Essays on literature: Nationality of N. A. Nekrasov’s poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'”
The poem by N. A. Nekrasov “Who Lives Well in Rus'” was written in 1860-1870. In this work, the author depicted Russian society in the post-reform period. He reflects on questions about where Rus' is going, what awaits it in the future, and reveals the main social problems that did not disappear with the abolition of serfdom. The author shows that the reform hit “the gentleman with one end, and the peasant with the other.”
The poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'” is truly a folk poem. he wrote for the people, about the people, and considered himself part of the people. The story is told on behalf of the peasantry. All problems are also considered from the point of view of a peasant, showing a peasant’s vision of the modern world. All judgments come not from the author himself, but from the people.
Nekrasov sympathizes with the peasants and sympathizes with them. The landowners, merchants, and clergy are depicted satirically and evoke contempt. The author sees the future of the country behind the peasant. The death of Prince Utyatin the Last is symbolic. It shows that serfdom is living out its last days. At the same time, the author shows the gradual liberation of peasant consciousness from serfdom, the people’s awareness of their rights. So, for example, Savely, the Holy Russian hero, acting as a people's philosopher, after much reflection on whether the people should continue to endure their beggarly and oppressed situation, comes to the conclusion that it is better to “not endure” than to “endure.” Thus, Nekrasov showed that peasants are a great force behind which the future of Russia lies:
More to the Russian people
No limits set:
There is a wide path before him.
The poem is written in folk language. The speech of the peasants is replete with sayings, proverbs, and is constantly interspersed with songs. Songs play a big role in the poem: they reveal the people's worldview, describe the hard life of the peasants, and emphasize the typicality of the images. Matryona Timofeevna finds many songs to describe her life. This suggests that her fate is a typical fate of a Russian peasant woman. The poem also contains several legends: the legend about Jacob the faithful, about two “villainous sinners.” The role of legends in the poem duplicates the role of songs.
It should be noted that the poem contains motifs of a folk tale: the plot is connected with the road, with travel, material problems are solved by introducing fairy-tale elements, for example, a self-assembled tablecloth, animals are animated, speak in a human voice and help people... The motive of truth-seeking is also widely used in folk art.
The poem also contains an epic motif. For example, almost the entire chapter about Savely, the Holy Russian hero, is written in epic language: Nekrasov uses hyperbole, inversion, repetitions: “... and it bends, but does not break, does not break, does not fall...”.
The poem contains many proverbs and sayings, especially clearly depicting the hard life of the people: “good, you, tsar’s letter, but you were not written about us,” “high is God, far is the king,” “from work, no matter how much you suffer, you will not be rich , and you will be hunchbacked,” “praise the grass in the haystack, and the master in the coffin,” etc.
Nekrasov widely uses folk signs and riddles in the poem. He does not hesitate to use crude expressions when depicting the hard life of peasants:
Go quickly and grunt
Lie down in the ditch and drink some water!
Perhaps, the nonsense will come off!..
Sympathizing with the peasants, the writer portrays their speech as more accurate, accurate, and sincere than the speech of the landowners. He seems to agree with the fact that “... the master’s abuse is like a mosquito sting, the peasant’s is a stupor.”
So, having depicted Russian reality through the prism of the peasant worldview, Nekrasov created a truly folk epic - a poem (“Who Lives Well in Rus'.”
The poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'” was conceived by Nekrasov as a folk epic. It reflects the thoughts and feelings, the life of ordinary people in post-reform Russia. At the same time, from the stories of peasants we learn about their life before 1861. For example, Savely talks about the cruelties of his former landowner Shalashnikov, who flogged his serfs. A clear example of a serf-owner in the poem is the old Prince Utyatin, shown in the chapter “The Last One.” Using examples of images of peasants, the poem reveals the features of the Russian national character, both its positive and negative qualities.
The author of the work portrays the peasants comprehensively. We see how they relax (chapter “Rural Fair”), we learn how they live and work. The poet gives the peasants the right to talk about their lives, work and worries. Moreover, the reader does not have the slightest doubt that the peasant says exactly this:
Have you measured our grief?
Is there a limit to the work?
