Nikolai Gerasimovich Pomyalovsky (1835-1863) - Russian writer and prose writer. Familiar to his contemporaries as the author of realistic stories, he is considered a successor to the traditions of the truly great N.V. Gogol.
Biography
Pomyalovsky was born on 04/11/1835 in the family of a deacon. His father served in St. Petersburg at the cemetery Malookhtinsky church. In the biography of Nikolai Pomyalovsky, the family played a big role. The father, who was distinguished by good nature, raised children with gentle advice and suggestions. Thanks to this, Nikolai quickly became independent in his thoughts and actions. One of his first comrades in his childhood was the Okhten fishermen. The boy spent a lot of time with them and had long conversations. The nearby graveyard, which made a negative impression with its gloomy paintings, also had an effect on the smart and lively Kolya. This became the main reason for the formation of the gloomy and skeptical nature of the future writer.
When his son was 8 years old, his father assigned him to the Alexander Nevsky Theological School for living and studying at the state expense - “Bursa”. Here, the future writer stayed until 1851. Morals and the life of the school were later displayed in the famous "Bursa Essays".
After college, Pomyalovsky completed a full course of study at the St. Petersburg Theological Seminary, which he graduated in 1857. Waiting for a place in the church, he sang the dead and sang at Sunday services. In the same period, Pomyalovsky began to engage in self-education, and was a free student at St. Petersburg University.
During this study, he embarked on literary work, taking part in the creation of the handwritten journal Seminarsky Listok. In one of these publications, the beginning of the story “Makhilov” written by Pomyalovsky was published. In these same journals, several of his articles were published. Since 1861, the writer began to publish his works in Sovremennik. Here from 1862 to 1863. Pomyalovsky's Bursa Essays were also published. They could be read in the journal "Time".
Famous work
Pomyalovsky received his fame thanks to "Essays on the Bursa." This talented work illuminated a modest and, at the same time, very dark corner of Russian life, which until that period had not been guessed by any of the representatives of a cultural society. Anyone who undertook to read Burya Essays by Pomyalovsky was horrified to learn that in the very center of the Northern capital there was life that was striking in its inhuman cruelty and aimlessness.
The work “Essays on the Bursa”, which was a huge success, was able to make a rather strong impression on society and ensured great popularity to the author. After its publication, Pomyalovsky conceived the novel "Brother and Sister." However, a period of political reaction has begun. The Russian government closed all Sunday schools, arrested Chernyshevsky, and suspended the publication of Sovremennik. Such events literally shocked the writer. However, he found the strength not to stop working on the continuation of "Essays on the Bursa", as well as on the novel "Brother and Sister", having conceived a new work "Vacation". But in September 1863, Nikolai Gerasimovich fell ill, and on October 17 died of gangrene.
Writer's Worldview
N. G. Pomyalovsky was close to the ideas of revolutionary democrats. Their influence can explain his sharply negative attitude to any manifestation of noble culture, as well as to bourgeois hoarding.
As one of the parts of the hated social system, Pomyalovsky described in his essays a bursa, showing it as a sphere that corrupts and kills a person. In these essays, the reader can find many fairly harsh words about the church and religion that cover violence and abuse.
Realism of the work
Images of Bursaks existed in literature even before Pomyalovsky. However, these were, as a rule, virtuous, cheerful and clean pupils of the seminary. They had nothing to do with those heroes that were described in Pomyalovsky's Essays on the Bursa. That is why critics greeted the revolutionary democratic work with hostility. Many of them believed that the hopeless and gloomy paintings described by Nikolai Gerasimovich were far beyond art. However, other voices were also heard, which claimed that not a single word of untruth was said in the Essays on the Bursa by Pomyalovsky.
To date, according to documentary evidence, it is possible to draw an unambiguous conclusion that N. Pomyalovsky's “Essays on the Bursa” provide true general coverage of the situation that took place in theological seminaries of the time.
About Poetics
Bursa's Essays by Nikolai Pomyalovsky are written using autobiographical material. In this work, which stands out for its artistic expressiveness and power, the reader is invited to familiarize himself with colorful images. These are Bursaks and their teachers, living in a world of stagnation and stagnation, which existed at that time in theological schools.
