The work of Ruslan and Lyudmila. The history of the creation of A.S. Pushkin’s poem “Ruslan and Lyudmila. Plot and biography

The poem “Ruslan and Lyudmila” is a fairy tale written in 1818 - 1820. The author was inspired to create the work by Russian folklore, Russian epics and popular popular stories. Pushkin’s poem “Ruslan and Lyudmila” is full of elements of grotesque fantasy, colloquial vocabulary and the author’s good-natured irony. According to literary scholars, the work is a parody of the chivalric novels and romantic ballads of Zhukovsky.

Main characters

Ruslan- a brave prince, Lyudmila’s fiancé, who saved her from Chernomor.

Lyudmila- Princess, youngest daughter of Prince Vladimir, bride of Ruslan.

Chernomor- a hunchbacked dwarf with a long magical beard, “the full-fledged owner of the mountains,” kidnapped Lyudmila.

Finn- an old wizard who helped Ruslan find and save Lyudmila.

Other characters

Rogdai- “brave warrior”, one of Ruslan’s rivals.

Farlaf- “an arrogant screamer, not defeated by anyone at feasts, but a humble warrior,” killed Ruslan and kidnapped Lyudmila.

Ratmir- “young Khazar Khan”, wanted to marry Lyudmila, but fell in love with another maiden.

Naina- Finn's beloved, sorceress.

Prince Vladimir- Prince of Kyiv, father of Lyudmila.

Dedication

The author dedicates his work to the “beauties” - “the queens of his soul.” The poem begins with a description of the fabulous Lukomorye - a magical world is revealed to the reader, where a learned cat, a mermaid, a goblin, Baba Yaga, King Kashchei, knights and sorcerers live.

Song one

Prince Vladimir marries his youngest daughter Lyudmila to “the brave Prince Ruslan.” The celebration is in full swing, guests listen to the song of the “sweet singer” Bayan, glorifying the newlyweds. However, not everyone is having fun; three knights, Ruslan’s rivals - Rogdai, Farlaf, Ratmir - are sitting “despondently, with a cloudy brow.”

After the feast, the young people went to their chambers. Suddenly thunder struck, the room went dark and “someone in the smoky depths / Soared blacker than the foggy haze.” Ruslan discovers in despair that Lyudmila has disappeared. Having learned about what happened, Prince Vladimir promises anyone who can find her his daughter’s hand and half his kingdom. Ruslan, Rogdai, Farlaf and Ratmir go in different directions in search of Lyudmila.

On the way, Ruslan notices a cave. Entering it, the knight sees a gray-haired old man reading a book. The elder informs him that Lyudmila was kidnapped by the “terrible wizard Chernomor.” The knight stays in the cave for the night, and the old man tells him his story. He was a “natural Finn”, a shepherd, in love with a very beautiful and proud girl Naina. However, she refused the young man. Then the Finn went to distant lands and ten years later returned victorious, throwing treasures at the feet of his beloved. But Naina again refused him. Finn decided to attract his beloved with charms, studied for many years in the forests with sorcerers and was finally able to make a woman fall in love with him. However, forty years had passed since their last meeting, and now before him was not a young beauty, but a decrepit old woman, and even a witch. Finn runs away from a woman who is inflamed with passion for him, and since then Naina has hated the man.

Song two

At this time, Rogdai decides to kill his main rival, Ruslan, and goes back. Farlaf, having lunch near the stream, saw a knight rushing towards him, got scared and ran away. When Rogdai, who believed that he was chasing Ruslan, caught up with him, he was disappointed and let the knight go.

On the way, Rogdai met the old woman Naina, who showed him the way to Ruslan to the north. The witch also appeared to Farlaf - she advised him to return to Kyiv, since “Lyudmila will not leave them.”

After the abduction, Lyudmila was in “painful oblivion” for a long time. The girl woke up in rich chambers similar to the house of Scheherazade. Three maidens, accompanied by wonderful singing, braided Lyudmila’s hair, put on her a pearl crown, an azure sundress and a pearl belt. However, the princess is very sad and yearns for Ruslan. She is not even happy with the magically beautiful garden where she spends the whole day. At night, a “long row of Arabs” unexpectedly enters her room. They bring on the pillows a long beard that belonged to a hunchbacked dwarf. In fright, Lyudmila screamed and wanted to hit the dwarf, but he, trying to escape, got tangled in his own beard. The araps carried him away.

Ruslan rides out into an open field, where a horseman rushes towards him with a spear. It was Rogdai. Ruslan defeats his opponent, and Rogdai finds his death in the river.

Song three

In the morning, a winged serpent flies to the dwarf Chernomor, which “suddenly turned around like Naina.” The woman invites the sorcerer to enter into an alliance, and he agrees.

Chernomor finds out that Lyudmila has disappeared - she was neither in the chambers nor in the garden. The girl accidentally discovered the sorcerer's invisibility cap and was now having fun, hiding from the dwarf and his servants.

Ruslan travels to the old battlefield, strewn with bones, where he selects armor for himself, but does not find a worthy sword. Heading further, the prince notices a high hill on which the huge head of a warrior in a helmet sleeps. Ruslan woke up his head and she, angry, began to blow on the knight. A strong whirlwind carried Ruslan back, but he contrived to thrust a spear into the tongue of the head, and then knocked it over. The prince wanted to “chop off her nose and ears,” but the head asked not to do this, telling her story. It used to belong to a giant, who was very jealous of his dwarf brother Chernomor. One day Chernomor learned that there was a sword that would cut off the giant’s head and his beard (in which “fatal power was hidden”). The giant got hold of a blade, and while his brother was sleeping, the dwarf cut off his head, placing it there to guard the sword. The head asks Ruslan to take the blade for himself and take revenge on Chernomor.

