Makes me sad. Poem by N.A. Nekrasov

Late fall. The rooks have flown away
The forest is bare, the fields are empty,

Only one strip is not compressed...
She makes me sad.

The ears seem to whisper to each other:
“It’s boring for us to listen to the autumn blizzard,

It's boring to bow down to the ground,
Fat grains bathing in dust!

Every night we are ruined by the villages1
Every passing voracious bird,

The hare tramples us, and the storm beats us...
Where is our plowman? what else is waiting?

Or are we worse born than others?
Or did they bloom and spike unharmoniously?

No! we are no worse than others - and for a long time
The grain has filled and ripened within us.

It was not for this reason that he plowed and sowed
So that the autumn wind will scatter us?..”

The wind brings them a sad answer:
- Your plowman has no urine.

He knew why he plowed and sowed,
Yes, I didn’t have the strength to start the work.

The poor fellow is feeling bad - he doesn’t eat or drink,
The worm is sucking his aching heart,

The hands that made these furrows,
They dried up into slivers and hung like whips.

As if laying your hand on a plow,
The plowman walked thoughtfully along the strip.

Analysis of the poem “Uncompressed Strip” by Nekrasov

Nekrasov spent his childhood on his father’s family estate, so from an early age he was familiar with peasant life and way of life. Many of the poet's poems are based on childhood experiences. Nekrasov's father was a vivid example of an inveterate serf owner who treated his peasants as slaves. The boy saw how hard a servile life was. The peasants were directly dependent not only on their master, but also on backbreaking physical labor. The poem “The Uncompressed Strip” (1854) is dedicated to the picture of the ruin of the peasant economy.

At the beginning of the work, the author depicts late autumn, which is associated with the end of the agricultural cycle. The sad landscape is broken by a lonely strip of unharvested grain. This indicates some kind of emergency event. The life of a peasant directly depended on his plot of land. The harvest became a means of payment to the owner and the basis for food. Bread left on the field meant inevitable death by starvation.

The author personifies lonely ears of corn that are destroyed by animals and bad weather. The wheat is burdened by the long-ripened grain and makes a plea to its owner, who for some reason has forgotten about his field. The answer to the ears of corn is given by the “autumn wind.” He says that the plowman could not forget about his work. He was struck down by a serious illness. The peasant understands that time for harvesting is running out, but he cannot do anything. Nekrasov does not describe the feelings that a sick person experiences. And it is so clear that the peasant says goodbye not only to the grain, but also to his own life. Having not paid the due quitrent and not having worked the corvee, he can hardly hope for the lord’s help.

The peasant is not at all to blame for what happened. He sowed his field in a timely manner, rejoiced at the first shoots, and protected the wheat from birds and animals. Everything pointed to a rich harvest, which was supposed to be a worthy reward for all the work. The tragedy is that an ordinary person could only rely on his own strength. As long as he is physically healthy, he is not in danger of death. But any illness, even a temporary one, can dash all hopes forever.

Nekrasov shows the strong connection between ordinary people and nature. But this connection becomes fatal due to serfdom. The peasant, shackled by debt and hunger, cannot even try to change his situation. The destruction of the crop will inevitably lead to the death of its owner and his family.

"Uncompressed strip"

Late fall. The rooks have flown away
The forest is bare, the fields are empty,

Only one strip is not compressed...
She makes me sad.

The ears seem to whisper to each other:
"It's boring for us to listen to the autumn blizzard,

It's boring to bow down to the ground,
Fat grains bathing in dust!

Every night we are ruined by the villages1
Every passing voracious bird,

The hare tramples us, and the storm beats us...
Where is our plowman? what else is waiting?

Or are we worse born than others?
Or did they bloom and spike unharmoniously?

No! we are no worse than others - and for a long time
The grain has filled and ripened within us.

It was not for this reason that he plowed and sowed
So that the autumn wind will scatter us?..”

The wind brings them a sad answer:
- Your plowman has no urine.

He knew why he plowed and sowed,
Yes, I didn’t have the strength to start the work.

The poor fellow is feeling bad - he doesn’t eat or drink,
The worm is sucking his aching heart,

The hands that made these furrows,
They dried up into slivers and hung like whips.

As if laying your hand on a plow,
The plowman walked thoughtfully along the strip.

