The creative process of the poet Osip Emilievich Mandelstam is extremely ambiguous. It is divided into several stages, according to structure and mood, which are radically different from each other. Poem “Insomnia. Homer. Tight Sails" was written in the early years of his activity and is imbued with a certain romanticism.
“Insomnia...” was written at the end of the summer of 1915. And it was published for the first time in the next publication of Mandelstam’s collection “Stone”. There are two versions of how this poem was created. The first and not very popular one tells that Osip Emilievich in those years was interested in ancient literature and was an ardent admirer of ancient Greek authors.
The other, more popular one, conveys the opinion of his close friends. They believed that the lyrics were inspired by Mandelstam’s trip to Koktebel, to the house of his old friend, Maximilian Voloshin (the Tsvetaeva sisters and Alexei Tolstoy also vacationed there). There Osip was shown part of an old ship that could have been built back in medieval times.
Genre, direction, size
The poem was written in iambic hexameter with the addition of pyrrhic. The rhyme is circular, where the feminine alternates with the masculine.
The direction within which Mandelstam’s creative genius developed is called “Acmeism.” From the point of view of literary theory, it is correct to call this phenomenon a movement, since it is not as large and large-scale as, for example, realism or classicism. The Acmeist poet prefers not abstract symbolic images, but rather concrete and understandable artistic images, metaphors and allegories. He writes down to earth, without using abstruse and complex philosophical concepts.
Genre: lyric poem.
Composition
The novelty of the poem is determined by its construction. The three-stage composition reflects the path overcome by the lyrical hero in his reflections.
- The first quatrain is the beginning of the plot. The hero is trying to sleep, and behold, a long list of Achaean ships in the hero’s imagination turns into a “crane train” rushing into the distance.
- The author asks the question: where and why are they sailing? Trying to answer this question in the second quatrain, Mandelstam asks even more serious questions, recalling the plot of an ancient poem, where a bloody war broke out because of love, claiming the lives of hundreds of heroes.
- The poem ends with a line that conveys the state of mind of the lyrical hero. The sea is noisy and thundering. But, it is worth assuming (considering that the work was written in Koktebel) that he finally falls asleep to these sounds of the night, dark sea.
Images and symbols
All images and symbols are taken by the author from Homer’s ancient poem “The Iliad”. It talks about a dispute between the Olympian goddesses, who did not invite the goddess of discord to the feast. In a fit of revenge, she quarreled three women from the divine pantheon (Hera, Aphrodite and Athena), throwing one golden apple on the table, intended for the most beautiful of them. The ladies went to Paris (the Trojan prince), the most beautiful young man on earth, so that he would judge them. Each offered her gift as a bribe, but Paris chose Aphrodite’s offer - the love of the most beautiful woman in the world, Helen, the wife of the Achaean king. The man kidnapped his chosen one, and then her husband, along with the troops of other rulers, went in search. The Achaeans could not stand the shame and declared war on Troy, which fell in the struggle, but resisted very courageously.
- List of ships- a long and monotonous list that the ancient Greek poet Homer added to his poem “The Iliad”. This is exactly how many ships went to conquer Troy. The author counted them in order to fall asleep, because his heart is also bewitched by love, he cannot find peace.
- Divine foam- This is a reference to the appearance of Aphrodite, the goddess of love. She came ashore from the sea foam, which in this case is a symbol of love.
- Helen of Troy- a woman for whose love troops of both sides were killed. The Achaeans did not need land and power; they came at the call of their hearts.
- Contrast between Homer's poetic voice and the sea necessary in order to show the futility of the efforts of the lyrical hero. Whatever he does, he cannot forget his own yearning of heart, because everything moves by love. The sea in this case is a free element, returning the author to the present time, to reality, where he is also tormented by feeling.
- Antique motifs. The poem begins with the thoughts of the lyrical hero while listing the names of ancient Greek ships. This is the "Catalog" mentioned in Homer's Iliad. The ancient work contains a detailed listing of each of the detachments of soldiers heading to the Trojan War. At the time of writing the poem, twenty-four-year-old Mandelstam was studying at the Faculty of History and Philology of the Faculty of Philology at St. Petersburg University. Reading a list of ships from Homer's poem was considered an excellent remedy for insomnia. It is with this word that the poet begins his work.
