Look like a living cloud
The shining fountain swirls;
How it burns, how it fragments
There's damp smoke in the sun.
Raising his beam to the sky, he
Touched the treasured heights -
And again with fire-colored dust
Condemned to fall to the ground.About mortal thought water cannon,
O inexhaustible water cannon!
What an incomprehensible law
Does it urge you, does it bother you?
How greedily you strive for the sky!..
But the hand is invisible and fatal
Your beam is persistent, refracting,
Throws down in splashes from a height.
Analysis of Tyutchev's poem "Fountain"
The early period of Fyodor Tyutchev’s work is directly related to landscape poetry. However, unlike his contemporaries such as Afanasy Fet, Tyutchev is trying not only to capture the beauty of the world around him, but also to find a logical explanation for certain phenomena. Therefore, it is not surprising that the poems of the young diplomat, which he publishes under various pseudonyms, are philosophical in nature. However, they also contain a fair amount of romance, because in the first half of the 19th century Tyutchev lived in Europe and met many German poets. Their work has a certain influence on him, and very soon he begins to consider himself one of the representatives of Russian romanticism.
Nevertheless, Tyutchev’s works during this period are distinguished by a certain “down-to-earthness”, because behind the beautiful epithets a deeper meaning is captured. The author constantly draws parallels between man and nature, gradually coming to the conclusion that everything in this world is subject to a single law. A similar idea is key in the poem “Fountain,” written in 1836. Today it is difficult to say exactly how this poem was born. However, it is possible that the author simply observed the fountain, trying to solve its mystery. It is for this reason that the first part of the poem is descriptive and replete with metaphors.
Thus, the poet compares the fountain to a “living cloud” that “whirls” like smoke, but at the same time shimmers in the sun with all the colors of the rainbow. However, the poet is interested not so much in the beauty of the fountain as in the force that makes the water stream rise up to a certain limit. Then, according to the poet, from the point of view of a simple man in the street, something completely incomprehensible happens, since some invisible force returns the flow of water, which “is condemned to fall to the earth like fire-colored dust.”
Of course, no one has canceled the laws of physics, and finding an explanation for such a phenomenon is not difficult. However, Tyutchev is not going to do this, because he does not want to deprive himself of that elusive charm that the most ordinary person gives him. Under the measured murmur of water, the poet tries to comprehend the essence of things and comes to very unexpected conclusions, which he sets out in the second part of his poem.
In it, he finds an undeniable similarity between a fountain, which he calls an “inexhaustible water cannon,” and a person whose life is so reminiscent of a stream of water. Indeed, starting our earthly journey, each of us climbs up an invisible ladder. Some people do it slowly and hesitantly, while for others such an ascent can be compared to a powerful jet of a fountain released under pressure. Addressing an invisible interlocutor, the poet notes: “How greedily you strive for the sky!” However, sooner or later the moment comes when a person’s strength runs out and life turns back. “But the invisible hand of your fatal beam, refracting, throws you down in splashes from above,” the author emphasizes. At the same time, he is aware that almost all people go through this life milestone. Therefore, their resemblance to fountains seems undeniable to Tyutchev. And such conclusions only convince the poet that both living and inanimate nature are subject to a single force, which governs the world at the highest level. We can only obey, because everything has long been predetermined. You can try to reach invisible heights or consider yourself invincible, but sooner or later the moment will still come when the period of ascent gives way to fall. And the faster a person rose up, the faster he would fall, like the spray of a fountain.
The shining fountain swirls;
How it burns, how it fragments
There's damp smoke in the sun.
Raising his beam to the sky, he
Touched the treasured heights -
And again with fire-colored dust
Condemned to fall to the ground.
About mortal thought water cannon,
O inexhaustible water cannon!
What an incomprehensible law
Does it urge you, does it bother you?
How greedily you strive for the sky!..
But the hand is invisible and fatal,
Your stubborn beam refracts,
Throws down in splashes from a height.
Poem “Fountain” by F.I. Tyutchev is very unusual. On the one hand, this is simply admiration for a wonderful picture born of the contrast of light and water (sun and water smoke), but after reading the poem two, five, ten times, you understand that this is not so.
The poem is based on the principle of conversion, i.e. the author says “look” - and a picture instantly appears in your imagination, under the impression of which we are transported to 1836, on one of the clear days of April. The weather is wonderful, hot, and there is a cool fountain nearby. Tyutchev portrays this seemingly indescribable picture, as if addressing you specifically and reciting these poems against the backdrop of the landscape - such an unusual impression is created.
A fountain is not just an architectural structure filled with water that circulates back and forth. It is immediately clear: this is a “living cloud”, consisting of billions of droplets that play and shimmer in the sun, creating a wonderful “fire-colored” smoke.
In the first eight-line, a picture of a fountain sparkling in the sun is drawn in detail, the physical process of raising water to the “cherished height” and subsequent fall under the influence of gravity, as well as the optical effect of light refraction in drops, is surprisingly accurately conveyed.
Tyutchev does not stop at the physical picture, he goes further, bringing his thoughts and identifying the fountain with the “human”. It should definitely be noted that in the second eight-line there is an appeal. The first two verses begin with “O,” which, combined with the special word “water cannon,” synonymous with a fountain, and the epithet “inexhaustible,” convey the author’s admiration. The picture of the fountain dissolves and disappears completely. The word “mortal” dispels it. Here it is - directly human - thought. The thought is unusual, captivating, like the drops of a fountain, and therefore the thought is comparable to the flight of a drop. The comparison is unusual, which is typical of poetic thought. So, the flight of poetic thought, the “cherished height” of which is the recognition of thought.
Thought moves according to the “incomprehensible law,” which means, according to Tyutchev, there is a higher power that controls the direction and content of thought. The fountain rushes to the sky. It is “torn”, this word emphasizes the speed, speed, strength and inevitability of the “human fountain” - thoughts.
Humanity remembers the “persistent rays” launched by the fountain of thought and controlled by the “invisible hand”. A fountain, like a person, can fall apart and die over time; the thought, if it is worthwhile, will be eternal.
Perhaps the main feature of this poem is that two worlds are present and clearly demarcated in it: the world close to the real, in this case the fountain, and the world of thoughts. If in most works of philosophical poetry of the romantic direction you have to look for the interlinear meaning yourself, then here it is given.
Tyutchev even masterfully constructed a description of the painting itself. The first two lines represent a complete thought, a picture appears in black and white, which only represents the scene of action, and at the end there is a “semicolon” - the first stage of the impression has passed. Before our eyes, the picture comes to life, filled with colors: red, orange, yellow. The fountain begins to flow, and slowly, one large drop is visible in close-up. which rises and falls. As soon as it falls, the picture disappears, as evidenced by the “dot” at the end of the first eight-line, and when the drop reaches its apogee, it hangs there for a while, and in this place it glows especially brightly. The duration is shown with a “dash” at this point. The second part begins, the main task of which is to pose the question: “What incomprehensible law is striving for you, troubling you?” And as if to confirm that this question is not meaningless, the picture of a “persistent ray” returns, which is refracted and thrown into the abyss from above.
Tyutchev formulated a question to which we may never find an answer, but we can only rejoice that he asked the questions so well, clearly saw and “collected” the idea that he was able to do the main thing, and this is his great merit.
Tasks:
1. Find in the work the parts corresponding to the “perception”, “interpretation”, “evaluation” of the poem. How did the independent approach to the analysis of the poem manifest itself?
F.I. Tyutchev "Fountain"
Lyrics of the Russian poet F.I. Tyutcheva is philosophical, always imbued with deep thought. However, Tyutchev’s thought is never abstract: it, as a rule, merges with an image, a picture depicting something specific. Thought and image are closely interconnected: the picture gives expressiveness to the thought, and the thought saturates the picture with depth.
In the literal sense, a “fountain” is an architectural structure for supplying water under pressure; in a figurative sense, one can say “a fountain of ideas, thoughts.”
