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We should probably remember that A. Blok warned: the importance of the political motives of the “Twelve” should not be overestimated. The poem has a broader meaning. At the center of the work is a clash of elements: the nature of music and the social element. After all, the action of the poem takes place not so much in Petrograd in 1918, but, as the poet writes, “in all of God’s world.” The elemental forces of nature are rampant, and for the romantic poet it is also a symbol opposing the most terrible thing - philistine peace and comfort. Even in the cycle “Iambas” (1907-1914) Blok wrote: “No! It’s better to perish in the fierce cold! There is no comfort. There is no peace." That is why his soul is so in tune with the elements of nature, which are conveyed in many images: wind, snow, blizzard and blizzard. In this revelry of the elements, through the howl of the wind and blizzard, A. Blok heard the music of the revolution; in the article “Intellectuals and the Revolution” he called: “With all your body, with all your heart, with all your consciousness - listen to the Revolution.”

The polyphony of the Russian revolution is reflected in the rhythm of the poem - it is all built on a change of musical and poetic melodies. Among them are a battle march, an everyday conversation, an old romance, and a ditty (it is known that A. Blok began writing a poem from the lines that struck him, “I’ll slash, slash with a knife”). And behind all this polyphony and disharmony, the poet still hears a powerful musical pressure, a clear rhythm of movement with which the poem ends.

Love is also spontaneous in her. This is a dark passion with black drunken nights, with fatal betrayal and the absurd death of Katka, who is killed while aiming at Vanka, and no one repents of this murder. Even Petrukha, ashamed of his comrades, feels the inappropriateness of his suffering: “He throws up his head, he’s cheerful again.”

A. Blok very accurately sensed the terrible thing that had entered the new life: the complete devaluation of human life, which is no longer protected by any law (it does not even occur to anyone that one must answer before the law for murder). After all, moral concepts have become devalued. It’s not for nothing that after the death of the heroine, a complete bacchanalia begins, now everything is permitted: “Lock the floors, now there will be robberies! Unlock the cellars - there's a bastard walking around these days!

Faith in God is also unable to keep us from dark, terrible manifestations of the human soul. She is also lost, and the twelve who went “to serve in the Red Guard” understand this themselves: “Petka! Hey, don't lie! Why did the golden iconostasis save you?.. Are your hands not bleeding because of Katka’s love?” But murder is not done only because of love - another element has also appeared in it, a social element: in revelry, in robbery - a rebellion of “nadity”. These people are not just raging, they have come to power and are already accusing Vanka of being a “bourgeois”. They seek to destroy the old world: “To the grief of all the bourgeois, we will fan the world fire...”

And here the most difficult question arises. How could A. Blok glorify this robbery and debauchery, this destruction, including the destruction of the culture in which he grew up and of which he himself was the bearer? Much in A. Blok’s position can be clarified by the fact that the poet, being always far from politics, was brought up in the traditions of Russian intelligentsia culture of the 19th century with its inherent ideas of “worship of the people” and the feeling of guilt of the intelligentsia before the people. Therefore, the revelry of the revolutionary element, which sometimes acquired such ugly features as, for example, the destruction of wine cellars mentioned by the poet, robberies, murders, the destruction of manorial estates with hundred-year-old parks, the poet perceived as popular retribution, including that of the intelligentsia for the sins of its fathers. Having lost moral guidelines, engulfed in a flurry of dark passions and permissiveness - this is how Russia appears in the poem “The Twelve”.

In the terrible and cruel thing that she has to go through, A. Blok sees not only retribution, but also immersion in hell, in the underworld. But in this Blok sees the cleansing of Russia. She must pass this terrible thing and, having sunk to the very bottom, ascend to the sky.

