About the poetry of N.A.’s poem Nekrasov "Railway"

Nekrasov’s work is poetic not only because of the brightness of the paintings and the charm of the landscapes; it is poetic, first of all, because poetry, which is, so to speak, the nervous system of verse, is an internal measure by which everything in verse is measured and evaluated.

Glorious autumn! Healthy, vigorous

The air invigorates tired forces;

Fragile ice on the icy river

It lies like melting sugar;

Near the forest, like in a soft bed,

You can get a good night's sleep - peace and space! -

Yellow and fresh, they lie like a carpet.

Clear, quiet days...

There is no ugliness in nature! And kochi,

And moss swamps and stumps -

Everything is fine under the moonlight,
Everywhere I recognize my native Rus'...

I fly quickly on cast iron rails,

I think my thoughts...

Nekrasov's landscape is poetic, but it is poetry of a special kind. The time of year is named - autumn, and immediately it rolls out - vigorous, “vigorous air” - a daring statement that seems to break off any connection with the poetic tradition of describing, conveying the feeling of autumn in Russian poetry. What is it worth when nature calls you to sleep, not to sleep, but to get enough sleep? A tired man like a man wants to go into nature, to rest, not in order to “find bliss in the truth,” but simply... to get some sleep.

But the sphere of the poetic not only does not disappear, it has expanded. In nature itself, everything that is traditionally unpoeticized is poeticized: stumps and moss mounds, ice, like melting sugar. Nekrasov's verse opens into nature. We are not only in the carriage, but also outside it, we took a breath of air - “the air invigorates tired forces.” “Near the forest, as in a soft bed, you can sleep well” - here an almost physical feeling of communion with nature is conveyed, not in the high philosophical, Tyutchevsky sense, but in also in its own high, but most direct sense. Nekrasov does not proseize the poetic, but poetizes the prosaic. The two words at the end of this part - “darling Rus'” (“I recognize my native Rus' everywhere”) - seem to suddenly bring everything together, absorb it into themselves and immediately, even somewhat unexpectedly, give the verse a high sound. Like a musician with one note, so a great poet with one word can determine the character and height of our perception. After all, Pushkin’s “Winter Morning” is not an idyll by the fireplace, not just a winter landscape, it is a moment in the development of a powerful spirit, expressed in the form of a truly Beethovenian sonata: the struggle of two principles and the allowing release into the light, into the harmony of the finale. And already in the first Pushkin chords

Towards the north. Aurors, appear as the Star of the North!

this height, this scale is given, by which, willingly or unwillingly, we will determine the entire development of the theme.

This is also Nekrasov’s “native Rus'” in the last line of the first part, which in no way exhausts, of course, the significance of the work, but which sets up for such significance. In the introduction there are intonations and motives of the folk song: “Rus” - “darling”, and “river” - “icy”. The people who will appear immediately later have already appeared here. In the poet and through the poet he declared himself, and declared himself poetically.

The first and second parts of Nekrasov’s work are internally unified, and this is not a unity of contrasts. Both are poetic. The picture of the amazing dream that Vanya saw is, first of all, a poetic picture. A liberating convention - a dream that makes it possible to see many things that you cannot see in ordinary life - is a motif that was widely used in Russian literature even before Nekrasov. It is enough to recall Radishchev and Chernyshevsky, if we talk about the tradition close to Nekrasov. For Nekrasov, sleep ceases to be just a conditional motive. The dream in Nekrasov's poem is a striking phenomenon, in which realistic images are boldly and unusually combined with a kind of poetic impressionism. A dream does not serve to reveal vague subconscious states of the soul, but it does not cease to be such a subconscious state, and what happens happens precisely in a dream, or rather, not even in a dream, but in an atmosphere of strange half-asleep. The narrator is always telling something, something is being seen by a disturbed child’s imagination, and what Vanya saw is much more than what he was told. The interlocutor spoke about the bones, and they came to life, as in a romantic fairy tale, about the hard life of people, and they sang their terrible song to Vanya. And where was the dream, where was the reality of the story, the awakened, come to his senses boy cannot understand:

“I saw, dad, I had an amazing dream,”

Vanya said: - five thousand men,

Representatives of Russian tribes and breeds

Suddenly they appeared - and He he told me:

These are the builders of our road!..”

