The happiness of the priest of Rus' is to live well. Essay Nekrasov N.A. Positive character traits of the hero

Tell about the meeting of the peasants with the priest, the landowner, and Ermil Girin. Find the lines that talk about what each of them includes in the ideal of happiness.

(All of them include “peace”, “wealth”, “honor” in the ideal of happiness. The priest was the first to meet the wanderers. To their question: “How do you live freely and happily, honest father?” - The priest answered first of all with the same question: “In what do you think is happiness?” Questions: what is happiness? What does a person need for happiness? - arise both in the conversation with the landowner and in the story about Ermil Girin. It becomes clear whether the landowner and the peasants have the same meaning in the concept of “happiness”. “honor”. The noble understanding of happiness is:

Wealth, property ownership: You used to be surrounded by

Alone, like the sun in the sky,

Your trees are modest,

Your forests are dense,

Your fields are all around!

General submission: Will you go to the village -

The peasants fall at their feet,

You'll go through the forest dachas -

Centenary trees

The forests will bow down!

…………….

Everything amused the master,

Lovingly every weed

She whispered: “I’m yours!”

Unlimited power over people, no contradictions in anyone,

belonging to him: I will have mercy on whomever I want,

I'll execute whoever I want.

Law is my desire!

The fist is my police!

The blow is sparkling,

The blow is tooth-breaking,

Hit the cheekbone!..

In the story about Ermil Girin, the Honor is enviable, true,

meaning: Not bought with money,

Not with fear: with strict truth,

With intelligence and kindness.

The people are unanimous in their voluntary desire to support Girin in the fight against the merchant Altynnikov, how great is the trust of the peasants in Ermila. This is conveyed with particular force in the scene of a village gathering electing a mayor, when “six thousand souls from the entire estate” shout: “Ermila Girina!”- Like one person! This is a true honor.")

Reflections on the happiness of the priest, the landowner and Ermila make us think that people understand happiness in different ways. The happiness of the priest and the landowner is the happiness of living by someone else's labor. It is to this conclusion that the priest’s reasoning about “oh the priest’s wealth is coming”: “If you don’t take it, there’s nothing to live on,” and Obolt Obolduev’s story about the happiness of the landowner in pre-reform times lead. It is not enough for Ermila to have “peace, money, and honor” - everyone needs to have all this.

Which path does Ermila Girin take to happiness?

(The wanderers ask the peasant talking about Yermil Girin a question:

However, it is advisable to know -

What kind of witchcraft

A man above the whole neighborhood

Did you take that kind of power?

In response they heard: “Not by witchcraft, but by truth.”)

What is the truth of Ermila Girin?

(Where there is enough strength, it will help,

Doesn't ask for gratitude

And if you give it, he won’t take it!

You need a bad conscience -

To the peasant from the peasant

Extort a penny.

In seven years the world's penny

I didn’t squeeze it under my nail,

At the age of seven I didn’t touch the right one,

He did not allow the guilty

I didn’t bend my heart...)

So, truly the answer to the question - who is happy? - puts wanderers before solving other issues:

What is happiness?

How to achieve happiness?

The consciousness of the seven wanderers does not remain unchanged. In what direction is this change going?

(At the beginning of the journey, the wanderers considered only the masters happy and argued only about which of them was happier. The subject of the dispute was comprehended by them only from one side, and, as it turns out later, not its main side.

For now, their idea of ​​happiness is necessarily associated with wealth. The men, without any reservations, agree with the priest’s formula of happiness - “peace, wealth, honor.” They accept his story with complete confidence.)

How did the peasants comprehend the very subject of the dispute in the Prologue, at the beginning of their journey when they met the priest?

(After meeting with the priest, the wanderers find themselves in the rich village of Kuzminskoye, where a cheerful holiday is taking place - a “fair” with a multifaceted, discordant peasant world. The truth-seeking men are born with the desire to look for the happy one among the men. After listening to the stories of the “happy” ones from the crowd, the seven wanderers are rejected limited peasant ideas about happiness, “holey with patches,” “hunchbacked with calluses.”)

