N. Leskov, "Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District": a brief analysis of the work

To the question Write a description of Ekaterina Lvovna from Leskov's story "Lady Macbereth. Mtsensk district". given by the author Alexey Selyutin the best answer is It is very difficult for Katerina Izmailova to endure life in her husband's house, mainly because the life of a woman in merchant's house boring. What to do with the wife of a rich merchant? Katerina wanders from corner to corner in her big house, sleeps and toils from idleness.
Katerina is tormented by unfair accusations. The silent reproach to the heroine is that she does not have children from her elderly husband, although the Izmailov family is really looking forward to the heirs. The writer emphasizes that married life behind locked doors "strangles" the heroine, destroys her potential, all the good that is in her. Izmailova regretfully tells what she was like as a girl - cheerful, full of joy of life, energy, happiness. And how unbearable it is for her to live in marriage.
Katerina Izmailova does not even think about treason. All of her is completely absorbed in feeling for the clerk Sergei and is ready for anything for him. This passionate nature I completely surrendered to my feeling, which knows no boundaries: neither physical, nor moral, nor moral.
Katerina Izmailova dies - trying to drown her happier rival: “Katerina Lvovna was trembling. Her wandering gaze focused and became wild. Hands once or twice, it is not known where, stretched out into space and fell again. Another minute - and she suddenly swayed all over, not taking her eyes off the dark wave, bent down, grabbed Sonetka by the legs and in one fell swoop threw herself over the side of the ferry with her.
The heroine understands that she will die along with another girl, but this does not stop her: why should she live if Sergey no longer loves her?
In her animal, godless love, Izmailova reaches the limit: the blood of three innocent people, including a child, is on her conscience. This love and all crimes devastate the heroine: “... for her there was no light, no darkness, no evil, no good, no boredom, no joys; she did not understand anything, she did not love anyone and did not love herself.
Katerina Izmailova lived with passions, obeying only the call of her flesh.

Answer from Ўliya[guru]
Izmailova Katerina Lvovna is a young (twenty-three years old) wife of a wealthy merchant Zinovy ​​Borisovich Izmailov. In the portrait of I., the attractiveness and sensuality of the heroine are expressed: “in appearance, the woman is very pleasant.<...>She was not tall, but slender, her neck was carved as if made of marble, her shoulders were round, her chest was strong, her nose was straight, thin, her eyes were black, lively, her high white forehead and black, even blue-black hair. Passionately in love with the worker Sergei, I., fearing exposure and separation from her beloved, kills her father-in-law and husband with his help, and then takes the life of her husband's minor relative, Fedya Lyamin. Heartlessness and willpower, readiness to step over everything for the sake of their goals moral standards combined in the character of I. with insane passion and selfless devotion to his beloved. The inhumanity of I. is emphasized thanks to the methods of contrast: I., who is expecting a child from Sergei, calmly strangles little Fedya, committing murder on the eve of the great Christian holiday of the Entry into the Church of the Most Holy Theotokos.
The fate of I. after the arrest is presented as a terrible retribution for committed crime; I. loses the most precious thing in life - the love of Sergei, who at the hard labor stage converges with another convict, Sonetka. At the crossing, I. dumps Sonetka into the river, drowns her and drowns herself.
In the title of the story, Leskov likens I. Lady Macbeth, the heroine of Shakespeare's tragedy "Macbeth", prompting her husband to commit treacherous murders. The image of I. is polemically correlated with the image of the heroine of the drama by A. N. Ostrovsky "Thunderstorm" by Katerina Kabanova. Both heroines have the same name, both are merchants, both cheat on their husbands with lovers. The difference lies in the fact that I. does not experience family oppression, is not a victim in her husband's house.
The heroine Leskov meaningful name. On the one hand, I., seized by a dark, "infernal" passion, is opposed to the "bright" and "quiet" Katerina from Ostrovsky's Thunderstorm. At the same time, the very name "Catherine" in Greek means "always pure" and, as it were, personifies the sacrificial principle in the love of Leskov's heroine. I.'s patronymic emphasizes the firmness and masculine strength of her character. The surname I. testifies to the black, demonic sources of the heroine's passion: "Ismaelites" in ancient Russian literature were called eastern, Turkic peoples who professed Islam. The story of I. served as the basis for the opera Katerina Izmailova by D. D. Shostakovich.
Sergei is a young worker, lover, and then the husband of Katerina Lvovna Izmailova, who, together with her, kills her relatives. The last of the three crimes (the murder of the boy Fedya Lyamin, who received the main part of the Izmailovs' fortune), Katerina Izmailova commits for the sake of S., who longed to become the sole heir. Willpower, selfless passion and Katerina's concern for S. are opposed to his weak will and selfish and shallow nature. During the investigation, he calls I. an accomplice in all crimes, at the hard labor stage he neglects I.'s love, mocks her and converges with Sonetka.
Sonetka is a young convict with whom Sergei converges at the stage, leaving Katerina Izmailova. Izmailova drowns S, in the river, dying with her. Selfish S., receiving gifts from Sergei, contrasts with selflessly loving Izmailova. Cruelly mocking the humiliated Izmailova, S. is opposed to the soldier Fiona, Sergei's fleeting mistress, compassionate Katerina. Evidence of a cruel, evil disposition is a miniature figure, thinness of S. (Thinness is presented as a sign of an evil character in some other works of Leskov.)

