Essay “Ostrovsky Theater. Ostrovsky's role in the creation of the national repertoire

(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 censorship, the theatrical and literary committee and the management 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 life home country, constantly communicating with the people, closely connecting 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 literary figures about the appearance and triumph of Russian characters on the domestic 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 in total in the folk theater he created there are about a thousand characters.

Shortly before his death, in 1886, Alexander Nikolaevich received a letter from 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.

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.

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

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 out of nowhere. 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, as if time will pass our dramatic literature." 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 a people’s writer,” he writes, “love for the homeland is not enough... you need to know your people well, get along with them, 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 “The 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 his 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. His bureaucracy does not act as 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, typical representatives of their social environment, which is shared by their ordinary everyday life, all its prejudices.

a) In the play “Our People – We Will Be Numbered,” Ostrovsky creates a typical biography of a merchant, talks about how capital is 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 Marya Andreevna's hand, 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, and 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, a new stage in Ostrovsky’s work began.

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).

A new hero also came into Ostrovsky’s play - a young official, Zhadov, who had 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 my 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,” which posed complex questions of 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 collision of the freedom-loving Katerina with the terrible world of 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 power of her feelings, consciousness 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 seemingly completely opposite dominants of the main character’s character, were never able to fully exhaust all of them. various 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, its 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 the 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. From the French point of view, the construction of the “Thunderstorm” is ugly, and 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 to understanding 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 also takes on a 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-idea, 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.

Orientation towards a healthy natural beginning became in the 50s and 60s 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 great place the hero or heroine begins to struggle with himself, with his own feelings, mistakes, assumptions.

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 vainglorious 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 banning of 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 accident. 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 the folk farce, that has the ability to directly and strongly influence the souls of people. Two and a half decades later, Alexander Blok, speaking about poetry, will write that its essence lies in the main, “walking” truths, in the ability to convey them to the 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, the position of theater in Russia, 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, the image becomes grotesque, while Ostrovsky gives an objective picture of life, his " dark kingdom“not hopeless - it was not in vain that N. Dobrolyubov wrote about the “ray of light.”

This feature of Ostrovsky was noted by critics even when his first plays appeared. “...The ability to 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 Gogol does not have a 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 an actor, 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. Before us are all the signs of 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 complex 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 craftsman. 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, 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.

Page 1 of 2

Life and work of A.N. Ostrovsky

The role of Ostrovsky in the history of the development of Russian drama 4

Life and work of A.N. Ostrovsky 5

Childhood and teenage years 5

First passion for theater 6

Training and service 7

First hobby. First plays 7

Disagreement with father. Ostrovsky's wedding 9

The beginning of a creative journey 10

Travel around Russia 12

“Thunderstorm” 14

Ostrovsky's second marriage 17

Ostrovsky’s best work is “Dowry” 19

Death of a Great Playwright 21

Genre originality of dramaturgy by A.N. Ostrovsky. Significance in world literature 22

Literature 24

The role of Ostrovsky in the history of the development of Russian drama

Alexander Nikolaevich Ostrovsky... This is an unusual phenomenon. His role in the history of the development of Russian drama, performing arts and the entire national culture can hardly be overestimated. He did as much for the development of Russian drama as Shakespeare in England, Lone de Vega in Spain, Moliere in France, Goldoni in Italy and Schiller in Germany.

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 the mind 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 in total there are about a thousand characters in the folk theater he created.

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.”

Life and work of A.N. Ostrovsky

Childhood and adolescence

Alexander Nikolaevich Ostrovsky was born in Moscow into a cultured, bureaucratic family on April 12 (March 31, old style) 1823. The family's roots were in the clergy: the father was the son of a priest, the mother the daughter of a sexton. Moreover, my father, Nikolai Fedorovich, himself graduated from the Moscow Theological Academy. But he preferred the career of an official to the profession of a clergyman and succeeded in it, as he achieved material independence, a position in society, and a noble title. This was not a dry official, confined only to his service, but a widely educated person, as evidenced by his passion for books - the Ostrovskys’ home library was very respectable, which, by the way, played an important role in the self-education of the future playwright.

The family lived in those wonderful places in Moscow, which were then accurately reflected in Ostrovsky’s plays - first in Zamoskvorechye, at the Serpukhov Gate, in a house on Zhitnaya, bought by the late father Nikolai Fedorovich at a cheap price, at auction. The house was warm, spacious, with a mezzanine, outbuildings, an outbuilding that was rented out to residents, and a shady garden. In 1831, grief befell the family - after giving birth to twin girls, Lyubov Ivanovna died (in total she gave birth to eleven children, but only four survived). The arrival of a new person in the family (Nikolai Fedorovich married the Lutheran Baroness Emilia von Tessin for his second marriage), naturally, introduced some innovations of a European nature into the house, which, however, benefited the children; the stepmother was more caring, helped the children in learning music, languages, formed a social circle. At first, both brothers and sister Natalya avoided the new mother. But Emilia Andreevna, good-natured, calm in character, attracted their children’s hearts with her care and love for the remaining orphans, slowly achieving the replacement of the nickname “dear auntie” with “dear mummy.”

Now everything has become different for the Ostrovskys. Emilia Andreevna patiently taught Natasha and the boys music, French and German, which she knew perfectly, decent manners, and how to behave in society. They started up in a house on Zhitnaya musical evenings, even dancing to the piano. Nannies and nurses for newborn babies, and a governess appeared here. And now they ate at the Ostrovskys, as they say, like a nobleman: on porcelain and silver, with starched napkins.

Nikolai Fedorovich liked all this very much. And having received hereditary nobility based on the rank achieved in the service, whereas previously he was considered “of the clergy,” daddy grew cutlet sideburns for himself and now received merchants only in his office, sitting at a large table littered with papers and plump volumes from the code of laws of the Russian Empire.

First passion for theater

Everything made Alexander Ostrovsky happy then, everything occupied him: cheerful parties; and conversations with friends; and books from daddy’s extensive library, where, first of all, they read, of course, Pushkin, Gogol, Belinsky’s articles and various comedies, dramas, and tragedies in magazines and almanacs; and, of course, the theater with Mochalov and Shchepkin at the head.

Everything in the theater delighted Ostrovsky at that time: not only the plays, the acting, but even the impatient, nervous noise of the audience before the start of the performance, the sparkle of oil lamps and candles. a wonderfully painted curtain, the very air of the theater hall - warm, fragrant, saturated with the smell of powder, makeup and strong perfume that was sprayed into the foyer and corridors.

It was here, in the theater, in the gallery, that he met one remarkable young man, Dmitry Tarasenkov, one of the newfangled merchant sons who passionately loved theatrical performances.

He was not small in stature, a broad-chested, dense young man, five or six years older than Ostrovsky, with blond hair cut in a circle, with a sharp look of small gray eyes and a loud, truly deaconal voice. His powerful cry of “bravo,” with which he greeted and escorted the famous Mochalov from the stage, easily drowned out the applause of the stalls, boxes and balconies. In his black merchant's jacket and blue Russian shirt with a slanted collar, in chrome accordion boots, he strikingly resembled the good fellow of old peasant fairy tales.

They left the theater together. It turned out that both live not far from each other: Ostrovsky - on Zhitnaya, Tarasenkov - in Monetchiki. It also turned out that both of them were composing plays for the theater based on the life of the merchant class. Only Ostrovsky is still just trying it out and sketching comedies in prose, and Tarasenkov writes five-act poetic dramas. And finally, it turned out, thirdly, that both dads - Tarasenkov and Ostrovsky - are resolutely against such hobbies, considering them empty self-indulgence that distracts their sons from serious activities.

However, father Ostrovsky did not touch his son’s stories or comedies, while the second guild merchant Andrei Tarasenkov not only burned all of Dmitry’s writings in the stove, but invariably rewarded his son for them with fierce blows of a stick.

From that first meeting at the theater, Dmitry Tarasenkov began to visit Zhitnaya Street more and more often, and with the Ostrovskys moving to another of their properties - to Vorobino, which is on the banks of the Yauza, near the Silver Baths.

There, in the quiet of the garden gazebo, overgrown with hops and dodder, they used to read together for a long time not only modern Russian and foreign plays, but also tragedies and dramatic satires by ancient Russian authors...

“My great dream is to become an actor,” Dmitry Tarasenkov once said to Ostrovsky, “and this time has come - to finally give my heart completely to theater and tragedy. I dare it. I must. And you, Alexander Nikolaevich, will either soon hear something wonderful about me, or you will mourn my early death. I don’t want to live the way I lived until now, sir. Away with everything vain, everything base! Farewell! Today at night I leave my native land, I leave this wild kingdom into an unknown world, to sacred art, to my favorite theater, to the stage. Goodbye, friend, let’s kiss on the way!”

Then, a year later, two years later, remembering this farewell in the garden, Ostrovsky caught himself with a strange feeling of some kind of awkwardness. Because, in essence, there was something in those seemingly sweet farewell words of Tarasenkov that was not so much false, no, but as if invented, not entirely natural, or something, similar to that pompous, sonorous and strange declamation with which dramatic works are filled our noted geniuses. like Nestor Kukolnik or Nikolai Polevoy.

Training and service

Alexander Ostrovsky received his primary education at the First Moscow Gymnasium, entering the third grade in 1835 and completing the course with honors in 1840.

After graduating from high school, at the insistence of his father, a wise and practical man, Alexander immediately entered Moscow University, the Faculty of Law, although he himself wanted to engage primarily in literary work. After studying for two years, Ostrovsky left the university, having quarreled with Professor Nikita Krylov, but the time spent within its walls was not wasted, because it was used not only for studying the theory of law, but also for self-education, for the hobbies characteristic of students in social life, for communication with teachers. Suffice it to say that K. Ushinsky became his closest student friend; he often visited the theater with A. Pisemsky. And the lectures were given by P.G. Redkin, T.N. Granovsky, D.L. Kryukov... Moreover, it was at this time that the name of Belinsky thundered, whose articles in “Notes of the Fatherland” were read not only by students. Fascinated by the theater and knowing the entire current repertoire, Ostrovsky all this time independently re-read such classics of drama as Gogol, Corneille, Racine, Shakespeare, Schiller, Voltaire. After leaving the university, Alexander Nikolaevich in 1843 decided to serve in the Conscientious Court. This happened again at the firm insistence with the participation of the father, who wanted a legal, respected and profitable career for his son. This also explains the transition in 1845 from the Conscience Court (where cases were decided “according to conscience”) to the Moscow Commercial Court: here the service - for four rubles a month - lasted five years, until January 10, 1851.

Having heard and watched his fill in court, the clerical servant Alexander Ostrovsky returned every day from public service from one end of Moscow to the other - from Voskresenskaya Square or Mokhovaya Street to Yauza, to his Vorobino.

A blizzard was crushing him in his head. Then the characters of the stories and comedies he invented made noise, cursed and cursed each other - merchants and merchants' wives, mischievous fellows from the shopping arcades, resourceful matchmakers, clerks, merchants' rich daughters, or judge's solicitors who were ready to do anything for a stack of rainbow banknotes... To this unknown country , called Zamoskvorechye, where those characters lived, only lightly touched once the great Gogol in “Marriage,” and he, Ostrovsky, may be destined to tell everything about it thoroughly, in detail... And, really, such fresh stories are spinning in his head! What fierce bearded faces loom before your eyes! What a rich and new language in literature!

Having reached the house on Yauza and kissed mom and dad’s hand, he sat down impatiently at the dinner table and ate what he was supposed to. And then he quickly went up to the second floor, into his cramped cell with a bed, table and chair, to sketch out two or three scenes for his long-planned play “Petition of Claim” (that’s how Ostrovsky’s first play “Picture of a Family” was originally called in drafts). happiness").

First hobby. First plays

Was already late fall 1846. City gardens and groves near Moscow turned yellow and flew away. The sky was frowning. But it still didn’t rain. It was dry and quiet. He walked slowly from Mokhovaya along his favorite Moscow streets, enjoying the autumn air, filled with the smell of fallen leaves, the rustle of carriages rushing past, the noise around the Iverskaya Chapel of a crowd of pilgrims, beggars, holy fools, wanderers, wandering monks collecting alms “for the splendor of the temple,” priests, for certain misdeeds of those removed from the parish and now “staggering around the courtyard”, peddlers of hot sbiten and other goods, dashing fellows from trading shops in Nikolskaya...

Having finally reached the Ilyinsky Gate, he jumped onto a passing carriage and, for three kopecks, drove it for some time, and then again walked with a cheerful heart towards his Nikolovorobinsky lane.

That youth and hopes that had not yet been offended by anything, and that faith in friendship that had not yet been deceived, gladdened his heart. And the first hot love. This girl was a simple Kolomna bourgeois, a seamstress, a needlewoman. And they called her by a simple, sweet Russian name - Agafya.

Back in the summer, they met at a party in Sokolniki, at a theater booth. And from that time on, Agafya began to frequent the white-stone capital (not only on her own and her sister Natalya’s business), and now she’s thinking of leaving Kolomna to settle in Moscow, not far from her dear friend Sashenka, with Nikola in Vorobino.

The sexton had already struck four o'clock in the bell tower when Ostrovsky finally approached his father's spacious house near the church.

In the garden, in a wooden gazebo woven with already dried hops, Ostrovsky saw, from the gate, brother Misha, a law student, having an animated conversation with someone.

Apparently, Misha was waiting for him, and having noticed him, he immediately notified his interlocutor about it. He impulsively turned around and, smiling, greeted the “friend of infancy” with a classic wave of the hand of a theater character leaving the stage at the end of the monologue.

