Quotes. Literary heroes. Katerina Lvovna Izmailova Whose fate is reminiscent of the life of Katerina Izmailova

Khairullina Tanzilya Malikovna

Place of work, position:

teacher MBOU "Mari-Turek secondary school"

Mari El Republic

Resource characteristics

Education levels:

Secondary (complete) general education

Class(es):

Item(s):

Literature

The target audience:

Methodist

The target audience:

Teacher (teacher)

Resource for a specialized school:

Resource for specialized schools

Resource type:

Lesson (lesson) summary

Brief description of the resource:

Extracurricular reading lesson based on N.S. Leskov’s story “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk”

Lesson summary on extracurricular reading based on N.S. Leskov's story "Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk"

Goals: 1. Find out the ideological content of the essay

2. Develop the ability to express one’s point of view, conduct a reasoned conversation, and draw conclusions based on analysis.

3. To cultivate moral sense in students.

4. To develop the ability to distinguish between actions, offenses and crimes.

Equipment: portrait of N.S. Leskova, fragments of a feature film.

Methods: heuristic conversation method, problem-based methods, research method.

Epigraph: “...a person is first of all worthy of participation, because he is a person...”

N.S. Leskov.

During the classes:

I.Org. moment.

II.Good afternoon, dear guests.

Hello guys.

Today we have an extracurricular reading lesson based on Nikolai Semyonovich Leskov’s story “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District”…”Is Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District a criminal or a victim? Don't rush to answer. Pay attention to the epigraph to the lesson: “...a person, first of all, is worthy of participation, because he is a person...”, wrote N.S. Leskov in the article “The Edge of Perdition.” We will return to this idea at the end of the lesson.

The goals of our lesson that we set for ourselves are: to clarify the ideological content of the essay, as well as to develop the ability to express one’s point of view, conduct a reasoned conversation, and draw conclusions based on the analysis of a literary text.

III. Conversation on questions:

What impression did the story make on you?

What unusual did you see in the title of the story?

Where is this Lady Macbeth from?

Student report on Shakespeare's tragedy Lady Macbeth.

Let's do a component analysis of each word:

Lady - English woman (female theme)

"Lady Macbeth" - the name of the tragedy (blood, death, crime)

Mtsensk district is a Russian district, typical for Russia (Russian themes and problems of folk life, national character)

Teacher: This is how Leskov determines the scale of the events taking place in the story. The author himself calls this work an essay. An essay is a documentary story. This means that the author wants to emphasize documentary, authenticity, reliability, truthfulness. This essay was published in the magazine “Epoch” No. 1 in 1865. The essay reflected one of N.S.’s Oryol impressions. Leskova: “Once an old neighbor who had lived for 70 years and went on a summer day to rest under a blackcurrant bush, an impatient daughter-in-law poured boiling sealing wax into his ear. I remember how they buried him... His ear fell off... Then the executioner tormented her on Ilyinka. She was young, and everyone was surprised at how white she was.

Tell us the background story of the Mtsensk tragedy.

Whose fate does the life of Katerina Izmailova remind us of?

What do they have in common?

(They were not married for love, both are childless, both husbands leave for some time, love comes to both during separation, both works end in tragedy - the death of the heroines, both have strong characters)

Teacher: The similarities discovered are not accidental. Leskov highly valued the drama “The Thunderstorm” and polemicized with critics who believed that folk life could only be the subject of a criminal chronicle, and not art. However, Leskov's story became a kind of polemic with the famous drama. Leskov contrasted his heroine with Katerina from “The Thunderstorm,” revealing the directly opposite element of the Russian national character.

How are both women different from each other?

Let's remember Katerina from "The Thunderstorm"

Katerina’s monologue (“Was I like that…” read by a student)

What she was like (Tender, vulnerable, possessing a poetic imagination, unearthly. She suffers not so much from external restrictions as from an internal feeling of lack of freedom. “The dark kingdom encroaches on the world of feelings and experiences”).

And Katerina Lvovna?

Mischievous, cheerful, spontaneous, accustomed to simplicity and freedom. Leskov emphasizes the earthly, carnal beginning, the extraordinary poverty of her inner life.

What feelings do you experience in your husband's house?

(For Katerina Kabanova, the painful way of life causes internal anxiety, longing for the past, and for Katerina Izmailova - a sleepy numbness that reaches the point of stupor, boredom, from which it is fun, they say, even to hang yourself.

What is love for heroines?

(For K. Kabanova, love is like some kind of dream, colored with poetic imagery. It makes her rejoice, and suffer, and torment. She is afraid of love - she has such a strong sense of duty. Marital fidelity is not empty words for her.

For K. Izmailova, love is a game of boredom that turns into an irrepressible, sizzling passion.

What captivated her with Sergei?

(Not with force and audacity, but with unusual speeches, which a woman’s heart so awaits. There is a well-known saying: “A woman loves with her ears.” Her soul, thirsty for love and affection, did not suspect deception and calculation. And now she is ready to go into the fire for him, in water, to prison and to the cross.

Teacher: The same situation leads the heroines of Ostrovsky and Leskov to directly opposite actions. The basis of the plot in “The Thunderstorm” is the motives of sin and repentance, guilt and punishment.

For Ostrovsky’s heroine, a sinful crime turns out to be a violation of the moral law, under which she cannot live according to her conscience, and for Leskov’s heroine, a love story becomes a story of criminal offenses.

