Among the images of Russian peasants created by Nekrasov, the image of Ermila Girin especially stands out. He, as they say in the work, “is not a prince, not an illustrious count, but a simple peasant,” but, nevertheless, he enjoys great respect among the peasants. Using the example of the image of Ermila Girin in the poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'” by Nekrasov, we can analyze what character traits were considered important for the Russian people, how the people saw their heroes.

“Both young and smart” - with these words the description of Yermil Girin begins in the poem. Then the peasant, who started talking about Ermil, tells the peasant wanderers a story that testifies to the boundless trust of the people in him. Yermil owned a mill, which the merchant Altynnikov was going to buy for his debts. Yermil won the trial, but the attorneys rigged the case in such a way that he did not have money with him to pay. Then he rushed to the square, to the people, and told them his misfortune. Yermil’s request: “If you know Yermil, / If you believe Yermil, / So help out, or something!..” is the best evidence of his love and trust in his compatriots. In this episode, Nekrasov perfectly noted the psychology of the Russian peasant, who prefers to experience troubles and make decisions “with the whole world”

Yermil opens up to the crowd - and receives help; everyone who was in the square brought him at least a nickel. This was enough to buy out the mill.

The main feature of Yermil is his incorruptible honesty and love of truth. He served as a clerk for seven years, and during all this time “he did not squeeze a worldly penny under his fingernail.” Everyone could turn to Yermil for advice, knowing that he would never demand money or offend an innocent person. When Yermil left his post, it was difficult to get used to the new unscrupulous clerk. “It is necessary to have a bad conscience - / A peasant should extort a penny from a peasant /” - this is the verdict the people pass on “grabber officials.”

With his decency, Yermil earned the faith of the peasants, and they repaid him with kindness: they unanimously elected Yermil as mayor. Now he is Girin Ermil Ilyich, honestly reigning over the entire estate. But Yermil does not stand the test of power. This is the only time he renounces his conscience, sending another person to become a soldier instead of his brother. And although he soon repents and makes amends for the harm he caused, the peasants remember this act. It's difficult to restore your good name, considered by the people to be the highest value - this is the idea Nekrasov conveys in the image of Yermil.

The image of Yermil Girin in Nekrasov’s poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'” is one of the most colorful, since in this character the author embodied his vision best features in the Russian people: honesty, directness, selflessness and love of truth. At the same time, Nekrasov described his hero very plausibly, putting the story about him into the mouths of peasants who tell wanderers about him. It is not for nothing that the poet conveys the story about him to strangers, thus trying to emphasize the veracity of the story.

general characteristics

The image of Yermil Girin is very symbolic in philosophical sense. The whole point of the poem is the search for seven wanderers happy person in Rus'. And in the chapter “Happy,” the author, through the mouths of the common people, talks about people who, in the opinion of the peasants, by their moral and moral qualities deserve to be known by everyone. But before talking about the heroes, it is necessary to note some facts about the creation and writing of the poem. Nekrasov began to write his, perhaps, most famous work in the first half of the 1860s, although he may have begun sketching earlier. The creation of the text and its publication lasted for several years and continued until the death of the author. At first he wanted to write eight parts, but due to illness he reduced the number of parts, and the final version included four parts.

Peculiarities

The image of Ermil Girin embodies the author’s general plan - the creation of a wide panorama folk life in Rus'. In a conventionally fairy-tale form, Nekrasov narrates the journey of seven wanderers who are looking throughout the country for a truly happy person. Characteristic feature of this work is that it has become a real epic canvas of the people's life of Rus'. The poet tried to cover the main spheres of social and social life, show the strata of the population and for this purpose chooses as heroes representatives of various social strata, each of whom presents his own story to the wanderers and tells about his disasters and problems. It was not without reason that the author followed this path, since it was in this way that the narrative received particular persuasiveness and truthfulness. He himself, as it were, deliberately distanced himself from the narrative and acts only as an observer, leaving his characters to talk about themselves.

