Everything should be beautiful in a wonderful person. Essay “Everything should be beautiful in a person: face, clothes, soul, and thoughts ...

Everything should be fine in a person!

The theme of "Uncle Vanya" is the life of "little people", with its imperceptible suffering and selfless labor in the name of someone else's happiness, the theme of beauty that is wasted.

From the memoirs of N.K.Krupskaya, we know that Lenin highly appreciated this play.

Gorky wrote to Chekhov after the play "Uncle Vanya" (the play was staged at the Moscow Art Theater in October 1899, before that it was successfully performed in the provinces):

“Your statement that you do not want to write for the theater makes me tell you a few words about how an understanding audience treats your plays. They say, for example, that "Uncle Vanya" and "The Seagull" are a new kind of dramatic art, in which realism rises to a spiritualized and deeply thought-out symbol. I find this to be said very true. Listening to your play ("Uncle Vanya" - V. Ye.), I thought about the life sacrificed to the idol, about the invasion of beauty into the beggarly life of people, and about many other things, fundamental and important. Other dramas do not distract a person from realities to philosophical generalizations - yours do it ... "

By the very title of the play, Chekhov indicates the simplicity, everyday life, and ordinariness of his heroes and their sufferings.

Uncle Vanya and his niece Sonya all their lives have been working tirelessly for the happiness of others: in order to create material well-being for Sonya's father, Professor Serebryakov, whom they used to consider a talented, progressive, prominent scientist.

Serebryakov, now a retired professor, is married with a second marriage to a young beautiful woman... His first wife, Sonya's mother and Uncle Vanya's sister, had died a long time ago.

The estate where Uncle Vanya and Sonya work belonged to Sonya's late mother. Now it belongs to Sonya. Uncle Vanya at one time renounced his share of the inheritance in favor of his late sister, whom he dearly loved. Thanks to his refusal, their father had the opportunity to buy this estate. The father paid far from the full value of the estate; a large debt was formed. For twenty-five years, Uncle Vanya worked in order to pay off the debt and put the upset estate in order. For twenty-five years he worked "as the most conscientious clerk", receiving a beggarly salary from Serebryakov and sending him to the capital all the income to the last penny, so that Serebryakov could calmly write his scientific works and speak from the department. Uncle Vanya and Sonya buried themselves within four walls, didn’t eat enough, knew no other life than caring for the professor. It never even occurred to them to remember that both in essence and by law the estate belonged to them, and not to Serebryakov: they voluntarily doomed themselves to the role of meek, selfless workers.

Uncle Vanya is forty-seven years old. He is a beggar. He never knew joy or relaxation.

And now, when his life was at sunset, his eyes were opened to the terrible truth. He realized that he gave best years, youth, all of myself in the service of nothingness, an "idol." He clearly saw that his idol was simply pompous mediocrity, full of pretensions and conceit, "an old cracker, a learned roach." This became especially clear now that Serebryakov “has retired, and not a single living soul knows him, he is completely unknown; it means that for twenty-five years he occupied someone else's place. " For twenty-five years he lectured on art, not understanding anything in art, chewing on other people's thoughts, and, therefore, for twenty-five years Uncle Vanya worked so that Professor Serebryakov could take someone else's place.

Spoiled easily by him successful career, by the love of women, by the work of uncles Vanya and Sonya, Serebryakov is soulless, selfish. For twenty-five years, he never once thanked Uncle Vanya, did not add a dime to his meager salary.

And so he comes with his beautiful wife to the estate in order to settle here forever, if necessary; he retired and lacks the means to live in the capital.

His arrival violates the entire strict working order of life in the house. The professor tyrannizes everyone around him with his whims, his gout, his callous egoism. Everyone in the house is forced to take care of only him.

Uncle Vanya is experiencing a difficult condition of a person who, in his old age, had to make sure of the meaninglessness of his whole life. If he had not donated his strength and abilities to serve the "idol", then he himself could have done a lot of useful things, deserve the gratitude of people ... Perhaps he would have been happy, could love and be loved!

