Composition
All poets in one way or another address the theme of love. And for each poet this topic has a special, personal meaning. Ancient poets considered the feeling of love to be the most important: they drew inspiration from it, love enriched them spiritually. Such a literary movement as sentimentalism is completely based on the sacred feelings of love and friendship. The theme of love occupies a large place in the works of romantic poets.
For Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin, love is one of the main themes in his lyrics. During the Lyceum period, Pushkin’s poetry was still largely imitative. At this time, the young poet became interested in the philosophy of voluptuousness. In the poem “The Tomb of Anacreon,” the poet calls for “being tired of ardent passion” and proclaims the formula for all his lyrics of that period:
Let me enjoy life;
Life, alas, is not an eternal gift!
In poems from the Lyceum period, Pushkin glorifies the carefree enjoyment of life, a friendly feast, and wine. Love for him is also one of life’s pleasures, a light, pleasant feeling, ranking on a par with feast and wine.
Very soon, light, life-affirming poetry, an understanding of love as fun entertainment, will be replaced by civic motives, the glorification of civic virtues. Pushkin rethinks the main themes of his poetry, and love receives a completely different light from him. In his message “To Chaadaev,” Pushkin seems to be trying to reconcile two completely different directions: sentimentalism and classicism. The poet combines civic ideals with intimate feelings. In the central lines of the poem, love experiences are compared with civic aspirations:
We wait with languid hope
Holy moments of freedom
How a young lover waits
Minutes of a faithful date.
Love as an intimate value in Pushkin's civil lyrics is combined with patriotic feelings. Now love for a poet is, first of all, love for the Motherland. The poem “To Chaadaev” combines previously incompatible concepts of love for a woman and love for the homeland.
Pushkin creates a new philosophy of the feeling of love. In the message “To Kaverin” we read:
Pray to both Bacchus and love
And despise the rabble's jealous murmuring.
Here love is a way of escaping from the outside world, from the crowd. Pushkin talks about the same thing in his poem “To Pluskova”:
Love and secret freedom
They inspired a simple hymn in the heart.
The feeling of love is placed on a line with inner freedom. Love helps the poet escape from the world into the depths of his feelings, where he is completely free and not dependent on anyone. In southern exile, during the romantic period of his creativity, love for Pushkin is no longer a “prank of his youth”, not a patriotic feeling for his homeland, but a deep, dramatic passion. The love of a romantic poet is often unrequited, always unhappy. She, like a leaf from the poem “Burnt Letter,” burns in the soul of the lyrical hero and burns out in one moment, leaving behind only ashes and a devastated soul. This bitter ending makes Pushkin disillusioned with romantic love. Does the poet need such free, but destructive, devastating love, which, except grief and pain, leaves nothing in the soul? Such love destroys the very source of inspiration.
The great poet refuses romantic love. In Mikhailovsky, he once again rethinks the theme of love in his work, returning to early lyrics, to the understanding of love as inner freedom and a source of inspiration. In the poems of the Mikhailovsky period, Pushkin rises much higher than the interpretation of love as a transitory, earthly passion.
In Pushkin's poems, love becomes an ideal, eternal feeling. It takes on a connotation of sacrifice and chivalry. In the poem “I loved you...” the poet proclaims selfless love:
I loved you: love is still, perhaps,
My soul has not completely died out;
But don't let it bother you anymore;
I don't want to make you sad in any way.
I loved you silently, hopelessly,
Now we are tormented by timidity, now by jealousy;
I loved you so sincerely, so tenderly,
How God grant you, your beloved, to be different.
This is one of the most mysterious and heartfelt works of Pushkin's lyrics. The mystery of these lines lies in their simplicity and artlessness, but at the same time in the capacity and depth of the expressed feeling. To love, even unrequitedly, in Pushkin’s understanding, is in itself a great happiness. A huge role is played by the threefold repetition of “I loved you...”, as well as repetitions of the same type of verbal constructions: “silently, hopelessly”, “so sincerely, so tenderly”. These repetitions give the poetic monologue an elegiac mood. The last line sounds as if on an exhale, like a passionate and farewell wish.
