“Belkin's Tales,” written by Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin, amazes the reader with its depth and relevance to this day. The destinies of poor peasants and provincial nobles, described by the author in this cycle of stories, touch the soul of every reader and leave no one indifferent. Such is the hero of the story “The Station Agent” Samson Vyrin. The characteristics of this character require more detailed study.
Ivan Petrovich Belkin, the main narrator of all the stories in the cycle, witnessed this ordinary, unknown story. Samson Vyrin is a poor college official of the fourteenth, the lowest class. His duties included looking after the roadside station, where he registered all travelers and changed their horses. Pushkin has great respect for the hard work of these people.
Samson Vyrin, whose characteristics and life were no different from other people, suddenly changed dramatically. His beloved daughter, Dunya, who always helped him in everyday life and was the source of his father’s pride, leaves for the city with a visiting officer.
At the first meeting of the minor official Belkin and the caretaker, we observe a rather positive atmosphere at the station. Vyrin’s house is very well maintained, flowers grow, and the atmosphere is cozy. He himself looks cheerful. All this thanks to Duna, Samson's daughter. She helps her father with everything and keeps the house clean.
The next meeting of the heroes turns out to be completely different: Samson Vyrin has changed a lot. The characteristics of the house are very different from what it was before. The caretaker is sleeping under his overcoat, now he is unshaven, there are no more flowers in the room. What happened to this good-natured man and his house?
Betrayal or?..
The characterization of Samson Vyrin from the story “The Station Agent” should be supplemented by the fact of his daughter’s departure. After another drink, he tells Belkin about the changes that have occurred in his life. It turns out that Dunya ran away from her father with officer Minsky, who lived at the station for several days by deception. Samson Vyrin treated the hussar with all the warmth and care. The characterization of Minsky as a vile person is perfectly confirmed in the scenes of the caretaker’s visit to his daughter.
Both times the hussar drives the old man away, humiliating him with crumpled banknotes, shouting at him and calling him names.
What about Dunya? She never became Minsky's wife. Lives in a luxurious apartment, has servants, jewelry, and luxurious clothes. But nevertheless, she has the rights of a mistress, not a wife. It probably wasn’t appropriate for a hussar to have a dowry-free wife. Seeing her father, who came to visit her and find out why she left so silently, leaving him alone, Dunya faints. Ask if she was ashamed? Maybe. Apparently, she understands that one way or another she betrayed her father, exchanging a poor life for a chic metropolitan atmosphere. But still he does nothing...
Little man
Belkin comes to this station for the third time and learns that our caretaker died alone, having become an alcoholic and suffering for his only child. Repentant, the daughter nevertheless comes to her father, but does not find him alive. Afterwards she will cry for a long time at his grave, but nothing can be returned...
Her children will be next to her. Now she herself has become a mother and has probably felt for herself how strong the love for her own child is.
The characterization of Samson Vyrin, in short, is positive. He is a very kind person, always happy to help. For the sake of his daughter’s happiness, he was ready to endure humiliation from Minsky and did not interfere with her happiness and well-being. Such people are called “little” in literature. He lived quietly and peacefully, not asking for anything for himself and not hoping for the best. That's how he died. Almost no one knows that such an unfortunate stationmaster Samson Vyrin lived.
The fate of an ordinary person, who does not stand out in any way, with his sorrows and joys, has long worried many creative people. From the artists' canvases, the townspeople looked obediently and humbly at the world. The same applied to literature: humility, obedience and hopelessness of the common people were taken for granted.
Prerequisites for creating a character named Samson Vyrin
The characteristics of creativity at the beginning of the 19th century indicate that romanticism as a movement embraced prose and poetry, music and painting. Writers and poets - educated people and mostly representatives of the aristocracy and nobility - understood that romantic plots, hackneyed characters and images were far from harsh reality. Change is needed.
A hopeless way of life, superstitiousness reaching the point of obscurantism, humility, servility and humility before those who are higher in position - all this remained outside the scope of creativity. At the beginning of the 19th century, the country was overwhelmed by an ideology defending the right to life and freedom of every person. Naturally, this could not but affect the art of that time.
In the works of many poets, artists and writers of this era, a transition to realism was made. A.S. Pushkin was also at its origins. He is one of the first writers in Russia who drew attention to the fate of a simple, ordinary, in a word, “little man.”
