Princess Trubetskaya

On a winter night in 1826, Princess Ekaterina Trubetskaya leaves for Siberia with her Decembrist husband. The old count, the father of Ekaterina Ivanovna, with tears, lays the bear's cavity into the wagon, which should forever take his daughter away from home. The princess mentally says goodbye not only to her family, but also to her native Petersburg, which she loved more than all the cities she had seen, in which her youth happily passed. After the arrest of her husband, Petersburg became a fatal city for her.

Despite the fact that at each station the princess generously rewards the Yamskaya servants, the journey to Tyumen takes twenty days. On the way, she recalls her childhood, carefree youth, balls in her father's house, which gathered all the fashionable world. These memories are replaced by pictures of a honeymoon trip to Italy, walks and conversations with her beloved husband.

Travel impressions make a heavy contrast with her happy memories: in reality, the princess sees the kingdom of beggars and slaves. In Siberia, for three hundred miles one comes across one miserable town, the inhabitants of which are sitting at home because of the terrible frost. “Why, damned country, did Yermak find you?” Trubetskaya thinks in despair. She understands that she is doomed to end her days in Siberia, and recalls the events that preceded her journey: the Decembrist uprising, a meeting with her arrested husband. Horror chills her heart when she hears the piercing moan of a hungry wolf, the roar of the wind along the banks of the Yenisei, the hysterical song of a foreigner, and realizes that she may not reach the goal.

However, after two months of travel, having parted with her ill companion, Trubetskaya nevertheless arrives in Irkutsk. The governor of Irkutsk, from whom she asks for horses to Nerchinsk, hypocritically assures her of her perfect devotion, recalls the father of the princess, under whom he served for seven years. He persuades the princess to return, appealing to her childish feelings, - she refuses, recalling the sanctity of marital duty. The governor frightens Trubetskaya with the horrors of Siberia, where "people are rare without a stigma, and they are callous in soul." He explains that she will not have to live with her husband, but in a common barracks, among convicts, but the princess repeats that she wants to share all the horrors of her husband's life and die next to him. The governor demands that the princess sign a renunciation of all her rights - she agrees without hesitation to be in the position of a poor commoner.

After keeping Trubetskaya in Nerchinsk for a week, the governor declares that he cannot give her horses: she must continue on foot, with an escort, along with convicts. But, having heard her answer: “I’m going! I don't care!" - the old general with tears refuses to tyrannize the princess anymore. He assures that he did this on the personal order of the king, and orders the horses to be harnessed.
Princess M. N. Volkonskaya

Wanting to leave memories of her life to her grandchildren, the old princess Maria Nikolaevna Volkonskaya writes the story of her life.

She was born near Kyiv, in the quiet estate of her father, the hero of the war with Napoleon, General Raevsky. Masha was the favorite of the family, she studied everything that a young noblewoman needed, and after the lessons she sang carelessly in the garden.

Princess Trubetskaya

It was late at night in 1826. Catherine decides to go into exile with her Decembrist husband in distant Siberia. Her father was an old count, he sends his daughter away from home with tears, because she is leaving forever. It is very difficult for Ekaterina Trubetskoy to say goodbye not only to her relatives and family, but also to her beloved city of St. Petersburg, and despite the fact that she has seen a large number of different cities, this city has become the most important in her life. But also, after her husband was arrested, he became the most fatal for her.

The princess generously endows servants at all stations, but still the journey takes her a very long period of time, almost a whole month. All the way, Catherine remembered her childhood and adolescence, it was a magical time, as she went to balls with her father, the count. All these memories were replaced by pictures from a honeymoon trip through the beautiful country of Italy, through which they walked with her beloved husband.

The whole journey made a strong contrast to her happy memories from her life and the upcoming trials that await her in Siberia. In this remote place, after a while, a small impoverished town comes across, in which the inhabitants do not leave their houses, since it is very cold outside. Ekaterina Trubetskaya in despair.

Now she realized that she was doomed to spend her whole life here, and she was wrapped up in the events that took place before this whole trip, before the uprising and goodbye after her husband's arrest. She is terrified by the howl of a wolf at the river bank, her blood freezes from the fact that she may not even reach her destination.

But still, after a few months of the road, after she buried her companion, she gets to the city of Irkutsk. She asks for horses to the city of Nerchinsk, from the local governor, he pretends to be devoted to her, because he knows her father well, because he served him for seven long years. He asks Trubetskaya to return home to her father, but she says that this is her marital duty. He tries to frighten Catherine, says that she will live in the barracks, side by side with convicts, but she is relentless. Catherine explains that she wants to share with her husband all the horrors of life in hard labor and breathe for the last time next to her beloved.

The governor of Irkutsk hands her a document on the renunciation of all rights, hoping that she will still refuse, but Trubetskaya agrees to a poor commoner.

The princess spends a week in Nerchinsk, as a result, the governor does not give her horses, and she wants to follow on foot under escort along with the prisoners.