Wine brings down the peasant,
Doesn't grief overwhelm him?
Work isn't going well?
A man does not measure troubles
Copes with everything
No matter what, come.
A man, working, does not think,
What will strain your strength...
The peasants in the poem are divided into slaves and those who protest against such a life. This is Yakim Nagoy and Savely, the Holy Russian hero. Yakim defends the interests of the people, expresses a protest that has not yet fully matured. He comes from the very bottom of the people and knows the hardship of peasant life firsthand. Savely is also a peasant who values freedom: “Branded, but not a slave!” - he says about himself.
Peasant patience
Enduringly and with time
There is an end to it too.
But some peasants have become accustomed to their slave status and do not want to change anything. Such is Ipat, the lackey of the Utyatin princes, and also Yakov, the “exemplary serf.”
In numerous images of peasants, Nekrasov showed their traits such as hard work, humanity, intelligence, honesty, perseverance and patience. But the author also shows the negative traits of the people: passivity, humility, lack of education.
Nekrasov, being an expert in Russian folk art, introduced many inserted elements into the poem: songs, proverbs, sayings. This gave the language of the work a genuine nationality, and gave the author the opportunity to more deeply reveal the worldview and feelings of the peasants.
“Praise the grass in the haystack, and the master in the coffin,” says the peasant Vlas, using a proverb. As you know, it is in oral folk art that the wisdom of the people lies.
Sadness and melancholy are heard in the folk songs presented in the poem. Their names speak for themselves: “Hungry”, “Corvee”.
The man is standing -
It's swaying
A man is coming -
At the center of N.A. Nekrasov’s great work is the collective image of the main character - the people. Before us appear generalized pictures of people's life, the faces of people from the people. Some of them only flicker before us in a motley crowd; others talk in detail about themselves; the heroes of the poem talk about the third.
Written about the people and for the people, the poem is close to works of oral folk art. Nekrasov was an expert in folklore, studying it not only from collections of songs, fairy tales, and laments, but also in direct communication with the people.
The plot of the poem is fabulous, its “Prologue” is built on the motives of a folk fairy tale, the beginning is borrowed from fairy tales (“In what year - count...”), and fairy-tale formulas are also found:
Whether it was long or short,
Whether they walked close or far...
There are many songs in the poem based on folk figurative words, proverbs and sayings.
Not only in its language and imagery, but also in its rhythm, the poem resembles folk songs, laments, and epics. Nekrasov was the first to introduce blank (unrhymed) verse, close to folk, into epic, expanding the boundaries of its application, using it in a variety of ways in lyrical episodes, and in satirical sketches, and in a calm epic story.
This is how Nekrasov creates a “style that corresponds to the theme” - the theme of the struggle for people's happiness.
The image of the people in the poem is a complex and contradictory unity. The folk types created by the poet are mainly divided into two categories. The first, most numerous, belong to peasants who think about their lives, peasants in whose souls the seeds of protest are ripening. The poet takes a particularly close look at them. Studying the life of the people, trying to unravel the soul of the peasant, Nekrasov passionately longs to see precisely those features that speak of the awakening of the people's consciousness. Another category of peasants are people hopelessly poisoned by the poison of serfdom and turned into serfs.
Nekrasov repeatedly mentions in the poem about peasant riots, which especially intensified after the reform. Here is a typical story:
Have any of you heard,
How the estate rebelled
Landowner Obrubkov,
Frightened province,
Nedykhanev County,
Villages Tetanus?..
In this passage, the names themselves are significant, talking about the fear, humility, and downtroddenness of the inhabitants. And if the peasants of these places rebelled, it means that the cup of people’s patience has overflowed! Due to censorship obstacles, the poet could not openly depict popular uprisings; he could not, of course, openly call for a peasant revolution. But hints scattered throughout the pages of the poem, images of individual peasants, their thoughts and aspirations, and sometimes decisive actions indicate the revolutionary orientation of the poem.
The legend “About Two Great Sinners” expresses the idea of revolutionary retribution, glorifies not Christian forgiveness, but fair punishment, and sounds a call to fight against the oppressors of the people. The robber Kudeyar accomplished a truly holy deed by killing the people's tormentor.