- Theme of love. The hero suffers from the fact that he cannot sleep and begins to list the names. However, this does not help and, having read the list to the middle, he begins to think. The main problem of the hero is as old as the world - love. The disturbances of the sea are like disturbances in his heart. He doesn’t know what to do, how to fall asleep and “who to listen to.”
- The problem of sacrifice of love. Mandelstam perceives feeling as a cult - it needs to make sacrifices, it is bloodthirsty in its fury. For his sake, the elements worry and destroy ships, for his sake wars are fought, where the best of the best perish. Not everyone is ready to devote themselves to love, putting all that is most precious on its altar.
Topics and issues
Meaning
The author recalls the Iliad, how the Kings, who were crowned with “divine foam,” sailed to Troy in the hope of returning the beautiful Helen, who was kidnapped by Paris. Because of her, the Trojan War broke out. It turns out that the most important reason for bloodshed is not the conquest of lands, but love. So the lyrical hero is surprised how this force sweeps away everything in its path, how people have been giving their lives for it for thousands of years.
In the third quatrain, he tries to understand this incomprehensible force, which turns out to be more powerful than both Homer and the sea. The author no longer understands what to listen to and who to believe if everything falls before the powerful force of attraction of souls. He asks Homer, but he is silent, because everything was said a long time ago, BC. Only the sea roars as furiously and stubbornly as the heart of a man in love beats.
Means of artistic expression
There are a lot of tropes in the poem on which the lyrical narrative is built. This is very characteristic of Acmeism, the movement to which Mandelstam belonged.
Metaphorical expressions and epithets such as “long brood” and “crane train” immediately take the reader to the hero’s thoughts and allow a deeper sense of the ancient Greek era that the author is thinking about. The ships seem to be compared to a flock of cranes rushing somewhere into the distance, where they literally sit “like a wedge” in foreign lands.
Rhetorical questions convey the hero’s thoughtfulness, his doubts, and anxiety. At the same moment, the element of the sea is very clearly manifested. For the author, she seems to be alive.
The adjective “black” simultaneously reminds us that the author was resting at that moment on the Crimean coast, and at the same time refers to eternity, the bottomlessness of sea waters. And they, like an endless stream of thoughts, rumble somewhere in the author’s head.
Interesting? Save it on your wall!
I read the list of ships halfway through:
This long brood, this crane train,
That once rose above Hellas.
Like a crane's wedge into foreign borders, -
On the heads of kings there is divine foam, -
Where are you sailing? Whenever Elena
What is Troy alone for you, Achaean men?
Both the sea and Homer - everything moves with love.
Who should I listen to? And now Homer is silent,
And the black sea, swirling, makes noise
And with a heavy roar he approaches the headboard.
Silver Age. St. Petersburg poetry
late XIX-early XX centuries.
Leningrad: Lenizdat, 1991.
I.A. Esaulov
READER'S WILTH OR DIALOGUE OF CONSENT?
(Reading of the Iliad by Osip Mandelstam) *
Let us recall the text of Mandelstam’s famous poem, attempts to interpret which have already been made twice by us Leith. Each time this text was placed in a slightly different context of understanding, which will be done anew in the version proposed below.
Insomnia. Homer. Tight sails.
I read the list of ships halfway through:
This long brood, this crane train,
That once rose above Hellas.
Like a crane's wedge into foreign borders -
On the heads of kings there is divine foam -
Where are you going? Whenever Elena
What is Troy to you, Achaean men?
Both the sea and Homer - everything is moved by love.
Who should I listen to? And so, Homer is silent,
And the black sea, swirling, makes noise
And with a heavy roar Malvina approaches the head of the room.
