Artistic features of the novel "Oblomov" by I. A. Goncharov. Artistic features of Goncharov's oblomov What are the features of Goncharov's artistic manner?

3. The novel "Oblomov"

1. Characteristics of I.А. Goncharova

Ivan Aleksandrovich Goncharov (1812-1891) is an outstanding classic of Russian literature, the second half of the XIX v. Goncharov created his works based on vivid impressions of provincial life in the city of Simbirsk, studies in Moscow, public service. Close collaboration with V.G.Belinsky also influenced Goncharov.

TO early works Goncharov owns the following:

✓ the novels "Dashing sick", "Happy mistake", "Nymphodora Ivanovna";

✓ essay "Ivan Savich Podzhabrin".

The most significant and famous are the following novels by Goncharov:

✓ An Ordinary History (1846);

✓ Oblomov (1849-1859);

✓ "Break" (1876).

Goncharov wrote many literary critical articles in which he analyzed the work of both his contemporaries and predecessors. The following are known critical articles by Goncharov:

✓ "Million of Torments" (1872), dedicated to Griboyedov's comedy "Woe from Wit" and includes the following thoughts about this comedy:

Liveliness and relevance, as well as individuality and dissimilarity from other comedies;

A faithful recreation of the picture of the Moscow customs of the times of Griboyedov;

Transfer of satire, living language, morality;

A vivid outline of the living types of Famusov, Molchalin, Skalozub;

Analysis of the image and character of the main character - Chatsky: he is positively smart (which Pushkin doubted, analyzing e that hero); he has a soul, and as a person he surpasses both Pushkin's Onegin and Lermontov's Pechorin; is a spokesman for a new era, and not an inactive boy and " an extra person"; performs the function of a fighter, denouncer of everything old and obsolete (unlike Onegin and Pechorin);

✓ "Again" Hamlet "on the Russian Stage", which tells about the staging of Shakespeare's plays on the Russian stage;

✓ works devoted to the analysis of A.N. Ostrovsky: "Review of the drama" Thunderstorm "Ostrovsky" (1860) and "Materials prepared for critical article about Ostrovsky "(1874);

✓ "Better Late Than Never" (1879), dedicated to his own novel "The Break", where he broadly interpreted the development of his ideas and images from an early sketch to a later completed novel and pointed out the connection between all three novels, which is that each of heroes - Peter Adulaev, Stolz and Tushin - is the spokesman for important trends social development in Russia;

✓ "Notes on the Personality of Belinsky" (1873-1874).

TO late works of art Goncharova include the following:

✓ "Servants of the Palace Time" (about the life of courtyard people);

✓ "A trip along the Volga";

✓ feature article " Literary evening"(criticism of anti-democratic creativity and amateurism in literature);

✓ "The month of May in St. Petersburg" (image of his house).

2. The novel "An Ordinary Story"

The novel An Ordinary History "(1846) is the first major work of Goncharov. This novel can be characterized as follows:

✓ the action covers the time period from 1830 to 1843, that is, about 14 years, which allowed the author to recreate a broad picture of the reality of Russian life in the 1930s – 1940s;

✓ different strata of society are shown: officials, the bourgeoisie, the bourgeoisie, secular society, rural landowners with a patriarchal way of life;

✓ the central conflict is the confrontation between the romantic "youth" and bourgeois morality and the people who profess it, in particular his clash with his own uncle, and in this confrontation, according to the author's plan, the conflict and the breaking up of everything old in Russian society in the second half of the 19th century is expressed. - old concepts of friendship and love, poetry of idleness, little family lies, etc .;

✓ describes the loss of romantic illusions by the central hero, Alexander Aduev, and this romanticism of the hero is viewed by the author as a useless, unnecessary thing that interferes with a useful existence;

✓ shows the "ordinariness", typical for that time of the evolution of the nature of the protagonist, which reflects the moods and characters of many young people of that time;

✓ reveals the reasons for the idleness and empty romance of the hero, which lie primarily in his environment and upbringing: lordly security, unaccustomedness to work, security, the willingness of people around him to fulfill all his whims at any time;

Artistic identity of the novel "An Ordinary Story" is as follows:

✓ the sequence of conveying the "ordinariness" of the hero's story - his transformation from an ethereal romantic into a businessman - through the construction of a novel, which has the following features:

Two parts, each with six chapters and an epilogue;

Description in the epilogue of a hero's marriage without love, but with strict calculation;

Comparison of the nephew (the main character) with the uncle, whose features appear in the main character at the end of the novel;

Implementation of the law of symmetry and contrast;

A single intrigue in both parts of the novel;

✓ clean, clear and flexible language of presentation, which enhances the value of the work.

The novel "An Ordinary History" has an important public and literary meaning , which is as follows:

✓ strikes a blow at romanticism, provincial daydreaming and bourgeois businesslike morality, which does not take into account human qualities and soul;

✓ denotes the leading trends and rules of life of the modern author of the society;

✓ draws a portrait of a typical young man of that time - a "hero of the time";

✓ shows true pictures of reality that time;

✓ asserts the principle of realism in displaying reality;

✓ demonstrates the main principle of the author - a realistic, objective attitude towards his hero;

✓ contributes to the development of the genre of the socio-psychological novel;

✓ topical in its content and raises one of the critical issues human existence: how and for what it is necessary to live.

3. The novel "Oblomov"

The novel "Oblomov" - the second in a row - Goncharov created for almost 10 years (1849-1859), and this work brought the author wide fame. The central place in the novel is given to the image and fate of the protagonist - Ilya Ilyich Oblomov, and all plot motives are subordinated to this, which makes this novel a monographic one and in this sense puts it on a par with Pushkin's Eugene Onegin, Lermontov's Hero of Our Time and "Rudin" Turgenev. The image of the main character can be characterized as follows:

✓ the use of a number of literary and life prototypes, among which the following can be distinguished:

. life prototypes:

Kozyrev, Gasturin, Yakubov, whose features - laziness, passivity, lack of desire for activity, ethereal dreaminess - were embodied in the image of Oblomov;

. literary prototypes:

Gogol characters: Podkolesin, Manilov, Tentnikov;

Characters of Goncharov himself: Tyazhelenko, Yegor and Alexander Oduevs;

✓ the originality of the portrait, which is as follows:

Expressiveness and generalization of features;

Equivalence of Oblomov's hero type to such eternal world images as Prometheus, Hercules, Hamlet, Don Quixote, Faust, Khlestakov;

The presence is not only negative traits(laziness, passivity, withdrawal from life and striving for peace in the "shell"), but also positive (gentleness, sincerity, conscientiousness);

✓ the use of the name of the protagonist as his "business card", indicating that life, as it were, "broke off" this person and he was unable to overcome his own laziness and bring some benefit to society;

✓ reflection of Russian national character in the image of Oblomov, as indicated by N.A. Dobrolyubov, calling Oblomov the "root type" of the Russian character.

