A. Ostrovsky, general characteristics of the playwright's work. Dramaturgy by A. N. Ostrovsky. Main features What features of the attitude of their ancestors did Ostrovsky inherit

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Attention! The slide preview is for informational purposes only and may not represent the full extent of the presentation. If you are interested this work please download the full version.

"I've been working all my life."

Slide 1 and 2.

Lesson objectives: introduce students to a new author; determine the originality of his work, expressed in the reflection of the problems of the era; show innovation and tradition in the work of A.N. Ostrovsky, the originality of his style.

Slide 3.

During the classes

I. Teacher lecture with presentation.

slide 4.

1. Pages of the history of the Russian theater before A.N. Ostrovsky (information). The originality of the themes of dramatic works; features of heroes (estates); characterization principles. A. Ostrovsky's predecessors: D.I. Fonvizin, A.S. Griboyedov, A.S. Pushkin, N.V. Gogol.

Slide 5.

2. Features of Ostrovsky's plays. A new hero, whom Russian literature did not know before him. "He opened to the world a man of a new formation: an Old Believer merchant and a capitalist merchant, a merchant in an Armenian coat and a merchant in a troika, traveling abroad and doing his own business. Ostrovsky opened wide the door to the world, hitherto locked behind high fences from prying eyes" - wrote V.G. Marantsman. The new hero of Ostrovsky determines the originality of the problems and themes of the plays, the features of the characters of the characters.

Slides 6-13

3. Pages of the biography of the playwright: family, Zamoskvorechie, study, service. Life in Zamoskvorechye, work in conscientious and commercial courts, where the main "clients" are merchants, allowed the playwright to observe the life of the merchant class. All this is reflected in Ostrovsky's plays, the characters of which seem to be taken from life. The incredible work capacity of the writer contributed to the birth of 48 works in which 547 heroes act.

Slides 14-19

4. Beginning of literary activity.

The creative path of A. Ostrovsky.

The first work - the play "Insolvent Debtor" - appeared in 1847 in the newspaper "Moscow city sheet". In 1850, the same work, modified by the author, was published in the Moskvityanin magazine. Then it was under arrest for 10 years, because in it, according to Dobrolyubov, "... human dignity, freedom of the individual, faith in love and happiness and the shrine of honest labor" were crushed to dust and brazenly trampled on by tyrants.

“This is what I am doing now, combining the high with the comic,” Ostrovsky wrote in 1853, defining the emergence of a new hero, a hero with a “warm heart”, honest, straightforward. One after another, the plays "Poverty is not a vice", "Do not sit in your own sleigh", "Profitable Place", "Forest", "Hot Heart", "Talents and Admirers", "Guilty Without Guilt" and others appear. “And such a spirit has become in me: I’m not afraid of anything! It seems that cut me into pieces, I’ll still put it on my own,” says the heroine of the play “The Pupil”. "I'm not afraid of anything" - that's the main thing in the new hero of Ostrovsky.

Slide 20

The Thunderstorm (1860) is a play about an awakening, protesting personality who no longer wants to live by the laws that suppress personality.

slide 21

"Forest" (1870) - the play raises the eternal questions of human relationships, tries to solve the problem of moral and immoral.

slide 22

"The Snow Maiden (1873) is a look at the ancient, patriarchal, fairy-tale world, in which material relations also dominate (Bobyl and Bobylikha).

slide 23

"Dowry" (1879) - the playwright's look 20 years later on the problems raised in the drama "Thunderstorm".

II. Student performances. Individual tasks for the lesson.

Slides 24-38

1. Features of Ostrovsky's style (Individual tasks)

Speaking surnames;
An unusual presentation of the characters in the poster, defining the conflict that will develop in the play;
Specific author's remarks;
The role of the scenery presented by the author in determining the space of the drama and the time of action
The originality of names (often from Russian proverbs and sayings);
Folk moments;
Parallel consideration of compared heroes;
The significance of the first replica of the hero;
"Prepared appearance", the main characters do not appear immediately, others first talk about them;
The peculiarity of the speech characteristics of the characters.

Final questions

Slide 39

Can we talk about the modernity of Ostrovsky's plays? Prove your point.
Why do modern theaters constantly turn to the playwright's plays?
Why is it so difficult to "modernize" the plays of A. N. Ostrovsky?

III. Lesson summary.

Slides 40-42

A.N. Ostrovsky opened a page unfamiliar to the viewer, bringing a new hero onto the stage - a merchant. Before him, Russian theatrical history consisted of only a few names. The playwright made a huge contribution to the development of the Russian theater. His work, continuing the traditions of Fonvizin, Griboedov, Pushkin, Gogol, is innovative in the depiction of heroes, in the language of characters and in the socio-moral problems raised.

Homework:

Drama Storm. The history of creation, the system of images, methods of revealing the characters of the characters. The nature of the conflict. The meaning of the name.

Group 1. History of the play. Student messages (homework with additional literature).

Group 2 The meaning of the play's title is "Thunderstorm".

Group 3. The system of characters in the play

Group 4. Features of the disclosure of the characters of the heroes.

Back forward

Attention! The slide preview is for informational purposes only and may not represent the full extent of the presentation. If you are interested in this work, please download the full version.

"I've been working all my life."

Slide 1 and 2.

Slide 3.

During the classes

I. Teacher lecture with presentation.

slide 4.

Slide 5.

Slides 6-13

Slides 14-19

4. Beginning of literary activity.

The creative path of A. Ostrovsky.

Slide 20

The Thunderstorm (1860) is a play about an awakening, protesting personality who no longer wants to live by the laws that suppress personality.

slide 21

"Forest" (1870) - the play raises the eternal questions of human relationships, tries to solve the problem of moral and immoral.

slide 22

"The Snow Maiden (1873) is a look at the ancient, patriarchal, fairy-tale world, in which material relations also dominate (Bobyl and Bobylikha).

slide 23

"Dowry" (1879) - the playwright's look 20 years later on the problems raised in the drama "Thunderstorm".

II. Student performances. Individual tasks for the lesson.

Slides 24-38

1. Features of Ostrovsky's style (Individual tasks)

Speaking surnames;
An unusual presentation of the characters in the poster, defining the conflict that will develop in the play;
Specific author's remarks;
The role of the scenery presented by the author in determining the space of the drama and the time of action
The originality of names (often from Russian proverbs and sayings);
Folk moments;
Parallel consideration of compared heroes;
The significance of the first replica of the hero;
"Prepared appearance", the main characters do not appear immediately, others first talk about them;
The peculiarity of the speech characteristics of the characters.

Final questions

Slide 39

Can we talk about the modernity of Ostrovsky's plays? Prove your point.
Why do modern theaters constantly turn to the playwright's plays?
Why is it so difficult to "modernize" the plays of A. N. Ostrovsky?

III. Lesson summary.

Slides 40-42

Homework:

Drama Storm. The history of creation, the system of images, methods of revealing the characters of the characters. The nature of the conflict. The meaning of the name.

Group 1. History of the play. Student messages (homework with additional literature).

Group 2 The meaning of the play's title is "Thunderstorm".

Group 3. The system of characters in the play

Group 4. Features of the disclosure of the characters of the heroes.

Introduction 3-8

Chapter 1. General characteristics of A.N. Ostrovsky.

Milestones in the life of a playwright. 9-28

Chapter 2 The history of the creation of the play "Abyss". 29-63

§ 1. Analysis of the most important discrepancies in the original

and final handwritten versions. 34-59

§ 2. The work of A.N. Ostrovsky over remarks. 60-63

Conclusion 63-72

Bibliography 73-76

Whichever way we look at

activities of Mr. Ostrovsky, we must

we will recognize her as the most brilliant,

most enviable activity in modern

to us Russian literature.

/A.Druzhinin/

Introduction .

The work of Alexander Nikolayevich Ostrovsky is an exceptional phenomenon in the history of Russian literature and theater. In terms of the breadth of coverage of life phenomena and the variety of artistic means, A.N. Ostrovsky knows no equal in Russian dramaturgy. He wrote about 50 plays. A contemporary of the playwright I.A. Goncharov believed that A.N. Ostrovsky created his own special world, created the Russian national theater.

The role of Alexander Nikolaevich Ostrovsky in the history of the development of Russian drama can hardly be overestimated. His contribution to Russian culture is compared with such well-known names as Shakespeare (England), Lope de Vega (Spain), Molière (France), Goldoni (Italy), Schiller (Germany).

Among the plays of the first half of the 19th century, such masterpieces of realistic dramaturgy as Griboedov's Woe from Wit, Boris Godunov and Pushkin's "little tragedies", Gogol's The Government Inspector and Marriage were especially prominent. These outstanding realistic plays clearly outlined the innovative trends in Russian dramaturgy.

The vast majority of the works that filled the theatrical stage were translations and adaptations of Western European plays. Now no one knows the names of M.V. Kryukovsky (“Pozharsky”, 1807), S.I. Viskovaty (“Xenia and Temir”, 1810?)

After the defeat of the Decembrists (A.N. Ostrovsky, the future famous playwright, was only two years old), hastily sewn works appeared in the theatrical repertoire, in which the main place was occupied by flirting, farcical scenes, anecdote, mistake, chance, surprise, confusion, dressing up, hiding . Under the influence of social struggle, vaudeville changed in its content. At the same time, along with vaudeville, melodrama was very popular.

The melodrama of V. Ducange and M. Duno "Thirty Years, or the Life of a Player", translated from French, was first staged in Russia in 1828. This melodrama, enjoying success, was often staged both in metropolitan and provincial theaters. Her exceptional popularity was also testified by Ostrovsky in the drama "Abyss". Guardians of moral purity from the "Northern Bee" and other organs of the reactionary press were outraged that the usual norms of morality were broken in the melodrama: the crime was justified, sympathy was aroused for seemingly negative characters. But it couldn't be banned. It strengthened the autocratic-feudal order more.

In the 19th century great success translations of the works of progressive playwrights of Western European romanticism were also used, for example, Schiller (“Cunning and Love”, 1827, “Carlos”, 1830, “William Tell”, 1830, “Robbers”, 1828, 1833, 1834) and V. Hugo (“Angelo , tyrant of Padua”, 1835-1836, the play was staged in the translation of M.V. Samoilova under the title “Venetian actress”). During these years, Belinsky and Lermontov created their own plays, but in the first half of the 19th century they did not go to the theater.

N.V. Gogol contributed to the establishment of realistic and national identity in the theater, and A.N. Ostrovsky in the field of dramaturgy. The playwright not only made the positive heroes of his plays the people of labor, the bearers of the people's truth and wisdom, but also wrote in the name of the people and for the people.

Welcoming the playwright on the occasion of his 35th birthday creative way, Goncharov wrote that A.N. Ostrovsky donated to literature a whole library of works of art, and created his own special world for the stage. The writer also appreciated the significant role of the playwright in the creation of the Russian national theater.

A.N. Ostrovsky had an impact not only on the development of domestic drama and theater, but on his roles the great talents of A.E. Martynov, L.P. Kositskaya-Nikulina, K.N. Rybakov, M.N. Ermolova and many others.

N.S. Vasilyeva recalled: “Ostrovsky gave each face of the play such an outline that it was easy for the actor to reproduce the author’s intention. The characterization was clear. And how figuratively, with what enthusiasm and variety of intonation he read folk scenes! The artists reverently listened to him!”

For almost half a century, A.N. Ostrovsky was a chronicler of Russian life, he quickly responded to newly emerging social phenomena, brought to the stage, just emerging characters.

Reading his plays, there is an interest in the history of their creation. As you know, L.N. Tolstoy rewrote his works many times, F.M. Dostoevsky also did not immediately build the plots of his novels. And how did A.N. Ostrovsky work?

In the Russian State Library, in the Department of Manuscripts, manuscripts of many plays by A.N. Ostrovsky are stored, such as “Thunderstorm”, “Our people - we will settle”, “Dowry”, “Wolves and Sheep” and others, including the manuscript of the drama "Abyss", the most significant among the plays of A.N. Ostrovsky about modernity after "Thunderstorm".

The purpose of this work is, in the process of analyzing the manuscript of the play “Abysses”, first of all, to show the path that the playwright made, making changes and additions to the original text of the play, and to determine its place in the dramaturgy of A.N. Ostrovsky.

Before proceeding to characterize the manuscript, a few words should be said about A.N. Ostrovsky's work on the plays. The work of a playwright is conditionally divided into three stages. At the first stage, A.N. Ostrovsky observed the surrounding people and their relationships. I didn’t make any sketches, I kept everything in my head. Almost all the main characters in many plays by A.N. Ostrovsky have at least two prototypes, and he himself pointed to them. This once again emphasizes the fact that the playwright did not invent his characters and situations, but focused on life's conflicts. For example, the actor N.Kh. Rybnikov was the prototype of Neschastlivtsev in the play "Forest". Provincial actors, in whom A.N. Ostrovsky saw talent, were also prototypes.

After the accumulation of sufficient information, A.N. Ostrovsky proceeded to comprehend everything he saw, believing that the writer should be at the level of the advanced requirements of the era. It should be noted that at this stage of his work, the playwright also did not make sketches of plays.

Only after the ordering of impressions did A.N. Ostrovsky proceed to compiling the script. Almost always there was only one draft, but new thoughts always appeared in the process of work. Therefore, when revising the draft, inserts appeared, certain points were crossed out, and an already fully designed and deliberate work went to print.

Turning to the literary and research works on the work of A.N. Ostrovsky by such authors as L.R. Kogan, V.Ya. Lakshin, G.P. Pirogov, A.I. complete information about the drama "Abyss", not to mention the fact that its manuscript was left without attention and is not described from a research point of view in any work.

Of great interest is the work of N.P. Kashin “Etudes about A.N. not a vice” and many others. But even by this author, the play “Abyss” was left without attention, although in terms of its drama and psychological characteristics of the images, as well as in its idea, it is in no way inferior to the plays of A.N. Ostrovsky, which have already become textbooks. It is no coincidence that in 1973, on the 150th anniversary of A.N. Ostrovsky, the theater that bears his name staged the play “Abyss”, as one of the most significant and not deservedly forgotten works of the great playwright. The play was a huge success and ran for several seasons at the Maly Theatre.

The author of this work took upon himself the task of “going along with A.N. Ostrovsky” the creative path of creating the play “Abyss” from conception to the final version and determining its place in the work of the playwright. So, step by step, page by page, a creative laboratory for creating a play was opened.

The textological research method described in the works of D.S. Likhachev, E.N. Lebedeva and others was used in the work on the manuscript. This method allows you to identify discrepancies, to understand the movement of the author's thought from the idea to its implementation, that is, to trace the gradual formation of the text.

There are two purposes of textual study:

1.Preparation of the text for publication.

2. Literary analysis of the text.

The purpose of the study in this work is a literary analysis of the text of the play "Abysses", associated with clarifying its history of creation for a deeper understanding of the author's intention, the content and form of the work, the playwright's work technique on the manuscript of the play.

Textual analysis involves the following steps:

1. The study of the creative history of the creation of the work.

2. Comparison of all variants of drafts.

3. Acquaintance with the responses, in the event that the work was read before publication.

4. Comparison of plans, sketches, draft and white manuscripts.

In this work, only the first stage of textual analysis was used, since there is a single draft of A.N. Ostrovsky's play "Abyss", which became the subject of the study.

The result of this painstaking, but very interesting work was the present work, which is an attempt at the first (perhaps the only) study of the manuscript of A.N. Ostrovsky's play "Abyss".

Chapter 1 General characteristics of the work of A.N. Ostrovsky.

Milestones in the life of a playwright.

Alexander Nikolayevich Ostrovsky was born in Moscow on March 31 (April 12), 1823, in the family of an official Nikolai Fedorovich Ostrovsky. He was the eldest in the family. Alexander Nikolayevich's father was an educated man, he graduated from the theological academy, quickly advanced in his career and was successfully engaged in private practice: he was a lawyer, handled the affairs of merchants. This gave him the opportunity to build his own house in Zamoskvorechye, where he could invite home and visiting teachers for his children.

In 1825, he first became staff secretary of the 1st department of the Moscow Chamber. civil court, then he was promoted to titular adviser, and as a result he received the rank of collegiate assessor. This gave him the right to hereditary nobility.

Nikolai Fedorovich, who wrote poetry in his youth, followed the latest in literature, subscribed to all the leading magazines: Moscow Telegraph, Domestic Notes, Library for Reading, Sovremennik. He had a solid library, which was later used by Alexander Nikolayevich. An important event in the life of the young playwright was the appearance in the house of his stepmother, Baroness Emilia Andreevna von Tessin. Together with her, new tastes and habits entered the Ostrovskys' house, special attention was paid to teaching children music, languages, and the education of secular manners.

In 1835, Alexander Nikolaevich entered the third grade of the first Moscow gymnasium, and in 1840 he graduated with honors. Then, In the same year, at the insistence of his father, he applied for admission to the law faculty of Moscow University.

The future playwright attended and successfully passed general education disciplines taught by brilliant professors: D.L. Kryukov ( ancient history), P.G. Redkin (history of Russian jurisprudence), T.N. Granovsky (middle and new story) and many others.

In the second year, highly specialized subjects were already taught, which did not interest Ostrovsky. Having received a negative score during the transition to the third year, the young playwright dropped out of his studies at the university.

The father was upset and appointed his son as an official of the Commercial Court.

The service did not captivate Alexander Nikolaevich, but gave him rich material for creativity.

