I first became acquainted with the work of Nikolai Alekseevich Nekrasov back in elementary school. Not yet able to read well, I listened with bated breath to how grandfather Mazai saved hares in the flood. Then I became acquainted with the poem “Peasant Children,” in which Nekrasov talks about the carefree peasant children’s life. From “General Toptygin” we read an innocent, funny story that happened to a bear. In these works, Nekrasov reveals himself to us as a kind children's writer.
But, growing up and continuing to study Nekrasov’s work in higher grades, I realized that Nikolai Alekseevich appears before us no longer as a kind children’s writer, but as a serious defender of the people. Nekrasov became a national poet. His life predetermined the main direction in the poet’s work. As a boy he played with peasant children; as a young man, he shared the hardships of his poor financial situation with common people. At this time, he became acquainted with the Russian soul, saw its integrity, was imbued with respect and gratitude for the worker, and fell in love with the people. Unlike the authors who lament the fate of the Russian people, only Nekrasov, in his works and poems, sought to awaken them, to rouse them to fight the oppressors. He believed in the strength of the people and was confident of their victory. Nekrasov learned to look at the world through the eyes of a worker. He showed the life of a peasant with all its hardships and adversities. Nekrasov openly and sincerely talks in his poetry about humiliation, about the difficult lot of peasants and boldly takes the side and defense of the common people. Only a person who knows and understands this well will be able to speak so accurately and openly about the life of ordinary people.
N.A. Nekrasov is one of those poets in whose work the folk theme is the main one and in whose works it is clearly formulated civic position. Now, in high school, Nekrasov appears before us as the greatest poet of Rus' and an honest, principled citizen. As a citizen, he always remained faithful to his ideas, never renounced his ideal, wrote poetry and published Sovremennik, despite the oppression of tsarist censorship and persecution. In the poem “elegy,” Nekrasov argues that the theme of the suffering of the people does not grow old while the peasants “languish in poverty, submitting to the whips...”, and his world could not serve anything more worthy: the poet embodies the tragedy, bitterness and despair of peasant destinies in his works . In his work “The Poet and the Citizen,” Nekrasov argues that a true poet is one who has “been dealt a hard lot,” but “he does not ask for a better share.” For Nekrasov, a poet must first of all be a worthy citizen.
The poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'” is an encyclopedia of Russian life. Nekrasov is the creator of the epic Russian painting folk life. The answer to the question: who still has a good life in Rus'? - Grisha finds. It is Grisha, according to Nekrasov, who will be happy, because he does a lot for the good of the people, supports them, and instills faith. In the image of Grisha, Nekrasov draws a freedom fighter. Grisha's goal is to fight for the happiness of the Russian people, and this goal makes him happy.
But the work of N.A. Nekrasov is not limited to one topic of the people. His works also contain the theme of love. This theme, for example, is revealed in the poem “Russian Women”. This poem is about the feat of Russian women, the wives of the Decembrists, who were accustomed to living in carelessness. But when the hour of testing came, these women turned out to be strong and resilient, because they loved their husbands and considered it their duty to share their fate. The Decembrists were convicted and forcibly taken to Siberia, and their wives went there voluntarily. And this is worse.
Nekrasov’s work reflects the entire soul of the common people, and especially the soul of the Russian woman. A Russian woman is capable of not only bearing on her fragile shoulders all the bitterness of life’s trials, but is also capable of enormous, strong and pure love.

Creative works of students on the topic

“How do the people appear in the lyrics of N.A. Nekrasov?”

“The people are the creator of spiritual and material wealth.”

(Based on the poem “Railroad”)

An essay by 7th grade student Alexandra Krasnoperova.

N.A. Nekrasov was born on the Volga, spent a lot of time with peasant children, and saw the difficult life of the people. From childhood, pictures of forced labor and the life of serfs, and the hard work of barge haulers sank into the child’s soul. While living in St. Petersburg, he himself led the life of a poor man. The poet entered the consciousness of the Russian people as an intercessor and singer of the people.

The poem “The Railway” was written by Nekrasov in 1865. The author turns an everyday conversation in a railway carriage into an exposure of the pseudo-nationality of the ruling circles, into thoughts about fate common man. This work was published after 1861, that is, after the liberation of the peasants from serfdom. We see pictures of forced labor. The people are liberated, but they cannot be the master of their fate; it is ruled by the king of hunger. Nekrasov calls hunger the king, because it forces him to do hard, backbreaking work.

He leads armies; at sea by ships

Rules; rounds up people in the artel,

Walks behind the plow, stands behind

Stonemasons, weavers.

The poet says that the existing system is to blame for the famine. Hunger kills people.

Many are in a terrible struggle,

Having brought these barren wilds back to life,

They found a coffin for themselves here.

Nekrasov in these lines contrasts life and struggle with the barren wilds and the coffin, that is, death. With the help of antithesis, the idea is expressed about what hard work, what tension of all forces is required to create, that people have to give their lives in order to breathe life into the barren wilds. The author sympathizes with the people's suffering. The writer creates a fantastic picture, draws a “crowd of the dead” running along the sides of the road in the light of the moon. But the song of the dead does not indicate a completely fantastic, but a deeply realistic picture of the oppression of the people:

We struggled under the heat, under the cold,

With a perpetually bent back.

They lived in dugouts, fought hunger,

They were cold and wet and suffered from scurvy.

The words “God’s warriors, peaceful children of labor” mean that God is still on the side of those who work peacefully and honestly. People's suffering could be much less if they were treated like brothers and their work was respected. Nekrasov turns to Vanya: “These are all your brothers, men.” The habit of work, people's patience and endurance are qualities that allow

believe in a better future for the people.

He does not see the creative power in the people, angry abuse flies out of his mouth:

Your Slav, Anglo-Saxon and German

Do not create and destroy the master,

Barbarians, a wild bunch of drunkards!..

The author's attitude to what is depicted is the opposite. The narrator wants to convey to the audience that it is the common people who create the wealth that generations are proud of. It is the people who create the richest culture.

Despite the fact that the poem is written about the past, it helps us better see the same problems in our time, pay attention to contemporary injustice and try to correct it.

People's idea of ​​happiness. (Based on the poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'.”)

Essay by 10th grade student Yulia Portnykh.

Plan.

The nationality of Nekrasov's lyrics.

The problem of national happiness in the poem.

1. 1. 1. “Who lives happily and freely in Rus'?”

         Understanding of happiness by representatives of different classes:

a) pop;

b) landowner;

c) Matryona Timofeevna;

d) people at the fair.

3. People's Intercessor Grisha Dobrosklonov.

A person’s happiness lies in serving the people and his country.

…The people are freed!

But are the people happy?

N.A. Nekrasov.

Nikolai Alekseevich Nekrasov is a whole era in Russian literature. He warmly sympathized with the people, shocked his contemporaries with pictures of slavery, poverty, and notes of sincere sympathy. He knew how to feel someone else's grief as if it were his own. Nekrasov experienced all the horror of peasant life with the heroes of the poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'.”

Already at the very beginning of the poem, by introducing a prologue, the poet sought to immediately show the main idea of ​​his poem:

In what year - calculate

In what land - guess

On the sidewalk

Seven men came together...

They got together and argued

Who has fun?

Free in Rus'?

Nekrasov’s main goal is to show the plight of the people after the abolition of serfdom. Even the names of the villages: Zaplatovo, Dyryavino, Razutovo, Znobishino, Gorelovo, Neelovo, Neurozhaika - reflect the social meaning of post-reform Russia. As the action develops, the road clash between men ceases to be just an everyday issue, but becomes a great dispute in which all layers of Russian society are involved, all its main social forces called upon by the peasant court.

The first person who had to think about the main question of the poem was the priest:

What do you think is happiness?

Peace, wealth, honor?

Our roads are difficult

Our parish is large...

No heart can bear

Without any trepidation

Death rattle

Funeral lament

Orphan's sadness!

There was no peace and honor for the priest’s wife and daughter:

Who are you making up about?

Are you fairy tales jokers?

And all sorts of blasphemy?

After these words about the priest’s daughter and wife, the truth-seekers became convinced that there is no honor for the priest on Russian soil:

The boys looked down

They are silent - and the priest is silent...

The pope was also deprived of wealth:

Live with only peasants,

Collect worldly hryvnias,

Yes, pies on holidays,

Yes, holy eggs.

The peasant himself needs

And I would be glad to give, but there’s nothing...

The priests have no peace, no honor, no wealth.

This is a poem about the crisis state of Russia, and the crisis affects all classes. Landowners are next on the way of wanderers. They seem to have everything for happiness: peace, wealth, honor. But we cannot see the truly happy in any of them. All of them, if you think about it, are unhappy. For example, Obold Obolduev is a rich landowner of a noble family, who believed that he could do whatever his soul desired - this was his happiness:

I will have mercy on whomever I want,

I'll execute whoever I want,

The law is my desire

The fist is my police.

But was he happy? No, he was lonely, no one loved him. Somewhere deep down he felt that he was unhappy, but he did not realize it or did not show it. But the way he treated the peasants was criminal! After all, everyone probably knows the proverb: “You can’t build happiness on someone else’s misfortune.”

The peasants cannot imagine real happiness. As poor people, they sought happiness from the rich and noble, but did not find it. What do men like them think about this? The chapter of the poem “Country Fair” is about this, where the peasant understanding of happiness is shown. For one, the only happiness is to buy inexpensive pictures in order to somehow decorate his wretched home, for the other - a noble disease, which he is proud of, since it brings him closer to the highest stratum of society. Wanderers do not find happiness among the soldiers:

Soldiers shave with an awl,

Soldiers warm themselves with smoke.

What happiness is there?

There was a soldier who participated in many battles, was on the verge of death several times, but, completely crippled, he considers himself happy. His happiness is that he survived. And there are many such “happy” people in the poem. The real trouble is that ordinary people do not understand what real happiness is!

Not finding a happy man among the men, the wanderers go in search of a happy Russian woman. Using the example of the fate of Matryona Timofeevna, the poet shows the fate of a typical Russian peasant woman. She was happy as a child:

We had a healthy

Non-drinking family.

But she had to start working at the age of five:

And brought me out of infancy

By the fifth year,

And on the seventh for a beetroot

I myself ran into the herd,

I took my father to breakfast,

She was feeding the ducklings.

But everyone around her considered her happier than others. Matryona was lucky with her husband, although his father chose him, Matryona Timofeevna liked him:

Beautifully ruddy, broad and mighty,

Rus hair, soft spoken -

Philip has fallen on his heart!

But she was not destined to be happy either: bullying by her husband’s relatives, the death of her beloved child, beatings, eternal hard labor, constant need - that’s how her life turned out.

All the power given by God,

I put it to work

All the love for the kids.

How can a mother cope with the death of her child?

I was rolling around like a ball

I was curled up like a worm, -

says the poor woman.

I have my head down

I carry an angry heart.

But a life full of torment and suffering did not break the character of the peasant woman, did not turn her into a wordless, obedient slave; treasures of love, kindness, loyalty, intelligence and nobility lurk in her soul.