The first stanza consists of eight verses with a ring rhyme: Abba||Abba.
The rings of rhymes give relative independence and closedness to the quatrains included in the stanza. The first four verses depict a picture of a gushing fountain, the next four - the fall of water to the ground. In general, the first stanza paints a picture associated with the fountain as an architectural structure.
The second stanza is a mirror image of the first. It sets out Tyutchev’s philosophical position, which is that human thought, even brilliant, cannot comprehend everything. “The water cannon of mortal thought” is compared to a fountain. This vivid image helps to visually present the picture that worries the author.
Important stylistic possibilities lie in the syntax. The first four verses, united by a common rhyme, represent a complex sentence with a main sentence consisting of one word - “look”, which contains an appeal and an appeal. The absence of a definite reference to the verb emphasizes the importance of the object of attention itself.
The repetition of the conjunction “how” performs the same function, drawing attention to the object of the image - the fountain, connecting the verbs with each other: “swirls”, “flames”, “splits”, which helps to vividly present the picture.
Inversion plays an important stylistic role (“treasured heights”, “fire-colored dust”, “condemned to fall to the earth”), increasing the expressiveness of poetic speech, enhancing the semantic load of words placed at the end of the verse.
The second stanza begins with an anaphora that combines appeals that are similar in syntactic structure:
About mortal thought water cannon,
O inexhaustible water cannon!
Rhetorical exclamations and questions create maximum emotional tension.
Strengthening the expressiveness of speech is achieved by using tropes - figures of speech in which a word or expression is used in a figurative meaning. The poetic language used to depict the fountain is bright, figurative, metaphorically rich (“shining fountain”, “wet smoke”, “like a living cloud... swirling”, “falling down with fire-colored dust... condemned”).
The second stanza as a whole is a detailed comparison of the fountain and human thought, which, like a fountain, rushes upward, obeying some kind of “incomprehensible law.” Tyutchev’s image of human thought is philosophically rich: the metaphor “you greedily strive for the sky” emphasizes swiftness and tirelessness. However, the infinity of thought turns out to be illusory: something, designated by the metaphor “invisibly fatal hand,” interrupts the flight of human thought.
At the end of the poem there is a tragic thought that the world is completely incomprehensible to man.
The person in Tyutchev's lyrics appears as a seeker, a thinker, gifted with high spiritual needs. The words of the biblical prophet: “In much wisdom there is much sorrow, and whoever increases knowledge increases sorrow,” are consonant with the main idea of Tyutchev’s poem “The Fountain.” The poet’s undoubted merit is that he was able to express human wisdom accumulated over centuries in bright, figurative poetic words.
Exercise:
1. Observe how the essay illustrates the thesis about the close relationship between thought and image in Tyutchev’s poem.
2. Give the titles of 2-3 poems by Tyutchev, thematically similar to “Fountain”.
F.I. Tyutchev “She was sitting on the floor”
She was sitting on the floor
And I sorted through a pile of letters,
And, like cooled ash,
She picked them up and threw them away.
I took familiar sheets
And I looked at them so wonderfully,
How souls look from above
The body thrown on them...
Oh, how much life there was here,
Irreversibly experienced!
Oh, how many sad moments
Love and joy killed!..
I stood silently on the sidelines
And I was ready to fall on my knees, -
And I felt terribly sad,
As from the inherent sweet shadow.
There are many works in Russian poetry that depict a person’s feelings at turning points in life. Many of these poems were written by F.I. Tyutcheva.
The poem consists of four stanzas. The first and fourth, associated with the image of the heroine and the lyrical hero (“she”, “I”), are framing; they reflect the behavior and experiences of the heroes of the depicted event.
The lyrical plot is as follows: a woman sitting on the floor sorts out old letters. A man standing aside watches and empathizes with her, sharing her suffering.
The motif of death plays an important compositional role in the poem, running through all four stanzas. It can be traced in the images of “cooled ash”, “a body abandoned by the soul”, “killed love and joy”, “sweet shadow”.
In the first and second stanzas, the greatest attention is paid to the heroine. Her pose (“she was sitting on the floor”) speaks of defenselessness and suffering. The heroine’s behavior is depicted using the verbs “sat,” “sorted,” “took,” “threw,” and “looked.” All of them are imperfect and are used in the past tense, which gives the picture the character of a memory, and the actions of the heroine - duration, extension in time. This emphasizes the burden of memory for the lyrical hero.
The woman’s state of mind is conveyed through an extended metaphorical comparison: “... I watched souls look from above at the body they abandoned.” The comparison emphasizes the irreversibility of the break, the impossibility of returning to the past.
The ellipsis at the end of the second stanza means a pause, a certain silence, incompleteness of thought.
The transition to the third stanza is a sudden, sharp emotional outburst:
Oh, how much life there was here,
Irreversibly experienced!
Oh, how many sad moments
Love and joy killed!…
The culminating nature of the stanza and its special meaning are emphasized by ellipses. We are talking about what is contained in that “pile of letters”: this is a whole life, this is love and joy, which are now in the past, “killed”.
The words “life” in the first verse and “killed” in the last form a semantic ring that enhances the feeling of the tragedy of the experience. The lyrical hero’s relationship to the letters reflects rhetorical exclamations, reinforced by the inversion of “life... irrevocably experienced,” “love and joy killed.” Anaphors also play a reinforcing role (“oh, how much... oh, how much...").
The third stanza ends with the word “killed”, and in the fourth the lyrical “I” appears. A semantic connection arises between the experiences of the woman and the lyrical hero. His detachment is obvious (“silently,” “aside”), but his empathy is also obvious: “I was ready to fall to my knees,” “I became terribly sad.” However, the past cannot be returned, and this is emphasized by the comparison “like from an inherent sweet shadow.” The lyrical hero may feel guilty about what happened, and even repent of it, but he is unable to change anything.
Tolstoy marked this poem with the letters “T.Ch.” (Tyutchev. Feeling.). The great writer apparently believed that the poet was able to convey in this poem those feelings that are difficult to express in words. There are moments in a person’s life when he simultaneously experiences a whole range of feelings. Tyutchev captured one of these moments in poetry.
Exercise:
1. The essay says nothing about the biographical background of the poem. What is she like? Is it appropriate to address it in the context of this essay and why?
2. Find the introduction in the essay and expand its introductory part.
3. Write about your perception of the poem.
ON THE. Nekrasov "Vlas"
In a jacket with an open collar,
With my head naked
Slowly passes through the city
Uncle Vlas is a gray-haired old man.
There is a copper icon on the chest;
He asks for God's temple,
All in chains, poor shoes,
There is a deep scar on the cheek;
Yes with an iron tip
Long stick in hand...
They say a great sinner
He was there before. In a man
There was no God; beatings
He drove his wife into the coffin;
Those who trade in robbery,
He hid horse thieves;
The whole neighborhood is poor
He will buy bread, and in a black year
He won't believe a penny,
He'll rip off a beggar threefold!
I took it from my native, I took it from the poor,
He was known as a kashchei-man;
He had a cool, strict disposition...
Finally, the thunder struck!
Vlas feels bad; calls the healer -
Can you help him?
Who took off the plowman's shirt,
Stole a beggar's bag?
It just can’t get any worse.
A year has passed - and Vlas lies,
And he swears to build a church,
If death is avoided.
They say he has a vision
Everything seemed delirious:
I saw the end of the world,
I saw sinners in hell:
Agile demons torment them,
The fidget witch stings.
Ethiopians - black in appearance
And like coal eyes,
Crocodiles, snakes, scorpions
They bake, cut, burn...
Sinners howl in sorrow,
The rusty chains are gnawing.
Thunder drowns them out with an eternal roar,
The fierce stench is suffocating,
And circles above them with laughter
Black tiger with six wings.
Those are strung on a long pole,
Those hot ones lick the floor...
There, on the charters it is written,
Vlas read his sins:
Vlas saw pitch darkness
And the last one made a vow...
