The history of the creation of a thunderstorm. Creative story "Thunderstorms"
The play “The Thunderstorm” was written by Ostrovsky during the summer and autumn of 1859, staged in theaters in Moscow and St. Petersburg in the same year, and published in 1860. The success of the play and performances was so great that the playwright was awarded the Uvarov Prize (the highest award for a dramatic work).
The plot was based on impressions from a literary expedition along the Volga in 1856-1857. in order to study the life and customs of the Volga settlements. The plot is taken from life. It is no secret that many Volga cities disputed the right to have the play take place in their city (domostroy, tyranny, rudeness and humiliation prevailed in many Russian cities of that time).
This is a period of social upsurge, when the foundations of serfdom were cracking. The name "Thunderstorm" is not just a majestic natural phenomenon, but a social upheaval. . The thunderstorm becomes the background against which it unfolds final scene plays. The outbreak of a thunderstorm frightens everyone with the fear of retribution for sins.
Storm... The peculiarity of this image is that, symbolically expressing main idea plays, he at the same time directly participates in the actions of the drama as a very real natural phenomenon, determines (in many ways) the actions of the heroine.
A thunderstorm broke out over Kalinov in Act I. She caused confusion in Katerina's soul.
In Act IV, the thunderstorm motif no longer ceases. (“The rain begins to fall, as if a thunderstorm is not going to gather?..”; “A thunderstorm is sent to us as punishment, so that we feel...”; “A thunderstorm will kill! It’s not a thunderstorm, but grace...”; “Remember my words, that this storm will not pass in vain...")
A thunderstorm is an elemental force of nature, terrible and not fully understood.
A thunderstorm is a “thunderstorm state of society”, a thunderstorm in the souls of the inhabitants of the city of Kalinov.
A thunderstorm is a threat to the fading but still strong world of wild boars and wild animals.
The thunderstorm is good news about new forces designed to free society from despotism.
For Kuligin, a thunderstorm is God's grace. For Dikiy and Kabanikha - heavenly punishment, for Feklusha - Ilya the Prophet is rolling across the sky, for Katerina - retribution for sins. But the heroine herself, her last step, which shook Kalinov’s world, is also a thunderstorm.
The thunderstorm in Ostrovsky's play, as in nature, combines destructive and creative forces.
The drama reflected the rise social movement, those moods that lived the advanced people of the 50-60s.
“The Thunderstorm” was allowed by dramatic censorship to be presented in 1859, and published in January 1860. At the request of Ostrovsky’s friends, censor I. Nordstrem, who favored the playwright, presented “The Thunderstorm” as a play not socially accusatory, satirical, but a love story. , without mentioning a word in his report about Dikiy, Kuligin, or Feklush.
In the most general formulation, the main theme of “The Thunderstorm” can be defined as a clash between new trends and old traditions, between the oppressed and the oppressors, between the desire of people to freely express their human rights, spiritual needs and the social and family order that prevailed in pre-reform Russia.
The theme of “Thunderstorm” is organically connected with its conflicts. The conflict that forms the basis of the plot of the drama is a conflict between old social and everyday principles and new, progressive aspirations for equality and freedom of the human person. The main conflict - Katerina and Boris with their environment - unites all the others. It is joined by the conflicts of Kuligin with Dikiy and Kabanikha, Kudryash with Dikiy, Boris with Dikiy, Varvara with Kabanikha, Tikhon with Kabanikha. The play is a true reflection of social relations, interests and struggles of its time.
common topic"Thunderstorms" entail a number of special topics:
a) Ostrovsky gives the stories of Kuligin, the remarks of Kudryash and Boris, the actions of Dikiy and Kabanikha detailed description the material and legal situation of all layers of society of that era;
c) depicting the life, interests, hobbies and experiences of the characters in “The Thunderstorm”, the author reproduces from different sides the social and family life of the merchants and philistines. This illuminates the problem of social and family relations. The position of women in the bourgeois-merchant environment is clearly depicted;
d) the life background and problems of that time are depicted. Heroes talk about important things for their time social phenomena: about the emergence of the first railways, about cholera epidemics, about the development of commercial and industrial activities in Moscow, etc.;
e) along with socio-economic and living conditions, the author skillfully depicted the surrounding nature and the different attitudes of the characters towards it.
