Features of utopia in N. Chernyshevsky’s novel “What to do? Chernyshevsky N.G.

N. G. Chernyshevsky in his novel “What is to be done?” places an unusual emphasis on common-sense selfishness. Why is egoism reasonable, sane? In my opinion, because in this novel we see for the first time a “new approach to the problem”, “new people” of Chernyshevsky, creating a “new” atmosphere. The author thinks that the “new people” see personal “benefit” in the desire to benefit others, their morality is to deny and destroy official morality. Their morality releases the creative potential of a philanthropic person. “New people” solve family and love conflicts less painfully. The theory of rational egoism has an undeniable appeal and a rational core. “New people” consider work an integral condition of human life, they do not sin and do not repent, their minds are in absolute harmony with their feelings, because neither their feelings nor their minds are perverted by the chronic hostility of people.

You can trace the course of Vera Pavlovna’s internal development: first at home she gains inner freedom, then the need for public service appears, and then the fullness of her personal life, the need to work regardless of personal will and social arbitrariness.

N. G. Chernyshevsky creates not an individual, but a type. For a “not new” person, all “new” people look alike, and the problem of a special person arises. Such a person is Rakhmetov, who differs from others, especially in that he is a revolutionary, the only individualized character. The reader is given his traits in the form of questions: why did he do this? For what? These questions create an individual type. He is a “new” man in his formation. All the new people seem to have fallen from the moon, and the only one connected with this era is Rakhmetov. Denial of oneself out of “calculation of benefits”! Here Chernyshevsky does not act as a utopian. And at the same time, Vera Pavlovna’s dreams exist as an indication of the ideal society to which the author strives. Chernyshevsky resorts to fantastic techniques: beautiful sisters appear to Vera Pavlovna in a dream, the eldest of them, Revolution - a condition for renewal. In this chapter, we have to put a lot of points in place to explain the voluntary omission of the text, which the censorship would not let through anyway and in which the main idea of the novel would be exposed. Along with this, there is the image of a beautiful younger sister - a bride, meaning love-equality, who turns out to be a goddess not only of love, but also of the enjoyment of work, art, and leisure: “Somewhere in the south of Russia, in a deserted place, there are rich fields and meadows , gardens; there is a huge palace made of aluminum and crystal, with mirrors, carpets, and wonderful furniture. You can see people working, singing songs, and relaxing everywhere.” There are ideal human relationships between people, traces of happiness and contentment everywhere, which were previously impossible to dream of. Vera Pavlovna is delighted with everything she sees. Of course, there are many utopian elements in this picture, a socialist dream in the spirit of Fourier and Owen. It is not for nothing that they are repeatedly hinted at in the novel without being directly named. The novel shows only rural labor and speaks about the people “in general,” in a very general way. But this utopia in its main idea is very realistic: Chernyshevsky emphasizes that labor must be collective, free, the appropriation of its fruits cannot be private, all the results of labor must go to satisfy the needs of the members of the collective. This new work must be based on high scientific and technological achievements, on scientists and powerful machines that allow man to transform the earth and his entire life. The role of the working class is not highlighted. Chernyshevsky knew that the transition from the patriarchal peasant community to socialism must be revolutionary. In the meantime, it was important to cement in the reader’s mind the dream of a better future. Chernyshevsky himself speaks through the mouth of his “elder sister,” addressing Vera Pavlovna with the words: “Do you know the future? It is bright and beautiful. Love it, strive for it, work for it, bring it closer, transfer from it to the present as much as you can.” .

Indeed, it is difficult to talk about this work seriously, given all its monstrous shortcomings. The author and his characters speak in an absurd, clumsy and unintelligible language. The main characters behave unnaturally, but they, like dolls, are obedient to the will of the author, who can make them do (experience, think) whatever he wants. This is a sign of Chernyshevsky’s immaturity as a writer. A true creator always creates beyond himself, the creations of his creative imagination have free will, over which even he, their creator, has no control, and it is not the author who imposes thoughts and actions on his heroes, but rather they themselves suggest to him this or that action, thought, turn plot. But for this it is necessary that their characters be concrete, complete and convincing, and in Chernyshevsky’s novel, instead of living people, we have bare abstractions that have been hastily given a human form.

