What is the significance of the work of A. N. Ostrovsky in world drama.
- 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.
Ostrovsky wrote 47 original plays (not counting the second editions of Kozma Minin and 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 Doesn’t Warm) and P. M. Nevezhin (Blazh, Old in a new way). In the words of Ostrovsky himself, this is a whole folk theater.
But Ostrovsky’s dramaturgy is a purely Russian phenomenon, although his work,
certainly influenced the drama and theater of the fraternal peoples,
included in the USSR. His plays have been translated and staged
scenes of Ukraine, Belarus, Armenia, Georgia, etc.Ostrovsky's plays gained fans abroad. His plays are staged
in theaters of former people's democracies, especially on stages
Slavic states (Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia).
After the Second World War, the playwright's plays increasingly attracted the attention of publishers and theaters in capitalist countries.
Here they were primarily interested in the plays The Thunderstorm, There is Enough Simplicity for Every Wise Man, The Forest, The Snow Maiden, Wolves and Sheep, The Dowry.
But such popularity and such recognition as Shakespeare or Moliere, Russian
the playwright has not earned any accolades in world culture. - Everything that the great playwright described has not been eradicated to this day.
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 adolescence 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, the foundation of which was laid by Fonvizin, Griboyedov, Gogol.” 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. There were musical evenings in the house on Zhitnaya, 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, was once only lightly touched upon by the great Gogol in “Marriage,” and he, Ostrovsky, may be destined to tell everything about it thoroughly, in detail... And, really, these are swirling around in his mind fresh stories in your 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
It was already late autumn of 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, and 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 oneself.
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 throughout 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. A whole new world began to open up to audiences.”
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 - next to Turgenev, Tolstoy, Grigorovich, Goncharov... The most excellent actors and actresses of both capitals gifted him with their sincere friendship, revering him as if even a meter away. 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, long ago conceived based on the bureaucratic tricks he once noticed in the service - “A Profitable Place”: about the black untruth of Russian courts, about the old beast-thief and bribe-taker, about the death of a young, unspoiled, but weak soul under the yoke of vile everyday life 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 Two New Ones,” “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 there any everyday naturalness, ease, there was no true truth in the development of the action, and yet the 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 in the 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 romance lasted a long time: five years before the wedding, their first illegitimate son was already 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. That’s why the speech of Ostrovsky’s heroes is so important, 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 ban on his plays by theater censorship so hard. The comedy “We Will Be Numbered Our Own People” was allowed to be staged in the theater only ten years after Pogodin managed to publish it in the magazine.
With a feeling of undisguised satisfaction, A. N. Ostrovsky wrote on November 3, 1878 to his friend, artist of the Alexandria Theater A. F. Burdin: “I have already read my play in Moscow five times, among the listeners there were people hostile to me, and that’s all.” unanimously recognized “The Dowry” as the best of all my works.” Ostrovsky lived with the “Dowry”, at times only on it, his fortieth thing in a row, he directed “his attention and strength”, wanting to “finish” it in the most careful way. In September 1878, he wrote to one of his acquaintances: “I am working on my play with all my might; It seems 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 audience, 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 critics, theaters and audiences became increasingly complex. The period when he enjoyed universal recognition, which he won in the late fifties and early sixties, was replaced by another, increasingly growing in different circles of cooling towards the playwright.
Theatrical censorship was stricter than literary censorship. This is no coincidence. In its essence, theatrical art is democratic; it addresses the general public more directly than literature. Ostrovsky in his “Note on the situation 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, but dramas and comedies are written for the whole people; dramatic 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. 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." For a “fresh” public, Ostrovsky wrote, “a 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 is 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,
So that from the walking truth
Everyone felt pain and light!
(“Balagan”, 1906)
The enormous importance that Ostrovsky attached to the theater, his thoughts about theatrical art, about the position of theater in Russia, about the fate of actors - all this was reflected in his plays. 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 portrayed 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”, 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 - too 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 of a theater school and his own repertoire in Russia. 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 artist’s superiors said “you,” when most of the troupe were serfs, Ostrovsky’s treatment seemed to everyone like some kind of revelation. Usually 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 of the arts, who felt like masters of the theater and could dictate their terms. 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, as depicted by Ostrovsky, 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.
