The fate and personality of each person cannot be fully understood outside the fate of his family, his ancestors. From the beginning of the 18th century, the noble family of the Nekrasovs turned out to be inextricably linked with the village (village, later village) Greshnevo in the Yaroslavl district, which stood on the road that had long connected the cities of Kostroma and Yaroslavl along the left bank of the Volga. At the beginning of the 18th century, Greshnevo was part of the estate of the stolnik Boris Ivanovich Neronov, the great-great-grandfather of the poet 13* .
In 1736, the daughter of B. I. Neronov, Praskovya Borisovna, married the reiter of the horse guard Alexei Yakovlevich Nekrasov. As a dowry for his wife, A. Ya. Nekrasov received the Yaroslavl estate - the village of Vasilkovo with the villages of Koshchevka, Gogulino and half the village of Greshnevo 14 . Thus, the great-grandfather of the poet A. Ya. Nekrasov was the first owner of Greshnev from the Nekrasov family. After his death (he died around 1760), P. B. Nekrasova (she died after 1780) and her only son Sergei Alekseevich, the poet’s grandfather, became the owners of the Yaroslavl estate. The retired artillery cadet bayonet S. A. Nekrasov and his wife Maria Stepanovna (nee Granovskaya), who lived in Moscow, had six sons and three daughters, including Alexei, the future father of the poet 15 . Sergei Alekseevich, who was a passionate gambler, after a series of major losses, got into large debts, for the payment of which he had to mortgage estates. At the very beginning of the 19th century, he was forced to sell his house in Moscow and move with his family to Greshnevo. 16 . From then until the abolition of serfdom, the Nekrasovs usually lived in Greshnev.
S. A. Nekrasov died on January 3, 1807. 17 The poet's grandfather was the first of the Nekrasovs to be buried in the parish cemetery near the walls of the Peter and Paul Church. * the village of Abakumtsev, located three versts from Greshnev. The grave of S. A. Nekrasov was preserved in Abakumtsevo until the beginning of the 20th century. Later, in the cemetery near the walls of this temple, they completed their life path children and grandchildren of Sergei Alekseevich.
The poet's parents
The poet's father, Alexei Sergeevich Nekrasov, apparently, was born in Moscow. With the definition of the exact year of his birth, the situation is very confusing. For a long time it was believed that A. S. Nekrasov was born in 1788, but recently S. V. Smirnov, on the basis of a number of documents, convincingly proved that the poet’s father was born in 1794 or 1795. 19 As mentioned above, Alexei Sergeevich lost his father early, who died on January 3, 1807. Soon the guardian appointed the three younger sons of S. A. Nekrasov - Sergei, Dmitry and Alexei - to serve in the Tambov Infantry Regiment, which was then in Kostroma. A. S. Nekrasov began his service in the Tambov Infantry Regiment on March 30, 1807 with the rank of non-commissioned officer 20 . At this time he was only 12 (or 13) years old. In the same 1807, together with the regiment, A.S. Nekrasov set out from Kostroma on a campaign in East Prussia; recall that there was an era of the Napoleonic wars and East Prussia was one of the main theaters of military operations of Russian and French troops. On December 2, 1810, A.S. Nekrasov was promoted to warrant officer and transferred to serve in the 28th Jaeger Regiment. September 17, 1811 he was awarded the rank of second lieutenant. In this rank, the poet's father met the Patriotic War of 1812. 21
The participation of A. S. Nekrasov in the Patriotic War was usually not mentioned in non-beautiful studies. As a rule, in literature we find Captain A.S. Nekrasov already in 1821, standing with the 36th Jaeger Regiment in Western Ukraine, in the Podolsk province, where his son Nikolai was born. What the poet's father did in previous years, as a rule, remained “behind the scenes”. The reasons for such silence are clear. A.S. Nekrasov gained a well-established reputation as a cruel serf landowner, while the participants in the war of 1812 were traditionally respected in the mass consciousness, and in order not to “undermine” the reputation, the issue of Nekrasov Sr.’s participation in the Patriotic War was usually hushed up. V. E. Evgeniev-Maksimov writes that the question of whether Aleksey Sergeevich was “any active participant in the Napoleonic wars, which coincided in time with his service in the army (...), remains open” 22 True, the researcher mentions the book by N. V. Gerbel “Russian poets in biographies and samples”, published in 1873, which said that “Alexey Sergeevich made the whole campaign of 1812-1814 (...) and lost two older brothers at Borodino » 23 . V. E. Evgeniev-Maksimov notes: “It is possible that this biography was viewed by Nekrasov (in the papers left after him, we found her handwritten copy)” 24 .
Yes, direct evidence of the participation of A. S. Nekrasov in battles Patriotic War We do not have 1812, however, we agree, it is difficult to assume that, being in the ranks of a belligerent army, an officer would not take part in hostilities. We do not know where the war ended for A.S. Nekrasov.
In non-beautiful studies, in fact, it was also ignored that the three older brothers of Alexei Sergeevich (the poet’s uncles) participated in the war, who, as N. A. Nekrasov wrote, were “killed near Borodino on the same day” (XII, 17) * . In one of the documents, Aleksey Sergeevich indicated that his three brothers - Vasily, Alexander and Pavel - were “killed in battles” 25 .
After the end of the Patriotic War and the foreign campaigns of the Russian army, the 28th Jaeger Regiment, in which A.S. Nekrasov served, stood on the western borders of the empire, in the Vinnitsa district of the Podolsk province. Here A.S. Nekrasov met his future wife. On November 11, 1817, the wedding of Lieutenant A. S. Nekrasov and Little Russian noblewoman Elena Andreevna Zakrevskaya took place in the Assumption Church in the town of Yuzvin, Vinnitsa district. 26 .
Little is known about the poet's mother, E. A. Zakrevskaya, and what is known has long been controversial. First, the question of the exact year of her birth is confused. It was traditionally believed that she was born in 1796. This date got into the literature thanks to V. E. Evgeniev-Maksimov, who in 1913 saw in the register of the church with. Abakumtsev’s record of her death: “1841, July 29, Major Alexei Sergeevich’s wife, Elena Andreevna, 45 years old, died of consumption from consumption” 27 . According to this entry, Elena Andreevna was born in 1796, and until recently this date was generally accepted. However, S. V. Smirnov, on the basis of archival documents, set a different date - 1803. A. S. Nekrasov’s official list for 1838 says that his wife is “35 years old” 28 . In the metric book of the Resurrection Church of Yaroslavl, where the funeral of Elena Andreevna took place, the record of her death says that the deceased is "38 years old" 29 , which again points to 1803 as the year of her birth.
Secondly, we do not even know what name the poet's mother bore: in some documents she is called Elena, in others - Alexandra. In this regard, the question of her nationality has long been raised in the literature. According to S. V. Smirnov, the presence of two names in the wife of A. S. Nekrasov indicates her "belonging to Catholicism at an early age." However, the researcher makes a reservation: “It seems that nee belonging to Catholicism does not indicate the Polish origin of the poet's mother. Her Catholicism is the fruit of her father’s “careful” upbringing by the Jesuits, a tribute to the Polish-Catholic influence in the region, where the elements of Polish-Catholic culture were given the importance of prestige, belonging to the local elite” 30 .
In 1820, the first-born son Andrei was born to the young spouses, at the very beginning of 1821 - the daughter Elizabeth. At the end of 1821, their third child, son Nikolai, was born. For a long time, it was erroneously believed that N. A. Nekrasov was born on November 22 (December 4, according to New Style), 1821, in the town of Yuzvin, Vinnitsa district. Only in 1949, A.V. Popov documented that the poet was born on November 28 (December 10, according to a new style) in the town of Nemirov*, Vinnitsa district, Podolsk province 31 .
For some reason, the future poet was baptized almost three years after his birth - on October 7, 1824 in the church with. Seniyok Podolsk province 32 . At baptism, the child received a name in honor of St. Nicholas, Archbishop of the World of Lycia, who has long been especially revered in Russia.
On January 16, 1823, A.S. Nekrasov "due to illness" was dismissed from military service as a "major in uniform" 33 . It was traditionally believed that the Nekrasovs moved to Greshnevo at the end of 1824. However, as V. I. Yakovlev convincingly proved recently, A. S. Nekrasov and his family arrived at the family estate near Yaroslavl in 1826. 34 The same researcher also gave a striking answer to the question why A. S. Nekrasov, who had lived in Ukraine for almost three years after his retirement, left there for Greshnevo. “As for the reasons for A. S. Nekrasov’s move from Ukraine to Greshnevo in 1826,” writes V. I. Yakovlev, “they (...) are obviously connected with the situation that developed as a result of the defeat of the southern center of the Decembrist movement. Before retiring in 1823, A. S. Nekrasov served in the city of Nemirov, in a military unit that was part of the 18th Infantry Division, which, in turn, was part of the 2nd Army. The headquarters of the 2nd Army was located in the city of Tulchin within 30 km from Nemirov. In Tulchin, in 1821-1826. housed the central office of the Southern Society, headed by P. I. Pestel " 35 . Following the defeat of the uprising of the Chernigov regiment in Ukraine, mass arrests began. “Apparently, fears for the fate of his family,” continues V.I. Yakovlev, “and undoubted personal acquaintances in the previous service with many of the“ conspirators ”, which directly assumed the position of brigade adjutant performed by A.S. Nekrasov, - and served the main reason for moving to live in the family estate - the village of Greshnevo, Yaroslavl province" 36 .
Apparently, in the summer months of 1826, the Nekrasov family left the Podolsk province and went - most likely through Kiev and Moscow - to the Upper Volga.
13. Yakovlev V. I. Genus and hereditary possessions of the Nekrasov nobles in the 17th - first third of the 19th centuries. // Karabikha: Historical and literary collection. Yaroslavl, 1993, p. 226 (hereinafter - Yakovlev V.I. Rod and hereditary possessions of the Nekrasov nobles in the 17th - first third of the 19th centuries).
14. Ibid., p. 226-227.
15. Nekrasov N. K. In their footsteps, along their roads. Yaroslavl, 1975, p. 247 (hereinafter - Nekrasov N.K. In their footsteps, along their roads).
16. Evgeniev-Maksimov V. Life and work of N. A. Nekrasov. M.-L., 1947, vol. 1, p. 14 (hereinafter - Evgeniev-Maksimov V. Life and work of N. A. Nekrasov).
17. Yakovlev V. I. Genus and hereditary possessions of the Nekrasov nobles, p. 229.
18. Monasteries and temples of the land of Yaroslavl. Yaroslavl - Rybinsk, 2000, vol. II, p. 245.
19. Smirnov S. V. Autobiographies of Nekrasov. Novgorod, 1998, p. 179 (hereinafter - Smirnov S. V. Autobiographies of Nekrasov).
20. Ibid., p. 172.
21. Ibid.
22. Evgeniev-Maksimov V. E. Life and work of N. A. Nekrasov, vol. 1, p. 28-29.
23. Ibid., p. 29.
24. Ibid.
25. Smirnov S. V. Autobiographies of Nekrasov, p. 169.
26. Ashukin N. S. Chronicle of the life and work of N. A. Nekrasov. M.-L., 1935, p. 20 (hereinafter - Ashukin N. S. Chronicle of the life and work of N. A. Nekrasov).
27. Evgeniev-Maksimov V. E. From the past. Notes of a non-krasologist // Nekrasovsky collection. L., 1980, issue. VIII, p. 223.
28. Op. Quoted from: Smirnov S.V. Autobiographies of Nekrasov, p. eleven.
29. Ibid., p. 12.
30. Ibid., p. 176.
31. Popov A. When and where was Nekrasov born? To the revision of tradition // Literary heritage. M., 1949, vol. 49-50, p. 605-610.