Among the peasants depicted by Nekrasov, Yakim Naga especially stands out. He is a defender of the interests of the people and an exponent of those sentiments of protest that are ripening among the peasant masses. Yakim is the flesh and blood of the lower peasantry. His portrait is expressive - a portrait of a man who seems to have grown out of the earth, connected to it by blood ties. Both his surname-nickname and the name of the village where he lives - Bosovo - are expressive.
Yakim visited the city, where he sought justice and suffered from unjust judges. He is a literate, inquisitive man, and although we see Yakim as “drunk”, “wretched”, what strength, what high dignity emanates from him when he speaks out for the offended peasantry! He speaks about the people with love and pain, with great anger against their enslavers:
Every peasant
The soul is like a black cloud -
Angry, menacing, and it should be
Thunder will roar from there,
Roar over the depths of the sea,
In the field, in the forest, whistle!..
Saveliy, the Holy Russian hero, is in many ways similar to Yakim Nagogo. They are united by their protest against social injustice, thoughts about the fate of the peasant, and love for their native working people. And at the same time, Savely is a unique, unusually bright figure. Yakim is outwardly frail and unprepossessing, but Savely is a hero at a hundred years old. For the murder of the manager, the bloodsucker Vogel, he spent twenty years in hard labor, twenty in a settlement, and still did not reconcile himself. His thoughts about the peasantry contain deep, hard-won wisdom. Saveliy firmly believes in the heroic power of the people, but sees with pain that all the people’s strength is spent on endless patience.
Where have you gone, strength?
What were you useful for?
Under rods, under sticks
Left for little things! -
Savely is sad.
The image of the Holy Russian hero captures the awakening consciousness of the people: Savely sees the causes of evil, he has lost the faith in God’s help and in the good king that is so characteristic of the patriarchal peasantry. He already understands that he must gain freedom not through humility, but with an axe.
But seeing how endlessly the people endure rods and chains, Savely himself at times begins to preach patience, uncomplaining faith in the wisdom of God. Nekrasov reveals the contradictory nature of the people's consciousness, the struggle between the age-old habit of slavery and the rebellious spirit. What will win? Savely dies with words about the hopelessness of the peasant's fate... And yet this image leaves the impression of strength, indomitable will, longing for freedom. Savely’s wise prophecy remains in my memory:
To be intolerant is an abyss,
To endure is an abyss.
Savely’s rebellious spirit remained to live in the heart of Matryona Timofeevna:
I have my head down
I carry an angry heart!.. -
Says the long-suffering peasant woman. It is not submission to fate, not “dull patience,” but pain and anger that are expressed in the words with which she ends the story about her life:
For me, grievances are mortal
Gone unpaid...
There is not a shadow of Christian forgiveness and humility in these words. On the contrary, here is the idea that retribution is needed for grievances. But Nekrasov is faithful to historical truth. Peasant anger is accumulating, but the usual faith in the intercession of the Mother of God and in the power of prayer has also been preserved.
And yet Matryona Timofeevna is saved by her own spiritual strength, the will to live. Not knowing how to get the truth, she is ready to go to the king and complains about the headman to the governor. She does not bow her head before the formidable bosses, before whom “the peasants trembled.” The unfortunate mother speaks on behalf of the entire people:
They have no darling in their chests,
They have no conscience in their eyes,
There is no cross on the neck!
The story about the peasant woman Korchagina leads us to the thought: if a spiritual storm is brewing in a woman, the most destitute and downtrodden creature, it means that a revolutionary reorganization of life is possible and close. Faith in the people, in their awakening, is expressed in the words of the poet, which have become popular:
Saved in slavery
Free heart -
Gold, gold
People's heart!
However, the poet did not idealize the people, knowing that not all hearts could resist the corrupting influence of slavery. But if the poet bows to those who have preserved their nobility and the will to fight, then he speaks of slaves and serfs with bitterness and contempt.
Lackey Ipat from the chapter “The Last One” is happy with his servile title. He doesn't even want to hear about freedom. Choking with emotion, he remembers the bullying of his master, calling him “prince” and himself “the last slave.” The author gives Ipat an apt and angry assessment: “a sensitive lackey.”