The General bends over and harnesses the horses with tears.

Princess Volkonskaya

Maria Volkonskaya wants future generations to remember her and writes a letter about her life. She was born near the city of Kyiv, on the small estate of her father, who was listed as a hero of the war with France. They gave birth to her under the name Raevskaya. Everyone in the family loved her very much, she studied well, comprehending all the knowledge that was necessary for a noble person. After training, she liked to walk and sing in the garden. General Raevsky wrote a lot about the battles, liked to read newspapers and collected balls. Mary has always been the center of attention. A beautiful girl with blue eyes, jet black hair, a bright blush and a proud personality. She had long won the hearts of all the men who visited her father, but her heart was untouched.

When Maria turned eighteen, she found a promising husband who had proven himself on the good side in the Patriotic War. In this war, half of Leipzig, Volkonsky was wounded. She was a little embarrassed only by the fact that he was somewhat older than she, and she did not know him at all. But she had no right to resist the will of her father. The wedding was played in half a month. Maria rarely found her husband at home, since he was in the service almost all the time. Somehow they went to Odessa to rest. The princess was pregnant. But they did not have time to settle down, as the husband was taken to the service. They left in a hurry, and before leaving, they burned a lot of some documents. Volkonsky saw his son already under arrest.

Volkonskaya gave birth hard and recovered for a long time after that. After a while, Maria realized that her relatives were hiding something from her. She learns that her husband was a Decembrist and wanted to overthrow the government. Volkonskaya decides to go to Siberia for him. She was once again convinced of her decision after she was allowed to see him in the Peter and Paul Fortress.

She asked that Volkonsky's punishment be mitigated, but she did not succeed. The whole family resisted Mary's departure. The father asked to have pity on a very small child and think about his future life. But after Volkonskaya spends the night in prayer, she realizes that until that day she had not made a single decision on her own.

But Masha could not endure the images that awaited her husband. Her heart tells her only one solution. She leaves the child, knowing that she will never be able to see him again, realizing that it is easier for her to die than to leave her husband. She believes that General Raevsky will still be able to understand her decision.

Masha receives a message from the Tsar, in which he explains that she will never be able to return and admires her decision. He also allows her to leave her home and follow her husband. For three days, she collects all the necessary things, sings her last lullaby at the baby's bed and says goodbye to her family.

The father, threatening, asks her to return home next year. For a few days she stays with her sister in the capital. The decision of Maria Volkonskaya was admired by everyone around.

On the day of the farewell evening, she meets Pushkin, whom she has known since a young age. At that time they saw each other in the city of Gurzuf. At that time, he was even in love with the beautiful Raevskaya. Later, he was able to give her a few lines in his work "Eugene Onegin". By leaving for Siberia, Pushkin was deeply saddened and depressed, but he was extremely delighted with the deed of this young and beautiful woman and therefore gave her his blessing.

On the way, the princess saw a lot. After leaving the city of Kazan, where she spent several days, she falls into a severe snowstorm. After spending the night with the forester in the lodge, in which even the doors were simply covered with a stone, she went to the city of Nerchinsk. In this city, Maria Nikolaevna catches up with Princess Trubetskaya, she tells her that their spouses are in the city of Blagodatsk. On the way to the appointed place, the coachman told the woman that he was taking the prisoners to work, and that the prisoners, as well as the free, still knew how to joke and laugh.

While Maria Nikolaevna Volkonskaya was waiting for permission to meet with her husband, she finds out exactly where her beloved works and begins to gather for the mines. The guard, shortly resisting the tears of a nice woman, yields to her and gives her a pass to the mines. Volkonskaya miraculously bypasses all the dips and pits and gets to the very mine, where, along with all the other hard labor prisoners, her husband also works.

She is noticed by Trubetskoy, later the Muravyov, Borisovs and Obolensky catch up with him. There were tears of joy on their faces.

Soon, Princess Volkonskaya notices her husband in the crowd. Looking at his chains, she realizes how much suffering he has already had to endure. Volkonskaya gets down on her knees and puts his shackles to her lips. The mine comes to a standstill in absolute silence. Maria is taken away, but in a second her husband shouts out in French that they will be able to see each other in prison.

Analysis of the poem - Muse (“Muse-sister looked into the face ...”)

Starting to study the features of the artistic world of A. Akhmatova's poem "Muse", it is necessary first of all to clearly define the meaning of the term "artistic world".

The terms "artistic world", "poetic world", "inner world of a work of art" have the same meaning; the existence of synonymous variants of the same concept is apparently explained by the relatively short history of its study.