So, in the words of Goncharov, in “The Thunderstorm” “a broad picture of national life and morals has settled down.” Pre-reform Russia is represented in it by its socio-economic, cultural, moral, and family and everyday appearance.
Composition of the play
The play has 5 acts: I act - the beginning, II-III - the development of the action, IV - the climax, V - the denouement.
Exposition- pictures of the Volga open space and the stuffiness of Kalinovsky morals (d. I, appearances 1-4).
The beginning- Katerina responds with dignity and peacefully to her mother-in-law’s nagging: “You’re talking about me, Mama, in vain. Whether in front of people or without people, I’m still alone, I don’t prove anything of myself.” The first collision (part I, scene 5).
Next comes development of the conflict between the heroes, a thunderstorm gathers twice in nature (D. I, Rev. 9). Katerina confesses to Varvara that she has fallen in love with Boris - and the old lady’s prophecy, a distant clap of thunder; end of part IV. A thundercloud creeps in, like a living, half-crazed old woman threatens Katerina with death in the whirlpool and hell, and Katerina confesses her sin (first climax), falls unconscious. But the thunderstorm never hit the city, only pre-storm tension.
Second climax- Katerina pronounces the last monologue when she says goodbye not to life, which is already unbearable, but to love: "My friend! My joy! Goodbye! (D. V, Rev. 4).
Denouement- Katerina’s suicide, the shock of the inhabitants of the city, Tikhon, who, being alive, envies his dead wife: Good for you, Katya! Why did I stay to live and suffer!..” (D. V, Rev. 7).
1. The nationality of Ostrovsky’s creativity.
2. Fateful journey along the Volga.
3. The nationwide scale of the tragedy.
4. The meaning of “Thunderstorm” from Dobrolyubov’s point of view.
“Ostrovsky’s world is not our world, and to a certain extent we, people of another culture, visit it as strangers... The alien and incomprehensible life that happens there... may be curious for us, like everything unprecedented and unheard of; but in itself the human variety that Ostrovsky has chosen for himself is uninteresting. He gave some reflection of the known environment, certain quarters of the Russian city; but he did not rise above the level of specific life, and the merchant overshadowed the person for him,” Yu. I. Aikhenvald wrote about A. N. Ostrovsky at the beginning of the 20th century. Critic Yu. Lebedev deeply disagrees with Aikhenvald’s opinion. He writes: “His attitude towards Ostrovsky is more despotic than any Kabanikh. And in him, no matter how sad it is to admit it, is a typical example of that sophisticated aesthetic “height” that our culture of the early 20th century was gaining in order to completely isolate itself from national life, first spiritually and then physically crush it.” This position is much closer to me, since I believe that Ostrovsky’s world may be far from aesthetic heights, but the people of his world artistic heroes with all the truth of life is undeniable. Ostrovsky's plays undoubtedly have enormous national significance. He opened up a huge country for the reader - the world of merchants as the center folk life in movement, development.
During the period of mature creativity, the writer creates the play “The Thunderstorm”, which became a kind of analysis of the dark and light sides of merchant life. The creation of the play was preceded by a trip to the Upper Volga, thanks to which the playwright’s childhood memories of a trip to his father’s homeland in Kostroma came to life. Ostrovsky recorded his impressions from a trip to provincial Russia in his diary, and this diary witnessed how much the future playwright was struck by his acquaintance with the people and poetic folk art. He wrote: “From Pereyaslavl begins Merya, a land abundant with mountains and waters, and a people who are tall, and beautiful, and intelligent, and frank, and obliging, and a free mind, and a wide-open soul. These are my beloved fellow countrymen, with whom I seem to get along well... On the meadow side the views are amazing: what kind of villages, what kind of buildings, just as if you are driving not through Russia, but through some promised land.” These impressions could not simply dissolve in a series of life events, they matured in the playwright’s soul, and when the time came, “The Thunderstorm” was born. His friend S.V. Maksimov spoke about the influence of the trip along the Volga on the writer’s subsequent work: “The artist, strong in talent, was not able to miss a favorable opportunity... He continued to observe the characters and worldview of the indigenous Russian people, who came out to meet him in the hundreds. .. The Volga gave Ostrovsky abundant food, showed him new themes for dramas and comedies and inspired him to those that constitute the honor and pride of Russian literature. From the veche, once free, Novgorod suburbs there was a whiff of that transitional time, when the heavy hand of Moscow shackled the old will and sent ironclad governors on long raked paws... Outwardly beautiful Torzhok, jealously guarding its Novgorod antiquity to the strange customs of girlish freedom and strict seclusion married, inspired Ostrovsky to create the deeply poetic “Thunderstorm” with playful Varvara and artistically graceful Katerina.”