High school students can use the "Essays of Bursa" by Nikolai Pomyalovsky for the contest "Living Classics". After all, this work is interesting not only in cognitive terms. It is a clear contrast to those childhood memories that can be read from noble writers. There are no bright or kind feelings in Pomyalovsky's Essays on the Bursa. In them, the reader sees only bitterness and anger about ruined childhood and youth, as well as spiritually crippled people.
Story building
What is characteristic of Nikolai Pomyalovsky's Essays on Bursa? They lack a single cognitively developing plot. There is no main character in this work. The “Bursa Essays” by N. G. Pomyalovsky are separate sketches, as well as brilliantly constructed scenes, dialogs and everyday details. All this allows the author to create a rather expressive whole picture. It does not have an external literary “smoothness”, which makes a strong impression on people.
To the one who began to read Pomyalovsky's Essays on the Bursa, the realism of the depicted becomes obvious. At the same time, it is emphasized by the peculiar language that the writer used to write his essays. These are forms of vernacular, and Bursatian jargon, and church-book speech.
Writer Innovation
The entire biography of Nikolai Gerasimovich Pomyalovsky clearly indicates that he belongs to the galaxy of those artists who did not look for beaten paths in art. He was a true experimenter and innovator. Critics note that the genre forms of the works created by him are characteristic of literature of the 60s of the 19th century, while expressing the typical art trends that were characteristic of that era.
An analysis of Pomyalovsky’s essays “Bursa Essays” clearly indicates that this writer is one of the artists who most clearly expressed the features of revolutionary democratic prose, which was influenced by the ideas that engulfed society at that time. The Bursa Essays genre was a clear confirmation of the maturity achieved by realistic literature.
Writer idea
Over the course of two years (1862–63), four parts of Bursa Essays were published. The fifth, incomplete, readers saw after the death of the author. Initially, Pomyalovsky planned 20 essays. In them, he wanted to tell with all the details about the life that takes place in theological schools.
Even when reviewing the summary of Pomyalovsky's Bursa Essays by chapters, it becomes clear that this work is not at all a photograph of reality. Each of the plots of the author is an integral part of the autobiographical story.
Let's get acquainted with the summary of the "Bursa Essays" by Pomyalovsky.
Winter evening
The summary of Pomyalovsky's Bursa Essays will begin by examining the first part of the work. It describes the end of classes. In the huge and dirty room of the school, the Bursaks started games.
The period for which “violent education” was characteristic has already ended. This is when all students, regardless of their age, were required to study the program of the full course of science. But this is already in the past. Now the time has come for the "law of great age." What does he mean? Bursak who has reached a certain age is expelled from school. In this case, a young man can become either a scribe, or a deacon, or a novice. At the same time, Bursaks are worried about rumors that some of them may be taken into the ranks of soldiers.
There are more than 100 people in the classroom of the school. Among them there are adults and children 12 years old. All of them play “fast-moving”, “fasting”, “habits” and “pebbles”. Such entertainments are inevitably associated with causing pain through blows, tweaks, clicks, etc.
However, no one wants to play with Semenov. This is a 16-year-old boy, the son of a parish priest. All bursaks know that Semenov is a fiscal.
The classroom begins to get dark. Pupils are having fun with noisy games, singing, and straying into a "heap of mala." However, suddenly everything subsides. Frightening sounds are heard in the dark. Someone is being whipped. It turns out that the Bursaks are punishing Semenov. The one, embittered, runs away to complain.
Then classes begin. Their main meaning lies in meaningless cramming and “dolby”. That is why no one wants to study. Some Bursaks are sleeping, while others are talking.
An inspector enters the class, along with Semenov, who complained to him about his abusers. One of them is immediately whipped. At the same time, the inspector promises to punish every tenth student in the same way next time.
Bursaks take revenge on Semenov. Their punishment is cruel. At night they insert a fiscal into the nose of the cone in which the burning cotton is located. Semenov is taken to the hospital. The authorities at the same time order to carve many students. Some of them are punished in vain.
Bursatsky types
We continue to familiarize ourselves with the summary of Bursa Essays. The second part of the work begins with a description of the early morning. Students are awakened and then taken to the bathhouse. Young people walk around the city, cursing with passers-by. After the bath, they engage in theft, looking for those products that are poorly laid. Two Bursaks, whose nicknames are Satan and Aksyut, are especially different in this. After they had eaten stolen goods, a good mood came to them. Returning to class, the Bursaks tell each other about what happened in the school in the old days, and how the students were cut off before.
