It coincided with preparations for the long-awaited marriage to Natalya Goncharova. During this time, work on “Eugene Onegin”, the cycles “Belkin’s Stories” and “Little Tragedies” were completed, the poem “House in Kolomna” and about 30 lyric poems were written.
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✪ Boldino in the life of A.S. Pushkin. Educational film
✪ Boldino autumn 2012
✪ 2017-PUSHKIN. BOLDIN AUTUMN
Subtitles
Spring and summer 1830
On May 6, 1830, the engagement of Pushkin and Goncharova was officially announced. But the wedding was constantly postponed - Natalya Goncharova’s mother did not want to give her daughter away without a dowry, but the ruined family had no money. In August of the same year, Pushkin’s uncle, Vasily Lvovich, died. The wedding was again postponed due to mourning, and Pushkin left Moscow for Boldino on August 31 to take possession of the nearby village of Kistenevo, allocated to him by his father on the occasion of his marriage. Before leaving, Pushkin quarreled with his future mother-in-law and, in a letter written under the influence of an explanation with her, announced that Natalya Nikolaevna was “completely free”, but he would marry only her or never marry.
Autumn
Pushkin arrived in Boldino on September 3, expecting to get things done in a month. At first, he was afraid that the best working time (usually in the fall he wrote a lot) should be filled with the hassle of taking possession and mortgaging Kistenev. On this trip, Pushkin took with him only three books: the second volume of Polevoy’s “History of the Russian People”, “The Iliad” translated by Gnedich and the works of English poets, including Barry Cornwall.
Pushkin's plans were disrupted by the cholera epidemic that swept across Russia - due to quarantine, he stayed in Boldino for three months, which became one of the most fruitful periods in his work.
A reflection of his worries were the “” and “” that appeared shortly after his arrival (“Crazy years of faded fun...”). Soon, however, a letter from the bride restored his lost peace of mind. Pushkin told his friend and publisher Pletnev that in his “pretty letter” she “promises to marry me without a dowry” and invites him to Moscow. The affairs of Kistenev were entrusted to the clerk Pyotr Kireev, and the poet, confident that the Goncharovs had left cholera-ridden Moscow, had already notified his friend that he would appear there no earlier than in a month.
On September 13, Pushkin wrote the edifying “Tale about the priest and his worker Balda.”
The autumn of 1830 became a time for Pushkin to take stock. Already in his message to his parents announcing the engagement (April 6-11, 1830), he wrote that a new period was beginning; He tells Pletnev about the same thing already from Boldin: “Until now he was me - but here he will be us. Joke!" (XIV, 113, September 29, 1830). Changes in personal life coincided with the beginning of a new stage literary activity. The poet opens the final chapter of “Eugene Onegin” with a retrospective picture of his work, symbolically presenting its development through “the change of appearances of the Muse,” and the direction of his literary evolution, according to Blagoy, as “movement through romanticism to realism, from “poetry” to “prose” ".
In early October, Pushkin tried to leave Boldin, but he was unable to overcome the quarantine cordons. On December 5, 1830, Pushkin returned from his third attempt to Moscow, still surrounded by cholera quarantines. On December 9, Pushkin wrote to Pletnev:
I’ll tell you (as a secret) that I wrote in Boldin, as I haven’t written for a long time. This is what I brought here: 2 [ch<авы>] the last chapters of Onegin, 8th and 9th, are completely ready for printing. A story written in octaves (400 verses), which we will give out to Anonyme. Several dramatic scenes, or small tragedies, namely: The Miserly Knight, Mozart and Salieri, The Feast during the Plague, and D.<он>Juan. In addition, he wrote about 30 small poems. Fine? That's not all: (Very secret) I wrote 5 stories in prose, which made Baratynsky laugh and fight - and which we will also publish Anonyme.
Boldino works
Belkin's stories
Little tragedies
In November 1830, Pushkin’s hand wrote a list of dramatic works created in Boldino, to which he added “The House in Kolomna” (“a story written in octaves”; completed on October 9):
I. "Oct." (that is, Octaves - “House in Kolomna”). II. "Stingy." III. "Salieri". IV. "D.G." (Don Guan - "The Stone Guest"). V. “Plague” (“Feast during the plague”).
Critical articles
The situation that had developed in the Russian literary world by the beginning of the 1830s, the isolation in which the employees of the Literary Newspaper found themselves and, especially, the strained relations with
The Boldino autumn of 1830 gave Russian literature best works A.S. Pushkin. It’s interesting that it happened completely by accident - while preparing for the wedding with Natalya Goncharova, the poet went to Boldino to decide some financial questions, and intended to stay there for a week at most, but the outbreak of a cholera epidemic forced him to stay in the village for almost the entire autumn. It so happened that these three months became the most fruitful for his work. The phenomenon of the Boldino Autumn in Pushkin’s work is surprising due to the ratio of the number of texts created and the timing of their writing - Alexander Sergeevich created one work after another with incredible speed. Such inspiration pleased the poet, and he did not miss the opportunity to use it. In Boldino, Pushkin mastered a variety of genres and forms, experimented with vocabulary, and combined folk and literary forms. Unfortunately, Pushkin later failed to finish and implement much of what he started and planned in Boldino.
About thirty poems were written in Boldino, among them “Demons”, “Elegy”, “My Genealogy”. In addition, the novel in verse “Eugene Onegin” was completed here and the poem “Gypsies” was written. In general, the theme of the poems of the Boldino period comes down to memories of the past and impressions of the present. In addition, it was here that Pushkin began to try himself in folk genres - for example, here the “Tale of the Bear” was created and started, which was never completed.