It was assumed that Ostrovsky took the plot of “The Thunderstorm” from the life of the Kostroma merchants. The play is based on the Klykov case, which was sensational in Kostroma in 1859. Until the beginning of the 20th century, any of its residents could show the place of Katerina’s suicide - a gazebo over the Volga at the end of the boulevard, as well as the house next to the Church of the Assumption where she lived. When “The Thunderstorm” was first staged on the stage of the Kostroma Theater, the actors made themselves up “to look like the Klykovs.”
Kostroma local historians carefully studied the “Klykovo Case” in the archives and came to the conclusion that, indeed, it was this story that Ostrovsky used when creating “The Thunderstorm.” The story of A.P. Klykova is as follows: she, raised by her grandmother in love and affection, was a cheerful and cheerful sixteen-year-old girl who was married into an unsociable merchant family. This family consisted of parents, a son and an unmarried daughter. The stern mother-in-law suppressed her family with her despotism, and not only forced her young daughter-in-law to do all the menial work, but also “ate to eat.” Young Klykov did not protect his wife from his mother’s oppression. After some time, the young woman met another man, an employee of the Maryin post office. The situation in the family became even more unbearable: suspicions and scenes of jealousy seemed endless. As a result, on November 10, 1859, the body of the unfortunate woman was found in the Volga. The trial that began lasted a very long time and received wide publicity outside the Kostroma province. Therefore, no one doubted that Ostrovsky used the materials of this case in “The Thunderstorm”.
However, several decades later, researchers of Ostrovsky’s work absolutely established that the play “The Thunderstorm” was written before the tragic events in Kostroma took place. Even more surprising is the fact of such a coincidence. This testifies to how insightful Ostrovsky is, who was able to predict the growing conflict in merchant life between the old and new ways of life. The famous theater figure S. A. Yuryev accurately noted: “It was not Ostrovsky who wrote “The Thunderstorm”... Volga wrote “The Thunderstorm.”
The play takes place over the great Russian Volga River, from a place overlooking the vast expanse of the Russian Empire. It was not by chance that the author chose this particular location - in this way he emphasized the national scale of the tragedy that unfolded. Katerina’s fate is the fate of many Russian women of that time, given in marriage to an unloved man and suffering from the despotism of their mothers-in-law. But the old Domostroevsky world has already been shaken, the new generation can no longer put up with wild laws. This crisis state of the merchant world is the focus of the author, who examines this problem using the example of one family.
In Russian criticism of the 60s, “The Thunderstorm” gave rise to heated controversy. For Dobrolyubov, the play became evidence of the revolutionary forces emerging in Russia, and the critic rightly noted the rebellious notes in Katerina’s character, which he associated with the atmosphere of crisis in Russian life: “In Katerina we see a protest against Kabanov’s concepts of morality, a protest brought to the end, proclaimed and under domestic torture and over the abyss into which the poor woman threw herself. She doesn’t want to put up with it, doesn’t want to take advantage of the miserable vegetation that is given to her in exchange for her living soul... What a joyful, fresh life a healthy person breathes upon us, finding within himself the determination to end this rotten life at any cost!”