In the 40s, A.N. Ostrovsky began to perform with his first works. It was in this decade that realism finally took shape and won as the leading literary trend.

“Forming in the 1940s under the influence of Belinsky and Herzen, who defended the ideas of denying the then-dominant feudal-serf regime, Ostrovsky saw the highest expression of the people in a accusatory satirical direction, in the works of Kantemir, Fonvizin, Kapnist, Griboyedov and Gogol. He wrote: “The more elegant the work, the more popular it is, the more this accusatory element is in it ... The public expects from art to clothe in a living, elegant form of its judgment on life, it expects to combine into full images the modern vices and shortcomings noticed in the century” .

The first dramatic works of A.N. Ostrovsky - “Family Picture” (1847) and “Own People - Let's Settle!” (1850) are mainly devoted to negative types and criticism of despotic arbitrariness in family and domestic relations.

Dobrolyubov wrote that A.N. Ostrovsky "found the essence of the general (requirements) of life even at a time when they were hidden and expressed very weakly."

The ideas of utopian socialism, atheism and revolution enjoyed particular success among young people during these years. This was a manifestation of the liberation movement associated with the struggle against serfdom.

Like his closest friends, A.N. Ostrovsky in the second half of the 40s was influenced by the views of his time.

At that time, the public danger was bankruptcy, the struggle for money, neglecting both family ties and moral rules. All this was reflected in the plots of works such as “Own people - we will count!”, “Poverty is not a vice”, “Abyss”, “Wolves and sheep”, “Labor bread”, “Profitable place”.

A vivid expression of A.N. Ostrovsky's deep admiration for the people is his love for oral poetry, caused in childhood by fairy tales and songs of the nurse. In the future, it strengthened and developed under the influence of the general aspirations of the playwright, his interest in the peasantry. A.N. Ostrovsky later shared some of his recordings of folk songs with P.I. Yakushkin, P.V. Shein and other folklore collectors.

Giving primary attention to Russian literature, the playwright was also interested in the best examples of foreign literature: in the gymnasium he read Sophocles, and in 1850-1851 he translated Plautus' Asinaria and Seneca's Hippolytus. Also, A.N. Ostrovsky closely followed the current Western European literature. In the late 1940s, he read the novels The Misdemeanor of Mr. Antoine by George Sand, Martin the Foundling by E. Xu, and Dombey and Son by C. Dickens.

In his youth, A.N. Ostrovsky got acquainted not only with Russian and foreign literature, but also with works devoted to the history of culture and aesthetics. Especially much for the development of literary and aesthetic tastes were given to him by the articles of Belinsky and Herzen. Following Belinsky, Ostrovsky considered a serious study of the history of culture and the latest aesthetic theories to be mandatory for the writer.

In the late 1940s, A.N. Ostrovsky collaborated in the Moskvityanin, where he wrote critical articles about the stories of E. Tur and A.F. Pisemsky, in which he defended the principles of realism. Realism was not conceived by the playwright outside the people, and therefore the defining principle of the aesthetics of A.N. Ostrovsky was the people in its democratic understanding. Based on the realistic traditions of progressive literature, demanding from contemporary writers truthful reproduction of life, he defended in his judgments the principle of historicism.

A.N. Ostrovsky considered the first condition for the artistry of a work to be its content. With the totality of his ideological and aesthetic principles, the playwright affirmed the view of literature as a wonderful "school of morals", as a powerful moral transforming force.

A.N. Ostrovsky entered the literature immediately as a well-established writer: the comedy “Our people - let's settle!” brought him all-Russian fame, originally called “Bankrupt” and published in 1850 in the magazine “Moskvityanin”.

In the 1850s, A.N. Ostrovsky began to arrange literary evenings in his house, where he read his own plays. At first, such evenings were held in a close friendly circle, but then the number of guests increased. As a rule, they gathered on Saturdays, when there were no performances in theaters. These readings began as early as 1846 with scenes from the comedy "Our people - let's settle!", but the circle of listeners expanded only in the 50s.

N.F. Ostrovsky was often dissatisfied with his son, but even more displeasure was caused by the fact that Alexander Nikolayevich, having fallen in love with a simple girl from a bourgeois environment, brought her into his house as a wife. An angry father deprived his son of any material assistance. From that time on, a difficult life began for the playwright, in material terms.

The difficult situation of the family (by that time A.N. Ostrovsky had already had four children) was the main content of the playwright's life in the 1850s. Thanks to Agafya Ivanovna, “with limited material resources, in the simplicity of life there was contentment of life. Everything that was in the oven was placed on the table with playful greetings, affectionate sentences,” notes the writer S.V. Maksimov. She, according to Maksimov, well understood “and Moscow merchant life in its particulars, which undoubtedly served her chosen one in many ways. He himself not only did not shy away from her opinions and opinions, but willingly went to meet them, listened to advice and corrected a lot after he read what was written in her presence and when she herself had time to listen to the contradictory opinions of various connoisseurs. A large share of participation and influence is attributed to her by probable rumors when creating the comedy “Our people - let's get along!”, At least regarding the plot and its external environment.

In the mid-60s, A.N. Ostrovsky was captured by the theme of "power and people." He devoted his historical works to this topic: the chronicle "Kozma Zakharyich Minin - Sukhoruk", "Dmitry the Pretender and Vasily Shuisky" and "Tushino". In his letters, the playwright noted that he created these works under the influence of Pushkin's "Boris Godunov".

By the end of the 60s, productions of twenty-two plays by A.N. Ostrovsky were a huge success in all theaters of Russia. The plays were not staged in their entirety, as the censors cut out pieces of text from the works, “cut them to the quick,” as L.A. Rozanova notes.

The playwright was in for a terrible blow: all the children born in this marriage died. In 1867, the playwright's beloved wife, Agafya Ivanovna, died, and in 1869 he married an actress of the Moscow Maly Theater, Maria Vasilievna Vasilyeva.

In 1867, the playwright, together with his brother Mikhail, bought the Shchelykovo estate from his stepmother. “A special mention should be made of Shchelykov in the fate of Ostrovsky. Just as it is impossible to imagine the life and work of A.S. Pushkin without Mikhailovsky, L.N. Tolstoy without Yasnaya Polyana, I.S. Turgenev without Spassky-Lutovinov, so the life of A.N. Kineshma".

For the first time, the playwright was struck by the beauty of this land back in 1848 and every year he came to visit his father and stepmother. He spoke about the house as follows: “The house is surprisingly good both from the outside with the originality of architecture and the internal convenience of the premises ... The house stands on a high mountain, which is pitted on the right and left with such delightful ravines covered with curly pines and lindens that you can’t imagine anything like that.” Every year, from spring to late autumn, A.N. Ostrovsky, together with his family and friends, lived in Shchelykovo. Here he could afford to walk around in a Russian costume: in harem pants, a loose shirt and long boots.

These memorable places for the playwright were reflected in his works. For example, in The Snow Maiden, the village of Subbotino and the meadow adjacent to it were described. Some of the most significant plays were written in Shchelykovo: “Each sage is quite simple”, “There was not a penny, but suddenly Altyn”, “Hot heart”, “Forest”, “Dowry”, “Talents and admirers”, “Without Guilty Guilty” and many others.

“Ostrovsky called his appointment happiness, as he received a practical opportunity to carry out transformations in life. Such vigorous activity in less than a year undermined Ostrovsky's strength.

“In his declining years, Alexander Nikolayevich Ostrovsky left in the album of M.I. Semevsky, the editor of the Russkaya Starina magazine, a record of the most significant facts and events experienced by him. “The most memorable day for me in my life: February 14, 1847,” he wrote. “From that day on, I began to consider myself a Russian writer, and I believed in my vocation without doubt or hesitation.” On this day, A.N. Ostrovsky finished the comedy "Pictures of Family Happiness", his first complete and complete work.

Then there were created: “Own people - let's settle”, “Poor bride”, “Profitable place”, “Thunderstorm” and many, many other plays.

On May 31, 1886, the terminally ill A.N. Ostrovsky set to work on the translation of Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra.

Burial took place at the Nikolo-Berezhki cemetery. Above the open

Kropachev delivered an excited farewell speech to the grave, and his last words were: Your premonition has come true: "the last act of your life drama is over"!”... A cross with the inscription: “Alexander Nikolaevich Ostrovsky” was placed on the grave.

travellers, not described…” – this is how the great playwright wrote in his Notes of a Zamoskvoretsky Resident.

“... This country, according to official reports, lies directly opposite the Kremlin... Until now, only the position and name of this country was known; as for the inhabitants of it, that is, their way of life, language, manners, customs, degree of education - all this was covered with the darkness of the unknown.

A.N. Ostrovsky spent his childhood, adolescence and youth in Zamoskvorechye. He knew its inhabitants well and as a child he could observe the manners, customs and characters of the heroes of his future plays. When creating images of the “dark kingdom”, A.N. Ostrovsky used his childhood, long-remembered impressions.

And who, if not A.N. Ostrovsky, was destined to remove the veil of uncertainty from this part of Moscow - Zamoskvorechye.

Initiation of A.N. Ostrovsky to the artistic word began mainly with his native literature. The first comedy that he read and made an indelible impression on him was the comedy by N.R. Of the Russian playwrights of the 18th century, A.N. Ostrovsky especially appreciated Ablesimov, the creator of the comic opera The Miller the Sorcerer, the Deceiver and the Matchmaker.

How did the playwright hatch the ideas of his works?

For several years, A.N. Ostrovsky wrote down only the words characteristic of the philistine-merchant environment with which he had to face: “himself” (master, head of the family), “lover”, “rusak” and others. The playwright then took an interest in recording the proverbs, discovering their deeper meaning. This was reflected in the titles of his works: “Don’t get into your sleigh”, “Not everything is Shrovetide for a cat”.

The first of the well-known works of A.N. Ostrovsky in prose is “The legend of how the quarter warden started dancing, or from the great to the ridiculous, there is only one step.” Gogol's trends are felt in it, especially in the pictures of everyday life.

In 1864 - 1874, A.N. Ostrovsky displays as the main characters people who are not able to fight the "well-fed", but who have a feeling human dignity. Among them: the clerk Obroshenov (“Jokers”), the honest official Kiselnikov (“Abyss”) and the hardworking teacher Korpelov (“Labor Bread”). The playwright sharply contrasted the main characters with the environment in which they live in order to make the reader and the viewer think and draw conclusions about the existing orders.

In his plays, A.N. Ostrovsky describes the reality of the time in which he himself lived. The playwright believed that reality is the basis of art, the source of the writer's creativity.

Living in Zamoskvorechye, A.N. Ostrovsky not only managed to sufficiently study the characters of merchants, merchants and their families, but also truthfully show them in his works.

In total, A.N. Ostrovsky created 47 original plays, wrote 7 together with other writers, translated more than 20 dramatic works from other languages. Back in 1882, I.A. Goncharov wrote to him: “You alone completed the building, at the base of which the cornerstones of Fonvizin, Griboedov, Gogol were laid ... I greet you as the immortal creator of the endless system of poetic creations ... where we see with our own eyes and we hear the primordial, true Russian life...”1

The first period of creativity of A.N. Ostrovsky (1847 - 1860).

The literary activity of A.N. Ostrovsky began in 1847 with the publication of stories and essays in the Moscow City List under the general title “Notes of a Zamoskvoretsky Resident”, a dramatic excerpt “Pictures of Moscow Life” (“Insolvent Debtor” and “Picture family happiness). However, the earliest literary experience of A.N. Ostrovsky dates back to 1843 - this is “The Tale of How the Quarter Warden Started to Dance, or There is Only One Step From the Great to the Ridiculous”. The first literary publications were prosaic - the unfinished story “They didn’t get along” (1846), essays and stories “Yasha’s Biography”, “Zamoskvorechye on a Holiday” and “Kuzma Samsonych” (1846-1847). "Notes of Zamoskvoretsko

1 Goncharov I.A. Sobr. op. in 8 vols., v. 8., M.: 1980, p. 475

"Familiarity with the Maly Theater, its repertoire, personal friendship with many of the actors contributed to the fact that Ostrovsky left prose classes and began to write plays."

A.N. Ostrovsky served in a commercial court when he began to think about a new work. The fruit of a long internal work was the play "Bankrupt", which later received the title "Our people - we will settle!" The driver is the conflict of fathers and children on the basis of "enlightenment", "education". It is surprising that the play has not yet been published, and rumors about it spread throughout Moscow. It was read in Moscow literary salons and home circles, and the first author's reading took place in the second half of 1849 at the apartment of M.N. Katkov, in Merzlyakovsky Lane. (At that time, M.N. Katkov was an adjunct in the Department of Philosophy of Moscow University). The young playwright was just beginning his journey and could not yet get used to the praises that excited him pleasantly. Among the listeners of A.N.Ostrovsky's new play were S.P.Shevyrev, A.S.Khomyakov, T.N.Granovsky, S.M.Soloviev, F.I.Buslaev and many others. The reviews were all unanimously enthusiastic.

In 1849, A.N. Ostrovsky was invited to read a new play to M.P. Pogodin, the editor and publisher of The Moskvityanin. M.P. Pogodin liked the new play by A.N. Ostrovsky so much that he soon (1850) published it in his journal, in the section “Russian Literature”. From that moment, the playwright's cooperation with this magazine began.

Soon after reading his play at M.P. Pogodin, A.N. Ostrovsky decided to introduce his friends to him. And in the literary environment of Moscow and St. Petersburg they started talking about the "young edition" of "Moskvityanin", which was then already ten years old. Among the authors were the names of A.N. Ostrovsky, A.A. Grigoriev, T.I. Filippov and others, along with N.V. Gogol, V.A. many others.

Communication with M.P. Pogodin and his friends - Slavophiles did not pass without a trace for A.N. Ostrovsky, it had an impact on the work of the playwright (the plays “Do not get into your sleigh”, “Poverty is not a vice”, “Do not live like this, as you like"). But there were also contradictions between the publisher and the "young editors", who wanted to have greater independence. MP Pogodin did not believe that young people could keep the legends of Karamzin and Pushkin in a journal. In the early 1950s, such plays as The Poor Bride (1852), Don’t Get into Your Sleigh (1853), and Don’t Live as You Want (1855) were already printed in the Moskvityanin. A valuable acquisition of the "Moskvityanin" was the collaboration in it of P.I. Melnikov and Pisemsky.

Soon M.P. Pogodin began to point out the weaknesses of the magazine. One of his friends advised in a friendly way: “You always have a lot of typos. Even other magazines began to imitate you in this. Appearance Muscovite not graceful, the fonts are hackneyed and ugly: not at all

it would be bad for you to imitate in this case Contemporary, the most foppish Russian magazine.

In October 1857, Apollon Grigoriev was approved as the editor of Moskvityanin, but by that time he was already in Italy, and Moskvityanin had to be closed.

On January 14, 1853, the comedy Do not get into your sleigh, the first play that was played in the theater, took place. Lyubov Pavlovna Kositskaya, already well-known by that time, agreed to play the main role. Lively, rich in everyday colors, the speech struck the audience. M.P. Lobanov writes about it this way: “But what followed was what was already the pinnacle of the performance, what remained forever, for life in the memory of those who had the good fortune to see Sergei Vasiliev. In a conversation with Rusakov, who asks why he, Ivanushka, is sad, Borodkin replies: "Something got a little sad." He said this as if by chance, but with an inexpressible feeling, ”as critics later noted, finding no words to express the longing that was heard in Borodkin’s voice. Modest, seemingly ordinary remarks suddenly lit up with such significance and depth of feeling that it was a whole revelation for the audience, which struck them and caused a stunning impression.

“The actors entered their roles so enthusiastically, with such self-forgetfulness, that the impression was created of the complete vitality of what was being done on stage. There was something that Ostrovsky himself would later call "a school natural and expressive games".

Ivan Aksakov wrote to Turgenev that the impression produced by the play

A.N. Ostrovsky on stage, "it can hardly be compared with any previously experienced impression."

Khomyakov wrote: "The success is huge and well deserved."

This success of the playwright opened the doors to the emerging Ostrovsky Theater.

With the advent of A.N. Ostrovsky to the Maly Theater, the theater itself has changed. Ordinary people appeared on the stage in undershirts, oiled boots, cotton dresses. Actors of the older generation spoke negatively about the playwright. From the plays of A.N. Ostrovsky, the principles of realistic national-original dramaturgy are affirmed in the Russian theater. “In front of the viewer should not be a play, “but life, so that there is a complete illusion, so that he forgets that he is in the theater” - this is the rule that the playwright followed. The high and the low, the comic and the dramatic, the everyday and the unusual were all combined realistically in his plays.”

A new stage in the work of the playwright was cooperation with the Sovremennik magazine. Frequent trips of A.N. Ostrovsky from Moscow to St. Petersburg brought him to the literary salon of I.I. Panaev. It was here that he met L.N. . For quite a long time, A.N. Ostrovsky collaborated with Sovremennik, in which the plays “A Festive Dream Before Dinner” (1857), “The Characters Didn’t Agree” (1858), “An Old Friend is Better than Two New Ones” (1860), “Kozma Zakharyich Minin-Sukhoruk" (1862), "Hard days" (1863), "Jokers" (1864), "Voevoda" (1865), "In a crowded place" (1865). After the closure of the journal in 1866, the playwright published almost all of his plays in the journal Otechestvennye Zapiski, which became his successor, edited by N.A. Nekrasov, and then by M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, G. Eliseev and N. Mikhailovsky.

