My gift is poor and my voice is not loud (Boratynsky). My gift is poor, and my voice is not loud...

Alexandra Istogina was born in 1947 in the village of Yastrebovka, Kursk region. Graduated from the Faculty of Philology of Moscow University. She began publishing as a literary critic in 1975. Author of two poetry collections, several literary books and many critical and literary articles on Russian classical and modern literature, published in the magazines “Znamya”, “Continent”, “Literary Review”, “North” , “Rise”, “Volga” and in other publications. Lives in Moscow.

“Read to fall in love with me...”
(Charles Baudelaire)

The fate and creativity of every major poet are inseparable. Their unity is not always easy to detect, but it should be strived for. That is why the article, dedicated to Baratynsky’s late philosophical poetry, begins with a biographical sketch with elements of a psychological description of his personality. Baratynsky recognized his own creativity as a concentrated, albeit transformed, but reliable reflection of his life:

But I live, and the land is mine

Existence is kind to someone;

My distant descendant will find it

In my poems; who knows? my soul

Will find himself in intercourse with his soul,

And how I found a friend in a generation,

I will find a reader in posterity.

/1828 / 1

Thus, the poet, who is generally considered to be a model of objectivity and abstract generalizations that are the ultimate in lyricism, himself directly speaks of the correlation between his fate and his poetry. This cannot be ignored, and therefore Baratynsky’s verse, included in the title of the article, not only formulates the poet’s creative credo, but also serves as a kind of tuning fork for presentation. At the same time, taking into account the specifics of Baratynsky’s late lyrics, it is advisable to outwardly separate the narrative of life and the analysis of poetry.

Evgeny Baratynsky was born and spent his childhood on his father’s estate in the village of Mara, Kirsanovsky district, Tambov province. He was a year younger than Pushkin and, therefore, belonged to the generation that experienced the heyday and defeat of Decembrism. But long before that, “fate took him into its own hands,” 2 as he wrote to N.V. You're confused. In 1808, the Baratynskys moved to Moscow, but two years later their father died and the family returned to Mara. “From childhood I was burdened by addiction and was gloomy and unhappy,” Baratynsky complains in the same letter.

The family, although well-born, was not very rich. Evgeniy, the eldest among the children, was sent to St. Petersburg, where in a private boarding school he prepared to enter the Corps of Pages. In December 1812, he became a pupil of this privileged institution, the atmosphere of which, apparently, was sharply different from the one Pushkin found himself in at the Lyceum. In a letter to Zhukovsky, Baratynsky spoke in detail about his stay in the corps: about friends (“frisky boys”) and enemies (“chiefs”), about the “society of avengers” that arose under the influence of Schiller’s “Robbers” (“The idea is not to look at anything, to overthrow I was delighted with any coercion; a joyful feeling of freedom excited my soul..." and about the sad end of vengeful amusements - participation in the theft of money, followed by expulsion from the corps (1816). The personal order of Alexander the First forbade those who were guilty to serve anywhere. except as privates in the army.

It is not difficult to imagine the confused state of the young man - sensitive, ardent, morally scrupulous. The meeting with his mother shocked Baratynsky, especially with the “abyss of tenderness,” all the more unexpected. His heart “trembled greatly at the living appeal to him; its light dispersed the ghosts that had darkened my imagination,” he writes to Zhukovsky. “... I... was horrified by both my action and its consequences...”

Even in an adolescent letter to his mother, Baratynsky shows a rare for this age tendency towards introspection and picky self-esteem. But in the “story of my dissolute life” proposed by Zhukovsky, he, psychologically motivating his “pranks,” seeks and finds justification for himself (“naturally restless and enterprising,” ignorance of mentors, etc.) Obviously, only strictly alone with himself and he seriously judges his “wicked” act, and only in this self-condemnation is the path to real repentance, a painful but fruitful work of the soul.

The memory of the offense sits in Baratynsky like a giant splinter, and does not give rest to his conscience and pride. Without waiting for the sovereign's forgiveness, he went to St. Petersburg, where at the beginning of 1819 he joined the Life Guards Jaeger Regiment as a private.

Baratynsky developed an interest in literary work while still in the Corps of Pages, and in St. Petersburg, through his corps friend Krenitsyn, he met Delvig, who became especially close to him, Kuchelbecker, F. Glinka, and Pushkin. He attends their friendly evenings (later described in the poem “Feasts”), as well as S.D.’s salon. Ponomareva, Pletnev’s literary “Wednesdays”, Zhukovsky’s “Saturdays” - in a word, he leads a rather “distracted” life, but full of intellectual and artistic events. Soon his poems began to appear on the pages of magazines.

However, on January 4, 1820, Baratynsky was promoted to non-commissioned officer and transferred to the Neyshlotsky regiment stationed in Finland. This was perceived by both him and his friends as a kind of exile. Thus, fate itself “provoked” the image of the “Finnish exile” in his early lyrics.

But Baratynsky lives as a loved one in the house of regiment commander A.G. Lutkovsky, is friends with company commander N.M. Konshin, who writes poetry, often travels to St. Petersburg for a long time. It would seem that this is not such a difficult fate, very far from ordinary soldiering?..

“It is not my service, to which I am accustomed, that burdens me,” he writes to Zhukovsky, “it is the contradiction of my position that burdens me. I do not belong to any class, although I have some kind of title. No one's hopes, no one's pleasures are suitable for me. I must wait in inaction... for a change in my fate... I do not dare resign, although, having entered the service of my own free will, I should have the right to leave it whenever I please; but such determination can be mistaken for self-will...”

A.I. is trying to have the punishment lifted. Turgenev, P.A. Vyazemsky, V.A. Zhukovsky, a lengthy letter to whom was written in connection with these troubles and represents the confession of a “thoughtful prankster,” as Pushkin once called Baratynsky, who took a passionate part in his fate. While himself in Mikhailovsky exile, Pushkin wrote to his brother at the beginning of 1825: “What is Baratynsky?.. And how soon, how long?.. how to find out?.. Where is the messenger of redemption? Poor Baratynsky, when you think about him, you will inevitably be ashamed to be despondent...”

Not only out of his infinite kindness did Pushkin write this way, but also probably because he deeply felt the dramatic self-perception of a noble and proud man who found himself in such an ambiguous position. “Notify about Baratynsky,” he writes to his brother after some time, “I’ll light a candle for Zakrevsky 3 if he helps him out...”

In April 1825, Baratynsky, together with the officer rank, finally got the opportunity to throw off the “chains imposed by fate.” Having gone on vacation in the fall, he never returned to Finland. On January 31, 1826, having retired, Baratynsky settled in Moscow with his mother.

