The problem of power poetic word in his text, Viktor Petrovich Astafiev, an outstanding Russian writer, considers it.
The author, reflecting on the problem in the first person, asks the question: “why is Yesenin sung and sung so little among us?” He notes that the poet suffers for all people with divine torment inaccessible to them. In addition, the narrator experiences inspiration when listening to the lines of the great poet’s poem coming from the receiver: poetry makes him cry, repent, and confess.
The problem of the power of the poetic word can be traced through the example of the work of great Russian poets. A. A. Akhmatova’s poem “Courage” is a cry from the poet’s soul, an instruction to citizens not to give up and to be moral.
"The Great Russian Word" is what united Soviet people and such a difficult period as the Great Patriotic War. The poetess notes the importance of Russian speech. By defending Russian speech, we are defending our Motherland. Delving into the lines of the poem, the reader feels proud of his country, native language, he gains the strength to move on, awareness of the importance of protecting his native land in case of danger.
As a second argument, I would like to cite the example of A.S. Pushkin’s poem “The Prophet”. Pushkin wants to convey to the reader that a poet, like a prophet, must “burn the hearts of people with his verb.” This is his true calling.
In conclusion, I would like to note: the power of poetry is great, it can easily make us feel the “highest torment” and “the sadness of the poet.” I believe that every person should have their own favorite poem, which allows you to open your soul and find peace.
What works will help you easily reveal the topic and write a good essay?
Text: Anna Chainikova
Collage: Year of Literature.RF
Practice shows that the most difficult thing for schoolchildren is the selection of arguments in an essay. everyone will have to take it, and everyone will have to write an essay in the second part of the exam, and not just those who have chosen for themselves humanitarian specialties. Together with you
We will look at the main thematic blocks, and start with art, because the exam often contains texts about reading and books.
Types of problems in essays in the Unified State Exam format:
- Philosophical
- Social
- Moral
- Environmental
- Aesthetic
We will look at some of the most common ones found in texts. Unified State Exam problems and we will select works, using examples of which it will be easy to reveal the topic and write a good essay.
AESTHETIC problems affect the sphere of human perception of beauty:
- The role of art in human life (music, books and reading)
- Perception of art (music, literature, theater) and mass culture (television, Internet)
- The power of art (music, poetry, books) and its influence on a person
- Education of aesthetic taste
- Spirituality in art
- Refusal of books and reading
Sample problem statements
The problem of the role of books/music in human life. (What role do books/music play in a person’s life?)
The problem of refusing to read and books. (What threatens humanity by giving up books?)
The problem of people's perception of music/poetry. (How do people perceive music/poetry?)
The problem of the influence of music on people. (What influence does music have on people?)
The problem of the cleansing power of art/poetry/music). (What is the power of art/poetry/music on a person?)
The problem of talent power. (What is the power of talent?)
The problem of the power of the poetic word. (What is the power of the poetic word?)
The problem of attitude towards people of art (poets, composers) and their creativity. (How do people treat people of art, creative people?)
The problem of differences between science and art. (What is the difference between science and art?)
A poetic word, the sounds of music, wonderful singing can awaken the most powerful emotions, make you experience different feelings: sadness, delight, peace, make you think about the important and eternal. Art has a cleansing effect on a person’s soul; it can heal mental wounds, give strength to a person, instill confidence in a desperate person, and give a desire to fight for life to a soldier in war.
A book is an invaluable source of knowledge passed on from generation to generation; with its help a person learns about the world, getting acquainted with life experience other people set out in it. It is impossible to understand a person if you do not read the books that are written about him. M. Gorky called the book “a New Testament, written by man about himself, about the most complex being in the world.”
If you give up books and reading, connections between people will be interrupted, the mechanism for transmitting knowledge will be lost, and humanity will stop in its development. Books cultivate morality, shape personality, without them it is impossible to raise a humane person who sympathizes with others. The novel Fahrenheit 451 describes a world in which books were illegal and subject to destruction. Portraying a society that has abandoned reading and books, Bradbury talks about the danger of losing one’s own self, individuality, and turning people into a faceless crowd that is easy to control.
Books can have a tremendous impact on a person’s worldview and give a certain model of behavior that he will adhere to in life. Thus, the title character of the novel “Don Quixote”, who loved knightly romances with all his heart, begins to “live by the book.” Imagining himself as a knight, he performs feats for the glory of his Beautiful Lady, Dulcinea of Toboso: he fights giants, frees convicts, saves the princess, fights for the rights of the oppressed and offended. From French sentimental novels, Tatyana Larina, the heroine, and Sofia Famusova from the comedy “Woe from Wit” learn about life and relationships with men. Tatiana writes a declaration of love to Onegin, just like the heroine of the novel, and she assigns a completely bookish role to her lover: he is either a “guardian angel” or a “cunning tempter.” Sofia sees Molchalin through the prism of a sentimental novel; he fully corresponds to the book ideal, which is why the girl chooses him. The caustic Chatsky does not attract her, because he does not have that kindness and tenderness (however, feigned) that is inherent in Molchalin.
His daughter’s immense love for books and reading worries Famusov, because he believes that books only cause harm ( “Learning is the plague, learning is the reason, / That now is worse than before, / There are crazy people, and deeds, and opinions ...”) and “if you stop evil, take everything books I wish I could burn".
The danger that, according to some, the book may contain, is also written about in the novel “The Name of the Rose.” However, it is worth noting that in the hands of a stupid reader, the book will never be dangerous, but it will not be useful either. For example, Chichikov’s footman Petrushka, a great lover of reading books, “whose content did not bother him,” read everything with equal attention. “He liked not what he read about, but more the reading itself, or, better to say, the process of reading itself, that some word always comes out of the letters, which sometimes means God knows what.”. A book in the hands of such a “reader” is mute, it can neither help nor harm him, because reading is not only pleasure, but also difficult mental and intellectual work.
To a sensitive, attentive reader, a book can not only give knowledge and pleasure, but also form an idea of the world, show its beauty, teach you to dream and give strength to go towards your dream. This is exactly what happens to Alyosha Peshkov, the hero of the trilogy “Childhood”, “In People”, “My Universities”. Sent “to the people,” the boy lives “in a fog of stultifying melancholy” among the rudeness and ignorance of ordinary working people. There are no aspirations or goals in his life; it seems dreary and hopeless to the child. But how Alyosha’s life changes when a book falls into his hands! She opens up a huge, wonderful new world for him, shows him that he can live differently: “They [the books] showed me a different life - a life of great feelings and desires that led people to exploits and crimes. I saw that the people around me were not capable of feats and crimes, they lived somewhere away from everything that books were written about, and it was difficult to understand what was interesting in their lives? I don’t want to live such a life... This is clear to me - I don’t want to..." Since then, the boy has been trying with all his might to get out of the pool he found himself in, and the book becomes his guiding star.
The main task of the book is not at all to entertain the reader, give him pleasure, console or lull, M. Gorky convinces the reader in the story “About a Restless Book.” A good book disturbs, deprives you of sleep, “sows needles on… the bed,” forcing you to think about the meaning of life, encouraging you to understand yourself.