Poem by Nekrasov N.A. - Uncompressed strip

See also Nikolai Nekrasov - poetry (Nekrasov N. A.):

No shame, no compassion...
No shame, no compassion, Curls in small curls, An agitated figure...

“Uncompressed strip” Nikolay Nekrasov

Late fall. The rooks have flown away
The forest is bare, the fields are empty,

Only one strip is not compressed...
She makes me sad.

The ears seem to whisper to each other:
“It’s boring for us to listen to the autumn blizzard,

It's boring to bow down to the ground,
Fat grains bathing in dust!

Every night we are ruined by the villages1
Every passing voracious bird,

The hare tramples us, and the storm beats us...
Where is our plowman? what else is waiting?

Or are we worse born than others?
Or did they bloom and spike unharmoniously?

No! we are no worse than others - and for a long time
The grain has filled and ripened within us.

It was not for this reason that he plowed and sowed
So that the autumn wind will scatter us?..”

The wind brings them a sad answer:
- Your plowman has no urine.

He knew why he plowed and sowed,
Yes, I didn’t have the strength to start the work.

The poor fellow is feeling bad - he doesn’t eat or drink,
The worm is sucking his aching heart,

The hands that made these furrows,
They dried up into slivers and hung like whips.

As if laying your hand on a plow,
The plowman walked thoughtfully along the strip.

Analysis of Nekrasov’s poem “Uncompressed Strip”

Nikolai Nekrasov grew up in a noble family, but his childhood was spent on the family estate of the Yaroslavl province, where the future poet grew up with peasant children. The cruelty of his father, who not only beat the serfs, but also raised his hand against members of the household, left a deep mark on the soul of the poet for the rest of his life, who in his own home was as powerless as the serfs. Therefore, Nekrasov not only sympathized with representatives of the lower classes of society, but also in his work constantly addressed their problems, trying to show the life of peasants without embellishment.

Nekrasov left his parents' home very early, but never for a moment forgot what he had seen and experienced in his childhood. A quarter of a century later, in 1854, the poet wrote the poem “The Uncompressed Strip,” in which he again touched on the topic of serfdom. The author of this work, which would later become a textbook, sincerely believed that if the peasants received freedom, they would be able to build their lives in such a way as not to experience hunger and need. However, the poet was deeply mistaken, since the abolition of serfdom on paper drove ordinary people into even greater bondage, since it deprived them of the most valuable thing in life - land.

“The Uncompressed Strip” is a poem that reveals how important farming was to the average peasant at that time. This was the only source of his well-being, and it depended on the harvest whether a peasant family would have bread in winter, or whether it would have to starve. But a good harvest was not always the key to prosperity, and the poet was able to convey this very clearly in his work.

“Late autumn, the rooks have flown away” - these lines, known to every schoolchild, create a peaceful and almost idyllic picture. However, against the backdrop of a serene autumn landscape, when nature is already preparing for hibernation, the author sees an unharvested strip of wheat and notes that “it brings a sad thought.” Indeed, it is difficult to imagine that a peasant, who has invested so much labor to obtain a harvest on which his life directly depends, could be so dismissive of bread. Moreover, the grain has grown beautifully, and is now forced to become prey to the wind, birds and wild animals. Using the technique of animating inanimate objects, the author, on behalf of the unharvested wheat, asks the question: “Where is our plowman? What else are you waiting for?

However, the ever-present wind brings a disappointing answer to the heavy ears of corn, telling the sad story of a peasant who is unable to harvest his crops due to illness. “He knew why he plowed and sowed,” the poet notes, but at the same time emphasizes that it is unlikely that a zealous owner who knows the value of his work will be able to reap its fruits. And this means that the peasant will inevitably die by starvation, and no one will come to his aid, because most families have exactly the same problems, among which hunger and disease occupy one of the first places.

Having given the floor to the wheat and the wind, Nekrasov tried to abstract himself from the picture he saw and evaluate it as impartially as possible. After all, the only explanation for the fact that one of the peasants did not harvest the harvest is a serious illness. However, the saddest thing in this situation is that this does not surprise anyone and does not evoke sympathy - people, according to the poet, are so accustomed to death that they simply do not notice it. And this submission to fate causes a feeling of annoyance in Nekrasov, he is convinced that by the right of his birth a person is free, therefore he must build his life so that it does not depend on circumstances.