The Lord listened to the sinful soul
He turned back into the open world.
Vlas gave away his estate,
I was left barefoot and naked
And gather for formation
The temple of God has gone.
Since then the man has been wandering
It's almost thirty years now,
He eats alms -
Strictly keeps his vow.
The strength of the whole soul is great
Gone to God's work:
It’s like wild greed
She had nothing to do with it...
Full of inconsolable sorrow,
Dark complexion, tall and straight,
He walks at a leisurely pace
Through villages and cities.
He has no long way to go:
Visited Mother Moscow
And the Caspian Sea is wide,
And by the royal Neva.
Walks with an image and a book,
He talks to himself all the time
And with an iron chain
It rings quietly while walking.
Walks in the cold winter,
Walks in the summer heat
Calling baptized Rus'
For feasible gifts -
And passers-by give and give...
So from the labor contribution
Temples of God are growing
Across the face of our native land...
In Russian folklore and literature, there are many interpretations of the plot about a repentant sinner. Nekrasov’s undoubted merit is that this plot found an unusual embodiment in his work, because it formed the basis of a poem - a genre traditionally related to the lyrical genre of literature. The genre originality of “Vlas” was precisely defined by N. Gumilyov, who considered it one of his favorites. He called this poem a work of “epic-monumental type.”
The concepts of epic and monumental are associated primarily with the image of the main character Vlas, after whom the poem is named.
Composition plays an important role in creating the image of the hero. The poem contrasts “Uncle Vlas - a gray-haired old man” with “Kashchei - a peasant”, “a great sinner”. The story about “Vlas” the righteous, the wanderer is framed by the story of Vlas the sinner. The portrait of Vlas at the beginning of the poem speaks both about his occupation (he asks for God’s temple) and about the fulfillment of his religious duty (an icon on his chest, chains). The open collar of his coat and his bare head create a feeling of Vlas’s openness towards everyone he meets. A stick “with an iron tip” like a wanderer’s staff.
What explains the change that happens to the main character? The plot of the action is Vlas’s illness, a serious illness that struck him for his sins: he killed his wife, sheltered robbers, was selfish and unfair towards his fellow villagers.
Realizing his sins during his illness, Vlas tries to cleanse himself:
... he swears to build a church,
If death is avoided.
However, this sacrifice is not enough, because spending ill-gotten money on the church does not mean atonement. The culmination of the transformation of Vlas the sinner into the righteous is a hellish vision. Stylistically, it goes back to folklore, as evidenced by the characters of the hellish action: “agile demons”, “egoza witch” and all sorts of hellish evil spirits. Ideologically, the scene of hell is connected with Dante’s “Divine Comedy,” but the picture of human sins is depicted here as both terrible and ironic:
Sinners howl in sorrow,
The rusty chains are gnawing.
The picture of hell is visible, real, although it appears in Vlas’s sick imagination. A psychological turning point occurs when Vlas comes to the realization of his last vow: to give everything to the poor and go collect money for the temple.
The story of Vlas the sinner is introduced into the poem using the word “they say”; this emphasizes the importance not so much of the hero’s backstory as of his present. His insight came at a great price, but...:
Since then the man has been wandering
It's almost thirty years now,
He eats alms -
Strictly keeps his vow.
The figure of Vlas evokes not so much compassion as respect. The author speaks of the great strength of his soul, inconsolable sorrow - these are the traits of a truly religious man, a wanderer, and the Russian people have always treated them with such love.
“In the cold winter” and in the “summer heat” “he walks slowly through villages and cities.” An image of Orthodox Rus' and its expanses emerges:
... I visited Mother Moscow,
And the Caspian Sea is wide,
And by the royal Neva.
Syntactic parallelism and anaphora emphasize the breadth of the native land. Russia appears in the poem as a responsive and generous soul. The main idea of the poem is not that Vlas became a righteous man, but that
...from the labor contribution
Temples of God are growing
Across the face of our native land...
The rhyme “passers-by” - “God’s” is interesting. In the literal coincidence of several sounds and the semantic roll call of the words that make up the rhyme, Nekrasov’s love for his native land, its people, which the author considers patriarchal, deeply moral, “God’s,” is visible.
The poem “Vlas” occupies a special place in Nekrasov’s work: being a singer of popular suffering, the poet rarely addressed religious themes. In this poem, he managed to create not only a vivid image of a person from the people, but also to depict important features of the people as a whole.
The poem was highly appreciated by such outstanding artists as Dostoevsky, Gumilev, Akhmatova. It attracts with its truly folk simplicity, the intonation of the tale, the songfulness, and the charge of moral teaching contained in it.
2. How does the essay argue for the thesis that the analyzed work belongs to the epic-monumental type?
ON THE. Nekrasov “The heart breaks from agony...”
My heart breaks with agony,
It’s hard to believe in the power of good,
Listening to the reigning sounds in the world
Drums, chains, axe.
But I love, golden spring,
Your continuous, wonderfully mixed noise;
You rejoice, without stopping for a moment,
Like a child, without care or thought.
In the charm of happiness and glory,
You are completely devoted to the feeling of life, -
The green grasses are whispering something,
The wave flows talkatively;
A foal neighs merrily in the herd,
The bull with the ground pulls out the grass,
And in the forest a blond child -
Chu! shouts: “Praskovya, ah!”
Over the hills, through the forests, over the valley
The birds of the north fly and scream,
You can hear the song of a nightingale at once
And discordant squeaks gabble,
The roar of the troika, the creaking of the cart,
The cry of frogs, the buzzing of wasps,
The crackling of fillies - in the expanse of freedom
Everything merged into the harmony of life...
I've heard enough noise...
Stunned, depressed by him,
Mother Nature! I'm coming to you again
With my everlasting desire -
Turn off this music of anger!
So that the soul feels peace
And an eye that has received its sight could
Enjoy your beauty.
For Nekrasov, the people were the “soil” and “foundation” of national existence. Folk life on the pages of his poetic works turned out to be multicolored and varied, and the methods of its poetic reproduction are diverse. For example, in the poem “The heart breaks from torment...” the theme of people's suffering is closely interconnected with the image of nature. The image of a lyrical hero contrasting the harmonious world of nature with the cruel world of people unites them.
The poem depicts a spring landscape, bright, emotionally rich, colorful. The main color of spring is green, but the poet calls it “golden.” The epithet “golden” may be associated here with the bright spring sun, flooding everything around with its golden light. It is also possible that this epithet reflects the author’s mood: spring is dear to him, it pleases him with a picture of awakening nature. Spring brings with it a feeling of celebration and harmony of life. “A continuous, wonderfully mixed noise” consists of different sounds: the whisper of green grass, the sound of a wave, the neighing of a foal, a child’s cry, a nightingale’s melody, the squeak of a jackdaw, the cry of a frog, the buzz of a wasp. These are the sounds of living life. Even the creaking of the cart and the roar of the troika do not disturb this harmony, because they are associated with the peaceful life of the peasants: its holidays (troika) and everyday life (cart).
The image of spring, its sound picture are compositionally contrasted with “other noise”, and the “harmony of life” is contrasted with the disharmony of social relations, good with evil. The poem consists of three parts, in the first of which the central image is “the reigning sounds of drums, chains, and an ax in the world.” These sounds give rise to images of violence, punishment, and oppression in our minds. The word “sounds” is connected by cross rhyme with the word “torment”. The lyrical hero expresses his attitude towards the people's suffering: his heart “breaks” and he loses faith in the power of good.
The second part of the poem is contrasted with the first. The “music of anger” is opposed here by a wonderful spring noise. This image is permeated with motifs of childhood (child, foal, jackdaws), freedom, a sense of homeland, its open spaces (hills, forests, valleys). If the sounds of violence are associated with death, which is symbolized by an axe, chains, drums, then the sounds of spring are with life:
In the charm of happiness and glory
You are completely devoted to the feeling of life...
