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What is the significance of Ostrovsky for the theatre. "The Significance of Ostrovsky's Creativity for the Ideological and Aesthetic Development of Literature

Alexander Nikolayevich Ostrovsky (1823-1886) rightfully occupies a worthy place among the largest representatives of world drama.

“You brought a whole library of works of art as a gift to literature, you created your own special world for the stage. You alone completed the building, at the foundation of which you laid the cornerstones of Fonvizin, Griboyedov, Gogol. But only after you we are Russians, we can proudly say: “We have our own Russian, national theater.” It, in fairness, should be called Ostrovsky's Theatre.

Ostrovsky began his career in the 40s, during the lifetime of Gogol and Belinsky, and completed it in the second half of the 80s, at a time when A.P. Chekhov was already firmly established in literature.

In his younger years, the playwright wrote critical articles and participated in the editorial affairs of Moskvityanin, trying to change the direction of this conservative magazine, then, publishing in Sovremennik and " Domestic notes”, became friendly with N. A. Nekrasov, L. N. Tolstoy, I. S. Turgenev, I. A. Goncharov and other writers. He followed their work, discussed their works with them and listened to their opinion about his plays.

In an era when state theaters were officially considered "imperial" and were under the control of the Ministry of the Court, and provincial entertainment institutions were given to the full disposal of business entrepreneurs, Ostrovsky put forward the idea of a complete restructuring of theatrical business in Russia. He argued the need to replace the court and commercial theater with a folk one.

Not limited to the theoretical development of this idea in special articles and notes, the playwright fought for its implementation for many years. The main areas in which he realized his views on the theater were his work and work with actors.

He considered the theaters of Shakespeare, Moliere, and Goethe to be exemplary experiments of this kind. The combination in one person of the author of dramatic works and their interpreter on stage - the teacher of actors, the director - seemed to Ostrovsky a guarantee of artistic integrity, the organic activity of the theater.

This idea, in the absence of directing, with the traditional orientation of the theatrical spectacle to the performance of individual, "solo" actors, was innovative and fruitful. Its significance has not been exhausted even today, when the director has become the main figure in the theater. It is enough to recall B. Brecht's theater "Berliner Ensemble" to be convinced of this.

The essence of his idea was to implement and consolidate the influence of literature on the theater. Fundamentally and categorically, he condemned the more and more felt from the 70s. subordination of dramatic writers to the tastes of the actors - the favorites of the stage, their prejudices and whims. At the same time, Ostrovsky did not conceive of dramaturgy without the theatre.

His plays were written with the direct expectation of real performers, artists. He emphasized: in order to write good play, the author must have full knowledge of the laws of the stage, the purely plastic side of the theater.

Far from every playwright, he was ready to hand over power over stage artists. He was sure that only a writer who created his own unique dramaturgy, his own special world on the stage, has something to say to the artists, has something to teach them. Ostrovsky's attitude to modern theater determined by his artistic system. The hero of Ostrovsky's dramaturgy was the people.

The whole society and, moreover, the socio-historical life of the people appeared in his plays. Not without reason, critics N. Dobrolyubov and A. Grigoriev, who approached Ostrovsky’s work from mutually opposite positions, saw in his works a complete picture of the life of the people, although they assessed the life depicted by the writer differently.

This orientation of the writer to the mass phenomena of life corresponded to the principle of ensemble play, which he defended, the consciousness inherent in the playwright of the importance of unity, the integrity of the creative aspirations of the team of actors participating in the performance.

In his plays, Ostrovsky portrayed social phenomena that had deep roots - conflicts, the origins and causes of which often date back to distant historical eras.

He saw and showed the fruitful aspirations arising in society, and the new evil rising in it. The carriers of new aspirations and ideas in his plays are forced to wage a hard struggle with the old, traditionally consecrated customs and views, and the new evil collides in them with the centuries-old ethical ideal of the people, with strong traditions of resistance to social injustice and moral untruth.

Each character in Ostrovsky's plays is organically connected with his environment, his era, the history of his people. At the same time, an ordinary person, in whose concepts, habits and speech itself, his kinship with the social and national peace, is the focus of interest in Ostrovsky's plays.

The individual fate of a person, the happiness and unhappiness of an individual, ordinary person, his needs, his struggle for his personal well-being excite the viewer of dramas and comedies of this playwright. The position of a person serves in them as a measure of the state of society.

Just as in Shakespeare's drama the tragic hero, whether he is beautiful or terrible in terms of ethical assessment, belongs to the sphere of beauty, in Ostrovsky's plays the characteristic hero, to the extent of his typicality, is the embodiment of aesthetics, and in a number of cases of spiritual wealth, historical life and culture of the people.

This feature of Ostrovsky's dramaturgy predetermined his attention to the play of each actor, to the performer's ability to present a type on stage, to vividly and captivatingly recreate an individual, original social character.

Ostrovsky especially valued this ability in best artists of their time, encouraging and helping to develop it. Addressing A. E. Martynov, he said: “... from several features sketched by an inexperienced hand, you created the final types, full of artistic truth. That's why you are dear to the authors.

Ostrovsky ended his discussion about the nationality of the theatre, about the fact that dramas and comedies are written for the entire people: "...dramatic writers must always remember this, they must be clear and strong."

The clarity and strength of the author's creativity, in addition to the types created in his plays, finds expression in the conflicts of his works, built on simple life incidents, reflecting, however, the main collisions of modern social life.

This story is true piece of art". The natural dramatic course of events, original characters, depiction of the life of ordinary people - listing these signs of true artistry in Pisemsky's story, the young Ostrovsky undoubtedly proceeded from his reflections on the tasks of drama as an art.

Characteristically, Ostrovsky attaches great importance to the instructiveness of a literary work. The instructiveness of art gives him a reason to compare and bring art closer to life.

Ostrovsky believed that the theater, gathering within its walls a large and diverse audience, uniting it with a sense of aesthetic pleasure, should educate society, help simple, unprepared spectators “to understand life for the first time”, and give educated ones “a whole perspective of thoughts that you can’t get rid of” (ibid.).

At the same time, abstract didactics was alien to Ostrovsky. “Anyone can have good thoughts, but only a select few can own minds and hearts,” he reminded, ironically at writers who replace serious artistic problems with edifying tirades and a naked trend. Knowledge of life, its truthful realistic depiction, reflection on the most pressing and complex issues for society - this is what the theater should present to the public, this is what makes the stage a school of life.

The artist teaches the viewer to think and feel, but does not give him ready-made solutions. Didactic dramaturgy, which does not reveal the wisdom and instructiveness of life, but replaces it with declaratively expressed common truths, is dishonest, since it is not artistic, while it is precisely for the sake of aesthetic impressions that people come to the theater.

These ideas of Ostrovsky found a peculiar refraction in her attitude to historical dramaturgy. The playwright argued that "historical dramas and chronicles<...>develop people's self-knowledge and educate a conscious love for the fatherland.

At the same time, he emphasized that not the distortion of the past for the sake of one or another tendentious idea, not calculated on the external stage effect of melodrama on historical plots and not the transcription of scientific monographs into a dialogical form, but a truly artistic recreation of the living reality of bygone centuries on the stage can be the basis patriotic performance.

Such a performance helps society to know itself, encourages reflection, giving a conscious character to the immediate feeling of love for the motherland. Ostrovsky understood that the plays that he creates every year form the basis of the modern theatrical repertoire.

Defining the types of dramatic works, without which an exemplary repertoire cannot exist, he, in addition to dramas and comedies depicting modern Russian life, and historical chronicles, named extravaganzas, fairy-tale plays for festive performances, accompanied by music and dances, designed as a colorful folk spectacle.

The playwright created a masterpiece of this kind - the spring fairy tale "The Snow Maiden", in which poetic fantasy and picturesque setting are combined with deep lyrical and philosophical content.

History of Russian literature: in 4 volumes / Edited by N.I. Prutskov and others - L., 1980-1983

What is the merit of A.N. Ostrovsky? Why, according to I.A. Goncharov, only after Ostrovsky could we say that we have our own Russian national theater? (Return to the epigraph of the lesson)

Yes, there were "Undergrowth", "Woe from Wit", "Inspector General", there were plays by Turgenev, A.K. Tolstoy, Sukhovo-Kobylin, but they were not enough! Most of the theater repertoire consisted of empty vaudeville and translated melodramas. With the advent of Alexander Nikolayevich Ostrovsky, who devoted all his talent exclusively to dramaturgy, the repertoire of theaters changed qualitatively. He alone wrote as many plays as all the Russian classics put together did not write: about fifty! Each season for more than thirty years, theaters have received new play, or even two! Now there was something to play!

There was a new school of acting, a new theatrical aesthetics, the "Ostrovsky Theater" appeared, which became the property of all Russian culture!

What caused Ostrovsky's attention to the theater? The playwright himself answered this question as follows: “Dramatic poetry is closer to the people than all other branches of literature. All other works are written for educated people, and dramas and comedies are written for the whole people ... ". Writing for the people, awakening their consciousness, shaping their taste is a responsible task. And Ostrovsky took it seriously. If there is no exemplary theater, ordinary public may mistake operettas and melodramas that irritate curiosity and sensibility for real art.

So, we note the main merits of A.N. Ostrovsky to the Russian theater.

1) Ostrovsky created the theater repertoire. He wrote 47 original plays and 7 plays in collaboration with young authors. Twenty plays have been translated by Ostrovsky from Italian, English and French.

2) No less important is the genre diversity of his dramaturgy: these are “scenes and pictures” from Moscow life, dramatic chronicles, dramas, comedies, the spring fairy tale “The Snow Maiden”.

3) In his plays, the playwright portrayed various classes, characters, professions, he created 547 actors, from the king to the tavern servant, with their inherent characters, habits, and unique speech.

4) Ostrovsky's plays cover a huge historical period: from the 17th to the 10th century.

5) The action of the plays also takes place in the estates of the landlords, in inns and on the banks of the Volga. On the boulevards and on the streets of county towns.

6) The heroes of Ostrovsky - and this is the main thing - are living characters with their own characteristics, manners, with their own destiny, with a living language inherent only to this hero.

A century and a half has passed since the first performance was staged (January 1853; Don’t Get in Your Sleigh), and the name of the playwright does not leave the posters of theaters, performances are staged on many stages of the world.

Particularly acute interest in Ostrovsky in troubled times when a person is looking for answers to the most important questions of life: what is happening to us? Why? what are we? Maybe it is at such a time that a person lacks emotions, passions, a sense of the fullness of life. And we still need what Ostrovsky wrote about: "And a deep sigh for the whole theater, and unfeigned warm tears, hot speeches that would flow straight into the soul."

Composition

Alexander Nikolaevich Ostrovsky... This is an unusual phenomenon. His role in the history of the development of Russian dramaturgy, performing arts and the entire national culture can hardly be overestimated. For the development of Russian drama he did as much as Shakespeare in England, Lone de Vega in Spain, Molière in France, Goldoni in Italy and Schiller in Germany. Despite the harassment inflicted by the censorship, the theatrical and literary committee and the directorate of the imperial theaters, despite the criticism of reactionary circles, Ostrovsky's dramaturgy gained more and more sympathy every year both among democratic spectators and among artists.

