Lotman Yu.M. Analysis of poem A

Anna Akhmatova

You will throw it lazily
Spanish shawl on shoulders,
Red rose in her hair.

A colorful shawl clumsily
You will shelter the child,
Red rose is on the floor.

But, absentmindedly listening
To all the words that sound all around,
You will think sadly
And repeat to yourself:

“I am not scary and not simple;
I'm not so scary that I just
Kill; I'm not that simple
So as not to know how scary life is.”

In the analysis of this poem, we deliberately abstract from extra-textual connections - coverage of the history of acquaintance between Blok and Akhmatova, a biographical commentary on the text, comparing it with A. Akhmatova’s poem “I came to visit the poet...”, to which Blok responded with the analyzed work. All these aspects, right down to the most general: Blok’s relationship to the emerging Acmeism and the young poets who joined this movement, are absolutely necessary for a complete understanding of the text. However, to join complex system external relations, the work must be a text, that is, have its own specific internal organization, which can and should be the subject of a completely independent analysis. This analysis is our task.

Plot basis lyric poem is constructed as a translation of the entire variety of life situations into a specific artistic language, in which all the wealth of possible nominal elements is reduced to three main possibilities:

The one who speaks is “I”
The one addressed is “you”
The one who is neither first nor second is “he”.

Since each of these elements can be used in a single and plural, then we have a system of personal pronouns. It can be said that lyrical stories- This life situations, translated into the language of the pronoun system natural language.

Traditional lyrical scheme“I - you” in Blok’s text is largely deformed. The author's “I” as some obvious center of text organization is not given at all. However, it is present in a hidden form, revealed primarily in the fact that the second semantic center is given in the form of a second-person pronoun - the one to whom one is addressing. And this implies the presence of an addressee - some other center in the construction of the text, which occupies the position of “I”. At the same time, the second person pronoun is given not in the form “you”, traditionally approved for lyrics and therefore neutral, but in the specific “polite” form “You”. This immediately establishes the type of relationship between the structural centers of the text. If the formula “I - you” transfers the plot into an abstract-lyrical space in which acting characters- sublimated figures, then the address to “You” combines the lyrical world with the everyday world (already: actually existing in the era of Blok and in his circle), gives the entire text the character of an unexpected connection with everyday and biographical systems. But the fact that they are placed in the structural place of the lyrics gives them a more generalized meaning: they do not copy everyday relationships, but model them.

The work is structured in such a way that the author’s “I,” although it clearly appears as the bearer of a point of view, is not the bearer of the text. It represents a “face without speech.” This is emphasized by the fact that the dialogue is not between “I” and “You,” but between “You” and some extremely generalized and faceless third party, hidden in the vaguely personal phrases “they will tell you” and the mention of “words that are heard around.”

The first two stanzas, dedicated to the speeches of this “third” and the reaction of “You” to them, are constructed with demonstrative parallelism.

“Beauty is terrible,” they will tell you,
You will throw it lazily
Spanish shawl on shoulders,
Red rose in her hair.

“Beauty is simple” - they will tell you -
A colorful shawl clumsily
You will shelter the child,
Red rose is on the floor.

In parallelly constructed stanzas, “they” say opposite things, and the heroine of the poem, about whom Blok wrote “obedient to rumor” in a rough draft, by silent behavior expresses agreement with both “their” assessments, each of which transforms the whole picture as a whole.

If “beauty is terrible”, then “shawl” becomes “Spanish”, and if “simple” - “motley” (“terrible” is associated with “Spanish” only semantically, and in the pair “simple - motley”, in addition to the semantic connection, there is also a sound connection - repeat " prst — pstr"); in the first case, it is “lazy” thrown over the shoulders, in the second, it is “clumsily” used to cover the child. In the first case, “You” stylizes itself in the spirit of conventional literary and theatrical Spain, in the second - in the sweet home environment reveals his youthful ineptitude.

The first two stanzas are deliberately conventional: two cliche images are introduced through the prism of which the heroine comprehends (and comprehends herself). In the first case, this is Carmen, the image performed for Blok during these years deep meaning and entails a whole complex of additional meanings. In the second there is Madonna, a girl-woman who combines purity, dispassion and motherhood. Behind the first are Spain and opera, behind the second are Italy and Pre-Raphaelite painting.

The third stanza separates the heroine from the image of her that “they” create (and with whom she does not argue) in the previous stanzas.

The dialogue between the heroine and “them” proceeds in a specific way. The poem is compositionally constructed as a chain of three links:

I. “They” - verbal text; “You” is a text-gesture.
Relationship between texts: complete correspondence.

II. “They” is a verbal text; “You” - text-gesture, pose (indicated, but not given).
Relationship between texts: divergence.

III. “They” - no text; “You” is a verbal text.
Relationship between texts: “You” refute “them”.

The verbal text in segments I and III is given in the first person. The heroine’s behavior is presented with increasing dynamics: gesture - pose - internal monologue. However, the movement is slow everywhere, tending towards picturesqueness. This is conveyed by the meanings of the words “absentmindedly listening”, “you will think sadly”.

The fourth stanza is the final one. The argument with “them” is not accomplished as a rejection of “their” thoughts, but as a revelation of the greater complexity of the heroine, her ability to combine various essences. The last stanza is based on the denial of elementary logic in the name of more complex connections. The final three verses of the last stanza deny, just like the first, “their” words. However, this equates two different statements:

However, this is only part general principle stanza construction. Word meanings in last stanza relative to the others they shift somewhat. The same words are used in other senses. This expands the very concept of the meaning of a word and gives it greater instability. A sharp increase in the role of local, which arises only in this text, semantics - since the last stanza always occupies in the poem special place- leads to the fact that it is precisely these unusual values that begin to be perceived as true. The text introduces us to a world where words mean more than just what they mean.

