Poor Lisa, the main characters. Poor Lisa (story)

Despite words and tastes

And contrary to wishes

On us from the faded line

Suddenly there is an air of charm.

What a strange thing for these days,

It is by no means a secret for us.

But there is dignity in it too:

She's sentimental!

Lines from the first play “Poor Liza”,

libretto by Yuri Ryashentsev

In the era of Byron, Schiller and Goethe, on the eve of the French Revolution, in the intensity of feelings characteristic of Europe in those years, but with the ceremoniality and pomp of the Baroque still remaining, the leading trends in literature were sensual and sensitive romanticism and sentimentalism. If the appearance of romanticism in Russia was due to translations of the works of these poets, and was later developed by Russia’s own works, then sentimentalism became popular thanks to the works of Russian writers, one of which is “Poor Liza” by Karamzin.

According to Karamzin himself, the story “Poor Liza” is “a very simple fairy tale.” The narrative about the fate of the heroine begins with a description of Moscow and the author’s confession that he often comes to the “deserted monastery” where Lisa is buried, and “listens to the dull groan of times, swallowed up by the abyss of the past.” With this technique, the author indicates his presence in the story, showing that any value judgment in the text is his personal opinion. The coexistence of the author and his hero in the same narrative space was not familiar to Russian literature before Karamzin. The title of the story is based on combining the heroine’s own name with an epithet characterizing the sympathetic attitude of the narrator towards her, who constantly repeats that he has no power to change the course of events (“Ah! Why am I writing not a novel, but a sad true story?”).

Lisa, forced to work hard to feed her old mother, one day comes to Moscow with lilies of the valley and meets a young man on the street who expresses a desire to always buy lilies of the valley from Lisa and finds out where she lives. The next day, Lisa waits for a new acquaintance, Erast, to appear, without selling her lilies of the valley to anyone, but he only comes the next day to Lisa’s house. The next day, Erast tells Lisa that he loves her, but asks her to keep their feelings secret from her mother. For a long time, “their embraces were pure and immaculate,” and to Erast, “all the brilliant amusements of the great world” seem “insignificant in comparison with the pleasures with which the passionate friendship of an innocent soul nourished his heart.” However, soon the son of a rich peasant from a neighboring village wooes Lisa. Erast objects to their wedding and says that, despite the difference between them, for him in Lisa “the most important thing is the soul, the sensitive and innocent soul.” Their dates continue, but now Erast “could no longer be content with just innocent caresses.” “He wanted more, more, and finally, he couldn’t want anything... Platonic love gave way to feelings that he couldn’t be proud of and that were no longer new to him.” After some time, Erast informs Lisa that his regiment is setting off on a military campaign. He says goodbye and gives Lisa’s mother money. Two months later, Liza, having arrived in Moscow, sees Erast, follows his carriage to a huge mansion, where Erast, freeing himself from Lisa’s embrace, says that he still loves her, but the circumstances have changed: on the hike he lost almost all of his money at cards. estate, and is now forced to marry a rich widow. Erast gives Lisa a hundred rubles and asks the servant to escort the girl from the yard. Lisa, having reached the pond, under the shade of those oak trees that just “a few weeks before had witnessed her delight,” meets the neighbor’s daughter, gives her money and asks her to tell her mother with the words that she loved a man, and he cheated on her. After this he throws himself into the water. The neighbor's daughter calls for help, Lisa is pulled out, but it is too late. Lisa was buried near the pond, Lisa's mother died of grief. Until the end of his life, Erast “could not console himself and considered himself a murderer.” The author met him a year before his death, and learned the whole story from him.

The story made a complete revolution in the public consciousness of the 18th century. For the first time in the history of Russian prose, Karamzin turned to a heroine endowed with emphatically ordinary features. His words “even peasant women know how to love” became popular. It is not surprising that the story was very popular. Many Erasts appear at once in the lists of nobles - a name that was previously infrequent. The pond, located under the walls of the Simonov Monastery (a 14th-century monastery, preserved on the territory of the Dynamo plant on Leninskaya Sloboda Street, 26), was called the Fox Pond, but thanks to Karamzin’s story it was popularly renamed Lizin and became a place of constant pilgrimage. According to eyewitnesses, the bark of the trees around the pond was cut with inscriptions, both serious (“In these streams, poor Liza passed away her days; / If you are sensitive, passer-by, sigh”), and satirical, hostile to the heroine and the author (“Erastova died in these streams bride. / Drown yourself, girls, there’s plenty of room in the pond”).

