Poor Lisa is a story of unrequited love. All school essays on literature. The main characters of the story

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The year 1792 was significant for Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin. And this is not surprising, because it was at that time that a wonderful sentimental story called “Poor Liza” came out from under his pen, which brought recognition and fame to the author. At that time, the writer was only twenty-five years old, and he was taking his first steps in the literary field.

Describing the difficult fate of a defenseless people, raising the problem of inequality between the poor and the rich, Karamzin tries to reach out to people's consciousness and draw attention to the fact that it is impossible to live like this. The story is told by the writer in the first person.

The main characters of the story

Lisa- a simple Russian peasant woman, a kind girl who loves nature and rejoices every day - until she fell in love with a rich nobleman named Erast. Since then, her life has taken a sharp turn, which subsequently led to a terrible tragedy.

Erast- a rich nobleman, a frivolous young man with a good imagination, but windy. He thinks that he loves Lisa, but under the circumstances he leaves her, without thinking about the girl's strong feelings caused by his betrayal. Causes Lisa to commit suicide.

old mother- a poor peasant woman, a widow who lost her husband and mourns him. A kind simple believing woman who loves her daughter immensely and wishes her happiness.

The magnificence of nature, which the author contemplates

The surroundings of Moscow with its monasteries, church domes, bright green flowering meadows evoke delight and tenderness. But not only. Upon entering the monastery, the author's soul begins to be overwhelmed by bitter memories, and the sad history of the Fatherland appears before his mind's eye. Most depressing is the incident that happened to one girl, poor Lisa, who ended her life tragically.

The beginning of Lisa's story

Why is this hut, located near the monastery wall, where the birch grove rustles, now empty? Why are there no windows, no doors, no roof? Why is everything so dull and gloomy? An inquisitive reader can get an answer to these questions by learning what happened here thirty years ago, when people around could hear the ringing voice of a girl named Lisa. She lived with her mother in great poverty, because after the untimely death of her father, the land fell into decay. In addition, the desperate widow fell ill with grief, so Lisa alone had to do household chores. Fortunately, the girl was diligent: working tirelessly, she wove canvases, knitted stockings, picked berries and tore flowers. Having a kind and loving heart, Lisa tried her best to console her sick mother, but in her heart she was very worried about the death of her dearest person - her dad.

Lisa's Incipient Love

And then, two years later, he appeared - a young man named Erast, who completely captured the feelings of a young girl who wants to love and be loved. And life began to sparkle with bright colors.

They met when Lisa came to Moscow to sell flowers. An unfamiliar buyer, seeing such a beautiful girl, began to shower her with compliments and even, instead of five kopecks, offered a ruble for flowers.

But Lisa refused. She did not know that the next day the young man would be standing at her window. “Hello, kind old woman,” he turned to the girl’s mother. “Do you have fresh milk?” The stranger suggested that Lisa sell her work only to him, then there would be no need to be exposed to dangers in the city, being separated from her mother.
The old woman and Liza happily agreed. Only one thing confused the girl: he is a gentleman, and she is a simple peasant woman.

A wealthy noble named Erast

Erast was a man with a kind heart, however, the author describes him as windy, weak and frivolous. He lived only for his pleasure and did not care about anything. In addition, he was a sentimental and very impressionable young man, having a rich imagination. Relations with Liza were to become a new milestone in his fate, a new interest that would diversify an idle and boring life.

Lisa got sad. Love swept over the girl like an avalanche, and where did the former carelessness go. Now she often sighed and was encouraged only when she saw Erast. And he suddenly ... confessed his love to her. Lisa's joy knew no bounds, she wanted their meetings to continue forever. "Will you always love me?" the girl asked. And received the answer: "Always!". She came home in a happy mood. And in a fit of feelings, she began to admire the beauty of nature created by God. Mom supported her daughter.

The image of an old mother

Lisa's mother is portrayed by the author as a simple believing woman who loves God and admires the beauty of His creation. “How good everything is with the Lord God! I live my sixth decade in the world, but still I can’t look enough at the works of the Lord, I can’t look enough at the clear sky, like a high tent, and at the earth, which every year is covered with new grass and new flowers. It is necessary that the King of Heaven loved a person very much when he removed the worldly light for him so well, ”she says. This poor woman was left a widow, but still yearns for her dear untimely departed husband, who was dearer to her than anything in the world. After all, "peasant women also know how to love."

