On February 19, 1861, a long-awaited reform took place in Russia - the abolition of serfdom, which immediately shook up the entire society and caused a wave of new problems, the main of which can be expressed in a line from Nekrasov’s poem: “The people are liberated, but are the people happy?..”. Singer folk life, Nekrasov did not stand aside this time either - in 1863, his poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'” began to be created, telling about life in post-reform Rus'. The work is considered the pinnacle of the writer’s work and to this day enjoys the well-deserved love of readers. At the same time, despite its seemingly simple and stylized fairy-tale plot, it is very difficult to understand. Therefore, we will analyze the poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'” in order to better understand its meaning and problems.

History of creation

Nekrasov created the poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'” from 1863 to 1877, and individual ideas, according to contemporaries, arose from the poet back in the 1850s. Nekrasov wanted to present in one work everything that, as he said, “I know about the people, everything that I happened to hear from their lips,” accumulated “by word” over 20 years of his life. Unfortunately, due to the death of the author, the poem remained unfinished; only four parts of the poem and a prologue were published.

After the death of the author, the publishers of the poem were faced with the difficult task of determining in what sequence to publish the disparate parts of the work, because Nekrasov did not have time to combine them into one whole. The problem was solved by K. Chukovsky, who, relying on the writer’s archives, decided to print the parts in the order in which they are known to the modern reader: “The Last One,” “The Peasant Woman,” “A Feast for the Whole World.”

Genre of the work, composition

There are many different genre definitions of “Who Lives Well in Rus'” - they talk about it as a “travel poem”, “Russian Odyssey”, even such a confusing definition is known as “the protocol of a kind of all-Russian peasant congress, an unsurpassed transcript of the debate on the acute political issue" However, there is also the author’s definition of the genre, which most critics agree with: epic poem. An epic involves depicting the life of an entire people at some decisive moment in history, be it a war or other social upheaval. The author describes what is happening through the eyes of the people and often turns to folklore as a means of showing the people's vision of the problem. An epic, as a rule, does not have one hero - there are many heroes, and they play more of a connecting role than a plot-forming role. The poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'” fits all these criteria and can safely be called an epic.

Theme and idea of ​​the work, characters, issues

The plot of the poem is simple: “on a pillared path” seven men meet and argue about who has the best life in Rus'. To find out, they go on a journey. In this regard, the theme of the work can be defined as a large-scale narrative about the life of peasants in Russia. Nekrasov covered almost all spheres of life - during his travels the men would become acquainted with different people: priest, landowner, beggars, drunkards, merchants, the cycle of human destinies will pass before their eyes - from a wounded soldier to a once all-powerful prince. The fair, the prison, hard work for the master, death and birth, holidays, weddings, auctions and elections of the burgomaster - nothing was hidden from stare writer.

The question of who should be considered the main character of the poem is ambiguous. On the one hand, formally it has seven main characters - men wandering in search of happy person. The image of Grisha Dobrosklonov also stands out, in whose person the author portrays the future people's savior and educator. But besides this, the image of the people as the image of the main character of the work is clearly visible in the poem. The people appear as a single whole in scenes of the fair, mass celebrations (“Drunken Night”, “Feast for the Whole World”), and haymaking. The whole world makes various decisions - from the help of Yermil to the election of the burgomaster, even a sigh of relief after the death of the landowner escapes from everyone at the same time. The seven men are not individualized either - they are described as briefly as possible, do not have their own individual traits and characters, pursue the same goal and even speak, as a rule, all together. The secondary characters (the serf Yakov, the village headman, Savely) are described by the author in much more detail, which allows us to talk about the special creation of a conventionally allegorical image of the people with the help of seven wanderers.

The lives of the people are, in one way or another, affected by all the problems raised by Nekrasov in the poem. This is the problem of happiness, the problem of drunkenness and moral degradation, sin, the relationship between the old and new way of life, freedom and lack of freedom, rebellion and patience, as well as the problem of the Russian woman, characteristic of many of the poet’s works. The problem of happiness in the poem is fundamental, and is understood differently by different characters. For the priest, the landowner and other characters endowed with power, happiness is represented in the form of personal well-being, “honor and wealth.” A man's happiness consists of various misfortunes - a bear tried to kill him, but could not, they beat him in the service, but did not kill him to death... But there are also characters for whom there is no personal happiness separate from the happiness of the people. This is Yermil Girin, the honest burgomaster, and this is the seminarian Grisha Dobrosklonov who appears in the last chapter. In his soul, love for his poor mother outgrew and merged with love for his equally poor homeland, for the happiness and enlightenment of which Grisha plans to live.

From Grisha’s understanding of happiness arises the main idea of ​​the work: true happiness is possible only for those who do not think about themselves, and are ready to spend their whole life for the happiness of everyone. The call to love your people as they are and to fight for their happiness, without remaining indifferent to their problems, sounds clearly throughout the poem, and finds its final embodiment in the image of Grisha.

Artistic media

An analysis of Nekrasov’s “Who Lives Well in Rus'” cannot be considered complete without considering the means of artistic expression used in the poem. Basically, this is the use of oral folk art - simultaneously both as an object of depiction, to create a more reliable picture of peasant life, and as an object of study (for the future people's intercessor, Grisha Dobrosklonov).

