“The stingy knight. The essence of the poem the stingy knight

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"The Miserly Knight"- a dramatic work (play), conceived in 1826 (the plan refers to the beginning of January 1826); created in the Boldin autumn of 1830, is part of the cycle of Pushkin's little tragedies. The play was filmed.

The Miserly Knight depicts the corrupting, dehumanizing, devastating power of gold. Pushkin was the first in Russian literature to notice the terrible power of money.

The result in the play is the words of the duke:

... Terrible age - Terrible hearts ...

With amazing depth, the author reveals the psychology of stinginess, but most importantly, the sources that feed it. The type of avaricious knight is revealed as a product of a certain historical era. At the same time, in the tragedy, the poet rises to a broad generalization of the inhumanity of the power of gold.

Pushkin does not resort to any moralizing teachings, reasoning on this topic, but with the entire content of the play he illuminates the immorality and criminality of such relations between people, in which everything is determined by the power of gold.

Obviously, in order to avoid possible biographical rapprochements (everyone was aware of the stinginess of the poet's father, S.L. Pushkin, and his difficult relationship with his son), Pushkin issued this completely original play for a translation from a nonexistent English original.

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The hero of the dramatic scenes of the same name (1830) by A.S. Pushkin (1799 1837), a miser and a curmudgeon. The name is a common noun for people of this type (ironic). Encyclopedic Dictionary of winged words and expressions. M .: "Lokid Press". Vadim Serov. 2003 ... Dictionary of winged words and expressions

- "SCOPE KNIGHT", Russia, Moscow theater "Vernissage" / Culture, 1999, color., 52 min. Teleplay, tragicomedy. Based on the drama of the same name by Alexander Pushkin from the cycle "Little Tragedies". Cast: Georgy Menglet (see Georgy Pavlovich MENGLET), Igor ... ... Encyclopedia of Cinema

Noun., Number of synonyms: 1 curmudgeon (70) ASIS synonym dictionary. V.N. Trishin. 2013 ... Synonym dictionary

The gold motif, which permeates all musical development in the second scene of the opera, undergoes especially varied changes. In a small orchestral introduction to the picture, it sounds dull and gloomy in the low register of tremolating strings, even somewhat mysterious. The same motive takes on a different color in the central section, which begins with the words of the Baron:

I want to arrange a feast for myself today:
Light a candle in front of every chest
And I will unlock them all, and I will become
Among them, look at the shining heaps.

The gradual increase in light and brilliance, which reach a dazzling brightness at the moment when all the candles are lit in front of the open chests of gold and the gloomy basement appears as if flooded with the glow of a fire, is conveyed by Rachmaninoff in a large symphonic episode, which is the pinnacle of this picture. The long organ point on the dominant prepares the culminating conduct of the theme of gold in a shining D-major (Rachmaninov chose D-major as the “tonality of gold” after Rimsky-Korsakov, in whom it also sounds extremely brightly, with great force in the fourth picture “Sadko” , in the episode of the transformation of fish into gold bars. Of course, when comparing these two examples, one must take into account their completely different expressive character.). The brilliant sonority of the four French horns, accompanied by a powerful orchestral tutti, and the change in the rhythmic pattern of the theme give it a stately chivalrous character:

This climax is followed by a sudden breakdown. The selfless delight of the Baron, exclaiming in ecstasy: "I reign!., My state is strong ..." The picture ends with an episode of an arious character (Moderato: "Who knows how many bitter abstinence") in d-moll - the key that Rachmaninoff usually served to express sorrowful and dramatic experiences. The dramatic construction of this picture is based on three reference points: an introduction based on the theme of gold, a central episode of the miser's feast, in which the same theme develops, and a minor final construction. They affirm the dominant importance of the keys D-dur - d-moll in it. In the final picture, arioso (d-moll) summarizes and partially rethinks the three themes. Thus, from the motive of human tears and suffering, a pathetic theme of conscience arises, connecting with the theme of dark obsession and heavy, concentrated reflections:

The theme of gold, "being minded", seems to fade, loses its brilliance and flicker, and a mournful phrase grows out of it, which alternately passes by the oboe, horn and bassoon, descending into an ever lower register:

In the very last bars of the second picture, the expressive sounding chromatic sequence of harmonies "sliding" towards the tonic in d-moll attracts attention:

This turn, imbued with a mood of gloomy despair, bears a resemblance to both the theme of gold and Albert's leitmotif, thus emphasizing the fatal bond between father and son, whom the rivalry and struggle for the possession of gold made irreconcilable enemies. The same turn sounds at the end of the whole opera, at the time of the death of the old Baron.

Third picture the opera, the most concise and laconic, is almost entirely built on the thematic material that has already been heard earlier; here he often appears in the same presentation and even in the same tonalities in which he was presented earlier (this picture begins with the introduction of Albert's theme in Es-dur, very reminiscent of the beginning of the first picture). If this achieves the integrity of the characteristics, then at the same time the abundance of repetitions becomes somewhat tedious towards the end and weakens the power of the dramatic impact.

After the scene in the basement, in which, despite the well-known imbalance of the vocal and orchestral-symphonic beginning, Rachmaninov managed to achieve a high tragic pathos, in the final picture there is a clear decline in dramatic tension. One of the most poignant dramatic moments, where there is a direct clash between father and son, ending with the death of the old Baron, turned out to be rather colorless and significantly inferior in terms of expression to much of the previous one. This imbalance affects the overall impression of the opera. The Baron's monologue rises so high above everything else that the two paintings that surround it seem to be somewhat optional pendants to it.

“There is nothing to say about the idea of ​​the poem“ The Miserly Knight: it is too clear both in itself and in the title of the poem. The passion of avarice is not a new idea, but a genius knows how to make the old new too ... ”, - so he wrote, defining the ideological nature of the work. G. Leskis, noting a certain "mystery" of the tragedy in relation to its publication (Pushkin's unwillingness to publish the tragedy under his own name, attributing authorship to the nonexistent playwright of English literature Chenston), believed that the ideological orientation was nevertheless extremely clear and simple: “Unlike the rather mysterious the external history of the play, its content and collision seem to be simpler than in the other three ”. Apparently, the starting point for understanding the ideological nature of the work was, as a rule, the epithet, which forms the semantic center of the name and is the key word in the code meaning of the conflict resolution. And that is why the idea of ​​the first play in the series "Little Tragedies" seems "simple" - stinginess.

We, however, see that this tragedy is devoted not so much to avarice itself, as to the problem of its comprehension, the problem of comprehending morality and spiritual self-destruction. The object of philosophical, psychological and ethical research is a person whose spiritual convictions turn out to be fragile in the ring of temptation.

The world of knightly honor and glory was struck by a vicious passion, the arrow of sin pierced the very foundations of being, destroyed the moral foundations. Everything that was once defined by the concept of "chivalrous spirit" has been rethought by the concept of "passion".

The displacement of vital centers leads the person into a spiritual trap, a kind of way out of which can only be a step taken into the abyss of non-being. The reality of sin, realized and determined by life, is terrible in its reality and tragic in its consequences. However, the power of comprehending this axiom is possessed by only one hero of the tragedy "The Miserly Knight" - the Duke. It is he who becomes an unwitting witness to a moral catastrophe and an uncompromising judge of its participants.

Avarice, indeed, is the "engine" of tragedy (avarice as a cause and consequence of the wasting of spiritual forces). But its meaning is seen not only in the pettiness of the curmudgeon.

The Baron is not just a stingy knight, but also a stingy father - stingy about communicating with his son, stingy about revealing to him the truths of life. He closed his heart to Albert, thereby predetermining his end and destroying the still unstable spiritual world of his heir. The baron did not want to understand that his son inherits not so much his gold as his life wisdom, memory and experience of generations.

Stingy with love and sincerity, the Baron closes in on himself, on his own individuality. He removes himself from the truth of family relations, from the "vanity" (which he sees outside his basement) of light, creating his own world and the Law: the Father is realized in the Creator. The desire to possess gold develops into an egoistic desire to possess the universe. There should be only one ruler on the throne, in heaven only one God. Such a message becomes the "foot" of Power and the cause of hatred for the son, who could be the successor of the Father's Cause (this does not mean a pernicious passion for hoarding, but the business of the family, the transfer of the spiritual wealth of the clan from father to son).

It is this avarice that destroys and marks with its shadow all manifestations of life that becomes the subject of dramatic comprehension. However, the latent, "looming" causal bases of perversity do not escape the author's view either. The author is interested not only in the results of completeness, but also in their primary motives.

What makes the Baron become an ascetic? Striving to become God, Almighty. What makes Albert want his father dead? The desire to become the owner of the baron's gold reserves, the desire to become a free, independent person, and most importantly, respected for both courage and fortune (which in itself, as a message to existence, but not to being, is quite understandable and characteristic of many people of his age) ...

“The essence of man,” wrote V. Nepomniachtchi, is determined by what he ultimately wants and what he does to fulfill his desire. Therefore, the "material" of "small tragedies" is human passions. Pushkin took three main ones: freedom, creativity, love [...]

With the desire for wealth, which, in the opinion of the Baron, is the guarantee of independence and freedom, his tragedy began. Albert strives for independence - also through wealth [...] ”.

Freedom as an impetus, as a call for the realization of what was conceived, becomes an indicator, an accompanying "element" and at the same time a catalyst for an action of moral significance (positive or negative).

Everything in this work is maximally combined, syncretically focused and ideologically concentrated. The inversion of the commanded origins of being and the disharmony of relations, family rejection and ancestral interruption (moral discontinuity of generations) are all marked by the fact of reality synth e zy (synthetically organized indicators) of spiritual drama.

The alogy of relations at the level of Father - Son is one of the indicators of moral tragedy precisely because the conflict of a dramatic work acquires ethical meaning not only (and not so much) when it is resolved vertically: God - Man, but also when the hero becomes a divine disciple in real-situational facts, when, consciously or unconsciously, the “ideal” replaces the “absolute”.

The multilevel nature of the meanings and resolutions of the conflict determines the polysemic nature of the subtext meanings and their interpretations. We will not find unambiguity in understanding this or that image, this or that problem, noted by the attention of the author. The dramatic works of Pushkin are not characterized by categorical assessments and the utmost obviousness of conclusions, which was characteristic of classicist tragedy. Therefore, it is important in the course of analyzing his plays to carefully read every word, to note the changes in the characters' intonations, to see and feel the author's thought in each remark.

