LYRICAL HERO is the main form of embodiment of the subject of lyrical utterance in the poetry of the 19th-20th centuries. This is not the poet himself, as is often naively believed - already because he is an image created by the poet, naturally, he does not absorb everything that is and was in his life, but, on the other hand, belongs to a new, artistic reality , brought into primary reality, enriching, expanding it.
In the lyric poetry of the 18th century. we still see, so to speak, a “genre hero”, “when, for example, A Sumarokov, the author of odes, is more like M. Lomonosov, who works in the same genre, than like himself as the author of elegies.” G.R. Derzhavin has already endowed the hero of his lyrics with individual traits that are unique to him personally. A.S. From his youth, Pushkin made his own biography generally significant (“The edges of Moscow, the native lands, / Where at the dawn of past years...” in “Memoirs in Tsarskoe Selo”, 1814). But only in the works of M.Yu. Lermontov fully developed the lyrical hero as the center of the entire poetic system, giving it a certain unity. He has his own beliefs (even if complex and contradictory), his own psychology, his own life. Actually, the lyrical hero is an intertextual category: it is impossible to judge from one poem how stable and representative its certain features are. But even in a single poem the general thing is revealed. There is an opinion that a lyrical hero must certainly be endowed with self-reflection, be the subject of introspection, i.e. become its own theme. Such a hero “does not appear in every poet. Of the Russian lyricists, he is most characteristic of M. Lermontov, A. Blok, M. Tsvetaeva, V. Mayakovsky, S. Yesenin.” But it is hardly possible to speak at all, for example, about Pasternak’s lyrical hero, although he is “cosmocentric”, often merged with the entire universe; it is unlikely that another poet would give his book of poems the title “My Sister is Life” (published in 1922) .
Usually the lyrical hero is identified with any lyrical “I”. But the subjects of consciousness in poetry are varied. The creator of one of the classifications, B.O. Corman, identified four of their types in Nekrasov’s “prosaic” lyrics. He terminologically inaccurately called the first and second “the author himself” and “the author-narrator.” The first manifests itself in the most objectified lyrics, where the focus is on a phenomenon, landscape, etc. and it is what is said that is important, and not who says it (“The honest ones who fell valiantly have fallen silent...”, “There is noise in the capitals, the orbits are thundering...”). The second type (the word “narrator” is unfortunate here, since the elements of plot and narration are optional in this case) - when the character of the speaker is clear from the way he characterizes another person (Nekrasov’s “Troika”, “Schoolboy”, “In Memory of Dobrolyubov”). The third type is a lyrical hero in the narrow sense, he is both the subject of description and the bearer of speech (“That’s why I deeply despise myself...”, “A knight for an hour”; in the poem “Am I Driving Down a Dark Street at Night...” lyrical the hero, according to Corman, is the narrator’s past). Nekrasov's lyrical hero bows to the revolutionary democrats, placing himself much lower. For the first time in his lyrics, he is burdened with worries about food, clothing, boots, etc. The fourth type of lyrical subject is the hero of role-playing lyrics, obviously far from the author-creator in terms of social status, biography, mental development, psychology, moral qualities (“Gardener”, “Kalistrat”, “Drunkard”).
Another classifier, S.N. Broitman, considers it necessary to add a fifth to these four types - the lyrical “I” in the narrow sense. “The criterion here will be the degree of emphasis and activity of the directly evaluative subtlety of vision, in Corman’s terminology... We can actually talk about the lyrical “I” when the speaker becomes an independent image, which was implicit in the case of the author-narrator and the “author himself” ". Examples: “A girl sang in the church choir...” by Blok, “The Only Days” by Pasternak. Sometimes “a complex play of points of view, voices and value intentions arises (“Two Voices” by Tyutchev, “Bow and Strings” by Annensky, poetic polyphony in Nekrasov, described by Corman)”, a double lyrical subject is possible, as in Blok’s “On the Kulikovo Field” : “he is also a lyrical hero, referring us to the author behind him, but he is also... a character - a participant in the Battle of Kulikovo.” The lyrical subject may not even be two-faced, but five-faced, as in Pasternak’s “Hamlet” (see: Content and Form).
