on the marble of my hand.

(Nabokov's parody of Pasternak's Nobel Prize).

“A homeless girl, a mother busy with herself, a maniac choking with lust - all of them are not only colorful characters in a one-of-a-kind story; they also warn us of dangerous deviations; they indicate possible disasters. Lolita should force us all - parents, social workers, educators - to devote ourselves with greater vigilance and insight to the cause of raising a healthier generation in a more secure world. — Thus concludes his review of the novel by fictional Ph.D. John Ray.

"Lolita" is a confession, like Stavrogin's leaflet. "Lolita" - repentance, warning. Humbert Humbert is a pseudonym taken from the history of the Christian church. It was Humbert Silva-Candide who was to blame for the fact that Catholicism separated from Orthodoxy.

This is how the penitential story itself begins, this is how Lolita Humbert presents us:

“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-li-ta: the tip of the tongue takes three steps down the palate to hit the teeth on the third. Lo. Lee. Ta.
She was Lo, just Lo, in the mornings, five feet tall (two inches short and wearing one sock). She was Lola in long pants. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always: Lolita.

Here is how she appeared to him:

"Here comes the porch," my driver [Lolita's mother, Charlotte Hayes] sang, and then, without the slightest warning, a blue wave of the sea billowed under my heart, and from the reed rug on the veranda, from the circle of the sun, half-naked, on my knees, turning on her knees to me, my Riviera love looked at me attentively over dark glasses.
It was the same child - the same thin, honey-colored shoulders, the same silky, flexible, bare back, the same blond cap of hair. A black kerchief with white polka dots, tied around her torso, hid from my aged gorilla eyes - but not from the gaze of young memory - the half-developed breasts that I so caressed that immortal day. And as if I were the fairy-tale babysitter of a little princess (lost, stolen, found, dressed in gypsy rags through which her nakedness smiles at the king and her hounds), I recognized the dark brown birthmark on her side. With sacred horror and ecstasy (the king weeps with joy, the trumpets blow, the nurse is drunk) I again saw the lovely sunken belly where my lips directed south in passing stopped, and these boyish thighs, on which I kissed the jagged print from the belt of panties - into that crazy, immortal day at the Pink Rocks. A quarter of a century since then, lived by me, has narrowed, formed a quivering edge and disappeared.
It is extraordinarily difficult for me to express this explosion, this trembling, this impetus of passionate recognition with the required force. In that sun-drenched moment, during which my gaze managed to crawl over the kneeling girl (blinking over strict dark glasses - oh, the little Herr Doktor, who was destined to cure me of all pains), as I walked past her under the guise of maturity (in the form of a stately manly handsome, hero of the screen), the emptiness of my soul managed to absorb all the details of her bright charms and compare them with the features of my dead bride. Later, of course, she, this nova, this Lolita, my Lolita, was to completely outshine her prototype. I only seek to emphasize that the revelation on the American veranda was only a consequence of that "principality by the sea" in my suffering adolescence. Everything that happened between these two events was reduced to a series of blind searches and delusions and false rudiments of joy. Everything that was common between these two creatures made them one for me.

In the films of S. Kubrick and E. Line, this moment is well shown - the moment when Humbert first saw Lolita. She looked up at him through her dark glasses.

But Humbert still does not distinguish the personality of Lolita from the dream of a nymphet he invented: “And now I want to state the following thought. In the age range between nine and fourteen years old, there are girls who, for some enchanted wanderers, twice or many times older than them, reveal their true essence - the essence is not human, but nymphic (that is, demonic); and I propose to call these little chosen ones like this: nymphets. And Next:
“The reader will notice that I am replacing spatial concepts with time concepts. Moreover: I would like him to see these limits, 9-14, as the visible outlines (mirrored shoals, reddening rocks) of an enchanted island, on which these nymphets of mine live and which is surrounded by a wide misty ocean. The question is: within these age limits, are all girls nymphets? Of course no. Otherwise, we, the initiates, we, the solitary sailors, we, the nympholeptics, would have gone mad long ago. But beauty also does not serve as a criterion, while vulgarity (or at least what is called vulgarity in one environment or another) does not necessarily exclude the presence of those mysterious features - that fabulously strange grace, that elusive, changeable, soul-killing, insinuating charm - which distinguish the nymphet from her peers, who are incomparably more dependent on the spatial world of one-time phenomena than on the weightless island of enchanted time, where Lolita plays with her kind. The island, the sea, which Stavrogin took from the painting by Claude Lorrain, Assis and Galatea.

Behind the abstract concept of a nymphet, a living, real person, Lolita, is lost. Humbert is enchanted, Humbert has immersed himself in his own mythology. Only at the end of the novel will he say that Lolita, who has already ceased to be a nymphet, is the most beautiful creature in this world or one that can only be conceived (dream to see) in the next.

Like Matryosha, Lolita herself responds (more precisely, even provokes) to Humbert’s lust with lust: “It will be enough to say that a warped observer did not see a trace of chastity in this pretty, barely formed girl, who was finally corrupted by the skills of modern guys, co-education , scams like Girl Scout bonfires and the like. For her, purely mechanical sexual intercourse was an integral part of the secret world of adolescents, unknown to adults. How adults act to have children, it did not interest her at all. Lolitochka wielded the staff of my life with unusual energy and efficiency, as if it were an insensitive device that had nothing to do with me. She, of course, terribly wanted to impress me with the valiant tricks of underage punks, but she was not quite ready for some discrepancies between the children's size and mine. Only pride did not allow her to give up what she had begun, for in my wild position I pretended to be a hopeless fool and left her to work herself - at least for the time being I could endure my non-intervention. But all this, in fact, is not relevant; I am not interested in sexual matters. Anyone can imagine this or that manifestation of our animal life. Another, great feat beckons me: to determine once and for all the disastrous charm of nymphets. Matryosha felt that she "killed God", she hanged herself. Lolita, on the other hand, was the brainchild of the coming and corrupting sexual revolution.

The relationship between Humbert and Lolita is somewhat similar to an ordinary everyday relationship. A man buys his woman whatever she wants. At the same time, a woman may not love “her sponsor”. But here the problem is different: the girl has nowhere else to go, and she runs away at the first opportunity. "Love cannot be only physical, otherwise it is selfish, and therefore sinful." Lolita is only a delight for Humbert, an outlet for his lust. He uses the little girl as a thing, like a rag, but also worships her as an idol, the idol of his "nymphet" cult.

Nabokov struggled all his life with the "totalitarian sexual myth" of the psychoanalysts of the school of Freud, whom the writer hated. In his article "What Everyone Should Know?" Nabokov sneers at the fact that the "Viennese charlatan" was made an example of a good doctor. Nabokov saw that moral decline, that debauchery, that sexual promiscuity that Freud's theory carries. It is the Freudians who are primarily hit by Lolita, where all the intentions of psychoanalysis are called “libidobeliberda”.

