Ostrovsky A.N. Key dates of life and work. Alexander Nikolaevich Ostrovsky - biography, information, personal life A message on the topic of the last years of Ostrovsky’s life

Alexander Nikolaevich Ostrovsky (1823-1886) - a famous writer and playwright in Russia. One of the founders of modern theater, he is best known for his plays “The Dowry” and “The Thunderstorm,” which are still very popular.

On March 31, 1823, Alexander Nikolaevich Ostrovsky was born on Malaya Ordynka in the city of Moscow. Alexander's father, Nikolai Fedorovich, studied at the Kostroma Seminary and the Moscow Theological Academy. Nikolai Fedorovich was an employee of judicial institutions, rose to the rank of titular councilor, and in 1839 received the nobility.

Mother - Lyubov Ivanovna Savvina died when Alexander was 7 years old. 5 years after the death of his wife, Nikolai Fedorovich proposed marriage to Baroness Emilia Andreevna von Tessin, who surrounded the children with care and attention. There were four children in the Ostrovsky family, and getting an education came first. Alexander spent his entire childhood in Zamoskvorechye. Thanks to his enthusiastic reading in the family library, the boy firmly decides to become a writer.

Youth: Education and early career

Ostrovsky was educated at home. His father insists on entering the 1st Moscow Gymnasium, and in 1835 Alexander enters.

In 1840 he became a student at the Faculty of Law at Moscow University, from which he was never able to graduate due to a conflict with his teacher. After studying for 3 years, Alexander writes a letter of resignation. Insisting on the profession of a lawyer, the father enrolls his son to serve as a scribe in court, where Ostrovsky worked until 1851.

Creation

Comedy "Our people - let's be numbered!" Alexander’s first work was written in 1846 and was originally titled “The Insolvent Debtor.” The comedy was published in 1850 and brought Ostrovsky literary fame. Such great classics as N.V. spoke positively about the work. Gogol and I.A. Goncharov. However, the play was banned by Nicholas 1, the writer was fired from service and placed under supervision. Only 11 years later the play began to be staged in theaters again.

Creative path of A.N. Ostrovsky continues only after Alexander 2 came to power. In 1856 A.N. Ostrovsky begins to collaborate with the Sovremennik publication. After 3 years, the writer publishes his first collection of works.

In 1865, the play “The Thunderstorm” was written, which was reviewed by many famous critics, including Dobrolyubov.

Theater is an integral part in Ostrovsky's life. In 1886, he created the Artistic Circle, and at the same time Alexander took an active part in the development of the Russian national theater. I.A. Goncharov wrote to A.N. Ostrovsky: “You brought a whole library of works of art as a gift to literature, you created your own special world for the stage. You alone completed the building, the foundation of which was laid by Fonvizin, Griboyedov, Gogol. But only after you, we Russians can proudly say: “We have our own Russian, national theater.”

Personal life

The playwright's first love, actress Lyubov Kositskaya, reciprocates Ostrovsky's feelings, however, due to circumstances, the young people are unable to start a family.

For 20 years, the writer has been living in a civil marriage with Agafya Ivanovna. Alexander's father was against this marriage and deprived the young family of financial support. Despite the fact that Agafya was a poorly educated girl, she read all the works and understood Ostrovsky perfectly. All the children from this marriage died in infancy, and later Agafya Ivanovna herself died.

However, Ostrovsky still managed to have children: four heirs and two daughters from actress Maria Bakhmetyeva. They got married 2 years after Agafya's death.

1. Ostrovsky spoke eight languages, including Russian.
2. Due to problems with censorship, the writer was constantly refused to be published.
3. While writing a new play, the playwright died of a seizure.
4. Alexander Nikolaevich often caused ridicule with his extravagant outfits.
5. I was seriously interested in fishing.

Last years

Alexander Nikolaevich Ostrovsky died on June 2, 1886 at the age of 63 in the Shchelykovo estate. The cause of death is considered to be angina.

The writer’s health was severely undermined by exhausting work, however, despite this, he was haunted by financial difficulties all his life. 3000 was allocated for burial, and a pension was paid to the children and widow.

A.N. Ostrovsky was buried in the village of Nikolo-Berezhki, Kostroma province, next to his father.

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A.N. Ostrovsky was born on March 31 (April 12), 1823 in Moscow, in the family of a person from the clergy, an official, and later a solicitor of the Moscow Commercial Court. The Ostrovsky family lived in Zamoskvorechye, a merchant and bourgeois district of old Moscow. By nature, the playwright was a homebody: he lived almost his entire life in Moscow, in the Yauza part, regularly traveling, except for several trips around Russia and abroad, only to the Shchelykovo estate in the Kostroma province. Here he died on June 2 (14), 1886, in the midst of work on a translation of Shakespeare's play Antony and Cleopatra.

In the early 1840s. Ostrovsky studied at the Faculty of Law of Moscow University, but did not complete the course, entering the service in the office of the Moscow Conscientious Court in 1843. Two years later he was transferred to the Moscow Commercial Court, where he served until 1851. Legal practice gave the future writer extensive and varied material. Almost all of his first plays about modernity developed or outlined crime plots. Ostrovsky wrote his first story at the age of 20, his first play at the age of 24. After 1851, his life was connected with literature and theater. Its main events were litigation with censorship, praise and scolding from critics, premieres, and disputes between actors over roles in plays.

Over almost 40 years of creative activity, Ostrovsky has created a rich repertoire: about 50 original plays, several plays written in collaboration. He was also involved in translations and adaptations of plays by other authors. All this constitutes the “Ostrovsky theater” - this is how the scale of what was created by playwright I.A. Goncharov was defined.

Ostrovsky passionately loved theater, considering it the most democratic and effective form of art. Among the classics of Russian literature, he was the first and remains the only writer who devoted himself entirely to drama. All the plays he created were not “plays for reading” - they were written for the theater. For Ostrovsky, stagecraft is an immutable law of dramaturgy, therefore his works belong equally to two worlds: the world of literature and the world of theater.

Ostrovsky's plays were published in magazines almost simultaneously with their theatrical productions and were perceived as bright phenomena of both literary and theatrical life. In the 1860s. they aroused the same lively public interest as the novels of Turgenev, Goncharov and Dostoevsky. Ostrovsky made dramaturgy “real” literature. Before him, in the repertoire of Russian theaters there were only a few plays that seemed to have descended onto the stage from the heights of literature and remained lonely (“Woe from Wit” by A.S. Griboyedov, “The Inspector General” and “Marriage” by N.V. Gogol). The theatrical repertoire was filled either with translations or works that did not have any noticeable literary merit.

In the 1850s -1860s. the dreams of Russian writers that theater should become a powerful educational force, a means of shaping public opinion, found real ground. Drama has a wider audience. The circle of literate people has expanded - both readers and those for whom serious reading was not yet accessible, but theater is accessible and understandable. A new social stratum was being formed - the common intelligentsia, which showed increased interest in the theater. The new public, democratic and diverse in comparison with the public of the first half of the 19th century, gave a “social order” for social and everyday drama from Russian life.

The uniqueness of Ostrovsky's position as a playwright is that, by creating plays based on new material, he not only satisfied the expectations of new viewers, but also fought for the democratization of the theater: after all, theater is the most popular of spectacles - in the 1860s. still remained elitist; there was no cheap public theater yet. The repertoire of the theaters in Moscow and St. Petersburg depended on officials of the Directorate of Imperial Theaters. Ostrovsky, reforming Russian drama, also reformed the theater. He wanted to see not only the intelligentsia and enlightened merchants as spectators for his plays, but also “owners of craft establishments” and “craftsmen.” Ostrovsky's brainchild was the Moscow Maly Theater, which embodied his dream of a new theater for a democratic audience.