In the image of the most ordinary woman Katerina Lvovna, who comes from an ordinary, petty-bourgeois environment, the writer shows how a passionate feeling that has flared up completely transforms her and she rebels against the conventions of the world in which she had previously spent her whole life. From the very beginning of the essay, the author writes that Katerina's life in the house of her wealthy husband was extremely boring, the young woman was literally strangled by monotony and melancholy.

While still a very young and inexperienced girl, she was married to the merchant Zinovy ​​Borisovich, she never had any feelings for him, her parents gave Katerina in marriage only because this particular groom was the first to woo her, and they considered him a suitable party. Since then, a woman has actually been spending five years of her life in a dream, every day reminds the previous one up to a minute, she has no friends or even acquaintances, Katerina is increasingly seized by such longing, from which she literally wants to “choke herself”.

A woman dreams of a child, because with a baby in the house she will at least have something to do, joy, a goal, but in her dull marriage, fate never brings her children.

But after these five years, in the life of Katerina, an ardent love for the worker, her husband Sergei, suddenly arises. This feeling is considered to be one of the brightest and most sublime, but for Izmailova it becomes the beginning of her death and leads a too passionate and ardent woman to a sad ending.

Katerina, without hesitation, is ready for any sacrifices and violations of all moral norms for the sake of her dear person. A woman, without any remorse, kills not only her father-in-law and husband, who have long been disgusted with her, but also the boy Fedya, who has not caused any harm to anyone, an innocent and pious child. The all-consuming passion for Sergey destroys in Katerina the feeling of fear, compassion, mercy, because before they were inherent in her, like almost any representative of the weaker sex. But at the same time, it is this boundless love that gives rise to her previously unusual courage, resourcefulness, cruelty and the ability to fight for her love, for her right to constantly be with her beloved and get rid of any obstacles that prevent the fulfillment of this desire.

Sergei, Izmailova's lover, also appears as a man without any moral rules and principles. He is capable of committing any crime without hesitation, but not out of love, like Katerina. For Sergei, the motive for his actions is that he sees in this woman the opportunity to ensure a further comfortable existence for himself, because she is the wife and legitimate heiress of a wealthy merchant, coming from a higher, wealthy and revered class in society than himself. His plans and hopes really begin to come true after the death of his father-in-law and Katerina's husband, but another obstacle suddenly arises, a little nephew of a merchant named Fedya.

If before Sergey served only as an assistant in the murders, now he himself offers his mistress to get rid of the child, which remains the only obstacle for them. He inspires Katerina that in the absence of the boy Fedya and the birth of her child before the expiration of nine months after the disappearance of her husband, all the money of the late merchant will go entirely to them, and they will be able to live happily without any worries.

