Analysis of poor Lisa Karamzin according to plan. Analysis of the story "Poor Lisa" (N

Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin beautifully described a story in which the main characters were a poor girl and a young nobleman. Karamzin's contemporaries greeted this love story with enthusiastic responses. Thanks to this work, the 25-year-old writer gained wide popularity. This story is still read by millions of people, it is studied in various educational institutions. Let's do a brief analysis of the story "Poor Lisa" by Karamzin.

General characteristics of the work

Immediately after reading the story, a sentimental aesthetic bias becomes apparent, which is clearly expressed in the interest shown in a person, regardless of what his position in society is.

When Nikolai Karamzin wrote the story "Poor Lisa", which we are now analyzing, he was in a country house, relaxing with friends, and next to this dacha was the Simonov Monastery, about which the researchers say that it was he who became the basis for the author's idea. It is important to understand that readers perceived the story of a love relationship as actually happening in large part due to this fact.

We have already mentioned at the beginning that the story "Poor Liza" is known as a sentimentalist story, although in its genre it is a short story, and such stylistic features at that time were used in literature only by Karamzin. What is the sentimentalism of "Poor Liza"? First of all, the sentimentalism of the work is focused on the feelings of a person, and the mind and society take a secondary place, giving priority to the emotions and relationships of people. This idea is extremely important in the analysis of the story "Poor Lisa".

Main theme and ideological background

Let's denote the main theme of the work - a peasant girl and a young nobleman. It is clear what social problem Karamzin touched upon in the story. There was a huge gulf between nobles and peasants, and in order to show what contradictions stood in the way of the relationship between urban and rural residents, Karamzin contrasts the image of Erast with the image of Liza.

In order to more accurately analyze the story "Poor Liza", let's pay attention to the descriptions of the beginning of the work, when the reader imagines harmony with nature, a quiet and cozy atmosphere. We also read about a city in which the "mass of houses" and "gold on the domes" are simply frightening, causing some rejection. It is clear that Liza reflects nature, naturalness, naivety, honesty and openness are visible in her. Karamzin acts as a humanist when he shows love in all its strength and beauty, recognizing that with reason and pragmatism one can easily crush these beautiful beginnings of the human soul.

The main characters of the story

It is quite obvious that the analysis of the story "Poor Liza" would be insufficient without considering the main characters of the work. It can be seen that the image of some ideals and principles is embodied in Lisa, and completely different in Erast. Indeed, Lisa was an ordinary peasant girl, and the main feature of her character is the ability to feel deeply. Acting as her heart dictates, she did not lose her morality, although she died. Interestingly, by the way she spoke and thought, it is difficult to attribute her to the peasant class. She had a literary language.

And what can be said about the image of Erast? As an officer, he thought only of entertainment, and social life tired him and made him bored. Erast is smart enough, ready to act kindly, although his character is very changeable and not constant. When Erast develops feelings for Lisa, he is sincere, but not far-sighted. The young man does not think about the fact that Lisa cannot become his wife, because they are from different circles of society.

Does Erast look like an insidious seducer? An analysis of the story "Poor Lisa" shows that it is not. Rather, this is a person who truly fell in love, to whom a weak character prevented him from surviving and carrying his love to the end. It must be said that Russian literature did not previously know such a type of character as Karamzin's Erast, but this type was even given a name - "an extra person", and later he began to appear more and more often on the pages of books.

Conclusions in the analysis of the story "Poor Liza"

Briefly speaking, what the work is about, one can formulate the thought as follows: this is a tragic love that led to the death of the main character, while the reader completely passes through her feelings, which is very helpful in vivid descriptions of the environment and nature.

Although we have considered only two main characters - Lisa and Erast, in fact there is also a narrator who himself heard this sad story, and now, with shades of sadness, conveys it to others. Thanks to the incredible psychologism, the acute topic, the ideas and images that Karamzin embodied in his work, Russian literature has been replenished with another masterpiece.