What ideas about happiness do the men who argue reject?

(Ermil Girin had everything he needed for happiness, living according to the laws of his native truth. But this was not a guarantee of happiness, but, on the contrary, led to a clash with the forces standing in the country of order. The people's defender does not accept a life built on self-interest and lies, he fights for good and truth, social justice, but intercession for the people during the riot in “the estate of the landowner Obrubkov, the Frightened province, the district of Nedykhanev, the village of Stolbnyaki” ended tragically for Girin. Since then, “he has been sitting in prison.” This hero makes him feel the inseparability of the concepts: “happily” and “at ease,” “happiness” and “will, freedom.”

The meeting of the seven wanderers with the landowner, the remarks of the peasants during his story testify to how deeply alien the ideals of the ruling class are to them. The conversation between the men and Obolt-Obolduev is perceived as a clash of irreconcilable points of view. Replies from the peasants accompanying the story of Obolt-Obolduev, starting with the naive and simple-minded:

Forests were not ordered for us -

We saw all sorts of trees!

ending with socially acute:

Bone white, bone black,

And look, they’re so different, -

They are treated differently and honored!

And you thought to yourself:

“You knocked them down with a stake, didn’t you?

Praying in the manor's house?..

Yes, it was for you, landowners,

Life is so enviable

No need to die! -

reveal the hostility of the people to the masters and the masters to the people, open the abyss that exists between them).

After meeting with the landowner, the men who argued come to the village of Vakhlaki. Here, to Uncle Vlas’s question: “What are you bothering about?” - they answered like this:

...We are looking, Uncle Vlas,

Unflogged province,

Ungutted parish,

Izbytkova village!..)

When did the wanderers redefine the purpose of their search? What causes this?

Who else is involved in the search for an answer to the question of happiness?

(In the new definition of the purpose of wandering, we are talking about people’s happiness. The idea of ​​radical transformations, the creation of living conditions that are completely different from the old ones that they have known until now, sounds with particular force.

In search of the happy, in the discussion of the question - who is happy? - Literally the entire people are gradually joining in. Not only the wanderers, the peasant Fedosey, the gray-haired priest, Matryona Timofeevna, but also “the rumor of the people gives the business, started by seven men who argued, a nationwide scope. Popular rumors glorified the happy Ermil Girin, grandfather Savely, Matryona Timofeevna.)

What result do they arrive at? Is wealth really happiness? What is it, people's happiness?

(Stories about their lives convince us that in the people’s idea of ​​happiness, the main thing is not wealth. The people’s ideal of happiness presupposes philanthropy, compassion, brotherhood, goodness, honor, truth and freedom. The false ideal of happiness is rejected: whoever is richest is the happiest of all, - brought up in a class society, where everything comes down to satiety, material wealth, life for oneself.)

What are the features of people's idea of ​​happiness? What are the necessary conditions for the happiness of a people?

(People's happiness turns out to be organically connected with the question of ways to achieve it.

The question of happiness is transferred from an ethical to a social plane and acquires an acute political resonance. The search for happiness made the peasants think about the impossibility of happiness without changes in the living conditions of the people and confronted them with the question - what to do to make happiness possible?).

These are the new conclusions that the wanderers - truth-seekers have come to, testify to the growth of self-awareness of the peasantry. The dispute that arose in the “Prologue” continues in all chapters and parts of the poem, all the time drawing the reader’s attention to the processes that are taking place in the life of the Russian people after the reform.

The question of happiness is central to the poem. It is this question that drives seven wanderers around Russia and forces them, one after another, to sort out the “candidates” for the happy ones. In the ancient Russian book tradition, the genre of travel, pilgrimage to the Holy Land was well known, which, in addition to visiting “holy places,” had a symbolic meaning and meant the pilgrim’s internal ascent to spiritual perfection. Behind the visible movement was hidden a secret, invisible - towards God.