But there have always been corrupters. This was felt, for example, by Krylov, whom Nabokov greatly appreciated:

In a dwelling of gloomy shadows
Appeared before the judges
At the same hour: Robber
(He broke on the big roads,
And finally got into the loop);
Another was the writer covered with glory:
He thin poured poison in his creations,
Instilled disbelief, rooted depravity,
Was, like a Siren, sweet-voiced,
And, like the Siren, he was dangerous...
The meaning of the fable is that the writer is more dangerous and sinful than the robber, because:
He was harmful
While only lived;
And you ... your bones have long decayed,
And the sun will never rise
So that new troubles from you are not illuminated.
Your creations poison not only does not weaken,
But, spilling, century-by-century, it flies.
Nabokov belongs to the kind of writers who felt all the responsibility to be a Writer. Therefore, for example, Nabokov does not favor the author of Lady Chatterley's Lover, David Lawrence.
9.
"Lady with a Dog" by Chekhov and "Spring in Fialta" by Nabokov.
Chekhov's "Lady with a Dog" continues the age-old debate about whether to change or not to change: Anna Karenina and Katerina from "Thunderstorm" have already lined up against Tatyana. And now another blow to the institution of marriage: Anna Sergeevna. At the age of twenty, she was married off, but she considers her husband nothing more than a "lackey". She is unhappy with him. She “runs away” from him to Yalta, where she meets Dmitry Dmitrievich Gurov, a womanizer, adulterer, for whom women are “an inferior race”.
This is how she enters Gurov's life:
“Sitting in Vernet’s pavilion, he saw a young lady walking along the embankment, a short blonde woman in a beret: a white Spitz was running after her.”
Gurov himself was that kind of person, a debauchee, who outwardly was very attractive:
“There was something attractive, elusive in his appearance, in character, in his whole nature, which disposed women to him, attracted them; he knew about it, and some kind of force attracted him himself to them. “He always seemed to women not to be who he was, and they loved in him not himself, but the man whom their imagination created and whom they eagerly sought in their lives; and then, when they noticed their mistake, they still loved. And none of them were happy with him. Time passed, he got acquainted, converged, parted, but never loved; there was anything but love.
The hero quite deftly manages to seduce the "lady with the dog". And after the betrayal, she, this Anna Sergeevna, echoing Matryosha, "who killed God," says:
“May God forgive me! .. This is terrible ... How can I justify myself? I am a bad, low woman, I despise myself and do not think of justification. I did not deceive my husband, but myself. And not only now, but for a long time I have been deceiving. My husband may be an honest, good man, but he's a lackey! I don’t know what he does there, how he serves, but I only know that he is a lackey.”
Another "Anna on the neck" who wanted "freedom".
Chekhov describes their fall as follows:
“It was stuffy in her room, it smelled of perfume that she bought in a Japanese store. Gurov, looking at her now, thought: "There are so many meetings in life!" From the past, he retained the memory of carefree, good-natured women, cheerful from love, grateful to him for happiness, even if it was very short; and about those - like, for example, his wife - who loved without sincerity, with excessive talk, mannered, with hysteria, with such an expression as if it were not love, not passion, but something more significant; and about two or three of them, very beautiful, cold, who suddenly flashed a predatory expression on their faces, a stubborn desire to take, snatch more from life than it can give, and these were not the first youth, capricious, not reasoning, domineering, not smart women, and when Gurov lost interest in them, their beauty aroused hatred in him, and the lace on their underwear then seemed to him like scales.
But much later, when the lovers are separated, they will dream of each other, they will find each other.
This is how Dmitry sees Anna now: “Anna Sergeevna also came in. She sat down in the third row, and when Gurov looked at her, his heart sank, and he clearly understood that for him now in the whole world there was no closer, dearer and more important person; she, lost in the provincial crowd, this little woman, unremarkable in any way, with a vulgar lorgnette in her hands, now filled his whole life, was his grief, joy, the only happiness he now desired for himself; and to the sounds of a bad orchestra, of crappy philistine violins, he thought about how good she was. I thought and dreamed.
And this will be their true love.
“And only now, when his head has become gray, he fell in love, as it should, for real - for the first time in his life.
Anna Sergeevna and he loved each other like very close, dear people, like husband and wife, like tender friends; it seemed to them that fate itself had destined them for each other, and it was not clear why he was married, and she was married; and it was as if they were two migratory birds, a male and a female, who were caught and forced to live in separate cages. They forgave each other what they were ashamed of in their past, forgave everything in the present and felt that this love of theirs changed them both.
Chekhov leaves the ending open. It is not known how this story will end. But the philosophy of life is expressed by the author of “Lady with a Dog” very succinctly: “And in this constancy, in complete indifference to the life and death of each of us lies, perhaps, the guarantee of our eternal salvation, the continuous movement of life on earth, continuous perfection.” "... Everything is beautiful in this world, everything except what we ourselves think and do when we forget about the higher goals of being, about our human dignity."
The theme of adultery in marriage is continued by Nabokov's story "Spring in Fialta".
Before us is Nina and the one whom she calls Vasenka. From his face, the story is told. Fialta is a fictional city that smacks of Green's cosmopolitanism. "Fialta" stands for "violet" and "Yalta". There are some parallels with Chekhov's "Lady with a Dog" and Bunin's general poetics.
Vasenka is married, he has children, Nina is also married. Their friendship or friendship or romance lasts their whole life (they meet in different cities under different circumstances, sometimes only in shadow), starting from childhood, when they first kissed. This is how the lyrical hero writes about Nina's childlike love: "... women's love was spring water containing healing salts, which she willingly gave to everyone from her ladle, just remind me."
Nina's husband is a mediocre writer Ferdinand. This is how the double betrayal of the main characters to their spouses is described: ““ Ferdinand left to fencing,” she said at ease, and, looking at the lower part of my face and thinking quickly about something to herself (her love wit was incomparable), she turned to me and she led, wiggling on her thin ankles ... and only when we locked ourselves in ... yes, everything happened so simply, those few exclamations and chuckles that we uttered did not correspond to romantic terminology so much that there was no place to spread out the brocade word : treason ... "Nina with her" light breath "on the same day will forget about treason. This is similar to Nabokov's other heroine, the wife of Tsencinnatus from Invitation to Execution, who says: "You know, I'm kind: it's such a small thing, and it's such a relief for a man."
And here is the last meeting of Nina and Vasenka before her death in a car accident:
“Nina, who was standing higher, put her hand on my shoulder, smiling and kissing me carefully so as not to break the smile. With unbearable strength, I survived (or so it seems to me now) everything that has ever been between us ... "Vasenka admits:" What if I love you? - but Nina did not accept these words, did not understand, and Vasenka is forced to make excuses, reducing everything to a joke.
The heroines of Vladimir Nabokov's novels, plays and stories are just as erotic as the heroines of Bunin, but something, some kind of artistic truth and strength in Nabokov, punishes debauchery. Nabokov is not a propagandist and not a supporter of the "sexual revolution", because he saw obvious evil in this: he hated Marx, Freud and Sartre, and it was their "Big Ideas" that influenced the student movements of the late 70s of the twentieth century in the West - for the sexual revolution.
10.
Woman at war.
The First and Second World Wars revealed the truth that a woman can work for men, master "male professions". A woman can fight, and not just wait for a sweetheart from the war. But even in war and in all "male" labor, she remains a woman. In this place, the example of the heroines of Boris Vasiliev's story "The Dawns Here Are Quiet ..." is indicative for us. We will consider female images as they die in a text that looks like a thriller.
The first to die was Liza Brichkina; she was sent by Vaskov for help, but drowned in a swamp. "Lisa Brichkina has lived all nineteen years in a sense of tomorrow." Mother was ill for a long time, taking care of her mother replaced almost all of Liza's education. Father drank...
Lisa has been waiting all her life, "waiting for something." Her first love was a hunter who, by the grace of his father, lived in their hayloft. Lisa waited for her to “knock on her window,” but no one was bored. One day, Liza herself asked the hunter at night to help him arrange a sleeping place. But the hunter drove her away. “Stupid things should not be done even out of boredom,” were his words that night. But leaving, the hunter left such a launch, again encouraging Brichkina, gave her a new expectation: “You need to study, Liza. You get completely wild in the forest. Come in August, I'll arrange for a technical school with a hostel. But the dream was not destined to come true - the war began. She fell into submission to Vaskov and she immediately liked him for his "solidity". The girls teased her about it, but not evil. Rita Osnyanina told her that she should "live easier." Vaskov promised her to "sing along" after the assignment, and this was Lisa's new hope, with which she died.

