These biographical essays were published about a hundred years ago in the series “The Lives of Remarkable People,” carried out by F.F. Pavlenkov (1839–1900). Written in the genre of poetic chronicle and historical and cultural research, new for that time, these texts retain their value to this day. Written for ordinary people`, for the Russian provinces, today they can be recommended not only to bibliophiles, but to the widest readership: both those who are not at all experienced in the history and psychology of great people, and those for whom these subjects are a profession.
A series: Life of wonderful people
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by liters company.
CHAPTER II. BEGINNING OF LITERARY ACTIVITY
Ostrovsky's literary activity began simultaneously with his government service. Job responsibilities didn't bother her. An aspiring writer could hardly apply himself to office work with particular diligence. She interested him only to the extent that she provided material for the implementation of his psychological and artistic goals. Official service was one of the paths that led the playwright to the reserved world of the “dark kingdom” - and in this regard, he took advantage of it very early. According to him, by the autumn of 1846 he had written many scenes from merchant life, in general outline a whole comedy was conceived and some of its scenes were even sketched.
The content of the comedy had a direct connection with Ostrovsky's clerical experiences as an official of a commercial court and, of course, with his numerous observations of Moscow life outside the service. The comedy was to be called Bankrupt. Subsequently, the author, for various reasons, found this name inconvenient and replaced it with the proverb - Our people - let's count! Also in 1846 it was written short play Family picture. This is Ostrovsky's first completed dramatic work, but it was not the first to appear in print. On January 9, 1847, the newspaper “Moscow City Leaflet” appeared dramatic passage under the title “Scenes from the comedy “The Insolvent Debtor” (Waiting for the Groom).” Above the passage stood: “Appearance IV,” and it contained only two phenomena. With minor amendments, they were included in the final version of the play. Our people - let's count! (first and second phenomena of the third act). The scenes are signed with the initials A.O. and D.G., therefore, they belonged to two authors - the future famous playwright and his collaborator, artist of the Moscow dramatic stage Dmitry Tarasenkov, in the theater - Gorev.
Before collaborating with Ostrovsky, Gorev managed to write and publish the drama “The Sovereign Deliverer” and, a few years later, the comedy “Everywhere and Around”. Both plays did not shine with talent; they are now completely forgotten and remain only as eloquent evidence of the undoubted fact that Gorev could not provide Ostrovsky as a writer with valuable services. But Gorev and connoisseurs of his talent looked at the matter completely differently, and Ostrovsky had to pay severely for his fleeting literary friendship with the pretentious playwright. The reckoning did not come immediately after Ostrovsky's name appeared in the press. Young writer loud fame was already surrounding him, he had enthusiastic connoisseurs of his talent, he apparently was destined to occupy one of the most prominent places in modern literature - and at this very time he had to lead the highest degree annoying controversy, to win back their rights to their own works. This happened nine years after the ill-fated author’s signature under the feuilleton of “Moscow City List”, while Ostrovsky had to overcome other obstacles on his newly discovered writing path.
A little over a month after the publication of “Scenes...” came the “most memorable day” in Ostrovsky’s life. This is what the writer himself called February 14, 1847. On this day he was visiting the professor of Russian literature Shevyrev. Ostrovsky met the professor, probably through his gymnasium friend who taught Shevyrev’s children. On this significant evening, the professor had many eminent guests, including the famous Slavophile publicist and philosopher A. S. Khomyakov, and the talented critic A. A. Grigoriev. In their presence, Ostrovsky read his dramatic scenes.
Shevyrev, in addition to lecturing at the university, wrote critical articles and was considered the main representative in a learned and respectable society literary criticism. The young playwright's first success depended on his impressions. His review could either inspire the author, or greatly cool his thirst writing activity. Shevyrev’s sentence could not have been decisive for Ostrovsky’s entire future, but it was in Moscow in the late forties and early fifties that the professor’s word had great literary authority and practical significance. It could open or block the path of a novice playwright to the pages of the only Moscow magazine - Moskvityanin. The magazine was published under the editorship of the professor of Russian history Pogodin and with the closest and most diligent participation of Shevyrev, who filled the entire critical department with his articles. Obviously, the praise or censure of a learned critic decided the issue of the rights of literary citizenship of an employee of the “City Leaflet”. The decision turned out to be quite favorable, and it was this that made February 14th the most memorable day of his life for Ostrovsky.
Shevyrev, after listening to the reading, was delighted, hugged the author and greeted him as a writer gifted with enormous talent and called to write for the national theater.
“From that day,” says Ostrovsky, “I began to consider myself a Russian writer and, without doubt or hesitation, believed in my calling.”
We do not know what dramatic scenes Ostrovsky read from Shevyrev - we can assume that it was a play Picture of family happiness. Exactly a month after the memorable day, it appeared in the same “Moscow City Leaflet” signed by A.O. And this play subsequently caused a printed controversy regarding the question of how much it belongs to Ostrovsky. Finally, in the same newspaper and in the same year, Ostrovsky published his first and last work in a non-dramatic form - Notes of a Zamoskvoretsky resident. They appeared in three issues of the newspaper, from June 3 to June 5, there was no signature under them, but the subtitle stated that the new work belonged to the author of Pictures of Family Happiness. The notes were never reprinted and were not included in the complete collection of Ostrovsky's works - however, they are of great interest in the history of the development of the author's talent and in their appeal to readers they contain an interesting characteristic of that original world, which was to inspire the creative genius of the playwright for many years.
The author reported that on April 1, 1847, he found the manuscript. It “sheds light on a country that until now has not been known in detail to anyone and has not yet been described by any traveler. Until now, only the position and name of that country were known; as for its inhabitants, that is, their way of life, language, morals, customs, degree of education - all this was covered in the darkness of the unknown.”
Until now, they only knew that this country lies directly opposite the Kremlin, on the other side of the Moscow River, which is why it is called Zamoskvorechye. But, the author hastens to add, some scientists also derive this name from the word “starling,” since the inhabitants of the country have a great passion for this bird and make a special kind of nest for it, called birdhouses. But even scientists’ information doesn’t go further.
“Will the traveler stop at the heights of the Kremlin, attracted by the indescribable beauty of Moscow - and he looks at Zamoskvorechye as if at Magic world, inhabited by fairy-tale characters from “A Thousand and One Nights”. Mystery, like fog, spread over Zamoskvorechye; through this fog, it is true, we heard some rumors about this Zamoskvorechye, but they were so confused, unclear and, one might say, implausible that not a single right-thinking person could form from them any satisfactory idea about Zamoskvorechye.” .
And the author gives an example of strange rumors spread among the public about the rarities and wonders of an unexplored country. The found manuscript is a true story about Zamoskvorechye, and the author intends to extract from his find a number of Zamoskvoretsky essays - in the meantime, he offers the public one, entitled Ivan Erofeich.
This is the story of a poor clerk, an ordinary man from Zatsepa, extremely sad - the story of the death of a person. Ivan Erofeyich himself explains his misfortunes with a very eloquent consideration, not without significance for our moods young author. “I’m dying,” says the unfortunate hero, “because I didn’t know happiness.” family life that I did not find a woman across the Moscow River who would love me as I could love. This is why I am perishing because I did not know the great influence of a woman, this heavenly dew.”
Brief story about the fate of Ivan Erofeich gives the author the opportunity to show a whole gallery of Zamoskvoretsky portraits, starting with the “merchant-rusak” and ending with petty officials. Obviously, the author has collected abundant material from the life and customs of Zamoskvorechye. The extremely vivid characterization of faces and everyday situations, the confidence of the drawing and the convexity of individual strokes testified to the author’s close personal knowledge of the subject. In a hitherto unknown country, he was at home, and the “manuscript” fully justified the preface: it was difficult to depict more realistically and truthfully the abandoned, “lost” life of the ordinary-looking Zamoskvoretsk inhabitants, and in a short excerpt we meet the first artistic sketches of numerous types, who later became famous as a playwright.
Such a brilliant and original talent, evident from the very beginning, should have attracted the attention of everyone who followed the phenomena modern literature. The personality of the new writer inevitably had to become the center of a whole circle of people involved in literature in one way or another - writers, artists and simply lovers of the Russian word.
Even before reading the scenes in Shevyrev's house, Ostrovsky was familiar with the writers. An enthusiastic review from a famous professor and critic raised the popularity of the aspiring playwright and expanded the community of people interested in his talent. And one of the most important facts in Ostrovsky’s life should be recognized as the extremely diverse and extensive circle of acquaintances that met and accompanied his first steps as a writer. Growing up in close contact with contemporary folk life, Ostrovsky began to write amidst the same persistent reminders of reality, which never ceased to inspire him with its truth and power - whether he was an official, whether he was sitting in the office of a commercial court, or whether he was in the lively company of friends and sympathizers of his talent.
Everywhere he saw a bountiful harvest for original creativity - leisure and business served the same goal - the enrichment and improvement of literary talent.
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The given introductory fragment of the book Alexander Ostrovsky. His life and literary activity (I. I. Ivanov) provided by our book partner -
Born on March 31 (April 12), 1823 in Moscow, he grew up in a merchant environment. His mother died when he was 8 years old. And the father married again. There were four children in the family.
Ostrovsky was educated at home. His father had a large library where little Alexander I began to read Russian literature for the first time. However, the father wanted to give his son a legal education. In 1835, Ostrovsky began his studies at the gymnasium, and then entered Moscow University at the Faculty of Law. Due to his interests in theater and literature, he never completed his studies at the university (1843), after which he worked as a scribe in court at the insistence of his father. Ostrovsky served in the courts until 1851.
Ostrovsky's creativity
In 1849, Ostrovsky’s work “Our People – Let’s Be Numbered!” was written, which brought him literary fame; he was highly appreciated by Nikolai Gogol and Ivan Goncharov. Then, despite censorship, many of his plays and books were published. For Ostrovsky, writings are a way to truthfully depict the life of the people. The plays “The Thunderstorm”, “Dowry”, “Forest” are among his most important works. Ostrovsky's play "Dowry", like other psychological dramas, describes characters in a non-standard way, inner world, the torment of heroes.