That is why the most mysterious image in the poem arises - the image that appears in the finale - Christ. An infinite amount has been written about the ending and the image of Christ. In studies of past years, there was a voluntary or involuntary desire to explain the appearance of Christ in the poem as almost an accident, a misunderstanding by the poet of who should be ahead of the Red Guards. Today there is no longer any need to prove the regularity of such an unexpected ending. And the image of Christ in the work is predicted from the very beginning - from the title: for the reader of that time, brought up in the traditions of Christian culture, who studied the Law of God at school, the number twelve was symbolic: twelve apostles, disciples of Christ. The entire path that the heroes of Blok’s poem follow is the path from the abyss to resurrection, from chaos to harmony. It is no coincidence that Christ follows the path “above the blizzard”, and in the poetic vocabulary, after deliberately reduced, rude words, beautiful and traditional for Blok appear:

With a gentle tread above the storm,
Snow scattering of pearls,
In a white corolla of roses
Ahead is Jesus Christ.

This is how the poetic “epigraph of the century” ends sublimely and melodiously. And it undoubtedly contains Blok’s faith in the coming resurrection of Russia and the victory of the human in man. The poet prophetically reminds us that, without high moral ideals, it is impossible to forcefully establish world justice based on the blood, violence and suffering of people.

An essay on a work on the topic: The image of the revolutionary era in A. A. Blok’s poem “The Twelve”

A revolution, like a thunderstorm, like a snowstorm, always brings something new and unexpected; she cruelly deceives many; she easily cripples the worthy in her whirlpool; she often brings the unworthy to land unharmed; but this does not change either the general direction of the flow or that menacing and deafening noise. This noise is still about great things.”

(From Blok’s article “Intellectuals and Revolution”)
The Bloc enthusiastically accepted the October Revolution. The October Revolution discovered Blok as an artist, inspired him to create “12” - his best work, after finishing which he was usually mercilessly strict with himself and said: “Today I am a genius!”

In “12,” Blok, with enormous inspiration and brilliant skill, captured the image of the Motherland liberated by the revolution that was revealed to him in romantic fires and snowstorms. He understood and accepted the October Revolution as a spontaneous, uncontrollable “world fire”, in the purifying fire of which the entire old world should burn without a trace.

This perception of the October Revolution had both strengths and weaknesses. The poet heard primarily one “music” in the revolution - the music of destruction. Mercilessly, “with holy malice,” he condemned and branded in his poem this rotten world with its bourgeoisie, young ladies, and priests. But the rational, organized, creative principle of the socialist revolution did not receive the same complete and clear artistic embodiment in “12”. In the heroes of the poem - the Red Guards, who selflessly went out to storm the old world - perhaps more from the anarchist “freedom” (actively active in the October days) than from the vanguard of the Petrograd working class, which, under the leadership of the Bolshevik Party, ensured the victory of the revolution.

Wind, blizzard, blizzard, snow - these are images symbolizing the elements

cleansing revolutionary storm, the strength and power of popular action.

The work is based on the conflict between old and new. Their intransigence is emphasized by the sharp contrast of “black” and “white”.

But certain inconsistencies and contradictions in “12” are redeemed by the high revolutionary pathos that completely permeates this wonderful work, a living sense of greatness and the world-historical significance of October. “They walk into the distance with a sovereign step,” the poem says about its heroes. Away, that is, into the distant future, and precisely with a sovereign step, that is, as new masters of life, builders of a young proletarian power. This is the main and fundamental thing that determines the meaning and historical significance of “12” as a majestic monument of the October era.

The poem “12” made the name of A. Blok truly popular. Its lines were transferred to posters, newspaper columns, and to the banners of the first military units of the Red Army.

“Listen to the Revolution with all your body, with all your heart,” the poet urged. Blok's clear and strong voice welcomed the revolution as a new day of peace.

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In 1918, Blok wrote the poem “The Twelve”; at the same time, his article “The Intelligentsia and the Revolution” was published, from which the words of the poet’s call were taken: “With all your body, with all your heart, with all your consciousness - listen to the music of the Revolution!” A whole generation responded to these words, for whom Blok was their conscience, and his call forced them to cast aside all hesitations and doubts. However, there were also those who accused the poet of blasphemy, cynicism, and, worst of all, treason. Blok did not change; he remained faithful to his path, the path of search and renunciation. He accepted the revolution of 1917 as a manifestation of a popular, cosmic element (“To the grief of all bourgeois, we will fan the world fire, the world fire is in the blood...”). Hence the breathtaking “flight over the abyss”, the gasping, convulsively intermittent rhythm of the poem.

