The people in the poem "who lives well in Rus'." Depiction of the image of Russia in the poem by N. A. Nekrasov “Who Lives Well in Rus' Rus' Lives Well Theme of the Motherland

Nationality in the poem by N.A. Nekrasov “Who Lives Well in Rus'.”

Nekrasov is, first of all, a people's poet, and not only because he speaks about the people, but because the people told them. The very name of the poem suggests that it shows the life of the Russian people.

According to Nikolai Alekseevich, he “collected little words for twenty years.” “I decided to present...,” the poet wrote, “everything that I know about the people, everything that I happened to hear from their lips...”

The poem was written for a long time, but was never finished, so there are still debates about the order and arrangement of parts and the completeness of the ideological meaning.

The originality of the poem lies in the fact that this work is realistic in its artistic method, folk in its meaning and themes, epic in the breadth of its depiction of reality and heroic pathos.

The poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'” is popular not only for its ideological sound. The people's point of view on reality is expressed here and in the very development of the theme, in that all of Rus', all events are shown through the perception of wandering men, presented as if in their vision. The form of travel, meetings, questions, stories, descriptions used in the work was very convenient in order to give a comprehensive image of life.

Creativity N.A. Nekrasov coincided with the heyday of native folkloristics. It was at this time that the people found themselves in the center of the reading masses.

Nekrasov himself constantly “visited Russian huts,” thanks to which peasant speech became well known to him from childhood: he studied the common language and became a great connoisseur of folk poetic images and folk forms of thinking. Eventually the speech became his own speech. Nekrasov strove for the most complete and comprehensive study of the people.

The poet was rooting for the fate of Russia and called for work to transform it into a “mighty and omnipotent” country. He highly valued the Russian people for their activity in the struggle for happiness.

The poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'” contains a large number of signs and beliefs, proverbs and sayings, as well as riddles: “Well, the goblin, he played a nice joke on us,” “Who are you afraid of meeting while walking along the road” (with the priest ), “I put on a clean shirt on Christmas”, “Send a cool rainbow to our skies”, “Soldiers shave with an awl and warm themselves with smoke”, “Our axes lay for the time being”, “From work, no matter how much you suffer, you will not be rich, and you will be hunchbacked,” “Praise the grass in the haystack, and the master in the coffin,” “Erase the word from the song, and the whole song will be broken,” “You have offended the wheat to the peasant, that you feed by choice, but he cannot stop looking at the rye, that feeds everyone,” “Nobody has seen him” (riddle about the echo), “The castle is a faithful dog” (about the castle), “That’s what the more it turns” (spindle), “Alone is not a bird” (about the mill), “You have bowed all your life” (about the ax), “All your life the iron saw has been chewing” (about the saw).

The poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'” was written precisely in the vernacular language precisely for those people who make up the bulk of our country - the ordinary Russian people.

“The most beloved Russian poet, a representative of the good beginnings in our poetry, the only talent in which there is now life and strength” - this is the review N. A. Dobrolyubov gave about N. A. Nekrasov. And indeed, Nekrasov’s lyrics are an exceptional phenomenon in Russian literature, for the poet was able to express in it selfless love for the Fatherland, for the Russian people, was able to truthfully talk about his work, strength, courage, patience, about a just protest against oppression, which has long been accumulating in in his mind, managed to draw the wonderful, endless expanses of our Motherland, great and powerful, like the Russian people themselves. The focus of the great artist’s attention was always the fate of the Motherland and the people. Nekrasov himself claimed that “he was called to sing of your suffering, amazing the people with patience.”

At the end of his creative journey, Nekrasov writes the poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'” - his most remarkable and most complex work. In it, the revolutionary poet, the poet of people's grief and anger, managed, despite the most stringent censorship conditions, to raise burning and topical issues of contemporary life. Nekrasov creates a poem about the people and for the people, written in the folk language, and about it many times more than about “Ruslan and Lyudmila”, one can say: “Here is the Russian spirit, here it smells of Russia.”

Through the eyes of peasant wanderers seeking an answer to the question “who lives well in Rus',” Nekrasov showed all the dissatisfaction with the reform of 1861, when the “liberation of peasants from the land” was carried out, when peasants were forced to pay not only for their land, but also for their freedom. In search of happiness and happy wanderers everywhere they see only the plight of the working people; in all its wretchedness and ugliness, “peasant happiness” appears, “holey, with patches, hunchbacked, with calluses.” People's “happiness”, mixed with sweat and blood, can best tell about the life of the people.

