The definition of “pure art” developed in Russian criticism as a negative one in the 40s and 50s. It was also impossible to speak like that about Zhukovsky and Batyushkov. One could feel the great content of their poetry and the positive merits of its form. Later, due to a misunderstanding and in connection with the annoying emphasis on Zhukovsky’s ideological “conservatism,” this derogatory definition spread to him as a poet. In the 40-50s, the poetic work of A.A. clearly manifested itself. Feta, F.I. Tyutchev as a peculiar reaction to the democratic orientations that came from Nekrasov and Belinsky. Both poets - Fet and Tyutchev - were outside the strengthening direction in literature, laying down its new pedigree. Their initiatives were taken up by A.N. Maikov, Ya.P. Polonsky, A.K. Tolstoy. The poets of this group sincerely believed that poetry should speak about the eternal freely, without coercion. They did not recognize any theory above themselves
Uniting on some common principles, the poets of “pure art,” however, differed from each other in many respects. Maikov was even at one time under the influence of Belinsky and with his modest poem “Mashenka” (1845) made a certain contribution to the formation of the “natural school”. The unpretentious Alexei Tolstoy was very angry and tendentious in his attacks against the democrats from Sovremennik, who offered recipes for social diseases (the ballad “Panteley the Healer”). He wrote a caustic history of Russia in verse, a satire on officials (“Popov’s Dream”), and was the co-author of the literary hoax “Kozma Prutkov.”
A.A. Fet turned out to be a difficult phenomenon to explain in Russian poetry, both for modern criticism and for subsequent literary criticism. The democratic public condemned his avoidance of topical social issues and the overly intimate nature of his poetry. The subtleties of his observations and poetic and artistic skill were not captured.
It is also complex and contradictory in the following respect: there was an extremely large gap between Fet, the subtle lyricist, and Shenshin, the man.
Fet allowed himself to flaunt paradoxes: “A work of art that has meaning does not exist for me.” “In our business, the true nonsense is the true truth.” “My muse babbles nothing but absurdities.” That's why D.I. Pisarev paid him the same and in his articles completely crossed out at least some significance of Fet the poet.
The severe enemy of “moth poetry” M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin wrote that most of Fet’s poems “breathe with the most sincere freshness”, they “conquer the hearts of readers”, romances based on Fet’s poems “are sung by almost all of Russia.” And again, with sober precision, it is said about the uneven quality of the poems, about the fact that Fet’s world is “small, monotonous and limited,” although few can compare with him in “fragrant freshness.”
Dobrolyubov, speaking of Fet as a master of “catching fleeting impressions,” in essence, already posed the problem of Fet’s impressionism, which has not yet been satisfactorily clarified by any of the scientists.
There are three positions in Fet's explanation. First: we want to know only “good” Fet, the greatest lyricist, and nothing else Fet and Shenshin, poet and businessman, and although Shenshin often interfered with Fet, these interferences must be ignored as purely empirical circumstances, as misunderstandings of private life, everyday vanity , not worth attention. And, finally, the third position: there are dialectical connections between Fet and Shenshin, between the fragrant lyricist and the militant conservative. We should be interested in the dialectic of connections between Fet’s life and beliefs, on the one hand, and his “pure” lyrics, on the other. True dialectics should not be sought in ugly connections - the relationship between Fet and Shenshin, the greatest lyricist with a selfish landowner - this path is false and unproductive . Connections can only be between Fetov’s poetic world and the boundless world of universal human life, the life of nature, and society. The real truth of Fet was formulated by himself in one of his articles in 1867: “Only man, and only he alone in the entire universe, feels the need to ask: what is the nature surrounding him? where does all this come from? what is he himself? where? Where? For what? And the higher a person is, the more powerful his moral nature, the more sincerely these questions arise in him.”
Fet preaches not narrowness, but observation. Of course, there is not only this in the world, but there is also this. Everything exists for man. The inner man is the measure of all things. He has the right to choose. Let us also quote the poem “And Evil”:
Fet is not concerned with the “cosmic” problems of human existence. Fet's world is absolutely this-worldly, it does not concern anything mystical, the fate of the universe. In earthly life, a person has his own sphere of fleeting impressions and feelings. It was with this “impressionism” that Fet could be liked by modernists and symbolists at the end of the 19th century.
“Art for art’s sake”, “pure art” is a conventional name that emerged in France in the 19th century for a number of aesthetic preferences and concepts, the common external feature of which is the affirmation of the intrinsic value of artistic creativity, the independence of art from politics, social demands, and educational tasks. Essentially, in different conditions, the concepts of “Art for art’s sake” are different both in social and ideological origins and in their objective meaning. Often the concepts of “Art for Art’s Sake” are a reaction to the increased “utilitarianism” of certain schools and movements, to attempts to subordinate art to political power or social doctrine. In such cases, protection turns out to be the self-defense of art from forces hostile to it, the defense of its spiritual specificity, its independence among other forms of consciousness and activity. The desire to create a world of beauty in spite of ugly reality comes from an exaggerated idea of the own power of art in transforming life and often leads to aestheticism. However, in real artistic practice, the declaration of any artistic fact as “pure art” turns out, as a rule, to be a conscious or unwitting mystification, often a cover for a conservative and other currently unpopular trend (for example, in Russia during the period of liberal activity of the 1860s, when supporters of “Art for Art’s sake” defended their social conservatism, resorting to the authority of A.S. Pushkin).
The desire to uphold “pure art” is observed in the views of the Ancient East, in Greco-Roman antiquity (in “Alexandrian” poetry, in Roman literature of the last centuries of the empire), during the late Renaissance - in Mannerism, Gongorism. The concept of “Art for art’s sake” was first formulated in G.E. Lessing’s book “Laocoon” (1766). The ideas were formalized into specific theory in the 19th century, largely as a reaction to the excesses of Enlightenment utilitarianism. The teachings of I. Kant about the practical disinterest in “judgments of taste” (aesthetic experiences), individual formulas of F. Schiller about art as a “game” and about aesthetic “appearance” (Schiller F. Articles on Aesthetics) served for the romantics not only to reinforce thoughts about freedom of inspiration, but, absolutized, they became the theoretical source of the concept of “Art for art’s sake.” The Iron Age (E.A. Baratynsky) caused both the flourishing of social analysis of realism and the response of the protective forces of art as such. Their one-sidedness dominates the aesthetic thought of the followers of romanticism. A characteristic phenomenon is the “Parnassian” school in France and its master T. Gautier (preface to the novel “Mademoiselle de Maupin”, 1835-36); their penchant for perfect form, the desire for expressive plasticity of verbal images lead to artistic effect; but this is achieved at the cost of a pointed disregard for the public and sociality. According to Gautier, the strength of C. Baudelaire is that he “stood for the unconditional freedom of art, he did not allow poetry to have any other purpose than poetry” (Baudelaire C. Flowers of Evil). A characteristic contradiction: the defense of the absolute independence of art results in actual lack of freedom in choosing topics, a ban on civil issues. A staunch defender of the theory of “Art for art’s sake” was O. Wilde.
A variety of “Art for art’s sake” is, in essence, modern naturalistic production. The social acuity inherent, in particular, in the best works of the Goncourt brothers or G. Flaubert, is dissolved in the epigones in the self-directed copying of phenomena, and art is sometimes directly declared an exclusive means of pleasure (in the novels of J.C. Huysmans). Various forms of “academicism” in the fine arts also become a stronghold of “Art for art’s sake” in the negative sense of this concept; speaking in defense of eternal norms of beauty, they often actively oppose the reproduction of modern reality as “rough” (the struggle of “academicism” with “peredvizhnichestvo” in Russia). Formalistic tendencies, found in some representatives of early symbolism (S. Mallarmé), grow into programs and schools, such as futurism and numerous subsequent forms of aesthetic extremism. Thus, the once progressive concept of art’s self-defense degenerates into practical propaganda for its self-destruction. Becoming increasingly unpopular "Art for art's sake" ideas in an era close to ours, they are often only an integral part of aesthetic constructions that oppose the extremes of sociology. The idea of “Art for Art’s Sake” unexpectedly appears under the cover of the struggle against the “intuitionism” of traditional art criticism. Thus, the formalists saw in a poetic work only a “text” that could be broken down into devices.
"Art for art's sake" in Russia
In Russian art, the slogans of “Art for art’s sake” became truly militant in the 40s and 50s of the 19th century, when they were polemically opposed to the natural school or the “Gogolian direction.” Belinsky in the article “Poems of M. Lermontov” (1841) assured: “Poetry has no goal outside itself, but is a goal for itself.” Later, in the article “A Look at Russian Literature of 1847,” under the influence of his liberal environment, he changed his view: “Nevertheless, we think that the thought of some pure, detached art living in its own sphere ... is an abstract, dreamy thought. Such art has never happened anywhere.” Since the second half of the 19th century, the most acute subject of dispute was Pushkin’s judgments about the freedom of the artist, expressed in the poems “The Poet” (1827), “The Poet and the Crowd” (1828), “To the Poet” (1830), and others. Opponents of the “Gogolian direction” ( A.V.Druzhinin, S.S.Dudyshkin, P.V.Annenkov, partly “young” Slavophiles) absolutized certain lyrical formulas of the poet (“Not for everyday excitement...”, etc.), passing them off as the main motive of Pushkin’s aesthetics and bypassing their specific historical meaning. While decisively rejecting “Art for Art’s sake,” N.G. Chernyshevsky and N.A. Dobrolyubov, due to their well-known limitations, metaphysical nature and polemical bias, did not refute the interpretation of Pushkin’s works by supporters of the theory of “artistry” and turned their criticism against the poet himself, recognizing him only great master of form. D.I. Pisarev completed the overthrow of Pushkin and cemented the misunderstanding: identification of the “Arts for Art’s Sake” program itself, the aesthetics of its essence with the requirement of freedom of inspiration, the inner independence of the artist, and this is the only thing that Pushkin defended. A number of poets (A.A. Fet, A.N. Maikov, and partly N.F. Shcherbina in “anthological” poems) were usually attributed to the school of “pure art” in Russian poetry of the 19th century, because in their poetry they sometimes demonstratively eschewed political and civil issues. The tendencies of this school at the time of social reaction of the 1880s were reflected in the poetry of A.N. Apukhtin, A.A. Golenishchev-Kutuzov, K.M. Fofanov. But, unlike the previous era, such poetry did not so much avoid civicism as express disappointment in the illusions of “universal bliss” (in the words of A.K. Tolstoy), characteristic of the mentality of certain layers of the liberal intelligentsia; Obviously, it does not fit into the framework of “Art for Art’s Sake.” In the literary schools that arose after symbolism (ego-futurism, imagism, and partly acmeism), the idea of “Art for art’s sake” has essentially exhausted itself on Russian soil. V.Ya.Bryusov, A.Bely and, especially, A.A.Blok, over time, increasingly asserted the connection of poetry with the life of society, although they placed art above any spiritual activity.
As a manuscript
POETRY OF “PURE ART”:
dissertations for an academic degree
Doctor of Philology
Eagle – 2008
The dissertation was completed at the Department of History of Russian Literature
XI-XIX centuries Oryol State University
Scientific consultant:
Doctor of Philology,
professor
Official opponents:
Doctor of Philology,
professor ;
Doctor of Philology,
professor ;
Doctor of Philology,
professor
Lead organization:
Moscow State Regional University
The dissertation defense will take place “__”_____________ 2008 at ____ hour. ____ min. at a meeting of the Dissertation Council D.122.183.02 at Oryol State University
The dissertation can be found in the scientific library of Oryol State University.
Scientific secretary
Dissertation Council,
Candidate of Philological Sciences,
associate professor
General characteristics of work
The poetry of the so-called “pure art” - one of the branches of Russian poetry of the 1920s - is considered in our dissertation in the light of the problems of continuity and innovation, as well as the accompanying artistic method and psychologism. Like any other literary movement, this community of literary artists arose as a definite unity, conditioned by the development of life and literature itself and having its source, first of all, in a well-known commonality in the approach to reality, in its aesthetic perception, in the creative method.
The poets, collectively included in the general category of apologists of “pure art,” were united by a related understanding of the essence and tasks of art, a strict distinction between the “low” and the “poetic” in reality, the opposition of real life to the free world of poetic dreams, and a focus on depicting the inner world of man. All of them have the idea that the deepest, most intimate thing in human nature and life is eternal, but the outer shell changes. They were not interested in the socio-historical content of personality, but in its transcendental beginning: personality as a bearer of absolute spirituality. The considerable merit and indisputable dignity of the “pure” lyricists lay in the revelation of the high impulses of the human spirit, in the fact that they considered the individual in his universal human content. Romantic exaltations and insights brought them into direct contact with the “universal.”
Art is the only, disinterested form of knowledge, based on the contemplative essence of things, that is, ideas. This is what the most gifted of this group of poets thought. The same idea of art is characteristic of other “pure” lyricists -,. Living contemplation of the beauty of nature, love, art, in their understanding, frees a person from selfish emotions and elevates him above the prose of life. Ideal knowledge (as opposed to everyday knowledge) opened up to each of them the world of eternal ideas, elevated them above the world of passions due to the harmonious fusion of subject and object.
The poets of “pure art,” being objective idealists in their philosophical worldview, contrast rational knowledge with direct “comprehension” of reality, based on intuition as a special ability of consciousness, irreducible to sensory experience and discursive, logical thinking. It is intuition, “clairvoyance” that reveals the harmonious essence of the world. The main thing hidden in the work of “pure lyricists” is their high poetic spirituality. The same Fet, in the article “Two Letters on the Significance of Ancient Languages in Our Education,” calls art a spiritual activity that reveals the essence of objects that lies “in immeasurable depth,” only the poet “is given complete mastery of the most intimate essence of objects.”
and, and, like Fet, they were convinced that the living power of poetry is preserved by faith in the ideal and spirituality of the human personality. All of them remained singers of high truths. Maikov and A. Tolstoy assessed the past of the Fatherland from a spiritual perspective. From the same position, Polonsky responded to any phenomenon of a foreign culture (ancient or modern, European or Eastern). Apukhtin's poetry is also inspired by faith in eternal human values.
