Poetic poem. The meaning of the word poem. Structure of a work of art

Instructions

Open a book with a work of art. Ask yourself what form the text is written in: in or ? This will be useful because... all fiction these two main varieties occur not only on the basis of formal criteria, but also semantic ones. Prose most often contains a narrative about some events or events, while answering the questions what?, where? and when? A poetic work strives to convey the feelings, emotions, impressions of the lyrical hero and, as a rule, has no plot.

Please note that the term “literary genre” is used in this connection, and the two types of works given above refer to the epic and lyrical genres, respectively.

Open the work of A. S. Pushkin “Ruslan and Lyudmila”. Make sure it is written in verse and try to identify the feelings and emotions expressed by the lyrical hero. There is no doubt that this has caused you difficulties. It is not surprising, because in the poem there is no lyrical hero with his feelings at all. But there is a plot, and it will not be difficult for you to retell in all the details the vicissitudes of Ruslan’s fate on his way to Lyudmila’s heart. It is obvious that in the poem two genera - lyrical and epic - are combined together and form an intermediate, borderline genus, which is called lyric-epic. Thus, we can conclude that distinguishing feature poems are a poetic form combined with an expanded storyline.

Video on the topic

note

In the history of literature, these lyric-epic works - poems - have been known for a long time and are found quite often. Even in Antiquity, the titans of literary expression Homer and Virgil wrote their epic poems - the well-known “Iliad” and “Odyssey”.

Poems were especially popular in the era of Romanticism, when writers sought to find new, synthetic genres that would allow them not only to tell, but also to sensually describe life. Then J. Byron wrote his poem “Child Harold’s Pilgrimage”, S. Coleridge - “The Poem of the Ancient Mariner”, W. Wordsworth - “Michael”.

Poems are also such well-known works of Russian authors as “The Demon” by M. Lermontov, “Who Lives Well in Rus'” by N. Nekrasov, “Requiem” by A. Akhmatova, “Cloud in Pants” by V. Mayakovsky, “Anna Snegina” by S. Yesenin, “Vasily Terkin” by A. Tvardovsky.

The poem is in the modern sense, any large or medium-sized poetic work. Initially, the term was applied to the mythological heroic and didactic epic (Homer, Hesiod), but already antiquity knew the irocomic poem (“The War of Mice and Frogs”), from which later burlesque and satirical poems originated. By analogy, “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign” is often considered a poem, which is non-poetic and unique in terms of genre. Romances of chivalry, which arose as poetic ones, were not considered poems and were later even opposed to them as works of insufficient seriousness. However, related to them, “The Knight in the Tiger’s Skin” (12th century) by Shota Rustaveli entered the history of world literature as a poem. Varieties of medieval poems had their own genre names. In France, heroic poetic works (about a hundred of them have been preserved in records of the 11th-14th centuries, some exceeding Homer's in volume) were called chansons de geste (see) - songs about deeds; the largest - the late ones (13-14 centuries) were influenced by courtly literature. At the turn of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance arose poem with title, which at that time simply meant a happy ending, is Dante’s “Comedy,” called “Divine” by his enthusiastic fans. However, from the Renaissance to classicism, the ancient poem served as a model for poets - not so much the Iliad, but the Aeneid (1st century BC) by Virgil, who allegedly streamlined and improved the poetics of Homer.

An indispensable requirement was compliance with the external structure of the poem, right down to the appeal to the muse and a statement about the subject of the chanting at the beginning. Renaissance poems based on violent fairy-tale fiction - “Roland in Love” (1506) by M.M. Boiardo and the continuation of this plot “Furious Roland” by L. Aristo (at the turn of the 15th-16th centuries) - were considered by contemporaries and later theorists to be novels. In the 17th century, the most original poem was written in blank verse " Lost heaven"(1667) J. Milton. In the 18th century, a poem was created according to the ancient model, transformed according to the classicist understanding; innovation beyond a certain limit was often condemned. V.K. Trediakovsky assessed Voltaire’s “Henriad” (1728) extremely harshly due to the implausible combination of the fictional actions of the famous historical figure Henry IV (presented as a philosopher king, an enlightened monarch), and documentary information about him. Russian poets of the 18th century, who considered the epic poem to be the highest genre (in the West it was often preferred to tragedy), repeatedly, but unsuccessfully, tried to glorify Peter I in this genre. M.M. Kheraskov, who wrote several poems based on others, was recognized as the creator of the Russian epic poem. Topics; the heavyweight "Rossiyada" (1779), which contained allusions to recent war with Turkey - about the capture of Kazan by Ivan the Terrible. The irocomic poem was also unofficially recognized (“Elisha, or Irritated Bacchus” by V.I. Maykov, 1771). Many Russians were fond of Voltaire’s ironic and frivolous poem “The Virgin of Orleans” (1735), published in 1755. Without its influence, A.S. Pushkin’s “Gabrieliad” (1821) would not have appeared. Pushkin's poem "Ruslan and Lyudmila" (1820) was oriented towards several traditions, most notably the tradition of Aristo.

Adherents of classicism did not agree to consider it a poem. The poet left his subsequent poems without a genre subtitle or called them stories. The widespread romantic poem, the founder of the curtain, J. Byron, became lyrical-epic, the plot in it was sharply weakened, as in “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage” (1809-18). Partly on the model of Byron's Don Juan (1818-23), it was begun and called a novel in verse, Eugene Onegin (1823-31). Such a genre definition was then an oxymoron; it synthesized the “low”, almost not legalized novel and the highest genre of the poem; the novel was introduced into high literature. V.G. Belinsky preferred to call “Eugene Onegin” a poem. After M.Yu. Lermontov, the romantic poem is the lot of epigones. I.S. Turgenev in his early poems paid tribute to both romanticism and the “natural school”. N.A. Nekrasov radically updated the poetic narrative: he “proseized” it, introduced folk peasant themes, and at the end of his life he wrote a unique peasant epic poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'” (1863-77). He is also the creator of the first Russian lyrical plotless poems “Silence” (1857) and “A Knight for an Hour” (1860). The lyricization of poems also occurred in the West. S. T. Coleridge first included his “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” in the collection “Lyrical Ballads” (1798), but then refined it as a poem. In American literature, the lyricization of poems occurred in the works of W. Whitman, although already “The Raven” (1845) by E. A. Poe, in fact, is a small lyric poem. This genre reaches its peak in Russian Silver Age, used later: “By the right of memory” (1969) by A.T. Tvardovsky, “Requiem” (1935-40) by A.A. Akhmatova consist of cycles of lyrical poems that form an epic poem in spirit.

The word “poem” has retained a connotation of solemnity and “sublimity.” When N.V. Gogol applied it to satirical prose, it was partly irony, partly an indication of a majestic plan. F.M. Dostoevsky also loved this word, also using it both ironically and seriously (the poem about the Grand Inquisitor in The Brothers Karamazov). Soviet writers N.F. Pogodin, A.S. Makarenko and others included the word “Poem” in a non-genre sense in the titles of their works in order to “increase” their sound.

