Rus late XVI- the beginning of the 17th century and is the main character, a kind of collective hero of Pushkin's tragedy. At the same time, Pushkin strives for historical truth in depicting each of the participants in this grandiose, moving, acting historical panorama in faces, achieving this through a close and in-depth study of historical materials, “... in the annals he tried to guess the way of thinking and language of that time” - he spoke about the process of his creative work, adding at the same time: - “The sources are rich! Whether I knew how to use them - I don’t know - at least my labors were zealous and conscientious. In "Boris Godunov" the poet brilliantly managed to use these sources.
This is one of the main reasons for the greatest artistic merit of Pushkin's tragedy. It does not contain conventional characters dressed in historical costumes, but really “people of bygone days, their minds, their prejudices.” Instead of the pompous rhetorical, the cutesy, conditionally literary language, far from real lively speech, in which the characters of the tragedies of classicism spoke, Pushkin endows actors"Boris Godunov" in a deeply individualized, at the same time "common language", devoid of unnecessary external "historicity" (an excessive abundance of obsolete words, expressions) and at the same time truly historical, based on a deep study of historical sources and an excellent mastery of the speech of the common people. The poet listened especially attentively to folk speech and inquisitively studied it just during the period of work on his tragedy, during the years of exile in Mikhailovsky. Along with and in parallel with the rejection of the "unity of the word", Pushkin no less decisively broke with the unity of the genre of "classical" tragedy, which was supposed to contain only the sublime and tragic, without the slightest - "defiling" - admixture of anything ordinary, comic.
Russian theorist Classicism XVIII century - the poet and playwright Sumarokov in his "Epistle on Poetry" separated tragedy and comedy from each other with an impenetrable wall, categorically forbidding "annoying" with tears the muse of comedy - Thalia, and Melpomene - the muse of tragedy - with laughter. In "Boris Godunov" Pushkin introduces, along with scenes filled with the deepest tragedy, not only domestic scenes, but also comic, "common" scenes. Moreover, in separate scenes Melpomene and Thalia - solemn and funny - freely mix with each other (the scene at the Novodevichy Convent, etc.). The "decease of the world", which Sumarokov was afraid of, actually happened in Pushkin's "Boris Godunov". Instead of the aristocratic, "court" tragedy of Sumarokov, Pushkin created a dramatic work, both in ideological content and in its entire structure, deeply democratic, in his own word - "folk".
Skillfully using resources speech characteristics, freely and widely shows Pushkin in his tragedy and human characters. In the modeling of characters, Pushkin's new method of depicting life, people, the method artistic realism- "poetry of reality." Pushkin could in no way be satisfied with the depiction of a person, a human character in the works of classicism, even in those in which realistic tendencies were most pronounced. Living people were replaced in them by one-sided and schematic personifications of one or another "passion" - one or another individual psychological trait: stinginess, love of power, malice, or, conversely, honesty, love for the fatherland, etc.
As a result, in the tragedies of classicism, either the monsters of vice, or walking mannequins, filled with the greatest virtue, appeared before the audience. Almost to the same extent, Pushkin was not satisfied with the arbitrary-subjective, romantic method of depicting character in Byron's dramaturgy. We have something completely different in Pushkin's tragedy. So, in the face of Boris Godunov himself, we are by no means the traditional "villain" of the classical tragedy, who was written in solid black paint.
It was no coincidence that Pushkin turned to the era of Grozny and Boris Godunov, a turning point for Russian history. In the XVI - XVII centuries in Russia, the crisis of the traditional patriarchal foundations on which the Russian society and the state of previous centuries. New, hitherto unknown historical forces entered the political struggle.
The image of Boris Godunov
The figure of Boris Godunov, the tsar who did not inherit the throne, but won it with cunning, intelligence and energy, is very symptomatic as an expression of the changes that began in his era. It was this that prompted Pushkin to place the image of Boris at the center of his historical tragedy, where Godunov's spiritual experiences and fate received a broad generalizing meaning.
Tsar Boris - in the image of Alexander Sergeevich - is a far-sighted and intelligent ruler. Thanks to his energy and intelligence, he pushed aside more well-born aspirants-boyars, clearing the way to the throne. In the future, the ambitious Boris dreams of consolidating the conquered power for his heirs through sober calculation, firmly thought out, far-sighted political plans. But, having seized the throne as a result of a skillful political game, he, by his example, showed the way to it to other ambitious people. From this point of view, the appearance of the Pretender in Pushkin's tragedy is not an accident, but a natural consequence of the same historical reasons which made possible the accession of Godunov himself.