In his early romantic stories, Maxim Gorky expressed his attitude to life and people, his view of the era. The heroes of many of these stories are so-called tramps. The writer portrays them as brave, strong-hearted people. The main thing for them is freedom, which tramps, like all of us, understand in their own way. They passionately dream of some kind of special life, far from everyday life. But they can’t find her, so they go wandering, drink themselves to death, and commit suicide. One of these people is depicted in the story “Chelkash”. Chelkash - “an old poisoned wolf, well known to the Havana people, an avid drunkard and l
In Fet's poetry, the feeling of love is woven from contradictions: it is not only joy, but also torment and suffering. In Fetov’s “songs of love,” the poet surrenders so completely to the feeling of love, the intoxication of the beauty of the woman he loves, which in itself brings happiness, in which even sorrowful experiences constitute great bliss. From the depths of world existence, love grows, which became the subject of Fet’s inspiration. The innermost sphere of the poet’s soul is love. In his poems he put various shades of love feelings: not only bright love, admiration of beauty, admiration, delight, happiness of reciprocity, but also
At the end of the 90s of the 19th century, the reader was amazed by the appearance of three volumes of “Essays and Stories” by a new writer - M. Gorky. “Great and original talent,” was the general judgment about the new writer and his books. Growing discontent in society and the expectation of decisive changes caused an increase in romantic tendencies in literature. These trends were reflected especially clearly in the work of young Gorky, in such stories as “Chelkash”, “Old Woman Izergil”, “Makar Chudra”, and in revolutionary songs. The heroes of these stories are people “with the sun in their blood”, strong, proud, beautiful. These heroes are Gorkog's dream
More than a hundred years ago, in a small provincial town in Denmark - Odense, on the island of Funen, extraordinary events took place. The quiet, slightly sleepy streets of Odense were suddenly filled with the sounds of music. A procession of artisans with torches and banners marched past the brightly lit ancient town hall, greeting the tall blue-eyed man standing at the window. In honor of whom did the inhabitants of Odense light their fires in September 1869? It was Hans Christian Andersen, who had recently been elected an honorary citizen of his hometown. Honoring Andersen, his fellow countrymen sang the heroic feat of a man and writer,
Alexander Nikolaevich Ostrovsky (1823-1886) rightfully occupies a worthy place among the largest representatives of world drama.
The significance of the activities of Ostrovsky, who for more than forty years annually published in the best magazines of Russia and staged plays on the stages of the imperial theaters of St. Petersburg and Moscow, many of which were events in the literary and theatrical life of the era, is briefly but accurately described in the famous letter of I.A. . Goncharov, addressed to the playwright himself.
“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, the foundation of which was laid by Fonvizin, Griboyedov, Gogol. But only after you, we Russians can proudly say: “We have our own Russian, national theater.” It, in fairness, should be called the Ostrovsky Theater.”
Ostrovsky began his creative journey in the 40s, during the lifetime of Gogol and Belinsky, and completed it in the second half of the 80s, at a time when A.P. Chekhov was already firmly established in literature.
The conviction that the work of a playwright creating a theater repertoire is a high public service permeated and directed Ostrovsky’s activities. He was organically connected with the life of literature.
In his youth, the playwright wrote critical articles and participated in the editorial affairs of Moskvityanin, trying to change the direction of this conservative magazine, then, publishing in Sovremennik and Otechestvennye Zapiski, he became friendly with N. A. Nekrasov and L. N. Tolstoy , I. S. Turgenev, I. A. Goncharov and other writers. He followed their work, discussed their works with them and listened to their opinions about his plays.
In an era when state theaters were officially considered “imperial” and were under the control of the Ministry of the Court, and provincial entertainment institutions were placed at the complete disposal of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs, Ostrovsky put forward the idea of a complete restructuring of the theatrical business in Russia. He argued for the need to replace the court and commercial theater with a folk one.
Not limiting himself to the theoretical development of this idea in special articles and notes, the playwright practically fought for its implementation for many years. The main areas in which he realized his views on theater were his creativity and work with actors.
Ostrovsky considered dramaturgy, the literary basis of the performance, to be its defining element. The theater's repertoire, which gives the viewer the opportunity to “see Russian life and Russian history on stage,” according to his concepts, was addressed primarily to the democratic public, “for whom popular writers want to write and are obliged to write.” Ostrovsky defended the principles of author's theater.
He considered the theaters of Shakespeare, Moliere, and Goethe to be exemplary experiments of this kind. The combination in one person of the author of dramatic works and their interpreter on stage - a teacher of actors, a director - seemed to Ostrovsky to be a guarantee of artistic integrity and the organic activity of the theater.