The creativity of writers adjoining the movement of “pure art” does not fit within these frameworks, and in general it is impossible to equate the aesthetic declarations of poets with their creative practice. , for example, was the author not only of the finest poems about nature or love, but also of the sharpest social satire (“Popov’s Dream”, “History of the Russian State ...”, the works of Kozma Prutkov), the author of brilliant parodies ... of “pure art”.
As for Polonsky, he avoided that inside-out tendentiousness that is characteristic, for example, of Fet, who prejudicially excluded everything social from poetry precisely because it is public. The people as an element in moments of the rise of their usually hidden forces, free human thought - all this excites Polonsky - a man and a poet. Polonsky objectively served in many ways the advanced trends of the time with his “mental” and “civil” anxiety expressed in his lyrics.
In A. Maykov’s poems from Russian history, poetic pictures are inspired by faith in the living significance of Russia, in its people. He resolutely defends the right to dignity and national identity of his people. “What can the Russian people endure in the name of love? - the poet asks in a letter to Dostoevsky and answers: - Yes, that’s it! People's love is our constitution... Russia in its basic principles is necessary for the world, for history, and this is its strength, and it’s nothing that even smart people don’t understand this: history, Providence, God - whatever you want to call them - they won’t be asked whether they understand or not!”
Fet, Polonsky, Maikov, A. Tolstoy, Apukhtin - each of them, in the conditions of the fierce ideological struggle of the 1860s, sought to save poetry from “didactism”, to preserve its right to sing the beauty of love, nature, art, and each was destined to carry on for a long time to oneself, as a stamp of rejection, the label of “pure art”, far from life and its problems. In defiance of democratic literature and in the fight against it, they defended the thesis of the independence of art from life, of its intrinsic value.
The works of numerous scientists have decisively revised the usual cliches in the characterization of these significant poets of that difficult time. The works of outstanding literary scholars have created a textual and source study basis for solving many problems associated with the work of these literary artists, including those problems that are of particular interest to us - continuity and innovation.
The latest research has significantly enriched our understanding of the place of each of the poets in the history of Russian culture and poetry, the uniqueness of their poetic systems, their aesthetic views, etc. Researchers are attracted primarily not by ideology, but by the “secret freedom” that he spoke about A. Blok.
Many correct thoughts and observations, not always, however, indisputable, about the poetry of “pure” lyricists are contained in the publications of G. B. Kurlyandskaya, . Some of the researchers (,) give a general outline of the life and creative path of this or that poet, others (T. A Bakhor,) reveal individual aspects of his talent, and others (,) clarify the features of the lyrical world. The keen interest of the fourth (,) concentrates on issues of poetics and creative individuality. In all cases, we are dealing not with purely factual, but with theoretically meaningful materials. In the scientific community, there has been a tendency towards an in-depth comprehension of the essence and independence of poetic systems and artistic worlds created by word artists, an understanding of how the same motif in the artistic system of a particular author develops into a special figurative complex, the analysis of which opens the way to identifying the creative manner of the poet (,).
The existence of solid research makes the task of modern reading of the poets that interest us quite difficult. In our work, we tried, avoiding speculation, to focus on issues that are little studied and controversial in the scientific community. We do not set ourselves the task of giving a systematic and consistent analysis of the work of this or that poet; we were interested in individual aspects of their poetics, artistic system, creative process, and method.
The core, key problems of the dissertation are continuity, innovation, involvement of the studied poets in the classical Pushkin (and not only) tradition, psychologism as the most essential feature of their creative manner. These questions are a kind of “brace”, thanks to which our observations regarding the poetics and A. K. Tolstoy, and, develop into a holistic picture, allowing us to clearly see both the common thing that unites them, and the uniquely individual thing that makes up the creative physiognomy of each.
Literary continuity, as we understand it, is a complex process that includes not only the intuitive connections in which poets find themselves, but also the “element” of awareness and intentionality. In addition, continuity presupposes not only attraction, but also repulsion, which, combined with each other, dialectically accompany each other. This is a critical revision, a reassessment of the inherited spiritual values and creative experience of their predecessors, which takes very diverse forms, behind which divergences of creative manners and lively polemics can be hidden.
Many of the poets of the school of “pure art” considered themselves heirs of Pushkin, and they objectively, with certain inevitable restrictions, continued the traditions of their great teacher. Most importantly, in relation to poetry, in understanding one’s role ministers, performing duty, - they certainly followed him. Although, of course, their connections with the founder of new Russian poetry had limits. The dissertation also examines reflections in the works of the poets we are interested in. Each of them found the meaningful beginning of their lyrics in a “dialogue” not with socio-political trends, but with the best examples of fine literature. Therefore, a deep and meaningful reading of them is possible only in the context of literary, in particular poetic, tradition.
Each of the poets, in accordance with the characteristics of their talent and temperament, paved the way for the liberation of modern poetry from that “sad, dissatisfied, sad-lazy element” that gave it the “stamp of monotony.” Their voices returned to poetry the vital authenticity, simplicity, and naturalness it had lost, and opened up new possibilities for artistic comprehension of the world.
The problem of the artistic method of “pure” lyricists presents a certain difficulty due to its insufficient development and debatability. We have studied this issue more or less thoroughly using the example of creativity. It turned out that in a complex system of interdependence, mutual influence of the subject-thematic basis, figurative and ideological content, genre-speech form - all these components of the work - lies the artistic and aesthetic essence of the romantic type of creativity.
In the understanding of adherents of the school of “pure art”, not all of life, but only its individual links and sections serve as an expression of its main, innermost current, which riveted their poetic ear. Its general meaning often seemed to them mysterious, “unreasonable,” and contradictory. They limited themselves to recreating only local spheres of life experiences and were interested in special, aesthetic layers of reality. The basis of the romanticism of lyric poets is a unique aesthetic concept of life; it determines the ideological and aesthetic features of their romanticism, including the method as a consistent unity of re-creating the external empirical shell of phenomena in order to understand their true essence.
In general, the creative method of the poets we are studying is a complex, highly artistic fusion of heterogeneous elements, where the romantic principle is still decisive. The system of their romantic poetry comes into contact with other, non-romantic artistic systems: realism, classicism (A. Maikov), impressionism and symbolism (A. Fet).
Artistic style is associated with the creative method. Each of the poets, in addition to the generic stylistic features characteristic of him as a representative of the school of “pure art,” is also endowed with his own stylistic signature. Fet, for example, turns to a semantically mobile word, to its overtones and whimsical associations. Maikov, precise and clear in the use of words, in the rendering of colors and sounds, imparts a certain beauty to the word, aestheticizes it. Tolstoy's style system is determined by the fact that his lyrics contain immeasurably more heartfelt melancholy than daring revelry. Everyday life - and a metaphorical breakthrough into the sphere of the ideal, leading into the deep perspective of comprehended premises, expanding the space of the poet’s soul - these are the signs of Polonsky’s individual style. The charming charm and undying charm of “banality” can be illuminated from within by Apukhtin’s elegiac verse.
The dissertation also talks about the nature of the psychologism of romantic poets, about the impact of poetry, with its ability to expand and generalize the meanings, concepts, and ideas inherent in it, on prose and about the reverse influence of prose on poetry, on the processes occurring in it.
We associate the nature of the psychologism of the romantic poets not with the “natural school”, as some researchers do, but with the heightened interest in the inner life, individual psychology of a person, characteristic of the mid-19th century, in the spiritual and moral values of the individual. With their ability to capture the subtle and fragile mental life, the poets anticipated Tolstoy’s “dialectics of the soul,” Turgenev’s “secret” psychology, and Dostoevsky’s discovery of psychological analytics in the sphere of mental life. And they themselves took into account the achievements of Russian psychological prose.
In lyrics, psychologism is expressive in nature. In it, as a rule, it is impossible to “look from the outside” at a person’s mental life. The lyrical hero either directly expresses his feelings, thoughts, experiences, or goes deeper into introspection. The subjectivity of the lyrical makes it expressive and deep, but at the same time limits its capabilities in understanding the inner world of a person.
In the process of analyzing lyrical poems, we sought to capture the inexplicable charm of allusion, understatement, which allows us to guess what is the very substance of art, and at the same time is difficult to translate into the language of direct and unique meanings. It is no coincidence that Dostoevsky valued poetry for the fact that it allows one to derive something general and whole from a hint or a detail.
According to the correct thought, “the poetry of Russian romantics of the mid and second half of the 19th century, which in many ways opposed realistic literature, acted at the same time as its unique ideal complement.” And this, undoubtedly, made them closer to each other.
In reflecting on this ideal world, each of the poets paved his own path. Their poetic creativity is distinguished by a rare expressive diversity.
The relevance of our research is determined by the fact that in the perception of our contemporaries, poets of the Nekrasov school and representatives of “pure” poetry no longer oppose each other, but one complements the other. The historical unity of opposites acquires a harmonious character. Using the best examples of the lyrics of Fet and Maykov, Polonsky and A. Tolstoy, our contemporary learns a “sense of poetry,” perception and comprehension of beauty. Their work continues to remain a living, enduring phenomenon in the history of Russian literature and culture.
The purpose of our work is to, without straying into repeating known information, focus on problems that have not yet found adequate coverage in the literature of the issue (the concept of personality in the work of “pure” lyricists, the features of their artistic method and style, their recognition of beauty as universal harmony, sacred essence of the world, recognition of aesthetic contemplation as the highest stage of knowledge). To achieve this, the following are set: tasks:
– identify the place of each poet in the history of Russian literature;
– explore individual issues of their artistic method and creative process;
– characterize the originality of their poetic manner;
– consider the creative connections in which the poets were with each other;
– show the organic involvement of poets in the classical Pushkin tradition.
Basic provisions submitted for defense.
1. Russian poetry of the 1990s, traditionally called “pure art”, as a literary movement, represents a certain unity, conditioned by the development of life and literature itself and having its source in a certain commonality in aesthetic perception, philosophical and ethical ideals, and in the creative method.
2. General principles and trends that exist in the work of poets play an important role in the literary process.
3. The work of poets affiliated with the school of “pure art” does not always fit into its framework and goes beyond its boundaries with many features (the desire to find beauty in the earthly and ordinary, to see the ideal and eternal in the everyday and transitory, love of freedom, attempts to appeal to people's life, a critical attitude towards arbitrariness and violence).
4. The nature of the artistic method of the poets under study: the method is basically romantic, but complicated by elements of realism, and in other cases - classicism (A. Maikov) and impressionism and symbolism (A. Fet).
5. The stylistic features of poets are associated not only with the type of artistic thinking, but also with the entire structure of the aesthetic thoughts and feelings of the artist of the word in their individual refraction.
6. The psychologism of the lyrical creativity of poets who were influenced by Russian psychological prose and, in turn, influenced prose with its growing attention to the “details of feeling” is an important feature of their creative manner.
7. Historical continuity is one of the necessary conditions for the fruitfulness of any literary artistic creation.
Scientific novelty of the research manifests itself in establishing the characteristics by which the artistic individuality of the poet is determined, as well as the specificity of the aesthetic world of poets classified as the school of “pure art”, in identifying the peculiarities of perception and assessment of the world characteristic of a particular poet, as well as a complex of means of expression - the dominant features his poetics.
Theoretical significance of the work is determined by the fact that it contains an understanding of the moral, aesthetic and spiritual quests of poets in the light of the ideas of “pure art” against the broad historical and literary background of the middle and second half of the 19th century. Theoretical observations and conclusions make certain clarifications and additions to the study:
– problems of harmony of universal life in the work of A. Fet with a similar problem in creativity;
– evolution of artistic method;
– Maykov’s romanticism, clothed in strict “classical” forms, but not reduced to passive contemplation and “cold” dispassion;
– connections between poetry and Russian realistic prose;
- the genre of poetic psychological short story.
Subject of research is the lyrical work of poets, in some cases - epic and dramatic works (poems “Dreams”, “Wanderer”, “lyrical drama” “Three Deaths” by Maykov).
Object of study– the problem of successive connections and innovative aspirations in the work of poets of “pure art”.
Methodological basis of the dissertation served as theoretical developments of researchers on ways to study the text of a work of art, on the lyrical system and the lyrical hero, on the problem of the author in lyric poetry, on the foundations of realistic and romantic poetics, on romanticism as a method and as an artistic system.
Research methods. The work uses the principles of a holistic analysis of works of art in close interdependence with historical-literary, comparative-typological and systematic methods.
Scientific and practical significance of the work is that its results can be used in the development of general and special courses on the history of Russian literature of the mid and second half of the 19th century.
Approbation of the obtained work results was conducted in the form of reports at a scientific conference at Oryol State University dedicated to the 180th anniversary of the birth of A. Fet (2000), and pedagogical Readings at the Oryol Institute for Advanced Training of Teachers dedicated to Oryol writers (1998, 2002). The dissertation materials were discussed at meetings of the Department of History of Russian Literature of the 11th-19th centuries at OSU.
The works prepared by the dissertation student based on the research materials were published in the magazines “Russian Literature”, “Literature at School”, “Russian Language at School”, “Russian Literature”, “Russian Speech”, as well as in his books “Star Threads of Poetry. Essays on Russian poetry" (Orel, 1995), "A sonorous spring of inspiration. Above the pages of Russian poetry" (Orel, 2001).
Work structure: consists of an introduction, five chapters, a conclusion and a list of references.
MAIN CONTENT OF THE WORK
In introduction the relevance of the topic is substantiated, the state of its scientific development is considered, the purpose and content of the tasks are determined, the research methodology is presented, the scientific novelty and practical significance of the work are revealed.
First chapter(“Poetics. Creative connections with and”) is dedicated to the poetics of the greatest and most original lyricist, who amazes the reader with his entire stylistic system, his special structure of artistic means and techniques.
