The main characters of the work are a stingy knight. The tragedy of the Miserly Knight, the character and image of Albert - artistic analysis. Pushkin, Alexander Sergeyevich

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Moral and philosophical issues of the tragedy “The Miserly Knight”

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

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

The world of knightly honor and glory was struck by a vicious passion; the arrow of sin pierced the very foundations of existence and destroyed moral supports. Everything that was once defined by the concept of “knightly spirit” was rethought by the concept of “passion”.

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

Stinginess, indeed, is the “engine” of tragedy (stinginess as the cause and consequence of wasted spiritual strength). But its meaning is visible not only in the pettiness of the miser.

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

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

It is this avarice that destroys and marks with its shadow all manifestations of life that becomes the subject of dramatic comprehension. However, the latent, gradually “emerging” causal foundations of depravity do not escape the author’s gaze. The author is interested not only in the results of completion, but also in their primary motives.

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

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

His tragedy began with the desire for wealth, which, according to Baron, is the key to independence and freedom. Albert strives for independence - also through wealth [...]."

Freedom as an impetus, as a call for the implementation of plans, becomes an indicator, an accompanying “element” and at the same time a catalyst for action that has moral significance (positive or negative).

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

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

The multi-level nature of meanings and conflict resolutions also determines the polysemy of subtextual meanings and their interpretations. We will not find any unambiguity in the understanding of this or that image, this or that problem, noted by the author’s attention. Dramatic creativity Pushkin is not characterized by categorical assessments and extreme obviousness of conclusions, which was characteristic of classic tragedy. Therefore, when analyzing his plays, it is important to carefully read every word, note the changes in the intonations of the characters, and see and feel the author’s thought in every remark.

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

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

The Baron is undoubtedly the most important, deeply psychologically “written out” sign image. It is in correlation with him, with his will and his personal tragedy, that the graphically marked realities of Albert’s co-existence are visible.

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

Albert is just as driven by conflict as the Baron. The mere realization that his son is the heir, that he is the one who will come after, makes Philip hate and fear him. The situation, in its tense intractability, is similar to the dramatic situation of “Mozart and Salieri,” where envy and fear for one’s own creative failure, an imaginary, justifying desire to “save” Art and restore justice force Salieri to kill Mozart. S. Bondi, reflecting on this problem, wrote: “In “The Stingy Knight” and “Mozart and Salieri”, a shameful passion for profit, stinginess that does not disdain crimes, envy that leads to the murder of a friend, genius composer, covered by people who are accustomed to universal respect, and, most importantly, who consider this respect to be well deserved [...] And they try to assure themselves that their criminal actions are guided either by high principled considerations (Salieri), or if passion, then something different, not so shameful, but high (Baron Philip).”

In “The Miserly Knight,” the fear of giving everything to someone who doesn’t deserve it gives rise to perjury (an act that, in its own way, final results in no way inferior to the effect of poison thrown into the “cup of friendship”).

A vicious circle of contradictions. Perhaps this is how it would be worth characterizing the conflict nature of this work. Here everything is “grown” and closed on contradictions and opposites. It would seem that father and son are opposed to each other, antinomic. However, this impression is deceptive. Indeed, the initially visible focus on the “sorrows” of poor youth, poured out by the angry Albert, gives reason to see the difference between the heroes. But one has only to carefully follow the son’s train of thought, and their immanent moral kinship with their father becomes obvious, even if marked in its original principle by oppositely polar signs. Although the baron did not teach Albert to appreciate and take care of what he dedicated his life to.

In the time period of the tragedy, Albert is young, frivolous, wasteful (in his dreams). But what happens next? Perhaps Solomon is right when he predicts a stingy old age for the young man. Probably, Albert will someday say: “I didn’t get all this for nothing...” (meaning the death of his father, which opened the way for him to the basement). The keys that the baron tried so unsuccessfully to find at the moment when life was leaving him will be found by his son and “the mud will be given to drink with the royal oil.”

