Aleko and the gypsies
The protagonist's former life was rich, he lived in the city, knew luxury and pleasure. The character of the young man is complex and contradictory: he is “not born for a wild life”, freedom - in the understanding of Aleko and the gypsies - are different things. The hero is jealous, he is a very passionate and loyal person. Aleko does not allow the thought that his beloved could betray him. This man accepted the gypsy lifestyle, but did not accept their philosophy and worldview.
Pushkin shows the uniqueness of the way of life, lifestyle, and relationships of the gypsies; the image of Aleko is intended to emphasize the dissimilarity of urban people with those who are accustomed to freedom in everything. Pride is part of Aleko’s nature, and for gypsies it is a vice. Aleko received freedom for himself personally, thanks to the fact that the gypsies accepted him into the camp. But he does not understand how important it is to give freedom to others, Zemfira is property for him, he is not ready to understand her, to let her go.
The idea of Pushkin's poem "Gypsies"
The poem "Gypsies" is a reflection of both Pushkin's personal life in southern exile and his literary influences. Observations of the life of semi-eastern Chisinau, acquaintance with the life of the Bessarabian gypsies forced Pushkin to peer into the peculiar local understanding of “love”, which was completely alien to a cultured person. This interest of Pushkin was also expressed in the poems “Black Shawl”, “Cut me, burn me”.
It turned out that among the gypsies there was still preserved that freedom of love relationships that bears the features of a primitive society and in the cultural environment has long been replaced by a chain of dependencies - from written laws to the conditions of secular “decency”. Of all human feelings, love between a man and a woman is the most selfish feeling. Pushkin chose a difficult love question to analyze the type of hero that was characteristic of his work during the period of southern exile - a person infected with the poison of “world melancholy”, an enemy of cultural life with its lies. The heroes of the writers who then influenced Pushkin (Rene Chateaubriand, Byron's characters) curse cultural life, glorify the life of savages... But will such a hero withstand primitive life, with all the simplicity of its life, the purity and freedom of purely plant and animal existence? The hero of Pushkin's poem "Gypsies" did not pass the test. Hatred of culture alone was not enough to become a savage. Growing up in an atmosphere of selfishness and violence, a cultured person carries selfishness and violence everywhere, along with beautiful words and dreams.
Pushkin. Gypsies. Brief retelling. Illustrated audiobook
Characteristics of the hero
Aleko is a vengeful person, he sees no other way out than to kill Zemfira and her new lover, the reason for this is his hot character, jealousy and pride. Love is a very subtle feeling, for Aleko it is forever, for Zemfira it is a fleeting, passing feeling.
“You love sadly and difficultly, but a woman’s heart loves in jest,” this is how the girl’s father explains that she has “cooled down.” The difference in views is revealed when the old man tells Aleko about Zemfira’s mother and her betrayal. The young man reacts very violently to a woman’s betrayal, and the old man explains to him the essence of female nature. Aleko cannot accept freedom in love; he sees love as something that chains him forever, depriving him of the right to choose.
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Russian criticism about Pushkin’s “Gypsies”
Russian criticism and the public enthusiastically accepted Pushkin's new work. Everyone was captivated by the descriptions of gypsy life and interested in the drama of the poem. In their analysis, criticism noted Pushkin’s originality in relation to the hero; noted that the Russian poet depends on Byron only in the “manner of writing.” A critic of the Moskovsky Vestnik pointed out that with “Gypsies” a new, third period of Pushkin’s work begins, “Russian-Pushkin” (he called the first period “Italian-French”, the second “Byronic”). The critic quite rightly noted: 1) Pushkin’s inclination towards dramatic creativity, 2) “correspondence with his time,” i.e., the ability to depict “typical features of modernity,” and 3) the desire for “nationality,” “nationality.”
