While working on the poem “The Gypsies” (1824), Pushkin created characters and described the life of the gypsies not from hearsay - he carefully studied their life and even lived for several days in a gypsy camp. In 1823-1824, which Pushkinists call the time of Pushkin’s ideological crisis, he was faced with a number of pressing life and creative questions. They primarily concerned the choice of life path (Pushkin was thinking about leaving Russia) and literary style (the poet experienced deep doubts about the prospects of the romantic style). In this difficult atmosphere of reflection and choice, “Gypsies”, the elegy “To the Sea” (1824) were created, and work continued on the first chapters of the novel in verse “Eugene Onegin”.
The plot of “Gypsies” may seem very far from real life. Why did Pushkin turn to such an exotic and unrealistic story? Of course, at the time of creating the work, the poet lives in the south of Russia and encounters many unusual things, and the customs of the nomadic people are interesting to readers from distant capitals. However, the description of gypsy life is not the first most important place in the poem. At the heart of the conflict in the poem is the clash of two opposing ways of life of people - civilization and primitive culture. At the beginning of the poem, Pushkin depicts a gypsy camp and describes the appearance of the hero Aleko in it.
The beginning of the conflict in the poem is outlined in Zemfira’s story about Aleko’s desire to stay with the gypsies. It is indicated through the contrast with the free life of the gypsies:
Like liberty, their night is cheerful
And peaceful sleep under the skies
and the reasons that brought Aleko to them:
He wants to be like us, a gypsy;
The law is pursuing him...
In the conventional language of a romantic poem, Zemfira’s words that Aleko is “pursuing the law” should not be understood to mean that he committed a crime. The hero is a voluntary exile, this is the main type of romantic hero, such as Childe Harold in Byron, the captive in Pushkin’s “Prisoner of the Caucasus” and others. Aleko is running away from a culture where law and coercion rule, personality, freedom of conscience, thought and speech are suppressed - Aleko expresses all this in his passionate monologue to Zemfira.
Aleko’s flight is an unconditional protest against the unacceptable order for a nobleman in Russia, which has a political basis, because it was in 1824 that the discontent of the progressive part of society increased and secret political societies became more active. In 1824 A.S. Griboedov completed the comedy “Woe from Wit,” in which he sharply ridiculed the inert and conservative society of that time.
Aleko's flight is also a protest against civilization, which deprives a person of natural freedom, simple feelings and relationships - friendship and love. The hero hopes to find a decent and free life among free gypsies, whose lives are untouched by either civilization or culture with its conventional laws and personal restrictions. The image of Aleko, of course, contains biographical features - it is not for nothing that Pushkin gives the hero his name, it is possible that someone called Pushkin exactly that during his stay in the camp. Moreover, the fate of the literary hero Aleko resembles the fate of Pushkin, who was in exile.
Meanwhile, one should not simplify the situation of the conflict, since the hero does not simply flee from the “stuffy cities” of his own free will, he is forced by circumstances. The poem contains two main romantic motives, which the poet resorts to when creating the image of the hero - the motive of escape and the motive of exile.
Pushkin does not stop at the simple contrast between nature, the free life of the camp and the “captivity of stuffy cities.” If the poet had not distinguished between romantic fiction and reality, he would probably have left Aleko among the gypsies and thereby resolved the conflict in favor of a simple, natural life without laws, without a developed culture. The “poetic savagery” of the gypsies, as Vyazemsky put it, attracted Pushkin as a vivid background for depicting the conflict. But will Aleko be able to accept not only everyday life, but also the customs themselves, the unwritten rules of life for the gypsies? What does their freedom mean?
The development of the plot leads to the fact that after two years of Aleko’s life, an event occurred in the “peaceful crowd” of gypsies, which for him became a disaster, but for gypsy morals and their natural “philosophy” it was only a natural episode: Zemfira lost interest in Aleko and cheated on him, moreover, just as easily and thoughtlessly as she had brought him to the camp earlier.
Zemfira sings a song calling Aleko “old husband,” but this expression should not be taken literally: Aleko is not old in age, he is a husband who lives with her for a long time, that is, a boring husband. Now she has met another, “fresher than spring, hotter than a summer day,” and, like a young plant, she is drawn to him. Aleko goes on a rampage and goes crazy, but this evokes in Zemfira not sympathy, but fear. Zemfira's father, in order to console the jealous man, tells Aleko his story.
Let us note that both Zemfira and her mother Mariula leave their husbands with their little daughters, that is, they act of their own free will, obeying only the call of nature, knowing neither responsibility nor duty. Zemfira's father accepts this freedom without complaint, as a natural law of life. This is the gypsy life that Aleko could not comprehend, no matter how long he lived among this tribe. He is irreconcilable, introducing his demands, laws and will into the life of the gypsies. Thus, the main moral conflict of the poem is associated with a different understanding of will: “will” as desire and its free execution and “will” as the suppression of another, coercion. This conflict is also insoluble. The culmination of the conflict in the poem is traditional for romantic poetics, occurring in an atmosphere of frantic passions and dramatic actions. So, in the midst of Zemfira’s night date with a young gypsy, Aleko appears. Zemfira dies unconquered, true to her natural freedom; in her feelings there is no shade of eternal love and devotion that romantics endowed their heroines with. She is free to love anyone who captivates her imagination, but the depths of her soul remain untouched.
Thus, the incompatibility of culture and wild freedom, high spirit and crude naivety and, as a consequence, the intractability of the conflict are shown by Pushkin through a love situation. The denouement of the poem is Aleko’s expulsion from the camp.
