Artistic Features of Mandelstam's Poetry. "Artistic features of Mandelstam's lyrics

Introduction.

Before talking about the work of Mandelstam, it is necessary to say about the time in which the poet lived and worked. This time is the turn of the century, a significant, difficult, bright, eventful time: literally in 25 years, events have occurred that radically changed the way of life of a person and his consciousness. At that time, life was not easy, and even more so to create. But, as often happens, in the most difficult time, the beautiful and unique is born.

That was exactly what Osip Mandelstam was: unique, original, educated - a wonderful person and a talented poet. Here is how Anna Akhmatova wrote about him in her diaries: “Mandelstam was one of the most brilliant interlocutors: he did not listen to himself and answered not to himself, as almost everyone does now. In conversation he was courteous, resourceful and infinitely varied. I never heard him repeat himself or play over-played records. With extraordinary ease, Osip Emilievich learned languages. "Divine Comedy" read by heart pages in Italian. Shortly before his death, he asked Nadia to teach him English, which he did not know at all. He spoke dazzlingly, biasedly about poetry, and sometimes he was monstrously unfair (for example, to Blok). He said about Pasternak: "I thought about him so much that I was even tired" and "I am sure that he did not read a single line of mine." About Marina: "I am an anti-Tsvetaevist."

Osip Mandelstam is one of my favorite poets. The first poem I read was:

In the face of frost I look alone, He is nowhere, I am nowhere,

And everything is ironed, flattened without wrinkles

The plains are a breathing miracle.

And the sun squints in starchy poverty,

His squint is calm and comforted,

Ten-figure forests - almost those ...

And the snow crunches in the eyes, like pure bread without sin.

This poem did not leave me without emotions, it "infected" me with Mandelstam's lyrics and she did not disappoint me.

A timid heart beats anxiously,

Hungry for happiness and give and keep!

It is possible to hide from people

But nothing can be hidden from the stars.

Athanasius Fet

Biography.

Osip Emilievich Mandelstam was born on January 3 (15), 1891 in Warsaw. His father, Emilius Veniaminovich, a descendant of Spanish Jews, who grew up in a patriarchal family and ran away from home as a teenager, self-taught European culture in Berlin - Goethe, Schiller, Shakespeare, spoke Russian and German equally poorly. A man with a difficult character, he was not a very successful businessman * and a homegrown philosopher at the same time. Mother, Flora Osipovna, nee Verblovskaya, came from an intelligent Vilna family, played the piano excellently, loved Pushkin, Lermontov, Turgenev, Dostoevsky and was a relative of the famous historian of Russian literature and bibliographer * S.A. Vengerov. Osip was the eldest of three brothers. Shortly after the birth of Osip, his family moved to Pavlovsk near St. Petersburg, and then in 1897 to St. Petersburg. In 1900, Osip entered the Tenishevsky School. A teacher of Russian literature Vl. Gippius. At the school, Mandelstam began to write poetry, at the same time he was carried away by the ideas of the Socialist-Revolutionaries. Immediately after graduating from college in 1907, parents worried about the political activity of their son sent Osip to Paris to study at the Sorbonne. In France, Mandelstam discovers the old French epic, the poetry of Villon, Baudelaire, Verlaine. Meets K. Mochulsky and N. Gumilyov. He writes poetry and tries himself in prose. In 1909-1910, Mandelstam studied philosophy and philology at the University of Heidelberg. In St. Petersburg, he attends meetings of the Religious-Philosophical Society, whose members were the most prominent thinkers and writers N. Berdyaev, D. Merezhkovsky, D. Philosophers, Vyach. Ivanov. During these years, Mandelstam drew closer to the St. Petersburg literary environment. In 1909, he first appeared on the "tower" of Vyach. Ivanova. There he meets Anna Akhmatova. In August 1910, Mandelstam made his literary debut - a selection of five of his poems was published in the ninth issue of Apollo. In 1911, the "Workshop of Poets" was created, of which Mandelstam also became a member. In the same year, Mandelstam converted to Christianity, which allowed him to enter the Romano-Germanic department of the Faculty of History and Philology of St. Petersburg University. He attends lectures and seminars of prominent philologists, under the influence of the young scientist V. Shileiko, he is fond of the culture of Assyria, Egypt, Ancient Babylon.

(*) - see glossary on page 21.

The poet also becomes a regular visitor to the Stray Dog, where he sometimes performs from the stage, reading his poems.

In 1913, the Akme publishing house published Mandelstam's first book, Stone. By this time, the poet had already moved away from the influence of symbolism *, having adopted a “new faith” - acmeism *. Mandelstam's poems are often published in the Apollo magazine. The young poet is gaining fame. In 1914, after Gumilyov's departure to the front, Mandelstam was elected syndicate of the Workshop of Poets.

In December 1915, Mandelstam published the second edition of The Stone (Giperborey publishing house), almost three times as large as the first.

At the beginning of 1916, Marina Tsvetaeva came to Petrograd. At a literary evening, she met with Petrograd poets. Her friendship with Mandelstam began from this "out of this place" evening. Poets often dedicated poems to each other, one of these poems is dedicated to Anna Akhmatova:

Do you want to be a toy

But your factory is ruined,

To you no one on a cannon shot

It won't work without lyrics.

After the revolution, Mandelstam served as a minor official in various Petrograd departments, and in the early summer of 1918 he left for Moscow.

In February 1919, the poet leaves hungry Moscow. Mandelstam's wanderings around Russia begin: Moscow, Kyiv, Feodosia ...

Mandelstam called his first collection of poetry, published in 1913, "Stone"; and it consisted of 23 poems. But recognition came to the poet with the release of the second edition of "Stone" in 1916, which already included 67 poems. Most of the reviewers enthusiastically wrote about the book, noting the "skillfulness", "chasing of the lines", "impeccability of form", "sharpness of the verse", "undoubted sense of beauty". True, there were reproaches of coldness, the predominance of thought, dry rationality. Yes, this collection is marked by special solemnity, gothic architectural lines, coming from the poet's passion for the era of classicism and ancient Rome. Unlike other reviewers who reproached Mandelstam for inconsistency and even imitation of Balmont, N. Gumilyov noted precisely the originality and originality of the author: “Only the Russian language was his inspiration ...