IN first Section of the chapter contains an analysis of two poetic messages to A. Fet on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of his poetic activity. Their authors, A. Maikov and Y. Polonsky, in a brilliant artistic form, managed to capture the very “essence” of the addressee-celebrator, sketching his creative portrait. Maikov in his message found a surprisingly accurate image with which he expressed Fet’s poetic talent. He likened Fet’s “irrepressible verse” to “a stormy horse that broke the bit.” This verse rushes into space in pursuit of a thought in order to grab it “like a trophy”, amuse itself with the “beauty” of this thought “not yet known to people” and marvel at its “audacity”. And the poet himself watches his “brainchild” - a poem - and when it becomes a “winner” for him, he experiences the greatest feeling of joy, “bliss”. Mike's message captures us with the mighty breath of a fresh, sparkling image, thanks to which Fet becomes closer and more accessible to us.
Polonsky “saw” Fet from the other side. The poet appeared in his message as a companion of the gods, a participant in their game, its singer. Singer of the beauty of life! Fet’s songs, alien to “vanities and moments of infatuation,” are “age-old” songs. The “genius of music” finds in them combinations of words “soldered into “something” by spiritual fire.” Fetov's chants are difficult to strictly logically analyze. Their meaning is more felt and guessed than clearly perceived by the mind - the “genius of reason” passes by them.
The features of Fet’s creative style, noted by his closest friends, Polonsky and Maykov, are revealed in detail by us in the second section “Novelty of Fet’s metaphorical language”.
It has long been noted that Fetov’s “primordial” word is multidimensional; its exact lexical meaning is not always captured. The language and poetic metaphors are intense, allowing for different interpretations. The logical connection (“coupling”) of images is weakened, the logic of the development of poetic thought is often bizarre and paradoxical. The poet every time carries us into new, unexpected states of spirit, disturbs our imagination with images that give a fusion of very distant concepts, and puts the word in an unusual position. This is the fundamental property of Fetov’s lyrics. The poet’s bold similes and metaphors were not always revealed to the inner gaze of his contemporaries; they stunned and baffled them. Yakov Polonsky, for example, was more than once annoyed at the ambiguity and even incomprehensibility of certain images of Fet. He often assessed Fet’s poems based not on direct poetic impressions, but from the point of view of formal logic, “common” sense - a criterion, when applied to Fet, is too shaky, not to say incorrect, because it does not take into account the specifics of his creative individuality. The emotional principle of the composition allows Fet to omit associative links. This caused bewilderment among many critics, and aesthetically sensitive ones at that - Fet was ahead of his time with his discoveries.
The “obscurities” in Fet’s poems, which were pointed out by Polonsky, Strakhov, Botkin, Druzhinin and other contemporaries, naturally flowed from the very nature of Fet’s lyrics and were conditioned by it. Fet resolutely defended this kind of “incomprehensibility” in his poems and firmly stood his ground. The victory here was won by the sixth sense of the poet, with which Fet was able, in his words, to see “music” even where the “non-poet” does not suspect its presence.
The “inaccuracies,” “ambiguities,” and “slips of the tongue” in individual poems by Fet that we examined and analyzed deepened our understanding of his poetic individuality, of its quality, which he defined with the words “lyrical audacity.”
Fet amazes the reader not only with the outburst of his emotions, but also with his reliable concreteness and vigilance of observations. In him lived the sophisticated visual power of an impressionist artist and at the same time a powerful melodic element. About this - last two sections of the chapter– “Nature in the poetic world of Fet and Tyutchev” and “Nature and man in the works of Fet and Turgenev: typology of aesthetic situations of the poet and prose writer.” Fet, especially the late one, no less than Tyutchev, is characterized by the perception of nature as a gigantic whole, as an animated, “intelligent” being. Fet's poetry from the period of "Evening Lights", having artistically become related to disharmony (not without the influence of A. Schopenhauer), penetrates deeper and deeper into the world of nature and the human soul. The natural world is depicted through the emotional perception of a person who strives to merge with it, to embrace it with his thoughts and feelings. Like Tyutchev, whose poems can expand to the size of the Universe, Fet infects us with deep cosmic lyricism and universal power. The image he created of the stars of the endless expanses of the Universe illuminated by golden eyelashes with the “sun of the world in the center” is highly consonant with Tyutchev with his close attention to metaphor and comparison of a very special kind: “Like heavy eyelashes / Rising above the earth, / And through the fugitive lightning / Whose “Those menacing eyes / Sometimes they light up.”
Apparently, not without the influence of Tyutchev, Fet resorts to solemn intonations of speech, using, for example, beginnings with the solemnly affirming adverb “so” (“So, impossible, undoubtedly, / permeated with golden fire”), compound epithets (“languorously- sweet”, “insanely happy”, “gold-leafed”), archaic vocabulary (“co-inherent”, “this seraph”, “boat”, “wind”).
At the same time, Fet and Tyutchev differ from each other in the development of a philosophy of nature, in the principles of awareness and depiction of the life of nature. Fet is not frightened by the night, as it frightens Tyutchev with its ugliness, the chaos stirring under the cover of darkness. The night of Feta is predominantly a bright, moonlit, starry, quiet night, setting one up for enthusiastic contemplation. In Tyutchev, nature and man are separated and alienated. Fet’s poems are not poems that convey the philosophical worldview of a person immersed in the contemplation of world laws, like Tyutchev’s, but a reflection of the psychological state of a person, full of impressions and gradually comprehending them. Fet strives to capture something significant in changing experiences. Tyutchev, on the contrary, is trying to penetrate through the fluid impressions of life to something more intimate and permanent in it.
Interesting material is provided by a comparative analysis of the problem of nature and man in the works of Fet and Turgenev. For both poets and prose writers, the “human” essence of nature was revealed in aesthetic experiences of its beauty. Both artists approached the process of merging man with the endless world of nature from a lyrical-romantic position. Reproducing the ecstatic states of a person immersed in nature helped them understand the essence of life. Turgenev and Fet showed that human communication with nature opens up the opportunity for him to comprehend high ethical values. Poetic sensitivity turned out to be associated with purity of moral feeling. This is the basis of the ideological and philosophical understanding of nature and man, which makes the poet and prose writer similar, despite their individual characteristics in the development of this problem. The essence of these features is as follows. In Fet’s understanding, beauty is a reality of life. In his ideal world there is no place for mystical moods, while Turgenev’s world often comes into contact with the transcendental, mysterious, and unknown. Turgenev's sense of beauty acquired shades of idealistic contemplation. The writer contrasts his idealistic hero with the prose of life. For Fet, there was no conflict between romance and everyday life; his interest was focused on moments of enlightenment and delight, elation. Fet's work directly expresses the feeling of the ideal - that feeling of life, full, bright and free, which a person is capable of, having shaken off the oppression of everyday worries and hardships.
The dissertation notes that the romantic ideal impulses of Turgenev’s heroes, when each of them has “delight in their eyes, and their cheeks are glowing, and their hearts are beating,” and they speak “about the truth, about the future of humanity, about poetry...”, match those moments contemplative elevation above the world of the “possible”, which Fet so inspiredly poeticized and which were for him, as for Turgenev, moments of moral uplift. Both of them, the poet and the prose writer, through love joined the Whole of universal life, overcoming that oppressive force that L. Tolstoy called “self-love, or rather the memory of oneself” - a feeling of painful concentration on oneself.
From the analysis of A. Fet’s work it follows:
Firstly, Fet’s romantic aesthetics was based on a sharp distinction between two spheres: the “ideal” and “everyday life.” This conviction had a common root with the very essence of his poetic gift. The sphere of the ideal is formed “spread throughout the entire universe” beauty, "spread throughout nature" Love, secret moments consonance of cosmic and spiritual life, creations of art. Fet “breathed” all this in his lyrics.
Secondly, Fetov’s song was born from the ideal of beauty and was lifted up by the same spirit of resistance to “life’s hardships.” Its naturalness and naturalness are the result of a premonition of ever-renewing changes in Russian life in the middle of the century, a premonition that called out to a new man and a new humanity.
Thirdly, the deep cosmic lyricism and universal power of the poems of the late Fet makes him similar to Tyutchev. And philosophical generality, and a sense of the integrity of world existence, and an emphasized typically romantic feeling of the beyond.
Finally, fourthly, Fet’s romantic aspiration for beauty brings him closer to Turgenev, as we could see by analyzing their aesthetic positions when they studied the problem of the relationship between nature and man. Both of them followed the same path to understanding the essence of life: through the depiction of romantic insights that have a morally elevating meaning for a person. The “human” essence of nature was revealed to both the poet and the prose writer in the aesthetic experiences of its beauty.
in the assessments of critics and the work of writers, the beginning of the poet’s creative path, the features of his artistic method, Tolstoy and the poetic tradition - the subject of research second chapters dissertation (“and his place in the history of Russian poetry”).
The chapter consists of four sections.
Tolstoy's work, as shown here, from the very beginning carries within itself a harmonious artistic concept in which beauty and citizenship, complementing and enriching each other, form a single indissoluble whole. “The singer, who held the banner in the name of beauty,” held it at the same time in the name of citizenship, in the name of the moral meaning of life. The theory of “art for art’s sake” that he professed did not have a self-sufficient meaning for him; he gave it a very special meaning: it did not mean a rejection of either a certain point of view on things or an assessment of what is depicted. A true work of art, according to Tolstoy, must carry within itself “the best proof of all those truths that can never be proven to those who sit down at their desks with the intention of presenting them in a work of art.” In recognizing poetry as having only official, “auxiliary” functions, in subordinating it to political tasks, he saw a threat to the very existence of art as a special and free sphere of human spiritual activity.
IN first section The chapter provides numerous assessments of Tolstoy’s work by his contemporaries; for the first time in the literature of the issue, it is shown how individual “peak” lyrical poems of the poet aroused the artistic thought of many writers (Skitalets (S. G. Petrov)), who introduced them into their works - as quotations , not only “revitalized” the narrative, but also helped to penetrate deeper into the innermost meaning of one’s own literary text. Tolstoy's poetic art turned out to be surprisingly receptive to the living movement of history.
Second The section is devoted to the beginning of the poet’s creative path. It is emphasized, in particular, that many of his poems of the 40s were influenced by narrative prose, the artistic principles of the “natural school”, the so-called “sensible poetry”. Plot and descriptive prose techniques invade lyrical poetry, the verse is saturated with specific life observations: it includes philosophical and historical material. History not only forms a special sphere of the epic, but even invades the poet’s lyrics, introducing “ballad” motifs and images into it. Historical associations complicate the lyrical beginning of such poems as “My bells...”, “You know the land where everything breathes abundantly...”, “On an uneven and shaking rowing...”.
The associativity of poetic thinking, multiplied by the “feeling” of history and complicated by a conscious correlation with the artistic world of Pushkin and other poets, predetermined the deep originality of Tolstoy.
The artistic method and creative process of Tolstoy the lyricist - the subject of research third chapter section.
His attraction to the ideal world was combined with a love for the earth, for the familiar joys of human earthly existence. The connection with romanticism did not separate Tolstoy from reality. The poet's ideological and figurative system synthesizes heterogeneous elements. The defining elements in it were certainly romantic, since Tolstoy chose primarily the spiritual sphere of life as the subject of re-creation and reproduction. The romantic image in Tolstoy's lyrics carries an artistic objectification of the spiritual feelings of the individual - love, aesthetic perception of nature, reflection on the phenomena of life around us, etc. However, realistic principles also appeared in Tolstoy's poetic system, which indicates the complexity of his aesthetic attitude to reality. What brings his poetry closer to the realism of the mid-19th century is its focus on reality, the “earthly roots” of life, the plasticity of nature paintings, elements of typification and realistic psychologism in love lyrics, and folk poetic associations. Through an analytical study of the complex world of the human soul, the poet overcame traditional romantic stylistics. Realistic figurative and ideological elements, penetrating the artistic fabric of romantic poems, were subject to the structural system of the romantic work. This was especially evident in the poet’s love and philosophical lyrics.
As observations of Tolstoy's notebooks and his drafts have shown, the process of realizing the plan ends with the creation of pronounced romantic works. In them, the phenomena of reality, reproduced in artistic images, are not a simple, unambiguous reflection of real objects, but serve as a means of expressing the author’s emotional experiences. In other cases, very few in number, a creative idea is translated into a realistic work of art. For example, as he worked on the poem “When all nature trembles and shines...”, concrete, material reality appeared in Tolstoy’s artistic consciousness in the form of concrete visual images, given, in essence, for the sole purpose of revealing the peculiar charm of Russian autumn.
Speaking about the complex nature of the artistic method of Tolstoy the lyricist, about the assimilation of realistic elements into the general romantic character of his works, it should be emphasized that Tolstoy’s creative path is not an evolution from romanticism to realism, as G. Stafeev believes. The formula “from romanticism to realism” simplifies Tolstoy’s creative development, and most importantly, contradicts the facts. How can we reconcile with such a statement, for example, the fact that the poet writes realistic and romantic poems at the same time? (Compare the poems “Darkness and fog cover my path...” and “The door to the damp porch has opened again...” written in the same year)? Or is it the fact that, following realistic poems (“The bad weather is noisy outside...”, “The Empty House”, “Kolodniki”), he creates typically romantic things (“In the land of rays, invisible to our eyes...”)? In addition, when studying Tolstoy’s creative method, it is important to keep in mind what genres of the poet we are talking about. If, say, these are lyrics and ballads, then we should talk about Tolstoy’s romanticism, enriched with elements of realism. Satirical poems and poems “Popov’s Dream”, “History of the Russian State...”, works published on behalf of Kozma Prutkov, are connected, it seems to us, with the realistic line of his poetry.
The dissertation examines the speech and genre components of Tolstoy's poems. Traditional poetic phrases in his artistic system adapted to new stylistic requirements, transformed, acquiring specific meanings lost in the poetic tradition. In the poems “Oh, if you could just for one moment...”, “It was getting dark, the hot day was turning pale elusively...”, “Since I’m alone, since you’re far away...” the poet returns poetic concreteness to the abstract formulas of elegiac sadness. , revives the semantic connections of the verse, extracts subtle differentiating shades from words.