This is how Uncle Vanya comes to his tragically belated "rebellion". He seems to demand his ruined life back. He falls in love with the professor's wife. He started drinking for the first time in his life. He is depressed by the thought that everything is lost, life is lost.

And then the professor pours the last drop into the bowl. He solemnly summons the household to a meeting and announces his project to them: to sell the estate so that the professor can live in the capital with the money raised. He cannot stand life in the country, he is used to the noise of the city.

Uncle Vanya is shocked. Not only did he give all his money and his whole life to Serebryakov. Now that he has become old, together with Sonya, in gratitude for everything, they drive him to the neck on all four sides from his native corner.

Uncle Vanya's rebellion reaches its climax.

“You ruined my life! - he shouts to Serebryakov: - I did not live, did not live! By your grace I have destroyed, destroyed the best years of my life! You are my worst enemy! "

The professor throws in his face: "Insignificance!"

“Life is lost! - Uncle Vanya exclaims in complete despair. - I am talented, clever, brave ... If I lived normally, then Schopenhauer, Dostoevsky could come out of me ... I made a report! I'm losing my mind…"

We don't get smiles of disbelief at Uncle Vann's words that he might have come out big man... During our acquaintance with him over the course of three acts, we managed to feel both his mind, and giftedness, and the ability to feat of self-sacrifice in the name of what seemed to him a common idea: in the name of science, progress, reason, which Serebryakov seemed to be the bearer of. Knowing Chekhov's heroes, we are not surprised to find little great people in them.

Uncle Vanya's "riot" ends with a shot at Serebryakov. After this climax, Uncle Vanya still cherishes the thought of suicide for some time, but then, under the influence of the gentle and meek Sonya, he returns to his work again - all on the same Serebryakov.

After the incident, the professor and his wife can no longer remain in the estate. They leave, however, not to the capital, but to Kharkov. A "reconciliation" takes place, and Uncle Vanya tells Serebryakov that everything will remain the same. The retired professor, as before, will neatly receive all the income.

This is the story of a life given to an “idol”. And, of course, Gorky was right in revealing a symbolic meaning in it. How many of these "Uncle Vanya", unnoticed workers, gave in the past their best forces the happiness of nonentities, false idols, convinced that they serve the "common idea" with their labor, deceived by life.

How much spiritual beauty, faith, purity perished in vain!

The play breaks through a protest against the laws of life of the bourgeois-noble society, the embodiment of which is the stupid, self-righteous, soulless Serebryakov. This protest sounds in the shots of Uncle Vanya, in Astrov's displeasure, in the whole atmosphere of the play. No wonder the clever tsarist bureaucrat, director imperial theaters Telyakovsky, was so outraged by the play: he felt in it a threat to all the "foundations" of the reactionary regime. In his diary, Telyakovsky wrote on November 22, 1899:

“… I was present at the Art Theater at the performance of Chekhov's play“ Uncle Vanya ”. The overall impression of the play was extremely difficult. An idea involuntarily comes to mind why such a play is being staged and what final conclusion can be drawn from it. The audience sits quietly, listens attentively, holding their breath, and everyone is waiting for what will happen.

In the third act, a strong tension is felt, two shots are fired ... In general, the appearance of such plays is a great evil for the theater.

If they can still be written, then God forbid to put them in our already nervous and groundless age ... In such plays, the theater does not educate the audience, but corrupts, because to the mass of unresolved burning questions it adds new ones ... Where is the theater to deal with such questions, when, in the absence of religion, respect for home and property, society does not know how to decide and how to act in those simple questions, for which our parents were upbringing prepared, maybe stupid, but definite answers, calm answers ... With these ready answers, the person was calm, had no embarrassed will - this willpower, the absence of which the modern generation suffers so much, killing its own mind, health and nerves to analyze the confusion of concepts ... ".

