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MUNICIPAL EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTION
STOLBISHCHENSKY SECONDARY EDUCATIONAL SCHOOL
PILNINSKY MUNICIPAL DISTRICT
NIZHNY NOVGOROD REGION
ESSAY
ON THE TOPIC:
“The image of Hermann in the story of A.S. Pushkin
« Queen of Spades» »
Performed
11th grade student
MOU Stolbischenskaya secondary school
Vasilyeva Elizaveta Petrovna
Supervisor:
Lukacheva Olga Alexandrovna
CONTENT
I.Introduction..……………………………………………..………………………….3
IIThe image of Hermann in the story of A.S. Pushkin "The Queen of Spades"……………...….4
The plot of the story "The Queen of Spades"………………………………………………4
Hermann and his role in the main plot……………………………………6
Thomson's Tales………………………………………………………………...8
Rock of Fate…………………………………………………………………...8
About the real meaning of the three cards……………………………………………….9
IIIConclusion…………………………………………………………………… 10
List of used literature………………………………………………...11
Appendix……………………………………………………………………..12
Introduction
" Pushkin is an extraordinary phenomenon, and perhaps the only manifestation of the Russian spirit," said Gogol.
F.M. Dostoevsky said this about Pushkin: “Pushkin was the first, with his deeply perspicacious and brilliant mind and purely Russian heart, to find and mark the most important and painful phenomenon of our intelligent society, historically cut off from the soil, exalted above the people. He noted and convexly placed before us our negative type, a person who is worried and not reconciled, who does not believe in his native soil and in her native forces, Russia and himself (that is, his own society, his own intelligent stratum that arose above our native soil). ) in the end denying, to do with others unwilling and sincerely suffering " .
An outstanding place among the prose works of Pushkin of the 30s is occupied by a small in volume, but rich in deep social meaning story "The Queen of Spades".
For the essay, I chose the topic “The image of Hermann in the story by A. S. Pushkin “The Queen of Spades”, since this story is still relevant, interesting and mysterious.
The Queen of Spades is truly one of the wonders of Pushkin's art. The story, for all its plot exoticism, is written with a focus on pure simplicity. Thanks to the calm, almost business-like tone of the story, the romantic plot acquires all the features of freshness and bright originality.
The problem of the eternal struggle with oneself and eternal passions runs like red threads through the whole story and determines its relevance in our days. The Queen of Spades is connected not only with the future of Russian literature, but also with its recent past. It explores human passion, fatal passion. Here it is transferred from the historical past directly into the modern era - and the fact that it appears in a more modern forms and in the more ordinary sphere of life, makes it even more terrible. The protagonist's passion for enrichment grows to the size of a cold, merciless and at the same time insane passion. Hermann in Pushkin's story goes crazy. Behind this is not just an indication of a real everyday fact, but also a deep and tragic author's thought general meaning .
"The Queen of Spades" has been studied by many writers, considered with different sides, and I want to know what mystery the work of A.S. Pushkin.
II The image of Hermann in the story of A.S. Pushkin "The Queen of Spades"
The plot of the story "The Queen of Spades"
The plot of The Queen of Spades, in Pushkin's style, is simple and transparent for a superficial interpretation, fraught with unlimited possibilities for a new vision. So "The Queen of Spades" at first glance may seem like a tragedy. But, peering into the depth of the story, we see something more serious and important here. Some secret lies in the story itself, in the epigraph it is written: "The Queen of Spades means malevolence."
In the face of the protagonist of the story - Hermann with his "profile of Napoleon, and the soul of Mephistopheles", Pushkin created the type of that new bourgeois "hero" - a predator-acquirer, who appears at that time in Russian reality.Hermann is a military engineer, the son of a Russified German, who did not receive a lot of capital from his parent, and therefore was forced to live on one salary, not allowing himself the slightest whim. A gambler at heart, he never sits down at the card table. However, Hermann's "strong passions and fiery imagination" are ignited by the story of his friend Tomsky about three cards that once allowed his grandmother, Countess Anna Fedotovna, to pay off a large gambling debt.For Hermann the main objective life - personal well-being, money. "Money - that's what his soul yearned for!" - Lizaveta Ivanovna, who guessed Hermann, admits bitterly. A man of "strong passions and a fiery imagination," Hermann is secretive, ambitious, passionate in his soul, but prudent and thrifty almost to the point of stinginess.The Countess's house attracts from now onHermannlike a magnet.For the sake of achieving wealth, he is ready for anything: to captivate a young girl whom he does not really love, and become the lover of an eighty-year old woman, and even commit a crime., just to become the owner of the secret of the three cards. "Calculation, moderation and diligence", on which he built his former life, lose their former attractiveness for Hermann. The meeting with Lizaveta Ivanovna - the poor pupil of the old countess - decides his fate. Using the girl's love as a key to the countess's house, Hermann enters her bedroom and conjures the old woman with "feelings of a wife, mistress, mother" to reveal to him the secret of the three cards. The frightened countess dies without saying anything. True, three days later, on the day of the funeral, the ghost of the countess appears to Hermann in a dream and calls the cards: three, seven, ace. From now on, three cards completely occupy the imagination of Hermann. For three days in a row, he comes to the house of the hussar Chekalinsky and puts one card at a time, as ordered by the countess. The first two days bring him a win, on the third day, instead of an ace, the Queen of Spades falls on the table, endowed in Hermann's imagination with a fatal resemblance to a countess. The defeated Hermann goes crazy and ends his days in the Obukhov hospital.
Such is the nature of the protagonist - a man who, being "not able to sacrifice the necessary in the hope of acquiring the superfluous," succumbed to destructive passion and lost his mind in the pursuit of wealth.