The test he voluntarily accepted - military service - certainly testifies to Baratynsky’s strong and conscientious character, but the languid and stubborn struggle with “fierce fate” tore his soul, took away a lot of vitality, deprived him of initiative and taste for resistance, and inclined his muse to intimacy , and the defeat of the Decembrists completed the pessimistic flavor of his worldview, which neither a happy family life nor recognition as a poet could shake.

After retiring, Baratynsky was not very happy. He was not an active opponent of the regime, but he certainly sympathized with the opposition. Pre-December inspiration penetrated into his lyrics (see, for example, the 1824 poem “The Storm”), and he was seriously, if not mortally wounded by the reprisal against the Decembrists, the terrible death of five, among whom was his close friend K.F. Ryleev. There are no hints about December 14 in Baratynsky’s letters, there is a faint echo in his poems (“Stanzas”, 1827), but his friend and relative N.V. Putyata witnessed the execution at dawn on July 13, 1826, and his story probably shocked the poet.

The impossibility of open sympathy for the condemned was burdened by the consciousness of one’s own powerlessness, involuntary timidity in front of the punishers, and this feeling was hopelessly humiliating.

Pushkin, who had the opportunity to directly answer Nicholas the First that “he would join the ranks of the rebels,” was internally freer and happier.

Baratynsky hid his grief deeply and never allowed himself to “express the feeling” even in poetry, that is, to “resolve it,” “take control of it.” The historically understandable defeat of the practical program of Decembrism seemed to him the collapse of freedom-loving ideals in general and the best aspirations of his generation in particular. He took the excesses of government autocracy as a manifestation of “autocratic fate”...

The collapse of hopes and the annoying hardships of mastering secular life... “My heart demands friendship, not politeness,” he writes to Putyata in January 1826, “and the pretense of goodwill gives rise to a heavy feeling in me... Moscow is a new exile for me.” The need to immerse himself “in the trifles of ordinary life” depressed Baratynsky. “I live quietly, peacefully, happy with my family life,” he writes to Putyata two years later, “but... Moscow is not to my heart. Imagine that I don’t have a single comrade, not a single person to whom I could say: remember? with whom I could have a wide-open talk...”

A letter to Pletnev (1839) sums up some results: “These last ten years of existence, which at first glance had no peculiarity, were more difficult for me than all the years of my Finnish imprisonment... I want sun and leisure, uninterrupted solitude and silence, if possible , limitless”...

And these ten years included, in addition to family worries and holidays, meetings with Pushkin and Vyazemsky, acquaintance with Chaadaev and Mitskevich, rapprochement and disagreements with wise men, the death of Pushkin, the fame and death of Lermontov (about whom Baratynsky did not say a word), Gogol’s stories (which he welcomed) and, finally, friendship with Ivan Vasilyevich Kireevsky, a talented critic, publisher of the magazine “European”, a deep man.

Baratynsky wrote this to him in 1831: “You are the first of all the people I know with whom I pour myself out without shyness: this means that no one instilled in me such confidence in his soul and character.”... He wrote this to him: “We comrades of the mental service are with you.” Together with Kireevsky, Baratynsky had a hard time with the banning of the magazine, and encouraged the publisher as best he could: “Let us think in silence... Let us enclose ourselves in our circle, like the first Christian brothers, owners of light, persecuted in their time, but now triumphant. We will write without typing. Maybe a prosperous time will come...”

But soon, unclear circumstances prevented friendship and gave Baratynsky a reason to throw a sharp reproach to the “new tribes” (poem “For Sowing the Forest,” 1843).

Being a man with a “tender and vindictive” soul (his own words about Rousseau), Baratynsky could see a “hidden ditch” of treachery where there was none at all or where there was a literary struggle, alas, not always correct. His wounded pride also harmed him, often depriving him of goodwill and fairness in his reviews of the literary work of his contemporaries, even his friends. The attitude towards Pushkin was tense. Baratynsky’s epigrams are distinguished by causticity and mockery, bordering on public insult. Is this why he suspected something similar in relation to himself in others?.. His virtuoso reason, even in Belinsky’s posthumous praise of Pushkin, found the intention to offend him, Baratynsky (see the poem “When is your voice, oh poet...”, 1843 .).

A difficult, “choosy”, demanding character, coupled with some creative tasks, which will be discussed later, put Baratynsky in a special, isolated position both in life and in literature: “he became a stranger to everyone and close to no one” (Gogol). His wife, whom he loved very much, was an interesting person and devoted to him, but she could not, of course, replace the lost hopes and friendships. The rejection of “general questions” in favor of “exceptional existence” led to inevitable inner loneliness and creative isolation. Only high talent and a remarkable desire for self-control helped Baratynsky adequately respond to the challenge thrown at him by “irreconcilable fate.” In 1825 he wrote:

I was weighed down by a burden of sorrow;

But I did not fall before fate,

Found joy in the songs of the muses

And in high indifference,

And the world's despised destiny

I knew how to ennoble...

/“Stanzas”/

Being an extremely sensitive, easily wounded, “feminine” nature, as befits a poet, Baratynsky passionately educated himself, even drilled him. He developed in himself such “masculine” qualities as sobriety of assessments, fearlessness in the face of “steep truths”, rigor and concentration of philosophical thinking, the desire for clear completeness, even finality of words and gestures.

“You cannot acquire what is not given by the heart,” he asserted, but the struggle with oneself and the return to oneself, the alternating rebellion and humility provide the underlying drama of Baratynsky’s mature lyrics.

“Gifting is an order,” Baratynsky believed, and he carried out the “assignment” with enviable inflexibility. His creative path, despite its apparent smoothness, was not simple. He was friends with A.A. Bestuzhev and K.F. Ryleev, was published in their almanac “Polar Star”, but the poets Decembrists His work did not fully satisfy him, because it lacked civic motives and felt the influence of classicism (“coldness and French superstition”). At the same time, its originality was not in doubt. An early inclination towards a sophisticated analysis of mental life gave Baratynsky the reputation of a “dialectician,” subtle and insightful. Pushkin called his elegy “Confession” “perfection,” and this is not a behind-the-scenes compliment or polite praise, but a sincere, generous assessment of his literary brother. “In him, in addition to talent, the foundation is dense and beautiful,” Vyazemsky asserted.

But with the release of the poem “Eda” (early 1826), which proposed a new solution of a romantic nature, different from Pushkin’s, and was not understood by either critics or readers, Baratynsky’s popularity began to wane. “The love of stones with the enmity of Fortune is One...” - he will write many years later. Nothing, however, shook his determination to “follow his own new path,” that is, first of all, he believed, to break out from under the comprehensive (ideological, thematic, stylistic) influence of Pushkin, open his own theme and give an original poetic solution to it.