However, very soon Blok will see the real consequences of the revolution. He will see it and be horrified. But it was in 1917 that he felt exactly what he reflected in his poem, and this is the main thing...

So, shortly before October, the poet defined what was happening in Russia as “a whirlwind of atoms of the cosmic revolution.” But in “The Twelve,” after October, Blok, who was still justifying the revolution, also wrote about the threatening power of the elements. Even in the summer, Blok, who believed in the wisdom and tranquility of the revolutionary people, spoke in his poem about the elements of rebellious passions, about people for whom the absolute freedom was the will for themselves.

The element is a symbolic image of the poem. She personifies universal cataclysms; the twelve apostles of the revolutionary idea promise to fan a “world fire”, a blizzard breaks out, “the snow curls like a funnel”, a “blizzard is dusty” in the alleys. The element of passions is also growing. Urban life also takes on the character of spontaneity: the reckless driver “rushes at a gallop,” he “flies, screams, yells,” “Vanka and Katka are flying” on the reckless driver, etc.

However, the October events of 1917 were no longer perceived only as the embodiment of whirlwinds and elements. In parallel with this essentially anarchic motif in “The Twelve,” the motif of universal expediency, rationality, and a higher principle embodied in the image of Christ also developed. In 1904-1905 Blok, carried away by the fight against the old world, wanting to “be tougher” and “hate a lot,” assured that he would not go “to be healed by Christ” and would never accept Him. In the poem, he outlined a different perspective for the revolutionary heroes - the future faith in Christ's commandments. On July 27, 1918, Blok noted in his diary: “People say that everything that is happening is due to the fall of religion...”.

Both the contemplators of the revolution and its apostles - the twelve fighters - turn to God's principle. So, the old woman does not understand the purpose of the poster “All power to the Constituent Assembly!”, She does not understand the Bolsheviks (“Oh, the Bolsheviks will drive them into the coffin!”), but she believes in the Mother of God (“Oh, Mother Intercessor!”) . The fighters go through the path from freedom “without a cross” to freedom with Christ, and this metamorphosis occurs against their will, without their faith in Christ, as a manifestation of a higher metaphysical order.

The freedom to violate Christ's commandments, namely to kill and fornicate, is transformed into the element of permissiveness. In the blood of the twelve watchmen there is a “world fire”; the atheists are ready to shed blood, be it Katka who betrayed her lover or a bourgeois.

Blok perceived the old government as immoral and not responsible to the people, so the idea of uniting Christ and the Red Guards in the poem as fellow travelers into a harmonious, “new” world was not accidental; it was brought about by Blok through suffering. He believed in the affinity of revolutionary and Christian truths. He believed that if there were true clergy in Russia, they would come to the same thought.

It is difficult to agree that “The Twelve” is the crown of Blok’s “trilogy of incarnation.” Supporters of this point of view emphasize that the poem reflected a romantic upsurge against the backdrop of wild natural disasters. However, nowhere does this element carry any positive load. The element seems to be on its own; it is, rather, akin to the disastrous wind, with which the image of Russia is associated for Blok. That is why it can be argued that the poem reflects not a romantic upsurge, but a spiritual emptiness deeply experienced by the poet.

In his famous article “The Intelligentsia and the Revolution,” Blok exclaimed: “What is planned? Redo everything. Arrange so that everything becomes new, so that our deceitful, dirty, boring, ugly life becomes fair, clean, cheerful and beautiful”; “a world fire that is flaring up and will continue to flare up for a long time and uncontrollably, until the entire old world burns to the ground.”

We are at the mercy of all bourgeoisie

Let's fan the world fire,

World fire in blood...