32. Smirnov S. V. Autobiographies of Nekrasov, p. 175.
33. Evgeniev-Maksimov V. E. Life and work of N. A. Nekrasov, vol. 1, p. 28.
34. Yakovlev V. I. Genus and hereditary possessions of the Nekrasov nobles in the 18th - first third of the 19th centuries, p. 249-251.
35. Ibid., p. 251.
Nikolay Alekseevich Nekrasov - the most prominent Russian revolutionary-democratic poet. Born December 4, 1821 in the family of a wealthy landowner. He spent his childhood in the Greshnevo estate of the Yaroslavl province. in an exceptionally difficult situation of his father's brutal reprisals against peasants, his stormy orgies with serf mistresses and brazen mockery of his "reclusive" wife. At the age of 11, Nekrasov was sent to the Yaroslavl Gymnasium, where he did not complete the course. At the insistence of his father, he went to St. Petersburg in 1838 to enter military service, but instead got a job as a volunteer at the university. The enraged father ceased to provide him with material support, and Nekrasov had to endure a painful struggle with poverty for a number of years. Already at that time, Nekrasov was attracted to literature, and in 1840, with the support of some St. to humorous genres: poems full of undemanding jokes (“Provincial clerk in St. Petersburg”), vaudeville (“Feoktist Onufrievich Bob”, “That's what it means to fall in love with an actress”), melodramas (“Mother's blessing, or poverty and honor”), stories about petty Petersburg bureaucracy (“Makar Osipovich Random”), etc. By 1843-1845 Nekrasov’s first publishing enterprises belong - “Physiology of Petersburg”, “Petersburg Collection”, a humorous almanac “April First”, etc. In 1842, Nekrasov came close to Belinsky’s circle which had a huge ideological influence on the young poet. The great critic highly appreciated his poems "On the Road", "Motherland" and others for tearing off the romantic veil from the rural and estate reality. Since 1847, Nekrasov was already a tenant of the Sovremennik magazine, where Belinsky also moved from Fatherland Notes. By the middle of the 50s. Sovremennik has won the great sympathy of the reading public; simultaneously with the growth of his popularity, the poetic glory of Nekrasov himself also grew. In the second half of the 50s. Nekrasov became close to the most prominent representatives of revolutionary democracy - Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov. The aggravated class contradictions could not but be reflected in the journal: the editors of Sovremennik were actually split into two groups: one represented the liberal nobility, headed by Turgenev, L. Tolstoy, and the big bourgeois adjoining them Vas. Botkin - a movement that stood up for moderate realism, for the aesthetic "Pushkin" beginning in literature, as opposed to the satirical - "Gogol", promoted by the democratic part of the Russian "natural school" of the 40s. These literary differences reflected the deepening as serfdom fell, the differences between its two opponents - the bourgeois-noble liberals, who sought to prevent the threat of a peasant revolution by reforming serfdom, and the democrats, who fought for the complete elimination of the feudal-serf system.
In the early 1960s, the antagonism between these two currents in the journal reached its peak. In the resulting split, Nekrasov remained with the "revolutionary raznochintsy", the ideologists of peasant democracy, who fought for the revolution, for the "American" type of development of capitalism in Russia and sought to make the magazine a legal basis for their ideas. It is to this period of the highest political upsurge of the movement that Nekrasov’s works such as “The Poet and the Citizen” (1856), “Reflections at the Front Door” (1858) and “Railway” (1864) belong. However, the beginning of the 1960s Nekrasov brought new blows - Dobrolyubov died, Chernyshevsky and Mikhailov were exiled to Siberia. In the era of student unrest, riots of peasants liberated from the land and the Polish uprising, the “first warning” was announced to Nekrasov’s journal, the publication of Sovremennik was suspended, and in 1866, after Karakozov’s shot at Alexander II, the journal closed forever. One of the most painful episodes of Nekrasov's social biography is connected with the last date - his laudatory ode to Muravyov the hangman, read by the poet in an aristocratic English club in the hope of softening the dictator and preventing a blow. As expected, Nekrasov's sabotage was not successful and brought him nothing but furious accusations of renegade and the bitterest self-flagellation:
The enemy rejoices, is silent in perplexity
Yesterday's friend, shaking his head.
And you, and you recoiled in embarrassment,
Standing in front of me,
Great suffering shadows ... "
Two years after the closure of Sovremennik, Nekrasov rented Notes of the Fatherland from Kraevsky and made them a militant organ of revolutionary populism. Such works by Nekrasov of the 70s as the poems “Grandfather”, “Decembrists” (due to censorship circumstances called “Russian Women”) and especially the unfinished poem “Who Lives Well in Russia”, in the last chapter to - the swarm is the son of a rural deacon Grisha Dobrosklonov:
"Fate prepared for him
The path is glorious, the name is loud
people's protector,
Consumption and Siberia.
An incurable disease - cancer of the rectum - for the last two years of his life chained Nekrasov to bed, led him to death on December 27, 1877. The funeral of Nekrasov, which attracted many people, was accompanied by a literary and political demonstration: a crowd of young people did not let Dostoevsky speak, who gave Nekrasov the third place in Russian poetry after Pushkin and Lermontov, interrupting him with cries of “Higher, higher than Pushkin!” Representatives of the Land and Freedom and other revolutionary organizations took part in the burial of Nekrasov, laying a wreath with the inscription "From the Socialists" on the poet's coffin.
The Marxist study of Nekrasov's work for a long time was led by an article about him by G. V. Plekhanov, written by the latter on the 25th anniversary of the poet's death, in 1902. It would be unfair to deny the major role this article played in its time. Plekhanov drew a sharp line in it between Nekrasov and noble writers and sharply emphasized the revolutionary function of his poetry. But the recognition of historical merits does not free Plekhanov's article from a number of major shortcomings, the overcoming of which is especially important at the current stage of Marxist-Leninist literary criticism. In declaring Nekrasov “a raznochintsy poet,” Plekhanov did nothing to differentiate this sociologically indefinite term and, most importantly, isolated Nekrasov from the phalanx of peasant democracy ideologists with which the author of “Railway” was so closely and organically connected. This gap is due to Plekhanov's Menshevik disbelief in the revolutionary nature of the Russian peasantry and the lack of understanding of the connection between the revolutionary raznochintsy of the 60s. and a small commodity producer, to which he so persistently pointed out already in the 90s. Lenin. Plekhanov's article is also unsatisfactory in terms of artistic assessment: Nekrasov's work, which represents a new quality in Russian poetry, is criticized by Plekhanov from the standpoint of the same noble aesthetics, with which Nekrasov fought fiercely. Standing on this, basically vicious, position, Plekhanov looks for numerous “errors” in Nekrasov against the laws of artistry, blames him for the “unfinishing”, “clumsiness” of his poetic manner. And finally, Plekhanov's assessment does not give an idea of the dialectical complexity of Nekrasov's work, does not reveal the internal contradictions of the latter. The task of modern researchers of Nekrasov is therefore to overcome the remnants of Plekhanov's views that are still tenacious in the literature about Nekrasov and to study his work from the standpoint of Marxism-Leninism.
In his work, Nekrasov sharply broke with the idealization of "noble nests", so characteristic of "Eugene Onegin", "The Captain's Daughter", "Fathers and Sons", "Childhood, Adolescence and Youth", "Family Chronicle". The authors of these works more than once witnessed the brutal violence against the personality of the serfs that raged in the estate, and yet, by virtue of their class nature, they all passed by these negative aspects of landlord life, singing what, in their opinion, was positive and progressive. In Nekrasov, these love and elegiac sketches of noble estates gave way to a merciless exposure:
And here they are again, familiar places,
Where is the life of my fathers, barren and empty,
Flowed among the feasts, senseless swagger,
The debauchery of dirty and petty tyranny,
Where is the swarm of depressed and trembling slaves
I envied the life of the last lordly dogs ... "
Nekrasov not only rejected, but also exposed the illusion of serfs' love for their owners, traditional for all noble literature: "dirty and petty tyranny" here they oppose "depressed and trembling slaves". And even from the landscape, from the more than once glorified beauties of the nature of Nekrasov, the poetic veil has been torn off:
And with disgust all around throwing a look,
With joy I see that the dark forest has been cut down,
In the languishing summer heat, protection and coolness,
And the field is scorched and the herd idly slumbers,
Hanging your head over a dry stream,
And an empty and gloomy house falls on its side ... "
So already in the early poem "Motherland" (1846) that hatred for serfdom sounds, which then passed through all the poet's work. The landowners in Nekrasov's image have nothing in common with the dreamy and beautiful-hearted heroes of liberal literature. These are petty tyrants poisoning peasant cattle (“Hound Hunting”), these are depraved people shamelessly using their right of the first night (“Excerpts from the travel notes of Count Garansky”, 1853), these are masterful slave owners who do not tolerate contradictions in anyone: "The law is my desire,- the landowner Obolt-Obolduev proudly announces to the peasants he meets, - the fist is my police! Sparkling blow, furious blow, cheekbone blow" ("To whom in Russia it is good to live", Ch. "Landlord"). “The terrible spectacle of a country where people traffic in people,” Belinsky mentioned in his wonderful letter to Gogol, this spectacle is unfolded by Nekrasov into the broadest narrative canvas. The verdict on the feudal-serf system, pronounced by the poet in the poem "Grandfather", in "Last Child" and in many small poems, is resolute and merciless.
But if the break with serfdom was already clearly reflected in the work of the young Nekrasov, then his attitude towards noble liberalism was much more complicated and contradictory. It must be remembered here that the era of the 1940s, when Nekrasov began his career, was characterized by an insufficient delimitation of democrats and liberals. The feudal lords were still strong and suppressed any attempts to replace their rule. new system relations. The path of the democrats at that time was not yet completely independent. Belinsky did not yet have his own journal, his path was still close to the path of Turgenev and Goncharov, with whom the ideological successors of Belinsky subsequently parted ways. On the pages of Sovremennik, the future enemies were still adjacent to each other, and it is quite natural that with this proximity of roads, the democrats should from time to time develop liberal assessments of reality. They naturally arose at that time with Nekrasov. Having broken with serfdom, he did not immediately outlive the remnants of the liberal-noble ideology, which, as we will see below, was fed in him by the entire balance of class forces in that era. In the work of Nekrasov, the process of transition of the declassed nobility to the camp of the ideologists of peasant democracy finds expression. Nekrasov’s departure from the estate, his break with his father cannot be considered facts of his personal biography - here the process of economic “washout” and political withdrawal of certain groups of the nobility from their class undoubtedly received its private expression. “In those periods when the class struggle is nearing its climax, the process of disintegration among the ruling class within the entire old society assumes such a sharp character that a certain part of the ruling class separates from it and joins the revolutionary class, which carries the banner of the future.” This provision of the "Communist Manifesto" undoubtedly clarifies Nekrasov's social path to the ideologists of the revolutionary peasantry. This path very quickly led Nekrasov to the camp of the Democrats. But this camp itself in the 40-50s. still insufficiently isolated from the liberal-gentry camp. Hence Nekrasov's temporary connection with these fellow travelers, with the liberals who fought for the replacement of feudalism by capitalism. This insufficient delimitation of the two camps complicated Nekrasov's creative path with hesitations, vestiges of liberal-gentry reactions, especially strong in the first period of his work.