Pushkin’s thought is that neither escape from real life, nor the most decisive change of place and lifestyle, nor philosophy or beliefs will protect a person from himself, from “fatal passions,” that is, it is impossible to guess the future and isolate himself from it, “ there is no protection from fate,” we must boldly move forward. This explains why Pushkin submitted to the will of the Tsar and went into exile in Mikhailovskoye rather than choose to flee. The poem also reflects a departure from romanticism and the formation of a new artistic style of the poet.
Source (abbreviated): Moskvin G.V. Literature: 9th grade: in 2 hours. Part 2 / G.V. Moskvin, N.N. Puryaeva, E.L. Erokhin. - M.: Ventana-Graf, 2016
The final phrase to the poem “Gypsies”:
And fatal passions are everywhere
And there is no protection from fate
usually used as a humorous and ironic commentary on an emotionally charged, stormy conflict over an unimportant issue. A minor event, however, can, under certain circumstances, lead to global consequences. Pushkin discusses this topic in the poem “Count Nulin”. In “Dead Souls,” Gogol describes how, for a relatively unimportant reason, Chichikov put the whole city on the spot. The significance of the same event, however, can vary greatly among different people and in different communities or circumstances. What is acceptable in one case is considered a crime in another.
Gypsy ethnographers claim that Pushkin did not have the slightest idea of gypsy morals and traditions, and his poem “The Gypsies” can be called an improvisational fantasy in front of photographs of the camp. Despite the excellent external description of the gypsy life, the actual events in the poem do not have the slightest relation to the life of the gypsies, this is only a convenient background for presenting the idea.
Different attitudes towards the same event on the part of the parties involved can cause conflict between personal and social consciousness, as well as between moral conviction and accepted tradition. This happens when a person from one society ends up in another, behaves there in the traditions of his society, but is tried and punished by local law. If at the same time a person lacks conformity, and he cannot accept the rules of the surrounding world, then a tragic conflict becomes inevitable. Refusing to live according to the laws of society, a person will either die or remain completely alone. The European invasion of America led to the destruction of old peoples and traditions, although even today the few remaining Indian peoples defend their right to live as they want on reservations. Horror films love the theme of an alien invasion of Earth. Terrible extraterrestrial viruses in these films threaten to destroy all humanity, but earthlings always defeat them.
One of the myths of gypsy life is the opinion about the so-called “free gypsy love” and in general the nature of “gypsy freedom”. Gypsy law establishes some of the strictest rules of communication between men and women that have ever existed in the world. Let me give you a few typical examples. In some gypsy communities, the murderer is required to be killed, and this leads to many years of bloody conflicts: the one who kills the murderer is also the murderer who needs to be killed. One of the central concepts among the gypsies (whom many consider “dirty”) is the concept of “Sacred Purity”. “Unclean” includes events, objects, people or parts of people. Cleanliness can be “contagious” or “non-contagious.” Some things can be removed by simply washing your hands, while others cannot be washed at all. Something or someone may be called "unclean" by a gypsy court. The most popular “bad” is the lower part of the female body. So the simple contact of a gypsy with a gypsy woman’s skirt makes him “unclean.” Female uncleanness is transmitted not only through contact, but can also flow down. A woman just has to go above men's clothing, food, equipment, etc. to desecrate them. A woman's impurity increases significantly if she is menstruating. The gypsy bath is a moderately unclean object. If a gypsy dropped dishes there, then they need to be thrown away; if they are clothes, then just wash them. Oral sex and other fantasies among gypsies are strictly prohibited. During sex, touching a woman's bottom does not spoil a man's bottom, but it does damage the hands, especially the left hand. After contact with a woman, you should wash your hands. Sperm is unclean and the sheets must be washed after sexual intercourse. A gypsy girl is obliged to marry a virgin or someone who deflowered her. A “dishonest bride” may be stoned, have her hair cut off, or be declared “defiled,” that is, expelled from the camp. For infidelity, a woman is always considered “defiled” and kicked out. A husband can beat his unfaithful wife to death. Husbands' infidelity is often quite natural and he is declared “unclean” only if he goes out too actively. Prostitution is strictly prohibited by Romani law only for women, and same-sex love is only for men. Lesbians are looked at askance, but calmly.
Gypsy law is not tolerant. The rules of communication between gypsies and gypsies and gypsies with non-gypsies are strictly different. Guests of the gajjo are given a separate set of dishes. In some cases, if a guest touches the host's dishes, they then throw them away, because if someone drinks from an unclean, defiled cup, then they themselves will become unclean. It is forbidden to eat food from animals that lick their genitals, cats, dogs, etc. You can’t eat horse meat, because horses are gypsy brothers. The most favorite gypsy food is pork, lamb and chicken. There are many thousands of laws regulating the behavior of Gypsies. This includes food and speech formulas, activities, hobbies, and all the details of life without exception. Moreover, all these laws unwritten. That is, they are observed at the level of obligatory and generally accepted tradition and there is not a single possibility of changing or correcting any law. If a person decides to “become a gypsy”, he must accept and recognize all laws and traditions without exception and strictly follow them. The slightest offense will lead to the fact that one way or another the person will be declared “unclean” and, therefore, expelled from the camp.
Gypsies are able to live and exist completely independently of any state or communal infrastructure “how freedom is joyful in their overnight stay”, they are “free inhabitants of the world”, “children of humble freedom”, “here people are free, the sky is clear”... But, internal the structure of life in such a society dictates so many different attitudes and requirements that for a person accustomed to the “free world”, an attempt to “assimilate” in such a society turns into real torture.