We are glad that a brief analysis of the story "Poor Lisa" was useful to you. In our literary blog you will find hundreds of articles with characteristics of characters and analyzes of famous works of Russian and foreign literature.

N. M. Karamzin's story "Poor Lisa" was first published in the June issue of the "Moscow Journal" for 1792. It marked the beginning not only of the original Karamzin prose, but of all Russian classical literature. Until the appearance of the first novels and stories by Pushkin and Gogol, Poor Liza remained the most perfect work of art.

The story was very popular with Russian readers. Much later, critics will reproach the author for excessive "sentimentality" and "sweetness", forgetting about the historical era in which Karamzin lived.

"Poor Lisa" became 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 financial situation of the girl, but also to her unfortunate fate.

The main theme of the work

The main theme of the work is tragic love.

Liza is an ordinary peasant girl who, after the death of her father, is forced to support herself and her mother. Manpower is needed to run a peasant economy, so until Liza gets married, she takes on any feasible female work: weaving, knitting, picking and selling flowers and berries. The old mother is infinitely grateful to her only nurse and dreams that God will send her a good man.

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

Erast is a windy and careless 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 respectful attitude towards 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 that has arisen between young people, considering it impossible.

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

After the incident, the nature of the relationship between the 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 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 cut off relations with Lisa, but he begins to see her less and less.

It is not difficult to predict the further course of events. Erast does not deceive Lisa that he is going to war. However, he returns soon enough and, forgetting 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, and finally, a 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.

Issues

Karamzin was one of the first writers to raise the problem of love between representatives of different classes. In the future, this topic has 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 jointly acquired children.

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

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

Composition

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

What does the author teach

The story of Lisa causes great pity for the unfortunate girl. The main culprit of the tragedy, of course, is the careless Erast, who should have seriously thought about the consequences of his love interest.

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 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. After reading novels in which "all people carelessly walked along the rays, bathed in clean springs, kissed like turtle doves, rested under roses and myrtle", he decided that he "found in Lisa 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

Today in the lesson we will talk about the story of N.M. Karamzin "Poor Liza", we will find out the details of its creation, the historical context, determine what the author's innovation is, analyze the characters of the characters in the story, and also consider the moral issues raised by the writer.

It must be said that the publication of this story was accompanied by extraordinary success, even a stir among the Russian readership, which is not surprising, because the first Russian book appeared, the heroes of which could be empathized in the same way as Goethe's The Sufferings of Young Werther or The New Eloise by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. We can say that Russian literature began to become on the same level with European. The enthusiasm and popularity were such that even a pilgrimage to the place of events described in the book began. As you remember, the case takes place not far from the Simonov Monastery, the place was called "Lizin's pond". This place is becoming so popular that some evil-speaking people even compose epigrams:

Drowned here
Erast's bride...
Get drunk girls
There's plenty of room in the pond!

Well, can you do
Godless and worse?
Fall in love with a tomboy
And drown in a puddle.

All this contributed to the unusual popularity of the story among Russian readers.

Naturally, the popularity of the story was given not only by the dramatic plot, but also by the fact that it was all artistically unusual.

So before Karamzin, no one had ever written in Russia. Moreover, the unusualness began already with the exposition, with a description of the place where the action of the story would take place.

“Perhaps no one living in Moscow knows the surroundings of this city as well as I do, because no one is more often than me in the field, no one more than me wanders on foot, without a plan, without a goal - wherever your eyes look - through the meadows and groves, hills and plains. Every summer I find new pleasant places or new beauties in old ones. But most pleasant for me is the place on which the gloomy, Gothic towers of the Si ... New Monastery rise.(Fig. 3) .

Rice. 3. Lithography of the Simonov Monastery ()

Here, too, there is unusualness: on the one hand, Karamzin accurately describes and designates the scene of action - the Simonov Monastery, on the other hand, this encryption creates a certain mystery, understatement, which is very much in line with the spirit of the story. The main thing is the installation on the non-fiction of events, on documentary. It is no coincidence that the narrator will say that he learned about these events from the hero himself, from Erast, who told him about this shortly before his death. It was this feeling that everything happened nearby, that one could be a witness to these events, intrigued the reader and gave the story a special meaning and a special character.