The “happiness” of the five-ruble earnings of a young, broad-shouldered stonecutter who gets up “before the sun” and works “until midnight”, the “happiness” of a mason who has worked too hard at back-breaking work and returned to his homeland to die, the “happiness” of who has fought in twenty battles and gone through hardships and trials is fragile. peacetime and still a surviving soldier. But what then is “misfortune” if such hard labor can be called happiness?

The funeral service for the former life of the landowner has been rung out, the noble estates are being destroyed, but next to the peasant there are still “three shareholders: God, the Tsar and the Master.” “The peasant’s navel is cracking” from backbreaking work. As before, the peasant “works himself to death and drinks until he is half to death.” Even more terrible is the situation of the peasant woman, who is under double oppression: serfdom and family oppression.

Rumor left Matryona Timofeevna lucky, but it was through the example of her “happy” life that Nekrasov showed without embellishment the difficult lot of a peasant woman. All her happiness lies in her non-drinking family, marriage by voluntary consent, and in her oral petition for her husband’s release from illegal recruitment. There was much more grief in this woman’s life! From early childhood she was forced to share the difficult peasant fate of her family. In her husband’s family, she endured the despotism of her mother-in-law, the need to leave small children in someone else’s hands when she went to work, the loss of her firstborn, the bitter situation of the mother of a slave son, and constant separation from her husband, who went to work. And to all this are added new misfortunes: fires, crop failures, loss of livestock, the threat of poverty and orphanhood of children. For a woman, will is an essential condition for happiness, but

The keys to female happiness, to... our free will Abandoned, lost from God himself!

The reform of 1861 only partially liberated women. She is “still a slave in the family, but the mother of a free son”! Serfdom was abolished, but centuries of slavery left a deep mark on the consciousness of the peasants. Self-righteous landowners who despised work did not want to recognize the peasant as a human being. Arbitrariness and despotism reigned in the nests of the nobility. Pan Glukhovsky in the world “honors only woman, gold, honor and wine,” but tortures, torments, and hangs his slaves. The Posledysh also “shows off”, not even allowing the thought that the peasants were still recognized as having human rights.

There are many crippled destinies on the conscience of landowners, but this does not prevent them from sleeping peacefully. But in the meantime, the people are awakening. There are fewer and fewer slaves, for whom “the heavier the punishment, the... nicer the gentlemen.” A consciousness of their strength, their human rights is already awakening in them, a consciousness that should illuminate their lives in a different way. The work in “their mowings” is amicable and cheerful. All hearts are full of hope, everyone lives with a premonition of a better fate. This consciousness lives in the soul of everyone, even the most seedy vahlak, raising him above those around him. But this is just hope. Nekrasov shows the same Vakhlaks, “whom, instead of the master, the volost will tear.” And the peasants themselves are beginning to understand that the reform did not give them true freedom: “that there is a black peasant soul here,” but “it all ends in wine.” Only sometimes a team comes, and you can guess that

...the village rebelled somewhere in an excess of gratitude.

But the most striking sign of the awakening of the people are the “rebel” peasants, the people’s defenders. Even the robber Kudeyar, seeing the impunity of the crimes of the landowners, takes on the noble role of the people's avenger. The personification of the heroic power and unshakable will of the Russian people is presented in the poem “branded, but not a slave” Savely, the “hero of Svyatorussky”. Both Ermil Girin and Grisha Dobrosklonov are also new people in semi-feudal Russia. These are future revolutionaries who understand that

The people's share, their happiness, light and freedom, first of all!

Comparing the pictures of pre- and post-reform Russia, Nekrasov leads us to the conviction that the liberation of the peasants of the land bases did not bring them happiness. And to the question “The people are liberated, but are the people happy?” - the poet answers negatively. That is why throughout Russia the working people are rising up, straightening their heroic shoulders. The long-awaited victory may not come soon, but it will certainly happen, because

The army is rising - Innumerable! The strength in her will be indestructible!

