LYRICAL HEROINE. Anna Akhmatova is the last bright star to shine under the sign of the Silver Age of Russian poetry, whose talent and personal courage are commensurate: she rejected emigration, was not broken by the terrible trials that befell her, without bowing her head, survived the silence and persecution that began in 1946 . Her poetry even today gathers a variety of people under its banner: Christians raise her deep faith, patriots - her “Russianness”, anti-communists - internal resistance to the regime, monarchists - her image of the empress. Men like her femininity, women like her masculinity, and absolutely everyone likes her simplicity and clarity.
They immediately started talking about her as a phenomenon in literature, although at that time Russia listened to the voice of great poets - A. Blok, K. Balmont, V. Bryusov, etc. Akhmatova’s poetry reveals the soul of a person, primarily a woman, and her poems attract people not so much by the plot, but by the drama of feelings, which fits into a few poetic lines.
The biography of Anna Akhmatova has not yet been written, and the facts in it are closely fused with myth. Akhmatova herself often very subtly, imperceptibly cultivated the legendary moments of her own life, offering them to future biographers as facts.
In her pedigree, the poetess emphasized the line going back through her mother to the ancient Novgorodians: “After all, a drop of Novgorod blood is in me, like a piece of ice in foamy wine.” But at the same time, she liked to say that as a pseudonym she took the maiden name of her grandmother, nee Princess Akhmatova (“Tatar grandmother”). Finding herself evacuated in Tashkent, Akhmatova remembered that Asia was her homeland: “I haven’t been here for six hundred years.”
The character of Anna Akhmatova contained the rapid temperament of a girl who was born near Odessa and spent her childhood on the shores of the Black Sea. But this southern temperament was balanced by the restraint of a woman brought up in the atmosphere of Tsarskoye Selo and who had mastered the canons of etiquette St. Petersburg culture. Even more important is that Akhmatova was a person of a truly European type and European education. In her person we find a Russian European with deep Slavic-Asian roots, that is special case universalism of Russian culture of the late XIX - early XX centuries. All this was included in her poems and built the character of her lyrical heroine. Anna Akhmatova wrote about life, about death, about sadness, about the Muse. But its main theme is love. In fact, her first five collections from Evening to Anno Domini are almost entirely devoted to this topic. Even in poems that declare the author’s position in times of social cataclysms (for example, “I had a voice”), the theme of love does not disappear, but becomes the background. And she always has the most varied manifestations of feelings: their different intensity and intensity, changeable forms are given, that is, love is shown in its transitions, unexpected outbursts and contradictions. For the lyrical heroine, love itself is light, song, freedom, and sin, delirium, illness, captivity. Love is associated with resentment, jealousy, renunciation, and betrayal.
The first reviewers noted the heightened psychologism in Akhmatova’s poems devoted to the theme of love; they said that her lyrics were interesting in depicting the subtlest movements of the female soul, and the poetess herself took credit for this, writing: “I taught women to speak.” Her poems have often been compared to Russian psychological prose, because each of her poems is a small short story, which depicts a strong psychological experience, in the field of which random details of the external world fall:
I accompanied my friend to the front hall,
Stood in the golden dust
From the nearby bell tower
Important sounds flowed.
Abandoned! Made up word -
Am I a flower or a letter?
And the eyes are already looking sternly
Into the darkened dressing table.
Mikhail Kuzmin, in the preface to “Evening,” called this the ability to “understand and love things in an incomprehensible connection with the minutes being experienced.” Later, V.V. Vinogradov noted that “the subject vocabulary of her poems exists in the aspect of a single experience, creating an “intimate-symbolic connection” between the lyrical heroine and the things around her.”
In Akhmatova’s love poems, criticism often saw a story about a woman’s struggle with a man for her equality. In fact, the collision of “Evening” and especially “The Rosary” is much more complex. Love requires the utmost effort of mental strength from those who love.
It is no coincidence that it is called “love torment” and even “love torture.” And Akhmatova’s lyrical heroine fights not with the man she loves, but with the very feeling of love, which turns her into a toy (“Am I a flower or a letter?”), threatening the loss of a sense of personal dignity. Akhmatova’s woman in this situation shows, first of all, will, character: “My voice is weak, but my will does not weaken.” Later, critics more than once noted in Akhmatova’s lyrics the combination of romance, femininity and fragility with firmness, authority, and strong will. Is it because already in the 1910s Akhmatova had a presentiment that the characters in her love lyrics were destined for an unusual and cruel historical fate? This was most clearly manifested in the works of the 20s, in which the lyrical heroine experiences the joy of love against the backdrop of a tragic premonition of unprecedented misfortune.