Ostensibly He - the narrator, and this, as Mayakovsky later joked in a similar case, “eliminates all suspicions about the author’s belief in all nonsense beyond the grave.” But for Vanya there was not only a story, there was a dream, strange and fantastic. He Nekrasov’s text is in italics:

AND He he told me.

He no longer just the narrator, but someone or something elusive. Like a number of other elements of Nekrasov’s verse, such He, perhaps it came from romantic poetry, and, apparently, directly from Zhukovsky’s poems, where it is often found, for example, in the “Ballad” translated by Zhukovsky from Southie, which describes how one old woman rode on a black horse together and who sat in front:

No one saw how he raced with her He...

Only a terrible trace was found on the ashes;

Only, listening to the cry, all night through a heavy sleep

The babies shuddered in fear.

However, what Zhukovsky looks like, although not real, is an easily identifiable element (He- just an evil spirit), Nekrasov appears as a real, but difficult to define psychological state. It's not real, but it's definitely and rough; here it is vague and subtle, but real.

Vanya’s dream is partly prepared by the landscape of the introduction, a picture of a moonlit night. An element of this landscape appears in the second part. Introduction verse

Everything is fine under moonlight

will repeat exactly, anticipating the dream picture:

Will you allow me at moonlight

Show him the truth.

Nekrasov the poet does not allow Nekrasov the painter to add a single extra color, striving for an almost hypnotic concentration of the poems.

Together with Vanya, we are immersed in an atmosphere of half sleep, half doze. The story is told as a story about the truth, but also as a fairy tale addressed to a boy. From here

amazing artlessness and fabulous scale of the very first images:

This work, Vanya, was terribly enormous -

Not enough for one! There is a king in the world; this

The king is merciless, Famine is his name.”

No sleep yet. The story goes on, the train goes on, the road goes on, the boy dozes, and the poet, who has parted ways with the narrator for the first and only time, interrupts the story and gives another dose of poetic anesthesia. He connects the soothing rhythm of the road to the rhythm of the story:

The path is straight: the embankments are narrow,

Columns, rails, bridges.

And the story continues again:

And on the sides all the bones are Russian...

How many of them! Vanechka, do you know?

Aren't we put to sleep along with Vanya? And Vanya’s dream began;

Chu! Menacing exclamations were heard!

Stomping and gnashing of teeth;

A shadow ran across the frosty glass...

What's there? Crowd of the dead!

Then they overtake the cast-iron road,

They run in different directions.

Do you hear singing?.. “On this moonlit night

We love to see our work!..”

The dream began like a ballad. The moon, the dead with gnashing teeth, their strange song - the characteristic accessories of ballad poetics are condensed in the first stanzas and enhance the feeling of sleep. The balladry is emphasized, as if the tradition, romantic and lofty, within the framework of which the story about the people will be told, is declared. But the story about the people does not remain a ballad, but turns into

In Nekrasov’s work there are two peoples and two different attitudes towards them. There is indignation, but, if you like, there is also tenderness. There is the people in their poetic and moral essence, worthy of poetic definition, and the people in their slavish passivity, causing bitter irony.

The image of the people, as they appeared in a dream, is a tragic and unusually large-scale image. Appeared as if

all “native Rus'”. Originally Nekrasov's line

From the Neman, from Mother Volga, from the Oka

replaced by another

From Volkhov, from Mother Volga, from Oka

not only because, it’s true, it’s very successful, Volkhov phonetically connected by an internal rhyme with the Volga." | Geography becomes more national both in its present and even in its focus on the past.

The people of this part are highly poetic; there can be no talk of any denunciation. Sometimes suddenly the story becomes restrained, almost dry: not a single “image”, not a single lyrical note. The narration takes on the character and force of documentary evidence, as in the song of the men:

We struggled under the heat, under the cold,

They lived in dugouts, fought hunger,

They were cold and wet and suffered from scurvy.

The literate foremen robbed us,

The authorities flogged me, the need was pressing...

And suddenly an explosion, a sob bursting into the story:

We, God's warriors, have endured everything,

Peaceful children of labor!

Brothers! You are reaping our benefits!