The above text is nothing more than a poetic reception of Homer's epic. Already in the first line, a special interaction is stated between “one’s own,” the reader’s, and “another’s,” the author’s; if “Insomnia” is “one’s own,” present, vital, testifying to the “here and now” presence of the lyrical hero, tormented by insomnia, then behind the word “Homer” flickers “alien,” the past, the book. The non-prevalence of sentences, the boundaries of which in this case coincide with the individual words we have considered, is extremely important: the reader’s and the author’s are still in a state of some isolation from each other, the overcoming of which is only guessed in Mandelstam’s completion of the line, where the adjective, by the very fact of its appearance in the text, is somewhat opens the previous isolation of the two previous nominal sentences, consisting of one single word. However, the second sentence, along with this, is also a kind of intermediary between the current state of the reader and the “tight sails” that already belong to the artistic world of Homer, and therefore, the “tight sails” that belong to Homer’s bookishness. More precisely, these “tight two hundred and sixty sails” that arose in the reader’s imagination equally belong to the world of Homer’s heroes and the world of the lyrical hero Mandelstam, tormented by insomnia. They, of course, are “between” Homer’s text and the consciousness of Mandelstam’s reader. However, if for the latter this is only a “second” reality, a kind of book illusion and “appearance”, “another life”, then for Homer’s heroes the world of “tight sails” is precisely the life (but their life) sphere, their only and eternal present . At the same time, in order for the intermental “between” to be fully realized and to receive the intensely active form of presence characteristic of this work (hence “Tight Sails”), a special meeting of “us” and “alien” is necessary. Actually, the last sentence of the line still represents the preliminary result of the supposed aesthetic meeting: that is why this peculiar result is located at the end of the line, and not literally “between” the reader’s and the author’s spheres of presence.
The famous “list of ships” is interpreted by its interpreter alternately as “long brood”, “crane train”, “crane wedge”. This interpretation combines not only the bookish and the real, but the human and the natural. The initial "bird" comparison with the "brood" is then refined through the correlation with the human one ("train"), to then culminate in the "bird" assimilation. As a result, the unique event of human history - the campaign against Troy, it turns out, has not only “human” analogues, but also natural ones: the annually repeated seasonal migrations of cranes, just as driven by “love” (“everything moves by love”), like the campaign of the Greeks.
Although the historical time of the Achaean campaign is irreversibly left in the past, it can be comprehended and understood by Mandelstam’s interpreter as essential for his life, and not just as one of the links in linear history, by placing it in a different (non-linear) context of perception: this is a historical event compared and realized by its persistent likening to a natural phenomenon: a crane wedge, that is, what was before the campaign, and during the campaign, and after it.
For Homer, the campaign of the Achaeans “to foreign borders” is significant and significant precisely because of its uniqueness and fundamental irreproducibility: it is something that is unlike anything else. His epic greatness, from this position, is unshakable and stable, no matter how many centuries have passed since the Trojan War. From this “epic” point of view, only that which is unique and irreproducible is significant (and worthy of remaining in the memory of posterity): everything else loses the privilege of surviving centuries and is not worth describing. This “rest” seems to not exist for the epic consciousness (just as for the Russian chronicler there were years in which “there was nothing”). That is why Homer, himself already separated from the time of this campaign by an epic distance, turns precisely to this historical event, which is why he tries in his description of the heroes to “reconstruct” certain “accurate” details relating to the participants and heroes of the war with Troy.
Hence the famous description of ships, their list (“list”), which, according to I.F. Annensky, “was real poetry while he inspired (emphasized by the author. - I.E.” Alice. This “list” is the word of Homer, sent to his descendants. As the Russian poet and excellent expert on antiquity rightly notes, “the names of the navarkhs who sailed under Ilion, now saying nothing, the very sounds of these names, forever silent and perished, in the solemn cadence of the lines, also no longer understandable to us, entailed in the memories of the ancient Hellenic living chains of blooming legends, which in our days have become the faded property of the blue dictionaries printed in Leipzig. What is so tricky if once even the symbols of names (emphasized by the author - I.E.) to the music of a verse evoked in listeners a whole world of sensations and memories, where the cries of battle mixed with the ringing of glory, and the shine of golden armor and purple sails with the noise of dark Aegean waves."
