The desire of the authors to define the hero of their time. New literary heroes of our time

A hero in literature is an artistic image, a character in a work of art. The great Russian writers of the 19th century portrayed their own heroes, who became no less famous, reflecting their era, mores, customs, problems, and traditions. Heroes have their strengths and weaknesses, strengths and weaknesses, like all people. But it is in the works of Russian classics of the 19th century that we see new, dissimilar, completely different, but at the same time surprisingly similar heroes.

Before starting work, we set ourselves the goal of analyzing and comparing the images of the most significant and memorable heroes of Russian literature in the first half of the 19th century.

To achieve this goal, the following tasks were defined:

2. Understand their characters and views on the world, society, friendship and love.

3. Compare the characters, identifying the features of their characters.

4. Determine the reasons that led to the appearance of such in Russian literature in the first half of the 19th century.

The subject of the study is the heroes of the works of Russian literature of the first half of the 19th century. (

The novelty of this work is determined by the fact that a study was carried out between the work of Schelling, Tyutchev and Pascal.

The following methods and means of research were used in the work on the project: theoretical methods of scientific research (deduction, comparative historical and system analysis, synthesis,); empirical methods (observation, analysis of materials).

Means: collection of theoretical material, study of the material, analysis, analysis, i.e. drawing up a conclusion.

In the research work, the author checks the hypothesis put forward: the problem of society in the first half of the 19th century in Russia is the rejection of smart, gifted, positive heroes, albeit inactive ones; and the way to overcome this tragedy is that the meaning of the life of the hero (and the man himself) lies in the ability to serve for the benefit of society and the people, and not to satisfy the selfish interests of the individual.

To refute or confirm this assumption, literary works and their main characters of Russian literature of the first half of the 19th century were studied in detail.

The practical output of the work can be its use by teachers in preparation for extracurricular and elective classes, and it can also serve as a guide for students and everyone who wants to better understand the literary process of the first half of the 19th century.

1. Characteristics of the historical and literary process of the first half of the 19th century in Russia.

The beginning of the 19th century brought with it a truly revolutionary breakdown of all previous ideas about the course of development of human society. It was then that the view of society began to take shape as an organism continuously changing, developing, progressing according to certain general laws, that is, a historical view. The 19th century itself receives the public name of "historical" in contrast to the "enlightenment" of the 18th century.

XIX century - the heyday of Russian literature "golden age", it was then that Lermontov, Pushkin, Gogol and others reached the heights of glory.

But the beginning of the century was not a time of peace. 1806-1807 - foreign campaigns of the Russian army, 1812 - war with Napoleon. These events were naturally reflected in literature, the rise of patriotism (“Gusar Denis Davydov”). Further, in December 1825, the Russian revolutionaries raised an uprising against the autocracy and serfdom. The Decembrists (they got their name from the month of the uprising) were revolutionaries of the nobility, their class limitations left a seal on the movement, which, according to slogans, was anti-feudal and associated with the maturation of the prerequisites for a bourgeois revolution in Russia. The purpose of the rebels was the destruction of the autocracy, the introduction of the Constitution and the abolition of serfdom.

The Decembrist uprising excited not only the country, but also the literary world, where immediately writers began to express their attitude on this matter more often with hints (“Woe from Wit”, A. S. Griboedov). This was followed by a period of reaction (reference A. S. Pushkin).

And finally, the 1930s was a period of crisis for the gifted, the people needed by the country, but not by society (“A Hero of Our Time”, M. Yu. Lermontov).

The Great French Revolution (1789-1793) Opening of the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum. Patriotic War of 1812. The emergence of the Decembrist organizations.

secular nature of literature. Development of the European cultural heritage. Increased attention to Russian folklore and folk legends. Decline of classicism. The birth of romanticism. The rise of journalism. Literary societies and circles

The growth of revolutionary and national liberation movements in Europe. The emergence of secret societies in Russia (1821-1822). Decembrist uprising (1825).

The dominant trend is romanticism. Literature of the Decembrists. Edition of almanacs. Romantic aspirations in the work of Pushkin 1812-1824.

1826 - the first half of the 50s.

Defeat of the Decembrist uprising. "The new censorship charter". Persecution of freethinking in Russia. Deepening crisis of serfdom, public reaction. Strengthening democratic tendencies. Development of the ideas of revolution and utopian socialism.

Loyalty to the ideas of Decembrism and realism in the work of Pushkin (1826-1837). The rise of Lermontov's romanticism. Gogol's transition to realism and social satire. Replacing poetry with prose. The 1830s are the heyday of the story. Publication of the first volume of "Dead Souls" (1842). The growing influence of advanced journalism on public life. The struggle of progressive and democratic forces in journalism.

Revolutions in Europe 1848-1849 1848-1855 period of the "Gloomy Seven Years". The defeat of the "Petrashevites". Russia's defeat in the Crimean War. The rise of the democratic movement and peasant unrest. The crisis of autocracy and the propaganda of the ideas of the peasant revolution. The abolition of serfdom in 1861. The confrontation between liberals and democrats. The beginning of bourgeois transformations in the country. Development of natural and mathematical sciences.

Increasing censorship in literature. Formation of the "Buturlin" press committee. Link Saltykov-Shchedrin to Vyatka, and Turgenev to Spasskoe-Lutovinovo. 1855 - the death of Nicholas I. The weakening of the censorship oppression. The rise of democratic journalism and its opposition to conservative journalism. Materialistic aesthetics of Chernyshevsky. The leading role of the magazine "Contemporary". Literature is a means of transforming reality on humanistic foundations. The development of Russian dramaturgy. The beginning of the heyday of the Russian realistic novel. New themes and problems in literature: raznochintsy heroes, passivity of the peasantry, showing the hard life of workers. "Soil". The assertion of realism in literature. Realism and truthfulness in the depiction of life in the works of L. Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Leskov. "Dialectics of the soul" and deep psychologism in their works. The high artistic skill of romantic poets (Fet, Tyutchev, A. K. Tolstoy, Maykov, Polonsky, etc.).

2. A hero of his time in Russian literature of the first half of the 19th century.

In literature, as in life, there is always a place for heroism, for heroes. Only in contrast to reality, in the fascinating diversity of the fictional, but instructive world of the book, the hero is the main character, the protagonist, and not the hero as a figure who performs feats, although a feat has the right to life. The hero in literature is an artistic image; character in the work.

Today we will get acquainted with the literary heroes of the first half of the 19th century and the early 50s. Our heroes have their weaknesses, shortcomings that pull them down, but there are also positive qualities that help the heroes in life; But first things first.

In my work, I will try to consider eight fictional literary characters. They are all men and lived around the same time. From this one could make a hasty conclusion that they are all similar, the same. The characters are indeed somewhat similar, but not all and only a little. The first character (we will consider them in order of passing through the school curriculum) is the main character of the immortal comedy “Woe from Wit”, our illustrious writer and diplomat, one of the most poisonous people of his time, Alexander Sergeevich Griboedov, - Alexander Andreyevich Chatsky.

Alexander Andreevich Chatsky.

Chatsky's youth falls on the reign of Alexander I, the expectation of changes and reforms. Chatsky's struggle with accusatory words corresponds to that early period of the Decembrist movement, when they believed that much could be achieved with words, and limited themselves to oral speeches. However, invocation alone does not lead to victory. In Chatsky, Griboyedov embodied many qualities of a progressive man of his era. According to his convictions, he is close to the Decembrists. The fact is that “Woe from Wit” was written during the years of the creation of the secret revolutionary organizations of the Decembrists. The comedy reflects the struggle of progressive-minded people with an inert society that professed servility, the struggle of the present century with the past century, the new worldview with the old. In Griboyedov's comedy, always acute topics are clearly shown: the confrontation between fathers and children, a love triangle where passions boil over the edge. But still, I would like to focus on the relationship between the young Chatsky and the more experienced Famusov.

The reason for the conflict between them is a different mentality, different worldview, mindset. The heroes have different points of view on the world, society (this is evidenced by their monologues). Famusov approves of the past century, but is not satisfied with the current one (“at the age of fifteen, teachers will teach”). He is convinced that the mind of a person is expressed in the ability to adapt to the requirements of those higher on the service (social) ladder. For Famusov, the personification of the mind is flattery, servility. He approves of Molchalin, who indulges him. Together with Molchalin, personifying obedience and servility, he believes that if there is one's own opinion, then it is not worth voicing it, that only one opinion can be correct - the opinion of society, which should be followed.

Chatsky, on the contrary, cannot and does not want to fawn at the right moment. He scolds both his own and Famusov’s time, and this can be seen in his attitude to Molchalin (“they love the wordless now.”), to society (“because now laughter scares and keeps shame in check.”), to the service (“to serve glad to serve sickeningly.”).

The mind in the understanding of the protagonist is the ability to think progressively, soberly assess the situation and express one's position. Mind means honor, nobility. Not without reason, in 1823, “Woe from Wit” began to go from hand to hand. All the young are delighted, and the old grab their heads!

Griboyedov's hero proclaims humanity, respect for the common man, service to the cause, and not to persons, freedom of thought. He affirms the progressive ideas of modernity, the prosperity of science and art, respect for the national language and culture, and for education. He sees the meaning of life not in servility to higher ranks, but in serving the people, the Motherland.

The character of the work is a personality, and one that is very few (both then and now). He is not afraid to go against public opinion, he is smart and knows his worth. As you know, such people are not liked in society, especially in a limited one. Chatsky did nothing, but he spoke, and for this he was declared insane (“he is not in tune with his mind”).

The old world is fighting Chatsky's free word, using slander. The old world is still so strong that it defeats the main character, who is fleeing from Famusov's house and from Moscow. But the flight of Alexander Andreevich from Moscow cannot be taken as a defeat. Griboyedov's hero is a morally undisputed winner.

For 24 years, Alexander Andreyevich Chatsky manages to annoy the Famus society quite a lot. Let it force him to leave, but he still did not give in, did not change his creed, although he somehow had to be spat upon by people who were no match for him.

As our illustrious writer I. A. Goncharov said: “against the background of hundreds of Molchalins, there is a couple of Chatskys, and as long as they are, we will be. ”,” Chatsky is broken by the amount of old strength, inflicting a mortal blow on it with the quality of fresh strength. ".

Pierre Bezukhov.

The protagonist of the most ambitious work of Russian literature of the entire 19th century, the famous epic novel by L. N. Tolstoy, is Pierre Bezukhov.

In his work, the writer raises the most important questions not only of his time, but of all human life. He acts as a psychologist and philosopher, considering many moral, moral problems, drawing the hard and thorny path of his heroes in search of truth and the meaning of life, in search of himself, his destiny. Almost all the main characters of the novel go through this path. But I would like to dwell in more detail on the ideological searches of Pierre Bezukhov, one of Tolstoy's most interesting and controversial characters.

Pierre is the illegitimate son of the rich and influential in the society of St. Petersburg and Moscow, Count Bezukhov. The father provides for his stepson, sends him to study abroad, feeds and clothes him. But unexpectedly, just before the death of the old Count Pierre, he returns from abroad and suddenly (not only for society, but even for himself) the hero becomes the heir to a huge fortune, millions and the new legitimate Count Bezukhov.

The attitude of society towards the hero changes dramatically. Moving from patronizing and a little dismissive to servile, sugary. For society, Tolstoy's hero is a bag of money, a lazy bumpkin who can always lend free of charge.

The hero of the novel is very different from people belonging to high society, both externally: “a massive and fat young man with glasses with a cropped head” with an “observant and natural look”; and internally: a kind and gentle disposition is combined with absolute impracticality (destructive absent-mindedness and indifference for a wealthy count in the capital). Taking advantage of Pierre's naivety, the greedy and mercenary Kuragin family catches the hero in their nets and forces him to marry Helen.

The newly minted Countess Bezukhova is young, beautiful, easy to communicate with and feels at home in high society. But despite this, the count is unhappy with her. He understands that she is a terrible, depraved woman, for whom nothing is sacred, and breaks off relations with her. This marriage brings Bezukhov only misfortune. He soon realizes that he has connected his life with a low woman and plunged into the vulgar, full of deceit, flattery and falsehood, the environment to which she belongs. The hero blames himself for making such a cruel mistake and marrying mean Helen without love (“she is a depraved woman. I asked her once if she felt signs of pregnancy. She laughed contemptuously and said that she was not a fool to want to have children and that she will not have children from me”).

The duel with his wife's lover does not bring relief to Pierre. He breaks up with Helen. Bezukhov has always been oppressed by injustice and human meanness. Tolstoy's hero is an addictive nature, a man endowed with a soft and weak character, kindness and gullibility, but at the same time subject to violent outbursts of anger (episodes of a quarrel and explanation with Helen after the duel; explanation with Anatole Kuragin after his attempt to take Natasha away). Good and reasonable intentions constantly come into conflict with the passions that overcome the hero, and often lead to big troubles, as in the case of the revelry in the company of Dolokhov and Kuragin, after which he was expelled from St. Petersburg.

In search of truth, the meaning of life, Tolstoy's hero goes through many hobbies and disappointments, replacing each other. Pierre is a searching nature, who, first of all, wants to live his life not in vain. The protagonist of the novel is smart, and, of course, has a penchant for philosophical reasoning, analyzes his life, looking for mistakes.

The hero is in search of the meaning of life. Admiration for Napoleon is replaced by Freemasonry. Spiritual life, values, independence give way to the charms, splendor and comforts of secular life. But soon spiritual impotence, idleness are replaced by aversion to the world and people belonging to this circle. Suddenly, a deep love for the people awakens in Bezukhov's soul, a dream of a feat and the murder of Napoleon (a former idol).

The hero of the novel makes mistakes, wasting his energy on revelry in the company of Dolokhov and Anatoly Kuragin. Having received a fortune and a title, the hero leads an idle, meaningless life surrounded by "golden youth". But at the same time, he always sought to defend his opinion and come to an understanding of the truth. The young hero rushes about in search of priorities, values ​​(“he wanted with all his heart to either produce a republic in Russia, or to be Napoleon himself, or a philosopher, or a tactician, the winner of Napoleon”). Ultimately, Bezukhov comes to the ideas of the Decembrists.

Once in the Masonic lodge, the hero calms down for a while, it seems to him that he has found the truth, support, ideal. The hero of the novel adheres to the ideas of equality, brotherhood and love. One of Pierre's main aspirations is the desire to oppose the evil that "reigns in the world." However, after a while, Bezukhov begins to realize that among the Freemasons the hated ideals of secular life flourish: careerism, hypocrisy and hypocrisy. They are alien to the desire of the count to help people disinterestedly. During the period of fascination with the ideas of Freemasonry, the hero, who seemed to have found life guidelines, is trying to reorganize the life of his peasants (“I lived for myself and ruined my life. And only now, I try to live for others, only now I understand all the happiness of life”). However, the reforms of Count Bezukhov fail because of his gullibility and impracticality.

Finally disillusioned with Freemasonry, Tolstoy's hero breaks off relations with this society. Again his dreams, desires and aspirations fail. The hero is already beginning to doubt: is it possible to find happiness and truth in this world full of disappointment and deceit, and whether it exists at all. However, a new impulse of the hero's soul, like a light at the end of the tunnel, a way out of the labyrinth of disappointments, appears in the life of Count Natasha Rostov. Love for her penetrates deeper into the heart of the hero. Full of purity and poetry, the feelings of Pierre in love elevate him above those around him and give him a very clear, real hope of finding long-awaited happiness after so many years of disappointment.

The peaceful life of the hero is interrupted by the war. Count Bezukhov decides to stay in Moscow and takes part in the war, not yet fully understanding what it is. Left in the half-burnt capital to kill Napoleon, Bezukhov is captured, where he experiences not only physical hardships, but also spiritual torments (execution of prisoners, worries about the fate of the people). In fact. which was saturated with the brain of every Russian soldier, partisan, peasant, person in general. That patriotism, which did not find an outlet in the count hitherto. Accustomed to luxury and freedom, the protagonist strongly feels spiritual and physical suffering, but they strengthen the faith, strength of the hero's spirit. He begins to appreciate what he would not have paid attention to before, appreciates the smallest joys of life.

In the same place, in captivity, Pierre meets a soldier, the spokesman for the "people's thought" Platon Karataev. Karataev in all situations remains optimistic, backed by fortitude. It was this meeting that largely contributed to the fact that Count Bezukhov begins to see "the eternal and infinite in everything."

Platon Karataev is a people, Pierre Bezukhov is an individuality, and therefore the latter strives to “unite in his soul the meaning of everything”. This helps the hero of Tolstoy to find harmony with the world.

During his stay in captivity, the protagonist of the novel rethinks his life, gains spiritual confidence and is reborn morally. Bezukhov comes to the conclusion that "man is created for happiness." But Tolstoy's hero's personal happiness is inextricably linked with public happiness, and the people are unhappy. The hero cannot look indifferently at the manifestation of injustice, social evil (“There is theft in the courts, in the army there is only one stick, shagistika, settlements, they torment the people, they stifle enlightenment. What is young, honestly, is ruined”).

Pierre is happy, found his place in life, married his beloved woman (Natasha Rostova), he has a loving and strong family. But the author makes us understand that this is not the end at all, and the main thing is yet to come. After all, the hero continues to strive for goodness, truth and public well-being.

L. N. Tolstoy shows us the difficult path of his hero to rebirth, renewal. This path is a series of ups and downs. Life hurts Bezukhov: an unsuccessful marriage, the death of Prince Andrei Bolkonsky's best friend, war, captivity. But despite all the difficulties, Pierre tries to resist the vicissitudes of fate. The difficult fate did not break him. The hero sees his main purpose in life in serving people, not only in his own interests, but also in public utility. The count joins a secret political society, opposes autocracy and serfdom. While the people are suffering, the hero's moral quest and the desire for full self-realization, the fulfillment of his dream, the mission will not end.

