“The Rakhmetovs are a different breed,” says Vera Pavlovna, “they merge with the common cause so that it is now a necessity for them, filling their lives; for them it even replaces their personal life.”
Novel by N. G. Chernyshevsky “What to do?” - a novel about new people, about their new life. This is an advanced, progressive-minded intelligentsia from commoners. These are people of action, and not of abstract dreams, they strive to win happiness for the people in the fight against the existing unjust social foundations. They love work, are ardently devoted to science, their moral ideals high. These people build their relationships on mutual trust and respect. They do not hesitate in the struggle, they do not give in to difficulties. The heroes of the novel fight for the ideal of a bright future, for a better life. Among them, the figure of a special person, Rakhmetov, stands out. Probably, wanting to more convincingly prove to his readers that Lopukhov, Kirsanov and Vera Pavlovna are really ordinary people, Chernyshevsky brings to the stage the titanic hero Rakhmetov, whom he himself recognizes as extraordinary and calls him a special person. Rakhmetov does not participate in the action of the novel. There are very few people like him: neither science nor family happiness satisfies them; they love all people, suffer from any injustice that occurs, experience great grief in their own souls - the pitiful existence of millions of people and devote themselves to healing this illness with all their fervor.
Rakhmetov became in the novel a true example of a comprehensive developed person who broke with his class and found his ideal, his goal in the life of the common people, in the struggle for their happiness. Critics wrote: "Even in the early student years the rigorism of a special person was formed, that is, habits were developed for stern, unyielding adherence to original principles in material, moral, and mental life." The path of an ordinary, good, kind and honest young man - student began with reading books, with the development of a new view for a living. He went through the school of political education from the common student Kirsanov. Rakhmetov took books for reading recommended by Kirsanov. bookstores. After immersing himself in such reading, he became stronger in the thought of the need for the fastest possible improvement of material and moral life the most numerous and poorest class.
Rakhmetov studies and does something in his homeland, and not abroad. He learns from Russian people engaged in everyday work. He needs, first of all, to know how financially constrained their lives are compared to his. own life. From the age of seventeen he became familiar with the harsh lifestyle of the common people. Initially, he became a laborer for several hours a day: he carried water, carried firewood, dug the earth, and forged iron. Rakhmetov finally gained the respect and love of ordinary people during his three-year wanderings around Russia, after he passed the entire Volga as a barge hauler. His comrades affectionately dubbed him Nikitushka Lomov.
Rakhmetov, through his harsh lifestyle, cultivated the physical endurance and spiritual fortitude necessary for future trials. Confidence in the correctness of his political ideals, the joy of fighting for the happiness of the people strengthened the spirit and strength of a fighter in him. Rakhmetov understood that the struggle for new world it will be life or death, and therefore he prepared himself for it in advance. It seems to me that it does not require much effort or special imagination to understand the general nature of Rakhmetov’s activities; he was constantly involved in other people’s affairs, he simply had no personal affairs, everyone knew that. Rakhmetov is involved in the affairs of other people, he seriously works for society. Rakhmetov generally had many distinctive features. For example, outside his circle, he only met people who had influence on others and had authority. And it was difficult to dismiss Rakhmetov if he decided to meet someone for the sake of business. And with unnecessary people he behaved simply rudely.
He performed unimaginable experiments on his body and scared to death his landlady, Agrafena Antonovna, who was renting out a room to him. He did not recognize love, suppressed this feeling in himself, did not want to allow love to tie him hand and foot. Rakhmetov abandoned love in the name of a great cause.
Yes, funny people, even funny... There are few of them, but with them the life of everyone around blossoms; without them it would have stalled, gone sour; There are few of them, but they give all people the opportunity to breathe, without them people would suffocate.
There are a great number of honest and kind people, but such obsessed people are few; but they are in it - tea for tea, a bouquet in noble wine; from them its strength and aroma; this is the color the best people, these are the engines of the engines, this is the salt of the earth.