In the 30s, O. Mandelstam very precisely defined one of the main qualities of Akhmatova’s creative gift: “She is a carnivorous seagull, where historical events are, Akhmatova’s voice is heard. And events are just the crest, the top of the wave: war, revolution. Her smooth and deep streak of life does not produce poetry.”
This characteristic has been confirmed more than once by Akhmatova’s poems in response to modern events, for example, in her response to the First World War - the poem “Prayer” (1915):
Give me the bitter years of illness,
Choking, insomnia, sleeplessness.
Take away both the child and the friend,
And a mysterious gift of song.
So I pray at Your liturgy
After so many tedious days.
So that a cloud over dark Russia
Became a cloud in the glory of the rays.
Akhmatova herself grew up, and so did her lyrical heroine. And more and more often in the poetess’s poems the voice of an adult, sophisticated woman began to be heard. life experience a woman internally prepared for the most cruel sacrifices that history will demand of her.
Gradually, Akhmatova’s “female” lyrics underwent a metamorphosis, approaching, in the words of O. Mandelstam, “to become one of the symbols of the greatness of Russia.”
Anna Akhmatova greeted the October Revolution of 1917 as if she had long been internally ready for it, and at first her attitude towards it was sharply negative. She understood that she was obliged to make her choice, and she made it calmly and consciously, outlining her position in the poem “I had a voice.” To the call to leave her homeland, Akhmatova’s heroine gives a direct and clear answer:
But indifferent and calm
I covered my ears with my hands,
So that with this speech unworthy
The mournful spirit was not defiled.
She later clarified her choice:
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...
The poetess’s lyrical “I” merges in these verses with “we,” and in the same way, on behalf of the entire people, she will write the poem “Courage” (1942) during the Patriotic War:
We know what's on the scales now
And what is happening now.
The hour of courage has struck on our watch,
And courage will not leave us.
The lyrical heroine of Akhmatova more than once felt herself standing at the turning point of eras, in the “world wind,” as A. said. Blok, and her living maternal feeling became the beginning that united the disintegrated Russia into a single whole.
In the 20s, Akhmatova actively turned to antiquity, the Bible, and among the “doubles” of her lyrical heroine we meet Dido, Cassandra, Phaedra, Lot’s wife, Rachel.
The experiences of the lyrical heroine Akhmatova in the 20s and 30s are also an experience of history as a test of fate. The main dramatic plot of the lyrics of these years is the collision with the tragic events of history, in which the woman behaved with amazing self-control. Cleopatra, the noblewoman Morozova, and the “streltsy wife” become her heroines.
Anna Akhmatova showed a keen interest in Russian history and folklore. In the poem “You will never live” (1921), Akhmatova’s lyrical heroine is a mourner. These poems were born under the impression of the tragic circumstances in the life of Akhmatova herself: the three people closest to her spiritually, the most dear ones - A. Blok, N. Gumilyov and A. Gorenko - died. In the poem “You will never live,” the lyrical “I” is generalized to the image of every Russian woman mourning her husband, brother, son, friend, whose blood was shed for the Russian land:
Bitter update
I sewed for a friend.
Loves, loves blood
Russian land.
In 1935, Akhmatova’s husband and son, Nikolai Punin and Lev Gumilev, were arrested. And yet she did not stop writing. This is how the prophecy made in 1915 (“Prayer”) partly came true: her son and husband were taken away from her. During the years of the Yezhovshchina, Akhmatova created the cycle “Requiem” (1935-1940), the lyrical heroine of which is a mother and wife, together with other contemporaries mourning their loved ones. During these years, the poetess's lyrics rise to the expression of a national tragedy, and next to her one can only put N. Klyuev and O. Mandelstam - two of her martyred contemporaries.
The year 1940 turned out to be a turning point for Akhmatova. The Second has begun World War, which covered almost all of Europe, Russia again moved to the Center of World History, and Akhmatova felt the approach of events of Shakespearean proportions. She felt a surge of a new poetic wave.
The poems of 1941-1944, which made up the “Wind of War” cycle, were dictated by Akhmatova’s sense of her personal participation in this drama. The maternal principle was powerfully manifested in them. The lyrical heroine, seeing off the Leningrad boys to the front and realizing what awaited them ahead, spoke on behalf of all women:
This is what books will be written about you:
“Your life is for your friends,”
Unpretentious boys -
Vanka, Vaska, Alyoshka, Grishka,
Grandchildren, brothers, sons!
Akhmatova spoke to the whole country and for the whole country, without betraying herself in anything and without sacrificing anything. The situation of national misfortune emphasized national basis her unique lyrical gift.
All these principles were finally formalized in Akhmatova’s key work, “Poem Without a Hero,” on which she worked from 1940 almost until the end of her life.