Folklore is introduced into the text either directly, as stylization: stylization of the prologue as a fairy-tale beginning (the mythological number seven, a self-assembled tablecloth and other details eloquently speak about this), or indirectly - quotes from folk songs, references to various folklore subjects (most often to epics).

The speech of the poem itself is stylized as a folk song. Let's pay attention to large number dialectisms, diminutive suffixes, numerous repetitions and the use of stable constructions in descriptions. Thanks to this, “Who Lives Well in Rus'” can be perceived as folk art, and this is not accidental. In the 1860s, an increased interest in folk art arose. The study of folklore was perceived not only as scientific activity, but also as an open dialogue between the intelligentsia and the people, which, of course, was close to Nekrasov in ideological terms.

Conclusion

So, having examined Nekrasov’s work “Who Lives Well in Rus',” we can confidently conclude that, despite the fact that it remained unfinished, it is still of enormous literary value. The poem remains relevant to this day and can arouse interest not only among researchers, but also among ordinary readers interested in the history of problems of Russian life. “Who Lives Well in Rus'” has been repeatedly interpreted in other forms of art - in the form of a stage production, various illustrations (Sokolov, Gerasimov, Shcherbakova), as well as a popular print on this subject.

Work test

The poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'” is the pinnacle work of N.A.’s creativity. Nekrasova. He nurtured the idea of ​​this work for a long time, working on the text of the poem for fourteen years (from 1863 to 1877). In criticism, it is customary to define the genre of a work as an epic poem. This work is not finished, however, despite the incompleteness of the plot, it embodies deep social meaning.

The poem consists of four chapters, united by a plot about how the men argued: who is happy in Rus'. Among possible options The search for the happy ones were: landowner, official, priest, merchant, boyar, minister and the tsar himself. However, the men refused to meet with some categories of “lucky” people, since in fact they (like the author) were interested in the question of people’s happiness. The location of the last three parts also remains not fully clarified in the author’s instructions.

The plot of the poem is in the form of a journey. Such a construction helps to include various paintings. Already in the Prologue, the writer’s subtle irony about Russian reality is heard, expressed in the “telling” names of the villages (“Zaplatova, Dyryavina, Razutova, Znobishina, Gorelova, Neelova, Neurozhaika, etc.”).

The poem has strong conversational intonations. Its text is filled with dialogues, rhetorical questions and exclamations, anaphoric repetitions (“In what year - calculate, In what land - guess”, “How the red sun set, How the evening came...”), repetitions within lines (“Oh, shadows ! Shadows are black!"). The small landscape sketches presented in the poem are also made as stylizations of folklore: “The night has long since passed, The frequent stars have lit up high heavens. The moon has surfaced, black shadows have cut the road to Zealous walkers.” Numerous inversions, constant epithets, personifications, mention of images from Russian folk tales (“Well! The goblin played a nice joke on us!”) and even riddles (“Without a body, but it lives, Without a tongue, it screams!” (echo)) - all these artistic details also give the poem a folkloric flavor.

N.A. Nekrasov needs this artistic effect in order to emphasize that the main character of the work is the people. It is no coincidence that there are so many Russian folk names in the novel.

Men's dreams of happiness are simple, their requirements for the joys of life are real and ordinary: bread, vodka, cucumbers, kvass and hot tea.

In search of happiness, men turn to the bird: “Oh, you little birdie! Give us your wings, We’ll fly around the whole kingdom, We’ll look, we’ll explore, We’ll ask and we’ll find out: Who lives happily, at ease in Rus'?” This also shows adherence to the folk poetic tradition. In ancient times, the ability of birds to fly and be transported over long distances was regarded as having supernatural powers and a special closeness to God. In this regard, the men’s request to the bird to borrow its wings emphasizes the symbolic level of perception of the topic: is the kingdom organized fairly? The traditions of the folk tale are embodied in the poem by the image of a self-assembled tablecloth: “Hey, self-assembled tablecloth! Treat the men!

According to your desire, according to your command, everything will appear immediately.” The image of the road in the poem emphasizes the vast expanses of Russia, which once again emphasizes the immense expanses of Russia, which once again indicates the importance of the question raised by the author: how do the inhabitants of a huge, endowed natural resources countries?

Another genre of Russian folklore, to which N.A. Nekrasov addresses in the poem, there is a conspiracy: “You, I see, are a wise bird, Respect - cast a spell on us with old clothes!” Thus, the work also emphasizes the spiritual potential of the people, the bizarre interweaving of Christian and pagan principles in their worldview. The fairy-tale form helps the author to somewhat veil the severity of the things he understands. social problems. According to N.A. Nekrasov, controversial issues should be resolved “according to reason, in a divine way.”

Drawing a gallery in front of the reader social types, N.A. Nekrasov starts with the priest. This is natural, because a church minister should, logically, better understand the idea of ​​the divine world order and social justice. It is no coincidence that men ask the priest to answer “according to conscience, according to reason,” “in a divine way.”