The genre of the poem itself does not have a clearly defined internal structure in Tolstoy. The plot of individual lyrical miniatures remains unfinished, their composition is “open”. In terms of their emotional tonality and general coloring, in some cases they gravitate towards romance (“Among the noisy ball, by chance…”), in others – to ode (“Singing louder than a lark…”), in others – to elegy (“Descends on yellow fields silence…"). In this regard, Tolstoy consolidated the break with canonical genre forms carried out in the romantic lyrics of the 20s.
It is also very characteristic of Tolstoy’s aesthetic tendencies that he diversifies the stylistic coloring of his elegiac confessions and expands their emotional range. We can talk about a unique genre of solemn elegy developed by the poet. The poet subordinates the elegiac intonations to the pathos structure of his philosophical reflections (“A tear trembles in your jealous gaze…”).
An essential feature of Tolstoy's artistic thinking is intuitiveness. The unconsciousness of individual images and paintings, the intuitive comprehension of truth, is evidenced by Tolstoy’s numerous confessions in his letters. Sometimes the present seemed to him a repetition of the long past, and his thoughts were carried away to other times in order to guess the connections between the present, past and future. Life is eternal return - this is, in fact, the philosophy of many of his poems. Life is built on repeating things, repetition helps you mentally travel through time. The poet's memory is able to penetrate into “pre-history”. Tolstoy’s awareness of the present through the prism of the “past” and prophetic predictions of the future are very significant. They characterize the peculiarities of the mindset of those poets who widely used predictions in their work as a unique artistic device. Penetrating into the depths of things through intuition allowed the poet to understand many aspects of human psychological life. At the same time, the direct “guessing” of the essence of existence prompted him to somewhat distance himself from reality (“I feel the insufficiency of life... and although I don’t talk about it, this feeling is very sincere in me”) and rush with his soul into another world, where “prototypes are boiling” where eternal beauty shines.
The dissertation reveals the principles of Tolstoy’s work on the poetic image based on the poet’s draft autographs and notebooks, which are widely used for literary analysis. These principles - the utmost generalization of the image, the refusal to overload details in the disclosure of the topic, the desire to avoid specification in the development of situations - are important not only for studying the “laboratory” of the poet, they help to understand the general laws of the art of words and to understand the nature of the poetic worldview.
Last, fourth, the section of the chapter “Tolstoy and the Poetic Tradition” reveals the poet’s place in the history of Russian literature and his close connection with his predecessors (Pushkin, Lermontov, Boratynsky) and contemporaries (Tyutchev, Fet). It is emphasized, in particular, that the general nature of Tolstoy’s use of Pushkin’s and Lermontov’s images and motifs is determined by the need for figurative and pictorial embodiment of the theme of Russia, focused attention to its historical destinies. Reinterpreting Pushkin's and Lermontov's images, Tolstoy included facts from the history of his own family into the “big” history.
Pushkin's influence is especially noticeable in the poet's landscape and love lyrics. Under the sign of Pushkin, Tolstoy also develops the poet’s theme. The creative use of Pushkin and Lermontov traditions strengthened Tolstoy’s valuable ideological and artistic tendencies: love for a healthy earthly life, Russian nature and homeland, integrity of perception of the world around him, cheerfulness.
To a certain extent, we can talk about Zhukovsky’s influence on Tolstoy’s poetics. From the first Russian romantic he learned to study the subtle, unclear, contradictory phenomena of the emotional world and the harmony of verse.
Appeal to the experience of Boratynsky, like Tyutchev, enriched Tolstoy’s lyrics with philosophical and psychological content. Very close to Tyutchev’s philosophical lyrics are Tolstoy’s poems about love, expressed in a solemn “key” (“Not the wind, blowing from above...”, “In the land of rays, invisible to our eyes...”, “Oh, don’t rush to where life is brighter and cleaner..."). In them, love experiences are realized in the light of philosophical views and moods akin to Tyutchev’s. For this purpose, both poets use largely the same intonation-syntactic structures, anaphoric and other linguistic means.
Tolstoy called himself a “sincere admirer” of Fet. Naturally, he could not ignore his artistic achievements. Obviously, we may not be talking here about the influence of one poet on another, but rather about a certain commonality of aesthetic positions, about typological convergences and internal connections. The main focus of their poetry is the pathos of romantic experiences, feelings and impressions caused by the life of nature and human, mainly love, relationships. Through the details of the landscape they express their enthusiastic feeling of the beyond. In a mysterious communication with the cosmos, the nature of their own soul, its deepest essence, was revealed to them, and this essence turned out to be close, akin to the world life that breathed around them. In their poetry we find separate echoes, most likely unconscious. There is nothing surprising in this: the poets lived and worked at the same time - this circumstance was reflected in their work by common moods, motives and even verbal images.
Some conclusions from what has been said about.
Among Russian poets of the same generation as himself, Tolstoy stands out for the diversity of his creativity and the significance of his personality. The poet never confined himself to aesthetic contemplation of artistic images. Love for his homeland and people, a critical attitude towards his surroundings helped him see the negative sides of Russian life. The poet did not accept the bureaucratization of the Russian state system, he was depressed by the fragmentation and degeneration of the “monarchical principle”, he was sad about the disappearance of the “knightly principle” in public and private life, his repelled lawlessness and inertia in any of their manifestations.
In intimate psychological, landscape and philosophical poems, he consistently and unswervingly defended the independence of the spirit and freedom of the individual - those moral principles that he valued above all else. His selfless service to the “ideal of beauty”, the beautiful, is a conscious service to humanity: the absolute and the human are deeply connected for Tolstoy. Beauty is inseparable from the moral meaning of life - this is his “creed”, the cornerstone of his work.
Chapter third devoted to poetic quests. It consists of five sections.
“The poetic word of Maykov and Tyutchev” – title first section.
In the ideological and figurative system of Maikov and his older contemporary Tyutchev, despite “different preferences,” there is something in common. They are connected by the problems of the poems: the relationship between man and the Universe, the understanding of nature as the only true reality. However, Tyutchev's consciousness is fundamentally deeply antinomic. Maikov's poetic consciousness does not know the fatal duality. But he also has a “cosmic feeling”, consonant with the sublime order of Tyutchev’s experiences. The commonality of perception of the “eternal questions” of human existence is caused by the coincidence of individual images. These are the images mountain peaks, night star, starry sky. The roll call of motives is associated with the commonality and relatedness of the “philosophical” worldview of the poets.
Internal unity in the poems of one and the other is realized, however, in different ways. In Tyutchev’s natural-philosophical poems, the poetic word is perceived in a double meaning – direct and figurative. This is due to the contextual interconnectedness of both parallel figurative series.
It’s a different matter for Maykov. He does not have the interchange or equivalence of natural and human, which are so noticeable in Tyutchev’s lyrical miniatures. Mike's “parallelism” of natural phenomena and human experiences is characterized by the fact that the objectivity of the depiction of natural phenomena prevails over their emotional coloring.
The difference in the poetic personalities of Tyutchev and Maykov is especially clearly manifested in what gives color to the verbal image - in the epithet. With the help of epithets, Tyutchev expresses his emotional and evaluative attitude towards the depicted. The poet often resorts to paired “oxymorons” (noon hazy, gloomy starlight) and compound epithets ( prophetically farewell, painfully bright, sonorously clear), conveying the dialectic of thought.
Maikov strives to objectify every impression from the outside world. He uses epithets in their usual meaning ( blue dusk, quiet evening, gloomy day), almost does not use the means of double definition. Unlike Tyutchev, Maikov retains the classic epic-narrative epithet.
Next, second, section – “Maykov’s poetic cycle “Excelsior”: ideas, images, poetics.”
The key theme of the cycle is the theme of the poet and the essence of poetry. In its development, Mike largely follows what he uniquely understood and interpreted. In Pushkin’s poems about art – in their “artistic” interpretation – Maikov tried to find support and confirmation for his aesthetic views.
He consistently contrasts the poet with the crowd. “In the crowd of self-satisfied light,” the poet does not encounter sympathy and understanding; on the contrary, he encounters her “reproach.”
Inspiration is “God’s power”, thanks to which an artist can “extract a thought from the primeval fog” and clothe it in an image. Maikov contrasts creative insight, poetic burning with “market bustle.”
Translating a secret thought into an image is not an act of simple improvisation, it is a huge amount of work. To rescue a thought from the “darkness,” the poet must literally suffer through the image: “Creative power forges its crown only from mental anguish!”
An important question that arises in the process of analyzing the poetic section of “Excelsior” is the so-called “objective” manner of Maykov’s writing. We believe that the poet’s desire to objectify his feelings primarily characterizes his anthological work. The desire to go beyond the subjective-emotional perception of the world in lyricism did not, however, lead to the complete elimination and removal of the lyrical subject from the picture depicted. The picturesque paintings he depicts are somehow “illuminated” with lyrical overtones.
Maikov persistently pursues the idea that one of the most important conditions for truly high art is the reflection of the poet’s personality in his work. It is important that “the entire image shines with the fire of the poet’s soul” and is “filled with joy, or anger, or sadness.”
Until the end of his life, Maikov remained a singer of high truths, an exponent of the spiritual principle in poetry.
IN third The section of the chapter - “Dream and reality in Maykov’s lyrics” examines the following questions: how the poet interprets the “ideal”, how he “remakes” reality into ideal images, what is the degree of opposition between the “higher”, poetic reality and real reality, what is the poet’s aesthetic ideal.
Maykov’s poetic and romantic dream did not want to put up with the soulless prose of life. The world transformed by the poet makes a person forget the “eternal everyday anxieties”, “the ashes of everyday vanity”.
Maykov's romantic moods resulted in the forms of ancient mythology, in conventional but picturesque pictures of Roman life.
The motifs of melancholy and longing, eternal dissatisfaction and the eternal desire for the unattainable determine the figurative structure of many “personal” poems.
The penetration of reality into a dream is reflected in the poet’s style, which is characterized by a mixture of everyday life with mythological images, a conventional literary stream with everyday vocabulary, vernacular, and “prosaisms.”
The stylistic duality in Maykov’s language did not at all lead to stylistic inconsistency, but it gave the impression of dissonance in the relations between the real world and ideal ideas about it. “Everyday” vocabulary, which invaded the “high” poetic vocabulary, served as a kind of “signal” that reminded us of everyday reality and did not allow us to completely break living ties with it. At the same time, everyday life testified to the maturation of realistic tendencies in Maykov’s lyrics.
The originality of Maykov the stylist lies in many of his figurative constructions and word combinations, which stand out against the background of contemporary poetry with the power of verbal reproduction and freshness of perception: dark-fawn classic face, bashful green, daylight bloody core, Aurora purple is yours scattered flowingly, sentimental romanticism.
Maikov's “dream” was expressed rather in “classicistic” rather than romantic artistic forms. His style is orderly, he does not know the “discontinuity” and “discontinuity” of the forms of romantic poetics. In the poem “Meeting,” the poet writes about his desire to embody the ideal in “sharp,” honed and perfect forms; he strives to “capture the sharp features of beauty and perfection.”
Just as persistently, the poet emphasizes another artistic feature of his lyrics - the musically melodious melody of the verse.
The rich capabilities of Maykov the poet are evidenced by his epic works (the lyrical drama “Three Deaths”, the poems “The Wanderer” and “Dreams”), which we consider in fourth section of the chapter. The poet’s lyricism in epic works at the same time seemed to be denser, saturated with multifaceted reality, the concreteness of human relationships. In the epic, Maikov revealed new facets of his talent as a poet of powerful epic scope and breath, and a passionate civic temperament. The artistic principles of drama and poem, merging into Maykov’s poetic system, enriched it, forming various stylistic layers, expanding the range of stylistic and linguistic means.
In the poems “The Wanderer” and “Dreams”, in the drama “Three Deaths”, Maikov managed, rushing into the world of moral and philosophical problems, to overcome thematic and genre-stylistic limitations.
The poem “The Wanderer” demonstrates the skill of its author to recreate in a “new form of poetry” images and paintings drawn from the centuries-old culture of the past, in particular from handwritten schismatic literature. The poem “Dreams” is interesting in that it makes it possible to clarify both the aesthetic position of Maykov, who reverently bowed to the art of the Word, illuminated by the light of the Gospel ideal, and the ideological position, which is close to the views of the advanced part of Russian society. The lyrical drama “Three Deaths” reflected the originality of the historical concept of the poet - the “painter”, who resurrected the “spirit” and the character of the era that worried him about the collapse of the slave society and the emergence of a world of new spiritual principles. From his point of view, the past can be resurrected not by a scientist, not by a “restorer of the ancient world,” but by a poet who approaches “every phenomenon from the inside.” Those critics who consider Maykov primarily a poet of external form and deny him psychologism are not entirely right. The lyrical element in the drama “Three Deaths” is “hidden” behind a picturesque verse. The lyrical element is formed by such features of Maykov’s poetic speech as its emotional excitement, intense drama of intonation, symbolism of images, “objectivity” of comparisons, “solemnity” of vocabulary, frequent anaphors.
IN last The section of the chapter (“Maikov and the poetic tradition”) examines Maikov’s poetic creativity in the context of Russian poetry, tracing his creative connections with his predecessors and contemporaries. A prominent place is given to his organic assimilation of the traditions of Pushkin and Batyushkov.
The Pushkin poetic tradition makes itself felt both in direct and open appeals to the work of the great Russian poet, attested in the form of ordinary reminiscences, quotes, allusions, and in the general structure of the “harmonic” lyre of the successor, in the high culture of his verse. Maikov objectively continued the Pushkin tradition.
True, Maykov limits the significance of Pushkin as a poet to the artistic merit of his work alone, although, however, the integrity of Maykov’s assessment of Pushkin was violated by the recognition of the “mental”, ideological element of his poetry. (See the poem “The Sculptor (What the Pushkin Monument Should Express).”
