“For even peasant women know how to love ...”
N.M. Karamzin
Sentimentalism - the direction of literature of the XVIII century. It contradicts the strict norms of classicism and, first of all, describes the inner world of a person and his feelings. Now the unity of place, time and action does not matter, the main thing is a person and his state of mind. N. M. Karamzin is probably the most famous and talented writer who actively worked in this direction. His story "Poor Lisa" reveals to the reader the tender feelings of two lovers.
Features of sentimentalism are found in the story of N. Karamzin in every line. The lyrical narration is conducted smoothly, calmly, although the intensity of passion and the strength of emotions are felt in the work. The characters experience a new feeling of love for both of them - tenderly and touchingly. They suffer, cry, part: “Lisa sobbed - Erast cried ...” The author describes in great detail the state of mind of the unfortunate Lisa when she escorted Erast to the war: “... abandoned, poor, lost her feelings and memory.”
The whole work is permeated with lyrical digressions. The author constantly reminds of himself, he is present in the work and comments on everything that happens to his characters. “I often come to this place and almost always meet spring there…”, the author tells about the place near the Si…new monastery, where the hut of Liza and her mother was located. “But I throw down the brush…”, “my heart bleeds…”, “a tear rolls down my face”, — this is how the author describes his emotional state when he looks at his characters. He feels sorry for Lisa, she is very dear to him. He knows that his "beautiful Lisa" deserves better love, honest relationships, sincere feelings. And Erast ... The author does not reject him, because "dear Erast" is very kind, but by nature or upbringing, a windy young man. And the death of Lisa made him unhappy for the rest of his life. N. M. Karamzin hears and understands his heroes.
A large place in the story is devoted to landscape sketches. The beginning of the work describes the place “near the Si..nova monastery”, the outskirts of Moscow. Nature is fragrant: the “magnificent picture” opens up to the reader, and he finds himself in that time and also wanders through the ruins of the monastery. Together with the "silent moon" we observe the meeting of lovers and, sitting "under the shade of the old oak tree", we look into the "blue sky".
The very name “Poor Liza” is also symbolic, where both the social status and the state of the soul of a person are reflected in one word. The story of N. M. Karamzin will not leave any reader indifferent, it will touch the delicate strings of the soul, and this can be called sentimentality.
1. Literary direction "sentimentalism".
2. Features of the plot of the work.
3. The image of the main character.
4. The image of the "villain" Erast.
In the literature of the second half of the 18th - early 19th centuries, the literary direction "sentimentalism" was very popular. The name comes from the French word "sentiment", which means "feeling, sensitivity". Sentimentalism called for paying attention to the feelings, experiences, emotions of a person, that is, the inner world acquired special importance. The story of N. M. Karamzin "Poor Lisa" is a vivid example of a sentimental work. The plot of the story is very simple. By the will of fate, a spoiled nobleman and a young naive peasant girl meet. She falls in love with him and becomes a victim of her feelings.
The image of the main character Lisa is striking in its purity and sincerity. The peasant girl is more like a fairy-tale heroine. There is nothing everyday, everyday, vulgar in it. Lisa's nature is sublime and beautiful, despite the fact that the life of a girl cannot be called fabulous. Lisa lost her father early and lives with her old mother. The girl has to work hard. But she does not grumble at fate. Liza is shown by the author as an ideal, devoid of any shortcomings. She is not characterized by a craving for profit, material values \u200b\u200bdo not have any meaning for her. Lisa is more like a sensitive young lady who grew up in an atmosphere of idleness, surrounded by care and attention from childhood. A similar trend was characteristic of sentimental works. The main character cannot be perceived by the reader as rude, down to earth, pragmatic. It should be cut off from the world of vulgarity, dirt, hypocrisy, should be a model of sublimity, purity, poetry.
In Karamzin's story, Lisa becomes a toy in the hands of her lover. Erast is a typical young rake, accustomed to getting what he wants. The young man is spoiled, selfish. The lack of a moral principle leads to the fact that he does not understand Lisa's ardent and passionate nature. Erast's feelings are doubtful. He used to live, thinking only about himself and his desires. Erast was not allowed to see the beauty of the girl's inner world, because Lisa is smart, kind. But the virtues of a peasant woman are worth nothing in the eyes of a jaded nobleman.