In the poem “On the Hills of Georgia...” the lyrical hero yearns for his beloved, but his sadness is “light” because it is full of love. For Pushkin, such love is long-awaited peace and tranquility.
my despondency
Nothing torments, nothing worries,
And the heart burns and loves again - because
That it cannot help but love.
The great Russian poet showed that love is a source of inner freedom and harmony, a source of creative inspiration. In the poem “I Remember a Wonderful Moment...”, dedicated to Anna Petrovna Kern, Pushkin paints an ideal, heavenly image of love. This image is alien to everything earthly. In the poem there is not a single specific feature of the beloved of the lyrical hero. Before us is an image of a pure, ideal manifestation of beauty. Only his appearance can give rise to high feelings and inspiration in the poet’s soul:
And the heart beats in ecstasy,
And for him they rose again
Both deity and inspiration.
And life, and tears, and love.
We see that the theme of love in Pushkin’s lyrics is revealed differently by him in different periods of his work. During the lyceum period, this is a light, frivolous feeling, one of the pleasures of life. In the St. Petersburg period, love is associated with the patriotic aspirations of the poet: it is love for the Motherland. During the period of southern exile, Pushkin depicts love as a romantic, devastating passion. And only in Mikhailovsky Pushkin comes to an understanding of love as the highest human value. Love is now associated with inner freedom, capable of awakening inspiration and the best human feelings in the poet.
Pushkin's traditions of the theme of love were inherited by other Russian poets. The combination of love with civic and patriotic feelings, the comparison of the beloved with the Motherland is characteristic of Nekrasov’s patriotic lyrics. “As a woman, you loved your homeland,” he says in the poem “In Memory of Dobrolyubov.” This is also characteristic of Blok (“Russia”) and Mayakovsky (“Letter to Tatyana Yakovleva”). Pushkin's romantic love lyrics were in many ways fundamental to Lermontov's work. The philosophy of selfless love created by Pushkin in the last period of his creativity will be creatively developed not only by poets, but also by prose writers Goncharov, Turgenev, Tolstoy.
The lyrics of Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin are rich and varied in their themes. The poet went down in the history of world literature as a singer of freedom, a master of landscape lyricism, an opponent of all violence against man, despotism and tyranny. But it seems to me that Pushkin’s gentle, loving, noble soul is most clearly manifested in poems dedicated to love and friendship. These feelings were sacred for the poet, the most important in his short but eventful life.
Pushkin treated his old lyceum comrades with tenderness and love. In the “Message to the book. Goncharov,” the poet admits that it is easier for him to breathe in a “happy family,” as he calls his circle of friends:
And I admit, I love it a hundred times better
Happy family of young rakes,
Where the mind is in full swing, where I am free in my thoughts.
Pushkin says that lyceum students are “wonderful friends.” In the company of people dear to him, the poet lives and thinks freely, here he can argue, rejoice, among friends his feelings become heightened, it is like a return to his lyceum youth. That is why the very memory of “languid, soulless meetings”, the boredom and emptiness of secular society, which the poet openly burdens, is so unpleasant for Pushkin. However, by the will of fate, he was often in a long separation from his dear Lyceum friends. At such moments in his life, the poet was especially in dire need of support; he was very happy with every news from friends who did not forget the disgraced poet. A striking example, an example of Pushkin’s attitude towards old comrades, is the famous poem “October 19,” written in 1825. Every year on this day, lyceum students gathered for a ceremonial meeting dedicated to the opening day of the Lyceum. But in October 1925, Pushkin was in exile, which is why the first lines of the poem sound so sad. The decline of nature in autumn is associated with the decline of human life. While in Mikhailovskoye, the poet talks about his personal pain, about the severity of loneliness, which is most difficult to bear precisely now, when old friends get together again. However, the author's optimism breaks through the motives of sadness and melancholy. The poet talks about the holiness of friendship and claims that this feeling is beautiful and eternal:
My friends, our union is wonderful.