Why is the famous “list of ships” read only “to the middle”? Is it because to the modern reader this “list... seems... rather boring” Nat, because the cultural code is forever lost, and without it it is impossible to adequately understand this word of Homer? If this assumption is correct, then the vector for reading Mandelstam’s text may be as follows: the initial “insomnia” of the lyrical hero is so “overcome” by the Homeric catalog that when reading it, in the middle of this endless and boring list, the hero finally falls asleep. Everything else is an area of sleep, where the realities of the Iliad and the sounds of the sea approaching the “bedside” of the fallen reader are mixed...
However, a different understanding seems more adequate. Returning to the interpretation of the meaning of the “bird” comparison of the list of ships with a crane’s wedge, we note that the Homeric hexameter itself, with which the Iliad was written, also resembles a kind of “wedge”: the rise in tone ends with a caesura after the third foot, and then its decrease follows. There were also legends about the origin of the hexameter as an onomatopoeia to the noise of sea waves running and rolling away from the shore. It follows from this that the list of ships (Homer’s text), the sound of the sea and the crane wedge have a common internal structure Stanislav Kozlov, which is updated in the work in question. If this is so, then the “mirror” repetition of the first part of this structure by its second component (be it a rolling wave, the second half of a crane wedge, or the second hemistich of a hexameter after a caesura) allows the observer to “guess” this repetition (and the very necessity of the existence of this repetition) - without its direct obligatory contemplation, reading or listening - after acquaintance with the first part of this two-member structure.
If the “list of ships” is actually Homer’s word addressed to us, as readers, then Mandelstam’s reader, who reads this list “to the middle” and then interprets Homer in his own context of perception, one might say, understands him perfectly: so according to one half of the crane wedge visible to an observer can be easily reconstructed and “guessed” its other half, even without seeing it directly. It is enough just to know (understand) that this is a flock of cranes.
Of course, in this case, the problem arises of the adequacy of Mandelstam’s reading of Homer’s heroic epic in the given context. A student who has not read to the end not only the Iliad, but even the “list of ships”, and then, in essence, claims that this is a poem “about love” (in any case, “driven” by love as the root cause) is unlikely to can he count on a satisfactory assessment from a professor of antiquity... In fact, would the creator of the epic “agree” with the fact that Elena (“Whenever Elena”) is the real reason (and not the reason) for the historical campaign, without which it is supposedly meaningless and the conquest of Troy (“what is Troy alone for you, Achaean men”)?
Doesn’t such a “willful” reading, as if anticipating later postmodernist extravagant interpretations of classical texts, lead to the silence of the shocked author, as if offended by his descendant who had not read his “list”, in the final third stanza (“And so, Homer is silent”)? It is no coincidence that Mandelstam’s reader’s “provocative” question, addressed to Homer’s heroes and suggesting a distinction between the author’s declarations, which coincide with the beliefs of the “kings,” and some secret one - both for the consciousness of the heroes themselves and their author! - goals: “Where (i.e., actually where and why. - I.E.) are you sailing?” It seems that the equality of the bookish and the natural as a result of this reader’s “mistrust” is violated: the noisy “black sea” seems to rise above Homeric bookishness.
In fact, this is not so. Having already said his word, according to the receptive logic under consideration, Homer is replaced by the word of the sea, consubstantial, as we have already hinted, with the heroic hexameters of the Iliad. It turns out that this is precisely a continuation of Homer’s statement (so to speak, the second - after the caesura - half of the line of the hexameter), and not a refutation of it. The natural “eternity” of the “word” of the sea does not reject the “historicity” of Homer’s word, but forever roots it in the world of human culture.