We meet the same slave in the chapter “Happy”. This is Prince Peremetyev's lackey. The poet ironizes his idea of happiness: the footman considers himself among the happy ones because he was his master’s “favorite slave,” suffered from a “noble disease” - gout, and licked the master’s plates.
Hatred of servility, of slavish patience is one of the character traits of the moral character of revolutionary democrats. This feeling is shared by the people. In the story “About the Exemplary Serf - Yakov the Faithful,” Baron Sineguzin’s servant expresses the people’s point of view:
People of servile rank -
Real dogs sometimes:
The heavier the punishment.
That's why gentlemen are dearer to them.
However, the story of Yakov differs from the story of Ipat or the lackey of Prince Peremetyev. Mr. Polivanov's faithful servant could not stand the bullying and, at least with his own death, took revenge on the master. It turns out that even morally disfigured, completely beaten slaves, driven to extremes, are capable of protesting.
Nekrasov understands what exactly cripples people’s souls. If among the people there are serfs, silent slaves and traitors, then “it’s all to blame”: serfdom corrupted forced people, imposed on them the terrible stigma of slavery.
At the center of the picture of the world created by Nekrasov in the poem is the people. The people are the sun around which everything revolves, the rays of which fall on the entire world created in the poem. The people can be mistaken, show narrow-mindedness, stupidity, cruelty, and yet its inner power, its greatness are never questioned in the poem. Grandfather Savely devotes an entire speech to Russian “heroism”; the last definition of Rus' in Grisha Dobrosklonov’s song is “omnipotent”.
You're miserable too
You are also abundant
You're downtrodden
You are omnipotent
Mother Rus'!
This is a portrait of the Russian people in a compressed form. The forces hidden in the people redeem their squalor, downtroddenness, and unresolved slavery, and it is these forces that should lead the people to “happiness.”
People's truth. The poem constructs a special folk system of values. This system develops special ideas about the essential issues of existence - primarily about righteousness and sin - which are noticeably different from the traditional ones developed by Christian culture.
Why, for example, is the people's favorite Yermil Girin ready to hang himself? Not because he simply committed a dishonorable act - he “excluded” his younger brother Mitri from recruiting. Spiritual kinship with the peasantry is higher than blood kinship. In the end, Yermil Girin recognizes his act as a sin against the whole world, against his own brother-peasant. After all, instead of Mitri, Nenila Vlasyevna’s son should go to service out of turn. This is why Girin's repentance is so deep.
In the story of the wanderer Ionushka “About Two Great Sinners,” the repentant thief Kudeyar receives forgiveness from God. But not after a difficult, many-year feat (for many years he had to cut the trunk of a huge oak tree with a knife), but only by killing the people's oppressor, Pan Glukhovsky. Glukhovsky boasts to Kudeyar that he “tortures, tortures and hangs” his slaves, and his murder turns into a virtue, since he protects the interests of the people - the oak tree collapses. In the same chapter, “A Feast for the Whole World,” the story is told about the elder Gleb, who hid the fact that eight thousand peasants received their freedom; his sin is called the Sin of Judas. As you remember, Judas betrayed Jesus Christ, God and Man. Gleb betrays the people, who in the poem are placed at the center of the universe. Heroes become righteous, sinners, Judases only when they are correlated with the people's truth and people's interests.
Crowd scenes. The image of the people in the poem has internal integrity and at the same time breaks up into many faces. The crowd scenes in the poem highlight the unity of the people, their willingness to gather, unite, and breathe with one breath. With exceptional expressiveness, Nekrasov describes how the entire peasant world helps their favorite Yermil Girin pay for the mill:
And a miracle happened -
Throughout the market square
Every peasant has
Like the wind, half left
Suddenly it turned upside down!
At a rural fair, on a drunken night (First part of the poem), at the mowing in “The Last One,” the people are also described as a single whole, as one being. By the way, the wanderers easily join the general ranks - they take hold of the braids during mowing, promise to squeeze Matryona Timofeevna’s rye, and pick up the songs she sings. All this also emphasizes that we are faced with a single organism; the wanderers and peasants they meet along the way live the same life.