After the start of classes, teacher Ivan Mikhailovich Lobov calls Aksyuta, but realizing that he did not learn a lesson, he beats the boy. After that, he begins to ask the others. Punishments are distributed the same way. During the lesson, the teacher has breakfast. But the new material does not explain. He never does that.
The next lesson comes a Latin teacher - Dolbezhkin. His students love, even though he cuts them all in a row for the slightest offense. However, Dolbezhkin does not take bribes, does not favor fiscals and is considered honest.
The nickname of the third teacher is Old Man. He is especially fierce. In addition to flogging, they are subject to other physical punishments, which are considered more sophisticated.
Grooms bursa
We continue to consider the "Essays on the Bursa" by Pomyalovsky (summary). The third part refers to two women who came to the school yard. One of them is an old woman, and the second is thirty years old. They wait for the director, and then rush to his feet. It turned out that this is the so-called fixed bride. With her mother, she came "for the groom." The thing is that in Russia of that period there was such a rule that the place of a deceased clergyman goes to someone who agrees to marry his daughter. So women came here to find a “breadwinner” in their bursa.
A new type of teacher appears in the school. One of its representatives is Krasnov Peter Ivanovich. This man is an opponent of cruel physical punishment. However, Krasnov likes to morally mock ignorant students, humiliating them in front of the class.
The aksyutka, along with Satan, steal bread in the Bursak canteen. They do it pretty deftly. Aksyutka takes the Chain out of himself, and while he chases after the arrogant boy, Satan commits theft.
The duty officer calls the grooms to the bride's bride. The authorities believe that three are suitable for her. These are Vesenda, Azinus and Aksyutka. The first two of them are engaged only in church sciences. At the same time, Wassenda is considered to be a solid and practical person, and Azinus - disorderly and stupid.
Bursaks are sent to the bride. Wassende does not like the bride, and Azinus decides to marry her. And this is despite the fact that a woman is much older than a young man. Aksyutka simply called himself the bridegroom to eat while in the bride's house, and to pull something there.
Students at the same time start a new game. They make a mockery of the wedding.
Runners and Saved Bursa
In the summary of Pomyalovsky's Essays on the Bursa, for the reader's diary we will further get acquainted with the fourth part of the work. And here the author tells us about Karas. From early childhood, this boy dreamed of becoming a student of Bursa. After all, his elder brothers studied here, who were very important to him. Karas the newcomer, who has just come to a bursa, is glad. However, comrades' ridicule immediately begins to pour on him, and he is subjected to various bullying. Already on the first day, Karasya is whipped.
The boy enters the seminary choir. However, there he tries not to sing, but only to open his mouth.
Karasem was called by his comrades, conducting an offensive ceremony. The boy is fighting with them. This sees Lobov. He orders to carve Karas. After this cruel flogging, a fracture occurs in the boy's soul. He begins to hate bursa and dreams of revenge.
There is a student in the class nicknamed Silych. He is considered the first hero. Silych states that he becomes the patron saint of Karas. Since then, no one has offended the boy, and it becomes much easier for him to live. Crucian himself tries to stand up for the “oppressed”. This is especially true for Bursatian fools. But at the same time, the boy does not want to study at all.
Another progressive teacher in the school is Vsevolod Vasilievich Razumnikov. He teaches children church singing, God's law, and sacred history. Razumnikov introduces a new system according to which mutual training is carried out. However, church singing is not available for Karas. He cannot comprehend it in any way. For this, Razumnikov punishes the boy. He does not let him go home on Sundays. Karas is afraid that he will not be able to leave school for Easter.
An arithmetic teacher came to the lesson. Livanov is drunk and helpless. Bursaki begin to mock him.
On Saturday, when Karas realized that they would not let him go home, he began to do all kinds of outrages with frustration. And on Sunday, he planned to escape. He had previously heard that the younger students who were caught were forgiven. Some of them were whipped. But on the same day, the captured "runner" Menshinsky was brought to the school. He was whipped half to death, and then taken to the hospital on a matting. Crucian was frightened and left thoughts of an escape. The guy decided to hide from church singing in a hospital. He did everything to get sick, and a terrible lesson passed without him. On Easter, Karas was released home.
Bursa Transition Time
A new caretaker has appeared in the school. The person who previously held this position was kind and could not stand the horrors that were happening in the bursa. In order not to see them, Stargazer sought to retire in his apartment. This gave him mystery in the eyes of his students. But by this time, many changes had taken place in the bursa. The punishments were mitigated, and less-than-old students became less.