There are four periods in Ostrovsky’s creative development:

1) First period (1847-1851)- the time of the first literary experiments. Ostrovsky began quite in the spirit of the times - with narrative prose. In his essays on the life and customs of Zamoskvorechye, the debutant relied on Gogol’s traditions and the creative experience of the “natural school” of the 1840s. During these years, the first dramatic works were created, including the comedy “Bankrut” (“We’ll count our own people!”), which became the main work of the early period.

2) Second period (1852-1855) are called “Moskvityanin”, since during these years Ostrovsky became close to the young employees of the Moskvityanin magazine: A.A. Grigoriev, T.I. Filippov, B.N. Almazov and E.N. Edelson. The playwright supported the ideological program of the “young editorial board,” which sought to make the magazine an organ of a new trend of social thought—“pochvennichestvo.” During this period, only three plays were written: “Don’t get into your own sleigh,” “Poverty is not a vice,” and “Don’t live the way you want.”

3) Third period (1856-1860) marked by Ostrovsky's refusal to search for positive principles in the life of the patriarchal merchants (this was typical for plays written in the first half of the 1850s). The playwright, who was sensitive to changes in the social and ideological life of Russia, became close to the leaders of the common democracy - the employees of the Sovremennik magazine. The creative outcome of this period were the plays “At Someone Else’s Feast a Hangover,” “Profitable Place” and “Thunderstorm,” “the most decisive,” according to N.A. Dobrolyubov, Ostrovsky’s work.

4) Fourth period (1861-1886)- the longest period of Ostrovsky’s creative activity. The genre range has expanded, the poetics of his works have become more diverse. Over the course of twenty years, plays have been created that can be divided into several genre and thematic groups: 1) comedies from merchant life (“Maslenitsa is not for everyone”, “The truth is good, but happiness is better”, “The heart is not a stone”), 2) satirical comedies (“Simplicity is enough for every wise man”, “Warm Heart”, “Mad Money”, “Wolves and Sheep”, “Forest”), 3) plays that Ostrovsky himself called “pictures of Moscow life” and “scenes from the life of the outback ": they are united by the theme of "little people" ("An old friend is better than two new ones", "Hard Days", "Jokers" and the trilogy about Balzaminov), 4) historical plays-chronicles ("Kozma Zakharyich Minin-Sukhoruk", "Tushino" etc.), and, finally, 5) psychological dramas (“Dowry”, “The Last Victim”, etc.). The fairy-tale play “The Snow Maiden” stands apart.

The origins of Ostrovsky’s creativity are in the “natural school” of the 1840s, although the Moscow writer was not organizationally connected with the creative community of young St. Petersburg realists. Starting with prose, Ostrovsky quickly realized that his true calling was drama. Already the early prose experiments are “scenic,” despite the most detailed descriptions of life and customs characteristic of the essays of the “natural school.” For example, the basis of the first essay, “The Tale of How the Quarterly Warden Started to Dance, or One Step from the Great to the Ridiculous” (1843), is an anecdotal scene with a completely complete plot.

The text of this essay was used in the first published work - “Notes of a Zamoskvoretsky Resident” (published in 1847 in the newspaper “Moscow City Listok”). It was in “Notes...” that Ostrovsky, called by his contemporaries “Columbus of Zamoskvorechye,” discovered a “country” previously unknown in literature, inhabited by merchants, petty bourgeois and petty officials. “Until now, only the position and name of this country were known,” the writer noted, “as for its inhabitants, that is, their way of life, language, morals, customs, degree of education, all this was covered in the darkness of the unknown.” Excellent knowledge of life material helped Ostrovsky the prose writer to create a detailed study of merchant life and history, which preceded his first plays about the merchants. In “Notes of a Zamoskvoretsky Resident,” two characteristic features of Ostrovsky’s work emerged: attention to the everyday environment that determines the life and psychology of characters “written from life,” and the special, dramatic nature of the depiction of everyday life. The writer was able to see in ordinary everyday stories potential, unused material for a playwright. The essays about the life of Zamoskvorechye were followed by the first plays.

Ostrovsky considered the most memorable day in his life to be February 14, 1847: on this day, at an evening with the famous Slavophile Professor S.P. Shevyrev, he read his first short play, “Family Picture.” But the real debut of the young playwright is the comedy “We Will Be Numbered Our Own People!” (the original title was “The Bankrupt”), on which he worked from 1846 to 1849. Theater censorship immediately banned the play, but, like “Woe from Wit” by A.S. Griboedov, it immediately became a major literary event and was a success read in Moscow houses in the winter of 1849/50. by the author himself and major actors - P.M. Sadovsky and M.S. Shchepkin. In 1850, the comedy was published by the magazine “Moskvityanin”, but only in 1861 was it staged on stage.

The enthusiastic reception of the first comedy from merchant life was caused not only by the fact that Ostrovsky, “Columbus of Zamoskvorechye,” used completely new material, but also by the amazing maturity of his dramatic skill. Having inherited the traditions of Gogol the comedian, the playwright at the same time clearly defined his view on the principles of depicting characters and the plot and compositional embodiment of everyday material. The Gogolian tradition is felt in the very nature of the conflict: the fraud of the merchant Bolshov is a product of merchant life, proprietary morality and the psychology of rogue heroes. Bolynov declares himself bankrupt, but this is a false bankruptcy, the result of his conspiracy with the clerk Podkhalyuzin. The deal ended unexpectedly: the owner, who hoped to increase his capital, was deceived by the clerk, who turned out to be an even greater swindler. As a result, Podkhalyuzin received both the hand of the merchant’s daughter Lipochka and capital. The Gogol origin is palpable in the homogeneity of the comic world of the play: there are no positive heroes in it, as in Gogol’s comedies, the only such “hero” can be called laughter.

The main difference between Ostrovsky's comedy and the plays of his great predecessor is the role of comedic intrigue and the attitude of the characters to it. In “Our People...” there are characters and entire scenes that are not only unnecessary for the development of the plot, but, on the contrary, slow it down. However, these scenes are no less important for understanding the work than the intrigue based on Bolshov’s alleged bankruptcy. They are necessary in order to more fully describe the life and customs of the merchants, the conditions in which the main action takes place. For the first time, Ostrovsky uses a technique that is repeated in almost all of his plays, including “The Thunderstorm”, “The Forest” and “The Dowry” - an extended slow-motion exposition. Some characters are not introduced at all to complicate the conflict. These “personalities of the situation” (in the play “Our People - Let’s Be Numbered!” - the matchmaker and Tishka) are interesting in themselves, as representatives of the everyday environment, morals and customs. Their artistic function is similar to the function of household details in narrative works: they complement the image of the merchant world with small, but bright, colorful touches.

The everyday, familiar things interest Ostrovsky the playwright no less than something out of the ordinary, for example, the scam of Bolshov and Podkhalyuzin. He finds an effective way to dramaturgically depict everyday life, making maximum use of the possibilities of the word heard from the stage. The conversations between mother and daughter about outfits and grooms, the squabble between them, the grumbling of the old nanny perfectly convey the usual atmosphere of a merchant family, the range of interests and dreams of these people. The oral speech of the characters became an exact “mirror” of everyday life and morals.

It is the characters’ conversations on everyday topics, as if “excluded” from the plot action, that play an exceptional role in all Ostrovsky’s plays: interrupting the plot, retreating from it, they immerse the reader and viewer in the world of ordinary human relationships, where the need for verbal communication is no less important than the need for food, food and clothing. Both in the first comedy and in subsequent plays, Ostrovsky often deliberately slows down the development of events, considering it necessary to show what the characters are thinking about, in what verbal form their thoughts are expressed. For the first time in Russian drama, dialogues between characters became an important means of characterization.