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

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

We must not forget that Albert still did not take advantage of Solomon’s offer to poison his father. But this fact does not in the least refute the fact that he has a thought, a desire for the speedy death (but not murder!) of the baron. Wanting to die is one thing, but killing is something completely different. The knight’s son turned out to be unable to commit the act that the “son of harmony” could decide to do: “Pour... three drops into a glass of water...”. Y. Lotman noted in this sense: “In The Miserly Knight, the Baron’s feast took place, but another feast, at which Albert would have had to poison his father, was only mentioned. This feast will take place in “Mozart and Salieri”, connecting these two otherwise so different plays into a single “montage phrase” by “rhyme of provisions”. .

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

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

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

Understanding the moral and philosophical issues of “The Miserly Knight”, one should draw a conclusion about the all-importance of the ethical sound of Pushkin’s tragedy, the comprehensiveness of the themes raised and the universal level of conflict resolution. All vector lines of action development pass through the ethical subtextual space of the work, touching on the deep, ontological aspects of human life, his sinfulness and responsibility before God.

Bibliography

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

2. Lesskis G. Pushkin’s path in Russian literature. - M., 1993. - P.298.

3. “Mozart and Salieri”, Pushkin’s tragedy, Movement in time. - M., 19с.

The action of the tragedy "The Miserly Knight" takes place in the era of late feudalism. The Middle Ages have been portrayed in different ways in literature. Writers often gave this era a harsh flavor of strict asceticism and gloomy religiosity. ( This material will help you write competently on the topic of the Tragedy of the Miserly Knight, the character and image of Albert. Summary does not make it possible to understand the full meaning of the work, so this material will be useful for a deep understanding of the work of writers and poets, as well as their novels, novellas, short stories, plays, and poems.) This is medieval Spain in Pushkin’s “The Stone Guest”. According to other conventional literary ideas, the Middle Ages are a world of knightly tournaments, touching patriarchy, and worship of the lady of the heart. Knights were endowed with feelings of honor, nobility, independence, they stood up for the weak and offended. This idea of ​​the knightly code of honor is necessary condition correct understanding of the tragedy "The Miserly Knight".

“The Miserly Knight” depicts that historical moment when the feudal order had already cracked and life entered new shores. In the very first scene, in Albert’s monologue, an expressive picture is painted. The Duke's palace is full of courtiers - gentle ladies and gentlemen in luxurious clothes; heralds glorify the masterful blows of knights in tournament duels; vassals gather at the overlord's table. In the third scene, the Duke appears as the patron of his loyal nobles and acts as their judge. The Baron, as his knightly duty to the sovereign tells him, comes to the palace upon first request. He is ready to defend the interests of the Duke and, despite his advanced age, “groaning, climb back onto the horse.” However, offering his services in case of war, the Baron avoids participating in court entertainment and lives as a recluse in his castle. He speaks with contempt of “the crowd of caresses, greedy courtiers.”

The Baron's son, Albert, on the contrary, with all his thoughts, with all his soul, is eager to go to the palace (“At any cost, I will appear at the tournament”).

Both Baron and Albert are extremely ambitious, both strive for independence and value it above all else.

The right to freedom was ensured to their knights noble origin, feudal privileges, power over lands, castles, peasants. The one who had full power was free. Therefore, the limit of knightly hopes is absolute, unlimited power, thanks to which wealth was won and defended. But a lot has already changed in the world. To maintain their freedom, the knights are forced to sell their possessions and maintain their dignity with money. The pursuit of gold has become the essence of time. This restructured the entire world of knightly relations, the psychology of knights, and inexorably invaded their intimate lives.

Already in the first scene, the splendor and pomp of the ducal court are just the external romance of chivalry. Previously, the tournament was a test of strength, dexterity, courage, and will before a difficult campaign, but now it pleases the eyes of illustrious nobles. Albert is not very happy about his victory. Of course, he is pleased to defeat the count, but the thought of a broken helmet weighs heavily on the young man, who has nothing to buy new armor with.

