Composition of the story Poor Lisa. Analysis of the story “Poor Lisa” by Karamzin: the essence, meaning, idea and thought of the story

Many people remember N.M. Karamzin based on his historical works. But he also did a lot for literature. It was through his efforts that a sentimental novel was developed, which describes not just ordinary people, but their feelings, suffering, experiences. brought together ordinary people and the rich as feeling, thinking and experiencing the same emotions and needs. At the time in which Poor Liza was written, namely in 1792, the emancipation of the peasants was still far away, and their existence seemed something incomprehensible and wild. Sentimentalism, however, brought them into full-fledged feeling heroes.

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History of creation

Important! He also introduced the fashion for little-known names - Erast and Elizabeth. Practically unused names quickly became common nouns, defining the character of a person.

It was this seemingly simple and uncomplicated completely fictional story of love and death that gave rise to a number of imitators. And the pond was even a place of pilgrimage for unfortunate lovers.

It's easy to remember what the story is about. After all, her story is not rich or vicissitudes. Annotation to the story allows you to find out the main events. Karamzin himself would have conveyed the summary as follows:

1. Left without a father, Lisa began to help her impoverished mother by selling flowers and berries.
2. Erast, conquered by her beauty and freshness, offers her to sell the goods only to him and then asks her not to go out at all, but to give him the goods from home. This rich but windy nobleman falls in love with Lisa. They begin to spend evenings alone.
3. Soon a wealthy neighbor woo Lizaveta, but Erast comforts her, promising to marry himself. There is closeness, and Erast loses interest in the girl he ruined. Soon the young man leaves for service. Lizaveta is waiting and afraid. But by chance they meet on the street, and Lizaveta throws herself on his neck.
4. Erast announces that he is engaged to another, and orders the servant to give her money and take her out of the yard. Lizaveta, having handed over the money to her mother, rushes into the pond. Her mother dies from a stroke.
5. Erast is ruined by losing at cards and forced to marry a wealthy widow. He does not find happiness in life and blames himself.

Selling flowers to the city

main characters

It is clear that the characterization of one of the heroes of the story "Poor Lisa" will be insufficient. They must be evaluated together, influencing each other.

Despite the novelty and originality of the plot, the image of Erast in the story "Poor Liza" is not new, and a little-known name does not save either. Rich and bored nobleman tired of accessible and cutesy beauties. He is looking for bright sensations and finds an innocent and pure girl. Her image surprises him, attracts and even awakens love. But the very first closeness turns the angel into an ordinary earthly girl. He immediately remembers that she is poor, uneducated, and her reputation has already been ruined. He runs from responsibility, from crime.

He runs into his usual hobbies - cards and festivities, which leads to ruin. But he does not want to lose his habits and live with his beloved work life. Erast sells his youth and freedom for the wealth of a widow. Although a couple of months ago he dissuaded his beloved from a successful marriage.

Meeting with his beloved after separation only tires him, interferes. He cynically throws money at her and forces the servant to take the unfortunate woman out. This gesture shows the depth of the fall and all its cruelty.

But the image of the main character of Karamzin's story is fresh and new. She is poor, works for her mother's survival, and yet is gentle and beautiful. Its distinctive features are sensitivity and nationality. In Karamzin's story, poor Liza is a typical village heroine, poetic and with a tender heart. It is her feelings and emotions that replace her upbringing, morality and norms.

The author, generously endowing the poor girl with kindness and love, seems to emphasize that such women are inherent in natural that does not require restrictions and teachings. She is ready to live for her loved ones, to work and keep joy.

Important! Life has already tested her for strength, and she withstood the test with dignity. Behind her image, honest, beautiful, gentle, it is forgotten that she is a poor, uneducated peasant woman. That she works with her hands and sells what God has sent. This should be remembered when the news of the ruin of Erast becomes known. Lisa is not afraid of poverty.

The scene describing how the poor girl died is full of despair and tragedy. A believing and loving girl undoubtedly understands that suicide is a terrible sin. She also understands that her mother will not live without her help. But the pain of betrayal and the realization that she is disgraced is too hard for her to experience. Lisa took a sober look at life and honestly told Erast that she was poor, that she was not a match for him, and that her mother had found her a worthy groom, albeit an unloved one.

But the young man convinced her of his love and committed an irreparable crime - he took her honor. What for him was an ordinary boring event turned out to be the end of the world for poor Lisa and the beginning of a new life at the same time. Her most tender and pure soul plunged into the mud, and a new meeting showed that her beloved appreciated her deed as licentiousness.

Important! The one who wrote the story "Poor Lisa" realized that he was raising a whole layer of problems and in particular the theme of the responsibility of rich bored noblemen to unfortunate poor girls whose fates and lives are broken from boredom, which later found its response in the work of Bunin and others.

Scene near the pond

Reader reaction

The audience received the story ambiguously. Women sympathized and made a pilgrimage to the pond, which became the last refuge of the unfortunate girl. Some male critics shamed the author and accused him of excessive sensitivity, of abundant tears that flow constantly, of the picturesqueness of the characters.