In the third stanza we see the result of the opposition. The image of “Mother Nature” appears as the only force capable of “drowning out the music of anger”, helping to forget, and detachment from the terrible everyday life. The lyrical hero is looking for more than just consolation. He needs to draw strength from somewhere to fight, and nature gives him this strength.
In many of Nekrasov’s poems the theme of people’s suffering sounds more clearly than in “The heart is torn from agony...”, but this poem occupies an important place in his work. In its lyrical power it is not inferior to the famous poems “A Knight for an Hour”, “In full swing of the village suffering...”. Genuine, sincere compassion permeates these verses. Nekrasov is rightly called the singer of people's suffering. “For a drop of blood shared with the people,” the poet earned both the recognition of his contemporaries and the gratitude of his descendants.
Exercise:
1. Observe how the composition of the poem is discussed in the essay. What is the main compositional technique here?
2. What does the “musical” theme sound like in the poem?
3. What is unique about the lyrical hero’s worldview?
A.A. Akhmatova “I learned to live simply, wisely...”
I learned to live simply and wisely,
Look at the sky and pray to God,
And wander for a long time before evening,
To tire out unnecessary anxiety.
When the burdocks rustle in the ravine
And the bunch of bright red rowan berries will disappear,
I write funny poems
I'm coming back. Licks my palm
Fluffy cat, purrs sweetly,
And the fire burns bright
On the turret of the lake sawmill.
Only occasionally the silence cuts through
The cry of a stork flying onto the roof.
And if you knock on my door,
I don't think I'll even hear it.
Akhmatova’s poetic phenomenon is not limited to her own ironic confession “I taught women to speak...” In Akhmatova’s lyrics, we are close and understandable not only to the vivid experiences of a woman’s heart, but also to the deep patriotic feelings of the poet, who lived through the tragic events of the twentieth century together with his people. Akhmatova's lyrics are philosophical and genetically connected with Russian classics, primarily with Pushkin. All this allows us to talk about her as one of the best poets of the twentieth century.
The poem “I learned to live simply, wisely...” reminds us
about a young poetess who has just published her first collections
“Evening” (1912) and “Rosary” (1914), which earned the approval of experts and the favor of discerning readers. The unexpected metamorphoses of the lyrical heroine, her variability, the authenticity and drama of her experiences, the poetic skill of the author of these books attract us even now.
“The Rosary,” dedicated mainly to the theme of love, opens with an epigraph from Baratynsky:
Forgive me forever! but know this
That there are two guilty
Not just one, there are names
In my poems, love stories.
Reading the poems of the cycle, you notice that in many of them, in addition to the lyrical heroine, whose appearance changes, there is also a lyrical addressee: the lyrical “I” and the lyrical “you”. The poem “I learned...” is perceived as a lyrical narrative of the heroine, the starting point of which is “I”, and the final point is “you”.
The first verse sounds like a statement by the lyrical heroine (“I”), emphasized by the form of the verb and convincing in its aphorism. The lyrical “you” will appear in the last, fourth stanza and will sound in the context of the assumption:
which will emphasize the psychological depth of the lyrical heroine’s experiences and give a new shade to her “I”. The movement of artistic thought from “I” to “you” is based on verbs, of which there are especially many in the first stanza, and all of them, except for the already noted first, are in an indefinite form. This highlights the significance and permanence of the actions and states they denote. The first stanza of the poem is one complex sentence, the main part of which is very widespread and built on the principle of syntactic parallelism, enhanced by gradation (simple, wise), which emphasizes the intonation of the statement. However, the stressed “and” in the words “scientific” And las", "w And t", "they say And get tired", "tired And“t” introduces some kind of piercing note, which somewhat contrasts with the very content of the statement that a means has been found to cure love. The word “love” is not uttered; here there is a certain “figure of silence,” the meaning of which is hinted at by the striking metaphor “to tire out unnecessary anxiety.” The lyrical heroine appears before us as strong, proud, but at the same time lonely and suffering. Her spiritual world is rich, she strives for a simple and righteous life (“live simply, wisely,” “pray to God”), and this is close to the author - Anna Akhmatova.
The second stanza reveals new aspects of the image of the lyrical heroine, strengthening her connection with the author. The motif of the evening walk, continuing to sound, is first filled with mystery, thanks to the sound recording (“ w ur w at...lopa X And"); then the brightness of sound and colors intensifies (g R come back R yabina yellow-k R asna"), and “unnecessary anxiety” gives rise to a creative impulse: the lyrical heroine turns out to be a poet. She really learned to “live wisely,” for “merry things” are written about “perishable life,” i.e. life-affirming poems. The amazing melodiousness of the verse is achieved by inversion and some special purity of sound:
I write funny poems
About life that is perishable, perishable and beautiful.
All verbs are imperfect, used in the present tense, and the writing of poetry is perceived not only as the result of anxious spiritual languor, humble acceptance of God’s world as corruptible and beautiful, but as a process internally, deeply connected with this world. Unexpectedly, an implicit lyrical motif of autumn appears. The heavy cluster of ripe mountain ash is drooping, and the burdocks are rustling, perhaps because they have dried out. The epithet “perishable” in combination with the autumn motif evokes an association with Tyutchev (“How fading is sweet!..”) and Pushkin (“I love nature’s magnificent withering...”), fitting Akhmatova’s poem into the context of Russian philosophical lyrics. The antithesis of “perishable and beautiful life” enhances this feeling.
The significance of the second stanza, the density of its poetic “substance” is increased by an unexpected and bright rhyme: “burdocks are poems”, which has a deep meaning.
Burdocks in a ravine and a cluster of rowan trees are details of the rural landscape reproduced by the author in accordance with the Acmeist requirement of “beautiful clarity” (M. Kuzmin). Slepnev’s impressions, the “scarce land of Tver” became the most important motif in the collection “Rosary Beads”, convincingly developed in later lyrics. On the other hand, the famous “burdocks” are part of that “trash” from which, as Akhmatova put it, “poems grow without knowing shame.” Thus, it becomes obvious that the poet’s creative credo was already taking shape during the “Rosary” period.
After the second stanza, an intonation change occurs. The high style (“composed”, “perishable”, “beautiful”) is replaced by a simple syllable. Returning from the world of poetry occurs as naturally as leaving it. The appearance of a “fluffy cat” seems to bring a feeling of homeliness and tranquility, enhanced by alliteration (“ l izhet - l adon - mur l yacks mind l“no”), but the enclosure of the space by the protective walls of the house does not arise. A bright fire “on the tower of a lake sawmill,” like a beacon for someone who has lost their way, and the sharp cry of a stork, a bird symbolizing home, family, create an alarming background for the anticipation of the event. At the sound level, it is expressed by the alternation of sounds “sh” - “zr” - “pr” - “sh” - “kr” - “sh” - “sh”. ("Lee w b and sp caustic etc cuts the tee w b cr hic stork, flying off w him on the roof w y...").
The ending of the poem is unexpected:
And if you knock on my door,
It seems to me that I won’t even hear, -
and at the same time justified. The psychological subtext of the last two verses is obvious, thanks to the intensification expressed by the introductory “it seems to me”, the intensifying particle “even”, assonance (“to A getting married I d A same"). The lyrical heroine waits for this sudden knock on the door, listening to the silence of the night, peering into the distant light.
The poem “I learned...” is one of the best in early Akhmatova’s lyrics. It is deep in content and perfect in form. The strength of feeling and the significance of the lyrical heroine’s experiences are depicted by the poetess with the skill of a great artist. The poetic language of the poem is laconic, devoid of pretentiousness and complex symbolism. This is the so-called “spoken verse”, aimed at women’s spoken language. At first glance, this style corresponds to the canons of Acmeism, the declaration of “joyful admiration of being” (N. Gumilyov). However, Acmeism sank into oblivion, and Akhmatova continued to “live wisely” and compose poems about life “perishable and beautiful.”