O poverty, poverty!

How she humbles our hearts! -

He complains bitterly. And he admits:

What was the fault of heroism? - stinginess.

Albert obediently submits to the flow of life, which carries him, like other nobles, to the Duke's palace. The young man, thirsty for entertainment, wants to take his rightful place among the overlord and stand on a par with the courtiers. Independence for him is maintaining dignity among equals. He does not at all hope for the rights and privileges that the nobility gives him, and speaks ironically of the “pigskin” - the parchment certifying his membership in knighthood.

Money haunts Albert's imagination wherever he is - in the castle, at a tournament match, at the Duke's feast.

The feverish search for money formed the basis dramatic action"The Stingy Knight" Albert's appeal to the moneylender and then to the Duke are two actions that determine the course of the tragedy. And it is no coincidence, of course, that it is Albert, for whom money has become an idea-passion, who leads the action of the tragedy.

Albert has three options: either get money from the moneylender on a mortgage, or wait for his father’s death (or hasten it by force) and inherit the wealth, or “force” the father to adequately support his son. Albert tries all the paths leading to money, but even with his extreme activity they end in complete failure.

This happens because Albert does not just come into conflict with individuals, he comes into conflict with the century. The knightly ideas about honor and nobility are still alive in him, but he already understands the relative value of noble rights and privileges. Albert combines naivety with insight, knightly virtues with sober prudence, and this tangle of conflicting passions dooms Albert to defeat. All of Albert’s attempts to get money without sacrificing his knightly honor, all of his hopes for independence are a fiction and a mirage.

Pushkin, however, makes it clear to us that Albert’s dreams of independence would have remained illusory even if Albert had succeeded his father. He invites us to look into the future. Through the mouth of the Baron, the harsh truth about Albert is revealed. If “pigskin” does not save you from humiliation (Albert is right in this), then an inheritance will not protect you from them, because luxury and entertainment must be paid not only with wealth, but also with noble rights and honor. Albert would have taken his place among the flatterers, the “greedy courtiers.” Is there really independence in the “palace antechambers”? Having not yet received the inheritance, he already agrees to go into bondage to the moneylender. The Baron does not doubt for a second (and he is right!) that his wealth will soon transfer to the moneylender’s pocket. And in fact, the moneylender is no longer even on the threshold, but in the castle.

Thus, all paths to gold, and through it to personal freedom, lead Albert to a dead end. Carried away by the flow of life, he, however, cannot reject the knightly traditions and thereby resists the new time. But this struggle turns out to be powerless and in vain: the passion for money is incompatible with honor and nobility. Before this fact, Albert is vulnerable and weak. This gives birth to hatred of the father, who could voluntarily, out of family responsibility and knightly duty, save his son both from poverty and humiliation. It develops into that frenzied despair, into that animal rage (“tiger cub,” Herzog calls Albert), which turns the secret thought of his father’s death into an open desire for his death.

If Albert, as we remember, preferred money to feudal privileges, then the Baron is obsessed with the idea of ​​power.

The Baron needs gold not to satisfy the vicious passion for acquisitiveness and not to enjoy its chimerical brilliance. Admiring his golden “hill,” the Baron feels like a ruler:

I reign!.. What a magical shine!

Obedient to me, my power is strong;

In her is happiness, in her is my honor and glory!

The Baron knows well that money without power does not bring independence. With a sharp stroke, Pushkin exposes this idea. Albert admires the outfits of the knights, their “satin and velvet.” The Baron, in his monologue, will also remember the atlas and say that his treasures will “flow” into “torn satin pockets.” From his point of view, wealth that does not rest on the sword is “wasted” with catastrophic speed.

