Life and work of Ostrovsky. Stages and features of creativity Ostrovsky

Alexander Nikolaevich Ostrovsky is a famous Russian writer and playwright, who had a significant influence on the development of the national theater. He formed a new school of realistic games and wrote many remarkable works. This article will outline the main stages of Ostrovsky's creative work. And also the most significant moments of his biography.

Childhood

Alexander Nikolayevich Ostrovsky, whose photo is presented in this article, was born in 1823, March 31, in Moscow, in the Malaya Ordynka district. His father, Nikolai Fedorovich, grew up in the family of a priest, graduated from the Moscow Theological Academy himself, but did not serve in the church. He became a court solicitor, engaged in commercial and judicial matters. Nikolai Fyodorovich managed to rise to the rank of titular councilor, and later (in 1839) to get the nobility. The mother of the future playwright - Savvina Lyubov Ivanovna - was a sexton's daughter. She died when Alexander was only seven years old. In the family of Ostrovsky six children grew up. Nikolay Fyodorovich did everything to ensure that the children grew in prosperity and received a decent education. A few years after the death of Lubov Ivanovna, he married again. His wife was Emilia Andreyevna von Tessin, a baroness, the daughter of a Swedish nobleman. Children were very lucky with their stepmother: she managed to find an approach to them and continued to engage in their education.

Youth

Alexander Nikolaevich Ostrovsky spent his childhood in the heart of Zamoskvorechye. His father had a very good library, thanks to which the boy early became acquainted with the literature of Russian writers and felt a penchant for writing. However, my father saw only a lawyer in the boy. Therefore, in 1835 Alexander was given to the First Moscow Gymnasium, after training in which he became a student of the Moscow University. However, to obtain a diploma of a lawyer Ostrovsky was never successful. He quarreled with the teacher and left the university. On the advice of his father, Alexander Nikolayevich went to the service as a scribe and worked for this position for several years.

Attempt at writing

However, Alexander Nikolayevich did not give up trying to prove himself in the literary field. In his first plays he adhered to the accusatory, "moral-social" trend. The first works of Ostrovsky were printed in a new edition, the Moscow City Leaflet, in 1847. These were sketches for the comedy "The Failed Debtor" and the essay "Notes of the Zamoskvoretsky Resident." Under the publication were the letters "A. O. and D. G. "The fact is that a certain Dmitry Gorev invited the young playwright to cooperate. It did not advance beyond the writing of one of the scenes, but later became a source of great trouble for Ostrovsky. Some detractors then accused the playwright of plagiarism. In the future, from the pen of Alexander Nikolayevich there will be a lot of great plays, and no one will dare to doubt his talent. Next, Ostrovsky's life and work will be described in detail . The table below will systematize the information received.

First success

When did this happen? Ostrovsky's work became very popular after the publication in 1850 of the comedy "His people - we shall be counted!". This work has received favorable reviews in literary circles. IA Goncharov and NV Gogol gave the play a positive evaluation. However, an impressive spoonful of tar fell into this barrel of honey. Influential representatives of the Moscow merchants, offended by the estate, complained to the higher authorities on the impudent playwright. The play was immediately banned from staging, the author was expelled from the service and given under the strictest supervision of the police. And it happened on the personal order of the Emperor Nicholas I himself. Supervision was eliminated only after the emperor Alexander II ascended the throne. And the theater public saw the comedy only in 1861, after the lifting of the ban on its staging.

Early plays

Early work of Alexander Ostrovsky was not without attention, the work was published mainly in the magazine Moskvityanin. The playwright actively collaborated with this publication both as a critic and as an editor in 1850-1851. Under the influence of the "young editorial board" of the magazine and the main ideologist of this circle, AA Grigoriev, Alexander Nikolayevich composed plays "Poverty is not a vice", "Do not sit down in your sled", "Do not live as you want." The themes of Ostrovsky's creative work during this period were the idealization of patriarchy, Russian ancient customs and traditions. These sentiments slightly muffled the accusatory pathos of the writer's work. However, in the works of this cycle, Alexander Nikolaevich's dramaturgical skills grew. His plays became known and popular.

Cooperation with Sovremennik

Beginning in 1853, for thirty years, Alexander Nikolayevich's plays were shown every season on the stages of Maly (in Moscow) and Alexandrinsky (in St. Petersburg) theaters. Since 1856, Ostrovsky's work is regularly covered in the journal Sovremennik (works are printed). During the social upsurge in the country (before the abolition of serfdom in 1861), the writer's works again acquired accusatory sharpness. In the play "In another's feast of a hangover," the writer created an impressive image of Bruskov's Tit Titych, in which he embodied the gross and dark power of domestic autocracy. Here, for the first time, the word "tyrant" sounded, which later became attached to a whole gallery of Ostrovsky's characters. In the comedy "Profitable place" ridiculed became the norm of life sales of officials. The drama "Raising a Child" was a living protest against violence against a person. Below, other stages of Ostrovsky's creative work will be described. But the top of the achievement of this period of his literary activity was the social and psychological drama "Thunderstorm."