Lifeless Soviet socialism came from French utopian socialism, whose representatives were Claude Henri de Saint-Simon and many others. Their goal was to create prosperity for all people, and to carry out the reform in such a way that no blood was shed. They rejected the idea of equality and fraternity and believed that society should be built on the principle of mutual appreciation, asserting the need for hierarchy. But who will divide people according to the principle of more and less gifted? So why is gratitude the best thing in the world? Because those who are below should be grateful to others for being below. The problem of a full personal life was solved. They considered a bourgeois marriage (concluded in a church) to be trafficking in a woman, since a lady cannot stand up for herself and ensure her well-being and is therefore forced to sell herself; in an ideal society she will be free. In my opinion, the most important thing in society should be gratitude.

The novel was written by Ch. in 1863, when he was in the Peter and Paul Fortress for 4 months. This is philosophical and utopian. novel. a genre of fiction, close to science fiction, describing a model of an ideal society, from the author’s point of view. Unlike dystopia, it is characterized by the author’s faith in the impeccability of the model.

The name of the genre comes from the work of the same name by Thomas More - “The Golden Little Book, as useful as it is amusing, about the best structure of the state and about the new island of Utopia,” in which “Utopia” is only the name of the island. For the first time in the meaning of “model of an ideal society” this word is found in the travel book of the English priest Samuel Purches “Pilgrimage”

Chernyshevsky was a fanatic of progress; he believed that with the help of progress, humanity would build heaven on earth and this would happen very soon. From the point of view of artistic value and style, the novel can be rated low. Chernyshevsky himself admitted his artistic shortcomings. They were generally recognized by everyone except Lenin.

But Chernyshevsky’s influence on his contemporaries and on Russian youth is enormous. Chernyshevsky receives worldwide recognition, the novel has been translated into many languages. How did the novel get published? 2 versions:

1) the prison censorship relied on the external one, but the external one decided that the prison censorship had already checked him

2) the censor decided that since he wrote the novel in such a terrible style, he would compromise the very ideas that were presented in it.

To "What should I do?" Dostoevsky and Tolstoy responded - in their works they conduct polemics with Chernyshevsky.

Many saw Chernyshevsky’s ideas as harmful and dangerous.

Tolstoy and Dostoevsky believed that truth is acquired only through life, “searching.” In Chernyshevsky, the hero Rakhmetov read books (read for three days in a row) and became a different person, learned the truth.

Chernyshevsky explains “what to do” to build an earthly paradise and make all people happy. And these ideas take hold of millions.

Chernyshevsky touches on a variety of issues.

1) including farms. The farm must be collectively owned.

2) Chernyshevsky sets out a new ethics in the novel - ethics without God, on the solid foundation of reason. Despite the fact that Chernyshevsky himself came from the family of a priest.

The essence of ethics without God: in the general course of life, lofty aspirations are insignificant.

3) Above all, the desire for one’s own benefit, that is, reasonable selfishness. Reasonable egoism is distinguished by the fact that a person does not go out on the high road and does not kill to get rich, but builds a factory, creates cars and becomes a millionaire. A reasonable egoist benefits himself and others.

4) denies the concept of victim. Sacrifice is a false concept, but it is the central concept of Christianity.

5) tried to explain morality from the point of view that it is beneficial for a person to act morally.

All these attempts failed. We must admit that it is not reason that governs morality, but vice versa. The unconvincingness of Chernyshevsky's theory lies in its internal contradictions (for example, Chernyshevsky himself denies the sacrifice, and Rakhmetov makes it). This inconsistency was seen by Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, their works “War and Peace” and “Notes from the Underground” - a polemic with the novel “What is to be done?”.

