Dostoevsky's poor people who speak their names. Poor people. Makar forms a syllable

Dostoevsky's novel “Poor People” is studied in literature lessons in the 9th grade. Such a profound work requires serious analysis and a versatile approach, as well as competent preparation before reading and comprehension. The information our article contains will help you understand the intricacies of literary analysis and the author's intention. Full and brief analysis works are presented below.

Brief Analysis

Year of writing– In May 1845, Dostoevsky finished work on the novel.

History of creation– the author realized his long-standing dream of “giving the right to speak” to those who are below the line of a well-fed, successful life. For just over a year he worked on the novel, using his relatives and acquaintances as prototypes for the characters, borrowing pictures of nature from his childhood memories.

Subject– the theme of the “little man”, poverty, loneliness, injustice.

Composition– a letter about the history of correspondence. A novel consisting of letters from the main characters, the last of which is written by Varvara on her wedding day.

Genre- epistolary novel.

Direction– between romanticism and realism (sentimentalism).

History of creation

The novel “Poor People” was conceived long before it was published. The prototypes of the characters were relatives and acquaintances of Dostoevsky, then an aspiring writer unknown to the public. In his life, Fyodor Mikhailovich saw many people in need, poor and hungry. His father worked as a doctor, and their family rented housing in the same building where the hospital was located.

As a child, Dostoevsky remembered many stories of those people who found themselves in poverty. In his youth, the author was actively interested in the lives of people who had sunk to the very bottom, living in the slums of St. Petersburg.

The inadequacy of the rich spiritual world and external painful poverty gave rise to the desire to write a serious work that would reveal the characters and problems of people living on the brink of poverty. In 1844, Dostoevsky left his job (draftsman) and tried himself as a writer. A new path is difficult for the young talent, so he interrupts work on the book and takes on the translation of Balzac’s “Eugenie Grande”.

Balzac's work inspires Dostoevsky and he takes up creativity with renewed vigor. In the spring of 1845, the author finished work on “Poor People.” This is Dostoevsky's first serious work, which was received more than favorably by critics and readers. It is worth noting the fact that over the course of 3-4 years the author corrected his novel, taking into account the comments of critics. In 1846, the novel was published in the Petersburg Collection. In his creative notes while working on the work, Dostoevsky indicated the role of the author’s image in the work: without showing the “author’s face,” give the floor to the characters. He really managed to portray reality through the eyes of the characters themselves.

There is a version that complements the main creation story and makes it more poetic. One day F. M. Dostoevsky was returning home along the Neva embankment, and suddenly an inspiration descended on him. He saw the surrounding picture with completely different eyes, the eyes of those who are disadvantaged, who are not sure of tomorrow, whose world is cold and uncomfortable. This understanding of the other side of life impressed the writer so much that he began working on the novel.

Subject

Dostoevsky revealed the theme of people's lives who, due to circumstances, are forced to limit themselves in everything. In Russian literature this is the theme of the “little man” (in in this case- “little people”) who, despite their miserable lives, love, think, dream, and perform highly spiritual actions.

Main thought The novel's message is that poor people deserve compassion, participation and justice towards them, which was not and could not be in the author's contemporary Russia. Impenetrable poverty, hopelessness, the inability to change something - this is what permeates the entire narrative. The author emphasized that, despite the severity of circumstances, people feel, live, suffer, have high aspirations, are spiritually rich and proud. Problems of the novel so broad that it became on a par with the works of the classics, despite the inexperience of the writer.

The writer’s desire, through the inner world of the characters, to show not only material poverty, but also the poor, downtrodden position of a person who is ashamed of himself, does not respect himself, and does not consider himself worthy of being happy. This contains idea and meaning of the name works. main character Varvara Dobroselova, driven into a corner by life, comes to the conclusion that she needs to marry the man who once ruined her honor. The situation in which the author puts his characters is so tragic that the aftertaste of despair does not leave the reader after reading the novel.

Composition

The composition of the novel was influenced by Western literature; many moments in the book echo the works of Balzac, Rousseau, and Goethe. The main compositional feature of the novel is the fact that it is essentially a letter about history in letters. The form of the letter becomes both a compositional form and a plot. The inner world of the writer (Varvara and Makar) comes to the fore, and not the events happening around. This ingenious technique made Dostoevsky’s work immortal and glorified him as an original, brilliant writer.