Katerina agrees with her lover, his words actually have a hypnotic effect on her, the woman is ready to do literally everything that Sergey wants. Thus, she turns into a real hostage of her feelings, a trouble-free slave of this man, although initially Izmailova occupies a more significant social position than her husband's worker.

During the interrogation, Katerina does not hide the fact that she committed several murders solely for the sake of her lover, that her passion pushed her to such terrible deeds. All her feelings are focused only on Sergey, the born baby does not cause any emotions in her, the woman is indifferent to the fate of her child. Everything around is absolutely indifferent to Katerina, only a gentle look or a kind word from her beloved can have an impact on her.

On the way to hard labor, the woman notices that Sergei is clearly growing cold towards her, although she is still ready for anything, just to see him once again. However, the man feels deeply disappointed both in Katerina and in life in general, because he never achieved what he wanted, he will never have to see any wealth with the help of the merchant Izmailova. Sergei, without embarrassment, meets with the depraved Sonetka in front of his mistress, he openly showers Katerina with insults and humiliations, trying to take revenge on her for the fact that she, as he believes, broke his fate and completely ruined him.

When Katerina sees that her lover, for whom she sacrificed everything she had before, is flirting with another woman, her mind does not stand the test of cruel jealousy. She does not even understand the meaning of bullying by other prisoners, primarily Sonetka and Sergei, but they have a profound destructive effect on her already completely broken psyche.

Her victims appear before Katerina's mind, the woman is unable to move, speak, live on, almost unconsciously she decides to commit suicide in order to get rid of the unbearable torment that her whole existence has become. Without hesitation, she also kills Sonetka, believing that it was this girl who stole her lover from her. In her last moments, Katerina believes that she has nothing more to do in the world, because her love, the meaning of her life, is completely lost to her. Because of the boundless passion, the personality of a woman is completely destroyed, Katerina Izmailova becomes a victim own feelings and inability to manage them.

The image of Katerina in Leskov's essay is very contradictory. At the beginning of the work, a woman acts as a victim. She is unhappy in marriage, because her husband, in addition to being older than her, also does not pay attention to her. He and his father are constantly busy working and increasing capital.

Katerina Lvovna is simply dying of boredom. Perhaps if they had a child, it would somehow dilute her life, but her husband is barren. However, in the absence of heirs, reproaches reach only the girl, which makes her suffer even more.

However, the constant role of the victim does not suit Katerina Lvovna. She is alive and wants love. Therefore, when the spouse leaves for a long time, the girl begins to accept the courtship of the young clerk Sergei.

Her interest in a man is growing every day, despite his bad reputation. Soon, the man becomes her lover and the person without whom she cannot imagine her further existence.

When her secret connection suddenly accidentally revealed by her father-in-law, the girl immediately “solves” the problem that has arisen. She mercilessly poisons the man by mixing rat poison into his mushrooms. At this moment, the girl is driven by a sense of revenge, since the father-in-law not only punished Sergei with whips, but also imprisoned him in the cellar.

Impunity inspired the woman. She ceased to be afraid of human publicity, and she generously paid the one who could say anything. Therefore, although people guessed about her love affair with the local clerk, preferred to remain silent.

However, he did not leave the "beloved" alone. He often said that, upon the return of Zinovy ​​Borisovich, he would become objectionable to Katerina. But Katerina Lvovna, it seems, figured out how she would deal with her husband. The woman was disgusted by the very idea that she would have to share a bed with someone else.

The woman was seized by a strong hatred for everything that was connected with the "past" life. After all, only Sergey taught her to love, rejoice, feel and desire. This desire was predatory and irresistible. It urged to fight and not to retreat. Woe will be to the one who will be with a woman on the road.

Zinovy ​​Borisovich had no idea about the reincarnations that happened to his wife. He was informed about her betrayal, as well as about the strange and fleeting death of his father. The man hurried for clarification. However, the man did not expect to see the picture that appeared before his eyes ...

Later, when the young merchant's wife and her lover dealt with Zinovy, they hid his body in the basement.