The inseparability of the concepts of will and happiness for the peasants is emphasized in the words about the lost keys:

Keys to female happiness,

From our free will

Abandoned, lost

From God himself.

At the end of the poem, Nekrasov shows us a truly happy person - this is Grisha Dobrosklonov. His image is both very real and generalized. On the one hand, he is the son of a poor sexton, a seminarian, a simple and kind guy who loves the village, the peasant, the people, who wishes him happiness and is ready to fight for it:

And soon in the boy's heart

With love to the poor mother

Love for all Vakhlatchina

Merged - and from the age of fifteen

Gregory already knew for sure

What will live for happiness

A wretched and dark native corner.

From childhood, Grisha was destined to become a people's defender:

Fate had in store for him

The path is glorious, the name is loud

People's Defender

Consumption and Siberia.

But Grisha is also a generalized image of youth, looking forward, hoping, believing in a better future:

The army rises -

Countless!

The strength in her will affect

Indestructible!

“Who can live well in Rus'?” - the poet asked a great question in the poem! But he also gave a worthy answer to it: “A person’s happiness lies in serving the people, his country.” Nekrasov is a poetic leader of the 60-70s of the 19th century. The poet brought poetry closer to the people, introduced new themes and images into literature. The main theme of Nekrasov’s poetry is showing the people in their quest for happiness and justice. The poet argued: “Only he will outlive himself who, serving the great goals of the century, gives his life entirely to the fight for his human brother.” This is probably why, when Dostoevsky said at Nekrasov’s funeral that the poet “must directly follow Pushkin and Lermontov,” young voices shouted from the crowd: “Higher!”

"Russian peasantry in the works of N.A. Nekrasov."

Essay by 10th grade student Yulia Kolegova.

I dedicated the lyre to my people.
N.A. Nekrasov.

Nikolai Alekseevich Nekrasov is one of the outstanding writers of the 19th century, who main theme in his work he chose to depict the life of the Russian people. As a representative of the “natural” trend, he shows this life as it is, without embellishment, delving into its smallest details. Nekrasov does not try to show only the best that exists in people's life; on the contrary, he mainly highlights those aspects of it that can evoke deep compassion or anger in the reader. The life of the Nekrasov peasants is joyless, hopeless, and difficult. But still, the poet’s people act as bearers of wonderful spiritual qualities. His peasant heroes are wiser and more talented than their masters. Nekrasov believed that all the best was created by the common people. The poet strove all his life to prove this to people; it was no coincidence that he said: “I dedicated the lyre to my people.”

N. A. Nekrasov widely presented the diversity of folk characters, and at the same time, almost every hero of his is endowed with individual traits. Yakim Nagoy, Ermil Girin, Savely, the hero of the Holy Russian, are bright and unforgettable personalities. The heroic strength of the people evokes admiration and respect in the poet, but he also shows the negative sides of the peasant character and peasant life: incessant drunkenness, poverty, downtroddenness, ignorance. Yakim Nagoy says about himself that he “works until he’s dead, drinks until he’s half to death.”

Nekrasov also condemns the slavish obedience of the people. For example, in the poem “The Railway,” showing the slave labor of the peasants, he at the same time emphasizes their resignation:

The literate foremen robbed us,

The bosses flogged, need pressed -

We, God's warriors, have endured everything,

Peaceful children of labor.

Nekrasov completely disagrees with such humility. “How much worse would your lot be if you were less patient?” - he exclaims, seeing how “our land is filled with great national sorrow.” One of the reasons for such submission was the ignorance of the peasants. Therefore, trying to find the reason for their miserable existence, peasants sometimes come to completely absurd theories about “peasant sin”:

Oh man! man! you are the sinner of all,

And for that you will suffer forever!

But, despite this, Nekrasov believes that the time will come “when a man will carry not Blucher and not my stupid lord - Belinsky and Gogol from the market.” In the meantime, even the most thoughtful of the peasants, for example Yakim Nagoy, whose thirst for beauty was not destroyed by hard life, buy simple bast pictures at the fair. For them, this is one of the few bright sides of life.

Nekrasov in his works, and especially in the poem “Who Lives Well in Rus',” mercilessly denounces peasant lackeys who treat other peasants with contempt, who are proud of their servility, even of gout - a master’s disease.

However, most of Nekrasov’s peasants, despite all the hardships of life, retained their dignity and humanity. So, even the “exemplary slave” Yakov decided to protest, albeit at the cost of his own life.

The typical fate of Nekrasov's heroes from the people is suffering. The poet embodies this suffering most vividly in the image and fate of a Russian peasant woman. Nekrasov was the first in Russian literature to develop this topic in such detail. In the poem “Troika,” reflecting on the future fate of the young woman, he writes:

From work, both menial and difficult,

You will fade before you have time to bloom,

You will fall into a deep sleep,

You will babysit, work and eat.

Nekrasov's heroines are strong-willed, hardworking, beautiful Russian women. But Daria (“Frost, Red Nose”), and Matryona Timofeevna (“Who Lives Well in Rus'”), and the heroine of the poem “Troika” - they all have to suffer a lot. That is why the “expression of dull patience” and “senseless eternal fear” were forever frozen in their eyes. Nekrasov's heroines evoke not only compassion, but also admiration. After all, it was not for nothing that he was the first of the Russian poets to compare his Muse with a peasant woman. Moreover, with the one who is punished with a whip. This is exactly how Nekrasov understood his mission: the Muse “the god of wrath and sorrow to remind the kings of the earth of Christ” sent him to torment. And this perception of poetry was characteristic of Nekrasov throughout his entire work.

Unlike his predecessors, who portrayed the people with pity, Nekrasov completely identified himself with them and became the spokesman for their pain and anger. The poet not only introduced readers to the people, but also made them understand and love them, and directed his poetry to serve the people; it became their voice, their cry and groan, the embodiment of their thoughts and feelings. And therefore N.A. Nekrasov occupies a special place in Russian literature.

“An interesting journey along N.A. Nekrasov’s favorite river.”

Essay by 5th grade student Irina Vostrikova.

My mother and I stand on the deck and admire how the sun slowly disappears behind the horizon. “You know, daughter, I once lived in these places great poet Nekrasov. Here he ran along the banks of the Volga, swam with peasant children, listened to the songs of barge haulers,” my mother tells me. I love reading books by Russian poets, and I really wanted to know about

N. A. Nekrasov. The white ship slowly sails along the Volga - a river that knows and remembers N.A. Nekrasov.

Nikolai Alekseevich Nekrasov was born on December 10, 1821 in the town of Nemirov, then his family moved to his father’s estate on the Volga. While still very young, Nekrasov was friends with peasant children. When his father was not at home, he called the children and fed them apples. His father forbade him, the son of a landowner, to “hang around” with peasant children. Nikolai Alekseevich never stopped communicating with peasants. He could easily talk with the peasants, go hunting with them, and tell them his interesting stories.

The love for the fields and forests of his homeland also first arose in him in those early childhood years. Nekrasov admired his native Yaroslavl nature, the beauty of its green spaces. When Nekrasov arrived from abroad, he noted that the nature of Greshnev was dearer to him than all the famous overseas lands. N. A. Nekrasov’s childhood memories are connected with the great Russian river Volga, to which he dedicated many poems.

Nekrasov's works are very interesting. I like his poems about the Volga, about the people, about nature, for example, “Grandfather Mazai and the Hares.” This work addresses the issue of animal protection. When rivers flood, a lot of animals and birds die. They have to escape from their holes, but the animals often do not have time to escape, many drown. Thanks to people like grandfather Mazai, many animals remained alive. I am pleased with the actions of such people. Nekrasov himself was a hunter, he spared animals, and today his poems help to love nature and take care of animals. Everyone really needs them.

If I ever see the Volga again, I will certainly visit the poet’s native place. In the meantime, I remember with sadness the summer, the white ship and the majestic Volga.

The fate of peasant children in the works of N.A. Nekrasov.

Essay by 7th grade student Tamara Burkova.

The childhood of the great Russian poet N.A. Nekrasov took place in a manorial estate on the banks of the Volga. The boy spent a lot of time with peasant children. They swam in the river, picked raspberries and blueberries, and went sledding in the winter. The future poet sympathized with the fate of the children and did not look down on them. Nekrasov’s own childhood was overshadowed by difficult memories of his father’s cruel treatment not only of serfs, but also of his household. All these impressions were reflected in the poet’s work.

The poems “Schoolboy”, “Song to Eremushka”, “Crying Children”, “Peasant Children”, “Mother”, “Nightingales” are dedicated to the fate of peasant children, in which the poet talks about their sad fate. Children from the people are talented and strive for knowledge. We see this from the poem “Schoolboy”. Parents want a better life for their son, they spend their “last penny”, hoping that he will be smarter and happier. “This is a glorious path for many,” says Nekrasov and recalls the same person from the people, Lomonosov, about how “the Arkhangelsk man, by his own and God’s will, became intelligent and great.” The poet emphasizes that the road to school is not boring, but fun. This poorly dressed, shoeless boy is contrasted with pompous people, it is emphasized that in Russia there are many outstanding people from the common people.

And in the work “Nightingales,” the talent of peasant children is emphasized; they love nature, love to listen to birdsong. Since childhood, they have been asking serious questions about their fate, about their serfdom. They ask their mother if there are groves in the world for people where they could be free just like nightingales. With regret, the mother replies:

No, these places... without taxes

And there is no recruiting, children.

What if they were for people?

Such groves and clearings,

All in the hands of their children

Peasant women would have been taken there.

Every mother would like to give her children a carefree life and joy, without pain and grief, without sadness and hatred.

Nekrasov also admires the children in the poem “Peasant Children.” In their eyes he sees kindness and calmness. The poet says that he loves them and even envies them, does not treat them as people of a low birth, emphasizes that the children are curious, listen to the stories of working people, wanderers. The author is surprised how love for love is preserved in such small hearts. native land, to work, to a world in which there is a lot of anger and injustice. But this coin has another side:

Suppose a peasant child is free

Growing up without learning anything

But he will grow up, if God wants,

And nothing prevents him from bending.

“The Cry of Children” is about this same difficult fate. Instead of carefree games, there is difficult and unbearable work in a factory for children. The poet wanted readers to hear “the quiet crying and complaints of children.” The heroes beg the merciless wheel to stop the “terrible whirling”, but

It's no use crying and praying,

The wheel does not hear, does not spare:

Even if you die, the damn thing is spinning,

Even if you die, it buzzes, buzzes, buzzes.

Children's dreams are not about games and fun, but about rest and sleep:

If we were allowed into the field now,

We would end up in the grass and sleep.

There is no happiness even at home; you will be met with “care and need.” The poor mother is crying, her heart is breaking because she cannot help the children, everything goes in circles, even cry and sob.

And in the poem “Mother” the unhappy woman is sad looking at her three sons. It’s sad for her to watch how they frolic and enjoy life, she knows what awaits them, she has a presentiment of their difficult fate: “Unfortunate ones! Why were you born?

