Russian literature of the 19th and 20th centuries is a source of strong dramatic subjects, vivid characters, and rich colorful characters. The image of the house in Russian literature is one of the strongest, reference, attracting attention and forcing to be equal to it. The reflection of the concept of "house" by writers and poets will be studied in our article.
Literature of the 19th century. Short review
This period of literature is one of the strongest, most powerful and predetermined fate of both literature itself and the Russian language as a whole. It was called the Golden Age of Poetry. But the prose of these years was also not inferior, it can be safely called a model of the origin of the canons of writing.
In this century, Pushkin and his teacher Zhukovsky, Fet and Tyutchev worked. The world famous Leo Tolstoy and Fedor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, competitors Gorky and Chekhov, Nekrasov and Turgenev created their pearls, now known all over the world. During this period, many worthy images were created. The image of the house in Russian literature of this time is one of the most powerful and memorable, endowed with native Russian features and at the same time favorable to new world trends.
The century began with the development of romanticism, which gradually turned into realism and social realism. The mood of the works was permeated with revolutionary forebodings and a desire for change.
The image of the house in Russian literature of the 19th century
The concept of "home" often goes hand in hand with the concept of "homeland." Perhaps that is why the writers of the 19th stormy century paid much attention to the house. The house was often the main scene, the most dramatic events took place in it. The housing of the heroes was associated with their clan traditions and family principles.
Many writers turned their stories around the housing of the main and secondary characters. The house was associated with its owner and his family.
The image of a 19th-century prose classic house
We will consider the image of the house of three iconic masters of the artistic word: Pushkin, Leo Tolstoy and Chekhov.
Thanks to A.S. Pushkin, the image of the house in Russian literature has two interpretations. Let us analyze them in detail on the example of the novel "Eugene Onegin" and its main characters - Eugene and Tatiana.
For Eugene, the house is a boring place to relax. To his house, Eugene does not feel a particularly reverent attitude. Another thing is the homebody Tatyana. At home, she needlework, read and dream. She is a real keeper of the hearth; at home she is very cozy and comfortable. Perhaps that is why she so easily rejects the untimely feelings of Onegin. She has a real, worthy home, and now he is her highest value. And the reader understands that Tatyana, even with her thoughts, cannot desecrate her home, which appears in the novel as a symbol of her soul, whose doors, if they are closed for a certain person, are forever. So the image of the house at Pushkin acts as a symbol of peace, peace, moral purity.
The image of Leo Tolstoy’s house is not much different from Pushkin’s interpretation. The tangible difference is that for Tolstoy, housing becomes both the main place of action and the “tribal nest,” the source of the character of the whole kind with its traditions, history and secrets. In the homes of Rostov and Bolkonsky (and the Kuragin), important events of "War and Peace" take place. It is worth recalling the interpretation of the name of this monumental work. The concept of “war” does not need to be explained, and the concept of peace here is not a “state of non-war”, but a comprehensive world of people and their destinies. In general, in Leo Tolstoy’s novels, descriptions of houses inside and outside, their interior and atmosphere are given a lot of space, it is the Tolstoyan image of the house and family in Russian literature that will become an example to many heirs of the literary traditions of the classic.
At A.P. Chekhov, the concept of a house is revealed in more detail in his latest play, The Cherry Orchard. The plot is based on a story about a noble family, which, due to difficult life circumstances, loses its family estate and is forced to part with its beloved cherry orchard. The work of the great prose writer intertwines the past and the present, the sublime and the everyday. The house here symbolizes both the family nest, and comfort, and the strong "standing on the feet" of the Ranevsky family. When they sell a house and move after the death of their son, everything turns upside down. The cherry orchard, it would seem, has no special material value. But its value is not calculated in money, the house was the haven of the body, and the garden was the soul of the family.
Summary of essays
An amazing variety of research topics can give us an image of a home in Russian literature. Unfortunately, the composition cannot convey all the nuances of the significance of the home for 19th century writers, but we can summarize by highlighting the main features common to all:
- The house is like a family nest.
- It symbolizes the traditions and history of the family.
- It is often the main scene of the work.
Writers spared no paints to describe the family nests of their heroes. Most of them lived in estates inherited from fathers and grandfathers, appreciated and respected him. The attitude to the house and being in it in many respects predetermined the character's character, the presence / absence of adventurism in it.
Literature of the 20th century. Overview
The literary traditions of the 19th century have been replaced by the challenging innovation of the 20th century. The image of the house in Russian literature of the 20th century will acquire completely different features than in the predecessor century.
This period will later be called the Silver Age. It takes its roots and develops many currents and directions. Realism goes over to modernism, and modernism falls into dozens of fragments of currents: acmeism and futurism, symbolism and avant-garde. The main topics and questions: the meaning of life and death, the argumentation and contestation of eternal moral values, the search for a "new" syllable and a new hero. Religion and mysticism became rivals, then diverged in their traditions, then intersected and went shoulder to shoulder.
This century is marked by the work of poets such as Yesenin and Akhmatova, Mayakovsky and Blok, the amazing Velemir Khlebnikov and the sad Sologub. Prose did not lag behind in its development and search for new traditions. Merezhkovsky creates his manifesto. Gorky moves from romanticism to realism. It was at this time that B. Pasternak would write the brilliant Doctor Zhivago and finish the work on Dead Souls by N. Gogol.
The image of the house in Russian literature of the 20th century. The novel "House" Abramova
The writer F. Abramov called his voluminous tragic novel “The House”. In it, he talks about the death and decline of the Russian village.
The main character returns from his sister's house in a small village and recalls his stay there. Against the background of the house, the main events in the life of this family take place.
Later this house will be sold and will become a double-digit symbol: on the one hand, it is already old, and it would be necessary to have a new one, but on the other, there are all the memories, the strength of the family and its moral principles. The heroine of the novel, Lisa, is ready to fight for her father’s house with all her might, she’s dear to her, even dilapidated, who suffered from the hands of the reseller who did not disdain.
House at Pasternak and Gogol
The image of the house in the works of Russian literature is vividly shown by Boris Pasternak in Doctor Zhivago. Here, the dwelling acts as a refuge of thoughts and protects the inner world of the hero from outside interference. But the houses are collapsing, and perhaps a reminder from above that you need to keep your thoughts not only in the four walls, that you need to be able to be yourself and in the crowd.
Gogol’s house in his “Dead Souls” acquires a completely mythological and symbolic meaning. Plyushkina's estate presents a sad picture of decay and destruction, decay and decay. The image of the house in Russian literature has never been shown in such a deplorable state. And all because Nikolai Vasilyevich hides the soul of his master, Plyushkin, behind the image of the house. He is old and too mired in his impoverished worldview, it is high time for him to either recover, get rid of the old, or collapse, burying his old decay under the ruins.
conclusions
Each century sees its own heroes in its own way. The image of the house in Russian literature also appears different (an essay on both periods will give you a general impression of the house in the 19th and 20th centuries).
The predecessor century depicts the house as a family nest, a repository of traditions and the history of childbirth, an object that formulates not only the characters, but also the fate of the heroes.
The twentieth century relates to housing already differently. It becomes a symbol of some kind of regression and sometimes requires updating, or even getting rid of it.
Complex and ambiguous is the image of the house in Russian literature. Arguments can be found in the works themselves.