You feel how frightened the tsarist official is by the mood of discontent and protest that attracted the audience to "Uncle Vanya". The concluding phrase of the quoted entry by Telyakovsky is very expressive:

“Or maybe I'm wrong about the play“ Uncle Vanya ”. Maybe it really is modern Russia... - Well, then it's rubbish, such a state should lead to disaster ... "

The theme of the disappearing, dying beauty of life is the leitmotif of the play. She contacts all the main actors.

What is real and false beauty?

We know that only labor, creativity, from the point of view of Chekhov and his heroes, create human beauty.

Like no one else in world literature before Gorky, Chekhov was an inspired poet of labor. All his work was a mournful and light song about work, a dream about creativity in the name of the happiness of the homeland. Labor was for him the foundation of humanity, the foundation of all morality and aesthetics, and the theme of labor has always been associated with him and his heroes with a dream of creative, free labor. Let us remember how Irina, the youngest of three sisters, yearns for such a work, and how life breaks her dream. “Labor without poetry, labor without thoughts,” Irina grieves.

Poetry of labor and the longing for this poetry is the secret of the charm of Chekhov's heroes and heroines.

All kinds of Abogins, "princesses" and others are deprived of true inner beauty precisely for this reason; that they are alien and hostile to work.

Dr. Astrov, a friend of Uncle Vanya's, speaks of Professor Serebryakov's wife, Elena Andreevna:

“Everything in a person should be beautiful: face, clothes, soul, and thoughts. She is beautiful, there is no dispute, but ... after all, she only eats, sleeps, walks, enchants all of us with her beauty - and nothing else. She has no responsibilities, others work for her. It is so? And an idle life cannot be pure. "

This is said by Astrov, carried away by Elena Andreevna, Astrov, for whom, as for all other Chekhov's heroes, such great value has beauty. “What else fascinates me,” he says of the reasons for his infatuation with Elena Andreevna, “is beauty. I'm not indifferent to her. " However, in the beauty of Elena Andreevna, he feels something that offends the feeling of beauty. He sees something impure in her beauty. “It seems to me that if Elena Andreevna wanted to, she could turn my head in one day. But this is not love, not affection ... "

False, impure "beauty" cannot inspire deep human feeling.

Beautiful is what serves creativity, creation. Passionately in love with the beauty of his native land, with its forests, gardens, suffering from the fact that forests are being cut down predatory, Astrov says: “Yes, I understand, if a highway lay in the place of these destroyed forests, railways if there were factories, factories, schools here, the people would become healthier, richer, smarter, but there’s nothing of the kind! In the district there are the same swamps, mosquitoes, the same impassability, poverty, typhus, diphtheria, fires ... Almost everything has been destroyed, but nothing has been created to replace it. "

Astrov grieves over the destruction of the beauty of his native land, the beauty of man. When he shares his thoughts with Elena Andreevna, he suddenly interrupts his excited story and says coldly: "I can see from your face that you are not interested in this."

“Yes, leave,” he tells her. -… (In thought.) As if you are a good, sincere person, but as if there is something strange in your whole being. So you came here with your husband, and everyone who worked here, fiddled around, created something, had to give up their business and deal only with the gout of your husband and you all summer. Both he and you have infected us all with your idleness. I got carried away, I didn't do anything for a whole month, and at that time people were sick, in my forests, forest thickets, men grazed their cattle ... So, wherever you and your husband set foot, everywhere you bring destruction ... and I am convinced that if if you stayed, there would be a tremendous devastation. "

Alien to work and creativity and therefore alien to life itself, devastated and devastating others, Elena Andreevna, without realizing it, destroys everything beautiful, large, human that meets on her way. She is a predator who herself does not understand this. So she destroyed friendship and possible love Astrova and Sonya.