In 1856, A.N. Ostrovsky took part in the Ethnographic Expedition of the Naval Ministry, and he went to study the way of life, living conditions, culture, fishing in the Volga cities from the upper Volga to Nizhny Novgorod. The trip along the Volga gave such rich material that A.N. Ostrovsky decided to write a cycle of plays under the general title “Nights on the Volga”. The main idea of the cycle was to be the idea of continuity in the life and culture of the Russian people, but these plans remained unrealized. At the same time, A.N. Ostrovsky began work on the Volga Dictionary, which later grew into the Dictionary of Russian vernacular. After the death of the playwright, his vocabulary research was transferred to the Academy of Sciences and partially used in the academic dictionary of the Russian language, published since 1891 under the editorship of Ya.K. Grot.

The second period of creativity of A.N. Ostrovsky (1860 - 1875).

If at the first stage of his career A.N. Ostrovsky painted mostly negative images (“Poverty is not a vice”, “Don’t live as you want”, “Your people - we’ll settle!” and others), then on the 2nd - the main in a positive way (falling into the cloying idealization of the merchant class, patriarchy, religion; at the 3rd stage, starting from 1855, he finally comes to the need for an organic fusion in his plays of denial and affirmation) - these are the people of labor.

The second period of 60-75 years includes such plays as “An old friend is better than two new ones”, “Hard days”, “Jokers”, “Not everything is a carnival for a cat”, “Late love”, “Labor bread”, “In a lively place” , “There was not a penny, but suddenly an altyn”, “The Trilogy about Balzaminov”, “Dogs squabble” and “Abyss”.

The themes of A.N. Ostrovsky's plays expanded; he becomes a representative of all the main classes of his era.

“Educated Moscow in the 1940s had two favorite offspring of which it was proud, with which it united its main hopes and sympathies: the university and the theatre. The Bolshoi Theater reigned supreme: in tragedy - Mochalov, in comedy - the great Shchepkin. A.N. Ostrovsky was also seared by the whirlwind of enthusiasm for Mochalov. Later, he expressed the idea that the need for tragedy among the “young public” is greater than the need for comedy or family drama: “She needs a deep sigh on stage, for the whole theater, she needs unfeigned, warm tears, hot speeches that would flow straight into the soul ". 20 years later, in the drama "Abysses", A.N. Ostrovsky will depict a walk in the Neskuchny Garden, familiar to him firsthand, and put into the mouths of strolling merchants and students a stormy approval of Mochalov's performance in Ducange's melodrama "Thirty Years, or the Life of a Player":

"Merchant. Hey, yes Mochalov! Respected.

Wife. Only these performances to watch is very

pitifully; so it's even too much.

Merchant. Well, yes, you understand a lot!”

“In The Deep, the devilish temptation of a bribe will be especially strongly and somehow personally described: life pushes the judicial clerk under the arm and leaves him no clue to maintain honesty. Here is a clear evidence that “everyone takes”, and the mother’s lamentations that the family is disappearing from hunger, and the reasoning of the merchant-father-in-law in the spirit that whoever needs to go to court, he still prepares money: “You won’t take so another will take from him. All this, as you might expect, ends with the hero doing a little clean-up in the case and taking a big jackpot from the client, and then going crazy with remorse.”

“In the year of the liberation of the peasants (1861), A.N. Ostrovsky finished two plays: a small comedy “What you go for, you will find”, where, finally, he married his hero, Misha Balzaminov, and thus completed the trilogy about him; and the fruit of 6 years of work - the historical drama in verse "Kozma Zakharyich Minin-Sukhoruk". Two things are polar in genre, style and objectives. It would seem, what do they have to do with what society lives and breathes? Some heroes act, while others only reason and, in a very Russian way, everyone dreams that happiness itself will fall on their heads.

About the people, the national character, how it developed and manifested itself in history, A.N. Ostrovsky also ponders over the pages of the Minin manuscript. The playwright wanted, referring to history and poetic instinct, to show a man of conscience and internal duty, capable of rousing the people to a feat in a difficult moment. It was a fresh topic at the time.

Following Minin, A.N. Ostrovsky wrote a drama in verse from the life of the 17th century Voevoda, or a dream on the Volga (1865). It contained amazingly successful pages, and, after reading it, I.S. Turgenev exclaimed: “What poetry in places, like our Russian grove in summer, is poetry! Oh, master, this bearded man!”

This was followed by the chronicles "Dmitry the Pretender and Vasily Shuisky" (1866) and "Tushino" (1867).

“I never knew how to bow and run, to flatter the authorities; they say that with age, under the yoke of circumstances, the consciousness of one's own dignity disappears, that the need will teach kalachi to eat - with me, thank God, this did not happen, ”wrote A.N. Ostrovsky in a letter to Gedeonov. The playwright was aware that behind him was the Russian theater, Russian literature.

No matter how autumn ripened, a new play was written, played in the theater, the following dates were marked by this:

1871 - "There was not a penny, but suddenly Altyn";

1872 - "Rabbit of the 17th century";

1873 - "The Snow Maiden", "Late Love";

1874 - "Labor bread";

1875 - "Wolves and Sheep", "Rich Brides" and so on...

The third period of creativity of A.N. Ostrovsky (1875 - 1886).

It should be noted that the plays of the playwright of the third period are dedicated to the tragic fate of a woman in the difficult conditions of Russia in the 70s and 80s. This theme includes such plays as The Last Victim (1877), The Dowry (1878), The Heart Is Not a Stone (1879), Slaves (1880), Guilty Without Guilt (1883) and others. The heroines of the plays by A.N. Ostrovsky of the third period are the image of slaves. The heroines go through the torments of unfulfilled hopes, unrequited love... Only a few of these women manage to rise above environment. A vivid example of such a strong personality is the heroine of the play "Guilty Without Guilt" - Kruchinina.

Once someone remarked to A.N. Ostrovsky that he idealizes a woman in his plays. To this the playwright replied: “How can one not love a woman, she gave birth to God to us.” Also in the plays of the third period, the image of a predator-predator behind women appears before the reader. A.N. Ostrovsky reveals spiritual emptiness, cold calculation and selfishness behind the noble appearance of such a predator. In the plays of the last period, many episodic faces appear to help convey the atmosphere, for example, of a noisy fair.

In the last play of the playwright "Not of this world", as in the previous ones, important moral and psychological questions are raised - love, relationships between husband and wife, moral duty and others.

In the late 70s, A.N. Ostrovsky created a number of plays in collaboration with young playwrights: with N.Ya. "Shines, but does not warm" (1880); with P.M. Nevezhin - “Whim” (1880), “The Old in a New Way” (1882).

In the 70s, A.N. Ostrovsky willingly turned to the plots of the criminal chronicle. Just at that time, he was elected an honorary justice of the peace in the Kineshma district, and in Moscow in 1877 he served as a juror in the District Court. Plots lawsuits gave a lot. There is an assumption that the plot of "Dowry" was suggested to the playwright by the case of murder out of jealousy, which was heard in the Kineshma Magistrate's Court.

In 1870, through the efforts of A.N. Ostrovsky, a meeting of Russian dramatic writers was established, of which he was the chairman. To understand the aesthetic positions of the playwright, it is important to note that A.N. Ostrovsky tried to stop the decline of theatrical art in Russia. Many people recalled with admiration about A.N. Ostrovsky reading his plays, about his work with actors on the role. A.Ya. Panaeva, P.M. Nevezhin, M.I. Pisarev and others wrote about relations with Moscow actors, about their warm feeling for the playwright

Chapter 2. The history of the creation of the play "Abyss".

Thanks to hard work, A.N. Ostrovsky created a new play every year, however, as early as 1857, critics assured readers that there was nothing more to be expected from A.N. Ostrovsky, that his talent had faded away. The inconsistency of such statements was refuted by the appearance of new talented plays, in particular, the play "Abyss".

In May 1865, A.N. Ostrovsky made a trip along the Volga. Returning from a trip, he is finishing a new play “In a Busy Place”, continues to translate from W. Shakespeare, and is working on a historical play “Dmitry the Pretender and Vasily Shuisky”. In the second half of December, he finishes the play “Abyss”, summing up with it a peculiar result of the theme of Zamoskvorechye in the 60s.

It can be seen from the above that during this period the literary activity of A.N. Ostrovsky was versatile and extremely intense.

For the first time the play "Abyss" was published in the newspaper "St. Petersburg Vedomosti" in January 1866 (No. 1, 4, 5, 6, 8). For some of its prints, preliminary censorship was required. In January of the same year, A.N. Ostrovsky read the play in the Artistic Circle, and in March The Abyss was already approved by the Theater Censorship. In April, the audience saw a new play by A.N. Ostrovsky on the stage of the "Maly Theatre", and in May the play "Abyss" was first presented at the Alexandrinsky Theater in the benefit performance of Vasiliev 1st.

The audience greeted the play with noisy approval. It should be noted that during this period, A.N. Ostrovsky's relations with the directorate of the imperial theaters were more tense. This is also noted by F. Burdin in one of his letters to A.N. Ostrovsky: “In general, you need to explain with great chagrin that the Higher spheres do not favor your works. They are disgusted by their accusatory pathos, ideological spirit ... it has reached the point that the "Abyss" has aroused enormous displeasure in the authorities and they are afraid to put it on.

This is confirmed by the table of productions of plays by A.N. Ostrovsky from 1887 to 1917. Interestingly, the first place in this table is occupied by the play "Forest" - 160 performances a year. The play "Abyss" - less than 15 performances a year. The plays “There was not a penny, but suddenly an altyn”, “A warm heart”, “Enough simplicity for every wise man” were subjected to the same “discrimination”.

In his work, A.N. Ostrovsky, following N.V. Gogol, continued the theme of the “little man”. This is also confirmed by the main character of the play “Abyss” - Kiselnikov. He is unable to fight and goes with the flow of life. Finally, the abyss of life sucks him in. Through this image, A.N. Ostrovsky shows that in the existing

in reality, one cannot remain a passive observer that one must fight, otherwise the abyss will swallow it up and it will be impossible to get out of it. The plays of A.N. Ostrovsky both educate and make the viewer think about the surrounding reality. As A.I. Revyakin notes in his work, the playwright believed that any kind of art must necessarily educate and be a weapon in the public struggle.

A.N. Ostrovsky not only draws the types of inhabitants of Zamoskvorechie, he maximally reveals to readers and viewers the social system that determined the behavior of these people. How

noted A.V. Lunacharsky: “... his creative eyes quickly penetrated into the souls of crippled, sometimes proud, sometimes humiliated creatures, full of deep feminine grace or sadly waving their broken wings of high idealism. ... From the depths of their mighty breasts bursts sometimes almost comical in its formal eccentricity, but such an infinitely human cry about straightened life...”

The playwright did not consider such a bold and truthful reflection of reality to be his merit. For A.N. Ostrovsky, the truth of life is not a dignity, but a prerequisite artwork. This is the most important principle of art.

In the play "Deeps" A.N. Ostrovsky did not depart from the main theme of his works and showed the "bottom" of post-reform life. At the same time, the play turned out to be unusual for the author in terms of genre: not a drama - an episode, but a drama - fate, a kind of romance in the faces. Many researchers of A.N. Ostrovsky spoke about the influence of Western European literature on him, in particular about his plot borrowings from foreign sources. A.I. Revyakin draws attention to the influence of Schiller (“Robbers” - and “Voivode”, “Dmitry the Pretender” - and “Dmitry the Pretender”), R.B. Sheridan (“School of Scandal” - and “On Every the sage of quite simplicity"), Shakespeare ("A Midsummer Night's Dream" - and "The Snow Maiden"), V. Dukanzha and Dino ("Thirty Years, or the Life of a Player" - and "Abyss")".

The hero of the play, Kiselnikov, goes from an idealist student in the 1930s to a petty judicial official in the 1940s. Each action of the play takes place in 5 - 7 years and draws a path young man who graduated from the university, entering into life with hopes and hopes for a brighter future. What is the result? Marrying a Zamoskvoretskaya girl, he falls into everyday life, as if into an abyss. Purity of thoughts ends with a crime - a large bribe, which the hero sees as the only way to escape from poverty.

Almost every play by A.N. Ostrovsky was subject to a theatrical censorship ban, as the playwright again and again raised questions about the pressing problems of our time. But nothing could force the playwright to change the subject of his plays.

It is necessary to give a general description of the manuscript of the play "Abyss".

The manuscript of the play, kept in the Department of Manuscripts of the Russian State Library, contains 54 sheets. The text is written in pencil. Some places are difficult to read, as time has left an imprint on the text of the manuscript (the result of long-term storage and repeated reference to the text). The manuscript has no margins. All notes are made by A.N. Ostrovsky in free places. When reviewing the manuscript, one finds a large number of inserts and additions, most often they are made directly in the text. Large inserts are taken out to free places or given below with the mark “F”. There are few crossed-out places in the manuscript; the original version is most often crossed out with a bold line. There are also crossed out pieces of text. There are sheets in which there are no corrections.

It can be assumed that these fragments were found by A.N. Ostrovsky immediately. However, it is possible that after a large number of changes and amendments, these sheets could be rewritten. It is impossible to make a categorical statement in favor of the first or second assumption.

The entire manuscript is written in even, small handwriting. As for the inserts, it is often possible to disassemble them only with the help of a magnifying glass, since there was no special place for them, and Ostrovsky was forced to place them in scanty free places.

Attention is drawn to the numbers affixed above the words, which allowed the author to achieve great expressiveness of the text.

For example:

Glafira

Now I will not be afraid of you, because you will enter our house.

Of particular interest in characterizing the manuscript is its first leaf.

After the first three lines:

"Abyss"

"Scenes from Moscow Life".

Scene I.”

Immediately there are columns of text written in small, illegible handwriting, “for myself”. With careful study, some words from these records were able to be read. In these notes, A.N. Ostrovsky arranged the main events of the play into scenes. During the final processing, all these entries were crossed out, since later they became unnecessary. In general, there are a lot of author's notes and sketches on the first sheet. All of them are also crossed out. This is the general a brief description of appearance manuscripts of the play by A.N. Ostrovsky “Abyss”.

Now let's move on to the additions and changes made by A.N. Ostrovsky during the final edition, of which there are a lot in the manuscript. Since the nature of this work does not provide for a complete and thorough study of the manuscript, only those passages that have undergone changes during the creation of the play will be analyzed. It is necessary to analyze and establish the purpose and significance of these amendments, some of which make significant changes in the character of the characters, others help to better reveal the situation in the play.

§ 1. Analysis of the most important discrepancies in the original and final manuscripts.

Researchers (A.I. Revyakin, G.P. Pirogov, V.Ya. Lakshin and others) of the work of A.N. Ostrovsky found that the playwright rarely succeeded at the beginning of the play right away. For a long time and hard he worked out the first lines, the arrangement of the characters. A.N. Ostrovsky tried to make the first lines of the characters in the play look like an ongoing dialogue.

Very often, his plays begin with a reciprocal remark that makes it easy to imply previous actions that took place before the curtain went up. It is this beginning that is observed in the “Abyss”.

SceneI.

The action begins with a discussion of Ducange's new translated play Thirty Years, or the Life of a Gambler. The discussion is led by merchants and their wives.

A.N. Ostrovsky succeeded in the first phenomenon right away, since the playwright studied the merchants very well and he had to hear the judgments of such “connoisseurs of art” more than once.

The second appearance of "Abyss" was originally conceived as a discussion of the same play, but already by students. A.N. Ostrovsky contrasted the opinion of the merchants with the opinion of the students. In the first version, the students not only talked about the play, but also talked about the theater "as the highest pleasure." "Player's Life" was discussed by three students and two other characters who were not noted in the composition of the characters in the play. These characters are listed by A.N. Ostrovsky under the names Alb and Galosh. Apparently, the author gave their names in an abbreviated form.

In this phenomenon, perhaps, the largest number of corrections. A.N. Ostrovsky almost completely reworks the text of this phenomenon: he removes the statement of the first student about the theater, instead of three students, only two students participate in the conversation; a new person is introduced - Pogulyaev.

True, Pogulyaev utters only one phrase, but his idea is developed by students. The author also removes the long arguments of Alb and Galosh.

Thus, after the changes made, two students and Pogulyaev remain in the second phenomenon.

What could have caused such a rethinking of this phenomenon? Yes, apparently, by the fact that A.N. Ostrovsky himself did not consider it necessary to talk a lot about the play “The Player's Life”, especially since the statement of Pogulyaev and students gives a fairly complete assessment of this play.

Pogulyaev

And how good Mochalov was today. It's just a pity that the play is bad.

1st student

Dry play. Naked morality.

..................................................... .

What a play this is! This is nonsense that is not worth talking about.

Long and general arguments could only scatter the viewer's attention.

In the third phenomenon, initially there were only two actors: Kiselnikov and Pogulyaev. The conversation went on between friends throughout the apparition. Kiselnikov's life was not very successful, and therefore it is not surprising that Kiselnikov willingly tells his friend Pogulyaev about everything.

With such an arrangement of actors, the action turned out to be somewhat monotonous. The conversation “tete a tete” does not suit A.N. Ostrovsky and in the new edition he introduces two more students who studied together with Kiselnikov. Now three people are asking questions, and Kiselnikov only manages to answer them.