The word poem comes from Greek poiema, from poieo, which means - I do, I create.

Poem

POEM (Greek poiein - “to create”, “creation”; in German theoretical literature the term “P.” corresponds to the term “Epos” in its correlation with “Epik”, coinciding with the Russian “epos”) - a literary genre.

STATEMENT OF A QUESTION.- Usually P. is called a large epic poetic work belonging to a specific author, in contrast to the nameless “folk”, “lyrical-epic” and “epic” songs and standing on the border between songs and P. - the semi-nameless “epic”. However, P.’s personal character does not provide sufficient grounds for distinguishing it as an independent genre on this basis. Epic song, "P." (as a large epic poetic work of a certain author) and “epic” are essentially varieties of the same genre, which we further call the term “P.”, since in Russian the term “epic” in its specific meaning (not as a genus poetry) is not common. The term "P." also serves to designate another genre - the so-called. “romantic” P., about which below. The P. genre has a long history. Having emerged in its origins in a primitive tribal society, slavery was firmly established and widely developed during the era of the formation of slave-owning society, when elements of the tribal system still prevailed, and then continued to exist throughout the entire era of slave-owning and feudalism. Only under capitalist conditions did literature lose its significance as a leading genre. Each of these periods created its own specific varieties of music. However, we can talk about music as a specific genre. It is necessary to concretely and historically define the poem on the basis of its typical features inherent in poetry in those social conditions that essentially created this genre, putting it forward as its main literary form and leading to its unique flourishing. The beginnings of genre before and its development after were only its prehistory or existence according to tradition, inevitably complicated by the new demands of a changing reality, demands that ultimately led to the death of the genre and to its overcoming by new genre forms.