Heroes

The images of Yakim Nagogo and Ermil Girin occupy one of the central places in the narrative for several reasons. Firstly, this simple people from the people, ordinary peasants. Secondly, they are mentioned in the chapter “Happy”, which immediately distinguishes them from other characters, since the title of the chapter suggests that they are the ones the wanderers are looking for during their journey through Rus'. Thirdly, they do not talk about themselves, but the reader learns about them from the words of the village residents who knew them well. Thus, the author follows folk tradition, according to which rumors about good and good person spreads throughout the earth, the whole world learns about him and his life becomes known to many people.

Characters

The image of Yermil Girin is distinguished by the greater truthfulness and expressiveness that wanderers all over the world are told about him. What features do peasants highlight when characterizing him? First of all, truthfulness: Yermil is an honest person who never used his position for his own benefit. Working as a clerk, he always helped the peasants, did not take bribes, and acted in their interests. For this, everyone in the village loved and respected him, and elected him mayor.

When he urgently needed money to buy back the mill, he turned to all the people for help, and everyone present at the fair helped him: everyone, even people he didn’t know, gave money to buy back the mill. It is in this episode that, perhaps, the image of Yermil Girin is most clearly revealed. Briefly about him in connection with this episode, the following can be said: he is a truly people's man in spirit, and therefore the peasants help him all over the world. And only once did he abuse his power: he sent the son of a poor peasant woman as a recruit instead of his brother. However, being by nature a conscientious and truthful person, he repented of his actions, resigned from his position, and repented before all the people. So, the image of Ermila Girin, which is briefly described in this section, is one of the most striking in the poem.

Yakim Nagoy is also a simple peasant, whose whole life is spent in hard physical labor. He drinks a lot, and at first glance it seems that he is a goner. However, Yakim is a man with wealth inner world. He has a sense of beauty: so, he buys beautiful pictures, who became his only consolation, so during a fire he saves them. So, in his poem, Nekrasov convincingly showed the images of simple peasants, each of which is touching and sympathetic to the reader.

In the story about Ermil Girin and his sad fate, the high ethical and topical political meaning of the men's dispute about happiness acquires greater clarity and poignancy. Already the compositional isolation of the episode with Yermil (he is included after the remark: “Hey, peasant happiness!..”) prepares the reader for the fact that his happiness is fundamentally different from the “holey and patched” peasant. The story about Girin depicts a high ideal of happiness according to popular ideas:

Yes! There was only one man!

He had everything he needed

For happiness...

Yermil has the material wealth that, from a man’s point of view, is necessary for happy life. “Who Lives Well in Rus'” is not an everyday story, it is a “philosophy of people’s life,” a work where the truth of life is revealed with the help of artistic conventions. Therefore, the author does not say anything about how, in what ways Yermil came to this “wealth.” To solve the social and moral problem that truth-seekers are struggling with, it is given: Girin is rich and he has nothing to be ashamed of, since everything he has was acquired by honest labor.

Ermil has something else necessary condition happiness: honor.

An enviable, true honor,

Not bought with money,

Not with fear: with strict truth,

With intelligence and kindness!

With his many years of selfless activity (“At seven years of age, he didn’t squeeze a worldly penny / Under his fingernail”), with his “intelligence and kindness,” Yermil earned the deep respect and trust of the people, which was manifested in the scene with the purchase of the mill. Girin gained power “over the surrounding area” “not through witchcraft, but through truth,” his appearance embodies the love of truth of the people, their moral demands. Only life based on strict truth can give a person a feeling of joy - this is the meaning of Fedosei’s story.

This was the case with Yermil, until he put his personal well-being above “truth”, above the interests of another person, until he recruited the son of the old woman Vlasyevna instead of his brother Mitri. However, Yermil’s deep repentance for his action, the inability for him to live with the consciousness of his guilt before the “world” make this image even more attractive. It’s not for nothing that after everything that happened, he became “more than ever / Loved by all the people.”