This was the merchant son Tarasenkov, and now the tragic actor Dmitry Gorev, who played in theaters everywhere, from Novgorod to Novorossiysk (and not without success) in classical dramas, melodramas, even in the tragedies of Schiller and Shakespeare.

They hugged...

Ostrovsky spoke about his new idea, a multi-act comedy called “Bankrupt” and Tarasenkov suggested working together.

Ostrovsky thought about it. Until now, he wrote everything - both his story and comedy - alone, without comrades. However, where are the grounds, where is the reason to refuse this dear person’s cooperation? He is an actor, playwright, knows and loves literature very well, and just like Ostrovsky himself, he hates lies and all kinds of tyranny...

At first, of course, some things didn’t go well; disputes and disagreements arose. For some reason, Dmitry Andreevich, and for example, at all costs wanted to slip into the comedy another groom for Mamzel Lipochka - Nagrevalnikov. And Ostrovsky had to expend a lot of nerves in order to convince Tarasenkov of the complete uselessness of this worthless character. And how many catchy, obscure or simply unknown words Gorev threw out to the characters in the comedy - for example, the same merchant Bolshov, or his stupid wife Agrafena Kondratievna, or the matchmaker, or the daughter of the merchant Olympias!

And, of course, Dmitry Andreevich could not come to terms with Ostrovsky’s habit of writing a play not at all from the beginning, not from its first scene, but as if randomly - first one thing, then another, now from the first, then from the third, say, act.

The whole point here was that Alexander Nikolaevich had been thinking about the play for so long, he knew and now saw it all in such minute detail that it was not difficult for him to snatch out of it that particular part that seemed to him to be more salient than all the others.

In the end, this too worked out. Having argued a little among themselves, they decided to start writing the comedy in the usual way - from the first act... Gorev and Ostrovsky worked for four evenings. Alexander Nikolaevich dictated more and more, walking around his small cell back and forth, and Dmitry Andreevich wrote down.

However, of course, Gorev sometimes made very sensible remarks, grinning, or suddenly suggested some really funny, incongruous, but juicy, truly merchant word. So they together wrote four small phenomena of the first act, and that was the end of their collaboration.

Ostrovsky’s first works were “The Tale of How the Quarterly Warden Started to Dance, or There’s Only One Step from the Great to the Ridiculous” and “Notes of a Zamoskvoretsky Resident.” However, both Alexander Nikolaevich and researchers of his work consider the play “The Picture of Family Happiness” to be the true beginning of his creative biography. Ostrovsky will remember this about her towards the end of his life: “The most memorable day for me in my life: February 14, 1847. From that day on, I began to consider myself a Russian writer and, without doubt or hesitation, believed in my calling.”

Yes, indeed, on this day the critic Apollon Grigoriev brought his young friend to the house of Professor S.P. Shevyrev, who was supposed to read his play to the audience. He read well, talentedly, and the intrigue was captivating, so the first performance was a success. However, despite the richness of the work and the good reviews, this was just a test of one’s own.

Disagreement with father. Ostrovsky's wedding

Meanwhile, daddy Nikolai Fedorovich, having acquired four estates in various Volga provinces, finally looked favorably at Emilia Andreevna’s tireless request: he quit his service in the courts, his legal practice and decided to move with his entire family for permanent residence to one of these estates - the village of Shchelykovo.

It was then, while waiting for the carriage, that Papa Ostrovsky called into the already empty office and, sitting down on a soft chair abandoned as unnecessary, said:

For a long time I wanted, Alexander, for a long time I wanted to preface you, or simply to finally express my displeasure to you. You dropped out of university; you serve in court without proper zeal; God knows who you know - clerks, innkeepers, townsfolk, other petty riffraff, not to mention all sorts of gentlemen feuilletonists... Actresses, actors - even so, although your writings do not console me at all: there is a lot of trouble, I see , but it’s of little use!.. This, however, is your business. - not a baby! But think for yourself, what manners you learned there, habits, words, expressions! After all, you do what you want, and from the nobles and son, I dare to think, a respectable lawyer - then remember... Of course, Emilia Andreevna, due to her delicacy, did not make a single reproach to you - it seems, right? And he won't. Nevertheless, your, to put it bluntly, manly manners and these acquaintances offend her!.. That’s the first point. And the second point is this. I have heard from many that you have started an affair with some bourgeois seamstress, and her name is something... too Russian - Agafya. What a name, have mercy! However, that’s not the point... What’s worse is that she lives next door, and, apparently, not without your consent, Alexander... So, remember: if you don’t leave all this, or, God forbid, If you get married, or just bring that Agafya to you, then live as you yourself know, but you won’t get a penny from me, I’ll stop everything once and for all... I don’t expect an answer, and keep quiet! What is said by me is said. You can go get ready... However, wait, there’s one more thing. As soon as we left, I ordered the janitor to transport all your and Mikhail’s things and some of the furniture you needed to our other house, under the mountain. You will live there as soon as you return from Shchelykov, on the mezzanine. You've had enough. And Sergei will live with us for now... Go!

Ostrovsky cannot and will never leave Agafya... Of course, it will not be sweet for him without his father’s support, but there is nothing to do...

Soon he and Agafya were left completely alone in this small house on the banks of the Yauza, near the Silver Baths. Because, not looking at daddy’s anger, in the end Ostrovsky finally transported “that Agafya” and all her simple belongings to his mezzanine. And brother Misha, having decided to serve in the State Control Department, immediately left first for Simbirsk, then for St. Petersburg.

My father’s house was quite small, with five windows along the façade, and for warmth and decency, it was covered with planks, painted dark brown. And the house nestled at the very foot of the mountain, which rose steeply through its narrow lane to the Church of St. Nicholas, high on its top.

From the street, the house seemed to be one-story, but behind the gate, in the courtyard, there was also a second floor (in other words, a mezzanine with three rooms), looking out onto the neighboring courtyard and onto the vacant lot with the Silver Baths on the river bank.

The beginning of a creative journey

Almost a whole year has passed since dad and his family moved to the village of Shchelykovo. And although Ostrovsky was often tormented by offensive need, yet his three small rooms greeted him with sunshine and joy, and from afar he heard, as he climbed the dark, narrow stairs to the second floor, a quiet, glorious Russian song, of which his fair-haired, vociferous Ganya knew many . And in this particular year, when necessary, delayed by service and daily newspaper work, alarmed, like everyone around after the Petrashevsky case, by sudden arrests, and the arbitrariness of censorship, and the “flies” buzzing around writers , It was in this difficult year that he finished the comedy “Bankrupt” (“Bankrupt” (“Our people - we will be numbered”), which had been difficult for him for so long).

This play, completed in the winter of 1849, was read by the author in many houses: at A.F. Pisemsky, M.N. Katkov, then at M.P. Pogodin, where Mei, Shchepkin, Rastopchina, Sadovsky were present, and where specially so that Gogol came to listen to “Bankrupt” for the second time (and then came to listen again - this time to the house of E. P. Rastopchina).

The performance of the play in Pogodin's house had far-reaching consequences: “Our people - we will be numbered” appears. in the sixth issue of “Moskvityanin” for 1850, and since then once a year the playwright publishes his plays in this magazine and participates in the work of the editorial board until the closure of the publication in 1856. Further printing of the play was prohibited; Nikolai I’s handwritten resolution read: “It was printed in vain, it is forbidden to play.” The same play served as the reason for secret police surveillance of the playwright. And she (as well as her very participation in the work of “Moskvityanin”) made him the center of controversy between Slavophiles and Westerners. The author had to wait many decades for this play to be staged on stage: in its original form, without censorship interference, it appeared at the Moscow Pushkin Theater only on April 30, 1881.

The period of cooperation with Pogodin’s “Moskvityanin” was both intense and difficult for Ostrovsky. At this time he wrote: in 1852 - “Don’t get into your own sleigh”, in 1853 - “Poverty is not a vice”, in 1854 - “Don’t live as you want” - plays of the Slavophile direction, which , despite conflicting reviews, everyone wanted a new hero for the domestic theater. Thus, the premiere of “Don’t Get in Your Own Sleigh” on January 14, 1853 at the Maly Theater aroused delight among the public, not least thanks to the language and characters, especially against the backdrop of the rather monotonous and meager repertoire of that time (the works of Griboedov, Gogol, Fonvizin were given extremely rarely; for example, “The Inspector General” was shown only three times throughout the entire season). A Russian folk character appeared on the stage, a person whose problems are close and understandable. As a result, Kukolnik’s “Prince Skopin-Shuisky,” which had previously made noise, was performed once in the 1854/55 season, and “Poverty is not a vice” - 13 times. In addition, they played in performances by Nikulina-Kositskaya, Sadovsky, Shchepkin, Martynov...

What is the difficulty of this period? In the struggle that unfolded around Ostrovsky, and in his revision of some of his beliefs.” In 1853, he wrote to Pogodin about the revision of his views on creativity: “I would not want to bother about the first comedy (“Our own people - we will be numbered”) because : 1) that I don’t want to make myself not only enemies, but even displeasure; 2) that my direction begins to change; 3) that the view of life in my first comedy seems to me young and too harsh; 4) that it is better for a Russian person to be happy when he sees himself on stage than to be sad. Correctors will be found even without us. In order to have the right to correct the people without offending, you need to show them that you know the good in them; This is what I am doing now, combining the sublime with the comic. The first sample was “Sleigh”, I’m finishing the second one.”

Not everyone was happy with this. And if Apollon Grigoriev believed that the playwright in the new plays “strove to give not a satire on tyranny, but a poetic depiction of the whole world with very diverse beginnings and ruins,” then Chernyshevsky held a sharply opposite opinion, inclining Ostrovsky to his side: “In the last two works Mr. Ostrovsky fell into a sugary embellishment of what cannot and should not be embellished. The works came out weak and false”; and immediately gave recommendations: they say that the playwright, “having damaged his literary reputation by this, has not yet ruined his wonderful talent: it can still appear fresh and strong if Mr. Ostrovsky leaves that muddy path that led him to “Poverty.” not a vice."

At the same time, vile gossip spread across Moscow that “Bankrupt” or “Our People, Let’s Be Numbered” was not Ostrovsky’s play at all, but, to put it simply, it was stolen by him from the actor Tarasenkov-Gorev. They say that he, Ostrovsky, is nothing more than a literary thief, which means he is a swindler among swindlers, a man without honor and conscience! The actor Gorev is an unfortunate victim of his trusting, noblest friendship...

Three years ago, when these rumors began to spread, Alexander Nikolaevich still believed in the high, honest convictions of Dmitry Tarasenkov, in his decency, in his incorruptibility. Because a man who so selflessly loved the theater, who read Shakespeare and Schiller with such excitement, this actor by vocation, this Hamlet, Othello, Ferdinand, Baron Mainau, could not even partially support those gossip poisoned by malice. But Gorev, however, remained silent. Rumors crawled and crawled, rumors spread, spread, but Gorev remained silent and silent... Ostrovsky then wrote a friendly letter to Gorev, asking him to finally appear in print in order to put an end to these vile gossip at once.

Alas! There was neither honor nor conscience in the soul of the drunkard actor Tarasenkov-Gorev. In his answer, full of insidiousness, he not only admitted himself to be the author of the famous comedy “Our People - We Will Be Numbered,” but at the same time hinted at some other plays that he allegedly transferred to Ostrovsky for safekeeping six or seven years ago. So now it turned out that all of Ostrovsky’s works - with perhaps a few exceptions - were stolen by him or copied from the actor and playwright Tarasenkov-Gorev.

He didn’t answer Tarasenkov, but found the strength to sit down again and work on his next comedy. Because at that time he considered all the new plays he was writing to be the best refutation of Gorev’s slander.

And in 1856 Tarasenkov emerged from oblivion again, and all these Pravdovs, Alexandrovichs, Vl. Zotov, “N. A." and others like them again rushed at him, at Ostrovsky, with the same abuse and with the same passion.

And Gorev, of course, was not the Instigator. Here the dark force that once persecuted Fonvizin and Griboyedov, Pushkin and Gogol, and now persecutes Nekrasov and Saltykov-Shchedrin, rose up against him.

He feels it, he understands. And that is why he wants to write his response to the libelous note of the Moscow police leaflet.

Now he calmly outlined the history of his creation of the comedy “Our People - We Will Be Numbered” and the insignificant participation of Dmitry Gorev-Tarasenkov in it, which was long ago certified by him, Alexander Ostrovsky.

“Gentlemen, feuilletonists,” he finished his answer with icy calm, “are carried away by their unbridledness to the point that they forget not only the laws of decency, but also those laws in our fatherland that protect the personality and property of everyone. Don’t think, gentlemen, that a writer who honestly serves the literary cause will allow you to play with his name with impunity!” And in the signature, Alexander Nikolaevich identified himself as the author of all nine plays that he has written so far and have long been known to the reading public, including the comedy “Our People - We Will Be Numbered.”

But, of course, the name of Ostrovsky was known primarily thanks to the comedy “Don’t Get in Your Own Sleigh,” staged by the Maly Theater; they wrote about her: “... from that day on, rhetoric, falsehood, and gallomania began to gradually disappear from Russian drama. The characters spoke on stage in the same language that they really speak in life. Whole new world began to open up to spectators.”

Six months later, “The Poor Bride” was staged in the same theater.

