Having experienced many difficult situations - exile to the camps, breaking up with his wife - N. Zabolotsky learned to subtly sense human nature. He could guess what the other person was thinking by his facial expression or intonation. In adulthood, the poet wrote the work “On the Beauty of Human Faces” (1955).
The theme of the poem is the human face as a mirror of the soul. The poet claims that the sculptor of our faces is an internal state that can give greatness or pitifulness. Reading the work carefully, it is not difficult to guess which forms are the ideal of beauty for the author himself.
The key images of the verse are human faces. The author creates a whole gallery of them, drawing parallels with architectural structures: magnificent portals, miserable shacks, dungeons and towers. N. Zabolotsky describes human loneliness in an original way: “Others are like towers in which for a long time // No one lives or looks out the window.” It seems that in the lines of the poem the faces lose their human appearance, turning into masks.
Among all the “houses”-guises, N. Zabolotsky singles out the “small hut”. She is not distinguished by beauty or elegance, but emits the “breath of a spring day,” which seems to hint at spiritual wealth. Finally, the poet talks about faces like songs, which emit notes like the sun. The last two types of faces are the standard of beauty for the author, although he does not say this directly.
The work “On the Beauty of Human Faces” by N. Zabolotsky is built on contrast: “pathetic” - “great”, “unpretentious” - “like jubilant songs”. Between opposing images, the author tries to maintain a smooth transition, which can be observed between faces in a crowd of people. He does not criticize ugly “huts”, realizing that very often appearance is the result of life circumstances.
The main artistic device in the work is metaphor. In almost every line, the author creates a metaphorical image of a house, symbolizing a face. Comparisons also play an important role, performing in this verse the same functions as a metaphor: “faces like lush portals”, “... faces closed with bars, like a dungeon.” Additional trope - epithets: “small hut”, hut “neokasista, not rich”, “pathetic shack”. They help clarify details, convey the author’s thoughts more clearly, and realize the idea.
The poem “On the Beauty of Human Faces” is not divided into stanzas, although in terms of meaning, quatrains are clearly distinguished in it. This composition probably symbolizes the collection of different faces that we can observe every day. The rhyme in the verse is parallel, the meter is amphibrachic tetrameter. The calm intonation pattern of the work is interrupted only once by an exclamation expressing the author’s admiration. The rhythmic and intonation organization of the text is harmoniously intertwined with its content and composition.
N. Zabolotsky’s poem “On the beauty of human faces” reveals the eternal theme of the interdependence of soul and appearance, but the author does not follow the paths trodden by other writers, putting his thoughts into an original artistic form.
“On the beauty of human faces” Nikolai Zabolotsky
There are faces like lush portals,
Where everywhere the great is seen in the small.
There are faces - like miserable shacks,
Where the liver is cooked and the rennet is soaked.
Other cold, dead faces
Closed with bars, like a dungeon.
Others are like towers in which for a long time
Nobody lives and looks out the window.
But I once knew a small hut,
She was unprepossessing, not rich,
But from the window she looks at me
The breath of a spring day flowed.
Truly the world is both great and wonderful!
There are faces - similarities to jubilant songs.
From these notes, like the sun, shining
A song of heavenly heights has been composed.
Analysis of Zabolotsky’s poem “On the beauty of human faces”
The poet Nikolai Zabolotsky felt people very subtly and knew how to characterize them by several features or accidentally dropped phrases. However, the author believed that his face can tell the most about a person, which is very difficult to control. Indeed, the corners of the lips, wrinkles on the forehead or dimples on the cheeks indicate what emotions people experience even before they directly say so. Over the years, these emotions leave their indelible imprint on faces, which is no less fun and interesting to “read” than a fascinating book.
It is this kind of “reading” that the author talks about in his poem “On the Beauty of Human Faces.” This work was written in 1955 - at the dawn of the poet’s life. Experience and natural intuition allowed him to this moment to accurately determine the internal “content” of any interlocutor just by the movement of his eyebrows. In this poem, the poet gives a classification to various people, and it turns out to be surprisingly apt. Indeed, even today you can easily find faces “like magnificent portals”, which belong to people who are nothing special, but at the same time trying to look weightier and more significant. Another type of such individuals, according to the author, instead of faces have “the resemblance of pitiful shacks.” Unlike pompous individuals, such people are aware of their worthlessness and do not try to disguise it under smart looks and skeptically curled lips. Tower faces and dungeon faces belong to those who are almost completely closed to communication for various reasons. Alienation, arrogance, personal tragedy, self-sufficiency - all these qualities are also reflected in facial expressions and eye movements, without going unnoticed by the poet. The author himself is impressed by faces that resemble small huts, where “the breath of a spring day flowed from the windows.” Such faces, according to Zabolotsky, are like a “jubilant song” because they are filled with joy, open to everyone and so friendly that you want to look at them again and again. “The song of heavenly heights is composed of these notes, like the sun, shining,” the author notes, emphasizing that the inner, spiritual beauty of each person is always reflected on the face and is a certain barometer of the well-being of the entire society. True, not everyone knows how to “read” facial expressions and enjoy getting to know people through their faces.