“Poor Liza” became one of the pinnacles of Russian sentimentality. It is here that the refined psychologism of Russian artistic prose, recognized throughout the world, originates. Karamzin's artistic discovery was important - the creation of a special emotional atmosphere corresponding to the theme of the work. The picture of pure first love is painted very touchingly: “Now I think,” says Lisa to Erast, “that without you life is not life, but sadness and boredom. Without your eyes the bright month is dark; without your voice the nightingale singing is boring..." Sensuality - the highest value of sentimentalism - pushes the heroes into each other's arms, giving them a moment of happiness. The main characters are also drawn characteristically: chaste, naive, joyfully trusting of people, Lisa seems to be a beautiful shepherdess, less like a peasant woman, more like a sweet society young lady brought up on sentimental novels; Erast, despite his dishonorable act, reproaches himself for it until the end of his life.

In addition to sentimentalism, Karamzin gave Russia a new name. The name Elizabeth is translated as “who worships God.” In biblical texts, this is the name of the wife of the high priest Aaron and the mother of John the Baptist. Later, the literary heroine Heloise, Abelard's friend, appears. After her, the name is associatively associated with a love theme: the story of the “noble maiden” Julie d’Entage, who fell in love with her modest teacher Saint-Preux, is called by Jean-Jacques Rousseau “Julia, or the New Heloise” (1761). Until the early 80s of the XVIII century, the name "Liza" almost never appeared in Russian literature. By choosing this name for his heroine, Karamzin broke the strict canon of European literature of the 17th-18th centuries, in which the image of Lisa, Lisette, was associated primarily with comedy and with the image of a maid-maid, which is usually quite frivolous and understands at a glance everything connected with a love affair. The gap between the name and its usual meaning meant going beyond the boundaries of classicism, weakening the connections between the name and its bearer in a literary work. Instead of the “name - behavior” connection familiar to classicism a new one appears: character - behavior, which became a significant achievement of Karamzin on the path to the “psychologism” of Russian prose.

Many readers were struck by the author's audacious style of presentation. One of the critics from Novikov’s circle, which once included Karamzin himself, wrote: “I don’t know whether Mr. Karamzin made an era in the history of the Russian language: but if he did, it’s very bad.” Further, the author of these lines writes that in “Poor Liza” “bad morals are called good manners”

The plot of “Poor Lisa” is as generalized and condensed as possible. Possible lines of development are only outlined; often the text is replaced with dots and dashes, which become its “significant minus”. The image of Lisa is also only outlined, each trait of her character is a theme for the story, but not yet the story itself.

Karamzin was one of the first to introduce the contrast between city and countryside into Russian literature. In world folklore and myth, heroes are often able to act actively only in the space allotted to them and are completely powerless outside of it. In accordance with this tradition, in Karamzin's story, a village man - a man of nature - finds himself defenseless when he finds himself in urban space, where laws different from the laws of nature apply. No wonder Lisa’s mother tells her: “My heart is always out of place when you go to town.”

The central feature of Lisa’s character is sensitivity - this is how the main advantage of Karamzin’s stories was defined, meaning by this the ability to sympathize, to discover the “tenderest feelings” in the “curves of the heart,” as well as the ability to enjoy the contemplation of one’s own emotions. Lisa trusts the movements of her heart and lives with “tender passions.” Ultimately, it is ardor and ardor that lead to her death, but it is morally justified. Karamzin’s consistent idea that for a mentally rich, sensitive person to do good deeds is natural, eliminates the need for normative morality.

Many people perceive the novel as a confrontation between honesty and frivolity, kindness and negativity, poverty and wealth. In fact, everything is more complicated: this is a clash of characters: strong - and accustomed to going with the flow. The novel emphasizes that Erast is a young man “with a fair mind and a kind heart, kind by nature, but weak and flighty.” It was Erast, who from the point of view of Lysia’s social stratum is the “darling of fate,” who was constantly bored and “complained about his fate.” Erast is presented as an egoist who seems to be ready to change for the sake of a new life, but as soon as he gets bored, he, without looking back, changes his life again, without thinking about the fate of those he abandoned. In other words, he thinks only about his own pleasure, and his desire to live, unencumbered by the rules of civilization, in the lap of nature, is caused only by reading idyllic novels and oversaturation with social life.