Russian poetry of the 20-30s of the last century sought a synthesis of citizenship and lyrical power, social significance and freedom of expression of the creative personality. The “Lubomudry” put forward a program of “poetry of thought.” Baratynsky, apparently not participating in these searches, also solved significant problems of creating Russian philosophical lyrics. He responded in his own way to Venevitinov’s reproaches that “for us, feeling in some way frees us from the obligation to think and, seducing us with the ease of unaccountable pleasure, distracts us from the high goal of improvement.”

Analyzing “Tavrida” by A. Muravyov (“Moscow Telegraph”, 1827), Baratynsky expresses considerations that sound like his own creative principle: “True poets are so rare precisely because they must at the same time have properties that are completely contradictory to each other : the flame of the creative imagination and the cold mind of the believer. As for the syllable, we must remember that we write in order to convey our thoughts to each other; if we express ourselves inaccurately, we are misunderstood or not understood at all: why write?..”

True poets are understood as poets truth. Poetry is sought thought, exactly expressed and addressed To to the reader, even if only “in posterity.” Nothing too misanthropic or arrogant. And, as already noted, Baratynsky was not alone in his search. “Russian social life, especially after the events of December 1825 and the reaction that followed, showed strong tendencies towards a philosophical understanding of modern reality, life in general, and man. The Russian thinker of an independent and progressive persuasion, deprived of hopes for the quick implementation of his social ideals, sought to compensate for this tragic lack with the depth and completeness of knowledge, with an internal, spiritual comprehension of the truth. And in this he could not and did not want to limit himself to little. He absolutely needed the whole truth: only a world-encompassing truth and a world-encompassing philosophy could satisfy him.” 4

Schelling’s philosophy became such a “world-encompassing philosophy” for a time, and even Baratynsky, despite his rationalistic mindset, fell under its spell. “The poetic and anti-dogmatic basis of Schelling’s philosophy allowed both the philosophers and other Russian admirers of the German philosopher to follow him freely, without at all sacrificing the originality of their own thoughts and their own view of things.” 5 Baratynsky’s work fully confirms this, but for now we will only note that the need for thought and the “poetry of thought” was, as they say, in the air, so Baratynsky’s lyrics, with their “ungeneral expression” and persistent interest in the superpersonal, were completely in the spirit time.

Thematically, Baratynsky's late lyrics are not very diverse. She is characterized by concentration, sometimes even a focus on any problem.

One of the most important was the question of truth. Its principle lies in the fact that the poet’s understanding of the essence and purpose of truth provides the correct guideline for the attitude towards the thoughts expressed by himself.

At first recoiling from the destructive, deadening truth (and it was these qualities that he noted above all), Baratynsky soon leaned toward the opposite point of view, preferring honest and cold evidence of reason. “The pride of the mind and the right of the heart in the incessant struggle...” - he admitted in 1828.

It is interesting that three years earlier, Pushkin, preparing a response to a note about his “Demon,” emphasized that he saw “a moral goal” in the need to preserve “the hopes and best poetic prejudices of the soul.”

“What is true is moral,” Baratynsky declares, as if polemicizing with Pushkin (who left his answer unpublished). There are no low, dark, ugly truths, especially in art.

Two areas - radiance and darkness -

We are equally eager to explore...

/“Blessed is he who proclaimed the holy...”, 1839/

“Criminal” and “beautiful” deserve equal attention from the artist, equal impartiality in consideration, equal rights in literature.

A whole bunch of problems, human and creative, are connected with the attitude to truth.

Everything is a thought and a thought! Poor artist!

O her priest! there is no oblivion for you;

Everything is here, and here is the person and the light,

And death, and life, and truth without cover.

Incisor, organ, brush! Happy is he who is attracted

To them sensually, without going beyond them!

There is hops for him at this worldly festival!

But before you, as before a naked sword,

Thought, sharp ray! earthly life is growing pale!

Think - painful the poet’s duty, for thought, according to Baratynsky, is a “naked sword” and a “sharp ray” at the same time, that is, something sharp, piercing, destructive. A living, “motley” life turns pale from fear of thought - the “sword”, 6 its merciless sentence, and at the same time the revealing light of thought - the “ray” reveals all the pallor, weakness of earthly existence.

“I tore apart the music like a corpse,” says the arrogant Salieri. The “priest” of thought goes further, because for him the “corpse” is all life, suitable only for “dismantling” it, “groping” it and pushing it away as a “delusion of the senses.”

A triumph of the hopeless coldness of the spirit over the deceptive heat of life, but a tragic triumph, and the poet’s exclamations smack not of delight, but of despair.

Thought is truth. Thought is death. Therefore, truth is death. Of course, the “poor artist of words” pronounces this truth without ecstasy, without “intoxication.” He is a prisoner of duty, and the drama of his situation is in voluntary captivity. Thought as a tool of analysis is forced to “anatomize,” that is, to work with an already inanimate object, along the way to the truth, losing the very possibility of finding it.

“The thought and the spoken word 7 is a lie,” Tyutchev insightfully noted, but for Baratynsky the spoken thought is the truth itself, albeit “gloomy,” unkind, “fatal,” as long as it is objective.

However, its bearer - a person, a poet - is inevitably subjective. Baratynsky strives for the impossible, and the maximalism of his claims predetermines the obvious outcome - dissatisfaction with the inferiority of thought. And yet, despite the obvious tension of the intellectual situation, he sees his duty and merit in the truthful testimony of a cooled mind, noting selflessness as “high morality of thinking.”

For Baratynsky, creativity and his own creativity is a thought that expresses the truth, and most often it is indisputable and, alas, bleak from the usual point of view. Rainbow truths did not bother him, and this is the sharp originality of his work, which embodied disharmony as an equal “hypostasis” of existence.

“The more I see Baratynsky,” wrote Vyazemsky A.I. Turgenev, - all the more I love him for his feelings, for his mind, amazingly subtle and deep, crushing”.

The analytical, dissecting nature of Baratynsky’s talent was noted even in the material of elegies. But he traced not just traditional confrontations, but crowding out, replacement: feelings with thought, life with death, dreams with experience.

And disappeared in the light of enlightenment

Poetry, childish dreams...

/“The Last Poet”, 1835/

The paradox is both amazing and joyless - for all its “objectivity”!..

He intensely explores the “junctions” of phenomena, “adjacent” states, which also turn out to be opposed, friendship-enmity of thought and truth, for example. Equally complex are the relationships between thought and fiction (imagination), truth and truth, 8 fate and life.

Even in the poem “Delvigu” (1821), Baratynsky wrote:

Our painful lot: the due date

Feeding on a painful life

To love and cherish the illness of existence

And fear joyful death.