Now Katerina became the direct heir to the entire capital of the Izmailovs. But did she really need the money? No! She was happy already because the man of her dreams was nearby. For him, she will stop at nothing, and it is from him that she is expecting a child.

Does she need this pregnancy now? No. Now the child was no longer needed by the woman. She would never be a good mother to him.

When a woman with her lover was caught killing her nephew and acting heir Fedenka, the couple was immediately detained. After the punishments, the "lovers" were sent along the stage, where Katerina Lvovna finally found out the price of her love. She immediately refused the born baby, and Sergey stopped paying any attention to her. The man fell in love with another girl.

Katerina, under the gaze of her husband, father-in-law and Fedenka, commits a double murder for the last time. She jumps overboard and pushes her rival there ...

Russian literature

Viktor Eremin

Katerina Lvovna Izmailova

Nikolai Semyonovich Leskov is a man of great passion, great contradictions, great Conscience and great patriotism. No wonder A.M. Gorky, who read in 1909-1911. on the island of Capri, a series of lectures under the general title “History of Russian Literature”, stated then that Leskov wrote “not about a peasant, not about a nihilist, not about a landowner, but always about a Russian person, about a person of this country. Each of his heroes is a link in the chain of people, in the chain of generations, and in every Leskov story you feel that his main thought is not about the fate of a person, but about the fate of Russia.

_________________________
* IMLI RAN. Archive A.M. Gorky. T.1. History of Russian literature. Moscow: Goslitizdat, 1939.

It is in these words that the essence of modern misunderstanding of Leskov's work is revealed. Nikolai Semyonovich is a writer of the fate of the Fatherland, and today in his works they often look for the quintessence of the Russian character, moreover, the image of the Russian people. And this is deeply wrong. Leskov - brightest representative raznochinny literature, therefore, in his books (in continuation of the aristocratic literature XIX c.) a predominantly aristocratic idea of ​​the Russian people is given, although richly decorated with great knowledge inner peace common man. Unfortunately, knowledge is not the truth, and the Russian people in Leskov's works remain, on the one hand, a romantic dream, and on the other hand, the writer's gloomy idea of ​​him. Let us note that the works of all the heresiarchs of Great Russian literature suffer from this disease.

Leskov is often called the most Russian, the most national writer of all the writers of our land. This comes from that part of the domestic intelligentsia, which is usually called patriotic, professing mainly Uvarov's formula "Autocracy, Orthodoxy, nationality", and therefore recognizing and even proclaiming the people's passive subordination in relation to irresponsible autocracy (in general, any power) and Orthodoxy (church hierarchy).

Nikolai Semyonovich himself repeatedly emphasized that positive characters were best for him. However, the writer's positive features (especially over the years) are dominated by such human qualities as humility, readiness to suffer forgivingly from a powerful villain, humility before the prepared fate. That is, in continuation of aristocratic literature, Leskov welcomed the feminized face of the Russian person. Indeed, from time immemorial, the Orthodox intelligentsia of Russia has proclaimed that, unlike the God-chosen people - the Jews, the Russian people are a God-bearing people, under the Protection of God. Mother of God, and Russia is her vale *, therefore, the Divine face of the Russian people is a woman who humbly suffers and trusts only in God.
_________________
* Vale - a place of suffering.

Let's face it, such an understanding of the Russian people is a purely aristocratic and intellectual fiction that has nothing to do with reality. Intellectuals wanted and still want to see the people in such a way that gradually they fully feel like masters, supermen and saviors, but the pretext for this, as always, was God and faith in him. Russian history itself, and even more so essential part her - Russian literature (despite many of its great creators) and its heroes, a thousand times refuted the image of obedient, praying and silent Russians imposed on us. The heroes of Leskov were no exception, in whose works even eldership is a form of active struggle against earthly villainy for the triumph of God's goodness.

Nikolay Semyonovich Leskov

Nikolai Semyonovich Leskov was born on February 4, 1831 in the village of Gorokhove, Oryol province. His mother, Maria Petrovna Leskova (née Alferyeva) (1813-1886), was from the Oryol impoverished nobles. Father, Semyon Dmitrievich Leskov (1789-1848), came from a priestly environment, served as a noble assessor of the Oryol Criminal Chamber (criminal investigator). Nikolai became the eldest of the seven Leskov children.