Well, so what? Is there a standard of life to which one should strive? No, the author had a different goal when introducing an episode with Yermil Girin into the poem. Having given the men the opportunity to listen to Fedosei’s story (with the additions of the gray-haired priest), the author, with the content of this story, leads to the idea that the high ideal of happiness, conceived as a free, prosperous working life, utopian, unattainable with modern social order. Firstly, in these conditions, the prosperity of the peasant (if he is not a world-eater) can only be a happy exception. We don’t even know how Yermil managed to get rich, while none of the residents of the villages of Bosovo, Gorelovo, Neelovo and others managed to achieve this... And secondly... Fedosei’s story is interrupted for the second time by the “gray-haired priest”, reporting that Yermil Girin was in prison. This remark immediately moves the narrative from the ethical and somewhat speculative to an acutely political plane.

This is reality! Poor peasant Rus' is rebelling in the struggle for justice. Rebels “in excess of gratitude” to the liberators. Even the most downtrodden are rising from an unbearable life to fight, even the patrimony has risen

Landowner Obrubkov,

Frightened province,

Nedykhanev County,

Village Tetanus...

And although the narrator, the peasant Fedosey, says that the cause of the rebellion “remained unknown,” Nekrasov, using the symbolism of the names, reveals it: the landowner cut off the peasant plots to such an extent that the peasants of the province, frightened for centuries, did not dare to breathe under serfdom (Nedykhanyev Uyezd), frozen in an age-old stupor (Tetanus!) - and they rebelled. With a careful mention of the riot in Tetanus, the author makes it clear to the reader that the people's patience is coming to an end, that the struggle that the peasantry is rising up to is the only way to achieve that ideal of life that so captivates listeners in the story about Yermil.

Why Yermil ended up in prison is not directly stated in the poem, but even from hints it is not difficult to guess: during a riot in the village of Stolbnyaki, Girin apparently takes the side of the rebels. A person with such a heightened sense of justice could not have acted otherwise. Yermil consciously sacrifices personal well-being in the name of the idea of ​​general justice, prefers “truth” to “richness” and ends up in prison. Under the conditions of the landowner state, his everyday well-being turned out to be fragile, temporary, illusory.

Compositionally separating the story about Girin from the depiction of the fate of the other “lucky ones” and thereby emphasizing the exclusivity of his fate, Nekrasov, however, left it within the chapter “Happy”, for the ironic meaning of its title can be extended to the fate of a man who ended his life in prison .

In Fedosei’s story, with no less clarity than the spiritual appearance of the hero, moral concepts and the demands of the peasant masses. The men of Adovshchina value Yermil for his honesty, selflessness, and strict straightforwardness. The sympathetic peasant heart pays a hundredfold for kindness, as evidenced by the episode with Yermil’s purchase of the mill. Nekrasov based it on a genuine fact described by P.I. Melnikov-Pechersky. The wealthy Nizhny Novgorod schismatic Pyotr Ivanovich Bugrov, half an hour before the renegotiation of a government contract for the transportation of salt, “rushed headlong to the lower bazaar and there, saying to the traders: “Brothers, give us money quickly,” he took off his malakhai in front of them, into which 20,000 were thrown in a quarter of an hour later. rubles in silver." With the money, Bugrov managed to re-auction. The contract remained with him. Nekrasov used this, perhaps exceptional, fact to show not only the boundless trust and respect of the men for Yermil, but also (and this is the main thing!) a sense of comradeship, a feeling of peasant solidarity, moreover, social solidarity, since the merchant Altynnikov is socially hostile to them and supporting Ermil is essentially tantamount to protecting one’s own interests. It is significant that the theme of popular solidarity begins (the purchase of the mill) and ends (the riot in Stolbnyaki) the story of Ermil Girin .

