The theme of the people and the problem of national character has become one of the main ones in Russian literature since the times of Griboedov with his comedy “Woe from Wit” and Pushkin, who in the novels “The Captain’s Daughter” and “Dubrovsky”, in the lyrics and “Eugene Onegin” raises the question of what constitutes the basis of the Russian national character, how noble culture and folk culture relate.

Gogol’s concept of the Russian person is complex and multifaceted. In the poem " Dead Souls“It consists of two layers: the ideal, where the people are heroes, brave and strong

People, and in reality, where the peasants turn out to be no better than their owners, the landowners.

Nekrasov’s approach to the theme of the people is very different from its presentation in the works of his predecessors. The poet expressed in his work the ideals of the democratic movement of Russia in the mid-nineteenth century, and therefore his concept of the people is distinguished by its harmony and accuracy: it is entirely subordinate to its social and political positions.

One of the striking features of Nekrasov’s work is that the people appear in it not as some kind of generalization, but as many living people with their own destinies, characters and concerns. All of Nekrasov’s works are densely “populated”, even their titles speak of this: “Grandfather”, “Schoolboy”, “Mother”, “Orina, the Soldier’s Mother”, “Kalistrat”, “Peasant Children”, “Russian Women”, “Song” Eremushka." All of Nekrasov’s heroes, even those for whom it is now difficult to find real prototypes, are very specific and alive. The poet loves some of them with all his heart, sympathizes with them, and hates others.

Already in Nekrasov’s early work, the world was divided into two camps:

Two camps, as before, in God's world;

Slaves in one, rulers in the other.

Many of Nekrasov’s poems represent a kind of “confrontation” between the strong and the weak, the oppressed and the oppressors. For example, in the poem “Ballet” Nekrasov, promising not to write satire, depicts luxurious boxes, the “diamond row”, and with a few strokes sketches portraits of their regulars:

I will not touch any military ranks,

Not in the service of the winged god

The civil aces sat down on their feet.

A starched dandy and a dandy,

(That is, the merchant is a reveler and a spendthrift)

And a mouse stallion (so Gogol

Calls the young elders)

Recorded supplier of feuilletons,

Officers of the Guards regiments

And the impersonal bastard of salons -

I am ready to pass everyone by in silence!

And right there, before the curtain had even fallen on the stage where the French actress dances the trepak, the reader is confronted with scenes of village recruitment. “Snowy - cold - haze and fog,” and gloomy trains of peasant carts pull by.

It cannot be said that the social contrast in the description of the paintings folk life was Nekrasov's discovery. Even in Pushkin’s “Village,” the harmonious landscape of rural nature is intended to emphasize the disharmony and cruelty of human society, where oppression and serfdom exist. In Nekrasov, the social contrast has more definite features: these are rich slackers and powerless people, who through their labor create all the blessings of life that the masters enjoy.

For example, in the poem “Hound Hunt,” the traditional fun of the nobles is presented from two points of view: the master, for whom it is joy and pleasure, and the peasant, who is unable to share the fun of the masters, because for him their hunt often turns into trampled fields, bullied cattle, and so on. This further complicates his life, which is already full of hardships.

Among such “confrontations” of the oppressed and oppressors, a special place is occupied by the poem “ Railway", in which, according to K.I. Chukovsky, “precisely those most typical features of his (Nekrasov’s) talent are concentrated, which together form the only Nekrasov style in world literature.”

In this poem, the ghosts of the peasants who died during the construction of the railway stand as an eternal reproach to passing passengers:

Chu! Menacing exclamations were heard!

Stomping and gnashing of teeth;

A shadow ran across the frosty glass.

What's there? Crowd of the dead!

Such works were perceived by censors as a violation of the official theory of social harmony, and by democratic layers as a call for immediate revolution. Of course, the author’s position is not so straightforward, but the fact that his poetry was very effective is confirmed by the testimony of his contemporaries. So, according to the recollections of one of the students of the military gymnasium, after reading the poem “The Railway,” his friend said: “Oh, I wish I could take a gun and go fight for the Russian people.”

Nekrasov's poetry demanded certain actions from the reader. These are “poems - calls, poems - commandments, poems - commands,” at least this is how they were perceived by the poet’s contemporaries. Indeed, Nekrasov directly addresses young people in them:

Bless the work of the people

And learn to respect a man!

