“The artistic originality of the novel “Who is to blame? The artistic originality of A. Herzen’s novel “Who is to Blame?” The novel's figurative system. The image of a superfluous person The role of inserted episodes in Herzen’s novel

His book "Who's to Blame?" Herzen called it a deception in two parts. But he also called it a story: “Who’s to blame?” was the first story I wrote.” Rather, it was a novel in several stories that had an internal connection, consistency and unity.

The composition of the novel "Who is to Blame?" highly original. Only the first chapter of the first part has the actual romantic form of exposition and the beginning of the action - “A retired general and teacher, deciding on the place.” Herzen wanted to compose a novel from this kind of individual life stories, where “in the footnotes one can say that so-and-so married so-and-so.”

But he did not write a “protocol,” but a novel in which he explored the law of modern reality. That is why the question posed in the title resonated with such force in the hearts of his contemporaries. Critic A.A. Grigoriev formulates the main problem of the novel this way: “It is not we who are to blame, but the lies in whose networks we have been entangled since childhood.”

But Herzen was also interested in the problem of moral self-awareness of the individual. Among Herzen’s heroes there are no “villains” who would deliberately do evil; his heroes are the children of the century, no better and no worse than others. Even General Negros, the owner of the “white slaves”, a serf owner and a despot due to the circumstances of his life, is depicted by him as a man in whom “life has crushed more than one opportunity.”

Herzen called history a “ladder of ascension.” This thought meant, first of all, the spiritual elevation of the individual above the living conditions of a certain environment. In the novel, a person declares himself only when he is separated from his environment.

The first step of this “ladder” is entered by Krutsifersky, a dreamer and romantic, confident that there is nothing accidental in life. He helps Lyuba, Negrov’s daughter, get up, but she rises a step higher and now sees more than he does; Krutsifersky, timid and timid, can no longer take a single step forward. She raises her head and, seeing Beltov there, gives him her hand.

But the fact of the matter is that this meeting, “random” and at the same time “irresistible,” did not change anything in their lives, but only increased the severity of reality and exacerbated the feeling of loneliness. Their life was unchanged. Lyuba was the first to feel this; it seemed to her that she and Krutsifersky were lost among the silent expanses. Herzen deploys an apt metaphor in relation to Beltov, deriving it from the folk proverb “Alone in the field is not a warrior”: “I am like a hero of folk tales... I walked along all the crossroads and shouted: “Is there a man alive in the field?” But the living man did not respond... My misfortune!.. And one in the field is not a warrior... I left the field...”

"Who is guilty?" – intellectual novel; his heroes are thinking people, but they have their own “woe from their minds.” With all their "brilliant ideals" they are forced to live "in a gray light." And there are notes of despair here, since Beltov’s fate is the fate of one of the galaxy of “superfluous people”, the heir of Chatsky, Onegin and Pechorin. Nothing saved Beltov from this “millions of torments,” from the bitter awareness that the light was stronger than his ideas and aspirations, that his lonely voice was being lost. This is where the feeling of depression and boredom arises.

The novel predicted the future. It was in many ways a prophetic book. Beltov, just like Herzen, not only in the provincial city, among officials, but also in the capital’s chancellery, found “the most imperfect melancholy” everywhere, “dying of boredom.” “On his native shore” he could not find a worthy business for himself.

But Herzen spoke not only about external obstacles, but also about the internal weakness of a person brought up in conditions of slavery. “Who is to blame is a question that did not give an unambiguous answer. It is not for nothing that the search for an answer to Herzen’s question occupied the most prominent Russian thinkers - from Chernyshevsky and Nekrasov to Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.

Composition

Both in theory and in practice, Herzen consistently and purposefully brought journalism and fiction closer together. He is infinitely far from a calm, imperturbable image of reality. Herzen the artist constantly intrudes into the narrative. Before us is not a dispassionate observer, but a lawyer and a prosecutor in one and the same person, for if the writer actively defends and justifies some characters, he exposes and condemns others, without hiding his subjective biases. The author's consciousness in the novel is expressed directly and openly.

The first part of the novel consists mainly of detailed biographies of the characters, which is emphasized even by the names of individual sections: “Biographies of Their Excellencies”, “Biography of Dmitry Yakovlevich”. In the second part, a more consistent plot narrative unfolds with numerous inserted episodes and the author's journalistic digressions. In general, the entire literary text is connected by the unity of the author’s idea and is built primarily on the basis of a clear and consistent development of the author’s thought, which has become the most important structure-forming and style-forming factor. The author's speech occupies a central place in the overall course of the narrative. It is often imbued with irony - sometimes soft and good-natured, sometimes striking and scourging. At the same time, Herzen brilliantly uses the most diverse styles of the Russian language, boldly combining forms of vernacular with scientific terminology, generously introducing literary quotations and foreign words, neologisms, unexpected and therefore immediately attention-grabbing metaphors and comparisons into the text. This creates an idea of ​​the author as an excellent stylist and encyclopedic educated person, with a sharp mind and observation, capable of capturing the most diverse shades of the reality he depicts - funny and touching, tragic and insulting human dignity.

Herzen's novel is distinguished by its wide coverage of life in time and space. The biographies of the heroes allowed him to develop the narrative over a large time range, and Beltov’s trips made it possible to describe the noble estate, provincial cities, Moscow, St. Petersburg, and talk about his impressions abroad. A deep analysis of the uniqueness of Herzen the writer is contained in Belinsky’s article “A Look at Russian Literature of 1847.” The main strength of the author of the novel “Who is to Blame?” the critic saw in the power of thought. “With Iskander (the pseudonym of Alexander Herzen), Belinsky wrote, his thought is always ahead, he knows in advance what he is writing and why; he depicts with amazing fidelity the scene of reality only in order to say his word about it, to carry out judgment.” As the critic deeply notes, “such talents are as natural as purely artistic talents.” Belinsky called Herzen “primarily a poet of humanity”; in this he saw the pathos of the writer’s work, the most important social and literary significance of the novel “Who is to Blame?” The traditions of Herzen’s intellectual novel were picked up and developed by Chernyshevsky, as indicated by the direct roll call of the titles: “Who is to blame?” - "What to do?"

