The idea of the book about Mstislav Cherny as a source of the plot for the novel “Vadim” by M. Yu. Lermontov

Moskvin Georgy Vladimirovich PhD in Philology Associate professor, Department of History of Russian Literature, M. V. Lomonosov Moscow State University 119992, Russia, g. Moscow, ul. Leninskie Gory, 1, str. 51 georgii_moskvin@mail.ru Other publications by this author

The idea of "Vadim" as an epic work was formed in the fusion of genre-generic streams of the poem and drama (the lyrics formed the inner, "intimate" basis of the novel). The outline of the plan of the work about Mstislav Cherny, placed under No. 16 in "Plans, sketches, plots" ^{[1, p. 379]} and dated 1831 after being found in notebook XI ^{[1, p. 677]}, should be considered a "pre-conceived" version of the plan. Both the plan and the "Plot" following it under No. 17 ^{[1, pp. 379-381]}, dated 1832 after being found in notebook IV ^{[1, p. 677]}, contain plot, plot-motive features, as well as features of the image of the alleged heroes, which will be distributed in Vadim.

At the beginning of the plan, the characters are presented: "The hero's name is Mstislav," the Black nickname from his thoughtfulness, "his sister is Olga." So, the plan specifies the type of kinship relationship of the main characters — brother and sister, which will be the basis for the love conflict of the novel. The name Mstislav semantically echoes the energy and spirit of vengeance that saturate the image of Vadim. Mstislav's nickname — Black, given to him, as can be seen from the plan, "from his thoughtfulness," indicates the nature of this thoughtfulness. In Vadim, the semantic potential of the word "black" as a linguistic, cultural, historical and stylistic unit will receive a differentiated expression depending on the specific angle of the main character's characteristics. For example, if we are talking about his characterization through the description of beggars, to whose social condition he belongs, then the extreme degree of the lower class is actualized ("black people — commoners, "black hundred", "Novgorod, ancient — the lower class" ^{[2, p. 594]}. The selection of the hero from the crowd of beggars is also carried out due to the actualization of another meaning of the definition of "black". When describing beggars, the meaning of "dirty, unclean, dirty" is emphasized: "Their clothes were images of their souls: black, tattered <...> the indentations in the faces seemed blacker than usual" (my italics are G.M.) ^{[1, p. 8]}. When describing Vadim, the word "black" or mutates into its stylistic correlate "gloomy", thereby noting the romantic trend in creating the image: "His broad forehead was <...> gloomy as a cloud," or is implicated in comparisons and comparisons, prompting an association with the meaning — "unclean, devil, devil." So, the beggars respected in the hero "a demon — but not a man," and the hero himself thinks: "...If I were a devil <...> the exile of paradise, the rival of God." The "black" side of Vadim's image is associated with his thirst for deadly revenge and murder (unintentional and intentional), and the duality of faith ("...He believed in God —but also the devil!"). It is also interesting to recall the word "chernets" (the plan also indicates the plot perspective of the development of the image — "after the pilgrim"); the image of chernets is found in Lermontov's lyrics (for example, the ballad "Guest", in which the motives of betrayal of love and death, as in "Vadim", are the main ones) and in his poems. Finally, the name Olga, which appeared in the novel, it would seem, according to literary tradition, indicates the "end-to-end" creative thought of the author, expressed in the name of his heroine.

Further, "Mstislav prays for three nights on the mound so that the kind name of Russia does not perish." The lyrical "Passage" correlated with this fragment of the plan ("I spent three nights without sleep — in anguish...") meaningfully coincides with the development of the main character's line in Vadim. The idea expressed in the words "so that the dear name of Russia does not perish" does not find a place in the text of the novel, since the historical content of the work was changed (from the invasion of the Tatars to the Pugachev uprising). In the crucial IX chapter of Vadim, verbal and figurative references are found with the plan of the work about Mstislav ("Mounds clothed in fog in the distance, maybe the graves of Tatar horsemen"); the next point of the plan ("To put a song: sad, about love or What kind of dust is gathering") also resonates in the novel - presumably, that both the sad love song and the folk song about Tatar captivity, recorded by Lermontov in 1830 and subjected to some literary processing ^{[3, p. 370]} receive a certain plot function, signaling future changes, or at the level of a single image ("... Gray dust swirled behind an idle caravan;.. "Isn't it to us?" thought Vadim... an incomprehensible premonition fell like lead on his soul"), or in Olga's sad song ("The wind howls, / The moon is shining: / The girl is crying — / Darling is riding into a foreign land"). Description of Olga and the situation of meeting with her brother from the plan ("Olga is young, innocent, angel… <...> Her brother enters...") coincides verbally and according to the situation with the detailed description in chapter III of "Vadim" ("A young girl was sitting... It was an angel.… <...> An ugly beggar has ascended").