Albert acts for the Baron as such a “spendthrift”, before whom the edifice of chivalry that has been erected for centuries cannot withstand, and the Baron also contributed to it with his mind, will, and strength. It, as the Baron says, was “suffered” by him and embodied in his treasures. Therefore, a son who can only squander wealth is a living reproach to the Baron and a direct threat to the idea defended by the Baron. From this it is clear how great the Baron’s hatred is for the wasteful heir, how great his suffering is at the mere thought that Albert will “take power” over his “power.”

However, the Baron also understands something else: power without money is also insignificant. The sword laid the Baron's possessions at his feet, but did not satisfy his dreams of absolute freedom, which, according to knightly ideas, is achieved by unlimited power. What the sword did not complete, gold must do. Money thus becomes both a means of protecting independence and a path to unlimited power.

The idea of ​​unlimited power turned into a fanatical passion and gave the figure of the Baron power and grandeur. The seclusion of the Baron, who retired from the court and deliberately locked himself in the castle, from this point of view can be understood as a kind of defense of his dignity, noble privileges, centuries-old life principles. But, clinging to the old foundations and trying to defend them, the Baron goes against time. The conflict with the century cannot but end in the crushing defeat of the Baron.

However, the reasons for the Baron's tragedy also lie in the contradiction of his passions. Pushkin reminds us everywhere that the Baron is a knight. He remains a knight even when he talks with the Duke, when he is ready to draw his sword for him, when he challenges his son to a duel and when he is alone. Knightly virtues are dear to him, his sense of honor does not disappear. However, Baron assumes undivided dominance, and Baron knows no other freedom. The Baron's lust for power acts both as a noble quality of nature (thirst for independence), and as a crushing passion for the people sacrificed to it. On the one hand, lust for power is the source of the will of the Baron, who has curbed “desires” and now enjoys “happiness,” “honor,” and “glory.” But, on the other hand, he dreams that everything will obey him:

What is beyond my control? like some kind of demon

From now on I can rule the world;

As soon as I want, palaces will be erected;

To my magnificent gardens

The nymphs will come running in a playful crowd;

And the muses will bring me their tribute,

And the free genius will become my slave,

And virtue and sleepless labor

They will humbly await my reward.

I will whistle, and obediently, timidly

Bloody villainy will creep in,

And he will lick my hand and my eyes

Look, there is a sign of my reading in them.

Everything obeys me, but I obey nothing...

Obsessed with these dreams, the Baron cannot gain freedom. This is the reason for his tragedy - in seeking freedom, he tramples it. Moreover: the lust for power degenerates into another, no less powerful, but much baser passion for money. And this is no longer so much a tragic as a comic transformation.

The Baron thinks that he is a king to whom everything is “obedient,” but unlimited power belongs not to him, the old man, but to the pile of gold that lies in front of him. His loneliness turns out to be not only a defense of independence, but also a consequence of fruitless and crushing stinginess.

However, before his death, knightly feelings, which had faded, but did not disappear completely, stirred up in the Baron. And this sheds light on the whole tragedy. The Baron had long convinced himself that gold personified both his honor and glory. However, in reality, the Baron's honor is his personal property. This truth pierced the Baron at the moment when Albert insulted him. In the Baron’s mind everything collapsed at once. All the sacrifices, all the accumulated treasures suddenly seemed meaningless. Why did he suppress desires, why did he deprive himself of the joys of life, why did he indulge in “bitter thoughts”, “heavy thoughts”, “daytime worries” and “sleepless nights”, if before in a short phrase- “Baron, you are lying” - is he defenseless, despite his enormous wealth? The hour of powerlessness of gold came, and the knight woke up in the Baron:

So raise the sword and judge us!

It turns out that the power of gold is relative, and there are such human values, which are not bought or sold. This simple thought refutes life path and the Baron's beliefs.