The poem “The Uncompressed Stripe” was presumably written in 1854, published in Sovremennik No. 1 for 1856 and included in the collected works of 1856. The image of the uncompressed stripe could have been suggested by the folk song “It’s my stripe, but it’s my stripe.” The poem was set to music several times in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Literary direction and genre

The poem belongs to the genre of civil elegy, like the classic work of this genre - the elegy “Let changing fashion tell us.” It is about the suffering of the people, according to the behest of the lyrical hero of that elegy, that this one tells us. The circumstances of the illness of the serf peasant are typical of Nekrasov’s modern times and evoke in the memory of the lyrical hero the typical image of a sick plowman. No one will be deceived by the appearance of a fairy-tale character - the wind, bringing a sad answer. In fact, this image of a sick plowman, a man whom the lyrical hero has never seen and will never see, is brought to life by Nekrasov’s artistic thinking of a realist, and the fairy-tale frame is just an entourage.

Theme, main idea and composition

The poem can be roughly divided into three parts. The first part is a peaceful landscape of late autumn. The second part is the imaginary complaints of the ears of the unharvested strip. The third part is the imaginary response of the wind. The lyrical hero in the poem seems to withdraw from himself and does not show himself. His role is to eavesdrop on the conversation between the dying ears of corn and the wind, but the whole conversation actually takes place “as if,” that is, it reflects the innermost thoughts of the lyrical hero.

The theme of the poem is the hard life of a serf peasant, for whom even if the harvest fails, illness will occur.

The main idea is sympathy for a lonely sick person who has lost his health due to hard work; awareness of the mortality of all things and humility with this fact.

Some believed that the poem is an allegory, the image of the plowman is Nicholas I, who shouldered the burden of the Crimean War and died during it. But the poem needs to be interpreted more broadly.

The creation of the image of the plowman could have been influenced by Nekrasov’s serious illness in 1853. He associated himself with a sick plowman who could not do his job (to sow the reasonable, the good, the eternal), the song he sang at the plow fell silent.

Paths and images

The landscape in the first part is written in the best traditions of landscape poetry. Verbs associated with the dying of nature: rooks flew away, forest exposed, fields empty, stripe not compressed. Epithets are traditional for the autumn landscape: late autumn, autumn snowstorm. The parallelism in the state of nature and man (the boredom of the ears of grain and the sad thought of the lyrical hero) allows us to personify nature and hear the conversation of the ears of grain.

In the second part, the ears of corn complain that they are wasted, fat grains bathe in dust(metaphor). They face various dangers. The strip is ravaged by flocks (stanitas) of birds (metaphor), a hare tramples and a storm hits. The reader associates ears of corn with weak people who cannot defend themselves even from “hares,” although they carry enormous wealth - bread, that is, with serfs. The ears ask a rhetorical question about what they did wrong, and they themselves answer: “No! We are no worse than others." The ears of corn are like the peasants themselves, who do not understand where their efforts and strength go, why they plow and sow.

In the third part, the wind, the personification of natural forces that destroy labor and human life itself, responds to the ears of corn. He is all-knowing, like a pagan god. The wind, like God, evaluates the life of a plowman: the peasant knew why he plowed and sowed, “but he started the work beyond his strength.” The reader does not understand the reason for the plowman’s illness and loneliness: perhaps he is old, perhaps he has strained himself at work. Nekrasov's contemporaries understood that the unharvested strip meant the starvation of the plowman who did not harvest bread for the winter, and of his family, if he had one.

Nekrasov depicts the inner world of a farmer: he is purposeful, but thoughtful, usually singing sad songs while working. The portrait of a plowman is written using metaphors and comparisons: the plowman has no lobe, the worm is sucking his aching heart, his hands have dried up to a sliver, they hang like whips, his eyes have dimmed, his voice has disappeared.

It is not for nothing that Nekrasov ends the description of the plowman with his missing voice, as if returning again to that moment when the peasant was plowing that very strip and singing. The mournful song is a prophecy of the sad fate of the peasant, which, like work, is inseparable from the song.

The ears of corn dying in the dust share the lot of their owner, the plowman. Elegiac discussions about the frailty of existence acquire a generalized meaning and go beyond the description of the bitter fate of the serf.

Meter and rhyme

The poem is written in dactyl tetrameter, the rhyme is paired, female rhyme alternates with male rhyme.

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