Since 1856, the writer has been participating in the publication of the Sovremennik magazine.
Ostrovsky Theater
In the biography of Alexander Ostrovsky, theater takes pride of place.
Ostrovsky founded the Artistic Circle in 1866, thanks to which many talented people appeared in the theater circle.
Together with the Artistic Circle, he significantly reformed and developed the Russian theater.
Ostrovsky's house was often visited famous people, including I. A. Goncharov, D. V. Grigorovich, Ivan Turgenev, A. F. Pisemsky, Fyodor Dostoevsky, P. M. Sadovsky, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, Leo Tolstoy, Pyotr Tchaikovsky, M. N. Ermolova and other.
IN short biography Ostrovsky is worth mentioning about the emergence in 1874 of the Society of Russian Dramatic Writers and Opera Composers, where Ostrovsky was the chairman. With his innovations, he achieved improvement in the lives of theater actors. Since 1885, Ostrovsky headed drama school and was the head of the repertoire of Moscow theaters.
Writer's personal life
It can't be said that personal life Ostrovsky was successful. The playwright lived with a woman from a simple family, Agafya, who had no education, but was the first to read his works. She supported him in everything. All their children died at an early age. Ostrovsky lived with her for about twenty years. And in 1869 he married the artist Maria Vasilyevna Bakhmetyeva, who bore him six children.
last years of life
Until the end of his life, Ostrovsky experienced financial difficulties. Hard work greatly depleted the body, and the writer’s health increasingly failed. Ostrovsky dreamed of revival theater school, in which it would have been possible to teach professional acting, but the death of the writer prevented the implementation of long-conceived plans.
Ostrovsky died on June 2(14), 1886 on his estate. The writer was buried next to his father, in the village of Nikolo-Berezhki, Kostroma province.
Chronological table
Other biography options
- Ostrovsky knew Greek, German and French and, and at a later age he also learned English, Spanish and Italian. All his life he translated plays into different languages, thus improving his skills and knowledge.
- The writer’s creative path spans 40 years of successful work on literary and dramatic works. His activities influenced an entire era of theater in Russia. For his works, the writer was awarded the Uvarov Prize in 1863.
- Ostrovsky is the founder modern theater linen art, whose followers were such outstanding personalities as Konstantin Stanislavsky and Mikhail Bulgakov.
- see all
Alexander Nikolaevich Ostrovsky is a great Russian playwright, author of 47 original plays. In addition, he translated more than 20 literary works: from Latin, Italian, Spanish, French, English.
Alexander Nikolaevich was born in Moscow into the family of a commoner official who lived in Zamoskvorechye, on Malaya Ordynka. This was an area where merchants had long settled. Merchant mansions with their blind fences, pictures of everyday life and the peculiar customs of the merchant world sank into the soul of the future playwright from early childhood.
After graduating from high school, Ostrovsky, on the advice of his father, entered the law faculty of Moscow University in 1840. But legal sciences were not his calling. In 1843, he left the university without completing the course of study, and decided to devote himself entirely to literary activity.
Not a single playwright showed pre-revolutionary life with such completeness as A. N. Ostrovsky. Representatives of various classes, people different professions, origin, upbringing pass before us in artistically truthful images of his comedies, dramas, scenes from life, historical chronicles. The life, customs, characters of the townspeople, nobles, officials and mainly merchants - from “very important gentlemen”, rich bar and businessmen to the most insignificant and poor - are reflected with amazing breadth by A. N. Ostrovsky.
The plays were written not by an indifferent writer of everyday life, but by an angry denouncer of the world of the “dark kingdom”, where for the sake of profit a person is capable of anything, where the elders rule over the younger, the rich over the poor, where government, the church and society in every possible way support the cruel morals that have developed over centuries.
Ostrovsky's works contributed to the development of public self-awareness. Their revolutionary influence was perfectly defined by Dobrolyubov; he wrote: “By painting us a vivid picture of false relationships with all their consequences, through this he serves as an echo of aspirations that require a better structure.” It was not without reason that the defenders of the existing system did everything in their power to prevent Ostrovsky’s plays from being performed on stage. His first one-act “Picture of Family Happiness” (1847) was immediately banned by theater censorship, and this play appeared only 8 years later. The first big four-act comedy “Our People - Let's Number” (1850) was not allowed on stage by Nicholas I himself, imposing a resolution: “It was printed in vain, it is forbidden to play in any case.” And the play, heavily altered at the request of the censor, was staged only in 1861. The Tsar demanded information about Ostrovsky’s lifestyle and thoughts and, having received the report, ordered: “Keep under supervision.” The secret office of the Moscow Governor-General opened the “Case of the writer Ostrovsky”, and secret gendarmerie surveillance was established over him. The obvious “unreliability” of the playwright, who was then serving in the Moscow Commercial Court, worried his superiors so much that Ostrovsky was forced to resign.
The comedy “Our People – Let’s Be Numbered”, which was not allowed on stage, created wide fame for the author. It is not difficult to explain the reasons for such a great success of the play. The faces of the tyrant owner Bolshov, his unrequited, stupidly submissive wife, his daughter Lipochka, distorted by an absurd education, and the rogue clerk Podkhalyuzin appear before us as if alive. “The Dark Kingdom” is how the great Russian critic N.A. Dobrolyubov described this musty, crude life based on despotism, ignorance, deception and arbitrariness. Together with the actors of the Moscow Maly Theater Prov Sadovsky and the great Mikhail Shchepkin, Ostrovsky read comedy in a variety of circles.
The enormous success of the play, which, in the words of N. A. Dobrolyubov, belonged “to Ostrovsky’s brightest and most consistent works” and captivated with “the truth of the image and the correct sense of reality,” made the guardians of the existing system wary. Almost every one new play Ostrovsky was prohibited by censorship or was not approved for performance by theater authorities.
Even such a wonderful drama as The Thunderstorm (1859) was met with hostility by the reactionary nobility and the press. But representatives of the democratic camp saw in “The Thunderstorm” a sharp protest against the feudal-serf system and fully appreciated it. The artistic integrity of the images, the depth of ideological content and the accusatory power of “The Thunderstorm” make it possible to recognize it as one of the most perfect works of Russian drama.
Ostrovsky is of great importance not only as a playwright, but also as the creator of Russian theater. “You have donated a whole library to literature. works of art“,” I. A. Goncharov wrote to Ostrovsky, “they created their own special world for the stage.” You alone completed the building, the foundation of which was laid by the cornerstones of Fonvizin, Griboyedov, Gogol. But only after you, we Russians can proudly say: we have our own Russian national theater" Ostrovsky's work constituted an entire era in the history of our theater. The name of Ostrovsky is especially strongly connected with the history of the Moscow Maly Theater. Almost all of Ostrovsky's plays during his lifetime were staged in this theater. They brought up several generations of artists who grew into wonderful masters of the Russian stage. Ostrovsky's plays played such a role in the history of the Maly Theater that it proudly calls itself the Ostrovsky House.
To play new roles, a whole galaxy of new actors had to appear and appeared, just as well as Ostrovsky, who knew Russian life. The national Russian school of realistic acting was established and developed on Ostrovsky's plays. Starting with Prov Sadovsky in Moscow and Alexander Martynov in St. Petersburg, several generations of metropolitan and provincial actors, right up to the present day, grew up playing roles in Ostrovsky’s plays. “Loyalty to reality, to the truth of life” – this is how Dobrolyubov spoke about Ostrovsky’s works – has become one of the essential features of our national performing arts.
Dobrolyubov pointed out another feature of Ostrovsky’s dramaturgy - “accuracy and fidelity vernacular" No wonder Gorky called Ostrovsky “the sorcerer of language.” Each character of Ostrovsky speaks in a language typical of his class, profession, and upbringing. And the actor, creating this or that image, had to be able to use the necessary intonation, pronunciation and others speech means. Ostrovsky taught the actor to listen and hear how people speak in life.
The works of the great Russian playwright recreate not only his contemporary life. They also depict the years of Polish intervention early XVII V. (“Kozma Minin”, “Dmitry the Pretender and Vasily Shuisky”), and legendary times ancient Rus'(spring fairy tale “The Snow Maiden”).
In the pre-revolutionary years, bourgeois spectators gradually began to lose interest in Ostrovsky's theater, considering it obsolete. On the Soviet stage, Ostrovsky's dramaturgy was revived with renewed vigor. His plays are also performed on foreign stages.
L. N. Tolstoy wrote to the playwright in 1886: “I know from experience how your works are read, listened to and remembered by the people, and therefore I would like to help you now quickly become in reality what you are, undoubtedly – nationwide – in the very in a broad sense writer."
After the Great October Socialist Revolution, the work of A. N. Ostrovsky became national.
(1843 – 1886).
Alexander Nikolaevich “Ostrovsky is a “giant of theatrical literature” (Lunacharsky), he created the Russian theater, an entire repertoire on which many generations of actors were brought up, the traditions of stage art were strengthened and developed. His role in the history of the development of Russian drama and the entire national culture can hardly be overestimated. He did as much for the development of Russian drama as Shakespeare in England, Lope de Vega in Spain, Moliere in France, Goldoni in Italy and Schiller in Germany.
“History has reserved the title of great and brilliant only for those writers who knew how to write for the whole people, and only those works have survived the centuries that were truly popular at home; such works over time become understandable and valuable for other peoples, and finally, and for the whole world." These words of the great playwright Alexander Nikolaevich Ostrovsky can be attributed to his own work.
Despite the oppression inflicted by the censorship, the theatrical and literary committee and the management of the imperial theaters, despite the criticism of reactionary circles, Ostrovsky's dramaturgy gained more and more sympathy every year among both 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 communicating with the most progressive contemporary public, Ostrovsky became an outstanding portrayer of the life of his time, embodying the dreams of Gogol, Belinsky and other progressive figures literature about the appearance and triumph of Russian characters on the Russian stage.