Gogol was guided by this tradition in the poem “Dead Souls”; its presence is also felt in Nekrasov’s poem. The men never find happiness, but they get another, unexpected spiritual result.

“Peace, wealth, honor” is the formula of happiness proposed to the wanderers by their first interlocutor, the priest. The priest easily convinces the men that there is neither one nor the other, nor the third in his life, but at the same time he does not offer them anything in return, without even mentioning other forms of happiness. It turns out that happiness is exhausted by peace, wealth and honor in his own ideas.

The turning point in the men’s journey is a visit to a rural fair. Here the wanderers suddenly understand that true happiness cannot consist either in a wonderful turnip harvest, or in heroic physical strength, or in the bread that one of the “happy” eats to the full, or even in a saved life - the soldier boasts that he came out alive from many battles, and a man going to bear - that he outlived many of his fellow craftsmen. But none of the “happy” people can convince them that they are truly happy. The seven wanderers gradually realize that happiness is not a material category, not related to earthly well-being or even earthly existence. The story of the next “lucky” one, Ermila Girin, finally convinces them of this.

Wanderers are told the story of his life in detail. Whatever position Ermil Girin finds himself in - clerk, mayor, miller - he invariably lives in the interests of the people, remains honest and fair to the common people. According to those who remembered him, this, apparently, was what his happiness should have consisted of - in selfless service to the peasants. But at the end of the story about Girin, it turns out that he is unlikely to be happy, because he is now sitting in prison, where he ended up (apparently) because he did not want to take part in pacifying the popular revolt. Girin turns out to be the harbinger of Grisha Dobrosklonov, who will also one day end up in Siberia for his love for the people, but it is this love that constitutes the main joy of his life.

After the fair, the wanderers meet Obolt-Obolduev. The landowner, like the priest, also speaks of peace, wealth, and honor (“honor”). Only one more important component is added by Obolt-Obolduev to the priest’s formula - for him, happiness also lies in power over his serfs.

“Whoever I want, I will have mercy, / Whoever I want, I will execute,” Obolt-Obolduev dreamily recalls about past times. The men were late, he was happy, but in his former, irretrievably gone life.

Then the wanderers forget about their own list of happy ones: landowner - official - priest - noble boyar - minister of the sovereign - tsar. Only two from this long list are inextricably linked with the life of the people - the landowner and the priest, but they have already been interviewed; an official, a boyar, especially a tsar, would hardly add anything significant to a poem about the Russian people, a Russian plowman, and therefore neither the author nor the wanderers ever turn to them. A peasant woman is a completely different matter.

Matryona Timofeevna Korchagina opens to readers another page of the story about the Russian peasantry dripping with tears and blood; she tells the men about the suffering she suffered, about the “spiritual storm” that invisibly “passed” through her. All her life, Matryona Timofeevna felt squeezed in the clutches of other people's, unkind wills and desires - she was forced to obey her mother-in-law, father-in-law, daughters-in-law, her own master, and unfair orders, according to which her husband was almost taken as a soldier. Her definition of happiness, which she once heard from a wanderer in a “woman’s parable,” is also connected with this.

The keys to women's happiness,
From our free will,
Abandoned, lost
From God himself!

Happiness is equated here with “free will”, that’s what it turns out to be - in “free will”, that is, in freedom.

In the chapter “A Feast for the Whole World,” the wanderers echo Matryona Timofeevna: when asked what they are looking for, the men no longer remember the interest that pushed them on the road. They say:

We are looking, Uncle Vlas,
Unflogged province,
Ungutted parish,
Izbytkova sat down.

“Not flogged”, “not gutted”, that is, free. Excess, or contentment, material well-being are placed in last place here. The men have already come to the understanding that excess is just the result of “free will.” Let us not forget that external freedom by the time the poem was created had already entered peasant life, the bonds of serfdom had disintegrated, and provinces that had never been “flogged” were about to appear. But the habits of slavery are too ingrained in the Russian peasantry - and not only in the courtyard people, whose ineradicable servility has already been discussed. Look how easily the former serfs of the Last One agree to play a comedy and again pretend to be slaves - the role is too familiar, habitual and... convenient. They have yet to learn the role of free, independent people.