First of all, when the statement “Beauty is scary” is followed by the answer “not scary”<…>“I”, we find ourselves faced with a characteristic substitution: “I”, which is associated with the concept of extreme concreteness, replaces abstract concept(only from this context does it become clear that in the first and second cases “beauty” was a periphrastic replacement for a personally specific concept). Already because “terrible” or “simple” in each of these cases act as components various combinations, their semantics shifts somewhat. But that's only part common system value shifts. “I am simple” allows us to interpret “simple”, including it in contexts that, when transforming the expression “beauty is simple,” will be incorrect. But the expressions “just kill” and “I’m not so simple, / So as not to know how scary life is” give absolutely different meanings for "simple", "simple". And although both of these groups of meanings can be substituted into the expression “I’m not just me,” they cannot replace each other. It is homonymy that reveals the depth of semantic differences here. The word “terrible” is used three times in the last stanza, and all three times in contexts that exclude ambiguity. The point is not only that in the first two cases it is associated with denial, and in the latter with affirmation, but also that the contexts “I am scary” and “life is scary” imply completely different contents of this word.

The world of complexity, understanding of life in its entirety, and wisdom created in the last stanza is built in the form of a monologue by the heroine. This contradicts the femininity and youth of the heroine’s world in the first stanzas. This contrast becomes an active structural factor due to the fact that the first stanzas are structured as a dialogue between two points of view - the heroine and “them”, and the last stanza is her monologue. The poet’s point of view does not seem to exist in the text. However, the lexical level comes into conflict with the syntactic level here. He tells us that, although there is no author's monologue in the text, this question is more complex. The heroine's monologue is not hers real words, but what she could say. After all, she “repeats them to herself.” How does the author know them? There can only be one answer: these are his words, his point of view.

Therefore, the entire poem is a dialogue. In the first stanzas there is a conversation between “you” and “them”, with “they” dominating and “you” following “them”. In the last stanza there are two voices: “mine” (the author) and “yours,” but they are so merged that they can seem like one. It follows from this that “You” throughout the text is not equal to itself, and its complex versatility, the ability to simultaneously be wise, like the author, beautiful with feminine (both secular and theatrical-Spanish) charm, covered in the charm of young motherhood and poetry, naively dependent on someone else’s opinion and full of superiority over this opinion, creates the semantic capacity of the text at the level of vocabulary and syntactic-compositional structure.

The complex polyphony of meanings at this level is complemented by the special structure of the lower elements. The reader's perception of the text is a feeling of its extreme simplicity. However, simplicity does not mean “unstructured.” The low activity of the rhythmic and strophic levels and the absence of rhyme are compensated by the active organization of the phonology of the text. Since vocalism and consonantism give here different schemes organizations and in total amount values includes the conflict that arises, we will consider each of the systems separately.

Stressed vowels in the text are arranged as follows:

I	A		A		A
		And		And
	A		A		e
	A		O		A
II	A		A		A
	O		A		e
		O		O
	A		O		at
III		e		A
	A		O		A
		at		at
		And		And
IV		A		A
	A		A		O
	A		A		A
	A		s		A

The distribution of stressed vowels gives the following picture:

For comparison, we present data on the poem “It’s raining and slush on the street...”, written in the same period and similar in basic indicators (number of verses and stressed vowels in a verse):

Realizing that, of course, it would be necessary to compare these data with the corresponding statistical indicators in all of Blok’s lyrics (such calculations are not yet available) and with average statistical data on the distribution of vowels in Russian non-poetic speech, we can, however, conclude that these data are quite sufficient to sense the phonological organization of the text.

Let us trace some features of this organization.

Within vocalism, the leading phoneme is “a”. The first verse not only gives an emphasized inertia of this dominance (the pattern of vocalism of the first verse looks like this: “a-a-a-a-a-a-a-u”), but also plays the role of a phonological leitmotif of the entire poem; further modifications - up to the complete destruction of this inertia - are possible precisely because it is so openly given at the beginning. The stressed “a” stitches a number of words like a thread, forming a chain of concepts that appear in the text as semantically close (similar to how we talk about local synonyms and antonyms poetic text, one could also talk about local semantic nests that play the same role in a poetic text as cognate groups play in a non-fiction text):

beauty
scary
red

The convergence of these concepts creates new meanings, actualizes some of the traditional ones, and extinguishes others. Thus, at the crossroads of the concepts “scary” and “red,” something that is absent from the text, but clearly influences its perception, appears—“blood.” Apart from this implied but unnamed word, the sudden appearance of “kill” in the last stanza would be completely incomprehensible.

At the same time, in the first stanza some dialogue is formed at the phonological level. One group consists of vowels back row("a" dominates), the second - front vowels + "s". “I/s” dominate in this series. Here, too, a “related” series is formed:

You
lazy
shoulders

It is curious that in this regard, the pair “You - You” does not look like two forms of the same paradigm, but like opposite remarks in a dialogue. The “red”, “scary” and “beautiful” world is the world that “they” impose on “you” (“they” is a certain type cultural tradition, a certain stamp for understanding life). The group “and/s” builds a poetic “You” - the heroine’s reaction: “throw it on” - “lazy” - “shoulders”. At the same time, “throw” and “Spanish” represent the synthesis of this sound dispute: “throw” - “a - and - and - e” - the transition from the first group to the second, and “Spanish” - “and - a - y - y” - transition from the second group to the series given in the first verse - “a - y”. This is also the special role of the word “red”, which acts as a merger of the group “beauty” - “terrible”, built only on “a”, and “you” with a single vowel “y”.

The explanatory cliche offered by “them” is attractive, meaningful and scary, but the heroine is passive and ready to accept it.

