The work of Boris Pasternak admires how the author skillfully conveyed in his poem the feelings that were in his soul and heart. If you read the text as just a verse, you cannot understand absolutely anything. But if you touch every line, every quatrain, you can understand that the author drew a fine line between death and life. Both physical and between the life and death of his creative career.

It is not difficult to guess that the author associates cold, blizzard, snow and darkness with death. And the light from a candle, wax dripping with tears on a dress - a state that fights death and tries not to disappear. That is, life.

If you touch on Pasternak’s biography, you will notice that in the year when he wrote this work, he was experiencing both a creative crisis and health problems.

Therefore, the poem Winter Night has such a bright contrast, making the reader first feel the coldness of what is happening, that darkness - the state that the poet is experiencing. At the same time, it instantly turns our attention to the fact that not all is lost. The author does not lose hope, this small warm light from a candle, does not lose faith in the best.

The poem is sad, but at the same time elegant. Makes you think about the meaning of life. It wants to convey to us the message that no matter how difficult it is, there is no need to give up, you need to believe and burn like this little candle. Burn with all your might. Until the last. No matter what happens in life, no matter what snowstorm there is outside the window.

Analysis of the poem Winter Night according to plan

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B. Pasternak's poem "Winter Night", which is a fusion of philosophical and love lyrics, is included in the "notebook of Yuryev's writings" in the novel "Doctor Zhivago" and plays the role of an additional connecting element in the compositional structure of the work.

The exact date of creation of the poem is unknown. A number of researchers date its writing to the winter of 1946, linking the poem with the poet’s last love and muse, Olga Ivinskaya. Other versions consider it appropriate to talk about 1954-1955, the time when work on the novel was completed. The poem gained fame after the first publication of the novel in the USSR in 1988.

In a poem that combines the features impressionism And symbolism, closely intertwined themes of love and nature. Pasternak synchronizes the life of nature and human feelings: a snowstorm outside the window accompanies a whirlwind of love passion, and fancy snow patterns on the windows turn into patterns of shadows on the ceiling. Landscape sketches form a parallel with the inner world of man.

The basis of the composition works lies antithesis fire and ice, two elements confront and interact with each other. A cold blizzard of universal proportions sweeps everything around, covering the windows with a swarm of snow flakes. But a lonely candle still resists the elements of the surrounding world. IN ring composition The last stanza does not exactly repeat the first. In it, unlike the endless action in the first stanza ( "melo, melo...") absence of repetition and indication of the time of action (February) marks the end, the end of the winter storm. The victory of hope and life is affirmed in the last line: "The candle was burning".

The main idea of ​​the work– a person’s opposition to the storms of life in both the external and internal world. The lyrical hero resists both the merciless blizzard and the inner "heat of temptation". The use of a number of words that have opposite meanings ( "temptation", "angel", "crosswise") allows the poet to show the confusion of the hero’s soul, trying to determine where is good and where is evil. A person can only oppose the cold, hostile world with the love and fire of his soul. Before love, cold and darkness recede, the world becomes homely and recognizable: there are shoes, a night light, a ceiling, and a candle.

The feelings of the lyrical hero are conveyed through image of a candle, carrying the most important semantic load: the candle, as a symbol of hope and quiet happiness, continues to burn on the table, despite the pressure of the outside world, becoming a symbol of the quivering fire of love, warming and illuminating human life. It is no coincidence that the image of a burning candle is cross-cutting in the novel, runs through the entire work and reaches its culmination in the poem by Yuri Zhivago.

Iambic tetrameter and alternation of male (first and third lines) and female (second and fourth lines) rhymes with cross rhyme convey the strong emotional coloring of the poem. Rhythm interruption– shortened second and fourth lines – give the work dynamism and expression.

The poem is full of various means of expression: metaphors (the heat of temptation, tears from the night light), personifications (shadows flew, a snowstorm formed on the table), epithets (illuminated ceiling, snowy, gray haze), refrain (“The candle was burning on the table. The candle was burning."). The poet introduces "Winter Night" replays ("melo, melo...") And inversion (the candle burned, flakes flew, shadows lay). The images of the poem help you feel alliteration sounds “m”, “l”, “s”, “v” and assonance"e".

In one of Pasternak’s most heartfelt poems, man and the Universe, a moment and eternity, merged together, causing the candle flame to burn as a symbol of life and hope.

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Analysis of the poem
Boris Pasternak "Winter Night"

Winter night...You said these words, and what appeared before your mind's eye? Maybe peace and tranquility, light, cozy snow, a full moon and a scattering of stars across the blue-black sky? Or maybe a blizzard outside the window, a whirlwind of snow flakes, a crazy dance of nature spirits and the only quiet haven - a house, a candle on the table?..

