The story of the character. Devushkin Makar Alekseevich Several interesting compositions

Makar Devushkin is a modest and very kind hero, from whom some characters in other Dostoevsky's works were "born". identifying the role of an unremarkable person in the huge secular Petersburg.

Makar himself understands who he is, knows his place and expresses his state openly, but with due pride. He often indicates that he is dressed in rags, that he cannot afford not only excesses, but also ordinary daily needs.

Character characteristics

Makar has lived in rented apartments all his life. Hates being under the slightest scrutiny. It even seems to him that he is being watched, discussions are imagining behind his back, he often does not take his eyes off the floor. He does not have any ranks and awards, but even without this he knows what honor and conscience are. Unquestioningly proud that he knows how to live without doing meanness to others. Varenka sympathizes with Makar, but she also believes that his kindness is excessive, and one cannot live like this: taking too close to heart everything that happens every day around a person. It is Varenka who shows him the literary world, which becomes the cause of a revolution in Devushkin's soul. Previously, Makar was only favorably interested in the written works of poets and writers, but did not find in himself the gift of distinguishing masterpieces and delving into the true essence of the work he had read.

The image of the hero in the work

(Makar Devushkin reads Gogol's story "The Overcoat". Illustration by N. Vereshchagin)

The fateful "Overcoat" by Gogol, suggested for reading by Devushkin, Varvara, struck at the state of mind of the "little man". Makar discovered phenomenal similarities between the protagonist and himself. The era of rebirth began, the rethinking of his whole life and further actions. Of course, Makar was in a real state of shock and his experiences drove the person to the bottle. Initially, he began to scold and deny all possible literature. It seemed that he rejects with resentment and anger, having understood the criticism of his own life. However, along with this, the understanding came that it was not worthwhile to treat what was happening in this way - with folded hands and submitting to fate. Makar begins to talk about how he lived too long for anyone, but not for himself. At a time when everyone was around, absolutely, all the same to other people's problems and life in general.

(Scene from the play "Poor People" Theater of Young Spectators named after A.A. Bryantseva, St. Petersburg)

Together with a surge of emotions, his true attitude towards Varvara Dobrosyolova is also manifested. If initially the reader could think of the quiet Makar's falling in love with the soulful Varenka, then by the end of the work it becomes clear that Devushkin is moving from his isolation to energetic vampirism. Cooking for him is free ears and that island in the ocean of loneliness, from which the answer always comes. Whether a person like Makar will be able to enter a normal social channel is, alas, not clear. But the complex of the "little man", not adapted to the aspirations of accepting two sides of the same coin, is revealed by the author in the hero with amazing precision.

Makar Devushkin, the protagonist of Poor People, is a man with a subtle and peculiar character. A similar character will later appear more than once in other works of Dostoevsky.

A petty official, Devushkin at the service is afraid of the glances of his colleagues and does not dare to take his eyes off the table. To the object of his love, the young Varvara Dobrosyolova, he writes: “Why, Varenka, is killing me? Not money is killing me, but all these everyday worries, all these whispers, smiles, jokes. " And again: “... For me it doesn't matter, even if I walk in a bitter frost without an overcoat and without boots, I will endure and endure everything ... but what will people say? Enemies of mine, all those evil tongues that will speak when you go without an overcoat? "

Devushkin borrows from Varenka to read Gogol's "The Overcoat", a touching story about how a "little man" like him was robbed. After reading the story, Devushkin feels as if his secret had been unraveled - he becomes very agitated: “After that, you can't live peacefully for yourself, in your little corner ... so that they don't get into your kennel, but they don't spy .. And why write this? And what is it for? Why would any of the readers make me an overcoat for this, or what? Will he buy new boots? No, Varenka, he will read it, and even continue to demand. Sometimes you hide, you hide, you hide in what you did not take, you are afraid to show your nose at times - wherever it may be, because you tremble at gossip, because of everything that is in the world, of everything, libel will work for you, and that's all your civil and family life walks through literature, everything is printed, read, ridiculed, condemned! "

Dostoevsky. Poor people. Audiobook

Devushkin is always afraid that he is being watched and tracked down, he sees enemies everywhere. He is painfully afraid of people, imagines himself a victim, and therefore is not able to communicate with others on an equal footing.