Developing the best traditions of Russian dramatic art, using the experience of progressive foreign dramaturgy, tirelessly learning about life home country, constantly communicating with the people, closely contacting the most progressive contemporary public, Ostrovsky became an outstanding depiction of the life of his time, who embodied the dreams of Gogol, Belinsky and other progressive literary figures about the appearance and triumph of Russian characters on the national stage.
The creative activity of Ostrovsky had a great influence on the entire further development of progressive Russian drama. It was from him that our best playwrights studied, he taught. It was to him that aspiring dramatic writers were drawn in their time.

The strength of Ostrovsky's influence on the writers of his day can be evidenced by a letter to the playwright poetess A. D. Mysovskaya. “Do you know how great was your influence on me? It was not love for art that made me understand and appreciate you: on the contrary, you taught me to love and respect art. I am indebted to you alone for the fact that I withstood the temptation to fall into the arena of miserable literary mediocrity, did not chase after cheap laurels thrown by the hands of sweet and sour half-educated. You and Nekrasov made me fall in love with thought and work, but Nekrasov gave me only the first impetus, you are the direction. Reading your works, I realized that rhyming is not poetry, and a set of phrases is not literature, and that only by processing the mind and technique, the artist will be a real artist.
Ostrovsky had a powerful impact not only on the development of domestic drama, but also on the development of the Russian theater. The colossal importance of Ostrovsky in the development of the Russian theater is well emphasized in a poem dedicated to Ostrovsky and read in 1903 by M. N. Yermolova from the stage of the Maly Theater:

On the stage, life itself, from the stage blows the truth,
And the bright sun caresses and warms us ...
The live speech of ordinary, living people sounds,
On stage, not a “hero”, not an angel, not a villain,
But just a man ... Happy actor
In a hurry to quickly break the heavy fetters
Conditions and lies. Words and feelings are new

But in the secrets of the soul, the answer sounds to them, -
And all the mouths whisper: blessed is the poet,
Tore off the shabby, tinsel covers
And shed a bright light into the kingdom of darkness

The famous actress wrote about the same in 1924 in her memoirs: “Together with Ostrovsky, truth itself and life itself appeared on the stage ... The growth of original drama began, full of responses to modernity ... They started talking about the poor, the humiliated and insulted.”

The realistic direction, muffled by the theatrical policy of the autocracy, continued and deepened by Ostrovsky, turned the theater onto the path of close connection with reality. Only it gave life to the theater as a national, Russian, folk theater.

“You brought a whole library of works of art as a gift to literature, you created your own special world for the stage. You alone completed the building, at the foundation of which the cornerstones of Fonvizin, Griboyedov, Gogol were laid. This wonderful letter was received among other congratulations in the year of the thirty-fifth anniversary of literary and theatrical activity, Alexander Nikolaevich Ostrovsky from another great Russian writer - Goncharov.

But much earlier, about the very first work of the still young Ostrovsky, published in Moskvityanin, a subtle connoisseur of elegance and a sensitive observer V. F. Odoevsky wrote: this man is a great talent. I consider three tragedies in Rus': “Undergrowth”, “Woe from Wit”, “Inspector”. I put number four on Bankrupt.

From such a promising first assessment to Goncharov's anniversary letter, a full, busy life; labor, and led to such a logical relationship of assessments, because talent requires, first of all, great labor on itself, and the playwright did not sin before God - he did not bury his talent in the ground. Having published the first work in 1847, Ostrovsky has since written 47 plays and translated more than twenty plays from European languages. And all in all, in the folk theater he created, there are about a thousand actors.
Shortly before his death, in 1886, Alexander Nikolayevich received a letter from L. N. Tolstoy, in which the brilliant prose writer admitted: “I know from experience how people read, listen and remember your things, and therefore I would like to help you have now quickly become in reality what you undoubtedly are - a writer of the whole people in the broadest sense.

Alexander Nikolayevich Ostrovsky (1823--1886) rightfully occupies a worthy place among the largest representatives of world drama.

The significance of the activities of Ostrovsky, who for more than forty years annually published in the best magazines in Russia and staged plays on the stages of the imperial theaters of St. Petersburg and Moscow, many of which were an event in the literary and theatrical life of the era, is briefly but accurately described in the famous letter of I. Goncharov, addressed to the playwright himself. “You brought a whole library of works of art as a gift to literature, you created your own special world for the stage. You alone completed the building, at the foundation of which you laid the cornerstones of Fonvizin, Griboyedov, Gogol. But only after you we are Russians, we can proudly say: "We have our own Russian, national theater." It, in fairness, should be called the "Ostrovsky Theater".

The conviction that the work of a playwright, creating a theater repertoire, is a high public service permeated and directed Ostrovsky's activity. He was organically connected with the life of literature. In his younger years, the playwright wrote critical articles and participated in the editorial affairs of Moskvityanin, trying to change the direction of this conservative journal, then, while publishing in Sovremennik and Otechestvennye Zapiski, he became friends with N. A. Nekrasov, L. N. Tolstoy , I. S. Turgenev, I. A. Goncharov and other writers. He followed their work, discussed their works with them and listened to their opinion about his plays.

Dramaturgy, the literary basis of the performance, Ostrovsky considered its defining element. The theatre's repertoire, which gives the viewer the opportunity to "see Russian life and Russian history on stage", according to his concepts, was addressed primarily to the democratic public, "for which people want to write, and are obliged to write folk writers." Ostrovsky defended the principles of the author's theater. He considered the theaters of Shakespeare, Moliere, and Goethe to be exemplary experiments of this kind. The combination in one person of the author of dramatic works and their interpreter on stage - the teacher of actors, the director - seemed to Ostrovsky a guarantee of artistic integrity, the organic activity of the theater. This idea, in the absence of directing, with the traditional orientation of the theatrical spectacle to the performance of individual, "solo" actors, was innovative and fruitful. Its significance has not been exhausted even today, when the director has become the main figure in the theater. It is enough to recall B. Brecht's theater "Berliner Ensemble" to be convinced of this.

Overcoming the inertia of the bureaucratic administration, literary and theatrical intrigues, Ostrovsky worked with actors, constantly directing productions of his new plays at the Maly Moscow and Alexandria Petersburg theaters. The essence of her idea was to implement and consolidate the influence of literature on the theater. Fundamentally and categorically, he condemned the more and more felt from the 70s. subordination of dramatic writers to the tastes of the actors - favorites of the stage, their prejudices and whims. At the same time, Ostrovsky did not conceive of dramaturgy without the theatre. His plays were written with the direct expectation of real performers, artists. He emphasized that in order to write a good play, the author must have full knowledge of the laws of the stage, the purely plastic side of the theatre.

Far from every playwright, he was ready to hand over power over stage artists. He was sure that only a writer who created his own uniquely original dramaturgy, his own special world on the stage, has something to say to the artists, has something to teach them. Ostrovsky's attitude to modern theater was determined by his artistic system. The hero of Ostrovsky's dramaturgy was the people. The whole society and, moreover, the socio-historical life of the people appeared in his plays. Not without reason, critics N. Dobrolyubov and A. Grigoriev, who approached Ostrovsky’s work from mutually opposite positions, saw in his works a complete picture of the life of the people, although they assessed the life depicted by the writer differently. This orientation of the writer to the mass phenomena of life corresponded to the principle of ensemble play, which he defended, the consciousness inherent in the playwright of the importance of unity, the integrity of the creative aspirations of the team of actors participating in the performance.

In his plays, Ostrovsky depicted social phenomena that had deep roots - conflicts, the origins and causes of which often date back to distant historical eras. He saw and showed the fruitful aspirations arising in society, and the new evil rising in it. The carriers of new aspirations and ideas in his plays are forced to wage a hard struggle with the old, traditionally consecrated customs and views, and the new evil collides in them with the centuries-old ethical ideal of the people, with strong traditions of resistance to social injustice and moral untruth.

Each character in Ostrovsky's plays is organically connected with his environment, his era, the history of his people. At the same time, the ordinary person, in whose concepts, habits and very speech his kinship with the social and national world is imprinted, is the focus of interest in Ostrovsky's plays. The individual fate of a person, the happiness and unhappiness of an individual, ordinary person, his needs, his struggle for his personal well-being excite the viewer of dramas and comedies of this playwright. The position of a person serves in them as a measure of the state of society.

Moreover, the typical personality, the energy with which the life of the people "affects" in the individual characteristics of a person, in Ostrovsky's dramaturgy has an important ethical and aesthetic significance. The characterization is wonderful. Just as in Shakespeare's drama the tragic hero, whether he is beautiful or terrible in terms of ethical assessment, belongs to the sphere of beauty, in Ostrovsky's plays the characteristic hero, to the extent of his typical character, is the embodiment of aesthetics, and in a number of cases, of spiritual wealth, historical life and culture. people. This feature of Ostrovsky's dramaturgy predetermined his attention to the play of each actor, to the performer's ability to present a type on stage, to vividly and captivatingly recreate an individual, original social character. Ostrovsky especially appreciated this ability in the best artists of his time, encouraging and helping to develop it. Addressing A. E. Martynov, he said: “... from several features sketched by an inexperienced hand, you created the final types, full of artistic truth. This is why you are dear to the authors” (12, 8).

Ostrovsky ended his discussion about the nationality of the theater, that dramas and comedies are written for the whole people, with the words: "... dramatic writers must always remember this, they must be clear and strong" (12, 123).

The clarity and strength of the author's creativity, in addition to the types created in his plays, finds its expression in the conflicts of his works, built on simple life incidents, reflecting, however, the main collisions of modern social life.

In his early article, positively evaluating the story of A.F. Pisemsky “The Mattress”, Ostrovsky wrote: “The intrigue of the story is simple and instructive, like life. Because of the original characters, because of the natural and highly dramatic course of events, a noble thought, acquired by worldly experience, shines through. This story is truly a work of art” (13, 151). The natural dramatic course of events, original characters, the depiction of the life of ordinary people - listing these signs of true artistry in Pisemsky's story, the young Ostrovsky undoubtedly proceeded from his reflections on the tasks of drama as an art. Characteristically, Ostrovsky attaches great importance to the instructiveness of a literary work. The instructiveness of art gives him a reason to compare and bring art closer to life. Ostrovsky believed that the theater, gathering within its walls a large and diverse audience, uniting it with a sense of aesthetic pleasure, should educate society (see 12, 322), help simple, unprepared spectators "to understand life for the first time" (12, 158), and educated to give "a whole perspective of thoughts that you can't get rid of" (ibid.).

At the same time, abstract didactics was alien to Ostrovsky. “Anyone can have good thoughts, but only the elect are given to own minds and hearts” (12, 158), he recalled, ironically at writers who replace serious artistic problems with edifying tirades and naked tendency. Knowledge of life, its truthful realistic depiction, reflection on the most pressing and complex issues for society - this is what the theater should present to the public, this is what makes the stage a school of life. The artist teaches the viewer to think and feel, but does not give him ready-made solutions. Didactic dramaturgy, which does not reveal the wisdom and instructiveness of life, but replaces it with declaratively expressed common truths, is dishonest, since it is not artistic, while it is precisely for the sake of aesthetic impressions that people come to the theater.

