Without a doubt, The Thunderstorm (1859) is the pinnacle of Alexander Ostrovsky's drama. The author shows the most important changes in the social and political life of Russia using the example of family relations. That is why his creation needs a detailed analysis.

The process of creating the play "The Thunderstorm" is connected in many ways with the past periods in the work of Ostrovsky. The author is attracted by the same problems as in the "Muscovite" plays, but the image of the family receives a different interpretation (the novelty was the denial of the stagnation of patriarchal life and the oppression of Domostroi). The appearance of a bright, kind beginning, a natural heroine is an innovation in the author's work.

The first thoughts and sketches of The Thunderstorms appeared in the summer of 1859, and already in early October the writer had a clear idea of \u200b\u200bthe whole picture. The work was greatly influenced by a journey along the Volga. An ethnographic expedition was organized under the patronage of the Maritime Ministry to study the customs and customs of the indigenous population of Russia. Ostrovsky also took part in it.

The city of Kalinov is a collective image of various Volga cities, which are simultaneously similar to each other, but have their own distinctive features. Ostrovsky, as an experienced researcher, entered all his observations about the life of the Russian province and the specifics of the behavior of residents in his diary. On the basis of these records, the characters of "The Thunderstorms" were later created.

The meaning of the name

A thunderstorm is not only a revelry of the elements, but also a symbol of the collapse and purification of the stagnant atmosphere of a provincial town, where the medieval orders of Kabanikha and the Wild ruled. This is the meaning of the title of the play. With the death of Katerina, which occurred during a thunderstorm, the patience of many people is exhausted: Tikhon rises against the tyranny of his mother, Varvara escapes, Kuligin openly blames the inhabitants of the city for what happened.

For the first time, Tikhon spoke about a thunderstorm during a farewell ceremony: “... For two weeks there will be no thunderstorm over me”. By this word he meant the oppressive atmosphere of his home, where an oppressive mother rules the ball. “A thunderstorm is sent to us as punishment,” says Dikoy to Kuligin. The tyrant understands this phenomenon as punishment for his sins, he is afraid to pay for the unfair treatment of people. The boar is in solidarity with him. The punishment for sin in thunder and lightning is seen by Katerina, whose conscience is also not clear. God's righteous wrath - this is another role of a thunderstorm in Ostrovsky's play. And only Kuligin understands that in this natural phenomenon only a flash of electricity can be found, but his advanced views cannot yet get along in a city that needs purification. If you need more information on the role and meaning of thunderstorms, you can read on this topic.

Genre and direction

"The Thunderstorm" is a drama, according to A. Ostrovsky. This genre defines a heavy, serious, often everyday plot, close to reality. Some reviewers have mentioned a more precise wording: a domestic tragedy.

If we talk about direction, then this play is absolutely realistic. The main indicator of this, perhaps, is the description of the mores, habits and everyday aspects of the existence of the inhabitants of the provincial Volga cities (detailed description). The author attaches great importance to this, carefully describing the realities of the life of the heroes and their images.

Composition

1. Exposition: Ostrovsky draws the image of the city and even the world in which heroes live and future events unfold.
2. This is followed by the outset of the conflict between Katerina and the new family and society as a whole and the internal conflict (dialogue between Katerina and Varvara).
3. After the outset, we see the development of the action, during which the heroes seek to resolve the conflict.
4. Closer to the finale, the conflict reaches the point when problems require urgent resolution. The climax is Katerina's last monologue in Act 5.
5. This is followed by a denouement, which shows the insolubility of the conflict on the example of the death of Katerina.

Conflict

There are several conflicts in The Thunderstorm:

1. First, it is a confrontation between tyrants (Dikaya, Kabanikha) and victims (Katerina, Tikhon, Boris, etc.). This is a conflict between two worldviews - old and new, obsolete and freedom-loving characters. This conflict is highlighted.
2. On the other hand, action exists thanks to a psychological conflict, that is, an internal one - in Katerina's soul.
3. The social conflict gave rise to all the previous ones: Ostrovsky begins his work with the marriage of an impoverished noblewoman and a merchant. This trend was widespread during the time of the author. The ruling aristocratic class began to lose power, becoming poorer and ruined by idleness, wastefulness and commercial illiteracy. But the merchants gained momentum due to lack of principle, assertiveness, business acumen and nepotism. Then some decided to improve matters at the expense of others: the nobles passed off refined and educated daughters for rude, ignorant, but rich sons from the merchant's guild. Because of this discrepancy, the marriage of Katerina and Tikhon is initially doomed to failure.

The essence

Raised in the best traditions of aristocracy, the noblewoman Katerina, at the insistence of her parents, married an uncouth and soft-bodied drunkard Tikhon, who belonged to a wealthy merchant family. His mother oppresses her daughter-in-law, imposing the false and ridiculous orders of Domostroy on her: to sob for show before her husband leaves, to humiliate herself in front of us in public, etc. The young heroine finds sympathy with the daughter of Kabanikha, Barbara, who teaches her new relative to hide her thoughts and feelings, secretly acquiring the joys of life. During her husband's departure, Katerina falls in love and begins dating Diky's nephew, Boris. But their dates end in separation, because the woman does not want to hide, she wants to run away with her beloved to Siberia. But the hero cannot risk taking her with him. As a result, she still repent of her sins to her husband and mother-in-law, and receives a harsh punishment from Kabanikha. Realizing that conscience and domestic oppression do not allow her to live on, she rushes into the Volga. After her death, the younger generation revolts: Tikhon reproaches his mother, Varvara escapes with Kudryash, etc.

Ostrovsky's play combines features and contradictions, all the pros and cons of feudal Russia in the 19th century. The town of Kalinov is a collective image, a simplified model of Russian society, described in detail. Looking at this model, we see "a necessary need for people who are active and energetic." The author shows that an outdated worldview only gets in the way. It spoils first family relationships, and later does not allow cities and the whole country to develop.

The main characters and their characteristics

The work has a clear system of characters, into which the images of the heroes fit.

1. First, there are the oppressors. Dikoy is a typical tyrant and a wealthy merchant. From his insults, relatives scatter to the corners. Dikaya's servants are cruel. Everyone knows that it is impossible to please him. Kabanova is the embodiment of the patriarchal way of life, the outdated Domostroy. A rich merchant's wife, a widow, she constantly insists on observing all the traditions of her ancestors and herself clearly follows them. We have described them in more detail in this.
2. Secondly, they have adapted. Tikhon is a weak person who loves his wife, but cannot find the strength to protect her from the oppression of his mother. He does not support the old orders and traditions, but he sees no reason to go against the system. Such is Boris, who tolerates the machinations of his rich uncle. This disclosure is devoted to their images. Varvara is the daughter of Kabanikha. She takes her trick, living a double life. During the day, she formally obeys conventions, at night she walks with Kudryash. Deceit, resourcefulness and cunning do not spoil her cheerful, adventurous disposition: she is also kind and responsive to Katerina, tender and caring in relation to her beloved. The whole is devoted to the characterization of this girl.
3. Katerina stands apart, the characterization of the heroine is different from everyone else. This is a young, intelligent noblewoman, whom her parents surrounded with understanding, care and attention. Therefore, the girl is accustomed to freedom of thought and speech. But in marriage, she faced cruelty, rudeness and humiliation. At first she tried to come to terms, to love Tikhon and his family, but nothing came of it: Katerina's nature resisted this unnatural union. She then tried on the role of a hypocritical mask that has a secret life. This also did not suit her, because the heroine is distinguished by directness, conscience and honesty. As a result, out of despair, she decided to go to a riot, confessing a sin and then committing a more terrible one - suicide. We wrote more about the image of Katerina in the dedicated to her.
4. Kuligin is also a special hero. He expresses the author's position, bringing a bit of progressiveness into the archaic world. The hero is a self-taught mechanic, he is educated and smart, in contrast to the superstitious inhabitants of Kalinov. We also wrote a short about his role in the play and his character.

Topics

• The main theme of the work is Kalinov's life and customs (we have dedicated a separate one to her). The author describes a provincial province in order to show people that they do not need to cling to the remnants of the past, they need to understand the present and think about the future. And the inhabitants of the Volga town are frozen out of time, their life is monotonous, false and empty. It is spoiled and hindered in the development of superstition, conservatism, as well as the unwillingness of tyrants to change for the better. Such a Russia will continue to vegetate in poverty and ignorance.
• Love and family are also important topics here, as the problems of upbringing and generational conflict are raised along the way. The influence of the family on certain characters is very important (Katerina is a reflection of the upbringing of her parents, and Tikhon grew up so spineless due to the tyranny of his mother).
• The theme of sin and repentance. The heroine stumbled, but realized her mistake in time, deciding to reform and repent of what she had done. From the point of view of Christian philosophy, this is a highly moral decision that uplifts and justifies Katherine. If you are interested in this topic, read our about it.

Problematic

Social conflict leads to social and personal problems.

1. Ostrovsky, firstly, denounces tyranny as a psychological phenomenon in the images of the Wild and Kabanova. These people played with the fate of their subordinates, trampling on the manifestations of their individuality and freedom. And because of their ignorance and despotism, the younger generation becomes as vicious and useless as what has already become obsolete.
2. Second, the author condemns weakness, obedience and selfishness with the help of the images of Tikhon, Boris and Varvara. By their behavior, they only condone the tyranny of the masters of life, although they could together turn the situation in their favor.
3. The problem of the contradictory Russian character, conveyed in the image of Katerina, can be called personal, albeit inspired by global upheavals. A deeply religious woman, in search and finding herself, goes to treason, and then to suicide, which is contrary to all Christian canons.
4. Moral issues associated with love and devotion, education and tyranny, sin and repentance. Heroes cannot distinguish one from the other, these concepts are intricately intertwined with each other. Katerina, for example, is forced to choose between loyalty and love, and Kabanikha does not see the difference between the role of a mother and the power of a dogmatist, she is driven by good intentions, but she embodies them to the detriment of everyone.
5. Tragedy of conscience is quite important. For example, Tikhon had to make a decision - to defend his wife from his mother's attacks or not. Katerina also made a deal with her conscience when she became close to Boris. You can read more about this.
6. Ignorance. The inhabitants of Kalinov are stupid and not educated, they believe fortune-tellers and wanderers, and not scientists and professionals in their field. Their worldview is turned into the past, they do not strive for a better life, so there is no need to be surprised at the savagery of manners and ostentatious hypocrisy of the main persons of the city.

Meaning

The author is convinced that the desire for freedom is natural, despite certain setbacks in life, and tyranny and hypocrisy ruin the country and talented people in it. Therefore, your independence, craving for knowledge, beauty and spirituality must be defended, otherwise the old order will not go anywhere, their falsity will simply cover the new generation and make it play by its own rules. This idea is reflected in the position of Kuligin, Ostrovsky's peculiar voice.

The author's position in the play is clearly expressed. We understand that Kabanikha, although she preserves traditions, is not right, just as the rebellious Katerina is also wrong. However, Katerina had potential, she had a mind, she had purity of thoughts, and the great people personified in her can still be reborn, throwing off the shackles of ignorance and tyranny. You can find out more about the meaning of the drama in on this topic.

Criticism

The Thunderstorm became the subject of bitter controversy among critics in both the 19th and 20th centuries. In the 19th century, Nikolai Dobrolyubov (article "A ray of light in a dark kingdom"), Dmitry Pisarev (article "Motives of the Russian drama") and Apollon Grigoriev wrote about it from opposite positions.

I.A.Goncharov praised the play and expressed his opinion in a critical article of the same name:

In the same drama, a broad picture of national life and customs settled down, with unparalleled artistic, fullness and fidelity. Every face in a drama is a typical character snatched directly from the environment of popular life.

Interesting? Keep it on your wall!

Option No. 371064

When completing tasks with a short answer, write in the answer field a number that corresponds to the number of the correct answer, or a number, word, sequence of letters (words) or numbers. The answer should be recorded without spaces or any additional characters. The answer to tasks 1-7 is a word, or a phrase, or a sequence of numbers. Write your answers without spaces, commas, or other additional characters. For tasks 8-9, give a coherent answer in the amount of 5-10 sentences. Performing task 9, select two works of different authors for comparison (in one of the examples, it is permissible to refer to the work of the author who owns the source text); indicate the titles of the works and the names of the authors; justify your choice and compare the works with the proposed text in a given direction of analysis.

Performing tasks 10-14 is a word, or a phrase, or a sequence of numbers. When completing assignment 15-16, rely on the author's position, if necessary, state your point of view. Argument your answer based on the text of the work. Performing task 16, select two works of different authors for comparison (in one of the examples, it is permissible to refer to the work of the author who owns the source text); indicate the titles of the works and the names of the authors; justify your choice and compare the works with the proposed text in a given direction of analysis.

For task 17, give a detailed and reasoned answer in the genre of an essay of at least 200 words (an essay of less than 150 words is estimated at zero points). Analyze a literary work based on the position of the author, using the necessary theoretical and literary concepts. When giving an answer, observe the norms of speech.

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At the beginning of the above fragment, the heroes communicate with each other, exchanging remarks. What is the name of this type of speech?

Here we are at home, - said Nikolai Petrovich, removing his cap and shaking his hair. - The main thing is now to have supper and rest.

Eating is really not bad, ”Bazarov remarked, stretching, and sank down on the sofa.

Yes, yes, let's have supper, supper as soon as possible. - Nikolai Petrovich stamped his feet for no apparent reason. - By the way, Prokofich.

A man of about sixty came in, white-haired, thin and swarthy, in a brown tailcoat with copper buttons and a pink kerchief around his neck. He grinned, went to the handle to Arkady and, bowing to the guest, stepped back to the door and put his hands behind his back.

Here he is, Prokofich, - Nikolai Petrovich began, - has come to us at last ... What? how do you find him?

At its best, sir, ”said the old man and grinned again, but immediately frowned his thick eyebrows. - Do you want to set the table? he said impressively.

Yes, yes, please. But won't you go first into your room, Evgeny Vasilich?

No, thank you, there is no need. Just order my little suitcase to be pulled there and this garment, ”he added, taking off his robe.

Very good. Prokofich, take their greatcoat. (Prokofich, as if in bewilderment, took Bazarov's "clothes" with both hands and, raising it high above his head, withdrew on tiptoe.) And you, Arkady, will you go to your place for a minute?

Yes, we need to clean up, - answered Arkady and was about to go to the door, but at that moment a man of average height, dressed in a dark English suite, a fashionable low tie and lacquered ankle boots, Pavel Petrovich Kirsanov entered the living room. He looked about forty-five years old: his cropped gray hair shone with a dark sheen like new silver; his face, bilious, but without wrinkles, unusually regular and clean, as if drawn by a thin and light incisor, showed traces of remarkable beauty; especially good were the light, black, oblong eyes. The whole appearance of Arkadiev's uncle, graceful and thoroughbred, retained youthful harmony and that striving upward, away from the earth, which for the most part disappears after the twenties.

Pavel Petrovich took out of his trousers pocket his beautiful hand with long pink nails - a hand that seemed even more beautiful from the snowy whiteness of a sleeve buttoned by a single large opal, and handed it to his nephew. Having made a preliminary European "shake hands", he three times, in Russian, kissed him, that is, he touched his cheeks three times with his scented mustache, and said: "Welcome."

Nikolai Petrovich introduced him to Bazarov: Pavel Petrovich slightly bent his flexible body and smiled slightly, but did not give his hand and even put it back in his pocket.