Let us turn to the epigraph at the beginning of the story: “When I started to sing the first song.” How do you understand its meaning?

Why did you commit your first murder?

(The father-in-law became an obstacle to her love and thereby sealed his fate).

Teacher: The first murder is the first step on the path of Katerina Lvovna’s moral suicide.

What role does Sergei play in all these murders?

(The subtle director of the Mtsensk tragedy. Katerina is an obedient instrument in the hands of a greedy and calculating cynic).

How are subsequent crimes committed?

The second murder with sophisticated cruelty, in cold blood. The murder of Fedya emphasizes the depth of moral decline.

Teacher: The plot of the story is unique, since the story has two endings:

• Exposure, trial and punishment.
• A tragic ending to a love story.

How does Katerina’s behavior change after her arrest?

(She falls into a state of indifferent numbness, in which the terrible changes in her life do not seem to reach her consciousness. Love-passion kills not only the natural nature of the individual, but also her eternal maternal feeling in a woman. She indifferently renounces her child. Unhappy child. Orphan with living parents. One of the most pressing problems in our time. Do you know how many orphans are abandoned, abandoned, and unwanted in orphanages?

In the last chapters, what feeling does Katerina Lvovna evoke?

Showing fragments of a feature film.

(Not amazement and horror, but pity)

Why pity?

(The criminal herself becomes a victim).

Teacher: The stronger her love for Sergei, the more cynical his abuse of her and her feelings.

Just as Katerina Lvovna once enjoyed the helplessness and humiliation of her husband, so her former lover knows no bounds in his sadism. Even seasoned convicts are trying to reassure him. The limit of her own suffering and torment awakens glimpses of moral consciousness in Katerina Lvovna, who had previously known neither guilt nor remorse. In the dark waters of the Volga she sees the heads of her father-in-law, husband and nephew killed by her.

Let's return to the topic of our lesson: so who is Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk - a criminal or a victim? Pay attention once again to the epigraph to the lesson: “...a person, first of all, deserves his fate, because he is a person...” N.S. Leskov.

(answers are arbitrary)

What is the difference between the tragic outcome of the fates of the heroines of Ostrovsky and Leskov?

(Katerina Kabanova left a bright feeling, a bright memory, because it’s not for nothing that, in Dobrolyubov’s words, she is “a ray of light in a dark kingdom.” And Katerina Izmailova is a product of the dark kingdom. Flesh of his flesh. This is something creepy, terrible. It is not for nothing that, recalling his work on the story, Leskov said: “At times I felt unbearably creepy, my hair stood on end, I froze at the slightest rustle, which I myself made with the movement of my leg or the turn of my neck. These were difficult moments that I will never forget. Since then I have avoided describing such horrors.”

IV.Conclusion:

Teacher:“Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk” stands apart in the writer’s work because he is looking for in Russian life the confrontation between “good” and “light”, which allows us to hope that the whole earth will be able to withstand the most difficult trials.”

V. Summing up the lesson.

VI.Homework Essay “The Mirror of the Soul - Its Deeds” (W. Shakespeare)

To the question Write a description of Ekaterina Lvovna from Leskov’s story “Lady Macbereth. Mtsensk District”. given by the author Alexey Selyutin the best answer is Katerina Izmailova finds it very difficult to endure life in her husband’s house, mainly because the life of a woman in a merchant’s house is boring. What should a rich merchant's wife do? Katerina wanders from corner to corner in her big house, sleeping and toiling from idleness.
Katerina is tormented by unfair accusations. A silent reproach to the heroine is that she does not have children from her elderly husband, although the Izmailov family is eagerly awaiting heirs. The writer emphasizes that married life behind locked doors “strangles” the heroine, destroys her potential, all the good that is in her. Izmailova tells with regret what she was like as a girl - cheerful, full of joy of life, energy, happiness. And how unbearable it is for her to live in marriage.
Katerina Izmailova doesn’t even think about cheating. She is completely absorbed in her feelings for the clerk Sergei and is ready to do anything for him. This passionate nature completely surrendered to her feeling, which knows no boundaries: neither physical, nor moral, nor moral.
Katerina Izmailova dies - trying to drown her happier rival: “Katerina Lvovna was trembling. Her wandering gaze concentrated and became wild. Hands once or twice stretched out into space unknown where and fell again. Another minute - and she suddenly swayed all over, without taking her eyes off the dark wave, bent down, grabbed Sonetka by the legs and in one fell swoop threw her over the side of the ferry.”
The heroine understands that she will die along with another girl, but this does not stop her: why should she live if Sergei no longer loves her?
In her animal, godless love, Izmailova reaches the limit: on her conscience is the blood of three innocent people, including a child. This love and all the crimes devastate the heroine: “... for her there was neither light nor darkness, neither bad nor good, nor boredom, nor joy; she didn’t understand anything, didn’t love anyone and didn’t love herself.”
Katerina Izmailova lived by passions, obeying only the call of her flesh.