The other images of the story are given with exceptional graphic clarity of the drawing: the old countess, who was directly copied by Pushkin from one of the titled old women of the Nikolaev court, the “poor pupil” Lizaveta Ivanovna, the frivolous and careless guardsman of Tomsky and the player Chekalinsky. The description of the game in Chekalinsky's house, in its strictly epic tone and at the same time deep inner drama, is one of the most remarkable pages of Russian narrative prose.
The plot revolves around simple human vices: betrayal, excitement, greed, thirst for easy money, flattery, laziness, selfishness. As in any classic book, Pushkin's story presented and fully revealed the images of Lisa and Hermann as antipodes. She is faithful and airy, he is greedy, incapable of strong feelings. Only excitement and thirst for profit drives him. The story deals with 2 parallels - the tortured Lisa, who is a servant of a rich, fastidious and eccentric old woman. And Hermann, tortured by the idle life of his friends, but unable to share it.
That is why all Hermann's actions are of a dual nature, they are fraught with the idea of retribution. Artistically, as we shall see, it could be expressed symbolically. Revealing the inevitability of Hermann's catastrophe, Pushkin thereby condemns his hero and his philosophy.
Hermann and his role in the main plot
The new century imposed its ideal of life on Hermann. But circumstances did not force him to betray, to commit a crime. Therefore, Hermann is not a victim of a society where money begins to rule, but the bearer of its ideologies, a typical figure of our time, belonging to a tribe of people with the profile of Napoleon. In Hermann's readiness to kill everything human in himself in order to gain an illusory happiness, whose name is capital - Hermann's guilt, which has no justification. “A man who has no moral rules and nothing sacred,” such is the epigraph to the chapter, where Hermann's shameless play with Lizaveta Ivanovna's feelings is revealed. Therefore, Hermann is the very source of evil in society, a person capable of committing crimes, a cruel practitioner of an inhuman society, who has chosen selfishness as a means of his self-affirmation.
There was a self-disclosure: we were brought to the very edge of the terrible abyss - the abyss of the soul of a man who betrays his human nature. This betrayal is one of the most savage crimes of the bourgeois age; the masters of the new legal order have turned the revivalist philosophy of individualism into a poisoned weapon for the corruption of man. The fate of Hermann psychologically reliably revealed the fatality of individualism for a person. It not only corrupts the personality, but gives rise to a violent and blind thirst for self-destruction, causes the betrayal of one's nature.
The soul of Hermann is illuminated by Pushkin, but we did not see a sick conscience there. Amazing and terrible is this soul of Hermann, lifeless as a conflagration, nothing living grows on it. Nothing? But it is clearly said that "his heart also tormented ...". Is Hermann's heart capable of tormenting? What was it about at that moment? One thing terrified him: the irretrievable loss of a secret from which he expected enrichment. Lizaveta Ivanovna, as it were, overheard the secret voice of Hermann's grief: “You are a Monster! Lizaveta Ivanovna finally said.
Hermann is a living person, not a soulless machine. The voice of conscience can sometimes, although muffled, make itself felt, but it will immediately be mercilessly suppressed and muffled. So it was before the explanation with the Countess. But after his threats, she died. Hermann understands his guilt. He informs Lizaveta Ivanovna: "The countess died ... And it seems," Hermann continued, "I was the cause of her death." Lizaveta Ivanovna realized that she was nothing but the blind assistant of the robber, the murderer of her old benefactor! .. She wept bitterly in her late, painful repentance.
And in this, I will add, one more feature symbolic image Hermann. The illusiveness and madness of Hermann's wild pursuit of the secret of the three cards, which should bring him wealth, is highlighted with particular brightness by the discovery that there is no secret, that the whole story with the cards is just a joke ... Calculating and Cruel person with a profile of Napoleon ahead, not sparing the people around him, he is torn to a secret - a symbol of his happiness, but she - a secret - is not! And all his efforts, betrayals are useless, there is nothing ahead, emptiness, a black hole of imminent catastrophe. All this collision is deeply symbolic.
Hermann sees tears, understands the grief and despair of Lizaveta Ivanovna. What does he experience after the murder, looking at the girl insulted and deceived by him? Pushkin deliberately creates a psychologically tense situation that would allow him to discover the most secret of his soul, hidden even from himself. “Hermann looked at her in silence: his heart was also tormented, but neither the tears of the poor girl, nor the amazing charm of her sorrows disturbed his harsh soul. He felt no remorse at the thought of the dead old woman."
Tale of Tomsky
This episode is the biggest. It tells an anecdote, after which the whole story is tied up, Hermann's excitement, his desires and weaknesses are kindled. The story is told by Tomsky. In my opinion, it is very successful, as it was told in the circle of players (a good place), many did not play, but wanted to, and many lost (on time). Tomsky is counting on the fact that this anecdote will intrigue them, interest them, and maybe even make them think about history constantly. We see how the actions of the characters begin to change, a plot is built, the cause of which is an anecdote. Tomsky conveys authentically and objectively the conversation between the Countess and Saint-Germain that no one has heard. He couldn't know it.
Throughout the work, Tomsky is a tempter.
He has something on his mind that no one cares about, but his stories make an impression. Tomsky came up with a lot of things in his story, but they believed him, although it may not have been true.
Tomsky, having guessed about the relationship between Liza and Hermann, decided to indirectly help him reach his goal and began to tempt Lizaveta Ivanovna, and why he needed this remains a question for us.