In his work, the talented Russian poet Nikolai Alekseevich Nekrasov depicts the life of peasant children full of pain, anxiety, hard work and need. But still, he believes that their future, although difficult, is bright. Nekrasov shows the talent, intelligence, perseverance, and hard work of the Russian people.

Nikolai Alekseevich Nekrasov November 28 (December 10) 1821—December 27, 1877 (January 8, 1878) Nekrasov’s childhood passed on the Nekrasov family estate, in the village of Greshnevo, Yaroslavl province, in the district where father Alexey Sergeevich Nekrasov, having retired, moved when Nikolai was 3 years old. The boy grew up in a huge family (Nekrasov had 13 brothers and sisters), in a difficult situation of his father’s brutal reprisals against peasants, his stormy orgies with serf mistresses and a cruel attitude towards his “recluse” wife, the mother of the future poet. Neglected cases and a number of processes on the estate forced Nekrasov’s father to take the place of police officer. During his travels, he often took little Nikolai with him, and, while still a child, he often saw the dead, collecting arrears, etc., which became embedded in his soul in the form of sad pictures of people’s grief.

In 1832, at the age of 11, Nekrasov entered the Yaroslavl gymnasium, where he reached the 5th grade. He did not study well and did not get along very well with the gymnasium authorities. At the Yaroslavl gymnasium, a 16-year-old boy began to write down his first poems in his home notebook. In his initial work one could trace the sad impressions of his early years, which to one degree or another colored the first period of his work.

His father always dreamed of a military career for his son, and in 1838, 17-year-old Nekrasov went to St. Petersburg to be assigned to a noble regiment.
However, Nekrasov met a gymnasium friend, a student of Glushitsky, and became acquainted with other students, after which he developed a passionate desire to study. He ignored his father’s threat to be left without any financial assistance and began to prepare for the entrance exam to St. Petersburg University. However, he failed the exam and entered the Faculty of Philology as a volunteer student. From 1839 to 1841 he spent time at the university, but almost all of his time was spent searching for income, since his angry father stopped providing him with financial support. During these years, Nikolai Nekrasov suffered terrible poverty, not every day even having the opportunity to have a full lunch. He didn't always have an apartment either. For some time he rented a room from a soldier, but one day he fell ill from prolonged starvation, owed the soldier a lot and, despite the November night, was left homeless. On the street, a passing beggar took pity on him and took him to one of the slums on the outskirts of the city. In this shelter, Nekrasov found a part-time job by writing a petition to someone for 15 kopecks. However, terrible need only strengthened his character.
After several years of hardship, Nekrasov’s life began to improve. He began giving lessons and publishing short articles in the “Literary Supplement to the Russian Invalid” and the Literary Gazette. In addition, he composed ABCs and fairy tales in verse for popular print publishers, and wrote vaudevilles for the Alexandrinsky Theater (under the name of Perepelsky). Nekrasov became interested in literature. For several years he worked diligently on prose, poetry, vaudeville, journalism, criticism - until the mid-1840s.
He began to have his own savings, and in 1840, with the support of some St. Petersburg acquaintances, he published a book of his poems entitled “Dreams and Sounds.” The collection consisted of pseudo-romantic imitative ballads with various “scary” titles like “Evil Spirit”, “Angel of Death”, “Raven”, etc. Nekrasov took the book that was being prepared to V. A. Zhukovsky to get his opinion. He singled out 2 poems as decent, the rest advised the young poet to publish without a name: “Later you will write better, and you will be ashamed of these poems.” Nekrasov hid behind the initials “N. N."
Literary critic Nikolai Polevoy praised the debutant, while critic V.G. Belinsky in “Notes of the Fatherland” spoke disparagingly about the book. The book of the aspiring poet “Dreams and Sounds” was not sold out at all, and this had such an effect on Nekrasov that he, like N.V. Gogol (who at one time bought up and destroyed “Hanz Küchelgarten”), also began to buy up and destroy “Dreams and sounds”, which therefore became the greatest bibliographic rarity.
However, the failure of his poetic debut was obvious, and Nekrasov tried his hand at prose. His early stories and short stories reflected his own life experience and his first impressions in St. Petersburg.
In the early 1840s, Nekrasov became an employee of Otechestvennye Zapiski, starting work in the bibliographic department. In 1842, Nekrasov became close to Belinsky’s circle, who became closely acquainted with him and highly appreciated the merits of his mind. Nekrasov’s publishing business was so successful that at the end of 1846, he, together with the writer and journalist Ivan Panaev, leased from P. A. Pletnev the Sovremennik magazine, founded by Alexander Pushkin. The literary youth, who created the main force of “Notes of the Fatherland,” left Kraevsky and joined Nekrasov. Belinsky also moved to Sovremennik; he transferred to Nekrasov part of the material that he had collected for the collection “Leviathan” he had planned.

Nekrasov, like Belinsky, became a successful discoverer of new talents. Ivan Turgenev, Ivan Goncharov, Alexander Herzen, Nikolai Ogarev, Dmitry Grigorovich found their fame and recognition on the pages of the Sovremennik magazine. Alexander Ostrovsky, Saltykov-Shchedrin, Gleb Uspensky were published in the magazine. Nikolai Nekrasov introduced Fyodor Dostoevsky and Leo Tolstoy into Russian literature. Also published in the magazine were Nikolai Chernyshevsky and Nikolai Dobrolyubov, who soon became ideological leaders"Contemporary".

However, this period could not be called easy. The class contradictions that aggravated at that time were also reflected in the magazine: the editors of Sovremennik found themselves split into two groups, one of which, led by Ivan Turgenev, Leo Tolstoy and Vasily Botkin, who advocated for moderate realism and the aesthetic “Pushkin” principle in literature , represented the liberal nobility. They were counterbalanced by adherents of satirical “Gogolian” literature, promoted by the democratic part of the Russian “natural school” of the 1840s. In the early 1860s, the confrontation between these two trends in the journal reached its utmost intensity. In the split that occurred, Nekrasov supported the “revolutionary commoners,” the ideologists of “peasant democracy.” During this difficult period of the highest political upsurge in the country, the poet creates such works as “The Poet and the Citizen,” “Reflections at the Front Entrance” and “The Railway.”

In the early 1860s, Dobrolyubov died, Chernyshevsky and Mikhailov were exiled to Siberia. All this was a blow for Nekrasov. The era of student unrest, riots of “liberated from the land” peasants and the Polish uprising began. During this period, the “first warning” was announced to Nekrasov’s magazine. The publication of Sovremennik was suspended, and in 1866, after Dmitry Karakozov shot the Russian Emperor Alexander II, the magazine closed forever.
After the closure of the magazine, Nekrasov became close to the publisher Andrei Kraevsky and two years after the closure of Sovremennik, in 1868, he rented Domestic Notes from Kraevsky, making them a militant organ of revolutionary populism and turning them, together with M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, into organ of progressive democratic thought.
At all stages of Nekrasov’s work, satire occupied one of the most important places in him; a gravitational tendency towards it began to emerge back in the 1840s. This desire for a sharply critical depiction of reality led in the 1860s to the 1870s to the appearance of a whole series of satirical works. At the same time, he did not forget about the lyrical beginning, he knew how to easily move from soulful intonations to the techniques of a prickly poetic feuilleton.
In 1866, Nekrasov's reputation as a revolutionary democrat and moral person Enormous damage was caused when the poet, probably trying to save his Sovremennik magazine, read an ode of laudatory ode to General Muravyov-Vilensky (“Muravyov-the Hangman”) at a dinner at the English Club. In the ode, Nekrasov called for speedy reprisals against young revolutionaries, to whom he had previously addressed calls: “go into the fire...”, “go and perish...”, “not die in vain: a cause is strong when blood flows underneath it...”. The ode caused a storm of indignation in society and especially in literary circles. Even the staff of his magazine Sovremennik and members of the English Club who heard this work were offended by Nekrasov’s act. Nikolai Nekrasov lived the rest of his life in an atmosphere of contempt from a significant part of society.
In 1866, General Muravyov, who had previously become famous for his great cruelty during the “pacification” of Poland, was called out of retirement by the Tsar to suppress revolutionary sentiments in St. Petersburg after an attempt was made on the Tsar’s life. The repressions immediately started by Muravyov and affecting even princes and ministers sowed fear and panic among the capital's intelligentsia. Many anti-monarchist people, in order to avoid repression, were forced to publicly express rejoicing at the miraculous salvation of the Tsar and praise his savior, Osip Ivanovich Komissarov, who pushed the terrorist’s arm at the moment of the shot. Nekrasov also succumbed to this panic, first signing an address to the Tsar, expressing his “deep sorrow over a crime unheard of in Russia” and at the same time “boundless joy about the preservation of his beloved monarch,” and then composing poems in honor of Komissarov.
On April 14, Nekrasov receives a secret note from censor Feofil Tolstoy warning about the impending closure of the Sovremennik magazine. At the same time, the foreman of the English Club, Count G. A. Stroganov, who liked the poems in honor of Komissarov, invites the poet to prepare poems for a dinner in honor of Muravyov, who has just been made an honorary member of the club. Fearing the closure of his magazine, to which the poet devoted many years (and which was eventually closed by Muravyov anyway), Nekrasov decided to compose and read an ode to the general over lunch. According to those present, Nekrasov began to curry favor with Muravyov from the very beginning of the dinner. Sitting at the table with Muravyov and listening to him scold the revolutionary ideas disseminated by magazines, the poet nodded to him and repeated:
“Yes, your Excellency! We need to uproot this evil! Your Excellency, do not spare the guilty!” After the end of the celebration, when the diners left the dining table and only a few remained, who went into the gallery to drink coffee, Nekrasov approached Muravyov and asked permission to say his “poetic greetings.” Muravyov allowed, but did not even turn to the poet, continuing to smoke his pipe.
“The majority of the club members did not like Nekrasov’s extremely awkward and inappropriate prank,” says Baron A.I. Delvig in his book; the poems greatly offended those present. Muravyov himself only looked at Nekrasov with a contemptuous look and advised him not to publish these poems. The news of Nekrasov's act quickly spread throughout St. Petersburg and caused a storm of indignation.
Nekrasov himself never denied the meanness of his act, but at first he rejected the right to judge himself, believing that the whole society is saturated with meanness: “Yes, I am a scoundrel, but you are also scoundrels. That is why I am a scoundrel, because I am your offspring, your blood. I don’t recognize your trial, you are the same defendants as I am.” At the same time, according to K.I. Chukovsky, Nekrasov experienced torment of conscience about this incident until his death; criticism about this deeply hurt Nekrasov and many times caused a deterioration in his health. It seemed especially painful to him that the ideological connection that clearly existed for everyone with Belinsky and Dobrolyubov, whom Nekrasov valued very much, was now broken.