Pushkin used in the tragedy also adopted by Karamzin (but rejected by many subsequent historians) version of the murder by Boris Godunov younger son Grozny, Tsarevich Dimitri. But Karamzin condemned Godunov as a usurper, a murderer of a legitimate monarch. Pushkin, on the other hand, interprets the murder of Demetrius as a link in the chain of numerous crimes inseparable from the very idea of royal power. The moral trial of Godunov and the Pretender in tragedy develops into a condemnation of any - even an outstanding - historical figure who builds his activities on violence and crimes.
The character of Boris Godunov is covered by Pushkin in a wide and versatile way. All the main stages of his reign pass before the viewer - from accession to death. Boris appears before us in his relations with the boyars, the people, the patriarch, alone with himself, in various personal and public life. The tragedy depicts not only the steps leading to his rise and death, but also shows how differently, depending on the situation, the dissimilar facets of Godunov's character are revealed. This is a stern and powerful ruler, a caring father, a person who is able to soberly assess his position and face the truth, even if it threatens his peace and power, and at the same time suffering from impotence to change what has been done, to interfere with the historical movement, which, foreseeing that in the future it will inevitably turn against him, he himself called it.
Image of the Pretender
Pushkin's image of the Pretender is just as complex. This outstanding personality feels the tragic side of his new position. Forced to play someone else's role, to pretend, to calculate his own benefits, the Pretender suffers from loneliness. Both in politics and in love, as his verbal duel with Marina in the scene at the fountain speaks eloquently, he does not achieve what he wants.
Drama Heroes
So, both Boris and the Pretender in Pushkin carry in themselves - each - a special personal tragic theme, are the centers of their "small" drama, woven into the big drama of Russian national history. The same applies to a number of other, more episodic characters"Boris Godunov" - Pimen, Ksenia Godunova, Basmanov, Yurodivy. And, finally, the people with their sufferings, deaf discontent, fermentation, deep sense of justice, which Godunov and Dimitri are forced to reckon with, and at the same time doomed for the time being for the time being, to play a formidable but silent role in history.
Revealing the inevitability of the fall of Boris (which portends a similar fate to his winner, the Pretender, who is at the top of his short career at the end of the tragedy), Pushkin highlights the tragic personality traits of a historical figure of an individualistic type. Having reached the limit of power and calm for a long time, it would seem that the reigning Boris is not great, but pathetic, because deep down in his soul he does not find peace, foresees his death, he is tormented by the voice of conscience, which he is powerless to lull. And in exactly the same way, the Pretender, having assumed the role of the murdered Demetrius, is forced to take upon himself all the tragic consequences of this step, a step that makes him a toy in the hands of others, dooms him to the torments of irresistible, eternal loneliness, constantly reminding him at the same time of the fragility of his success.
Generic Character Types
Pushkin painted in "Boris Godunov" not only a vivid, unforgettable picture of the era he had chosen. Thanks to his penetration into the spirit of Russian history, the poet, skillfully depicting the political events and customs of the Time of Troubles, giving capacious, impressive, psychologically deep portraits of Boris Godunov, the Pretender, Shuisky, Basmanov, Marina Mnishek, was able at the same time to brilliantly describe a number of generalized characters - types and historical situations that recreate the general structure, the most national-historical atmosphere of the life of Moscow pre-Petrine Russia and, even more broadly, of Russian antiquity in general. It is no coincidence that even the first listeners and readers of the tragedy were especially struck by the image of Pimen, in which Pushkin tried to draw the type of an ancient Russian monk-chronicler. Pimen, the Holy Fool, the wandering monks Fathers Varlaam and Misail, the patriarch, the young Kurbsky, Ksenia Godunova, weeping over the portrait of her fiancé, are not only images-characters of one particular era, but also deep historical characters-types in which common features life and psychology of people ancient Russia. Pushkin was able to give the same generalizing, typical meaning to the depiction of the main historical forces that acted and fought in the arena of the history of Russia, not only in the era of Godunov's reign, but over many other centuries and decades - the supreme power, spiritual and secular, the boyars, the service nobility, people. Little of. Just as the “Russian scenes” of “Boris Godunov” brilliantly recreate the general color of Russian history, which has developed over many eras of its development, absorbed the spirit and signs of not one, but many of its eras, so the “Polish” scenes and characters of the tragedy (as and in “Ivan Susanin” by M. I. Glinka, who relied on the experience of Pushkin as a historical playwright in working on the music of this brilliant opera) are a similar bunch of features and will take on many eras in the history of old aristocratic-gentry Poland, recreate its common local national -historical flavor.