Yes, his own seeing, hearing, tactile, eternally sleepless thought ... ”These words are all the more surprising because ethnically Mandelstam was not Russian. The mood of "Stone" is minor. The refrain of most poems is the word “sadness”: “Oh my prophetic sadness”, “inexpressible sadness”, “I slowly carry sadness in my heart like a gray bird”, “Where sadness has huddled, hypocrite ...” And surprise, and quiet joy, and youthful longing - all this is present in the "Stone" and seems natural and ordinary.

But there are also two or three poems of incredibly dramatic, Lermontov power: ... The sky is dull with a strange glow -

World foggy pain Oh, let me be foggy too And let me not love you.

In the second large collection "Tristia", as in "Stone", a large place is occupied by the theme of Rome, its palaces, squares, however, as well as St. Petersburg with its no less luxurious and expressive buildings. This collection contains a cycle of love poems. Some of them are dedicated to Marina Tsvetaeva, with whom, according to some contemporaries, Mandelstam had a "stormy romance." One should not think that Mandelstam's "novels" were like a game of "tragic passions." Falling in love, as many have noted, is an almost constant property of Mandelstam, but it is interpreted widely - as falling in love with life. This fact itself suggests that love for a poet is like poetry. Love lyrics for Mandelstam are light and chaste, devoid of tragic heaviness and demonism. Here is one of them dedicated to the actress of the Alexandrinsky Theater O. N. Arbenina - Hildenbrand, for whom the poet had a great feeling: Because I could not hold your hands,

For having betrayed the salty tender lips, I must wait for the dawn in the dense acropolis. How I hate odorous ancient log cabins!

Mandelstam dedicated several poems to A. Akhmatova. Nadezhda Yakovlevna writes about them: “Akhmatova's poems - there are five of them ... - cannot be classified as love ones. These are verses of high friendship and unhappiness. They have a sense of a common lot and catastrophe.” Mandelstam fell in love, perhaps, until the last years of his life. But his constant affection, his second "I", remained infinitely devoted to him Nadezhda Yakovlevna, his Nadenka, as he lovingly called her. Evidence of the loving attitude of Osip Emilievich to his wife can serve not only letters, but also poems. The reader might think that Mandelstam at all times wrote only about love, or about antiquity. This is not true. The poet was one of the first to write on civil topics. The revolution was a huge event for him, and it is not by chance that the word people appears in his poems. In 1933, Mandelstam, the first and only poet living and recognized in the country, wrote anti-Stalinist poems and read them to at least a dozen people, mostly writers and poets, who, upon hearing them, were horrified and denied: “I didn’t hear this you didn't read it to me" Here's one of them:

We live, not feeling the country beneath us, Our speeches are not heard ten steps away, And where there is enough for half a conversation, They will remember the Kremlin highlander. His thick fingers, like worms, are fat, And the words, like pood weights, are true, Cockroach eyes laugh, And his tops shine.

And around him is a rabble of thin-necked leaders, He plays with the services of the floor of people. Who whistles, who meows, who whimpers, He alone babachet and pokes.

Like a horseshoe, he gives a decree for a decree - To whom in the groin, to whom on the forehead, to whom in the eyebrow, to whom in the eye. Whatever execution he has, then raspberries And the broad chest of an Ossetian.

Until recently, this poem was kept in the archives of the State Security and was first published in 1963 in the West, and in our country only in 1987. And this is not surprising. After all, what a bold poet should be, who decided on such a daring act. Many critics regarded his anti-Stalinist poems as a challenge to the Soviet authorities, assessing his courage bordering on insanity, but I think this opinion came from the desire to see the poet with his complex metaphor, and, as it were, not from this world. But Mandelstam was in his right mind, just with completely sincere feelings he paints an atmosphere of general fear that fettered the country at that time. This is proved by the first two lines of this poem. The poet was not a politician at all and was never an anti-Soviet, anti-communist. It's just that Mandelstam turned out to be instinctively more perspicacious and wiser than many, having seen the cruel policy of the Kremlin rulers that destroyed the fate of millions of people. This is just a kind of satirical denunciation of evil. The line "His fingers are fat like worms" is emphatic, but perhaps a bit too blunt. What next? “And the words, like pood weights, are true, the cockroach's eyes laugh and its tops shine. In these lines, Mandelstam gives a complete description of the "Kremlin highlander". And how to the place the next detail - "shining tops" - an indispensable attribute of the Stalinist costume. And here you are - the external portrait is ready. A psychological portrait in the next eight lines: in two lines, first comes the evaluation of the "thin-necked leaders" - nukers, christened "half-humans." It is difficult to think of a more magnificent characterization for these people, whose moral qualities were below human limits. Stalin shot their brothers, imprisoned their wives, and not a single one was found who would rise up and avenge himself and the country. Reading this poem, I involuntarily remembered a fairy tale about a tyrant king who constantly shouted: “Execute, or hang, or drown!” Only here, of course, everything is much more sinister. The line “No matter what execution he has, it’s raspberries”, in my opinion, is very expressive: here is voluptuousness from the intoxication of power, and the satisfaction of bloodthirstiness. And the line "... and the broad chest of an Ossetian" is a direct allusion to the origin of Stalin. Namely, the legend that spoke of his Ossetian roots. Stalin, moreover, generally hinted that he was almost Russian. Mandelstam speaks sarcastically about the incomprehensible nationality of the Soviet ruler. I liked this poem because it challenges the political and social life of Russia. I bow to the courage of Mandelstam, who, alone among the whole crowd, exhausted by misfortune, but living by the principle - “We don’t like everything, but we endure and are silent”, expressed his entire critical point of view on the environment.

