The history of the creation of the story poor lisa karamzin is brief. The story "Poor Liza" by Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin

The story of NM Karamzin "Poor Liza" was first published in the June issue of "Moscow Journal" for 1792. It marked the beginning not only of the original Karamzin prose, but also of all Russian classical literature. Until the appearance of the first novellas and short stories by Pushkin and Gogol, Poor Liza remained the most perfect work of fiction.

The story was immensely popular with Russian readers. Much later, critics will accuse the author of excessive "sentimentality" and "sugaryness", forgetting about the historical era in which Karamzin lived.

Poor Liza has become a necessary transitional stage in the formation of the modern Russian language. The story is strikingly different from the ponderous style of the 18th century and anticipates the best examples of the golden age of Russian literature.

The meaning of the name

“Poor Liza” is the name and, at the same time, a figurative characteristic of the main character. The definition of "poor" refers not only to the girl's financial situation, but also to her unhappy fate.

The main theme of the work

The main theme of the work is tragic love.

Lisa is an ordinary peasant girl who, after the death of her father, is forced to support herself and her mother. Man's strength is needed to run a peasant farm, so until Liza is married, she takes on any feminine job: weaving, knitting, collecting and selling flowers and berries. The old mother is infinitely grateful to her only nurse and dreams that God would send her a good person.

The turning point in Lisa's life is a meeting with the young nobleman Erast, who begins to show her attention. For a simple peasant woman, an elegant and well-mannered young man seems to be a demigod, strikingly different from his fellow villagers. Liza is not a fool after all, she does not allow anything superfluous and reprehensible to a new acquaintance.

Erast is a windy and carefree young man. He had long been fed up with the entertainment of high society. Lisa becomes for him the embodiment of an unfulfilled dream of a patriarchal love idyll. At first, Erast really does not have any low thoughts about the girl. He is happy from innocent meetings with a naive peasant woman. Due to his carelessness, Erast does not even think about the future, about that insurmountable abyss that separates the nobleman and the commoner.

Erast's modest behavior and respect for Liza conquer the girl's mother. She treats the young man as a good friend of the family, and does not even know about the romance between the young people, considering it impossible.

The purely platonic relationship between Lisa and Erast could not last forever. The reason for physical intimacy was the mother's desire to marry her daughter. For lovers, this was a heavy blow of fate. Hugs, kisses and passionate vows of allegiance led to the fact that Lisa lost her innocence.

After the incident, the nature of the relationship between lovers changes dramatically. For Lisa, Erast becomes the closest person, without whom she cannot imagine her future life. The nobleman "descended from heaven to earth." Lisa has lost her former magical charm in his eyes. Erast began to treat her as a familiar source of sensual pleasure. He is not yet ready to abruptly break off relations with Lisa, but begins to see her less and less.

The further course of events is not difficult to predict. Erast does not deceive Lisa that he is going to war. However, he returns pretty soon and, having forgotten his beloved, finds a rich bride, equal to him in social status.

Lisa continues to believe and wait for her loved one. A chance meeting with Erast, the news of his engagement and imminent wedding, finally, humiliating monetary alms for love inflict a huge mental trauma on the girl. Unable to survive her, Lisa commits suicide.

Thus ends a short romance between a nobleman and a peasant woman, which from the very beginning was doomed to a tragic ending.

Problematic

Karamzin was one of the first writers to raise the problem of love between representatives of different classes. Subsequently, this topic received great development in Russian literature.

Love, as you know, knows no boundaries. However, in pre-revolutionary Russia, such borders existed and were strictly protected by law and public opinion. The physical connection of a nobleman with a peasant woman was not forbidden, but the fate of a seduced woman was unenviable. At best, she became a kept woman and could only hope for the adoption by the master of the jointly acquired children.

At the beginning of the love story, Erast behaves simply stupidly, dreaming that he will “live with Liza like brother and sister”, take her to his village, etc. In the finale, he forgets about promises and acts as he tells he is of noble origin.

Deceived and dishonored Liza prefers to die and take her love and shameful secret to the grave.

Composition

The story has a clear classical structure: an exposition (the author's lyrical digression, smoothly turning into Lisa's story), an outset (Lisa's meeting with Erast), a climax (physical intimacy between lovers) and a denouement (Erast's betrayal and Lisa's suicide).

What does the author teach

Lisa's story evokes great pity for the unfortunate girl. The main culprit of the tragedy, of course, is the careless Erast, who had to seriously think about the consequences of his love interest.