It is clear that the existing classifications are not exhaustive and the concept of “lyrical subject” is much broader than “lyrical hero”. It is necessary to stipulate that “role lyrics” are not always lyrics: if Nekrasov’s “The Drunkard” is a conditional self-characterization of the hero, then in “The Gardener” there is action, the gardener is just a character, and not just a “lyrical role”. The roles of positive heroes and self-exposing negative ones are very different (for example, “Moral Man”), in the latter case there is a multidirectional two-voiced word, according to M.M. Bakhtin (see: Artistic speech). The “lyrical heroes” of the poem “Am I Driving Down a Dark Street at Night...” and the poem “A Knight for an Hour” are clearly different, and their relationship with the “biographical” author is very different. The “I” of early Akhmatova ranges from a beggar to a society lady (there are also poems written on behalf of a man, there is also “we”, starting with the 1911 poem “A dark-skinned youth wandered through the alleys...”), and in Yesenin from “ a humble monk” to a “bawdy and brawler,” but the type of consciousness these so diverse heroines and heroes express in each case is generally the same.
Image lyrical hero is created on the basis of the poet’s life experience, his feelings, sensations, expectations, etc., enshrined in the work in an artistically transformed form. However, complete identification of the personality of the poet himself and his lyrical hero is unlawful: not everything that the “biography” of the lyrical hero includes actually happened to the poet himself. For example, in the poem by M.Yu. Lermontov's "Dream" the lyrical hero sees himself mortally wounded in the valley of Dagestan. This fact does not correspond to the empirical biography of the poet himself, but the prophetic nature of the “dream” is obvious (the poem was written in 1841, the year of Lermontov’s death):
In the midday heat in the valley of Dagestan With lead in my chest I lay motionless; The deep wound was still smoking, Drop by drop my blood was leaking.The term “lyrical hero” was introduced by Yu.N. Tynyanov 1 in 1921, and by him is meant the bearer of the experience expressed in the lyrics. “A lyrical hero is an artistic “double” of the author-poet, growing out of the text of lyrical compositions (a cycle, a book of poems, a lyric poem, the entire body of lyrics) as a clearly defined figure or life role, as a person endowed with certainty, individuality of fate, psychological clarity of inner peace" 2.
The lyrical hero is not present in all the works of the lyric poet, and the lyrical hero cannot be judged by one poem; the idea of the lyrical hero is formed from the poet’s cycle of poems or from his entire poetic work. This is a special form of expression of the author’s consciousness 3:
- The lyrical hero is both a speaker and the subject of the image. He stands openly between the reader and the world depicted; we can judge the lyrical hero by what is close to him, what he rebels against, how he perceives the world and his role in the world, etc.
- The lyrical hero is characterized by internal ideological and psychological unity; in different poems a single human personality is revealed in its relationship to the world and to itself.
- Biographical unity can be combined with the unity of the internal appearance. In this case, different poems can be combined into episodes from the life of a certain person.
The definiteness of the lyrical hero is characteristic, for example, of the poetry of M.Yu. Lermontov (to whom the discovery of the lyrical hero in Russian literature belongs, although the term itself appeared in the twentieth century), N.A. Nekrasov, V. Mayakovsky, S. Yesenin, A. Akhmatova, M. Tsvetaeva, V. Vysotsky... From their lyrical works grows an image of a whole personality, outlined psychologically, biographically, and emotionally, with its characteristic reactions to events in world, etc.