Ostrovsky's creative activity had a great influence on the entire further development of progressive Russian drama. It was from him that our best playwrights came and learned from him. It was to him that aspiring dramatic writers in their time gravitated.
The power of Ostrovsky’s influence on the young writers of his day can be evidenced by a letter to the playwright of the poetess A.D. Mysovskaya. “Do you know how great your influence was on me? It was not love for art that made me understand and appreciate you: but on the contrary, you taught me to both love and respect art. I owe it to you alone that I resisted the temptation to fall into the arena of pathetic literary mediocrity, and did not chase after cheap laurels thrown by the hands of sweet and sour half-educated people. You and Nekrasov made me fall in love with thought and work, but Nekrasov gave me only the first impetus, while you gave me the direction. Reading your works, I realized that rhyming is not poetry, and a set of phrases is not literature, and that only by cultivating intelligence and technique will an artist be a real artist.”
Ostrovsky had a powerful impact not only on the development of domestic drama, but also on the development of Russian theater. The colossal importance of Ostrovsky in the development of Russian theater is well emphasized in a poem dedicated to Ostrovsky and read in 1903 by M. N. Ermolova from the stage of the Maly Theater:
On the stage life itself, from the stage the truth blows,
And the bright sun caresses us and warms us...
The living speech of ordinary, living people sounds,
On stage there is 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 there is an answer to them, -
And all lips whisper: blessed is the poet,
Tore off the shabby, tinsel covers
And shed a bright light into the dark kingdom
The famous artist wrote about the same thing in 1924 in her memoirs: “Together with Ostrovsky, truth itself and life itself appeared on the stage... The growth of original drama began, full of responses to modernity... They started talking about the poor, the humiliated and the insulted.”
The realistic direction, muted by the theatrical policy of the autocracy, continued and deepened by Ostrovsky, turned the theater onto the path of close connection with reality. Only it gave the theater life as a national, Russian, folk theater.
“You have donated a whole library of works of art to literature, and you have created your own special world for the stage. You alone completed the building, at the foundation of which Fonvizin, Griboyedov, Gogol laid the cornerstones.” This wonderful letter was received, among other congratulations, on the year of the thirty-fifth anniversary of literary and theatrical activity by 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 elegant and sensitive observer V. F. Odoevsky wrote: “If this is not a momentary flash, not a mushroom squeezed out of the ground by itself, cut by all kinds of rot, then this man has enormous talent. I think there are three tragedies in Rus': “The Minor”, “Woe from Wit”, “The Inspector General”. On “Bankrupt” I put number four.”
From such a promising first assessment to Goncharov’s anniversary letter - a full life, rich in work; labor, and which led to such a logical relationship 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 translated more than twenty plays from European languages. And everything he created folk theater– about a thousand characters.
Shortly before his death, in 1886, Alexander Nikolaevich received a letter from L.N. Tolstoy, in which the brilliant prose writer admitted: “I know from experience how people read, listen to and remember your works, and therefore I would like to help ensure that You have now quickly become in reality what you undoubtedly are - a writer of the entire people in the broadest sense.”
Even before Ostrovsky, progressive Russian drama had magnificent plays. Let’s remember Fonvizin’s “The Minor,” Griboyedov’s “Woe from Wit,” Pushkin’s “Boris Godunov,” Gogol’s “The Inspector General,” and Lermontov’s “Masquerade.”
Each of these plays could enrich and decorate, as Belinsky rightly 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 rose above the level of mass drama like lonely, rare mountains in an endless desert plain. The overwhelming majority of the plays that filled the theater stage of that time were translations of empty, frivolous vaudevilles and heartbreaking melodramas woven from horrors and crimes. Both vaudeville and melodrama, terribly far from life, were not even its shadow.
In the development of Russian drama and domestic theater, the appearance of A. N. Ostrovsky’s plays constituted an entire era. They sharply turned drama and theater towards life, towards its truth, towards what truly touched and worried people of the unprivileged segment of the population, working people. By 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 bureaucrats who faithfully served them.
But Ostrovsky did not limit himself to the role of a satirical exposer. He vividly and sympathetically portrayed victims of socio-political and family-domestic despotism, workers, lovers of truth, educators, warm-hearted Protestants against tyranny and violence.
The playwright not only made the positive heroes of his plays people of labor and progress, bearers of people's truth and wisdom, but also wrote in the name of the people and for the people.
Ostrovsky depicted in his plays the prose of life, ordinary people in everyday circumstances. Taking the universal human problems of evil and good, truth and injustice, beauty and ugliness as the content of his plays, Ostrovsky survived his time and entered our era as its contemporary.
During this time, he wrote 47 original plays and several plays in collaboration with Solovyov (“The Marriage of Balzaminov”, “Savage”, “It shines but 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 of Rus' is represented. A variety of genres: comedies, dramas, dramatic chronicles, family scenes, tragedies, dramatic sketches are presented in his dramaturgy. He acts in his work as a romantic, everyday writer, tragedian and comedian.
Of course, any periodization is to some extent conditional, but in order to better navigate the entire 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 “Picture of Family Happiness”, “Our People – Let’s Be Numbered”, “Poor Bride”.
1853 – 1856 - the so-called “Slavophile” period: “Don’t get into your own sleigh.” “Poverty is not a vice,” “Don’t live the way you want.”
1856 – 1859 - rapprochement with the Sovremennik circle, return to realistic positions. The most important plays of this period: “A Profitable Place”, “The Pupil”, “At Someone Else’s Feast there is a Hangover”, “The Balzaminov Trilogy”, and, finally, created during the revolutionary situation, “The Thunderstorm”.
1861 – 1867 – deepening the study of national history, the result is the dramatic chronicles Kozma Zakharyich Minin-Sukhoruk, “Dmitry the Pretender” and “Vasily Shuisky”, “Tushino”, the drama “Vasilisa Melentyevna”, the comedy “The Voivode or the Dream on the Volga”.
1869 – 1884 – plays created during this period of creativity are dedicated to social and everyday relations that developed in Russian life after the reform of 1861. The most important plays of this period: “Every Wise Man Has Enough Simplicity”, “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 on empty space. Their appearance is directly related to the plays of Griboedov and Gogol, which absorbed everything valuable that the Russian comedy that preceded them achieved. Ostrovsky knew the old Russian comedy of the 18th century well, and specially studied the works of Kapnist, Fonvizin, and Plavilshchikov. On the other hand, there is the influence of the prose of the “natural school”.
Ostrovsky came to literature in the late 40s, when Gogol's dramaturgy was recognized as the greatest literary and social phenomenon. Turgenev wrote: “Gogol showed the way how our dramatic literature will go over time.” From the first steps of his activity, Ostrovsky recognized himself as a successor to the traditions of Gogol, “ natural school", he considered himself one of the authors of a "new direction in our literature."
The years 1846 - 1859, when Ostrovsky worked on his first big comedy, “We Will Be Numbered Our Own People,” were the years of his formation as a realist writer.
The ideological and artistic program of Ostrovsky, the playwright, is clearly set out in his critical articles and reviews. Article “Mistake,” Mrs. Tour’s story” (“Moskvityanin”, 1850), unfinished article about Dickens’s novel “Dombey and Son” (1848), review of Menshikov’s comedy “Whims” (“Moskvityanin” 1850), “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 principles:
Firstly, he believes that drama should be a reflection of people's life, people's consciousness.
For Ostrovsky, the people are, first of all, the democratic masses, the lower classes, ordinary people.
Ostrovsky demanded that the writer study people's life, the problems that concern the people.
"In order to be national writer“,” he writes, “love for the homeland alone is not enough... you need to know your people well, get along with them quickly, become akin to them.” The best school for talent is the study of one’s nationality.”
Secondly, Ostrovsky talks about the need for national identity for drama.
The nationality of literature and art is understood by Ostrovsky as an integral consequence of their nationality and democracy. “Only art that is national is national, for the true bearer of nationality is the popular, democratic mass.”
In “Table Word 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 the courage to be Russian.”
And finally, the third point is about the socially accusatory nature of literature. “The more popular the work, the more accusatory element it contains, because the “distinctive feature of the Russian people” is “aversion from everything that has been sharply defined,” an unwillingness to return to “old, already condemned forms” of life, the desire to “look for the best.”
The public expects art to expose the vices and shortcomings of society, to judge life.
Condemning these vices in our artistic images the writer arouses disgust for them in the public, forces them to be better, more moral. Therefore, “the social, accusatory direction can be called moral and public,” Ostrovsky emphasizes. Speaking about the 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 desire for social justice.
Thus, the term “moral-accusatory direction” in its objective meaning approaches the concept of critical realism.
Ostrovsky’s works, written by him in the late 40s and early 50s, “Picture of Family Happiness”, “Notes of a Zamoskvoretsky Resident”, “Our People – We Will Be Numbered”, “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 essay: it is not divided into phenomena, there is no completion of the plot. Ostrovsky set himself the task of depicting the life of the merchants. The hero is interested in Ostrovsky solely 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 existence.
He places 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 wildness of these views.
This technique was common in satirical literature of the 40s - the technique of self-exposure.
The most significant work of Ostrovsky in the 40s. - the comedy “Our People - Let's Be Numbered” (1849) appeared, which was perceived by contemporaries as a major achievement of the natural school in drama.
“He began in an extraordinary way,” Turgenev writes about Ostrovsky.
The comedy immediately attracted the attention of the authorities. When the censorship submitted the play to the Tsar for consideration, Nicholas I wrote: “It was printed in vain! It’s forbidden to play, in any case.”
Ostrovsky's name was included in the list 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 relationships that dominate 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 a writer and innovator. Comparing the works of the early stage of his creativity (1846 -1852) with the traditions of Gogol, we will trace what new things Ostrovsky brought to literature.
The action of Gogol’s “high comedy” takes place as if in the world of unreasonable reality - “The Inspector General”.
Gogol tested a person in his attitude to society, to civic duty - and showed - this is what these people are like. This is the center of vices. They don't think about society at all. They are guided in their behavior by narrowly selfish calculations and selfish interests.