Works
About books and reading
A. S. Griboyedov"Woe from Wit"
A. S. Pushkin"Eugene Onegin"
"Dead Souls"
Maksim Gorky“In People”, “Konovalov”, “About a Restless Book”
A. Green"Green Lamp"
V. P. Astafiev“They sing Yesenin”
B. Vasiliev"Don't shoot white swans"
V. Sorokin"Manaraga"
M. Cervantes"Don Quixote"
D. London"Martin Eden"
R. Bradbury"451 degrees Fahrenheit"
O. Huxley"Brave New World"
U. Eco"Name of the Rose"
B. Schlink"Reader"
About music and singing
"Mozart and Salieri"
"Singers"
L. N. Tolstoy"War and Peace", "Albert"
A. P. Chekhov"Rothschild's Violin"
V. G. Korolenko"The Blind Musician"
A. I. Kuprin"Garnet Bracelet", "Gambrinus", "Taper"
V. P. Astafiev « The Dome Cathedral", "Postscript"
« old cook", "Dead city"
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Essay on the topic: There is a month above the window. There's a wind under the window
Sample and example of essay No. 1
From time immemorial it has sounded in Rus' folk song. In it, people shared their joy, but more often cried out their sadness. This same deep folk sadness can be heard in the words of some Russian poets. The first of them is probably Sergei Yesenin. It is the problem of the closeness of the poetic word to the people's soul that the classic of Soviet literature Viktor Astafiev devotes his reasoning to.
All this leads the author to think about the fate of the creative legacy of the great peasant poet, who for some reason is still “terrified to let among the people.”
Viktor Petrovich Astafiev is sure that Yesenin’s word with its “universal melancholy” is exactly what people need, because it reminds us of the most important thing and explains the “incomprehensible.”
I largely agree with the writer: the poetic word is addressed directly to the spirit of the people, to their emotional self-awareness.
Yesenin’s poems remind us of a caring attitude towards nature, towards “our smaller brothers”. For example, in such famous poems as “Song of the Dog”, “You are my fallen maple...”, “The golden grove dissuaded...”. The poet describes the experiences of his “heroes” as one who passed them through his own heart. Yesenin compares himself with a maple tree, a birch grove, showing the deep connection of a person with native nature, reminding us that we are all part of it.
We live in a terrible time, when our native rivers, forests, and fields began to be called “ environment"and are increasingly turning into a dump for various waste. For example, in E. Nosov’s story “The Doll” we read about how a once deep and beautiful river rich in fish turned into a thin, stinking stream. And against the backdrop of this desolation is the story of a mutilated doll. It would seem, what is the connection? But pondering Astafiev’s text, you understand: desolation in the soul without a living poetic word leads to desolation in nature. Without understanding the beauty of poetry, we lose morality, and with it the idea of the beauty of our native corner. I would like to believe that this situation will change, and our children will not have to live in the desert.
Sample and example of short essay No. 2 on the topic: There is a month above the window. There is wind under the window. How to write a mini essay with a plan
Joan of Arc, Jesus Christ, Moses, the list goes on. All these people gave themselves to the people, did not spare own strength to help people. But people were not always ready to thank them for their kindness. But is it reasonable to love, save the people, and in return be burned at the stake or crucified on the cross? In the text proposed for analysis, V.P. Astafiev raises the problem of love for the people. The author's position is expressed extremely clearly and clearly. Through the poet's compassion his love for people is manifested.
He was kind to every living creature on earth. The author feels some connection between himself and Yesenin, sympathizes with him, because “even when he’s dead, everyone rejects him with their elbows.” I completely share the author's position. Yesenin felt the condition of ordinary people. He suffered for everyone, at once experienced and passed through himself all the suffering of the Russian people. However, despite all his love for people, he never received universal recognition. He was placed in a psychiatric hospital and was rejected by those close to him. But it was not only the Russian poet who was treated so harshly.
People are not always ready to thank for love and kindness. But it is important to understand that this good is done not for the sake of recognition, not for show, but for the sake of one’s own spiritual satisfaction. This is well written about in Maxim Gorky’s work “Old Woman Izergil”. The main character tells interesting story about the daredevil Danko. This young man had a warm, bright heart. There was so much love in him that he was able to illuminate the path for people when they found themselves in a thunderous forest, where not the slightest ray of light penetrated. Danko tore his heart out of his chest, not thinking that it could kill him, not thinking that people wouldn’t even thank him.
He acted like a hero, brought the people to light, saved them. But what motivated him? Great love for the people. Joan of Arc, the legendary French warrior who was able to expel the hostile British forces from her country, also experienced great love for the people. She led the regiments and instilled in the soldiers faith in victory. But people accused her of heresy and called her a witch. For what? Because she wore men's clothes! The Maid of Orleans, who saved France, was burned at the stake. The girl never received any gratitude for her actions, moreover, she was killed for this. This text made me think about such an important issue as love for one’s native people.
Is it worth doing good to people at all? I think it's worth it. But you also need to be able to give thanks. After all, if I don’t thank a person who did something nice for me, will he do it again for me or someone else? Of course not. Therefore, if we want to live in a world where love and mutual understanding reign, we must help and appreciate the help of others.
Sample and example of short essay No. 3 on the topic: There is a month above the window. There is wind under the window. How to write a mini essay with a plan
When I read the proposed passage, a real Russian village appears before my eyes, where sincere human relationships and sincerity are still preserved. A field with a harvest, a grazing horse, a haystack, a ringing stream - this is all real Russia, which is what Sergei Yesenin sang about.
Alas, little remains of the village he praised. People scattered to big cities. The huts are half empty, only old people remain in them. In the evening there is no laughter, conversations or songs. Instead of them, only oppressive silence is heard: “Nothing is heard, nothing is seen, the song has moved away from the village, life is dying without it.”
Everything is so sad that the old people do not recognize the children who have not visited them for a long time: “For some reason he arrived in winter, walked up to his mother through the snowdrifts, knocked, but she did not let him in - she no longer recognized him by his voice.”
The author of the text shows that Russian villages are empty, as young people leave for better life, they don’t like hard work. The saddest thing is that they forget their parents, who can barely cope with the household themselves. But the author is sure that there is still hope, as long as there is at least one person in the village, as long as there is light in the windows.
I. A. Bunin portrayed the Russian village very truthfully and vividly in the story “The Village”. He sees a sad picture, poverty and joylessness, dead fields. Bunin shows that the residents have a small outlook, they are practically isolated from the rest of the world.
Many of my acquaintances and comrades come from distant villages and villages; they go there to visit their parents extremely rarely, if at all. Unfortunately, I am convinced that the image of a half-empty and forgotten Russian village is not just an artistic image from works, but the bitter truth.
Sample and example of short essay No. 4 on the topic: There is a month above the window. Arguments from literature. Text problem
It seems to me that poetry has existed as long as humans have existed. In moments of experience and happiness, tragedy and comedy, on holiday and in grief - people have always expressed their thoughts, emotions and experiences with the help of songs and poems. In the text proposed for analysis by V.P. Astafiev makes us think about the question: “What is the power of the poetic word?”
Commenting on this problem, the writer draws our attention to a poem by Sergei Yesenin, coming from the receiver, as well as from the lips of vociferous women, symbolizing the simple Russian people. These lines are filled with a variety of emotions: there is both cleansing grief and love for the native land. V.P. Astafiev emphasizes what feelings the poet put into his poem and how they are reflected in the hearts of ordinary citizens: “He suffers for all people, for every living creature, with a divine torment inaccessible to us, which we often hear in ourselves and therefore cling, reaching out to the word of Ryazan guy..."