Introduction
A. N. Ostrovsky is very modern as truly talented artist. He never shied away from complex and painful issues of society. Ostrovsky is a very sensitive writer who loves his land, his people, its history. His plays attract people with their amazing moral purity and genuine humanity.
The play “The Thunderstorm” is rightfully considered one of the masterpieces of Ostrovsky and all Russian drama. After all, the author himself evaluates it as a creative success. In “The Thunderstorm,” according to Goncharov, “the picture of national life and morals settled down with unprecedented artistic completeness and fidelity,” in this capacity, the play was a passionate challenge to the despotism and ignorance that reigned in pre-reform Russia.
Very clearly and expressively he depicts the Ostrovsky corner of the “dark kingdom”, where before our eyes the confrontation between darkness and ignorance on the one hand, and beauty and harmony on the other, is gaining strength. The masters of life here are tyrants. They crowd people, tyrannize their families and suppress every manifestation of living and healthy human thought. Already at the first acquaintance with actors drama, the inevitability of a conflict between two opposing sides becomes obvious. Because both among adherents of the old order and among representatives of the new generation, both truly strong and weak characters are striking.
Based on this, the purpose of my work will be a detailed study of the characters of the main characters of A.N. Ostrovsky’s drama “The Thunderstorm”.
The history of the creation and plot of the drama “The Thunderstorm”
Drama A.N. Ostrovsky's "The Thunderstorm" first saw the light not in print, but on the stage: on November 16, 1859, the premiere took place at the Maly Theater, and on December 2 at the Alexandrinsky Theater. The drama was published in the first issue of the magazine “Library for Reading” the following year, 1860, and in March of the same year it was published as a separate publication.
“The Thunderstorm” was written quickly: started in July and finished on October 9, 1859. And it took shape and matured in the mind and imagination of the artist, apparently, for many years...
What a mystery is creation artistic image? When you think about “The Thunderstorm,” you remember a lot of what could have been the impetus for writing the drama. Firstly, the writer’s trip along the Volga itself, which opened up to him a new, unprecedented world of Russian life. The play says that the action takes place in the city of Kalinov on the banks of the Volga. The conventional town of Kalinov absorbed real signs of provincial life and customs of those cities that were well known to Ostrovsky from his Volga travel - Tver, Torzhok, Kostroma, and Kineshma.
But a writer may be struck by some detail, a meeting, even a story he heard, just a word or an objection, and it sinks into his imagination, secretly ripening and germinating there. He could see on the banks of the Volga and talk with some local tradesman, reputed to be an eccentric in the town, because he likes to “disperse the conversation”, speculate about local morals, etc., and in his creative imagination, future faces and characters could gradually emerge the heroes of "The Thunderstorm" that we have to study.
In the most general formulation, the thematic core of “The Thunderstorm” can be defined as a clash between new trends and old traditions, between the aspirations of oppressed people to freely express their spiritual needs. Inclinations, interests and the social, family and everyday order that prevailed in pre-reform Russia.
Characterizing representatives of old traditions and new trends, Ostrovsky deeply and completely reveals the essence of life relationships and the entire structure of pre-reform reality. In the words of Goncharov, in “The Thunderstorm” “a broad picture of national life and morals has settled down.”
“The Thunderstorm” was not written by Ostrovsky... “The Thunderstorm” was written by Volga.
S. A. Yuryev
Alexander Nikolaevich Ostrovsky was one of the largest cultural figures XIX century. His work will forever remain in the history of literature, and his contribution to the development of Russian theater is difficult to overestimate. The writer made some changes to the production of plays: attention should no longer be focused on just one character; a fourth scene is introduced, separating the audience from the actors in order to emphasize the conventionality of what is happening; are depicted ordinary people and standard everyday situations. The last position most accurately reflected the essence of the realistic method that Ostrovsky adhered to. His literary work began in the mid-1840s. “Our people are numbered,” “Family pictures,” “Poverty is not a vice” and other plays were written. The drama “The Thunderstorm” has a history of creation that is not limited to just working on the text and writing conversations between the characters.