It turns out that the priest simply carries his cross through life and does not consider himself happy: “Our roads are difficult, Our parish is large. The sick, the dying, the one born into the world do not choose time: In the harvest and in the haymaking, In the dead of autumn night, In winter, in severe frosts, And in the spring floods Go

Where is the name? The priest had a chance to see and hear everything, to support people in the most difficult moments of life: “There is no heart that can endure without some trembling the death rattle, the funeral sob, the orphan’s sadness.” The priest's story raises the problem of happiness from the social level of perception to the philosophical. I never dream of peace and honor for my butt. And the former wealth of the parishes is lost with the beginning of the disintegration of noble nests. The priest does not see any spiritual return from his mission (it’s also good that in this parish two-thirds of the population lives in Orthodoxy, while in others there are only schismatics). From his story we learn about the poverty of peasant life: “Our villages are poor, And in them there are sick peasants, And sad women, Nurses, water-maids, Slaves, pilgrims, And eternal workers, Lord, add strength to them! It’s hard to live on pennies with such labor!”

However, the peasant has a different view of the priest’s life: one of the men knows about this well: “for three years he lived with the priest as a worker and knows that he has porridge with butter and a pie with filling.

N.A. has it. Nekrasov in the work and original poetic discoveries in the field of figurative and expressive means of language (“...rainy clouds, Like milk cows, Walk across the skies”, “The earth is not dressed in green bright velvet And, like a dead man without a shroud, lies under the cloudy sky Sad and naga").

A fair in the rich trading village of Kuzminskoye sheds light on folk life in Rus'. There is dirt everywhere. One detail is noteworthy: “The house with the inscription: school, 11 standing, packed tightly. A hut with one window, with a picture of a paramedic Bleeding.” Nobody cares about public education and healthcare in the state. N.A. Nekrasov paints a colorfully dressed peasant crowd. It seems like this picture should put you in a festive mood. However, through this atmosphere of elegance and apparent prosperity, a dark peasant self-awareness clearly peeks through. The feisty Old Believer angrily threatens the people with hunger, seeing fashionable outfits, since, in her opinion, red calicoes are dyed with dog’s blood. Complaining about the lack of education of men, N.A. Nekrasov exclaims with hope: “Eh! eh! Will the time come, When (come, the desired one!..) They will make it clear to the peasant, That a portrait is rose for a portrait, That a book is a rose for a book? When will a man carry not Blucher and not my stupid lord - Belinsky and Gogol From the market?

The fair fun ends in drunkenness and fights. From the stories of women, the reader learns that many of them feel sick at home, as if they were in hard labor. On the one hand, the author is offended to look at this endless drunkenness, but on the other hand, he understands that it is better for the men to drink and forget themselves between hours of hard work than to understand where the fruits of their work go: “And as soon as the work is over, look, they are standing three shareholders: God, king and master!

From the story about Yakima Nagy, we learn about the fate of people who are trying to defend their rights: “Yakim, a wretched old man, once lived in St. Petersburg, but ended up in prison: He decided to compete with a merchant! Like a peeling stick, he returned to his homeland and took up his plow.” Saving paintings, Yakim lost money during the fire: preserving spirituality, art is higher for him than everyday life.

As the plot of the poem develops, the reader learns about social inequality and social prejudices that N.A. Nekrasov is mercilessly castigated and ridiculed. “Prince Peremetyev had me as a favorite slave. The wife is a beloved slave, And the daughter, together with the young lady, learned French, And all sorts of languages, She was allowed to sit down in the presence of the princess...”

The yard servant declares.

The funniest thing about his monologue is that he believes that he has an honorable disease - gout. Even illnesses in Russia are divided by class: men suffer from hoarseness and hernia, and the privileged classes suffer from gout. The disease is considered a noble disease because in order to get it, you need to drink expensive wines: “Champagne, Burgon, Tokay, Wengen You have to drink for thirty years...”. The poet writes with admiration about the feat of the peasant Yermil Girin, who ran the orphan mill. The mill was put up for auction. Yermil began to bargain for it with the merchant Altynnikov himself. Girin did not have enough money; the peasants in the market square lent him money. Having returned the money, Yermil discovered that he still had a ruble. Then the man gave it to the blind: he didn’t need someone else’s. Ermil’s impeccable honesty becomes a worthy response to the trust that the people showed in him by collecting money for him: “They put on a hat full of Tselkoviks, foreheads, Burnt, beaten, tattered Peasant banknotes. He took it sweetly - he didn’t disdain And a copper nickel. He would have become disdainful when he came across another copper hryvnia worth more than a hundred rubles!”

Yermil worked as a clerk in an office and willingly helped peasants write petitions. For this he was elected mayor. He worked regularly: “At seven years old I didn’t squeeze a worldly penny under my fingernail, At seven years I didn’t touch the right one, I didn’t allow the guilty to go, I didn’t bend my soul...”.

His only sin was that he shielded his younger brother Mitri from recruiting. Yes, then his conscience tormented him. At first Yermil wanted to hang himself, then he asked him to judge him. They imposed a fine on him: “Fine money for the recruit, a small part for Vlasyevna, a part for the world for wine...”. Finally, a gray-haired priest enters the story about Ermil Girin, who emphasizes that the honor that Girin had was bought not by fear and money, but by “strict truth, intelligence and kindness!” This is how the image of the people's intercessor emerges in the poem - an honest and decent person. However, in the end it turns out that Yermil, after a popular riot, is in prison. Surnames play an important meaningful function in the poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'”: Girin sounds weighty and reliable, but the names of the landowners (Obrubkov, Obolt-Obolduev) indicate their limitations and inability to support the Russian people.

