Nekrasov is the same as if there were such a peasant, with enormous abilities, with Russian, peasant pains in his chest, who would undertake that way and describe his Russian insides and show it to his peasant brothers: “Look at yourself!” (Newspaper "Pravda", October 1, 1913)

All his life he bore N.A. Nekrasov's idea of ​​a work that would become a folk book, i.e. a book "useful, understandable to the people and truthful", reflecting the most important aspects of his life. "According to a word" for 20 years he accumulated material for this book, and then worked on the text of the work for 14 years. The result of this colossal work was this epic poem "To whom in Russia it is good to live."

The broad social panorama unfolded in it, the truthful depiction of peasant life, begin to occupy a dominant place in this work. Separate plot-independent parts and chapters of the epic are connected by the inner unity of the poem - the image of the life of the people.

From the first chapter of the first part begins the study of the main life force of Russia - the people. It is the desire to depict all folk Russia led the poet to such paintings, where you could gather a lot of people. It appears especially fully in the chapter "Country Fair".

Wanderers came to the square:

A lot of goods

And apparently invisible

To the people! Isn't it fun?

With great skill, Nekrasov conveys the flavor of Russian festivities. There is a feeling of direct participation in this holiday, as if you are walking among a motley crowd and absorbing the atmosphere of universal joy, a holiday. Everything around is moving, making noise, screaming, playing. And here is an episode that confirms the idea of ​​the moral strength and beauty of the national character. The peasants are happy with the act of Veretennikov, who presented Vavila's granddaughter with shoes:

But other peasants

So they were disappointed

So happy, like everyone

He gave the ruble!

Pictures of folk life are not only fun, joy, celebration, but also its dark, unsightly, "ugly" side. The fun turned into drunkenness.

Crawled, lay, rode,

Drunk floundered,

And there was a groan!

The road is crowded

What later is uglier:

More and more often come across

Beaten, crawling

Lying in a layer.

"Drank" and the man who "thought about the ax", and the guy "quiet", who buried a new undercoat in the ground, and the "old", "drunk woman". The statements from the crowd testify to the darkness, ignorance, patience and humility of the people. The peasant world appears extremely naked in all intoxicated frankness and immediacy. The interchanging words, phrases, quick dialogues and shouts seem to be random and incoherent. But among them sharp political remarks are discernible, testifying to the desire and ability of the peasants to comprehend their situation.

You are good, royal letter,

You are not written about us.

And here is a picture of collective labor - "merry mowing." She is imbued with a festive and bright feeling:

Dark people!

There are white

Women's shirts, but colorful

Agile braids.

The joy of labor is felt in everything: "high grass", "agile braids", "merry mowing". The picture of mowing gives rise to the idea of ​​inspired labor, capable of repeating miracles:

Sweeps are haymaking

They go in the right order:

All brought together

Braids flashed, tinkled.

In the chapter "Happy" Nekrasov showed the people already as a "world", i.e. as something organized, conscious, with the strength of which neither the merchant Altynnikov nor the chicane clerks are able to compete ("Cunning, the clerks are strong, and their world is stronger, the merchant Altynnikov is rich, but he cannot resist the worldly treasury").

The people win by organized action in the economic struggle and actively behave (albeit spontaneously, but still more decisively) in the political struggle. In this chapter of the poem, the writer told how the patrimony of the landowner Obrubkov rebelled in the Frightened province, Nedykhaniev county, the village of Stolbnyaki. And in the next chapter ("The Landowner") the poet once again for the "sharp-witted" people will ironically say: "The village must have rebelled in excess of gratitude somewhere!"

Nekrasov continues to recreate the collective image of the hero. This is achieved, first of all, by the masterful depiction of folk scenes. The artist does not stop for a long time at showing individual types of the peasant masses. The growth of peasant consciousness is now being revealed in historical, social, everyday, psychological terms. It must be said about the contradictory soul of the people. In the mass of peasants there is an old woman, "pockmarked, one-eyed", who sees happiness in the turnip harvest, "a soldier with medals", pleased that he was not killed in battles, a courtyard of Prince Peremetyev, proud of gout - a noble disease. Wanderers, seekers of happiness, listen to everyone, and the people in their bulk become the supreme judge. As he judges, for example, the court prince Peremetiev. The impudence and arrogance of the toady-licker causes contempt of the peasants, they drive him away from the bucket from which they treat the "happy" at the rural fair. One cannot lose sight of the fact that Peremetyev's "beloved slave" once again flickers among the pictures of the drunken night. He is flogged for theft.