Artistic identity the novel "Oblomov" "is as follows:

✓ wide epic, as the events described in the novel develop over the course of 37 years;

✓ slow, gradual development of the action, which allows you to more fully penetrate into the essence of the character of the protagonist and the concept of "Oblomovism" derived from his image, which capaciously reflects all the features of not only a specific hero of the novel, but also a whole generation of young people;

✓ simplicity of intrigue;

✓ the development of the exposure;

✓ the reception of inversion in the plot, which consists in revealing the hero's past not at the beginning of the narrative, but with some delay - in the 6th and 9th chapters;

✓ contrast in the image of the main characters (Oblomov - Stolz, Olga - Pshenitsyna);

✓ internal drama;

✓ an abundance of dialogues;

✓ monocentricity;

✓ symmetry of the composition;

✓ psychologism, which makes it possible to call this novel socio-psychological, and this is evidenced by its following features:

Continuation and development of Gogol traditions:

Search, description and in-depth analysis of the details of the character of the characters;

Details in the description of everyday life and everyday situations;

Combination of objectivity of presentation with subjective analyticity;

A broad description of the realities of Russian life;

Broad generalization of Oblomovism;

Psychological study of the personality of a dying person;

Illumination of the phenomenon and object from each side, detail;

✓ the originality of the language, which is as follows:

Purity, lightness and simplicity, provided by the introduction of proverbs, apt comparisons, epithets into the text;

Individualization of the speech of each of the characters, based on their characters, social status, morals, etc.

Ivan Aleksandrovich Goncharov is a famous Russian writer who was a member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. He gained the greatest fame thanks to such novels as "The Break", "An Ordinary History", "Oblomov", as well as the cycle of road sketches "Frigate Pallas". And, of course, everyone knows Goncharov's literary-critical article "A Million of Torments." Let's talk about this great writer in more detail.

Childhood of the writer

After university

After graduating from the university in 1834, Goncharov went to his native Simbirsk, where his sisters, mother and Tregubov were waiting for him. Such a familiar from childhood, the city struck Ivan first of all by the fact that for so many years nothing has changed there. It was a huge sleepy village.

Even before graduating from university, the future writer had the idea of ​​not returning to his hometown. He was attracted by the intense spiritual life in the capitals (Petersburg, Moscow). And although he made the decision to leave, he still did not leave.

First job

At this time, Goncharov, an essay on the life and work of which is in the school curriculum, received an offer from the governor of Simbirsk. He wanted to future writer worked as his personal secretary. After much hesitation and thought, Ivan accepted the offer, but the work turned out to be boring and ungrateful. But he understood the mechanism of the functioning of the bureaucratic system, which later came in handy for him as a writer.

Eleven months later, he moved to St. Petersburg. Ivan began to build his future with his own hands, without any outside help. Upon arrival, he got a job as a translator at the Ministry of Finance. The service was not burdensome and well paid.

Later he became friends with the Maikov family, teaching Russian literature and Latin to his two eldest sons. The Maykovs' house was an interesting cultural center of St. Petersburg. Painters, musicians and writers gathered here every day.

The beginning of creativity

Over time, Goncharov, whose "Million of Torments" remains one of the most readable works, began to treat with irony the romantic cult of art inherent in the Maikovs' house. The 40s can be called the beginning of it creative path... This was an important time in terms of the development of Russian literature and the life of society in general. It was then that the writer met Belinsky. The great critic significantly enriched the spiritual world of Ivan Alexandrovich and showed admiration for the style of writing that Goncharov owned. "Million of torments" of the writer was highly appreciated by Belinsky.

In 1847, Sovremennik published An Ordinary History. In this novel, the conflict between romanticism and realism is presented in the form of a significant collision of Russian life. With the invented title, the author drew the reader's attention to the typicality of the processes reflected in this creation.

Trip around the world

In 1852, Goncharov was lucky enough to get a secretary in the service of Vice Admiral Putyatin. So the writer went to the frigate "Pallada". Putyatin was instructed to inspect Russian possessions in America (Alaska) and establish trade and political relations with Japan. Ivan Alexandrovich was already in anticipation of many impressions that would enrich his work. Goncharov, whose "Million of Torments" is still popular, kept a detailed diary from the first days. These notes formed the basis of his future book "Frigate" Pallas "". It was published in 1855, when the writer returned to St. Petersburg, and was well received by the readers.

But since Ivan Aleksandrovich worked as a censor in the Ministry of Finance, he found himself in an ambiguous position. In the progressive strata of society, his position was not welcomed. A persecutor of free thought and a representative of the hated power - that was who the Potters were for most of them. The novel "Oblomov" was almost ready, but Ivan Alexandrovich could not finish it due to lack of time. Therefore, he left the Treasury Department and focused entirely on his writing career.

The flowering of creativity

"Goncharov, the novel" Oblomov "" - such an inscription was on the cover of several thousand books published in 1859. The fate of the leading character was revealed not only as a social phenomenon, but also as a kind of philosophical understanding of the national character. The writer made an artistic discovery. This novel entered the sketch of the life and work of Goncharov as his most outstanding work. But Ivan Alexandrovich did not want to be idle and bask in the glory. Therefore, he began work on a new novel - "The Break". This work was his child, whom he raised for 20 years.

The last novel

Diseases and mental depression - it was from them that he suffered in last years the life of the Potters, whose life and work were very productive. "The Break" is the last major work of the writer. After Ivan Aleksandrovich finished work on him, it became even harder for him to live. Of course he dreamed of writing new romance, but did not proceed to it. He always wrote tensely and slowly. He often complained to colleagues that he does not have time to deeply comprehend fast-paced events modern life... It took him time to realize them. All three novels of the writer depicted pre-reform Russia, which he perfectly understood. Ivan Alexandrovich understood the events of subsequent years worse, and he lacked neither moral nor physical strength for their deeper study. Nevertheless, he actively corresponded with other writers and did not abandon his creative activity.

He wrote several essays: "Across Eastern Siberia", "A Trip along the Volga", "Literary Evening" and many others. Some were published posthumously. It is also worth noting a number of his critical works... Here are the most famous etudes by Goncharov: "Million Torment", "Better late than never", "Notes on Belinsky" and others. They have firmly entered the annals of Russian criticism as classic examples of literary and aesthetic thought.

Death

In early September 1891, Goncharov (his life and work are briefly described in this article) caught a cold. Three days later, all alone great writer died. Ivan Alexandrovich was buried at the Nikolskoye cemetery at the Alexander Nevsky Lavra (half a century later, the writer's ashes were transferred to the Volkovo cemetery). An obituary immediately appeared in the Vestnik Evropy: "Like Saltykov, Ostrovsky, Aksakov, Herzen, Turgenev, Goncharov will always be in the leading positions in our literature."

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Trilogy of works: "An Ordinary History", "Oblomov", "Break".
The topic of Russia at the turn of the epochs was of primary concern to Goncharov.
A socio-psychological novel in which contemporary social problems are solved on the basis of family and everyday material.
One way of life is destroyed, and another comes to replace - the fundamental processes of the era.

It is based on the reception of the antithesis. Heroes: practitioners, pragmatists, their interdependence and mutual transition play an important role.
The plot is based on the theme of a love test.
The female character is between the poles. Corresponds to the eternal, universal, universal. They are idealized ("Birds of Paradise").
Traditional chronotope: city - village. Goncharov's typification is based on everyday life. Everyday life shows a person. A household item is always filled with deep meaning.
At Goncharov's detailed description details. The type is composed of numerous repetitions. Goncharov has a special type of psychological characteristic - the author's characteristic, commentary.
Goncharov = Pushkin + Gogol's beginning.

An Ordinary Story.
Provincial psychology, heroes believe in eternal love, eternal friendship, dream of a career - this is idealism.
In the city - analysis, cold calculation, they don't believe in love, there is no happiness, there is just life, good and evil.
Dialogue relations - confrontation for about ten years, the positions of the heroes change.
The author shows that one-sidedness is always flawed, unacceptable. Extremes are dangerous. The worldview is changing, but there is no potential nature.