DI. Pisarev. Thinking proletariat:

Ch-go’s novel infuriates everyone who is fed and warmed by routine.

The novel mocks their aesthetics, destroys their morality, and shows the narrowness of their chastity. It is similar to all other Russian novels only in external form, its plot is simple and there are few characters in it. The novel “What to do?” created by the work of a strong mind. He knew how to peer into the phenomena of life, the author knows how to generalize and comprehend them. All the author's sympathies lie with the future. Chernyshevsky knows not only how “new people” think and reason, but also how they feel.

Creating the image of a professional revolutionary, Ch. looks into the future, in many ways ahead of his time.

1) shows the process of becoming a revolutionary, highlighting three stages in Rakhmetov’s life:

Theoretical Preparation,

Practical inclusion in the life of the people

Go to prof. revolutionary activity.

2) at all stages of his life, Rakhmetov acts with complete dedication.

R. lives in general, not personal, is constantly in trouble, and is not at home much. There is a well-known episode of his love for a certain lady whom he saved by stopping a charabanc with a runaway horse. R. deliberately refuses love because it ties his hands. The image of R. bears the stamp of mystery, which encrypts the revolutionary activity of the hero - the “hidden” plot of the novel. Its plot function is to represent the type of special, “ideal” person with whom all other characters are compared in one way or another. It is known that two years after the events described in the novel, he leaves St. Petersburg, believing that he has already done everything here. The author calls people like R. “the salt of the salt of the earth.”

Such people are not always needed, but at the steep passes of history as individuals who absorb the needs of the people and deeply feel the pain of the people.

Shot on the foundry bridge.

Letter for Vera. It says that the person writing it is leaving the stage because he loves “both of you” too much...

The tragic outcome is preceded by the life story of Vera Pavlovna. Her mother wants to quickly marry her to a rich man. Teacher, medical student Dmitry Lopukhov was invited to visit his brother. Having learned about the girl’s plight, Lopukhov tries to help her. Makes an offer. At this time, she has her first dream: she sees herself released from a damp and dark basement and talking with an amazing beauty who calls herself love for people. Verochka promises the beauty that she will always release other girls from the basements, locked in the same way she was locked.

The young people rent an apartment, and their life is going well. Strange relationships: they sleep in different rooms, enter each other's rooms after knocking, and do not show up undressed.

Soon she starts a sewing workshop. The girls are self-employed, but are co-owners and receive their share of the income.

In the second dream he sees a field in which ears of corn grow. On this field the dirt is both fantastic and real. Real dirt is caring for the bare necessities - ears of corn can grow from it. Fantastic dirt - caring for the superfluous and unnecessary; nothing grows out of it.

Alexander Kirsanov often visits the Lopukhovs. He brightens up Vera Pavlovna's loneliness with conversations, falls in love with her, and she with him.

The situation in which three smart and decent “new people” find themselves seems insoluble. Lopukhov finds a way out - a shot on the Liteiny Bridge.

On the day this news was received, an old acquaintance of Kirsanov and Lopukhov, Rakhmetov, comes to Vera Pavlovna, a “special person” Rakhmetov, one day he decides to sleep on nails in order to test his physical capabilities. He doesn't drink wine, doesn't touch women.

Rakhmetov brings Vera Pavlovna a note from Lopukhov, after reading which she becomes calm and even cheerful.

The Kirsanov family has approximately the same lifestyle as the Lopukhov family before.

Soon she has a fourth dream.

Before her are pictures of the lives of women in different millennia. The great woman, familiar to her from her first dream, explains to Vera Pavlovna the meaning of women's equality and freedom. This woman also shows Vera Pavlovna pictures of the future: citizens of New Russia live in a beautiful house made of cast iron, crystal and aluminum. They work in the morning, have fun in the evening, and “whoever has not worked enough has not prepared the nerve to feel the fullness of the fun.” The guidebook explains to Vera Pavlovna that this future should be loved, one should work for it and transfer from it to the present everything that can be transferred.