In fact, behind the external cloying and tearfulness, in which every critical article is full of reproaches, lies the true meaning, understood by attentive readers. The author pushes not only two characters, but two worlds:

• Sincere, sensitive, painfully naive peasantry with its touching and stupid, but real girls.
• Good-natured, enthusiastic, generous nobility with pampered and capricious men.

One is hardened by the difficulties of life, the other is broken and frightened by the same difficulties.

Genre of the work

Karamzin himself described his work as a sentimental fairy tale, but it received the status of a sentimental story, since it has heroes acting for a long time, a full-fledged plot, development and denouement. Heroes live not in separate episodes, but a significant part of their lives.

Poor LISA. Nikolai Karamzin

Retelling Karamzin N. M. "Poor Lisa"

Conclusion

So, the question: "Poor Liza" - is it a story or a story, was decided long ago and unambiguously. The summary of the book gives the exact answer.

The story "Poor Lisa", written by Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin, became one of the first works of sentimentalism in Russia. The love story of a poor girl and a young nobleman won the hearts of many of the writer's contemporaries and was received with great enthusiasm. The work brought unprecedented popularity to the then completely unknown 25-year-old writer. However, with what descriptions does the story “Poor Liza” begin?

History of creation

N. M. Karamzin was distinguished by his love for Western culture and actively preached its principles. His role in the life of Russia was enormous and invaluable. This progressive and active man traveled extensively in Europe in 1789-1790, and upon his return he published the story "Poor Lisa" in the Moscow Journal.

Analysis of the story indicates that the work has a sentimental aesthetic orientation, which is expressed in interest in, regardless of their social status.

While writing the story, Karamzin lived in a dacha with his friends, not far from which he was located. It is believed that he served as the basis for the beginning of the work. Thanks to this, the love story and the characters themselves were perceived by readers as completely real. And the pond near the monastery began to be called "Lizina Pond".

"Poor Lisa" by Karamzin as a sentimentalist story

“Poor Liza” is, in fact, a short story, in the genre of which no one wrote in Russia before Karamzin. But the writer's innovation is not only in the choice of genre, but also in the direction. It was behind this story that the title of the first work of Russian sentimentalism was entrenched.

Sentimentalism arose in Europe in the 17th century and focused on the sensual side of human life. Questions of reason and society went by the wayside for this direction, but emotions, relationships between people became a priority.

Sentimentalism has always sought to idealize what is happening, to embellish. Answering the question about what descriptions the story “Poor Liza” begins with, we can talk about the idyllic landscape that Karamzin paints for readers.

Theme and idea

One of the main themes of the story is social, and it is connected with the problem of the attitude of the nobility towards the peasants. It is not for nothing that Karamzin chooses a peasant girl for the role of the bearer of innocence and morality.

Contrasting the images of Lisa and Erast, the writer is one of the first to raise the problem of contradictions between the city and the countryside. If we turn to what descriptions the story "Poor Lisa" begins with, then we will see a quiet, cozy and natural world that exists in harmony with nature. The city, on the other hand, frightens, terrifies with its “mass of houses”, “golden domes”. Lisa becomes a reflection of nature, she is natural and naive, there is no falsehood and pretense in her.

The author speaks in the story from the position of a humanist. Karamzin depicts all the charm of love, its beauty and strength. But reason and pragmatism can easily destroy this wonderful feeling. The story owes its success to the incredible attention to the personality of a person, his experiences. "Poor Lisa" evoked sympathy from her readers thanks to Karamzin's amazing ability to portray all the spiritual subtleties, experiences, aspirations and thoughts of the heroine.

Heroes

A complete analysis of the story "Poor Liza" is impossible without a detailed examination of the images of the main characters of the work. Liza and Erast, as noted above, embodied different ideals and principles.

Lisa is an ordinary peasant girl whose main feature is the ability to feel. She acts according to the dictates of her heart and feelings, which ultimately led her to death, although her morality remained intact. However, in the image of Lisa there is little peasant: her speech and thoughts are closer to the language of the book, however, the feelings of the girl who fell in love for the first time are conveyed with incredible truthfulness. So, despite the external idealization of the heroine, her inner experiences are conveyed very realistically. In this regard, the story "Poor Liza" does not lose its innovation.

What descriptions begin the work? First of all, consonant with the character of the heroine, helping the reader to recognize her. This is a natural idyllic world.

Erast appears completely different to readers. He is an officer who is only puzzled by the search for new entertainment, life in the world tires and bores him. He is not stupid, kind, but weak in character and changeable in his affections. Erast truly falls in love, but does not think about the future at all, because Lisa is not his circle, and he will never be able to marry her.

Karamzin complicated the image of Erast. Usually such a hero in Russian literature was simpler and endowed with certain characteristics. But the writer does not make him an insidious seducer, but a sincerely fallen in love man who, due to weakness of character, could not pass the test and keep his love. This type of hero was new to Russian literature, but he immediately took root and later received the name "superfluous person."