Rice. 4. Erast and Lisa ("Poor Lisa" in a modern production) ()

It is curious that this private, uncomplicated story of two young people (the nobleman Erast and the peasant woman Lisa (Fig. 4)) turns out to be inscribed in a very wide historical and geographical context.

“But the most pleasant for me is the place where the gloomy, Gothic towers of the Si ... new monastery rise. Standing on this mountain, you see on the right side almost all of Moscow, this terrible mass of houses and churches, which appears to the eyes in the form of a majestic amphitheater»

Word amphitheater Karamzin singles out, and this is probably no coincidence, because the scene becomes a kind of arena where events unfold, open to the eyes of everyone (Fig. 5).

Rice. 5. Moscow, XVIII century ()

“a magnificent picture, especially when the sun shines on it, when its evening rays blaze on countless golden domes, on countless crosses, ascending to the sky! Below are fat, densely green flowering meadows, and behind them, on yellow sands, a bright river flows, agitated by the light oars of fishing boats or rustling under the helm of heavy plows that float from the most fruitful countries of the Russian Empire and endow greedy Moscow with bread.(Fig. 6) .

Rice. 6. View from Sparrow Hills ()

On the other side of the river, an oak grove is visible, near which numerous herds graze; there the young shepherds, sitting under the shade of the trees, sing simple, melancholy songs, and thereby shorten the summer days, so uniform to them. Farther away, in the dense greenery of ancient elms, the golden-domed Danilov Monastery shines; still farther, almost at the edge of the horizon, the Sparrow Hills turn blue. On the left side, you can see vast fields covered with bread, forests, three or four villages, and in the distance the village of Kolomenskoye with its high palace.

Curiously, why does Karamzin frame private history with this panorama? It turns out that this history is becoming a part of human life, a part of Russian history and geography. All this gave the events described in the story a generalizing character. But, giving a general hint at this world history and this extensive biography, Karamzin nevertheless shows that private history, the history of individual people, not famous, simple, attracts him much more strongly. 10 years will pass, and Karamzin will become a professional historian and begin to work on his "History of the Russian State", written in 1803-1826 (Fig. 7).

Rice. 7. Cover of the book by N. M. Karamzin "History of the Russian State" ()

But for now, the focus of his literary attention is the story of ordinary people - the peasant woman Lisa and the nobleman Erast.

Perhaps the main artistic discovery of Karamzin in "Poor Liza" is the image of the narrator, the narrator. We are talking on behalf of a person who is interested in the fate of his heroes, a person who is not indifferent to them, who sympathizes with other people's misfortunes. That is, Karamzin creates the image of the narrator in full accordance with the laws of sentimentalism. And now this is becoming unprecedented, this is the first time in Russian literature.

Sentimentalism- this is a worldview and a tendency of thinking aimed at identifying, strengthening, emphasizing the emotional side of life.

In full accordance with Karamzin's intention, the narrator does not accidentally say: “I love those objects that touch my heart and make me shed tears of tender sorrow!”

The description in the exposition of the fallen Simonov Monastery, with its collapsed cells, as well as the crumbling hut in which Liza and her mother lived, introduce the theme of death into the story from the very beginning, creates that gloomy tone that will accompany the story. And at the very beginning of the story, one of the main themes and favorite ideas of the figures of the Enlightenment sounds - the idea of ​​the extra-class value of a person. And it sounds weird. When the narrator talks about the story of Liza's mother, about the early death of her husband, Liza's father, he will say that she could not be consoled for a long time, and will utter the famous phrase: "... for even peasant women know how to love".