BORIS GODUNOV- the central character of the historical drama (“folk tragedy”), which is based on the events described in the 10th and 11th volumes of the “History of the Russian State” by N. M. Karamzin. The tragedy is dedicated to his “memory precious for Russians”. Not accepting much in the views of Karamzin, Pushkin fully accepts the version of the direct involvement of the tsar's brother-in-law Boris Godunov in the Uglich murder of the only heir to the throne, Tsarevich Dimitri (1582-1591). Boris Godunov appears as a usurper of power, hiding behind popular election. Trouble is the retribution for his sins. Boris Godunov and False Dmitry are connected in tragedy as cause and effect: the “illegality” of the first is generated by the “lawlessness” of the second; blood is attracted to blood. The collapse of the Muscovite kingdom, the approach of the Time of Troubles, the terrible prologue of the majestic St. Petersburg period of Russian history - all these topics have an indirect moral and political relation to the present of the 1820s.
Already in the 1st scene (“Kremlin chambers”), preceding the election of Boris Godunov, the boyar Shuisky, who investigated the Uglich murder, tells the nobleman Vorotynsky about the Bityagovskys and Kachalov, who were sent by Boris Godunov; the interlocutor concludes: Boris Godunov has been sitting for a month now, shutting himself up with his sister, the monastic tsarina Irina, because “the blood of an innocent baby / Prevents him from stepping on the throne.” However, both agree that “Yesterday’s slave, Tatar, Malyuta’s son-in-law, / and the executioner himself in his soul”, much less well-born than they, will still be the tsar in Moscow: the times have come when courage has become more important than nobility and power goes to the one who fights for it more resolutely. The 3rd (“Maiden Field. Novodevichy Convent”) and 4th (“Kremlin Chambers”) scenes seem to confirm the boyar “diagnosis”. Curious and indifferent to their political fate, the people, crying and rejoicing, at the behest of the boyars, raise Boris Godunov to the throne. The boyars and the patriarch reverently (and somewhat slyly) listen to the speech of the new sovereign. The character of Boris Godunov is not revealed; all this is just an exposition that reveals the beginning of a global historical plot (the murder of a prince is the moral defeat of the “winner” in the struggle for the royal vacancy - the phenomenon of an impostor). Actually, the stage intrigue will start later - in the scene of "The Chamber of the Patriarch", when the reader (spectator) learns about the escape of the self-proclaimed monk Grigory Otrepyev from the monastery.
Starting from the 7th scene (" Royal chambers”) Boris comes to the fore. The king, from whom the sorcerer has just emerged (which indicates the ruler's lack of confidence in his powers), utters a confessional monologue: he reigns for the sixth year (the same number of years have passed between the death of Dimitri and the accession of Boris; chronological symmetry is indicative); the board turned out to be unsuccessful - famine, fires, "ungratefulness" of the mob. Beloved daughter's fiancé is dead; Courage alone is not enough to wield power; right on it must be supported by an internal rightness:
And everything is sick, and the head is spinning,
And the boys are bloody in the eyes ...
And glad to run, but nowhere ... terrible!
Yes, pitiful is the one in whom the conscience is unclean.
The soil is slipping from under Boris Godunov's feet - he feels it, although he still does not know anything about the "resurrection" of Demetrius (the Patriarch did not dare to inform the sovereign about Grigory's flight).
Terrible news overtakes Godunov in the 10th scene (also called "The Tsar's Chambers"); the cunning Shuisky hurries to tell her, with whom the Moscow boyar Pushkin shared the news received from the Krakow nephew Gavrila Pushkin the day before. (At the same time, the thoughts of the author of the tragedy about the ruin of the ancient boyar families - including the "Romanovs, the fatherland of hope" - as a political cause of the Troubles were put into the mouth of the Pushkin ancestor. This reasoning changes all the "semantic proportions" of the tragedy, where, using the example of Shuisky, the loss of dignity of the ancients is shown boyars, and on the example of Basmanov - the quirky meanness of the new boyars.) Shocked, Boris is at a loss: what is the "legality" of power, elected popularly and approved by the church, if the dead have the "right" to come out of the coffin to interrogate the kings? Political effects are generated by moral causes; False Dmitry is able to inspire the crowd with dangerous ideas and lead them along; the shadow is ready to pluck the purple from the king: "So that's why I've been thirteen years in a row / I dreamed of a murdered child!".
