Than modern literature of the 18th century, poor Lisa. "Poor Lisa", analysis of Karamzin's story

Karamzin did not accidentally attribute the action of the story to the vicinity of the Simonov Monastery. He knew this outskirts of Moscow well. Sergius Pond, according to legend dug by Sergius of Radonezh, became a place of pilgrimage for couples in love, it was renamed Lizin Pond.

Literary direction

Karamzin is an innovative writer. He is rightfully considered the founder of Russian sentimentalism. Readers accepted the story enthusiastically, because society has long yearned for something like this. The classical trend that preceded sentimentalism, which was based on rationalism, tired readers with sermons. Sentimentalism (from the word feelings) reflected the world of feelings, heart life. Many imitations of "Poor Lisa" appeared, a kind of popular literature which was requested by the readers.

Genre

« Poor Lisa"- the first Russian psychological story. The feelings of the characters are revealed in dynamics. Karamzin even invented a new word - sensitivity. Lisa's feelings are clear and understandable: she lives by her love for Erast. Erast's feelings are more complex, he himself does not understand them. At first he wants to fall in love simply and naturally, as he read in novels, then he discovers a physical attraction that destroys platonic love.

Issues

Social: the class inequality of lovers does not lead to a happy ending, as in old novels, but to tragedy. Karamzin raises the problem of the value of a person, regardless of class.

Moral: a person's responsibility for those who trust him, "unintentional evil" that can lead to tragedy.

Philosophical: self-confident reason tramples natural feelings, about which the French enlighteners spoke at the beginning of the 18th century.

Main characters

Erast is a young nobleman. His character is written in many ways. Erast cannot be called a scoundrel. He's just a weak-willed young man who can't resist life circumstances fight for your happiness.

Lisa is a peasant girl. Her image is not spelled out in such detail and contradictory, remains in the canons of classicism. The author sympathizes with the heroine. She is industrious loving daughter, chaste and innocent. On the one hand, Liza does not want to upset her mother by refusing to marry a rich peasant, on the other hand, she submits to Erast, who asks her not to tell her mother about their relationship. First of all, Lisa thinks not about herself, but about the fate of Erast, who will be dishonored if he does not go to war.

Lisa's mother is an old woman who lives with love for her daughter and the memory of her dead husband. It was about her, and not about Liza, that Karamzin said: “Even peasant women know how to love.”

Plot and composition

Although the writer's attention is focused on the psychology of the characters, external events that lead the heroine to death are also important for the plot. The plot of the story is simple and touching: the young nobleman Erast is in love with the peasant girl Lisa. Their marriage is impossible due to class inequality. Erast is looking for pure brotherly friendship, but he does not know his own heart. When the relationship develops into an intimate one, Erast grows cold towards Lisa. In the army, he loses fortune at cards. The only way to fix things - to marry a rich elderly widow. Lisa accidentally meets Erast in the city and thinks that he has fallen in love with another. She cannot live with this thought and drowns herself in the very pond near which she met her beloved. Erast realizes his guilt and suffers for the rest of his life.

The main events of the story take about three months. Compositionally, they are decorated with a frame associated with the image of the narrator. At the beginning of the story, the narrator reports that the events described by the lake happened 30 years ago. At the end of the story, the narrator returns to the present again and recalls the unfortunate fate of Erast at Liza's grave.

Style

In the text Karamzin uses internal monologues, the voice of the narrator is often heard. Landscape sketches are in harmony with the mood of the characters and are in tune with the events.

Karamzin was an innovator in literature. He was one of the creators modern language prose close to colloquial speech educated nobleman. So say not only Erast and the narrator, but also the peasant woman Liza and her mother. Sentimentalism did not know historicism. The life of the peasants is very conditional, they are some kind of free (not serfs) pampered women who cannot cultivate the land and buy rose water. Karamzin's goal was to show feelings that are equal for all classes, which a proud mind cannot always control.

Karamzin N. M. - "Poor Lisa" - "the first national work"

Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin - a representative of the sentimental-romantic line of Russian literature XVIII century. In his work, full and brightly revealed artistic possibilities sentimentalism.

Sensitivity - so on the tongue late XVIII centuries determined the main dignity of Karamzin's stories, because he focused on the psychology of the characters, achieving in this matter high skill. Like none of the previous Russian writers, he was able to show all the vicissitudes of love, convey the subtlest shades of feelings, masterfully reveal inner world their heroes. Immersing readers in a tense emotional atmosphere of "gentle passions", he taught them to sympathize with people. Karamzin was called sensitive and gentle. In Russian literature, Karamzin was an innovator - in the field of interpretation of characters, themes and stylistic means, in the field of prose characters.