Canto Four

Ratmir drives out to the valley and sees a castle on the rocks in front of him. The Knight notices a beautiful maiden walking along the wall and singing a song. The young khan knocks on the castle and is greeted by red maidens. Ratmir remains in the castle.

Lyudmila, all this time, wandered around the sorcerer’s possessions, yearning for her lover. “Wounded by cruel passion,” Chernomor decides to catch Lyudmila, turning into the wounded Ruslan. The girl rushes to her lover, but upon discovering the substitution, she falls unconscious. Suddenly a horn rings.

Song five

As it turned out, Ruslan challenged the sorcerer to battle. In the midst of the battle, the knight grabs Chernomor by the beard and they rise into the sky. Ruslan did not let go of the sorcerer’s beard for three days, and he, tired, descended to the ground. Immediately the knight drew his sword and cut off the sorcerer’s beard, after which he lost his magical power.

Ruslan returns to Chernomor's possessions, but cannot find Lyudmila. Grieving, the knight begins to destroy everything around him with his sword and with an accidental blow knocks off the princess’s invisibility cap. Ruslan falls at the girl’s feet, but she is bewitched and sleeps.

Suddenly, the virtuous Finn appears nearby. He advises taking Lyudmila to Kyiv, where the princess will wake up. The Knight does just that.

On the way back, Ruslan tells the giant’s head that he has taken revenge, and she dies calmly. Near a quiet river, the knight meets a fisherman with a sweet maiden, whom he recognizes as Ratmir. Former rivals wish each other happiness.

Naina comes to Farlaf. The sorceress takes the knight to Ruslan, who is sleeping at Lyudmila’s feet. Farlaf “stabs thrice-cold steel” into his opponent’s chest and kidnaps the princess.

Song Six

Farlaf arrives in Kyiv, but Lyudmila continues to sleep. Soon the Pecheneg uprising begins. At this time, Finn comes to the murdered Ruslan with dead and living water and revives the knight. The wizard sends the prince to protect Kyiv and gives him a ring that will help break Lyudmila’s spell.

Ruslan leads the army and defeats the Pechenegs. After the victory, the prince entered the chambers, touched Lyudmila’s forehead with a ring and the girl woke up. Ruslan and Lyudmila forgave Farlaf, and the dwarf was accepted into the palace.

Conclusion

In the poem “Ruslan and Lyudmila” Pushkin reveals the eternal conflict - the confrontation between good and evil. All the heroes of the work are ambiguous - they have both positive and negative sides, but they themselves choose which path to follow. At the end of the poem, the author, following the traditional fairy tale, shows that good always triumphs over evil.

A brief retelling of “Ruslan and Lyudmila” will help you become familiar with the plot of the work, as well as prepare for a lesson in Russian literature.

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History of creation

Written in 1818-1820, after leaving the Lyceum; Pushkin sometimes indicated that he began writing the poem while still at the Lyceum, but, apparently, only the most general ideas, hardly the text, date back to this time. Leading a “most distracted” life after leaving the Lyceum in St. Petersburg, Pushkin worked on the poem mainly during his illnesses.

Pushkin set the task of creating a “heroic” fairy-tale poem in the spirit of Ariosto’s “Furious Roland,” known to him from French translations (critics called this genre “romantic,” which should not be confused with romanticism in the modern sense). He was also inspired by Voltaire (“The Virgin of Orleans”, “What Ladies Like”) and Russian literary fairy tales (such as the popular popular story about Eruslan Lazarevich, “Bakhariyana” by Kheraskov, “Ilya Muromets” by Karamzin or especially “Alyosha Popovich” by Nikolai Radishchev). The immediate impetus for starting work on the poem was the publication in February 1818 of the first volumes of Karamzin’s “History of the Russian State,” from which many details and names of all three of Ruslan’s rivals (Rogdai, Ratmir and Farlaf) were borrowed.

The poem is written in astronomical iambic tetrameter, which, starting with “Ruslan,” became the decisively dominant form of the romantic poem.

The poem contains elements of parody in relation to Zhukovsky’s ballad “The Twelve Sleeping Virgins”. Pushkin consistently ironically reduces the sublime images of Zhukovsky, saturates the plot with comic erotic elements, grotesque fantasy (the episode with the Head) and uses “common” vocabulary (“I’ll strangle”, “sneezed”). Pushkin’s “parody” of Zhukovsky initially does not have a negative connotation and is rather of a friendly nature; It is known that Zhukovsky “heartily rejoiced” at Pushkin’s joke, and after the poem was published, he presented Pushkin with his portrait with the inscription “To the winning student from the defeated teacher.” Subsequently, in the early 1830s, the mature Pushkin, inclined to critically overestimate his youthful experiences, lamented that he parodied “The Twelve Sleeping Virgins” “to please the mob.”

The poem began to be published in “Son of the Fatherland” in the spring of 1820 in excerpts; the first separate edition was published in May of the same year (just during the days of Pushkin’s exile to the south) and caused indignant responses from many critics who saw in it “immorality” and “indecency” (A.F. Voeikov, who began the journal publication of a neutral-friendly analysis of the poem, in the last part of the review, under the influence of I.I. Dmitriev, criticized it). A special position was taken by P. A. Katenin, who reproached Pushkin, on the contrary, for being insufficiently national and for excessively “smoothing out” Russian fairy tales in the spirit of French salon stories. A significant part of the reading public received the poem enthusiastically, and with its appearance Pushkin’s all-Russian fame began.

Epilogue(“So, an indifferent inhabitant of the world...”) was written by Pushkin later, during his exile to the Caucasus. In 1828, Pushkin prepared the second edition of the poem, added an epilogue and a newly written famous so-called “prologue” - formally part of the first Song (“By the Lukomorye there is a green oak tree...”), which strengthened the conventional folklore coloring of the text, and also shortened many erotic episodes and lyrical digressions . As a preface, Pushkin reprinted some critical reviews of the 1820 edition, which in the new literary climate had already become downright ridiculous. In 1830, again refuting old accusations of immorality in his “Rebuttal to Critics,” the poet emphasized that what now displeased him in the poem, on the contrary, was the lack of genuine feeling: “No one even noticed that she was cold.”