It cannot be said that the entire troupe unambiguously accepted Ostrovsky’s plays. Yes, something like this is impossible in a creative team. After the performance of “Poverty is not a vice,” Shchepkin announced that he did not recognize Ostrovsky’s plays; Several other actors joined him: Shumsky, Samarin and others. But the young troupe understood and accepted the playwright immediately.

It was more difficult to conquer the St. Petersburg theater stage than the Moscow one, but it soon submitted to Ostrovsky’s talent: over two decades, his plays were presented to the public about a thousand times. True, this did not bring him much wealth. The father, with whom Alexander Nikolaevich did not consult when choosing a wife, refused him financial assistance; the playwright lived with his beloved wife and children on a damp mezzanine; Moreover, Pogodin’s “Moskvityanin” paid humiliatingly little and irregularly: Ostrovsky begged for fifty rubles a month, encountering the stinginess and stinginess of the publisher. Employees left the magazine for many reasons; Ostrovsky, despite everything, remained faithful to him to the end. His last work, which was published on the pages of “Moskvityanin”, - “Don’t live the way you want.” On the sixteenth book, in 1856, the magazine ceased to exist, and Ostrovsky began working in Nekrasov’s magazine Sovremennik.

Travel around Russia

At the same time, an event occurred that significantly changed Ostrovsky’s views. The Chairman of the Geographical Society, Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolaevich, decided to organize an expedition with the participation of writers; The purpose of the expedition is to study and describe the life of the inhabitants of Russia involved in navigation, about which to later compose essays for the “Maritime Collection” published by the ministry, covering the Urals, the Caspian Sea, the Volga, the White Sea, the Azov region... Ostrovsky in April 1856 began a journey along the Volga: Moscow - Tver - Gorodnya - Ostashkov - Rzhev - Staritsa - Kalyazin - Moscow.

That’s how Alexander Nikolaevich Ostrovsky came to the provincial city of Tver, to the merchant of the second guild Barsukov, and immediately misfortune overtook him.

Sitting on a rainy June morning, in a hotel room at the table and waiting for his heart to finally calm down, Ostrovsky, now rejoicing, now annoyed, went over in his soul one after another the events of the last months.

That year everything seemed to work out for him. He was already his man in St. Petersburg, with Nekrasov and Panaev. He has already stood on a par with the famous writers who constituted the pride of Russian literature - nearby with Turgenev, Tolstoy, Grigorovich, Goncharov... The most excellent actors and actresses of both capitals endowed him with their sincere friendship, revering him as if they were even the meter in theatrical art.

And how many other friends and acquaintances he has in Moscow! It’s impossible to count... Even on his trip here, to the Upper Volga, he was accompanied by Guriy Nikolaevich Burlakov, his faithful companion (and secretary and copyist, and voluntary intercessor on various road matters), a silent, fair-haired, bespectacled, still very young man. He joined Ostrovsky from Moscow itself and since he passionately worshiped the theater, then, in his words, he wanted to be “at the stirrup of one of the mighty knights of Melpomene (in ancient Greek mythology, the muse of tragedy, theater) of Russia.”

To this, wincing at such expressions, Alexander Nikolaevich immediately answered Burlakov that, they say, he does not at all look like a knight, but that, of course, he is sincerely glad to have a kind friend and comrade on his long journey...

So everything was going great. With this sweet, cheerful companion, making his way to the sources of the beautiful Volga, he visited many coastal villages and cities of Tver, Rzhev, Gorodnya or once Vertyazin, with the remains of an ancient temple, decorated with frescoes half-erased by time; the beautiful city of Torzhok along the steep banks of the Tvertsa; and further, further and further to the north - along piles of primeval boulders, through swamps and bushes, over bare hills, among desolation and wildness - to the blue Lake Seliger, from where Ostashkov, almost drowned in the spring water, and the white walls of the monastery of the hermit Nile were clearly visible, sparkling behind a thin net of rain, like the fabulous Kitezh-city; and, finally, from Ostashkov - to the mouth of the Volga, to the chapel called Jordan, and a little further to the west, where our mighty Russian river flows out from under a fallen birch overgrown with moss in a barely noticeable stream.

Ostrovsky’s tenacious memory greedily grabbed everything he saw, everything he heard in that spring and that summer of 1856, so that later, when the time came, either in a comedy or in a drama, all this would suddenly come to life, move, speak its own language, boil with passions .

He was already sketching in his notebooks... If only there was a little more time free from everyday needs and, most importantly, more silence in the soul, peace and light, it would be possible to write at once not just one, but four or more plays with good actors' roles. And about the sad, truly terrible fate of a Russian serf girl, a landowner’s pupil, cherished by a lord’s whim, and ruined by a whim. And a comedy could be written, conceived long ago based on the bureaucratic tricks he once noticed in the service - “A Profitable Place”: about black lies Russian ships, about an old beast-thief and bribe-taker, about the death of a young, unspoiled, but weak soul under the yoke of vile everyday prose. And recently, on the way to Rzhev, in the village of Sitkov, at night at the inn where the gentlemen officers were carousing, an excellent plot flashed across his mind for a play about the devilish power of gold, for the sake of which a person is ready for robbery, murder, any betrayal...

He was haunted by the image of a thunderstorm over the Volga. This dark expanse, torn by the flash of lightning, the noise of rain and thunder. These foamy shafts, as if rushing in rage towards the low sky littered with clouds. And alarmingly screaming seagulls. And the grinding of stones rolled by the waves on the shore.

Something always arose, was born in his imagination from these impressions, deeply ingrained in his sensitive memory and constantly awakening; they had long dulled and obscured the insult, insult, ugly slander, washed his soul with the poetry of life and awakened an insatiable creative anxiety. Some vague images, scenes, fragments of speeches had been tormenting him for a long time, pushing his hand to paper for a long time in order to finally capture them either in a fairy tale, or in a drama, or in a legend about the lush antiquity of these steep banks. After all, he will now never forget the poetic dreams and sorrowful everyday life that he experienced on his many-month journey from the origins of the wet nurse-Volga to Nizhny Novgorod. The beauty of the Volga nature and the bitter poverty of the Volga artisans - barge haulers, blacksmiths, shoemakers, tailors and boat makers, their exhausting work for half a week and the great untruth of the rich - merchants, contractors, resellers, barge owners who make money from labor bondage.

Something must really be brewing in his heart, he felt it. He tried to tell in his essays for the “Sea Collection” about the hard life of the people, about the merchant untruths, about the dull rumbles of the thunderstorm approaching the Volga.

But there was such truth there, such sadness in these essays that, having published four chapters in the February issue of the fifty-ninth year, the gentlemen from the naval editorial office no longer wanted to print that seditious truth.

And, of course, the point here is not whether he was paid well or poorly for his essays. This is not what we are talking about at all. Yes, now he doesn’t need money: “Library for Reading” recently published his drama “The Kindergarten,” and in St. Petersburg he sold a two-volume collection of his works to the eminent publisher Count Kushelev-Bezborodko for four thousand silver. However, in fact, those deep impressions that continue to disturb his creative imagination cannot remain in vain! excited and what the high-ranking editors of the “Sea Collection” did not deign to make public...

“Storm"

Returning from the “Literary Expedition,” he writes to Nekrasov: “Dear Sir Nikolai Alekseevich! I recently received your circular letter as I was leaving Moscow. I have the honor to inform you that I am preparing a whole series of plays under the general title “Nights on the Volga,” of which I will deliver one to you personally at the end of October or at the beginning of November. I don’t know how much I’ll have time to do this winter, but I’ll definitely do two. Your most humble servant A. Ostrovsky.”

By this time, he had already linked his creative destiny with Sovremennik, a magazine that fought to attract Ostrovsky to its ranks, whom Nekrasov called “our, undoubtedly, first dramatic writer. To a large extent, the transition to Sovremennik was facilitated by acquaintance with Turgenev, Leo Tolstoy, Goncharov, Druzhinin, Panav. In April 1856, Sovremennik published “The Picture of Family Happiness”, then - “An Old Friend is Better than New Two”, “Not got along in character” and other plays; readers are already accustomed to the fact that Nekrasov’s magazines (first Sovremennik, and then Otechestvennye Zapiski) open their first winter issues with Ostrovsky’s plays.

It was June 1859. Everything was blooming and smelling in the gardens outside the window on Nikolovorobinsky Lane. The herbs smelled, dodder and hops on the fences, rosehip and lilac bushes, jasmine flowers that had not yet opened.

Sitting, thoughtful, at the desk, Alexander Nikolaevich looked out the wide open window for a long time. His right hand still held a sharpened pencil, and the plump palm of his left continued, as an hour ago, to lie calmly on the finely written sheets of the manuscript of his unfinished comedy.

He remembered the humble young woman who walked side by side with her unsightly husband under the cold, condemning and stern gaze of her mother-in-law somewhere on a Sunday festivities in Torzhok, Kalyazin or Tver. I remembered the dashing Volga boys and girls from the merchant class who ran out at night into the gardens above the extinguished Volga, and then, which happened often, disappeared with their betrothed to God knows where from their unloved home.

He himself knew from childhood and youth, living with his father in Zamoskvorechye, and then visiting merchants he knew in Yaroslavl, Kineshma, Kostroma, and he heard more than once from actresses and actors what it was like for a married woman to live in those rich, behind high fences and strong castles of merchant houses. They were slaves, slaves of their husband, father-in-law and mother-in-law, deprived of joy, will and happiness.

So this is the drama that is ripening in his soul on the Volga, in one of the provincial towns of the prosperous Russian Empire...

He pushed aside the manuscript of an unfinished old comedy and, taking a blank piece of paper from the stack of paper, began to quickly sketch out the first, still fragmentary and unclear, plan for his new play, his tragedy from the cycle “Nights on the Volga” he had planned. Nothing in these short sketches, however, satisfied him. He threw away sheet after sheet and again wrote either individual scenes and pieces of dialogue, or thoughts that suddenly came to mind about the characters, their characters, the denouement and the beginning of the tragedy. There was no harmony, definiteness, precision in these creative attempts - he saw, he felt. They were not warmed by some single deep and warm thought, by some single all-encompassing artistic image.

It was past noon. Ostrovsky rose from his chair, threw a pencil on the table, put on his light summer cap and, telling Agafya, went out into the street.

He wandered along the Yauza for a long time, stopping here and there, looking at the fishermen sitting with fishing rods over the dark water, at the boats slowly sailing towards the city, at the blue desert sky above his head.

Dark water... a steep bank above the Volga... lightning whistling... thunderstorm... Why does this image haunt him so much? How is he connected with the drama in one of the Volga trading towns, which has long worried and concerned him?..

Yes, in his drama, cruel people tortured a beautiful, pure woman, proud, tender and dreamy, and she rushed into the Volga out of melancholy and sadness. It's like that! But a thunderstorm, a thunderstorm over the river, over the city...

Ostrovsky suddenly stopped and stood for a long time on the bank of the Yauza, overgrown with coarse grass, looking into the dull depths of its waters and nervously pinching his round reddish beard with his fingers. Some new, amazing thought, which suddenly illuminated the whole tragedy with poetic light, was born in his confused brain. Thunderstorm!.. A thunderstorm over the Volga, over a wild abandoned city, of which there are many in Rus', over a woman restless in fear, the heroine of a drama, over our entire life - a killer thunderstorm, a thunderstorm - a herald of future changes!

Then he rushed straight through the field and vacant lots, quickly to his mezzanine, to his office, to his desk and paper.

Ostrovsky hastily ran into the office and on some piece of paper that came to hand he finally wrote down the title of the drama about the death of his rebellious Katerina, who thirsted for will, love and happiness - “The Thunderstorm”. Here it is, the reason or tragic reason for the denouement of the entire play has been found - the mortal fright of a woman exhausted in spirit from a thunderstorm that suddenly broke out over the Volga. She, Katerina, brought up from childhood with a deep faith in God - the judge of man, should, of course, imagine that sparkling and thundering thunderstorm in the sky as God's punishment for her daring disobedience, for her desire for freedom, for secret meetings with Boris. And that’s why, in this spiritual turmoil, she will publicly throw herself on her knees in front of her husband and mother-in-law to shout out her passionate repentance for everything that she considered and will consider to the end her joy and her sin. Rejected by everyone, ridiculed, alone, without finding support or a way out, Katerina will then rush from the high Volga bank into the pool.

So much has been decided. But much remained unresolved.

Day after day he worked on the plan for his tragedy. He would begin it with a dialogue between two old women, a passer-by and a city woman, in order to tell the viewer about the city, its wild customs, about the family of the merchant widow Kabanova, where the beautiful Katerina was given in marriage, about Tikhon, her husband, about the richest tyrant in the city, Savel Prokofich Wild and other things that the viewer needs to know. So that the viewer can feel and understand what kind of people live in that provincial Volga town and how the heavy drama and death of Katerina Kabanova, a young merchant woman, could have happened there.

Then he came to the conclusion that it was necessary to unfold the action of the first act not somewhere else, but only in the house of that tyrant Savel Prokofich. But this decision, like the previous one - with the dialogue of the old women - after some time he gave up. Because in neither case was it possible to achieve everyday naturalness, ease, there was no true truth in the development of action, but a play is nothing more than a dramatized life.

And in fact, a leisurely conversation on the street between two old women, a passer-by and a city woman, precisely about what the viewer sitting in the hall should definitely know, will not seem natural to him, but will seem deliberate, specially invented by the playwright. And then there will be nowhere to put them, these chatty old ladies. Because subsequently they will not be able to play any role in his drama - they will talk and disappear.