This sob could not obey the strophic division of the verses and begin with a new stanza. It burst in where, as they say, it came to the throat. The same is in the description of the Belarusian, already the author’s:

You see, he’s standing there, exhausted by fever,

Tall, sick Belarusian:

Bloodless lips, drooping eyelids,

Ulcers on skinny arms.

Always standing in knee-deep water

The legs are swollen; tangle in hair...

The story acquired the dispassionate dryness of a protocol testimony, but it contains both the premise and justification for a new explosion, high lyrical pathos. The story about the Belarusian ends with the words:

I didn’t straighten my hunchbacked back

He is still: stupidly silent

And mechanically with a rusty shovel

It's hammering the frozen ground!

And these words are replaced by a call?

It would be a good idea for us to adopt this noble habit of work...

Nekrasov Railway analysis of the poem

Plan

1. History of creation

2.Genre

3. Main idea

4.Composition

5.Size

6. Expressive means

7. Main idea

1.History of creation. The work “The Railway” was written by the poet in 1864 and is dedicated to the construction of the first Nikolaev railway in Russia (1842-1852). Nicholas I, without taking into account the terrain, simply drew a line on the map with a ruler. This monstrous carelessness resulted in a huge number of workers dying during construction in impenetrable swamps and forests.

2.Genre of the poem- the poet’s favorite and perfected civil lyric poetry.

3. main idea the poems depict the plight of the common people, forced to pay with their lives for progress in Russia. The king and his entourage did not take into account the cost of the grandiose project at all. Peasants driven from all over Rus' worked in inhumane conditions, littering the vast expanses of their land with bones. It is no coincidence that the first part of the poem lovingly describes a beautiful landscape that was destined to become a huge mass grave. A sharp contrast to this description is presented by the picture of hard physical labor that arose in the narrator’s imagination. The souls of all those who died during construction flash before us. They did not understand the significance of their huge undertaking. The peasants were forced to work by the earthly king and the invisible king - hunger. The general's monologue reveals the cynical attitude of high society towards workers. The lot of slaves is drunkenness and theft, so there is nothing to feel sorry for them. This reveals the absolute illiteracy and stupidity of the general, who does not understand that all the achievements and successes of the state are based on the overwhelming mass of the downtrodden and humiliated peasantry. The “bright” picture that completes the work is the settlement with the workers. Exhausted peasants, heroes of labor, receive a reward - ... a barrel of vodka. And the manifestation of the “immeasurable generosity” of the authorities is the forgiveness of all arrears and absenteeism. The country is taking a huge step forward, the leaders are triumphant, but the people, as always, are being made fools.

4.Composition. The poem "Railroad" consists of four parts. The first is a lyrical description of the Russian landscape rushing past travelers. The second is a terrible picture of overwork. The third part describes the general's primitive thoughts and opinions. The final part is a “joyful” picture, the result of the work.

5. Poem size- alternation of four- and three-foot dactyl with cross rhyme.

6.Expressive means. Nekrasov widely uses epithets to describe nature (“glorious”, “vigorous”, “icy”) and the suffering of workers (“huge”, “terrible”, “barren”). The first part is rich in comparisons: “like melting sugar,” “like a soft bed,” “like a carpet.” Hunger is described with vivid personifications: “the king is merciless,” he “drives,” “drives,” “walks.” In general, the first parts are built on sharp contrast with each other. The third and fourth parts are written in extremely short language without much use of expressive means. The boss’s lively colloquial speech “...that’s...well done!..well done!...” brings us significantly closer to reality.

7. Main thought works - the suffering of the common people is incalculable. He has to bear the civilizational development of Russia on his shoulders. At the end of the second part, Nekrasov makes the main statement that the Russian people will endure everything and come to a happy future. But this is still very far away, the “beautiful time” is in the foggy unknown.

