The role of inserted episodes of the novel a Herzen. Problems of the novel by A.I.

If we turn to Belinsky's opinion that "Who is to blame?" not a novel as such, but a “series of biographies”, then in this work, indeed, after an ironic description of how a young man named Dmitry Krucifersky was hired as a teacher in the house of General Negrov (who has a daughter Lyubonka living with a maid), chapters follow "Biography of Their Excellencies" and "Biography of Dmitry Yakovlevich". The narrator dominates everything: everything described is emphatically seen through his eyes.

The biography of the general and the general's wife is thoroughly ironic, and the narrator's ironic comments on the actions of the heroes look like a palliative replacement for artistic and prosaic psychologism - indeed, this is a purely external device for explaining to the reader how he should understand the heroes. The narrator's ironic remarks let the reader know, for example, that the general is a petty tyrant, a martinet and a serf-owner (the "speaking" surname additionally reveals his "planter" essence), and his wife is unnatural, insincere, plays romanticism and, portraying "motherhood", tends to flirt with boys.

After a condensed (in the form of a cursory retelling of events) story of Krucifersky’s marriage to Lyubonka, a detailed biography follows again - this time Beltov, who, in accordance with the literary behavioral stereotype of the “extra person” (Onegin, Pechorin, etc.), will destroy the unpretentious happiness of this young family, and even provoke the physical death of the heroes (in the briefly outlined finale, after the disappearance of Beltov from the city, Lyubonka, at the behest of the author, soon becomes fatally ill, and the morally crushed Dmitry “prays to God and drinks”).

This narrator, who passes the story through the prism of his worldview colored with irony, is now busily laconic, now talkative and goes into details, the narrator, who is close to being the unannounced protagonist, noticeably resembles the lyrical hero of works of poetry.

About the laconic finale of the novel, the researcher wrote: “The concentrated brevity of the denouement” is “a device as heretical as the sad disappearance of Pechorin, broken by life, to the East.”

Well, Lermontov's great novel is the poet's prose. She was internally close to Herzen, "who did not find a place for himself in the arts", in whose synthetic talent, in addition to a number of others, there was also a lyrical component. Interestingly, the novels of prose writers as such rarely satisfied him. Herzen spoke out about his dislike for Goncharov and Dostoevsky, did not immediately accept Turgenev's Fathers and Sons. L.N. He placed Tolstoy above "War and Peace" autobiographical "Childhood". It is not difficult to see here a connection with the peculiarities of his own work (it was in the works “about himself”, about his own soul and its movements that Herzen was strong).

His book "Who is to blame?" Herzen called deception in two parts. But he also called it a story: "Who is to blame?" was the first story that I wrote. Rather, it was a novel in several stories, having an internal connection, consistency and unity.

The composition of the novel "Who is to blame?" eminently original. Only the first chapter of the first part has a properly romantic form of exposition and the plot of the action - "A retired general and a teacher, determined to the place." Herzen wanted to compose a novel from this kind of separate biographies, where "in footnotes it can be said that such and such married such and such."

But he did not write a "protocol", but a novel in which he explored the law of modern reality. That is why the question in the title resonated with such force in the hearts of his contemporaries. Critic A.A. Grigoriev formulates the main problem of the novel in this way: "It is not we who are to blame, but the lie whose nets have entangled us since childhood."

But Herzen was also occupied with the problem of the moral self-consciousness of the individual. Among the heroes of Herzen there are no "villains" who would deliberately do evil, his heroes are the children of the century, no better and no worse than others. Even General Negro, the owner of "white slaves", a feudal lord and a despot by the circumstances of his life, is depicted by him as a man in whom "life has crushed more than one possibility."

Herzen called history "the ladder of ascent." This thought meant, first of all, the spiritual rise of the individual above the conditions of life in a certain environment. In the novel, a personality only makes itself known when it is separated from its environment.

Krucifersky, a dreamer and romantic, enters the first rung of this "ladder", confident that there is nothing accidental in life. He helps Lyuba, Negro's daughter, to rise, but she rises a step higher and now sees more than he does; Krucifersky, timid and timid, can no longer take a single step forward. She raises her head and, seeing Beltov there, gives him her hand.

