Mtsyri character traits key episodes quotes. M.Yu

It was not for nothing that the critic Belinsky called the poem “Mtsyri” Lermontov’s favorite brainchild, emphasizing that in it the great poet reflected his cherished dreams and ideals. The poem is autobiographical in nature and contains subtle hints about the personality and fate of the poet himself.

Yes, the author and his hero are spiritually close to each other. The characteristics of Mtsyri and the story of his life allow us to notice direct analogies. Like Lermontov, Mtsyri is a bright, extraordinary nature, ready to challenge the whole world and rush into battle in the name of freedom and for the sake of finding a homeland. A quiet, measured life within the monastery walls, endless fasting and prayer, complete humility and refusal of any resistance is not for a young novice. In the same way, Lermontov refused the tame court poet, a sugary regular at balls and high-society drawing rooms. Mikhail Yuryevich hated the country of slaves and masters to the same extent as his Mtsyri stuffy cell and the entire way of monastic life. And both of them - the author and the fruit of his creation - were endlessly lonely, deprived of the happiness of being understood, of being close to a close, dear, beloved soul. The joy of true friendship, the sweetness of true, devoted, mutual love, the opportunity to live where the heart yearns - all this passed them by, poisoning the soul with the bitterness of disappointment and the pain of unfulfilled hopes.

Romantic features of the poem

The hero of the poem is a vivid embodiment of Lermontov's romantic worldview. In light of this, the characterization of Mtsyri, as well as the entire work, reflects the main features of this place of action in a romantic work - exotic countries, far from the shackles of civilization and its corrupting influence. For Lermontov, this is the Caucasus, which in his work became a symbol of freedom. The life and customs of the mountain people, sometimes wild, incomprehensible to the European consciousness, their tribal pride and belligerence, a heightened sense of honor and dignity, the power and pristine beauty of the mountains and all of the Caucasian nature captivated the poet in early childhood and won his heart for the rest of his life. And by a fateful play of chance, it was the Caucasus that became Mikhail Yuryevich’s second home, the place of his endless exiles and an inexhaustible source of creativity. So in the poem the whole plot takes place in Georgia, near the monastery that stood at the confluence of the Aragva and Kura.

Mtsyri's characterization includes the motif of rejection, misunderstanding on the one hand and pride, disobedience, challenge, struggle on the other, which is also typical of romantic works. The main character of the poem considers the years spent in the monastery to be wasted, lost, erased from life. Confessing to an old monk who once nursed him, an exhausted child, saved him from physical death, but condemned him to spiritual death, for he was unable to become either a father or a friend to him, and so, telling about what he saw and did in freedom during escape, Mtsyri noted: he would not regret three lives in the monastery for the sake of one, filled with action, movement, struggle and freedom.

The monks will never understand the young man. They spend their lives humbly bowing their heads in prayer and trust in the Lord. The hero relies on himself, on his strengths and capabilities. An indicative characteristic of Mtsyri is that he escapes from his prison during a terrible thunderstorm, and the rampant nature of the elements pleases him, for him the storm is his sister, while the monks pray in horror for salvation. And the fight with the leopard, taken by Lermontov from mountain legends (also an element of romanticism - a connection with folklore) and Rustaveli’s “The Knight in the Skin of a Tiger” and so brilliantly rethought and reworked, fits surprisingly organically into the content of the work and helps to reveal the best personality traits of the young man. Here there is courage, and amazing courage, self-control, faith in one’s strengths and capabilities and testing them for strength, a complete fusion of a proud, rebellious spirit with the same rebellious nature. Without the episode “Fight with the Leopard,” the characterization of the hero Mtsyri would be incomplete, and his image itself would not be fully revealed.

What else, besides freedom, does a young man dream of? First of all, find your family, hug your relatives, find yourself under the roof of your father’s house. He dreams of his father and brothers, and recalls echoes of the lullaby that his mother once sang. In his dreams, he sees smoke over his native village, hears the guttural speech of his people. In essence, this is what constitutes the foundation, the spiritual core of every person: family, home, native language and native land. Take away one thing and a person will feel orphaned. And Mtsyri was deprived of everything - and right away! But it is important for Lermontov that he saved his memories, kept them within himself as his most precious and intimate. Like Lermontov himself, he cherished and cherished in the depths of his heart the image of people’s Russia with its boundless forests, rivers like seas and birches whitening on a hillock.