At the same time, there are lyrical systems in which the lyrical hero does not come to the fore; we cannot say anything definite about his psychology, biography, or emotional world. In such lyrical systems, “between the poetic world and the reader, during the direct perception of the work, there is no personality as the main subject of the image or a keenly tangible prism through which reality is refracted” 4 . In this case, it is customary to talk not about the lyrical hero, but about the poetic world of this or that poet. A typical example is the work of A.A. Fet with his special poetic vision of the world. Fet constantly speaks in his lyrics about his attitude to the world, about his love, about his suffering, about his perception of nature; he widely uses the personal pronoun of the first person singular: over forty of his works begin with “I”. However, this “I” is not Fet’s lyrical hero: he has neither external, biographical, nor internal certainty that allows us to talk about him as a certain personality. The poet's lyrical "I" is a view of the world, essentially abstracted from a specific individual. Therefore, when perceiving Fet’s poetry, we pay attention not to the person depicted in it, but to a special poetic world. In Fet's poetic world, the center is a feeling, not a thought. Fet is interested not so much in people as in their feelings, as if abstracted from people. Certain psychological situations and emotional states are depicted in their general terms - without a particular personality make-up. But the feelings in Fet’s poems are also special: vague, indefinite. To reproduce such a vague, barely perceptible inner world, Fet resorts to a complex system of poetic means, which, despite all their diversity, have a common function - the function of creating an unsteady, indefinite, elusive mood.
The lyrical hero in poetry, although he does not completely coincide with the author’s “I,” is accompanied by special sincerity, confession, “documentary” lyrical experience, introspection and confession prevail over fiction. The lyrical hero, and not without reason, is usually perceived as the image of the poet himself - a real person.
However, in the lyrical hero (with all his obvious autobiography and autopsychologism), we are attracted not so much by his personal uniqueness, his personal destiny. Whatever biographical and psychological certainty the lyrical hero may have, his “fate” is interesting to us primarily for its typicality, universality, and reflection of the common destinies of the era and of all humanity. Therefore, the remark of L.Ya. is correct. Ginzburg on the universality of lyrics: “...lyrics have their own paradox. The most subjective type of literature, it, like no other, is directed towards the general, towards the depiction of mental life as universal... if lyricism creates a character, then it is not so much “particular”, individual, as epochal, historical; that typical image of a contemporary that is developed by large cultural movements" 5 .
Lyrical hero- the subject of a statement in a lyrical work, a kind of character in the lyrics.
The concept of a lyrical hero, not identical to the author of the text as such, arose in the works of Yuri Tynyanov and was developed by such researchers as Lydia Ginzburg, Grigory Gukovsky, Dmitry Maksimov. Some researchers distinguish the concept of the poet's lyrical self from the lyrical hero.
As Irina Rodnyanskaya notes in connection with Lermontov’s lyrical hero, the lyrical hero is
a kind of artistic double of the author-poet, emerging from the text of extensive lyrical compositions (a cycle, a book of poems, a lyric poem, the entire body of lyrics) as a person endowed with vital certainty of personal destiny, psychological clarity of the inner world, and sometimes with features of plastic certainty (appearance , “habit”, “posture”). Understood in this way, the lyrical hero was a discovery of the great romantic poets - J. Byron, G. Heine, M. Yu. Lermontov - a discovery widely inherited by the poetry of subsequent decades and other movements. The lyrical hero of European romanticism is in extreme agreement with the personality of the author-poet (as the “soulful” and conceptual truth of the author’s self-image) and at the same time in a tangible discrepancy with it (since everything extraneous to his “fate” is excluded from the hero’s existence). In other words, this lyrical image is consciously constructed not in accordance with the full volume of the author’s consciousness, but in accordance with a predetermined “fate.”<...>The lyrical hero, as a rule, is additionally created by the audience, a special type of reader’s perception, which also arose within the framework of the romantic movement<...>. For the reader's consciousness, the lyrical hero is the legendary truth about the poet, a legend about himself, bequeathed by the poet to the world.