Consumed by an inner heat, all in captivity of his fantasies, Devushkin shuns reality and completely goes into letters. They give him the opportunity to avoid communicating with real people. Only in correspondence can he surrender to the whims of his heart.

“You are very useful to me, Varenka. You have such a beneficial influence ... Now I think of you now, and I have fun ... Sometimes I will write you a letter and state all my feelings in it, to which I receive a detailed answer. " Varenka Dobrosyolova is needed by Makar Devushkin not at all in order to live with her, but only as a listener to his spiritual outpourings.

Varenka is exhausted under the weight of his confessions and answers: “What a strange character you have, Makar Alekseevich! You take everything too strongly to heart; from this you will always be the most unhappy person. "

This is what a strange man Dostoevsky brought out in his first work. The critic V. G. Belinsky, who was then living in St. Petersburg, read the manuscript of Poor People, praised the author and gave him a start in the literary world. Belinsky owes a great deal of credit to the fact that he recognized a literary talent in an unknown young man.

At the same time, Belinsky planted the seeds of misinterpretation of all subsequent work of Dostoevsky. Regarding Devushkin, he writes: “The more limited his mind, the closer and coarser his concepts, the wider and more delicate his heart seems to be; we can say that all his mental faculties passed from his head to his heart. "

This interpretation of Belinsky over the course of many subsequent years became the main one for readers: Poor People is a novel full of sympathy for the poor, who have a beautiful soul. This understanding has become immutable.

However, if you try to read Poor People with an open mind, it turns out that Dostoevsky's hero is far from stupid, but just a strange person with an inferiority complex. In Devushkin's character, sensitivity is developed beyond any measure. He is able to plunge headlong into the "play" of his experiences, but delicacy, coupled with excessiveness, make him powerless in real life, and fear and dislike for reality form a bizarre, almost ridiculous type.

In Poor People, Dostoevsky discovered a very unusual, even fantastic character.

The Soviet literary historian BM Eikhenbaum spoke of Dostoevsky's characters as "images of realistic fantasy" (see his work "On Chekhov"). Young Dostoevsky was initially fascinated by historical dramas Schiller and Pushkin, he tried to imitate them, but having discovered a "strange man", he felt deep sympathy and interest for him and wrote a novel - thereby realizing his true literary destiny and peculiarities of his talent. This realistic and, at the same time, fantastic character partly lived in himself. Makara Devushkina Dostoevsky partly wrote himself.

Dostoevsky did not have the talent of a historical writer with a field of vision capable of capturing a wide panorama of events. He did not have a natural streak to feel and describe people who do great things. Most of his characters are weak, humiliated and sick people. Public opinion most often evaluates such painful, unsuccessful, powerless people negatively, but Dostoevsky discovered boiling feelings, drama, complexity, emotional wealth in their images. Because he himself was in these characters.

In the hero of Poor People, the petty official Makar Devushkin, Dostoevsky discovered the secret spiritual world of the humiliated and sick “little man”. This novel anticipates all his subsequent works.