This is the hero of one of Belkin’s Stories - Samson Vyrin. The characterization of this character will allow the reader to understand that society is indifferent to the problems of such people. It is confident that their destiny is humility, and it is stupid to ask the “little man” for protection from the strong.
“Belkin’s Tales”: realism in Pushkin’s works
The appearance of a collection of stories by a certain I.P. Belkin in the early thirties did not foretell anything out of the ordinary. Perhaps this would have happened if the author of these lines had not been A.S. Pushkin, who told everyone that he was only the publisher of the collection.
“Belkin’s Tales” marked a new stage not only in Pushkin’s work, but also opened the way to a new direction in the development of Russian literature. Its name is realism. The author makes you look at hackneyed stories from a different angle. It was a transition to real life. From traditional norms and techniques accepted in literature, to the world and man.
With great love, the author introduces the reader to modest characters and the events of their lives. But the master’s pen gives them deep significance and reveals the innermost secrets of the soul. The characterization of the caretaker Samson Vyrin in “The Station Agent” reveals this topic very well.
The narration in the work is conducted on behalf of the narrator I.P. Belkin, who introduces the reader into the powerless world of the petty bureaucratic class. Despite all the difficulties associated with the position of caretaker, they are peaceful, helpful people, not money-loving and sociable.
This is exactly the main character of the work - the station guard Samson Vyrin. The characteristics of representatives of this profession from the very first words give a general idea of him as a calm, patient, hardworking person.
Once in the N-province Belkin was caught in heavy rain, and upon arrival at the station he was forced to change clothes and drink hot tea. The caretaker, a cheerful man of about fifty, told his daughter to put on the samovar. A girl of about fourteen, with huge blue eyes, amazed Ivan Petrovich with her extraordinary beauty.
While the owners were doing their work, the guest examined their poor but tidy home - geraniums bloomed on the windows, there was a bed behind a colorful curtain, on the walls there were pictures from the biblical story of the prodigal son. The narrator's short but apt phrases allow you to get to know the stationmaster better. Samson is a retired military man; judging by his medals, he participated in military battles. Widower.
To the guest’s questions, the caretaker replied that Dunya was his daughter, intelligent and hard-working, just like her mother. The father spoke “with an air of satisfied pride.” This small remark complements the characterization of the station superintendent Samson Vyrin, presenting him as a loving, caring father, proud of his child, whom he raised himself. This is his only joy and hope.
Dunya - daughter of Samson Vyrin
Soon Dunya, the caretaker’s daughter, returned with a samovar, and the guest began talking to the girl. The little coquette quickly realized that she had made a great impression on him, and answered his questions without any timidity. The guest alone did not want to sit at the table and invited the hosts. Over a cup of tea they talked as if they had known each other for many years.
The horses were ready a long time ago, but I didn’t want to part with the owners. Finally, having gathered, the guest asked the girl for permission to kiss her on the cheek goodbye. Belkin, who has seen a lot, says that he could not forget this kiss for a very long time.
The narrator's short phrases perfectly reveal the image of Dunya, on whom the entire household rests. The attentive girl immediately stopped sewing when Minsky first appeared at the station and raised his voice. Kindly asked if he wanted to eat. Hardworking and hard-working, she does all the housework, sews her own dresses, and helps her father with his work.
Everyone likes the beautiful Dunya. And to the ladies who gave them a handkerchief or earrings. And to the gentlemen who stopped under the pretext of having lunch, but in reality - to admire her. The girl knows this very well. But secretly from her father, she allows herself to be kissed by an unfamiliar man.
The tragedy of Samson Vyrin
A few years later, Ivan Petrovich returns to the same station and enters a familiar house. But he sees a completely different picture, as if he was in the wrong place. There are no flowers on the windows, there is negligence and disrepair all around. The caretaker, who was sleeping under his sheepskin coat, woke up, and the guest hardly recognized Samson Vyrin. Three or four years until they saw each other turned him into a frail, gray-haired old man.
The daughter was nowhere to be seen. The old man remained silent when asked about her. Only a glass of punch stirred him up. And the guest heard a sad story. One day a young officer stopped at the station. Pretending to be sick, he stayed in the caretaker's house for several days. The arriving doctor, speaking with the guest in German, confirmed that he was unwell.