Main characters

Genre

A novel in letters, an epistolary novel, a novel-dialogue. In the novel “Poor People”, analysis of genre features is as important as the semantic side of the work. The epistolary genre reached its peak in Western literature, in Russian - it was Dostoevsky who became its master. Despite the fact that this is the first of the writer’s novels, it is very harmoniously complex in the “form-content” system.

Work test

Rating Analysis

Average rating: 4.7. Total ratings received: 83.

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novel

Fedor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky

Original language: Date of writing: Date of first publication: Text of the work in Wikisource

"Poor people"- the first novel by Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, begun by him in 1844 and, after numerous alterations, completed in May 1845. Written as an epistolary novel.

• 1 History of creation
• 2 Plot
• 3 Characters
• 4 Criticism
• 5 Notes

History of creation

Work on the novel began in January 1844, shortly after the completion of the translation of Balzac's Eugenie Grande. Work continued throughout the spring and summer of 1844. All this time, the author did not dedicate anyone to his plan. Finally, in a letter to his brother dated September 30, Dostoevsky decides to tell what he was working on, and expresses his intention to submit the final version to the critic in the near future and, having received a response by October 14, to publish the novel in Otechestvennye zapiski.

However, it is impossible to complete the novel by October. The first draft version was ready by November, but already in December it was radically revised. February - March 1845, the writer again makes changes, rewrites this version completely and again decides to correct the edition. Only on May 4, 1845, the novel was finally completed.

Dmitry Grigorovich, who lived in the same apartment with Dostoevsky from the end of September 1844, recalls his work on “Poor People”:

"Dostoevsky<…>sat all day and part of the night at his desk. He didn’t say a word about what he was writing; he answered my questions reluctantly and laconically; Knowing his isolation, I stopped asking.” Title page of the “Petersburg Collection” (1846), where the novel “Poor People” was first published

Having completed the final copying of the final version at the end of May, Dostoevsky “in one sitting and almost without stopping” reads the novel to Grigorovich. He, shocked, immediately goes with the manuscript to Nikolai Nekrasov. Although Nekrasov was annoyed by the late visit, he agreed to read at least ten pages. Without stopping, they reread the entire novel overnight and at four o’clock in the morning return to Dostoevsky to report their delight with fresh impressions from what they read. On the morning of the same day, Nekrasov takes the manuscript to Lopatin’s house, where he hands it over to Vissarion Belinsky with the words: “The new Gogol has appeared!” The critic greeted this statement with disbelief, but already in the evening of the same day he asks Nekrasov for an early meeting with the author. Having met Dostoevsky in person the next day, Belinsky warmly greeted him and highly praised the work. Dostoevsky believed all his life that this meeting was a turning point for him; the writer strengthened his faith in himself, in his talent and capabilities.

“...the novel reveals such secrets of life and characters in Rus' that no one had ever dreamed of before<…>. This is our first attempt at a social novel, and moreover, it was made in the way that artists usually do, that is, without even suspecting what is coming out of them.”

Nekrasov decided to publish the novel in his new almanac, which he asked Alexander Nikitenko to censor. On January 12, 1846, Nekrasov’s “Petersburg Collection” received permission from the censor and was published on January 21.

A separate edition of the novel was published in 1847. For this edition, the author slightly shortened the work and made some stylistic changes.

Minor stylistic changes were also made in 1860 and 1865 when Dostoevsky prepared the first two collected works of his works.

Plot

The novel is a correspondence between Makar Devushkin and Varvara Dobroselova. The form of the novel in letters allowed the author to convey the subtle nuances of the psychology of self-revealing characters.

Characters

Varvara Dobroselova and Makar Devushkin. Illustrations by Peter Boklevsky. 40s years XIX V.

• Makar Alekseevich Devushkin
• Varvara Alekseevna Dobroselova
• Parents of Varvara Alekseevna Dobroselova
• Anna Fedorovna
• Maid Teresa
• Student Pokrovsky
• Father of student Pokrovsky
• Gorshkov with his family
• Ratazyaev
• Bykov
• Fedora

Criticism

The excitement that began already during the first reading of the novel's manuscript only intensified over time. In the fall of 1845, even before publication, “half of St. Petersburg is already talking about “Poor People”,” “Everywhere there is incredible respect, terrible curiosity about me.” Then Dostoevsky meets Vladimir Odoevsky, Vladimir Sollogub and Ivan Turgenev.