FROM THE HISTORY OF THE POEM.- The historical beginning of P. was laid by the so-called lyrical-epic songs, which emerged from primitive syncretic art (see Syncretism, Song). The original lyrical-epic songs have not reached us. We can judge about them only by the songs of peoples who, much later, retained a state close to primitive, and later appeared on the historical stage. An example of lyrical-epic songs are the songs of North American Indians or poorly preserved Greek nomes and hymns complicated by later layers. Unlike previous lyrical-epic songs, songs of a later stage of historical development already had a relatively pure epic character. From German songs of the VI-IX centuries. One accidentally recorded song about Hildebrand has reached us. In the X-XI centuries. songs flourished in Scandinavia. Traces of these songs can be found in the much later (13th century) recorded collection “Edda”. This also includes Russian epics, Finnish runes, Serbian epic songs, etc. From various kinds songs that were preserved longer than others were those that were dedicated to especially major social events that left long-lasting memories. They were then complicated by events of a later time. Formally, the singers relied on the tradition of syncretic art and lyrical-epic songs. From here they took, for example. rhythm.
IN further development songs, we observe their cyclization, when, in the process of transmission from generation to generation, various songs were combined, caused by the same analogous fact (“natural cyclization,” in Veselovsky’s terminology), and when songs about heroes of the distant past were complicated by songs about their descendants (“ genealogical cyclization"). Finally, “sings” of songs appeared, not directly related to each other in any way, united by singers through an arbitrary mixture of persons and episodes around the most significant social events and figures. At the basis of these cycles, which then grew into integral songs, as has recently been established, there was usually one song that grew, swollen (“Anschwellung”, in Geisler’s terminology) at the expense of others. The events around which cyclization was carried out were, for example. the Hellenic campaign against Troy (Greek epic), the great migration of peoples (German epic), the reflection of the Arabs who conquered Spain and threatened the French people (French epic), etc. This is how the Persian “Shah-Name”, the Greek “Iliad” and "The Odyssey", the German "Song of the Nibelungs", the French "Song of Roland", the Spanish "Poem of Cid". In Russian literature, a similar cyclization was outlined in epics. Its development was hampered by the dominance of the church with its Christian dogma. Close to similar poems is “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign.”
So. arr. from the lyrical-epic songs that emerged from syncretic art, through the epic songs of the druzhina epic to the huge synthetic canvases of the so-called. “folk” P. was the prehistory of P. P. received its greatest completeness in Homer’s “Iliad” and “Odyssey,” classical examples of this genre. Marx wrote about Homer’s poems, explaining their enduring artistic power: “Why should not the childhood of human society, where it developed most beautifully, have an eternal charm for us like a never-repeating stage. There are ill-mannered children and senile smart children. Many of the ancient peoples belong to this category. The Greeks were normal children” (“On a Critique of Political Economy,” Introduction, ed. Marx and Engels Institute, 1930, p. 82).
The conditions that created the most vivid artistic reflections of the “childhood of human society” were the conditions that developed in a system close to the tribal system ancient Greece, where class differentiation was just beginning to emerge. The peculiar conditions of the social structure of ancient Greek society provided its members (or rather, the emerging class of “free citizens”) with broad political and ideological freedom and independence. Representatives of even the ruling classes of the feudal and especially capitalist structures were later deprived of such freedom, having been placed in strict dependence on things and relationships that had acquired independent power. For the ideology of the “children’s” stage of development of human society, reflected in the poems of Homer, the defining feature was a mythological understanding of reality. " Greek mythology constituted not only the arsenal of Greek art, but also its soil” (Marx, On the Critique of Political Economy, Introduction, ed. Marx and Engels Institute, 1930, p. 82). The mythology of the Hellenes, unlike the mythology of other ancient peoples, had a pronounced earthly, sensual character and was distinguished by its wide development. Moreover, the mythology of Homeric times was the basis of consciousness, while in later periods it turned into a purely external accessory, mainly of rhetorical significance. These social and ideological features of ancient Greek society determined the main thing in his literary work - the broad social “folk” meaning of P., the struggle to assert the strength and significance of the “people” as a whole and its individual representatives, and its free and multifaceted manifestation (“of the people”).
This defining feature of Homer’s poems determined a number of aspects of the Iliad and Odyssey related to these basic features. The socially active society of ancient Greece reflected in literature primarily large events that had state and national significance, such as war. At the same time, events (wars) were taken from the distant past, in the future their significance grew even more: leaders turned into heroes, heroes into gods. The wide coverage of reality led to inclusion in the framework of the main event large number independently developed episodes. "Odyssey" consists of e.g. from a whole string of such episodes. The literary connection between classical songs and squad songs also played a role here. The integrity of the coverage of reality made it possible, along with attention to large events, to dwell in detail on individual little things, since they were felt as necessary links in the chain of life relationships: details of costume and furnishings, the process of preparing food and details of its use, etc. were included in outline of the story. P.'s tendency to spread in breadth was expressed not only in relation to things and events, but also to characters and their characters. P. embraced a huge number of people: kings, generals, heroes, reflecting the reality of ancient Greek society, acted as active members of a free society along with a whole host of no less active gods, their patrons. Moreover, each of them, being a typical generalization of one or another group of society, is not just an impersonal cog in the system of the whole, but an independent, freely acting character. Although Agamemnon is the supreme ruler, the military leaders around him are not just submissive subordinates to him, but leaders who have freely united around him, maintaining their independence and forcing Agamemnon to listen carefully to themselves and take themselves into account. The same relationships exist in the kingdom of the gods and in their mutual relations with people. This construction of a figurative system is one of characteristic qualities classical poem, sharply contrasting with poetry of a later time, most often devoted to rhetorical praise of the virtues of primarily one or a few historically specific individuals, and not the “people” as a whole. The diversity of characters included in the poem was further enriched by the versatility of the characters of the most important of them. The main feature of truly epic characters is their versatility and at the same time integrity. Achilles is one of the brilliant examples of such versatility. Moreover, private, personal interests not only do not enter into a tragic conflict for the character with state and social demands, but are holistically connected in a harmonious world relationship, not without contradictions, of course, but always resolved: for example. Hector. In contrast to the later epic - the bourgeois novel, which placed the individual at the center of attention instead of social events - P.'s characters are less developed psychologically.
The breadth of coverage of reality in P., due to which the largest social events depicted in it were complicated by individual independent episodes, did not, however, lead to the disintegration of P. into separate parts, nor did it deprive it of the necessary artistic unity. The unity of action connects all the compositional elements of P. However, the action in P. is unique. Its unity is determined not only by the conflicts of the characters, but also by the installation of a “national” reproduction of the world. Hence the slowness of action, the abundance of inhibitions created by episodes included in order to show different aspects of life, also necessary as a compositional emphasis on the significance of what is depicted. The very type of development of action is characteristic of P.: it is always determined by the objective, from the author’s point of view, course of events, and is always the result of circumstances determined by necessity that lies outside the individual desires of the characters. The course of events unfolds without the visible participation of the author, like a cast from reality itself. The author disappears in the world he reproduces: even his direct assessments are given in the Iliad, for example. sometimes Nestor, sometimes other heroes. Thus, by means of compositional means, the monolithic nature of the poem is achieved. The content and form of the poem are of great significance: the broad social meaning of the poem serves as the basis for this, and the indicated structural features are the means of its expression; the solemn seriousness is also emphasized by the high syllable of P. (metaphors, complex epithets, “Homeric comparisons,” constant poetic formulas, etc.) and the slow intonation of hexameters. P.'s epic greatness is its necessary quality.
These are the features of P. as a genre in its classical form. The main thing is the ideological meaning of P. - the affirmation of the “people”; other essential features: theme - a major social event, characters - numerous and richly versatile heroes, action - the need for its objective immutability, assessment - epic greatness. This classic form of poem is called epic.
A number of these features of P. can be outlined in an unexpanded form and in epic songs, as a result of the cyclization of which Homer’s poems were formed. These same signs - and already on the basis of the broadly social, “folk” meaning of P. - could be traced in the above-mentioned P. of other countries, with the only difference that the features of P. have never found such a complete and comprehensive expression as in Hellenes. The myths of the eastern peoples, due to the much more abstract nature of their religious and mythological basis, were worn, for example. largely symbolic or didactic in nature, which reduces their artistic significance (“Ramayana”, “Mahabharata”). Thus, due to their expressiveness and brightness, the noted features of Homer’s poems are typical for the genre of poetry in general.
Since the conditions for the formation of ancient Greek P. could not be repeated in the further development of mankind, P. in its original form could not reappear in literature. “Regarding some types of art, e.g. epic, it is even recognized that it can no longer be created in its classical form, which constitutes the era of world history” (Marx, Towards a Critique of Political Economy, Introduction, ed. Marx and Engels Institute, 1930, p. 80). But a number of circumstances in later history put forward problems that were artistically resolved with an orientation toward P., often even with direct reliance on classical P. (even indirectly, for example, through the Aeneid), in different time using them differently. New varieties of paintings were created, their artistic merits being far from classical examples. Compared to the latter, they narrowed and became impoverished, which indicated the decline of the genre, although at the same time the very fact of their existence speaks of the great strength of the genre’s inertia. New genres were born and established, which at first still retained a number of formal features of P.
After a period of classical heyday, the genre of P. appears again in Virgil’s Aeneid (20s BC). In “The Aeneid” we can clearly observe, on the one hand, the loss of a number of features of P., on the other hand, the preservation of the still known features of the P. genre: a national event in the spotlight (the emergence of Rome), a wide display of reality through many interwoven into the main narration of independent episodes, the presence of a main character (Aeneas), participation in the action of a host of gods, etc. However, in essential respects, “Aeneid” differs from classical P.: its main ideological aspiration is to glorify one “hero” - Emperor Augustus - and his kind; the loss of the mythological integrity of the worldview led to the fact that the mythological material in P. acquired a conditional and rhetorical character; passive submission to fate deprived the heroes of that earthly strength and brightness, that vitality that they possessed in Homer; the refined elegance of the style of the Aeneid had the same meaning.
So. arr. a narrowing of the ideological stance, loss of integrity of the worldview, growth of the personal, subjective, pathetic and rhetorical principle - these are the characteristic features of the path of P.’s fall, which was already evident in the Aeneid. These trends were determined by the courtly-aristocratic character of the class that put forward this philosophy, which developed under the conditions of the Roman Empire, in contrast to the broadly democratic basis of ancient Greek poems.