As for prose, it was here that Belkin’s Tales were born. Pushkin, as you know, never adhered to strict genre boundaries, loved to experiment and create in different directions, and this cycle is proof of this. "Belkin's Tales" contain works by different literary trends and genres that were popular at that time: realism (“Shot”), sentimentalism (,), vaudeville (“The Young Lady-Peasant”), gothic story (“The Undertaker”). Moreover, all works have a feature that is inherent in critical realism: “little people” often appear in them, and the conflict develops at the lowest levels of the social ladder.
In Boldino, Pushkin tries his hand at drama and creates “Little Tragedies.” Small in volume, they are intimate in nature: they have few characters, they have a dynamically developing plot and an acute, irreconcilable conflict that ends, according to the law of the genre, with the death of the hero. At the heart of the conflict are the strongest human passions, which, if uncontrolled, can lead a person to death. In “The Stingy Knight” it is stinginess, in “Mozart and Salieri” it is envy, in “The Stone Guest” it is love passion. In this sense, “A Feast in the Time of Plague” differs from other tragedies, since it does not focus on any one passion, however, this tragedy completes the cycle and is a kind of generalization - it resolves the pressing issues of the existence of a person who looks death in the eyes . Here death is not a consequence of the conflict, but its cause. There is no explanation for the fact that the innocent and righteous are dying along with bandits and sinners - the epidemic is blind.
Spring and summer 1830
On May 6, 1830, the engagement of Pushkin and Goncharova was officially announced. But the wedding was constantly postponed - Natalya Ivanovna Goncharova did not want to give her daughter away without a dowry, but the ruined family had no money. In August of the same year, Pushkin's uncle, Vasily Lvovich, died. The wedding was again postponed due to mourning, and Pushkin left Moscow for Boldino on August 31 to take possession of the nearby village of Kistenevo, allocated to him by his father on the occasion of his marriage. Before leaving, Pushkin quarreled with his future mother-in-law and in a letter written under the influence of an explanation with her, he announced that Natalya Nikolaevna was “completely free”, but he would marry only her or never marry.
Boldino
Pushkin estate in Bolshoy Boldin
Pushkin arrived in Boldino on September 3, expecting to get things done in a month. At first, he was afraid that the best working time (usually in the fall he wrote a lot) should be filled with the hassle of taking possession and mortgaging Kistenev. The cholera epidemic disrupted his plans - due to quarantine, he was delayed for three months, which became one of the most fruitful periods in his work.
A reflection of his worries were the “” and “” that appeared shortly after his arrival (“Crazy years of faded fun...”). Soon, however, a letter from the bride restored his lost peace of mind. Pushkin informed his friend and publisher Pletnev that, in his “pretty letter,” she “promises to marry me without a dowry” and invites him to Moscow. The cases regarding Kistenev were transferred to the clerical employee, and the poet, confident that the Goncharovs had left cholera-ridden Moscow, had already notified his friend that he would appear there no earlier than in a month.
The autumn of 1830 became a time for Pushkin to take stock. Already in his message to his parents announcing the engagement (April 6-11, 1830), he wrote that a new period was beginning; He tells Pletnev about the same thing already from Boldino: “Until now he was me - but here he will be us. Joke!" (XIV, 113,29 September 1830). Changes in his personal life coincided with the beginning of a new stage of literary activity. The poet opens the final chapter of “Eugene Onegin” with a retrospective picture of his work, symbolically presenting its development through “the change of appearances of the Muse,” and the direction of his literary evolution, according to Blagoy, as “movement through romanticism to realism, from “poetry” to “prose” ".
In early October, Pushkin tried to leave Boldino, but he was unable to overcome the quarantine cordons.
On December 5, 1830, Pushkin returned from his third attempt to Moscow, still surrounded by cholera quarantines. On December 9, Pushkin wrote to Pletnev:
I’ll tell you (as a secret) that I wrote in Boldin, as I haven’t written for a long time. This is what I brought here: 2 [ch<авы>] the last chapters of Onegin, 8th and 9th, are completely ready for printing. A story written in octaves (400 verses), which we will give out to Anonyme. Several dramatic scenes, or small tragedies, namely: The Miserly Knight, Mozart and Salieri, Feast during the Plague, and D.<он>Juan. In addition, he wrote about 30 small poems. Fine? That's not all: (Very secret) I wrote 5 stories in prose, which made Baratynsky laugh and fight - and which we will also publish Anonyme.
Prose
Belkin's stories
Little tragedies
In November 1830, Pushkin’s hand wrote a list of dramatic works created in Boldino, to which he added “The House in Kolomna”:
I. "Oct." (that is, Octaves - “House in Kolomna”). II. "Stingy". III. "Salieri". IV. "D. G." (Don Guan - “The Stone Guest”). V. “Plague”* (“Feast during the plague”).
Critical articles
The situation that had developed in the Russian literary world by the beginning of the 1830s, the isolation in which the employees of the Literary Gazette found themselves and, especially, the strained relations with Bulgarin - all this forced Pushkin to turn to literary polemics for the first time and re-evaluate all his important works ( "Ruslan and Lyudmila", "Eugene Onegin", "Count Nulin", "Poltava"). On October 2, after an unsuccessful attempt to escape to Moscow, he begins his notes: “Today, in the unbearable hours of quarantine, having neither books nor a friend with me, I decided to pass the time to write a refutation of all the criticism that I could only remember, and own comments on one’s own writings.” Pushkin had neither newspapers nor magazines at his disposal, however, he apparently remembered all the significant critical reviews he received. Pushkin wrote two large literary critical cycles for " Literary newspaper", but all the articles remained unpublished, since on November 15, 1830, publication of the newspaper was suspended.