The history of the creation of Nekrasov’s work “Railroad”

The poem “Railway” is one of Nekrasov’s most dramatic works. For the first time, a poem indicating the author “Dedicated to Children” was published in the tenth issue of the Sovremennik magazine for 1865. The published poem aroused the indignation of the censors - after two warnings, the magazine was closed in June 1866. Particular criticism was directed at the epigraph, which, according to the censors, gave the poem a sharp social meaning and cast a shadow both on the former chief executive of the railways, Count Kleinmichel, and on his deceased patron, that is, the king.
The real basis of the poem “The Railway” was the construction (1842-1855) of the first Nikolaev railway in Russia (now Oktyabrskaya). On November 1, 1851, regular train traffic opened on the St. Petersburg-Moscow highway, the longest and most advanced double-track railway in the world in terms of technical equipment. In Russia it was a time of serfdom, there was very little free labor. Therefore, the main builders of the railway were state and serf peasants, who were brought to the construction site in batches, shamelessly deceived, and enormous fortunes were made from their labor. Landowners generally rented out serfs. Legally, the builders of the Nikolaev railway were completely defenseless. Russia knew at that time one method of construction - contracting. This is exactly how the Nikolaev railway was built.
This construction was led by one of the important dignitaries of that time, Count P.A. Kleinmichel. Wanting to please the king with an unusually fast pace of work, he did not spare either the health or lives of the workers; the unfortunates died in hundreds and thousands in damp and cold dugouts.
In Russian literature at that time, a lot of poems were written dedicated to the railway. In them, the authors thanked the emperor and officials, calling them the builders of the railway. Nekrasov created a poem as a counterbalance to this literature.
Nekrasov’s close friend, engineer Valerian Aleksandrovich Panaev, who was personally involved in the construction of the railway, characterized the situation of the workers this way: “Diggers were mainly hired in the Vitebsk and Vilna provinces from Lithuanians. They were the most unfortunate people in the entire Russian land, who looked less like people than like working cattle, from whom they demanded superhuman strength in their work without any, one might say, remuneration.”
This is confirmed by the official report of the then auditor Myasoedov. It turns out that for six months of hard labor, the diggers received an average of 19 rubles (that is, 3 rubles per month), that they did not have enough clothes or shoes, that, taking advantage of the illiteracy and downtrodden nature of the people, the clerks shortchanged them at every turn. And when one of the diggers expressed dissatisfaction with the government ration, he was punished with whips. On another occasion, the gendarmes flogged 80 workers from a party of 728 people. Driven to extreme despair, the workers continually fled to their homeland, but were caught and returned to the construction site.

Genre, genre, creative method

“The Railway” is a small poem in size. However, in terms of the scale of events, in its spirit, this poem is a real poem about the people. The journalistic orientation of the poem is combined with an artistic depiction of pictures of the backbreaking labor of workers, a poetic generalization with deep lyricism, a poetic depiction of Russian autumn and nature with an ideological orientation.

Subject of the analyzed work

The main content of Nekrasov’s poetry is love and compassion for ordinary people, for the people, for the Russian land. In his poem “The Railway,” Nekrasov touched upon a topical issue for those years—the role of capitalism in the development of Russia. Using the example of the construction of the railway, the author showed how, at the cost of backbreaking labor and the lives of hundreds of ordinary people, new social relations were established in Russia.
Nekrasov did not limit himself to showing the horrors of hard labor. He admires the labor feat of people who “suffered under the heat, under the cold, with their backs always bent, lived in dugouts, fought hunger, were cold and wet, suffered from scurvy,” and still built the road. Nekrasov glorifies people's labor, glorifies the “noble habit of work.” He glorified the people's patience and endurance, hard work and high moral qualities: “This noble habit of work / It wouldn’t be a bad thing for us to adopt... / Bless the people’s work / And learn to respect the peasant.”
And at the same time, with emotional pain, the author shows the humility of the people who have come to terms with their situation. He contrasts the beauty diffused in the world of nature: “there is no ugliness in nature... everything is good under the moonlight,” with the “ugliness” that reigns in the world of human relations, and again emphasizes the love for “native Rus'.”

The idea of ​​the poem "Railroad"

An analysis of the work shows that in “The Railway” one can hear the poet’s confidence in the bright future of the Russian people, although he is aware that this wonderful time will not come soon. And in the present, “The Railway” presents the same picture of spiritual sleep, passivity, downtroddenness and humility. The epigraph preceding the poem helps the author express his view of the people in a polemic with the general, who calls Count Kleinmichel the builder of the railway, and the people in his view are “barbarians, a wild crowd of drunkards.” Nekrasov in his poem refutes this statement of the general, drawing images of the real builders of the road, talking about the most difficult conditions of their life and work. But the poet strives to awaken in young Van, who personifies the younger generation of Russia, not only pity and compassion for the oppressed people, but also deep respect for them, for their creative work.