It's not even a threat! The fire is already raging in the poem, rising around with the snowy tongues of a raging blizzard, which swept away the recently adorned “St. Petersburg” and its official inhabitants, who imagined themselves to be the salt of the Russian soil, from the face of the earth.

If you look at the poem through the prism of such a perception of events, then it will no longer seem strange that Blok so enthusiastically described the brokenness of the old world in “The Twelve.” The symbol of the triumph of the new world is given to the reader immediately, without any preliminary preparation:

From building to building

They will stretch the rope.

On the rope - poster:

All power to the Constituent Assembly!

This triumph is a fait accompli. It is no longer called into question by ironic intonation or any absurd epithet. And already this fact, standing firmly on the feet of proletarian freedom, not the one that ends where freedom begins, but all-permissive and anarchic, is contrasted with the silhouettes of the old world beating in its death convulsions.

And who is this? - Long hair

- Traitors!
- Russia is dead!

Must be a writer -

Human images, symbolizing the old world breaking down before our eyes, are absurd and comical. They, like puppets from the Theater of the Absurd, who are unceremoniously pulled by the strings, forced to perform various body movements and utter nonsense in distorted voices, fill the emptiness of a soap bubble, and their faces reflected on the iridescent convex surface evoke only a bitter smile:

And there’s the long-haired one -

Side behind the snowdrift...

Why is it sad now?

Comrade pop?

Do you remember how it used to be

He walked forward with his belly,

And the cross shone

Belly for the people?..

Alexander Blok, as a true genius of symbolism, with one simple phrase demonstrated the bottomless abyss that had arisen between opposing worlds. It is Comrade Priest who is a symbol of the antagonism of the old and the new, their complete incompatibility and the most severe ugliness in random phrases, without evoking a drop of pity.

The totality of social and moral values in the souls and minds of the Red Guards, through whose mouths Blok voices the sentiments of the new world, corresponds to ideas about the relationship between the goal and the means to achieve it. If we are to destroy the old world, then it will be cruel, blasphemous and to the ground:

Comrade, hold the rifle, don’t be afraid!

Let's fire a bullet into Holy Rus' -

To the condo,

In the hut,

In the fat ass!..

The murder of fat-faced Katka, who has Kerenki in her stocking, is not perceived as a crime, but, on the contrary, as an act aimed at strengthening the new world. Some moral hesitation of Petrusha, who doubted the correctness of what he had done, soon, thanks to the admonitions of the other eleven, turns into a phrase of absolute confidence in the correctness of the path that they have chosen for themselves. There is no turning back.

The ending of the poem puts a final and definitive end to the conflict between the old and new worlds. The appearance of Jesus Christ under the bloody banner of the revolution, leading the orderly march of the twelve revolutionary apostles, became the last nail in the coffin of the old world, the final and unconditional brokenness of which was symbolically depicted in his poem by A. Blok.

Blok needed to show the complexity and duality of what had happened. The dream is lofty, but it is realized by people who are “ready for anything,” who “don’t regret anything,” who have irresponsibility, recklessness, intoxication (fortunately, and repentance) in their faces and figures:

There’s a cigarette in his teeth, he’s wearing a cap,

You need an ace of diamonds on your back.

The poet endlessly repeats: “Freedom, freedom/Eh, eh, without a cross!”, “Anger, sad anger/Simmers in the chest.../Black anger, holy anger.” Against this background, the very calls for discipline, sometimes official, poster, not Blok (“Keep control over yourself!”), have no official meaning at all. Blok is afraid of the explosion of the elements, its destructive elements.

A. Blok wanted to depict the collective, “swarm” (in the words of L. Tolstoy) consciousness and collective will, which replaced the individual principle. Therefore, he introduces the Red Guards into the poem.

The traditional point of view of Soviet bloc studies is that the twelve Red Guards are a significant collective image-symbol of representatives and defenders of the “new life”. As a positive point, it is emphasized that Blok does not “straighten” or idealize his heroes at all, that they are exponents of the popular element with all its extremes, people who are aware of their high revolutionary duty and are ready to fulfill it.