In the same way he calls on the poet:

You may not be a poet

But you have to be a citizen.

Nekrasov even addresses those who do not care at all about the people and their problems:

Wake up! There is also pleasure:

Turn them back! Their salvation lies in you!

With all his sympathy for the troubles of the people and his kind attitude towards them, the poet does not at all idealize the people, but accuses them of long-suffering and humility. One of the most striking embodiments of this accusation can be called the poem “The Forgotten Village.” Describing the endless troubles of the peasants, Nekrasov each time cites the answer of the peasants, which has become a saying: “When the master comes, the master will judge us.” In this description of the patriarchal faith of the peasants in the good master, the good king, notes of irony slip through. This reflects the position of Russian Social Democracy, to which the poet belonged.

The accusation of long-suffering is also heard in the poem “The Railway”. But in it, perhaps, the most striking lines are devoted to something else: the topic of people's labor. Here a genuine hymn to the peasant worker is created. It is not for nothing that the poem is constructed in the form of an argument with the general, who claims that the road was built by Count Kleinmichel. This was the official opinion - it is reflected in the epigraph to the poem. Its main text contains a detailed refutation of this position. The poet shows that such a grandiose work is “not up to one person.” He glorifies the creative work of the people and, turning to the younger generation, says: “This noble habit of work / It wouldn’t be a bad thing for us to adopt with you.”

But the author is not inclined to harbor illusions that any positive changes can happen in the near future: “The only thing to know is to live in this wonderful time / Neither I nor you will have to.” Moreover, along with glorifying the creative, noble labor of the people, the poet creates pictures of painful, difficult labor, stunning in their power and poignancy, which brings death to people:

We struggled under the heat, under the cold,

With an ever-bent back,

They lived in dugouts, fought hunger,

They were cold and wet, suffered from scurvy, -

These words in the poem are spoken by the dead - peasants who died during the construction of the railway.

Such duality is present not only in this poem. Hard work, which became the cause of suffering and death, is described in the poem “Frost, Red Nose”, the poems “Strada”, “On the Volga” and many others. Moreover, this is not only the labor of forced peasants, but also barge haulers or children working in factories:

The cast iron wheel turns

And it hums and the wind blows,

My head is burning and spinning,

The heart is beating, everything is going around.

This concept of folk labor already developed in Nekrasov’s early works. Thus, the hero of the poem “The Drunkard” (1845) dreams of freeing himself, throwing off the “yoke of heavy, oppressive labor” and giving his whole soul to another work - free, joyful, creative: “And into another work - refreshing - / I would droop with all my soul.”

Nekrasov argues that work is a natural state and an urgent need of the people, without it a person cannot be considered worthy or be respected by other people. So, about the heroine of the poem “Frost, Red Nose,” the author writes: “She doesn’t feel sorry for the poor beggar: / It’s free to walk without work.” The peasant love of work is reflected in many of Nekrasov’s poems: “Hey! Take me as a worker, / My hands are itching to work!” - exclaims the one for whom work has become an urgent, natural need. It’s not for nothing that one of the poet’s poems is called “Song of Labor.”

In the poem “The Uncompressed Strip” an amazing image is created: the earth itself calls for the plowman, its worker. The tragedy is that a worker who loves and values ​​his work, who cares about the land, is not free, downtrodden and oppressed by forced hard labor.

Among the people, not only men, but also women are workers, but their lot is even heavier:

Fate had three hard parts,

And the first part: to marry a slave,

The second is to be the mother of a slave son,

And the third is to submit to the slave until the grave.

Many of Nekrasov’s works are dedicated to the female lot: the poem “Frost, Red Nose” and the chapter “Peasant Woman” from the poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'”, the poems “Motherland”, “Mother”, “Orina, the Soldier’s Mother”, “Am I Riding at Night on dark street..." and others.

We can say that the theme of the Russian woman becomes for Nekrasov one of the main ones in his work. He glorifies the “type of majestic Slavic woman,” arguing that an integral part of her beauty is her love of work and ability to work:

Beauty, the world is a wonder,

Blush, slim, tall,

She is beautiful in any clothes,

Dexterous for any job!

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

I saw how she squints:

With a wave, the mop is ready!

And after work, leaving everyday worries behind, she can relax:

Such heartfelt laughter

And such songs and dances

Money can't buy it.