"Break".
Goncharov said: "Beloved child of the heart."
The original name was "The Artist".
The life of the landlord nobility is shown.

The type of superfluous person.

M. Volokhov: "Blind protest against everything that is."

Moral fall.
People like Tushin are noble, honest, do business, he loves Vera, but understands that she must come to him herself. There is always a way out of the everyday impasse.
The novel is dedicated to Russian women. Different types of love are shown: sentimental love, conventionally secular, philistine, old-fashioned knightly, artistic unconscious, exotic (wild, animal).
The cliff helps to exalt, to rethink everything.

(above - all lecture)

Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev (1818-1883) wrote six novels: "Rudin" (1855), "Noble Nest" (1858), "On the Eve" (1859), "Fathers and Sons" (1862), "Smoke", "New" (1876). The main ones are the first four. The first two: the main character- nobleman, intellectual, philosopher, etc. 30-40s. This was the time of the formation of the personality of the writer himself, therefore, the appeal to the heroes of that era was explained not only by the desire to objectively assess the past, but also to understand himself. The writer wonders what a nobleman can do in modern conditions when specific issues need to be addressed. Turgenev believed that the main genre features of his novels were already formed in Rudin. In the preface to the publication of his novels (1879), he emphasized: “The author of Rudin, written in 1855, and the author of Novi, written in 1876, are one and the same person. Among his tasks, when writing novels, Turgenev singled out two of the most important.
The first is to create “the image of time,” “the body and pressure of time,” as Shakespeare wrote. The image is not only of "heroes of the time", but also of everyday life and secondary characters.
The second task is attention to new trends in the life of the "cultural layer" of the country. Turgenev was interested not only in lone heroes, the most typical of the era, but also in the mass stratum of people. Dmitry Rudin's prototype was Bakunin, a radical Westernizer and anarchist. Therefore, the hero turned out to be a contradictory personality, since Turgenev himself had a contradictory attitude towards Bakunin, with whom he was friends in his youth, and could not assess him absolutely impartially. The second novel - "The Noble Nest" (1858) - the most perfect of all Turgenev's novels, had the greatest success among his contemporaries, even Dostoevsky, who disliked Turgenev, spoke very well of him. The last attempt to find a hero among the nobles. This novel differs from Rudin in its pronounced lyrical beginning - the love of Lavretsky and Lisa Kalitina and the creation of an image-symbol of the “noble nest”. According to the writer, it was in such estates that the main cultural values Russia. If in "Rudin" there is only one main hero, then there are two of them and the love between them is shown as a love-dispute between two life positions and ideals. In the finale, Turgenev concludes that the nobility is not capable of doing anything, he welcomes the generation of commoners who are coming to replace him. The third novel is "On the Eve" (1859). A novel about the love of the Bulgarian revolutionary Dmitry Insarov and Elena Stakhova. Many pretend to be Elena's heart, but she chooses Insarov, a foreigner, a revolutionary. She personifies Russia on the eve of change. Dobrolyubov took the novel as a call for the appearance of the Russian Insarovs. Turgenev considered such an interpretation unacceptable. Features of the novels. There is no clash of major political forces. The actions are concentrated in the estate, the manor house. Life-like, realistic events. Ideological conflict against the background of love, or vice versa. Refuses to depict details of the everyday life environment (natural school) in favor of a broad ideological interpretation of the characters. The most important principle of characterizing characters is dialogue and background details (landscape, interior). Unlike Dostoevsky or Tolstoy, Turgenev's heroes are not abstract, abstract, but concrete, behind them there is necessarily a living image from real life... Rudin - Bakunin, Insarov - Bulgarian Katranov, Bazarov - Dobrolyubov, but these are not exact portrait copies, but images created by Turgenev based on real people... In his novels, there are no “crimes”, no “punishments”, no moral resurrection of heroes, no murders, no conflicts with laws and morality - Turgenev does not go beyond recreating the real course of life, the action is local and the meaning is limited by the actions of the heroes. There is no author's commentary on the actions of the heroes and their inner world. Fathers and Sons (1862). The main character is not a nobleman brought up in the era of "thought and reason", but a commoner, not inclined to abstract reflections, trusting only his own experience and his sensations. The test of love becomes an insurmountable obstacle for Bazarov. Bazarov is completely different from the heroes of the previous novels. If earlier, showing the inconsistency of his heroes-nobles, deprived of the ability to act, Turgenev did not completely reject their idea of ​​life, then in Fathers and Children his attitude to Bazarov's convictions was sharply negative from the very beginning. All things rejected by Bazarov - love, nature, art Turgenev considers unshakable human values. The structure of the novel is similar to "Rudin" - all plot lines are reduced to one center, to one hero. Turgenev depicted all the costs of the nihilistic theory. Turgenev singles out democracy in Bazarov - a noble habit of work. This distinguishes him favorably from the Kirsanovs, the best of the nobles, but who know how to do anything, to get down to business. Bazarov's humanism is manifested in his desire to benefit the people, Russia. Bazarov is a man with a great sense of his own dignity, in this he is not inferior to aristocrats. In the story of a duel, he shows common sense, intelligence, nobility, fearlessness and the ability to ironic over himself in a mortally dangerous situation. He considers the entire political system of Russia to be rotten, therefore he denies "everything": autocracy, serfdom, religion - and what is generated by the "ugly state of society": people's poverty, lack of rights, darkness, ignorance, patriarchal antiquity, family. However, Bazarov does not put forward a positive program. The events that I.S.Turgenev describes in the novel take place in mid XIX century. This is the time when Russia was going through another era of reforms. The idea contained in the title of the novel is revealed very broadly, since it is not only about the originality of different generations, but also about the confrontation between the nobility, descending from the historical stage, and the democratic intelligentsia, advancing to the center of social and spiritual life in Russia, representing its future ... Turgenev's novels: 1) reflect new trends and new intellectual movements in Russia; 2) the hero of the first novels (from "Rudin" to "O. and D.") - an ideologist who finds himself in an unknown environment, tested by this environment and emerges victorious from these tests; 3) the clash of the universal and the ideological, then - the ideological and the general cultural; 4) the appearance of the phenomenon of Turgenev's heroine (beginning - in "Asa"): cultural, intelligent, capable of self-giving, sacrifice; 5) the hero of later novels is an ordinary person; 6) in the center of Turgenev's reflections is the relationship between the present and the past; 7) the deepest drama and lyricism (landscape sketches and paintings; especially at night, for example, the explanation of Bazarov and Odintsova on a summer night); 8) synthesis of the epic and the lyrical; 9) special motives: a Russian person for a rendezvous, a test of love, a duel situation (verbal - ideological and usual - ironic).

Ivan Aleksandrovich Goncharov (1812-1891), Russian writer of the 19th century, was born into a wealthy merchant family. In addition to him, the Goncharov family had three more children. After the death of the father, the mother and their godfather N.N. Tregubov, an educated man of advanced views, familiar with many Decembrists. During the years of study at a private boarding school, Goncharov joined the reading of books by Western European and Russian authors and studied French and Russian well. In 1822 he successfully passed the exams at the Moscow Commercial School, but without completing it, he entered the Moscow University in the philological department.

During his studies at the university, Goncharov turned to literary creation... Of the subjects studied, he was most attracted by the theory and history of literature, fine arts, architecture. After graduating from the university, Ivan Aleksandrovich entered the office of the Simbirsk governor's office, then moved to St. Petersburg and took the position of an interpreter at the Ministry of Finance. However, the service did not prevent him from studying literature and supporting friendly relations with poets, writers and painters.