Answer from Oliya[guru]
Izmailova Katerina Lvovna is the young (twenty-three years old) wife of the wealthy merchant Zinovy ​​Borisovich Izmailov. The portrait of I. expresses the attractiveness and sensuality of the heroine: “in appearance the woman is very pleasant.<...>She was not tall, but slender, with a neck as if carved from marble, round shoulders, a strong chest, a straight, thin nose, black, lively eyes, a high white forehead and black, almost blue-black hair.” Having passionately fallen in love with the worker Sergei, I., fearing exposure and separation from her beloved, kills her father-in-law and husband with his help, and then takes the life of her husband’s young relative, Fedya Lyamin. Heartlessness and willpower, the readiness to cross all moral standards for the sake of one’s own goals are combined in I.’s character with insane passion and selfless devotion to his beloved. I.'s inhumanity is emphasized through contrast techniques: I., expecting a child from Sergei, coldly strangles little Fedya, committing murder on the eve of the great Christian holiday of the Entry of the Blessed Virgin Mary into the Temple.
I.’s fate after his arrest is presented as a terrible retribution for the crime committed; I. loses the most precious thing in life - the love of Sergei, who, at the convict stage, meets with another convict, Sonetka. At the crossing, I. throws Sonetka into the river, drowns her and drowns herself.
In the title of the story, Leskov likens I. to Lady Macbeth, the heroine of Shakespeare's tragedy Macbeth, who encourages her husband to commit treacherous murders. The image of I. is polemically correlated with the image of the heroine of A. N. Ostrovsky’s drama “The Thunderstorm” by Katerina Kabanova. Both heroines have the same name, both are merchants, both cheat on their husbands with their lovers. The difference is that I. does not experience family oppression and is not a victim in her husband’s house.
Leskov's heroine has a significant name. On the one hand, I., seized by a dark, “infernal” passion, is contrasted with the “light” and “quiet” Katerina from Ostrovsky’s “The Thunderstorm”. At the same time, the very name “Ekaterina” in Greek means “always pure” and, as it were, personifies the sacrificial principle in the love of Leskov’s heroine. I.'s patronymic emphasizes the firmness and masculine strength of her character. I.’s surname testifies to the black, demonic origins of the heroine’s passion: “Ishmaelites” in ancient Russian literature were the name given to the eastern, Turkic peoples who professed Islam. I.'s story served as the basis for D. D. Shostakovich's opera Katerina Izmailova.
Sergei is a young worker, lover, and then husband of Katerina Lvovna Izmailova, who commits murders of her relatives with her. The last of the three crimes (the murder of the boy Fedya Lyamin, who received the bulk of the Izmailovs’ fortune) is committed by Katerina Izmailova for the sake of S., who longed to become the only heir. Katerina's willpower, selfless passion and care for S. are contrasted with his weakness of will and selfish and shallow nature. During the investigation, he calls I. an accomplice of all crimes, at the hard labor stage he neglects I.’s love, mocks her and gets together with Sonetka.
Sonnetka is a young convict with whom Sergei meets at the stage, leaving Katerina Izmailova. Izmailova drowns S in the river, dying along with her. The selfish S., who receives gifts from Sergei, contrasts with the selflessly loving Izmailova. Cruelly mocking the humiliated Izmailova, S. is contrasted with the soldier Fiona, Sergei’s fleeting lover, and the compassionate Katerina. Evidence of a cruel, evil character is S.’s miniature figure and thinness. (Thinness is presented as a sign of an evil character in some other works of Leskov.)

Composition
Two Catherines

Plan
I. The female theme in the drama “The Thunderstorm” by A.N. Ostrovsky and in the story “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk” by N.S. Leskov.
II. Two Katerinas - two heroines, two destinies. Their similar and different features and characteristics:
1. In character and appearance.
2. Married.
3. In the way of life, in memories, thoughts, dreams.
4. In forbidden love.
5. In the punishments that occurred in life and conscience.
6. In finding death in the water element.
III. Portrait of a Russian woman in the destinies of two Katerina N.S. Leskova and A.N. Ostrovsky.