The first resounding success did not foretell a cloudless creative path for Akhmatova. She had to endure both persecution and oblivion. Real fame came to her after her death. Anna Akhmatova has become a favorite poet of many art connoisseurs both in Russia and abroad.
Exercise:
1. How does the creative history of a poem help you enter its artistic world?
2. What is unique about the lyrical hero of the poem?
3. What features of the sound organization of poetic speech are noted in the work? How do these elements of form relate to content?
A.A. Akhmatova "Seaside Sonnet"
Everything here will outlive me,
Everything, even dilapidated birdhouses
And this air, spring air,
With an unearthly irresistibility,
And over the cherry blossoms
The radiance of the light month is pouring.
And it seems so easy
Whitening in the emerald thicket,
I won’t tell you where the road is...
There among the trunks it is even brighter,
And everything looks like an alley
At the Tsarskoye Selo pond.
Human life is an endless series of days and nights, sunsets and sunrises. It is never monotonous, it is full of mysteries. A writer is an artist of life, striving to capture this entire picture on paper, without missing a single phenomenon. That is why literature is so rich, bright, mysterious, and when choosing one favorite work, the “caring” memory gives the reader more than a dozen of them. Many of these works deal with a topic that was exciting in the past, exciting today and, undoubtedly, important for the future - the theme of eternity and mortality. Various authors touch on the philosophical problem of the perception of these two principles, the mysterious interaction of life and death: some people are afraid of death, some are constantly attracted to them, and some are playing with death, not believing in its proximity. In the work of A.A. Akhmatova’s “Seaside Sonnet”, the road to another world does not seem anything terrible, similar to the formidable “memento more”. The poem pacifies with its deep, by no means ostentatious belief in eternal life and reconciles with the thought of death.
This sonnet was written in Komarov, a small place on the shores of the Gulf of Finland. In one note about Lermontov, Akhmatova mentioned that he, looking at the Marquis’s puddle, wrote: “A lonely sail is white...”, and the poetess herself transferred to the shore of the Gulf of Finland “both the shine, and the shadow, and the talk of the waves” of the southern sea and writes “Seaside Sonnet” - an epitaph to “blooming cherries”, youth, memories:
Bays cut the low shore,
All the sails fled to the sea,
And I was drying my solar braid
A mile from the ground on a flat stone.
And I didn’t know at all that this was happiness.
(A. Akhmatova. “Near the sea.”)
Already in the title, Akhmatova designates the genre form of the poem - the sonnet, strictly maintaining it throughout the entire work. The poem has all the parts corresponding to a sonnet. In the first stanza there is a statement: “Everything here will outlive me...” Hyperbole (“everything”) enhances the feeling of human frailty and the inviolability of everything around us. In the second stanza, doubts about human mortality began to be heard, and an image of eternity appeared. In the light glow of the month, a lunar road appears. She beckons “with an unearthly irresistibility,” beckons to cross the threshold from endless frailty into the abyss, as my favorite hero, the procurator of Judea Pontius Pilate, once did. But the end of the path is not yet visible, it is hidden by a figure of silence (“the road I won’t tell you where...”). Next comes a generalization: the road becomes more clear. In the fourth stanza there is a conclusion, the end of the path. The lunar road led the poetess to Pushkin. “It’s even brighter there among the trunks,” because Pushkin is there. Akhmatova reaches out to this light:
Cold, white, wait,
I, too, will become marble.
(A. Akhmatova. “In Tsarskoe Selo.”)
The poem moves from statement to conclusion intuitively. There is no strict logic in it. Artistic space is a kind of border between life and eternity - three-dimensional, open. Poetic time is infinitely conditional: the future and the past are so intertwined that the sense of time has disappeared.
“Seaside Sonnet” is not replete with numerous artistic techniques: the poem has only one epithet - “emerald” thicket, but it sparkles with pure Pushkin colors. Inversion (“with an unearthly irresistibility”) enhances the desire for the unearthly. The poetic meter chosen by Akhmatova (iamb) does not contradict the elegiac mood of the sonnet. Pyrrhichia lighten this meter and give the poem a special melody.
The sonnet as a poetic genre arose in the thirteenth century and was especially popular in Renaissance poetry:
The stern Dante did not despise the sonnet,
Petrarch poured out the heat of love in him,
The creator of Macbeth loved his game,
Camões clothed them with mournful thoughts.
(A.S. Pushkin. “The stern Dante did not despise the sonnet...”)
Akhmatova continues this poetic tradition. Unlike sonnets, in which the lyrical, love principle predominated, “Seaside Sonnet” is imbued with a deep philosophical meaning. Akhmatova was not an innovator in this; A.S. was the first to give the sonnet a philosophical sound. Pushkin. This is another thread connecting the two great poets of the “golden” and “silver” ages.
Among the works written by the late A. Akhmatova, there are many masterpieces: “Requiem”, “Poem without a Hero”, “Wreath for the Dead”. But it was the small, bright “Seaside Sonnet” that I remember. He captivates with quiet sadness about the irrevocable and unforgettable, attracts with the image of a tired, proud Russian woman who has endured a lot, but is not broken.
Exercise:
1. What is the justification for including in works references to the facts of the author’s creative biography, mentioning and citing other works?
A.A. Akhmatova “Seaside Sonnet”
At that time I was visiting the earth...
A. Akhmatova
In Russian and world literature there are many lyrical works devoted to the eternal themes of life and death. Among these amazing and, of course, noteworthy poems, I am most attracted to “Seaside Sonnet” by Anna Akhmatova: it most fully corresponds to my current understanding of the world order. Man is often concerned about the eternal problems of life and death, his destiny here on Earth. These questions are among the first to arise for many young people who are setting out on their own journey through life for the first time. Certain answers to these questions can greatly influence a person’s future life.
Anna Akhmatova's philosophical poem reveals the theme of the eternal and the transitory, their connection with each other, and emphasizes the infinity of life, continuously flowing from the past to the future.
From the title and form of the poem (two quatrains and two tercets) it becomes clear that this is a sonnet, and this, in turn, suggests that the poetic idea of the work must be revealed according to strictly defined rules.
The very first line of the poem makes the statement clear:
Everything here will outlive me.
A feeling of the frailty of earthly existence is created, especially strengthened by the repetition of the words “everything - everything”, “air - air”. The lyrical hero realizes how small and insignificant his earthly life is. The image of “decrepit birdhouses” and the metaphor “spring air, the sea has completed its flight,” which has a hint of hyperbole, convey a feeling of the fleetingness of life “here” and the inevitability of leaving for some other world.
The lyrical hero of the sonnet is conditional: in the text of the poem there are no verbs or adjectives of the feminine or masculine gender corresponding to the lyrical hero, the only word directly related to him is the pronoun “me”. This achieves a high level of generalization, in which there is a philosophical overtone: any person sooner or later thinks about eternal questions.
The next stanza indirectly expresses doubt about the insignificance of man’s earthly life, and the vivid metaphor “the voice of eternity” suggests the existence of an unearthly world in which what man has done on Earth will certainly be reflected. What was created in this “old” world will find new life in “eternity.”
Thus, after the first two stanzas, the sonnet identifies two worlds: the one that exists now on Earth and the one that exists forever everywhere. Space and time merge together in the poem, forming an indivisible whole. The lyrical hero seems to be balancing on the edge of the eternal and the present. It is no coincidence that the sonnet is called “seaside” and not “sea”. Anna Akhmatova also emphasizes the existence of a certain boundary. The symbol of the eternal is the sea, the element, and the present is introduced by the word “here” in the first line of the poem.
Without a doubt, there must be some kind of connection between the worlds. And, indeed, the symbolic image of the road stretching into eternity appears before us in the form of the radiance poured out by the month in the fourth line of the second quatrain. The motif of the lunar path will continue to be heard further in the poem. A little earlier, the image of a “cherry blossom” appears, associated with the lunar path. The adjective “blooming” is important here, helping to restore this connection: blooming is life.