These ideas of Ostrovsky found a peculiar refraction in his attitude to historical dramaturgy. The playwright argued that "historical dramas and chronicles" ... "develop people's self-knowledge and bring up a conscious love for the fatherland" (12, 122). At the same time, he emphasized that not the distortion of the past for the sake of one or another tendentious idea, not calculated on the external stage effect of melodrama on historical plots and not the transcription of scientific monographs into a dialogical form, but a truly artistic recreation of the living reality of bygone centuries on the stage can be the basis patriotic performance. Such a performance helps society to know itself, encourages reflection, giving a conscious character to the immediate feeling of love for the motherland. Ostrovsky understood that the plays that he creates every year form the basis of the modern theatrical repertoire. Defining the types of dramatic works, without which an exemplary repertoire cannot exist, he, in addition to dramas and comedies depicting modern Russian life, and historical chronicles, named extravaganzas, fairy-tale plays for festive performances, accompanied by music and dances, designed as a colorful folk spectacle. The playwright created a masterpiece of this kind - the spring fairy tale "The Snow Maiden", in which poetic fantasy and picturesque setting are combined with deep lyrical and philosophical content.

Ostrovsky entered Russian literature as the heir of Pushkin and Gogol - a national playwright, intensely reflecting on the social functions of theater and drama, transforming everyday, familiar reality into an action full of comedy and drama, a connoisseur of language, sensitively listening to the living speech of the people and making it a powerful tool artistic expression.

Ostrovsky's comedy "Our people - let's settle!" (originally titled "Bankrupt") was regarded as a continuation of the line of national satirical dramaturgy, the next "number" after "Inspector", and although Ostrovsky had no intention of prefixing it with a theoretical declaration or explaining its meaning in special articles, circumstances forced him to determine his attitude to the work of a dramatic writer.

Gogol wrote in Theatrical Journey: “It is strange: I am sorry that no one noticed the honest face that was in my play“ ... ”This honest, noble face was laughter"..." I am a comedian, I served him honestly and therefore I should become his intercessor.

“According to my notions of elegance, considering comedy to be the best form for achieving moral goals and recognizing in myself the ability to reproduce life mainly in this form, I had to write a comedy or write nothing,” says Ostrovsky in the request from him about his play explanation to the trustee of the Moscow educational district V.I. Nazimov (14, 16). He is firmly convinced that talent imposes duties on him to art and the people. Ostrovsky's proud words about the meaning of comedy sound like a development of Gogol's thought.

In accordance with the recommendations of Belinsky to writers of the 40s. Ostrovsky finds a little-studied sphere of life, not previously depicted in literature, and devotes his pen to it. He himself proclaims himself a "discoverer" and researcher of Zamoskvorechye. The writer's declaration about life, with which he intends to acquaint the reader, resembles the humorous "Introduction" to one of Nekrasov's almanacs "The First of April" (1846), written by D. V. Grigorovich and F. I. Dostoevsky. Ostrovsky reports that the manuscript, which “sheds light on a country that has not been known to anyone in detail until now and has not been described by any of the travelers”, was discovered by him on April 1, 1847 (13, 14). The very tone of the appeal to the readers, preceded by the "Notes of the Zamoskvoretsky Resident" (1847), testifies to the author's orientation towards the style of humorous everyday life of Gogol's followers.

Reporting that the subject of his depiction will be a certain “part” of everyday life, delimited from the rest of the world territorially (by the Moscow River) and fenced off by the conservative isolation of his way of life, the writer thinks about what place this isolated sphere occupies in the integral life of Russia.

Ostrovsky correlates the customs of Zamoskvorechye with the customs of the rest of Moscow, contrasting, but even more often bringing them closer. Thus, the pictures of Zamoskvorechye, given in Ostrovsky's essays, stood in line with the generalized characteristics of Moscow, opposed to St. Petersburg as a city of traditions to a city embodying historical progress, in Gogol's articles "Petersburg Notes of 1836" and Belinsky "Petersburg and Moscow".

The main problem that the young writer puts as the basis of his knowledge of the world of Zamoskvorechye is the correlation in this closed world of tradition, the stability of being and the active principle, the trend of development. Depicting Zamoskvorechye as the most conservative, immovable part of the observing tradition of Moscow, Ostrovsky saw that the way of life that he paints, in its outward lack of conflict, may seem idyllic. And he resisted such a perception of the picture of life in Zamoskvorechye. He characterizes the routine of existence beyond Moscow: "... the power of inertia, numbness, so to speak, hindering a person"; and explains his thought: “It was not without reason that I called this force Zamoskvoretskaya: there, beyond the Moscow River, is her kingdom, there is her throne. She drives a person into a stone house and locks the iron gate behind him, she dresses a person with a cotton robe, she puts a cross on the gate from the evil spirit, and from evil people let the dogs in the yard. She arranges bottles at the windows, buys annual proportions of fish, honey, cabbage, and salts corned beef for future use. She makes a man fat and with a caring hand drives away every disturbing thought from his forehead, just as a mother drives away flies from a sleeping child. She is a deceiver, she always pretends to be “family happiness”, and an inexperienced person will not soon recognize her and, perhaps, envy her” (13, 43).

This remarkable characterization of the very essence of life in Zamoskvorechye is striking in its juxtaposition of such seemingly mutually contradictory images-assessments as a comparison of “Zamoskvoretskaya strength” with a caring mother and a hobbled noose, numbness - a synonym for death; the combination of such far-flung phenomena as the procurement of products and the way of thinking of a person; the convergence of such different concepts as family happiness in a prosperous home and vegetating in prison, strong and violent. Ostrovsky leaves no room for confusion, he directly declares that well-being, happiness, carelessness are a deceitful form of enslaving a person, killing her. The patriarchal way of life is subordinated to the real tasks of providing a closed, self-sufficing cell-family with material well-being and comfort. However, the very system of the patriarchal way of life is inseparable from certain moral concepts, a certain worldview: deep traditionalism, submission to authority, a hierarchical approach to all phenomena, mutual alienation of houses, families, estates and individuals.

The ideal of life in such a way is peace, the immutability of the ritual of everyday life, the finality of all ideas. Thought, to which Ostrovsky, not by chance, constantly assigns the definition of "restless", is expelled from this world, outlawed. Thus, the consciousness of the Zamoskvoretsky townsfolk turns out to be firmly merged with the most concrete, material forms of their life. The fate of the restless, searching for new paths in life thought is shared by science - a concrete expression of progress in consciousness, a refuge for an inquisitive mind. She is suspicious and, at best, tolerant as a servant of the most elementary practical calculation, science is “like a serf who pays his master dues” (13, 50).

Thus, Zamoskvorechye from a private sphere of life studied by the essayist, a “corner”, a remote provincial district of Moscow, turns into a symbol of patriarchal life, an inert and integral system of relations, social forms and concepts corresponding to them. Ostrovsky shows a keen interest in mass psychology and the worldview of the entire social environment, in opinions that are not only long-established and based on the authority of tradition, but also “closed”, creating a network of ideological means of protecting their integrity, turning into a kind of religion. At the same time, he is aware of the historical concreteness of the formation and existence of this ideological system. Comparison of Zamoskvoretsky practicality with feudal exploitation does not arise by chance. It explains the Zamoskvoretsky attitude to science and the mind.

In his earliest, still student imitative story, The Tale of How the Quarterly Overseer Started to Dance... (1843), Ostrovsky found a humorous formula expressing an important generalization of the generic features of the “out of Moscow” approach to knowledge. The writer himself, obviously, recognized it as successful, since he transferred, albeit in an abridged form, the dialogue containing it to new story"Ivan Erofeich", published under the title "Notes of a Zamoskvoretsky Resident". “The watchman was “…” such an eccentric that you don’t ask him, he doesn’t know anything. He had such a saying: "But how to know him, what you don't know." Right, like a philosopher” (13, 25). Such is the proverb in which Ostrovsky saw a symbolic expression of the “philosophy” of Zamoskvorechye, who believes that knowledge is primordially and hierarchically, that everyone is “released” a small, strictly defined share of it; that the greatest wisdom is the lot of spiritual or "God-inspired" persons - holy fools, seers; the next step in the hierarchy of knowledge belongs to the rich and older in the family; the poor and subordinates, by their very position in society and the family, cannot claim “knowledge (the watchman “stands on one thing, that he knows nothing and cannot know” - 13, 25).

Thus, studying Russian life in its concrete, particular manifestation (life of Zamoskvorechye), Ostrovsky thought hard about the general idea of this life. Already at the first stage literary activity, when his creative personality was just taking shape, and he was intensely looking for his writing path, Ostrovsky came to the conclusion that the complex interaction of the patriarchal traditional way of life and the stable views formed in its bosom with the new needs of society and moods that reflect the interests of historical progress constitutes the source of endless variety of modern social and moral collisions and conflicts. These conflicts oblige the writer to express his attitude towards them and thereby intervene in the struggle, in the development dramatic events, which make up the inner being of an outwardly calm, sedentary flow of life. Such a view of the tasks of the writer contributed to the fact that Ostrovsky, starting with work in the narrative kind, relatively quickly realized his vocation as a playwright. The dramatic form corresponded to his idea of the peculiarities of the historical existence of Russian society and was "consonant" with his desire for enlightenment art of a special type, "historical and educational" as it could be called.

Ostrovsky's interest in the aesthetics of drama and his peculiar and deep look at the dramatic nature of Russian life bore fruit in his first major comedy "Our people - we will settle!", Determined the problematics and stylistic structure of this work. Comedy "Own people - let's settle!" was perceived as a great event in art, a completely new phenomenon. Contemporaries who stood on very different positions converged on this: Prince V. F. Odoevsky and N. P. Ogarev, Countess E. P. Rostopchina and I. S. Turgenev, L. N. Tolstoy and A. F. Pisemsky, A A. Grigoriev and N. A. Dobrolyubov. Some of them saw the significance of Ostrovsky's comedy in denouncing one of the most inert and depraved classes of Russian society, others (later) in the discovery of an important social, political and psychological phenomenon public life- tyranny, others - in a special, purely Russian tone of the heroes, in the originality of their characters, in the national typicality of the depicted. There were lively disputes between listeners and readers of the play (it was forbidden to stage it), but the very feeling of the event, the sensation, was common to all its readers. Its inclusion in a number of great Russian social comedies ("Undergrowth", "Woe from Wit", "The Government Inspector") has become a commonplace of talk about the work. At the same time, however, everyone noticed that the comedy “Own people - let's settle!” fundamentally different from its famous predecessors. "Undergrowth" and "Inspector" raised national and general moral problems, depicting a "reduced" version social environment. With Fonvizin, these are middle-class provincial landowners who are taught by officers of the guard and a man of high culture, the rich Starodum. Gogol has officials of a remote, deaf town, trembling before the ghost of the St. Petersburg auditor. And although for Gogol the provincial nature of the heroes of The Inspector General is a “dress” in which meanness and meanness, which is everywhere, “dressed up”, the public sharply perceived the social concreteness of the depicted. In Griboedov's Woe from Wit, the "provinciality" of the Famusovs' society and others like them, the Moscow mores of the nobility, in many respects different from those in St. ideological and plot aspect of comedy.