Alexander Nikolaevich Ostrovsky in the drama “The Thunderstorm” and Nikolai Semenovich Leskov in the story “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk” presented the female soul and love, the share of a woman in a merchant environment. These writers showed that a woman from the merchant class, like any other woman, is also capable of suffering, experiences, feelings and passions.
The main heroines of the works were two Katerinas: Katerina Kabanova by A.N. Ostrovsky and Katerina Lvovna Izmailova by N.S. Leskov. Both heroines have both similarities and differences in their destinies, in their characters, in their relationships with other people, in their dreams, thoughts, speech, and expression of feelings.
Both Katerinas are young and beautiful. Katerina Izmailova “was a very pleasant woman in appearance,” “she was not tall, but slender, her neck looked like it was carved from marble, her shoulders were round, her chest was strong, her nose was straight, thin, her eyes were black, lively, white, high forehead and black, as blue as blue.” black hair". Katerina Kabanova is a poetic, light, sublime nature, “she has an angelic smile on her face, and her face seems to glow.”
Both women did not marry for love. Katerina Lvovna was given “in marriage to the merchant Izmailov from Tuskari from the Kursk province, not out of love or any attraction, but because Izmailov approached her, and she was a poor girl, and she did not have to go through suitors.” Katerina Kabanova’s marriage was also not according to her wishes, not out of love. Her husband was the son of a rich merchant’s wife, Tikhon Ivanovich Kabanov, who deep down loves Katerina and is even able to forgive her for her offense. Feeling fear of his mother, he cannot protect Katerina and help her in difficult times.
The merchant environment, its orders and customs are reflected in the lifestyle of the heroines. Katerina Kabanova cannot get used to the traditional ideas of merchant life, and the constant reproaches of her mother-in-law make her life cramped. Her only consolation is dreams and memories of her girlhood, when she lived “like a bird in the wild.” Before her marriage, Katerina loved to go to church, saw beautiful, vivid dreams and dreamed. This is how she says about it: “And to death I loved going to church! Surely, it happened that I would enter heaven, and I didn’t see anyone, and I didn’t remember the time, and I didn’t hear when the service was over; “And what kind of dreams did I have...!... Or golden temples or some extraordinary gardens, and invisible voices are singing and everything smells of cypress...” If Katerina Kabanova calms down and entertains herself with dreams, then Katerina Izmailova lives a boring life. She cannot entertain herself with anything, does not read books, does not think, does not dream. Her life is full of melancholy, boredom and monotony: she just yawned, walked around the house, in the garden, in the yard, rested, lay on her high bed, drank tea - this is how her life passed in the merchant's house day after day.
Both girls did not have children, which saddened and upset them a lot. Katerina Lvovna, from her boring and dreary life, was glad to have a child: “when I gave birth to a child, I would have fun with him.” Katerina Kabanova speaks about children like this: “I don’t have children”, “I really like to talk to children - they are angels.”
There is sinful and forbidden love in the lives of two Katerinas. Both have passion in their feelings, their feelings are deep, but this manifests itself in each of them differently. Katerina Kabanova’s feeling for Boris is bright, sincere, albeit sinful. She understands the severity of this feeling, but she can’t help herself. The heroine’s “heart hurts,” she feels guilty, afraid of punishment, because this sin “will fall like a stone on her soul.” Her love has poetry, purity, hope, but there is also pain, suffering, and mental anguish. Passion and love for Sergei in Katerina Izmailova destroyed all moral boundaries. For the sake of love she kills, for the sake of love she abandons her child, for the sake of love she even goes to hard labor. She committed all her dirty deeds in cold blood, cruelly, with animal strength and indifference. From her hand he dies a “rat’s death”, quietly and simply, father-in-law, with calmness and indifference she kills her husband, kills her husband’s innocent, pure-hearted nephew, Fedenka. Refuses the born child, not being interested in his further fate, as he thinks only about Sergei. With Sergei, even hard labor was not a punishment for her.
Katerina Kabanova was punished with pangs of conscience, since in her soul there were moral principles, primarily Christian laws, to which she was faithful, which did not allow her to calmly experience this sinful feeling. She punishes herself, without waiting for life to punish her. Katerina Izmailova, on the contrary, does not feel any remorse, does not suffer and does not understand the severity and guilt of the crimes committed due to the fact that godless and animal love for Sergei overshadowed her eyes, heart and soul.
Both heroines became victims of their strong feelings. Boris left Katerina alone against the dark merchant kingdom. She couldn’t reconcile herself and return to her husband’s house with her mother-in-law. Another woman, perhaps, could have done this, but not Katerina, created by Ostrovsky. Suicide is the logical and only way out. Katerina Kabanova passes away without accepting the world of Kabanikha, Tikhon, Dikiy, the world of the dark merchant kingdom. Life punished Katerina Izmailova not with hard labor, but with Sergei’s betrayal. And this heroine couldn’t come to terms with it either. Betrayed by Sergei. Humiliated by him, she found no other way out but to die and take the life of her rival, an obstacle to her happiness. Her predatory, animal nature remains with her until her death: “...Katerina Lvovna rushed at Sonetka, like a strong pike at soft-feathered flesh, and neither of them showed up again.”
Another similarity of destinies is that both Katerinas die in the Volga, in the water. And water is a symbol of freedom, it led the heroines to liberation from torment, and their love, filled with sincere feelings, led to death. A slight fall, like a bird's flight, into the water of Katerina Kabanova and the bestial revenge of Katerina Izmailova in the water are two properties of their characters that were characteristic of them in life.
N.S. Leskov and A.N. Ostrovsky showed in their works two souls, two destinies - two Katerinas. Their forensic similarities reveal the properties of a Russian woman: determination, love, full of passion, deep and strong feelings, care, love of freedom and spiritual responsibility. Therefore, Katerina Leskova and Katerina Ostrovsky are a portrait of a woman who lives, dreams, suffers, worries, rejoices and loves.

Izmailova Ekaterina Lvovna is the main character of N.S.’s essay. Leskova "Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District".

A 24-year-old woman with a pleasant appearance and a character that “you will never remember without trembling.” While still a peasant girl, she was not married out of love to the merchant Zinovy ​​Borisovich, who was twice her age. In the house of her father-in-law Boris Timofeevich, Ekaterina Lvovna, suffering from boredom and loneliness, wanders around empty rooms all day long, because her husband and father-in-law are constantly busy with work, and there was no child in the family.

Catherine’s former cheerfulness and energy were replaced by melancholy and monotony of life, creating an atmosphere “from which it’s even fun to hang yourself.”

The complete lack of love and affection on the part of her husband pushes the merchant’s wife to accept the courtship of the young clerk Sergei. Interest in a handsome man gradually develops into an insane passion, which, combined with an ardent and daring character, can overcome any obstacles on the path to long-awaited happiness.