He did not communicate with Hermann, but he told Lizaveta Ivanovna interesting details of his character, he did not know them either: “He has the profile of Napoleon, and the soul of Mephistopheles. I think that on his conscience, at least three atrocities.
rock of fate
Fate played a cruel joke with Hermann. And now she is starting to lay out her trump cards on the table. The first is Hermann's loss. The second is his madness. “Herman has gone mad. He is sitting in the Obukhov hospital in room 17, but does not answer any questions and mutters unusually quickly: "Three, seven, ace! Three, seven, queen!..." But the third winning card fate did not play. She was able to stop and not continue the useless duel. And it turns out that it was she who won this final game. And her cards were: three, seven, fate.
Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin showed us a man's attempt to conquer his fate, but it turned out to be impossible. But it does not at all follow from this that one must become fatalists and completely obey one's predestination. Fate must and must be fought, but only by other methods. On the misfortune and death of others, fate simply will not allow you to build your well-being. She is mean, but very fair. It is she who rewards a person according to his merits. After all, the fate of other characters was successful. Lizaveta Ivanovna got married and raised a poor relative. Tomsky was promoted to captain and married Princess Polina.
On the real meaning of the motive of three cards
The plot of The Queen of Spades attracted the attention of many researchers and caused very different interpretations.
Some commentators, raising the question of the degree of its reality, attached to the fantastic element of the story a meaning that Pushkin did not assume. As a result, judgments arose almost about the "mysticism" of Pushkin. According to L.V. Chkhaidze, there is no mysticism in the story: “However, attaching a mystical meaning to the fiction of the story is not only unacceptable, but completely unreasonable. A strong but impressionable person, who looked at someone else's game for a long time and knew well how and how much one could win, inspired himself on which cards to bet following from the game, but at the last moment unacceptable negligence led him to lose, to the complete collapse of all desires. .
Lack of clarity and innuendo lies in the very structure of the Queen of Spades style. As V. V. Vinogradov showed, here "the semantic connection is based not on the directly obvious logical correlation of successive sentences, but on the sought-after, implied links that are eliminated by the narrator." Let's try to approach the analysis of The Queen of Spades without trying to unravel and explain the mysterious vagueness of the events taking place in it, but, on the contrary, we will proceed from the fact that this feature is a defining feature of the artistic world of Pushkin's story.
In The Queen of Spades, only nascent processes are captured, about which it is still difficult to say what they will result in. Such a perception of reality brings Pushkin's story closer to Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. D.S. Likhachev notes: “One of the features of the artistic world constructed by Dostoevsky in his works is its dynamism and “unsteadiness”. All events seem to be unfinished. Everything is in the process of becoming, and therefore is not established and is by no means static. These characteristics, of course, do not apply directly to the "Queen of Spades", but there is a known connection here. For Dostoevsky, unsteadiness, dynamism, instability are inherent in life. Pushkin clearly felt the awakening of these properties of life, when the world around the poet still retained its relative stability. For centuries, the established norms of relations were still strong in the minds of people, they still claimed to be unconditional and inviolable. But life no longer fit into these norms and definitions. It revealed itself in its variability and inexhaustibility. Pushkin in The Queen of Spades creates such an artistic model of the world that allows you to demonstrate these properties of life with maximum brightness. As in any model, there is a certain amount of conventionality in it, therefore, this story by Pushkin cannot be approached from the point of view of lifelikeness. It is no coincidence that in The Queen of Spades, more than in other prose works by Pushkin, one feels the careful thoughtfulness of the composition, the skillful construction of the plot, and the refinement of every detail. Only the artistic genius of Pushkin was able to save The Queen of Spades from the feeling of "made".
Former forms of life are collapsing, new ones have not yet formed. Pushkin opposes the spontaneity and unformedness of life itself with the power of art, holding the unsteady, unstable world in a perfect and classically completed artistic form..
Conclusion
In the course of the work, we became convinced that the image of Hermann is ambiguous. We have seen how a man like Hermann can be affected by a story about a big win, a big victory. A. S. Pushkin does not tell us anything unambiguously. But we see that
in the story Man is shown as a weak being who cannot resist any temptations. Fate, on the contrary, is shown as a sovereign mistress. Only she is given the right to decide the fate of people. And when they try to stand on a par with her in full height She severely punishes them for it. Do not argue with your fate. You need to win her favor with good deeds. And, perhaps, it will be you who will be told that you have a happy fate. But you should remember that only you created it yourself.
Bibliography
1. Maimin, E. A. Pushkin. Life and work / E. A. Maimin. – M.: Nauka, 1981.
2. Pushkin A.S. “Works in three volumes”, volume 3 - Moscow, “ Fiction", 1987.
3. Dostoevsky F.M. Letters, vol. IV. M., 1959, p. 178.
4. Sidyakov L.S. to the characterization of Pushkin's artistic searches of the second Boldino autumn - Gorky: Volgo-Vyatka book publishing house, 1979.
5. Gogol N.V. Sobr. cit.: In 6 vols. - T.6.-M.: GIHL, 1959.- P.33;
6. Dostoevsky F.M. Full coll. cit.: In 30 volumes - T.26. - L .: Nauka, 1984. - S. 146-147;
7. L.V. Chkhaidze "On the real meaning of the motif of three cards in the "Queen of Spades": [ Electronic resource] // Fundamental digital library"Russian Literature and Folklore". - Access mode: ;
8. O.S. Muravyov "Fiction in Pushkin's story" The Queen of Spades ": [Electronic resource] // Fundamental Electronic Library "Russian Literature and Folklore". - Access mode: ;
9. Gukovsky G.A. Pushkin and problems of realistic style. M., 1957, p. 364.
10.Dmitriev V. A. On realistic conventionality. - In the book: Enrichment of the method of socialist realism and the problem of the diversity of Soviet art. M., 1967, p. 203.