Creativity N.M. Karamzin is associated primarily with the emergence in Russian literature of such a trend as sentimentalism. Prior to that, it was dominated by classicism with its clear construction and didactic moral teachings. Karamzin, on the other hand, opens a sensual world filled with various emotions, personal experiences of the heroes. He admitted that he considered a special sensitivity of the heart - sentimentality - to be a necessary quality of a writer. Karamzin showed himself to be a brilliant writer, his works still arouse genuine interest. Let us dwell on one of them - the story "Poor Liza", which is currently included in the compulsory school curriculum.

It is believed that Karamzin decided on a similar literary experiment, inspired by the stories of European literature, which he got acquainted with during his travels to European countries. But the writer understood: in order to arouse the interest and compassion of the Russian reader, it is necessary to find something that will evoke a response in his soul. Therefore, in addition to describing the feelings of the main characters, Karamzin describes nature in detail. He uses the surroundings near the Simonov Monastery as his main background. Oak forests, light rivers, a pond - the author tries to capture what brings him pleasure away from the bustle of the city, and fills the landscapes with a special meaning.

This approach makes the story seem very authentic. Researcher V.N.Toporov noted:

"For the first time in Russian literature, fiction created such a way of true life, which was perceived as stronger, poignant and convincing than life itself."

Readers could visit the places described in the work and feel the atmosphere on their own. Not far from the monastery there was a pond - the one where the main character tragically committed suicide. Subsequently, he received the name - "Lizin Pond".

Karamzin was not only a poet and prose writer, but also an excellent translator. Thanks to him, Russian readers got acquainted with the works of W. Shakespeare, G. Lessing and other prominent European literary figures. One of the most interesting creations of Karamzin are "Letters of a Russian Traveler", written under the impression of a trip to Europe and published in 1791-1792. It is here that the author begins to introduce the features of sentimentalism, thanks to which he became a famous writer. The talent of the writer was revealed with each of his works. A landmark event in Russian prose was the publication of the story Poor Liza, followed by another work, Natalia, the Boyar's Daughter.

The result of Karamzin's creative path is the encyclopedic work "History of the Russian State", which describes the events of our country from antiquity to the beginning of the Time of Troubles. Much of what is written in these twelve volumes was found in the archives by the writer himself and was first published thanks to him.

Genre and direction

"Poor Liza" belongs to the genre of the story - a prose work, which is based on a chain of logically and chronologically connected episodes. Some people call "Poor Lisa" a story, which is incorrect, since usually a story has one storyline and is not as large in volume as this book.

Karamzin writes his story, departing from the canons of classicism and using the techniques of sentimentalism. Sentimentalism is a trend in the literature of the 18th century, when the focus is not on reason, but on sensitivity. The hero of sentimentalism is more elaborate and individual, so he finds a response in the soul of the reader. The poet PA Vyazemsky called this trend "an elegant depiction of the basic and the everyday."

The main features of sentimentalism in the story "Poor Liza":

Emotionality: the reader understands how the characters feel by describing the emotions;
The role of nature: in addition, for a deeper study of the heroes, Karamzin uses the natural world ("Often the sad turtledove combined her plaintive voice with her groaning");
Hyperbola: Liza's sufferings sometimes seem excessive, they are very exaggerated ("... Liza, retiring into the thick forest, could freely shed tears and lament about separation from her sweetheart");
Author's image: the lyrical hero, who is presented in the story as a first-person narrator, describes his emotions as small lyrical digressions ("a tear is rolling down my face", "my heart is bleeding ...").

However, not all the characters in the work have close proximity to nature, but only Liza and the narrator himself. The author gives them this ability, focusing on the fact that they are capable of real feelings.

The meaning of the name

The name "Poor Liza" can be interpreted in several ways. First of all, Karamzin, adding an evaluative word to the title, lets us understand his attitude towards the heroine. He feels sorry for the girl and hopes that the reader will also sympathize with her.

But do not forget that "poor" can also mean "beggar", and Lisa's financial situation was the reason why Erast did not want to associate his future life with her.

The essence

The plot, which currently seems rather primitive, made a splash in the Russian public at the end of the 18th century. The story depicts the tragic fate of poor Liza.

The peasant girl Liza is forced to work by the sweat of her brow to provide for herself and her mother after the death of her father, who was a "wealthy peasant". She collects lilies of the valley in the woods and sells them in Moscow. There she is noticed by a young handsome nobleman Erast, who falls in love with her, and these feelings seem to be forever.

They spend a lot of time together, but at some point Lisa ceases to be of interest to the hero. At first Erast saw in her an angel who was so strikingly different from the pompous young ladies of his circle; but after the girl gives herself to the young man, she loses her attractiveness for him. Erast begins to refuse to meet with her, and then even says that he needs to leave with the regiment going on a campaign. Lisa asks him to stay, but he replies that his refusal to serve means dishonor and shame for him. The girl understandingly agrees, and she has to come to terms with the inevitable separation. She is very sad, but tries to hold on so as not to disturb her mother once again.