This love is immoral and merciless, it is devoid of not only high emotional experiences, but also common sense (it abandons its own child).

The fear of being separated from her loved one takes over Katerina, and therefore she easily commits murders of loved ones who in one way or another interfered with her happy life. After Sergei's betrayal and ridicule, unhealthy love gives way to jealousy and resentment, which becomes a decisive blow for the hostess. So, she commits her last murder, which completely destroys her personality.

Thus, Katerina Lvovna, a woman who dreams of love and family happiness, becomes a victim of her own feelings. Love, which turned into passion and insanity, consumed the heart of a young merchant's wife, forced her to transgress human dignity and commit murder in the name of her own happiness.

Clerk Sergei

The hero of N.S. Leskov’s essay “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District.” A young clerk in the Izmailovs' house. Outwardly handsome and charming, he easily seduces women with sweet speeches, based on his own selfish interests. He amuses himself by playing with the feelings of poor girls tormented by boredom, pushing them to the lowest and most terrible actions. Thus, he forces the Merchant's wife, Katerina Lvovna, to kill her own husband and father-in-law, and also becomes an accomplice in this process. Deception and intrigue completely make up his life, because... He ended up with the Izmailovs for having an affair with his former mistress.

Despite the vows of love and fidelity, the highest feeling is alien to Sergei. Betrayal, ridicule, cruelty towards the “loved one” confirm the essence of his true nature.

He could calmly lie about his own feelings only when he saw before himself the goal of a carefree and rich life. At that moment, when all prospects were lost, there was no longer any need to play the game.

Thus, Sergei is a vile, low, cruel and proud person, driven solely by his own selfish desires.

Russian literature

Victor Eremin

Katerina Lvovna Izmailova

Nikolai Semyonovich Leskov is a man of great passion, great contradictions, great Conscience and great patriotism. No wonder A.M. Gorky, who read in 1909-1911. on the island of Capri, a series of lectures under the general title “History of Russian Literature”, stated then that Leskov wrote “not about a peasant, not about a nihilist, not about a landowner, but always about a Russian person, about a person of a given country. Each of his heroes is a link in a chain of people, in a chain of generations, and in each of Leskov’s stories you feel that his main thought is not about the fate of an individual, but about the fate of Russia.”*

_________________________
* IMLI RAS. Archive of A.M. Gorky. T.1. History of Russian literature. M.: Goslitizdat, 1939.

It is in these words that the essence of the modern misunderstanding of Leskov’s work is revealed. Nikolai Semyonovich is a writer of the fate of the Fatherland, and today in his works they often look for the quintessence of the Russian character, moreover, the image of the Russian people. And this is deeply wrong. Leskov is the brightest representative of heterogeneous literature, therefore, in his books (in continuation of the aristocratic literature of the 19th century) a predominantly aristocratic idea of ​​the Russian people is given, although richly decorated with great knowledge of the inner world of the common man. Unfortunately, knowledge is not truth, and the Russian people in Leskov’s works remain, on the one hand, a romantic dream, and on the other hand, the writer’s gloomy idea of ​​them. Let us note that the works of all the heresiarchs of Great Russian literature suffer from this disease.

Leskov is often called the most Russian, the most national writer of all the writers of our land. This comes from that part of the domestic intelligentsia, which is usually called patriotic, professing mainly the Uvarov formula “Autocracy, Orthodoxy, nationality”, and therefore recognizing and even proclaiming the passive subordination of the people in relation to the autocracy (in general, any power) and Orthodoxy (church) that are irresponsible to them. hierarchy).

Nikolai Semyonovich himself repeatedly emphasized that he was best at positive characters. However, the writer’s positive ones (especially over the years) are dominated by such human characteristics as humility, readiness to suffer unforgivingly from a villain in power, and humility before one’s prepared fate. That is, in continuation of aristocratic literature, Leskov welcomed the feminized face of the Russian man. After all, from time immemorial, the Orthodox intelligentsia of Russia proclaimed that, unlike God’s chosen people - the Jews, the Russian people are a God-bearing people, under the Protection of the Mother of God, and Russia is her vale, therefore, the Divine face of the Russian people is humbly suffering and trusting only in God woman.
_________________
* Yudol is a place of suffering.

Let's face it, this understanding of the Russian people is a purely aristocratic and intellectual invention that has nothing to do with reality. Intellectuals wanted and still want to see the people in such a way that gradually they could fully feel themselves masters, supermen and saviors, but the pretext for this was, as always, God and faith in him. Russian history itself, and even more so the most important part of it - Russian literature (despite many of its great creators) and its heroes, have refuted the image of submissive, pleading and silent Russians imposed on us a thousand times over. Leskov’s heroes were no exception, in whose works even eldership is a form of active struggle against earthly villainy for the triumph of Divine good.

Nikolai Semenovich Leskov

Nikolai Semyonovich Leskov was born on February 4, 1831 in the village of Gorokhov, Oryol province. His mother, Maria Petrovna Leskova (née Alferyeva) (1813-1886), was one of the impoverished Oryol nobles. Father, Semyon Dmitrievich Leskov (1789-1848), came from a priestly background, served as a noble assessor of the Oryol Criminal Chamber (criminal investigator). Nikolai became the eldest of the seven Leskov children.