As for the meeting of the main characters at Savel Prokofich Dikiy, there is no natural way to gather them there. The well-known scolder Savel Prokofich is truly wild, unfriendly and gloomy throughout the city; What kind of family meetings or fun get-togethers can he have in the house? Absolutely none.

That is why, after much thought, Alexander Nikolaevich decided that he would begin his play in a public garden on the steep bank of the Volga, where everyone could go - take a walk, breathe clean air, take a look at the open spaces beyond the river.

It was there, in the garden, that the city old-timer, self-taught mechanic Kuligin, would tell the viewer what the viewer needed to know to Savel Dikiy’s recently arrived nephew Boris Grigorievich. And there the viewer will hear the undisguised truth about the characters in the tragedy: about Kabanikha, about Katerina Kabanova, about Tikhon, about Varvara, his sister, and others.

Now the play was structured in such a way that the viewer would forget that he was sitting in a theater, that in front of him was scenery, a stage, not life, and the actors in make-up spoke about their sufferings or joys in words composed by the author. Now Alexander Nikolaevich knew for sure that the audience would see the very reality in which they live day after day. Only that reality will appear to them, illuminated by the author’s lofty thought, his verdict, as if different, unexpected in its true essence, not yet noticed by anyone.

Alexander Nikolayevich never wrote so sweepingly and quickly, with such reverent joy and deep emotion, as he now wrote “The Thunderstorm”. Is it possible that another drama, “The Pupil,” also about the death of a Russian woman, but completely powerless, tortured by the fortress, was once written even faster - in St. Petersburg, at my brother’s, in two or three weeks, although I almost thought about it more than two years.

So the summer passed, September flew by unnoticed. And on the morning of October 9, Ostrovsky finally put the finishing touches on his new play.

None of the plays had such success with the public and critics as “The Thunderstorm”. It was published in the first issue of the “Library for Reading”, and the first performance took place on November 16, 1859 in Moscow. The performance was performed weekly, or even five times a month (as, for example, in December) to a packed hall; the roles were played by public favorites - Rykalova, Sadovsky, Nikulina-Kositskaya, Vasiliev. To this day, this play is one of the most famous in Ostrovsky’s work; Dikogo, Kabanikha, Kuligin are hard to forget, Katerina - impossible, just as it is impossible to forget will, beauty, tragedy, love. Having heard the play read by the author, Turgenev wrote to Fet the next day: “The most amazing, most magnificent work of Russian, powerful, completely mastered talent.” Goncharov rated it no less highly: “Without fear of being accused of exaggeration, I can honestly say that there has never been such a work as a drama in our literature. She undoubtedly occupies and will probably for a long time occupy first place in high classical beauties.” Dobrolyubov’s article on “The Thunderstorm” also became known to everyone. The grandiose success of the play was crowned with a large Uvarov Academic Prize for the author of 1,500 rubles.

He has now truly become famous, playwright Alexander Ostrovsky, and now all of Russia listens to his words. That is why, one must think, the censorship finally allowed his favorite comedy on the stage, which had been reviled more than once, and which had once exhausted his heart - “Our own people - we will be numbered.”

However, this play appeared before the theater audience crippled, not as it was once published in Moskvityanin, but with a hastily well-intentioned ending attached. Because the author three years ago, when publishing his collected works, although reluctantly, albeit with bitter pain in his soul, nevertheless brought onto the stage (as they say, at the end of the curtain) Mr. Quarterly, in the name of the law, taking the clerk under judicial investigation Podkhalyuzin “in the case of concealing the property of the insolvent merchant Bolshov.”

In the same year, a two-volume set of Ostrovsky’s plays was published, which included eleven works. However, it was the triumph of “The Thunderstorm” that made the playwright a truly popular writer. Moreover, he then continued to touch on this topic and develop it on other material - in the plays “It’s not all Maslenitsa for cats,” “Truth is good, but happiness is better,” “Hard days” and others.

Quite often in need himself, Alexander Nikolaevich at the end of 1859 came up with a proposal to create a “Society for benefiting needy writers and scientists,” which later became widely known as the “Literary Fund.” And he himself began to conduct public readings of plays in favor of this foundation.

Ostrovsky's second marriage

But time does not stand still;

everything runs, everything changes. And Ostrovsky’s life changed. Several years ago, he got married to Marya Vasilievna Bakhmetyeva, an actress of the Maly Theater, who was 2 2 years younger than the writer (and the affair lasted a long time: five years before the wedding, their first illegitimate son was born) - he could hardly be called completely happy: Marya Vasilievna she herself was a nervous person and didn’t really delve into her husband’s experiences

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. For this reason, the speech of Ostrovsky’s heroes is so important, and that’s why his works sound so vivid. It is not for nothing that 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 banning of 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.

In September 1878, he wrote to one of his acquaintances: “I am working on my play with all my might; It seems like it won’t turn out bad.” 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, right 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 criticism, theaters and the audience became increasingly difficult. 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 accident. 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 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. To a new viewer, not experienced in art, Ostrovsky writes: “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.” It is important to understand that for a “fresh” audience, Ostrovsky wrote, “strong drama, major comedy, provocative, frank, loud laughter, hot, sincere feelings are required.”

It is the theater, according to Ostrovsky, which has its roots in the folk farce, that has the ability to directly and strongly influence the souls of people. Two and a half decades later, Alexander Blok, speaking about poetry, will write that its essence lies in the main, “walking” truths, in the ability of theater to convey them to the reader’s heart:

• Ride along, mourning nags!
• Actors, master your craft,
• In order for 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. Contemporaries perceived Ostrovsky as a successor of Gogol's dramatic art. But the novelty of his plays was immediately noted. Already in 1851, in the article “A Dream on the Occasion of a Comedy,” the young critic Boris Almazov pointed out the differences between Ostrovsky and Gogol. Ostrovsky’s originality lay not only in the fact that he depicted not only the oppressors, but also their victims, not only in the fact that, as I. Annensky wrote, Gogol was primarily a poet of “visual” impressions, and Ostrovsky of “auditory” impressions.

Ostrovsky's originality and novelty were also manifested in the choice of life material, in the subject of the image - he mastered new layers of reality. He was a pioneer, a Columbus not only of Zamoskvorechye - who we don’t see, whose voices we don’t hear in Ostrovsky’s works! Innokenty Annensky wrote: "...This is a virtuoso of sound images: merchants, wanderers, factory workers and Latin teachers, Tatars, gypsies, actors and sex workers, bars, clerks and petty bureaucrats - Ostrovsky gave a huge gallery of typical speeches..." Actors, The theatrical environment is also a new vital material that Ostrovsky mastered - everything connected with the theater seemed very important to him.

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 in Russia theater school, own repertoire. Artist of the Maly Theater N.V. Rykalova recalled: Ostrovsky, “having become better acquainted with the troupe, became our man. The troupe loved him very much. Alexander Nikolaevich was unusually affectionate and courteous with everyone. Under the serfdom regime that reigned at that time, when the authorities said “you” to the artist, when most of the troupe were serfs, Ostrovsky’s behavior seemed to everyone like some kind of revelation. It is worth canceling that traditionally Alexander Nikolaevich himself staged his plays... Ostrovsky assembled a troupe and read the play to them. He could read amazingly skillfully. All his characters appeared to be alive... 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 position of the actors in the theater and their success depended on whether or not the rich audience who set the tone in the city liked them. After all, provincial troupes lived mainly on donations from local patrons, who felt like masters in the theater and could dictate their own conditions. Many actresses lived off expensive gifts from wealthy fans. The actress, who took care of her honor, had a hard time

In “Talents and Admirers,” Ostrovsky depicts such a life situation. Domna Panteleevna, Sasha Negina’s mother, laments: “There is no happiness for my Sasha! He maintains himself very carefully, and there is no goodwill between the public: no special gifts, nothing like the others, which... if...”

Nina Smelskaya, who willingly accepts the patronage of wealthy fans, essentially turning into a kept woman, lives much better, feels much more confident in the theater than the talented Negina. But despite the difficult life, adversity and grievances, in Ostrovsky’s depiction, many people who dedicated their lives to the stage and theater retain kindness and nobility in their souls

First of all, these are tragedians who on stage have to live in a world of high passions. Of course, nobility and generosity of spirit are not limited to tragedians. Ostrovsky shows that genuine talent, selfless love for art and theater lift and elevate people. These are Narokov, Negina, Kruchinina.

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The meaning of the duel episode in Lermontov’s story “Princess Mary”

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The earth is a poetically polysemantic image in the art of V. Shukshin: the native house, the arable land, the steppe, the Motherland, the raw mother earth... Folk-figurative associations and perceptions create an integral system of national, historical and philosophical concepts: about the infinity of life and the passing into the past chains of generations, about the Motherland, about spiritual ties. The comprehensive image of the Motherland becomes the center of gravity of the entire content of Shukshin’s work: the main collisions, artistic concepts, moral and aesthetic ideals and poetics. Did Shukshin write about the cruel and gloomy property owners Lyubavins, the freedom-loving rebel Stepan Razin, old men and women, did he talk about the breakdown of families, about the inevitable departure of a person and his farewell to all earthly things, did he stage films about Pashka Kolokolnikov, Ivan Rastorguev, the Gromov brothers, Yegore Prokudine, he depicted his heroes against the backdrop of specific and generalized images - a river, a road, an endless expanse of arable land, a home, unknown graves. Shukshin fills this central image with comprehensive content, solving the cardinal problem: what is Man? What is the essence of his existence on Earth? Earthly gravity and attraction to the earth is the strongest feeling of an earthling, but above all - of a peasant farmer....

The name of O. Kobylyanskaya in Ukrainian prose is associated with the treatment of a new theme - the fate of an enlightened girl who cannot come to terms with the soullessness of the bourgeois environment. Each work of the writer amazed with its poetry, sophistication and depth of depiction of characters, especially female ones. For this, literary researchers call her works an encyclopedia of the female soul. During her lifetime, O. Kobylyanskaya’s works were translated into European languages: German, Bulgarian, Czech, Russian; her ideal was an enlightened, intelligent woman with progressive views, with lofty spiritual needs, free to choose her occupation, loving and gentle. This is exactly what the writer herself was like...

A. N. Tolstoy said superbly: “Great people do not have two dates of their existence in history - birth and death, but only one date: their birth.”

The significance of A. N. Ostrovsky for the development of Russian drama and stage, his role in the achievements of all Russian culture are undeniable and enormous. He did as much for Russia as Shakespeare did for England or Moliere for France. Continuing the best traditions of Russian progressive and foreign drama, Ostrovsky wrote 47 original plays (not counting the second editions of “Kozma Minin” and “The Voevoda” and seven plays in collaboration with S. A. Gedeonov (“Vasilisa Melentyeva”), N. Ya. Solovyov (“Happy Day”, “The Marriage of Belugin”, “Savage”, “It shines, but does not warm”) and P. M. Nevezhin (“Whim”, “Old in a new way”, in the words of Ostrovsky himself, this is “whole”). folk theater."

Ostrovsky's immeasurable merit as a bold innovator lies in the democratization and expansion of the themes of Russian drama. Along with the nobility, bureaucrats and merchants, he also depicted ordinary people from the poor townspeople, artisans and peasants. Representatives of the working intelligentsia (teachers, artists) also became heroes of his works.

His plays about modernity recreate a wide range of Russian life from the 40s to the 80s of the 19th century. His historical works reflected the distant past of our homeland: the beginning and middle of the 17th century. In Ostrovsky's original plays alone, there are more than seven hundred speaking characters. And besides them, many plays have crowd scenes in which dozens of people participate without speeches. Goncharov correctly said that Ostrovsky “wrote all of Moscow life, not the city of Moscow, but the life of the Moscow, that is, Great Russian state.” Ostrovsky, expanding the themes of Russian drama, solved pressing ethical, socio-political and other problems of life from the standpoint of democratic enlightenment, defending the interests of the people. Dobrolyubov rightly argued that Ostrovsky in his plays “captured such common aspirations and needs that permeate all Russian society, whose voice is heard in all phenomena of our life, the satisfaction of which is a necessary condition for our further development.” When realizing the essence of Ostrovsky’s work, it cannot be emphasized enough that he continued the best traditions of progressive foreign and Russian nationally original dramaturgy consciously, with deep conviction, from the very first steps of his writing activity. While Western European drama was dominated by plays of intrigue and situation (remember O. E. Scribe, E. M. Labiche, V. Sardou), Ostrovsky, developing the creative principles of Fonvizin, Griboyedov, Pushkin and Gogol, created a dramaturgy of social characters and morals .

Boldly expanding the role of the social environment in his works, the circumstances that comprehensively motivate the behavior of the characters, Ostrovsky increases the proportion of epic elements in them. This makes his “plays of life” (Dobrolyubov) similar to contemporary Russian novelism. But for all that, epic tendencies do not weaken their scenic quality. Using a wide variety of means, starting with the always acute conflict, which Dobrolyubov wrote so thoroughly about, the playwright gives his plays a vivid theatricality.

Noting the invaluable treasures given to us by Pushkin, Ostrovsky said: “The first merit of the great poet is that through him everything that can become smarter becomes smarter... Everyone wants to think sublimely and feel with him; everyone is waiting for him to tell me something beautiful, something new, something I don’t have, something I lack; but he will say, and it will immediately become mine. This is why there is love and worship of great poets” (XIII, 164-165).

These inspired words spoken by the playwright about Pushkin can rightfully be addressed to him himself.