The needs of an unyielding blind slave,

Slaves of autocratic rock!

Earthly sensations force us

Random life conquers...

It is enough to listen to the epithets to understand that it is not death that is hostile to man, but life, or rather, fate, this “conditional gift of the stingy sky.” Man is a slave, and the upward desire that controls him, this timid platonism (“we remember our native sky”), only adds to his hopeless languor and anxiety. From the grandiose Derzhavin formula “I am a king - I am a slave - I am a worm - I am a god” Baratynsky takes only defective parts of antitheses.

The spaciousness of life and the grip of fate are so keenly felt by the poet that in nature he seeks the law of resigned submission. One’s own “reasonable” slavery must be included in universal pattern.

“Why should a slave dream of freedom?..” - this is how he begins a wonderful poem from 1833. The contradictions of the human “lot” plunge him into deep, dull sorrow:

Oh, it's painful for us

Life, beating in the heart like a mighty wave

And squeezed into narrow boundaries by fate.

And, paradoxically, it only gains power and authority from this.

The same, perhaps, with a person? No, Baratynsky is not carried away by this line of thought. He is rather inclined, like the Stoics, to choose hopelessness, the renunciation of hope altogether. 9 But there is a palpable sense of compulsion in this choice. In addition, it is strangely overlooked that the renunciation of hope is already a consequence of fear, and the person who makes a courageous challenge is in a strong position. Baratynsky’s contemporary Tyutchev gave a fascinating sense of this:

Let the Olympians have an envious eye

They look at the struggle of unyielding hearts,

Who, while fighting, fell, defeated only by Fate,

He snatched the victorious crown from their hands.

Human freedom and selflessness give rise to a feeling of joy.

Tyutchev emphasizes the inflexibility of hearts, Baratynsky - the inflexibility of fate. Tyutchev at least does not abandon the sublime illusion, while Baratynsky declares the illusion itself illusory. Tyutchev avoids, as much as possible, exposing the abyss with their “fears and darkness”, prefers the “fabric of the blessed cover”. 10 Baratynsky desires only “truth without cover.” Tyutchev craves self-forgetfulness, but Baratynsky is too proud to allow himself this weakness. He is ready for exclusively graceless revelations, up to and including “revelations of the underworld.” This also demonstrates the freedom of an extraordinary personality, but it evokes a painful feeling.

Being consistent in his own way, Baratynsky not only accepts, but undertakes justify the most traditionally negative aspects of life. Montaigne, for example, sought to achieve this, proposing to reconsider the attitude towards death, poverty, suffering: “after all, fate supplies us only with raw material, and we ourselves are left to give it form,” that is, to endow it with a “bitter and disgusting taste” or “to make this taste pleasant."

Baratynsky is less free in dealing with life, but in Russian, and, perhaps, world lyric poetry, few people before him tried to contemplate death from such a close distance.

I will not call death the daughter of darkness

And, with a servile dream

Giving her a coffin skeleton,

I won’t attack her with my scythe.

O daughter of the supreme ether!

O luminous beauty!

In your hand is the olive of peace,

Not a destroying scythe.

When did the world bloom

From the balance of wild forces,

In your keeping almighty

His device was entrusted.

And you fly over creation,

Consent is right up his alley

And there is a cool breath in it

Tranquilizing the riot of existence...

And the man! Holy virgin!

In front of you with his cheeks

The stains of anger disappear instantly,

The heat of lust runs away.

Befriends the righteous you

Unfriendly fate of people:

You caress with the same hand

You are master and slave.

Confusion, coercion,

The conditions of our troubled days,

You are the solution to all mysteries,

You are the solution to all chains.

/“Death”, 1828/

Baratynsky's poem is often a lyrical image of an idea, just as Dostoevsky's hero is to a significant extent personification of an idea. But Dostoevsky always has an opposing idea, Baratynsky almost never. It excludes “antithesis”, and with it “synthesis”. The poem “Death” was written by an ecstatic atheist and breathes truly infernal inspiration. Death itself appears here as a kind of “synthesis,” but isn’t it too ominous?..

Or maybe this frantically hammered praise is a kind of spell, a spell O R? We must try to present the terrible, incomprehensible as ordinary, even useful, to “tame” and “neutralize”...

“Think about death!” - Whoever says this tells us to think about freedom. He who has learned to die has forgotten how to be a slave,” says Seneca. The idea of “throwing off all compulsion” delighted Baratynsky not only in his youth.

But in order to appreciate the originality of this “apology for death” as a literary phenomenon, it is necessary to remember How Other poets wrote about the same thing - before and after.

Derzhavin exclaimed: “Death, the trembling of nature and fear!..”, but in the ode “God” he inspiredly sang the greatness and goodness of Providence.

Batyushkov has piercing lyricism, “a harmonic shower of tears”:

Wanderers for a minute, we walk on graves,

We consider all days as losses,

On the wings of joy we fly to our friends -

So what?.. let’s hug their ballot boxes...

/"To friend"/

Young Pushkin wrote:

Breathing sweet hope as an infant,

If only I believed that there was once a soul,

Having escaped from decay, he carries away eternal thoughts,

Both memory and love in the abyss are endless...

But in vain I indulge in a deceptive dream;

My mind persists, despises hope...

Nothingness awaits me beyond the grave...

Later, his thoughts about “inevitable death” became more humble and brighter, but were never focused on the phenomenon of death itself. He does not seek to “explore the secrets of the tomb,” for he honors the order of existence and trusts its unspoken law. His sadness is truly human: living for Pushkin is “an inexplicable pleasure.” Meanwhile, he wrote many poems about death, varying in depth and boldness - from “The Drowned Man” to “The Spell” and “Do I wander along the noisy streets...” But Pushkin’s so-called “necrophilia” comes more likely from Montaigne, for he I also tried to constantly think and speak about death, but without reverence or fear, “variably”, as about a curious everyday life - or he chastely averted his gaze...

In Symbolist poems, death is conditional. That’s why, perhaps, the image found by Blok is so striking:

The little dwarf quietly came out

And he stopped the clock...

/“In the blue distant bedroom...”/

And here is Tarkovsky:

Death is pernicious, but life is even more pernicious,

And life's arbitrariness is unbridled...

/"After the war"/

It was said as if “after” Baratynsky, but for Tarkovsky’s life-loving muse something else is typical:

Thank you for keeping my smile on my lips

Above the salt and bile of the earth.

Well, goodbye, Olympic violin,

Don't laugh, don't sing at me.

