The essence of the novel is what to do Chernyshevsky. The novel 'What is to be done?': the first utopian work in Russian literature

The novel “What to do?” belongs to the pen of one of the most famous writers and literary critics. Being included in the school curriculum, this great work is read by many. And in Soviet times, when Chernyshevsky was given the status of a great democratic revolutionary, the novel “What is to be done?” was one of the most famous. Of course, today the name of Chernyshevsky has lost its former greatness and glory, but interest in the novel has not weakened. The history of the creation of the novel “What is to be done?” is noteworthy.

Nikolai Gavrilovich wrote his masterpiece while imprisoned in solitary confinement in the Alekseevsky ravelin, located in the Peter and Paul Fortress. The novel was written for almost a year, and then, after passing through the investigative commission that dealt with the Chernyshevsky case, it was handed over to writers in parts. Of course, the censors and the commission considered only a love plot in the novel, so they allowed it to be published in the Sovremennik magazine. Later, when the novel “What is to be done?” was published, the mistake, of course, was discovered, and everyone who had anything to do with the publication of the novel was removed from office. All issues of Sovremennik in which the novel was published were banned. The history of the creation of the novel “What is to be done?”, as you can see, is not at all simple. And if we also take into account the fact that the novel was lost on the way from the Peter and Paul Fortress to the Sovremennik editorial office and was picked up by some guy on the street, it becomes clear how miraculously it has survived to this day.

At first glance it seems that “What should I do?” love story. However, the novel reflects philosophical, aesthetic, economic, and social hints for the future. In essence, this is the first utopian novel in Russian literature. And the story of the creation of the novel “What is to be done?” was dictated by the needs of the time. But, at the same time, Chernyshevsky was able to predict the revolution to which the tsar’s reforms were quietly leading, as well as some details, for example, aluminum in the novel is called a metal that will be used in the future. In addition, some of the heroes of the novel “What is to be done?” autobiographical. Thus, the Lady in Mourning from the last chapter is the writer’s wife, Olga Chernyshevskaya, who personifies virtue and love.

The main character of the novel is Vera Rozalskaya, who is not like her environment and family. She suffers greatly from this until her brother's teacher, Dmitry Lopukhov, comes up with a plan to save her. It consists of the girl making an agreement with him that will allow her to get rid of parental oppression and become an independent person. She begins to study, opens her own sewing shop, which became a new word in the then economy, because the profit was divided equally among all the workers. At the end of the novel, Vera becomes the first female physician.

The novel “What to do?” It also has a love plot that was unusual for that time. After several years of marriage, Dmitry and Vera begin to truly love each other. And after a while, the love of two turns into a triangle. The third is Alexander Kirsanov, who loves Vera. Then the plot develops in an unpredictable way, and you can find out exactly how by reading the novel.

Chernyshevsky also introduces a special person named Rakhmetov into the novel. He does not play a big role in the work, but his biography and actions make it possible to distinguish him as a special type of person. Which? You'll find out if you read the novel. Apart from Rakhmetov, the rest of the main characters also constitute a type of new people (but not special ones), who live and think outside the box, and act in a new way, going against established traditions.

How does the novel end? This is what readers of the brilliant work of Nikolai Chernyshevsky have to find out. It is not for nothing that many generations of interesting and great people have grown up through his works.

For the first time, Chernyshevsky’s most famous work, the novel “What is to be done?”, was published as a separate book. - published in 1867 in Geneva. The initiators of the book's publication were Russian emigrants; in Russia the novel was banned by censorship by that time. In 1863, the work was still published in the Sovremennik magazine, but those issues where its individual chapters were published soon found themselves banned. Summary “What to do?” The youth of those years passed Chernyshevsky on to each other by word of mouth, and the novel itself in handwritten copies, so much so did the work make an indelible impression on them.

Is it possible to do something

The author wrote his sensational novel in the winter of 1862-1863, while in the dungeons of the Peter and Paul Fortress. The dates of writing are December 14-April 4. From January 1863, censors began working with individual chapters of the manuscript, but, seeing only a love line in the plot, they allowed the novel to be published. Soon the deep meaning of the work reaches the officials of Tsarist Russia, the censor is removed from office, but the job is done - a rare youth circle of those years did not discuss the summary of “What is to be done?” With his work, Chernyshevsky wanted not only to tell Russians about the “new people”, but also to arouse in them a desire to imitate them. And his bold call echoed in the hearts of many of the author’s contemporaries.