Maikov often and willingly turned to those ideas and images of Pushkin that are contained in the famous cycle of poems about the position of the poet in society, about the path of the artist, about the social content and meaning of poetry. And although he one-sidedly accepted the complex concept of his great teacher, nevertheless, his consciousness was deeply captured by Pushkin’s images of the poet and the crowd, tearing the crown from the singer’s head with a “sacrilegious hand,” the motive of inspiration, “creative trembling,” etc. Following Pushkin, Maikov proclaims the poet’s independence from serving the secular “crowd” and “rabble.” Only free and independent art occupies its own special sphere in the spiritual life of society, inaccessible to ideological and political speculation.
Maykov inherited Batyushkov’s style, a characteristic feature of which is the combination of elegant, plastic images with the harmonious sound of verse. He builds many of his images according to Batyushkov’s principle. Moreover, some of Batyushkov’s images and expressions go to him: golden cup, chatter of waters, penates, songs of the Nereids, seagulls, amber honey. Batyushkov’s poems seem to shine through the entire anthological lyrics of Maykov.
Like Batyushkov, Maikov opened access to everyday vocabulary, “prosaisms.” But in comparison with it, he expanded the connections between the Russian literary language and the elements of living colloquial speech.
In Maykov's poetry we find images inspired by the works of Zhukovsky, Lermontov, Boratynsky, Tyutchev.
Deep literary quality constitutes the “subsoil” of Maykov’s poetry, its inalienable quality. The poetic memories that permeate the poet are a sign of his rich spiritual culture, undeniable philological erudition, which allowed him to be “on par with the century” and give birth to poems in “dialogue” with the best examples of verbal art.
Fourth The chapter (“In the poetic world”) consists of three sections. IN first section (“Caucasian” cycle of poems by Polonsky: ideas, motives, images) reveals the features of the poet’s artistic, stylistic and linguistic system, which determine the nature of his imagery.
Polonsky's Caucasian poems are marked by a romantic flavor, a keen interest in the history, culture and ethnography of Georgia, in its wild and picturesque nature. Harmony and clarity, precision of words, conciseness of syntax, breadth and humanity of the worldview, the desire to comprehend the spirit of another people - in all this one can see the classical Pushkin tradition, one can see, in Turgenev’s words, “a reflection of Pushkin’s grace.”
The beauty of artistic images and paintings is striking, due to the high poetic and humane mood. In Caucasian poems there is a reckless rapture of life, complete fusion with nature, glorification of love and love passion. The verse is energetic, never drawn out, it is melodious and sincere, often full of everyday, everyday vocabulary.
Using Caucasian material, Polonsky continues to develop the traditional genres of romance (“Recluse”), ballad (“Agbar”), poem (“Caravan”), creates folklore and historical works inspired by ancient legends and traditions of Georgia (“Tatar song”, “Georgian song ", "In Imereti (Tsar Vakhtang's dilapidated pages..."), "Tamara and her singer Shota Rustavel"), writes the great historical tragedy "Darejana, Queen of Imereti." In the “Caucasian” cycle, Polonsky develops new stylistic techniques that make his poems similar to the “natural school.” He assimilates such achievements of realistic prose as its saturation with democratic ideas of time, interest in the “little man” - the hero of the “raznochinsky” layer, in the attributes of real life. Characteristic in this regard are “plot” poems, poetic works of an essay or novelistic nature, some of which resemble poetic “physiological essays.”
The simplicity and pictorial visibility of the descriptions (“Tiflis is a godsend for a painter,” as Polonsky noted) is combined with a psychological element introduced into the artistic fabric of poetic short stories and essays and simply lyrical miniatures, as, for example, in the poem “Night,” the symbolic landscape of which expresses contradictory state of the human soul, admiring the beauty of the night and at the same time... suffering.
Individual poems of the “Caucasian” cycle are united by the image of the poet. This image is in many ways traditionally romantic: he is a prophet, a chosen one (“Old Sazandar”, “Satar”, “Sayat-Nova”).
The philosophical idea of the Artist’s Path (“Mountain Road in Georgia”) was also heard in Polonsky’s poems.
The poem “Rocking in a Storm” anticipated future poetic discoveries of the 20th century. It is no coincidence that A. Blok read him a lot in his youth. It occupies almost a central place in the cycle, rising above this lyrically united series and to a certain extent influencing its content and itself experiencing the opposite influence.
The poems of the “Caucasian” cycle are connected by a single image of Polonsky’s poetry and everything that relates to it: experience, poetic ideas-mythologems, symbols, themes, leitmotifs. That is why, when reading them, one cannot leave the feeling of semantic cohesion and integrity.
Second section (“The formation of Polonsky’s poetic system. Peculiarities of the poet’s worldview”) deepens our understanding of the uniqueness of Polonsky’s poetry of citizenship, which he himself successfully defined as the poetry of “mental” and “civil” anxiety. In his best civic, journalistic and philosophical poems, he expressed himself as a “son of the times,” who sympathized with what coincided in the progressive movement of the era with the ideals of his youth. The poet felt public troubles as personal, sympathizing with those suffering, but without, however, rising to indignation and indignation. Due to the nature of his spiritual organization, extremely soft, good-natured, noble, he was not capable of “cursing” and hating: “God did not give me the scourge of satire... / There are no curses in my soul” (“For the Few”).
Polonsky does not impose anything on the reader, using hints or understatement, he knows how to highlight an everyday life situation, extend it into an endless distance, and then a mysterious meaning is revealed in the very incompleteness. This amazing quality of the poet manifested itself already in his early experiments, in the “plot” poems “Meeting”, “Winter Journey”, “Already above the spruce forest from behind the prickly tops...”, “In the living room”, “Last Conversation”. Some of them - these are small stories from the life of the poor intelligentsia - are in the spirit of Turgenev's stories. They are characterized by the presence of everyday and portrait details that convey the psychological state of the lyrical hero. Here the “distinctive feature” that was noted in typical poems was clearly reflected - the naturalness of the line between the “everyday” and the “poetic”: “... transition from the ordinary material and everyday environment into the realm of poetic truth - remains palpable».
“The sublime” and the “everyday” are inseparable from each other, they seem to transform into each other - we are witnesses of this transition. Before our eyes, the poetic soul breaks away from the ground and soars above it. If we use V. Solovyov’s metaphor, we feel the flapping of wings, lifting the soul above the ground.
“Everyday” in Polonsky’s poems takes on the reflection of the “ideal”; the latter, in turn, casts a backward light on the “material”, being reflected in it. The everyday scene underlying this or that poem, such as the unremarkable meeting in the poem “In the Wilderness,” appears in Polonsky as full of mystery and beauty, because it reveals a distant perspective.
The same is true in the poem “I hear my neighbor...”. A simple story about a neighbor is combined with a mysterious and metaphorical breakthrough into the sphere of the “ideal”: “Behind the wall is a singing voice - / An invisible, but living spirit, / Because even without a door / Penetrates my corner, / Because even without a word / Can I in the silence of the night / To sound a response to the call, / To be a soul for the soul.” The last couplet is, perhaps, the semantic center of the entire lyrical scene, concentrating the poet’s deep theme: responsiveness. The poet heeds the call addressed to the human soul. With this gift alone of heeding the call of life and revealing its romantic distances to the reader, Polonsky attracts our attention.
The poet loved to depict pictures in an opening distant perspective, which is why images of the road, distance, steppe, and space are so frequent in his poems (“Road”, “In the Wilderness”, “On Lake Geneva”, “Gypsies”, “In Memory”). He seems to be pushing the boundaries of the poetic situation, hinting at what is hidden in the depths of his psychology. A circle of reflections on the meaning of human life, dreams of impossible happiness, fears for the future, sad memories of what was and died - all this seems at first glance quite traditional, but the image of the lyrical hero acquires psychologically reliable features, he turns out to be an exponent of a unique spiritual experience the poet himself with his real experiences.
A romantic by the nature of his work, Polonsky remains a lyricist who knows how to combine reality with fantasy, with a fairy-tale element. A subjective view of life, art, and its tasks determines the romantic principle of artistic recreation of reality in his work. At the same time, he early reveals a search for a different, more sober, realistic attitude towards life. This was reflected in his assimilation of the achievements and discoveries of realistic prose, in his interest in the modest, unnoticed fate of the “little man”, in the attributes of real life that surround people, in the democracy and humanism of his poetry.
IN third section (“Spiritual and moral quests of the late Polonsky”) examines the main ideas, motives, images of the poet’s late lyrics, emphasizing that the main advantage of such masterpieces as “The Swan”, “The Prisoner”, “The Old Nanny”, “At the Door” - in the harmonious combination of civic thoughts and feelings with the beauty of the artistic form. True, in later works there are forgotten “accessories” of high poetry: sacrificial flame, heavy cross of the poet, incense, wreaths, thorns. But these traditional attributes of the eternal world of art were called upon to protect poetry in difficult times for it, in conditions of a sharp demarcation between two poetic movements. However, they cannot obscure the main thing from us: the solid vital foundation of Polonsky’s “quiet” lyrics, its deep connections with its era. Polonsky, like his like-minded people in their views on art, Fet and Maikov, expressed in his own way the spirit of the era and the mood of his contemporary. He is close to the “...rootless, / Noble in slavery itself” old nanny; he speaks with sympathy about the people, “...who suffered from chains / and suffer without chains”; he is admired by the feat of the sister of mercy who saved the life of a mutilated soldier; he wants “everyone in his family to have holiday candles burning!” A heightened sensitivity to the suffering of others is captured in the heartfelt lines of “The Prisoner.”
The poet himself had every reason to say about himself: “Harmony taught me / To suffer like a human being...”.
Spiritual responsiveness to human troubles was generated by a feeling of loneliness and depression in a world of triumphant vulgarity and rigidity of “dissipation.” “And I, with the ears of corn, like an ear of corn, / Nailed to the damp earth,” the poet complained in the poem “Loving the soft rustle of ears of grain...”. “Between me and the whole universe / Night is like a dark sea all around,” he was annoyed in another poem (“Night Thought”). In the poem “Cold Love,” Polonsky concludes with bitterness: “My love has long been alien to a cheerful dream.” “To me, chilled by life and light, / Let me at least greet you with warm greetings!..” - he addresses the sea wave (“At Sunset”).
The plot-forming elements that determine the structure of the lyrical poem are such key color images as huge masses of polar ice floating in the fog, a fading sunset, autumn darkness, the “dull and unresponsive” darkness of the night, “there are weeds on the way” - images that have not only psychological, but also a pronounced social subtext.
Of course, it is impossible to discern certain allegorical meanings behind each of these images in a straightforward, literal way, but, moving from poem to poem, varying and repeating, “mating” with each other, they together form a sensual image and the “spirit” of the era, and in addition, they express the mental, moral and psychological state of the lyrical hero, very close to the poet himself.
In an effort to save poetry from “didactism,” Polonsky, with his constant skepticism towards himself and life, was alien to the positivist speculations of his opponents and resolutely defended the poet’s right to sing the beauty of art, love, and nature. With the poet’s “sixth sense” he heard “God’s music”, which “suddenly rang out” from eternity and “poured” into infinity, capturing “chaos” on its way (“Hypothesis”).
He not only listened to this music, he tried to express it using all the artistic means available to him. The poetic depth of his inspired creations is determined by the power of depicting human experiences and moods, which is on the verge of the “supersensible”, “irrational”. Poetic “obscurity” was inherent, as it were, in the very nature of Polonsky’s artistic perception of the world, who, following the example of his closest friend and patron, opposed systems and all kinds of “last words,” preferring halftones to unambiguous assessments and judgments.
It is difficult, almost impossible, to analyze many of Polonsky's poems. But it’s easy to get into their moods and inner expression. A subtle stylist and lyricist, Polonsky achieves artistic effect by boldly combining traditional romantic images with specific everyday details. He deliberately avoids vivid images and rich epithets. The verse, freed from unnecessary embellishments, is endowed with natural conversational intonations. It is as close as possible to prosaic speech, to its strictest norms, while retaining, however, all the qualities of poetic speech.
The lyrical works of the late Polonsky were written by the hand of an experienced master who had not lost his youthful liveliness of perception of the world, social sensitivity, and ardent faith in the ideal of freedom and beauty. Until the end of his days he remained a knight of poetry.
Chapter fifth(“-one of the last romantics of the 80s”) contains three sections. In the first– “the features of the content of Apukhtin’s poetry and the principles of awareness and depiction of life” are revealed (section title).
In Apukhtin's small poetic heritage, intimate narrative lyrics and the romance genre clearly stand out. The intimate narrative line is represented by diary poems (“A Year in the Monastery”), monologue poems (“From the Prosecutor’s Papers,” “Crazy,” “Before the Operation”), poetic messages (“To the Brothers,” “. Regarding historical concerts", "To the Slavophiles"). All of them can conditionally be classified as a genre of original confession, marked by genuine sincerity, sincerity, and subtle psychologism. The same qualities are also distinguished by romances (“I defeated her, fatal love ...”, “Flies”, “Whether the day reigns, or the silence of the night ...”, “No response, not a word, not a greeting ...”, “A pair of bays”).
The theme of tragic powerlessness, futility, chaos, fragmentation varies in different aspects. And although the problems of many works are not directly related to the socio-political and moral atmosphere of the eighties, nevertheless, they reflected with rare psychological and emotional expressiveness, with deep inner drama, the ideas and anxieties of the generation that survived the crisis of populism. The poet depicts ordinary everyday dramas and captures the pain of a “weary soul.”
In the poem “Muse” (1883), hopelessness takes on a downright declarative character: “My voice will sound lonely in the desert, / The cry of the exhausted soul will not find any sympathy...”. People have poisoned life with treason and slander, death itself is more merciful than them, it is “warmer than these brother people.”
The restless consciousness of the hero, hunted by life, is reproduced with great artistic force in the poem “A Year in the Monastery.” The hero flees “from the world of lies, betrayal and deceit” to the monastery, but even there he does not find “peace” and, at the first call of a woman, returns to the company of “vulgar, evil persons” that he hates, bitterly realizing that he is a “pathetic corpse.” soul” and that he “has no place in the world”...