It is not at all necessary that the people merge into a whole in a common noble impulse, during a song or haymaking - the role of a unifying principle can be played by severe drunkenness (chapter “Drunken Night”), and by beating a person. In the chapter “A feast for the whole world” there is a scary episode with Yegorka Shutov, whom the whole world condemned to beat, everyone obediently follows the sentence, although some do not even know what Yegorka’s offense is. When wanderers express surprise at this - “Wonderful people! / They beat the sleepy one, / For what, without knowing anything...” - in response they hear a sharp shout: “If the whole world has ordered: / Beat! - there’s something to be said for!” The will of the world is not discussed, the world is always right. The readiness of the people for a merger, for unity turns out to be much more important for Nekrasov than why this unification took place and where the combined forces will be directed.
"People of servile rank". In the crowd scenes, the differences between the peasants are erased. At the same time, the people in the poem have many faces. There are many different types here - righteous people, truth-seekers, wanderers, soldiers, workers, farce artists, people's defenders... A group of servants opposes all this motley and diverse environment. The moral image of the servants, that is, peasants cut off from the land and living with the landowner, is distorted; the servants are imbued with servility, the spirit of unreasoning slavery and blind submission to the master. The courtyard servant of Prince Peremetyev, appearing in the chapter “Happy”, Ipat, the “sensitive lackey” from “The Last One”, the headman Gleb and Yakov, the “exemplary lackey” from the chapter “A Feast for the Whole World” - each of them represents ugly faces in their own way slavery. One is proud of the fact that he is sick with a “noble disease” and drank foreign wines from the master’s glasses, another remembers with emotion how the master bathed him in two ice holes in winter, the third hides his freedom from the peasants. Only the fourth, Yakov, an “exemplary slave,” decides to take revenge on the master for unfair treatment - he hangs himself in front of his eyes.
People of servile rank -
Real dogs sometimes:
The heavier the punishment,
That's why gentlemen are dearer to them.
Through the stories about slaves, the ideal of peasant happiness emerges more clearly - it is impossible not only with external, but also with internal, spiritual slavery.
People and landowners. The question of people's happiness is inseparable from the life of landowners, former masters of the peasants. The poem gives several landowner types. The first of them is Gavrila Afanasyevich Obolt-Obolduev, to whom men turn with questions about happiness. The landowner's surname and the condensation of diminutive suffixes around his image compromise him in advance.
Some round gentleman,
Mustachioed, pot-bellied,
With a cigar in his mouth.
Everything that comes from this “mustachioed, pot-bellied” gentleman initially loses its substance, becomes frivolous and insignificant.
Obolt-Obolduev lives with memories of blessed past times, when he felt like a real gentleman, who organized noisy holidays, went hunting, and carried out reprisals against his serfs. His speech ends with a death knell: a peasant was killed in the village of Kuzminskoye, but Obolt-Obolduev gives the sound of the bells a symbolic meaning.
They are not calling for the peasant!
Through life according to the landowners
They're calling!..
The mark of decay and death lies in the poem not only on the life of the landowners, but also on the landowners themselves, death crushes them one by one. The landowner Shalashnikov, who mercilessly tormented his peasants (“Peasant Woman”), dies in the war, the robber Kudeyar kills Pan Glukhovsky, Prince Utyatin dies from a blow.
Prince Utyatin is nicknamed the Posledysh (the last one is the youngest in the family). And although Utyatin has heirs, he is the youngest in the family of landowners. If Obolt-Obolduev regrets the bygone era, then Utyatin does not want to part with it and lives in an illusory world created for him by those around him. The signs of degeneration of the landowner class in Utyatino are obvious. This is an old man, out of his mind, unwilling to admit obvious things, unable to come to terms with the abolition of serfdom.
The right of trial over the landowner is given to the peasant in the poem. Skeptical remark of seven wanderers: “You knocked them down with a stake, or what, you / Pray in the master’s house?” - immediately destroys the prosperous picture of the “spiritual kinship” of the master and his peasants drawn by Obolt-Obolduev. In “The Last One,” the peasants even make fun of their former master.