This episode reveals the characterization of Samson Vyrin as a kind and trusting person. Not noticing the deception, he gives up the bed to the supposedly sick Minsky. When the hussar got ready to leave and undertook to give Dunya a ride to the church, the father himself allowed his daughter to go with the captain. As a result, the hussar takes her to St. Petersburg.
The father finds no place for himself. Having begged for leave, he goes on foot to search for his daughter. Having found Minsky, Vyrin begs in tears to return his daughter. The hussar began to assure his father that he loved her and would never leave her. He put several banknotes in Samson’s hand and sent him out. But Vyrin angrily trampled the money.
A few days later, Samson Vyrin saw Minsky’s droshky driving down the street. From the coachman I learned that Dunya lived in the house where the hussar entered. Vyrin entered the house and saw his daughter, fashionably dressed and looking vaguely at the captain. Dunya, noticing her father, fell unconscious. Minsky became angry and pushed Samson out into the street. The caretaker returns home in deep sadness.
Hussar Minsky
Minsky is one of the main characters in the work “The Station Agent”. The narrator introduced him as a lively, cheerful and wealthy gentleman. The young officer, a nobleman, gives a generous tip. In order to stay with the beautiful Dunya longer, he pretends to be sick and, as a result, takes Dunya away from her home.
In St. Petersburg he rents her a separate apartment, as decency required. Dunya loves him. Obviously, Minsky responds in kind. He tells the heartbroken father that he is not going to leave his daughter, and gives him his word of honor that she will be happy. Having become Minsky's companion, the girl lives in luxury, she has her own servant. And yet, when the father wants to meet with his daughter, the captain tries to get rid of him and gives him money.
After some time, the narrator Belkin happened to visit these places again. The station no longer existed, and the boy who settled in Vyrin’s house said that Samson had already died a year ago. He took the guest to the caretaker’s grave and told him that a beautiful lady with three children came in the summer. I went to the rural cemetery and cried for a long time at the grave.
Nature of the conflict
At the center of the story is the “little man,” caretaker Samson Vyrin. His characterization throughout the narrative represents an honest, decent, good-natured man. He willingly communicates with people, loves the neighbor's children, carves pipes for them and treats them with nuts. An open and sweet person, he nevertheless knows his place, humbly performs his difficult work, and endures the shouts and pushes of the guests.
The obedient Samson cannot bear the insult inflicted on him by the officer and nobleman Minsky. Unable to come to terms with the loss of his daughter, he goes to St. Petersburg to save Dunya, whom he believed would soon be thrown out onto the street by the insidious seducer. But everything turned out to be much more complicated. The hussar fell in love with his daughter and even turned out to be a conscientious person. He blushed at the sight of his deceived father. And Dunya responded to the young officer with mutual feelings.
Tears of indignation welled up in Samson’s eyes when Minsky handed him money. He threw them to the ground, but returned a little later, and the banknotes were no longer there. This episode allows us to see not only Vyrin’s powerless position, but also to observe the invisible battle between the nobleman Minsky and the “little man.”
“Trampled with his heel” - the phrase clearly shows Vyrin’s indignation and moral superiority. But, again, the words “thought” and “returned” somewhat disappoint the reader. Yes. The “little man” has not yet matured before conscious rebellion.
Belkin, on his next visit, trying to get the caretaker to talk, pours him punch, “of which he pulled out five glasses.” Inconspicuous words - “picturesquely” wiped away tears, “pulled out” instead of the usual “drank” - once again point to the weakness of the Russian peasant. A man accustomed to the firm hand of a cruel master. In this case - the love of a daughter.
Having achieved nothing, the grief-stricken father, confident that his daughter is unhappy, quietly drinks himself to death after returning home. The loss deprived him of the meaning of life. Society looked at him indifferently and silently. It is stupid to ask a small, weak person for protection from a strong one. And the caretaker died from his own helplessness.
Artistic originality of the story
Many of the actions of heroes today are incomprehensible. But in Pushkin’s time they were natural. Apparently, the captain kept his word. But, for some reason, he could not immediately marry the girl. In those days, marriage threatened resignation, and Minsky had considerable rank. Again, Dunya is homeless, perhaps his parents would not like it.