An important point in comprehending the ideological and content aspect of the work is also the analytical "reading" of the images of the main characters in their inextricable correlation and direct relation to the level facts of resolving a conflict that has an ambivalent nature.

We cannot agree with the opinion of some literary critics, who see in this work, just as in Mozart and Salieri, only one protagonist, endowed with the power and right to move the tragedy. So, M. Kostalevskaya noted: “The first tragedy (or dramatic scene) -“ The Covetous Knight ”- corresponds to the number one. The main, and in fact the only hero, is the Baron. The rest of the characters of the tragedy are peripheral and serve only as a background for the central person. Both philosophy and psychology of character are concentrated and fully expressed in the monologue of the Covetous Knight [...] ”.

The Baron is undoubtedly the most important, deeply psychologically "written" symbol. It is in correlation with him, with his will and his personal tragedy that the graphically marked realities of Albert's co-existence are also seen.

However, despite all the visible (external) parallelism of their life lines, they are still sons of the same vice, historically predetermined and actually existing. Their visible difference is largely explained and confirmed by age, and therefore time, indicators. The baron, struck by an all-consuming sinful passion, rejects his son, engendering in his mind the same sinfulness, but also burdened by the latent motive of parricide (in the finale of the tragedy).

Albert is driven by conflict as much as the Baron. The mere realization that the son is the heir, that he is the one who will be after, makes Philip hate and fear him. The situation in its tense undecidability is similar to the dramatic situation of "Mozart and Salieri", where envy and fear for one's own creative inconsistency, an imaginary, justifiable desire to "save" Art and restore justice make Salieri kill Mozart. S. Bondi, reflecting on this problem, wrote: “In“ The Covetous Knight ”and“ Mozart and Salieri ”the shameful passion for profit, avarice, not abhorrent of crimes, envy, leading to the murder of a friend, a brilliant composer, embraces people accustomed to the universal respect, and, most importantly, who consider this respect well deserved [...] And they try to assure themselves that their criminal actions are guided either by high principled considerations (Salieri), or, if passion, then some other, not so shameful, but tall (Baron Philip). "

In The Covetous Knight, the fear of giving everything to the one who deserves it gives rise to perjury (an act that in its end results is in no way inferior to the action of the poison thrown into the “cup of friendship”).

A vicious circle of contradictions. Perhaps this is how it would be worth characterizing the conflict nature of this work. Here everything is "nurtured" and closed on contradictions, opposites. It would seem that father and son are opposed to each other, antinomical. However, this impression is misleading. Indeed, the initially visible setting on the "sorrow" of poor youth, poured out by angry Albert, gives rise to the difference between the heroes. But one has only to carefully follow the son's train of thought, and the immanent, even if marked in its fundamental principle by opposite signs, their moral kinship with the father becomes obvious. Although the baron did not teach Albert to value and cherish what he devoted his life to.

In the time period of the tragedy, Albert is young, frivolous, wasteful (in his dreams). But what will happen next. Perhaps Solomon is right, predicting a miserly old age for the young man. Probably, Albert will say someday: “I really got all this for nothing ...” (meaning the death of his father, which opened the way for him to the basement). The keys, which the baron so unsuccessfully tried to find at the moment when his life was leaving him, will be found by his son and "he will give the royal oil to drink."

Philip did not pass it on, but according to the logic of life, by the will of the author of the work and by the will of God, testing the spiritual endurance of his children by testing, he “threw” the inheritance against his own will, as he threw the glove to his son, challenging him to a duel. Here again the motive of temptation arises (stating the invisible presence of the Devil), the motive sounds already in the first scene, in the very first voluminous monologue-dialogue (about the broken helmet) and the very first ideologically significant dialogue (the dialogue between Albert and Solomon about the possibility of getting the father's money as soon as possible). This motive (the motive of temptation) is as eternal and old as the world. Already in the first book of the Bible, we read about the temptation, the result of which was the expulsion from Paradise and the acquisition of earthly evil by man.

The Baron understands that the heir wants his death, which he accidentally admits, about which Albert himself blurts out: "Will my father survive me?"

We must not forget that Albert did not take advantage of Solomon's proposal to poison his father. But this fact does not in the least disprove that he has a thought, a desire for the speedy death (but not murder!) Of the baron. To wish for death is one thing, but to kill is quite another. The knight's son turned out to be unable to commit an act that the “son of harmony” could decide on: “Pour three drops into a glass of water ...”. Yu. Lotman noted in this sense: “In The Covetous Knight, the Baron's feast took place, but another feast at which Albert should have poisoned his father is only mentioned. This feast will take place in "Mozart and Salieri", linking the "rhyme of provisions" these two so different in the rest of the play into a single "editing phrase". ...

In Mozart and Salieri, the words of the hero of the first tragedy, detailing the entire murder process, are restructured into the author's remark with the meaning “action is the result”: “Throws poison into Mozart's glass”. However, in a moment of intense spiritual tension, the son accepts the “first gift of his father”, ready to fight him in the “game”, the stake of which is life.

The ambiguity of the conflict-situational characteristics of the work is determined by the difference in the initial motives of their occurrence and the multidirectionality of the resolution. Level cuts of conflict are found in the vectors of moral movements and signs of spiritual disharmony, marking all the ethical messages and actions of the heroes.

If in "Mozart and Salieri" the opposition is defined by the semantics "Genius - Craftsman", "Genius - Villainy", then in "The Covetous Knight" the opposition is in the semantic field of the antithesis "Father - Son". The level difference in the initial indicators of spiritual drama also leads to the difference in the final signs of its development.

Comprehending the questions of the moral and philosophical problems of The Covetous Knight, one should draw a conclusion about the omnipotence of the ethical sound of Pushkin's tragedy, the comprehensiveness of the topics raised and the universal level of conflict resolution. All vector lines of development of the action pass through the ethical subtext space of the work, touching upon the deep, ontological aspects of a person's life, his sinfulness and responsibility before God.

Bibliographic list

1. Belinsky Alexander Pushkin. - M., 1985 .-- S. 484.

2. Leskis G. Pushkin's way in Russian literature. - M., 1993. - P.298.

3. "Mozart and Salieri", Pushkin's tragedy, Movement in time. - M., 19s.

In "little tragedies" Pushkin collides mutually exclusive and at the same time inextricably linked points of view and truths of his heroes in a kind of polyphonic counterpoint. This conjugation of opposite life principles is manifested not only in the figurative and semantic structure of tragedies, but also in their poetics. This is clearly seen in the title of the first tragedy - "The Miserly Knight".

The action takes place in France, in the late Middle Ages. In the person of Baron Philip, Pushkin captured a peculiar type of knight-usurer, engendered by the era of transition from feudal relations to bourgeois-money relations. This is a special social "species", a kind of social centaur, fancifully combining features of opposite eras and structures. In him are still alive the idea of ​​knightly honor, of his social privilege. At the same time, he is the bearer of other aspirations and ideals generated by the increasing power of money, on which the position of a person in society depends to a greater extent than on origin and titles. Money shatters, erodes the boundaries of class-caste groups, tears down the partitions between them. In this regard, the importance of the personal principle in a person, his freedom, but at the same time also responsibility - for himself and others, increases.

Baron Philip is a large, complex character, a man of great will. Its main goal is the accumulation of gold as the main value in the emerging new way of life. At first, this hoarding is not an end in itself for him, but only a means of gaining complete independence and freedom. And the Baron seems to achieve his goal, as his monologue speaks about in the “basements of the faithful”: “What is beyond my control? As a certain demon From now on, I can rule the world ... ”and so on (V, 342-343). However, this independence, power and strength are bought at too high a price - with tears, sweat and blood of the victims of baronial passion. But the matter is not limited to turning other people into a means of achieving his goal. In the end, the Baron turns himself into only a means of achieving this goal, for which he pays with the loss of his human feelings and qualities, even such natural ones as his father's, perceiving his own son as his mortal enemy. So money, from a means of gaining independence and freedom, imperceptibly for the hero turns into an end in itself, of which the Baron becomes an appendage. No wonder his son Albert says about money: “Oh, my father does not see servants or friends in them, but masters, and he himself serves them ... like an Algerian slave, like a chain dog” (V, 338). Pushkin, as it were, but already realistically rethinks the problem posed in The Prisoner of the Caucasus: the inevitability of finding on the paths of individualistic flight from society instead of the desired freedom - slavery. Selfish monoplasty leads the Baron not only to his alienation, but also to self-alienation, that is, to alienation from his human essence, from humanity as its basis.

However, Baron Philip has his own truth, which explains and to some extent justifies his position in life. Thinking about his son - the heir of all his riches, which he will get without any efforts and worries, he sees in this a violation of justice, the destruction of the foundations of the world order he affirms, in which everything must be achieved and suffered by the person himself, and not passed on as an undeserved gift of God (including the royal throne - here there is an interesting roll-over with the problems of Boris Godunov, but on a different basis in life). Enjoying the contemplation of his treasures, the Baron exclaims: “I reign! .. What a magical brilliance! Obedient to me, my state is strong; In her happiness, in her my honor and glory! " But after that he was suddenly overwhelmed by confusion and horror: “I reign ... but who will follow me to take power over her? My heir! Madman, young wasteful. Libertines riotous interlocutor! " The Baron is horrified not by the inevitability of death, parting with life and treasures, but the violation of the highest justice, which gave his life meaning: “He squanders ... And by what right? I really got it all for nothing ... Who knows how many bitter abstinence, Bridled passions, heavy thoughts, Day cares, sleepless nights did it cost me? that he acquired with blood ”(V, 345-346).

It has its own logic, a harmonious philosophy of a strong and tragic personality, with its own consistent truth, although it did not withstand the test of humanity. Who is to blame for this? On the one hand, historical circumstances, the era of the approaching commercialism, in which the unrestrained growth of material wealth leads to spiritual impoverishment and turns a person from an end in itself into just a means of achieving other goals. But Pushkin does not relieve the responsibility of the hero himself, who chose the path of achieving freedom and independence in individualistic separation from people.