Makar Devushkin

MAKAR DEVUSHKIN is the hero of the novel by F.M. Dostoevsky's Poor People (1845), a titular adviser for 47 years, rewriting for a small salary of paper in one of the St. Petersburg departments. He just moved to a "capital" house near the Fontanka, where he huddles behind a partition in a common kitchen with a "rotten, acutely sweetened smell" in which "siskins are dying." In the same yard M.D. rents a more comfortable and expensive apartment for his distant relative Varenka, a 17-year-old orphan, for whom there is no one else to stand up for. Living side by side, they rarely see each other, so as not to cause gossip. They draw their warmth and sympathy from their almost daily correspondence with each other. M.D. happy having found heartfelt affection. Denying himself food and dress, he makes money on flowers and sweets for his "angel". "Smirnenky", "quiet" and "kind", M.D. - the subject of constant ridicule of others. The only joy is Varenka: "God blessed me with a house and a family!" She sends M.D. stories by Pushkin and Gogol; The "station superintendent" elevates him in his own eyes, the "Overcoat" - offends by disclosing the pitiful details of his own life. Finally, M.D. luck smiles: summoned for a mistake in the paper for a "receipt" to the general, he won the sympathy of "his excellency" and received 100 rubles from him personally. This is salvation: paid for the apartment, table, clothes. M.D. suppressed by the generosity of the boss and reproaches himself for recent "liberal" thoughts. Realizing all the overwhelming power for M.D. material concerns about herself, Varya agrees to marry a rude and cruel Bykov and leaves for his estate. In the last letter to M.D. to her - a cry of despair: "I worked, and wrote papers, and walked, and walked ... all because you ... here, on the contrary, lived nearby." In other works of the 1840s. Dostoevsky paints the "little man" in a slightly different way, emphasizing his moral inferiority (Goayadkin, Prokharchin, etc.), and in the 1850s - even ugliness (Opiskin). Since the 1860s. this type becomes secondary for the writer, giving up the central place to the outstanding hero-intellectual. The first artistic performance of Dostoevsky is associated with the novel "Poor People": in April 1846, at a literary concert in the house of the famous Slavophiles Samarin, MS Shchepkin read one of the "letters" to M.D.

Lit .: Belinsky V.G. "Petersburg collection" // Belinsky V.G. Complete collection of works M., 1953-1959. T.9; A.A. Grigoriev "Poor people" // Finnish Bulletin, 1846. №9. Ot.d. U; Maikov V.N. Something about Russian literature in 1846 // Maikov V.N.

Literary criticism. L., 1885; Tseitlin A.G. The story of the poor official Dostoevsky (To the story of one plot). M., 1923; Vinogradov V.V. Evolution of Russian naturalism. Gogol and Dostoevsky. L., 1929; Bakhtin M.M. Problems of Dostoevsky's poetics. M., 1979; Bocharov S.G. The transition from Gogol to Dostoevsky // Bocharov S.G. About the artistic worlds. M., 1985.

All characteristics alphabetically:

The plot of the work

Petty official Makar Alekseevich Girls takes care of his distant relative Vara Dobrosyolova. The titular counselor, having no means of subsistence, tries, nevertheless, to help the unfortunate orphan by renting a house for her. Despite the fact that Varya and Makar live side by side, they rarely see each other: Devushkin fears for Varya's reputation. Relatives are forced to be content with letters to each other.

According to the stories of Varvara Dobrosyolova herself, one can judge that her childhood was quite happy. The family lived in a village where my father served as the manager of the estate of a certain prince P-th. The move to St. Petersburg was forced: Alexey Dobroselov lost his job as a manager. The difficult life in the capital and numerous failures ruined Vary's father. A distant relative, Anna Fedorovna, took the widow Dobrosyolova into her house, and she immediately began to "reproach" the new tenants with a piece.

To compensate for the material "losses" inflicted by Varya and her mother, Anna Fedorovna decided to marry the orphan to the wealthy landowner Bykov. By that time, Dobrosyolov's widow had already died, and there was no one to intercede for Varya, except Devushkin, who took the orphan from Anna Fedorovna's house. It was necessary to hide Varvara's new address from an insidious relative.

Despite all the efforts of Makar, Vara Dobrosyolova had to marry the rude and cynical Bykov. Devushkin spent all the meager savings he had and could no longer help his ward.

Composition of the novel

The novel "Poor People" is presented in epistolary form, that is, in the form of correspondence between the characters. The choice of the author cannot be called accidental. Letters are the direct speech of the characters, completely excluding the subjective opinion of the author.