The fate of the Motherland and the people (based on the poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'”)

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Depiction of the image of Russia in the poem by N. A. Nekrasov “Who Lives Well in Rus'”

1. Original verse of the poem.

2. The miserable life of the village.

4. Chapter “The Last One” and its meaning.

5. A call not to accept exploitation, faith in the future of the people.

N.A. Nekrasov as a poet will not be repeated or forgotten; the richness of his work cannot be underestimated. His themes and style seemed to come out of folk life. His poetry, tale-like, song-like, is sometimes majestic, sometimes passionate, militant, but always folk.

The highest example of his creativity is the poem “ Who can live well in Rus'?" The poem is entirely permeated with folklore images, epithets, and metaphors. Nekrasov even uses the figurative system of the epic warehouse.

The plot of the poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'” is very simple: seven men from neighboring villages wanted to know the answer to the question: “Who lives happily and freely in Rus'?”; Is there anywhere in their native land a province where they do without beating peasants, where there is no humiliating slave labor?

In the poem we see pictures from the life of all social strata: from the rich to the poor, from landowners to peasants. Nekrasov described a difficult time in his life Russia, there was an increase in popular dissatisfaction with their fate. In 1861, serfdom was abolished, but this “freedom” turned out to be false; the peasants received neither land nor freedom. Slavery remained, some forms of exploitation were replaced by others. “The peasant navel is cracking,” wrote Nekrasov.

Fate Russia and the peasantry is very concerned about the seven truth-seekers. They want to find happiness, so they set off on a journey Russia with your fabulous self-assembled tablecloth.

They have a long way to go. They will meet many people there. These are peasant farmers, a priest, a landowner, and guardsmen; they come across courtyard people, soldiers, St. Petersburg artisans, and a commoner gentleman who collects folklore. And they all talk about themselves, about their lives. Very gradually, page by page, the theme of the people's grief and misfortune, the wretched existence of the village, is revealed in the poem.

Rarely do any of the people they meet admit their happiness to the wanderers. Thus, the rural priest does not find himself happy. He himself is completely dependent on the well-being of his flock, on the peasant harvest or failure. The conscientious priest knows that the income of the peasants is such that he is sick of even taking recompense for what he demands - his soul is heavy, his hands are trembling: “It’s hard to live on pennies from such labor.”

Another priest laments to the “boss”: Our people are all hungry and drunk. For the wedding, for confession. They owe it for years. They bring their last pennies to the tavern! But the dean is carrying only sins!

The landowners, too, it turns out, are dissatisfied with the “great reform of the Tsar-Liberator.” Previously, they lived happily and at ease. And now the land is orphaned after the old foundations of rural life were destroyed:

The fields are not finished, the crops are not sown, there is no trace of order! Oh mother! O homeland! We are not sad about ourselves.

I feel sorry for you, dear.

Another landowner, the “last child” Prince Utyatin, did not believe at all that new orders had come and the serfs were already free, and his sons persuaded the men to maintain all serf relations until his death.

The chapter “The Last One” is one of the best in the poem in terms of semantic significance and artistic realism. The figure of the landowner-tyrant and the images of the peasants - the fake mayor Klim Lavin, Vlas, the rebel Agap Petrov, the lackey Ipat and others - are extremely expressive and colorful.

The rich nobleman, Prince Utyatin, commands the peasants in the old way, portraying a strict ruler, although the peasants and the land no longer belong to him. But the tragedy here is not in the landowner Utyatin himself, but in people’s attitude towards the “performance.” Almost all the peasants, appeased by the promises of the prince’s heirs, themselves agree to hide the truth until the old man’s death and, in essence, continue to put up with the old landowner’s bondage.

Prince Utyatin, an old tyrant, gives one order after another, one more absurd and stupid than the other. This game goes far, an ugly and ridiculous double life has begun for everyone. The old orders seem to have been abolished, but in fact they exist and the decrepit prince is still menacing and picky, he does not understand his absurd position. But it’s terrible that free people now put up with him. Moreover, having become convinced of the unshakability of the previous relationship, the prince became even more capricious and harmful.

Before his men realized that they were free, they found themselves in bondage again. Outlived despotic orders are being revived again, but they are already perceived as a farce. The men quietly laugh at the master, mock him, but do not dare to contradict him and bow to the master as before, flatter him and please him.