Once Lisa went to Moscow for medicine and there she saw her lover. She was happy to meet him, but he said that he was now engaged and they could not be together. It turns out that instead of a valiant service in the army, Erast became interested in playing cards and lost all his fortune. He is unable to pay off his debts, so he decides to marry an elderly rich widow who has been in love with him for a long time. Lisa cannot survive his betrayal. After he kicked her out of the door, the girl asks her friend to convey an apology and money to her mother, and she throws herself into the pond. They do not have time to save her. Erast until the end of his life was unhappy and blamed himself for the death of his beloved. The many-wise Litrecon sympathizes with this loss, and offers you a summary of the story for your reader's diary and a review (here).

Conflict

The main conflict in the story "Poor Liza" can be called psychological. It consists in the attitude of the heroes to love and money. Liza, who knows how to sincerely and strongly love, is strongly attached to Erast. She lives with her feeling, surrendering to him completely. Lisa is not interested in the financial situation of her lover, she does not take his money when he tries to pay for the lilies of the valley an amount several times higher than the announced value. At the same time, Erast enjoys a temporary bond with a girl who at first seemed interesting to him. But then he got bored with it, and he leaves. Having lost all the money, Erast makes a deal with his conscience - he marries a rich widow for the sake of her fortune, which he needs to pay off his debts.

Lisa understood from the very beginning that she would not have a happy life with Erast. She said several times that he would never be her husband, because he is a nobleman. But this did not prevent the heroine from plunging into these relations deeper and deeper. Erast, it seemed, was ready for anything for the sake of Lisa. But his feelings have not stood the test of time. The young man acts meanly, because he did not even tell his beloved that he had returned.

It turns out that the conflict of the work is based on such a technique as antithesis (opposition). The characters in the story cannot be divided into strictly positive and strictly negative, as is customary in classicism. In sentimentalism, the clash of views is realized through the discrepancy between the feelings and principles of one hero with the feelings and principles of another hero. A social conflict is also noticeable: Karamzin, obeying the democratic trends of Europe, takes the side of natural and sensitive peasants, not spoiled by luxury, and condemns the nobles, spoiled by the environment. In other well-known examples of sentimental works (Schiller, Lessing), the truth is also on the side of the common man, and the nobleman shows meanness, but often regrets it.

The main characters and their characteristics

The images of the heroes in the story "Poor Liza" contribute to the fullest disclosure of the social and love conflict:

Lisa- the main character of the story. Due to the death of her father, she has to become the head of the family, now consisting only of her and her mother, and take care of the household. The girl takes on any job, she is very hardworking and agreeable. Lisa is distinguished by sensitivity and kindness. She takes care of her mother, who, by the way, does nothing, only yearns for her deceased husband. But her daughter supports her and never reproaches her. For Lisa, at the head of her life are the feelings that she experiences. Strong love for Erast leads to tragedy - the heroine throws herself into a pond and drowns. Even this she does on emotions - right after a painful separation from her lover. But until the very end, she does not forget about her mother and gives her friend money and a message to the old woman. Liza seems wise, she understands that there is no future for her and Erast. However, she gives herself to the young man without thinking about the consequences. In addition, love blinds her so much that she is not able to appreciate the changes in the chosen one, although she notices them.
At the beginning of the story Erast described by a wealthy and carefree nobleman. He is very spoiled and weak-willed, at the same time he seems to be a dreamer, inspired by novels. He is not a negative character. Who knows, maybe he read the same European works on the basis of which Karamzin built the plot of the story, and therefore decided on such a love relationship. Windy and frivolous, Erast takes some care of Lisa and her mother. At the first parting, he left them enough money so that Lisa did not need to sell lilies of the valley. During the last meeting, he gives the girl one hundred rubles, which in those days was a very large amount. It seems as if the hero wants to buy off his former lover, but Erast is sure that money is very necessary for a happy life. Of course, he treats poor Lisa disgustingly, and probably nothing can justify him. Although Karamzin does not directly accuse him and writes that he, too, was unhappy until the end of his days. It is Erast who tells the sad story to the narrator.
Lisa's mother was a kind woman. She could not cope with the loss of her husband and actually relieved herself of responsibility for the future of her daughter, whom she still loves very much. And so she spends many years in longing for her husband. This situation is very typical for sentimentalism. Perhaps Lisa is completely devoted to the relationship, seeing her mother in front of her as an example. She asks her mother for advice, introduces Erast to her and supports her lamentation. Upon learning of the death of her daughter, the widow dies immediately.
Nature also becomes one of the characters in the story. However, in Poor Lisa, nature is passive: she observes the development of the heroes' relations, reflecting their feelings in herself, but does not act in any way. For example, after the fall of the heroine, a thunderstorm begins, that is, "nature" foreshadows trouble, but she did not interfere with it.