The fact that Kiselnikov tells about his life not only to Pogulyaev, but also to the students present, characterizes him as an open and sociable person. When editing, A.N. Ostrovsky does not alter the phrases belonging to Pogulyaev and does not add new text. The playwright breaks these phrases into lines. Now, in a new version, they are already pronounced by students.

In the original version, A.N. Ostrovsky does not indicate how long Pogulyaev did not see Kiselnikov, this clarification appears only in the corrected version.

Interestingly, in the original version, Kiselnikov himself spoke about his life. With the introduction of two more characters, the number of questions increases and, consequently, Kiselnikov's long answers are divided into smaller ones. Kiselnikov now more often answers in monosyllables. By this, A.N. Ostrovsky, as it were, makes it clear that, after all, Kiselnikov does not have a great desire to talk about himself.

A new phrase appears, with which Kiselnikov is trying to justify everything that has been said.

Kiselnikov

However, I can still do it all.

But, since there is no real action behind this phrase, the subsequent dialogue moves on to another topic.

Kiselnikov

My father was a strict, capricious old man...

The constant presence of his father oppressed Kiselnikov.

The fourth and fifth phenomena were left by A.N. Ostrovsky in their original form. In the fifth phenomenon, new actors appear. Their speech characteristic was found by the playwright at once.

In the sixth phenomenon, inserts with the “F” mark appear for the first time, there are many changes and additions to the text itself. Noteworthy is the insert in Glafira's answer to Pogulyaev's question about her studies.

In the original version, to the question of Pogulyaev, what she does, Glafira answered:

Glafira

I do embroidery.

In the final version, A.N. Ostrovsky adds:

Glafira

Usually what young ladies do. I do embroidery.

In her opinion, all the young ladies are only engaged in embroidering and are not interested in anything else.

There is no doubt that A.N. Ostrovsky, by this additional phrase in Glafira's answer, emphasizes the narrowness of her interests. Perhaps, with this additional phrase, the playwright simultaneously contrasts Kiselnikov's education with the narrow-mindedness of his bride.

Now let's turn to another scene in which Kiselnikov convinces Pogulyaev that there is no better family than the Borovtsovs, that nothing can be better than their family pleasures. In the original version of the manuscript, Pogulyaev silently listens to Kiselnikov and thus, as it were, largely agrees with him. But when editing the original text, A.N. Ostrovsky is not satisfied with this behavior of Pogulyaev, and a new line appears in which the author, through the mouth of an old comrade Kiselnikov, expresses his attitude to the way of life of the Borovtsovs.

Pogulyaev

No, there is something better than this.

Instead of tacit consent, Pogulyaev's protest is visible.

To show the limited interests and views of Borovtsova, A.N. Ostrovsky immediately introduces her remark.

Borovtsov

This is dancing, right? So well them. Husband can't stand it.

Thus, in the sixth appearance of the first scene, the two short inserts (the words of Glafira and the words of Borovtsova) significantly reveal the characteristics of the Borovtsov family, emphasizing their individuality and contrast with Kiselnikov.

In the seventh, last appearance of the first scene, there are no significant changes in the text.

SceneII

Seven years pass. Kiselnikov's life after marriage is not changing for the better. The father-in-law does not give him the promised inheritance, Glafira turns from a meek girl into a greedy and hysterical woman.

The first appearance of the second scene begins with a scandal between Kiselnikov and Glafira.

In the original version of the manuscript, when the scandal reaches its peak, we read:

Kiselnikov(covers ears)

In the final version:

Kiselnikov(covering ears, screaming)

You are my tyrants, you!

Just one replica, but how the character of the image changes! In the first version, Kiselnikov is a passive nature in which any ability to fight has been destroyed. In the final version - we have before us a man whom fate forced to live among hated people, he has to adapt, but the hero is not afraid to say his opinion about others. At the end of the apparition, A.N. Ostrovsky introduces Kiselnikov’s long monologue, in which he almost repents of his behavior.

With this replica of Kiselnikov, reinforced by the addition of just one word to the remark: “shouts” and an additionally introduced monologue at the end of the phenomenon, A.N. the struggle between the passive and active beginnings of his nature, but the passive beginning begins to gain the upper hand and suck him into the abyss of merchant life.

The image of Glafira is obtained from A.N. Ostrovsky not immediately. In the final version, the playwright draws the attention of readers to her rudeness and greed. In the original version of the manuscript we read:

Glafira

How many times have I told you to rewrite the house in my name...

Kiselnikov

It's her own house, isn't it?

Glafira

So what's her? I give her my dresses, I do not regret for

It turned out that Glafira treats Kiselnikov's mother well - she gives her her dresses. But these words contradicted the character of the greedy Glafira.

When editing the manuscript, A.N. Ostrovsky corrects this discrepancy. But at the same time, the playwright does not change the text of the speech of the heroes, but only in the last words of Glafira, before the word “dresses”, he inserts the definition “old”. Now Glafira's response looks like this:

Glafira

So what's her? I give her my old dresses, I don’t regret it for her, ...

So, with just one word, introduced during editing, A.N. Ostrovsky reveals the insignificant soul of Glafira and reveals new features in her character: callousness, callousness.

In the second apparition, the Borovtsovs come to visit Kiselnikov. Glafira has a name day, and her parents congratulate her. It turns out that Kiselnikov has already pawned Glafira's earrings, which were given to her as a dowry. Glafira's parents are outraged. But Kiselnikov had no other choice. The money he receives in the service is too little to feed a large family. Borovtsov teaches Kiselnikov to take bribes. He draws him a rich life.

In the original version, Borovtsov's teaching does not completely reveal his views on life. In the final version, A.N. Ostrovsky adds:

Borovtsov

You live for the family - here you are good and honest, and fight with others, as in a war. What you managed to grab, and drag home, fill and cover your hut ...

In these added words, the image of a greedy predator, who cares only about his own good, looms before the reader. If such is the head of the Borovtsov family, then the rest of its members are the same. A.N. Ostrovsky once again emphasizes the impossibility, incompatibility of the views on life of Kiselnikov and the Borovtsovs.

In the third phenomenon, A.N. Ostrovsky does not make any special changes when editing.

In the fourth scene of the second scene, while editing the first version of the manuscript, in order to fully reveal the characters, A.N. Ostrovsky makes additions to their speech.

Guests are gathering in Kiselnikov's house. Pereyarkov and Turuntaev come to Glafira's name day. In the first version of the manuscript, when Anna Ustinovna delays tea for the guests and Glafira shouts at her mother-in-law in front of everyone, we read:

Glafira

Why did you fail there with tea!

................................................

Stomp only in the house, but there is no sense.

Borovtsov

Well, be quiet, be quiet! Hello, bridesmaid!

In the final version, A.N. Ostrovsky emphasizes the duplicity of Borovtsova.

Borovtsov

Well, be quiet, be quiet! Don't shout in front of people! Not good. Hello, bridesmaid!

From this addition, it becomes clear that Borovtsova cares only about outward decency, she is not at all opposed to Glafira yelling at her mother-in-law, but not in public. The conclusion involuntarily suggests itself that a new phrase in Borovtsova's speech was added by A.N. Ostrovsky not only to promote her character, but also the character of Glafira. It becomes clear that Glafira's meekness before the wedding was ostentatious, but by her nature and upbringing she was rude and greedy.

This small addition reveals the character of two characters at once.

In the original version, when Pogulyaev arrives, Glafira greets him quite kindly.

Pogulyaev (Glafira)

I have the honor to congratulate you. (bows to everyone)

Glafira

Thank you humbly.

From the dialogue it is clear that Glafira accepts Pogulyaev without joy, but purely outwardly her behavior does not go beyond the bounds of decency. In the final version, A.N. Ostrovsky adds one more phrase to Glafira's speech:

Pogulyaev (Glafira)

I have the honor to congratulate you. (bows to everyone).

Glafira

Thank you humbly. Only today we did not wait for strangers, we want to spend time between our own.

In the final version, the meaning of Glafira's response to Pogulyaev's greeting changes dramatically. She pronounces the first phrase as if with a mockery, and then emphasizes that Pogulyaev is a stranger to them. This reveals another trait of Glafira's character: indifference to "unnecessary" people.

When talking with Pogulyaev, Pereyarkov emphasizes that they (the Borovtsovs, Pereyarkov and Turuntaev) have tenderness among themselves; that "they live soul to soul." But as soon as Pereyarkov looks into his neighbor's cards (he does this without a twinge of conscience), Turuntaev calls him a robber in front of everyone.

A skirmish begins. Each of those present tries to insult his companion worse. When editing, A.N. Ostrovsky adds new lines. Now all these "nice" people look like bazaar squabblers.

Pereyarkov

Pawnbroker! Koschey! Judas!

Turuntaev

Thief, day thief!

Borovtsov

What are you barking about!

Turuntaev

And what are you, a yardstick!

To these remarks, introduced at the end of the quarrel between Borovtsov and Turuntaev, when editing, A.N. Ostrovsky adds a phrase by Pogulyaev, which is a conclusion to this scene.

Pogulyaev

Here's to your soul!

At the end of the apparition, Pogulyaev gives Kiselnikov a loan. Kiselnikov is very grateful to him. In the original version it looked like this:

Kiselnikov

Thank you, brother, thank you, that's borrowed! Here's a friend, so a friend! If it weren't for him, I would have completely disgraced myself in front of my father-in-law.

After editing the original version, we read:

Kiselnikov

Here's a friend, so a friend! What is there to do, if not him! Where to go? This is for me, for my truth and meekness, God sent. If there were more such friends, it would be easier to live in the world! If it weren't for him, I would have completely disgraced myself in front of my father-in-law.

What does A.N. Ostrovsky want to draw our attention to? Does the meaning of Kiselnikov's words change in the final version?

In the first version, A.N. Ostrovsky does not reveal the word "friend" in the understanding of Kiselnikov. In the final version, it becomes clear that for him a friend is one who can lend money. The playwright emphasizes that need dulls all other feelings in Kiselnikov.

At the beginning of the play, Kiselnikov still tries to protest. Even though they were only words, they could also turn into deeds. Gradually, A.N. Ostrovsky brings the reader and viewer to the tragic finale of the play. At the end of the second scene, Kiselnikov is a weak, weak-willed person, incapable of protest, taking merit and patience to his credit.

SceneIII

In the manuscript, A.N. Ostrovsky begins to write the third scene of “Abysses” from the second appearance. Apparently, the playwright was not ready to present the first phenomenon and left it “for later”. The first phenomenon follows the second, then the third phenomenon follows, and so on.

In the first appearance of the third scene, A.N. Ostrovsky tells about the life of Kiselnikov over the past five years.

Another five years pass. Glafira died. The children are sick, but Kiselnikov has no money to treat them. The father-in-law, on whom Kiselnikov pinned his last hope, “declared himself insolvent.” But Kiselnikov continues to hope that Borovtsov will return to him at least part of the money taken. In order not to upset his mother, Kiselnikov tries to give her at least a little hope.

Kiselnikov

I'm going to visit my father-in-law tomorrow morning. I won’t give back, I’ll just take it by the collar.

Anna Ustinovna

Ask well...

The mother advises her son to first ask well, well, and then you can “behind the collar”. By nature, Kiselnikov is a weak-willed person. He will never be able to "take the gate." Anna Ustinovna knows this very well. After all, Kirill is easier to give in than to use force and pressure, even in a matter relating to his own money. In confirmation of this, A.N. Ostrovsky adds:

Anna Ustinovna

Well, where are you! You better ask well...

This inserted phrase once again, through the words of the mother, very figuratively reveals the weak-willed nature of her son.

The second phenomenon needs to be considered in more detail. It is perhaps the most dramatic place in the play. In the second phenomenon, the main events take place that change the character of Kiselnikov, which will then become guiding in his subsequent actions.

Borovtsov and Pereyarkov come to Kiselnikov. Borovtsov is now poorly dressed, and he himself came to his son-in-law with a request. In the final version, A.N. Ostrovsky introduces the appeal “BRAT” into Borovtsov’s words. Father-in-law calls Kiselnikov that not because he loves him, this is just Borovtsov's new trick to implement the vile plan he had conceived. A.N. Ostrovsky makes significant changes to the speech of Pereyarkov, who directs all the actions of Borovtsov in this meeting.

In the original version we read:

Pereyarkov

Cry! After all, you will cry in front of other creditors.

In the new edition, Pereyarkov gives Borovtsov more detailed and refined advice:

Pereyarkov

Cry! Why don't you cry? Now your business is like an orphan. After all, you will cry in front of other creditors. You have to bow at your feet.

In the new version, A.N. Ostrovsky emphasizes the cunning of Pereyarkov. Such words can pity any person, and even more so Kiselnikov. Borovtsov knows in advance that after all that has been said and played out, Kiselnikov will agree to help him and sign the necessary document.

The artless Kiselnikov is ready to trust Borovtsov and give up his own money. To emphasize the generosity of Borovtsov “in words”, a new remark appears in the final version.

Borovtsov

Yes, how can you not believe something, an eccentric! I'll tell you later ... I'll make you rich later ...

A.N. Ostrovsky draws attention to “later”, which here borders on “never”.

In the original version of the manuscript, A.N. Ostrovsky ended the second phenomenon with a successful deal. In an effort to reveal the state of mind of the protagonist, his despair and fear of life, in the new version, A.N. Ostrovsky introduces Kiselnikov's monologue.

Kiselnikov

My children, children! What have I done to you! You are sick, you are hungry; you are robbed, and your father helps. The robbers came and took away the last piece of bread, but I didn’t fight with them, didn’t cut myself, didn’t gnaw them with my teeth, but gave it myself, gave your last food with my own hands. I would rob people myself and feed you - people would forgive me, and God would forgive me; and I, together with the robbers, robbed you. Mommy, mommy!

In the third appearance, Kiselnikov tells his mother about everything that happened. Both are excited. In the final version, A.N. Ostrovsky introduces short lines, which add dynamism to their conversation and further enhance the drama of the situation.

Anna Ustinovna

Do not grumble, Kirill, do not grumble!

Kiselnikov

Oh, to die now!

Anna Ustinovna

And the children, the children!

Kiselnikov

Yes, children! Well, what's gone is gone.

The last remark testifies to the prudence of Kiselnikov. He understands that tears will not help grief.

In the original version of the manuscript, A.N. Ostrovsky puts only the following words into Kiselnikov’s mouth:

Kiselnikov

When to rest! The thing is unbearable. You sit with me! I won't be so bored; and then one something worse longing for the heart sucks.

But from these words it is not clear how Kiselnikov is going to get out of this situation. Therefore, when editing the text, A.N. Ostrovsky inserts several new phrases into the quoted statement of Kiselnikov and thereby shows that he is not going to sit idly by.

Kiselnikov

When to rest! The thing is unbearable. Well, mama, let them enjoy! They won't get rich with our money. I'll get to work now. I will work day and night. You sit with me! I won't be so bored; and then one something worse longing for the heart sucks.

It seems interesting to trace how Kiselnikov's life developed.

Kiselnikov studied at the university, but did not finish it. Hope to keep learning. He meets Glafira, marries her for love and is sure that Glafira loves him too. Kiselnikov dreams of a happy and rich new life, as his father-in-law promises six thousand for Glafira.

However, in life everything turned out quite differently. Glafira turns into a scandalous and greedy merchant's wife. Kiselnikov not only does not receive the promised six thousand, but also loses his savings, given to his father-in-law against a credit receipt.

Glafira dies. Four sick children remain in Kiselnikov's arms. Kiselnikov has no money for treatment. All the children except Lisa die. In addition to everything, the rich father-in-law is "declared insolvent." Kiselnikov has the last hope that his father-in-law will return to him at least part of his own money, but the circumstances are such that Kiselnikov himself, out of pity for his father-in-law, "gives" him this last money. Such is the position of the desperate Kiselnikov before the fourth apparition.

The events of the fourth apparition foreshadow the play's denouement. An unknown person incites Kiselnikov to commit a forgery of a document. For this he offers a large amount. By nature, Kiselnikov is a very honest and noble person. He could never afford to accept a bribe, even when in a critical situation, although others did it without a twinge of conscience. But here comes the last hope. Father-in-law “robs” him. There is no money and will not be, but in the hands of an elderly mother and daughter, who still needs to be put on her feet. In desperation, Kiselnikov commits a forgery of the document. When editing the manuscript, wanting to emphasize the unconsciousness of Kiselnikov's act, A.N. Ostrovsky adds to the original version the following statements of his hero after the crime he committed in office:

Kiselnikov

God! What am I doing! (cries.)

...........................................................................

You won't kill me. Family-s!

In the fifth apparition, we see Kiselnikov rushing about, with eyes full of fear. His speech and actions are erratic. His condition is close to that of a patient in a fever. Most of all, Kiselnikov is afraid of losing the money he just had.

Kiselnikov

Oh my god! Well, through the cracks, behind the wallpaper, wrap it in rags.

In an effort to emphasize that Kiselnikov cares about money not for himself, but for his family, when working out this place, A.N. Ostrovsky expands the above remark more widely.

Kiselnikov

Oh my god! Well, through the cracks, behind the wallpaper, wrap it in rags. So that you have some money left than you have to live with children after me.

At the end of the fourth final scene of the third scene, while editing, A.N. Ostrovsky adds Kiselnikov's exclamation.

Kiselnikov

Mother, I'm within a hair's breadth of penal servitude... Tomorrow, maybe

This is Kiselnikov's last sober exclamation.