The second stanza begins with a verse of the same sound organization. True, there is a difference already in the first verse. Although his vocalization is pronounced the same:

a - a - a - a - a - a - a - y,

but not all of these “a” are equivalent: some of them are phonemes, others are just pronunciation variants of the phoneme “o”. To a certain extent this was the case in the first verse of the first stanza, but the difference is very great. The point is not that there is one such case in seven, but here there are two. In the leading word of the first stanza - “terrible” - both “a” are phonemic, and the second is “simple” - the first “a” is just a “disguised” “o”. This is very significant, since the phoneme “o” in this stanza from the group of “back rows”, opposed to “a”, receives an independent structural meaning. If in the expression “beauty is terrible” (a - a/o -a - a - a) “a/o” is hidden under the influence of general inertia, then in the case of “beauty is simple” we get a symmetrical organization “a - a/o - a - a/o - a", which immediately makes it structurally significant. With a consonantal group, as we will see later, “simple” is associated with “variegated” (prst - pstr), and vocalisms form a group:

motley
clumsily
cover
child.

Since the special role of “red” in the first stanza set the inertia of high “coloring”, antithetical general structure already sets us up to search for a color antonym. Here it turns out to be “motley”, which condenses the meanings of domesticity, ineptitude, youth and motherhood. Special role in this stanza it takes on “u”. It is found in combinations not with “a”, but with the group “e - and - o” (“unskillfully”: e - y - e - o, “you will cover”: y - o - e - e). In antithetical opposition of verses:

Red rose in the hair,
Red rose - on the floor -

the opposition of the final shocks “a” - “y” takes on the character of an opposition “top - bottom”, which in semantic level easily interpreted as a triumph or humiliation of the “red rose” - the entire semantic group of beauty, scary and red.

Since the first stanza contrasts with the second as “red” - “variegated”, special meaning gets that the first is built on repetitions of one phoneme (namely “a”), and the second - on combinations of different ones. That is, in the first case the phoneme is significant, in the second - its elements. This, when establishing correspondences between phonological and color meanings, is interpreted as an iconic sign of variegation.

The third stanza is “uncolored.” This is expressed both in the absence of color epithets and in the inability to detect the vocal dominants of the stanza.

The last stanza, forming a compositional ring, is built just as demonstratively on the basis of “a” as the first (this takes on a special meaning, since at the level of words it negates the first). Dissonance is represented only by the stressed “s” in the word “life”. It is all the more significant because it is the only stressed “not-a” in the stanza. It is immediately associated into a single semantic group with “You”. And the fact that “life” is the most capacious and meaningful concept- turns out to be an antonym of the heroine at the syntax level (it’s not me, but life that is scary), and at the phonological level a synonym (or rather, a “single-root” word), gives the image of the heroine that complexity, which is the constructive idea of the poem.

The consonantisms of the text form a special structure, to a certain extent parallel to the vocalisms and at the same time conflicting with it. In the consonantal organization of the text, relatively speaking, the “red” group and the “variegated” group are clearly distinguished. The first is marked by: 1) deafness; “k”, “s”, “t”, “w”, “p” accumulate here; 2) concentration of consonants in groups. The second - 1) sonority; smooth ones predominate here; 2) “discharged”; if in the first group the ratio of vowels and consonants is 1: 2 or 1: 3, then in the second it is 1: 1.

Phonological repetitions of consonants form certain connections between words.

beauty	scary →	red
krst	terrible	Krsn
beauty	simple →	motley
krst	prst	pstr

Sound transformations take place in in this case quite natural. In this case, on the one hand, phonemes included in the repeating sound core are activated, and on the other, non-repeating ones, such as “sh” in the first case or “k” in the second. They play a role differential features. Hence the increased significance of the combinations “sh” with the dominant “a” in the word “shawl” (the third verse of the first stanza) and “kr” in the second stanza, where this combination is repeated in the discarded (both plot - “on the floor”, and constructively) “red”, and in contrast to it “you will cover” and “child”.

However, despite all the opposition “red - motley”, these concepts (words) form a pair that is neutralized at the meta level not only because they form the archiseme “color”, but also because they have a tangible common phonological core. This cluster of consonants with a combination of plosive and smooth, voiceless and voiced is opposed by the use of single consonants on the vocal background. “You” becomes the center of this group. In it great place occupy sonorants and semivowels. These are words such as “clumsily”, “paying attention”, “think about it”. Their semantic relationship is obvious - they are all connected with the heroine’s world. In the last stanza these two tendencies are synthesized. Thus, the word “kill” (the only hyphen), placed in an exceptional syntactic position in the verse, according to the type of consonantal organization, belongs to the group with “home” semantics, and this contributes to surprise, that is, the significance of its information load.

If we summarize the picture obtained in this way of not completely coinciding orderings on different structural levels text, you can get something like this:

The first stanza is the speech of a certain general collective observer, taken in quotation marks, and a description of the heroine’s behavior that is semantically similar to him. The heroine agrees with this voice. The second stanza is constructed in the same way. The only difference is that in each of them the “voice” says the opposite and, accordingly, the heroine’s behavior is constructed in the opposite way. There seems to be no author’s judgment, his “point of view” in the text.

The third stanza is a transition. In terms of all structural indicators, it eliminates the problems of the first two.

The fourth represents a return, which simultaneously contains a repetition and negation of the first stanzas. The synthesis is given in the form of direct speech by the heroine, that is, it undoubtedly gives her point of view. However, this direct speech is not real, but an internal monologue, which is known to the author only because it coincides with the author’s explanation of the heroine’s personality (syntactically it is the same type of phrase: “In response to this you could say”), that is, it is also direct speech author. If in the first stanzas the heroine’s point of view coincides with the general opinion, then in the second it is combined with Blok’s voice.

The image of the poetic “You” is revealed in next move:

Carmen ——→ Madonna ——→ a person whose inner world defies standard explanations (poet)

It is obvious that there is a rapprochement between this “You” and the poetic “I” of the author. But the following is also important: the first two links of the chain are given as something external for Blok - “their” and “your” (and not “mine”) assessment. However, we know how important the symbols of Carmen and Madonna are for Blok’s lyrics, and to what extent they belong to his poetic world. This contradiction is not external and random, but internal, structurally meaningful.