Topics and problems

In the story "Poor Liza" we have a rich theme:

Perception of the world through the prism of feelings... The author describes in detail the feelings of the heroine, making her more lively and understandable to the reader. Lisa's mood often coincides with the weather and the world around her. When she is happy, she notices how good it is around. When she feels lost, then the environment in which she finds herself corresponds to her condition. Landscape in sentimentalism plays an independent role, like a choir in an ancient theater.
Love is the main theme of the work... The romantic plot line is the main one in this work. Using the example of a love drama, Karamzin reveals the characters and problems. Love, as the most powerful feeling, becomes for Lisa both a blessing and a calvary.
Social inequality... Lisa, being a poor peasant, falls in love with a wealthy nobleman. They cannot be together, because they are from different strata of society, which is not ready to accept such an alliance. Therefore, Lisa does not build castles in the air regarding their joint future, although she dreams about it. She even imagined what it would be like if Erast was the same peasant like her.
City - village. This opposition is often found in art. In this work, the city - Moscow - becomes a haven of temptation, which is dragging Erast. The countryside is filled with purity and beauty, where you can find peace. And the people there are different - more sincere and innocent. That is why the young nobleman pays attention to Lisa. He is fed up with the bustle of the city and is ready to enjoy the marvelous natural landscapes. In the city, nature is not realized as a reflection of feelings, unlike in the village, where each landscape meant any emotions of the heroes.

Problems in the story "Poor Liza":

Conscience... Erast until the end of his days could not forgive himself for the death of Liza and suffered until his death. So, his irresponsible actions and cruel words turned into grief in the first place for him.
Moral... The unequivocally young nobleman is condemned by the narrator, who wonders if anything can justify Erast? The actions of Lisa's chosen one throughout the entire work are frivolous and prosaic. But the main character is also not sinless: she surrenders to a man with whom, as she herself admits, she has no future. Both Erast and Lisa are destroying their lives, not giving themselves a full account of their actions.
Inner world... Heroines like Lisa and her mother build their whole world around one person. Usually such people are not very educated and developed, which is not surprising for peasant women. And therefore, Liza devotes all her experiences and sensual nature to Erast, real and unreal, near and far.
Social inequality... Could Erast take Lisa as a wife? No, but he didn't count. He, like Lisa, understood that this was impossible in the society in which they lived, so he said that he wanted to live with her as with a sister. Erast becomes a hostage of the way in which he was born and raised, to some extent he is also a victim. But the young man is weak-willed and weak-willed, he seems to go with the flow. Liza, albeit without education and state, spiritually turns out to be higher than her beloved.
Poverty... Lack of means of survival forces a young girl to work tirelessly. Erast, who at the beginning of the work was a wealthy nobleman, quickly loses money and gets into debt. The beggarly position of the young man makes him propose to an elderly but wealthy widow. Erast has nowhere and no one to expect help, and he has to survive in such an ignoble way.

the main idea

Innovative in Russian literature was the idea, the essence of which was that the lower classes, just like the upper classes, can feel. Peasants can show emotions like nobles, or even deeper. The phrase "And the peasant women know how to love" became the key phrase for the audience, who read the story with enthusiasm. Karamzin calls to be more humane towards each other, regardless of class affiliation. Erast's selfishness ruined both Liza and her mother, and himself.

The meaning of the story is a call to humanism, because people are equal, none of them is to blame for being born without a silver spoon in their mouth. Meanwhile, it is the silver spoon that becomes the measure of the value of the individual. If Lisa were noble and rich, they would have a happy marriage with Erast, but the way society is fixated on titles and money turns love into a tragedy. Karamzin's contemporaries so enthusiastically accepted the story of feelings, because there were no feelings in their lives, since all marriages were dictated by financial necessity or senile lust, but not love.

Language

Karamzin takes the first steps in the transformation of the literary Russian language. He removes old Slavicisms and church vocabulary from the speech of the heroes, makes the conversations of the heroes simpler and more understandable. However, the writer misses one point: the speech of a provincial peasant woman and a nobleman from a big city is the same. That is, in literature there have not yet been strong differences between the peasant dialect and aristocratic conversations, although in life they were felt.