Mandelstam: Features of creativity

Other essays on the topic:

On the twentieth of October 1938, Osip Emilievich Mandelstam wrote to his brother Alexander and his wife Nadezhda Yakovlevna: “Dear Shura! I am...
Composition on the theme "The image of the XX century in world lyrics". XX century. Here it said goodbye to us, do not wait back, it ...
Anton Pavlovich-Chekhov is a Russian writer and playwright. He wrote at the end of the 19th century, but even now, in the 21st century, we meet...
Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Spanish playwright, was born on January 17, 1600 in Madrid. He belonged to an old but impoverished...
Surrealism (French letters, "supra-realism") is an avant-garde movement that arose on the borders of the 20s in French literature and spread to ...
Osip (Joseph) Emilievich Mandelstam appeared at the same time and in the same edition as Akhmatova. He is one of...
Purpose: to introduce students to N. Gogol, a writer and a personality; find out the influence of Ukrainian culture on the development of his work; to form the skill briefly, ...
V. Mayakovsky entitled his autobiography “I myself” and began it with the words: “I am a poet. This is what is interesting. About this and...
Lermontov early began to try his hand at various kinds and genres. But the basis of his artistic world was the lyrics. early lyrics...
Through all the diverse work of the poet and his hard life, there is a search for an answer to the question that is put in the epigraph of the work. Osip...
I. A. Bunin and his work Bunin's work is characterized by an interest in ordinary life, the ability to reveal the tragedy of life, the richness of the story ...
Features of the work on a public theme. 1. Public topics include those that relate to the life of our society. 2. The main sources of information... Alexander Trifonovich Tvardovsky was born in the Smolensk region. He studied at a rural school, then at the Smolensk Pedagogical Institute. In 1939 he graduated...
1. Ostrovsky's desire to generalize specific facts. On the example of the events taking place in Kalinovo, a picture of the life of provincial Russia in the second third of the nineteenth century is revealed ...
Today, every cultured person calls this name with great respect. But was it like this before? It is worth remembering the beginning of the path of the poetess ....

Essay on the subject of literature

Zelenograd District Department of Education of the Department of Education of the City of Moscow

Moscow 2008

Introduction.

Osip Mandelstam is one of my favorite poets. The first poem I read was:

In the face of frost I look alone, He is nowhere, I am nowhere,

And everything is ironed, flattened without wrinkles

The plains are a breathing miracle.

And the sun squints in starchy poverty,

His squint is calm and comforted,

Ten-figure forests - almost those ...

And the snow crunches in the eyes, like pure bread without sin.

This poem did not leave me without emotions, it "infected" me with Mandelstam's lyrics and she did not disappoint me.

A timid heart beats anxiously,

Hungry for happiness and give and keep!

It is possible to hide from people

But nothing can be hidden from the stars.

Athanasius Fet

Biography.

(*) - see glossary on page 21.

The poet also becomes a regular visitor to the Stray Dog, where he sometimes performs from the stage, reading his poems.

In December 1915, Mandelstam published the second edition of The Stone (Giperborey publishing house), almost three times as large as the first.

Do you want to be a toy

But your factory is ruined,

To you no one on a cannon shot

It won't work without lyrics.

After the revolution, Mandelstam served as a minor official in various Petrograd departments, and in the early summer of 1918 he left for Moscow.

In February 1919, the poet leaves hungry Moscow. Mandelstam's wanderings around Russia begin: Moscow, Kyiv, Feodosia ...

On May 1, 1919, in the Kiev cafe "Khlam", Mandelstam met twenty-year-old Nadezhda Khazina, who in 1922 became his wife.

After a number of adventures, having been in the Wrangel prison, Mandelstam returned to Petrograd in the fall of 1920. He gets a room in the "House of Arts", turned into a hostel for writers and artists.

The Mandelstams spent the summer and autumn of 1921 in Georgia, where they were caught by the news of the death of A. Blok, and then of the execution of Gumilyov. In 1922-23, Mandelstam published three poetry collections: Tristia (1922), Second Book (1923), Stone (3rd edition, 1923). His poems and articles are published in Petrograd, Moscow, Berlin. At this time, Mandelstam wrote a number of articles on the most important problems of history, culture and humanism: "Word and Culture", "On the Nature of the Word", "Human Wheat" and others.

In the summer of 1924, Mandelstam moved from Moscow to Leningrad. In 1925, Mandelstam published his autobiographical book The Noise of Time. In 1928, Mandelstam's last lifetime book of poems "Poems" was published, and a little later - a collection of articles "On Poetry" (Publishing House "Academia") and the story "Egyptian Mark". The Mandelstams spent most of 1930 in Armenia. The result of this trip was the prose "Journey to Armenia" and the poetic cycle "Armenia". From Armenia at the end of 1930, the Mandelstams arrived in Leningrad. In January 1931, due to problems with housing, the Mandelstams left for Moscow. In March 1932, for "services to Russian literature," Mandelstam was awarded a life pension of 200 rubles a month.

In Moscow, Mandelstam writes a lot. In addition to poetry, he is working on a large essay "Talk about Dante." But printing becomes almost impossible. For the publication of the last part of "Journeys to Armenia" in the Leningrad "Zvezda", the editor Ts. Volpe was removed.

In 1933, Mandelstam visited Leningrad, where two of his evenings were arranged. Another evening was organized in Moscow at the Polytechnic Museum.

On the night of May 13-14, 1934, O. Mandelstam was arrested. Mandelstam himself said that from the moment of his arrest, he had been preparing for execution: “After all, this happens with us on smaller occasions.” But a miracle happened. Not only was Mandelstam not shot, but he was not even sent to the “channel”. He escaped with a relatively easy exile to Cherdyn, where his wife was also allowed to go with him. And soon the Mandelstams were allowed to settle anywhere, except for the twelve largest cities in the country (then it was called “minus twelve”). Not being able to choose for a long time (acquaintances, except in 12 forbidden cities, they did not have anywhere), they randomly chose Voronezh. He served a link there until May 1937, living almost beggarly, first on small earnings, then on the meager help of friends. What was the reason for the commutation of the sentence? Personally, I prefer the following hypothesis. Stalin understood that the action of poetry cannot be stopped by killing a poet. Poems already existed, were distributed in lists, were transmitted orally. To kill a poet is nothing. Stalin wanted more. He wanted to force Mandelstam to write other poems - poems glorifying Stalin. Poems in exchange for life. Of course, all this is only a hypothesis, but very plausible.