I already thought that you would not come today, ”he spoke in a pleasant voice, swaying graciously, twitching his shoulders and showing his beautiful white teeth. - What happened on the road?

Nothing happened, - answered Arkady, - so, they hesitated a little.

I. S. Turgenev "Fathers and Sons"

Answer:

What is the literary movement, the principles of which are embodied in Dead Souls?

Read the fragment of the work below and complete tasks B1-B7; C1, C2.

The nobleman, as usual, comes out: “Why are you? Why do you? AND! - He says, seeing Kopeikin, - I have already announced to you that you must expect a decision. " - "Have mercy, your Excellency, I do not have, so to speak, a piece of bread ..." - "What to do? I can't do anything for you: try to help yourself for the time being, look for the means yourself. " "But, your Excellency, you yourself can, in a way, judge what means I can find without having either an arm or a leg." “But,” says the dignitary, “you must agree: I cannot support you, in a way, at my own expense: I have many wounded, they all have an equal right ... Arm yourself with patience. The sovereign will come, I can give you my word of honor that his royal grace will not leave you. " “But, Your Excellency, I cannot wait,” says Kopeikin, and speaks, in a way, roughly. The grandee, you see, was already annoyed. Indeed: here from all sides the generals await decisions, orders: affairs, so to speak, are important, state affairs, requiring the speediest execution - a minute of omission can be important - and then an obsessive devil has attached itself to the side. "Excuse me, he says, I have no time ... things are more important than yours." Reminds in a way, in a way, subtle, that it's time to finally get out. And my Kopeikin, - you know, hunger spurred him: "As you wish, your Excellency, he says, I will not leave my place until you give a resolution." Well ... you can imagine: to answer in this way a nobleman who needs only a word - and so the tarashki flew up, so the devil will not find you ... Then if an official tells our brother, one less rank, like and rudeness. Well, and there the size is, what size: general-in-chief and some captain Kopeikin! Ninety rubles and zero! The general, you know, nothing more, as soon as he glanced, and his gaze is a firearm: there is no soul - it has already gone into his heels. And my Kopeikin, you can imagine, is standing rooted to the spot. "What are you?" - says the general and took him, as they say, in the shoulder blades. However, to tell the truth, he was still quite merciful: someone else would have scared so much that the street would turn upside down for three days after that, but he only said: “Well, he says, if it is expensive for you to live here and you cannot wait peacefully in the capital the decision of your fate, so I will send you to the state account. Call the courier! send him to his place of residence! " And the courier is already there, you know, and stands: a three-armed peasant of some kind, his hand, you can imagine, by nature itself is arranged for the coachmen - in a word, a kind of dentist. .. Here he, the servant of God, was seized, my sir, and into a cart, with a courier. “Well,” Kopeikin thinks, “at least there is no need to pay runs, thanks for that.” Here he is, my sir, riding a courier, yes, riding a courier, in a way, so to speak, reasoning to himself: “When the general says that I should look for the means to help myself, well, he says, I, he says, will find facilities!" Well, as soon as he was taken to the place and where exactly he was brought, none of this is known. So, you see, the rumors about Captain Kopeikin have sunk into the river of oblivion, into some sort of Lethe, as the poets call it. But, excuse me, gentlemen, this is where, one might say, the thread, the beginning of the novel, begins. So, where Kopeikin went is unknown; but, can you imagine, two months have not passed since a gang of robbers appeared in the Ryazan forests, and the chieftain of this gang was, my sir, no one else ... ".

N.V. Gogol "Dead Souls"

Answer:

Indicate the term that denotes the image of the inner, mental life of the characters, including with the help of external “clues” (“he exclaimed impatiently,” “interrupted again,” “looked from under his brows”).

Read the fragment of the work below and complete tasks B1-B7; C1, C2.

This is how you and I, Nikolai Petrovich said to his brother that same day after dinner, sitting in his office, - we are retired people, our song is sung. Well? Perhaps Bazarov is right; But I confess, one thing hurts: I was hoping just now to get close and friendly with Arkady, but it turns out that I stayed behind and he went ahead, and we cannot understand each other.

Why did he go ahead? And how is he so very different from us? - Pavel Petrovich exclaimed impatiently. - This signor drove it all into his head, this nihilist. I hate this doctor; in my opinion, he is just a charlatan; I am sure that with all his frogs he is not far from physics.

No, brother, don't say that: Bazarov is smart and knowledgeable.

And what a repugnant vanity, ”Pavel Petrovich interrupted again.

Yes, - Nikolai Petrovich remarked, - he is proud. But without this, apparently, it is impossible; only that's what I won’t understand. It seems that I am doing everything in order to keep up with the times: I arranged the peasants, I started a farm, so that even in the whole province they call me red; I read, study, in general I try to become in line with modern requirements - and they say that my song has been sung. Yes, brother, I myself am beginning to think that it is definitely sung.

Why?

Here's why. Today I am sitting and reading Pushkin ... I remember I came across "Gypsies" ... Suddenly Arkady comes up to me and silently, with such tender regret on his face, quietly, like a child's, took the book from me and put another one in front of me, German ... smiled, and left, and took Pushkin away.

Here's how! What book did he give you?

This one.

And Nikolai Petrovich took from the back pocket of his coat the notorious pamphlet of Buchner, ninth edition. Pavel Petrovich turned it over in his hands.

Hm! he mumbled. - Arkady Nikolaevich takes care of your upbringing. Well, have you tried reading?

I tried it.

So what?

Either I am stupid, or this is all nonsense. I must be stupid.

Don't you forget German? Pavel Petrovich asked.

I understand German.

Pavel Petrovich turned the book over in his hands again and glanced at his brother from under his brows. Both were silent.

I. S. Turgenev "Fathers and Sons"

Answer:

The relationship between the Wild and the people around him is often in the nature of collision, irreconcilable confrontation. Indicate the term by which it stands.

Read the fragment of the work below and complete tasks B1-B7; C1, C2.

Kabanova. Go, Feklusha, tell me to cook something to eat.

Feklusha leaves.

Let's go to the chambers!

Wild. No, I will not go to the chambers, in the chambers I am worse.

Kabanova. What made you angry, then?

Wild. Since the morning since Kabanov himself, they must have been asking for money.

Wild. As if they had conspired, damned; then one, then the other stick around all day.

Kabanova. It must be necessary if they stick.

Wild. I understand this; but what will you order me to do with yourself when I have such a heart! After all, I already know that I must give, but I can’t do everything good. You are my friend, and I must give you back, but if you come and ask me, I will scold you. I will give, I will give, but I will scold. Because - just give me a hint of money, I will start to kindle all my insides; he kindles all the insides, and that's all; well, and in those days I would never swear at a person.

Kabanova. There are no elders over you, so you are swaggering.

Wild. No, you, godfather, shut up! You listen! These are the stories that happened to me. Somehow about fasting, about great things, I was fasting, but here it’s not easy and slip a peasant; I came for money, carried firewood. And he brought him to sin at a time like this! He did sin: he scolded him, he scolded him so much that it was impossible to demand better, he almost nailed him. Here it is, what a heart I have! After asking forgiveness, he bowed at his feet, really, so. Truly I tell you, I bowed to the peasant's feet. This is what my heart drives me to: here in the yard, in the mud, I bowed to him; bowed to him in front of everyone.

Kabanova. Why do you bring yourself into your heart on purpose? This, godfather, is not good.

Wild. How is it on purpose?

Kabanova. I have seen, I know. If you see that they want to ask you for something, you will take it from your own on purpose to someone and pounce on to get angry; because you know that no one will go to you angry. That's what, godfather!

Wild. Well, what is it? Who does not feel sorry for his good!

Glasha enters.

Kabanova. Marfa Ignatievna, there is a bite to eat, please!

Kabanova. Well, godfather, come in! Have a snack than God sent!

Wild. Perhaps.

Kabanova. Welcome! (Skips ahead of the Wild one and goes after him.)

A.N. Ostrovsky "Thunderstorm"

Answer:

At the end of the fragment, a question sounds that does not require a specific answer: "And what passions and enterprises could excite them?" What is the name of such a question?

The poet and dreamer would not be satisfied even with the general appearance of this modest and unpretentious area. They would not have been able to see there some evening in the Swiss or Scottish taste, when all nature - and the forest, and water, and walls of huts, and sandy hills - everything burns like a crimson glow; when, against this crimson background, a cavalcade of men driving along a sandy winding road is sharply shaded, accompanying some lady on walks to a sullen ruin and hurrying to a strong castle, where an episode about the war of two roses, told by their grandfather, a wild goat for dinner and sung to a young miss to the sound of the lute ballad - pictures,

with which Walter Scott's pen has so richly populated our imaginations.

No, this was nothing in our land.

How quiet everything is, everything is sleepy in the three or four villages that make up this corner! They lay not far from each other and were as if accidentally thrown by a giant hand and scattered in different directions, and so they have remained since then.

As one hut got on the edge of a ravine, it has been hanging there since time immemorial, standing with one half in the air and propped up with three poles. Three or four generations have lived quietly and happily in it.

It seems that a chicken would be scared to enter it, and there lives with his wife Onisim Suslov, a respectable man who does not stare at his full height in his home. Not everyone will be able to enter the hut to Onesimus; unless the visitor asks her to stand with her back to the forest and in front of him.

The porch hung over the ravine, and in order to get on the porch with your foot, you had to grab the grass with one hand, the roof of the hut with the other, and then step directly onto the porch.

Another hut clung to the hillock like a swallow's nest; there three happened to be side by side, and two stand at the very bottom of the ravine.

Everything in the village is quiet and sleepy: the silent huts are wide open; not a soul is visible; some flies fly in clouds and buzz in the stuffy atmosphere. Entering the hut, in vain you will click loudly: dead silence will be the answer; in a rare hut, an old woman, living out her life on the stove, will respond with a painful groan or a dull cough, or a barefoot, long-haired three-year-old child, in one shirt, silently, will appear from behind the partition, gazing at the newcomer and timidly hiding again.

The same deep silence and peace lie in the fields; only here and there, like an ant, a plowman, scorching in the heat, is homozy in a black field, leaning on a plow and sweating.

Silence and serenity reign in the mores of people in that region. There were no robberies, no murders, no terrible accidents happened there; neither strong passions nor daring ventures excited them.

And what passions and ventures could excite them? Everyone there knew himself. The inhabitants of this region lived far from other people. The nearest villages and the county town were twenty-five and thirty versts away.

The peasants at a certain time carried bread to the nearest pier to the Volga, which was their Colchis and Pillars of Hercules, and once a year some went to the fair, and had no more relations with anyone.

Their interests were focused on themselves, did not overlap and did not come into contact with anyone else.

(I.A. Goncharov. Oblomov)

Answer:

Read the fragment of the piece below and complete tasks B1-B7; C1, C2.

XVII Arriving home, pistols He examined, then invested Again them in a box and, undressed, By candlelight, Schiller opened; But thought alone embraces him; A sad heart does not sleep in him: With inexplicable beauty He sees Olga before him. Vladimir closes the book, Takes a feather; his poems, Full of love nonsense They sound and pour. Read them He's out loud, in the lyrical heat, Like Delvig drunk at a feast. XVIII Poems have been preserved in case I have them; here they are: "Where, where have you gone, Are my golden days of spring? What is the coming day for me? My gaze catches him in vain, It lurks in deep darkness. No need; the law of fate. Will I fall, pierced by an arrow, Or will she fly by All is good: vigil and sleep The definite hour is coming; Blessed is the day of worries, Blessed is the arrival of darkness! XIX "In the morning the ray of the day will shine And a bright day will play; And I, maybe I am the tombs I will go down into the mysterious shade, And the memory of the young poet Swallow up the slow Lethe, The world will forget me; notes Will you come, maiden of beauty, Shed a tear over the early urn And think: he loved me, He dedicated to me alone The sad dawn of a stormy life! .. A warm friend, a welcome friend Come, come: I am your husband! .. "XIX So he wrote dark and listless (What we call romanticism At least there is no romanticism here I do not see; what is it to us?) And finally before dawn Bowing with a tired head On the buzzword ideal Lensky fell asleep quietly; But only with sleepy charm He forgot, already a neighbor The silent office enters And he wakes Lensky up with an appeal: “It's time to get up: it's already seven o'clock. Onegin, surely, is waiting for us. "

Answer:

What is the name of the stanza used by the author in this work?

Read the passage below and complete tasks B1-B7; C1-C2.

XXXVI But now it’s close. In front of them Already white-stone Moscow. Like heat, with golden crosses Old chapters are burning. Oh, brothers! How pleased I was, When churches and bell towers, Gardens, palace semicircle Opened before me suddenly! How often in sorrowful separation, In my wandering destiny Moscow, I was thinking about you! Moscow ... how much of this sound For the Russian heart it has merged! How much it echoed! XXXVII Here, surrounded by its oak grove, Petrovsky castle. Gloomy he Recently proud of fame. Napoleon waited in vain, Intoxicated with the last happiness, Moscow kneeling With the keys of the old Kremlin: No, my Moscow did not go To him with a guilty head. Not a holiday, not an accepted gift, She was preparing a fire An impatient hero. From here, immersed in thought, He looked at the formidable flame. XXXVIII Goodbye witness to fallen glory Petrovsky castle. Well! don't stop Let's go! Already the pillars of the outpost Turn white; already on Tverskaya The carriage rushes through the bumps. They flash past the booth, women, Boys, benches, lanterns, Palaces, gardens, monasteries, Bukharians, sleighs, vegetable gardens, Merchants, hovels, peasants, Boulevards, towers, Cossacks, Pharmacies, fashion stores, Balconies, lions at the gates And flocks of jackdaws on the crosses. XXXIX On this tiresome walk An hour or two passes, and now Have Kharitonya in the alley The carriage in front of the house at the gate Has stopped...

A. Pushkin "Eugene Onegin"

Answer:

The above fragment contains the author's explanations to the text of the play and the statements of the characters, which are in brackets. What is the term for them?

Read the passage below and complete tasks B1-B7; C1-C2.

Wild. Look, everything has soaked. (To Kuligin.) Leave me alone! Leave me alone! (With heart.) Foolish man!

Kuligin. Savel Prokofich, after all, this, your degree, is beneficial for all ordinary people in general.

Wild. Go away! What is the use! Who needs this benefit?

Kuligin. Yes, even for you, your degree, Savel Prokofich. I wish, sir, on the boulevard, in a clean place, and put it. And what is the expense? Empty consumption: stone column (gestures the size of each item), a copper plate, so round, and a hairpin, here's a straight hairpin (gesturing), the simplest one. I'll fix it all up, and I'll cut out the numbers myself. Now you, your dignity, when you deign to walk, or others who are walking, now come up and see<...> And that kind of place is beautiful, and the view, and everything, but it seems empty. With us, too, your degree, there are travelers, they go there to see our views, after all, decoration is more pleasant for the eyes.

Wild. Why are you bothering me with all sorts of nonsense! Maybe I don’t want to talk to you. You should have known first whether I was in the mood to listen to you, a fool, or not. What am I to you - even, or what? Look, what an important job you have found! So right with a snout and climbs to talk.

Kuligin. If I were climbing with my business, well, then it would be my fault. Otherwise I am for the common good, your degree. Well, what does some ten rubles mean for society! More, sir, will not be needed.

Wild. Or maybe you want to steal; who knows you.