Where he is caught - here is his judgment:

Three dozen judges met

We decided to give a vine,

And each gave a vine.

It is no coincidence that this was said after the scenes of people's trust were drawn: Yermil Girin is given money without receipts to buy a mill, and in the same way - for honesty - he returns them. This contrast suggests the moral health of the masses of the peasantry, the strength of their moral rules even in an atmosphere of serfdom. The image of the peasant woman Matrena Timofeevna occupies a large and special place in the poem. The story about the share of this heroine is a story about the share of the Russian woman in general. Talking about her marriage, Matrena Timofeevna talks about the marriage of any peasant woman, about all their great multitude. Nekrasov managed to combine the private life of the heroine with mass life, without identifying them. Nekrasov all the time sought to expand the meaning of the image of the heroine, as if to embrace as many women's destinies as possible. This is achieved by weaving folk songs and lamentations into the text. They reflect the most characteristic features of folk life.

Songs and lamentations - this is a small fraction of the artistic originality of the poem "To whom in Russia it is good to live." One can write about the people, write for the people only according to the laws of folk poetry. And the point is not that Nekrasov turned to folklore, using vocabulary, rhythm and images of folk art. In the poem "To whom it is good to live in Russia", first of all, the folk theme is revealed - the people's search for a way to happiness. And this theme is approved by Nekrasov as the leading one, which determines the movement of the people forward. Behind the numerous pictures of people's life, the image of Russia rises, that "wretched and plentiful, downtrodden and omnipotent." countries. A patriotic feeling, a heartfelt love for the motherland and people fills the poem with that inner burning, that lyrical warmth that warms its harsh and truthful epic narrative.