Karamzin's story "Poor Lisa", written in 1792 and dedicated to love theme, history of two loving hearts gained particular popularity among contemporaries. His heroes are looking for happiness in love, but they are surrounded by a large and cruel world with its inhuman and terrible laws. This world deprives Karamzin's heroes of happiness, makes them victims, brings them constant suffering and dooms them to death.

Lisa lived with her mother in the Moscow region, in a small house on the banks of the Moscow River, not far from the Simonov Monastery. Both mother and late father tried to instill in their daughters high moral character. From childhood, she was taught that in this life nothing is given for free, you need to achieve everything yourself. They themselves adhered to the same principles: the father “loved work, plowed the land well and always led a sober life”, and the mother remained faithful to the memory of her husband and for many years continued to shed tears about him, “for even peasant women know how to love!” Liza, brought up in strictness, "worked day and night - weaving canvases, knitting stockings, picking flowers in the spring, and picking berries in the summer - and selling all this in Moscow."

We see that the author's ardent sympathies invariably accompany the heroine; he is on her side in resolving the main conflict. A simple peasant girl with a selfless character (with all due respect and love for her mother, Lisa never told her about her relationship with Erast) fell in love with a kind but gentleman spoiled by an idle life, unable to think about the consequences of his actions. Her feelings were unusually deep, constant, and most importantly, disinterested. Liza was well aware that she could never become the wife of a loved one, because he is a “master”, but, despite this, she continued to selflessly love Erast “completely surrendering to him, she only lived and breathed ... and believed her happiness in his pleasure, without thinking about yourself at all.

Karamzin described the relationship between Lisa and Erast in pastoral, idyllic tones, emphasizing that the tragic end of their relationship is the result of the circumstances and the frivolous nature of the protagonist, and the reason is not social inequality at all. Erast is a "rather rich nobleman" with a "kind by nature" but "weak and windy heart". "He led scattered life thought only of his own pleasure. At first, Erast thought only of “pure joys” and wanted to “live with Lisa like a brother and sister,” but overestimated his strength. Then, as usual, having had enough of "bored" relationships, he wanted to get rid of them. For Lisa, the loss of Erast was tantamount to the loss of Life. Existence without Erast has no meaning for her, so she commits suicide.

Drama is not only with Lisa, but also with Erast. After all, to condemn oneself to moral torment until the end of one's life is no less a punishment than to be condemned by others. ABOUT emotional drama Erast says the words of the author himself: “Erast was unhappy until the end of his life. Having learned about the fate of Lizina, he could not be consoled and considered himself a murderer. Karamzin does not consider his hero typical: “People do a lot of evil - no doubt - but there are few villains; delusion of the heart, recklessness, lack of enlightenment through the fault of bad deeds ... "

Karamzin's innovation lies in the fact that he did not reduce the significance of the socio-ethical problem put forward by him with a happy denouement. V. V. Sipovsky drew on this circumstance Special attention. “Poor Liza,” he wrote in “Essays on the History of the Russian Novel,” “that’s why it was accepted by the Russian public with such enthusiasm that in this work Karamzin was the first to express the “new word” that Goethe told the Germans in his “ Werther". Such a “new word” was the suicide of the heroine in the story. The Russian public, accustomed in old novels to comforting outcomes in the form of weddings, believing that virtue is always rewarded and vice punished, for the first time in this story met with the bitter truth of life.

The work of N. M. Karamzin played an outstanding role in the history of Russian literature. “The pure, high glory of Karamzin belongs to Russia, and not a single writer with true talent, not a single scientist man, even from those who were his opponents, did not refuse him deep respect and gratitude, ”wrote A. S. Pushkin. And according to Belinsky, Karamzin “created in Rus' an educated literary language”, having managed to “want” the Russian public to read Russian books. Assessing the achievements of Karamzin in the development of Russian prose, the critic emphasized: “Karamzin was the first in Rus' to begin writing stories that interested society ... stories in which people acted, depicted the life of the heart and passions in the midst of ordinary everyday life”, stories in which “like in a mirror, the life of the heart is faithfully reflected ... as it existed for the people of that time.” Send a request with a topic right now to find out about the possibility of receiving a consultation.