But, of course, the main thing about a woman is that she is a wife and mother. It is not for nothing that the image of a mother appears so often in Nekrasov’s poetry. He writes not only about peasant mothers, but also about his mother, about the wives of the Decembrists; many of the poet’s poems are dedicated to his wife.

But there is one more the most important images his poetry is the Motherland or Mother Rus', which is also connected with the folk theme and the theme of the Russian woman. And like all Nekrasov’s poems about the people, works about Russia, its past, present and future are distinguished by a certain duality. On the one hand, they convey the poet’s deepest faith that the dark pages of the past will be passed, and in the future his native country will finally cease to be the place where “the groan is heard everywhere” of the “sower and guardian” of the Russian land - its people . But on the other hand, the immediate future was not painted in happy tones:

Let changing fashion tell us,

That the topic is old - the suffering of the people

And that poetry should forget her, -

Don't believe it, boys! She doesn't age.

And yet, Nekrasov remained in Russian literature not only as a folk singer, an exponent of the suffering and aspirations of the people, but also as a poet who did a lot to ensure that the Russian people paved a “wide, clear / chest-thrust road” for themselves into the future. This is the poet’s enormous merit not only to literature, but also to his Fatherland.

I. Biographical background of the topic.
2. The pettiness and wretchedness of the rich.
3. Moral purity of the people.
4. A sad song of hope.

Already when the cradle rocks, it is decided where the scales of fate will tip.
S. E. Lec

The theme of the people's fate is one of the main themes in the works of N. A. Nekrasov. He, like no one else, was able in his poetic heritage to show all aspects of life and shades of the mental state of the peasantry. The writer was greatly influenced by his childhood years spent on the Volga. Probably, I. E. Repin’s painting “Barge Haulers on the Volga” can be considered an illustration not only of his work, but also of life itself. Throughout its entire length, he carried in his heart a pinching pain for a gifted people, but oppressed by slavery and power.

And there was also an example of this in life - a cruel landowner father. But the writer did not learn moral principles from him. His role model was his mother, a kind, sympathetic woman. That is why he pays close attention to those who are with him. He, like a doctor, understands all their illnesses and sorrows. But the most important thing that appears in his poetic work is not only pain, but also the understanding that a way out of such a difficult situation is possible. But this should be done not only and not so much by the landowners, but by the peasants themselves. They can rise up and realize that their life and happiness largely depend on themselves.

N. A. Nekrasov has many poetic paintings of description peasant life. But one of the brightest is “Reflections at the Front Entrance.” The very title of the work uses the word “reflection”, which is in plural. This suggests that the poet has repeatedly addressed such a pressing issue. But, probably, he cannot find the correct and suitable way out of the current situation. Therefore, he still has the role of an observer and, to some extent, an analyst of what he sees around him every day.

From the very first lines, the lyrical hero presents us with an ordinary picture. Front, main, entrance to special days waiting for his petitioners. But from the first two lines it is clear that the lyrical hero treats them with contempt. He compares rich petitioners to slaves. This is how everything gets mixed up in a poetic picture. Rich people have servile qualities despite the fact that they pride themselves on their relationship and position in society. But in spirit they remain petty, insignificant and dependent people.

Let us note that, despite their position, they are afraid of those to whom they come with a request. But they have a certain vocation that infects the whole city - to put themselves on the lists of petitioners.

Here front entrance.
On special days,
Possessed by a servile illness,
The whole city is in some kind of fright
Drives up to the treasured doors;
Having written down your name and rank,
The guests are leaving for home,
So deeply pleased with ourselves
What do you think - that’s their calling!

Next, the lyrical hero divides people into categories, since they come on different days. On weekdays this front entrance is full of sufferers. But they find a response in the heart of the lyrical hero. Therefore, they appear before us not as a shapeless mass, but in their unique individuality: an elderly old man, a widow, etc. But in the story, the lyrical hero moves on to a specific case. His observations made it possible not only to separate the petitioners, but also to understand

Even their spiritual content. The focus is on a certain incident - Russian village people approach the front entrance. Lyrical hero notices that they prayed first. That is, the soul, like their body, is supported by God himself. He is always in their heart, he supports them in grief and brings them a rich spiritual and moral foundation. The doorman does not see this natural beauty; he judges by appearance, which is far from the cold shine of the gentlemen. But we understand that appearance speaks of the great diligence and unpretentiousness of the Russian people, capable of bearing not only the heavy burden of slavery, but also a long journey in order to achieve justice.