But not everyone came to terms with their double life under the landowner Utyatin. There were also those who did not want to play the humiliating game. Agap Petrov could not bear the ridicule of the Last One and the buffoonery of the mayor, he rebelled, cursed those who had pandered to the prince as “scum” and told the truth. Agap was sentenced to punishment with rods, although, of course, no one was going to beat him. But he could not stand the humiliation; his human dignity was insulted. He died without waiting for the “execution.”

The poem presents a whole gallery of images of peasants - rogues and righteous people, rebels and passion-bearers, slaves and robbers. This is Yakim Nagoy, and Ermila Girin, and Savely the hero, and Kudeyar, and the “exemplary slave” Yakov the faithful, and, finally, Matryona Timofeevna Korchagina, a strong Russian woman. Nekrasov wrote a lot about the heroic life of a Russian woman, wife and mother, about her dedication and self-denial. Its shares are “hardly more difficult to find.” But, despite everything, Matryona Timofeevna endured, did not break, did not give up.

Nekrasov is indignant at only one feature of the Russian people. This is his long-suffering, humility. “How much worse would your lot be if you were less patient?” - the poet says to the barge hauler in the poem “On the Volga”.

In many works, including the poem “Whom)” “It’s good to live in Rus'”, there is a call to the people to stop bullying themselves, rebel and find happiness. “Feast for the whole world”, a chapter from the last part of the poem, according to According to critics, this is almost a direct call for revolution. The following lines from the poem serve as proof of this statement:

The army is rising - Innumerable, The strength will be felt in it - Indestructible!

Nekrasov’s entire brilliant poem is an accurate, truthful depiction of not only all layers of Russian society, but also the aspirations of the common people. Nekrasov strove for the nationality of images, language, and structure of the poem. After all, Mother Rus' herself - “... and poor, and abundant, and downtrodden, and all-powerful” - is the poet’s main character.

“Who lives well in Rus'”)

“The favorite Russian poet, the representative of the good beginnings in our poetry, the only talent in which there is now life and strength” - this is the review N. A. Dobrolyubov gave about N. A. Nekrasov. And indeed, Nekrasov’s lyrics are an exceptional phenomenon in Russian literature, for the poet was able to express in it selfless love for the Fatherland, for the Russian people, was able to truthfully talk about his work, strength, courage, patience, about a just protest against oppression, which has long been accumulating in in his mind, managed to draw the wonderful, endless expanses of our Motherland, great and powerful, like the Russian people themselves. The focus of the great artist’s attention was always the fate of the Motherland and the people. Nekrasov himself claimed that “he was called to sing of your suffering, amazing the people with patience.”

“Who Lives Well in Rus'” is his most remarkable and most complex work. In it, the revolutionary poet, the poet of people's grief and anger, managed, despite the most stringent censorship conditions, to raise burning and topical issues of contemporary life. Nekrasov creates a poem about the people and for the people, written in the folk language, and about it many times more than about “Ruslan and Lyudmila”, one can say: “Here is the Russian spirit, here it smells of Russia.”

the “happiness” of the five-ruble earnings of a young, broad-shouldered stonemason who gets up “before the sun” and works “until midnight”, the “happiness” of a mason who has worked too hard at back-breaking work and returned to his homeland to die, the “happiness” of having fought in twenty battles, having gone through the hardships and trials of a peaceful time and still a surviving soldier. But what then is “misfortune” if such hard labor can be called happiness?

In his “happy” life, Nekrasov showed without embellishment the difficult lot of a peasant woman. All her happiness lies in a non-drinking family, marriage by voluntary consent and in an oral petition for the release of her husband from illegal recruitment. There was much more grief in this woman’s life! From early childhood she was forced to share the difficult peasant fate of her family. In her husband’s family, she endured the despotism of her mother-in-law, the need to leave small children in someone else’s hands when she went to work, the loss of her firstborn, the bitter situation of the mother of a slave son, and constant separation from her husband, who went to work. And to all this are added new misfortunes: fires, crop failures, loss of livestock, the threat of poverty and orphanhood of children. For a woman, will is an essential condition for happiness, but

“there is still a slave in the family, but the mother is already a free son”! Serfdom was abolished, but centuries of slavery left a deep mark on the consciousness of the peasants. Self-righteous landowners who despised work did not want to recognize the peasant as a human being. Arbitrariness and despotism reigned in the nests of the nobility. Pan Glukhovsky in the world “honors only woman, gold, honor and wine,” but tortures, torments, and hangs his slaves. The Posledysh also “shows off”, not even allowing the thought that the peasants were still recognized as having human rights.