The peasants mock the Last One, not noticing that they have fallen into a new dependence - on the whims of his heirs. This slavery is already voluntary - all the more terrible it is. And Nekrasov gives the reader a clear indication that the game is not as harmless as it seems - Agap Petrov, who is forced to scream allegedly under the rods, suddenly dies. The men who portrayed the “punishment” did not even touch it with a finger, but invisible reasons turn out to be more significant and destructive than visible ones. Proud Agap, the only one of the men who objected to the new “collar,” cannot stand his own shame.

Perhaps the wanderers do not find happy people among the common people also because the people are not yet ready to be happy (that is, according to Nekrasov’s system, completely free). The happy one in the poem is not the peasant, but the sexton’s son, seminarian Grisha Dobrosklonov. A hero who understands well the spiritual aspect of happiness.

Grisha experiences happiness by composing a song about Rus', finding the right words about his homeland and people. And this is not only creative delight, it is the joy of insight into one’s own future. In Grisha’s new song, not cited by Nekrasov, the “embodiment of people’s happiness” is glorified. And Grisha understands that it will be he who will help the people “embody” this happiness.

Fate had in store for him
The path is glorious, the name is loud

People's Defender,
Consumption and Siberia.

Grisha is followed by several prototypes at once, his surname is a clear allusion to the surname of Dobrolyubov, his fate includes the main milestones of the path of Belinsky, Dobrolyubov (both died of consumption), Chernyshevsky (Siberia). Like Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov, Grisha also comes from a spiritual environment. In Grisha one can also discern the autobiographical traits of Nekrasov himself. He is a poet, and Nekrasov easily conveys his lyre to the hero; Through Grisha’s youthful tenor, Nikolai Alekseevich’s dull voice clearly sounds: the style of Grisha’s songs exactly reproduces the style of Nekrasov’s poems. Grisha is just not Nekrasov-like cheerful.

He is happy, but wanderers are not destined to know about this; the feelings overwhelming Grisha are simply inaccessible to them, which means their path will continue. If we, following the author’s notes, move the chapter “Peasant Woman” to the end of the poem, the ending will not be so optimistic, but deeper.

In “Elegy,” one of his most “soulful,” by his own definition, poems, Nekrasov wrote: “The people are liberated, but are the people happy?” The author’s doubts also appear in “The Peasant Woman.” Matryona Timofeevna does not even mention the reform in her story - is it because her life changed little even after her liberation, that there was no more “free spirit” in her?

The poem remained unfinished, and the question of happiness open. Nevertheless, we caught the “dynamics” of the men’s journey. From earthly ideas about happiness, they move to the understanding that happiness is a spiritual category and to achieve it, changes are necessary not only in the social, but also in the spiritual structure of every peasant.

The first chapter tells about a meeting between truth-seekers and a priest. What is its ideological and artistic meaning? Expecting to find someone happy “at the top,” men are primarily guided by the opinion that the basis of every person’s happiness is “wealth,” and as long as they encounter “craftsmen, beggars, / Soldiers, coachmen” and “their brother, a peasant-basket-maker,” neither thoughts ask

How is it for them - is it easy or difficult?

Lives in Rus'?

It’s clear: “What happiness is there?”

And the picture of a cold spring with poor shoots in the fields, and the sad view of Russian villages, and the background with the participation of a poor, tormented people - all inspires wanderers and the reader with disturbing thoughts about the people’s fate, thereby preparing them internally for a meeting with the first “lucky one” - the priest. The priest's happiness in Luke's view is depicted as follows:

The priests live like princes...

Raspberries are not life!

Popova porridge - with butter,

Popov pie - with filling,

Popov's cabbage soup - with smelt!

etc.