The great chain has broken,
Torn and splintered:
One way for the master,
Others don't care! -
says Obolt-Obolduev. The abolition of serfdom actually exploded the usual Russian way of life. However, the changes that awaited the master and the peasant were fundamentally different: the master faced extinction, degeneration, death, the peasant - a foggy but great future.
The work of Nikolai Alekseevich Nekrasov is associated with the second period of the Russian liberation movement. In his works, he examines the origins of social disasters and means of overcoming them. The poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'” is the result of the author’s thoughts about the fate of the country and the people. It addresses the main question of post-reform Russia: “The people are liberated, but are the people happy?” Nekrasov shows the path leading to people's happiness, the path of struggle.
At the center of the work is the image of the people. Describing it, the author uses simple Russian language, using folklore and proverbs. The folk types created by the poet are mainly divided into two categories. The first, most numerous, belong to the peasants who are thinking about their lives, in whose souls a protest is already brewing. Another category of peasants are people poisoned by the poison of serfdom and turned into slaves.
Nekrasov repeatedly mentions in the poem about peasant riots, which especially intensified after the reform:
Have any of you heard,
How the estate rebelled
Landowner Obrubkov,
Frightened province,
Nedykhanev County,
Villages Tetanus?..
In this passage, attention is drawn to the telling names, emphasizing the fear and downtroddenness of the residents. And if the peasants of such places rebelled, then the cup of people’s patience was overflowing!
Among others, Yakim Nagoy especially stands out. He is a defender of the interests of the people and a spokesman for those sentiments of protest that are growing among the peasant masses. Drawing a portrait of Yakim, Nikolai Alekseevich emphasizes his closeness to the land on which he was born, lived, and worked:
And to Mother Earth myself
He looks like...
A competent man, Yakim Nagoy, thought for a long time about the fate of his brothers, and was able to understand a lot from his own experience. He speaks about the people with love, and with anger about the enslavers:
Every peasant
The soul is like a black cloud -
Angry, menacing, and it should be
Thunder will roar from there,
It's raining bloody...
The image of a thundercloud is an image of the revolution, the storm that the poet called for, exclaiming:
Roar over the depths of the sea,
In the field, in the forest, whistle!..
In many ways he is similar to Yakima Nagogo Saveliy. The old man sees the causes of evil; he has lost the faith in God’s help and in the good king (“high is God, far is the king”) that is so characteristic of the patriarchal peasantry. Grandfather understands that one must gain freedom not through humility, but with an ax. Savely realizes the heroic power of the people, but sees with pain that all the strength of the peasants is spent on endless patience. Nekrasov reveals both the inconsistency of the people's consciousness and the struggle between the age-old habit of slavery and the rebellious spirit.
From the story about Matryona Timofeevna, we understand more deeply that a spiritual thunderstorm is brewing in a woman, the most downtrodden and disadvantaged creature. Faith in the people, in their spiritual awakening, is expressed in the words of the poet:
Saved in slavery
Free heart -
Gold, gold
People's heart!
The author did not idealize the peasants, because many of them turned into slaves. He speaks about this part of the people with bitterness and contempt. Lackey Ipat (chapter “The Last One”) is happy with his servile title; he doesn’t want to hear about freedom. Choking with emotion, he remembers the bullying of his master, calling him “prince” and himself “the last slave.” Nekrasov gives Ipat an apt assessment: “a sensitive lackey.” But among the slaves there are also people like Yakov. Unable to withstand the bullying, he took revenge on the master with his death. The poet understands that the cause of all national disasters is serfdom.
With sarcasm, he paints images of landowners. This is how, for example, Obolt-Obolduev is depicted:
Some round gentleman,
Mustachioed, pot-bellied,
With a cigar in his mouth...
Peasant speech often mocks the serf owners:
We corvées have grown up
Under the landowner's snout...
Nikolai Alekseevich creates images of “new people” who emerged from the people’s environment and became active fighters for the good of the people. This is Ermil Girin. No matter who he was, no matter what he did, he sought to be useful to the peasant, to help him, to protect him.