L. N. Tolstoy shows us in his novel the epic of an atypical hero in atypical circumstances. And even in the epilogue, we see Count Pierre Bezukhov surrounded by his family and beloved wife. The hero is a happy husband and father. Does this sound like a happy ending? So unusual for Russian classical literature. No! Tolstoy's hero has found personal happiness, but he will still fight for public happiness. In a dispute with Nikolai Rostov, Pierre expresses his convictions, and we understand that we have a future Decembrist

Eugene Onegin

Eugene Onegin from the novel of the same name by the great Pushkin is a brilliant metropolitan aristocrat, the last offspring of a noble noble family and therefore “the heir to all his relatives” (one of them is an elderly uncle, to whose village Eugene Onegin goes at the very beginning of the novel). He leads an idle, carefree, independent life, full of exquisite pleasures and various entertainments (“amusements and luxury of a child.”), he is content with home education and does not burden himself with service.

Crisis of the mid-1820s. Indifference to rank and service career, the cult of idleness, elegant pleasure and personal independence, and finally, political freethinking form an internally unified complex, characteristic of the generation of the 1820s and captured in the image of Eugene Onegin. Of course, one can speak of the hero's free-thinking, of his participation in the near-Decembrist circle, only in hints. But these allusions are significant and eloquent. Evgeny Onegin's critical attitude towards high society and neighbor landlords, voluntary rural hermitage, alleviating the lot of serfs (quite a “Decembrist” gesture in spirit), reading Adam Smith, who was in use among the Decembrists, long conversations and disputes with Lensky on the most burning topics of our time Finally, a direct comparison of Onegin with the freethinker, philosopher Chaadaev, the mention of the hero’s acquaintance with the dashing hussar, the Decembrist Kaverin, the story of his friendship with the hero-author, the disgraced poet, and Onegin’s willingness to accompany him in his escape abroad - all this testifies to the true the scale of the personality of Eugene Onegin, about his belonging to the heroes of the time, who acutely felt his historical destiny and social lack of demand, painfully solving the problem of his life path.

Onegin is characterized by a certain demonism (“arrogant demon”), which is increasingly manifested in him as the plot develops in the novel, and, in the end, leads him to disaster. In the novel, the hero goes through a path consisting of a series of trials (relationship with society, friendship, and, of course, love), but Onegin does not withstand any of the trials. Deeply despising the neighbors - landlords, ignoramuses and serfs, the protagonist nevertheless fears their court and accepts a challenge to a duel with Lensky (Onegin said "that he is always ready"). As a result, Onegin will kill a friend. But to the honor of the Pushkin hero, he acts nobly with Tatyana, who is in love with him. He does not feed the heart of a young and inexperienced girl with the illusion of hope, but rather simply explains that they cannot be together (“I love you with the love of a brother”, “learn to control yourself, not everyone, like me, will understand, inexperience leads to trouble” ).

But six long years after the duel with Lensky and the explanation of Tatyana, who is in love with Onegin, the girl, Onegin again meets the already married, flourishing Tatyana, the woman. Not having fallen in love with Tatyana, the girl, Onegin falls passionately in love with Tatyana, the woman (“what stirred in the depths of the cold and lazy soul? Annoyance? Vanity? Or again the concern of youth? Love”). And Tatyana, in turn, still loves Yevgeny dearly (“and he stirred her heart,” “she dreams of someday making a humble life path with him”). It would seem that here it is - happiness, at arm's length.

Fate punishes the hero of the work for neglecting the feelings of women earlier, for a wild life and for not seeing in Tatyana the girl her amazing, incomparable, pure inner world. In addition to ordinary physical life, there is a category of moral and aesthetic. Tatyana cannot leave, run away from her husband, not because she is sorry for her position in society and condition, but because she is highly moral, morally pure, and if she took an oath before the altar, then she will follow her, will not fall into temptation will be faithful to her husband. Love is missed (“what did I find in your heart? What answer? One harshness!”, And happiness was so possible, so close! But my fate was already decided. “).

Hopeless love for Tatyana brings Onegin to the brink of death. However, it is precisely the fundamental possibility of the moral revival of Onegin that is important to Pushkin, because the true hero of the novel is not he, but a certain “superhero” - modern man in general.

Grigory Alexandrovich Pechorin.

The failure of the Decembrist uprising, the unfulfilled hopes of the best part of society for the liberation of Russia. Pechorin's generation did not know how to realize their plans for the transformation of Russia. The third hero is also a hero of his time - Grigory Aleksandrovich Pechorin from M. Yu. Lermontov's novel “A Hero of Our Time”.

Pechorin is a nobleman, and by no means one of the poor, young, handsome, and popular with women. It would seem, what else is needed for happiness? But he is deeply unhappy. And the point here is that Pechorin, despite his youth, is tired of life (“sometimes I specifically look for death under bullets”). Having received a secular upbringing, Pechorin was tired of chasing secular entertainment. Then disappointment awaits him, attempts to do science and cooling to them. Pechorin is bored with life (“Well? To die, so to die! A small loss for the world, and I myself am pretty bored”). He is indifferent to the world and feels a deep dissatisfaction with life (“His eyes did not laugh when he laughed. This is a sign - either an evil disposition, or deep permanent sadness”). Pechorin is quite experienced, he has already seen a lot. But his main problem is oppressive loneliness, boredom, disappointment in life, love. Pechorin did not achieve happiness either in love or in friendship. According to him, he is not capable of friendship. In it, again, according to Grigory Alexandrovich, "one is invariably the slave of the other." In different chapters we see different people helping us to understand the character of Lermontov's hero. Pechorin had friends, but he never became friends with any of them to the end: his colleague Maxim Maksimych, the same age as Grushnitsky, Dr. Werner, who was close in intellect, or the complete opposite - Lieutenant Vulich. Pechorin does not want to make anyone "his slave".

The whole environment of the protagonist is lower than him in intelligence, does not differ in sensitivity and insight, strength of character. Lermontov's hero is distinguished by one very rare property - the ability and inclination for internal introspection. Sobriety of mind is combined in Pechorin with a thirst for activity and willpower. Pechorin feels immense strength in himself (“I feel immense strength in myself”), but wastes them on trifles, on love adventures, without doing anything useful (“I was carried away by the bait of empty and ungrateful passions, I came out of their crucible as hard and cold as iron, but lost forever the ardor of noble aspirations - the best color of life”).

But the hero of the novel has another terrible property. He makes the people around him unhappy (“my love has not brought happiness to anyone”). He is smarter than the rest, but internally devastated, disappointed. Grigory Alexandrovich lives out of curiosity, not with his heart, but with his head.

Pechorin's personality paradox is his inner world, introspection. The hero carefully rummages through the pantry of his own mind and heart. Pechorin is aware of his bad deeds (the game of love with Princess Mary, the failure with Vera, the conquest of Bela), and it is from this consciousness of what happened that he is so hard. Pechorin is suffering, but deservedly suffering.

As V. A. Belinsky wrote: “The soul of Pechorin is not rocky soil, but scorched earth. ” and something could grow on this earth if it were not for the incessant “self-draining” of our hero. Lermontov's hero crushes everything human in himself, his eyes are calm when there is a volcano inside. He does not realize the value of human life, does not value either his own life or someone else's (duel with Grushnitsky).

The character of the work combines the incompatible: sensitivity (the hero cries about Vera’s lost love; it’s hard for him when Maxim Maksimych mentions Bel) and the most terrible cold-blooded cruelty (a duel with Grushnitsky, “I wanted to give myself every right not to spare him”), an amazing feature go against fate, enter into eternal confrontation with society (“water society”).

The hero is an egoist, and he is aware of this, he is insanely disgusted with himself, out of boredom he tries to entertain himself (“and you all live out of curiosity: you expect something new. Ridiculous and annoying!”), sometimes at the cost of broken destinies (Princess Mary , Vera), and even someone's death (Grushnitsky). It's scary to say, but Bela's death is the best end, both for her and for Pechorin. Grigory Aleksandrovich knows how to hate, but he does not know how to love. He seeks happiness only for himself (“I loved for myself, for my own pleasure, I only satisfied the strange need of the heart, greedily absorbing their feelings, their joys, their suffering - and could never get enough”), and in love, as you know , one cannot be happy: either both are happy or neither is. As then, so now - this is the reality of life, which the hero perfectly understood. Probably the only way out for the hero of the novel is to work on himself, his problem is that he saw his vices and mistakes, but did not correct them!

So, Lermontov's hero is unhappy both in love and in friendship through his own fault. His loneliness is depressing. He is selfish and proud, but most importantly, he is honest with himself, and this quality is not enough for very, very many. He can offend, he knows how to hate, he is loved, but he does not love (“as an instrument of execution, I fell on the heads of doomed victims, often without malice, always without regret.”), as a result, he is unhappy. In my opinion, the main character, inactive, not constantly looking for happiness, is no longer Pechorin, not the hero of the 30s of the XIX century. The complex aspects of the hero's mental life are of interest to Lermontov.

The protagonist painfully looks for a way out, thinks about the role of fate, seeks understanding among people of a different circle. And he does not find himself an environment of activity, application of his forces. He seeks for himself, rushes about in search of happiness, is aware of his vices, but does not change; this is his tragedy, the tragedy of both the generation of the 30s and our time

Lermontov helps us understand the ideological and spiritual life of Russian society in the 30s of the 19th century in A Hero of Our Time. The hopelessness of the hero is directly related to the socio-political situation in Russia of that period. The failure of the Decembrist uprising, the unfulfilled hopes of the best part of society for the liberation of Russia. Pechorin's generation did not know how to realize their plans for the transformation of Russia. The tragedy of Pechorin is the tragedy of many of his contemporaries, who are similar to him in their way of thinking, in their position in society.

Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov.

The 1840s in Russia were marked by the most severe crisis of the entire feudal-serf system.

N.V. Gogol shows us a new hero of the time. Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov, a new type of adventurer-acquirer for Russian literature, the protagonist of the poem, who has fallen, betrayed his true destiny, but is able to cleanse himself and resurrect his soul, acts on the pages of Dead Souls. This possibility of spiritual resurrection is indicated even by the name Pavel, given to the hero by Gogol. It was given by the author not by chance, in honor of the Apostle Paul, who at first was the persecutor of Christ, but then vehemently believed in him; the idea of ​​rebirth. Pavel is the one who was able to rise. Gogol clearly shows us this new person (the main character), describing in detail the life of Pavel Ivanovich in Chapter II.

As a child, Pavlusha faithfully followed his father's instructions to "save a penny!" The father, sending his son to study, gives him a meager amount of money, which the son saves carefully, painstakingly, wisely, constantly increasing his capital. For example, during the break he buys a bun, then during class, when the rest of the students are hungry, he sells it at a speculative price. Still persistent, intelligent and, of course, cunning, Pavlusha bought a mouse on the cheap, which he trained for a long time and patiently, and, as a result, sold it profitably.

The whole life of the Gogol hero is a series of ups and downs. The character of the work works very well at customs. First, he enters the trust of his superiors (“and for sure, he showed unheard-of selflessness, patience and limitation of needs”), then he begins cooperation with smugglers, but his friend betrays him, but the main character gets away with it.

So, Chichikov is a new hero, a hero of his time. Gogol's hero's goals are to take care only of himself, to seek profit for himself in everything, to please people who are useful to him, to choose a richer wife. He doesn't know what it's like to be uncomfortable. He doesn't feel uncomfortable at all. The hero of the poem is still relevant to this day, because in every team there is still a person who takes his own not by knowledge, but by diligence, servility (“Chichikov suddenly comprehended the spirit of the boss and what behavior should consist of,” as soon as the bell rang, he rushed recklessly and served the teacher before all three, giving three, he left the class first and tried to catch him three times on the road, constantly taking off his hat”). This hero was like that from a young age.

Pavel Ivanovich is active, but he directs his mind and cunning in the wrong direction, not for the benefit of society, but for his own gain. Chichikov is a wonderful psychologist. The ability to properly approach people helps Chichikov in his brilliant scam with “dead” souls.

Disposable, polite on the outside, rotten on the inside: this is the image of the new man in Rus'.

Ilya Ilyich Oblomov.

"Oblomov" appeared in an atmosphere of the rise of the democratic movement and was of great importance in the struggle of the advanced circles of Russian society against serfdom. Goncharov in the novel criticized the backward, inert and stagnant morals inherent in the feudal-serf order that gave rise to Oblomovism: “I tried to show in Oblomov how and why our people turn prematurely into jelly” [. The essence and origin of Oblomovism are revealed in the novel from an anti-serfdom, democratic point of view. The author seeks to prove that Oblomov was turned into a jelly, into a "sourdough" by the serf environment.

Oblomov Ilya Ilyich - a nobleman "32-33 years old, good-looking, with dark gray eyes, but with the absence of any specific goal, any concentration in facial features, softness was the dominant and basic expression of the whole soul."

Ilya Ilyich was born and grew up until the age of twenty in the provincial Oblomovka. In childhood, everyone inspired Oblomov with the thought of his exclusivity. He studied at a boarding school, but could not serve. As a boy, Ilyusha, like most of the inhabitants of Oblomovka, grew up kind and good-natured. But from a very young age, the hero did nothing, everything was done for him (Ilyusha rarely went to the boarding house, and if he was there, his friend Stolz worked for him, but at home there were servants for everything). Goncharov's hero is accustomed to getting the satisfaction of his desires not from his own efforts, but from others, and this developed in him an apathetic immobility. This habit plunged him into a miserable state of moral slavery. This slavery is closely intertwined with the nobility of Oblomov. Apathy and immobility are reflected by Goncharov even in the appearance of Ilya Ilyich - a pampered, flabby man who "has attacked his ailments."

The hero lies on his couch all day, doing nothing. He is unable not only to manage his estate, but even to get ready and go to the party. All this is a great difficulty for him. It is important to note what inaction is - the conscious choice of the hero: “Life: good life!. there is nothing deep, touching for the living. All these are dead, sleeping people, worse than me, these members of the council and society!

In the hero of the novel, a living mind, purity, kindness, truthfulness, a tendency to introspection and self-criticism, a sense of justice are ruined. The hero is mired in a swamp of selfishness, which sweeps away all the good qualities that Oblomov does not feel the need to develop in himself. It soon becomes clear to the reader that Oblomov depends on Zakhar more than Zakhar depends on him.

The horror of the position of the protagonist lies in the fact that he did not ask himself questions about "his relationship to the world and to society", using his rights, he did not think about duties, therefore "he was burdened and bored from everything that he had to do." “Labor and boredom were synonymous for him,” and Oblomov explained his inactivity and worthlessness by the fact that he was a nobleman.

Impracticality, helplessness are the characteristic features of the hero Goncharov: “I don’t know what corvée is, what rural labor is, what a poor peasant means, what a rich one; I don’t know what a quarter of rye or oats means, what it costs, in what month and what they sow and reap, how and when they sell it, I don’t know anything. This ignorance was a typical feature of most of the noble intelligentsia of the 40s. Oblomov's whole life is a depressing process of gradual spiritual and moral impoverishment of the human personality, the voluntary death of his own soul.

We learn the ideal of life of Ilya Ilyich from the chapter "Oblomov's Dream". The hero dreams of his childhood in his native Oblomovka: calm, peaceful, idle, filled with love and warmth.

"Oblomov's Dream" is not a fairy tale about heavenly life, as it might seem at first glance. Here, the social and simply human ugliness of Oblomov's life is clearly visible. The hero is used to inaction. "Three hundred Zakharov" kill any activity in the boy. The patriarchal isolation of Oblomovka, at first touching, cheerfully surprising with its exclusivity, then frightening. Oblomov's gentleness in the complex world of social inequality turns into a very real evil.

Ilya Ilyich's doing nothing is by no means an innocent thing. As Dobrolyubov noted: “Yes, while he lies alone, it’s still nothing; and when Tarantiev, Zaterty, Ivan Matveich arrives, what disgusting nastiness begins near Oblomov. They eat him, drink him, drink him, ruin him in the name of peasants. He endures all this silently. The critic concludes: “No, you can’t flatter the living like that, but we are still alive, we are still Oblomovs. Oblomovism never left us.”

The path of Oblomov is a typical path of the provincial nobles of the early 19th century. O. served in the department, was engaged in routine work, from year to year he was waiting for a promotion. But such a worthless life was not needed by the hero. He chose to lie on the couch and contemplate the vices of his time from the outside. He studied at the university, was interested in literature, then served, even conceived a scientific work on Russia, but it all ended in Oblomovism. “He had life on its own, and science on its own. His knowledge was dead. His head was a complex archive of dead deeds, faces, eras, figures, religions. It was like a library, consisting of some scattered volumes on different parts of knowledge.

But the soul of the hero of the novel is not devoid of dreaminess. He is a lyricist who knows how to feel deeply. But his way of life muffled this spiritual feature of the hero. Only an old friend, Stolz, can wake her up for a short while. The hero of Goncharov is not completely devoid of spiritual and moral life; some good aspirations and qualities were laid in him (moral purity, meek soul).

Love for Olga temporarily changes the hero beyond recognition: "A fever of life, strength, and activity appeared in him." But "the further direction, the very thought of life, the deed - remains in the intentions." This is not surprising: Oblomov is not capable of active love that requires self-improvement. Only Agafya Matveevna Pshenitsyna was able to create an ideal life for him with a sense of care, warmth, and idleness.