Some critics considered the extensive use of everyday details a violation of the laws of the stage. The only justification, in their opinion, could be that the aspiring playwright was the pioneer of merchant life. But this “violation” became the law of Ostrovsky’s dramaturgy: already in the first comedy he combined the severity of intrigue with numerous everyday details and not only did not abandon this principle later, but also developed it, achieving the maximum aesthetic impact of both components of the play - a dynamic plot and static “conversational » scenes.

“Our people - we will be numbered!” - an accusatory comedy, a satire on morals. However, in the early 1850s. the playwright came to the idea of ​​the need to abandon criticism of the merchants, from the “accusatory direction.” In his opinion, the outlook on life expressed in the first comedy was “young and too tough.” Now he justifies a different approach: a Russian person should rejoice when he sees himself on stage, and not be sad. “There will be correctors even without us,” Ostrovsky emphasized in one of his letters. - In order to have the right to correct the people without offending them, you need to show them that you know the good in them; This is what I’m doing now, combining the sublime with the comic.” “High,” in his view, are folk ideals, truths acquired by the Russian people over many centuries of spiritual development.

The new concept of creativity brought Ostrovsky closer to the young employees of the Moskvityanin magazine (published by the famous historian M.P. Pogodin). In the works of the writer and critic A.A. Grigoriev, the concept of “soilism”, an influential ideological movement of the 1850s - 1860s, was formed. The basis of “pochvennichestvo” is attention to the spiritual traditions of the Russian people, to traditional forms of life and culture. The merchants were of particular interest to the “young editors” of “Moskvityanin”: after all, this class was always financially independent and did not experience the pernicious influence of serfdom, which the “soil people” considered the tragedy of the Russian people. It was in the merchant environment, in the opinion of the “Muscovites,” that one should look for genuine moral ideals developed by the Russian people, not distorted by slavery, like the serf peasantry, and separation from the people’s “soil,” like the nobility. In the first half of the 1850s. Ostrovsky was strongly influenced by these ideas. New friends, especially A.A. Grigoriev, pushed him to express the “indigenous Russian view” in his plays about the merchants.

In the plays of the “Moscowite” period of creativity - “Don’t Get in Your Sleigh,” “Poverty is not a Vice” and “Don’t Live the Way You Want” - Ostrovsky’s critical attitude towards the merchants did not disappear, but was greatly softened. A new ideological trend emerged: the playwright portrayed the morals of modern merchants as a historically changeable phenomenon, trying to find out what was preserved in this environment from the rich spiritual experience accumulated by the Russian people over the centuries, and what was deformed or disappeared.

One of the peaks of Ostrovsky’s creativity is the comedy “Poverty is not a vice,” the plot of which is based on a family conflict. Gordey Tortsov, an imperious tyrant merchant, the predecessor of Dikiy from Groza, dreams of marrying his daughter Lyuba to African Korshunov, a merchant of a new, “European” formation. But her heart belongs to someone else - the poor clerk Mitya. Gordey's brother, Lyubim Tortsov, helps break up the marriage with Korshunov, and the tyrant father, in a fit of anger, threatens to give his rebellious daughter in marriage to the first person he meets. By a lucky coincidence, it turned out to be Mitya. For Ostrovsky, a successful comedy plot is only an event “shell” that helps to understand the true meaning of what is happening: the clash of folk culture with the “semi-culture” that developed among the merchant class under the influence of fashion “for Europe.” The exponent of merchant false culture in the play is Korshunov, the defender of the patriarchal, “soil” principle - Lyubim Tortsov, the central character of the play.

We love Tortsov, a drunkard who defends moral values, attracts the viewer with his buffoonery and foolishness. The entire course of events in the play depends on him; he helps everyone, including promoting the moral “recovery” of his tyrant brother. Ostrovsky showed him as the most “Russian” of all the characters. He has no pretensions to education, like Gordey, he simply thinks sensibly and acts according to his conscience. From the author’s point of view, this is quite enough to stand out from the merchant environment, to become “our man on the stage.”

The writer himself believed that a noble impulse is capable of revealing simple and clear moral qualities in every person: conscience and kindness. He contrasted the immorality and cruelty of modern society with Russian “patriarchal” morality, therefore the world of plays of the “Muscovite” period, despite Ostrovsky’s usual precision of everyday “instrumentation,” is largely conventional and even utopian. The main achievement of the playwright was his version of the positive folk character. The image of the drunken herald of truth, Lyubim Tortsov, was by no means created according to tired stencils. This is not an illustration for Grigoriev’s articles, but a full-blooded artistic image; it is not for nothing that the role of Lyubim Tortsov attracted actors of many generations.

In the second half of the 1850s. Ostrovsky again and again turns to the theme of the merchants, but his attitude towards this class has changed. He took a step back from the “Muscovite” ideas, returning to sharp criticism of the rigidity of the merchant environment. The vivid image of the tyrant merchant Tit Titych (“Kita Kitych”) Bruskov, whose name has become a household name, was created in the satirical comedy “At Someone Else’s Feast a Hangover” (1856). However, Ostrovsky did not limit himself to “satire on faces.” His generalizations became broader: the play depicts a way of life that fiercely resists everything new. This, according to the critic N.A. Dobrolyubov, is a “dark kingdom” that lives according to its own cruel laws. Hypocritically defending patriarchy, tyrants defend their right to unlimited arbitrariness.

The thematic range of Ostrovsky's plays expanded, and representatives of other classes and social groups came into his field of vision. In the comedy "Profitable Place" (1857), he first turned to one of the favorite themes of Russian comedians - the satirical depiction of bureaucracy, and in the comedy "The Pupil" (1858) he discovered the life of a landowner. In both works, parallels with “merchant” plays are easily visible. Thus, the hero of "A Profitable Place" Zhadov, an exposer of the corruption of officials, is typologically close to the truth-seeker Lyubim Tortsov, and the characters of "The Pupil" - the tyrant landowner Ulanbekova and her victim, the pupil Nadya - resemble the characters of Ostrovsky's early plays and the tragedy "The Thunderstorm" written a year later ": Kabanikha and Katerina.

Summing up the results of the first decade of Ostrovsky’s work, A.A. Grigoriev, who argued with Dobrolyubov’s interpretation of Ostrovsky as an exposer of tyrants and the “dark kingdom,” wrote: “The name for this writer, for such a great writer, despite his shortcomings, is not a satirist, but national poet. The word for clues to his activities is not “tyranny,” but “nationality.” Only this word can be the key to understanding his works. Anything else - more or less narrow, more or less theoretical, arbitrary - restricts the circle of his creativity.”

“The Thunderstorm” (1859), which followed three accusatory comedies, became the pinnacle of Ostrovsky’s pre-reform drama. Turning again to the depiction of the merchants, the writer created the first and only social tragedy in his work.

Ostrovsky's works of the 1860s-1880s. extremely diverse, although in his worldview and aesthetic views there were no such sharp fluctuations as before 1861. Ostrovsky’s dramaturgy amazes with the Shakespearean breadth of problematics and the classical perfection of artistic forms. One can note two main trends that clearly manifested themselves in his plays: the strengthening of the tragic sound of comedy plots traditional for the writer and the growth of the psychological content of conflicts and characters. “Ostrovsky’s Theatre,” declared “outdated” and “conservative” by playwrights of the “new wave” in the 1890s and 1900s, actually developed precisely those trends that became leading in the theater of the early 20th century. It was not at all accidental that, starting with “The Thunderstorm,” Ostrovsky’s everyday and morally descriptive plays were rich in philosophical and psychological symbols. The playwright acutely felt the insufficiency of stage “everyday” realism. Without violating the natural laws of the stage, maintaining the distance between actors and spectators - the basis of the foundations of classical theater, in his best plays he came closer to the philosophical and tragic sound of the novels created in the 1860s-1870s. his contemporaries Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, to the wisdom and organic strength of the artist, of which Shakespeare was a model for him.