The idea of ​​the poem “To whom it is good to live in Russia” is dictated by life itself. N. A. Nekrasov keenly felt the “sick” questions of his time. This prompted the poet to create a folk book.
Nekrasov devoted many years of tireless work to the poem. In it, he sought to give the reader as complete information as possible about the Russian people, about the processes that took place in the life of the peasantry after the reform of 1861.
The situation of the people is clearly drawn already at the beginning of the poem by the names of the places where the peasants-truth-seekers come from. They are “temporarily obliged”, “Tightened province, Terpigorev district, Empty volost, from adjacent villages - Zaplatova, Dyryavin, Razutov, Znobilin, Gorelova, Neyolova, Neurozhayka, too.” Wandering, the peasants pass through the Frightened, Shot and Illiterate provinces. These names speak for themselves.
Many pages of the poem depict the disenfranchised, joyless life of the people. The villages are “unenviable villages, no matter what the hut is - with a support, like a beggar with a crutch ...” The peasants have scarce supplies, poor seedlings in the peasant fields, so entire villages go “begging” in the fall
Pictures of folk life are depicted in the songs “Hungry”, “Corvee”, “Soldier”, “Merry”, “Salty”.
Here is how the pre-reform peasant is shown in one of the songs:
Poor, unkempt Kalinushka,
Nothing for him to flaunt
Only the back is painted
Yes, you don’t know behind the shirt.
From the bast to the gate
The skin is all torn
The belly swells from the chaff,
twisted, twisted,
Slashed, tormented
Barely Kalina wanders ...
The reform of 1861 did not improve the situation of the people, and it is not for nothing that the peasants say about it:
You are good, royal letter,
You are not written about us.
As before, the peasants are people who “have not eaten their fill, slurped unsalted food”. The only thing that has changed is that now instead of the master they will be torn by the volost.
The peasant world appears extremely naked, in all intoxicated frankness and immediacy in the chapter "Drunk Night". Unusual "drunk" night unties tongues:
The road is full-voiced
Buzzing! That the sea is blue
Silence rises
Popular rumor.
Almost every replica is a plot, a character. The chapter, in my opinion, contains many stories. Isn't the exact picture of the wild despotism of family life emerging from a quarrel between two women:
My elder brother-in-law broke a rib,
The middle son-in-law stole the ball,
A ball is a spit, but the point is
Fifty dollars was wrapped in it,
And the younger son-in-law takes everything,
Look, he will kill, he will kill ...
But isn’t the fate of the woman Daryushka clear from a few phrases, although there is no story about her:
- You have become thin, Daryushka!
Not a spindle, friend!
That's what spins more
It's getting fatter
And I'm like a day-to-day ...
It was the desire to show all the people's Russia that attracted Nekrasov to such a picture, where a lot of people could be gathered. This is how the chapter “Village Fair” appeared. It's been a long time. And in the summer the wanderers came to the “fair”, which brought together many people. This is a folk festival, a mass holiday:
Noise, sing, swear,
It wobbles, it rolls.
Fighting and kissing
The holiday people.
All around is colorful, red, shirts are full of flowers, dresses are red, braids with ribbons6 “The spring sun is playing, funny, loud, festive.”
But among the people there is a lot of dark, unsightly and ugly:
All along that lane
And along the roundabout paths,
As long as the eye was enough
Crawled, lay, rode,
Drunk people were floundering...
The peasant world at the rural fair ends with a story about Yakima Nago. He is not talking about the visitors of the fair, but about the whole world of workers. Yakim does not agree with his master Pavlusha Veretennikov, but expresses his peasant feeling:
Wait, empty head!
Shameless crazy news
Don't talk about us!
Defending the feeling of labor peasant pride, Yakim also sees social injustice in relation to the working peasantry:
You work alone
A little bit of work is done
Look, there are three equity holders:
God, king and lord!
The Russian woman has always been for Nekrasov the main bearer of life, a symbol of national existence. Therefore, the poet paid so much attention to the peasant woman Matryona Timofeevna Korchagina. She talks about her own life. The personal fate of the heroine expands to the limits of the all-Russian. She experienced everything and went through all the states that a Russian woman could go through.
Nekrasovskaya peasant woman - unbroken by trials, survived. So, in the poem, folk life is revealed in a wide variety of manifestations. For the poet, the peasant is great in everything: in his slavish patience, in his age-old suffering, in sins, in revelry.
Before Nekrasov, many portrayed the people. He also managed to notice in the people his hidden strength and at the top of his voice to say: "an innumerable army rises." He believed in the awakening of the people.

Nekrasov wrote the poem "To whom it is good to live in Russia" for twenty years, collecting material literally word by word. The poem became the crowning achievement of his work. The poet wanted to depict in it all social strata: from the peasant to the king. But, unfortunately, due to the death of the author, the work remained unfinished.

As conceived by the poet, “Who is to live well in Russia” is an epic of contemporary folk life. In the center of it is an image of post-reform Russia, when the peasants were liberated, and those, having no land of their own, fell into even greater bondage. The poem is extremely broad coverage of folk life. It was the people's point of view on reality that Nekrasov tried to express in the poem by the very theme, showing Russia, all events through the perception of wandering peasants.

The form of wanderings, meetings, inquiries and stories turned out to be very convenient for the poet, who decided to show the people's life in a comprehensive way. Nekrasov needed a broad socio-historical panorama to depict the conditions in which the life of a peasant took shape.

The main problem of the work is clearly visible already from the title - this is the problem of happiness. The situation of the people is clearly drawn by the very names of the places where the truth-seeking peasants come from: Terpigorevo district, Pustoporozhnaya volost, the villages of Zaplatovo, Dyryavino, Razutovo, Znobishino, Gorelovo, Neurozhayka. The poem realistically depicts the bleak, powerless, hungry life of the people. “A man's happiness,” the poet exclaims bitterly, “leaky, with patches, humpbacked, with calluses!” As before, the peasants are people who "have not eaten their fill, slurped without salt." The only thing that has changed is that "now instead of the master, the volost will fight."

The poet paints, one after another, pictures of the heavy peasant lot, of general ruin. The motive of the hungry life of the peasantry, whom “longing-trouble tortured”, sounds with particular force in the song called “Hungry” by Nekrasov. At the same time, the poet does not soften the colors, showing poverty, rude morals, religious prejudices and drunkenness among the peasants.