While working on “Poem without a Hero,” she did not stop writing lyrical poems, which sharply and vividly highlighted the through-line plot of her poetry as a whole - the drama of unembodied love. In this lyric, one is struck by a powerful creative effort, creating a myth about a great feeling that overcomes space and time - the lyrical heroine again goes towards her own destiny, as Dmitry Donskoy’s army once went to win:
And I was ready to meet
My destiny is the ninth wave.
Here two of the most important themes of Akhmatova’s work intersect with each other - love and national-historical. History not only shapes, but also deforms a person, creates a different fate for him, and only Love can resist this.
The lyrical heroine of Anna Akhmatova and the poetics of symbolism and acmeism
The aesthetics of Acmeism is in many ways close to the aesthetics of symbolism: the desire for the ideal, the unknowable, deep aestheticism, interest in higher reality - all this is characteristic of both directions. However, Acmeism is a more “earthly” direction, in which the real and the ideal are balanced, in which due attention is paid to the simple human life. Often the state of feelings was not revealed directly; it was conveyed by a psychologically significant gesture, movement, or listing of things. The Acmeists’ close attention to the material, material world did not mean their abandonment of spiritual searches. Over time, the affirmation of the highest spiritual values became the basis of the work of many Acmeists. Another feature of this movement was that its representatives advocated the preservation of cultural values, therefore the work of many of them absorbed the heritage of the golden age of Russian literature as a fundamental basis.
With these general features direction, the creativity of its individual representatives has original features.
For example, Anna Akhmatova’s acmeism is devoid of colorful imagery. The originality of her lyrics lies in the capture of spiritual objectivity: “Through the amazing precision of the material world, Akhmatova displays an entire spiritual structure.” Ibid.. Otherwise, this technique is called the materialization of the experiences of the lyrical hero: Akhmatova’s details are associative and psychological, aimed at revealing the image of the lyrical heroine.
The interest of Acmeism in the objective world led the poetess to the fact that in her poems she began to rely on the psychological Russian prose of the 19th century, this was expressed in the special plot of her works, a special interest in details, the objective world. As V. Gippius said, in the era of decadence "... the novel is over, the tragedy of ten years is unleashed in one brief event, in one gesture, look, word" Quoted from: Skatov N. The Book of the Female Soul (On the poetry of Anna Akhmatova): introduction to the collected works of A. Akhmatova in 2 volumes. - vol. 1. - M.: Pravda, 1990. - P. 11. A. A. Akhmatova’s poems can be called this kind of novels of “gesture, look, word”
A the main character of these "novels", especially in the early lyrics, is a woman who loves. Akhmatova’s lyrical heroines, with all their diversity life situations for all their unusualness, even exoticism, they carry something important, primordially feminine. There is a center that, as it were, brings the rest of the world of her poetry to itself, turns out to be its main nerve, its idea and principle. This is Love. The element of the female soul inevitably had to begin with such a declaration of itself in love. In a certain sense, all of Akhmatova’s early lyrics are dedicated to love. It was in this theme that truly poetic discoveries were born, such a view of the world that allows us to speak of Akhmatova’s poetry as a new phenomenon in the development of Russian lyric poetry of the 20th century in comparison with symbolism and acmeism.
In one of her poems, Akhmatova called love the “fifth season of the year.” From this unusual, fifth time, she saw the other four, ordinary ones. In a state of love, the world is seen anew. All senses are heightened and tense. And the unusualness of the ordinary is revealed. A person begins to perceive the world with tenfold force, truly reaching peaks in the feeling of life, and this, perhaps, is exactly the side of the matter where the somewhat artificial term a k me (Greek - peak) finally receives some kind of justification.
However, it would be wrong to say that Akhmatova’s poems about love are poems about happy love. Most likely, all her lyrics are a story about how two principles struggle in the lyrical heroine: the feminine, created for earthly love, and the creative, free, whose destiny is spiritual loneliness, the element of the Word.
The influence of decadence, symbolism and acmeism on Anna Akhmatova's lyrics is enormous, but at the same time her creative style remains deeply individual. Anna Akhmatova is one of those authors whose creative development never stopped: it evolved throughout the poetess’s entire life. Akhmatova's poetry eventually broke away from the framework of any literary direction and became truly original. Already in the earliest collection "Evening" the flock took shape, and in "Rosary" and "White" the flock finally took shape. distinctive features Akhmatova's individual style. The most important of them are novelistic composition, rhythmic and intonation freedom of poetic speech, the significance of material details, and, finally, new type lyrical heroine. It is this feature that will be discussed in the following chapters of the work.
A new type of lyrical heroine in the works of Anna Akhmatova and its evolution
Anna Akhmatova created a new type of lyrical heroine, not isolated in her experiences, but included in the broad historical context of the era. At the same time, the scale of the generalization in the image of the lyrical heroine did not contradict the fact that Akhmatova’s lyrics remained extremely intimate, and at first seemed even “chamber” to contemporaries.