In this light, falling in love with Lisa is only a necessary addition to the idyllic picture being created - it is not for nothing that Erast calls her his shepherdess. Having read novels in which “all the people walked blithely along the rays, swam in clean springs, kissed like turtle doves, rested under roses and myrtles,” he decided that “he found in Lisa what his heart had been looking for for a long time.” That’s why he dreams that he will “live with Liza, like brother and sister, I will not use her love for evil and I will always be happy!”, and when Liza gives herself to him, the sated young man begins to cool in his feelings.

At the same time, Erast, being, as the author emphasizes, “kind by nature,” cannot just leave: he is trying to find a compromise with his conscience, and his decision comes down to paying off. The first time he gives money to Liza’s mother is when he doesn’t want to meet with Liza anymore and goes on a campaign with the regiment; the second time is when Lisa finds him in the city and he informs her about his upcoming marriage.

The story “Rich Liza” opens the theme of the “little man” in Russian literature, although the social aspect in relation to Liza and Erast is somewhat muted.

The story caused many outright imitations: 1801. A.E. Izmailov “Poor Masha”, I. Svechinsky “Seduced Henrietta”, 1803. "Unhappy Margarita." At the same time, the theme of “Poor Lisa” can be traced in many works of high artistic value, and plays a variety of roles in them. Thus, Pushkin, moving to realism in his prose works and wanting to emphasize both his rejection of sentimentalism and its irrelevance for contemporary Russia, took the plot of “Poor Lisa” and turned the “sad story” into a story with a happy ending “The Young Lady - a Peasant Woman” . Nevertheless, in the same Pushkin’s “The Queen of Spades,” the line of the future life of Karamzin’s Liza is visible: the fate that would have awaited her if she had not committed suicide. An echo of the theme of the sentimental work is also heard in the novel “Sunday” written in the spirit of realism by L.T. Tolstoy. Seduced by Nekhlyudov, Katyusha Maslova decides to throw herself under the train.

Thus, the plot, which existed in literature before and became popular after, was transferred to Russian soil, acquiring a special national flavor and becoming the basis for the development of Russian sentimentalism. Russian psychological, portrait prose and contributed to the gradual retreat of Russian literature from the norms of classicism to more modern literary movements.

	Lisa	Erast
Character qualities	Modest; shy; timid; kind; beautiful not only in appearance, but also in soul; tender; tireless and hardworking.	Courteous, with a naturally kind heart, quite intelligent, a dreamer, also calculating, frivolous and reckless.
Appearance	A beautiful girl with pink cheeks, blue eyes and fair hair (She worked without sparing “her rare beauty, without sparing her tender youth”). Lisa did not look like a peasant woman, rather like an airy young lady from high society.	A young, well-dressed man. He had gentle eyes and beautiful pink lips. The face is pleasant and kind.
Social status	Daughter of a wealthy villager; later an orphan living with his old mother. A simple girl, a peasant woman.	A young officer, a nobleman, a rather distinguished gentleman.
Behavior	Supports his sick mother, cannot read or write, often sings plaintive songs, knits and weaves well.	He leads the life of a real gentleman, loves to have fun and often gambles (he lost his entire estate while he was supposed to be fighting), reads novels and idylls. Has a bad effect on Lisa.
Feelings and experiences	Victim of feelings. He loves Erast with all his heart. His kiss and the first declaration of love echoed delightful music in the girl’s soul. She looked forward to every meeting. Later, Lisa deeply worries about what happened. You can see that when the young man seduced the girl, thunder struck and lightning flashed. Having learned that Erast was getting married, without thinking twice the unfortunate girl threw herself into the river. For Lisa there is no mind, for her there is only a heart. Broken heart.	Master of feelings. Most of his time he did not know what to do with himself and was waiting for something else. He “looked” for pleasure in fun.” A meeting takes place in the city, and Erast experiences feelings for the “daughter of nature.” He found in Lisa what his heart had been looking for for so long. But all this affection was rather an illusion, because a loving person would not do this, and after Lisa’s death, he is saddened not by the loss of his beloved, but by a feeling of guilt.
Attitude towards others	Very trusting; I am convinced that there are only kind and good people around. Lisa is hospitable, helpful and grateful	Frequent guest of social events. The story does not talk about his attitude towards other people, but we can conclude that he first of all thinks about himself.
Attitude towards wealth	She is poor, earns money by working (picking flowers) to support herself and her mother; moral qualities are more important than material means.	Quite rich; measures everything in money; enters into a marriage of convenience, submitting to circumstances; tries to pay off Lisa with one hundred rubles.