Old man Zemfira awakens:
“Oh my father, Aleko is terrible:
Listen, through a heavy sleep
And he groans and weeps."
If “another mind” exists and can influence people’s lives, is it capable of adapting to the traditions existing in human society? If we are talking about religion, but what position should this “other mind” take so as not to become “an enemy of the human race”? The name "Aleko" has a funny interpretation of "Al and Co". Al is the common root for the family of Semitic gods including El-ohim and Al-lah. This god's "Companies" may include those whom he involved in one way or another in his performances on religious themes. Zemfira in Arabic means "Rebellious". The family of Abrahamic religions is associated with different cultures. The Old Testament contains a dialogue between God and the Jews, which ended with the tragic death of the Jewish state and the destruction of the Jerusalem temple. The basis of Islam is the dialogue between God and the Arabs through the Prophet Muhammad. The New Testament was accepted by "Christians" and the Talmud by "Talmudists." Which of them is the most “rebellious”?
In the tradition of Lord Byron and his Lord Harold, Aleko left society to become “free” from it. He chose “free gypsies” for this, but ended up in a spiritual and moral prison. In a society of strict written laws, Aleko was a criminal. But the world ruled by unwritten traditions, the “world of feeling,” turned out to be more painful than the “world of reason.”
What to regret? If only you knew.
When would you imagine
The captivity of stuffy cities!
There are people in heaps, behind the fence,
They don’t breathe the morning cool,
Not the spring smell of meadows;
They are ashamed of love, thoughts are driven away,
They trade according to their will,
They bow their heads before idols
And they ask for money and chains.
There is a “paradox of prison” when a person, once in prison, can feel freer than in freedom. The police limit physical freedom by confining people to small areas and depriving them of communication with the outside world. But this also means that a person does not have to go to work, go shopping, or take care of his family. All time belongs only to a person, and if he loves reading and thinking more than anything in the world, then now no one can stop him from doing this. So where does this person have more freedom - outside or in prison? They say that in Russia many residents of rural areas themselves strive to be put in prison so that ourselves don't think about how to earn a living. Perhaps this explains such a long existence of serfdom in the Russian Empire.
In Buddhism, Siddhartha Gautama, called "Buddha", initially lived in a palace, but decided to exchange his palace life for freedom in poverty. According to the book of Exodus, Moses lived at the court of the Egyptian pharaoh, and then, having killed a guard, that is, breaking the law, he left with like-minded people into the desert. A micro-community free from a strict system can survive only with an abundance of strict traditions and unwritten laws. Maybe that’s why Moses first had the desire to create for the Jews written law. Some aspects of the life of the gypsies parody the Old Testament commandments about “cleanliness,” “kosher food,” and communication with non-believers. The strictness of life in the ancient Egyptian hierarchy was little better than the regulations on impurity and religious rituals. Only the existence of special traditional strictness allows Old Believers, Jews or Amish to survive, avoiding assimilation with other peoples.
It is natural to assume that if there was a system administrator in our world, he would use the mechanisms for the fastest and most optimal development of both human society and each person individually. The infrastructure of the state, business or national traditions, together with the function of maintaining stability, hinders the development of culture. The freer a society is, the better and more actively its culture develops. Greco-Roman civilization had a vibrant and deep culture, including all aspects of society: mythology, literature, architecture and fine arts. However, why do the Gypsies, traditionally considered the symbol of the “children of freedom,” have such a meager culture, scanty language and almost complete absence of literature? Without a doubt, freedom from external public infrastructures makes them the most survivable people in the world. Gypsies can exist in the most difficult conditions, but the total internal dictatorship of Gypsy law blocks any cultural development. Jews, with equally strict internal regulations of the hostel, also did not develop much my culture. At the same time, the contribution of Jews to world culture and science is significant. Isaac Levitan is considered the absolute genius of the Russian landscape, and Albert Einstein is a symbol of genius in science. The emergence of Christianity disrupted the progressive development of society. The gloomy Middle Ages stopped the development of civilization and culture for one and a half thousand years. It was only with the advent of the Renaissance that the world began to awaken from liturgical sleep. A life that rests only on traditions and rituals is an analogue of death and a crime against moral freedom. A poem by A.S. is devoted to this issue. Pushkin’s “Desert Sower of Freedom”:
Desert sower of freedom,
I left early, before the star;
With a clean and innocent hand
Into the enslaved reins
Threw a life-giving seed
But I only lost time
Good thoughts and works...
!Graze, peaceful peoples!
The cry of honor will not wake you up.
Why do the herds need the gifts of freedom?
They should be cut or trimmed.
Their inheritance from generation to generation
A yoke with rattles and a whip.
Vladimir Vysotsky has a song with a similar content: “Give the dogs meat.” If the normal instincts of society do not work, and “they poured water on the ground, there are no ears of corn Miracle,” who needs this very Freedom, if “a yoke with rattles and a whip” is quite suitable for happiness?
People scare crows
But the crow is not afraid.
Couples connect
And they would like to separate.
Poured water on the ground
There are no ears of corn. Miracle!
Yesterday I was given freedom
What am I with him will I do it?!