In 1968, in the journal "Questions of Literature" (No. 1968), an article by D. S. Likhachev "The inner world of a work of art" was published, which aroused high interest in the stated topic. According to the observations of academician Likhachev, in the inner world of a work of art, like the real world, there are their own special laws of space and time, their own topos, events, “population”, etc. In itself, this idea was not absolutely new for literary criticism (it is enough to recall the theory of the chronotope proposed back in the 1930s by M. M. Bakhtin #_w1 "artistic/poetic world" became more and more "blurred", moreover, it strongly depended on the methodological attitudes of the researcher - for example, philologists of the Tartu structural-semiotic school proposed the following definition: "the concept of the poetic world is considered as an extrapolation of the concept of the theme on the semantic structure of the totality of the works of one author The poetic world of the author is primarily a semantic invariant of his about works "#_w6" language as an ontological horizon of the world", in the words of H.-G. Gadamer's #_w8″ internal form" of the word (as defined by A. A. Potebnya) - all this eventually complicated an already unstable concept even more. Only one thing is clear: the artistic world in a literary work really exists, every reader is able to perceive it, therefore, it can, it is necessary, it is interesting to explore.

And yet the question remains open: what is the artistic world and how to explore it? In any literary work, three subjects participate - the author, the hero, the reader. If, to simplify the task, we consider only the hero, then it is easy to see and understand that the hero in the work is not nominally present, but necessarily acts, performs actions. This means that for the hero there is time before and after the committed act, this statement is true even if such an act is the hero’s thought, his dream, internal doubts, and the like. If there is time, then there is also space, there is, in the words of M. M. Bakhtin, a chronotope in which the hero lives and acts. Thus it becomes obvious that the hero lives in a certain world. The time in which the hero lives and in which the author lives are different already because the author created the hero, the time of the author embraces the time of the hero, therefore the hero lives in his own special time, in his own chronotope, his own world. The word peace has several meanings (non-war, the whole world, etc.), but they all come down to one thing: the world is an arranged well-functioning cosmos, the consent of all parts of the universe. If we call the spatio-temporal continuum of the hero the world, then by doing so we assume the presence of order and patterns in it, that is, we believe that the artistic world has its own special laws. If in our real life time develops consistently, progressively, evenly, irreversibly, then in artistic reality it can be reversible, cyclical, discrete, motionless and any other (see, for example, in A. T. Tvardovsky’s poem “I was killed near Rzhev ... "); if in our reality the space is infinite and the laws of perspective operate in it (the distant looks smaller in size than the close one; the far and the close cannot be side by side; two objects cannot occupy the same place, etc.), then in the artistic in the world it can have, for example, “the end of the world”, near and far in it can be nearby (cf. Lermontov: far in the blue of the sea, a whitening sailboat at the same time is so close that you can hear how “the mast bends and hides”) etc. Special laws naturally determine the uniqueness of events in the artistic world (in the already quoted poem by Lermontov, events occur in a very paradoxical way - a stream of water does not flow, does not flow, does not move, it is simply “under it”, just like “above it” a golden ray of sunshine). The heroes living in these strange worlds obey their laws (for example, in the grotesque world of "Dead Souls" Chichikov wears an overcoat "on big bears" in the summer).

The inner world of a work of art reveals itself primarily through the special laws of space and time, so the analysis of the art world is, first of all, an analysis of the spatio-temporal organization of the work.

Of the several terms that define the concept of "artistic world", in this work, preference is given to the term "poetic world". It seems to us fundamentally important that the definition of "poetic" goes back not only to the word "poetry", but also to the word "poetics", because the features of the inner world of a work are expressed in the specific features of its poetics: genre affiliation, originality of the plot, composition, subject organization and pl. others

The work to be analyzed in our work belongs to the lyrical genre of literature. The poetic world in lyrics is especially difficult to study, since, due to generic features, lyrics depict primarily the emotional experiences of the hero, and not his actions with all the accompanying circumstances, objects. there is no plot in the lyrics in the usual sense of the word (the plot is “a system of events that makes up the content of ... a literary work” # _w9 "i". The world in a lyrical work is given indirectly, through the experiences of the hero. It is for this reason that it is necessary to understand the features of building a poetic world in lyrics.

As already mentioned, there is no plot in the lyrics in the usual sense of the word, but it is more correct to say that the lyrics have their own special plot. According to the definition of Yu. M. Lotman, the plot “is the crossing of the boundaries of the semantic field by the character” #_w10 ″ Lyrical space, - wrote L. Ya. Ginzburg, - is the author's consciousness ... It contains a lyrical event, and rows of representations freely move and intersect in it … The epic space is, as it were, contained in the all-encompassing space of the lyrical poet…” #_w11″ The plot, thus, continues another researcher, “unfolds not in its natural way… but through the experiences of the hero, who is at some fixed spatio-temporal point…” #_w12 "the main reference point" (T. I. Silman) of the poetic world. Indeed, if the world in lyrics is given indirectly through the experiences of the hero and the world is therefore very relative, then it is extremely important to determine the starting point from which the entire poetic world of a lyrical work unfolds. It is with this that we will begin the analysis of A. Akhmatova's poem "Muse".

A. Akhmatova

Muse-sister looked into the face,

Her gaze is clear and bright.