Images of Carmen and Madonna in Blok’s lyrics - varieties feminine and invariably oppose the lyrical “I” as a passionate earthly or sublime heavenly, but always external beginning. The image of the poet in the lyrics is attributed to inner world“I”, and therefore the sign “male” / “female” is irrelevant for him (as for Lermontov’s pine and palm trees). The image is complicated and close to Blok’s lyrical “I”.

In the chain we have noted, there is a weakening of the specifically feminine (very clearly emphasized in the first links) and a simultaneous movement of the heroine from the world external to the “I” to the internal.

But the ring composition leads to the fact that the refutation of the first links does not mean their destruction. The charm of femininity and the separation of the heroine from the author are preserved, forming only a structural tension with the synthetic image of the last stanza.

The specific construction of the text allows Blok to convey to the reader an idea that is much more complex than the sum of meanings individual words. At the same time, the weave different points vision expressed by direct speech coming from several subjects turns out to be a complexly constructed monologue of the author.

And the fact that the author’s text is given in the form of a monologue by the heroine (otherwise it would be another interpretation from the outside, which “you” are offered by strangers) does not detract from its connection specifically with Blok’s world. The final “life is scary” is a clear reference to phraseological units like “ scary world" And this explanation, created by Blok, of what Akhmatova is, contains clear signs of translating the world of the young poetess, a representative both poetically and humanly of the new generation already following Blok, into the language of Blok’s poetry. And just as Altman is visible in Altman’s portrait, and in Petrov-Vodkin the artist himself, who translated Akhmatova into his own language, in the poetic portrait created by Blok, Blok is visible. But portraits are still, first and foremost, the poetess depicted in them. And Blok’s portrait is connected by many threads with the poetics of young Akhmatova, who here becomes the object of interpretation, depiction and translation into the language of Blok’s poetry.

It is significant that the system of plots in the lyrics varies depending on the structure of the language. Availability dual number and corresponding forms of pronouns in Old Russian language determined the possibility of a plot device in “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign”: “This is the separation of my brother” - all the more significant since there were not two, but four princes. But the real life situation is deformed, turning into a system of typical plots (it should be remembered that between the dual and plural the difference at the level of pronouns is not only quantitative: plural pronouns represent an undivided object opposing singular, pronouns of the dual number consist of two equal objects).

Wed. a common case in poetry when the author of a poem addresses a woman as “you”, the degree of intimacy in a relationship with whom does not at all allow such an address in life. This lyrical “you” is more abstract than the corresponding pronoun in colloquial speech, and does not necessarily imply an indication of a degree of proximity, since, unlike non-literary language, it does not have the “distant” second person “You” as an alternative.

Blok A. A. Collection Op.: In 8 vol. M.; L., 1960. T. 3. P. 550.

It is significant that the “answers” seem to be asking for recoding into visual images, illustrations. They can be considered as illustrations of the words “them”.

For example, for the isolated expression “I am simple,” it is quite possible to substitute semantics like “simplicity is worse than theft.” Any paraphrase of the expression “beauty is simple”, which would be based on the requirement to preserve the basic meaning of the statement (semantics like “stupid beauty” in this statement is not explicitly included), excludes the substitution of such values.

Wed. in the drafts: “Your early blossoming frightens you.”

The clause gives a characteristic violation of inertia, but within the limits of the back row phonemes.

Here, for the first time, the heroine is called not “You”, but “I”, entering the group “a”.

Analysis of poetic text: Verse structure //
Lotman Yu. M. About poets and poetry. St. Petersburg, 1996. pp. 211-221.

You will throw it lazily
Spanish shawl on shoulders,
Red rose in her hair.

A colorful shawl clumsily
You will shelter the child,
Red rose is on the floor.

But, absentmindedly listening
To all the words that sound all around,
You will think sadly
And repeat to yourself:

“I am not scary and not simple;
I'm not so scary that I just
Kill; I'm not that simple
So as not to know how scary life is.”

In the analysis of this poem, we deliberately abstract from extra-textual connections - coverage of the history of acquaintance between Blok and Akhmatova, a biographical commentary on the text, comparing it with A. Akhmatova’s poem “I came to visit the poet...”, to which Blok responded with the analyzed work. All these aspects, right down to the most general: Blok’s relationship to the emerging Acmeism and the young poets who joined this movement, are absolutely necessary for a complete understanding of the text. However, in order to be included in a complex system of external connections, a work must be a text, that is, it must have its own specific internal organization, which can and should be the subject of completely independent analysis. This analysis is our task.
The plot basis of a lyric poem is constructed as a translation of the entire variety of life situations into a specific artistic language, in which all the wealth of possible nominal elements is reduced to three main possibilities:

1. The one who speaks is “I”
2. The one addressed is “you”
3. The one who is neither first nor second is “he”.

Since each of these elements can be used in singular or plural, we have a system of personal pronouns. We can say that lyrical plots are life situations translated into the language of the system of natural language pronouns.

The traditional lyrical scheme “I - you” in Blok’s text is significantly deformed. The author's “I” as some obvious center of text organization is not given at all. However, it is present in a hidden form, revealed primarily in the fact that the second semantic center is given in the form of a second-person pronoun - the one to whom one is addressing. And this implies the presence of an addressee - some other center in the construction of the text, which occupies the position of “I”. At the same time, the second person pronoun is given not in the form “you”, traditionally approved for lyrics and therefore neutral2, but in the specific “polite” form “You”. This immediately establishes the type of relationship between the structural centers of the text. If the formula “I - you” transfers the plot into an abstract-lyrical space in which the acting characters are sublimated figures, then the appeal to “You” combines the lyrical world with the everyday one (already: actually existing in the era of Blok and in his circle), gives everything The text is characterized by an unexpected connection with everyday and biographical systems. But the fact that they are placed in the structural place of the lyrics gives them a more generalized meaning: they do not copy everyday relationships, but model them.

The first two stanzas, dedicated to the speeches of this “third” and the reaction of “You” to them, are constructed with demonstrative parallelism.