Scene 15 ("The Tsar's Thought") serves as the culmination of the "Godunov" plot line. The troops of False Dmitry are moving towards Moscow; having sent Trubetskoy and Basmanov to the war, Godunov is holding a council with those close to him: how to stop the Time of Troubles? Patriarch, whom Pushkin (despite historical prototype- Job) depicts a stupid kind-hearted, simpleton, unaware of the underlying reason for the events, offers a moral way out of the circumstances: to transfer the miraculous relics of Tsarevich Dimitry from Uglich to the Archangel Cathedral of the capital.
put them in the cathedral
Arkhangelsk; people will see clearly
Then the deception of the godless villain,
And the power of demons will disappear like dust.
But the fact of the matter is that Godunov cannot transfer the relics and find himself in the immediate "mystical proximity" of his victim. So - he is doomed to fight with the Pretender, whom he gave birth to. Understanding this, the dodgy Shuisky rejects the arguments of the ingenuous Patriarch (“Won’t they say that we boldly create a shrine / In worldly affairs we create tools?”) And announces that he himself (instead of holy relics!) Will appear on the people’s square and discover the “evil deceit of a tramp” . The situation is tragicomic; and Godunov (who during the patriarchal speech covers his face in horror with a handkerchief) throughout the scene from a maliciously majestic, tragic figure turns into a semi-comic figure. He is "miserable" - for he has "an unclean conscience." He is no longer the ruler, as he depends on the circumstances.
After that, Boris is left with one thing - to die. What he does in the 20th scene (“Moscow. The Tsar’s Chambers”), having managed to promise Basmanov that after defeating the Pretender, he will burn the “Class Books”, destroy the nobility and put the mind in the place of the clan:
Basmanov
Ah, sir, blessed a hundred times
That will be the day when books are bit
With strife, with pride of pedigree
Eat fire.
This day is not far off;
Just give people confusion first
I calm down.
Godunov's kingdom began with blood, continued with blood, and ends with blood: "He was sitting on the throne and suddenly fell - / Blood gushed from his mouth and from his ears."
last hope dying and preparing to accept Godunov's schema that at least his death would eliminate moral disharmony and restore political balance. He is personally guilty of the death of Demetrius - and for that he will answer before God; but the election itself was legal, therefore, the innocent heir to the throne, Fedor, would rule "by right." The same thought in the finale will be repeated by “a man from the people” (“The father was a villain, and the children are innocent”); but in vain: the children of one "false tsar", Fedor and Xenia, will be killed by the servants of another "false ruler".
Place in the character system. There are five main groups of characters in the tragedy - the perpetrators, accomplices, participants, witnesses, victims. The role of innocent victims is naturally played by the children of the king. Chronicler Pimen, Holy Fool, people from the people in the scenes “The Square in front of the Cathedral in Moscow” and “Kremlin. House of Borisov. Guards at the porch "do not participate in historical evil, but testify to it - denouncing (like the Holy Fool), discussing (like people from the crowd) or passing on the news of it to posterity (like Pimen). The stupid Patriarch, the mercenary commanders of the Russian troops Margeret and V. Rosen, the prisoner of False Dmitry "Moscow nobleman" Rozhnov, the son of Prince Kurbsky and others secondary characters from different camps are directly involved in history, but are not responsible for its bloody break, because they have no personal intent. People from the crowd, indifferently electing the tsar (the scene "Maiden's Field. Novodevichy Convent") and willingly running to "drown" the innocent "Boris Puppies" (the scene "The Kremlin. House of Borisov"); Polish nobility in the person of Marina Mnishek, her father and Vishnevetsky, the Jesuits in the person of pater "a Chernikovsky; deceitful Russian boyars know what they are doing, which means they participate in the tragedy of Russia. Their guilt is different; the author's attitude towards them is ambiguous (to Grigory Pushkin rather sympathetic, extremely hostile to Shuisky).