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THE STINGY KNIGHT

(Scenes from Chanston’s tragicomedy “The Covetous Knight”, 1830)

Baron- father of the young knight Albert; brought up in a previous era, when belonging to knighthood meant, first of all, to be a brave warrior and a rich feudal lord, and not a servant of the cult of a beautiful lady and a participant in court tournaments. Old age freed B. from the need to put on armor (although in final scene he expresses his readiness to draw his sword for the Duke in case of war). But the love for gold grew into passion.

However, it is not money as such that attracts B. - but the world of ideas and feelings associated with it. (This sharply distinguishes B.’s image from the numerous “misers” of Russian comedy late XVIII V. and even from “Skopikhin” by G. R. Derzhavin, the epigraph from which was originally prefaced by the tragedy; The “crossing” of the comedic-satirical type of miser and the “high” hoarder of type B. will occur in the image of Plyushkin in “ Dead souls"N.V. Gogol.) In the second, central scene of the tragedy, he goes down to his basement (a metaphor for the devil's sanctuary, the altar of the underworld) to pour a handful of accumulated coins into the sixth chest - “still incomplete.” Here he essentially confesses to gold and to himself; then lights candles and arranges a “feast” ( end-to-end image“Little tragedies”) for the eyes and for the soul - that is, he performs a certain sacrament, serves a kind of mass to gold.

This “mystical” subtext corresponds to the Gospel paraphrases in the character’s confession. Piles of gold remind B. of a “proud hill”, from which he mentally looks at everything that is under his control. That is, for the whole world. And the lower the basement, the more bent the pose of B., bending over the gold, the higher his demonic spirit rises. The parallel is self-evident: it was precisely the power over the whole world that Satan promised Christ, raising Him to high mountain and offering in exchange only to “fall” to bow to the prince of this world (Matt. 4:8-9). B.’s memory of a widow who today brought an old doubloon, “but before / With three children, half a day in front of the window /<...>stood on her knees, howling,” is negatively associated with the parable of the poor widow who donated her last mite to the temple (Mark 12:14). This is an inverted image of the gospel scene, but the image of B. itself is an inverted image of God. This is how he thinks of himself; gold for him is only a symbol of power over existence. Money sleeps in chests “in the sleep of strength and peace, / Like gods sleep in the deep skies”; ruling over them, B. rules over the gods. He repeats many times: “I reign!” - and it's not empty words. Unlike A., he values ​​money not as a means, but as an end; for their sake I am ready to endure hardships - no less than a widow with children; for their sake he conquered passions; he is an ascetic in the sense in which Epicurus was an ascetic, who valued not possession, but the consciousness of the possibility of possession. (It is not for nothing that Epicurus’s image of the “sleeping gods” is included in his monologue.) The father considers his son an enemy - not because he is bad, but because he is wasteful; his pocket is a hole through which the shrine of gold can leak.

But gold, for the sake of which passions are defeated, itself becomes a passion and defeats the “knight” B. To emphasize this, Pushkin introduces the usurer Solomon, who lends money to the poor son of the rich man B. and ultimately advises him to poison his father. On the one hand, the Jew is the antipode of B., he values ​​​​gold as such; deprived of even a hint of “sublimity” of feelings (even such a demonically base sublimity as B.’s). On the other hand, the “exalted” hoarder B. is ready to humiliate himself and lie in order not to pay for his son’s expenses. Summoned by the latter's complaint to the Duke, he behaves not like a knight, but like a dodging scoundrel; the “drawing” of his behavior completely repeats the “drawing” of Solomon’s behavior in the first scene of the tragedy. And the “knightly” gesture (the glove is a challenge to a duel) in response to the accusation of lying hurled by Albert in the presence of the Duke only more sharply highlights his complete betrayal of the spirit and letter of chivalry. And the final exclamation of the Duke over the body of the suddenly dying B. (“Terrible age, terrible hearts!”) applies equally to both antagonist heroes.