Her early poems present various role incarnations of the lyrical heroine, peculiar “literary types” of the 1900s: the bride, the husband’s wife, the abandoned lover and even the marquise, the fisherman, the rope dancer and Cinderella (Cendrillona).
Such diversity of the heroine sometimes misled not only readers, but also critics. This play with a variety of “masks” was most likely aimed at preventing the author from identifying with each of them separately.
However, our task is to consider how the image of the lyrical heroine becomes more complex already in her first collections: “Evening”, “Rosary Beads”, “White Flock”, i.e. further we will talk more about the ideological content of Akhmatova’s lyrics, embodied in the lyrical subject.
Before moving on to consider this issue, I would like to note some features of the analyzed collections. Firstly, their composition is interesting: each collection, both thematically and structurally, represents something unified and integral. Moreover, each book corresponds to a certain stage in Akhmatova’s development as a poetess, coinciding with certain milestones in her biography (“Evening” - 1909-1911, “Rosary” - 1912-1913, (The White Flock) - 1914-1917). The compositional features of Akhmatov’s collections were noted by L.G. Kikhney, who wrote: “The sequence of poems within the book was determined not by the chronology of events, but by the development of lyrical themes, their progressive movement, parallelism or contrast. In general, the leaves of the “diary”, unfinished and fragmentary individually , were part of the general narrative about the fate of the lyrical hero - the poetess. They were composed as if in a free lyrical novel in its composition, devoid of a single plot and consisting of a number of instantaneous episodes independent from each other in content, included in the general lyrical movement. Such a “book” broke up into several chapters (sections) and was united by an obligatory epigraph containing an emotionally consonant key to the content" Kikhney L.G. Poetry of Anna Akhmatova. Secrets of the craft. - M, 1991. - P. 84. Let’s analyze the image of the lyrical heroine in each of these collections and compare them.
I taught women to speak.
A. Akhmatova.
A.A. Akhmatova is one of the great poetesses of Russia. She is, “of course, the most characteristic heroine of her time, revealed in endless variety women's destinies" According to A. Kollontai, Akhmatova created “a whole book of the female soul.” Larisa Reisner wrote: “She poured out in art all my contradictions that had no outlet for so many years... How grateful I am to her...”
Yes, indeed, Akhmatova “poured into art” a complex story feminine character. And not only character turning point. In the lyrical heroine Akhmatova, almost every woman recognizes herself, her attitude towards everything that is close and dear to us in this world.
Here she confesses her reverently tender love for Pushkin and that her second love was Blok:
To all my lovers
I brought happiness.
Alone and now alive
In love with his girlfriend,
And another one became bronze
On a snow-covered square.
In general, the image of a woman - the heroine of Akhmatov's lyrics can be attributed to any person. With extraordinary specificity of experiences, this is both a person of a specific fate and biography, and a bearer of an infinite number of biographies and destinies:
Morozova and I should bow to each other,
To dance with Herod's stepdaughter,
Fly away from Dido's fire with smoke,
To go to the fire with Zhanna again.
God! You see I'm tired
Resurrect, and die, and live.
Akhmatova’s poems are “to many” (that’s what she titled one of them), because her heroine:
I am the reflection of your face.
Because with all the variety of life phenomena, with all the unusual characters and situations, Akhmatova’s heroine carries the most important thing, the most important thing in life - love.
Love is Akhmatova’s most exciting theme. She is as different as her lyrical heroine. The element of the female soul finds its expression precisely in love. “Great earthly love” is the driving principle of Akhmatova’s lyrics, the essence of her lyrical heroine. In this state the world is seen anew, in the ordinary the unusual is revealed:
After all, the stars were larger
After all, the herbs smelled different.
Therefore, every confession is like pain, like a cry from the soul:
My beloved always has so many requests!
A woman who has fallen out of love has no requests.
The heroine of Akhmatov’s lyrics is “sick” with love. But love is not only happiness; rather, on the contrary, it is suffering, painful misunderstanding, separation. Akhmatova’s love is almost always “restless.” That is why the poetess has so many poems - original lyrical short stories with an unexpected ending (“The City Has Disappeared”, “New Year’s Ballad”).
Akhmatova’s love is both a closed and “egoistic” passion, it is also “love is fun,” but most of all, of course, “great earthly love” - all-love, love for people and to people. And it is expressed, first of all, in love for the native land, for the Motherland, for Russia:
He said: "Come here,
Leave your land deaf and sinful,
Leave Russia forever..."
But Akhmatov’s heroine “shut up her hearing with her hands” because
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.