The image of Albert is also connected with the problem of choosing a life position. Its widespread interpretation as a crushed version of the personality of his father, in which the features of chivalry will be lost over time and the qualities of a usurer-accumulator, will prevail over time. In principle, such a metamorphosis is possible. But it is not fatally inevitable, because it depends on Albert himself whether he will retain his inherent openness to people, sociability, kindness, the ability to think not only about himself, but also about others (the episode with a sick blacksmith is indicative here), or will lose these qualities, like his father. In this regard, the final remark of the Duke is significant: "A terrible century, terrible hearts." In it, guilt and responsibility are, as it were, evenly distributed - between the century and the “heart” of a person, his feeling, reason and will. At the moment of the development of the action, Baron Philip and Albert act, despite their blood relationship, as carriers of two opposing, but in some ways mutually correcting truths. In both there are elements of both absoluteness and relativity, which are tested and developed in each epoch by each person in his own way.

In The Covetous Knight, as in all other “little tragedies,” Pushkin's realistic skill reaches its peak - in terms of the depth of penetration into the socio-historical and moral-psychological essence of the characters depicted, in the ability to consider the timeless and the universal in the temporal and particular. In them, such a feature of the poetics of Pushkin's works as their “dizzying brevity” (A. Akhmatova), which contains “an abyss of space” (N. Gogol), reaches its full development. From tragedy to tragedy, the scale and content of the depicted images-characters increase, the depth, including the moral and philosophical, of the displayed conflicts and problems of human existence - in its special national modifications and deep universal human "invariants".

After Boris Godunov, Pushkin wanted to express in a dramatic form those important observations and discoveries in the field of human psychology that had accumulated in his creative experience. He conceived to create a series of short plays, dramatic sketches, in which, in an acute plot situation, the human soul was revealed, seized by some kind of passion or showing its hidden properties in some special, extreme, unusual circumstances. The list of titles of the plays conceived by Pushkin has been preserved: "The Miser", "Romulus and Remus", "Mozart and Salieri", "Don Juan", "Jesus", "Berald of Savoy", "Paul I", "The Devil in Love", "Dmitry and Marina "," Kurbsky ". He was occupied in them by the acuteness and contradictions of human feelings: stinginess, envy, ambition, etc. From this list of dramatic plans Pushkin realized only three: "The Covetous Knight", "Mozart and Salieri" and "The Stone Guest" ("Don Juan" ). He worked on them in 1826-1830. and completed them in the fall of 1830 in Boldino. In the same place, he wrote another "little tragedy" (not included in the list) - "A Feast in Time of Plague." Pushkin is not afraid to exacerbate situations as much as possible, to create rare circumstances in drama in which unexpected sides of the human soul are revealed. Therefore, in "little tragedies" the plot is often built on sharp contrasts. The miser is not an ordinary bourgeois usurer, but a knight, a feudal lord; the feast takes place during the plague; the famous composer, the proud Salieri kills his friend Mozart out of envy ... Striving for maximum brevity, conciseness, Pushkin in "small tragedies" willingly uses traditional literary and historical images and plots: the appearance on the stage of heroes familiar to the audience makes a long exposition explaining the characters unnecessary and character relationships. In "small tragedies", Pushkin much more often and with greater depth and skill uses purely theatrical means of artistic influence: the music in Mozart and Salieri, which serves there as an affinity of characterization and even plays a decisive role in the development of the plot - a cart filled with dead people passing by feasting during the plague, the lonely "feast" of a miserly knight in the light of six cinders and the glitter of gold in six open chests - all these are not external stage effects, but genuine elements of the dramatic action itself, deepening its semantic content. characteristic of Pushkin's solution to those philosophical problems in poetry that have come to the fore in Russian literature, especially after the tragic events of December 1825. During Pushkin's lifetime, the cycle was not published in full, the title "Little Tragedies" was given after his posthumous publication. The study of man in his most irresistible passions, in the extreme and most secret expressions of his contradictory essence - this is what Pushkin is most interested in when he begins to work on small tragedies. Small tragedies come close to drama in terms of genre. To some extent, Pushkin's drama goes back to the rigid plot structure of "Byronic" poems: fragmentary, culmination, and so on. The first of the small tragedies was the tragedy "The Covetous Knight". Pushkin completed work on it on October 23, 1830, although, apparently, its original design, like most other small tragedies, dates back to 1826. At the center of the tragedy is the conflict of two heroes - father (Baron) and son (Albert). Both belong to the French knighthood, but to different periods of its history. The Covetous Knight is the tragedy of avarice. Avarice here appears not as something unambiguous and one-dimensional, but in its hidden complexity and contradictoriness, volumetric, in Shakespearean style. In the center of Pushkin's tragedy is the image of the baron, a stingy knight, shown not in the spirit of Moliere, but in the spirit of Shakespeare. In the baron, everything is based on contradictions, the incompatible is combined in him: the avaricious - and the knight. The knight is seized by a drying up passion for money, and at the same time he has something of a poet. A well-known proverb says: you can mourn your love, but you can't mourn your money. The Baron refutes this adage. He does not even mourn the money, but he does more - he sings a hymn to them, high praise:

How a young rake is waiting for a date

With some sly libertine

Or a fool who was deceived by him, so I

All day I waited for a minute when I get off

To my secret basement, to the faithful chests ...

Bron is drawn to money not just as a curmudgeon, but as a power hungry. Money becomes a symbol of power, and that is why it is especially sweet for the baron. This is a sign of the times. This is not even a sign of the medieval time in which the action takes place nominally, but of Pushkin's time. This is the tragedy of Pushkin's time. The Baron's passion for gold, for power is explored by Pushkin in all psychological subtleties. In money, the Baron sees and glorifies not just power, but the secrecy of power. For him, it is sweet not obvious, but precisely hidden power, which he alone knows and which he can freely dispose of. All this conveys the terrible, deep truth of the tragedy. The tragedies of the century, when everything high in life becomes a miserable slave to yellow power, when money breaks all close ties - the most sacred ties: the son goes to the father, the father to the son; slander and poison become legal weapons; instead of natural cordial ties between people, monetary ties alone dominate. Albert is a young knight, the son of a stingy Baron, the hero of a tragedy. Albert is young and ambitious, for him the idea of ​​chivalry is inseparable from tournaments, courtesy, demonstrative courage and equally ostentatious extravagance. The feudal avarice of the father, elevated to a principle, not only condemns his son to bitter poverty, but deprives him of the opportunity to be a knight in the "modern" sense of the word, that is, a noble rich man who despises his own wealth. The tragedy begins with a conversation between Albert and the servant Ivan. Albert discusses the sad consequences of the tournament: the helmet is broken, the horse Emir is limping, the reason for the victory he won, "and bravery ... and wondrous strength" is stinginess, anger at Count Delorgue because of a damaged helmet. So the name "The Miserly Knight" applies in full measure to both the Baron and Albert. The tragedy continues with the scene of Albert's humiliation in front of the usurer Solomon, whom the knight despises and generally does not mind hanging. The chivalrous word is nothing for a usurer who transparently hints to Albert about the possibility of "speeding up" the long-awaited moment of receiving the inheritance. Albert is enraged by Solomon's baseness. But then Albert demands that Ivan take the chervonets from Solomon. In a scene in the palace, Albert complains to the Duke “of the shame of bitter poverty,” and he tries to admonish the stingy father. The Baron accuses his own son:

He, sir, unfortunately, is not worthy

Neither mercy nor your attention ...

He ... he me

I wanted to kill ...