When the Grand Inquisitor releases his interlocutor into the “silent hailstorms,” why does he need the freedom granted by the Inquisitor? What will he do in a society where power is in the hands of the Black Ravens, shouting “Nevermore!”? The poem "Gypsies" has a sad ending. Aleko is left completely alone, outside of any society, like a bird with a wounded wing. He cannot return to the society of “reason and law”; he broke the law there. Society, living “at the call of spirit and feeling,” expelled him because he did not want to fulfill the law of tradition. He cannot live by the principles that both societies impose on him, and he is not able to change written and unwritten laws. How can he live if a society ruled by strict laws is as alien to him as the unwritten traditions of “free peoples”?
Aleko can be compared to a “Byronic hero.” In Charld Harold's Travels, Byron paints a picture of a man observing the world from the outside. How and with what the world lives no doubt interests him, but he himself does not belong to any of these societies. No one will pursue him until he influences this world, and he cannot do that. But where can Charles Harold find the company of “his own people”, find himself not alone, but among people like him?
“The concept of society” is a necessary condition for the existence of a state or people. The greatest civilization of all times and peoples Ancient Egypt, which existed the longest, more than three thousand years, on Earth, was able to achieve such results only thanks to the desire of the ancient Egyptians to become a “Unified Country,” when, as Galich sang in his song:
... happiness does not lie in one for all,
And the fact is that everyone is as one!
Perhaps the desire for total unity and uniformity was the main reason why the split in Egypt became inevitable. Thanks to unity, the ancient Egyptians were able to build the Great Pyramids and the Sphinx, and erected statues of their leaders throughout the country. At the same time, historians note that as Egyptian civilization matured, it did not develop, but degraded. Egypt created all its main achievements only at the very beginning, and then only moved along the path of copying and repeating old victories. Akhenaten's revolution suffered the same fate as Lenin's revolution. The new ideology was destroyed, and the leader was spat upon and forgotten. Ancient Egypt can be compared to a society of written law, and the ancient Jews to peoples living according to tradition. After God killed his wife at the beginning of our era, he had to remain as lonely as Aleko at the end of Gypsy.
The sixth chapter of Eugene Onegin opens up the themes of society as a subject of study. If until the sixth chapter the center of the novel was more about personal problems, now the emphasis moves to social problems. So in physics, thermodynamics or hydrodynamics are related to mechanics. In the center of Leo Tolstoy's book "War and Peace", the Patriotic War of 1812. Napoleon was defeated without a single battle won, since Napoleon's army fought not against the “Russian army,” but against the entire people. For the French, every house and every bush on their way became an enemy. Society has demonstrated the properties of water: hit the water with a stick and it will part, but then return again. Water has great destructive power. First, it penetrates into all the small cracks, and then, when frozen, it tears everything to shreds. The complementarity of soft and hard is one of the principles of the Chinese Tao. Any event that contradicts the traditions established in society and does not fit into the generally accepted traditional framework should be perceived with hostility in this society, since it claims its rights to change the established order and tranquility. At the same time, the development of science and culture becomes impossible.
In our pragmatic times, no image can influence people if it does not really change their lives. Valery Bryusov’s famous poem “The Horse of Bled” is dedicated to this topic. Pictures of the Apocalypse at the beginning of our era probably could have made some impression, but suppose that the most impressive Horseman of the Apocalypse Bled the Horse will appear today in New York on Broadway. What will be the reaction of New Yorkers rushing to work, to a restaurant, to a business meeting or shopping? Will they notice this Horseman against the backdrop of bright and colorful advertising, street lights and limousine headlights?
A fiery-faced horseman appeared from the turn,
The horse flew swiftly and became with fire in its eyes.
The air still trembled with echoes, screams,
But the moment was trembling, the gaze was fear!The horseman had a long scroll in his hands,
Fiery letters proclaimed the name: Death...
The horse Bled will probably be mistaken for some kind of yet another PR campaign: the Horseman of the Apocalypse will cause not fear, but irritation. Why did you come to disturb us? Who dares to disrupt our usual routine of measured and marked life? But there are some who will rejoice at the appearance of the Horseman - those who are at the very bottom of society, whom society has removed from its ranks as unnecessary: prostitutes, beggars, crazy people. The world of the well-fed and arranged for outcasts is hostile. If “a quarter of you perishes from pestilence, famine and sword!”, then the outcasts will only be happy and themselves will rake the coals to the fire on which the dying world will be burned. In Bryusov's poem, the vision lasts only a short moment. The stone curtain sweeps away everything in its path. The streets are filled with lights, no one is standing in the crowd, everyone has returned to their usual business. The last to part with the dream of divine revelation are the psycho and the prostitute, but they too are crushed by the stone curtain: “Like unnecessary words from forgotten lines.”
Aleko's lonely wagon standing in a fatal field is one of the most vivid and poignant images in Pushkin's entire work. Frozen in time and space, covered with a wretched carpet, the cart symbolizes the fantastic loneliness of a person whom society has pushed away. What should he do now, how to continue to live, where to go?
So sometimes before winter,
Foggy, morning times,
When it rises from the fields
Late crane village
And screaming into the distance to the south rushes,
Pierced by the deadly lead
One sadly remains
Hanging with a wounded wing.
Night has come; in a dark cart
No one lit the fire
No one under the lifting roof
I didn’t go to sleep until the morning.
Notes
I will begin my work on the poem “Gypsies” and its analysis, perhaps, with the history of writing the poem “Gypsies” by Pushkin. The author began writing his work in 1821. The idea for the origin of this work was the Chisinau exile, during which Pushkin had to travel with the gypsies and observe their life. Their behavior and way of life impressed the author so much that, under the impression, Pushkin took up the pen from which this work appeared. The writer completed his work in 1824.