Plot and originality

The plot of the story is pretty straightforward. This is the story of the tragic love of a peasant woman and a nobleman, the result of which was the death of Liza.

What descriptions begin the story "Poor Lisa"? Karamzin draws a natural panorama, the bulk of the monastery, a pond - it is here, surrounded by nature, that the main character lives. But the main thing in the story is not the plot and not the descriptions, the main thing is feelings. And the narrator must awaken these feelings in the audience. For the first time in Russian literature, where the image of the narrator has always remained outside the work, the hero-author appears. This sentimental narrator learns the love story from Erast and retells the reader with sadness and sympathy.

Thus, there are three main characters in the story: Liza, Erast and the author-narrator. Karamzin also introduces the technique of landscape descriptions and somewhat lightens the ponderous style of the Russian literary language.

Significance for Russian literature of the story "Poor Liza"

An analysis of the story thus shows Karamzin's incredible contribution to the development of Russian literature. In addition to describing the relationship between the city and the countryside, the appearance of an “extra person”, many researchers note the birth of a “little person” - in the image of Liza. This work influenced the work of A. S. Pushkin, F. M. Dostoevsky, L. N. Tolstoy, who developed the themes, ideas and images of Karamzin.

The incredible psychologism that brought world fame to Russian literature also gave rise to the story "Poor Lisa". With what descriptions does this work begin! How much beauty, originality and incredible stylistic lightness are in them! One cannot overestimate Karamzin's contribution to the development of Russian literature.

The writing

Words and tastes contrary

And contrary to wishes

On us from a faded line

Suddenly, there is charm.

What a strange thing for our days

It's not a secret for us.

But there is merit in it:

She's sentimental!

Lines from the first performance "Poor Liza",

libretto by Yuri Ryashentsev

In the era of Byron, Schiller and Goethe, on the eve of the French Revolution, in the intensity of feelings characteristic of those years for Europe, but with the ceremonial and pomp of the Baroque still preserved, the leading trends in literature were sensual and sensitive romanticism and sentimentalism. If the emergence of romanticism in Russia was due to the translations of the works of these poets, and later it was developed by their own Russian writings, then sentimentalism became popular thanks to the works of Russian writers, one of which is “Poor Lisa” by Karamzin.

In the words of Karamzin himself, the story "Poor Lisa" is "a very uncomplicated fairy tale." The story of the fate of the heroine begins with a description of Moscow and the author's admission that he often comes to the "deserted monastery" where Lisa is buried, and "listens to the muffled groan of times swallowed up by the abyss of the past." With this technique, the author indicates his presence in the story, showing that any value judgment in the text is his personal opinion. The coexistence of the author and his hero in the same narrative space before Karamzin was not familiar to Russian literature. The title of the story is built on the combination of the heroine's own name with an epithet that characterizes the sympathetic attitude of the narrator towards her, who at the same time constantly repeats that he has no power to change the course of events ("Ah! Why am I writing not a novel, but a sad story?").

Liza, forced to work hard to feed her old mother, one day comes to Moscow with lilies of the valley and meets a young man on the street who expresses his desire to always buy lilies of the valley from Lisa and finds out where she lives. The next day, Lisa is waiting for the appearance of a new acquaintance - Erast, without selling her lilies of the valley to anyone, but he only comes the next day to Lisa's house. The next day, Erast tells Lisa that he loves her, but asks to keep their feelings secret from her mother. For a long time, “their embraces were pure and immaculate,” and to Erast, “all the brilliant amusements of the great world” seem “insignificant in comparison with the pleasures with which the passionate friendship of an innocent soul fed his heart.” However, soon the son of a wealthy peasant from a neighboring village woo Lisa. Erast objects to their wedding, and says that, despite the difference between them, for him in Lisa "the most important thing is the soul, a sensitive and innocent soul." Their dates continue, but now Erast "could not be satisfied with being just innocent caresses." “He wanted more, more, and finally, he could not wish for anything ... Platonic love gave way to such feelings that he could not be proud of and which were no longer new to him.” After some time, Erast informs Lisa that his regiment is going on a military campaign. He says goodbye, gives Lisa's mother money. Two months later, Liza, having arrived in Moscow, sees Erast, follows his carriage to a huge mansion, where Erast, freeing himself from Lisa's embrace, says that he still loves her, but circumstances have changed: on the campaign he lost almost all of his estate, and is now forced to marry a rich widow. Erast gives Liza a hundred rubles and asks the servant to escort the girl out of the yard. Liza, having reached the pond, under the canopy of those oaks, which just "a few weeks before had witnessed her delights," meets the neighbor's daughter, gives her the money and asks her to tell her mother with the words that she loved the man, and he cheated on her. After that, he jumps into the water. The neighbor's daughter calls for help, Lisa is pulled out, but too late. Lisa was buried near the pond, Lisa's mother died of grief. Erast until the end of his life "could not be consoled and considered himself a murderer." The author met him a year before his death, and learned the whole story from him.