Mandelstam understood Stalin's intentions. (Or maybe they helped him understand). One way or another, driven to despair, he decided to try to save his life at the cost of a few forced lines. As a result, “Ode to Stalin” was born, which caused numerous controversies.

If I took coal for the highest praise -

For the joy of the immutable drawing, I would draw the air into cunning angles

Both cautious and anxious.

It can be assumed that the poet wanted to say: “Now, if I wanted to praise someone, then I would ...” And further ... I would raise my eyebrows a small corner

And he raised it again and resolved otherwise:

To know, Prometheus fanned his coal, Look, Aeschylus, how I cry while drawing!

In “Ode”* there are no glorifying traditional clichés, it seems to be saying: this is what would happen if the artist undertook to write about what he does not have a soul for, but he must say about it in order to save himself and his loved ones. The “Ode” didn’t work out, it turned out to be a poem about the inner state of the artist, tearing him apart between what he would like to say and what his soul does not allow him to.

He was last arrested on May 2, 1938. The official notice said that he died on December 27 of the same year in a camp near Vladivostok.

Features of the lyrics.

Collections: "Stone" and "Tristia".

"Stone" (1913) - the first poetry collection. This collection consisted of 23 poems. But recognition came to the poet with the release of the second edition of "Stone" in 1916, which already included 67 poems. Most of the reviewers wrote enthusiastically about the book, noting the "jewelry craftsmanship", "chasing of the lines", "impeccability of form", "sharpness of the verse", "undoubted sense of beauty". There were, however, reproaches of coldness, the predominance of thought, dry rationality. Yes, this collection is marked by special solemnity, gothic architectural lines, coming from the poet's passion for the era of classicism and ancient Rome.

Unlike other reviewers* who reproached Mandelstam for inconsistency and even imitation of Balmont, N. Gumilyov noted precisely the originality and originality of the author: “It was only the Russian language that inspired him ... yes, his own seeing, hearing, tactile, eternally sleepless thought ...”

These words are all the more surprising because ethnically Mandelstam was not Russian.

The mood of "Stone" is minor. The refrain of most poems is the word “sadness”: “Oh, my prophetic sadness”, “inexpressible sadness”, “I slowly carry sadness, like a gray bird, in my heart”, “Where sadness has huddled, hypocrite ...”

And surprise, and quiet joy, and youthful longing - all this is present in the "Stone" and seems natural and ordinary. But there are also two or three poems of incredibly dramatic, Lermontov-like power:

... The sky is dull with a strange glow -

World misty pain Oh, let me be misty too

And let me not love you.

In the second large collection "Tristia" (1922), as in "Stone", a large place is occupied by the theme of Rome, its palaces, squares, however, as well as St. Petersburg with its no less luxurious and expressive buildings. This collection contains a cycle of love poems. Falling in love, as many have noted, is an almost constant property of Mandelstam, but it is interpreted widely - as falling in love with life. Love for a poet is like poetry.

Love lyrics for Mandelstam are light and chaste, devoid of tragic heaviness and demonism. Here is one of them dedicated to the actress of the Alexandrinsky Theater

O. N. Arbenina - Gildenbrand:

For the fact that I could not hold your hands,

For betraying salty tender lips,

I must wait for dawn in the dense acropolis.

How I hate odorous ancient log cabins!

Features of the poetic language of O. Mandelstam.

Mandelstam began his work as a supporter of acmeism. He formulated his concept of acmeism in the article "Morning of acmeism" (1919). Here he dismissed the usual idea of acmeism as a simple return to realism, to the glorification of reality. The only real thing in art is the work of art itself. Reality in poetry is not the objects of the external world, but "the word as such." In the article “Word and Culture” (1921), he writes: “The living word does not designate an object, but freely chooses, as if for housing, one or another objective significance ...” And further: “A poem is alive in an internal way, that cast of form which precedes the written poem. Not a single word yet, but the poem already sounds. It sounds like an internal image, it is the poet's ear that touches it. In these words - the key to much in the verses of both early and late Mandelstam.

Stay foam, Aphrodite,

And the word in the music come back!

The evolution that Mandelstam experienced during his creative career clearly affected his poetic language, figurative system, they changed significantly from early poems, from the book “Stone” to “Voronezh Notebooks”, “Poems about the Unknown Soldier”.

Mandelstam's early work is characterized by a desire for classical clarity and harmony; his poems are distinguished by simplicity, lightness, transparency, which are achieved by the sparing use of simple rhymes (“The sound is cautious and deaf ...”, “Only read children's books ...”).

In Mandelstam, the expressive, visible objectivity characteristic of acmeists is spiritualized by symbolic meaning. The poem reflects not the objects and phenomena themselves, but their perception by the artist:

Oh heaven, heaven, I will dream of you!

You can't be completely blind

And the day burned like a white page:

Some smoke and some ash!