The author wished not to tell the reader this. But one thing is clear: whatever the reasons, it took time to resolve them. And Dunya comes to her father only when her secret hope has come true. Three children, a wet nurse, six horses, and money indicate a successful outcome to this story. However, the author does not say a word about the girl’s marriage.
The author left a lot of “unsaid” passages. Perhaps his intention was not to reveal his heroes, not to expose them? The point is to focus the reader’s attention on the “little man.” To open his compassionate and sensitive soul, responding to other people's pain and misfortunes.
Dunya blames herself for her father's death. All in tears, the prodigal daughter asks for forgiveness at his grave. But it's too late. Perhaps the reader will forgive Dunya, as the narrator Belkin forgave her, who “gave the boy a penny and did not regret” either the trip or the money spent...
The life of Samson Vyrin was no different from the life of station wardens like him, who, in order to have the bare essentials to support their family, were ready to silently listen and just as silently endure endless insults and reproaches addressed to them. True, Samson Vyrin’s family was small: he and his beautiful daughter. Samson's wife died. It was for the sake of Dunya (that was the name of the daughter) that Samson lived. At the age of fourteen, Dunya was a real helper to her father: cleaning the house, preparing dinner, serving a passer-by - she was a master of everything, everything was easy in her hands. Looking at Dunina’s beauty, even those who had made it a rule to treat station attendants rudely became kinder and more merciful.
When we first met Samson Vyrin, he looked “fresh and cheerful.” Despite the hard work and the often rude and unfair treatment of those passing by, he is not embittered and sociable.
However, how grief can change a person! Just a few years later, the author, having met Samson, sees before him an old man, unkempt, prone to drunkenness, dully vegetating in his abandoned, untidy home. His Dunya, his hope, the one who gave him strength to live, left with an unfamiliar hussar. And not with the father’s blessing, as is customary among honest people, but secretly. Samson was scared to think that his dear child, his Dunya, whom he protected as best he could from all dangers, did this to him and, most importantly, to herself - she became not a wife, but a mistress. Pushkin sympathizes with his hero and treats him with respect: honor for Samson is above all, above wealth and money. Fate beat this man more than once, but nothing made him sink so low, so stop loving life, as the act of his beloved daughter. Material poverty for Samson is nothing compared to the emptiness of his soul.
On the wall in Samson Vyrin’s house there were pictures depicting the story of the prodigal son. The caretaker's daughter repeated the action of the hero of the biblical legend. And, most likely, like the father of the prodigal son depicted in the pictures, the stationmaster was waiting for his daughter, ready for forgiveness. But Dunya did not return. And the father could not find a place for himself out of despair, knowing how such stories often end: “There are many of them in St. Petersburg, young fools, today in satin and velvet, and tomorrow, you’ll see, sweeping the street, along with the tavern’s nakedness. When you sometimes think that Dunya, perhaps, is disappearing right there, you will inevitably sin and wish for her grave...”
The stationmaster's attempt to return his daughter home did not end well. After this, having drunk even more from despair and grief, Samson Vyrin died.
In the image of this man, Pushkin showed the joyless life of ordinary people, selfless workers, filled with troubles and humiliations, whom every passer-by and traveler strives to offend. But often such simple people as station guard Samson Vyrin are an example of honesty and high moral principles.
SAMSON VYRIN
SAMSON VYRIN- stationmaster, unfortunate official of the 14th (last) class, “a real martyr” of the position, father of his daughter Dunya, taken by a hussar to St. Petersburg.
The story told to Belkin by the titular adviser A.G.N. is placed in the fourth cycle, but in the footnote to the letter of “one respectable husband” it is placed in first place; This is hardly accidental. Samson Vyrin is the most complex of the figures presented in the cycle; social motives are spelled out here in great detail. No matter how much Pushkin emphasizes his difference from the “proto-storyteller” (i.e. from A.G.N.; he is at least 10 years older, because by the beginning of the story he has been traveling “in all directions” for 20 years), the emphasized sincerity and compassion of intonation reveals the author’s constant presence in the text.