Neither Homer nor his heroes, the “Achaean men,” “understands” this, so Mandelstam’s reader’s questions addressed to them remain unanswered. From the standpoint of epic consciousness, the natural chaos of the ever-changing sea should be contrasted with the organized order of battle of ships described by Homer. At the level of linear perception, not only Homer’s heroes, but he himself are contrasted with the sea, just as “silence” is opposed to “noise.” It can be said that at this level, the finite verbs of individual lines of Mandelstam’s text (“silent” - “noisy”) are a rhyming pair, forming a typical “binary opposition”. However, at a deeper level of understanding, a moment transgredient to this opposition is revealed - the syntactic construction of a phrase, which, in the excess of the author’s vision, removes the opposition of these imaginary “poles” (their very opposition, like the opposition of “culture” and “nature” does not work, or rather, “cancelled” by the poetics of the work).
Homer and the sea are connected twice by the connecting conjunction “and”. For example: “And so, Homer is silent, / And the black sea, swirling, makes noise.” There is not an unconditional opposing “a”, but precisely “and”. Therefore, we can say that Mandelstam’s reader understands Homer’s heroes (and Homer himself) better than they themselves. Or, at least, pretends to be such an understanding. Is such a reader's claim beyond the spectrum of Lys's adequacy in interpreting the Homeric text? We believe not.
Of course, what is actually “Homeric” in the Iliad and the vector of understanding the epic that Mandelstam outlines are strikingly different. But such a discrepancy is an indispensable and obligatory condition for a “dialogue of agreement” (M.M. Bakhtin), without which the reader’s consciousness is doomed to an unnecessary and empty tautology of the author’s “intention”, even if contained in the text, and philological interpretation is at its limit in such In this case, it seems doomed to strive for an unfruitful “cloning” of a ready-made author’s attitude embodied in the “studied” text (though never reaching this limit). Ultimately, this literalist adherence to the “letter” and not the “spirit” of the work inherits the ready-made “law” of text construction and ignores the irreplaceable personality of the reader: thereby the author’s “law” of writing rises above the reader’s (human) freedom and potentially only “preserves “The author’s past is in the reader’s present instead of significantly opening the vector of this past in the vastness of the incomplete “big time”.
Does Mandelstam “modernize” Homer’s text by clearly emphasizing the role of Helen and, along with this, by the decisive statement “everything is moved by love”? This would happen if “love” was interpreted by him in a context of understanding that was fundamentally different from the ancient one. However, let us pay attention to the fact that in Mandelstam “everything” really moves with “love”: not only ancient characters, without knowing it themselves, but also cranes, and the sea, and the air sphere. After all, the “sails” are “tight” precisely because they are also inflated by “love.” What does the word “love” mean in this context? After all, it is strikingly different from the new European (individualizing) meaning of this word. In our case, we are talking about love-eros, about that powerful Eros, which really permeates the entire ancient culture, and to which not only the elements of the world, but also the ancient gods are subject. Sea foam, which also has an erotic – in the ancient meaning – meaning, is not localized in this type of culture only by the figure of Aphrodite, but, defined as “divine,” is located “on the heads of the kings” sailing to Troy and thirsting for Helen. This pre-personal (in the Christian context of understanding) culture, permeated with a comprehensive physicality that so amazes us, for example, in ancient sculpture, can be perceived as a whole only from the position of being outside of this culture: this is precisely the position declared by Mandelstam.
According to an old school joke, the ancient Greeks did not know the most important thing about themselves: that they were ancient. Despite the sharp, sometimes significant differences between ancient Greek literary genres and genres, as well as between the position of authors expressing different aesthetic views, all literary texts belonging to ancient culture still, in one way or another, manifest the dominants of this culture, its cultural archetypes, its attitudes . Mandelstam tried to understand and formulate precisely such archetypal attitudes, such a cultural unconscious, which Homer was not and could not be aware of, being inside this culture and being defined in relation to his own literary environment - the immediate past, the present and the near future. Mandelstam “unlocked” this attitude focused on the “ancient present,” thanks to which Homer’s voice, without losing his own “self,” acquired hidden meanings that were not imposed on him by the “modernity” of the twentieth century that was relevant to Mandelstam, but although inherent in Homer’s text, fully manifested precisely in a dialogical situation, when the intuition of corporeality ceased to be dominant in Europe, being “overcome” (but not abolished) by a different type of culture.