He, like the soul, is inseparable and eternal,
Unshakable, free and carefree,
He grew together under the shadow of friendly muses.
These lines echo the words of the message to Gorchakov. A society of friends is a family of kindred souls, a beautiful and happy union, which is sanctified by the carelessness of youth and the love of art. Pushkin addresses words of gratitude to those who have not forgotten him and visited the poet in Mikhailovskoye. Special thanks are addressed to Pushkin, whose appearance in the house of the disgraced poet turned a gray, dreary day into a real holiday for the Lyceum. Pushkin was the first to visit his friend in Mikhailovsky, and Pushkin retained the memory of this for the rest of his life. When many of his Decembrist friends were exiled, the poet sent to Siberia not only the message “In the depths of the Siberian ores...”, but also the message “I. I. Pushkin,” which begins with the words:
My first friend, my priceless friend!
This is how Pushkin wants to support his comrade in a difficult time, just as Pushkin once returned to the poet the joy of the holiday, the feeling of life. Poems dedicated to the theme of love are distinguished by the same warmth, humanism, and sincerity. Only Pushkin could say this about the most beautiful human feeling:
I remember a wonderful moment
You appeared before me.
For the poet, the image of his beloved is a “fleeting vision”, “a genius of pure beauty”. When you read these lines, it seems that love combines earthly and divine principles. Pushkin creates a delightful picture of harmony, in which there is simplicity, naturalness, “divinity, and inspiration.” A person cannot live without love, he languishes and suffers until a sweet image appears before him again. Pushkin's lines very accurately convey the feelings of a person who has fallen into the power of this great feeling of the need to love and be loved. In the poem “Confession,” which describes the mental state of a truly in love person, the poet shows the full power of love, its ability to give both joy and sadness:
I love you, even though I'm mad.
Although this is labor and shame in vain,
And in this unfortunate stupidity
At your feet I confess.
There is so much tenderness and sincerity in these words! How beautifully love as “unfortunate stupidity” and love as that which makes one be at the feet of one’s beloved are combined! Just one look, one smile can breathe life and happiness into the human soul.
The lines of such poems as “I remember a wonderful moment”, “I loved you...” became the words of beautiful Russian romances. This is how the Russian people appreciated the works of the brilliant poet of Russia, which were included in the golden fund of world poetry. Many people have written about love and friendship; these are eternal themes not only in Russian poetry. But it seems to me that no one can speak about these feelings better than Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin - the sun of our great literature.
THE THEME OF LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP IN THE LYRICS OF A.S. PUSHKIN
Pushkin...! When you remember this wonderful poet, tirades of poems about love and friendship, honor and the Motherland appear before you, images of Onegin and Tatyana, Masha and Grinev appear. For more than 100 years, people have turned to his poetry, finding in it a reflection of their thoughts, feelings and experiences. I love Pushkin's poetry. Yes, it’s impossible not to love her. The most strict reader will find something close to him in it, because it is multifaceted. Pushkin was not only a great poet, a wizard of the Russian word, he was a man who passionately responded to all living things, a tall and noble man. In the variety of lyrical themes that illuminate Pushkin’s poetry, the theme of friendship occupies such a significant place that the poet could be called the singer of this noble feeling. In all world literature there is no more striking example of a special passion for this particular aspect of human relations.