The ideological and artistic originality of Herzen’s novel “Who is to Blame?”, the problems of the stories “Doctor Krupov” and “The Thieving Magpie”

The writer worked on the novel “Who is to Blame” for six years. The first part of the work appeared in Otechestvennye zapiski in 1845-1846, and both parts of the novel were published as a separate edition as a supplement to Sovremennik in 1847.

In his novel, Herzen touched on many important issues: the problem of family and marriage, the position of women in society, the problem of education, the life of the Russian intelligentsia. He resolves these issues in the light of the ideas of humanism and freedom. Belinsky defined Herzen’s sincere thought in his novel as “the thought of human dignity, which is humiliated by prejudice, ignorance, and humiliated either by man’s injustice to his neighbor, or by his own voluntary distortion of himself.” This sincere thought was anti-serfdom. The pathos of the fight against serfdom as the main evil of Russian life of that time permeates from beginning to end.

The plot of the novel is based on the difficult drama experienced by husband and wife Krutsifersky: the dreamy, deeply focused illegitimate daughter of the landowner Negrov Lyubonka and the enthusiastic idealist, son of a doctor, candidate at Moscow University, Negrov’s home teacher Dmitry Krutsifersky. The second storyline of the novel is connected with the tragic fate of Vladimir Beltov, who occupied a prominent place in the gallery of Russian “superfluous people.” Talking about the tragic situation of the commoner - teacher Dmitry Krutsifersky, his wife Lyubov Alexandrovna, who fell in love with the young nobleman Beltov, the writer reveals all the confusion and painful confusion that ruined the lives of these people, ruined them. He wants the reader to know who is to blame for the tragic fate of the novel's heroes. Taking as an epigraph to the novel the words of some court ruling: “And this case, due to the failure to discover the guilty, should be handed over to the will of God, and the matter, having been considered resolved, should be handed over to the archives,” Herzen, with the entire course of his novel, seems to want to declare: “The culprit has been found, the case must be taken up.” from the archive and re-decide for real.” The autocratic-serf system, the terrible kingdom of dead souls, is to blame.

Beltov is a typical face of his era. A talented, lively and thinking person, he became an intelligent irrelevance in a feudal society. “I’m like the hero of our folk tales... I walked along all the crossroads and shouted: “Is there a man alive in the field?” But the living man did not respond... my misfortune... and one in the field is not a warrior... So I left the field,” says Beltov to his Genevan teacher. Following Pushkin and Lermontov, Herzen paints the image of a “superfluous person,” showing the clash of a gifted and intelligent individual with the surrounding environment, which is backward but strong in its inertness. However, Chernyshevsky, comparing Beltov with Onegin and Pechorin, said that he was completely different from his predecessors, that personal interests were of secondary importance to him. Dobrolyubov singled out Beltov in the gallery of “superfluous people” as “the most humane among them,” with truly high and noble aspirations.

The novel ends in tragedy. Lyubonka, broken by moral torment, after Beltov’s departure, withdraws into her inner world in order to take hidden dreams and love to the grave.

Herzen's novel was new and original not only in its richness of ideas and images, but also in its artistic style. Belinsky, analyzing “Who is to blame?”, compared Herzen with Voltaire. The peculiarity of the style of Herzen's novel lies, first of all, in the complex interweaving of various techniques of artistic writing. The author makes excellent use of satire when talking about Negros, about the vulgarity of the inhabitants of the “uniform” city of NN. Here he continues the Gogol tradition of ridiculing dead souls and gives the theme of denunciation of serfdom a new force, full of revolutionary negation. Gogol's laughter sounded through his tears. Herzen's eyes are dry.

The compositional structure of the novel “Who is to Blame?” is peculiar. Herzen's work is not actually a novel, but a series of biographies, masterfully written and originally linked into one whole. At the same time, these biographies are excellent artistic portraits.

The novel is deeply original. Herzen once said with good reason: “My language.” Behind each of his phrases there is a deep intelligence and knowledge of life. Herzen freely introduced into colloquial speech, was not afraid to complicate his style with proverbial expressions of Russian and foreign speech, and abundantly introduced literary quotations and historical images that suddenly evoked whole pictures.

The story “Krupov” is a bright satirical pamphlet, partly reminiscent of Gogol’s ““. The story was written as an excerpt from the autobiography of the old materialist doctor Krupov. Long-term medical practice leads Krupov to the conclusion that human society is sick with madness. According to the doctor’s observation, in a world of social injustice, in a society where man is a wolf to man, where the power of the rich exists and poverty and lack of culture reign, those recognized as “crazy” “are essentially no more stupid or more damaged than everyone else, but only more original, more focused, more independent.” , more original, even, one might say, more brilliant than those.”

Herzen's satire extends not only to the autocratic-serf system of Russia, but also to bourgeois relations in Europe. Krupov notes in his journal that madness is committed both in the East and in the West (pauperism, etc.).

The cycle of works of art in Herzen’s work of the 40s is completed by the story “The Thieving Magpie,” written in 1846, which appeared in Sovremennik in 1848. The plot of “The Thieving Magpie” is based on M. S. Shchepkin’s story about the sad story of a serf actress from the theater of the depraved tyrant serf owner S. I. Kamensky in Orel. Herzen raised the story of Shchepkin, who appears in the story under the name of a famous artist, to the level of great social generalization.