Gogol does not focus on everyday life - laughter through tears. For him, the bureaucracy acts not as a social layer, but as a political force that determines the life of society as a whole.
Ostrovsky has something completely different - a thorough analysis of social life.
Like the heroes of the essays of the natural school, Ostrovsky’s heroes are ordinary people, typical representatives their social environment, which is shared by their ordinary everyday life, all its prejudices.
a) In the play “Our People – Let’s Be Numbered,” Ostrovsky creates a typical biography of a merchant, talks about how capital is made.
Bolshov sold pies from a stall as a child, and then became one of the first rich people in Zamoskvorechye.
Podkhalyuzin made his 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's career. Through their fate, Ostrovsky showed how capital is composed.
b) The peculiarity of Ostrovsky’s dramaturgy was that he showed this question - how capital is composed in a merchant environment - through consideration of intra-family, daily, ordinary relationships.
It was Ostrovsky who was the first in Russian drama to examine, thread by thread, the web of daily, everyday relationships. He was the first to introduce into the sphere of art all these little things of life, family secrets, small household affairs. A huge amount of space is occupied by seemingly meaningless everyday scenes. Much attention is paid to the poses, gestures of the characters, their manner of speaking, and their speech itself.
Ostrovsky's first plays seemed unusual to the reader, not stage-like, more like narrative rather than dramatic works.
The circle of Ostrovsky’s works, directly related to the natural school of the 40s, is closed with the play “The Poor Bride” (1852).
In it, Ostrovsky shows the same dependence of a person on economic and monetary relations. Several suitors seek the hand of Marya Andreevna, but the one who gets it does not have to make any effort to achieve the goal. The well-known economic law of a capitalist society works for him, where money decides everything. The image of Marya Andreevna begins in Ostrovsky’s work a new theme for him about the position of a poor girl in a society where everything is determined by commercial calculation. (“Forest”, “Nurse”, “Dowry”).
Thus, for the first time in Ostrovsky (unlike Gogol) not only a vice appears, but also a victim of vice. In addition to the masters of modern society, there appear those who oppose them - aspirations whose needs are in conflict with the laws and customs of this environment. This entailed new colors. Ostrovsky discovered new sides of his talent - dramatic satirism. “We will be our own people” - satirical.
Ostrovsky's artistic style in this play is even more different from Gogol's dramaturgy. The plot loses all its edge here. It is based on an ordinary case. The theme that was heard in Gogol’s “Marriage” and received satirical coverage - the transformation of marriage into buying and selling, here acquired a tragic sound.
But at the same time, it is a comedy in terms of its characters and situations. But if Gogol’s heroes evoke laughter and condemnation from the public, then in Ostrovsky the viewer saw their everyday life, felt deep sympathy for some, and condemned others.
The second stage in Ostrovsky’s activity (1853 – 1855) was marked by Slavophile influences.
First of all, this transition of Ostrovsky to Slavophile positions should be explained by the strengthening of the atmosphere, the reaction, which was established in the “gloomy seven years” of 1848 - 1855.
Where 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 staff” 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 main conservative principle, which manifested itself in the existing 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.
One of the most prominent ideologists of the “Young Editorial Board” of “Moskvityanin”, Apollon Grigoriev, argued that there is a single “national spirit” that forms the organic basis of people’s life. Capturing this national spirit is the most important thing for a writer.
Social contradictions, class struggle are historical layers that will be overcome and which do not violate the unity of the nation.
The writer must show the eternal moral principles of the people's 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 Rus', preserved the faith, morals, and language of their fathers. This class has not been affected by the falsehood 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 the “new direction,” the essence of which is to appeal to the positive principles of everyday life and national character.
The old view of things now seems to him “young and too cruel.” Exposing social vices does not seem to be the main task.
“There will be correctors even without us. In order to have the right to correct the people without offending them, you need to show them that you know the good in them” (September 1853), writes Ostrovsky.
A distinctive feature of Ostrovsky’s Russian people at this stage seems to be not its willingness to renounce outdated standards of life, but patriarchy, commitment to unchanging, fundamental conditions of life. Ostrovsky now wants to combine “the sublime with the comic” in his plays, understanding by the sublime the positive features of merchant life, and by the “comic” - everything that lies outside the merchant circle, but exerts its influence on it.
These new views of Ostrovsky found expression in three so-called “Slavophile” plays by Ostrovsky: “Don’t get on your own sleigh,” “Poverty is not a vice,” “Don’t live the way you want.”
All three Slavophile plays by 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 there are no longer economic and social relations.
Family and everyday relationships are interpreted in a purely moral sense - everything depends on the moral qualities of people, there are no material or monetary interests behind this. Ostrovsky is trying to find the possibility of resolving contradictions in moral terms, in the moral regeneration of heroes. (The moral enlightenment of Gordey Tortsov, the nobility of the soul of Borodkin and Rusakov). Tyranny is justified not so much by the existence of capital, economic relations, but by the personal characteristics of a person.
Ostrovsky depicts those aspects of merchant life in which, as it seems to him, the national, the so-called “national spirit” is concentrated. Therefore, he focuses on the poetic, bright sides of merchant life, introduces ritual and folklore motifs, 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 merchant heroes to the people, their social and everyday ties with the peasantry. They say about themselves that they are “simple” people, “ill-mannered”, that their fathers were peasants.
From an artistic point of view, these plays are clearly weaker than the previous ones. Their composition is deliberately simplified, the characters are less clear, and the endings are less justified.
The plays of this period are characterized by didacticism; they openly contrast light and dark principles, the characters are sharply divided into “good” and “evil,” and vice is punished at the denouement. The plays of the “Slavophile period” are characterized by open moralizing, sentimentality, and edification.
At the same time, it should be said that during this period Ostrovsky, in general, remained on a realistic position. According to Dobrolyubov, “the power of direct artistic feeling could not abandon the author here, and therefore particular situations 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 / We love Tortsov /. (If Bolshov is a rude and straightforward type of tyrant, then Rusakov is softened and meek).
Dobrolyubov: “In Bolshov we saw a vigorous nature, subjected to the influence of merchant life, in Rusakov it seems to us: but this is how even honest and gentle natures turn out with him.”
Bolshov: “What am I and my father for if I don’t give orders?”
Rusakov: “I will not give it up for the one she loves, but for the one I love.”
The praise of patriarchal life is contradictorily combined in these plays with the formulation of pressing social issues, and the desire to create images that would embody national ideals (Rusakov, Borodkin), with sympathy for young people who bring new aspirations, opposition to everything patriarchal and old. (Mitya, Lyubov Gordeevna).
These plays expressed Ostrovsky's desire to find a bright, positive beginning in ordinary people.
This is how the theme of folk humanism arises, the breadth of nature of the common man, 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 heard in such central plays by Ostrovsky as “The Thunderstorm”, “Forest”, “Dowry”.
The idea of creating a folk performance - a didactic performance - was not alien to Ostrovsky when he created “Poverty is not a vice” and “Don’t live the way you want.”
Ostrovsky sought to convey the ethical principles of the people, the aesthetic basis of their life, and to evoke a response from a democratic viewer to the poetry of their native life and national antiquity.
Ostrovsky was guided by the noble desire to “give the democratic viewer an initial cultural inoculation.” Another thing is the idealization of humility, obedience, and conservatism.
The assessment of Slavophil plays in the articles by Chernyshevsky “Poverty is not a vice” and Dobrolyubov “The Dark Kingdom” is interesting.
Chernyshevsky came up with his article in 1854, when Ostrovsky was close to the Slavophiles, and there was a danger of Ostrovsky moving away from realistic positions. Chernyshevsky calls Ostrovsky’s plays “Poverty is not a vice” and “Don’t sit in your own sleigh” “false,” but further continues: “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 destroys even the strongest talent,” concludes Chernyshevsky.
Dobrolyubov's article was written in 1859, when Ostrovsky freed himself from Slavophile influences. It was pointless to recall previous misconceptions, and Dobrolyubov, limiting himself to a vague hint on this score, focuses on revealing the realistic beginning of these same plays.
The assessments of Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov mutually complement each other and are an example of the principles of revolutionary-democratic criticism.
At the beginning of 1856 it begins new stage in the works of Ostrovsky.
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 maturation of a revolutionary situation.
He, as if following Nekrasov’s advice, returns to the path of studying social reality, the path of creating analytical plays that give pictures of modern life.
(In a review of the play “Don’t Live the Way You Want,” Nekrasov advised him, abandoning all preconceived ideas, to follow the path along which his own talent would lead: “to give free development to your talent” - the path of depicting real life).
Chernyshevsky emphasizes “Ostrovsky’s wonderful talent, strong talent. Dobrolyubov - “the power of artistic flair” of the playwright.
During this period, Ostrovsky created such significant plays as “The Pupil”, “Profitable Place”, the trilogy about Balzaminov and, finally, during the revolutionary situation - “The Thunderstorm”.
This period of Ostrovsky’s work is characterized, first of all, by an expansion of the scope of life phenomena and an expansion of themes.
Firstly, in the field of his research, which included the landowner, serf environment, Ostrovsky showed that the landowner Ulanbekova (“The Pupil”) mocks her victims just as cruelly as the illiterate, shady merchants.
Ostrovsky shows that in the landowner-noble environment, as in the merchant environment, the same struggle is going on between rich and poor, older and younger.
In addition, during the same period, Ostrovsky raised the topic of philistinism. Ostrovsky was the first Russian writer to notice and artistically discover the philistinism as a social group.
The playwright discovered in the philistinism a predominant and eclipsing all other interests interest in material things, what Gorky later defined as “a monstrously developed sense of property.”
In the trilogy about Balzaminov (“Holiday sleep - before lunch”, “Your own dogs are biting, don’t pester someone else’s”, “What you go for is what you will find”) /1857-1861/, Ostrovsky denounces the bourgeois way of existence, with its mentality and limitations , vulgarity, thirst for profit, ridiculous dreams.