The type of democratic intellectual is embodied in Grisha Dobrosklonov. Grisha dreams of people's happiness more than his own. His love for his poor and exhausted mother gradually turns into love for his homeland. Dobrosklonov consciously chooses the path along which “strong, loving souls” go. His image is typical of a “people's defender.” Characteristic of Grisha is a thirst for learning. He believes in the future happiness of the people.
Dobrosklonov's songs contain hope and optimism. The song “Rus” ends with the lines:
The army rises -
Uncountable,
The strength in her will affect
Indestructible!
At the center of N. A. Nekrasov’s great work is the collective image of the main character - the people. Before us appear generalized pictures of people's life, the faces of people from the people. Some of them only flicker before us in a motley crowd; others talk in detail about themselves; the heroes of the poem talk about the third.
Written about the people and for the people, the poem is close to works of oral folk art. Nekrasov was an expert in folklore, studying it not only from collections of songs, fairy tales, and laments, but also in direct communication with the people.
The plot of the poem is fabulous, its “Prologue” is built on the motives of a folk fairy tale, the beginning is borrowed from fairy tales (“In what year - count on...”), and fairy-tale formulas are also found:
Whether it was long or short,
Whether they walked close or far...
There are many songs in the poem based on folk figurative words, proverbs and sayings.
Not only in its language and imagery, but also in its rhythm, the poem resembles folk songs, laments, and epics. Nekrasov was the first to introduce blank (unrhymed) verse, close to folk, into epic, expanding the boundaries of its application, using it in a variety of ways in lyrical episodes, and in satirical sketches, and in a calm epic story.
This is how Nekrasov creates a “style that corresponds to the theme” - the theme of the struggle for people's happiness.
The image of the people in the poem is a complex and contradictory unity. The folk types created by the poet are mainly divided into two categories. The first, most numerous, belong to peasants who think about their lives, peasants in whose souls the seeds of protest are ripening. The poet takes a particularly close look at them. Studying the life of the people, trying to unravel the soul of the peasant, Nekrasov passionately longs to see precisely those features that speak of the awakening of the people's consciousness. Another category of peasants are people hopelessly poisoned by the poison of serfdom and turned into serfs.
Nekrasov repeatedly mentions in the poem about peasant riots, which especially intensified after the reform. Here is a typical story:
Have any of you heard,
How the estate rebelled
Landowner Obrubkov,
Frightened province,
Nedykhanev County,
Villages Tetanus?..
In this passage, the names themselves are significant, talking about the fear, humility, and downtroddenness of the inhabitants. And if the peasants of these places rebelled, it means that the cup of people’s patience has overflowed! Due to censorship obstacles, the poet could not openly depict popular uprisings; he could not, of course, openly call for a peasant revolution. But hints scattered throughout the pages of the poem, images of individual peasants, their thoughts and aspirations, and sometimes decisive actions indicate the revolutionary orientation of the poem.
The legend “About Two Great Sinners” expresses the idea of revolutionary retribution, glorifies not Christian forgiveness, but fair punishment, and calls for a fight against the oppressors of the people. The robber Kudeyar accomplished a truly holy deed by killing the people's tormentor.
Among the peasants depicted by Nekrasov, Yakim Naga especially stands out. He is a defender of the interests of the people and an exponent of those sentiments of protest that are ripening among the peasant masses. Yakim is the flesh and blood of the lower peasantry. His portrait is expressive - a portrait of a man who seems to have grown out of the earth, connected to it by blood ties. Both his surname and nickname and the name of the village where he lives - Bosovo - are expressive.
Yakim visited the city, where he sought justice and suffered from unjust judges. He is a literate, inquisitive man, and although we see Yakim “drunk”, “wretched”, what strength, what high dignity emanates from him when he speaks out for the offended peasantry! He speaks about the people with love and pain, with great anger against their enslavers:
Every peasant
The soul is like a black cloud -
Angry, menacing - and it would be necessary
Thunder will roar from there,
It's raining bloody...
Here the author’s voice merges with the peasant’s voice. The image of a thundercloud is an image of the revolution, the storm that the poet called for, exclaiming:
Roar over the depths of the sea,
Howl in the field, in the forest!