The first creative experiments of Goncharov - poetry, then the anti-romantic story "Dashing sick" and the story "Happy mistake" - were published in a manuscript journal. In 1842 he wrote the essay "Ivan Savich Podzhabrin", published only six years after its creation. In 1847, the journal Sovremennik published the novel "An Ordinary History", which aroused enthusiastic criticism and brought the author great success. At the heart of the novel is a clash of two central characters- Aduev-uncle and Aduev-nephew, personifying sober practicality and enthusiastic idealism. Each of the heroes is psychologically close to the writer and represents different projections of his spiritual world.

In the novel "An Ordinary History" the writer denies the abstract appeals of the protagonist, Alexander Aduev, to a certain "divine spirit", condemns the empty romance and the insignificant commercial efficiency that reigns in the bureaucratic environment, that is, what is not provided with lofty ideas, necessary for a person... The clash of the main characters was perceived by contemporaries as "a terrible blow to romanticism, dreaminess, sentimentality, provincialism" (VG Belinsky). However, decades later, the anti-romantic theme lost its relevance, and subsequent generations of readers perceived the novel as the most "ordinary story" of cooling and sobering up a person, as an eternal theme of life.

The pinnacle of the writer's work was the novel Oblomov, which Goncharov began to create back in the 40s. Before the novel was published, in the almanac "Literary collection with illustrations" appeared "Oblomov's Dream" - an excerpt from the future work. "Oblomov's Dream" was highly appreciated by critics, but ideological differences were traced in their judgments. Some believed that the passage has great artistic value, but rejected the author's irony in relation to the patriarchal landlord way of life. Others recognized the writer's undoubted skill in describing scenes of estate life and saw in a fragment of Goncharov's future novel a creative step forward in comparison with his previous works.

In 1852 Goncharov, as secretary to Admiral E.V. Putyatin set off on a round-the-world voyage on the frigate Pallada. Simultaneously with the performance of his official duties, Ivan Alexandrovich collected material for his new works. The result of this work was travel notes, which in 1855-57. were published in periodicals, and in 1858 came out as a separate two-volume edition under the name "Frigate" Pallas "". The travel notes convey the author's impressions of his acquaintance with the British and Japanese cultures, reflects the author's opinion about what he saw and experienced during the trip. The paintings created by the author contain unusual associations and comparisons with the life of Russia, are filled with lyrical feeling. Travel sketches were very popular with Russian readers.

Returning from a trip, Goncharov entered the service of the St. Petersburg Censorship Committee and accepted an invitation to teach Russian literature to the heir to the throne. Since that time, the relationship between the writer and Belinsky's circle has noticeably cooled down. Acting as a censor, Goncharov assisted in the publication of a number of the best works of Russian literature: "Notes of a Hunter" by I.S. Turgenev, "A Thousand Souls" by A.F. Pisemsky and others. From the fall of 1862 to the summer of 1863, Goncharov edited the newspaper "Severnaya Pochta". At about the same time, he began to move away from the literary world. The ideal of the writer, by his own admission, was "a piece of independent bread, a pen and a close circle of closest friends."

In 1859 the novel “Oblomov” was published, the idea of ​​which was formed back in 1847. From the moment the chapter “Oblomov's Dream” was published, the reader had to wait almost ten years for the appearance of the full text of the work, which immediately won a huge success. The novel caused heated debate between readers and critics, which testified to the depth of the author's intention. Immediately after the publication of the novel, Dobrolyubov wrote an article "What is Oblomovism?" Some critics, on the contrary, saw in the protagonist "independent and pure", "tender and loving nature", consciously removed from fashion trends and remained faithful to the true values ​​of being. Disputes about the main character of the novel continued until the beginning of the 20th century.

Goncharov's last novel "The Break", published in 1869, presents a new version of Oblomovism in the image of the main character, Boris Raysky. This work was conceived as early as 1849 as a novel about the complex relationship between the artist and society. However, by the beginning of writing, the writer somewhat changed his plan, which was dictated by new social problems. At the center of the novel was tragic fate revolutionary-minded youth, presented in the guise of the "nihilist" Mark Volokhov. The novel "Break" caused ambiguous assessment criticism. Many questioned the author's talent and denied him the right to judge modern youth.

After the publication of the novel "The Break", Goncharov's name rarely appeared in print. In 1872, a literary-critical article "Million of Torments" was written, dedicated to the staging of Griboyedov's comedy "Woe from Wit" on the stage. To this day, this article remains a classic work on the comedy of Griboyedov. Further literary activity of Goncharov is represented by "Notes on Belinsky's Personality", theatrical and publicistic notes, the article "Hamlet", the essay "Literary Evening" and newspaper feuilletons. The result of the creative activity of Goncharov in the 70s. is considered a major critical work about his own work, entitled "Better late than never." In the 80s. the first collected works of Goncharov was published. In the last years of his life, the writer, endowed with the talent of a subtle observer, lived alone and withdrawn, consciously avoiding life and at the same time grievingly experiencing his situation. He continued to write articles and notes, but, unfortunately, before his death, he burned everything he had written in recent years.

In all his works, Goncharov strove to reveal the inner dynamism of the personality outside the plot events and convey the inner tension of everyday life. The writer advocated the independence of the individual, called for vigorous activity, inspired by moral ideas: spirituality and humanity, freedom from social and moral dependence.

Lecture 7 CREATIVITY I.A. GONCHAROVA. GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS. ROMAN "ORDINARY HISTORY"

In Russian and world literature Ivan Aleksandrovich Goncharov (1812-1891) became one of the greatest creators of the artistic ("artistic") novel. He - the author of three famous novels - "An Ordinary History" (1847), "Oblomov" (1859) and "Break" (1869). And - the book “The frigate“ Pallada ”” (separate ed. In 1858), describing the circumnavigation of the world performed by Goncharov in 1852-1855 on the Russian military ship “Pallada”. Having no analogues in the world travel literature, it can be correctly understood only in the genre context of the novel "trilogy" of the writer as, in turn, a novel - in this case, a "geographical" one (M. Bakhtin).

Creativity Goncharov, in which the initial experiments (the story "Dashing to be ill", "Happy mistake", the essay "Ivan Savich Podzhabrin") are preparing his novel, and later works (essays "At home", "Servants of the old century", "Literary evening ") thematically and problematically adjoin it, in general romance-centric, which is due to two reasons.

First, Goncharov's understanding of contemporary reality and “ modern man". Goncharov shared the position of V. Belinsky, which goes back to Hegel, that in the European history of modern times "the prose of life has deeply penetrated the very poetry of life." And I would agree with the observation of the German philosopher that the previous "era of heroes" was replaced by the "prosaic state" of human existence and of man himself. After all, recognizing this change, the author of "An Ordinary History" only in terms of his generation recorded that objective atomization man and society, which in Russia in the 1840s was accompanied by a latent growing crisis of the feudal-patriarchal community and the class individual. "Positively<...>time of the strong<...>geniuses have passed ... ", - asserts in one of the letters of 1847 to Pauline Viardot and Turgenev, adding in another message to her:" ... In a critical and transitional time that we are experiencing,<...>life sprayed; now there is no longer a powerful all-encompassing movement ... "(my italics. - V.N.).

