“My favorite child,” Nekrasov wrote in his manuscript about the poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'.” Later, in one of his letters to the journalist P. Bezobrazov, the poet himself defined the genre of the poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'”: “This will be an epic of modern peasant life.”
And here the modern reader will immediately have many questions, because when we hear the word epic, we are reminded of large-scale works, for example, the epics of Homer or the multi-volume works of Tolstoy. But does even an unfinished work have the right to be called an epic?
First, let’s figure out what is meant by the concept of “epic”. The problematic of the epic genre involves consideration of the life not of an individual hero, but of an entire people. Any significant events in the history of this people are selected to depict. Most often, such a moment is war. However, at the time Nekrasov created the poem, there is no war going on in Russia, and the poem itself does not mention military actions. And yet, in 1861, another event, no less significant for people’s life, took place in Russia: the abolition of serfdom. It causes a wave of controversy in high circles, as well as confusion and a complete restructuring of life among the peasants. It is to this turning point that Nekrasov devotes his epic poem.
The genre of the work “Who Lives Well in Rus'” required the author to comply with certain criteria, first of all, scale. The task of showing the life of an entire people is not at all easy, and it was this that influenced Nekrasov’s choice of a plot with travel as the main plot-forming element. Travel is a common motif in Russian literature. It was addressed by both Gogol in “Dead Souls” and Radishchev (“Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow”), even in the Middle Ages there was a popular genre of “walking” - “Walking across Three Seas.” This technique allows the work to depict a full-fledged picture of folk life, with all its customs, joys and sorrows. In this case, the main plot fades into the background, and the narrative breaks up into many separate kaleidoscopic parts, from which at the same time a three-dimensional picture of life gradually emerges. The peasants' stories about their destinies give way to lingering lyrical songs, the reader gets acquainted with a rural fair, sees folk festivals, elections, learns about attitudes towards women, grieves with the beggar and has fun with the drunk.
It is characteristic that parts sometimes deviate so strongly from each other in the plot that they can be swapped without harm to the composition of the work. This at one time caused long disputes over the correct arrangement of the chapters of the poem (Nekrasov did not leave clear instructions on this).
At the same time, such a “patchwork” of the work is compensated by the internal continuous development of the plot - one of the prerequisites for the epic genre. The people's soul, sometimes very contradictory, sometimes despairing under the weight of troubles and yet not completely broken, moreover, constantly dreaming of happiness - this is what the poet shows the reader.
Among the features of the genre “Who Lives Well in Rus'” can also be mentioned the huge layer of folklore elements included in the text of the poem, from directly introduced songs, proverbs, sayings to implicit references to one or another epic, the use of phrases like “Savely, the Russian hero.” Nekrasov’s love for the common people and his sincere interest in the topic are clearly visible here - it’s not for nothing that it took so many years (more than 10) to collect material for the poem! Let us note that the inclusion of folklore elements in the text is also considered a sign of an epic - this makes it possible to more fully depict the features of the people’s character and way of life.
The genre peculiarity of the poem is also considered to be its bizarre combination of historical facts with fairy-tale motifs. In the beginning, written according to all the laws of fairy tales, seven (magic number) peasants set off on their journey. The beginning of their journey is accompanied by miracles - a warbler speaks to them, and they find a self-assembled tablecloth in the forest. But their further path will not follow a fairy tale.
The skillful combination of a fairy-tale, unburdensome plot with serious political problems of post-reform Rus' favorably distinguished Nekrasov’s work immediately after the publication of parts of the poem: it looked interesting against the backdrop of monotonous pamphlets and at the same time made one think. This also allowed the epic poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'” not to lose its interest for the reader today.
Work test
The poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'” is the pinnacle of N. A. Nekrasov’s creativity. He himself called it “his favorite child.” Nekrasov devoted many years of tireless work to his poem, putting into it all the information about the Russian people, accumulated, as the poet said, “by word of mouth” for twenty years. In no other work of Russian literature have the
The same is true of the characters, habits, views, hopes of the Russian people, as in this poem.
The plot of the poem is very close to the folk tale about the search for happiness and truth. The poem opens with a “Prologue” - the most rich chapter in folklore elements. It is in it that the main problem of the poem is constant: “who lives cheerfully, at ease in Rus'.” The heroes of the poem, seven (one of the traditional significant numbers) men, go to “The Ungutted Province, the Ungutted Volost, the Izbytkova Village.” The seven men who argued in the “Prologue” are endowed with the best qualities of the people’s character: pain for their people, selflessness, and a burning interest in the main issues of life. They are interested in the basic question of what is truth and what is happiness.