Both in the novel “Who is to Blame?” and in the story “The Thieving Magpie” Herzen touches on a question very acutely posed in Western European literature by George Sand - the question of the rights and status of women. In the story, this issue is illuminated as applied to the tragic fate of a serf woman, a talented actress.

Drawing the unusually rich personality of Aneta, Herzen shows the horror of her slavish dependence on the insignificant “bald celadon” of Prince Skalinsky. Her situation becomes tragic from the moment when Aneta decisively and boldly rejected the prince’s encroachments.

Her suffering is warmed by the author’s emotional attitude towards his heroine. A tragic note is heard in the thoughts of the artist-storyteller: “Poor artist!.. What kind of crazy, what kind of criminal person thrust you into this field without thinking about your fate! Why did I wake you up?.. Your soul would sleep in underdevelopment, and a great talent unknown to you yourself would not torment you; Maybe sometimes an incomprehensible sadness would rise from the bottom of your soul, but it would remain incomprehensible.”

These words emphasize the deep drama of the Russian popular intelligentsia, rising from the darkness of serf life. Only freedom could open a wide path for people's talents. The story “The Thieving Magpie” is imbued with the writer’s boundless faith in the creative powers of his people.

Of all the stories of the 40s, “The Thieving Magpie” stands out for its sharpness and courage in revealing the contradiction between “baptized property” and its owners. Irony, as in earlier works, serves to expose the hypocrisy of the wealthy serf-owner, a “passionate lover of art.” The stories of the artist and the actress herself are deeply lyrical and emotional. This contributed to awakening in the reader sympathy for the serf actress, whose stunning story reflects the tragedy of the Russian people under the autocratic serfdom system. This is exactly how he perceived it when he noted that “Herzen was the first in the 40s to boldly speak out against serfdom in his story “The Thieving Magpie.”

You have read the finished development: The ideological and artistic originality of Herzen’s novel “Who is to Blame?”, the problems of the stories “Doctor Krupov” and “The Thieving Magpie”

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45. Who is to blame? A.I. Herzen. V.G. Belinsky about the novel.

Composition of the novel"Who is guilty?" very original. Only the first chapter of the first part has the actual romantic form of exposition and the beginning of the action - “A retired general and teacher, deciding on the place.” This is followed by: “Biography of Their Excellencies” and “Biography of Dmitry Yakovlevich Krutsifersky”. The chapter “Life and Being” is a chapter from the correct form of narration, but it is followed by “Biography of Vladimir Beltov”.

Herzen wanted to compose a novel from this kind of individual biographies, where “in the footnotes one can say that so-and-so married so-and-so.” “For me, a story is a frame,” said Herzen. He painted mostly portraits; he was most interested in faces and biographies. “A person is a track record in which everything is noted,” writes Herzen, “a passport on which visas remain.”

Despite the apparent fragmentation of the narrative, when the story from the author is replaced by letters from the characters, excerpts from the diary, and biographical digressions, Herzen’s novel is strictly consistent. “This story, despite the fact that it will consist of separate chapters and episodes, has such integrity that a torn page spoils everything,” writes Herzen.

He saw his task not in resolving the issue, but in identifying it correctly. Therefore, he chose a protocol epigraph: “And this case, due to the failure to discover the guilty, is to be handed over to the will of God, and the case, having been considered unresolved, is to be handed over to the archives. Protocol".

But he did not write a protocol, but a novel, in which he explored not “a case, but a law of modern reality.” That is why the question posed in the title of the book resonated with such force in the hearts of his contemporaries. The critic saw the main idea of ​​the novel in the fact that the problem of the century receives from Herzen not a personal, but a general meaning: “It is not we who are to blame, but the lies in whose networks we have been entangled since childhood.”

But Herzen was interested in the problem of moral self-awareness and personality. Among Herzen's heroes there are no villains who would consciously and deliberately do evil to their neighbors. His heroes are children of the century, no better and no worse than others; rather, even better than many, and some of them contain the promise of amazing abilities and opportunities. Even General Negros, the owner of “white slaves”, a serf owner and a despot due to the circumstances of his life, is depicted as a man in whom “life has crushed more than one opportunity.” Herzen's thought was social in essence; he studied the psychology of his time and saw a direct connection between a person's character and his environment.

Herzen called history a “ladder of ascension.” This thought meant, first of all, the spiritual elevation of the individual above the living conditions of a certain environment. So, in his novel “Who is to Blame?” only there and then does the personality declare itself, when it is separated from its environment; otherwise it is consumed by the emptiness of slavery and despotism.

And so Krutsifersky, a dreamer and romantic, confident that there is nothing accidental in life, enters the first step of the “ladder of ascension.” He gives his hand to Lyuba, Negrov’s daughter, and helps her rise. And she rises after him, but one step higher. Now she sees more than he does; she understands that Krutsifersky, a timid and confused person, will not be able to take another step forward and higher. And when she raises her head, her gaze falls on Beltov, who was much higher on the same stairs than she was. And Lyuba herself extends her hand to him...

“Beauty and in general strength, but it acts according to some kind of selective similarity,” writes Herzen. The mind also operates by selective similarity. That is why Lyubov Krutsiferskaya and Vladimir Beltov could not help but recognize each other: they had this similarity. Everything that was known to her only as a sharp guess was revealed to him as complete knowledge. This was a nature “extremely active inside, open to all modern issues, encyclopedic, gifted with bold and sharp thinking.” But the fact of the matter is that this meeting, accidental and at the same time irresistible, did not change anything in their lives, but only increased the severity of reality, external obstacles, and aggravated the feeling of loneliness and alienation. The life they wanted to change with their ascent was motionless and unchanging. It looks like a flat steppe in which nothing moves. Lyuba was the first to feel this when it seemed to her that she and Krutsifersky were lost among the silent expanses: “They were alone, they were in the steppe.” Herzen deploys the metaphor in relation to Beltov, deriving it from the folk proverb “Alone in the field is not a warrior”: “I am like a hero of folk tales... I walked along all the crossroads and shouted: “Is there a man alive in the field?” But a man is not alive responded... My misfortune!.. And one in the field is not a warrior... I left the field...” The “ladder of ascension” turned out to be a “humpbacked bridge”, which raised him to a height and released him on all four sides.