So, the fact that the idea of Mstislav Cherny in his basic, marching ideas will be transformed into "Vadim" is beyond doubt. Another thing may raise doubts: is it legitimate to talk about Mstislav Cherny as a poetic idea. Indeed, the "Plot" following the outline of the plan is "a detailed outline of the drama, the idea of which is devoted to the previous sketch. Apparently, the drama was planned for 5 acts and 10 scenes" ^{[1, p. 677]}. B.T. Udodov writes about this: "Lermontov intended to write a tragedy, not a poem or even a dramatic poem" ^{[4, p. 91]}. The argument for this position is not only the obvious dramatic structure of the "Plot". The idea of Mstislav Cherny is accompanied by sketches of dramatic works (the tragedy "Marius, from Plutarch" (No. 10), a note for memory: "add another scene to the "Strange Man" (No. 11), the intention to write a tragedy about Nero (No. 15)), or the ideas of works of uncertain genre perspective ("There was a young knight at the court of Prince Vladimir" (No. 12), "The Program" (No. 18), "The monk subsequently sits at the window ..." (No. 20)). Even the concise outline of the poem "Angel of Death" can be considered in line with the dramatic search for Lermontov's early work, if we take into account that the narrative in the poem "Azrael", which developed into the poem "Angel of Death", is interrupted by dramatic inserts. The listed sketches, plans and plots are in notebooks XI (1831) and IV (1832) and cover the period of time preceding the active work on "Vadim" and coinciding with its beginning.

Meanwhile, in order to solve the question of the possible genre of the work about Mstislav Cherny, it is useful, in our opinion, to pay attention to the separation in time of drawing up the outline of the plan (late 1831) and the "Plot" (presumably the first months of 1832). The "Plot", as noted, is obviously drawn up according to a dramatic scheme, and the outline of the plan contains the signs of a future poem: the "points" of the plan are not connected by event motivations, i.e. they do not indicate a plot sequence of actions, but a poetic principle in which the deep theme of the work finds embodiment in different genre angles subordinate to the lyrical dominant. So, the first point of the plan involves the representation of the characters in a specific situation; the second and third are saturated with lyrical and song elements; followed by the first event episode - the meeting of brother and sister, the main content of which is the description of Olga and the impression of Mstislav; then a collision is planned, while its main purpose is to show not so much the external state of things as acceptance the hero of the internal decision, and finally, the last point points to the decisive and final episode of the poem — the battle and death of Prince Vasily (here there is a noticeable connection with the defeats of the Slavs in the poem "The Last Son of Liberty" (1831), and with the folk song experience of defeat and captivity in the song "What is dust in the field" (1830), and with the "Ballad" "In the hut late sometimes ..." (1831).