After the release of the Petersburg Collection, Bulgarin, in order to humiliate the new literary direction, uses the term “natural school” for the first time. “Poor People” was perceived as a programmatic work for this school, and therefore for a long time became the subject of heated controversy among its ideologists, followers and opponents.

The first reviews were extremely polar. Reactionary critics from “The Northern Bee” and “Illustrations”, which were ridiculed in the novel itself, said that the novel was devoid of form and content.

But many recognized the author’s outstanding talent and the iconic nature of the work. Especially important point(not so much for the entire natural school, but specifically for the author) Dostoevsky himself highlights in a letter to his brother dated February 1, 1846, in which he talks about how the publication of his novel was received. Among other things, there are these lines:

“They find in me a new, original stream (Belinsky and others), consisting in the fact that I act by analysis, and not by synthesis, that is, I go into the depths, and disassembling them atom by atom, I find the whole, while Gogol takes the whole directly...”

Also indicative is the comparison of the works of two writers by Valerian Maykov, made based on the results of 1846 (when Dostoevsky, in addition to “Poor People,” published only a few works of small forms):

“...Gogol is primarily a social poet, and Mr. Dostoevsky is primarily psychological. For one, the individual is important as a representative of a certain society or a certain circle; for another, society itself is interesting because of its influence on the personality of the individual...”

Gogol himself, having read the novel, also spoke well of it and the author, but, like some other contemporaries, he called the large volume of the work a disadvantage. Dostoevsky believed that in the novel “there is no superfluous word,” however, when preparing the novel for a separate publication, he still shortened it a little.

Notes

1. F. M. Dostoevsky. Letter to M. M. Dostoevsky dated September 30, 1844 // Collected works in fifteen volumes. - St. Petersburg: Nauka, 1996. - T. 15. Letters 1834-1881. - pp. 44-46. - 18,000 copies. - ISBN 5-02-028-255-3.
2. 1 2 Grigorovich D. V. Literary Memoirs. - M., 1987.
3. Writer's Diary. 1877. January. Ch. 2. § 4
4. Klementy Berman Nevsky Prospekt // “Our Texas”: Newspaper. - Houston, 2003. - V. No. 80, May 2.
5. Annenkov P.V. Literary memories. - M., 1983. - P. 272.
6. G. M. Friedlander. Notes “Poor people” // F. M. Dostoevsky. Collected works in fifteen volumes. - L.: Nauka, 1989. - T. 1. Tales and stories 1846-1847. - pp. 430-442. - 500,000 copies. - ISBN 5-02-027899-8.
7. F. M. Dostoevsky. Letter to M. M. Dostoevsky dated October 8, 1845 // Collected works in fifteen volumes. - St. Petersburg: Nauka, 1996. - T. 15. Letters 1834-1881. - P. 51-53. - 18,000 copies. - ISBN 5-02-028-255-3.
8. F. M. Dostoevsky. Letter to M. M. Dostoevsky dated November 16, 1845 // Collected works in fifteen volumes. - St. Petersburg: Nauka, 1996. - T. 15. Letters 1834-1881. - pp. 54-56. - 18,000 copies. - ISBN 5-02-028-255-3.
9. 1 2 Northern bee. - January 26, 1846. - No. 22
10. Northern bee. - January 30, 1846. - No. 25. - P. 99
11. Northern bee. - February 1, 1846. - No. 27. - P. 107
12. Illustration. - January 26, 1846. - No. 4. - P. 59
13. 1 2 F. M. Dostoevsky. Letter to M. M. Dostoevsky dated February 1, 1846 // Collected works in fifteen volumes. - St. Petersburg: Nauka, 1996. - T. 15. Letters 1834-1881. - pp. 56-58. - 18,000 copies. - ISBN 5-02-028-255-3.
14. Domestic notes - 1847. - No. 1. - Dept. 5. pp. 2-4.
15. N.V. Gogol. Letter from A. M. Vielgorskaya dated May 14, 1846 // Complete collection essays. - M., 1952. - T. 13. - P. 66.