The main characters of the work

There are no individual characters in the poem. There are pictures of folk life that create a broad social panorama and are united by one theme. The poet is angrily indignant at the terrible conditions in which the people were, because it is believed that the road was built by the construction manager, Count Kleinmichel, and not by the people - ragged men driven to build the road by hunger. The crowds of ghostly dead people surrounding the speeding train are victims of back-breaking work and hardships during the construction of the road. But their work was not in vain: they created a magnificent structure, and the poet glorifies the working people. From this crowd, the author singles out the figure of a navvy: “bloodless lips,” “fallen eyelids,” “ulcers on skinny arms.” And next to them is the culprit of national disasters - the overweight “meadowsweet”. This is a self-confident, cunning and arrogant embezzler.
The images in “The Railway” are graphic and realistically merciless. The people are depicted truthfully - as they really are. The poet not only addresses the long-suffering Russian working people in his work, he merges with the people's consciousness. In the struggle for a place in life, Nekrasov’s man appears not as a loner opposed to society, but as a full-fledged representative of the masses.
The poem depicts the people in two forms: a great worker, deserving universal respect and admiration for his deeds, and a patient slave, whom one can only pity without offending with this pity. The author condemns the people who have come to terms with their situation and do not dare to openly protest. However, the poet is confident that the hardworking Russian people will not only build railways, but will also create a “beautiful time” in the future.
The people are opposed in the poem by the general, who in his monologue tries to act as a defender of aesthetic values, recalling the Colosseum, the Vatican, and Apollo Belvedere. However, the listing of works of art and culture in the mouth of the general is replaced by curses addressed to the people: “barbarians”, “a wild crowd of drunkards”, which testifies to his true culture. The general perceives the people as the destroyer of everything beautiful, and not the creator.

Plot and composition

In the context of the analysis, it is worth noting that the poem is preceded by an epigraph - a conversation in the carriage between the boy Vanya and his father. The boy asks his father who built the railway. The father (“in a coat with a red lining”) called “Count Pyotr Andreevich Kleinmichel.” Only generals wore coats with red lining. And Vanya’s Armenian boy is a demonstration of the general’s “love of the people.” Dad wants to emphasize his love for the “simple peasant.” Nekrasov contrasts the general’s false statement that the road was built by the head of railway construction, Count Kleinmichel (who became famous for embezzlement and bribes), with the real truth and shows the true builder of the road - the people.
There are two storylines in The Railway. The first of them: the story of the lyrical hero, touched by the words of the “good father” - the general, about the true builders of the railway. The second line is Vanya’s dream, in which a crowd of builders appears, talking about their difficult fate.
The poem consists of four parts. In the first part we see a beautiful autumn landscape: the air is “healthy, vigorous”, the leaves are “yellow and fresh, lying like a carpet”, everywhere there is “peace and space”. The author emphasizes: “There is no ugliness in nature!” The first part is an exposition of the further narrative.
The second part is the main one in the poem. The poet - a lyrical hero - tells Vanya the truth about the construction of the railway: “This work, Vanya, was terribly enormous - / Not enough for one!” The boy learns that the real builder of the road is not the tsar’s henchman and embezzler, but the people driven to build the “cast iron” by hunger. On both sides of the road there are “Russian bones”, “a crowd of the dead”. In his final words, the lyrical hero addresses not only the boy, but also the entire young generation of the 60s of the 19th century.
In the third part, the general demands to turn to the “bright side” of construction; he objects to the author’s story. Here the character of the general, an empty and cruel man, is fully revealed. However, the story continues. Hard backbreaking labor (“strained themselves under the heat, under the cold”), the hunger of the people who were robbed by the foremen, “the bosses flogged them, the need crushed them” - in the center of the third part of the poem.
The fourth part, depicting the “bright side”, is filled with irony, hidden mockery in the depiction of the picture of receiving a reward for “fatal labors”: “The dead are buried in the ground; sick / Hidden in dugouts...” And those who did not die from hunger and disease were deceived: “Every contractor owes a stay...”.