The story made a complete revolution in the public consciousness of the XVIII century. Karamzin, for the first time in the history of Russian prose, turned to a heroine endowed with emphatically mundane features. His words "and peasant women know how to love" became winged. Not surprisingly, the story was very popular. In the noble lists, many Erasts appear at once - the name was previously infrequent. The pond, located under the walls of the Simonov Monastery (a 14th-century monastery, has been preserved on the territory of the Dynamo plant on Leninskaya Sloboda Street, 26), was called Lisiny Pond, but thanks to Karamzin's story, it was popularly renamed Lizin and became a place of constant pilgrimage. According to eyewitnesses, the bark of the trees around the pond was cut with inscriptions, both serious (“Poor Lisa died in these streams for days; / If you are sensitive, passerby, take a breath”), and satirical, hostile to the heroine and author (“Erastov died in these streams bride. / Drown yourself, girls, there is enough room in the pond”).

"Poor Lisa" has become one of the pinnacles of Russian sentimentalism. It is in it that the refined psychologism of Russian artistic prose, recognized throughout the world, is born. Of great importance was the artistic discovery of Karamzin - the creation of a special emotional atmosphere corresponding to the theme of the work. The picture of a pure first love is drawn very touchingly: “Now I think,” Liza says to Erast, “that without you life is not life, but sadness and boredom. Without your dark eyes, a bright month; the singing nightingale is boring without your voice…” Sensuality – the highest value of sentimentalism – pushes the heroes into each other’s arms, gives them a moment of happiness. The main characters are also characteristically drawn: chaste, naive, joyfully trusting people, Liza appears as a beautiful shepherdess, least of all like a peasant woman, rather like a sweet secular young lady, brought up on sentimental novels; Erast, despite the dishonest act, reproaches himself for him until the end of his life.

In addition to sentimentalism, Karamzin gave Russia a new name. The name Elizabeth is translated as "honoring God." In biblical texts, this is the name of the wife of the high priest Aaron and the mother of John the Baptist. Later, the literary heroine Eloise, a friend of Abelard, appears. After her, the name is associated with a love theme: the story of the "noble maiden" Julie d "Entage, who fell in love with her modest teacher Saint-Pre, Jean-Jacques Rousseau calls "Julia, or New Eloise" (1761). Until the early 80s of the XVIII century, the name "Liza" was almost never found in Russian literature. By choosing this name for his heroine, Karamzin broke the strict canon of European literature of the 17th-18th centuries, in which the image of Lisa, Lisette was associated primarily with comedy and with the image of a maid-maid, who usually quite frivolous and understands everything connected with a love affair at a glance.The gap between the name and its usual meaning meant going beyond classicism, weakening the ties between the name and its bearer in a literary work. new: character - behavior, which was a significant achievement of Karamzin on the way to the "psychologism" of Russian prose.

Many readers were struck by the audacity of the author in the style of presentation. One of the critics from the Novikov circle, which once included Karamzin himself, wrote: “I don’t know if Mr. Karamzin made an era in the history of the Russian language: but if he did, it’s very bad.” Further, the author of these lines writes that in "Poor Liza" "bad morals are called good manners"

The plot of "Poor Lisa" is maximally generalized and compressed. Possible lines of development are only outlined, often the text is replaced by dots and dashes, which become its “significant minus”. The image of Lisa is also only outlined, each feature of her character is a topic for a story, but not yet the story itself.

Karamzin was one of the first to introduce the opposition of the city and the countryside into Russian literature. In world folklore and myth, heroes are often able to act actively only in the space allotted to them and are completely powerless outside of it. In accordance with this tradition, in Karamzin's story, a village man - a man of nature - turns out to be defenseless, falling into an urban space, where laws operate that are different from the laws of nature. No wonder Lisa's mother tells her: "My heart is always in the wrong place when you go to the city."

The central feature of Lisa's character is sensitivity - this is how the main dignity of Karamzin's stories was defined, meaning by this the ability to sympathize, to discover "the tenderest feelings" in the "bends of the heart", as well as the ability to enjoy the contemplation of one's own emotions. Liza trusts the movements of her heart, lives "gentle passions." Ultimately, it is ardor and fervor that lead her to death, but morally she is justified. The idea consistently pursued by Karamzin that it is natural for a spiritually rich, sensitive person to do good deeds removes the need for normative morality.

Many perceive the novel as a confrontation between honesty and windiness, kindness and negativity, poverty and wealth. In fact, everything is more complicated: this is a clash of characters: strong - and accustomed to go with the flow. The novel emphasizes that Erast is a young man "with a fair mind and a kind heart, kind by nature, but weak and windy." It was Erast, who, from the point of view of the Lisa social stratum, is the “darling of fate”, was constantly bored and “complained about his fate.” Erast is represented by an egoist who thinks that he is ready to change for the sake of a new life, but as soon as he gets bored, he, without looking back, changes his life again, without thinking about the fate of those whom he abandoned. In other words, he thinks only about his own pleasure, and his desire to live, not burdened by the rules of civilization, in the bosom of nature, is caused only by reading idyllic novels and oversaturation with social life.