Prologue to the poem “Ruslan and Lyudmila”. The famous prologue appeared in the second edition of the poem in 1828. At one time, the poem drew criticism from critics for its peasant rudeness and “area” democracy. Eight years later, the poet did not deviate from his views on folk tales as a source of beauty, emphasizing the main difference between folk magical fiction and fiction in a literary fairy tale: the world of folk fantasy is endless, miracles have neither count nor limit.

The prologue is perceived as an independent work. The principle of its construction is mosaic. The listed images-pictures are held together only by the basis of a fairy-tale, unreal world. “There”, i.e. in a fairy tale, everything is wonderful and beautiful, even scary. The mysterious world, in which every step is a miracle, unfolds in a series of images and paintings. The poet understood that the “lie” of a fairy tale nevertheless requires trust. In this regard, a fairy tale is perfect art, if pure fiction, which seems to have nothing in common with reality (“There are miracles ...”, “There the forest and the valley are full of visions ...”), has a powerful influence on a person, makes to see something that is not there:

And I was there, and I drank honey;

I saw a green oak by the sea...

Note that the poet is somewhat ironic about the fairy tale with its naive convention (“There the prince in passing / Captures the formidable king ...”), thereby emphasizing the difference between folklore and literature.

Each of the image-pictures can be expanded into a separate fairy tale, and the entire prologue is built as a single fairy tale - with a saying, with a chain of actions of fairy-tale characters and an ending.

The main character of the prologue is a “scientist cat”, a singer and a storyteller (he is also the hero of the folk tale “Wonderful Children”). It is not for nothing that Pushkin prefaces the mosaic of fairy-tale plots with a saying about where and how songs and fairy tales are born: folk fictions are so extraordinary that they cannot be composed by a person, their very origin is shrouded in mystery. At the end of the prologue, the poet meets a wonderful cat and listens to his fairy tales, including “Ruslan and Lyudmila.”

The list of miracles begins with the goblin and the mermaid - heroes not of a fairy tale, but of demonology, i.e. such heroes in whom people believe. Then an unknown world opens up, either fictional or real: “There on unknown paths / Traces of unseen animals...” And immediately after the unknown world a transition takes place into the world of the fairy tale itself: the hut on chicken legs has meaning in a folk tale as well boundaries between field and forest, i.e. between two kingdoms - the human one, in which the hero’s family lives, and the non-human, “other” one, in which Kashchei the Immortal lives. “There the forest and the valley are full of visions...” - the poet emphasizes the close relationship between mysterious nature and magical fiction, and then “shows” the emergence of a miracle from the sea: “There, at dawn, the waves will rush / onto the sandy and empty shore, / and thirty beautiful knights / in succession from the clear waters, / and with them their uncle of the sea...” The reader is already ready to actually “see” the prince captivating the king, and the flying sorcerer with the hero (looking along with the people from the ground), and the princess with the brown wolf. Finally, the most majestic creations of the popular imagination appear - Baba Yaga and Tsar Kashchei. “There’s a Russian spirit there... It smells like Russia!” - this is the highest assessment of the folk tale made by the poet. “And I was there, and I drank honey...” - citing the folklore ending verbatim, the author declares folk poetry the source of his own creativity.

"Ruslan and Ludmila"- the first completed poem by Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin; a fairy tale inspired by ancient Russian epics.

History of creation

The poem was written in -, after leaving the Lyceum; Pushkin sometimes indicated that he began writing the poem while still at the Lyceum, but, apparently, only the most general ideas, hardly the text, date back to this time. Leading a “most distracted” life after leaving the Lyceum in St. Petersburg, Pushkin worked on the poem mainly during his illnesses.

Pushkin set the task of creating a “heroic” fairy-tale poem in the spirit of Ariosto’s “Furious Roland,” known to him from French translations (critics called this genre “romantic,” which should not be confused with romanticism in the modern sense). He was also inspired by Voltaire (“The Virgin of Orleans”, “What Ladies Like”) and Russian literary fairy tales (such as the popular popular story about Eruslan Lazarevich, “Bakhariyana” by Kheraskov, “Ilya Muromets” by Karamzin or especially “

1. REDIRECT Popovich" by Nikolai Radishchev). The immediate impetus for starting work on the poem was the release in February 1818 of the first volumes of Karamzin’s “History of the Russian State,” from which many details and names of all three of Ruslan’s rivals (Ragdai, Ratmir and Farlaf) were borrowed.

The poem is written in astronomical iambic tetrameter, which, starting with "Ruslan", became the dominant form of the romantic poem.

The poem contains elements of parody in relation to Zhukovsky's ballad "". Pushkin consistently ironically reduces the sublime images of Zhukovsky, saturates the plot with comic erotic elements, grotesque fantasy (the episode with the Head), and uses “common” vocabulary (“I’ll strangle”, “sneezed”). Pushkin’s “parody” of Zhukovsky initially does not have a negative connotation and is rather of a friendly nature; It is known that Zhukovsky “heartily rejoiced” at Pushkin’s joke, and after the poem was published, he presented Pushkin with his portrait with the inscription “To the winning student from the defeated teacher.” Subsequently, in the early 1830s, the mature Pushkin, inclined to critically overestimate his youthful experiences, lamented that he parodied “The Twelve Sleeping Virgins” “to please the mob.”