Classicism is being replaced by sentimentalism. Sentimentalism is a pan-European phenomenon. Originated in England. Then it appears in other countries. It is believed that in Russia the origins of sentimentalism date back to the 1760s. The 1770s take shape as a literary trend, the 1780s-90s are the heyday of sentimentalism. If in classicism the category of reason was the main category, then in sentimentalism feelings are proclaimed, an interest in a person arises. Sentimentalists proceed from the natural law of people. They are inherent in the recognition of human nature as good. The basis is sensationalism. The main postulate of this doctrine is truth in feeling. Therefore, at the center of sentimentalism is a feeling person. The category of sensitivity is the defining category of sentimentalism. The purpose of man in the theory of sentimentalism is to serve as a test of the heart. Positive characters are compassionate, responsive, capable of selfless love. Negative heroes are selfish and hard-hearted. In Western European literature, the sentimentalists are represented by Richardson's "Clarice Garlo" 1748. About the tragic love of a young girl for the aristocrat Lavlas. In France - Rousseau - "Julia or the new Eliza" in 1761, he became the banner of sentimentalism. Goethe - "the suffering of young Werther." Ideas of moral equality between people, ideas of simplicity, organic connection with nature. People leave in autumn. All trends in sentimental prose are the democratization of literature.

The favorite genres of sentimentalists are memoirs, elegiac messages. They often write in the first person. All this gives the prose of sentimentalists lyricism. In Russian literature, it manifested itself more consistently in the stories of Karamzin, the young Zhukovsky ("rural cemetery").

Karamzin.

Journalist, philologist, writer. Born December 1, 1766. He took many landscapes in his works from his native Simbirsk places. Read Shakespeare, knew ancient languages. The first translation is "Eugene and Julia". He is a translator. In 1789-1790 he traveled around Europe. The results of the trip were "letters from a Russian traveler".

Karamzin has a Russoist motive. In 1792, "Poor Liza", "Natalya, the Boyar's Daughter" was published.

Karamzin owns the reform of the Russian language. It is based on the convergence of writing with the word of the nobility.

Since 1801 Karamzin has been a historian. "History of Russian Goverment". Created a genre of psychological story.

"Poor Lisa"

The story is based on the tragic love of Lisa and Erast. The story of a deceived girl. The writer knew how to show how peasant women know how to love.

The image of Liza is positive, and Erast is negative. In Soviet literary criticism, the reasons were seen in social inequality, but Karamzin does not focus on this, he notes that Erast marries by calculation. At the end of the story, Erast repents.

The humanism of Karamzin is expressed in the thought of the non-classical personality. Author with sympathy for remorse. Life does not interest Karamzin. Nature in the story is solemn. A story in the first person.

The selection of sentimental vocabulary is characteristic. The story had a great influence on the literature of the 19th century.

The place described by Karamzin has become a place of pilgrimage for young people.

"Natalia, boyar's daughter"

Sentimental and psychological is also the story "Natalya, the Boyar's Daughter", which takes place during the time of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. The appeal to the historical past of the Russian people was caused, firstly, by the patriotic desire of the writer to fight gallomania, which at that time was quite widespread among the Russian nobility. This is evidenced by the introduction to the story: “Which of us does not love those times when Russians were Russians, when they dressed up in their own clothes, walked with their own gait, lived according to their custom, spoke ... as they thought. At least, I love these times, I love to fly on the swift wings of imagination into their gloom, under the canopy of long-decayed elms, to look for my bearded ancestors, to talk with them about the adventures of antiquity, about the character of the glorious Russian people ... I always give preference to their undercoats and fur coats before current and all Gallo-Albion outfits. Secondly, in "Natalia, boyar daughter”a picture of an “ideal” monarchy is drawn, where the tsar cared only about the well-being of his subjects, was merciful and indulgent, where the attractive simplicity of morals favorably differed from the licentiousness and depravity of the Catherine’s court, and the confidant of the sovereign was a faithful and useful adviser to him, did not use his position for selfish intrigue, did not plunder the state treasury, was a patron, and "protector of poor neighbors." Karamzin thus provided the reader with material for comparing the idealized past with the gloomy present, helping him to see the deeply vicious reactionary nature of Catherine's autocracy.

