How does the image of the twelve Red Army soldiers change in A. Blok’s poem “The Twelve”? Abstract on the topic: “Symbolic images in the poem “Twelve”

The revolutionary unrest of the early twentieth century in Russia evoked responses from many writers. The events of 1917 and the Civil War inspired the creation of works by both contemporaries and writers of later periods, right up to the present day. Among the poets who were inspired by this period of Russian history was A.A. Block. The poem “The Twelve” reflected the author’s ambiguous perception of the coup, the meaning of which is still being wondered about. The rich symbolism of the work has a large number of interpretations.

Symbols: role and their meaning

What does a symbol mean to a poet? It’s the same as a term for a scientist, that is, with the help of it you can express a thought more succinctly, without unnecessary words. And Blok actively took advantage of this opportunity in his work.

Colors. The first thing the reader encounters in the poem is the antithesis of colors - black and white. In world culture, these shades have dozens of meanings, but for this particular poem, white is renewal, the desire for the future, black is the darkness of the old world, the suffering of the soul caused by sin. In addition, the text contains red, expressing resistance and desire for change.
Wind is a sign of storm and revolution. He is trying to stir up the snow to bring in everything that is old and experienced.
12 is a number with a special meaning. The number of Red Army soldiers in the poem is comparable to the many apostles at the Last Supper. There are many hypotheses about what author’s position is hidden behind the Gospel symbolism. Perhaps for Blok the events of the 17th year are comparable in significance in the history of mankind to Holy Week.

Images

It is important to emphasize the role and image of the author in “The Twelve”. Blok realized that he was present at an epoch-making event; he intuitively sensed the coming changes in the country, which is why in this work “The Writer is a Vitia”, and the poem itself is associated more with a chronicle. Here the poet plays the role of Pimen or Nestor, whose goal is to capture what is happening.
Let us turn to the image of the twelve Red Guards. Not everyone is named by name, but it is no coincidence that the characters named in the poem coincide with the apostles. Such a mention makes it possible to attach to the characters the largest number of associations evoked in the reader. Ivan, Andrey, Peter - these names are both sacred and social at the same time.
For example, Petrukha repents of killing out of jealousy, but this hero would not be so significant for the poem if his name were not an allusion to Peter, who renounced Christ. In both cases, crime is not a reason to leave the path, but stimulates you to move on with even greater zeal. Both for Blok’s Peter and for the Evangelical Peter there was no time to regret what they had done: they needed to move forward to realize the common idea.
The most discussed image in the poem is Christ (an essay on his role in the work is available). It is interesting to see how it appears in the poem. At the beginning of the poem there is wind, in the 12th chapter a red flag appears in this element, the same attribute in the hands of Christ. It can be assumed that the Savior is present in the poem from the first lines, but in the form of a spirit, a breath, and finds its embodiment only at the end of the work. What does this image mean for the poem? It is unfair to consider that this is a sign of the author's approval of the events of 1917. Blok realized the inevitability of revolution, the impossibility of returning to the old order. The world has become different, the old world is a thing of the past, the country is on the threshold of a new era. The previous one began with Christ and the apostles. And they haven’t disappeared anywhere: the scenery has changed, but the main characters remain.

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Revolution is like a storm. This is the element that changes the world. The old time remains in the past, ceases to exist. It is replaced by a new time, just as day gives way to night, and the old year gives way to a new one. The clock strikes twelve. One time has ended, and another is about to begin.
Alexander Blok heard the “music of the revolution”, the sounds of new times, felt the magic of the era and expressed his feelings in the poem “The Twelve”. This magical number symbolizes the connection of times: old and new, day and night.
The poem from beginning to end is built on contrast: black evening, white snow. These colors are opposite: black symbolizes darkness, emptiness, the unknown; white – light, simplicity, openness.
The color scheme of the work is not rich. Only three colors - black, white and red - are used by A. Blok in this poem. They change, they transform.
Revolution inevitably brings destruction, even the collapse of the old world. The block depicts details characteristic of pre-revolutionary society. All these “bourgeois things” should remain in the past. They will be replaced by “freedom without