In 1946, Boris Pasternak wrote the poem “Winter Night”. The war has just recently ended. It would seem that this is it, the coming calm! But the storms of global upheaval have not subsided and will probably never subside. Where is the salvation? What will help a person not to get lost in the whirlpool of passions, to preserve his fragile inner world? And the poet gives the answer: home, hearth - an abode of hope and tranquility. But this answer is not clear-cut.

Let's go back to the poem and see what the author wanted to say to the reader, what thoughts he expressed in an orderly series of lines.

This work is a poem of doubt, departure, escape. It is no coincidence that it is completely built on the technique of antithesis, that is, on opposition. The couplet follows as a refrain from stanza to stanza:

The candle was burning on the table,
The candle was burning.

A candle is a symbol of hope, quiet happiness, solitude and purity. This light, which for the lyrical hero is the center of the Universe, the center of his world, is easy to extinguish. Just a light breath is enough - and now

The heat of temptation

Crosswise.

Heat, fire is a symbol of emotions and passions. But this is the “heat of temptation.” The fire of a candle is the torch of a quiet, secluded life. The author depicted one element in two diametrically opposed forms. But the basis of the work is still the antithesis of fire and ice.

Let's pay attention to the first stanza:

Chalk, chalk all over the earth
To all limits.
The candle was burning on the table,
The candle was burning.

The first two lines plunge into winter, a swarm of snow flakes, a blizzard. Moreover, the cold element is the queen of the whole world, “the whole earth,” everything is subordinate to it. And only a lone candle bravely confronts this snow queen. She is indignant, furious, and here it is:

Like a swarm of midges in summer
Flies into the flames
Flakes flew from the yard
To the window frame.
A snowstorm sculpted on the glass
Circles and arrows.

With its confrontation between wild dancing, the struggle between the spirits of nature and existence and the lonely human soul - a candle - “Winter Night” is reminiscent of Pushkin’s “Demons”. But the result here is completely different. If in Pushkin demons in the form of the elements overturn the cart of a lost traveler and break his resistance, then here external forces cannot completely defeat the small flame, this beacon of hope. The last stanza repeats the first:

It was snowy all month in February,
Every now and then
The candle was burning on the table,
The candle was burning.

The last two lines match, but not the first. Let's pay attention to them. In the first stanza there is no sense of time; the action merges with infinity. This is emphasized by the repetition: “melo, melo...” In the last stanza, a clear time frame has already been set: “in February,” and besides, the word “melo” is not repeated. This means that the winter storm is not endless, it has its end. The final line – “the candle was burning” – affirms the victory of life and hope. This struggle, sometimes everyday, sometimes unjustified, ends in favor of a pure source of light, which bravely defended its right to life. It is the confrontation with the storms of life of both the external and internal world that is the main idea of ​​the work. Both the ring composition of “Winter Night” and the emotional coloring of the work serve to reveal it. If we look closely at it, listen to the sound of the words, we will understand that it is very bright and colorful. The poem is written in “ancient, antediluvian” iambic, according to V. Khodasevich, which most of all reflects the strong emotional coloring of the verse. It would seem, what's wrong with this? Iambic is traditional, tetrameter... But let's look at the second and fourth lines of each stanza. They are shortened. There are only two feet here. In addition, the first and third lines use masculine rhyme, and the second and fourth lines use feminine rhyme. Of course, this is not accidental. The techniques used are colors in the poet’s palette to add brightness to the emotional mood of the poem. The lines are shortened - and now the antithesis of fire and ice is highlighted and attracts attention. But there is no cruelty or rudeness here. This is facilitated by the use of alliteration:

M e lo, m e lo on sun e y z e ml e
On Sun e etc e d e ly...

Or in another stanza:

M e T e l l e saw on st e cl e
Mugs and pages e ly.

Or consonants:

Meta l b l epi l and on the stack l e
Mugs and drinks l s.

In this case, this technique gives the blizzard a sonority and lightness; we hear a kind of crystal clinking of ice floes, but we feel lifeless. And this again plays into the antithesis.

It is also used in the description of the external poetic world. He is fussy, cruel, colorless:

And everything was lost in the snowy darkness,
Gray and white.

It’s easy to get lost in it, to disappear. He will easily absorb everything alien and unusual. But that part of the world where the candle reigns; to describe it, the author uses words denoting simple, homely things - these are “ceiling”, “two shoes”, “wax”, “tears”, “night light”, “dress” and so on. It’s nice and cozy here, but echoes of another world can be heard here, and here there is a place for struggle and doubt:

On the illuminated ceiling
The shadows were falling
Crossing of arms, crossing of legs,
Crossing fates.