The landowner in Rus', too, as it turns out, does not feel happy. When Obolt-Obolduev talks about his “family tree,” we learn that the feats that his ancestors performed can hardly be called such. One of them received a certificate for entertaining the empress on the day of the royal name day. And Prince Shchepin with Vaska Gusev In general, they were criminals: they tried to set fire to Moscow and rob the treasury. N.A. Nekrasov also describes that part of the life of the landowners, which makes up the former beauty of the landowners' houses with greenhouses, Chinese gazebos and English parks, the traditions of dog hunting. However, all this is a thing of the past: “ Oh, you dog hunt! All the landowners will forget, But you, the original Russian Fun! We will not be sad for ourselves forever! We are sorry that you, Mother Rus', willingly lost your knightly, warlike, majestic appearance! »

Obolt-Obolduev yearns for the time of serfdom, remembering how voluntary gifts were brought to him and his family in addition to the corvee. N.A. Nekrasov shows that the landowners found themselves in a difficult situation: they were accustomed to living on the labor of others and did not know how to do anything.

Obolt-Obolduev talks about this in his confession: “Work hard! To whom did you decide to read such a sermon? I am not a peasant lapatnik - I am, by God’s grace, a Russian nobleman! Russia is not a foreigner, We have delicate feelings, We are instilled with pride! We have noble classes They don’t learn to work. Our official is inferior And he won’t sweep the floors, He won’t heat the stove... I’ll tell you, without bragging, I’ve been living almost forever in the village for forty years, And I can’t tell a barley ear from a rye ear, And they sing to me: “Work.” !

The chapter “Peasant Woman” is devoted to the position of the Russian woman. This is a cross-cutting theme in the work of N.A. Nekrasov, which indicates her importance in the writer’s worldview. Main character- Matrena Timofeevna (a dignified woman of about thirty-eight). Drawing her portrait, the author admires the beauty of the Russian peasant woman: “Beautiful; gray hair, large, stern eyes, rich eyelashes, stern and dark.” When asked by men about happiness, the woman at first refuses to answer at all, saying that there is labor suffering going on. However, the men agree to help her reap rye, and Timofeevna still decides to tell about herself. Before her marriage, her life was happy, although it was spent in labor (she had to get up early, bring breakfast to her father, feed ducklings, pick mushrooms and berries). The chapter is interspersed with folk songs. During her marriage, Matryona endured beatings and barbs from her husband’s relatives.

The whole life of a peasant woman is spent in hard work, in an attempt to divide her time between work and children: “Week after week, in one order, they walked, Every year, then the children: there is no time Neither to think nor to grieve, God forbid they can cope with the work Yes, cross your forehead You will eat - when will remain From the elders and from the children, You will fall asleep when you are sick...” Monotony, the inability to even think calmly about one’s life, the need to constantly spend it in endless labor - this is the lot of the Russian woman of the lower classes in Russia.

Soon Matryona lost her parents and child. Submitting to her father-in-law in everything, Timofeevna lives, essentially, for the sake of her children. The story she told about how some wanderer ordered fast days Do not feed milk to infants. I remember here the wanderer Feklusha from the play by A.N. Ostrovsky's "The Thunderstorm" with its stupid fables. From this comparison, a general picture of the morals existing in Russia emerges. The scene described in the poem when, during a hungry year, a woman is killed with stakes just because she put on a clean shirt at Christmas, eloquently testifies to darkness and ignorance. By folk signs, this leads to crop failure.

Once Timofeevna accepted punishment with rods for her son, who did not save a sheep from a she-wolf. Describing this story, N.A. Nekrasov writes with admiration about the strength and selflessness of maternal love. Timofeevna is a typical Russian woman with a “downcast head” and an angry heart. Emphasizing the strength of character of the heroine, N.A. Nekrasov also shows her in moments of weakness: Matryona is like Alyonushka from the famous painting by artist V.M. Vasnetsova goes to the river, sits on a gray pebble of a broom bush and sobs. Another way out for a woman is to pray.

The description of the difficult life of a peasant woman lifts the curtain on the general picture of people's life in Russia. Hunger, need, recruitment, lack of education and lack of qualified medical care- these are the conditions in which the Russian peasantry finds itself. It is no coincidence that crying and tears are the most frequently used motifs in the poem.

The inserted plot is a fragment of the chapter entitled “Savely, the hero of the Holy Russian” about how the rebellious workers buried the owner. Then Savely suffered penal servitude and a settlement; only in old age was he able to return to his native place.

In the chapter “The Last One,” old Vlas talks about his landowner, who constantly scolded the peasants, not realizing that they were no longer working on the lord’s land, but on their own land. The master issues absurd orders, which make everyone laugh. It doesn’t take long for people to realize that the master has gone crazy. One day the man Agap could not stand it and scolded the master himself. They decided in the presence of the landowner “to punish Agap for his unprecedented insolence.” However, in reality, this punishment turns into a farce: the steward Klim takes Agap to the stable, gives him a glass of wine and orders him to scream and moan so that the master can hear: “How four men carried Him out of the stable, dead drunk, So the master even took pity: “It’s his own fault, Agapushka.” !