In 1839, the father resigned with a scandal, and the family moved to live on a recently purchased estate - the Panin farm in Kromsky district. In 1841, Nikolai entered the Oryol gymnasium, but studied unevenly and in 1846 failed the transfer exams. However, by the time he was expelled from the gymnasium, he was already working as a scribe in the Oryol State Chamber and was actively moving in the circle of the Oryol intelligentsia.

It was then that Leskov had the opportunity to meet the exiled Little Russian writer, ethnographer and folklorist Afanasy Vasilyevich Markevich (1824-1867), under whose influence young Leskov chose his life path - the young man firmly decided to become an ethnographer writer.

After the sudden death of his father in 1849, Nikolai was transferred for service to Kyiv as an official of the treasury chamber. There he lived in the family of his maternal uncle, professor-therapist at Kyiv University Sergei Petrovich Alferyev (1816-1884).

In Kyiv in 1853, Nikolai Semenovich married the daughter of a wealthy Kyiv homeowner and businessman, Olga Vasilievna Smirnova (c. 1831-1909). And soon the Crimean War began (1854-1856), which upended all the foundations of the life of Russian society.

In May 1857, Leskov retired and got a job at the private company Shcott and Wilkens, which was headed by the husband of his aunt Alexandra Petrovna (1811-1880), the Russified Englishman Alexander Yakovlevich (Jamesovich) Shcott (c. 1800-1860). Nikolai Semyonovich was involved in the resettlement of peasants to fertile lands, the organization of enterprises in the provinces, and agriculture. The writer himself subsequently called three years of service in his uncle’s company the happiest time of his life. Then Leskov traveled almost the entire European part of Russia, saw and understood a lot, the collected vital material was enough for him for many years of fruitful literary work.

Unfortunately, the company's business was not going well, and in April 1860 it had to be closed. Leskov returned to Kyiv and entered the service - in the office of the Governor General. At the same time, he took up journalism. On June 18, 1860, his first article was anonymously published in the journal “Economic Index” - about the speculation of booksellers in the Gospel. However, Leskov himself considered the beginning of his literary activity to be the publication in February 1861 on the pages of “Domestic Notes” of “Essays on the Distillery Industry (Penza Province).”

It was a turning point in the life of the aspiring writer. Leskov’s wife left him, he moved to live in St. Petersburg, and was recognized as a talented publicist...

And in 1862, Nikolai Semyonovich for the first time had to feel his foreignness in St. Petersburg society. In the spring, a wave of fires swept through the capital. Rumor attributed the arson to nihilistic students. Outraged by these rumors, Leskov published an article in the Northern Bee calling on the St. Petersburg mayor to look into this issue and, if the students are guilty, to punish them, and if not, to stop the slanderous chatter. The writer found ill-wishers who began to spread gossip around St. Petersburg that Leskov was calling for reprisals against progressive-minded youth. Few people read the article itself, but the condemnation of the innocent journalist turned out to be universal. Even Alexander II was indignant against Nikolai Semyonovich. Serfdom had just been abolished (1861), democratic reforms were being actively introduced, and society was in a state of delight in its own liberalism. Freedom fighters craved a retrograde victim. And the provincial journalist who so conveniently turned up was chosen as such.

Poor Leskov was shocked by both the slander and such monstrously general rejection of an article that no one had read. Nobody wanted to hear his explanations - he was guilty and that was all! In the end, Nikolai Semyonovich was forced to go abroad for a while - as a correspondent for the Northern Bee, he visited Austria (Bohemia), Poland, France...

And when he returned, contrary to many expectations, not only did he not repent - there was nothing to repent of, but he had the audacity to rush into battle against St. Petersburg society with its liberal demagoguery. In 1863, the writer published his first stories - “The Life of a Woman” and “Musk Ox”; Leskov published the collection “Three Stories by M. Stebnitsky*”, which was followed in 1864 by the anti-nihilistic novel “Nowhere”.
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* M. Stebnitsky - pseudonym for the first years of literary work of N.S. Leskova.

To say that this novel became a social bomb means to say nothing. For the first time in Russian literature (great prophetic works on this topic were written much later), albeit slightly, albeit only in some features, only in the third part of the novel, the revolutionary movement was condemned (!). The hysteria of the democratic press, which was then essentially exercising a dictatorship in the literary field of Russia, had no boundaries. The apogee of the scandal was the article by the idol of the revolutionary youth of those years, Dmitry Ivanovich Pisarev (1848-1869), “A Walk through the Gardens of Russian Literature,” which he wrote in a cell in the Peter and Paul Fortress, which gave the writings of a mentally ill critic a special aura of a sufferer. It was in this article that there were famous words that have forever entered the history of Russian and world literature as a shameful stain: “I am very interested in the following two questions: 1) Is there now in Russia - besides Russky Vestnik - at least one magazine that would dare to publish on its pages, anything coming from the pen of Mr. Stebnitsky and signed with his last name? 2) Is there at least one honest writer in Russia who will be so careless and indifferent to his reputation that he will agree to work in a magazine that adorns itself with the stories and novels of Mr. Stebnitsky? “These questions are very interesting for the psychological assessment of our literary world.”* In fact, Pisarev shouted: “Atu!” - at Leskov, and the democratic crowd rushed to persecute him.
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* D.I. Pisarev. Literary criticism in 3 volumes. T. 2. Articles 1864-1865. L., “Art. literature", 1981.