Ostrovsky's deeply realistic creativity is alien to narrow everydayism, ethnography and naturalism. The generalizing power of his characters is in many cases so great that it gives them the properties of a household name. Such are Podkhalyuzin (“We are our own people - we will be numbered!”), Tit Titych Bruskov (“In someone else’s feast there is a hangover”), Glumov (“Simplicity is enough for every wise man”), Khlynov (“Warm Heart”). The playwright consciously strove to make his characters known from the very beginning of his creative career. “I wanted,” he wrote to V.I. Nazimov in 1850, “for the public to brand vice with the name of Podkhalyuzin in the same way as they brand with the name of Harpagon, Tartuffe, Nedorosl, Khlestakov and others” (XIV, 16).

Ostrovsky's plays, imbued with high ideas of democracy, deep feelings of patriotism and genuine beauty, their positive characters, expand the mental, moral and aesthetic horizons of readers and spectators.

The great value of Russian critical realism of the second half of the 19th century is that, while containing the achievements of Russian and Western European realism, it is also enriched by the acquisitions of romanticism. M. Gorky, speaking about the development of Russian literature, in the article “On How I Learned to Write,” rightly noted: “This fusion of romanticism and realism is especially characteristic of our great literature, it gives it that originality, that strength that all more noticeably and deeply influences the literature of the whole world."

The dramaturgy of A. N. Ostrovsky, representing in its generic essence the highest expression of critical realism of the second half of the 19th century, along with realistic images of the most diverse aspect (family and everyday life, socio-psychological, socio-political), also contains romantic images. The images of Zhadov (“Profitable Place”), Katerina (“Thunderstorm”), Neschastlivtsev (“Forest”), Snegurochka (“Snow Maiden”), Meluzov (“Talents and Admirers”) are shrouded in romance. To this, following A.I. Yuzhin, Vl. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko and others, A. A. Fadeev also drew attention. In the article “Tasks of Literary Criticism” he wrote: “Many consider our great playwright Ostrovsky to be a writer of everyday life. What kind of a writer of everyday life is he? Let's remember his Katerina. The realist Ostrovsky consciously sets himself “romantic” goals.”

Ostrovsky's artistic palette is extremely colorful. In his plays he boldly and widely refers to symbolism (The Thunderstorm) and fantasy (The Voevoda, The Snow Maiden).

Satirically denouncing the bourgeoisie (“Warm Heart”, “Dowry”) and the nobility (“Simplicity is enough for every wise man”, “Forest”, “Wolves and Sheep”), the playwright brilliantly uses the conventional means of hyperbolism, grotesque and caricature. Examples of this are the scene of the mayor's trial over the townsfolk in the comedy "Ardent Heart", the scene of the reading of a treatise on the dangers of reforms by Krutitsky and Glumov in the comedy "Simplicity is enough for every wise man", Baraboshev's anecdotal story about speculation in granulated sugar discovered along the banks of rivers ("Pravda" - good, but happiness is better").

Using a wide variety of artistic media, Ostrovsky walked in his ideological and aesthetic development, in a creative evolution towards an increasingly complex revelation of the inner essence of his characters, moving closer to the dramaturgy of Turgenev and paving the way for Chekhov. If in his first plays he depicted characters with large, thick lines (“Family Picture”, “Our People - Let’s Be Numbered!”), then in later plays he uses very subtle psychological coloring of the images (“Dowry”, “Talents and Admirers”, “ Guilty without guilt").

The writer's brother, P. N. Ostrovsky, was rightly indignant at the narrow everyday standard with which many critics approached Alexander Nikolaevich's plays. “They forget,” said Pyotr Nikolaevich, “that first of all he was a poet, and a great poet, with real crystal poetry, which can be found in Pushkin or Apollo Maykov!.. Agree that only a great poet could create such a pearl of folk poetry as "Snow Maiden"? Take, for example, Kupava’s “complaint” to Tsar Berendey - after all, this is purely Pushkin’s beauty of verse!!” .

Ostrovsky’s powerful talent and his nationality delighted true connoisseurs of art, starting with the appearance of the comedy “Our People - Let’s Be Numbered!” and especially since the publication of the tragedy “The Thunderstorm”. In 1874, I. A. Goncharov stated: “Ostrovsky is undoubtedly the most great talent in modern literature” and predicted “longevity” for it. In 1882, in connection with the 35th anniversary of Ostrovsky’s dramatic activity, as if summing up the results of his creative activity, the author of “Oblomov” gave him an assessment that became classic and textbook. He wrote: “You alone completed the building, the foundation of which was laid by Fonvizin, Griboyedov, Gogol... Only after you, we Russians can proudly say: “We have our own Russian, national theater... I greet you, as the immortal creator of an endless system of poetic creations, from “The Snow Maiden”, “The Voivode’s Dream” to “Talents and Admirers” inclusive, where we see and hear with our own eyes the original, true Russian life in countless, vital images, with its true appearance, style and dialect ".

The entire progressive Russian public agreed with this high assessment of Ostrovsky’s activities. L.N. Tolstoy called Ostrovsky a writer of genius and truly popular. “I know from experience,” he wrote in 1886, “how people read, listen to and remember your things, and therefore I would like to help you to become now as quickly as possible in reality what you undoubtedly are - a national figure in itself.” in a broad sense, a writer." N. G. Chernyshevsky, in a letter to V. M. Lavrov dated December 29, 1888, stated: “Of all those who wrote in Russian after Lermontov and Gogol, I see a very strong talent in only one playwright - Ostrovsky...”. Having visited the play “The Abyss,” A.P. Chekhov reported to A.S. Suvorin on March 3, 1892: “The play is amazing. The last act is something that I wouldn't have written in a million. This act is a whole play, and when I have my own theater, I will stage only this one act.”

A. N. Ostrovsky not only completed the creation of Russian drama, but also determined with his masterpieces all its further development. Under his influence, the whole “Ostrovsky School” appeared (I. F. Gorbunov, A. F. Pisemsky, A. A. Potekhin, N. Ya. Solovyov, P. M. Nevezhin). The dramatic art of L. N. Tolstoy, A. P. Chekhov and A. M. Gorky was formed under his influence. For the author of War and Peace, Ostrovsky's plays were examples of dramatic art. And therefore, having decided to write “The Power of Darkness,” he began to reread them again.

Caring about the development of domestic drama, Ostrovsky was an exceptionally sensitive, attentive mentor and teacher of aspiring playwrights.

In 1874, on his initiative, in collaboration with theater critic and translator V.I. Rodislavsky, the Society of Russian Dramatic Writers was created, which improved the situation of playwrights and translators.

All his life Ostrovsky fought to attract new forces to dramaturgy, to expand and improve the quality of the Russian nationally original theatrical repertoire. But he was always alien to disdain for the artistic successes of other peoples. He stood for the development of international cultural relations. In his opinion, the theatrical repertoire “should consist of the best original plays and good translations of foreign masterpieces with undoubted literary merit” (XII, 322).

Being a man of versatile erudition, Ostrovsky was one of the masters of Russian literary translation. With his translations, he promoted outstanding examples of foreign drama - plays by Shakespeare, Goldoni, Giacometti, Cervantes, Machiavelli, Grazzini, Gozzi. He translated (based on the French text by Louis Jacolliot) the South Indian (Tamil) drama “Devadasi” (“La Bayadère” by the folk playwright Parishurama).

Ostrovsky translated twenty-two plays and left sixteen plays begun and unfinished from Italian, Spanish, French, English and Latin. He translated poems by Heine and other German poets. In addition, he translated the drama of the Ukrainian classic G. F. Kvitka-Osnovyanenko “Shchira Lyubov” (“Sincere love, or Darling is more valuable than happiness”).

A. N. Ostrovsky is not only the creator of brilliant plays and an outstanding translator, but also an outstanding connoisseur of stage art, an excellent director and theorist who anticipated the teachings of K. S. Stanislavsky. He wrote: “I every new comedy, long before rehearsals, I read it several times among the artists. In addition, I went through each person’s role separately” (XII, 66).

Being a theatrical figure on a large scale, Ostrovsky passionately fought for a radical transformation of his native stage, for turning it into a school of social morals, for the creation of a public private theater, and for improving the acting culture. By democratizing the theme, defending the nationality of works intended for the theater, the great playwright decisively turned the domestic stage towards life and its truth. M. N. Ermolova recalls: “Together with Ostrovsky, truth and life itself appeared on the stage.”

Many generations of outstanding Russian artists were brought up and grew up on Ostrovsky’s realistic plays: P. M. Sadovsky, A. E. Martynov, S. V. Vasiliev, P. V. Vasiliev, G. N. Fedotova, M. N. Ermolova, P. A. Strepetova, M. G. Savina and many others, up to modern ones. The artistic circle, which owed its emergence and development primarily to him, provided many servants of the muses with significant material assistance, contributed to the improvement of acting culture, and put forward new artistic forces: M. P. Sadovsky, O. O. Sadovskaya, V. A. Maksheev and others. And naturally, the attitude of the entire artistic community towards Ostrovsky was reverent. Large and small, metropolitan and provincial artists saw in him their favorite playwright, teacher, ardent defender and sincere friend.

In 1872, celebrating the twenty-fifth anniversary of A. N. Ostrovsky’s dramatic activity, provincial artists wrote to him: “Alexander Nikolaevich! We all developed under the influence of that new word that you introduced into Russian drama: you are our mentor.”

In 1905, in response to the words of a Petersburgskaya Gazeta reporter that “Ostrovsky is outdated,” M. G. Savina replied: “But in that case, you can’t play Shakespeare, because he is no less outdated. Personally, I always enjoy playing Ostrovsky, and if the public no longer likes him, it’s probably because not everyone knows how to play him now.”

Ostrovsky's artistic and social activities were an invaluable contribution to the development of Russian culture. And at the same time, he was grieving the absence necessary conditions for the realistic production of his plays, for the implementation of his bold plans for a radical transformation of the theatrical business, for a steep increase in the level of dramatic art. This was the tragedy of the playwright.

Around the mid-70s, Alexander Nikolaevich wrote: “I am firmly convinced that the position of our theaters, the composition of the troupes, the director’s part in them, as well as the position of those who write for the theater will improve over time, that dramatic art in Russia will finally emerge from its stalemate. , abandoned state... but I can’t wait for this prosperity. If I were young, I could live in hope in the future, but now there is no future for me” (XII, 77).

Ostrovsky never saw the dawn he desired - a significant improvement in the position of Russian playwrights, decisive changes in the field of theater. He passed away largely unsatisfied with what he had done.

The progressive pre-October public assessed the creative and social activities creator of "The Thunderstorm" and "Dowry". She saw in this activity an instructive example of high service to the homeland, a patriotic feat of a national playwright.

But only the Great October Socialist Revolution brought truly popular fame to the playwright. It was at this time that Ostrovsky found his mass audience - the working people, and a truly rebirth began for him.

In the pre-October theatre, under the influence of vaudeville-melodramatic traditions, due to the cool and even hostile attitude towards him of the management of the imperial theaters and the highest government spheres, the plays of the “father of Russian drama” were often staged carelessly, became impoverished and were quickly removed from the repertoire.

The Soviet theater made it possible to fully reveal them realistically. Ostrovsky becomes the most beloved playwright of Soviet audiences. His plays have never been staged as often as at this time. His works had never before been published in such huge numbers as at this time. His dramaturgy has not been studied as closely as in this era.

Superbly oriented in Ostrovsky’s work, V.I. Lenin often used apt words and catchphrases from the plays “At Someone Else’s Feast,” “A Profitable Place,” “Mad Money,” and “Guilty Without Guilt” in a sharply journalistic sense. In the fight against reactionary forces, the great leader of the people especially widely used the image of Tit Titych from the comedy “At Someone Else’s Feast a Hangover.” In 1918, probably in the fall, talking with P.I. Lebedev-Polyansky about the publication of the Collected Works of Russian Classics, Vladimir Ilyich told him: “Don’t forget Ostrovsky.”

On December 15 of the same year, Lenin attended the performance of the Moscow Art Theater “Simplicity is enough for every wise man.” In this performance, the roles were played by: Krutitsky - K. S. Stanislavsky, Glumova - I. N. Bersenev, Mamaev - V. V. Luzhsky, Manefa - N. S. Butova, Golutvin - P. A. Pavlov, Gorodulina - N. O. Massalitinov, Mashenka - S.V. Giatsintova, Mamaev - M.N. Germanova, Glumov - V.N. Pavlova, Kurchaeva - V.A. Verbitsky, Grigory - N.G. Alexandrov.

The remarkable cast of actors brilliantly revealed the satirical pathos of the comedy, and Vladimir Ilyich watched the play with great pleasure, laughing from the heart and laughing contagiously.

Lenin liked the entire artistic ensemble, but Stanislavsky’s performance in the role of Krutitsky aroused his particular admiration. And most of all, he was amused by the following words of Krutitsky when he read the draft of his memorandum: “Every reform is harmful in its essence. What does the reform include? Reform involves two actions: 1) abolishing the old and 2) putting something new in its place. Which of these actions is harmful? Both are the same.”

After these words, Lenin laughed so loudly that some of the spectators paid attention to this and someone’s heads were already turning towards our box. Nadezhda Konstantinovna looked reproachfully at Vladimir Ilyich, but he continued to laugh heartily, repeating: “Wonderful! Amazing!".

During the intermission, Lenin did not cease to admire Stanislavsky.

“Stanislavsky is a real artist,” said Vladimir Ilyich, “he so transformed into this general that he lives his life in the smallest detail. The viewer does not need any explanation. He sees for himself what an idiot this important-looking dignitary is. In my opinion, the art of theater should follow this path.”