SceneIV

In the first appearance of the fourth scene, we have before us a completely ruined Borovtsov and a maddened Kiselnikov.

Another five years pass. The lives of the actors change, and so does their position. Now Kiselnikov and Borovtsov are selling old things on the square together. A powerful merchant, Kiselnikov's father-in-law, Borovtsov finds himself in the position of his poor son-in-law. That is life.

Anna Ustinovna, who has aged five years, remains the same devoted mother, trying to protect her beloved Kirill from any excitement. This character trait, when editing the text, A.N. Ostrovsky emphasizes in the new edition.

In the first version, when Borovtsov reminds Anna Ustinovna of her former life, we read:

Anna Ustinovna

Oh, shut up!

In the second version, after editing, we have:

Anna Ustinovna

Oh, shut up! What are you with him! Well, wake up and remember ...

Anna Ustinovna is constantly worried about Kirill. She believes that Kirill can wake up.

When editing the original version of the manuscript, A.N. Ostrovsky adds to Borovtsov’s speech the words about “talan-dol.” Why is this? He invents this proverb so that Kiselnikov could believe in something.

In the second phenomenon, we first meet Kiselnikov's eldest daughter, Lisa, and meet Pogulyaev again. In the first version, A.N. Ostrovsky does not specify who Pogulyaev has become over the past five years. But when comparing his life with the life of Kiselnikov, it becomes necessary. In the new edition, A.N. Ostrovsky introduces the following addition into Pogulyaev’s dialogue:

Pogulyaev

Now a lawyer, I am engaged in cooking.

This insert shows that Pogulyaev achieved a good position in society and received a seat in court. Anna Ustinovna tells him the story of Kiselnikov. It is noteworthy that in the original version of her story began with the words:

Anna Ustinovna

The service was not given to him - somehow he did not get used to it; ...

In the new version we read:

Anna Ustinovna

Family, father, and relatives ruined Kirill. The service was not given to him - somehow he did not get used to it; ...

In the new words of Anna Ustinovna, A.N. Ostrovsky once again emphasizes that main reason Kiselnikov's current position is not in the service, but in his environment.

Anna Ustinovna tells Pogulyaev that Kirill has gone mad. When editing, A.N. Ostrovsky adds: “out of fear.” What is this fear? This is the fear of an honest person before the law, the fear of the head of the family for his daughter and mother.

In the conversation between Lisa and Pogulyaev, A.N. Ostrovsky changes almost nothing. Only in the final version the theme of happiness is touched upon. It turns out that Pogulyaev has everything except happiness.

Pogulyaev is financially well-off, and he is happy to help his friend's family. In memory of an old acquaintance, he gives Anna Ustinovna a banknote. Kiselnikov's mother is very grateful to him.

Anna Ustinovna

We humbly thank you for remembering us orphans. You visit.

In order to reveal the psychology of a poor person, A.N. Ostrovsky makes an addition to the above words of Anna Ustinovna.

Anna Ustinovna

If you don’t have happiness, then you have money; It means you can still live.

We humbly thank you for remembering us orphans. You visit.

For a poor person, happiness, sometimes, is not necessary when

have money.

When constructing the fourth phenomenon, A.N. Ostrovsky introduces semantic amendments to the arrangement of events.

In the original version, the fourth phenomenon began from the moment Kiselnikov arrived with a ten-ruble banknote, which was given to him by a gentleman neighbor for poverty. In the modified version, the action begins with Kiselnikov's incoherent words, which he had just heard from the master and haunted his shaken psyche.

Kiselnikov

Kennel, kennel...

...................................

A kennel, he says, a dog kennel...

Kiselnikov thinks over the words he heard, he is going to go to the master again. Lisa immediately understands what is at stake. She is in despair. Lisa can save the family if she goes to the maintenance of a rich neighbor. What should she do?

At the end of the apparition, Lisa utters words full of despair:

Lisa

Who will help me! I'm standing over the abyss, I have nothing to hold on to. Kind people!

In the process of editing the text, A.N. Ostrovsky makes changes to this part of the manuscript. Changed variant:

Lisa

Who will help me now! I'm standing over the abyss, I have nothing to hold on to. Oh, save me, good people! Grandma, talk to me something!

In the first version, Lisa talks about help in general, and in the final version, about help at the moment. This cry of a drowning man: “Save me!” - the climax of the current situation. Lisa asks for help, but from whom? Even her grandmother does not speak to her, as she is afraid to give her bad advice and deprive her family of a possible salvation. In the modified version, A.N. Ostrovsky enhances the drama of the current situation.

In the fifth appearance, Pogulyaev reappears. In the original version of the manuscript, the apparition begins with Liza's exclamation addressed to Pogulyaev:

Lisa

Help me!

This could be regarded as an unexpected straw, which Lisa clutches at, being in despair. She didn't care who she asked for help.

When editing the manuscript, A.N. Ostrovsky rejects this option. Of all the people around Lisa, only Pogulyaev can help her. Therefore, in the new edition, he concretizes Lisa's appeal.

Lisa

Oh, how timely you are! I need to ask for advice, not from anyone. Help me.

Pogulyaev proposes to Lisa, and she accepts. He reports this to Kiselnikov. Kiselnikov's reaction to this message undergoes a change when editing the manuscript.

In the first option:

Kiselnikov

Mommy!

Anna Ustinovna

True, Kiryusha, true!

What does this exclamation of Kiselnikov mean? Fear, joy? From this exclamation, Kiselnikov's reaction is not entirely clear.

When working out this scene, A.N. Ostrovsky feels that it is important that Kiselnikov come to his senses and realize, at that moment, what happiness has befallen his daughter. If A.N. Ostrovsky had changed only the words of Kiselnikov, then this would not have been enough either. Therefore, a new phrase appears in Anna Ustinovna's speech, testifying to Kiselnikov's common sense at this crucial moment.

Kiselnikov

Mommy! Lisa! Is he getting married? Truth?

Anna Ustinovna

Thank God I woke up! True, Kiryusha, true!

Reply of Anna Ustinovna: “Thank God, I woke up!” emphasizes the mother's double joy. Firstly, Kiryusha came to his senses and can be happy for his daughter, and secondly, she is glad that Liza is getting married so successfully.

In the sixth manifestation of the drama, we see that common sense does not leave Kiselnikov until the very end of the play. When Pogulyaev invites everyone to move in with him, Kiselnikov openly says that he is not worth it, that he is a fraudster, and now only his father-in-law can keep him company.

When editing the sixth appearance, the playwright makes a change to Kiselnikov's final monologue, amplifying it with an exclamation:

Kiselnikov

No, Pogulyaev, take them, take them; God will not leave you; and drive us, drive! ...

Kiselnikov is afraid that the abyss will suck his daughter. His life is already broken, so let Lisa not repeat his mistakes.

When examining and studying the manuscript of A.N. Ostrovsky “Abyss”, it is easy to establish two versions of its writing: the original and the final one.

AT compositional construction The play is conceived as follows.

Young Kiselnikov meets his old friend Pogulyaev. From the story of Kiselnikov we learn how he lived lately. Here we learn that Kiselnikov is going to marry Glafira. All these events are the exposition of the play.

Kiselnikov got married. His life has changed. A.N. Ostrovsky tells about all the misfortunes that have fallen on his head. Kiselnikov's marriage is the plot of the play.

A.N. Ostrovsky gradually brings us to the climax. First, Kiselnikov is deprived of the promised inheritance, then he gives his father-in-law his own money. The highest point of climax is the forgery of the document.

The play has a dramatic denouement - Kiselnikov loses his mind.

On which fragment of the play did A.N. Ostrovsky work more carefully? Leafing through the manuscript again, it is clear that A.N. Ostrovsky had to make equal changes in all parts of the play. If we take into account that the exposition is the smallest in volume, and there are a large number of corrections and additions to it, then we can say that A.N. Ostrovsky worked on the exposition more carefully.

The work of the playwright on the main characters deserves attention. All images are almost immediately outlined by the author in their final version. A.N. Ostrovsky adds phrases and remarks to the speech of some characters, emphasizing new character traits. This is especially true for the images of Kiselnikov and Glafira. The image of Pogulyaev remains in its original form, and the new phrases in Anna Ustinovna's speech do not affect her image in any way. They serve to reveal the images and characters of other characters. A.N. Ostrovsky also makes changes to the characterization of the images of Borovtsov and Borovtsova.

§ 2. A.N. Ostrovsky's work on remarks.

The work of A.N. Ostrovsky on remarks should be discussed separately. To get started, please refer to explanatory dictionary S.I. Ozhegova and find out the meaning of the word "REMARK":

In the plays of A.N. Ostrovsky, and in this case in the play "Abyss", remarks play an important role. And this follows, first of all, from the fact that in the process of work the playwright made significant changes not only to the main text of the work, but also to the remarks.

In the play "Abyss" there are three types of remarks: remarks concerning the characters, remarks that reveal the situation in the life of the characters, and remarks that reveal the characters through speech and emotional state.

There are few remarks relating to the characters in the manuscript.

In the final version of the play, A.N. Ostrovsky replaces the surname Gulyaev with Pogulyaev. What could have caused such a change, it is difficult to say. The author adds to Pogulyaev's characterization: "graduated from the course."

After editing the list of characters, A.N. Ostrovsky removes the maiden name of Borovtsova, in the play she appears not as Firsova, but as Borovtsova.

After making changes to the composition of the characters in the play, A.N. Ostrovsky crosses out everything, apparently in the hope of returning to this again. However, there is no new version of the characters in the manuscript, therefore, the original version was given for printing.

There are no changes in the remarks of the characters before the second scene.

In the third scene, Glafira was included in the original version of the characters. It doesn't exist in the final version.

A.N. Ostrovsky attached great importance to the description of the situation surrounding the characters on the stage. The playwright paid much attention to the work on remarks of this type.

In the first scene, after describing the characters in the initial version of the manuscript, we read:

"Boring Garden".

This is the setting in which the first scene should take place.

Such a short remark does not satisfy the playwright. In the final version, A.N. Ostrovsky reveals to the viewer a panorama of a boring garden.

"A boring garden. A meadow between trees; ahead is a path and a bench; in the depths there is a path, behind the path there are trees and a view of the Moscow River ..." Why does the author reveal to readers the panorama of a boring garden, near which the merchants lived? It can be assumed that A.N. Ostrovsky is trying to achieve greater figurativeness, he pays attention to details: a bench, paths, trees ... The nature of Zamoskvorechie appears before the reader and viewer (an abundance of trees, a view of the Moscow River). These descriptions are given by the author also for greater reliability of the action.

In the 2nd scene of the play, there are no stage directions in the original version. When processing and editing the manuscript, a remark appears in the text:

"A small room in Kiselnikov's apartment."

This remark alarms the reader and the viewer. After all, Kiselnikov hoped to get rich, and the atmosphere of the second scene suggests otherwise. This remark very clearly and frankly introduces the content of the unfolding action.

In the third scene, in the original version, there was a short remark:

"Poor Room"

But what does A.N. Ostrovsky mean by such a definition?

In the new edition, after the changes and additions made, A.N. Ostrovsky reveals the concept of "poor". The playwright gives this definition a concrete and one-way interpretation:

"A poor room; a painted table and several chairs; on the table is a tallow candle and a pile of papers..."

This clarification shows that the protagonist of the play, Kiselnikov, is already on the verge of poverty. Again, A.N. Ostrovsky pays attention to details, and does not look at the picture as a whole. The candle on the table is precisely “greasy”, which causes the reader to empathize with the hero, the disorder is emphasized: “a pile of papers” on the table.

The cases discussed above show that scene setting remarks help to reveal the content and create a certain mood.

Finally, the third type of remarks: emotional remarks and remarks indicating to whom the character is specifically addressing.

So, for example, in a dialogue with Glafira (scene II, first appearance), Kiselnikov, unable to bear insults, plugs his ears. In the original version, after editing, A.N. Ostrovsky endows Kiselnikov's passive behavior with a response coming from the depths of his soul and expands the remark with the word "SCREAMING".

In the fifth appearance of the second scene, when Kiselnikov, being in distress, tells Pogulyaev a dream with consolation and the hope of getting rich, A.N. Ostrovsky adds:

"through tears"

These tears reveal Kiselnikov's state of mind, his despair. The playwright educates the reader and viewer on the example of his hero, teaches empathy.

In the scene where Kiselnikov receives a bribe for forging a document, to Kiselnikov's words:

"Lord! What am I doing!".

A.N. Ostrovsky adds the remark "(crying)".

Based on the foregoing, we can conclude that all the new remarks introduced by the author when editing the first version of the manuscript carry a great psychological and emotional load in the play and help the reader, the audience and the actors to better understand the characters, look into their soul, and arouse sympathy for the main character. .

Conclusion.

In the play "Abyss" A.N. Ostrovsky reveals to the reader and viewer the life of a merchant family. Removing the usual external gloss, the author shows that rudeness, humiliation and deceit lie behind the external attractiveness of rich families in their lives.

A.N. Ostrovsky asserted the principle of truthful depiction of reality.

In the play “Abyss”, he draws the image of a typical representative of the Russian merchant class - Borovtsov. The story of Borovtsov's life is the story of the life of a greedy and stingy merchant who began with exorbitant wealth and ended in poverty.

In the play, A.N. Ostrovsky poses a big social question, the question of life in the merchant class. A.N. Ostrovsky was able to deeply reveal and draw broadly pictures of merchant life only thanks to personal acquaintance and observations of the life of this society.

The image of the merchant class remained a paramount theme in his work. However, A.N. Ostrovsky did not limit himself to this and painted the life of the bureaucracy (“Our people - we will settle”, “Poor bride”, “Abyss”), the nobility (“Don’t get into your sleigh”) and the bourgeoisie (“Do not live like this as you like").

As A.I. Revyakin rightly noted: “The versatility of thematic interests, the development of the most important topical problems of his era made A.N. Ostrovsky a national writer of great social significance.”

Among the petty officials, A.N. Ostrovsky always singled out honest workers who were bent from overwork. The playwright treated them with deep sympathy.

Experiencing extreme material deprivation, feeling their lack of rights, these heroes-workers tried in word and deed to bring goodness and truth into life. Not sharing Kiselnikov's intention to live on Glafira's dowry and on interest from capital, the student from the play "Abysses" confidently declares: "But in my opinion, there is nothing better than living on your labor." (sc.1, yavl.3).

In "Abyss" A.N. Ostrovsky deliberately brings to the fore an unremarkable personality. Main negative traits The author makes the protagonist passivity and inability to fight the environment, its mores.

According to the Borovtsovs and others like them, Kiselnikov's main shortcomings are honesty and poverty.

The work of A.N. Ostrovsky is consonant with the work of F.M. Dostoevsky, in revealing the problem of the moral quest of the individual. The heroes of Dostoevsky Svidrigailov and Stavrogin languish in the emptiness of existence and, in the end, end up committing suicide. The search leads them to the problem of the inner moral "abyss". In "Hard Days" one of the heroes of A.N. Ostrovsky remarks: "In a word, I live in the abyss" and to the question: "where is this abyss?" - replies: “Everywhere: you just have to go down. It borders the northern ocean to the north, the eastern ocean to the east, and so on.”

The playwright revealed the depth of these words in the play "Abyss". And with such artistic force he revealed that the restrained Anton Pavlovich Chekhov wrote with an enthusiasm unusual for him: “The play is amazing. The last act is something I wouldn't write for a million. This act is a whole play, and when I have my own theater, I will stage only this one act.

Like Zhadov from “Profitable Place” and other people who came out of “university life” with its “concepts”, “advanced convictions”, Kiselnikov begins to realize that he is “nothing better than others” once he agrees to forge a document. Starting with the accusation of bribe-takers, Kiselnikov ends with a moral decline, as he says about himself: “We sold everything: ourselves, conscience ...” and the reason for this is seen in the ideal that people like Kiselnikov aspired to in their youth.

The ideal was only loud declarations, but not actions. At the very first test of life, the Kiselnikovs are ready to serve any idea, as long as it is profitable.

“... the playwright does not burn with hatred,” notes A.I. Revyakin, “but sympathizes, regrets, gently mourns, seeing the ruined human life, because the “power of grace” sees further, and she forgives more, because she loves deeper.”

Kiselnikov perishes in the abyss of merchant life. For a weak personality, such an end is inevitable.

Summing up the work on the analysis of the manuscript of A.N. Ostrovsky’s drama “Abyss”, it should be noted that the material contained in the draft manuscript made it possible to comprehensively trace the birth of the play and the finishing of its images.

All the noted changes and additions were made by A.N. Ostrovsky to enhance the emotional impact of the play, the desire to arouse compassion in the reader and viewer for the main character - Kiselnikov.

The fact that in the process of creative work A.N. Ostrovsky did not have to rewrite the draft manuscript twice or several times, and all the changes, insertions and additions were made by him in the first version of the manuscript, indicates that the author knew the material presented well, the images were they considered that they only needed to be artistically designed and conveyed to the reader and viewer. Classics does not oppose modernity, but gives us the opportunity to see ourselves in a historical perspective. As E. Kholodov noted: “Without a sense of the past, there is no sense of the present - one who is indifferent to the past is indifferent to the future, no matter how much he swears in words to be faithful to the ideals of this very bright - bright future. Classics just cultivates in us a sense of personal involvement in the historical movement of mankind from the past to the future.