But the fact of the matter is that this meeting, "accidental" and at the same time "irresistible", did not change anything in their lives, but only increased the severity of reality, exacerbated the feeling of loneliness. Their life was unchanged. Lyuba was the first to feel this, it seemed to her that she, along with Krucifersky, was lost among the silent expanses. Herzen unfolds a well-aimed metaphor in relation to Beltov, deriving it from the folk proverb “One is not a warrior in the field”: “I am like a hero of folk tales ... I walked along all the crossroads and shouted:“ Is there a man alive in the field? ”But the man did not respond alive ... My misfortune! .. And one in the field is not a warrior ... I left the field ... ".

"Who is guilty?" - intellectual novel; his heroes are thinking people, but they have their own "woe from the mind." With all their "brilliant ideals" they are forced to live "in a gray light." And there are notes of despair here, since the fate of Beltov is the fate of one of the galaxy of "superfluous people", the heir of Chatsky, Onegin and Pechorin. Nothing saved Beltov from this "million of torments", from the bitter realization that the light is stronger than his ideas and aspirations, that his lonely voice is being lost. Hence the feeling of depression and boredom.

The novel predicted the future. It was in many ways a prophetic book. Beltov, just like Herzen, not only in the provincial city, among officials, but also in the capital's chancellery, everywhere found "imperfect melancholy", "died of boredom." "On his native shore" he could not find a worthy business for himself.

But Herzen spoke not only about external barriers, but also about the internal weakness of a person brought up in conditions of slavery. “Who is to blame is a question that did not give an unambiguous answer. No wonder the search for an answer to the Herzen question occupied the most prominent Russian thinkers - from Chernyshevsky and Nekrasov to Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.

Alexander Ivanovich Herzen (March 25 (April 6), 1812, Moscow - January 9 (21), 1870, Paris) - Russian publicist, writer, philosopher, teacher, one of the most prominent critics of the feudal Russian Empire.

(The natural school is the conventional name for the initial stage in the development of critical realism in Russian literature of the 1840s, which arose under the influence of the work of Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol. Turgenev and Dostoevsky, Grigorovich, Herzen, Goncharov, Nekrasov, Panaev, Dal, Chernyshevsky were considered to be a "natural school" , Saltykov-Shchedrin and others)

Issues

The composition of the novel “Who is to blame?” very original. Only the first chapter of the first part has the actual romantic form of the exposition and the plot of the action - “A retired general and a teacher, determined to the place”. Then follow: "Biography of their Excellencies" and "Biography of Dmitry Yakovlevich Krucifersky." Chapter “ Life” is a chapter from the regular narrative form, but is followed by “ Biography of Vladimir Beltov". Herzen wanted to compose a novel from this kind of separate biographies, where "in footnotes it can be said that such and such married such and such." “For me, the story is a frame,” said Herzen. He painted mostly portraits, he was most interested in faces and biographies. “A person is a track record in which everything is noted,” Herzen writes, “a passport on which visas remain.” At visible fragmentary narrative, when the story from the author is replaced by letters of heroes, excerpts from the diary, biographical digressions, Herzen's novel is strictly consistent.

He saw his task not in resolving the issue, but in identifying it correctly. Therefore, he chose a protocol epigraph: “And this case, due to the non-discovery of the perpetrators, to betray the will of God, considering the matter unresolved, to hand it over to the archive. Protocol". But he did not write a protocol, but a novel in which investigated not “a case, but the law of modern reality". That is why the question posed in the title of the book resonated with such force in the hearts of his contemporaries. Criticism saw the main idea of the novel in the fact that the problem of the century receives from Herzen not a personal, but a general meaning: “It is not we who are to blame, but the lie whose nets have entangled us since childhood.”

But Herzen occupied the problem of moral self-consciousness and personality. Among the heroes of Herzen there are no villains who would consciously and deliberately do evil to their neighbors. . His heroes are children of the century, no better or worse than others; rather, even better than many, and in some of them there are pledges of amazing abilities and opportunities. Even General Negro, the owner of "white slaves", a serf-owner and a despot by the circumstances of his life, is depicted as a person in whom "life has crushed more than one opportunity." Herzen's thought was essentially social; he studied the psychology of his time and saw a direct connection between a person's character and his environment. Herzen called history "the ladder of ascent". This idea was primarily spiritual elevation of the individual above the conditions of life of a certain environment. So, in his novel “Who is to blame?” only there and then the personality declares itself when it separates from its environment; otherwise it is swallowed up by the emptiness of slavery and despotism.