In this light, falling in love with Lisa is only a necessary addition to the idyllic picture being created - it’s not for nothing that Erast calls her his shepherdess. Having read novels in which “all people carelessly walked along the rays, bathed in clean springs, kissed like turtledoves, rested under roses and myrtle”, he decided that he “found in Liza what his heart had been looking for for a long time.” Therefore, he dreams that he will “live with Lisa, like brother and sister, I will not use her love for evil and I will always be happy!”, And when Lisa gives herself to him, the satiated young man begins to grow cold in his feelings.

At the same time, Erast, being, as the author emphasizes, “kind by nature,” cannot just leave: he is trying to find a compromise with his conscience, and his decision comes down to paying off. The first time he gives money to Liza's mother, when he no longer wants to meet with Lisa and goes on a campaign with the regiment; the second time - when Lisa finds him in the city and he informs her about his upcoming marriage.

The story "Rich Lisa" in Russian literature opens the theme of the "little man", although the social aspect in relation to Lisa and Erast is somewhat muffled.

The story caused a lot of frank imitations: 1801. A.E. Izmailov "Poor Masha", I. Svechinsky "Seduced Henrietta", 1803 "Unfortunate Margaret". Along with this, the theme of "Poor Liza" can be traced in many works of high artistic value, and plays a variety of roles in them. So, Pushkin, turning to realism in prose works and wanting to emphasize both his rejection of sentimentalism and its irrelevance for contemporary Russia, took the plot of "Poor Lisa" and turned the "sad reality" into a story with a happy ending "The Young Lady - Peasant Woman" . Nevertheless, the same Pushkin in The Queen of Spades shows the line of the future life of the Karamzin Lisa: the fate that would have awaited her if she had not committed suicide. An echo of the theme of a sentimental work also sounds in the novel “Sunday” written in the spirit of realism by L.T. Tolstoy. Seduced by Nekhlyudov, Katyusha Maslova decides to throw herself under a train.

Thus, the plot, which existed in literature before and became popular after, was transferred to Russian soil, while acquiring a special national flavor and becoming the basis for the development of Russian sentimentalism. Russian psychological, portrait prose and contributed to the gradual departure of Russian literature from the norms of classicism to more modern literary trends.

Other writings on this work

Words and tastes contrary

And contrary to wishes

On us from a faded line

Suddenly, there is charm.

What a strange thing for our days

It's not a secret for us.

But there is merit in it:

She's sentimental!

Lines from the first performance "Poor Liza",

libretto by Yuri Ryashentsev

In the era of Byron, Schiller and Goethe, on the eve of the French Revolution, in the intensity of feelings characteristic of those years for Europe, but with the ceremonial and pomp of the Baroque still preserved, the leading trends in literature were sensual and sensitive romanticism and sentimentalism. If the emergence of romanticism in Russia was due to the translations of the works of these poets, and later it was developed by their own Russian writings, then sentimentalism became popular thanks to the works of Russian writers, one of which is “Poor Lisa” by Karamzin.

In the words of Karamzin himself, the story "Poor Lisa" is "a very uncomplicated fairy tale." The story of the fate of the heroine begins with a description of Moscow and the author's admission that he often comes to the "deserted monastery" where Lisa is buried, and "listens to the muffled groan of times swallowed up by the abyss of the past." With this technique, the author indicates his presence in the story, showing that any value judgment in the text is his personal opinion. The coexistence of the author and his hero in the same narrative space before Karamzin was not familiar to Russian literature. The title of the story is built on the combination of the heroine's own name with an epithet that characterizes the sympathetic attitude of the narrator towards her, who at the same time constantly repeats that he has no power to change the course of events ("Ah! Why am I writing not a novel, but a sad story?").

Liza, forced to work hard to feed her old mother, one day comes to Moscow with lilies of the valley and meets a young man on the street who expresses his desire to always buy lilies of the valley from Lisa and finds out where she lives. The next day, Lisa is waiting for the appearance of a new acquaintance - Erast, without selling her lilies of the valley to anyone, but he only comes the next day to Lisa's house. The next day, Erast tells Lisa that he loves her, but asks to keep their feelings secret from her mother. For a long time, “their embraces were pure and immaculate,” and to Erast, “all the brilliant amusements of the great world” seem “insignificant in comparison with the pleasures with which the passionate friendship of an innocent soul fed his heart.” However, soon the son of a wealthy peasant from a neighboring village woo Lisa. Erast objects to their wedding, and says that, despite the difference between them, for him in Lisa "the most important thing is the soul, a sensitive and innocent soul." Their dates continue, but now Erast "could not be satisfied with being just innocent caresses." “He wanted more, more, and finally, he could not wish for anything ... Platonic love gave way to such feelings that he could not be proud of and which were no longer new to him.” After some time, Erast informs Lisa that his regiment is going on a military campaign. He says goodbye, gives Lisa's mother money. Two months later, Liza, having arrived in Moscow, sees Erast, follows his carriage to a huge mansion, where Erast, freeing himself from Lisa's embrace, says that he still loves her, but circumstances have changed: on the campaign he lost almost all of his estate, and is now forced to marry a rich widow. Erast gives Liza a hundred rubles and asks the servant to escort the girl out of the yard. Liza, having reached the pond, under the canopy of those oaks, which just "a few weeks before had witnessed her delights," meets the neighbor's daughter, gives her the money and asks her to tell her mother with the words that she loved the man, and he cheated on her. After that, he jumps into the water. The neighbor's daughter calls for help, Lisa is pulled out, but too late. Lisa was buried near the pond, Lisa's mother died of grief. Erast until the end of his life "could not be consoled and considered himself a murderer." The author met him a year before his death, and learned the whole story from him.