The author's point of view, it seems to me, is expressed quite clearly. It is as follows: a poetic word can awaken various feelings in a person, make him think about the most important things. The poetry of Sergei Yesenin fills a person with “tears and bitter delight.” It's hard to disagree with V.P. Astafiev that poetry has magical powers.
One line can make a person laugh and cry at the same time. Imbued with the emotions and experiences of the author, the reader passes them through his heart. Thanks to the lyrics of the classics of world literature, you can think about the meaning of life, look back at your own life, cleanse your soul and be morally reborn. For example, in a short but very rich poem by M.Yu. Lermontov’s “Prayer”, contains both the author’s sadness and his faith in the “power of grace,” in the rebirth of man and the liberation of his soul from melancholy and painful doubts.
The lyrical hero, like the author himself, believes in the power of the living word and that it can help anyone clear their minds of anxiety. And where there used to be heaviness, now there will be lightness: “A burden will roll off the soul, Doubt is far away - And one believes and cries, And so easily, easily...”. The power of the poetic word lies in the very calling of the poet. A.S. Pushkin in his poem “The Prophet” expresses this through the image of a poet-martyr dragging through the desert and awaiting truth from heaven.
And God indicated to him his calling: “With the verb, burn the hearts of people.” Thus, A.S. Pushkin sees the power of the poetic word in getting to the very depths of the human soul and burning them with words. For each of us, poetry plays its own individual role. Someone gets into it love lyrics and finds their experiences in this, someone loves poems about friendship and love for their native land, and someone even passes sad lines through their hearts about the meaning of life and the purpose of the poet. But no one remains indifferent, and this is the power of the poetic word.
Source text in full version for writing the Unified State Examination
(1) “There is a month above the window. (2) There is wind under the window. (3) The poplar that has flown around is silvery and bright...” comes from the receiver. (4) And from the toes, hands, from the roots of the hair, from every cell of the body, a drop of blood rises to the heart, pricks it, fills it with tears and bitter delight, you want to run somewhere, hug someone living, repent before the whole world or huddle in a corner and howl out all the bitterness that is in the heart, and that which still remains in it.
(b) Voiced women with a quiet sigh lead and talk about the month outside the window, about the little girl who is crying outside the outskirts, and I also feel sorry for these singers, I want to console them, pity them, reassure them. (b) What a cleansing sorrow! (7) There is no month outside. (8) It’s foggy outside. (9) It was exhausted from the earth, filled the forests, flooded the clearings, covered the river - everything was drowned in it. (Y) It’s a rainy summer, the flax has died, the rye has fallen, the barley is not growing. (11) And all the fogs, fogs. (12) There may be a month, but it is not visible, and in the village they go to bed early.
(13) And not a single voice is heard. (14) Nothing is heard, nothing is seen, the song has moved away from the village, life is dying out without it. (15) 3 Along the river in a deserted village live two old women, in the summer they are apart, in the winter they come together in one hut so that less wood is wasted. (16) A son from Leningrad came to visit one grandmother. (17) For some reason he arrived in winter, walked up to his mother through the snowdrifts, knocked, but she didn’t let him in - she didn’t recognize him by his voice. (18) Talyanka is crying, crying. (19) Not there, not across the river, but in my heart.
(20) And I see everything in its original light, between summer and autumn, between evening and day. (21) The old horse over there is the only one in three half-empty villages, eating grass without interest. (22) A drunken shepherd outside the outskirts barks blackly at the starved calves; Anna, a young and old-looking woman, comes down to the river with a bucket. (23) “The distant cry of a Talyanka, a lonely voice...” (24) Why is this and why are so few of us singing and singing Yesenin? (25) The most melodious poet! (26) Is it really possible that everyone rejects him even when he’s dead?
(27) Is it really scary to let him into the people? (28) The Russian people will take it and tear their shirt, and with it their heart, so that they can suffer the torment that the poet, suffering at once from all the suffering of his people, did not endure, did not survive. (29) He suffers for all people, for every living creature, with a supreme torment inaccessible to us, which we often hear in ourselves and therefore cling, reaching out to the word of the Ryazan guy, so that his pain, his all-world melancholy will echo again and again, stir up our soul .
(30) I often feel him so close and dear to me that I talk to him in my sleep, calling him brother, younger brother, sad brother, and I keep comforting him, comforting him... (31) Where can you console him? (32) He’s gone, the miserable orphan. (33) Only a bright soul hovers over Russia and disturbs, disturbs us with eternal sadness. (34) And they explain everything to us and explain to us that he is not guilty of anything and that he is ours.
(35) The judges themselves, who determined who is “ours” and “not ours”, have become “not ours”, erased from human memory, the song, sound, sadness of the poet is with us forever, and everything is explained to us and the inexplicable, incomprehensible . (36) “It’s a month outside the window...” (37) Darkness outside the window, empty villages and empty land. (38) It’s unbearable to listen to Yesenin here. (39) The fogs lie around, dense, motionless, no sound breaks through. (40) The light barely leaked from across the river like a faded speck in the village window.
(41) The old ladies are alive. (42) We've worked hard. (43) They are having dinner. (44) Is the evening still going on or is it already night? (45) The grass is wet, the leaves are dripping, a horse snorts in a wet meadow, the tractor has fallen silent behind the village. (46) And it lies endlessly, in forests and copses, among grains and flaxes, near rivers and lakes, with a silent church in the middle, mourned by the Russian singer. (47) Shut up, military trumpet! (48) Calm down, eloquent speaker! (49) Don’t make faces, newfangled howler monkeys! (bO) Turn off the tape recorders and transistors, guys! (51) Hats off, Russia! (52) They sing Yesenin! (According to V.P. Astafiev*)
“The poet is open in soul to the world, and our world is sunny, in it the celebration of labor and creativity is eternally taking place, every moment a sunny yarn is created - and whoever is open to the world, he, peering carefully around him at countless lives, at countless combinations of lines and colors, will always have solar threads at his disposal and will be able to weave gold and silver carpets."
K. D. Balmont
N. V. Dzutseva (Ivanovo) The problem of the poetic word in the article by I. Annensky “Balmont the lyricist”
N. V. Dzutseva (Ivanovo)
The problem of the poetic word in I. Annensky’s article “Balmont the Lyricist”
The article “Balmontlirik”, written in 1904, was included in the first collection of critical prose by I. Annensky “The Book of Reflections” (1906), representing one of the most fundamentally significant expressions of the author’s critical-aesthetic position and, in his direct statement, “the basic provisions of aesthetic criticism ". It is precisely this understanding of the place and significance of this article that allows us to see in it something more than a critical essay on the work of one of our contemporary poets. Here we are talking not just about the poetic personality of K. Balmont and its stylistic expression; This speech by Annensky concentrates the most significant observations and discoveries in the field of poetic speech both for the poet himself and for the literary situation of the early twentieth century. Ultimately, the problem of a word that is capable of expressing a new structure of the human soul, which has undergone significant shifts in its psychological composition and declared the need for its artistic embodiment, is being solved here.