In the story "Poor Liza" Karamzin uses the following means of expression:

Comparison ("her cheeks glowed like dawn on a clear summer evening").
Metaphors ("a new guest of her soul", "an angel of innocence").
Epithets ("white fogs", "green cover", "life-giving rays", "motley flock", "gloomy oak", "terrible death", "pale, languid, sorrowful friend", "scarlet sea", "touching picture" , "Eastern sky").
The composition is to some extent circular, because the story begins and ends with a description of oaks and a pond.
Antithesis and hyperbole - they ideologically permeate the entire work.
Incarnation ("groves, bushes came to life", "flowers raised their heads", "the wind howls", "darkness fed desires").
Phraseologisms ("my heart bleeds," "harbored love," "blood cooled with horror," "came to," "inflame the imagination").
Superlative adjectives ("the most terrible", "the most dangerous", "the greatest", "the most tender").
Anaphora ("Erast felt an extraordinary excitement in his blood ... Erast feels a thrill in himself ...", "Where is your guardian angel? Where is your innocence?").
Lexical repetition ("God forbid! God forbid! Every day, every hour I will pray for that", "Before you were more cheerful, before we were calmer and happier, and before I was not so afraid of losing your love!").
Multi-Union ("They said goodbye, kissed for the last time and promised to see each other every day either on the banks of the river, or in a birch grove, or somewhere near Lisa's hut, just right, they will certainly see each other").
Rhetorical question ("What happened to you?", "Where is your guardian angel? Where is your innocence?").
Rhetorical address ("Ah, Liza, Liza!").
Graduation (“He languishes, withers, dries up - and the dull ringing of the bell announces to me his untimely death”).

Criticism

Not only the audience reacted with great favor to the story "Poor Liza". Most critics spoke of Karamzin's innovation and emphasized the peculiarity of Poor Lisa. They noted not only a new sensibility and sentimentality for the Russian reader, but also the sad end that the heroine chose for herself - suicide. The writer V. V. Sipovsky wrote that the Russian public first met with the "bitter truth of life", and not with a happy ending, as it was before.

The critic V. N. Toporov called Karamzin's work the "root" from which the "tree of Russian classical prose" grew. He believed that many of the works of Alexander Pushkin ("The Queen of Spades", "The Young Lady-Peasant", "The Captain's Daughter") were written precisely thanks to "learning the lessons of the Karamzin story."

However, the Soviet literary critic G.A. Gukovsky wrote that if antifeudal thought prevailed in such European subjects, where the consequences of class inequality were shown, then Karamzin seemed to say that one could be happy in serfdom.

“The humanity of democratic sentimentalism, which demanded freedom for every person, turned into the formula“ and peasant women know how to love, ”the researcher wrote.

This is a fair comment, since Karamzin really did not want the abolition of serfdom. He believed that it was necessary to regulate the arbitrariness of the landlords and monitor their actions in relation to the peasants.

However, the author's personal views in no way detract from his merits. Karamzin called on the aristocracy to be more humane and responsive. It is difficult to overestimate his contribution to Russian culture. The writer's works still arouse interest from researchers and the general public, because he really showed life in its diversity.

Many people remember N.M. Karamzin on his historical works. But he did a lot for literature too. It was through his efforts that a sentimental novel developed, in which not just ordinary people are described, 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 year Poor Liza was written, namely in 1792, the peasants were still far from liberation, and their existence seemed to be something incomprehensible and wild. Sentimentalism brought them into full-fledged feeling heroes.

In contact with

History of creation

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

It was this outwardly 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 not hard to remember what the story is about. After all, its plot does not differ in richness or twists and turns. Annotation to the story allows you to find out the main events. Karamzin himself would have conveyed a summary like this:

Left without a father, Lisa began to help her impoverished mother by selling flowers and berries.
Erast, captivated by her beauty and freshness, invites her to sell the goods only to him and then generally asks not to go out, but to give him the goods from home. This rich but a windy nobleman falls in love with Lisa... They start spending their evenings alone.
Soon a well-to-do neighbor wooed Lizaveta, but Erast consoles her, promising to marry herself. An intimacy occurs, and Erast loses interest in the girl he has killed. Soon the young man leaves for the service. Lizaveta is waiting and afraid. But by chance they meet on the street, and Lizaveta throws herself on his neck.
Erast informs that he is engaged to another, and orders the servant to give her money and take her out of the yard. Lizaveta, handing the money over to her mother, rushes into the pond. Her mother is dying from a blow.
Erast is devastated by a loss at cards and is forced to marry a rich widow. He does not find happiness in life and blames himself.

To sell flowers to the city

main characters

It is clear that the characterization of one of the heroes of the story "Poor Liza" will be insufficient. They must be evaluated together, in their influence on each other.