/“Earthly”/

Zabolotsky creates the theory of “metamorphoses”, according to which nothing dies: thought is alive, just as nature is alive. Following Tsiolkovsky, he longs to feel like a “state of atoms” that continues after death live in a different “association”, a different form. “Immortal and increasingly blissful matter is the only material that we cannot grasp in its final and simplest form,” he wrote, trying to “tune in” to painless destruction, deindividuation. And sometimes this was possible, especially in poetry:

I won't die, my friend. Breath of flowers

I will find myself in this world.

Centuries-old oak my living soul

It will cover its roots, sad and stern.

In its large sheets I will give shelter to the mind,

With the help of my branches I nurture my thoughts,

So that they hang over you from the darkness

And you were involved in my consciousness...

/"Will"/

“The vast world of foggy transformations” does not go beyond the limits of life. Zabolotsky's fantasies are artistic, inventive, his poems are like dreams, like fairy tales, although he worshiped above all reason and clarity of design. Only in the dying lyrics are bitter doubts and murmurs allowed:

Good God,

Why did you create the world, both sweet and bloody,

And he gave me the mind so that I could comprehend it!..

/“In much knowledge there is considerable sadness...”/

One can recall Fet and Sologub, Annensky and Akhmatova, Mandelstam and Khodasevich, Gumilyov and Kuzmin, Tsvetaeva and Yesenin, right down to modern poets: Zhigulin, Samoilov, Val. Sokolov and others - no one escaped special unrest, special even intonation, touching on this “topic”.

Baratynsky remains icy calm and, as if in defiance of the proverb “You can’t look at death like the sun!”, he doesn’t look away and doesn’t even squint his eyes. Amazing self-control, but its essence is contradictory, if not tragic. The poem “Death” is a masterpiece absolutization some thought or guess, absolutization, to which Baratynsky’s decisive mind is so prone. He takes the negative aspects of life (“the riot of existence,” the rampant passions, social imperfections) and “humbles” them with a dispassionate denier, as if not taking seriously “all the pleasures of life” and all the suffering associated with death.

But what leads to unprecedented “blasphemy of life” is not so much pride as a sad doubt about the value of that “random life” to which a person is subject from birth.

Baratynsky is a poet of uniqueness, originality:

Completely intoxicated

Our only first love.

/“Confession”, 1823, 1834/

He does not tolerate return: possible completeness has been exhausted immediately and forever, and in repetition he imagines forgery, illusion, betrayal original.

The “focus” of his nature, prone to maximalism and categoricalness, is very sharply and recklessly expressed in the poem “What are you days for!..” /1840/: The world is static, man is constrained, soul and body are strikingly “incompatible”, alienated. But everyone is each other's prisoners. Life is meager, human possibilities are insignificant, and even those “without at wait,” the world order is meaningless and fruitless - Boratynsky comes to this conclusion, and there is hardly a more hopeless poem in world poetry. By the end of it, the darkness thickens into an irresistible darkness. This feeling is strengthened and absolutized due to the absence of “objections”, “antithesis”. The disintegration was recorded with convincing certainty; there is no hint of revival or transformation. “The ring of existence is tight...” - Blok will say later. But how much pain is there in his other confession:

How hard it is to walk among people

And pretend not to die...

But “there are many to whom life seems not bitter, but unnecessary,” wrote Seneca almost twenty centuries ago.

And as if insisting on this unforgivable uselessness, Baratynsky writes a requiem for the claims of the human spirit.

I am the connection of worlds existing everywhere...

/Derzhavin/

I am a man, I am in the middle of the world...

/Tarkovsky/

What do i do? I'm small and bad...

/Baratynsky/

The childishly plaintive, aching intonation of “The Little One” (1835) reveals the enormity of its author’s grief. “The Winged Sigh,” endowed with a wide range of physical manifestations, is amazingly ephemeral, and its inferiority is conveyed with awe and downright affectionate sympathy.

Like Tyutchev’s poem “Madness,” “The Little One” does not lend itself to a primitive rational interpretation, but it can, obviously, be considered as a variation of spiritual oppression, metaphysical lack of freedom, a variation of that very life constrained by fate. The spaciousness of life, like “meaningless eternity,” is a burden to this strange creature:

I'm from a tribe of spirits

But not a resident of the Empyrean,

And barely to the clouds

Having soared, I fall weaker.

What do i do? I'm small and bad...

The defenselessness is unheard of, peace is unavailable, there is no consolation.

We'll soon get tired in the sky, -

And no insignificant dust is given

Breathe divine fire -

/"Glimmer"<1825 > /

This is how Tyutchev conveyed the sad limitations of human nature.

Baratynsky transfers the accents:

Poor spirit! insignificant spirit!

The fatal breath

Viet, spins me like feathers,

Rushes under the thunderous sky.

A tree leaf hits me

The flying ashes are choking!

I raise a sad cry... 11

The blatant weakness of the spirit or the pitiful posthumous fate of the soul - the taste of life’s “brushes” is equally “bitter and disgusting”...

From the message to “Delvig” to the tragic poems “Autumn” (1836-1837) and “What are you doing, days!..” extends Baratynsky’s conviction of the meaninglessness of human existence. “To love life more than its meaning” - this formula of Ivan Karamazov, suggested by the “scheme monk” Alyosha, is deeply alien to Baratynsky’s creative and human consciousness. Reflecting on the “harvest” from the “field of life,” he is not seduced by anything, does not send greetings or blessings to anything:

Your day has risen and it is clear to you

All the insolence of young gullibility;

You have tested the depth

Human madness and hypocrisy.

You, once a friend of all hobbies,

A fiery seeker of sympathy,

The king of brilliant mists - and suddenly

Contemplator of barren wilds,

Alone with melancholy, which is a mortal groan

Barely strangled by your pride...

Winter is coming and the earth is thin

In wide bald patches of powerlessness,

And the joyfully shining fields

Golden classes of abundance,

With death there is life, wealth with poverty -

All images of the ex-year

They will be equal under the snow veil,

Covering them monotonously, -

From now on this is the light before you,

But there is no future harvest in it for you!

“Autumn” contains all the fundamental themes and solutions of Baratynsky’s lyrics: disappointment, the futility of human efforts, misanthropic motives and a complaint about the lack of “feedback”, the ridiculous ardor of the heart and the coldness of experience, opposition to the “immortal illusions of the spirit”, questioning the coffin and disbelief in the “future” harvest." A poem, like a tree, “branches” into stanzas that are self-meaning, but held together by a “trunk” of meaning. Images gravitate toward symbolism, that is, deliberate generalization; their grandeur strives to absorb the whole world with its imaginaries and self-deceptions. The intonation is sad and at the same time caustic. Pulsating iambs, aggravated by archaisms, create the impression of gloomy and not just solemn, but triumphant immutability.