It is from these “residual” moods that Nekrasov wove complicating confessions into exposing the slave-owning essence of the noble estate. In this estate, “I learned to endure and hate, but hatred in my soul is shamefully harbored”, there “sometimes I was a landowner”, there “blessed peace flew away from my prematurely corrupted soul”. This recognition of "Motherland" can be confirmed by similar confessions in the poem "In the Unknown Wilderness" (1846). It goes without saying that Nekrasov was not one iota inclined to soften his sentence on the feudal system; but in that era, when the Democrats were still very weak as an independent group, the liberals still played a certain progressive role. That is why Nekrasov's preaching of new democratic relations are often complicated by liberal fluctuations. In the poem "Sasha" (1855), he goes immeasurably further in exposing noble liberalism than Turgenev in the novel Rudin, which is close to her in plot. But exposing Agarin, ridiculing his inability to "work", he pays tribute to him as a teacher of the young and democratic generation: “Still, he sows a good seed ... The neighbor awakened so many untouched forces in Sasha”. The same relaxed attitude towards the liberals of the 40s. we meet with Nekrasov and in his lyrical comedy "Bear Hunt": “For this, now the young tribe sometimes labels them as traitors, But I would say to him:“ do not forget, Who withstood that fatal time, There is something for him to rest ... ... who once held your banner, Do not stain those ".
These motives never played a dominant role with Nekrasov, they were never leading. With all his sympathy for the best, most honest people from the nobility, Nekrasov is still a representative of a different political camp, an ideologist of the peasantry. But in themselves, Nekrasov's excusing notes are undeniable, and they find their explanation in the origins of his work and the complexity and inconsistency of the social conditions of his development. According to Lenin, “Nekrasov, being personally weak, hesitated between Chernyshevsky and the liberals, but all his sympathies were on the side of Chernyshevsky. Nekrasov, due to the same personal weakness, sinned with notes of liberal servility, but he himself bitterly mourned his “sins and publicly repented of them” (Lenin V.I., Another campaign against democracy, Sochin., ed. 3rd, vol. XVI , p. 132).
The closer to the 60s, the less these liberal reactions Nekrasov had, the stronger the motives for denouncing the nobility as a class sounded in him. At the end of the 50s. Nekrasov is already the closest ally of Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov. In this era, temporary fellow travelers found themselves on opposite sides of the barricades. Nekrasov is breaking with the liberals. Such is Nekrasov's poem "To Turgenev" (1861), reflecting his break with one of his closest friends, in his new novel "Fathers and Sons" opening fire on the ideas of nihilism. Reforms of the 60s deeply exposed the treacherous essence of noble liberalism, which sought to remove the feudal burdens from the peasant only in order to open a wide road for his capitalist exploitation. In relation to Nekrasov to the liberals of the 40s. some apologetic notes still sounded, but Nekrasov branded the liberals of the post-reform period as traitors to the people's interests.
But if in the 60s. Nekrasov's breaks into liberalism had almost disappeared, then at this new stage of his work, a new contradiction loomed in all its breadth. Nekrasov in these years was an active participant in the revolutionary-democratic camp, leading a stubborn struggle for the triumph of the peasant revolution. But this fight. despite all its bitterness, it ended (at the stage at which Nekrasov could find her) with the defeat of the revolutionary movement. Chernyshevsky was exiled to distant Siberia, the organs of revolutionary journalism were closed, the circulation of "the people" of revolutionary propagandists of the 70s was crushed. “The honest, valiantly fallen fell silent, Their lonely voices fell silent, Crying for the unfortunate people ...” In this new and deeply tragic situation, Nekrasov is tormented by the fact that he is weak, that he cannot share the fate of his friends. He tirelessly speaks of his weakness both in the poem “To an Unknown Friend”, and in the tragic response to the “frantic crowd”, stigmatizing him for “servile sins”, and in his dying elegies. Nekrasov is tormented by the tragedy of his isolation from the people: “I am dying as alien to the people as I began to live.” This idea was, of course, incorrect, for all of Nekrasov's activities were in the line of protecting peasant interests, but it was fed by the deep contradictions of the revolutionary movement itself.
The contradictions that arose on this basis and overwhelmed Nekrasov's psyche are basically contradictions of word and deed:
“I deeply despise myself for this,
That I live - day after day uselessly ruining ...
And that the malice in me is both strong and wild,
And it will come to the point - the hand freezes.
The poet has the deepest respect for the leaders and ideologists of revolutionary democracy:
“Belinsky was especially loved ...
Praying for your long-suffering shadow,
Teacher! in front of your name
Let me humbly kneel
("Bear Hunt"),
“Mother nature! When would such people
You sometimes did not send to the world,
The field of life would have died out "
("Dobrolyubov").
He praised these fighters for that crystalline unity of word and deed, theory and practice, which Nekrasov did not always feel in himself:
“He will not say that his life is needed,
He will not say that death is useless;
His fate has long been clear to him."
("Chernyshevsky").
Having lost friends and leaders, Nekrasov often surrendered to the power of depression. The fact that he survived the fiercest struggle gave him reason to paint himself as a loner:
“I am to our noble family
I did not acquire the brilliance of my lyre;
I'm just as alien to the people
I'm dying as I began to live.
Ties of friendship, unions of the heart -
Everything is torn: my childhood fate
She sent long-lived enemies,
And friends were carried away by the struggle.
This was, of course, an immense exaggeration, but it was a fact of Nekrasov's literary biography and was widely reflected in his work. From here, from this position of Nekrasov, in the camp of the ideologists of the peasant revolution defeated and torn off from their class, Nekrasov’s motives for despondency (“Despondency”) and the exposure of the constant “powerlessness of a slave”, “powerless” and “sluggish melancholy” (“Return ").
"You are not yet in the grave, you are alive,
But for the cause you are dead for a long time;
Good impulses are destined for you,
But nothing can be done."
“Rare are those to whom these words cannot be applied,- Nekrasov attributed in the autograph of "Knight for an Hour" under the impression of the arrest of M. L. Mikhailov, - honor and glory to them - honor and glory to you, brother ". Nekrasov's lyrics, full of repentant moods, concentrated all the "costs of his production." Nekrasov, of course, does not fit within the boundaries of mere woeful reflection: in his work, there is no doubt a sharp ideological break with the noble regime. But all that pain, which the poet experienced in the difficult struggle for social self-determination, found expression in his lyrics.
Let's take a closer look at the system of images of this lyric, at its internal structure. Through all his lyrics passes the image of a crying mother, inseparable from Nekrasov's estate impressions. Nekrasov's appeals to his mother are almost always appeals to the "motherland", imbued with the poet's excitement and his no less exciting consciousness of his "powerlessness". Another image - the Muses - arises in Nekrasov when he has to determine his attitude to the classical heritage and subject his own work to aesthetic evaluation. The traditional image of the majestic patroness of art, the young goddess in the temple of poetry (Zhukovsky, Pushkin, Fet), could not take root in Nekrasov's lyrics - he would have been outrageously disharmonious with his work saturated with social trends. The weeping and mournful image of the Muse of Nekrasov, which he so often identified with the image of a peasant woman cut with a whip, was associated with the poet with a “strong and blood union”:
"Through the dark abysses of violence and evil,
She led me through labor and hunger.”
Embodying the leading tendencies of Nekrasov's work, the Muse is full of anger towards the exploiters and sorrow for the oppressed people:
“Make peace with my Muse!
I don't know another tune
Who lives without sorrow and anger,
He does not love his fatherland"
("Newspaper").
Nekrasov's attitude to art was most fully embodied in the dialogue The Poet and the Citizen (1856); like all the rest of Nekrasov's poems about art, this dialogue speaks of a relentless craving for "citizenship" and an awareness of the deepest difficulties of this path. In this struggle between the two principles - the poet and the citizen - one of the main themes of his work manifested itself in a special way, in a narrowed size. And finally, Nekrasov’s lyrics are characterized by the image of a beloved woman, deprived of the attributes of estate contentment, brought up in need “by fate that disliked her from childhood” (“She got a heavy cross”). The feeling of love loses its immediacy. Growing up in an environment of poverty, hunger and prostitution, it is full of sudden chills, saturated with various manifestations of jealousy, family scenes and the poet's bitterest self-accusations of insignificance and impotence. Nekrasov's love poems are a detailed repentance, Nekrasov's inexorable scourging of his own weaknesses and sins. Thus, these works of his are closely connected with the rest of the lyrical production.
The main lyrical genre of Nekrasov is a poem, in its content representing either a confession (“Knight for an hour”), or the poet’s memories of a distant past (“Return”), or finally an appeal to close person("Mother"). Nekrasov's love lyrics are characterized by melodious genres, such as a romance with a peculiar rhythmic-melodic structure and leitmotifs, and especially an elegy with characteristic memories of past happiness and painful thoughts about the present. All lyrics are characterized by an abundance of landscape sketches, most often unwelcome in autumn. The images of "hunger", "illness", "death", "cemetery" are just as natural for the poet's psyche. Sad are Nekrasov’s favorite epithets (“sick”, “heavy”, “gloomy”, “dull”, “sad”, “torturous”, etc.) and his comparisons (“A woman sings as if she were putting a friend in a coffin”, "You moaned like a slave moaning over a plow"). The poet's constant hesitation, his abrupt transitions from extreme excitement to apathy and melancholy lead to a struggle in his lyrics of two syntactic streams. At moments of lyrical upsurge, the melodic-rhetorical element dominates with a mass of author's questions and appeals ("Don't cry so madly over him. It's good to die young ..." "What a lamp of the mind has gone out! What a heart has stopped beating!"), with antitheses, parallelisms, gradations (“Neither mistake, nor strength, nor malice will put a spot on it”) and a high structure of vocabulary. In periods of depression, on the contrary, an almost colloquial structure of speech dominates with an abundance of enjambements (“Despondency”, “Last Elegies”), frequent pauses and intentional breaks in verse (“Letters”, “Burning Letters”), with mournful dactylic endings. Combinations of these two antithetical elements are also observed in the vocabulary of Nekrasov’s lyrics, ranging from almost pompous phraseology (“And you sowed a lot of good knowledge, Friend of Truth, Goodness and Beauty”) to emphasized prosaisms (cf. e.g. in “Knight for an hour ": "I will swallow the potion at night"). The screaming dissonances of Nekrasov's dictionary reflect the same contradictions as the struggle between the two principles of his poetic syntax, as well as the three-syllable dimensions of the metric, as well as the sad, poignant images and paths. Participial rhymes ("From jubilant, idly chattering, charring ...") "cut the ear", but the smooth, "high" vocabulary would be out of harmony with the suffering motifs of his lyrics. Nekrasov's stylistics is all built on dissonances, but what else could be in such an organic connection with the dissonances and contradictions of his creative development?
Nekrasov's field of vision was bound to fall into the muzhik, whose exploitation the landowners lived. Breaking with the nobility, the poet had to pay more and more attention to local-village relations, the peasant, his way of life and his consciousness. The ideological break with the estate was in a dialectical connection with Nekrasov's in-depth attention to the peasant. From here grew his broadest canvases of peasant reality.
The color of Nekrasov's folk paintings is invariably gloomy: "Where the people are, there is a groan."
“He groans through the fields, along the roads ...
In mines on an iron chain,
He groans under the barn, under the stack,
Under the cart, spending the night in the steppe;
Moaning in his own poor little house,
The light of God's sun is not happy;
Moaning in every deaf town,
At the entrance of courts and chambers.
("Reflections at the front door").
Only two categories of peasants do not moan at Nekrasov - courtyards and children. But on the other hand, Nekrasov treats the first in a completely different way than he treats the original peasant farmers. In contrast to the idealization of the loyalty of domestic servants, so characteristic of noble writers (the images of Savelich in The Captain's Daughter, Evseich in the Childhood Years of Bagrov's Grandson, Natalya Savishna in Childhood, Adolescence and Youth), Nekrasov shows the dog's devotion to the courtyard masters as slavish , servile, "servile" trait ("Hey, Ivan", the images of the "beloved slave" Prince Peremetyev, the "sensitive lackey" Ipat in "Who Lives Well in Russia"). As for peasant children, drawing them sympathetically, Nekrasov constantly emphasizes the dangers hanging over them - illness, the threat, like Demushka, of being eaten by pigs, the disturbing work of the shepherd, and finally orphanhood.