The second died Sonya Gurvich. She ran after Vaskov's pouch, forgotten by Osyanina, ran at once, unexpectedly, without a command, rushed away and was killed ... Sonya Gurvich knew German and was a translator. Her parents lived in Minsk. Father is a doctor. The family is big, even at the university she wore altered dresses of her sisters. In the reading room with her sat the same "bespectacled" neighbor. He and Sonya had only one evening - an evening in the Gorky Park of Culture and Leisure, and in five days he would volunteer for the front (he gave her a "thin book of Blok"). Sofya Solomonovna Gurvich died a heroic death: she was stabbed to death by non-human fascists. Vaskov cruelly avenged the Fritz for her...
They were quiet, inconspicuous girls, alive, whose image was not alienated either from Vaskov or from the author of the story. The girls are meek, inconspicuous, secretly in love. And such simple girls were crushed by the war.
Galya Chetvertak. Orphan. She grew up, as they say, with a gray mouse. Great inventor and visionary. All her life she lived in some kind of her dreams. The surname "Chetvertak" is a fictional, fictional and her mother. Her first love was shrouded in mystery, her first love "overtook" her. A quarter was not taken to the front for a long time, but she stormed the military enlistment office for a long time and achieved her goal. More than all the other girls, she was afraid of Sonya's death. In the first attack on the Fritz, Galya got scared, hid away, but Vaskov did not scold her. She died when she sat hiding in the bushes, and the Fritz passed by, but Chetvertak lost her nerve, she ran and was shot.
Evgenia Komelkova. She died at the age of nineteen, leading the Germans away from Osyanina, wounded by shrapnel, and Vaskov, who was caring for her. Evgenia Komelkova had, perhaps, the “lightest breath” of all the girls commanded by Vaskov. Until the last minutes, she believed in life. She loved life and rejoiced at every wave, was happy and carefree. “And Zhenya was not afraid of anything. She rode horses, shot at a shooting range, sat with her father in an ambush for wild boars, drove her father's motorcycle around a military camp. And she also danced at the evenings a gypsy and a match, sang with a guitar and twisted novels with lieutenants pulled into a glass. I twisted it easily, for fun, without falling in love. Because of this, there were various rumors that Zhenya did not pay attention to. She had an affair even with a real colonel - Luzhin, who had a family. It was he who "picked up" her when she lost her relatives. “Then she needed such support. I had to stumble, cry, complain, caress and find myself again in this formidable military world. After Zhenya's death, "a proud and beautiful face" remained. It was Evgenia Komelkova who staged a “theater” performance for the Germans, playing an idle bather, which confused the Germans’ plans. It was she who was the soul of their female company. And it was precisely because of her romance with Luzhin that she was assigned to the women's team. Zhenya was envious. “Zhenya, you are a mermaid! Zhenya your skin is transparent! Zhenya, all you have to do is sculpt a sculpture! Zhenya, you can walk without a bra! Oh, Zhenya, you need to go to the museum. Under glass on black velvet! Unfortunate woman, packing such a figure into uniforms is easier to die. Beautiful, beautiful are rarely happy ”The most feminine of all Vaskov’s“ fighters ”. Can we judge her for her "easy breathing"? But the war took a toll. She inspired other girls, she was an emotional center, she died as a hero, the animals were killed point-blank by the Germans.

Margarita Osyanina. She was wounded by a fragment of a grenade and, in order not to suffer, she shot herself. After her death, she left a three-year-old son (Albert, Alik), who was adopted by the surviving Vaskov. At less than eighteen years old, Rita Mushtakova married Lieutenant Osyanin, a red commander and border guard whom she met at a school party. A year after registering with the registry office, she gave birth to a boy. The husband died on the second day of the war in a bayonet counterattack. The mourning for her husband was long, but with the advent of Zhenya Osyanina she “thawed”, “softened”. Then she "took someone" in the city, where she roamed at night two or three nights a week. And it was because of this that she was the first to discover the Fritz.
The war forced to kill; the mother, the mother-to-be, who herself must be the first to hate death, is compelled to kill. This is how the hero of B. Vasilyev argues. The war broke the psychology. But a soldier needs a woman so much, so necessary that without a woman there is no reason to fight, and yet they fought for the house, for the family, for the hearth, which is guarded by a woman. But women also fought, fought to the best of their ability, but remained women. Is it possible to judge Zhenya for her "easy breathing"? According to Roman law, yes. According to Greek law, aesthetic, according to the principle of kalokagatiya - no, because the beautiful is at the same time good. Can there be an Inquisition that punished such girls? It is impossible for a man to blame a woman. Especially in a war.

11.
Family love.
The best example of true love (according to many writers and philosophers) is the example of the “old-world landowners” N.V. Gogol. Their life was quiet, impassive, calm. Kindness, cordiality, sincerity were always expressed on their faces. Afanasy Ivanovich “carried away quite cleverly” Pulcheria Ivanovna, “whom the relatives did not want to give away for him.”
“Pulcheria Ivanovna was somewhat serious, almost never laughed; but so much kindness was written on her face and in her eyes, so much readiness to treat you to everything that they had the best, that you would probably find the smile already too sugary for her kind face.
"It was impossible to look at their mutual love without participation." They both loved warmth, loved to eat well, were careless about the affairs of a large household, although, of course, they did something in this direction. However, the entire burden lay on the shoulders of Pulcheria Ivanovna.
“Pulcheria Ivanovna’s room was all lined with chests, drawers, drawers and chests. A lot of bundles and bags with seeds, flower, garden, watermelon, hung on the walls. A lot of balls with multi-colored wool, scraps of old dresses sewn for half a century, were stacked in the corners in chests and between chests.
Pulcheria Ivanovna kept a strict eye on the girl's, "... considered it necessary to keep them [girls] in the house and strictly looked after their morality."
Afanasy Ivanovich loved to play a trick on his wife: he would talk about the fire, then about the fact that he was going to war, then he would make fun of her cat.
They also loved the guests, from whom Pulcheria Ivanovna was always "extremely in good spirits."
Pulcheria Ivanovna guessed in advance the approach of her death, but she thought only of her husband, so that her husband would feel good without her, so that he “did not notice her absence.” Without her, Afanasy Ivanovich was in a long, hot sadness. He once felt that Pulcheria Ivanovna was calling him, and in a short time he himself died and was buried next to her.
The family, the love of these little Russian kind old men gives us an example of true married life. They addressed each other “to you” and they did not have children, but their warmth and hospitality, their tenderness towards the other, their affection captivates. It is love, not passion, that guides them. And they live only for each other.
Such love is rare these days. During the time after the "sexual revolution", after the decline of morals from the collapse of the USSR, in our time it is already difficult to find women worthy of chanting in literature. Or maybe you need to write, write the ideal of a woman or write the reality of a woman, so that our reality is more beautiful, moral, warm and bright. So that there would be no situation that Vladimir Makanin defined as follows: “one and one”. People who would be together do not see, do not notice each other. Behind the tinsel of passing days, love no longer dreams, the “boat of love” breaks into everyday life, even if there were “scarlet sails” in the remainder. "Sex! Sex! Sex!" - we hear in the media and from living people of our environment. Where is love? Where did all the chastity go, without which there is no mystery, mystery, mysticism. There are men and women, they sleep with each other, go left and right. Beloved women no longer write poems, and women don’t really need poetry anymore. Romance and the desire to have a healthy family are outlived by hitherto unprecedented debauchery. Pornography from the Internet breaks all records in terms of popularity: complete alienation, oblivion of the sexual sphere. Illusory, virtual erotica replaces the happiness of full-fledged love, living, real, bodily-spiritual. And we look at the older generation and wonder: how did they live together so much, did not run away after three years of marriage? And they, these happy couples, are surprised at the moral abyss in which the Russian youth find themselves. There is no more poetry now that would form a high level of sexuality, an elevated sexual life, quivering, someone goes into reading fantasy, goes into the world of fairy tales, someone studies books on the wisdom of the East, someone has nothing to do, reads detective stories or small love-story.
It is the culture that saves, the culture of sexual relations that was, which cannot be completely eradicated. Russian Orthodox Christianity is being revived, which has always stimulated the purity of sexual relations. We have a capital of our female images from our fiction, which we must increase. At all times, men and women have loved each other, leaving monuments of this love in culture and in life itself - in children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. We need to reinvent love.