In all three famous comedies, people of a different cultural and social level invade the normal course of life of the environment, destroy the intrigues that arose before their appearance and created by local residents, carry with them their own, special conflict, forcing the entire depicted environment to feel its unity, to show its properties and engage in a fight with a foreign, hostile element. In Fonvizin, the “local” environment is defeated by a more educated and conditionally (in the author’s deliberately ideal image) close to the throne. The same “assumption” exists in the “Inspector General” (cf. in “Theatrical Journey” the words of a man from the people: “I suppose the governors were quick, but everyone turned pale when the royal reprisal came!”). But in Gogol's comedy, the struggle is more "dramatic" and variable, although its "illusion" and the ambiguous meaning of the main situation (due to the imaginary nature of the auditor) lend comicality to all its vicissitudes. In Woe from Wit, the environment wins over the "outsider". At the same time, in all three comedies, a new intrigue introduced from outside destroys the original one. In The Undergrowth, the exposure of Prostakova's illegal actions and the taking of her estate under guardianship cancels Mitrofan and Skotinin's encroachments on marriage with Sophia. In Woe from Wit, Chatsky's intrusion destroys Sofia's romance with Molchalin. In The Inspector General, officials who are not accustomed to letting go of "what floats into their hands" are forced to abandon all their habits and undertakings due to the appearance of the "Auditor".

The action of Ostrovsky's comedy unfolds in a homogeneous environment, the unity of which is emphasized by the title "Our people - let's settle!".

In the three great comedies, the social environment was judged by a "newcomer" from a higher intellectual and partly social relations circle, however, in all these cases, national problems were raised and resolved within the nobility or bureaucracy. Ostrovsky makes the merchant class the focus of solving national problems - a class that had not been portrayed in literature before him in such a capacity. The merchant class was organically connected with the lower classes - the peasantry, often with the serf peasantry, raznochintsy; it was part of the "third estate", the unity of which had not yet been destroyed in the 40-50s.

Ostrovsky was the first to see in the peculiar life of the merchants, different from the life of the nobility, an expression of the historically established features of the development of Russian society as a whole. This was one of the innovations of the comedy "Own people - let's settle!". The questions that it raised were very serious and concerned the whole society. “There is nothing to blame on the mirror, if the face is crooked!” - Gogol addressed the Russian society with rude frankness in the epigraph to The Inspector General. "Own people - let's settle!" - Ostrovsky slyly promised the audience. His play was designed for a wider, more democratic audience than the dramaturgy that preceded it, for a viewer for whom the tragicomedy of the Bolshov family is close, but who is able at the same time to understand its general significance.

Family relations and property relations appear in Ostrovsky's comedy in close connection with a whole range of important social issues. The merchant class, a conservative estate that preserves ancient traditions and customs, is depicted in Ostrovsky's play in all the originality of its way of life. At the same time, the writer sees the significance of this conservative class for the future of the country; the depiction of the life of the merchants gives him reason to raise the problem of the fate of patriarchal relations in modern world. Outlining an analysis of Dickens' novel Dombey and Son, a work whose main character embodies the morals and ideals of the bourgeoisie, Ostrovsky wrote: “The honor of the company is above all, let everything be sacrificed to it, the honor of the company is the beginning from which all activity flows. Dickens, in order to show the whole untruth of this beginning, puts it in contact with another beginning - with love in its various manifestations. Here it would be necessary to end the novel, but this is not how Dickens does it; he forces Walter to come from across the sea, Florence to hide with Captain Kutl and marry Walter, makes Dombey repent and fit into Florence's family ”(13, 137-138). The conviction that Dickens should have ended the novel without resolving the moral conflict and without showing the triumph of human feelings over "merchant honor" - a passion that arose in bourgeois society, is characteristic of Ostrovsky, especially during his work on the first great comedy. Fully realizing the dangers of progress (which Dickens showed), Ostrovsky understood the inevitability, inevitability of progress and saw the positive principles contained in it.

In the comedy "Own people - let's settle!" he portrayed the head of a Russian merchant house, just as proud of his wealth, renounced simple human feelings and interested in the company's income, like his English counterpart Dombey. However, Bolshov not only is not obsessed with the fetish of the "honor of the company", but, on the contrary, is alien to this concept in general. He lives on other fetishes and sacrifices all human attachments to them. If Dombey's behavior is determined by the code of commercial honor, then Bolshov's behavior is dictated by the code of patriarchal family relations. And just as for Dombey serving the honor of the company is a cold passion, so for Bolshov a cold passion is the exercise of his power as a patriarch over the household.

The combination of confidence in the sanctity of their autocracy with the bourgeois consciousness of the obligation to increase profits, the paramount importance of this goal and the legitimacy of subordinating all other considerations to it, is the source of the daring plan of false bankruptcy, in which the features of the hero’s worldview are clearly manifested. Indeed, the complete absence of legal concepts that arise in the field of commerce as its importance grows in society, the blind faith in the inviolability of the family hierarchy, the substitution of commercial and business concepts for the fiction of kinship, family relations - all this inspires Bolshov with the idea of simplicity and ease of enrichment for account of trade partners, and confidence in the obedience of her daughter, in her consent to marriage with Podkhalyuzin, and confidence in this latter, as soon as he becomes a son-in-law.

Bolshov's intrigue is that "original" plot, to which in "The Undergrowth" there corresponds an attempt to seize Sophia's dowry on the part of Prostakovs and Skotinin, in "Woe from Wit" - Sophia's romance with Silent, and in "The Government Inspector" - abuses of officials, which are revealed (as if in inversion) in the course of the play. In The Bankrupt, the destroyer of the original intrigue, who creates the second and main collision within the play, is Podkhalyuzin, Bolshov's "own" person. His behavior, unexpected for the head of the house, testifies to the disintegration of patriarchal-family relations, to the illusory nature of any appeal to them in the world of capitalist entrepreneurship. Podkhalyuzin represents bourgeois progress to the same extent as the Bolshoi represents a patriarchal way of life. For him, there is only a formal honor - the honor of "justifying the document", a simplified semblance of the "honor of the company."

In the play by Ostrovsky in the early 70s. “Forest” already and the merchant of the older generation will stubbornly stand on positions of formal honor, perfectly combining claims to unlimited patriarchal power over households with the idea of the laws and rules of trade as the basis of behavior, i.e. about the “honor of the company”: “If I I justify the documents - that's my honor and "..." I'm not a man, I'm a rule, ”the merchant Vosmibratov says about himself (6, 53). Pushing the naively dishonest Bolshov against the formally honest Podkhalyuzin, Ostrovsky did not suggest an ethical decision to the viewer, but raised the question of the moral state of modern society. He showed the doom of the old forms of life and the danger of the new that spontaneously grows out of these old forms. The social collision expressed through a family conflict in his play was essentially historical in nature, and the didactic aspect of his work was complex and ambiguous.

The associative connection of the depicted events with Shakespeare's tragedy "King Lear" provided for in his comedy contributed to the identification of the author's moral position. This association arose among contemporaries. The attempts of some critics to see in the figure of Bolshov - the "merchant king Lear" - features of high tragedy and to assert that the writer sympathizes with him, met with strong resistance from Dobrolyubov, for whom Bolshov is a tyrant, and in his grief remains a tyrant, a dangerous and harmful personality. for society. Dobrolyubov's consistently negative attitude towards Bolshov, excluding any sympathy for this hero, was mainly due to the fact that the critic acutely felt the connection between domestic tyranny and political tyranny and the dependence of non-compliance with the law in private business on the lack of legality in society as a whole. "Merchant King Lear" interested him most of all as the embodiment of those social phenomena that give rise to and maintain the silence of society, the lack of rights of the people, stagnation in the economic and political development of the country.

The image of Bolshov in Ostrovsky's play is certainly interpreted in a comedic, accusatory way. However, the suffering of this hero, unable to fully understand the criminality and unreasonableness of his actions, is subjectively deeply dramatic. The betrayal of Podkhalyuzin and his daughter, the loss of capital bring Bolshov the greatest disappointment in the ideological order, a vague feeling of the collapse of age-old foundations and principles, and strike him like the end of the world.

The fall of serfdom and the development of bourgeois relations are foreseen in the denouement of the comedy. This historical aspect of the action "strengthens" the figure of Bolshov, while his suffering evokes a response in the soul of the writer and viewer, not because the hero, in his own way, moral qualities did not deserve retribution, but because the formally right-wing Podkhalyuzin tramples not only Bolshov’s narrow, distorted idea of family relations and the rights of parents, but also all feelings and principles, except for the principle of “justifying” a monetary document. Violating the principle of trust, he (a student of the same Bolshov, who believed that the principle of trust exists only in the family), precisely because of his antisocial attitude, becomes the master of the situation in modern society.

Ostrovsky's first comedy, long before the fall of serfdom, showed the inevitability of the development of bourgeois relations, the historical and social significance of the processes that took place among the merchants.

“The Poor Bride” (1852) differed sharply from the first comedy (“His People ...”) in its style, in types and situations, in dramatic construction. The Poor Bride was inferior to the first comedy in the harmony of the composition, the depth and historical significance of the problems posed, the sharpness and simplicity of the conflicts, but it was permeated with the ideas and passions of the era and made a strong impression on the people of the 50s. The suffering of a girl for whom marriage of convenience is the only possible "career", and the dramatic experiences of the "little man", whom society denies the right to love, the tyranny of the environment and the individual's striving for happiness, which does not find satisfaction for himself - these and many others the collisions that worried the audience were reflected in the play. If in the comedy "Own people - let's settle!" Ostrovsky in many ways anticipated the problems of narrative genres and opened the way for their development; in The Poor Bride, he rather followed the novelists and short story writers, experimenting in search of a dramatic structure that makes it possible to express the content that narrative literature was actively developing. In the comedy, there are noticeable responses to Lermontov's novel "A Hero of Our Time", attempts to reveal one's attitude to some of the questions raised in it. One of central characters bears a characteristic surname - Merich. Contemporary criticism of Ostrovsky noted that this hero imitates Pechorin and claims to be demonic. The playwright reveals the vulgarity of Merich, unworthy of standing next to not only Pechorin, but even Grushnitsky due to the poverty of his spiritual world.

The action of The Poor Bride unfolds in a mixed circle of poor officials, impoverished nobles and commoners, and Merich's "demonism", his tendency to have fun, "breaking the hearts" of girls who dreamed of love and marriage, receives a social definition: a rich young man, a "good groom" , deceiving a beautiful dowry, he exercises the master’s right, which has been established in society for centuries, “to joke free with pretty young women” (Nekrasov). A few years later, in the play The Pupil, which originally had the expressive title “Toy Cat, Tears to Mouse”, Ostrovsky showed this kind of intrigue-entertainment in its historically “original” form, as “lordly love” - a product of serf life (compare wisdom, expressed through the lips of a serf girl in "Woe from Wit": "Bypass us more than all sorrows and lordly anger and lordly love!"). At the end of the XIX century. in the novel "Resurrection" L. Tolstoy will again return to this situation as the outset of events, evaluating which he will raise the most important social, ethical and political questions.