Tanned faces and hands,
The Armenian boy is thin on his shoulders,
On a knapsack on their bent backs,
Cross on my neck and blood on my feet,
Shod in homemade bast shoes
(You know, they wandered for a long time
From some distant provinces).

The doorman not only did not let the ragged petitioners in, but was not even flattered by their gifts. Then the Russian man did not ask for mercy, but with the words “God judge him,” he was ready to return home. The lyrical hero emphasizes that they, having come such a long way, beating their legs until they bled, were not even heard. Later, the reason for this behavior is revealed to us - the owner of the luxurious chambers was still sleeping. He doesn't care common man, a hard worker, thanks to whom he can afford such luxury.

And then, in a kaledoscopic movement, the life of a carefree rich man flashes before us. But in this crazy run he is always alone. Throughout the entire description, he remains so lonely that even his relatives only wish him death. But the Russian people, in contrast, are represented as a mass, strong, powerful and invincible. Although he is poor in appearance, he is rich spiritually, and the life of each of the members of this society is filled with deep meaning.

Note that the lyrical hero does not idealize the man. It shows not only his strengths, but also his weaknesses. For example, he is not averse to drinking everything down to the ruble, because then he faces a new path, full of anxiety and humiliation.

Behind the outpost, in a wretched tavern
All the poor people will drink up to a ruble
And they will go, begging along the road,
And they will groan...

But after such a detailed description of the different categories of petitioners, the lyrical hero turns to his native land, which is capable of bearing such a contradiction on its shoulders. Bitter reflections at the front entrance gradually turn into a passionate appeal to someone who can hear and understand him.

...Native land!
Name me such an abode,
I've never seen such an angle
Where would your sower and guardian be?
Where would a Russian man not moan?

And the lyrical hero begins to list all those who groan from such a difficult life. It seems that he set out to show all of them and in no case leave anyone out. In the last place in listing the reasons for such behavior, he puts indifference, the greatest evil in the world in relation to any living creature, especially a person.

Moans in every remote town,
At the entrance of courts and chambers.

But the groan slowly turns into a sad song that can be heard on the Volga. Such a transition to a similar image allows the lyrical hero to compare the people's grief with the breadth great river. And in the end, one gets the feeling that the people and the groan are simply inseparable from each other.

Go out to the Volga: whose groan is heard
Over the great Russian river?
We call this groan a song -
The barge haulers are walking with a towline!..
Volga! Volga!.. In spring, full of water
You're not flooding the fields like that,
Like the great sorrow of the people
Our land is overflowing,
Where there are people, there is a groan...

But the lyrical hero is confident that such a powerful, strong people will find the strength to open the chains that have shackled them for many years. He will be able to build his own world, full not of grief and humiliation, but of hard work and respect.

...Oh, my dear!
What does your endless groan mean?
Will you wake up full of strength...

But notes of doubt creep into the heart of the lyrical hero. He begins to think that since the people are still suffering so much humiliation, then he is not ready to create a new song that can change this world. He will also remain surrounded by humiliation and moaning.

...Or, fate obeying the law,
You have already done everything you could,
Created a song like a groan
And spiritually rested forever?..

Note that the poem ends with an ellipsis and a question mark. The lyrical hero does not answer the question he poses. At the same time, by putting an ellipsis at the end of the text, he shows that everything can be different in life. That is, he believes in the mighty Russian people, capable of not only bearing the burden of humiliation on their shoulders, but also opening the gates to a new life, A. Ya. Panaeva said that this poem is based on real events. Observing the scene alone at first, she invited N.A. Nekrasov to see how events would develop: “He approached the window at the moment when the janitors of the house and the policeman were driving the peasants away, pushing them in the back. Nekrasov pursed his lips and nervously pinched his mustache; then he quickly moved away from the window and lay down again on the sofa. About two hours later he read me the poem “At the Front Entrance.” Despite the fact that the poet reworked the plot and introduced his own thoughts into it, we see that N. A. Nekrasov could not remain indifferent and simply pass by what he accidentally saw. A storm of protest lurked in his soul, which later found a way out in a poetic and truthful picture, describing the realities and fate of the Russian person, capable of overcoming all obstacles in his path.