Of course, we can no longer resurrect poor Lisa's feelings for Erast, but a way out must be found. With the institution of family and marriage, love itself is destroyed, the demographic structure of society is destroyed. The birth rate is declining, the Russian people, having lost its roots and culture, are dying out. But our baggage, our literary capital, both of tsarist times and Soviet, Russian-foreign, all this treasure must be absorbed and rethought within the framework of modernity and with thoughts about the future.

The position of women in society has changed dramatically in the XIX-XX centuries. This was reflected in Russian fiction, which flourished just at the same time. The status of a woman in society went parallel to the evolution of the female image. Literature influenced society, and society influenced literature. This interdependent, ambivalent process has not stopped even today. Living male writers with great interest tried to find out the secret that a woman carries, looked for the paths a woman takes, tried to guess what she wants. There is no doubt that Russian literature with its female images influenced the formation of a new status for women, her liberation and preserved her - women - dignity. But the evolution of female images is not a straight line, but an opportunity to look at different women from different angles. Every male writer who writes about a woman is a Pygmalion who brings to life many Galateas. These are living images, you can fall in love with them, you can cry with them, you can admire the eroticism that they possess. The masters of Russian prose, poetry and dramaturgy brought out the images of heroic women, you can certainly fall in love with such.

What a bad thing I did
and am I a corrupter and a villain,
I, who make the whole world dream
about my poor girl? -

Nabokov writes about his Lolita. A. Green's girls are admired for their courage and belief in a dream, Bunin's heroines seduce in an erotic sense, one wants to see a Turgenev type in a living girl, and war is not terrible if a woman is nearby.

All of us - men and women - seek happiness in love for each other, one sex admires the other. But there are situations - external and internal - when love cannot find a way out. Such situations are considered by Russian classical literature and offer solutions to these situations. Misunderstanding between the sexes can be found in reading the Russian classics. Literature is an occasion for acquaintance and conversation, discussing artistic images, the erotic position of the person himself is revealed, whether it be a male reader or a female reader. Attitude towards sex, love, marriage and family is one of the most important components of the worldview of an individual and the ideology of society. Societies where there is no love, where there is a low birth rate, where there are no beacons and stars by which a person orients himself in love, debauchery and evil triumph there. Societies where there are large families, where love is a value, where men and women understand each other, and do not use each other for the sake of their lustful appetites, there is the flowering of this society, there is culture, there is literature, because, as I noted above , love literature and real love go hand in hand.

So let's love, let's comprehend the mystery of marriage, let's admire our women! Let more children be born, let new serious books about love be written, let new images excite the soul!

Woman, this is the beginning of the beginning. Her beauty, charm, rich spiritual world have inspired poets and writers at all times. Beautiful female images still excite the hearts of readers. These are the divine beauties of A.S. Pushkin, and the charming images of L.N. Tolstoy, and the heroines of I.S. Turgenev, as well as the images of simple peasant women N.A. Nekrasov. Poets and writers of the 20th century, following the traditions of their predecessors, also create amazing female images worthy of admiration. The poetry of V.Ya. Bryusov and A.A. Akhmatova creates an unforgettable gallery of strong and tender, affectionate and arrogant, vulnerable and daring heroines. All of them are deeply individual, each of them is endowed only with its inherent character traits, but one thing unites them - high spirituality and moral purity, they are not capable of meanness and deceit, of base human passions. But at the same time: women - who and when could understand them! They were admired, they were hated, they were loved, feats were performed in their honor. The versatility of female nature for many years tried to comprehend not only representatives of art, but also pundits. A woman was valued, loved and respected at all times.

F.I. Tyutchev said: "There is nothing more beautiful in the world of a woman." At all times, poems were dedicated to a woman, portraits were painted, flowers were given, carried on her hands, romances were composed in their honor. Who does not know the classic lines of A.S. Pushkin - ..I remember a wonderful moment ... ..

All the heroines are so different, each has its own life, its own idea of ​​happiness, but they are all united by love ... .. Russian literature tends to sing the image of a loving and devoted wife:

Let's remember "The Tale of Igor's Campaign" - a work in which for the first time the image of a Russian woman is sung - loving, worried, suffering, ready for great sacrifices in the name of her beloved. This is Yaroslavna crying for her husband and calling for strength to save him.

"Women in the Petrine era" A.N. Tolstoy presented female images from all social strata of society.

XIX century, 1825. Petersburg, Decembrists. "Women of Russia". The wives of the Decembrists share the fate of the prisoners, write letters to their relatives, master housekeeping in exile. Warm-hearted, kind, meek, calm - they quickly became everyone's favorites. But even if it will be unbearably hard for them, they, Russian women, will endure everything. Such is their fate. Many years later, N.A. Nekrasov in his poem "Russian Women" will write about the fate of Princess E.I. Trubetskoy and Princess M.N. Volkonskaya.

The works of I.S. Turgenev - one of the most lyrical and poetic works in Russian literature. Women's images give them a special charm. "Turgenev's woman" is some kind of special dimension, some kind of ideal that embodies beauty, both external and internal. They are inherent in both poetry, and the integrity of nature, and incredible fortitude. These heroines, of course, are very different, each of them has her own life, her own experiences, but all of them are united by love and the desire to be happy. The novel "Fathers and Sons" presents a whole gallery of female images. - from a simple peasant woman Fenechka to a high society lady Anna Sergeevna Odintsova.

A woman is an inspirer, a woman is a Muse, a woman is a mother. A WOMAN is that bright and kind beginning that leads the world to harmony and beauty. Bearers of folk ideals and women of high society.

The highest female calling and appointment of L.N. Tolstoy sees in motherhood, in the upbringing of children, because it is the woman who is that bright and kind beginning that leads the world to harmony and beauty. At the same time, L.N. Tolstoy in the epic novel "War and Peace" reveals the image of a woman as a bearer of popular ideals. Tolstoy's thoughts about the true destiny of a woman are not outdated even today.

AS Pushkin in his most significant work "Eugene Onegin" revealed the rich inner world of his heroine, which left an imprint on her appearance. Takova Tatiana Larina A.S. Pushkin - "sweet" and "true" ideal, morally impeccable, seeking deep content in life. The name Tatyana was not chosen by the author by chance, but was given in memory of the holy martyr Tatyana, who embodied, on the one hand, spiritual holiness and purity, and on the other, firmness of faith and opposition to earthly passions. "I'm still the same ... But there is another in me." Representatives of the "age of the past", the heroines are not abstract images, but living people with their shortcomings and virtues, yet each of them is an individuality.

The novel by M. Yu. Lermontov "A Hero of Our Time" presents the images of four women: the Circassian Bela ("Bela"), the long-haired "undine" - the girlfriend of the smuggler Yanko ("Taman"), Princess Mary and Princess Vera ("Princess Mary"); this gallery of female images is completed by the episodic figure of Nastya, "the pretty daughter of the old constable" ("The Fatalist").