And when the men ask the priest whether the priest’s life is sweet, and when they agree with the priest that the prerequisites for happiness are “peace, wealth, honor,” it seems that the priest’s confession will follow the path outlined by Luke’s colorful sketch. But Nekrasov gives the movement of the main idea of ​​the poem an unexpected turn. The priest took the peasants' issue very seriously. Before telling them the “truth, the truth,” he “looked down, thought,” and began to talk not at all about “porridge with butter.”

In the chapter “Pop,” the problem of happiness is revealed not only in a social sense (“Is the life of a priest sweet?”), but also in a moral and psychological sense (“How are you living at ease, happily / Are you living, honest father?”). Answering the second question, the priest in his confession is forced to talk about what he sees as the true happiness of a person. The narration in connection with the priest's story acquires a high teaching pathos.

The truth-seekers met not a high-ranking shepherd, but an ordinary rural priest. The lower rural clergy in the 60s constituted the largest layer of the Russian intelligentsia. As a rule, rural priests knew well the life of the common people. Of course, this lower clergy was not homogeneous: there were cynics, drunkards, and money-grubbers, but there were also those who were close to the needs of the peasants and understood their aspirations. Among the rural clergy there were people who were in opposition to the higher church circles and to the civil authorities. We must not forget that a significant part of the democratic intelligentsia of the 60s came from among the rural clergy.

The image of the priest encountered by the wanderers is not without its own kind of tragedy. This is the type of person characteristic of the 60s, an era of historical rupture, when the feeling of the catastrophic nature of modern life either pushed honest and thoughtful people of the mainstream onto the path of struggle, or drove them into a dead end of pessimism and hopelessness. The priest drawn by Nekrasov is one of those humane and moral people who live an intense spiritual life, observe with anxiety and pain the general ill-being, painfully and truthfully striving to determine their place in life. For such a person, happiness is impossible without peace of mind, satisfaction with oneself, with one’s life. There is no peace in the life of the “examined” priest, not only because

Sick, dying,

Born into the world

They don't choose time

and the priest must go wherever he is called at any time. Much heavier than physical fatigue is moral torment: “the soul is tired, it hurts” to look at human suffering, at the grief of a poor, orphaned, family that has lost its breadwinner. The priest remembers with pain those moments when

The old woman, the mother of the dead man,

Look, he's reaching out with the bony one

Calloused hand.

The soul will turn over,

How they jingle in this little hand

Two copper coins!

Painting before his listeners a stunning picture of popular poverty and suffering, the priest not only denies the possibility of his own personal happiness in an atmosphere of nationwide grief, but instills an idea that, using Nekrasov’s later poetic formula, can be expressed in words:

Happiness of noble minds

See contentment around.

The priest of the first chapter is not indifferent to the people's fate, and he is not indifferent to the people's opinion. What kind of respect do people have for the priest?

Who do you call

Foal breed?

...Who are you writing about?

You are joker fairy tales

And the songs are obscene

And all sorts of blasphemy?..

These direct questions from the priest to the wanderers reveal the disrespectful attitude towards the clergy found among the peasants. And although the truth-seeking men are embarrassed in front of the priest standing next to him for the popular opinion that is so offensive to him (the wanderers “groan, shift,” “look down, remain silent”), they do not deny the prevalence of this opinion. The well-known validity of the hostile and ironic attitude of the people towards the clergy is proven by the priest’s story about the sources of the priest’s “wealth”. Where is it from? Bribes, handouts from landowners, but the main source of priestly income is collecting the last pennies from the people (“Live from the peasants alone”). The priest understands that “the peasant himself is in need,” that

With so much work for pennies

Life is hard.

He cannot forget these copper nickels that jingled in the old woman’s hand, but even he, honest and conscientious, takes them, these pennies of labor, because “if you don’t take it, you have nothing to live on.” The confession story of the priest is structured as a judgment on the life of the class to which he himself belongs, a judgment on the life of his “spiritual brethren”, on his own life, for collecting people’s pennies is a source of eternal pain for him.