The old woman's love for her daughter is very strong. She, like any mother, wants only the best for her.

Liza and Erast: love is gaining strength

Since then, they saw each other constantly - every evening. Embraced, but did not allow themselves anything vicious. Erast also talked with Lisa's mother, who told the young man about her difficult life. But suddenly trouble struck.

Bitter change in fate

Lisa had to tell Erast that she was being married to another - the son of a wealthy peasant. But he was very upset, again swore to the girl in love - and finally, feelings prevailed over common sense: at that moment the girl lost her innocence. Since then, their dates have become different - Erast began to treat his beloved no longer as immaculate. Meetings took place less and less, and, finally, the young man announced that he was leaving for the war.

Last meeting with Lisa

Erast decided to say goodbye before the road - both to his mother (who, by the way, did not know at all about his love relationship with his daughter), and to Liza. The farewell was touching and bitter. After Erast retired, Lisa "lost her senses and memory."

Erast's betrayal

For a long time the girl was in despair. Only one thing consoled her restless soul: the hope of a meeting. Once she went on business to Moscow and suddenly saw the carriage in which Erast was sitting. Lisa rushed to her beloved, but in response she received only a cold confession that he was marrying another.

Lisa jumps into the water

The girl could not stand such a shame, humiliation and betrayal. I no longer wanted to live. Suddenly, Lisa saw a friend - fifteen-year-old Anya, and, asking her to take money for her mother, in front of the girl, she rushed into the water. They couldn't save her. The old mother, having learned about what had happened to her beloved daughter, died immediately. Erast is greatly depressed by what happened and will forever reproach himself for the death of an innocent girl.

Class inequality is the cause of many problems in society

At that difficult time, the main role in choosing a groom or bride was played by the environment. The lower class - the peasants - could not connect with the wealthy nobles. Lisa clearly understands this already at the first meetings, when her heart trembles with love, but her mind insists on the impossibility of such a union. “However, you cannot be my husband,” she says. And in despair she adds: "I am a peasant woman." Still, the girl could not resist the impulse of violent feelings for the man whom she loved with all her heart (although at times she regrets that her fiancé is not a shepherd boy). She either naively began to believe that later Erast would nevertheless marry her, or simply for the time being preferred not to think about the consequences of this kind of romantic dates. Be that as it may, Lisa's reaction to the fact that the one without whom she cannot live marries another, a noblewoman from his circle, prompts her to a desperate act - suicide. She took a step into the abyss, from which there is no way out. Youth and hopes are ruined. And Erast was left to live with an incessant sense of guilt. So the story "Poor Liza" ended tragically. The intelligent reader will learn from it and draw the right conclusions.

Karamzin's story "Poor Lisa" enjoyed considerable success with readers at the beginning of the last century, which had a significant impact on the formation and development of new Russian literature. The plot of this story is very simple: it boils down to a sad love story between a poor peasant girl Lisa and a wealthy young nobleman Erast. The central interest of the narrative lies in the kind-hearted life of Lisa, in the story of the heyday and tragic withering of love.
Psychologically, the state of the young, chaste