The images of the 19th century became the basis for the modern image of a woman - a heroine with a big heart, a fiery soul and a readiness for great unforgettable deeds. Women's images of modernity, which bear the imprint of the twentieth century, were created by great poetesses - A. Akhmatova, Z. Gippius, M. Tsvetaeva. The one who considers the images of women created by them to be only exquisite hothouse flowers, artfully inscribed in the romantic background of the Art Nouveau style, is mistaken. Indeed, behind their appearance, we, thanks to the poets V. Bryusov, A. Akhmatova, distinguish high spirituality, a brilliant mind, nobility of feelings.

You are a woman and you are right about that.
From the century removed the crown of stars.
You are the image of a deity in our abyss!
V.Ya.Bryusov

Russian literature has always been distinguished by the depth of its ideological content, the tireless desire to resolve issues of the meaning of life, a humane attitude towards a person, and the truthfulness of the image. Russian writers strove to express in female images the best features inherent in our people. In no literature of the world, we will not find such beautiful and pure images of women, distinguished by their faithful and loving hearts, as well as their unique spiritual beauty. A woman is multifaceted, harmonious, over time her image has changed, acquired the features of modernity, but it always exuded warmth, mystery and mystery.

FEMALE IMAGES IN RUSSIAN CLASSICAL LITERATURE. Russian literature has always been distinguished by the depth of its ideological content, the tireless desire to resolve issues of the meaning of life, a humane attitude towards a person, and the truthfulness of the image. Russian writers strove to reveal in female images the best features inherent in our people. In no other national literature we will meet such beautiful and pure women, distinguished by their faithful and loving hearts, as well as their unique spiritual beauty. Only in Russian literature is so much attention paid to the depiction of the inner world and the complex experiences of the female soul. Since the 12th century, the image of a Russian woman-heroine, with a big heart, a fiery soul and readiness for great unforgettable deeds, has been passing through all our literature.

It is enough to recall the captivating image of the ancient Russian woman Yaroslavna, full of beauty and lyricism. She is the embodiment of love and loyalty. Her sadness in separation from Igor is combined with civil grief: Yaroslavna is experiencing the death of her husband's squad and, turning to the forces of nature, asks for help not only for her "lada", but also for all his soldiers. The author of the "Word" managed to give the image of Yaroslavna an unusual vitality and truthfulness. He was the first to create a beautiful image of a Russian woman.

A. S. Pushkin painted an unforgettable image of Tatyana Larina. Tatyana is “Russian in spirit”, the author emphasizes this throughout the novel. Her love for the Russian people, for patriarchal antiquity, for Russian nature runs through the entire work. Tatyana is "a deep, loving, passionate nature." Integral, sincere and simple, she "loves without art, obedient to the attraction of feelings." She does not tell anyone about her love for Onegin, except for the nanny. But Tatyana combines deep love for Yevgeny with a sense of duty to her husband:

I love you (why lie?),

But I am given to another;

I will be faithful to him forever.

Tatyana is characterized by a serious attitude to life, to love and to her duty, she has a depth of experiences, a complex spiritual world. All these features were brought up in her by a connection with the people and nature, which created a truly Russian woman, a person of great spiritual beauty.

Pushkin also created another, seemingly less vivid image - a modest Russian girl Masha Mironova ("The Captain's Daughter"). The author also managed to show a serious attitude towards love, the depth of a feeling that she does not know how to express in beautiful words, but which she remains faithful to for life. She is ready to do anything for the one she loves. She is able to sacrifice herself to save Grinev's parents.

Unforgettable is another image full of beauty and tragedy - Katerina in Ostrovsky's drama "Thunderstorm", which, according to Dobrolyubov, reflected the best character traits of the Russian people: spiritual nobility, striving for truth and freedom, readiness for struggle and protest. Katerina is “a bright ray in a dark kingdom”, an exceptional woman, a poetic and dreamy nature. Having fallen into an atmosphere of hypocrisy and hypocrisy, having married an unloved person, she suffers deeply. But how brightly her feeling flares up when she meets a person in this "dark kingdom" who is close to her in his moods. Love for him becomes for Katerina the only meaning of life: for the sake of Boris, she is ready to transcend her notions of sin. The struggle between feeling and duty leads to the fact that Katerina publicly repents before her husband and, driven to despair by the despotism of Kabaikha, commits suicide. In the death of Katerina Dobrolyubov sees "a terrible challenge to the tyranny of power."

I. S. Turgenev was a great master in creating female images, a fine connoisseur of the female soul and heart. He painted a whole gallery of portraits of amazing Russian women. Before us stands Lisa Kapitina - bright, clean, strict. A sense of duty, responsibility for one's actions, deep religiosity bring her closer to the women of ancient Russia ("Noble Nest").

But Turgenev also created images of "new" women - Elena Stakhova and Marianna. Elena is an "extraordinary girl", she is looking for "active good". She strives to get out of the narrow confines of the family into the scope of social activities. But the conditions of Russian life at that time did not allow a woman the possibility of such an activity. And Elena fell in love with Insarov, who devoted his whole life to the cause of the liberation of his homeland. He captivated her with the beauty of heroism in the struggle for the "common cause". After his death, Elena remains in Bulgaria, devoting her life to a holy cause - the liberation of the Bulgarian people from the Turkish yoke.

The real singer of the Russian woman was N. A. Nekrasov. Not a single poet before him or after paid so much attention to a Russian woman. The port speaks with pain about the hard lot of the Russian peasant woman, about the fact that "the keys to the happiness of women have been lost for a long time." But no slavishly humble life can break her pride and self-esteem. Such is Daria in the poem "Frost, Red Nose." As a living image rises before us, pure in heart and bright.

Nekrasov writes with great love and warmth about the Decembrist women who followed their husbands to Siberia. Trubetskaya and Volkonskaya are ready to share hard labor and prison with them, who suffered for the happiness of the people. They are not afraid of disaster or deprivation.

Finally, the revolutionary democrat N. G. Chernyshevsky showed in the novel What Is To Be Done? the image of a woman of the new time - Vera Pavlovna, resolute, energetic, independent. How passionately she is torn from the "basement" to the "free air". Vera Pavlovna is truthful and honest to the end. She strives to make life easier for many people, to make it beautiful and extraordinary. Many women read the novel and tried to imitate Vera Pavlovna in their lives.

L. N. Tolstoy, speaking out against the ideology of democrats-raznochintsev, opposes to the image of Vera Pavlovna his ideal of a woman - Natasha Rostov. This is a gifted, cheerful and determined girl. She, like Tatyana Larina, is close to the people, to their life, loves their songs, rural nature. The patriotic upsurge that all layers of Russian society experienced when Napoleon's army entered Russia also embraced Natasha. At her insistence, the carts intended for loading property were released for the wounded. But the life ideal of Natasha Rostova is a happy family.

The greatest Russian writers in their works revealed in all their richness the spiritual, moral and intellectual qualities of Russian women, purity, intelligence, a heart full of love, the desire for freedom, for struggle.

Recently, the BBC showed a series based on Tolstoy's "War and Peace". In the West, everything is like ours - there, too, the release of a film (television) adaptation dramatically increases interest in the literary source. And now the masterpiece of Lev Nikolaevich suddenly became one of the bestsellers, and with it the readers became interested in all Russian literature. On this wave, the popular literary site Literary Hub published the article "10 Russian Literary Heroines You Should Know" (The 10 Russian Literary Heroines You Should Know). It seemed to me that this is a curious look from the outside on our classics and I translated the article for my blog. I post it here too. The illustrations are taken from the original article.

Attention! The text contains spoilers.