The son accuses his father of lying - and receives a challenge to a duel. Pushkin tests his hero. Albert not only accepts the Baron's challenge, that is, demonstrates that he is ready to kill his father, he raises the glove hastily, until the father changes his mind and deprives his son of the opportunity to make the "Solomon decision." However, the scene is deliberately built ambiguously: Albert's haste may also be due to the fact that he had already followed the vile advice, injected poison, in which case the duel for him is the last opportunity to give parricide the appearance of a "knightly" duel, moreover, begun on the initiative of the Baron himself. For the “new” chivalry, in contrast to the “old”, money is not important in itself, not as a mystical source of secret power over the world, for him it is only a means, the price of a “knightly” life. But in order to pay this price, to achieve this goal, Albert, professing a "noble" philosophy, is ready to follow the vile advice of the "despicable usurer". All interpretations of the image of Albert (and Baron) are reduced to two "options". According to the first, the spirit of the times is to blame (“A terrible age, terrible hearts!”); behind each of the heroes - his own truth, the truth of the social principle - new and outdated (G.A. Gukovsky). According to the second, both heroes are to blame; the plot confronts two equal lies - Baron and Albert (Yu.M. Lotman). The Duke, from within the chivalrous ethics, evaluates the behavior of the heroes, calling the elder a "madman", the younger a monster. This assessment does not contradict Pushkin's. Baron is the father of the young knight Albert; brought up by the previous era, when to belong to chivalry meant, first of all, to be a brave warrior and a wealthy feudal lord, and not a minister of the cult of a beautiful lady and a participant in court tournaments. Old age freed the Baron from the need to put on armor, but love for gold grew into passion. However, it is not money as such that attracts the Baron, but the world of ideas and feelings associated with him. This sharply distinguishes the Baron from the numerous "misers" of the Russian comedy of the 18th century, including from "Skopikhin" by GR Derzhavin, the epigraph from which was originally preceded by the tragedy; The "crossing" of the comedy-satirical type of the miser and the "tall" accumulator like the Baron will take place in the image of Plyushkin in "Dead Souls" by Nikolai Gogol. In the second, central scene of the tragedy, the Baron descends into his basement (a metaphor for the devil's sanctuary) to pour a handful of accumulated gold coins into the sixth chest - "not yet complete." Here the Baron confesses to gold and to himself, then lights candles and arranges a "feast", a see-through image of "Little Tragedies", that is, he performs a kind of sacrament, serves a kind of mass to gold. The piles of gold remind the Baron of a "proud hill" from which he mentally looks at everything that is subject to him - the whole world. The Baron's recollection of a widow who now brought an “old doubloon”, “but before with three children she was kneeling in front of the window, howling,” is negatively connected with the parable of a poor widow who donated the last mite to the church. This is an inverted image of the gospel scene. The Baron thinks of himself as God, since money gives him unlimited power, gold for the Baron is only a symbol of power over being. Unlike Albert, he values ​​money not as a means, but as an end, for the sake of them he is ready to endure hardships no less than a widow with children, for the sake of which he conquered passions. The father considers his son an enemy, not because he is bad, but because he is wasteful; his pocket is a hole through which the shrine of gold can leak. But gold, for the sake of which passions are defeated, becomes passion itself, - the "knight" of the Baron wins. To emphasize this, Pushkin brings into action the usurer Solomon, who lends money to the poor son of the rich man Baron and in the end advises him to poison his father. On the one hand, the Jew is the antipode of the Baron, he appreciates gold as such, and lacks a hint of the "sublimity" of feelings, even if only such a demonic sublimity, like the Baron. On the other hand, the "exalted" accumulator Baron is ready to humiliate himself and lie, just not to pay the expenses of his son. Summoned by the latter's complaint to the Duke, he behaves not like a knight, but like a dodging scoundrel, in the "drawing" of his behavior the "drawing" of Solomon's behavior in the first scene of the tragedy is completely repeated. And the "knightly" gesture (a glove is a challenge to a duel) in response to the accusation of lying, thrown by Albert in the presence of the Duke, only sharply emphasizes his complete betrayal of the spirit of chivalry. “A terrible age, terrible hearts,” says the Duke, concluding the dramatic action, and Pushkin himself speaks through his lips. Two days after the "Stone Guest" was completed, on November 6, the last Boldin tragedy of Pushkin was completed "Feast in Time of Plague"... The source for it was the dramatic poem by the English poet John Wilson "The City of Plague". Pushkin used book sources, but used them freely, subordinating him to his own ideological and artistic tasks. In the tragedy "A Feast in a Time of Plague", the processing of book sources was even freer than in "The Stone Guest". Pushkin took from the English poem one passage, inserted songs, changed the content of the latter, and composed one of them - the Chairman's song - anew. The result is a new, independent work, with a deep and original thought. The very name of Pushkin's tragedy is original. In it you can see the reflection of personal, autobiographical facts, facts of reality. In the fall of 1830, when the tragedy was being written, cholera raged in the central provinces of Russia, Moscow was cordoned off by quarantines, and the path from Boldino was temporarily closed for Pushkin. In "Feast during the Plague" artistically explores the high passion for life, when it manifests itself on the brink, on the brink of death, in spite of possible death. This is an extreme test of man and his spiritual strength. In the tragedy, the main place is occupied by the monologues of the heroes and their songs. In them, not only and not so much a story about what is happening, but even more - a confession of faith. Monologues and songs embody different human characters and different norms of human behavior in the face of fatal inevitability. The song of the yellow-haired Mary is to the glory of high and eternal love, capable of surviving death. All the greatness, all the power of the feminine principle is embodied in this song. In another song - the song of the Chairman, Valsingham - the greatness of the beginning of the masculine and heroic. Valsingam is the hero of the tragedy, who buried his mother and a little later his beloved wife Matilda three weeks ago, and now presides over a feast among the plague city. Scot Mary sings a song about dead Jenny. The feasts have despaired of faith and are defying inevitable death. Their fun is the madness of the doomed, knowing about their fate (the breath of the plague has already touched the participants of the feast, so this is also a ritual meal). After a dreary song, the experience of fun is sharper. Then, after watching the cart with dead bodies, driven by a Negro (the personification of hellish darkness), Valsingam sings himself. The song, composed for the first time in his life by Valsingham, sounds in a completely different key: it is a solemn hymn to the Plague, praise to despair, a parody of church chants:

As from the mischievous Winter,

Let's also lock ourselves up from the Plague!

Let's light the lights, pour the glasses

Let's drown our minds merrily

And, having brewed feasts and balls,

Let's praise the kingdom of the Plague.

The song of Valsingham opposes and complements Mary's song. In both of them, the ultimate, not only male and female, but human height - the disastrous height and greatness of man, is fully revealed. The Valsingham song is the artistic and semantic culmination of the tragedy. It sounds a hymn to human courage, which is familiar and dear to the ecstasy of battle, a hopeless struggle with fate itself, a sense of triumph in death itself. The song of Chairman Walsingham is the glory of the only possible immortality of a person in this disastrous, tragic world: in a hopeless and heroic duel with an insurmountable person, a person endlessly rises and triumphs in spirit. This is a truly philosophical and unusually lofty thought. It is not for nothing that Valsingam uses the "gospel" style in a theomachist song; he glorifies not the Kingdom, but precisely the Kingdom of the plague, the negative of the Kingdom of God. Thus, the Chairman, placed at the center of the last of the "little tragedies", repeats the "semantic gesture" of the other heroes of the cycle: the Valsingham hymn endows the plague feast with a sacred status, turning it into a black mass: pleasure on the brink of death promises the mortal's heart a guarantee of immortality. The Hellenic high pagan truth sounds in the song of Valsingam, it is opposed in the Pushkin tragedy by the words and truth of the Priest, reminding of loved ones, of the need for humility before death. The priest directly compares the feasting with demons. Having sung the hymn to the Chume, the Chairman ceased to be “just” the manager of the feast, he turned into its full-fledged “secret maker”; from now on, only a servant of God can become a plot antagonist of Valsingam. The priest and the President get into an argument. The priest calls Valsingam to follow him, not promising deliverance from the plague and mortal horror, but promising a return to the meaning lost by the feasting, to a harmonious picture of the universe. Valsingam flatly refuses, because at home "dead emptiness" awaits him. The Priest's reminder of the mother that “weeps bitterly in heaven itself” for the dying son does not affect him, and only “Matilda's pure spirit”, her “forever silenced name” uttered by the Priest, shakes Valsingam. He still asks the Priest to leave him, but he adds words that have been impossible for him until this moment: "For God's sake." This means that in the soul of the Chairman, who remembered the heavenly bliss of love and suddenly saw Matilda ("the holy child of light") in heaven, a revolution took place: the name of God returned to the limits of his suffering consciousness, the religious picture of the world began to recover, although before the recovery of the soul it was still far. Realizing this, the priest leaves, blessing Valsingam. The Priest’s truth is no less true than Valsingham’s truth. These truths collide in tragedy, conflict and mutually influence each other. Moreover: in Valsingham, a Hellenic by the strength of the poetic and human spirit and at the same time a man of the Christian age, at some point, under the influence of the words of the Priest, both truths are internally combined.

This extracurricular reading lesson is conducted after studying several works by A.S. Pushkin: the drama "Boris Godunov" (episode "Scene in the Chudov Monastery"), the story "The Station Keeper" and "Snowstorm".

Lesson objectives:

• teach to analyze a dramatic work (to define a theme, idea, conflict of a drama),
• give an idea of ​​the dramatic character;
• develop the ability to work with the text of a literary work (selective reading, expressive reading, reading by roles, selection of quotations);
• to educate the moral qualities of the individual.

During the classes

1. The history of the creation of "Little Tragedies" by A.S. Pushkin(teacher's word).

In 1830 A.S. Pushkin received a blessing to marry N.N. Goncharova. The chores and preparations for the wedding began. The poet had to urgently go to the village of Boldino in the Nizhny Novgorod province to equip the part of the family estate allocated to him by his father. A cholera epidemic that began suddenly detained Pushkin for a long time in rural seclusion. It was here that the miracle of the first Boldin autumn took place: the poet experienced a happy and unprecedented surge of creative inspiration. In less than three months he wrote the poetic story "House in Kolomna", dramatic works "The Covetous Knight", "Mozart and Salieri", "Feast in Time of Plague", "Don Juan", later called "Little Tragedies" "Belkin's Tales", "The history of the village of Goryukhin", about thirty wonderful lyric poems were written, the novel "Eugene Onegin" was completed.

The relationship between a person and those around him - relatives, friends, enemies, like-minded people, casual acquaintances - is a topic that has always worried Pushkin, therefore in his works he explores various human passions and their consequences.

In "Little Tragedies" the poet seems to travel through space and time in Western Europe, together with him the reader finds himself in the late Middle Ages ("The Covetous Knight"), the Renaissance ("The Stone Guest"), the Enlightenment ("Mozart and Salieri") ...

Each tragedy turns into a philosophical discourse about love and hate, life and death, about the eternity of art, about greed, betrayal, about true talent ...

2.Analysis of the drama "The Miserly Knight"(frontal conversation).

1) -How do you think, which of the following topics is this drama devoted to?

(The theme of greed, the power of money).

What problems related to money can a person have?

(Lack of money, or, conversely, too much of it, inability to manage money, greed ...)

Is it possible to judge the theme and idea of ​​the work by the title of this drama?

2) "The Miserly Knight" - can a knight be stingy? Who were called knights in medieval Europe? How did the knights come about? What qualities are inherent in knights?

(The children prepare answers to these questions at home. This can be individual messages or homework ahead of time for the whole class.

The word "knight" comes from the German "ritter", ie horseman, in French there is a synonym for "chevalier" from the word "cheval", i.e. horse. So, originally it is called a rider, a warrior on a horse. The first real knights appeared in France around 800. These were fierce and skillful warriors who, under the leadership of the chief of the Franks, Clovis, defeated other tribes and by the year 500 conquered the entire territory of present-day France. By 800, they owned even more of Germany and Italy. In 800, the Pope proclaimed Charlemagne Emperor of Rome. This is how the Holy Roman Empire came into being. Over the years, the Franks more and more used cavalry in hostilities, invented stirrups, various weapons.

By the end of the 12th century, chivalry began to be perceived as the bearer of ethical ideals. The knightly code of honor includes values ​​such as courage, courage, loyalty, protection of the weak. Betrayal, revenge, stinginess evoked sharp condemnation. There were special rules for the behavior of a knight in battle: it was impossible to retreat, to show disrespect to the enemy, it was forbidden to inflict fatal blows from behind, to kill an unarmed one. The knights showed humanity towards the enemy, especially if he was wounded.

The knight dedicated his victories in battle or in tournaments to his lady of the heart, therefore the era of chivalry is also associated with romantic feelings: love, love, self-sacrifice for the sake of his beloved.)

Finding out the meaning of the word "knight", the students come to the conclusion that there is a contradiction in the title of the work "The Miserly Knight": the knight could not be stingy.

3)Introduction to the term "oxymoron"

Oxymoron - an artistic device based on the lexical inconsistency of words in a phrase, a stylistic figure, a combination of words opposed in meaning, "a combination of incongruous."