In cinematography
Boldino Autumn (film), 1999
In fine arts
etchings by E. Kh. Nasibulin “Boldino Autumn”.
Notes
Comments
Literature
- Akhmatova A. Boldino Autumn (Chapter 8 of Onegin<»>) // Akhmatova A. About Pushkin: Articles and notes. L., 1977.
- Belyak N.V., Virolainen M.N. “Little tragedies” as a cultural epic of modern European history: (The fate of the individual is the fate of culture) // Pushkin: Research and materials / USSR Academy of Sciences. Institute rus. lit. (Pushkin. House). - L.: Science. Leningr. department, 1991. - T. 14. - P. 73-96.
- Blagoy D.D. Creative path Pushkin (1826-1830). - M.: Soviet writer, 1967. - 723 p.
- Golovin, V.V. “The young lady-peasant”: why Baratynsky “laughed and fought” [Text] / V.V. Golovin // Russian literature. – 2011. – No. 2. – P. 119-135. http://lib.pushkinskijdom.ru/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=yRwEPo-s8Zo%3d&tabid=10358
- Eliferova M. Why did Baratynsky laugh? in Art. Shakespearean plots retold by Belkin // Questions of literature. 2003. No. 1. http://magazines.russ.ru/voplit/2003/1/mel.html
- Krasnoborodko T.I. Boldin polemical notes of Pushkin: (From observations of manuscripts) // Pushkin: Research and materials / USSR Academy of Sciences. Institute rus. lit. (Pushkin House). - L.: Science. Leningr. department, 1991. - T. 14. - P. 163-176.
- Lotman Yu. M. Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin: Biography of the writer // Lotman Yu. M. Pushkin: Biography of the writer; Articles and notes, 1960-1990; "Eugene Onegin": Commentary. - St. Petersburg: Art-SPB, 1995. - P. 21-184.
- Smolnikov I. F. Boldino autumn. - L.: Children's literature, 1986. - 142 p.
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See what “Boldino autumn” is in other dictionaries:
- “BOLDIN AUTUMN”, Russia, Aquarium / Lenfilm, 1999, color, 9 min. Novella. Based on the story of the same name by Viktor Erofeev. Cast: Andrey Krasko (see KRASKO Andrey Ivanovich), Ivan Krasko (see KRASKO Ivan Ivanovich), Mikhail Urzhumtsev (see... ... Encyclopedia of Cinema
Razg. A particularly fruitful creative period in life. /i> The expression is based on the autumn of 1830, which A.S. Pushkin spent in the village of Boldino, where he worked a lot and fruitfully. Yanin 2003, 36 ...
Boldino autumn- Olda autumn (also: a period of special creative upsurge) ... Russian spelling dictionary
BOLDIN AUTUMN- 1999, 12 min., color, film "Lenfilm", studio "Aquarium", Goskino RF. genre: philosophical drama. dir. Alexander Rogozhkin, screenplay Alexander Rogozhkin (based on the story by Viktor Erofeev), opera. Andrey Zhegalov, artist. Vladimir Kartashov, sound. Igor Terekhov. IN… … Lenfilm. Annotated Film Catalog (1918-2003)
Boldino autumn- (in the biography of A. S. Pushkin; about the period of special creative upsurge) ... orthographic dictionary Russian language
Fed since autumn. Simple Joking. About a person who refuses food, eats poorly, and has no appetite. F 1, 198; Podyukov 1989, 80. Indian Autumn. Sib. Warm sunny days in early autumn. FSS, 127. Boldino autumn. Razg. Particularly fruitful... ... Big dictionary Russian sayings
- (abbr. YURSP) association of writers of Odessa and the Odessa region, as well as writers associated with the literature of the city. The main goals of the URSP work are to unite the ranks of Russian-speaking writers in the region, to actualize the Russian-language... ... Wikipedia
Wikipedia has articles about other people with this surname, see Sidorenko. Veniamin Georgievich Sidorenko ... Wikipedia
The request for "Pushkin" is redirected here; see also other meanings. Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin Alexander ... Wikipedia
Russian writer, founder of new Russian literature. Born into the family of a poor nobleman, a descendant of an old boyar family. Great-grandson (on the maternal side) of the Abyssinian A.P. Hannibal,... ... Great Soviet Encyclopedia
Books
- Winter, spring, summer and Boldino autumn. Life of A. S. Pushkin in 1830, Valentin Osipov, A documentary-fictionalized chronicle of the life and work of A. S. Pushkin in 1830 for the first time reunites the events of an unusually busy year, when in winter the poet became the first editor... Publisher:
Introduction
A.S. Pushkin is not only a Russian writer, but also a world writer. He left behind a huge literary heritage for modern readers. The poet occupies a special place in the cultural life of Russia. He created works that became a symbol of Russian spiritual life. A. Grigoriev prophetically remarked: “Pushkin is our everything: so far the only complete sketch of our national personality» Zolotareva I.V., Belomestnykh O.B. Methodological material on literature. M.: VAKO, 2004, p. 46.. No one was able to notice the subtleties of the Russian soul and national culture as accurately as Alexander Sergeevich.
The poet's work is a rapid movement, a development closely connected with his destiny, with the literary life of Russia. In his works he captured the beauty of Russian nature, the peculiarities of peasant life, the breadth and versatility of human soul. His creations are full of colors, emotions, experiences.
The works of A.S. Pushkin were admired, and will continue to be admired for another hundred years. His creations are popular even outside our country. Schoolchildren not only read fairy tales, stories and novels, but also memorize poems from year to year, discovering a variety of creative world poet.