It cannot be said that the article “Balmontlirik” remained without the attention of researchers, and this is natural: without referring to it, it is difficult to understand Annensky’s aesthetic position, and yet this speech of the critic/poet deserves special reflection. The point here is not so much in the unconditional apologetics of Balmont, which in itself is interesting and significant against the backdrop of the usually distanced analyticism of Annensky’s critical manner, but in what is hidden behind it. In our opinion, this text contains a kind of key to the inner drama of the Annensky poet. Some subtle “nerve” of this text was captured by I. Podolskaya, who, among other things, notes that in a scrupulous analysis of Balmont’s work, Annensky “at times does not seem to write about him. And then the reader feels in the familiar consonances some kind of anxiety that is not Balmont’s, and some other image of the poet unexpectedly grows in the article, overshadowing Balmont. Of course, this is not only the authorial self of Annensky himself, but to a certain extent the psychological type of the poet of the turn of the century...”
This sensitive but cursory remark, of course, does not exhaust the problematic depth and complexity of Annensky’s unusual speech. First of all, a legitimate question arises: why, of all the contemporary poets working alongside Annensky, among whom were such masters of the symbolist movement as V. Bryusov and Vyach. Ivanov, it was Balmont who became the object of close attention of the Annensky critic. As is known, Annensky did not belong to either the Moscow or St. Petersburg school of symbolism, building his relations with new artistic orientations quite carefully. Nevertheless, he was one of the first to feel and realize that inner freedom, which was carried by symbolist poetry, based on a new sense of verbal matter. However, he was not satisfied with either the rational-aesthetic dictate of V. Bryusov, or the mystic-religious intentions of Ivanov, which he, as a theorist and theurgist, tried to introduce into poetic creativity. Among the poets actively working in the symbolist paradigm of the early twentieth century, in Annensky’s field of vision there were other figures who, a few years later, would become the main “heroes” of his famous dying article “On Modern Lyricism” - A. Blok, A. Bely, F. Sologub, M. Kuzmin. However, it is Balmont with his three collections, according to Annensky, “the most defining for his poetry” - “Burning Buildings”, “Let’s Be Like the Sun” and “Only Love” - that becomes for the critic the center of a new poetic situation.
Of course, in the figure of Balmont, Annensky first of all sees the type of poet par excellence, unburdened by theoretical dogmas and not constrained by any task introduced into the creative act. This, by the way, was understood by other fellow writers, as evidenced by, for example, the words of Vyach. Ivanova: “...Valery Bryusov, in love with the so-called pure creativity,<...>once exclaimed, turning to the naively spontaneous Balmont: “We are prophets, you are a poet.” But Annensky’s choice has a clearly thought-out motivation: “... our self, successfully or unsuccessfully,<...>but, in any case, it is reflected more fully than before in the new poetry and, at the same time, not only in its logically justified, or at least formulated, moment, but also in the spontaneously unconscious.”
The fact that Annensky chose the “naively spontaneous” Balmont with his “spontaneously unconscious” gift from the poetic cohort of famous contemporaries could not but cause bewilderment among the philological community. This is how Annensky himself, in a letter to A.N. Veselovsky, talks about his impression of the report on which the article was written, which he read in the Neophilological Society on November 15, 1904: “...The reading ended rather sadly. P. I. Weinberg, who presided over us, gave his final speech after a ritual compliment<...>found it possible to approve of me for taking seriously the poet, whom “we” treat only ironically... G<осподин>Weinberg further expressed his view of Balmont and allowed himself to call me Balmont’s “lawyer.” “But who, if not you,” Annensky continues, “can express to me how upset I am by the accusation of being a lawyer” (italics by I. Annensky. - N.D.).
As we see, Annensky resolutely distances himself from an amateurishly biased attitude towards artistic creativity, defending the scientific nature of his approach to Balmont’s poetry. At the same time, Annensky’s article is devoid of dry, detached analyticism, and it is no coincidence that in the preface to the “Book of Reflections”, where it appeared, there are wonderful words: “The very reading of a poet is already creativity” (italics by I. Annensky - N.D.). Thus, Annensky here is concerned not so much with a critical as with a creative task: to read the poet according to, in Pushkin’s words, the laws that he recognized above himself. Moreover, the poet, who can hardly be suspected of closeness - both personal and poetic - to the author writing about him, is so different in their spiritual structure, the nature of the poetic statement, the intonation structure and, finally, the artistic content of the poetic worlds. All the more significant and not accidental is Annensky’s close attention to the poetic figure of Balmont.
Acting not so much in the role of a critic, but in the forgotten genre of apology, Annensky builds a leading strategy of his thought aimed at solving the problem of speech, and behind this apparently impartial task reveals a polemically ambiguous layer of the internal structure of the article. The reflective consciousness of the critic/poet unfolds before us, addressed, on the one hand, to the modern poetic situation, but on the other, to the ontology of the poetic word and, if you like, to the existence of the poetic self. In the preface to the “Book of Reflections,” Annensky manifests a creative approach to the artistic material of his critical opuses: “... I wrote here only about what owned me, what I followed, what I surrendered to, what I wanted to preserve in myself, making myself "(Italics by I. Annensky. - N.D.). But in the letter quoted above, the task is formulated much more definitely and strictly. Complaining that “the poetic word has been emancipated in our consciousness much less than the prose-artistic word,” Annensky states: “My goal was to draw attention to the interestingness of new attempts to increase our sense of speech, that is, attempts to introduce into Russian consciousness a broader view of the word as a stimulant, and not just an exponent of thought” (emphasized by Annensky - N.D.). This setting is implemented in the article as its main defining task.
What is behind this desire to enhance our sense of speech? The legitimacy of aesthetic criteria as an element of social consciousness, enslaved by the dominance of the servile word in literature. It has already been written that Annensky sees the reasons for the underestimation and even neglect and hostility to the aesthetic factor in Russian literature of the post-Pushkin period in the dominance of journalism (the official word), which solves mainly public problems, and, as a consequence, in the absence of “stylish Latin culture ", i.e., the tradition of aesthetic attitude to the artistic (poetic) word that has developed in Western, and especially French, culture.
Turning “social consciousness” to the prerogative of aesthetic criteria, “thinking about language as art” is the position, according to Annensky, not of a solitary spirit, but of a poet asserting new rights to his role in public consciousness. Annensky assigns this role to Balmont. In a letter to A. N. Veselovsky, he writes: “I took examples from the poetry of Balmont, as the most striking and characteristic, in my opinion, for the new Russian direction, and, moreover, already more defined: the very polemicism and paradoxical nature of some of this poet’s poems give the right to feel what a difficult path must be taken to instill aesthetic criteria into our words.”
In 1929, in émigré Paris, V. Khodasevich, looking back and analyzing the symbolist era, wrote: “The new tasks posed by symbolism also opened up new rights for poetry.<...>Poetry has found new freedom". Annensky declared this new freedom, referring to the poetic discoveries of Balmont. Let's look again at what it means. First of all, this is all that, says Annensky, “that cannot be translated into official speech,” which means: “to look at poetry seriously, that is, as art.” Thus, the requirement of aestheticism acquires a universal character in the article - it is freedom not only from civil, but also from moral obligations. The rejection of the official word also leads to another freedom - the rejection of moralism, that is, generally accepted ideas about morality in art. Annensky here formulates one of the extreme slogans of aestheticism: “Creativity itself is immoral, and whether to enjoy it or something else does not at all mean sacrificing and limiting oneself for the sake of one’s neighbors...”.