Hero and time

His poems make it clear: it was no coincidence that the author gave Mtsyri only three days of a bright, eventful, full-blooded life. The time had not yet come for rebels of this kind, just as the poet himself was far ahead of his era. Society, being in spiritual despondency after the defeat of the Decembrists and the death of Pushkin, could not rise to fight during the rampant reaction. And rare loners like Mtsyri were doomed to death. After all, the hero of the time, the portrait of a whole generation of Lermontov’s contemporaries, was not the mountain youth, but Pechorin, Grushnitsky, Doctor Werner - “superfluous people”, disappointed in life or playing at such.

And yet, it was Mtsyri who became the embodiment of the poet’s romantic ideals, a symbol of a bright, purposeful personality who is ready to burn in an instant, but brightly, and not to smolder as a worthless firebrand for many years.

The idea of ​​writing a romantic poem about the wanderings of a free highlander doomed to monastic seclusion arose in Lermontov on the threshold of his youth - at the age of 17.

This is evidenced by diary entries and sketches: a young man who grew up within the walls of a monastery and saw nothing but monastery books and silent novices suddenly gains short-term freedom.

A new worldview is being formed...

The history of the poem

In 1837, the 23-year-old poet found himself in the Caucasus, which he fell in love with as a child (his grandmother took him to sanatorium treatment). In fabulous Mtskheta, he met an old monk, the last servant of a no longer existing monastery, who told the poet the story of his life. At the age of seven, the Highlander, a Muslim boy, was captured by a Russian general and taken away from his home. The boy was sick, so the general left him in one of the Christian monasteries, where the monks decided to raise their follower from the captive. The guy protested, ran away several times, and almost died during one of the attempts. After another failed escape, he finally took orders, as he became attached to one of the old monks. The monk's story delighted Lermontov - after all, it strangely coincided with his long-standing poetic plans.

At first, the poet titled the poem “Beri” (from Georgian this translates as “monk”), but then he replaced the title with “Mtsyri”. This name symbolically merges the meanings of “novice” and “stranger”, “foreigner”.

The poem was written in August 1839 and published in 1840. The poetic prerequisites for the creation of this poem were the poems “Confession” and “Boyar Orsha”; in the new work, Lermontov transferred the action to an exotic, and therefore very romantic setting - to Georgia.

It is believed that in Lermontov’s description of the monastery there appears a description of the Mtskheta Svetitskhoveli Cathedral, one of the most ancient shrines in Georgia.

At first, Lermontov intended to use the French epigraph “There is only one homeland” for the poem. Then he changed his mind - the epigraph to the poem is a biblical quote translated from Church Slavonic as “Tasting, I tasted little honey - and now I’m dying.” This is a reference to the biblical story of King Saul. The leader of the army, Saul bade his soldiers go to battle. He threatened execution for anyone who took a break from the battle to eat and recuperate. The king did not know that his own son would taste the forbidden honey and rush into battle. After a successful battle, the king decided to execute his son, as an edification to everyone, and the son was ready to accept the punishment (“I drank honey, now I must die”), but the people kept the king from execution. The meaning of the epigraph is that a rebellious person, free by nature, cannot be broken, no one has the right to dispose of his right to freedom, and if seclusion is inevitable, then death will become true freedom.

Analysis of the work

Plot, genre, theme and idea of ​​the poem

The plot of the poem almost coincides with the events described above, but does not begin in chronological order, but is an excursion. A young man preparing to become a monk remains outside the walls of his monastery during a storm. Life gave him three days of freedom, but when he was found sick and wounded, he told the old monk what he had experienced. The young man realizes that he will certainly die, if only because after three days of freedom he will no longer be able to put up with his former life in the monastery. Unlike his prototype, Mtsyri, the hero of the poem, does not put up with monastic customs and dies.

Almost the entire poem is a confession of a young man to an old monk (this story can only be called a confession formally, since the young man’s story is not at all imbued with a desire for repentance, but with a passion for life, a passionate desire for it). On the contrary, we can say that Mtsyri does not confess, but preaches, exalting a new religion - freedom.

The main theme of the poem is considered to be the theme of rebellion both against formal seclusion and against ordinary, boring, inactive life. The poem also raises the following themes:

• love for the homeland, the need for this love, the need for one’s own history and family, for “roots”;
• the confrontation between the crowd and the seeker alone, misunderstanding between the hero and the crowd;
• theme of freedom, struggle and heroism.