The youth of the late 19th century turned Chernyshevsky’s ideas into their own lives. Stories about the numerous noble deeds of those years began to appear so often that for some time they became almost commonplace in everyday life. Many suddenly realized that they were capable of Action.

Having a question and a clear answer to it

The main idea of ​​the work, and it is doubly revolutionary in its essence, is personal freedom, regardless of gender. That is why the main character of the novel is a woman, since at that time the dominance of women did not extend beyond the confines of their own living room. Looking back at the life of her mother and close friends, Vera Pavlovna early realizes the absolute mistake of inaction, and decides that the basis of her life will be work: honest, useful, giving the opportunity to live with dignity. Hence morality - personal freedom comes from the freedom to perform actions that correspond to both thoughts and capabilities. This is what Chernyshevsky tried to express through the life of Vera Pavlovna. "What to do?" chapter by chapter, he paints readers a colorful picture of the step-by-step construction of “real life.” Here Vera Pavlovna leaves her mother and decides to open her own business, so she realizes that only equality between all members of her artel will correspond to her ideals of freedom, so her absolute happiness with Kirsanov depends on Lopukhov’s personal happiness. interconnected with high moral principles - this is all Chernyshevsky.

Characteristics of the author's personality through his characters

Both writers and readers, as well as omniscient critics, have the opinion that the main characters of the work are a kind of literary copies of their creators. Even if not exact copies, they are very close in spirit to the author. The narration of the novel “What to do?” is told in the first person, and the author is an active character. He enters into conversation with other characters, even argues with them and, like a “voice-over,” explains to both the characters and the readers many points that are incomprehensible to them.

At the same time, the author conveys to the reader doubts about his writing abilities, says that “he doesn’t even speak the language well,” and he certainly doesn’t have a drop of “artistic talent.” But for the reader his doubts are unconvincing; this is also refuted by the novel that Chernyshevsky himself created, “What is to be done?” Vera Pavlovna and the rest of the characters are so accurately and versatilely drawn, endowed with such unique individual qualities that an author who does not have true talent would be unable to create.

New, but so different

Chernyshevsky’s heroes, these positive “new people”, according to the author’s conviction, from the category of unreal, non-existent, should one day by themselves firmly enter our lives. To enter, to dissolve in the crowd of ordinary people, to push them aside, to regenerate someone, to convince someone, to completely push the rest - those who are intractable - out of the general mass, ridding society of them, like a field of weeds. The artistic utopia that Chernyshevsky himself was clearly aware of and tried to define through its name is “What to do?” A special person, in his deep conviction, is capable of radically changing the world around him, but how to do this, he must determine for himself.

Chernyshevsky created his novel as a counterweight to Turgenev’s “Fathers and Sons”; his “new people” are not at all like the cynical nihilist Bazarov, who irritates with his peremptory attitude. The cardinality of these images is in the implementation of their main task: Turgenev’s hero wanted to “clear a place” around him from everything old that had outlived his own, that is, to destroy, while Chernyshevsky’s characters tried more to build something, to create, before destroying.

Formation of the “new man” in the middle of the 19th century

These two works of great Russian writers became for readers and the literary community of the second half of the 19th century a kind of beacon - a ray of light in a dark kingdom. Both Chernyshevsky and Turgenev loudly declared the existence of a “new man” and his need to create a special mood in society capable of bringing about fundamental changes in the country.

If you re-read and translate the summary of “What to do?” Chernyshevsky in the plane of revolutionary ideas that deeply affected the minds of a certain part of the population of those years, then many of the allegorical features of the work will become easily explainable. The image of the “bride of her grooms”, seen by Vera Pavlovna in her second dream, is nothing more than “Revolution” - this is precisely the conclusion drawn by writers who lived in different years, who studied and analyzed the novel from all sides. The rest of the images that are narrated in the novel are also marked by allegory, regardless of whether they are animated or not.