Summary of a literature lesson on the topic “Osip Emilievich Mandelstam. Life, creativity. Analysis of the poem “Insomnia. Homer. Tight sails..."
He appeared like a miracle.
To be a poet, meter, rhyme, image, even if you master them perfectly, are not enough, you need something else, innumerably more: your own, unique voice, your own, unshakable, attitude, your own destiny, not shared by anyone.
N. Struve
Purpose of the lesson: get acquainted with the life and work of the poet; develop students’ ability to understand a literary text, teach them how to work with text using the research method.
Equipment: laptop, multimedia presentation, handouts (poet), screen.
Lesson type: learning new material.
Comments:
Students prepare a report on the following topics:
1. “Facts” of biography (1891-1938);
2. The history of the creation of the poem “Insomnia. Homer. Tight sails..."
During the classes:
1. Organizational moment.
2. Statement of the topic and purpose of the lesson.
3. Studying new material.
How do you understand A. Akhmatova’s words?
O. Mandelstam is a unique personality with a unique destiny and a poetic gift. It can be compared to a miracle.
The student makes messages “Facts of the poet’s biography.”
Writing in notebooks.
Osip Mandelstam is one of the most mysterious Russian poets, whose contribution to the literature of the 20th century is invaluable. His early work dates back to the Silver Age.
So, Mandelstam’s life, like his works, is interesting, mysterious and contradictory at the same time. This poet was one of those people who cannot be indifferent to everything that happens around him. Mandelstam deeply feels what the true values are and where the truth is... The creative destiny of the poet is the search for a word that would fully express the poet’s inner state. One of Mandelstam’s best works is his poem “Insomnia. Homer Tight Sails...", which was written in 1916 in Crimea (reading the poem by a trained student).
Conversation with students:
What attracted you to this poem, what feelings did it evoke?
What images does it create?
Which lines reflect the main idea?
(the poem attracts with its calmness, mystery, grandeur. The author created images of the Achaeans from Homer’s Iliad, ships, the sea, the lyrical hero. The main idea in the line: all this is moved by love).
A report from a prepared student about known facts related to the history of the creation of the poem.
According to one version, Mandelstam was inspired to write this poem by a fragment of an ancient ship found by Maximilian Voloshin, with whom he was visiting in Koktebel. However, the theme of antiquity as a whole is characteristic of Mandelstam’s early poems. The poet's fascination with the ancient world is his desire for a standard of beauty and for the basis that gave birth to this beauty.
The theme of the sea, like the theme of antiquity in the poem, is not accidental, and is caused not only by the place of birth of the poem: Mandelstam first came to Koktebel in June 1915.
Many critics noted that Mandelstam preferred water to all elements. Moreover, his preference is not rapid streams falling from the sky or rushing through the mountains; he is attracted by calm and eternal movement: lowland rivers, lakes, but more often - the most grandiose form - the ocean, majestically rolling huge shafts. The theme of the sea is inextricably linked with the theme of antiquity: both are majestic, grandiose, calm, mysterious. It is a known fact that Mandelstam during this period of his life was in love with Marina Tsvetaeva, but she did not answer him.
What happens to the lyrical hero?
How does the poem convey the feeling?
(The lyrical hero is tormented by insomnia. On the shores of the Black Sea, he reads Homer, reflecting on the fact that both the Achaeans and Homer were inspired by love).
The mythological basis of the Trojan War was Menelaus' revenge for the abduction of his beautiful wife Helen. Helen, daughter of Zeus and the goddess of retribution Nemisis. The most beautiful of women, she evokes the envy of Aphrodite, the goddess of Beauty.
The very rumor about Helen's beauty can cause strife: all the Hellenic leaders and heroes woo her. Helen will bring pain and dishonor to her husband Menelaus, death to Paris, with whom she will run away, unable to resist the passion inspired by Aphrodite. The city that sheltered the fugitive - Troy - will be destroyed to the ground, most of Helen's suitors who went to the walls of Troy will die.