"What to do?" N. G. Chernyshevsky- a work about the newly minted, contemporary writer, people, about their unusual life for that society. They were an advanced, progressively minded intelligentsia, emerging from commoners. These were real men of action, trying to win happiness for people in the battle against existing undeserved social foundations. They loved to work, were passionate and devoted to science, their moral ideals were noble and sublime. These people create personal relationships based on mutual trust and respect. The commoners have no doubts in the fight, do not shy away from difficulties, fight for the ideal of a clear and bright future, for best life. In their midst, the personality of the “special person” Rakhmetov clearly emerges. Surely, trying to convincingly prove to his readers that Lopukhov, Kirsanov and Vera Pavlovna are in fact ordinary, ordinary people, Chernyshevsky introduces the character of the titanic hero Rakhmetov, whom he himself considers outstanding and extraordinary personality and names an unusual person. Rakhmetov does not participate in the action of the novel. There are extremely few such people: they are not satisfied with either science or family happiness; they love all of humanity, suffer from every injustice that occurs, feel great grief in their own souls - the deplorable vegetation of millions of people, and devote themselves to recovery from this illness with all their ardor.
Rakhmetov became a true example of a comprehensively developed person who broke with his class and found his ideal, his goal in the life of the common people, in the struggle for their happiness. Critics wrote: “Even in the early student years, the rigorism of a special person was formed, that is, habits were developed for stern, unyielding adherence to original principles in material, moral, and mental life.” The path of an ordinary, good, kind and honest young student began with reading books, with developing a new outlook on life. He went through the school of political education with the common student Kirsanov. Rakhmetov bought reading books recommended by Kirsanov from bookstores. After reading such books, he became stronger in his thoughts about the need for a speedy improvement in the material and moral life of the largest and poorest class.
Rakhmetov studies and works in his homeland, and not abroad. He learns from Russian people engaged in everyday work. He needs, first of all, to know how financially constrained their life is compared to his own life. From the age of seventeen he became familiar with the harsh lifestyle of the common people. In his youth, he worked several hours a day as a laborer: he carried water, carried firewood, dug the earth, and forged iron. Rakhmetov finally gained the respect and love of ordinary people during his three-year wanderings around Russia, after he passed the entire Volga as a barge hauler. His comrades affectionately dubbed him Nikitushka Lomov.
Rakhmetov, through his harsh lifestyle, cultivated the physical endurance and spiritual fortitude necessary for future trials. Confidence in the correctness of his political ideals, the joy of fighting for the happiness of the people strengthened the spirit and strength of a fighter in him. Rakhmetov understood that the struggle for a new world would be life and death, and therefore he prepared himself for it in advance. It seems to me that it does not require much effort or special imagination to understand the general nature of Rakhmetov’s activities: he was constantly involved in other people’s affairs, he simply had no personal affairs, everyone knew that. Rakhmetov was involved in the affairs of other people, he seriously worked for society. He generally had a lot distinctive features. For example, outside his circle, he only met people who had influence on others and had authority. And it was difficult to dismiss Rakhmetov if he decided to meet someone for the sake of business. And with unnecessary people he behaved simply rudely.
Rakhmetov performed unimaginable experiments on his body and scared to death his landlady Agrafena Antonovna, who rented out a room to him. He did not recognize love, suppressed this feeling in himself, not wanting to allow love to tie him hand and foot. Rakhmetov abandoned love in the name of a great cause.
“Yes, funny people, even funny... There are few of them, but with them the life of everyone around them blossoms; without them it would die out, it would turn sour; there are few of them, but they give all people the opportunity to breathe, without them people would suffocate.”
The democratic writer Chernyshevsky, in the image of Rakhmetov, portrayed a revolutionary leader, a special person. The author wrote about such people: “This is the color of the best people, these are the engines of engines, this is the salt of the earth.”
However, time has revealed the inconsistency of socialist ideas. And in currently It becomes clear to us why the leaders of the October Revolution chose Rakhmetov as their ideal. They forged such qualities of character with which it was favorable for them to commit inhumane acts: they did not spare either themselves, much less others, carried out orders with the chilling, blind clarity of an unshakable engine, looked at dissenters like supermen at subhumans. As a result, Russia was drowned in blood, and global community was shocked by the savagery of the revolutionary acts.