In the further development of literature, we observe a modification of the literary genre in the direction indicated by the Aeneid. The reason for this is not so much that the Aeneid, accepted by Christianity much more favorably than Homer’s poems, and interpreted by him in his own way, was widely distributed in the era of strengthening the power of the Christian church. The reason for P.’s degradation is the loss in the further development of class society of that free worldview, which, although in a “childish” mythological form, still provided the basis for a broadly social (“folk”) knowledge of reality, including, in the first place turn, poetic.
But the history of P.'s fall did not proceed smoothly. In the further development of poetry, with all the variety of features of each individual work of this genre and with all their large number, one can outline the main varieties of poetry: religious-feudal poem (Dante, “The Divine Comedy”), secular-feudal knightly poem (Ariosto, “Roland the Furious”) ", Torquatto Tasso, "Jerusalem Liberated"), heroic-bourgeois poem (Camoens, "The Lusiads", Milton, "Paradise Lost" and "Paradise Regained", Voltaire, "Henriada", Klopstock, "Messiad"), parody burlesque petty-bourgeois P. and in response to it - the bourgeois “heroic-comic” P. (Scarron, “Virgil in Disguise”, Vas. Maikov, “Elisha, or the Irritated Bacchus”, Osipov, “Virgil’s Aeneid, Turned Inside Out”, Kotlyarevsky, “Refaced Aeneid"), romantic noble-bourgeois P. (Byron, “Don Juan”, “Childe Harold”, etc., Pushkin, southern poems, Lermontov, “Mtsyri”, “Demon”). The latter are already a completely unique, independent genre. Later, there is a revival of interest in P. in revolutionary bourgeois and generally anti-feudal literature: satirical-realistic, sometimes downright revolutionary-democratic poem (Heine, “Germany”, Nekrasov, “Who Lives Well in Rus'”), and finally we see traces of critical assimilation P. as a genre in Soviet literature (Mayakovsky, “150,000,000”, V. Kamensky, “Iv. Bolotnikov” and many others).
Row characteristic features distinguishes each of the indicated varieties of P., each of the named stages of its history.
Feud. the Middle Ages in its poetic creativity transferred the question of the fate of the people, humanity from reality to the plane of Christian mysticism. The defining moment of religious-feudal P. is not the affirmation of the “people” in its “earthly” life, but the affirmation of Christian morality. Instead of a major socio-political event, Dante’s “Divine Comedy” is based on the ethical tales of Christianity. Hence the allegorical character of P., hence her didacticism. However, through its allegorical form, the living reality of feudal Florence, contrasted with bourgeois Florence, breaks through. Real life, real characters, given in a huge variety in the “Divine Comedy”, give it unfading power. The closeness of the “Divine Comedy” to the poem lies in the interpretation of the fundamental question of the salvation of the soul from the point of view of the ruling class of feudal society that put it forward; this interpretation is developed in application to the diverse aspects of reality, completely (in the system of a given worldview) covering it; The poem contains a rich system of characters. In addition, the Divine Comedy is similar to the ancient poem by a number of particular elements - the general composition, the wandering motif, and a number of plot situations. A broad interpretation of the general problems of the life of society (class), although given in religious and moral terms, places the “Divine Comedy” above the “Aeneid,” an essentially rhetorical poem. For all that, “The Divine Comedy”, in comparison with classical P., is impoverished by the loss of a democratic basis, a religious and ethical tendency, and an allegorical form. The feudal-secular poem is immeasurably farther from classical poetry than even Dante’s poem. Knightly adventures, erotic adventures, various kinds of miracles, which are by no means taken seriously - this, in essence, is the content of not only the epic of Boiardo, Ariosto’s “Furious Roland” and Torquatto Tasso’s “Rinaldo”, but also his “Gofredo”, only renamed, no more, in “Jerusalem Liberated.” To provide aesthetic pleasure to aristocratic secular knighthood is their main purpose. Nothing from the national base, no truly socially significant events (the history of the conquest of Jerusalem by Godfrey of Bouillon is just an external frame), no majestic folk heroes. In essence, feudal-secular poetry is rather an embryonic form of the novel with its interest in private, personal life, with its characters from an ordinary, by no means heroic environment. All that remains of the poem is its form - adventurous adventures unfold against the external background of social events, which has a purely official significance. The presence of a poetic composition for the purpose of decorating the gods of Olympus has the same deep service significance. The definite decline of feudal culture, the emergence of bourgeois tendencies, primarily the emergence of interest in a private person and his personal life, killed the poem, preserving only elements of its external appearance. In the era of growth and strengthening of the political self-awareness of the bourgeoisie, during the period of its struggle for state power, the poem again received widespread development. The heroic bourgeois poem in its typical examples was closely related to Virgil's Aeneid. It arose in direct imitation of the “Aeneid” from the genre. Among the heroic bourgeois poems we find works that directly glorify the conquering activity of the class, for example, the first journey of Vasco de Gama in Camões' Lusiads. A number of heroic bourgeois poems still retained the medieval form of religious works: Milton’s “Paradise Lost” and “Paradise Regained,” and Klopstock’s “Messiad.” The most typical example of a bourgeois heroic poem is Voltaire's Henriad, which glorifies in the person of Henry IV the bourgeois ideal of an enlightened monarch, just as Virgil glorified Emperor Augustus. Following Virgil, in order to glorify the hero, an event of national significance is taken, shown in the activities of a number of high-ranking officials. In a large number of slowly developing episodes, an idealized, rhetorically praised main character. Conventional idealization is facilitated by mythological mechanics, high syllables, and Alexandrian verse. The missing sincere pathos of social greatness is compensated by didacticism and lyrical lamentations. So. arr. the heroic bourgeois poem turns out to be very far from the classical poems. Instead of an epic affirmation of a free heroic people, the bourgeois poem pompously praised the stilted quasi-hero. The realistic elements in the heroic bourgeois P. were suppressed by conventional pathos. But in a number of the indicated formal features, bourgeois heroic P. sought, through Virgil, to imitate the Greek. poems. K. Marx ironized about this: “Capitalist production is hostile to certain branches of spiritual production, such as art and poetry. Without understanding this, one can end up with a French invention XVIII century, already ridiculed by Lessing: since we have gone further than the ancients in mechanics, etc., why don’t we create an epic? And now the Henriada appears instead of the Iliad” (“Theory of Surplus Value”, vol. I, Sotsekgiz, M., 1931, p. 247). In Russian literature, Kheraskov’s “Rossiada” is very close to the heroic bourgeois P., which arose in a different - feudal-noble - class environment. The petty-bourgeois philistine strata, antagonistically disposed towards the class in power, who experienced the delights of bourgeois heroics on their own backs, parodied the conventional solemnity of the bourgeois heroic poem. This is how burlesque plays of the 17th-18th centuries arose: “The Judgment of Paris”, “The Merry Ovid” by Dassoucy, “The Aeneid” by Scarron, “Virgil’s Aeneid, Turned Inside Out” by Osipov, “The Aeneid Remade” by Kotlyarevsky (Ukrainian), etc. For burlesque plays Characterized by a realistic retelling of a conventionally sublime plot (see Burlesque). In response to P.'s petty-bourgeois parody, representatives of classicism came out with this. called “heroic-comic” P., where they opposed the desire to belittle the “lofty” with the art of sublimely interpreting the comic plot: “Nala” by Boileau, “The Stolen Lock” by Pop, “Elisha” by Maykov. In the history of Russian literature, Maikov’s poem, however, did not differ in its social purpose from Osipov’s poem - both of them were forms of literary struggle against the feudal nobility and its ideology. But in Western literature, these varieties of parodic P. had a noted specific meaning. In burlesque and “heroic-comic” poetry, the main feature and at the same time the main vice of bourgeois poetry was revealed - its conventional heroism, its rhetoric. True epic greatness, only generated by the affirmation of the wide social interests of the people, even in the limited sense of ancient free citizenship, was inaccessible to the bourgeoisie with its individualism, particularism, and egoism. The genre of P. in the literary life of the era of capitalism has lost its former significance. The name P. began to denote new uniform a large epic poetic work, essentially a new genre. As applied to this new genre, the term "P." was especially persistently used in late XVIII and in early XIX centuries In the conditions of the collapse of feudalism, the advanced part of the feudal nobility, moving towards capitalism, sharply raised the question of the individual, its liberation from the oppressive pressure of feudal forms. Despite a clear understanding of the severity of this pressure, there was still no clear idea of the paths of positive life creativity; they were depicted in a romantically vague way. This contradiction was experienced extremely acutely. It found its expression in such literary works as “Childe Harold” by Byron, “Gypsies” and other southern poems by Pushkin, “Mtsyri” and “Demon” by Lermontov, poems by Baratynsky, Podolinsky, Kozlov and others. These works, which grew up in conditions of the collapse of feudalism, are essentially very far from P. They rather represent something close to its opposite and are characterized by features characteristic of Ch. arr. novel. From the epic greatness of classical novels as their main mood, just like from a genuine novel with its objectively given content, romanticism. P. is distinguished by his defining mood - sharply emphasized lyricism. The basis of romantic love is the affirmation of individual freedom. The topic is events of personal intimate life, ch. arr. love, developed on one central character, rather one-sidedly shown in his only inner life, along the line of his main conflict. Lyrical emphasis also affects the organization of language and verse. Due to the alienness of P. from all these features, it is possible to bring these works closer to the genre of P. only in the sense that here and there the main questions of life are posed, which completely determine all events, all the behavior of the hero and are therefore given by the author in an emphasized - epic or lyrical - significance. Hence such a common feature as a large poetic narrative form, although the large form of romantic poetry is of a completely different scale compared to classical poetry.
Subsequently, in the literature of capitalism, the poem as any significant genre form disappears, and the novel is firmly established. However, there are also poetic epic works at this time, but in terms of their genre features, these works are more likely stories in verse (“Sasha” by Nekrasov and others).
Only the growth of peasant revolutionary democracy again brings to life P. “Who Lives Well in Rus'” by Nekrasov - a brilliant example of such a new P. Nekrasov gives a vivid picture of the life of the most important classes and layers of Russian reality of his time (peasantry, nobility, etc.). He shows this reality in a series of independent, but plot-related episodes. The connection is established through the main characters, representing an epic generalization of the people, the peasantry. The characters and their destinies are shown in their social conditioning. The main meaning of P. is the affirmation of the people, their significance, their right to life. The pathos of folk heroism, hidden by the forms of the most difficult everyday life, distinguishes this P. Its originality lies in its deep realism. Nothing moralistic, religious, conventional, pompous, solemn.
The poetic form, realistic in its texture, emphasizes the significance of the topic. This realism is especially acutely felt in comparison with the poetry of the recent past - romantic and bourgeois-heroic. Nekrasov's poem is a critical poem. The poet's critical attitude gave P. a satirical character. Despite all its originality, this poem is much closer to the classical than other varieties of poetry, which to a greater or lesser extent testified to the degradation of the genre.
Proletarian, socialist literature revealed much more deeply and clearly the heroism of the genuine masses of the people, their formation, their struggle for the communist way of life that provides the only truly free, harmonious life, but poetry as a genre is a historical phenomenon, and there is no need to talk about its revival. Critical assimilation of P. is however possible and necessary. The genre of literature has significance for critical study material not only in literature. Let us mention, for example, the film “Chapaev”. Interesting in terms of genre are the poems of Mayakovsky (“Poem about Lenin”, “Good”), Kamensky (“Razin”, “Bolotnikov”) and others. The critical assimilation of classical poetry in its most striking historical examples is one of the important tasks of Soviet literature , the resolution of the cut should provide significant assistance in the formation of new genres of proletarian literature.