On the same wavelength, Annensky states: “New poetry, first of all, teaches us to value the word, and then teaches us to synthesize poetic impressions, to find the poet’s self, that is, our only enlightened self in the most complex combinations.<...>This intuitively restored self will be not so much the external, so to speak, biographical self of the writer, but rather his true indecomposable self, which, in essence, is the only one we can experience in poetry as adequate to ours.” Actually, here, long before Yu. Tynyanov, we find the category of lyrical hero, separating the biographical personality of the poet from its poetic expression and at the same time meaning their unmerged unity. Speaking against the direct identification of Balmont’s lyrical self and his biographical double, Annensky writes: “Among all the black revelations of Baudelaire, among the cold serpentineness and stupefying aromas, an attentive gaze will easily discover in Balmont’s poetry a purely feminine modesty of the soul, which does not understand all the bleakness of the cynicism looking at her... ". Regarding the sacramental “I want to be daring...” Annensky remarks with a smile: “... are these innocent missiles really mystifying anyone else?” , and the no less rousing readership “I hate humanity...” causes him a greater degree of skepticism: “I don’t think that all this could frighten anyone more than any rhetorical figure.” But Annensky sees Balmont’s main “justification” in his “lexical creativity”, in the new matter of verse - sound and rhythm, considering this as a general poetic achievement: “His language is our common poetic language, which has only received new flexibility and musicality.”
One could put an end to this, considering that main meaning The article “Balmontlirik” is sufficiently clarified, but in this case its hidden, internal layer, which was mentioned above, will remain “behind the scenes”. The fact is that in his thoughts about Balmont, Annensky encounters a certain internal taboo, which he prescribes to himself. Denoting in Balmont’s poetry the conflict of multidirectional principles - “the absurdity of integrity” and the “absurdity of justification” - Annensky approaches an insoluble conflict for him that determines his consciousness. Namely: Annensky’s critic is trying to defend pure aestheticism as a justification for life through art, while his lyrical self is painfully “linked” (one of Annensky’s favorite words) with the experience of all Russian classics, developing the theme of “sick conscience,” which Akhmatova later defined as “the high road Russian literature". This “drama of consciousness” is distinguished by the intense psychologism of lyrical experience, but in the article “Balmontlirik” Annensky deliberately tries to circumvent it. Annensky deduces Balmont’s “absurd justification” from his position - the entire world must be justified, which forces the critic/poet to understand the “irreconcilable contradiction between ethics in life and aesthetics in art.” In the field of art, he believes, “there is essentially nothing to justify, because creativity is immoral.” And yet, he makes a fundamentally important reservation: “But to what extent can art be purely aesthetic?<...>this question, of course, remains open.”
This question throbbed painfully in Annensky’s mind. Despite the affirmation of aesthetic criteria as fundamental in the approach to art, and the art of poetry in particular (which Annensky demonstrates with captivating persuasiveness in the article), in the depths of the poet’s reflective thought this conviction always reached the main foundations of his creative self, losing its immutability:
...Oh painful question!
Our conscience... Our conscience...
("On the road")
It is more than remarkable that, building the “absurdity of integrity” in Balmont’s poetry, Annensky consciously stops before the same “tormenting question”: “Another reality that rebels in Balmont’s poetry against the possibility of finding integrity is conscience, to which the poet devoted an entire section of poems. It’s very interesting, but we’ll pass by.”
“Let’s pass by,” because otherwise aestheticism will not be able to become the universal of new poetry, and yet the logic of Annensky’s thought in the article is aimed precisely at establishing the aesthetic status of the word as a conquest of poetic freedom. “Annensky is too much of a Russian intellectual for a self-sufficient aesthetic act to bring him satisfaction,” notes L. Ya. Ginzburg. Yes, confirms V.V. Musatov, “the aesthetic justification of reality for him was not universal, and a universal justification, which certainly included a moral component, became impossible and absurd.” “But, on the other hand,” the researcher continues, “a life left outside of art, having lost the ability to be an object of aesthetic experience, truly horrified Annensky.”
It follows from this that Annensky, deducing in his article a new type of lyricism (a concept fundamental to Annensky’s critical prose), could not help but correlate it with his own poetic personality, with his own self as a poet, entering into a kind of hidden dialogue with his “hero”, a dialogue that is not manifested, first of all, for oneself, and especially not written down in the article. Behind Balmont's apologetics as a spontaneous exponent of the idea of beauty and pathos of freedom of lyrical self-expression there is implicitly present the dramatism of Annensky's consciousness, who outlined the milestone foundations of poetic evolution of the early twentieth century, those processes that are associated with the transformation and change of poetic systems. Annensky understood this well, and in an article that was not published during his lifetime, “What is poetry?” (1903), intended for the introduction to the first book of poems, “Quiet Songs,” he wrote: “Every day in the art of words, individuality with its capricious contours, painful returns, with its secret and tragic consciousness of our hopeless loneliness is revealed more subtly and more and more mercilessly truthfully. and ephemerality.<...>new poetry is looking for new symbols for sensations, that is, the real substratum of life, and for moods, that is, that form of mental life that most of all brings people together, entering the psychology of the crowd with the same right as in individual psychology» .
Actually, it is precisely these programmatic guidelines for new poetry that Annensky develops in the article “Balmontlirik”, but at the same time emphasizing the comprehensive nature of aestheticism in poetry as a legislative principle of freedom of art. By doing this, he seems to drown out the voice of conscience, which speaks of the impossibility of justifying life with art. By taking the resignation outside the article, Annensky avoids the “painful question,” while in the text itself there is an attempt to convince not only the reader, but also himself that this kind of tilt towards aestheticism is more than justified current state poetic situation: “I think that, in any case, for the complete development of a person’s spiritual life there would be no need to be particularly afraid of the victory in poetry of the sense of beauty over the sense of duty.”
There is hardly any doubt that Annensky the poet sincerely wanted this. At the same time, “the power of things with its triad of dimensions,” to which his poetic gift was completely subject, turned him into a prisoner of his favorite word impossible. The conflict of Annensky’s poetic consciousness made his existential and artistic experience unique: “through Annensky’s lyrics passes a man with a torn will and developed reflection,” for whom the highest value was “beauty in art,” marked by painful doubt about its moral justification.
All this explains a lot about Annensky’s attitude towards Balmont. The “absurdity of integrity” with its “painful unconditionality of a fleeting sensation,” which he sees in Balmont’s poetry, helps him confirm the original extremism of “the pure aestheticism of creativity, justified by genius.” Indeed, what Annensky nurtured within himself as a drama of personal and poetic existence, Balmont “filmed” with the elemental power of his poetic gift, creating a “liturgy of beauty” and not caring about resolving painful collisions.