The “plot” of Vyrin’s life is simple to the point of despair, although this does not prevent him from almost completely repeating the outlines of the plot of Marmontel’s sentimental story “Loretta” about the village farmer Basil, whose daughter leaves with the Comte de Luzy, who pretended to be ill. Basil goes in search and finds his daughter living in abundance; returns her and eventually “officially” marries her to the count.
By the time A.G.N. meets Vyrin (1816), the caretaker’s wife had already died - while he himself was still cheerful and businesslike; the house rests on young Duna, who is beautiful. A visiting hussar (Minsky) with a black mustache, struck by her beauty, fakes an illness and eventually takes Dunya to the capital; Vyrin’s trip for “poor Dunya” does not produce results. First, the hussar tries to pay him off (as if repeating the gesture of Erast from “Poor Liza” by N. M. Karamzin, against the backdrop of which the “Belkin” story is created). Then - when Dunya, “dressed in all the luxury of fashion,” faints at the sight of her father suddenly appearing, Minsky drives Samson Vyrin away. Left alone, the caretaker drinks himself to death; Dunya, in a six-horse carriage, with three little horses and a nurse, comes to cry at his grave...
And yet, from the very beginning, the author introduces the modest story of the caretaker into the general philosophical context of the cycle. All the heroes of “Tales” in one way or another look at life through the prism of schemes that are not generated by life itself. This can be a “romantic” scheme - as in “Blizzard”, or pastoral (but also associated with Shakespeare) - as in “The Young Peasant Lady”, or “Byronic” - as in “The Shot”, or simply “professional” - like in The Undertaker. Samson Vyrin also has his own scheme of perception of life. It is reflected in the pictures “with decent German poetry” hung on the walls of his “humble but neat abode.” (A technique common in “Walter Scott” Russian novelism; cf. corresponding episodes in the novels of M. N. Zagoskin.)
Four pictures depict episodes from the parable of the Prodigal Son. The first shows a “venerable old man” in a dressing gown who blesses the “restless young man” and gives him a bag of money; the second depicts the “depraved behavior” of a young man surrounded by “false friends and shameless women”; the third offers the image of a squandered young man in rags and a triangular (!) hat - among the pigs with whom he “shares” his “meal”; the fourth is dedicated to the triumph of a venerable old man who accepts his repentant son into his arms (“in the future, the cook kills a well-fed calf”). The narrator describes the pictures in a deadly funny way; the rhetorical cliches that he parodies are extremely far from the religious and mystical meaning of the “source” - the Gospel parable of the Prodigal Son. Here mysticism is replaced by “philistine” morality; This everyday morality underlies Vyrin’s worldview.
Samson Vyrin views everything that happened to him through the prism of these pictures. For him, Dunya’s flight is tantamount to the departure of an ungrateful young man (“Didn’t I really love my Dunya...”). Her life in the capital must correspond to the scene of “depraved behavior.” It must - and it doesn’t matter that the hussar Minsky turned out to be by no means a “false” friend for his daughter, that she is rich, free and even has some power over her lover; that Minsky promises him: “...she will be happy, I give you my word of honor” - and in the end he keeps his word; that in life everything turns out differently than envisaged by Vyrin’s “scenario”. It’s not that Vyrin doesn’t see reality, it’s just that for him it is less real than the life scheme of a bourgeois idyll (“Biedermeier”), and therefore he, almost word for word repeating the words of the mother of “poor Liza” N. M. Karamzin: “You are still you don’t know how evil people can offend a poor girl,” - waiting for Dunina’s life to repeat the outlines of the third picture - “There are many of them in St. Petersburg, young fools, today in satin and velvet, and tomorrow, you’ll see, sweeping the streets along with tavern nakedness " He is waiting, because only after this, after the daughter’s complete catastrophe in life, will the turn of the fourth picture come - the repentant return of the “prodigal daughter” will take place. And, as if sensing that this will not happen, Samson Vyrin wishes his beloved Dunya to die...