Goncharov himself treats his hero with a considerable degree of sympathy when the consciousness of his gradual fall awakens in Oblomov. Goncharov conveys his inner monologue: “He painfully felt that some good, bright beginning was buried in him, as in a grave, perhaps now dead, or it lies like gold in the bowels of a mountain, and it would be high time to this gold to be a walking coin. But the treasure is deeply and heavily littered with rubbish, alluvial rubbish.

The melancholy that sometimes engulfed Oblomov testified that he had real human feelings, sometimes resisting the inexorable Oblomovism, which nevertheless turns out to be stronger. Lack of will, lack of an inner core, fading of the mind, all this cannot be saved even by the pure soul of the hero and the active Stolz. The best qualities of Ilya Ilyich are fading away, and with them the hero himself.

Dmitry Nikolaevich Rudin.

Rudin (1855) is Turgenev's first novel, capturing a whole period in the development of Russian society in the 30s and 40s of the 19th century. The main thing in "Rudin" is not a description of life, but a recreation of the ideological picture of the era. The characters of the heroes are revealed primarily through disputes about philosophy, education, morality. This became one of the most characteristic signs of the Russian novel of the 19th century.

In the novel of the same name “Rudin”, I. S. Turgenev considers the history of the so-called “extra person”. The author repeatedly notes the inconsistency of his hero: enthusiasm, the desire to act in the name of achieving ideals is combined in him with ignorance of "living life", the inability to translate into reality everything that he talks about so eloquently.

Turgenev's hero dreams of the welfare of mankind, delivers fiery speeches about the high vocation of man, about the significance of education and science. However, being a student of the philosophical idealism of the 30s (the novel tells in detail about Pokorsky's circle, in which contemporaries easily guessed the circle of N.V. Stankevich), Rudin, like other noble intellectuals, turns out to be very far from the correct perception of reality. Ideal ideas crash when they collide with real life.

Highly appreciating the hero, Turgenev nevertheless repeatedly emphasizes in Rudin a sharp gap between word and deed, which emphasizes the test of love. The hero can't stand it. Before the sincere and loving Natalia, he turns out to be a weak-willed person, unable to take on the burden of responsibility for her fate (“The first obstacle - and I crumbled all over, I was just afraid of the responsibility that fell on me, and therefore I’m definitely not worthy of you”).

The epilogue of the novel was intended to exalt Rudin, to prove his ability for heroic deeds. However, even on the Parisian barricades, the hero still turns out to be an eternal wanderer. His feat is useless, his very figure is somewhat theatrical: "In one hand he held a red banner, in the other - a crooked and blunt saber." The rebels did not even know who Rudin was, they considered him a Pole. So Dmitry Rudin also passes away from the pages of the novel.

In the image of Dmitry Rudin, Turgenev captured the era of the 30-40s of the XIX century. Hence the death of the hero on the barricades in Paris during the revolution of 1848: he dies along with the end of his era.

Evgeny Vasilievich Bazarov.

The Russian reality of the early 60s put forward a new type of "nihilist", calling for a resolute struggle against the whole old world, its way of life, customs, culture, without making exceptions for anyone, without feeling the slightest regret. The honesty and truthfulness of the writer predetermined in many cases the objective portrayal of the raznochintsy hero, his moral victory over noble liberalism, in particular over the Kirsanov brothers.

Bazarov's youth fell on the difficult period of the 60s of the XIX century. The rise of the democratic movement and peasant unrest. The crisis of autocracy and the propaganda of the ideas of the peasant revolution. The abolition of serfdom in 1861. The confrontation between liberals and democrats. The beginning of bourgeois transformations in the country. Development of natural and mathematical sciences.

The image of Turgenev's hero is riddled with contradictions. Evgeny Bazarov denies love. This can be seen in his attitude towards a woman and an eternal feeling (“romantic nonsense”, “rottenness”), but at the same time, Eugene is a romantic in his soul. He passionately falls in love with Anna Sergeevna Odintsova.

Bazarov is a nihilist, denies science and art, does not listen to other people's opinions, and treats everything from a critical point of view. There is no authority for a hero.

Bazar's nihilism has nothing to do with fashion or imitation. For this, Sitnikov and Kukshin are introduced into the plot of the novel, so that against their background, Bazarov’s deep conviction in the correctness of the views that form the basis of his worldview is more clearly manifested.

Turgenev's hero has his own convictions (“reading Pushkin is a waste of time, making music is ridiculous, romanticism is nonsense, Rafael is not worth a penny”) and expresses them, but absolutely does not accept other people's “principles”. Also, Bazarov does not accept empty talk. The hero strives to act "by virtue of what is useful."

Yevgeny Bazarov belongs to the new social camp - revolutionary democrats (raznochinets).

The hero, representing the Russian democratic youth with all the advantages and disadvantages, strength and weakness, marked the beginning of a new stage in the history of Russian literature. In many works of the following decades, the artistic development of problems, images, and motives first raised by Turgenev will continue. Dostoevsky in 1863 sympathetically mentioned "the restless and yearning Bazarov (a sign of a great heart), despite his egoism."

But, despite the destructive power of Bazarov's nihilism, it is worth noting that the hero does not advance in his convictions beyond denial. After all, the hero of the novel sees only ignorance and darkness among the people. Bazarov believes that it is necessary to separate popular interests from popular prejudices.

It is not contempt for the people that is heard in the speeches of the "nihilist", but criticism of darkness, downtroddenness and backwardness. The problem of "Bazarov and the people" is very acute and not yet fully clarified. There are episodes in the novel that testify not only to the strength of Bazarov, but also to his weakness, isolation from the people.

The hero denies everything, but we cannot call him narrow-minded and limited. He acts on the principle: "they will tell me the case and I will agree."

To reveal the image of the protagonist, Turgenev compares him with Pavel Petrovich Kirsanov. Kirsanov is an aristocrat, the exact opposite of Bazarov. Even Bazarov's appearance sharply separated him from the brothers Kirsanov and Arkady: a long robe with tassels, red hands, long hair, which in those days were a demonstrative sign of freethinking. And Bazarov's speech testifies to the sympathy with which his image is drawn. Of all the characters in the novel, it is Bazarov who is endowed with the simplest and clearest Russian language, it is he who is able to use a folk saying or proverb to the point, he turns out to be a master at winged, precise characteristics.

Pavel Petrovich honors the family, religiosity, patriarchy, the peasant community, cannot live without faith, loves nature and music. P.P. Kirsanov and Bazarov constantly argue, which leads to their duel, fortunately not dangerous.

However, Bazarov's clash with noble heroes, noble culture should not be taken unambiguously as a complete and unconditional victory for the "nihilist". Shortly before the end of the novel, Turgenev wrote: "since the ancient tragedy, we already know that real clashes are those in which both sides are right to a certain extent." This is what happens in the novel. It is impossible not to take into account that the "fathers" of Turgenev, with all their liberalism, are the bearers of certain life values, they are characterized by aesthetic sensitivity, a culture of feelings. And in some moments, Bazarov, in comparison with them, reveals not only strength, but also weakness.

Turgenev confronts his hero with serious life tests, as a result of which the hero has to give up a number of beliefs. It shows signs of skepticism and pessimism. One of these tests is the hero's love for Anna Sergeevna Odintsova. Raznochinets Bazarov feels embarrassed in front of the aristocrat Odintsova; gradually he discovers in himself a feeling whose existence he had previously denied.

Anna Sergeevna Odintsova could understand Bazarov. Odintsova sees the soul of Eugene, and not his external pricklyness and constant denial of everything. The hero of the novel respects Odintsova because she does not boast of her origin (before marriage, she barely made ends meet and raised her sister (“she ate our bread”). Bazarov falls in love with Anna Sergeevna, but she ruthlessly rejects him.

The views of Bazarov and other heroes on life, society, people, and the political system are diametrically opposed. Therefore, Turgenev's hero is lonely, he is an "extra person" who is in opposition to society.

Turgenev's position manifests itself gradually, as the image itself is revealed, in the hero's monologues, his disputes with other characters: with his friend Arkady Kirsanov, with his father and uncle Pavel Petrovich. At first, the hero of the novel is confident in his abilities, in the work that he is doing; this is a proud, purposeful person, a bold experimenter and a denier.

The hero of Turgenev suffers defeat in love. Ultimately, he remains alone, but even now Bazarov does not want to open himself to simple, natural feelings. He is cold and demanding of his parents, as well as of everyone around him. Only in the face of death, Evgeny Vasilyevich begins to vaguely understand the price of such manifestations of life as poetry, love, beauty.

Bazarov is an “extra person”, but despite all the misfortunes and disappointments in life, he can still be useful to society.

Turgenev's hero is true to his ideals, devoted to his work, self-confident. Such people are necessary in Russian society, because the rest of the "superfluous people" are inactive. Onegin and Pechorin strive to assert themselves, to realize their potentialities, but they do not find any use for them.

Oblomov and Rudin love to think, but are absolutely incapable of practical activity, all their projects fail, Bazarov, on the other hand, contributes to social development, movement forward, destroys the old foundations. According to Yevgeny Vasilyevich, "the new cannot be established without the destruction of the old." Turgenev's hero is sincerely trying to benefit society with his activities.

The hero of the novel is valuable for society, brings with him a wave of changes, but society is not ready for them. Bazarov's time has not yet come, so Turgenev, not knowing what to do, "kills" him. Bazarov's convictions are not an artistic exaggeration, the character of the hero reflects the characteristic features of the representatives of the democratic youth of the 60s.

Rakhmetov.

Rakhmetov is the central character of the utopian novel by N. G. Chernyshevsky “What is to be done?”. The hero led "the most severe way of life", "was engaged in other people's affairs or no one's affairs in particular", in the "gathering points" of friends "got acquainted only with people who have influence on others", "he was rarely at home, he kept walking and driving around." A “special person” differs from “new people” in many ways. By origin, he is not a raznochinets, but a nobleman, “from a family known since the 13th century”; not circumstances, but only the strength of his convictions makes him go against secular society. He remakes both his mental and physical nature. He completely renounces personal benefits and intimate life, so that the struggle for the full enjoyment of life would be a struggle “only on principle, and not on predilection, on conviction, and not on personal need.

The hero of Chernyshevsky deliberately brought up the firmness of character, accuracy and punctuality, because he knew that these qualities were necessary for an underground revolutionary. At the same time, he was not a dry and callous person, although with his refusal of all pleasures and entertainments, he made the impression of a “gloomy monster” on his friends. Knowing him better, Vera Pavlovna appreciated "what a gentle and kind person he is."

Rakhmetov gave his all to the cause of the revolution. Personal life, in the usual sense, does not exist for him. Friends call the hero a "rigorist", that is, a person who, with unswerving firmness, observes the rules he has adopted and refuses all pleasures for the sake of his work. The hero of the novel believes that people who have devoted themselves to the struggle for human happiness should testify with their lives that they demand happiness "not to satisfy their personal passions, not for themselves personally, but for a person in general."

Work for the revolution has become his personal affair, the only one that completely absorbs him. Therefore, he learned to treat his time very carefully: he makes only “necessary” acquaintances, reads only “original” books, that is, those in which important thoughts are fully and clearly stated.

Rakhmetov tries to be as close as possible to the common people, closely studying their life. He knows that people respect strong people, so he stubbornly does gymnastics, various physical labors, and eats simple food. He mastered various working professions: “he was a plowman, carpenter, carrier and worker of all kinds of healthy trades; once he even walked the entire Volga, from Dubovka to Rybinsk, ”demonstrating such extraordinary strength that his comrades in the webbing dubbed him Nikitushka Lomov, after the famous bogatyr barge hauler who walked along the Volga about fifteen to twenty years ago.

The revolutionary activity of the hero can be judged only by individual hints: his trips, meetings, some business are mentioned, "not personally related to him." Chernyshevsky did not have the opportunity to say more, but he emphasizes the authority of Rakhmetov among the progressive youth, makes it clear that the hero is the leader and educator of the revolutionaries.

The writer encourages young people to follow Rakhmetov along the path of revolutionary struggle. This path is difficult and dangerous. People who have declared a life-and-death war on the existing system know that if they fall into the hands of the authorities, they will not receive mercy. Therefore, the hero of Chernyshevsky tests his ability to withstand torture. After spending the night on the tips of the nails, he says to Kirsanov: “Test. Need to. ; Incredible, of course; however, just in case, it is necessary. I see I can." Chernyshevsky himself was well aware that the need for such training was not at all so “implausible”: after all, he wrote the chapter on Rakhmetov just during his exhausting hunger strike. There are very few people like Rakhmetov "the lady in mourning" and her husband, but their significance is enormous. "This is the color of the best people, these are the engines of engines, this is the salt of the salt of the earth." The whole book is filled with a premonition of the revolution, predictions of its coming.

It is also important that the closest literary predecessor of Rakhmetov is Bazarov from Turgenev's novel Fathers and Sons. While maintaining some stylistic continuity, Chernyshevsky at the same time showed that his hero differs from Bazarov in the presence of a positive point of application of his forces and has the ability to act among like-minded people.

The image of Rakhmetov is built on a paradoxical combination of the incongruous. The extreme chronological specificity of his biography, which serves as a starting point for many other events in the book, is adjacent to significant gaps in events; a minor character, he turns out to be “more important than all taken together”; an extreme materialist in his views, he lives and fights only for an idea.

The image of the hero Chernyshevsky, as befits any hagiographic image, gave rise to many imitations. He became the standard of a professional revolutionary, as D. I. Pisarev pointed out in the article “The Thinking Proletariat” (1865), calling Rakhmetov a “historical figure”: “In the general movement of events, there are such moments when people like Rakhmetov are necessary and irreplaceable” .

He lives in the general, refusing the personal. He loved one lady, but deliberately refused his love, because she would have limited him. He admits that he wants to live like everyone else, but he cannot afford it. Rakhmetov is a special, new person, in whom we see the ideal image of a revolutionary.

3. Comparative characteristics of the heroes of the first half of the 19th century. *

At first glance, all the characters are completely different, but if you look closely, we will see both striking differences and impressive similarities.

The relationship of characters with society.

So, we see that most of the heroes are in conflict with the society of their time. Progressive-minded Chatsky is not accepted in society. The Famus society slanders Alexander Andreevich, spreading rumors about his insanity, but the hero cannot be broken, he is the undisputed winner in moral terms.

Also in moral terms, the spiritual aspect is higher than other heroes and society, Count Pierre Bezukhov. For whom the ideal of life is service to the people, the public good, just like Chatsky's.

A critical attitude towards high society and neighbors-landowners is experienced by Pushkin's hero Eugene Onegin. Grigory Pechorin also treats society a little condescendingly. But it is important to note that Onegin, despising the world, is afraid of his opinion and accepts a challenge to a duel from his friend Lensky.

Pechorin, on the other hand, is absolutely not interested in what they think of him. He himself does what he wants with the society (conflict with the water society, duel with Grushnitsky and the death of the latter).

Turgenev's hero, Yevgeny Bazarov, is also dismissive of society. The nihilist is not interested in what they say about him. But the hero is in conflict with P.P. Kirsanov because of the “incompatibility” of views on life, the state system, etc.

Oblomov experiences complete social apathy, the hero does not care what is happening outside the window of his room.

Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov does everything for his own benefit, and if he needs society, then he enters into trust, flatters and gets along well in any society.

Dmitry Rudin, in turn, does not get along anywhere for a long time. Obviously, Rudin's superiority over the hypocritical landowner Lasunskaya, her accustomer Pandelevsky, the denier Pigasov, but Turgenev's hero's word is at odds with the deed, the latter "weaves somewhere far behind."

Rakhmetov goes against his environment not because of circumstances, but solely due to the strength of his convictions, only by principle, and not by predilection, by conviction, and not by personal need.

Some heroes can be attributed to "superfluous people" (Onegin, Pechorin), individuals who were ahead of their time (Bazarov, Rakhmetov), ​​characters living "out of" time - dropped out of their time (Rudin, Oblomov). And all of them are in conflict with society.

But only one of them, the deceitful and dodgy Chichikov, lives in clover, gradually making a fortune, on deception with “dead” souls. Unfortunately, only Gogol's hero, who caters to everyone who is useful to him, functions calmly in Russian society in the 40s of the 19th century.

Society (albeit in the 60s and 30s) is not ready for Bazarov and Chatsky and Rakhmetov. Pechorin and Onegin do not know how to realize their strength. Oblomov is sorely lacking in practical activities, just like Rudin. But the hero of Turgenev loves to engage in polemics on absolutely any topic, and the hero of Goncharov only occasionally has weak insights.

Only the hero of L. N. Tolstoy is useful to society in practice (he fights, donates money to those in need), understands his purpose and his place in society.

The attitude of heroes to friendship.

So, the heroes basically fail the test of friendship.

Chatsky Griboyedov does not show any friends at all.

Pechorin does not have friends on his own conviction that "in friendship, one is invariably the slave of the other."

Chichikov does not see it useful for himself to have friends. Pavel Ivanovich has only useful acquaintances through whom one can benefit. Both Pechorin and Chichikov are selfish. They only take, they don't give.

In friendship with the poet V. Lensky, Onegin is patronizing, with condescension to the "young heat". But soon, as a result of a quarrel, a duel occurs between friends. Eugene is afraid of public opinion and accepts a challenge to a duel, then kills Lensky. Pushkin's hero did not succeed in friendship.