Within each section of the 1856 collection, poems were arranged in a thoughtful sequence. Nekrasov turned the entire first section of the collection into a poem about the people and their future destinies. This poem opened with the poem “On the Road” and ended with “Schoolboy”. The poems echoed each other. They were united by the image of a country road, the conversations of the master in the first poem with a coachman, in the last with a peasant boy.

We sympathize with the driver's mistrust of the gentlemen who really killed his unfortunate wife Grusha. But this sympathy clashes with the driver’s deep ignorance: he distrusts enlightenment and sees in it an empty master’s whim:

Everyone is looking at some portrait

Yes, he is reading some book...

Sometimes fear, you hear, aches me,

That she will destroy her son too:

Teaches literacy, washes, cuts hair...

And at the end of the section, the road stretches again - “sky, spruce forest and sand.” Outwardly, she is just as gloomy and unfriendly as in the first poem. But in the meantime, a beneficial revolution is taking place in the popular consciousness:

I see a book in the knapsack.

So, you're going to study...

I know: father for son

I spent my last penny.

The road stretches on, and before our eyes it changes, brightens peasant Rus', rushing towards knowledge, towards the university. The image of the road that permeates the verses acquires from Nekrasov not only an everyday, but also a conventional, metaphorical meaning: it enhances the feeling of change in spiritual world peasant.

Nekrasov the poet is very sensitive to the changes that are taking place in the people's environment. In his poems, peasant life is depicted in a new way, not like that of his predecessors and contemporaries. There were many poems based on the plot chosen by Nekrasov, in which daring troikas raced, bells rang under the arc, and songs of coachmen sounded. At the beginning of his poem “On the Road,” Nekrasov reminds the reader of exactly this:

Boring! Boring!.. Daring coachman,

Dispel my boredom with something!

A song or something, buddy, binge

About recruitment and separation...

But immediately, abruptly, decisively, he breaks off the usual and familiar course in Russian poetry. What strikes us in this poem? Of course, the driver’s speech is completely devoid of the usual folk song intonations. It seems as if bare prose has unceremoniously burst into poetry: the driver’s speech is clumsy and rude, full of dialecticisms. What new opportunities does such a “down-to-earth” approach to depicting a person from the people open up for Nekrasov the poet?

Note: in folk songs, as a rule, we are talking about a “daring coachman”, a “good fellow” or a “red maiden”. Everything that happens to them

applicable to many people from the popular environment. The song reproduces events and characters of national significance and sound. Nekrasov is interested in something else: how people’s joys or hardships manifest themselves in the fate of this particular hero. He is attracted primarily by the personality of the peasant. The poet depicts the general in peasant life through the individual, unique. Later, in one of the poems, the poet joyfully greets his village friends:

Still familiar people

Whatever the guy, he's a buddy.

This is what happens in his poetry: no matter the man, he is a unique personality, a one-of-a-kind character.

Perhaps none of Nekrasov’s contemporaries dared to get so close and intimate with the man on the pages of a poetic work. Only he was then able not only to write about the people, but also to “speak to the people,” letting in peasants, beggars, artisans with their different perceptions of the world, in different languages into your poems. And such poetic audacity cost Nekrasov dearly: it was the source of the deep drama of his poetry. This drama arose not only because it was painfully difficult to extract poetry from such vital prose, which no poet had penetrated before Nekrasov, but also because such an approach of the poet to the popular consciousness destroyed many of the illusions by which his contemporaries lived. The “soil” was subjected to poetic analysis, the strength was tested, in the inviolability of which people of different directions and parties believed in different ways, but with equal uncompromisingness. Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov strengthened their faith in the peasant socialist revolution, idealizing the communal way of life of the people, associating with it the socialist instincts in the character of the Russian peasant. Tolstoy and Dostoevsky believed in the inviolability of other, patriarchal-Christian principles of folk morality. Is this why the people in their great novels are an integral unity, a world from which neither the “round” Platon Karataev, nor the whole Sonechka Marmeladova are inseparable.

For Nekrasov, the people were also the “soil” and “foundation” of the national

existence. But where his contemporaries stopped, the poet went further, gave himself up to analysis and discovered something in the people that made him suffer and suffer:

What friends? Our strength is uneven,

I didn't know the middle of anything

What do they bypass, cold-blooded,

I dared everything recklessly...