Modern Russia is again on the path to a civilized future. And we can only dream that in this future of ours there will be fewer “special” people, and more ordinary and simple people: kind-hearted, smiling, cheerful, living their own personal lives. I would like this to be reflected in reality.
The main positive image of Chernyshevsky’s novel “What is to be done?” - Rakhmetov (Nikitushka Lomov). He is the focus of a certain positive program of Chernyshevsky, the embodiment of the author's ethical and aesthetic ideals. But, of course, the content of this image is not exhausted by either this program or these ideals. Chernyshevsky understood that the people themselves, the peasantry itself, did not have the conditions for developing revolutionary consciousness. And, from this point of view, the image of Rakhmetov is an attempt to artistically resolve the issue that worried Chernyshevsky all his life. It is in affirming the desire for unity with the people that the meaning and content of this image lies. Rakhmetov himself was proud of his closeness to the people. mental shock She forgot about her workshops for a minute, Rakhmetov says that because of this, the business could suffer, a business that, ultimately, is needed by the people. “This, Vera Pavlovna,” continues Rakhmetov, “is what in church language is called a sin against the Holy Spirit, a sin about which it is said that every other sin can be forgiven to a person, but this one - in no way, never.” In the scene of the conversation with Vera Pavlovna, Rakhmetov performs a double “mission”, Vera Pavlovna is calmed down, everything begins to fall within the framework of “ordinary” life, but the hero is concerned about the condition of her servant Masha: - Are you calm now, Vera Pavlovna? - Yeah almost. - Fine. Do you think Masha is sleeping? Do you need her for anything now?- Of course not. - But you have already calmed down; therefore, you could already remember that you need to tell her to sleep, it’s already the first hour, but she gets up early in the morning.”
The image of Rakhmetov in Chernyshevsky’s novel What to do
The true hero of his era, before whom Chernyshevsky “bows”, is Rakhmetov, a revolutionary with his fiery love for all that is good. At the beginning of the novel, the image of Rakhmetov and the whole innocent, elevated atmosphere of respect and recognition that surrounds this hero appear before us. All this undoubtedly indicates that the central theme of the novel is not the depiction of love and new family relations“ordinary decent people”, but in glorifying all the unbridled revolutionary energy and feat ordinary person, Rakhmetova. The title of the novel “What is to be done?” is directly related to the image of Rakhmetov.
It is noteworthy that in the “Notes” of the third section, containing evaluations of magazines of the 60s, this famous passage in the novel was quoted in full from Sovremennik, word for word. The anonymous author of “Notes” testified to the “enthusiastic” reception given by readers to the novel “What is to be done?” He was bitterly annoyed that Chernyshevsky’s followers, “our nihilists, have formed such a dense and autocratic corporation that they act in literary world completely despotic."
No one else before Chernyshevsky in Russian, and indeed in the world fiction did not say such poetically soulful words about a revolutionary, about a socialist. In the final chapter of the novel, “A Change of Scenery,” confidence is expressed in the proximity of a revolutionary coup. With all his being, the disgraced author of “What is to be done?” waited for the revolution in Russia, welcomed it, glorified its leaders.
With the feeling of a great realist artist and thinker, Chernyshevsky understood that only a relief image would most fully express the essence of the Russian revolutionary - then still “a specimen ... of a rare breed” - and would have a strong educational impact on the reader. According to the terminology of the author of “What is to be done?”, he painted the Rakhmetovs as “funny.”