cross." The personification of this freedom is twelve Red Guards with aces of diamonds on their backs. This card suit is a symbol of bondage, a sign of prisoners.
The revolutionary patrol in the poem does not act as the twelve apostles. On the contrary, the Red Guards proudly march through the city at night not at all with the goal of protecting people:
Lock the floors, Now there will be robberies!
It is quite possible that these pseudo-apostles are the twelve real thieves freed by the revolution. They see one single goal: the establishment of a revolutionary order. And here all methods are good: robbery, murder of a person dear to you, and renunciation of God.
Revolutionaries have their own god. He appears at the very end of the poem. Blok calls this leader Jesus Christ. But is this God? Is this leader of the pseudo-apostles, “with a bloody flag,” “in a white crown of roses,” really the son of God?
The name Jesus, combined with a contradictory appearance (the color of blood and a “white crown of roses”) reveals the Antichrist in the leader of the Red Guards. For only God and the devil are capable of being “invisible behind the blizzard” and “unharmed by a bullet,” capable of descending to earth at the hour when the fate of not only Russia, but the whole world is being decided. After all, the Bolsheviks openly dream of “fanning a global fire.”
Twelve revolutionaries bring grief and suffering not only to those around them, but also to themselves. Petrukha kills his beloved because he misunderstands freedom. For him, freedom is the ability to act with impunity. He doesn't notice how he becomes a killer. At first, Petka is tormented by his conscience. But the Red Guards do not understand Petka’s suffering. They are heartless, they see nothing reprehensible in killing for the sake of a great proletarian idea.
The burden will be heavier for us, dear comrade!
People create the future with their own hands, building it from the fragile bricks of human destinies. But if society accepts the methods of violence and terror, then the bright future for which the revolution took place cannot be seen.
The life of an individual person is valued insignificantly in the eyes of revolutionaries; it is equated to the life of a doll, which is manipulated by the powers that be.
A typical representative of the old world is “comrade priest”:
Do you remember how it used to be that the belly walked forward, and the belly shone like a cross at the people?
Any clergyman is perceived by the Red Guards as a bourgeois, a creature who has no place in the new world, because he worships another God. During a revolution, collective consciousness dominates; the role of the individual in this seething, all-consuming stream is very, very small.
Man is a cog in the harsh and cruel mechanism of the revolution. We see in the example of Petrukha how several people manipulate him, put pressure on his consciousness and feelings.
The revolution destroys the individual, compassion, honesty, faith in the true God and in oneself disappear irrevocably.
Spiritual death is sometimes much worse than physical death, because it brings suffering. The pain of the soul is incomparable. In spiritual death a person is reborn. And nothing more is capable of melting the ice in his heart, awakening conscience and compassion.
Twelve Red Guards with their procession open a new era, a time of suffering and great trials. Hiding under the masks of apostles, companions of the Savior, they destroy the old world without creating anything in return.
The idea of universal equality attracts with extraordinary force, drawing in like a funnel. A man, like a lonely ship moving along the fairway, suddenly finds himself captured by the revolutionary elements. The once calm surface of the sea explodes in a sudden gust, dragging everyone and everything to the bottom.
A revolution is always accompanied by a social explosion, blood and death, and human life is too valuable to sacrifice it on the altar of revolution. And the only way to escape from a merciless storm is to listen to the call of your heart and decide for yourself whether you need to go through such tests for the sake of a ghostly idea.
After all, there is another way to change the existing order. The evolutionary path is always more effective. One should not destroy what has been built over many centuries. It is much better to use historical experience rather than set unattainable goals, and then people will be able to come out of all revolutionary trials with dignity and finally build something new to replace the destroyed old.

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Blok's Jesus Christ, walking ahead of a detachment of twelve Red Guards, remains one of the mysteries of world literature. After all, Christ himself leads one of the detachments of that...

An essay on a work on the topic: Images and symbolism in A. Blok’s poem “”

The poem “The Twelve” was written by A Blok in January 1918, when the October events were already behind us, but not enough time had passed to comprehend them and give an objective historical assessment. The revolution of 1917 swept through like a storm, like a hurricane, and it was difficult to say unequivocally what good and what bad it brought with it. It was under such a spontaneous impression that the poem “The Twelve” was written.

Bright, polysemantic images and symbols play an important role in A. Blok’s poem, their semantic load is great; this allows you to more vividly imagine revolutionary St. Petersburg, revolutionary Russia, and understand the author’s perception of the revolution, his thoughts and hopes. One of the main symbols of the revolution in the poem “The Twelve” is the wind, like it, it blows away everything in its path.

Wind, wind!

The man is not standing on his feet.

Wind, wind -

All over God's world!

The wind curls

White snow.

There is ice under the snow.

Slippery, hard

Every walker

Slips - oh, poor thing!

In this part of the poem, A. Blok sought to convey to the reader the atmosphere of the time when anyone can “slip” on the “ice” of the revolution, caught by surprise by the hurricane of change.