His faith in the people was subject to much greater temptations than the faith of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, on the one hand, or Dobrolyubov and Chernyshevsky, on the other. But on the other hand, folk life on the pages of his poetic works turned out to be more colorful and diverse, and the ways of its poetic reproduction were more diverse. The first section of the poetry collection of 1856 determined not only the paths of movement and growth of national self-awareness, but also the forms of depicting people's life. The poem "On the Road" is initial stage: here Nekrasov’s lyrical “I” is still largely removed from the coachman’s consciousness. The driver's voice is left to its own devices, and so is the author's voice. But as high moral content is revealed to the poet in folk life, lyrical disunity is overcome. Let's listen to how the same voices sound in the poem "Schoolboy":

Well, let's go, for God's sake!

Sky, spruce forest and sand -

A sad road...

Hey! sit down with me, my friend!

Whose words are we hearing? A Russian intellectual, a nobleman riding along our sad country road, or a peasant coachman urging tired horses? Apparently, both, these two voices merged into one:

I know: father for son

I spent my last penny.

This is what his village neighbor could say about the schoolboy’s father. But Nekrasov says here: he accepted folk intonations, the very speech pattern of the folk language into his soul.

About whom we're talking about in the poem "Uncompressed Strip"? As if about a patient

peasant. Even the signs of the autumn landscape - “the fields are empty” - are captured here through the eyes of a plowman. And the misfortune is understood from a peasant point of view: it’s a pity for the unharvested strip, the unharvested harvest. The earth-nurse also becomes animated in a peasant way: “It seems that the ears of corn are whispering to each other...” “I’m about to die, but this is rye,” people said. And with the approach of his death, the peasant thought not about himself, but about the land, which would remain orphan without him. But you read the poem and feel more and more that these are very personal, very lyrical poems, that the poet looks at himself through the eyes of a plowman. And so it was. Nekrasov wrote the “Uncompressed Strip” to seriously ill people before leaving abroad for treatment in 1855. The poet was overcome by sad thoughts; it seemed that the days were already numbered, that he might not return to Russia. And here the courageous attitude of the people towards troubles and misfortunes helped Nekrasov to withstand the blow of fate and preserve his spiritual strength. The image of the “uncompressed strip”, like the image of the “road” in the previous poems, takes on a figurative, metaphorical meaning in Nekrasov: this is both a peasant field, but also a “field” of poetic labor, the craving for which for the sick poet is stronger than death, just as love is stronger than death the farmer to work on the land, to the labor field.

At one time, Dostoevsky, in a speech about Pushkin, spoke about the “worldwide responsiveness” of the Russian national poet, who knew how to feel someone else’s as if he were his own, and to be imbued with the spirit of other national cultures. Nekrasov inherited a lot from Pushkin. His muse is surprisingly attentive to the people's worldview, to the different, sometimes very distant from the poet, characters of people. This quality of Nekrasov’s talent manifested itself not only in the lyrics, but also in poems from folk life.

References

To prepare this work, materials were used from the site http://www.bobych.spb.ru/

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Composition

When I think about the artist’s duty, about his honesty before time and before himself, before his Motherland and before the people, I first of all remember Nekrasov.

I. Rylenkov

The poetry of N. A. Nekrasov was a sign of a new time - a change in the noble period liberation movement raznochinsky. Nekrasov’s “muse cut with a whip” is the share of the enslaved people, whose hatred, whose torment was already condensing into thunderclouds of frantic peasant unrest. Turning to the Motherland, both Pushkin and Lermontov saw the national greatness of the Russian people, its history, the glory of military victories, the exploits of great men, and finally, the vastness of the Russian steppes, the familiar and unique nature from childhood. For Nekrasov, the concept of the Motherland included, first of all, the working people, the peasant - the breadwinner and defender of the Russian land. Therefore, the poet’s patriotism was organically connected with the anti-noble protest against the peasant’s oppressors. For Nekrasov, as well as for his friends and like-minded people - Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov, the peasantry was the bearer of revolutionary force capable of blowing up the hated serfdom system. Nekrasov was a poet of the peasant revolution, such was his “new word” with which he entered Russian poetry.

The position of the serf peasant, his urgent demands - all this cruel prose turned under the pen of Nekrasov into the material of high poetry. The man became the main character of Nekrasov.