It is interesting that Baratynsky’s reflection “convinces” more emotionally than intellectually. But back in 1828, Pushkin noted: “No one more than Baratynsky has feelings in his thoughts and taste in his feelings.”

And in fact, all his lyrics are characterized by high grace, noble restraint of self-expression.

Baratynsky’s acute originality - and in the joyless desire to go to the end in the “beating” of hope, to take away even the hope of hope.

Only sometimes does his proud mind droop before the “blessing dreams” of his heart, so poet defeats the “merciless” thinker. In the same “Autumn” a counterbalance to the all-corroding corrosion of experience arises - “a blooming shore behind the black darkness.”

Before the justified Providence you prostrate yourself

You will fall with grateful humility,

With hope that knows no bounds,

And satisfied with the mind...

It’s like Tyutchev’s “wind”, “warm and damp”, which even in the darkest bad weather “will blow over our souls as if in spring”...

But Baratynsky is not like that. He immediately turns to doubt about grace, because, he is sure, “that verb that passed over the passionate earthly will not find a response.” Spiritual gains are individual, indescribable, and this causes incurable grief in a person seemingly prone to misanthropy, preferring “solitary rapture.”

The same is in the poem “Rhyme”, which in its own way denies artistic seclusion:

But there are no markets for our thoughts,

But there is no forum for our thoughts,

The poet does not know between us

Is he flying high or not?

How great is creative thought?

The judge and the defendant himself,

Say: your restless heat -

A funny illness or a supreme gift?

Solve the unsolvable question!..

But if in “Rhyme” there is a certain hint of good news already because “the aching spirit is healed by chant,” then in “Autumn,” despite impulses into the area of “radiance,” Baratynsky rejects the possibility of any kind of harmony.

Including the harmony of nature and man.

Since ancient times, poetry has been sensitive to the relationship between man and “nature”. The famous “Am I wandering...”, where nature is unexpectedly and seemingly incorrectly called “indifferent,” provides the basis for the following interpretation: Pushkin perceives nature as eternally alive and indifferent to man after his death, since the direct connection between them is lost. A person remains in the spirit and belongs to other spheres. Dead man and nature after his death mutually indifferent, its beauty shines on the living, and man falls away from nature. 12

But Pushkin, who was not too inclined towards metaphysics, especially in poetry, perhaps did not have any of this in mind. In any case, to the person in his poems, nature is sweet, desirable, the connections are simple and deep. For the “pantheist” Tyutchev, nature appears “in the full splendor of its manifestations.” He is devoted to the elements, listens attentively to it, and perhaps that is why “he has hops at the worldly holiday.” Tyutchev states:

Equanimity in everything,

There is complete harmony in nature, -

Only in our illusory freedom

We are aware of the discord...

/“There is a melodiousness in the sea waves...”/

Zabolotsky rejected “structure” and “consonance”, even called nature an “eternal winepress,” but all his life he thought lovingly about it, considered man to be “unsteady” with her mind and exclaimed, turning to nature:

How sweet it is to understand

Your incoherent and vague lessons!..

/"Drought"/

Baratynsky rarely “drinks the oblivion of thought,” so he rarely experiences nature directly, without reflection. He notes her impending discord with the man who approached her without love, but with “a crucible, scales and measure.” All the blame is placed on the person:

Having despised feeling, he trusted his mind;

I got lost in the hustle and bustle of research...

And the heart of nature closed to him,

And there are no prophecies on earth.

/“Signs”, 1839/

This sounds in the spirit of Schellingian concepts, like the poem “On Goethe’s Death” (1833), where nature and the poet breathe “one life.” Baratynsky himself could no longer breathe like that, although he tried. The first stanzas of “Autumn” are filled with a desire to feel the state of fading nature, and farewell to its beauty is colored by insatiable sadness. But here, too, meditation overcomes live communication, and feeling is supplanted by thinking, even if it is emotional.

In 1827, Baratynsky published the poem “The Last Death,” where he described in detail the “last fate of all living things” that he had dreamed of. Pictures of the future are far from expressing apocalyptic visions; they show exhaustion, lack of will, and the slow extinction of weakened humanity. And beautiful solemn nature, “deep silence” on earth without people evokes a painful sense of loss. And the less horror there is in the picture, the more peaceful it is, the more acute this feeling. There is no one to see this beauty, no one to love, no one to praise...

Paradoxically, “The Last Death” is a sermon on harmony. The “imbalance” of earthly existence leads to the destruction of humanity. The mental elite is doomed to physical extinction, and Schellingism, which oriented people only towards fantasies and refined spirituality in return practical activity is untenable.

This idea of Baratynsky, judging by the reaction of critics, was not understood, although the poet’s fears have not lost their relevance to this day...

In his view of nature, the author of “Will Accept” was the most “unoriginal,” but perhaps also the farthest from statements reminiscent of dogma. Baratynsky’s attitude towards religion was complex. All ancient deities and appeals to them are conventional, literary in nature. Mono-religions are a different matter. Russian Schellingians, as is known, half-despised Christian teaching as “folk” and placed Spinoza above the Gospel.

Baratynsky, who is usually prone to “heresies,” is more restrained and traditional. But the Creator invariably present in his universe is unusual: He entrusted the structure of the world to death, abandons a person without help and hope, is mocking and almost “jealously evil”, like ancient Fate...

Baratynsky did not hide his doubts about the omnipotence of the “Invisible” and even in His good wisdom, which is why providence must be acquitted and its justice is appreciated by the suffering person.

Only once does his speech sound almost humbly and its meaning is humanly significant:

King of Heaven! calm down

My sick spirit!

Of the delusions of the land

Send me oblivion

And on your strict paradise

Give strength to your heart.

/1842 or 1843/

Baratynsky doubted everything, but he never doubted the fruits of his own thoughts. That is why, perhaps, the motive of repentance, the “snake of heart remorse,” is alien to him. He seemed to carve his truths in stone and did it with amazing indisputability, thereby, as it were, asserting their inviolability. He was probably guided by what Tolstoy called “the energy of delusion,” which is necessary for a writer to paradoxically be confident that he is right.

But becoming a poet disillusionment, Baratynsky took on his soul an immeasurably heavy burden of not only his own melancholy, but also the disappointments of others, almost hypnotically inspired or supported by him. He was aware of the drama of his situation:

In vain! I feel: grave

She accepted me alive

And, my suffocating light gift,

A fatal thought falls on my chest

It lay like a grave mound...

/“When the darkness disappears...”, 1834/

Sometimes it seems that Baratynsky’s total skepticism is not the equivalent of his worldview, but only a “working hypothesis,” an instrument of intellectual activity, that same “naked sword” of sophisticated, fearless thought.

