Heroes of the story “Poor Liza” by Nikolai Karamzin. Characteristics of Lisa from the story "Poor Lisa". Psychological analysis of the characters of the main characters in the work of N.M. Karamzin The main characters of the story poor Liza Karamzin

The main character of the story is a poor young peasant woman from a village near Moscow. Lisa was left early without her father, who was the breadwinner of the family. After his death, he and his mother quickly became poor. Lisa's mother was a kind, sensitive old woman, but no longer able to work. Therefore, Lisa took on any job and worked without sparing herself.

One of the heroes of the story, the old mother of the main character, Lisa. She is a kind, caring and sensitive woman living in a village near Moscow. After the death of her husband, who was the main breadwinner of the family, he and his daughter quickly became poor. Her health did not allow her to work much, and her vision was already poor.

Lisa's father

An episodic character, he was a wealthy and hardworking villager who never drank alcohol. After his death, his wife and daughter quickly became destitute.

Shepherd

An episodic character, a young man who drove his herd past Lisa. Instead of him, Lisa represented her beloved Erast.

Servant of Erast

An episodic character, he took Lisa out of the yard after Erast told her that he was getting married.

Elderly widow

An episodic character, Erast's rich but elderly fiancee, whom he is forced to marry because he lost his entire estate at cards.

Kind woman

An episodic character, a random woman who brought Lisa to her senses and helped her get up after she fainted after leaving Erast.

Anyuta

An episodic character, a fifteen-year-old girl, Lisa's neighbor, whom she accidentally met near the pond. Giving her the money and asking her to give it to her mother, and also to kiss her and explain that Lisa had been betrayed and she could no longer live.

Many remember N.M. Karamzin based on his historical works. But he also did a lot for literature. It was through his efforts that a sentimental novel was developed, which describes not just ordinary people, but their feelings, suffering, and experiences. brought together ordinary people and the rich as they feel, think and experience the same emotions and needs. At the time in which “Poor Liza” was written, namely in 1792, the liberation of the peasants was still far away, and their existence seemed something incomprehensible and wild. Sentimentalism brought them into full-fledged feeling heroes.

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History of creation

Important! He also introduced the fashion for little-known names - Erast and Elizabeth. Almost unused names quickly became household names that define a person’s character.

It was this seemingly simple and uncomplicated completely fictitious story of love and death that gave rise to a number of imitators. And the pond was even a place of pilgrimage for unhappy lovers.

It's easy to remember what the story is about. After all, its plot is not rich or full of twists and turns. The summary of the story allows you to find out the main events. Karamzin himself would convey the summary as follows:

1. Left without a father, Lisa began to help her impoverished mother by selling flowers and berries.
2. Erast, captivated by her beauty and freshness, invites her to sell the goods only to him and then asks her not to go out at all, but to give him the goods from home. This one is rich, but a flighty nobleman falls in love with Lisa. They begin to spend evenings alone.
3. Soon a wealthy neighbor wooed Lizaveta, but Erast consoles her, promising to marry himself. Intimacy occurs, and Erast loses interest in the girl he destroyed. Soon the young man leaves for service. Lizaveta is waiting and afraid. But by chance they meet on the street, and Lizaveta throws herself on his neck.
4. Erast reports that he is engaged to another, and orders the servant to give her money and take her out of the yard. Lizaveta, having handed over the money to her mother, throws herself into the pond. Her mother dies from a stroke.
5. Erast is ruined by losing at cards and is forced to marry a rich widow. He does not find happiness in life and blames himself.

Sell ​​flowers to the city

Main characters

It is clear that the characterization of one of the heroes of the story “Poor Liza” will be insufficient. They must be assessed together, in their influence on each other.

Despite the novelty and originality of the plot, the image of Erast in the story “Poor Liza” is not new, and the little-known name does not save it. Rich and bored nobleman, tired of accessible and cutesy beauties. He is looking for bright sensations and finds an innocent and pure girl. Her image surprises him, attracts him and even awakens love. But the very first intimacy turns the angel into an ordinary earthly girl. He immediately remembers that she is poor, uneducated, and her reputation is already ruined. He is running away from responsibility, from crime.

He runs into his usual hobbies - cards and festivities, which leads to ruin. But he doesn’t want to lose his habits and live the work life he loves. Erast sells his youth and freedom for the widow's wealth. Although a couple of months ago he tried to dissuade his beloved from a successful marriage.