We can agree that the destroyers of the old are led by the spirit of some truth in the name of some high goals. One can even accept that subjectively A. Blok was ready, like V. Bryusov, to see in them, destroying the old world, wild Huns and even bless them. But objectively, with brilliant insight, he showed that the twelve Red Guards did not have any high universal goals. All their high impulses are only externally beautiful.

The murder of the unfaithful Katka by the Red Guards (in particular, Petrukha in rivalry with Vanka) is an expression of the barbaric power of the elements, renewing and destroying. The highest meaning, which, of course, is in the events, in all their scale, did not hide from Blok what happened at Rybatskaya, 12. And therefore, as a justification for the death (ultimately of lynching) of Katya, Christ became needed. Nothing else can relieve this sudden invasion of melancholy and disappointment.

Blok was really afraid of his guess: was it really a “Russian rebellion, senseless and merciless” again? Is it really not clear to anyone that destruction is as old as hoarding? “Blok elevates Katka’s death to the level of a world tragedy - it is so significant for him. He wants the illustration of the murdered Katka to “breathe with thick snow and through it - Christ,” - this is what he asks Yuri Annenkov to do. Specific address and world tragedy; Rybatskaya, 12 and Jesus Christ. This incredible combination contains the whole Blok, all his poetics, the power of his artistic imagination,” wrote the insightful blockologist L.K. Dolgopolov.

Did the poet lower the image of Christ by suddenly placing him at the head of the procession of the Red Guards? Why do these people need him “without a cross”? Will they not pollute this symbol of purification, resurrection, and torment of the cross with their recklessness?

M.M. Prishvin wrote in his diary: “I strongly suspect that Christ in Blok’s poem “The Twelve,” graceful, light, decorated with roses, is the deified poet Blok himself.” This observation is indirectly confirmed by the fact that Christ in the poem is not wearing a traditional crown of thorns, but an unexpected white crown of roses. On the one hand, he did not seem to know Golgotha. But, on the other hand, he walks “in the height above the blizzard,” i.e. is this the risen Christ who survived the crucifixion?

Apparently, a lot needs to be understood in the light of the pangs of conscience, the ripening repentance in the same Petka, perhaps in all the Red Guards. Probably, this feeling of guilt of everyone before the ruined Beauty, before the future victims of the era, caused the great vision of Christ? It turns out that all abstract goals in the name of something new (incomprehensible to no one, unknown) are akin to the disastrous wind twisting Russia. The poet does not know what will happen behind the blizzard, behind the disastrous wind, but he has a presentiment that his hopes for harmony will again not come true.

A stormy stream is capable of sweeping away not only the old world, but also the very carriers of new life. These “carriers” are embodied in Blok in the Red Guards, who undoubtedly came from the “working people.” But not from his vanguard. The class that came out for the fight against the old world was not something homogeneous. The militant party of the proletariat - the Bolsheviks, who took the fate of an armed uprising into their own hands - was the vanguard. And behind him came people who were at various levels of revolutionary consciousness, often still dark, just waking up from an age-old sleep, but already possessed by “holy malice” towards the bourgeoisie.

These are exactly the twelve. These are people who sincerely joined the revolution and served it selflessly, but did not always see its ultimate goals. So far they are led only by “black malice, holy malice” towards kings and masters. But these fierce enemies of the old world are at the same time also its victims: the thick shadows of this accursed world still lie on them, its curse still weighs on them.

The destruction of the previous order created by the “old world” releases enormous forces that break free chaotically, unbridled, uncontrollably. The forces of the elements - wind, blizzard, blizzard - cannot be defined unambiguously as good or evil. These are deep internal contradictions in a person, which are the source of development and movement. However, in their spontaneous unrestraint and blindness, they can cause destruction and even death.

But it was not enough for Blok to stigmatize and ridicule the ingloriously dying old world and all its components. He also wanted to show the force that creates the revolution. He showed it in “The Twelve” - to the best of his (mostly and mainly correct, although incomplete) understanding of it. This is a force, first of all, destructive, designed to burn to the ground all old life, but at the same time bringing a new historical truth into the world.