Now this phrase has become almost catchy, and we often do not correlate it with the original source, although in Karamzin's story it appears in a very important historical, artistic and cultural context. It turns out that the feelings of commoners, peasants are no different from the feelings of noble people, nobles, peasant women and peasants are capable of subtle and tender feelings. This discovery of the extra-class value of a person was made by the figures of the Enlightenment and becomes one of the leitmotifs of Karamzin's story. And not only in this place: Liza will tell Erast that there can be nothing between them, since she is a peasant woman. But Erast will begin to console her and will say that he does not need any other happiness in life, except for Lisa's love. It turns out, indeed, the feelings of ordinary people can be as subtle and refined as the feelings of people of noble birth.

At the beginning of the story, another very important topic will sound. We see that in the exposition of his work, Karamzin concentrates all the main themes and motives. This is the theme of money and its destructive power. At the first date of Lisa and Erast, the guy will want to give her a ruble instead of the five kopecks requested by Lisa for a bouquet of lilies of the valley, but the girl will refuse. Subsequently, as if paying off Liza, from her love, Erast will give her ten imperials - one hundred rubles. Naturally, Liza will automatically take this money, and then she will try through her neighbor, a peasant girl Dunya, to transfer it to her mother, but this money will also be of no use to her mother. She will not be able to use them, because upon the news of Lisa's death, she herself will die. And we see that, indeed, money is the destructive force that brings misfortune to people. Suffice it to recall the sad story of Erast himself. For what reason did he refuse Lisa? Leading a frivolous life and losing at cards, he was forced to marry a wealthy elderly widow, that is, he, too, is actually sold for money. And this incompatibility of money as an achievement of civilizations with the natural life of people is demonstrated by Karamzin in Poor Lisa.

With a fairly traditional literary plot - a story about how a young rake-nobleman seduces a commoner - Karamzin nevertheless solves it not quite traditionally. It has long been noted by researchers that Erast is not at all such a traditional example of an insidious seducer, he really loves Lisa. He is a man with a good mind and heart, but weak and windy. And it is this frivolity that destroys him. And destroys him, like Lisa, too strong sensitivity. And here lies one of the main paradoxes of Karamzin's story. On the one hand, he is a preacher of sensitivity as a way of moral improvement of people, and on the other hand, he also shows how excessive sensitivity can bring detrimental consequences. But Karamzin is not a moralist, he does not call to condemn Liza and Erast, he calls on us to sympathize with their sad fate.

Just as unusual and innovative Karamzin uses landscapes in his story. The landscape for him ceases to be just a scene of action and a background. The landscape becomes a kind of landscape of the soul. What happens in nature often reflects what happens in the soul of the characters. And nature seems to respond to the characters on their feelings. For example, let's remember a beautiful spring morning when Erast first sails along the river in a boat to Liza's house, and vice versa, a gloomy, starless night, accompanied by a storm and thunder, when the heroes fall into sin (Fig. 8). Thus, the landscape also became an active artistic force, which was also an artistic discovery of Karamzin.

Rice. 8. Illustration for the story "Poor Liza" ()

But the main artistic discovery is the image of the narrator himself. All events are presented not objectively and dispassionately, but through his emotional reaction. It is he who turns out to be a genuine and sensitive hero, because he is able to experience the misfortunes of others as his own. He mourns his too sensitive heroes, but at the same time remains true to the ideals of sentimentalism and a faithful adherent of the idea of ​​\u200b\u200bsensitivity as a way to achieve social harmony.

Bibliography

1. Korovina V.Ya., Zhuravlev V.P., Korovin V.I. Literature. Grade 9 Moscow: Enlightenment, 2008.
2. Ladygin M.B., Esin A.B., Nefyodova N.A. Literature. Grade 9 Moscow: Bustard, 2011.
3. Chertov V.F., Trubina L.A., Antipova A.M. Literature. Grade 9 M.: Education, 2012.

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Homework

1. Read the story "Poor Liza".
2. Describe the main characters of the story "Poor Liza".
3. Tell us, what is Karamzin's innovation in the story "Poor Liza".