The Kirsanovs have a lot of young people, like-minded people. The Beaumont family soon appears among them. Ekaterina Vasilievna Beaumont, nee Polozova She marries a man who calls himself an agent of an English company, Charles Beaumont. He speaks excellent Russian because he supposedly lived in Russia until he was twenty. When Beaumont meets Kirsanov, it becomes clear that this man is Lopukhov. The Kirsanov and Beaumont families feel such spiritual closeness that they soon settle in the same house and receive guests together. Ekaterina Vasilievna also sets up a sewing workshop, and the circle of “new people” thus becomes wider.

N. G. Chernyshevsky in his novel “What is to be done?” places an unusual emphasis on common-sense selfishness. Why is egoism reasonable, sane? In my opinion, because in this novel we see for the first time a “new approach to the problem”, “new people” of Chernyshevsky, creating a “new” atmosphere. The author thinks that the “new people” see personal “benefit” in the desire to benefit others, their morality is to deny and destroy official morality. Their morality releases the creative potential of a philanthropic person. “New people” solve family and love conflicts less painfully. The theory of rational egoism has an undeniable appeal and a rational core. “New people” consider work an integral condition of human life, they do not sin and do not repent, their minds are in absolute harmony with their feelings, because neither their feelings nor their minds are perverted by the chronic hostility of people.

Artistic features and compositional originality of the novel by N.G. Chernyshevsky "What to do?"

Mysterious suicide in the 1st chapter of the novel "What to do?" - the plot is unconventional and unusual for Russian prose of the 19th century, more typical of adventurous French novels. According to the generally accepted judgment of all researchers, it was, so to speak, a kind of intriguing device designed to confuse the investigative commission and the tsarist censorship. The melodramatic coloring of the story about a family tragedy in the 2nd chapter, as well as the unexpected title of the 3rd - “Preface”, which begins like this, were intended for the same purpose: “The content of the story is love, the main person is a woman, - this is good, at least she herself the story was bad..." In addition, in this chapter the writer, addressing the people in a half-joking, half-mocking tone, admits that he completely deliberately "began the story with spectacular scenes, torn from the middle or end of it, and covered them with fog." Following this, Chernyshevsky, having laughed at his readers to his heart’s content, says: “I don’t have a shadow of artistic talent. I don’t even speak the language well. But that’s still nothing.”<...>Truth is a good thing: it rewards the shortcomings of the writer who serves it." Thus, he puzzles the reader: on the one hand, the author openly despises him, classifying him as one of the majority with whom he is "impudent", on the other, as if inclined to open his eyes to he has all the cards and, moreover, intrigues him because there is also a secret meaning in his story! The reader has only one thing left to do - read and disassemble, and in the process be patient, and the deeper he plunges into this work, the more tests he is subjected to. patience...

The reader is convinced literally from the first pages that the author really does not speak the language well. So, for example, Chernyshevsky has a weakness for stringing together verb chains: “Mother stopped daring to enter her room”; loves repetitions: “This is strange to others, but you don’t know that it’s strange, but I know that it’s not strange”; the author’s speech is careless and vulgar, and sometimes one gets the feeling that this is a bad translation from a foreign language: “The gentleman broke into ambition”; “For a long time they felt the sides of one of them”; “He answered with exquisite portability”; “People fall into two main divisions”; "The end of this beginning happened when they passed the old man." The author's digressions are dark, clumsy and verbose: “They didn’t even think that they were thinking this; but this is the best thing, that they didn’t even notice that they were thinking this”; "Vera Pavlovna<...>began to think, not at all, but somewhat, no, not several, but almost completely to think that there was nothing important, that she mistook for a strong passion just a dream that would dissipate in a few days<...>or did she think that no, she doesn’t think this, that she feels that this is not so? Yes, it’s not like that, no, like that, like that, she thought more and more firmly that she was thinking this.” At times, the tone of the narrative seems to parody the intonations of a Russian everyday fairy tale: “After tea... she came to her room and lay down. So she’s reading in her crib, only the book drops from her eyes, and Vera Pavlovna thinks: “Why is it that lately I’ve become a little bored sometimes?” Alas, such examples can be given endlessly...