The picture of state humanity and justice in "Natalya, the Boyar's Daughter", perhaps somewhat timidly, but rather unequivocally, showed Catherine II and her favorites what the monarchy, the empress herself and their entourage should be like. However, even here the writer more occupies the life of the heart, the love story of Natalia, the daughter of the first boyar of the state, and Alexei, the son of a nobleman. Trying to create the inner appearance of Natalia as characteristic of a Muscovite of the 17th century, Karamzin notes only that the “charming Natalya” also had a “charming soul”, “she was tender like a turtledove, innocent like a lamb”, in a word, she was a “well-bred girl”, although I didn’t read the works of Rousseau, Locke, Campe, Weiss, Moritz” (but the author himself read them, which left a very tangible imprint on the image of the heroine of the story). It should be noted that although Karamzin did not reveal the psychology of a girl of the 17th century, he nevertheless managed to reproduce some of the everyday features characteristic of that time quite correctly. The story plausibly describes the life of a Russian girl in the terem. Occasionally, a “society” of young girls gathered at Natalya’s, and the boyar himself amused them with stories about “the adventures of the pious Prince Vladimir and the mighty Russian heroes.” Sometimes Natalya herself went to parties, where "mothers" and "nannies" invented different fun for their young ladies. Seeing once in a church beautiful young man, Natalia felt that this was her chosen one. “Having prayed with zeal, she did not purposely turn her eyes to the left wing, and what did she see? A beautiful young man, in a blue caftan with gold buttons, stood there like a king, among all other people, and his brilliant penetrating gaze met her gaze. In one second, Natalya blushed all over, and her heart, trembling strongly, said to her: here he is! her desire to look once more at the lovely youth. “She lowered her eyes, but not for long; she looked again at the handsome man, again burned in her face and again trembled in her heart. The "amiable ghost" that had seduced her imagination both day and night, finally presented itself to her as an image of "this young man". The image of the inner world of the characters in development, in dynamics was a great merit of the writer and his innovation. But Karamzin's persistent desire to reveal to the reader the inner appearance of the characters in his story leads to their modernization in a psychological sense. So, in the spirit of sentimentalism, the love relationship between Alexei and Natalya is described: when they meet, the “lovers” turn pale, almost faint, and tears constantly flow from their eyes. Natalya turns out to be a character endowed with all the attributes of the heroines of the sentimental stories of the end of the 18th convict, and not a Muscovite of pre-Petrine Rus'. And it is not surprising that Natalya is almost a double of "poor Lisa." It is easy to verify this by comparing the two stories. The similarity of Lisa and Natalia is not hindered even by a large difference in their social status. The linguistic and stylistic features of "Natalia, the Boyar's Daughter" are inextricably linked with its content, ideological orientation, with its system of images and genre originality. The work reflects the characteristic features of the style inherent in Karamzin's fictional prose as a whole. The subjectivism of Karamzin's creative method, the writer's increased interest in the emotional impact on the reader determine in his work an abundance of paraphrases, comparisons, similes, etc. an object, a phenomenon (i.e., to show what impression the author experiences or with what the impression made on him by some object, phenomenon can be compared). Here is how the appearance of the author's “great-great-grandmother's ghost” is described in the story: “Your eyes shine like the sun; your lips turn red, like the morning dawn, like the top of snowy mountains at the dawn of the daylight, you smile, like a young creation on the first day of its existence smiled. Here, each item mentioned is necessarily accompanied by a comparison. Common in "Natalia, the Boyar's Daughter" and paraphrases, generally characteristic of the poetics of sentimentalists. So, instead of saying that the boyar Matvey was old, close to death - Karamzin writes: “Already the quiet trembling of the heart heralded the onset of life’s evening and the approach of night”; the wife of the boyar Matvey did not die, but "fell an eternal sleep." There are substantiated adjectives in the story that are not such in ordinary speech: “What are you doing, reckless!”; “Is not some bridegroom, rich and noble, wooing a beautiful woman?” In the use of epithets, Karamzin goes mainly in two ways. On the one hand, he is looking for such epithets that should shade the inner, “psychological” side of the subject, taking into account the impression that the subject makes directly on the heart of the author (and, therefore, on the heart of the reader). The epithets of this series seem to be devoid of real content. Such epithets are a characteristic phenomenon in the system of visual means of sentimentalist writers. In the story there are “tops of gentle mountains”, “a kind ghost”, “sensitive souls that have this sweet pen”, “sweet tears”; boyar Matvey - "clean hand and pure heart»; Natalya "becomes cloudier." It is curious that Karamzin applies the same epithets to various objects and concepts. "Cruel! (she thought) cruel! this epithet refers to Alexei, and in the next episode Karamzin calls frost cruel. Karamzin uses another series of epithets to revive the pictures he creates, to influence the visual perception of the reader, to make what is described shine, light up, shine. This is how he creates decorative painting. Here is a portrait of Natalia, illuminated by the rays of the rising sun: the rays of the sun played on her white face and, penetrating through black, fluffy eyelashes, shone in her eyes brighter than on gold. Hair, like dark coffee velvet, lay on the shoulders and on the white, half-open chest. Here everything is presented in bright, contrasting colors: “dark coffee hair” and “white breasts”, “black eyelashes” and “the scarlet blush on a white face”. In the eyes of Natalia there is a “brilliant tear”, and the sun scatters “millions of brilliant diamonds” on the snow. The reader, together with the author, admires "a motley carnation or a white jasmine." Repeatedly found in "Natalia, the Boyar's Daughter" are appeals characteristic of many of Karamzin's works. Their function is to give the story a more emotional character and introduce elements of intimacy into the story, closer communication between the author and the reader, which obliges the reader to treat the events depicted in the work with great confidence. After all, it must be borne in mind that almost all the events in the stories Karamzin sought to give the most complete illusion of reality and assure the reader of the truth of what is happening. So, in “Natalya, the boyar daughter”, we meet: “Gracious sovereigns! I tell how the thing happened: do not doubt the truth, do not doubt the strength of that mutual attraction that two hearts feel, created for each other.