Artistic originality

The narrative in the poem begins with a description of a beautiful autumn landscape. The author shows that in nature “there is no ugliness”, everything is proportionate. The image of “peace” in nature is contrasted with images of backbreaking labor and inhumane treatment of ordinary people. Nekrasov is characterized by exaggeration in poetry. And in the poem “Railway” it is present. The poet turns to a variety of artistic means.
In the very title of the poem, the epithet “iron” carries an evaluative meaning, that is, a road built with hard work.
In order to talk about the hardship and feat of national labor, the poet turns to a technique quite well known in Russian literature - a description of the dream of one of the participants in the story. Vanya’s dream is not only a conventional device, but the real state of a boy, in whose disturbed imagination the story of suffering with which the narrator addresses him gives birth to fantastic pictures with the dead revived under the moonlight and strange songs.
The poem is written in truly folk poetic language. As always, “the people spoke; more precisely, the poet himself spoke personally like a Russian commoner, with the language, jokes, and humor of a peasant, worker, typesetter, soldier, etc.” (V.V. Rozanov).
“The Railway” is written mainly in dactyl tetrameter; the construction of the line of the poem allows us to convey the rhythmic sound of the wheels of a moving train.

Meaning of the work

An analysis of the work clearly proved that the poem “The Railway” remains to this day relevant and the most cited work of Nekrasov, who predicted a long path to people's happiness. Nekrasov is one of the poets who determine the direction of art for many years, for entire periods of its development. And the literature of critical realism, and painting (the Wanderers artists), and in some respects even Russian music, developed under the influence of Nekrasov’s mournful and passionate poetry. Compassion, denunciation and protest penetrated into all spheres of Russian life. The social character of Russian culture developed to a large extent under the influence of Nekrasov.
ON Nekrasov created a new type of poetic satire, combining elegiac, lyrical and satirical motifs within one poem, as in “The Railway”. Nekrasov expanded the possibilities of poetic language, including a plot-narrative beginning in the lyrics. He mastered Russian folklore: a penchant for song rhythms and intonations, the use of parallelisms, repetitions, trisyllabic meters (dactyl and anapest) with verbal rhymes. Nekrasov poetically interpreted proverbs, sayings, folk mythology, but most importantly, he creatively processed folklore texts, revealing the potentially revolutionary, liberating meaning contained in them. Nekrasov also unusually expanded the stylistic range of Russian poetry, using colloquial speech, folk phraseology, dialectisms, boldly including different speech styles in his work - from everyday to journalistic, from vernacular to folk-poetic vocabulary, from oratorical-pathetic to parody-satirical.

This is interesting

Anyone traveling from St. Petersburg to Moscow passes through the city of Chudovo. The village of Chudovo on the Kerest River in the Georgian Pogost was first mentioned in the Novgorod scribe book in 1539.
By the middle of the 18th century. Chudovo turns into a large Yamskoye village with a postal station, taverns, and trading shops. In the vicinity of the village there were possessions of landowners and St. Petersburg nobility. In 1851, the Nikolaevskaya Railway (St. Petersburg - Moscow) passed through it. And in 1871, the construction of the Novgorod - Chudovo railway was completed, and a large settlement grew up near the railway station.
An entire period in the work of the poet Nekrasov is associated with the Chudovskaya land. In 1871, the poet bought the small estate Chudovskaya Luka from the landowners Vladimirovs. It was located where the Kerest River, a tributary of the Volkhov, makes a beautiful loop. In the old garden there is a two-story wooden house, in which the poet spent every summer from 1871 to 1876. Nekrasov came here to take a break from magazine work and censorship ordeals with his wife Zinochka. She accompanied Nekrasov on trips to Chudovo and even took part in hunts. Nekrasov usually lived here for several days in the summer and only once - in 1874 - he stayed here for two months. Then he wrote 11 poems that made up the so-called “Monster Cycle”. The poet uses details of the life and everyday life of local peasants and Novgorod impressions in the poems “Railroad”, “Fire”, and in the lyrical comedy “Bear Hunt”. Here he created the text of the famous “Elegy” (“I dedicated the lyre to my people...”).
The poem “Railway” is based on Novgorod material. The description of the road of 644 kilometers is documented accurately. He speaks with anger about the living conditions of the builders:
We toiled under the heat, under the cold, With our backs always bent, We lived in dugouts, fought against hunger, We were frozen and wet, and suffered from scurvy.