The trilogy about Balzaminov reveals not just ignorance or narrow-mindedness, but some kind of intellectual wretchedness, the inferiority of the bourgeoisie. The image is built on the opposition of this mental inferiority, moral insignificance - and complacency, confidence in one’s right.
This trilogy contains elements of vaudeville, buffoonery, and features of external comedy. But internal comedy predominates in it, since the figure of Balzaminov is internally comic.
Ostrovsky showed that the kingdom of the philistines is the same dark kingdom of impenetrable vulgarity, savagery, which is aimed at one goal - profit.
The next play, “Profitable Place,” indicates Ostrovsky’s return to the path of “moral and accusatory” dramaturgy. During the same period, Ostrovsky was the discoverer of another dark kingdom - the kingdom of officials, the royal bureaucracy.
During the years of the abolition of serfdom, denunciation of bureaucratic orders 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” in terms of its themes. But if in The Inspector General the officials who commit lawlessness feel guilty and fear retribution, then Ostrovsky’s officials are imbued with the consciousness of their rightness and impunity. Bribery and abuse seem to them and those around them to be the norm.
Ostrovsky emphasized that the distortion of all moral norms in society is a law, and the law itself is something illusory. Both officials and the people dependent on them know that the laws are always on the side of the one who has power.
Thus, for the first time in literature, Ostrovsky shows officials as a kind of merchants of the law. (The official can turn the law the way he wants).
He also came to Ostrovsky's play new hero– a young official, Zhadov, who has just graduated from university. The conflict between representatives of the old formation and Zhadov acquires the force of an irreconcilable contradiction:
a/ Ostrovsky was able to show the inconsistency of illusions about an honest official as a force capable of stopping the abuses of the administration.
b/ fight against “Yusovism” or compromise, betrayal of ideals - Zhadov was given no other choice.
Ostrovsky denounced the system, the living conditions that give rise to bribe-takers. The progressive significance of the comedy lies in the fact that in it the irreconcilable denial of the old world and “Yusovism” merged with the search for a new morality.
Zhadov is a weak person, he cannot stand the fight, he also goes to ask for a “lucrative position.”
Chernyshevsky believed that the play would have been even stronger if it had ended with the fourth act, i.e., with Zhadov’s cry of despair: “We’re going to uncle to ask for a lucrative position!” In the fifth, Zhadov faces the abyss that almost destroyed him morally. And, although Vyshimirsky’s end is not typical, there is an element of chance in Zhadov’s salvation, his words, his belief that “somewhere there are other, more persistent, worthy people” who will not compromise, will not reconcile, will not give in, talk about the prospect of further development of new social relations. Ostrovsky foresaw the coming social upsurge.
The rapid development of psychological realism, which we observe in the second half of the 19th century, also manifested itself in drama. The secret of Ostrovsky's dramatic writing lies not in the one-dimensional 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 impulse for the dramatic movement. G.A. Tovstonogov spoke well about this feature of Ostrovsky’s creative style, referring in particular to Glumov from the comedy “Simplicity is Enough for Every Wise Man,” a far from ideal character: “Why is Glumov charming, although he commits a number of vile acts? After all, if “He is unsympathetic to us, then there is no performance. What makes him charming is his hatred of this world, and we internally justify his way of paying it back.”
Interest in the human personality 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 the leading role in the development of this method belonged to Ostrovsky. In addition, Ostrovsky made an attempt to go further in psychologism, along the path of providing his characters with the maximum possible freedom within the framework of the author’s plan - the result of such an experiment was the image of Katerina in “The Thunderstorm”.
In The Thunderstorm, Ostrovsky rose to the level of depicting the tragic collision of living human feelings with the deadening Domostroevsky life.
Despite the variety of types of dramatic conflicts presented in Ostrovsky's early works, their poetics and their general atmosphere were determined, first of all, by the fact that tyranny was presented in them as a natural and inevitable phenomenon of life. Even the so-called “Slavophile” plays, with their search for bright and good principles, did not destroy or disturb the oppressive atmosphere of tyranny. The play “The Thunderstorm” is also characterized by this general coloring. And at the same time, there is a force in her that resolutely resists the terrible, deadening routine - this is the element of the people, expressed both in folk characters (Katerina, first of all, Kuligin and even Kudryash), and in Russian nature, which becomes an essential element of dramatic action .
The play "The Thunderstorm", staged difficult questions modern life and appeared in print and on stage just before the so-called “liberation” of the peasants, testified that Ostrovsky was free from any illusions regarding the paths of social development in Russia.
Even before publication, “The Thunderstorm” appeared on the Russian stage. The premiere took place on November 16, 1859 at the Maly Theater. The play featured magnificent actors: S. Vasiliev (Tikhon), P. Sadovsky (Dikoy), 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 a triumph. A year after the brilliant premiere of "The Thunderstorm", the play was awarded the highest academic award - the Great Uvarov Prize.
“The Thunderstorm” sharply exposes the social system of Russia, and the death main character shown by the playwright as a direct consequence of her hopeless situation in the “dark kingdom.” The conflict in “The Thunderstorm” is built on the irreconcilable clash between the freedom-loving Katerina and scary world wild and wild boars, with animal laws based on “cruelty, lies, mockery, and humiliation of the human person.” Katerina went against tyranny and obscurantism, armed only with the strength of her feelings, the consciousness of the right to life, to happiness and love. According to Dobrolyubov’s fair remark, she “feels the opportunity to satisfy the natural thirst of her soul and cannot continue to remain motionless: she strives for a new life, even if she has to die in this impulse.”
From childhood, Katerina was brought up in a unique environment, which developed in her romantic dreaminess, religiosity and a thirst for freedom. These character traits later determined the tragedy of her situation. Brought up in a religious spirit, she understands the “sinfulness” of her feelings for Boris, but cannot resist the natural attraction and gives herself entirely to this impulse.
Katerina speaks out not only against “Kabanov’s concepts of morality.” She openly protests against immutable religious dogmas that affirm the categorical inviolability of church marriage and condemn suicide as contrary to Christian teaching. 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 very few in our literature were able to rise, and no one knew how to stay at it as well as Ostrovsky.”
Katerina does not want to put up with the deadening environment around her. “I don’t want to live here, I won’t, even if you cut me!” she says to Varvara. And she commits suicide. “Sad, bitter is such liberation,” Dobrolyubov noted, “but what to do when there is no other way out” Katerina’s character is complex and multifaceted. This complexity is most eloquently evidenced, perhaps, by the fact that many outstanding performers, starting from the seemingly completely opposite dominants of the main character’s character, have not been able to fully exhaust all these different ones. the interpretations did not fully reveal the main thing in Katerina’s character: her love, to which she surrenders with all the spontaneity of her young nature. Her life experience is insignificant; most of all, her nature has a developed sense of beauty, a poetic perception of nature. However, her character is given in movement, in development. Contemplation of nature alone, as we know from the play, is not enough for her. Other areas of application of spiritual forces are needed. Prayer, service, myths are also means of satisfying the poetic feeling of the main character.
Dobrolyubov wrote: “It’s not the rituals that occupy her in the church: she doesn’t even hear what they sing and read there; she has different music in her soul, different visions, for her the service ends imperceptibly, as if in one second. She is occupied by trees, strangely drawn on images, and she imagines a whole country of gardens, where all the trees are like this, and everything is blooming, fragrant, everything is full of heavenly singing. Otherwise, on a sunny day, she will see how “such a bright pillar is coming down from the dome, and smoke is moving in this pillar, like clouds,” and now she sees, “as if angels are flying and singing in this pillar.” Sometimes she will present herself - why shouldn’t she fly? And when she’s standing on a mountain, she’s drawn to fly: just like that, she’d run up, raise her arms, and fly...”
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 difficult atonement for guilt - all this is filled with the liveliest dramatic interest, and is conducted with extraordinary art and knowledge of the heart,” I. A. Goncharov rightly noted.
How often the passion and spontaneity of Katerina’s nature are condemned, and her deep spiritual struggle is perceived as a manifestation of weakness. Meanwhile, in the memoirs of the artist E. B. Piunova-Schmidthof we find Ostrovsky’s curious story about his heroine: “Katerina,” Alexander Nikolaevich told me, “is a woman with a passionate nature and a strong character. She proved this with her love for Boris and suicide. Katerina, although overwhelmed by her environment, at the first opportunity gives herself over to her passion, saying before this: “Come what may, I will see Boris!” In front of the picture of hell, Katerina does not rage and scream, but only with her face and whole figure must depict mortal fear. In the scene of farewell to Boris, Katerina speaks quietly, like a patient, and only last words: "My friend! My joy! Goodbye!" - pronounces as loudly as possible. Katerina's situation became hopeless. You can’t live in your husband’s house... There’s nowhere to go. To parents? Yes, at that time they would have tied her up and brought her to her husband. Katerina came to the conclusion that it was impossible to live as she lived before, and, having a strong will, she drowned herself...”
“Without fear of being accused of exaggeration,” wrote I. A. Goncharov, “I can say in all conscience that there was no such work as a drama in our literature. She undoubtedly occupies and will probably for a long time occupy first place in high classical beauties. From whatever side it is taken, whether from the side of the creation plan, or the dramatic movement, or, finally, the characters, it is everywhere captured by the power of creativity, the subtlety of observation and the grace of decoration.” In “The Thunderstorm,” according to Goncharov, “a broad picture of national life and morals has settled down.”
Ostrovsky conceived The Thunderstorm as a comedy, and then called it a drama. N. A. Dobrolyubov spoke very carefully about the genre nature of “The Thunderstorm”. He wrote that “the mutual relations of tyranny and voicelessness are brought to the most tragic consequences.”