Obviously, the origins of this feeling lie in the very nature of the poet, responsive, able to reveal in each person the best properties of his soul. Pushkin had many friends, both close and not so close. The range of his friendly affections is very wide - from simple and external friendship to high degrees of demanding, fearless and sometimes sacrificial friendship. Pushkin brotherly loved the dreamy Delvig, and the naive Kuchelbecker, and the witty Vyazemsky, and the exuberant Denis Davydov, and the poet-citizen Ryleev, and the simple-minded Nashchokin. A very special place among Pushkin’s friends is occupied by P. Chaadaev, who in his youth was for the poet an example of high civic courage and intelligent love of freedom. Pushkin wrote many poems addressed to Chaadaev, imbued with the greatest respect, trust and friendship. Friendship with Chaadaev was for Pushkin not just an everyday affection, but, above all, a symbol of noble, freedom-loving ideas. This was reflected with particular force in one of the early poems, “To Chaadaev” (1818). This message for subsequent generations became a monument to high friendship, inspired by common political ideals. Pushkin not only loves and appreciates his friends, but also does not forget about them even when they are in trouble, when showing heartfelt attention to them threatens him with big and dangerous troubles. Pushkin, in front of the gendarmes, rushes into the arms of the exiled Kuchelbecker.
Having learned that Muravyova is going to Siberia to see her husband, exiled to hard labor, he sends through her poems to his Decembrist friends, full of the deepest confidence in the rightness of their heroic cause. And when asked by Nikolai where he would be on December 14, he answers without hesitation: “With friends!” Among Pushkin’s best friends from his lyceum youth, I.I. Pushchin occupied a special place. He was not a poet like Delvig or Kuchelbecker; he was connected with Pushkin not only by general literary interests. This was a friend to whom Pushkin, more willingly than others, trusted the excitement and anxiety of his young heart. The memory of night conversations with a friend remains in the poet’s heart for the rest of his life and gives a special tone to their relationship. True, after graduating from the lyceum, friends saw each other very rarely and little, but both of them were always eager for each other. When Pushkin learned about the defeat of the Decembrist uprising, he took this news very hard. With a message to Siberia, he sends poems to Pushchin: “My first friend, my priceless friend! And I blessed fate, when my secluded house, covered with sad snow, your bell rang. I pray to holy providence: may my voice grant your soul the same consolation, may he illuminate the imprisonment with the ray of the lyceum’s clear days.” Just ten lines! But how much is said in them! How much has been experienced and suffered in these extremely compressed words! Each line is full of deep meaning. It was true friendship, noble and faithful. Friendship is one of the main themes of Pushkin's lyrics at all stages of his creative path. In the poem “October 19,” 1827, Pushkin again writes to his Decembrist friends about his loyalty and friendship: “God help you, my friends, both in storms and in everyday grief, in a foreign land, in a deserted sea, and in dark abysses of the earth..." But, perhaps, the eternal theme of love runs through Pushkin’s lyrics even more diversely. The theme of love in Pushkin’s work is delight in spiritual and physical beauty, it is a hymn to a feeling that elevates and ennobles a person, it is an expression of boundless respect for a woman. Back in 1818, at one of the evening parties, Pushkin met 19-year-old Anna Petrovna Kern.Her radiant beauty and youth delighted the young poet.
Years have passed... Pushkin is in exile. Next to Mikhailovsky was the estate of the landowner Osipova. Here Pushkin met again with Kern, as charming as before. Pushkin gave her a recently published chapter of “Eugene Onegin,” and between the pages he inserted poems written for her. The poems dedicated to Anna Petrovna (“I remember a wonderful moment”) are a famous hymn to a high and bright feeling. This is one of the peaks of Pushkin's lyrics. The poems captivate not only with the purity and passion of the feelings embodied in them, but also with their harmony. Love for a poet is a source of life and joy, the poem “I loved you” is a masterpiece of Russian poetry. More than twenty romances have been written based on his poems. And let time pass, the name of Pushkin will always live in our memory and awaken the best feelings in us.