The poem contains another vivid symbol - “world fire”. In the article “Intellectuals and Revolution” Blok wrote that revolution is like a spontaneous phenomenon, “a thunderstorm”, “a snowstorm”; for him, “the scope of the Russian revolution, which wants to embrace the whole world, is this: it cherishes the hope of raising a world cyclone...”. This idea is reflected in the poem “The Twelve,” where the author talks about a “world fire” - a symbol of the universal revolution. And twelve Red Army soldiers promise to fan this “fire”:

We are woe to all the bourgeoisie

Let's fan the world fire,

World fire in blood -

God bless!

These twelve Red Army soldiers personify the twelve apostles of the revolutionary idea. They are entrusted with a great task - to defend the revolution, although their path lies through blood, violence, cruelty. With the help of the image of twelve Red Army soldiers, Blok reveals the theme of shed blood, violence during the period of great historical changes, and the theme of permissiveness. The “Apostles of the Revolution” turn out to be capable of killing, robbing, and violating Christ’s commandments, but without this, in the author’s opinion, it is impossible to achieve the goals of the revolution. Blok believed that the path to a harmonious future lies through chaos and blood.

In this sense, the image of Petrukha, one of the twelve Red Army soldiers who killed Katka out of jealousy, is important. On the one hand, A. Blok shows that his villainy is quickly forgotten and justified by an even greater future villainy. On the other hand, through the images of Petrukha and Katka, Blok wants to convey that, despite the important historical events taking place, love, jealousy, passion are eternal feelings that guide human actions.

Also important in the poem “The Twelve” are the images of an old woman, a priest, a bourgeois - they are representatives of the old, outdated world. For example, the old woman is far from the revolution, from political affairs, she does not understand the meaning of the poster “All power to the Constituent Assembly!”, She does not accept the Bolsheviks (“Oh, the Bolsheviks will drive them into the coffin!”), but the old woman believes in the Mother of God, “the intercessor mother " For her, pressing problems are important, not revolution:

On the rope - poster:

“All power to the Constituent Assembly!”

The old woman is killing herself - crying,

He won't understand what it means

What is this poster for?

Such a huge flap?

How many foot wraps would there be for the guys...

The priest and the bourgeois are afraid of the consequences of the revolution, they fear for their fate, for the failure of their future life:

The wind is biting!

The frost isn't far behind!

And the bourgeois at the crossroads

He hid his nose in his collar.

And there's the long one -

To the side - behind the snowdrift...

Why is it sad now?

Comrade pop?

The old, obsolete, unnecessary world in the poem is also presented as a “rootless”, “cold” dog that barely trails behind twelve Red Army soldiers:

Bares his teeth - hungry wolf -

Tail tucked - not far behind -

A cold dog is a rootless dog...

Ahead is Jesus Christ.

The image of Christ in the poem personifies Blok’s faith in overcoming bloody sin, in the outcome from the bloody present to a harmonious future. His image symbolizes not only the author’s faith in the holiness of the tasks of the revolution, not only the justification of the “holy malice” of the revolutionary people, but also the idea of Christ’s acceptance of yet another human sin, the idea of forgiveness and the hope that people will come to His covenants, to the ideals of love, to eternal values . Jesus walks ahead of the twelve Red Army soldiers who go from freedom “without a cross” to freedom with Christ.

Revolutionary Petersburg, in which the “universal elements” are played out, personifies the entire revolutionary Russia. A. Blok depicted it as a world split in two, as a confrontation between black and white. The symbolism of color plays an important role in the poem “The Twelve”: on the one hand, black wind, black sky, black anger, black rifle belts, and on the other, white snow, Christ in a white crown of roses. The black, evil present is contrasted with the white, bright, harmonious future. The symbolism of red color expresses the motive of the bloody crime. The red flag, on the one hand, is a symbol of a victorious end, on the other hand, a symbol of the bloody present. The colors are associated with the image of time: a black past, a bloody present and a white future.

Thanks to the system of images and symbolism in the poem “The Twelve,” Blok was able to show that in the bloody present there is a formation of a new person and a transition from chaos to harmony. This, according to the poet, is the true meaning of the revolution.

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The images of A. Blok's poem go beyond the scope of this work, because the author resorts to allusion. The meaning of images must be sought in historical events, the works of other writers and, finally, in the Bible. The book of books became the source for creating the collective image of twelve Red Army soldiers who link all the verses of the poem into a single whole.

Twelve Red Army soldiers are associated with the apostles of Christ. A. Blok does not name them all by name, but the sacred names mentioned are enough to evoke a biblical association in the reader. In the text we meet Andryukha, Petrukha (remember the apostles Peter, Andrew and Paul).