However, to our common happiness, there were both magazines and writers for whom the absurd Pisarev was not a decree. And the first among them was the journal of the recent convict Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky. Pisarev’s article appeared in Russky Vestnik in March 1865, and in the same month the last issue of the Dostoevsky brothers’ magazine “Epoch” was published, on the pages of which Nikolai Semyonovich Leskov’s masterpiece was published - the essay “Lady Macbeth of Our District”*.
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* It was only in the 1867 edition of “Tales, Essays and Stories by M. Stebnitsky,” vol. I, that the essay first received its current name: “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District.”

Essays in the 19th century. they also called purely artistic works. “Lady Macbeth...” became the first essay in the planned series. Leskov himself wrote to the famous Russian philosopher and literary critic, and at the same time the leading employee of the Epoch, Nikolai Nikolaevich Strakhov (1828-1896): “... I ask you for your attention to this small work. “Lady Macbeth of Our District” is the first of a series of essays exclusively on typical female characters of our (Oka and part of the Volga) area. I propose to write twelve such essays..."*.
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* V.A. Gebel. N.S. Leskov. In the creative laboratory. M.: Soviet writer, 1945.

The main character Katerina Lvovna Izmailova does not have a prototype, although they never stop looking for one. “Lady Macbeth...” is a purely artistic work, composed by the author “out of his head,” and rumors that a similar tragedy occurred in Leskov’s childhood are groundless.

The writer worked on the essay in Kyiv, in a difficult mental state caused by widespread public obstruction, which inevitably affected the work itself. In a later conversation with the famous writer Vsevolod Vladimirovich Krestovsky (1839-1895), Nikolai Semyonovich recalled: “But when I wrote my “Lady Macbeth,” under the influence of tense nerves and loneliness, I almost reached the point of delirium. At times I felt unbearably creepy, my hair stood on end, I froze at the slightest rustle, which I myself made by moving my leg or turning my neck. These were difficult moments that I will never forget. Since then I have avoided describing such horrors.”*
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* How Leskov worked on “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk.” Sat. articles for the production of the opera “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk” by the Leningrad State Academic Maly Theater. L.: 1934.

The essay turned out to be millions of times more anti-nihilistic and anti-revolutionary than any other work of Leskov. Only no one noticed or understood this - after all, Nikolai Semyonovich Pisarev himself (!) was declared an outlaw reactionary. “Lady Macbeth of our district” was chosen not to be noticed!

And in vain, although it must be admitted that Katerina Izmailova has not been recognized by our literary criticism to this day. But it is precisely this that is the central connecting thread that stretches from “The Captain’s Daughter” and Nekrasov’s peasant women to the great pentateuch of Dostoevsky, to “Anna Karenina” and “Quiet Don”; it was she who, having absorbed all the willfulness and unbridled licentiousness of Pushkin’s Emelka Pugachev and the power of the one who “stops a galloping horse, will enter a burning hut” from the poem “Frost, Red Nose”, became an inseparable, if not the main component of almost every hero of the latest novels by Fyodor Mikhailovich (primarily Nastasya Filippovna, Parfyon Rogozhin, Dmitry and Ivan Karamazov) or Sholokhov’s Grigory Melekhov and Aksinya.

Why? Yes, because it was in the image of Katerina Izmailova that for the first time in history (in the most artistically perfect form) the individual, personal embodiment of that very national, purely national philosophical thought of A.S. was revealed to the world. Pushkin: “God forbid that we see a Russian rebellion, senseless and merciless!”*. After Katerina Izmailova, the theme of a personal, merciless, very selfish, and often senseless Russian rebellion became almost the main one in our national literature and replaced the theme of the superfluous person. And it was precisely this personal rebellion on the pages of Great Russian literature that involuntarily created the idea of ​​the Russian people as a people living in constant stress, a people inextricably welded together by uncontrollable daring and recklessness, spiritual freedom and naive, but unjustified cruelty, etc. Nowadays, mediocre intellectuals from cinema don’t even know how to show the Russian people anything other than as showy, rollicking, reckless victims of their own boundless passions. This is already a stable stencil, a brand of belonging to everything Russian.
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* A.S. Pushkin. Collection op. in 10 volumes. T.5. M.: State Publishing House of Fiction, 1960.

However, in Russian literature, personal rebellion always has a great background: no matter what forms it is expressed, it is initially always directed against injustice, and it is always preceded by a long-suffering expectation of Justice.

Katerina Izmailova was married from the poor with one purpose - to give birth to a child and bring an heir to the Izmailovs’ house. Her entire way of life, as was customary in Russian merchant families, was built and organized to raise a successor to the family. But Katerina remained a non-relative for five (!) years. Many years of infertility became the root cause of her rebellion: on the one hand, the woman innocently turned out to be the greatest obstacle for her husband, since the absence of an heir for a merchant is a catastrophe of his entire life, and Katerina was constantly blamed for this; on the other hand, for a childless young merchant's wife, loneliness in a golden cage is mortal boredom, from which it is time to go mad. Katerina rebelled, and her rebellion spontaneously resulted in an insane passion for the insignificant, pretty clerk Sergei. The worst thing is that Katerina Lvovna herself would never be able to explain what she was rebelling against, a dark carnal passion simply went wild in her, provoked by a kindly thief*, and then events developed against anyone’s will, in full accordance with the epigraph-proverb that preceded the essay “When I started to sing the first song.”
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* Firth (obsolete) - a dashing, dapper and cheeky, self-satisfied person.