Goncharov will repeatedly record the fact of the deheroization of modern reality and the present man on the pages of the "Pallas Frigate" - while in the pictures not only of bourgeois-numbered England, where everything is subject to the interests of trade and profit and the spirit of selfishness and human specialization reigns everywhere, but also in the image until recently mysterious Africa, mysterious Malaysia, Japan almost unknown to Europeans. And there, albeit less than in capitalist Europe, everything gradually, but steadily, says the writer, "comes up to some prosaic level." Here Goncharov also sketches the silhouette of a "modern hero" - an ubiquitous English merchant, in a tuxedo and a snow-white shirt, with a cane in his hand and a cigar in his mouth, watching the shipment of colonial goods in the ports of Africa, Singapore or eastern China.

Following the prosaization of reality, Goncharov believes, "she changed her sacred beauty" and poetry(literature, art) of modern times. The main literary genre instead of heroic epics, tragedies and odes of antiquity and the era of classicism, as well as sublime poems of romanticism, the novel appeared as a form that most corresponds to a modern personality in its relationship with today's society, therefore, more than others capable of "embracing life and reflecting a person"

The novel, he says, developing the corresponding opinion of Belinsky, Goncharov, in addition, a genre with synthetic the ability to absorb individual lyrical, dramatic and even didactic components. He most fully meets the conditions of artistry, as it, again in accordance with the analogous code of Belinsky, understood the creative work of "Oblomov". And she, besides figurative the nature of the poetic "idea" (pathos), typification and psychologizing characters and situations, copyright yuiora, shading the comic side of each person depicted and his position in life, assumed objectivity the creator, his coverage of reality in the most possible integrity and with all of her definitions, finally - the presence in the work poetry("Novels without poetry are not works of art"), i.e. universal value principle (level, element), guaranteeing him lasting interest and value. This interest in the novel is also facilitated by the fact that “large episodes of life, sometimes a whole life, in which, like in a big picture, every reader will find something close and familiar to him, fit into its framework”.

The above-mentioned qualities of the novel allow it to most effectively fulfill the “serious task” of art - without moralizing and moralizing (for the “novelist is not a moralist”) “to complete the education and improvement of a person”, presenting him with an impolite mirror of his weaknesses, mistakes, delusions, and at the same time the path on which he can protect himself from them. First of all pms & t'lu-novelist we are able to reveal and convincingly embody those spiritual, moral and social foundations on which a new, harmonious person and the same society could be formed.

All these advantages, recognized by Goncharov for the novel, became second the reason for the conscious romance-centeredness of his work.

Within its framework, however, took a significant place and feature article, monographic, as "Ivan Savich Podzhabrin", "A trip along the Volga", "May in St. Petersburg", "Literary evening", or as part of the essay cycles "At the University", "At home", "Servants of the old century."

The main subject of the depiction in Goncharov's essay is “the external conditions of life,” that is, the way of life and customs of traditional, mostly provincial Russia with its characteristic figures of administrative or "artistic" Oblomovites, petty officials, old-regime servants, and so on. In some of Goncharov's essays, there is a noticeable connection with the methods of essays by the "natural school". Such is, in particular, the essay "The month of May in St. Petersburg", in a "physiological" manner, reproducing an ordinary day of the inhabitants of one of the big houses of the capital. Not so much typification as the classification of characters in "Servants of the Old Century" (according to some group criterion - for example, "drinkers" or "non-drinkers") brings them closer to the faces of such sketches of "Physiology of St. Petersburg" as "St. Petersburg organ-grinders" by D. Grigorovich or "Petersburg Janitor" by V. Dahl.

A well-known connection with the literary methods of the essayists-“physiologists” of the 1840s is also present in a number of secondary persons from Goncharov's novels. The stereotypical portraits of Russians, captured in Nashi, written off from life by the Russians (1841-1842), could be replenished by the hero of the endless landlord litigation Vasily Zaezzhalov and sentimental spinster, Marya Gorbatova, "To the grave" faithful to the beloved of her youth ("An Ordinary Story"), Ilya Ilyich's visitors in the first part of "Oblomov", a faceless St. Petersburg official Ivan Ivanovich Lyapov(like everyone else, from "a" to "I") or his eloquent provincial brother "from the seminarians" Openkin ("Break") and similar figures, who do not exceed in their human content the class or caste environment to which they belong.

Generally Gotarov-artist, however, like Turgenev, he is not so much an heir as a principled opponent of essay-physiological characterology, which actually replaced the person portrayed with his estate or bureaucratic position, rank, rank and uniform and deprived him of his originality and free will.

Indirectly, his attitude to the essay-"physiological" interpretation of a contemporary, Goncharov will express through the lips of Ilya Ilyich Oblomov in his conversation with a fashionable writer Penkin(a hint at the inability of this "writer" to see people and life deeper than their surface). “We need one naked physiology of society; We have no time for songs now, ”Penkin declares his position, touched by the accuracy with which essayists-everyday writers copy“ whether a merchant, an official, an officer, or a security worker ”-“ they will definitely print it alive ”. To which Ilya Ilyich, “suddenly ignited,” declares with “flaming eyes”: “But there is no life in anything: there is no understanding of it and no sympathy ...<...>Human, human give it to me!<...>Love him, remember yourself in him and treat him as you are yourself - then I will read you and bow my head before you ... "(my italics. - V.N.).

“One mobile side of the external conditions of life, the so-called moral descriptive, everyday essays,” Goncharov himself wrote later, “will never make a deep impression on the reader, if they do not affect together the person himself, his psychological side... I do not pretend to have fulfilled this supreme task of art, but I confess that it was, first of all, included in my views. "

The artistic task set before himself by Goncharov is to see “the person himself” under the social and everyday shell of a contemporary and create characters with universally significant psychological content on the basis of certain life observations. Cliffs usually builds them on very common plots. Note: none of the heroes of his novel "trilogy" shoots, like Onegin, Pechorin or even Turgenev's "plebeian" Bazarov, in a duel, does not participate, like Andrei Bolkonsky, in historical battles and in the writing of Russian laws, does not commit, like Rodion Raskolnikov, crimes against morality (the principle "Thou shalt not kill!"), Does not prepare, like the "new people" of Chernyshevsky, the peasant revolution. Goncharov does not use an ontological and expressively dramatic situation by its very nature for the purpose of artistic disclosure of his characters. of death or dying hero, so common in Turgenev's novels (remember the death of Rudin on the Parisian barricades, in Venice - Dmitry Insarov, the death of Yevgeny Bazarov, the suicide of Alexei Nezhdanov), in the works of L. Tolstoy (the death of Nikolenka Irteniev's mother in Childhood; the old Count Bezukhov, Petit Rostov, Prince Andrei Bolkonsky in War and Peace; Nikolai Levin and Anna Karenina in Anna Karenina) and F. Dostoevsky (death-murder of an old money-lender and her sister Lizaveta, death of an official Marmeladov and his wife Katerina Ivanovna in Crime and punishment ”and many deaths in subsequent novels).

In all these and similar cases, the death-dying scenes put on this or that hero the final and decisive touches that finally set off his human essence and destiny itself.

And what about Goncharov? In The Ordinary Story, only the hero's mother dies at an advanced age, which is reported in just two words: “she died”. In Oblomov, the title character himself dies early, but his dying is not depicted, and only three years after the event itself, the reader was informed that Ilya Ilyich's death was like falling asleep forever: “One morning Agafya Matveyevna brought him, as usual coffee and - found him just as meekly resting on the deathbed as on the bed of sleep, only the head moved a little from the pillow and the hand was convulsively pressed to the heart, where, apparently, the blood was concentrated and stopped ”. In "The Break" in general, all the characters are alive until the end of the work.