11. Likhachev
Appendix
LikhachevD.S. “Neglect of the word” by Dostoevsky. - In the book: Dostoevsky. Materials and Research, vol. 2. L., 1976, p. thirty.
DmitrievV. A. On realistic conventionality. - In the book: Enrichment of the method of socialist realism and the problem of the diversity of Soviet art. M., 1967, p. 203.
One of the most legendary houses, inseparable from literary characters, is the house of the Queen of Spades, or the house of Princess Golitsyna on Malaya Morskaya, 10. Saying “Queen of Spades”, we immediately recall the secret of three cards: three, seven and ace; Herman's desperation after losing, room 17 of the Obukhov hospital, where Herman, who went mad, ended his life.
The scenery with a humpbacked bridge over the Winter Canal comes to mind… but these are already impressions from Tchaikovsky's opera of the same name The Queen of Spades. By the way, the house where P.I. Tchaikovsky, is located opposite the house of Princess Golitsyna. Such strange rapprochements happen in history ...
The maid of honor and lady of state at the court of five Russian emperors, cavalry princess Natalya Petrovna Golitsyna personified the continuity and inviolability of royal power. Both the cadet and the important general appeared to her, as to important authorities. Before the girl was brought out into the world, she was shown to Natalya Petrovna Golitsyna. In the princess's house on Malaya Morskaya, members of the royal family. The son of Natalya Petrovna - the Moscow Governor-General Prince Dmitry Golitsyn - stretched out before the formidable mother, as before the sovereign.
Golitsyna inherited her stern disposition from her grandfather Ushakov, head of the secret detective office under Anna Ioannovna, a well-known executioner. The father of the princess was a prominent diplomat, Count Pyotr Grigoryevich Chernyshev.
Natalya Petrovna Golitsyna was not particularly beautiful even in her youth. In her old age, she became very unattractive. Behind her eyes, she was called the "mustachioed princess." In the literature, we do not find evidence of A. Pushkin's personal acquaintance with Golitsyna, but who in St. Petersburg did not know the princess and her house on Malaya Morskaya?
Of course, the appearance of a literary hero most often reflects the character traits and biographies of not one, but several real people. The character of the book, as a rule, is a collective image. A close friend of Pushkin, Pavel Voinovich Nashchokin, noted that in the image of the old countess from the story "The Queen of Spades" they embodied the traits of another high society lady, the maid of honor and a distant relative of Pushkin's wife Natalya Kirillovna Zagryazhskaya. By the time the story was written, she was already 87 years old, like the old countess. Pushkin liked to talk for a long time with Natalya Kirillovna, learning many curious details from the era of Catherine I and Paul I.
But back to Malaya Morskaya, 10. Under Golitsyn, the house was less elegant than it is now. There was no balcony above the entrance; the pattern of windows in the center of the facade was different. But basically, both the external and internal appearance of the house has been preserved quite well. On the pediment of the house you can see the remains of the coat of arms molding. Upon entering the house, we immediately find ourselves in a spacious lobby. The main staircase leads, as before, to the fireplace on the platform, above which there is a high semicircular mirror and in it a small round clock. Faded Roman numerals on the dial. Below the inscription: "Leroy Paris". It is curious that Hermann, when he walked through the house of the Queen of Spades, came across a table clock made by the “glorious Leroy”.
Liza's note served Herman as a guide: “Go straight to the stairs ... From the front, go to the left, go all the way to the countess's bedroom. In the bedroom, behind the screens, you will see two small doors: on the right into the study, where the countess never enters, on the left into the corridor, and right there a narrow winding staircase: it leads to my room.
Following the indicated route, even today, upon entering the house of Princess Golitsyna, we will see the main marble staircase, with a fireplace and vintage clock firm "Leroy" on the site. On the second floor, just above the lobby, there is a reception hall, where today one of the city's polyclinics is located. Previously, this hall was connected with other enfilade that went along Malaya Morskaya. From the reception hall it was possible to follow Herman to the preserved corner room. Today due to redevelopment inner chambers Golitsyna's house is impossible to get through like that. Today, you can enter the former bedchamber of the princess through a narrow corridor, bypassing spiral staircase. Two windows of the bedchamber overlook Gorokhovaya, three - on Malaya Morskaya Street. Preserved white marble fireplace outer wall. Alcove, deep and wide, on inner wall room, suggests the location of the bed of the princess. On either side of the alcove are two small doors. The one to the right leads to a small room that previously served as the Countess's office.
The door to the left of the alcove connects the princess's bedroom with narrow corridor, through which today you can get into the bedroom of the Countess.
The amazing similarity of the interiors, down to the smallest details, with the one described by A.S. Pushkin! Undoubtedly, A.S. Pushkin visited Golitsyna's house. How the poet could be familiar with the peculiarities of the location and furnishing of the Countess's bedroom, where only servants or close relatives could be admitted, one can only guess ...
Six months before the creation of the "Queen of Spades" A.S. Pushkin, a block away from the house of the old countess, rented an apartment in the house of Zhadimirovsky, on the corner of Bolshaya Morskaya and Gorokhovaya streets. Bolshaya and Malaya sea streets were located in the center of aristocratic Petersburg. Of course, the poet often passed by the princess's house and that police box that stood at the corner of Malaya Morskaya and Gorokhovaya. Here is how the house of Princess A.S. Pushkin:
“... he found himself in one of the main streets of St. Petersburg, in front of the house ancient architecture. The street was crowded with carriages, the carriage one after another was heated to the illuminated entrance. From the carriages, the slender leg of a young beauty constantly stretched out, then a rattling jackboot, then a striped stocking and a diplomatic shoe. Fur coats and raincoats flashed past the stately porter. Hermann stopped.