Ostrovsky's innovative aspirations are especially noticeable in his satirical comedies and psychological dramas. Four comedies about the life of the post-reform nobility - "Enough Simplicity for Every Wise Man", "Wolves and Sheep", "Mad Money" and "Forest" - are connected by a common theme. The subject of satirical ridicule in them is the uncontrollable thirst for profit, which gripped both the nobles, who had lost their point of support - the forced labor of serfs and “mad money”, and people of a new formation, businessmen, amassing their capital on the ruins of collapsed serfdom.

Comedies create vivid images of “business people” for whom “money has no smell” and wealth becomes the only goal in life. In the play “Every Wise Man Has Enough Simplicity” (1868), such a person appeared as the impoverished nobleman Glumov, who traditionally dreams of receiving an inheritance, a rich bride and a career. His cynicism and business acumen do not contradict the way of life of the old noble bureaucracy: he himself is an ugly product of this environment. Glumov is smart in comparison with those to whom he is forced to bend - Mamaev and Krutitsky, he is not averse to mocking their stupidity and swagger, he is able to see himself from the outside. “I’m smart, angry, envious,” Glumov confesses. He does not seek the truth, but simply benefits from the stupidity of others. Ostrovsky shows a new social phenomenon characteristic of post-reform Russia: it is not the “moderation and accuracy” of the Molchalins that lead to “mad money,” but the caustic mind and talent of the Chatskys.

In the comedy “Mad Money” (1870), Ostrovsky continued his “Moscow chronicle”. Yegor Glumov reappeared in it with his epigrams “for all of Moscow,” as well as a kaleidoscope of satirical Moscow types: socialites who have lived through several fortunes, ladies who are ready to become kept servants of “millionaires,” lovers of free booze, idle talkers and voluptuaries. The playwright created a satirical portrait of a way of life in which honor and integrity are replaced by an unbridled desire for money. Money determines everything: the actions and behavior of the characters, their ideals and psychology. The central character of the play is Lydia Cheboksarova, who puts both her beauty and her love up for sale. She doesn’t care who to be - a wife or a kept woman. The main thing is to choose a thicker money bag: after all, in her opinion, “you can’t live without gold.” Lydia’s corrupt love in “Mad Money” is the same means for obtaining money as Glumov’s mind in the play “Simplicity is enough for every wise man.” But the cynical heroine, who chooses a richer victim, herself finds herself in a stupid position: she marries Vasilkov, seduced by gossip about his gold mines, is deceived by Telyatev, whose fortune is just a myth, does not disdain the caresses of “dad” Kuchumov, knocking him out of money. The only antipode to the “mad money” catchers in the play is the “noble” businessman Vasilkov, who talks about “smart” money, obtained by honest labor, saved and wisely spent. This hero is the new type of “honest” bourgeois guessed by Ostrovsky.

The comedy “The Forest” (1871) is dedicated to the popular in Russian literature of the 1870s. the theme of the extinction of the “noble nests” in which the “last Mohicans” of the old Russian nobility lived.

The image of the “forest” is one of Ostrovsky’s most capacious symbolic images. The forest is not only the background against which events unfold in the estate, located five miles from the district town. This is the object of a deal between the elderly lady Gurmyzhskaya and the merchant Vosmibratov, who is buying up their ancestral lands from impoverished nobles. The forest is a symbol of the spiritual wilderness: the revival of the capitals almost does not reach the forest estate “Penki”; ​​“age-old silence” still reigns here. The psychological meaning of the symbol becomes clear if we correlate the “forest” with the “wilds” of rude feelings and immoral actions of the inhabitants of the “noble forest”, through which nobility, chivalry, and humanity cannot break through. “... - And really, brother Arkady, how did we get into this forest, into this dense damp forest? - says the tragedian Neschastlivtsev at the end of the play, - Why, brother, did we frighten away the owls and eagle owls? Why bother them? Let them live as they want! Everything is fine here, brother, as it should be in the forest. Old women marry high school students, young girls drown themselves from bitter life with their relatives: forest, brother” (D. 5, Rev. IX).

"The Forest" is a satirical comedy. The comedy manifests itself in a variety of plot situations and turns of action. The playwright created, for example, a small but very topical social cartoon: almost Gogolian characters discuss the topic of the activities of zemstvos, popular in post-reform times - the gloomy misanthrope landowner Bodaev, reminiscent of Sobakevich, and Milonov, as beautiful-hearted as Manilov. However, the main object of Ostrovsky’s satire is the life and customs of the “noble forest.” The play uses a proven plot device - the story of the poor pupil Aksyusha, who is oppressed and humiliated by the hypocritical “benefactor” Gurmyzhskaya. She constantly talks about her widowhood and purity, although in fact she is vicious, voluptuous, and vain. The contradictions between Gurmyzhskaya’s claims and the true essence of her character are the source of unexpected comic situations.

In the first act, Gurmyzhskaya puts on a kind of show: to demonstrate her virtue, she invites her neighbors to sign a will. According to Milonov, “Raisa Pavlovna decorates our entire province with the severity of her life; our moral atmosphere, so to speak, is redolent of her virtues.” “We were all afraid of your virtue here,” Bodaev echoes, recalling how they were expecting her arrival at the estate several years ago. In the fifth act, the neighbors learn about the unexpected metamorphosis that occurred with Gurmyzhskaya. A fifty-year-old lady, who languidly spoke of forebodings and imminent death (“if I don’t die today, not tomorrow, at least soon”), announces her decision to marry a dropout high school student, Alexis Bulanov. She considers marriage a self-sacrifice, “in order to arrange the estate and so that it does not fall into the wrong hands.” However, the neighbors do not notice the comedy in the transition from the dying will to the marriage union of “unshakable virtue” with “the tender, young branch of the noble nursery.” “This is a heroic feat! You are a heroine! - Milonov exclaims pathetically, admiring the hypocritical and depraved matron.

Another part of the comedy plot is the story of a thousand rubles. The money went around in a circle, which made it possible to add important touches to the portraits of a variety of people. The merchant Vosmibratov tried to pocket a thousand while paying for the purchased timber. Neschastlivtsev, having reassured and “provoked” the merchant (“honor is endless. And you don’t have it”), prompted him to return the money. Gurmyzhskaya gave a “stray” thousand to Bulanov for a dress, then the tragedian, threatening the hapless youth with a fake pistol, took the money away, intending to spend it on a spree with Arkady Schastlivtsev. In the end, the thousand became Aksyusha’s dowry and... returned to Vosmibratov.

The completely traditional comedic situation of the “shifter” made it possible to contrast the sinister comedy of the inhabitants of the “forest” with a high tragedy. The pathetic “comedian” Neschastlivtsev, Gurmyzhskaya’s nephew, turned out to be a proud romantic who looks at his aunt and her neighbors through the eyes of a noble man, shocked by the cynicism and vulgarity of “owls and owls.” Those who treat him with contempt, considering him a loser and a renegade, behave like bad actors and common buffoons. “Comedians? No, we are artists, noble artists, and you are the comedians,” Neschastlivtsev angrily throws in their faces. - If we love, we love; if we don’t love, we quarrel or fight; If we help, it’s with our last penny. And you? All your life you talk about the good of society, about love for humanity. What did you do? Who did you feed? Who was consoled? You amuse only yourself, you amuse yourself. You are comedians, jesters, not us” (D. 5, Rev. IX).