Despite the novelty and originality of the plot, the image of Erast in the story "Poor Liza" is not new, and the little-known name does not help either. A rich and bored nobleman tired of accessible and cutesy beauties. He is looking for vivid sensations and finds an innocent and pure girl. Her image surprises him, beckons and even awakens love. But the very first intimacy 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 doesn't 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 makes the servant 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 the story by Karamzin is distinguished by freshness and novelty. She is poor, works for the survival of her mother, and at the same time is gentle and beautiful. Its distinctive features are sensitivity and nationality. In Karamzin's story, poor Liza is a typical heroine from the village, 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, as if emphasizes that such women are inherent natural that does not require restrictions and teachings. She is ready to live for the sake of loved ones, work and keep joy.

Important! Life has already tested her strength, and she has stood the test with dignity. For her image, honest, beautiful, gentle, it is forgotten that she is a poor, uneducated peasant woman. That she works with her hands and trades what God 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... It is undoubtedly clear to a believing and loving girl that suicide is a terrible sin. She also understands that her mother cannot live without her help. But the pain of betrayal and the realization that she is disgraced is too hard for her. Liza looked at life soberly 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 unloved.

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

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

Scene near the pond

Reader reaction

The audience met the story ambiguously. The women were compassionate 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 being too sensitive, in abundant tears that are constantly pouring down, in the picturesque character of the characters.

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

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

One is tempered 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 tale, but it received the status of a sentimental tale, since it contains heroes acting for a long time, a full-fledged plot, development and denouement. The heroes do not live isolated episodes, but a significant part of their lives.

Poor LISA. Nikolay Karamzin

Retelling Karamzin N. M. "Poor Liza"

Output

So, the question: "Poor Liza" is a story or a story, has been resolved long ago and unambiguously. The abstract to the book gives an exact answer.

Still from the film "Poor Lisa" (2000)

In the vicinity of Moscow, not far from the Simonov Monastery, once lived a young girl Liza with her old mother. After the death of Liza's father, a rather wealthy peasant, his wife and daughter became impoverished. The widow became weaker day by day and could not work. Liza alone, not sparing her tender youth and rare beauty, worked day and night - weaving canvases, knitting stockings, picking flowers in spring, and selling berries in Moscow in summer.

One spring, two years after her father's death, Liza came to Moscow with lilies of the valley. A young, well-dressed man met her on the street. When he learned that she was selling flowers, he offered her a ruble instead of five kopecks, saying that "beautiful lilies of the valley, plucked by the hands of a beautiful girl, are worth a ruble." But Lisa refused the proposed amount. He did not insist, but said that henceforth he would always buy flowers from her and would like her to pick them only for him.

Arriving home, Lisa told her mother everything, and the next day she picked the best lilies of the valley and again came to the city, but this time she did not meet the young man. Throwing flowers into the river, she returned home with sadness in her soul. The next day in the evening a stranger himself came to her house. As soon as she saw him, Liza rushed to her mother and excitedly announced who was going to them. The old woman met her guest, and he seemed to her a very amiable and pleasant person. Erast - that was the name of the young man - confirmed that he was going to buy flowers from Lisa in the future, and she didn’t have to go to town: he himself could visit them.

Erast was a fairly wealthy nobleman, with a fair mind and a naturally kind heart, but weak and windy. He led an absent-minded life, thought only of his own pleasure, looked for it in secular amusements, and not finding it, he was bored and complained about fate. The immaculate beauty of Lisa at the first meeting shocked him: it seemed to him that in her he found exactly what he had been looking for for a long time.

This was the beginning of their long dates. Every evening they saw each other either on the banks of the river, or in a birch grove, or under the shade of centenary oak trees. They hugged, but their embrace was pure and innocent.

Several weeks passed in this way. It seemed that nothing could interfere with their happiness. But one evening Lisa came to a date sad. It turned out that the groom, the son of a rich peasant, was wooing her, and mother wanted her to marry him. Erast, comforting Liza, said that after his mother's death he would take her to him and would live inseparably with her. But Lisa reminded the young man that he could never be her husband: she is a peasant, and he is of a noble family. You offend me, said Erast, for your friend the most important thing is your soul, a sensitive, innocent soul, you will always be closest to my heart. Liza threw herself into his arms - and in this hour purity must perish.

Delusion passed in one minute, giving way to surprise and fear. Liza cried, saying goodbye to Erast.

Their meetings continued, but how everything had changed! Liza was no longer an angel of purity for Erast; platonic love gave way to feelings that he could not "be proud of" and which were not new to him. Liza noticed a change in him, and this saddened her.

Once, during a meeting, Erast told Lisa that he was being drafted into the army; they will have to part for a while, but he promises to love her and hopes to never part with her upon his return. It is not difficult to imagine how hard Liza experienced separation from her beloved. However, hope did not leave her, and every morning she woke up with the thought of Erast and their happiness upon his return.