Conflict of the poem Gypsies
The conflict in the poem “Gypsies” is built on the contradiction of the passions of the hero himself. Here we see how two different worlds are intertwined: the world of city people and people of will and freedom. The peculiarity of the conflict in the poem “Gypsies” is that Aleko, the main character, was able to break free from the power of the city, joined the gypsies with whom he wanted to live a free life, but never truly managed to become a man of will, so he heard his sentence: “Leave us, proud man.”
The motive of Aleko's escape from the city and coming to the gypsies
What was the motive for Aleko’s flight from the city and why did he decide to join the gypsies? Everything is very simple. The hero of the poem is a freedom-loving person, a rebel of his own kind, who is tired of the framework and wants to become free. Aleko became disillusioned with the blessings of civilization, for him city life began to turn into hell, and then there was the crime committed by the hero, which the author does not tell us about. He feels good among the gypsies; he quickly joins the life of the gypsies, accepting a primitive way of life.
Freedom of the gypsies. Unfreedom of man in a civilized society
Continuing the analysis of the work, we will dwell on civilized society and the lack of human freedom in it, as well as on the freedom of the gypsies, which the writer depicted in his work. So, the author criticizes the life of people in the midst of civilization, where there are all the benefits, where there is everything to live freely, but people here are like in a cage. Here people lose themselves, live by written rules, are constrained by laws. But life outside civilization, where there are no established laws, is full of freedom of action, but having chosen freedom, you need to be prepared for a poor existence, where you have to earn your living by singing and dancing.
The role of a lyrical digression about the moon
The theme of love is touched upon in Pushkin’s poem “The Gypsies,” which means that romanticism is also present in the poem “The Gypsies.”
Love in itself is a complex feeling; it is impossible to command the heart to love or not, and it is impossible to predict the outcome of events. So Zemfira, the heroine of the poem “Gypsies,” fell in love with another, without hesitation she committed treason, causing pain to Aleko, the hero of the poem “Gypsies,” and in order to convey the state of the hero’s soul, the author resorts to a natural picture, using a digression about the moon. And here she “Went into the Mists.” In addition, the author used the moon for a reason; apparently, he wanted to show how changeable a woman can be and ordering a woman to love one is just as impossible as making the moon stand still.
The artistic role of the image of Mariula, the wife of the Old Gypsy, in the conflict and composition of the poem
Mariula is Zemfira’s mother, who left her husband and child for new love. And it is no coincidence that the author tells us about Mariula, thereby showing that her daughter also followed the same path, only their lovers act differently. And, if the free old gypsy let his wife go, because he knows that love cannot be commanded, then Aleko, who lived among the rules, lived in a world where there are boundaries, could not forgive and let go, so he took such a step as murder .
Author's position in the poem
When you read Pushkin’s work “The Gypsies,” we see that the author does not choose one side or the other, he does not come to the defense of Aleko or the gypsies, but simply sympathizes with the old man and has a positive attitude towards the main character, however, his action when the hero decides to kill , does not approve, so with the words of the old man, he drove Aleko out of the camp.
Myths and realities of gypsy life. Examples of gypsy law. Is a gypsy camp freedom or prison? What is A.S. talking about? Pushkin in the poem “Gypsies”? Why is religion the first enemy of God? The main theme of the Taganka Theater performance “Hamlet”. Leo Tolstoy on the properties of collective consciousness. Where is there more freedom in the USA - outside or in prison? Why the US can't defeat the Islamic world. Analysis of the poem “The Horse of Bled” by Valery Bryusov.
Since then I haven’t kissed those lovely eyes,
Since then I have not known happy nights.
I look like crazy at the black shawl
And the cold soul is tormented by sadness.
A.S. Pushkin “Black Shawl”
The final phrase to the poem “Gypsies”:
And fatal passions are everywhere
And there is no protection from fate
usually used as a humorous and ironic commentary on an emotionally charged, stormy conflict over an unimportant issue. A minor event, however, can, under certain circumstances, lead to global consequences. Pushkin discusses this topic in the poem “Count Nulin”. In “Dead Souls,” Gogol describes how, for a relatively unimportant reason, Chichikov put the whole city on the spot. The significance of the same event, however, can vary greatly among different people and in different communities or circumstances. What is acceptable in one case is considered a crime in another.
Gypsy ethnographers claim that Pushkin did not have the slightest idea of gypsy morals and traditions, and his poem “The Gypsies” can be called an improvisational fantasy in front of photographs of the camp. Despite the excellent external description of the gypsy life, the actual events in the poem do not have the slightest relation to the life of the gypsies, this is only a convenient background for presenting the idea.
Different attitudes towards the same event on the part of the parties involved can cause conflict between personal and social consciousness, as well as between moral conviction and accepted tradition. This happens when a person from one society ends up in another, behaves there in the traditions of his society, but is tried and punished by local law. If at the same time a person lacks conformity, and he cannot accept the rules of the surrounding world, then a tragic conflict becomes inevitable. Refusing to live according to the laws of society, a person will either die or remain completely alone. The European invasion of America led to the destruction of old peoples and traditions, although even today the few remaining Indian peoples defend their right to live as they want - on reservations. Horror films love the theme of an alien invasion of Earth. Terrible extraterrestrial viruses in these films threaten to destroy all humanity, but earthlings always defeat them.