In the poem - a real picture: the sky turned white, like a page, darkened, as if disappeared, the day burned out. We are talking about the inevitable disappearing moment, the inevitable, irrevocable movement of time. After the collection "Tristia" in "Poems of 1921-1925" and then in the work of the late Mandelstam, classical clarity and transparency disappear, his poetic language acquires metaphorical complexity; unexpected, complicated images make his poems difficult for readers to perceive. A concrete phenomenon actually correlates with the universal and eternal. The complex world of the poem, filled with deep meaning, is created by the ambiguity of the word, which is revealed in the artistic context. In this context, the word is enriched with new, additional content. Mandelstam has words-symbols that pass from one poem to another, acquiring new semantic shades. For example, the word “age” creates a concept, an image that changes depending on the context of the poem: “My age, my beast, who will be able to look into your pupils”, “But your spine is broken, my beautiful miserable age” (“Vek”); "Two sleepy apples at the age-ruler" (January 1, 1924); “A century-wolfhound throws itself on my shoulders” (“For the explosive valor of the coming centuries ...”). “Swallow” in Mandelstam’s poems is associated with art, creativity, the word - for example: “I forgot the word that I wanted to say. The blind swallow will return to the chamber” (“Swallow”); “And a living swallow fell on the hot snows” (“A ghostly scene flickers a little ...”); “We tied the swallows into fighting legions...” (“The Twilight of Freedom”). Researchers call Mandelstam's poetics associative. Images, words evoke associations that fill in the missing semantic links. Often definitions do not refer to the subject to which they are grammatically attached, the defined word, the subject that gave rise to some actions may not be named - for example: “I learned the science of parting in the simple-haired complaints of the night.” In the context of the poem “Tristia”, the word “hairless” is associated with a sudden nocturnal goodbye, with tears and complaints from women. In the poem “Where is the bound and nailed groan? ..” from the context it becomes clear that we are talking about Prometheus, nailed to a rock, doomed to torment. “Water rested against one hundred and four oars” - this image in the poem “Kama” is associated with a hard labor galley: the poet made his way along the Kama under escort into exile.

A very stable, private image of Mandelstam: black sun, night sun, yesterday's sun:

Passion wild and sleepless

Let's take the black sun.

At the gates of Jerusalem

The black sun has risen.

I woke up in the cradle

Illuminated by the black sun.

This night sun buries

The mob excited by the games...

A man dies, the sand cools warm,

And yesterday's sun is carried on a black stretcher.

And you will not notice the night sun.

The image of the black, night sun is a frequent guest in world literature, especially religious literature. An eclipse of the sun - a black sun - a harbinger of doom. Epithets in Mandelstam usually define an object from different angles and may, as it were, contradict each other. So, about Andrei Bely it is said “Turquoise teacher, tormentor, ruler, fool” (“Poems in memory of Andrei Bely”), about Petersburg: “Proud, accursed, empty, youthful” (“I was only childishly connected with the sovereign world ... ”).

Mandelstam solves one of the most difficult problems of the verse language. He brought from the 19th century his musical verse, enclosed in special shades of words:

I am in a round dance of shadows trampling on a gentle meadow,

Intervened with a singsong name

But everything melted, and only a faint sound

Remained in a hazy memory.

Each restructuring of the melody by Mandelstam is, first of all, a change in the semantic structure:

And I thought: why wake up

Swarm of elongated sounds,

In this eternal squabble to catch

Aeolian miraculous formation?

The semantic structure of Mandelstam is such that one image, one vocabulary series acquires a decisive role for the whole poem and imperceptibly colors all others - this is the key to the entire hierarchy of images:

I am attached to the ladder

I climbed into a disheveled hayloft, I breathed milky dust from the stars,

He breathed the tangle of space.

He knows more than any of the modern poets the power of vocabulary coloring. Shades of words are important for him language.

Sweeter than the singing of Italian speech

For me, my native language

For it mysteriously babbles

A spring of foreign harps.

Here is one "foreign harp" built almost without foreign words:

I learned the science of parting

In the simple-haired complaints of the night.

Oxen chew, and the wait lasts,

The last hour of the vigils of the city.

A small foreign inoculation is enough for this receptive poetic culture, so that “parting”, “bare-haired”, “waiting” become Latin like “vigils”. S. Averintsev writes: "... Mandelstam is so tempting to understand - and so difficult to interpret." Is there always a need to interpret and understand?

Is this “anatomization” of the living body of poetry really necessary? And is it really impossible to simply perceive Mandelstam? Many contemporaries recited vivid, instantly memorable lines by heart:

Slower than snow hives

More transparent than crystal windows,

And a turquoise veil

Carelessly thrown on a chair.

Fabric intoxicated with itself

Indulged in the caress of light,

She experiences summer

No matter how touched in winter;

And if in ice diamonds

Eternity frost flows,

Here is the flutter of dragonflies

Fast-living, blue-eyed.

Themes of O. Mandelstam's poetry.

The poetic heritage of O. Mandelstam is about 600 works of various genres, topics, including poems for children, comic poems and translations. The range of Mandelstam's "blissful inheritance" is all-encompassing. It includes the world of antiquity, French and German Gothic, Italian Renaissance, Dickensian England, French classicism and, of course, Russian poetry... “Alien” images will sprout like a grain on fertile soil, reshaped by it in its own way.

I. The theme of antiquity. Especially acutely he felt the ancient world:

Insomnia. Homer. Tight sails.

I read the list of ships to the middle:

This long brood, this crane train,

That over Hellas once rose ...

In antiquity, he is looking for support and salvation, looking for something very simple and at the same time the most important and durable in relations between people, inspiring hope for the future.

On the stone spurs of Pieria

The Muses led the first round dance,

To, like bees, the lyrics are blind

We were given Ionian honey...

Oh, where are you, holy islands,

Where no broken bread is eaten,

Where only honey, wine and milk,

Creaky labor does not darken the sky

And the wheel spins easily?

II. The theme of death. From the very first steps of his work, the theme of death became one of the dominant notes in his poetry. Even in his earliest verses, death seemed to him the only test of his own reality:

If not for death, it would never

I do not know that I live.

When the poet was not yet twenty years old, he wrote:

I am the gardener, I am the flower,

In the darkness of the world, I am not alone.

On the glass of eternity has already fallen

My breath, my warmth.

In the transparent Petropolis we will die,

Where Proserpina rules over us.

We drink mortal air in every breath,

And every hour we die.

In another poem, he even favors death over love:

Let them say: love is winged,

Death is more elated than a hundred times;

Still the soul is engulfed in struggle,

And our lips fly to her.

This theme was exacerbated to the limit in the verses of the 1930s:

I'm haunted by two or three random phrases All day long I repeat: my sadness is fat,

Oh God, how black and blue-eyed

Dragonflies of death, like azure black!

III. The theme of love. The cornerstone of every lyric is love. Love for life, nature, woman. In the poetry of O. Mandelstam, love lyrics occupy an important place. She is bright and chaste. The lyrical hero of Mandelstam is not a lover, but rather a gentle brother, slightly in love with his sister or with the “foggy nun” (from a poem dedicated to Marina Tsvetaeva):

Kiss the elbow tanned

And forehead piece of wax.