Quite a large part of his literary works was written in Nizhny Novgorod region. Amazingly beautiful nature, historical places could not help but leave indelible impressions in the poet’s memory. Therefore, the purpose of this work is to study the influence of Nizhny Novgorod land on the work of A.S. Pushkin.
Each new generation, each era affirms its understanding of the poet, writer, sees him as a contemporary, he is studied, they argue about him, he is idolized or rejected. But invariably everyone sees their own Pushkin in him.
Boldino autumn
The name of Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin is inextricably linked with the Nizhny Novgorod side and the village Boldino. He spent 3 autumns on the estate. Alexander Sergeevich made his first trip autumn 1830 year in order to pledge Kistenev's property to the board of guardians in order to obtain the money necessary for the upcoming wedding to Natalya Goncharova.
The ancient ancestor of A. S. Pushkin, Evstafiy Mikhailovich Pushkin, ambassador at the court of Ivan the Terrible, received Boldino as an estate - land ownership given to nobles for the duration of their service.
Grandfather A.S. Pushkin owned quite large land holdings around Boldin. After his death, the land was divided among numerous heirs, and as a result of fragmentation, the ruin of the ancient family began. Boldino went to Pushkin’s uncle, Vasily Lvovich, and his father, Sergei Lvovich. After the death of Vasily Lvovich, the northwestern part of the village with the old manor’s estate was sold. Pushkin’s father owned the southeastern part of Boldin (with manor house and other buildings) - 140 peasant households, more than 1000 souls, and the village of Kistenevo.
Going to the family estate, Alexander Sergeevich did not experience much happiness. He wrote to Pletnev in St. Petersburg: “I’m going to the village, God knows whether I’ll have time to study there and peace of mind, without which you won’t accomplish anything...”. But A.S. Pushkin was wrong. Arriving in Boldino, the writer got down to business in the morning. The clerk and I went to Kistenevo. In Kistenevo there lived craftsmen who made sleighs and carts, and peasant women wove canvas and cloth. In the evening, Pushkin sorted out his papers and introduced the Boldino folk priest. The mischievous lines began to play by themselves:
From the first click
The priest jumped to the ceiling;
From the second silk
Lost my tongue;
And from the third click
It knocked the old man's mind out;
Having looked around Boldin, the poet wrote to a friend: “Now my gloomy thoughts have dissipated; I came to the village and am relaxing... Not a single neighbor, ride as much as your heart desires, write at home as much as you like...” Tikhonova O S, Muse E V. Life and work of A S Pushkin. - M.: Children's literature, 1989. p. 25. After stress recent years, literary battles, the nagging of Benckendorff, who followed his every step, after Moscow experiences and disagreements with his future mother-in-law, who demanded money and “position in society” from him, he could finally breathe freely: he rode around the neighborhood on horseback, wrote, read at home in silence. He did not intend to stay here for long - he entrusted his property affairs to the clerk Pyotr Kireev, signed several papers and was in a hurry to get to Moscow. But it was not possible to leave Boldin: a cholera epidemic was approaching. Quarantines were established around.
The poet stayed here for all three autumn months. He had almost no contact with the outside world (he received no more than 14 letters). However, forced seclusion contributed to fruitful work, which surprised Pushkin himself, who wrote to P.A. Pletnev: “I’ll tell you (for the secret) that I wrote in Boldin, as I haven’t written for a long time...”.
“Boldino Autumn” opened with the poems “Demons” and “Elegy” - the horror of the lost and hope for the future, difficult, but giving the joys of creativity and love. Three months were devoted to summing up the results of my youth and searching for new paths.
In the solitude of Boldino, Pushkin reconsidered the past. He thought about what was stronger: the laws of a terrible age or the high impulses of the human soul. And one after another, tragedies were born, which he called “small” and which were destined to become great. These are “The Miserly Knight”, “Mozart and Salieri”, “A Feast during the Plague”, “Don Juan”, etc. These four plays help us better understand the feelings and thoughts that possessed Pushkin, who found himself “in the wilderness, in the darkness of imprisonment” for three months.
In Boldino, he recalled his youth and past hobbies, saying goodbye to them forever. Evidence of this is in his papers: sheets of paper with lines of poetry “farewell”, “spell”, “for the shores of the distant fatherland”. In these poems, as in others written in Boldin, Pushkin expressed the mood of a man who, with sadness and mental anguish, remembers the past and parts with it.
The amount written by A.S. Pushkin's three months of forced seclusion are comparable to the results of creative work over the previous decade. He created completely diverse works in Boldin - both in content and form. One of the first was the prose “Tales of Belkin”; in parallel, work was going on on the comic-parody poem “The House in Kolomna” and the last chapters of “Eugene Onegin”. The Boldino autumn brought “The Tale of the Priest and His Worker Balda” and “The History of the Village of Goryukhin”. The background of Pushkin’s imagination is lyrical poetry: about 30 poems, including such masterpieces as “Elegy”, “Demons”, “My Genealogy”, “Spell”, “Poems Composed at Night During Insomnia”, “Hero”, etc. d.
There was no peace in the world. A revolution had just occurred in France, finally throwing the Bourbons off the throne. Belgium rebelled and separated from Holland. A little later, a few days before Pushkin’s departure from Boldin, an uprising would begin in Warsaw. Pushkin thought about all these events in the silence of the village. These thoughts disturbed my imagination, forced me to compare and search for the inner meaning of what was happening. At night, during insomnia, Pushkin turned to life itself with poetry:
I want to understand you
I'm looking for meaning in you
For the second time Pushkin visited Boldino in October 1833, returning from a trip to the Urals, where he collected material on the history of the Pugachev uprising. In Boldin he hoped to put things in order collected materials and work on new works. It was during the second Boldino autumn that Pushkin wrote many poems, “The Bronze Horseman”, “Angelo”, “The Tale of the Fisherman and the Fish” and other works. It was during the second Boldino autumn that Pushkin wrote the well-known poem “Autumn”:
“And I forget the world - and in the sweet silence
I'm sweetly lulled to sleep by my imagination,
And poetry awakens in me:
The soul is embarrassed by lyrical excitement,
It trembles and sounds and searches, as in a dream,
To finally pour out with free manifestation -
And then an invisible swarm of guests comes towards me,
Old acquaintances, fruits of my dreams.