"Who is guilty?" - an intellectual novel. His heroes are thinking people, but they have their own “woe from their minds.” And it lies in the fact that with all their brilliant ideals they were forced to live in a gray world, which is why their thoughts were seething “in empty action.” Even genius does not save Beltov from this “millions of torments,” from the consciousness that the gray light is stronger than his brilliant ideals, if his lonely voice is lost among the silence of the steppe. This is where the feeling of depression and boredom arises: “Steppe - go wherever you want, in all directions - free will, but you won’t get anywhere...”

There are also notes of despair in the novel. Iskander wrote the story of the weakness and defeat of a strong man. Beltov, as if with peripheral vision, notices that “the door that opened closer and closer was not the one through which the gladiators entered, but the one through which their bodies were carried out.” Such was the fate of Beltov, one of the galaxy of “superfluous people” of Russian literature, the heir of Chatsky, Onegin and Pechorin. From his sufferings grew many new ideas that found their development in Turgenev’s “Rudin” and in Nekrasov’s poem “Sasha”.

In this narrative, Herzen spoke not only about external obstacles, but also about the internal weakness of a person brought up under conditions of slavery.

"Who is guilty?" - a question that did not give a clear answer. It is not without reason that the search for an answer to Herzen’s question occupied the most prominent Russian thinkers - from Chernyshevsky and Nekrasov to Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.

The novel “Who is to Blame?” predicted the future. It was a prophetic book. Beltov, like Herzen, not only in the provincial city, among officials, but also in the capital’s chancellery, found “utter melancholy” everywhere, “dying of boredom.” “On his native shore” he could not find a worthy business for himself.

But slavery also established itself “on the other side.” On the ruins of the revolution of 1848, the triumphant bourgeois created an empire of property owners, discarding good dreams of fraternity, equality and justice. And again a “most perfect emptiness” formed, where thought died of boredom. And Herzen, as predicted by his novel “Who is to Blame?”, like Beltov, became “a wanderer around Europe, a stranger at home, a stranger in a foreign land.”

He did not renounce either the revolution or socialism. But he was overcome by fatigue and disappointment. Like Beltov, Herzen “made and lived through the abyss.” But everything he experienced belonged to history. That is why his thoughts and memories are so significant. What Beltov was tormented by as a mystery became for Herzen modern experience and insightful knowledge. Again the same question arose before him with which it all began: “Who is to blame?”

Belinsky: To see in the author “Who is to blame?” an extraordinary artist means not understanding his talent at all. True, he has a remarkable ability to accurately convey the phenomena of reality, his essays are definite and sharp, his paintings are bright and immediately catch the eye. But even these very qualities prove that his main strength is not in creativity, not in artistry, but in thought, deeply felt, fully conscious and developed. The power of this thought is the main strength of his talent; the artistic manner of correctly capturing the phenomena of reality is a secondary, auxiliary strength of his talent. Take the first one away from him, and the second one will turn out to be too untenable for original activity. Such talent is not something special, exceptional, or accidental. No, such talents are as natural as purely artistic talents. Their activity forms a special sphere of art, in which fantasy comes second and intelligence comes first. Little attention is paid to this difference, and this is why there is terrible confusion in the theory of art. They want to see in art a kind of mental China, sharply separated by precise boundaries from everything that is not art in the strict sense of the word. Meanwhile, these boundary lines exist more hypothetically than actually; at least you can’t point them out with your finger, like on a map of state boundaries. Art, as it approaches one or another of its borders, gradually loses something of its essence and takes into itself from the essence of what it borders on, so that instead of a dividing line there is a region that reconciles both sides.

It all started in childhood. Krupov was the son of a deacon, and he was being prepared to take his place someday. There was such a boy Levka in the village, Senka’s (Krupov) only friend. Levka was blessed, he didn’t understand a damn thing at all and didn’t love anyone except Senka and his dog. Levka lived an amazing life: he found food for himself, communicated with nature, didn’t attack anyone, but everyone offended him. In short, the man was happy, but everyone was bothering him. Senka was interested in how this could happen. Why do people think he's crazy? And he came to the conclusion that “the reason for all the persecution of Levka is that Levka is stupid in his own way - and others are completely stupid.” Krupov also decided: “in this world of social injustice and hypocrisy, Krupov is convinced, the so-called “crazy” are “essentially no more stupid and no more damaged than everyone else, but only more original, focused, independent, more original, one might even say, which is more brilliant than those." But still, Senka wanted to explore all this from a scientific point of view. He wanted to go to university, but his father did not allow him. Then he went to the master, but the master did not accept him. As a result, after the death of his father, Senka ended up in it. University and enrolled in general psychiatry. And so, after years of practice with psychotics, Krupov drew his conclusions about the signs of disorders:

A) in incorrect, but also involuntary consciousness of surrounding objects

C) stupid pursuit of unrealistic goals and omission of real goals.

And so he began to adjust people to these signs and it turned out that EVERYONE was nuts.