The lyrical hero is, according to Lydia Ginzburg, “not only the subject, but also the object of the work,” that is, the depicted and the depicting coincide, the lyric poem closes on itself. In this case, the lyrical hero naturally focuses primarily on his feelings and experiences, which is the essence of the very category of lyrical. Let us note that, in accordance with the established tradition in literary studies, one can talk about a lyrical hero only when the entire corpus of works of a particular author is considered in relation to his author’s hypostasis. According to Boris Korman’s definition, “the lyrical hero is one of the subjects of consciousness<…>he is both subject and object from a direct evaluative point of view. The lyrical hero is both the bearer of consciousness and the subject of the image" [
lyrical hero
one of the forms of manifestation of the author's consciousness in a lyrical work; the image of the poet in lyric poetry, expressing his thoughts and feelings, but not reducible to his everyday personality; the subject of speech and experience, at the same time being the main object of the image in the work, its ideological, thematic and compositional center. The lyrical hero has a certain worldview and an individual inner world. In addition to emotional and psychological unity, it can be endowed with a biography and even external appearance (for example, in the lyrics of S.A. Yesenina and V.V. Mayakovsky). The image of the lyrical hero is revealed throughout the poet’s work, as in the poetry of M. Yu. Lermontov, and sometimes within a certain period or poetic cycle.
The term “lyrical hero”, first used by Yu.N. Tynyanov in relation to the work of A. A. Blok in the article “Blok” (1921), may not be applied to every poet and poem: the lyrical “I” is sometimes devoid of individual definition or completely absent (as, for example, in most poems by A.A. Feta). Instead, the poems come to the fore: the generalized lyrical “we” (“To Chaadaev,” “The Cart of Life” by A.S. Pushkin), landscape, philosophical discussions on universal themes, or the hero of “role-playing lyrics”, contrasted with the author with his worldview and/or speech manner (“Black Shawl”, “Imitations of the Koran”, “The Page, or the Fifteenth Year”, “I am here, Inezilla” ..." by A. S. Pushkin; "Borodino" by M. Yu. Lermontov; "Gardener", "Moral Man", "Philanthropist" by N. A. Nekrasova etc.).
A lyrical hero is the image of that hero in a lyrical work, whose experiences, thoughts and feelings are reflected in it. It is by no means identical to the image of the author, although it reflects his personal experiences associated with certain events in his life, with his attitude towards nature, public life, and people. The uniqueness of the poet's worldview, his interests, and character traits find appropriate expression in the form and style of his works. A person who is well acquainted with lyrics can easily distinguish the unique originality of the lyrics of A. S. Pushkin, M. Yu. Lermontov, N. A. Nekrasov, F. I. Tyutchev, A. A. Blok, V. V. Mayakovsky, A. T. Tvardovsky and other Russian and Soviet, as well as foreign poets: I. V. Goethe, I. F. Schiller, G. Heine, I. R. Becher, N. Guillen, P. Neruda and others.
Artistic images of any work, including lyrical ones, generalize the phenomena of life and, through individual, personal experience, express thoughts and feelings that are characteristic of many contemporaries. So, for example, in “Duma” Lermontov expressed the feelings of an entire generation of people of his time. Any personal experience of a poet only becomes a fact of art when it is an artistically perfect expression of feelings and thoughts typical of many people. Lyrics are characterized by both generalization and artistic invention. The more talented the poet, the richer his spiritual world, the more deeply he penetrates into the world of other people’s experiences, the greater heights he reaches in his lyrical creativity. Reading the poet’s poems one after another, we, despite all their diversity, establish their unity in the perception of the world, in the nature of experiences, in their artistic expression. A complete image is created in our consciousness - an experience, that is, a state of character, an image of a person’s spiritual world. The image of a lyrical hero appears. The lyrical hero, like the hero of epic and dramatic works, reflects certain characteristic, typical features of the people of his time, his class, exerting a huge influence on the formation of the spiritual world of readers.
For example, the lyrical hero of A. S. Pushkin’s poetry, who in his “cruel age” revealed the ideal of a spiritually rich, free personality, high humanism, greatness in struggle, creativity, friendship and love, was the banner of the progressive people of that era and continues to provide beneficial influence on people of our time.