"Poor Lisa" really happy fate. The story is one of the works that mark literary era and this is its significance for the history of literature. Written almost 200 years ago, over these two centuries it has known neither oblivion nor loss of readers' love.

One of the most characteristic features of the great works of Russian literature is that, despite the simplicity external plot they raise the most complex, deep questions of life. These are “Eugene Onegin” by A. S. Pushkin, “ Dead Souls"N. V. Gogol, "Anna Karenina" by L. N. Tolstoy ...

The plot of "Poor Lisa", as the author himself rightly noted, is very straightforward. The peasant woman Liza and the nobleman Erast fell in love, but soon Erast left his beloved in order to marry a rich widow and thereby improve his fortune. The abandoned girl drowned herself in a pond with grief.

This story was more successful than anything written by Karamzin before. "Your 'Poor Lisa' is beautiful to me!" - this is how Petrov, an impartial and harsh critic, commented on the story.

First of all, "Poor Liza" bribed the reader with the fact that she talked about Russian life, about modern times. Usually in the stories they wrote that the action takes place in an indefinite “one city”, “one village”, and here the Simonov Monastery, well known to every Muscovite, everyone recognized birch grove and the meadow where the hut stood, the monastery pond surrounded by old willows - the place of the death of poor Lisa ... Accurate descriptions gave special authenticity to the whole story. In addition, the author emphasized the veracity of his story: “Ah! Why am I not writing a novel, but a sad story!” Even the fact that Lisa was selling forest flowers was new feature life: in one of the articles, Karamzin reports that they began to sell bouquets of such flowers in Moscow only a year or two before the creation of the story.

The name Lisin was strengthened behind the Fox Pond, it is on for a long time became a place of pilgrimage for sensitive readers. The Moscow Guide of 1827, along with the Sukharev Tower, the Red Gates and other Moscow sights, recommends visiting Lizin Pond.

Not only sensitive girls came to the pond, but also men: Pogodin conveys the words of Professor Tsvetaev, “that he, too, went to Lizin’s pond, with a white handkerchief in his hands, to wipe his tears.”

Now, many years later, “Poor Lisa” seems almost an elegant toy, but at one time it was perceived differently: it was sharply modern and socially sounding work. The theme and images of "Poor Lisa" directly echo the pages of Radishchev's book, which had just been banned and confiscated even from private individuals.

The chapter "Edrovo" "Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow" tells how in this village the author met a peasant girl, Anyuta, who cannot marry a loved one, because he has to pay 100 rubles for permission to marry, and neither , neither Anyuta has that kind of money. The author offers Anyuta and her mother this money, but they refuse.

The image of Anyuta's mother resonates with the image of Lisa's mother, who resolutely refuses to take from Erast the fee he insistently offers "ten times more than the price she sets" for the canvas woven by Lisa. In addition, there are minor coincidences in details, words: for example, Anyuta's father died, leaving a strong economy, Lisa's father was also a "well-to-do villager", and here and there there was no male worker left in the house; Liza at Karamzin says: “God gave me hands to work,” Anyuta’s fiancé, also refusing to accept money as a gift, declares: “I, master, have two hands, I will run the house with them.” The connection between "Poor Liza" and "Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow" is undeniable.

The fundamental difference between the works of Radishchev and Karamzin lies in the fact that in Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow the theme is revealed by means of journalism, in Poor Liza by artistic means. Radishchev names the phenomenon and gives it an explanation from the point of view of social and economic, Karamzin depicts it. Both methods have their merits, but for the conditions of Russian reality fiction was of particular importance. Very well her role in public life determined by N. G. Chernyshevsky. He called it "the textbook of life."