Role of the reader

The reader is entrusted with a difficult task: having "overheard" someone else's personal conversation, he himself can understand what is happening and draw a certain conclusion. We can learn the biography of the main characters from them. You will have to make a conclusion about the character of the characters yourself.

To help the reader, the author draws parallels, mentioning the well-known novels "The Overcoat" and "The Station Keeper". In Devushkin it is not difficult to recognize the disenfranchised Akaki Akakievich Bashmachkin. The choice of the story "The Station Keeper" is also not accidental. Samson Vyrin was the same powerless petty official as Bashmachkin. And if a new greatcoat was stolen from Akaki Akakievich, Vyrin was deprived of his daughter. By analogy with the two previous literary characters, Makar Devushkin had to lose the only joy of his life - Varya.

Characteristics of the characters

In the center of the reader's attention are 2 main characters: Varya Dobrosyolova and Makar Devushkin. Of course, these are positive characters, and for the full disclosure of images, negative characters are also needed, represented by Anna Fedorovna and the landowner Bykov.

Makar Devushkin

The image of the "little man" existed before the appearance of the novel Poor People. And the author himself does not deny this, drawing a parallel between his work, Gogol's "The Overcoat" and Pushkin's "Station Keeper". It is enough for Dostoevsky to mention these two stories, to point out that Makar recognized himself in the main characters, and the reader already becomes clear what the titular counselor Devushkin is. According to Makar himself, he could not advance up the career ladder only because he was "meek" and "kind". To obtain titles, you must have an iron grip.

One should not ignore the name of the protagonist, which can rightfully be considered a speaker. Makar is sensitive and vulnerable like a girl. It completely lacks the brutality characteristic of a man. In Makar's speech, you can often find nouns and adjectives with diminutive-affectionate suffixes: mother, boots, little dress, quiet. Everything in Devushkin's appearance testifies to the weakness of his character.

Varya Dobrosyolova

Like Makar Devushkin, Varya Dobrosyolova is a bearer of a speaking surname, the characterizing element of which is the word "good". The main characters of the "positive camp" have the same middle names, and this is not a coincidence. The sameness indicates the similarity of the characters of Vary and Makar, on a kind of common parent of the main characters, despite the fact that they were not the children of one person named Alexey.

Makar and Varya are kindred spirits. It is very difficult for both of them to live in this harsh world, mostly due to the excessive gentleness of their character. Devushkin and Dobrosyolova were united by the lack of warmth, which they need, but which they do not receive from others. Two people completely different in age and education find moral support in each other.

There are, however, some differences in the characters of Vari and Makar. Varya, despite her young age, is more practical than her relative. She tries to earn money by sewing on her own, not relying on her patron. Dobrosyolova agreed to marry an unpleasant, but rich man who can save her from poverty. Unlike Makar, who cannot give up his principles for a more comfortable life, Varya is sure that living in poverty is much more terrible than with an unloved husband. The author shows hidden power in his heroine. This power will certainly help you survive and perhaps even succeed.

Bykov

By the name of the protagonist, it is easy to judge his character: rude, stubborn, impudent and strong. Bykov is the "master of life." He is used to getting what he wants and does not like being refused. From Varya's letters, it can be concluded that Bykov does not need a family as such. The landowner dreams of the birth of a legal heir. After all, if he dies childless, all his fortune will pass to the hated nephew. Varya Dobrosyolova means nothing to Bykov. Her only mission is to give birth to an heir to the “master of life”. If the girl does not agree to get married, the landowner will quickly find a replacement for her in the person of a rich Moscow merchant's wife.

Bykov does not notice living people around him. The life of each individual person is dear to the landowner as much as this person can be useful to him, Bykov. Even before he became the lawful wife of the landowner, Varya is already becoming his property, his personal thing. And Bykov is not used to standing on ceremony with things.

Anna Fedorovna

A distant relative of the Dobrosyolov family lives a strange and ambiguous life. Varya sees the mystery in her studies. Anna Fedorovna is constantly fussing, leaving somewhere several times a day. The woman came to her poor relatives herself and she herself offered to move to her.