The main thing that Annensky discovered in Balmont was his power over the word, which ensured the completeness of the poet’s worldview, despite the many-sided contradictions of the lyrical self. Annensky himself felt existential skepticism about the word, and the further he went, the more so. He experienced this feeling so acutely that it even penetrated his private correspondence. So, he writes to A.V. Borodina on June 25, 1906: “Word?<...>The word is too crude a symbol... the word has been vulgarized, tattered, the word is in plain sight, on the report... The slags of nationality and instincts have stuck to the word - the word, moreover, lies,<отому>h<то>Only the word lies. Poetry, yes: but it is higher than words. And strange as it may seem, but perhaps until now the word - like the Gospel Martha - could least of all serve the purposes of poetry." And this is written against the background of “Balmontalirik”, where the poetic word is established as an unconditional aesthetic category. We can say that the famous Annensky melancholy is a longing for a word that justifies life, and it was this that internally separated the two contemporary poets. But there is no doubt that they were brought together as discoverers of new paths of poetic art: “the beauty of free human thought in its triumph over the word, a sensitive fear of the rough plan of banality, fearlessness of analysis, the mystical music of the unsaid and the recording of the fleeting - this is the arsenal of the new poetry.”
Literature
1. Annensky, I. Books of reflections / Ed. prepared by N. T. Ashinbaeva, I. I. Podolskaya, A. V. Fedorov. M., 1979. (“Lit. monuments”).
2. Annensky, I. Letter to A.N. Veselovsky dated November 17, 1904. See: Lavrov, A.V. I. F. Annensky in correspondence with Alexander Veselovsky // Russian literature. 1978. No. 1.
3. Ginzburg, L. About lyrics. L., 1974.
4. Ivanov, Vyach. On the boundaries of art // Ivanov, V. Native and universal. M., 1994.
5. Musatov, V.V. Pushkin tradition in Russian poetry of the first half of the twentieth century. M., 1998.
6. Podolskaya, I.I. I. Annensky critic // Annensky, I. Books of reflections. M., 1979. (“Lit. monuments”).
7. Khodasevich, V. About Bunin’s poetry // Khodasevich, V. Collection. cit.: in 4 vols. M., 1996-1997. T. 2.
The problem of plotting in full her cannot be considered within the scope of this book, since the general laws of plot construction apply to both poetry and prose and, moreover, appear in the latter with much greater clarity and consistency. In addition, the plot in prose and the plot in poetry are not the same thing. Poetry and prose are not fenced off by an impassable line, and due to a number of circumstances, prose structure can have a very great impact on poetic works in certain periods. This influence is especially strong in the area of plot. The penetration into poetry of a typically essay, novel or short story plot is a fact well known in the history of poetry. Solving the theoretical questions that arise in connection with this would require too serious excursions into the theory of prose. Therefore, we will consider only those aspects of the plot that are specific to poetry.
Poetic plots are distinguished by a much greater degree of generalization than prose plots. A poetic plot does not pretend to be a story about one event, just one among many, but a story about an Event - the main and only one, about the essence of the lyrical world. In this sense, poetry is closer to myth than to the novel. Therefore, studies that use lyrics as ordinary documentary material for reconstructing a biography (even A. N. Veselovsky’s wonderful monograph on Zhukovsky is guilty of this) do not recreate a real, but a mythologized image of the poet. Facts of life can become the plot of poetry only by being transformed in a certain way.
Let's give one example. If we did not know the circumstances of Pushkin’s exile to the south, but were guided only by the materials provided by his poetry, then we would have doubts: was Pushkin exiled? The fact is that in the poems of the southern period, exile almost does not appear, but flight and voluntary exile are repeatedly mentioned:
Seeker of new impressions, I ran from you, fatherly land... ("The daylight has gone out...") An unauthorized exile, dissatisfied with the world and himself and life... ("To Ovid")
Wed. in the clearly autobiographical verses of "Prisoner of the Caucasus":
A renegade of the world, a friend of nature, He left his native land and flew to a distant land With a cheerful ghost of freedom.
Through persecution I became known among people... ("V.F. Raevsky")
There is no sufficient reason to see in this image - the image of a fugitive, a voluntary exile - only a censorship replacement for the figure of an exile. After all, Pushkin mentions in other poems both “ostracism” and “exile”, and in some, “lattice” and “cage”.
In order to understand the meaning of the transformation of the image of an exile into a fugitive, it is necessary to dwell on that typical romantic “myth” that determined the birth of plots of this type.
The high satire of the Enlightenment created a plot that generalized a whole complex of socio-philosophical ideas of the era to the level of a stable “mythological” model. The world is divided into two spheres: the region of slavery, the power of prejudice and money: “city”, “court”, “Rome” - and the land of freedom, simplicity, labor and natural, patriarchal morals: “village”, “hut”, “native land” ". The plot consists of the hero's break with the first world and voluntary flight to the second. It was developed by Derzhavin, Milonov, Vyazemsky, and Pushkin 1.
Texts of this type represent the implementation of the plot “the world of slavery - the escape of the hero - the world of freedom.” Moreover, it is significant that the “world of slavery” and the “world of freedom” are given at the same level of specificity: if one is “Rome”, then the other is “fatherly Penates”, if one is “City”, then the other is “Village”. They are opposed to each other politically and morally, but not by the degree of specificity. In Radishchev's poem, the place of exile is named with geographical accuracy.
A similar plot of romanticism is constructed differently. The universe of romantic poetry is divided not into two closed, opposed worlds: slave and free, but into a closed, motionless sphere of slavery and the boundless and extra-spatial world of freedom lying outside it. An educational plot is a transition from one state to another; it has a starting point and an ending point. The romantic plot of liberation is not a transition, but a departure. It has a starting position - and direction instead of end point. It is fundamentally open, since moving from one fixed point to another for romanticism is synonymous with immobility. And movement (equivalent to liberation, hence the persistent romantic plot - “exile is liberation”) is thought of only as continuous movement.
Therefore, exile without the right to leave can be transformed in a romantic work into a “poetic escape”, into “eternal exile”, into “ostracism”, but cannot be depicted as imprisonment in Ilimsk or exile in Chisinau or Odessa.
Thus, a poetic plot implies extreme generalization, the reduction of a collision to a certain set of elementary models characteristic of a given artistic thinking. In the future, the plot of the poem can be concretized, consciously drawing closer to the most immediate everyday situations. But these situations are taken to confirm or refute any initial lyrical model, but never out of correlation with it.
Pushkin's poem "She" (1817) ends: "I to her Not He". See also:
“He” and “she” is my ballad. I'm not scary new. The scary thing is that “he” is me and that “she” is mine. (V. Mayakovsky. “About This”)
Correlation with traditional lyrical schemes gives rise in these cases to different semantic effects, but it is always full of meaning. The ability to transform the abundance of life situations into a specific, relatively small set of lyrical themes - characteristic poetry. The very nature of these sets depends on certain general patterns human relations and their transformation under the influence of standard cultural models.
Another distinctive property of a poetic plot is the presence in it of some rhythm, repetition, and parallelism. In certain cases, they rightly speak of “rhymes of situations.” A similar principle can penetrate into prose (repetition of details, situations and situations), as it penetrates, for example, into cinematography. But in these cases, critics, feeling the penetration of poetic structural principles, talk about “poetic cinema” or the “non-prosaic” structure of the plot of prose (“Symphonies”, “Petersburg” by A. Bely, a number of works of the 1920s).
1 Poem about exile in poetry of the 18th century. only one thing - “You want to know who I am, what I am, where I’m going...” Radishcheva. The plot of the poem develops as follows: a certain type of central character is given:
Not a cattle, not a tree, not a slave, but a Man...