- Whose is this house? he asked the corner guard.
“Countess ***,” answered the watchman.
The story with three cards is taken from life. Golitsyn's grandson Sergei Grigoryevich Golitsyn, who had the nickname Firs in high society, was a friend of Pushkin. Firs was no stranger to poetry, music, tried his hand at writing in these areas. But Firs' greatest passion was cards. Once, after a big loss, he came to ask his rich grandmother for money. The stingy Natalya Petrovna, instead of money, gave her grandson advice to bet on three cards and thus win back. Which cards were named by Golitsyna is unknown. But one thing is certain: Firs, having bet on the named cards, not only recouped, but also increased his jackpot!
This story, an anecdote, as they were called in the 19th century, became known to A. Pushkin and was used by him in his story The Queen of Spades.
For Pushkin scholars, the fact that N.P. Golitsyna with the famous adventurer Saint-Germain, from whom she could learn the secret of three cards ...
Why exactly these cards? Troika. Seven. Ace?
The three is associated in our view with the three commandments of Herman. All his life he put on three true cards: calculation, moderation, diligence.
If you follow Herman's bets during the game, it is easy to find the three and seven hidden in them. They are laid down by the rules of the game of the bank (shtos, pharaoh).
A.S. Pushkin in the epigraph of the story we read:
"And on rainy days
They were going
Often;
Bent - God forgive them! -
From fifty
One hundred…”
The rules of the game in the bank were beneficial to the banker and pushed his punter opponent, if he lost, to double the bet (“from fifty to one hundred.”) Sometimes it came to a sixteenfold increase in the initial bet. It was called the "password game".
Herman's initial rate was 47,000 rubles. The first win brings him another 47 thousand. On the second day of the game, Herman bets already 94 thousand. Winning on a seven gives him another 94,000. Ahead is the last, third bet. She promises Herman a doubling of the 188,000 rubles delivered; 376 thousand!
In all these calculations, a three and a seven are found. As a result of the second win, Herman receives a triple initial capital, and after the third he had to increase it seven times relative to the original bet. On the margins of the story "The Queen of Spades" the author did all these calculations. They were of fundamental importance for Pushkin.
On the third evening of the game, when Herman instead of Ace discovers the Queen of Spades, he is struck by the extraordinary resemblance of the latter to the old countess. “At that moment it seemed to him that the Queen of Spades narrowed her eyes and grinned,” we read from A.S. Pushkin.
Hermann realizes that his lady has been killed. He traded Lisa for cards. He was not going to fulfill the condition set by the old woman: to marry her poor pupil. Herman put everything on the line. And did not become an Ace.
Three and seven are favorite numbers in Russians folk tales. And in the works of Pushkin, based on Russian folklore, we remember the three girls under the window, the seven bogatyrs in The Tale of the Dead Princess, and the 33 immortal bogatyrs in The Tale of Tsar Saltan.
In the story of A.S. Pushkin's "The Queen of Spades" fancifully intertwined the poet's fantasy and reality. The poet knew the world of Moscow and St. Petersburg gamblers very well, which helped him to reflect it so realistically and vividly in his story.
Natalya Petrovna Golitsyna lived a surprisingly long life by today's standards. She died at the age of 98 and was buried in the family tomb of the Golitsyn princes in the Donskoy Monastery. The house of the Queen of Spades on Malaya Morskaya was donated by Nicholas I to the Minister of War Chernyshev as a gift for perpetual and hereditary possession. At the same time, in the middle of the 19th century, it was partially rebuilt, the coat of arms of the princes Chernyshevs and a balcony with an openwork lattice on the facade overlooking Malaya Morskaya Street appeared on the pediment. During the reconstruction, the bedchamber of the old countess and the rooms adjacent to it remained in their original form.
This makes it possible, of course, to create a museum corner in this part of the house, if the current tenants, the city polyclinic, would so desire. Currently, in the interior of the bedchamber there is an ordinator's room.
Another memorable address of the story "The Queen of Spades" is the Obukhov hospital. It is here that Hermann appears in the 17th issue.
The old Obukhov hospital near the Obukhov bridge on the embankment of the Fontanka River was publicly accessible. She was sometimes called common people. The hospital, which opened in 1780, was originally housed in several wooden buildings and was designed for 60 beds. A little later, an extensive building designed by D. Quarenghi was built on the same site.
The building of the Obukhov hospital, decorated with a powerful white-columned portico, is still used as medical institution and serves as a decoration of the embankment of the Fontanka River.
By the way, in the same hospital he finished his life path and another literary character - Lefty, the hero of N.S. Leskov.
That is why all the actions of Germans are of a dual nature, they are fraught with the idea of retribution. Artistically, as we shall see, it could be expressed symbolically. Revealing the inevitability of the catastrophe of Germanets, Pushkin thereby condemns his hero and his philosophy.
G. A. Gukovsky is right, who saw in the image of Hermann the last link in Pushkin's struggle against romanticism, with its perversion of the philosophy of man. “Hermann is really a romantic, petrified in soul, who rejected all norms of evil and good for the sake of the only good - the triumph of his “I”. Hermann felt no remorse at the thought of the dead countess. “This is the essence of Pushkin's analysis of romanticism in the image of Hermann; it is not only organically combined with the philistinism of the accumulator, its deepest foundation in Hermann's soul is egoism, and in the conditions of the social environment in which Hermann is placed, egoism acquires the features of a manic thirst for money. “All this does not at all “lower” the image of Hermann, does not make him petty; he remains in a titanic way, for the evil contained in him and destroying him is not a vulgar vice of an individual, but the spirit of the era, the ruler of the world, the modern Mephistopheles, or, the same, the meaning of the legend of Napoleon.