And took away the golden ring

First spring present.

Muse! You see how happy everyone is -

Girls, women, widows...

I'd rather die on the wheel

Just not these chains.

I know: guessing, and I cut off

Delicate daisy flower.

Must experience on this earth

Every love torture.

I burn a candle on the window until dawn

And I don't miss anyone

But I don't want, I don't want, I don't want

Know how to kiss another.

Tomorrow they will tell me, laughing, mirrors:

“Your gaze is not clear, not bright…”

Quietly answer: "She took away

God's gift." #_w13″ Her gaze is clear and bright”), as if she had already looked into the face, but had not yet left. Secondly, all the events depicted take place at the beginning of spring - apparently, the Muse appeared immediately after the heroine of the poem found a golden ring - “the first spring gift”. Thus, judging by the first stanza, time in the artistic world of this poem develops unevenly, an event that has already taken place seems to be delayed (the Muse stares intently and for a long time into the face), and then again everything happens rapidly (the Muse took away the ring she just presented).

The second stanza begins with the present tense, once again colliding with the past tense of the previous verb ("took away the golden ring"), thus creating the effect of slowing down events. The Muse has irretrievably taken away the ring, but her earthly sister addresses her with a rhetorical monologue “Muse! You see how happy everyone is ... "The heroine projects the fate of all girls, women, widows onto herself, as if trying to see herself in the future and comes to the conclusion:" I'd rather die on the wheel, / But not these fetters ... "The appearance of the future tense in verbs the first two stanzas of the poem are natural: the tense forms of the verbs encountered are arranged in a well-defined sequence past (“peeped”, “took away”) - present (“you see”) - future (“I will perish”), but this sequence is regularly violated by additional indications of time, oh which were mentioned above. In addition, the heroine’s exclamation “I’d rather die on the wheel” is a fragment of her appeal to the Muse, that is, the very fact of the appeal takes place in the present tense, and the future tense appears only in the heroine’s imagination and her direct speech. Thus, by the end of the second stanza, there is an impression of the coexistence in the artistic world of the poem of two temporal sequences: one is the sequence of time from past to future, the other is the simultaneity of past, present and future, an infinite duration of time similar to eternity. These different temporal coordinates are assigned to the two characters of the poem rather clearly: the main character lives in time, similar to the real earthly one, and the Muse-sister who appeared in eternity.

The third stanza is entirely devoted to the expected fate of the heroine, therefore it is written in the future tense (“I must cut off”, “I must experience”), however, the temporal duality is observed: all these expectations, foresights are included in today’s reflections of the heroine (“I know: guessing, and I will cut off / Delicate daisy flower"). The ability of the heroine to know her future sets a large time scale - the whole human life.

The same temporary structure of the world is preserved in the fourth stanza: the heroine is in the present tense (“burning”, “not longing”, “I don’t want”), but she sees the future. In the third and fourth stanzas, an important change took place imperceptibly for the readers - two time plans seemed to change places: the heroine, an inhabitant of ordinary earthly time, turns out to know the future, that is, in fact, she lives in eternity. Why such an amazing transformation? Probably, this is due to the visit of the mysterious and silent inhabitant of eternity, the Muse-sister, this is her gift.

The fifth, last, stanza answers many questions. The heroine’s ability to know the future is still preserved (“Tomorrow they will tell me ...”), but suddenly it turns out that having gained this amazing omniscience, the heroine has lost some of her former qualities, namely a clear and bright look. It is instantly remembered that the Muse had such a look at the very beginning of the poem. What does it mean? The last verses directly answer this question:

Quietly answer: "She took away

God's gift."

That is, the Muse, instead of the gift to see the future, took away the clarity and brightness of her gaze, making the heroine unattractive (“... they will tell me, laughing, mirrors”), thereby depriving her of the happiness of love. Particularly noteworthy is the definition of what exactly the Muse took away - "God's gift." Of course, the gift of love that transforms a person, enlightening and clarifying his gaze can be called a gift from God, but at the beginning of the poem it was said that the Muse "... took away the golden ring, / The first spring gift" - is there a contradiction in this? Maybe they mean different visits of the Muse, each time taking away from the heroine more and more of her earthly feminine qualities? Finally, another unexpected question arises: if the Muse takes away God's gift, then is she not the bearer of evil? However, this question no longer concerns the temporal, but other levels of organization of the artistic world of the poem.

Space

The space in the lyrics, as mentioned above, is depicted indirectly, passed through the consciousness of the lyrical self, which means that it appears to the reader meaningful, appreciated. Each object that enters the depicted world is already colored with some meaning. As a rule, there are few such objects in the field of view of the lyrical self, but the greater the semantic load they carry. The analysis of the spatial organization begins with the consideration of the material objective world and the search for a starting point for the spatio-temporal organization of the artistic world of the poem.