Ostrovsky contrasts the crude farce played by Gurmyzhsky and Bulanov with the truly tragic perception of the world that Neschastlivtsev represents. In the fifth act, the satirical comedy is transformed: if earlier the tragedian demonstratively behaved with the “clowns” in a buffoonish manner, emphasizing his disdain for them, maliciously ironizing their actions and words, then in the finale of the play the stage, without ceasing to be a space for comedic action, turns into a tragic theater of one actor, who begins his final monologue as a “noble” artist, mistaken for a jester, and ends as a “noble robber” from the drama of F. Schiller - in the famous words of Karl Moor. The quotation from Schiller again speaks of the “forest,” or more precisely, of all the “bloodthirsty inhabitants of the forests.” Their hero would like to “rage against this hellish generation” that he encountered in the noble estate. The quote, not recognized by Neschastlivtsev’s listeners, emphasizes the tragicomic meaning of what is happening. After listening to the monologue, Milonov exclaims: “But excuse me, you can be held accountable for these words!” “Yes, just to the police officer. We are all witnesses,” Bulanov, “born to command,” responds like an echo.

Neschastlivtsev is a romantic hero, there is a lot in him from Don Quixote, the “knight of the sad image.” He expresses himself pompously, theatrically, as if he does not believe in the success of his battle with “windmills.” “Where can you talk to me,” Neschastlivtsev addresses Milonov. “I feel and speak like Schiller, and you like a clerk.” Comically playing on Karl Moor’s just spoken words about “bloodthirsty forest inhabitants,” he reassures Gurmyzhskaya, who refused to give him her hand for a farewell kiss: “I won’t bite, don’t be afraid.” All he can do is get away from people who, in his opinion, are worse than wolves: “Give me a hand, comrade! (Gives his hand to Schastlivtsev and leaves).” Neschastlivtsev’s last words and gesture are symbolic: he offers his hand to his comrade, the “comedian,” and proudly turns away from the inhabitants of the “noble forest” with whom he is not on the same path.

The hero of “The Forest” is one of the first in Russian literature to “break out”, “prodigal children” of his class. Ostrovsky does not idealize Neschastlivtsev, pointing out his everyday shortcomings: he, like Lyubim Tortsov, is not averse to carousing, is prone to trickery, and behaves like an arrogant gentleman. But the main thing is that it is Neschastlivtsev, one of the most beloved heroes of Ostrovsky’s theater, who expresses high moral ideals, completely forgotten by the jesters and Pharisees from the forest estate. His ideas about the honor and dignity of a person are close to the author himself. As if breaking the “mirror” of comedy, Ostrovsky, through the mouth of a provincial tragedian with the sad surname Neschastlivtsev, wanted to remind people of the danger of lies and vulgarity, which easily replace real life.

One of Ostrovsky’s masterpieces, the psychological drama “Dowry” (1878), like many of his works, is a “merchant” play. The leading place in it is occupied by the playwright’s favorite motifs (money, trade, merchant “courage”), traditional types found in almost every of his plays (merchants, a minor official, a girl of marriageable age and her mother, trying to “sell” her daughter at a higher price, a provincial actor ). The intrigue also resembles previously used plot devices: several rivals are fighting for Larisa Ogudalova, each of whom has their own “interest” in the girl.

However, unlike other works, for example the comedy “The Forest”, in which the poor pupil Aksyusha was only a “character of the situation” and did not take an active part in the events, the heroine of “Dowry” is the central character of the play. Larisa Ogudalova is not only a beautiful “thing”, shamelessly put up for auction by her mother Kharita Ignatievna and “bought” by rich merchants of the city of Bryakhimov. She is a richly gifted person, thinking, deeply feeling, understanding the absurdity of her situation, and at the same time a contradictory nature, trying to chase “two birds with one stone”: she wants both high love and a rich, beautiful life. It combines romantic idealism and dreams of bourgeois happiness.

The main difference between Larisa and Katerina Kabanova, with whom she is often compared, is freedom of choice. She herself must make her choice: to become the kept woman of the rich merchant Knurov, a participant in the daring entertainments of the “brilliant master” Paratov, or the wife of a proud nonentity - an official “with ambitions” Karandyshev. The city of Bryakhimov, like Kalinov in “The Thunderstorm,” is also a city “on the high bank of the Volga,” but this is no longer the “dark kingdom” of an evil, tyrant force. Times have changed - the enlightened “new Russians” in Bryakhimov do not marry dowry girls, but buy them. The heroine herself can decide whether or not to participate in the auction. A whole “parade” of suitors passes in front of her. Unlike the unrequited Katerina, Larisa’s opinion is not neglected. In a word, the “last times” that Kabanikha feared so much have arrived: the old “order” has collapsed. Larisa does not need to beg her fiancé Karandyshev, as Katerina begged Boris (“Take me with you from here!”). Karandyshev himself is ready to take her away from the temptations of the city - to the remote Zabolotye, where he wants to become a justice of the peace. The swamp, which her mother imagines as a place where there is nothing but forest, wind and howling wolves, seems to Larisa to be a village idyll, a kind of swampy “paradise”, a “quiet corner”. In the dramatic fate of the heroine, the historical and everyday, the tragedy of unfulfilled love and bourgeois farce, subtle psychological drama and pathetic vaudeville are intertwined. The leading motive of the play is not the power of the environment and circumstances, as in “The Thunderstorm,” but the motive of man’s responsibility for his destiny.

“The Dowry” is, first of all, a drama about love: it was love that became the basis of the plot intrigue and the source of the heroine’s internal contradictions. Love in “Dowry” is a symbolic, multi-valued concept. “I was looking for love and didn’t find it” - this is the bitter conclusion Larisa makes at the end of the play. She means love-sympathy, love-understanding, love-pity. In Larisa’s life, true love was replaced by “love” put up for sale, love as a commodity. The bargaining in the play is precisely because of her. Only those who have more money can buy such “love”. For the “Europeanized” merchants Knurov and Vozhevatov, Larisa’s love is a luxury item that is bought in order to furnish their lives with “European” chic. The pettiness and prudence of these “children” of Dikiy is manifested not in selfless swearing over a penny, but in ugly love bargaining.

Sergei Sergeevich Paratov, the most extravagant and reckless among the merchants depicted in the play, is a parody figure. This is the “merchant Pechorin,” a heartthrob with a penchant for melodramatic effects. He considers his relationship with Larisa Ogudalova a love experiment. “I want to know how soon a woman forgets her passionately loved one: the day after separation from him, a week or a month later,” Paratov franks. Love, in his opinion, is only suitable “for household use.” Paratov’s own “trip to the island of love” with the dowry Larisa was short-lived. She was replaced by noisy carousing with gypsies and marriage to a rich bride, or rather, her dowry - gold mines. “I, Mokiy Parmenych, have nothing cherished; If I find a profit, I’ll sell everything, whatever I want” - this is the life principle of Paratov, the new “hero of our time” with the habits of a broken clerk from a fashion store.

Larisa’s fiancé, the “eccentric” Karandyshev, who became her killer, is a pitiful, comical and at the same time sinister person. It mixes the “colors” of various stage images in an absurd combination. This is a caricature of Othello, a parody of a “noble” robber (at a costume party “he dressed up as a robber, took an ax in his hands and cast brutal glances at everyone, especially Sergei Sergeich”) and at the same time a “philistine among the nobility.” His ideal is a “carriage with music”, a luxurious apartment and dinners. This is an ambitious official who found himself at a riotous merchant feast, where he received an undeserved prize - the beautiful Larisa. The love of Karandyshev, the “spare” groom, is love-vanity, love-protection. For him, Larisa is also a “thing” that he boasts of, presenting it to the whole city. The heroine of the play herself perceives his love as humiliation and an insult: “How disgusting you are to me, if only you knew!... For me, the most serious insult is your patronage; I didn’t receive any other insults from anyone.”