This idea, in the absence of direction, with the traditional focus of theatrical performance on the performance of individual, “solo” actors, was innovative and fruitful. Its significance has not been exhausted even today, when the director has become the main figure in the theater. It is enough to recall B. Brecht’s theater “Berliner Ensemble” to be convinced of this.
Overcoming the inertia of the bureaucratic administration, literary and theatrical intrigues, Ostrovsky worked with actors, constantly directing the productions of his new plays at the Maly Moscow and Alexandrinsky St. Petersburg theaters.
The essence of his idea was to implement and consolidate the influence of literature on the theater. He fundamentally and categorically condemned what was becoming more and more apparent since the 70s. the subordination of dramatic writers to the tastes of actors - favorites of the stage, their prejudices and whims. At the same time, Ostrovsky could not imagine drama without theater.
His plays were written with real performers and artists in mind. He emphasized: in order to write a good play, the author must have full knowledge of the laws of the stage, the purely plastic side of the theater.
He was not ready to give power over stage artists to not every playwright. He was sure that only a writer who created his own unique dramaturgy, his own special world on stage, has something to say to the artists, has something to teach them. Ostrovsky's attitude towards modern theater was determined by his artistic system. The hero of Ostrovsky's dramaturgy was the people.
The whole society and, moreover, the socio-historical life of the people were represented in his plays. It was not without reason that critics N. Dobrolyubov and A. Grigoriev, who approached Ostrovsky’s work from mutually opposite positions, saw in his works a holistic picture of the existence of the people, although they assessed the life depicted by the writer differently.
This writer’s orientation towards the mass phenomena of life corresponded to the principle of ensemble acting, which he defended, the inherent awareness of the playwright of the importance of unity, the integrity of the creative aspirations of the group of actors participating in the play.
In his plays, Ostrovsky depicted social phenomena that have deep roots - conflicts, the origins and causes of which often go back to distant historical eras.
He saw and showed the fruitful aspirations arising in society, and the new evil rising in it. The bearers of new aspirations and ideas in his plays are forced to wage a difficult struggle with old conservative customs and views, sanctified by tradition, and in them new evil collides with the ethical ideal of the people that has evolved over centuries, with strong traditions of resistance to social injustice and moral injustice.
Each character in Ostrovsky's plays is organically connected with his environment, his era, the history of his people. At the same time, the ordinary person, in whose concepts, habits and very speech his kinship with the social and national world is imprinted, is the focus of interest in Ostrovsky's plays.
The individual fate of the individual, the happiness and misfortune of the individual, ordinary person, his needs, his struggle for his personal well-being excite the viewer of the dramas and comedies of this playwright. The position of a person serves in them as a measure of the state of society.
Moreover, the typicality of personality, the energy with which the individual characteristics of a person “affect” the life of the people, in Ostrovsky’s dramaturgy has important ethical and aesthetic significance. The character is wonderful.
Just as in Shakespeare’s drama the tragic hero, be he beautiful or terrible in terms of ethical assessment, belongs to the sphere of beauty, in Ostrovsky’s plays the characteristic hero, to the extent of his typicality, is the embodiment of aesthetics, and in a number of cases, spiritual wealth, historical life and culture of the people .
This feature of Ostrovsky’s dramaturgy predetermined his attention to the performance of each actor, to the performer’s ability to present a type on stage, to vividly and captivatingly recreate an individual, original social character.
Ostrovsky especially appreciated this ability in the best artists of his time, encouraging and helping to develop it. Addressing A.E. Martynov, he said: “... from several features sketched by an inexperienced hand, you created final types full of artistic truth. This is what makes you so dear to the authors.”
Ostrovsky ended his discussion about the nationality of the theater, about the fact that dramas and comedies are written for the whole people with the words: “...dramatic writers must always remember this, they must be clear and strong.”
The clarity and strength of the author's creativity, in addition to the types created in his plays, finds expression in the conflicts of his works, built on simple life incidents, which, however, reflect the main conflicts of modern social existence.
In his early article, positively assessing A.F. Pisemsky’s story “The Mattress,” Ostrovsky wrote: “The intrigue of the story is simple and instructive, like life. Because of the original characters, because of the natural and highly dramatic course of events, a noble thought, gained from everyday experience, comes through.
This story is truly a work of art." The natural dramatic course of events, original characters, depiction of the life of ordinary people - by listing these signs of true artistry in Pisemsky’s story, young Ostrovsky undoubtedly came from his reflections on the tasks of dramaturgy as an art.