For Nekrasov, the peasantry is not a homogeneous mass. It includes a wealth of characters and types. Among them there are also positive heroes, such noble, full of spiritual beauty, as Matrena Timofeevna, Savely, Yermil Girin; there are also unworthy, weak ones: the servile footman of Prince Utyatin Ipat or "Jacob the faithful, exemplary serf." Nekrasov stigmatizes the lord's henchmen, "people of the servile rank", who, under the conditions of serfdom, have lost all human dignity.

Throughout the poem, the thought of the impossibility of living like this goes on. With undisguised sympathy, the author treats those who do not put up with their hungry and powerless existence. The best of them have retained true humanity, the ability to sacrifice, spiritual nobility. These are Matryona Timofeevna, the bogatyr Saveliy, Yakim Nagoi, seven truth-seekers, Grisha Dobrosklonov.

Not meek and submissive are close to the poet, but bold, rebellious and freedom-loving rebels, such as Saveliy, the Holy Russian hero. The image of Saveliy embodies the sides closest to the author inner world Russian peasant, his epic, heroic features. He used to go alone on a bear, he despises slavish obedience, he is ready to stand up for the people. Saveliy helped the peasants to deal with the German steward, who ruined and oppressed them, for which he was exiled to hard labor in Siberia, endured severe torture, but did not reconcile. He retained a hatred for the oppressors and contempt for those who dutifully obeyed them. He experiences terrible mental suffering after the death of Demushka, in which he will blame himself until the end of his life (“grandfather cried so much that the forest groaned”), then he goes to the monastery to atone for his sin, pray for the deceased and “for all the suffering Russian peasantry”, and dying, asks to be buried next to Demushka.

The entire second part of the poem "Who Lives Well in Russia" is devoted to the suffering fate of a Russian woman. In the life of Matryona Timofeevna there was nothing unusual, out of the ordinary. The death of the firstborn, the enmity of the husband's family, hunger, illness, fires - what peasant woman did not go through all this? Behind Matryona stood hundreds and thousands of people like her. But other women call her "happy", which means that their life is even more hopeless. According to Matryona, this is not a matter - “to look for a happy woman between women.” Another heroine of the poem, a pilgrim who entered the village, said that "the keys to women's happiness, from our free will, are abandoned, lost from God himself."

The first folk poet, he wrote about the people and for the people, knowing their thoughts, needs, concerns and hopes. The connection with the people filled the life of Nekrasov with special meaning and was the main content of his poetry.

"On the road"

Nekrasov the poet is very sensitive to the changes that are taking place among the people. In his poems, people's life is depicted in a new way, not like that of his predecessors.

Through all the work of the poet passes the motive of the road - a through motive for Russian literature. The road is not just a segment connecting two geographical points, it is something more. “If you go to the right, you will lose your horse; if you go to the left, you yourself will not be alive; if you go straight, you will find your destiny.” The road-path is the choice of a life path, a goal.

There were many verses on the plot chosen by Nekrasov, in which daring troikas raced, bells rang under an arc, and coachmen's songs sounded. At the beginning of his poem, the poet reminds the reader of this:

Boring! boring! .. The remote coachman,
Disperse my boredom with something!
Song, or something, buddy, sing
About recruiting and separation ...

But immediately, abruptly, decisively, he breaks off the usual and familiar poetic course. What strikes us in this poem? Of course, the coachman's speech, completely devoid of the usual folk-song intonations. It seems as if bare prose unceremoniously burst into poetry: the driver's voice is clumsy, rude, saturated dialect words. What new opportunities does such a “mundane” approach to depicting a man from the people open up for Nekrasov the poet?

Note: in folk songs, as a rule, we are talking about “a daring coachman, a “good fellow” or a “red maiden”. Everything that happens to them is applicable to many people from the popular environment. The song reproduces events and characters of national significance and sound. Nekrasov is interested in something else: how people's joys or hardships are manifested in the fate of this particular hero. The poet depicts the general in peasant life through the individual, the unique. Later, in one of his poems, the poet joyfully greets his village friends:

All familiar people
Whatever a man, then a friend.

So after all, it happens in his poetry that no man is a unique personality, a one-of-a-kind character.