One of the myths of gypsy life is the opinion about the so-called “free gypsy love” and in general the nature of “gypsy freedom”. Gypsy law establishes some of the strictest rules of communication between men and women that have ever existed in the world. Let me give you a few typical examples. In some gypsy communities, the murderer is required to be killed, and this leads to many years of bloody conflicts: the one who kills the murderer is also the murderer who needs to be killed. One of the central concepts among the gypsies (whom many consider “dirty”) is the concept of “Sacred Purity”. “Unclean” includes events, objects, people or parts of people. Cleanliness can be “contagious” or “non-contagious.” Some things can be removed by simply washing your hands, while others cannot be washed at all. Something or someone may be called "unclean" by a gypsy court. The most popular “bad” is the lower part of the female body. So the simple contact of a gypsy with a gypsy woman’s skirt makes him “unclean.” Female uncleanness is transmitted not only through contact, but can also flow down. A woman just has to go above men's clothing, food, equipment, etc. to desecrate them. A woman's impurity increases significantly if she is menstruating. The gypsy bath is a moderately unclean object. If a gypsy dropped dishes there, then they need to be thrown away; if they are clothes, then just wash them. Oral sex and other fantasies among gypsies are strictly prohibited. During sex, touching a woman's bottom does not spoil a man's bottom, but it does damage the hands, especially the left hand. After contact with a woman, you should wash your hands. Sperm is unclean and the sheets must be washed after sexual intercourse. A gypsy girl is obliged to marry a virgin or someone who deflowered her. A “dishonest bride” may be stoned, have her hair cut off, or be declared “defiled,” that is, expelled from the camp. For infidelity, a woman is always considered “defiled” and kicked out. A husband can beat his unfaithful wife to death. Husbands' infidelity is often quite natural and he is declared “unclean” only if he goes out too actively. Prostitution is strictly prohibited by Romani law only for women, and same-sex love is only for men. Lesbians are looked at askance, but calmly.
Gypsy law is not tolerant. The rules of communication between gypsies and gypsies and gypsies with non-gypsies are strictly different. Guests of the gajjo are given a separate set of dishes. In some cases, if a guest touches the host's dishes, they then throw them away, because if someone drinks from an unclean, defiled cup, then they themselves will become unclean. It is forbidden to eat food from animals that lick their genitals, cats, dogs, etc. You can't eat horse meat, because horses are gypsy brothers. The most favorite gypsy food is pork, lamb and chicken. There are many thousands of laws regulating the behavior of Gypsies. This includes food and speech formulas, activities, hobbies, and all the details of life without exception. Moreover, all these laws unwritten. That is, they are observed at the level of obligatory and generally accepted tradition and there is not a single possibility of changing or correcting any law. If a person decides to “become a gypsy”, he must accept and recognize all laws and traditions without exception and strictly follow them. The slightest offense will lead to the fact that one way or another the person will be declared “unclean” and, therefore, expelled from the camp.
Gypsies are able to live and exist completely independently of any state or communal infrastructure - “how joyful is their overnight stay”, they are “free inhabitants of the world”, “children of humble freedom”, “here people are free, the sky is clear”... But, the internal structure of life Such a society dictates so many different attitudes and requirements that for a person accustomed to the “free world”, an attempt to “assimilate” in such a society turns into real torture.
Old man Zemfira awakens:
“Oh my father, Aleko is terrible:
Listen, through a heavy sleep
And he groans and weeps."
If “another mind” exists and can influence people’s lives, is it capable of adapting to the traditions existing in human society? If we are talking about religion, but what position should this “other mind” take so as not to become “an enemy of the human race”? The name "Aleko" has a funny interpretation of "Al and Co". Al is the common root for the family of Semitic gods including El-ohim and Al-lah. This god's "Companies" may include those whom he involved in one way or another in his performances on religious themes. Zemfira in Arabic means "Rebellious". The family of Abrahamic religions is associated with different cultures. The Old Testament contains a dialogue between God and the Jews, which ended with the tragic death of the Jewish state and the destruction of the Jerusalem temple. The basis of Islam is the dialogue between God and the Arabs through the Prophet Muhammad. The New Testament was accepted by "Christians" and the Talmud by "Talmudists." Which of them is the most “rebellious”?
In the tradition of Lord Byron and his Lord Harold, Aleko left society to become “free” from it. He chose “free gypsies” for this, but ended up in a spiritual and moral prison. In a society of strict written laws, Aleko was a criminal. But the world ruled by unwritten traditions, the “world of feeling,” turned out to be more painful than the “world of reason.”
What to regret? If only you knew.
When would you imagine
The captivity of stuffy cities!
There are people in heaps, behind the fence,
They don’t breathe the morning cool,
Not the spring smell of meadows;
They are ashamed of love, thoughts are driven away,
They trade according to their will,
They bow their heads before idols
And they ask for money and chains.
There is a “paradox of prison” when a person, once in prison, can feel freer than in freedom. The police limit physical freedom by confining people to small areas and depriving them of communication with the outside world. But this also means that a person does not have to go to work, go shopping, or take care of his family. All time belongs only to a person, and if he loves reading and thinking more than anything in the world, then now no one can stop him from doing this. So where does this person have more freedom - outside or in prison? They say that in Russia many residents of rural areas themselves strive to be put in prison so that ourselves don't think about how to earn a living. Perhaps this explains such a long existence of serfdom in the Russian Empire.