Erast, unlike Lisa, never knew hardship. He did not have to worry about his daily bread, his whole life is a continuous holiday. And he initially considers love a game that can decorate a few days of life. Erast cannot be faithful, his affection for Lisa is just an illusion.
And Lisa deeply experiences the tragedy. It is significant that when a young nobleman seduced a girl, thunder struck, lightning flashed. A sign of nature portends trouble. And Lisa feels that she will have to pay the most terrible price for what she has done. The girl was not wrong. Not much time passed, and Erast lost interest in Liza. Now he has forgotten about her. For the girl, this was a terrible blow.
Karamzin's story "Poor Liza" was very loved by readers, not only because of the entertaining plot, which told about a beautiful love story. Readers highly appreciated the skill of the writer, who managed to truthfully and vividly show the inner world of a girl in love. Feelings, experiences, emotions of the main character cannot leave indifferent.
Paradoxically, the young nobleman Erast is not fully perceived as a negative hero. After Lisa's suicide, Erast is crushed with grief, considers himself a murderer and yearns for her all his life. Erast did not become unhappy, for his act he suffered a severe punishment. The writer treats his character objectively. He admits that the young noble has a good heart and mind. But, alas, this does not give the right to consider Erast a good person. Karamzin says: “Now the reader should know that this young man, this Erast, was a rather rich nobleman, with a fair mind and a kind heart, kind by nature, but weak and windy. He led a distracted life, thought only of his own pleasure, looked for it in secular amusements, but often did not find it: he was bored and complained about his fate. No wonder that with such an attitude to life, love did not become something worthy of attention for a young man. Erast is dreamy. “He read novels, idylls, had a rather lively imagination and often mentally moved to those times (former or not former), in which, according to the poets, all people carelessly walked through the meadows, bathed in clean springs, kissed like doves, rested under roses and myrtle and in happy idleness they spent all their days. It seemed to him that he had found in Lisa what his heart had been looking for for a long time. What can be said about Erast if we analyze the characteristics of Karamzin? Erast is in the clouds. Fictional stories are more important to him than real life. Therefore, he quickly got bored with everything, even the love of such a beautiful girl. After all, real life always seems to the dreamer less bright and interesting than life invented.
Erast decides to go on a military campaign. He believes that this event will give meaning to his life, that he will feel his significance. But, alas, the weak-willed nobleman during the military campaign only lost his entire fortune at cards. Dreams collided with harsh reality. Frivolous Erast is not capable of serious deeds, entertainment is most important for him. He decides to marry profitably in order to regain the desired material well-being. At the same time, Erast does not think about Lisa's feelings at all. Why does he need a poor peasant woman, if he was faced with the question of material benefits.
Liza throws herself into the pond, suicide becomes her only possible way out. The suffering of love so exhausted the girl that she does not want to live anymore.
For us, modern readers, Karamzin's story "Poor Liza" seems like a fairy tale. After all, there is nothing similar to real life in it, except, perhaps, the feelings of the main character. But sentimentalism as a literary trend turned out to be very important for Russian literature. After all, writers who create in line with sentimentalism showed the subtlest shades of human experiences. And this trend has continued to develop. On the basis of sentimental works, others appeared, more realistic and believable.
We will talk about the next era after the Enlightenment and how it manifested itself in the Russian cultural space.
The Age of Enlightenment was built on the education of the senses. If we believe that feelings can be educated, then at some point we must admit that it is not necessary to educate them. You need to pay attention and trust them. What was previously considered dangerous will suddenly turn out to be important, capable of giving us an impetus to development. This happened during the transition from the Enlightenment to sentimentalism.
Sentimentalism- translated from French "feeling".
Sentimentalism offered not just to educate feelings, but to reckon with them, to trust them.
A cross-cutting theme of classicism in European culture is the struggle between duty and feeling.