Fedor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky
Novels	Humiliated and insulted Crime and punishment Player Idiot Demons Teenager Brothers Karamazov
Stories and stories	Double | Notes from the House of the Dead | How dangerous it is to indulge in ambitious dreams | A Novel in Nine Letters | The village of Stepanchikovo and its inhabitants | Mr. Prokharchin | Mistress | White nights | Christmas tree and wedding | Sliders | Weak Heart | Someone else's wife and husband under the bed | Netochka Nezvanova | Little hero | Uncle's dream | Honest Thief | Petersburg dreams in verse and prose | Bad joke | Crocodile | Notes from the Underground | Eternal husband | Bobok | Man Marey | Centennial | Meek | Boy at Christ's Christmas tree | Funny man's dream
Journalism	Petersburg Chronicle | Winter notes about summer impressions | Writer's Diary | Two suicides | From the country walks of Kuzma Prutkov and his friend | Small pictures | Small pictures (on the road) | Dostoevsky's speech about Pushkin
Characters	Rodion Raskolnikov | Sonya Marmeladova | Prince Myshkin | Nastasya Filippovna | Parfyon Rogozhin | Ivan Karamazov | Alyosha Karamazov | Dmitry Karamazov | Grushenka Svetlova | Pavel Smerdyakov | Grand Inquisitor
Translations	Eugenia Grande (novel by O. de Balzac)
Related Articles	Museums of F. M. Dostoevsky | Addresses of F. M. Dostoevsky | Petersburg by Dostoevsky | Mikhail Dostoevsky | Andrei Dostoevsky | Monument to Dostoevsky (Moscow, Russian State Library) | Monument to Dostoevsky (Tobolsk) | Dostoevistika

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Poor People Information About

At the end of September 1844, F. M. Dostoevsky, who was then 24 years old, left his position as a draftsman in the St. Petersburg engineering team and became a free man. Dostoevsky dreamed of literary activity. He wanted to pour out his feelings, dreams, thoughts on paper. That is why he left his position - despite the fact that he no longer had a reliable source of income.

After leaving the service, Dostoevsky wrote his first work - the novel “Poor People”. What is he talking about?

What is the novel "Poor People" about?

Makar Devushkin, main character“Poor people”, lives in a cheap rented apartment on the outskirts of St. Petersburg. This is a middle-aged petty official who has no chance of making a career. Opposite him, in the same house, lives a young girl, Varvara Alekseevna, Varenka - she is lonely and earns her living by sewing. The novel "Poor People" represents fifty-four letters exchanged between these people of different ages - lovers who never united.

Varenka’s window is located across the courtyard opposite the room of Makar Devushkin, who writes long letters every evening and quietly hands them to her along with sweets and clothes. In these letters, he promises to make a date with the girl, talks in detail about his colleagues, about the behavior of his boss, gossips about the other inhabitants of the apartment, shares his impressions of what he has read, what he has seen and heard, and shares his feelings. Varenka tells him about her mood and well-being, about her fears for the future, and indulges in memories of her childhood. It’s like Goethe’s Werther and Lotte (characters from “The Sorrows of Young Werther”), placed in the impoverished life of St. Petersburg.

In the lives of these people who love each other - who live on the outskirts of a big city, living unnoticed, avoiding human eyes - nothing truly remarkable happens. At the end of the novel, Varvara Alekseevna leaves the kind but helpless Devushkin, and, having agreed to marry a village landowner, leaves St. Petersburg. This is how this novel in letters ends.

Image of Makar Devushkin

Nothing significant happens in the novel, it seems like just some kind of “game of letters,” but as you read, Devushkin becomes more and more interesting to the reader, begins to seem like a person with a subtle and unique character. In addition, this character is a model of a hero who will subsequently appear in other works of Dostoevsky.

Devushkin needs Varvara Alekseevna, but at the same time he is not going to marry her and live together. Although Varenka invites him to visit her, he invariably refuses on the pretext that this will cause people's gossip. And in the service, Makar Devushkin is also afraid of the glances of his colleagues and does not dare take his eyes off the table.

Devushkin borrows Gogol’s “The Overcoat” from Varenka to read. This is a touching story about how a petty official was robbed - his brand new overcoat, acquired with such difficulty, was taken from him. After reading the story, Devushkin, although it seems funny, feels as if his secret had been unraveled and made public - he becomes very excited and really angry.

Devushkin’s preoccupation with rumors and gossip exceeds reasonable limits. Reading a novel, he immediately tries it on himself and feels fear and anger. He is always afraid that he is being watched and tracked; he sees enemies everywhere. He is morbidly afraid of people, imagines himself as a victim, and from here arises an acute complex of inferiority, fear, suffering, and therefore Devushkin is not able to communicate with people on equal terms. He perceives both co-workers and roommates as his enemies.