In Buddhism, Siddhartha Gautama, called "Buddha", initially lived in a palace, but decided to exchange his palace life for freedom in poverty. According to the book of Exodus, Moses lived at the court of the Egyptian pharaoh, and then, having killed a guard, that is, breaking the law, he left with like-minded people into the desert. A micro-community free from a strict system can survive only with an abundance of strict traditions and unwritten laws. Maybe that’s why Moses first had the desire to create for the Jews written law. Some aspects of the life of the gypsies parody the Old Testament commandments about “cleanliness,” “kosher food,” and communication with non-believers. The strictness of life in the ancient Egyptian hierarchy was little better than the regulations on impurity and religious rituals. Only the existence of special traditional strictness allows Old Believers, Jews or Amish to survive, avoiding assimilation with other peoples.
It is natural to assume that if there was a system administrator in our world, he would use the mechanisms for the fastest and most optimal development of both human society and each person individually. The infrastructure of the state, business or national traditions, together with the function of maintaining stability, hinders the development of culture. The freer a society is, the better and more actively its culture develops. Greco-Roman civilization had a vibrant and deep culture, including all aspects of society: mythology, literature, architecture and fine arts. However, why do the Gypsies, traditionally considered the symbol of the “children of freedom,” have such a meager culture, scanty language and almost complete absence of literature? Without a doubt, freedom from external public infrastructures makes them the most survivable people in the world. Gypsies can exist in the most difficult conditions, but the total internal dictatorship of Gypsy law blocks any cultural development. Jews, with equally strict internal regulations of the hostel, also did not develop much my culture. At the same time, the contribution of Jews to world culture and science is significant. Isaac Levitan is considered the absolute genius of Russian landscape, and Albert Einstein is a symbol of genius in science. The emergence of Christianity disrupted the progressive development of society. The gloomy Middle Ages stopped the development of civilization and culture for one and a half thousand years. It was only with the advent of the Renaissance that the world began to awaken from liturgical sleep. A life that rests only on traditions and rituals is an analogue of death and a crime against moral freedom. A poem by A.S. is devoted to this issue. Pushkin’s “Desert Sower of Freedom”:
Desert sower of freedom,
I left early, before the star;
With a clean and innocent hand
Into the enslaved reins
Threw a life-giving seed -
But I only lost time
Good thoughts and works...
!Graze, peaceful peoples!
The cry of honor will not wake you up.
Why do the herds need the gifts of freedom?
They should be cut or trimmed.
Their inheritance from generation to generation
A yoke with rattles and a whip.
Vladimir Vysotsky has a song with a similar content: “Give the dogs meat.” If the normal instincts of society do not work, and “they poured water on the ground, there are no ears of corn - a miracle,” who needs this very Freedom, if “a yoke with rattles and a whip” is quite suitable for happiness?
People scare crows -
But the crow is not afraid.
Couples connect -
And they would like to separate.
They poured water on the ground -
There are no ears of corn. Miracle!
Yesterday I was given freedom -
What am I with him will I do it?!
When the Grand Inquisitor releases his interlocutor into the “silent hailstorms,” why does he need the freedom granted by the Inquisitor? What will he do in a society where power is in the hands of the Black Ravens, shouting “Nevermore!”? The poem "Gypsies" has a sad ending. Aleko is left completely alone - outside of any society, like a bird with a wounded wing. He cannot return to the society of “reason and law” - he broke the law there. Society, living “at the call of spirit and feeling,” expelled him because he did not want to fulfill the law of tradition. He cannot live by the principles that both societies impose on him, and he is not able to change written and unwritten laws. How can he live if a society ruled by strict laws is as alien to him as the unwritten traditions of “free peoples”?
Aleko can be compared to a “Byronic hero.” In Charld Harold's Travels, Byron paints a picture of a man observing the world from the outside. How and with what the world lives no doubt interests him, but he himself does not belong to any of these societies. No one will pursue him until he influences this world, and he cannot do that. But where can Charles Harold find the company of “his own people”, find himself not alone, but among people like him?
“The concept of society” is a necessary condition for the existence of a state or people. The greatest civilization of all times and peoples - Ancient Egypt, which existed on Earth for the longest time, more than three thousand years, was able to achieve such results only thanks to the desire of the ancient Egyptians to become a “Unified Country”, when, as Galich sang in his song:
Perhaps the desire for total unity and uniformity was the main reason why the split in Egypt became inevitable. Thanks to unity, the ancient Egyptians were able to build the Great Pyramids and the Sphinx, and erected statues of their leaders throughout the country. At the same time, historians note that as Egyptian civilization matured, it did not develop, but degraded. Egypt created all its main achievements only at the very beginning, and then only moved along the path of copying and repeating old victories. Akhenaten's revolution suffered the same fate as Lenin's revolution. The new ideology was destroyed, and the leader was spat upon and forgotten. Ancient Egypt can be compared to a society of written law, and the ancient Jews to peoples living according to tradition. After God killed his wife at the beginning of our era, he had to remain as lonely as Aleko at the end of Gypsy.
The sixth chapter of Eugene Onegin opens up the themes of society as a subject of study. If until the sixth chapter the center of the novel was more about personal problems, now the emphasis moves to social problems. So in physics, thermodynamics or hydrodynamics are related to mechanics. In the center of Leo Tolstoy's book "War and Peace", the Patriotic War of 1812. Napoleon was defeated without a single battle won, since Napoleon's army fought not against the “Russian army,” but against the entire people. For the French, every house and every bush on their way became an enemy. Society showed the properties of water: hit the water with a stick - it will part, but then return again. Water has great destructive power. First, it penetrates into all the small cracks, and then, when frozen, it tears everything to shreds. The complementarity of soft and hard is one of the principles of the Chinese Tao. Any event that contradicts the traditions established in society and does not fit into the generally accepted traditional framework should be perceived with hostility in this society, since it claims its rights to change the established order and tranquility. At the same time, the development of science and culture becomes impossible.