And two shoes fell
With a thud to the floor.
And wax with tears from the night light
It was dripping on my dress.

Thus, the external world of the poem is outlined quite clearly. If you analyze the nouns used in the work, then almost all of them relate specifically to its description. The inner world of the lyrical hero of the poem is quite difficult to imagine. Almost nothing is said about it; it is given in separate strokes. We can only guess about the feelings that own the soul of the lyrical hero. Penetration into his inner, spiritual world makes us think and reflect, because, like any lyrical work of B. Pasternak, “Winter Night” carries a powerful philosophical potential.

The soul of the lyrical hero was taken over by doubts, “the heat of temptation.” This heat is insidious, an interesting comparison is used here:

And the heat of temptation
Raised two wings like an angel
Crosswise.

We see a clear discrepancy: temptation, which is the exclusive prerogative of Satan, is compared with an angel, a symbol of purity and purity. The highlighted word “cruciform” - a symbol of Christianity - is again, as if in mockery, attributed to vice. And this is a clear indicator of the restless soul of the lyrical hero: where is the evil? where is the goodness? what is better and what is worse? How to find answers to these questions? How not to get confused? The only straw, the only landmark in space is the symbolic “candle” - a stronghold of faith and hope. Whether it shines or goes out under the pressure of life’s troubles depends on the hero himself.

The poem “Winter Night” is part of a cycle of poems by Yuri Zhivago, the title character of Pasternak’s novel. This novel is a “spiritual autobiography” of the author, therefore the feelings of the lyrical hero are also the feelings of the poet.

This poem describes one winter night in the life of the lyrical hero; his feelings are not written directly; we can understand them thanks to the parallelism in the description of the objects around him and the contrast to nature outside the window.

The hero's memories are shrouded in sadness, he experiences some anxiety and confusion.

Any object or image is not accidental; there are many symbols in the poem that help reveal the hero’s mood. The main symbol is the candle: “The candle was burning on the table, / The candle was burning.” It symbolizes solitude and hope, but then we feel the excitement that this light can be blown out by a slight breath of wind. These lines run like a refrain through the entire poem, which speaks of the importance of the candle for the lyrical hero; for him at the moment it is the center of everything. The image of a blizzard is also important: “The blizzard sculpted on the glass / Circles and arrows,” which is a metaphor meaning the experiences, anxiety and bad weather that befell the lyrical hero and poet.

Shadow images

To the illuminated ceiling

The shadows were falling

Crossing of arms, crossing of legs,

Crossing fates.

These shadows fall on the ceiling, creating only an uncomfortable atmosphere around. A number of homogeneous members and the absence of a union add some tension.

The author uses metaphors and comparisons that complement the overall picture of what is happening: “And the wax dripped from the night light with tears/On the dress”, “The candle was blown from the corner, / And the heat of temptation / Raised two wings / Crosswise, like an angel.” It is impossible not to notice the antithesis technique used to create images - fire and ice, “illuminated ceiling” and “shadows”, “snow haze”, the uniform burning of a candle is contrasted with the snowstorm outside the window. The author also resorts to the technique of alliteration: Chalk, chalk all over the earth To all limits.

A snowstorm sculpted on the glass

Circles and arrows.

The repetition of the vowel “e” in the lines adds length. And the assonance in the description of a snowstorm helps to hear the hum and ringing, these are the consonants “l” and “s”.

The entire poem is written in iambic with alternating male and female cross rhymes - this gives it fluidity and tenderness, but at the same time, a strict and clearly visible structure adds dynamism to the entire work. In many stanzas one can trace syntactic parallelism. The composition of the poem is circular - this gives it semantic completeness and brevity.

Updated: 2018-01-31

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Boris Leontyevich Pasternak is one of five Russian writers awarded the Nobel Prize, a recognized master of words and an undeniably great Russian poet. Born in Moscow on January 29, 1890. The spirit of creativity constantly reigned in his house. His father’s artistic talent and his mother’s musical talent could not help but “awaken” young Pasternak’s love and interest in creativity. His choice fell on literature. This is probably directly related to the fact that in his youth Pasternak met outstanding contemporary writers: Mayakovsky, Rachmaninov, Tolstoy, who visited his parents’ house. Already at the age of twenty, Boris Leonidovich wrote deep and rich poetry. Naturally, they were still immature and, as often happens, were the result of a broken heart due to the refusal of their beloved.