Consumed by inner heat and in captivity of his multiplying fantasies, Makar Devushkin shuns reality and devotes himself entirely to letters. They give him the opportunity to avoid communication with real people, and he can surrender to the whims of his heart with a calm soul. He doesn’t need Varenka to live with her. He needs her as a listener to his very different feelings, as a “container” where these feelings accumulate and are neutralized.

Makar Devushkin is ready to unleash his boiling emotions, confessions, and fantasies on Varvara Alekseevna at any moment. This is all he can do. There is no doubt that otherwise his emotional intensity will reach a dangerous degree, and this will lead either to insanity or to some terrible and unexpected consequences for him. And at the same time, each new premonition gives rise to new fears.

In his first work, Dostoevsky brought out such a “strange” person. The critic V. G. Belinsky, who lived and worked in St. Petersburg at that time, read the manuscript of “Poor People,” praised the author and gave him a ticket to the literary world. Belinsky deserves great credit for recognizing literary talent in an unknown young man who dreamed of becoming a writer.

At the same time, by introducing “Poor People” to readers, Belinsky sowed the seeds of misinterpretation of all subsequent work of Dostoevsky. Regarding Devushkin, he writes: “The more limited his mind, the narrower and coarser his concepts, the wider and more delicate his heart seems to be; one can say that all his mental abilities moved from his head to his heart.”

This interpretation of Belinsky over the next hundred and thirty 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 and without looking back at Belinsky’s assessment, it turns out that Dostoevsky’s hero is a strange man with an inferiority complex who, due to his unusually developed imagination, is unable to communicate with other people, he is lonely and knows how to confide his thoughts and feelings only in letters. If we evaluate Devushkin’s character as a whole, then his sensitivity is developed beyond all measure, he is able to immerse himself headlong in the “play” of his experiences, but at the same time he does not know how to deal with real people, and delicacy coupled with excessiveness makes him completely powerless in real life, and fear and dislike for reality form a strange and funny type.

In his first work, Dostoevsky showed a man who at first glance seems to be just a petty and insignificant official, but in fact he discovered a very unusual type, who wears a fantastic guise that is not immediately visible.

The Soviet literary historian B. M. Eikhenbaum spoke of Dostoevsky’s characters as “images of realistic fiction” (see his work “About Chekhov”). Until that moment, young Dostoevsky was fascinated by the historical dramas of Schiller and Pushkin, he tried to imitate them, but having discovered the “strange” man, he felt deep sympathy and interest for him and wrote a novel - thereby realizing his literary destiny and talent. Therefore, he spoke of his debut work as “quite original.” That is, this realistic and, at the same time, fantastic character lived within himself. Somewhat exaggerating, one might say, with the help of “Poor People” Dostoevsky wrote himself. Makar Devushkin dreams of becoming a “poet,” and Dostoevsky himself dreams of becoming a “writer.” In a letter to his brother Mikhail, he noted: “They are accustomed to seeing the author’s face in everything; I didn't show mine. But they didn’t even realize that Devushkin was speaking, not me, and that Devushkin couldn’t say otherwise” (February 1, 1846).

Dostoevsky wants to say that Makar Devushkin is his double, but “I” pretended to be Devushkin so skillfully that the reader did not notice it.

Dostoevsky did not have the talent of a historical writer with such a field of vision that is capable of capturing major historical shifts and a wide panorama of events. Nor did he have the natural literary inclination to feel and describe people who overcome difficulties and accomplish great things. Most of his characters - regardless of the time the work was written - are weak, humiliated and sick people. Public opinion evaluates such painful, unsuccessful, powerless, and at times abnormal people only negatively, but Dostoevsky insatiably continued to describe them, finding seething feelings, drama, complexity, and richness in their characters and lifestyle. 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 a humiliated and sick person, and this work anticipates all subsequent works written by him.

The work of Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky can easily be considered one of those that creates world fame for Russian literature. The mass reader is better known for the novel Crime and Punishment, which became a world bestseller, but not everyone knows that Dostoevsky’s literary fame began with another work - the novel "Poor people", the analysis of which will be presented.