Crimes were committed by the merchant's wife on an increasing scale: at first Katerina sinned; then she secretly poisoned her old father-in-law with rat poison, who learned about her adultery; then she forced her lover to participate in the murder of her husband, so as not to interfere with them leading a free life; and only then the two of them, for the sake of capital, strangled their husband’s little nephew, and were caught and exposed by people...

And here Leskov brought us to another topic given only to the Russian world (apparently as a general philosophical national one) - the topic of torment and the violent death of an innocent baby. In real history, the death of two boys, terrible and unjustified, became the mystical root cause of two of the greatest Russian Troubles - the mysterious death of Tsarevich Dimitri Ioannovich on May 15, 1591 became the impetus for the Troubles of 1605-1612; The popular hanging in 1614 at the Serpukhov Gate of the Moscow Kremlin of three-year-old Ivashka Vorenok, the son of Maria Mnishek and False Dmitry II, became the unrepentant curse of the reigning house of the Romanovs, the mystical retribution for which was the extermination and expulsion of the family in 1917-1918.

In Russian literature, A.S. was the first to raise this topic. Pushkin in “Boris Godunov”:

...And the boys have bloody eyes...
And I’m glad to run, but there’s nowhere... terrible!
Yes, pitiful is the one whose conscience is unclean.

The murdered boy in Pushkin's drama is the Supreme Judge, Conscience and the inevitability of the highest Retribution.

Leskov posed this question differently. For Katerina Izmailova, the murder of a child became the lowest point of fall, beyond which earthly retribution began, and much more terrible than human judgment. The woman suffered from her lover, seemingly refuting previous accusations that she was not a relative. But in fact, she only confirmed her infertility in an even more monstrous form: “... in the prison hospital, when they gave her her child, she just said, “Well, that’s it!” and, turning to the wall, without any groan, without any complaint, she fell with her chest on the hard cot.”* She already had the opportunity on earth to become convinced of the senselessness and monstrosity of what she had done; it was not for nothing that Katerina’s last earthly words, instead of a prayer, became a shameful lament for her former lover who mocked her: “how you and I walked, sat through the long autumn nights, sent people away from the world with a cruel death.” . And Leskov described the last earthly moments of this unrepentant, godless killer-monster as absolutely terrible, terrible: “... but at the same time, from another wave, Katerina Lvovna rose above the water almost waist-deep, rushed at Sonetka, like a strong pike at a soft-feathered flesh, and both didn’t show up again.”
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* N.S. Leskov. Collection op. in 11 volumes. T.1. M.: State Publishing House of Fiction, 1956. The following text is quoted from this publication.

However, Katerina Lvovna is completely terrible not for her actions, but for the fact that she has become a mirror of the soul of the Russian intelligentsia of our days - a great mirror for the black souls of blurred morality.

By creating “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk,” Leskov showed the dead-end path of personal rebellion for the sake of satisfying one’s own passions and nihilism as such in general, in contrast to the general rebellion for Justice. If a popular revolt is an earthly judgment against those in power who have gone too far, then a personal revolt is a dead end of infertility, an all-death loop of narcissistic egoism, which has no justification either in the atrocities of others or in one’s own misfortune. It was this terrible all-consuming difference that was later most fully revealed by F.M. Dostoevsky in Ivan Karamazov’s great monologue about a tortured child and a mother embracing the torturer who tore her son to pieces with dogs.

Through the efforts of the modern creative intelligentsia, Katerina Izmailova is now presented as the bearer of “innocent” and “undervalued” female love, as a victim-sufferer, but not because of the terrible atrocities and infanticide she committed, but because the lover to whom she devoted her whole life , betrayed her boundless passion. Comments are unnecessary: ​​the preachers of this nonsense managed to fall spiritually even lower than Katerina herself.

In 1930, Dmitry Dmitrievich Shostakovich (1906-1975) based on the essay wrote the brilliant opera “Katerina Izmailova” - the growing cacophony of reckless Russian rebellion, which was never understood by the domestic intelligentsia. To this day, the opera is interpreted as a story about the confrontation of a free, passionately loving person - Katerina - with the dictates of an ordinary-minded crowd! Leskov and Shostakovich must be turning over in their graves at such a high flight of thought among modern intellectuals.

The first film adaptation of the story, entitled “Katerina the Gas Chamber,” was made in 1916. Director A.A. Arkatov.
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* Alexander Arkadyevich Arkatov (Mogilevsky) (1888-1961) - classic director of world silent cinema. In 1922 he emigrated from Soviet Russia to the USA and ended his cinematic career. Arkatov's fame was brought to him by films about the fate of Jews in pre-revolutionary Russia.

The last film adaptation of “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk” was made in 1989 by director R.G. Balayan. The role of Katerina Izmailova was played by actress N.E. Andreichenko.
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* Roman Gurgenovich Balayan (b. 1941) - famous domestic film director; creator of 14 films, including “Flights in a dream and in reality”, “Keep me safe, my talisman”, “Filer”, etc.
** Natalya Eduardovna Andreichenko (b. 1956) - domestic theater and film actress. She played leading roles in many classic works of our cinema, but is best known for her role as Mary Poppins in the television film “Goodbye Mary Poppins!”