Observations on the different genre perspectives of the embodiment of the work about Mstislav Cherny — poem and drama — allow us to trace the process of formation of Lermontov's prose in the most significant aspect of the evolution of his work — genre and style. It would seem that the above case of changing the genre in which the idea was to be realized convinces of the following sequence of genre changes on the way to prose: from poem to drama, especially since the idea of the poem preceded the idea of the drama in time, however, with all the clarity of the manifestation of the noted trend, it must be assumed that this creative an episode may be isolated or even accidental. It follows from this that to represent the "movement" of genres in sequence from lyrics to poem and further to drama, although tempting, is incorrect. Firstly, the creation of works of different genres was a single and time-combined creative process for Lermontov, if one does not take into account the poet's natural "lyrical advance" of his texts at the beginning of his work. Secondly, the choice of a genre was determined by its predisposition, or ability, to express a theme. Thus, the genre diversity characteristic of Lermontov's early work is explained by the search for a possible adequate way of expressing a particular topic, and this search was carried out not at all in the sequential shutdown of unsuitable genre forms — on the contrary, lyrics, poem and drama compensated for their weaknesses in a single creative act, complemented each other. It was the fusion of genre and style streams that led to the inevitability of prose, in Lermontov's case, the novel, the genre form that is able to absorb these streams. This consideration can serve as confirmation of the idea that Lermontov's work develops in "prosaic waves".

The first such "wave" is the novel "Vadim". The conceived work about Mstislav Cherny is a unique illustration of the construction of the novel by Lermontov, unique because the idea did not acquire a certain genre form, but was expressed in the process of its selection: a lyrical work ("I spent three nights without sleep...", "The wind is buzzing..."), a folk song ("What is dust in the field dusting"), a poem (outline of the plan — "The name of the hero Mstislav"), a drama ("Plot"). As a result, each genre perspective found its embodiment in Vadim, but none received a dominant role, because only the novel form could unite them, thereby developing their capabilities and compensating for their impossibilities.

The lyrical works of the poet could not be concretely historical in their basis, since the experiences and states of the lyrical hero carried out beyond real time were decisive for their content (in other words, they were in the context of time, but outside of real time). The lyrical hero represented the "intimate" and conceptual truth of the author's image" ^{[5, p. 103]} and was endowed with "a plot characteristic (due to the coherence and consistency of the representation of a love story in early lyrics — G.M.), which nevertheless should not be identified with the character" ^{[6, p. 157]}. Therefore, the connection of Lermontov's early poems with "Vadim" should be considered primarily from the standpoint of their plot interaction, as well as in connection with the problem of the character of the hero. There is no documentary evidence as to why Lermontov left his idea of Mstislav Cherny unembodied — nevertheless, it can be stated that he represents the last (before working on Vadim) attempt to create a work based on the material of the Russian Middle Ages, i.e. on a historical basis. These attempts include a fragment of the unwritten poem "Oleg" (dated 1829), the completed poem "The Last Son of Liberty" (dated presumably the first half of 1831). The historical time of both poems is united by the images of Oleg, the successor of Rurik ("Oleg") and Rurik himself ("The Last Son of Liberty"). The perspective of the event plot in Oleg is unclear, and the stoppage of work on it can be explained by the fact that there is no conflict in the work. Rather, it begins to be outlined in the third version of the beginning (actually, the entire outline of the poem represents three versions of the beginning): "And he was looking for revenge on the Greeks <...> But what did Prince Oleg slow down / Apparently, the author hesitates in choosing the historical focus of the conflict, since in "Oleg" three historical times can be distinguished: the Doryurik period ("In the darkness of the pagan oak grove / In the years of forgotten antiquity"), the time of Prince Oleg and the time of Prince Igor. The contamination of the last two times occurs under the influence of Lermontov's artistic goals, i.e. the need to choose a hero who surpasses everyone in personality scale, heroism of the image and drama of fate (the dependence of the choice of such a hero on Pushkin's "Song of Prophetic Oleg" is unconditional), on the one hand, and to expand the activity field of personality conflict with the outside world — on the other. It seems that this is the reason for the historical inaccuracy made by Lermontov twice – the transfer of the raids of the Pechenegs from the time of Prince Igor to the poem about Oleg: "Before whom (in the third version – "before him") the Pechenegs trembled."A significant motive in the portrayal of the hero is also his "interpretation <...> as an avenger" ^{[7, p. 317]}.