Kuligin. If I want to donate my labors, what can I steal, your degree? Yes, everyone here knows me; no one will say bad things about me.

Wild. Well, let them know, but I don't want to know you.

Kuligin. Why, sir, Savel Prokofich, would you please to offend an honest man?

Wild. I’ll give you a report! I don't give any account to anyone more important than you. I want to think so of you, I think so. For others you are an honest man, but I think you are a robber, that's all. Do you want to hear it from me? So listen! I say that a robber, and the end! What are you, to sue, or what, you will be with me? So you know that you are a worm. If I want - I will have mercy, if I want - I will crush.

Kuligin. God be with you, Savel Prokofich! I am, sir, a small man, I will not offend for long. And I'll tell you this, your degree: "And virtue is honored in rags!"

Wild. Don't you dare be rude to me! Do you hear!

Kuligin. I am not doing any rudeness to you, sir, but I am telling you because perhaps you will think of doing something for the city sometime. You have strength, your degree, other; there would only be a will for a good deed. If only now we will take something: we have frequent thunderstorms, and we will not start thunderous branches.

Wild (proudly)... All is vanity!

Kuligin. But what a fuss when the experiments were.

Wild. What kind of thunder taps you have there?

Kuligin. Steel.

Wild (with anger)... Well, what else?

Kuligin. Steel poles.

Wild (more and more angry)... I heard that the poles, you are like a viper; and what else? Adjusted: poles! Well, what else?

Kuligin. Nothing more.

Wild. What do you think is a thunderstorm, eh? Well, speak!

Kuligin. Electricity.

Wild (stamping his foot)... What other elegance there is! Well, how are you not a robber! A thunderstorm is sent to us as punishment, so that we feel, and you want to defend yourself with poles and rods of some kind, God forgive me. What are you, a Tatar, or what? Are you a Tatar? AND? speak! Tatar?

Kuligin. Savel Prokofich, your degree, Derzhavin said:

I decay with my body in dust,

I command the thunder with the mind.

Wild. And for these words you should be sent to the mayor, so he will ask you! Hey honored ones! listen to what he says!

Kuligin. There is nothing to do, you have to submit! But when I have a million, then I'll talk. (With a wave of his hand, leaves.)

A. N. Ostrovsky "Thunderstorm"

Answer:

What is the term for an expressive detail in a work of art (for example, a pink ribbon with which a list of peasants is tied)?

Read the fragment of the work below and complete tasks B1-B7; C1, C2.

No sooner had he gone outside, thinking about all this and at the same time dragging a bear covered with brown cloth on his shoulders, when at the very turn into the alley he ran into the gentleman, also in bears covered with brown cloth, and in a warm cap with ears. The gentleman cried out, it was Manilov. They immediately hugged each other and remained in the street for five minutes in this position. The kisses on both sides were so intense that both of them had almost sore front teeth all day. For Manilov, only a nose and lips on his face were left with joy, his eyes completely disappeared. For a quarter of an hour he held Chichikov's hand with both hands and heated it terribly. In the most subtle and pleasant turns, he told how he flew to embrace Pavel Ivanovich; the speech was concluded with such a compliment, which perhaps only befits a girl with whom they go to dance. Chichikov opened his mouth, not yet knowing how to thank, when suddenly Manilov took out from under his fur coat a paper rolled into a tube and tied with a pink ribbon, and filed it very deftly with two fingers.

What's this?

Little men.

AND! - he immediately opened it, ran his eyes and marveled at the purity and beauty of the handwriting. - Nicely written, - he said, - there is no need to rewrite. There is also a border around! who made the border so skillfully?

Well, don't ask, ”said Manilov.

Oh my god! I really am ashamed of having caused so many difficulties.

There are no difficulties for Pavel Ivanovich.

Chichikov bowed with gratitude. Upon learning that he was going to the ward for the completion of the deed, Manilov expressed his readiness to accompany him. The friends took an arm and went together. At every slight rise, or hill, or step, Manilov supported Chichikov and almost lifted him with his hand, adding with a pleasant smile that he would not allow Pavel Ivanovich to hurt his legs in any way. Chichikov was ashamed of himself, not knowing how to thank, for he felt that he was somewhat heavy. In such mutual services, they finally reached the square where the offices were located; a large three-story stone house, all white as chalk, probably to depict the purity of the souls of the positions that were placed in it; other buildings on the square did not match the enormity of the stone house. These were: a sentry box, at which a soldier stood with a gun, two or three cabbots, and finally long fences with famous fence inscriptions and drawings scrawled in charcoal and chalk; there was nothing more in this secluded, or, as we say, beautiful square. From the windows of the second and third floors, the incorruptible heads of the priests of Themis sometimes protruded and at that very minute they hid again: probably at that time the chief was entering the room. The friends did not climb, but ran up the stairs, because Chichikov, trying to avoid being supported by the arms from Manilov's side, quickened his pace, and Manilov, on his part, flew forward, trying not to let Chichikov get tired, and therefore both were out of breath very much when entered a dark corridor. Neither in the corridors, nor in the rooms, their gaze was not struck by the cleanliness. They did not take care of her then; and what was dirty remained dirty, not taking on an attractive appearance. Themis just, as it is, in a negligee and a dressing gown received guests. We should describe the office rooms that our heroes passed through, but the author has a strong shyness towards all public places. If he happened to pass them even in a brilliant and ennobled form, with lacquered floors and tables, he tried to run as soon as possible, humbly lowering and looking down at the ground, and therefore does not know at all how everything is prospering and prospering there. Our heroes saw a lot of paper, both rough and white, bowed heads, wide backs, dress coats, provincial cut coats, and even just some kind of light gray jacket, which came off quite abruptly, which, turning its head to one side and putting it almost on the very paper, wrote briskly and boldly some protocol on the seizure of land or a slip of the tongue of an estate seized by some peaceful landowner who is peacefully living out his life on trial, who made his own children and grandchildren under his cover, but short expressions were heard in snatches, uttered in a hoarse voice: , Fedosey Fedoseevich, business for N 368! "" You will always pull the cork from the government inkwell somewhere! " Sometimes a voice, a more stately one, no doubt, of one of the chiefs, rang out imperatively: “Here, rewrite! otherwise they'll take off their boots and stay with me for six days without eating. " The noise from the feathers was great and sounded as if several carts with brushwood were driving through a forest heaped with withered leaves a quarter of an arshin.

I do not understand what you say.

Katerina. I say: why do people not fly like birds? You know, sometimes it seems to me that I am a bird. When you stand on a mountain, you are drawn to fly. So I would have scattered, raised my hands and flew. Nothing to try now? He wants to run.

Barbara. What are you making up something?

Katerina. (sighing)... How frisky I was! I have wilted completely.

Barbara. Do you think I can't see?

Katerina. Was I that way! I lived without grieving about anything, like a bird in the wild. Mamma doted on me, she dressed me up like a doll, did not force me to work; I do what I want. Do you know how I lived in girls? I'll tell you now. I used to get up early; If in the summer I go to the spring, wash, bring some water with me and water all the flowers in the house. I had many, many flowers. Then we’ll go with mamma to church, everyone and wanderers - our house was full of wanderers and pilgrims. And we will come from church, sit down for some kind of work, more on velvet in gold, and the wanderers will begin to tell: where have they been, what they have seen, they have different lives, or they sing poems. So the time will pass before lunch. Here the old women will fall asleep, and I walk in the garden. Then to Vespers, and in the evening again stories and singing. It was so good!

Barbara. Why, we have the same thing.

Katerina. Yes, everything here seems to be out of bondage. And until death I loved to go to church! Precisely, I used to go into paradise, and I don't see anyone, I don't remember the time, and I don't hear when the service is over. Exactly how it all happened in one second. Mamma said that everyone used to look at me, what was happening to me! Do you know: on a sunny day, such a light pillar goes down from the dome, and smoke flows in this pillar, like clouds, and I see it as if the angels in this pillar were flying and singing. And then, it happened, a girl, I get up at night - we, too, have lamps lit everywhere - but somewhere in the corner I pray until morning. Or early in the morning I will go to the garden, as soon as the sun is rising, I will fall on my knees, I pray and cry, and I myself do not know what I pray for and what I cry for; so they will find me. And what I prayed about then, what I asked - I don't know; I didn’t need anything, I had enough of everything. And what dreams I dreamed, Varenka, what dreams! Either the temples are golden, or some kind of extraordinary gardens, and everyone is singing invisible voices, and it smells of cypress, and the mountains and trees seem to be not the same as usual, but as they are written on images. And if I fly, I fly through the air. And now sometimes I dream, but rarely, and not that.

A. N. Ostrovsky "Thunderstorm"

Answer:

Finish testing, check answers, see solutions.

The play "The Thunderstorm" by the famous Russian writer of the XIX century Alexander Ostrovsky was written in 1859 on the wave of social upsurge on the eve of social reforms. It became one of the author's best works, opening the eyes of the whole world to the mores and moral values \u200b\u200bof the then merchant class. It was first published in the journal "Library for Reading" in 1860 and due to the novelty of its subject matter (descriptions of the struggle of new progressive ideas and aspirations against old, conservative foundations) immediately after publication caused a wide public response. She became the topic for writing a large number of critical articles of that time ("A ray of light in the dark kingdom" by Dobrolyubov, "Motives of the Russian Drama" by Pisarev, criticism of Apollo Grigoriev).

Writing history

Inspired by the beauty of the Volga region and its endless expanses during a trip with his family to Kostroma in 1848, Ostrovsky began writing the play in July 1859, after three months he finished it and sent it to the court of the St. Petersburg censorship.

Having worked for several years in the office of the Moscow Conscientious Court, he knew very well what the merchants were in Zamoskvorechye (the historical district of the capital, on the right bank of the Moskva River), more than once on duty with what was happening behind the high fences of the merchants' choir , namely with cruelty, tyranny, ignorance and various superstitions, illegal deals and scams, tears and suffering of others. The plot of the play was based on the tragic fate of the daughter-in-law in the wealthy merchant family of the Klykovs, which happened in reality: a young woman threw herself into the Volga and drowned, unable to withstand the oppression of the imperious mother-in-law, tired of her husband's spinelessness and secret passion for the postal worker. Many believed that it was the stories from the life of the Kostroma merchants that became the prototype for the plot of the play written by Ostrovsky.

In November 1859, the play was performed on the stage of the Maly Academic Theater in Moscow, in December of the same year at the Alexandrinsky Drama Theater in St. Petersburg.

Analysis of the work

Story line

At the center of the events described in the play is the well-to-do merchant family of the Kabanovs living in the fictional Volga city of Kalinov, a kind of peculiar and closed world symbolizing the general structure of the entire patriarchal Russian state. The Kabanov family consists of an imperious and cruel tyrant woman, and in fact the head of the family, a wealthy merchant and widow of Marfa Ignatievna, her son, Tikhon Ivanovich, weak-willed and spineless against the background of the heavy temper of his mother, daughter Varvara, who learned to deceive and cunningly resist the despotism of the mother , as well as Katerina's daughter-in-law. A young woman who grew up in a family where she was loved and pitied, suffers in the house of an unloved husband from his weakness and claims of his mother-in-law, in fact, having lost her will and becoming a victim of the cruelty and tyranny of Kabanikha, left to the mercy of fate by her rag-husband.

Out of hopelessness and despair, Katerina seeks consolation in love for Boris the Diky, who also loves her, but is afraid to disobey his uncle, the wealthy merchant Savyol Prokofich Diky, because his and his sister's financial situation depends on him. Secretly, he meets with Katerina, but at the last moment betrays her and escapes, then at the direction of his uncle he leaves for Siberia.

Catherine, being brought up in obedience and submission to her husband, tormented by her own sin, confesses everything to her husband in the presence of his mother. She makes her daughter-in-law's life completely unbearable, and Katerina, suffering from unhappy love, reproaches of conscience and cruel persecution of the tyrant and despot Kabanikha, decides to end her torment, the only way in which she sees salvation is suicide. She throws herself off a cliff into the Volga and tragically dies.

Main characters

All the characters in the play are divided into two opposing camps, some (Kabanikha, her son and daughter, the merchant Dikoy and his nephew Boris, the servants of Feklusha and Glasha) are representatives of the old, patriarchal way of life, others (Katerina, a self-taught mechanic Kuligin) are new, progressive.

A young woman, Katerina, the wife of Tikhon Kabanov, is the central heroine of the play. She was brought up in strict patriarchal rules, in accordance with the laws of the Old Russian Domostroi: a wife must obey her husband in everything, respect him, fulfill all his requirements. At first, Katerina tried with all her might to love her husband, to become a submissive and good wife for him, however, due to his complete spinelessness and weakness of character, she can only feel pity for him.

Outwardly, she looks weak and silent, but in the depths of her soul there is enough willpower and perseverance to resist the tyranny of her mother-in-law, who is afraid that her daughter-in-law may change her son Tikhon and he will cease to obey his mother's will. Katerina is cramped and stuffy in the dark kingdom of life in Kalinovo, she literally suffocates there and in dreams she flies away like a bird away from this terrible place for her.

Boris

Having fallen in love with the visiting young man Boris, the nephew of a wealthy merchant and businessman, she creates in her head the image of an ideal lover and a real man, which is completely untrue, breaks her heart and leads to a tragic ending.

In the play, the character of Katerina is opposed not to a specific person, her mother-in-law, but to the entire patriarchal order of the time.

Kabanikha

Marfa Ignatievna Kabanova (Kabanikha), like the tyrant merchant Dikoy, who tortures and insults his relatives, does not pay wages and deceives his workers, are bright representatives of the old, bourgeois way of life. They are distinguished by stupidity and ignorance, unjustified cruelty, rudeness and rudeness, complete rejection of any progressive changes in the ossified patriarchal way of life.

Tikhon

(Tikhon, in the illustration near Kabanikha - Marfa Ignatievna)

Throughout the play, Tikhon Kabanov is characterized as a quiet and weak-willed person who is under the full influence of a despotic mother. Distinguished by gentle character, he makes no attempt to protect his wife from the attacks of his mother.

At the end of the play, he finally does not stand up and the author shows his rebellion against tyranny and despotism, it is his phrase at the end of the play that leads readers to a definite conclusion about the depth and tragedy of the situation.

Features of compositional construction

(Fragment from a dramatic production)

The work begins with a description of Kalinov, a city on the Volga, whose image is a collective image of all Russian cities of that time. The landscape of the Volga expanses depicted in the play contrasts with the musty, dull and gloomy atmosphere of life in this city, which is emphasized by the dead isolation of the life of its inhabitants, their underdevelopment, dullness and wild ignorance. The author described the general state of city life as if before a thunderstorm, when the old, dilapidated way of life is shaken, and new and progressive trends, like a gust of a furious thunderstorm wind, will carry away the obsolete rules and prejudices that prevent people from living normally. The period in the life of the inhabitants of the city of Kalinov described in the play is just in a state when everything looks calm outwardly, but this is only a calm before the coming storm.

The genre of the play can be interpreted as a social drama, as well as a tragedy. The first is characterized by the use of a thorough description of living conditions, the maximum transfer of its "density", as well as the alignment of characters. Readers' attention should be distributed among all participants in the production. The interpretation of the play as a tragedy suggests its deeper meaning and thoroughness. If we see in the death of Katerina as a consequence of her conflict with her mother-in-law, then she looks like a victim of a family conflict, and all the unfolding action in the play for a real tragedy seems small and insignificant. But if we consider the death of the main character as a conflict of a new, progressive time with a dying, old era, then her act is interpreted in the best possible way in the heroic key characteristic of a tragic narrative.