The main feature that appears in Karandyshev’s appearance and behavior is quite “Chekhovian”: it is vulgarity. It is this feature that gives the figure of the official a gloomy, ominous flavor, despite his mediocrity compared to other participants in the love market. Larisa is killed not by the provincial “Othello”, not by the pathetic comedian who easily changes masks, but by the vulgarity embodied in him, which - alas! - became for the heroine the only alternative to love paradise.

Not a single psychological trait in Larisa Ogudalova has reached completion. Her soul is filled with dark, vague impulses and passions that she herself does not fully understand. She is not able to make a choice, accept or curse the world in which she lives. Thinking about suicide, Larisa was never able to throw herself into the Volga, like Katerina. Unlike the tragic heroine of "The Thunderstorm", she is just a participant in a vulgar drama. But the paradox of the play is that it was precisely the vulgarity that killed Larisa that, in the last moments of her life, also made her a tragic heroine, rising above all the characters. No one loved her the way she would like, but she dies with words of forgiveness and love, sending a kiss to the people who almost forced her to renounce the most important thing in her life - love: “You need to live, but I need to live.” ... die. I don’t complain about anyone, I don’t take offense at anyone... you are all good people... I love you all... everyone... ”(Sends a kiss). This last, tragic sigh of the heroine was answered only by a “loud chorus of gypsies,” a symbol of the entire “gypsy” way of life in which she lived.

Alexander Nikolaevich Ostrovsky is a Russian playwright and writer, whose work played an important role in the development of the Russian national theater. He is the author of several famous works, some of which are included in the literature for the school curriculum.

Writer's family

Ostrovsky's father, Nikolai Fedorovich, the son of a priest, served as a lawyer in the capital and lived in Zamoskvorechye. He graduated from the Moscow Theological Seminary, as well as the seminary in Kostroma. His mother was from a rather poor family and died when Ostrovsky was seven years old. In addition to Alexander, three more children were born in the family. When their mother died, a couple of years later their father remarried, and Baroness Emilia Andreevna von Tessin became his chosen one. She further took care of the children, taking upon herself the trouble of raising them and receiving a proper education.

In 1835, Alexander Ostrovsky entered the Moscow gymnasium, and 5 years later he entered the university of the capital to study law. It was during this period of time that he began to experience an increased interest in theatrical productions. Young Ostrovsky often visits the Petrovsky and Maly theaters. His studies are suddenly interrupted by failure to pass an exam and a quarrel with one of the teachers, and he leaves the university of his own free will, after which he gets a job as a scribe in a Moscow court. In 1845 he finds work in a commercial court, in the chancery department. All this time, Ostrovsky is accumulating information for his future literary work.

During his life, the writer was married twice. He lived with his first wife, Agafya, whose last name has not survived to this day, for about 20 years. His children from this marriage, unfortunately, died while still very young. His second wife was Maria Bakhmetyeva, from her he had six children - two daughters and four sons.

Creative activity

The first literary publication, “Waiting for the Groom,” appeared in 1847 in the Moscow City List, describing scenes from the merchant life of those times. Next year, Ostrovsky finishes writing the comedy “Our People - We Will Be Numbered!” It was staged on the theater stage and received considerable success, which served as an incentive for Alexander to finally come to the decision to devote all his energies to drama. Society reacted warmly and with interest to this work, but it also became the reason for persecution by the authorities, due to its too frank satire and oppositional nature. After the first showing, the play was banned from production in theaters, and the writer was under police surveillance for about five years. As a result, in 1859 the play was significantly altered and republished with a completely different ending.

In 1850, the playwright visited a circle of writers, where he received the unspoken title of singer of a civilization untouched by falsehood. Since 1856, he became the author of the Sovremennik magazine. At the same time, Ostrovsky and his colleagues went on an ethnographic expedition, the task of which was to describe the peoples living on the banks of the rivers of Russia, in its European part. Basically, the writer studied the life of the peoples living on the Volga, in connection with which he wrote a large work, “Journey along the Volga from its origins to Nizhny Novgorod,” reflecting in it the main ethnic features of the people from those places, their life and customs.

In 1860, Ostrovsky’s most famous play, “The Thunderstorm,” was released, the action of which takes place precisely on the banks of the Volga. In 1863 he received a prize and honorary membership in the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences.
Ostrovsky died in 1886 and was buried in the village of Nikolo-Berezhki.

• Ostrovsky's conceptual view of theater is the construction of scenes based on convention, using the riches of Russian speech and its competent use in revealing characters;
• The theater school, which Ostrovsky founded, was further developed under the leadership of Stanislavsky and Bulgakov;
• Not all actors responded well to the playwright's innovations. For example, the founder of realism in Russian theatrical art, actor M. S. Shchepkin, left the dress rehearsal of “The Thunderstorm,” which was held under the direction of Ostrovsky.

Alexander Nikolaevich Ostrovsky. Born March 31 (April 12), 1823 - died June 2 (14), 1886. Russian playwright, whose work became the most important stage in the development of the Russian national theater. Corresponding member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences.

Alexander Nikolaevich Ostrovsky was born on March 31 (April 12), 1823 in Moscow on Malaya Ordynka.

His father, Nikolai Fedorovich, was the son of a priest, he himself graduated from the Kostroma Seminary, then the Moscow Theological Academy, but began to practice as a lawyer, dealing with property and commercial matters. He rose to the rank of collegiate assessor, and in 1839 received the nobility.

His mother, Lyubov Ivanovna Savvina, the daughter of a sexton and a breadmaker, died when Alexander was not yet nine years old. The family had four children (four more died in infancy).

Thanks to Nikolai Fedorovich’s position, the family lived in prosperity, and great attention was paid to the education of children who received home education. Five years after the death of his mother, his father married Baroness Emilia Andreevna von Tessin, the daughter of a Swedish nobleman. The children were lucky with their stepmother: she surrounded them with care and continued to educate them.

Ostrovsky spent his childhood and part of his youth in the center of Zamoskvorechye. Thanks to his father's large library, he became acquainted with Russian literature early and felt an inclination towards writing, but his father wanted to make him a lawyer.

In 1835, Ostrovsky entered the third grade of the 1st Moscow Provincial Gymnasium, after which in 1840 he became a student at the Faculty of Law of Moscow University. He failed to complete the university course: without passing the exam in Roman law, Ostrovsky wrote a letter of resignation (he studied until 1843). At the request of his father, Ostrovsky entered the service as a clerk in the Conscientious Court and served in the Moscow courts until 1850; his first salary was 4 rubles a month, after some time it increased to 16 rubles (transferred to the Commercial Court in 1845).

By 1846, Ostrovsky had already written many scenes from the life of a merchant and conceived the comedy “The Insolvent Debtor” (later - “Our People - We Will Be Numbered!”). The first publication was a small play “Picture of Family Life” and an essay “Notes of a Zamoskvoretsky Resident” - they were published in one of the issues of “Moscow City List” in 1847. Professor of Moscow University S.P. Shevyrev, after Ostrovsky read the play at his home on February 14, 1847, solemnly congratulated those gathered on the “appearance of a new dramatic luminary in Russian literature.”