Astrov - creative person large scale. Elena Andreevna Sonya speaks of him correctly:

“My dear, understand, this is a talent! Do you know what talent means? Courage, a free head, a wide sweep ... He will plant a tree and already guess what will happen from this in a thousand years, he already sees the happiness of mankind ... He drinks, sometimes he is rude - but what a trouble! .. Think for yourself what kind of life this the doctors! Impenetrable dirt on the roads, frosts, snowstorms, huge distances, the people are rude, wild, all around need, disease, and in such a situation, it is difficult for those who work and struggle day after day to keep themselves clean and sober by the age of forty ... "

Astrov loves life; like all the beloved heroes of Chekhov, he strives for the future, tries to see his face, to guess the shape of tomorrow's happiness of the motherland, of humanity. “As for my own personal life,” he says to Sonya, “by God, there is absolutely nothing good in it. You know when you go in the dark night through the forest, and if at this time a light shines in the distance, then you do not notice either fatigue, or darkness, or thorny branches that hit you in the face ... I work - you know this - like no one in the district, fate beats me incessantly, sometimes I suffer unbearably, but I have no spark in the distance. I'm not expecting anything for myself ... "

But nevertheless, he also had a small bright point in life: this is his friendship with Sonya and Uncle Vanya.

Sonya loves Astrov.

If it were not for the invasion of Elena Andreevna into their lives, then Sonya, perhaps, would become his wife. And, in any case, he would not have had to lose his friendship with her.

A.P. Chekhov (1897)

But Elena Andreevna "out of participation" decided to help the shy Sonya, undertook to talk with Astrov, - does he love Sonya or not? If she doesn't like it, let her not come here anymore - so, they say, it will be easier for Sonya. Sonya hesitates: is this conversation necessary? After all, if he says "no", then the end of all hopes and the end of friendship! Wouldn't it be better to give up at least hope? In her life, devoted to continuous work and cares, Astrov is the only bright point, a "light" that shines in the distance in a dark forest ...

But nevertheless she decides, under the influence of Elena Andreevna, to entrust her with this conversation.

And why did Elena Andreevna need this conversation? She may not be fully aware of this, but the reason, of course, is clear: she herself is carried away by Astrov. Thin, smart Astrov guesses this reason.

“There is only one thing I don’t understand: why did you need this interrogation? (Looks into her eyes and shakes her finger.) You are cunning!

Elena Andreevna. What does it mean?

ASTROV (laughing). Sly! Suppose Sonya is suffering, I willingly admit it, but why is this interrogation of yours? .. Sweet predator, don’t look at me like that ... ”

Yes, as a predator, she stole her happiness from Sonya, forcing Astrov to say that he did not love Sonya. The whole essence of the relationship between Astrov and Sonya lay in the fact that this relationship was not yet possible, it was not necessary to define it. Elena Andreevna felt this, achieved "clarity" and thereby destroyed everything.

Having destroyed someone else's happiness, she is not able to create happiness for herself or Astrov. She devastates others just as senselessly, aimlessly, as she drags aimlessly through life and her empty beauty, unable to serve happiness. Soulless, unspiritualized, ugly beauty!

The leitmotif of the play - the perishing beauty - sounds in many variations. After all, Astrov himself, yearning for the destruction of the beauty of life, is also an image of dying beauty.

Sonya begs him not to drink vodka. “It doesn't come to you like that! You are graceful, you have such a gentle voice ... Even more, you, like no one else I know - you are beautiful. Why do you want to be like ordinary people who drink and play cards? Oh, don't do this, I beg you! You always say that people do not create, but only destroy what is given to them from above. Why, why are you destroying yourself? "

But the beauty of Astrov, his beautiful inner and external image destroyed by life itself. In the final act, he says to Uncle Vanya:

“Our position, yours and mine, is hopeless ... Those who will live a hundred, two hundred years after us and who will despise us for the fact that we have lived our lives so stupidly and so tasteless - those, perhaps, will find a means, how to be happy, and we ... Yes, brother. In the whole district there were only two decent, intelligent people: me and you. But in some ten years, a philistine life, a contemptible life, pulled us in; she poisoned our blood with her putrid vapors, and we became as vulgar as everyone else ... "

This is too strict and harsh. Neither Astrov nor Uncle Vanya turned into ordinary people living a despicable, self-satisfied life. But the light leaves them, emptiness awaits them. In Astrov, we already distinguish the features of a descending person. Smolder touched him.