There is also an ambiguous attitude towards the two main characters, who act in the story in the first person, and therefore bear full responsibility for everything that happens. Pushkin gives false Dmitry the opportunity to manifest himself with different parties, because in some way he impresses him. Boris Godunov is monumentally monotonous and motionless; he seemed to be petrified by the horror of his position, fed up with the bitterness of power, and from scene to scene, from monologue to monologue, the same set of themes varies. His ethical connection with all the actors, with all the events depicted in the drama (not excluding those that occur after his "physical" death), is undeniable; his plot connection with them is far from always obvious.
Here Pushkin sharply diverges from the genre tradition of Russian political tragedy: he puts at the center not an anti-state villain (cf. A. P. Sumarokov's "Dimitri the Pretender") and not a state hero. But it is the villain - the state. This was not possible until the publication of volumes 9-11 of Karamzin's "History ...", where the official rulers of Russia, Ivan the Terrible and Boris Godunov, were portrayed negatively for the first time. Having placed Boris Godunov in the center and clearly delineating his attitude towards him, Pushkin is in no hurry to close the entire multi-figure composition of the drama to this center. As a result, there is a feeling of its greater volume - and less stage presence.
Pushkin diverges from tradition in that he does not strive for direct political allusions, preferring historical authenticity to topicality. (Although anachronisms in the image of Boris Godunov cannot be avoided, - thus, reflecting on the thirst for power, the ruler of the 16th century switches to the language of Russian lyrics of the 19th century:
Is not it
We fall in love from a young age and are hungry
The joys of love, but only quench
Heart smoothness by instant possession,
Already, having cooled, we miss and languish? ..
Wed in Pushkin's letter to Chaadaev - "We are waiting with languor of hope / Minutes of freedom of the saint, / As a young lover waits / Minutes of the first meeting ... ".) And yet, the parallel between the "legal-lawless" accession of Boris Godunov and the bloody accession of Alexander I after the assassination Paul I arose by itself; the trial of Godunov - following Karamzin - is carried out not so much from the standpoint of the people's religion (the true tsar is destined for the kingdom from time immemorial; he can be replaced - no matter on the basis of the law or not; then any person who has proved his "pre-election" can be a contender for the throne ” and hereditary right to power), how much in terms of its legitimacy. Meanwhile, the philosophy of legitimate government (the principle of heredity, fixed by law) was developed precisely in the Alexander era, during the post-war congresses.
There are about 60 actors in the tragedy "Boris Godunov". Many of them appear on stage only for a moment and disappear. Nevertheless, they are needed in the work, as they create a lively, multicolored, exciting background of the era. Among the minor heroes of the tragedy, Prince Vasily Shuisky and Marina Mniszek pay special attention.
Vasily Shuisky- an extremely characteristic figure of that time. This is the center around which the restless, dissatisfied, ambitious elite of the boyars are grouped: Prince Vorotynsky, Afanasy Pushkin, Miloslavsky, Buturlin, Saltykov and others. not to him, but to Godunov:
What an honor for us, for all Russia!
Yesterday's slave, Tatar, son-in-law of Malyuta,
The son-in-law of the executioner and the executioner himself in the soul,
He will take the crown and berms of Monomakh ... -
he complains caustically and angrily to Vorotynsky. In the same conversation, Shuisky outlines the tactics of fighting Godunov:
When Boris won't stop cheating,
Let's skillfully excite people ...
Shuisky's element is intrigue. When Godunov took the throne, Shuisky plays a double game: in the presence of the tsar he is servile, flattering, and in the circle of secret like-minded people he is preparing a conspiracy. “The crafty courtier,” Vorotynsky characterizes him, and “Evasive, but brave and crafty,” Boris says about him. We know from history that Shuisky, skillfully understanding the moods of the boyars and the people, achieved his goal: after the death of the Pretender, he became king and reigned for four years (1606-1610).
The image of the proud beauty Marina Mnishek appears in only two scenes of the tragedy, but leaves, however, a vivid impression. In the scene at the fountain, the Pretender, entangled in the nets of the cunning beauty, reveals his secret to her and begs for love. But Marina loves not the Pretender, but her dream of the Moscow throne. She coldly interrupts the lover, laughs at him, threatens and arrogantly declares that she will give her love only to the Moscow Tsar. The further fate of Marina goes beyond the time outlined by the tragedy. It should be noted that this fate fully corresponded to the image drawn by Pushkin. Marina managed to realize her ambitious plan and after the Pretender's accession to the throne, she became the Moscow queen. But False Dmitry I soon died. Marina, returning from a short-term exile, became the wife of False Dmitry). Soon this impostor also died. Marina, obsessed with one dream - to reign, gave herself into the hands of the Cossack ataman Zarutsky, who promised the throne to her and her little son from False Dmitry II. “Zarutsky was captured in 1616 and executed; Marina also died with her little son. Pushkin in one of his letters described Marina as follows: “Of course, she was the strangest of all pretty women; she had only one passion - ambition, but it was so strong, furious, which is hard to imagine.
