Analysis of the poem " Motherland»
A. Akhmatova's poem "Native Land" reflects the theme of the Motherland, which very keenly worried the poetess. IN this work She created the image of her native land not as a sublime, holy concept, but as something ordinary, self-evident, something that is used as a certain object for life.
The poem is philosophical. The title goes against the content, and only the ending encourages you to think about what the word “native” means. “We lie down in it and become it,” writes the author. “Becoming” means merging with her into one whole, just as people were, not yet born, one with their own mother in her womb. But until this merger with the earth comes, humanity does not see itself as part of it. A person lives without noticing what should be dear to the heart. And Akhmatova does not judge a person for this. She writes “we”, she does not elevate herself above everyone else, as if the thought of her native land for the first time forced her to write a poem, to call on everyone else to stop the train of their everyday thoughts and think that the Motherland is the same as one’s own mother . And if so, then why “We don’t carry them on our chests in treasured amulet”, i.e. is the earth not accepted as sacred and valuable?
With pain in her heart A. Akhmatova describes human attitude to the ground: “for us it’s dirt on our galoshes.” How is that considered dirt with which humanity will merge at the end of life? Does this mean that a person will also become dirt? The earth is not just dirt underfoot, the earth is something that should be dear, and everyone should find a place for it in their heart!
In addition to the analysis of “Native Land”, read other essays:
- “Requiem”, analysis of Akhmatova’s poem
- “Courage”, analysis of Akhmatova’s poem
- “I clenched my hands under a dark veil...”, analysis of Akhmatova’s poem
- “The Gray-Eyed King,” analysis of Akhmatova’s poem
- "Twenty first. Night. Monday", analysis of Akhmatova’s poem
- “The Garden”, analysis of the poem by Anna Akhmatova
- “Song of the Last Meeting”, analysis of Akhmatova’s poem
The theme of the homeland in the works of Anna Akhmatova occupies one of most important places. The poetess often thought about the fact that a person can belong to something greater than himself. And in particular, he is connected by invisible ties with his native land. Similar motives prompted the poetess to write the work “Native Land” in 1961. This was the final period in Akhmatova’s work.
A work about the relationship to the earth
An analysis of Akhmatova’s “Native Land” can begin with the fact that from the first lines the work provokes bewilderment in the reader. After all, the patriotic name is absolutely at odds with its content. There are no laudatory odes in it, but main image- native land - compared to mud stuck to galoshes. However, this comparison speaks much louder and more meaningfully than any praise addressed to the homeland. An analysis of the poem “Native Land” by Akhmatova demonstrates that the poetess does not distinguish herself from the Russian people, and she writes that among the broad masses the concept of “Motherland” began to depreciate. People forget what their native land should mean to them, they do not realize its holiness and take it for granted. The homeland is compared to mud on galoshes.
Changing attitude towards the shrine
The poem cannot be called intricate. It is written in simple but sincere language. An analysis of Akhmatova’s “Native Land” shows: at the beginning of the poem, the poetess notes that people do not carry land in “cherished amulet.” Once upon a time in ancient times the land was called “holy”, but in post-revolutionary times the attitude towards it became different. Everything that was endowed with a mystical meaning was refuted. The people began to love the homeland itself as a native land, and the land was assigned the role of fertile soil.
By the beginning of the 60s of the last century, the tradition of worshiping the native land was a thing of the past. However, the poetess reminds us that reverence for the native land should live in every person. It is impossible to destroy ethnic memory that has accumulated over centuries. Of course, those people who do not work in the fields do not pay attention to the land. But without this very “dirt” that sticks to the galoshes, life is impossible. And the earth must be revered, if only for the reason that after death, every person returns to it and gives it his mortal body. IN in simple words Akhmatova has a deep sacred meaning.
Reproof
When analyzing “Native Land” by Anna Akhmatova, a student can point out: the work is quite short, but it has a powerful accusatory force. The final lines reveal the most important philosophical truth about the attitude towards one’s native land. A person becomes one again with his native land after he dies. He turns into a part of it, and in these words the poetess opens her eyes to the fact that the earth is not ordinary dirt. According to the plan, the analysis of the poem “Native Land” by Akhmatova should contain an indication that this work reflects the theme of the homeland. This topic was the most important for the poetess. The homeland should have a sacred status; everyone who has an idea of their essence and their calling should remember it.