Love for the Motherland is not a subject of analysis, some painful thoughts and doubts. This is love-homeland, love-fate (there was love-passion, love-separation and many, many other loves), but in the heroine’s worldview and attitude this love is forever. Love for the Motherland is love for native language. This interpretation is very unusual, which is why it sounds like a spell and a promise:
It's not scary to lie dead under bullets,
It's not bitter to be homeless, -
And we will save you, Russian speech,
Great Russian word.
And therefore, the image of the lyrical heroine in poems dedicated to the Motherland, “military” poems, becomes physically tangible. This is no longer a trembling, vulnerable, vulnerable lady, this is a courageous woman, her character is flint, a monolith, therefore many of the poetess’s poems sound and are perceived as an oath:
We swear to the children, we swear to the graves,
That no one will force us to submit!
It is difficult not to identify the heroine of Akhmatov’s lyrics with the poetess herself. From a “cheerful sinner”, “a mocker of Tsarskoye Selo” and a young elegant lady, Akhmatova, together with her heroine (or heroines), will grow up, turning into “the first poetess of her native land, with a strong and mature voice, mournfully ringing. She became, as it were, a herald for the defenseless and suffering, a formidable denouncer of evil and ferocity.” This stunningly accurate description was given to Akhmatova by the patriarch of Russian literature abroad, Boris Zaitsev.
And if the heroine of Akhmatova’s poetry early realized her life as destiny, then Akhmatova the poet early and responsibly accepted and realized her creative - poetic - mission. Apparently, this is where the poems are self-reports, which is why there is such a demand for every word, for every poetic line. This is probably why her lines sound so sincere, heartfelt and piercing:
Cup of dark wine
The goddess of sorrow gave it to me.
But Akhmatova’s poems, the image of her lyrical heroine, so different and so close, are so surprisingly heartfelt, so touching the soul of every reader, regardless of whether it is a man or a woman, regardless of what power is in the country, what time is outside the window...
The lyrical hero in the works of A. A. Akhmatova.
| Parameter name | Meaning |
| Article topic: | The lyrical hero in the works of A. A. Akhmatova. |
| Rubric (thematic category) | Literature |
A. Akhmatova occupies an exceptional place in Russian poetry of the 20th century. A contemporary of the great poets of the so-called Silver Age, she stands much higher than many of them. What is the reason for such amazing power of Anna Akhmatova’s poems? In my opinion, in that chaotic and scary time, in ĸᴏᴛᴏᴩᴏᴇ the poetess happened to live, at a moment when it was extremely important to rethink and evaluate a lot of things in a new way; it is at such moments in history that a woman can most deeply feel the entire depth of life. Anna Akhmatova's poetry is still women's poetry, and her lyrical hero is a person with the deepest intuition, the ability to subtly feel and empathize with everything that happens around.
Love is a theme that from the very beginning creative path poetess became one of the leaders in the lyrics of A. A. Akhmatova. “She had the greatest talent for feeling out of love, unloved, unwanted, rejected,” K. Chukovsky said about A. Akhmatova. And this is very clearly expressed in the poems of the early period: “I’m not asking for your love...”, “Confusion,” “I accompanied a friend to the front...”. Love in Akhmatova’s early poems is always unrequited, unrequited, tragic. The mental pain of her lyrical heroine is unbearable, but she, like the poetess herself, always endures the blows of fate with dignity.
In the period from 1911 to 1917, the theme of nature became more and more persistent in A. Akhmatova’s lyrics, which was partly due to the fact that she spent this period of her life on her husband’s Slepnevskoye estate. Russian nature is described in Akhmatova’s lyrics with amazing tenderness and love:
Before spring there are days like this:
The meadow rests under the dense snow,
The dry trees make a cheerful noise,
And the warm wind is gentle and resilient.
During this period, there is a rapprochement between the lyrical heroine Anna Akhmatova and the world around her, which becomes closer, understandable, dear, infinitely beautiful and harmonious - the world to which her soul strives.
At the same time, for the hero of A. Akhmatova’s works, love for nature native land inseparable from the feeling of love for the Motherland - Russia as a whole. Therefore, in the work of the poetess there should not be indifference to the fate of her people; the lyrical heroine is overcome by feelings of pain and longing for the fate of the people. Akhmatova’s heroine becomes closer to the people every year and gradually absorbs all the bitter feelings of her generation, feels guilty for everything that happens around her:
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...
In the poems of the period of the First World War and the Russian revolutions, peace and bright joy in the soul of Akhmatov’s heroine change to constant feeling impending disaster:
It smells like burning. Four weeks
The dry peat in the swamps is burning.
Even the birds didn't sing today,
And the aspen no longer trembles...