The comedy brought Ostrovsky literary fame “Our people - we will be numbered!”(original title - “The Insolvent Debtor”), published in 1850 in the journal of university professor M.P. Pogodin “Moskvityanin”. Under the text it read: “A. ABOUT." and "D. G.”, that is, Dmitry Gorev-Tarasenkov, a provincial actor who offered Ostrovsky cooperation. This collaboration did not go beyond one scene, and subsequently served as a source of great trouble for Ostrovsky, since it gave his ill-wishers a reason to accuse him of plagiarism (1856). However, the play evoked approving responses from N. V. Gogol and I. A. Goncharov.

The influential Moscow merchants, offended for their class, complained to the “boss”; as a result, the comedy was banned from production, and the author was dismissed from service and placed under police supervision by personal order of Nicholas I. Supervision was lifted after the accession of Alexander II, and the play was allowed to be staged only in 1861.

Ostrovsky’s first play, which was able to reach the theater stage, was “Don’t Get in Your Own Sleigh.”(written in 1852 and staged for the first time in Moscow on the stage of the Bolshoi Theater on January 14, 1853).

Since 1853, for more than 30 years, new plays by Ostrovsky appeared almost every season at the Moscow Maly and St. Petersburg Alexandrinsky theaters. Since 1856, Ostrovsky has become a permanent contributor to the Sovremennik magazine. In the same year, in accordance with the wishes of Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolaevich, a business trip of outstanding writers took place to study and describe various areas of Russia in industrial and domestic relations. Ostrovsky took upon himself the study of the Volga from the upper reaches to Nizhny Novgorod.

In 1859, with the assistance of Count G. A. Kushelev-Bezborodko, the first collected works of Ostrovsky were published in two volumes. Thanks to this publication, Ostrovsky received a brilliant assessment from N. A. Dobrolyubov, which secured his fame as an artist of the “dark kingdom.” In 1860, “The Thunderstorm” appeared in print, to which he dedicated the article “A Ray of Light in the Dark Kingdom.”

From the second half of the 1860s, Ostrovsky took up the history of the Time of Troubles and entered into correspondence with Kostomarov. The fruit of the work was five “historical chronicles in verse”: “Kuzma Zakharyich Minin-Sukhoruk”, “Vasilisa Melentyeva”, “Dmitry the Pretender and Vasily Shuisky”, etc.

In 1863, Ostrovsky was awarded the Uvarov Prize (for the play “The Thunderstorm”) and was elected a corresponding member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences.

In 1866 (according to other sources - in 1865) Ostrovsky founded the Artistic Circle, which later gave many talented figures to the Moscow stage.

I. A. Goncharov, D. V. Grigorovich, I. S. Turgenev, A. F. Pisemsky, F. M. Dostoevsky, I. E. Turchaninov, P. M. Sadovsky, L. P. visited Ostrovsky’s house. Kositskaya-Nikulina, M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, L. N. Tolstoy, P. I. Tchaikovsky, M. N. Ermolova, G. N. Fedotova.

In 1874, the Society of Russian Dramatic Writers and Opera Composers was formed, of which Ostrovsky remained the permanent chairman until his death. Working on the commission “to revise regulations on all parts of theatrical management,” established in 1881 under the directorate of the Imperial Theaters, he achieved many changes that significantly improved the situation of artists.

In 1885, Ostrovsky was appointed head of the repertory department of Moscow theaters and head of the theater school.

Despite the fact that his plays did well at the box office and that in 1883 Emperor Alexander III granted him an annual pension of 3 thousand rubles, financial problems did not leave Ostrovsky until the last days of his life. His health did not meet the plans he had set for himself. The intense work exhausted the body.

On June 2 (14), 1886, on Spiritual Day, Ostrovsky died in his Kostroma estate Shchelykovo. His last work was the translation of “Antony and Cleopatra” by W. Shakespeare, Alexander Nikolaevich’s favorite playwright. The writer was buried next to his father in the church cemetery near the Church of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker in the village of Nikolo-Berezhki, Kostroma province. Alexander III donated 3,000 rubles from the cabinet funds for the funeral; the widow, together with her two children, was given a pension of 3,000 rubles, and 2,400 rubles a year for raising three sons and a daughter. Subsequently, the widow of the writer M. V. Ostrovskaya, actress of the Maly Theater, and the daughter of M. A. Chatelain were in the family necropolis.

After the death of the playwright, the Moscow Duma established a reading room named after A. N. Ostrovsky in Moscow.

Family and personal life of Alexander Ostrovsky:

The younger brother is the statesman M. N. Ostrovsky.

However, even after becoming a widow in 1862, Kositskaya continued to reject Ostrovsky’s feelings, and soon she began a close relationship with the son of a wealthy merchant, who eventually squandered her entire fortune. She wrote to Ostrovsky: “I don’t want to take your love away from anyone.”

The playwright lived in cohabitation with the commoner Agafya Ivanovna, but all their children died at an early age. Having no education, but an intelligent woman with a subtle, easily vulnerable soul, she understood the playwright and was the very first reader and critic of his works. Ostrovsky lived with Agafya Ivanovna for about twenty years, and two years after her death, in 1869, he married actress Maria Vasilievna Bakhmetyeva, who bore him four sons and two daughters.

Plays by Alexander Ostrovsky:

"Family Picture" (1847)
“Our people - we will be numbered” (1849)
"An Unexpected Case" (1850)
"The Morning of a Young Man" (1850)
"Poor Bride" (1851)
“Don’t get into your own sleigh” (1852)
"Poverty is no vice" (1853)
“Don’t live as you want” (1854)
“There is a hangover at someone else’s feast” (1856)
"Profitable Place" (1856)
"A Festive Sleep Before Dinner" (1857)
“They didn’t get along” (1858)
"Nurse" (1859)
"Thunderstorm" (1859)
"An old friend is better than two new ones" (1860)
“Your own dogs squabble, don’t bother someone else’s” (1861)
"The Marriage of Balzaminov" (1861)
“Kozma Zakharyich Minin-Sukhoruk” (1861, 2nd edition 1866)
"Hard Days" (1863)
“Sin and misfortune do not live on anyone” (1863)
"Voevoda" (1864; 2nd edition 1885)
"The Joker" (1864)
"On a Lively Place" (1865)
"The Deep" (1866)
"Dmitry the Pretender and Vasily Shuisky" (1866)
"Tushino" (1866)
“Vasilisa Melentyeva” (co-authored with S. A. Gedeonov) (1867)
“Simplicity is enough for every wise man” (1868)
"Warm Heart" (1869)
"Mad Money" (1870)
"Forest" (1870)
“It’s not all Maslenitsa for the cat” (1871)
“There wasn’t a penny, but suddenly it was Altyn” (1872)
"Comedian of the 17th Century" (1873)
"The Snow Maiden" (1873)
"Late Love" (1874)
"Labor Bread" (1874)
"Wolves and Sheep" (1875)
"Rich Brides" (1876)
“Truth is good, but happiness is better” (1877)
"The Marriage of Belugin" (1877)
"The Last Victim" (1878)
"Dowry" (1878)
"Good Master" (1879)
“Savage” (1879), together with Nikolai Solovyov
"The Heart Is Not a Stone" (1880)
"Slave Girls" (1881)
“It shines, but does not warm” (1881), together with Nikolai Solovyov
“Guilty Without Guilt” (1881-1883)
"Talents and Admirers" (1882)
"Handsome Man" (1883)
"Not of this world" (1885)

Ostrovsky Alexander Nikolaevich (1823-1886). Born in Moscow, he grew up in a merchant environment. Father is a judge. O. himself graduated from high school, did not graduate from the law department of Moscow State University, and after (1843-1851) he served in the army, holding low positions. There are four periods in Ostrovsky’s creative development:

1) First period (1847-1851)- the time of the first literary experiments. Ostrovsky began quite in the spirit of the times - with narrative prose. In his essays on the life and customs of Zamoskvorechye, the debutant relied on Gogol’s traditions and the creative experience of the “natural school” of the 1840s. During these years, the first dramatic works were created, including the comedy “Bankrupt” ("Our people - we'll be numbered!»), which became the main work of the early period. (Published in the magazine “Moskvityanin” in 1850. The story of the merchant Samson Silych Bolshov, who decided to deceive his creditors and declare himself bankrupt, and as a result found himself deceived and sent to debtor’s prison by his unscrupulous daughter Lipochka and her husband, clerk Podkhalyuzin. The play was banned from production , the playwright was placed under police supervision. The work was seen in the world 12 years later (68 years)).