He said kindly." This scene eloquently indicates that the time of noble rule has irrevocably passed. The same idea is emphasized by the scene of the death of the old prince at the end of the chapter: “The amazed peasants looked at each other... crossed themselves... Sighed... Never has such a friendly, deep, deep sigh been emitted by the poor Village of Vakhlaki of the Illiterate province...”.

The chapter “A feast for the whole world” was subject to serious censorship edits. In front of it there is a dedication to S.P. Botkin, a famous doctor who treated N.A. Nekrasova.

The most striking episode of the chapter is the fragment “About the exemplary slave - Yakov the Faithful.” It poses the problem of servility. “People of servile rank - Real dogs sometimes: The more severe the punishment, the dearer the gentlemen are to them,” writes N.A. Nekrasov. The poet convincingly shows that some peasants even like the feeling of servility. They have a slave psychology so firmly developed that they even like humiliation: “Yakov had only joy: to groom, protect, please the Master.”

The landowner, in response to Yakov’s concerns, paid with black ingratitude. He didn’t even allow his nephew Grisha to marry his beloved girl and sent him into conscription. Yakov was offended and took the master to the Devil's Ravine, but did not commit reprisals, but hanged himself in front of the owner. The legless master lay in the ravine all night, seeing the crows pecking at the body of the dead Yakov. A hunter found him in the morning. Returning home, the master realized what a sin he had committed.

Another important image in the poem is the image of the people's intercessor Grisha Dobrosklonov. Only he smiled in the poem to experience happiness. Grisha is still young, but “at the age of fifteen, Gregory already knew for sure that he would live for the happiness of the poor and dark Native corner" The song “Rus”, composed by the young poet, is a genuine call for a revolutionary reorganization of the world: “The army is rising - Innumerable, the Power in it will be indestructible!” Thus, N.A. Nekrasov, as a poet-citizen, convincingly shows that happiness lies in serving other people, in fighting for the people's cause. “I don’t need either silver or gold, but God grant, so that my fellow countrymen and every peasant may live freely and cheerfully throughout all holy Rus'!” - exclaims the hero. In the image of G. Dobrosklonov N.A. Nekrasov embodied the collective image of a revolutionary, young man, capable of devoting his life to the fight for a bright future for Russia.

I want to start the analysis of Nekrasov’s poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'” with the history of writing. And the work was written after the abolition of serfdom. It took fourteen years to write the poem, because the writer began it in 1863 and completed it in 1877, but the poem remained unfinished, because the work was interrupted due to Nekrasov’s death.

The author only managed to write four chapters and a prologue, so this work Nekrasov’s “Who Lives Well in Rus'” is an excerpt from what the author wanted to write and convey, but this is enough to call the poem the pinnacle of the writer’s creativity. And this is enough to call the poem an entire encyclopedia, which introduces us to the lives of people who had to live in pre-reform and post-reform times. In his work, Nekrasov shared with us his accumulated experience and put into the poem all the information that had been collected for many years.

If we talk about the genre of the presented work, then this is an epic poem. Why epic? Because Nekrasov, in the poem “Who Lives Well in Rus',” created a collective image of a people who had to live in other, no longer familiar conditions, during the period of the abolition of serfdom. There is not just one hero in the poem, there are many heroes, and in his work Nekrasov tried to look at the changes taking place through the eyes of the people, expressing feelings and aspirations in the poem.

Who can live well in Rus' summary

Getting acquainted with Nekrasov’s poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'”, already from the content at the beginning of the work we see that we're talking about about the entire Russian land, because the author does not give the exact coordinates of where exactly the men meet, he only reports that in some year, in some land, on a pillar “road”, where seven men met. Moreover, the names of the villages are symbolic, because they are “Zaplatova, Dyryavino, Razugovo, Znobishino, Gorelovo, Neelovo, Neurozhaika.”

At the beginning of the poem, everything happens like in a fairy tale. The men met, argued, quarreled because of differences in opinions, and then there was reconciliation with the help of a magic bird that spoke to them in human speech, which gave them a self-assembled tablecloth.

The poem is based on the journey of men, thanks to which the author was able to show the life of all of Rus'. During their journey, the men try to find out who is living well now. They meet with a priest, a landowner, beggars, they do not pass by drunkards, merchants, and everyone sees happiness “in their own way.” For example, an old woman sees happiness in the turnip harvest, a hunter is happy because he managed to survive a fight with a bear, beggars are happy that they are given alms. And only from Grisha Dobrosklonov’s understanding of happiness, the author conveys to us the main idea of ​​his work, namely, happiness can only be felt by those who do not care about themselves, but who spend their strength and energy to create the happiness of everyone. In the work, the author calls to love your people, help those in need, not to be indifferent to what is happening and those around you, calls to fight for happiness.

The poem is filled with exclamations, rhetorical questions, epithets, comparisons: “Luka is like a mill,” “They walk as if they are being chased,” metaphors: “a man is like a bull.” The poem is rich in repetitions, dialogues, there is a description of nature, images of fairy-tale characters and riddles are used. The author uses dialects, common speech, and folklore motifs.