In this difficult time for the country, a time of radical change in the life of the entire country and the Akhmatova generation, the personal problems of the lyrical heroine fade into the background, the main ones are universal human problems, problems that awaken in the soul feelings of anxiety, uncertainty, a sense of catastrophism and the uncertainty of existence. It is enough to recall such poems as “Slander”, “Fear, sorting through things in the darkness...”, “A monstrous rumor” and many others:
And slander accompanied me everywhere.
I heard her creeping step in my dreams
And in dead city under a merciless sky,
Wandering at random for shelter and bread.
The enormous pain for the suffering of Russia was most fully expressed in the poem “Requiem”, written in 1935 - 1940. The creation of the poem is largely connected with Akhmatova’s personal experiences, with the arrest of her son, but what is more important is that the lyrical heroine of this poem absorbs all the pain and suffering that befell millions of Russian people. In this regard, each of the mothers and wives standing in long lines in the hope of learning at least something about the fate of their loved ones, each of them having survived a terrible tragedy, speaks in the voice of the lyrical heroine.
The cycle of poems “Wind of War” - one of the last in the work of A. A. Akhmatova - includes works of the war and post-war years. War 1941 - 1945. - another difficult test that befell the Akhmatova generation, and the lyrical heroine of the poetess is again together with her people. The poems of this period are full of patriotic enthusiasm, optimism, and faith in victory:
And the one who says goodbye to her beloved today -
Let her transform her pain into strength.
We swear to the children, we swear to the graves,
That no one will force us to submit!
The post-war poems of A. A. Akhmatova (the collection “Odd”) are the result of her work. These verses combine all the themes that worried Anna Akhmatova throughout her life, but now they are illuminated by the wisdom of a person who lived a rich, vibrant, difficult life. They are full of memories, but they also contain hope for the future. For the lyrical heroine, this time is marked by a return to the feeling of love, and this theme receives a more general, philosophical development:
You're right that you didn't take me with you
And he didn’t call me his girlfriend,
I became a song and destiny,
Through insomnia and blizzard...
The originality of the lyrical hero of O.E.’s poetry Mandelstam (using the example of 2-3 poems of the examinee’s choice)
To the talented poet O.E. Mandelstam had to live and create in harsh times. He witnessed the revolution of 1917, during the reign of Lenin and Stalin. Mandelstam poured out everything he saw and felt into his poems. It is in this regard that the work of this poet is so tragic, filled with fear, anxiety, pain for the fate of the country and for his own fate.
It is known that Stalin really did not like this poet because Mandelstam openly expressed his attitude towards everything that was happening in the country and towards the leader, in particular. An example of this is a satirical pamphlet on the ruler. After reading it, many said that on the part of the poet this act was suicide. And Mandelstam was well aware of this, but he was ready for death.
The lyrical hero of the poem “We live without feeling the country beneath us...” acts as a brave citizen standing in defense of his country and his people. He dares to openly say what everyone knows but is silent about:
We live without feeling the country beneath us,
Our speeches are not heard ten steps away,
And where is enough for half a conversation,
The Kremlin highlander will be remembered there.
The hero laughs bitterly and even to some extent mocks the main character of the poem. In the eyes of the lyrical hero, Stalin turns into some kind of mythical monster: “thick fingers like worms”; “The cockroach’s eyes are laughing and his tops are shining.” He is not a man, but some kind of monstrous animal: “He is the only one who babbles and pokes.”
The characteristics of the actions of this monster are no less terrible:
Like a horseshoe, he gives a decree after a decree -
Some in the groin, some in the forehead, some in the eyebrow, some in the eye.
No matter what his punishment is, it’s a raspberry...
One can only admire the courage of the lyrical hero of this poem. Stalin became “interested” in Mandelstam, the poet was arrested. But the leader did not order the poet to be shot immediately. That would be too easy. He exiled Mandelstam to Voronezh.
Living in this city, the poet existed as if on the edge of two worlds, always awaiting execution. It was in Voronezh that Mandelstam wrote the poem “Among the People’s Noise and Hurry...“ Here the intonation of the lyrical hero changes. He feels guilty before the leader for everything that was created by him before. Now the lyrical hero evaluates the “leader of all nations” differently. His “fatherly” gaze both “caresses and drills.” The hero feels that Stalin is reproaching him for all his “mistakes”. But, in my opinion, all these feelings of the hero are far-fetched and insincere. This poem was written under pressure from Stalin, as was the next one, “Oda” (1937).
The title of this work speaks for itself. It is dedicated to chanting the merits of Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin-Dzhugashvili. The poem focuses on Dzhugashvili. The poet emphasizes that, first of all, he describes not a leader, but a person. The hero calls him “father”. He allegedly feels reverence for Stalin:
And I want to thank the hills
That this bone and this hand were developed:
He was born in the mountains and knew the bitterness of prison.