CONCLUSIONS.- P. is one of the most significant genres of narrative literature. P. is the main narrative genre of pre-capitalist literature, the place of which under capitalism is occupied by the novel. The classic type of poem is epic. Its most striking example is the ancient Greek P. In the further development of literature, P. degrades, receiving in the process of degradation a number of unique species differences. An essentially independent genre, but an intermediate genre, is romantic literature. Critical assimilation of the most significant aspects of classical literature is observed only in revolutionary-democratic literature and ch. arr. in proletarian and socialist literature. The main features of classical psychology: the affirmation of the people through the most important social events of their life, the affirmation of a full-fledged human personality in the unity of its social and personal interests, the reflection of broad social reality in the “objective” pattern of its development, the affirmation of man’s struggle with the conditions of social and natural reality opposing him , the resulting heroic greatness as the main tone of P. This defines a whole series of private formal features of P., up to the characteristics of composition and language: the presence of a large number of independently developed episodes, attention to detail, a complex conglomerate of characters loosely connected into a single whole by a common thread that unites them action, a whole system of techniques of high syllables and solemn intonation. Bibliography:
Marx K., Towards a critique of political economy, Introduction, IMEL, 1930; Him, Theory of surplus value, vol. I, Sotsekgiz, M., 1931; Boileau N., L'art poetique, P., 1674; Hegel G. F. W., Vorlesungen uber die astethik, Bde I-III, Samtliche Werke, Bde XII-XIV, Lpz., 1924; Humboldt, uber Goethes "Herman u. Dorothea", 1799; Schlegel Fr., Jugendschriften; Carriere M., Das Wesen und die Formen der Poesie, Lpz., 1854; Oesterley H., Die Dichtkunst und ihre Gattungen, Lpz., 1870; Methner J., Poesie und Prosa, ihre Arten und Formen, Halle, 1888; Furtmuller K., Die Theorie des Epos bei den Brudern Schlegel, den Klassikern und W. v. Humboldt, Progr., Wien, 1903; Heusler A., Lied und Epos in germanischen Sagendichtungen, Dortmund, 1905; Lehmann R., Poetik, Munchen, 1919; Hirt E., Das Formgesetz der epischen, dramatischen und lyrischen Dichtung, Lpz., 1923; Ermatinger E., Das dichterische Kunstwerk, Lpz., 1923; Weber, Die epische Dichtung, T. I-III, 1921-1922; His, Geschichte der epischen und idyllischen Dichtung von der Reformation bis zur Gegenwart, 1924; Petersen J., Zur Lehre v. d. Dichtungsgattungen, on Sat. "August Sauer Festschrift", Stuttg., 1925; Wiegand J., Epos, in the book. "Reallexikon der deutschen Literaturgeschichte", hrsg. v. P. Merker u. W. Stammler, Bd I, Berlin, 1926; Steckner H., Epos, Theorie, ibid., Bd IV, Berlin, 1931 (literature given); Aristotle, Poetics, introduction and preface by N. Novosadsky, Leningrad, 1927; Boileau, Poetic Art, Translation Edited by P. S. Kogan, 1914; Lessing G. E., Laocoon, or on the boundaries of painting and poetry, ed. M. Livshits, with entry. Art. V. Grib, (L.), 1933; Two epistoles of Alexander Sumarokov. The first one is about the Russian language, and the second one is about poetry. Printed at the Imperial Academy of Sciences in 1784. To St. Petersburg; Ostolopov N., Dictionary of ancient and new poetry, part 2, St. Petersburg, 1821; Veselovsky Al-dr. N., Three chapters from historical poetics, Collection. sochin., vol. I, St. Petersburg, 1913; Tiander K., Essay on the evolution of epic creativity, “Questions in the theory and psychology of creativity,” vol. I, ed. 2, Kharkov, 1911; His, Folk epic creativity and poet-artist, in the same place, vol. II, no. I, St. Petersburg, 1909; Sakulin P.N., Fundamentals of classical poetics, in the book. “History of new Russian literature of the era of classicism”, M., 1918; Zhirmunsky V., Byron and Pushkin, L., 1924; Iroikomic Poem, ed. Tomashevsky, entry. Art. Desnitsky, Leningrad, 1933; Bogoyavlensky L., Poem, “Literary Encyclopedia”, vol. II, ed. L.D. Frenkel, Moscow, 1925; Fritsche V.M., Poem, “Encyclops. dictionary" br. Pomegranate, vol. XXXIII, 1914. Genres, Poetics, Literary Theory and bibliographies of writers and literary monuments named in the article.