A cross-cutting theme of sentimentalism is that the mind is not omnipotent. And it’s not enough to cultivate feelings, you need to trust them, even if it seems that this is destroying our world.
Sentimentalism first manifested itself in literature as classicism in architecture and theater. This is not accidental, because the word "sentimentalism" is associated with the transfer of shades of feelings. Architecture does not convey shades of feelings; in the theater they are not as important as the performance as a whole. Theater is a "fast" art. Literature can be slow and convey shades, which is why the ideas of sentimentalism were realized with greater force.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau's novel The New Eloise describes situations that were unthinkable in previous eras - the friendship of a man and a woman. This topic has only been discussed for a couple of centuries. For the era of Rousseau, the question is colossal, but then there was no answer. The era of sentimentalism is focused on those feelings that do not fit into the theory and contradict the ideas of classicism.
In the history of Russian literature, Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin became the first outstanding sentimentalist writer (see Fig. 1).
Rice. 1. Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin
We talked about his Letters of a Russian Traveler. Try to compare this work with "Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow" by Alexander Nikolayevich Radishchev. Find common and different.
Pay attention to the words with "with": sympathy, compassion, interlocutor. What is in common between the revolutionary Radishchev and the sentimental Karamzin?
Having returned from his trip and having written “Letters from a Russian Traveler”, which were published in 1791, Karamzin proceeds to publish the “Moscow Journal”, where in 1792 a short story “Poor Liza” appears. The work turned all Russian literature upside down, determined its course for many years. The story of several pages has echoed in many classic Russian books, from The Queen of Spades to Dostoevsky's novel Crime and Punishment (the image of Lizaveta Ivanovna, the sister of an old pawnbroker).
Karamzin, having written "Poor Lisa", entered the history of Russian literature (see Fig. 2).
Rice. 2. G.D. Epifanov. Illustrations for the story "Poor Lisa"
This is a story about how the nobleman Erast deceived the poor peasant woman Lisa. He promised to marry her and did not marry, he tried to pay off from her. The girl committed suicide, and Erast, saying that he had gone to war, tied the knot with a rich widow.
There were no such stories. Karamzin changes a lot.
In the literature of the XVIII century, all heroes are divided into good and bad. Karamzin begins the story by saying that everything is ambiguous.
Perhaps no one living in Moscow knows the surroundings of this city as well as I do, because no one is more often than me in the field, no one more than me wanders on foot, without a plan, without a goal - where the eyes look - through meadows and groves. over hills and plains.
Nikolai Karamzin
We meet the storyteller's heart before we see the characters. Previously, in literature, there was a binding of characters to a place. If this is an idyll, events unfolded in the bosom of nature, and if a moralizing story, then in the city. Karamzin from the very beginning places the heroes on the border between the village where Lisa lives and the city where Erast lives. The tragic meeting of the city and the village is the subject of his story (see Fig. 3).
Rice. 3. G.D. Epifanov. Illustrations for the story "Poor Lisa"
Karamzin introduces something that has never been in Russian literature - the theme of money. In building the plot of "Poor Lisa" money plays a huge role. The relationship between Erast and Lisa begins with the fact that a nobleman wants to buy flowers from a peasant woman not for five kopecks, but for a ruble. The hero does it with a pure heart, but he measures feelings in money. Further, when Erast leaves Liza and when he accidentally meets her in the city, he pays her off (see Fig. 4).
Rice. 4. G.D. Epifanov. Illustrations for the story "Poor Lisa"
But after all, Lisa, before committing suicide, leaves her mother 10 imperials. The girl had already contracted the city's habit of counting money.
The ending of the story is incredible for that time. Karamzin talks about the death of heroes. Both in Russian literature and in European literature, the death of loving heroes has been spoken about more than once. A cross-cutting motive - the lovers united after death, like Tristan and Isolde, Peter and Fevronia. But for the suicide Liza and the sinner Erast to reconcile after death was incredible. The last phrase of the story: "Now, maybe they are reconciled." After the final Karamzin talks about himself, about what is happening in his heart.