The description of what the truth-seekers saw during their wanderings in Rus', the stories about themselves of the imaginary “happy” ones to whom the peasants turned, constitutes the main content of the poem.
The composition of the work is built according to the laws of classical epic: it consists of separate parts and chapters. Outwardly, these parts are connected by the theme of the road: seven truth-seekers wander around Rus', trying to resolve the question that haunts them: who can live well in Rus'? And here one of the most important motifs of Russian folklore sounds - the motif of wandering. Even the heroes of Russian fairy tales went to look for common happiness, to find out whether it even exists - peasant happiness. The very nature of the poem is also combined with a Russian fairy tale. The journey of the Nekrasov peasants is, in essence, a spiritual journey.
The first chapter of “Pop” opens with the image of a “wide path.” This is one of the important poetic symbols of Russian literature, which embodies the idea of movement, striving forward. This is an image of not only the life, but also the spiritual path of a person.
The meeting with the priest in the first chapter of the first part of the poem shows that the peasants do not have their own peasant understanding of happiness. The men do not yet understand that the question of who is happier - the priest, the landowner, the merchant or the tsar - reveals the limitations of their ideas about happiness. These ideas come down only to material interest. It is no coincidence that the priest proclaims the formula for happiness, and the peasants passively agree. “Peace, wealth, honor” - this is the priest’s formula for happiness. But his story makes men think about a lot. The life of the priest reveals the life of Russia in its past and present, in its different classes. Like the laity, among priests only the highest clergy live well. But the clergy cannot be happy when the people, their breadwinner, are unhappy. All this indicates a deep crisis that has gripped the entire country.
In the next chapter, “Country Fair,” the main character is the crowd, wide and diverse. Nekrasov creates paintings in which the people themselves speak, talk about themselves, revealing the best and most unsightly features of their lives.
creates pictures in which the people themselves speak, talk about themselves, revealing the best and most unsightly features of their lives. But in everything: both in beauty and in ugliness, the people are not pitiful and petty, but large, significant, generous and
In the next chapter, “Drunken Night,” the festive feast reaches its climax. From the depths of the folk world emerges a strong peasant character, Yakim Nagoy. He appears as a symbol of working peasant life: “There are splinters at the eyes, at the mouth, like cracks in dry earth.” For the first time in Russian literature, Nekrasov creates a realistic portrait of a peasant worker. Defending the sense of peasant pride through labor, Yakim sees social injustice towards the people.
You work alone
And the work is almost over,
Look, there are three shareholders standing:
God, king and lord!
In the image of Yakim, the author shows the emergence of spiritual needs among the peasants. “Spiritual bread is higher than earthly bread.”
In the chapter “Happy” the entire peasant kingdom is involved in a dialogue, in a dispute about happiness. In their miserable life, even a tiny bit of luck already seems like happiness. But at the end of the chapter there is a story about a happy man. This story about Ermil Girin moves the action of the epic forward and marks a higher level of the people's idea of happiness. Like Yakim, Yermil is endowed with a keen sense of Christian conscience and honor. It would be given that he has “everything that is needed for happiness: peace of mind, money, and honor.” But at a critical moment in his life, Yermil sacrifices this happiness for the sake of the people’s truth and ends up in prison.
In the fifth chapter of the first part, “The Landowner,” the wanderers treat the masters with obvious irony. They already understand that noble “honor” is worth little. The wanderers spoke to the master as boldly and uninhibitedly as Yakim Nagoy. The landowner Obolt-Obolduev is most astonished by the fact that former serfs shouldered the burden of the historical question “Who can live well in Rus'?” As in the case with the priest, the story of the landowner and about the landowner is not just an accusation. It is also about a general catastrophic crisis that engulfs everyone. Therefore, in subsequent parts of the poem, Nekrasov leaves the intended plot scheme and artistically explores the life and poetry of the people.
In the chapter “Peasant Woman,” Matryona Timofeevna appears before the wanderers, embodying the best qualities of the Russian female character. Harsh conditions honed a special female character - independent, accustomed to relying on her own strength everywhere and in everything.
The theme of spiritual slavery is central to the chapter “The Last One.” A terrible “comedy” is played out by the characters in this chapter. For the sake of the half-mad Prince Utyatin, they agreed to pretend that serfdom had not been abolished. This proves that no reform makes yesterday’s slaves free, spiritually valuable people.