Meeting his beloved after separation only tires him and interferes with him. He cynically throws money at her and forces the servant to take the unfortunate woman out. This gesture shows the depth of the fall and all its cruelty.

But the image of the main character of Karamzin’s story is distinguished by freshness and novelty. She is poor, works for her mother's survival and is also gentle and beautiful. Its distinctive features are sensitivity and nationality. In Karamzin's story, poor Liza is a typical heroine from the village, poetic and with a tender heart. It is her feelings and emotions that replace her upbringing, morality and norms.

The author, generously endowing the poor girl with kindness and love, seems to emphasize that such women have natural, which does not require restrictions and teachings. She is ready to live for the sake of her loved ones, work and maintain joy.

Important! Life has already tested her strength, and she has passed the test with dignity. Behind her image, honest, beautiful, gentle, one forgets that she is a poor, uneducated peasant woman. That she works with her hands and trades with what God sent her. This should be remembered when the news about the ruin of Erast becomes known. Lisa is not afraid of poverty.

The scene describing how the poor girl died is complete despair and tragedy. A believing and loving girl undoubtedly understands that suicide is a terrible sin. She also understands that her mother will not live without her help. But the pain of betrayal and the realization that she is disgraced is too hard for her to experience. Lisa looked at life soberly and honestly told Erast that she was poor, that she was not a match for him, and that her mother had found her a worthy groom, albeit an unloved one.

But the young man convinced her of his love and committed an irreparable crime - he took her honor. What became an ordinary boring event for him turned out to be the end of the world and the beginning of a new life at the same time for poor Lisa. Her most tender and pure soul plunged into the mud, and a new meeting showed that her beloved assessed her action as promiscuity.

Important! The one who wrote the story “Poor Liza” realized that he was raising a whole layer of problems and, in particular, the topic of the responsibility of rich, bored noblemen to unfortunate poor girls, whose destinies and lives are broken from boredom, which later found its response in the works of Bunin and others.

Scene near the pond

Readers' reaction

The public greeted the story with ambiguity. The women felt compassion and made a pilgrimage to the pond, which became the last refuge of the unfortunate girl. Some male critics shamed the author and accused him of being overly sensitive, of copious tears that constantly flow, and of the picturesqueness of the characters.

In fact, behind the external cloying and tearfulness, the reproaches of which every critical article is full of, lies the true meaning, understood by attentive readers. The author confronts not only two characters, but two worlds:

• Sincere, sensitive, painfully naive peasantry with its touching and stupid, but real girls.
• Good-natured, enthusiastic, generous nobility with pampered and capricious men.

One is strengthened by the difficulties of life, while the other is broken and frightened by these same difficulties.

Genre of the work

Karamzin himself described his work as a sentimental fairy tale, but it received the status of a sentimental story, since it has heroes acting over a long period of time, a full-fledged plot, development and denouement. The characters do not live individual episodes, but a significant part of their lives.

Poor LISA. Nikolay Karamzin

Retelling Karamzin N. M. “Poor Liza”

Conclusion

So, the question: “Poor Liza” is a story or a short story was solved long ago and unambiguously. The book summary gives the exact answer.

The story “Poor Liza,” which became an example of sentimental prose, was published by Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin in 1792 in the Moscow Journal publication. It is worth noting Karamzin as an honored reformer of the Russian language and one of the most highly educated Russians of his time - this is an important aspect that allows us to further evaluate the success of the story. Firstly, the development of Russian literature was of a “catch-up” nature, since it lagged behind European literature by about 90-100 years. While sentimental novels were being written and read in the West, clumsy classical odes and dramas were still being composed in Russia. Karamzin’s progressiveness as a writer consisted in “bringing” sentimental genres from Europe to his homeland and developing a style and language for the further writing of such works.

Secondly, the assimilation of literature by the public at the end of the 18th century was such that at first they wrote for society how to live, and then society began to live according to what was written. That is, before the sentimental story, people read mainly hagiographic or church literature, where there were no living characters or living speech, and the heroes of the sentimental story - such as Lisa - gave secular young ladies a real life scenario, a guide to feelings.

The history of the story

Karamzin brought the story about poor Liza from his many trips - from 1789 to 1790 he visited Germany, England, France, Switzerland (England is considered the birthplace of sentimentalism), and upon his return he published a new revolutionary story in his own magazine.