“There was a lot of funny things in them,” wrote Chernyshevsky, “everything that was important about them was funny, everything was why they were people of a special breed.” Chernyshevsky, who was under judicial investigation, was forced to often resort to Aesopian language, most of all on those pages where he wrote about Rakhmetov. The word “revolutionary” is replaced here by the concepts “rigorist”, “ special person", "highest nature". Revolutionary activities- “deed”, revolutionary beliefs and views - “original principles in material, moral, and mental life.” Revolutionary propaganda - “Rakhmetov’s fiery speeches, of course, are not about love”; tsarism, the landowner system - “circumstances”, “the old order”, “that which must perish.” Socialism - “golden age”, “new order”, “what must live”, etc.
With the subtlest hints, the author made it clear that his hero was carrying out revolutionary work. Having reported that Rakhmetov has an abyss of “cases that did not concern him personally,” Chernyshevsky concludes the story with words from which it becomes clear what dangerous secret activities his hero indulges in: “But often he was not at home for several days. Then, instead of him, one of his friends sat with him and received visitors, devoted to him in soul and body and silent as the grave.”
Surrounded by these and similar hints that reveal the political face of Rakhmetov as a revolutionary and socialist, Chernyshevsky extremely pointedly and emphatically highlights the main aspects of his character and the unusualness of his life biography.
Rakhmetov is a descendant of the most ancient aristocratic family, the son of a wealthy ultra-conservative landowner. Protesting thoughts began to wander in the young man’s head while still in the house of his despot father, who caused a lot of evil and grief to his mother, his beloved girl, and the serfs. During his student years, Rakhmetov became friends with Kirsanov, and “his transformation into a special person began.”
Already this extraordinary biography of Rakhmetov (a healthy ear on a tiny piece of rotten noble swamp) declares the powerful conquering power of new revolutionary ideas. At the same time, the writer was not fantasizing, he knew, and his readers knew, that revolutionaries - people from the nobility - are not an exceptional phenomenon in Russian history (Radishchev, the Decembrists, many of the Petrashevists, Ogarev, Herzen, etc.).
The figure of Rakhmetov testified to how far the process of decay had gone within the old society, within the ruling class, if honest, healthy people renounce it and join the people and the revolution. Rakhmetov hardens himself with physical work, leads the most severe lifestyle, to match to the common people. Moreover, Rakhmetov does not observe the everyday life of the people from the outside. Chernyshevsky's hero himself works as a plowman, carpenter, carrier, and barge hauler. Rakhmetov is proud that his comrades in the strap dubbed him Nikitushka Lomov, a glorious and dear name for the common people of the Volga barge hauler-hero. The democratism of the revolutionary, which brought him the trust, respect and love of ordinary people, is presented in such an unusually salient, pointed way in the novel.
To emphasize Rakhmetov’s deep devotion to the revolutionary cause, Chernyshevsky deliberately exaggerates the Spartan, ascetic principles in the behavior of his hero. The nature is ebullient, lively, passionate, Rakhmetov refuses love, life’s pleasures. “We demand complete enjoyment of life for people,” he says, “we must testify with our lives that we demand this not to satisfy our personal passions, not for ourselves personally, but for man in general.”
Your readiness to withstand the most severe trials, any suffering, even torture in the name of revolutionary convictions, Rakhmetov tests by the fact that one day he calmly lays down on felt, studded with nails, and, bloodied, spends the whole night. "Try. It’s necessary... - says Rakhmetov, - just in case it’s necessary. I see I can.”
Rakhmetov is not only a stern person, but also taciturn, “phenomenally rude,” “terribly harsh,” but, in essence, he is delicate, sweet, cheerful, gentle and a kind person. Harmful “circumstances” do not allow him to forget “his melancholy thoughts, his burning sorrow,” and he rarely jokes, more often he looks like a “gloomy monster.” Honest people are not offended by his harshness. They love him, they believe him. The writer admires his “funny” hero.
The role of Rakhmetov captures the most significant aspects of the character of the type of revolutionary emerging in Russia, with his unyielding will to fight, high moral nobility, and boundless devotion to the people and homeland. The fierce public struggle around “What is to be done?”, around the images of “new people” created by Chernyshevsky, the embittered attacks of enemies on the author of this revolutionary novel and the sincere gratitude of adherents and allies, in turn, clearly reveal a political creature like the hero - Rakhmetov.