Traditional images and symbols for poetry of that time often become plot-forming elements of a lyrical play. Thus, the lyrical plot of the poem “A joyless dream has exhausted me from life...” forms a metaphorical image of a prison:
I am imprisoned in my past, like in a prison
Under the supervision of an evil jailer.
Do I want to leave, do I want to step -
The fatal wall doesn't let me in,
Only the shackles sound, and the chest contracts,
Yes, a sleepless conscience torments me.
For Apukhtin, the theme of prison is not a random image, but a real problem of the existence of modern man. Just like other images: dreams, “longing”, “burning tears”, “fateful memories”, “mighty passion”, spiritual “silence”, love dreams, “rebellious soul”, “insane ardor”, “insane jealousy” “- all these are integral attributes of Apukhtin’s lyrics, flesh of its flesh.
The structure of the poem “To Poetry” (“In those days when the broad waves ...”) is determined by the expressive images and colors of “the spirit of inexorable hostility”, “the icy crust” that fettered life, “the underground, the mysterious forces” shaking the earth. These and similar conventional images, localizing the lyrical situation in time and space, create an impressive image of the “transitional” era. For the poet, the passionate denunciation of social evil merges with universal, cosmic evil, with the “untruths of the earth.”
Apukhtin's poetics is a curious interweaving of conventional general poetic images, tradition-fixed poetic formulas, stable models, linguistic cliches with sharp features of the particular, with breakthroughs into the vernacular, into the “conversational” element.
Emphasized inclusion of everyday speech and purely prosaic comparisons in a sublime poetic text ( black thoughts like flies) gives it a peculiar expressive shade, enriching the narrative precisely due to the tangible difference in the verbal series correlated in the work. All kinds of everyday words, “mundane” words, in the vicinity of “high” lexemes, lose their everydayness.
Let’s read the poem “Oh, be happy! Without complaints, without reproach...”, which, by the way, has a real basis related to the relationship between the poet and his beloved singer. Fate decreed that they were not destined to be together - the singer married a friend of the poet - whom he himself introduced to her, he himself contributed to their marriage and, by his own admission, never repented of what happened.
The first stanza of the poem is a set of traditional phraseology and vocabulary, beautiful in its proven effectiveness: complaints, reproach, empty cry of jealousy, insane melancholy, fervent prayers, an extinguished altar.
But already the second stanza is a metaphorical breakthrough into spiritual depth, a breakthrough into the private, constructive, concrete. Happily found image funeral train And on wedding guests traveling, fulfilling an important associative-psychological role in the verse, rearranges the entire text, giving it a piercingly intimate intonation. This image falls on the soul and is easily remembered because it appears unexpectedly against the background of ordinary images.
The internal connection, which always shines through in Apukhtin, between the external environment and secret spiritual life, is reminiscent of Russian realistic psychological prose. Apukhtinsky, on the verge of prose, “sad verse”, weighed and verified on the scales of impeccable taste, full of internal tension and psychological authenticity, becomes a living pain.
Apukhtin created his works with the expectation that they would be read by reciters or performed by singers, that is, for auditory perception. Hence, intonation becomes of great importance in poetry: raising and lowering the tone, speech pauses, questions and exclamations, syntactic and phrasal stresses, emphasizing the sound structure of speech. With the help of various syntactic structures of phrases, word order, and punctuation marks, Apukhtin conveys the main features of intonation, achieving the uniqueness of his “voice.”
The poet deliberately avoids the coincidence of the constant rhythmic pause that ends the line with the semantic pause, and often breaks the verse into short phrases. To increase the emotional intensity of his speech, he alternates - within the same poem - iambic tetrameter, pentameter and hexameter (“Night in Monplaisir”), sometimes for the same purposes he uses a tapering stanza (“The path of life is paved by the barren steppes…”).
The increased emotional coloring of Apukhtin’s poetic speech is given by frequent roll calls of the first and final stanzas of the poems (“Soldier’s song about Sevastopol”, “Oh, God, how good the cool summer evening is...”, “Road Thought”, “Crazy nights, sleepless nights...”), as well as other types of repetition: doubling, anaphora, gradation, junction, refrain. In “A Pair of Bays,” the poet very successfully used the repetition of words in different meanings: “ Melted in the arms of a happy lover, / Melted sometimes other people have capital...”
It is just as easy to find in Apukhtin’s poems examples of other techniques of stylistic figures, for example, syntactic parallelism (“Flies”, “Broken Vase”), the intersection of various syntactic constructions (“Will I find you? Who knows! Years will pass...” - “To the Lost letters”), polyunion (“I love you so much because…”), etc.
Apukhtin’s poetic speech presents everyday, everyday expressions, colloquial words and phrases, “prosaisms”. Let us give examples of everyday, conversational expressiveness: “No one would tell her about love stuttered, / But here the king, unfortunately, turned up" - "Venice"; " I really didn't dare" - "The Sadness of a Girl" (from the series "Village Sketches"); “And the gray one is attached with his fat friend/ Along the sultry path walking along…” – “Neighbor” (from the series “Village Sketches”); “And so we won, so sour face/ And with broken set sail nose" - "Soldier's song about Sevastopol"; " Maybe, your conversation kill the clock will help” – “Fortune telling”, etc.
Apukhtin gave Russian verse the freedom, looseness, and ease necessary to talk about ordinary, everyday things, for a sincere outpouring of the soul. His poems speak in the language of subtle and complex associations about the depth of personal experiences, often filled with dramatic contradictions; in them, as a rule, the subtext turns out to be much more important and deeper than the words themselves, in which emotional movements are expressed.
The romantic Apukhtin is by no means devoid of social pathos. Behind his poetic confessions and revelations ultimately lie the completely earthly concerns and conflicts of contemporary man and modern society. He felt a strong urge to realistically recreate life. Apukhtin adopted certain features of the realistic style in Nekrasov’s poetry, which were especially pronounced in his narrative poems and in his verse stories. This is revealed both in the interpretation of the topic, and in the very nature of the imagery, and in the vocabulary - everywhere the constant trend of “decrease” makes itself felt.
Apukhtin chose for himself the genre of romance as the most emotionally intense means of expressing conventional poetic reality, which smoothes out the expressiveness of poetic thought and at the same time gives the same expressiveness to “everyday” emotions.
Often romantic, conventional vocabulary is intertwined with an almost prosaic analysis of a complex psychological situation, as, for example, in the poem “We were sitting alone. The pale day was coming…”, in the romance shell of which such “prosaisms” as “sarcasm” and “irony” are barely contained. The song-romance “element” dissolves mental pain: “And your voice sounded triumphant / And tormented with poisonous mockery / Over my dead face / And over my broken life...”.
Other poems are also constructed as a kind of psychological research - “A Memorable Night”, “Late at night, on a snowy plain...”, “Crazy nights, sleepless nights...”.
Apukhtin is a “transitional” poet, open equally to the past and future of poetry. His poetics bears the reflection of a bygone great poetic era, which both nourishes his work and weighs him down with a heavy burden. This burden of heritage is acutely felt not only by Apukhtin, but also by other poets of the end of the century - K. Sluchevsky, K. Fofanov, S. Andreevsky, A. Golenishchev-Kutuzov. In comparison with them, Apukhtin’s poetry most fully expressed the main features of the life and literary atmosphere of the eighties.
And one more important, in our opinion, circumstance. Some critics focus on the hopelessly dull Apukhtin autumn and talk about the monotonous gray twilight of Apukhtin. This is hardly fair. The sincerity of sadness and the authenticity of suffering resist the general feeling of “despondency.” No wonder Sluchevsky wrote about his “songs”:
There is something infinitely good about you...
The happiness that has flown away sings within you...
As if spring is approaching under the powder,
There is languor in the heart, ice drifting in the soul.
In second section “The genre of psychological short stories in the works of Apukhtin and Polonsky. Connections with Russian realistic prose" provides an analysis of a new genre for lyricism - the psychological short story in verse, which is connected with prose in many ways, but at the same time - which is characteristic of poetry - presents the problem in an extremely compressed, “compressed” form. Works of this genre, unlike purely lyrical poems, as a rule, have a detailed plot, containing some kind of life drama.
The basis for the psychological novel, as one might think, was Russian psychological prose with its art of penetrating into the depths of the human soul. At the same time, some poetic short stories themselves gave birth to a literary tradition, anticipating the discoveries of prose writers. The life situations and collisions reproduced in them so captured the consciousness of the prose writer that he involuntarily “thought” about the poems that worried him, often introducing them into his literary text and, starting from them, enriching and deepening their plot “moves”, creating his own spiritual universe.
Not only Apukhtin and Polonsky, but also other poets of the “golden age” of Russian poetry - K. Sluchevsky, In. Annensky. Its best examples, presented by them, received wide recognition and retained their significance as a characteristic literary phenomenon of the period of quest and impulse, which was the middle and especially the second half of the 19th century in the history of Russian literature.
When reading Apukhtin's psychological short stories, associations arise with Dostoevsky. One of these short stories, “From the Prosecutor’s Papers,” outlines a situation of real choice, including the ultimate option of leaving into oblivion—the choice of a suicide—a topic that worried the author of the novel “Demons.”
Apukhtin’s most famous poem “The Madman” also interacts with the tradition of Dostoevsky.
Organic for Apukhtin is the short story “With the Express Train,” which reflects Tolstoy’s “dialectics of the soul”: the internal monologues of the characters, into which the author’s story “flows,” reveal their moral and psychological states through everyday details. This novella to some extent anticipates individual stories.
Small tragedies in Polonsky’s poems, such as “The Bell”, “Miasm”, “The Blind Tapper”, “At the Door”, “The Swan”, found a sympathetic response from our wonderful prose masters. They “thought” with Polonsky’s poems and created their works, respectively, “In a Familiar Street” and “Humiliated and Insulted.” The heroes of these works perceived Polonsky’s poems as something of their own, deeply felt, “native,” painfully familiar.
The contours of an entire novel, or at least a short story or story in the style of Chekhov, are outlined in the poems “The Blind Tapper” and “At the Door.” Behind the plot lines of the short story “Miasm” one can guess a collision, which can also unfold into a voluminous novel narrative.
Turning to the verse short story gave Apukhtin and Polonsky the opportunity to introduce into their poetry the intonation of lively colloquial speech and new moods. The most important features of the genre of the poetic short story were the following: high tension of the figurative structure, fed by collisions and characters drawn from the life of predominantly democratic strata of the population, plot drama, psychological motivation of love and other life vicissitudes of human destinies, “openness” of the composition. It should also be noted the significant role of colloquial and everyday vocabulary in the general flavor of the narrative poems of Polonsky and Apukhtin.
Third The section “Apukhtin and the poetic tradition” is devoted to the consideration of the poet’s work in the context of literary, in particular poetic, continuity. From the very beginning of his career, Apukhtin was formed under the direct influence of Pushkin, Lermontov, Nekrasov, and he maintained connections with these and his other predecessors and contemporaries until the end of his life. The section examines echoes, reminiscences, paraphrases from Pushkin, and explores Lermontov’s reflections: the motives of unrequited “fatal love,” the betrayal of a woman, the callousness and hypocrisy of people in the “secular” circle. Apukhtin’s poems “A Year in the Monastery” and “From the Prosecutor’s Papers” are marked by the significant influence of the author of “Duma” and “Hero of Our Time”: they depict the same “inner man” who became the object of Lermontov’s close artistic attention.
Philosophical lyrics had a certain impact on Apukhtin (motives of the ephemerality of human life, powerlessness, weakness of man before the omnipotence of the Creator and the nature he created, painful thoughts about the mystery of existence, the soullessness and lack of spirituality of the age). In the poetics of both poets, a huge place belongs to the night, dreams, everything that lies on the border between being and non-being.
Nekrasov's traditions are clearly visible in Apukhtin's work. True, with rare exceptions, we do not find any verbal coincidences with Nekrasov in him, but nevertheless the Nekrasov “element” is expressed quite strongly. In a poetic vein close to Nekrasov’s style, “Village Sketches”, excerpts from the poem “The Village of Kolotovka”, the poems “In wretched rags, motionless and dead...”, “Fortune telling”, “Old Gypsy”, “About the Gypsies”, “A Year in monastery”, “Before the operation”... They use Nekrasov’s dramatic-narrative tonality and plot principles for the development of the theme.
The creative development of Nekrasov's traditions did not, however, exclude polemics with him. Apukhtin declared his hostility towards Nekrasov. And yet, he adopted certain features of the realistic style in his poetry.
Deep humanity, sincerity of feeling, subtle, elegant psychologism make Apukhtin's lyrics also similar to the prose of his great contemporaries. In our opinion, in particular, the poem “The music thundered, the candles burned brightly...” concisely reproduces the history of the intimate and personal relationships of the heroes of the story “Asya”, published, by the way, in the same year as Apukhtin’s poem (1858). In a short spatial period of the poem, a whole story of the dramatic relationships of the heroes is squeezed, starting from the emergence of the first feelings and ending with their rupture - a situation quite close to the one that we learn about from Turgenev’s story. The poem outlines the main phases of the lyrical hero’s mental states ( I didn’t believe it, I languished, I cried), those stages through which the feeling of Turgenev's hero passed. The poet's psychologism is akin to Turgenev's psychologism: Apukhtin is focused only on the external manifestations of feelings and mental movements of the heroes ( trembling chest, burning shoulders, gentle voice, gentle speech, sad and pale etc.), giving the reader the opportunity to guess for himself what is happening in their souls.
Possessing an undoubtedly high artistic gift, Apukhtin was not afraid to introduce images and motifs of his contemporaries and predecessors into his poems - he was not in danger of being a simple imitator in poetry. His poetry is not secondary, it is fresh and original: it was nourished not by other people’s images, but by life itself. He was not afraid to turn to topics long sung by “others”; he was able to find and convey the unique in the familiar and banal. It is no coincidence that A. Blok mentioned the “Apukhtin touch” in Russian poetry.