The chapter “A Feast for the Whole World” is a continuation of “The Last One.” This depicts a fundamentally different state of the world. This is people's Rus' that has already woken up and spoken at once. New heroes are drawn into the festive feast of spiritual awakening. The whole people sings songs of liberation, judges the past, evaluates the present, and begins to think about the future.
liberation, judges the past, evaluates the present, and begins to think about the future. Sometimes these songs are contrasting to each other. For example, the story “About the exemplary slave - Yakov the Faithful” and the legend “About two great sinners”. Yakov takes revenge on the master for all the bullying in a servile manner, committing suicide in front of his eyes. The robber Kudeyar atones for his sins, murders and violence not with humility, but with the murder of the villain - Pan Glukhovsky. Thus, popular morality justifies righteous anger against the oppressors and even violence against them.
According to the original plan, the peasants had to make sure that it was impossible to find a happy person in Rus'. But he appeared in life - “a new hero of a new era,” a democrat commoner. The author introduces a new face into the poem - the people's intercessor Grisha Dobrosklonov, who sees his happiness in serving the people. Despite the fact that Grisha’s personal fate was difficult (“Fate had prepared for him a glorious path, a great name for the people’s intercessor, consumption and Siberia”), he believes in a bright future for the people as a result of the struggle. And as if in response to the growth of popular consciousness, the songs of Grisha begin to sound, knowing that people's happiness can only be achieved as a result of a nationwide struggle for the “Unflogged province, Ungutted volost, Izbytkovo village.”
The poem, conceived about the people and for the people, becomes an accusatory act against the landowners.
The name of Nekrasov is forever fixed in the consciousness of the Russian people as the name of a great poet who came to literature with his new word and was able to express the high patriotic ideals of his time in unique images and sounds.
Speaking about Nekrasov’s poem “Who Lives Well in Rus',” it must be said that the poem is not finished. The poet began work on the grandiose plan of a “people's book” in 1863, and ended up terminally ill in 1877. As he said: “One thing I deeply regret is that I did not finish the poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'.” However, Belinsky believed that incompleteness is a sign of the true. The question of the “incompleteness” of the poem is highly controversial. After all, “Who Lives Well in Rus'” was conceived as an epic, that is, a work of art depicting with the maximum degree of completeness an entire era in the life of the people. Since folk life is limitless and inexhaustible in its countless manifestations, epics in any variety are characterized by incompleteness. The epic can be continued indefinitely, but you can put an end to almost any part of its path. That is, the individual parts of the poem are connected by some common phenomenon. For example, in “Who Lives Well in Rus'” all parts are united only by wandering peasants (excluding the parts “Last One” and “Feast for the Whole World”). This allows you to freely rearrange the parts. That is, there is a loose order of parts. If the order had been fixed, the part “The Last One” would have followed not the first part, but the second, and “The Peasant Woman” would have been located after the third part, “A Feast for the Whole World.” The composition of the work is built according to the laws of classical epic: it consists of separate, relatively autonomous parts and chapters. Outwardly, these topics are connected by the theme of the road: seven truth-seekers wander around Rus', trying to resolve the question that haunts them: who can live well in Rus'? And therefore, rearranging the parts does not eliminate the meaning and charm of the poem.
The genre originality of the poem is its mixing of fairy-tale motifs and real facts of history. For example, the number seven in folklore is magical. The Seven Wanderers are an image of a large epic cast. The fabulous flavor of the Prologue raises the narrative above everyday life, above peasant life and gives the action an epic universality. At the same time, the events are attributed to the post-reform era. A specific sign of men - “temporarily obliged” - indicates the real situation of the peasants at that time. But it’s not just the magical number of wanderers that creates the fabulous atmosphere. In the Prologue, the meeting of seven men is narrated as a great epic event:
In what year - calculate
In what land - guess
On the sidewalk
Seven men came together...
This is how epic and fairy-tale heroes came together for a battle or an honorable feast. But here, along with fairy-tale motifs, the general sign of post-reform ruin is captured, expressed in the names of the villages: Zaplatovo, Razutovo, Zlobishino, Neurozhaika. Terpigoreva County, Empty Volost, Smart Province - all this also tells us about the plight of the provinces, districts, and volosts after the reforms of 1861.
And yet the men live and act as in a fairy tale: “Go there, I don’t know where, bring that, I don’t know what.” The poem makes a comic comparison of a men's argument with a bullfight in a peasant herd. According to the laws of the epic, it unfolds, as in Gogol’s “Dead Souls,” but also acquires an independent meaning. A cow with a bell, straying from the herd, came to the fire, fixed her eyes on the men,
I listened to crazy speeches
And began, my heart,
Moo, moo, moo!
Nature and animals also participate in the peasant dispute:
And the raven, a smart bird,
Arrived, sitting on a tree
Right by the fire,
Sits and prays to the devil,
To be slapped to death
Which one!
The commotion grows, spreads, covers the entire forest:
A booming echo woke up,
Let's go for a walk,
Let's go scream and shout
As if to tease
Stubborn men.