“The heavier the punishment, the... nicer the gentlemen.” A consciousness of their strength, their human rights is already awakening in them, a consciousness that should illuminate their lives in a different way. The work in “their mowings” is amicable and cheerful. All hearts are full of hope, everyone lives with a premonition of a better fate. This consciousness lives in the soul of everyone, even the most seedy vahlak, raising him above those around him. But this is just hope. Nekrasov shows the same Vakhlaks, “whom, instead of the master, the volost will tear.” And the peasants themselves are beginning to understand that the reform did not give them true freedom: “that there is a black peasant soul here,” but “it all ends in wine.” Only sometimes a team comes, and you can guess that

"rebels", people's defenders. Even the robber Kudeyar, seeing the impunity of the crimes of the landowners, takes on the noble role of the people's avenger. The personification of the heroic power and unshakable will of the Russian people is presented in the poem “branded, but not a slave” Savely, the “hero of Svyatorussky”. Both Ermil Girin and Grisha Dobrosklonov are also new people in semi-feudal Russia. These are future revolutionaries who understand that

The poet set himself the task of understanding and, within one work, capturing peasant Rus', Russian folk character in all its versatility, complexity and inconsistency. And the life of the people in “Who in Rus'...” appears in all the diversity of its manifestations. We see the Russian peasant at work (the speech of Yakim Nagogo, mowing in "The Last One", the story of Matryona) and struggle (the story of Yakim and Ermil, the lawsuit of the Vakhlaks, the reprisal against Vogel), in moments of rest ("Rural Fair", "Feast") and revelry (“Drunk Night”), in a time of grief (“Pop,” Matryona’s story) and moments of joy (“Before Marriage,” “Governor’s Lady,” “Feast”), in the family (“Peasant Woman”) and peasant collective (“Last One” ", "Feast"), in relationships with landowners ("Landowner", "Lastly", "Savely, the hero of the Holy Russian", tales in "Feast"), officials ("Demushka", the story about Ermil) and merchants (the history of Yakim, litigation between Ermil and Altynnikov, fight between Lavin and Eremin).

The poem gives a clear picture of the economic situation of the post-reform, “free” peasantry (names of villages and counties, stories of the priest and the “lucky ones”, the plot situation of the chapter “Last One”, songs “Veselaya”, “Salty”, “Hungry” and a number of details in the chapter “Feast”) and legal “changes” in his life (“...instead of a master / There will be a volost”).

Nekrasov depicts folk life in a strictly realistic manner. The author does not turn a blind eye to the negative phenomena of people's life. He boldly speaks about the darkness and underdevelopment generated by the “fortress” and the living conditions of the peasantry (illiteracy, belief in “poor” signs), rudeness (“As if he didn’t beat you?”), swearing, drunkenness (“Drunk Night”), parasitism and servility servants (Peremetyev's footman, Ipat, servants in the "Prologue" of the chapter "Peasant Woman"), the sin of social betrayal (Gleb the headman, Yegorka Shutov). But the shadow sides of people's life and consciousness do not obscure the main thing in the poem, that which forms the basis of people's life and is decisive for the people's character. Labor is such a basis of people's life in Nekrasov's poem.