In our pragmatic times, no image can influence people if it does not really change their lives. Valery Bryusov’s famous poem “The Horse of Bled” is dedicated to this topic. Pictures of the Apocalypse at the beginning of our era probably could have made some impression, but let's assume that the most impressive Horseman of the Apocalypse - Bled the Horse - will appear today in New York on Broadway. What will be the reaction of New Yorkers rushing to work, to a restaurant, to a business meeting or shopping? Will they notice this Horseman against the backdrop of bright and colorful advertising, street lights and limousine headlights?
A fiery-faced horseman appeared from the turn,
The horse flew swiftly and became with fire in its eyes.
The air was still shaking - echoes, screams,
But there was a moment of trepidation, there were looks of fear! The horseman had a long scroll in his hands,
Fiery letters proclaimed the name: Death...
The horse Bled will probably be mistaken for some kind of yet another PR campaign: the Horseman of the Apocalypse will cause not fear, but irritation. Why did you come to disturb us? Who dares to disrupt our usual routine of measured and marked life? But there are some who will rejoice at the appearance of the Horseman - those who are at the very bottom of society, whom society has removed from its ranks as unnecessary: prostitutes, beggars, crazy people. The world of the well-fed and arranged for outcasts is hostile. If “a quarter of you perishes - from pestilence, famine and sword!”, then the outcasts will only be happy and themselves will rake the coals to the fire on which the dying world will be burned. In Bryusov's poem, the vision lasts only a short moment. The stone curtain sweeps away everything in its path. The streets are filled with lights, no one is standing in the crowd, everyone has returned to their usual business. The last to part with the dream of divine revelation are the psycho and the prostitute, but they too are crushed by the stone curtain: “Like unnecessary words from forgotten lines.”
Aleko's lonely wagon standing in a fatal field is one of the most vivid and poignant images in Pushkin's entire work. Frozen in time and space, covered with a wretched carpet, the cart symbolizes the fantastic loneliness of a person whom society has pushed away. What should he do now, how to continue to live, where to go?
So sometimes before winter,
Foggy, morning times,
When it rises from the fields
Late crane village
And screaming into the distance to the south rushes,
Pierced by the deadly lead
One sadly remains
Hanging with a wounded wing.
Night has come; in a dark cart
No one lit the fire
No one under the lifting roof
I didn’t go to sleep until the morning.
Notes
The work became the final romantic poem. Below we will touch upon the history of the creation of the poem, its composition and problematics. The poem “Gypsies” still remains popular; it is also studied in the school curriculum.
History of creation and other features of the poem
The work “Gypsies” was written in Chisinau in 1824, where Pushkin was in exile. While staying in a gypsy camp for several weeks, the poet became imbued with their life and wrote this poem. This is a kind of response to the southern poem "Caucasian Prisoner". During this period, many dark and strange, but also unfinished works were written.
If we analyze the composition of the poem “Gypsies”, then it is worth noting that it was written according to the rules of romanticism. But in this work, the poet continues the conflict with Byron and makes romanticism more critical. For Pushkin, returning to the natural environment is not a solution, but an inhibition in the development of personality and creativity.
The main conflict of the poem is the collision of two worlds: the modern civilized and the simply primitive. One has laws that regulate the order of life, and the other has rituals that also exercise control. The work traces the love story of Zemfira and Aleko.
Aleko is the main character of the poem, the main image. He flees the city, in which he cannot come to terms with injustice and hypocrisy, falsehood. The image of the Moon is a reflection of Aleko's soul. After his sleep, the Moon was darkened, as was the state of the protagonist's soul.
General analysis of the poem “Gypsies” by Pushkin
The poem contains the plot of a young man's escape from a rotting society into a free gypsy camp. The hero is a romantic by nature, who does not want to put up with the atrocities of a cultural society.
The young man, depressed by his problems, at first did not notice the beautiful gypsy. The free Aleko falls in love with Zemfira, but even here he is faced with human vices, such as fornication. His beloved sings to him a song that her mother sang to her as a child. She sings about her husband, whom Aleko will never know about, because he loves her so much. One night, he was waiting for her. But Zemfira did not come, and he himself found a couple in love. In front of the gypsy woman, he killed his lover, and then her. He died with love for Aleko, he died loving.
Aleko does not find what he was looking for in the camp; they also do not have complete freedom. This was his wrong position. But there are also people in the camp, like the old gypsy, who has already resigned himself to the fate of his society and is content with what he has. But the essence of the wanderer is not revealed from the best side. He is revealed as an egoist and a murderer. Perhaps he needed to look for the problem in himself, and not in society. After all, a person decorates the world, and not vice versa. The final scene of the poem shows that not a single person from one world can escape what is destined for him from above.
We conducted a relatively small analysis of the poem “Gypsies” by Pushkin. We looked at what prompted Alexander Pushkin to write the work, as well as the main themes that are raised. Although the poem “Gypsies” was written almost two hundred years ago, the problems raised by the writer remain relevant to this day. We hope that this analysis of the poem “Gypsies” helped you more accurately understand Pushkin’s intentions. If you want to know the plot of the work in more detail, you can read