The Achaean army, ready to stone the queen, will stop before her beauty, and she will be returned home with honor to Sparta. Elena means torch, torch. This name is the focus of all the lines of the poem.
So, the pictures of bygone times come to life before us. The lyrical hero recreates in his imagination the ancient ships that set off to conquer Troy. Where is this said in the poem?
Insomnia. Homer. Tight sails.
I read the list of ships to the middle:
This long brood, this crane train,
That once rose above Hellas.
One gets the impression that the lyrical hero is rereading lines from the Iliad, where the list of ships becomes a symbol of the strength and power of the Hellenes.
What was the reason for the campaign of their troops against Troy?
(The beautiful Elena was kidnapped).
Like a crane's wedge into foreign borders -
On the heads of kings there is divine foam -
Where are you going?
What is Troy alone for you, Achaean men?
The pictures that arise in the imagination of the lyrical hero captivate him and make him think.
What is the meaning of life?
(in the end he comes to the conclusion that everything in life is subordinated to love).
Both the sea and Homer - everything moves with love.
Who should I listen to? And now Homer is silent,
And the Black Sea, swirling, makes noise
And with a heavy roar he approaches the headboard.
So, what brings out the best in a person? (only love makes you perform sometimes unexpected, but the most faithful actions and deeds).
(he calls the ships “a long brood, a crane train, and even more vividly what a comparison is a “crane wedge,” but it also has a real basis. Ships in those distant times, when they went out on military campaigns, really lined up in a wedge).
Let us pay attention to the epithet “tight sails”.
What is he pointing to?
(It indicates that the ships are ready to go to sea.)
Usually, movement in poetry is conveyed through a quick change of verbs, energetic words; Mandelstam has few verbs, most of the sentences are denominative, incomplete, which creates a feeling of slowness and duration. So, before us are ships, so to speak, in motionless motion, the poet created an image of frozen time - the past, forever remaining the present.
Who else does the poet remind you of?
(Kings with “divine foam” on their heads).
What does this mean?
(About their greatness and strength).
To whom are the kings compared here?
(To the Greek gods. One gets the feeling that the gods of Olympus approve of this trip to “foreign borders” for Helen).
What image does Mandelstam introduce in this poem?
(The image of the Black Sea, which “swirls and makes noise”, this image gives the poem brightness and a sense of the reality of what is happening.
Let's pay attention to the vocabulary.
Which one is most important in this poem?
(Nouns: sails, ships, foam, head, sea and there are abstract concepts - insomnia, love)
(They are necessary to understand the idea and theme of the poem).
The poem also contains rhetorical questions. They talk about the special state of the lyrical hero. What condition is it in? (A state of thoughtfulness, reflection, philosophizing).
Homer's "Iliad" becomes for the lyrical hero something mysterious, incomprehensible and beautiful at the same time.
What is the hero thinking about? (entries in notebooks).
About truth, about beauty, about the meaning of life, about the laws of the Universe. And most importantly, love is what awakens humanity to action, and this is where the continuity of generations is manifested.
So, summing up the lesson, I would like to say: “Both the sea and Homer - everything moves with love, you still need to surrender to this movement, submit to the universal law, just as the Achaeans submitted to fate when going to the walls of Troy. This is where the lyrical hero's insomnia comes from. Living life to the fullest, striving for beauty, loving is very difficult, it requires courage and mental strength.”
Conversation based on the analysis of the poem “Insomnia. Homer. Tight sails..."
Students record in their notebooks the features of O. Mandelstam’s poetry
What features of O. Mandelstam’s early poetry were able to be identified through the analysis of the poem “Insomnia...”?
(Understanding art as a connecting thread between generations, understanding life as a movement towards love, requiring courage and mental strength.)
Lesson summary
Reflection
What did we do in class today?
Have we achieved our goal?
How do you evaluate your work?
Teacher's final words
During the lesson, we tried to understand the poems of one of the most mysterious and most significant Russian poets of the 20th century - O. Mandelstam, to understand the features of his work of the early period, the universal significance of poetry; developed skills in analyzing literary texts.