Literary encyclopedia. - At 11 t.; M.: Publishing House of the Communist Academy, Soviet Encyclopedia, Fiction. Edited by V. M. Fritsche, A. V. Lunacharsky. 1929-1939 .

Poem

(Greek poiema, from Greek poieo - I create), a large form of a poetic work in epic, lyric or lyric-epic kind. Poems from different eras are generally not the same in their genre characteristics, but they have some common features: the subject of the image in them is, as a rule, a certain era, the author’s judgments about which are given to the reader in the form of a story about significant events in the life of an individual, who is its typical representative (in epic and lyric-epic), or in the form of a description of his own worldview ( in lyrics); Unlike poems, the poems are characterized by a didactic message, since they directly (in the heroic and satirical types) or indirectly (in the lyrical type) proclaim or evaluate social ideals; they are almost always plot-based, and even in lyrical poems, thematically isolated fragments tend to become cyclical and turn into a single epic narrative.
Poems are the earliest surviving monuments of ancient writing. They were and are original “encyclopedias”, when accessing which one can learn about gods, rulers and heroes, get acquainted with the initial stage of the history of the nation, as well as its mythological prehistory, and comprehend the way of philosophizing characteristic of a given people. These are the early examples of epic poems in many nationalities. literatures: in India - folk epic " Mahabharata"(not earlier than the 4th century BC) and " Ramayana» Valmiki (no later than the 2nd century AD), in Greece - “Iliad” and “Odyssey” Homer(no later than the 8th century BC), in Rome - “Aeneid” Virgil(1st century BC), in Iran - “ Shah-name» Ferdowsi(10th–11th centuries), in Kyrgyzstan - folk epic " Manas"(no later than the 15th century). These are epic poems in which either various lines of a single plot are mixed, associated with the figures of gods and heroes (as in Greece and Rome), or an important historical narrative is framed by thematically isolated mythological legends, lyrical fragments, moral and philosophical reasoning, etc. (so in the East).
In ancient Europe, the genre series of mythological and heroic poems was supplemented by examples of parodic-satirical (anonymous “Batrachomyomachy”, no earlier than the 5th century BC) and didactic (“Works and Days” of Hesiod, 8–7 centuries BC). BC) poetic epic. These genre forms developed in the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and later: the heroic epic poem turned into a heroic “song” with a minimum number of characters and storylines (« Beowulf», « Song of Roland», « Song of the Nibelungs"); its composition was reflected in imitative historical poems (in “Africa” by F. Petrarch, in “Jerusalem Liberated” T. Tasso); the magical plot of the mythological epic was replaced by a lighter magical plot of the poetic chivalric romance(his influence will also be felt in Renaissance epic poems - in “Furious Orlando” by L. Ariosto and in "The Fairy Queen" Spencer); the traditions of the didactic epic were preserved in allegorical poems (in the Divine Comedy Dante, in “Triumphs” by F. Petrarch); finally, in modern times, classic poets were guided by the parody-satirical epic, in the manner burlesque who created irocomic poems (“Naloy” by N. Boileau).
In the era romanticism with his cult lyrics new poems appeared - lyric-epic (“Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage” by J. G. Byron, the poem “Yezersky” and the “novel in verse” “Eugene Onegin” by A.S. Pushkin, “Demon” M. Yu. Lermontov). In them, the epic narrative was interrupted by various detailed landscape descriptions, lyrical deviations from the plot outline in the form of the author's reasoning.
In Russian early literature 20th century There has been a tendency to transform the lyric-epic poem into a lyrical one. Already in the poem by A.A. Blok“The Twelve” is distinguished by lyrical-epic chapters (with the author’s narration and character dialogues) and lyrical chapters (in which the author imitates song types of urban folklore). Early poems by V.V. Mayakovsky(for example, “Cloud in Pants”) also hide the epic plot behind the alternation of different types and different dark lyrical statements. This tendency will manifest itself especially clearly later, in the poem by A.A. Akhmatova"Requiem".

Literature and language. Modern illustrated encyclopedia. - M.: Rosman. Edited by prof. Gorkina A.P. 2006 .

Poem

POEM- the word is Greek and conceals in itself ancient meaning- “creation, creation” - and not only because it tells about the deeds, “creations” of people, but also because it itself is a “song action”, “arrangement of songs”, their unification. Hence the application of the name “poem” to epic vaults and chants; hence its closeness in meaning to the epic, closeness to identity. But still there is a difference. The difference is that the term “poem” has evolved, while the term “epic” has frozen in its meaning of a set of epic - folk - songs. The term “poem” is included in literature as a type of artistic verbal creativity and, together with literature, goes through a number of eras. Alexandrian scholars establish the characteristics of a poem, theorize it and make it literary, i.e. in a reproducible form. They carry out their work on the Iliad and Odyssey, which become models of the poem. In the era of Augustus in Rome, Virgil, under their influence and under the influence of the unsuccessful attempts of his predecessors, wrote the Roman poem “Aeneid”, which, despite the elegant verse and many beautiful details, is generally more of a learned than a free poetic creation. The features of an artificial heroic poem are the following: 1) the basis of the poem is an important event of national or state significance (in Virgil - the founding of a state in Latium), 2) a descriptive element is widely introduced (in Virgil, a description of the storm, night, Eneev’s shield), 3) the touching is introduced into the image of a person (in Virgil - Dido’s love for Aeneas), 4) the miraculous is introduced into the event: dreams, oracles(predictions to Aeneas), direct participation of higher beings, personifications of abstract concepts, 5) the poet’s personal beliefs and beliefs are expressed, 6) hints of modernity are introduced (in the “Aeneid” of the play of Rome contemporary to Virgil). These are the features in the content; the features in the form boiled down to the following: 1) the poem begins with an introduction that indicates the content of the poem (Arma virumque cano in the Aeneid); and the calling of the Muse (Muse, remind me. En. 1. 8); 2) the poem, having unity, grouping the content around one most important event, is diversified by episodes, i.e. such introductory events, which, themselves constituting a whole, adjoin the main event of the poem, often as obstacles slowing down its movement; 3) the beginning of the poem for the most part introduces the reader to the middle of the event: in medias res (in the Aeneid, Aeneas is presented in the 7th year of his journey); 4) previous events are learned from stories on behalf of the hero (in the Aeneid, Aeneas tells Dido about the destruction of Troy).