“Who is guilty?" - an intellectual novel. His heroes are thinking people, but they have their own "woe from the mind." And it consists in the fact that, with all their brilliant ideals, they were forced to live in a gray light, which is why their thoughts were seething "in empty action." Even genius does not save Beltov from this "million torments", from the realization that the gray light is stronger than his brilliant ideals, if his lonely voice is lost among the silence of the steppe. From here arises feelings of depression and boredom:“Steppe - go wherever you want, in all directions - free will, only you won’t get anywhere ...”

“Who is guilty?" - a question that did not give a clear answer. It is not for nothing that the most prominent Russian thinkers, from Chernyshevsky and Nekrasov to Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, were looking for an answer to the Herzen question. The novel “Who is to blame?” predicted the future. It was a prophetic book. Beltov, like Herzen, not only in the provincial city, among officials, but also in the capital's office - everywhere he found "the most perfect melancholy", "died of boredom." “On his native shore” he could not find a worthy job for himself. But even “on the other side” slavery was established. On the ruins of the revolution of 1848, the triumphant bourgeois created an empire of proprietors, discarding good dreams of brotherhood, equality and justice. And again the “most perfect emptiness” was formed, where the thought was dying of boredom. And Herzen, as his novel “Who is to blame?” predicted, like Beltov, became “a wanderer in Europe, a stranger at home, a stranger in a foreign land”. He did not renounce either the revolution or socialism. But he was overcome by weariness and disappointment. Like Beltov, Herzen "made and lived through the abyss." But everything they experienced belonged to history. That is why his thoughts and memories are so significant. What Beltov tormented like a riddle became Herzen's modern experience and penetrating knowledge. Again the same question that started it all arose before him: “Who is to blame?”

Beltov's image

The image of Beltov contains a lot of obscure, seemingly contradictory, sometimes given only hints. This was also reflected in the creative subjectivity of Herzen, who created the character of the hero following the fresh traces of his own ideological development, and even more so in the censorship conditions that did not allow him to talk about many things directly. This also determined Belinsky's misunderstanding of Beltov's character. In the "prehistory" of the hero, the critic only drew attention to the fact that Beltov "has a lot of mind", that his "nature" is spoiled by "false education", "wealth", and therefore he does not have "a special vocation for any kind of activity ", that he was "condemned to languish ... with longing for inaction." In the main part of the novel, the character of the hero, according to the critic, is “arbitrarily changed by the author”, and Beltov “suddenly appears before us, some kind of higher, brilliant nature, for whose activity reality does not present a worthy field ...”. “This is no longer Beltov, but something like Pechorin.” The latter opinion is true: the matured Beltov has something in common with Pechorin. But this is not their "genius", and their tragic relationship with society. However, Belinsky was mistaken in assessing the character of the young Beltov. Already in his youth, Beltov was not just a spoiled barich. And then there were more romantic impulses in him than "longing for inaction." As for his transition to the skepticism of a mature understanding of life, this transition looks sudden because the author could not tell about it in detail. This turning point is not made by the author's will, and as a result of "the power of circumstances". This time Herzen's hero is a Russian nobleman and even the son of a peasant serf. Unlike Chatsky, Onegin and Pechorin, who received the capital, secular-aristocratic upbringing, Beltov, like the heroes of Turgenev (Lezhnev, Lavretsky, etc.), was brought up in the estate, and from there he got into the circle of students of Moscow University. A characteristic feature of Beltov's ideological development is his early pursuit of romantic ideals. Based on his own experience, Herzen connects these aspirations with reading Plutarch and Schiller, with strong impressions of the revolutionary movements in the West.