The first event in the analyzed work - the meeting of the heroine of the poem with the Muse face to face, eye to eye - sets the spatial scale of the world and is its starting point. It should immediately be noted that both in terms of time the world is dual, and in space. Some of the objects that fill the world of the poem belong to the part of the world closest to the heroine - a golden ring, a daisy flower on which she wonders, a candle on the window, a mirror - all these are signs of the life of a young and dreamy girl. But there is another part of the items that do not fit into this girlish world, they belong to another world, another time - the wheel of torture, fetters - signs of the medieval Inquisition, punishing a person for sins. It is difficult to resist the temptation to see these two space-time levels assigned to the author and the heroine of the poem, but there are no clear “signals” giving the right to do so in the text of the poem. The author and the hero are so firmly and inextricably merged into one voice, into one lyrical self, that the spatial levels are mixed and it becomes unclear where the boundary separating them is. A woman poet finds herself between two worlds: she acquires a poetic gift, but loses the gift of earthly female happiness, she is both a naive, dreamy girl at the window and at the same time a sinner who is ready to be executed on a wheel. It is no coincidence that in the finale of the lyrical plot the heroine talks with mirrors that create a second, reflected world that seems similar to reality, but still different - the image of mirrors quite naturally completes the construction of the two worlds in this poem.

Hero

The subjective organization of the poem is not simple, because apart from the Muse and the hero, or rather, the heroine, there is something unsaid, which, however, the author is well aware of. Already in the first stanza, the strange nature of the relationship between the heroine and the Muse attracts attention. Firstly, Muse is a sister, what does this mean? Secondly, the heroine is not surprised at the unexpected and swift appearance of the Muse (why does the impression of the inevitable visit of the Muse arise?) Thirdly, the sisters communicate in silence, the Muse did not say anything, but looked with a clear and bright look. Apparently, the heroine of the poem and the Muse met before (after all, they are sisters) and then their relationship was formed, an episode of which (that's why everything happens in silence and surprises no one) depicts the first stanza.

What does the heroine of the poem consider as terrible fetters? When she says that everyone is happy, is she serious or ironic? Rather ironically - after all, what kind of happiness does a widow have ... “These shackles” are the shackles of love, the obligations of love that frighten the heroine or is it a lack of love, a ban on love, which the Muse imposes like shackles? The text is written in such a way that there is apparently no clear answer, which implies the duality of the meaning of these fetters: it is both love and a ban on love.

Why - "I'll die on the wheel"? Why the wheel - quartering for sins? The mention of the wheel introduces a religious meaning into the poem; the main thing that the heroine dreams of and desires and fears - be it love passion or the passion of poetic inspiration - acquires a shade of religious sin. Here it turns out how deeply and seriously the visit of the Muse affects the heroine.

Muse, taking away God's gift, isn't it the bearer of evil? You can answer “yes”, because taking away the gift of love is evil. Such an assessment of the Muse and the poetic gift is also facilitated by the motive of religious sin, heresy and execution on the wheel, found in the second stanza. But just as time and space in the world of this poem are dual, so are the laws of this world ambiguous. Love is God's gift, but also torture ("Must on this earth to experience / Everyone love torture"), so the deprivation of the gift of love by the Muse is both the taking away of God's gift and salvation from torture, good and evil at the same time.

Another assessment of the Muse is also possible, which does not oppose it to God. Muse, one of the inhabitants of the ancient Olympus, inhabited by the gods, that is, also a goddess. In this case, her definition of “Muse-sister” acquires a new meaning. If the heroine is the sister of Muse, then it means that she combines, like the Olympic gods, the divine and the human.

Apparently, this ambivalence of the creative gift contains the source of the artistic world of Anna Akhmatova's poem - with its intersection of two temporal, two spatial states of the world, with its complex hero.

The artistic world of the poem and context

The poem is included in the collection, thereby inevitably acquiring some fragmentation, incompleteness, understatement. Some moments in the poem seem unclear to the end (for example, the “golden ring” or what is considered a sin - poetic or love passion), but the presence of the context of the collection makes it possible to clarify the meaning of these elements of the artistic world of the poem.

The ring is found in another poem "I've gone crazy, oh strange boy ...", which is part of the collection, here is its full text:

I've lost my mind, oh strange boy

Wednesday at three o'clock!

Pricked ring finger

A ringing wasp for me.

I accidentally pressed her

And she seemed to die

But the end of the poisoned sting

Was sharper than the spindle.

Will I cry about you, strange,

Will your face smile at me?

Look! On the ring finger

So beautifully smooth ring.

There is reason to believe that this is the same ring referred to in the poem "Muse", since exactly the same rhyme "ring - face" is used - such a coincidence for any poet, and even more so for Akhmatova, cannot be accidental. If we imagine a collection of poems as a fragmentary story of the life of a single hero (heroine), then in this case there is nothing strange that an object from the world of one poem falls into another, these worlds are connected. What is the meaning of the image of the ring? The answer is obvious - crazy, forbidden love, besides love for a boy, and even a strange one. With such a reading of this image in the poem "Muse", taking into account the context of the collection, the question of what is considered the reason for the execution on the wheel is resolved - of course, forbidden, sinful love.