Of the vivid and dramatic manifestations of man in the novel "trilogy" by Goncharov, only love is painted in detail and masterly ("the relationship of both sexes with each other"); the rest of the life of her heroes, as the writer himself emphasized, is made up of "simple, uncomplicated events" that do not go beyond the limits of everyday life.

The creator of "Oblomov", however, was not at all happy when individual critics and researchers (V.P. Botkin, later - S.A. Vengerov), noting the extraordinary pictoriality of his "portraits, landscapes<...>living copies from morals ", they called him on this basis" a first-class genre painter "in the spirit of the Little Flemings or the Russian painter P.A. Fedotov, the author of The Fresh Cavalier, The Major's Matchmaking and similar canvases. “What is there to praise for? - the writer answered this. - Is it so difficult in general for a talent, if there is one, to pile up the faces of provincial old women, teachers, women, girls, courtyard people, etc.?

Goncharov did not consider his true merit in Russian and world literature to create characters and situations, in his words, "local" and "private" (that is, just a social and everyday level and purely Russian) - it was only initial part of his creative process - and the subsequent deepening them to the meaning and significance of the national and all-human. Solution this Goncharov's creative task is in several directions.

It is served by Goncharov's own theory of artistic generalization - typing. A writer, Goncharov believed, cannot and should not typify a new reality that has just been born, since, being in the process of fermentation, it is full of elements and tendencies that are random, changeable and external, overshadowing its fundamental foundations. The novelist should wait until this young reality (life) has properly settled down, molded into repeatedly repeating faces, passions, collisions of already stable species and properties.

The process of such "upholding" of the current and shaky, and therefore elusive reality, Goncharov, in his artistic practice, performed, of course, independently - by the power of his creative imagination. However, the identification in Russian life, first of all, of those prototypes (prototypes), tendencies and conflicts that “will always excite people and never become obsolete”, and their artistic generalization dragged out Goncharov’s work on his novels by ten (in the case of “Oblomov”) and even (in the case of the "Break") for twenty years. But in the end, the "local" and "private" characters (conflicts) were transformed into those "indigenous universal", which will become in "Oblomov" its title character and Olga Ilyinskaya, and in "The Break" - painter("Artistic nature") Boris Raisky, Tatiana Markovna Berezhkova ("Grandmother") and Vera.

Only as a result of a long search did Goncharov get those household details that were able to accommodate already super-everyday in its essence the image (character, picture, scene). It required the most severe selection of options for the sake of one out of a thousand. One example of such a selection is the famous ha, tt(as well as a sofa, wide shoes or a holiday cake in Oblomovka, and then in the house of Agafya Pshenitsyna) Ilya Ilyich Oblomov, as if fused in the imagination of readers with this hero and fixing the main phases of his emotional and moral evolution.

As a means of literary characterization, this detail was not at all a discovery of Goncharov. Here it is in I. Turgenev's poem "Landowner" (1843), which Belinsky called "a physiological sketch in verse":

At the tea table, in the spring,

Under the sticky, at ten o'clock,

The landowner was sitting on a pole,

Covered in a quilted robe.

He ate in silence, without haste;

He smoked, looked carelessly ...

And His noble soul enjoyed endlessly.

Here the dressing gown is one of the stereotypical signs of the free manor-landowner life, the direct-home vestment of a provincial Russian master. In a broader characteristic function, the robe is used in Gogol's portrait of Nozdryov in the scene of this hero's morning meeting with Chichikov. “The owner himself, without hesitating to enter soon,” says the narrator of Dead Souls about Nozdryov, “had nothing under his dressing gown, except for an open chest, on which was growing some kind of beard. Holding a shank in his hand and sipping from a cup, he was very good for a painter who does not like the fear of gentlemen slicked and curled, like barbarian signs, or trimmed to a comb. " Here is a robe thrown by Nozdryov directly over his naked body and thus eloquently speaking about the complete contempt of this "historical" person for any decency, - a detail of the life of the psychologized, throwing a bright light on the moral essence of its owner.

And here is the same dressing gown in the portrait of Ilya Ilyich Oblomov: “How did Oblomov's home suit go to his deceased features and to his pampered body! He was wearing a robe made of persian matter, real

Oriental robe, without the slightest hint of Europe ... Sleeves, according to the unchanged Asian fashion, went from fingers to shoulder wider and wider.<...>Although this robe has lost its original freshness<...>but still kept brightness eastern dyes and fabric strength ”. From the subject of morning vestments and a psychologized everyday attribute, the Oblomov robe was transformed into a symbol of one of the fundamental types of human existence - namely, being not European, but Asian, as it was understood in the middle of the 19th century in Europe, being, the content and purpose of which was the endless and unchanging peace.

The enduring universal principle was included in Goncharov's "trilogy" and with some kind of ontological motive integrating everyday scenes and pictures in their origin into "one image", "one concept" geological meaning. Such is the motive of "silence, immobility and sleep", passing through the description of the entire "wonderful" Oblomov region and the customs of the Oblomovites, or, on the contrary, the motive cars and mechanical existence in the image of both bureaucratic Petersburg ("An Ordinary History") and specialized Englishmen ("Frigate" Pallada ""), partly and the way of life of Agafya Pshenitsyna before her love for Oblomov (remember the crackle of a coffee shop accompanying this woman mills - also cars).

Their context- archetypal (literary and historical), mythological or all together. Here are some examples of it.

“I look at the crowd,” the protagonist of The Ordinary History says in a conversation with his uncle Peter Ivanovich Aduev, “as only a hero, a poet and a lover can look”. The name of the author of this statement - Alexander - suggests that hero, with whom Aduev Jr. is ready to compare himself. This is Alexander the Great (by the way, and directly mentioned in the text of this novel) - the famous ancient commander who created the greatest monarchy of antiquity and believed in his divine origin. Which, obviously, is consonant with Alexander Aduev, who in his turn has long considered himself a man inspired from above (“I thought that a creative gift was put into me from above”). It is understandable why the Macedonian was placed by Aduev the Younger and on a par with the poet and the lover. The poet, according to the romantic concept shared at this time by the hero of "An Ordinary History", is "the chosen one of heaven" (A. Pushkin). A lover is akin to him, for love (and friendship), according to the same concept, is also not an earthly, but a heavenly feeling, only descended into an earthly vale or, in the words of Alexander Aduev, fell "into earthly mud."

An active mythological subtext is contained in the name of Uncle Alexander - Petra Adueva. Peter in Greek means stone; Peter named the fisherman Simon Jesus Christ, believing that he would become the cornerstone of the Christian church (faith). Pyotr Ivanovich Aduyev, who wants to initiate his nephew into this faith, considers himself to be a kind of a stone-holder of a new faith - namely, a new "outlook on life" and life behavior, characteristic not of provincial Russia, but of the "new order" of St. Petersburg. The Apostle Peter is also known for the fact that on the night of Christ's arrest he denied him three times. The motive of renunciation sounds in the image of Aduev Sr. Living in Petersburg for seventeen years, Pyotr Ivanovich renounced what, according to the novelist's conviction, constitutes the main value of human life: love and friendship(he replaced them with "habit") and from creativity.

A number of approximations, allusions and associations with folk, literary and mythological persons accompany the image of Ilya Ilyich Oblomov. Among those directly named are Ivanushka the Fool, Galatea (from the ancient legend of the sculptor Pygmalion and the sculpture of a beautiful woman created by him, then animated by the gods), Ilya Muromets and the Old Testament prophet Elijah, the ancient Greek idealist philosopher Plato and the biblical Joshua, king Baltazar ), "Desert elders" (ie desert dwellers). Among those implied are the cynic philosopher Diogenes of Sinop (Diogenes in a barrel) and the unlucky Gogol groom Podkolesin ("The Marriage").