Nikolai Nekrasov’s poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'” is replete with various characters, including Yermil Girin. The characteristics of this hero are very important for the entire work, since the author makes him one of the likely contenders for the title of a happy person.

About the poem

Nikolai Alekseevich Nekrasov created a poem about hardships peasant life, trying to portray all the torment that befalls the village peasant. And at the same time, illustrate the life of former serfs. One of these village people is Ermil Girin. The character's characteristics are not the least important in understanding the way of life of that time. And Nekrasov himself sets him apart from others. We'll talk about how it does it and why below.

Ermil Girin: characteristics

This character appears already in the first part of the poem. However, the reader does not get to know him personally, but only hears a story about him. Yermil Girin (the characterization according to the plan must include this point) is the chairman of the village, who is nominated as a candidate for the lucky ones. Ermila was elected to his position for his honesty and intelligence by the mayor. And the man fully justified the hopes placed on him, performing his duty regularly and fairly for seven years, for which he earned the respect and love of the entire community.

Only once did Girin abuse his power. When they came for his younger brother to recruit him, he gave the son of a local peasant woman instead. But even here the best showed up moral qualities hero. His conscience began to torment him. And he brought himself to the point that he almost hanged himself. The situation was saved by the master, who returned his son, who had been unfairly sent to serve, to his mother.

But after this incident he no longer felt entitled to be chairman, so he left the service and then became a miller. However, despite everything, Girin continued to enjoy the trust and respect of other peasants. The case of the sale of the mill is illustrative in this regard. The fact is that he rented the mill where Yermil worked. And so the owner decided to sell his property. The bidding began, and Girin won it. However, he did not have the required amount of deposit with him. Then some men came to his aid, and in half an hour they managed to collect a rather large sum - a thousand rubles. Only their help saved Girin from ruin.

However, this joyful story ends when Yermil was arrested for refusing to pacify the riot that happened in his village.

Nekrasov specifically shows the strength and height of the hero’s moral principles ( quotation description Ermila Girin confirms this). However, the injustice of power does not allow even such a person to live happily.

Hero prototype

Ermil Girin, whose characteristics were outlined above, was not invented out of nowhere by Nekrasov. The prototype was A.D. Potanin, a native of peasants who managed the estate of the Counts Orlovs. This man became famous for his selflessness, justice and honesty. Potanin and Girin are related, for example, by the following quotes from the poem: “It takes a bad conscience to extort a penny from a peasant to a peasant,” “He became more loved than ever by all the people.”

This is the measure of happiness, for which, according to Nekrasov, it is necessary to be honest, fair, selfless and respected by the people.

“Who lives well in Rus'.” In the poem we're talking about about how seven peasant men went to wander around Rus' to find at least one happy person. Ermil Girin is one of minor characters, a peasant whose story is told in the chapter called "The Happy Ones."

History of creation

Nekrasov wrote the poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'” over ten years, from 1866 to 1876, and possibly longer. The author spent a lot of time collecting material, and the first sketches could have been made as early as 1863. An excerpt of the poem first appeared in print in 1866, in the January issue of the literary magazine Sovremennik. At this point, Nekrasov had just finished working on the first part. The publication of finished materials lasted for four long years, and all this time Nekrasov was persecuted and attacked by censors.

In the 70s of the 19th century, Nekrasov resumed work on the poem and began writing a sequel. From 1872 to 1876, parts appeared entitled by the author “The Last One,” “Peasant Woman” and “Feast for the Whole World.” The author intended to continue working and stretch the poem into three or four more parts, but his health did not allow Nekrasov to carry out these plans. As a result, the author limited himself to trying to give a finished look to the last of the written parts of the poem and stopped there.

“Who lives well in Rus'”

Ermil Ilyich Girin is a simple peasant man, but a proud and determined man. The hero runs a mill, where he works honestly, without deceiving anyone. The peasants trust Girin, and the landowner treats the hero with respect. The surname “Girin” probably refers the reader to the physical and mental strength of the hero.