The mask of Christian virtue, which Anna Fyodorovna is so proud of, hides a cruel and insidious soul. Even Bykov admits this. At one time, Anna Fyodorovna helped the landowner "cover up the sin" by marrying a woman pregnant from Bykov to the official Zakhar Pokrovsky.

Many researchers of FM Dostoevsky's work believe that some of the heroes of the novel "Poor People" had their own prototypes in life. To create the image of Vary Dobrosyolova, for example, the writer was inspired by his sister V.M.Dostoevskaya (after Karepin's husband).

("Poor People")

A 9th grade official (titular counselor), a beggar and lonely middle-aged (45-46) man who fell in love with a young girl and survived a touching "epistolary affair" with her - they met very rarely, mostly in church, but they wrote to a friend letters to a friend every other day and every day. In Devushkin's simple-minded letters, his whole character, his whole destiny, his everyday life is clearly outlined: “I'll start with the fact that I was only seventeen years old when I came to the service, and now it will soon knock my career for thirty years. Well, there is nothing to say, I have worn out my uniforms quite enough; matured, grew wiser, looked at people; I lived, I can say that I lived in the world, so that they even wanted to present me to receive the cross. You may not believe, but I really am not lying to you. So, my dear, there were evil people for all this! And I will tell you, my dear, that although I am a dark person, a stupid person, perhaps, my heart is the same as that of someone else. So do you know, Varenka, what the evil man did to me? And it is shameful to say what he did; ask - why did you do it? And because I am meek, but because I am quiet, but because I am kind! They didn’t like it, and so it went to me.<...>No, my dear, you see how things went: everything is on Makar Alekseevich; they only knew how to do that in the proverb introduced Makar Alekseevich in our entire department. Yes, not only did they make a proverb and almost a swear word out of me - they got to my boots, to my uniform, to my hair, to my figure: everything is not according to them, everything needs to be redone! And this is all from time immemorial, every single day is repeated. I am used to it because I get used to everything, because I am a meek person, because I am a small person; but, nevertheless, what is it all for? What have I done wrong to whom? Did Chin intercept someone, or what? Has anyone vilified before the higher ones? Rewarding asked again! Did the Cabal cook something up? Yes, it's a sin for you to think such and such, my dear! Well, where do I need all this? Just consider, my dear, do I have the ability sufficient for cunning and ambition? So why should such misfortunes befall me, God forgive me? After all, you find me a worthy man, and you are by no means better than them all, my dear.<...>I have my own piece of bread; true, a simple piece of bread, sometimes even stale; but it is, obtained by labor, lawfully and irreproachably used. Well what can you do! After all, I myself know that I do a little by rewriting; all the same, I am proud of it: I work, I spill sweat. Well, what is it really about that I rewrite! Is it a sin to rewrite, or what? "He, they say, rewrites!" "This, they say, is a rat the official is rewriting!" What's so dishonorable? The letter is so clear, good, pleasant to look at, and His Excellency is pleased; I rewrite the most important papers for them. Well, no syllable, because I myself know that he is not, the damned; that is why I didn’t take the service, and even now, my dear, I am writing to you casually, without any fancy, and in the way that the thought falls on my heart ... I know all this; yes, however, if everyone began to compose, so who would rewrite? This is the question I'm asking and I ask you to answer it, my dear. Well, this is how I realize now that I am needed, that I am necessary, and that there is nothing to confuse a person with nonsense. Well, perhaps, let it be a rat, if you find a similarity! Yes, this rat is needed, but the rat is useful, but they hold on to this rat, but this rat is rewarded, - what a rat it is! However, enough about this matter, my dear; I didn’t want to talk about that, but I got a little excited. Still, it's nice to give yourself justice from time to time ... "