Plays take on a modern sound, depending on how much the theater managed to convey to the audience what can excite everyone today. It should be noted that in one era the interest of theaters and spectators is attracted by some classical plays, and in other eras by other classical plays. This is due to the fact that the classic enters into complex ideological and aesthetic mutual relations with modernity. In our theater studies, there is the following periodization of the repertoire of A.N. Ostrovsky:

1 period- years civil war. Ostrovsky is staged and played in the old fashioned way.

2 period- 20s. Formalistic experiment on Ostrovsky's dramaturgy.

3 period- the end of the 20s and 1 half of the 30s. Influence of sociology. In the work of Ostrovsky, only satirical colors are emphasized.

4 period- the years of the Second World War and the first post-war years. In Ostrovsky's dramaturgy, both dark and light sides of the image of life were sought.

In 1923, the country widely celebrated the 100th anniversary of the birth of the great Russian playwright. That year, a monument to the great Russian playwright was laid in front of the facade of the Maly Theatre. Also in this year, 10 volumes of the first Soviet Collected Works of A.N. Ostrovsky, completed in 1923, were published. During the jubilee year in Moscow, Petrograd, Ivanovo-Voznesensk, Vladikavkaz, more than a dozen books dedicated to the life and work of the playwright were published. And, of course, performances of the great playwright were staged.

In the 60s, Ostrovsky again began to win the attention of theaters and critics. Performances were staged during these years not only in Moscow and Leningrad, but also in many other cities: in Kyiv, Gorky and Pskov - "For every wise man ...", in Novosibirsk and Sverdlovsk - "Thunderstorm", in Minsk and Kaluga - "The Last Sacrifice ”, in Kaunas - “Profitable Place”, in Vilnius - “Balzaminov’s Marriage”, in Novgorod - “Abyss”, in Tambov - “Guilty Without Guilt”. It should be noted that each era brought its own new vision of Ostrovsky's dramaturgy, therefore, precisely those questions that interested the modern viewer were brought to the fore.

A.N. Ostrovsky has several plays in the center of which is the image of a young man choosing his own path in life. The most popular plays are Profitable Place, Enough Simplicity for Every Wise Man and Abyss. In these plays, three paths of a young intellectual in the contemporary reality of A.N. Ostrovsky can be traced. What unites the main characters (Zhadov, Glumov and Kiselnikov) is that they are young people, that is, people who begin their lives, choosing life paths.

“The ideals of Zhadov from Profitable Place are not crushed by some kind of “terrible, soul-shattering drama” - they are undermined day by day, day by day by the vile prose of life, tirelessly repeating the irresistibly vulgar arguments of common sense - today, as yesterday and tomorrow like today."

The play "Abyss" reminds the modern viewer of the old theater, not even from Ostrovsky's time, but from an era even more distant. Recall that the first scenes take place, according to the author's remark, "about 30 years ago", and the play itself was written in 1865. The play begins with the audience talking about Ducange's melodrama "Thirty Years Later, or the Life of a Player" with the participation of Mochalov himself.

Kholodov notes that “the performance of the melodrama Thirty Years Later, or the Life of a Player” is, as it were, opposed to the presentation of the drama of Kiselnikov’s life, which could be titled “Seventeen Years, or the Life of a Loser.” The essence of The Deep is that, having taken as a basis the plot scheme typical of melodrama, the playwright refutes the melodramatic concept of personality and society with the whole logic of his play. A.N. Ostrovsky contrasts life with the theatre.

"Abyss" - the only one of the plays by A.N. Ostrovsky, which is based on a biographical, "hagiographic" principle - we get acquainted with Kirill Filippych Kiselnikov when he is 22 years old, then

we meet him at 29, at 34, and finally at 39. With regard to Zhadov and Glumov, the viewer can only guess how their lives will turn out, while Kiselnikov's life unfolds before the viewer for 17 years. Kiselnikov is aging before our eyes - at 39 he is already an old man.

In the plays "Abyss" and "Profitable Place" the same metaphor appears - the image of a driven horse. Zhadov: " Need, circumstances, the lack of education of my relatives, the depravity surrounding me can drive me like a mail horse is driven ...» Kiselnikov: « You know, mother, they drive the mail horse, it trudges leg by leg, hanging its head, does not look at anything, if only it could somehow drag itself to the station; this is how I became". Circumstances can still “drive Zhadov”, but they have already driven Kiselnikov (“here I have become like that”). Kiselnikov, as Kholodov notes, is Zhadov, driven by life.

The role of Kiselnikov is usually entrusted to experienced actors, who are closer in age to Kiselnikov in the last scenes, therefore, in the performance of the first scene by such actors, when the hero is only 22 years old, there is always a certain stretch.

“Kiselnikov’s trouble is in Kiselnikovism,” Kholodov notes, “in mental inertia, inactive beautiful soul, in spinelessness, in lack of will. Trouble or guilt? This question is raised at the beginning of the play by the playwright himself. After the presentation of Ducange's melodrama "Thirty Years, or the Life of a Gambler", the audience exchanges opinions about the tragic fate of the hero. The viewer is presented with several points of view:

« With whom you behave, you yourself will be»

« Everyone is to blame for himself ... Stand firm, because you alone will answer».

One position: Yes, it's a pity". Another position: Nothing to regret. Know the edge, don't fall! That's why reason is given to man».

The Abyss is an amazing play, because the playwright does not give an exact answer: is the protagonist guilty or not. The theater, following A.N. Ostrovsky, replies that this is the hero’s misfortune, but also guilt.

Unlike Zhadov, Kiselnikov commits a crime, and we are witnessing the final fall of the hero.

It should be noted that the drama "Abyss" currently attracts more viewers than readers and researchers. I dare to suggest that researchers are not very interested in studying the only version of the manuscript with all the corrections and additions made to it. In artistic terms, "Abyss" is weaker than the drama "Thunderstorm", for example.

Well, the reader is not interested in this drama, in my opinion, because he cannot find a love affair, and the theme of the “little man” is no longer interesting, since it was comprehensively disclosed in the works of N.V. Gogol, F.M. Dostoevsky, A.P. Chekhov.

However, the play "Abyss" is always present in the repertoire of the Maly Theater, which bears the name of the great playwright.

Until 2002, the play was directed by Yuri Solomin, and now it is being staged in a new production by Korshunov.

The play is relevant in our time, as it raises an acute psychological question - how to survive in this world if you are an honest person? In my opinion, each of the readers should find for himself the answer to the question posed by A.N. Ostrovsky.

Excerpts from "Memoirs of the Artist N.S. Vasilkvoy". "Yearbook of the Imperial Theatres", 1909, No. 1, p.4.

Revyakin A.I. "Dramaturgy of A.N. Ostrovsky" (To the 150th anniversary of his birth), M .: Knowledge, 1973, p.36

Lakshin V.Ya. "Alexander Nikolaevich Ostrovsky" - 2nd ed., Rev. and additional - M .: Art, 1982, p. 63.

Kholodov E.G. "A playwright for all time"; All-Russian Theater Society, M., 1975, p. 260-261.

3 ibid. 321

There with. 321General characteristics of A.N. Ostrovsky. General characteristics of A.N. Ostrovsky.

“He opened to the world a man of a new formation: an Old Believer merchant and a capitalist merchant, a merchant in an Armenian coat and a merchant in a “troika”, traveling abroad and doing his own business. Ostrovsky opened wide the door to the world, hitherto locked behind high fences from prying eyes "(V. G. Marantsman)

Features of Ostrovsky's style 1. Speaking surnames. In the play "Thunderstorm" there are no random names and surnames. Tikhon Kabanov is a weak-willed drunkard and sissy. He fully lives up to his name.

In the play Guilty Without Guilt. Seeing the name Neznamov, the reader immediately understands that we are talking about a person who does not know about his past.

Features of Ostrovsky's style. 2. Specific author's remarks. Ostrovsky's plays were also intended for reading, so his remarks, although they consist of rather short inserts, carry great internal potential. For example, the stage directions in The Thunderstorm describe the landscape, the setting, the characters, and their behavior.

Features of Ostrovsky's style 3. Originality of names (often proverbs). 1. Let's settle our people 2. The heart is not a stone 3. Don't live as you want 4. The truth is good, but happiness is better

He opened the world to a man of a new formation: an Old Believer merchant and a capitalist merchant, a merchant in an Armenian coat and a merchant in a “troika”, traveling abroad and doing his own business. Ostrovsky opened wide the door to the world, hitherto locked behind high fences from strange prying eyes.
V. G. Marantsman

Dramaturgy is a genre that involves the active interaction of the writer and the reader in considering the social issues raised by the author. A. N. Ostrovsky believed that dramaturgy has a strong impact on society, the text is part of the performance, but the play does not live without staging. Hundreds and thousands will view it, and much less will read it. Nationality is the main feature of the drama of the 1860s: heroes from the people, a description of the life of the lower strata of the population, the search for a positive national character. Drama has always had the ability to respond to hot topics. Creativity Ostrovsky was at the center of the dramaturgy of this time, Yu. M. Lotman calls his plays the pinnacle of Russian drama. I. A. Goncharov called Ostrovsky the creator of the “Russian national theater”, and N. A. Dobrolyubov called his dramas “life plays”, since in his plays the private life of the people is formed into a picture modern society. In the first big comedy "Our People - Let's Settle" (1850), it is through intra-family conflicts that public contradictions are shown. It was with this play that Ostrovsky's theater began, it was in it that new principles of stage action, the behavior of an actor, and theatrical entertainment first appeared.

Creativity Ostrovsky was new to Russian drama. His works are characterized by the complexity and complexity of conflicts, his element is a socio-psychological drama, a comedy of manners. The features of his style are speaking surnames, specific author's remarks, peculiar titles of plays, among which proverbs are often used, comedies based on folklore motives. The conflict of Ostrovsky's plays is mainly based on the incompatibility of the hero with the environment. His dramas can be called psychological, they contain not only an external conflict, but also an internal drama of a moral principle.

Everything in the plays historically accurately recreates the life of society, from which the playwright takes his plots. The new hero of Ostrovsky's dramas - a simple man - determines the originality of the content, and Ostrovsky creates a "folk drama". He accomplished a huge task - he made the "little man" a tragic hero. Ostrovsky saw his duty as a dramatic writer in making the analysis of what was happening the main content of the drama. “A dramatic writer ... does not compose what was - it gives life, history, legend; his main task is to show on the basis of what psychological data some event took place and why it was so and not otherwise ”- this, according to the author, is the essence of the drama. Ostrovsky treated dramaturgy as a mass art that educates people, and defined the purpose of the theater as a "school of social morals." His very first performances shocked with their truthfulness and simplicity, honest heroes with a "hot heart". The playwright created, "combining the high with the comic", he created forty-eight works and invented more than five hundred heroes.

Ostrovsky's plays are realistic. In the merchant environment, which he observed day after day and believed that the past and present of society were united in it, Ostrovsky reveals those social conflicts that reflect the life of Russia. And if in "The Snow Maiden" he recreates the patriarchal world, through which modern problems are only guessed, then his "Thunderstorm" is an open protest of the individual, a person's desire for happiness and independence. This was perceived by playwrights as an affirmation of the creative principle of love of freedom, which could become the basis of a new drama. Ostrovsky never used the definition of "tragedy", designating his plays as "comedies" and "dramas", sometimes providing explanations in the spirit of "pictures of Moscow life", "scenes from village life", "scenes from backwater life", pointing out that that we are talking about the life of a whole social environment. Dobrolyubov said that Ostrovsky created a new type of dramatic action: without didactics, the author analyzed the historical origins of modern phenomena in society.

The historical approach to family and social relations is the pathos of Ostrovsky's work. Among his heroes are people of different ages, divided into two camps - young and old. For example, as Yu. M. Lotman writes, in The Thunderstorm Kabanikha is the “keeper of antiquity”, and Katerina “carries the creative beginning of development”, which is why she wants to fly like a bird.

The dispute between antiquity and newness, according to the scholar of literature, is an important aspect of the dramatic conflict in Ostrovsky's plays. Traditional forms of life are regarded as eternally renewing, and only in this the playwright sees their viability... The old enters into the new, into modern life, in which it can play the role of either a "fettering" element, oppressing its development, or stabilizing, providing strength to the emerging novelty, depending on the content of the old that preserves the people's life. The author always sympathizes with young heroes, poeticizes their desire for freedom, selflessness. The title of the article by A. N. Dobrolyubov “A ray of light in a dark kingdom” fully reflects the role of these heroes in society. They are psychologically similar to each other, the author often uses already developed characters. The theme of the position of a woman in the world of calculation is also repeated in "The Poor Bride", "Hot Heart", "Dowry".

Later, the satirical element intensified in the dramas. Ostrovsky refers to Gogol's principle of "pure comedy", bringing to the fore the characteristics of the social environment. The character of his comedies is a renegade and a hypocrite. Ostrovsky also turns to the historical-heroic theme, tracing the formation of social phenomena, growth from a “little man” to a citizen.

Undoubtedly, Ostrovsky's plays will always have a modern sound. Theaters constantly turn to his work, so it stands outside the time frame.

Dramaturgy by A.P. Chekhov.

Chekhov is called "Shakespeare of the 20th century". Indeed, his drama, like Shakespeare's, played a huge turning point in the history of world drama. Born in Russia at the turn of the new century, it has developed into such an innovative artistic system that has determined the future development of dramaturgy and theater throughout the world.
Of course, the innovation of Chekhov's drama was prepared by the searches and discoveries of his great predecessors, the dramatic works of Pushkin and Gogol, Ostrovsky and Turgenev, on the good, strong tradition of which he relied. But it was Chekhov's plays that made a real revolution in the theatrical thinking of their time. His entry into the sphere of drama marked a new starting point in the history of Russian artistic culture.
By the end of the 19th century, Russian dramaturgy was in an almost deplorable state. Under the pen of craft writers, the once lofty traditions of drama degenerated into routine clichés, turned into dead canons. The scene is too noticeably removed from life. At that time, when the great works of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky raised Russian prose to unprecedented heights, Russian drama eked out a miserable existence. To overcome this gap between prose and dramaturgy, between literature and theater, it was destined for none other than Chekhov. Through his efforts, the Russian stage was raised to the level of great Russian literature, to the level of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.
What was the discovery of Chekhov the playwright? First of all, he brought the drama back to life itself. Not without reason did it seem to his contemporaries that he simply offered briefly written long novels for the stage. His plays were striking in their unusual narrative, realistic thoroughness of their manner. This manner was not accidental. Chekhov was convinced that drama cannot be the property of only outstanding, exceptional personalities, a springboard only for grandiose events. He wanted to discover the drama of the most ordinary everyday reality. It was in order to give access to the drama of everyday life that Chekhov had to destroy all the outdated, firmly rooted dramatic canons.
“Let everything on the stage be as simple and at the same time as complicated as in life: people dine, only dine, and at that time their happiness is added up and their lives are broken,” said Chekhov, deriving the formula of a new drama. And he began to write plays in which the natural course of everyday life was captured, as if completely devoid of bright events, strong characters, sharp conflicts. But under top layer everyday life, in an unprejudiced, as if accidentally scooped up everyday life, where people "just dined", he discovered an unexpected drama that "composes their happiness and breaks their lives."
The drama of everyday life, deeply hidden in the undercurrent of life, was the first most important discovery of the writer. This discovery required a revision of the previous concept of characters, the relationship between the hero and the environment, a different construction of the plot and conflict, a different function of events, breaking the usual ideas about dramatic action, its plot, climax and denouement, about the purpose of the word and silence, gesture and look. In a word, the entire dramatic structure from top to bottom has undergone a complete re-creation.
Chekhov ridiculed the power of everyday life over a person, showed how any human feeling becomes smaller and distorted in a vulgar environment, how a solemn ritual (funeral, wedding, anniversary) turns into absurdity, how everyday life kills holidays. Finding vulgarity in every cell of life, Chekhov combined a cheerful mockery with good humor. He laughed at human absurdity, but did not kill the man himself with laughter. In peaceful everyday life, he saw not only a threat, but also protection, appreciated the comfort of life, the warmth of the hearth, the saving power of gravity. The genre of vaudeville gravitated towards tragic farce and tragicomedy. Perhaps that is why his humorous stories were fraught with the motive of humanity, understanding and sympathy.

24. Moscow Art Theater. Creativity of K.S. Stanislavsky.

Moscow Art Theatre. The innovative program of the Moscow Art Theater (founded in 1898) and its connection with the ideas of advanced Russian aesthetics of the 19th century. Use in creative practice best achievements world realistic theater. Theatrical activities of K. S. Stanislavsky (1863-1938) and Vl. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko (1858-1943) before the creation of the Moscow Art Theater. Creation of the Moscow Public Art Theater by Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko (1898). "Tsar Fedor Ivanovich" by A. K. Tolstoy - the first performance of the Moscow Art Theater. Historical and everyday line of performances of the Moscow Art Theater.

Productions of Chekhov's plays in the period 1898-1905: "The Seagull", "Uncle Vanya", "Three Sisters", "The Cherry Orchard", "Ivanov". Innovation in the interpretation of Chekhov's plays.

Socio-political line in the repertoire of the Moscow Art Theater. "Doctor Stockman" Ibsen. Performances of Gorky's plays "Petty Bourgeois", "At the Bottom", "Children of the Sun". Passion for recreating life on stage. "At the bottom" - the creative victory of the Moscow Art Theater. Staging "Children of the Sun" during the revolutionary events of 1905. Gorky's role in the ideological and creative development of the Art Theater.