The poetess’s attitude towards her native land
The analysis of Akhmatova’s “Native Land” can be supplemented with information about how the poetess herself related to her homeland. Akhmatova was a true patriot. She forever connected her life with native Russia and did not leave the country even after the difficult trials that befell her. People refused to publish her works, and her son was arrested twice. Akhmatova's first husband was shot. However, even all these terrible circumstances could not extinguish the love for her native land in her heart.
Akhmatova did not move to Europe either in 1917 or later, when N. Gumilyov persistently invited her with him. She did not understand how one could be happy in foreign lands. The poetess survived all the horrors besieged Leningrad, mortal danger. Akhmatova was even under threat of reprisals. And in her work she writes about the land as fertile black soil, which is still revered by grain growers to this day.
Two meanings of the word "earth"
In the analysis of Akhmatova’s “Native Land,” it can be pointed out that the work reveals two meanings of the word “land” - on the one hand, it is the homeland in which a person is born, lives and dies; on the other hand, it is the soil thanks to which the people feed. And these values do not oppose each other. On the contrary, they complement each other with their meaning and content. Each line of the work reveals one meaning of this concept, then another. But for Akhmatova herself, these words are inseparable, because one is impossible without the other.
Not only for the poetess, but also for other people, her native land did not become the promised paradise. During Akhmatova’s time, many were subjected to persecution and persecution. The earth remained a “crunch in the teeth”, but it was to blame for the troubles ordinary people no - after all historical events created by those who rule the people. The earth represents physical fitness capable of giving life. The final part of the work indicates that a person born on earth at the end of his life becomes part of it. And this major events in the circle of life, which gives the earth the status of a shrine.
Analysis of the poem “Native Land” by Akhmatova: size of the poem
It is also especially worth noting the unusual size in which it is written poetic work. It begins with iambic pentameter. Then this size is replaced by a three-foot anapest, and after that by a four-foot anapest. Why did the poetess find it necessary to switch rhythms like this? This is necessary in order to divide the poem into emotional parts of different meanings and a logical conclusion to the work.
Analysis of Akhmatova’s poem “Native Land”
Akhmatova Russian literature love lyrics
The late Anna Andreevna Akhmatova leaves the genre of the “love diary”, a genre in which she knew no rivals and which she left, perhaps even with some apprehension and caution, and goes on to think about the role and fate of the poet, about religion, about craft , fatherland. There is a keen sense of history. Akhmatova wrote about A.S. Pushkin: “He does not close himself off from the world, but goes towards the world.” This was also her road - to peace, to a sense of community with it. Thinking about the fate of the poet leads to thinking about the fate of Russia and the world.
The epigraph of Anna Andreevna Akhmatova’s poem “Native Land” contains the final two lines of a poem composed by Akhmatova herself in the post-revolutionary years. And it starts like this:
"I am not with those who abandoned the earth
To be torn to pieces by the enemies."
A.A. Akhmatova did not then want to join the ranks of emigrants, although many of her friends ended up abroad. The decision to stay in Soviet Russia there was no compromise with Soviet people, nor agreement with the course she has chosen. The point is different. Akhmatova felt that only by sharing fate with own people, she will be able to survive as a person and as a poet. And this premonition turned out to be prophetic. In the thirties and sixties, her poetic voice acquired unexpected strength and power. Having absorbed all the pain of her time, her poems rose above it and became an expression of universal human suffering. The poem “Native Land” sums up the poet’s attitude towards his homeland. The name itself has double meaning. “Earth” is both a country with the people inhabiting it and with its own history, and simply the soil on which people walk. Akhmatova, as it were, returns the lost unity to meaning. This allows her to introduce wonderful images into the poem: “dirt on galoshes”, “crunch on teeth” - which receive a metaphorical load. There is not the slightest bit of sentimentality in Anna Akhmatova’s attitude towards her native land. The first quatrain is built on the denial of those actions that are usually associated with the manifestation of patriotism:
“We don’t wear treasured incense on our chests,
We don’t write sobbing poems about her...”
These actions seem unworthy to her: they do not contain a sober, courageous view of Russia. Anna Akhmatova does not perceive her country as a “promised paradise” - there is too much in national history testifies to the tragic sides of Russian life. But there is no resentment here for the actions that the native land “brings to those living on it.” There is a proud submission to the lot that it presents to us. In this submission, however, there is no challenge. Moreover, it does not conscious choice. And this is the weakness of Akhmatova’s patriotism. Love for Russia is not for her the result of a completed spiritual path, as it was with Lermontov or Blok; this love was given to her from the very beginning. Her patriotic feeling is absorbed with mother's milk and therefore cannot be subjected to any rationalistic adjustments. The connection with our native land is felt not even on a spiritual, but on a physical level: the earth is an integral part of our personality, because we are all destined to physically merge with it - after death:
“But we lie down in it and become it,
That’s why we call it so freely – ours.”