The story made a complete revolution in the public consciousness of the XVIII century. Karamzin, for the first time in the history of Russian prose, turned to a heroine endowed with emphatically mundane features. His words "and peasant women know how to love" became winged. Not surprisingly, the story was very popular. In the noble lists, many Erasts appear at once - the name was previously infrequent. The pond, located under the walls of the Simonov Monastery (a 14th-century monastery, has been preserved on the territory of the Dynamo plant on Leninskaya Sloboda Street, 26), was called Lisiny Pond, but thanks to Karamzin's story, it was popularly renamed Lizin and became a place of constant pilgrimage. According to eyewitnesses, the bark of the trees around the pond was cut with inscriptions, both serious (“Poor Lisa died in these streams for days; / If you are sensitive, passerby, take a breath”), and satirical, hostile to the heroine and author (“Erastov died in these streams bride. / Drown yourself, girls, there is enough room in the pond”).

"Poor Lisa" has become one of the pinnacles of Russian sentimentalism. It is in it that the refined psychologism of Russian artistic prose, recognized throughout the world, is born. Of great importance was the artistic discovery of Karamzin - the creation of a special emotional atmosphere corresponding to the theme of the work. The picture of a pure first love is drawn very touchingly: “Now I think,” Liza says to Erast, “that without you life is not life, but sadness and boredom. Without your dark eyes, a bright month; without your voice, the nightingale singing is boring ... "Sensuality - the highest value of sentimentalism - pushes the characters into each other's arms, gives them a moment of happiness. The main characters are also characteristically drawn: chaste, naive, joyfully trusting people, Liza appears as a beautiful shepherdess, least of all like a peasant woman, rather like a sweet secular young lady, brought up on sentimental novels; Erast, despite the dishonest act, reproaches himself for him until the end of his life.

In addition to sentimentalism, Karamzin gave Russia a new name. The name Elizabeth is translated as "honoring God." In biblical texts, this is the name of the wife of the high priest Aaron and the mother of John the Baptist. Later, the literary heroine Eloise, a friend of Abelard, appears. After her, the name is associated with a love theme: the story of the "noble maiden" Julie d "Entage, who fell in love with her modest teacher Saint-Pre, Jean-Jacques Rousseau calls "Julia, or New Eloise" (1761). Until the early 80s of the XVIII century, the name "Lisa" was almost never found in Russian literature. By choosing this name for his heroine, Karamzin broke the strict canon of European literature of the 17th-18th centuries, in which the image of Lisa, Lisette was associated primarily with comedy and with the image of a maid-servant, which is usually rather frivolous and understands everything connected with a love affair at a glance.The gap between the name and its usual meaning meant going beyond classicism, weakening the ties between the name and its bearer in a literary work. a new one appears: character - behavior, which was a significant conquest of Karamzin on the way to the "psychologism" of Russian prose.

Many readers were struck by the audacity of the author in the style of presentation. One of the critics from the Novikov circle, which once included Karamzin himself, wrote: “I don’t know if Mr. Karamzin made an era in the history of the Russian language: but if he did, it’s very bad.” Further, the author of these lines writes that in "Poor Liza" "bad morals are called good manners"

The plot of "Poor Lisa" is maximally generalized and compressed. Possible lines of development are only outlined, often the text is replaced by dots and dashes, which become its “significant minus”. The image of Lisa is also only outlined, each feature of her character is a topic for a story, but not yet the story itself.

Karamzin was one of the first to introduce the opposition of the city and the countryside into Russian literature. In world folklore and myth, heroes are often able to act actively only in the space allotted to them and are completely powerless outside of it. In accordance with this tradition, in Karamzin's story, a village man - a man of nature - turns out to be defenseless, falling into urban space, where laws operate that are different from the laws of nature. No wonder Lisa's mother tells her: "My heart is always in the wrong place when you go to the city."

The central feature of Lisa's character is sensitivity - this is how the main dignity of Karamzin's stories was defined, meaning by this the ability to sympathize, to discover "tender feelings" in the "bends of the heart", as well as the ability to enjoy the contemplation of one's own emotions. Liza trusts the movements of her heart, lives "gentle passions." Ultimately, it is ardor and fervor that lead her to death, but morally she is justified. The idea consistently pursued by Karamzin that it is natural for a spiritually rich, sensitive person to do good deeds removes the need for normative morality.