As a result of a conversation with the priest, truth-seekers begin to understand that “man does not live by bread alone,” that “porridge with butter” is not enough for happiness if you have it alone, that it is hard for an honest person to live on his own, and those who live on someone else’s labor, deceit, are worthy only of condemnation and contempt. Happiness based on untruth is not happiness - this is the conclusion of the wanderers.

Well, here's what you've praised,

Popov's life -

They attack “with selective strong abuse / On poor Luka.”

Consciousness of the inner rightness of one’s life is a prerequisite for a person’s happiness, the poet teaches the contemporary reader.

Topic: - The problem of happiness in the poem by N. A. Nekrasov “Who Lives Well in Rus'”

After the reform of 1861, many were concerned with such questions as whether the life of the people had changed for the better, had they become happy? The answer to these questions was Nekrasov’s poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'.” Nekrasov devoted 14 years of his life to this poem; he began work on it in 1863, but it was interrupted by his death.
The main problem of the poem is the problem of happiness, and Nekrasov saw its solution in the revolutionary struggle.
After the abolition of serfdom, many seekers of national happiness appeared. One of these are the seven wanderers. They left the villages: Zaplatova, Dyryavina, Razutova, Znobishina, Gorelova, Neelova, Neurozhaika in search of a happy person. Each of them knows that none of the common people can be happy. And what kind of happiness does a simple man have? Okay, priest, landowner or prince. But for these people, happiness lies in living well, and not caring about others.
The priest sees his happiness in wealth, peace, honor. He claims that it is in vain that wanderers consider him happy; he has neither wealth, nor peace, nor honor:
...Go - wherever you are called!
...Laws, formerly strict
They softened towards the schismatics.
And with them the priest
The income has come.
The landowner sees his happiness in unlimited power over the peasant. Utyatin is happy that everyone obeys him. None of them care about the people's happiness; they regret that they now have less power over the peasant than before.
For the common people, happiness lies in having a fruitful year, so that everyone is healthy and well-fed; they don’t even think about wealth. The soldier considers himself lucky because he was in twenty battles and survived. The old woman is happy in her own way: she gave birth to up to a thousand turnips on a small ridge. For a Belarusian peasant, happiness is in a piece of bread:
...Gubonin has his fill
They give you rye bread,
I'm chewing - I won't get chewed!
The wanderers listen to these peasants with bitterness, but mercilessly drive away their beloved slave, Prince Peremetyev, who is happy because he is suffering from a “noble disease” - gout, happy because:
With the best French truffle
I licked the plates
Foreign drinks
I drank from the glasses...
After listening to everyone, they decided that it was in vain that they had spilled the vodka. Happiness is a man's:
Leaky with patches,
Humpbacked with calluses...
Men's happiness consists of misfortunes, and they boast about it.
Among the people there are people like Ermil Girin. His happiness lies in helping the people. In his entire life, he never took an extra penny from a man. He is respected, loved by the simple
men for honesty, kindness, for not being indifferent to men’s grief. Grandfather Savely is happy that he has retained human dignity, Ermil Girin and grandfather Savely are worthy of respect.
In my opinion, happiness is when you are ready to do anything for the happiness of others. This is how the image of Grisha Dobrosklonov appears in the poem, for whom the happiness of the people is his own happiness:
I don't need any silver
No gold, but God willing,
So that my fellow countrymen
And every peasant
Life was free and fun
All over holy Rus'!
Love for his poor, sick mother grows in Grisha's soul into love for his Motherland - Russia. At the age of fifteen, he decided for himself what he would do all his life, for whom he would live, what he would achieve.
In his poem, Nekrasov showed that the people are still far from happiness, but there are people who will always strive for it and achieve it, since their happiness is happiness for everyone.

The poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'” is the central work of N.A. Nekrasova. This is a monumental lyrical-epic creation, covering an entire historical period in the life of the Russian people.

One of the central problems of the poem is the problem of understanding happiness: the characters are looking everywhere for a happy person, trying to understand “who lives happily and freely in Rus'.” This question is complex and multifaceted for Nekrasov, considered from various points of view - social, political, moral, philosophical, religious.