“Beauty is terrible” - they will tell you -
You will throw it lazily
Spanish shawl on shoulders,
Red rose in her hair.

“Beauty is simple” - they will tell you -
A colorful shawl clumsily
You will shelter the child,
Red rose is on the floor.

In parallelly constructed stanzas, “they” say opposite things, and the heroine of the poem, about whom Blok wrote in the rough draft “obedient to rumor”3, by silent behavior expresses agreement with both “their” assessments, each of which transforms the whole picture as a whole.

If “beauty is terrible”, then “shawl” becomes “Spanish”, and if “simple” - “motley” (“terrible” is associated with “Spanish” only semantically, and in the pair “simple - motley”, in addition to the semantic connection, there is also a sound connection - repeat “prst - pstr”); in the first case, they “lazyly” throw it over the shoulders, in the second, they “ineptly” cover the child with it. In the first case, “You” stylizes itself in the spirit of conventional literary and theatrical Spain, in the second, in a nice homely setting, it reveals its youthful ineptitude.

The first two stanzas are deliberately conventional: two cliche images are introduced through the prism of which the heroine comprehends (and comprehends herself). In the first case, this is Carmen, an image performed for Blok in these years of deep meaning and entailing a whole complex of additional meanings. In the second - Madonna, a woman-girl, combining purity, dispassion and motherhood. Behind the first are Spain and opera, behind the second are Italy and Pre-Raphaelite painting.

The third stanza separates the heroine from the image of her that “they” create (and with whom she does not argue) in the previous stanzas.

The dialogue between the heroine and “them” proceeds in a specific way. The poem is compositionally constructed as a chain of three links:

I. “They” - verbal text; “You” - text-gesture4.
Relationship between texts: complete correspondence.
II. “They” is a verbal text; “You” - text-gesture, pose (indicated, but not given).
Relationship between texts: divergence.
III. “They” - no text; "You" is a verbal text.
Relationship between texts: “You” refute “them”.

The verbal text in segments I and III is given in the first person. The heroine's behavior is presented with increasing dynamics: gesture - pose - internal monologue. However, the movement is slow everywhere, tending towards picturesqueness. This is conveyed by the meanings of the words “absentmindedly listening”, “you will think sadly”.

However, this is only part of the general principle of constructing the stanza. The meanings of the words in the last stanza shift somewhat in relation to the others. The same words are used in other senses. This expands the very concept of the meaning of a word and gives it greater instability. A sharp increase in the role of local semantics that arises only in a given text - since the last stanza always occupies a special place in the poem - leads to the fact that it is these unusual meanings that begin to be perceived as true. The text introduces us to a world where words mean more than just what they mean.

First of all, when the statement “Beauty is scary” is followed by the answer “not scary”<…>“I”, we find ourselves faced with a characteristic substitution: “I”, which is associated with the concept of extreme concreteness, replaces an abstract concept (only from this context does it become clear that in the first and second cases “beauty” was a periphrastic replacement of a personally concrete concept) . Just because “terrible” or “simple” in each of these cases act as components of various combinations, their semantics shifts somewhat. But this is only part of the general system of value shifts. “I am simple” allows us to interpret “simple”, including it in contexts that, when transforming the expression “beauty is simple,” will be incorrect5. But the expressions “just kill” and “I’m not so simple, / So as not to know how scary life is” give completely different meanings for “simple”, “simple”. And although both of these groups of meanings can be substituted into the expression “I’m not just me,” they cannot replace each other. It is homonymy that reveals the depth of semantic differences here. The word “terrible” is used three times in the last stanza, and all three times in contexts that exclude ambiguity. The point is not only that in the first two cases it is associated with denial, and in the latter with affirmation, but also that the contexts “I am scary” and “life is scary” imply completely different contents of this word.

The world of complexity, understanding of life in its entirety, and wisdom created in the last stanza is built in the form of a monologue by the heroine. This contradicts the femininity and youth6 of the heroine’s world in the first stanzas. This contrast becomes an active structural factor due to the fact that the first stanzas are constructed as a dialogue of two points of view - the heroine and “them”, and the last stanza is her monologue. The poet’s point of view does not seem to exist in the text. However, the lexical level comes into conflict with the syntactic level here. He tells us that, although there is no author's monologue in the text, this question is more complex. The heroine's monologue is not her real words, but what she could say. After all, she “repeats them to herself.” How does the author know them? There can only be one answer: these are his words, his point of view.

The complex polyphony of meanings at this level is complemented by the special structure of the lower elements. The reader's perception of the text is a feeling of its extreme simplicity. However, simplicity does not mean “unstructured.” The low activity of the rhythmic and strophic levels and the absence of rhyme are compensated by the active organization of the phonology of the text. Since vocalism and consonantism provide different organizational schemes here and the total sum of meanings includes the conflict that arises, we will consider each of the systems separately.

And the fact that the author’s text is given in the form of a monologue by the heroine (otherwise it would be another interpretation from the outside, which “you” are offered by strangers) does not detract from its connection specifically with Blok’s world. The final “life is scary” is a clear reference to phraseological units like “scary world.” And this explanation, created by Blok, of what Akhmatova is, contains clear signs of translating the world of the young poetess, a representative both poetically and humanly of the new generation already following Blok, into the language of Blok’s poetry. And just as in Altman’s portrait Altman is visible, and in Petrov-Vodkin the artist himself, who translated Akhmatova into his own language, in the poetic portrait created by Blok, Blok is visible. But portraits are, first and foremost, the poetess depicted in them. And Blok’s portrait is connected by many threads with the poetics of young Akhmatova, who here becomes the object of interpretation, depiction and translation into the language of Blok’s poetry.

We publish the text based on the book by Lotman Yu.M. About poets and poetry: Analysis of the poet. Text Art-SPb, 1996.-846c.