Perhaps none of Nekrasov's contemporaries dared to get so close, to get close to a peasant on the pages of a poetic work. Only he could then not only write about the people, but also "speak to the people"; letting in peasants, beggars, artisans with their different perceptions of the world, in different languages in verse.

With ardent love, the poet refers to nature - the only treasure of the world, which "strong and well-fed lands could not take away from the hungry poor." Subtly feeling nature, Nekrasov never shows it in isolation from man, his activities and condition. In the poems "Uncompressed Strip" (1854), "Village News" (1860), in the poem "Peasant Children" (1861), the image of Russian nature is closely intertwined with the disclosure of the soul of the Russian peasant, his difficult life fate. A peasant who lives in the midst of nature and deeply feels it rarely has the opportunity to admire it.

About whom in question in the poem "Uncompressed band"? As if about a sick peasant. And the trouble is comprehended from the peasant point of view: there is no one to clean the strip, the grown crop will be lost. Here, the land-breadwinner is also animated in a peasant way: “it seems that the ears of corn are whispering to each other.” I was going to die, but this rye, ”they said among the people. And with the onset of the hour of death, the peasant did not think about himself, but about the land, which would remain an orphan without him.

But you read a poem and more and more you feel that these are very personal, very lyrical poems, that the poet looks at himself through the eyes of a plowman. So it was. Nekrasov wrote the “uncompressed strip” to seriously ill patients before leaving abroad for treatment in 1855. The poet was overcome by sad thoughts; it seemed that the days were already numbered, that he might not return to Russia either. And here the courageous attitude of the people to troubles and misfortunes helped Nekrasov to withstand the blow of fate, to preserve his spiritual strength. The image of the “uncompressed lane”, like the image of the “road” in the previous poems, acquires a figurative, metaphorical meaning from Nekrasov: this is both a peasant field, but also a “field” of writing, the craving for which in a sick poet is stronger than death, as love is stronger than death a grain grower to work on the earth, to a labor field.

"Song to Eremushka" (1859)

Nekrasov condemns in this "Song" the "vulgar experience" of opportunists crawling their way to life's blessings, and calls on the younger generation to devote their lives to the struggle for the happiness of the people.

Exercise

Reading and independent analysis or commentary of Nekrasov’s poems: “On the road”, “Is I driving at night”, “I don’t like your irony ...”, “Uncompressed band”, “Schoolboy”, “Yeremushka’s Song”, “Funeral”, “ Green Noise”, “Morning”, “Prayer”, fragments from the cycle “About the weather”.

The analysis of poems is carried out at three levels:
- figurative-linguistic (vocabulary, tropes);
- structural and compositional (composition, rhythm);
- ideological (ideological and aesthetic content).

In the poem "Yesterday at six o'clock" Nekrasov first introduced his Muse, the sister of the offended and oppressed. In his last poem, "O Muse, I am at the door of the coffin," the poet last time recalls "this pale, in blood, / Whip excised Muse." Not love for a woman, not the beauty of nature, but the suffering of the poor, tortured by poverty - this is the source of lyrical experiences in many of Nekrasov's poems.

The subject matter of Nekrasov's lyrics is varied.

The first of the artistic principles of Nekrasov-lyric can be called social. The second is social analytics. And this was new in Russian poetry, absent from Pushkin and Lermontov, especially from Tyutchev and Fet. This principle permeates two of Nekrasov's most famous poems: "Reflections at the front door" (1858) and " Railway» (1864).

"Reflections at the Front Door" (1858)

In "Reflections ..." a specific isolated case is the arrival of peasants with a request or complaint to a certain statesman.

This poem is built on contrast. The poet contrasts two worlds: the world of the rich and the idle, whose interests are reduced to "red tape, gluttony, play", "shameless flattery", and the world of the people, where "blatant sorrow" reigns. The poet depicts their relationship. The nobleman is full of contempt for the people, this is revealed with the utmost clarity in one line:

Drive!
Ours does not like ragged mob!

The feelings of the people are more difficult. Walkers from a distant province wandered "for a long time" in the hope of finding help or protection from a nobleman. But the door "slammed" in front of them, and they leave,

Repeating: "God judge him!",
Spreading hopelessly hands,
And as long as I could see them,
With their heads uncovered...