Initially, criticism perceived “Mtsyri” as a revolutionary poem, a call to fight. Then her idea was understood as loyalty to her ideology and the importance of maintaining this faith, despite a possible defeat in the struggle. Critics viewed Mtsyri’s dreams of her homeland as a need to join not only her lost family, but also as an opportunity to join the army of her people and fight with it, that is, to achieve freedom for her homeland.

However, later critics saw more metaphysical meanings in the poem. The idea of ​​the poem is seen more broadly, as the image of the monastery is revised. The monastery serves as a prototype of society. Living in society, a person puts up with certain limits, shackles for his own spirit, society poisons a natural person, which is Mtsyri. If the problem were the need to change the monastery to nature, then Mtsyri would be happy outside the walls of the monastery, but he does not find happiness outside the monastery either. He has already been poisoned by the influence of the monastery, and he has become a stranger in the natural world. Thus, the poem states that the search for happiness is the most difficult path in life, where there are no prerequisites for happiness.

Genre, composition and conflict of the poem

The genre of the work is a poem, this is the genre most beloved by Lermontov, it stands at the junction of lyrics and epic and allows you to draw the hero in more detail than lyrics, since it reflects not only the inner world, but also the actions and actions of the hero.

The composition of the poem is circular - the action begins in the monastery, takes the reader into the fragmentary childhood memories of the hero, into his three-day adventures and returns to the monastery again. The poem includes 26 chapters.

The conflict of the work is romantic, typical for works in the romanticism genre: the desire for freedom and the impossibility of obtaining it are contrasted, the romantic hero is in search and the crowd that hinders his search. The climax of the poem is the moment of meeting a wild leopard and a duel with the beast, which completely reveals the hero’s inner strengths and character.

Hero of the poem

(Mtsyri tells the monk his story)

There are only two heroes in the poem - Mtsyri and the monk to whom he tells his story. However, we can say that there is only one active hero, Mtsyri, and the second is silent and quiet, as befits a monk. In the image of Mtsyri, many contradictions converge that do not allow him to be happy: he is baptized, but a non-believer; he is a monk, but he rebels; he is an orphan, but he has a home and parents, he is a “natural man,” but does not find harmony with nature, he is one of the “humiliated and insulted,” but internally he is the freest of all.

(Mtsyri alone with himself and nature)

This combination of the incongruous - touching lyricism in contemplating the beauties of nature with powerful strength, gentleness and firm intentions to escape - is something that Mtsyri himself relates to with full understanding. He knows that there is no happiness for him either in the form of a monk or in the form of a fugitive; he surprisingly accurately understood this deep thought, although he is neither a philosopher nor even a thinker. The last stage of protest does not allow one to come to terms with this thought, because shackles and prison walls are alien to man, because he was created in order to strive for something.

Mtsyri dies, deliberately does not touch the food offered by the monk (he saves him a second time from death, and is also his baptist), simply does not want to recover. He sees death as the only possible deliverance from the shackles of an imposed religion, from someone who , without hesitation, wrote his fate. He looks into the eyes of death courageously - not in the way a Christian should humbly lower his eyes before it - and this is his last protest before earth and Heaven.

Quotes

“A long time ago I thought

Look at the distant fields

Find out if the earth is beautiful

Find out for freedom or prison

We will be born into this world"

“What need is this? You lived, old man!
There is something in the world for you to forget.”

"And with this thought I will fall asleep
And I won’t curse anyone.”

Artistic media and composition

In addition to the typical means of artistic expression for romantic works (epithets, comparisons, a large number of rhetorical questions and exclamations), poetic organization plays a role in the artistic originality of the work. The poem is written in iambic tetrameter, using exclusively masculine rhyme. V.G. Belinsky, in his review of the poem, emphasized that this persistent iambic and masculine rhyme is like a mighty sword cutting down enemies. This technique allowed us to draw truly passionate and vivid images.

"Mtsyri" became a source of inspiration for many poets and artists. More than once they tried to set heroic themes to music, since the poem became a real symbol of the ineradicable desire for freedom.