“Poor Liza” is not an original work, since Karamzin adapted its plot for Russian soil, taking it from European literature. We are not talking about a specific work and plagiarism - there were many such European stories. In addition, the author created an atmosphere of amazing authenticity by depicting himself as one of the heroes of the story and masterfully describing the setting of events.

According to the memoirs of contemporaries, soon after returning from the trip, the writer lived in a dacha near the Simonov Monastery, in a picturesque, calm place. The situation described by the author is real - readers recognized both the surroundings of the monastery and the “Lizin Pond”, and this contributed to the fact that the plot was perceived as reliable, and the characters as real people.

Analysis of the work

Plot of the story

The plot of the story is love and, as the author admits, extremely simple. The peasant girl Lisa (her father was a wealthy peasant, but after his death the farm is in decline and the girl has to earn money by selling handicrafts and flowers) lives in the lap of nature with her old mother. In a city that seems huge and alien to her, she meets a young nobleman, Erast. Young people fall in love - Erast out of boredom, inspired by pleasures and a noble lifestyle, and Liza - for the first time, with all the simple, ardor and naturalness of a “natural person”. Erast takes advantage of the girl’s gullibility and takes possession of her, after which, naturally, he begins to be burdened by the girl’s company. The nobleman leaves for war, where he loses his entire fortune at cards. The way out is to marry a rich widow. Lisa finds out about this and commits suicide by throwing herself into a pond, not far from the Simonov Monastery. The author, who was told this story, cannot remember poor Lisa without holy tears of regret.

Karamzin, for the first time among Russian writers, unleashed the conflict of a work with the death of the heroine - as, most likely, it would have happened in reality.

Of course, despite the progressiveness of Karamzin’s story, his heroes differ significantly from real people, they are idealized and embellished. This is especially true for peasants - Lisa does not look like a peasant woman. It is unlikely that hard work would have contributed to her remaining “sensitive and kind”; it is unlikely that she would conduct internal dialogues with herself in an elegant style, and she would hardly be able to carry on a conversation with a nobleman. Nevertheless, this is the first thesis of the story - “even peasant women know how to love.”

Main characters

Lisa

The central heroine of the story, Lisa, is the embodiment of sensitivity, ardor and ardor. Her intelligence, kindness and tenderness, the author emphasizes, are from nature. Having met Erast, she begins to dream not that he, like a handsome prince, will take her into his world, but that he would be a simple peasant or shepherd - this would equalize them and allow them to be together.

Erast differs from Lisa not only in social terms, but also in character. Perhaps, the author says, he was spoiled by the world - he leads a typical life for an officer and a nobleman - he seeks pleasure and, having found it, grows cold towards life. Erast is both smart and kind, but weak, incapable of action - such a hero also appears in Russian literature for the first time, a type of “aristocrat disillusioned with life.” At first, Erast is sincere in his impulse of love - he does not lie when he tells Lisa about love, and it turns out that he is also a victim of circumstances. He does not stand the test of love, does not resolve the situation “like a man,” but experiences sincere torment after what happened. After all, it was he who allegedly told the author the story about poor Lisa and led him to Lisa’s grave.

Erast predetermined the appearance in Russian literature of a number of heroes of the “superfluous people” type - weak and incapable of making key decisions.

Karamzin uses “speaking names.” In the case of Lisa, the choice of name turned out to be a “double bottom.” The fact is that classical literature provided typification techniques, and the name Lisa was supposed to mean a playful, flirtatious, frivolous character. This name could have been given to a laughing maid - a cunning comedy character, prone to love adventures, and by no means innocent. By choosing such a name for his heroine, Karamzin destroyed the classical typification and created a new one. He built a new relationship between the name, character and actions of the hero and outlined the path to psychologism in literature.

The name Erast was also not chosen by chance. It means “lovely” from Greek. His fatal charm and the need for novelty of impressions lured and destroyed the unfortunate girl. But Erast will reproach himself for the rest of his life.

Constantly reminding the reader of his reaction to what is happening (“I remember with sadness...”, “tears are rolling down my face, reader...”), the author organizes the narrative so that it acquires lyricism and sensitivity.

Quotes

“Mother! Mother! How can this happen? He is a gentleman, but among the peasants...”. Lisa.