Brief analysis of the work
The progressive public of the 60s of the 19th century She showed a deep interest in the problems of education and upbringing that existed in the country. This was the main reason that Pomyalovsky decided to portray a bursa. The work was written at a time when the already rotten serfdom system discovered its ulcers in this matter.
Nikolai Pomyalovsky, “Bursa Essays,” presented the readers at the time when brutality, punishment, and humiliation of students were rampant. Moreover, this did not happen at all in the distant Russian outback. The horrors illustrated by the writer were commonplace in the grave imperial and outwardly brilliant Petersburg.
During this period, that is, in the first half of the 19th century, theological schools were one of the most common educational institutions. However, it is worth noting that the same system and similar customs (sometimes in a somewhat more decent form) were present in gymnasiums, closed institutes and cadet corps.
In almost every spiritual school, mechanical and meaningless cramming dominated. The same student who wished to consciously learn the subject began to be considered a freethinker. The teachers of that time did not raise any doubts about the need for corporal punishment. Ruthless beatings were the main method of influencing students, with the help of which the younger generation tried to teach the rules of good behavior, religion and morality. Making an analysis of Pomyalovsky's Bursa Essays, we can see that in the first part of the work of everyday and universal flogging is not yet observed. In all its magnitude, it appears before the reader in “Bursatsky types”.
Physical punishment was a real nightmare of spiritual schools. And, unfortunately, not only of them alone. They were punished with rods in home, school and national education. But a similar method aroused among the pupils only hatred of their teachers and superiors. And if, in front of the elders, the students behaved more or less calmly, then they secretly “crap”, thus being responsible for the persecution and punishment.
In addition to the cruelty of education, N.G. Pomyalovsky also raises the problem of personality. It is expressed in "Essays on Bursa" in questions of the formation of the child. Moreover, the author indicates that in such conditions a real person from a student is unlikely to succeed.
Creating the characters of his heroes, Nikolai Gerasimovich tried to find out the influence on the fate and personality of the Bursak social environment. And in those situations where the writer seeks to show the reader the dialectic of character formation, he puts on art experiments. The author emphasizes and consciously changes the external circumstances. At the same time, he begins his research of the actions that a person performs in a sharply different environment. After this, certain conclusions follow. So, in his essays Pomyalovsky portrayed children whose souls are gradually being corrupted by the Bursat system of education and science. Moreover, the author takes the blame not only from the students, but also from the teachers. He points to a specific external root cause, which lies in a typical social order. Those senseless and brutal punishments that the bursa was subjected to forced children to seek salvation by hiding in latrines, escaping home or into the forest, and also, having deliberately caught a cold, lay down in the hospital.
Describing the bureaucracy that existed in the school, the power of the strong over the weaker, bribery, earphones and despotic violence, the author created a cast of the system that existed in tsarist Russia. So, in the minds of Karas, who was oppressed by the bursa, thoughts about what is unbearable not only here begin to ripen. It is bad for a person to live in all modern reality. With factual accuracy, having produced the mores and customs of a spiritual school, Pomyalovsky bitterly speaks out that the same bursa exists in the life of all. A similar typification feature was very clear to representatives of the revolutionary democratic movement. In particular, D.I. Pisarev pointed out that he sees in “Essays on the Bursa” not only a Russian school, but also other spheres of public life, in particular, a prison.
Pomyalovsky actively condemns the orders that existed in the theological school. And in this is expressed his position as an active commoner. She was diametrically opposed to liberal views.
The pages of the work of Pomyalovsky introduced the reader to unusually gloomy, but at the same time vivid pictures of reality. As a result, the author presents all the Bursaks and teachers as victims of church science and the upbringing system. Nevertheless, the author expresses an extremely negative opinion about many teachers. This, for example, the terrible Old Man, known for his "bloodthirstiness." He literally tortured children, not limiting himself in his fanaticism. No less brutal, the author describes Lobova. This teacher only entered the class with a birch whip. In these people, the bursa uprooted everything human, which turned them into bloodthirsty executioners.
The author finds some positive features in the images of Razumnikov, Krasnov and Dolbezhkin. The latter, for example, despite his rudeness and cynicism, did not take bribes from his parents. Krasnova Pomyalovsky portrayed a man as delicate and soft. However, none of these teachers even thought about eradicating the rods as a means of forcing children to learn.