The universal human meaning of Olga Ilyinskaya as a positive heroine is already given by the semantics of her name (translated from Old Norse, Olga - saint), then the aforementioned parallel with Pygmalion (in his role Olga acts in relation to the apathetic Oblomov), as well as with the title character of V. Bellini's opera Norma, whose famous aria - Casta diva("The chaste goddess"), performed by Olga, for the first time awakens in Ilya Ilyich a heartfelt feeling for her. Based on such motives in the action of the named opera as mistletoe(compare with "lilac branch") and sacred grove Druids (the summer grove will also be an important element in the "poetic ideal of life", which Oblomov will draw at the beginning of the second part of the novel to Andrei Stolts), the love story Ilya Ilyich - Olga Ilyinskaya will also be built in "Oblomov".

The figure of Andrei Stolz draws a generalizing meaning in the mythological poetics of the hero's name, as in its direct meaning (Andrei in ancient Greek - courageous), and in the allusion to the apostle Andrew the First-Called- the legendary baptist (transformer) and patron saint of Russia. The possibility of a contradictory assessment of this seemingly impeccable person lies in the semantics of his surname: Stolz in German means “proud”.

Due to the diverse context, the central characters of the novel "The Break" are raised to national and all-human (archetypal) characters. Such are the artist from nature Boris Raisky, the neo-Platonic esthete and at the same time the newly-minted "enthusiast" Chatsky (Goncharov), as well as the artistic version of the loving Don Juan; Martha and Vera, dating back respectively to Pushkin's Olga and Tatiana Larin, and to the evangelical sisters of Lazarus - Martha and Mary: the first fed Jesus Christ, becoming a symbol of the material side of life, the second listened to him, symbolizing spiritual thirst. In an ironic context, first with the noble robber Karl Mohr from “The Robbers” by I.F. Schiller, and then in direct rapprochement with the ancient Cynics (cynics), Indian pariahs (outcasts, untouchables), finally, with the gospel robber Barabbas and even with the Old Testament snake-tempter, the image of Mark Volokhov, the bearer of the apostolic name, but anti-Christian cause is formed ...

The listed and similar methods of generalizing "private" and "local" in their original form of Goncharov's heroes and situations led to the fact that everyday life in the writer's novels it was literally saturated being, the present (temporary) is imperishable (eternal), the external is internal.

The context of the three most important literary archetypes created by the Western European classics of the 16th-18th centuries served the same purpose. We are talking about Shakespeare's Hamlet, Cervantes' Don Quixote and Goethe's Faust. In the lectures on the work of Turgenev, we showed the refraction of Hamlet's and quixotic principles in the heroes of the author's stories and novels " Noble nest". WITH young years Turgenev's favorite work was Goethe's Faust, with a tragic love line which (Faust - Margarita) to a certain extent echoes the relations of the main characters of Turgenev's story "Faust", published, by the way, in the same tenth issue of Sovremennik for 1856, as performed by A.N. Strugovshikov Russian translation of the famous creation of Goethe. Certain allusions to the indicated supercharacters and their fates are indicative for the subsequent classical prose from N. Leskov to L. Tolstoy and F. Dostoevsky.

In the novel "trilogy" of Goncharov, the first two of them are most important for understanding the images of Alexander Aduev, Oblomov and Boris Raisky; The Faustian motive will be reflected in Olga Ilyinskaya's unexpected “melancholy”, experienced by her in her happy marriage with Stolz, depicted in the “Crimean” (part 4, chapter VIII) chapter of “Oblomov”. Here is an important confession from the writer about the design of the three heroes of his novels. “I’ll tell you,” wrote Goncharov in 1866 to Sofya Alexandrovna Nikitenko, “<...>which I didn’t tell anyone: from the very minute I started writing for print<...>, I had one artistic ideal: this is an image of an honest, kind, pretty nature, an eminently idealist, fighting all his life, seeker of truth, meeting a lie at every step, deceived and, finally, finally cooling down and falling into apathy and powerlessness - from the consciousness of his own weakness and someone else's, that is, in general, human nature.<...>But this topic is too broad<...>, and at the same time negative (i.e. critical; - V.N.) the direction so encompassed the whole of society and literature (starting with Belinsky and Gogol) that I succumbed to this direction and instead of a serious human figure began to draw particular types, catching only the ugly and funny sides. Not only mine, but no talent would have been enough for this. Shakespeare alone created Hamlet - da Cervantes - Don Quixote - and these two giants have absorbed in themselves almost everything that is comic and tragic in human nature. "

"ORDINARY HISTORY"

The artist Goncharov's ability to transform “local”, “private types” into “indigenous” national and universal characters, how “they connected with the life around them and how the latter reflected on them,” was fully manifested already in the first “link” of his novel "Trilogy".

Explaining the title of the work, Goncharov emphasized: under ordinary one must understand not the story "uncomplicated, not entangled", but "so for the most part happens as it is written", i.e. universal possible everywhere, always and with every person. It is based on an eternal collision idealism and practicality as two opposite "views on life" and life attitudes. In the novel, it is “tied up” with a meeting in St. Petersburg of a twenty-year-old who arrived there. provincial Alexander Aduev, a graduate of Moscow University and heir to the village estate of Grachi and his thirty-seven-year-old "uncle", metropolitan official and entrepreneur Pyotr Ivanovich Aduev. At the same time, it is a conflict and wholes behind the heroes. historical eras- "Old Russian" (D. Pisarev) and - in the current Western European way, as well as different ages of a person: youth and maturity.

Goncharov does not take the side of any of the opposing misunderstandings of life (epochs, ages), but believes each of them to conform to the harmonious “norm” of human existence, designed to ensure the integrity of the individual, integrity and creative freedom. To this end, the positions of the "nephew" and "uncle" are first highlighted and shaded in the novel by one another, and then both are verified by the real completeness of reality. As a result, without any authorial morality, the reader is convinced of their complete equal one-sidedness.

Alexander, who recognizes only the unconditional human values ​​as an idealist, hopes to find heroic friendship in St. Petersburg in the spirit of the "fabulous" Greeks Orestes and Pilada, the glory of an exalted (romantic) poet and all the more "colossal", "eternal" love. However, tested by relations with modern Petersburgers (former student friend, officials and colleagues, magazine editor, secular women and especially "uncle"), increasingly suffers from "clashes of his rosy dreams with reality" and ultimately suffers a crushing defeat and in the field of a writer, and, what is most bitter for him, in passionate "romances" with the young Nadya Lyubetskaya and the young widow Yulia Tafaeva. In the first of them, Alexander blindly adored the girl, but failed to occupy her mind, did not find an antidote to her female ambition, and was abandoned; in the second, he himself, bored with the overwhelming and mutually jealous sympathy, literally fled from his beloved.

Spiritually devastated and depressed, he indulges in Byronic disillusionment with people and the world and experiences other negative universal human conditions recorded by domestic and European authors: Lermontov-Pechorin reflection, complete mental apathy with thoughtless killing of time, sometimes in the company of a random friend, or like Goethe's Faust in the wine cellar of Auerbach, among the reckless admirers of Bacchus, finally, there was an almost “complete frenzy” that pushed Alexander into a vulgar Don Juan attempt to seduce an innocent girl, for which he would pay with “tears of shame, fury at himself, despair”. And after an eight-year stay in the capital, fruitless for his "career and fortune", he leaves Petersburg to, like an evangelical prodigal son, return to the ancestral home - the family estate of Grachi.