His literary debut was a translation of Balzac's novel Eugénie Grande, which appeared in mid-1844 in the almanac Repertoire and Pantheon. That same year, Dostoevsky began enthusiastically working on his first novel, Poor People. For almost two years the writer continued to work: he reworked the manuscript several times, then Grigorovich read it, who passed it on to N. A. Nekrasov, and he passed it on to V. G. Belinsky. And now on January 15, 1846, the novel “Poor People” opened the “Petersburg Collection”.

A year earlier, Dostoevsky experienced a shock that he later called “the vision on the Neva.” One day he was returning home along the Neva and suddenly, in the frosty, muddy distance, he saw a completely different new world and some unusual figures, “quite prosaic” - “quite titular advisers.” And suddenly “another story appeared in the imagination, some titular heart, honest and pure, and with it some girl, offended and sad.”

A revolution took place in the soul of the future writer: he clearly saw the light and saw the world through the eyes of “little people” - the poor official Makar Devushkin and Varenka Dobroselova, his distant relative. Then the idea of ​​an original novel appeared - a novel in letters, in which the narration is told on behalf of the characters themselves. Subsequently, Belinsky will call Dostoevsky “the new Gogol”, because, according to the aspiring writer, he started a “litigation with all literature” and, first of all, with Gogol’s “The Overcoat”. But in Gogol, man is destroyed by the circumstances surrounding him. And Dostoevsky allows his hero, the “little man,” to find a voice in order to judge not only the reality around him, but also himself.

At the very beginning of the novel, the writer reminds readers of the well-known Christian commandment that one must take more care of one’s soul than of clothes, because it is the soul that reveals the whole nature of a person. This is the soul of the main character Makar Devushkin - an open, naked soul. If you read the contents of the novel, you will be horrified by how the hero’s soul is wounded life circumstances. But unlike Akaki Akakievich from Gogol’s “The Overcoat,” Makar Devushkin is more wounded not by poverty, but by his own ambitions, painful pride.

What depresses the “little man” most is that he is not just poorer - he is generally worse than everyone else, as it seems to him. And he is too concerned about how others who are higher than him in social status treat him, what these same “others” say or think about him. Ambitions, which have replaced self-esteem for him, force him to prove to the whole world, and above all to himself, that he is no worse than others - he is the same as those “others”.

Main character novel - the titular adviser Makar Devushkin, forty-seven years old. For a more than modest salary, he is engaged in copying papers in one of the departments of St. Petersburg. Having learned about the tragedy of seventeen-year-old orphan Varenka Dobroselova, dishonored by the rich landowner Bykov, he takes her under his protection in order to save her from final “death.” The author reveals the history of their relationship in letters. Although they rarely see each other, as they are afraid of gossip and gossip, their daily correspondence becomes a real source of warmth and sympathy for both.

The reader learns that poor Varenka was unconscious for almost a month, fleeing from Bykov, and Devushkin, in order to feed her, was forced to sell his new uniform. From the correspondence you can learn about the girl’s childhood and how she became an orphan. Makar complains in response that the department mocks him, considering him the subject of constant ridicule: “... 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!”

It is Varenka, whose education was once handled by student Pokrovsky, who introduces the official to Pushkin’s story and Gogol’s “The Overcoat.” Pushkin's story exalts Devushkin in his own eyes, while Gogol's story offends him. Varya gives him self-respect: he still feels significant for the girl, protecting her from unworthy suitors for her hand. But the girl is still going to marry her offender, the landowner Bykov, so that he will return her good name and avert poverty from her.

The correspondence of the heroes ends on the wedding day - September 30. Varya, in her farewell letter, calls the hero “a kind, priceless, only friend” and asks not to forget “poor Varenka.” Devushkin writes in response that this cannot be the last letter, calls on Varya to write from there too, so that he too has someone to write to, because his syllable is just forming. He regrets that Bykov did not marry the merchant’s wife, and he became nice to Varya only because he could buy her rags.

This epistolary form was more characteristic of works of the era of sentimentalism (Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s novel “Julia, or the New Heloise”). However, this format of the novel allows Dostoevsky to achieve a truly epic embrace of reality. In the letters of the official Devushkin and Varenka, the fates of many unfortunate people are resurrected in absentia: the family of the impoverished official Gorshkov, who lives in a room where even “siskins die,” and tragic story student Pyotr Pokrovsky, and the fate of the minor writer Ratazyaev, and the “witch” mistress.

According to the author, love for Varenka returns Devushkin a sense of self-respect: he now not only looks at the world around him differently, but also sees the depravity of its internal structure. In the eyes of readers, Makar Devushkin from a “little insignificant person” becomes a hero worthy of true respect and sympathy.