And the thoughts in my head are agitated in courage,
And light rhymes run towards them,
And fingers ask for pen, pen for paper,
A minute - and the poems will flow freely...”
The last time Pushkin came to Boldino was a year later, in 1834, in connection with taking possession of the estate and spent about three weeks here. During this visit, Pushkin had to do a lot of business, which, however, did not stop him from writing “The Tale of the Golden Cockerel” and preparing other fairy tales written here a year earlier for publication.
The significance of the Boldinskaya autumn in Pushkin’s work is determined by the fact that most of the works written are the implementation of the poet’s earlier plans and at the same time a kind of prologue to his work of the 1830s. Ending many years of work- the novel “Eugene Onegin” is a symbolic result of Pushkin’s artistic development of the 1820s. In the creative field of the novel there were many works - poems, poems, the first prose experiments. “Belkin's Tales,” in which A.S. Pushkin said goodbye to the plots and heroes of sentimental and romantic literature, became the beginning of a new, prosaic period of creativity.
Indeed, the Boldino autumn had a significant impact on the creative potential of A.S. Pushkin, forced me to rethink a lot and realize what had been planned for a long time.
BOLDIN AUTUMN
Having left Moscow on August 31, Pushkin arrived in Boldino on September 3. He expected to complete the matter of taking possession of the village allocated by his father in a month, mortgage it * and return to Moscow to celebrate the wedding.
* Taking possession is a clerical operation carried out through the local court chamber, which formalizes the transfer of the estate to the new owner; mortgage - a financial transaction in which the bank issued to the landowner, on the security of the audit souls, a sum of money that was subsequently subject to repayment.
He was a little annoyed that autumn, his best working time, would be lost due to all this trouble:
"Autumn is approaching. This is my favorite time - my health usually gets stronger - the time for my literary works is coming - and I have to worry about my dowry(the bride did not have a dowry. Pushkin wanted to get married without a dowry, but Natalya Nikolaevna’s vain mother could not allow this, and Pushkin himself had to get money for the dowry, which he allegedly received for the bride. - Yu.L. ), Yes, about the wedding that we will play God knows when. All this is not very comforting. I’m going to the village, God knows whether I’ll have time to study there, and peace of mind, without which I won’t produce anything except epigrams on Kachenovsky.”(XIV, 110).
Pushkin was athletically built, although short in stature, physically strong and resilient, possessed strength, agility and good health. He loved movement, horseback riding, noisy crowds, and crowded, brilliant society. But he also loved complete solitude, silence, and the absence of annoying visitors. In the spring and summer heat he was tormented by excessive excitement or lethargy. By habits and physical make-up he was a man of the north - he loved the cold, fresh autumn weather, winter frosts. In the autumn he felt a surge of vigor. Rain and slush did not frighten him: they did not interfere with horseback riding - the only entertainment during this working time - and supported the fervor of poetic work. "Autumn is wonderful,- he wrote to Pletnev, - and rain, and snow, and knee-deep mud"(XIV, 118).
The prospect of losing this treasured time for creativity made him irritable. The point was not only that the difficult year of 1830 was affected by fatigue: St. Petersburg life, with the bustle of literary battles, took away strength and did not leave time to work on creative ideas- and there were a lot of them, they filled both the head and the poet’s rough notebooks. He felt "an artist in strength" at the peak of creative completeness and maturity, and "time" engage and "peace of mind, without which you can’t produce anything,” not enough. In addition, the autumn "harvest" of poetry was the main source of subsistence for the entire year. Pushkin's publisher and friend Pletnev, who monitored the material side of Pushkin's publications, constantly and persistently reminded him of this. Money was needed. Associated with them was independence - the opportunity to live without service - and happiness - the opportunity family life. Pushkin from Boldin wrote with playful irony to Pletnev: “What is Delvig doing, do you see him. Please tell him to save me some money; money is nothing to joke about; money is an important thing - ask Kankrin(Minister of Finance. - Yu. L. ) and Bulgarin"(XIV, 112). It was necessary to work, I really wanted to work, but the circumstances were such that, apparently, the work should not have been successful.
Pushkin arrived in Boldino in a depressed mood. It is no coincidence that the first poems of this autumn were one of Pushkin’s most disturbing and intense poems, “Demons,” and “Elegy,” which smacks of deep fatigue, in which even the hope for future happiness is painted in melancholy tones (“The fading fun of crazy years...”). However, the mood soon changed; everything was going for the better: it came "lovely" a letter from the bride, which "quite reassuring": Natalya Nikolaevna agreed to get married without a dowry (the letter, apparently, was tender - it did not reach us), the clerical rigmarole was completely entrusted to the clerk Pyotr Kireev, but it turned out to be impossible to leave Boldino: "Near me Kolera Morbus("cholera fatal" is the medical name for cholera. - Yu.L. ). Do you know what kind of animal this is? Just look, he'll run into Boldino and eat us all up."(in a letter to his fiancee, he called cholera more affectionately, in accordance with the general tone of the letter: "Pretty little person", XIV, 111 and 112).