I know he is white

Under a swarthy strand of gold.

We only have a name:

Great sound, long lasting

Take it with my palms

Sprinkled sand.

A poem dedicated to O. Arbenina is a rare case in Mandelstam's early poems of such an open, passionate manifestation of feelings:

I am equal to others

I want to serve you

Dry from jealousy

Tell fortunes with lips.

Doesn't satisfy the word

I have parched lips

And without you to me again

The dense air is empty.

I'm not jealous anymore

But I want you

And I carry myself

As a sacrifice to the executioner.

I won't call you

Neither joy nor love;

To the wild, alien

They changed my blood.

One more moment

And I'll tell you

Not joy, but torment

I find in you.

And like a crime

I'm attracted to you

Bitten, in confusion,

Cherry tender mouth.

Come back to me soon

I'm scared without you

I'm never stronger

Didn't feel you

And everything I want

I see for real.

I'm not jealous anymore

But I'm calling you.

However, O. Mandelstam was one of the few poets who dedicated poems to their wives. Even the poem of 1937, written shortly before his death, looks like a message from a lover:

Your pupil is in the heavenly crust,

Facing away and prostrate,

Defend Reservations

Weak smelling eyelashes.

He will be deified

To live long in his native country The pool of the eye surprised, Throw it after me.

He looks already willingly

In fleeting centuries Light, iridescent, ethereal,

Pleading for now.

Only Mandelstam knew how to combine bitterness and admiration in this way:

You haven't died yet, you're not alone yet,

While with a beggar friend

You enjoy the majesty of the plains

And darkness, and hunger, and blizzard.

In luxurious poverty, in mighty poverty

Live calm and comforted -

Blessed are those days and nights

And sweet-voiced labor is sinless.

Unhappy is the one whom, like his shadow,

The barking of dogs frightens and the wind mows,

And the tone is poor, who, half-dead himself,

He asks for alms from the shadow.

IV. The theme of St. Petersburg. Petersburg for Mandelstam is the city where he spent his childhood and youth. The theme of St. Petersburg runs through all the work of the poet. It was clearly manifested in the first collection "Stone" (1908-1915). For example, “Petersburg stanzas”, “Admiralty”, “Running out onto the square, free ...”, “Palace Square”. The second collection “Tristia” also contains the theme of the northern capital: “In the transparent Petropolis we would die...”, “A wandering fire at a terrible height...”, “In St. Petersburg we will meet again...”. Later, Petersburg motives sound differently in the poems “I returned to my city, familiar to tears ...”, “I was only childishly connected with the sovereign world ...”. The latest work of Mandelstam's lyrics containing a reference to St. Petersburg is the poem "Isakiy froze on dead eyelashes ...". The poet easily and willingly operates with all the known realities of St. Petersburg architecture, which in the minds of Russian people have become emblems of the northern capital. His "Admiralty", "Palace Square", Kazan Cathedral preserve the authenticity of details, but the recognizability of traditional realities does not interfere with the peculiar Mandelstam's plasticity of St. Petersburg. I would like to draw attention to the roll call of antiquity and modernity, characteristic of Mandelstam, the themes of Rome and St. Petersburg. For example, in a poem about the Kazan Cathedral, built by the Russian architect A.N. Voronikhin:

Running out into the square, free

The colonnade became a semicircle, And the temple of the Lord spread out,

Like a light cross-spider.

And the architect was not Italian,

But a Russian in Rome - that one, so what!

Every time you are like a foreigner,

You walk through a grove of porticoes.

And the temple's little body

More animated a hundred times

The giant that is a whole rock

Helplessly pinned to the ground!

The Kazan Cathedral is seen as if from a bird's eye view: “And spread out

temple of the Lord, like a light cross-spider.” The cathedral was built in St. Petersburg,

therefore, the line may be bewildering: “But a Russian in Rome...” However,

if you know that Voronikhin chose his beloved as a model for his creation

Mandelstam Cathedral of St. Peter in Rome, everything falls into place. The words about the “foreigner” passing through the “grove of porticos” turn out to be understandable. The poem is also interesting for its figurative structure. The cathedral is a giant colonnade deployed in a semicircle (a daring comparison: the temple of the Lord is likened to an insect, traditionally far from the concepts of high, beautiful, noble - “spider-cross”). The temple itself occupies about a tenth of the total area of the building (“the temple is a small body”). In the original Petersburg-Leningrad almanac * of the 20th century, begun by Blok, continued by the poems of Pasternak and Akhmatova, Mandelstam owns a special page. Masterful, recognizable, whimsical, accurate not by the similarity of features and proportions, but by the internal logic and energy of penetration, Mandelstam's Petersburg is a page without which poetry is unthinkable, without which the city itself becomes destitute and poorer.

V. The political theme sounded in Mandelstam's poetry even before the revolution.

Europe of Caesars! Ever since Bonaparte

Goose pen directed by Metternich For the first time in a hundred years and before my eyes

Your mysterious card is changing!

According to A. Akhmatova, “Mandelstam met the revolution quite

an established poet ... He was one of the first to write poetry on civil topics. The revolution was a huge event for him, and it is not by chance that the word people appears in his poems. For Mandelstam, the essence of the new government was exposed from the first days, and he felt the fatal meaning of incompatibility with it.

On the square with armored cars

I see a man: he

Wolves scare with firebrands Freedom, equality, law!

He accepts the ideals of the revolution, but rejects the power that

falsifies.

When October was preparing a temporary worker for us

The yoke of violence and malice,

And the killer-armored car bristled

And the low-browed machine gunner - Crucify Kerensky! the soldier demanded

And the evil mob applauded:

Pilate allowed us to take the heart on bayonets,

And my heart stopped beating!

At the time of the first, overwhelming disappointment with the revolution, looking higher

blood flowing down the street, O. Mandelstam wrote "The Twilight of Freedom" a kind of "anthem" of the revolution.