Lenin liked the play “Enough Simplicity for Every Wise Man” so much that he, having talked on the twentieth of February 1919 with the artist O. V. Gzovskaya about Art Theater, I remembered this performance. He said: “You see, Ostrovsky’s play... An old classic author, but Stanislavsky’s play sounds new to us. This general reveals a lot of things that are important to us... This is propaganda in the best and noble sense... If everyone were so able to reveal the image in a new, modern way - it would be wonderful!”

Lenin's obvious interest in Ostrovsky's work was undoubtedly reflected in his personal library located in the Kremlin. This library contains almost all the main literature published in 1923, in connection with the centenary of the birth of the playwright, who created, in his words, an entire national theater.

After the Great October Revolution, everything anniversary dates, associated with the life and work of A. N. Ostrovsky, are celebrated as national holidays.

The first such national holiday was the centenary of the birth of the playwright. During the days of this holiday, following Lenin, the position of the victorious people towards Ostrovsky’s legacy was especially clearly expressed by the first commissar of public education. A.V. Lunacharsky proclaimed the ideas of ethical and everyday theater in the broadest sense of the word, responding to the burning problems of the new, still emerging socialist morality. Struggling with formalism, with “theatrical” theater, “devoid of ideological content and moral tendency,” Lunacharsky contrasted the dramaturgy of A. N. Ostrovsky with all varieties of self-directed theatricality.

Pointing out that Ostrovsky is “alive for us,” Soviet people, proclaiming the slogan “back to Ostrovsky,” A. V. Lunacharsky called theatrical figures to move forward from the formalistic, narrow everyday, naturalistic theater of “everyday life” and “petty tendentiousness”. According to Lunacharsky, “simply imitating Ostrovsky would mean dooming oneself to death.” He called for learning from Ostrovsky the principles of serious, meaningful theater, which carries “universal notes”, and the extraordinary skill of their embodiment. Ostrovsky, wrote Lunacharsky, “ greatest master of our everyday and ethical theater, at the same time so playing with forces, so amazingly scenic, so capable of captivating the public, and its main teaching these days is this: return to the theater that is everyday and ethical and at the same time thoroughly and entirely artistic, that is truly capable of powerfully moving human feelings and human will."

The Moscow Academic Maly Theater took an active part in celebrating the 100th anniversary of Ostrovsky's birth.

M. N. Ermolova, unable, due to illness, to honor the memory of the playwright she deeply valued, wrote to A. I. Yuzhin on April 11, 1923: “Ostrovsky is the great apostle of life’s truth, simplicity and love for his little brother! How much he did and gave to people in general, and to us artists in particular. He instilled this truth and simplicity into our souls on stage, and we sacredly, as best we knew how and could, strove to follow him. I am so happy that I lived in his time and worked according to his instructions together with my comrades! What a reward it was to see the public’s grateful tears for our efforts!

Glory to the great Russian artist A. N. Ostrovsky. His name will live forever in his light or dark images, because there is truth in them. Glory to the immortal genius! .

The deep connection between A. N. Ostrovsky’s dramaturgy and Soviet modernity, his enormous importance in the development of socialist art, were understood and recognized by all leading figures in dramatic and stage art. So, in 1948, in connection with the 125th anniversary of the playwright’s birth, N. F. Pogodin said: “Today, a century after the significant appearance of young talent in Russia, we are experiencing the powerful influence of his unfading creations.”

In the same year, B. Romashov explained that Ostrovsky teaches Soviet writers “a constant desire to discover new layers of life and the ability to embody what is found in bright artistic forms... A. N. Ostrovsky is a comrade-in-arms of our Soviet theater and young Soviet drama in the struggle for realism, for innovation, for folk art. The task of Soviet directors and actors is this. in order to reveal even more fully and deeply the inexhaustible riches of Ostrovsky’s dramaturgy in theatrical productions. A. N. Ostrovsky remains our faithful friend in the struggle for the implementation of the tasks facing modern Soviet drama in its noble cause - the communist education of the working people."

In truth, it should be noted that the distortion of the essence of Ostrovsky’s plays by formalistic and vulgar sociological interpreters also took place in the Soviet era. Formalistic tendencies clearly affected the play “The Forest” staged by V. E. Meyerhold at the theater named after him (1924). An example of a vulgar sociological embodiment is the play “The Thunderstorm”, staged by A. B. Viner at the Drama Theater named after the Leningrad Council of Trade Unions (1933). But it was not these performances, not their principles that determined the face of the Soviet theater.

Revealing Ostrovsky's popular position, sharpening the social and ethical issues of his plays, embodying their deeply generalized characters, Soviet directors created wonderful performances in the capitals and on the periphery, in all the republics of the USSR. Among them, the following were especially heard on the Russian stage: “A Profitable Place” at the Theater of the Revolution (1923), “Ardent Heart” at the Art Theater (1926), “In a Lively Place” (1932), “Truth is good, but happiness is better” (1941 ) at the Moscow Maly Theater, “The Thunderstorm” (1953) at the Moscow Theater named after V.V. Mayakovsky, “The Abyss” at the Leningrad Theater named after A.S. Pushkin (1955).

The contribution of theaters of all fraternal republics to the stage embodiment of Ostrovsky’s dramaturgy is enormous, indescribable.

To understand more clearly rapid growth stage incarnations of Ostrovsky’s plays after October, let me remind you that from 1875 to 1917 inclusive, that is, in 42 years, the drama “Guilty Without Guilt” was performed 4415 times, and in 1939 alone - 2147. Scenes from the outback “Late Love” for those 42 years passed 920 times, and in 1939 - 1432 times. The “Thunderstorm” tragedy occurred 3592 times from 1875 to 1917, and 414 times in 1939. With particular solemnity, the Soviet people celebrated the 150th anniversary of the birth of the great playwright. Lectures were given all over the country about his life and work, his plays were broadcast on television and radio, and conferences were held in humanitarian educational and research institutes on the most pressing issues of Ostrovsky's dramaturgy and its stage embodiment.

The results of a number of conferences were collections of articles published in Moscow, Leningrad, Kostroma, Kuibyshev.

On April 11, 1973, a ceremonial meeting took place at the Bolshoi Theater. In his opening speech, S. V. Mikhalkov, chairman of the All-Union Anniversary Committee for the 150th anniversary of the birth of A. N. Ostrovsky, Hero of Socialist Labor, secretary of the board of the Union of Writers of the USSR, said that “Ostrovsky’s life is a feat”, that his creativity is dear to us “not only because” it played a great progressive role in the development of Russian society in the 19th century, but also because it faithfully serves people today, because it serves our Soviet culture. That’s why we call Ostrovsky our contemporary.”

He ended his opening speech with gratitude to the great hero of the day: “Thank you, Alexander Nikolaevich! Thank you very much from all the people! Thank you for the enormous work, for the talent given to people, for the plays that even today, having stepped into the new century, teach us to live, work, love - teach us to be a real person! Thank you, the great Russian playwright, for the fact that today, for all the peoples of the multinational Soviet country, you remain our beloved contemporary!” .

Following S.V. Mikhalkov, M.I. Tsarev, People’s Artist of the USSR, Chairman of the Presidium of the Board of the All-Russian Theater Society, spoke on the topic “The Great Playwright”. He argued that “Ostrovsky’s creative heritage is the greatest achievement of Russian culture. It stands on a par with such phenomena as the painting of the Wanderers, the music of the “mighty handful”. However, Ostrovsky’s feat also lies in the fact that artists and composers made a revolution in art by united forces, while Ostrovsky made a revolution in the theater alone, being at the same time a theorist and practitioner of the new art, its ideologist and leader... At the origins of the Soviet multinational theater, our directing , our acting mastery was the son of the Russian people - Alexander Nikolaevich Ostrovsky... The Soviet theater sacredly honors Ostrovsky. He has always learned and continues to learn from him the creation of great art - the art of high realism and true nationality. Ostrovsky is not only our yesterday and our today. He is our tomorrow, he is ahead of us, in the future. And we joyfully imagine this future of our theater, which will have to discover in the works of the great playwright huge layers of ideas, thoughts, feelings that we did not have time to discover.”

In order to promote the literary and theatrical heritage of Ostrovsky, the Ministry of Culture of the RSFSR and the All-Russian Theater Society from September 1972 to April 1973 held an All-Russian review of performances of drama, musical drama and children's theaters, dedicated to the anniversary. The review showed both successes and failures in the modern interpretation of Ostrovsky’s dramaturgy.

Theaters of the RSFSR specially prepared over 150 premieres based on the plays of A. N. Ostrovsky for the anniversary. At the same time, more than 100 performances were included in the anniversary year's posters from previous years. Thus, in 1973, more than 250 performances of 36 works by the playwright were staged in theaters of the RSFSR. Among them, the most popular plays were: “Simplicity is Enough for Every Wise Man” (23 theaters), “Profitable Place” (20 theaters), “Dowry” (20 theaters), “Mad Money” (19 theaters), “Guilty Without Guilt” (17 theatres), “The Last Victim” (14 theatres), “Talents and Fans” (11 theatres), “The Thunderstorm” (10 theatres).

In the final show of the best performances selected by zonal commissions and brought to Kostroma, the first prize was awarded to the Academic Maly Theater for the play “Mad Money”; second prizes were awarded to the Central Children's Theater for the play "Jokers", the Kostroma Regional Drama Theater for the play "Talents and Admirers" and the North Ossetian Drama Theater for the play "The Thunderstorm"; third prizes were given to the Gorky Academic Drama Theater for the play “Simplicity is Enough for Every Wise Man,” to the Voronezh Regional Drama Theater for the play “It Shines, but Doesn’t Warm,” and to the Tatar Academic Theater for the play “Our People—Let’s Be Numbered!”

The All-Russian review of performances, dedicated to the 150th anniversary of the birth of A. N. Ostrovsky, ended with a final scientific and theoretical conference in Kostroma. The viewing of the performances and the final conference confirmed with particular conviction that Ostrovsky’s dramaturgy, which reflected contemporary Russian reality in deeply typical, truthful and vivid images, does not age, that with its universal human properties it continues to effectively serve our time.

Despite the breadth of coverage, the viewing of performances caused by the anniversary of A. N. Ostrovsky could not provide for all the premieres. Some of them came into operation late.

Such are, for example, “The Last Sacrifice”, staged by I. Vs. Meyerhold at the Leningrad Academic Drama Theater named after A. S. Pushkin, and “The Thunderstorm”, performed by B. A. Babochkin at the Moscow Academic Maly Theater.

Both of these directors, focusing on the universal content of the plays, created mostly original performances.

In the Pushkin Theater, from the beginning to the end of the action, there is a fierce struggle between dishonesty and honesty, irresponsibility and responsibility, frivolous wasting of life and the desire to base it on the principles of trust, love and fidelity. This performance is an ensemble performance. Organically fusing deep lyricism and drama, she impeccably plays the heroine of G. T. Karelin’s play. But at the same time, the image of Pribytkov, a very rich industrialist, is clearly idealized here.

In the Maly Theater, in close-up, sometimes convincingly relying on the means of cartooning (Dikoy - B.V. Telegin, Feklusha - E.I. Rubtsova), the “dark kingdom” is shown, that is, the power of social arbitrariness, terrifying savagery, ignorance , inertia. But despite everything, young forces strive to realize their natural rights. Here even the quietest Tikhon utters words of submission to his mother in an intonation of simmering discontent. However, in the play, the overly emphasized erotic pathos argues with the social, reducing it. So, for example, a bed is played out here, on which Katerina and Varvara lie down during the action. Katerina’s famous monologue with the key, full of deep socio-psychological meaning, turned into a purely sensual one. Katerina thrashes around on the bed, clutching her pillow.

Clearly contrary to the playwright, the director “rejuvenated” Kuligin, compared him to Kudryash and Shapkin, and forced him to play the balalaika with them. But he is over 60 years old! Kabanikha rightly calls him an old man.

The overwhelming majority of the performances that appeared in connection with the anniversary of A. N. Ostrovsky were guided by the desire for a modern reading of his plays, while carefully preserving their text. But some directors, repeating the mistakes of the 20s and 30s, took a different path. So, in one performance the characters of “Slave Women” talk on the phone, in another - Lipochka and Podkhalyuzin (“We are our own people - we will be numbered!”) dance tango, in the third Paratov and Knurov become lovers of Kharita Ogudalova (“Dowry”), etc.

In a number of theaters, there has been a clear tendency to perceive Ostrovsky’s text as raw material for the director’s fabrications; re-mountings, free combinations from various plays and other gags. They were not deterred by the greatness of the playwright, who should be freed from disrespect for his text.

Modern reading, directing and acting, using the capabilities of the classical text, highlighting, emphasizing, rethinking certain of its motives, has no right, in our opinion, to distort its essence, violate its stylistic originality. It is also worth remembering that Ostrovsky, while allowing certain abbreviations of the text for stage execution, was very jealous of its meaning, not allowing any changes to it. So, for example, in response to the request of the artist V.V. Samoilov to redo the ending of the second act of the play “Jokers,” the playwright answered Burdin with irritation: “You have to be crazy to offer me such things, or consider me a boy who writes without thinking and does not value his work at all, but only values ​​the affection and disposition of the artists and is ready for them to break down his plays as they please” (XIV, 119). There was such a case. In 1875, at the opening of the Public Theatre, provincial artist N.I. Novikov, playing the role of the mayor in Gogol’s “The Inspector General,” made an innovation - in the first act of the first act he released all the officials on stage, and then came out himself, greeting them. He was hoping for applause. It turned out the other way around.