The mixture of styles is no less annoying: over the course of one semantic episode, the same persons now and then stray from a pathetically sublime style to an everyday, frivolous or vulgar one.

Why did the Russian public accept this novel? The critic Skabichevsky recalled: “We read the novel almost on our knees, with such piety that does not allow the slightest smile on the lips, with which liturgical books are read.” Even Herzen, admitting that the novel was “disgustingly written,” immediately made a reservation: “On the other hand, there is a lot of good.” On what “other side”? Obviously, on the part of Truth, whose service should clear the author of all accusations of mediocrity! And the progressive minds of that era identified Truth with Benefit, Benefit with Happiness, Happiness with serving the same Truth... Be that as it may, it is difficult to blame Chernyshevsky for insincerity, because he wanted good, and not for himself, but for everyone! As Vladimir Nabokov wrote in the novel “The Gift” (in the chapter dedicated to Chernyshevsky), “the brilliant Russian reader understood the good that the mediocre fiction writer vainly wanted to express.” Another thing is how Chernyshevsky himself went towards this good and where he led the “new people”. (Let us remember that the regicide Sofya Perovskaya, already in her early youth, adopted Rakhmetov’s “boxing diet” and slept on the bare floor.) Let the revolutionary Chernyshevsky be judged with all severity by history, and the writer and critic Chernyshevsky by the history of literature.

Finally, the genre form itself of “What is to be done?” is also unusual. It was then almost unknown in Russian literature, a journalistic, socio-philosophical novel. Its peculiarity is that the “reproduction of life” in contrasting pictures of the “dirty” noble-bourgeois world and the world of new people is accompanied in the novel by an open author’s explanation of both. This explanation is by no means boring or edifying. It is carried out subtly and variedly, woven into the narrative fabric of the novel with a special thread. The explanation is also a bright journalistic page, showing through detailed economic calculations the profitability of collective work; This is also a complex psychological analysis of the emotional experiences and actions of the heroes, convincing of the superiority of the new morality over the old, Domostroevsky one. These are the constantly ongoing caustic disputes between the author and the “slaves” of routine, especially with the “insightful reader”, stupid, ignorant, self-satisfied, who insistently undertakes to talk about art, and about science, and about morality, and about other things in which “no doesn't understand the bullshit." This is a philosophical generalization of events and processes in the centuries-old history of mankind, striking in the breadth of knowledge and depth of theoretical thought.

In the work, the “verdict on the phenomena of life” is clearly announced in a journalistic manner, declaring in the words of the author’s own aesthetics. However, not at all in the form of “prosecutorial” speeches, or even some kind of punitive outpourings. The present verdict is presented as a spectacle of new family and everyday relationships. Today the author's socialist ideal is condemned, in the “glimmer of radiance” of which the unreasonableness of existence, characters and views of an egoistic society looks more and more terrible and uglier, and the Rakhmetovs, who devote their lives to the revolutionary struggle, are increasingly attractive.

In the genre form of the novel chosen by Chernyshevsky, the figure of the narrator, the author’s “I,” undoubtedly played a remarkable plot and compositional role. From one chapter to the next, the presence of the author himself, his strong and powerful intellect, generosity and nobility, the generosity of his soul, heartfelt, impartial comprehension of the most complex motives of the human personality, his irony and causticity are felt closer and closer. And, in addition, an unshakable faith in a better future. N.G. Chernyshevsky conceived his novel as a “textbook of life” and brilliantly implemented this idea.

Features of utopia in the novel by Nikolai Chernyshevsky What to do