The talented playwright Alexander Ostrovsky gradually creates a real tragedy from the social and everyday drama about the life of the merchant class, in which, with the help of a love-everyday conflict, he showed the onset of an epochal turning point in the minds of the people. Ordinary people realize the awakening self-esteem, begin to relate to the world around them in a new way, want to decide their own destinies and fearlessly express their will. This nascent desire enters into irreconcilable contradiction with the real patriarchal order. The fate of Katerina acquires a social historical meaning, expressing the state of national consciousness at the turning point of two eras.

Alexander Ostrovsky, who noticed in time the doom of the decaying patriarchal foundations, wrote the play "The Thunderstorm" and opened the eyes of the entire Russian public to what was happening. He depicted the destruction of the usual, outdated way of life, with the help of the multivalued and figurative concept of a thunderstorm, which, gradually increasing, will sweep everything from its path and open the way for a new, better life.

(1843 – 1886).

Alexander Nikolaevich "Ostrovsky is a" giant of theatrical literature "(Lunacharsky), he created the Russian theater, a whole repertoire on which many generations of actors were brought up, the traditions of the performing arts were strengthened and developed. His role in the history of the development of Russian drama and the entire national culture can hardly be overestimated. For the development of Russian drama, he did as much as Shakespeare in England, Lope de Vega in Spain, Moliere in France, Goldoni in Italy and Schiller in Germany.

"History left the name of the great and brilliant only for those writers who knew how to write for the whole people, and only those works survived the centuries that were truly popular at home; such works eventually become understandable and valuable for other nations, and finally, and for the whole world. " These words of the great playwright Alexander Nikolaevich Ostrovsky may well be attributed to his own work.

Despite the harassment inflicted by the censorship, the theatrical literary committee and the directorate of the imperial theaters, contrary to criticism from reactionary circles, Ostrovsky's drama gained more and more sympathy both among democratic spectators and among artists.

Developing the best traditions of Russian dramatic art, using the experience of progressive foreign drama, tirelessly learning about the life of his native country, constantly communicating with the people, closely linking with the most progressive contemporary society, Ostrovsky became an outstanding representative of the life of his time, who embodied the dreams of Gogol, Belinsky and other progressive figures literature about the appearance and triumph of Russian characters on the national stage.

Ostrovsky's creative activity had a great influence on all further development of progressive Russian drama. It was from him that our best playwrights learned from him. It was to him that aspiring dramatic writers were drawn in their time.

A letter to the playwright poetess A.D. Mysovskaya can testify to the power of Ostrovsky's influence on contemporary writers' youth. “Do you know how great was your influence on me? It was not love for art that made me understand and appreciate you: on the contrary, you taught me to love and respect art. I owe it to you alone that I resisted the temptation to enter the arena of pathetic literary mediocrity, did not chase after cheap laurels thrown by the hands of sweet and sour half-educated people. You and Nekrasov made me love thought and work, but Nekrasov gave me only the first impetus, but you gave me direction. Reading your works, I realized that rhyming is not poetry, but a set of phrases is not literature, and that only having processed the mind and technique, the artist will be a real artist ”.

Ostrovsky had a powerful impact not only on the development of Russian drama, but also on the development of Russian theater. The colossal significance of Ostrovsky in the development of Russian theater is well emphasized in a poem dedicated to Ostrovsky and read in 1903 by M.N.Yermolova from the stage of the Maly Theater:

Life itself on the stage, truth blows from the stage,

And the bright sun caresses us and warms us ...

The living speech of simple, living people sounds,

On stage, not a "hero", not an angel, not a villain,

But just a man ... a happy actor

Hastens to quickly break the heavy shackles

Conventions and lies. Words and feelings are new

But in the recesses of the soul, the answer sounds to them, -

And all lips whisper: blessed is the poet,

Torn off the decrepit, tinsel covers

And into the kingdom of the dark who shed a bright light

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

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

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

But much earlier, about the very first work of the still young Ostrovsky, published in Moskvityanin, a subtle connoisseur of the graceful and sensitive observer V. F. Odoevsky wrote: “If this is not a momentary flash, not a mushroom that squeezed out of itself from the ground, cut through by all rot, then this person has a huge talent. I count three tragedies in Russia: "Minor", "Woe from Wit", "Inspector General". I put number four on “Bankrupt”. ”

From such a promising first assessment to Goncharov's jubilee letter - a full, laborious life; labor, and led to such a logical interconnection of assessments, because talent requires, first of all, great work on itself, and the playwright did not sin before God - he did not bury his talent in the ground. Having published his first work in 1847, Ostrovsky has since written 47 plays, and more than twenty plays has been translated from European languages. And in total in the folk theater he created there are about a thousand characters.

Shortly before his death, in 1886, Alexander Nikolaevich received a letter from Leo Tolstoy, in which the genius prose writer admitted: “I know from experience how your things are read, obeyed and remembered by the people, and therefore I would like to help you have now, in fact, quickly become what you are, undoubtedly - a writer of the whole people in the broadest sense. "

And before Ostrovsky, progressive Russian drama had magnificent plays. Let us recall Fonvizin's "Minor", Griboyedov's Woe from Wit, Pushkin's "Boris Godunov", Gogol's "Inspector General" and Lermontov's "Masquerade". Each of these plays could enrich and embellish, as Belinsky justly wrote, the literature of any Western European country.

But these plays were too few. And they did not determine the state of the theatrical repertoire. Figuratively speaking, they towered above the level of mass drama as lonely, rare mountains in an endless desert plain. The overwhelming majority of the plays that filled the theatrical stage of that time were translations of empty, frivolous vaudeville and sentimental melodramas woven from horror and crime. And vaudeville, and melodramas, terribly far from life, were not even its shadow.

In the development of Russian drama and domestic tetra, the appearance of plays by A.N. Ostrovsky constituted an entire era. They abruptly turned drama and theater to life, to its truth, to something that truly touched and worried people from the underprivileged segment of the population, people of labor. Creating "plays of life", as Dobrolyubov called them, Ostrovsky acted as a fearless knight of truth, a tireless fighter against the dark kingdom of autocracy, a merciless denouncer of the ruling classes - the nobility, the bourgeoisie and the bureaucracy that served them loyally.

But Ostrovsky did not confine himself to the role of a satirical denouncer. He vividly, sympathetically portrayed the victims of socio-political and family and domestic despotism, workers, truth-lovers, educators, warm-hearted Protestants against arbitrariness and violence.

The playwright not only made the people of labor and progress, bearers of the people's truth and wisdom, the positive heroes of his plays, but also wrote in the name of the people and for the people.

Ostrovsky portrayed in his plays the prose of life, ordinary people in everyday circumstances. Taking the general human problems of good and evil, truth and injustice, beauty and ugliness as the content of his plays, Ostrovsky outlived his time and entered our era as its contemporary.

The creative path of A.N. Ostrovsky lasted four decades. He wrote his first works in 1846, and the last in 1886.

During this time, he wrote 47 original plays and several plays in co-authorship with Solovyov ("The Marriage of Balzaminov", "The Wild Woman", "It Shines But It Does Not Warm", etc.); made many translations from Italian, Spanish, French, English, Indian (Shakespeare, Goldoni, Lope de Vega - 22 plays). His plays have 728 roles, 180 acts; all Russia is represented. A variety of genres: comedies, dramas, dramatic chronicles, family scenes, tragedies, dramatic sketches are presented in his drama. He appears in his work as a romantic, everyday life, tragedian and comedian.

Of course, any periodization is to some extent arbitrary, but in order to better navigate in all the diversity of Ostrovsky's work, we will divide his work into several stages.

1846 - 1852 - the initial stage of creativity. The most important works written during this period: "Notes of a Zamoskvoretsky Resident", the plays "A Picture of Family Happiness", "Our People - Let's Numbered", "Poor Bride".

1853 - 1856 - the so-called "Slavophil" period: "Don't get into your sleigh." "Poverty is not a vice", "Don't live the way you want to."

1856 - 1859 - rapprochement with the "Contemporary" circle, return to realistic positions. The most important plays of this period: "A profitable place", "Parent", "Hangover in a foreign feast", "The Trilogy about Balzaminov", and, finally, created during a revolutionary situation, "Thunderstorm".

1861 - 1867 - deepening in the study of Russian history, the result - the dramatic chronicles of Kozma Zakharyich Minin-Sukhoruk "," Dmitry the Pretender "and" Vasily Shuisky "," Tushino ", the drama" Vasilisa Melentyevna ", the comedy" Voevoda or Dream on the Volga ".

1869 - 1884 - the plays created during this period of creativity are devoted to social and everyday relations that developed in Russian life after the reform of 1861. The most important plays of this period: "Enough for any wise man", "Warm Heart", "Mad Money", "Forest", "Wolves and Sheep", "The Last Sacrifice", "Late Love", "Talents and Admirers", " Guilty without guilt ”.

Ostrovsky's plays did not appear from scratch. Their appearance is directly related to the plays of Griboyedov and Gogol, which absorbed everything of value that the Russian comedy that preceded them achieved. Ostrovsky knew well the old Russian comedy of the 18th century, specially studied the works of Kapnist, Fonvizin, Plavilshchikov. On the other hand, there is the influence of the “natural school” prose.

Ostrovsky came to literature in the late 1940s, when Gogol's drama was recognized as the greatest literary and social phenomenon. Turgenev wrote: "Gogol showed the way of how our dramatic literature will go over time." Ostrovsky from the first steps of his activity recognized himself as the successor of the traditions of Gogol, the "natural school", he ranked himself among the authors of "a new direction in our literature."

The years 1846 - 1859, when Ostrovsky worked on his first big comedy, "Our People - Let's Be Numbered", were the years of his formation as a realist writer.

The ideological and artistic program of Ostrovsky, the playwright, is clearly stated in his critical articles and reviews. Article "Error", the story of Mrs. Tour "(" The Muscovite ", 1850), an unfinished article about Dickens's novel" Dombey and Son "(1848), a review of Menshikov's comedy" Quirks "(" The Muscovite "1850)," A note on the situation dramatic art in Russia at the present time "(1881)," Table talk about Pushkin "(1880).

Ostrovsky's social and literary views are characterized by the following basic provisions:

First, he believes that the drama should be a reflection of the people's life, the people's consciousness.

For Ostrovsky, the people are, first of all, the democratic masses, the lower classes, the common people.

Ostrovsky demanded that the writer study the life of the people, the problems that concern the people.

“In order to be a people's writer,” he writes, “love for the homeland is not enough ... you need to know your people well, to get closer to them, to become akin. The best school for talent is to study your own nationality. "

Secondly, Ostrovsky talks about the need for national identity for drama.

The nationality of literature and art is understood by Ostrovsky as an inalienable consequence of their nationality and democracy. "Only that art that is national is national, for the true bearer of nationality is the popular, democratic mass."

In "Table talk about Pushkin" - an example of such a poet is Pushkin. Pushkin is a national poet, Pushkin is a national poet. Pushkin played a huge role in the development of Russian literature because he "gave the Russian writer courage to be Russian."

And, finally, the third provision is about the socially accusatory nature of literature. “The more popular the work, the more it contains a denunciatory element, because the“ distinctive feature of the Russian people ”is“ aversion from everything sharply defined ”, unwillingness to return to“ old, already condemned forms ”of life, the desire to“ look for the best ”.

The public expects from the art of exposing the vices and shortcomings of society, the judgment of life.

Condemning these vices in his artistic images, the writer disgusts them in the public, forces them to be better and more moral. Therefore, "the social, accusatory direction can be called moral and public" - emphasizes Ostrovsky. Speaking about a socially-accusatory or moral-social direction, he means:

accusatory criticism of the dominant way of life; protection of positive moral principles, i.e. protecting the aspirations of ordinary people and their pursuit of social justice.

Thus, the term "moral-denunciatory direction" in its objective meaning approaches the concept of critical realism.

The works of Ostrovsky, written by him in the late 40s and early 50s, "A Picture of Family Happiness", "Notes of a Zamoskvoretsky Resident", "Our People - We Will Reckon", "Poor Bride" are organically connected with the literature of the natural school.

The "Picture of Family Happiness" is largely in the nature of a dramatized sketch: it is not divided into phenomena, there is no completion of the plot. Ostrovsky set himself the task of depicting the life of the merchant class. The hero interests Ostrovsky exclusively as a representative of his class, his way of life, his way of thinking. Goes beyond the natural school. Ostrovsky reveals the close connection between the morality of his heroes and their social being.

He puts the family life of the merchants in direct connection with the monetary and material relations of this environment.

Ostrovsky completely condemns his heroes. His heroes express their views on family, marriage, education, as if demonstrating the savagery of these views.

This technique was common in the satirical literature of the 40s - the technique of self-exposure.

The most significant work of Ostrovsky in the 40s. - the comedy "Our people - we will be numbered" (1849) appeared, which was perceived by contemporaries as a major conquest of the natural school in drama.

“He started out extraordinarily,” writes Turgenev of Ostrovsky.

The comedy immediately caught the attention of the authorities. When the censorship presented the play to the tsar for consideration, Nicholas I wrote: “It was published in vain! Prohibit playing, anyway. "

The name of Ostrovsky was included in the lists of unreliable persons, and the playwright was placed under secret police surveillance for five years. The "Case of the writer Ostrovsky" was opened.

Ostrovsky, like Gogol, criticizes the very foundations of relations that prevail in society. He is critical of contemporary social life and in this sense he is a follower of Gogol. And at the same time, Ostrovsky immediately identified himself as an innovator writer. Comparing the works of the early stage of his work (1846 -1852) with the traditions of Gogol, let us trace what Ostrovsky introduced into literature.

The action of Gogol's "high comedy" takes place, as it were, in the world of unreasonable reality - "The Inspector General".

Gogol tested a person in his relation to society, to civic duty - and showed - this is what these people are. This is the center of vices. They don't think about society at all. They are guided in their behavior by narrowly selfish calculations, selfish interests.

Gogol does not focus on everyday life - laughter through tears. For him, bureaucracy acts not as a social stratum, but as a political force that determines the life of society as a whole.

Ostrovsky's work is completely different - a thorough analysis of social life.

Like the heroes of the essays of the natural school, the heroes of Ostrovsky are ordinary, typical representatives of their social environment, which is also shared by their ordinary daily life, all its prejudices.

a) In the play "Our people - we will be numbered" Ostrovsky creates a typical biography of a merchant, talks about how capital is amassed.

Bolshov, as a child, traded pies from a stall, and then became one of the first rich people in Zamoskvorechye.

Podkhalyuzin - made himself capital by robbing the owner, and, finally - Tishka is an errand boy, but, however, already knows how to please the new owner.

Here are given, as it were, three stages of a merchant career. Through their fate, Ostrovsky showed how capital is composed.

b) The peculiarity of Ostrovsky's drama was that he showed this question - how capital is composed in a merchant environment - through consideration of intra-family, daily, ordinary relations.

It was Ostrovsky who was the first in Russian drama to consider thread after thread, the web of daily, everyday relations. He was the first to introduce into the sphere of art all these little things of life, family secrets, small household matters. A huge place is taken by seemingly meaningless everyday scenes. Much attention is paid to the poses, gestures of the characters, their manner of speaking, their very speech.

The first plays of Ostrovsky seemed to the reader unusual, not stage-based, more like narrative rather than dramatic works.