The poet is not limited to depicting the hopeless humility and endless groaning of the people. “Will you wake up, full of strength? ..” - he asks and leads the reader to answer this question with the whole poem: “The happy are deaf to good”, the people have nothing to expect salvation from the nobles, he must take care of his own fate.

Two principles of reflecting reality in Nekrasov's lyrics naturally lead to the third principle - revolutionary. The lyrical hero of Nekrasov's poetry is convinced that only a popular, peasant revolution can change the life of Russia for the better. This side of consciousness is especially strong lyrical hero manifested itself in poems dedicated to Nekrasov's associates in the revolutionary-democratic camp: Belinsky, Dobrolyubov, Chernyshevsky, Pisarev.

Literature

School curriculum grade 10 in answers and solutions. M., St. Petersburg, 1999

Yu.V. Lebedev Comprehension of the people's soul // Russian literature of the 18th–19th centuries: reference materials. M., 1995

Nikolai Alekseevich Nekrasov - the great Russian poet of the 19th century. Great fame was brought to him by the epic poem "To whom in Russia it is good to live." I would like to define the genre of this work in this way, because it widely presents pictures of the life of post-reform Russia.

This poem has been written for 20 years. Nekrasov wanted to represent all social strata in it: from the peasant peasant to the king. But, unfortunately, the poem was never finished - the death of the poet prevented it.

Of course, the peasant theme occupies the main place in the work, and the question that torments the author is already in the title: “Who should live well in Russia?”

Nekrasov is disturbed by the thought of the impossibility of living the way Russia lived at that time, of the heavy peasant lot, of the hungry, beggarly existence of a peasant on Russian soil in this poem, Nekrasov, as it seemed to me, does not idealize the peasants at all, he shows the poverty, rudeness and drunkenness of the peasants .

To everyone who meets on the way, men ask a question about happiness. So gradually, from the individual stories of the lucky ones, a general picture of life after the reform of 1861 is formed.

To convey it more fully and brighter. Nekrasov, along with wanderers, is looking for a happy man not only among the rich, but also among the people. And not only landowners, priests, wealthy peasants appear before the reader, but also Matryona Timofeevna, Savely, Grisha Dobrosklonov

And in the chapter "Happy" images and pickles of the people are conveyed most realistically. One by one, the call comes from the peasants: "the whole square is crowded" listening to them. However, the men did not recognize any of the narrators.

Hey, man's happiness!

Leaky, with patches,

Humpbacked with calluses…

After reading these lines, I concluded that the people throughout Russia are poor and humiliated, deceived by their former masters and the tsar.

The situation of the people is clearly depicted by the name of the places where the wandering peasants come from: Terpigorev district, Pustoporozhnaya volost, the villages of Zaplatovo, Dyryavino, Znobishino, Gorelovo.

So in the poem the joyless, disenfranchised, hungry life of the peasantry is vividly depicted.

The description of nature in the poem is also given in inseparable unity with the life of a peasant. In our imagination, an image of a land devoid of life arises - “no greenery, no grass, no leaf”

The landscape gives rise to a feeling of peasant deprivation, grief. This motif sounds with a special, soul-touching force in the description of the village of Klin, the “village of the Unenviable”:

Whatever the hut, with a support

Like a beggar with a crutch:

And from the roofs the straw is fed

Scott. They stand like skeletons

Poor at home.

Rainy late autumn

This is how the nests of the jackdaw look,

When the jackdaws fly out

And the roadside wind

The birches will bare

The village of Kuzminskoye is described in the same way with its mud, the school “empty, packed tightly”, the hut, “in one window”. In a word, all descriptions are convincing evidence that in the life of a peasant throughout Russia "poverty, ignorance, darkness."

However, the images of special peasants such as Savely the Bogatyr, Matrena Timofeevna help to judge that Mother Russia is full of spirituality. She is talented.

The fact that Nekrasov connected people of different classes in his poem made, in my opinion, the image of Russia of that time not only extensive, but also complete, bright, deep and patriotic.

It seems to me that the poem "To whom it is good to live in Russia" reflects the author's ability to convey reality, reality, and contact with such artwork brings me closer to high art and history.