Among the spectators was A. N. Ostrovsky. Seeing this gag, he became extremely indignant. “For mercy,” said Alexander Nikolaevich, “is it really possible to allow an actor such things? Is it possible to treat Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol with such disrespect? It's a shame! Some Novikov decided to remake a genius about whom he probably has no idea!” “Gogol probably knew better than Novikov what he wrote, and Gogol should not be remade, he is already good.”

Ostrovsky's dramaturgy helps the builders of communism in understanding the past. Revealing hard life working people under the power of class privileges and heartless purity, it promotes understanding of the greatness of the social transformations carried out in our country, and inspires them to further actively fight for the successful construction of a communist society. But Ostrovsky’s significance is not only educational. The range of moral and everyday problems posed and resolved in the plays of the playwright, in many ways echoes our modernity and remains relevant.

We deeply sympathize with his democratic heroes, full of life-affirming optimism, for example, teachers Ivanov (“In Someone Else’s Feast there is a Hangover”) and Korpelov (“Labor Bread”). We are attracted to his deeply humane, spiritually generous, warm-hearted characters: Parasha and Gavrilo (“Warm Heart”). We admire his heroes who defend the truth in spite of all obstacles - Platon Zybkin (“Truth is good, but happiness is better”) and Meluzov (“Talents and Admirers”). We are in tune with both Zhadov, who is guided in his behavior by the desire for the public good (“Profitable Place”), and Kruchinina, who has set the goal of her life to be active good (“Guilty Without Guilt”). We share Larisa Ogudalova’s aspirations for love “equal on both sides” (“Dowry”). We cherish the playwright’s dreams of the victory of the people’s truth, the end of devastating wars, the advent of an era of peaceful life, the triumph of the understanding of love as a “good feeling,” a great gift of nature, the happiness of life, so vividly embodied in the spring fairy tale “The Snow Maiden.”

Ostrovsky's democratic ideological and moral principles, his understanding of good and evil are organically included in the moral code of the builder of communism, and this makes him our contemporary. The plays of the great playwright provide readers and viewers with high aesthetic pleasure.

Ostrovsky's work, which defined an entire era in the history of Russian stage art, continues to have a fruitful impact on Soviet drama and the Soviet theater. By rejecting Ostrovsky's plays, we impoverish ourselves morally and aesthetically.

The Soviet audience loves and appreciates Ostrovsky's plays. The decline in interest in them manifests itself only in those cases when they are interpreted in a narrow everyday aspect, muting their inherent universal human essence. Clearly in the spirit of the judgments of the final conference, as if participating in it, A.K. Tarasova in the article “Belongs to Eternity” states: “I am convinced: the depth and truth of feelings, high and light, permeating Ostrovsky’s plays will forever be revealed to people and will forever be excite them and make them better... changing times will entail a change of emphasis: but the main thing will remain forever, will not lose its cordiality and instructive truth, because integrity and honesty are always dear to man and people.”

At the initiative of Kostroma party and Soviet organizations, warmly supported by the participants in the final conference of the Ministry of Culture of the RSFSR and the WTO, a resolution was adopted on the regular holding of periodic festivals of the works of the great playwright, new productions of his plays and their creative discussions in Kostroma and the Shchelykovo Museum-Reserve. The implementation of this resolution will undoubtedly contribute to the promotion of Ostrovsky's dramaturgy, its correct understanding and more vivid stage embodiment.

A real event in Ostrov studies was the 88th volume of “Literary Heritage” (M., 1974), which published very valuable articles about the work of the playwright, numerous letters from him to his wife and other biographical materials, reviews of the stage life of his plays abroad.

The anniversary also contributed to the release of a new Full meeting Ostrovsky's works.

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The work of A. N. Ostrovsky, included in the treasury of world progressive art, is the glory and pride of the Russian people. And that is why for the Russian people everything that is connected with the memory of this great playwright is dear and sacred.

Already during the days of his funeral, the idea arose among progressive figures of the Kineshma zemstvo and residents of Kineshma about opening a subscription for the construction of a monument to him. This monument was supposed to be installed on one of the squares in Moscow. In 1896, the democratic intelligentsia of the city of Kineshma (with the help of the Moscow Maly Theater) organized the Musical and Drama Club named after A. N. Ostrovsky in memory of their glorious fellow countryman. This circle, having rallied around itself all the progressive forces of the city, became a hotbed of culture, science and socio-political education in the broadest layers of the population. They opened the Theater named after. A. N. Ostrovsky, a free library-reading room, a folk teahouse selling newspapers and books.

On September 16, 1899, the Kineshma district zemstvo assembly decided to name the newly built public primary school in the Shchelykovo estate after A. N. Ostrovsky. On December 23 of the same year, the Ministry of Public Education approved this decision.

Russian people, deeply honoring literary activity Ostrovsky, carefully protects the place of his burial.

Visits to the grave of A. N. Ostrovsky became especially frequent after the Great October Socialist Revolution, when the victorious people had the opportunity to give what they deserve to the worthy. Soviet people, arriving in Shchelykovo, go to the Nikola churchyard on Berezhki, where behind an iron fence above the grave of the great playwright stands a marble monument on which the words are carved:

Alexander Nikolaevich Ostrovsky

At the end of 1917, the Shchelykovo estate was nationalized and came under the jurisdiction of local authorities. The “old” house was occupied by the volost executive committee, then it was transferred to a colony of street children. The new estate, which belonged to M. A. Chatelain, came into the possession of the Kineshma workers’ commune; it was soon converted into a state farm. None of these organizations even ensured the safety of the memorial values ​​of the estate, and they were gradually destroyed.

In connection with the 100th anniversary of the birth of Ostrovsky, on September 5, 1923, the Council of People's Commissars decided to remove Shchelykovo from the jurisdiction of local authorities and transfer it to the disposal of the People's Commissariat of Education under the department of Main Science. But at that time the People's Commissariat for Education did not yet have either people or material means, necessary to transform Shchelykov into an exemplary memorial museum.

In 1928, by decision of the Council of People's Commissars, Shchelykovo was transferred to the Moscow Maly Theater with the condition that a memorial museum be organized in the house of A. N. Ostrovsky.

The Maly Theater opened a holiday home in the estate, where the Sadovskys, Ryzhovs, V.N. Pashennaya, A.I. Yuzhin-Sumbatov, A.A. Yablochkina, V.O. Massalitinova, V.A. Obukhova, S. spent their holidays. V. Aidarov, N. F. Kostromskoy, N. I. Uralov, M. S. Narokov and many other artists.

At first, there was no unanimity among the Maly Theater staff on the question of the nature of Shchelykov’s use. Some artists perceived Shchelykovo only as their vacation spot. “Therefore, the old house was inhabited by vacationing workers of the Maly Theater - all of it, from top to bottom.” But gradually the team matured plans to combine a holiday home and a memorial museum in Shchelykovo. The artistic family of the Maly Theater, improving the holiday home, began to turn the estate into a museum.

There were enthusiasts for organizing a memorial museum, primarily V. A. Maslikh and B. N. Nikolsky. Through their efforts, in 1936, the first museum exhibition was opened in two rooms of the “old” house.

Work on establishing a memorial museum in Shchelykovo was interrupted by the war. During the Great Patriotic War, children of artists and employees of the Maly Theater were evacuated here.

After the Great Patriotic War, the management of the Maly Theater began renovating the “old” house and organizing a memorial museum in it. In 1948, the first director of the museum was appointed - I. I. Sobolev, who turned out to be an extremely valuable assistant to Maly Theater enthusiasts. “He,” writes B.I. Nikolsky, “helped us for the first time restore the arrangement of furniture in the rooms, indicated how and where the table stood, what kind of furniture, etc.” . Through the efforts of all Shchelykov’s enthusiasts, three rooms of the “old” house (dining room, living room and study) were opened to tourists. A theatrical exhibition was set up on the second floor.

To commemorate the 125th anniversary of the playwright's birth, an important resolution was adopted regarding his estate. On May 11, 1948, the Council of Ministers of the USSR declared Shchelykovo a state reserve. At the same time, in memory of the playwright, the Semenovsko-Lapotny district, which includes the Shchelykovo estate, was renamed Ostrovsky. In Kineshma, a theater and one of the main streets were named after Ostrovsky.

But the obligations imposed by the resolution of the Council of Ministers of the USSR could not be fulfilled by the Maly Theater: it did not have sufficient material resources for this. And at the suggestion of its directorate, party and public organizations, the Council of Ministers of the USSR on October 16, 1953 transferred Shchelykovo to the All-Russian Theater Society.

Shchelykov's transition under the auspices of the WTO marked a truly new era for him. WTO officials showed genuine state concern for the A. N. Ostrovsky Memorial Museum.

Initial amateur attempts to create a memorial museum were replaced by its construction on a highly professional, scientific basis. The museum was provided with a staff of scientists. The “old” house was thoroughly renovated, and in fact, restored. The collection and study of literature about Ostrovsky’s work began, the search for new materials in archival repositories, the acquisition of documents and interior decoration items from private individuals. Much attention was paid to the exhibition of museum materials, gradually updating it. The employees of the memorial museum not only replenish and store its funds, but study and publish them. In 1973, the first “Schelykov collection” was published, prepared by museum staff.

Since the time of A. N. Ostrovsky, major changes have occurred in the surroundings of the ancient house. Much in the park is overgrown or completely destroyed (garden, vegetable garden). Due to the decrepitude of the years, all the office premises have disappeared.

But the main impression of the mighty northern Russian nature, among which Ostrovsky lived and worked, remained. In an effort to give Shchelykov, if possible, the appearance of Ostrovsky's time, the WTO began to restore and improve its entire territory, in particular the dam, roads, and plantings. The cemetery where the playwright is buried, and the Nikola-Berezhka Church, located on the territory of the reserve, have not been forgotten; the Sobolevs’ house, which Alexander Nikolaevich often visited, has been restored. This house has been turned into a social museum.

Shchelykov's enthusiasts, while preserving old ones, establish new traditions. Such a tradition is the annual ceremonial meetings at the playwright’s grave on June 14. This “memorable day” became not a mourning day, but a bright day of pride for the Soviet people in a writer-citizen, a patriot who devoted all his strength to serving the people. At these meetings, actors and directors, literary and theater scholars, and representatives of Kostroma and local party and Soviet organizations give speeches. The meetings end with the laying of wreaths on the grave.

Transforming Shchelykovo into a cultural center, into the center of scientific research thought addressed to Ostrovsky, interesting scientific and theoretical conferences on the study of the dramaturgy of A. N. Ostrovsky and its stage embodiment have been organized and held here since 1956. At these conferences, which bring together major theater experts, literary critics, directors, playwrights, artists, artists, the season's performances are discussed, experiences of their productions are shared, common ideological and aesthetic positions are developed, ways of development of drama and performing arts are outlined, etc. .

On June 14, 1973, with a huge crowd of people, a monument to A. N. Ostrovsky and the Literary and Theater Museum were opened on the territory of the reserve. Representatives of the Ministry of Culture of the USSR and the RSFSR, the WTO, the Writers' Union, guests from Moscow, Leningrad, Ivanovo, Yaroslavl and other cities came to the opening ceremony of the monument and museum.

The monument, created by sculptor A.P. Timchenko and architect V.I. Rovnov, is located at the intersection of an asphalt driveway and the path leading to the memorial museum, facing it.

The ceremonial meeting was opened by the first secretary of the Kostroma Regional Committee of the CPSU, Yu. N. Balandin. Addressing those present, he spoke about the unfading glory of the great Russian playwright, the creator of the Russian national theater, about his close connection with the Kostroma region, with Shchelykov, about why Alexander Nikolaevich is dear to the Soviet people, the builders of communism. S.V. Mikhalkov, M.I. Tsarev and representatives of local party and Soviet public organizations also spoke at the rally. S. V. Mikhalkov noted the importance of Ostrovsky as the greatest playwright who made an invaluable contribution to the treasury of classical Russian and world literature. M.I. Tsarev said that here, in Shchelykovo, the works of the great playwright, his enormous mind, artistic talent, and sensitive, warm heart become especially close and understandable to us.

A. A. Tikhonov, first secretary of the Ostrovsky district committee of the Communist Party, very well expressed the mood of all those present by reading a poem by local poet V. S. Volkov, a pilot who lost his sight in the Great Patriotic War:

Here it is, the Shchelykovskaya estate!

Years will not grow old memories.

To honor Ostrovsky's immortality,

We have gathered here today.

No, not the skeleton of an obelisk stone

And not the crypt and the cold of the grave,

As alive, as dear, close,

These days we honor him.

The granddaughter of the playwright M. M. Chatelain and the best production workers of the region - G. N. Kalinin and P. E. Rozhkova - also spoke at the rally.

After this, the honor of opening the monument to the great playwright was given to the chairman of the All-Union Anniversary Committee - S. V. Mikhalkov. When the canvas covering the monument was lowered, Ostrovsky appeared before the audience, sitting on a garden bench. He is in creative thought, in wise inner concentration.

After the opening of the monument, everyone headed to the new building, decorated in Russian style. M.I. Tsarev cut the ribbon and invited the first visitors to the opened Literary and Theater Museum. Exhibition of the museum "A. N. Ostrovsky on the stage of the Soviet theater" includes the main stages of the playwright's life, his literary and social activities, the stage embodiment of his plays in the USSR and abroad.

The Literary and Theater Museum is an important link in the entire complex that makes up the A. N. Ostrovsky Museum-Reserve, but its soul and center will forever remain memorial house. Nowadays, through the efforts of the WTO and its leading figures, this house-museum is open to tourists throughout the year.