In 1839, the father resigned with a scandal, and the family moved to live in a recently purchased estate - the Panin farm in Kromsky district. In 1841, Nikolai entered the Oryol gymnasium, but he studied unevenly and in 1846 he did not pass the transfer exams. However, by the time he was expelled from the gymnasium, he was already moonlighting as a clerk in the Oryol State Chamber and actively rotated in the circle of the Oryol intelligentsia.

It was then that Leskov happened to meet the exiled Little Russian writer, ethnographer and folklorist Afanasy Vasilievich Markevich (1824-1867), under whose influence the young Leskov chose his life path- the young man firmly decided to become an ethnographer.

After the sudden death of his father in 1849, Nikolai was transferred to Kyiv as an official of the Treasury. There he lived in the family of his maternal uncle, professor-therapist of Kyiv University Sergey Petrovich Alferyev (1816-1884).

In Kyiv, in 1853, Nikolai Semyonovich married the daughter of a wealthy Kyiv landlord and businessman, Olga Vasilievna Smirnova (c. 1831-1909). And soon the Crimean War (1854-1856) began, which turned all the foundations of the life of Russian society upside down.

In May 1857, Leskov retired and got a job in the private firm "Shkott and Wilkens", which was headed by the husband of his aunt Alexandra Petrovna (1811-1880), the Russified Englishman Alexander Yakovlevich (Dzheymsovich) Shkott (c. 1800-1860). Nikolai Semyonovich was engaged in the resettlement of peasants to fertile lands, the organization of enterprises in the provinces, agriculture. The writer himself subsequently called three years of service in his uncle's firm the happiest time of his life. Then Leskov traveled almost all European part Russia, he saw and understood a lot, the collected vital material was enough for him to long years fruitful literary work.

Unfortunately, the company's business did not go well, and in April 1860 it had to be closed. Leskov returned to Kyiv and entered the service - in the office of the Governor-General. At the same time, he took up journalism. On June 18, 1860, his first article was anonymously published in the journal Economic Pointer, on booksellers' speculation with the Gospel. However, the beginning of his literary activity Leskov himself considered the publication in February 1861 on the pages " Domestic notes» «Essays on the distillery industry (Penza province)».

It was a turning point in the life of an aspiring writer. Leskov left his wife, he moved to live in St. Petersburg, was recognized as a talented publicist ...

And in 1862, Nikolai Semyonovich for the first time had to feel his foreignness in St. Petersburg society. In the spring, a wave of fires swept through the capital. Rumor attributed the arson to nihilist students. Outraged by these rumors, Leskov published an article in Severnaya Pchela, where he urged the St. Petersburg mayor to look into this issue and, if the students are guilty, punish them, and if not, stop the slanderous chatter. The writer found ill-wishers who began to spread gossip around St. Petersburg, as if Leskov was calling for reprisals against progressive-minded youth. Few people read the article itself, but the condemnation of an innocent journalist turned out to be universal. Even Alexander II was indignant against Nikolai Semyonovich. Just got canceled serfdom(1861), democratic reforms were actively introduced, and society was in a state of delight from its own liberalism. The freedom fighters craved the retrograde victim. And as such, a provincial journalist who so successfully turned up under the arm was chosen.

Poor Leskov was shocked both by the slander and by such a monstrously general rejection of an article that no one had read. No one wanted to hear his explanations - guilty and that's it! In the end, Nikolai Semyonovich was forced to go abroad for a while - as a correspondent for the Northern Bee, he visited Austria (Bohemia), Poland, France ...

And when he returned, contrary to many expectations, he not only did not repent - there was nothing to repent of, but he had the audacity to rush into battle against Petersburg society with its liberal demagoguery. In 1863, the writer published his first stories - "The Life of a Woman" and "Musk Ox", Leskov published the collection "Three Stories by M. Stebnitsky *", which was followed in 1864 by the anti-nihilistic novel "Nowhere".
______________________
* M. Stebnitsky - pseudonym of the first years literary work N.S. Leskov.