For the hero, the monastery is a symbol of bondage, a prison with gloomy walls and “stuffy cells.” To remain in the monastery meant for him to forever abandon his homeland and freedom, and to be doomed to eternal slavery and loneliness. The author does not reveal the boy’s character, but gives only a few strokes of his behavior, and the personality of the captive highlander emerges clearly.
Mtsyri (translated from Georgian) is a non-serving monk, an alien, a foreigner, a stranger. Mtsyri is a person who lives not according to the far-fetched laws of the state, which suppress human freedom, but according to the natural laws of nature, which allow the individual to open up and realize his aspirations. But the hero is forced to live in captivity, within the walls of a monastery alien to him. Mtsyri’s idea of ​​freedom is connected with the dream of returning to his homeland. To be free means for him to escape from monastic captivity and return to his native village. The image of an unknown, but desired “wonderful world of anxiety and battles” constantly lived in his soul. Mtsyri’s personality, his character is revealed in what pictures attract the hero and how he talks about them. He is struck by the richness and brightness of nature, sharply contrasting with the monotony of monastic existence. And in the close attention with which the hero looks at the world around him, his love for life, desire for everything beautiful in it, sympathy for all living things is felt. In freedom, it revealed itself with renewed vigor. Mtsyri’s love for his homeland, which for the young man merged with the desire for freedom. In freedom, he experienced the “bliss of freedom” and became stronger in his thirst for earthly happiness. After living for three days outside the walls of the monastery, Mtsyri realized that he was brave and fearless. Mtsyri’s “fiery passion” - love for his homeland - makes him purposeful and firm.
Living in freedom for the main character means being in constant search, anxiety, fighting and winning, and most importantly - experiencing the bliss of “holy freedom” - in these experiences the fiery character of Mtsyri is very clearly revealed. Only real life tests a person and shows what he is capable of. Mtsyri saw nature in its diversity, felt its life, experienced the joy of communicating with it. Yes, the world is beautiful! - this is the meaning of Mtsyri’s story about what he saw. His monologue is a hymn to this world. And the fact that the world is beautiful, full of colors and sounds, full of joy, gives the hero the answer to the second question: why was man created, why does he live? Man is born for freedom, and not for prison. The origins of Mtsyri's tragedy are in the conditions that surrounded the hero from childhood. The circumstances in which he found himself left their mark on him, making him a “prison flower,” and determined the death of the hero. Such a defeat is at the same time a victory: life doomed Mtsyri to eternal slavery, humility, loneliness, but he managed to know freedom, experience the happiness of struggle and the joy of merging with the world. Therefore, his death, despite all the tragedy, makes us proud of Mtsyri and hatred of the conditions that deprive him of happiness.