Themes of poems by N.A. Zabolotsky is diverse. He can be called a philosophical poet and singer of nature. He has many faces, like life. But the main thing is the poems of N.A. Zabolotsky is forced to think about good and evil, hatred and love, beauty...
What is beauty
And why do people deify her?
She is a vessel in which there is emptiness,
Or a fire flickering in a vessel?
The eternal question posed in “The Ugly Girl” is illuminated somewhat differently in the poem “On the Beauty of Human Faces,” which was written in the same year, nineteen fifty-five.
“Truly the world is both great and wonderful!” - with these words the poet completes the image of the gallery of human portraits. N.A. Zabolotsky does not talk about people, he draws faces, behind which is character and behavior. The descriptions given by the author are surprisingly accurate. Everyone can see in them their own reflection or characteristics of friends and loved ones. Before us are faces “like lush portals”, “like miserable hovels”, “dead faces”, faces “like towers”, “like jubilant songs”. This picture once again affirms the theme of the diversity of the world. But questions immediately arise: “Are they all beautiful? And what is true beauty?
N.A. Zabolotsky gives the answers. For him there is almost no difference between faces like a miserable hovel or a magnificent portal. These “...cold, dead faces are closed with bars, like a dungeon.” Alien to him and
Towers in which for a long time
Nobody lives and looks out the window.
There is no life in these faces; it is not for nothing that an important characteristic here are epithets with a negative connotation (“pathetic,” “cold, dead”).
The tone of the poem changes when the author paints the opposite picture:
But I once knew a small hut,
She was unprepossessing, not rich,
But from the window she looks at me
The breath of a spring day flowed.
Movement, warmth, and joy come into the work with these lines.
Thus, the poem is built on opposition (lush portals - miserable shacks, towers - a small hut, a dungeon - the sun). The antithesis separates greatness and baseness, light and darkness, talent and mediocrity.
The author claims: inner beauty, “like the sun,” can make even the “smallest hut” attractive. Thanks to her, a “song of heavenly heights” is compiled, capable of making the world wonderful and great. The word “similarity” and its cognates “similar”, “likeness” run through the entire poem as a refrain. With their help, the theme of true and false beauty is revealed most fully. This cannot be real, it is only an imitation, a fake that cannot replace the original.
An important function in the first four lines is performed by anaphora (“There is...”, “Where...”), which helps to reveal images according to a single scheme: complex sentences with subordinate clauses:
There are faces like lush portals,
Where everywhere the great is seen in the small.
There are faces - like miserable shacks,
Where the liver is cooked and the rennet is soaked.
In the next four lines, a special role is given to comparisons (“like a prison,” “like towers”), creating a gloomy picture of external greatness that cannot replace internal harmony.
The emotional mood changes completely in the next eight lines. This is largely due to the variety of expressive means: personification (“breath of a spring day”), epithets (“jubilant”, “shining”), comparison (“like the sun”), metaphor (“song of heavenly heights”). Here a lyrical hero appears, who immediately from the kaleidoscope of faces singles out the main thing, truly beautiful, capable of bringing the purity and freshness of a “spring day” into the lives of those around him, illuminating “like the sun,” and composing a song of “heavenly heights.”
So what is beauty? I look at the portrait of a serious, no longer young man. Tired look, high forehead, compressed lips, wrinkles in the corners of the mouth. “Ugly...” - I would probably say that if I didn’t know that in front of me was N.A. Zabolotsky. But I know and am sure: a person who wrote such amazing poetry cannot be ugly. It's not about appearance, it's just a "vessel". What is important is the “fire flickering in the vessel.”
The name of Nikolai Zabolotsky is associated with the realistic tradition in literature, which was developed by poets belonging to the group “Associations of Real Art”. Years of work were devoted to Detgiz, a publishing house that produces works for children, and Zabolotsky, in addition, had a pedagogical education. That is why many of his poems can be addressed and perfectly understood by children and adolescents, while they do not contain boring didacticism and answer the first philosophical questions that concern young readers.