In numerous poems dedicated to friends and lovers, the poet’s understanding of these highest life values was revealed, and vivid images of friends and beloved women were created. Friendship and love for Pushkin are the companions of youth; they arise in the “whirlwind of young life” and accompany a person throughout his life. Pushkin's need for friendly communication, for the understanding and support of friends was as constant as the need to love and be loved. I understood friendship not only as a relationship that arises between two people. “Friendship” for him is a whole circle of people who are close “by fate”, this is “brotherhood”, “our union”, which formed back in the lyceum. Manifesto of Friendship – stanza from “October 19”:
My friends, this union is wonderful!
He, like a soul, is inseparable and eternal
Unwavering, free and carefree
He grew together under the shadow of friendly muses...
Pushkin also understood friendship as a “sweet union” that binds poets together.
In the poem “To Yazykov,” creativity and inspiration are called the basis of this union: They are priests of the same muses; A single flame excites them; Strangers to each other by fate, They are kin by inspiration. Pushkin’s poems about friendship invariably contain the philosophical motif of fate (“October 19”). Reflections about friends pushed the poet to analyze his own fate and created the psychological and philosophical background of many of his poems. Lyceum students scattered all over the world seemed to unite in the lyrical world of Pushkin.
Friendly participation, friendly support for Pushkin are the highest manifestations of humanity, requiring courage, will, readiness to fulfill one’s duty (“I. I. Pushchin”). The power of friendship is stronger than prison chains, the ray of lyceum brotherhood is able to dispel the darkness of imprisonment - this is the main idea of the poet. Unlike friendship, in which Pushkin valued constancy and loyalty, he considered love as a transitory feeling. It, like a storm, gave him a powerful source of inspiration, depriving him of freedom, subordinating him to “rebellious passions.” And in the masterpieces of Pushkin’s love lyrics (“…”, “I loved you...”, “On the hills of Georgia...”) it is about the poet’s feelings, and not about the relationships that connected him with his lovers. Pushkin's lyric love is the subject of high poetry. It seems to be taken beyond the boundaries of everyday life, everyday “prose”.
Pushkin's poems are not at all a diary of his love victories and defeats. They capture not only the psychological truth of love experiences, but also express the poet’s philosophical ideas about a woman as a source of beauty, harmony, and inexplicable pleasures. Pushkin glorified the woman. His “captivating dreams of love” come to life in his poems. These are memoir poems in which the poet sensitively listens to himself, strives to express in words the psychological uniqueness and at the same time the similarity of his love experiences. It is as difficult for a poet to talk about his beloved as it is to talk about absolute beauty or supreme bliss, so images of women are created using comparisons and analogies (“Madona”). Love, “closing” the enumeration of what makes the poet’s soul “awaken,” seems to crown everything that life consists of. It is love that can give a person the highest pleasure. Love is a symbol of spiritual rebirth. Even the very hope of “late” love is capable of reconciling the poet with a gloomy and joyless life.
Hope that new love is ahead,
the tallest and brightest
"Elegy"
In the poem “On the Hills of Georgia...” love comes to life not only because the poet remembered his beloved. She is a source of new bright experiences, she is a spark that ignites a heart that cannot help but love. The last lines (“And the heart burns again and loves - because it cannot help but love”) are especially important for understanding the poem and the idea of love that inspired Pushkin’s lyrics: the very need to love is eternal, the feeling arises in the heart as an echo of feminine beauty and harmony. Even someone else's, unknown love can fill the poet's soul with a “strange dream”
reviving a whole swarm of memories
about one’s own and “other people’s” youth,
about beauty and happiness
("Flower").
Pushkin... When you pronounce this name, immortal images of his works appear before you - Eugene Onegin and Tatyana Larina, Masha Mironova and Pyotr Grinev, Vladimir Dubrovsky and Masha Troekurova and many others. For more than a hundred years, people have been turning to the work of the great Russian poet and writer, finding in it a reflection of their thoughts, feelings and experiences.
Pushkin is closer to me as a poet. His lyrics are very multifaceted. Pushkin was not only a great poet, a wizard of the Russian word, he was a man who responded passionately to everything that happened in life, a tall and noble man.