He had a bourgeois ward who closed a vicious circle herself: she bought wine for her husband, he drank, beat her, and left. day all over again... Krukpov tells her: don’t buy wine. And she told him: why the hell shouldn’t I bring wine to my lawful husband? Krupov: then why are you arguing with your legal husband? She: this freak is not my husband, fuck him... Then she loved her child strangely. She hunched over at work all day to buy him new clothes, but if he got it dirty, she beat the child. Further. All officials are complete psychos: they do meaningless work all day long. What about the landowners? Two people lived in a legal marriage, but they hated each other terribly and wished each other death. Krupov suggested: just loosen your grip on the estates, everything will be better. And they: yes, now, I was born and raised in a pious family, I know the laws of decency! Or there was another stingy landowner who starved everyone to death. But when a high-ranking official arrived, he ran and almost on his knees asked him to dine with him. And then I spent so much money on it that my dear mother. The whole system of life looks “damaged”, in which people working “day and night” “did not produce anything, and those who did nothing continuously produced nothing, and those who did nothing continuously produced, and a lot.” ".And look at the history of mankind! History is caused by a universal pathology.

And so the doctor says that he no longer has anger at people, but only gentle condescension towards the patient.

The originality of satire:

Speaks for itself, doesn't it?

Here's what Lotman says:

Reflections on the interconnection of various social phenomena and the causes of social evil led the best progressive representatives of critical realism to the perception of the ideas of utopian socialism. They are reflected in Saltykov’s story. The circle of Petrashevites, ideologically connected with Belinsky, was actively involved in the propaganda of these ideas. Meetings of the Petrashevsky circle were attended by many writers of the Gogol school. In The Holy Family, Marx formulated the idea of ​​the contact between revolutionary humanism and materialism of the 19th century and socialist ideas as follows: “It does not require great wit to see the connection between the teaching of materialism about the innate tendency towards goodness, about the equality of the mental abilities of people, about the omnipotence of experience, habits, upbringing, the influence of external circumstances on a person, the high importance of industry, the moral right to enjoyment, etc. - both communism and socialism. If a person draws all his knowledge, sensations, etc. from the sensory world and the experience received from this world, then it is necessary, therefore, to arrange the world around us in such a way that a person recognizes what is truly human in it, so that he gets used to cultivating human properties in it. If correctly understood interest constitutes the principle of all morality, then it is necessary, therefore, to strive to ensure that the private interest of an individual coincides with the general human interests ... If a person's character is created by circumstances, then it is necessary, therefore, to make circumstances

humane. If man, by nature, is a social being, then he, therefore, can only develop his true nature in society, and the strength of his nature must be judged not by individual individuals, but by the whole society.”

Speaking about the absurdity of the modern social structure in the story “Doctor Krupov,” Herzen criticized society from a socialist position. Through the mouth of his hero, the writer declared: “In our city there were five thousand inhabitants; Of these, about two hundred people were plunged into tedious boredom from the lack of any activity, and four thousand seven hundred people were plunged into tedious activity from the lack of any rest. Those who worked day and night produced nothing, but those who did nothing produced continuously and a lot.” 2

Herzen seemed to be developing the idea of ​​Gogol’s St. Petersburg stories, especially “Notes of a Madman,” about the madness of society, about the abnormality of relationships that are recognized in modern society as the “norm,” and at the same time his story was sharply different from Gogol’s stories. Unlike Gogol, Herzen took the position of a revolutionary; he was a socialist and saw the possibility of correcting society through revolutionary means.

And one more thing:

The famous artist in “The Thieving Magpie” said bitterly: “There are crazy people all around.” But it was like a random phrase. Dr. Krupov develops his theory of “comparative psychiatry” in detail and in detail. At every step he sees how people waste their lives “in the pain of madness.” From observations of modern life, Krupov moved on to studying history, re-reading ancient and modern authors - Titus Livy. Tacitus, Gibbon, Karamzin - and found clear signs of madness in the deeds and speeches of kings, monarchs, and conquerors. “History,” writes Dr. Krupov, “is nothing more than a coherent story of generic chronic madness and its slow cure.”

The philosophical essence of the story lies in overcoming Hegel’s “beautiful” theory that “everything that is real is reasonable, and everything that is reasonable is real,” a theory that was the basis of “reconciliation with reality.” Dr. Krupov saw in this theory a justification of existing evil and was ready to assert that “everything that is real is insane.” “It was not pride and disdain, but love that led me to my theory,” says Krupov.

In order for the monsters of madness to disappear, the atmosphere must change, Dr. Krupov proves. Vemlya was once trampled by mastodons, but the composition of the air changed, and they disappeared. “In some places the air becomes cleaner, mental illnesses are tamed,” writes Krupov, “but the ancestral madness in the human soul is not easily processed.”

47. The Thieving Magpie of A.I. Herzen in the literary and social struggle of the 1840s.

This retelling is from the site of Herzen fans, but you couldn’t write it better:

Three people are talking about the theater: a “Slav” with a short haircut, a “European” with “no haircut at all”, and a young man standing outside the party, with a buzz cut (like Herzen), who proposes a topic for discussion: why there are no good people in Russia actresses Everyone agrees that there are no good actresses, but each explains this according to his own doctrine: the Slav speaks about the patriarchal modesty of the Russian woman, the European speaks about the emotional underdevelopment of Russians, and for the man with a close-cropped hair, the reasons are unclear. After everyone has had time to speak out, a new character appears - a man of art and refutes the theoretical calculations with an example: he saw a great Russian actress, and, which surprises everyone, not in Moscow or St. Petersburg, but in a small provincial town. The artist's story follows (his prototype is M. S. Shchepkin, to whom the story is dedicated).
Once in his youth (at the beginning of the 19th century), he came to the city of N, hoping to enter the theater of the rich Prince Skalinsky. Talking about the first performance seen at the Skalinsky Theater, the artist almost echoes the “European”, although he shifts the emphasis in a significant way:
“There was something tense, unnatural in the way the courtyard people<…>represented lords and princesses." The heroine appears on stage in the second performance - in the French melodrama “The Thieving Magpie” she plays the maid Aneta, unfairly accused of theft, and here in the play of the serf actress the narrator sees “that incomprehensible pride that develops on the edge of humiliation.” The depraved judge offers her to “buy freedom with the loss of honor.” The performance, the “deep irony of the face” of the heroine especially amazes the observer; he also notices the prince’s unusual excitement. The play has a happy ending - it is revealed that the girl is innocent and the thief is a magpie, but the actress in the finale plays a creature mortally tortured.
The audience does not call the actress and outrages the shocked and almost in love narrator with vulgar remarks. Behind the scenes, where he rushed to tell her about his admiration, they explain to him that she can only be seen with the permission of the prince. The next morning, the narrator goes for permission and in the prince’s office he meets, among other things, the artist, who had been playing the lord for three days, almost in a straitjacket. The prince is kind to the narrator because he wants to get him into his troupe, and explains the strictness of the rules in the theater by the excessive arrogance of the artists, accustomed to the role of nobles on stage.
“Aneta” meets a fellow artist as if she were a loved one and confesses to him. To the narrator, she seems like a “statue of graceful suffering,” he almost admires how she “perishes gracefully.”
The landowner, to whom she belonged from birth, seeing her abilities, provided every opportunity to develop them and treated her as if she were free; he died suddenly, and did not bother to write out vacation pay for his artists in advance; they were sold at public auction to the prince.
The prince began to harass the heroine, she evaded; Finally, an explanation occurred (the heroine had previously read aloud “Cunning and Love” by Schiller), and the offended prince said: “You are my serf girl, not an actress.” These words had such an effect on her that soon she was already in consumption.
The prince, without resorting to gross violence, pettyly annoyed the heroine: he took away the best roles, etc. Two months before meeting the narrator, she was not allowed from the yard to the shops and was insulted, suggesting that she was in a hurry to see her lovers. The insult was deliberate: her behavior was impeccable. “So is it to preserve our honor that you lock us up? Well, prince, here is my hand to you, my word of honor that within a year I will prove to you that the measures you have chosen are insufficient!”
In this novel of the heroine, in all likelihood, the first and last, there was no love, but only despair; she said almost nothing about him. She became pregnant, and what tormented her most was that the child would be born a serf; she only hopes for a quick death for herself and her child by the grace of God.
The narrator leaves in tears, and, having found at home the prince’s offer to join his troupe on favorable terms, he leaves the city, leaving the invitation unanswered. Then he learns that “Aneta” died two months after giving birth.
The excited listeners are silent; the author compares them to a “beautiful gravestone group” for the heroine. “That’s all right,” the Slav said, getting up, “but why didn’t she get married secretly?..”

Literary and social struggle of the 1840s:

The character of this period of Russian literature was directly influenced by the ideological movement that, as stated, manifested itself in the mid-thirties in Moscow circles of young idealists. Many of the greatest luminaries of the forties owe their first development to them. In these circles, the basic ideas arose that laid the foundation for entire directions of Russian thought, the struggle of which revived Russian journalism for decades. When the influence of the idealistic German philosophy of Hegel and Schelling was joined by a passion for French romantic radicalism (V. Hugo, J. Sand, etc.) , a strong ideological ferment manifested itself in literary circles: they either converged on many points they had in common, then diverged to the point of outright hostile relations, until, finally, two bright literary trends were defined: Westernism, St. Petersburg, with Belinsky And Herzen at the head, which put at the forefront the foundations of Western European development, as an expression of universal human ideals, and the Slavophile, Moscow, in the person of the brothers Kireevskikh, Aksakov And Khomyakova, trying to find out the special paths of historical development that corresponded to a very specific spiritual type of a known nation or race, in this case the Slavic one. In their passion for struggle, passionate by temperament adherents of both directions very often went to extremes, sometimes denying all the bright and healthy aspects of national life in the name of exaltation of the brilliant mental culture of the West, then trampling on the results developed by European thought, in the name of unconditional admiration for the insignificant, sometimes even insignificant, but national characteristics of their historical life.
However, during the forties, this did not prevent both directions from converging on some basic, common and obligatory provisions for both, which had the most beneficial effect on the growth of public self-awareness. This common thing that connected both warring groups was idealism, selfless service to the idea, devotion to the people's interests in the broadest sense of the word, no matter how differently the paths to achieving possible ideals were understood.
Of all the figures of the forties, one of the most powerful minds of that era best expressed the general mood - Herzen, whose works harmoniously combined the depth of his analytical mind with the poetic softness of sublime idealism. Without venturing into the realm of fantastic constructions, which Slavophiles often indulged in, Herzen, however, recognized many real democratic foundations in Russian life (for example, the community).
Herzen deeply believed in the further development of the Russian community and at the same time analyzed the dark sides of Western European culture, which were completely ignored by pure Westerners. Thus, in the forties, literature for the first time put forward clearly expressed directions of social thought. She strives to become an influential social force. Both warring trends, the Westernizer and the Slavophile, equally categorically pose the tasks of civil service for literature.

"The Thieving Magpie" is Herzen's most famous story with a very complex

internal theatrical structure. First three appear on stage

The persons talking are “Slavic”, “European” and “author”. Then to them

a “famous artist” joins. And immediately, as if in the depths of the stage,

the second curtain rises and a view of the Skalinsky Theater opens up. Moreover

the "famous artist" moves to this second stage as an actor

faces But that's not all. The Skalinsky Theater has its own stage, on which,

in the very depths and in the center of this triple perspective, a figure arises

the main character playing the role of Ayeta from the play famous in those years

"The Thieving Magpie" [The play was written by Quenier and d'Aubigny in 1816

"The Thieving Magpie", and in 1817 G. Rossini created an opera based on this

The story was written at the height of the disputes between Westerners and

Slavophiles. Herzen brought out the ah aa scene as the most characteristic types of time.