If it were not for the “dry grief” with which he utters his destructive truths!.. There is in it, by the way, the subtlest similarity with the grief of the Grand Inquisitor, who, on the contrary, was forced to lie for the sake of the imaginary good of the people he despised . Both do not trust Providence, do not believe in man with his pitiful, “current”, and not “absolute” mind, do not recognize, although in different ways, freedom of choice, do not tolerate alternatives. And at the same time, Baratynsky, who said with conviction: “I give the beauty of truth to my poems...”, sharply opposes Dostoevsky’s character, because truth is moral, lie is immoral. Having come together, the extremes diverge radically again.

The only thing that Baratynsky’s bilious reflection does not encroach on is the memory of his childhood, of the places “where, by the will of heaven, he recognized existence.” With constant tenderness he remembers the “protective shelter” of his father’s house in Mara:

Well? Let the past pass in a fleeting sleep!

You are still beautiful, stalled Elisey,

And with mighty charm

Filled for my soul...

/“Desolation”, 1834/

Baratynsky’s last poem “To an Italian Uncle” (1844) is also connected with the Tambov “patrimony”: dedicated to the poet’s teacher Giacinto Borghese. Memory involuntarily flies to his native land, where the Italian “found a peaceful shelter, and later a calm coffin”:

Our stormy, midnight aquilon,

No worse than the breath of oblivion and peace,

Than the sighs of the south with their fragrant rapture...

Baratynsky's late lyrics, despite its harsh coloring, make a strong and varied impression. For all the “twilight”, she is humane. This was noted even by Belinsky, who had many complaints against the poet, but after his death wrote: “... a thinking person will always re-read Baratynsky’s poems with pleasure, because he will always find in them person 13- a subject that is always interesting for a person.”

Baratynsky’s total skepticism is “a calcareous layer in the blood of a sick son,” the same “layer” that Mandelstam wrote about in the poem “January 1, 1924.” Baratynsky's life coincided with the oppressive era of post-Decembrism. And it’s not a matter of “ideological powerlessness” in front of the social reality he hates, as E.N. writes about. Kupreyanov (see introductory article to the cited publication, p. 36). Where and when was the tyrant ideologically stronger than the opposition? Apart from censorship and hard labor, apart from intimidation and corruption of subjects, the “autocratic villains” never had any “ideas”. Belonging to a beheaded, cut-down generation tragically coincided with the individual qualities of Baratynsky’s personality, predisposed to melancholy, harsh analysis and “heresies.” He himself noted the disastrous lack of “enlightened fanaticism” and “heartfelt convictions.”

Baratynsky practically lacks the theme of memory, which deprived his thought of space and perspective and flattened it. Blok would later say about this loss of historical and spiritual soil:

And for those who did not know that the past exists,

That the coming night is not empty, -

Fatigue and revenge clouded my heart,

Disgust curled my lips...

/“You say that I am cold, withdrawn and dry...”/

The “vain”, by Baratynsky’s own admission, departure from the simplified understanding of Pushkin’s harmony turned out to be fraught with considerable losses - both creative and purely human. But in the very categorical thinking of Baratynsky there is something youthfully defiant, maximalist. There is so much hidden youthful energy and spiritual strength in its denial that it turns into its own opposite, like any extreme.

In addition, in the late lyric poetry there are poems that are “completely new in both spirit and form.” 14 “There were storms, bad weather...” almost free from obsessive rationality. “Achilles” sounds very purposeful and not at all hopeless. The poem “On the Death of Goethe” opposes all of Baratynsky’s skeptical and nihilistic statements about human life. Even “The Little One” with its shimmering meaning testifies to the mobile inner essence of the author. The “fatal duel” of the poet and philosopher continued throughout his life, but his strict devotion to the truth and fearlessness on the path to it were not shaken:

Feel the indignant darkness -

Will disappear, merge with the void

A ghost that frightens you

And your horror will smile at the delusion of feelings...

/“The crowd greets the anxious day...”, 1839/

Hating rationality, he himself was its prisoner. Corroded the soul of poetry, feelings, like Salieri - muses s ku. And this fearlessness makes one tremble, the hair rises, the forehead freezes, and we hasten to call the poet incomparable, deep, insightful, even perspicacious. (This, by the way, is very close to the twentieth century). For the same purpose, Baratynsky forced his muse, his thought, to dispassion, “coldness” (coldness as a principle, which is also very much in the spirit of the latest theories of art: cf., for example, the reasoning of Mann’s heroes Tonio Kröger and Adrian Leverkühn). 15 One can note a number of other features that bring Baratynsky closer to modern Western artists: a skeptical attitude towards man and spiritual values, paradoxically associated with the centuries-old tradition of humanism; the requirement of non-triviality, “taste” when depicting feelings, etc.

However, the intoxication with the word as such, sound writing, “steep and superficial punishment of feeling through literary language” is alien to Baratynsky, but this is a subject for a special conversation. The important thing is that the work of Evgeny Baratynsky has firmly entered into the spiritual composition Russian literature that unmistakably rejects everything false and inhuman. Catharsis does not often visit Baratynsky’s reader, but his poetry evokes a special state of mind, striking with firmness, self-control and the power of extraordinary thought, aesthetically impeccably expressed.

Baratynsky died unexpectedly during a trip to Italy. Death interrupted his voice, perhaps precisely “in the higher sounds,” for in “Piroskaf” (1844), openly in major key, “Italian,” there are clearly final lines, but also aimed at the future:

I left many lands behind me;

I endured a lot with my troubled soul

False joys, true evils,

I have solved many rebellious issues,

Before the hands of the Marseilles sailors

We raised the anchor, a symbol of hope!..

Sailing from Marseille to Naples, Baratynsky recalled his youthful dream of naval service and with this “return to his beginning” ended his earthly journey.

Referring to the poem that began this article, Osip Mandelstam wrote: “I would like to know which of those who catch the eye of these lines by Baratynsky will not shudder with the joyful and terrible trembling that happens when they are unexpectedly called by name” (article “About the interlocutor”, 1913).

In this Unexpected- the inexhaustible charm of the poet Evgeny Baratynsky and his “rebellious muse”.

1 Poems by E. Baratynsky are quoted from the publication: Evgeny Baratynsky. Complete collection of poems. “The Poet's Library”, L., 1957. Almost all the poems are approximately dated, that is, written later than the indicated year.

2 Letters and articles by E. Baratynsky are quoted from the publication: Evgeny Baratynsky. Poems. Poems. Prose. Letters. M., 1951. For continuity of presentation - without specifying pages.