Thus, Blok’s October poem is a work not free from serious contradictions. But great art lives not by the contradictions of the artist’s consciousness reflected in it, but by the truth that he told (could not help but tell!) to people. So in “The Twelve” the main, fundamental and decisive, of course, is not Blok’s idealistic delusions, but his clear faith in the rightness of the people’s cause, not a limited understanding of the real driving forces and specific socialist tasks of the proletarian revolution, but that high revolutionary-romantic pathos, that living feeling of the greatness and world-historical significance of October, with which the poem is completely imbued. “They walk into the distance with a sovereign step...” - it is said about its heroes. Precisely into the distance - that is, into the distant future, and precisely with a sovereign step - that is, as new masters of life. This is the ideological center of the poem.

The stamp of the turbulent revolutionary times lies on the style and language of The Twelve. In the very rhythms and intonations of the poem, in the tension and intermittency of its verse tempo, the sound of the collapse of the old world echoed, which Blok, as he himself assured, heard physically, by ear. The new, revolutionary content imperiously demanded a new poetic form, and Blok, having sharply changed his usual creative manner, turned in “The Twelve” to folk, song and ditty forms of verse, to the lively, rough colloquial speech of the Petrograd street of those revolutionary days, to the language of slogans and proclamations:

How did our guys go?

To serve in the Red Guard -

I'm going to lay down my head!

Eh, you, bitter grief,

Sweet life!

Torn coat

Austrian gun!

Never before had he been able to write so freely, simply and easily, with such plastic expressiveness; never before had his voice sounded so strong and uninhibited.

The poem amazed its first readers not only with the energy of its revolutionary pathos, but also with the novelty of its style. It sounded like a daring challenge to all literary Old Believers and purists, and delighted everyone who expected the pure word from poetry. The general impression boiled down to one thing: this had never happened before in Russian poetry. Everything in the poem seemed unusual: the worldly in it was intertwined with the everyday, the revolution with the grotesque, the hymn with the ditty; the “vulgar” plot, taken as if from a chronicle of newspaper incidents (the story of Katka, Vanka and Petrukha), ends with a majestic apotheosis; the unheard-of “rudeness” of the vocabulary enters into a complex relationship with the subtlest verbal and musical constructions. And all this is welded together, brought together into one whole, into an indivisible artistic unity. And all this seemed to be publicly available - it was understandable to absolutely everyone, it immediately fell into memory and remained on the tongue.

May 14 2014

The image of the revolutionary era in A. A.’s poem “The Twelve.” A revolution, like a thunderstorm, like a snowstorm, always brings something new and unexpected; she cruelly deceives many; she easily cripples the worthy in her whirlpool; she often brings the unworthy to land unharmed; but this does not change either the general direction of the flow or that menacing and deafening noise. This noise is still about great things.” This text is intended for private use only 2005 (From Blok’s article “Intellectuals and Revolution”) Blok enthusiastically accepted the October Revolution. The October Revolution discovered Blok as an artist, inspired him to create “12” his best work, after finishing which he was usually mercilessly strict with himself and said: “Today I am a genius!” In “12”, Blok, with enormous inspiration and brilliant skill, captured what was revealed to him in the romantic fires and blizzards of the liberated revolution of the Motherland.

He understood and accepted the October Revolution as a spontaneous, uncontrollable “world fire”, in the purifying fire of which the entire old world should burn without a trace. This perception of the October Revolution had both strengths and weaknesses. I heard mostly one “music” in the revolution: the music of destruction. Mercilessly, “with holy malice,” he condemned and branded in his poem this rotten world with its bourgeoisie, young ladies, and priests. But the rational, organized, creative principle of the socialist revolution did not receive the same complete and clear artistic embodiment in “12”.