Evgeny Vasilyevich Bazarov, who also treated his friend Arkady Kirsanov in a patronizing manner, was also not happy in friendship. But there is no friendship without mutual understanding. Being representatives of the same generation, Evgeny Bazarov and Arkady Kirsanov ultimately cannot find a common language. Friendship of two completely different people in character and outlook on life also takes place.

Friendship between the apathetic Oblomov and the active Stolz. The characters of the characters are so different that many critics agreed: Stolz is a kind of “antidote” to Oblomov. As a result, the sluggish and lazy Oblomov is unhappy, and his active friend is the opposite.

The characters are also different in Turgenev's Rudin novel of the same name. Rudin talks a lot, but does little, his friend Lezhnev - on the contrary. As a result - misfortune in the life of the first, happiness of the second.

Chernyshevsky does not show Rakhmetov's friends, only friends, but all of them, of course, respect the hero.

And finally, the friendship of Pierre Bezukhov and Andrei Bolkonsky. The heroes are united by the search in life, the truth, both of them are at a crossroads. Disagreeing with each other, they recognize the right of everyone to their own judgments, to their own choice. Friendship of heroes is saturated with respect.

We see that Pechorin, Chichikov and Onegin are selfish and unhappy in friendship. Bazarov does not have an understanding with his friend Arkady. Oblomov and Rudin are passive. Chatsky and Rakhmetov's friends are not depicted. Only Count Pierre Bezukhov is happy in friendship, because, unlike other heroes, he is not selfish and respects the opinion and right to choose his friend.

Test of love.

And again our heroes are unhappy.

Chatsky's chosen one, Sophia, is closed to the hero, spreads gossip about his madness and, in my opinion, is not worthy of an honest and open Griboyedov hero.

Pushkin's Onegin fails in love. Fate punishes the hero of the work for neglecting the feelings of women earlier, for a wild life and for not seeing in Tatyana the girl her amazing, incomparable, pure inner world. Love is missed

Pechorin is an egoist (“I loved for myself, for my own pleasure, I only satisfied the strange need of the heart, greedily absorbing their feelings, their joys, their suffering - and could never get enough”).

Gogol's hero does not know what love is, he simply does not think about it. Chichikov loves no one and nothing but himself and money, although he would be glad to find a richer wife.

Oblomov and Rudin love in words. Heroes are not capable of active love, where you need to do things.

Yevgeny Bazarov also suffers defeat in love. Raznochinets Bazarov, feels embarrassed in front of the aristocrat Odintsova. The heroine rejects the nihilist.

Rakhmetov consciously renounces happiness for the sake of a social, revolutionary idea.

The only one who is happily married is Pierre Bezukhov. But at what cost! After many years of torment in marriage with the dishonest Helen Kuragina, the hero, after the unexpected death of his wife, still finds the desired happiness by meeting Natasha Rostova. In the epilogue, Pierre Bezukhov is depicted as a happy husband and father.

So, the heroes are accustomed only to take, but not to give, and in love this is tantamount to death. After all, what, besides suffering, did Pechorin, Rudin, Onegin, Oblomov give to their beloved!? Chatsky is unhappy through no fault of his own, Chichikov does not even think about the eternal feeling. Oblomov gives in to fate. Rakhmetov consciously avoids personal happiness. Only exhausted by the failures of his marriage to Helen, Bezukhov will find his happiness.

Attitude to the motherland, the political situation in the country.

In relation to the political situation and the state system, the opinions of the heroes differ.

Chatsky and Bezukhov see the purpose of life in serving the people, "the cause, not the persons", in the public good.

Pierre cannot look indifferently at the manifestation of injustice, social evil, and opposes autocracy and serfdom. The characters are close in their beliefs to the Decembrists. Bezukhov even joins a secret society, and in Woe from Wit there is a hint of a secret circle.

Eugene Onegin is also close to the ideas of Decembrism. Pushkin speaks of the freethinking of the hero, of his communion with the near-Decembrist, only in hints. But these allusions are significant and eloquent. Relieving the fate of the serfs (quite a “Decembrist” gesture in spirit), reading Adam Smith, who was in use among the Decembrists, long conversations and disputes with Lensky on the most burning topics of our time, and finally, a direct comparison of Onegin with a freethinker, philosopher Chaadaev, mention of the acquaintance of the hero with the dashing hussar, the Decembrist Kaverin, a story about his friendship with the hero-author, a disgraced poet, and Onegin's willingness to accompany him in his escape abroad.

Pechorin is an egoist, he seeks personal happiness, not public happiness.

Oblomov is passive to the political situation, lives in his fenced, closed world.

Rudin has many ideas and plans to improve life in the country, but these projects remain just projects. The hero lacks practical activity, things do not move beyond words.

Chichikov directs his forces not to state prosperity, but to his own needs (scam with "dead" souls).

Turgenev's hero falls into a conflict between fathers and children. The old opinion collides with the new conviction.

Rakhmetov is a special, new person, in whom we see the ideal image of a revolutionary.

So, the active, preaching the word Chatsky, gifted, albeit inactive heroes: Onegin, Pechorin, Bazarov, Rudin are not accepted in Russian society of the 19th century. The generation of these heroes did not know how to realize their plans for the transformation of Russia.

Oblomov's strength is in thought, but the hero is inactive and useless for society. And the negative hero is active - Chichikov. Gogol's hero feels at home in the society of the 19th century like a fish in water. Greed and greed reign in society. That is why Chichikov does not belong to the “superfluous”. He is active, and his activity is successful, but it is aimed at deception.

For Pierre Bezukhov and Rakhmetov, activities are directed in a positive direction (Tolstoy's hero fights, donates funds for the victims; Chernyshevsky's hero understands public affairs). But even in the epilogue, portraying the happy family man Pierre, L. N. Tolstoy shows us that this is far from the end, and we understand that we have a future Decembrist in front of us. Rakhmetov is a revolutionary.

III. CONCLUSION. The meaning of the images of literary heroes of the first half of the 19th century.

So, let's try to draw conclusions, for this we will define concepts.

"EXTRA MAN" is a term used to refer to literary heroes who are in opposition to the social system, endowed with knowledge of their uselessness, suffering from the lack of a clearly conscious goal in life. It is believed that the concept of "superfluous people" implies the impossibility of "inclusion" of heroes of this type in real social practice, their "social uselessness".

Under the "HERO OF OUR TIME" we mean the hero of a work of art, reflecting the main conflict of society in a certain period of time (at the time of the creation of the work or the "life" of this character).

The merit of Griboedov is that the hero, the society opposing him, the conflict relations between them receive a realistic embodiment in the comedy "Woe from Wit".

Pushkin's Onegin in the novel is presented as a progressive, nationally peculiar phenomenon, of great social significance. Pushkin gave a multilateral characterization of Onegin, revealed his contradictory essence, pointed out the positive and negative significance of this social phenomenon. With the image of Onegin, Pushkin prompted other writers of the 19th century to express their word about the “heroes of their time”.

Widely using the traditions of previous literature, M. Yu. Lermontov in the novel "A Hero of Our Time" creates his own, special, type of hero. The writer begins to solve the most difficult task - to show a fundamentally new type of personality, to create an image of a gifted and thinking person, but crippled by secular education and cut off from the life of the people. Pechorin was a kind of "result" of the author's reflections on the essence of the "hero of his time" - a phenomenon of great social significance.

"A Hero of Our Time" is considered the first "personal" novel in Russian prose, the ideological and plot core of which is not an external biography, but the personality of a character.

It is recognized that the main psychological "nerve" in the character of Pechorin, the main internal spring that guides his life, motives and actions are individualism, which is not just a characteristic feature of the generation of the 30s, but also the world perception of the hero, the philosophy of his life.

The failure of Pechorin's skepticism as a worldview is obvious, but its profoundly progressive significance should also be noted. Pechorin's denial puts the hero much higher than the "wise people", brings Pechorin closer to the best, advanced people of the Lermontov era, thereby making it possible to consider Pechorin a truly Hero of the Time.

The tragedy of the fate of the hero is inevitable. Pechorin's trouble is not in the inability, but in the impossibility to fulfill his "high purpose", because the path that Pechorin could take has not been "marked" yet.

Most researchers believe that the meaning and content of the image of the Hero of the Time in the 1920s and 1930s is a forced, historically conditioned refusal to work. The characters of this period, possessing an extraordinary mind and energy, cannot act due to objective reasons: living conditions in serf-owning Russia, oppression by the government, underdevelopment of social relations - all this did not provide an opportunity for fruitful activity. Therefore, the energy of the heroes was wasted, on the satisfaction of individualistic desires.

However, their advanced social significance is not in real activity, but in the level and quality of their consciousness in comparison with the environment. The rejection of the existing conditions of life, the protest in the form of non-participation in social activities, in the era of noble revolutionism and the subsequent reaction, determine the "advanced" position of the heroes. This is probably why some scientists tend to rank Onegin and Pechorin as the vanguard of the social movement, to see them as heroes of the Decembrist persuasion.

In the 1940s and 1950s, with the change in social and historical conditions, the type of hero of his time also changed.

After a seven-year reaction, broader opportunities for “action” appear, the goals and tasks of the struggle become clearer. At this time, the hero becomes " par excellence": he promotes advanced ideas, influences the minds of people. But nevertheless, it does not cease to remain "superfluous" due to the impossibility of combining into a single word and deed. This is manifested primarily in the inability of "superfluous people" to real activity with its real possibility.

I. S. Turgenev develops the theme of the “hero of his time” widely and diversified. The writer from different angles explores the psychological options for the type of hero of the time, trying to create truthful portraits of his contemporaries - representatives of the "cultural layer" of the Russian nobility.

The logical outcome of the writer's reflections on the historical drama of the hero of his time was the novel "Rudin". The protagonist of the work - an intelligent, well-educated person, a brilliant speaker and propagandist - is defeated when confronted with real life. Rudina Turgenev sees the reasons for the drama in his abstract, abstract approach to reality, in his ignorance of the pressing problems of Russian life, in his "philosophical idealism."

Rudin's special place is determined by the fact that he is a person who lives in the public interest, his aspirations are aimed at the common, not personal good. His ardent speeches awaken the thought, inspire hope, therefore the leading word of the hero is his "historical deed".

People like Rudin, having risen to the denial of evil and injustice, influenced the minds and hearts of those who, unlike them, were full of strength and could join the struggle in the future. The time of the "rudins" has passed, but it was their forces that paved the way for the "new people" following them, it was the "rudins" who did everything possible for them to appear.

The sixties brought fundamental changes in the hierarchy of literary heroes. The birth and appearance on the historical arena of a new social force - the revolutionary-democratic intelligentsia - clarify the aspects and directions of the possible activity of the individual.

A necessary condition for the “usefulness” of a person is his inclusion in real social practice. This "requirement of the time" was reflected in a number of programmatic publications of the 60s ("Russian man on renduz-vous" by N. G. Chernyshevsky; "What is Oblomovism?" N. A. Dobrolyubov; "Bazarov", "Realists" D. I. Pisareva and others). Their authors stated an indisputable fact: the "hero of his time" sometimes turned out to be "below" the tasks of his time.

However, N. G. Chernyshevsky, and N. A. Dobrolyubov, and D. I. Pisarev, noting the numerous weaknesses and shortcomings of typical representatives of this time, paid tribute to all the positive things that these heroes carried in themselves. “They were the bringers of new ideas to a certain circle, educators, propagandists. their work was difficult, respectable and beneficial, ”considered N. A. Dobrolyubov. “The time of the Beltovs, Chatskys, Rudins has passed. but we, the newest realists, feel our blood relationship with this obsolete type. We recognize our predecessors in him, we respect and love our teachers in him, we understand that without them we could not exist,” wrote D. I. Pisarev.

The tragedy of Russia in the first half of the 19th century lies in the rejection of smart, gifted, positive heroes, albeit inactive ones (Onegin and Pechorin; Chatsky and Rudin, Bazarov and Rakhmetov), ​​but their strength is in reflection. But, unfortunately, in Russia, in Russian society, they turn out to be unclaimed, while the negative hero (Chichikov) feels himself in the society of the 19th century like a fish in water. Greed and greed reign in Russia. He is active, and his activity is successful, but it is aimed at deception. Chichikov uses the imperfection of the political system exclusively for his own benefit. Gogol wanted to create a positive hero in the third volume of Dead Souls, but he could not do this, because, unfortunately, Rus' and a positive hero are incompatible things. Russia rushed towards the abyss, putting a fog in her eyes, set off on a false path.

Only Pierre Bezukhov (the hero of L. N. Tolstoy's epic "War and Peace"), having gone through the severe trials of fate, comes to understand his destiny - serving society and the people.

Thus, we have confirmed our hypothesis: the problem of society in the first half of the 19th century in Russia is the rejection of smart, gifted, positive heroes, even if they are inactive; and the way to overcome this tragedy is that the meaning of the life of the hero (and the man himself) lies in the ability to serve for the benefit of society and the people, and not to satisfy the selfish interests of the individual.

It is important to note that all writers believed in the possibility of a spiritual, moral rebirth of the Russian nation. And our duty is to love Russia dearly (actively), to begin the transformation of society by changing itself, to be cleansed of sins, to believe in God and in the strength of our people. After all, the soul is immortal. We just need to be able to resurrect it, and with it a society where thinkers are superfluous, and adventurers are our own. A better future for the Motherland is not only our main duty, but also our most sacred duty.

So, what is a "hero of our time"?

Considering the theme of characters in literature, you inevitably call him a hero. But what is inherent in the hero of modern literature?

World literature has managed to develop only four main types of plot and, accordingly, four types of “hero” corresponding to each of this unique plot:

1) a hero who challenged the surrounding reality by the very fact of his existence. Hero-rebel (the plot "the city is defended and besieged by heroes"). Sigrfried, Sigurd, St. George, Hercules, Achilles. Pavel Korchagin can be considered an example of such a hero in modern literature.

2) the hero - a man of wanderings, a man rejected by society, unable to find himself in it, endlessly wandering through the nooks and crannies of space and time: Beowulf, Odysseus, Don Quixote, and in a modern interpretation: Pecherin.

3) a hero is a character who is in constant search for a certain "grail" of a certain meaning, but not rejected by society, not opposing himself to him, even if he is forced to. Here the list is huge, the most characteristic image in mythology, by definition of the same Borges, is Jason, Belorophon, Lancelot, or, for example, Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde.

4) the hero of the “death of the gods” plot – one who has lost or is gaining faith, seeking faith: this is Volkonsky in Tolstoy, and the Master in Bulgakov, and Zarathustra in Nietzsche.

In any case, any time determines the most convenient type of hero that fits into the general reader's understanding of the content of a given time in a given space.

The popularity of the "outcast" heroes coincided in time with the collapse of society and was localized in the space of "darkness". The popularity of rebel heroes was due to the era of rebellion and revolution, the era of the formation of a new society. The rebel hero attracts the viewer with sympathy for him, the desire to imitate and be like him. The wandering hero attracts with sympathy and a desire to help, but not to imitate, not to imitate. The search hero draws us in with his search to follow him, guiding us through space as a guide and revealing to us his amazing secrets. The faith-seeking hero forces us to participate in the thought process and makes us think.

SLIDING ON THE REALITY OF THE PRESENT, WITHOUT MEMORY OF THE PAST AND SEARCH FOR THE FUTURE. The past has died since the death of the old value system and the old world. The horror of velvet revolutions from the point of view of culture lies in the fact that they do not give birth to rebel heroes, who, in principle, are needed for "non-velvet" revolutions. They give birth to precisely gray and nondescript personalities that all these revolutions saw on TV or learned about them from newspapers. The past is cut off and forgotten for them, like unnecessary rubbish, which for some reason flickers in memory, but has no value already in their world, in a world without a past.

THIS HERO IS DISCONNECTED FROM "SUPERCULTURE" AND IS SUB-CULTURE. Exactly! Subculture subordinates the consciousness of such a person. A person is immersed in the space of a dull today, but not a great past. There is no past! The past is some kind of illusion, a false mirage that flickers in memory for some reason.

THIS IS A PERSON TO OBEY TO THE RULES OF THE PRESENT FULLY AND UNQUICKLY IMPOSED ON HIM, UNLIKE PAVEL KORCHAGIN, ALL OF WHICH BEHAVIOR WAS A CONTINUOUS PROTEST TO THE PRESENT. This man does not protest, rather, all his strength is enough for him only to fight for life. How can his life become a protest? Protest against what? Against the opportunity to live? The poor shopkeeper fights for himself, not for great ideas. He does not need great ideas, his whole essence is completely in the space of his present, or rather the banal bustle of life. Banal trading for one's own life.

THIS PERSON DOES NOT CREATE A FAMILY, BUT CREATE LOVE. With all this, he is a hero-wandering. All his fuss, all his helplessness, creates a moment of rejection by the world. This person is rejected not by society, but by the most vain and cruel reality at the same time. Such a person is not able to create a family, but is able to fall in love.

1) This person is indifferent to the suffering of others, but is very worried about the suffering of people close to him.

2) This is a hidden barbarian, but with a civilized mask. He is capable of any barbarism and any immoral act, but is educated and generally reserved and phlegmatic.

3) Most importantly - he is not aggressive!

The overall result: the hero of our time, this is the hero of timelessness, a man who succumbed to the temptations of the present.

But, probably, this hero should give another type: the decadent type is replaced by the assertive one.

How did this character come about and how did he infect the public consciousness?

The reason for the penetration of such a character into the consciousness of most modern writers should be sought precisely in the processes that have been observed in our world in the past few years. It is the hero who resonates in the soul of the mass reader and becomes popular at this current moment in the territory of this space. Examples of such "heroes" are the characters of Sergei Dovlatov (the best, in my opinion, writer of the era of modern decline). But, in his characters there is still no intimidation and detachment that manifests itself in the images created by the now fashionable writer V. Pelevin. It was in the work of Pelevin that the modern hero found his most decisive reflection.