The circle of Ostrovsky's works, directly connected by the natural school of the 40s, is closed with the play Poor Bride (1852).

In it, Ostrovsky shows the same dependence of a person on economic, monetary relations. Several suitors seek the hand of Marya Andreevna, but the one who gets it does not need to make any efforts to achieve the goal. The well-known economic law of capitalist society, where money decides everything, works for him. The image of Marya Andreevna begins in Ostrovsky's work a new theme for him, the position of a poor girl in society, where everything is determined by commercial calculation. ("Forest", "Pupil", "Dowry").

So, for the first time, Ostrovsky (unlike Gogol) has not only vice, but also a victim of vice. In addition to the masters of modern society, there are those who oppose them - aspirations, the needs of which are in conflict with the laws and customs of this environment. This entailed new colors. Ostrovsky discovered new sides of his talent - dramatic satirism. “Our people - we will be numbered” - satirical.

Ostrovsky's artistic manner in this play is even more different from Gogol's drama. The plot loses all sharpness here. It is based on an ordinary case. The theme that sounded in Gogol's "The Marriage" and received satirical coverage - the transformation of marriage into a sale and purchase, here acquired a tragic sound.

But at the same time, it is a comedy of character portrayal, of provisions. But if the heroes of Gogol cause laughter and condemnation of the public, then in Ostrovsky the viewer saw his daily life, felt deep sympathy for some - condemned others.

The second stage in Ostrovsky's activity (1853 - 1855) was marked by the stamp of Slavophil influences.

First of all, this transition of Ostrovsky to Slavophil positions should be explained by the intensification of the atmosphere, the reaction that was established in the “gloomy seven years” of 1848-1855.

How exactly did this influence appear, what ideas of the Slavophiles turned out to be close to Ostrovsky? First of all, Ostrovsky's rapprochement with the so-called "young editorial board" of "Moskvityanin", whose behavior should be explained by their characteristic interest in Russian national life, folk art, the historical past of the people, which was very close to Ostrovsky.

But Ostrovsky failed to discern in this interest the basic conservative principle, which manifested itself in the prevailing social contradictions, in a hostile attitude towards the concept of historical progress, in admiration for everything patriarchal.

In fact, the Slavophiles acted as ideologists of the socially backward elements of the petty and middle bourgeoisie.

Apollon Grigoriev, one of the most prominent ideologues of the Young Editorial Office of the Moskvityanin, argued that there is a single "national spirit" that constitutes the organic basis of people's life. To catch this national spirit is the most important thing for a writer.

Social contradictions, the struggle of classes are historical layers that will be overcome and that do not violate the unity of the nation.

The writer must show the eternal moral principles of the folk character. The bearer of these eternal moral principles, the spirit of the people, is the "middle, industrial, merchant" class, because it was this class that preserved the patriarchy of the traditions of old Russia, preserved the faith, customs, and language of the fathers. This class has not been affected by the falsity of civilization.

The official recognition of this doctrine of Ostrovsky is his letter in September 1853 to Pogodin (editor of Moskvityanin), in which Ostrovsky writes that he has now become a supporter of a "new direction", the essence of which is to appeal to the positive principles of life and folk character.

The old way of looking at things now seems to him "young and too cruel." Exposing social vices does not seem to be the main task.

“Correctors will be found without us. In order to have the right to correct the people without offending them, you need to show them that you know good things behind them ”(September 1853), writes Ostrovsky.

At this stage, the distinguishing feature of the Russian people of Ostrovsky is not his willingness to renounce outdated norms of life, but patriarchy, adherence to unchanging, fundamental conditions of life. Ostrovsky now wants to combine the "high with the comic" in his plays, understanding the positive features of the merchant's life by the high, and by the "comic" - everything that lies outside the merchant's circle, but exerts its influence on it.

These new views of Ostrovsky found their expression in three so-called "Slavophil" plays by Ostrovsky: "Don't get into your sleigh," "Poverty is not a vice," "Don't live the way you want to."

All three Slavophil plays of Ostrovsky have one defining beginning - an attempt to idealize the patriarchal foundations of life and family morality of the merchants.

And in these plays Ostrovsky turns to family and everyday subjects. But behind them are no longer economic, social relations.

Family, everyday relations are interpreted in a purely moral sense - everything depends on the moral qualities of people, there are no material, monetary interests behind this. Ostrovsky is trying to find a way to resolve the moral contradictions, in the moral transformation of the heroes. (The moral enlightenment of Gordey Tortsov, the nobility of the soul of Borodkin and Rusakov). Petty tyranny is based not so much on the existence of capital, economic relations, as on the personal properties of a person.

Ostrovsky depicts those aspects of the merchant's life, in which, as it seems to him, the nationwide is concentrated, the so-called "national spirit". Therefore, he focuses on the poetic, light sides of merchant life, introduces ritual, folklore motives, showing the "folk-epic" beginning of the heroes' lives to the detriment of their social certainty.

Ostrovsky emphasized in the plays of this period the closeness of his heroic merchants to the people, their social and everyday ties with the peasantry. They say about themselves that they are "simple", "ill-mannered" people, that their fathers were peasants.

From the artistic point of view, these plays are clearly weaker than the previous ones. Their composition is deliberately simplified, the characters turned out to be less clear, and the denouements were less justified.

The plays of this period are characterized by didacticism, they openly oppose light and dark principles, the heroes are sharply divided into “good” and “evil”, vice is punished at the denouement. Plays of the "Slavophil period" are characterized by open moralizing, sentimentality, edification.

At the same time, it should be said that during this period Ostrovsky, in general, remained on realistic positions. According to Dobrolyubov, "the power of immediate artistic feeling could not leave the author even here, and therefore particular positions and individual characters are distinguished by genuine truth."

The significance of Ostrovsky's plays written during this period lies primarily in the fact that they continue to ridicule and condemn tyranny in whatever forms it manifests itself / Lyubim Tortsov /. (If Bolshov is a rude and straightforward type of tyrant, then Rusakov is a softened and meek type).

Dobrolyubov: "In Bolshov we saw a vigorous nature, exposed to the influence of merchant life, in Rusakov, we imagine: but what even honest and gentle natures look like with him."

Bolshov: "What is my father and I, if you don't order?"

Rusakov: "I will not give up for the one whom she will love, but for the one whom I will love."

The praise of the patriarchal life is contradictory in these plays with the posing of acute social issues, and the desire to create images in which national ideals would be embodied (Rusakov, Borodkin), with sympathy for young people who bring new aspirations, opposition to everything patriarchal, old. (Mitya, Lyubov Gordeevna).

These plays found expression of Ostrovsky's desire to find a bright, positive beginning in ordinary people.

This is how the theme of folk humanism, the breadth of the common man's nature, arises, which is expressed in the ability to boldly and independently look at the environment and in the ability to sometimes sacrifice one's own interests for the sake of others.

This theme was then sounded in such central Ostrovsky's plays as "The Thunderstorm", "Forest", "Dowry".

The idea of \u200b\u200bcreating a folk performance - a didactic performance - was not alien to Ostrovsky when he created Poverty is Not a Vice and Don't Live As You Want.

Ostrovsky strove to convey the ethical principles of the people, the aesthetic basis of their life, to evoke the response of the democratic audience to the poetry of their native life, national antiquity.

Ostrovsky was guided in this by a noble desire "to give the democratic spectator an initial cultural graft." Another thing is the idealization of humility, obedience, conservatism.

An interesting assessment of the Slavophil plays in the articles by Chernyshevsky "Poverty is not a vice" and Dobrolyubov "The Dark Kingdom".

Chernyshevsky wrote his article in 1854, when Ostrovsky was close to the Slavophiles, and there was a danger of Ostrovsky's departure from realistic positions. Chernyshevsky calls Ostrovsky's plays "Poverty is not a vice" and "Don't get into your sleigh" "fake", but goes on to say: "Ostrovsky has not yet ruined his wonderful talent, he needs to return to the realistic direction." “In truth, the power of talent, the wrong direction ruins even the strongest talent,” concludes Chernyshevsky.

Dobrolyubov's article was written in 1859, when Ostrovsky freed himself from Slavophil influences. It was pointless to recall previous delusions, and Dobrolyubov, limiting himself to a dull hint on this score, emphasizes the disclosure of the realistic principle of these same plays.

The assessments of Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov mutually complement each other and are an example of the principled attitude of revolutionary democratic criticism.

At the beginning of 1856, a new stage began in Ostrovsky's work.

The playwright is getting closer to the editors of Sovremennik. This rapprochement coincides with the period of the rise of progressive social forces, with the maturing of a revolutionary situation.

He, as if following the advice of Nekrasov, returns to the path of studying social reality, the path of creating analytical plays in which pictures of modern life are given.

(In a review of the play “Don't live the way you want”, Nekrasov advised him, abandoning all preconceived ideas, to follow the path that his own talent would lead: “to give free development to his talent” - the way of depicting real life).

Chernyshevsky emphasizes “Ostrovsky's wonderful talent, strong talent. Dobrolyubov - “the power of artistic instinct” of the playwright.

During this period, Ostrovsky creates such significant plays as "Pupil", "Profitable Place", a trilogy about Balzaminov and, finally, during a revolutionary situation - "Thunderstorm".

This period of Ostrovsky's creativity is characterized, first of all, by the expansion of the coverage of life phenomena, the expansion of themes.

Firstly, in the field of his research, in which the landowner, serf environment falls, Ostrovsky showed that the landowner Ulanbekova ("The Pupil") mocks her victims just as cruelly as illiterate, dark merchants.

Ostrovsky shows that in the landlord-noble environment, as in the merchant, the same struggle is going on between the rich and the poor, the elders and the younger.

In addition, during the same period, Ostrovsky raises the topic of philistinism. Ostrovsky was the first Russian writer to notice and artistically discovered philistinism as a social group.

The playwright discovered in the philistine a predominant and overshadowing all other interests interest in the material, what Gorky later defined as "an ugly developed sense of ownership."

In the trilogy about Balzaminov ("A festive dream - before lunchtime", "Your dogs are squabbling, do not bother a stranger", "What you go for, you will find") / 1857-1861 /, Ostrovsky denounces the philistine way of existence, with its intelligence, , vulgarity, thirst for profit, absurd dreams.

The trilogy about Balzaminov reveals not just ignorance or narrow-mindedness, but some kind of intellectual wretchedness, inferiority of the bourgeoisie. The image is built on the opposition of this mental inferiority, moral insignificance - and self-righteousness, self-confidence.

In this trilogy there are elements of vaudeville, buffoonery, features of external comic. But the internal comic prevails in it, since the figure of Balzaminov is internally comic.

Ostrovsky showed that the kingdom of the bourgeoisie is the same dark kingdom of impassable vulgarity, savagery, which is directed towards one goal - profit.

The next play - "A Profitable Place" - testifies to Ostrovsky's return to the path of "moral accusatory" drama. In the same period, Ostrovsky was the discoverer of another dark kingdom - the kingdom of officials, the tsarist bureaucracy.

In the years when serfdom was abolished, exposing the bureaucratic order had a special political meaning. Bureaucracy was the most complete expression of the autocratic serf system. It embodied the exploitative and predatory essence of autocracy. This was no longer just everyday arbitrariness, but a violation of common interests in the name of the law. It is in connection with this play that Dobrolyubov expands the concept of "tyranny", understanding by it autocracy in general.

"A profitable place" is reminiscent of N. Gogol's comedy "The Inspector General". But if in "The Inspector General" the officials who commit lawlessness feel guilty, are afraid of retribution, then Ostrovsky's officials are imbued with the consciousness of their righteousness and impunity. Bribery, abuse, seem to them and others to be the norm.

Ostrovsky emphasized that the distortion of all moral norms in society is the law, and the law itself is something illusory. Both officials and people dependent on them know that laws are always on the side of those who have power.

Thus, officials - for the first time in literature - are shown by Ostrovsky as peculiar traders in law. (An official can turn the law any way he wants.)

A new hero also came to Ostrovsky's play - a young official Zhadov, who had just graduated from the university. The conflict between representatives of the old formation and Zhadov takes on the force of an irreconcilable contradiction:

a / Ostrovsky managed to show the inconsistency of the illusions about an honest official as a force capable of stopping the administration's abuses.

b / fight against "Yusovschina" or compromise, betrayal of ideals - Zhadov was not given any other choice.

Ostrovsky denounced the system, the living conditions that give rise to bribe-takers. The progressive meaning of comedy lies in the fact that in it the irreconcilable denial of the old world and "Yusovschina" merged with the search for a new morality.

Zhadov is a weak person, he cannot withstand the struggle, he also goes to ask for a "lucrative job."

Chernyshevsky believed that the play would be even stronger if it ended with the fourth act, that is, with Zhadov's cry of despair: "Let's go to my uncle to ask for a lucrative job!" In the fifth, that abyss appears before Zhadov that almost destroyed him morally. And, although the end of Vyshimirsky is not typical, there is an element of chance in the salvation of Zhadov, his words, his belief that “somewhere there are other, more persistent, worthy people” who will not compromise, will not humble themselves, will not give in, talk about the prospect of further development of new social relations. Ostrovsky had a presentiment of the coming social upswing.

The rapid development of psychological realism, which we observe in the second half of the 19th century, manifested itself in drama. The secret of Ostrovsky's dramatic writing lies not in the one-sided characteristics of human types, but in the desire to create full-blooded human characters, the internal contradictions and struggles of which serve as a powerful impetus to the dramatic movement. G.A. Tovstonogov spoke well about this peculiarity of Ostrovsky's creative manner, referring in particular to Glumov from the comedy "Enough simplicity for every wise man", a character that is far from ideal: "Why is Glumov charming, although he commits a number of vile deeds? he is unsympathetic to us, then there is no performance. Hatred for this world makes him charming, and we internally justify his way of paying him back. "

Interest in the human person in all its states forced writers to seek means for their expression. In drama, the main such means was the stylistic individualization of the characters' language, and it was Ostrovsky who played the leading role in the development of this method. In addition, in psychology, Ostrovsky made an attempt to go further, along the path of providing his heroes with the maximum possible freedom within the framework of the author's intention - the result of such an experiment was the image of Katerina in The Thunderstorm.

In The Thunderstorm, Ostrovsky rose to the depiction of the tragic collision of living human feelings with the deadening domestic life of the house.

Despite the variety of types of dramatic conflicts presented in Ostrovsky's early works, their poetics, their general atmosphere were determined, first of all, by the fact that tyranny was given in them as a natural and inevitable phenomenon of life. Even the so-called "Slavophil" plays, with their search for light and good principles, did not destroy and did not violate the oppressive atmosphere of tyranny. The play "The Thunderstorm" is also characterized by this general flavor. And at the same time, there is a force in her that resolutely opposes the terrible, deadening routine - this is a folk element, expressed both in folk characters (Katerina, above all, Kuligin and even Kudryash), and in Russian nature, which becomes an essential element of dramatic action ...

The play "The Thunderstorm", which raised complex questions of modern life and appeared in print and on the stage just on the eve of the so-called "liberation" of the peasants, testified that Ostrovsky was free from any illusions about the paths of social development of Russia.