Ilyushin AL. Poetry of Nekrasov. - M., 1998.
RozanovaLA. About the work of N. Nekrasov. - M., 1988.
Russian writers of the 19th century. about his works: Reader of historical and literary materials / Comp. I.E. Kaplan. - M., 1995.
Skatov N.N. Nekrasov. - M., 1994.
Chukovsky K.I. Nekrasov's mastery. - M., 1971.
Yakushin N.I. ON Nekrasov in life and work: A textbook for schools, gymnasiums, lyceums, colleges. - M.: Russian Word, 2003.

Life for the common people has always been difficult. Especially in Russia with its unbearable climate. Especially before the abolition of serfdom. The country was ruled by ruthless, greedy landowners and kings who drove peasants into their graves to achieve their goals. The fate of the serfs who built the first railway between Moscow and St. Petersburg is tragic. This path is strewn with the bones of thousands of men. Nekrasov (“Railroad”) dedicated his work to tragedy. A summary and analysis of it will reveal to us what the poet wanted to convey to his readers with a heightened sense of civic duty.

The theme of the complex life of the Russian people in the works of Nekrasov

The great poet was a truly people's writer. He sang the beauty of Rus', wrote about the plight of peasants, people of the lower classes, and women. It was he who introduced colloquial speech into literature, thereby reviving the images presented in the works.

Nekrasov showed the tragic fate of serfs in his poetry. “The Railway,” a brief summary of which we will present, is a short poem. In it, the author was able to convey the injustice, deprivation and monstrous exploitation to which the peasants were subjected.

N. A. Nekrasov, “Railway”: summary

The work begins with an epigraph. In it, the boy Vanya asks the general who built the railway. He answers: Count Kleinmichel. Thus, Nekrasov began his poem with sarcasm.

Next, readers are immersed in a description of Russian autumn. It is nice, with fresh air, beautiful scenery. The author flies along the rails, plunging into his thoughts.

Having heard that the road was built by Count Kleinmichel, he says that there is no need to hide the truth from the boy, and begins to talk about the construction of the railway.

The boy heard as if a crowd of dead people were running towards the windows of the train. They tell him that people built this road in any weather, lived in dugouts, were hungry, and were sick. They were robbed and flogged. Now others are reaping the fruits of their labor, and the builders are rotting in the ground. “Are they remembered kindly,” ask the dead, “or have people forgotten about them?”

The author tells Vanya that there is no need to be afraid of the singing of these dead men. Points to someone who is exhausted from hard work, stands bent over, and plows the ground. It’s so hard for people to earn their bread. Their work must be respected, he says. The author is confident that the people will endure everything and eventually pave the way for themselves.

Vanya fell asleep and woke up from a whistle. He told his father-general his dream. In it they showed him 5 thousand men and said that these were the road builders. Hearing this, he burst out laughing. He said that men are drunkards, barbarians and destroyers, that they can only build their mansions. The general asked not to tell the child about terrible sights, but to show the bright sides.

This is how Nekrasov described the construction of the road in his poem “The Railway”. A summary (“briefly” is what it’s called in English) cannot, of course, convey all the author’s pain for a simple deceived person. To feel all the sarcasm and bitterness of injustice, it is worth reading this poem in the original.

Analysis of the work

The poetry is a conversation between the author and fellow traveler with the boy Vanya. The author wanted people to remember how we receive benefits and who is behind it. He also told readers about the greed of their superiors and their inhumanity. About peasant peasants who receive nothing for their labor.

Nekrasov showed all the injustice and tragedy of the life of serfs in his work. “The Railway,” a summary of which we have reviewed, is one of the few works of the 19th century with a social orientation, telling about the life of ordinary people with sympathy.

Conclusion

In his poem, the poet notes that the creators of everything great in Rus' are simple men. However, all the laurels go to the landowners, counts, and contractors who shamelessly exploit the workers and deceive them.

Nekrasov ends his work with a picture of slavish glee and submission. The “railroad” (a brief summary tells about this) was built, the peasants were fooled. But they are so timid and submissive that they rejoice at the crumbs given to them. In the final lines, Nekrasov makes it clear that he is not happy about this submission and hopes that the time will come when the peasants will straighten their backs and throw off those who sit on them.