About two months passed in this way. Once Liza went to Moscow and on one of the large streets she saw Erast passing by in a magnificent carriage, which stopped near a huge house. Erast left and was about to go to the porch, when he suddenly felt himself in Lisa's arms. He turned pale, then, without a word, led her into the office and locked the door. Circumstances have changed, he announced to the girl, he is engaged.

Before Lisa could recover, he took her out of the office and told the servant to see her out of the yard.

Finding herself on the street, Liza went wherever she looked, unable to believe what she had heard. She left the city and wandered for a long time, until she suddenly found herself on the bank of a deep pond, under the shade of ancient oak trees, which for several weeks before had been silent witnesses of her enthusiasm. This memory shocked Lisa, but after a few minutes she plunged into deep thought. Seeing a neighbor's girl walking along the road, she called her, took all the money out of her pocket and gave it to her, asking her to give it to her mother, kiss her and ask her to forgive her poor daughter. Then she threw herself into the water, and they could no longer save her.

Liza's mother, having learned about the terrible death of her daughter, could not withstand the blow and died on the spot. Erast was unhappy for the rest of his life. He did not deceive Lisa when he told her that he was going to the army, but instead of fighting the enemy, he played cards and lost his entire fortune. He had to marry an elderly rich widow who had been in love with him for a long time. Having learned about Lisa's fate, he could not be comforted and considered himself a murderer. Now they may have already been reconciled.

Retold

XVIII century, which glorified many wonderful people, including the writer Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin. Towards the end of this century, he publishes his most famous creation - the story "Poor Liza". It was it that brought him resounding fame and immense popularity among readers. The book is based on two characters: the poor girl Lisa and the nobleman Erast, who appear in the course of the plot in their attitude to love.

Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin made a huge contribution to the cultural development of the fatherland at the end of the 18th century. After numerous trips to Germany, England, France and Switzerland, the prose writer returns to Russia, and while vacationing at the dacha of the famous traveler Pyotr Ivanovich Beketov In the 1790s, he undertakes a new literary experiment. The local surroundings near the Simonov Monastery strongly influenced the concept of Poor Liza, which he nurtured during his travels. Nature for Karamzin was of great importance, he truly loved her and often changed the city bustle for forests and fields, where he read his favorite books and plunged into thought.

Genre and direction

Poor Liza is the first Russian psychological story that contains the moral disagreement between people of different classes. Liza's feelings are clear and understandable to the reader: for a simple bourgeois woman, happiness is love, so she blindly and naively loves. Erast's feelings, on the contrary, are more confused, because he himself cannot understand them in any way. At first, the young man simply wants to fall in love just like in the novels he has read, but it soon becomes clear that he is not able to live by love. City life, full of luxury and passion, had a huge impact on the hero, and he discovers a carnal attraction that completely destroys spiritual love.

Karamzin is an innovator, he can rightfully be called the founder of Russian sentimentalism. Readers perceived the work with admiration, since society has long been wanting something like this. The audience was exhausted by the moral teachings of the classicist direction, the basis of which is the worship of reason and duty. Sentimentalism, on the other hand, demonstrates the emotional experiences, feelings and emotions of the heroes.

About what?

According to the writer, this story is "a very uncomplicated tale." Indeed, the plot of the work is simple to the point of genius. It begins and ends with an outline of the area of the Simonov Monastery, which evokes in the memory of the narrator the thoughts of a tragic turn in the fate of poor Liza. This is the love story of a poor provincial woman and a wealthy young man from a privileged class. The acquaintance of the lovers began with the fact that Lisa was selling lilies of the valley collected in the forest, and Erast, wanting to strike up a conversation with a girl he liked, decided to buy flowers from her. He was captivated by the natural beauty and kindness of Lisa, and they began to meet. However, soon the young man was fed up with the charm of his passion and found a more profitable party. The heroine, unable to withstand the blow, drowned herself. Her lover regretted it all his life.

Their images are ambiguous, first of all, the world of a simple natural person, unspoiled by city bustle and greed, is revealed. Karamzin described everything in such detail and picturesquely that readers believed in this story and fell in love with his heroine.