Why not allow the opposite image in the mind of the reader?

At one time, someone noticed that the Gestapo chief in the famous television series turned out to be much more attractive and attractive than the noble and absolutely correct Stirlitz. It’s hard to believe in the “right” heroes living in the wrong world. They look like a mockery of reality, like some phantoms and peculiar monsters that for some reason have penetrated into a distorted and at the same time bizarre world. Müller is cruel, cynical (just to the point of cuteness!), smart. And at the same time, Muller is unlucky. Muller plays Stirlitz as a character in the eyes of the viewer in all respects. It’s hard to believe in the eccentric superluck of the “correct” Stirlitz, but in the bad luck of his completely “wrong”, or rather ordinary for that reality (the reality of the viewer, not the hero), his opponent, Muller, can be understood.

Although, of course, this bad luck is connected with the director's intention, and is already embedded in the script itself, but the viewer does not have time to catch it. The reader rejects the false image, unconsciously looking for the true one, which most accurately fits into his worldview. At the same time, each reader, according to the Borges formula, finds that image of a modern hero that most accurately fits into his worldview and with which he can find himself.

There can be two answers:

1) the authors just want to get quick popularity and throw to the viewer those characters that are most associated with the reader's average self-perceptions: chaos, timelessness, chaos, loss of spirit and strength.

Most of the heroes of modern literature, through which the author's position is expressed, cannot be unambiguously assessed. They are just a set of guidelines to follow when trying to figure out who you are and who you are going to become. An approximate (and very approximate) typology of the heroes of modern literature (as examples, authors and books seen in society are mentioned, which attracted the attention of authoritative experts, won prizes in competitions, and winners of prestigious awards):

A reflective personality who has abandoned the generally accepted set of social roles, "fallen out" of time, lost in it, choosing external or internal emigration (V. Aksyonov "The New Sweet Style", V. Makanin "Underground, or the Hero of Our Time", L. Ulitskaya "Sincerely yours Shurik", "Kukotsky's Incident", Y. Arabov "Big Beat", A. Melikhov "Plague", P. Meilakhs "The Chosen One");

A fighter living in a society of lawlessness, and defending justice, honor and dignity, and even just the opportunity to survive, according to the laws of lawlessness, realizing that it is impossible to do otherwise (V. Rasputin "Ivan's daughter, Ivan's mother", S. Govorukhin "Voroshilovsky shooter ", R.D. Gallego "Black and White");

A conformist, a layman with a positive aspiration (manager, businessman, PR specialist, architect), who has made a career, has a fairly flexible conscience and principles, suddenly trying to understand what is happening to him, and sometimes thinking about the soul (V. Pelevin "Generation P", E. Grishkovets "Shirt", A. Kabakov "Everything is fixable").

A young, loitering person who considers himself a hero of the new modernity and aspires to this, but belongs to the "lost generation" (born in the 70-80s and bearing the signs of the collapse of the empire) (I. Stogoff, S. Shargunov "Hurrah! ").

Standing apart is the idealized teenage hero, a knight filled with nobility without fear or reproach, who unconditionally stands as a wall in the path of any evil. But for some reason, it always seems that an honest, direct, uncompromising teenager fighting injustice in the books of V.P. Krapivina, does not operate in the real world, but inside the myth of the world.

Of course, the absence of a positive hero as an ideal, an idea, a guideline for development is typical today for "high" literature (which was discussed above), but not for the mass genres of "formula" literature (created according to a certain scheme, formula, where there is a mandatory set of types and certain schemes for the development of events, which are not so many; formal literature includes detective, thriller, science fiction, romance). In this literature, there are necessarily positive heroes (policemen, investigators, private detectives and journalists who enter the fight against criminals; interplanetary travelers who free alien worlds from evil; individuals endowed with superpowers who direct them for the benefit of mankind; noble businessmen and bankers who defend good and justice). All according to the laws of the genre. And most importantly, all the accents of good and evil are clearly placed. There are criteria by which you can compare your life. Perhaps this partly explains the superpopularity of mass genres in the context of the decline of the classical socio-psychological novel (or "novel of education"), within which the formation and development of the positive hero of new literature could take place.

Miscellaneous writers. N. G. Chernyshevsky. Who became the direct heir to the ideas of the natural school in Russian literature? Except for the great satirist and publicist M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin (the next section will be devoted to him), then first of all those raznochintsy writers who are commonly called "revolutionary democrats". For the most part, they were interested not so much in "arts" as in the real course of real life. Many of them were political fighters in spirit, they wanted to change the Russian reality in an evolutionary or revolutionary way. But there were no legal ways to participate in politics (elections to parliament, parties) in autocratic Russia. And they did not want to confine themselves to illegal struggle, participation in secret revolutionary organizations. And then, feeling that Russian literature was turning into the main public platform, directly influencing the minds, dealing with the fate of “little people”, criticizing the structure of Russian life, raznochinny prose writers and publicists of the 1840-1860s, consciously or unconsciously, used literature as a means of promoting their political ideas.

The most prominent representative of this "cohort" of domestic writers-fighters was Nikolai Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky (1828-1889).

He was born and raised in Saratov, on the Volga. Being (like many literary raznochintsy) the son of a priest, he early parted from church life, but transferred all the passion of religious feelings to public life. He believed in the reorganization of earthly existence on a just basis, just as a believer hopes for the Kingdom of God, for the afterlife. A straightforward and honest man, Chernyshevsky warned his future wife in advance that he would devote himself entirely to the cause of the revolution, and if a popular uprising happened, he would certainly take part in it; therefore, most likely, he will end up in a fortress and hard labor. And so she consciously and voluntarily connected her fate with a "dangerous" person.

Before acting as a novelist, Chernyshevsky (who by that time had moved to St. Petersburg) managed to defend a scientific dissertation entitled "The Aesthetic Relations of Art to Reality" (1855). The main idea of ​​​​Chernyshevsky-aesthetics was the idea that the beautiful is life itself in all its manifestations, and the tragic is the terrible in human life.

From the point of view of traditional aesthetics, Chernyshevsky's ideas did not withstand any criticism. We do not read a book in order to derive practical benefit from reading; we read it in order to get aesthetic pleasure. Of course, a good book ultimately influences us, our thoughts, our worldview, and even educates us. But this is a consequence, not a cause, a result, not a goal. However, any political fighters, regardless of which camp they belong to, noble, raznochintsy or proletarian, treat art as a service force, which is subordinated to the solution of more important social problems.

In 1863, Chernyshevsky's own novel, What Is to Be Done?, appeared in Sovremennik. The title referred the reader to another nonfiction novel, Who is to Blame? A. I. Herzen. (At the center of Herzen's plot was the young nobleman Beltov; brought up by an idealist Swiss tsar, Beltov dreamed of social activity; tried to find a use for himself in the social field in Russia; was rejected by autocratic reality; became a disappointed "young old man", in fact, a loser.) But Herzen's question was posed "in a literary way"; he, as a writer-analyst, a student of the natural school, diagnosed modern society, declared it to be the main culprit of the Beltov catastrophe. And for Chernyshevsky, the question put in the title of the novel sounds almost like a guide to action. It is as if the writer promises the reader in advance to answer the question, to give a recipe for healing from a social disease.

The semi-detective plot (the mysterious hero Rakhmetov disappears to no one knows where) was fully consistent with the semi-detective history of the manuscript itself. On July 7, 1862, on suspicion of involvement in revolutionary organizations, Chernyshevsky was arrested and imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress. During the investigation (it ended in 1864 with a guilty verdict, civil execution and seven years of hard labor), Nikolai Gavrilovich had a lot of free time, and he composed a publicistic novel. The manuscript was submitted in parts to the members of the investigative committee, but did not raise any objections from them: the “dangerous” ideas were well conspired, veiled in an “entertaining” form. Missed the novel and censorship; if anything threatened the manuscript at that moment, it was an accident, “the finger of fate.”

Later, A. Ya. Panaeva recalled:

The editors of Sovremennik were impatiently waiting for Chernyshevsky's manuscript. Finally, it was received with many seals ... Nekrasov himself took the manuscript to Wolf's printing house, located not far - on Liteinaya, near Nevsky. A quarter of an hour had not passed since Nekrasov returned and, entering my room, struck me with the lost expression of his face.

A great misfortune happened to me,” he said in an agitated voice, “I dropped the manuscript!”

Most of all, Nekrasov feared that the manuscript of the novel What Is To Be Done? find some commoner who will put it into wrappers or sell it to a small shop; then it will not be possible to restore the novel. However, everything was settled by itself: the editors placed an ad in the newspaper, and soon an official came to Sovremennik and brought the manuscript he had found. In three issues of the magazine for 1863, the novel What Is To Be Done? was published.

Its heroes, as Chernyshevsky himself emphasized in the subtitle (“From stories about new people”), were representatives of a new generation of raznochintsy intelligentsia - later they would be called “sixties”.

Outwardly, the novel is structured in such a way that at first it is indeed easy to mistake for a traditional moral description.

The young raznochinets student Lopukhov is indignant at how the family treats the girl Vera Pavlovna; becoming her spiritual leader (actually replacing the priest, spiritual father), he instills in her a love of science, practical knowledge and social ideals. And in order to save her from marriage with a hated zhuyer, he marries her - and for this he refuses his future medical career, drops out of his studies at the medical academy.

Lopukhov's friend, Kirsanov, also refuses a brilliant medical practice, but not for the sake of saving a young creature, but for the sake of engaging in high science. In turn, the businesslike Vera Pavlovna comes up with a way to benefit society - she organizes a sewing workshop, the workers of which take everything they earn for themselves, and the mistress does not pursue any personal benefit. (This was the first depiction in Russian culture of socialist production based on justice, not profit.)

But the social idyll suddenly stumbles upon a personal problem: after two years of happy family life, Lopukhov suddenly notices that his wife has fallen in love with Kirsanov. How would the traditional hero of Russian classical literature act in such a situation? He would fall into deep thought, indulge in suffering, at worst, would challenge the enemy to a duel. Ho for new people (respectively for new heroes) this is an unworthy way out of the current circumstances, a manifestation of noble prejudices. Therefore, Lopukhov is guided not by emotions, but by reason (Chernyshevsky defined his ethical views as “reasonable egoism”). He analyzes the situation and in the end comes to the conclusion that Vera Pavlovna's happiness is the most precious thing, therefore, she should become Kirsanov's wife.

The images of young people filled with practical nobility are shaded, on the one hand, by the unworthy image of Vera Pavlovna's mother, Maria Alekseevna Pozalskaya. On the other - the ideal image of a real revolutionary Rakhmetov.

Maria Alekseevna is practical, intelligent, but indifferent to other people's suffering and cruel; her sole purpose is the welfare of the family. Of course, against the background of Pozalskaya with her unreasonable egoism, the “new people” especially benefit. But they lose a little against the background of Rakhmetov, who broke with his native noble environment and from his youth devoted himself to the future revolution (Rakhmetov even sleeps on bare boards to prepare his body for hardships). Lopukhov, Kirsanov, Vera Pavlovna have yet to become conscious fighters against the existing regime - the author hints at this quite transparently.

It is not for nothing that Vera Pavlovna constantly has dreams in which pictures of the socialist future arise; for this future, as the writer believes, it is not a pity to lay down one's life. In the famous “fourth dream” of Vera Pavlovna, the author’s words generally sound, which cannot be understood otherwise than as a direct call to revolution: “... you know the future. It is light and beautiful. Love it, strive for it, work for it, transfer from it to the present as much as you can transfer: your life will be so bright and kind, rich in joy and pleasure, as far as you can transfer it from the future.

Propaganda, tendentious, as they said then, the meaning of the novel "What is to be done?" eventually reached the censorship department. Ho late - the novel has already been published. It only remained to ban it for reprints (the ban was in effect until 1905). Those who let the manuscript go to print were roughly punished. Meanwhile, Chernyshevsky, as a consistent person, only put into practice the provisions of his long-standing aesthetic theory; he used the art form of a literary work to "advance" practical ideas. That is why his novel caused a huge reader response, but not as a literary work, but as a social, political document. It still retains its significance primarily as a historical source, as a distant evidence of that contradictory era.

"New People" in Social Prose of the 1860s. Writers of ordinary talent, of a good average level, seem to have “preserved” the poetics of a physiological essay. And for almost a decade and a half, they willingly exploited his methods.

So, Nikolai Gerasimovich Pomyalovsky (1835-1863) posed in his prose writings the actual problems of that time: in his story "Petty-bourgeois Happiness" (1861), the educated raznochinets Molotov faced with the incurable landlord nobility; in the sketch story The Junkman (1863), a man is taken out of the crowd. A Vasily Alekseevich Sleptsov (1836-1878) placed in the plot center of his sensational story "Hard Time" (1865) a revolutionary raznochintsy who is faced not with the "wild nobility", but with the inertia of the people. This hero, Ryazanov, expresses the cherished thought of the author himself, taking the ideas of Russian “naturalism” to the extreme: “Everything depends on the conditions in which a person is placed: under certain conditions he will strangle and rob his neighbor, and under others he will remove and give back myself the last shirt.

Such a super-rigid social approach to the human personality, which completely reduced it to external circumstances, was shared by many at that time. One of the most popular critics and publicists of that time, Dmitry Ivanovich Pisarev (1840-1868), in one of his articles polemically argued that a person does not kill people, does not commit bad deeds, for the same reason that he does not eat rotten meat. Ho, finding himself in a hopeless situation of hunger, he will overcome disgust and eat rotten meat; therefore, if the environment, circumstances compel him, he will kill and steal, and there is no particular fault in that. In fact, the writers and publicists of the revolutionary camp turned a person into a social animal, which depends on social instincts. Therefore, Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev called them nihilists, from the Latin word nihil - nothing.

However, the highest achievements of writers who were followers of the natural school are associated with the boundary between literature and journalism, the genre of the essay.

So, the best essays are still reprinted Gleb Ivanovich Uspensky (1843-1902) about the life of the Russian post-reform village - "From the village diary" (1877-1880). His colorful book The Morals of Rasteryaeva Street (1866) directly continued the tradition of the Physiology of Petersburg. These literary essays, devoid of fiction, but colored by the personal intonation of the narrator, had a direct influence on the development of "proper" fiction. They were read, for example, by Vladimir Galaktionovich Korolenko (1853-1921), whose stories “The Blind Musician” (1886) and “In Bad Society [Children of the Underground]” (1885) you read in elementary grades. Other talented prose writers of the second half of the 19th century did not pass them by, for example, Vsevolod Mikhailovich Garshin (1855-1888), the author of the textbook "social" story "The Red Flower" (1883).

Russian prose after natural school. In parallel with the physiological essay and literary essays of the essay type, realistic, life-like, everyday prose developed in the 1850s and 1860s. It was then that the Russian reader got acquainted with autobiographical novels Sergei Timofeevich Aksakov (1791-1859): "Family Chronicle" (1856), "Childhood of Bagrov-grandson" (1858); at the same time, his fairy tale “The Scarlet Flower” was published, which you probably know well. The father of the famous Slavophiles, the Aksakov brothers, Sergei Timofeevich came to "professional" literature late, a few years before his death, but remained in Russian culture forever. His literary talent was distinguished by originality. When raznochintsy writers began to expose the wild nobility and popular ignorance, Aksakov almost defiantly wrote about the happy childhood of the barchuk, Bagrov-grandson. Stylistically, it coincided with the spirit of the times, gave the characters and events social characteristics, and detailed the details of real life; substantively resisted the epoch.

And yet, the further fate of Russian literature was primarily associated not with acutely social stories from modern "grassroots life", not with vivid essays or autobiographical narratives in the spirit of Aksakov, but with the genre of the novel.

The main genres of modern European epic prose are short stories (short stories), short stories, and novels. The story is a small form; in it, as a rule, one storyline, not complicated by "side" plot moves, the focus of the narrator is the fate of the protagonist and his immediate environment. It is common to call a novel a special kind of story with a dynamic plot that ends with an unexpected denouement (the very name of the novel genre comes from the Italian word novella, which means “news”). The story is the middle form of epic prose; As a rule, there are several storylines in the story that interact with each other in a complex way. Ho, like a short story (and this is “enshrined” by the name of the genre), the story shows a picture of life that can be captured, as it were, with one glance, the gaze of the narrator, the narrator.

But the novel is a large form of epic prose, it covers such a vast section of life, so intertwines the fate of the characters, storylines, that it is difficult for one narrator to keep all its threads in his hands. Therefore, he is forced to resort to testimonies and "documents", retell events from other people's words, "instruct" the heroes who witnessed some episodes to independently narrate about them. The novel, as the largest literary genre, often absorbs small and medium-sized genres. Inside the vast space of the novel can include a poem, a fairy tale, and even a whole story - remember at least "The Tale of Captain Kopeikin" in Gogol's "Dead Souls".

And of course, the more complex the picture of life that Russian writers of the second half of the 19th century strove to portray became, the more often they turned to the synthetic, all-encompassing genre of the novel. It was in this genre that Fyodor Dostoevsky and Leo Tolstoy worked. They were destined to complete all the most important processes that took place in Russian literature throughout the entire 19th century. They managed to combine in their novel work the image of an individual character in inseparable connection with society and the environment - and an extremely broad view of a person as a being capable of overcoming any circumstances.