Blok’s “apostles of the revolution” differ from the sacred ones. They rob, kill, destroy everything “old” in their path. They violate God's commandments at every turn. But it is not in vain that the author presents precisely this side of the revolutionaries. Alexander Blok believed that coups are impossible without robberies, violence, and chaos. Only in this way can one come to a “new world”. So this perception was reflected in the image of twelve Red Guards.

Outwardly, all revolutionaries are the same: “A torn coat, an Austrian gun.” Already from the uniform it is clear that the guys ended up in the army not because of material gain, they stood for the idea. The author immediately stipulates that the guys knew that everything could end in death: “How our guys went to serve in the Red Army! I’m going to lay down my head.” Chaos and ruin gradually consume them, turning them into robbers who go towards their goal, despite the blood on their hands.

The Red Army soldiers march despite the wind and snowy weather. With the help of this technique, the author shows their attitude to revolutionary events, because by the image of the wind one should understand the revolution. They enthusiastically pour into anarchy and chaos, because such a situation only fuels the revolutionaries' dreams of a new free world.

Petrukha stands out from the company of Red Army soldiers. A guy kills his lover after he notices her cheating. At the time of the murder, he is cold-blooded, but realizing what he has done, he feels mental anguish. He hides his eyes and admits that he loved the girl. A. Blok brought this image to the forefront in precisely this light to show that, under any socio-political circumstances, human feelings remain. Thanks to them, a person retains his human appearance, at least for a short time.

By killing Katka, Petrukha crossed one of God’s main commandments. And if you look at this image more broadly, you can recognize the allusion to the Apostle Peter, who at one time denied Christ. Neither the Biblical apostle nor Blok's revolutionary leaves his path even after a terrible act. They persistently continue to move towards their goal, which, in fact, is common.

To interpret the image of the twelve Red Army soldiers from Blok’s poem “The Twelve,” it is also important to notice the details around them. For example, an old dog tags along behind them, and his comrades drive him away. This is because this animal is a legacy of the previous way of life.

The image of the twelve Red Army soldiers is multifaceted, in several dozen lines about them A. Blok “hid” everything that another would write a whole novel about.

The revolution of 1917 left an indelible mark on the history of our state. After it, a lot has changed, a lot has been rethought. In the poem "" Blok gives his assessment and analysis of the events that occurred.

Analyzing this work, it should be noted that the author created a system of images and symbols that show us the full scale of revolutionary events.

One of the first symbolic images that we encounter on the pages of the poem is the wind. Being a spontaneous natural phenomenon, the wind becomes a symbol of the spontaneous and destructive nature of the revolution. The revolution, like the wind, sweeps away everything in its path and no one can hide from it.

The next symbol in the poem “The Twelve” is the “world fire,” which reflects the global scale of revolutionary events. Blok compared the revolution to a “snowstorm.” The author said that the revolution could spread throughout the whole world, that is, turn into a “world cyclone.”

The driving force behind this “world cyclone” was supposed to be twelve. Twelve are ordinary Russian soldiers who walked the streets of revolutionary Petrograd. They are the twelve apostles of the revolution who pave the way and bring revolutionary ideas to the masses. Their road is saturated with blood and pain, twelve are ready to kill and deal with everyone. Blok did not condemn the actions of the twelve, because he believed that the path to a bright future lies through blood and destruction.

The old woman, who does not understand revolutionary slogans, becomes the symbol of the old bourgeois society. The priest and the bourgeois must now fear for their lives, because they know that there will be no place for them in the “new world”.

The old “rootless” dog becomes a symbol of the “old world”. He trails behind the twelve in the hope of pardon and leniency.

An important place in the poem “The Twelve” is occupied by the image of Christ. Christ here becomes a symbol of a harmonious and bright future. He walks ahead of the twelve, as if showing them the way to the “new world.” On the other hand, Blok wanted to show us that Christ, like many centuries ago, again descended to earth to help humanity overcome dirt and destruction.

The revolutionary city becomes a symbol of a huge country that is engulfed in revolutionary struggle. In general, the struggle between the “old” and “new” worlds becomes the main theme of the work. Blok shows this struggle through the struggle of color. Thus, “black sky” is opposed to “white snow”; The red flag, on the one hand, becomes a symbol of victory, and on the other, a symbol of the bloody present.

With the help of the poem “The Twelve,” Blok wanted to show us how a new person is born in dirt and blood. This is precisely what the author saw as the main purpose of the revolution.