Anna Akhmatova - A.A. Block(analysis of poetic text)

In the analysis of this poem, we deliberately abstract from extra-textual connections - coverage of the history of acquaintance between Blok and Akhmatova, a biographical commentary on the text, comparing it with A. Akhmatova’s poem “I came to visit the poet...”, to which Blok responded with the analyzed work. All these aspects, right down to the most general: Blok’s relationship to the emerging Acmeism and the young poets who joined this movement, are absolutely necessary for a complete understanding of the text. However, in order to be included in a complex system of external connections, a work must be a text, that is, it must have its own specific internal organization, which can and should be the subject of completely independent analysis. This analysis is our task.

The plot basis of a lyric poem is constructed as a translation of the entire variety of life situations into a specific artistic language, in which all the wealth of possible nominal elements is reduced to three main possibilities:

1. The one who speaks is “I”

2. The one addressed is “you”

3. The one who is neither first nor second is “he”.

Since each of these elements can be used in the singular or plural, we have a system of personal pronouns. We can say that lyrical plots are life situations translated into the language of the natural language pronoun system 1 .

The traditional lyrical scheme “I - you” in Blok’s text is significantly deformed. The author's “I” as some obvious center of text organization is not given at all. However, it is present in a hidden form, revealed primarily in the fact that the second semantic center is given in the form of a second-person pronoun - the one to whom one is addressing. And this implies the presence of an addressee - some other center in the construction of the text, which occupies the position of “I”. Moreover, the second person pronoun is not given in the form “you”, traditionally approved for lyrics and therefore neutral 2 , and in a specific “polite” form “You”. This immediately establishes the type of relationship between the structural centers of the text. If the formula “I - you” transfers the plot into an abstract-lyrical space in which the acting characters are sublimated figures, then the appeal to “You” combines the lyrical world with the everyday one (already: actually existing in the era of Blok and in his circle), gives everything The text is characterized by an unexpected connection with everyday and biographical systems. But the fact that they are placed in the structural place of the lyrics gives them a more generalized meaning: they do not copy everyday relationships, but model them.

The first two stanzas, dedicated to the speeches of this “third” and the reaction of “You” to them, are constructed with demonstrative parallelism.

“Beauty is terrible” - they will tell you -
You will throw it lazily
Spanish shawl on shoulders,
Red rose in her hair.

“Beauty is simple” - they will tell you -
A colorful shawl clumsily
You will shelter the child,
Red rose is on the floor.

In parallelly constructed stanzas, “they” say opposite things, and the heroine of the poem, about whom Blok wrote in a rough draft, “obedient to rumor” 3 , by silent behavior expresses agreement with both “their” assessments, each of which transforms the whole picture as a whole.

If “beauty is terrible”, then “shawl” becomes “Spanish”, and if “simple” - “motley” (“terrible” is associated with “Spanish” only semantically, and in the pair “simple - motley”, in addition to the semantic connection, there is also a sound connection - repeat " prst -pstr"); in the first case, it is “lazy” thrown over the shoulders, in the second, it is “clumsily” used to cover the child. In the first case, “You” stylizes itself in the spirit of conventional literary and theatrical Spain, in the second, in a nice homely setting, it reveals its youthful ineptitude.

The first two stanzas are deliberately conventional: two cliche images are introduced through the prism of which the heroine comprehends (and comprehends herself). In the first case, this is Carmen, an image performed for Blok in these years of deep meaning and entailing a whole complex of additional meanings. In the second - Madonna, a woman-girl, combining purity, dispassion and motherhood. Behind the first are Spain and opera, behind the second are Italy and Pre-Raphaelite painting.

The third stanza separates the heroine from the image of her that “they” create (and with whom she does not argue) in the previous stanzas.

The dialogue between the heroine and “them” proceeds in a specific way. The poem is compositionally constructed as a chain of three links:

I. “They” - verbal text; “You” - text-gesture 4 .
Relationship between texts: complete correspondence.

II. “They” is a verbal text; “You” - text-gesture, pose (indicated, but not given).
Relationship between texts: divergence.

III. “They” - no text; "You" is a verbal text.
Relationship between texts: “You” refute “them”.

First of all, when the statement “Beauty is scary” is followed by the answer “not scary”<…>“I”, we find ourselves faced with a characteristic substitution: “I”, which is associated with the concept of extreme concreteness, replaces an abstract concept (only from this context does it become clear that in the first and second cases “beauty” was a periphrastic replacement of a personally concrete concept) . Just because “terrible” or “simple” in each of these cases act as components of various combinations, their semantics shifts somewhat. But this is only part of the general system of value shifts. “I am simple” allows us to interpret “simple”, including it in contexts that, when transforming the expression “beauty is simple,” would be incorrect 5 . But the expressions “just kill” and “I’m not so simple, / So as not to know how scary life is” give completely different meanings for “simple”, “simple”. And although both of these groups of meanings can be substituted into the expression “I’m not just me,” they cannot replace each other. It is homonymy that reveals the depth of semantic differences here. The word “terrible” is used three times in the last stanza, and all three times in contexts that exclude ambiguity. The point is not only that in the first two cases it is associated with denial, and in the latter with affirmation, but also that the contexts “I am scary” and “life is scary” imply completely different contents of this word.

The world of complexity, understanding of life in its entirety, and wisdom created in the last stanza is built in the form of a monologue by the heroine. This is contrary to femininity and youth 6 the heroine's world in the first stanzas. This contrast becomes an active structural factor due to the fact that the first stanzas are constructed as a dialogue of two points of view - the heroine and “them”, and the last stanza is her monologue. The poet’s point of view does not seem to exist in the text. However, the lexical level comes into conflict with the syntactic level here. He tells us that although there is no author's monologue in the text, the issue is more complex. The heroine's monologue is not her real words, but what she could say. After all, she “repeats them to herself.” How does the author know them? There can only be one answer: these are his words, his point of view.