A little about the theory of reasonable egoism

The desire for change not only for oneself, not only for one’s loved ones, but also for everyone else runs like a red thread through the entire novel. This is completely different from the theory of calculating one’s own benefit, which Turgenev reveals in Fathers and Sons. In many ways, Chernyshevsky agrees with his fellow writer, believing that any person not only can, but should also reasonably calculate and determine his individual path to his own happiness. But at the same time, he says that you can only enjoy it surrounded by equally happy people. This is the fundamental difference between the plots of the two novels: in Chernyshevsky, the heroes forge well-being for everyone, in Turgenev, Bazarov creates his own happiness without regard to those around him. Chernyshevsky is all the closer to us through his novel.

“What to do?”, the analysis of which we give in our review, is ultimately much closer to the reader of Turgenev’s “Fathers and Sons.”

Briefly about the plot

As the reader who has never picked up Chernyshevsky’s novel has already been able to determine, the main character of the work is Vera Pavlovna. Through her life, the formation of her personality, her relationships with others, including men, the author reveals the main idea of ​​her novel. Summary “What to do?” Chernyshevsky's list of characteristics of the main characters and details of their lives can be conveyed in a few sentences.

Vera Rozalskaya (aka Vera Pavlovna) lives in a fairly wealthy family, but everything in her home disgusts her: her mother with her dubious activities, and her acquaintances, who think one thing, but say and do something completely different. Having decided to leave her parents, our heroine tries to find a job, but only with Dmitry Lopukhov, who is close to her in spirit, gives the girl the freedom and lifestyle that she dreams of. Vera Pavlovna creates a sewing workshop with all seamstresses having equal rights to its income - a rather progressive idea for that time. Even her suddenly flared up love for her husband’s close friend Alexander Kirsanov, which she became convinced of while caring for the sick Lopukhov with Kirsanov, does not deprive her of sanity and nobility: she does not leave her husband, she does not leave the workshop. Seeing the mutual love of his wife and close friend, Lopukhov, staging suicide, frees Vera Pavlovna from all obligations to him. Vera Pavlovna and Kirsanov get married and are quite happy about it, and a few years later Lopukhov appears in their lives again. But only under a different name and with a new wife. Both families settle in the neighborhood, spend quite a lot of time together and are quite satisfied with the circumstances that have arisen in this way.

Does being determine consciousness?

The formation of Vera Pavlovna’s personality is far from the pattern of character traits of those of her peers who grew up and were brought up in conditions similar to her. Despite her youth, lack of experience and connections, the heroine clearly knows what she wants in life. Getting married successfully and becoming an ordinary mother of a family is not for her, especially since by the age of 14 the girl knew and understood a lot. She sewed beautifully and provided the whole family with clothes; at the age of 16 she began earning money by giving private piano lessons. Her mother's desire to get her married is met with a firm refusal and she creates her own business - a sewing workshop. The work “What to do?” is about broken stereotypes, about courageous actions of a strong character. Chernyshevsky in his own way gives an explanation for the well-established statement that consciousness determines the existence in which a person finds himself. He defines, but only in the way he decides for himself - either following a path not chosen by him, or finding his own. Vera Pavlovna left the path prepared for her by her mother and the environment in which she lived and created her own path.

Between the realms of dreams and reality

Determining your path does not mean finding it and following it. There is a huge gap between dreams and their implementation in reality. Some people do not dare to jump over it, while others gather all their will into a fist and take a decisive step. This is how Chernyshevsky responds to the problem raised in his novel “What is to be done?” The analysis of the stages of formation of Vera Pavlovna’s personality is carried out by the author himself instead of the reader. He guides him through the heroine’s embodiment of her dreams of her own freedom in reality through active work. It may be a difficult path, but it is a straight and completely passable path. And according to it, Chernyshevsky not only guides his heroine, but also allows her to achieve what she wants, letting the reader understand that only through activity can the cherished goal be achieved. Unfortunately, the author emphasizes that not everyone chooses this path. Not every.

Reflection of reality through dreams

In a rather unusual form he wrote his novel “What is to be done?” Chernyshevsky. Vera's dreams - there are four of them in the novel - reveal the depth and originality of those thoughts that real events evoke in her. In her first dream, she sees herself freed from the basement. This is a certain symbolism of leaving her own home, where she was destined for an unacceptable fate. Through the idea of ​​liberating girls like her, Vera Pavlovna creates her own workshop, in which each seamstress receives an equal share of her total income.