For the first time since Radishchev, such a stunningly gloomy depiction of peasant slavery has been deployed in Russian literature. Serfdom illuminates with its tragic reflection almost all of Nekrasov's works about the people - from the early "Ogorodnik" (1846) to the poem "Who Lives Well in Russia" (1875). Through all the work of Nekrasov, peasant lack of rights and aristocratic arbitrariness pass as leitmotifs. The life of a serf is completely dependent on the desires and whims of the landowner:
“Pakhomushka has a wife and children,
Yes, do not Pakhomushka own them:
He lay down as a family man, and got up as a bean.
Today - a peasant of a quitrent, Tomorrow - a serf of a non-portrait, In a week a soldier under arms ". There is no form of landowner violence against a peasant that Nekrasov would not have depicted: here is merciless fighting, it doesn’t matter whether it is for refusing taxes or for strong abuse, here is the upsetting of a peasant’s wedding, played without the permission of the master, with the surrender of the groom to the recruits, here is the brazen use of village girls for the needs of the lord's harem. And above all this - the hopeless lawlessness of the peasant. Deprived of the right to the products of their labor, the peasantry lives in terrible poverty: "The fields have withered, the cows have died, How will these people pay dues?" ("Traveler"). It is not surprising that the peasants drown their sorrows in wine, drink to forget about the hard suffering, about the back-breaking work (images of drunks in "Wine", "Pedlars", in the scene of the fair in "Who Lives Well in Russia"). The fate of the peasant is hard, but the fate of the peasant woman is even more hopeless, over which, in addition to hard labor, eternal dependence on a heavy hand weighs. For the male part of the pre-reform village, the greatest calamity is twenty years of recruitment ("Frost-Red Nose"). A peasant returns from military service either sick (“Orina, a soldier’s mother”) or a crippled disabled person with a penny pension (“It is not ordered to give out the full: The heart has not been shot through” - “Who lives well in Russia”). The hungry, impoverished and disenfranchised village burns out (“Overnights”) and dies out (“Funeral”, “Frost-Red Nose”).
"Will" of 1861 removed from the peasant (and even then nominally) the legal power of the master, but poverty still remained hopeless. At first, the peasants are delighted with the news of freedom ("Village News", "Healer"), and the poet himself is seized with hope for an improvement in the peasant's lot. But after a few months, the pacification of the patrimony of the landowner Obrubkov by the “army” begins, and the heirs of the peasants of the “Latter” pulled off the promised land. Hunger still knocks on the peasant's door, drought still devastates his meager fields. In addition to the master, a fist is growing stronger, waiting for "opportunities, When taxes were collected And Vahlat property Was sold under the hammer" (Eremin's image in "Who lives well in Russia"), and the new administration, "unsolicited and unrighteous." The Old Believer Kropilnikov, who was fired for trouble in prison, sternly predicted to the peasants:
“Were torn off - you will be hungry,
They beat you with sticks, rods, whips,
You will be beaten with iron bars...
Truth in the court, light in the night,
Do not look for good in the world."
Drawing the contradictions of the peasant consciousness, Nekrasov was able, to an immeasurably greater extent than any other Russian poet, to show the rebellious beginning living in the peasant of that time. Does his gardener say: “To know, to love is not a hand for a peasant-Vahlak and a noble daughter” (1846), does a peasant-shepherd poisonously scold a hunting master (“Hound Hunting”), do wanderers laugh at a last-born serf-owner who has gone out of his mind - peasants are everywhere appear at Nekrasov's as hating the bar and harboring the seeds of rebellion. They either kill the master who abused his "right of the first night", or "bury in the ground" the "flayer" of the master manager. They sympathize with the reprisal against the landowner, which Nekrasov spoke about in "The Song of the Robber Kudeyar", skillfully disguising the call for revolutionary reprisal against the landowner contained in it with a fictitious Polish flavor. But calling for a struggle and in every possible way noting the indestructible hatred of the peasants for the bars, Nekrasov at the same time realizes that the peasantry, cut off from its ideologists and unorganized, is powerless to rise up to fight the regime. For the Nekrasov peasant, passive protest is characteristic both when he wanders as a walker to a distant capital (“Reflections at the front door”), and when he hangs himself in order to deprive his master of his “faithful serf”. From the truth-seeker Iona Lyapushkin to the robber Kudeyar, from the murderer of the master's manager to the old woman who tells a sad parable about the lost keys "from our free will" - what a huge range of fluctuations! But these fluctuations were not invented by Nekrasov, they lived in the peasantry that he portrayed. Displaying these contradictions as a democrat, defending the class interests of the peasant, Nekrasov reflected the contradictions of the peasant revolution.
And here deep connecting threads are drawn between Nekrasov's peasant epic and his lyrics. All these contradictions of Nekrasov were a reflection of the contradictions of the peasant revolution itself, capable only of spontaneous disturbances, but unable to defeat the feudal-bourgeois regime. This organic weakness of the peasant revolution, largely due to the petty-bourgeois nature of the peasantry, opened up in Nekrasov's mind the widest access to all kinds of self-flagellation.
“Stuffy! without happiness and will
The night is infinitely long.
There would be a storm, right?
The rimmed bowl is full!"
(1868).
But the people's revolution did not come, and it took a very long time for the peasant movement, led by the proletariat, to come to victory over the remnants of serfdom in the countryside. Nekrasov interpreted the organic weakness of the peasant movement as the indifference of the people to the fate of their defenders, and this depressing feeling of their own loneliness filled Nekrasov's lyrics of the post-reform period. In the struggle against serfdom and the capitalized nobility, the peasant movement was defeated, and this filled the lyrics of his most prominent poet with a whole range of complex contradictions. However, in these contradictions, the leading principle is Nekrasov's faith in the people, the hope that the people will eventually understand their ideologists and that "wide bast shoes of the people" will pave the way to their graves.
Nekrasov is often considered a populist, which is not entirely true. Let us recall Lenin's characterization of populism and try to apply it to Nekrasov. He stigmatized capitalism from the point of view of protecting peasant interests (Railway, Contemporaries), but he did not hesitate to recognize its greater progressiveness compared to serfdom.
“I know: in place of the networks of serfs,
People have come up with many more.
So! But it is easier for people to untangle them.
Muse! Hail freedom with hope!”
("Freedom", 1861).
Nekrasov was against predatory Prussian-type capitalism, which built its prosperity on the bones of the landless peasantry, but nowhere did he oppose American-type capitalism as such. The second feature of populism is also unusual for Nekrasov - "faith in the originality of Russia, the idealization of the peasant, the community, etc." Recognizing, following Belinsky, capitalism as an inevitable stage in the Russian historical past, Nekrasov never staked on the communal economy, invariably contrasting it with the individual owner. It was not by chance that Nekrasov portrayed the peasant welfare in individualistic-proprietary tones. Characteristic in “Grandfather” is the picture of Tarbagatai Posad, where “hefty dogs, geese scream, piglets poke their noses into the trough”, where “large herds” are tall, beautiful, “the inhabitants are always cheerful”, etc. (“Grandfather”). His peasants dream of
"so we live,
To surprise the world:
So that money is in the bag,
To rye on the threshing floor ...
So as not to be worse than others
We are honored by people
Pop visiting the big ones,
Children are literate "
("Songs").
Nekrasov, without hesitation, relies on individual farming. However, it is absolutely wrong to see kulak tendencies in all this, as G. Gorbachev does in his article on Nekrasov. Nekrasov's farming tendencies were not accidental: he fought for the American path of development of capitalism in Russia, for the elimination of the remnants of serfdom, for the transfer of landowners' land to the peasantry, for the political and cultural growth of the peasant.
"Bless the labor of the people,
Strengthen the freedom of the people
Establish justice for the people.
To good undertakings
Could freely rise
Spread the thirst for knowledge among the people
And show the way to knowledge!”
("Hymn", 1866).
Between this political program and reality lay the same gulf as between Tarbagatai's idyll painted by grandfather and peasant poverty:
“Well ... while you think,
Do you see around:
Here he is our gloomy plowman,
With a dark dead face...
The eternal worker is hungry,
Hungry too, I'm afraid!
Hey! take a rest, hearty,
I'll work for you!
The peasant looked with fear,
The master gave way to the plow,
Grandpa is behind the plow for a long time,
Wiping sweat, walking
("Grandfather").
This almost Tolstoyan image of a plowing gentleman weaves into the picture of harsh peasant reality the motives of noble repentance already familiar to us. The third feature of the latter does not bring him closer to the populists: "ignoring the connection between the intelligentsia and the legal and political institutions of the country with the material interests of certain social classes": on the one hand, Nekrasov perfectly understood the treacherous role of the bourgeois-noble intelligentsia, and on the other, he constantly opposed it the intelligentsia that defended peasant interests (the image of Grisha Dobrosklonov in “Who Lives Well in Russia”). Of course, one should not conclude from all this that Nekrasov does not have deep ties with revolutionary populism: his deep sympathy for the ideas of the peasant revolution is undeniable, but it is equally characteristic of populists and democrats. From a number of illusions, which were characteristic of populism and which made its ideology reactionary, Nekrasov is certainly free. His historical place is not with Mikhailovsky, but with Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov. Having played, like them, an enormous role in shaping the idea of Russian populism and in expressing these ideas, he nevertheless remains a peasant democrat. It is noteworthy that N. and V.I. Lenin called N. and V.I.
Let us return to the folk works of Nekrasov. A detailed display of such a huge material of peasant images required Nekrasov to create epic canvases. The small genres of this kind include: “fortress ballad”, “Gardener”, “The parable of Yermolai the laborer”, small poems (“Wine”, “Forgotten village”, etc.) with a melodic structure, the presence of solid beginnings, refrains, ring composition etc. The form of compound poems is also used, where several scenes from peasant life are welded together in a single image of a wandering storyteller or hunter. However, his favorite of the “small genres” is his widely used song (“Songs in a tavern for a half-damask”, “Song of Eremushka”, “Song of a Wretched Wanderer”, etc.). Deprived for many centuries of the opportunity to have their own literature, the serfs expressed their worldview in oral poetry - in a fairy tale, in various genres of ritual poetry, and especially in a song. Nekrasov reflected this song element in his work, as he reflected the ideology of a peasant enslaved by the landowners. The great epic genre of Nekrasov is also saturated with songs - a folk poem - "Peddlers", "Who is it good to live in Russia" ("a song about two great sinners", "salty", "merry", "soldier", "hungry") and especially " Frost-Red Nose. The composition of these poems contains a number of techniques characteristic of oral peasant poetry: negative forms of comparisons, parallelisms, monotony, etc. These poems are replete with landscape sketches, their action unfolds slowly, with a series of repeating traditional formulas (“Who lives happily, freely in Russia? Roman said: to a landowner, Demyan said: to an official ... "etc.), with triple retardation, with a series of fairy-tale motifs (a self-assembled tablecloth in "Who Lives Well in Russia"). The rhythmic-melodic pattern of the poems is unusually sophisticated - Nekrasov practices in them constant changes of intonations, contractions, enjambements. The metric varies greatly: "Frost-Red Nose" is written in amphibrach, dactyl and trochaic; the stanza is just as varied: couplets (“Hound hunting”, “Storm”), quatrains (“Orina, a soldier’s mother”), a continuous text (“Who should live well in Russia”). There is no plot tension in the action of Nekrasov's poems, the plot is extensive and often allows shuffling of chapters (for example, “Who should live well in Russia”); the plot is driven either by the observations of curious wanderers, or by inquiries, or by chance encounters. The style of the Nekrasov epic is characterized by a complete and accurate transmission of peasant speech, an abundance of dialectisms, local turns (in early poems, for example. “On the road”, especially emphasized), an exceptional ability to reproduce the individual originality of the speech of any character (cf. in chapter IV alone “Who lives well in Russia” - “Yarmonka” - the unctuous and touching speech of a rural deacon with quotations from scripture, impudent speech of a retired lackey, lively abuse of women quarreling among themselves). The epithet Nekrasov is constant, as in a peasant song (“stand up, good fellow, look into my clear eyes ...”, “wrapped a violent head, dispelled black thoughts”), but at the same time he is original and well-aimed (“groans thieving sandpiper”, “Klim has a clay conscience”, etc.). Comparisons play a huge role in the style of his epic - with the nature surrounding the peasant ("Like rain that has charged for a long time, She sobs softly"), with birds, with insects ("master's speech, like a haunting fly, Buzzes under the ear"), with pets (“a Kholmogory cow is not a woman”), with utensils, with village institutions (“Klim’s speech is short And clear, like a signboard, Calling to a tavern”). The composition and style of the Nekrasov epic are determined by the same peasant ideology of the poet as his subject matter. The content finds its adequate form here too.