“Nature calls me into its arms, to its pure joys,” he thought and decided, at least for a while, to leave the big world.”.

“I can’t live,” thought Lisa, “I can’t!.. Oh, if the sky would fall on me! If the earth would swallow up the poor woman!.. No! the sky doesn’t fall; the earth doesn’t shake! Woe to me.” Lisa.

"Now maybe they have already reconciled!" Author

Theme, conflict of the story

Karamzin's story touches on several topics:

• The theme of the idealization of the peasant environment, the ideality of life in nature. The main character is a child of nature, and therefore by default she cannot be evil, immoral, or insensitive. The girl embodies simplicity and innocence due to the fact that she is from a peasant family, where eternal moral values ​​are kept.
• Theme of love and betrayal. The author glorifies the beauty of sincere feelings and talks with sorrow about the doom of love, not supported by reason.
• The theme is the contrast between countryside and city. The city turns out to be evil, a great evil force capable of breaking a pure being from nature (Lisa’s mother intuitively senses this evil force and prays for her daughter every time she goes to the city to sell flowers or berries).
• Theme "little man". Social inequality, the author is sure (and this is an obvious glimpse of realism) does not lead to happiness for lovers from different backgrounds. This kind of love is doomed.

The main conflict of the story is social, because it is because of the gap between wealth and poverty that the love of the heroes, and then the heroine, perishes. The author extols sensitivity as the highest human value, asserts the cult of feelings as opposed to the cult of reason.

The story “Poor Liza,” written by Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin, became one of the first works of sentimentalism in Russia. The love story of a poor girl and a young nobleman won the hearts of many of the writer’s contemporaries and was received with great delight. The work brought unprecedented popularity to the then completely unknown 25-year-old writer. However, with what descriptions does the story “Poor Liza” begin?

History of creation

N. M. Karamzin was distinguished by his love for Western culture and actively preached its principles. His role in the life of Russia was enormous and invaluable. This progressive and active man traveled extensively throughout Europe in 1789-1790, and upon his return he published the story “Poor Liza” in the Moscow Journal.

Analysis of the story indicates that the work has a sentimental aesthetic orientation, which is expressed in interest in people, regardless of their social status.

While writing the story, Karamzin lived at his friends’ dacha, not far from which he was located. It is believed that he served as the basis for the beginning of the work. Thanks to this, the love story and the characters themselves were perceived by readers as completely real. And the pond not far from the monastery began to be called “Liza’s Pond.”

“Poor Liza” by Karamzin as a sentimental story

“Poor Liza” is, in fact, a short story, a genre in which no one had written in Russia before Karamzin. But the writer’s innovation is not only in the choice of genre, but also in the direction. It was this story that secured the title of the first work of Russian sentimentalism.

Sentimentalism arose in Europe back in the 17th century and focused on the sensual side of human life. Issues of reason and society faded into the background for this direction, but emotions and relationships between people became a priority.

Sentimentalism has always strived to idealize what is happening, to embellish it. Answering the question about what descriptions the story “Poor Liza” begins with, we can talk about the idyllic landscape that Karamzin paints for readers.

Theme and idea

One of the main themes of the story is social, and it is connected with the problem of the attitude of the noble class towards the peasants. It is not for nothing that Karamzin chooses a peasant girl to play the role of bearer of innocence and morality.

Contrasting the images of Lisa and Erast, the writer is one of the first to raise the problem of contradictions between the city and the countryside. If we turn to the descriptions with which the story “Poor Liza” begins, we will see a quiet, cozy and natural world that exists in harmony with nature. The city is frightening, terrifying with its “huge houses” and “golden domes.” Lisa becomes a reflection of nature, she is natural and naive, there is no falsehood or pretense in her.

The author speaks in the story from the position of a humanist. Karamzin depicts all the charm of love, its beauty and strength. But reason and pragmatism can easily destroy this wonderful feeling. The story owes its success to its incredible attention to a person’s personality and his experiences. “Poor Liza” aroused sympathy among its readers thanks to Karamzin’s amazing ability to depict all the emotional subtleties, experiences, aspirations and thoughts of the heroine.

Heroes

A complete analysis of the story “Poor Liza” is impossible without a detailed examination of the images of the main characters of the work. Lisa and Erast, as noted above, embodied different ideals and principles.