She was buried near the pond, under a gloomy oak, and a wooden cross was placed on her grave. Here I often sit in thought, leaning on the receptacle of Liza's ashes; in my eyes a pond flows; Leaves rustle above me.
The narrator turns out to be no less important participant in the literary action than his characters. It was all incredibly new and fresh.
We said that ancient Russian literature valued not novelty, but the observance of rules. The new literature, of which Karamzin turned out to be one of the conductors, on the contrary, appreciates freshness, the explosion of the familiar, the rejection of the past, the movement into the future. And Nikolai Mikhailovich succeeded.
Tale Poor Lisa was written by Karamzin in 1792. In many ways, it corresponds to European standards, which is why it caused a shock in Russia and turned Karamzin into the most popular writer.
At the center of this story is the love of a peasant woman and a nobleman, and the description of the peasant woman is almost revolutionary. Prior to this, two stereotypical descriptions of peasants had developed in Russian literature: either they were unfortunate oppressed slaves, or comical, rude and stupid creatures that you could not even call people. But Karamzin approached the description of the peasants in a completely different way. Liza does not need to be sympathized with, she has no landowner, and no one oppresses her. There is also nothing comic in the story. But there is a famous phrase And peasant women know how to love, which turned the minds of the people of that time, because. they finally realized that the peasants are also people who have their own feelings.
In fact, there is very little that is typically peasant in this story. The images of Lisa and her mother do not correspond to reality (a peasant woman, even a state woman, could not only sell flowers in the city), the names of the heroes are also taken not from the peasant realities of Russia, but from the traditions of European sentimentalism (Lisa is derived from the names Eloise or Louise, typical of European novels).
At the heart of the story lies a universal idea: every person wants to be happy. Therefore, the main character of the story can even be called Erast, and not Lisa, because he is in love, dreams of an ideal relationship and does not even think about something carnal and vile, wishing live with Lisa like brother and sister. However, Karamzin believes that such pure platonic love cannot survive in the real world. Therefore, the culmination of the story is the loss of innocence by Lisa. After that, Erast ceases to love her as purely, because she is no longer an ideal, she has become the same as other women in his life. He begins to deceive her, the relationship breaks down. As a result, Erast marries a rich woman, while pursuing only selfish goals, not being in love with her.
When Lisa finds out about this, having arrived in the city, she is beside herself with grief. Considering that she has no more reason to live, because. her love is destroyed, the unfortunate girl rushes into the pond. This move emphasizes that the story is written in the tradition of sentimentalism, after all, Liza is driven exclusively by feelings, and Karamzin places a strong emphasis on describing the feelings of the heroes of Poor Liza. From the point of view of reason, nothing critical happened to her - she is not pregnant, not disgraced before society ... Logically, there is no need to drown herself. But Lisa thinks with her heart, not her mind.
One of Karamzin's tasks was to make the reader believe that the characters actually existed, that the story was real. He repeats several times what he writes not a story, but a sad story. The time and place of action are clearly indicated. And Karamzin achieved his goal: people believed. The pond, in which Liza allegedly drowned herself, became the site of mass suicides of girls who were disappointed in love. The pond even had to be cordoned off, which gave rise to an interesting epigram.
Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin became the most prominent representative in Russian literature of a new literary trend - sentimentalism, popular in Western Europe at the end of the 18th century. In the story "Poor Lisa" created in 1792, the main features of this trend appeared. Sentimentalism proclaimed a priority attention to the private life of people, to their feelings, equally characteristic of people from all classes. Karamzin tells us the story of the unhappy love of a simple peasant girl, Lisa, and a nobleman, Erast, in order to prove that "peasant women know how to love." Liza is the ideal of the "natural man" advocated by the sentimentalists. She is not only “beautiful in soul and body,” but is also able to sincerely love a person who is not quite worthy of her love. Erast, although he surpasses his beloved in education, nobility and wealth, turns out to be spiritually smaller than her. He is not able to rise above class prejudices and marry Lisa. Erast has a "fair mind" and a "kind heart", but at the same time he is "weak and windy." After losing at cards, he is forced to marry a rich widow and leave Lisa, which is why she committed suicide. However, sincere human feelings did not die in Erast and, as the author assures us, “Erast was unhappy until the end of his life. Having learned about the fate of Lizina, he could not be consoled and considered himself a murderer.