However, cholera did not worry Pushkin much - on the contrary, it promised a long stay in the village. On September 9, he cautiously writes to his fiancée that he will stay for twenty days, but on the same day to Pletnev that he will come to Moscow "not before a month." And every day, as the epidemic around us intensifies, the departure date is increasingly pushed back, therefore, the time for poetic work increases. He firmly believes that the Goncharovs did not remain in cholera-ridden Moscow and are safe in the village - there is no reason to worry, there is no need to rush to go. Having just looked around Boldin, on September 9 he writes to Pletnev:
“You can’t imagine how fun it is to run away from the bride, and even sit down to write poetry. A wife is not like a bride. Where! The wife is her brother. In her presence, write as much as you want. And the bride is worse than the censor Shcheglov, tying her tongue and hands<...>Ah, my dear! What a beauty this village is! imagine: steppe and steppe; not a soul's neighbors; ride as much as you like,[sitWrite at home as much as you like, no one will interfere. I’ll prepare all sorts of things for you, both prose and poetry."(XIV, 112).
The solitude of Boldin has another charm for Pushkin; it is not peaceful at all: death lurks nearby, cholera walks around. The feeling of danger electrifies, amuses and teases, just as the double threat (plague and war) amused and excited Pushkin in his recent - just two years ago - trip to Arzrum in the army. Pushkin loved danger and risk. Their presence excited him and awakened his creative powers. Cholera sets you up for mischief: “I would like to send you my sermon to the local peasants about cholera; you would die laughing, but you are not worth this gift.”(XIV, 113), he wrote to Pletnev. The content of this sermon has been preserved in memoirs. Nizhny Novgorod Governor A.P. Buturlina asked Pushkin about his stay in Boldin:
“What were you doing in the village, Alexander Sergeich? Were you bored?”
- “There was no time, Anna Petrovna. I even preached sermons.”
- "Sermons?"
- “Yes, in the church, from the pulpit. On the occasion of cholera. He admonished them. - And cholera was sent to you, brothers, because you do not pay your rent, you are drunk. And if you continue like this, you will be flogged. Amen! "
However, it was not only the danger of illness and death that excited me. And the words written right there in Boldin:
although they directly concern "Blows of Plague" also mentioned "delight in battle, / And the dark abyss on the edge."
After the suppression of the European revolutions of the 1820s and the defeat of the December uprising in St. Petersburg, a motionless lead cloud of reaction hung over Europe. History seemed to have stopped. In the summer of 1830, this silence gave way to feverish events.
The atmosphere in Paris had been steadily heating up since King Charles X summoned the fanatical ultra-royalist Count Polignac to power in August 1829. Even the moderate Chamber of Deputies, which existed in France on the basis of a charter that was approved by the allies in the anti-Napoleonic coalition and returned power to the Bourbons, came into conflict with the government. Pushkin, while in St. Petersburg, followed these events with intense attention.
The distribution of French newspapers in Russia was prohibited, but Pushkin received them through his friend E.M. Khitrovo, and also drew information from diplomatic channels, from the husband of the latter’s daughter, the Austrian ambassador Count Fikelmon. Pushkin's awareness and political flair were so great that they allowed him to predict the course of political events with great accuracy. Thus, on May 2, 1830, in a letter to Vyazemsky, he discussed plans to publish a political newspaper in Russia, giving examples of future news about "that there was an earthquake in Mexico and that the Chamber of Deputies is closed until September"(XIV, 87). Indeed, on May 16, Charles X dissolved the chamber.
On July 26, the king and Polignac carried out a coup d'etat, abolishing the constitution. 6 ordinances were published, all constitutional guarantees were destroyed, the electoral law was changed in a more reactionary direction, and the convening of the new chamber was scheduled, as Pushkin predicted, for September. Paris responded with barricades. By July 29, the revolution in the capital of France was victorious, Polignac and other ministers were arrested, and the king fled.
Pushkin went to Moscow on August 10, 1830 in the same carriage with P. Vyazemsky, and when he arrived, he settled in his house. At this time, they had a characteristic dispute over a bottle of champagne: Pushkin believed that Polignac had committed an act of treason by attempting a coup and should be sentenced to death, Vyazemsky argued that this should not be done "shouldn't and can't" for legal and moral reasons. Pushkin left for the village, not knowing the end of the case (Polignac was eventually sentenced to prison), and on September 29 he asked for Pletnev from Boldino; "What is Philip doing?(Louis Philippe is the new king of France erected by the revolution. - Yu.L. ) and is Polignac healthy?- and even in a letter to the bride he was interested in "how is my friend Polignac doing"(Natalya Nikolaevna had a lot to do with the French Revolution!).
Meanwhile, revolutionary upheavals began to spread in waves from the Paris epicenter:
On August 25, the revolution began in Belgium; on September 24, a revolutionary government was formed in Brussels, proclaiming the separation of Belgium from Holland; in September, riots began in Dresden, which later spread to Darmstadt, Switzerland, and Italy. Finally, a few days before Pushkin’s departure from Boldin, an uprising began in Warsaw. The order of Europe established by the Congress of Vienna was cracking and falling apart. "Silent bondage" as Pushkin called it in 1824, the peace that the monarchs who defeated Napoleon prescribed to the peoples of Europe was replaced by storms. A restless wind also blew across Russia. Epidemics in Russian history often coincided with unrest and popular movements. There were still people alive who remembered the Moscow plague riot of 1771, which was a direct prologue to Pugachev’s uprising. It is no coincidence that it was in the cholera year of 1830 that the theme of peasant rebellion first appeared in Pushkin’s manuscripts and in the poems of sixteen-year-old Lermontov (“The year will come. Russia’s black year...”).