Lisa is an ordinary peasant girl, whose main feature is the ability to feel. She acts according to the dictates of her heart and feelings, which ultimately led to her death, although her morality remained intact. However, there is little peasant in the image of Lisa: her speech and thoughts are closer to book language, but the feelings of a girl who has fallen in love for the first time are conveyed with incredible truthfulness. So, despite the external idealization of the heroine, her inner experiences are conveyed very realistically. In this regard, the story “Poor Liza” does not lose its innovation.

What descriptions does the work begin with? First of all, they are in tune with the character of the heroine, helping the reader to recognize her. This is a natural, idyllic world.

Erast appears completely different to the readers. He is an officer who is only puzzled by the search for new entertainment; life in society tires him and makes him bored. He is intelligent, kind, but weak in character and changeable in his affections. Erast truly falls in love, but does not think at all about the future, because Lisa is not his circle, and he will never be able to take her as his wife.

Karamzin complicated the image of Erast. Typically, such a hero in Russian literature was simpler and endowed with certain characteristics. But the writer makes him not an insidious seducer, but a sincerely in love with a person who, due to weakness of character, could not pass the test and preserve his love. This type of hero was new to Russian literature, but it immediately caught on and later received the name “superfluous person.”

Plot and originality

The plot of the work is quite simple. This is the story of the tragic love of a peasant woman and a nobleman, the result of which was the death of Lisa.

What descriptions does the story “Poor Liza” begin with? Karamzin draws a natural panorama, the bulk of the monastery, a pond - it is here, surrounded by nature, that the main character lives. But the main thing in a story is not the plot or descriptions, the main thing is feelings. And the narrator must awaken these feelings in the audience. For the first time in Russian literature, where the image of the narrator has always remained outside the work, a hero-author appears. This sentimental narrator learns a love story from Erast and retells it to the reader with sadness and sympathy.

Thus, there are three main characters in the story: Lisa, Erast and the author-narrator. Karamzin also introduces the technique of landscape descriptions and somewhat lightens the ponderous style of the Russian literary language.

The significance of the story “Poor Lisa” for Russian literature

Analysis of the story, thus, shows Karamzin’s incredible contribution to the development of Russian literature. In addition to describing the relationship between city and village, the appearance of the “extra person,” many researchers note the emergence of the “little person” - in the image of Lisa. This work influenced the work of A. S. Pushkin, F. M. Dostoevsky, L. N. Tolstoy, who developed the themes, ideas and images of Karamzin.

The incredible psychologism that brought Russian literature worldwide fame also gave rise to the story “Poor Liza.” What descriptions does this work begin with! There is so much beauty, originality and incredible stylistic lightness in them! Karamzin’s contribution to the development of Russian literature cannot be overestimated.

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“Poor Liza” is perhaps the calling card of Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin. This story was written at the end of the 18th century - during the heyday of the literary fashion for sentimentalism.

A few words about the plot of the story

Lisa's story is definitely a sad one. Having lost her father, Lisa, the main character of the story, is at one point forced to part with her usual way of life. She has no one else to rely on but herself.

Lisa is forced to sell flowers in order to be able to feed herself. One day, while selling lilies of the valley on the streets of Moscow, a girl meets her love, Erast.

A handsome young aristocrat, Erast falls in love with Lisa. In a fit of passion, he is ready to do anything for her, even to lose his position in the social hierarchy of their environment. However, having received Lisa’s innocence and her heart, Erast realizes that she no longer represents her former interest to him.

The girl is left alone, and her lover leaves with the regiment. But one day - after several months - Liza finds herself in Moscow again and accidentally notices Erast: he is passing by in a luxurious carriage in the company of a certain rich widow. From the text of the story it becomes clear that the young man squandered all his fortune, lost his estate and was forced to agree to a profitable match for marriage. Overcome by despair, Lisa throws herself into the pond and dies. All that remains are memories of how once upon a time – not so long ago – lovers walked here, near this very pond, naive and happy.

On the uniqueness of sentimentalism

Of course, it is impossible to characterize a work designated as one of the brightest examples of sentimentalism without a few words about the originality of this movement. Its very name speaks of the importance of feelings, which are declared here to be the highest value. Much attention is paid to the everyday life of people, to what, before this turn in literature, remained behind the scenes. What kind of person is interesting to a sentimentalist writer? This is, of course, a simple man and his inner world.