Introduction
Interest in drama and the desire for dramatic creativity did not leave Pushkin throughout his life. Work in the field of dramaturgy Pushkin gave special meaning understanding the need to transform the entire Russian dramatic and theatrical system. “The spirit of the century,” he wrote, “requires important changes on the dramatic stage as well.” Pushkin regarded his first completed tragedy, Boris Godunov, as a step of exceptional importance in this direction.
"Boris Godunov" is the highest pinnacle of Russian historical realistic drama.
The socio-historical and socio-philosophical realistic tragedy created by Pushkin was a new phenomenon not only in Russian but also in world drama. It differed from the tragedy of classicism, and from Shakespearean tragedy, and from the Western European historical-romantic drama of Schiller and Hugo.
The purpose of this work is to analyze Pushkin's work "Boris Godunov" as a historical drama. To do this, it is necessary to solve the following tasks:
· find out how Karamzin and Pushkin assess the events of the 17th century;
· characterize the images of Boris Godunov, the Pretender, Pimen;
· consider the problems raised by Pushkin in the tragedy.
Based on the principles of strict realism, Pushkin's tragedy is dramatic work great truth of life. Not only all the characters of the tragedy are vitally truthful, but also the historical situations underlying it.
1. History of the creation of the work
The Russian reality of the early 1920s, characterized by the rapid growth of anti-serfdom sentiments of the broad masses and the developed movement of noble revolutionaries, could not but exert a strong influence on the ideological and artistic development Pushkin. Pushkin thought a lot both about the nature of broad popular movements in the past and about the images of their leaders. In early November 1824, Pushkin asked his brother to send him The Life of Emelka Pugachev. In one of the following letters, a new assignment is given to him: “Ah! Oh my god, I almost forgot! here is your task: historical, dry news about Stenka Razin, the only poetic person in Russian history.
Such is the soil on which the prerequisites for the idea of a work about the role of the people in Russian history arise.
The next X and XI volumes of N.M. Karamzin’s “History of the Russian State”, published in 1824, contained a narrative about the era of “many rebellions” and provided quite varied and meaningful factual material, which determined Pushkin’s decision to dwell on the topic “about a real disaster Muscovy, about Tsar Boris and Grishka Otrepiev.
In a large notebook in black leather binding, brought by Pushkin to Mikhailovskoye from Odessa, among the notes of the end of 1824, historical notes preceding the draft text of the tragedy.
The work begins with an outline of individual places in the X volume of the History of the Russian State. The position of the entries in the book allows them to be attributed to the middle - the second half of November 1824.
Pushkin outlined not in the sequence of reading, but guided by some of his own considerations, sometimes returning from the middle of the volume to its beginning - and back. In the notes that have come down to us, Pushkin outlined certain places in Volume X only in the part that ends with the election of Godunov to the kingdom and is not directly related to the content of the tragedy.
The peculiarity of the nature of Pushkin's work on "Boris Godunov" was that individual scenes were created by directly following the source, others required almost research methods for extracting and connecting heterogeneous historical material, and still others, finally, were not based on the data of the source, but entirely depended only on from poetic inspiration. Pushkin wrote to N.N. Raevsky in July 1825: “I write and think. Most of the scenes require only reasoning; when I get to a scene that needs inspiration, I wait for it or skip that scene - this way of working is completely new to me.
The drafts of "Boris Godunov" are highly indicative precisely in this respect. Those places where Pushkin created a dialogue on quite sufficient material were given to him easily and contain the least number of amendments and options. These include: the beginning of scene I, sketches of scenes II, III and IV.
The picture changes when Pushkin proceeds, for example, to the fifth scene, which has no direct correspondence in the text of Karamzin's History. These are the most complex, with an abundance of corrections and variations, pages of the manuscript. The text is repeatedly interrupted by fragments and sketches of other works - stanzas of "Eugene Onegin", drafts of unfinished poems, confirming Pushkin's words: "... when I reach a scene that requires inspiration, I wait for it or skip this scene."
