(ROMANTICISM) Poor Liza by Nikolay Karamzin

THEORY

ROMANTICISM

-It elevated the achievements of what it perceived as heroic individualists and artists, whose pioneering examples would elevate society. 

-It also legitimized the individual imagination as a critical authority, which permitted freedom from classical notions of form in art.

TITLE | AUTHOR

POOR LIZA BY NIKOLAY KARAMZIN

SYNOPSIS

The subject of the story is the unhappy love of a poor peasant girl, Liza, for a rich young nobleman, Erast. The girl lives with her mother in a small house not far from the monastery. Liza was born into a wealthy peasant family (her father worked hard), but soon after her father’s death, she and her mother grew poor. One day while selling flowers in Moscow she meets a young nobleman. Liza’s purity and charm fascinate Erast, who sees in her, in my opinion, an opportunity, at least for a while, to partake of the innocence and simplicity so lacking in his city life. Karamzin’s portrayal of Liza, however, starts with contextualizing the relations of exploitation between Moscow and the countryside that was conventional in the XVIIIth-century Russia.

There is something in Erast that attracted Liza so much, and she falls in love with him. Their love affair progresses in the spirit of the idyll, in the heart of nature. 

Liza’s tragedy is that she kills herself, she drowns in the river, while Erast lives with his weakness and choice. He chose to go to war. War is violence about capital, power, and resources and in the army he lost all his wealth. Because of that, he decides to marry a rich widow even though his heart aches for Liza.

ANALYSIS

The narration of the story is very interesting.
The author provides abundant information about himself in the retelling of Liza's story as he constantly expresses his own opinions.

The story presents the sentimentalism as Karamzin shows her affection to the character of Liza and his life.
I believe that there is more in "Poor Liza" than the love story of Liza and Erast.
The "sentimentalism" of the whole story is what made it fall under the theory of Romanticism.