By the middle of the 19th century, Dobrolyubov’s definition of a “play of life” turned out to be more capacious than the traditional division of dramatic art, which was still experiencing the burden of classicist norms. In Russian drama, there was a process of bringing dramatic poetry closer to everyday reality, which naturally affected their genre nature. Ostrovsky, for example, wrote: “The history of Russian literature has two branches that have finally merged: one branch is grafted and 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 another; the other - from Kantemir, through the comedies of the same Sumarokov, Fonvizin, Kapnist, Griboyedov to Gogol; both were completely merged in him; dualism is over. On the one hand: laudable odes, French tragedies, imitations of the ancients, the sensibility of the late 18th century, German romanticism, frantic youthful literature; and on the other: satires, comedies, comedies and “Dead Souls”, Russia seemed at the same time, in the person of its best writers, to live, period after period, the life of foreign literature and educate its own to universal significance.”
Comedy, thus, turned out to be closest to the everyday phenomena of Russian life; it responded sensitively to everything that worried the Russian public, and reproduced life in its dramatic and tragic manifestations. That is why Dobrolyubov so stubbornly clung to the definition of “play of life,” seeing in it not so much a conventional genre meaning, but the very principle of reproducing modern life in drama. Actually, Ostrovsky also spoke about the same principle: “Many conventional rules have disappeared, and some more will disappear. Now dramatic works are nothing more than dramatized life." This principle determined the development of dramatic genres throughout the subsequent decades of the 19th century. In terms of its genre, “The Thunderstorm” is a social and everyday tragedy.
A. I. Revyakin rightly notes that the main feature of the tragedy - “the depiction of irreconcilable life contradictions that determine the death of the main character, who is an outstanding person” - is evident in “The Thunderstorm”. The depiction of a national tragedy, of course, entailed new, original constructive forms of its implementation. Ostrovsky repeatedly spoke out against 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 a French translation: “It doesn’t hurt to print “The Thunderstorm” in a good French translation, it can make an impression with its originality; but whether it should be put on stage is something to think about. I highly value the ability of the French to make plays and am afraid of offending their delicate taste with my terrible ineptitude. WITH French point From a glance, the construction of the “Thunderstorm” is ugly, but I must admit that it is not very coherent at all. When I wrote “The Thunderstorm,” I was carried away by the finishing of the main roles and “treated the form with unforgivable frivolity, and at the same time I was in a hurry to be in time for the benefit performance of the late Vasiliev.”
A.I. Zhuravleva’s reasoning regarding the genre uniqueness of “The Thunderstorm” is interesting: “The problem of genre interpretation is the most important when analyzing this play. If we turn to the scientific-critical and theatrical traditions of interpretation of this play, we can identify two prevailing trends. One of them is dictated by the understanding of “The Thunderstorm” as a social and everyday drama; it attaches special importance to everyday life. The attention of the directors and, accordingly, the audience is distributed equally among all participants in the action, each person receives equal importance.”
Another interpretation is determined by the understanding of “The Thunderstorm” 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 were private individuals, and not historical figures, even legendary ones. The “thunderstorm” remained a unique phenomenon in this regard. The key point to understand the genre dramatic work in this case, it is not the “social status” of the heroes, but, first of all, the nature of the conflict. If we understand Katerina’s death as the result of a collision with her mother-in-law, and see her as a victim of family oppression, then the scale of the heroes really looks too small for a tragedy. But if you see that Katerina’s fate was determined by the collision of two historical eras, then the tragic nature of the conflict seems quite natural.
A typical feature of a tragic structure is the feeling of catharsis experienced by the audience during the denouement. By death, the heroine is freed from both oppression and the internal contradictions tormenting her.
Thus, the social and everyday drama from the life of the merchant class develops into a tragedy. Through love and everyday conflict, Ostrovsky was able to show the epoch-making change taking place in the popular consciousness. 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, everyday reliable state of Ostrovsky’s contemporary patriarchal way of life, but also with the ideal idea of morality inherent in the high heroine.
This transformation of drama into tragedy also occurred thanks to the triumph of the lyrical element in “The Thunderstorm.”
The symbolism of the play's title 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, Ostrovsky also recreated the image of a thunderstorm as a landscape: dark clouds filled with moisture (“as if a cloud is curling in a ball”), we feel the stuffiness in the air, we hear the rumble of thunder, we freeze in front of the light of lightning.
The title of the play also has a figurative meaning. A thunderstorm rages in Katerina’s soul, is reflected in the struggle between creative and destructive principles, the collision of bright and dark forebodings, good and sinful feelings. The scenes with Grokha seem to push forward the dramatic action of the play.
The thunderstorm in the play acquires and symbolic meaning, expressing the idea of the entire work as a whole. The appearance of people like Katerina and Kuligin in the dark kingdom is a thunderstorm over Kalinov. The thunderstorm in the play conveys the catastrophic nature of existence, the state of a world split in two. The diversity and versatility of the play's title becomes a kind of key to a deeper understanding of its essence.
“In Mr. Ostrovsky’s play, which bears the name “The Thunderstorm,” wrote A.D. Galakhov, “the action and atmosphere are tragic, although many places 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. V.E. Meyerhold wrote excellently about this: “The originality 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 noted in the script is not gradual (from the second act through the third to the fourth), but with a push, or rather, with two pushes; the first rise is indicated in the second act, in the scene of Katerina’s farewell to Tikhon (the rise is strong, but not yet very strong), and the second rise (very strong - this is the most sensitive shock) in the fourth act, at the moment of Katerina’s repentance.
Between these two acts (staged as if on the tops of two unequal, but sharply rising hills), the third act (with both scenes) lies, as it were, in a valley.”
It is not difficult to notice 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, the stages of development of her feelings for Boris.
A. Anastasyev notes that Ostrovsky’s play has its own, special destiny. 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 playing the main roles. P. A. Strepetova, O. O. Sadovskaya, A. Koonen, V. N. Pashennaya. And at the same time, “theater historians have not witnessed complete, harmonious, outstanding performances.” The unsolved mystery of this great tragedy lies, according to the researcher, “in its multi-ideational nature, in the strongest fusion of undeniable, unconditional, concrete historical truth and poetic symbolism, in the organic combination of real action and deeply hidden lyrical principles.”
Usually, when they talk about the lyricism of “The Thunderstorm,” they mean, first of all, the system of worldview of the main character of the play that is lyrical in nature; they also talk about the Volga, which in its most general form is opposed to the “barn” way of life and which evokes Kuligin’s lyrical outpourings . But the playwright could not - due to the laws of the genre - include the Volga, the beautiful Volga landscapes, or nature in general, into the system of dramatic action. He showed only the way in which nature becomes an integral element of stage action. Nature here is not only an object of admiration and admiration, but also the main criterion for assessing all things, allowing us to see the illogicality and unnaturalness of modern life. “Did Ostrovsky write The Thunderstorm? Volga wrote “Thunderstorm”!” - exclaimed the famous theater expert and critic S. A. Yuryev.
“Every true everyday person is at the same time a true romantic,” the famous theater figure A. I. Yuzhin-Sumbatov would later say, referring to Ostrovsky. A romantic in the broad 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 discussed in one of his early diary entries after arriving in Kostroma: “And on the other side of the Volga, directly opposite the city, there are two villages; “One is especially picturesque, from which the most curly grove stretches all the way to the Volga; the sun at sunset somehow miraculously climbed into it, from the roots, and created many miracles.”
Starting from this landscape sketch, Ostrovsky reasoned:
“I was exhausted looking at this. Nature - you are a faithful lover, only terribly lustful; no matter how much I love you, you are still dissatisfied; unsatisfied passion boils in your gaze, and no matter how much you swear that you are unable to satisfy your desires, you do not get angry, you do not move away, but you look at everything with your passionate eyes, and these gazes full of expectation are execution and torment for a person.”
The lyricism of “The Thunderstorm,” so specific in form (Ap. Grigoriev subtly remarked about it: “... as if it was not a poet, but a whole people who created here...”), arose precisely on the basis of the closeness of the world of the hero and the author.
Healthy orientation natural start In the 50s and 60s it became the social and 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 lyrical 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 work thematically expanded extremely. He shows how the new is mixed with the old: in the familiar images of his merchants we see polish and worldliness, education and “pleasant” manners. They are no longer stupid despots, but predatory acquirers, holding in their fist not only a family or a city, but entire provinces. A wide variety of 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: “Warm Heart”, “Mad Money”, “Forest”, “Wolves and Sheep”, “The Last Victim”, “Dowry”, “Talents and Admirers”.
The shifts in Ostrovsky’s work during his last period are very clearly visible if we compare, for example, “Warm Heart” with “Thunderstorm”. Merchant Kuroslepov is a famous 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 no longer monolithic. The Domostroevsky way of life will no longer save the willfulness of Mayor Gradoboev. The unbridled carousings of the rich merchant Khlynov are symbols of wasted life, decay, and nonsense: Khlynov orders the streets to be watered with champagne.
Parasha is a girl with a “warm heart”. But if Katerina in “The Thunderstorm” turns out to be a victim of an unrequited husband and a weak-willed lover, then Parasha is aware of her powerful spiritual strength. She also wants to “fly up”. She loves and curses her lover’s weak character and indecisiveness: “What kind of guy is this, what kind of crybaby has forced himself on me... Apparently, I have to think about my own head.”
The development of Yulia Pavlovna Tugina’s love for the unworthy young reveler Dulchin in “The Last Victim” is shown with great tension. In Ostrovsky's later dramas there is a combination of action-packed situations with detailed psychological characteristics of the main characters. Great emphasis is placed on the vicissitudes of the torment they experience, in which the struggle of the hero or heroine with himself, with his own feelings, mistakes, and assumptions begins to occupy a large place.
In this regard, "Dowry" is typical. Here, perhaps for the first time, the author’s attention is focused on the very feeling of the heroine, who has escaped from the care of her mother and the ancient way of life. In this play, there is not a struggle between light and darkness, but the struggle of love itself for its rights and freedom. Larisa herself preferred Paratova to Karandysheva. The people around her cynically violated Larisa’s feelings. She was abused by a mother who wanted to “sell” her “dowryless” daughter for a moneyed man who was vain that he would be the owner of such a treasure. She was abused by Paratov, who deceived her best hopes and considered Larisa’s love one of the fleeting joys. Both Knurov and Vozhevatov abused each other, playing a toss with each other.