Characteristics plan
1. Mtsyri’s life story.
2. Reasons for fleeing.
3. Relationships with monks.
4. Attitude to the world.
5. The pattern of fate. Characteristics of Mtsyri Mtsyri was a young man who was taken with him by a Russian general in one of the villages during the Caucasian War. He was about six years old then. On the way, he fell ill and refused food. Then the general left him in the monastery. Once upon a time a Russian general
I drove from the mountains to Tiflis;
He was carrying a prisoner's child.
He fell ill and couldn’t bear it
Labors of a long journey;
He seemed to be about six years old...
...He signly rejected food
And he died quietly, proudly.
Out of pity one monk
He looked after the sick man... The boy grew up in a monastery, but on the eve of taking monastic vows, he suddenly fled during a severe thunderstorm. They found him three days later, dying, not far from the monastery. It was with great difficulty that we managed to get him to talk. ...Already wanted to in the prime of life
Take a monastic vow
Suddenly one day he disappeared
Autumn night.
Dark forest
Stretched around the mountains.
Three days all the searches on it
They were in vain, but then
They found him unconscious in the steppe...
He did not answer the interrogation...
...Then a monk came to him
With exhortation and supplication;
And, having proudly listened, the patient
I stood up, gathered the rest of my strength,
And he talked like that for a long time... Speaking about the reasons for the flight, Mtsyri spoke about his young life, which was almost entirely spent in the monastery and all this time he perceived it as captivity. He did not want to completely turn it into the life of a monk: I lived little, and lived in captivity. He sought to know a free life, “Where rocks hide in the clouds, / Where people are free like eagles.” He does not at all repent of his action; on the contrary, he regrets that he managed to experience so little in these three days. The monks could not give him the human warmth and participation that he had so longed for and craved so much all these years. I couldn't tell anyone
The sacred words "father" and "mother".
I've seen others
Fatherland, home, friends, relatives,
But I didn’t find it at home
Not only sweet souls - graves! He considered himself a “slave and orphan” and reproached the monk for the fact that, willingly or unwillingly, the monks deprived him of a full life. You can leave the world, having experienced it and become tired of it, but he had none of this. I'm young, young...
Did you know
Dreams of wild youth?
What kind of need? You lived, old man!
There is something in the world for you to forget,
You lived, I could also live! Mtsyri, having broken free, completely trusted the world that surrounded him, began to perceive it completely differently than in the monastery. Now he felt like an organic part of it, included in the general whirlpool of events. He didn't even feel human. ...I myself, like an animal, was alien to people
And he crawled and hid like a snake.
And all nature's voices
They merged here; didn't sound
In the solemn hour of praise
Only a man's proud voice.
...I hung above the depths,
But free youth is strong,
And death seemed not scary! New impressions awakened in him a long-forgotten memory of the past, of childhood. He remembered his village, his relatives, and vaguely understood the direction in which he needed to move.
He now has a goal. “And I remembered my father’s house...” But he avoided people and did not want their help. His unity with nature would be disrupted by human intervention; he completely surrendered to fate, even in its unfavorable manifestations. But believe me, human help
I didn't want...
I was a stranger
For them forever, like a beast of the steppe;
And if only for a minute cry
He cheated on me - I swear, old man,
I would tear out my weak tongue. The fight with the leopard forced Mtsyri to strain all his remaining strength, and he also showed all the changeability of wild nature. The wounded Mtsyri realized that his action was clearly doomed to failure: he compared himself to a prison flower caught in the sun's rays. But what?
The dawn has barely risen,
The scorching ray burned her
A well-mannered flower in prison... But he does not at all repent of his action; If there is anything that causes him regret, it is that he did not make it to his homeland. He asks to be buried in a place from where the peaks of the Caucasus are visible.
Mtsyri's fate is natural, because he rushed into the big world without any preparation, recognizing it as he wandered. He protested against the oppression of the individual, but his protest was chaotic, and his goals were illusory and ill-conceived. He tried to lean on the wild nature within himself, but the wild nature is dark and deadly, full of the game of blind chance. The tragedy of Mtsyri is a tragedy of spontaneous protest, a clear example for anyone who tries to rebel against the existing state of affairs without a clear understanding of why he is doing this. A clear understanding and awareness of one’s actions is a human privilege.

(378 words)

The poem “Mtsyri” was written by Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov in 1839. This work is rightfully considered an example of Russian romantic poetry, and it has an interesting backstory. The author often visited the Caucasus, and it is believed that the plot of the book was based on events that actually happened to the writer. Traveling along the Georgian Military Road, he came across the main cathedral of Georgia - Mtskheta and met a lonely monk who told him the story of his life, and later a grateful listener described it in poetry.

The story of Mtsyri is a story about a lonely mountaineer boy who, by chance, found himself a student in a temple monastery (from the Georgian language “mtsyri” is translated as “novice”, “non-serving monk”). During his short life, the captive learned the local language, traditions and got used to living in captivity, but he was never able to understand who he really is, because family plays a big role in the formation of personality, which, unfortunately, he never has was.

The image of Mtsyri is, first of all, the image of a lonely person in search of the meaning of life. After spending a long time in the monastery, he finally decides to get out into the wild, experience new feelings, and experience freedom. After living for three days outside the monastery, the young man remembers his native language, the faces of his relatives: his father, sister and brother. There is hope in his heart that he will be able to find his father’s house, but this dream is not destined to come true. The prisoner dies after a fight with a tiger. Before death, confessing to the priest, the fugitive pours out his soul, sheds the light of truth on his fate. He dies with the thought that he remained a slave, a prisoner and was unable to see the place where he was born.

Of course, Mtsyri could be devoted to his country, family, home, he could have taken place as a person, but his wanderings are a metaphor for the life of each of us. For three days, the prisoner experienced the main feelings and impressions: struggle, passion, admiration for nature and disappointment in himself and the world. We, too, experience all this and yearn for an unattainable ideal. In a religious sense it is Eden, in a practical sense it is the highest level of consumption, in a personal sense it is happiness, in a creative sense it is recognition, etc. Therefore, the drama of the freedom-loving young man is the story of the ups and downs of each of us; this image reflects the face of humanity.

In his dying confession, he says that he wants to be buried in the far corner of the monastery garden, so that the view from his grave overlooks the hero’s native mountains. Mtsyri is a romantic hero, and despite the fact that in the last scene we see him broken, he dies with the thought that perhaps someday he will meet his family and friends.