These features of the poem became laws for writers of subsequent eras and, mainly, the 16th and 18th centuries, who later received the name false classics for their blind imitation of predominantly Roman models. Among them should be named: Liberated Jerusalem - Torquato Tasso, Franciade - Ronear, Lusiad - Camoes, Henriade - Voltaire, "Peter the Great" - Lomonosov, Rossiad - Kheraskov. Along with the heroic poem, the ancients knew a poem of another kind - pheogonic - the deeds of the gods, cosmogonic - depicting the universe (Deeds and Days - Hesiod, On the Nature of Things - Lucretius). And in imitation of them, Christian writers in the 14th, 17th and 18th centuries created religious poems. These are: The Divine Comedy - Dante, Paradise Lost - Milton, Messiah - Klopstock. It is necessary to point out for a more complete disclosure of the term that the poem, as a poem, is also known to the Hindu epic (Ramayana, Magabharata), and, as a mythical-historical one, it appears at the end of the 10th and beginning of the 11th century AD. and among the Persians, where Abdul-Qasim-Mansur-Firdussi creates the Shah-Name (royal book) in 60,000 couplets, where he connected the actual history of Persia before the overthrow of the Sassanids by the Arabs with legends about primitive antiquity, depicting in it the fate of the people side by side major events. In Western Europe, along with the false classical poem, a romantic poem arose and developed, which arose from the tales of the Middle Ages. The main content of this kind of poem was scenes from the life of a knight, depicting mainly religious feelings, feelings of honor and love. There is no strict unity in them: the adventures are diverse, intricately intertwined with each other (“The Furious Roland” by Ariosto).

From these foundations, from the interaction of pseudo-classical and romantic poems at the beginning of the 19th century, a new poem grew in the form of the poem of Byron and his imitators. The poem now takes the form of either a short or a widespread poetic story about events from the personal life of a fictional person, not subject to any of the usual rules of the poem, with numerous digressions of a lyrical nature, with the main attention being paid to the heartfelt life of the hero. Soon the poem loses its romantic character and, due to a general change in literary theoretical attitudes, receives a new meaning of the lyric-epic poem as a special type work of art, the classicism of which is reflected in the complete justification of the work by its compliance with its folk characteristics (folk spirit) and the requirements of artistry.

In this form the poem spread widely. In Russian literature, as authors of poems of this kind, one can name Pushkin, Lermontov, Maykov (“The Fool”), A. K. Tolstoy and a number of other less prominent poets. Getting closer and closer to other types of epic creativity, in Nekrasov’s poetry the poem becomes a purely realistic work (the poems “Sasha”, “Who Lives Well in Rus'”, “Peasant Children”, etc.), more like a story in verse, than a pseudo-classical or romantic poem. At the same time, the external form of the poem changes in a unique way. The hexameter of classical and pseudo-classical poems is freely replaced by other meters. The masters of Dante and Ariosto in this case supported the determination of modern poets to free themselves from the clutches of the classical form. A stanza is introduced into the poem and a number of poems appear written in octaves, sonnets, rondos, and triplets (Pushkin, V. Ivanov, Igor Severyanin, Iv. Rukavishnikov). Fofanov (The Dressmaker) tries to give a realistic poem, but is unsuccessful. Symbolists (Bryusov, Konevsky, Balmont) are very willing to use the term “poem” to describe their experiments in poetic storytelling. This movement is also reflected in the frequent translations of Western European poems (starting with the poems of Edgar Allan Poe). Recently, the poem has found a new source of revival in the social themes of the time. An example of this type of poem can be called “The Twelve” - A. Blok, poems by Mayakovsky, Sergei Gorodetsky. Obviously, the heroic era of revolutionary struggle finds in the poem elements and forms that most clearly reflect it. Thus, the poem, having originated in Greece, went through a number of changes, but through all the centuries it carried its main feature of an epic work, characterizing moments of bright rise and self-determination of a nationality or individual.

Dictionary of literary terms

What is a poem? This is a work that is at the junction of two literary “worlds” - poetry and prose. As prose, the poem has a narrative logic, a real plot with a denouement and an epilogue. And as poetry, it conveys the depth of the hero’s subjective experiences. Many of the classics that everyone took in school were written in this genre.

Let's remember the poem " Dead Souls"from the pen of the Ukrainian classic - N.V. Gogol. Here a wonderful large-scale plan echoes the ability to find depth in a person.

Let us remember the poetry of the brilliant A. Pushkin - “Ruslan and Lyudmila”. But besides them, there are many more interesting works.

History of the development of the genre

The poem grew out of the very first folk songs, through which every nation transmitted historical events and myths to your children. These are the well-known “Iliad” and “Odyssey”, and “The Song of Roland” - a French epic. In Russian culture, the ancestor of all poems was the historical song - “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign.”

Then the poem stood out from such syncretic art, people began to complement these epics and introduce new heroes. Over time, new ideas and new stories appeared. New authors came up with their own stories. Then new types appeared: burlesque poem, irocomic; the life and affirmation of the people ceased to be the main theme of the works.

This is how the genre developed, becoming deeper and more complex. The elements of the composition were gradually formed. And now this direction in art is already a whole science.

Structure of a work of art

What do we know about the poem? The key feature is that the work has a clear interconnected structure.

All parts are connected to each other, the hero somehow develops, passes tests. His thoughts, as well as his feelings, are the focus of the narrator's attention. And all the events around the hero, his speech - everything is conveyed in a certain poetic size and chosen rhythm.

The elements of any work, including a poem, include dedications, epigraphs, chapters, and epilogue. Speech, just like in a story or story, is represented by dialogues, monologues and the author’s speech.

Poem. Features of the genre

This genre of literature has existed for a long time. What is a poem? In translation - “I create”, “I create”. The genre is a lyrical large-scale poetic work, which not only gives the reader a pleasant impression of beautiful lines, but has both purpose and structure.

The creation of any work begins with a theme. So, the poem very well reveals both the theme and the character of the main character. The work also has its own elements, a special author’s style and the main idea.

The elements of the poem are as follows:

subject;
form;
structure;
and rhythm.

Indeed, since this is a poetic genre, rhythm must be present; but as in a story, the plot must be followed. By choosing a topic, the poet indicates what exactly the work is about. We will look at the poem "Who feels good in Rus'" and famous story Gogol about Chichikov and his adventures. They both have general theme.