News of cholera in Moscow prompted vigorous government measures. Nicholas I, showing determination and personal courage, rode into the epidemic-ridden city. For Pushkin, this gesture acquired symbolic meaning: he saw in it a combination of courage and philanthropy, a guarantee of the government’s readiness not to hide from events, not to cling to political prejudices, but to boldly meet the demands of the moment. He waited for reforms and hoped for forgiveness of the Decembrists. He wrote to Vyazemsky: “What kind of sovereign is this? Well done! Just look at him, he will forgive our convicts - God bless him.”(XIV, 122).
At the end of October, Pushkin wrote the poem "Hero", which he secretly sent to Pogodin in Moscow with a request to publish “wherever you want, even in Vedomosti - but I ask you and demand in the name of our friendship not to announce my betrayal to anyone. If Moscow censorship does not let it through, then send it to Delvig, but also without my name and not in my hand.”(XIV, 121 - 122). The poem is dedicated to Napoleon: the poet considers his greatest inspiration not to be military victories, but the mercy and courage that he allegedly showed when he visited the plague hospital in Jaffa. Both the topic and the date under the poem hinted at the arrival of Nicholas I in cholera-ridden Moscow. This was the reason for the secrecy of the publication: Pushkin was afraid of even the shadow of suspicion of flattery - while openly expressing his disagreement with the government, he preferred to express approval anonymously, carefully hiding his authorship.
However, the poem also had a more general meaning: Pushkin put forward the idea of humanity as a measure of historical progress. Not every movement of history is valuable - the poet accepts only that which is based on humanity. "Hero, be first a man"- he wrote in 1826 in the drafts of “Eugene Onegin”. Now the poet expressed this thought in print and more sharply:
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Leave your heart to the hero! What |
The combination of silence and leisure, necessary for reflection, and anxious and cheerful tension, born of the feeling of approaching terrible events, spilled out unheard of even for Pushkin, even for his "autumn leisure" when did he ever "love to write" creative inspiration. In September, “The Undertaker” and “The Peasant Young Lady” were written, “Eugene Onegin” was completed, “The Tale of the Priest and His Worker Balda” and a number of poems were written. In October - "Blizzard", "Shot", "Station Agent", "House in Kolomna", two "little tragedies" - "The Miserly Knight" and "Mozart and Salieri", the tenth chapter of "Eugene Onegin" was written and burned, Many poems were created, among them such as “My Pedigree”, “My Ruddy Critic...”, “The Spell”, and a number of literary critical sketches. In November - “The Stone Guest” and “A Feast during the Plague”, “The History of the Village of Goryukhin”, critical articles. In the Boldino autumn, Pushkin's talent reached full bloom.
In Boldin, Pushkin felt free as never before (paradoxically, this freedom was ensured by those 14 quarantines that blocked the path to Moscow, but also separated him from the “fatherly” cares and friendly advice of Benckendorf, from the annoying curiosity of strangers, confused heartfelt affections, emptiness secular entertainment). Freedom has always been for him - the fullness of life, its richness, diversity. Boldin's creativity amazes with its freedom, expressed, in particular, in the unfettered variety of ideas, themes, and images.
The diversity and richness of materials were united by the desire for strict truth of view, for understanding the entire surrounding world. To understand, for Pushkin, meant to comprehend the inner meaning hidden in events. It is no coincidence that in “Poems Composed at Night During Insomnia,” written in Boldin, Pushkin turned to life with the words:
History reveals the meaning of events. And Pushkin is not only surrounded by history at his desk, not only when he turns to different eras in “small tragedies” or analyzes the historical works of N. Polevoy. He himself lives, surrounded and permeated by history. A. Blok saw the fullness of life in
The last verse could be an epigraph to the Boldino chapter of Pushkin’s biography.
Pushkin’s most significant work, on which he worked for more than seven years, “Eugene Onegin,” was completed in Boldin. In it, Pushkin achieved a maturity of artistic realism unheard of in Russian literature. Dostoevsky called "Eugene Onegin" a poem “tangibly real, in which real Russian life is embodied with such creative power and with such completeness that never happened before Pushkin, and perhaps even after him”*. The typicality of the characters is combined in the novel with the exceptional versatility of their depiction. Thanks to his flexible narrative style and his fundamental rejection of a one-sided point of view on the events described, Pushkin overcame the division of heroes into “positive” and “negative”. This is what Belinsky meant, noting that, thanks to the form of storytelling found by Pushkin, “the personality of the poet” "is so loving, so humane" **.
* Dostoevsky F.M. Collection cit., vol. X. M., Goslitizdat, 1958, p. 446.
** Belinsky V.G. Full collection cit., vol. VII. M., 1955, p. 503.
If "Eugene Onegin" drew a line under a certain stage of Pushkin's poetic evolution, then "little tragedies" and "Belkin's Tales" marked the beginning of a new stage. In "small tragedies" Pushkin revealed the influence of crisis moments in history on human characters in acute conflicts. However, in history, as well as in the deeper layers of human life, Pushkin sees deadening tendencies that are in a struggle with living, human forces full of passion and awe. Therefore, the theme of freezing, slowing down, petrifying or turning a person into a soulless thing, terrible for its movement even more than its immobility, is adjacent to revival, spiritualization, the victory of passion and life over immobility and death.
"Belkin's Tales" were the first completed works of Pushkin the prose writer. By introducing the conventional image of the narrator Ivan Petrovich Belkin and a whole system of cross-narrators, Pushkin paved the way for Gogol and the subsequent development of Russian prose.