Later years

1877-1878
Nekrasov’s main work in his later years was the epic peasant poem-symphony “Who Lives Well in Rus',” which was based on the poet’s thought, which relentlessly haunted him in the years after the reform: “The people are liberated, but are the people happy?” This epic poem absorbed all his spiritual experience. This is the experience of a subtle connoisseur of folk life and folk speech. The poem became, as it were, the result of his long thoughts about the situation and fate of the peasantry, ruined by this reform.
At the beginning of 1875, Nekrasov became seriously ill. Doctors discovered he had intestinal cancer, an incurable disease that left him bedridden for the next two years. During this time, his life turned into a slow agony. Nekrasov was operated on by surgeon Billroth, who specially arrived from Vienna, but the operation only slightly extended his life. News of the poet's fatal illness significantly increased his popularity. Letters and telegrams began to arrive to him in large quantities from all over Russia. The support greatly helped the poet in his terrible torment and inspired him to further creativity.
During this difficult time for himself, he writes “Last Songs,” which, due to the sincerity of his feelings, are considered one of his best creations. IN recent years the consciousness of its significance in the history of the Russian word clearly emerged in his soul.
Nekrasov died on December 27, 1877 at 8 pm.
A huge number of people came to see the poet off on his final journey. His funeral became the first time a nation paid its last respects to the writer. The farewell to the poet began at 9 a.m. and was accompanied by a literary and political demonstration. Despite the severe frost, a crowd of several thousand people, mostly young people, escorted the poet’s body to his eternal resting place at the St. Petersburg Novodevichy Cemetery.
Personal life

The personal life of Nikolai Alekseevich Nekrasov was not always successful. In 1842, at a poetry evening, he met Avdotya Panaeva (ur. Bryanskaya) - the wife of the writer Ivan Panaev. Avdotya Panaeva, an attractive brunette, was considered one of the most beautiful women Petersburg at that time. In addition, she was smart and was the owner of a literary salon, which met in the house of her husband Ivan Panaev. Her own literary talent attracted the young but already popular Chernyshevsky, Dobrolyubov, Turgenev, Belinsky to the circle in the Panayevs’ house. Her husband, the writer Panaev, was characterized as a rake and a reveler. Despite this, his wife was distinguished by her decency, and Nekrasov had to make considerable efforts to attract the attention of this woman. Fyodor Dostoevsky was also in love with Avdotya, but he failed to achieve reciprocity. At first, Panaeva also rejected 26-year-old Nekrasov, who was also in love with her, which is why he almost committed suicide.
During one of the trips of the Panaevs and Nekrasov to the Kazan province, Avdotya and Nikolai Alekseevich nevertheless confessed their feelings to each other. Upon their return, they began to live in a civil marriage in the Panaevs’ apartment, together with Avdotya’s legal husband, Ivan Panaev. This union lasted almost 16 years, until Panaev’s death.
All this caused public condemnation - they said about Nekrasov that he lives in someone else’s house, loves someone else’s wife and at the same time makes scenes of jealousy for his legal husband. During this period, even many friends turned away from him. But, despite this, Nekrasov and Panaeva were happy.
In 1849, Avdotya Yakovlevna gave birth to a boy from Nekrasov, but he did not live long. At this time, Nekrasov himself fell ill. It is believed that strong attacks of anger and mood swings are associated with the death of the child, which later led to a break in their relationship with Avdotya. In 1862, Ivan Panaev died, and soon Avdotya Panaeva left Nekrasov. However, Nekrasov remembered her until the end of his life and, when drawing up his will, mentioned her in it.
In May 1864, Nekrasov went on a trip abroad, which lasted about three months. He lived mainly in Paris with his companions - his sister Anna Alekseevna and the Frenchwoman Selina Lefren, whom he met in St. Petersburg in 1863. Selina was an actress of a French troupe performing at the Mikhailovsky Theater. She was distinguished by her lively disposition and easy character. Selina spent the summer of 1866 in Karabikha, and in the spring of 1867 she went abroad, as before, together with Nekrasov and his sister Anna. However, this time she never returned to Russia. This did not interrupt their relationship - in 1869 they met in Paris and spent the whole of August by the sea in Dieppe. Nekrasov was very pleased with this trip, also improving his health. Having returned, Nekrasov did not forget Selina for a long time and helped her. And in his dying will he assigned her ten and a half thousand rubles.
Later, Nekrasov met a village girl, Fyokla Anisimovna Viktorova, very pleasant and kind, but simple and poorly educated. She was 23 years old, and he was already 48. The writer took her to theaters, concerts and exhibitions to fill the gaps in her upbringing. Nikolai Alekseevich came up with her name - Zina. So Fyokla Anisimovna began to be called Zinaida Nikolaevna. She learned Nekrasov's poems by heart and admired him. They got married only shortly before the poet’s death, but he considered her his legal wife. However, Nekrasov still yearned for his former love - Avdotya Panaeva - and at the same time loved both Zinaida and the Frenchwoman Selina Lefren, with whom he had an affair abroad. He dedicated one of his most famous poetic works, “Three Elegies,” only to Panaeva.
Another hobby of Nekrasov, also passed on to him from his father, was hunting.

Avdotya Panaeva recalled: when Nekrasov was going to hunt the bear, there were large gatherings - expensive wines, snacks and just provisions were brought; They even took the cook with them. In March 1865, Nekrasov managed to catch three bears in one day. He valued bear-hunting men and dedicated poems to them.
Fyokla Anisimovna, who became Nekrasov’s late muse in 1870 and was named Zinaida Nikolaevna by the poet in a noble manner, also became addicted to her husband’s hobby, hunting. She even saddled the horse herself and went hunting with him in a tailcoat and tight trousers, with a Zimmerman on her head. All this delighted Nekrasov. But one day, while hunting in the Chudovsky swamp, Zinaida Nikolaevna accidentally shot Nekrasov’s beloved dog, a black pointer named Kado. After this, Nekrasov, who devoted 43 years of his life to hunting, hung up his gun forever.
Glorious Autumn (excerpt from "Railroad")
Glorious autumn! Healthy, vigorous
The air invigorates tired forces;
Fragile ice on the icy river
It lies like melting sugar;
Near the forest, like in a soft bed,
You can get a good night's sleep - peace and space!
The leaves have not yet had time to fade,
Yellow and fresh, they lie like a carpet.
Glorious autumn! Frosty nights
Clear, quiet days...
There is no ugliness in nature! And kochi,
And moss swamps and stumps -
Everything is fine under the moonlight,
Everywhere I recognize my native Rus'...
I fly quickly on cast iron rails,
I think my thoughts...

Grandfather Mazai and the hares (excerpt)

Old Mazai chatted in the barn:
In our swampy, low-lying region
There would be five times more game,
If only they didn't catch her with nets,
If only they didn’t press her with snares;
Hares too - I feel sorry for them to the point of tears!
Only the spring waters will rush in,
And without that, they are dying by the hundreds, -
No! not enough yet! men are running
They catch them, drown them, and beat them with hooks.
Where is their conscience?.. I'm just getting firewood
I went in a boat - there are a lot of them from the river
In the spring the flood comes to us, -
I go and catch them. The water is coming.
I see one small island -
The hares gathered on it in a crowd.
Every minute the water was rising
To the poor animals; there's nothing left underneath them
Less than an arshin of land in width,
Less than a fathom in length.
Then I arrived: their ears were chattering,
You can't move; I took one
He commanded the others: jump yourself!
My hares jumped - nothing!
The oblique team just sat down,
The entire island disappeared under water.
“That's it! - I said, - don’t argue with me!
Listen, bunnies, to grandfather Mazai!”
Just like that, we sail in silence.
A column is not a column, a bunny on a stump,
Paws crossed, the poor fellow stands,
I took it too - the burden is not great!
Just started paddle work
Look, a hare is scurrying around by the bush -
Barely alive, but as fat as a merchant's wife!
I, fool, covered her with a zipun -
I was shaking a lot... It wasn’t too early.
A gnarled log floated past,
About a dozen hares escaped on it.
“If I took you, sink the boat!”
It’s a pity for them, however, and a pity for the find -
I caught my hook on a twig
And he dragged the log behind him...
The women and children had fun,
How I took the village of bunnies for a ride:
“Look: what old Mazai is doing!”
OK! Admire, but don’t disturb us!
We found ourselves in the river outside the village.
This is where my bunnies really went crazy:
They look at hind legs get up
The boat is rocked and not allowed to row:
The shore was seen by oblique rogues,
Winter, and a grove, and thick bushes!..
I drove the log tightly to the shore,
The boat moored - and “God bless!” said…
Once upon a time, in the cold winter... (excerpt from “Peasant Children”)

One day, in the cold winter season
I came out of the forest; it was bitterly cold.
I see it's slowly going uphill
A horse carrying a cart of brushwood.
And walking importantly, in decorous calm,
A man leads a horse by the bridle
In big boots, in a short sheepskin coat,
In big mittens... and he's as small as a fingernail!
“Great guy!” - “Go past!”
- “You’re so formidable, as I can see!
Where do the firewood come from? - “From the forest, of course;
Father, you hear, chops, and I take it away.”
(A woodcutter’s ax was heard in the forest.)
“What, my father has big family?»
- “The family is big, but two people
Just men: my father and I..."
- “So that’s it! What’s your name?” - “Vlas.”
- “What year are you?” - “The sixth has passed...
Well, dead! - the little one shouted in a deep voice,
He pulled the reins and walked faster.
There are women in Russian villages... (excerpt from “Frost, Red Nose”)

There are women in Russian villages
With calm importance of faces,
With beautiful strength in movements,
With the gait, with the look of queens,—
Wouldn't a blind person notice them?
And the sighted man says about them:
“It will pass - as if the sun will shine!
If he looks, he’ll give me a ruble!”
They go the same way
How all our people are coming,
But the dirtiness of the situation is wretched
It doesn't seem to stick to them. Blooms
Beauty, the world is a wonder,
Blush, slim, tall,
In every the clothes are beautiful,
Dexterous for any job.
And endures hunger and cold,
Always patient, even...
I saw how she squints:
With a wave, the mop is ready!
The scarf fell over her ear,
Just look at the scythes falling.
Some guy got it wrong
And he threw them up, the fool!
Heavy brown braids
They fell on the dark chest,
Bare feet covered her feet,
They prevent the peasant woman from looking.
She pulled them away with her hands,
He looks at the guy angrily.
The face is majestic, as if in a frame,
Burning with embarrassment and anger...
On weekdays he does not like idleness.
But you won't recognize her,
How the smile of joy will disappear
The stamp of labor is on the face.
Such heartfelt laughter
And such songs and dances
Money can't buy it. "Joy!"
The men repeat among themselves.
In the game the horseman will not catch her,
In trouble, he will not fail, he will save;
Stops a galloping horse
He will enter a burning hut!
Beautiful, straight teeth,
What big pearls she has,
But strictly rosy lips
They keep their beauty from people -
She rarely smiles...
She has no time to sharpen her lasses,
Her neighbor won't dare
Ask for a grip, a potty;
She doesn't feel sorry for the poor beggar -
Feel free to walk around without work!
Lies on it with strict efficiency
And the seal of inner strength.
There is a clear and strong consciousness in her,
That all their salvation is in work,
And her work brings reward:
The family does not struggle in need,
They always have a warm house,
The bread is baked, the kvass is delicious,
Healthy and well-fed guys,
There is an extra piece for the holiday.
This woman is going to mass
In front of the whole family in front:
Sits like he's sitting on a chair, two year old
The baby is on her chest
Six year old son nearby
The elegant uterus leads...
And this picture is to my heart
To everyone who loves the Russian people!