Insomnia. Homer. Tight sails.
I read the list of ships halfway through:
This long brood, this crane train,
That once rose above Hellas.
Like a crane's wedge into foreign borders, -
On the heads of kings there is divine foam, -
Where are you sailing? Whenever Elena
What is Troy alone for you, Achaean men?
Both the sea and Homer - everything is moved by love.
Who should I listen to? And now Homer is silent,
And the black sea, swirling, makes noise
And with a heavy roar he approaches the headboard.
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"Insomnia. Homer. Tight Sails" Osip Mandelstam
Insomnia. Homer. Tight sails.
I read the list of ships halfway through:
This long brood, this crane train,
That once rose above Hellas.Like a crane's wedge into foreign borders, -
On the heads of kings there is divine foam, -
Where are you sailing? Whenever Elena
What is Troy alone for you, Achaean men?Both the sea and Homer - everything moves with love.
Who should I listen to? And now Homer is silent,
And the black sea, swirling, makes noise
And with a heavy roar he approaches the headboard.
Analysis of Mandelstam's poem “Insomnia. Homer. Tight sails"
The work of the poet Osip Mandelstam is very diverse and is divided into several periods, which differ significantly from each other in mood and content. Poem “Insomnia. Homer. Tight Sails” refers to the early stage of the author’s literary activity. It was written in 1915 and was included in Osip Mandelstam’s first poetry collection entitled “Stone.” According to one version, during this period the author was interested in ancient literature and re-read the imperishable works of ancient Greek authors. However, those who were closely acquainted with the poet are convinced that this poem was inspired by a trip to Koktebel to the poet Maximilian Voloshin, who showed Mandelstam an amazing find - a fragment of an ancient ship that could easily belong to a medieval flotilla.
One way or another, in the summer of 1915, a poem “Insomnia”, atypical for the poet and having deep philosophical overtones, was created. Homer. Tight sails." Of course, in it you can find echoes of Homer’s Iliad, or rather, a reference to its part called “The Dream of Boeotius, or a list of ships.” In it, the ancient Greek poet described the flotilla that was going to war with Troy, and the detailed list included about 1,200 ships. Therefore, it is not surprising that, tormented by insomnia, the poet “read the list of ships to the middle.” Arguing on the topic of the Trojan War, Osip Mandelstam draws a parallel between the past and the present, coming to the conclusion that any human actions have a logical explanation. And even the bloodiest battles, treacherous and inexorable in their mercilessness, can be justified from the point of view of the one who initiates them. One of these justifications is love, which, according to the poet, can not only kill, but also give hope for rebirth. “Both the sea and Homer—everything is moved by love,” says the author, realizing that the conquerors did not need proud Troy at all. They were driven by the desire to get the most charming captive in the world - Queen Helena, who provoked the war with her unearthly beauty.
Realizing that feelings and reason often contradict each other, Osip Mandelstam asks the question: “Who should I listen to?” . Even the wise Homer, who believes that if love is so strong that it can spark a war, then this feeling deserves deep respect, cannot give an answer to it. Even if, obeying him, you have to kill and destroy. Osip Mandelstam cannot agree with this point of view, since he is convinced that love should not bring destruction, but creation. But he is not able to refute the great Homer, since there is a vivid example of blinding love that completely destroyed Troy.
The author does not have an answer to this philosophical question, because the feelings experienced for a woman can force some to accomplish a great feat, while others reveal the basest qualities that guide them in achieving their goal. Therefore, Osip Mandelstam compares love to the black sea, which “swirls, makes noise and approaches the head with a heavy roar,” absorbing all doubts and fears. It is almost impossible to resist his pressure, so everyone has to choose whether he is ready to sacrifice his principles and ideals for the sake of a high feeling. Or, on the contrary, it is love that will become the lifeline that will help you get out of the abyss of vice, mistakes and rash actions, and take responsibility for every decision you make and for every word spoken, spoken in a fit of passion or peace.