Acting art of the Moscow Art Theatre: K.S. Stanislavsky, I. M. Moskvin, V. I. Kachalov, O. L. Knipper-Chekhova, L. M. Leonidov and others.

Konstantin Sergeevich Stanislavsky(real name - Alekseev; January 5, 1863, Moscow - August 7, 1938, Moscow) - Russian theater director, actor and teacher, theater reformer. The creator of the famous acting system, which for 100 years has been very popular in Russia and in the world. People's Artist of the USSR (1936).

In 1888 he became one of the founders of the Moscow Society of Art and Literature. In 1898, together with Vl. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko founded the Moscow Art Theater.

Konstantin Sergeevich was born in Moscow, in a large (he had nine brothers and sisters in total) family of a well-known industrialist, who was related to S. I. Mamontov and the Tretyakov brothers. Father - Alekseev, Sergey Vladimirovich (1836-1893), mother - Elizaveta Vasilievna (nee Yakovleva), (1841-1904).

The mayor of Moscow N. A. Alekseev was his cousin. The younger sister is Zinaida Sergeevna Sokolova (Alekseeva), Honored Artist of the RSFSR.

His first and illegitimate son from a peasant girl Avdotya Nazarovna Kopylova V. S. Sergeev (1883-1941) was adopted by Stanislavsky's father S. V. Alekseev, after whom he received his surname and patronymic, later became a professor at Moscow State University, a historian of antiquity.

Wife - Maria Petrovna Lilina (1866-1943; by her husband - Alekseeva) - Russian and Soviet theater actress, actress of the Moscow Art Theater.

S. V. Alekseev, father of K. S. Stanislavsky.

In 1878-1881 he studied at the gymnasium at the Lazarev Institute, after which he began serving in a family firm. The family was fond of the theater, in the Moscow house there was a hall specially rebuilt for theatrical performances, in the Lyubimovka estate - a theater wing.

Stage experiments began in 1877 in the home Alekseevsky circle. He intensively studied plasticity and vocals with the best teachers, studied on the examples of the actors of the Maly Theater, among his idols were Lensky, Musil, Fedotova, Yermolova. He played in operettas: "The Countess de la Frontière" by Lecoq (the ataman of the robbers), "Mademoiselle Nitouche" by Florimore, "The Mikado" by Sullivan (Nanki-Poo).

On the amateur stage in the house of A. A. Karzinkin on Pokrovsky Boulevard in December 1884, his first performance as Podkolesin in Gogol's "Marriage" took place. Also for the first time, the young actor worked under the direction of the artist of the Maly Theater M. A. Reshimov, who staged the play.

On the day of the premiere, there was also a curiosity that Konstantin Sergeevich remembered for the rest of his life. In his declining years, he himself spoke about this episode: “In the last act of the play, as you know, Podkolesin climbs out the window. The stage where the performance takes place was so small that, getting out of the window, one had to step along the piano standing behind the scenes. Of course, I blew the lid and broke a few strings. The trouble is that the performance was given only as a boring prelude to the upcoming merry dances. But at midnight they could not find a master to repair the piano, and the unlucky performer had to sit all evening in the corner of the hall and sing all the dances in a row. “It was one of the most fun balls,” recalled K. S. Stanislavsky, “but, of course, not for me.” We will also sympathize not only with the poor young man, but also with the charming young ladies who lost this evening an elegant and skillful handsome gentleman ...

In 1886, Konstantin Alekseev was elected a member of the directorate and treasurer of the Moscow branch of the Russian Musical Society and the conservatory attached to it. His associates in the directorate of the conservatory were P. I. Tchaikovsky, S. I. Taneev, S. M. Tretyakov. Together with the singer and teacher F. P. Komissarzhevsky and the artist F. L. Sollogub, Alekseev is developing a project for the Moscow Society of Art and Literature (MOIiL), investing personal funds in it. At this time to hide your real name, took the surname Stanislavsky for the stage.

The impetus for the creation of the Society was a meeting with the director A. F. Fedotov: in his play “The Players” by N. Gogol, Stanislavsky played Ikharev. The first performance took place on December 8 (20), 1888. For ten years of work on the stage of MOIiL, Stanislavsky became a famous actor, his performance of a number of roles was compared with the best works professionals of the imperial stage, often in favor of an amateur actor: Anania Yakovleva in A Bitter Fate (1888) and Platon Imshin in A. Pisemsky's Arbitrary Rules; Paratov in "Dowry" by A. Ostrovsky (1890); Zvezdintsev in "The Fruits of Enlightenment" by L. Tolstoy (1891). On the stage of the Society, the first directorial experience was "Burning Letters" by P. Gnedich (1889). A great impression on the theatrical community, including Stanislavsky, was made on tour in Russia, in 1885 and 1890, by the Meiningen Theater, which was distinguished by a high production culture. In 1896, regarding Stanislavsky's Othello staged, N. Efros wrote: “The Meiningen people must have left a deep mark on the memory of K. S. Stanislavsky. Their setting is drawn to him in the form of a beautiful ideal, and he strives with all his might to approach this ideal. Othello is a big step forward on this pretty path.

In January 1891, Stanislavsky officially took over the directorship of the Society of Arts and Literature. He staged the performances Uriel Acosta by K. Gutskov (1895), Othello (1896), The Polish Jew by Erkman-Shatrian (1896), Much Ado About Nothing (1897), Twelfth Night (1897), The Sunken Bell" (1898), played Acosta, mayor of Matisse, Benedict, Malvolio, Henry's master. Stanislavsky was looking for, according to the definition he formulated later, "director's techniques to reveal the spiritual essence of the work." Following the example of the Meiningen artists, he uses authentic antique or exotic objects, experiments with light, sound, and rhythm. Subsequently, Stanislavsky would single out his production of Dostoevsky's The Village of Stepanchikov (1891) and the role of Foma ("Paradise for the Artist").

Moscow Art Theater

Dissatisfaction with the state of the drama theater in late XIX century, the need for reform, the denial of stage routine provoked the search for A. Antoine and O. Bram, A. Yuzhin in the Moscow Maly Theater and Vl. Nemirovich-Danchenko at the Philharmonic School.

In 1897, Nemirovich-Danchenko invited Stanislavsky to meet and discuss a number of issues related to the state of the theatre. Stanislavsky kept a business card, on the back of which is written in pencil: “I will be at the Slavianski Bazaar at one o'clock - see you?” On the envelope, he signed: “The famous first meeting-sitting with Nemirovich-Danchenko. The first moment of the founding of the theatre.

In the course of this conversation, which has become legendary, the tasks of the new theatrical business and the program for their implementation were formulated. According to Stanislavsky, they discussed "the foundations of the future business, questions of pure art, our artistic ideals, stage ethics, technique, organizational plans, projects for the future repertoire, our relationships." In an eighteen-hour conversation, Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko discussed the composition of the troupe, the backbone of which was to be composed of young intelligent actors, a circle of authors (G. Ibsen, G. Hauptman, A. P. Chekhov) and the modestly low-key design of the hall. Duties were divided: the literary and artistic veto was given to Nemirovich-Danchenko, the artistic veto to Stanislavsky; sketched out a system of slogans by which the new theater would live.

June 14 (26), 1898 in the suburban summer cottage Pushkino began the work of the troupe of the Art Theater, created from the students of Nemirovich-Danchenko in the Philharmonic and amateur actors of the Society of Arts and Literature. In the very first months of rehearsals, it turned out that the division of duties of leaders is conditional. The rehearsals of the tragedy "Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich" were started by Stanislavsky, who created the mise-en-scenes of the performance that shocked the audience at the premiere, and Nemirovich-Danchenko insisted on choosing his student I. V. Moskvin for the role of Tsar Fyodor, and in individual lessons with the artist helped him create a touching the image of the "king-peasant", which became the opening of the performance. Stanislavsky believed that the historical and everyday line in the Moscow Art Theater began with "Tsar Fyodor", to which he attributed the productions of "The Merchant of Venice" (1898), "Antigone" (1899), "The Death of Ivan the Terrible" (1899), "The Power of Darkness" (1902), "Julius Caesar" (1903), etc. With A.P. Chekhov, he connected another - the most important line of productions of the Art Theater: the line of intuition and feelings - where he attributed "Woe from Wit" by A.S. Griboyedov (1906 ), “A Month in the Village” (1909), “The Brothers Karamazov” (1910) and “The Village of Stepanchikovo” (1917) by F. M. Dostoevsky and others.

K. Stanislavsky, 1912.

The most significant performances of the Art Theater, such as "Tsar Fedor Ioannovich" by A. K. Tolstoy, "The Seagull", "Uncle Vanya", "Three Sisters", " The Cherry Orchard» by A.P. Chekhov were staged by Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko together. In the following productions of Chekhov, the discoveries of The Seagull were continued and brought to harmony. The principle of continuous development united the crumbling, disparate life on the stage. A special principle of stage communication (“an object outside the partner”), incomplete, semi-closed, was developed. The spectator at Chekhov's performances of the Moscow Art Theater was pleased and tormented by the recognition of life, in its previously unthinkable details.

In the joint work on the play by M. Gorky "At the Bottom" (1902), the contradictions of the two approaches were identified. For Stanislavsky, the impetus was a visit to Khitrov Market's rooming houses. In his directorial plan, there are a lot of sharply noticed details: Medvedev's dirty shirt, shoes wrapped in outerwear on which sateen sleeps. Nemirovich-Danchenko was looking for "cheerful lightness" on the stage as the key to the play. Stanislavsky admitted that it was Nemirovich-Danchenko who found "the real manner of playing Gorky's plays", but he himself did not accept this manner of "simply reporting the role". The poster for "At the Bottom" was not signed by either director. From the beginning of the theater, both directors sat at the director's table. Since 1906, “each of us had his own table, his own play, his own production,” because, Stanislavsky explains, each “wanted and could only follow his own independent line, while remaining true to the general, basic principle of the theater.” The first performance where Stanislavsky worked separately was Brandt. At this time, Stanislavsky, together with Meyerhold, creates an experimental Studio on Povarskaya (1905). Stanislavsky would then continue his search for new theatrical forms in L. Andreev’s Life of a Man (1907): against the background of black velvet, schematically depicted fragments of interiors appeared, in which schemes of people arose: grotesquely pointed lines of costumes, make-up masks. In The Blue Bird by M. Maeterlinck (1908), the principle of the black cabinet was applied: the effect of black velvet and lighting techniques were used for magical transformations.

Stanislavsky-actor[edit | edit wiki text]

When creating the Art Theater, Stanislavsky believed Nemirovich-Danchenko that the roles of the tragic warehouse were not his repertoire. On the stage of the Moscow Art Theater, he played out only a few of his previous tragic roles in performances from the repertoire of the Society of Arts and Literature (Heinrich from The Drowned Bell, Imshin). In productions of the first season, he played Trigorin in The Seagull and Levborg in Hedda Gabler. According to critics, his masterpieces on stage were the roles: Astrov in "Uncle Vanya", Shtokman in G. Ibsen's play "Doctor Shtokman"), Vershinin "Three Sisters", Satin in "At the Bottom", Gaev "The Cherry Orchard", Shabelsky in Ivanov, 1904). The duet of Vershinin - Stanislavsky and Masha - O. Knipper-Chekhova entered the treasury of stage lyrics.

Stanislavsky continues to set himself more and more new tasks in the acting profession. He demands from himself the creation of a system that could give the artist the possibility of public creativity according to the laws of the “art of experience” at every moment of being on stage, an opportunity that opens up to geniuses in moments of the highest inspiration. Stanislavsky transferred his searches in the field of theatrical theory and pedagogy to the First Studio he created (public shows of its performances began in 1913).

The cycle of roles in modern drama - Chekhov, Gorky, L. Tolstoy, Ibsen, Hauptmann, Hamsun - was followed by roles in the classics: Famusov in "Woe from Wit" by A. Griboyedov (1906), Rakitin in "A Month in the Country" by I. Turgenev (1909), Krutitsky in A. Ostrovsky’s play “Enough Stupidity for Every Wise Man” (1910), Argan in Molière’s “Imaginary Sick” (1913), Count Lubin in W. Wicherly’s “Provincial Girl”, Cavalier in “The Hostess of the Inn” by K. Goldoni (1914).

The fate of Stanislavsky was echoed by his last two acting works: Salieri in the tragedy “Mozart and Salieri” by A. S. Pushkin (1915), and Rostanev, whom he was supposed to play again in the new production of “The Village of Stepanchikov” by F. M. Dostoevsky. The reason for the failure of Rostanev, the role that was not shown to the public, remains one of the mysteries of the history of the theater and the psychology of creativity. According to many testimonies, Stanislavsky "rehearsed beautifully." After a dress rehearsal on March 28 (April 10), 1917, he stopped work on the role. After Rostanev “was not born”, Stanislavsky forever refused new roles (he violated this refusal only out of necessity, during his tours abroad in 1922-1924, agreeing to play the governor Shuisky in the old play “Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich”).

After 1917[edit | edit wiki text]

K. S. Stanislavsky with the troupe of the studio theater in Leontievsky Lane in the scenery of the Lensky Mansion (c. 1922)

In the autumn of 1918, Stanislavsky directed a 3-minute comic film that was not released and has no title (it is found on the net under the name "Fish"). Stanislavsky himself and the actors of the Art Theater I. M. Moskvin, V. V. Luzhsky, A. L. Vishnevsky, V. I. Kachalov take part in the film. The plot of the film is as follows. In the garden at the house in Karetny, I. M. Moskvin, V. V. Luzhsky, A. L. Vishnevsky and Stanislavsky begin a rehearsal and wait for V. I. Kachalov, who is late. Kachalov comes up to them, who gestures that he cannot rehearse, because something is wrong with his throat. Moskvin examines Kachalov and removes a metal fish from his throat. Everyone laughs.

Stanislavsky's first production after the revolution was D. Byron's Cain (1920). Rehearsals had just begun when Stanislavsky was taken hostage during the Whites' breakthrough to Moscow. The general crisis in the Art Theater was aggravated by the fact that a significant part of the troupe, headed by Vasily Kachalov, who went on tour in 1919, was cut off from Moscow by military events. An absolute victory was the production of The Inspector General (1921). For the role of Khlestakov, Stanislavsky appointed Mikhail Chekhov, who had recently moved from the Moscow Art Theater (the theater had already been declared academic) to his 1st studio. In 1922, the Moscow Art Theater under the direction of Stanislavsky went on a long foreign tour of Europe and America, which was preceded by the return (not in full force) of the Kachalovsky troupe.

In the 1920s, the issue of changing theatrical generations became acute; the 1st and 3rd studios of the Moscow Art Theater turned into independent theaters; Stanislavsky painfully experienced the "betrayal" of his students, giving the studios of the Moscow Art Theater the names of Shakespeare's daughters from King Lear: Goneril and Regan - the 1st and 3rd studios, Cordelia - the 2nd [ source unspecified 1031 days] . In 1924, a large group of studio members, mostly pupils of the 2nd studio, joined the troupe of the Art Theater.

Stanislavsky's activity in the 1920s and 1930s was determined, first of all, by his desire to defend the traditional artistic values of Russian stage art. The production of "Hot Heart" (1926) was the answer to those critics who assured that "The Art Theater is dead." Rapid ease of pace, picturesque festivity distinguished Beaumarchais's Crazy Day, or The Marriage of Figaro (1927) (set by A. Ya. Golovin).

After joining the troupe of the Moscow Art Theater of youth from the 2nd studio and from the school of the 3rd studio, Stanislavsky taught them classes and released on stage their works performed with young directors. Among these works, far from always signed by Stanislavsky, are “The Battle of Life” according to Dickens (1924), “The Days of the Turbins” (1926), “The Sisters Gerard” (a play by V. Massa based on the melodrama of A. Dennery and E. Cormon “Two orphans") and "Armored Train 14-69" Sun. Ivanova (1927); "Squanderers" by V. Kataev and "Untilovsk" by L. Leonov (1928).

Later years[edit | edit wiki text]

After a severe heart attack that happened on the anniversary evening at the Moscow Art Theater in 1928, the doctors forbade Stanislavsky to go on stage forever. Stanislavsky returned to work only in 1929, focusing on theoretical research, on pedagogical tests of the "system" and on classes at his Opera Studio of the Bolshoi Theater, which had existed since 1918 (now the Moscow Academic Musical Theater named after K. S. Stanislavsky and Vl. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko).

For the production of Othello at the Moscow Art Theater, he wrote the director's score of the tragedy, which act after act was sent along with letters from Nice, where he hoped to complete the treatment. Published in 1945, the score remained unused, since I. Ya. Sudakov managed to release the performance before the end of Stanislavsky's work.

In the early 1930s, Stanislavsky, using his authority and the support of Gorky, who had returned to the USSR, applied to the government to secure a special position for the Art Theatre. They went towards him. In January 1932, the abbreviation "USSR" was added to the name of the theater, equating it with the Bolshoi and Maly Theaters, in September 1932 it was named after Gorky, - the theater became known as the Moscow Art Theater of the USSR. Gorky. In 1937 he was awarded the Order of Lenin, in 1938 - the Order of the Red Banner of Labor. In 1933, the building of the former Korsh Theater was transferred to the Moscow Art Theater to create a branch of the theater.