(The term is written in notebooks or linguistic dictionaries)

4) - Which of the heroes of the drama can be called a stingy knight?

(Barona)

What do we know about the Baron from scene 1?

(Students work with text. Read quotes)

What was the fault of heroism? - stinginess
Yes! It is not difficult to get infected here
Under the roof alone with my father.

Would you tell him that my father
He is rich himself, like a Jew ...

The Baron is healthy. God willing - ten, twenty years
And twenty-five and thirty will live ...

O! My father is not servants or friends
He sees in them, but masters; ...

5) Reading the Baron's Monologue (Scene 2)

Explain where did the baron's stinginess come from? What is the main character trait of the Baron that dominates all the others? Find a keyword, a key image.

(Power)

To whom does the Baron compare himself?

(With a king in command of his warriors)

Who was the Baron before?

(A warrior, a knight of sword and loyalty, in his youth he did not think about chests with doubloons)

What has changed, who has he become now?

(By the usurer)

How do you understand the term " dramatic character "? (An explanation of the term is written in notebooks)

6) Vocabulary work.

Explaining the meanings of the words "usurer" (you can pick up the same root words "growth", "grow"), "Code of honor", "pigskin" - parchment with a family tree, with a coat of arms or knightly rights, "knightly word".

7) Scene analysis 3.

What does the Duke say about the Baron? What was the name of the baron, what do we learn about him from his greeting to the Duke?

(Philip is the name of kings and dukes. The Baron lived at the Duke's court, was the first among equals.)

Did the knight in the baron die?

(No. The Baron is offended by his son in the presence of the Duke, and this increases his resentment. He challenges his son to a duel)

Why did the Baron, who was a real knight, become a usurer?

(He was accustomed to power. In the days of his youth, power was given by the sword, knightly dignity, baronial privileges, military deed)

What has changed?

(Time)

Another time comes and with it another generation of nobles. What is the Baron afraid of?

(The ruin of accumulated wealth)

What can you say about the son of the Baron - Albert? How is he doing? Can you call him a knight?

(For him, the word of chivalry and "pigskin" is an empty phrase)

What motivates Albert when he surprises everyone with his courage at a tournament?

(Avarice)

Is Albert himself a miser like his father?

(No. He gives the last bottle of wine to the sick blacksmith, he does not agree to poison his father and commit a crime for the sake of money)

What can you say about the relationship between father and son - Baron and Albert?

(The Baron accuses his son of plotting paricide, of trying to rob him)

8) Reading the roles of the scene of a quarrel between father and son.

What caused the quarrel?

(Because of money)

What does the Baron think about in the last minutes of his life?

(About money)

Read the last words of the Duke.

He died God!
Terrible age, terrible hearts!

What century is the Duke talking about? (About the age of money)

3. Conclusions. The final part of the lesson.(Teacher's word)

Any dramatic work is based on conflict. Thanks to him, the development of the action takes place. What caused the tragedy? (The meaning of the terms is written in a notebook)

It is the power of money that rules people. The power of money brings to the world the great suffering of the poor, the crimes committed in the name of gold. Because of the money, relatives, close people become enemies, ready to kill each other.

The theme of avarice, the power of money is one of the eternal themes of world art and literature. Writers from different countries dedicated their works to her:

• Honore de Balzac "Gobsec",
• Jean Baptiste Moliere "The Miser",
• D. Fonvizin "Minor",
• N. Gogol "Portrait",
• "Dead Souls" (the image of Plyushkin),
• "Evening on the eve of Ivan Kupala"

4. Homework:

1. Read N. Gogol's story "Portrait";
2. In notebooks, write a detailed answer to the question "How can you explain the name of the drama" The Miserly Knight "?
3. Prepare a message on the topic "The Image of the Miser in World Painting." (Individual task)

To the question What is the main idea of ​​Pushkin's "The Miserly Knight"? And why this work was called that. given by the author MK2 the best answer is The main theme of "The Covetous Knight" is a psychological analysis of the human soul, human "Passions". (However, like all books from the collection "Little Tragedies"). Avarice, a passion for collecting, accumulating money and a painful unwillingness to spend at least one penny out of it are shown by Pushkin in its destructive effect on the psyche of a person, a miser, and in its influence on family relations. Pushkin, unlike all his predecessors, made the bearer of this passion not a representative of the "third estate", a merchant, a bourgeois, but a baron, a feudal lord belonging to the ruling class, a man for whom knightly "honor", self-respect and the demand for self-respect stand first place. To emphasize this, as well as the fact that the avarice of the baron is precisely a passion, a painful affect, and not dry calculation, Pushkin introduces into his play, next to the baron, another usurer - the Jew Solomon, for whom, on the contrary, the accumulation of money, shameless usury is just a profession that enables him, a representative of the then oppressed nation, to live and act in a feudal society. Avarice, love of money, in the minds of a knight, a baron - a low, shameful passion; usury as a means of accumulating wealth is a shameful occupation. That is why, alone with himself, the baron convinces himself that all his actions and all his feelings are based not on a passion for money unworthy of a knight, not on stinginess, but on another passion, also destructive for others, also criminal, but not so base and shameful, and covered with some aura of gloomy heights - on an exorbitant lust for power. He is convinced that he denies himself everything he needs, keeps his only son in poverty, burdens his conscience with crimes - all in order to realize his enormous power over the world. The power of an avaricious knight, or rather, the power of money that he collects and accumulates all his life - exists for him only in potency, in dreams. In real life, he does not implement it in any way. In fact, this is all self-deception of the old baron. To say nothing of the fact that lust for power (like any passion) could never rest on the consciousness of its power alone, but would certainly strive to realize this power, the baron is not at all as omnipotent as he thinks (“... in peace I can ... "," I just want, palaces will be erected ... "). He could do all this with his wealth, but he can never want to; he can open his chests only in order to pour the accumulated gold into them, but not in order to take it from there. He is not a king, not the lord of his money, but a slave to them. His son Albert is right when they talk about his father's attitude to money. For the baron, his son and heir to the wealth accumulated by him is his first enemy, since he knows that after his death Albert will destroy the work of his whole life, squander, squander everything he has collected. He hates his son and wishes him death. Albert is portrayed in the play as a brave, strong and good-natured young man. He can give the last bottle of Spanish wine given to him to a sick blacksmith. But the baron's avarice completely distorts his character. Albert hates his father, because he keeps him in poverty, does not give his son the opportunity to shine at tournaments and on holidays, makes him humble himself in front of the usurer. He, without hiding, awaits the death of his father, and if Solomon's proposal to poison the baron evokes such a violent reaction in him, it is precisely because Solomon expressed a thought that Albert drove away from himself and which he feared. The deadly enmity between father and son is revealed when they meet at the duke's, when Albert happily picks up the glove thrown to him by his father. “So he dug his claws into her, the monster,” says the duke indignantly. Pushkin not without reason at the end of the 20s. began to develop this topic. In this era and in Russia, bourgeois elements of everyday life more and more intruded into the system of the feudal system, new characters of the bourgeois type were developed, and a greed for the acquisition and accumulation of money was brought up.

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Boldinskaya autumn is one of the most fruitful periods in Pushkin's life. The cholera epidemic found the writer at his father's estate, in Boldino. Many works were born here, including The Covetous Knight. In fact, the idea of ​​"The Covetous Knight" originated earlier - in 1826. However, Alexander Sergeevich finished this text only in 1830. As you know, Pushkin was engaged in a magazine - the famous "Contemporary". Therefore, it is not surprising that the work was published on the pages of this particular edition in 1836.

Mystical collisions "The Covetous Knight"

There is one curious moment connected with this play. The fact is that Pushkin laid down autobiographical moments here. However, these details from the life of the writer touched on a very delicate topic - the avarice of father Alexander Sergeevich. To confuse readers and literary critics a little, Pushkin provided his work with a subtitle - "From Chenston's Tragicomedy". Chenston (or William Shenston) is an 18th century writer who, however, does not have any similar works available. The tradition of the 19th century required to write the name of this author exactly as "Chenston", so sometimes there is confusion associated with names.

On the subject and plot of the work

"The Covetous Knight" is considered the first text from the cycle with Pushkin's dramatic sketches. These are short plays later called Little Tragedies. Alexander Sergeevich had an idea: to devote each play to the disclosure of a certain side of the human soul. And Pushkin wanted to write not just about the side of the soul, but about passion - an all-consuming feeling. In this case, we are talking about stinginess. Alexander Sergeevich reveals the depth of the spiritual qualities of a person, showing these qualities through sharp and unusual plots.

On the characters and characters of the "Covetous Knight"

The image of the baron

The Baron is perhaps the key image from this Pushkin masterpiece. The hero is famous for his wealth, but the baron's stinginess is no less than his wealth. The author spares no words, describing the wealth of the baron: chests full of gold, coins ... However, the hero leaves everything intact, pulling nothing out of the chests. Here is how Albert describes Baron:

O! my father is not servants or friends
In them he sees, and the masters; and serves them himself.
And how does it serve? like an Algerian slave,
Like a chain dog. In an unheated kennel
Lives, drinks water, eats dry crusts,

He does not sleep all night, everything runs and barks ...

According to the Baron, he is sovereign with money. You can buy everything for gold coins, because everything is sold - love, virtues, atrocities, genius, artistic inspiration, human labor ... All that interests the baron is wealth. The hero is even capable of murder if someone wants to appropriate his money for himself. When the baron suspected his son of this, he challenged him to a duel. The duke tried to prevent the duel, but the baron dies only from the thought of losing his money.

So Pushkin metaphorically shows that passion is capable of absorbing a person.

Thus, the baron can be described as a mature man, wise in his own way. The baron was well trained, was brought up in the old traditions, was once a valiant knight. But now the hero concluded the whole meaning of life in the accumulation of money. The Baron believes that his son knows little about life in order to trust him with his money:

My son does not like a noisy, high life;
He has a wild and gloomy disposition -
He always wanders around the castle through the forests,
Like a young deer ...

Image of money

Money could be counted in a separate way. How does the baron perceive wealth? Money for the baron is the master, the ruler. They are not tools at all, not means, not servants. Also, the baron does not consider money to be friends (as the usurer Solomon believed). But the hero refuses to admit that he has become a slave to money.