I want to call him - not Stalin - Dzhugashvili!
Lyrical addresses the artists - his brethren. He calls on creators to work for the good of the country, that is, for the good of the “father”. After all this person completely, with all your thoughts and feelings, with your “children”, your people. “Artist, help the one who is all with you, who thinks, feels and builds,” the poet calls.
The portrait of Stalin in this poem is written in the tradition of an ode. According to the hero, this is an epic hero who gave all of himself to the cause of the people. Stalin has powerful eyes, a thick eyebrow, and a firm mouth. Dzhugashvili is a role model, according to Mandelstam. From him you need to learn to give your all to others, without thinking about yourself and without feeling sorry for yourself.
The lyrical hero realizes his restlessness in the Soviet country, his guilt before it for the fact that he once scolded the great Stalin. But the hero always has this image before his eyes: “In a wonderful square with happy eyes.”
But behind these pathetic and sublime lines one can see the tragedy of a man driven into a corner. Behind every tortured line one sees a lyrical hero scared to death, not knowing what to do or how to live. It is in this regard that Mandelstam’s poems dedicated to Stalin are the most effective documents against the Stalinist regime and the “father of nations”.
The lyrical hero in the works of A. A. Akhmatova. - concept and types. Classification and features of the category "Lyrical hero in the works of A. A. Akhmatova." 2017, 2018.
- What does love mean for the lyrical heroine Akhmatova?
- Read the poems “Clenched my hands under a dark veil...”, “The Gray-Eyed King.” What mood are these poems permeated with? What artistic techniques does the author use?
- Read the lines from Akhmatova’s notebooks, which speak about the purpose and place of the poet in society: “But in the world there is no power more formidable and more terrible than the prophetic word of the poet”; “The poet is not a person - he is only a spirit / Be blind, like Homer, or deaf, like Beethoven, / Sees everything, hears, owns everything...”. How does Akhmatova see the poet’s purpose?
- Read the poems “Solitude”, “Muse”. How do you see the image of the Muse in Akhmatova’s poetry?
- Read the poem " Motherland" Determine its tone. What motives can you identify in this poem? Which different meanings Do the words “earth” sound in it? What theme is indicated in the last lines?
- K. Chukovsky wrote: “Quiet, barely audible sounds have an indescribable sweetness for her. The main charm of her lyrics is not in what is said, but in what is not said. She is a master of omissions, hints, meaningful pauses. Her silences speak louder than words. To depict every feeling, even a huge one, she uses the smallest, almost inconspicuous, microscopically small images, which acquire extraordinary power on her pages.” Express your impressions from your acquaintance with Akhmatova’s lyrics.
- The poet Mikhail Kuzmin called Akhmatova’s poetry “sharp and fragile.” How did you understand this definition?
The love of the lyrical heroine Akhmatova is painted in tragic tones. Akhmatova's love poetry is characterized by deep psychologism and lyricism. Her heroines are different, they do not repeat the fate of the poetess herself, but their images testify to her deep understanding of the inner world of women who are completely different in psychological make-up and social status. This is a young girl waiting for love (“Praying to the Window Ray,” “Two Poems”), and an already mature woman, absorbed in love-struggle, and an unfaithful wife, ready to endure any torment for the right to love freely (“The Gray-Eyed King ", "My husband whipped me with a patterned ..."), and a peasant woman, and a wandering circus rocker, and a poisoner, "a hawk moth and a harlot." Akhmatova has many poems about failed love, about saying goodbye to her beloved. The fate of a woman poet is tragic. In the poem "Muse" she wrote about incompatibility female happiness and the fate of the creator. Giving up love in favor of creativity or vice versa is impossible. Here is an example of a man’s misunderstanding of a woman poet:
He talked about summer and that being a poet for a woman is absurd. How I remembered the tall royal house and the Peter and Paul Fortress.
One of the techniques is the transfer of deep feelings, penetration into the inner world of a loving heroine, and an emphasis on isolated everyday details. In a poem
“I clenched my hands under a dark veil...” conveys the convulsive movements of the lyrical heroine, trying to hold on to love and her beloved (“If you leave, I’ll die”). Her tense state is countered by a calm phrase (note, said “calmly and terribly”) “Don’t stand in the wind,” which negates the perception of the heroine’s feelings by her loved ones and thereby enhances the tragedy of the love situation. “The Gray-Eyed King” is one of Akhmatova’s most popular poems about love, conveying the drama of feelings, a woman’s longing for her beloved, sadness from loss, tenderness for her “gray-eyed” daughter. In this poem, the poetess addresses colloquial speech, almost aphoristic. Researchers note that this is a language of reflection. Through events and details, the lyrical plot of the poem is revealed, a tender feeling, longing, jealousy, love, sadness is conveyed, i.e. the state of a woman’s heart is revealed. It also contains a lyrical culmination: “I’ll wake up my daughter now, / I’ll look into her gray eyes.” The summary of the poem: “Your king is not on earth.”