In another letter, discussing the story "The Overcoat" by N.V. Gogol, Makar Alekseevich describes himself as follows: “I have been in the service for about thirty years; I serve impeccably, behavior sober, never seen in disorder. As a citizen, I consider myself, my own consciousness, as having its own shortcomings, but at the same time virtues. We respect the authorities, and His Excellency themselves are pleased with me; although they have not yet shown me any special signs of goodwill, but I know that they are pleased. Lived to gray hair; I don’t know a big sin behind me. Of course, who is not sinful in small things? Everyone is sinful, and even you are sinful, my dear! But I have never been noticed in great misconduct and insolence, so that something is against decisions or in violation of public peace, in this I have never been noticed, this has not happened; even a cross came out - well, yes!<...>So after that, one cannot live quietly for oneself, in one's own corner - no matter what he is there - to live with water without muddying, according to the proverb, touching no one, knowing the fear of God and oneself, so that you are not touched, so that in they didn't sneak into your kennel, but they didn't spy - what, they say, how are you doing it at home, what, for example, do you have a good vest, do you have what follows from your underwear; whether there are boots, and what are they lined with; What do you eat, what do you drink, what do you rewrite? .. And what's wrong with that, my dear, that even if I, where the pavement is not good enough, sometimes pass on tiptoe, that I am boots on the shore! Why write about someone else, that sometimes he needs it, that he doesn't drink tea? And as if everyone should certainly drink tea by all means! But do I really look into everyone's mouth, what, they say, what piece he chews there? Whom did I hurt in this way? No, my dear, why offend others when you are not touched! .. "

And a little later Devushkin adds characteristic touches: “Well, what a slum I got into, Varvara Alekseevna! Well, already an apartment! Before, after all, I lived as such a capercaillie, you know yourself: quietly, quietly; I used to have a fly flying, and I could hear the fly. And here is the noise, the scream, the hubbub! Why, you still don’t know how it all works here. Imagine, roughly, a long corridor, completely dark and unclean. On his right hand there will be a blank wall, and on his left all doors and doors, like numbers, all stretch out in a row like that. Well, here they are hiring these rooms, and in them there is one room in each; live in one and two and three. Don't ask the order - Noah's ark! However, it seems that people are good, they are all so educated, scientists.<...> I live in the kitchen, or it would be much more correct to say this: there is one room next to the kitchen (and we, you need to notice, the kitchen is clean, bright, very good), the room is small, the corner is so modest ... that is, or Better yet, the kitchen is large with three windows, so I have a partition along the transverse wall, so it looks like another room, a supernumerary number; everything is spacious, comfortable, and there is a window, and everything - in a word, everything is comfortable. Well, this is my corner. Well, don't think so, my dear, that there is something so different and mysterious in its meaning; what, they say, the kitchen! - that is, I, perhaps, live in this very room behind the partition, but that's nothing; I myself am aloof from everyone, little by little I live, I live quietly. I put up a bed, a table, a chest of drawers, a couple of chairs, I hung up the image. True, there are better apartments — perhaps there are much better ones — but convenience is the main thing; after all, I’m all for convenience, and you don’t think that it’s for anything else. Your window is opposite, across the yard; and the yard is narrow, you will see you in passing - all the more cheerful to me, the miserable, and cheaper. We have the very last room here, with a table, it costs thirty-five rubles in banknotes. It is too expensive! And my apartment costs me seven rubles in banknotes, and the table costs five rubles: here's twenty-four and a half rubles, and before that I paid exactly thirty, but I refused myself a lot; I didn’t always drink tea, but now I’ve made a fortune for tea and sugar. You know, my dear, it's a shame not to drink tea; here all the people are sufficient, so it is a shame. For the sake of strangers and drink it, Varenka, for the sight, for the tone; but for me it doesn't matter, I'm not whimsical. Put it this way, for pocket money - all is required - well, some boots, little dress - will there be many left? That's all my salary. I do not grumble and am pleased. It is enough. Enough for several years; there are also awards. Well, goodbye, my little angel. There I bought a couple of pots with balsam and geranium - inexpensive. And you, perhaps, also love mignonette? So there is mignonette, you write; yes, you know, write everything in as much detail as possible. You, however, do not think anything and do not doubt, my dear, about me, that I have hired such a room. No, this convenience compelled, and one convenience seduced me. After all, my dear, I'm saving up money, saving it: I have money. You don’t look at the fact that I’m so quiet that it seems that the fly will beat me with its wing. No, my dear, I’m not a blunder about myself, and the character is absolutely the same as a decently solid and serene soul to a person. .. "