Nekrasov's opposition of the exploiters to the exploited was not limited to the sphere of country estate reality. The same two social categories met him in the capital city, where he appeared, deprived of the support of his father, and where he went through the terrible ordeals of hunger. Urban motifs are exceptionally strong already in early work Nekrasov. They sound in his feuilleton reviews, they fill his early vaudevilles and melodramas, but they are especially widely deployed in Nekrasov's prose and lyrics.
Nekrasov's prose, in particular his "Petersburg Corners" and the recently found story "The Life and Adventures of Tikhon Trostnikov", in all its breadth reflects that musty world of the capital's slums, which Nekrasov was almost the first to depict in Russian literature in all its ugliness. Sustained in brightly naturalistic tones, Nekrasov's prose is the direct predecessor of the prose of Nikolai Uspensky, Levitov, Reshetnikov and other Raznochinsk writers of the 60s. Equally remarkable are the urbanistic poems of Nekrasov, in which he depicts the life of the destitute lower classes of the then capital.
Petersburg, drawn by Nekrasov, does not in any way resemble that solemn and magnificent image of the imperial capital, which Pushkin depicted in the prologue to The Bronze Horseman and Gogol in the finale of Nevsky Prospekt. A revolutionary democrat, Nekrasov deheroizes Petersburg: the flag of the “proud palace” seems to him “a simple rag”, the houses “stand empty like fortresses” (“Unfortunate”), the Neva seems to him a “tomb”, and the city itself is “a worn-out veil without rouge” ("Dust"). The author of "Petersburg Corners" is alien to the splendor of military parades, the luxury of metropolitan ballets; the poet gives all his sympathy to the petty philistinism, the metropolitan poor, “bare”, living in “damp, dim, fetid, smoking cellars”. Need and illness push some representatives of this goal to theft, others - they force them to sell their bodies. Cold and hunger rage in these squalid slums.
"Get away from the hungry, the sick,
Concerned, always working,
Go away, go away, go away!
Have mercy on the Petersburg scum!
But the frost does not spare, it is added ... "
"All kinds of typhus, fever,
Inflammations go on
Dying like flies, cabbies, laundresses,
Children freeze in their beds.
An endless string of funeral processions stretch through the pages of Nekrasov's urban works to the "boundless cemeteries" of St. Petersburg. A series of hyperbole draws Nekrasov and unattractive landscapes of "sick", "hazy" and "foggy" Petersburg ("On the Weather") and its bleak everyday life. The paintings of the latter are replete with grotesque details: the coffin is escorted by an old woman “in a katsaveyka, in men’s boots”, “from the funeral the empty drogs run back merrily”, etc. Nekrasov’s attitude towards the inhabitants of the capital’s slums is best characterized by the image of a cabbie beating a defenseless nag (“On the Weather”) , as if symbolizing bullying, which is also experienced by the “Petersburg goal”:
“Legs somehow spread wide,
All smoking, settling back,
The horse only sighed deeply
And looked ... (so people look),
Submitting to wrong attacks.
Breathing deep sorrow Nekrasov's poems about the poor in the capital constitute a transitional bridge to open satire on representatives of the bourgeoisie. The gallery of satirical images of Nekrasov is inexhaustible. All those who sat on the neck of the people, who defended the landlord-bourgeois regime were subjected to his scourging. Nekrasov went through all the steps of the bureaucratic ladder, from petty and obsequious performers, through administrators who made their own careers, getting to the minister. The images of censors, officials appointed to punish literature stand apart. The second category is formed by the nobility, burning through their forces in countless revels, bourgeoisized, captivated by the benefits of capitalist. entrepreneurship. Such is Grisha Zatsepin: “And a pilgrim, and a dashing captain, And a hospitable man - the leader of the nobility - He eventually became an ace of ransom - An exploiter of the people's drunkenness" ("Contemporaries"). The bourgeois intelligentsia - lawyers, engineers and professors, who tied their fate with predatory capital - was seized by a turbulent process of ideological degeneration. Here between them is the scientist Schnabs, to-ry, “After graduating from the course, at a lecture to students ... he inspired with energy Love for work, contempt for interest, Smashing the tariff, taxes, capital. The classes listened sympathetically to him ... And now he is the director of the loan office ... " Here is a lawyer defending a notorious rogue in court:
“And tearing off an immoderate fee,
My barrister exclaimed:
Before you stands a citizen
Purer than the snow of the Alpine peaks! .. "
The ruthlessness with which Nekrasov denounced the petty, rotten bourgeois liberalism of the post-reform era brings his poetry closer to the satires of Saltykov-Shchedrin, a writer in general extremely close to Nekrasov. But the main object of N.'s satire are the bourgeois, the omnipotent owners of money, the arrogant appropriators of surplus value, surrounded by universal admiration. Here are merchants - “traders”, and a long gallery of capital moneylenders, and contractors who profit from military supplies. In depicting the paths of the initial accumulation of Russian capital, Nekrasov is the greatest master: let us recall Shkurin, who profited by tearing out the bristles of their backbones of living pigs, who created the artificial dispossession of the peasants, who forced the worker to drink more kvass and "get along willingly without meat." But the best monument to this accumulation is undoubtedly the "Railway" - in the words of M. N. Pokrovsky - "the theory of labor value in verse." In this work, with unprecedented artistic power, that noble-bourgeois Russia is stigmatized, which grew fat and prospered on the bones of the landless peasantry. In this sense, the "general in a red-lined coat" and the "copper-red contractor" represented inseparable allies in Russia's capitalist prosperity. N. treated this "Prussian" version of capitalism unconditionally negatively, and all attempts by individual researchers (for example, Chukovsky) to prove the opposite by referring to Nekrasov's interest in the process of hoarding are in vain. This hatred of the ruling bloc (in which political power belonged, of course, to the generals with a red lining) naturally combined in Nekrasov with fiery sympathy for those poor people who filled the metropolitan "corners" and slums. Nekrasov's urbanism is inseparable from the exposure of capitalism. His fire is open on the most diverse groups of the bourgeois-noble bloc. Officials and professors, nobles and bankers, hussars and contractors are united here in one inseparable phalanx by a common desire for profit, a common exploitation of people's labor. From The Moneylender, The Ballet, The Moral Man, and The Contemporaries, the irreconcilable denial of the exploiters bubbles up. Nekrasov denounces Russian capitalism fully armed with realities. Unlike the Marxists, who understood the gigantic revolutionary role of the proletariat that was being formed in the process of capitalization, Nekrasov did not see these positive consequences of capitalism: the era is largely to blame for this - Russian capitalism was still very weak. Not feeling in the workers, whom he repeatedly depicted in his urbanistic works (“On the Weather”, “Songs about the Free Speech”, the same “Railway”), the future gravediggers of Russian capitalism, Nekrasov sang them as his victim.
The richest social content of Nekrasov's satire was realized by a number of poetic genres. A series of literary parodies testifies to his liberation from the canons of noble poetry; having broken with the social milieu, Nekrasov severed ties with the poetic culture created by this class. In "Tekla" he, as it were, debunks the romantic image of Pushkin's Tatyana, in "Karpa Panteleich and Stepanida Kondratyevna" he takes under fire the high exoticism of Zhukovsky's "Indian story" "Nal and Damayanti". But most often Lermontov is parodied - his emphatic phraseology, his exotic Caucasian themes (“They went to one tavern diligently”, “It’s both boring and sad and there’s no one to cheat at cards”, “The first step to Europe”, “Court” and finally “Lullaby song"). Another satirical genre of Nekrasov is a couplet - a poetic form with a characteristic division into stanzas, with a consistent development of the theme and a uniform deployment of the main satirical leitmotif; a characteristic example is “The Moral Man” with the invariable self-satisfied refrain: “Living in harmony with strict morality, I did no harm to anyone in my life”, “Modern Ode” with a ring refrain, the romance “Another Three” and especially “Songs about the free word” , whose refrain is "Caution, caution, caution, gentlemen!" excellently characterizes the numerous dangers that confronted freedom of speech in the conditions of political reaction. From couplets, a transition to a broader satirical canvas suggested itself, which would unite these disparate studies in itself. Such a large form is Nekrasov's feuilleton poem. The composition of the poem "Contemporaries", which is a conglomeration of scenes, monologues, dialogues, characterizations, inserted verses, fully corresponds to its theme, the hustle and bustle of a large restaurant, in various halls of which anniversaries are celebrated at the same time, reporting meetings of shareholders take place and sprees unfold. With a compositional cacophony of various “voices”, Nekrasov recreates “in full social growth an immense crowd of“ heroes of the time ”. The broad framework of this review includes smaller genres, subordinated to the general accusatory task; such is eg. chansonette about “Madame Judic”, which is sung “in hall number 3”. Nekrasov's satire is characterized by a portrait grotesque, the depiction of characters that are class alien to him by a sharp exaggeration of certain features of their appearance and character: "Prince Ivan is a colossus on the belly, Hands are a kind of down jacket, A fat cheek serves as a pedestal for the ear." But even more curious is the plot grotesque - a song about a burlatsky mountain, which Nekrasov puts at the end of the poem into the mouths of predators drunk on revelry:
"Everything in this song: stupid patience,
Long slavery, reproach.
Almost brought me to tenderness
This robber choir! .. "
The stunning contrast between the composition of the choir and the content of the song leads to a stormy scene of Zatsepa's repentance - "a bold artistic device worthy of a great master, a contrast terrifying in its tragedy," modern criticism wrote to Nekrasov. The essence of Nekrasov's plutocrats is perfectly characterized by their lexicon, replete with a huge number of banking and stock exchange terms, a series of proud aphorisms about the power of money, and a sharply "prosaic" rhyme ("souls" with "profits", "artist" with "swindler", "brother with “plutocrat”, “Ovid”, “Phidias” and “subsidies”), and a series of comic comparisons in which the bourgeois and bureaucrats are compared with animals (“But he is fierce in the game, like a hyena”, or in cursing one speculator at the address of another - "instead of a heart, a penny is fake in your chest"). The pathetic saturation of Nekrasov's satire is emphasized by a whole system of oratory techniques - rhetorical questions and exclamations, periods with a number of pressure and aggravating constructions, with a sudden breakdown, when the poet suddenly realizes the futility of his denunciations. Let us recall the disruption of a hypocritical pathetic declamation by an unexpected shout from a footman:
"Present in the Senate,
Did you care about your little brother!
Have you always served good?
Have you always sought the truth?
- Allow me! I stepped aside
And he gave way to the sturgeon ... "
Finally, it is necessary to note here the exceptional variety of meters: in addition to the four-foot iambic, Nekrasov uses dactyl (“Railway”, “Songs of the Free Speech”) and especially often - anapaest (mainly in works that pair great lyrical richness with satire: “Reflections”, “On weather”, “Poor and elegant”). At the same time, Nekrasov often combines different sizes; so, in "Contemporaries" we will find a four-foot trochee, a two-foot dactyl, a four-foot amphibrach, etc. Nekrasov's satire is not a bad offshoot of his work, as it seemed at one time to a certain part of his criticism, but an equal part of it. It expresses with exceptional passion and flexibility the burning hatred of the poet for the exploiters and oppressors.