Hero of the time ... What is he like? Russian classic writers of the nineteenth century often reflected on this question. A.S. Griboyedov, A.S. Pushkin, M.Yu. Lermontov, I.S. Turgenev, L.N. Tolstoy in his works painted images of heroes who embodied the characteristic features of the people of the era.

Such characters, as a rule, are extraordinary and bright personalities, have outstanding abilities and a developed mind, thanks to which they stand out among those around them, who in most cases do not understand and do not accept them. In the works of classical writers, it is these characters that attract me. I always wanted to penetrate deeper into the secrets of their characters, to understand why people who could be useful to their contemporaries turned out to be unnecessary to society.

The novels "Eugene Onegin" and "A Hero of Our Time" are considered the pinnacles of Russian classics. Readers of different generations turn to these works at different stages of life. The problem of the hero of his time, touched upon in both books, is also of interest to thinking people of the twenty-first century. There is a huge reassessment of values, our ideals are changing. And we continue to look for answers to "eternal" questions from classical writers.

Onegin is a typical nobleman of the twenties of the nineteenth century. The upbringing and education of the Pushkin hero were rather superficial. However, he still received the minimum knowledge necessary to shine in the world: he spoke French, knew how to dance a mazurka and “bowed at ease” ... Onegin led the usual way of life for the nobles of that time: he went to balls, went to the theater, attended social events. The enjoyment of life and success among women at first attracted the protagonist of the novel.

But Yevgeny is smart, and therefore, over time, an idle and empty life simply bored him - “Russian melancholy took possession of him.” He does not find meaning in any activity. Tatyana's love does not save from obsessive boredom. Onegin rejects the feelings of a girl in love with him: he is "not created for bliss." Indifference to life, inner emptiness turned out to be very strong. Subsequently, the punishment for this will be loneliness.

In Pushkin's hero there is, despite all his shortcomings, "the soul of direct nobility." It is no coincidence that he is so sincerely and tenderly attached to the young Lensky. However, Onegin himself destroys his friend, shooting him in a duel. And, regrettably, the cause of Lensky's senseless death is Onegin's "spleenness".

V.G. Belinsky notes that a certain part of the readers misinterpreted the image of Onegin, seeing in him only an ordinary secular dandy, a "cold egoist." According to the critic, Onegin is “an unwilling egoist”, and society has made him that way. He belongs to a generation that does not know where to apply their sometimes remarkable strength. I almost completely share Belinsky's opinion. However, I believe that only society should not be blamed for Onegin's misfortunes. It is hardly possible to remove responsibility from the Pushkin hero himself. He does not set himself any life goals, because he does not want to work in the name of their achievement.

M.Yu. Lermontov is a writer of "a completely different era", although they are separated from Pushkin by no more than a decade. Pechorin became the "hero" of time - or rather, timelessness - of the 30s. On the one hand, this is a skeptic disappointed in life, who lives solely “out of curiosity”, but on the other hand, he subconsciously craves life, activity. In Pechorin rationality and feelings, mind and heart oppose. “I weigh, analyze my own passions and actions,” says Lermontov’s hero, “with strict curiosity, but without participation.”

Before the duel, scrolling through his own life in memory, Pechorin reflects on what he lived for and for what purpose he was born. “Ah, it’s true, it existed,” he writes in his journal, “and, it’s true, I had a high appointment ...”. Pechorin did not find his "high appointment". He spends his energy on actions that are unworthy and sometimes meaningless: he destroys the lives of the unfortunate “honest smugglers”, kidnaps the Circassian Bela, falls in love with Mary and then abandons her, kills Grushnitsky ... This is the fateful and terrible contradiction: “the immense forces of the soul » - and small deeds; he dreams of "loving the whole world" - and brings only evil.

Belinsky saw in the image of Pechorin the embodiment of the spirit of the times and appreciated Lermontov's hero quite highly. “The soul of Pechorin is not stony soil, but the earth dried up from the heat of fiery life ...” wrote the critic. Belinsky also pointed out the differences between Onegin and Pechorin, which are "much less than the distance between Onega and Pechora."

So, we have two heroes, two representatives of their difficult time. V.G. Belinsky did not put an "equal" sign between them, but he did not see a huge gap between them either. Their images really have a lot in common, ranging from character traits to life situations in which they were destined to fall. However, the conflict between the individual and society in "A Hero of Our Time" is sharper than in "Eugene Onegin": Pechorin "chases life" without getting anything from it, and Onegin just "goes with the flow."

"Eugene Onegin" and "Hero of Our Time" can be considered, without exaggeration, the brightest artistic documents of the era. Their main characters, by their existence, prove the futility of trying to live in society and at the same time be free from it.

So, the protagonist of literary works, the hero of the time, who, as a rule, is the “superfluous person” of his era, becomes a kind of expression of social problems, the bearer of new ideas and trends in Russian life. Russian literature of the 19th century presented a whole gallery of people of this type. The predecessor of Onegin and Pechorin can be called Griboedov's Chatsky. The traditions of Pushkin and Lermontov in depicting the “hero of time” were continued in the works of A.I. Herzen (“Who is to blame?”), I.S. Turgenev ("Rudin", "Fathers and Sons"), I.A. Goncharova ("Oblomov"). Chichikov, a character in Gogol's poem Dead Souls, can also be called a "hero" of the new, capitalist era. We find the features of the heroes of time in the characters of L.N. Tolstoy "War and Peace" by Andrei Bolkonsky and Pierre Bezukhov.

The writers of the 20th century also addressed the problem of the hero of time. One of the brightest examples is the image of the "superfluous person" Levushka Odoevtsev from A. Bitov's novel "Pushkin's House". At the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries, works appeared that again turned to the theme of the new generation, and therefore to the image of the hero of the time. In 1998, V. Makanin's novel "Underground, or a Hero of Our Time" was published. In 2006, S. Minaev's book "Duhless: A Tale of a Fake Man" aroused great interest among readers. Already in the very titles of the works, one can feel the desire of the writers to show the heroes of the time, and the roll call with the traditions of Pushkin and Lermontov.

This means that even now there are people like Onegin and Pechorin. These are modern “superfluous people” who, at first glance, have all the qualities necessary for success in life, and at the same time are in conflict with society.

Each era gives rise to a new hero, and the task of a true writer is to discern such a character and truly portray him in a work of art. This, in my opinion, is the main reason that writers have been turning to the theme of the hero of time for two centuries now.

"A Hero of Our Time" is certainly one of the masterpieces of Russian literature of the 19th century. It became the first Russian psychological novel. As the author writes in the preface, the novel depicts "the history of the human soul." And indeed it is. The whole novel is centered around the personality of the protagonist Pechorin. "A Hero of Our Time" is structured in such a way that readers learn about Pechorin's character gradually, see the hero from different angles, in different situations, listen to his characteristics from the lips of a variety of characters (and even the narrator officer himself, who accidentally meets Pechorin in the chapter "Maxim Maksimych"). Thus, at the end, the reader should form his own opinion about the “hero of time”.
In addition, the novel raises a number of important philosophical questions - about the boundaries of what is permitted, about life and death, about human will and predestination (most clearly in the story "The Fatalist"). Also, Lermontov manages to reliably depict in the novel several worlds of his contemporary era - the life of highlanders and Caucasian officers, the life of secular society on the waters.
The most interesting and mysterious person is the main character of the novel, Grigory Aleksandrovich Pechorin. All other characters of the novel immediately notice his eccentricity, courage, and caustic mind. Mediocre and shallow people (like Grushnitsky and the dragoon captain) feel hostility towards him. Smart and insightful people (like Dr. Werner) or simply good people (like Maxim Maksimych) are strongly attached to Pechorin, recognizing his superiority. Much in Pechorin's actions seems unusual, too risky. Sometimes he behaves like a cold and cruel person. For example, having fallen in love with a Circassian Bela, he quickly cools down to her and seriously injures her heart. A simple game for him is the rivalry with Grushnitsky for Princess Mary. He kills Grushnitsky in a duel, and then coldly admits to the princess that he does not love her at all.
The author does not justify his hero. But he finds an opportunity to show the reader why his soul “withered”. From the very beginning of his life, Pechorin found himself in an unfriendly world where no one understood him - and he was forced to defend himself, ruthlessly burying half of his soul. In a monologue before a duel with Grushnitsky, Pechorin says that he did not guess his destination, squandered his immense spiritual strength on empty and ignoble passions and lost "the ardor of noble aspirations - the best color of life."
In Pechorin, despite the realism of his character, the features of a romantic hero are visible. He is also lonely, resisting the whole world and even fate, he wanders restlessly around the world.
There are many other interesting or mysterious personalities in the novel - Kazbich from "Bela", Yanko from "Taman", Dr. Werner from "Princess Mary", Vulich from "The Fatalist", even the storyteller officer who published Pechorin's diary. But they are all psychological counterparts of Pechorin. Psychological "twins" are usually called heroes, in the image of which the author highlights some trait that is also characteristic of Pechorin himself. For example, in Kazbich - a passionate heart, in Yanko - mystery and courage, in Dr. Werner - a sharp mind .. When compared with the "doubles", Pechorin's personal qualities, the special properties of his character, the depth of his reflection - all those features due to which Pechorin became a "hero of the time." Only Grushnitsky is not a "double", but a parody of Pechorin. What makes up the essence of Pechorin's soul (disillusionment, contempt for secular society, wit) becomes simple posturing for Grushnitsky.

Composition

Classical Russian literature has always been a reflection of the surrounding life, a concentrated story about the problems facing Russian society at critical periods in history. Thanks to the works of A. S. Pushkin "Eugene Onegin", M. Yu. Lermontov "Hero of Our Time", N. V. Gogol "Dead Souls", M. E. Saltykov - Shchedrin "Lord Golovlev" and the works of other talented writers, we can see a truthful, vivid portrait of their contemporaries, trace the evolution of the development of Russian society.

From the passive and disillusioned in everything idler Eugene Onegin to Grigory Alexandrovich Pechorin, who is trying in vain to find his place in life, to the adventurer and money-grubber Chichikov and the completely degraded, lost human appearance Yudushka Golovlev, Russian writers of the 19th century lead us. They thought about the time, the ways of development of their contemporary society, tried by artistic means to convey a collective portrait of a generation, to emphasize its individuality, characteristic difference from the previous ones, thereby creating a chronicle of time, and in general, a true and figurative picture of the death of the noble class, which once brought Russia progress , culture, and subsequently became the main obstacle in its movement forward. Reading the works of art of the 19th century, you observe not only the events that played a major role in certain periods of time, but you learn about the people who in one way or another made our history. The movement of time cannot be stopped, it flows inexorably, changing us, ideas about life, ideals. The change of formations does not happen by itself, without the participation and struggle of a person, but it also changes people, since every time has “its own heroes”, reflecting the moral principles and goals they strive for. It is very interesting to trace this "evolution" in the works of art of the 19th century. To see what the hero “lost” or “found” as a result of this progressive movement. If we turn to a specific conversation about a character who, as if in a drop of water, reflected an entire generation, then I would like to dwell on Eugene Onegin, who stands almost at the origins of the formation of Russian bourgeois society. And what is the portrait like? Not very attractive, although outwardly the hero is beautiful. Like the windy Venus, When, wearing a man's outfit, the Goddess goes to a masquerade. His inner world is poor. He read a lot, "everything to no avail", "was gloomy." He who has lived and thought cannot but despise people in his soul... Departure for the countryside does not console Yevgeny, as he had hoped. Boredom everywhere equally accompanies idleness. Onegin mechanically does good to the peasants, but does not think about them. Alone, among his possessions, Just to pass the time, At first, our Eugene conceived to establish a new order. In his wilderness, the desert sage, Yarem, he replaced the old corvée with an easy quitrent; And the slave blessed fate. The habit of not bothering with anything makes Eugene Onegin lonely, and then completely unhappy. He refuses the love of Tatyana Larina, explaining his act in this way: “But I was not created for bliss; My soul is alien to him; Your perfections are in vain: I am not worthy of them at all. But Onegin is also not capable of sincere friendship. Having killed a friend in a duel, he leaves to wander, suffering from the long life to which he is doomed. Onegin with a look of regret Looks at the smoky streams And thinks, clouded with sadness: Why am I not wounded by a bullet in the chest? Why am I not a frail old man, I am young, my life is strong; What should I expect? longing, longing! .. And the end of the novel follows quite logically, when, having met Tatyana in the world, Onegin fell in love with her sincerely and deeply, but hopelessly: she is married and will never respond to Eugene's feelings. I love you (why lie?). But I am given to another; I will be faithful to him forever. Onegin did not see his fate, laziness of mind or spiritual callousness prevented him from understanding Tatyana at the first meeting, he pushed away pure and sincere love, now he pays with a lack of happiness, a joyless course of years. The image of Eugene Onegin, created by the genius of Pushkin, began a gallery of "superfluous people" in Russian literature of the 19th century, worthily continued by other writers.

Russian classical literature of the 19th century is a literature of search. Russian writers sought to answer the eternal questions of life: about the meaning of life, about happiness, about the Motherland, about human nature, about the laws of life and the universe, about God. They were also worried about what was happening in Russia, where its development was moving, what future awaited it.

In this regard, Russian writers were inevitably worried about the question of the "hero of the time" - the person with whom all the hopes and aspirations of the Russian intelligentsia were associated. This collective image was, as it were, the face of the generation, its typical spokesman.

So, A.S. Pushkin in his novel "Eugene Onegin" depicts a young St. Petersburg aristocrat - the hero of the 20s of the 19th century.

We learn about the upbringing, education, lifestyle of Eugene Onegin. This hero has not received a deep education. He is a fan of fashion, does and reads only what you can show off at a reception or dinner party.

The only thing that interested Onegin and in which he achieved perfection was "the science of tender passion." The hero early learned to be hypocritical, to pretend, to deceive in order to achieve his goal. But his soul always remained empty at the same time, only pride was amused.

In search of the meaning of life, Onegin tried to read various books, compose, but nothing could really captivate him. An attempt to forget himself in the village was also unsuccessful. The hero tried to carry out peasant reforms, to facilitate the work of serfs, but all his undertakings soon came to naught.

In my opinion, Onegin's problem was the lack of a true meaning of life. Therefore, nothing could bring him satisfaction.

Despite all this, Eugene Onegin had great potential. The author characterizes him as a man of great intelligence, sober and prudent, capable of much. The hero frankly misses among his narrow-minded village neighbors, by all means avoids their society. He is able to understand and appreciate the soul of another person. So it happened with Lensky, so it happened with Tatyana.

In addition, Onegin is capable of noble deeds. He did not take advantage of Tatyana's love after her letter, but explained himself to her like a decent person. But, unfortunately, at that time Onegin himself was not able to experience deep feelings.

On the other hand, the hero is a "slave of public opinion." That is why he goes to a duel with Lensky, where he kills the young poet. This event turns out to be the strongest shock for Onegin, after which his strong internal changes begin.

Eugene flees the village. We learn that for some time he wandered, moved away from high society, changed a lot. Everything superficial is gone, only a deep, ambiguous personality remains, capable of sincere love and suffering.

Thus, initially Onegin is a deep and interesting personality. But high society "has done him a disservice." Only after moving away from his surroundings, the hero again "returns to himself" and discovers in himself the opportunity to deeply feel and sincerely love.

The character of the novel M.Yu. Lermontov "Hero of Our Time" - a man of another era (30s of the 19th century). That is why Pechorin has a different warehouse, he is concerned about other problems.

This hero is disappointed in the modern world and in his generation: "We are no longer capable of great sacrifices, either for the good of mankind, or even for our own happiness." Pechorin lost faith in man, in his significance in this world: "We are rather indifferent to everything, except ourselves." Such thoughts lead the character to boredom, indifference and even despair.

Inevitable boredom gives rise to disbelief in love and friendship in the hero. These feelings may have appeared at a certain point in his life, but still did not bring happiness to Pechorin. He only tormented women with doubts, sadness, shame. Often Pechorin played with the feelings of others, not thinking about what hurts them. So it happened with Bela, so it happened with Princess Mary.

Pechorin feels like an “extra” person in his society, in general, “extra” in life. Of course, this hero has enormous personal powers. He is gifted and even talented in many ways, but does not find application for his abilities. That is why Pechorin dies at the end of the novel - Lermontov considered this the logical conclusion to the life of the "hero of his time."

The search for a modern hero continued in the literature of the second half of the 19th century. The portrait of the hero, captured in the works of this period, testifies to the significant changes that have taken place in society.

So, Evgeny Bazarov, the main character of the novel by I.S. Turgenev "Fathers and Sons", a representative of a new, younger generation in the novel. He is the personification of the changes that took place in society in the 60s of the 19th century.

Bazarov is a commoner. He is not rich, he earns for his education. The hero studies natural sciences and plans to become a practicing doctor. We see that this profession captivates Bazarov. He is ready to work to achieve results, that is, to help people, improve their lives.

Once in the "noble family" of the Kirsanovs, Evgeny Bazarov shocks the "fathers" with his views. It turns out that he is a nihilist - "a person who does not bow to any authorities, who does not accept a single principle on faith, no matter how respected this principle is surrounded."

Indeed, Bazarov denies everything that was accumulated before him by previous generations. Especially his heart "rebels" against everything intangible: art, love, friendship, soul.

Evgeny Bazarov sees only one destruction as the goal of his life. He believes that the goal of his generation is to "clear up space".

Turgenev did not agree with the philosophy of his hero. He debunks Bazarov's worldview, leading him through trials that the hero cannot stand. As a result, Bazarov is disappointed in himself, loses faith in his views and dies.

