The role of inserted episodes in Herzen's novel. 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 a description full of irony of how a young man named Dmitry Krutsifersky was hired as a teacher in the house of General Negrov (who has a daughter Lyubonka living with his 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 completely ironic, and the narrator's ironic comments on the actions of the heroes look like a palliative replacement for artistic prosaic psychologism - indeed, this is a purely external method of 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 tyrant, a martinet and a serf owner (the "speaking" surname additionally reveals his "plantation" essence), and his wife is unnatural, insincere, plays at romanticism and, pretending to be "motherhood", is inclined to flirt with boys.

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

This narrator, who passes the narrative through the prism of his worldview tinged with irony, is now busily laconic, now garrulous and goes into detail, close to being an unannounced protagonist, noticeably resembles the lyrical hero of works of poetry.

About the laconic ending of the novel, the researcher wrote: “The concentrated conciseness 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 in the arts,” and whose synthetic talent, in addition to a number of others, also contained a lyrical component. It is interesting that the novels of prose writers as such rarely satisfied him. Herzen spoke out about his dislike for Goncharov and Dostoevsky, and did not immediately accept Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons. At L.N. He placed the autobiographical “Childhood” above Tolstoy’s “War and Peace.” It is not difficult to see a connection here with the peculiarities of his own creativity (it was in works “about himself”, about his own soul and its movements that Herzen was strong).

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

The composition of the novel "Who is to Blame?" highly original. Only the first chapter of the first part has the actual romantic form of exposition and the beginning of the action - “A retired general and teacher, deciding on the place.” Herzen wanted to compose a novel from this kind of individual biographies, where “in the footnotes one can say that so-and-so married so-and-so.”

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

But Herzen was also interested in the problem of moral self-awareness of the individual. Among Herzen’s heroes 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 Negros, the owner of the “white slaves”, a serf owner and a despot due to the circumstances of his life, is depicted by him as a man in whom “life has crushed more than one opportunity.”

Herzen called history a “ladder of ascension.” This thought meant, first of all, the spiritual elevation of the individual above the living conditions of a certain environment. In the novel, a person declares himself only when he is separated from his environment.

The first step of this “ladder” is entered by Krutsifersky, a dreamer and romantic, confident that there is nothing accidental in life. He helps Lyuba, Negrov’s daughter, get up, but she rises a step higher and now sees more than he does; Krutsifersky, 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, “random” and at the same time “irresistible,” did not change anything in their lives, but only increased the severity of reality and exacerbated the feeling of loneliness. Their life was unchanged. Lyuba was the first to feel this; it seemed to her that she and Krutsifersky were lost among the silent expanses. Herzen deploys an apt metaphor in relation to Beltov, deriving it from the folk proverb “Alone in the field is not a warrior”: “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 living man did not respond... 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 their minds.” With all their "brilliant ideals" they are forced to live "in a gray light." And there are notes of despair here, since Beltov’s fate is the fate of one of the galaxy of “superfluous people”, the heir of Chatsky, Onegin and Pechorin. Nothing saved Beltov from this “millions of torments,” from the bitter awareness that the light was stronger than his ideas and aspirations, that his lonely voice was being lost. This is where the feeling of depression and boredom arises.

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, found “the most imperfect melancholy” everywhere, “dying of boredom.” “On his native shore” he could not find a worthy business for himself.

But Herzen spoke not only about external obstacles, 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. It is not for nothing that the search for an answer to Herzen’s 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.

(Natural school is the conventional name for the initial stage of 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, Dahl, Chernyshevsky were considered to be the “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 exposition and the beginning of the action - “A retired general and teacher, deciding on the place.” This is followed by: “Biography of Their Excellencies” and “Biography of Dmitry Yakovlevich Krutsifersky”. Chapter “ Living life” is a chapter from the correct narrative form, but it is followed by “ Biography of Vladimir Beltov" Herzen wanted to compose a novel from this kind of individual biographies, where “in the footnotes one can say that so-and-so married so-and-so.” “For me, a 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,” writes Herzen, “a passport on which visas remain.” At visible fragmentation of the narrative, when the story from the author is replaced by letters from the 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 guilty, should be handed over to the will of God, and the case, having been considered unresolved, should be handed over to the archives. Protocol". But he did not write a protocol, but a novel in which investigated not “a case, but a 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. The critic 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 lies in whose networks we have been entangled since childhood.”

But Herzen occupied the problem of moral self-awareness and personality. Among Herzen's heroes there are no villains who would consciously and deliberately do evil to their neighbors . His heroes are children of the century, no better and no worse than others; rather, even better than many, and some of them contain the promise of amazing abilities and opportunities. Even General Negros, the owner of “white slaves”, a serf owner and a despot due to the circumstances of his life, is depicted as a man in whom “life has crushed more than one opportunity.” Herzen's thought was social in essence; he studied the psychology of his time and saw a direct connection between a person's character and his environment. Herzen called history a “ladder of ascension”" This idea meant first of all spiritual elevation of the individual above the living conditions 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 consumed 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 their minds.” And it lies in the fact that with all their brilliant ideals they were forced to live in a gray world, which is why their thoughts were seething “in empty action.” Even genius does not save Beltov from this “millions of torments,” from the consciousness that the gray light is stronger than his brilliant ideals, if his lonely voice is lost among the silence of the steppe. This is where it comes from feeling depressed and bored:“Steppe - go wherever you want, in all directions - free will, but you won’t get anywhere...”