Solomon has a different attitude to money. For a usurer, money is only a job, a way to survive in this world. However, Solomon also has a passion: in order to get rich, the hero even offers Albert to kill his father.

Albert's image

Albert is twenty years old, and youth affects the young man: the hero longs to enjoy life. Albert is depicted as a worthy young knight, strong and courageous. Albert easily wins knightly tournaments, enjoys the attention and sympathy of women. However, only the detail torments the knight - complete dependence on his own father. The young man is so poor that he has no money for knightly uniforms, a horse, armor, food. The hero is constantly forced to beg before his father. Despair pushes the knight to complain about his misfortune to the duke.

So he dug into her claws! - monster!
Come: do not dare to my eyes
To be as long as I am on my own
I will not call you ...

Duke image

The Duke in Pushkin's work is depicted as a representative of the authorities who voluntarily undertakes these heavy obligations. The era in which he lives, as well as people (for the callousness of their hearts), the Duke condemns, calling them terrible. So - in the mouth of this hero - the author puts his own reflections on his contemporary era.

The Duke tries to always be fair:
I believe, I believe: noble knight,
Such as you, the father will not blame
No extreme. There are few such depraved ones ...
Be calm: your father
I will advise in private, without noise ...

The image of Ivan

The play also features a secondary image of Ivan, the young servant of Albert. Ivan is very devoted to his young master.

On the problems of the text

In his "Little Tragedies" the writer understands a certain vice. As for The Covetous Knight, here the author is interested in portraying avarice. This, of course, is not one of the deadly sins, however, stinginess pushes people to destructive actions. Under the influence of avarice, a worthy person sometimes changes beyond recognition. Pushkin introduces heroes who are submissive to vices. And therefore, in this play, vices are portrayed as the reason why people lose their own dignity.

About the conflict of the work

The key conflict in Pushkin's work is external. The conflict unfolds between the baron and Albert, who claims the inheritance due to him. According to the Baron, money should be treated with care, not wasteful. And suffering teaches this attitude. The Baron wishes to preserve and increase his wealth. And the son, in turn, seeks to use money to enjoy life.

Pushkin's poem "Village" is an example of a work written far from the bustling city. We offer our readers

The conflict creates a clash of interests for the heroes. Moreover, the situation is greatly aggravated by the intervention of the duke. In this situation, the baron slanders Albert. The conflict can only be resolved in a tragic way. One side must die for the conflict to be settled. As a result, the passion turns out to be so destructive that it kills the baron, who is represented by that stingy knight. However, Pushkin does not speak about the fate of Albert, so the reader can only speculate.

On the composition and genre of "The Covetous Knight"

The tragedy includes three episodes. In the first scene, the writer talks about the situation of the baron's son. Albert suffers from material poverty, because the baron is overly stingy. In the second scene, the reader is introduced to the monologue of the baron, reflecting on his passion. Finally, in the third scene, the conflict is gaining proportions, the duke joins the conflict - one of the most just characters. Unwittingly and unwittingly, the duke hastens the tragic outcome of the conflict. The baron, possessed by passion, dies. The culmination is the death of the stingy knight. And the denouement, in turn, is the Duke's conclusion:

Terrible age, terrible hearts!

In terms of genre, Pushkin's work is definitely a tragedy, since the central character dies at the end. Despite the small volume of this text, the author managed to concisely and succinctly reflect the whole essence.

Pushkin set out to present the psychological characteristics of a person who is possessed by a destructive passion - avarice.

About the style and artistic originality of the "The Covetous Knight"

It should be said that the author created Pushkin's tragedies more for theatrical performance than for reading. There are many theatrical elements in the work - for example, what is the image of a stingy knight, a dark basement and shiny gold. In addition, critics consider this text a poetic masterpiece.

Mystical and biblical implications of the work

However, Pushkin lays in his text deeper meanings than it seems at first glance. The Baron is not attracted to wealth in and of itself. The hero is rather interested in the world of ideas and emotions associated with gold. This is the difference between the image of the baron and the images of "misers" from Russian comedies of the 18th century (as an example, we can recall the heroes from the works of Derzhavin). Initially, Alexander Sergeevich took the epigraph from Derzhavin's text called "Skopikhin". In the literature, writers tend to infer several types. The first type is comic-satirical (the miser), and the second type is tall, tragic (accumulator). The Baron, accordingly, belongs to the second type. The combination of these types is observed in Gogol's "Dead Souls", and specifically in the personality of Plyushkin.

High drive image

This image is fully revealed in the monologue of the baron, presented in the second part of "The Covetous Knight". The author describes how the baron goes into the dungeon of his castle. This, in turn, is a symbol of an altar in the underworld, a devilish sanctuary. The hero pours a handful of coins into the chest. This chest is not yet full. This scene depicts the hero's confession in front of him. In addition, here Pushkin gives a general leitmotif for the entire cycle of tragedies - a feast by candlelight. Such a feast pleases both the eyes and the soul - it is a sacrament, a mass for money.

This is the mystical subtext of Pushkin's work, which is combined with the Gospel paraphrases from the baron's confession. Pushkin describes the gold heaped up in the image of a "proud hill". Standing on a hill, towering above the outside world, the baron feels power. The lower the hero leans over the gold, the stronger, the more his passion rises. And passion is the embodiment of a demonic spirit. The reader probably noticed a similar image in the Bible: the Devil promises world power to Jesus Christ. To demonstrate power, the Devil lifts Christ to a high hill. Sometimes literary critics see the baron as an inverted image of God. Considering that gold is a symbol of power over the world, the words of the baron about the reign are not surprising.

Another question is why the baron treats his son as an enemy. This has nothing to do with Albert's moral character. The reason is the extravagance of the young man. Albert's pocket is not a place where gold accumulates, but an abyss, an abyss that absorbs money.

Images-antipodes

In order to focus on the destructive nature of passions, the writer introduces an antipode character, contrasting with the image of the main character. The antipode of the Baron is the usurer (Jew). Solomon lends money to Albert, but eventually pushes the young man to kill his father. However, the young knight does not want to commit such a sin and drives the usurer away.

"Am I wandering along noisy streets ..." is a work reflecting the philosophical reflections of Alexander Pushkin on eternal questions. We invite lovers of the classics to get acquainted

The usurer wishes to receive gold as a medium of exchange. There are no sublime emotions here, like the baron. This is also seen in Solomon's behavior. The mode of action of the usurer betrays the hero as a scoundrel rather than a knight. In this context, it is symbolic that the author singled out individual characters into a separate category of knights.

Pushkin wrote the tragedy in the 20s of the XIX century. And it was published in the Sovremennik magazine. With the tragedy The Miserly Knight begins a cycle of works called "Little Tragedies". In the work, Pushkin denounces such a negative trait of the human character as stinginess.

He transfers the action of the work to France so that no one would guess that we are talking about a very close person to him, about his father. It is he who is the miser. Here he lives in Paris, surrounded by 6 chests of gold. But he doesn't take a dime from there. Opens, looks and closes again.

The main goal in life is hoarding. But the baron does not understand how mentally ill he is. This "golden serpent" completely subjugated him to his will. Miserly believes that thanks to gold he will gain independence and freedom. But he does not notice how this serpent deprives him of not only all human feelings. But even he perceives his own son as an enemy. His mind was completely clouded. He challenges him to a duel over money.

The son of a knight is a strong and brave man, he often emerges as a winner in knightly tournaments. He is handsome and likes the female sex. But he is financially dependent on his father. And he manipulates his son with money, insults his pride and honor. Even the strongest person can break the will. Communism has not yet arrived, and money still rules the world now, it ruled then. Therefore, the son secretly hopes that he will kill his father and take possession of the money.

The Duke ends the duel. He calls his son a monster. But the very thought of losing money kills the Baron. Interestingly, and that there were no banks in those days? I would put the money at interest and live happily ever after. And he, apparently, kept them at home, so he shook over every coin.

Here is another hero Solomon, also "laid eyes" on the wealth of the stingy knight. For the sake of his own enrichment, he does not shun anything. Acts cunningly and subtly - invites his son to kill his father. Just poison him. The son drives him away in disgrace. But he is ready to fight with his own father because he insulted his honor.

Passions ran high, and only the death of one of the parties can calm the duelists.

There are only three scenes in the tragedy. The first scene - the son confesses to his difficult financial situation. The second scene - the stingy knight pours out his soul. The third scene is the intervention of the duke and the death of the stingy knight. And at the end of the curtain the words sound: "Awful age, terrible hearts." Therefore, the genre of the work can be defined as a tragedy.

The precise and accurate language of Pushkin's comparisons and epithets makes it possible to imagine a stingy knight. Here he is sorting through gold coins, in a dark basement among the flickering candlelight. His monologue is so realistic that one can shudder when imagining how blood-stained villainy creeps into this gloomy damp basement. And licks the hands of the knight. It becomes scary and disgusting from the presented picture.

The time of the tragedy is medieval France. The end, on the threshold is a new system - capitalism. Therefore, a stingy knight, on the one hand, is a knight, and on the other hand, a usurer, lends money at interest. That's where he got such a huge amount of money from.

Each has its own truth. The son sees in the father a watchdog, an Algerian slave. And the father in the son sees a windy young man who will not earn money with his hump, but will receive it by inheritance. He calls him a madman, a young prodigal who participates in riotous revels.

Option 2

The genre versatility of A.S. Pushkin is great. He is a master of words, and his work is represented by novels, fairy tales, poems, poems, drama. The writer reflects the reality of his time, reveals human vices, looks for psychological solutions to problems. The cycle of his works "Little Tragedies" is the cry of the human soul. The author wants to show his reader in them: how greed, stupidity, envy, the desire for enrichment look from the outside.

The first play in Little Tragedies is The Covetous Knight. It took the writer four long years to realize the plot he had conceived.

Human greed is a common vice that has existed and exists at different times. The Covetous Knight takes the reader to medieval France. The main image of the play is Baron Philip. The man is rich and stingy. He is haunted by his chests of gold. He does not spend money, the meaning of his life is only accumulation. Money has consumed his soul, he is completely dependent on them. Avarice manifests itself in the baron and in human relations. The son is an enemy to him, who poses a threat to his wealth. From a once noble man, he turned into a slave to his passion.