Thus, all Russian literature of the 19th century can be called the literature of the search for a Hero. The writers sought to see in the contemporary a person who is able to serve the motherland, benefit it with his deeds and thoughts, and also simply able to be happy and harmonious, develop and move forward. Unfortunately, Russian writers practically failed to find such a person.

She, referring to the writer Olga Slavnikova, argues that in a rapidly changing world, it is really impossible to understand the image of the hero of time as “also a person, only for some reason immortal”, as “the existence of a secret network of “special agents” sent from literature into reality is really impossible.”

There is another point of view. For example, critic Nikolai Krizhanovsky writes about the absence of a hero in modern Russian literature and assures that “a real hero of our time, like any other, for Russian literature is a person who is able to sacrifice himself for the sake of his neighbors, who is able to“ lay down his soul for his friends ”and ready serve God, Russia, family…”. According to the critic, the hero of our time in literature can be “a professional soldier who saves conscripts from a live grenade, an entrepreneur who does not want to live only for enrichment and his own pleasures and recklessly went to fight in Novorossia, a family man who brings up his children in national traditions , a schoolboy or student capable of a great and selfless deed, an elderly rural teacher who still keeps a cow and does not sell, but distributes milk to her poor neighbors, a priest who sells his apartment to complete the construction of the temple, and many other of our contemporaries.
In search of a “hero of our time,” Vera Rastorguyeva turns to the works of the so-called media writers, that is, writers actively published and widely cited by the press. Nikolai Krizhanovsky, in addition to media names, names several names from his entourage. Rastorgueva really describes the "hero of our time", found in modern works. Krizhanovsky assures that there are few real heroes left in modern literature, that “the process of deheroization of domestic literature is underway, and that, finally, “the tendency in modern literature to emasculate the positive hero is gradually being overcome today” by the efforts of some writers.
There is also a point of view according to which the blame for the disappearance of the heroic from modern literature is placed on postmodernism. The same critic Krizhanovsky believes that "the penetration of postmodernism into domestic literature leads to the disappearance of the hero in the original sense of the word."
However, none of these points of view seems convincing, and for several reasons at once. First of all, it is necessary to point out the conceptual confusion: saying “hero of our time”, many researchers mean “heroic”, understood as selflessness, courage, selflessness, nobility, etc. But the concept of “hero of our time” sends us, of course, to M.Yu. Lermontov. In the preface to the novel, Lermontov deliberately stipulates that "the hero of our time" is "a portrait made up of the vices of our entire generation, in their full development." In the same place, in the preface, Lermontov ironically notes that the public tends to understand every word literally and that he himself calls his contemporary, or rather, the most common type of modern man, “the hero of our time”. And if the image of Pechorin came out unattractive, then there is no author's fault.
In other words, "hero of our time" is not a synonym for "heroic" at all. So, since the time of Lermontov, it has been customary to call an image that has absorbed the typical features of the era, reflecting the spirit of the times, which does not necessarily have to be associated with heroism, nobility and selflessness. Therefore, studies of the "hero of our time" and "heroic" should go in two different directions. Replacing one concept with another not only clarifies nothing, but only multiplies confusion.
Misunderstandings of the creative process contribute to the same confusion, with critics guilelessly claiming the need for more descriptions of engineers, doctors, and teachers. Let's try, for example, to present a modern work of art written in the spirit and truth of the Early Middle Ages. It is clear that at best it will be comical, and at worst it will be pathetic, because the modern person professes different truths, moves in a different spirit. It is possible to portray the “hero of our time”, that is, according to Lermontov, a modern person who is met too often, guided by the spirit and truth of his time. But in this case, engineers, teachers, and doctors are not necessarily "positively wonderful people."
Each era creates its own picture of the world, its own culture, its own art. The expression “now they don’t write like that” is appropriate precisely in those cases when an artist tries to create in the spirit of a time alien to him. And this is not about conjuncture, but about the artist's ability to feel his time and convey these feelings in images. Even when working on a historical work, a sensitive and talented artist will make it understandable to his contemporaries, while not vulgarizing or simplifying anything. This means that the artist will be able to convey the spirit of a time alien to him in images understandable to his contemporaries.
Art changes with the era, so ancient art differs from medieval art, and contemporary Russian art differs from Soviet art. In the works of culture, a person always reflects himself and his era, a creative act does not exist in isolation from culture, and culture does not exist in isolation from the era. That is why the researcher of the work is able to identify the features and originality of the human type of a particular era. Based on this, it is logical to assume that if modern art does not offer heroic images, then the heroic is not characteristic, or rather, not typical of our era. And the point here is not the rejection of realistic writing.
It's easier, of course, to blame writers who don't want to describe characters. But it will be appropriate to do this only if the writers, fulfilling the order, deliberately deheroize literature. If we are talking about a direct creative act, then it would be much more correct to explore the era through works, and not try to turn literature into a program “On Request”.
In addition, in order to obtain more or less objective results, it is necessary to study the work of not only media authors. The fact is that modern domestic literature is very reminiscent of an iceberg with a relatively small visible part and a completely unpredictable invisible part. The visible or media part is, as a rule, the literature of the projects. Such literature does not have to be good or bad in terms of the quality of the text. It just has to be, consisting of printed books and authors whose names, thanks to frequent and repeated mention in all kinds of media, gradually become brands. So, even without reading the works, people know very well: this is a fashionable, famous writer. There is such a thing as "pop taste", that is, the preference is not good, but successful, what is replicated, broadcast and discussed. The modern literature of projects is designed specifically for the “pop taste”, while the goals of its existence are very different - from commercial to political. The author of a series of articles on the modern literary process, the writer Yuri Miloslavsky, analyzing the features of contemporary art, notes that, among other things, “the professional art industry, by its very nature, could not operate successfully in the conditions of variability, unpredictability and arbitrariness of individual creative achievements, indeed struggle of creative groups, etc.” That is why "gradually achieved complete and absolute man-made (ersatz, imitation) of artistic and / or literary success." In other words, that very media literature, or the literature of projects, is an artificially created space, characterized by Yuri Miloslavsky as an “artificial cultural context”, where “the best, highest quality will be declared at the moment that the art industry on someone’s orders , strategic or tactical calculations and, according to the own calculations formed on the basis of these calculations, produced, acquired and assigned for subsequent implementation. Today, anything can be assigned to these "best". Everything". In addition, Yuri Miloslavsky refers to the data of a survey conducted from 2008 to 2013 by the Megapinion Internet project. The survey participants, and they turned out to be over twenty thousand people, were asked the question “Which of these writers have you read?” and a list of nine hundred writers' names. It turned out that the percentage of media writers who actually read the works ranges from about 1 to 14. The Russian reader, it turns out, still prefers the classics or entertaining (mainly detective) fiction.

Perhaps the main consumers of media literature are researchers who undertake, for example, to find out what he is - "a hero of our time." But this kind of research concerns only writers and critics, not touching the ordinary reader. After all, if the reader is familiar with modern literature, mainly at the level of names and newspaper praises, then the influence of such literature on him will be very insignificant. At the same time, studies based on media literature seem to be incomplete and meaningless, since media literature, as was said, is only the tip of the iceberg and it is not possible to judge the block as a whole by it. Building a study of literature solely on its public component is like studying the opinion of the citizens of a country by polling pop stars.
The understanding of the “hero of our time” can be approached not only through the study of works of literature, but also from the theoretical side. Let's ask ourselves a simple question: what kind of person is more common in our time than others - a disinterested daredevil, a restless intellectual or a gambling consumer? Of course, you can meet anyone, and each of us has wonderful friends and loving relatives. And yet, who is more typical of our time: Governor Khoroshavin, analyst Rodchenkov, some "promoted" artist with dubious merit, or, in the words of critic Krizhanovsky, "a priest selling his apartment to complete the construction of the temple"? We repeat: you can definitely meet anyone, especially in the Russian expanses, but in order to understand who the “hero of our time” is, it is important to identify the typical, to find an exponent of the spirit of the times.
Would it not be correct to assume that a typical representative of our era is a person who prefers the material to the ideal, the mundane to the sublime, the perishable to the eternal, earthly treasures to all other treasures? And if this assumption is correct, then the “hero of our time” can safely be called Judas. His image becomes clear through the choice he made. Therefore, it is important to understand not why and why he betrayed, but what exactly he chose. Through his betrayal, Judas refused Christ and what Christ offered. The amount of thirty pieces of silver was so small that Judas could hardly be tempted by it. But he was faced with a choice: a symbolic amount, meaning the rejection of the Teacher, or the Kingdom of Heaven. In other words, just the same material against the ideal, mundane against the sublime, downhill against the mountain. Judas turned out to be the prototype of a “consumer society”, for which, just like for Judas, it is impossible, while remaining oneself, to remain faithful to high ideals.
There is really little heroic in modern literature. But this is precisely because the heroic has ceased to be typical. Alas, not in every era more often than others there are defenders of the Motherland, space explorers and honest workers. There are epochs when consumers of goods scurry around, turning from ideals to comfort.
Meanwhile, the heroic is necessary. At least as an example to follow, a reason for pride, a model for education. But what heroes in the country of optimistic patriotism! Unless those who, in the absence of money, lasted the longest. Or those who gave more kicks to English drunkards, yelling louder than others: "Russia, forward!" The authorities have no one to offer as heroes, and the society has no one to nominate. There remain individual cases of heroism shown by ordinary citizens, but not becoming typical from this. The critic Krizhanovsky writes about these cases, including, among other things, simply decent people among the heroes.
And yet, in the hero of our time, that is, in the contemporary we meet more often than others, there is nothing heroic. But, as M.Yu. Lermontov, God save us trying to correct human vices. After all, humanity is just clay in the hands of history. And who knows what features it will take in the next decade.
As for recommendations on how and what to write about, I think it’s worth trying to write in an interesting and good language.

Svetlana ZAMLELOVA

History of Russian culture. XIX century Yakovkina Natalya Ivanovna

§ 1. RUSSIAN LITERATURE OF THE 60–70s

A characteristic feature of Russian literature in the second half of the 19th century was the democratization of artistic consciousness, which was facilitated both by the nature of the social movement and the appearance of representatives of the various intelligentsia in the socio-political and cultural spheres.

“From the stuffiness of the seminaries,” Ogarev wrote about her, “from under the yoke of theological academies, from the homeless bureaucracy, from the dejected philistinism, she broke free to life and took the initiative in literature.”

Since the end of the 50s, a whole galaxy of democratic writers and critics has emerged in literature - raznochintsy: Chernyshevsky, Dobrolyubov, then - Pisarev, journalists Blagosvetov and Kurochkin, writers Pomyalovsky, Nekrasov, Sleptsov, Reshetnikov, G. Uspensky, Zlatovratsky ... Almost all of them passed a harsh school of life: they struggled with poverty, traveled around Russia, lived in the "corners" among the poor. They brought their life experience to literary work. Thus, the literature of those years was enriched with new plots: descriptions of the life of the "lower classes" of the capital and provincial cities, the peasantry; village, factory essays and stories appeared, works reflecting the diversity of folk life, such as Maksimov's stories - "Forest wilderness", "Year in the North", "Siberia and penal servitude", etc.

Inspired by the progressive ideas of the 1960s and "non-bookish" knowledge of life, these writers for the most part considered literary activity not as a profession or work that to some extent ensured their existence, but as a civil service. The literary reflection of life pursued a specific spiritual and practical goal - to transform the life of Russia by the power of expressed thoughts. This desire predetermined not only the themes of fiction, but also the frequent appeal of novelists to journalism, as a more effective influence on readers.

The aggravation of political conflicts, the development of social life, and finally, the changes that have taken place in the minds of people, now demanded from writers not a simple depiction of any events, but an explanation of the complex phenomena of life. According to N. V. Shelgunov, “in the 60s, as if by some miracle, a completely new, unprecedented reader with public feelings, public thoughts and interests was suddenly created, who wanted to think about public affairs, who wanted to learn what he wanted know".

Literature was given the meaning of a kind of "textbook of life." Poems, prose, journalistic articles of writers and critics aroused the liveliest interest of an enlightened society.

The sphere of influence of literature expanded significantly, involving people who were far from artistic creativity. At the same time, the emotional impact of literary works on ordinary readers was much stronger than in subsequent times. There is a lot of evidence for this fact in the memoirs of that era. So, for example, a teacher at the Naval Cadet Corps, who attended public readings in 1860, which were often held in St. Petersburg at that time, wrote down his impressions in his diary as follows: “The people are in darkness. Started at 8 o'clock. Polonsky left. He read declamatory "Naiads", "Winter". They applauded loudly. I didn't lazy myself. It was so sweet to me ... Nekrasov came out, swarthy, thin, thoughtful, as if killed by life. In a sickly and quiet voice, he read "Blessed is the Gentle Poet" and "About the Forsaken Virgin." He tore my soul to pieces so much that I would not have suffered so much even if I had been tortured. Great and noble Nekrasov.

The development of social and cultural life changed the concept of literary creativity as a whole, artistic and moral criteria were revised, and analytical tendencies increased. The epoch of new bourgeois relations has brought about significant changes in people's attitudes. The romantic intensity of passions in literature and life was replaced by a sober prose perception. The romantic stories of A. Marlinsky were replaced first by the essays of the "natural school", then by the novels of Turgenev and Dostoevsky full of life's truth. Realism was established as the dominant trend in literature throughout the second half of the 19th century, which at that time was mainly of a pronounced socially accusatory character. The basis of this trend in the 1960s and 1970s was the creative activity of writers who at one time formed the so-called "natural school" - Nekrasov, Grigorovich, Dostoevsky and later major realist artists: Turgenev, Ostrovsky, Saltykov-Shchedrin, L. Tolstoy. For all the difference in creative principles, they were united by a heightened attention to Russian reality, denunciation of social injustice, love of people and humanism.

Literary realism of the second half of the 19th century was characterized not only by a truthful depiction of reality, but, above all, by an analytical approach, as well as a wide-ranging artistic thinking, when human individuality was considered and evaluated against the background of public life, in relation to it.

Together with the “little man” of Gogol and the writers of the “natural school”, a hero came to literature, reflecting to some extent the spirit of the era, reflecting on himself and the most important problems of the country. The themes of literary works were mainly national in nature: modern Russian people, with their feelings and problems, Russian life, the Russian landscape are firmly embedded in poetry and prose.

Along with the plot basis of the narrative, the image of the literary hero also underwent a natural transformation. He not only became a man of his time, the owner of certain social ideas, but also changed outwardly. Instead of an impressive, handsome romantic hero with fiery eyes, a modest, often unattractive outwardly character, but endowed with high spiritual potential, came to literature. Such are the heroes of L. Tolstoy's novels - Kutuzov (in "War and Peace") - elderly, flabby, one-eyed; Pierre Bezukhov - an absent-minded goof with glasses; Dostoevsky - Raskolnikov, Netochka Nezvanova.

Along with the social-critical trend in Russian realistic literature, already in the late 1950s and early 1960s, a tendency appeared and began to develop, gravitating toward moral and ethical problems. The division of writers that began in art criticism was most clearly manifested in the editorial office of the Sovremennik magazine. The reason for the open opposition was the second posthumous edition of the works of A. S. Pushkin, edited by P. V. Annenkov. In the article by A. V. Druzhinin, which followed shortly after the appearance of the first volumes, - “A. S. Pushkin and the last edition of his works”, the author distinguished between two trends in Russian literature: Gogol's - with the image and criticism of the dark sides of life, and Pushkin's - poetic, reproducing only the bright, joyful sides of life. According to the critic, the same way of life, the same people as in Gogol, in Pushkin, all this "looks calm and calm." Druzhinin's point of view aroused sharp objections from writers who actively participated in the turbulent social events of the 60s, and especially from that part of the Sovremennik staff who wanted to turn the magazine into a revolutionary democratic organ and stood on completely different aesthetic positions. N. G. Chernyshevsky, who became a member of the journal in 1854 and defended his dissertation on the topic “The Aesthetic Relations of Art to Reality,” asserted in his critical articles the thesis: “beautiful is life.” And since art is only a reflection of reality, the goal of artistic creativity, according to Chernyshevsky, should not be the reproduction of beauty in its purified and embellished form, but the depiction of life's realities. Chernyshevsky's position was supported by Nekrasov, who in the article "Notes on the Journal for the month of July 1855" wrote that "there is no science for science, no art for art - they exist for society, for ennoblement, for the elevation of man, for his enrichment with knowledge and material comforts."

The speeches of Chernyshevsky and Nekrasov provoked sharp objections from the supporters of the "Pushkin direction" - Annenkov, Grigorovich and others. The heated discussion not only caused Druzhinin, Annenkov and Fet, Tyutchev and A. K. Tolstoy, who shared their views, to leave the editorial board of Sovremennik, but also demonstrated the design of a new direction, called the "theory of pure art" or "art for art's sake".

Despite the length and severity of the controversy that took place between the opposing sides and critics, it should be recognized that the apologists of "pure art" did not deny in principle the appeal to life, they refused only to reproduce "damned questions", a sharply critical analysis of the socio-political situation, from political bias. Annenkov, for example, in his article “On Thought in Works of Fine Literature” protested against the “instructiveness” of literature, that is, the introduction of a certain (possibly political) concept into a literary work. He, like his like-minded people, considered the beauty of life, eternal spiritual ideals, the world of nature and the high feelings of man to be the subject of art, and especially poetry.

Thus, the debate about the nature of literary works has outgrown the boundaries of purely artistic discussions and marked the confrontation of worldviews, ultimately reflecting certain trends in social thought.