The poem is divided into three sections, which is emphasized and graphic. The first eight lines are constructed as a chain of parallel negative constructions. The ends of the phrases coincide with the ends of the lines, which creates a measured “persistent” information, which is emphasized by the rhythm of iambic pentameter. This is followed by a quatrain written in three-foot anapest. Changing meters throughout one poem is a rather rare phenomenon in poetry. IN in this case this rhythmic interruption serves to counter the flow of denials, statements about how the collective is perceived lyrical hero motherland. This statement is of a rather reduced character, which is reinforced by the anaphoric repetition:
“Yes, for us it’s dirt on our galoshes,
Yes, for us it’s a crunch in the teeth...”
And finally, in the finale, the three-foot anapest is replaced by a four-foot one. Such a meter interruption gives two last lines latitude poetic breath, which find support in the infinite depth of meaning contained in them. The poetry of Anna Andreevna Akhmatova “was nourished - even in the initial poems - by a feeling of homeland, pain for the homeland, and this theme sounded louder in her poetry... No matter what she wrote about in last years, in her poems there was always a persistent thought about historical destinies country with which she is connected with all the roots of her being.” (K. Chukovsky)
I'm not with those who abandoned the earth
To be torn to pieces by enemies.
I don't listen to their rude flattery,
I won’t give them my songs.
But I always feel sorry for the exile,
Like a prisoner, like a patient.
Your road is dark, wanderer,
Someone else's bread smells like wormwood.
And here, in the depths of the fire
Losing the rest of my youth,
We don't hit a single beat
They didn’t turn away from themselves.
And we know that in the late assessment
Every hour will be justified...
But there are no more tearless people in the world,
More arrogant and simpler than us.
The poem “Native Land” was written by A.A. Akhmatova in 1961. It was included in the collection “A Wreath for the Dead.” The work refers to civil lyrics. Its main theme is the poet’s feeling of the Motherland. The epigraph to it was lines from the poem “I am not with those who abandoned the earth...”: “And in the world there are no people more tearless, More arrogant and simpler than us.” This poem was written in 1922. About forty years passed between the writing of these two works. Much has changed in Akhmatova’s life. She survived terrible tragedy- her ex-husband, Nikolai Gumilyov, was accused of counter-revolutionary activities and executed in 1921. Son Lev was arrested and convicted several times. survived war, famine, disease, the siege of Leningrad. It was no longer published in the mid-twenties. However, difficult trials and losses did not break the spirit of the poetess.
Her thoughts are still turned to the Motherland. Akhmatova writes about this uncomplicatedly, sparingly, sincerely. The poem begins with a denial of the pathos of patriotic feeling. The lyrical heroine’s love for the Motherland is devoid of external expressiveness, it is quiet and simple:
We don’t carry them on our chests in our treasured amulet,
We don’t write poems about her sobbingly,
She doesn't wake up our bitter dreams,
Doesn't seem like the promised paradise.
We don’t do it in our souls
Subject of purchase and sale,
Sick, in poverty, speechless on her,
We don't even remember her.
Researchers have repeatedly noted the semantic and compositional similarity of this poem with the poem by M.Yu. Lermontov "Motherland". The poet also denies official patriotism, calling his love for the Motherland “strange”:
I love my fatherland, but with a strange love!
My reason will not defeat her.
Nor glory bought with blood,
Neither complete proud trust peace,
Neither dark antiquity cherished legends
No joyful dreams stir within me.
But I love - for what, I don’t know myself -...
Official, state Russia contrasts natural and folk Russia - the breadth of its rivers and lakes, the beauty of forests and fields, the life of the peasantry. Akhmatova also strives to avoid pathos in her work. For her, Russia is a place where she is ill, in poverty, and experiencing deprivation. Russia is “dirt on galoshes”, “crunch on teeth”. But at the same time, this is the Motherland, which is infinitely dear to her, lyrical heroine as if fused with her:
Yes, for us it’s dirt on our galoshes,
Yes, for us it's a crunch in the teeth.
And we grind, and knead, and crumble
Those unmixed ashes.
But we lie down in it and become it.
That’s why we call it so freely – ours.