Who can live well in Rus'?

Answering the main question of the work: “Have the men found someone who lives well?” I will answer: “Found.” They thought that priests, merchants, boyars, and the tsar had a good life, but it turned out that in Rus' after the reform, life is good for those who are close to the people and serve them, and in the poem this is Grisha Dobrosklonov - “the embodiment of the people’s happiness,” about which we learn from the last chapter.

In February 1861, Russia abolished serfdom. This progressive event greatly agitated the peasants and caused a wave of new problems. Nekrasov described the main one in the poem “Elegy,” which contains the aphoristic line: “The people are liberated, but are the people happy?” In 1863, Nikolai Alekseevich began working on the poem “Who lives well in Rus'”, which addresses the problems of all segments of the country's population after the abolition of serfdom.

Despite the rather simple, folkloric style of narration, the work is quite difficult to understand correctly, since it touches on serious philosophical issues. Nekrasov has been looking for answers to many of them all his life. And the poem itself, which took 14 long years to create, was never completed. Of the planned eight parts, the author managed to write four, which do not follow one another. After the death of Nikolai Alekseevich, publishers were faced with a problem: in what order to publish parts of the poem. Today we are getting acquainted with the text of the work in the order proposed by Korney Chukovsky, who scrupulously worked with the writer’s archives.

Some of Nekrasov's contemporaries argued that the author had the idea for the poem back in the 50s, before the abolition of serfdom. Nikolai Alekseevich wanted to fit into one work everything he knew about the people and heard from many people. To some extent, he succeeded.

For the poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'” many genre definitions have been selected. Some critics claim that this is a “travel poem”, others refer to it as a “Russian Odyssey”. The author himself considered his work epic, because it depicts the life of the people at a turning point in history. Such a period could be a war, a revolution, or in our case, the abolition of serfdom.

The author sought to describe the events taking place through the eyes of ordinary people and using their vocabulary. As a rule, an epic does not have a main character. Nekrasov’s poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'” fully meets these criteria.

But the question about main character The poem has been raised more than once; it haunts literary critics to this day. If we approach it formally, then the main characters can be considered disputing men who went looking for happy people in Rus'. Perfect for this role and Grisha Dobrosklonov- people's educator and savior. It is quite possible to admit that the main character in the poem is the entire Russian people. This is clearly reflected in the mass scenes of festivities, fairs, and haymaking. Important decisions are accepted in Rus' by the whole world, even a sigh of relief after the death of the landowner escaped the peasants at the same time.

Plot The work is quite simple - seven men accidentally met on the road and started an argument on the topic: who lives well in Rus'? To solve it, the heroes go on a journey across the country. On the long journey, they meet a variety of people: merchants, beggars, drunkards, landowners, a priest, a wounded soldier, a prince. The debaters also had a chance to see many pictures from life: a prison, a fair, birth, death, weddings, holidays, auctions, elections of a burgomaster, etc.

The seven men are not described by Nekrasov in detail, their characters are practically not revealed. Wanderers go together towards one goal. But the supporting characters (the village headman, Savely, the slave Yakov and others) are drawn vividly, with many small details and nuances. This allows us to conclude that the author, represented by seven men, created a conventionally allegorical image of the people.

Problems that Nekrasov raised in his poem are very diverse and relate to life different layers society: greed, poverty, illiteracy, obscurantism, arrogance, moral degradation, drunkenness, arrogance, cruelty, sinfulness, difficulty in moving to a new way of life, limitless patience and thirst for rebellion, oppression.

But the key problem of the work is the concept of happiness, which each character solves according to his own understanding. For rich people, such as priests and landowners, happiness is personal well-being. It is very important for a man to be able to escape from troubles and misfortunes: he was chased by a bear, but did not catch him, he was beaten severely at work, but was not beaten to death, etc.

But there are characters in the work who do not seek happiness only for themselves, they strive to make all people happy. Such heroes are Ermil Girin and Grisha Dobrosklonov. In Gregory’s mind, love for his mother grew into love for the whole country. In the guy’s soul, the poor and unhappy mother became identified with an equally poor country. And seminarian Grisha considers the purpose of his life to be the education of the people. From the way Dobrosklonov understands happiness, the main idea of ​​the poem follows: this feeling can only be fully felt by that person who is ready to devote his life to the fight for the happiness of the people.

The main artistic means of the poem can be considered oral folk art. The author makes extensive use of folklore in pictures of the life of peasants and in the description of the future protector of Rus' Grisha Dobrosklonov. Nekrasov uses folk vocabulary in the text of the poem in different ways: as direct stylization (the prologue is composed), the beginning of a fairy tale (a self-assembled tablecloth, the mythical number seven) or indirectly (lines from folk songs, references to various legends and epics).

The language of the work is stylized as a folk song. The text contains a lot of dialectisms, numerous repetitions, diminutive suffixes in words, stable constructions in descriptions. Because of this, the work “Who Lives Well in Rus'” is perceived by many as folk art. In the mid-nineteenth century, folklore was studied not only from a scientific point of view, but also as a way of communication between the intelligentsia and the people.