Psychological appearance of Aleko in the poem “Gypsies”
From the point of view of the plot and the “main character,” the poem “Gypsies” (1824) is, as it were, a variation of “Prisoner of the Caucasus.” Like the Captive, Aleko, in search of freedom, leaves his “fatherland”, civilized life, goes to the steppes of Moldova, and joins the nomadic gypsies. The method of depicting the characters' characters is in the spirit of the poetics of a “romantic poem”: like the life of the Captive, Aleko’s life before his appearance in the poem is depicted in the most general, deliberately abstract, mysteriously unclear lines. A veil of meaningful understatement and mystery falls at the end of the poem over Aleko’s future fate: he comes from the steppe “darkness”, during the action of the poem he is in a strip of light and again gets lost in an unknown mysterious darkness:
- Night has come; in a dark cart
- No one lit the fire
- No one under the lifting roof
- I didn’t go to sleep until the morning.
But Aleko’s psychological appearance is developed much more and much more consistently than that of the Captive. The Captive's love of freedom was mentioned in the most general and vague way. It is unclear where his greedy search for freedom stemmed from, as well as what kind of “prison” the freedom he was striving for was opposed to. Aleko's pathetic remarks say this directly. What the poem calls “the shackles of enlightenment,” civilized “slave” life, “captivity in stuffy cities,” people deprived of the charm of nature, ashamed of their natural feelings, trading in their freedom, is contrasted with the free life of a “wild” nomadic tribe. Aleko’s speeches are imbued with an almost Radishchev-like pathos of indignation against the ruling classes - the “idols” of power and strength, as well as against those who servilely grovel before them - “asking for money and chains” (the motive for the ending of the parable of the sower). One might think that it is precisely because of this mood that Aleko turns out to be a “migratory exile”: “He is persecuted by the law.”
The second member of the antithesis is presented much sharper and more clearly in “Gypsies” - that free existence into which Aleko finds himself. Free from a sedentary, established life, from constraining property, land, home, from the “laws” associated with all this, free like the wind of those steppes along which they roam, the gypsies are, as it were, the ultimate expression of the romantic freedom sought by the hero, together with the closest to the life of nomadic peoples. But the most important and significant thing that distinguishes “Gypsy” from “Prisoner of the Caucasus” lies in completely different relationships that connect the “enlightened, civilized hero” and the “wild,” primitive tribe. The search for freedom by the hero of “Prisoner of the Caucasus” was as uncertain as their motivation. What kind of freedom was he looking for? Where did you expect to find her? In any case, he ends up in the circle of the free tribe completely by accident and, moreover, turns out to be a “slave”, chained among the free and predatory Circassians. In "Gypsies" this external conflict is transferred, as it were, internally. In this regard, the main conflict deepens, acquires much greater tension, sharpness and genuine drama. Aleko comes to the gypsy camp voluntarily. In the future, no one interferes with his freedom, which he enjoys freely. He quite likes the newfound freedom. But Aleko is internally unworthy of this freedom.
In a brilliant analysis of “Gypsies,” in which the idea of this work was deeply revealed for the first time, V. G. Belinsky, however, points out that A. S. Pushkin did not do what he wanted: “... thinking of creating an apotheosis of Aleko from this poem ... instead, he made a terrible satire on him and people like him, pronouncing judgment on them that was inexorably tragic and at the same time bitterly ironic.” In fact, in the poem, which Pushkin began to create after writing the first two chapters of Eugene Onegin, there is neither “apotheosis” nor “satire”. In the image of Onegin, the “hero of the century” is revealed without any romanticization, using the means and techniques of critical realism, the first example of which is given by Pushkin in his novel in verse. In "Gypsies" this image is still romanticized. But at the same time, and this makes Pushkin’s poem a wonderful example of a kind of “critical romanticism”, the poet, using the means and techniques of romantic art, removes the exalting aura from the hero, shows not only his strengths, but also his weaknesses.
Aleko is an extraordinary person who stands out sharply from the environment, possessing many undoubtedly positive qualities - a sharply critical mind, the ability to have deep feelings, strong will, courage, determination. Aleko stands at the heights of contemporary education. And at the same time, he is deeply dissatisfied with his surroundings, filled with the progressive aspirations of his time, and sincerely and passionately hates the slave and merchant system of his contemporary society. His rebellion against society is a rebellion in the name of freedom against slavery, in the name of “naturalness,” “nature,” against social relations based on “money and chains” and fettering and enslaving human thought and feelings.
Aleko's image
Pushkin wrote a wonderful poem “Gypsies” in 1824. One of the heroes of this work is Aleko. Pushkin created this hero as a unique image of a young guy of the 19th century.