Many perceive the novel as a confrontation between honesty and windiness, kindness and negativity, poverty and wealth. In fact, everything is more complicated: this is a clash of characters: strong - and accustomed to go with the flow. The novel emphasizes that Erast is a young man "with a fair mind and a kind heart, kind by nature, but weak and windy." It was Erast, who, from the point of view of the Lisa social stratum, is the “darling of fate”, was constantly bored and “complained about his fate.” Erast is represented by an egoist who thinks that he is ready to change for the sake of a new life, but as soon as he gets bored, he, without looking back, changes his life again, without thinking about the fate of those whom he abandoned. In other words, he thinks only about his own pleasure, and his desire to live, not burdened by the rules of civilization, in the bosom of nature, is caused only by reading idyllic novels and oversaturation with social life.

In this light, falling in love with Lisa is only a necessary addition to the idyllic picture being created - it’s not without reason that Erast calls her his shepherdess. Having read novels in which “all people carelessly walked along the rays, bathed in clean springs, kissed like turtledoves, rested under roses and myrtle”, he decided that he “found in Liza what his heart had been looking for for a long time.” Therefore, he dreams that he will “live with Lisa, like brother and sister, I will not use her love for evil and I will always be happy!”, And when Lisa gives herself to him, the satiated young man begins to grow cold in his feelings.

At the same time, Erast, being, as the author emphasizes, “kind by nature,” cannot just leave: he is trying to find a compromise with his conscience, and his decision comes down to paying off. The first time he gives money to Liza's mother, when he no longer wants to meet with Lisa and goes on a campaign with the regiment; the second time - when Lisa finds him in the city and he tells her about his upcoming marriage.

The story "Rich Lisa" in Russian literature opens the theme of the "little man", although the social aspect in relation to Lisa and Erast is somewhat muffled.

The story caused a lot of frank imitations: 1801. A.E. Izmailov "Poor Masha", I. Svechinsky "Seduced Henrietta", 1803 "Unfortunate Margaret". Along with this, the theme of "Poor Liza" can be traced in many works of high artistic value, and plays a variety of roles in them. So, Pushkin, moving to realism in prose works and wanting to emphasize both his rejection of sentimentalism and its irrelevance for contemporary Russia, took the plot of "Poor Lisa" and turned the "sad reality" into a story with a happy ending "The young lady - a peasant woman" . Nevertheless, the same Pushkin in The Queen of Spades shows the line of the future life of the Karamzin Lisa: the fate that would have awaited her if she had not committed suicide. An echo of the theme of a sentimental work also sounds in the novel “Sunday” written in the spirit of realism by L.T. Tolstoy. Seduced by Nekhlyudov, Katyusha Maslova decides to throw herself under a train.

Thus, the plot, which existed in literature before and became popular after, was transferred to Russian soil, while acquiring a special national flavor and becoming the basis for the development of Russian sentimentalism. Russian psychological, portrait prose and contributed to the gradual departure of Russian literature from the norms of classicism to more modern literary trends.

The story "Poor Lisa", which became an example of sentimental prose, was published by Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin in 1792 in the publication "Moscow Journal". It is worth noting Karamzin as an honored reformer of the Russian language and one of the most highly educated Russians of his time - this is an important aspect that allows us to evaluate the success of the story in the future. Firstly, the development of Russian literature had a "catching up" character, since it lagged behind European literature by about 90-100 years. While in the West sentimental novels were being written and read with might and main, clumsy classical odes and dramas were still being composed in Russia. Karamzin's progressiveness as a writer consisted in "bringing" sentimental genres from Europe to his homeland and developing a style and language for further writing such works.

Secondly, the assimilation of literature of the late 18th century by the public was such that at first they wrote for society how to live, and then society began to live according to what was written. That is, before the sentimental story, people read mostly hagiographic or church literature, where there were no living characters or lively speech, and the heroes of the sentimental story - such as Lisa - gave secular young ladies a real scenario of life, a guide of feelings.

History of the creation of the story

Karamzin brought a story about poor Lisa from his many trips - from 1789 to 1790 he visited Germany, England, France, Switzerland (England is considered the birthplace of sentimentalism), and upon his return he published a new revolutionary story in his own journal.

“Poor Liza” is not an original work, since Karamzin adapted its plot for Russian soil, taking it from European literature. We are not talking about a specific work and plagiarism - there were many such European stories. In addition, the author created an atmosphere of amazing authenticity by drawing himself as one of the heroes of the story and masterfully describing the situation of events.

According to the memoirs of contemporaries, shortly after returning from a trip, the writer lived in a dacha not far from the Simonov Monastery, in a picturesque, calm place. The situation described by the author is real - the readers recognized both the surroundings of the monastery and the "lizine pond", and this contributed to the fact that the plot was perceived as reliable, and the characters - as real people.