However, the story about the stationmaster is truly the most complex in its construction in the entire cycle. The hero’s views are socially motivated - in his own way, he is right; such “romantic” stories with abductions most often end in disaster. (Here, according to the author’s plan, the reader should again remember Karamzin’s story - its tragic ending.) In addition, the image of Samson Vyrin is reflected in several other literary mirrors. First, the narrator ironically recalls the poems of the book. Vyazemsky about the “college registrar”, the postal station “dictator”, in order then - contrary to the quote - to awaken in the reader sympathy for this unfortunate “dictator”, whom anyone can offend. Thus - gradually and implicitly - the caretaker appears as a victim of society; its “formula” is derived from the experience of living in this society. Another thing is that the caretaker does not want to look around himself with open eyes, with an open mind, in order to see through “social” life the life of life itself, its unpredictable fullness. The laws of existence are unpredictable, open to the good will of Providence or at least to chance; its flow can also invade social space, changing the usual course of things. Samson Vyrin completely rejects this possibility; Moreover, he seems to enter and grow into the image of the suffering father, in the literal sense of the word “revels” in his sadness, so that the narrator rushes to reflect the hero in another literary mirror, this time a crooked one. The somewhat theatrical gesture of a drunken caretaker, “picturesquely” wiping away tears “with his lap,” is compared with the behavior of the “zealous Terentich” in “Dmitriev’s beautiful ballad” (“Caricature”).
The limitedness of the social scheme corresponds to the ordinariness of Vyrin’s “pictures”; The ultimate openness of existence itself corresponds to the religious meaning of the gospel “source” lost in these pictures. While the caretaker waits for events to line up in the sequence “prompted” by his pictures, the free flow of life arranges everything in its own way. Contrary to the “pictures” and in accordance with the spirit of the Gospel. The story of Dunya's arrival and her repentant cry at her father's grave unravels the plot of the story and finally connects it with the plot of the prodigal son. True, Vyrin himself will never see this again.
The complex organization of the image of Samson Vyrin suggested the possibility of his perception in a purely “literary”, and in a religious, and in a purely social manner. It was the social mask of Vyrin’s “little man” that was used by writers and critics of the early “natural school” (for example, Makar Devushkin in F. M. Dostoevsky’s “Poor People” reads “The Station Warden,” as if recognizing his predecessor in Samson Vyrin).
Literature:
Altman M. S.“Humiliated and Insulted” and “Station Warden” // Slavia. 1937. Ro?. 14.
Bocharov S. G. Pushkin and Gogol: “The Station Agent” and “The Overcoat” // Problems of the typology of Russian realism / Ed. N. L. Stepanova, U. R. Fokhta. M., 1969.
Surat I. Poor caretaker: On the literary background of A. S. Pushkin’s story // Literary works of the 18th–19th centuries in historical and cultural context. M., 1985.
Characteristics of the station attendant Samson Vyrin Samson Vyrin is the main character of the story by A.S. Pushkin. By position, he is a station superintendent, which means “a real martyr of the fourteenth class, protected by his rank only from beatings, and even then not always.” His home is unprepossessing and sparse, decorated only with pictures depicting the story of the prodigal son. The only real treasure was his fourteen-year-old daughter Dunya. At the beginning of the story, Samson Vyrin is “a man of about fifty,” “fresh and cheerful,” dressed in “a long green frock coat with three medals on faded ribbons.” The story with Dunya will turn “a vigorous man into a frail old man.” And we will see his “gray hair”, “deep wrinkles”, “hunched back”. The stationmaster was a peaceful, helpful, modest man. He treated his guests with respect and good nature. Having lived his life in poverty, accustomed to the insults and humiliations of rich travelers, Samson Vyrin always relied only on himself. He understood that there was nowhere for him to expect help and support. The author shows how awkward the caretaker feels in the city among strangers and rich houses. But in the soul of this small, timid man there is a place for strong feelings. He loves his daughter dearly and is ready to do anything for her. He indignantly throws away the money Minsky slipped him. Returning to the empty orphaned house, Samson Vyrin was left alone. He shed tears for his lost daughter. He carved pipes not for his grandchildren, but for other people’s children. He fussed with other people's children and treated them to nuts. He died alone. The author sympathizes with his hero, but condemns the limitations of his thoughts. After all, the caretaker is not even able to hope for the best! Pushkin makes it clear to readers that this limitation is determined by the hero’s living conditions. A person who is accustomed to abuse and oppression, who considers himself a lower being, can only think about bad things. The writer teaches us to be more attentive to others, to appreciate and respect their thoughts and feelings, and not the positions they occupy.
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