Text from Wikipedia.

S.A. ANDREEVSKY. About Nekrasov

A controversial poet... And before others, he challenged himself: “There is no free poetry in you, my harsh, clumsy verse!” ; "I'm struggling prevented me from being a poet“... As an extreme opinion against Nekrasov, one can point to Turgenev’s review: “I am convinced that lovers of Russian literature will re-read Polonsky’s best poems when the very name of Mr. Nekrasov is covered in oblivion. Why is this? But simply because in the matter of poetry only poetry alone is tenacious and that in Mr. Nekrasov’s fabrications sewn with white thread, seasoned with all sorts of spices, painfully hatched? It’s poetry that’s not worth a penny, just as it’s not there, for example, in the poems of the universally respected and venerable A.S. Khomyakov, with whom, I hasten to add, Mr. Nekrasov has nothing in common” (“St. Petersburg Gazette”, 1870 No. 8). A commentary on this printed statement by Turgenev is his letter to Mr. Polonsky from Weimar dated January 29, 1870: “You may be right in what you tell me about Nekrasov; but believe me, I have always had the same opinion about his writings - and he is knows; Even when we were on friendly terms, he rarely read his poems to me, and when he read them, he always did so with the caveat: “I know that you don’t like them.” I feel something like a positive disgust for them: their “arri?re gout”? I don’t know how to say it in Russian - it’s especially disgusting: they smell like mud, like bream or carp.” Even earlier (January 13, 1868) Turgenev wrote to Mr. Polonsky: “Mr. Nekrasov is a poet with effort and tricks; The other day I tried to re-read his collection of poems... no! Poetry didn’t even spend the night here - and I threw this chewed papier-mâché with a sprinkle of spicy vodka into the corner.” Turgenev’s natural alienation from Nekrasov’s muse was also reflected in his “Ghosts”: “At the open window of a high house (flying over St. Petersburg), ? writes Turgenev, “I saw a girl in a wrinkled silk dress, sleeveless, with a pearl net on her hair and with a cigarette in her mouth. She read the book reverently: it was a volume essays one of the newest Juvenals. - Let's fly away! ? I said to Ellis" (Ghosts, XXII). - Why is it Turgenev, who welcomed poetry in everything and everywhere, noting, for example, Dobrolyubov’s “amazing” poem: “Let me die - there is little sadness ...” - why did Turgenev completely deny Nekrasov? This, admittedly, somewhat capricious and exaggerated hostility of Turgenev to the works of Nekrasov can hardly be explained by the personal relations between both writers; Probably, there was really something in Nekrasov’s lyrics that painfully irritated Turgenev’s sensitive aesthetic nature. And Turgenev was not alone. Among the estheticians, Mr. Strakhov very boldly and persistently denounced Nekrasov for artificial effects and poetic tactlessness. Among the liberals, Mr. Antonovich argued that Nekrasov “was not strictly a lyrical poet, creating and singing in poetic passion: he created coldly, thoughtfully and strictly consciously” (“Slovo.” February 1877). The poet himself doubted himself, and so did others. Something is hiding here. Here, either the nature of the talent itself, or the split in its functions, or both together are to blame.

Everyone recognized Nekrasov’s talent. Caught by the positive tastes of society, he looked for new roads, new techniques; he forced adherents of pure art to dispute its glory and get confused in definitions: what exactly is poetry?

This great and complex literary force begs to be studied.

“The struggle prevented me from being a poet,” ? says Nekrasov. Not just one struggle, but also the time in which he acted, and the demands of readers, and the influence of leading critics and, of course, most of all, Nekrasov’s own nature, the most positive, efficient, earthly that you can imagine. Even if he was an energetic, sincere, even ardent worker of the word? after all, the soil of his nature was predominantly practical, tastes? sober and material. Beauty, women's love? these eternal springs of poetry? hardly aroused his inspiration. In a woman, he loved physical health, dark skin, blush, full figure, slimness and proportionality: “She is sweet, portly and beautiful” (“On the Volga”), “proportionate, slender” (“Cheap Purchase”), “Where is your face dark” (“Troika”, “Sasha”, etc.).

All of Nekrasov’s lyrical plays, dedicated to love, constantly, fatally, return to domestic scenes and feuds, revealing the writer’s incompatibility with the gentle sex (“If tormented by rebellious passion...”, “Struck by an irrevocable loss...”, “I visited your cemetery... your laughter. and the talk... infuriated my heavy, sick and irritated mind...", "I don't like your irony...", "You and I are stupid people... every minute, the flash is ready", "Yes, our life flowed rebelliously, parting was inevitable" , “Nerves and Tears”, etc.) Nature evokes a poetic feeling in the heart of everyone, even not a poet, it constitutes the main happiness of the commoner and, of course, in the admirer of the people she had to find her natural, strong singer. That's how Nekrasov was. His appeals to the Motherland, to the Volga, to the Russian expanse are sometimes filled with breathtaking lyricism, they breathe power, sorrow and love; the pictures of the forest, village, peasant field are drawn vividly and realistically; they emanate either freshness or sadness; in “Sasha” and “Moroz” Nekrasov gave a truly poetic personification of summer and winter. But this responsiveness to nature, as a feeling common to everyone, does not yet constitute a distinctive sign of a rich poetic temperament. And here, if you subtract Nekrasov’s exceptional moods, you will discover in him the same positive person: bilious in bad weather, kind in the fresh frost, cursing typhus and cholera carried by the St. Petersburg winds, and quite content only when hunting, in his village, outside the city :

Admiring the month, looking into the distance,

We feel that quiet sadness in our souls,

What is sweeter than joy... Where do these feelings come from?

Why are we so pleased? After all, we are no longer children!

Is it really day labor? dreaming tendencies

More didn't kill us?... And do we, the poor,

For pleasures distracted by nature

Freedom to briefly count down moments?

? Eh, it’s full of reasoning, looking for reasons for everything!

The village has banished the long-standing spleen from its soul.

The hard oppressive work is forgotten,

Is tiresome poverty a constant concern?

And the heart is happy...

Finally, in the main nerve of its activity, in what created it great glory, in mourning the people's grief, in protecting the oppressed and disadvantaged, ? What exactly did Nekrasov concentrate all the power of his compassion on? On poverty, hunger and cold, on illness, on the torment of the heat in times of suffering, on the difficulties of stage-by-stage transition, on the suffocating darkness of convict holes, on the harmful air of factories for children and workers, on the unbearable hardships of barge labor, on the squalor of petty officials,? in a word, always and mainly - on the material adversities of the lesser brethren. His speech was strong, his sermon was hot and menacing, but at the core there still sat a man of action, a steward of public needs, an eloquent hygienist or an ardent social deputy. The great day of liberation of the peasants, which bestowed moral benefits on the masses of the people, was met with only a very weak greeting from Nekrasov in the form of a short, 16-line poem “Freedom”... Nekrasov was not so exalted as to be confused and stunned at such a moment. He immediately said: that’s not all. Thirteen years later, in his “Elegy” (1874), Nekrasov wrote:

I saw a red day: there is no slave in Russia!

And I shed sweet tears in tenderness...

“Enough to rejoice in naive enthusiasm”?

The muse whispered to me: “It’s time to go forward:

The people are liberated, but are the people happy?...

All this is true, but you will not find Nekrasov’s tears of tenderness or rejoicing over the liberation of the peasants in any of his poems that coincide with this glorious era. Unsatisfied from the very beginning, he kept waiting for when “the peasant suffering would become more bearable”, when a contented child would run “across the meadow, playing and whistling with his father’s breakfast”? Earthly, vital goals always remained closer to Nekrasov’s heart. This is the essence of the poet’s nature, exposed by his book. Already in his very personality there are many makings for discord with the muse.

The content corresponds to the form. The poetic text very often betrays Nekrasov in the same way. Someone, in praise of Nekrasov, said that the dignity of his works lies precisely in the fact that if they were translated into prose, due to their content, they would not lose anything. Treacherous praise! Indeed, in this case, the inevitable question arises: why were they written in poetry? The poetic form is a complete form of art, which has its own special area. Outside of this form, the objects of poetry become unrecognizable. Musical speech alone can convey and capture certain elusive moods; with the destruction of the melody everything disappears. And with Nekrasov, a really good two-thirds of his works can be turned into prose and not only will not suffer from this, but will even gain in clarity and completeness. There are entire pages that just need to be printed without paragraphs, with the slightest rearrangement of words, with the addition of two or three conjunctions, and no one will know that they were poems. Here is an example (from “Russian Women”):

“The old man says: Think about us! After all, we are not strangers to you: father, mother, and child, and finally, you recklessly abandon us all. For what?

Father! I am doing my duty.

But why are you condemning yourself to torment?

I won't suffer there. A more terrible torment awaits me here. But if I remain obedient to you, separation will torment me. Knowing no peace day or night, sobbing over the poor orphan, I will keep thinking about my husband and hearing his gentle reproach...”

As you can see, there is not the slightest trace of melody here, and yet this is an almost literal reprint of the following dubiously musical lines:

The old man said: “Think about us,

We are not strangers to you:

And mother, and father, and child, finally,

You are recklessly abandoning everyone,

For what?” ? I am doing my duty, father!

? “Why are you dooming yourself?

For flour? ? I won't suffer there!

A terrible torment awaits me here.

Yes, if I stay, obedient to you,

I'm tormented by separation.

Knowing no peace either night or day,

Sobbing over the poor orphan,

I will always think about my husband,

Yes, hear his meek reproach..."

Why, one might ask, is there a poetic form here, when it adds absolutely nothing to the story, either in beauty or in the power of impressions?

And many such experiments can be done with Nekrasov’s poems. What does this prove? This proves that the poetic form, by its nature, is not necessary for most of the subjects depicted by the author, and is not essential for conveying his mood, that it is of little use for the material with which the author so often fills his text. The “language of the gods” does not merge with this material into one whole, it does not transform it into something better and easily falls off it like mortal husk. But try to do the same thing, for example, with Fetov’s “Whisper, timid breathing...”: in prose this little thing will completely perish, like a diamond that has burned into coal. Or do you think about, for example, translating “The Demon” or “Onegin” into prose? Yes, there is so much music in these verses that you will not be able to cope with them; rhymes will be sung in prose, will it hurt you to do this withdrawal, ? you will feel that you are tormenting, destroying something living and magical... And if you managed to destroy the meter, for example, in some stanza of Onegin, even if it apparently has the most prosaic content,? then you will still see that something charming has disappeared, that a well-known melody was necessary here, that rhymes gilded some joke, brought out a sharp word, that a coherent tone was created by ready-made aphorisms, unforgettable touches - that in general these enchanted words cannot be touched with impunity . But here, at Nekrasov’s, all this is permitted and does not in the least harm the essence of the matter. Why does Nekrasov use poetry in this case? One might think that Nekrasov was honestly mistaken and often did not suspect that he was writing rhymed prose. He was not particularly sensitive to form and was himself aware of the “clumsiness” in many cases of his verse. He even sometimes fell into funny and major musical mistakes, choosing the wrong size for entire large plays. So, for example, Nekrasov wrote “Russian Women” (“Princess Trubetskaya”) in the same meter as Zhukovsky wrote his fairy tale “Thunderbolt”, and Pushkin wrote the ballad “Groom” (with the only difference that Nekrasov completely discarded female rhymes). Nothing could have been more unsuccessful. What was quite suitable, in its spectacular and sonorous monotony, for a fairy-tale plot? it turned out to be sadly funny when applied to such a completely reliable event as Princess Volkonskaya’s trip to Siberia to visit her exiled husband, her disasters on the road, business conversations with the governor, etc. Or, for example, to Pushkin’s motif: “The clouds are rushing, the clouds are swirling...”, so coinciding with the whirling blizzard,? Nekrasov writes the following:

And where the hell leads

These thoughts? Boronya,

The manager approaches

I bow my head low,

I don't dare look you in the eye,

And he’s not even looking?