Only by being independent, free from any goals external to it, can art awaken the best feelings in a person. This ultimately Kantian idea of “purposeless” art, of poetry embodying the “ideal,” naturally follows from the analysis of the poetic creativity of “pure” lyricists. The principle of a sublime ideal, which constitutes one of the basic principles of their aesthetic views, predetermined the absence in their work of a direct, untransformed image of certain aspects of reality.
The long-term wariness towards “pure” lyricists is not explained by the content of their work as such. A fatal role in their fate was played by the fact that they tried to resurrect the freedom of poetry, its independence from practical needs and the “spite of the day” in a dramatic situation - a situation that Dostoevsky quite seriously likened to the Lisbon earthquake. The world was split into two camps - and both camps sought to put poetry at the service of their needs and demands.
But, as always, the fate of art is decided by the almighty time. “Lyrical audacity” by A. Fet, a bright, simple-hearted, courageous talent filled with a high ideal, a unique talent of Ya. Polonsky, in which the real, the ordinary and the fantastic are intricately combined, the spiritual grace of A. Maykov’s lyrics, with its harmonious cheerfulness, plastic completeness, the melodious, attractive melancholy of A. Apukhtin - all this is our spiritual heritage, which gives us and will give our descendants genuine aesthetic pleasure.
IN « Z "adventure" The work summarizes the results of the research, updated in the provisions submitted for defense.
List of works on the topic of the dissertation,certain vacancies of the Russian Federation
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16. “The ability to scribble mercilessly.” Draft versions of poems // Russian speech. – 2004. – No. 4. – P. 30-34.
17. Images of A. Tolstoy, A. Maykov, Y. Polonsky, In. Annensky and the poetry of K. Sluchevsky // Russian speech. – 2005. – No. 1. – P. 23-31.
18. “My heart is a spring, my song is a wave.” About poetics // Russian speech. – 2005. – No. 2. – P. 12-22.
19. Poem by I. A Bunin “Loneliness” // Russian language at school and at home. – 2005. – No. 4. – P. 8-10.
20. “All this already happened once...” // (About one poem) // Russian language at school and at home. – 2005. – No. 5. – P. 14-17.
21. About the poem “Evening sky, azure waters...” // Russian speech. – 2006. – No. 4. – P. 10-14.
22. The genre of psychological short story in Russian poetry // Russian literature. – 2006. – No. 8. – P. 8-14.
23. “You are a victim of life’s anxieties...” (Page of love) // Russian speech. – 2007. – No. 2. – P. 17-20.
24. Reflecting on the poem // Russian language at school and at home. – 2007. – No. 3. – P. 15-17.
25. In the depths of psychological subtext (In. Annensky. “The Old Organ”) // Russian language at school and at home. – 2007. – No. 8. – P. 9-11.
OTHER PRINTED WORKS OF THE APPLICANT
26. “What’s wrong with her, what’s wrong with my soul?” We read poems about nature by Russian poets with sixth-graders // Literature at school. – 1995. – No. 1. – P. 65-68.
27. Star threads of poetry. Essays on Russian poetry. – Orel, 1995. – 208 p.
28. // Literature at school. – 1996. – No. 1. – P. 86-89.
29. “The abyss of poetry...”. Works of Russian writers about native nature in the 5th grade // Literature at school. – 1996. – No. 3. – P. 111-115.
30. “Nature... slender is true to simplicity.” Interdisciplinary connections in the study of poetry // Literature at school. – 1997. – No. 3. – P. 124-127.
31. and poetic tradition // Literature at school. – 1999. – No. 5. – P. 25-33.
32. About poetics // Literature at school. – 2000. – No. 8. – P. 2-5.
33. A resounding spring of inspiration. (Above the pages of Russian poetry). – Orel, 2001. – 244 p.
34. Poetic individuality: from “First Snow” to “Winter Caricatures” // Literature at school. – 2002. – No. 1. – P. 21-25.
35. In the name of sacrificial self-denial. . “The sun is shining, the waters are sparkling...” // Literature at school. – 2003. – No. 1. – P. 14-15.
36. Poetry is an expression of universal human sadness. K. Sluchevsky. “It burns, it burns without soot and smoke...” // Literature at school. – 2003. – No. 4. – P. 13-14.
37. Notes on poetics // Mundo Eslavo. Revista de Cultura y Estudios Eslavos. – Universidad de Granada. – 2004. – No. 3. – P. 91-96.
38. About “The Poet and the Citizen” // Literature at school. – 2007. – No. 6. – P. 47.
39. A. K. Tolstoy and the poetic tradition // Literature at school. – 2006. – No. 8. – P. 13-18.
See about this: Kurlyandskaya Galina. Thoughts: I. Turgenev, A. Fet, N. Leskov, I. Bunin, L. Andreev. – Orel, 2005. – P. 107 et seq.
Fet.: In 2 volumes - M., 1982. - T. 2. - P. 166.
Dostoevsky and materials / Ed. . – P.-L., 1925. – P. 348.
Druzhinin. Op. – St. Petersburg, 1866. –T. VII.-S. 132.
“Lyrics have their own paradox. The most subjective kind of literature, it, like no other, is directed towards the general, towards the depiction of mental life as universal” (On Lyrics. - 2nd ed. - M., 1974. - P. 8).
Corman lyrics of the era of realism // Problems of studying cultural heritage. – M., 1985. – P. 263.
This issue is developed in detail in the works. See, for example, her study “Turgenev and Fet // Kurlyandskaya Galina: Reflections: I. Turgenev, A. Fet, N. Leskov, I. Bunin, L. Andreev. – Orel, 2005. – 70-87 p.
Turgenev. collection Op. and letters: in 28 volumes - M.-L, . – Works, vol. VI. – P. 299.
Tolstoy. collection Op. (Anniversary edition). – T.V. – P. 196.
Tolstoy. cit.: In 4 volumes - M., 1963 - 1964. - T. IV. – P. 343.
"My heart is full of inspiration." Life and creativity. – Prioksk. book ed., Tula, 1973. – P. 304.
Tolstoy. collection Op. – T. IV. – St. Petersburg, 1908. – P. 56.
Soloviev Vl. C. Literary criticism. – M., 1990. – P. 158.
Block A. Collection cit.: In 6 volumes - L., 1980. - T. II. – P. 367.
Features of the poetry of “pure art” Signs 1 Poetry of hints, guesses, omissions. 2 Poems have no plot: lyrical miniatures convey not thoughts and feelings, but the “volatile” mood of the poet. 3 Art should not be connected with life. 4 A poet should not interfere in the affairs of the world. 5 This is poetry for the elite.
The main themes of the poetry of “pure art” Love Nature Art The lyrics are distinguished by a richness of shades; tenderness and warmth. Imagery, unconventional comparisons, epithets; humanizing nature, finding an echo of one’s moods and feelings. Singability and musicality
Amalia Maximilianovna Lerchenfeld I met you and everything that was before came to life in my obsolete heart; I remembered the golden time - And my heart became so warm... Like late autumn, sometimes there are days, there is an hour, When suddenly there is a breath of spring And something stirs in us - So, all of us are blown by the breath of Those years of spiritual fullness, With a long-forgotten rapture I look at your lovely features... As if after a century of separation, I look at you, as if in a dream, - And now the sounds that never ceased in me became more audible... There are more than one memories, Here life spoke again, - And the same in We are enchanted, And the same love is in my soul! G
Dictionary Poetics Poetics is a set of stylistic techniques of the author. Archaic syllable - An archaic syllable is ancient, ancient, dating back to the traditions of the 18th century. Pantheism - Pantheism is a religious and philosophical doctrine that identifies God and the world as a whole (nature). Natural philosophy - Natural philosophy is the philosophy of nature, a speculative interpretation of nature, considered in its integrity.
Features of poetry by F.I. Tyutchev Tyutchev’s artistic world is not a holistic, but a bifurcated picture of the perception of the world, which leads to disharmony between the rebellious spirit of man and reality. The “double existence” of the split human soul is most clearly expressed in the poet’s love lyrics. The feeling of Infinity and Eternity as reality, and not some abstract, abstract categories.
Features of poetry by F.I. Tyutchev Tyutchev is the discoverer of new imaginative worlds in poetry. Poetic images have a cosmic scale: they are space and chaos, life and death. The scale of poetic associations is amazing. The poet draws parallels between the states of mind of the lyrical hero and natural phenomena. Tyutchev's lyrics are inherent in the ideas of pantheism. In the poems of the late period of creativity, the poet’s interest in psychological specificity intensifies.
Poetics F.I. Tyutcheva 1. Vocabulary Archaisms (wind, tree). Compound words (sad orphaned land). Words consisting of 3 or more syllables (mysterious, foreboding) 2. Syntax A poem begins with a question, affirmation or denial. The poems are like replicas of an interrupted conversation. 3. Genre Fragment “His poetic creations came into the light of day before they had time to cool down, still trembling with the inner life of the poet’s soul.”
The main themes of F.I.'s poetry Tyutcheva 1. Theme of the poet and poetry “Don’t believe, don’t trust the poet, maiden...” “Don’t believe, don’t trust the poet, maiden...” “Poetry” “Poetry” “We are not given the power to predict...” “We are not given the power to predict...” Motive loneliness, the tragic insights of which are incomprehensible, and the prophets of which are not even heard by others.
The main themes of F.I.'s poetry Tyutcheva 3. Theme of Russia. “I looked, standing over the Neva...” “I looked, standing over the Neva...” “Above this dark crowd...” “Above this dark crowd...” “You can’t understand Russia with your mind...” “You can’t understand Russia with your mind...” “Two unities.” “Two unities” Russia is the soul of humanity. Russia is the soul of humanity. Feeling Russia can be realized through faith. Feeling Russia can be realized through faith. The salvation of Russia is in the Orthodox tradition. The salvation of Russia is in the Orthodox tradition.
The main themes of F.I.'s poetry Tyutcheva 4. Theme of nature. “Glimmer” “Glimmer” “As the ocean embraces the globe of the earth...” “As the ocean embraces the globe of the earth...” “Autumn evening” “Autumn evening” “Not what you think, nature...” “Not what you think, nature ..." “What are you howling about, night wind?” “What are you howling about, night wind?” “There is in the primordial autumn...” “There is in the primordial autumn...” Phenomena of nature are perceived as phenomena of the living soul. Natural phenomena are perceived as phenomena of a living soul. The natural-philosophical character of F.I.’s lyrics Tyutcheva. The natural-philosophical character of F.I.’s lyrics Tyutcheva.
The main themes of F.I.'s poetry Tyutcheva 5. Theme of love. “With what sadness, with what longing does one fall in love...” “With what sadness, with what longing does one fall in love...” “Predestination” “Predestination” “Oh, how murderously we love...” “Oh, how murderously we love...” “She sat on the floor..." "She was sitting on the floor..." Love is always a struggle. Love is always a struggle. This “fatal duel” can cause the death of one of the lovers. This “fatal duel” can cause the death of one of the lovers. Psychological specificity is combined with a philosophical understanding of the state of the soul. Psychological specificity is combined with a philosophical understanding of the state of the soul.
“Pure art” (or “art for art’s sake”, or “aesthetic criticism”), a direction in Russian literature and criticism of the 50-60s of the 19th century, which is characterized by in-depth attention to the spiritual and aesthetic features of literature as an art form that has a Divine source of Goodness, Love and Beauty. Traditionally, this direction is associated with the names of A.V. Druzhinin, V.P. Botkin, P.V. Annenkov, S.S. Dudyshkin. Among the poets, the position of “pure art” was shared by A. A. Fet, A. N. Maikov, N. F. Shcherbina. The head of the school was A.V. Druzhinin. In their literary assessments, critics developed not only the concepts of beauty, the aesthetic itself, but also categories of moral, philosophical, and sometimes social order. The phrase “pure art” had another meaning - “pure” in the sense of perfect, ideal, absolutely artistic. Pure is, first of all, spiritually filled art, strong in its methods of self-expression. The position of the supporters of “pure art” was not to separate art from life, but to to protect his truly creative principles, poetic originality and the purity of his ideals. They did not strive for isolation from public life (this is impossible for anyone to achieve), but for creative freedom in the name of establishing the principles of the perfect ideal of art, “pure”, which means independent of petty needs and political predilections. For example, Botkin spoke about art as art, putting into this expression the entire complex of concepts related to creativity free from social order and perfect in its level. The aesthetic is only a component, albeit an extremely important one, in the system of ideas about true art. Annenkov published critical articles more often than Botkin. He owns over two dozen voluminous articles and reviews, the fundamental work “Materials for the biography of Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin” and, perhaps, the richest in memoirs of the 19th century. "Literary Memoirs". An important point in Annenkov’s aesthetic views was the question of the artistry of art. Annenkov does not deny the “influence” of art on society, but considers this possible under the condition of true artistry. And the expression “pure” here does not mean the isolation of art from the urgent demands of social life, but the perfection of its quality, and not only in terms of form, but also in content. Druzhinin based his judgments about art on three provisions that were the most important from the point of view of his aesthetic system: 1) Art is the highest degree of manifestation of the human spirit, which has a Divine source, in which the “ideal” and “real” are combined in a very complex and specific way; 2) Art deals with the generally significant, revealing it, however, through the “inner” world of an individual person and even “particulars” through beauty, beautiful (if there is an ideal) images; 3) While stimulating a person’s aspirations to the ideal, art and literature cannot, however, subordinate themselves to social pragmatism to such an extent as to lose their main advantage - to remain a source of moral transformation, a means of introducing a person to the highest and eternal values of spiritual existence.
2. The main themes of poetry of “pure art”
Russian literature of the 50s-60s includes several well-known poets today, who make up the galaxy of priests of pure art. These include Tyutchev, Alexey Tolstoy, Polonsky, Maikov and Fet. All these poets in the past of Russian literature go back to Pushkin, who in most of his youthful poems was a theorist of pure art and pointed out for the first time in Russian literature the importance of the poet.