The text implies that such a hero is incompatible with the world from which he is exiled. He doesn't want to change:
I am the same as I have been and will be all my life...
For such a hero, the only place in Russia is the Ilimsk prison.
"Someone else's word" in a poetic text
The relationship between text and system is built in poetry in a specific way. In normal language contact, the recipient of the message reconstructs the text and deciphers it using a system of codes of this language. However, knowledge of this language itself, as well as the fact that the transmitted text belongs specifically to it, is given to the listener in some initial convention that precedes this communicative act.
The perception of a poetic text is constructed differently. A poetic text lives in the intersecting field of many semantic systems, many “languages”, and information about language 1 in which the message is conveyed, the reconstruction of this language by the listener, “teaching” the listener a new type of artistic modeling often constitutes the main information of the text.
Therefore, as soon as the perceiver of poetry hears a text that does not fit within the framework of structural expectations, is impossible within the limits of a given language and, therefore, represents a fragment of another text, a text in another language, he makes an attempt, sometimes quite arbitrary, to reconstruct this language.
The relationship between these two ideological, cultural, artistic languages, sometimes closeness and compatibility, sometimes distance and incompatibility, becomes the source of a new type of artistic influence on the reader.
For example, it is widely known that the criticism of the 1820s. Pushkin's poem "Ruslan and Lyudmila" seemed indecent. It is now almost impossible for us to feel the “indecency” of this work. But were the readers really that scrupulous? Pushkin era? Really, they, who read “The Dangerous Neighbor”, and “The Virgin of Orleans” by Voltaire, and the erotic poems of Guys, and “Darling” by Bogdanovich, who knew first-hand “The Art of Love” by Ovid, the naked frankness of the descriptions of Petronius or Juvenal, familiar with Apuleius and Boccaccio , could you seriously be amazed by a few ambiguous poems and free scenes? Let's not forget that Pushkin's poem appeared in a censored publication in an era when morality was prescribed no less than political reliability. If there had actually been anything in the text that offended the generally accepted decency of the era, the poem would undoubtedly have been detained by the censor. The indecency of the poem was of a different kind - literary.
The work opened with verses:
Deeds of days gone by, Traditions of deep antiquity.
This was a quote from Ossian, well known to readers of those years. Its introduction was designed for the audience to become involved in a certain system of ideological and cultural connections, in a given - high, national-heroic - experience of the text. This system implied certain situations and their acceptable combinations. Thus, heroic episodes could be combined with elegiac ones, but could not be combined with funny, erotic or fantastic ones (it is known that Macpherson, compiling his “Works of Ossian” based on the original texts of the bards, carefully removed all fantastic episodes, doing the same as the first German and Russian translators of "Macbeth", who threw out scenes with witches, while the fantasy in "The Tempest" or "A Midsummer Night's Dream" did not bother anyone - the heroic was not combined with it). The “Ossian” key to the text was not an accident - episodes (for example, Ruslan on the battlefield), images or epithets continued to remind us of it.
However, the following passages of the text were constructed according to a system that was decidedly not united with the “Ossian” pieces. Another type of artistic organization was included - a humorous "heroic" poem. He was also well known to the reader since the last third of the 18th century. and was guessed (“turned on”) by a small set of signs, for example, by conventional names repeated in the works of Popov, Chulkov and Levshin, or by a typical plot of bride kidnapping. These two types of artistic organization were mutually incompatible. For example, “Ossianovsky” implied lyrical reflection and psychologism, while “Bogatyrsky” focused attention on the plot and adventurous and fantastic episodes. It is no coincidence that Karamzin failed, who abandoned the poem about Ilya Muromets, unable to cope with the combination of the style of the “heroic” poem, psychologism and irony.
But the combination of incompatible structures of “Ossianism” and “heroic” poem did not exhaust the constructive dissonances of “Ruslan and Lyudmila”. Graceful eroticism in the spirit of Bogdanovich or Batyushkov (from the point of view of the culture of Karamzinism, these two styles came closer; cf. Karamzin’s programmatic statement about Bogdanovich as the founder of “light poetry”), “luxurious” poems like:
Jealous clothes will fall on Tsaregrad carpets... 2 -
were combined with the naturalism of poems about a rooster, from whom a kite stole his beloved, or “Voltairian” discussions about physical capabilities Chernomora or the degree of platonism in the relationship between the two main characters.
Mentioning the name of the artist Orlovsky should include the text in the system of supernovas and therefore romantic experiences that were especially acutely felt in those years. However, the reference to Zhukovsky's ballads evoked the artistic language of romanticism only to expose it to crude ridicule.
The text of the poem freely and with feigned carelessness switched from one system to another, colliding them, and the reader could not find in his cultural arsenal a single “language” for the entire text. The text spoke in many voices, and the artistic effect arose from their juxtaposition, despite the apparent incompatibility.
This is how the structural meaning of the “alien word” is revealed. Just as a foreign body entering a supersaturated solution causes crystals to fall out, that is, it reveals the own structure of the dissolved substance, the “foreign word”, by its incompatibility with the structure of the text, activates this structure. This is the meaning of those “specks” that only make the water purer, according to the textbook quote from L. Tolstoy. A structure is imperceptible until it is juxtaposed with another structure or disrupted. These two means of activating it constitute the very life of an artistic text.
For the first time, the problem of the “alien word” and its artistic function was made the subject of consideration by M. Bakhtin 3 . His works also noted the connection between the problems of “someone else’s word” and the dialogization of artistic speech: “Through absolute enactment, a relationship is established between someone else’s speech and the author’s context, similar to the relationship of one remark to another in a dialogue. By this, the author becomes close to the hero and their relationship is dialogized " 4 .
The above idea is extremely significant for works such as “Eugene Onegin”, in which the abundance of quotes, literary, everyday, ideological, political and philosophical references leads to the inclusion of numerous contexts and destroys the monologism of the text.
The above reveals another significant conflict inherent in poetic structure. By its structure, as a certain type of speech, linguistically, poetry gravitates towards a monologue. Due to the fact that any formal structure in art tends to become meaningful, the monologism of poetry acquires constructive significance, interpreted in some systems as lyricism, in others as a lyric-epic principle (depending on who is accepted as the center of the poetic world).
However, the principle of monologism comes into conflict with the constant movement of semantic units in the general field of constructing meanings. The text constantly contains a polylogue of different systems colliding different ways explanations and systematization of the world, different pictures of the world. A poetic (artistic) text is, in principle, polyphonic.
It would be too easy to show the internal multilingualism of the text through examples of parodic poetry or cases of the poet's open use of various intonations or contradictory styles. Let's see how this principle is implemented in the work of, for example, such a fundamentally monological poet, who consciously closes himself within the boundaries of a carefully created poetic world, as Innokenty Annensky. Let us consider his poem “More Lilies” from this point of view.
When under the black wings I bow my tired head And silently death extinguishes the flame In my golden lamp... If, smiling at the new life, And from earthly life The soul that has broken the shackles Carries away the atom of existence - I will not take the memories, The joys of love experienced, Not even my eyes wife, no nanny's fairy tales, No dreams of golden poetry, Flowers of my rebellious dream Forgetting the momentary beauty, One snow-white lily I am in better world I will transfer both the aroma and the delicate outline.