The second and third dreams explain to the reader through real and fantastic dirt, reading Verochka’s diary (which, by the way, she never kept) what thoughts about the existence of different people possess the heroine at different periods of her life, what she thinks about her second marriage and the very necessity of this marriage. Explanation through dreams is a convenient form of presentation of the work that Chernyshevsky chose. "What to do?" - content of the novel , reflected through dreams, the characters of the main characters in dreams are a worthy example of Chernyshevsky’s use of this new form.

Ideals of a bright future, or Vera Pavlovna’s Fourth Dream

If the heroine’s first three dreams reflected her attitude towards accomplished facts, then her fourth dream reflected dreams about the future. It is enough to remember it in more detail. So, Vera Pavlovna dreams of a completely different world, implausible and beautiful. She sees many happy people living in a wonderful house: luxurious, spacious, surrounded by amazing views, decorated with flowing fountains. In it no one feels disadvantaged, there is one common joy for everyone, one common well-being, everyone is equal in it.

These are the dreams of Vera Pavlovna, this is how Chernyshevsky would like to see reality (“What to do?”). Dreams, and they, as we remember, are about the relationship between reality and the world of dreams, reveal not so much the spiritual world of the heroine, but the author of the novel himself. And his full awareness of the impossibility of creating such a reality, a utopia that will not come true, but for which it is still necessary to live and work. And this is also what Vera Pavlovna’s fourth dream is about.

Utopia and its predictable ending

As everyone knows, his main work is the novel “What is to be done?” - Nikolai Chernyshevsky wrote while in prison. Deprived of family, society, freedom, seeing reality in the dungeons in a completely new way, dreaming of a different reality, the writer put it on paper, without believing in its implementation. Chernyshevsky had no doubt that “new people” are capable of changing the world. But he also understood that not everyone will survive under the power of circumstances, and not everyone will be worthy of a better life.

How does the novel end? The idyllic coexistence of two families close in spirit: the Kirsanovs and the Lopukhovs-Beaumonts. A small world created by active people full of nobility of thoughts and actions. Are there many similar happy communities around? No! Isn't this the answer to Chernyshevsky's dreams about the future? Whoever wants to create his own prosperous and happy world will create it; whoever doesn’t want to will go with the flow.

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novel

Nikolai Chernyshevsky

1863, "Contemporary"

"What to do?"- a novel by Russian philosopher, journalist and literary critic Nikolai Chernyshevsky, written in December 1862 - April 1863, during his imprisonment in the Peter and Paul Fortress of St. Petersburg. It was written partly in response to Ivan Turgenev’s work “Fathers and Sons”.

• 1 History of creation and publication
• 2 Plot
• 3 Artistic originality
• 4 Interesting facts
• 5 Literature
• 6 Film adaptations
• 7 Notes
• 8 See also
• 9 Links

History of creation and publication

Chernyshevsky wrote the novel while in solitary confinement in the Alekseevsky ravelin of the Peter and Paul Fortress, from December 14, 1862 to April 4, 1863. Since January 1863, the manuscript has been transferred in parts to the investigative commission in the Chernyshevsky case (the last part was transferred on April 6). The commission, and after it the censors, saw only a love story in the novel and gave permission for publication. The censorship oversight was soon noticed, and the responsible censor, Beketov, was removed from office. However, the novel had already been published in the Sovremennik magazine (1863, No. 3-5). Despite the fact that the issues of Sovremennik, in which the novel “What is to be done?” were published, were banned, the text of the novel in handwritten copies was distributed throughout the country and caused a lot of imitations.

N. S. Leskov:

“They talked about Chernyshevsky’s novel not in a whisper, not in a low voice, but at the top of their lungs in the halls, on the entrances, at Madame Milbret’s table and in the basement pub of the Stenbokov Passage. They shouted: “disgusting,” “charming,” “abomination,” etc. - all in different tones.”

P. A. Kropotkin:

“For Russian youth of that time it was a kind of revelation and turned into a program, became a kind of banner.”