Each person has his own path to understanding his purpose, the road to the eternal. To confirm this idea, Akhmatova uses the technique of default:
I won’t tell you where the road is...
Incompleteness allows us to emphasize the uniqueness of everyone’s path, the impossibility of planning and accurately defining this path in advance. For Anna Akhmatova, her road led to the Tsarskoye Selo pond, the image of which symbolizes the “cradle” of Russian poetry associated with the name of Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin.
The transition from the present to the future at the beginning of the sonnet and the return to the times of Pushkin at the end significantly expand artistic time and space, creating the impression of their continuity and infinity.
The language of the poem is very organic. Anna Akhmatova does not resort to special, deliberate imagery, but at the same time, she perfectly uses a variety of artistic techniques, for example, the extended metaphor “spring air, the sea has completed its flight.” The epithet “emerald thicket” is reminiscent of the bright colors of Pushkin’s “Winter Morning”:
The transparent forest alone turns black,
And the spruce turns green through the frost,
And the river glitters under the ice.
The feeling of continuity and infinity of time and space is created through the use of ring rhymes in the first and second stanzas. The iambic verse of the sonnet contains a large number of spondees and pyrrhics, which facilitates the rhythm, enhances the necessary stress and gives the poem an elegiac intonation.
If we talk about the structure of the poem as a whole, then it is typical for a classic sonnet: at the beginning there are two quatrains, united by a surrounding rhyme:
Anna Akhmatova does not answer in “Seaside Sonnet” those eternal questions to which one would like to find answers, and hardly anyone on Earth knows these answers. But this is not the most important thing, it is much more significant that a person lives for a reason, but tries to find his path, his calling, his place in life. It is important that a person believes that everything he has created will not be forgotten after his death and that he will leave his mark on the “sand of time.” This is exactly what Anna Akhmatova’s poem is about, which is why it rightfully belongs to the golden fund of both Russian and world poetry.
Exercise:
1. Compare the texts of this and previous essays devoted to the analysis of the same poem. Note the commonality in the approaches of both authors and the uniqueness of each of them’s interpretation of the poem.
S.A. Yesenin “Soviet Rus'”
That hurricane passed . There are few of us left .
There are no friendships at roll call for many.
I returned again to the orphaned land,
Which I haven't been to for eight years.
Here even the mill is a log bird
With only one wing, he stands with his eyes closed.
I don't know anyone here
And those who remembered have long forgotten.
And where my father's house once was,
Now there is ash and a layer of road dust.
And life is in full swing.
They're scurrying around me
Both old and young faces.
But I have no one to bow my hat to,
I don’t find shelter in anyone’s eyes.
And thoughts pass through my head:
What's the homeland?
Are these really dreams?
After all, for almost everyone here I’m a gloomy pilgrim
God knows from what distant side.
I, a citizen of the village,
Which will be famous only for that,
That a woman once gave birth here
Russian scandalous piita.
“Come to your senses! Why are you offended?
After all, this is just a new light burning
Another generation at the huts.
They will probably be more interesting -
It’s no longer a village, but the whole earth is their mother.”
Ah, homeland! How funny I have become.
A dry blush flies onto sunken cheeks,
The language of my fellow citizens has become like a foreign language to me,
I'm like a foreigner in my own country.
This is what I see:
Sunday villagers
They gathered at the volost as if they were going to church.
With clumsy unwashed speeches
They discuss their “live.”
It's already evening. Liquid gold plating
The sunset sprinkled the gray fields,
And bare feet, like heifers under the gate,
Poplars were buried in the ditches.
A lame Red Army soldier with a sleepy face,
Wrinkling my forehead in memories,
Tells important stories about Budyonny,
About how the Reds recaptured Perekop.
“We have him - this way and that way,”
This bourgeois... who... is in Crimea..."
And the maples wrinkle with the ears of their long branches,
And the women groan into the mute semi-darkness.
The peasant Komsomol is coming from the mountain,
And to the harmonica, playing zealously,
The propaganda of Poor Demyan is singing,
Announcing the valley with a cheerful cry.
This is how the country is!
Why the hell am I
Sorry, dear shelter.
What I served you with, and with that I am satisfied,
Let them not sing to me today -
I sang when my land was sick.
I accept everything.
I take everything as is.
Ready to follow the beaten tracks.
I will give my whole soul to October and May,
But I won’t give the lyre to my dear one.
I won't give it into the wrong hands,
Not my mother, not my friend, not my wife.
Only she entrusted her sounds to me
And she just sang tender songs to me.
Bloom, young ones! And have a healthy body!
You have a different life, you have a different tune.
And I will go alone to unknown limits,
The rebellious soul has been pacified forever.
But even then
When in the whole planet
The tribal feud will pass,
Lies and sadness will disappear, -
I will chant
With the whole being in the poet
Sixth of the land
With a short name “Rus”.
In 1924, Yesenin was the first among the writers of that time to touch upon the topic of the fate of “native abodes” in his poems from the point of view of a newfound view of the world. The first such work was the poem “Return to the Motherland,” which sounds deep melancholy and sadness from the irreversible changes in the life of the homeland and a strange feeling of the invisible abyss that lies between the lyrical hero and the “new” village.
This theme was voiced with enormous, almost epic power in the poem “Soviet Rus'” written at the same time. This is one of the most profound and perfect creations of late Yesenin.
The very name “Soviet Rus'” already speaks of the complexity of Yesenin’s perception of the then way of life. The word “Rus” recalls the centuries-old traditions of the Russian people, their faith, and the complex and glorious historical path of their native country. And the adjective “Soviet” sounds like an antithesis; this word already speaks of a new system that has nothing in common with Russia, Orthodox Russia.
The very first line of the poem contains the motif of revolution, which the author compares to a hurricane. This comparison is quite traditional in Russian literature. In the first quatrain there is a parallel with Pushkin, with his poem “Again I visited...”
Once again I visited that corner of the earth,
Where I spent two unnoticed years as an exile,
Both here and in “Soviet Rus'” the motif of a lost home is heard. In the third verse, Yesenin uses the metaphor “orphaned land” to emphasize the emptiness that the lyrical hero felt upon returning to his native village. And indeed, the epithet “orphaned” fits the description of present-day Russia perfectly. We are talking not so much about orphaned families, but about the loss of historical statehood, faith, and warmth of heart. Here you can also hear the biblical motif of the prodigal son, who returned to his homeland after many years of wandering. But, unlike the biblical hero, the lyrical hero of the poem does not find forgiveness and a warm welcome in his native land. On the contrary, he feels loneliness and alienation here:
That sad joy that I was alive?
The oxymoron “sad joy” further enhances the sad intonation of these lines. In the second stanza, the image of the mill appears as a symbol of the homeland, a symbol of the Russian village. The author compares this mill to a bird “with only one wing.” Here you can hear the motive of inferiority. Just as a bird unable to fly loses its meaning in life, so the mill in the “new” village has lost its purpose.
In the third stanza, the motif of a burnt house, the motif of ashes, echoes Pushkin’s poem “Two feelings are wonderfully close to us...” Yesenin’s lines are largely autobiographical. It is known that in 1922 the house of Yesenin’s parents burned down. But here the ashes on the site of the father’s house rather personify the collapse of the old world, the old way of life against the backdrop of a new world order.
At the beginning of the fourth stanza, the poetic line “breaks”. The author puts the poetic thought “And life is in full swing...” in a separate line, followed by a pause. Here the antithesis, based on the contrast between the bustle of life and the thoughts of the lyrical hero, catches the eye. The motif of an exile in his native country also sounds. “In no one’s eyes” the lyrical hero finds love and understanding.
The first 4 stanzas can be called the introductory part of the poem. The main story begins with the reasoning of the lyrical hero. “What is Motherland?” The author highlights this rhetorical question in a separate line to emphasize its significance. The motif of the lyrical hero’s alienation in his native land continues to develop. At the same time, the lyrical hero calls himself a “sullen pilgrim”, says that “in his own country... like a foreigner.” The comparison “pilgrim” is interesting, i.e. a pilgrim, a wanderer who has renounced worldly life for the sake of faith, who lives in his own special world, and people often do not understand him. The lyrical hero, in spite of everything, believes in his homeland, in his fatherland and cannot accept a new “faith”.