We have so far studied Nekrasov's style in the individual genres that make it up; now let's try to highlight the common unifying features in it. Nekrasov's style sharply opposes the leading lines of noble poetry. If the art of this class, which was degrading and gradually yielding the field of struggle to its antagonists, became more and more apolitical, then Nekrasov's poetry is full of social motives. The poetry of the nobility develops under the sign of recognition of the doctrine of pure art, Nekrasov's poetry is utilitarian through and through, invariably setting the task of revealing social contradictions to art. Thus, Nekrasov turns out to be the most prominent realist in the poetry of his time, for there is not a single other poet who would reveal these contradictions with greater breadth and concreteness. And finally, Nekrasov's style is democratic, because, developing his ideological tendencies, he opens up new areas of social reality for Russian poetry, transferring his attention to the slums of St. Petersburg corners, to the huts of serfs and villages devastated by the reform. The subject of creativity of landlord poetry was an intellectual nobleman; with Nekrasov, this place passed to the peasant, whose interests are protected by all his poetry. Nekrasov's style is the style of a revolutionary peasant democrat.
The variety of Nekrasov's poetic style was created not only on the basis of overcoming alien literary and poetic traditions, but also on the basis of a careful selection in the literature of the past of what was at least relatively acceptable to him.
The main highway of Nekrasov's lyrics goes in the direction of a merciless denial of the canons of noble lyrics, which, however, does not deprive Nekrasov of a dialectical connection with those of its elements, which expressed the process of forming a new social quality. It is characteristic, for example, that along with parodies of Lermontov's exoticism, Nekrasov continued those of his motives that characterized Lermontov's protest against social reality; the same should be said about the young Ogarev and Pleshcheev, with whom Nekrasov has some connections. Nekrasov clearly relies on the "civilian" lyrics of the first half of the 19th century. - on Derzhavin (compare, for example, "Reflections at the front door" with "Velmozha"), on Ryleev, whose struggle for civil poetry with Pushkin's galaxy is well known and directly continued by Nekrasov (the influence of "Voinarovsky" on "Unfortunate" and on "Russian women ”, noted by some critics of the 70s). In creating the "folk" epic, Nekrasov widely used the peasant oral-poetic tradition - at first through the reflected refraction of noble poetry (Zhukovsky in "Dreams and Sounds"), later - through the folklore publications of Kireevsky, Rybnikov, Shein, and finally through the direct collection of Nekrasov needed for him oral-poetic material, small spoken genres - proverbs, sayings, riddles (the latter serve as the basis for many figurative expressions, for example, “Yes, you can’t cut the truth out of a swindler And with an ax, Like shadows from a wall”), song forms (family and everyday songs - “ I sleep as a baby, doze, my hateful husband rises”), lamentations (“Fall, my tears”), etc. But the historical and literary position of Nekrasov the satirist is especially curious. Starting from the high exoticism of noble romanticism and parodying it, Nekrasov relies on feuilleton couplet poetry, which developed so widely in the 1930s (F. A. Koni, Grigoriev, Karatygin and others). However, he managed to overcome the lack of ideas of these products, for the most part designed for the needs of the middle and small urban bourgeoisie - merchants, lower bureaucracy, etc. The process of overcoming Nekrasov proceeded extremely quickly: if in "The Talker" (1843) he is still in the grip of unpretentious snarling , then the "Moral Man" marks the creation of a accusatory couplet by him; thirty years later, the motifs of "The Moral Man" will be widely developed in the satirical poem "Contemporaries".
The content of Nekrasov's work was to provide him with a major revolutionary role. This was successfully achieved by his folk epic, imbued with strong sympathy for the oppressed peasantry and a burning hatred for the landlords, and a caustic satire on the predatory Russian bourgeoisie, and finally Nekrasov's lyrics, which invariably aroused the reader with the tragedy of the social contradictions deployed in it. That is why Nekrasov was taken under his close supervision by censorship, which rightly did not find in his poems “not a single encouraging thought, not a shadow of that hope in the goodness of providence, which always constantly reinforces the ill-fated beggar and keeps him from crime” (review of censor Lebedev about “Is I Going at night along a dark street”), who rightly saw in “Last Child” “a libel on the entire nobility” and therefore fought against the work of “the most desperate communist” (Bulgarin’s expression) with ruthless mutilation of poems, the prohibition of individual poems and entire publications. Readers' reactions to Nekrasov's work could not and were not uniform. It met with resolute condemnation among those possessive classes whose interests were contrary to its tendencies. It was no coincidence that Nekrasov's poems were indignant in the circle of you, brought up on noble aesthetics. Botkin, Druzhinin and Turgenev: the defenders of Pushkin's traditions were struck by the emphasis of Nekrasov's barbarisms, the prosaic nature of his rhymes ("we regretted Zhitomir... Let the family go around the world"). “Lovers of Russian literature,” Turgenev solemnly predicted in 1869, “will still be rereading Polonsky's best poems when the very name of Mr. Nekrasov is covered with oblivion. Why is this? But because in the matter of poetry only poetry survives and that with white threads, seasoned with all sorts of spices, painfully hatched fabrications of "the mournful muse of Mr. Nekrasov - she, poetry, is not worth a penny." Pushing away the criticism of the nobility, Nekrasov found a second group of his readers in the post-reform peasantry. Bourgeois-noble criticism made fun of Nekrasov's sympathies for the people in every possible way. “Stop singing about the love of coachmen, gardeners and all the rednecks. This is a falsehood that cuts the ear, ”Botkin taught at a time when he and other members of his circle had not yet lost faith in Nekrasov. The wide popularity of Nekrasov in the peasant and working environment of the late XIX century. and the beginning of the 20th century. - an indisputable fact, certified by a long series of personal testimonies and confessions. From the mid-70s, when the beginning of "Peddlers" entered the popular song books, and to this day, Nekrasov is one of the favorite poets of these readers, who made an irresistible impression on them, "huge, the strongest of all." However, Nekrasov met his main admirers among the revolutionary commoners. Already V. Belinsky admired Nekrasov's sympathy for "people of a low breed." “Nekrasov’s poems are in everyone’s hands,” V. Zaitsev wrote in 1864, “and they awaken the mind and captivate both with their protests and ideals.” “Nekrasov as a poet,” the radical raznochinets D. Pisarev admitted three years earlier, “I respect him for his ardent sympathy for the suffering of the common man, for the“ honest word ”that he is always ready to put in a good word for the poor and the oppressed. Who is able to write "Philanthropist", "Epilogue to an unwritten poem", "Am I driving down a dark street at night", "Sasha", "Living in accordance with strict morality, he can be sure that living Russia knows and loves him" . “His glory will be immortal,” Chernyshevsky wrote from Siberia, “Russia’s love for him, the most brilliant and noblest of all Russian poets, is eternal.” Revolutionary-democratic criticism had every reason to give such a high rating to N.'s work. His poetry tirelessly called to the thorny road of struggle for the oppressed people; to speak in the era of the bourgeois-noble reaction of the 1960s and 1970s, in the era of the most severe repressions against populism and the complete political enslavement of the peasantry, for the "people" against the exploiters, meant to advocate the revolution. When Volkonskaya confessed: “Sergei stood powerless before me, Jail exhausted, pale, And sowed many previously unknown passions in my poor soul,” this inner rebirth characterized not only the wives of the Decembrists, but was even more inherent in hundreds and thousands of girls and women - “raznochinok” who tore all ties with the mire of the family-patriarchal way of life and politically enlightened. N. made a direct connection between the Decembrists and the revolutionary youth. “Perhaps,” he promised in the same epilogue, “we, continuing our story, Someday we will also touch others, Who, leaving their homeland, Went to die in the snowy deserts.” But even without this direct reference to the revolutionary raznochintsy, N.'s historical poems should have aroused enormous revolutionary enthusiasm among them, like all his work as a whole. The testimonies of L. Deutsch, G. V. Plekhanov, M. Olminsky and many others. others confirm this.
Nekrasov enjoyed great popularity among the poets of the revolutionary democracy of the 60-80s, who saw in him the head of a new poetic school. Such poets of revolutionary democracy as V. Kurochkin, Goltz-Miller, Gnut-Loman and Zhulev, such radicals as Weinberg, Minaev, such populists as Simborsky, P. Yakubovich, followed Nekrasov’s precepts in their creative work, learned from him new artistic methods. The ideas of female emancipation, attention to the life of the urban lower classes, deep sympathy for the oppressed peasantry, a sharp denial of the noble ideology and noble poetry - all these distinctive features of Nekrasov's poetry were also characteristic of the work of these poets. With Nekrasov, they unfolded especially widely, which was due both to the size of his creative talent and the complexity of his creative path.
Nekrasov has outgrown his era. Its value for the modern proletarian reader is not only in the fact that in his work, perhaps for the first time in Russian poetry, the life of the working class of the post-reform period is displayed (a landscape of distant suburbs with clouds of smoke “from colossal chimneys” in the verse. “About the weather”, images of typographic workers in "Songs of the Free Speech", diggers - in "Railway", etc.), but also in the fact that with all his creativity he served the cause of social reorganization, which is currently being developed so widely by the working class . Isn't it relevant, for example? in our time, Nekrasov's lyrics with its main theme of the social remelting of the individual, do not these problems confront the petty-bourgeois intelligentsia in our time, gravitating towards the proletariat, but often powerless to overcome their ties with the bourgeois world? Are the motives of Nekrasov's poems about the suffering of peasants in the noble-bourgeois system not relevant? Don't we need his satire on this system, and has his ardent hatred of the exploiters gone into eternity? Since exploitation has not yet been abolished in the world and the world is still divided into the oppressed and the oppressors, the social pathos of Nekrasov's creativity remains effective and organizing. Perhaps in nothing N. is not in tune with us to such an extent as in admiration for the "peppy" work of the "indefatigable" people. The poet, who knew only the slave labor of serfs or peasants liberated from the land, and the no less hard work of disenfranchised factory workers, managed, through the sharpness of the contradictions that overwhelmed his social consciousness, to carry deep confidence in the creative ability of the working people and that sooner or later “the turn of other pictures” will come. ”, the onset of a different social order. This entitles him to the highest respect of the class building socialism.
The task of using the Nekrasov heritage is one of those problems that are on the order of the day of Soviet literature. Modern poets should learn from Nekrasov the democratism of style, his deep ability to put art at the service of the social aspirations of the working class, his realistic depiction of reality. The art of the poet was formed on a petty-bourgeois basis, but it served the revolution, educated revolutionaries and is one of the closest to the proletariat and the immediate predecessors of socialist realism.
Nikolai Alekseevich Nekrasov (1821-1877) - an outstanding Russian poet, writer and publicist, who became a classic of Russian literature. The most famous were his works “To whom it is good to live in Russia”, “Troika”, “Poet and citizen”, “Grandfather Mazai and hares”. For a long time he was engaged in active social work, managing the journals Sovremennik and Otechestvennye Zapiski.
Nikolai Alekseevich became famous as an apologist for people's suffering, trying to show through his works the true tragedy of the peasantry. He is also known as an innovative poet who actively introduced folk prose and speech patterns into Russian poetry.
Childhood and youth
Nikolai Alekseevich Nekrasov was born on November 22, 1821 in the Vinnitsa district of the Podolsk province in the family of a large Yaroslavl landowner Alexei Nekrasov. At this time, the regiment in which he served was stationed in these places. The mother of the great poet was the Polish Elena Zakrevskaya. Shortly after the birth of his son, his father quit military service, and the family moved near Yaroslavl to the family estate of Greshnevo.