2 version of the table

	Lisa	Erast
Appearance	Extraordinarily beautiful, young, fair-haired.	Handsome, young, stately, charming
Character	Tender, sensual, meek, trusting.	Weak character, two-faced, irresponsible, cowardly, naturally kind, but flighty.
Social status	Peasant girl. The daughter of a wealthy villager, after whose death she became poor.	Secular aristocrat, rich, educated.
Life position	You can only live by honest work. You need to take care of your mother and not upset her. Be honest and nice with others.	Life was boring for him, so he often looked for entertainment.
Attitude to moral values	She valued moral values above all else. She could only give up for the sake of someone, and not on her own whim.	He recognized morality, but often deviated from its principles, guided only by his own desires
Attitudes towards material values	Considers money only as a means of subsistence. I never chased wealth.	Considers wealth to be a fundamental factor in a cheerful, happy life. For the sake of wealth, he married an elderly woman whom he did not love.
Moral	Highly moral.	All his thoughts were highly moral, but his actions contradicted this.
Attitude to family	She is devoted to her mother and loves her dearly.	Not shown, but most likely he is devoted to his family.
Relation to the city	She grew up in the village, so she loves nature. Prefers life in the wilderness to city social life.	Completely and completely urban man. He would never exchange city privileges for country life, just for the purpose of having fun.
Sentimentalism	Sensual, vulnerable. Does not hide feelings, is able to talk about them.	Sensual, impetuous, sentimental. Capable of experiencing.
Attitude towards love	He loves purely and devotedly, completely and completely surrendering to his feelings.	Love is like entertainment. In his relationship with Lisa, he is driven by passion. When there are no more restrictions, he quickly cools down.
The importance of public opinion	It doesn't matter to her what they say about her.	Depends on public opinion and position in society
Relationships	Her feelings were crystal clear from the very beginning. Falling in love grew into strong love. Erast was an ideal, the one and only.	Liza's pure beauty attracted Erast. At first, his feelings were brotherly. He didn't want to mix them with lust. But over time, passion won.
Strength of mind	I couldn’t cope with the pain in my soul and betrayal. I decided to commit suicide.	Erast had the fortitude to plead guilty to the death of the girl. But still I didn’t have the fortitude to tell her the truth.

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Karamzin, in his works, was the first to touch the strings of the human soul, and began to write not about the rational, which was characteristic of classicism, but about heartfelt experiences, thereby becoming sentimentalism in Russian literature. His sentimental work was Poor Lisa, which was enthusiastically received by readers, thereby bringing popularity to the writer.

Poor Lisa: a brief analysis of the story

After studying Karamzin’s work, we have to write a short story, Poor Liza, which can rightfully be considered a work of sentimentalism. Why? Because there is an obvious sentimental bias in this work. Here society and reason took a secondary place, and the feelings of the heroes came to the fore.

The story Poor Liza takes us into the world of love between two heroes, a peasant woman and a nobleman. By the way, in his story, Karamzin showed the reader that a peasant girl also has a soul, a heart, and she also knows how to love.

Here we meet Erast, who was bored with secular society and wanted something clean and bright. And then he meets the daughter of nature - Lisa. Having read novels, Erast understands that it is Lisa who is his ideal companion. He feels good with the girl, just like Lisa and Erast. The characters fall in love, but as soon as Lisa gives herself to a man, he loses interest, he grows cold, and then disappears altogether, going to work. While in the service, Erast gets into gambling debts and has to look for a rich bride to pay off his debts. The deceived Lisa cannot stand such betrayal and throws herself into the water. This is how the life of the deceived girl ends, who drowned herself in a pond near the Simonov Monastery. Erast, having learned about the death of his beloved, and the end of his life, was unhappy and considered himself a murderer.

Genre and composition

Speaking about the genre of the story Poor Lisa, it is worth noting that this is a short story, a small work that does not look like multi-volume works. In it, the writer uses a sentimental focus with a tragic outcome. The composition is simple, telling us about the events that happened thirty years ago. The relationship between the heroes lasted only three months, during which their social inequality became invisible. And the fact that a man leaves a peasant woman and marries an elderly widow does not surprise anyone. After all, this is a common phenomenon among noble society. I feel very sorry for Lisa, who has real feelings. She believed in love and could not bear betrayal. Her life ends tragically.