The poem "Who lives well in Rus'?" N. Nekrasova

The writer began his work in 1863. Two years after the abolition of serfdom, and continued to work for 14 years. But he never finished his main work.

The focus is on the road, symbolizing the choice of direction in life that everyone chooses in their lives.

N. Nekrasov sought to reliably convey both the problems of the people and the best features of a simple man. According to the plot, the dispute that arose between ordinary workers dragged on, and seven heroes went to look for at least one of those who really lived better at that time.

The poet vividly depicted both fairs and haymaking - all these mass paintings serve as a clear confirmation of the main idea that he wanted to convey:

The people are liberated, but are the people happy?

Characters in the main work of N. Nekrasov

This is the basis of the plot of the poem "Who Lives Well..." - according to Russian roads Representatives of the people, peasant men, come and investigate the problems of the same ordinary people.

The poet created many interesting characters, each of which is valuable as a unique literary image, and speaks on behalf of the peasants of the 19th century. These are Grigory Dobrosklonov, and Matryona Timofeevna, whom Nekrasov described with obvious gratitude to Russian women, and

Dobrosklonov is the main character who wants to act as a people's teacher and educator. Ermila, on the other hand, is a different image, he protects the peasants in his own way, completely going over to his side.

Nikolai Gogol, "Dead Souls"

The theme of this poem echoes Nekrasov's theme. The road is also important here. The hero in the story is looking not only for money, but also for his own path.

The main character of the work is Chichikov. He comes to a small town with his great plans: to earn a whole million. The hero meets the landowners and learns about their life. And the author who tells the story ridicules the stupid thoughts and absurd vices of the elite of that time.

Nikolai Gogol managed to convey social reality well, the failure of landowners as a class. And he also perfectly describes the portraits of the heroes, reflecting them personal qualities.

Foreign classical works

Most famous poems written in dark times Medieval Europe, are Alighieri's The Divine Comedy and Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales. Through the stories described by the talented poet Geoffrey Chaucer, we can learn about English history how different layers of society lived in this country.

After all, what is a poem - it is an epic that tells about bygone times and includes a large number of characters. D. Chaucer did an excellent job with this task. But, of course, this is an epic that is not intended for schoolchildren.

Modern views on the poem

So, it is clear that initially these were only epic works. And now? What is a poem? These are modern plot structures, interesting images and a non-trivial approach to reality. can place the hero in a fictional world, convey his personal suffering; describe incredibly interesting adventurous adventures.

The modern author of poems has at his disposal a wide experience of previous generations and modern ideas, and a variety of techniques with the help of which the plot is combined into a single whole. But in many cases, the rhythm of the verse fades into the background, or even into the background, as an optional element.

Conclusion

Now let us clearly define what a poem is. This is almost always a lyrical-epic volumetric work in verse. But there is also an ironically constructed story, where the author ridicules the vices of a particular class, for example.

Poem!

Poem ( Old Greek Ποίημα) is a poetic genre. A large epic poetic work belonging to a specific author, a large poetic form. Can be heroic, romantic, critical, satirical, etc.

A poem is a work of narrative or lyrical content written in verse. Also called a poem are works created on the basis of folk tales, legends, and epic stories. The classic type of poem is considered to be an epic. Translated from Greek language a poem is a creation.

Having emerged in a primitive tribal society in the form of songs, the poem firmly took shape and developed widely in subsequent eras. But soon the poem lost its significance as a leading genre.

Poems from different eras have some common features: the subject of the image in them is a certain era, judgments about which are given to the reader in the form of a story about significant events in the life of an individual (in epic and lyric-epic) or in the form of a description of a worldview (in lyric poetry).

Unlike poems, poems are characterized by a message, since they proclaim or evaluate social ideals. Poems are almost always plot-driven, and even in lyrical poems, individual fragments tend to turn into a single narrative.

The poems are the earliest surviving monuments of ancient writing. They were and are original “encyclopedias” of the past.

Early examples of epic poems: in India - the folk epic "Mahabharata" (no earlier than the 4th century BC), in Greece - Homer's "Iliad" and "Odyssey" (no later than the 8th century BC), in Rome - “Aeneid” by Virgil (1st century BC), etc.

The poem received its greatest completeness in Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, classic examples of this genre - epics. They reflected big events, and the integrity of their coverage of reality made it possible to dwell on the little things and create complex system characters. The epic poems affirmed a broad national meaning, the struggle for the strength and significance of the people.

Since the conditions for the formation of ancient Greek poems could not be repeated, the poems in their original form could not reappear - the poem degrades, receiving a number of differences.

In ancient Europe, parody-satirical (anonymous “Batrachomyomachy”, no earlier than the 5th century BC) and didactic (“Works and Days” of Hesiod, 8-7 centuries BC) poems appeared. They developed in the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and later. The heroic epic poem turned into a heroic “song” with a minimum number of characters and plot lines (“Beowulf”, “The Song of Roland”, “The Song of the Nibelungs”).

Its composition was reflected in imitative historical poems (in “Africa” by F. Petrarch, in “Jerusalem Liberated” by T. Tasso). The plot of the mythological epic was replaced by a lighter plot of the knight's poem (its influence is noticeable in L. Ariosto's Orlando Furioso and Spenser's The Fairy Queen). The traditions of the didactic epic were preserved in allegorical poems (in Dante’s “Divine Comedy”, in F. Petrarch’s “Triumphs”). In modern times, the classicist poets were guided by the parody-satirical epic, creating ironic poems (“Naloy” by N. Boileau).

Poem! The poem is often called a novel in verse.

The heyday of the poem genre occurs in the era of romanticism, when the greatest poets of various countries turned to creating poems. The poems acquire a socio-philosophical or symbolic-philosophical character (“Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage” by J. Byron, “The Bronze Horseman” by A. S. Pushkin, “The Demon” by M. Yu. Lermontov, “Germany, a Winter’s Tale” by G. Heine).

In Russian literature of the early 20th century, a tendency arose to transform a lyric-epic poem into a lyrical one. The most intimate experiences are correlated with historical shocks (“Cloud in Pants” by V.V. Mayakovsky, “The Twelve” by A.A. Blok, “First Date” by A. Bely). In A. A. Akhmatova’s poem “Requiem,” the epic plot is hidden behind the alternation of lyrical statements.

In Soviet poetry, there were various genre varieties of poems: reviving the heroic principle (“Good!” by Mayakovsky, “Vasily Terkin” by A.T. Tvardovsky), lyrical-psychological poems (“About this” by V.V. Mayakovsky, “Anna Snegina” by S. A. Yesenin), philosophical, historical, etc.

The poem as a lyric-epic and monumental genre, which allows one to combine the epic of the heart and “music”, the “element” of world upheavals, intimate feelings and historical events, remains a productive genre of world poetry, although in modern world There are few authors in this genre.