The future poet got acquainted early with the realities of the serf Russian village and the difficult peasant life. All this made a depressing impression and left a deep imprint on his soul. The gloomy and dull life in these places will respond in the future poems of the poet "Motherland", "Unfortunate", "In the unknown wilderness".
The harsh realities were complicated by the bad relationship between mother and father, which adversely affected the life of a large family (Nekrasov had 13 sisters and brothers). There, in his native land, Nekrasov first fell ill with poetry. Instilled a love for art by his beloved mother, who was well educated. After her death, the poet found many books in Polish, in the margins of which she left notes. Little Kolya also dedicated his first poems, written at the age of seven, to his mother:
Dear mother, please accept
This weak work
And consider
Does it fit anywhere?
After entering the gymnasium, Nekrasov left his native hearth and enjoyed freedom. He lived in the city in a private apartment with his younger brother and was left to himself. This is probably why he did not study well, and he often entered into verbal skirmishes with teachers and wrote satirical poems about them.
At the age of 16, Nikolai moved to St. Petersburg. The change of circumstances turned out to be forced, since after being expelled from the gymnasium he was threatened with a military career with a barracks spirit unbearable for the freedom-loving Kolya. In 1838, he arrives in the capital with a letter of recommendation for admission to the cadet corps, but instead begins preparations for entering the university. Emphasizing his desire to break with the hated past, in which the only bright spot was the memories of his mother, the poet writes the poem "Thought".
Nekrasov's first collection of poetry entitled "Dreams and Sounds" was not accepted by critics or by the author himself. After that, he moved away from the lyrics for a long time, and immediately destroyed all copies of the book that fell into his hands. Until his death, Nikolai Alekseevich did not like to think about these plays and poems.
In the field of literature
After such a turn, his father refused material support, so Nekrasov was forced to survive by odd jobs and even risked dying of starvation. Nevertheless, he firmly believed in literature as the most perfect form of free and rational activity. Even the most severe need did not make him leave this field. In memory of this period, he began to write, but never finished the novel The Life and Adventures of Tikhon Trostnikov.
In the period from 1840 to 1843, Nikolai Alekseevich took up writing prose, while simultaneously collaborating with the journal Otechestvennye Zapiski. Many stories came out from his pen - “Morning in the Editorial Office”, “Carriage”, “Landowner 23”, “Experienced Woman” and many others. Under the pseudonym of Perepelsky, he writes the dramas “Husband is not at ease”, “Feokfist Onufrievich Bob”, Grandfather's parrots”, “Actor”. Along with this, he became known as the author of numerous reviews and feuilletons.
In 1842, the long-awaited reconciliation with his father took place, which opened the way for him home. "With a tired head, neither alive nor dead," - this is how he describes the return to Greshnevo. By that time, the already elderly father had forgiven him and was even proud of his son's ability to overcome difficulties.
The following year, Nekrasov met V. Belinsky, who at first did not take his literary gift very seriously. Everything changed after the appearance of the poem "On the Road", which made the famous critic call him "a true poet." Even more Belinsky admired the famous "Motherland". Nekrasov did not remain in debt and called the meeting with him his salvation. As it turned out, the poet, with his great talent, really needed a person who would illuminate him with his ideas.
Singer of the soul of the people
After writing the poem "On the Road", which exposed the soul of an intelligent person who was no stranger to people's suffering, he created about a dozen more works. In them, the author accumulates all his hatred for the senseless opinion of the crowd, ready to stigmatize any victim of a difficult life with false and empty chatter. His poems “When from the darkness of delusion” became one of the first attempts by Russian authors to show a bright image of a woman who was dying from poverty and misfortune.
In the period from 1845 to 1854, the poet did not write so much, creating immortal poems "In Memory of Belinsky", "Muse", "Masha", "Uncompressed Strip", "Wedding". It is difficult not to notice in them the vocation that the great poet found in his fate. True, for the time being he followed this path with special caution, which was facilitated and not best years for literature, associated with the strengthening of the reactionary Nikolaev regime.
Social activity
Beginning in 1847, the poet took the helm of the Sovremennik magazine, becoming its publisher and editor. Under his leadership, the publication turned into a full-fledged organ of the revolutionary-democratic camp, the most advanced literary minds of Russia collaborated with him. Despite desperate attempts to save the magazine, when Nekrasov recited his poems at a dinner in honor of the famous Count N. Muravyov (“the hanger”), in 1866 Sovremennik was closed. The reason for such a decisive step by the authorities was the shots of Karakozov in the Summer Garden, which nearly cost the emperor his life. Until the last days, the poet regretted his act, calling it "the sound is wrong."
Two years later, Nekrasov nevertheless returned to publishing, acquiring the right to publish Otechestvennye Zapiski. This magazine will be the last brainchild of Nikolai Alekseevich. On its pages, he published chapters of the famous poem "Who Lives Well in Russia", as well as "Russian Women", "Grandfather" and a number of satirical works.
Late period
Much more fruitful was the period from 1855 to 1864, which began with the accession of the new Emperor Alexander II. During these years, Nekrasov appears as a true creator of poetic pictures of folk and social life. The first work in this series was the poem "Sasha". It so happened that at this time there was a social upsurge, including the birth of the populist movement. The response to this of a caring poet and citizen was the writing of the poem "Peddlers", "Songs to Eremushka", "Reflections at the front door" and, of course, "The Poet and the Citizen". In an effort to support the impulse of the revolutionary intelligentsia, he calls for feat and self-sacrifice for the sake of people's happiness in the poem "To the Sowers".
The late creative period is characterized by the presence of elegiac motifs in the poems. They found expression in such poems as "Morning", "Elegy", "Three Elegies", "Despondency". The most famous work poet "To whom in Russia it is good to live", which became the crown of his creative activity. It can be called a real guide to folk life, where there was a place for folk ideals of freedom, the spokesman for which was the hero of the work Grisha Dobrosklonov. The poem contains a large layer of peasant culture, conveyed to the reader in the form of beliefs, sayings, colloquial folk language.
In 1862, after reprisals against many radical friends, Nekrasov returned to his native places in the Yaroslavl region. Staying in his small homeland inspired the poet to write the poem "Knight for an Hour", which the author especially loved. Soon he bought his own estate Karabikha, where he came every summer.
Poet and citizen
In Russian literature, Nikolai Nekrasov took his own, very special place. He became a real folk poet, the spokesman of his aspirations and suffering. Exposing the vices of those in power, he, as best he could, stood up for the interests of the village oppressed by serfdom. Close contact with colleagues in Sovremennik helped develop deep moral convictions associated with his active citizenship. In his works “About the Weather”, “The Cry of Children”, “Reflections at the Front Door”, he shares with readers his revolutionary ideas, born in the name of people's happiness.
In 1856, the literary collection "Poems" was published, which became a kind of manifesto for progressive literature, which dreamed of forever removing the shackles of serfdom. All this contributed to the growth of the authority of Nikolai Alekseevich, who became a moral guide for many representatives of the then youth. And it is no coincidence that he was proudly called the most Russian poet. In the 1860s, the concept of the “Nekrasov school” was established, into which poets of a real and civic direction were “enrolled”, who wrote about the people and spoke with their reader in its language. Among the most famous authors of this trend, D. Minaev and N. Dobrolyubov stand out.
A distinctive feature of Nekrasov's work was his satirical orientation. In his poems "Lullaby", "Modern Ode" he ridicules noble hypocrites and bourgeois philanthropists. And in the "Court" and "The Song of the Free Speech" one can see a bright sharply satirical political subtext. The poet denounces censorship, feudal landlords and the illusory freedom given by the emperor.
In the last years of his life, Nekrasov suffered from a severe oncological disease of the stomach. He agreed to an operation by the famous Dr. Billroth, but it was unsuccessful. A trip to the Crimea did not save him from a serious illness - on December 27, 1877, Nikolai Alekseevich died. His funeral turned into an unprecedented expression of the popular sympathies of thousands of people who came on a frosty winter day to honor the memory of the great poet.
Personal life
In the most difficult times of lack of money, Ivan Panaev, a well-known holder of a literary salon in St. Petersburg, helped Nekrasov. In his house, the poet met many prominent literary figures - Dostoevsky, Turgenev, Saltykov-Shchedrin. Acquaintance with the beautiful Avdotya Panaeva, Ivan's wife, stood apart. Despite her firm disposition, Nekrasov managed to achieve the location of a woman. After the successes that came, Nikolai Alekseevich acquired a large apartment on Liteiny, where the Panaev family also moved in. True, the husband had long lost interest in Avdotya and did not have any feelings for her. After the death of Panaev, the long-awaited marriage with Avdotya did not take place. She quickly married the secretary of Sovremennik A. Golovachev and moved out of the apartment.
Tormented by unrequited love, Nekrasov, together with his sister Anna, goes abroad, where he meets a new passion - the Frenchwoman Sedina Lefren. For five years they will maintain a relationship at a distance, however, having received a lot of money from a successful publisher, she disappeared from his life forever.
At the end of his life, Nekrasov became close to Fekla Viktorova, whom, according to legend, he won at cards. She was a girl of humble origin and was often embarrassed by her presence in educated society. Experiencing rather paternal feelings for her, the poet awarded the girl with his patronymic and contributed to the acquisition of a new name ─ Zinochka. An indirect proof of this is the fact that he dedicated all his later poems to A. Panaeva.
Nevertheless, shortly before his death, already greatly weakened and exhausted, the poet decided to marry Thekla, which took place in a temporary church built right in the dining room of his house.
Famous Russian poet - Nikolai Nekrasov. A brief biography of the literary genius is very ambiguous. He survived the difficult years of childhood with a tyrant father and youth, without a penny in his pocket. Started as an unknown poet, and died a brilliant writer. He was always worried about the fate of the common people, which he reflected on in his works. Nekrasov, with his poems and poems, made a huge contribution to the development of Russian literature.
Famous Russian writer - Nikolai Alekseevich Nekrasov. His brief biography is very interesting and rich in various events. Perhaps the most famous work of Nikolai Alekseevich is the poem "Who Lives Well in Russia", which he created from 1860 to 1877. The poem "Frost, Red Nose", written in 1863, the poem "Grandfather Mazai and Hares" are also known throughout the world.
Little Nikolai began to write his first poems in a notebook at the age of 16, and began to compose them at 11. Nekrasov died at the age of 57 as a recognized writer. Nikolai Alekseevich rightfully occupies an honorable place in Russian literature on a par with A. A. Pushkin and M. Yu. Lermontov.
Origin
A brief biography of Nekrasov shows what an extraordinary person this man was. The writer was born into the family of a wealthy landowner and lieutenant Alexei Sergeevich in the city of Nemirov, Vinnitsa district, Podolsk province. His mother, Elena Andreevna Zakrevskaya, was an educated woman, the daughter of a petty official. Elena's parents were against this marriage, so she married Nikolai Nekrasov's father against their will. However, Zakrevskaya was unhappy in marriage - Alexei Nekrasov turned out to be a tyrant, oppressed not only the serfs, but his entire family.
The poet's family had 13 children. Nikolai's father took his son with him when he solved family affairs: knocking out debts from peasants, intimidating people. A child from early childhood saw the dead, which sunk into his soul. In addition, the father openly cheated on his wife. Later, all this will manifest itself in the writer's work in the form of images of a tyrant-father and a martyr-mother. The image of the mother - bright and kind - the writer carried through his whole life, and it is in all his works.
Nekrasov was an unusual person, his brief biography is unique. At the age of 11, Nekrasov was sent to study at a gymnasium, where he hardly completed his studies until the 5th grade. The boy had problems with his studies, in particular because of the administration of the Yaroslavl gymnasium. The young poet was not loved because of his satirical rhymes, in which he ridiculed his superiors. It was at that time that the writer began to write down his first poems in a small notebook. The first works of Nikolai Nekrasov are full of sad notes.