And naive girlhood with a joyful trust in life, merged with the bright colors of a sunny day, blooming nature. Then an anxious period of bewilderment is intertwined before a new, unfamiliar feeling to her after meeting with Erast. It is replaced by a touching picture of pure first love, heavenly and spiritually inspired. But when poor Lisa surrenders to Erast, the pure admiration of the girl is overshadowed by the consciousness of something lawless that interfered with her love. And nature responds to this new state of mind in its own way: “Meanwhile, lightning flashed, and thunder roared. Lisa trembled all over: “Erast, Erast! - she said. - I'm scared! I am afraid that the thunder will kill me as a criminal!”
The anxiety turns out to be not in vain: the satiated young nobleman begins to cool in his feelings for Lisa. And in her soul, the fear of losing a loved one is replaced by hope for the opportunity to return the lost happiness. Here Erast leaves Lisa for a long time, setting off on a military campaign, where he loses all his fortune at cards, and upon his return decides to fix things by marrying a rich widow. Having learned about this from the lips of Erast himself, Lisa falls into despair. Deceived in the best hopes and feelings, the girl throws herself into the pond near the Simonov Monastery - the place of her happy dates with Erast.
In the character of Erast, Karamzin anticipates the type of disappointed person common in new Russian literature. By nature, Erast is kind, but weak and windy. He is tired of public life and secular pleasures, he is bored and complains about his fate. Under the influence of sentimental novels, which Erast read a lot, he dreams of happy times when people, not burdened by the conventions and rules of civilization, lived carelessly and amicably in the bosom of nature. Disappointed in the world, in the people of his circle, Erast is looking for new experiences. The meeting with Liza satisfies his dreams of a harmonious life away from society, in the natural simplicity of manners and customs. But he soon gets tired of the shepherd's idyll.
The motives of the story associated with Erast will sound in different variations in our literature - in Pushkin's "Gypsies", in L. N. Tolstoy's late drama "The Living Corpse" and the novel "Resurrection". And Lisa's fate will echo in Pushkin's The Stationmaster, in Dostoevsky's Poor People. In essence, “Poor Liza” opens the key theme in Russian literature of the “little man”.
True, the social aspect in the relationship between Liza and Erast is muffled: Karamzin is most of all concerned in the story with the proof that "peasant women know how to love." But precisely because of this, Karamzin lacks social flavor in the depiction of Liza's character. This is, perhaps, the weakest point of the story, because Lisa is least of all like a peasant woman, and more like a sweet socialite of the Karamzin era, brought up on sensitive sentimental novels. Nowadays, such a writer's approach to depicting people from the people seems naive and unartistic. But Karamzin's contemporaries, who had not yet read either Krylov, or Pushkin, or Gogol, not only did not feel this falsehood, but admired the artistic truth of the story to tears. The pond near the Simonov Monastery became a place of pilgrimage for admirers of Karamzin's talent and was named "Lizin's pond". Sentimental couples met here on a date, people with sensitive and broken hearts came here to yearn and indulge in “melancholy”. So, one of the secular wits wrote the following announcement on this occasion:
“Here, Erast's bride threw herself into the water, - drown yourself, girls, there is enough space in the pond!” And the monks simply stopped these pilgrimages: they surrounded the pond with a fence and hung out an inscription that this pond was not called Lizin at all.
Even now all this cannot but evoke smiles, naivete and innocence of people of an era far from us. But upon mature reflection, one cannot but agree that Karamzin conveyed the story of girlish love from its inception to the catastrophe, “tied” to a peasant woman with outdated literary language, with psychological certainty, and the future Turgenev, the singer of “first love” and a subtle connoisseur of girlish hearts, and Leo Tolstoy with penetration into the spiritual flow with its forms and laws. The sophisticated psychologism of Russian artistic prose, recognizable all over the world, is foreseen, appears in the now-seemingly naive and even inept story of this writer.

Karamzin's story "Poor Lisa" is one of the first sentimental works in Russian literature. In the novel, the main role is occupied by the feelings and experiences of the characters. The plot is based on the love story of a poor peasant woman Liza and a rich aristocrat Erast.

The theme of love in Karamzin's sentimental work is the main one, although others are revealed in the course of the plot, albeit more briefly. For example, the topic of social inequality is also raised, we see that the traditions and conventions of society do not allow loving young people from different classes to start a family. In addition, we observe the disclosure in the story of the theme of inner purity and dignity of the individual, manifested in her actions and attitude towards others: meanness (Lisa's deceit) and Erast's selfish acts (marriage of convenience) are opposed to Lisa's loyalty and sincerity. However, the theme of love as a range of feelings interests the author the most, allowing him to fully create a work of the sentimental genre.