“The Railway” is a poem by N. A. Nekrasov. It was written in 1864 and became the embodiment of the poet’s thoughts about the plight of the Russian people, injustice and the conditions in which people who built railways found themselves. You can read a brief analysis of the “Railway” according to the plan. This analysis can be used when studying a work in a literature lesson in 6th grade.

Brief Analysis

History of creation- the poem appeared in 1864 and became one of Nekrasov’s works, dedicated to the people, telling about their difficult life.

Subject- a poem about the suffering of people during the construction of railways in Russia in the 19th century, the recklessness of officials, and the brutal exploitation of the people.

Composition- linear, the poem consists of four parts: the first is a description of nature, and the following are a vivid description of the terrible scenes that took place during the construction of the railway.

Genre- civil lyrics.

Poetic size- the poem is written in dactyl, using precise and imprecise, feminine and masculine rhyme, cross ABAB rhyming method.

Epithets– “Healthy, vigorous air”, “glorious autumn”.

Comparisons- “Ice... lies like melting sugar”, “Near the forest, you can sleep in a soft bed”, “The leaves... are yellow and fresh, like a carpet”, “...the venerable meadowsweet, thick, squat, red as copper”.

Hyperboles– “This work, Vanya, was terribly enormous.”.

Metonymy– “And on the sides there are all Russian bones”.

Personification– “The whistle blew a deafening sound”.

History of creation

The poem “The Railway” was written in 1864. The history of the creation of this work is connected with the construction of railways in the Russian Empire. The peasants who worked on the tracks were in difficult conditions, hungry and sick. Their lives were not thought or cared for, the only goal was to finish the job quickly. For the poet, who cared about ordinary people and tried to reflect reality as it is, it was painful and insulting to see this. His experiences were embodied in the poem being studied.

Subject

The main idea that Nekrasov tried to convey to the general public in many of his works was the plight of the common people in Russia. The theme of the life of peasants and workers, the unbearable conditions of their work and life during the construction of communication routes, was clearly reflected in the poem “Railroad”. Also here, a red thread runs through the poet’s condemnation of those people who were at the head of these works. They did not care about making people's work easier and saving their lives, but used them only as a means to achieve their goals.

Composition

The poem consists of four distinct parts. All of them are interconnected and represent a combination of several images of people sitting in a train carriage: the lyrical hero, the general and his son Vanya.

The description is completely built on antithesis: in the first part we see autumn landscapes, thin ice on the river, forest, yellow leaves, moonlight. The author says that “there is no ugliness in nature.” Then we are presented with completely different pictures: hunger, death, and terrible working conditions for people. There “stands, exhausted by fever... a sick Belarusian: bloodless lips, drooping eyelids, ulcers on his skinny arms...”. Here we see the leaders of the work: “in a blue caftan... fat, stocky... contractor.”

Genre

The genre of a poem is determined by the topic to which it is dedicated - this is civil poetry. Confirmation of this is a reflection of real reality, not embellished in any way. The poet worries about the Russian people, people forced to work in unimaginably difficult conditions, condemns the leadership, which strives to achieve its goals at any cost.

The poem is written in a three-syllable meter - dactyl. Various types of rhyme are used: exact (beds - had time, nights - kochi), inaccurate (space - carpet, alone - him), masculine (people - weavers), feminine (huge - merciless), the method of rhyming is cross.

Means of expression

Various artistic means were used in the poem “Railroad”. Among them there are often comparisons: “Ice... lies like melting sugar”, “Near the forest, like in a soft bed, you can sleep well”, “Leaves... yellow and fresh lie like a carpet”, “... the venerable meadowsweet, thick, planty, red as copper” . The author also applies epithets: “Healthy, vigorous air”, “glorious autumn”, hyperbole: “This work, Vanya, was terribly enormous.”

In addition, other means can be observed, for example, metonymy: “And on the sides there are all Russian bones”, personification: “The whistle blew a deafening sound.”

The abundance of means of expression helps to recreate a bright, living picture of the reality of that time, which appears before us when reading the poem.

Poem test

Rating Analysis

Average rating: 4.5. Total ratings received: 158.