The main characters and their characteristics

The main character of the story, Lisa, is a poor country girl. At an early age, she lost her father and was forced to become the breadwinner for her family, agreeing to any job. The industrious provincial is very naive and sensitive, she sees only good features in people and lives by her emotions, following the call of her heart. She looks after her mother day and night. And even when the heroine decides on a fatal act, she still does not forget about the family and leaves her money. Lisa's main talent is the gift of love, because for the sake of her loved ones she is ready to do anything.
Lisa's mother is a kind and wise old woman. She very hard experienced the death of her husband Ivan, since she loved him faithfully and lived happily with him for many years. The only joy was her daughter, whom she tried to marry off to a worthy and wealthy man. The character of the heroine is internally whole, but a little bookish and idealized.
Erast is a wealthy nobleman. He leads a riotous lifestyle, thinking only of fun. He is smart, but very fickle, spoiled and weak-willed. Without thinking that Lisa is from a different class, he fell in love with her, but still he cannot overcome all the difficulties of this unequal love. Erast cannot be called a negative hero, because he admits his guilt. He read and was inspired by novels, was dreamy, looking at the world with pink glasses. Therefore, his real love did not stand such a test.

Subject

The main theme in sentimental literature is the sincere feelings of a person in the face of the indifference of the real world. Karamzin was one of the first to decide to write about the spiritual happiness and suffering of the common people. He reflected in his work the transition from the civic theme, which was widespread during the Enlightenment, to a personal one, in which the main subject of interest is the spiritual world of the individual. Thus, the author, having described in depth the inner world of the characters together with their feelings and experiences, began to develop such a literary device as psychologism.
Love theme. Love in Poor Lisa is a test that tests the characters for strength and loyalty to their word. Lisa completely surrendered to this feeling, her author elevates and idealizes for this ability. She is the embodiment of the female ideal, the one that completely dissolves in the adoration of her beloved and is faithful to him until her last breath. But Erast could not stand the test and turned out to be a cowardly and pitiful person, incapable of self-giving in the name of something more important than material wealth.
Contrasting city and village. The author prefers the countryside, it is there that natural, sincere and kind people are formed, who do not know the temptation. But in big cities they acquire vices: envy, greed, selfishness. Erast's position in society was more precious than love, he was fed up with it, because he was not able to experience a strong and deep feeling. Liza, however, could not live after this betrayal: if love died, she follows her, because without her she cannot imagine her future.

Problem

Karamzin in the work "Poor Liza" touches upon various problems: social and moral. The problematic of the story is based on opposition. The main characters differ in both quality of life and character. Liza is a pure, honest and naive girl from the lower class, and Erast is a spoiled, weak-tempered, thinking only about his pleasures, a young man belonging to the nobility. Lisa, having fallen in love with him, cannot even a day without thinking about him, while Erast, on the contrary, began to move away as soon as he received what he wanted from her.

The result of such fleeting moments of happiness for Liza and Erast is the death of the girl, after which the young man cannot stop blaming himself for this tragedy and remains unhappy for the rest of his life. The author showed how class inequality led to an unhappy ending and was the reason for the tragedy, as well as what responsibility a person bears for those who trusted him.

the main idea

The plot is far from the most important thing in this story. Emotions and feelings that awaken during reading are worthy of more attention. The narrator himself plays a huge role, because he tells with sadness and sympathy about the life of a poor rural girl. For Russian literature, the image of an empathic narrator who knows how to empathize with the emotional state of the heroes turned out to be a discovery. Any dramatic moment makes his heart bleed, as well as sincerely shed tears. Thus, the main idea of the story "Poor Liza" is that one must not be afraid of one's feelings, love, experience, and compassion with full breasts. Only then will a person be able to conquer immorality, cruelty and selfishness in himself. The author begins with himself, because he, a nobleman, describes the sins of his own class, and gives sympathy to a simple village girl, urging people of his position to become more humane. Inhabitants of poor huts sometimes overshadow the masters of old estates with their virtue. This is the main idea of Karamzin.

The attitude of the author to the main character of the story also became an innovation in Russian literature. So Karamzin does not blame Erast when Liza dies, he demonstrates the social conditions that caused the tragic event. The big city influenced the young man, destroying his moral principles and making him depraved. Lisa, on the other hand, grew up in the countryside, her naivety and simplicity played a cruel joke on her. The writer also demonstrates that not only Lisa, but also Erast was subjected to the hardships of fate, becoming a victim of sad circumstances. The hero experiences a sense of guilt throughout his life, never becoming truly happy.

What does it teach?

The reader has the opportunity to learn something from other people's mistakes. The clash of love and selfishness is a hot topic, since anyone at least once in his life has experienced unrequited feelings, or survived the betrayal of a loved one. Analyzing Karamzin's story, we gain important life lessons, become more human and responsive to each other. The creations of the era of sentimentalism have a single property: they help people to mentally enrich themselves, and also bring up the best humane and moral qualities in us.

The story "Poor Lisa" has gained popularity among readers. This work teaches a person to be more responsive to other people, as well as the ability to compassion.