The poem amazes with the unity of its lyrical tone, a unity felt intuitively by the reader. However, the feeling of unity that arises here is stronger than, say, when reading a chemistry textbook, because it arises here in the struggle with the heterogeneity of the elements of the text.
If we try to highlight the commonality of the various stylistic elements of the text, then, perhaps, we will have to indicate only one - literariness. The text is demonstratively, nakedly built on literary associations. And although it does not contain direct quotes, it nevertheless refers the reader to a certain cultural, everyday and literary environment, without the context of which it cannot be understood. The words of the text are secondary, they are signals of certain systems lying outside of it. This emphasized “culture” and bookishness of the text sharply contrasts it with works whose authors subjectively tried to break out of the boundaries of “words” (mature Lermontov, Mayakovsky, Tsvetaeva).
However, unity is more than conditional. Already the first two verses entail various literary associations. “Black Wings” resurrects the poetry of demonism, or rather, those of its standards that in the mass cultural consciousness were associated with Lermontov or Byronism (cf. the monograph by N. Kotlyarevsky, which recorded this stamp of culture). “A tired head” entails associations with popular poetry of the 1880-1890s, Apukhtin and Nadson (“Look how weak we are, look how tired we are, How helpless we are in a painful struggle”), Tchaikovsky’s romances, and the vocabulary of the intelligentsia those years 5. It is no coincidence that “wings” are given in a lexical version that reveals poeticism (not “wings”), and “head” - in a contrastingly everyday way. "Weary head" would be a stamp of a different style:
With trepidation, I entered the bosom of a new friendship, Charter, and clung to the caressing head... (A. Pushkin. "October 19, 1825")
The poetry of the eighties was created under the direct influence of the Nekrasov tradition and implied the everyday concreteness of the subject of the lyrics.
In the context of the entire stanza, the “golden lamp” is perceived as a metaphor (death will extinguish the lamp), and the epithet “golden” in the structural antithesis “black” is not perceived in connection with concrete material meanings. But then we come across the verse:
No dreams of golden poetry.
In comparison with it, the “golden lamp” (cf. the antithesis: “golden - golden”) acquires signs of materiality and is already correlated with a very specific object - the pre-contemporary lamp.
But the image of a dying lamp can receive two different meanings - conventionally literary (“do you burn, our lamp”, “and in the name of divine love has gone out”) and associations with Christian church culture:
And it went out, like a wax candle, a precursor... (N. Nekrasov. “Orina, the soldier’s mother”)
Here is the first system of semantic connections. Then the realization of the lamp as an object activates the second.
The second stanza is based on a religious-Christian structure of meanings, well known to the reader’s consciousness of that era. An antithesis of “new life” (synonymous with “death” and “black wings” of the first stanza) and “earthly life” arises. The image of a soul parting with earthly captivity with a smile was quite natural in this regard. But last verse unexpected “Atom” absolutely did not find a place for itself in the semantic world of the previous poems. But in the type of cultural meanings it evoked, the subsequent “being” was placed very naturally - a world of scientific and philosophical vocabulary and semantic connections arose.
The next stanza comes under the sign of memories as a kind of textual signal. Different systems of poetic texts give different content to the concept of “memory,” but the most significance of this word belongs to it not as a designation of psychological action, but as a cultural sign. The stanza contains a whole range of types of interpretation of this concept. “The joys of love” and “dreams of golden poetry” sound like frank quotes from that Pushkin poetic tradition, which in the cultural image of Annensky’s world is perceived not as one of the varieties of poetry, but as poetry itself. "Nanny's Tales" refers to two types of extra-textual connections - to the non-literary, everyday, to the world of childhood, opposed to the world of books, and at the same time to the literary tradition of recreating the world of childhood. "Nanny's Tales" in poetry late XIX V. - cultural sign of the unfamiliar - children's world. Against this background, “the eyes of the wife” is “an alien - extraliterary - word”, which is perceived as the voice of life in the polyphonic chorus of literary associations (“eyes”, not “eyes”, “wives”, not “maidens”).
The three stanzas of the poem establish a certain constructive inertia: each stanza consists of three verses, designed in a certain conventional literary style, and one that falls out of this style. The first two stanzas establish the place of this verse - the end of the stanza. Then the violations begin: in the third stanza, the “destructive” verse is moved to the second place from the end. But the structural dissonance is even sharper in the last stanza: four verses are emphatically literary. Both in terms of vocabulary and leading theme, they should be perceived against the background of the entire poetic tradition of the 19th century. It is no coincidence that the title mentions “lilies” with an obvious emphasis on the first syllable, and in the third verse of the last stanza:
One snow-white lily -
The second syllable is stressed - in accordance with the norms of poetic speech early XIX V. The name of the flower has become a poetic association. And to this stanza, unexpectedly, in violation of the entire rhythmic inertia of the text, a fifth verse was added:
Both the aroma and the outline are delicate.
The verse is contrasted with the entire text by its materiality, its exclusion from the world of literary associations. Thus, on the one hand, there are the earthly and otherworldly worlds, presented in their literary guises, and on the other, non-literary reality. But this reality itself is not a thing, not an object (this is the difference from the “wife’s eyes”), but forms subject. “Snow-white” in combination with “lily” is a color banality that dates back to the poetry of the 18th century. there were dozens. But a unique word was found for the outline - “outline”. Reality as a set of abstract forms - this Aristotelian world is most organic to Innocent of Annensky. It is no coincidence that the last verse also provides the only alliteration in the poem. The combination of “aroma” and “outline”, parallel both rhythmically and phonologically, into one archiseme is possible only in one meaning - “form”, “entelechy”. This introduces into the text the voice of another culture - ancient classicism in its most organic, meaning-forming connections.
This is how the tension in the semantic structure of the text is revealed: the monologue turns out to be a polylogue, and the unity consists of the polyphony of different voices speaking in different languages culture. Outside of poetry, such a structure would take up many pages.
1 To establish the commonality of the problems of diversity of stylistic layers and polyglotism, see: Uspensky B. A. The problem of style in semiotic lighting // Uchen. zap. Tartu State un-ta. 1969. Vol. 237. (Works on sign systems. T. 4).
2 What makes these poems “Batyushkovsky” is not only the structure of the image, but also the originality of the rhythm. The verse refers to a rare VI (according to K. Taranovsky’s terminology) rhythmic figure. In the poem it is 3.9% (this figure curiously coincides with Batyushkov’s - 3.4%, in Zhukovsky for the same years - 10.9 and 11.6%; in Pushkin himself in the lyrics of 1817-1818 - 9, 1% - figures according to K. Taranovsky). Thus, the verse is sharply emphasized. The pause achieves a purely Batiushkovian technique - in the erotic scene the action suddenly ends and attention is transferred to the details of the aestheticized surroundings, which thereby receive the meaning of euphemisms ("tympanum above the head...", "ruins of luxurious attire...").
3 See: Bakhtin M. Problems of Dostoevsky's poetics. M., 1963; Voloshinov V.N. Marxism and philosophy of language. L., 1929.
4 Voloshinov V. N. Marxism and philosophy of language. pp. 136-146.
5 Wed. in I. Annensky’s poem “Ego”: “I am the weak son of a sick generation...”