Even before the publication, "Thunderstorm" appeared on the Russian scene. The premiere took place on November 16, 1859 at the Maly Theater. Great actors were involved in the play: S. Vasiliev (Tikhon), P. Sadovsky (Wild), N. Rykalova (Kabanova), L. Nikulina-Kositskaya (Katerina), V. Lensky (Kudryash) and others. The production was directed by N. Ostrovsky himself. The premiere was a huge success, and subsequent performances were held with triumph. A year after the brilliant premiere of The Storms, the play was awarded the highest academic award - the Great Uvarov Prize.

In The Thunderstorm, the social system of Russia is sharply denounced, and the death of the main character is shown by the playwright as a direct consequence of her desperate situation in the “dark kingdom”. The conflict in "Thunderstorm" is built on the irreconcilable clash of freedom-loving Katerina with the terrible world of wild and wild boars, with animal laws based on "cruelty, lies, mockery, humiliation of the human personality. Katerina went against tyranny and obscurantism, armed only with the power of her feelings, consciousness the right to life, to happiness and love. ”According to Dobrolyubov's just remark, she“ feels the opportunity to satisfy the natural thirst of her soul and can no longer remain motionless: she is eager for a new life, even if she had to die in this impulse ”.

Since childhood, Katerina was brought up in a peculiar environment, which developed in her a romantic dreaminess, religiosity and a thirst for freedom. These character traits later determined the tragedy of her position. Raised in a religious spirit, she understands all the “sinfulness” of her feelings for Boris, but she cannot resist natural attraction and surrenders entirely to this impulse.

Katerina opposes not only the "Kabanov concepts of morality." She openly protests against immutable religious dogmas that asserted the categorical inviolability of church marriage and condemned suicide as contrary to Christian doctrine. Bearing in mind this fullness of Katerina's protest, Dobrolyubov wrote: “This is the true strength of character, which, in any case, you can rely on! This is the height to which our national life reaches in its development, but to which in our literature very few were able to rise, and no one knew how to hold on to it as well as Ostrovsky. "

Katerina does not want to put up with the deadening environment. “I don’t want to live here, I don’t want to, even though you cut me!” She says to Varvara. And she commits suicide. “It’s sad, bitter such liberation,” Dobrolyubov remarked, “but what to do when there is no other way out” The character of Katerina is complex and multifaceted. This complexity is most eloquently evidenced, perhaps, by the fact that many outstanding performers, starting, it would seem, from completely opposite dominants of the main character's character, could not completely exhaust him. interpretations did not fully reveal the main thing in Katerina's character: her love, to which she surrenders with all the immediacy of her young nature. Her life experience is negligible, most of all in her nature is a sense of beauty, poetic perception of nature. However, her character is given in movement, in development. Contemplation of nature, as we know from the play, is not enough for it. Other spheres of application of spiritual forces are needed. Prayer, service, myths are also means of satisfying poet the technical feeling of the protagonist.

Dobrolyubov wrote: “It is not rituals that occupy her in church: she does not even hear what is being sung and read there; she has a different music in her soul, different visions, for her the service ends imperceptibly, as if in one second. She is occupied with trees, strangely painted on images, and she imagines a whole country of gardens, where all such trees, and all this blooms, smells, everything is full of paradise singing. Otherwise, on a sunny day, she will see "from the dome, a light such pillar goes down, and smoke goes in this pillar, like clouds" - and now she already sees, "as if the angels in this pillar fly and sing." Sometimes it will appear to her - why shouldn't she fly? And when she stands on the mountain, she is drawn to fly: like that, she ran away, raised her hands, and flew ... ”.

A new, yet unexplored sphere of manifestation of her spiritual powers was her love for Boris, which ultimately became the cause of her tragedy. "The passion of a nervous passionate woman and the struggle with debt, the fall, repentance and heavy atonement - all this is filled with the most lively dramatic interest, and conducted with extraordinary skill and knowledge of the heart," IA Goncharov justly noted.

How often passion, spontaneity of Katerina's nature is condemned, and her deep spiritual struggle is perceived as a manifestation of weakness. Meanwhile, in the memoirs of the artist EB Piunova-Schmidthof we find Ostrovsky's curious story about his heroine: “Katerina,” Alexander Nikolaevich told me, “is a woman with a passionate nature and strong character. She proved it with her love for Boris and her suicide. Katerina, even though she is overwhelmed by the environment, gives herself up to her passion at the first opportunity, saying before that: "Come what may, and I will see Boris!" In front of the picture of hell, Katerina does not rage and hysterics, but only with her face and with her whole figure must depict mortal fear. In the scene of farewell to Boris, Katerina speaks quietly, like a patient, and only the last words: “My friend! My joy! Goodbye!" - says as loud as possible. Katerina's position became hopeless. You can't live in your husband's house ... There is nowhere to go. To parents? Yes, by that time they would have tied her up and brought her to her husband. Katerina came to the conviction that it was impossible to live the way she used to, and, having a strong will, she drowned herself ... ”.

“Without fear of being accused of exaggeration,” wrote IA Goncharov, “I can honestly say that there was no such work as a drama in our literature. She, undoubtedly, occupies and, probably for a long time, will occupy the first place in high classical beauties. From whatever side it was taken - from the side of the plan of creation, or dramatic movement, or, finally, characters, everywhere it is captured by the power of creativity, subtlety of observation and gracefulness of decoration. In The Thunderstorm, according to Goncharov, “the broad picture of national life and customs has settled down”.

Ostrovsky conceived The Thunderstorm as a comedy, and then called it a drama. NA Dobrolyubov spoke very carefully about the genre nature of The Storm. He wrote that "the mutual relations of tyranny and speechlessness are brought in her to the most tragic consequences."

By the middle of the 19th century, Dobrolyubov's definition of the “play of life” turned out to be more capacious than the traditional division of dramatic art, which still felt the burden of classicist norms. In Russian drama, there was a process of rapprochement between dramatic poetry and everyday reality, which naturally affected their genre nature. Ostrovsky, for example, wrote: “The history of Russian literature has two branches, which have finally merged: one grafted branch is the offspring of a foreign, but well-rooted seed; it goes from Lomonosov through Sumarokov, Karamzin, Batyushkov, Zhukovsky and others. to Pushkin, where he begins to converge with the other; another - from Kantemir, through the comedies of the same Sumarokov, Fonvizin, Kapnist, Griboyedov to Gogol; both have completely merged in him; dualism is over. On the one hand: laudable odes, French tragedies, imitations of the ancients, the sensitivity of the late 18th century, German romanticism, frantic youthful literature; and on the other: satire, comedy, comedy and Dead Souls, Russia seemed to at the same time, in the person of its best writers, lived period after period the life of foreign literatures and brought up its own to universal human significance.

Thus, comedy turned out to be the closest thing to the everyday phenomena of Russian life, it responded sensitively to everything that worried the Russian public, reproduced life in its dramatic and tragic manifestations. That is why Dobrolyubov so stubbornly adhered to the definition of the "play of life", seeing in it not so much a conventional genre meaning as the very principle of reproducing modern life in drama. Actually, Ostrovsky spoke of the same principle: “Many conventional rules have disappeared, and some more will disappear. Now dramatic works are nothing more than a dramatized life. "This principle determined the development of dramatic genres throughout the subsequent decades of the 19th century. In its genre," Thunderstorm "is a social and everyday tragedy.

A. I. Revyakin rightly notes that the main feature of the tragedy - "the image of irreconcilable life contradictions that determine the death of the protagonist, who is an outstanding person" - is evident in "The Thunderstorm". The depiction of a folk tragedy, of course, entailed new, original constructive forms of its embodiment. Ostrovsky has repeatedly opposed the inert, traditional manner of constructing dramatic works. The "Thunderstorm" was also innovative in this sense. He spoke about this, not without irony, in a letter to Turgenev dated June 14, 1874, in response to a proposal to publish The Thunderstorm in French translation: “It does not interfere with publishing The Thunderstorm in a good French translation, it can impress with its originality; but whether it should be put on the stage - one can think about it. I highly value the skill of the French in making plays, and I am afraid of offending their fine taste with my terrible ineptitude. From the French point of view, the construction of the "Thunderstorm" is ugly, but it must be admitted that it is not very foldable at all. When I wrote The Thunderstorm, I got carried away with finishing the main roles and with unforgivable frivolity “took the form, and at the same time was in a hurry to keep up with the benefit performance of the late Vasiliev”.

A. Zhuravleva's reasoning about the genre originality of The Storms is interesting: “The problem of genre interpretation is the most important in the analysis of this play. If we turn to the scientific-critical and theatrical traditions of the interpretation of this play, we can distinguish two prevailing tendencies. One of them is dictated by the understanding of "The Storm" as a social and everyday drama, in which special importance is attached to everyday life. The attention of the directors and, accordingly, the audience is, as it were, equally distributed among all the participants in the action, each person receives an equal value. "

Another interpretation is determined by the understanding of "The Storm" as a tragedy. Zhuravleva believes that such an interpretation is deeper and has "greater support in the text", despite the fact that the interpretation of "The Thunderstorm" as a drama is based on the genre definition of Ostrovsky himself. The researcher rightly notes that "this definition is a tribute to tradition." Indeed, the entire previous history of Russian drama did not provide examples of tragedy in which the heroes would be individuals, and not historical figures, even legendary ones. The "thunderstorm" in this respect remains a unique phenomenon. The key point for understanding the genre of a dramatic work in this case is not the "social status" of the heroes, but, first of all, the nature of the conflict. If we understand the death of Katerina as a result of a collision with her mother-in-law, see her as a victim of family oppression, then the scale of the heroes really looks too small for a tragedy. But if we see that the fate of Katerina was determined by the collision of two historical eras, then the tragic nature of the conflict seems to be quite natural.

A typical sign of a tragic structure is the catharsis feeling experienced by the audience during the denouement. By death, the heroine is freed from both oppression and internal contradictions that torment her.

Thus, the social and everyday drama from the life of the merchant class grows into a tragedy. Ostrovsky managed to show the epoch-making turning point taking place in the common people's consciousness through a love-everyday conflict. The awakening sense of personality and a new attitude to the world, based not on individual expression of will, turned out to be in irreconcilable antagonism not only with the real, worldly reliable state of Ostrovsky's modern patriarchal order, but also with the ideal concept of morality inherent in the high heroine.

This transformation of drama into tragedy also happened thanks to the triumph of the lyrical element in The Thunderstorm.

The symbolism of the title of the play is important. First of all, the word "thunderstorm" has a direct meaning in its text. The title character is included by the playwright in the development of the action and directly participates in it as a natural phenomenon. The thunderstorm motif develops in the play from the first to the fourth act. At the same time, the image of a thunderstorm was recreated by Ostrovsky as a landscape: dark clouds filled with moisture ("like a cloud is twisting like a ball"), we feel stuffiness in the air, we hear thunder rolls, we freeze before the light of lightning.

The title of the play also has a figurative meaning. A thunderstorm rages in Katerina's soul, it affects the struggle between creative and destructive principles, the collision of light and dark forebodings, good and sinful feelings. The scenes with Grokha seem to push the dramatic action of the play forward.

The thunderstorm in the play also takes on a symbolic meaning, expressing the idea of \u200b\u200bthe entire work as a whole. The appearance in the dark kingdom of people like Katerina and Kuligin is a thunderstorm over Kalinov. The thunderstorm in the play conveys the catastrophic nature of life, the state of the world split in two. The versatility and versatility of the title of the play becomes a kind of key to a deeper understanding of its essence.

"In the play by Mr. Ostrovsky, which bears the name" The Thunderstorm ", - wrote A. D. Galakhov, - the action and atmosphere are tragic, although many passages excite laughter." The Thunderstorm combines not only the tragic and the comic, but - what is especially important - the epic and the lyrical. All this determines the originality of the composition of the play. VE Meyerhold wrote about this excellently: “The peculiarity of the construction of The Thunderstorm is that Ostrovsky gives the highest point of tension in the fourth act (and not in the second scene of the second act), and the intensification is noted in the script not gradual (from the second act through the third to the fourth), but by a push, or rather, by two jolts; the first ascent is indicated in the second act, in the scene of Katerina's farewell to Tikhon (the ascent is strong, but not yet very strong), and the second ascent (very strong - this is the most sensitive impulse) in the fourth act, at the moment of Katerina's repentance.

Between these two acts (set as if on the tops of two unequal, but sharply rushing upward hills) - the third act (with both pictures) lies, as it were, in a valley. "

It is easy to see that the internal scheme of the construction of The Thunderstorm, subtly revealed by the director, is determined by the stages of development of Katerina's character, stages of her development, of her feelings for Boris.

A. Anastasyev notes that Ostrovsky's play has its own, special fate. For many decades, "The Thunderstorm" has not left the stage of Russian theaters; N. A. Nikulina-Kositskaya, S. V. Vasiliev, N. V. Rykalova, G. N. Fedotova, M. N. Ermolova became famous for their leading roles. P. A. Strepetova, O. O. Sadovskaya, A. Koonen, V. N. Pashennaya. At the same time, "theater historians have not witnessed integral, harmonious, outstanding performances." The unsolved mystery of this great tragedy lies, according to the researcher, "in its multi-ideality, in the strongest fusion of indisputable, unconditional, concrete historical truth and poetic symbolism, in the organic combination of real action and deeply hidden lyrical beginning."

Usually, when they talk about the lyricism of The Thunderstorm, they mean, first of all, the lyrical in nature system of the worldview of the main heroine of the play, they also talk about the Volga, which is opposed in its most general form to the “barn” way of life and which causes the lyrical outpourings of Kuligin ... But the playwright could not - by virtue of the laws of the genre - include the Volga, the beautiful Volga landscapes, in general, nature in the system of dramatic action. He showed only the way by which nature becomes an integral element of the stage action. Nature here is not only an object of admiration and admiration, but also the main criterion for evaluating all that exists, which makes it possible to see the illogism, the unnaturalness of modern life. “Did Ostrovsky write The Thunderstorm? Volga wrote the "Thunderstorm"! " - exclaimed the famous theater critic and critic S. A. Yuriev.

“Every true everyday person is at the same time a true romantic,” the famous theatrical figure AI Yuzhin-Sumbatov will say later, referring to Ostrovsky. A romantic in the broadest sense of the word, surprised by the correctness and severity of the laws of nature and the violation of these laws in public life. This is exactly what Ostrovsky was talking about in one of his early diary entries after his arrival in Kostroma: “And on the other side of the Volga, right opposite the city, there are two villages; especially picturesque is one, from which the most curly grove stretches all the way to the Volga, the sun at sunset climbed into it somehow miraculously, from the roots, and did many miracles.

Starting from this landscape sketch, Ostrovsky reasoned:

“I was exhausted looking at this. Nature - you are a faithful mistress, only terribly lustful; no matter how you love you, you are all unhappy; unsatisfied passion boils in your eyes, and no matter how you swear to you that you are not able to satisfy your desires, you are not angry, you do not move away, but you look at everything with your passionate eyes, and these eyes full of expectation are execution and torture for a person. "

The lyricism of "The Thunderstorms", so specific in form (Ap. Grigoriev subtly remarked about him: "... as if not a poet, but a whole people created here ..."), arose precisely on the basis of the proximity of the world of the hero and the author.

The orientation towards a healthy natural beginning became in the 50s and 60s the socio-ethical principle not of Ostrovsky alone, but of all Russian literature: from Tolstoy and Nekrasov to Chekhov and Kuprin. Without this peculiar manifestation of the "author's" voice in dramatic works, we cannot fully understand the psychologism of the "Poor Bride", and the nature of the lyric in "The Thunderstorm" and "Dowry", and the poetics of the new drama of the late 19th century.