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We know that all happy heroines are equally happy, and each unhappy heroine is unhappy in her own way. But the fact is that there are few happy characters in Russian literature. Russian heroines tend to complicate their lives. It should be so, because their beauty as literary characters largely comes from their ability to suffer, from their tragic destinies, from their “Russianness”.

The most important thing to understand about Russian female characters is that their destinies are not stories of overcoming obstacles to achieve "and they lived happily ever after." Keepers of primordial Russian values, they know that there is more to life than happiness.

1. Tatyana Larina (A.S. Pushkin "Eugene Onegin")

In the beginning there was Tatyana. This is a kind of Eve of Russian literature. And not only because it is chronologically the first, but also because Pushkin occupies a special place in Russian hearts. Almost any Russian is able to recite the poems of the father of Russian literature by heart (and after a few shots of vodka, many will do this). Pushkin's masterpiece, the poem "Eugene Onegin", is the story not only of Onegin, but also of Tatyana, a young innocent girl from the provinces, who falls in love with the protagonist. Unlike Onegin, who is shown as a cynical bon vivant spoiled by fashionable European values, Tatyana embodies the essence and purity of the mysterious Russian soul. Including a penchant for self-sacrifice and neglect of happiness, which is shown by her famous rejection of the person she loves.

2. Anna Karenina (L.N. Tolstoy "Anna Karenina")

Unlike Pushkin's Tatyana, who resists the temptation to get along with Onegin, Anna Tolstoy leaves both her husband and son to run away with Vronsky. Like a true dramatic heroine, Anna voluntarily makes the wrong choice, a choice she will have to pay for. Anna's sin and the source of her tragic fate is not that she left the child, but that, selfishly indulging her sexual and romantic desires, she forgot the lesson of Tatyana's selflessness. If you see a light at the end of a tunnel, make no mistake, it could be a train.

3. Sonya Marmeladova (F.M. Dostoevsky "Crime and Punishment")

In Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, Sonya appears as the antipode of Raskolnikov. A whore and a saint at the same time, Sonya accepts her existence as a path of martyrdom. Upon learning of Raskolnikov's crime, she does not push him away, on the contrary, she attracts him to herself in order to save his soul. Characteristic here is the famous scene when they read the biblical story of the resurrection of Lazarus. Sonya is able to forgive Raskolnikov, because she believes that everyone is equal before God, and God forgives. For a repentant killer, this is a real find.

4. Natalia Rostova (L.N. Tolstoy "War and Peace")

Natalia is everyone's dream: smart, funny, sincere. But if Pushkin's Tatyana is too good to be true, Natalya seems alive, real. Partly because Tolstoy added other qualities to her image: she is capricious, naive, flirtatious and, for the mores of the early 19th century, a little daring. In War and Peace, Natalia starts out as a charming teenager, exuding joy and vitality. Throughout the novel, she grows older, learns the lessons of life, tames her fickle heart, becomes wiser, her character acquires integrity. And this woman, which is generally uncharacteristic for Russian heroines, after more than a thousand pages, is still smiling.

5. Irina Prozorova (A.P. Chekhov "Three Sisters")

At the beginning of Chekhov's play Three Sisters, Irina is the youngest and full of hope. Her older brothers and sisters are whiny and capricious, they are tired of life in the provinces, and Irina's naive soul is filled with optimism. She dreams of returning to Moscow, where, in her opinion, she will find her true love and be happy. But as the chance to move to Moscow fades, she becomes increasingly aware that she is stuck in the countryside and is losing her spark. Through Irina and her sisters, Chekhov shows us that life is just a series of dull moments, only occasionally punctuated by short bursts of joy. Like Irina, we waste our time on trifles, dreaming of a better future, but gradually we realize the insignificance of our existence.

6. Lisa Kalitina (I.S. Turgenev "The Noble Nest")

In the novel "The Nest of Nobles" Turgenev created an example of a Russian heroine. Liza is young, naive, pure in heart. She is torn between two boyfriends: a young, handsome, cheerful officer and an old, sad, married man. Guess who she chose? The choice of Lisa says a lot about the mysterious Russian soul. She is clearly on her way to suffering. The choice of Lisa shows that the desire for sadness and melancholy is no worse than any other option. At the end of the story, Lisa is disappointed in love and goes to a monastery, choosing the path of sacrifice and deprivation. “Happiness is not for me,” she explains her act. “Even when I hoped for happiness, my heart was always heavy.”

7. Margarita (M. Bulgakov "The Master and Margarita")

Chronologically, the last on the list is Bulgakov's Margarita, an extremely strange heroine. At the beginning of the novel, this is an unhappy woman in marriage, then she becomes the lover and muse of the Master, in order to later turn into a witch flying on a broomstick. For Master Margarita, this is not only a source of inspiration. She becomes, like Sonya for Raskolnikov, his healer, lover, savior. When the Master is in trouble, Margarita turns to none other than Satan himself for help. Having concluded, like Faust, a contract with the Devil, she nevertheless reunites with her lover, albeit not quite in this world.

8. Olga Semyonova (A.P. Chekhov "Darling")

In Darling, Chekhov tells the story of Olga Semyonova, a loving and tender soul, a simple person who is said to live by love. Olga becomes a widow early. Twice. When there is no one around to love, she closes herself in the company of a cat. In a review of Darling, Tolstoy wrote that, intending to ridicule a narrow-minded woman, Chekhov accidentally created a very endearing character. Tolstoy went even further, he condemned Chekhov for being too harsh on Olga, urging her to judge her soul, not her intellect. According to Tolstoy, Olga embodies the ability of Russian women to love unconditionally, a virtue unknown to men.

9. Anna Sergeevna Odintsova (I.S. Turgenev "Fathers and Sons")

In the novel "Fathers and Sons" (often mistranslated "Fathers and Sons"), Mrs. Odintsova is a lonely woman of mature age, the sound of her surname in Russian also hints at loneliness. Odintsova is an atypical heroine who has become a kind of pioneer among female literary characters. Unlike other women in the novel, who follow the obligations imposed on them by society, Mrs. Odintsova is childless, she has no mother and husband (she is a widow). She stubbornly defends her independence, like Pushkin's Tatyana, refusing the only chance to find true love.

10. Nastasya Filippovna (F.M. Dostoevsky "The Idiot")

The heroine of The Idiot, Nastasya Filippovna, gives an idea of ​​how complex Dostoevsky is. Beauty makes her a victim. Orphaned as a child, Nastasya becomes a kept woman and mistress of the elderly man who picked her up. But every time she tries to break free from the clutches of her position and build her own destiny, she continues to feel humiliated. Guilt casts a fatal shadow on all her decisions. According to tradition, like many other Russian heroines, Nastasya has several options for fate, mainly associated with men. And in keeping with tradition, she fails to make the right choice. Resigned to fate instead of fighting, the heroine drifts to her tragic end.

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The author of this text is the writer and diplomatic worker Guillermo Erades. He worked in Russia for some time, knows Russian literature well, is a fan of Chekhov and the author of Back to Moscow. So this view is not entirely outsider. On the other hand, how to write about Russian literary heroines without knowing the Russian classics?

Guillermo does not explain his choice of characters in any way. In my opinion, the absence of Princess Mary or “poor Liza” (which, incidentally, was written earlier than Pushkin's Tatyana) and Katerina Kabanova (from Ostrosky's Thunderstorm) is surprising. It seems to me that these Russian literary heroines are better known among us than Liza Kalitina or Olga Semyonova. However, this is my subjective opinion. Who would you add to this list?

Women's images in the literature of the XIX century.

Literature is the source from which we, readers, draw information about a particular era. Works of the 18th century - early 19th century give us the opportunity to vividly, colorfully reproduce the picture of Russian society, taken at one of the most interesting moments of its development.