In 1867, the novel was published as a separate book in Geneva (in Russian) by Russian emigrants, then it was translated into Polish, Serbian, Hungarian, French, English, German, Italian, Swedish and Dutch. In Soviet times, also into Finnish and Tajik ( Farsi). The influence of Chernyshevsky's novel can be felt in Emile Zola ("Ladies' Happiness"), Strindberg ("Utopias in Reality"), the figure of the Bulgarian National Revival Lyuben Karvelov ("Is Fate to Blame" written in Serbian). "Fathers and Sons" gave rise to the so-called aninihilistic novel, in particular "On Knives" by Leskov, which parodically uses the motifs of Chernyshevsky's work.

Ban on publication of the novel “What is to be done?” was only removed in 1905. In 1906, the novel was first published in Russia as a separate edition.

Plot

The central character of the novel is Vera Pavlovna Rozalskaya. To avoid marriage imposed by a selfish mother, the girl marries medical student Dmitry Lopukhov (teacher of her younger brother, Fedya). Marriage allows her to leave her parents' home and manage her own life. Vera studies, tries to find her place in life, and finally opens a sewing workshop of a “new type” - this is a commune where there are no hired workers and owners, and all the girls are equally interested in the well-being of the joint enterprise.

Soon Vera Pavlovna realizes that she loves Lopukhov’s friend, with whom they studied at the medical academy, Alexander Kirsanov. Kirsanov, for his part, has long been in love with the heroine. To give his exhausted wife freedom, Lopukhov stages suicide (the novel begins with an episode of an imaginary suicide), and he himself leaves for America to study industrial production in practice. After some time, Lopukhov, under the name of Charles Beaumont, returns to Russia. He is an agent of an English company and arrived on its behalf to purchase a stearin plant from the industrialist Polozov. Delving into the affairs of the plant, Lopukhov visits Polozov’s house, where he meets his daughter Ekaterina. The young people fall in love with each other and soon get married, after which Lopukhov-Beaumont announces his return to the Kirsanovs. A close friendship develops between the families, they settle in the same house and a society of “new people” - those who want to arrange their own and social life in a “new way” - expands around them.

One of the most significant characters in the novel is the revolutionary Rakhmetov, a friend of Kirsanov and Lopukhov, whom they once introduced to the teachings of the utopian socialists. A short digression is devoted to Rakhmetov in Chapter 29 (“A Special Person”). This is a supporting character, only incidentally connected with the main storyline of the novel (he brings Vera Pavlovna a letter from Lopukhov explaining the circumstances of his imaginary suicide). However, in the ideological outline of the novel, Rakhmetov plays a special role. what it consists of, Chernyshevsky explains in detail in Part XXXI of Chapter 3 (“Conversation with an insightful reader and his expulsion”):

Artistic originality

The emphatically entertaining, adventurous, melodramatic beginning of the novel was supposed to not only confuse the censors, but also attract a wide mass of readers. The external plot of the novel is a love story, but it reflects new economic, philosophical and social ideas of the time. The novel is permeated with hints of the coming revolution.

L. Yu. Brik recalled Mayakovsky: “One of the books closest to him was “What is to be done?” by Chernyshevsky. He kept coming back to her. The life described in it echoed ours. Mayakovsky seemed to consult with Chernyshevsky about his personal affairs and found support in him. “What to do?” was the last book he read before his death.”

• In the novel by N. G. Chernyshevsky “What to do?” aluminum is mentioned. In the “naive utopia” of Vera Pavlovna’s fourth dream, it is called the metal of the future. Aluminum reached a “great future” in the middle of the 20th-21st centuries.
• The “lady in mourning” who appears at the end of the work is Olga Sokratovna Chernyshevskaya, the writer’s wife. At the end of the novel we are talking about the liberation of Chernyshevsky from the Peter and Paul Fortress, where he was staying while writing the novel. He never received his release: on February 7, 1864, he was sentenced to 14 years of hard labor followed by settlement in Siberia.
• The main characters with the surname Kirsanov are also found in Ivan Turgenev’s novel “Fathers and Sons”, but researchers deny the connection between the novel characters of Chernyshevsky and Turgenev.

F. M. Dostoevsky argues with Chernyshevsky’s ideas, in particular with his thoughts about the future of humanity, in “Notes from the Underground.” Thanks to “Notes...” the image of the “crystal palace” became a common motif in world literature of the 20th century.