And gave everyone the opportunity to speak according to their character

and beliefs. Herzen, like Gogol, believed that the disputes between Westerners and

Slavophiles are the “passions of the mind” raging in abstract spheres, while

how life goes its own way; and while they argue about national character and

whether it is decent or indecent for a Russian woman to be on stage, somewhere in the wilderness,

A great actress dies in a serf theater, and the prince shouts to her: “You are mine.”

a serf girl, not an actress."

The story is dedicated to M. Shchepkin, he appears on the “stage” under the name

"famous artist" This gives The Thieving Magpie a special edge.

After all, Shchepkin was a serf; his case delivered from slavery. And the whole story about the serf actress was a variation

on the theme "Thieving Magpies", a variation on the theme of the guilty 6ez guilt...

Aneta from "The Thieving Magpie" in her character and in her destiny is very

Total y...

Russian literature and medicine: Body, prescriptions, social practice [Collection of articles] Borisova Irina

5 Herzen’s novel “Who is to Blame?”

Herzen's novel "Who is to Blame?"

development of psychological realism Novel “Who is to Blame?” consists of two parts, significantly different from each other with regard to the depiction of literary heroes. The first part consists of a series of biographies of heroes, a story about their origin, environment and life circumstances. Describing various aspects of social life (quite in the spirit of a physiological essay), Herzen discovers and analyzes the facts of interaction between an individual and society among the landed nobility. This series of biographies sets the stage for the development of the storyline that begins in the second part of the novel. From this moment on, the technique of literary psychologization is introduced, so that the biographies of the heroes become more dynamic. In this case, the emphasis is on the inner world of the heroes, so the description of their appearance plays only a secondary role. The author resorts to the external only in the case when it can serve as an indicator of the hero’s mental states and is, thus, an addition to his biography; The hero’s interaction with the outside world is manifested primarily at the level of depicting his inner world. The author conducts an “open experiment” on the characters, who are placed in various life circumstances.

So, the strengthening of the psychologization of the internal perspective in the novel leads to going beyond the rigid psychosociological framework of the “natural school”. The title of the novel reflects its social-critical orientation. In fact, we are talking about describing the paradigm of the possibilities for the internal development of an individual within the social framework assigned to him. In this case, the problem of self-awareness and the hero’s gaining independence from society through introspection comes to the fore.

Unlike the first part of the novel, which continues the tradition of the “natural school”, in which the literary hero is presented as the performer of one or another social function assigned to him by a certain social group, the second part pays increased attention to the individual and the problem of his emancipation from the social environment. S. Gurvich-Lischiner, in his study of the narrative structure of the novel, comes to the conclusion that the pronounced polyphonic structure of “Who is to blame?” sends far beyond the scope of the problem of determination of personality by the environment, which was discussed in detail by the “natural school” [Gurvich-Lishchiner 1994:42–52]. Polyphonic construction at the plot level presupposes the ability to consider the hero in his interaction with the outside world, as well as to concentrate on the psychological patterns of development of the hero’s inner world. First of all, the patterns of character development are revealed at the level of the dialogically constituted structure of the novel. Refusal of ideas about direct cause-and-effect relationships between a person and his environment opens up new narrative possibilities for literary psychologization. The hero's past and the hero's reflection on the events that happened to him become essential elements of a literary character. In this case, the events of the past turn out to be inextricably linked with the present situation of the hero, which makes it possible to predict his future in the novel.

This new perspective is especially clearly expressed in the image of the main character of the novel, Lubonke. The heroine's well-developed character sets her apart from other characters who are presented in a rather formulaic manner. It personifies the ability for intellectual development and at the same time for emotional actions.

From the age of twelve, this head, covered with dark curls, began to work; the range of questions raised in her was not large, completely personal, especially since she could concentrate on them; nothing external or surrounding occupied her; she thought and dreamed, dreamed in order to ease her soul, and thought in order to understand her dreams. Five years passed like this. Five years in a girl’s development is a huge era; thoughtful, secretly fiery, Lyubonka in these five years began to feel and understand things that good people often do not realize until their graves... [Herzen 1954–1966 IV: 47].

This fragment is an example of going beyond the psychological discourse of that time and moving away from literary templates that denied a woman spiritual or mental potential and saw the only opportunity to show the heroine’s mental life in the depiction of “hysterical femininity,” the main features of which were weakness and unreasonableness. Although a woman represents the “weak” part of society, her heightened sensitivity gives her the opportunity to register deviations from the norm in the development of civilization. With the image of Lyubonka, literary psychologization takes on such “typically feminine” traits as nervousness, emotionality, and sometimes even instability as an opposition to the social criterion of “normality.”

Psychologization in the novel reaches its highest point in Lyubonka’s diary entries, in which the aesthetics of the “natural school” is transposed into autobiographical self-reflection. In her diary entries, Lyubonka tries to describe her internal state, establishing the relationship between it and external circumstances (moreover, this introspection is carried out according to psychological laws that are clear to the reader, which significantly increases its significance). The source of the psychological plausibility of such self-analysis is the psychological discourse of that time with its analysis of the internal development of a person and the connections of the biographical narrative with the mental state of the individual.