Know puts it in the neck.

Neck, do you believe it? It's cracking!

Arrears! Tumble

I start in front of him, etc.

(“Overnight lodgings.” III. At Trofim’s).

So, Nekrasov himself might not have suspected that in the cases we indicated he was writing rhymed prose. In his time, in the field of poetry (generally demoted), they did not attach much importance to the correspondence between form and content. What was the main thing? content. But the poetic form was still more suitable for disseminating the content - to the public: the poems are shorter, they do not tire and, due to their consistency, are easier to remember: many were glad that they could read poetry like a newspaper; readers encouraged Nekrasov, and he willingly believed that his poems were “taken to heart more vividly” than Pushkin’s (“The Poet and the Citizen”). Nekrasov began to succumb to this and then for a long time taught the Russian public to demand prose from poetry. He also influenced all the beginning poets of the subsequent period: none of them avoided magazine language and business detail in the most lyrical plays. “But what’s the problem?” ? they will ask us. “The poet expressed everything he needed to say; everyone understood him perfectly and loved him. What more?”... Of course, there is no trouble and the winners are not judged. But everything must be put in its place, and we only assert that in many cases the highest, musical form of speech was turned by Nekrasov to a task unusual for its nature, or was used ineptly, with a lack of understanding of the internal laws of this art and therefore for these things will have to pay back, as for any violence of nature: they will not live in poetry. It was everyday poetry, cheapened, for general use, applique poetry, cupronickel; The polish is already coming off in places and will come off completely over time. What to do! Poetry is created in such a way that it lives only in forms inextricably fused with its content; otherwise, decomposition will inevitably follow.

They may object to us: but there can be poetry in works written in prose; there is so much poetry, for example, in the prose of Lermontov, Turgenev, Gogol, and if some of Nekrasov’s plays, when turned into prose, do not lose anything, then recognize them as poetry, at least in this non-poetic form. But here again each art has its own immutable laws. There is no doubt that prose form can contain an abyss of poetry. Such prose can be translated into poetry with the condition that the poems introduce something new that prose lacks - they inspire the melody hidden in it, correspond in their melody to the mood of the original, like music to the words of a romance, and thus at least somewhat colorize and decorate the original in a unique way . But if you do the opposite technique, i.e. if the prototype, according to the author's intention, is written in verse, and you translate these verses into prose and not only do not lose anything, but, on the contrary, sometimes gain, then be sure that these are very unimportant verses.

Of course, with the help of such an experience of transcription, only a certain part of Nekrasov’s works will give a reaction to the prose. But on the other hand, this experience (which, however, has long been known) is infallible, and if anything is lost in the prose translation, then know that that is where, for the most part, poetry lies. And Nekrasov will still have a lot of such poetry, ? poetry strong and original.

We offer an examination, if you resort to it, it will show you that Nekrasov is predominantly a true poet in such cases when he presents folk themes in folk dialect (“On the Road”, “Green Noise”, “Peddlers”, “Vlas”, “Who lives well in Rus'”, “Peasant children”, etc.) or when he writes literary language plays without a tendency (“A Knight for an Hour”, “Silence”, “Sasha”, “Storm”, personal poems, etc.).

However, let's look at the details.

Often falling into gross dissonances and not particularly sensitive to poetic subtleties, Nekrasov, however, thanks to his extraordinary talent, discovered new sounds and new original forms for Russian poetry. He was forced to do so by time. The time of Iskra, Offenbach and the great reforms - the mockery of the old and the creation of the new - this time demanded that poetry, if it wanted to have listeners, lower its tone and become simpler. Nekrasov adapted to this difficult situation. He brought out of oblivion the anapest abandoned on Olympus and for many years made this heavy but flexible meter as common as the airy and melodious iambic remained from the time of Pushkin to Nekrasov. This rhythm, favored by Nekrasov, reminiscent of the rotational movement of a barrel organ, allowed him to stay on the boundaries of poetry and prose, joke around with the crowd, speak smoothly and vulgarly, insert a funny and cruel joke, express bitter truths and imperceptibly, slowing down the beat with more solemn words, move into floridity. Most of Nekrasov’s works were written in this meter, starting with the introductory play “Virtues Decorate You...”, and therefore he remained nicknamed Nekrasov meter. In this way, Nekrasov retained attention to poetry in his difficult time, and at least for this alone, the aestheticians who suffered so many blood grievances from him should say a big thank you to him. Then the sad dactyls also came to Nekrasov’s heart: he also took a liking to them and turned them to his advantage. He began to combine them into separate couplets and wrote the whole poem “Sasha” with such unique and beautiful music. Some purism that Koltsov and Nikitin held in relation to folk speech was completely discarded by Nekrasov: he released it entirely into poetry. He could do miracles with this sometimes very tough material. In “Who Lives Well in Rus',” the melodiousness of this completely unrefined folk speech flows out from Nekrasov with such force that chips and debris completely disappear in the rapid flow of the melody. In rhymes in general, Nekrasov was skillful and rich; but he achieved particular wealth in popular motives. The best example of this is Vlas. The short lines of “Peddlers” shine with clean, coherent harmonies.

“Oh, the box is full, the box is full,

There are chintz and brocade,

Have pity, my sweetheart,

Well done shoulder!

Go out, go out into the high rye!

I'll wait there until nightfall,

And I envy the black-eyed one -

I will arrange all the goods.

The prices I paid were not small,

Don't bargain, don't skimp:

Submit your scarlet lips,

Sit closer to your dear one!”

So the foggy night has fallen,

A daring fellow is waiting.

Chu, here he comes! The desired one came

A merchant sells goods.

Katya bargains carefully,

He's afraid to convey everything.

A guy kisses a girl

He asks to increase the price.

Only deep night knows

How they got along.

Straighten up, tall rye,

Keep the secret sacred!

Isn’t this the most genuine poetry and is it possible to turn all this into prose? We involuntarily continue the extract to show that the transition to a more everyday topic does not in any way weaken the brilliance and artistry of the execution:

“Oh, light, light box,

The strap doesn't hurt your shoulders!

And the sweetheart took everything

Turquoise ring.

I gave her a whole piece of calico,

Scarlet ribbon for braids,

Belt - white shirt

Belt into haymaking -

The darling put everything

In the box, except for the ring:

“I don’t want to go dressed up

Without a hearty friend!

You guys are such fools!

Didn't she bring it herself?

Half a glass of sweet vodka?

But I didn’t take any gifts!

So wait! Unbreakable

I promise.

The father has a favorite child!

Remember my speech:

The box will empty,

I'll come home on Intercession,

And you, sweetheart soul,

I'll take you to God's church,

And how, for example, are the trading cries of Uncle Yakov:

“New gingerbreads -

Look: books!

Sudarik boy,

Buy a primer!

Fathers are respectable!

Books are worthless:

One hryvnia per piece -

Science for kids!

For kids

Timoshek, Grishek,

Gavryushek, Vanek...

The primer is not a carrot,

Just read it

You'll bite your tongue...

The primer is not a dog,

And how do you figure it out?

Sweeter than a nut!

A nickel and a half,

Look - and the picture!

Hey, joy!

You will be smart with him,

You will get money...

According to the ABC book!

According to the ABC book!

Grab it - take it!

Read - look!

Although this was done according to the system of raeshniks and peddlers, the abundance of consonances (almost a word per line) reveals the author’s undoubted virtuosity in rhyme. Nekrasov also had a remarkable ability to find successful refrains: “He died, Kasyanovna, he died, my dear, and ordered me to live long,” “Cold, page, cold, ? hungry, dear, hungry”, “The master will come: the master will judge us”, etc. Finally, in plays written in iambics, Nekrasov sometimes achieved extremely beautiful smoothness of verse (“Silence”, “On the Volga”, “Poet and Citizen”, short lyrical plays like: “Hearing the horrors of war ...”, “Forgive me! Don’t remember the days falls...", elegies "Last Songs" and others). All this shows that Nekrasov had extensive musical talent, but such was the poet’s nature that he constantly came into conflict with the melody (as with those women he loved) and pushed this melody into a task that was not at all suitable for her, but more close to his own aspirations and tastes.

After the destruction of his first collection “Dreams and Sounds” (in which - it is impossible to imagine! - ghosts and afterlife dates of souls were glorified), Nekrasov abruptly turned to satire. Starting with jokes and couplets, he raised his tone higher and higher, spoke angrier and freer, and created the most diverse forms of poetic denunciations: stories, small poems, dialogues, pictures, panoramas of street life, extensive, most talented feuilletons with whimsical transitions of plot and mood , and sometimes solemn sermons. The latter include two plays that thundered throughout Russia, spread across all stages and literary evenings, known at one time to everyone by heart and therefore, as it were, most associated with the memory of Nekrasov: “Wretched and Smart” and “Reflections at the Front Entrance.” They are very characteristic. Their effect on society was so strong because in them Nekrasov was most in harmony with his aspirations and calling, as well as with the mood of the time. By their decline one can judge the degree of dilapidation of Nekrasov’s muse. If you go back to the past and set yourself up in the way of that time,? then these two plays, like works of a well-known style, will still retain their special beauty and strength. In “Wretched and Decorated” the first three verses can be called eternal:

Restless tenderness of glance

And the fake paint hurts

And the miserable luxury of the outfit -

Everything is not in her favor.

“The restless tenderness of the look”, “the wretched luxury of the outfit”, ? here every epithet, every word is full of truth, colors and content; in conciseness and expressiveness, in artistic truth, these lines are equal to the best Pushkin lines. The family situation is “wretched”, her entire short career is described briefly, powerfully and touchingly. At the address of the “elegant” verse, it sparkles with branding eloquence: “Diamonds, flowers, lace, bringing the mind to delight, and on the forehead the fatal words: “sold at public auction””... This is a decidedly indelible blow of the scourge! "The Front Entrance", the author's closest heart, has faded much more.

True, there were always exaggerations in this play, as befits a satire, but much became incomprehensible because we had gone too far from serfdom. Recently, for example, someone noticed to us that it was especially cloying and false when the peasants moved away from the nobleman’s entrance with their heads uncovered: “and as long as I could see them, they walked with their heads uncovered”...