The rhyme "ring - face" is clearly associated with another context - the poetic tradition of A. Blok. The first thing that seems to be remembered by every reader is Blok's:

... I threw the cherished ring into the night

You gave your fate to another

And I forgot the beautiful face ... (1908)

These inevitable associations activate and connect the “Blok legend” to the artistic world of the analyzed poem.

In the spring of 1911, the thirty-year-old, who was at the zenith of his poetic fame, and the aspiring poet Anna Akhmatova, who was in her 22nd year, met for the first time. By this time, she had written about 180 poems, but few of them were published. What impression did Blok make on Akhmatova at the first meeting? Unknown. Researcher E. S. Dobin dares to note only that in the guise of the hero of the poem "Fisherman" Blok's features are vaguely guessed. #_w14 "Apollo". Perhaps the formation of the “Blokov legend” in the work of Akhmatova began with this poem. His second line draws attention to itself: “And the eyes are bluer than ice…” L. D. Blok recalled that Blok perfectly embodied the image of a light-haired, blue-eyed, slender, heroic Aryan. Andrey Bely also wrote about Blok's "beautiful blue eyes". In the future, as we will see, the theme of the eyes will become a leitmotif in the poetic roll call between Blok and Akhmatova.

In 1911, there was a noticeable “redistribution of forces on the literary scene. Relations between N. S. Gumilyov and V. I. Ivanov are becoming more and more strained. In contrast to the Ivanovo "Tower", there is a "Workshop of poets". Soon Blok and Akhmatova meet again in The Tower. On November 7, he writes in his diary: “In the first hour, we came with Lyuba to Vyacheslav. (...) A. Akhmatova (she read poems, already exciting me; the further the better the poems) ... "It is very tempting to include 1911 poems in the list of Akhmatova's readings that evening. - "Muse". Akhmatova dated it November 10, 1911 - three days after Blok's diary entry. However, such a dating does not interfere with the comparison of Akhmatova's "Muse", published in the collection "Evening", which was released in March 1912, with Blok's famous poem "To the Muse", dating from the end of 1912. Akhmatova's rhymes sound like Blok - this is obvious. The first stanza not only makes us remember Blok's rhyme "face - ring", but also see other correspondences and consonances from different Blok's poems.

Muse-sister looked into the face,

Her gaze is clear and bright.

And took away the golden ring

First spring gift...

…Open, answer my question:

Was your day bright?

I brought a royal shroud

For you as a gift! (1909)

The first stanza of Blok's poem:

Is in the melodies of your innermost

Fatal news of death

There is a curse of sacred covenants,

There is an outrage of happiness...

in turn makes us recall Akhmatov's:

Muse! you see how happy everyone is -

Girls, women, widows...

I'd rather die on the wheel

Just not these fetters ...

However, Blok's poems

So why did you give me

A beam with flowers and a firmament with stars -

All the curse of your beauty?

clearly contrast with the final words of Akhmatov’s poem: “... she took away

God's gift."

Nevertheless, it is impossible to talk about Blok's influence on Akhmatova in this case, the influence was, rather, the opposite - from Akhmatova to Blok (given the dating of the works). Nevertheless, this poetic dialogue makes it possible to read Akhmatova's "Muse" in a new way. The passion of female love and the mystical power of poetic passion are inextricably linked in beauty, which Blok evaluates as a curse of beauty. In the well-known "madrigal" of 1913, Blok will again return to the theme of the "curse of beauty", directly addressing Akhmatova: "... Beauty is terrible, they will tell you ...". The ambivalence of beauty in the artistic world of Akhmatova is comprehended in the form of a tense dialogue with the Muse.

Akhmatova's poem is also open to the wider context of Russian poetry. This connection arises, for example, because of the old plot of the poet’s meeting with the Muse, which for some poets was a “genius of pure beauty” (V. A. Zhukovsky, A. S.), for others - a humiliated “young peasant woman” (N. A. ), otherwise - Hagia Sophia (V. Solovyov) or a mysterious stranger, a beautiful lady (A. A. Blok). With a broad context, the poem is connected with the understanding of poetic talent as a divine gift and as a severe punishment, which has been encountered in Russian poetry more than once, starting almost with A. Kantemir (“Ume immature, the fruit of short-lived science / Rest, do not force my hands to write a pen ...") or, at least, M. V. Lomonosov ("The delight of a sudden mind captivated ...") and up to the modern Akhmatova B. L. Pasternak ("Oh, if I knew that this happens ..."). "Connecting" Akhmatova's poem to the context allows you to read it as a continuation of an old poetic theme, maybe even as a dispute.

The poetic analysis of the poem "Muse", even being far from complete and to a large extent superficial, allows us to discover deep, non-obvious contextual connections of the work and, as a result, clarify its reading.