The poem “Night,” written in 1957, dates back to the late period of Pasternak’s work, when the poet lived and worked in the writers’ village of Peredelkino. His Litfond dacha, although located in the middle of a forest, was at the same time not far from the capital. A comfortable house with a vegetable garden, where you can work for the soul, and not for food, intelligent neighbors. The strange, rather abnormal situation with his personal life has become almost habitual, passions have subsided: Pasternak lives in two families, which in some incomprehensible way get along next door. Feeling great in both families, the poet spends more time with his “friend,” but still prefers to work in his office.

This period of Pasternak’s life can probably be called the happiest stage of his life. And at the same time - constantly experiencing guilt in front of loved ones. And yet this benefits the creation process. That year, Pasternak wrote about forty works, including many magnificent poems.

Genre, direction and size

The poem is written in a meter that is not often found in Pasternak’s work. This is iambic trimeter.

Cross rhyme, on the contrary, is used by him everywhere. The number of male rhymes predominates over female ones. The genre combines two directions - elegy and meditative lyrics.

Images and symbols

At the center of the poem is the image of a huge space in which sleep and insomnia, forced and voluntary, are intertwined, where night work echoes night entertainment (night bars), noisy train stations, and at the same time in the silence of his secluded attic dwelling from one understandable anxiety the poet is awake. And while the night “melts” over the earth, there is a feeling that as long as man, the one who works, with whose care “the continents are burning,” watches the planet, life will continue on this planet.

The second quatrain is considered one of the best, and perhaps the best, aphorism of Pasternak. It is cited perhaps more often than any of his other poems. This is a conclusion about the fate of the poet, where the image of a prisoner of eternity and time, an artist doomed to create and suffer, emerges.

The night sky symbolizes a certain canvas on which the pilot draws his aerial figures. The artist also creates there, but his patterns are mental. Night in world culture traditionally means the mysterious arrival of inspiration, the time when mystical forces awaken. No wonder the poet chooses him.

The poem “Night” is considered strange by critics and connoisseurs of Pasternak’s work, although to most readers, on the contrary, it seems one of the simplest and most accessible in all of his work. It is believed that in this poem Pasternak’s genius rose to a special height. “Night” is Pasternak’s rise as a poet to the world level. The hero feels like a midnight pilot, comparing himself with him, and not at all with a space satellite, as it might seem to us, contemporaries of space flights (the poem was written in the summer of 1957, even before the launch of the first Earth satellite). Most likely, the author was inspired by the French writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and the planes from the Vnukovo airfield constantly circling over the dacha in Peredelkino.

Themes and mood

Of course, the poem indicates the beginning of a new stage in Pasternak’s life as a poet. One might even declare a new level of poetic maturity. The author looks at the world as if from above, from under the clouds. This theme of looking from above, and not only through the eyes of a pilot hurrying along his usual flight route, but also through the “eyes” of stars and planets that “look” at the restless earthly economy from an infinite distance, runs like a red thread through the entire poem. The theme of incomprehensible power is conveyed through this gaze. It is possessed by a pilot who has conquered human nature and has capabilities that are inaccessible to the average person. It is possessed by mysterious cosmic bodies that are on a grander scale than our planet. And finally, it is possessed by the creator, whose mind can create and create new lives, stories and worlds.

Another most important theme for Pasternak, perhaps the main one in this work: the task of the artist in the life of society. He does not fly beyond the clouds; if he “falls asleep”, the consequences will not be catastrophic, but he also has a duty - his service is incredibly important.

Idea

The night is always alarming, in fact. The metaphorical vivid expression “the continents are burning” is intended to cause anxiety in the reader, and even the understanding that they are burning with the peaceful light of street lamps does not reduce the feeling of anxiety. The interweaving of anaphora and a strong epithet: “a terrible, terrible list” increases anxiety, and only the peaceful sound of a gliding plane, familiar to a resident of the Vnukovo suburb, reduces anxiety and practically bestows peace.

Life goes on as usual, the firemen, bartenders, railway workers, Parisian actors, separated by oceans, borders and political differences, the artist in his attic and the pilot invisible behind the clouds who took off from the Vnukovo airfield, do not sleep. They are all awake, working, creating and, like the Greek Antaeus, holding the world on their shoulders, saving them from madness and collapse.

Means of artistic expression

The work is replete with tropes. These are metaphors (the night is melting), epithets (the sleeping world), comparisons (Standing with a cross on the fabric), hyperbole (In boundless spaces), personification (Venus or Mars are looking), repeated anaphora (Don't sleep, don't sleep, work).

It should also be noted that the anaphora in the final two quatrains merges with the antithesis, which is especially unusual. This simultaneous use of two or more types of tropes significantly enhances the impression of the read. To enhance expression, the author also uses such a strong expressive means of language as non-union nominative enumeration.

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