In the variety of lyrical themes, the theme of friendship occupies such a significant place in Pushkin’s work that the poet could safely be called the singer of this noble feeling. Obviously, its origins should be sought in the very nature of the poet, responsive, able to reveal in each person the best properties of his soul. Pushkin had many friends - both close and not so close. The range of his friendly affections is very wide - from simple, purely external friendship to high degrees of demanding, fearless and sometimes sacrificial friendship. Pushkin brotherly loved the dreamy Delvig, and the naive Küchelbecker, and the witty Vyazemsky, and the violent Denis Davydov, and the poet-citizen Ryleev, and the simple-minded Nashchokin. But a very special place among the poet’s friends was occupied by Chaadaev, who in his youth was for Pushkin an example of high civic courage and love of freedom. Pushkin wrote many poems addressed to Chaadaev, imbued with the greatest respect and trust in this man. Friendship with Chaadaev was for Pushkin not just an everyday affection, but, above all, a symbol of noble, freedom-loving ideas. The poet expressed this with particular force in the poem “To Chaadaev” (“Love, hope, quiet glory...”).
Pushkin not only loves and appreciates his friends, but also does not forget about them when they are in trouble, when showing heartfelt attention to them threatens him with big and dangerous troubles. Pushkin, in front of the gendarmes, rushes into the arms of the exiled Kuchelbecker. Having learned that Muravyova is going to Siberia to see her husband, exiled to hard labor, he sends through her poems to his Decembrist friends, full of the deepest confidence in the rightness of their heroic cause. And to Nikolai’s question where he would be on December 14, he answers without hesitation: “With friends!”
Among Pushkin’s best friends from his lyceum youth, I. I. Pushchin occupied a special place. He was not a poet like Delvig or Kuchelbecker; he was connected with Pushkin not only by general literary interests. This was a friend to whom Pushkin, more willingly than others, confided the worries and anxieties of his young heart. When Pushkin learned about the defeat of the Decembrist uprising, he took this news very hard. With a message to Siberia he sends poems to Pushchin:
My first friend, my priceless friend!
And I blessed fate
When my yard is secluded,
Covered in sad snow,
Your bell rang.
I pray to holy providence:
Yes my voice to your soul
Gives the same consolation
May he illuminate the imprisonment
A ray of clear Lyceum days.
Just ten lines! But how much is said in them! Yes, it was true friendship, noble and faithful.
In the poem “October 19, 1827,” Pushkin again writes to his Decembrist friends about his loyalty and friendship:
God help you, my friends,
And in storms and in everyday grief,
In a foreign land, in a deserted sea,
And in the dark abysses of the earth!
And, of course, Pushkin could not ignore the eternal theme of love in his work. His love lyrics are a hymn to a feeling that elevates and ennobles a person, an expression of boundless respect for a woman.
Back in 1818, at one of the dinner parties, Pushkin met the brilliant Anna Petrovna Kern. Her radiant beauty and youth delighted the young poet. Years have passed... Pushkin is in exile.
Next to Mikhailovsky was the estate of the landowner Osipova. Here Pushkin met again with Kern, as charming as before. He gave her a recently printed chapter of “Eugene Onegin,” and between the pages he inserted poems written for her. The poem “I remember a wonderful moment...” is one of the pinnacles of Pushkin’s lyrics.
Another masterpiece of Russian poetry is Pushkin’s poem “I loved you...”:
I loved you: love is still, perhaps,
My soul has not completely died out;
But don't let it bother you anymore;
I don't want to make you sad in any way.
I loved you silently, hopelessly,
Now we are tormented by timidity, now by jealousy;
I loved you so sincerely, so tenderly,
How God grant that your beloved be different.
More than twenty romances have been written based on Pushkin's poems. And let time pass, the name of Pushkin will always live in our memory and awaken the best feelings in us.