"Storm"

In this play, the "everyday" Ostrovsky painted the dreary atmosphere of a provincial city with its hypocrisy, rudeness, indisputable authority of the "elders" and the rich. In contrast to the imperfect world of people, Alexander Nikolayevich depicts exciting pictures of the Volga region. The image of Katerina is covered with tragic beauty and gloomy charm. The storm symbolizes the emotional turmoil of the heroine and, at the same time, embodies the burden of fear under which ordinary people live permanently. The kingdom of blind submission obfuscates, according to Ostrovsky, two forces: the common sense, which Kuligin preaches in the play, and the pure soul of Katerina. In his "Ray of light in a dark kingdom" critic Dobrolyubov interpreted the image of the main character as a symbol of deep protest, gradually ripening in the country.

Thanks to this play, Ostrovsky's creativity soared to the unattainable heights. "Thunderstorm" made Alexander Nikolayevich the most famous and revered Russian playwright.

Historical motives

In the second half of the 1860s Alexander Nikolayevich began to study the history of the Time of Troubles. He began to correspond with the famous historian and public figure Nikolai Ivanovich Kostomarov. Based on the study of serious sources by the playwright, a whole series of historical works was created: "Dmitry Samozvanets and Vasily Shuisky", "Kozma Zakhar'ich Minin-Sukhoruk", "Tushino". The problems of the national history were portrayed Ostrovsky talently and reliably.

Other plays

Alexander Nikolayevich still remained true to his favorite topic. In the 1860s he wrote many "household" dramas and plays. Among them: "Heavy days", "Deep", "Jokers". These works were fixed by the motives already found by the writer. Since the late 1860's, Ostrovsky's creative work has been going through a period of active development. In his dramaturgy appear images and themes of the "new", surviving the reform of Russia: dealers, acquirers, degenerate patriarchal moneybags and "Europeanized" merchants. Alexander Nikolaevich created a brilliant cycle of satirical comedies, debunking the postreform illusions of citizens: "Mad Money", "Hot Heart", "Wolves and Sheep", "Forest". The moral ideal of the playwright is pure soul, noble people: Parasha from the "Hot Heart", Aksyusha from the "Forest". Ostrovsky's notions of the meaning of life, happiness and duty were embodied in the play "Labor Bread". Almost all the works of Alexander Nikolayevich, written in the 1870s, were published in Otechestvennye zapiski.

"Snow Maiden"

The appearance of this poetic play was completely random. The Small Theater in 1873 was closed for repairs. His artists moved to the building of the Bolshoi Theater. In connection with this, the commission for the management of the Moscow Imperial Theaters decided to create a play in which three troupes would be involved: opera, ballet and drama. Write a similar play took Alexander Nikolaevich Ostrovsky. "Snegurochka" was written by a playwright in a very short time. As a basis, the author took a story from a Russian folk tale. While working on the play, he carefully selected the sizes of the verses, consulted with archaeologists, historians, connoisseurs of antiquity. The music for the play was composed by the young PI Tchaikovsky. The play premiered in 1873, on May 11, on the stage of the Bolshoi Theater. KS Stanislavsky spoke of the "Snow Maiden" as a fairy tale, a dream told in sonorous and magnificent poems. He said that the realist and everyday Ostrovsky wrote this play as if he had not been interested in anything before, except pure romance and poetry.

Work in recent years

During this period Ostrovsky composed significant social and psychological comedies and dramas. They tell of the tragic fate of women who are delicate, gifted in a cynical and self-seeking world: Talents and admirers, and Dowryless. Here the playwright has developed new techniques of scenic expressiveness, anticipating the work of Anton Chekhov. Preserving the peculiarities of his drama, Alexander Nikolaevich strove to translate into the "intelligent subtle comedy" the "inner struggle" of the heroes.

Social activity

In 1866, Alexander Nikolaevich founded the famous Artistic Circle. He subsequently gave the Moscow stage many talented figures. Ostrovsky had DV Grigorovich, IA Goncharov, IS Turgenev, PM Sadovsky, AF Pisemsky, GN Fedotova, ME Yermolova, PI Tchaikovsky , LN Tolstoy, ME Saltykov-Shchedrin, IE Turchaninov.