It is characteristic that Ostrovsky attaches great importance to the instructiveness of a literary work. The instructiveness of art gives him the basis to compare and bring art closer to life.
Ostrovsky believed that the theater, gathering within its walls a large and diverse audience, uniting it with a sense of aesthetic pleasure, should educate society, help simple, unprepared spectators “understand life for the first time,” and give the educated “a whole perspective of thoughts that cannot be escaped.” (ibid.).
At the same time, abstract didactics was alien to Ostrovsky. “Anyone can have good thoughts, but control over minds and hearts is given only to a select few,” he reminded, mocking writers who replace serious artistic issues with edifying tirades and naked tendencies. Knowledge of life, its truthful realistic portrayal, reflection on the most pressing and complex issues for society - this is what the theater should present to the public, this is what makes the stage a school of life.
The artist teaches the viewer to think and feel, but does not give him ready-made solutions. Didactic dramaturgy, which does not reveal the wisdom and instructiveness of life, but replaces it with declaratively expressed truisms, is dishonest, since it is not artistic, while it is precisely for the sake of aesthetic impressions that people come to the theater.
These ideas of Ostrovsky found a peculiar refraction in her attitude to historical drama. The playwright argued that “historical dramas and chronicles<...>develop people’s self-knowledge and cultivate conscious love for the fatherland.”
At the same time, he emphasized that it is not the distortion of the past for the sake of one or another tendentious idea, not the external stage effect of melodrama on historical subjects, and not the transposition of scholarly monographs into a dialogical form, but a truly artistic recreation of the living reality of bygone centuries on stage can be the basis patriotic performance.
Such a performance helps society to understand itself, encourages reflection, giving a conscious character to the immediate feeling of love for the homeland. Ostrovsky understood that the plays he created annually formed the basis of the modern theatrical repertoire.
Defining the types of dramatic works, without which an exemplary repertoire cannot exist, he, in addition to dramas and comedies depicting modern Russian life, and historical chronicles, named extravaganzas, fairy tale plays for festive performances, accompanied by music and dance, designed as a colorful folk spectacle.
The playwright created a masterpiece of this kind - the spring fairy tale "The Snow Maiden", in which poetic fantasy and a picturesque setting are combined with deep lyrical and philosophical content.
History of Russian literature: in 4 volumes / Edited by N.I. Prutskov and others - L., 1980-1983.
sound. 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 ban on his plays by theater censorship so hard. The comedy “We Will Be Numbered Our Own People” was allowed to be staged in the theater only ten years after Pogodin managed to publish it in the magazine.
“I have already read my play in Moscow five times, among the listeners there were people hostile to me, and everyone unanimously recognized “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 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 audience, 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 critics, theaters and audiences became increasingly complex. The period when he enjoyed universal recognition, which he won in the late fifties and early sixties, was replaced by another, increasingly growing in different circles of cooling towards the playwright.
Theatrical censorship was stricter than literary censorship. This is no coincidence. In its essence, theatrical art is democratic; it addresses the general public more directly than literature. Ostrovsky, in his “Note on the State of Dramatic Art in Russia at the Present Time” (1881), wrote that “dramatic poetry is closer to the people than other branches of literature. All other works are written for educated people, and dramas and comedies are written for the whole people; dramatic works writers must always remember this, they must be clear and strong. This closeness to the people does not in the least degrade dramatic poetry, but, on the contrary, doubles its strength and does not allow it to become vulgar and crushed.” Ostrovsky talks in his “Note” about how the theatrical audience in Russia expanded after 1861. 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." For a "fresh" audience, Ostrovsky wrote, "a strong drama, major comedy, provocative, frank, loud laughter, hot, sincere feelings are required."
about poetry, he will write that its essence is in the main, “walking” truths, in the ability of theater to convey them to the heart of the reader:
Ride along, mourning nags!
Actors, master your craft,
So that from the walking truth
Everyone felt pain and light!
(“Balagan”, 1906)
The enormous importance that Ostrovsky attached to the theater, his thoughts about theatrical art, about the position of theater in Russia, about the fate of actors - all this was reflected in his plays. 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 of a theater school and his own repertoire in Russia. Maly Theater artist 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 artist’s superiors said “you,” when most of the troupe were serfs, Ostrovsky’s treatment seemed to everyone like some kind of revelation. Usually 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 of the arts, who felt like masters of the theater and could dictate their terms. 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...”
But despite the difficult life, adversity and grievances, as depicted by Ostrovsky, 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.