It was the last (fifth) scene that came down to us in the draft that demanded the greatest creative effort. From the back of sheet 52, Pushkin returns to tragedy and begins work on the monologue of the awakening Gregory. Unlike the final text in the draft, Gregory's monologue immediately begins with a story about a dream, and then his reflections on Pimen follow. Work on the monologue required great creative effort and, breaking off the text on the line: “And all night long he did not close his eyes!” Pushkin again turns to “Eugene Onegin”. The texts of "Eugene Onegin" are further replaced by rough sketches relating to the unrealized plan about Faust, a draft of the poem "I witnessed your golden spring ...", and only from the middle of sheet 55 Pushkin returns to the interrupted work: "How I love his calm face ..." . Work on the fifth scene ends at the end of sheet 56. Having not finished it, Pushkin moves on to other entries. He returns to work on the tragedy on sheets that have not come down to us.
After a firmly established date - January 1825, when Pushkin was still working on the fifth scene, until mid-July of that year - we have no reliable evidence of the poet's work on the tragedy. And only on July 13, 1825, Pushkin informed Vyazemsky.
The time when work on Boris Godunov will be completed can only be determined approximately. The well-known letter from Pushkin to Vyazemsky about the completion of work on the tragedy dates presumably from early October or early November 1825.
The end of the correspondence of the tragedy is clearly established by the date of the white autograph - November 7, 1825.
In the white list of the tragedy, Pushkin abandoned the original archaic title, significantly reducing it:
"Comedy
Tsar Boris and about Grishka Otrepyev
Rewriting the tragedy cleanly, Pushkin made corrections to the text being whitewashed. Often these fixes were quite numerous and gave individual pages of the whitelist a semi-draft look.
Having finished the correspondence in November 1825, Pushkin continued to make new amendments to the text of the tragedy from time to time until his departure for Moscow in September 1826.
Those dramatic principles that Pushkin approached while working on the tragedy led him to the need to practically resolve the most difficult questions of both the construction of the tragedy itself and the interpretation and embodiment of stage images and characters.
In an effort to give the Russian theater new forms, different from the canons of the old classical tragedy, Pushkin abandoned the original intention to divide the tragedy into acts and broke the whole action into 25 small scenes. The unity of the place is completely destroyed. The action of the tragedy with kaleidoscopic speed is transferred from one geographical point to another.
The unity of time is also completely broken, and the dates - the subtitles of individual scenes, seem to emphasize this bold innovation even more.
“Barely preserved,” in Pushkin’s words, and the unity of action, which provides for the development of action around one plot core of the play, with one central hero. In Pushkin's tragedy, in essence, there are two main characters - Boris and the Pretender, and the latter is given nine scenes of the tragedy, while the title character appears only in six.
Another “unity” has also been destroyed, about which, according to Pushkin, “ French criticism and does not mention - the unity of the syllable ": Pushkin replaces the traditional Alexandrian verse with white pentameter, interrupting it with prose inserts, while some scenes are written entirely in prose.
The abundance of actors, incredible for the dramaturgy of that time, is also striking - there are about 80 of them in Pushkin's tragedy.
The Pushkin tragedy raised the most difficult question for that time about the possibility of creating a play based not on the personal fate of the hero or heroes, but on the fate of the people, era, state.
Pushkin resolves this most difficult problem on the basis of its most difficult variant: he does not create any far-fetched plot by deliberate selection and appropriate grouping historical facts, nose the greatest art outlines storyline tragedy, without even violating the chronological sequence of the recreated historical events.
2. Historical sources of "Boris Godunov"
A number of the most important problems directly related to the historical and social concept of "Boris Godunov" cannot be comprehended without clarifying the question of the nature of the historical material underlying Pushkin's tragedy and the interpretation of this material by Pushkin.
In the literature about "Boris Godunov" there have been more than once expressed the opinion that, in parallel with the "History of the Russian State" by Karamzin and the Russian chronicles - the main historical sources Pushkin's tragedy - Pushkin to some extent relied on the "Annals" of Tacitus. Pushkin's interest in Tacitus and Pushkin's remarks on the Annals coincide in time with his work on the tragedy. There is already quite an extensive literature on Pushkin's attitude to Tacitus.