Nekrasov’s muse, “a weeping, grieving and paining muse, constantly thirsting, humbly asking,” the muse of “revenge and sorrow” is the sister of a simple serf woman:

Yesterday, at about six o'clock,

I went to Sennaya,

There they beat a woman with a whip,

A young peasant woman.

Not a sound from her chest

Only the whip whistled as it played...

And I said to the Muse:

“Look! Your dear sister!

What is Nekrasov’s position in relation to the people? First of all, it is love and compassion for him, deep sympathy for his difficult fate.

The harsh truth, pain for a person can be heard in the poem “On the Road.” In simple words, the coachman tells the poet about his wife - a serf who received an education, and then, at the whim of the master, married off to a simple peasant. This story contains the tragedy of a living lost soul.

Nekrasov dedicated many poems to the fate of a simple Russian woman:

Fate had three hard parts,

And the first share is to marry a slave,

The second is to be the mother of a slave's son,

And the third is to obey the slave until the grave,

And all these formidable shares fell

To a woman of Russian soil.

"Jack Frost"

The national poet not only saw the difficult lot of the Russian woman, but also glorified the type of “majestic Slavic woman”; he mourned her fate, but was also delighted and proud of her beauty and moral strength:

In the game the horseman will not catch her,

In trouble he will not fail - he will save:

Stops a galloping horse

He will enter a burning hut!

"Jack Frost"

It was not for nothing that at Nekrasov’s funeral two peasant women in sheepskin coats walked ahead of the procession and carried a wreath with the inscription: “From Russian women.”

Nekrasov paints gloomy pictures of the life of ordinary people in the poems “The Uncompressed Strip”, “The Cry of Children”, “On the Volga”, in the cycle of poems “About the Weather” and many others.

Where can we, exhausted in captivity,

Rejoice, frolic and jump,

If we were allowed into the field now,

We would end up in the grass and sleep.

We would like to return home soon -

But why are we going there too?..

It’s sweet for us not to forget at home:

We will be greeted by care and need."

There, leaning his tired head

To the breast of your poor mother,

Sobbing over her and over myself,

Let's tear her heart apart...

"Children's Cry"

The poet’s hatred of autocracy, mournful love for the Motherland, downtrodden and suffering working people, condemnation of the people’s obedience and unshakable faith in their strength are heard in the poem “Reflections at the Front Entrance.” That is why the tsarist censorship did not allow this poem to be published for five years, and Herzen, who published it in Kolokol in I860, wrote: “We very rarely publish poems, but there is no way not to publish this kind of poem.” In this poem, condemning the obedience of the people. and calling him to wake up, the revolutionary-democrat Nekrasov’s view of the people is expressed:

Where there are people, there is a groan...

Oh, my heart!

What does your endless groan mean?

Will you wake up full of strength,

Or, fate obeying the law,

You've already done everything you could -

Created a song like a groan

And spiritually rested forever?..

Nekrasov in his works relies on oral folk art and at the same time acts as a continuer of the traditions of Radishchev, Pushkin, Gogol, who realistically depicted the people. He also uses the achievements of I. S. Turgenev, who created bright types of people from the people in “Notes of a Hunter.” The poet’s poems “Orina - the soldier’s mother”, “Katerina”, “Kalistrat” and others reveal the spiritual image of the peasant. In his works about the people, Nekrasov highlights the people's hard work, internal and external beauty, great patience, intelligence, ingenuity, endurance, breadth of soul, kindness, thirst for knowledge, ability to rebel, on the one hand, and on the other - darkness, religiosity, servility of individual peasants, the habit of slavery.

Nekrasov raises the topic of people's labor in his poem “The Railway.” And here he acts as a revolutionary, a democrat.

According to the general described in the poem, the people are barbarians, a bunch of drunkards; according to the author, the people are the main creator of all material and spiritual values. Moreover, the poet calls for action, activity against the oppressors, believes in the future of the people who

Will bear everything - and a wide, clear

He will pave the way for himself with his chest.

Many of Nekrasov's predecessors and contemporaries wrote about the people. Their works helped the development of social consciousness, taught to love and respect the peasant, causing hatred of the oppressors of the people. What was essentially new was that the poet, addressing the people, showed them the path to liberation. His works are a monument to revolutionary democratic poetry.