Girin is young, but smart and taught to read and write, thanks to which he served as a clerk in the office for five years. When it comes to choosing a mayor, the peasants unanimously choose Girin for this position. The hero remained in this post for seven years and proved himself to be a fair and honest person, earning the respect of the people.

The hero is well off for a peasant, but those around him value Girin not for his wealth, but for his kindness to people, his intelligence and truthfulness. When peasants turn to Girin for help, he invariably helps with advice or action, acting as a kind of people's defender. At the same time, the hero does not demand gratitude from people and refuses to accept payment for his own good deeds.

Girin does not appropriate someone else's property. One day the hero has an “extra ruble” left, with which Girin goes around everyone to return the money to the owner, but never finds the owner. At the same time, the hero himself is not naive and sees when another person is trying to play around and deceive, and does not buy the flattery.

Girin is conscientious and truthful, he is indignant towards peasants who “extort a penny” from other similar men, and judges those around him by the conscience. A heightened sense of justice does not allow Girin to let the guilty go or offend the right. The hero is also very self-critical and is ready to call himself a villain when he acts against his conscience.

There was only one case in which the hero betrayed his soul in Girin’s life. Girin “shielded” his own younger brother from the “recruit” (helped to avoid the army). The hero himself considers this act dishonest and suffers from the fact that he committed it, almost committing suicide as a result. Ultimately, the hero gives up his own brother as a soldier, and the other peasant son returns home from the army.

Not feeling that his guilt has been atoned for, Girin resigns from the position of “burgist”, rents a mill and begins to work there. The hero works honestly and takes the grind according to his conscience. Girin believes that people are equal, and therefore releases the flour in order, without looking at who is in front of him - a poor man or a manager. The hero is respected in the area, so those who approach him honestly, regardless of status, adhere to the queue established by Girin.

Later, a certain merchant Altynnikov begins to “take over” the mill. They decide to sell the mill, and the lively Girin participates in the auction, which he wins. However, the hero does not have the money on hand that is needed to post bail. Here the love of the common people for Girin was manifested, because the peasants present at the bazaar collected a thousand rubles for Girin in just half an hour - a huge amount for those times.

The hero has everything he needs to be happy, but Girin harbors a grudge against those who tried to take the mill away from him. Resentment pushes the hero to give up happy fate and a quiet life and support the popular uprising that broke out in the patrimony. The hero refuses to pacify the peasants and eventually ends up in prison. Further biography Girina is unknown.

There are other notable characters in the poem, for example, Yakim Nagoy - the antipode of Girin. This is a man who drinks half to death with a sunken chest and a brown neck, the hero’s skin looks like tree bark, and his face looks like a brick. Nekrasov portrays an exhausted man whose drunkenness and exhausting work have deprived him of health and strength.

Yakim drinks because he finds nothing good in life. The hero once lived in St. Petersburg, but went broke, ended up in prison and was forced to return to the village, where Yakim had no alternatives except the exhausting work of a plowman. The image of Yakim embodies the tragic side of the peasant way of life.

The image of a “governor” and a “good-witted” woman, about whom those around her think that her life is fun and at ease, is also interesting. The heroine herself has a different opinion and believes that “the keys to women’s happiness” have been lost in Rus'.

The image of a priest’s son and poet, who dreams of raising the common people from their knees, is also vivid. Grisha grew up in extreme poverty and almost died of hunger, so the meaning own life sees in serving the peasants and in alleviating the plight of the common people, whose life is full of troubles and hardships.

Quotes

“The man is a bull: he’ll get confused

What a whim in the head -

Stake her from there

You can’t knock them out: they resist,

Everyone stands on their own!”

"He works himself to death,

He drinks until he's half dead."

"A crowd without red girls,

What is rye without cornflowers?

“I was so young, I was waiting for the best,

Yes, it always happened like this

The best has come to an end

Nothing or trouble."