To say that this novel has become a social bomb is to say nothing. For the first time in Russian literature (the great prophetic works on this subject were written much later), albeit slightly, albeit only in some respects, only in the third part of the novel, however, it was condemned (!) revolutionary movement. The hysteria of the democratic press, which at that time was actually exercising a dictatorship in the literary field of Russia, knew no bounds. The apogee of the scandal was the article of the idol of the revolutionary youth of those years, Dmitry Ivanovich Pisarev (1848-1869) "A walk through the gardens of Russian literature", composed by him in his cell Peter and Paul Fortress which gave the writings of the mentally ill critic a special aura of the sufferer. It was in this article that there were famous words that have become a shameful stain forever in the history of Russian and world literature: “I am very interested in the following two questions: anything in their pages coming from the pen of Mr. Stebnitsky and signed with his name? 2) Is there at least one honest writer in Russia who will be so careless and indifferent to his reputation that he will agree to work in a magazine that adorns itself with stories and novels by Mr. Stebnitsky? - These questions are very interesting for the psychological assessment of our literary world»*. In fact, Pisarev cried out: - Atu! - at Leskov, and the democratic crowd rushed to persecute him.
___________________
* D. I. Pisarev. Literary criticism in 3 volumes. T. 2. Articles 1864-1865. L., "Artist. literature", 1981.

However, to our common happiness, there were also magazines and writers for whom the absurd Pisarev was not a decree. And the first among them was the journal of the recent convict Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky. Pisarev's article appeared in Russkiy Vestnik in March 1865, and saw the light of day the same month. last number periodical of the Dostoevsky brothers "The Epoch", on the pages of which Nikolai Semenovich Leskov's masterpiece was published - the essay "Lady Macbeth of our county" *.
_________________
* Only in the 1867 edition of “Tales, essays and stories by M. Stebnitsky”, vol. I, did the essay for the first time receive its current name: “Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk district”.

Essays in the 19th century called and purely works of art. "Lady Macbeth ..." was the first essay from the intended cycle. Leskov himself wrote to the famous Russian philosopher and literary critic, and at the same time to the leading employee of the Epoch, Nikolai Nikolaevich Strakhov (1828-1896): “... I ask you for your attention to this small work. "Lady Macbeth of Our County" constitutes the first of a series of essays of exclusively typical female characters our (Oka and part of the Volga) area. I propose to write twelve such essays…”*.
____________________
* V.A. Goebel. N.S. Leskov. In the creative lab. M.: Soviet writer, 1945.

Prototype y main character Katerina Lvovna Izmailova is not there, although they do not stop looking for one. "Lady Macbeth ..." is a purely artistic work composed by the author "from the head", and rumors that such a tragedy occurred in Leskov's childhood are groundless.

The writer worked on an essay in Kyiv, in a difficult state of mind, caused by widespread public obstruction, which inevitably affected the work itself. In a later conversation with famous writer Vsevolod Vladimirovich Krestovsky (1839-1895) Nikolai Semyonovich recalled: “But when I wrote my Lady Macbeth, under the influence of inflated nerves and loneliness, I almost reached delirium. At times I felt unbearably terrified, my hair stood on end, I froze at the slightest rustle, which I made myself by moving my foot or turning my neck. Those were hard moments that I will never forget. Since then, I have avoided describing such horrors.
_________________________
* How Leskov worked on "Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District". Sat. articles for the production of the opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District by the Leningrad State Academic Maly Theatre. L.: 1934.

The essay turned out to be millions of times more anti-nihilistic and anti-revolutionary than any other work by Leskov. But no one noticed or understood this - after all, Nikolai Semyonovich himself Pisarev (!) Was declared a reactionary outside the law. "Lady Macbeth of our district" chose not to notice!