Ostrovsky responded in a peculiar way to problems, the popularity of which was associated with the influence of George Sand on the minds of Russian readers in the 1940s and 1950s. The heroine of The Poor Bride is a simple girl who yearns for modest happiness, but her ideals are tinged with Georgesandism. She tends to think general questions, and I am sure that everything in a woman's life is resolved through the implementation of one main desire - to love and be loved. Many critics found that Ostrovsky's heroine "theorizes" too much. At the same time, the playwright "reduces" from the heights of idealization characteristic of the novels of George Sand and her followers, his woman, striving for happiness and personal freedom. She is presented as a Moscow young lady from the circle of middle-ranking officials, a young romantic dreamer, selfish in her thirst for love, helpless in judging people and not able to distinguish genuine feeling from vulgar red tape.

In The Poor Bride, the commonplace concepts of well-being and happiness collide with love in its various manifestations, but love itself appears not in its absolute and ideal expression, but in the form of time, the social environment, the concrete reality of human relations. The dowry Marya Andreevna, suffering from material need, which with fatal necessity pushes her to give up feelings, to reconcile with the fate of a domestic slave, experiences severe blows from people who love her. The mother actually sells her to win a lawsuit; devoted to the family, honoring her late father and loving Masha as if he were his own, the official Dobrotvorsky finds her a "good fiancé" - an influential official, rude, stupid, ignorant, who has amassed capital by abuse; Merić, who is playing with passion, cynically amuses himself with an "affair" with a young girl; Milashin, who is in love with her, is so passionate about the struggle for his rights in the girl’s heart, the rivalry with Merich, that he doesn’t think for a minute about how this struggle responds to the poor bride, what she should feel. The only person who sincerely and deeply loves Masha - descended in the middle class environment and crushed by her, but the kind, intelligent and educated Khorkov - does not attract the attention of the heroine, there is a wall of alienation between them, and Masha inflicts on him the same wound that is inflicted on her surrounding. Thus, from the interweaving of four intrigues, four dramatic lines (Masha and Merich, Masha and Khorkov, Masha and Milashin, Masha and the groom - Benevolensky), the complex structure of this play is formed, in many respects close to the structure of the novel, consisting of the interweaving of storylines. At the end of the play, in two brief appearances, a new dramatic line appears, represented by a new, episodic person - Dunya, a bourgeois girl who was Benevolensky's unmarried wife for several years and left him for the sake of marriage with an "educated" young lady. Dunya, who loves Benevolensky, is able to feel sorry for Masha, understand her and sternly say to the triumphant groom: “Only will you be able to live with such a wife? You look, do not ruin someone else's century in vain. It will be a sin for you “…” It’s not with me: they lived, lived, and that’s how it was” (1, 217).

This "little tragedy" of philistine life attracted the attention of readers, viewers and critics. It depicted a strong female folk character; the drama of women's fate was revealed in a completely new way, in a style that, with its simplicity and reality, opposed the romantically elevated, expansive style of George Sand. In the episode, the heroine of which is Dunya, the original understanding of tragedy inherent in Ostrovsky is especially noticeable.

However, apart from this "interlude" "The Poor Bride" began a completely new line in Russian drama. It was in this, in many respects still not quite mature play (the author's miscalculations were noted in the critical articles of Turgenev and other authors) that Ostrovsky later developed in a number of works - right up to his late masterpiece "Dowry" - the problems of modern love in her complex interactions with material interests that enslaved people, one can only marvel at the creative courage of the young playwright, his daring in art. Having not yet staged a single play on the stage, but having written a comedy before The Poor Bride, recognized as exemplary by the highest literary authorities, he completely departs from its problematics and style and creates an example of modern drama inferior to his first work in perfection, but new in type.

Late 40s-early 50s. Ostrovsky became close to a circle of young writers (T. I. Filippov, E. N. Edelson, B. N. Almazov, A. A. Grigoriev), whose views soon took a Slavophile direction. Ostrovsky and his friends collaborated in the Moskvityanin magazine, the conservative convictions of whose editor, MP Pogodin, they did not share. An attempt by the so-called "young editors" of The Moskvityanin to change the journal's direction failed; moreover, the material dependence of both Ostrovsky and other Moskvityanin employees on the editor increased and sometimes became unbearable. For Ostrovsky, the matter was also complicated by the fact that the influential Pogodin contributed to the publication of his first comedy and could to some extent strengthen the position of the author of the play, which was officially condemned.

The well-known turn of Ostrovsky in the early 50s. towards Slavophile ideas did not mean a rapprochement with Pogodin. Increased interest in folklore, in traditional forms folk life, the idealization of the patriarchal family - features that are palpable in the works of Ostrovsky's "Muscovite" period - have nothing in common with Pogodin's official-monarchist convictions.

Speaking about the shift that took place in Ostrovsky's worldview in the early 50s, they usually quote his letter to Pogodin dated September 30, 1853, in which the writer informed his correspondent that he did not want to bother about the first comedy anymore, because he did not want to " make "..." displeasure", admitted that the view of life expressed in this play now seems to him "young and too tough", for "it is better for a Russian person to rejoice at seeing himself on stage than to yearn", argued that the direction his “begins to change” and now he combines “high with comic” in his works. He himself considers “Do not get into your sleigh” as an example of a play written in a new spirit (see 14, 39). When interpreting this letter, researchers, as a rule, do not take into account that it was written after the ban on the production of Ostrovsky’s first comedy and the big troubles that accompanied this ban for the author (up to the appointment of police supervision), and contained two very important requests addressed to to the editor of "Moskvityanin": Ostrovsky asked Pogodin to petition through St. Petersburg to be given a place - service at the Moscow Theater, which was subordinate to the Ministry of the Court, and to petition for permission to stage his new comedy "Don't get into your sleigh" on the Moscow stage . Outlining these requests, Ostrovsky gave Pogodin, thus, assurances of his trustworthiness.

The works written by Ostrovsky between 1853 and 1855 are really different from the previous ones. But The Poor Bride was also very different from the first comedy. At the same time, the play Do Not Get into Your Sleigh (1853) continued in many respects what had been started in The Poor Bride. She painted the tragic consequences of the routine relations prevailing in a society divided into hostile social clans alien to each other. Trampling the personality of simple, gullible, honest people, desecrating the selfless, deep feeling of a pure soul - this is what the master's traditional contempt for the people turns into in the play. In the play “Poverty is not a vice” (1854), the image of tyranny arose again in all its brightness and specificity - a phenomenon that was discovered, although not yet named by name, in the comedy “Own People ...”, and the problem of the relationship between historical progress and the traditions of national life was posed . At the same time, the artistic means by which the writer expressed his attitude to these social issues have changed markedly. Ostrovsky developed more and more new forms of dramatic action, opening the way for enriching the style of a realistic performance.

Plays by Ostrovsky 1853-1854 even more frankly than his first works, they were focused on a democratic audience. Their content remained serious, the development of problems in the playwright's work was organic, but the theatricality, the folk festivity of such plays as "Poverty is not a vice" and "Do not live as you want" (1854), opposed the everyday modesty and reality of "Bankrupt" and "Poor Bride" Ostrovsky, as it were, "returned" the drama to the square, turning it into "folk entertainment." The dramatic action played out on the stage in his new plays approached the life of the spectator in a different way than in his first works, which painted harsh pictures of everyday life. The festive splendor of the theatrical performance, as it were, continued the folk Christmas or Shrovetide festivities with its age-old customs and traditions. And the playwright makes this riot of fun a means of posing great social and ethical questions.

In the play “Poverty is not a vice”, there is a noticeable tendency to idealize the old traditions of family and life. However, the portrayal of patriarchal relations in this comedy is complex and ambiguous. The old is interpreted in it both as a manifestation of the eternal, enduring forms of life in modern times, and as the embodiment of the power of inert inertia, “hindering” a person. The new is as an expression of the natural process of development, without which life is unthinkable, and as a comic "imitation of fashion", a superficial assimilation of the external aspects of the culture of a foreign social environment, foreign customs. All these heterogeneous manifestations of the stability and mobility of life coexist, fight and interact in the play. The dynamics of their relationships is the basis of the dramatic movement in it. Its background is an old ritual festive festivities, a kind of folklore act, which is played out at Christmas time by a whole people, conditionally discarding the “mandatory” relations in modern society in order to take part in the traditional game. A visit to a rich house by a crowd of mummers, in which it is impossible to distinguish the familiar from the stranger, the poor from the noble and those in power, is one of the “acts” of the old amateur comedy game, which is based on popular ideal utopian ideas. “In the carnival world, all hierarchy has been abolished. All classes and ages are equal here,” M. M. Bakhtin rightly asserts.

This property of folk carnival holidays is fully expressed in the image of the Christmas fun, which is given in the comedy "Poverty is not a vice." When the hero of a comedy, the rich merchant Gordey Tortsov, ignores the conventions of the “game” and treats the mummers the way he used to treat ordinary people on weekdays, this is not only a violation of traditions, but also an insult to the ethical ideal that gave rise to the very tradition. It turns out that Gordey, who declares himself a supporter of novelty and refuses to recognize the archaic rite, insults those forces that are constantly involved in the renewal of society. In insulting these forces, he relies equally on a historically new phenomenon - the growth of the importance of capital in society - and on the old house-building tradition of the unaccountable power of the elders, especially the "master" of the family - the father - over the rest of the household.

If in the system of family and social collision of the play Gordey Tortsov is denounced as a tyrant, for whom poverty is a vice and who considers it his right to push around a dependent person, wife, daughter, clerk, then in the concept of folk action he is a proud man who, having dispersed the mummers, he himself performs in the mask of his vice and becomes a participant in the folk Christmas comedy. Another hero of the comedy, Lyubim Tortsov, is also included in the dual semantic and stylistic series.

In terms of the social problems of the play, he is a ruined poor man who has broken with the merchant class, who in his fall acquires a new gift for him of independent critical thought. But in the series of masks of the festive Christmas evening, he, the antipode of his brother, the “disgraceful”, who in ordinary, “everyday” life was regarded as the “shame of the family”, appears as the master of the situation, his “stupidity” turns into wisdom, simplicity - insight, talkativeness - amusing jokes, and drunkenness itself turns from shameful weakness into a sign of a special, broad, irrepressible nature, which embodied the riot of life. The exclamation of this hero - "Wider road - Lyubim Tortsov is coming!" - enthusiastically picked up by the theatrical public, for which the production of the comedy was a triumph of national drama, expressed the social idea of the moral superiority of a poor, but internally independent person over a tyrant. At the same time, it did not contradict the traditional folklore stereotype of the behavior of the Christmas hero - a joker. It seemed that from the festive street this mischievous, generous traditional jokes character and that he will again retire to the streets of the festive city covered by fun.

In “Don't Live As You Want,” the image of Shrovetide fun becomes central. The atmosphere of the national holiday and the world of ritual games in "Poverty is no vice" contributed to the resolution of social collisions in spite of the everyday routine of relations; in "Don't Live the Way You Want" Shrovetide, the atmosphere of the holiday, its customs, the origins of which lie in ancient times, in pre-Christian cults, start a drama. The action in it is relegated to the past, to the 18th century, when the way that many of the playwright's contemporaries considered primordial, eternal for Rus' was still a novelty, not fully established order.

The struggle of this way of life with a more archaic, ancient, half-destroyed and turned into a festive carnival game system of concepts and relations, an internal contradiction in the system of religious and ethical ideas of the people, a “dispute” between the ascetic, harsh ideal of renunciation, submission to authority and dogma, and “practical” , a family economic principle that implies tolerance, form the basis of the play's dramatic conflicts.