These poems, in the words of the famous literary critic V.M. Zhirmunsky, seem to have been written with the intention of a prosaic story, sometimes interrupted by individual emotional exclamations. And in this we see the psychologism of poetry, in particular the love poetry of Akhmatova.
Akhmatova saw art as miraculous and endowed with incomparable power. Of course, the artist must reflect contemporary historical era and the spiritual life of the people, which is what the poetess was guided by in her work. And at the same time, his spiritual and psychological make-up is special, he sees and hears and predicts much more than an ordinary person, and thus becomes interesting and necessary to the reader, mainly thanks to the ability of his spirit to comprehend the highest. Here her understanding of the role of poetry is close to Pushkin’s, and partly to Innokenty Annensky and other poets of the Silver Age.
Akhmatova’s muse is closely connected with Pushkin’s muse: she is dark and sometimes cheerful. In the poem “Solitude” there is a motif of the poet’s chosenness. Art raises him above worldly vanity. However, Akhmatova also experiences passionate gratitude to life, which constantly inspires creativity. The tower refers to the experience of life, the bitter and difficult lessons of fate, which help to look at the world with far-seeing eyes. Solitude is not so much a departure from life in general, but a departure from the easy and idle existence of a poet. Let us pay attention to the first lines of this poem: “So many stones have been thrown at me, / That not a single one of them is scary anymore...” Fate can never be merciful to a poet in the highest sense of the word.
And at the same time, Akhmatova’s muse is an eternal muse, “a sweet guest with a pipe in her hand,” bringing inspiration to the poet, a muse served by world-famous poets, for example, such as Dante. Here Anna Akhmatova talks about the continuity of her work.
In Akhmatova’s poem “Native Land,” which dates back to the late period of her work (1961), the concreteness of the idea of land in the literal sense of this concept is combined with a broad philosophical generalization. The tonality can be defined as philosophical. The author seeks to deepen his understanding of the most seemingly everyday and everyday concepts. Here are the motives of life, difficult, sometimes tragic, painful. “Dirt on the galoshes”, “Crunch on the teeth”, mash, crumbs - not only the attributes of the earth that burden life, but also the very manifestations of everyday life. In the last lines the earth acquires a high philosophical meaning, associated with the end of man’s earthly existence, which continues in his merging with the earth both in the physical and spiritual sense. The word “own” symbolizes this unity of a person with his homeland (the land in the title is called native), with which he lived his life, and the land in its literal sense.
Akhmatova’s lyrics enchant with their secrets; they prepare the reader to penetrate into understatements and omissions. We have already talked about the role of everyday details in conveying a woman’s mysterious love feeling. And this, too, lies the secret of Akhmatova’s poetry. Speaking about the secret and its understanding by the poet, I would like to read one of my favorite poems created by her. Material from the site
Twenty-first, night, Monday... The outlines of the capital in the darkness. Some slacker wrote that there is love on earth. And out of laziness or boredom, everyone believed. That's how they live. They are waiting for a date, afraid of separation, and singing love songs. But the secret is revealed to others. May silence rest upon them. I came across this by accident and since then it’s been like I’ve been sick.
There is more than one mystery here. First of all, the mystery of love, which differs from the ordinary understanding of love relationships, a mystery, the comprehension of which makes a person “sick”, attached to a new vision. For some reason, the secret is revealed to the lyrical heroine on the twenty-first, on Monday night... Probably, the solution is available only to her. And finally, playfully, “composed by some slacker.”
Acute means that it responds to the most complex problems of the personal world, reflecting a person’s deep experiences in love and relationships with the outside world. Poignant means courageous and tragic, conveying the most complex states of a person of the tragic century, of which she was a great poet. Many of Akhmatova’s works can be called poignant, for example “I had a voice...”, “I am not with those...”, “Requiem”, “Poem without a hero”. Akhmatova’s poetry is considered fragile because every word of her poems is chosen surprisingly precisely, to the right place, it cannot be rearranged or replaced with another - otherwise the work will be destroyed. The poems convey the most fragile, subtle, tender feelings of the author and her lyrical heroines.
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On this page there is material on the following topics:
- which artistic media used in Akhmatova's poem as a white stone?
- aa akhmaova all me vidis
- read the lines from Akhmatova’s notebooks in which they prepare about the purpose and place of the poet in society
- which artistic techniques uses scars in the poem native village
- analysis of Akhmatova's poem 21st Night Monday