Irony and pain are heard in the sixth stanza of the poem. The first line is highlighted as a rhetorical exclamation. Here the author again uses antithesis, combining words that are completely different in style: “baba” and “piit” in one stanza. And all this works to intensify the painful feeling that the hero experiences. Here the theme of the poet and his country begins to sound.
Next, one hears the motive of discord between the mind and heart of the lyrical hero. Intellectually, he understands the changes that have taken place and believes: the future belongs to the younger generation. But the heart refuses to accept the “new” life, it only feels pain. It is very unusual that a relatively young man
(at the time of writing the poem Yesenin was 29 years old) gives way to another generation:
You've already begun to fade a little,
Other young men sing different songs.
They will probably be more interesting -
It’s no longer a village, but the whole earth is their mother.
Here the motive of life's completion appears. In the next stanza one can notice a direct echo with the already mentioned poem “Return to the Homeland”:
And now my sister is divorcing me,
Having opened the pot-bellied “Capital” like the Bible,
About Marx, Engels...
No matter the weather
I haven't read these books, of course.
These lines in some sense explain the phrase: “The language of my fellow citizens has become like a stranger to me.”
Further, an epic element appears in the poem - plot pictures, with the help of which the author depicts the life of the “new” village. To add color and verisimilitude to these pictures, the poet includes words of village everyday life, such as “live”, “bourgeois entogo”, etc. Comparing meetings near the volost with a Sunday visit to church, the poet raises the problem of trampled faith.
The technique of personification, with the help of which an image of nature is created, was also characteristic of young Yesenin. But now the poet uses such epithets as “liquid”, “barefoot”, and compares poplars with the legs of heifers. All this creates a very down-to-earth image of rural nature, in tune with the mood of the poem.
The fifteenth stanza of the poem is its climax.
This is how the country is!
Why the hell am I
Screamed in verse that I am friendly with the people?
My poetry is no longer needed here,
And, perhaps, I myself am not needed here either.
This is a cry from the soul. Here, reflections on his native country reach their climax, the hero fully realizes his uselessness in the “new” world, realizing what an impassable abyss now lies between him and the Russian people he once praised. With the help of assonance (countries A- freak out A- op A l - needed A) the author highlights this quatrain.
The final part of the poem begins with inversion and repetition (I accept everything // I accept everything as it is). The author uses this technique to enhance the logical emphasis, emphasizing the readiness to follow the bitter but inevitable lot, “ready to follow the beaten tracks.”
I will give my whole soul to October and May,
But I won’t give away my dear lyre, -
These lines express the duality of the poet’s worldview. He is ready to come to terms with a new way of life, but he cannot adapt his gift to it.
The penultimate stanza ends with the motif of humility and reconciliation with reality. And the hero wishes the younger generation: “Blossom, young ones! And stay healthy in body!” The author uses the same word to create different images (“fading” - “bloom”), thereby creating a kind of roll call: (“...I began to... fade” - “Bloom, young ones...”).
The hero wishes the younger generation to be healthy in body. Is it because it is very difficult to “healthy” your soul while singing “propaganda”?
The last two lines of this quatrain complete the theme of loneliness, bringing it closer to the theme of the eternal.
You can notice that there are different rhythms in the poem: first there is lyrical intonation, then almost a ditty, and finally again lyrical intonation. And only in the last stanza this intonation, quite consistent with the motive of humility, is replaced by a firm pathetic recognition, as if contrary to everything that was said before. This stanza is written in clear, solemn iambic. These lines state one thing: Rus' is alive. Soviet is just one of the forms of existence of a great, spiritually inexhaustible country, which Yesenin always glorified in his work.
4. How is the work completed? If the final part of the essay does not seem complete enough to you, expand it.
S.A. Yesenin “The feather grass is sleeping. Dear plain..."
The feather grass is sleeping. Plain dear,
And the leaden freshness of wormwood.
No other homeland
Know that we all have such a fate,
And, perhaps, ask everyone -
Rejoicing, raging and tormented,
Life is good in Rus'.
The light of the moon, mysterious and long,
The willows are crying, the poplars are whispering.
But no one listens to the crane's cry
He will not stop loving his father's fields.
And now, when the new light
And my life was touched by fate,
I still remain a poet
Golden log hut.
I see him as a strong enemy
How someone else's youth splashes with newness
To my glades and meadows.
But still, pressed by that newness,
I can sing with feeling:
Give me in my beloved homeland,
Loving everything, die in peace!
Yesenin is a genius, first of all, because he created a uniquely unique image of his native land, different from others. He sang the simple, slightly sad, vast expanse of the Russian land.
The theme of the Motherland runs through all of his work; the “country of birch chintz” became the main love of his life:
If the holy army shouts:
"Throw away Rus', live in paradise!"
I will say: "There is no need for heaven,
Give me my homeland."
Yesenin is called a village poet. Yes, to some extent this is legitimate: he was born in a village, from early childhood the quiet beauty of endless fields, the sweet simplicity of birch and linden trees, the “blue plateau of heaven”, stretching into infinity, entered his soul.
The poem "The feather grass is sleeping. The dear plain..." belongs to the late period of the author's work. Many roads have already been traveled, many words have been said, he is no longer a “village” guy, not a hooligan, but a man who has realized a lot, undoubtedly wiser, tired.
More and more often in his poems there is a motif of memory (“You sing me that song that before...”), an attempt to realize the path traveled (“Who am I? What am I? Just a dreamer...”), and remains unchanged in his poems, the Motherland, still passionately loved and hated at the same time:
Uncomfortable liquid lunarness
And the melancholy of endless plains, -
This is what I saw in my frisky youth,
That, while loving, not only one cursed.
The poem “The feather grass is sleeping...” opens with a short, laconic description. In one sentence, the image of the evening steppe is drawn, when in the deepening twilight nature falls asleep, the wormwood is filled with “lead weight”.
The inversion in the first verse emphasizes the epithet “dear” - this is how the motive of love for the homeland is carefully and smoothly introduced. You feel how dear this plain is to the lyrical hero, personifying his vast Rus'.
In verses three and four he states:
No other homeland
It will not pour my warmth into my chest.
Cross rhyme (“dear-other” and “wormwood-warmth”) gives the stanza a soft, melodic sound. The verb “will pour” is used here in an unusually precise and organic way. It will “infuse warmth” into the soul of the lyrical hero, filling him with inexplicable bliss. The colloquial phrase (“You know, we all have such a fate”) seems to include the reader in a dialogue with the lyrical hero, as if the lyrical hero is addressing the listener, sharing his opinion with him. It is worth noting the pronoun “everyone”: if in the first stanza the double repetition of “me” and “by me” seems to insist on the personal, deeply intimate experiences of the lyrical hero, then in the second stanza the motive of generalization sounds - everyone who lives here “rejoices” rages" and "suffers", but still:
Life is good in Rus'.
Here, that same contradictory, painful, painful feeling of love for the Motherland is revealed, which is inherent in all Russians and which in the West is called the “mysterious Russian soul.”
The light of the moon, mysterious and long...
The image of the moon is one of the author’s favorite images. Yesenin created about 160 original and unusually poetic images of the moon (she is both a “red calf” and a “foal”). Vivid metaphors (“the willows are crying, the poplars are whispering”) lead to the motive of quiet sadness, some kind of bright sadness. And, echoing the last two verses of the second stanza, the poet again states:
...But no one listens to the crane's cry
He will not stop loving his father's fields.
The double negative “no one… will stop loving” seems to insist on this.