Therefore, the entire poem is a dialogue. In the first stanzas there is a conversation between “you” and “them”, with “they” dominating and “you” following “them”. In the last stanza there are two voices: “mine” (the author) and “yours,” but they are so merged that they can seem like one. It follows from this that “You” throughout the text is not equal to itself, and its complex versatility, the ability to simultaneously be wise, like the author, beautiful with feminine (and secular, and theatrical-Spanish) charm, covered in the charm of young motherhood and poetry, naively dependent on someone else’s opinion and full of superiority over this opinion, creates the semantic capacity of the text at the level of vocabulary and syntactic-compositional structure.

The complex polyphony of meanings at this level is complemented by the special structure of the lower elements. The reader's perception of the text is a feeling of its extreme simplicity. However, simplicity does not mean “unstructured.” The low activity of the rhythmic and strophic levels and the absence of rhyme are compensated by the active organization of the phonology of the text. Since vocalism and consonantism provide different organizational schemes here and the total sum of meanings includes the conflict that arises, we will consider each of the systems separately.

Stressed vowels in the text are arranged as follows:

The distribution of stressed vowels gives the following picture:

Realizing that, of course, it would be necessary to compare these data with the corresponding statistical indicators in all of Blok’s lyrics (such calculations are not yet available) and with average statistical data on the distribution of vowels in Russian non-poetic speech, we can, however, conclude that for the feeling of phonological The organization of the text of this data is quite sufficient.

Let us trace some features of this organization.

Within vocalism, the leading phoneme is “a”. The first verse not only gives an emphasized inertia of this dominance (the vocalism pattern of the first verse looks like this: “a-a-a-a-a-a-a-u” 7 ), but also plays the role of a phonological leitmotif of the entire poem; further modifications - up to the complete destruction of this inertia - are possible precisely because it is so openly given at the beginning. The stressed “a” stitches, like a thread, a number of words, forming a chain of concepts that appear in the text as semantically close (just as we talk about local synonyms and antonyms of a poetic text, we could also talk about local semantic nests that play in in a poetic text the same role as cognate groups in a non-fiction text):

beauty
scary
red

The convergence of these concepts creates new meanings, actualizes some of the traditional ones, and extinguishes others. Thus, at the crossroads of the concepts “scary” and “red”, something that is absent from the text, but clearly influences its perception, appears - “blood”. Apart from this implied but unnamed word, the sudden appearance of “kill” in the last stanza would be completely incomprehensible.

At the same time, in the first stanza some dialogue is formed at the phonological level. One group consists of back vowels (dominated by “a”), the second group consists of front vowels + “s”. “I/s” dominate in this series. Here, too, a “related” series is formed:

You
lazy
shoulders

It is curious that in this regard, the pair “You - You” does not look like two forms of the same paradigm, but like opposite remarks in a dialogue. The “red”, “scary” and “beautiful” world is the world that “they” impose on “you” (“they” is a certain type of cultural tradition, a certain stamp for comprehending life). The “i/s” group builds the poetic “You” - the heroine’s reaction: “throw it over” - “lazy” - “shoulders”. At the same time, “throw” and “Spanish” represent the synthesis of this sound dispute: “throw” - “a - and - and - e” - the transition from the first group to the second, and “Spanish” - “and - a - y - y” - transition from the second group to the series given in the first verse - “a - y”. This is also the special role of the word “red”, which acts as a merger of the group “beauty” - “terrible”, built only on “a”, and “you” with a single vowel “s”.

The explanatory cliche offered by “them” is attractive, meaningful and scary, but the heroine is passive and ready to accept it.

The second stanza begins with a verse of the same sound organization. True, there is a difference already in the first verse. Although his vocalization is pronounced the same:

a - a - a - a - a - a - a - y,

but not all of these “a” are equivalent: some of them are phonemes, others are just pronunciation variants of the phoneme “o”. To a certain extent this was the case in the first verse of the first stanza, but the difference is very great. The point is not that there is one such case in seven, but here there are two. In the leading word of the first stanza - “terrible” - both “a” are phonemic, and the second is “simple” - the first “a” is only a “disguised” “o”. This is very significant, since the phoneme “o” in this stanza from the “back row” group, opposed to “a”, receives an independent structural meaning. If in the expression “beauty is terrible” (a - a/o -a - a - a) “a/o” is hidden under the influence of general inertia, then in the case of “beauty is simple” we get a symmetrical organization “a - a/o - a - a/o - a”, which immediately makes it structurally significant. With a consonantal group, as we will see later, “simple” is associated with “variegated” (prst - pstr), and vocalisms form a group:

motley
clumsily
cover
child.

Since the special role of “red” in the first stanza set the inertia of high “coloring,” the antithetical nature of the general structure already sets us up to search for a color antonym. Here it turns out to be “motley”, which condenses the meanings of domesticity, ineptitude, youth and motherhood. “u” plays a special role in this stanza. It is found in combinations not with “a”, but with the group “e - i - o” (“unskillfully”: e - u - e - o, “you will cover”: u - o - e - e). In antithetical opposition of verses:

Red rose in the hair,
Red rose - on the floor -

the opposition of the final stressed “a” - “y” takes on the character of an opposition “top - bottom”, which at the semantic level is easily interpreted as the triumph or humiliation of the “red rose” - the entire semantic group of beauty, scary and red.

Since the first stanza contrasts with the second as “red” - “motley”, it is of particular significance that the first is built on repetitions of one phoneme (namely “a”), and the second - on combinations of different ones. That is, in the first case the phoneme is significant, in the second - its elements. This, when establishing correspondences between phonological and color meanings, is interpreted as an iconic sign of variegation.

The third stanza is “uncolored.” This is expressed both in the absence of color epithets and in the inability to detect the vocal dominants of the stanza.

The last stanza, forming a compositional ring, is built just as demonstratively on the basis of “a” as the first (this takes on a special meaning, since at the level of words it negates the first) 8 . Dissonance is represented only by the stressed “s” in the word “life”. It is all the more significant because it is the only stressed “not-a” in the stanza. It is immediately associated into a single semantic group with “You”. And the fact that “life” - the most capacious and significant concept - turns out to be an antonym of the heroine at the syntax level (it’s not me, but life that is scary), and at the phonological level a synonym (or rather, a “single-root” word), gives the image of the heroine the complexity that and is the constructive idea of the poem.