At first glance (more precisely, at the first reading by ear), the poem sounds like a 4-3-foot dactyl, but immediately a noticeable irregularity is heard in it, which is expressed in the alternation of 4 and 3-foot dactylic lines (each time the second verse seems unsaid) , as well as in omissions of metric stress (tribrachs), occurring in the first foot and once in the middle of the verse. #_w15″ pure” dactyl in this poem by Akhmatova at the end of each verse, unstressed syllables fall out, and the last verse looks incomplete. As a result of various violations of the metric scheme, the dactyl turns out to be rather strongly loosened towards the dolnik, a size often used by Akhmatova. Thus, the poem "Muse" was written in 4-3 ct dolnik.

However, Akhmatova does not hide, and therefore deliberately leaves noticeable the genetic connection of the size she uses with the 4-3-foot dactyl, which in Russian poetry had a well-defined tradition: in the first third of the 19th century, this size was used in philosophical lyrics (for example, "Source" K N. Batyushkova, “Clouds of heaven, eternal wanderers ...” by M. Yu. Lermontov), ​​but most often he imitated the German ballad dolnik # _w16 “ballad” in size, signs, sometimes barely perceptible, of Zhukovsky’s ballad world penetrated into Akhmatova’s poem: the image of a girl , fortune-telling at the window and at the mirror, a mysterious visitor (here the Muse-sister). In the fantastic world of Zhukovsky's ballads, a person often turns out to be a victim of the elements, but in Zhukovsky, who created "psychological romanticism" in Russian poetry, this element is always internal, in the human soul. The idea of ​​the inner world of a person and the conflicts taking place there, apparently, influenced the artistic world of Akhmatova, even if she deliberately did not set herself such a goal - Akhmatova got the poetic meter already colored by the tradition of philosophical elegies and ballads of the romantic era.

List of used literature

1. Akhmatova A. Works in 2 vols. / Under the general editorship of N. N. Skatov. - T.1. – M.: Pravda, 1990.

2. Akhmatova A. Poems. Poems. Prose. / Comp. V. V. Rudakov. - Tomsk: Tomsk book publishing house, 1989.

3. Dobin E. S. Poetry A. Akhmatova. - L. 1968.

4. Zhirmunsky V. M. Creativity of Anna Akhmatova. - L. 1973.

5. Pavlovsky A. I. Anna Akhmatova. - L., 1966.

6. Gasparov M. L. Essay on the history of Russian verse. – M.: Nauka, 1984.

7. Kholshevnikov V. E. What is Russian verse // Thought armed with rhymes. Poetic anthology. - L .: Publishing House of Leningrad State University, 1984.

8. Dictionary of literary terms. Ed.-stat. L. I. Timofeev and S. V. Turaev. - M .: Education, 1974.

9. Lotman Yu. M. The structure of a literary text. - L., 1966.

10. Ginzburg L. Ya. About the old and the new. - L., 1982.

11. Silman T. I. Notes on lyrics. - L., 1977.

12. Yanushkevich A. S. Stages and problems of creative evolution of V. A. Zhukovsky. - Tomsk: Publishing House of TSU, 1985.

13. Zholkovsky A. K., Shcheglov Yu. K. On the concepts of “theme” and “poetic world” // Proceedings on sign systems. — Volume VII. – Tartu, 1975.

When I wait for her arrival at night,
Life seems to hang by a thread.
What honors, what youth, what freedom
In front of a nice guest with a pipe in her hand.
And so she entered. Throwing back the cover
She looked at me carefully.
I tell her: “Did you dictate to Dante
Pages of Hell? Answers: "Me!".

Analysis of the poem "Muse" by Akhmatova

Poets of all times and peoples in their work in one way or another turned to the main source of their inspiration - the Muse. This is the main symbol of poetry, before which they bowed and admired. Millions of warm and tender lines are dedicated to the museum, to which it is very difficult to add something. A. Akhmatova addressed this topic in her own way, writing in 1924 a short poem with the eloquent title "Muse".

The plot of the elegant miniature is extremely simple: the expectation of the lyrical heroine and the long-awaited arrival of the Muse. It is very important to take into account the time of creation of the work and the circumstances of Akhmatova's life. From the beginning of the 20s. the poetess is subjected to official criticism, her poems are not published. But for a truly creative person, money and fame mean absolutely nothing. For Akhmatova, in extremely difficult conditions, the most important thing was not to lose hope and the ability to create.

Creating something new in your imagination is a very difficult task. Pushkin also complained about the tedious hours and days of waiting for inspiration, like a bright flash. Therefore, Akhmatova admits that in such painful periods, "life seems to hang by a thread." Probably, the poetess also hints at the possibility of a sudden night arrest.

"Dear Guest" is able to completely transform the world of the lyrical heroine. The arrival of the Muse allows you to forget about everything in the world: "honor", "youth", "freedom". The immortal phrase “manuscripts do not burn” is very appropriate here. The Creator creates his own world, into which even the most secret agents can never penetrate. This world cannot be destroyed.