So the hero of "Ordinary History" is punished for his stubborn unwillingness to correct his idealism with the prosaic and practical requirements and responsibilities of Petersburg life (of the current "century"), to which his "uncle" Peter Ivanovich was vainly encouraged.

Aduev the elder is also far from the true understanding of life, only in his own characterization in the second chapter of the novel he appears as a person with “a truly Renaissance breadth of interests” (E. Krasnoshekova). On the whole, this “cold by nature, incapable of generous movements”, although “in the full sense a decent person” (V. Belinsky) is not a positive alternative to Alexander, but his “perfect antipode”, that is, polar extreme. Aduev Jr. lived with his heart and imagination; Petr Ivanovich is guided in everything by reason and "merciless analysis." Alexander believed in his chosenness "from above", elevated himself above the "crowd", neglecting hard work, relied on intuition and talent; senior Aduev strives to be "like everyone else" in St. Petersburg, and his life success is based on "reason, reason, experience, everyday life." For Aduev Jr. “there was nothing on earth holier than love"; Pyotr Ivanovich, successfully serving in one of the ministries and owning a porcelain factory with partners, the meaning of human existence reduces to doing Affairs in the meaning of "work, be different, get rich."

Completely indulging in the "practical direction of the century", Aduev Sr. dried up his soul and heart that was not callous from birth: after all, in his youth, like Alexander, he experienced both tender love and the accompanying "sincere outpourings" he obtained for his beloved, " with danger to life and health ", and yellow flowers of the lake. But, having reached adulthood, he dismissed the best properties of youth as allegedly interfering with "business":

"Idealism of the soul and the stormy life of the heart" (E. Krasnoshchekova), having committed this, according to the logic of the novel, no less than Alexander, who is alien to his social and practical responsibilities, a mistake.

In the atmosphere of a materially luxurious, but "colorless and empty life", the beautiful wife of Pyotr Ivanovich Lizaveta Aleksandrovna, created for mutual love, maternal and family happiness, but who did not recognize them, and by the age of thirty turned into a lost will and own desires human automaton. In the epilogue of the novel, we are overcome with ailments, depressed and confused himself, hitherto confident in the correctness of his everyday philosophy, Aduev Sr. Complaining, as before Alexander, about the "treachery of fate", asking, again after the "nephew", the gospel question "What to do?" , but a "wooden" life.

"I ruined my own life" - repents Alexander Aduev, guessing at the moment of his epiphany about the reason for his St. Petersburg failures. Kind repentance in front of himself and his wife, Pyotr Aduyev also accomplishes in the epilogue, planning, sacrificing his service (on the eve of being promoted to secret councilors!) and selling the plant, which brings him "up to forty thousand net profit", to leave with Lizaveta Alexandrovna to Italy in order to live there together and heart. The reader, alas, it is clear: this plan of the soul salvation - resurrection spouses who have long been accustomed but not loving each other are hopelessly outdated. However, the very readiness of such a “pragmatist-rationalist” (E. Krasnoshchekova) as Aduev Sr. to voluntarily renounce a business “career and fortune” at its highest peak becomes a decisive proof of life's failure.

The "Ordinary History" also outlines the author's norm is truth the relationship of a person with modern (and any other) reality and the individual with people, although only in outline, since goodie, who embodied this norm in his life-teaching, is not in the novel.

It is revealed in two similar fragments of the work: the scene of the concert of a German musician, who, with his music, “told” Alexander Aduev “his whole life, bitter and deceived,” and especially in the letter of the hero from the village to his “aunt” and “uncle,” concluding two the main parts of the novel. In it, the younger Aduev, according to Lizaveta Alexandrovna, finally "explained life to himself," appeared "beautiful, noble, clever."

Indeed, Alexander intends, having returned to St. Petersburg, from the former "madcap<...>, dreamer<...>disappointed<...>, a provincial "to be transformed into a person" of which there are many in St. Petersburg, " to become a realist, without renouncing, however, the best hopes of youth: "they are a guarantee of a purity of heart, a sign of a noble soul, disposed to good." He thirsts for activity, but not for ranks and material prosperity, but for an inspired "from above intended goal" of spiritual and moral improvement and not at all excluding the excitement of love, struggle and suffering, without which life "would not be life, but a dream ..." ... Such an activity would not divide, but organically combine the mind with the heart, existence with the hoped for, the duty of a citizen with personal happiness, everyday prose with life poetry, giving the personality completeness, wholeness and creative freedom.

It seems that Alexander had only to realize this "way of life", no matter how perseverance, spiritual and physical efforts it may cost him. But in the epilogue of the novel, he, referring, as before "uncle", to the practical "century" ("What to do<...>- such a century. I walk on a par with the century ... "), makes a self-serving bureaucratic career, and prefers a rich bride's dowry to mutual love.

Goncharov's critics and researchers interpreted such a striking metamorphosis of the former idealist, who was essentially reborn into an ordinary representative of the “crowd” so despised by Alexander, was interpreted differently by Goncharov's critics and researchers. Among recent judgments, the most convincing is the opinion of V.M. It is gratifying. “The hero who came to St. Petersburg for the second time,” notes the scientist, “found himself at that stage of his development.<...>, when the enthusiasm and idealism of youth were to be replaced by the enthusiasm of a creative person, the enthusiasm of an innovator in life ... But in the hero of The Ordinary History, such enthusiasm was not enough. "

In conclusion, a few words about the results of Goncharov's artistic generalization, as it manifested itself in the plot of "An Ordinary History". The above stated the simplicity and simplicity of the events on which the action in the works of Goncharov is based. This fact is also confirmed by the writer's first novel: his provincial hero comes from the patriarchal family estate to St. Petersburg, from where, after unjustified hopes for an exceptional "career and fortune", he returns to his father's house, there, replacing the "dandy tailcoat" with a "wide robe", he tries to comprehend "The poetry of a gray sky, a broken fence, a gate, a dirty pond and a trepak" praised by Pushkin, but soon bored with it, he again travels to Petersburg, where, discarding all the ideally exalted hopes of youth, he achieves ranks and a profitable marriage.

Within the framework of this visible plot in the "Ordinary Story", however, a different one is built - not striking, but just as real. Indeed: in his movement from the Rooks to St. Petersburg and in the life phases he experienced there, Alexander Aduev reproduces in a condensed form, the whole history of mankind in its main typological "ages" - ancient idyllic (antique), medieval-knightly, romantic with its initial hopes and impulses to the heavenly ideal, and then - "world sorrow", all-encompassing irony and ultimate apathy and boredom, finally, at the present age - "Prosaic" (Hegel), inviting his contemporary to come to terms with life on the basis of only material and sensual comfort and well-being.

This is not enough. Told by Goncharov " ordinary story"Is able to appear as the current version of the Christian life paradigm, where the initial output a person from a closed world (Galileo in Christ; Rooks - in Alexander Aduev) into the all-human world (Jerusalem in Christ; Petersburg - in Alexander's “window to Europe”) for the sake of confirming his teachings(The good news of Christ and - Alexander's "outlook on life") is replaced by a short-term human love, recognition and - rejection, persecution from the side of the ruling order ("century"), then the situation of choice(in the Garden of Gethsemane for Christ; in the "grace" of the Rooks for Alexander) and ultimately the possibility of either resurrection for a new life (with Christ), or betrayal of a genuine human purpose and moral doom in conditions of soulless existence (for Alexander Aduev).