An analysis of Lyubonka’s diary entries clearly shows that although life circumstances play a decisive role in the development of her character, this development itself should be considered as “individual”, i.e. in the context of the events of the heroine’s life, and in no case as “typical” or generalized. Her character is not a product of her social environment, but the sum of the events of her entire life. It is the result of both “consistent adaptation of world experience” and the dynamic process of her personal development. The main thesis is that the hero’s “I” grows out of his personal history. The hero's consciousness is a self-reflective consciousness that constitutes the narrative process. Lyubonka's character is constituted both through the author's external perspective and through autobiographical diary entries. At the same time, the diary entries clearly model the situation of a personal crisis (love conflict) of the reflecting heroine. “Self-psychologization,” conveyed in the text through a first-person account of the motivation for actions and the development of a problematic situation that develops into a pathological crisis, reaches a high degree of immediacy that would be impossible based on the author’s perspective alone. The development of the love conflict is described mainly by the heroine herself, therefore the “lack” of information given directly by the author is compensated with the help of a detailed psychological justification. In this context, it is the fundamental crisis that is the impetus for the heroine’s desire to write the text of her life to arise from the initial inclination towards self-reflection. A meeting with the nobleman Beltov, who bears the traits of a “superfluous man,” brings a sharp change to Lyubonka’s previously calmly flowing life and becomes the subject of the heroine’s reflection: “I have changed a lot, matured after meeting Voldemar; his fiery, active nature, constantly busy, touches all inner strings, touches all aspects of existence. How many new questions arose in my soul! How many simple, everyday things, which I had never looked at before, now make me think” [Herzen 1954–1966 IV: 183].

The heroine's husband, having learned about her love affair, is deeply worried about this; his reaction to his wife's betrayal is apathy and disappointment. Lyubonka's memories of her former love for him do not allow her to think about breaking up with her husband. At the same time, the moral laws of “healthy” normality distort the prospect of living together with Beltov. In this aspect, Lyubonka can perceive her current situation only as “sick”; her conflict results in self-contempt due to weakness of will and the “misdemeanor” she committed; the heroine does not see a constructive way out of the current situation. It is absolutely clear to her that an attempt to free herself from social norms can lead to isolation; the prospect of finding happiness in a love affair with Beltov is too uncertain.

But why do all the heroes of this novel fail, despite the initially promising possibilities of their own “liberation”? None of the novel's biographies can serve as an example of a successful life, despite the fact that the social conditions in the author's depiction do not predetermine the development of the characters, and therefore cannot hinder it. The heroes of the novel also do not suffer from a lack of introspection, however, their self-reflection is not followed by actions; they are marked by an inability to take the “last step.” The reason for this phenomenon is not easy to determine unambiguously. The title of the novel suggests that the main question posed by the writer is the question of guilt (which would mark the moral aspects of the characters’ behavior in their personal conflicts). However, the peculiarities of the construction of the novel and the strategy for constructing the consciousness of the characters refute the hypothesis of the author’s “moral monopoly,” therefore, it is impossible to give an unambiguous answer to the question about the causes of the social and personal conflicts depicted in the novel. As a result, it becomes clear that the assumption that the novel develops the issue of guilt is erroneous and leads in the wrong direction. Thus, the author deviates from the ideological principles of the “natural school”, which require identifying (and naming) the culprit of social ills.

Herzen sought to show the impossibility of a one-sided explanation of the social and personal problems of the heroes. The author does not offer clear answers and at the same time refuses typification in favor of procedural structures. In this novel, every social situation, every dialogic connection between individual characters turns out to be problematic.

Depicting the mental development of the hero and human relationships in all their diversity, Herzen sheds new light on the problem of the status of literature and reality. Reality is depicted using the technique of literary psychologization, which is close and understandable to the reader. The author acts as a psychologist, establishing the character of the characters, their mental and moral state and connecting all this with the “mental” state of society. The text does not pretend, however, to directly reflect reality by filling the novel with a lot of factual material that constitutes this reality. The author shows reality as it appears to the eyes of an individual. Social reality is presented in the novel only through the prism of the heroes’ consciousness.

Psychologization becomes the main technique of Herzen's poetics. Literature turns into an experimental field for exploring the possibilities of development of an individual personality under certain conditions; the verisimilitude of the image is achieved through a dynamic depiction of the psyche of the acting characters. This dynamic appears as a result of the inclusion in literary discourse of segments of anthropological knowledge containing certain connotative connections that would be impossible to establish outside the framework of a literary work. The relationship between literature and society takes on a new form. At the level of pragmatics, new relationships are established between the text, the reader and the author, in which knowledge of the context plays a large role. The position, which calls on the reader to determine for himself the culprit of social disorder, is relativized with the help of the structural composition of the novel. The reader must realize that reality is too complex to be clear-cut. The question of the relationship between morality, science and social norms is posed in a new way. The literary psychogram complicates the functioning of unambiguous connotative connections and replaces them with polysemy at the level of pragmatics. At the same time, the reader must connect the moral dilemma of guilt with the reader's life situation. But what is a person’s position in relation to reality? Knowledge of reality and knowledge of the connection between it and an individual personality is stimulated by “processing” “external” history into one’s own history. The image of a real person is now read not from his opposition to reality, but from the process of cognition viewed through the prism of psychology and being in constant development. The task of man is to gradually assimilate and process reality. Human character is understood, therefore, as dynamic, in constant development and interaction with the outside world. Literary treatment of all this is possible, however, only if the possibility of going beyond the subjective and objectifying the mental development of the individual is allowed.

We can thus observe two stages in the development of psychological realism from the poetics of medicine. The initial stage is the introduction into literature of the “natural school” of “medical realism”, using psychology as a functional and organizational model for postulating statements in the field of anthropology and sociology. Interest in the problem of the relationship between the individual and society is directed in its further development to the inner world of man. Dostoevsky in his novel “Poor People” develops the problem of the relationship between the individual and society at the psychological level and shows the process of introducing social norms into the internal structures of the hero’s psyche. Psychology is not a tool for expressing the ideological beliefs of the author; it is more appropriate to talk here about its aestheticization. Herzen in the novel “Who is to Blame?” depicts a paradigm of the possibilities of internal development of the individual within the social framework assigned to it. In this case, the problem of self-awareness and the hero’s gaining independence from society through introspection comes to the fore.