Analysis of the work

The plot of the story

The plot of the story is love and, according to the author, utterly simple. The peasant girl Lisa (her father was a prosperous peasant, but after his death the farm is in decline and the girl has to earn money by selling needlework and flowers) lives in the bosom of nature with her old mother. In a city that seems huge and alien to her, she meets a young nobleman, Erast. Young people fall in love - Erast out of boredom, inspired by pleasures and a noble lifestyle, and Liza - for the first time, with all the simple, ardor and naturalness of a "natural person". Erast takes advantage of the girl's gullibility and takes possession of her, after which, naturally, he begins to be weary of the girl's company. The nobleman leaves for the war, where he loses his entire fortune in cards. The way out is to marry a rich widow. Lisa finds out about this and commits suicide by throwing herself into a pond, not far from the Simonov Monastery. The author who has been told this story cannot remember poor Liza without holy tears of regret.

For the first time among Russian writers, Karamzin unleashed the conflict of a work by the death of the heroine - as, most likely, it would have been in reality.

Of course, despite the progressiveness of Karamzin's story, his characters differ significantly from real people, they are idealized and embellished. This is especially true of the peasants - Lisa does not look like a peasant woman. It is unlikely that hard work would have contributed to the fact that she remained “sensitive and kind”, it is unlikely that she would conduct internal dialogues with herself in an elegant style, and she could hardly keep up a conversation with a nobleman. Nevertheless, this is the first thesis of the story - "and peasant women know how to love."

main characters

Lisa

The central heroine of the story, Liza, is the embodiment of sensitivity, ardor and ardor. Her mind, kindness and tenderness, the author emphasizes, are from nature. Having met Erast, she begins to dream not that he, like a handsome prince, will take her to his world, but that he should be a simple peasant or shepherd - this would equalize them and allow them to be together.

Erast differs from Liza not only in social terms, but also in character. Perhaps, the author says, he was spoiled by the world - he leads a typical lifestyle for an officer and a nobleman - he seeks pleasures and, having found them, cools to life. Erast is both smart and kind, but weak, incapable of action - such a hero also appears in Russian literature for the first time, a type of "disappointed aristocrat's life." At first, Erast is sincere in his love impulse - he does not lie when he tells Lisa about love, and it turns out that he is also a victim of circumstances. He does not stand the test of love, does not resolve the situation "like a man", but feels sincere torment after what happened. After all, it was he who allegedly told the author the story of poor Lisa and led him to Liza's grave.

Erast predetermined the appearance in Russian literature of a number of heroes like "superfluous people" - weak and incapable of key decisions.

Karamzin uses "speaking names". In the case of Liza, the choice of the name turned out to be "double-sided." The fact is that classical literature provided for typing techniques, and the name Lisa was supposed to mean a playful, flirtatious, frivolous character. Such a name could have a laughing maid - a cunning comedy character, prone to love adventures, by no means innocent. Having chosen such a name for his heroine, Karamzin destroyed the classical typification and created a new one. He built a new relationship between the name, character and actions of the hero and outlined the path to psychologism in literature.

The name Erast was also not chosen by chance. It means "beautiful" in Greek. His fatal charm, the need for novelty of impressions lured and ruined the unfortunate girl. But Erast will reproach himself for the rest of his life.

Constantly reminding the reader of his reaction to what is happening (“I remember with sadness ...”, “tears are rolling down my face, reader ....”), the author organizes the narrative in such a way that it acquires lyricism and sensitivity.

Quotes

"Mother! Mother! How can this be? He is a gentleman, and among the peasants ...". Lisa.

"Nature calls me into its arms, to its pure joys," he thought, and decided - at least for a while - to leave the great light..

“I can’t live,” thought Liza, “it’s impossible!.. Oh, if only the sky would fall on me! If only the earth would swallow up the poor woman!... No! The sky doesn’t fall; the earth doesn’t tremble! Lisa.

"Now, maybe they've already reconciled!" Author

Theme, conflict of the story

Karamzin's story touches on several themes:

• The theme of the idealization of the peasant environment, the ideality of life in nature. The main character is a child of nature, and therefore, by default, she cannot be evil, immoral, insensitive. The girl embodies simplicity and innocence due to the fact that she comes from a peasant family, where eternal moral values ​​are kept.
• The theme of love and betrayal. The author sings of the beauty of sincere feelings and sadly talks about the doom of love, not supported by reason.
• The theme of the opposition of the village and the city. The city turns out to be evil, a great evil force capable of breaking a pure creature from nature (Lisa's mother intuitively feels this evil force and prays for her daughter every time she goes to the city to sell flowers or berries).
• The theme of the "little man". Social inequality, the author is sure (and this is an obvious glimpse of realism) does not lead to the happiness of lovers from different backgrounds. Such love is doomed.

The main conflict of the story is social, because it is precisely because of the gap between wealth and poverty that the love of the heroes dies, and then the heroine. The author exalts sensitivity as the highest value of a person, affirms the cult of feelings as opposed to the cult of reason.