For Karamzin, the village becomes a hotbed of natural moral purity, and the city becomes a source of debauchery, a source of temptations that can destroy this purity. The heroes of the writer, in full accordance with the precepts of sentimentalism, suffer almost all the time, constantly expressing their feelings with abundantly shed tears. As the author himself admitted: "I love those objects that make me shed tears of tender sorrow." Karamzin is not ashamed of tears and encourages readers to do the same. As he describes in detail the experiences of Lisa, left by Erast, who had gone into the army: “From now on, her days were days
longing and sorrow, which had to be hidden from a tender mother: the more her heart suffered! Then it was only relieved when Liza, secluded in the dense forest, could freely shed tears and moan about separation from her beloved. Often the sad dove combined her mournful voice with her groaning. Karamzin forces Liza to hide her suffering from her old mother, but at the same time he is deeply convinced that it is very important to give a person the opportunity to openly express his grief, in plenty, in order to ease his soul. The author examines the essentially social conflict of the story through a philosophical and ethical prism. Erast sincerely would like to overcome class barriers on the way of their idyllic love with Liza. However, the heroine looks at the state of affairs much more soberly, realizing that Erast "cannot be her husband." The narrator already quite sincerely worries about his characters, worries in the sense that he seems to live with them. It is no coincidence that at the moment when Erast leaves Lisa, a penetrating author's confession follows: “My heart bleeds at this moment. I forget a man in Erast - I'm ready to curse him - but my tongue does not move - I look at the sky, and a tear rolls down my face. Not only the author himself got along with Erast and Lisa, but also thousands of his contemporaries - readers of the story. This was facilitated by the good recognition not only of the circumstances, but also of the place of action. Karamzin quite accurately depicted in "Poor Lisa" the surroundings of the Moscow Simonov Monastery, and the name "Lizin's Pond" was firmly entrenched behind the pond located there. Moreover: some unfortunate young ladies even drowned themselves here, following the example of the main character of the story. Lisa herself became a model that they sought to imitate in love, however, not peasant women who did not read the Karamzin story, but girls from the nobility and other wealthy classes. The hitherto rare name Erast became very popular in noble families. Very much "Poor Lisa" and sentimentalism corresponded to the spirit of the times.
It is characteristic that Karamzin's Liza and her mother, although declared to be peasant women, speak the same language as the nobleman Erast and the author himself. The writer, like the Western European sentimentalists, did not yet know the speech distinction of the heroes, representing classes of society that were opposite in terms of the conditions of existence. All the heroes of the story speak Russian literary language, close to the real spoken language of that circle of educated noble youth to which Karamzin belonged. Also, the peasant life in the story is far from the true folk life. Rather, it was inspired by the notions of the “natural man” characteristic of sentimentalist literature, the symbols of which were shepherds and shepherds. Therefore, for example, the writer introduces an episode of Lisa's meeting with a young shepherd who "drives a flock along the river bank, playing the flute." This meeting makes the heroine dream that her beloved Erast would be "a simple peasant, a shepherd", which would make their happy union possible. The writer, nevertheless, was mainly occupied with truthfulness in the depiction of feelings, and not with the details of the folk life unfamiliar to him.
Having affirmed sentimentalism in Russian literature with his story, Karamzin took a significant step in terms of its democratization, abandoning the strict, but far from real life schemes of classicism. The author of "Poor Liza" not only sought to write "as they say", freeing the literary language from Church Slavonic archaisms and boldly introducing new words borrowed from European languages into it. For the first time, he refused to divide heroes into purely positive and purely negative, showing a complex combination of good and bad traits in Erast's character. Thus, Karamzin took a step in the direction in which realism, which replaced sentimentalism and romanticism, moved the development of literature in the middle of the 19th century.