• “Poor People”, a summary of Dostoevsky’s novel

Makar Alekseevich Devushkin is a titular councilor forty-seven years old, copying papers for a small salary in one of the St. Petersburg departments. He just moved to new apartment in a “main” house near Fontanka. Along the long corridor are the doors of rooms for residents; the hero himself huddles behind a partition in the common kitchen. His previous housing was “incomparably better,” but now the main thing for Devushkin is cheapness, because in the same courtyard he rents a more comfortable and expensive apartment for his distant relative Varvara Alekseevna Dobroselova.

A poor official takes under his protection a seventeen-year-old orphan, for whom there is no one but him to intercede. Living nearby, they rarely see each other, as Makar Alekseevich is afraid of gossip. However, both need warmth and sympathy, which they draw from almost daily correspondence with each other. The history of the relationship between Makar and Varenka is revealed in thirty-one - his and twenty-four - her letters, written from April 8 to September 30, 184... Makar’s first letter is permeated with the happiness of finding heartfelt affection: “... spring, so are thoughts everything is so pleasant, sharp, intricate, and tender dreams come..." Denying himself food and clothes, he saves money for flowers and sweets for his "angel."

Varenka is angry with the patron for excessive expenses, and cools his ardor with irony: “only poems are missing.” “Fatherly affection animated me, the only pure fatherly affection...” - Makar is embarrassed.

Varya persuades her friend to come to her more often: “Who cares?” She takes home work - sewing.

In subsequent letters, Devushkin describes in detail his home - “Noah’s Ark” due to the abundance of a motley audience - with a “rotten, pungently sweet smell”, in which “the little siskins are dying.” He draws portraits of his neighbors: the card player midshipman, the petty writer Ratazyaev, the poor official without a job, Gorshkov and his family. The hostess is a “real witch.” He is ashamed that he is bad, he writes stupidly - “there is no syllable”: after all, he studied “not even with copper money.”

Varenka shares her anxiety: Anna Fedorovna, a distant relative, is “finding out” about her. Previously, Varya and her mother lived in her house, and then, supposedly to cover their expenses, the “benefactor” offered the girl, who was orphaned by that time, to the rich landowner Bykov, who dishonored her. Only Makar’s help saves the defenseless from final “death.” If only the pimp and Bykov didn’t find out her address! The poor thing falls ill from fear and lies unconscious for almost a month. Makar is nearby all this time. To get his little one back on his feet, he sells a new uniform. By June, Varenka recovers and sends notes to her caring friend with the story of her life.

Her happy childhood was spent in her family in the lap of rural nature. When my father lost his position as manager of the estate of Prince P-go, they came to St. Petersburg - “rotten,” “angry,” “sad.” Constant failures drove my father to his grave. The house was sold for debts. Fourteen-year-old Varya and her mother were left homeless and homeless. It was then that Anna Fedorovna took them in, and soon began to reproach the widow. She worked beyond her strength, ruining her poor health for the sake of a piece of bread. For a whole year, Varya studied with a former student, Pyotr Pokrovsky, who lived in the same house. She was surprised by the strange disrespect for the old father, who often visited his adored son, in “the kindest, most worthy man, the best of all.” He was a bitter drunkard, once a petty official. Peter's mother, a young beauty, was married to him with a rich dowry by the landowner Bykov. Soon she died. The widower remarried. Peter grew up separately, under the patronage of Bykov, who placed the young man, who left the university for health reasons, “to live on bread” with his “short acquaintance” Anna Fedorovna.

Joint vigils at the bedside of Varya’s sick mother brought the young people closer together. An educated friend taught the girl to read and developed her taste. However, Pokrovsky soon fell ill and died of consumption. The hostess took all the deceased's belongings to pay for the funeral. The old father took as many books from her as he could and stuffed them into her pockets, hat, etc. It started to rain. The old man ran, crying, behind the cart with the coffin, and books fell from his pockets into the mud. He picked them up and ran after them again... Varya, in anguish, returned home to her mother, who was also soon taken away by death...

Devushkin responds with a story about own life. He has been serving for thirty years. “Smirnenky”, “quiet” and “kind”, he became the subject of constant ridicule: “Makar Alekseevich was introduced into the proverb in our entire department”, “...they didn’t get to the boots, to the uniform, to the hair, to my figure: everything was not According to them, everything needs to be redone! The hero is indignant: “Well, what’s wrong with rewriting it! Is it a sin to rewrite, or what?” The only joy is Varenka: “It’s as if the Lord blessed me with a house and a family!”