By the end of the sixties, Ostrovsky's creativity thematically expanded tremendously. He shows how the new is mixed with the old: in the usual images of his merchants we see gloss and secularity, education and "pleasant" manners. They are no longer stupid despots, but predatory acquisitions, holding in their fists not only a family or a city, but entire provinces. The most diverse people find themselves in conflict with them, their circle is infinitely wide. And the accusatory pathos of the plays is stronger. The best of them: "Hot Heart", "Mad Money", "Forest", "Wolves and Sheep", "The Last Victim", "Dowry", "Talents and Admirers".

The shifts in the work of Ostrovsky in the last period are very clearly visible, if we compare, for example, "Ardent Heart" with "Thunderstorm". The merchant Kuroslepov is an eminent merchant in the city, but not as formidable as Dikoy, he is rather an eccentric, does not understand life and is busy with his dreams. His second wife, Matryona, is clearly having an affair with the clerk Narkis. They both rob the owner, and Narkis wants to become a merchant himself. No, the "dark kingdom" is not monolithic now. The Domostroevsky way of life will no longer be saved by the willfulness of the mayor Gradoboev. The unrestrained revels of the wealthy merchant Khlynov are symbols of burning through life, decay, nonsense: Khlynov orders the streets to pour champagne.

Parasha is a girl of a "warm heart". But if Katerina in "The Thunderstorm" turns out to be a victim of an unrequited husband and weak-willed lover, then Parasha is aware of her mighty spiritual strength. She also wants to "take off". She loves and curses the weakness of character, the indecision of her lover: "What kind of guy is this, what kind of crybaby has forced himself on me ... Apparently, I myself think about my head."

The development of the love of Yulia Pavlovna Tugina for her unworthy young carousel Dulchin is shown with great tension in The Last Victim. In Ostrovsky's later dramas, there is a combination of action-packed positions with detailed psychological characteristics of the main characters. Great emphasis is placed on the vicissitudes of the torment they are experiencing, in which the struggle of the hero or heroine with herself, with her own feelings, mistakes, assumptions begins to take a large place.

In this respect, the "Dowry" is characteristic. Here, perhaps for the first time, in the center of the author's attention is the very feeling of the heroine, who has escaped from the care of her mother and the ancient way of life. In this play, it is not the struggle between light and darkness, but the struggle of love itself for its rights and freedom. Larisa Paratova herself preferred Karandyshev. The people around her cynically outraged Larisa's feelings. The mother outraged, who wanted to “sell” her daughter, a “dowry” for a money man who was vain to be the owner of such a treasure. Paratov outraged her, deceived her best hopes and considered Larisa's love one of fleeting pleasures. Knurov and Vozhevatov also outraged, playing Larissa with a toss.

In what kind of cynics, ready to go for forgeries, blackmail, bribery for the sake of selfish ends, the landowners have become in post-reform Russia, we learn from the play "Wolves and Sheep". "Wolves" are the landowner Murzavetskaya, the landowner Berkutov, and the "sheep" are the young rich widow Kupavina, the weak-willed elderly master Lynyaev. Murzavetskaya wants to marry a dissolute nephew to Kupavina, "having parroted" her with old bills of her late husband. In fact, the bills were forged by the confidant, solicitor Chugunov, who also serves as Kupavina. Berkutov appeared from Petersburg, a landowner - and a businessman, not more vile than the local scoundrels. He instantly realized what was the matter. Kupavina with her huge capital seized his hands, not dwelling on feelings. Deftly "parroting" Murzavetskaya by exposing the forgery, he immediately entered into an alliance with her: it is important for him to win a ballot in the elections to the leader of the nobility. He is a real "wolf" and is, all the others next to him are "sheep". At the same time, there is no sharp division into scoundrels and innocents in the play. Between the "wolves" and "sheep", it is as if there is some kind of vile conspiracy. Everyone is playing war with each other and at the same time they easily reconcile and find a common benefit.

One of the best pieces of Ostrovsky's entire repertoire, apparently, is the play “Guilty Without Guilt”. It combines the motives of many previous works. The artist Kruchinina, the main character, is a woman of high spiritual culture, experienced a great life tragedy. She is kind and generous, heartfelt and wise. At the peak of goodness and suffering stands Kruchinina. If you like, she is also a "ray of light" in the "dark kingdom", she is also the "last victim", she is also a "hot heart", she is also a "dowry", around her are "admirers", that is, predatory "wolves", money-grubbing and cynics. Kruchinina, not yet assuming that Neznamov is her son, instructs him in life, reveals his unhardened heart: “I am more experienced than you and lived more in the world; I know that in people there is a lot of nobility, a lot of love, selflessness, especially in women. "

This play is a panegyric to the Russian woman, the apotheosis of her nobility and self-sacrifice. This is the apotheosis of the Russian actor, whose real soul Ostrovsky knew well.

Ostrovsky wrote for the theater. This is the peculiarity of his talent. The images and pictures of life created by him are intended for the stage. That is why the speech of Ostrovsky's characters is so important, that is why his works sound so brightly. No wonder Innokenty Annensky called him a "realist-rumor". Without being staged on stage, his works seemed to be incomplete, which is why Ostrovsky took the prohibition of his plays by theatrical censors so hard. (The comedy "Our People - We Will Reckon" was allowed to be staged in the theater only ten years after Pogodin was able to publish it in a magazine.)

With a feeling of undisguised satisfaction, A. N. Ostrovsky wrote on November 3, 1878 to his friend, artist of the Alexandria Theater A. F. Burdin: “I have already read my play in Moscow five times, among the listeners there were persons who were hostile to me, and all unanimously recognized "Dowry" the best of all my works. "

Ostrovsky lived "Dowry", at times only on her, his fortieth thing, directed "his attention and strength", wanting to "finish" her in the most careful way. In September 1878, he wrote to one of his acquaintances: "I am working on my play with all my might; it seems that it will not come out badly."

A day after the premiere, on November 12, Ostrovsky could learn, and undoubtedly learned from Russkiye Vedomosti, how he managed to "tire the entire audience down to the most naive spectators." For she - the audience - has clearly "outgrown" those spectacles that he offers her.

In the seventies, Ostrovsky's relationship with critics, theaters and the audience became more and more complex. The period when he enjoyed universal recognition, won by him in the late fifties - early sixties, was replaced by another, more and more growing in different circles of cooling towards the playwright.

Theatrical censorship was harsher than literary censorship. This is no coincidence. In essence, theatrical art is democratic, it is more direct than literature, addressed to the general public. Ostrovsky in his "Note on the State of Dramatic Art in Russia at the Present Time" (1881) wrote that "dramatic poetry is closer to the people than other branches of literature. All other works are written for educated people, and dramas and comedies are for the whole people; writers should always remember this, they should be clear and strong. This closeness to the people does not in the least humiliate dramatic poetry, but on the contrary, doubles its strength and does not allow it to be vulgarized and crushed. " Ostrovsky speaks in his "Note" about the expansion of the theater audience in Russia after 1861. Ostrovsky writes about the new, not experienced in art viewer: "Fine literature is still boring and incomprehensible to him, music too, only the theater gives him full pleasure, there he experiences everything that happens on stage in a childish way, sympathizes with good and learns evil, clearly presented. " For a "fresh public," Ostrovsky wrote, "a strong drama, a big comic is required, evoking, frank, loud laughter, hot, sincere feelings." It is the theater, according to Ostrovsky, rooted in a folk farce, that has the ability to directly and strongly influence the souls of people. Two and a half decades later, Alexander Blok, speaking about poetry, will write that its essence lies in the main, "walking" truths, in the ability to convey them to the heart of the reader.

Drag along, mourning nags!

Actors rule the craft

To walk from the truth

Everyone felt pain and light!

("Balagan"; 1906)

The great importance that Ostrovsky attached to the theater, his thoughts on theatrical art, on the state of the theater in Russia, on the fate of actors - all this was reflected in his plays.

In the life of Ostrovsky himself, the theater played a huge role. He took part in staging his plays, worked with actors, was friends with many of them, corresponded. He put a lot of effort into defending the rights of actors, seeking to create a theater school in Russia, his own repertoire.

Ostrovsky knew well the inner, hidden from the eyes of the audience, the backstage life of the theater. Beginning with "The Forest" (1871), Ostrovsky develops the theme of the theater, creates images of actors, depicts their fates - this play is followed by "The Comic of the 17th Century" (1873), "Talents and Admirers" (1881), "Guilty Without Guilt" ( 1883).

The theater in the depiction of Ostrovsky lives according to the laws of the world that is familiar to the reader and viewer from his other plays. How the destinies of the artists are shaped is determined by the morals, relationships, and circumstances of the "common" life. Ostrovsky's ability to recreate an accurate, vivid picture of time is fully manifested in plays about actors. This is Moscow in the era of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich ("The Comedian of the 17th Century"), a provincial city, modern to Ostrovsky ("Talents and Admirers", "Guilty Without Guilt"), a noble estate ("Forest").

In the life of the Russian theater, which Ostrovsky knew so well, the actor was a bondage person who was in multiple dependence. "At that time it was the time of favorites, and the entire supervisory responsibility of the repertoire inspector was to instruct the chief director to take all possible care when compiling the repertoire so that the favorites, receiving a large after-performance pay, played every day and, if possible, at two theaters," draft rules on imperial theaters for dramatic works "(1883).

In the portrayal of Ostrovsky, the actors could turn out to be almost beggars, like Neschastlivtsev and Schastlivtsev in "The Forest", humiliated, losing their human appearance due to drunkenness, like Robinson in "Dowry", like Shmaga in "Guilty Without Guilt", like Erast Gromilov in Talents and admirers "," We, artists, our place is in the buffet ", - Shmaga says with defiance and evil irony.

Theater, the life of provincial actresses in the late 70s, at about the time when Ostrovsky writes plays about actors, shows M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin in the novel "Lord Golovlevs". Judas' nieces Lyubinka and Anninka become actresses, fleeing Golovlev's life, but end up in a den. They had no talent, no training, they did not study acting, but all this was not required on the provincial stage. The life of the actors appears in Anninka's memories as hell, like a nightmare: “Here is a scene with the sooty, captured and slippery scenery from the dampness; here she herself spins on the stage, just spins, imagining that she is playing ... Drunken and quarreling nights; landowners, hastily taking out a green one from their skinny wallets, merchant grips, encouraging the "actors" with a whip in their hands. And the backstage life is ugly, and what is played out on the stage is ugly: "... And the Duchess of Gerolstein, stunning with a hussar mentic, and Clerette Ango, in a wedding dress, with a slit in front to the waist, and Beautiful Elena, with a slit in the front, from behind and from all sides ... Nothing but shamelessness and nakedness ... that's what my life was like! " This life brings Lyubinka to suicide.

The coincidences between Shchedrin and Ostrovsky in the portrayal of the provincial theater are natural - they both write about what they knew well, write the truth. But Shchedrin is a merciless satirist, he thickens the colors so much, becomes grotesque in the image, Ostrovsky gives an objective picture of life, his "dark kingdom" is not hopeless - it was not for nothing that N. Dobrolyubov wrote about the "ray of light."

This feature of Ostrovsky was noted by critics even when his first plays appeared. "... The ability to portray reality as it is -" mathematical fidelity to reality, "the absence of any exaggeration ... All of this is not the hallmark of Gogol's poetry; all these are the hallmarks of a new comedy," - wrote B. Almazov in the article the occasion of a comedy ". Already in our time, the literary critic A. Skaftmov in his work "Belinsky and the Drama of A. N. Ostrovsky" noted that "the most striking difference between the plays of Gogol and Ostrovsky is that Gogol does not have a victim of vice, and Ostrovsky always has a suffering victim depicting vice, Ostrovsky protects something from it, protects someone ... Thus, the entire content of the play changes.The play is colored by suffering lyricism, enters into the development of fresh, morally pure or poetic feelings; the author's efforts are directed towards that in order to sharply put forward the inner legality, truth and poetry of genuine humanity, oppressed and expelled in an atmosphere of dominant self-interest and deception. " Ostrovsky's approach to depicting reality different from that of Gogol is, of course, explained by the originality of his talent, the "natural" properties of the artist, but (this, too, must not be overlooked) by the time that has changed: increased attention to the individual, to her rights, recognition of her value.

IN AND. Nemirovich-Danchenko in his book "The Birth of the Theater" writes about what makes Ostrovsky's plays especially stage: "an atmosphere of kindness", "clear, firm sympathy on the side of the offended, to which the theater hall is always extremely sensitive."

In plays about theater and actors, Ostrovsky certainly contains the image of a true artist and a wonderful person. In real life, Ostrovsky knew many excellent people in the theatrical world, appreciated them and respected them. L. Nikulina-Kositskaya, who brilliantly performed Katerina in The Thunderstorm, played an important role in his life. Ostrovsky was friends with the artist A. Martynov, highly appreciated N. Rybakov, G. Fedotov and M. Ermolov played in his plays; P. Strepetova.

In the play "Guilty Without Guilt" actress Elena Kruchinina says: "I know that people have a lot of nobility, a lot of love, selflessness." And Otradina-Kruchinina herself belongs to such wonderful, noble people, she is a wonderful artist, intelligent, significant, sincere.

"Oh, do not cry; they are not worth your tears. You are a white dove in a black flock of rooks, so they peck at you. Your whiteness, your purity is offensive to them," says Sasha Negina in Narok's Talents and Admirers.

The most striking image of the noble actor, created by Ostrovsky, is the tragedian Neschastlivtsev in The Forest. Ostrovsky depicts a "living" person, with a difficult fate, with a sad life story. The heavily drinking Neschastlivtsev cannot be called a "white dove". But he changes throughout the play, the plot situation gives him the opportunity to fully reveal the best features of his nature. If at first, in the behavior of Neschastlivtsev, the posturing inherent in a provincial tragedian, an addiction to pompous declamation (at these moments he is ridiculous) appear; if, playing the master, he gets into ridiculous situations, then, realizing what is happening in the Gurmyzhskaya estate, what rubbish his mistress is, he takes an ardent part in the fate of Aksyusha, shows excellent human qualities. It turns out that the role of a noble hero is organic for him, this is really his role - and not only on stage, but also in life.

In his view, art and life are inextricably linked, an actor is not a hypocrite, not a pretender, his art is based on genuine feelings, genuine experiences, it should have nothing to do with pretense and lies in life. This is the meaning of the remark that Neschastlivtsev throws from Gurmyzhskaya and her entire company: "... We are artists, noble actors, and you are comedians."

Gurmyzhskaya turns out to be the main comedian in that life performance, which is played out in "The Forest". She chooses for herself the attractive, attractive role of a woman of strict moral rules, a generous benefactor who devoted herself to good deeds ("Gentlemen, do I live for myself? All I have, all my money belongs to the poor. I am only a clerk with my money, and their owner is every poor, every unfortunate one "- she inspires those around them). But all this is an act of acting, a mask that hides her true face. Gurmyzhskaya is deceiving, pretending to be kind-hearted, she did not even think to do something for others, to help anyone: "Why did I get emotional? You play, play a role, well, you will play it." Gurmyzhskaya not only plays a completely alien role to her, she forces others to play along with her, imposes on them roles that should present her in the most favorable light: Neschastlivtsev is assigned to play the role of a grateful, loving nephew. Aksyusha is the role of the bride, Bulanov is the groom of Aksyusha. But Aksyusha refuses to break a comedy for her: "I won't go for him; so why is this comedy?" Gurmyzhskaya, no longer hiding that she is the director of the play being performed, rudely puts Aksyusha in his place: "Comedy! How dare you? And even a comedy; I feed you and dress you, and make you play a comedy."