Having analyzed in detail Nekrasov’s work “Who Lives Well in Rus',” it is easy to understand that even in its unfinished form it is a literary heritage and is of great value. And today the poem arouses keen interest among literary critics and readers. Studying historical features Russian people, we can conclude that they have changed a little, but the essence of the problem remains the same - the search for their happiness.

• Images of landowners in Nekrasov’s poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'”

Analysis of the poem by N.A. Nekrasov "Who Lives Well in Rus'"

In January 1866, the next issue of the Sovremennik magazine was published in St. Petersburg. It opened with lines that are now familiar to everyone:

In what year - calculate

In what land - guess...

These words seemed to promise to introduce the reader into an entertaining fairy-tale world, where a warbler bird speaking in human language and a magic tablecloth would appear... So N.A. began with a sly smile and ease. Nekrasov his story about the adventures of seven men who argued about “who lives happily and freely in Russia.”

He devoted many years to working on the poem, which the poet called his “favorite brainchild.” He set himself the goal of writing a “people's book”, useful, understandable to the people and truthful. “I decided,” said Nekrasov, “to present in a coherent story everything that I know about the people, everything that I happened to hear from their lips, and I started “Who Lives Well in Russia.” This will be an epic of peasant life.” But death interrupted this gigantic work; the work remained unfinished. However, uhThese words seemed to promise to introduce the reader into an entertaining fairy-tale world, where a warbler bird speaking in human language and a magical self-assembled tablecloth would appear... So, with a sly smile and ease, N. A. Nekrasov began his story about the adventures of seven men, who argued about “who lives happily and freely in Russia.”

Already in the “Prologue” a picture of peasant Rus' was visible, the figure of the main character of the work stood up - the Russian peasant, as he really was: in bast shoes, onuchakh, an army coat, unfed, having suffered grief.

Three years later, publication of the poem resumed, but each part was met with severe persecution by the tsarist censors, who believed that the poem was “notable for its extreme ugliness of content.” The last of the written chapters, “A Feast for the Whole World,” came under especially sharp attack. Unfortunately, Nekrasov was not destined to see either the publication of “The Feast” or a separate edition of the poem. Without abbreviations or distortions, the poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'” was published only after the October Revolution.

The poem occupies a central place in Nekrasov’s poetry, is its ideological and artistic peak, the result of the writer’s thoughts about the fate of the people, about their happiness and the paths that lead to it. These thoughts worried the poet throughout his life and ran like a red thread through all his poetic work.

By the 1860s, the Russian peasant became the main character of Nekrasov's poetry. “Peddlers”, “Orina, the soldier’s mother”, “Railway”, “Frost, Red Nose” are the most important works of the poet on the way to the poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'”.

He devoted many years to working on the poem, which the poet called his “favorite brainchild.” He set himself the goal of writing a “people's book”, useful, understandable to the people and truthful. “I decided,” said Nekrasov, “to present in a coherent story everything that I know about the people, everything that I happened to hear from their lips, and I started “Who Lives Well in Russia.” This will be an epic of peasant life.” But death interrupted this gigantic work; the work remained unfinished. However, despite this, it retains ideological and artistic integrity.

Nekrasov revived the genre of folk epic in poetry. “Who Lives Well in Rus'” is a truly folk work: both in its ideological sound, and in the scale of the epic depiction of modern folk life, in posing the fundamental questions of the time, and in heroic pathos, and in the widespread use of poetic traditions of oral folk art, the closeness of the poetic language to living speech forms of everyday life and song lyricism.

At the same time, Nekrasov’s poem has features characteristic specifically of critical realism. Instead of one central character, the poem depicts, first of all, the folk environment as a whole, the living conditions of different social circles. The people's point of view on reality is expressed in the poem already in the very development of the theme, in the fact that all of Russia, all events are shown through the perception of wandering peasants, presented to the reader as if in their vision.

The events of the poem unfold in the first years after the reform of 1861 and the liberation of the peasants. The people, the peasantry, are the true positive heroes of the poem. Nekrasov pinned his hopes for the future on him, although he was aware of the weakness of the forces of peasant protest and the immaturity of the masses for revolutionary action.

In the poem, the author created the image of the peasant Savely, the “hero of the Holy Russian”, “the hero of the homespun”, who personifies the gigantic strength and fortitude of the people. Savely is endowed with the features of the legendary heroes of the folk epic. This image is associated by Nekrasov with the central theme of the poem - the search for ways to people's happiness. It is no coincidence that Matryona Timofeevna says about Savely to wanderers: “He was also a lucky man.” Savely’s happiness lies in his love of freedom, in his understanding of the need for active struggle of the people, who can only achieve a “free” life in this way.

The poem contains many memorable images of peasants. Here is the smart old mayor Vlas, who has seen a lot in his time, and Yakim Nagoy, a typical representative of the working agricultural peasantry. However, Yakim Naga portrays the poet as not at all like a downtrodden, dark peasant of a patriarchal village. With a deep consciousness of his dignity, he ardently defends the people's honor and makes a fiery speech in defense of the people.

An important role in the poem is occupied by the image of Yermil Girin - a pure and incorruptible “protector of the people”, who takes the side of the rebel peasants and ends up in prison.