In the prologue to the poem, the wandering men line up a whole series of happy, in their opinion, people: an official, a merchant, a landowner, a priest, a tsar... The author treats with irony the very essence of this dispute: “A man is like a bull: if you get some kind of whim in your head - stake it you can’t get it out of there...” He also disagrees with the men about the correctness of the system of well-being they have built, believing that the happiness of these people is limited and comes down to material security.

The formula for such happiness is called by the “priest” despised by the poet: “peace, wealth, honor.” The men agree with him due to their lack of education, naive

Innocence. It is this character who, with his story about a “happy life,” brings discord into the way of thinking of the wanderers and changes the nature of their behavior: from the role of abstractly arguing contemplatives of life, they move on to the role of its direct participants.

We find the most striking manifestation of this in the chapter “Rural Fair”, which depicts the discord of the multilingual, riotous, drunken folk “sea”. Here there is a dialogue between wanderers and the entire peasant “world”, which is involved in a dispute about happiness. In this part of the poem there is a sharp turn of the wandering men towards the life of the people.

What is happiness in the minds of the people? Are there happy people in this environment? The questions posed are revealed by the author in the chapter “Happy”. In which, on their own initiative, “lucky” people from the lower classes approach the wanderers. Before us appear generalized but limited pictures of the happiness of the peasant (“up to a thousand turnips on a small ridge”), the soldier (“... in twenty battles I was, and not killed!”), the worker (“to beat crushed stones a day for five silver”). , serf (“I was Prince Peremetyev’s favorite slave”). However, the outcome of this conversation is unacceptable neither for the author nor for his meticulous heroes, causing their common irony: “Hey, peasant happiness! Leaky with patches, hunchbacked with calluses, go home!”

However, the finale of this part of Nekrasov’s work contains a truly serious and deep story about a happy man - Ermil Girin, which marks a higher level of popular ideas about happiness. “Not a prince, not an illustrious count, but just a man!” - in terms of his authority and influence on peasant life, this man turns out to be stronger than the prince and the count. And this strength lies in the trust of the people’s “world” and in Yermil’s reliance on this “world”. This is clearly manifested in his litigation with Altynnikov for the mill.

Girin is endowed with a sense of Christian conscience and honor that is invaluable in its universal significance - this is where his happiness lies, in the author’s understanding. Ermil Girin’s conscientiousness, according to the poet, is not exceptional - it expresses one of the most characteristic features of the Russian peasant community, and this character is one of the best representatives of his people.

Thus, Yermil refutes the wanderers’ initial idea of ​​the essence of human happiness. It would seem that he had everything necessary for a happy life according to the proposed formula: peace, wealth, and respect. However, he sacrifices these benefits for the sake of the people's truth and ends up in prison, thereby preserving his honor and Christian conscience. This is one of the most striking examples of understanding true happiness in Nekrasov’s work.

Gradually, as events change and new heroes appear, a generalized, collective image of a happy person takes shape in the poem. Nekrasov’s fighter for the people’s interests turns out to be such a lucky man. As if in response to the growth of national self-awareness, the songs of Grisha Dobrosklonov, a Russian intellectual, a true ascetic, for whom “fate was preparing... consumption and Siberia” begin to sound louder and louder from the diverse chorus of peasant voices. The image of a person who sees the possibility of achieving “people's happiness” as a result of a general and active struggle for an “uneviscerated province” is cross-cutting throughout Nekrasov’s work. This village of Izbytkovo, according to the author’s plan, is now being sought by spiritually grown wanderers who have long forgotten about the original purpose of their journey.

Thus, Nekrasov’s wanderers act as a symbol of a post-reform people’s Russia that has set off, thirsting for change for a better life. However, the poem does not contrast the happiness of the “upper” and “lower”; it leads the reader to the idea of ​​​​the embodiment of universal happiness - “a feast for the whole world.”