In my opinion, Russian classical literature is so rich and diverse that it can tell us about any problem that is still relevant today.

How many works exist in Russian literature that tell about women's fate. This is "Svetlana" V.A. Zhukovsky,
"Undergrowth" D.I. Fonvizin, "Woe from Wit" A.S. Griboedova, "Evgeny
Onegin" A.S. Pushkin. The heroines of these works lived at about the same time and were in the same circumstances. Sofia, niece
Staroduma from the comedy "Undergrowth", Sofya Famusova from the play "Woe from Wit", Tatyana Larina from the novel "Eugene Onegin" ... and this is not a complete list of heroines with whom the best pages of Russian classical literature are associated.
Studying these works in literature lessons, I began to think more and more often about the female share of these girls. Previously, it seemed to me that their life is full of something unusual, mysterious, but over time I began to understand that there is nothing mysterious here, they are ordinary, secular ladies, with their own problems and shortcomings. But nothing happens so simply, and no matter how simple they are, each of them has its own characteristics, qualities for which they should be valued and respected. And that's why I was interested in the theme of women's fate, set in the works of poets and writers of the XVIII century. - early 19th century
Some authors, creating their creations, sought to show female beauty and charm, talking about their “sweet ideal” of a woman.
Others spoke of femininity, spiritual purity, sincerity, strength of character.

The most famous, in my opinion, are Sofia Famusova from the play
A.S. Griboyedov "Woe from Wit" and Tatyana Larina from the novel by A.S. Pushkin
"Eugene Onegin".

In order to better understand them, to realize the depth of their characters, I took up research work. After all, these heroines are somewhat similar to us today. We also strive to find the answer to the eternal question: "What is love?" We also want to understand this feeling, we want to love and be loved, but at the same time make our choice consciously, without losing our own dignity.

I believe that there is a lot in common between Sofia Famusova and Tatyana Larina. They lived in about the same era, when women were supposed to stay at home raising children, and only because they were noblewomen, parents took care of education for their daughters, but this could only be at best.

One was brought up in the village and then comes to Moscow. The other lives in
Moscow, but then, in all likelihood, will be for some time in the countryside. And they probably read the same books. For father
Sophia in the books is all evil. And Sophia was brought up on them. Most likely, it was on those that were available to the "county young lady", Pushkin
Tatyana - Richardson, Rousseau, de Stael.
Sophia grew up in the house of her father, Pavel Afanasyevich Famusov, lost her mother in infancy. She was raised by Madame Rosier, who was her governess. Sofia got a good education

“We take the tramps, and into the house, and by tickets,

To teach our daughters everything, everything…”, said Famusov.
At seventeen, she not only “bloomed charmingly,” as the admiring Chatsky says about her, but also shows an enviable independence of opinion, unthinkable for people like Molchalin or even her father.
An important role in her is played by that immediacy, the unspoilt nature of her nature, which allowed Goncharov to bring Griboyedov's heroine closer to Pushkin's Tatyana Larina: ".
But there is also a significant difference. Tatyana is not only the ideal character of a Russian woman herself, as the author of the novel imagined him
"Eugene Onegin". She loves an outstanding person, worthy of her in a number of qualities.
Sophia's chosen one, unfortunately, is different. Therefore, we must evaluate her behavior, her courage, which so frightens this chosen one, in a different way.
Comparing Tatyana and Sophia, Goncharov wrote that “the huge difference is not between her and Tatyana, but between Onegin and Molchalin. Sophia's choice, of course, does not recommend her, but Tatyana's choice was also accidental ... ".
But he also noted further that “not immorality” (but not “God”, of course) “brought” her to Molchalin. But simply "the desire to patronize a loved one, poor, modest, who does not dare to raise his eyes to her, - to elevate him to himself, to his circle, to give him family rights." Goncharov thinks so.

We don't understand her character. In her behavior and moods, there is a contradiction between a sober mind and sentimental experiences.

Despite the fact that she was brought up by “a foolish father and some kind of madam,” her ideal contradicts the rules of the Famus society. Although it arose under the influence of "French books", but in it one can feel the desire for an independent choice of one's love and one's destiny, disagreement with the fate prepared. Sophia is ready to protect her love - however, by the methods of the society that raised her: deceit and gossip.
This is manifested in relation to Chatsky. She starts a rumor that Chatsky has gone crazy, trying to take revenge on him.

Ah, Chatsky! You love to dress up everyone in jesters,

Feel free to try on yourself.
Sofya does not hide her alienation, and then hostility towards him, although she understands that pretending with this keen observer of her behavior would “make her life easier”. She even, without pretending, reveals to him her sympathy for Molchalin, admits trustingly and directly:

I did not try, God brought us together.

of the most wonderful property

He is finally: compliant, modest, quiet,

Not a shadow of worry on your face

And there are no misdeeds in the soul;

Strangers and at random does not cut, -

That's why I love him.
Sophia lives only by love, the low and dependent position of Molchalin even seems to increase her attraction to him. Her feeling is serious, it gives her the courage not to be afraid of the opinions of the world and go against all the norms and traditions of her environment.

What is my rumor? Whoever wants to judges...

What am I to whom? Before them? To the whole universe?

Funny? - let them joke; annoying? - let them scold.
She makes her choice on her own and is not ashamed, almost does not hide it.

Molchalin! How intact my mind remained!

After all, you know how dear your life is to me!

V. G. Belinsky, in relation to Sophia, notes: “There is some kind of energy of character in her: she gave herself to a man, not being seduced by either wealth or his nobility, in a word, not by calculation, but, on the contrary, too not by calculation ... ". Indeed, it is somewhat suspicious that a girl of noble origin turns her attention not to a childhood friend whom she should know better, but to a servant whose main talents are cunning and the ability to adapt.
But, having learned what Molchalin did to her, Sophia rejects him with contempt, orders to leave the house tomorrow, threatening otherwise to reveal everything to her father.

Leave me alone, I say, now

I'll wake everyone in the house with a cry,

And I will destroy myself and you.

I haven't known you since then.

Reproaches, complaints, my tears

Do not dare to expect, you are not worth them;
Appreciating the mind, dedication, respect for people in a person, Sophia causes pity for herself, because she was cruelly mistaken in Molchalin.
And this mistake deals her a severe blow.

As K.A. Polevoy: “Sophia is a necessary face of the play where you see modern society.” She is, as it were, the initial stage of the future insidious, blasphemous, insensitive Khlestovs, Khryumins, Tugoukhovskys, who at one time, of course, were Sophias, but deprived of moral and mental education , became gossips and destroyers of their young daughters, granddaughters and nieces. "The mind and soul, always idle and immersed in petty gossip and swagger of life, signified only by dinners and balls, must certainly bear the fruits that they have collected
Famusov at the end of the comedy,” K.A. came to this conclusion. Polevoy in his article dedicated to Sophia.
But Sophia is not like them, she is much smarter than her peers, she feels them more subtle. She is too full of sensitivity. She has the strong inclinations of a remarkable nature, a lively mind, passionate and feminine softness ... “she hides something of her own in the shadows, hot, tender, even dreamy,” said A.I. Goncharov. Sophia does not like empty cleverness, wit and slander, which distinguished people of the 19th century.
Therefore, she cannot understand Chatsky: she also refers his merciless witticisms to evil speaking.
I sincerely feel sorry for Sophia: she, with her lively mind, selflessness, became a victim of a society in which hypocrisy and self-interest prevail, and real feelings are depreciated. Her lesson is my lesson in life. She succumbed to the influence of the people around her; showed weakness, which means that you need to stick to your life principles, and trust only close and faithful people who can really give good advice.
As I.A. Goncharov: “Sofya is a mixture of good instincts with lies, a lively mind with the absence of any hint of ideas and beliefs, confusion of concepts, mental and moral blindness - all this does not have the character of personal vices in her, but appears as common features of her circle ... "
And we do not know how the future fate of Sophia will turn out, but we want to believe that she will be able to preserve in herself the best that was given to her by nature.
Tatyana Larina is another heroine whose fate did not turn out the way she herself would like. Her love was most likely tragic. Although, I do not think that Tatyana was disappointed in life. Maybe it was just a test that she endured with dignity.
Tatyana is a very rare name for the 19th century. and maybe, naming his heroine like that, A.S. Pushkin already emphasized the unusualness, peculiarity, exclusivity of her nature. Using the particles NOT and NOR in the description
Tatiana, he talks not so much about what she was, but rather about what Tatiana was not: ordinary.