The fourth stanza disrupts the smooth flow of poetic thought, and the overall intonation of the poem changes. It should be noted that this stanza is autobiographical. The author himself is clearly recognizable in the lyrical hero. 25th year: a revolution passed, a civil war, the “power of the soviets” was in its heyday. Yesenin had a completely ambivalent perception of the new Russia; he called himself “the most furious fellow traveler” of his new homeland. Desiring with all his heart the revival of his fatherland (“But still I want to see poor, beggarly Rus' as steel!”), he was distrustful of everything “new” (“I will still remain a poet of the golden log hut”).
The cross rhyme in the fourth stanza is interesting: “light-poet”, “fate-hut”. If you look closely, you can catch the interlinear meaning: a poet is a torch, a singer of native songs; The hut is his village destiny, his inextricable, deep connection with his native land.
The fifth stanza conveys the intimate feelings of the lyrical hero, his torment and fears:
At night, huddled against the headboard,
I see...
In this “snuggling” one can hear some kind of anguish and despair.
Against the backdrop of the “new world,” the lyrical hero is proud to be faithful to his albeit backward, but original homeland. The antithesis of “alien” and “mine” further enhances the feeling that the lyrical hero consciously separates himself from “new” - he is different, he is “old”, he does not agree to change.
His glades and meadows are “his” homeland, and no one can or dares take it away.
A comment:
Autograph unknown. List - Muran. album. pp. 87–88.
First publication - Sovrem., 1836. T. III. P. 9, number V, with the general title “Poems sent from Germany” with the general signature “F. T.". Then - Modern. 1854. T. XLIV. P. 18; Ed. 1854. P. 34; Ed. 1868. P. 39; Ed. St. Petersburg, 1886. P. 105; Ed. 1900. P. 108.
Printed from the first edition.
Muran is on the list. album there is a mistake in the 3rd line: “... how deep it goes.” G.I. Chulkov claims that “there are no authoritative handwritten sources” for this poem. In the first five editions, Tyutchev’s favorite signs are preserved: a dash at the end of the 6th line, an ellipsis at the end of the 16th, and in Pushkin’s Sovr. and at the end of the 13th line - an exclamation mark and an ellipsis. But in Ed. 1900 dashes and dots have been removed, which somewhat reduces the dynamics of Tyutchev’s artistic emotion. Ed. Chulkov I prints the poem without highlighting stanzas and without an ellipsis at the end. K.V. Pigarev in Lyrics I - also without this ellipsis.
Dates from the first half of the 1830s; at the beginning of May 1836 Tyutchev sent it to I.S. Gagarin.
"The Fountain" attracted the attention of critics and readers. S. S. Dudyshkin saw the expression of the general artistic principle in verse. “The stream has thickened and is dimming...” and “Fountain”, but in the latter, according to the reviewer, “the image is even brighter and there is even more richness in the colors, but thought breaks through their multi-colored cover more strongly, bearing, however, bright traces the environment through which she passed in the poetic process. Imagine, if you like, the fate of human thought, which, no matter how it strives for heights, always falls down, reaching only a certain limit - it will all appear to you in the form of an inexhaustible water cannon, which rises like a beam to the sky and again falls to the ground as fiery dust.” .
The critic of the Pantheon did not approve of the figurative expression “what law is troubling you,” however, he cut down Tyutchev’s phrase, throwing out the intermediate words standing between “law” and “troubling”, and thereby simplistic the thought-image of Tyutchev: “What incomprehensible law / is striving for you, you wrinkling?
L.N. Tolstoy marked “Fountain” with the letter “G” (Depth).
In the poem they saw Tyutchev's thought about the limited possibilities of poetry; N. Ovsyannikov in a review of the collection. poem. Tyutchev said: “Tyutchev compares the splashing fountain that adorns southern nature with a poet: the poet of mortal thought also has a water cannon rushing to the sky, and someone’s fatal hand overthrows him in the spray from a height.”
Vyach. Ivanov cited “The Fountain” in order to understand the essence of beauty. For him, “ascent” can be a symbol of the tragic, born of separation, personal isolation, which turns out to be sacrificial; he discovered this aesthetic experience in Tyutchev’s image of a rainbow (“in height, she became exhausted”), but, according to this author, “the inclination of the ascended line for the first time brings down on us the charm of the beautiful<...>We are captivated by the spectacle of ascent resolving into descent<...>the triangular tympanum - the “eagle” of the Greek portico and the pyramidal groups of Raphael - are harmonious. Beethoven's starry adagios fall like sunny sparkling splashes, resolving into sparkling scherzi. The round dances of the Naiads and the rhythms of the Muses are intoxicating with the wavy fluctuations of rise and fall.” Vyach. Ivanov found parallels to Tyutchev’s image in other arts, thus isolating precisely the aesthetic essence of an artistic painting. The theorist’s further train of thought led him to ancient religious ideas: “the descent is a symbol - a symbol of a gift. Beautiful is the gift-bearer of heavenly moisture descending from above; Thus, among the ancient marbles, we see the bearded Dionysus, in a wide table, raising a flat cup with his hand - a moist god, raining and life-giving the earth with ambrosian hops, cheering the hearts of people with wine... And only a gift is sweet. Only for the gift is it worth living...” Clarifying the hidden symbolic meaning of the image, Vyach. Ivanov states that “ascension is No to the Earth; descent is a gentle ray of the mysterious Yes.” The perception of beauty, concentrated in Tyutchev’s poem, Vyach. Ivanov finds inspiration in overcoming earthly inertia and in a new appeal to the bosom of the Earth; it is like the breath of “the Mother herself,” her “sighs,” “inhalations”; beauty descends to earth again every time with the gifts of Heaven. A researcher of Tyutchev's text discovered its new meaning, not skeptical (“condemned to fall to earth”), but sublimely mysterious, ultimately associated with religious belief - the gift of Heaven to Earth, and then the association leads to verse. “These poor villages...” and the image of Christ. At Vyach. Ivanov is not so much an analysis of the poem as a subjective philosophical and religious insight that has acquired a universal character, an insight that serves as a free commentary on “The Fountain.”
However, V. Ya. Bryusov did not accept the deep and original ideas of Vyach. Ivanov, he saw only a sad and skeptical idea: “... the world is incomprehensible to man. Tyutchev found a poetic expression of this thought in the comparison of “mortal thought” with a fountain. The jet of a water cannon can only reach a certain, “cherished” height, after which it is condemned to “fall like fire-colored dust onto the ground.” The same is true for human thought: “How greedily you strive for the sky / But the invisible hand of fate / Your stubborn beam refracts / Throws you down in the spray from the heights.” From here it was already one step to the final conclusion: “A thought expressed is a lie!” Tyutchev made this conclusion...”
In order to correctly interpret and read the poem “Fountain” by Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev, you need to know the history of its writing. It was created in 1836, at a time when the author’s poetry was distinguished by its “earthliness.” And this work fully corresponds to the principles that he professed at that time: it shows that both man and nature are subject to the same laws. It is interesting to teach it in a literature lesson in the classroom for another reason: Tyutchev puts many metaphors into his poetic lines, which makes you think: perhaps they were written as a result of observing a fountain, the mystery of which the poet wanted to solve.
In the text of Tyutchev’s poem “Fountain”, one can also see a reluctance to learn the laws of physics that make the jets rise and fall - the author simply wants to admire the charm and think that some secret is hidden in the movement of water. If you read it in its entirety online, you can also see a comparison between the fountain and human life, which in the same way first rushes upward and then returns to the ground. Thus, he concludes that human existence is still predetermined - he is born and dies, like a stream of water from a fountain.
Look like a living cloud
The shining fountain swirls;
How it burns, how it fragments
There's damp smoke in the sun.
Raising his beam to the sky, he
Touched the treasured heights -
And again with fire-colored dust
Condemned to fall to the ground.
About mortal thought water cannon,
O inexhaustible water cannon!
What an incomprehensible law
Does it urge you, does it bother you?
How greedily you strive for the sky!..
But the hand is invisible and fatal
Your beam is persistent, refracting,
Throws down in splashes from a height.