Let us glorify, brothers, the twilight of freedom, the Great twilight year.

In the boiling night waters

The heavy forest is lowered.

You rise in deaf years,

O sun, judge, people.

Let's glorify the fatal burden

Which the people's leader takes in tears.

Let us glorify the power of the gloomy burden,

Her unbearable oppression.

In whom there is a heart, he must hear the time,

As your ship sinks.

Well, let's try a huge, clumsy,

Squeaky steering wheel.

The earth is floating. Take heart, men.

Like a plow, dividing the ocean,

We will remember in the letey cold,

That the earth cost us ten heavens.

The poet is ready to voluntarily join the efforts of those who are trying

move humanity in a new, unknown direction: “Well,

try a huge, clumsy, squeaky turn of the steering wheel...” But he knows

that the “twilight of freedom” has come and “we will remember even in the cold of Lethe,

that the earth cost us ten heavens!” In this ode - a clear readiness to accept the revolution, with full consciousness of the size of the payment. He did not want and could not be a passive, impersonal victim, the “unknown soldier” of the wheel of history, and entered into an unprecedented duel with all his time. The poetry of Mandelstam in the early 1930s becomes poetry of challenge:

For the explosive valor of the coming centuries,

For the high tribe of people

I lost the cup at the feast of the fathers,

And fun, and his honor.

A wolfhound age throws itself on my shoulders,

But I'm not a wolf by my blood,

Stuff me better, like a hat, in a sleeve

A hot fur coat of the Siberian steppes, so as not to see a coward or a flimsy filth,

No bloody bones in the wheel

So that blue foxes shine all night

Me in my primeval beauty.

Take me to the night where the Yenisei flows

And the pine reaches the star

Because I'm not a wolf by my blood

And only an equal will kill me.

Mandelstam was the first, and perhaps the only poet in the country,

who in the 30s wrote about the famine in the Crimea, Ukraine, Kuban.

Cold Spring. Hungry Old Crimea.

As if under Wrangel - the same guilty.

Sheepdogs in the yard, on the rags of the patch,

The same gray, biting smoke.

The scattered distance is still good Trees, slightly swollen with buds,

They stand like strangers and excite pity

Almonds decorated with yesterday's stupidity.

Nature does not recognize its face,

And the terrible shadows of Ukraine, Kuban ...

Like hungry peasants in felt shoes

The gate is guarded without touching the ring.

The poems seem to be devoid of angry motives, but in the very atmosphere

lethargy, as if frozen, “not recognizing its face” of nature

despair oozes. And of course, the poem could not be printed,

In the same 1933, O. Mandelstam, the first and only living and

poets recognized in the country, wrote anti-Stalinist poems, for which he

had to pay the highest price - the price of life.

We live, not feeling the country under us,

Our speeches are not heard for ten steps,

And where is enough for half a conversation,

They will remember the Kremlin mountaineer there.

His thick fingers, like worms, are fat,

And the words, like pood weights, are true,

Cockroaches are laughing mustaches,

And his bootlegs shine.

And around him is a rabble of thin-necked leaders,

He plays with the services of demihumans.

Who whistles, who meows, who whimpers,

He only babachet and pokes.

Like a horseshoe, a decree forges a decree Who in the groin, who in the forehead, who in the eyebrow, who in the eye.

Whoever executes him is a raspberry

And the broad chest of an Ossetian.

Mandelstam was not a politician or, say, a singer of socialism, but he was never an anti-Soviet either. An anti-Stalinist poem does not mean anti-Soviet. Perhaps Mandelstam turned out to be intuitively more perspicacious and wiser than many, having seen the inhumane, anti-people nature of the activities of the Kremlin rulers. The poet turned out to be the first critic of the cult of personality - long before this phenomenon was designated by politicians. Naturally, for such a confrontation with the authorities, the poet could not help but fear reprisals.

Help, Lord, to live this night:

I'm afraid for life - for Your servant -

Living in Petersburg is like sleeping in a coffin.

The poem “Leningrad” is also permeated with fear:

Petersburg, I don't want to die yet...

And all night long waiting for dear guests,

Moving the shackles of door chains.

Conclusion.

In the early - mid-thirties, O. Mandelstam's poems were known

only to a narrow circle. This circle of connoisseurs and lovers of poetry gradually

increased, although O. Mandelstam and his work were not taken into account by the official literature. They were relegated to the elite periphery. According to the plan of high-ranking literary and non-literary officials, the poet was doomed to be in a deep shadow and remain silent. O. Mandelstam told his wife: "We take poetry seriously - they kill for them." He knew the value of his gift. He knew that he was born with the stigma of a poet. Poetry is not a position, not a profession. Poetry is "nowhere to go". When the poems were going on, it was like an obsession. The finished poem was a joy, a liberation, a “rectifying sigh.” The work of the poet was such a high value for him that, in comparison with it, literary ordeals and constant everyday deprivations seemed like nothing. Mandelstam knew with the poet's intuition that his feat, both moral and creative, was preparing a crown of imperishable glory.

Don't put it on me, don't put it on me

Ostrolaskovy laurel on whiskey,

Better break my heart

You are on the blue ringing pieces.

And when I die, having served,

Lifetime friend of all living,

To resound wider and higher

The response of the sky in all my chest.

I believe that E.M. wrote most clearly and fairly about Osip Mandelstam. Tager:

Imperishable thought confessor,

By the grace of the Lord, singer

The verse of the chased heir,

The last Pushkin chick...

He walked, submissive to higher powers,

Following the burning pillar.

Over an eccentric, sick and frail,

The boisterous crowd laughed.

In the cold chorus of dithyrambs

His chant did not sound;

Only the Ocean with the breath of iambs

He answered with the breath of the storm.

Only he, the Great, dark-water,

Sang the last praise

To the one who was a free soul

Like the wind and the eagle.

Indestructible vaults of the temple

Diamond snow, sapphire ice, And a pole in memory of Mandelstam

Northern lights are pouring.

Glossary of terms.

Ode is a poetic work, distinguished by solemnity and sublimity.