“Why were they walking like that!”, ? the critic exclaimed laughing. Meanwhile, during serfdom, a peasant did not dare to cover his head in front of any noble-looking passerby and, therefore, on the front street of St. Petersburg he hardly had the opportunity to put on a hat. There is exaggeration in this poem, but there is also great power. The group of petitioners is depicted expressively and vividly, the poet’s address to the nobles is full of noble passion, the death of the nobleman is sung with treacherous musicality, a suppressed whisper of indignation is thrown after his coffin, the tirade about the people’s groan breathes genuine sorrow, and the end is a challenge to the people? concludes the play with enormous stage effect. In these two things Nekrasov was reflected completely, in his true essence. By nature, he was most of all a public speaker with tragic notes in his voice, armed with the scourge and stings of satire,? a lawyer for the starving and humiliated masses, acting with cries, hyperboles, fabrications, documents, ridicule, sometimes indiscriminately with anything, but always making his indignant word strongly felt. No wonder Nekrasov, as if he had mentioned it, called himself ornate: “And they were louder than us, but they did no good with their pen.” Not without reason, Dostoevsky called Nekrasov a “herald.”

Speaking of hyperbole. It is, of course, acceptable in satire as a spice. But Nekrasov somewhat abuses it. Already Mr. Strakhov accused him of such exaggerations that some pathetic official (in the poem “About the Weather”) “ fourteen times burned that during the flood “cannon thunder rumbled all night long” and “the whole capital prayed”, that once in severe frost “in the space five fathoms" could be counted " up to a hundred frostbitten cheeks and ears." But Nekrasov also has more insidious exaggerations, not in one word or comparison, but in the whole tone of the picture, and, moreover, expressed with such aplomb that the reader does not immediately come to his senses. But it becomes all the more bitter later, when suddenly, with the last stroke of the brush, the falsity of the whole image is instantly felt. Here, for example:

In our street, working life:

Neither light nor dawn begins,

Mine horrible concert, chorus,

Turners, carvers, mechanics,

And in response to them thunders pavement!

Wild scream salesman-man

And a barrel organ with shrill howling,

And the conductor with pipe and troops,

WITH drum walking in battle,

Urging exhausted nags,

Barely alive, bloodied, dirty,

And children tearing cry

In the arms of ugly old women.

All merges, moans, buzzing,

Somehow dull and menacingly rumbles,

Like chains are forged on the unfortunate people,

As if city collapse wants.

Has anyone, at any hour of the day or night, seen such a “labor” street in St. Petersburg, upon entering which he would have been engulfed by the united frantic roar and roar described by the poet? Like all the streets of St. Petersburg, more or less distant from the center, such a labor street usually presents an outward appearance of cold beauty, order and comparative desertion. And the reader involuntarily gets irritated by the untruth...

This cheap effect - to intimidate with false sound impressions - is Nekrasov’s weak point. We will indicate one more place in “Russian Women”, i.e. no longer in satire, but in poem. Princess Trubetskoy talks to her husband on a date in the Peter and Paul Fortress. And suddenly he says:

“Oh dear! what did you say? Words
I can't hear yours.

Then this one scary clock striking,
That screams sentries!

Is it possible that the melancholic sound of the chimes and the call of the sentry were combined into such a deafening sound that would not allow one to hear the words of the interlocutor at the closest distance, in a secluded cell? Nothing else, but silence in the Peter and Paul Fortress seems to be enough. Nekrasov has a lot of such tasteless salting. Caricature in descriptions and comparisons sometimes spoils the most wonderful pages. For example, in “Silence”, after a beautiful and poetic appeal to his homeland, the poet describes fields with rye, a forest - and suddenly, having driven onto the road, he rejoices that “the dust is no longer standing in pillars, nailed to the ground by the tears of recruit wives and mothers! This unimaginable rain, which refreshed the main road, is completely unbearable.

Returning to the satires, it must be said that Nekrasov’s enormous talent is still visible in them. In his great satires (“Who is cold, who is hot”, “Newspaper”, “Ballet”, “Heroes and contemporaries”, etc.), Nekrasov elevated the poetic feuilleton to the significance of a large literary work. The original mosaic of these whimsical sketches contains excellent sketches of St. Petersburg at that time. Here, loud caricature is constantly replaced by a faithful and lively image, bilious irony by a sincere word, magazine prose by an unexpected poetic stanza. So, after the description of the “labor street” we indicated, there follows a tender, lyrical appeal to the capital’s child workers; after the incredibly tragic adventures of an official who was burned fourteen times, there is a famous touching stanza about signs by which one can find the grave of a writer and teacher; in “Ballet” there is a sad description of a recruit train, sketched in vivid colors; in "Heroes of Time"? many apt couplets about modern figures and institutions, for example, a brilliantly humorous image of the district court: “There is such a building on Liteiny...”, etc. And always, with all the variety of plots and variegated presentation, you hear the constantly sounding note of a protesting citizen who does not forget his fighting position for a minute. In these memoirs it is unusual smart person and, moreover, a skillful versifier has scattered a lot of things that will wash away and touch the people of the reform period and their successors for a long time to come.

We have already partly talked about Nekrasov’s poems. They repeat the same alternation of poetry and prose, mixed like dry land and water into chaos. We will not separate them or indicate details. Shall we stop at “Russian Women”? the most unsuccessful and instructive work of Nekrasov. Here he is visible through and through with his behind-the-scenes artificial work and weak artistic flair. We have already indicated some major shortcomings. But overall, this is a prosaic thing from beginning to end. The plan of the poem is very simple: the first part describes the long and painful journey of Princess Trubetskoy to Siberia; in the second, in order to avoid repetition, there is the arrival of another heroine, Princess Volkonskaya, to hard labor, the hard labor itself and the meeting of both wives with their husbands. To blur the narrative, Nekrasov instructs Princess Trubetskoy to relive her own travel impressions in Rome, and Princess Volkonskaya in Crimea. He even makes Princess Trubetskoy, directly a la Nekrasov, be transported in thought from the Vatican to the Volga, to the barge haulers. Using Pushkin’s biography and Onegin’s stanza about legs, Nekrasov for a moment shows us the shadow of the great poet next to Volkonskaya. But this image came out colorless. To the author of "Arion" and "Message to Siberia", ? susceptible as gunpowder, freedom-loving, courageous and (unforgivably forgotten) brilliant Pushkin - Nekrasov puts into the mouth watery verses, somewhat smoothed “for the sake of form” and richly equipped with archaisms: “this”, “cold”, “penates of the fathers”, “canopy of the home” garden”, “full cups will be drained”, etc., as if this ancient language, from which Pushkin himself fell behind so early, was a characteristic feature of his poetry. One of the critics favorable to Nekrasov explained the failure of “Russian Women” by the fact that here Nekrasov left his usual sphere. This is hardly true. Political exile is a completely Nekrasov topic. He was constantly drawn to this plot, but in the cloying story “Grandfather” and in the poem “The Unfortunate” (which contains an excellent description of a St. Petersburg morning) he was unable to find the figures of exiles. Or rather, Nekrasov lacked real creativity, the ability to understand and reproduce the past time, the disappeared characters; and to depict the fate of Volkonskaya and Trubetskoy, real lyricism was also required, a deep and simple feeling, alien to pathos and rhetoric. Nekrasov did not have all this. The bare facts from the lives of two Decembrists will always make a more touching impression than the intricate patterns painted by Nekrasov based on them. And compassion for the exiles is deeper and stronger than in all Nekrasov’s fabrications, sounds in the following in simple words Pushkin:

Deep in Siberian ores

Keep your proud patience,

Your sorrowful work will not be wasted

And I think about high aspiration.

Love and friendship up to you

They will reach through the dark gates,

Like in your convict holes

My free voice comes through.

The heavy shackles will fall,

Will the dungeons collapse? and freedom

You will be greeted joyfully at the entrance,

And the brothers will give you the sword.

Nekrasov's lyrical poems are distinguished by the peculiarity that no matter which of them you take up, you will find only Nekrasov in it,? not the broad individuality of the poet, not the “I” with which many poets begin their poems with the common voice of all humanity, but precisely Nekrasov alone with the exceptional features of his life and personality. Never, while reading it, will you forget yourself so much that the author disappears before you, so that in his songs you find something of your own, so intimate, as if someone unknown had eavesdropped on your own heart. In personal poems he always remains personal and in most cases a little theatrical. His feeling is often deep, strong, but never simple, naive, and always with a touch of solemnity. Almost all of his lyrical plays are divided into two equal halves: one concerns disputes with women, the other concerns the literary activity and social role of the poet himself. In both areas, it is difficult for you to transfer anything to yourself: you can agree with a lot, but everything remains the property of the harsh personality of the author himself. Nekrasov tells you, for example, about his muse, about her purpose, that he envies the “kindly poet”; he refutes the slander brought against him, swears in his sincerity,? fears that his name will be forgotten or hopes that he will be remembered kind words, even prophesies glory for himself, ? or calls the crowd to remember the unfortunate with him, or gives testamentary instructions, describes his illness - and all this is absolutely inseparable from the idea of ​​himself. So in all these poems, Nekrasov is almost never an invisible other, a double of his reader. It is hardly possible to count up to ten poems by Nekrasov that have more or less general application, such as “Hearing the horrors of war...”, “All attachments are broken. Reason has come into its cold rights...", "I'm in such a sad mood today...", "Sorry! Don’t remember the days of the fall,” “A restless heart beats...” and the most charming elegy: “Ah! What a confession, imprisoned! It seems that besides these plays, there is not one more.

But in all the poems in which Nekrasov talks about his mission, there is undoubted poetry. First of all, they contain complete harmony between form and content. All of them are written in smooth, expressive, finished verse. In them, Nekrasov seemed to preen himself, leaving his day labor, and went out on the stage in front of the crowd in a wreath and toga, in a real poet’s costume. He loved these big entrances, these festive melodies of his muse, somewhat spectacular, but always sincere, caused by the painful doubt that they did not understand him, that they did not believe him, that the lyre itself was considered in his hands an illegal weapon of struggle. And he was very strong, very eloquent in these songs; they helped his cause and increased the number of his allies and admirers. From them one could compose a whole code of tendentious poetry, its strongest defense. Almost all of these poems were learned by heart, almost all of them are beautiful.

Alas! While the peoples

They languish in poverty, submitting to the whips,

Like skinny herds across mown meadows,

The muse will mourn their fate, the muse will serve them,

And there is no stronger, more beautiful union in the world!..

Remind the crowd that the people are in poverty

While she rejoices and sings,

To arouse the attention of the powerful of the world to the people -

What better service could the lyre serve?

I dedicated the lyre to my people.

Perhaps I will die unknown to him,

But I served him - and my heart is calm...

Let not every warrior harm the enemy,

But everyone go into battle! And fate will decide the battle...

(“Elegy” by A.N. E-wu).