Literature

• Nikolaev P. Revolutionary novel // Chernyshevsky N. G. What to do? - Moscow, 1985.

Film adaptations

• "What to do?" - three-part television play (directors: Nadezhda Marusalova, Pavel Reznikov), 1971.

• “Che fare?” (“What to do?”) - a five-part teleplay on Italian television (director: Gianni Serra http://gianniserracinema.wordpress.com/), 1979.
  • Part 1
  • Part 2
  • Part 3
  • Part 4
  • Part 5

Notes

1. "Northern Bee". 1863. No. 142
2. Kropotkin P. A. Ideals and reality in Russian literature. - St. Petersburg, 1907. - P. 306-307
3. The phrase is given in the memoirs of N.V. Valentinov “Meetings with Lenin” (1953)
4. Lib.ru/Classics: Mayakovsky Vladimir Vladimirovich. V. Mayakovsky in the memoirs of his contemporaries

see also

• Who is guilty?
• What to do? (Lenin)

Links

• Text of the novel
• Journal edition of the novel in ENI “N. G. Chernyshevsky"
• The original edition of the novel in ENI “N. G. Chernyshevsky"

What to do? (novel) Information About

More than a hundred years ago, in the mighty and eternal garden of world literature, an amazing creation of human genius grew - the novel by Nikolai Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky “What is to be done?”

Many times the typesetter bent over the typesetting of this unique book; the letters of dozens of languages ​​of the world again and again made up the pages of the novel, which had, is having today and will always have a considerable influence on the spiritual life of people and entire nations.

Knowing how to love people and humanity, deeply understanding the needs and hardships of life of his native people, N. G. Chernyshevsky looked for new ways of developing Russia, dreamed of its wonderful socialist future. The enormous talent of Chernyshevsky - a thinker, philologist and historian, publicist and organizer, critic and writer - was aimed at realizing this dream.

The novel “What to do?” - an amazing document of the human spirit, the personal courage of the author, his unshakable conviction in the rightness of the cause to which he devoted his life, in the historical inevitability of social progress.

In the original version of “What to do?” In the chapter “New Faces and Denouement,” Chernyshevsky introduced a dialogue that explains the reason for the appearance of a “special person” among the “new people” - Rakhmetov.

This dialogue was not included in the journal text of Sovremennik, apparently for censorship reasons. The professional revolutionary Rakhmetov - a hero who stepped into literature, undoubtedly, from life - according to the author, was born of historical necessity, the situation of the then revolutionary reality.

Here is this restrained dialogue, veiled with a veil of conspiratorial considerations, but still quite clear to the reader of any degree of insight, in which we are talking about Rakhmetov, who is abroad:

“- It’s time for him to come back!

Yes, it's time.

I. Don't worry, he won't miss his time.

Yes, but what if he doesn’t come back?

So what? (You know, a holy place is never empty.) There is never a stop for people if they have business; - there will be another - there would be bread, but there would be teeth.

II. And the mill is grinding, grinding hard! “He’s preparing bread!”

Yes, the revolutionary mill in the 50-60s of the 19th century ground hard and tirelessly in Russia. The horizons of Russian history were constantly blazing, either with an unabated wave of peasant revolts, or with the red rooster of fires in estates with indomitable and merciless reprisals against their owners, or with the magmatic tremors of the ideology of the “godless Voltairians” grouped around Petrashevsky, or with the rebellion of excited students, or with the voice of Herzen’s “Bell.” , calling invitingly from the foggy distance of London, then a heavy defeat in the Crimean War, in which the absurd hulk of tsarism showed its creaking worthlessness and backwardness. It seemed that history was thirsty for change and was rushing towards it. Revolutionary Russia first put forward Belinsky and Herzen in response, and then gave birth from its depths to a gigantic figure - Chernyshevsky.

I would like to compare the passing of the revolutionary baton, a kind of baton in the field of literary critical thought from Belinsky to Chernyshevsky, with that amazing fact in the history of Russian literature, when the poetic pen knocked out of the hands of the great Pushkin was picked up on the fly by the young genius Lermontov.