After repeated unsuccessful attempts, Pushkin finally managed to return to Moscow to his bride on December 5th. His impressions on the road were not cheerful. On December 9 he wrote to Khitrovo: “The people are depressed and irritated, 1830 is a sad year for us!”(XIV, 422).
Reflections on the circumstances of the Boldino autumn lead to some interesting conclusions. In the 1840s, the extremely fruitful idea of the determining influence of the environment on the fate and character of an individual human personality became widespread in literature. However, every idea has a downside: in the everyday life of the average person, it turned into a formula "Wednesday is stuck" not only explaining, but also, as it were, excusing the dominance of omnipotent circumstances over a person who was assigned the passive role of a victim. The intellectual of the second half of the 19th century sometimes justified his weakness, hard drinking, and spiritual death by facing unbearable circumstances. Reflecting on the destinies of people at the beginning of the 19th century, he, resorting to familiar schemes, argued that the environment was more merciful to the noble intellectual than to him, the commoner.
The fate of the Russian intellectuals-raznochintsy was, of course, extremely difficult, but the fate of the Decembrists was not easy either. And yet none of them - first thrown into dungeons, and then, after hard labor, scattered across Siberia, in conditions of isolation and material need - went down, took to drinking, gave up not only on their spiritual world, their interests, but also on your appearance, habits, manner of expression. The Decembrists made a huge contribution to the cultural history of Siberia: it was not their environment that “eaten them” - they remade the environment, creating around themselves the spiritual atmosphere that was characteristic of them. This can be said to an even greater extent about Pushkin: whether we are talking about exile to the south or to Mikhailovskoye, or about long imprisonment in Boldin, we invariably have to note what a beneficial effect these circumstances had on the creative development of the poet.
It seems that Alexander I, having exiled Pushkin to the south, provided an invaluable service to the development of his romantic poetry, and Vorontsov and cholera contributed to Pushkin’s immersion in the atmosphere of nationalism (Mikhailovskoye) and historicism (Boldino). Of course, in reality everything was different: exile was a heavy burden, imprisonment in Boldin, the unknown fate of the bride could break even a very strong person. Pushkin was not the darling of fate. The answer to why the Siberian exile of the Decembrist or the wanderings of Pushkin seem to us less gloomy than the material need of the mid-century commoner living in poverty in the St. Petersburg corners and basements lies in the activity of the individual’s relationship to the environment: Pushkin powerfully transforms the world into which fate plunges him, brings him into it his spiritual wealth, does not allow the “environment” to triumph over him. It is impossible to force him to live differently from the way he wants. Therefore, the most difficult periods of his life are light - only part of Dostoevsky’s well-known formula is applicable to him: he was offended but never allowed myself to be humiliated.
* * *
A few months after the creation of the poem “To the Nobleman” in the famous Boldino autumn of 1830, a radical change occurred in Pushkin’s work - the final rejection of romantic ideas about reality, romantic illusions and, in connection with this, the transition from “minxy rhyme” to “severe prose” , a turning point, the premonition of which was filled with the above-mentioned final stanzas of the sixth chapter of “Eugene Onegin” and which was gradually being prepared and matured in his creative consciousness.
Having arrived briefly to arrange property affairs in connection with his upcoming marriage in the Nizhny Novgorod patrimony, the village of Boldino, Pushkin unexpectedly, due to the outbreak of a cholera epidemic, was forced to stay here for about three months.
As in 1824-1825. in Mikhailovskoye, Pushkin again found himself in a remote Russian village, in even more complete solitude and even closer contact with the common people, far from the captivity of the capital, from Benckendorff and his gendarmes, from corrupt journalists like Bulgarin, from the secular “rabble.” And the poet, in his own words, perked up, “like an awakened eagle.” The enormous internal energy that had accumulated over the years of relative creative calm, which now and then made itself felt in the numerous ideas, plans, and sketches that constantly replaced each other, which Pushkin did not complete and remained hidden in his workbooks, suddenly burst out at once. And this received the force of a grandiose creative explosion - in terms of the quantity, variety and quality of works created in this shortest period of time - unparalleled in all world literature.
Of Boldino’s lyrical works, about thirty poems were written in the fall of 1830, including such greatest creations as “Elegy” (“The faded joy of crazy years...”), love poems - “Farewell”, “Spell” and especially “ For the shores of a distant homeland...”, such as “Hero”, “Demons”, “Poems composed at night during insomnia”. The widest thematic range of the lyrics of the Boldino period is striking: from a heartfelt love poem (“For the shores of the distant fatherland...”) to a flagellating social pamphlet (“My Genealogy”), from a philosophical dialogue on a large ethical topic (“Hero”) to an anthological miniature ( “The Tsarskoe Selo statue”, “Labor”, etc.), to a funny joke (“The deaf man called the deaf ...”), to an apt and evil epigram. This corresponds to the exceptional variety of genres and poetic forms: elegy, romance, song, satirical feuilleton, monologue, dialogue, passage in terzas, a series of poems written in hexameter, etc.
The lyrics of these months, like all of Pushkin’s “Boldino” works, on the one hand, complete a long period of the poet’s creative development, on the other hand, mark his entry onto fundamentally new paths along which advanced Russian literature would follow decades later.
Particularly innovative is the small poem “My Ruddy Critic...”, which was not published during Pushkin’s lifetime and so confused the editors of the posthumous edition of his works that they gave it (perhaps for censorship reasons) the softening title “Caprice.” Indeed, in this poem, which represents a kind of lyrical parallel to the simultaneously written “History of the Village of Goryukhin,” the poet completely washes away all idyllic colors from the image of rural serfdom, gives an example of such a sober, harsh realism that directly precedes Nekrasov’s poetry.