And in vain, although it must be admitted that Katerina Izmailova is still not recognized by our literary criticism. But it is she who is the central connecting thread that stretches from " captain's daughter" and Nekrasov peasant women to the great Pentateuch of Dostoevsky, to "Anna Karenina" and " Quiet Don»; it was she who, having absorbed all the willfulness and unbridled unbridledness of Pushkin's Emelka Pugachev and the power of the one that "stops a galloping horse, Into a burning the hut will enter”from the poem“ Frost, Red Nose ”, has become an inseparable, if not the main component of almost every hero of Fyodor Mikhailovich’s latest novels (primarily Nastasya Filippovna, Parfena Rogozhin, Dmitry and Ivan Karamazov) or Sholokhov's Grigory Melekhov and Aksinya.

Why? Yes, because it was in the image of Katerina Izmailova for the first time in history (in the most artistically perfect form) that an individual, personal embodiment of that very nationwide, purely national philosophical thought A.S. Pushkin: “God forbid to see a Russian rebellion, senseless and merciless!”*. After Katerina Izmailova, the theme of a personal, merciless, very selfish, and often senseless Russian rebellion became almost the main one in our national literature and pushed the subject extra person. And it was this personal rebellion on the pages of Great Russian literature that involuntarily created the idea of ​​the Russian people as a people living on a constant anguish, a people inseparably soldered by irrepressible prowess and recklessness, spiritual expanse and naive, but unjustified cruelty, etc. In our days, mediocre intellectuals from the cinema, in a different way, the Russian people do not know how to show something, except as candy-rolling, reckless victims of their own boundless passions. This is already a stable stencil, a brand of belonging to everything Russian.
_____________________
* A.S. Pushkin. Sobr. op. in 10 volumes. T.5. Moscow: State publishing house fiction, 1960.

However, in Russian literature, personal rebellion always has a great underlying reason: no matter what form it takes, initially it is always directed against injustice, and it is always preceded by a long-suffering expectation of Justice.

Katerina Izmailova was married from the poor with one goal - to give birth to a baby and bring an heir to the Izmailovs' house. The whole way of her life, as was customary in Russian merchant families, was built and organized for the cultivation of the successor of the family. But Katerina remained a non-native for five (!) years. Many years of barrenness became the root cause of her rebellion: on the one hand, the woman innocently turned out to be the hardest hindrance for her husband, since the absence of an heir for a merchant is a catastrophe of his whole life, and Katerina was constantly blamed for this; on the other hand, for a childless young merchant's wife, loneliness in a golden cage is a mortal boredom, from which it is just right to go berserk. Katerina rebelled, and her rebellion spontaneously turned into an insane passion for the insignificant handsome clerk Sergei. The worst thing is that Katerina Lvovna herself would never have been able to explain what she was rebelling against, she simply went berserk with a dark carnal passion provoked by a non-malicious fort *, and then events developed against anyone's will, in full accordance with the epigraph-saying prefaced by the essay "Blushing to sing the first song."
_____________________
* Firth (obsolete) - a dashing, dapper and cheeky, self-satisfied person.

The crimes were committed by the merchant's wife on the rise: at first Katerina sinned; then she secretly poisoned her old father-in-law with rat poison, who found out about her adultery; then she forced her lover to participate in the murder of her husband, so as not to interfere with their free life; and only then, together, for the sake of capital, they strangled the husband’s little nephew, on which they were caught and exposed by people ...

And here Leskov brought us to another topic given only to the Russian world (apparently, as a general philosophical national one) - the topic of flour and the violent death of an innocent baby. IN real history the death of two boys, terrible and unjustified, became the mystical root cause of the two greatest Russian troubles - the mysterious death of Tsarevich Dimitri Ivanovich on May 15, 1591 became the impetus for the Troubles of 1605-1612; the popular hanging in 1614 at the Serpukhov Gates of the Moscow Kremlin of the three-year-old Ivashka Vorenok, the son of Maria Mnishek and False Dmitry II, became an unrepentant curse of the reigning house of the Romanovs, the mystical retribution for which was the extermination and expulsion of the family in 1917-1918.

In Russian literature, A.S. was the first to raise this topic. Pushkin in "Boris Godunov":

...And the boys are bloody in the eyes...
And I'm glad to run away, but there's nowhere ... terrible!
Yes, pitiful is the one in whom the conscience is unclean.