The poem “On the Beauty of Human Faces” appeared at the end of Nikolai Zabolotsky’s writing career - in 1955. There was a period of “thaw”, Zabolotsky experienced a creative surge. Many lines that are on everyone’s lips were born at this time - “Ugly girl”, “Don’t let your soul be lazy”, many are united by a common theme.
The main theme of the poem
The main theme of the poem is the idea that the path of life, character traits, habits and inclinations - all this is literally written on a person’s face. The face does not deceive, and tells everything to a person capable of logical thinking and analysis, creating not only an external, but also an internal portrait. The ability to draw such portraits, reading the fate of the interlocutor, like a book, is called physiognomy. So, for an observant physiognomist, one person will appear pretentiously beautiful, but empty inside, another may turn out to be modest, but contain the whole world. People are also like buildings, because each person “builds” his life, and everyone succeeds differently - either a luxurious castle or a shabby shack. The windows in the buildings we build are our eyes, through which we can read our inner life - our thoughts, intentions, dreams, our intellect.
Zabolotsky draws these several images-buildings, resorting to extended metaphors:
It is absolutely clear that the author himself likes such discoveries - when in a “little hut” a real treasure of positive human qualities and talents is discovered. Such a “hut” can be opened again and again, and it will delight you with its versatility. Such a “hut” is inconspicuous in appearance, but an experienced person who knows how to read faces may be lucky enough to meet such a person.
The author resorts to the techniques of extended metaphor and antithesis (“portals” are contrasted with “pathetic shacks”, arrogant “towers” with small but cozy “huts”). Greatness and earthliness, talent and emptiness, warm light and cold darkness are contrasted.
Structural analysis of the poem
Among the stylistic means of artistic representation chosen by the author, one can also note anaphora (the unity of the lines “There is...” and “Where...”). With the help of anaphora, the disclosure of images is organized according to a single scheme.
Compositionally, the poem contains increasing emotionality, turning into triumph (“Truly the world is both great and wonderful!”). The author's position in the finale is expressed by the enthusiastic realization that there are many great and wonderful people in the world. You just need to find them.
The poem is written in amphibrach tetrameter and contains 4 quatrains. The rhyme is parallel, feminine, mostly accurate.
Analysis of the poem by N. A. Zabolotsky “On the beauty of human faces.”
The poet was always concerned with the question of what is more important in a person: his appearance, cover, or his soul, inner world. The poem “On the Beauty of Human Faces,” written in 1955, is dedicated to this topic. The word beauty is already in the title. What beauty does the poet value in people?
The poem can be divided into two parts. The first part is the lyrical hero’s reflection on the beauty of human faces: “There are faces like lush portals, Where everywhere the great appears in the small.”
In these lines, the poet uses unusual metaphors and comparisons. A portal is the main entrance of a large building, its facade. Let us pay attention to the epithet “lush” - elegant, beautiful. You can't always judge a person by their appearance. After all, spiritual poverty can be hidden behind a beautiful face and fashionable clothes. It is no coincidence that the poet uses antonyms: “the great is seen in the small.”
Next comes a comparison contrasted with the first: “There are faces like miserable shacks, Where the liver is boiled and the rennet gets wet.” The epithet creates an unsightly picture, emphasizing poverty and squalor: “a pitiful shack.” But here we see not only external poverty, but also internal, spiritual emptiness. The identical construction of sentences in this quatrain (syntactic parallelism) and anaphora are used to strengthen and highlight the antithesis.
The next quatrain continues the author's philosophical reflections. The pronouns “other - other” are symbolic and emphasize monotony. Let us pay attention to the epithets “cold, dead faces” and the metaphor-comparison “closed with bars, like dungeons.” Such people, according to the author, are closed in on themselves, never share their problems with others: “Others are like towers in which no one lives for a long time and no one looks out the window.”
The abandoned castle is empty. Such a comparison emphasizes a person’s loss of dreams and hope. He does not try to change anything in his life, does not strive for the better. The second part is opposed to the first in emotional terms. The conjunction “but” emphasizes the antithesis. Bright epithets “spring day”, “jubilant songs”, “shining notes” change the mood of the poem, it becomes sunny and joyful. Despite the fact that the small hut is “unprepossessing and not rich,” it radiates light. The exclamatory sentence emphasizes this mood: “Truly the world is both great and wonderful!” For the poet, the main thing is the spiritual beauty of a person, his inner world, what he lives by: “There are faces - the likeness of jubilant songs, From these, like the sun, shining notes, a song of heavenly heights is composed.”
These lines express the idea of the poem. It is precisely such people, simple, open, cheerful, that attract the poet. It is these faces that the poet considers truly beautiful.