Edition

The poem began to be published in “Son of the Fatherland” in the spring of 1820 in excerpts; the first separate edition was published in May of the same year (just during the days of Pushkin’s exile to the south) and provoked indignant responses from many critics who saw in it “immorality” and “indecency” (A.F. Voeikov, who began the journal publication of a neutral-friendly analysis of the poem, in the last part of the review, under the influence of I.I. Dmitriev, criticized it). In correspondence with Karamzin, I. I. Dmitriev compares “Ruslan and Lyudmila” with the famous ironic poem by Nikolai Osipov “Virgil’s Eneida, Turned Inside Out,” to which Karamzin responds in a letter dated June 7, 1820:

In previous letters I forgot to tell you that, in my opinion, you do not do justice to talent or poem young Pushkin, comparing it with Osipov’s “Aeneid”: it has liveliness, lightness, wit, taste; only there is no skillful arrangement of parts, no or little interest; everything is creamed into a living thread.

A special position was taken by P. A. Katenin, who reproached Pushkin, on the contrary, for being insufficiently national and for excessively “smoothing out” Russian fairy tales in the spirit of French salon stories. A significant part of the reading public received the poem enthusiastically, and with its appearance Pushkin’s all-Russian fame began.

The epilogue (“So, an indifferent inhabitant of the world...”) was written by Pushkin later, during his exile in the Caucasus. In 1828, Pushkin prepared the second edition of the poem, added an epilogue and a newly written famous so-called “prologue” - formally part of the first Song (“By the Lukomorye there is a green oak tree...”), which strengthened the conventional folklore coloring of the text, and also shortened many erotic episodes and lyrical digressions . As a preface, Pushkin reprinted some critical reviews of the 1820 edition, which in the new literary climate had already become frankly ridiculous, for example, a critical article by a little-known critic who wrote about the poem “Ruslan and Lyudmila”: imagine, they say, a man in bast shoes, in an Armenian jacket invaded some “noble meeting” and shouted: “Great, guys!” , regarding this case, literary critic Vadim Kozhinov noted: “I must say: it happens that the highest assessment is given to a person not by friends, but by enemies.” In 1830, again refuting old accusations of immorality in his “Rebuttal to Critics,” the poet emphasized that what now displeased him in the poem, on the contrary, was the lack of genuine feeling: “No one even noticed that she was cold.”

On August 17, Rostov and Ilyin, accompanied by Lavrushka, who had just returned from captivity, and the leading hussar, from their Yankovo ​​camp, fifteen versts from Bogucharovo, went horseback riding - to try a new horse bought by Ilyin and to find out if there was any hay in the villages.
Bogucharovo had been located for the last three days between two enemy armies, so that the Russian rearguard could have entered there just as easily as the French vanguard, and therefore Rostov, as a caring squadron commander, wanted to take advantage of the provisions that remained in Bogucharovo before the French.
Rostov and Ilyin were in the most cheerful mood. On the way to Bogucharovo, to the princely estate with an estate, where they hoped to find large servants and pretty girls, they either asked Lavrushka about Napoleon and laughed at his stories, or drove around, trying Ilyin’s horse.
Rostov neither knew nor thought that this village to which he was traveling was the estate of that same Bolkonsky, who was his sister’s fiancé.
Rostov and Ilyin let the horses out for the last time to drive the horses into the drag in front of Bogucharov, and Rostov, having overtaken Ilyin, was the first to gallop into the street of the village of Bogucharov.
“You took the lead,” said the flushed Ilyin.
“Yes, everything is forward, and forward in the meadow, and here,” answered Rostov, stroking his soaring bottom with his hand.
“And in French, your Excellency,” Lavrushka said from behind, calling his sled nag French, “I would have overtaken, but I just didn’t want to embarrass him.”
They walked up to the barn, near which stood a large crowd of men.
Some men took off their hats, some, without taking off their hats, looked at those who had arrived. Two long old men, with wrinkled faces and sparse beards, came out of the tavern and, smiling, swaying and singing some awkward song, approached the officers.
- Well done! - Rostov said, laughing. - What, do you have any hay?
“And they are the same...” said Ilyin.
“Vesve...oo...oooo...barking bese...bese...” the men sang with happy smiles.
One man came out of the crowd and approached Rostov.
- What kind of people will you be? - he asked.
“The French,” Ilyin answered, laughing. “Here is Napoleon himself,” he said, pointing to Lavrushka.
- So, you will be Russian? – the man asked.
- How much of your strength is there? – asked another small man, approaching them.
“Many, many,” answered Rostov. - Why are you gathered here? - he added. - A holiday, or what?
“The old people have gathered on worldly business,” the man answered, moving away from him.
At this time, along the road from the manor's house, two women and a man in a white hat appeared, walking towards the officers.
- Mine in pink, don’t bother me! - said Ilyin, noticing Dunyasha resolutely moving towards him.
- Ours will be! – Lavrushka said to Ilyin with a wink.
- What, my beauty, do you need? - Ilyin said, smiling.

"Ruslan and Ludmila". A knight who embodies the ideal qualities of a valiant husband - physical strength, spiritual nobility, and the valor of a warrior.

History of creation

Pushkin wrote the poem “Ruslan and Lyudmila” after graduating from the Lyceum; this is his first completed poem. The author worked on this work mainly during forced inactivity due to illness, and the rest of the time he led a “most distracted” life in St. Petersburg.

This text combines knightly poems, which Pushkin knew in French translation, satirical poems and images inspired by ancient Russian epics and fairy tales, as well as literary fairy tales by Russian authors, among whom Kheraskov and Kheraskov had already created works on the “heroic” theme.

The names of Ruslan’s competitors and details of their biographies were taken by Pushkin from “The History of the Russian State.” The poem also contains a parody of a romantic ballad called “The Twelve Sleeping Maidens.” In Pushkin, sublime images are reduced and diluted with frivolous jokes, grotesqueries and colloquial expressions, the characters of the heroes are masterfully written out. The poem “Ruslan and Lyudmila” is included in the school curriculum and is studied in the fifth grade.

The Moscow Theater-Workshop named after staged a performance based on the poem “Ruslan and Lyudmila”. The premiere took place in 2014. And for the new year 2018, she staged a musical on ice based on this work, which ran from December 23, 2017 to January 7, 2018 at the Megasport Sports Palace in Moscow.