Here we involuntarily recall Pushkin’s lines:
Two feelings are wonderfully close to us -
The heart finds food in them -
Love for the native ashes,
Love for fathers' coffins.
(Based on them since centuries
By the will of God himself
Human independence
The key to his greatness).
In the same way, for Akhmatova, a person’s independence is based on his inextricable, blood connection with his Motherland.
Compositionally, the poem is divided into two parts. In the first part, the lyrical heroine refuses excessive expression and pathos in showing her feelings for Russia. In the second, she denotes what the Motherland is for her. The heroine feels like an organic part of a single whole, a person of a generation, of her native land, inextricably linked with the Fatherland. The two-part nature of the composition is reflected in the metric of the poem. The first part (eight lines) is written in free iambic. The second part is a three-foot and four-foot anapest. The poetess uses cross and pair rhymes. We find modest means artistic expression: epithet (“bitter dream”), phraseological unit (“promised paradise”), inversion (“we do not do it in our soul”).
The poem “Native Land” was written in the final period of the poetess’s work, in 1961. It was a period of summing up and remembering the past. And Akhmatova in this poem comprehends the life of her generation against the backdrop of the life of the country. And we see that the poet’s fate is closely connected with the fate of her Fatherland.
G.Yu. Sidnev, I.N. Lebedeva
The theme of the Motherland is a cross-cutting theme in the works of Anna Andreevna Akhmatova. This is a long-term internal dispute of the poet - both with ideological opponents and with his own doubts. In this dialogue, three noticeable milestones can be noted - “I had a voice...” (1917), from which all subsequent creative path Akhmatova: “I am not with those who abandoned the earth...” (1922) as a continuation and development of the civil line; “Native Land” (1961), which sums up the long-term philosophical debate about what the Motherland is, about complex essence emotional and moral relationships with her.
The subject of this article is the poem “Native Land”; the perfection of its form and natural sound are achieved through extensive work, invisible to the reader. Imagining the process and volume of this work is not only interesting, but also necessary to comprehend the full wealth of content and skill great poet.
Motherland
And there are no more tearless people in the world, more arrogant and simpler than us.
1922
We don’t carry them on our chests in our treasured amulet,
We don’t write poems about her sobbingly,
She doesn't wake up our bitter dreams,
Doesn't seem like the promised paradise.
We don’t do it in our souls
Subject of purchase and sale,
Sick, in poverty, speechless on her,
We don't even remember her.
Yes, for us it’s dirt on our galoshes,
Yes, for us it's a crunch in the teeth.
And we grind, and knead, and crumble
But we lie down in it and become it,
("Running of Time")
Having elected traditional form sonnet, A.A. Akhmatova enriches it with bold innovative discoveries. The philosophical premise and iambic beginning are reminiscent of Shakespeare's sonnets. The ratio of stanzas is preserved, emphasizing the artistic logic of the development of thought: the first quatrain is the thesis (plot); the second quatrain is the development of the thesis; third quatrain - antithesis (culmination); final couplet-synthesis (denouement). However, the rhythmic diversity, intonation richness and figurative content of the poem indicate that this is a sonnet of a new type, a unique creation of a bright and original poet. That is why it is especially interesting how Akhmatova, bringing the form to harmonic perfection, builds rhythm and works on the word.
First of all, it is necessary to remember that meter and rhythm are not the same thing. Meter is a form that combines many syllabic-tonic verses with similarly ordered stress and unstressed syllables, and in each specific case it carries a strictly individual rhythm, which is the meaning-forming element of the verse. The semantics of this or that poetic size depends on the meaning and rhythm of the phrases that make up the meter. But it often happens that one rhythm contributes to the development of the dominant mood in poetry, while another does not. Akhmatova’s complex intonation patterns emphasize and enhance semantic associativity. The entire poem is a rhythmic monolith with very flexible rhythmic-semantic and associative connections that form supporting rhythmic parallels.
The author of the sonnet discovers true mastery in the fact that the rhythm of the poem does not exist on its own, it provides exceptional scope for development lyrical plot. The strict iambic style of the first two quatrains indicates expression, enhanced by emphasized laconicism.
Each quatrain of a traditional sonnet is graphically separated from the rest. Akhmatov's sonnet does not need this.
In the ideological disclosure of the topic, the following rhythmic and semantic connection can be noted: the number of syllables and the location last accents the lines of the last couplet rhythmically echo the iambic hexameter lines, which emphasizes the following train of thought: “We don’t carry them on our chests in treasured amulet” - “But we lie down in it and become it.” Negation turns into affirmation qualitatively new thought.