Here genuine person, which Russia especially needs now, take his example and, whoever is able and able, follow his path, for this is the only path for you that can lead to the desired goal.
N.G. Chernyshevsky.
How actor Rakhmetov appears in the chapter "A Special Person". In other chapters his name is only mentioned. But it is felt that the image is placed in the center of the reader’s attention, that Rakhmetov is the main character of the novel “What is to be done?” The chapter “A Special Person” forms, as it were, a small independent story in a novel, the idea of which would not be complete and understandable without it.
When talking about Rakhmetov, Chernyshevsky deliberately shifts the temporal order of facts, and does not give a definitely consistent description and biography. He uses hints and innuendo, interweaving what was “known” about him with what was “found out” later. Therefore, every stroke of the biography is of fundamental importance. For example, origin. Indeed, why does the commoner Chernyshevsky make the main character of a socio-political novel a nobleman whose pedigree goes back centuries? Perhaps, according to the writer, the image of a revolutionary nobleman made the idea of revolution more convincing and attractive. Since the best representatives of the nobility renounce their privileges to live at the expense of the people, it means that a crisis is ripe.
Rakhmetov's rebirth began in his early youth. His family was obviously a serf family. This is indicated by the terse phrase: “Yes, and he saw that it was in the village.” Observing the cruelty of serfdom, the young man began to think about justice.
“Thoughts began to wander in him, and Kirsanov was for him what Lopukhov was for Vera Pavlovna.” On the very first evening, he “listened greedily” to Kirsanov, “interrupted his words with exclamations and curses on what should perish, blessings on what should live.”
Rakhmetov differs from Lopukhov and Kirsanov not only in his aristocratic pedigree, but also in his exceptional strength of character, which is manifested in the constant hardening of body and spirit, but especially in his absorption in the matter of preparing for the revolutionary struggle. This is a man of ideas in a high sense words.
For Rakhmetov, the dream of revolution is a guide to action, a guideline for all personal life.
Rakhmetov’s desire for rapprochement with ordinary people. This is evident from his travels around Russia, physical labor, and severe self-restraint in his personal life. The people nicknamed Rakhmetov Nikitushka Lomov, thereby expressing their love for him. Unlike the commoner Bazarov, who spoke condescendingly to the “thick-bearded” men, the nobleman Rakhmetov does not look at the people as a mass to be studied. For him, people are worthy of respect. He is trying to experience at least part of the weight that hangs on the peasant's shoulders.
Chernyshevsky shows Rakhmetov as a person of a “very rare”, “special breed”, but at the same time as a typical person, belonging to a new social group, albeit a small one. The writer endowed the “special person” with severe demands on himself and others and even a gloomy appearance.
Vera Pavlovna at first finds him “very boring.” “Lopukhov and Kirsanov, and everyone who was not afraid of anyone or anything, felt at times a certain cowardice in front of him... except for Masha and those who were equal to her or superior to her in the simplicity of their soul and dress.”
But Vera Pavlovna, having gotten to know Rakhmetov better, says about him: “...what a gentle and kind person he is.”
Rakhmetovrigorist, that is, a person who never deviates from anything accepted rules behavior. He prepares himself for the revolutionary struggle both morally and physically. Having slept the night on the nails, he explains his action, smiling broadly and joyfully: “A test. It’s necessary. Implausible, of course: however, it’s necessary just in case. I see, I can.” This is probably how Chernyshevsky saw the leader of the revolutionaries. To the question: “What to do?” Nikolai Gavrilovich answers with the image of Rakhmetov and the words placed in the epigraph. The figure of this rigorist had a huge influence on subsequent generations of Russian and foreign revolutionaries. This is evidenced by the confessions of these people that “Rakhmetov, in particular, was their favorite.”
I like Rakhmetov. He has the qualities that Bazarov lacks. I admire his tenacity, will, endurance, ability to subordinate his life to his chosen ideal, courage, strength. I want to be at least a little like Rakhmetov.