In 1874, the Society of Russian Dramatic Writers and Opera Composers was established in Russia. The chairman of the association was Alexander Ostrovsky. Photographs of a famous public figure were known to every fan of stage art in Russia. The reformer made a lot of efforts to ensure that the theater management legislation was revised in favor of the artists, and thereby significantly improved their material and social status.

In 1885, Alexander Nikolayevich was appointed to the post of head of the repertoire of the theaters of Moscow and became head of the theatrical school.

Ostrovsky Theater

The work of Alexander Ostrovsky is inextricably linked with the formation of a real Russian theater in its modern sense. The playwright and writer managed to create his own theater school and a special holistic concept of theatrical productions.

The peculiarities of Ostrovsky's creative work in the theater are the absence of opposition to the actor's nature and extreme situations in the action of the play. In the works of Alexander Nikolayevich, ordinary events occur with ordinary people.

The main ideas of reform:

• The theater should be built on conventions (there is an invisible "fourth wall" that separates the audience from the actors);
• When staging a performance, a bet should be made not on one famous actor, but on a team of artists who understand each other well;
• The invariance of the actors' attitude to language: speech characteristics should express almost everything about the heroes represented in the play;
• People come to the theater to look at the play of artists, and not to get acquainted with the play - it they can read at home.

The ideas that the writer Alexander Ostrovsky came up with were subsequently finalized by Bulgakov and Stanislavsky.

Personal life

The personal life of the playwright was no less interesting than his literary work. In a civil marriage with a simple petty bourgeois, Ostrovsky Alexander Nikolayevich lived for almost twenty years. Interesting facts and details of the relationship between the writer and his first wife still worry researchers.

In 1847, a young girl, Agafya Ivanovna, lived with her thirteen-year-old sister in Nikolo-Vorobyinovsky Lane, near the house where Ostrovsky lived. She had no relatives or friends. Nobody knows when she met Alexander Nikolayevich. However, in 1848 young people had a son, Alexei. There were no conditions for raising a child, so the boy was temporarily placed in an educational home. Ostrovsky's father was terribly enraged that his son had not only left the prestigious university, but also contacted a simple bourgeois who lives in the neighborhood.

However, Alexander Nikolayevich showed firmness, and when his father and his stepmother left for the newly purchased Shchelkovo estate in the Kostroma province, he settled with Agafya Ivanovna in her wooden house.

Writer and ethnographer SV Maksimov jokingly called Ostrovsky's first wife "Martha Posadnitsa", because she was next to the writer in times of hardship and severe deprivation. Friends of Ostrovsky characterize Agafya Ivanovna as a man of nature very intelligent and cordial. She knew perfectly well the customs and customs of merchant life and had an unconditional influence on Ostrovsky's work. Alexander Nikolaevich often consulted her about the creation of his works. In addition, Agafia Ivanovna was a wonderful and hospitable mistress. But Ostrovsky did not formalize her marriage even after her father's death. All the children born in this union died very small, only the oldest, Alexei, survived the mother for a short time.

Over time, Ostrovsky had other hobbies. He was passionately in love with Lyubov Pavlovna Kositskaya-Nikulin, who played Caterina at the premiere of "The Thunderstorms" in 1859. However, soon there was a personal break: the actress threw the playwright for the sake of a rich merchant.

Then Alexander Nikolayevich had a connection with the young actress Vasilyeva-Bakhmetieva. Agafya Ivanovna knew about this, but she bore her cross steadfastly and managed to keep Ostrovsky's respect for himself. The woman died in 1867, on March 6, after a serious illness. Alexander Nikolayevich did not leave her bed until the very end. The place of burial of the first wife of Ostrovsky is unknown.

Two years later, the playwright married Vasilyeva-Bakhmetieva, who gave birth to him two daughters and four sons. With this woman, Alexander Nikolaevich lived until the end of his days.

Death of the writer

Tense social and creative activity could not but affect the health of the writer. In addition, despite the good fees from staging plays and the annual pension of 3 thousand rubles, Alexander Nikolaevich always lacked money. Exhausted by constant cares, the writer's body eventually failed. In 1886, on June 2, the writer died in his estate Shchelykovo near Kostroma. Emperor Alexander the Third granted 3,000 rubles to the playwright's funeral. In addition, the widow of the writer, he appointed a pension of 3 thousand rubles, and for the education of Ostrovsky's children - another 2,400 rubles a year.

Chronological table

Ostrovsky's life and work can be briefly displayed in a chronological table.

Such events were filled with Ostrovsky's life and work. Table, which indicates the main incidents in the fate of the writer, will help to better study his biography. Alexander Nikolayevich's dramatic heritage can not be overestimated. The small theater, even during the life of the great artist, was called "Ostrovsky's house," and this speaks volumes. Ostrovsky's work, a brief description of which is set forth in this article, is worth studying in more detail.