The interconnectedness of all structural elements The sonnet clearly brings it into thematic community with the entire patriotic work of Anna Akhmatova. Starting from the epigraph, which rhythmically seems to be continued in the poem, the semantic connection is constantly supported by grammatical parallels: there are no more tearless people - We don’t write poetry out of our minds; arrogant and simpler than us - that’s why we call so freely... Finally, a reader familiar with Akhmatova’s poetry will easily discover the structural (and therefore artistic) connection between the ending of the sonnet and the version of the ending of the poem included by the author in the epigraph: “But we lie down in it and become it... - “and there are no more tearless people in the world...” The “poetic resonance” that arose at the very beginning reaches highest point, which allows the final lines, outwardly devoid of expression, to produce a genuine emotional explosion. This artistic effect is the result of the poet’s strict adherence to two most important stylistic principles. The first of them is laconicism. Akhmatova was firmly convinced that every poem, even a small one, should carry a huge emotional load - figurative, semantic, intonational. The second is orientation towards the living colloquial, which determines that naturalness poetic speech, which in Russian poetry is primarily associated with the name of Pushkin. One gets the feeling that the author, without visible effort, uses and collides various speech styles: traditional sublimely poetic vocabulary is contrasted with words with a deliberately reduced specificity emotional coloring. The solemnity of reflection followed by a significant conclusion is often created as if in spite of the reduced vocabulary used. Akhmatova is not afraid to rhyme (and rhymes for a great poet are always the center of meaning) in galoshes and crumbs. On the contrary, she needs this rhyme in order to explode her with the pathetically sublime: there is dust on her teeth. Note that this rhyme crowns the third, culminating, quatrain, preparing the denouement-synthesis.
It is interesting to use tropes in this poem - words with figurative meaning. Metaphor is rarely present in Akhmatova’s poems. One of the main elements of imagery for her is the epithet, the renewal of which has been going on in her poetry for a long time. Let us recall at least these lines from the poem “Listening to Singing”:
Here, with the help of epithets, new ones are conveyed, unexpected properties audible music, an unearthly sense of reality is expressed. And it would be natural to expect a similar artistic technique in "Native Land". However, instead we find quite traditional, “cherished amulet”, “promised paradise”, which has become a poetic cliche - and even adjacent to the expressions: “dirt on galoshes”, “chalk, and knead, and crumble”. The combination of such contradictory images in one poem is not an external method of mixing high style with low, not just a contrast different beginnings, opposite world relations, and new harmony, which allows you to organically connect the traditionally poetic with the ordinary, discreet, but true in its depth feeling.
Striving for the utmost laconicism in expressing this feeling, Akhmatova resorts to “semantic imposition,” which is why the word acquires a special capacity and ambiguity. Thus, it has several meanings at once keyword earth, and its semantic dominant is constantly moving, changing and becoming more complex from line to line, since the semantic field of this word cannot be clearly differentiated into the main and peripheral parts. This is both a symbolic attribute (amulet) of a person’s belonging to the land where he was born, and its generalized meaning - Motherland, country, state, and soil, the surface of our planet. The imposition of meaning is facilitated by the fact that the word earth itself is mentioned only in the title of the poem. In the future, this word is replaced by the pronouns she or it. Associative connections are provided by the selection of signal words that form the necessary context: paradise, dirt, crunch, dust. In addition, the keyword, in connection with one or another of its semantic dominants, combines various actions in relation to it: we don’t wear, we don’t remember, we grind, and we knead, and we crumble. And in the final part of the poem, all meanings are combined at a qualitatively new semantic level:
But we lie down in it and become it,
That's why we call it so freely - ours.
She doesn't disturb our bitter dreams...
The following phrases attract attention: a bitter dream and a dream that does not disturb. Tears, grievances, memories or share can be bitter; You can heal wounds, including mental ones. The word dream, therefore, appears in combinations unusual for it. But psychology artistic perception eliminates linguistic confusion. Tagged transparency artistic image allows us to avoid misinterpretation.
The word in the line is subject to a similar contamination of meaning: we don’t write poems about it sobbingly... Here the phrases are combined: crying bitterly and writing poetry - creating poetic appeals to the Motherland, imbued with tearful sentimentality.
The words in the following lines of the poem enter into even more complex associative connections:
And we grind, and knead, and crumble
Those unmixed ashes.