We learn from the play “Wolves and Sheep” what cynics the landowners in post-reform Russia turned into, ready to resort to forgery, blackmail, and bribery for selfish purposes. The “wolves” are the landowner Murzavetskaya, the landowner Berkutov, and the “sheep” are the young rich widow Kupavina, the weak-willed elderly gentleman Lynyaev. Murzavetskaya wants to marry her dissolute nephew to Kupavina, “scaring” her with her late husband’s old bills. In fact, the bills were forged by the trusted attorney Chugunov, who also serves as Kupavina. Berkutov, a landowner and businessman, arrived from St. Petersburg, more vile than the local scoundrels. He instantly realized what was going on. He took Kupavina with her huge capital into his hands without talking about his feelings. Having deftly “scared” Murzavetskaya by exposing the forgery, he immediately concluded an alliance with her: it was important for him to win the election for leader of the nobility. He is the real “wolf”, everyone else next to him is “sheep”. At the same time, in the play there is no sharp division between scoundrels and innocents. There seems to be some kind of vile conspiracy between the “wolves” and the “sheep”. Everyone plays war with each other and at the same time easily makes peace and finds common benefit.
One of the best plays in Ostrovsky’s entire repertoire, apparently, is the play “Guilty Without Guilt.” It combines the motifs of many previous works. The actress Kruchinina, the main character, a woman of high spiritual culture, experienced a great tragedy in her life. She is kind and generous, warm-hearted and wise. At the pinnacle of goodness and suffering stands Kruchinina. If you like, she is a “ray of light” in the “dark kingdom”, she is the “last victim”, she is a “warm heart”, she is a “dowry”, there are “fans” around her, that is, predatory “wolves”, money-grubbers and cynics. Kruchinina, not yet assuming that Neznamov is her son, instructs him in life, reveals her unhardened heart: “I am more experienced than you and have lived more in the world; I know that there is a lot of nobility in people, 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 also 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 he created are intended for the stage. That’s why the speech of Ostrovsky’s heroes is so important, that’s why his works sound so vivid. No wonder Innokenty Annensky called him an “auditory realist.” Without staging his works on stage, it was as if his works were not completed, which is why Ostrovsky took the ban on his plays by theater censorship so hard. (The comedy “We Will Be Numbered Our Own People” was allowed to be staged in the theater only ten years after Pogodin managed to publish it in the 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 people hostile to me, and that’s all.” unanimously recognized "The Dowry" as the best of all my works."
Ostrovsky lived with the “Dowry”, at times only on it, his fortieth thing in a row, he directed “his attention and strength”, wanting to “finish” it 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 turn out badly.”
Already a day after the premiere, on November 12, Ostrovsky could, and undoubtedly did, learn from Russkiye Vedomosti how he managed to “tire the entire public, down to the most naive spectators.” For she - the audience - has clearly “outgrown” the spectacles that he offers her.
In the seventies, Ostrovsky's relationship with critics, theaters and audiences became increasingly complex. The period when he enjoyed universal recognition, which he won in the late fifties and early sixties, was replaced by another, increasingly growing in different circles of cooling towards the playwright.
Theatrical censorship was stricter than literary censorship. This is no coincidence. In its essence, theatrical art is democratic; it addresses the general public more directly than literature. 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 written for the whole people; dramatic works writers must always remember this, they must be clear and strong. This closeness to the people does not in the least degrade dramatic poetry, but, on the contrary, doubles its strength and does not allow it to become vulgar and crushed.” Ostrovsky talks in his “Note” about how the theatrical audience in Russia expanded after 1861. Ostrovsky writes about a new viewer, not experienced in art: “Fine literature is still boring and incomprehensible for him, music too, only the theater gives him complete pleasure, there he experiences everything that happens on stage like a child, sympathizes with good and recognizes evil, clearly presented." For a “fresh public,” Ostrovsky wrote, “a strong drama, major comedy, defiant, frank, loud laughter, hot, sincere feelings are required.” It is the theater, according to Ostrovsky, which has its roots in folk farce, 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 reader’s heart.
Ride along, mourning nags!
Actors, master your craft,
So that from the walking truth
Everyone felt pain and light!
("Balagan"; 1906)
The enormous importance that Ostrovsky attached to the theater, his thoughts about theatrical art, about the position of theater in Russia, about 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 the production of his plays, worked with the actors, was friends with many of them, and corresponded with them. He put a lot of effort into defending the rights of actors, seeking the creation of a theater school and his own repertoire in Russia.
Ostrovsky knew well the inner, behind-the-scenes life of the theater, hidden from the eyes of the audience. Starting with "The Forest" (1871), Ostrovsky develops the theme of the theater, creates images of actors, depicts their fates - this play is followed by "Comedian of the 17th Century" (1873), "Talents and Admirers" (1881), "Guilty Without Guilt" ( 1883).
The theater as depicted by Ostrovsky lives according to the laws of the world that is familiar to the reader and viewer from his other plays. The way the destinies of artists develop is determined by morals, relationships, and circumstances of “general” 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 ("Comedian of the 17th Century"), a provincial city contemporary with 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 forced person, repeatedly dependent. “Then it was the time of favorites, and all the managerial orders of the repertoire inspector consisted of instructions to the chief director to take every possible care when compiling the repertoire so that the favorites, who receive large payments for the performance, played every day and, if possible, in two theaters,” Ostrovsky wrote in “Note on draft rules for imperial theaters for dramatic works" (1883).
In Ostrovsky's portrayal, 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 fans”, “We, artists, our place is at the buffet,” says Shmaga with challenge and evil irony.
Theatre, the life of provincial actresses in the late 70s, around the time when Ostrovsky wrote plays about actors, also showed M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin in the novel "The Golovlevs." Judushka’s nieces Lyubinka and Anninka become actresses, escaping Golovlev’s life, but end up in a den. They had neither talent nor training, they were not trained in acting, but all this was not required on the provincial stage. The life of the actors appears in Anninka’s memoirs as hell, as a nightmare: “Here is a scene with smoky, captured and slippery from damp scenery; here she herself is spinning on stage, just spinning, imagining that she is acting... Drunken and pugnacious nights; passers-by landowners hastily taking out a little green card from their skinny wallets; merchants cheering on the “actors” almost with a whip in their hands.” And the life behind the scenes is ugly, and what is played out on stage is ugly: “...And the Duchess of Gerolstein, stunning with a hussar’s cap, and Cleretta Ango, in a wedding dress, with a slit in front right up to the waist, and Beautiful Helena, with a slit in the front, from behind and from all sides... Nothing but shamelessness and nakedness... that’s how life was spent!” This life drives Lyubinka to suicide.
The similarities between Shchedrin and Ostrovsky in their depiction of the provincial theater are natural - they both write about what they knew well, they write the truth. But Shchedrin is a merciless satirist, he thickens the colors so much that the image becomes grotesque, while Ostrovsky gives an objective picture of life, his “dark kingdom” is not hopeless - it was not for nothing that N. Dobrolyubov wrote about a “ray of light”.
This feature of Ostrovsky was noted by critics even when his first plays appeared. “...The ability to depict reality as it is - “mathematical fidelity to reality”, the absence of any exaggeration... All of this is not the distinctive features of Gogol’s poetry; all of these are the distinctive features of the new comedy,” wrote B. Almazov in the article “A Dream According to occasion of a comedy." Already in our time, literary critic A. Skaftymov 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 in Gogol there is no victim of vice, while in Ostrovsky there is always a suffering victim vice... By portraying vice, Ostrovsky protects something from it, protects someone... Thus, the entire content of the play changes. The play is colored with suffering lyricism, it enters into the development of fresh, morally pure or poetic feelings; "to sharply highlight the inner legality, truth and poetry of true humanity, oppressed and expelled in an environment of prevailing self-interest and deception." Ostrovsky’s approach to depicting reality, different from Gogol’s, is explained, of course, by the originality of his talent, the “natural” properties of the artist, but also (this also should not be missed) by changing times: increased attention to the individual, to his rights, recognition of his value.
IN AND. Nemirovich-Danchenko in the book “The Birth of the Theater” writes about what makes Ostrovsky’s plays especially scenic: “an atmosphere of goodness,” “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 has the image of a true artist and a wonderful person. In real life, Ostrovsky knew many excellent people in theater world, highly valued them and respected them. L. Nikulina-Kositskaya, who brilliantly performed Katerina in “The Thunderstorm,” played a big role in his life. Ostrovsky was friends with the artist A. Martynov, had an unusually high regard for 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, smart, significant, sincere.
“Oh, don’t 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,” Narokov says in “Talents and Admirers” to Sasha Negina.
The most striking image of a noble actor created by Ostrovsky is the tragedian Neschastlivtsev in “The Forest.” Ostrovsky portrays a “living” person, with a difficult fate, with a sad life story. Neschastlivtsev, who drinks heavily, 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 Neschastlivtsev’s behavior reveals the posturing inherent in a provincial tragedian and his predilection for pompous declamation (at these moments he is ridiculous); if, while playing the master, he finds himself in absurd situations, then, having realized what is happening on the Gurmyzhskaya estate, what rubbish his mistress is, he takes an ardent part in Aksyusha’s fate and shows excellent human qualities. It turns out that the role of a noble hero is organic for him, it is truly his role - and not only on stage, but also in life.
In his view, art and life are inextricably linked, the actor is not a pretender, 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 Gurmyzhskaya throws at her and her entire company of Neschastlivtsev: “...We are artists, noble artists, and you are the comedians.”