Phonological repetitions of consonants form certain connections between words.

	scary ----→

	simple -----→

Sound transformations occur in this case quite naturally. In this case, on the one hand, phonemes included in the repeating sound core are activated, and on the other, non-repeating ones, such as “sh” in the first case or “k” in the second. They act as differential features. Hence the increased significance of the combinations “w” with the dominant “a” in the word “shawl” (the third verse of the first stanza) and “kr” in the second stanza, where this combination is repeated in the discarded (both plot - “on the floor”, and constructively) “red”, and in contrast to it “you will cover” and “child”.

However, despite all the opposition “red - motley”, these concepts (words) form a pair that is neutralized at the meta level not only because they form the archiseme “color”, but also because they have a tangible common phonological core. This cluster of consonants with a combination of plosive and smooth, voiceless and voiced is opposed by the use of single consonants on the vocal background. “You” becomes the center of this group. Sonorants and semivowels occupy a large place in it. These are words such as “clumsily”, “paying attention”, “think about it”. Their semantic relationship is obvious - they are all connected with the heroine’s world. In the last stanza these two tendencies are synthesized. Thus, the word “kill” (the only hyphen), placed in an exceptional syntactic position in the verse, according to the type of consonantal organization, belongs to the group with “home” semantics, and this contributes to surprise, that is, the significance of its information load.

If we summarize the picture obtained in this way of not completely coinciding orderings at various structural levels of the text, we can obtain approximately the following:

The third stanza is a transition. In terms of all structural indicators, it eliminates the problems of the first two.

The image of the poetic “You” is revealed in the following movement:

It is obvious that there is a rapprochement between this “You” and the poetic “I” of the author. But the following is also important: the first two links of the chain are given as something external for Blok - “their” and “your” (and not “mine”) assessment. However, we know how essential the symbols of Carmen and Madonna are for Blok’s lyrics, and to what extent they belong to his poetic world. This contradiction is not external and random, but internal, structurally meaningful.

The images of Carmen and Madonna in Blok’s lyrics are varieties of the feminine principle and invariably oppose the lyrical “I” as a passionate earthly or sublime heavenly, but always external principle. The image of the poet in the lyrics is related to the inner world of “I”, and therefore the sign of “male” / “female” is irrelevant for him (as for Lermontov’s pine and palm trees). The image is complicated and close to Blok’s lyrical “I”.

The specific construction of the text allows Blok to convey to the reader an idea that is much more complex than the sum of the meanings of individual words. At the same time, the interweaving of different points of view, expressed in direct speech coming from several subjects, turns out to be a complexly constructed monologue of the author.

And the fact that the author’s text is given in the form of a monologue by the heroine (otherwise it would be another interpretation from the outside, which “you” are offered by strangers) does not detract from its connection specifically with Blok’s world. The final “life is scary” is a clear reference to phraseological units like “scary world.” And this explanation, created by Blok, of what Akhmatova is, contains clear signs of translating the world of the young poetess, a representative both poetically and humanly of the new generation already following Blok, into the language of Blok’s poetry. And just as Altman is visible in Altman’s portrait, and in Petrov-Vodkin the artist himself is visible, translating Akhmatova into his own language, so in the poetic portrait created by Blok, Blok is visible. But portraits are, first and foremost, the poetess depicted in them. And Blok’s portrait is connected by many threads with the poetics of young Akhmatova, who here becomes the object of interpretation, depiction and translation into the language of Blok’s poetry.

“Beauty is terrible,” they will tell you,
You will throw it lazily
Spanish shawl on shoulders,
Red rose in her hair.

“Beauty is simple” - they will tell you -
A colorful shawl clumsily
You will shelter the child,
Red rose on the floor.

But, absentmindedly listening
To all the words that sound all around,
You will think sadly
And repeat to yourself:

“I am not scary and not simple;
I'm not so scary that I just
Kill; I'm not that simple
So as not to know how scary life is!”

December 16, 1918
_________________________
Lotman Yu. M. Analysis of A. Blok’s poem “Beauty is Terrible” (Anna Akhmatova) (excerpt)

...And the fact that the author’s text is given in the form of a monologue by the heroine (otherwise it would be another interpretation from the outside, which “you” are offered by strangers) does not detract from its connection specifically with Blok’s world. The final “life is scary” is a clear reference to phraseological units like “scary world.” And this explanation, created by Blok, of what Akhmatova is, contains clear signs of translating the world of the young poetess, a representative both poetically and humanly of the new generation already following Blok, into the language of Blok’s poetry. And just as Altman is visible in Altman’s portrait, and in Petrov-Vodkin the artist himself, who translated Akhmatova into his own language, in the poetic portrait created by Blok, Blok is visible. But portraits are still, first and foremost, the poetess depicted in them. And Blok’s portrait is connected by many threads with the poetics of young Akhmatova, who here becomes the object of interpretation, depiction and translation into the language of Blok’s poetry.

___________________
Varlam Shalamov (excerpt).
There is a visit to Blok, where Akhmatova brings Blok three volumes of his works. On the first two he puts the inscription “Akhmatova Blok”, and on the third he writes a madrigal prepared in advance, included in all the collected works of Blok under the title “Beauty is terrible - they will tell you...”.
The draft of this madrigal shows how difficult it was for Blok. Blok forcibly shoved into the Romance the text of a poem that had never been given to him in December 1913. Akhmatova did not like the madrigal, it even offended her, because it “Spanishized” her. Akhmatova, biting her lips, explained that “Spanishization” arose in Blok involuntarily, because at that time he was fond of Delmas, the performer of the role of Carmen. But the fact is that the acquaintance with Delmas dates back to March of the future 1914.
Akhmatova responds to Blok in the same meter: “I came to visit the poet...”, the poem is the most ordinary, landscape, descriptive, recording the visit.