Poetry is an end in itself for the poet; calm contemplation is necessary, withdrawing from the bustle world, and delving into the exclusive world of individual experiences. The poet is free, independent of external conditions. His purpose is to go where his free mind leads. Free creativity is a feat of the poet. And for this noble feat no earthly praise is needed. They do not determine the value of poetry. There is a higher court, and it only has to say, to evaluate poetry as a sweet sound, as a prayer. And this highest court is within the poet himself. This is how Pushkin determined the freedom of creativity and the individual world of the poet in the first period of his creative activity.
Pure poetry is lofty, sacred, earthly interests are alien to it, both with all approvals, hymns of praise, and censures, instructions and demands for what is useful for them. Poets - supporters of pure art - deliberately went against the intensified flow of their time. This was a conscious reaction against the demands of civic duty and against all social demands. Therefore, their themes are mostly secular-aristocratic chosen. Poetry of a select circle of readers. Hence the prevailing lyricism of love, lyricism of nature, keen interest and attraction to classical models, to the ancient world (Maykov A.T.); poetry of world chaos and world spirit Tyutchev; aspiration upward, poetry of the moment, direct impressions of the visible world, mystical love for nature and the mystery of the universe.
At the same time, all these poets are characterized by complete indifference to the revolutionary and liberal tendencies that dominated the social life of that time. It is deeply logical that in their works we will not find any of the popular in the 40-50s. topics - denouncing the feudal police regime in its various aspects, the fight against serfdom, defending the emancipation of women, the problem of extra people, etc. are not of interest to these poets engaged in the so-called. “eternal” themes - admiring nature, depicting love, imitation of the ancients, etc.
These poets had their own teachers in world poetry; in modern poetry they were predominantly German romantics, close to them in their political and aesthetic passionism. No less close to the poets of “pure art” were ancient literature, the works of Anacreon, Horace, Tibullus, and Ovid.
Analysis of the poem by F.I. Tyutchev “Oh, how murderously we love...”
“Oh, how murderously we love...” (1851) - the 3rd verse of the “Denisyev” cycle, that is, a cycle of love lyrics consisting of fifteen poems dedicated to Elena Alexandrovna Denisyeva. This poem (it consists of ten stanzas) most fully expresses Tyutchev’s idea of love as a “fatal meeting”, as a “terrible sentence of fate.” “In the violent blindness of passions,” a loved one destroys the joy and charm of love: “We most certainly destroy / What is dear to our hearts!”
F. I. Tyutchev poses here the complex problem of the guilt of a person who, in the name of love, violated the laws of the world - the laws of falsehood and lies. The psychological analysis of F. I. Tyutchev in his late lyrics is inseparable from ethics, from the writer’s demands on himself and on others. In the “Denisyev” cycle, he surrenders to his own feelings, and at the same time checks and analyzes it - what is the truth, what is the lie, what is the delusion and even the crime. This often manifests itself in the lyrical statement itself: in some self-doubt and in one’s own rightness. “His” guilt is already defined in the first line: “how murderously we love,” although in the most general and abstract sense. The “violent blindness of passions” and their destructiveness clarify something.
“She” is a victim, but not only and not so much of the egoistic and blind passion of her lover, but of the ethical “lawlessness” of her love from the point of view of secular morality; F. I. Tyutchev’s defender of this legalized morality is the crowd: “The crowd, surging, trampled into the dirt / What was blooming in her soul. / And what did she manage to save from long torment, / Like ashes? / Pain, the evil pain of bitterness, / Pain without joy and without tears!” These ten quatrains are consonant with the story of Anna Karenina, which L.N. Tolstoy developed into an extensive novel narrative.
Thus, in the “unequal struggle of two hearts,” the woman’s heart turns out to be more tender, and therefore it is she who must inevitably “languish” and wither, die in the “fatal duel.” Public morality also permeates personal relationships. According to the laws of society, he is strong, she is weak, and he is unable to give up his advantages. He is fighting with himself, but also with her. This is the “fatal” meaning of their relationship, their selfless love. “In Denisiev’s cycle,” writes N. Berkovsky, “love is unhappy in its very happiness, the heroes love and in love itself remain enemies.”
At the end, Tyutchev repeats the first quatrain. She repeats it with doubled bitterness, blaming herself once again for the fact that his love has become for her a life of renunciation and suffering. He repeats with a pause, as if taking a break from the feelings that came so quickly. Tyutchev remembers for the last time the roses on her cheeks, the smile of her lips and the sparkle of her eyes, her magical gaze and speech, her infantile, lively laughter; draws a line to what happened for the last time. At the same time, by repeating the first quatrain, Tyutchev shows that everything is repeated: each of his new loves goes through similar difficulties, and this is a vicious circle in his life and he cannot break this circle.
Tyutchev writes in trochee pentameter and cross rhyme, which affects the smoothness of the poem, and therefore the fluidity of the author’s thoughts. Tyutchev also does not forget about the odic tradition of the 18th century: he uses archaisms (lanits, eyes, joy, renunciation, gaze), in the very first line there is an interjection “O”, which has always been an integral part of the odes, a certain prophetic pathos is felt: Tyutchev seems says that all this awaits any “sloppy” person who falls in love.
Be that as it may, F. I. Tyutchev’s “last love,” like all his work, enriched Russian poetry with poems of extraordinary lyrical power and spiritual revelation.
Analysis of the poem by F.I. Tyutchev “Silentium!”
It is unlikely that any other work by Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev (1803-1873) has been subject to so many contradictory interpretations as his brilliant poem “Silentium!” (“Silence!”) (no later than 1830). The poem "Silentium!" was written in 1830 in iambic tetrameter. The poem consists of 18 lines, divided into three six-line lines, each of which is relatively independent both in semantic and intonation-syntactic terms. The connection between these three parts is only in the development of the lyrical theme. Of the formal means, as a beginning that holds these three parts together, one can note homogeneous end rhymes - precise, strong, masculine, percussive - and the last rhymes they rhyme in each of the three six-line lines. The main thing that connects all three parts into an artistic whole is intonation, oratorical, didactic, persuasive, inviting and commanding. “Be silent, hide and conceal,” the indisputable command of the very first line is repeated three more times, in all three six-line lines. The first stanza is an energetic conviction, an order, a strong-willed force.
In the second stanza, the energy of pressure and dictatorship weakens, it gives way to the intonation of conviction, the meaning of which is to clarify the decisive instructions of the first stanza: why should feelings and dreams be hidden in the depths of the soul? There is a chain of evidence: “How can the heart express itself? / How can someone else understand you? / Will he understand what you live for? / A thought expressed is a lie.” We are talking about sociability, about the ability of one person to convey to another not his thoughts - this is easier - but the life of his soul, his consciousness and subconscious, his spirit - that which is not reducible to reason, but is much broader and subtler. A feeling formalized into a thought by a word will obviously be incomplete, and therefore false. Others’ understanding of you will also be insufficient and false. Trying to tell the life of your soul, your feelings, you will only ruin everything, not achieving your goal; you will only alarm yourself, disrupt the integrity and peace of your inner life: “By exploding, you will disturb the springs, - / Feed on them - and be silent.”
The first line of the third stanza contains a warning about the danger posed by the very possibility of contact between two incompatible spheres - internal and external life: “Just know how to live within yourself...”. This is possible: “There is a whole world in your soul / Of mysteriously magical thoughts; / They will be deafened by the noise from outside, / The rays of day will disperse them.” “Mysterious magical thoughts” return the thought to the first stanza, since they are similar to “feelings and dreams”, which, like living beings, “both get up and go in” - that is, these are not thoughts, these are dreams, sensations, shades of the soul states, in their totality constituting the living life of the heart and soul. It is they who can be “deafened” by the “external noise”, dispersed by the “daytime” “rays” - all the confusion of the “daytime” bustle of life. Therefore, we need to protect them in the depths of our souls; only there they retain their harmony, structure, consonant “singing”: “Listen to their singing - and be silent!”
21. Romantic image and realistic detail in Fet’s poetry.
a certain tradition of romantic poetry"poetry of hints."The inexpressible is only the theme of Fet’s poetry, but not a property of her style. in the artistic world of Fet, art, love, nature, philosophy, God - all these are different manifestations of the same creative force - beauty.A. Fet was interested in German philosophy; the views of idealist philosophers, especially Schopenhauer, had a strong influence on the worldview of the aspiring poet, which was reflected in the romantic idea of two worlds, which found expression in Fet’s lyrics.
Fet's creativity is characterized by the desire to escape from everyday reality into the “bright kingdom of dreams.” The main content of his poetry is love and nature. His poems are distinguished by the subtlety of their poetic mood and great artistic skill. The peculiarity of Fet’s poetics is that the conversation about the most important is limited to a transparent hint. The most striking example is the poem “Whisper, timid breathing...”
Fet is a representative of the so-called pure poetry. In this regard, throughout his life he argued with N.A. Nekrasov, a representative of social poetry.
With landscape lyrics by A.A. Feta is inextricably linked to the theme of love. Fet's love lyrics are distinguished by their emotional richness; they contain joy and tragic notes, a feeling of inspiration and a feeling of hopelessness. The center of the world for the lyrical hero is his beloved. (“Whisper, timid breathing”, “Don’t wake her up at dawn”, “I still love, I’m still languishing...”, etc.). The prototype of Fet's lyrical heroine was the daughter of a Serbian landowner, Maria Lazic. Fet kept the memory of his tragically departed beloved all his life. She is present in his love lyrics as a beautiful romantic image-memory, a bright “angel of meekness and sadness.” The lyrical heroine saves the poet from the vanity of everyday life (“Like a genius you, unexpected, slender, / A light flew from heaven to me, / Humbled my restless mind...”).
The emotional state of the lyrical “I” of Fet’s poems also has neither a clear external (social, cultural and everyday) nor internal biography and can hardly be designated by the usual term lyrical hero.
No matter what Fet writes about, the dominant state of his lyrical “I” will always be delight and admiration for the inexhaustibility of the world and man, the ability to feel and experience what he saw as if for the first time, with a fresh, just born feeling. (poem “I’m Waiting,” 1842) One might think that the hero is waiting for his beloved, but the emotional state of Fet’s lyrical “I” is always broader than the reason that caused it. And now, before the reader’s eyes, the trembling anticipation of a close meeting develops into a trembling enjoyment of the beautiful moments of existence. As a result, one gets the impression of deliberate fragmentation, a broken plot of the poem.
A. A. Fet acutely feels the beauty and harmony of nature in its fleetingness and variability. His landscape lyrics contain many minute details of the real life of nature, which correspond to the most diverse manifestations of the emotional experiences of the lyrical hero. For example, in the poem “It’s Still a May Night,” the charm of a spring night creates in the hero a state of excitement, expectation, longing, and involuntary expression of feelings:
What a night! Every single star
Warmly and meekly they look into the soul again,
And in the air behind the nightingale's song
Anxiety and love spread.
In each stanza of this poem, two opposing concepts are dialectically combined, which are in a state of eternal struggle, evoking a new mood each time. Thus, at the beginning of the poem, the cold north, the “kingdom of ice” is not only opposed to the warm spring, but also gives rise to it. And then two poles arise again: on one, warmth and meekness, and on the other, “anxiety and love,” that is, a state of anxiety, expectation, vague forebodings.
An even more complex associative contrast between natural phenomena and human perception of it is reflected in the poem “A fire blazes in the forest with the bright sun.” Here is a real, visible picture in which the bright colors are extremely contrasting: red blazing fire and black coal. But, besides this striking contrast, there is another, more complex one in the poem. On a dark night the landscape is bright and colorful:
A fire blazes in the forest with the bright sun,
And, shrinking, the juniper cracks,
A choir crowded like drunken giants,
Flushed, the spruce tree staggers.
Perhaps the most Fetov-like poem, reflecting his creative individuality, is “Whisper, timid breathing...” It amazed the poet’s contemporaries and still continues to delight and enchant new generations of readers with its psychological richness with the maximum laconicism of expressive means. There is a complete lack of eventfulness in it, reinforced by the wordless listing of overly personal impressions. However, every expression here has become a picture; in the absence of action there is internal movement. And it lies in the semantic compositional development of the lyrical theme. First, these are the first discreet details of the night world:
Whisper, timid breathing, Trill of a nightingale,/ Silver and swaying/ of a sleepy stream...
Then, more distant large details, more generalized and vague, foggy and vague, come into the poet’s field of vision:
Night light, night shadows, / Shadows without end, / A series of magical changes / Of a sweet face.
In the final lines, both specific and generalized images of nature merge, forming a huge whole - the sky covered in dawn. And the internal state of a person is also included in this three-dimensional picture of the world as an organic part of it:
There are purple roses in the smoky clouds,
The reflection of amber
And kisses and tears,
And dawn, dawn!..
That is, there is an evolution of human and natural plans here, although the analytical element is completely absent, only a recording of the poet’s feelings. There is no specific portrait of the heroine, only vague, elusive signs of her appearance in the subjective perception of the author. Thus, movement, the dynamics of the elusive, whimsical feelings convey the complex world of the individual, evoking a feeling of an organic fusion of natural and human life.
The poetry of the eighties is characterized by a combination of two principles: the outbreak of “neo-romanticism”, the revival of high poetic vocabulary, the enormous growth of Pushkin’s influence, the final recognition of Fet, on the one hand, and on the other, the clear influence of realistic Russian prose, primarily Tolstoy and Dostoevsky (especially of course, the skill of psychological analysis). The influence of prose is enhanced by the special property of this poetry, its rationalistic, investigative character, a direct legacy of the enlightenment of the sixties.
Along with a general inclination towards fact, towards in-depth psychological analysis, these poets have a noticeably emphasized inclination towards realistically precise detail introduced into the verse. With the acute mutual attraction of two poles - the realistic, even naturalistic, and the ideal, romantic - the realistic detail itself appears in a conventionally poetic atmosphere, surrounded by the usual romantic cliches. This detail, with its naturalism and fantasy, is correlated not so much with the achievements of the previous realistic era of poetry, but with the aesthetic concepts of the coming era of decadence and modernism. A random detail that violates the proportions of the whole and parts is a characteristic stylistic feature of this transitional era: the desire to find and capture beauty not in eternal beauty, sanctified by time and art, but in the accidental and instantaneous.