The main comedian in the life performance that is played out in “The Forest” turns out to be Gurmyzhskaya. She chooses for herself the attractive, sympathetic role of a woman of strict moral rules, a generous philanthropist who devotes herself to good deeds(“Gentlemen, do I really live for myself? Everything I have, all my money belongs to the poor. I am only a clerk with my money, and the owner of it is every poor, every unfortunate person,” she inspires those around her). But all this is acting, a mask hiding her true face. Gurmyzhskaya is deceiving, pretending to be kind-hearted, she didn’t even think of doing anything for others, helping anyone: “Why did I get emotional! You play and play a role, and then you get carried away.” Gurmyzhskaya not only plays a role that is completely alien to her, she also 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 nephew who loves her. Aksyusha is the role of the bride, Bulanov is Aksyusha’s groom. But Aksyusha refuses to put on a comedy for her: “I won’t marry him; so why this comedy?” Gurmyzhskaya, no longer hiding the fact that she is the director of the play being staged, rudely puts Aksyusha in her place: “Comedy! How dare you? Even if it’s a comedy, I’ll feed you and clothe you, and I’ll make you play a comedy.”
The comedian Schastlivtsev, who turned out to be more insightful than the tragedian Neschastlivtsev, who first took Gurmyzhskaya’s performance on faith, figured out the real situation before him, says to Neschastlivtsev: “The high school student is apparently smarter; he plays the role here better than yours... He’s the lover plays, and you are... a simpleton."
The viewer is presented with the real Gurmyzhskaya, without the protective pharisaical mask - a greedy, selfish, deceitful, depraved lady. The performance she performed pursued low, vile, dirty goals.
Many of Ostrovsky's plays present such a deceitful "theater" of life. Podkhalyuzin in Ostrovsky's first play "Our People - Let's Be Numbered" plays the role of the most devoted and faithful person to the owner and thus achieves his goal - having deceived Bolshov, he himself becomes the owner. Glumov in the comedy “Every Wise Man Has Enough Simplicity” builds a career for himself on a complex game, putting on one mask or another. Only chance prevented him from achieving his goal in the intrigue he started. In "Dowry" not only Robinson, entertaining Vozhevatov and Paratov, introduces himself as a lord. The funny and pathetic Karandyshev tries to look important. Having become Larisa’s fiancé, he “... raised his head so high that, just behold, he would bump into someone. Moreover, he put on glasses for some reason, but never wore them. He bows and barely nods,” says Vozhevatov. Everything that Karandyshev does is artificial, everything is for show: the pitiful horse he got, the carpet with cheap weapons on the wall, and the dinner he throws. Paratov is a man - calculating and soulless - plays the role of a hot, uncontrollably broad nature.
Theater in life, impressive masks are born from the desire to disguise, to hide something immoral, shameful, to pass off black as white. Behind such a performance there is usually calculation, hypocrisy, and self-interest.
Neznamov in the play “Guilty Without Guilt”, finding himself a victim of the intrigue started by Korinkina, and believing that Kruchinina was only pretending to be a kind and noble woman, says with bitterness: “Actress! actress! Just play on stage. There they pay money for good pretense.” And to play in life over simple, gullible hearts, who do not need a game, who ask for the truth... we must be executed for this... we don’t 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 comedy and hypocrisy in life with art on stage full of truth and sincerity. Real theater and an artist’s inspired performance are always moral, bring goodness, and enlighten people.
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, in realizing himself, spends and burns himself out, about the happiness of creativity he finds, about complete dedication, about the high mission of art that affirms goodness and humanity. Ostrovsky himself expressed himself, revealed his soul in the plays he created, perhaps especially openly in plays about 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 this is where art ends,
And the soil and fate breathe.
(B. Pasternak " Oh, I wish I knew
that this happens...").
Entire generations of wonderful Russian artists grew up watching productions of Ostrovsky’s plays. In addition to the Sadovskys, there are also Martynov, Vasilyeva, Strepetova, Ermolova, Massalitinova, Gogoleva. The walls of the Maly Theater saw the living great playwright, and his traditions are still being multiplied on the stage.
Ostrovsky's dramatic mastery is the property of modern theater and the subject of close study. It is not at all outdated, despite the somewhat old-fashioned nature 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. Ostrovsky's plays contain limitless possibilities for stage performance and acting 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 and landowners, but also universal types. All the signs are before us the highest art which is immortal.
The originality of Ostrovsky's dramaturgy and its innovation are especially clearly manifested in typification. If ideas, themes and plots reveal the originality and innovation of the content of Ostrovsky’s dramaturgy, then the principles of character typification also concern its artistic depiction and its form.
A. N. 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 less typicality.
Almost every Ostrovsky character 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 realistic depiction of human psychology.
“Ostrovsky,” Dobrolyubov rightly 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’s why external oppression, the weight of the whole situation that oppresses a person, is felt in his works much more strongly than in many stories, terribly outrageous in content, but with the external, official side of the matter completely overshadowing the internal, human side.” In the ability to “notice nature, penetrate into the depths of a person’s soul, capture his feelings, regardless of the depiction of his external official relationships,” Dobrolyubov recognized one of the main and best properties of Ostrovsky’s talent.
In his work 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 bright, but more or less one-line characters of the characters. Further works provide examples of a more in-depth and complicated disclosure of human images.
In Russian drama, the Ostrovsky school 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. Solovyov, P. M. Nevezhin, I. . A. Kupchinsky. Studying from Ostrovsky, I. F. Gorbunov created wonderful scenes from the life of the bourgeois merchant and craftsmen. Following Ostrovsky, A. A. Potekhin revealed in his plays the impoverishment of the nobility (“The Newest Oracle”), the predatory essence of the rich bourgeoisie (“The Guilty One”), bribery, the careerism of the bureaucracy (“Tinsel”), the spiritual beauty of the peasantry (“A Sheep’s Fur Coat - the human soul”), the emergence of new people of a democratic bent (“The Cut Off Chunk”). Potekhin’s first drama, “The Human Court is Not God,” which appeared in 1854, is reminiscent of Ostrovsky’s plays, written under the influence of Slavophilism. At the end of the 50s and at the very beginning of the 60s, the plays of I. E. Chernyshev, an artist of the Alexandrinsky Theater and a permanent contributor to 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 and the acute presentation of moral and everyday issues. For example, in the comedy “Groom from the Debt Branch” (1858) it was about a poor man trying to marry a wealthy landowner; in the comedy “Money Can’t Buy Happiness” (1859) a soulless predatory merchant was depicted; in the drama “Father of the Family” (1860) a tyrant landowner, and in the comedy “Spoiled Life” (1862) they depict an unusually honest, kind official, his naive wife and a dishonestly treacherous fool who violated their happiness.
Under the influence of Ostrovsky, such playwrights as A.I. Sumbatov-Yuzhin, Vl.I. were formed later, at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. Nemirovich-Danchenko, S. A. Naydenov, E. P. Karpov, P. P. Gnedich and many others.
Ostrovsky's unquestioned authority as the country's first playwright was recognized by all progressive literary figures. Highly appreciating Ostrovsky’s dramaturgy as “national”, listening to his advice, L. N. Tolstoy sent him the play “The First Distiller” in 1886. Calling Ostrovsky “the father of Russian drama,” the author of “War and Peace” asked him in an accompanying letter to read the play and express his “fatherly verdict” about it.
Ostrovsky's plays, the most progressive in dramaturgy of the second half of the 19th century century, constitute a step forward in the development of world dramatic art, an independent and important chapter.
The enormous influence of Ostrovsky on the dramaturgy of Russian, Slavic and other peoples is undeniable. But his work is connected not only with the past. It actively lives in the present. In terms of his contribution to the theatrical repertoire, which is an expression of current life, the great playwright is our contemporary. Attention to his work does not decrease, but increases.
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 broad generalization of his heroes, good and evil, their universal human properties, and the uniqueness of his original dramatic skill.
Ostrovsky's chronological table helps to highlight the main stages of the writer's life. This article provides information about Ostrovsky’s life and work by date in a convenient form. The biography of A. N. Ostrovsky, a famous Russian playwright, will be of interest to schoolchildren and anyone interested in Russian classical literature.
Ostrovsky made a unique contribution to theatrical art. The theater business occupies a place of honor in Ostrovsky’s life. The periodization of his creative path reflects the dates of development of the Russian theater associated with the founding of the Artistic Circle. The works of Alexander Nikolaevich Ostrovsky in the table are indicated in chronological sequence. You can learn more about the playwright’s work in a special section.
1823, March 31– A.N. was born. Ostrovsky in Moscow in the family of an official of the Moscow departments of the Senate Nikolai Fedorovich Ostrovsky and his wife Lyubov Ivanovna.
1831 – Death of mother A.N. Ostrovsky.
1835 – Admission to the third grade of the 1st Moscow gymnasium.
1840 – Admission to the Faculty of Law of Moscow University.
assigned to serve in the Moscow Conscientious Court.
1847, February 14– Reading the play “The Picture of Family Happiness” by S.P. Shevyreva, first success.
1853, January 14– Premiere on the stage of the Maly Theater of the comedy “Don’t Get in Your Own Sleigh,” the first play by A. N. Ostrovsky staged in the theater.
1856 – Cooperation with the Sovremennik magazine.
1860, January– The play “The Thunderstorm” was first published in No. 1 of the “Library for Reading” magazine.
1865, March-April– The charter of the Moscow artistic circle was approved (A.N. Ostrovsky, V.F. Odoevsky, N.G. Rubinstein).
opening of the Artistic Circle.
1868, November– In issue No. 11 of the magazine “Otechestvennye zapiski” the comedy “Simplicity is Enough for Every Wise Man” was published.
1870, November– On the initiative of A. N. Ostrovsky, the Meeting of Russian Dramatic Writers was established in Moscow, which was later transformed into the Society of Russian Dramatic Writers and Opera Composers.
1874 – A. N. Ostrovsky was unanimously elected chairman of the Society of Russian Dramatic Writers and Opera Composers.
1879 – The drama “Dowry” was published in No. 5 of Otechestvennye Zapiski.
"Table talk about Pushkin."
1882, January– The comedy “Talents and Admirers” was published in No. 1 of Otechestvennye Zapiski.
1882, February– Honoring A. N. Ostrovsky on the occasion of the 35th anniversary of his creative activity.
1886, June 2– Death of A.N. Ostrovsky. He was buried in the cemetery in Nikolo-Berezhki near Shchelykovo.
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