The love of Lisa and Erast flares up at the first meeting. Erast sees Lisa selling flowers and falls in love with a beautiful girl almost at first sight. Lisa cannot forget the mysterious stranger either. Later, Erast finds Lisa's house, where she lives with her mother. He asks her mother for permission to continue to buy all the flowers collected by the girl, and “she will have no need to go to the city often, and you will not be forced to part with her. I can visit you from time to time."

Erast is fond of a pure, trusting and innocent girl. He calls her "shepherdess" and "daughter of nature." For the sake of love for her, he is ready to leave secular life. Lisa also fell in love with Erast. Young people take an oath of allegiance to each other. Lisa is ready for him to hide their relationship from her beloved mother. They enjoy secret meetings and cannot live a day without each other. However, the son of a wealthy peasant soon approached Lisa. Erast opposes their wedding and promises Lisa, despite the difference between them, never to part. The platonic love between them ended and "gave way to such feelings that he could not be proud of, and which were no longer new to him." Erast is gradually losing his former interest in Liza. Soon he informs her that he is going on a military campaign. Lisa yearns for her Erast. And then one day she accidentally meets him in the city. The girl is happy to meet them, but Erast says that, despite his love, he is forced to marry another.

Lisa could not survive this shock. She rushes into the pond, near which they often walked with Erast. So tragically ends the life of Lisa and the story of her love.

Karamzin was one of the first in Russian literature who was able to describe the feelings and experiences of the characters so vividly. The story "Poor Lisa" is filled with subtle psychologism, it shows the inner world of a person, his experiences and desires.

An essay on the topic “Why did the happiness of Erast and Lisa not take place?”

The story of Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin "Poor Lisa" is saturated with sentimental feelings and experiences of a young and incredibly beautiful girl of peasant origin. Once her family was quite prosperous, but after the death of the father of the family, their existence with their mother became very difficult and poor. Lisa struggled to earn a living and often spared neither herself, nor her beauty, nor her youth.
In Moscow, she sold flowers. One day, a handsome and noble young man approached Lisa and offered to buy flowers for a much higher price, arguing that flowers plucked by such a beautiful hand and cost longer. Lisa, out of natural modesty, refused. Then the young man, and his name was Erast, said that he would buy flowers from her every day. At that very moment at their first meeting, a completely new feeling appeared in Lisa's soul, which she had never experienced before. Surprising excitement and deep thoughts settled in her soul. She undoubtedly began to feel sympathy for Erast. And what was her happiness when he soon personally visited their house, and said that now he would visit her every evening.
Thus began a short, but incredibly touching and romantic series of meetings between Lisa and Erast. They were together every evening under the shade of green foliage. The young man admired the natural beauty and innocence of the girl. He felt that in Liza there is that purity, sincerity and purity that could not be found in the spoiled society of the nobles. It was new and interesting for Erast to spend time with the girl. Their relationship was innocent and high.
But one day Lisa came on a date with obvious anxiety. It turned out that the son of a wealthy peasant was wooing her and her mother was going to marry her off. Erast was also amazed. He said that he would certainly take her to him and would live with her until the end of her days. After all, the main thing for him is the innocent soul of Lisa, and the position in society is not important for him. Since the girl was of peasant origin, and Erast was a nobleman. At this point, their immaculate relationship ended. Both succumbed to the temptation and something happened that could not be changed. On this day, Liza cried when she said goodbye to Erast. She was terrified at the realization of what she had done.
After that, their dates did not end, but irreparable changes took place in Erast. Now Liza no longer seemed to him a pure, innocent, immaculate girl. This halo was irretrievably destroyed. The young man felt that now his soul was filled with the same vicious feelings from which he was pretty tired in the highest noble society. Lisa ceased to be interesting to him, she was already a "read book", and Erast lost interest in her. In my opinion, it was the loss of any interesting young man to Liza that led to a sad end.
Soon he told the girl that he needed to go to the army and for a long time they should part. Lisa was very worried, but she believed that he would certainly return and everything would be as before. But this was not destined to come true. After some time, the girl saw Erast near his house and immediately rushed to hug him. The young man immediately took her to the house, locked her in his office and explained the situation that plans had changed dramatically and now he was engaged to another girl. Lisa's heart was broken and she immediately left the estate. Unable to withstand the betrayal of a loved one, she laid hands on herself the same day. Thus ended the sad but incredibly beautiful story of poor Lisa.