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

History of creation

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

Theme and plot

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

Heroes and images

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

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

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

Albert has wonderful spiritual qualities, he is kind, gives the last bottle of wine to the sick blacksmith. But he is broken by circumstances and dreams of the time when the gold will be inherited by him. When the moneylender Solomon offers to set Albert up with a pharmacist who sells poison to poison his father, the knight expels him in disgrace. And soon Albert already accepts the baron’s challenge to a duel; he is ready to fight to the death with his own father, who insulted his honor. The Duke calls Albert a monster for this act.

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

Issues

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

Conflict

The main conflict is external: between a stingy knight and his son, who claims his share. The Baron believes that wealth must be suffered so as not to be squandered. The Baron's goal is to preserve and increase, Albert's goal is to use and enjoy. The conflict is caused by a clash of these interests. It is aggravated by the participation of the Duke, to whom the Baron is forced to slander his son. The strength of the conflict is such that only the death of one of the parties can resolve it. Passion destroys the stingy knight; the reader can only guess about the fate of his wealth.

Composition

There are three scenes in the tragedy. From the first, the reader learns about Albert’s difficult financial situation, associated with his father’s stinginess. The second scene is a monologue of a stingy knight, from which it is clear that passion has completely taken possession of him. In the third scene, the just duke intervenes in the conflict and unwittingly becomes the cause of the death of the hero obsessed with passion. The climax (the death of the baron) is adjacent to the denouement - the Duke’s conclusion: “A terrible age, terrible hearts!”

Genre

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

Style and artistic originality

All “Little Tragedies” are intended not so much for reading as for staging: how theatrical the stingy knight looks in a dark basement among gold flickering in the light of a candle! The dialogues of the tragedies are dynamic, and the monologue of the miserly knight is a poetic masterpiece. The reader can see how a bloody villain crawls into the basement and licks the hand of a stingy knight. The images of The Miserly Knight are impossible to forget.

The action of the tragedy "The Miserly Knight" takes place in the era of late feudalism. The Middle Ages have been portrayed in different ways in literature. Writers often gave this era a harsh flavor of strict asceticism and gloomy religiosity. This is medieval Spain in Pushkin’s “The Stone Guest”. According to other conventional literary ideas, the Middle Ages are a world of knightly tournaments, touching patriarchy, and worship of the lady of the heart.

Knights were endowed with feelings of honor, nobility, independence, they stood up for the weak and offended. This idea of ​​the knightly code of honor is a necessary condition for a correct understanding of the tragedy “The Miserly Knight.”

“The Miserly Knight” depicts that historical moment when the feudal order had already cracked and life entered new shores. In the very first scene, in Albert’s monologue, an expressive picture is painted. The Duke's palace is full of courtiers - gentle ladies and gentlemen in luxurious clothes; heralds glorify the masterful blows of knights in tournament duels; vassals gather at the overlord's table. In the third scene, the Duke appears as the patron of his loyal nobles and acts as their judge.

The Baron, as his knightly duty to the sovereign tells him, comes to the palace upon first request. He is ready to defend the interests of the Duke and, despite his advanced age, “groaning, climb back onto the horse.” However, offering his services in case of war, the Baron avoids participating in court entertainment and lives as a recluse in his castle. He speaks with contempt of “the crowd of caresses, greedy courtiers.”

The Baron's son, Albert, on the contrary, with all his thoughts, with all his soul, is eager to go to the palace (“At any cost, I will appear at the tournament”).

Both Baron and Albert are extremely ambitious, both strive for independence and value it above all else.

The right to freedom was guaranteed to the knights by their noble origin, feudal privileges, power over lands, castles, and peasants. The one who had full power was free. Therefore, the limit of knightly hopes is absolute, unlimited power, thanks to which wealth was won and defended. But a lot has already changed in the world. To maintain their freedom, the knights are forced to sell their possessions and maintain their dignity with money. The pursuit of gold has become the essence of time. This restructured the entire world of knightly relations, the psychology of knights, and inexorably invaded their intimate lives.