The murdered boy in Pushkin's drama is the Supreme Judge, Conscience and the inevitability of the Supreme Retribution.

Leskov put this question differently. For Katerina Izmailova, the murder of a child became the lowest point of the fall, beyond which earthly retribution began, and much more terrible than the human court. The woman suffered from her lover, seemingly refuting previous accusations that she was a non-native. But in fact, she only confirmed her infertility in an even more monstrous form: “... in a prison hospital, when her child was given to her there, she only said “Well, it’s completely!” and, turning away to the wall, without any groan, without any complaint, she collapsed with her chest on a hard bunk. She already had a chance on earth to be convinced of the senselessness and monstrosity of what she had done, it was not without reason that Katerina's last earthly words, instead of a prayer, became a shameful lamentation for those who mocked her. former lover: "how we walked with you, we sat through the autumn long nights, with a fierce death from the wide world people were sent away." And Leskov described the last earthly moments of this impenitent, godless murderous monster with absolutely terrible, terrible: “... but at the same time, from another wave, Katerina Lvovna rose almost to her waist above the water, rushed at Sonetka, like a strong pike at a soft-feathered raft, and both didn't show up anymore."
___________________
* N.S. Leskov. Sobr. op. in 11 volumes. T.1. M.: State Publishing House of Fiction, 1956. Further text is cited from this edition.

However, Katerina Lvovna is completely terrible not by her deeds, but by the fact that she has become a mirror of the soul of the Russian intelligentsia of our days - a great mirror for black souls of blurred morality.

Creating "Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District", Leskov showed a dead end path of personal rebellion for the sake of satisfying his own passions and nihilism as such in general, in contrast to the general rebellion for Justice. If a people's rebellion is an earthly judgment on those who are presumptuous in power, then a personal rebellion is a dead end of barrenness, an all-deadly noose of narcissistic egoism, which has no justification either in other people's atrocities or in one's own misfortune. It was this terrible all-consuming difference that was later most fully revealed by F.M. Dostoevsky in Ivan Karamazov's great monologue about a tortured child and a mother embracing a torturer who tore her son to pieces by dogs.

Through the efforts of the modern creative intelligentsia, Katerina Izmailova is now presented as the bearer of “innocent” and “underestimated” female love, as a victim-sufferer, but not because of the terrible atrocities and infanticide she committed, but because the beloved, to whom she devoted her whole life betrayed her boundless passion. Comments are unnecessary: ​​the preachers of this nonsense managed to fall spiritually even lower than Katerina herself.

In 1930, Dmitri Dmitrievich Shostakovich (1906-1975) wrote based on the essay the brilliant opera Katerina Izmailova, a growing cacophony of reckless Russian revolt, which was never understood by the domestic intelligentsia. To this day, the opera is interpreted as a story about the opposition of a free, passionately loving person - Katerina - to the dictates of an ordinary-minded crowd! Leskov and Shostakovich must be turning over in their graves from such a high flight of thought of modern intellectuals.

The first film adaptation of the story called "Katerina the gas chamber" was made in 1916. Directed by A.A. Arkatov.
______________________
* Alexander Arkadyevich Arkatov (Mogilevsky) (1888-1961) - classic director of world silent cinema. In 1922 he emigrated from Soviet Russia in the United States and ended his film career. Films about the fate of Jews in pre-revolutionary Russia brought fame to Arkatov.

The last adaptation of Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District was made in 1989 by director R.G. Balayan. The role of Katerina Izmailova was performed by the actress N.E. Andreichenko.
______________________
* Roman Gurgenovich Balayan (b. 1941) - a well-known domestic film director; creator of 14 films, including "Flying in a dream and in reality", "Keep me, my talisman", "Filer", etc.
** Natalya Eduardovna Andreichenko (b. 1956) - domestic actress theater and cinema. Played leading roles in many classical works of our cinema, but is best known for the role of Mary Poppins in the TV movie "Mary Poppins, Goodbye!".