The New Age imposed its ideal of life on the German. But circumstances did not force him to betray, to commit a crime. Therefore, Hermann is not a victim of a society where money begins to rule, but the bearer of its ideologies, a typical figure of our time, belonging to a tribe of people with the profile of Napoleon. In Hermann's readiness to kill everything human in himself in order to gain an illusory happiness, whose name is capital - Hermann's guilt, which has no justification. “A man who has no moral rules and nothing sacred,” such is the epigraph to the chapter, where Hermann's shameless play with Lizaveta Ivanovna's feelings is revealed. Therefore, Hermann is the very source of evil in society, a person capable of committing crimes, a cruel practitioner of an inhuman society, who has chosen selfishness as a means of his self-affirmation.
There was a self-disclosure: we were brought to the very edge of the terrible abyss - the abyss of the soul of a man who betrays his human nature. This betrayal is one of the most savage crimes of the bourgeois age; The Kozyaevs of the new legal order turned the revivalist philosophy of individualism into a poisoned weapon for the corruption of man. The fate of Germans psychologically reliably revealed the fatality of individualism for a person. It not only corrupts the personality, but gives rise to a violent and blind thirst for self-destruction, causes the betrayal of one's nature.
The soul of Hermann is illuminated by Pushkin, but we did not see a sick conscience there. Amazing and terrible is this soul of Hermann, lifeless as a conflagration, nothing living grows on it. Nothing? But it is clearly said that "his heart also tormented ...". Is Hermann's heart capable of tormenting? What was it about at that moment? One thing terrified him: the irretrievable loss of a secret from which he expected enrichment. Lizaveta Ivanovna, as it were, overheard the secret voice of Hermann's grief: “You are a Monster! Lizaveta Ivanovna finally said.
Hermann is a living person, not a soulless machine. The voice of conscience can sometimes, although muffled, make itself felt, but it will immediately be mercilessly suppressed and muffled. So it was before the explanation with the Countess. But after his threats, she died. Hermann understands his guilt. He informs Lizaveta Ivanovna: The Countess died ... And it seems, - Hermann continued, - I am the cause of her death. Lizaveta Ivanovna realized that she was nothing but the blind assistant of the robber, the murderer of her old benefactor! .. She wept bitterly in her late, painful repentance.
And this, I will add, is another feature of the symbolic image of Hermann. The illusiveness and madness of the Germans' wild pursuit of the secret of the three cards, which should bring him wealth, is highlighted with particular brightness by the discovery that there is no secret, that the whole story with the cards is just a joke ... A prudent and cruel person with Napoleon's profile right through, not sparing the people around him , is eager for a secret - a symbol of his happiness, but there is no secret - a secret! And all his efforts, betrayals are useless, there is nothing ahead, emptiness, a black hole of imminent catastrophe. All this collision is deeply symbolic.
Hermann sees tears, understands the grief and despair of Lizaveta Ivanovna. What does he experience after the murder, looking at the girl insulted and deceived by him? Pushkin deliberately creates a psychologically tense situation that would allow him to discover the most secret of his soul, hidden even from himself. “Hermann looked at her in silence: his heart was also tormented, but neither the tears of the poor girl, nor the amazing charm of her sorrows disturbed his harsh soul. He felt no remorse at the thought of the dead old woman." In the section on the question What is the surname of Herman in "The Queen of Spades" by A. S. Pushkin? given by the author Yotary Soldier the best answer is This is his last name - Hermann. There is no name in the work.
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He first appears on the pages of the story in an episode with the horse guard Narumov, but, sitting up to 5 in the morning in the company of players, he never plays - "I am not able to sacrifice what is necessary, in the hope of acquiring what is superfluous." Ambition, strong passions, fiery imagination are suppressed in him by firmness of will. After listening to Tomsky's story about three cards, the secret of which was revealed 60 years ago to his grandmother, Countess Anna Fedotovna, by the legendary visionary Saint Germain, he exclaims: not "Chance", but "Fairy Tale!" - because it excludes the possibility of irrational success. slide number 4
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Further, the reader sees Herman standing in front of the windows of the poor pupil of the old countess, Liza; his appearance is romantic: a beaver collar covers his face, his black eyes sparkle, a quick blush flares up on his pale cheeks. However, G. is not a gallant character in an old French novel that the countess reads, not a fatal hero of a Gothic novel (which the countess condemns), not actor boring and peaceful Russian novel (brought to her by Tomsky), not even the "literary relative" of Erast from Karamzin's story "Poor Liza". (The connection with this story is indicated not only by the name of the poor pupil, but also by the “foreign” vowel of the name of her “seducer”.) G. is rather the hero of a German petty-bourgeois novel, from which he borrows word and word his first letter to Lisa; this is the hero of the novel by calculation. He needs Lisa only as an obedient tool for the implementation of a well-thought-out plan - to master the secret of the three cards. slide number 5
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There is no contradiction here with Narumov's scene; a man of the bourgeois era, G. did not change, did not recognize the omnipotence of fate and the triumph of chance (on which any game of chance is built - especially the pharaoh, which the countess played 60 years ago). Simply, after listening to the continuation of the story (about the deceased Chaplitsky, to whom Anna Fedotovna revealed the secret), G. was convinced of the effectiveness of the secret. This is logical; a one-time success can be random; the repetition of chance indicates the possibility of its transformation into a regularity; and regularity can be "calculated", rationalized, used. Until now, his three trump cards were - calculation, moderation and accuracy; from now on, mystery and adventurism paradoxically combined with the same calculation, with the same bourgeois thirst for money. slide number 6