Heroes also appeared on television screens. In 1972, a two-part film based on Pushkin’s poem was released. The roles of Ruslan and Lyudmila are played by actors Valery Kozinets and Natalya Petrova.

Plot and biography

Prince Ruslan marries Lyudmila, the youngest daughter. There is a feast, next to the newlyweds are the prince's sons and a crowd of friends, the prophetic Bayan sings and plays the harp in honor of the young couple. There are three men at the feast who do not rejoice with the others. These are Ruslan's rivals - the boastful Farlaf, a Khazar khan named Ratmir and a certain knight Rogdai.

The feast is coming to an end, the guests are leaving. Prince Vladimir blesses the bride and groom, and they go to the bedroom. However, Ruslan's love dreams are not destined to come true - the light suddenly dims, thunder roars, a mysterious voice is heard, something soars and disappears in the darkness. When Ruslan comes to his senses, it turns out that Lyudmila is no longer with the hero - the girl was kidnapped by an “unknown force.”

Prince Vladimir is amazed by this incident and is angry with his young son-in-law, who allowed his youngest daughter to be kidnapped straight from her bedchamber like this and could not protect the girl. The angry prince calls on the young knights to go in search of Lyudmila and promises the girl as a wife to the one who finds her, and along with the girl, half the kingdom. Not only Ruslan, who wants to return his young wife, goes on the search, but also three competitors - Ratmir, Rogdai and Farlaf. The knights saddle their horses and gallop away from the princely chambers along the banks of the Dnieper.

The heroes are traveling in four. Ruslan is sad, others - some brag in advance about the exploits they will accomplish, some are soaring in erotic dreams, and some remain sullenly silent. In the evening, the heroes arrive at a crossroads and each goes their own way. Ruslan rides alone and comes to a cave with a fire burning inside. In the cave, the hero finds a gray-bearded old man reading a book in front of a lamp.

The old man declares that he has been waiting for a hero for a long time. It turns out that the “unknown force” that dragged the girl away is an evil sorcerer, a famous kidnapper of beauties. This villain lives in the inaccessible northern mountains, where no one has ever reached, but Ruslan will certainly overcome the obstacles and defeat Chernomor in battle.

Ruslan perks up from such news, and the old man leaves the hero to sleep in the cave, and at the same time tells him his own story. The old man comes from Finland, where he worked as a shepherd and led a carefree life until one day he fell in love with the evil beauty Naina. She did not reciprocate the young shepherd’s feelings, and the young man abandoned peaceful pursuits and became a warrior.

He spent ten years in battles and sea campaigns, but the girl again rejected his claims and gifts obtained in battles. Then the hero decided to try to come from the other side and began to learn witchcraft in order to bewitch the beauty. He managed to summon Naina using witchcraft, but she appeared before him in the repulsive image of an old hag.

The hero learned that while he was learning to conjure, forty years passed unnoticed, and his passion managed to grow old. Now Naina is 70 years old. And, worst of all, the spells worked - the old woman loves the hero. At the same time, it turned out that the passion herself became an evil sorceress during this time. Seeing and hearing all this, the hero ran away in horror, forgetting his own love interest. And having escaped, he settled in this cave and now lives as a hermit.

In the morning, Ruslan sets out on the road in search of Lyudmila. Meanwhile, the knight Rogdai is jumping on the hero’s trail, who wants to kill the hero and thus remove the obstacle that stands between him and Lyudmila. Having identified himself, Rogdai almost kills the braggart Farlaf, who runs away from him in fear. Rogdai's character, therefore, can be called treacherous - the character is cruel and angry, and does not hesitate to act basely.

Having fallen behind the frightened Farlaf, Rogdai travels further and meets a certain old woman. She shows the hero where he should go to find the enemy, and when Rogdai disappears from sight, the old woman approaches the coward Farlaf lying in the mud and tells him to go straight home, because Lyudmila, they say, will belong to him anyway, there’s no point continue to risk yourself. And the cowardly hero does as the old woman says. Rogdai, meanwhile, catches up with Ruslan and attacks him from behind. In the battle, Rogdai dies - Ruslan yanks the scoundrel out of the saddle and throws him into the waters of the Dnieper, where he drowns.

Lyudmila, meanwhile, comes to her senses in the chambers of Chernomor, furnished in the manner of a palace from One Thousand and One Nights. The heroine reclines under a canopy, beautiful maidens look after her - they braid her hair, dress her, and decorate her with a pearl belt and crown. At the same time, someone invisible sings songs that are pleasant to the ear. Outside the window of the room, Lyudmila sees mountain peaks, snow and a gloomy forest.

Inside the Black Sea chambers there is a garden with exotic trees and lakes, nightingales sing, and fountains flow. A tent unfolds spontaneously over Lyudmila, luxurious dishes appear in front of the heroine, and music sounds. When the heroine gets up after the meal, the tent disappears, and when in the evening Lyudmila begins to fall asleep, invisible hands pick her up and carry her to bed.

Meanwhile, the girl is not happy about anything and is waiting for a catch. Suddenly, uninvited guests invade the heroine's bedchamber - a shaven-headed dwarf, whose long gray beard is carried on pillows by blackamoors. Lyudmila attacks the dwarf, he gets scared, gets tangled in his beard and runs away while the heroine screams. Here the reader sees the character of Lyudmila - this young maiden is determined to defend her honor and freedom and, without buying into ostentatious luxury, remains faithful to her lover.

Later, Lyudmila finds Chernomor’s invisibility cap and hides from the sorcerer under it, while the evil sorceress Naina flies to Chernomor in the guise of a winged snake and informs him of Ruslan’s approach. Chernomor believes that nothing threatens him as long as his beard is intact.