Problems and main idea

In the analysis of the story Poor Lisa, we see several problems raised by the writer. Here the inequality of social classes, betrayal are clearly visible, the theme of love and the theme are touched upon. Revealing these problems, the writer also shows their versatility, which lies in the comparison of life in the city and life in the countryside. At the same time, the images of the village and the city are contained in the image of Lisa and Erast. The author shows how terrible the city is, which can easily enslave a person. We see this in the behavior of Erast, who easily took advantage of the girl and then abandoned the unfortunate woman. Continuing our analysis of the work, we see the main problem

Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin described in beautiful language a story in which the main characters were a poor girl and a young nobleman. Karamzin's contemporaries greeted this love story with enthusiastic responses. Thanks to this work, the 25-year-old writer became widely known. This story is still read by millions of people and is studied in various educational institutions. Let's do a brief analysis of the story "Poor Liza" by Karamzin.

General characteristics of the work

Immediately after reading the story, a sentimental aesthetic bias becomes obvious, which is clearly expressed in the interest shown in a person, regardless of his position in society.

When Nikolai Karamzin wrote the story “Poor Liza,” which we are now analyzing, he was in a country house, relaxing with friends, and next to this dacha was the Simonov Monastery, which researchers say was the basis for the author’s idea. It is important to understand that readers perceived the story of a love relationship as actually happening largely due to this fact.

We have already mentioned at the beginning that the story “Poor Liza” is known as a sentimentalist story, although its genre is a short story, and such stylistic features at that time were used in literature only by Karamzin. How does the sentimentalism of “Poor Lisa” manifest itself? First of all, the sentimentalism of the work is focused on human feelings, and the mind and society occupy a secondary place, giving priority to the emotions and relationships of people. This idea is extremely important when analyzing the story "Poor Liza."

Main theme and ideological background

Let us outline the main theme of the work - a peasant girl and a young nobleman. It is clear what social problem Karamzin touched upon in the story. There was a huge gap between the nobles and peasants, and in order to show what contradictions stood in the way of the relationship between city residents and villagers, Karamzin contrasts the image of Erast with the image of Lisa.

In order to more accurately analyze the story “Poor Liza,” let us pay attention to the descriptions of the beginning of the work, when the reader imagines harmony with nature, a quiet and cozy atmosphere. We also read about a city in which the “mass of houses” and “gold on the domes” are simply frightening, causing some rejection. It is clear that Lisa reflects nature; naturalness, naivety, honesty and openness are visible in her. Karamzin acts as a humanist when he shows love in all its strength and beauty, recognizing that reason and pragmatism can easily crush these beautiful principles of the human soul.

The main characters of the story

It is quite obvious that an analysis of the story “Poor Liza” would be insufficient without considering the main characters of the work. It is clear that Lisa embodies the image of some ideals and principles, and Erast embodies completely different ones. Indeed, Lisa was an ordinary peasant girl, and the main trait of her character was her ability to feel deeply. Acting as her heart told her, she did not lose her morality, even though she died. It is interesting that by the way she spoke and thought, it is difficult to attribute her to the peasant class. She was characterized by bookish language.

What can you say about the image of Erast? As an officer, he thought only about entertainment, and social life tired him and made him bored. Erast is quite smart, ready to act kindly, although his character is very changeable and not constant. When Erast develops feelings for Lisa, he is sincere, but not far-sighted. The young man does not think about the fact that Lisa cannot become his wife, because they are from different circles of society.

Does Erast look like an insidious seducer? Analysis of the story "Poor Liza" shows that no. Rather, this is a person who has truly fallen in love, whose weak character prevented him from standing and carrying his love to the end. It must be said that Russian literature had not previously known such a type of character as Karamzin’s Erast, but this type was even given the name “superfluous person,” and he later began to appear more and more often on the pages of books.

Conclusions in the analysis of the story "Poor Lisa"

Briefly speaking, what the work is about, we can formulate the idea as follows: this is a tragic love that led to the death of the main character, while the reader completely passes through her feelings, in which vivid descriptions of the environment and nature are very helpful.

Although we looked at only two main characters - Lisa and Erast, in fact there is also a narrator who himself heard this sad story, and now, with shades of sadness, conveys it to others. Thanks to the incredible psychologism, sensitive topic, ideas and images that Karamzin embodied in his work, Russian literature was replenished with another masterpiece.

We are glad that a brief analysis of the story “Poor Liza” was useful to you. In our literary blog you will find hundreds of articles with character characteristics and analyzes of famous works of Russian and foreign literature.