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And then G. in a terrible way calculated. As soon as he set out to master the law of chance, to subordinate the mystery to his own goals, the mystery itself immediately took possession of him. This dependence, the "bondage" of the actions and thoughts of the hero (which he himself almost does not notice) begins to manifest itself immediately - and in everything. Upon returning from Narumov, he has a dream about a game in which gold and banknotes are, as it were, demonized; then, already in reality, an unknown force brings him to the house of the old countess. The life and consciousness of G. instantly and completely obey the mysterious game of numbers, the meaning of which the reader does not understand for the time being. Pondering how to take possession of the secret, G. is ready to become the lover of the eighty-year-old countess - for she will die in a week (i.e., after 7 days) or in 2 days (i.e., on the 3rd); the gain may triple, sevenfold his capital; after 2 days (i.e., again on the 3rd) he appears for the first time under Lisa's windows; after 7 days, she smiles at him for the first time - and so on. Even the surname G. now sounds like a strange, German echo of the French name Saint-Germain, from which the countess received the secret of the three cards. slide number 7
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But, barely hinting at the mysterious circumstances that his hero becomes a slave to, the author again focuses the reader's attention on the reasonableness, prudence, and planning of G.; he thinks through everything - right down to Lizaveta Ivanovna's reaction to his Love letters. Having obtained from her consent to a date (and therefore - having received detailed plan home and advice on how to get into it), G. sneaks into the countess's office, waits for her to return from the ball - and, frightening half to death, tries to find out the coveted secret. The arguments that he brings in his favor are extremely diverse; from the proposal "to make up the happiness of my life" to reasoning about the benefits of thrift; from the readiness to take the Countess's sin upon one's soul, even if it is connected "with the ruin of eternal bliss, with the devil's pact" to the promise to honor Anna Fedotovna "as a shrine" from generation to generation. (This is a paraphrase of the liturgical prayer “The Lord shall reign forever, your God, Zion, generation and generation.”) G. agrees to everything, because he does not believe in anything: neither in the “destruction of eternal bliss”, nor in the shrine; these are only incantatory formulas, "sacred-legal" conditions of a possible contract. Even "something resembling remorse" that echoed in his heart when he heard the steps of Liza, deceived by him, is no longer able to awaken in him; he became petrified, like a dead statue. slide number 8
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Realizing that the countess is dead, G. sneaks into Lizaveta Ivanovna's room - not in order to repent before her, but in order to dot the "and"; to untie the knot of a love plot, which is no longer needed, “... all this was not love! Money - that's what his soul yearned for! A harsh soul, - Pushkin clarifies. Why, then, twice in the course of one chapter (IV) does the author lead the reader to compare the cold G. with Napoleon, who for people is the first half of XIX in. embodied the idea of romantic fearlessness in a game with fate? First, Lisa recalls a conversation with Tomsky (G. has a “truly romantic face” - “the profile of Napoleon, and the soul of Mephistopheles”), then follows a description of G., sitting on the window with folded arms and surprisingly resembling a portrait of Napoleon ... slide number 9
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First of all, Pushkin (as later on Gogol) depicts a new, bourgeois world that has been reduced to pieces. Although all the passions, the symbols of which are the cards in the story, remained the same, but evil lost its “heroic” appearance, changed its scale. Napoleon longed for glory - and boldly went to fight with the whole universe; the modern "Napoleon", G. craves money - and wants to book his fate. The "former" Mephistopheles threw the whole world at the feet of Faust; The "current" Mefisto is only capable of frightening the old countess to death with an unloaded pistol (and the modern Faust from Pushkin's ♦ Scenes from Faust, 1826, with which the Queen of Spades is associated, is mortally bored). From here it is a stone's throw to the "Napoleonism" of Rodion Raskolnikov, united with the image of G. by ties of literary kinship ("Crime and Punishment" by F. M. Dostoevsky); For the sake of an idea, Raskolnikov will sacrifice an old pawnbroker (the same personification of fate as an old countess) and her innocent sister Lizaveta Ivanovna (the name of a poor pupil). However, the opposite is also true: the evil was reduced, but remained the same evil; The “Napoleonic” posture of G., the posture of the master of fate, who suffered a defeat, but did not reconcile with him - crossed arms - indicates a proud contempt for the world, which is emphasized by the “parallel” with Liza, sitting opposite and humbly folding her arms in a cross. slide number 10
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However, the voice of conscience will speak again in G. - three days after the fateful night, during the funeral service for the old woman he unwittingly killed. He decides to ask her for forgiveness - but even here he will act for reasons of moral gain, and not for moral reasons proper. The deceased may have bad influence on his life - and it is better to mentally repent before her in order to get rid of this influence. And then the author, who consistently changes the literary registration of his hero (in the first chapter he is a potential character in an adventure novel; in the second - the hero of a fantastic story in the spirit of E. - T.