“Who is guilty?" - a question that did not give a clear answer. It is not without reason that the search for an answer to Herzen’s question occupied the most prominent Russian thinkers - from Chernyshevsky and Nekrasov to Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. 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 chancellery, found “utter melancholy” everywhere, “dying of boredom.” “On his native shore” he could not find a worthy business for himself. But slavery also established itself “on the other side.” On the ruins of the revolution of 1848, the triumphant bourgeois created an empire of property owners, discarding good dreams of fraternity, equality and justice. And again a “most perfect emptiness” formed, where thought died of boredom. And Herzen, as predicted by his novel “Who is to Blame?”, like Beltov, became “a wanderer around 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 fatigue and disappointment. Like Beltov, Herzen “made and lived through the abyss.” But everything he experienced belonged to history. That is why his thoughts and memories are so significant. What Beltov was tormented by as a mystery became for Herzen modern experience and insightful knowledge. Again the same question arose before him with which it all began: “Who is to blame?”

Beltov's image

Beltov’s image contains a lot of unclear, seemingly contradictory, sometimes given only by hints. This was reflected both by Herzen’s creative subjectivity, who created the character of the hero according to the fresh traces of his own ideological development, and even more so by the censorship conditions that did not allow him to speak directly about many things. This also determined the incorrect understanding of Beltov’s character on Belinsky’s part. In the “backstory” of the hero, the critic only drew attention to the fact that Beltov has “a lot of intelligence”, that his “nature” is spoiled by “false upbringing”, “wealth”, and therefore he does not have “a special vocation for any kind of activity “that he was “condemned to languish ... with the anguish of 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 as some kind of higher, genius nature, for whose activity reality does not represent a worthy field...”. “This is no longer Beltov, but something like Pechorin.” The last opinion is correct: 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 young Beltov. Already in his youth, Beltov was not just a spoiled gentleman. And then there were more romantic impulses in him than “melancholy of inaction.” As for his transition to the skepticism of a mature understanding of life, this transition looks sudden because the author could not talk about it in detail. This change is not taking place at the discretion of the author, and as a result of the “power of circumstances" This time Herzen's hero is a Russian nobleman and even the son of a serf peasant woman. Unlike Chatsky, Onegin and Pechorin, who received the capital's, secular-aristocratic education, Beltov, like Turgenev’s heroes (Lezhnev, Lavretsky, etc.), was brought up in the estate, and from there I got into the circle of students at Moscow University. A characteristic feature of Beltov’s ideological development is his early emergence pursuit of romantic ideals. Drawing on his own experience, Herzen connects these aspirations with reading Plutarch and Schiller, with strong impressions of revolutionary movements in the West.

… Beltov's development took place in the context of Russian social life in the early 1830s. Herzen speaks briefly and deliberately vaguely about a “friendly circle of five or six young men,” but emphasizes that the ideas of this circle were “alien to the environment” and that “the young people drew colossal plans for themselves,” which were far from being realized. In this, Beltov differs sharply from Pechorin. Pechorin, created by temperament for active social struggle, longs for “storms and battles,” but exchanges his strength in random everyday clashes. Beltov, brought up more abstractly, draws up “colossal plans” for himself, but wastes his time in carrying out private practical tasks, which he always undertakes to solve alone, with “desperate courage of thought.” This is, first of all, Beltov’s service in department e, which the aristocrat Pechorin would never agree to. Beltov undoubtedly set himself a “colossal” and naively romantic task: alone to fight injustice and overcome it. No wonder the officials were indignant at the fact that he “runs around with all sorts of rubbish, gets excited, like his own father... they are cutting him down, but he saves”... No wonder the minister himself vainly made him “gentle” suggestions, and then simply thrown out of service for obstinacy. Such is the passion 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 his painting classes, the young man’s civic and romantic interests were reflected. 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 objected well to Krupov, who explained his idleness by wealth, that there are “quite strong incentives to work” and “besides hunger,” at least “the desire to speak out.” Pechorin would not have said that. This is the self-assessment of "a 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 leaving 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, perhaps bleak and sad, but true.” Calling Beltov’s new views “bleak” but “true,” Herzen undoubtedly has in mind the ideological crisis that the most advanced people in Russia experienced in the early 40s during the transition from philosophical idealism to materialism. ..... This is exactly 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 modern issues.” It is interesting, however, that Herzen, not content with this, scattered hints in the novel about some of Beltov’s activities abroad, which apparently led him to new views and moods. You can try to bring these hints into one whole, 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, unperturbed image of reality. Herzen the artist constantly intrudes into the narrative. Before us is not a dispassionate observer, but a lawyer and a prosecutor in one and the same person, for if the writer actively defends and justifies some characters, he exposes and condemns others, without hiding his subjective biases. 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 emphasized even 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 the author's journalistic digressions. In general, the entire literary text is connected 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 overall course of the narrative. It is often imbued with irony - sometimes soft and good-natured, sometimes striking and 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 attention-grabbing metaphors and comparisons into the text. This creates an idea of the author as an excellent stylist and encyclopedic educated person, with a sharp mind and observation, capable of capturing the most diverse shades of the reality he depicts - funny and touching, tragic and insulting to 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 develop 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 impressions abroad. A deep analysis of the uniqueness of Herzen the writer is contained in Belinsky’s article “A Look at Russian Literature of 1847.” The main strength of the author of the novel “Who is to Blame?” the critic saw in the power of thought. “With Iskander (the pseudonym of Alexander Herzen), Belinsky wrote, his thought is always ahead, he knows in advance what he is writing and why; he depicts with amazing fidelity the scene of reality only in order to say his word about it, to carry out judgment.” As the critic deeply notes, “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?"