Already in the first scene, the splendor and pomp of the ducal court are just the external romance of chivalry. Previously, the tournament was a test of strength, dexterity, courage, and will before a difficult campaign, but now it pleases the eyes of illustrious nobles. Albert is not very happy about his victory. Of course, he is pleased to defeat the count, but the thought of a broken helmet weighs heavily on the young man, who has nothing to buy new armor with.

O poverty, poverty!

How she humbles our hearts! -

he complains bitterly. And he admits:

What was the fault of heroism? - stinginess.

Albert obediently submits to the flow of life, which carries him, like other nobles, to the Duke's palace. The young man, thirsty for entertainment, wants to take his rightful place among the overlord and stand on a par with the courtiers. Independence for him is maintaining dignity among equals. He does not at all hope for the rights and privileges that the nobility gives him, and speaks ironically of the “pigskin” - the parchment certifying his membership in knighthood.

Money haunts Albert's imagination wherever he is - in the castle, at a tournament match, at the Duke's feast.

The feverish search for money formed the basis of the dramatic action of The Stingy Knight. Albert's appeal to the moneylender and then to the Duke are two actions that determine the course of the tragedy. And it is no coincidence, of course, that it is Albert, for whom money has become an idea-passion, who leads the action of the tragedy.

Albert has three options: either get money from the moneylender on a mortgage, or wait for his father’s death (or hasten it by force) and inherit the wealth, or “force” the father to adequately support his son. Albert tries all the paths leading to money, but even with his extreme activity they end in complete failure.

This happens because Albert does not just come into conflict with individuals, he comes into conflict with the century. The knightly ideas about honor and nobility are still alive in him, but he already understands the relative value of noble rights and privileges. Albert combines naivety with insight, knightly virtues with sober prudence, and this tangle of conflicting passions dooms Albert to defeat. All of Albert’s attempts to get money without sacrificing his knightly honor, all of his hopes for independence are a fiction and a mirage.

Pushkin, however, makes it clear to us that Albert’s dreams of independence would have remained illusory even if Albert had succeeded his father. He invites us to look into the future. Through the mouth of the Baron, the harsh truth about Albert is revealed. If “pigskin” does not save you from humiliation (Albert is right in this), then an inheritance will not protect you from them, because luxury and entertainment must be paid not only with wealth, but also with noble rights and honor. Albert would have taken his place among the flatterers, the “greedy courtiers.” Is there really independence in the “palace antechambers”? Having not yet received the inheritance, he already agrees to go into bondage to the moneylender. The Baron does not doubt for a second (and he is right!) that his wealth will soon transfer to the moneylender’s pocket. And in fact, the moneylender is no longer even on the threshold, but in the castle.

Thus, all paths to gold, and through it to personal freedom, lead Albert to a dead end. Carried away by the flow of life, he, however, cannot reject the knightly traditions and thereby resists the new time. But this struggle turns out to be powerless and in vain: the passion for money is incompatible with honor and nobility. Before this fact, Albert is vulnerable and weak. This gives birth to hatred of the father, who could voluntarily, out of family responsibility and knightly duty, save his son both from poverty and humiliation. It develops into that frenzied despair, into that animal rage (“tiger cub,” Herzog calls Albert), which turns the secret thought of his father’s death into an open desire for his death.

If Albert, as we remember, preferred money to feudal privileges, then the Baron is obsessed with the idea of ​​power.

The Baron needs gold not to satisfy the vicious passion for acquisitiveness and not to enjoy its chimerical brilliance. Admiring his golden “hill,” the Baron feels like a ruler:

I reign!.. What a magical shine!

Obedient to me, my power is strong;

In her is happiness, in her is my honor and glory!

The Baron knows well that money without power does not bring independence. With a sharp stroke, Pushkin exposes this idea. Albert admires the outfits of the knights, their “satin and velvet.” The Baron, in his monologue, will also remember the atlas and say that his treasures will “flow” into “torn satin pockets.” From his point of view, wealth that does not rest on the sword is “wasted” with catastrophic speed.