-A. Hoffmann, in the third - the protagonist of the story is social and everyday, the plot of which gradually returns to its adventurous origins), again sharply "switches" the tone of the narration. The rhetorical cliches from the memorial sermon of the young bishop (“the angel of death found her awake in good thoughts and in anticipation of the midnight bridegroom”) are superimposed on the events of the terrible night. In G., this “angel of death” and “midnight groom”, parodic features suddenly appear; his image continues to shrink, to decline; it seems to melt before the eyes of the reader. And even the “revenge” of the dead old woman, which makes the hero faint, can make the reader smile: she “mockingly looked at him, narrowing her eyes with one eye.” and ambiguity, so that neither the hero nor the reader is able to make out: is the dead old woman, shuffling in her slippers, all in white, really coming to G. that night? Or is it a consequence of a nervous paroxysm and drunk wine? What are the three cards she called - “three, seven, ace” - the otherworldly secret of numbers to which G. is subject from the moment he decided to take possession of the secret of the cards, or a simple progression that G. long ago brought out for himself ( “I will triple, I will triple the capital ..,”; that is, I will become an ace)? And what explains the promise of the dead countess to forgive her unwitting murderer if he marries a poor pupil, whom she did not care about during her lifetime? Is it because the old woman was forced to “be kinder” by an unknown force that sent her to G., or because in his ailing consciousness all the same echoes of conscience sound that once woke up in him at the sound of Liza’s steps? There are no and cannot be answers to these questions; Without noticing it himself, G. found himself in an “intermediate” space, where the laws of reason no longer operate, and the power of the irrational principle is not yet omnipotent; he is on his way to insanity. slide number 11
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The idea of three cards finally takes possession of him; he compares a slender girl with a red troika; when asked about time, he answers “5 minutes to seven”. A pot-bellied man seems to him an ace, and an ace is a spider in a dream - this image of dubious eternity in the form of a spider weaving its web will also be picked up by Dostoevsky in Crime and Punishment (Svidrigailov). G., who so valued precisely independence, even material, for the sake of it and entered into a game with fate, completely loses independence. He is ready to completely repeat the "Parisian" episode of the life of the old countess and go to play in Paris. But here the famous player Chekalinsky appears from the "irrational" Moscow and starts a real "irregular" game in the "regular" capital. The very case, which G. intended to exclude from his regular, planned life, saves him from "troubles" and decides his fate. slide number 12
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In the scenes of the “duel” with Chekalinsky (whose last name rhymes in assonance with the last name of Chaplitsky), the reader is presented with the former G. - cold and all the more prudent, the less predictable the game of pharaoh is. (The player puts a card, the punter who holds the bank, throws the deck to the right and left; the card may coincide with the one chosen by the player at the beginning of the game, and not match; it is obviously impossible to predict winning or losing; any maneuvers of the player that do not depend on his mind and will are excluded.) G. does not seem to notice that in the image of Chekalinsky, on whose full fresh face an eternal icy smile plays, he is opposed by fate itself; G. is calm, because he is sure that he has mastered the law of chance. And he, oddly enough, is right: the old woman did not deceive; all three cards win night after night. It's just that G. himself accidentally turned around, that is, instead of an ace, he put the queen of spades. The regularity of the mystery is fully confirmed, but the omnipotence of chance is confirmed in the same way. G.'s tripled, seven-fold capital (94,000) goes to the "ace" - Chekalinsky; G. gets the Queen of Spades, who, of course, immediately repeats the "gesture" of the dead old woman - she "squinted her eyes and grinned." slide number 13
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"The Queen of Spades" was created, obviously, the second Boldin autumn, in parallel with the "Tale of the Fisherman and the Fish" and the "Petersburg Tale" Bronze Horseman". Naturally, the image of G. comes into contact with their central characters. Like the old countess, he wants to put fate at his service - and, in the end, he also suffers a crushing defeat. Like poor Eugene, he rebels against the "natural" order of social life - and also goes crazy. (That is, he loses Reason - that “tool” with which he was going to master the Law of Fate.) From the Conclusion to the story, the reader learns that the failed conqueror of the other world, the bourgeois Napoleon, who reduced Mephistopheles, is sitting in the 17th number (ace + seven) Obukhov hospital and very quickly mutters: “Three, seven, ace! Three, seven, lady!
Mystery one: Hermann's lack of a name.
It is not difficult to notice that the main character of the work does not have a name (or maybe a surname). Let's prove that "Hermann" is a surname. Let's take a proof by contradiction: let "Hermann" be a name. But in this case, contradictions arise: firstly, in the word "Herman", denoting the name, there is only one letter "H", in contrast to the one written by Pushkin; secondly, based on the dialogues, we can conclude that the cavaliers use the person's surname when they address each other or talk about someone in the third person:
- What did you do, Surin? .
- And what is Hermann! .
Therefore, "Hermann" is a surname.
Hermann approaches the coffin. “At that moment it seemed to him that the dead woman looked at him mockingly, screwing up one eye. Hermann, hastily leaning back, stumbled and fell backward on the ground.<...>A dull murmur arose between the visitors, and a thin chamberlain, a close relative of the deceased (italics mine - M.A.), whispered into the ear of an Englishman standing next to him that the young officer was her natural son, to which the Englishman answered coldly: "Oh?"
We will not delve into the reasons that forced Pushkin to introduce this remark of the chamberlain. Let's risk and accept these words as a "working hypothesis" for commenting and understanding both the opera (especially) and the story.
We believe that Herman is the bastard son of the Countess. In opera, this hypothesis can clarify a lot.
First of all - the mysterious mutual attraction-repulsion of the Countess and Herman. Tomsky's ballad is also clarified in some way. If Herman is the son of the Countess, then Saint-Germain turns out to be the only contender for the role of father, all the more it is not news that "Germain" and "Herman" - different variants one surname.
Note: latin root, underlying: germen, and further, descending - genmen from geno - offspring, sprout, shoot. From this - germanus - native, or consanguineous. See Dvoretsky I. Kh. Latin-Russian Dictionary.
Presentation on the topic: Peak Lady. Characteristics of Herman