On June 10, Devushkin takes his ward for a walk to the islands. She's happy. Naive Makar is delighted with Ratazyaev’s writings. Varenka notes the bad taste and pomposity of “Italian Passions”, “Ermak and Zuleika”, etc.

Realizing that Devushkin’s material worries about himself are too much for him (he behaved so much that he arouses contempt even among servants and watchmen), the sick Varenka wants to get a job as a governess. Makar is against: its “usefulness” lies in its “beneficial” influence on his life. He stands up for Ratazyaev, but after reading what Varya sent “ Stationmaster"Pushkin - shocked: “I feel the same, just like in the book." Vyrina tries on fate for herself and asks her “native” not to leave, not to “ruin” him. July 6 Varenka sends Gogol’s “The Overcoat” to Makar; that same evening they visit the theater.

If Pushkin's story elevated Devushkin in his own eyes, then Gogol's story offended him. Identifying himself with Bashmachkin, he believes that the author spied on all the little details of his life and unceremoniously made them public. The hero’s dignity is hurt: “after this you have to complain...”

By the beginning of July, Makar had spent everything. The only thing worse than lack of money is the ridicule of the tenants at him and Varenka. But the worst thing is that a “seeker” officer, one of her former neighbors, comes to her with an “undignified offer.” In despair, the poor man started drinking and disappeared for four days, missing service. I went to shame the offender, but was thrown down the stairs.

Varya consoles her protector and asks, despite the gossip, to come to her for dinner.

Since the beginning of August, Devushkin has been trying in vain to borrow money at interest, especially necessary in view of a new misfortune: the other day another “seeker” came to Varenka, directed by Anna Fedorovna, who herself will soon visit the girl. We need to move urgently. Makar starts drinking again out of helplessness. “For my sake, my darling, don’t ruin yourself and don’t ruin me,” the unfortunate woman begs him, sending her last “thirty kopecks in silver.” The encouraged poor man explains his “fall”: “how he lost respect for himself, how he indulged in denying his good qualities and his dignity, so here you are all lost!” Varya gives Makar self-respect: people “disgusted” him, “and I began to disdain myself, and you illuminated my whole dark life, and I learned that I was no worse than others; that I just don’t shine with anything, there’s no gloss, I’m not drowning, but still I’m a man, that in my heart and thoughts I’m a man.”

Varenka’s health is deteriorating, she is no longer able to sew. Anxious, Makar goes out on a September evening to the Fontanka embankment. Dirt, disorder, drunks - “boring”! And on neighboring Gorokhovaya there are rich shops, luxurious carriages, elegant ladies. The walker falls into “freethinking”: if work is the basis of human dignity, then why are so many slackers well-fed? Happiness is not given according to merit - therefore the rich should not be deaf to the complaints of the poor. Makar is a little proud of his reasoning and notes that “his syllable has been forming recently.” On September 9, luck smiled on Devushkin: summoned for a “scolding” to the general for a mistake in a paper, the humble and pitiful official received the sympathy of “His Excellency” and received one hundred rubles from him personally. This is a real salvation: we paid for the apartment, the table, the clothes. Devushkin is depressed by his boss’s generosity and reproaches himself for his recent “liberal” thoughts. Reading "Northern Bee". Full of hope for the future.

Meanwhile, Bykov finds out about Varenka and on September 20 comes to woo her. His goal is to have legitimate children in order to disinherit his “worthless nephew.” If Varya is against it, he will marry a Moscow merchant's wife. Despite the unceremoniousness and rudeness of the offer, the girl agrees: “If anyone can restore my good name, turn poverty away from me, it’s only him.” Makar dissuades: “Your heart will be cold!” Having fallen ill from grief, he still last day shares her efforts in getting ready for the trip.

September 30 - wedding. On the same day, on the eve of leaving for Bykov’s estate, Varenka writes a farewell letter to an old friend: “Who will you stay with here, kind, priceless, the only one!”

The answer is full of despair: “I worked, and wrote papers, and walked, and walked, all because you, on the contrary, lived nearby.” Who now needs his formed “syllable”, his letters, himself? “By what right” do they destroy “human life”?

Retold