The lyrical hero of V. V. Mayakovsky’s poetry reveals in an unusually versatile way the rich inner world of a person in a socialist society, his socio-political, moral, and aesthetic ideals.
In many ways, the lyrical hero of A. T. Tvardovsky appears before us in character, ideas, proposals: restrained, stern, taciturn. And already completely different, unlike the first two, the lyrical hero of B. L. Pasternak - fragile, impressionable, vulnerable, sophisticated.
The lyrical hero in the works of socialist realism reflects and reveals the diversity of the spiritual world of the builders of a new society.
Lyrical hero - this concept was introduced by Y. Tynyanov in 1921, and it is understood as the bearer of the experience expressed in the lyrics: “The lyrical hero is the artistic “double” of the author-poet, growing out of the text of lyrical compositions (cycle, book of poems, lyric poem, the entire set of lyrics) as a clearly defined figure or life role, as a person endowed with certainty, individuality of fate, psychological clarity of the inner world.”
There are synonyms: “lyrical consciousness”, “lyrical subject” and “lyrical self”. Most often, this definition is the image of a poet in lyric poetry, the poet’s artistic double, growing out of the text of lyrical compositions. This is a carrier of experience, expression in lyrics.
The term arose due to the fact that it is impossible to equate the poet with the bearer of consciousness. This gap appears at the beginning of the 20th century in Batyushkov’s lyrics.
The remark of L.Ya. is fair. Ginzburg on the universality of lyrics: “...lyrics have their own paradox. The most subjective kind of literature, it, like no other, is directed towards the general, towards the depiction of mental life as universal... if lyricism creates a character, then it is not so much “particular”, individual, as epochal, historical; that typical image of a contemporary that is developed by large cultural movements.”
The image of the lyrical hero is created on the basis of the poet’s life experience, his feelings, sensations, expectations, etc., enshrined in the work in an artistically transformed form. However, complete identification of the personality of the poet himself and his lyrical hero is unlawful: not everything that the “biography” of the lyrical hero includes actually happened to the poet himself. For example, in the poem by M.Yu. Lermontov's "Dream" the lyrical hero sees himself mortally wounded in the valley of Dagestan. This fact does not correspond to the empirical biography of the poet himself, but the prophetic nature of the “dream” is obvious (the poem was written in 1841, the year of Lermontov’s death):
Midday heat in the valley of Dagestan
With lead in my chest I lay motionless;
The deep wound was still smoking,
Drop by drop my blood flowed.
The lyrical hero is not present in all the works of the lyric poet, and the lyrical hero cannot be judged by one poem; the idea of the lyrical hero is formed from the poet’s cycle of poems or from his entire poetic work.
A lyrical hero is a special form of expression of the author’s consciousness:
1. The lyrical hero is both a speaker and the subject of the image. He stands openly between the reader and the world depicted; we can judge the lyrical hero by what is close to him, what he rebels against, how he perceives the world and his role in the world, etc.
2. The lyrical hero is characterized by internal ideological and psychological unity; in different poems a single human personality is revealed in its relationship to the world and to itself.
3. Biographical unity can be combined with the unity of the internal appearance. In this case, different poems can be combined into episodes from the life of a certain person.
The definiteness of the lyrical hero is characteristic, for example, of the poetry of M.Yu. Lermontov (to whom the discovery of the lyrical hero in Russian literature belongs, although the term itself appeared in the twentieth century), N.A. Nekrasov, V. Mayakovsky, S. Yesenin, A. Akhmatova, M. Tsvetaeva, V. Vysotsky... From their lyrical works grows an image of a whole personality, outlined psychologically, biographically, and emotionally, with its characteristic reactions to events in world, etc.
The lyrical hero in poetry, although he does not completely coincide with the author’s “I,” is accompanied by special sincerity, confession, “documentary” lyrical experience, introspection and confession prevail over fiction. The lyrical hero, and not without reason, is usually perceived as the image of the poet himself - a real person.