Savely, the Holy Russian hero, is in many ways similar to Yakim Nagogo. They are united by their protest against social injustice, thoughts about the fate of the peasant, and love for their native working people. And at the same time, Savely is a unique, unusually bright figure. Yakim is outwardly frail and unprepossessing, but Savely is a hero at a hundred years old. For the murder of the manager, the bloodsucker Vogel, he spent twenty years in hard labor, twenty in a settlement, and still did not reconcile himself. His thoughts about the peasantry contain deep, hard-won wisdom. Saveliy firmly believes in the heroic power of the people, but sees with pain that all the people’s strength is spent on endless patience.
Where have you gone, strength?
What were you useful for?
Under rods, under sticks
Left for little things! –
Savely is sad.
The image of the Holy Russian hero captures the awakening consciousness of the people: Savely sees the causes of evil, he has lost the faith in God’s help and in the good king that is so characteristic of the patriarchal peasantry. He already understands that he must gain freedom not through humility, but with an axe.
But seeing how endlessly the people endure rods and chains, Savely himself at times begins to preach patience, uncomplaining faith in the wisdom of God. Nekrasov reveals the contradictory nature of the people's consciousness, the struggle between the age-old habit of slavery and the rebellious spirit. What will win? Savely dies with words about the hopelessness of the peasant's fate... And yet this image leaves the impression of strength, indomitable will, longing for freedom. Savely’s wise prophecy remains in my memory:
To be intolerant is an abyss,
To endure is an abyss.
Savely's rebellious spirit remained to live in the heart of Matryona Timofeevna.
says the long-suffering peasant woman. It is not submission to fate, not “dull patience,” but pain and anger that are expressed in the words with which she ends the story about her life:
There is not a shadow of Christian all-embracing and humility in these words. On the contrary, here is the idea that retribution is needed for grievances. But Nekrasov is faithful to historical truth. The peasant's anger accumulates, but the usual faith in the intercession of the Mother of God and in the power of prayer has also been preserved.
And yet Matryona Timofeevna is saved by her own spiritual strength, the will to live. Not knowing how to get the truth, she is ready to go to the king and complains about the headman to the governor. She does not bow her head before the formidable bosses, before whom “the peasants trembled.” The unfortunate mother speaks on behalf of the entire people:
The story about the peasant woman Korchagina leads us to the thought: if a spiritual storm is brewing in a woman, the most destitute and downtrodden creature, it means that a revolutionary reorganization of life is possible and close. Faith in the people, in their awakening, is expressed in the words of the poet, which have become popular:
Saved in slavery
Free heart -
Gold, gold
People's heart!
However, the poet did not idealize the people, knowing that not all hearts could resist the corrupting influence of slavery. But if the poet bows to those who have preserved their nobility and the will to fight, then he speaks of slaves and serfs with bitterness and contempt.
Lackey Ipat from the chapter “The Last One” is happy with his servile title. He doesn't even want to hear about freedom. Choking with emotion, he recalls the bullying of his master, calling him “prince” and himself “the last slave.” The author gives Ipat an apt and angry assessment: “a sensitive lackey.”
We meet the same slave in the chapter “Happy”. This is Prince Peremetyev's lackey. The poet ironizes his idea of happiness: the footman considers himself among the happy ones because he was his master’s “favorite slave,” suffered from a “noble disease” - gout, and licked the master’s plates.
Hatred of servility, of slavish patience is one of the characteristic features of the moral character of revolutionary democrats. This feeling is shared by the people. In the story “About the Exemplary Serf - Yakov the Faithful,” Baron Sineguzin’s servant expresses the people’s point of view:
People of servile rank -
Real dogs sometimes:
The heavier the punishment.
That's why gentlemen are dearer to them.
However, the story of Yakov differs from the story of Ipat or the lackey of Prince Peremetyev. Mr. Polivanov's faithful servant could not stand the bullying and, at least with his own death, took revenge on the master. It turns out that even morally disfigured, completely beaten slaves, driven to extremes, are capable of protesting.
Nekrasov understands what exactly cripples people’s souls. If among the people there are serfs, silent slaves and traitors, then “it’s all to blame”: serfdom corrupted forced people, imposed on them the terrible stigma of slavery.
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