The WTO is also radically reorganizing the rest house located on the territory of the reserve. Converted into the House of Creativity, it is also intended to serve as a kind of monument to the playwright, recalling not only his creative spirit in Shchelykov, but also his wide hospitality.

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The modern Shchelykovo estate is almost always crowded. Life is in full swing in her. Here, in the spring and summer, Ostrovsky’s heirs work and relax in the House of Creativity - artists, directors, theater experts, literary critics from Moscow, Leningrad and other cities. Sightseers from all over our country come here.

Theater workers coming to Shchelykovo exchange experiences, discuss productions of the past season, and hatch plans for new works. How many new stage images are born here in friendly conversations and disputes! With what lively interest issues of theatrical art are discussed here! How many creative, significant ideas appear here! It was here that V. Pashennaya conceived her production of “Thunderstorms,” performed in 1963 at the Moscow Academic Maly Theater. “I was not mistaken,” she writes, “deciding to relax not at a resort, but among Russian nature... Nothing took me away from my thoughts about “The Thunderstorm”... I was again overcome by a passionate desire to work on the role of Kabanikha and on the entire play "Storm". It became clear to me that this play is about the people, about the Russian heart, about the Russian man, about his spiritual beauty and strength.”

The image of Ostrovsky acquires a special tangibility in Shchelykov. The playwright becomes closer, more understandable, more familiar both as a person and as an artist.

It is important to note that the number of tourists visiting the memorial museum and the grave of A. N. Ostrovsky is growing every year. In the summer of 1973, from two hundred to five hundred or more people visited the memorial museum every day.

Their entries left in guest books are interesting. Tourists write that the life of Ostrovsky, a wonderful artist, a rare devotee of labor, an energetic public figure, an ardent patriot, arouses their admiration. They emphasize in their notes that Ostrovsky’s works teach them an understanding of evil and good, courage, love of the motherland, truth, nature, and grace.

Ostrovsky is great in the versatility of his creativity, in that he depicted both the dark kingdom of the past and the bright rays of the future that arose in the social conditions of that time. Ostrovsky's life and work arouse a legitimate sense of patriotic pride in tourists. Great and glorious is the country that gave birth to such a writer!

The regular guests of the museum are workers and collective farmers. Deeply moved by everything they saw, they note in the museum’s diaries that the works of A. N. Ostrovsky, depicting the conditions of pre-revolutionary, capitalist Russia that enslave the working man, inspire the active construction of a communist society in which human talents will find their full expression.

Donbass miners in December 1971 enriched the museum’s diary with these short but expressive words: “Thank you to the miner for the museum. Let’s take home the memory of this house where the great A. N. Ostrovsky lived, worked and died.” On July 4, 1973, the workers of Kostroma noted: “Everything here tells us about what is most dear to a Russian person.”

The house-museum of A. N. Ostrovsky is very widely visited by secondary and high school students. It attracts scientists, writers, and artists. On June 11, 1970, employees of the Institute of Slavic Studies arrived here. “We are fascinated and captivated by Ostrovsky’s house,” this is how they expressed their impressions of what they saw. On July 13 of the same year, a group of Leningrad scientists visited here, who “saw with pride and joy” that “our people know how to appreciate and preserve so carefully and so touchingly everything that concerns the life ... of the great playwright.” On June 24, 1973, Moscow researchers wrote in a guest book: “Shchelykovo is a cultural monument of the Russian people of the same importance as the estate Yasnaya Polyana. Preserving it in its original form is a matter of honor and duty of every Russian person.”

Frequent guests of the museum are artists. On August 23, 1954, People's Artist of the USSR A. N. Gribov visited the museum and left a note in the guest book: “Magic house! Everything here breathes the real thing - Russian. And the land is magical! Nature itself sings here. Ostrovsky’s creations, glorifying the beauty of this region, are becoming closer, clearer and dearer to our Russian heart.”

In 1960, E. D. Turchaninova expressed her impressions of the Shchelykovo Museum: “I am glad and happy that... I was able to live in Shchelykovo more than once, where the nature and furnishings of the house where the playwright lived reflect the atmosphere of his work.” .

Foreign guests also come to Shchelykovo to admire its nature, visit the writer’s office, and visit his grave, more and more every year.

The tsarist government, hating Ostrovsky's democratic drama, deliberately left his ashes in the wilderness, where for many years it was a feat to travel. The Soviet government, bringing art closer to the people, turned Shchelykovo into a cultural center, into a center of propaganda for the work of the great national playwright, into a place of pilgrimage for workers. Narrow, really literally the impassable path to Ostrovsky's grave became a wide road. People of various nationalities travel along it from all sides to bow to the great Russian playwright.

Eternally alive and beloved by the people, Ostrovsky, with his unfading works, inspires Soviet people - workers, peasants, intellectuals, innovators in production and science, teachers, writers, performers - to new successes for the good and happiness of their native Fatherland.

M. P. Sadovsky, characterizing Ostrovsky’s work, said beautifully: “Everything in the world is subject to change - from people’s thoughts to the cut of a dress; Only truth does not die, and no matter what new directions, new moods, new forms appear in literature, they will not kill Ostrovsky’s creations, and “the people’s path will not become overgrown” to this picturesque source of truth.

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Speaking about the essence and role of drama and dramatic writers, Ostrovsky wrote: “History has reserved the name of great and brilliant only for those writers who knew how to write for the whole people, and only those works that survived the centuries that were truly popular at home: such works with over time they become understandable and valuable for other peoples, and finally for the whole world” (XII, 123).

These words perfectly characterize the meaning and significance of the activities of their author himself. The work of A. N. Ostrovsky had a huge impact on the drama and theater of all fraternal peoples now part of the USSR. His plays have been widely translated and staged on the stages of Ukraine, Belarus, Armenia, Georgia and other fraternal nations since the late 50s of the 19th century. Their stage managers, playwrights, actors and directors perceived him as a teacher who paved new ways for the development of dramatic and stage art.

In 1883, when A. N. Ostrovsky arrived in Tiflis, members of the Georgian drama troupe addressed him with an address in which they called him “the creator of immortal creations.” “Pioneers of art in the East, we were convinced and proved with our own eyes that purely Russian folk creatures Yours can move the hearts and affect the minds of more than just the Russian public, that your famous name is just as beloved among us, among Georgians, as it is among you, inside Russia. We are infinitely happy that our humble lot has had the high honor of serving, with the help of your creations, as one of the links in the moral connection between these two peoples, who have so many common traditions and aspirations, so much mutual love and sympathy.”

Ostrovsky's powerful influence on the development of dramatic and performing arts of the fraternal peoples further intensified. In 1948, the outstanding Ukrainian director M. M. Krushelnitsky wrote: “For us, workers of the Ukrainian stage, the treasury of his work is at the same time one of the sources that enriches our theater with the life-giving power of Russian culture.”

More than half of A. N. Ostrovsky’s plays were performed on the stages of the fraternal republics after October. But among them, the ones that received the most attention were “Our own people - let us be numbered!”, “Poverty is not a vice”, “Profitable place”, “Thunderstorm”, “Simplicity is enough for every wise man”, “Forest”, “Snow Maiden”, “Wolves and Sheep” , “Dowry”, “Talents and Admirers”, “Guilty Without Guilt”. Many of these performances became major events in theatrical life. The beneficial influence of the author of “The Thunderstorm” and “Dowry” on the drama and stage of fraternal peoples continues to this day.

Ostrovsky's plays, gaining more and more new admirers abroad, are widely staged in theaters of people's democratic countries, especially on the stages of Slavic states (Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia).

After the Second World War, the plays of the great playwright increasingly attracted the attention of publishers and theaters in capitalist countries. Here they were primarily interested in the plays “The Thunderstorm”, “Enough Simplicity for Every Wise Man”, “Forest”, “Snow Maiden”, “Wolves and Sheep”, “Dowry”. Moreover, the tragedy “The Thunderstorm” was shown in Paris (1945, 1967), Berlin (1951), Potsdam (1953), London (1966), Tehran (1970). The comedy “Enough Simplicity for Every Wise Man” was staged in New York (1956), Delhi (1958), Bern (1958, 1963), London (1963). The comedy "The Forest" was shown in Copenhagen (1947, 1956), Berlin (1950, 1953), Dresden (1954), Oslo (1961), Milan (1962), West Berlin (1964), Cologne (1965), London (1970) , Paris (1970). Performances of The Snow Maiden took place in Paris (1946), Rome (1954), and Aarhus (Denmark, 1964).

The attention of foreign democratic viewers to Ostrovsky’s work is not weakening, but increasing. His plays are conquering more and more stages of the world theater.

It is quite natural that the interest of literary scholars in Ostrovsky has recently increased. Progressive domestic and foreign criticism placed A. N. Ostrovsky, even during his lifetime, among the most important playwrights in the world as the creator of timeless masterpieces that contributed to the formation and development of realism. Already in the first foreign article about Ostrovsky, published by the English literary critic V. Rolston in 1868, he is perceived as an outstanding playwright. In 1870, Jan Neruda, the founder of realism in Czech literature, argued that Ostrovsky’s dramaturgy was ideologically and aesthetically superior to the plays of any playwright of the 19th century, and, predicting its prospects, wrote: “In the history of dramaturgy, Ostrovsky will be given an honorable place ... thanks to the truth of the image and true humanity he will live for centuries."

All subsequent progressive criticism, as a rule, considers his work among the luminaries of world drama. It is in this spirit that, for example, the French Arsene Legrel (1885), Emile Durand-Greville (1889), Oscar Metenier (1894) write their prefaces to Ostrovsky’s plays.

In 1912, Jules Patuillet’s monograph “Ostrovsky and His Theater of Russian Morals” was published in Paris. This huge work (about 500 pages!) is an ardent propaganda of the work of Ostrovsky - a deep connoisseur, a truthful portrayer of Russian morals and a remarkable master of dramatic art.

The researcher defended the ideas of this work in his further activities. Refuting critics who did not underestimate the playwright’s skill (for example, Boborykin, Vogüet and Valishevsky), Patuillet wrote about him as a “classic of the stage”, who was a complete master of his craft already in the very first major play - “Our people - let’s be numbered!” .

The interest of foreign literary and theater scholars in Ostrovsky intensified after the October Revolution, especially after the end of the Second World War. It was at this time that the extremely original essence, genius, and greatness of Ostrovsky’s dramaturgy, which rightfully took its place among the most brilliant works of world dramatic art, became increasingly clear to progressive foreign literary researchers.

Thus, E. Wendt, in the preface to the Collected Works of Ostrovsky, published in 1951 in Berlin, states: “A. N. Ostrovsky, the greatest dramatic genius of Russia, belongs to the brilliant era of Russian critical realism of the second half of the 19th century, when Russian literature took a leading place in the world and had a profound influence on European and American literature.” Calling on theaters to stage Ostrovsky’s plays, he writes: “And if the leaders of our theaters open the work of the greatest playwright of the 19th century to the German stage, this will mean the enrichment of our classical repertoire, like the discovery of a second Shakespeare."

According to the Italian literary critic Ettore Lo Gatto, expressed in 1955, the tragedy “The Thunderstorm”, which went around all the stages of Europe, remains eternally alive as a drama, because its deep humanity is “not only Russian, but also universal.”

The 150th anniversary of A. N. Ostrovsky contributed to a new intensification of attention to his drama and revealed its enormous international possibilities - the ability to respond to the moral problems not only of his compatriots, but also of other peoples of the globe. And that is why, by decision of UNESCO, this anniversary was celebrated all over the world.

Time, a great connoisseur, has not erased the inherent colors from Ostrovsky’s plays: the further it goes, the more it confirms their universal human essence, their undying ideological and aesthetic value.

Biographies) are enormous: closely aligned in his work with the activities of his great teachers Pushkin, Griboyedov and Gogol, Ostrovsky also said his word, strong and intelligent. A realist in his writing style and artistic worldview, he gave Russian literature an unusually large variety of pictures and types, snatched from Russian life.

Alexander Nikolaevich Ostrovsky. Educational video

“Reading his works, you are directly amazed by the immense breadth of Russian life, the abundance and diversity of types, characters and situations. As if in a kaleidoscope, Russian people of every possible mental make-up pass before our eyes - here are tyrant merchants, with their downtrodden children and household members, - here are landowners and landowners - from broad Russian natures, wasting their lives, to predatory hoarders, from complacent, pure in heart, to the callous, not knowing any moral restraint, they are replaced by the bureaucratic world, with all its various representatives, starting from the highest steps of the bureaucratic ladder and ending with those who have lost the image and likeness of God, petty drunkards, quarrelsome, - the product of pre-reform courts, then they go simply baseless people, honestly and dishonestly getting by from day to day - all kinds of businessmen, teachers, hangers-on and hangers-on, provincial actors and actresses with the whole world around them.. And along with this passes the distant historical and legendary past of Russia, in the form artistic paintings the life of the Volga daredevils of the 17th century, the formidable Tsar Ivan Vasilyevich, the Time of Troubles with the frivolous Dmitry, the cunning Shuisky, the great Nizhny Novgorod Minin, the military boyars and the people of that era,” writes the pre-revolutionary critic Alexandrovsky.

Ostrovsky is one of the most prominent national Russian writers. Having studied to the depths the most conservative layers of Russian life, he was able to consider in this life the good and evil remnants of antiquity. He introduced us more fully than other Russian writers to the psychology and worldview of the Russian person.