In beautiful female image Matryona Timofeevna, the poet draws the typical features of a Russian peasant woman. Nekrasov wrote many moving poems about the harsh “female share,” but he had never written about a peasant woman so fully, with such warmth and love as is depicted in the poem Matryonushka.

Along with the peasant characters of the poem, who evoke love and sympathy, Nekrasov also depicts other types of peasants, mainly courtyards - lordly hangers-on, sycophants, obedient slaves and outright traitors. These images are drawn by the poet in the tones of satirical denunciation. The more clearly he saw the protest of the peasantry, the more he believed in the possibility of their liberation, the more irreconcilably he condemned slavish humiliation, servility and servility. Such are the “exemplary slave” Yakov in the poem, who ultimately realizes the humiliation of his position and resorts to pitiful and helpless, but in his slavish consciousness, terrible revenge - suicide in front of his tormentor; the “sensitive lackey” Ipat, who talks about his humiliations with disgusting relish; informer, “one of our own spy” Yegor Shutov; elder Gleb, seduced by the promises of the heir and agreed to destroy the will of the deceased landowner about the liberation of eight thousand peasants (“Peasant Sin”).

Showing the ignorance, rudeness, superstition, and backwardness of the Russian village of that time, Nekrasov emphasizes the temporary, historically transitory nature of dark sides peasant life.

The world poetically recreated in the poem is a world of sharp social contrasts, clashes, and acute contradictions in life.

In the “round”, “ruddy-faced”, “pot-bellied”, “mustachioed” landowner Obolte-Obolduev, whom the wanderers met, the poet reveals the emptiness and frivolity of a person who is not used to thinking seriously about life. Behind the guise of a good-natured man, behind the courteous courtesy and ostentatious cordiality of Obolt-Obolduev, the reader sees the arrogance and anger of the landowner, barely restrained disgust and hatred for the “muzhich”, for the peasants.

The image of the landowner-tyrant Prince Utyatin, nicknamed by the peasants the Last One, is marked with satire and grotesquery. A predatory look, “a nose with a beak like a hawk,” alcoholism and voluptuousness complement the disgusting appearance of a typical representative of the landowner environment, an inveterate serf owner and despot.

At first glance, the development of the plot of the poem should consist in resolving the dispute between the men: which of the persons they named lives happier - the landowner, the official, the priest, the merchant, the minister or the tsar. However, developing the action of the poem, Nekrasov goes beyond the plot framework set by the plot of the work. Seven peasants are no longer looking for happiness only among representatives of the ruling classes. Going to the fair, in the midst of the people, they ask themselves the question: “Isn’t he hiding there, who lives happily?” In "The Last One" they directly say that the purpose of their journey is to search for people's happiness, the best peasant share:

We are looking, Uncle Vlas,

Unflogged province,

Ungutted parish,

Izbytkova village!..

Having begun the narrative in a semi-fairy-tale humorous tone, the poet gradually deepens the meaning of the question of happiness and gives it an increasingly acute social resonance. The author's intentions are most clearly manifested in the censored part of the poem - “A feast for the whole world.” The story about Grisha Dobrosklonov that began here was to take a central place in the development of the theme of happiness and struggle. Here the poet speaks directly about that path, about that “path” that leads to the embodiment of national happiness. Grisha’s happiness lies in the conscious struggle for a happy future for the people, so that “every peasant can live freely and cheerfully throughout all holy Rus'.”

The image of Grisha is the final one in the series of “people's intercessors” depicted in Nekrasov’s poetry. The author emphasizes in Grisha his close proximity to the people, live communication with the peasants, in whom he finds complete understanding and support; Grisha is depicted as an inspired dreamer-poet, composing his “good songs” for the people.

The poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'” is the highest example of the folk style of Nekrasov poetry. The folk-song and fairy-tale element of the poem gives it a bright national flavor and is directly related to Nekrasov’s faith in the great future of the people. The main theme of the poem - the search for happiness - goes back to folk tales, songs and other folklore sources that talked about the search happy land, truth, wealth, treasure, etc. This theme expressed the most cherished thought of the masses, their desire for happiness, the age-old dream of the people about a just social system.

Nekrasov used in his poem almost the entire genre diversity of Russian folk poetry: fairy tales, epics, legends, riddles, proverbs, sayings, family songs, love songs, wedding songs, historical songs. Folk poetry provided the poet with rich material for judging peasant life, life, and the customs of the village.

The style of the poem is characterized by a wealth of emotional sounds, a variety of poetic intonation: the sly smile and leisurely narration in the “Prologue” is replaced in subsequent scenes by the ringing polyphony of a seething fair crowd, in “The Last One” - by satirical ridicule, in “The Peasant Woman” - by deep drama and lyrical emotion, and in “A Feast for the Whole World” - with heroic tension and revolutionary pathos.

The poet subtly feels and loves the beauty of the native Russian nature of the northern strip. The poet also uses the landscape to create an emotional tone, to more fully and vividly characterize the character’s state of mind.

The poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'” has a prominent place in Russian poetry. In it, the fearless truth of pictures of folk life appears in an aura of poetic fabulousness and the beauty of folk art, and the cry of protest and satire merged with the heroism of the revolutionary struggle. All this was expressed with great artistic force in the immortal work of N.A. Nekrasova.