“Not by the beauty of your sister,

Nor the freshness of her ruddy

She would not attract eyes.

Dika, sad, silent,

Like a forest doe, timid ...

... She did not know how to caress

To my father, not to my mother;

A child by herself, in a crowd of children

I did not want to play and jump ...

Thoughtfulness and daydreaming distinguish her among the local inhabitants, she feels lonely among people who are not able to understand her spiritual needs. Her tastes and interests are not entirely clear to us:

... scary stories

In winter in the dark of nights

They captivated her heart more ...

... She loved on the balcony

Warn dawn dawn...

... She liked novels early on ...
Tatyana's only real pleasure and entertainment were books: she read a lot and indiscriminately.

"She fell in love with deceptions

And Richardson and Rousseau"
These romantic book heroes served as an example for Tatyana to create the ideal of her chosen one. We see the same thing with Sophia.
V.G. Belinsky, explaining Tatyana's character, said: “Tatyana's whole inner world consisted in a thirst for love; nothing else spoke to her soul; her mind was asleep ... Her girlish days were not busy with anything, they did not have their own series of work and leisure ... A wild plant, completely left to itself, Tatyana created her own life, in the emptiness of which the inner fire that devoured her burned all the more rebelliously, that her the mind is not occupied with anything ... ".
Pushkin writes about his heroine seriously, respectfully. He notes her spirituality, poetry.

Under the influence of the books she read, Tatyana creates her own romantic world, in the center of which - by the will of fate - was Onegin, whose unusualness and depth of personality Tatyana immediately felt. I should note that Onegin and Tatiana have a lot in common: mental and moral originality, a sense of alienation from their environment, and sometimes an acute feeling of loneliness. But if Pushkin is ambivalent about Onegin, then
Tatyana - with open sympathy. The poet's ideas about the Russian national character are connected with "dear Tatiana". Pushkin endowed his heroine with a rich inner world and spiritual purity:
“with a rebellious imagination, a living mind and will, and a wayward head, and a fiery and tender heart.”
No wonder the author remarks:

Tatyana (Russian soul,

I don't know why.)

With her cold beauty

I loved Russian winter...
She thinks and feels like a truly Russian person. She knows how to appreciate the natural beauty of nature. Not without reason, when Tanya found out that she was being sent to Moscow, with the first rays of the sun she got up and hurried to the fields:

"Sorry, peaceful valleys,

And you, familiar mountain peaks,

And you, familiar forests;

I'm sorry, heavenly beauty,

Sorry, cheerful nature;
Nature has a great influence on her. Thanks to her, Tatyana did not break, she withstood the pain inflicted on her by Onegin.
A.S. Pushkin emphasizes the spiritual connection of a girl who grew up in a provincial estate with the way of life, beliefs, folklore of the people.

"Tatyana believed the legends

common folk antiquity,

And dreams, and card fortune-telling,

And the predictions of the moon.

She was disturbed by signs; "

This is also evidenced by Tatyana's dream, he speaks of her naturalness, honesty, sincerity, the folk, folklore perception of the world is so close to her.

And remember Sophia: after all, she also talks about sleep. And here for the first time
Sophia named those traits of her personality that were so highly appreciated
Goncharov. Sophia's dream is important for understanding her character, how important sleep is
Tatyana Larina to comprehend the character of Pushkin's heroine, although
Tatyana is actually dreaming her dream, and Sofya is making up a dream to deceive her father.

Suddenly a nice person, one of those we

We will see - as if we have known each other for a century,

Came here with me; and insinuating, and smart,

But timid... You know who was born in poverty...

Tatyana dreamed of Onegin in her dream. "She found out among the guests

The one who is sweet and terrible to her,

The hero of our novel!
As noted by V.G. Belinsky in his article: Tatyana - “this marvelous combination of rude, vulgar prejudices with a passion for French books and with respect for the profound work of Martyn Zadeka is possible only in a Russian woman ...
... And suddenly Onegin appears. He is completely surrounded by mystery: his aristocracy, his undeniable superiority over all this calm and vulgar world ... could not but affect Tatiana's fantasy. With understanding, Pushkin describes how the feeling of love awakens in Tatyana:

For a long time her imagination

Burning with grief and longing,

Alkalo fatal food;

Long hearted languor

It pressed her young breast;

The soul was waiting ... for someone,

And waited ... Eyes opened;

She said it's him!

Interest is a combination of someone. Is it possible to just wait for someone? But Tatyana was waiting, and, probably, that's why she fell in love with a man without knowing him. She only knew that Eugene was not like everyone around - this is enough to get interested, and then fall in love. She knew very little about life, people, and even herself. “For Tatyana, there was no real Onegin, whom she could neither understand nor know; therefore, she needed to give it some meaning, borrowed from a book, and not from life, because life
Tatyana, too, could neither understand nor know, ”said V.G. Belinsky
But her love is a real, great feeling, no matter how it is borrowed from books. She loved with all her heart, with all her soul she gave herself to this feeling. With what sincerity she wrote a letter to Onegin, and despite the fact that she was the first to declare her love, the first to take a risky step, absolutely not accepted in society.
Tatyana's letter is an impulse, confusion, passion, longing, a dream, and at the same time it is all authentic. It was written by a Russian girl, inexperienced, tender and lonely, sensitive and shy.
Such an act only earns respect. After all, even in our time it is not customary for a girl to be the first to open her love.
But time passes, Tatyana is married, although her first love still lives in her heart. But she remains true to her duty. At the meeting, she says to Onegin:

“I love you (why lie?),

But I am given to another;

I will be faithful to him forever.
And now, in our time, every young man is looking for his ideal woman. And I think that for many this ideal is associated with Tatiana
Larina, because she combines the qualities that make a woman beautiful. Years pass, people change, social conditions, aesthetic principles, but those spiritual qualities that the “sweet ideal” of the great Russian poet A. S. Pushkin possesses will always be honored.

Summing up what I have said, I return to the comparison of Tatyana
Larina and Sofia Famusova.

For readers, Tatyana has become an ideal to follow. A convincing, psychologically truthful image of a Russian girl, silent and sad, timid and at the same time resolute, sincere in her feelings.
And Sophia is an example of a young girl in whom naivety and hypocrisy, a thirst for love and obstacles created by society and education are fighting.
The heroine of Pushkin's novel goes through a significant and very important part of her life and appears before us as a character that has developed, completed by the author. The heroine of Griboyedov's play, in fact, receives only the first cruel lesson. She is depicted at the beginning of those trials that fall to her lot. Therefore, Sophia is a character that can be further developed and revealed "to the end" only in the future.

In the process of studying this topic, I realized how difficult it was for women to make their choice, they did not have special rights, so no one considered their opinion. And how we, it turns out, are happier than them.
After all, we, living in the 21st century, have all the ways and roads open. But how important it is not to make a mistake in choosing and save yourself. This, of course, helps us and
Sofia Famusova and Tatyana Larina.

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