The son of the baron is a strong youth, a knight. Handsome and brave, girls like him, he often participates in tournaments and wins them. But financially Albert depends on his father. A young man cannot afford to purchase a horse, armor, and decent clothing for going out. The striking opposite of a father's son is kind to people. The difficult financial situation broke the will of his son. He dreams of receiving an inheritance. A man of honor, after being insulted, he challenges Baron Philip to a duel, wishing him death.

Another character in the play is the duke. He acts as a judge of the conflict as a representative of the authorities. Condemning the act of the knight, the duke calls him a monster. The very attitude of the writer to the events taking place in the tragedy is embedded in the speech of this hero.

Compositionally, the piece consists of three parts. The opening scene tells the story of Albert, his plight. In it, the author reveals the cause of the conflict. The second scene is a monologue of the father, who appears before the viewer as a "stingy knight". The finale is the denouement of the story, the death of the possessed baron and the author's conclusion about what happened.

As in any tragedy, the plot's denouement is classic - the death of the protagonist. But for Pushkin, who managed to reflect the essence of the conflict in a small work, the main thing is to show the psychological dependence of a person on his vice - avarice.

The work written by A.S. Pushkin back in the 19th century is relevant to this day. Humanity has not got rid of the sin of accumulating material wealth. Now the generational conflict between children and parents is not resolved. Many examples can be seen in our time. Children who rent out their parents in nursing homes to get apartments are not uncommon these days. Spoken in the tragedy by the Duke: "A terrible age, terrible hearts!" can be attributed to our XXI century.

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Since ancient times, clothing had not only a formal meaning - to hide nudity, but also represented a symbolic element that was used in society. For example, people once took pride in owning skins.

The stingy knight.

The young knight Albert is going to come to the tournament and asks his servant Ivan to show his helmet. The helmet is pierced through in the last duel with the knight DeLorgue. It is impossible to put it on. The servant comforts Albert by the fact that he repaid DeLorgue in full, knocking him out of the saddle with a mighty blow, from which Albert's offender lay dead for a day and has hardly recovered until now. Albert says that the reason for his courage and strength was fury over the damaged helmet.

The guilt of heroism is avarice. Albert complains about poverty, about the embarrassment that prevented him from removing the helmet from the defeated enemy, says that he needs a new dress, that he alone is forced to sit at the ducal table in armor, while other knights flaunt in satin and velvet. But there is no money for clothing and weapons, and Albert's father, the old baron, is a curmudgeon. There is no money to buy a new horse, and Albert's permanent creditor, the Jew Solomon, according to Ivan, refuses to continue to believe in debt without a mortgage. But the knight has nothing to pledge. The usurer does not give in to any persuasion, and even the argument that Albert's father is old, will soon die and leave his son all his huge fortune, does not convince the lender.

At this time, Solomon himself appears. Albert tries to beg for a loan from him, but Solomon, although gently, nevertheless decisively refuses to give money even on the knight's word of honor. Albert, upset, does not believe that his father can survive him, Solomon says that everything happens in life, that “our days are not numbered by us,” and the baron is strong and can live for another thirty years. In desperation, Albert says that in thirty years he will be fifty, and then he will hardly need money.

Solomon objects that money is needed at any age, only "the young man is looking for quick servants in them", "the old man sees in them reliable friends." Albert claims that his father himself serves money, like an Algerian slave, "like a chain dog." He denies himself everything and lives worse than a beggar, and "gold lies quietly in chests for himself." Albert still hopes that someday it will serve him, Albert. Seeing Albert's despair and his readiness for anything, Solomon gives him hints to understand that the death of his father can be brought closer with the help of poison. At first, Albert does not understand these hints.

But, having understood the matter, he wants to immediately hang Solomon at the gate of the castle. Solomon, realizing that the knight is not joking, wants to pay off, but Albert drives him out. Recovering himself, he intends to send a servant for the usurer to accept the offered money, but changes his mind, because it seems to him that they will smell like poison. He demands to serve wine, but it turns out that there is not a drop of wine in the house. Cursing such a life, Albert decides to seek justice for his father from the duke, who must force the old man to support his son, as befits a knight.

The Baron goes down to his basement, where he keeps chests of gold, so that he can pour a handful of coins into the sixth chest, which is not yet full. Looking at his treasures, he recalls the legend of the king, who ordered his soldiers to put a handful of earth, and how, as a result, a gigantic hill grew from which the king could look over vast spaces. The baron likens his treasures, collected bit by bit, to this hill, which makes him the ruler of the whole world. He recalls the story of each coin, behind which there are tears and grief of people, poverty and death. It seems to him that if all the tears, blood and sweat shed for this money now emerged from the bowels of the earth, then there would be a flood.

He pours a handful of money into the chest, and then unlocks all the chests, puts lighted candles in front of them and admires the glitter of gold, feeling himself the lord of a mighty power. But the thought that after his death the heir will come here and squander his wealth, infuriates the baron and indignation. He believes that he has no right to this, that if he himself had accumulated these treasures by the hardest labors bit by bit, then surely he would not have thrown gold left and right.

In the palace, Albert complains to the duke about his father, and the duke promises to help the knight, to persuade the baron to support his son, as befits. He hopes to awaken paternal feelings in the baron, because the baron was a friend of his grandfather and played with the duke when he was still a child.

The baron approaches the palace, and the duke asks Albert to hide in the next room while he talks with his father. The Baron appears, the Duke greets him and tries to evoke in him the memories of his youth. He wants the baron to appear at court, but the baron is discouraged by old age and infirmity, but promises that in case of war he will have the strength to draw his sword for his duke. The duke asks why he does not see the baron's son at court, to which the baron replies that his son's gloomy disposition is an obstacle. The duke asks the baron to send his son to the palace and promises to teach him to have fun. He demands that the baron appoint to his son a maintenance befitting a knight.

Gloomy, the baron says that his son is not worthy of the duke's care and attention, that “he is vicious,” and refuses to fulfill the duke's request. He says he is angry with his son for plotting paricide. The Duke threatens to bring Albert to justice for this. The Baron reports that his son intends to rob him. Hearing these slander, Albert bursts into the room and accuses his father of lying. The angry baron throws a glove to his son. With the words “Thank you. Here is the first gift of his father. ”Albert accepts the baron's challenge. This incident plunges the duke into amazement and anger, he takes away the baron's glove from Albert and drives away his father and son. At that moment, with the words about the keys on his lips, the baron dies, and the duke laments "a terrible century, terrible hearts."

The theme of "The Covetous Knight" is the terrible power of money, that "gold" that the sober bourgeois merchant called upon the people of the "Iron Age", the "century-huckster" to save it back in 1824 in Pushkin's "A Conversation of a Bookseller with a Poet". In the monologue of Baron Philip, this knight-usurer, in front of his trunks, Pushkin paints the profoundly inhuman nature of the “immediate emergence of capital” - the initial accumulation of piles of “gold”, compared by the avaricious knight with the “proud hill” of some ancient king who ordered his soldiers to “demolish the land a handful in a heap ": * (Looks at his gold.) * It seems not a lot, * And how many human worries, * Deceptions, tears, prayers and curses * It is a ponderous representative! * There is an old doubloon ... here it is. * Today the Widow gave it to me, but before * With three children half a day in front of the window * She was on her knees howling. * It rained, and stopped, and went again, * The pretender did not touch; * I could have chased Her away, but something whispered to me, * That she brought me a husband's debt, * And she will not want to be in jail tomorrow. * And this one? this one Thibault brought me * Where was he to get the sloth, the rogue? * Stole, of course; or maybe * There on the high road, at night, in the grove. * Yes! if all the tears, blood and sweat, * Shed for everything that is stored here, * From the depths of the earth, all suddenly emerged, * Then there would be a flood again - I drowned b * In my basements of the faithful. Tears, blood and sweat - these are the foundations on which the world of "gold", the world of the "century-huckster" is built. And it is not for nothing that Baron Philip, in whom "gold" suppressed and disfigured his' human nature, the simple and natural movements of the heart - pity, sympathy for the suffering of other people - compares the sensation that grips him when he unlocks his chest with the sadistic sensations of a perverted murderers: * ... my heart is cramping * Some unknown feeling ... * We are assured by doctors: there are people * who find pleasure in murder. * When I put the key in the lock, the same * I feel that I should feel * They, plunging a knife into the victim: nice * And scary together. Creating the image of his "stingy knight", giving a vivid picture of his experiences, Pushkin shows the main features, features of money - capital, everything that he brings with him to people, brings into human relations. Money, gold for Baron Philip is, in Belinsky's words, an object of super-possession, a source of supreme power and might: * What is beyond my control? as a certain Demon * From now on I can rule the world; * I just want - palaces will be erected; * In my magnificent gardens * Nymphs will run down in a frisky crowd; * And the muses will bring their tribute to me, * And a free genius will enslave me, * And virtue and sleepless labor * Will humbly await my reward. Here the peculiar figure of Pushkin's knight-usurer acquires gigantic proportions and outlines, grows into an ominous, demonic prototype of the coming capitalism with its boundless greed and insatiable lusts, with its crazy dreams of world domination. A striking example of ripping off such a superpower of money is the same "stingy knight". Completely lonely, secluded from everything and everyone in his basement with gold, Baron Philip looks at his own son - the only person who is bloodily close to him on earth, as at his worst enemy, a potential murderer (the son really does not wait for his death) and a thief: he will squander, let down the wind after his death, all his selflessly accumulated wealth. This culminates in the scene of the father calling his son to a duel and the joyful readiness with which the last glove thrown to him "hastily lifts". Marx noted, among other things, the special aesthetic properties of the so-called 'noble metals' - silver and gold: highest voltage, red. The sense of color is the most popular form of aesthetic feeling in general ”1. Baron Philip Pushkin - we know - is a kind of poet of the passion that grips him. Gold gives him not only intellectual (the thought of his omnipotence, omnipotence: "I obey everything, I do nothing"), but also purely sensual pleasure, and precisely with its "feast" for the eyes - color, brilliance, sparkle: * I want myself to arrange a feast today: * I will light a candle in front of each chest, * And I will open all of them, and I myself will * Look among them at the shining heaps. * (Lights a candle and unlocks the chests one by one.) * I reign! .. * What a magical shine! Very expressively shown by Pushkin in the image of a "stingy knight" and one more consequence, which naturally follows from the characteristic of the capitalist capital: the accumulation of "accursed thirst for gold." Money, as a means, for a person possessed by a cursed thirst for gold, turns into an end in itself, the passion for enrichment becomes stinginess. Money, as an “individual of universal wealth,” gives its owner “universal domination over society, over the whole world of pleasure and labor. This is the same as if, for example, the discovery of a stone would give me, completely regardless of my individuality, the mastery of all sciences. The possession of money puts me in relation to wealth (social) in exactly the same relation to which the possession of a philosopher's stone would put me in relation to the sciences.