2) Second period (1852-1855) are called “Moskvityanin”, since during these years Ostrovsky became close to the young employees of the Moskvityanin magazine: A.A. Grigoriev, T.I. Filippov, B.N. Almazov and E.N. Edelson. The playwright supported the ideological program of the “young editorial staff”, which sought to make the magazine an organ of a new trend of social thought - "soilism". During this period, only three plays were written: “Don’t get on your own sleigh,” "Poverty is not a vice" and “Don’t live the way you want.”

3) Third period (1856-1860) marked by Ostrovsky's refusal to search for positive principles in the life of the patriarchal merchants (this was typical for plays written in the first half of the 1850s). The playwright, who was sensitive to changes in the social and ideological life of Russia, became close to the figures of the common democracy - the employees of the Sovremennik magazine. The creative outcome of this period was the plays “At Someone Else’s Feast, a Hangover”, “Profitable Place” and “Thunderstorm”,“the most decisive”, as defined by N.A. Dobrolyubov, is Ostrovsky’s work.

4) Fourth period (1861-1886)- the longest period of creative activity. The genre range has expanded, the poetics of his works have become more diverse. Over the course of twenty years, plays have been created that can be divided into several genre and thematic groups: 1) comedies from merchant life (“Maslenitsa is not for everyone”, “The truth is good, but happiness is better”, “The heart is not a stone”), 2) satirical comedy (“Simplicity is enough for every wise man”,“Warm Heart”, “Mad Money”, “Wolves and Sheep”, “Forest”), 3) plays that Ostrovsky himself called “pictures of Moscow life” and “scenes from the life of the outback”: they are united by the theme of “little people” ( “An old friend is better than two new ones”, “Hard Days”, “Jokers” and the trilogy about Balzaminov), 4) historical chronicle plays (“Kozma Zakharyich Minin-Sukhoruk”, “Tushino”, etc.), and finally 5 ) psychological dramas (“Dowry”, “The Last Victim”, etc.). The fairy-tale play “The Snow Maiden” stands apart.

10. "Thunderstorm". Drama or tragedy (TRAGEDY!).

The unity of “Thunderstorm” is not complete (i.e. classicism is violated = this means it’s not a drama):

1. Time is not 24 hours, but 10 days. 2. Places – change constantly. 3. Action – Ekaterina + Feklusha, and not 1 character. In addition, the main character is from a low class, and for classicism, heroes are gods, demigods, kings, etc.

Construction scheme tragedy complied with: 1. The presence of a tragic hero; 2. Hero of the highest class; 3. The presence of a tragic conflict (a conflict that cannot be resolved peacefully = Euripides “God from the Machine”); 4. catharsis (purification of both the hero and the viewer) - occurs in Tikhon, Varvara (runs away with Kudryash), Kulibin (changes).

In "The Thunderstorm" - 2 conflicts - this is INNOVATION IN EUROPEAN LITERATURE.

- External. Katya is a ray of light in the good kingdom; kingdom - personified by Feklusha.

- Internal. Catherine is a believer and she sinned = doomed. BUT! She cannot help but sin, because... 1. she doesn’t love her husband, she doesn’t need him. 2. cannot help but love (stay alone); all this leads her to SUICIDE.

RESULT: TRAGEDY: 1. hero. 2. conflict. 3. catharsis.

11. Life and work of Goncharov.

One novel to choose from: “Oblomov”, “Cliff”, “An Ordinary Story”. Know the essence of his travels.

Ivan Aleksandrovich Goncharov (1812–1891), was born into a merchant family with 4 children. Education in a private boarding school - introduction to the books of Western European and Russian authors, study of French. language. 1823 – Moscow State University, Faculty of Philology.

After university, service in the office of the Simbirsk governor, then moving to St. Petersburg - translator at the Ministry of Finance. Goncharov’s first creative experiments - poetry, anti-romantic story "Dashing pain" and story "Lucky Mistake"– were published in a handwritten journal. In 1842 he wrote essay "Ivan Savich Podzhabrin", published only six years after its creation. In 1847, the novel “Ordinary History” was published in the Sovremennik magazine. The novel is based on the collision of two central characters - Aduev the uncle and Aduev the nephew, personifying sober practicality and enthusiastic idealism. Each of the characters is psychologically close to the writer and represents different projections of his spiritual world. "Ordinary History" received the approval of V. G. Belinsky(in the article “A Look at Russian Literature of 1847”), whose assessment was the subject of special pride for Goncharov throughout his life. The leaders of the democratic trend in literature of that time welcomed the novel for the deep artistic research it contained and a sharp denial of romance in its diverse forms. Aduev writes poetry, but his romanticism is lifeless, which his uncle, Pyotr Ivanovich Aduev, mockingly states. In explaining the reasons why the life of Aduev Jr. turns out to be meaningless and useless, Goncharov anticipates the main idea of ​​the novel "Oblomov". The empty, enthusiastic rantings of the hero appear as a consequence of his lordly upbringing. Goncharov began work on this novel back in the 40s. In 1849 in the almanac "Literary Collection with Illustrations" at the Sovremennik magazine, "Oblomov's Dream" was published. An episode of an unfinished novel." But before G. finishes the novel, many more events will happen. In October 1852 of the year G Oncharov became a participant in a trip around the world on a sailing warship - the frigate "Pallada" - as a secretary to the head of the expedition, Vice Admiral Putyatin. It was equipped to inspect Russian possessions in North America - Alaska, which at that time belonged to Russia, as well as to establish political and trade relations with Japan. Cycle of travel essays “Frigate “Pallada””(1855-1857) - a kind of “writer’s diary” ». During the trip, he kept careful notes, describing in them everything he saw in Europe, Africa and Asia. Records = true portrayal of life. The sailor-traveler is simultaneously in “his” world of the ship and in the “alien” world of geographical space. He returned and entered the service of the St. Petersburg Censorship Committee (provided assistance to Turgenev’s Notes of a Hunter, Pisemsky’s A Thousand Souls, etc.). In 1859, the novel “Oblomov” was published (10 years passed after the chapter was published in the magazine). Immediately Art. Dobrolyubova “What is Oblomovism?”

Goncharov's last novel "Cliff" published in 1869, presents a new version of Oblomovism in the image of the main character - Boris Raisky. Conceived in 1849 as a novel about the complex relationship between the artist and society, but the writer changed his plan: the center of the novel was the fate of revolutionary youth, represented in the image of the “nihilist” Mark Volokhov. The novel "The Precipice" received mixed reviews from critics. Many questioned the author's talent and denied him the right to judge modern youth. Further, Goncharov rarely published.

1871 - literary critical article "A million torments" dedicated to the stage production of Griboedov’s comedy “Woe from Wit”. After “Notes on Belinsky’s personality,” article "Hamlet", feature article "Literary evening" and newspaper feuilletons. The result of Goncharov’s creative activity in the 70s. considered a critical work on his own work entitled " Better late than never". In recent years he lived alone, worked quite a lot, but before his death he burned everything.