The poet approaches the very essence of the dispute with irony. The men do not yet understand that the question of who is happier - the priest, the landowner, the merchant, the official or the tsar - reveals the limitations of their ideas about happiness, which come down to material security. But for the peasants of that time, the issue of security was the most important. And not only in Russia this question worried people, which is why the poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'” has a prominent place not only in Russian, but also in world poetry.
The genre originality of N. A.-Nekrasov’s poem lies in the author’s amazing ability to combine a fairy-tale atmosphere with the political problems of the 60s of the 19th century. And also in writing a wonderful epic poem, accessible to all people at any age.
Disputes about the composition of the work are still ongoing, but most scientists have come to the conclusion that it should be like this: “Prologue. Part One”, “Peasant Woman”, “Last One”, “Feast for the Whole World”. The arguments in favor of this particular arrangement of material are as follows. The first part and chapter “Peasant Woman” depicts an old, moribund world. “The Last One” shows the death of this world. In the final part, “A Feast for the Whole World,” signs of new life are especially noticeable; the overall tone of the narrative is lighter, more joyful,
One senses a focus on the future, associated primarily with the image of Grisha Dobrosklonov. In addition, the ending of this part plays the role of a kind of denouement, since it is here that the answer to the question posed at the beginning of the work sounds: “Who lives cheerfully, freely in Russia?” The happy man turns out to be the people's defender Grisha Dobrosklonov, who in his songs predicted “the embodiment of people's happiness.” At the same time, this is a special kind of denouement. She does not return the wanderers to their homes, does not put an end to their search, because the wanderers do not know about Grisha’s happiness. That is why it was possible to write a continuation of the poem, where the wanderers had to look for a happy person further, while following the wrong trail - right up to the king himself. The peculiarity of the composition of the poem is its construction based on the laws of the classical epic: it consists of separate relatively autonomous parts and chapters, its hero is not an individual person, but the entire Russian people, and therefore in genre it is an epic of national life.
The external connection of the parts of the poem is determined by the motive of the road and the search for happiness, which also corresponds to the genre of the folk-epic tale. The plot and compositional method of organizing the narrative - the journey of the peasant heroes - is complemented by the inclusion of author's digressions and extra-plot elements. The epic nature of the work is also determined by the majestically calm pace of the narrative, based on folklore elements. The life of post-reform Russia is shown in all its complexity and versatility, and the breadth of coverage of the general view of the world as a kind of wholeness is combined with the lyrical emotion of the author and the detail of external descriptions. The genre of the epic poem allowed Nekrasov to reflect the life of the entire country, the entire nation, and at one of its most difficult, turning points.
Disputes about the composition of the work are still ongoing, but most scientists have come to the conclusion that it should be like this: “Prologue. Part One”, “Peasant Woman”, “Last One”, “Feast for the Whole World”. The arguments in favor of this particular arrangement of material are as follows. The first part and chapter “Peasant Woman” depicts an old, moribund world. “The Last One” shows the death of this world. In the final part, “A Feast for the Whole World,” signs of new life are especially noticeable, the overall tone of the narrative is lighter, more joyful, and one can feel a focus on the future, associated primarily with the image of Grisha Dobrosklonov. In addition, the ending of this part plays the role of a kind of denouement, since it is here that the answer to the question posed at the beginning of the work sounds: “Who lives cheerfully, freely in Russia?” The happy man turns out to be the people's defender Grisha Dobrosklonov, who in his songs predicted “the embodiment of people's happiness.” At the same time, this is a special kind of denouement. She does not return the wanderers to their homes, does not put an end to their search, because the wanderers do not know about Grisha’s happiness. That is why it was possible to write a continuation of the poem, where the wanderers had to look for a happy person further, while following the wrong trail - right up to the king himself. The peculiarity of the composition of the poem is its construction based on the laws of the classical epic: it consists of separate relatively autonomous parts and chapters, its hero is not an individual person, but the entire Russian people, and therefore in genre it is an epic of national life.
The external connection of the parts of the poem is determined by the motive of the road and the search for happiness, which also corresponds to the genre of the folk-epic tale. The plot and compositional method of organizing the narrative - the journey of the peasant heroes - is complemented by the inclusion of author's digressions and extra-plot elements. The epic nature of the work is also determined by the majestically calm pace of the narrative, based on folklore elements. The life of post-reform Russia is shown in all its complexity and versatility, and the breadth of coverage of the general view of the world as a kind of wholeness is combined with the lyrical emotion of the author and the detail of external descriptions. The genre of the epic poem allowed Nekrasov to reflect the life of the entire country, the entire nation, and at one of its most difficult, turning points.