In 1935, the last one was opened - the Opera and Drama Studio of K. S. Stanislavsky (now the Moscow Drama Theater named after K. S. Stanislavsky) (among the works - Hamlet). Practically without leaving his apartment in Leontievsky Lane, Stanislavsky met with the actors at home, turning the rehearsals into an acting school according to the method of psycho-physical actions he was developing.

Continuing the development of the "system", following the book "My Life in Art" (American edition - 1924, Russian - 1926), Stanislavsky managed to send the first volume of "The Work of an Actor on Himself" (published in 1938, posthumously) to print.

Stanislavsky died on August 7, 1938 in Moscow. An autopsy showed that he had a whole bunch of diseases: an enlarged, failing heart, emphysema, aneurysms - a consequence of a severe heart attack in 1928. " Pronounced arteriosclerotic changes were found in all the vessels of the body, with the exception of the brain, which did not succumb to this process."- such was the conclusion of the doctors [ source unspecified 784 days] . He was buried on August 9 at the Novodevichy cemetery.

25. Creativity of V.E. Meyerhold.

Vsevolod Emilievich Meyerhold(real name - Karl Casimir Theodor Mayergold(German Karl Kasimir Theodor Meyergold); January 28 (February 9), 1874, Penza - February 2, 1940, Moscow) - Russian Soviet theater director, actor and teacher. Theorist and practitioner of theatrical grotesque, author of the Theater October program and creator of the acting system, called "biomechanics". People's Artist of the RSFSR (1923).

Biography[edit | edit wiki text]

Karl Casimir Theodor Mayergold was the eighth child in the family of Germanized Lutheran Jews of the winemaker Emil Fedorovich Mayergold (d. 1892) and his wife Alvina Danilovna (nee Neeze). In 1895 he graduated from the Penza Gymnasium and entered the law faculty of Moscow University. In the same year, upon reaching the age of majority (21), Meyerhold converted to Orthodoxy and changed his name to Vsevolod- in honor of the beloved writer V. M. Garshin.

In 1896, he moved to the 2nd year of the Theater and Music School of the Moscow Philharmonic Society in the class of Vl. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko.

In 1898, Vsevolod Meyerhold graduated from college and, together with other graduates (O. L. Knipper, I. M. Moskvin), joined the troupe of the Moscow Art Theater being created. In the play "Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich", which opened the Public Art Theater on October 14 (26), 1898, Vasily Shuisky played.

In 1902, Meyerhold left the Art Theater with a group of actors and began an independent directorial activity, heading a troupe in Kherson together with A. S. Kosheverov. From the second season, after the departure of Kosheverov, the troupe received the name "New Drama Partnership". In 1902-1905, about 200 performances were staged.

In May 1905, Konstantin Stanislavsky invited him to prepare the performances The Death of Tentagil by M. Maeterlinck, The Comedy of Love by G. Ibsen and Shlyuk and Yau by G. Hauptmann for the Studio Theater, which he planned to open on Povarskaya Street in Moscow. However, the Studio did not exist for long: as it turned out, Stanislavsky and Meyerhold understood its purpose in different ways. Having watched the performances staged by Meyerhold, Stanislavsky did not consider it possible to release them to the public. Years later, in the book “My Life in Art”, regarding Meyerhold’s experiments, he wrote: “A talented director tried to hide the artists with himself, who in his hands were simple clay for sculpting beautiful groups, mise-en-scenes, with the help of which he carried out his interesting ideas. But in the absence of artistic technique among the actors, he could only demonstrate his ideas, principles, searches, but there was nothing to implement them, no one with whom, and therefore the studio’s interesting ideas turned into an abstract theory, into a scientific formula. In October 1905 the Studio was closed and Meyerhold returned to the provinces.

In 1906, he was invited by V. F. Komissarzhevskaya to St. Petersburg as the chief director of her own Drama Theater. In one season, Meyerhold produced 13 performances, including: "Hedda Gabler" by G. Ibsen, "Sister Beatrice" by M. Maeterlinck, "Public Show" by A. Blok, "The Life of a Man" by L. N. Andreev.

Imperial theaters[edit | edit wiki text]

Director of the Imperial Theatres.

In 1910, in Terijoki, Meyerhold staged a performance based on the play by the 17th century Spanish playwright Calderon Adoration of the Cross. The director and actors have been looking for a suitable place in nature for a long time. It was found in the estate of the writer M.V. Krestovskaya in Molodyozhny (fin. Metsäkyla). There was a beautiful garden here, a large staircase descended from the dacha to the Gulf of Finland - a stage platform. The performance, according to the plan, was to go on at night, "by the light of burning torches, with a huge crowd of the entire surrounding population." At the Alexandrinsky Theater he staged At the Royal Doors by K. Hamsun (1908), Jester Tantris by E. Hart, Don Giovanni by Molière (1910), Halfway by Pinero (1914), The Green Ring by Z. Gippius, "The Steadfast Prince" by Calderon (1915), "Thunderstorm" by A. Ostrovsky (1916), "Masquerade" by M. Lermontov (1917). In 1911 he staged Gluck's opera Orpheus and Eurydice at the Mariinsky Theater (artist - Golovin, choreographer - Fokin).

After the revolution[edit | edit wiki text]

B. Grigoriev. Portrait of V. Meyerhold, 1916

Member of the Bolshevik Party since 1918. Worked at Theo Narkompros.

After the October Revolution, he staged V. Mayakovsky's Mystery Buff in Petrograd (1918). From May 1919 to August 1920 he was in the Crimea and the Caucasus, where he experienced several changes of power, was arrested by white counterintelligence. From September 1920 to February 1921 - head of the TEO. In 1921 he staged the second edition of the same play in Moscow. In March 1918, in the cafe "Red Rooster", opened in the former San Galli Passage, Meyerhold staged A. Blok's play "The Stranger". In 1920, he proposed and then actively implemented the program "Theatrical October" into the theory and practice of the theater.

In 1918, the teaching of biomechanics as a theory of movements was introduced at the Stage Performance Courses in Petrograd; in 1921 Meyerhold uses the term for the practice of stage movement.

GosTeam[edit | edit wiki text]

Main article:State Theater named after Vs. Meyerhold

State Theater named after Vs. Meyerhold (GosTiM) was created in Moscow in 1920, initially under the name "Theater of the RSFSR-I", then from 1922 it was called the "Actor's Theater" and the GITIS Theater, from 1923 - the Meyerhold Theater (TiM); in 1926 the theater was given the status of a state theater.

In 1922-1924, Meyerhold, in parallel with the formation of his theater, directed the Theater of the Revolution.

In 1928, GosTiM was almost closed: having gone abroad with his wife for treatment and negotiations about the theater tour, Meyerhold stayed in France, and since at the same time Mikhail Chekhov, who headed the Moscow Art Theater at that time, did not return from foreign trips 2nd, and head of the GOSET Alexei Granovsky, Meyerhold was also suspected of unwillingness to return. But he was not going to emigrate and returned to Moscow before the liquidation commission had time to disband the theater.

In 1930, GosTiM successfully toured abroad, - Mikhail Chekhov, who met Meyerhold in Berlin, said in his memoirs: “I tried to convey to him my feelings, rather premonitions, about his terrible end if he returns to the Soviet Union. He listened in silence, calmly and sadly answered me this way (I don’t remember the exact words): since my gymnasium years, I have carried the Revolution in my soul and always in its extreme, maximalist forms. I know you are right - my end will be as you say. But I will return to the Soviet Union. To my question - why? - he answered: out of honesty.

In 1934, the play "The Lady of the Camellias", in which Reich played the main role, was watched by Stalin, and he did not like the performance. Criticism fell upon Meyerhold with accusations of aestheticism. Zinaida Reich wrote a letter to Stalin saying that he did not understand art.

On January 8, 1938, the theater was closed. Order of the Committee for Arts under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR "On the liquidation of the Theater. Sun. Meyerhold" was published in the newspaper "Pravda" on January 8, 1938. In May 1938, K. S. Stanislavsky offered Meyerhold, who was left without a job, the position of director in the opera theater he himself directed. After the death of K. S. Stanislavsky, Meyerhold became the chief director of the theater. Continued work on the opera "Rigoletto".

Arrest and death[edit | edit wiki text]

Photo of the NKVD after the arrest

On June 20, 1939, Meyerhold was arrested in Leningrad; at the same time, a search was carried out in his apartment in Moscow. The search protocol recorded a complaint from his wife Zinaida Reich, who protested against the methods of one of the NKVD agents. Soon (July 15) she was killed by unidentified persons.

After three weeks of interrogation, accompanied by torture, Meyerhold signed the testimony necessary for the investigation: he was accused under Article 58 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR. In January 1940, Meyerhold wrote to V. M. Molotov:

... They beat me here - a sick sixty-six-year-old man, they laid me on the floor face down, they beat me with a rubber tourniquet on my heels and on my back, when I sat on a chair, they beat me with the same rubber on my legs […] the pain was such that it seemed to hurt the sensitive places of the legs poured boiling water ...

The meeting of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR took place on February 1, 1940. The board sentenced the director to death. On February 2, 1940, the sentence was carried out. The Teatral magazine writes about the burial place of Meyerhold: “Granddaughter of Vs. E. Meyerhold Maria Alekseevna Valentey back in 1956, having achieved his political rehabilitation, but not knowing then how and when her grandfather died, she installed on the grave of Zinaida Nikolaevna Reich, in the Vagankovsky cemetery, a common monument - to her, the actress and her beloved wife, and to him. The monument is engraved with a portrait of Meyerhold and the inscription: "To Vsevolod Emilievich Meyerhold and Zinaida Nikolaevna Reich."<…>In 1987, she also became aware of the true burial place of Meyerhold - "Common grave No. 1. Burial of unclaimed ashes from 1930 - 1942 inclusive" at the cemetery of the Moscow crematorium near the Donskoy Monastery. (According to the decision of the Politburo of January 17, 1940 No. II 11/208, signed personally by Stalin, 346 people were shot. Their bodies were cremated, and the ashes poured into a common grave were mixed with the ashes of other dead.) ".

In 1955, the Supreme Court of the USSR posthumously rehabilitated Meyerhold.

Family[edit | edit wiki text]

Since 1896 he has been married to Olga Mikhailovna Mundt (1874-1940):

Maria (1897-1929), married Evgeny Stanislavovich Beletsky.
Tatyana (1902-1986), married Alexei Petrovich Vorobyov.
Irina (1905-1981), married Vasily Vasilyevich Merkuriev.

The son of Irina and V.V. Merkuriev - Pyotr Vasilyevich Merkuriev (he played the role of Meyerhold in the film " I'm an actress", 1980, and in the television series" Yesenin", (2005).

Since 1922 he has been married to Zinaida Nikolaevna Reich (1894-1939), in her first marriage she was married to Sergei Yesenin.

In 1928-1939 Meyerhold lived in the so-called "House of Artists" in Moscow, Bryusov per., 7. Now there is a museum in his apartment

Creativity[edit | edit wiki text]

Theatrical work[edit | edit wiki text]

Acting[edit | edit wiki text]

1898 - "Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich" by A. K. Tolstoy. Stage directors K. S. Stanislavsky and Vl. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko - Vasily Shuisky
1898 - "The Merchant of Venice" by W. Shakespeare - Prince of Aragon
1898 - "The Seagull" by A.P. Chekhov. Directors K. S. Stanislavsky and Vl. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko - Treplev
1899 - "Death of Ivan the Terrible" by A. K. Tolstoy. Directors K. S. Stanislavsky and Vl. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko - Ivan the Terrible
1899 - Antigone by Sophocles - Tiresias
1899 - "Lonely" by G. Hauptmann. Directors K. S. Stanislavsky and Vl. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko - Johannes
1901 - "Three Sisters" by A.P. Chekhov. Directors K. S. Stanislavsky and Vl. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko - Tuzenbach
1907 "Balaganchik" A. Blok - Pierrot

Director's[edit | edit wiki text]

1907 - "Balaganchik" by A. Blok
1918 - "Mystery-Buff" by V. Mayakovsky

Theater of the RSFSR-1 (Actor's Theatre, GITIS Theater)

1920 - "Dawns" by E. Verharn (together with V. Bebutov). Artist V. Dmitriev
1921 - "Union of Youth" G. Ibsen
1921 - "Mystery-buff" by V. Mayakovsky (second edition, together with V. Bebutov)
1922 - "Nora" by G. Ibsen
1922 - "The Magnanimous Cuckold" by F. Krommelink. Artists L. S. Popova and V. V. Lutse
1922 - "Death of Tarelkin" by A. Sukhovo-Kobylin. Director S. Eisenstein

Tim (GosTim)

1923 - "The Earth on End" by Martin and S. M. Tretyakov. Artist L. S. Popova
1924 - "D. E." Podgaetsky according to I. Ehrenburg. Artists I. Shlepyanov, V. F. Fedorov
1924 - "Teacher Bubus" A. Fayko; director Sun. Meyerhold, artist I. Shlepyanov
1924 - "Forest" by A. N. Ostrovsky. Artist V. Fedorov.
1925 - "Mandate" N. Erdman. Artists I. Shlepyanov, P. V. Williams
1926 - The Inspector General by N. Gogol. Artists V. V. Dmitriev, V. P. Kiselev, V. E. Meyerhold, I. Yu. Shlepyanov.
1926 - “Roars, China” by S. M. Tretyakov (together with the laboratory director V. F. Fedorov). Artist S. M. Efimenko
1927 - "Window to the village" R. M. Akulshin. Artist V. A. Shestakov
1928 - “Woe to the mind” based on the comedy by A. S. Griboyedov “Woe from Wit”. Artist N. P. Ulyanov; composer B. V. Asafiev.
1929 - "The Bedbug" by V. Mayakovsky. Artists Kukryniksy, A. M. Rodchenko; composer - D. D. Shostakovich.
1929 - "Commander-2" by I. L. Selvinsky. Artist V. V. Pochitalov; stage design by S. E. Vakhtangov.
1930 - "Shot" by A. I. Bezymensky. Directors V. Zaichikov, S. Kezikov, A. Nesterov, F. Bondarenko, under the direction of Vs. Meyerhold; artists V. V. Kalinin, L. N. Pavlov
1930 - "Bath" by V. Mayakovsky. Artist A. A. Deineka; stage design by S. E. Vakhtangov; composer V. Shebalin.
1931 - "The last decisive" Sun. V. Vishnevsky. Design by S. E. Vakhtangov
1931 - "List of good deeds" by Y. Olesha. Artists K. K. Savitsky, V. E. Meyerhold, I. Leystikov
1933 - "Introduction" by Yu. P. German. Artist I. Leystikov
1933 - "Krechinsky's Wedding" by A. V. Sukhovo-Kobylin. Artist V. A. Shestakov.
1934 - "Lady with Camellias" by A. Dumas son. Artist I. Leystikov
1935 - "33 fainting" (based on the vaudeville "Proposal", "Bear" and "Jubilee" by A.P. Chekhov). Artist V. A. Shestakov

In other theaters

1923 - "Lake Lyul" A. Fayko - Revolution Theater
1933 - "Don Juan" by Moliere - Leningrad State Drama Theater

Filmography[edit | edit wiki text]

"The Picture of Dorian Gray" (1915) - director, screenwriter, performer of the role Lord Henry
« Strong man"(1917) - director
"White Eagle" (1928) - dignitary

Legacy[edit | edit wiki text]

Monument to Meyerhold in Penza (1999)

The exact date of the death of Vsevolod Meyerhold became known only in February 1988, when the KGB of the USSR allowed the granddaughter of the director Maria Alekseevna Valentey (1924-2003) to get acquainted with his “case”. On February 2, 1990, the day of Meyerhold's death was marked for the first time.

Immediately after the official rehabilitation of Vs. Meyerhold, in 1955, the Commission on the creative heritage of the director was formed. From the moment of foundation to 2003, M.A. Valentei-Meyerhold was the permanent scientific secretary of the Commission; chaired the Legacy Commission in different years Pavel Markov (1955-1980), Sergei Yutkevich (1983-1985), Mikhail Tsarev (1985-1987), V. N. Pluchek (1987-1988). Since 1988, the director Valery Fokin has been the chairman of the Commission.

At the end of 1988, it was decided to create a memorial Museum-apartment in Moscow - a branch of the Theater Museum. A. A. Bakhrushina

Since February 25, 1989 at the Theater. M. N. Yermolova, who at that time was headed by Valery Fokin, held evenings in memory of Meyerhold.

In 1991, at the initiative of the Heritage Commission and with the support of the Union of Theater Workers of Russia, on the basis of the All-Russian Association "Creative Workshops" established back in 1987, the Center named after Vs. Meyerhold (CIM). The Center is engaged in scientific and educational activities; in more than two decades of its existence, it has become a traditional venue for international festivals and the Golden Mask national festival, a platform for touring the best European and Russian performances.

Memory[edit | edit wiki text]

In Penza, on February 24, 1984, the Center for Theater Arts "Meyerhold's House" was opened (director Natalia Arkadyevna Kugel), in which the Theater of Doctor Dapertutto has been operating since 2003.
In 1999, a monument to V. E. Meyerhold was unveiled in Penza.
In honor of the 140th anniversary of the birth of V.I. Meyerhold in St. Petersburg on the street. Borodinskaya 6, February 10, 2014 a memorial plaque was unveiled in the hall where Meyerhold worked [ source unspecified 366 days] .