At the same time, with all the difference in positions, both directions, proceeding from the realities of life as a whole, had common aspirations in the spiritual sphere, for many artists of the social-realistic plan were characterized by an appeal to philosophical problems. Suffice it to recall "Poems in Prose" by such a social writer as Turgenev, with reflections on the meaning of human existence, the same question arose in one of his most popular novels, "Fathers and Sons." The same problems were decisive for all the significant works of Dostoevsky and the novels of L. Tolstoy. But the resolution of these eternal questions for world philosophy and literature was achieved through artistic comprehension of dynamic modern life.

The impatient expectation of the coming changes, which at the turn of the first and second half of the 19th century engulfed all sections of the Russian population, inevitably penetrated into the press, into literature. This seething of political and social passions, which captured writers as well, raised the tone of their perception of life, actively involved them in national problems, caused many writers to turn to journalism, which became a characteristic feature of the literary process of the second half of the 19th century.

A burning issue for Russian society was the question of the future fate of Russia - how to develop the country further, whether to continue the work of reforms or turn back? What paths should be taken - a decisive revolutionary breaking of everything that has become obsolete or a slow gradual transformation? What forces should lead and accomplish this? etc.

The involvement of literature in the social movement was expressed both in numerous journal discussions and in disputes between individual outstanding masters of the word. In the correspondence between Herzen and Turgenev in the early 1960s, this question, characteristic of that time, arose about the direction of Russia's further development. Herzen, defending the idea of ​​"Russian socialism", pointed to the vices of the bourgeois system, which had already become so clearly visible in Europe, and placed his hope in the originality of the Russian people, their traditional community. He outlined his position in the series of articles "Ends and Beginnings", which appeared in the pages of "The Bell" in 1862-1863. Initially, Turgenev was also going to publish his objections in this publication, but he could not do this due to an official ban and was forced to respond in private letters. In one of them, he already pointed out to Herzen the appearance in Russia of the "bourgeoisie in a tanned sheepskin coat", that the rural community could not avoid capitalist relations. “That “sumum” that you are talking about,” Turgenev wrote, “does not blow on the West alone - it spills over here too.”

The notion of those forces that were credited with a decisive role in the future fate of Russia was also controversial. If Herzen, like Bakunin, assumed “revolutionary or reformist principles in the people”, then Turgenev considered the “educated class”, that is, the intelligentsia, to be the main acting force, in a letter to Herzen he stated: “The role of the educated class in Russia is to be the transmitter of civilization to the people in order to so that he himself decides what to answer or accept ... Eh, old friend: believe me: the only point of support for living revolutionary propaganda is that minority of the educated class in Russia, which Bakunin calls rotten and divorced from the soil ... ".

Thus, in the minds of contemporaries, along with reflections on the future path of the country, the question naturally arose - who will lead this process, are new forces - representatives of the diverse intelligentsia that came into the social and cultural life of Russia - capable of fulfilling this historical mission?

Moreover, they stood out sharply for their unusualness, striking with their views, appearance and behavior. Describing this new force, N. N. Serno-Solovyevich wrote that by the beginning of the 60s, “a large number of personalities appeared in Russian life, terrible with energy and intransigence of convictions ... We had no idea about such personalities five years ago. But already in the last two or three years, characters began to appear among the youngest youth, before the power of which the most extreme people of the generations brought up in the past reign turned out to be almost children.

Fascinated by the progressive ideas of their time, the young people of the 1960s strove to arrange life on new principles. Hostels, "communes" began to appear, where residents jointly ran the household and spent their leisure time discussing topical issues or reading scientific or fiction literature. Thus, the commune of Sleptsov, a publicist and public figure, enjoyed great fame in St. Petersburg. Several young people and girls rented a large apartment on Znamenskaya Street, ran a joint household, doing all the housework themselves, and spent their free time together. The commune was visited by people close to art: the satirist poet Minaev, the composer and music critic A. N. Serov, the actress Chelishcheva. The Znamenskaya commune, as a hotbed of freethinking, was closed by the police in 1864. Petersburg, there were stories about the decisive actions of young women who did not take into account the gossip and sought to get an education and start a working life.

The images of the “new people” created in the novel reproduced not only and not so much like-minded people contemporary to the author who had already appeared in Russian society, but also their future generation. So, in Rakhmetov, with his asceticism, fanatical devotion to the cause of the revolution, one can more likely guess not a member of the sixties, but a hero of the "Narodnaya Volya" of the late 70s. New people - democrats-raznochintsy - oppose the world of money-grubbers in the novel. Lopukhov, Kirsanov, Vera Pavlovna are not only endowed with high moral virtues, but with will and energy, so they can build their lives according to their principles. Independent in their judgments, industrious, they strive not only for personal happiness, but also for general well-being and for “helping it come sooner.”

"New people" create new relationships in their environment. The ideals of freedom and truth that they profess determine their life behavior - high friendship, selflessness, respect for a person. The understanding of love and marriage is completely different. So, Lopukhov's feeling for Vera Pavlovna and his friendship with Kirsanov are so deep and noble that he was able to step aside so as not to interfere with the happiness of a friend and beloved woman, while maintaining the best relations with them. Respect for human feelings also determines the idea of ​​marriage as an equal union based on the moral closeness of people. These family relationships are contrasted with marriage based on calculation, where the wife is mostly considered the property of the husband. "Oh dirt! Oh dirt! "Possess" - who dares to possess a person? They have a bathrobe, shoes ... ”the writer exclaimed.

One of the most significant for that time - the women's issue - was also resolved in the novel from fundamentally new positions. Along with representatives of a new galaxy of raznochintsy intelligentsia, a new image of an advanced Russian woman arose, who must take an equal position with a man in public life, achieve complete independence. Her happiness is not only in love, in family life, but also in useful work and social activities.

Chernyshevsky's novel is full of the author's reflections on the past, present and future of Russia. Moreover, in the present and in the future of the country, it was precisely the “new people” that had to play a huge role. Hopes were pinned on them to transform Russian life. For obvious reasons, the novel does not speak about the means and ways of these transformations. It can be assumed that the revolutionary impact was also meant. But the creation of a society of social equality could take place only under the condition of re-education, the moral improvement of people. The idealized images of the “new people”, which fully corresponded to the artistic form of the utopian novel, at the same time denoted the moral ideal that the best people of the nation had to strive for in order to lead others.

That is how contemporaries perceived this covenant of the author imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress. Plekhanov testified to this when he wrote: “Who has not read and re-read this famous work? Who was not carried away by him, who did not become purer, better, nobler under his beneficial influence? Who was not struck by the moral purity of the main characters? Who, after reading this novel, has not thought about his own life, has not subjected his own aspirations and inclinations to a strict test? A bright picture of the future society, where there will be no oppression of man by man, the proclamation of new ethical standards made a huge impression on contemporaries. “For Russian youth,” wrote the famous revolutionary Prince P. Kropotkin, “the novel What Is to Be Done? has become a kind of revelation and program. None of Turgenev's stories, no work of Tolstoy or any other writer had such a wide and deep influence on Russian youth as this story of Chernyshevsky. She became a kind of banner for the Russian youth.

Completely different images of the "new people" and other problems associated with them appear in Turgenev's famous novel Fathers and Sons. The writer, who constantly followed the “pulse of life” very closely and with interest, created this work almost simultaneously with the events described in the novel. Turgenev began working on it in the winter of 1860, and finished in July 1861. "Fathers and Sons" was published in the February issue of "Russian Messenger" for 1862. The action of the novel takes place in the summer of 1859, and the epilogue takes place after 1861. Thus, the writer depicted a turning point in the Russian social movement - the old outgoing life and the new era, which is still in its infancy.

Already at the very beginning of the novel, the theme of the crisis of the serf way of life arises - it sounds both in the woeful lamentations of Nikolai Petrovich Kirsanov about economic impoverishment, and in landscape sketches of local villages. “... Small forests, rivers with open banks, tiny ponds with thin dams, villages with low huts under dark, half-swept roofs, crooked threshing sheds with yawning gates near the empty gumens.”

Young Arkady Kirsanov is already thinking about the need for change. Thus, the regularity of the appearance of "transformers" in the person of Bazarov is affirmed.

Yevgeny Bazarov, like the heroes of the novel “What is to be done?”, is a raznochinets, just like them, he is honest, principled, his convictions are progressive and democratic. But he is devoid of many of the attractive features that Chernyshevsky bestowed upon Lopukhov and Kirsanov. Bazarov is ugly - “hairy”, with red hands, the harshness of his judgments, sometimes reaching rudeness, is unpleasant. This outwardly unattractive appearance is, as it were, contrasted with his handsome “opponent” in disputes about life, Pavel Petrovich. But spiritual emptiness and selfishness lurk behind the outward good looks of the elder Kirsanov, while mind and will are reflected in Bazarov's eyes.

Bazarov is a denier, or, as they call him, a nihilist, that is, a person who, according to the author, "applies to everything from a critical point of view ... does not bow to any authorities ...".

To Turgenev himself, he seemed to be "an expression of our latest modernity." And indeed, the writer very sensitively and historically correctly noticed the main features of this "thinking proletarian", a democrat of the commoners, a staunch opponent of the serf system, a materialist, independent and inquisitive.

Bazarov, like Dobrolyubov, denied admiration for obsolete principles. His aphoristic statement: “At the present time, denial is most useful - we deny” is extremely close to Pisarev’s statement in the article “Scholastics of the XIX century” that young people should be allowed to “shake up with their native skepticism those stale things, that dilapidated junk that you call general authority."

Even the young maximalism of Bazarov is akin to the categorical character inherent in many articles of the 60s, and especially the articles of D. I. Pisarev.

Embodying the typical features of the democratic youth of the 60s, Bazarov, in his views, was closest to Pisarev's like-minded people. Therefore, although the dispute between “children” and “fathers” goes on on many issues, it is no coincidence that the writer especially highlights the debate about public duty, about art and science and the attitude towards the noble cultural heritage, which so worried both advanced public opinion and personally Turgenev.

The approval of new aesthetic principles, expressed in the articles of Belinsky and Chernyshevsky, caused at that time a heated discussion among the staff of Sovremennik, which led to a split in the editorial office and the exit from it of those close to the writer. The polemically gambling speeches of Pisarev, who overthrew not only the "dilapidated junk", but also the classics of Russian literature, including Pushkin, and sympathy for them among the youth of various ranks, also aroused alarm. German Lopatin also testified to this, noting that in Bazarov "of course, all the youth of the 60s did not fit in ... - But, undoubtedly, there were such people, especially with such an attitude towards art." Fundamental differences caused by fear for the national cultural heritage, which has become a significant part of not only Russian, but also European culture and civilization as a whole, somewhat later led to a break with Sovremennik and Turgenev himself. But already at the time of writing the novel, the seriousness of these contradictions was quite obvious, as well as the definite position of the author. With all the deeply sincere condemnation of serfdom, for Turgenev, as a social artist, it was undeniable that it was the noble culture of the 18th - the first half of the 19th century that constituted the most valuable national wealth and that the cultural life of Russia in subsequent years would still largely depend on the most educated first estate of the country. . For all the shortcomings of the Kirsanovs, for all the precariousness of their position in life, they are connected by many threads with this civilization, with its centuries-old traditions, while Bazarov's denial of the spiritual values ​​of the past is fruitless.

Thus, objectively and even benevolently assessing many features of the representatives of the raznochintsy intelligentsia of the 60s, Turgenev, however, completely disagreed with the "new people" not only in assessing the culture of the nobility and classical literature; Bazarov's primitive materialistic views were also unacceptable to him. In the novel, Bazarov the physiologist constantly rejects the lofty feelings that determine people's behavior. “The devil knows what nonsense,” he says to Arkady, “every person hangs by a thread, the abyss can open up under him every minute, and he still invents all sorts of troubles for himself, spoils his life.” However, the deep feeling for Odintsova that soon overwhelmed him, as it were, crosses out all previous convictions, affirming love as the highest spiritual principle of human existence. The writer kind of "punished" his hero with love. It can be assumed that Turgenev, who was gentle, benevolent to people and condescending to their weaknesses, was generally unpleasant with such a tough life position of his hero. Until the end of his life, according to the researchers of his work, the writer had a completely different attitude towards people: “in the half-sick, old, sorrowful Turgenev, the trait of sympathy for human misfortunes, not repulsion, is worthy of all respect. Already one patience with which he listened! The fact that he found time to go, ask, bow. That he read countless, hopeless manuscripts, wrote small letters, looked for work, arranged for the sick in hospitals, gave money for schools, fiddled with literary and artistic "mornings" for the benefit of the needy, established a Russian library in Paris - this is not so little, and so does not look like a "European" writer."

The novel constantly notes the "nihilism" of Bazarov, his criticism of certain problems of our time.

At the same time, it is quite natural that, due to censorship conditions, there is no presentation of his political program for the future reorganization of Russia. The presence of such is evidenced by his words addressed to Odintsova, which were in the manuscript, but excluded in the final version: “Do you want to see how last year’s worthless grass is burned? If the strength has not dried up in the soil, it gives double growth. In other words, when the fire of the revolution destroys everything that is “unusable” that impedes progress, then the young forces will begin to create a new state. This is the same political revolutionary-democratic program that the heroes of What Is to Be Done? strived for.

The fact that the writer himself did not share revolutionary democratic ideas did not prevent Turgenev from creating such a vitally truthful image as his Bazarov was. A perceptive contemporary wrote about Turgenev: “A staunch admirer of gradual social development, without convulsive leaps forward and timid retreats back, gentle in the disposition of his soul, Turgenev never fell into slavish flattery either before the crowd or before individuals. In his writings, which sometimes touched on very acute issues of our time, artistic justice dominates, so to speak.

"Artistic Justice" was also executed the writer's novel about "new people".

But already in the next major work of Turgenev, the novel “Smoke”, on which the author worked in Baden-Baden from 1852 to 1865, there are no images like Bazarov. The change in the socio-political situation brought to the fore other problems. The ardent hopes of the sixties dissipate "like smoke." The strengthening of the reactionary policy of the government indicates the strength and danger of the conservative camp, whose representatives are so vividly and grotesquely - almost in the style of Saltykov-Shchedrin's satire - are drawn in the novel. Litvinov appears here as the only opponent of the conservative generals - not a fighter, but a person who takes progressive positions, honest and conscientious, whose activities could be very useful to the country.

Litvinov, as well as another character in "Smoke", Potugin, partially, but only partially, reflects the views of the author. Like Turgenev, Potugin sees the salvation of Russia in civilization, enlightenment. Many of the writer's thoughts expressed in his previous philosophical and political disputes with Herzen - about the meaning of civilization, the role of the educated class of Russia in the life of society and the country, etc. in the opinion of the author, will not lead the country forward. Striking the conservatives with the edge of satire, Turgenev spoke at the same time against the leaders of the younger generation, who, in his opinion, did not justify the hopes of the leaders of the young generation, "drunk and foggy", against their ostentatious radicalism. Thus, the writer once again confirmed Belinsky's words that his vocation is "to observe real phenomena and convey them, passing through fantasy ...". Petelin Viktor Vasilievich

From the book History of Russian Literature of the 19th Century. Part 1. 1800-1830s author Lebedev Yury Vladimirovich

From the book History of Russia from ancient times to the beginning of the 20th century author Froyanov Igor Yakovlevich

Russian culture of the 60-90s of the XIX century. The abolition of serfdom in Russia and the bourgeois reforms that followed it, the growth of the economy and the establishment of capitalist relations in the country created qualitatively new conditions for the rapid progressive development of Russian

From the book Literature of the late XIX - early XX century author author Yakovkina Natalya Ivanovna

§ 1. RUSSIAN LITERATURE The 19th century is one of the most brilliant periods in the history of Russian literature. At this time, the greatest works of Russian classical literature were created, which received worldwide recognition. And their greatness was determined not only by artistic

author Yakovkina Natalya Ivanovna

§ 1. RUSSIAN LITERATURE OF THE 60–70s

From the book History of Russian Culture. 19th century author Yakovkina Natalya Ivanovna

§ 4. RUSSIAN LITERATURE OF THE 80–90s OF THE XIX CENTURY The last decades of the XIX century were marked by serious changes in the social and literary life of Russia. The establishment of capitalism in the economy led to changes in the social, cultural, and spiritual spheres of Russian life.

From the book Russia and the West on the swing of history. From Paul I to Alexander II author Romanov Petr Valentinovich

Eastern War 1877–1878. The Russian army is trying its best not to take Constantinople. If there was at least some sense for the Russians in this ridiculous war, then only one - to once again prove to Europe that the "Testament" of Peter the Great, which was referred to by all and sundry, including

author Petelin Viktor Vasilievich

Part one Russian literature of the 50s. On Sincerity in Literature After Stalin's death, changes began in politics and culture, in literature and art. And at the beginning of 1953, Russian literature continued to exist in a sharp struggle between various

From the book History of Russian Literature of the Second Half of the 20th Century. Volume II. 1953–1993 In the author's edition author Petelin Viktor Vasilievich

Part three Russian literature of the 60s. Truth and

From the book History of Russian Literature of the Second Half of the 20th Century. Volume II. 1953–1993 In the author's edition author Petelin Viktor Vasilievich

Part Four Russian Literature of the 70s. Russian national

From the book History of Russian Literature of the Second Half of the 20th Century. Volume II. 1953–1993 In the author's edition author Petelin Viktor Vasilievich

Part Seven Russian Literature of the 80s. Legal freedom of the spirit It has long been known that works of art are read and remembered not because of these or those acute, topical problems posed in them, but because of the characters created. Will the writer be able to find