Persistent references to tea are quite characteristic here: Dostoevsky himself a few years earlier, while studying at the Engineering School, (May 5-10, 1839): “Will or not, but I must fully conform to the regulations of my present society<...>the camp life of each student of military educational institutions requires at least 40 rubles. of money. (I am writing to you all this because I am talking to my father). In this amount, I do not include such needs as, for example: to have tea, sugar, etc. This is already necessary, and it is necessary not out of decency alone, but out of need. When you get wet in wet weather in the rain in a canvas tent, or in such weather, coming home from school tired, chilled, you can get sick without tea; what happened to me last year on the hike. But all the same, respecting your need, I will not drink tea ... ”Meanwhile, in the camps they gave government tea twice a day. Tea for Dostoevsky throughout his life played the role of not only the favorite drink, but also the yardstick of any kind of well-being. If a person doesn’t have his own tea, it’s not even poverty, it’s poverty; and poverty is certainly, as he will formulate later in Crime and Punishment, a vice: further, gentlemen, there is nowhere else! Tea will serve, so to speak, and the basis of the well-known ambitious exclamation-motto of the hero of "Notes from the Underground" that, they say, it would be better if the whole world would fall into tartarar, but only for him to drink tea.

No matter how paradoxical it sounds, but in fact Makar Alekseevich Devushkin is a writer, literary man, composer. Although he himself seems to admit to Varenka that he is deprived of a gift from above: “And nature, and various rural pictures, and everything else about feelings - in a word, you described all this very well. But I have no talent. At least ten pages of namarai, nothing comes of it, nothing can be described. I've already tried ... "This" I've already tried "speaks directly about the literary attempts of Makar Alekseevich. Apparently, having lost faith in his abilities, for self-complacency he indulges himself with rhetorical questions: "... if everyone began to compose, so who would rewrite?" But it is no secret for the reader that the hero of the novel is clearly being shy. After all, it is his pen, the pen of Devushkin, who owns a good half of the text of Poor People; after all, his letters, like those of Varenka, of which Dostoevsky "compiled" the work, are literary reality. One has only to recall his description of the tragedy of the Gorshkov family, complete with real artistry, or the scene he recreated on paper with a button that came off during a reception with His Excellency ... No, Makar Alekseevich is a real writer of the "natural school", only because of his excessive modesty and habit of not being obscured suspect about it. However, he vividly imagines what an embarrassment he would have to endure if the book "Poems of Makar Devushkin" was published. In his first work, Dostoevsky already fully applied a technique that would become fundamental in all his work - he entrusted the word to the heroes, made them co-authors of the text, endowed them with independence of creativity, independence of judgments and conclusions (which later, already in the XX century, M. .M. Bakhtin defines it as "polyphonic"), and in the end made the heroes extremely lively and convincing. In (February 1, 1846), speaking of the critics, Dostoevsky wrote: “In everything they are accustomed to seeing the face of the writer; I didn't show mine. And they can't guess what Devushkin is saying, not me, and that Devushkin cannot speak otherwise ... "

The fate of this hero, alas, is bleak - no matter how he begged Devushkin not to marry, he even threatened suicide, but the irreparable happened, and Makar Alekseevich remains completely alone. Already from a later story (1848), the reader indirectly learns that poor Devushkin repeated the fate of Pushkin's hero Vyrin, from the story "The Stationmaster", which once shocked him - he drank himself and died. in The Honest Thief he speaks of who in Poor People, having become close to Devushkin, dragged him into “brawls”: “And before that he, like me, used to go to one clerk, became attached to him, everyone drank together; but he drank himself and died of some kind of grief ... "