3 Zakrevsky A.A. - Governor General of Finland.

4 E.A. Maimin. Russian philosophical poetry. M., 1976, p. 21.

5 Ibid., p.19.

6 It is interesting to note that mystics and some Catholic saints often use the image of a sword or spear piercing the heart during mystical ecstasy. Wed. Blok also has a description of “colored worlds”: “radiant sword", "golden sword”...

7 The quotations are mine, except where otherwise noted. - A.I.

8 Wed. proverb “Truth is from earth, but truth is from heaven.”

9 Wed. Hekaton’s statement: “You will cease to fear if you cease to hope.”

10 Although sometimes he also goes to the end, recklessly minting: “And there is no Creator in creation, And there is no meaning in prayer”...

11 Wed. Dostoevsky’s words of the Grand Inquisitor about people: “weak rebels”, “unfinished trial creatures created as a mockery”...

12 A similar “indifference” is noted between the living and the dead in the poem “Under the blue sky of my native country...”. Observation by I.M. Semenko.

13 Emphasized by Belinsky. - A.I.

14 While going through his papers with Zhukovsky after Pushkin’s death, Baratynsky made the following conclusion about Pushkin’s poems, before apparently not considering him a poet thinking...

15 Meanwhile, in “meth” O de” his work has something in common with Tsvetaeva’s, with the “only” difference that where Tsvetaeva has “heat”, Baratynsky has “cold”. She was feverish at the most “reasonable” moment, but he remained sober and keenly observant even at the most “crazy” moment, as if anticipating the precepts of Mann’s Tonio Kröger.

The poems are united by a theme: the authors comprehend their place in literature. It is no coincidence that the first word in both works is the pronoun “my”. Both Baratynsky and Sluchevsky are distinguished by modesty in this matter - they begin by asserting their own “smallness.” Baratynsky expresses this directly: “My gift is poor, and my voice is not loud,” while Sluchevsky more subtly, with a syntactic construction with negation: “My verse is not without meaning.” But a poet (like any person) cannot exist without faith in the necessity of his own activity. Both authors are convinced that they have readers, but Baratynsky sees his own in a descendant, Sluchevsky - in a contemporary, he doubts exactly what Baratynsky is convinced of - interest in his work in the future.

It is very important that Baratynsky comprehends his poetic creativity, understanding it as an expression of his life on earth. Together with the words gift and voice, verse, related to creativity, he uses the words soul, being. The second thematic part of the poem begins with the statement “But I live.” The author knows that his entire existence is reflected in his work, and human life (“on earth is my... existence”) cannot but be interesting, and the poet’s connections with the reader are as inevitable as connections between close people. The poet compares his reader with a friend, he talks about the spiritual kinship of people. At the same time, not everyone can be close, and this poet addresses only those who are close to him, will be able to hear him (after all, he has a quiet voice) and understand. Baratynsky recognizes himself as a chamber poet.

Sluchevsky pays more attention to reflection not on his life, but on his poems. He calls them sketches and characterizes their features and colors. He uses images of art and creativity (paintings, tablets). In the last stanza, he says that art serves the communication of generations, human memory (the image of an echo, the motif of an echo). The poet associates himself with the generation, he expresses the spirit of his contemporaries: “Those people who live now // Will see their own reflections in it when they read it.” Therefore, the singular pronouns in the first two stanzas (“my”, “me”) are replaced by plural pronouns in the last (“we”, “us”).

Another significant difference between these poems is the emotional tone. Baratynsky’s poem sounds calm, like the result of the author’s thoughts. Iambic pentameter in Russian poetry often serves to express meditation (reflection), since it sounds drawn-out, somewhat solemn and at the same time melodious. It expresses a thought that is dear to the author and expressed by him, which fits into one sentence and one stanza. The completeness of the thought is manifested in the ring rhyme of every four verses, and in the fact that Baratynsky chooses an eight-line stanza that usually sounds complete. There are no descriptions in the poem, few emotionally charged words (only “kindly”), since the author does not express emotions, but thoughts. To do this, he needs special words rooted in the poetic tradition (often found in poems of the era): “gift”, “being”, “kindly”, “descendant”, “soul”.

Sluchevsky’s work sounds, in comparison with the previous one, as if accelerated, more “nervous”: iambic tetrameter is capable of conveying a variety of emotions. It is stanzaic, the first and third stanzas correspond to one sentence, the second and fourth - two, and the second and third - exclamatory; in the latter one seems to be unfinished (ellipses), and the second (last verse) includes two questions. The author does not so much assert as think during the course of the poem, he doubts, is not sure, so he either exclaims or falls silent, uses colloquial syntactic constructions (incomplete, with interjections) and appropriate vocabulary (many function words, the form “even though”). It is more intense; it is no coincidence that almost every verse contains a disharmonious “r”.

These poems are an example of the originality of each poet’s understanding of his place in literature and in life, and also indicate that the poet’s character is reflected in his work.

My gift is poor and my voice is not loud,
But I live, and the land is mine
Is it kind to someone to be:
My distant descendant will find him
In my poems: who knows? my soul

And how I found a friend in a generation,

<1828>

Quote-comment

Every person has friends. Why shouldn't the poet turn to friends, to people naturally close to him? At a critical moment, the navigator throws a sealed bottle with his name and a description of his fate into the ocean waters. After many years, wandering through the dunes, I find it in the sand, read the letter, find out the date of the event, the last will of the deceased. I had the right to do this. I didn't open someone else's letter. A letter sealed in a bottle is addressed to whoever finds it. I found it. So, I am the mysterious addressee.

My gift is poor, and my voice is not loud,
But I live, and the land is mine
Existence is kind to someone:
My distant descendant will find it
In my poems; who knows? my soul
Will find himself in intercourse with his soul,
And how I found a friend in a generation,
I will find a reader in posterity.

Reading Boratynsky’s poem, I experience the same feeling as if such a bottle fell into my hands. The ocean with all its enormous element came to her aid - and helped fulfill her destiny, and a feeling of providence covers the finder. In the sailor's throwing of a bottle into the waves and in Boratynsky's sending of the poem, there are two identical, clearly expressed moments. The letter, like the poem, is definitely not addressed to anyone in particular. Nevertheless, both have an addressee: the letter - the one who accidentally noticed the bottle in the sand, the poem - “the reader in posterity.” I would like to know which of those who catch the eye of the above-mentioned lines of Boratynsky will not shudder with a joyful and terrible trembling, which happens when they unexpectedly call you by name.

It turns out that he entered through connections. The Lyceum was founded by Minister Speransky himself, the enrollment was small - only 30 people, but Pushkin had an uncle - a very famous and talented poet Vasily Lvovich Pushkin, who was personally acquainted with Speransky. I don’t know how my uncle felt afterwards, but on the list of high-achieving students that was prepared for the graduation party, Pushkin was second to last.