The meeting of the lyrical heroine with the Muse is described in a very original way. It is no coincidence that Akhmatova mentions the Divine Comedy, which is considered the pinnacle of world literature. The answer of the “dear guest”, that it was under her dictation that Dante wrote, finally convinces the poetess of her talent. The realization of this gives her the strength not to give up under the influence of external negative circumstances and continue her great work. If you enlist the support of the Muse, then all the same, someday the descendants will appreciate the efforts expended.

The work "Muse" is at the same time a simple and very powerful poem. The final life-affirming “I!” sounds most impressive. It contains not only the answer of the Muse, but also the statement of Akhmatova herself that she will never stop her struggle for higher ideals and justice.

The work of Anna Akhmatova entitled "Muse" was written in 1924. It is quite short, but, nevertheless, conveys all the emotions that the poet generally wanted to convey to her reader. It is beautiful, very epic, but at the same time, as it usually happens in the work of this writer and poetess, the next work again carries with it some kind of mystery, as well as some kind of unusual atmosphere, a little sad, and yet it attracts with its uniqueness.

Anna Akhmatova is a very interesting person in her own right. But besides, her works won the hearts of many people, and it is not for nothing that she became so famous, as well as her poems.

The poem consists of eight lines, but is not divided into stanzas separately. But still, critics divide it into two episodes, as it were. The first part of the verse is, as it were, the very expectation of the character, which is directed against the heroine, as it were, the poetess herself, who comes late and not as soon as the one who was waiting so would like. And this is already told in the second half of the poem. But in the second stanza, this “Muse” finally appears, which they have been waiting for so long, and finally waited.

Anna Akhmatova, as it were, added a little autobiography to the poem on her own. Since one line, even if only one, but already, as it were, indicates a little what happened in her life so brightly, but, alas, so tragically. After all, she had a husband, but whom she did not love. No details about her personal life, but she wanted to marry someone else, but this divorce was not finalized until then. It was during those years that something went wrong. And it is the stanza "... Life seems to be hanging by a thread ..." says everything. After all, then she even wandered around the apartments a little. She lived with a friend for a long time, who was a famous dancer and even the first fashion model at that time.

Dante Alighieri - it is not for nothing that he is mentioned in the work, because his works are eternal. And the poetess, as it were, was ready for what she would receive in return for what everyone is not ready to give up - immortality, like a poetess.

Analysis of the poem Muse Akhmatova

A brilliant lyricist and philosopher, the poetess Anna Akhmatova in the poem "Muse" arranges an "interrogation" of the lyrical heroine on behalf of the Muse. The goddess of poetry comes as a guest friend, and between the interlocutors, either in a dream or in reality, such a dialogue is tied up:

I tell her: “Did you dictate to Dante

Pages of Hell? Answers: "I am".

Anna Akhmatova, whom the most severe critics recognized as a deity in the manner of her possession of verse, in Muse intricately intertwines colloquial and sublime styles. The virtuoso stanzas, and there are only a few of them in the verse, are so precise that it seems as if you have read a poem. When the Muse leaves, with the heroine, who, of course, is the same person as the poetess, there remains the boundless sky - the land of poetic inspiration.

I loved her alone.
And there was a dawn in the sky.
Like a gateway to her country.

Interestingly, throughout the short narrative, Anna Akhmatova presents the Muse in the greatest, inaccessible way - the patroness of literary insight. That, thanks to its amazing, subtle nature, pays tribute to the Muse as a sister. But there is no touch of familiarity here either - communication with the Muse, and in fact with your passion for rhyme and rhythm, is delightful in essence. It is almost a confession to a higher mind.

What honors, what youth, what freedom

In front of a nice guest with a pipe in her hand.

How to understand in a poem the fact that the Muse and the author are talking? Apparently, Anna Akhmatova "raises" herself to the level of this mission. There is no "importance" in such a reception. Akhmatova turned out to be like no one else as a master of the poetic word. And even a short period was not a student. She immediately ascended the pedestal of Russian poetry, competing with the greatest predecessors.

It is also worth explaining why the author introduces a dramatic fragment into a conversation with a nice guest:

Covering my face, I answered her...

But there are no more tears, no more excuses.

It seems that in these lines the poetess admits how devastating, drawing out the strength of writing, writing. But all the "squeeze" of the soul is given to readers, fans of creativity. And Anna Akhmatova is happy to admit that she can neither write, nor love, nor live at half strength.

Experiences, feelings in Akhmatova's poetry are always brought to the highest intensity. It is wonderful that nothing artificial, far-fetched, vain is mixed in them. As her friend Muse “taught” the poetess, the earth should be illuminated with kindness and talent of the highest standard.

When you read the amazing lines of "Muse", it seems that you are a little dizzy from the beauty of rhyme and images. But how can the classics be different?

Analysis of the poem Muse according to plan

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