In the heroes of the poem, the Red Guards who selflessly went out to storm the old world, perhaps more from the anarchist “freedom” (actively active in the October days) than from the vanguard of the Petrograd working class, which, under the leadership of the Bolshevik Party, ensured the victory of the revolution. Wind, blizzard, blizzard, snow are images that symbolize the element of a cleansing revolutionary storm, the strength and power of popular action. At the heart of the work is the conflict between old and new. Their intransigence is emphasized by the sharp contrast of “black” and “white”.

Blok seemed to put the image of Christ at the head of his Red Guards. The poet proceeded from his subjective (and completely clear to himself) ideas about early Christianity as a “religion of slaves,” imbued with rebellious sentiments and leading to the collapse of the old, pagan world. In this Blok saw a certain historical similarity with the collapse of tsarist landowner-bourgeois Russia. But certain inconsistencies and contradictions in “12” are completely redeemed by the high revolutionary pathos that permeates this remarkable work, a living sense of greatness and the world-historical significance of October.

“They walk into the distance with a sovereign step” is said in the poem about its heroes. Away, that is, into the distant future, and precisely with a sovereign step, that is, as new masters of life, builders of a young proletarian power. This is the main and fundamental thing that determines the meaning and historical significance of “12” as a majestic monument of the October era. The poem “12” made the name of A. Blok truly popular. Its lines were transferred to posters, newspaper columns, and to the banners of the first military units of the Red Army.

Essay Blok A.A. - Twelve

Topic: - The image of the revolutionary era in the poem by A.A. Block "Twelve"

The Bloc enthusiastically accepted the October Revolution. The October Revolution discovered Blok as an artist, inspired him to create “12,” his best work, after finishing which he was usually mercilessly strict with himself and said: “Today I am a genius!”
In “12,” Blok, with enormous inspiration and brilliant skill, captured the image of the Motherland liberated by the revolution that was revealed to him in romantic fires and snowstorms. He understood and accepted the October Revolution as a spontaneous, uncontrollable “world fire”, in the purifying fire of which the entire old world should burn without a trace.
This perception of the October Revolution had both strengths and weaknesses. The poet heard primarily one “music” in the revolution - the music of destruction. Mercilessly, “with holy malice,” he condemned and branded in his poem this rotten world with its bourgeoisie, young ladies, and priests. But the rational, organized, creative principle of the socialist revolution did not receive the same complete and clear artistic embodiment in “12”. In the heroes of the poem, the Red Guards, who selflessly went out to storm the old world, perhaps there is more from the anarchist “freedom” (actively active in the October days) than from the vanguard of the Petrograd working class, which, under the leadership of the Bolshevik Party, ensured the victory of the revolution.
Wind, blizzard, blizzard, snow are images symbolizing the elements
cleansing revolutionary storm, the strength and power of popular action.
The work is based on the conflict between old and new. Their intransigence is emphasized by the sharp contrast of “black” and “white”.
Blok seemed to put the image of Christ at the head of his Red Guards. The poet proceeded from his subjective (and completely clear to himself) ideas about early Christianity as a “religion of slaves,” imbued with rebellious sentiments and leading to the collapse of the old, pagan world. In this Blok saw a certain historical similarity with the collapse of tsarist landowner-bourgeois Russia.
But certain inconsistencies and contradictions in “12” are redeemed by the high revolutionary pathos that completely permeates this wonderful work, a living sense of greatness and the world-historical significance of October. “They walk into the distance with a sovereign step,” says the poem about its heroes. Away, that is, into the distant future, and precisely with a sovereign step, that is, as new masters of life, builders of a young proletarian power. This is the main and fundamental thing that determines the meaning and historical significance of “12” as a majestic monument of the October era.
The poem “12” made the name of A. Blok truly popular. Its lines were transferred to posters, newspaper columns, and to the banners of the first military units of the Red Army.
“Listen to the Revolution with all your body, with all your heart,” the poet urged. Blok's clear and strong voice welcomed the revolution as a new day of peace.

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Essay Blok A.A. - Twelve

Topic: - The image of the revolutionary era in the poem by A.A. Block "Twelve"