The history of the creation of the play “The Thunderstorm” by Ostrovsky begins in the summer of 1859, and ends a few months later, in early October. It is known that this was preceded by a trip along the Volga. Under the patronage of the Maritime Ministry, an ethnographic expedition was organized to study the customs and morals of the indigenous population of Russia. Ostrovsky also took part in it.
The prototypes of the city of Kalinov were many Volga towns, at the same time similar to each other, but with something unique: Tver, Torzhok, Ostashkovo and many others. Ostrovsky, as an experienced researcher, recorded all his observations about the life of the Russian province and the characters of the people in his diary. Based on these recordings, the characters in "The Thunderstorm" were later created.
For a long time there was a hypothesis that the plot of “The Thunderstorm” was completely borrowed from real life. In 1859, precisely at this time the play was written, a resident of Kostroma left home early in the morning, and later her body was discovered in the Volga. The victim was the girl Alexandra Klykova. During the investigation, it became clear that the situation in the Klykov family was quite tense. The mother-in-law constantly mocked the girl, and the spineless husband could not influence the situation. The catalyst for this outcome was love relationship between Alexandra and the postal worker.
This assumption is deeply ingrained in people's minds. Surely in modern world tourist routes would already have been laid out in that place. In Kostroma, “The Thunderstorm” was published as a separate book; during the production, the actors tried to resemble the Klykovs, and local residents even showed the place from which Alexandra-Katerina allegedly threw herself. Kostroma local historian Vinogradov, to whom the famous literature researcher S. Yu. Lebedev refers, found many literal coincidences in the text of the play and in the “Kostroma case”. Both Alexandra and Katerina were married off early. Alexandra was barely 16 years old. Katerina was 19.
Both girls had to endure discontent and despotism from their mothers-in-law. Alexandra Klykova had to do all the menial housework. Neither the Klykov family nor the Kabanov family had children. The series of “coincidences” does not end there. The investigation knew that Alexandra had a relationship with another person, a postal worker. In the play "The Thunderstorm" Katerina falls in love with Boris. That is why for a long time it was believed that “The Thunderstorm” was nothing more than a real-life incident reflected in the play.
However, at the beginning of the twentieth century, the myth created around this incident was dispelled due to a comparison of dates. So, the incident in Kostroma occurred in November, and a month earlier, on October 14, Ostrovsky took the play to print. Thus, the writer could not display on the pages what had not yet happened in reality. But this does not make the creative history of “The Thunderstorm” any less interesting. It can be assumed that Ostrovsky, being smart person, was able to predict how the girl’s fate would turn out under typical conditions of that time. It is quite possible that Alexandra, like Katerina, was tormented by the stuffiness that is mentioned in the play. The old orders are becoming obsolete and the absolute inertia and hopelessness of the current situation. However, one should not completely correlate Alexandra with Katerina. It is quite possible that in the case of Klykova, the reasons for the girl’s death were only everyday difficulties, and not a deep-seated personal conflict, like Katerina Kabanova’s.
The most realistic prototype of Katerina can be called theater actress Lyubov Pavlovna Kositskaya, who later played this role. Ostrovsky, like Kositskaya, had his own family; it was this circumstance that prevented the further development of the relationship between the playwright and the actress. Kositskaya was originally from the Volga region, but at the age of 16 she ran away from home in search of better life. Katerina’s dream, according to Ostrovsky’s biographers, was nothing more than the recorded dream of Lyubov Kositskaya. In addition, Lyubov Kositskaya was extremely sensitive to faith and churches. In one of the episodes, Katerina utters the following words:
“... Until death, I loved going to church! Exactly, it happened that I would enter heaven, and I didn’t see anyone, and I didn’t remember the time, and I didn’t hear when the service was over... And you know, on a sunny day such a light pillar comes from the dome, and smoke moves in this pillar, like clouds, and I see that it used to be as if angels were flying and singing in this pillar.”
The history of the creation of Ostrovsky's play "The Thunderstorm" is interesting in its own way: there are both legends and personal drama. The premiere of “The Thunderstorm” took place on November 16, 1859 on the stage of the Maly Theater.
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