Ruslan, meanwhile, finds himself on a field littered with human bones and armor, where a battle once took place. Among the abandoned weapons, the hero finds a steel spear. At night, the hero drives up to a huge living head in a helmet, which he initially mistakes for a hill. After a short skirmish, the hero turns his head over, and a sword is discovered under it.

The head tells the hero where it came from, and it turns out that it used to rest on the shoulders of the giant knight. He had an angry and envious younger dwarf brother - Chernomor. This brother persuaded the giant to go in search of a sword that could kill either of them, and when the sword was discovered, Chernomor cut off the head of the older brother. Since then, the head has been placed here to guard the sword. However, the head gives the magic weapon to Ruslan and calls on the hero to take revenge.

Meanwhile, Khan Ratmir, who went to look for Lyudmila along with the other three knights, is lured by some beautiful maidens to a castle on a rock. Ruslan continues to go north, towards the mountains. Lyudmila continues to hide under the invisibility hat, walking around the Chernomor palace in this form and mocking the servants of the evil sorcerer. The cunning dwarf attracts the girl's attention by pretending to be the wounded Ruslan, but at that moment the sound of a battle horn reaches him and Chernomor goes to see what is happening there.

A fight with Ruslan begins, during which the wizard becomes invisible. The hero grabs the sorcerer by the beard, and they rush under the skies for two days until Chernomor begins to beg for mercy. Ruslan demands to take him to Lyudmila, and on the ground he cuts off the villain’s beard and ties it to his own helmet.

The beloved, discovered by Ruslan, is sleeping soundly, and the hero goes with her to Kyiv, where Lyudmila must wake up. On the way, Ruslan meets a poor fisherman, whom he recognizes as Khan Ratmir. He found happiness with his young wife and no longer dreams of Lyudmila.

Meanwhile, the witch Naina teaches the cowardly Farlaf how to defeat Ruslan. The scoundrel stabs Ruslan while he is sleeping and takes Lyudmila to Kyiv. Meanwhile, the girl does not regain consciousness, even when she finds herself in her own mansion. It is impossible to wake up the heroine, and meanwhile the city is surrounded by rebel Pechenegs.

Ruslana is revived by an old Finn and gives the hero a magic ring that should awaken Lyudmila. The hero breaks into the ranks of the Pechenegs and strikes left and right, putting the enemy to flight. Then Ruslan enters Kyiv, finds Lyudmila in the mansion and touches her with the ring. The girl wakes up, Prince Vladimir and Ruslan forgive the coward Farlaf, and Chernomor, who along with his beard has lost his magical power, is accepted into the palace.

Quotes

“I still have my faithful sword with me,
The head hasn’t fallen off my shoulders yet.”

“I heard the truth, it happened:
Even though the forehead is wide, the brain is small!”

"And a girl at seventeen
What hat won’t stick!”

“Every day, when I rise from sleep,
I thank God from the bottom of my heart
Because in our times
There aren’t that many wizards.”

Year of writing:

1820

Reading time:

Description of the work:

The poem Ruslan and Lyudmila was written in 1820 by Alexander Pushkin. This is his first completed poem, which is also a fairy tale. Pushkin wrote the poem Ruslan and Lyudmila, being inspired by ancient Russian epics.

If we talk about the time of writing the poem Ruslan and Lyudmila, it is worth mentioning that the poet himself considered its beginning to be the time of study at the Lyceum, but the poem was, of course, written after graduation from the Lyceum. It is possible that at the Lyceum Pushkin’s main idea matured, but not the text of the work.

Read below a summary of the poem Ruslan and Lyudmila.

Prince Vladimir the Sun feasts in the gridnitsa with his sons and a crowd of friends, celebrating the wedding of his youngest daughter Lyudmila with Prince Ruslan. The guslar Bayan sings in honor of the newlyweds. Only three guests do not rejoice at the happiness of Ruslan and Lyudmila, three knights do not listen to the prophetic singer. These are Ruslan's three rivals: the knight Rogdai, the braggart Farlaf and the Khazar khan Ratmir.

The feast is over and everyone leaves. The prince blesses the newlyweds, they are taken to the bedchamber, and the happy groom is already anticipating the delights of love. Suddenly thunder struck, light flashed, everything became dark, and in the ensuing silence a strange voice was heard and someone flew up and disappeared into the darkness. Ruslan, who has woken up, is looking for Lyudmila, but she is not there, she was “kidnapped by an unknown force.”

Struck by the terrible news of the disappearance of his daughter, the Grand Duke, angry with Ruslan, turns to the young knights with a call to go in search of Lyudmila and promises the one who finds and returns his daughter to give her as a wife as a reproach to Ruslan, and in addition - half the kingdom. Rogdai, Ratmir, Farlaf and Ruslan himself immediately volunteer to go look for Lyudmila and saddle their horses, promising the prince not to prolong the separation. They leave the palace and gallop along the banks of the Dnieper, and the old prince looks after them for a long time and his thoughts fly after them.

The knights ride together. Ruslan languishes with melancholy, Farlaf boasts of his future exploits in the name of Lyudmila, Ratmir dreams of her embrace, Rogdai is gloomy and silent. The day is approaching evening, the riders approach a crossroads and decide to part, each trusting his own fate. Ruslan, devoted to gloomy thoughts, rides at a pace and suddenly sees in front of him a cave in which a fire glows. The knight enters the cave and sees in it an old man with a gray beard and clear eyes, reading an ancient book in front of a lamp. The elder greets Ruslan and says that he has been waiting for him for a long time. He calms the young man, informing him that he will be able to regain Lyudmila, who was kidnapped by the terrible wizard Chernomor, a longtime kidnapper of beauties who lives in the northern mountains, where no one has ever been able to penetrate. But Ruslan is destined to find Chernomor’s home and defeat him in battle. The elder says that Ruslan’s future is in his own will. The delighted Ruslan falls at the old man’s feet and kisses his hand, but suddenly a sadness appears on his face again. The wise old man understands the reason for the young man’s sadness and calms him down, saying that Chernomor is a powerful wizard who can bring down the stars from the sky, but is powerless in the fight against inexorable time, and therefore his senile love is not scary for Lyudmila. The elder persuades Ruslan to go to bed, but Ruslan languishes in melancholy and is unable to sleep. He asks the elder to tell him who he is and how he came to this region. And the old man with a sad smile tells his wondrous story.