It is obvious that Lermontov is looking for a historical time and a situation that should be adequate to an exalted, heroic personality, integral by nature, vocation and activity. In other words, Lermontov is not looking for such a person in history, but brings history closer to his need to express the ideal of personal existence, which, in fact, is the true aspiration of a romantic. The stated consideration is confirmed by the text of "Oleg": the poet calls for proper attitude to the places of the "pagan oak grove" ("Alien alien, nowadays / Do not despise these places: they are / We were familiar with inspiration!..") and asserts his spiritual connection with the heroes of the past ("I matured their vague soul, / I listened to them with indifference. / I had a stamp of longing on me, / My conscience was tormented by inaction"). There is also an obvious tendency to combine the heroic-romantic personality of the hero with the national idea, while the national idea is based not so much on the dichotomous archetype of "one's own — another's" as on the idea of freedom (liberty). Thus, Lermontov's personal freedom becomes synonymous with the freedom of the nation, and the hero becomes a personality on a scale comparable to the whole nation. This trend was developed in the poem "The Last Son of Liberty", in which the hero — Vadim Novgorodsky — by the end remains the only one who resists Rurik and the new order. It is significant that the idea of freedom is increasingly concentrated, gathering in the image of Vadim as the circle of defenders of freedom thinns (first Novgorod, then 30 young men, then 6 young men and the old man Ingelot, and finally Vadim and Ingelot). In "The Last Son of Liberty" Lermontov chooses a historical perspective that is accurate for expressing the idea of a heroic and romantic personality: there is a change of epochs (liberty for the Slavs is replaced by slavery), and the hero acts as a defender of the old time. However, according to an inexorable law, he himself becomes a bygone era, since the change has already taken place, and we find ourselves witnessing a paradoxical situation when the hero, embodying the whole people, his idea and freedom, is alienated from the people and in his lack of demand ("He sleeps his last sleep under him, / With his sword, with his shield"), and in people 's memory ("Forgotten by the Slavic country, / Freedom is a young knight"). It is also interesting to see the transformation of motives in the actions of the hero: from a defender he turns into an avenger. Probably, the romantic motif of loneliness in a work created on a historical plot basis reaches its greatest expressiveness precisely in the described situation, i.e. when times change, and the hero embodies the passing time and remains faithful to his ideal (in our case, liberties), regardless of whether this ideal is in demand or not. Russian grave. Note that in the "Song about Tsar Ivan Vasilyevich ...", which in many ways grew out of the "Last Son of Liberty", Kalashnikov remains in the memory of the people — although his grave is nameless, everyone passing feels his involvement in the Russian spirit of the hero. In the poem about Vadim Novgorodsky, the gap between personality and reality (in this case, historical) is a stylistic plot—organizing feature characteristic of all of Lermontov's early work. This gap most often manifests itself as a violent collision with the real world in terms of expression and form. The reason for this, in our opinion, is not only the stylistic romantic dominant of literature modern to the young Lermontov, but also the problem of differentiation of reality common to romanticism in general and the individual artist in particular. In the case of Lermontov, one should also take into account the phenomenon of such an early intellectual and artistic development of his personality — a phenomenon that determinedI am the centrality of Lermontov's work. Hence, historical reality as the plot basis of the work looks like a kind of "application" to the plot of self-discovery of personality, it is erased and even goes into the background, as it happens in "Litvinka" or the poem "Two Brothers", which was started but not developed. Of course, the historical basis of "Oleg" and "The Last Son of Liberty" cannot be called a background, but it is present in parallel with the plot of the personality and can be perceived as an additional theme in the composition of the work. The splitting of historical and personal existence in the author's artistic reflection required, first of all, the restoration of the "connection of times" as the elimination of the dogmatic opposition of history and life. It is significant that Lermontov uses the epigraph to "The Last Son of Liberty" to take a line from Byron's "Giaur": "When shall such a hero live again?" (When will such a hero live again?). The semantic focus of this quote is interesting: it's not so much about "such a hero" (he is a historical fact), but about when he "will live again." This is how the artist's need for a modern hero reveals itself, i.e., in creating a heroic image in life — an image psychologically associated with himself, living here and now.

The idea of Mstislav the Black thus becomes a transitional stage in the process, when a poem built on a historical plot basis, enriched by dramatic action (the "Plot" to the idea of Mstislav the Black), is absorbed by the novel idea and novel form.