A few years after the death of the “frantic Vissarion,” N. G. Chernyshevsky, paying tribute to the great significance of his activities in Russian criticism and history, wrote in “Essays on the Gogol period of Russian literature”: “Who will delve into the circumstances among which criticism of Gogol’s period, will clearly understand that its character completely depended on our historical situation; and if Belinsky was the representative of criticism at that time, it was only because his personality was exactly what historical necessity required. If he were not like that, this inexorable historical necessity would have found another servant, with a different surname, with different facial features, but not with a different character: historical necessity calls people to action and gives strength to their activity, but itself does not obey anyone, does not change to please anyone. “Time demands its servant,” according to the profound saying of one of these servants.”

Time demanded the appearance of Chernyshevsky, and he came to accomplish his amazing life feat, which is forever inscribed in the history of Russia, the revolutionary movement, and the history of literature.

Updated: 2012-02-17

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1863, "Contemporary"

1867 (Geneva), 1906 (Russia)

"What to do?"- a novel by Russian philosopher, journalist and literary critic Nikolai Chernyshevsky, written in December - April, during his imprisonment in the Peter and Paul Fortress of St. Petersburg. The novel was written partly in response to Ivan Turgenev's novel Fathers and Sons.

History of creation and publication

Chernyshevsky wrote the novel while in solitary confinement in the Alekseevsky ravelin of the Peter and Paul Fortress, from December 14, 1862 to April 4, 1863. Since January 1863, the manuscript has been transferred in parts to the investigative commission in the Chernyshevsky case (the last part was transferred on April 6). The commission, and after it the censors, saw only a love story in the novel and gave permission for publication. The censorship oversight was soon noticed, and the responsible censor, Beketov, was removed from office. However, the novel had already been published in the magazine Sovremennik (1863, No. 3-5). Despite the fact that the issues of Sovremennik, in which the novel “What is to be done?” were published, were banned, the text of the novel in handwritten copies was distributed throughout the country and caused a lot of imitations.

“They talked about Chernyshevsky’s novel not in a whisper, not in a low voice, but at the top of their lungs in the halls, on the entrances, at Madame Milbret’s table and in the basement pub of the Stenbokov Passage. They shouted: “disgusting,” “charming,” “abomination,” etc. - all in different tones.”

“For Russian youth of that time, it [the book “What is to be done?”] was a kind of revelation and turned into a program, became a kind of banner.”

The emphatically entertaining, adventurous, melodramatic beginning of the novel was supposed to not only confuse the censors, but also attract a wide mass of readers. The external plot of the novel is a love story, but it reflects new economic, philosophical and social ideas of the time. The novel is permeated with hints of the coming revolution.

• In the novel by N. G. Chernyshevsky “What to do?” aluminum is mentioned. In the “naive utopia” of Vera Pavlovna’s fourth dream, it is called the metal of the future. And this great future By now (mid XX - XXI centuries) aluminum has already reached.
• The “lady in mourning” who appears at the end of the work is Olga Sokratovna Chernyshevskaya, the writer’s wife. At the end of the novel we are talking about the liberation of Chernyshevsky from the Peter and Paul Fortress, where he was while writing the novel. He never received his release: on February 7, 1864, he was sentenced to 14 years of hard labor followed by settlement in Siberia.
• The main characters with the surname Kirsanov are also found in Ivan Turgenev’s novel “Fathers and Sons”.

Literature

• Nikolaev P. Revolutionary novel // Chernyshevsky N. G. What to do? M., 1985

Film adaptations

• 1971: Three-part teleplay (directors: Nadezhda Marusalova, Pavel Reznikov)

Notes

see also

Links

Categories:

• Literary works in alphabetical order
• Nikolai Chernyshevsky
• Political novels
• Novels of 1863
• Novels in Russian

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- "What to do?" the philosophical question of various thinkers, religious figures, prophets, as well as literary works with this title: “What to do?” novel by Nikolai Chernyshevsky, his main work. "What to do?" book... ...Wikipedia

The name of the famous socio-political novel (1863) by Nikolai Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky (1828 1889). The main question that in the 60s and 70s. XIX century was discussed in youth circles, there was, as the revolutionary P. N. Tkachev writes, “the question that ... ... Dictionary of popular words and expressions

Date of birth: June 16, 1965 Place of birth: Makeevka, Ukrainian SSR, USSR ... Wikipedia