If in “Poverty is not a vice” the traditions of the people’s carnival behavior of the heroes act as humane, expressing the ideals of equality and mutual support of people, then in “Do not live as you want”, the culture of the carnival carnival is drawn with a high degree of historical concreteness. In “Don’t Live As You Want,” the writer reveals both the life-affirming, joyful features of the ancient worldview expressed in it, and the features of archaic severity, cruelty, the predominance of simple and frank passions over a more subtle and complex spiritual culture, corresponding to the later ethical ideal.

Peter's "falling away" from patriarchal family virtue takes place under the influence of the triumph of pagan principles, inseparable from Shrovetide merriment. This predetermines the nature of the denouement, which seemed to many contemporaries implausible, fantastic and didactic.

In fact, just as the Maslenitsa Moscow, engulfed by the whirling of masks - “mug”, the flashing of decorated triplets, feasts and drunken revelry, “spun” Peter, “dragged” him from home, made him forget about family duty, so the end noisy holiday, the morning blagovest, according to the legendary tradition, resolving spells and destroying the power of evil spirits (it is not the religious function of the blagovest that is important here, but the “new term” marked by it), returns the hero to the “correct” everyday state.

Thus, the folk-fiction element accompanied the depiction of the historical variability of moral concepts in the play. Collisions of life of the XVIII century. "anticipated", on the one hand, modern social conflicts, the genealogy of which is, as it were, established in the play; on the other hand, beyond the distance of the historical past, another distance opened up - the most ancient social and family relations, pre-Christian ethical ideas.

The didactic tendency is combined in the play with the depiction of the historical movement of moral concepts, with the perception of the spiritual life of the people as an eternally living, creative phenomenon. This historicism of Ostrovsky's approach to the ethical nature of man and to the tasks arising from it of enlightening, actively influencing the viewer, the art of drama made him a supporter and defender of the young forces of society, a sensitive observer of newly emerging needs and aspirations. Ultimately, the historicism of the writer's worldview predetermined his divergence from his Slavophil-minded friends, who staked on the preservation and revival of the original foundations of folk customs, and facilitated his rapprochement with Sovremennik.

The first small comedy in which this turning point in Ostrovsky's work was reflected was "Hangover at a Strange Feast" (1856). The basis of the dramatic conflict in this comedy is the opposition of two social forces, corresponding to two trends in the development of society: enlightenment, represented by its real bearers - workers, poor intellectuals, and purely economic and social development, devoid, however, of cultural and spiritual, moral content, the carriers of which are the rich tyrants. The theme of the hostile confrontation between bourgeois morals and the ideals of enlightenment, outlined in the comedy "Poverty is not a Vice" as moralistic, in the play "A Hangover at a Strange Feast" acquired a socially accusatory, pathetic sound. It is this interpretation of this theme that then passes through many of Ostrovsky's plays, but nowhere does it determine the most dramatic structure to such an extent as in a small but "turning point" comedy "Hangover at a Strange Feast". Subsequently, this “confrontation” will be expressed in “Thunderstorm” in Kuligyn’s monologue about the cruel customs of the city of Kalinov, in his dispute with Wild about the public good, human dignity and a lightning rod, in the words of this hero concluding the drama, calling for mercy. The proud awareness of one’s place in this struggle will be reflected in the speeches of the Russian actor Neschastlivtsev, who smashes the inhumanity of the baro-merchant society (“Forest”, 1871), will be developed and substantiated in the arguments of the young, honest and sensible accountant Platon Zybkin (“Truth is good, but happiness is better”, 1876), in the monologue of the student-educator Meluzov (“Talents and Admirers”, 1882). In this last of these plays main theme will become one of the problems posed in the comedy "In a strange feast ..." (and before that - only in Ostrovsky's early essays) problems - the idea of the enslavement of culture by capital, of the claims of the dark kingdom for patronage, claims, behind which is the desire of the brute force of tyrants to dictate their demands to thinking and creative people, to achieve their complete submission to the power of the owners of society.

Noticed by Ostrovsky and become the subject of artistic comprehension in his work, the phenomena of reality were depicted by him both in the old, original, sometimes historically obsolete form, and in their modern, modified form. The writer drew inert forms of modern social life and sensitively noted the manifestations of novelty in the life of society. So, in the comedy “Poverty is not a vice”, a petty tyrant tries to discard his peasant habits inherited from the “young man”: modesty of life, directness of expression of feelings, similar to that which was characteristic of Bolshov in “Our people - let's settle!”; he expresses his opinion about education and imposes it on others. In the play “A Hangover at a Strange Feast”, having first defined his hero with the term “tyrant”, Ostrovsky confronts Tit Titych Bruskov (this image has become a symbol of tyranny) with enlightenment as an irresistible need of society, an expression of the future of the country. Enlightenment, which for Bruskov is embodied in specific persons - the poor eccentric teacher Ivanov and his educated daughter without a dowry - robs the rich merchant, as it seems to him, of his son. All the sympathies of Andrei - a lively, inquisitive, but downtrodden and confused by the wild family way of life - are on the side of these impractical people, far from everything he is used to.

Tit Titych Bruskov, spontaneously but firmly aware of the power of his capital and firmly believing in his indisputable power over his household, clerks, servants and, ultimately, over all the poor dependent on him, is surprised to find that Ivanov cannot be bought and even intimidated, that his intelligence is a social force. And he is forced for the first time to think about what courage and a sense of personal dignity can give to a person who does not have money, a rank, who lives by work.

The problem of the evolution of tyranny as a social phenomenon is posed in a number of Ostrovsky's plays, and tyrants in his plays in twenty years will become millionaires going to the Paris Industrial Exhibition, fine merchants listening to Patty and collecting original paintings (probably by Wanderers or Impressionists), - after all, this already "sons" of Tit Titych Bruskov, such as Andrey Bruskov. However, even the best of them remain bearers of the brute force of money, which subjugates and corrupts everything. They buy, like the strong-willed and charming Velikatov, the benefit performances of actresses along with the "hostesses" of the benefit performances, since the actress cannot, without the support of a wealthy "patron", resist the arbitrariness of petty predators and exploiters who have seized the provincial stage ("Talents and Admirers"); they, like the respectable industrialist Frol Fedulych Pribytkov, do not interfere in the intrigues of usurers and Moscow business gossips, but willingly reap the fruits of these intrigues, obligingly presented to them in gratitude for patronage, a monetary bribe or out of voluntary servility (“The Last Victim”, 1877). From play to play by Ostrovsky, the audience with the heroes of the playwright came close to Chekhov's Lopakhin, a merchant with the thin fingers of an artist and a delicate, unsatisfied soul, who, however, dreams of profitable dachas as the beginning of a "new life". Lopakhin self-foolishly, in the heat of joy over the purchase of a manor estate, where his grandfather was a serf, demands that the music play “distinctly”: “Let everything be as I wish!” he shouts, shocked by the realization of the strength of his capital.

The compositional structure of the play is based on the opposition of two camps: carriers of caste egoism, social exclusivity, posing as defenders of traditions and moral norms, developed and approved by the age-old experience of the people, on the one hand, and on the other hand, "experimenters", spontaneously, at the behest of the heart and the demand of the disinterested mind of those who have taken the risk of expressing social needs, which they feel as a kind of moral imperative. The heroes of Ostrovsky are not ideologists. Even the most intelligent of them, to which Zhadov belongs, the hero of "Profitable Place", solve the immediate life problems, only in the process of their practical activity "bumping" on the general patterns of reality, "bruising", suffering from their manifestations and coming to the first serious generalizations.

Zhadov fancies himself a theoretician and connects his new ethical principles with the movement of world philosophical thought, with the progress of moral concepts. He proudly says that he did not invent the new rules of morality himself, but heard about them at the lectures of leading professors, read them in "the best literary works of ours and foreign" (2, 97), but it is precisely this abstraction that makes his convictions naive and lifeless. Zhadov acquires real convictions only when, having gone through real trials, he turns to these ethical concepts at a new level of experience in search of answers to questions. tragic questions set before him by life. “What a man I am! I am a child, I have no idea about life. All this is new to me “…” It's hard for me! I don't know if I can take it! Debauchery all around, little strength! Why did they teach us! - Zhadov exclaims in despair, faced with the fact that “social vices are strong”, that the struggle against inertia and social egoism is not only difficult, but also harmful (2, 81).

Each environment creates its everyday forms, its ideals, corresponding to its social interests and historical function, and in this sense, people are not free in their actions. But the social and historical conditionality of the actions of not only individual people, but also of the whole environment does not make these actions or entire systems of behavior indifferent to moral assessment, "out of jurisdiction" of the moral court. Ostrovsky saw historical progress, first of all, in the fact that, abandoning the old forms of life, humanity becomes more moral. The young heroes of his works, even in those cases when they commit acts that, from the point of view of traditional morality, can be regarded as a crime or a sin, are essentially more moral, honest and purer than the guardians of “established concepts” who reproach them. This is the case not only in The Pupil (1859), The Thunderstorm, The Forest, but also in the so-called "Slavophile" plays, where inexperienced, inexperienced and mistaken young heroes and heroines often teach their fathers tolerance, mercy, force them for the first time to think about the relativity of their indisputable principles.

Ostrovsky's educational attitude, faith in the importance of the movement of ideas, in the influence of mental development on the state of society, was combined with the recognition of the importance of spontaneous feeling, expressing the objective tendencies of historical progress. Hence - the "childhood", immediacy, emotionality of the young "rebellious" heroes of Ostrovsky. Hence their other peculiarity - non-ideological, everyday approach to essentially ideological problems. This childish immediacy is lacking in Ostrovsky's plays by young predators who cynically adapt to untruth. modern relations. Next to Zhadov, for whom happiness is inseparable from moral purity, stands the careerist Belogubov - illiterate, greedy for material wealth; his desire to turn the public service into a means of gain and personal prosperity meets with sympathy and support from those who are at the highest levels of state administration, while Zhadov’s desire to work honestly and be content with modest remuneration without resorting to “tacit” sources of income is perceived as freethinking, overthrowing the foundations .

While working on “Profitable Place”, where for the first time the phenomenon of tyranny was put in direct connection with the political problems of our time, Ostrovsky conceived a cycle of plays “Nights on the Volga”, in which folk poetic images and historical themes were to become central.

Interest in the historical problems of the existence of the people, in identifying the roots of modern social phenomena, not only did not dry up in these years with Ostrovsky, but acquired explicit and conscious forms. Already in 1855 he began work on a drama about Minin, in 1860 he was working on Voyevoda.