The comedian Schastlivtsev, who turned out to be more perceptive than the tragedian Neschastlivtsev, who at first took Gurmyzhskaya's play on faith, had figured it out in the real situation before him, said to Neschastlivtsev: “The gymnasium student is apparently smarter; plays, and you ... a simpleton. "

The viewer is presented with a real Gurmyzhskaya without a protective pharisaic mask - a greedy, selfish, deceitful, depraved lady. The play she was playing pursued low, mean, dirty goals.

In many of Ostrovsky's plays such a deceitful "theater" of life is presented. The podkhalyuzin in Ostrovsky's first play "Our People - We Will Reckon" plays the role of the most devoted and loyal person to the owner and thus achieves his goal - by deceiving Bolshov, he himself becomes the owner. Glumov, in the comedy "Enough of Simplicity for Every Wise Man," builds a career for himself on a complex game, putting on one or the other masks. Only chance prevented him from achieving his goal in the intrigue he had started. In "Dowry" not only Robinson, entertaining Vozhevatov and Paratov, is represented as a lord. The funny and pathetic Karandyshev tries to look important. Becoming Larissa's fiancé, he "... raised his head so high that, look, he would bump into someone. And he put on glasses for some reason, but never wore them. He bows - barely nods," says Vozhevatov. Everything that Karandyshev does is artificial, everything is for show: the pitiful horse that he started, and the carpet with cheap weapons on the wall, and the dinner that he gives. Paratov is a calculating and soulless person who plays the role of a hot, unrestrainedly broad nature.

Theater in real life, imposing masks are born of the desire to disguise, hide something immoral, shameful, pass black for white. Behind such a performance is usually calculation, hypocrisy, self-interest.

Neznamov in the play "Guilty Without Guilt", being a victim of an intrigue that Korinkina started, and believing that Kruchinina was only pretending to be a kind and noble woman, bitterly says: "Actress! Actress! Play on stage. And to play in life over simple, trusting hearts, which do not need a game, who ask for the truth ... for this we must execute ... we do not need deception! Give us the truth, the pure truth! " The hero of the play here expresses a very important idea for Ostrovsky about the theater, about its role in life, about the nature and purpose of acting. Ostrovsky contrasts comedianism and hypocrisy in life with art on stage full of truth and sincerity. A real theater, an artist's inspirational play is always moral, good, enlightens a person.

Ostrovsky's plays about actors and theater, which accurately reflected the circumstances of Russian reality in the 70s and 80s of the last century, contain thoughts about art that are still alive today. These are thoughts about the difficult, sometimes tragic fate of a true artist, who, while realizing, spends, burns himself, about the happiness he finds in creativity, full dedication, about the high mission of art, which affirms goodness and humanity. Ostrovsky himself expressed himself, revealed his soul in the plays he created, perhaps especially frankly in plays about the theater and actors. Much in them is consonant with what the poet of our century writes in wonderful verses:

When a line is dictated by a feeling

It sends a slave to the stage,

And then art ends

And the soil and fate breathe.

(B. Pasternak " Oh, I would know

that it happens ... ").

Whole generations of remarkable Russian artists have grown up on productions of Ostrovsky's plays. In addition to the Sadovskys, there are also Martynov, Vasiliev, Strepetov, Ermolov, Massalitinov, Gogolev. The walls of the Maly Theater saw a living great playwright; his traditions are still multiplying on the stage.

Ostrovsky's dramatic skills are the property of modern theater, the subject of close study. It is not at all out of date, despite some old-fashionedness of many techniques. But this old-fashionedness is exactly the same as that of the theater of Shakespeare, Moliere, Gogol. These are old, genuine diamonds. In Ostrovsky's plays, there are endless possibilities for stage embodiment and actor's growth.

The main strength of the playwright is the all-conquering truth, the depth of typification. Dobrolyubov also noted that Ostrovsky depicts not just types of merchants, landowners, but also universal types. Before us are all the signs of the highest art, which is immortal.

The originality of Ostrovsky's drama, its innovation is especially clearly manifested in the typification. If ideas, themes and plots reveal the originality and innovation of the content of Ostrovsky's drama, then the principles of typification of characters already relate to its artistic depiction, its form.

A. H. Ostrovsky, who continued and developed the realistic traditions of Western European and Russian drama, was attracted, as a rule, not by exceptional personalities, but by ordinary, ordinary social characters of greater or lesser typicality.

Almost any character of Ostrovsky is unique. At the same time, the individual in his plays does not contradict the social.

By individualizing his characters, the playwright discovers the gift of the deepest penetration into their psychological world. Many episodes of Ostrovsky's plays are masterpieces of a realistic depiction of human psychology.

“Ostrovsky,” Dobrolyubov justly wrote, “knows how to look into the depths of a person’s soul, knows how to distinguish nature from all externally accepted deformities and growths; that is why the external oppression, the heaviness of the whole situation oppressing a person, is felt in his works much stronger than in many stories that are terribly outrageous in content, but the external, official side of the matter completely obscures the internal, human side. " In the ability to “notice nature, penetrate into the depths of a person's soul, catch his feelings, regardless of the image of his external official relations” Dobrolyubov recognized one of the main and best properties of Ostrovsky's talent.

In working on characters, Ostrovsky constantly improved the techniques of his psychological mastery, expanding the range of colors used, complicating the coloring of images. In his very first work we have before us the bright, but more or less one-line characters of the characters. Further works represent examples of a more in-depth and complicated disclosure of human images.

In Russian drama, the school of Ostrovsky is quite naturally designated. It includes I.F. Gorbunov, A. Krasovsky, A.F. Pisemsky, A.A. Potekhin, I.E. Chernyshev, M.P.Sadovsky, N. Ya. Soloviev, P.M. Nevezhin, I. A. Kupchinsky. Studying with Ostrovsky, IF Gorbunov created wonderful scenes from the bourgeois-merchant and craft life. Following Ostrovsky, AA Potekhin revealed in his plays the impoverishment of the nobility ("The Newest Oracle"), the predatory essence of the wealthy bourgeoisie ("The Guilty One"), bribery, the careerism of the bureaucracy ("Tinsel"), the spiritual beauty of the peasantry ("Sheep fur coat - the soul of a man "), the emergence of new people of a democratic make-up (" Cut off a hunk "). Potekhin's first drama, "The Human Court is Not Divine," which appeared in 1854, resembles Ostrovsky's plays written under the influence of Slavophilism. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, plays by IE Chernyshev, an artist of the Alexandrinsky Theater, and a permanent employee of the Iskra magazine, were very popular in Moscow, St. Petersburg and the provinces. These plays, written in a liberal-democratic spirit, clearly imitating Ostrovsky's artistic style, impressed with the exclusivity of the main characters, with an acute formulation of moral and everyday issues. For example, in the comedy "The Groom from the Debt Department" (1858) it was told about a poor man who tried to marry a wealthy landowner; tyrant landowner, and in the comedy "Spoiled Life" (1862), an unusually honest, kind official, his naive wife and a dishonestly perfidious veil, who violated their happiness, are depicted.

Under the influence of Ostrovsky, such playwrights as A.I.Sumbatov-Yuzhin, Vl.I. were formed later, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Nemirovich-Danchenko, S. A. Naydenov, E. P. Karpov, P. P. Gnedich and many others.

Ostrovsky's indisputable authority as the country's first playwright was recognized by all progressive literary figures. Highly appreciating Ostrovsky's drama as "nationwide", listening to his advice, LN Tolstoy sent him in 1886 the play "The First Distiller". Calling Ostrovsky “the father of Russian drama”, the author of “War and Peace” asked him to read the play in an accompanying letter and express his “paternal judgment” about it.

Ostrovsky's plays, the most progressive in the drama of the second half of the 19th century, constitute a step forward, an independent and important chapter in the development of world dramatic art.

Ostrovsky's tremendous influence on Russian drama, Slavic and other peoples is indisputable. But his work is connected not only with the past. It also actively lives in the present. In terms of his contribution to theatrical repertoire, which is an expression of current life, the great playwright is our contemporary. Attention to his work is not decreasing, but increasing.

Ostrovsky will for a long time attract the minds and hearts of domestic and foreign viewers with the humanistic and optimistic pathos of his ideas, the deep and wide generalization of his heroes, good and evil, their universal human properties, the uniqueness of his original dramatic skill.

Testing on the work of Ostrovsky

1 OPTION

1) Ostrovsky's name

a) Nikolai Alekseevich

b) Alexey Nikolaevich

c) Alexander Nikolaevich

d) Nikolai Alexandrovich

2) Ostrovsky was nicknamed

a) "Columbus Zamoskvorechye"

b) "a man without a spleen"

c) "Comrade Constantine"

3) Ostrovsky studied

a) at the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum

b) in the Nizhyn gymnasium

c) at Moscow University

d) at Simbirsk University

4) The work "Thunderstorm"

a) comedy

b) tragedy

a) "Snow Maiden"

b) "Wolves and Sheep"

c) "Oblomov"

d) "Our people - we will count"

6) The drama "Thunderstorm" was first published in

7) What invention did the self-taught mechanic Kuligin want to introduce into the life of his city?

a) telegraph

b) printing press

c) lightning rod

d) microscope

8) Determine the climax of the drama "The Thunderstorm"

a) farewell of Tikhon and Katerina before his trip

b) the scene with the key

c) meeting Katerina with Boris at the gate

d) Katerina's repentance to the residents of the city

a) realism

b) romanticism

c) classicism

d) sentimentalism

10) The action of the drama "Thunderstorm" takes place

a) in Moscow

b) in Nizhny Novgorod

c) in Kalinov

d) in St. Petersburg

11) What was the name of Katerina's husband?

c) Curly

d) Akaki

12) Identify the main conflict of the drama "The Thunderstorm"

a) the love story of Katerina and Boris

b) clash of tyrants and their victims

c) the love story of Tikhon and Katerina

d) a description of the friendly relations between Kabanikha and the Wild

13) Which of the heroes of the drama "Thunderstorm" "envied" the deceased Katerina, considering his own life to be the upcoming torment?

b) Kuligin

a) footnote

b) remark

c) explanation

d) escort

a) Kuligin

d) Curly

16) What type of literary heroes did Kabanikha belong to?

a) "extra person"

b) the hero-reasoner

c) "little man"

d) "tyrant"

17) Who wrote the critical article "Motives of the Russian Drama" about "The Thunderstorm"?

a) V.G.Belinsky

b) N.G. Chernyshevsky

c) N. A. Dobrolyubov

d) D.I. Pisarev

He has such an establishment. In our country, no one dares to utter a word about the salary, scold what the world is worth. "You," he says,

Why do you know what I have on my mind? Can't you know my soul? Or maybe I'll come to this location

what will I give you five thousand. "So you talk to him! Only in his entire life he never once in such and such

the location did not come.

c) Curly

19) Who said:

“Cruel manners, sir, in our city, cruel! In philistinism, sir, you will see nothing but rudeness and naked poverty. And we, sir, will never get out of this crust. "

a) Curly

b) Kuligin

c) Boris Grigorievich

20) To whom do the words addressed to the main character of the play "Dowry" belong?

“Your friends are good! What respect for you! They do not look at you as a woman, as a person - a person has his own destiny, they look at you as a thing. "

a) Knurov

b) Paratov

c) Vozhevatov

d) Karandyshev

Ostrovsky's creativity test. "Thunderstorm", "Dowry"

OPTION 2

1) Years of life of A. Ostrovsky:

2 Ostrovsky studied

a) at the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum

b) in the Nizhyn gymnasium

c) at Moscow University

d) at Simbirsk University

3) Ostrovsky was nicknamed

a) "Columbus Zamoskvorechye"

b) "a man without a spleen"

c) "Comrade Constantine"

d) "a ray of light in the dark kingdom"

4) The drama "Thunderstorm" was first published in

5) What work does not belong to Ostrovsky:

a) "Snow Maiden"

b) "Poverty is not a vice"

c) "Oblomov"

d) "Our people - we will count"

6) The work "Thunderstorm"

a) comedy

b) tragedy

d) story

7) To what class did Kabanikha belong?

b) philistines

c) nobles

d) commoners

8) Who arranged a meeting between Katerina and Boris, having stolen the key from Kabanikha?

a) Curly

b) Kuligin

c) Barbara

9) Which literary direction should be attributed to the drama "Thunderstorm"

a) realism

b) sentimentalism

c) classicism

d) romanticism

10) What was the name of Katerina's beloved

a) Kuligin

d) Curly

11) In which city does the play take place?

a) in Nizhny Novgorod

b) in Torzhok

c) in Moscow

d) in Kalinov

12) Who owns the phrase: "Do what you want, if only it was sewn and covered"?

a) Curly

b) Katherine

c) Barbara

d) Kabanikhe

13) What did the self-taught mechanic Kuligin invent?

a) telegraph

b) perpetuum mobile

c) sundial

a) footnote

b) remark

c) explanation

d) escort

15) What phrase ends the drama "Thunderstorm"?

a) Mamma, you ruined her, you, you, you ...

b) Do what you want with her! Her body is here, take it; but now the soul is not yours: it is now before the judge,

who is more merciful than you!

c) Thank you, good people, for your service!

d) Good for you, Katya! Why was I left to live in the world and suffer!

16) What type of literary heroes did Dikoy belong to?

a) "extra person"

b) "tyrant"

c) "little man"

d) hero-lover

17) Who wrote the critical article "A ray of light in the dark kingdom" about the "Thunderstorm"?

a) V.G.Belinsky

b) N.G. Chernyshevsky

c) N. A. Dobrolyubov

d) D.I. Pisarev

18) What character are you talking about?

He will first break over us, abuse us in every possible way, as his heart desires, and will end

all the same by the fact that it will not give anything or so, some little. Yes, there will be

to tell that out of mercy he gave, that this should not have followed.

c) Curly

19) Who said:

“Our parents in Moscow raised us well, they did not spare anything for us. Me

sent to the Commercial Academy, and my sister to a boarding school, but both suddenly died of cholera,

my sister and I were orphans and remained. Then we hear that the grandmother died here and

left a will so that my uncle would pay us the part that should be paid when we arrive

coming of age, only on condition ... "

d) Curly

20) To whom do the words from the play by A. Ostrovsky "Dowry" belong?

“The thing ... yes, the thing! They are right, I am a thing, not a person. I am now convinced that I

tested myself ... I am a thing! (With fervor.) Finally a word has been found for me, you

found him. Go away! Please, leave me! "

a) Larisa Dmitrievna Ogudalova

b) Agrofena Kondratyevna Bolshova

c) Anna Pavlovna Vyshnevskaya

d) Harita Ignatievna Ogudalova

Option 1

1-c, 2-a, 3-c, 4-c, 5-c, 6-b, 7-c, 8-d, 9-a, 10-c, 11-a, 12-b, 13- d, 14-b, 15-c, 16-g, 17-g, 18-a, 19-b, 20-g

Option 2

1-a, 2-c, 3-a, 4-b, 5-c, 6-c, 7-a, 8-c, 9-a, 10-c, 11-d, 12-c, 13- b, 14-b, 15-g, 16-b, 17-c, 18-a, 19-b, 20-a