Aleko is a person who loves justice and the most important thing for him is dignity. For him, all invented laws in the state and throughout the world are a lever of violence against people. Aleko is a hero who can be called in one word - a fugitive, perhaps he was expelled or maybe he himself decided to change his image and environment. Another main aspect in the hero’s life is freedom. He wants to find it, and he sees no other option but to do it only in a gypsy camp.
Pushkin builds his work based on the conflict between civil life and the will that the camp and Aleko personify. The author, in his own way, explains to the reader the fact that Aleko parted with civilization. The reader perceives Aleko's exile as his own choice. The hero, therefore, has many abilities if he decides to leave a civilization that is somehow flawed for him.
Life in civilization for the hero of the poem was not entirely successful, so he hopes that being “free” in the camp, he will be able to build a new life. Aleko has a beloved woman - Zemfira. The girl also reciprocates Aleko’s feelings and this is the best thing in life for the hero. But, after some time, Zemfira cheated on Aleko. The woman destroyed the hero’s peace of mind and hopes for a new life. Aleko decides to take justice; he wants to kill Zemfira. It is interesting that the hero is the personification of justice, freedom, love, but it is he who brings blood, hatred and violence to the camp. It soon becomes clear to the reader that Aleko is not suitable for life in a camp, for a free life. He is kicked out of the camp again and this ends the plot in which Aleko participates.
The author in the work examines several philosophies of life, but Pushkin does not take the side of one or the other. This allows the conflict to be conveyed more accurately in the poem. Aleko is the one who goes to the most terrible extremes in this conflict. Many critics, after reading and studying the poem in detail, have a very negative attitude towards the hero; they consider the hero to be incompetent.
The hero of the story personifies tragedy, he is tragic. Aleko has no other path in life but to follow the path of evil. Pushkin in his poem showed the reader that man himself cannot be perfect.
Essay about Aleko
Pushkin wrote not only poetry and novels, he also wrote poems. One of the very famous is the poem “Gypsies”. The main character of this poem is a young man who grew up in a rich European country, but never found freedom there. All moral norms, laws, traditions and foundations seem to him to be an obstacle to the freedom of the whole world, seem absurd and fetter the soul of such eagles of freedom as himself.
One fine day, Aleko meets a gypsy Zemfira, with whom he falls in love at first sight. Zemfira reciprocates his feelings. She accompanies her lover to her gypsy camp, where they begin to live together. Living with her beloved, Zemfira, like the reader, learns that her husband is being persecuted by the law, that he is hiding from the authorities.
Aleko is a very passionate person, he not only loves and appreciates Zemfira, she replaces the whole world for him. He doesn’t need anyone at all except her alone, he loves and appreciates her so much. With all this, he believes that women's hearts love, jokingly, playfully, unlike men's, who suffer in love, give all their juices to maintain passion and so that the object of sympathy is happy. The reader immediately learns that Aleko is a very vengeful person who does not forgive his enemies and offenders. He is ready to kill a sleeping enemy, he is such an evil and cruel person. For many, this is proof of his dishonor, because even in the most terrible wars there were people who would never kill their enemies in a sleeping position.
To provide a life for himself and his woman, Aleko performs in a camp with a bear in front of the public. He completely lost the habit of city life, got used to the camp and loved it with his soul. Zemfira says that Aleko wants freedom only for himself, and not for all people, that his struggle for freedom throughout the world is only a struggle for freedom for himself, a selfish struggle.
Soon their child is born, but Zemfira’s feelings begin to cool, she no longer finds Aleko such a wonderful man as she considered him before the wedding - now she has really learned what the young rebel really is. The poem ends with Zemfira cheating on Aleko with another gypsy, knowing how jealous her husband is. Aleko, having learned about the betrayal, kills both his lover and Zemfira herself, for which he is expelled from the camp, leaving him alone in the field, like an abandoned bird. Aleko is a very proud man, and he would never ask the camp for forgiveness to leave him. And what kind of life does he have now without a person who was his whole world? But if Aleko really loved Zemfira so much, would he have killed her?
Other works: ← Vasilisa Egorovna Mironova in the novel The Captain's Daughter ↑ Pushkin Characteristics of Shabashkin in the novel Dubrovsky →