The comedy "Voevoda", depicting Russian life in the 17th century, was a kind of addition to "Profitable Place" and other plays by Ostrovsky, exposing the bureaucracy. From the confidence of the heroes of "Profitable Place" Yusov, Vyshnevsky, Belogubov that the public service is a source of income and that the position of an official gives them the right to tax the population, from their conviction that their personal well-being means the well-being of the state, and an attempt to resist their dominance and arbitrariness - an encroachment on the holy of holies, a direct thread stretches to the mores of the rulers of that distant era, when the governor was sent to the city "for feeding". The bribe taker and rapist Nechay Shalygin from Voyevoda turns out to be the ancestor of modern embezzlers and bribe takers. Thus, while confronting the audience with the problem of corruption of the state apparatus, the playwright did not push them to the path of a simple and superficial solution to it. Abuses and lawlessness were treated in his works not as a product of the last reign, the shortcomings of which could be eliminated by the reforms of the new king, but they appeared in his plays as a consequence of a long chain of historical circumstances, the struggle against which also has its own historical tradition. The legendary robber Khudoyar is depicted as a hero embodying this tradition in Voivode, who:

“... the people did not rob

And he did not bleed his hands; but on the rich

Lays dues, servants and clerks

He does not favor us, the local nobles,

It frightens hard ... "(4, 70)

This folk hero in the drama is identified with a runaway townsman, hiding from the harassment of the governor and uniting the offended into the dissatisfied around him.

The end of the play is ambiguous - the victory of the inhabitants of the Volga city, who managed to "fall down" the governor, entails the arrival of a new governor, the appearance of which is marked by a collection from the townspeople's "commemoration" in order to "honor" the newcomer. The dialogue of two folk choirs about the governors testifies that, having got rid of Shalygin, the townspeople did not “get rid” of trouble:

"Old townspeople

Well, the old one is bad, some new one will be.

Young townspeople

Yes, one must be the same, if not worse" (4, 155)

The last remark of Dubrovin, answering the question of whether he will remain in the suburb, with the recognition that if the new governor “pressures the people”, he will again leave the city and return to the forests, opens up an epic perspective of the historical struggle of the zemshchina with bureaucratic predators.

If Voevoda, written in 1864, was in its content a historical prologue to the events depicted in Profitable Place, then the play Enough Simplicity for Every Wise Man (1868) in its historical concept was a continuation of Profitable Place. The hero of the satirical comedy "For every wise man ..." - a cynic who only allows himself to be frank in a secret diary - builds a bureaucratic career on hypocrisy and renegade, on indulgence of stupid conservatism, which he laughs at in his heart, on servility and intrigues. Such people were born of an era when reforms were combined with heavy backward movements. Careers often began with a demonstration of liberalism, with denunciation of abuses, and ended with opportunism and cooperation with the blackest forces of reaction. Glumov, in the past, obviously close to people like Zhadov, contrary to his own reason and feeling expressed in a secret diary, becomes an assistant to Mamaev and Krutitsky, the heirs of Vishnevsky and Yusov, an accomplice of the reaction, because the reactionary meaning of the bureaucratic activity of people like Mamaev and Krutitsky in early 60s. revealed in full. The political views of officials are made in the comedy the main content of their characterization. Ostrovsky notices historical changes even when they reflect the complexity of the slow movement of society forward. Describing the mentality of the 1960s, the democratic writer Pomyalovsky put into the mouth of one of his heroes the following witty remark about the state of reactionary ideology at that time: "This antiquity has never happened before, it is new antiquity."

This is exactly how Ostrovsky paints the “new antiquity” of the era of reforms, the revolutionary situation and the counteroffensive of reactionary forces. The most conservative member of the “circle” of bureaucrats, who talks about the “harm of reforms in general,” Krutitsky, finds it necessary to prove his point of view, make it public through the press, publish projects and notes in journals. Glumov hypocritically, but in essence thoroughly, points out to him the “illogicality” of his behavior: asserting the harm of any innovations, Krutitsky writes a “project” and wants to express his militantly archaic thoughts in new words, i.e., makes “a concession to the spirit of the times”, which itself but considers it "an invention of idle minds." Indeed, in a confidential conversation with a like-minded person, this arch-reactionary recognizes over himself and other conservatives the power of the new, historically established social situation: "The time has passed" ... "If you want to be useful, know how to wield a pen," he states, however, willingly joining in the vowel discussion (5, 119).

This is how political progress manifests itself in a society that is constantly experiencing the icy winds of a lurking, but lively and influential reaction, forced progress, wrested from the top of the government by an irresistible historical movement of society, but not relying on its healthy forces and always "ready to turn back. Cultural and moral development of society , its true spokesmen and supporters are constantly under suspicion, and at the threshold of the “new institutions”, which, as the very influential Krutitsky confidently declares, “will soon close”, there are ghosts and pledges of complete regress - superstition, obscurantism and retrograde in everything that concerns culture, science, art. Smart, modern people who have their own, independent opinion and incorruptible conscience are not allowed a mile away from the "renovating" administration, and liberal figures in it are people who "simulate" free-thinking, who do not believe in anything, cynical and interested only in egg success.This cynicism, venality and make Glumov "the right person" in the bureaucratic circle.

Gorodulin is the same, taking nothing seriously, except for comfort and a pleasant life for himself. This figure, influential in the new, post-reform institutions, believes least of all in their significance. He is a greater formalist than the Old Believers around him. Liberal speeches and principles are for him a form, a conventional language, which exists to alleviate the "necessary" public hypocrisy and lends a pleasant secular streamlining to words that might be "dangerous" if false rhetoric did not devalue and discredit them. Thus, political function people like Gorodulin, to the implementation of which Glumov was also involved, consists in the amortization of concepts that arise again in connection with the irresistible progressive movement of society, in the bleeding of the very ideological and moral content of progress. There is nothing surprising that Gorodulin is not frightened, that he even likes Glumov's sharply accusatory phrases. After all, the more resolute and bolder the words, the more easily they lose their meaning when they are behaved inappropriately. Nor is it surprising that the "liberal" Glumov is his own man in the circle of old-style bureaucrats.

“There is enough simplicity for every wise man” - a work that develops the most important artistic discoveries, made by the writer before, at the same time it is a comedy of a completely new type. The main problem The playwright raises here is again the problem of social progress, its moral consequences and historical forms. Again, as in the plays "Own People ..." and "Poverty is not a Vice", he points out the danger of progress that is not accompanied by the development of ethical ideas and culture, again, as in "Profitable Place", he draws the historical invincibility of the development of society, the inevitability of the destruction of the old administrative system, its deep archaism, but at the same time the complexity and painfulness of the liberation of society from it. Unlike "Profitable Place", the satirical comedy "For every wise man, ..." is devoid of a hero who directly represents the young forces interested in the progressive change of society. Neither Glumov nor Gorodulin actually oppose the world of reactionary bureaucrats. However, the fact that the hypocrite Glumov has a diary, where he expresses sincere disgust and contempt for the circle of influential and powerful people, to whom he is forced to bow, speaks of how rotten rags of this world contradict modern needs, the minds of people.

Enough Simplicity for Every Wise Man is Ostrovsky's first openly political comedy. It is undoubtedly the most serious of the political comedies of the post-reform era that hit the stage. In this play, Ostrovsky posed to the Russian audience the question of the significance of modern administrative transformations, their historical inferiority, and the moral state of Russian society at the time of the breakdown of feudal relations, which was carried out under the government's "containment", "freezing" of this process. It reflected the whole complexity of Ostrovsky's approach to the didactic and educational mission of the theatre. In this regard, the comedy "For every wise man ..." can be put on a par with the drama "Thunderstorm", representing the same focus of the lyrical-psychological line in the work of the playwright as "For every wise man ..." - satirical.

If the comedy Enough Simplicity in Every Wise Man expresses the moods, questions and doubts that Russian society lived in the second half of the 60s, when the nature of the reforms was determined and the best people of Russian society experienced more than one serious and bitter disappointment, then Thunderstorm ”, written a few years before, conveys the spiritual upsurge of society in the years when a revolutionary situation developed in the country and it seemed that serfdom and the institutions it had generated would be swept away and all social reality would be renewed. Such are the paradoxes artistic creativity: a cheerful comedy embodies fears, disappointments and anxiety, and a deeply tragic play - an optimistic faith in the future. The action of the "Thunderstorm" is deployed on the banks of the Volga, in ancient city, where, as it seems, nothing has changed for centuries, and cannot change, and it is in the conservative patriarchal family of this city that Ostrovsky sees manifestations of an irresistible renewal of life, its selflessly rebellious beginning. In The Thunderstorm, as in many of Ostrovsky's plays, the action "flashes" like an explosion, an electric discharge that has arisen between two oppositely "charged" poles, characters, human natures. The historical aspect of the dramatic conflict, its correlation with the problem of national cultural traditions and social progress in The Thunderstorm is especially pronounced. Two "poles", two opposite forces folk life, between which there are "lines of force" of the conflict in the drama, are embodied in the young merchant's wife Katerina Kabanova and in her mother-in-law - Martha Kabanova, nicknamed "Kabanikha" for her tough and stern disposition. Kabanikha is a convinced and principled keeper of antiquity, once for all found and established norms and rules of life. Katerina is an eternally searching, taking a bold risk for the sake of the living needs of her soul, a creative person.

Not recognizing the admissibility of changes, development and even diversity of the phenomena of reality, Kabanikha is intolerant and dogmatic. It “legitimizes” habitual forms of life as an eternal norm and considers it its highest right to punish those who have violated the laws of everyday life in a big or small way. Being a staunch supporter of the immutability of the entire way of life, the "eternity" of the social and family hierarchy and the ritual behavior of each person taking his place in this hierarchy, Kabanova does not recognize the legitimacy of individual differences between people and the diversity of peoples' lives. Everything that distinguishes the life of other places from the life of the city of Kalinov testifies to “infidelity”: people who live differently from Kalinovtsy should have dog heads. The center of the universe is the pious city of Kalinov, the center of this city is the house of the Kabanovs, - this is how the seasoned wanderer Feklusha characterizes the world in favor of a harsh mistress. She, noticing the changes taking place in the world, argues that they threaten to “belittle” time itself. Any change appears to the Kabanikha as the beginning of sin. She is a champion of a closed life that excludes the communication of people. They look out the windows, in her opinion, from bad, sinful motives, leaving for another city is fraught with temptations and dangers, which is why she reads endless instructions to Tikhon, who is leaving, and makes him demand from his wife that she does not look out the windows. Kabanova listens with sympathy to stories about the "demonic" innovation - "cast iron" and claims that she would never have traveled by train. Having lost an indispensable attribute of life - the ability to change and die, all the customs and rituals approved by Kabanova turned into an "eternal", inanimate, perfect in its own way, but empty form.

From religion she derived poetic ecstasy and a heightened sense of moral responsibility, but she is indifferent to the form of ecclesiasticism. She prays in the garden among the flowers, and in the church she sees not a priest and parishioners, but angels in a beam of light falling from the dome. From art, ancient books, icon painting, wall painting, she learned the images she saw on miniatures and icons: “golden temples or some kind of extraordinary gardens“ ... ”and the mountains and trees seem to be the same as usual, but as they write on the images” - everything lives in her mind, turns into dreams, and she no longer sees a painting and a book, but the world into which she has moved, hears the sounds of this world, smells it. Katerina carries within herself a creative, ever-living principle, generated by the irresistible needs of the time, she inherits the creative spirit of that ancient culture, which seeks to turn into a meaningless form Kabanikh. Throughout the action, Katerina is accompanied by the motive of flight, fast driving. She wants to fly like a bird, and she dreams about flying, she tried to swim away along the Volga, and in her dreams she sees herself racing on a troika. She turns to both Tikhon and Boris with a request to take her with her, to take her away.