Albert acts for the Baron as such a “spendthrift”, before whom the edifice of chivalry that has been erected for centuries cannot withstand, and the Baron also contributed to it with his mind, will, and strength. It, as the Baron says, was “suffered” by him and embodied in his treasures. Therefore, a son who can only squander wealth is a living reproach to the Baron and a direct threat to the idea defended by the Baron. From this it is clear how great the Baron’s hatred is for the wasteful heir, how great his suffering is at the mere thought that Albert will “take power” over his “power.”

However, the Baron also understands something else: power without money is also insignificant. The sword laid the Baron's possessions at his feet, but did not satisfy his dreams of absolute freedom, which, according to knightly ideas, is achieved by unlimited power. What the sword did not complete, gold must do. Money thus becomes both a means of protecting independence and a path to unlimited power.

The idea of ​​unlimited power turned into a fanatical passion and gave the figure of the Baron power and grandeur. The seclusion of the Baron, who retired from the court and deliberately locked himself in the castle, from this point of view can be understood as a kind of defense of his dignity, noble privileges, and age-old principles of life. But, clinging to the old foundations and trying to defend them, the Baron goes against time. The conflict with the century cannot but end in the crushing defeat of the Baron.

However, the reasons for the Baron's tragedy also lie in the contradiction of his passions. Pushkin reminds us everywhere that the Baron is a knight. He remains a knight even when he talks with the Duke, when he is ready to draw his sword for him, when he challenges his son to a duel and when he is alone. Knightly virtues are dear to him, his sense of honor does not disappear. However, the Baron's freedom presupposes undivided dominance, and the Baron knows no other freedom. The Baron's lust for power acts both as a noble quality of nature (thirst for independence), and as a crushing passion for the people sacrificed to it. On the one hand, lust for power is the source of the will of the Baron, who has curbed “desires” and now enjoys “happiness,” “honor,” and “glory.” But, on the other hand, he dreams that everything will obey him:

What is beyond my control? like some kind of demon

From now on I can rule the world;

As soon as I want, palaces will be erected;

To my magnificent gardens

The nymphs will come running in a playful crowd;

And the muses will bring me their tribute,

And the free genius will become my slave,

And virtue and sleepless labor

They will humbly await my reward.

I will whistle, and obediently, timidly

Bloody villainy will creep in,

And he will lick my hand and my eyes

Look, there is a sign of my reading in them.

Everything obeys me, but I obey nothing...

Obsessed with these dreams, the Baron cannot gain freedom. This is the reason for his tragedy - in seeking freedom, he tramples it. Moreover: the lust for power degenerates into another, no less powerful, but much baser passion for money. And this is no longer so much a tragic as a comic transformation.

The Baron thinks that he is a king to whom everything is “obedient,” but unlimited power belongs not to him, the old man, but to the pile of gold that lies in front of him. His loneliness turns out to be not only a defense of independence, but also a consequence of fruitless and crushing stinginess.

However, before his death, knightly feelings, which had faded, but did not disappear completely, stirred up in the Baron. And this sheds light on the whole tragedy. The Baron had long convinced himself that gold personified both his honor and glory. However, in reality, the Baron's honor is his personal property. This truth pierced the Baron at the moment when Albert insulted him. In the Baron’s mind everything collapsed at once. All the sacrifices, all the accumulated treasures suddenly seemed meaningless. Why did he suppress desires, why did he deprive himself of the joys of life, why did he indulge in “bitter thoughts”, “heavy thoughts”, “daytime worries” and “sleepless nights”, if before a short phrase - “Baron, you are lying” - he is defenseless, despite great wealth? The hour of powerlessness of gold came, and the knight woke up in the Baron:

So raise the sword and judge us!

It turns out that the power of gold is relative, and there are human values ​​that cannot be bought or sold. This simple thought refutes the Baron's life path and beliefs.

Updated: 2011-09-26

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