Aleksey Sergeevich always wanted his son to follow in his footsteps and become a military man, but Nikolai Nekrasov did not share his father's desires, so at the age of 17 he left without permission to go to university in St. Petersburg. Even the threats of his father that he would leave him penniless did not stop the young man.
Studying a brief biography of Nekrasov, one can see how difficult the first years in the capital were for the writer. There were times when he could not eat properly due to lack of funds. Nikolai Alekseevich took on any job, but sometimes there was not enough money even for housing. Belinsky helped the poet a lot, who accidentally drew attention to a talented young man and brought him to Panaev, the famous writer of that time.
Nikolai Nekrasov - a short biography of writing
The hard times were left behind when Nekrasov began to write short articles in magazines and newspapers: Literaturnaya Gazeta, Literary Addendum to the Russian Disabled Man. He also gave lessons, wrote vaudeville. In 1840, Nekrasov published his first collection of poems, Dreams and Sounds. However, this book was not very popular, and the metropolitan critics did not take seriously the poems from the collection. This greatly influenced Nikolai Alekseevich's self-esteem, he even began to buy "Dreams and Sounds" from the shelves and destroy it in order to avoid shame.
Early Nekrasov prose was full of realism, it mentioned poor deceived girls, hungry poets, cruel usurers - everything that the writer had to face personally during his difficult youth. Nekrasov's biography - a summary of his life - shows all the difficulties that the writer had to go through before he made a decent fortune and found friends.
Sovremennik magazine
In early 1847, Nikolai Nekrasov, together with Ivan Panaev, rented Sovremennik from Pletnev, a popular literary magazine at that time, which was founded by Alexander Pushkin himself. The comrades became discoverers of new talents: it was in their journal that Fyodor Dostoevsky and Nikolai Chernyshevsky were first published. Nekrasov himself at this time writes and prints such works as "Dead Lake", "Three Countries of the World", in collaboration with Golovachevay-Panaeva (Stanitsky). Nekrasov fought with all his might, a brief biography of his literary activity shows that he spared no effort to ensure that the magazine remained interesting and in demand.
During the reign of Nicholas I, the strongest censorship reigns in the press, it is not easy for the writer to fight it, so Nekrasov closes the gaps in the magazine with his works. Although, as the poet himself noted, the content of Sovremennik noticeably faded, and a lot of effort had to be made to maintain the reputation of the magazine.
Personal life of Nikolai Alekseevich
Nekrasov met his first lover in St. Petersburg. In fact, we can say that he recaptured Avdotya Panaeva from his friend Ivan Panaev. Avdotya was a bright and temperamental woman who was liked by many, but she preferred Nikolai Alekseevich Nekrasov. A brief biography of the writer shows that after the poet and his beloved began to live together in the apartment of Avdotya's ex-husband, many friends and acquaintances turned their backs on Nikolai, but he did not care - the lovers were happy.
The next woman of Nekrasov was the windy Frenchwoman Selina Lefren. She was not serious about the writer, while Nikolai Alekseevich Nekrasov himself, a brief biography shows this, was crazy about her. He dedicated poems to her, admired this woman. But Selina spent most of Nikolai's fortune and left for Paris.
The last woman of the writer was the young Zinaida Nikolaevna, whose real name was Fekla Anisimovna Viktorova. She took care of her husband until her last days. Nekrasov was very affectionate towards Zinaida and dedicated more than one poem to her.
The late years of the writer
The writer constantly reflects on the fate of the people of his homeland, as evidenced by the biography of Nekrasov. Summary the famous work "Who in Russia should live well": the poet is trying to understand whether the common people - the peasant peasant - live so well after the abolition of serfdom? People already have freedom, but is there happiness?
Satire has always occupied a large place in Nekrasov's work. This can be seen especially in such a work as "Contemporaries", written in 1875. In the same year, the poet fell seriously ill, the doctors diagnosed him with stomach cancer. The surgeon Billroth was called from Vienna, but the treatment and operation only delayed Nekrasov's death for a short time.
In the last works of the poet, one can see sadness - Nekrasov understands that he has been given very little time. In some works, he reflects on his life, what he has achieved, thanks his close friends for being there.
Nikolai Alekseevich Nekrasov died in the early evening of December 27, 1877. The entire literary elite of that time, as well as the common people, for whom he wrote, came to say goodbye to the poet.
A brief biography of Nekrasov shows how extraordinary this man was: having gone through all the difficulties of life, ups and downs with dignity, the poet never forgot about his mission - to write for the people and about the people.
It was Nekrasov who expanded the range of the poetic genre with colloquial speech and folklore. Before him, no one practiced such combinations. This innovation had a great impact on further development literature.
Nekrasov was the first to decide on a combination of sadness, satire and lyrics within one work.
Biographers like to divide the history of the development of Nikolai Alekseevich as a poet into three periods:
✪ The moment of the release of the collection "Dreams and Sounds". This is the image of the poet, which was created in the lyrics of Pushkin, Lermontov, Baratynsky. The young man still wants to be like this image, but he is already looking for himself in his own, personal work. The writer has not yet decided on his direction, and is trying to imitate the recognized writers.
✪ Since 1845. Now the poet depicts street scenes in his verses, and he likes it, it is welcome. Before us is a poet of a new format, who already knows what he wants to say.
✪
Late 40s - Nekrasov is a famous poet and successful writer. He edits the most influential literary world at that time.
At the beginning of the creative path
Very young, with great difficulty, eighteen-year-old Nekrasov reached St. Petersburg. With him he kept a notebook of youthful poems. The young man believed in his abilities. It seemed to him that the glory of the poet would happen as soon as people began to read his poems.
Indeed, a year later he was able to publish his first book - poetry. The book was called Dreams and Sounds. The success that the author had hoped for did not follow. This did not break the poet.
The young man aspired to education. He decided to attend lectures at St. Petersburg University as a volunteer, but this was also a very short-lived project of his, which ended in failure. His father deprived him of all help, there was nothing to live on. The young man put aside his high nickname for several years and began to write in various magazines, newspapers, while becoming a literary day laborer. Vaudeville, prose, satirical stories - this is what Nikolai earned in his early years.
Fortunately, in 1845 everything changed. Together with the poet Ivan Panaev, the young authors published an almanac with the attractive title "Physiology of St. Petersburg". The collection was a success. Absolutely new heroes appeared to the Russian reader. These were not romantic characters, not duelists. These were ordinary residents of St. Petersburg: janitors, organ grinders, in general, those who need sympathy.
Contemporary
A year later, at the end of 1846, young writers go even further. They are a well-known magazine "Contemporary" arrange for rent. This is the same magazine that was founded in 1836 by Pushkin.Already in January 1847, the first issues of Sovremennik were published.
Contemporary is also a resounding success. New Russian literature begins with this magazine. Nikolai Alekseevich is a new type of editor.
He assembled an excellent team of literary professionals. All Russian literature seems to have narrowed down to a narrow circle of like-minded people. For a writer to make himself known, it was enough to show his manuscript to Nekrasov, Panaev or Belinsky, like it and get it published in Sovremennik.
The journal began to educate the public in an anti-serfdom and democratic spirit.
When Dobrolyubov and Chernyshevsky began to publish in the publication, the old employees began to resent. But Nikolai Alekseevich was sure that due to the diversity of the magazine, its circulation would increase. The bet worked. The magazine, designed for diverse youth, attracted more and more readers.
But in 1862, a warning was issued to the writing team, and the government decided to suspend the publication. It was reopened in 1863.
After the assassination attempt on Emperor Alexander II, in 1866, the magazine was closed forever.
creative flourishing
In the middle of the 1940s, while working at Sovremennik, Nikolai Alekseevich became famous as a poet. This fame was undeniable. Many did not like the poems, they seemed strange, shocking. For many, there were few beautiful paintings, landscapes.
With his lyrics, the writer sings of simple everyday situations. Many people think that the position of the people's intercessor is just a mask, but in life the poet is a completely different person.
The writer himself worked a lot on his own biography, creating the image of a poor man and, therefore, well understanding the soul of the poor. At the beginning of his creative career, he really ate bread in public canteens, covering himself with shame with a newspaper, for some period he slept in an overnight shelter. All this, of course, tempered his character.
When, finally, the writer began to live the life of a wealthy writer, this life ceased to fit in with the legend, and contemporaries formed a counter myth about the voluptuary, the player, the spender.
Nekrasov himself understands the duality of his position and reputation. And he repents in his poetry.
I deeply despise myself for this.
That I live - day after day uselessly ruining;
That I, not torturing my strength on anything,
He condemned himself with a merciless judgment ...
The brightest works
There were different periods in the author's work. They all found their reflection: classical prose, poetry, dramaturgy.The debut of literary talent can be considered a poem "On the way" , written in 1945, where the conversation between the master and the serf reveals the attitude of the nobility towards the common people. The gentlemen wanted it - they took a girl into the house for education, and after the audit of the serfs, the grown up, well-bred girl was taken and put out of the manor house. She is not adapted to rural life, but no one cares about that.
For about ten years, Nekrasov has been published on the pages of a magazine, of which he himself is the editor. Not only poems occupy the writer. Having become close to the writer Avdotya Panaeva, falling in love with her, appreciating her talent, Nikolai creates a kind of tandem.
One after another, novels written in collaboration are published. Panaeva published under the pseudonym Stanitsky. Most notable "Dead Lake", "Three Countries of the World" .
Early significant works include poems: "Troika", "Drunkard", "Hound Hunting", "Motherland" .
In 1856, his new collection of poems was published. Each verse was saturated with pain about the people, their heavy lot in conditions of complete lack of rights, poverty and hopelessness: "Schoolboy", "Lullaby", "To the temporary worker" .
A poem born in agony "Reflections at the Front Door" in 1858. It was the usual material of life, only seen from the window, and then, decomposed into the themes of evil, judgment and retribution.
In mature work, the poet did not change himself. He described the difficulties that all sectors of society faced after the abolition of serfdom.
A special textbook place is occupied by such nicknames:
✪ A large verse dedicated to the poet's sister, Anna Alekseevna "Jack Frost" .
✪ "Railway" , where the author, without embellishment, shows the reverse side of the construction medal. And he does not hesitate to say that nothing changes in the life of serfs who have received freedom. They are also exploited for a penny, and the masters of life fraudulently use illiterate people.
✪ poet "Russian women" , was originally supposed to be called "Decembrists". But the author changed the title, trying to emphasize that any Russian woman is ready for sacrifice, and she has enough mental strength to overcome all obstacles.
✪
Even though the poem "Who in Russia to live well"
was conceived as a voluminous work, only four parts saw the light. Nikolai Alekseevich did not have time to finish his work, but he tried to give the work a finished look.
Idioms
The extent to which Nekrasov's work remains relevant to this day can be judged by the most famous phrases. Here are just a few of them.
✪ The poem "The Poet and the Citizen" opened the collection of 1856. In this poem, the poet is inactive, does not write. And then a citizen comes to him and urges him to start working.
You may not be a poet
But you have to be a citizen.
There is such a philosophy in these two lines that writers still interpret them differently.
✪ The author constantly used gospel motifs. The poem "To the Sowers", written in 1876, was based on a parable about a sower who sowed grain. Some grain sprouted and brought forth good fruit, while others fell on the stone and perished. Here the poet exclaims:
Sower of knowledge to the people's field!
Do you find the soil barren,
Are your seeds bad?
Sow reasonable, good, eternal,
Sow! Thank you heartily
Russian people…
The conclusion suggests itself. Not always and not everyone says thank you, but the sower sows, choosing fertile soil.
✪ And this fragment, known to everyone, from the poem “Who Lives Well in Russia” can be considered the culminating last chord of Nekrasov’s work:
You are poor
You are abundant
You are powerful
You are powerless
Mother Russia!
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