However, all this movement, with which Ostrovsky surrounded and characterized the heroine, has one feature - the absence of a clearly defined goal.

Where did the soul of the people migrate from the inert forms of the ancient life, which became the "dark kingdom"? Where does it take the treasures of enthusiasm, truth-seeking, magical images of ancient art? The drama does not answer these questions. It only shows that the people are looking for a life that corresponds to their moral needs, that the old relations do not satisfy them, they have moved from the centuries of a fixed place and have begun to move.

In The Thunderstorm, many of the most important motifs of the playwright's work were combined and given a new life. Contrasting the "hot heart" - a young, courageous and uncompromising heroine in her demands - with the "inertness and numbness" of the older generation, the writer followed the path, the beginning of which were his early essays and on which, even after The Thunderstorm, he found new, endlessly rich sources of exciting, burning drama and "big" comedy. As defenders of two basic principles (the principle of development and the principle of inertia), Ostrovsky brought out heroes of a different temperament. It is often believed that "rationalism", Kabanikh's rationality is opposed to Katerina's spontaneity, emotionality. But next to the judicious "guardian" Marfa Kabanova, Ostrovsky placed her like-minded person - "ugly" in his emotional irrepressibility Savel Diky, and expressed in an emotional outburst aspiration for the unknown, Katerina's thirst for happiness "supplemented" with a thirst for knowledge, Kuligin's wise rationalism.

The “dispute” between Katerina and Kabanikha is accompanied by the dispute between Kuligin and Dikiy, the drama of the slavish position of feeling in the world of calculation (Ostrovsky’s constant theme, from “The Poor Bride” up to “The Dowry” and the last play of the playwright “Not of this world”) is accompanied by an image tragedies of the mind in the "dark kingdom" (the theme of the plays "Profitable place", "Truth is good, but happiness is better" and others), the tragedy of the desecration of beauty and poetry - the tragedy of the enslavement of science by wild "patrons" (cf. "In someone else's feast hangover").

At the same time, The Thunderstorm was a completely new phenomenon in Russian dramaturgy, an unprecedented folk drama that attracted the attention of society, expressed its current state, and alarmed it with thoughts about the future. That is why Dobrolyubov devoted a special large article to her, "A Ray of Light in the Dark Kingdom."

obscurity further destinies new aspirations and modern creative forces of the people, as well as the tragic fate of the heroine, not understood and passed away, do not remove the optimistic tone of the drama, permeated with the poetry of love of freedom, glorifying a strong and integral character, the value of direct feelings. The emotional impact of the play was not aimed at condemning Katerina and not at inciting pity for her, but at the poetic exaltation of her impulse, justifying it, elevating it to the rank of a tragic heroine's feat. showing modern life like a crossroads, Ostrovsky believed in the future of the people, but could not and did not want to simplify the problems facing his contemporaries. He awakened the thought, feeling, conscience of the audience, and did not lull them to sleep with ready-made simple solutions.

His dramaturgy, evoking a strong and direct response from the viewer, sometimes made the not very developed and educated people sitting in the hall participants in the collective experience of social conflicts, general laughter at social vice, general anger and reflection generated by these emotions. In the Table Oration, spoken during the celebrations on the occasion of the opening of the monument to Pushkin in 1880, Ostrovsky stated: “The first merit of a great poet is that through him everything that can become wiser becomes wiser. In addition to pleasure, in addition to forms for expressing thoughts and feelings, the poet also gives the very formulas of thoughts and feelings. The rich results of the most perfect mental laboratory are being made public property. The highest creative nature attracts and equalizes everyone to itself” (13, 164).

With Ostrovsky, the Russian spectator wept and laughed, but most importantly, he thought and hoped. His plays were loved and understood by people of different education and preparedness, Ostrovsky served as an intermediary between the great realistic literature of Russia and its mass audiences. Seeing how Ostrovsky's plays were perceived, writers could draw conclusions about the moods and abilities of their reader.

A number of authors have references to the impact of Ostrovsky's plays on the common people. Turgenev, Tolstoy, Goncharov wrote to Ostrovsky about the nationality of his theatre; Leskov, Reshetnikov, Chekhov included in their works the judgments of artisans, workers about Ostrovsky's plays, about performances based on his plays ("Where is it better?" Reshetnikova, Leskov's "Squanderer", Chekhov's "My Life"). In addition, the dramas and comedies of Ostrovsky, relatively small, concise, monumental in their problems, always directly related to the main question of the historical path of Russia, the national traditions of the country's development and its future, were an artistic crucible that forged poetic means that turned out to be important for development of narrative genres. Outstanding Russian word artists closely followed the work of the playwright, often arguing with him, but more often learning from him and admiring his skill. Having read Ostrovsky's play abroad, Turgenev wrote: “And Ostrovsky's Voivode brought me tenderness. No one had ever written in such a glorious, tasty, pure Russian language before him! “…” What poetry, smelling in places, like our Russian grove in summer! “…” Ah, the master, this bearded man's master! He and books in his hands "..." He strongly stirred up a literary vein in me!

Goncharov I. A. Sobr. op. in 8 volumes, vol. 8. M., 1955, p. 491-492.

Ostrovsky A.N. Full coll. soch., vol. 12. M, 1952, p. 71 and 123. (The following references in the text are to this edition).

Gogol N.V. Full coll. soch., vol. 5. M., 1949, p. 169.

Ibid, p. 146.

Cm.: Emelyanov B. Ostrovsky and Dobrolyubov. -- In the book: A. N. Ostrovsky. Articles and materials. M., 1962, p. 68-115.

On the ideological positions of individual members of the "young edition" circle of "Moskvityanin" and their relationship with Pogodin, see: Vengerov S. A. The young edition of "Moskvityanin". From the history of Russian journalism. -- West. Europe, 1886, No. 2, p. 581--612; Bochkarev V. A. On the history of the young edition of "Moskvityanin". - Learned. app. Kuibyshev. ped. in-ta, 1942, no. 6, p. 180--191; Dementiev A. G. Essays on the history of Russian journalism 1840-1850. M.--L., 1951, p. 221--240; Egorov B.F. 1) Essays on the history of Russian literary criticism in the middle of the 19th century. L., 1973, p. 27--35; 2) A. N. Ostrovsky and the “young edition” of The Moskvityanin. -- In the book: A. N. Ostrovsky and the Russian writer. Kostroma, 1974, p. . 21--27; Lakshin V. A. N. Ostrovsky. M., 1976, p. 132-179.

"Domostroy" was formed as a set of rules that regulated the duties of a Russian person in relation to religion, church, secular power and family in the first half of the 16th century, was later revised and partly supplemented by Sylvester. A. S. Orlov stated that the way of life, erected by "Domostroy" into the norm, "survived to the Zamoskvoretsky epic of A. N. Ostrovsky" ( Orlov A. S. Ancient Russian literature of the XI-XVI centuries. M.--L., 1937, p. 347).

Pomyalovsky N. G. Op. M.--L., 1951, p. 200.

On the reflection in the play “Enough Simplicity for Every Wise Man” of the actual political circumstances of the era, see: Lakshin V. Ostrovsky's "wise men" in history and on the stage. -- In the book: Biography of the book. M., 1979, p. 224--323.

For a special analysis of the drama "Thunderstorm" and information about the public outcry aroused by this work, see the book: Revyakin A.I."Thunderstorm" by A. N. Ostrovsky. M., 1955.

On the principles of organizing action in Ostrovsky's drama, see: Kholodov E. Mastery Ostrovsky. M., 1983, p. 243--316.

Turgenev I. S. Full coll. op. and letters in 28 volumes. Letters, vol. 5. M.--L., 1963, p. 365.

In connection with the 35th anniversary of Ostrovsky's activity, Goncharov wrote to him: “You alone built the building, at the base of which you laid the cornerstones of Fonvizin, Griboyedov, Gogol. But only after you, we, Russians, can proudly say: "We have our own, Russian, national theater." It, in fairness, should be called the Ostrovsky Theater.

The role played by Ostrovsky in the development of Russian theater and drama may well be compared with the importance that Shakespeare had for English culture, and Molière for French. Ostrovsky changed the nature of the Russian theater repertoire, summed up everything that had been done before him, and opened up new paths for dramaturgy. His influence on theatrical art was exceptionally great. This is especially true of the Moscow Maly Theatre, which is also traditionally called the Ostrovsky House. Thanks to the numerous plays of the great playwright, who affirmed the traditions of realism on the stage, the national school of acting was further developed. A whole galaxy of remarkable Russian actors on the material of Ostrovsky's plays was able to vividly show their unique talent, to affirm the originality of Russian theatrical art.

At the center of Ostrovsky's dramaturgy is a problem that has gone through all of Russian classical literature: the conflict of man with the unfavorable conditions of life opposing him, the diverse forces of evil; assertion of the individual's right to free and comprehensive development. Before readers and spectators of the plays of the great playwright, a wide panorama of Russian life is revealed. This is, in essence, an encyclopedia of life and customs of an entire historical era. Merchants, officials, landlords, peasants, generals, actors, merchants, matchmakers, businessmen, students - several hundred characters created by Ostrovsky gave a total idea of Russian reality in the 40-80s . in all its complexity, diversity and inconsistency.

Ostrovsky, who created a whole gallery of wonderful female images, continued the noble tradition that had already been defined in the Russian classics. The playwright exalts strong, integral natures, which in a number of cases turn out to be morally superior to a weak, insecure hero. These are Katerina (“Thunderstorm”), Nadya (“Pupil”), Kruchinina (“Guilty Without Guilt”), Natalia (“Labor Bread”), and others.

Reflecting on the originality of Russian dramatic art, on its democratic basis, Ostrovsky wrote: “Folk writers want to try their hand at a fresh audience, whose nerves are not very pliable, which requires strong drama, big comedy, causing frank, loud laughter, hot, sincere feelings, lively and strong characters. Essentially, this is a feature creative principles Ostrovsky himself.

The dramaturgy of the author of "Thunderstorm" is distinguished by genre diversity, a combination of tragic and comic, everyday and grotesque, farcical and lyrical elements. His plays are sometimes difficult to attribute to one particular genre. He wrote not so much drama or comedy as "plays of life", according to the apt definition of Dobrolyubov. The action of his works is often carried out on a wide living space. The noise and talk of life burst into action, become one of the factors determining the scale of events. Family conflicts develop into social ones. material from the site

The skill of the playwright is manifested in the accuracy of social and psychological characteristics, in the art of dialogue, in apt, lively folk speech. The language of the characters becomes for him one of the main means of creating an image, an instrument of realistic typification.

A great connoisseur of oral folk art, Ostrovsky made extensive use of folklore traditions, the richest treasury of folk wisdom. The song can replace his monologue, proverb or saying and become the title of the play.

The creative experience of Ostrovsky had a huge impact on the further development of Russian drama and theatrical art. V. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko and K. S. Stanislavsky, founders of the Moscow Art Theater, sought to create "a folk theater with approximately the same tasks and in the same plans as Ostrovsky dreamed of." The dramatic innovation of Chekhov and Gorky would have been impossible without mastering the best traditions of their remarkable predecessor.

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Essay on the life of Ostpovsky, its importance in the development of the Russian theater
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