The main characters of the story

It is curious that there are not so many main characters in this work. The main character is the peasant girl Lisa, whose thoughts are connected with the landscapes of decline and dilapidation, the abandonment of the monastery monastery. Lisa is a vivid example of the ideal heroine of a sentimental novel. She is materially poor, but spiritually rich. Her inner world, like the world of a romantic, is directly opposite to the limitations of the external world: a bottomless, deep, sensual, open and boundless inner world.

The girl lives with her mother in a village near Moscow. Once upon a time, Lisa’s family was not so poor, because the most difficult times for Lisa and her mother came due to the death of the breadwinner - the girl’s father.

Lisa's mother is also, one way or another, at the center of the story. She is an elderly woman who sincerely hopes that Lisa will be able to get married profitably.

Actually, Lisa’s mother is not a selfish woman: she simply wishes her daughter happiness, which at that time was thought inextricably from the ability to make a successful game. The unfortunate woman was already too weak to work as in previous years, and therefore Lisa did not disdain any work: she was a jack of all trades - she knew how to weave, knit stockings, picked and sold berries in the fall, and flowers in the spring.

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Along with the lack of egocentric qualities, one can note such traits of Lisa as purity, devoted love and the ability to care without wanting to receive anything in return. These features of Lisa, as well as her openness to the world, prevent her from seeing darkness in people: she believes that all people are good and cannot accept her mother’s words that the world consists of polarities, and good is always complemented by bad. The mother was very kind and sensitive, like her daughter, but she could not make Lisa’s life easier: her health no longer allowed her to work, in addition, her eyesight was weakening, and gradually her daughter took the place of nurse in the family. A curious fact is that after meeting Erast, Liza’s mother spoke of him extremely warmly and friendly, since the young man suggested that Liza pick up the work she had done on her own, so that she would not have to go to the city too often. After the death of her daughter, the old woman dies, unable to withstand the blow.

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Finally, Erast is Lisa’s lover, who later betrayed her, just like the girl’s love. Erast is an extremely ambivalent character. He has his own merits: an extraordinary and sharp mind, noble origin, external attractiveness and a kind, soft heart. But these advantages were sometimes offset by his shortcomings: frivolity and frivolity, weak will, which pushed the young man to gambling, secular pleasures and a depraved, morally reprehensible lifestyle. His frivolity does not allow him to find peace of mind with any one girl. Lisa does not know that the young nobleman falls in love and is carried away just as easily as he is later disappointed.

This is what happened with Lisa: when he conquered the girl’s heart and body, she lost her former charm for him. Lisa, however, had a chance to have a completely different life: one day a wealthy peasant approached her - a match for the girl in status. However, Erast made enough efforts to dissuade Lisa from this marriage, showering her with promises to stay with her forever. Thus, Erast’s ambivalence affects not only his life, leading to destructive processes in his inner world, but also affects the lives of the people around him.

A separate figure is the narrator. He is kind and sentimental, he seems to collect images, but only those that evoke tenderness and a special kind of pain, grief and sadness. However, he builds a specific topography for the story.

So, the topography of “Poor Lisa”

The work begins with a description of the abandoned atmosphere of the hill on which the old monastery stands. The Simonov Monastery, standing on a hill, thus offers an amazing view of Moscow. The narrator draws us a map on which the events of the story will unfold. A dilapidated hut that is about to collapse, because the walls are all that remains of its former life. Its inhabitants have died, and the place in which their daily lives took place no longer evokes anything but melancholy sadness. For more than thirty years, no one has lived here anymore: however, the narrator remembers all the sad and mournful events that happened here. This is a place of memory and eternity.

Moscow, which can be seen from the hill we have already mentioned, is a place of raging life, oblivion in the brevity of everything that happens here. Fleetingness, brightness, “great hopes” and quickly forgotten disappointments – this is what Moscow brings to people.

The binary of oppositions permeates all the structures of this story.

Results

Nikolai Karamzin, creating “Poor Liza,” sought to look down and in depth: down - because in the center of the work there are not at all nobles and high society, heroes of past texts of Russian literature, but in depth - because we are not talking about external events here, not about the dynamics of changing circumstances, but about the development of the inner world. In fact, sentimentalist authors are making the same revolution in the question of anthropology that the Sophists and Socrates once did in antiquity. But the result remains simple - no matter what origin a person has, he is equally worthy of happiness.