… Beltov's development took place in the atmosphere of Russian public life in the early 1830s. Briefly and deliberately vaguely, Herzen speaks of a “friendly circle of five or six young men,” but at the same time emphasizes that the ideas of this circle were “alien to the environment” and that “young people drew colossal plans for themselves” that were far from being realized. In this, Beltov differs sharply from Pechorin. Pechorin, created by temperament for an active social struggle, longs for "storms and battles", but exchanges his strength in random everyday clashes. Beltov, brought up more abstractly, draws "colossal plans" for himself, but exchanges himself in the performance of private practical tasks, which he always undertakes to solve alone, "with desperate courage of thought." Such is, first of all, Beltov's service in department e, on which the aristocrat Pechorin would never go. Beltov undoubtedly set himself a "colossal" and naively romantic task: alone to fight injustice and overcome it. It was not for nothing that the officials were indignant at the fact that he “rushes around with all sorts of rubbish, gets excited, like his own father ... they cut him, but he saves” ... No wonder the minister himself vainly made him “gentle” suggestions, and then simply thrown out of service for obstinacy. It's the same hobby Beltova medicine. And here he would like to benefit people, trying to solve difficult scientific problems with "desperate courage of thought", and was defeated. Even in painting, the young man's civic-romantic interests affected. Summing up the failures of his hero in the first part of the novel, asking a “sophisticated question” about their causes, Herzen correctly believes that the answer must be sought not in the “mental structure of a person”, but, as he deliberately vaguely says, “in the atmosphere, in the environment, in influences and contacts ... ". Beltov himself later retorted well to Krupov, who explained his trinket by wealth, that there are "quite strong motives for work" and "besides hunger", at least "the desire to speak out." Pechorin would not say so. It's a self-assessment of "the man of the 1840s". And in this respect, Beltov can be compared not with Pechorin, but with Rudin. Beltov realized the reason for his failures only during his wanderings in the West. The author emphasizes many times that before going abroad, his hero, due to his romantic upbringing, "did not understand reality." Now he understood something about her. In his own words, he "lost his youthful beliefs" and "acquired a sober look, maybe bleak and sad, but true." Calling Beltov's new views "dreary" but "true," Herzen undoubtedly has in mind the ideological crisis experienced in the early 1940s by the most advanced people in Russia during the transition from philosophical idealism to materialism. ….. This is what Herzen emphasizes in Beltov, saying that Beltov “lived a lot in thought”, that he now has “bold, sharp thinking” and even “a terrible breadth of understanding”, that he is internally open to “all contemporary issues”. It is interesting, however, that Herzen, not content with this, scattered in the novel allusions to some activity of Beltov abroad, which apparently led him to new views and moods. One can try to bring these allusions together, at least hypothetically.

Composition

Both in theory and in practice, Herzen consistently and purposefully brought journalism and fiction closer together. He is infinitely far from a calm, unflappable portrayal of reality. Herzen the artist constantly intrudes into the narrative. Before us is not a dispassionate observer, but a lawyer and prosecutor in one and the same person, because if the writer actively defends and justifies some actors, then he exposes and condemns others, without hiding his subjective predilections. The author's consciousness in the novel is expressed directly and openly.

The first part of the novel consists mainly of detailed biographies of the characters, which is even emphasized by the title of individual sections: “Biographies of Their Excellencies”, “Biography of Dmitry Yakovlevich”. In the second part, a more consistent plot narrative unfolds with numerous inserted episodes and author's journalistic digressions. In general, the entire literary text is bound by the unity of the author's idea and is built primarily on the basis of a clear and consistent development of the author's thought, which has become the most important structure-forming and style-forming factor. The author's speech occupies a central place in the general course of the narrative. It is often imbued with irony - sometimes soft and good-natured, sometimes smashing, scourging. At the same time, Herzen brilliantly uses the most diverse styles of the Russian language, boldly combining forms of vernacular with scientific terminology, generously introducing literary quotations and foreign words, neologisms, unexpected and therefore immediately striking metaphors and comparisons into the text. This creates an idea of the author as a great stylist and an encyclopedically educated person with a sharp mind and powers of observation, capable of capturing the most diverse shades of reality depicted by him - funny and touching, tragic and insulting human dignity.

Herzen's novel is distinguished by its wide coverage of life in time and space. The biographies of the heroes allowed him to unfold the narrative over a large time range, and Beltov's trips made it possible to describe the noble estate, provincial cities, Moscow, St. Petersburg, and talk about his foreign impressions. A deep analysis of the originality of Herzen the writer is contained in Belinsky's article "A Look at Russian Literature in 1847". The main strength of the author of the novel "Who is to blame?" the critic saw in the power of thought. “Iskander (Alexander Herzen's pseudonym), wrote Belinsky, “thought is always ahead, he knows in advance what and why he writes; he depicts with amazing fidelity the scene of reality only in order to say his word about it, to pronounce judgment. According to the critic's profound remark, "such talents are as natural as purely artistic talents." Belinsky called Herzen "primarily a poet of humanity", in this he saw the pathos of the writer's work, the most important social and literary significance of the novel "Who is to blame?". The traditions of Herzen's intellectual novel were picked up and developed by Chernyshevsky, as indicated by the direct roll-call of the titles: "Who is to blame?" - "What to do?"