Psychologically, the state of a young, chaste and naive girlhood is shown for certain with a joyful trust in life, merged with the bright colors of a sunny day, blooming nature. Then an anxious period of bewilderment is intertwined before a new, unfamiliar feeling to her after meeting with Erast. It is replaced by a touching picture of pure first love, heavenly and spiritually inspired. But when poor Lisa surrenders to Erast, the pure admiration of the girl is overshadowed by the consciousness of something lawless that interfered with her love. And nature responds to this new state of mind in its own way: “Meanwhile, lightning flashed, and thunder roared. Lisa trembled all over: “Erast, Erast! - she said. - I'm scared! I am afraid that the thunder will kill me as a criminal!”

The anxiety turns out to be not in vain: the satiated young nobleman begins to cool in his feelings for Lisa. And in her soul, the fear of losing a loved one is replaced by hope for the opportunity to return the lost happiness. Here Erast leaves Lisa for a long time, setting off on a military campaign, where he loses all his fortune at cards, and upon his return decides to fix things by marrying a rich widow. Having learned about this from the lips of Erast himself, Lisa falls into despair. Deceived in the best hopes and feelings, the girl rushes into the pond near the Simonov Monastery - the place of her happy rendezvous with Erast.

In the character of Erast, Karamzin anticipates the type of disappointed person common in new Russian literature. By nature, Erast is kind, but weak and windy. He is tired of public life and secular pleasures, he is bored and complains about his fate. Under the influence of sentimental novels, which Erast read a lot, he dreams of happy times when people, not burdened by the conventions and rules of civilization, lived carelessly and amicably in the bosom of nature. Disappointed in the world, in the people of his circle, Erast is looking for new experiences. The meeting with Liza satisfies his dreams of a harmonious life away from society, in the natural simplicity of manners and customs. But he soon gets tired of the shepherd's idyll.

The motives of the story associated with Erast will sound in different variations in our literature - in Pushkin's "Gypsies", in L. N. Tolstoy's late drama "The Living Corpse" and the novel "Resurrection". And Lisa's fate will echo in Pushkin's The Stationmaster, in Dostoevsky's Poor People. In essence, “Poor Liza” opens the key theme in Russian literature of the “little man”.

True, the social aspect in the relationship between Liza and Erast is muffled: Karamzin is most of all concerned in the story with the proof that "peasant women know how to love." But precisely because of this, Karamzin lacks social flavor in the depiction of Liza's character. This is, perhaps, the weakest point of the story, because Lisa is least of all like a peasant woman, and more like a sweet socialite of the Karamzin era, brought up on sensitive sentimental novels. Nowadays, such a writer's approach to depicting people from the people seems naive and unartistic. But Karamzin's contemporaries, who had not yet read either Krylov, or Pushkin, or Gogol, not only did not feel this falsehood, but admired the artistic truth of the story to tears. The pond near the Simonov Monastery became a place of pilgrimage for admirers of Karamzin's talent and was named "Lizin's pond". Sentimental couples met here on a date, people with sensitive and broken hearts came here to yearn and indulge in “melancholy”. So, one of the secular wits wrote the following announcement on this occasion:

“Here, Erast's bride threw herself into the water, - drown yourself, girls, there is enough space in the pond!” And the monks simply stopped these pilgrimages: they surrounded the pond with a fence and hung out an inscription that this pond was not called Lizin at all.

Even now all this cannot but evoke smiles, naivete and innocence of people of an era far from us. But with mature reflection, one cannot but agree that Karamzin conveyed the story of girlish love from its inception to the catastrophe, “tied” to a peasant woman with outdated literary language, with psychological certainty, and the future Turgenev, the singer of “first love” and a subtle connoisseur of girlish hearts, and Leo Tolstoy with penetration into the spiritual flow with its forms and laws. The sophisticated psychologism of Russian artistic prose, recognizable all over the world, is foreseen, appears in the now-seemingly naive and even inept story of this writer.