"The Miserly Knight" analysis of the work - theme, idea, genre, plot, composition, characters, problems and other issues are disclosed in this article.

History of creation

The Miserly Knight was conceived in 1826 and finished in the autumn of Boldin in 1830. Published in 1836 in the Sovremennik magazine. Pushkin gave the play the subtitle "From Chenston's Tragicomedy". But the writer of the 18th century. Shenston (in the tradition of the 19th century, his name was written Chenston) there was no such play. Perhaps Pushkin referred to a foreign author so that his contemporaries would not suspect that the poet described his relationship with his father, who was known for his stinginess.

Theme and plot

Pushkin's play "The Covetous Knight" is the first work in a cycle of dramatic sketches, short plays, which were later named "Little Tragedies". Pushkin intended in each play to reveal some side of the human soul, an all-consuming passion (avarice in The Covetous Knight). Spiritual qualities, psychology are shown in sharp and unusual plots.

Heroes and characters

The Baron is rich but stingy. He has six chests full of gold, from which he does not take a dime. Money is not servants or friends for him, as for the usurer Solomon, but gentlemen. The Baron does not want to admit to himself that money has enslaved him. He believes that thanks to money sleeping peacefully in chests, everything is subject to him: love, inspiration, genius, virtue, labor, even villainy. The Baron is ready to kill anyone who encroaches on his wealth, even his own son, whom he challenges to a duel. The duel is hindered by the duke, but the very possibility of losing money kills the baron. The passion that the Baron possesses consumes him.

Solomon has a different attitude to money: it is a way to achieve a goal, to survive. But, like the baron, for the sake of enrichment, he does not disdain anything, offering Albert to poison his own father.

Albert is a worthy young knight, strong and brave, winning tournaments and enjoying the favor of the ladies. He is completely dependent on his father. The young man has nothing to buy a helmet and armor, a dress for a feast and a horse for a tournament, only out of despair he decides to complain to the duke.

Albert possesses excellent spiritual qualities, he is kind, gives the last bottle of wine to a sick blacksmith. But he is broken by circumstances and dreams of the time when gold will be inherited by him. When the usurer Solomon proposes to bring Albert to the pharmacist who sells poison in order to poison his father, the knight drives him out in disgrace. And soon Albert already accepts the baron's challenge to a duel, he is ready to fight to the death with his own father, who insulted his honor. The Duke calls Albert a monster for this act.

The duke in tragedy is a representative of authority who voluntarily took on this burden. The duke calls his age and the hearts of people terrible. Through the mouth of the Duke, Pushkin speaks about his time.

Problematic

In every small tragedy, Pushkin gazes intently at some vice. In The Covetous Knight, this pernicious passion is avarice: a change in the personality of a once worthy member of society under the influence of vice; the hero's submission to vice; vice as a cause of loss of dignity.

Conflict

The main conflict is external: between the stingy knight and his son, claiming his share. The Baron believes that wealth must be endured in order not to squander it. The Baron's goal is to preserve and increase, Albert's goal is to use and enjoy. The conflict is caused by the clash of these interests. It is aggravated by the participation of the duke, to whom the baron is forced to slander his son. The strength of the conflict is such that only the death of one of the parties can resolve it. Passion destroys the stingy knight, the reader can only guess about the fate of his wealth.

Composition

There are three scenes in the tragedy. From the first, the reader learns about the difficult financial situation of Albert, associated with the avarice of his father. The second scene is a monologue of a stingy knight, from which it is clear that passion has taken possession of him completely. In the third scene, a just duke intervenes in the conflict and involuntarily becomes the cause of the death of the hero possessed by passion. The culmination (the death of the baron) is adjacent to the denouement - the conclusion of the duke: "A terrible century, terrible hearts!"

genre

The Miserly Knight is a tragedy, that is, a dramatic work in which the main character dies. Pushkin achieved the small size of his tragedies, excluding everything unimportant. Pushkin's goal is to show the psychology of a person obsessed with the passion of avarice. All "Little Tragedies" complement each other, creating a voluminous portrait of humanity in all the variety of vices.

Style and artistic identity

All "Little Tragedies" are intended not so much for reading as for staging: how a stingy knight looks theatrically in a dark basement among the gold flickering by the light of a candle! The dialogues of tragedies are dynamic, and the monologue of the miserly knight is a poetic masterpiece. The reader just sees how bloody villainy creeps into the basement and licks the hand of the stingy knight. The images of The Covetous Knight cannot be forgotten.

In "little tragedies" Pushkin collides mutually exclusive and at the same time inextricably linked points of view and truths of his heroes in a kind of polyphonic counterpoint. This conjugation of opposite life principles is manifested not only in the figurative and semantic structure of tragedies, but also in their poetics. This is clearly seen in the title of the first tragedy - "The Miserly Knight".

The action takes place in France, in the late Middle Ages. In the person of Baron Philip, Pushkin captured a peculiar type of knight-usurer, engendered by the era of transition from feudal relations to bourgeois-money relations. This is a special social "species", a kind of social centaur, fancifully combining features of opposite eras and structures. In him are still alive the idea of ​​knightly honor, of his social privilege. At the same time, he is the bearer of other aspirations and ideals generated by the increasing power of money, on which the position of a person in society depends to a greater extent than on origin and titles. Money shatters, erodes the boundaries of class-caste groups, tears down the partitions between them. In this regard, the importance of the personal principle in a person, his freedom, but at the same time also responsibility - for himself and others, increases.

Baron Philip is a large, complex character, a man of great will. Its main goal is the accumulation of gold as the main value in the emerging new way of life. At first, this hoarding is not an end in itself for him, but only a means of gaining complete independence and freedom. And the Baron seems to achieve his goal, as his monologue speaks about in the “basements of the faithful”: “What is beyond my control? As a certain demon From now on, I can rule the world ... ”and so on (V, 342-343). However, this independence, power and strength are bought at too high a price - with tears, sweat and blood of the victims of baronial passion. But the matter is not limited to turning other people into a means of achieving his goal. In the end, the Baron turns himself into only a means of achieving this goal, for which he pays with the loss of his human feelings and qualities, even such natural ones as his father's, perceiving his own son as his mortal enemy. So money, from a means of gaining independence and freedom, imperceptibly for the hero turns into an end in itself, of which the Baron becomes an appendage. No wonder his son Albert says about money: “Oh, my father does not see servants or friends in them, but masters, and he himself serves them ... like an Algerian slave, like a chain dog” (V, 338). Pushkin, as it were, but already realistically rethinks the problem posed in The Prisoner of the Caucasus: the inevitability of finding on the paths of individualistic flight from society instead of the desired freedom - slavery. Selfish monoplasty leads the Baron not only to his alienation, but also to self-alienation, that is, to alienation from his human essence, from humanity as its basis.

However, Baron Philip has his own truth, which explains and to some extent justifies his position in life. Thinking about his son - the heir of all his riches, which he will get without any efforts and worries, he sees in this a violation of justice, the destruction of the foundations of the world order he affirms, in which everything must be achieved and suffered by the person himself, and not passed on as an undeserved gift of God (including the royal throne - here there is an interesting roll-over with the problems of Boris Godunov, but on a different basis in life). Enjoying the contemplation of his treasures, the Baron exclaims: “I reign! .. What a magical brilliance! Obedient to me, my state is strong; In her happiness, in her my honor and glory! " But after that he was suddenly overwhelmed by confusion and horror: “I reign ... but who will follow me to take power over her? My heir! Madman, young wasteful. Libertines riotous interlocutor! " The Baron is horrified not by the inevitability of death, parting with life and treasures, but the violation of the highest justice, which gave his life meaning: “He squanders ... And by what right? I really got it all for nothing ... Who knows how many bitter abstinence, Bridled passions, heavy thoughts, Day cares, sleepless nights did it cost me? that he acquired with blood ”(V, 345-346).

It has its own logic, a harmonious philosophy of a strong and tragic personality, with its own consistent truth, although it did not withstand the test of humanity. Who is to blame for this? On the one hand, historical circumstances, the era of the approaching commercialism, in which the unrestrained growth of material wealth leads to spiritual impoverishment and turns a person from an end in itself into just a means of achieving other goals. But Pushkin does not relieve the responsibility of the hero himself, who chose the path of achieving freedom and independence in individualistic separation from people.

The image of Albert is also connected with the problem of choosing a life position. Its widespread interpretation as a crushed version of the personality of his father, in which the features of chivalry will be lost over time and the qualities of a usurer-accumulator, will prevail over time. In principle, such a metamorphosis is possible. But it is not fatally inevitable, because it depends on Albert himself whether he will retain his inherent openness to people, sociability, kindness, the ability to think not only about himself, but also about others (the episode with a sick blacksmith is indicative here), or will lose these qualities, like his father. In this regard, the final remark of the Duke is significant: "A terrible century, terrible hearts." In it, guilt and responsibility are, as it were, evenly distributed - between the century and the “heart” of a person, his feeling, reason and will. At the moment of the development of the action, Baron Philip and Albert act, despite their blood relationship, as carriers of two opposing, but in some ways mutually correcting truths. In both there are elements of both absoluteness and relativity, which are tested and developed in each epoch by each person in his own way.

In The Covetous Knight, as in all other “little tragedies,” Pushkin's realistic skill reaches its peak - in terms of the depth of penetration into the socio-historical and moral-psychological essence of the characters depicted, in the ability to consider the timeless and the universal in the temporal and particular. In them, such a feature of the poetics of Pushkin's works as their “dizzying brevity” (A. Akhmatova), which contains “an abyss of space” (N. Gogol), reaches its full development. From tragedy to tragedy, the scale and content of the depicted images-characters increase, the depth, including the moral and philosophical, of the displayed conflicts and problems of human existence - in its special national modifications and deep universal human "invariants".