Born in the Finnish valleys, he was a peaceful and carefree shepherd in his homeland, but to his misfortune he fell in love with the beautiful, but hard-hearted and obstinate Naina. For six months he was yearning for love and finally opened up to Naina. But the proud beauty answered indifferently that she did not love the shepherd. Feeling disgusted with his usual life and activities, the young man decided to leave his native fields and set off with his faithful squad on a brave voyage in search of battles in order to earn the love of the proud Naina with the glory of war. He spent ten years in battles, but his heart, full of love for Naina, longed to return. And so he returned to throw rich trophies at the feet of the arrogant beauty in the hope of her love, but again the indifferent maiden refused the hero. But this test did not stop the lover. He decided to try his luck with the help of magical powers, learning powerful wisdom from the sorcerers living in his area, to whose will everything is subject. Having decided to attract Naina’s love with the help of witchcraft, he spent imperceptible years studying with sorcerers and finally comprehended the terrible secret of nature, learned the secret of spells. But evil fate pursued him. Naina, summoned by his witchcraft, appeared before him as a decrepit old woman, hunchbacked, gray-haired, with a shaking head. The horrified sorcerer learns from her that forty years have passed and today she turns seventy. To his horror, the sorcerer was convinced that his spells worked and Naina loved him. With trepidation, he listened to the love confessions of the gray-haired, ugly old woman, and to top it off, he learned that she had become a witch. The shocked Finn ran away, followed by the curses of the old witch, reproaching him for infidelity to his feelings.

Having fled from Naina, the Finn settled in this cave and lives there in complete solitude. Finn predicts that Naina will also hate Ruslan, but he will also be able to overcome this obstacle.

All night Ruslan listened to the old man's stories, and in the morning, with a soul full of hope, gratefully hugging him goodbye and parting with the blessing of the wizard, he sets out on the road in search of Lyudmila.

Meanwhile, Rogdai travels “between the forest deserts.” He cherishes a terrible thought - to kill Ruslan and thereby free his way to Lyudmila’s heart. He decisively turns his horse and gallops back.

Farlaf, having slept all morning, dined in the silence of the forest by the stream. Suddenly he noticed that a horseman was rushing straight towards him at full speed. Throwing away lunch, weapons, chain mail, the cowardly Farlaf jumps on his horse and runs away without looking back. The horseman rushes after him and calls on him to stop, threatening to “rip” his head off. Farlaf's horse jumps over the ditch, and Farlaf himself falls into the mud. Rogdai, who has flown up, is ready to defeat his opponent, but sees that it is not Ruslan, and rides away in frustration and anger.

Under the mountain he meets a barely alive old woman, who points to the north with her stick and says that the knight will find his enemy there. Rogdai leaves, and the old woman approaches Farlaf, who is lying in the mud and shaking with fear, and advises him to return home, not to expose himself to danger anymore, because Lyudmila will be his anyway. Having said this, the old woman disappeared, and Farlaf followed her advice.

Meanwhile, Ruslan strives for his beloved, wondering about her fate. One evening he was passing over the river and heard the buzz of an arrow, the ringing of chain mail and the neighing of a horse. Someone shouted for him to stop. Looking back, Ruslan saw a horseman rushing towards him with a raised spear. Ruslan recognized him and shuddered with anger...

At the same time, Lyudmila, carried away from her wedding bed by the gloomy Chernomor, woke up in the morning, overwhelmed with vague horror. She was lying in a luxurious bed under a canopy, everything was like in Sheherezada’s fairy tales. Beautiful maidens in light clothes approached her and bowed. One skillfully braided her braid and decorated it with a pearl crown, another put an azure sundress on her and shod her, the third gave her a pearl belt. The invisible singer sang funny songs all this time. But all this did not cheer Lyudmila’s soul. Left alone, Lyudmila goes to the window and sees only snowy plains and the tops of gloomy mountains, everything is empty and dead all around, only a whirlwind rushes with a sad whistle, shaking the forest visible on the horizon. In despair, Lyudmila runs to the door, which opens by itself in front of her, and Lyudmila goes out into an amazing garden in which palm trees, laurel, cedars, and oranges grow, reflected in the mirror of the lakes. There is a spring fragrance all around and the voice of a Chinese nightingale can be heard. In the garden there are fountains and beautiful sculptures that seem alive. But Lyudmila is sad, and nothing cheers her up. She sits down on the grass, and suddenly a tent unfolds above her, and a sumptuous lunch appears in front of her. Beautiful music delights her ears. Intending to reject the treat, Lyudmila began to eat. As soon as she got up, the tent disappeared by itself, and Lyudmila again found herself alone and wandered in the garden until the evening. Lyudmila feels like she is falling asleep, and suddenly an unknown force lifts her up and gently carries her through the air onto her bed. The three maidens appeared again and, having laid Lyudmila to rest, disappeared. Lyudmila lies in bed in fear and waits for something terrible. Suddenly there was a noise, the palace lit up, and Lyudmila saw a long row of Arabs in pairs carrying a gray beard on pillows, followed by a hunchbacked dwarf with a shaved head covered with a high cap. Lyudmila jumps up, grabs him by the cap, the dwarf gets scared, falls, gets entangled in his beard, and the araps carry him away, leaving his hat, to the sound of Lyudmila's squeal.