Astrov - alas! - is not mistaken in the diagnosis of his position. It really was hopeless. It could not have been otherwise with a person who despised liberal philistinism and at the same time was far from the revolutionary movement of the working class, which in the nineties was trying to achieve everything. great success... Astrov, like his "friend Voinitsky, will not be able to find some kind of saving idea, to be comforted by" small deeds ", sweet illusions; he will not be able to find a lofty goal in life, being far from those people who fought for goals close to Astrov - for a reasonable, clean, fair life. The tragedy of the Chekhovian hero was primarily in his apolitical character, petty-bourgeois narrow-mindedness.

Of course, Astrov would have kept himself and his dream, and at half trouble all the difficulties of his life would have been for him if he had been warmed by the consciousness that his modest work was included in the common cause of change, the creation of life. But he does not have this consciousness.

Leaves the Serebryakov estate with Elena Andreevna. Astrov leaves, leaves Sonya's life forever. And again, as before, uncle Vanya and Sonya are left alone. But everything has already become different in their lives. All hopes were gone from her forever.

“What can we do, we have to live,” says Sonya. - We, Uncle Vanya, will live. Let's live a long series of days, long evenings; let us patiently endure the tests that fate will send us; we will work for others both now and in old age, not knowing rest, and when the hour comes, we will die obediently, and there, behind the grave, we will say that we suffered, that we cried, that we were bitter, and God will take pity on us , and you and I, uncle, dear uncle, will see a bright, beautiful, graceful life ... We will rest! We will hear the angels, we will see the whole sky in diamonds, we will see how all earthly evil, all our sufferings will drown in mercy, which will fill the whole world ... (He wipes his tears with a handkerchief.)

Poor, poor Uncle Vanya, you are crying ... (Through tears.) You did not know any joys in your life, but wait, Uncle Vanya, wait ... We will rest ... (Hugs him) We will rest! "

In the finale of Uncle Vanya, Chekhov succeeded in expressing the beauty of human grief, which, in his words, “they will not soon learn to understand and describe and which, it seems, only music can convey”.

Of course, it would be wrong to think that Chekhov, with his alienation from any kind of religious experience, seeks consolation for his heroes in the religious faith. But Sonya has nothing more to hope for, she has nothing more to console Uncle Vanya with. And this makes even more clear the whole hopelessness of the dream of rest and joy for her and for Uncle Vanya. The wisdom of the play's finale lies in the fact that the mention of “a bright, beautiful, graceful life” is a mention of the life that Sonya, Uncle Vanya, Astrov, and many “little” people, workers who give their whole lives, deserve. the happiness of others ...

And above all this hopeless life of "little people", above the dark, evil force of destruction, Chekhov's dream of that future life when everything in a person will be perfect! And, as always with Chekhov, the idea of ​​the beautiful merges with the idea of ​​truth, of creative work: the aesthetic merges with the ethical. Truth and work are the basis, the eternal living source of beauty. And life should be such that the beauty of "little great people" is not destroyed, so that spiritual strength, self-sacrifice, selfless diligence are not plundered, they do not serve false idols, so that it is not the Serebryakovs who set the tone in life, but the Astrovs, Uncle Vanya, Sonya, can decorate their own land by creative, free labor.

Astrov's words that “everything should be beautiful in a person: face, clothes, soul, and thoughts” - the formula for the indissoluble unity of beauty and truth - were recorded in Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya's notebook among the most dear thoughts for her ...