Sometimes in these songs Nekrasov achieved true greatness:

... But since childhood, a strong and blood union

The muse was in no hurry to break with me;

Through the dark abysses of violence and evil,

She led me through labor and hunger -

Taught me to feel my suffering

And she blessed to announce them to the world...

Here the poetry, of course, is not in the theories that the poet preaches, but in his own fate, in his role, in his passionate personality, tormented by the suffering of others, unrequited for him.

In “Last Songs,” Nekrasov’s verse acquired some special purity and charm: his “Bayushki-Baya” positively resembles Pushkin. Among the lyrical plays we also include the large poem or the whole poem “A Knight for an Hour”? Nekrasov's most perfect creation. On a clear frosty night, in the middle of a village field, instigated by a sensitive silence, the poet peers into his past, is transported in thought to his mother’s grave and is deeply tormented by his delusions. The sober clarity of the landscape, painted by the hand of a master, is somehow terribly combined with the poet’s equally clear gaze into the depths of his conscience. Wonderful verses of repentance pour out... The next morning, good determination fades and disappears. This bright, simple and stunning piece belongs to the best creations of the Russian muse. The reader of all times will dwell on it with love; he will involuntarily succumb to the charm of the vital movements of the soul, captured in her strong and sad music.

Finally, the general question remains about the people, about the humiliated and insulted. These two words inevitably bring to mind Dostoevsky. It seems to us that the future literary historian will be able to guess the related features in the democracy of Nekrasov and Dostoevsky. No wonder these two writers shed their youthful tears together over the novel “Poor People.” It was not for nothing that Nekrasov wrote to Dostoevsky that under the name of the Mole in “The Unfortunate,” he wanted to portray him, Dostoevsky, in exile. The way these two writers achieve it is opposite, but the essence is very close. Remember Marmeladov’s monologue, Raskolnikov’s social theories, and Father Zosima’s sermons. The difference is that one acted violently and openly, almost with a citizen’s sword in his hand, as Minin is usually portrayed, and the other acted under a humble monastic robe... But that’s not the point. The question was constantly raised: did Nekrasov sincerely love the Russian people and the disadvantaged in general? For us, this question, outside of any biographical research, matters only in this sense: is Nekrasov’s love for the people felt in his works?

G. Strakhov, one of the authoritative researchers of our literature, expressed doubt about Nekrasov’s sincerity, or, rather, noted an arrogant note in his comments about the people: “Nekrasov, ? writes Mr. Strakhov, ? can never refrain from the role of an enlightened, subtly developed St. Petersburg official (?) and journalist, and, one way or another, will always show his superiority over the dark people with whom he sympathizes. A whole series of poems by this poet are devoted to depicting the rudeness and savagery of the Russian people. How the elegant feeling of Mr. Nekrasov is insulted apron tied under the arms, so his humane and enlightened ideas are constantly at odds with rough life, with rough concepts, with the rough soul and speech of ordinary people. He writes special poems for such, as if, deeply folk topics: “Dear beatings don’t hurt for long!” (Katerina), or: “We can’t drink water from our faces, and we can live with a clumsy one.” He is always not averse to laughing sadly or mocking the people sadly”...

In us under the paternal roof

Not a single one stuck

Pure, human life

Fruitful grain.

This is Mr. Nekrasov’s real view of Russia and the Russian people; With such views, it is difficult to be a people's poet and cast rays of consciousness on the paths of Providence, expressed in our history" (Notes on Pushkin, pp. 136 and 137). In the preface to his book, Mr. Strakhov warns that some of his articles “have a too loud tone, echoing the bad habits of journalism” (XVIII). It seems that the quotes we have given belong precisely to such ill-fated pages. Here, apparently, objectivity betrayed Mr. Strakhov. The poems he took from Nekrasov do not at all prove his positions. Nekrasov's rough painting corresponds to the roughness of the subject; it is designed to show the wretchedness of the peasant’s life, his almost animal existence, his ironic reconciliation with all kinds of adversity; There is absolutely no trace of mockery of the people of the poet himself anywhere in his works. Nekrasov had very little “sense of grace,” and no one would ever be proud of him. Finally, the stanza about the “father’s roof” was taken by Mr. Strakhov from the lullaby of Eremushka, which Nekrasov sings peasant child, and here the poet speaks about his roof, about his serf upbringing, about the perception of the dying generation and warns the child so that he does not pour into the “old, ready-made form” the new strength of noble young days. Where is the misunderstanding of Russia or the misunderstanding of the people here?

It makes no difference to us whether Nekrasov understood the history of the Russian people and the highest destiny of his calling correctly or incorrectly. One thing is important for us: is his love for the people visible in his works? There can be no other answer to this question except in the affirmative. This love - not only for the people, but also for all the disadvantaged and starving - flows like a lava from Nekrasov throughout all his works. It has all the shades of soul-tearing grief (“Frost”), courageous defense before the powers that be (“Front Entrance”), the kind affection of a father (“Peasant Children”), the warm care of a publicist (“Crying Children,” “Railroad”), the poet’s inspired passion (“Peddlers”, “Green Noise”), etc. What is the source of this love? It seems to us that two factors influenced this: 1) the era of general love for the peasant masses; 2) events in the poet’s personal life.

In addition to the well-known impressions of childhood, Nekrasov was most decisively influenced by the poverty he suffered in St. Petersburg during his youth. It’s scary to read in his biography how he was dying of hunger, how he lost his poor corner for lack of means to pay for it, how abandoned by everyone he shuddered from the cold on the street, how some beggar took pity on him and took him with him to a remote night shelter and how here, among the ragged crowd, Nekrasov got himself a piece of bread by drawing up a petition, for which he received 15 kopecks. “I swore not to die in the attic, I killed idealism in myself, I developed a practical streak in myself,”? he said later, remembering this time. In those bitter, unforgettable days, this man looked through the eyes of a proletarian at the beautiful life of the capital; a feeling of resentment was deeply and forever ingrained in him. And when he got out of the “abyss of labor, hunger and darkness,” he understood what material wealth meant. “Among the idealists, I was the only one who was practical,” ? Nekrasov spoke about the circle of his literary friends and associates. And so, to the best of his ability, promoting a more equal distribution of earthly goods became his cherished thought. To do this, a fashionable, rich, inexhaustible topic was revealed to him - the people. At that time, the entire best part of our society saw their hope, their revival in the masses; they dreamed of “destroying the wall”, of “merging the intelligentsia with the people” and of “great results of such an untried, grandiose undertaking.” Long years now seem to have shown that as the peasant transforms into an intellectual, the intelligentsia can grow in numbers, but its natural features are unlikely to change as a result. However, the insightful Nekrasov did not get into the clouds even then; but the general attraction to the people with whom he suffered the famine side by side? it was to his advantage. From the life of this people he began to take themes for his amazing paintings. He saw his success; this work fascinated him. By nature, reserved and cool, almost unresponsive to the feelings of beauty, a strong and deep man, but disfigured and saddened by life,? Nekrasov needed revenge for the insults of fate, and he loved to take revenge on the self-righteous for the unfortunate. He lost the line between sincere and artificial. Often he loved only “his dream”; he often shed tears “over the fiction.” But he felt himself the master of the people's mourning feeling,? these immensely rich possessions in order to extract from them at every moment something terrifying for the “powers of the world.” “The people were silent,” but this only gave an even more tragic shade to Nekrasov’s songs. He was carried away by his mission, ennobled in it, elevated to the voice of a true citizen, saw in it his glory, his atonement for some sin, of which there are bitter, restrained hints in his poetry. For many years, before the eyes of the whole of Russia, this romance between Nekrasov and the people unfolded. Poetry was no longer only in what he wrote, but in his very role, in this story of Nekrasov’s unrequited, painful love for the people. So when he died, he, who had long been spoiled by wealth, was buried by a countless crowd with tears, as a sufferer for the people and the poor.

What remains of this bright and noisy activity? The truth must be told that Nekrasov’s contribution to the eternal treasury of poetry is much less than his fame, his name. And now, after 12 years, his noisiest works have significantly lost their charm. In many ways he soon became positively old-fashioned. It is difficult to look into the future, but perhaps those who say that everything that Nekrasov shone with will be forgotten are right, but that, on the contrary, his works, not noticed in their time, will emerge and remain eternal. However, there is too much intelligence in Nekrasov’s works for them to lose their historical interest. The social issue is destined to exist for a long, long time. As a document testifying to a heated struggle, as an illustration of social evil, Nekrasov’s book can come up more than once, serve as a tool, and be reread. But the practical interests with which it is connected will always be lower than the internal, general life of humanity. Not all people constitute a Landwehr to win civil freedom,? and for those who are not part of such a Landwehr, Nekrasov’s book will rarely bring joy. All Russian people, of course, will definitely read it and, in some places, with surprise at his talent, but one can pick it up and re-read it on one’s own impulse only in a special, exceptional mood.

However, the general voice, as if by instinct, pronounced exactly the same sentence on Nekrasov even in the moment of the most ardent worship. He was called the “citizen poet.” What does it mean? Why this addition to the word poet? The root word is so great that any prefix can only reduce it... Is it flattering for poetic fame to say “poet-vocal of the Duma.” or even a “poet-commander”? We know, for example, the “partisan poet” Davydov. This nickname tells us that Davydov was primarily a partisan, but that he was, by the way, also a poet. And in Nekrasov, “citizen” sounds stronger than poet; this name indicates that Nekrasov was more a citizen than a poet. Therefore, we think that Nekrasov is not great, but a wonderful, original poet in general and a poet of folk sorrow in particular; but most of all, Nekrasov is an irresistibly unforgettable name in the history of our citizenship.

For the first time? gas. “New Time”, 1889, Nos. 4926, 4927 (November 14 and 15). We reprint the text of the first publication.

From verse. “Celebration of life, youth years...” (1855).

From verse. "Z<и>not" (1876).

Not entirely accurate quote from Turgenev’s letter to the editor of St. Petersburg Gazette on January 8, 1870 // Turgenev I.S. Full collection Op. and letters in 30 volumes. Letters. T. 10. M., 1994. pp. 126-127.

Right there. P. 141; arri?regout? taste.

Turgenev. Decree. Op. T. 8. pp. 99-100.

Wed: “G. Nekrasov is a purely Petersburg poet<…>This is the poet of the Alexandrinsky Theater, Nevsky Prospekt, St. Petersburg officials and St. Petersburg journalists. His poems, in tone and manner, very often resemble vaudeville couplets of that special kind that once flourished in our “Alexandrinka”<…>A whole series of poems by this poet are devoted to depicting the rudeness and savagery of the Russian people<…>He is always not averse to laughing sadly or mocking the people sadly.”//N. Strakh. Notes about Pushkin and other poets. Kyiv. 1897. pp. 135-136 (article “Nekrasov and Polonsky”, 1870).

See note 7.

These words of Nekrasov are quoted by A.S. Suvorin in “Weekly Sketches and Pictures” (“New Time”, 1878, No. 662, January 1). See Nekrasov in the memoirs of his contemporaries. M., 1971. P. 341.

Wed: “Did she lead me through the dark abysses of Violence and Evil, // Labor and Hunger?” (“Muse”, 1852).

Right there. P. 342.