And at this time, Ruslan, overtaken by the knight, fights with him in a fierce battle. He rips the enemy from the saddle, lifts him and throws him from the shore into the waves. This knight was none other than Rogdai, who found his death in the waters of the Dnieper.

A cold morning shines on the tops of the northern mountains. Chernomor lies in bed, and slaves comb his beard and oil his mustache. Suddenly a winged serpent flies into the window and turns into Naina. She greets Chernomor and informs him of the impending danger. Chernomor answers Naina that he is not afraid of the knight as long as his beard is intact. Naina, turning into a snake, flies away again, and Chernomor again goes to Lyudmila’s chambers, but cannot find her either in the palace or in the garden. Lyudmila has disappeared. Chernomor, in anger, sends slaves in search of the missing princess, threatening them with terrible punishments. Lyudmila didn’t run away anywhere, she just accidentally discovered the secret of the Black Sea invisibility cap and took advantage of its magical properties.

What about Ruslan? Having defeated Rogdai, he went further and found himself on the battlefield with armor and weapons scattered around and the yellowing bones of warriors. Ruslan sadly looks around the battlefield and finds armor for himself among the abandoned weapons, a steel spear, but cannot find a sword. Ruslan is driving along the steppe at night and notices a huge hill in the distance. Having approached closer, in the light of the moon he sees that this is not a hill, but a living head in a heroic helmet with feathers that tremble from her snoring. Ruslan tickled the nostrils of the head with a spear, it sneezed and woke up. The angry head threatens Ruslan, but, seeing that the knight is not afraid, he becomes angry and begins to blow on him with all his might. Unable to resist this whirlwind, Ruslan's horse flies far into the field, and his head laughs at the knight. Enraged by her ridicule, Ruslan throws his spear and pierces his head with his tongue. Taking advantage of the confusion in her head, Ruslan rushes towards her and hits her in the cheek with a heavy mitten. The head shook, turned over and rolled. In the place where she stood, Ruslan sees a sword that suited him. He intends to cut off the head's nose and ears with this sword, but hears her groan and spares her. The prostrate head tells Ruslan his story. Once she was a brave giant knight, but to her misfortune she had a younger dwarf brother, the evil Chernomor, who was jealous of his older brother. One day Chernomor revealed a secret he found in the black books, that behind the eastern mountains in a basement there was a sword kept that was dangerous for both brothers. Chernomor persuaded his brother to go in search of this sword and, when he was found, he took possession of it by deception and cut off his brother’s head, moved it to this desert region and doomed it to guard the sword forever. The head invites Ruslan to take the sword and take revenge on the treacherous Chernomor.

Khan Ratmir went south in search of Lyudmila and on the way he sees a castle on a rock, along the wall of which a singing maiden is walking in the moonlight. With her song she attracts the knight, he drives up, and is met under the wall by a crowd of red maidens who give the knight a luxurious reception.

And Ruslan spends this night close to his head, and in the morning he goes on further searches. Autumn passes and winter comes, but Ruslan stubbornly moves north, overcoming all obstacles.

Lyudmila, hidden from the eyes of the sorcerer by a magic hat, walks alone through the beautiful gardens and teases Chernomor's servants. But the insidious Chernomor, taking the guise of a wounded Ruslan, lures Lyudmila into the net. He is ready to pick the fruit of love, but the sound of a horn is heard and someone calls him. Putting an invisibility cap on Lyudmila, Chernomor flies towards the call.

Ruslan challenged the sorcerer to a fight, he is waiting for him. But the insidious wizard, having become invisible, hits the knight on the helmet. Having contrived, Ruslan grabs Chernomor by the beard, and the wizard takes off with him into the clouds. For two days he carried the knight through the air and finally asked for mercy and carried Ruslan to Lyudmila. On the ground, Ruslan cuts off his beard with a sword and ties it to his helmet. But, having entered the possessions of Chernomor, he does not see Lyudmila anywhere and in anger begins to destroy everything around him with his sword. With an accidental blow, he knocks the invisibility cap off Lyudmila’s head and finds a bride. But Lyudmila sleeps soundly. At this moment, Ruslan hears the voice of a Finn, who advises him to go to Kyiv, where Lyudmila will wake up. Having approached the head on the way back, Ruslan pleases her with a message about the victory over Chernomor.

On the bank of the river, Ruslan sees a poor fisherman and his beautiful young wife. He is surprised to recognize Ratmir in the fisherman. Ratmir says that he found his happiness and left the vain world. He says goodbye to Ruslan and wishes him happiness and love.

Meanwhile, Naina appears to Farlaf, who is waiting in the wings, and teaches him how to destroy Ruslan. Sneaking up to the sleeping Ruslan, Farlaf thrusts the sword into his chest three times and disappears with Lyudmila.

The murdered Ruslan lies in the field, and Farlaf with the sleeping Lyudmila strives for Kyiv. He enters the mansion with Lyudmila in his arms, but Lyudmila does not awaken, and all attempts to wake her are fruitless. And then a new disaster befalls Kyiv: it is surrounded by rebel Pechenegs.

While Farlaf is traveling to Kyiv, the Finn comes to Ruslan with living and dead water. Having resurrected the knight, he tells him about what happened and gives him a magic ring that will remove the spell from Lyudmila. Encouraged, Ruslan rushes to Kyiv.

Meanwhile, the Pechenegs besiege the city, and at dawn a battle begins, which does not bring victory to anyone. And the next morning, among the hordes of Pechenegs, a horseman in shining armor suddenly appears. He strikes left and right and puts the Pechenegs to flight. It was Ruslan. Having entered Kyiv, he goes to the tower, where Vladimir and Farlaf were next to Lyudmila. Seeing Ruslan, Farlaf falls to his knees, and Ruslan rushes to Lyudmila and, touching her face with the ring, awakens her. Happy Vladimir, Lyudmila and Ruslan forgive Farlaf, who confessed everything, and Chernomor, deprived of his magical powers, is accepted into the palace.

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