Poor Lisa (story)

Poor Lisa
O. A. Kiprensky, “Poor Liza”, 1827
Genre:

Original language:
Year of writing:
Publication:	1792, “Moscow Magazine”
Separate edition:
in Wikisource

History of creation and publication

Plot

After the death of her father, a “prosperous villager,” young Lisa is forced to work tirelessly to feed herself and her mother. In the spring, she sells lilies of the valley in Moscow and there she meets the young nobleman Erast, who falls in love with her and is even ready to leave the world for the sake of his love. The lovers spend all evenings together, sharing a bed. However, with the loss of innocence, Lisa lost her attractiveness for Erast. One day he reports that he must go on a campaign with the regiment and they will have to part. A few days later, Erast leaves.

Several months pass. Liza, once in Moscow, accidentally sees Erast in a magnificent carriage and finds out that he is engaged (he lost his estate at cards and is now forced to marry a rich widow). In despair, Lisa throws herself into the pond.

Artistic originality

Simonov Monastery

The plot of the story was borrowed by Karamzin from European love literature, but transferred to “Russian” soil. The author hints that he is personally acquainted with Erast (“I met him a year before his death. He himself told me this story and led me to Lisa’s grave”) and emphasizes that the action takes place in Moscow and its environs, describes, for example , Simonov and Danilov monasteries, Vorobyovy Gory, creating the illusion of authenticity. This was an innovation for Russian literature of that time: usually the action of works took place “in one city.” The first readers of the story perceived Lisa's story as a real tragedy of a contemporary - it is no coincidence that the pond under the walls of the Simonov Monastery was named Liza's Pond, and the fate of Karamzin's heroine received a lot of imitations. The oak trees growing around the pond were covered with inscriptions - touching ( “In these streams, poor Lisa passed away her days; If you are sensitive, passer-by, sigh!”) and caustic ( “Here Erast’s bride threw herself into the pond. Drown yourself, girls: there’s plenty of room in the pond!”) .

However, despite the apparent plausibility, the world depicted in the story is idyllic: the peasant woman Liza and her mother have sophistication of feelings and perceptions, their speech is literate, literary and no different from the speech of the nobleman Erast. The life of poor villagers resembles a pastoral:

Meanwhile, a young shepherd was driving his flock along the river bank, playing the pipe. Lisa fixed her gaze on him and thought: “If the one who now occupies my thoughts was born a simple peasant, a shepherd, - and if he were now driving his flock past me: ah! I would bow to him with a smile and say affably: “Hello, dear shepherd!” Where are you driving your flock? And here green grass grows for your sheep, and here flowers grow red, from which you can weave a wreath for your hat.” He would look at me with an affectionate look - maybe he would take my hand... A dream! A shepherd, playing the flute, passed by and disappeared with his motley flock behind a nearby hill.

The story became an example of Russian sentimental literature. In contrast to classicism with its cult of reason, Karamzin affirmed the cult of feelings, sensitivity, compassion: “Ah! I love those objects that touch my heart and make me shed tears of tender sorrow!” . Heroes are important first of all for their ability to love and surrender to feelings. There is no class conflict in the story: Karamzin sympathizes equally with both Erast and Lisa. In addition, unlike the works of classicism, “Poor Liza” is devoid of morality, didacticism, and edification: the author does not teach, but tries to evoke empathy for the characters in the reader.

The story is also distinguished by its “smooth” language: Karamzin abandoned Old Slavonicisms and pomposity, which made the work easy to read.

Criticism about the story

“Poor Liza” was received by the Russian public with such enthusiasm because in this work Karamzin was the first to express the “new word” that Goethe said to the Germans in his “Werther.” The heroine’s suicide was such a “new word” in the story. The Russian public, accustomed in old novels to consoling endings in the form of weddings, who believed that virtue is always rewarded and vice is punished, met for the first time in this story the bitter truth of life.

"Poor Lisa" in art

In painting

Literary reminiscences

Dramatizations

Film adaptations

1967 - “Poor Liza” (television play), directed by Natalya Barinova, David Livnev, starring: Anastasia Voznesenskaya, Andrei Myagkov.
- “Poor Lisa”, director Idea Garanina, composer Alexey Rybnikov
- “Poor Lisa”, directed by Slava Tsukerman, starring Irina Kupchenko, Mikhail Ulyanov.

Literature

Toporov V. N.“Poor Liza” by Karamzin: Reading experience: To the bicentenary of its publication. - Moscow: Russian State University for the Humanities, 1995.

Notes

Links

Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

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