Reading “To whom in Rus'...”, we feel the greatness of the labor feat of the Russian peasantry, this “sower and guardian” of the Russian land. The man “works to death”, his “work has no measure”, the peasant navel is cracking from the strain of exorbitant labor, Matryona’s fellow villagers are making “horse strains”, peasant women appear as “eternal toilers”. Through the labor of a peasant, in the spring they are dressed with the greenery of cereals, and in the fall the fields are stripped, and although this labor does not save from poverty, the peasant loves to work (“The Last One”: mowing, the participation of wanderers in it; Matryona’s story). The Russian peasant, as depicted by Nekrasov, is smart, observant, inquisitive (“comedy with Petrushka”, “they care about everything”, “who has ever seen how he listens ...”, “he greedily catches news”), persistent in the pursuit of his goal goals (“man, what a bull...”), sharp-tongued (there are many examples!), kind and sympathetic (episodes with Vavilushka, with Brmil at the fair, the help of the Vakhlaks to Ovsyannikov, the family of the sexton Dobrosklonov), has a grateful heart (Matryona about governor), sensitive to beauty (Matryona; Yakim and pictures). Nekrasov characterizes the moral qualities of the Russian peasantry with the formula: “gold, gold is the people’s heart.” The poem reveals the thirst for justice characteristic of the Russian peasantry, shows the awakening and growth of its social consciousness, manifested in a sense of collectivism and class solidarity (support for Yermil, hatred of the Last One, beating Shutov), in contempt for lackeys and traitors (attitude towards the lackey of Prince Peremetyev and Ipat, to the story about Gleb the Headman), in rebellion (rebellion in Stolbnyaki). The popular environment as a whole is depicted in the poem as “good soil” for the perception of liberation ideas.

The masses, the people, are the main characters of the epic “Who Lives Well in Rus'.” Nekrasov not only painted vivid portraits of individual representatives of the people's environment. The innovative nature of Nekrasov’s plan was manifested in the fact that the central place in the work is occupied by the collective image of the Russian peasantry.

Researchers have repeatedly noted the high “population density” of the poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'.” In addition to the seven wanderers and the main characters, dozens and hundreds of images of peasants are drawn in it. Some of them are briefly characterized, in the images of others only some characteristic touch is noticed, and others are only named. Some of them are present “on stage”, included in the action, while truth-seekers and the reader learn about others only from the stories of the “stage” characters. Along with individual ones, the author introduces numerous group images into the poem.

Gradually, from chapter to chapter, the poem introduces us to different versions of people's destinies, different types of characters' characters, the world of their feelings, their moods, concepts, judgments and ideals. The variety of portrait sketches, speech characteristics, the abundance of crowd scenes, their polyphony, the introduction of folk songs, sayings, proverbs and jokes into the text - everything is subordinated to the single goal of creating an image of the peasant masses, the constant presence of which is felt when reading every page of “Who Lives Well in Rus'” .

Against the background of this peasant mass, the author of the epic painted close-up images of the best representatives of the Russian peasantry. Each of them artistically captures certain aspects, facets of the people’s character and worldview. Thus, the image of Yakim reveals the theme of heroic people’s labor and the awakening of the people’s consciousness, Savely is the embodiment of the heroism and love of freedom of the peasantry, its rebellious impulses, the image of Yermil is evidence of the love of truth, the moral beauty of the people and the height of their ideals, etc. But this commonality is revealed in a unique individuality of fate and character of each. Any character in “To Whom in Rus'...”, be it Matryona, who “revealed” her whole soul to the wanderers, or the “yellow-haired, hunched” Belarusian peasant who flashed in the crowd, is realistically accurate, full-blooded, and at the same time, everyone is some micro part of the general concept of “people”.

All chapters of the epic are united by the end-to-end image of seven truth-seekers. The epic, generalized, conventional character of this image gives all the real-life events depicted in it special significance, and the work itself - the character of a “philosophy of people’s life.” Thus, the somewhat abstract concept of “people” in the “Prologue” gradually, as the reader gets acquainted with the wanderers, Yakim, Ermil, Matryona, Savely, the many-sided and motley mass of peasants, is filled for him with the brightness of life’s colors, concrete and figurative realistic content.

In “Who Lives Well in Rus',” Nekrasov wanted to show the process of awakening self-awareness among the masses, their desire to comprehend their situation and find ways out. Therefore, the author constructed the work in such a way that his folk heroes wander, observe, listen and judge, moreover, as the circle of their observations expands, their judgments become more mature and deep. The pictures of life in the poem are refracted through the perception of them by truth-seekers, that is, the author chooses the epic path or way of depicting reality.

The epic breadth of the depiction of life in “Who Lives Well in Rus'” is also manifested in the fact that, along with the peasantry, all social groups and classes of Russia are represented here (priests, landowners, officials, merchants, bourgeois entrepreneurs, intelligentsia), moreover, in a wide variety of typical individuals , the intertwining of their destinies, the struggle of their interests.