Almanac - a kind of serial publication, an ongoing collection of literary, artistic and / or popular science works, united on some basis.

Review (review) - analysis and evaluation of a new artistic (literary, theatrical, musical, cinematographic, etc.), scientific or popular science work; the genre of newspaper and magazine journalism and literary criticism by other people who are experts in this field. The purpose of the review is to make sure and, if necessary, to achieve from the author the adherence to the standards adopted in a particular field or science in general. Publications of unpeered works are often viewed with distrust by professionals in many fields.

Refrain - in literature, a certain word or phrase, repeatedly repeated throughout the work. In poetry, a refrain can be a line or several lines.

Merchant - a person engaged in private trade, carrying out commercial entrepreneurship.

Bibliography is a branch of scientific and practical activity involved in the preparation, dissemination and use of information about printed works necessary for their identification. Scientific systematic description of book publications, compilation of their lists, indexes and reviews.

Symbolism is one of the largest trends in art (in literature, music and painting), which arose in France in the 1870s and 80s. and reached its greatest development at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, primarily in France itself, Belgium and Russia. The Symbolists radically changed not only various types of art, but also the very attitude towards it. Much attention is paid to signs and symbols in their work. Their experimental nature, desire for innovation, cosmopolitanism and a wide range of influences have become a model for most contemporary art movements.

Acmeism is a literary movement that opposes symbolism and arose at the beginning of the 20th century in Russia. Acmeists proclaimed materiality, objectivity of themes and images, the accuracy of the word (from the standpoint of "art for art's sake").

Bibliography

1. S.S. Averintsev. "Poets". M.; 1996.

2. E.E. Mandelstam. “Poems. Prose. Articles”, M., Ast, 2000.

3. E. Necheporuk. "Osip Mandelstam and his time". M. - Our house, 1995.

4. P.S. Ulyashov. "The Lonely Seeker" M., Knowledge, 1991.

5. “Russian literature of the XX century” (edited by Pronina E.P.), 1994.

6. “Russian literature of the XX century” (edited by Batakov L.P.), 1993.

7. Karpov A. “Osip Emilievich Mandelstam”, 1988.

For the preparation of this work, materials from the site http://referat.ru were used.

Tutoring

Need help learning a topic?

Our experts will advise or provide tutoring services on topics of interest to you.
Submit an application indicating the topic right now to find out about the possibility of obtaining a consultation.

The nature of Osip Mandelstam's work is determined by the difficult times in which he lived. Revolution, Stalinist repressions, bitterness and fear for the fate of the Motherland and one's own. His poetry was not widely known. However, by the strength of its sound, the author can be safely put along with such famous personalities as Akhmatova, Mayakovsky, Yesenin ...

Mandelstam called his first collection "Stone". And this is no coincidence, because the words of poetry are stones, solid, solid, which lie in the masonry of spirituality. Gumilyov once noted that the main

The inspiration for Osip Emilievich was the Russian language. And this is all the more surprising that Mandelstam did not have Russian roots. Nevertheless, in his poems, the poet makes extensive use of melodiousness and extraordinary richness of speech, as, for example, in the poetry "Pilgrim":

Dressed too lightly in a cloak,

I repeat my vows.

The wind ruffles the edges of the clothes -

Can't we give up hope?

Some kind of unusual melancholy, a dull mood live in the collection "Stone". Perhaps time has left its mark on the worldview of a literary hero. "Sorrow" is the key word for him. “I am sadness, like a gray bird, slowly in my heart

I do,” he admits. But along with this, youthful surprise and bright joy live in the perception of the world.

I was given a body - what should I do with it,

So single and so mine?..

... On the glass of eternity has already fallen

My breath, my warmth.

The chanting of the cultural values of different peoples is inherent in all poets of the early 20th century. Osip Mandelstam developed this most fully, because, returning to the property of different historical eras and peoples, the lyricist comes to the conclusion that spiritual values \u200b\u200bhave no nationality, they belong to everyone.

In the poem “We live without feeling the country under us”, Osip Mandelstam condemns the processes taking place in the state. The poet condemns the stupid obedience of the crowd, which is afraid to express its opinion. The lyrical hero acts as a citizen - experiencing, thinking.

However, Mandelstam's line of condemnation of the "leader of all peoples" is inconsistent. Over time, he suddenly begins to admire the "father", feeling guilty for the former harshness. He asks all talented individuals to keep up with the times, and therefore the leader:

Artist, help the one who is with you,

Who thinks, feels and builds...

It is difficult to say how sincere the lines written by Mandelstam were. Suffice it to say that dissent was severely punished at that time. And such depression and restlessness of the lyrical hero fully reflects the essence of the era, which stifled any creative impulse. Death overtook Osip Mandelstam in the Gulag.

Being an educated and comprehensively developed person, the poet Mandelstam believed that everything in history was natural, and for his country the period of darkness would eventually be replaced by a time of prosperity.

But in affectionate books and in games, children

I will rise again to say that the sun is shining ...

O. E. Mandelstam was the unique creator of the poetic system in Russian literature in the first half of the 20th century. His lyrics very skillfully combine classic style and motifs with modernist tendencies. The most complex poet, deep thinker, atypical prose writer, Mandelstam will never cease to be relevant. "Style of shifts", "poetics of reminiscences", "poetics of missing links", "paradoxicalism", "semantic poetics", "synthetic poetics" [M. L. Gasparov, N. Struve, R. D. Timenchik, V. N. Toporov, K. Taranovsky] - all these numerous definitions of the poetic manner of O. E. Mandelstam indicate that some new knowledge was embodied in his work in a special way about the world.

Osip Emilievich Mandelstam began his career as a successor to the Symbolists, but at that time the collapse of Symbolism was already obvious to everyone. The poems included in the first collection "Stone" in 1913 were already devoid of the ideology and philosophy characteristic of symbolism. Musical imagery often predominated in the poems of this period. According to the poet, music is the fundamental principle of all living things. When creating these images, Mandelstam turned to the work of such composers as Mozart, Beethoven, Bach and others.

In 1912, Mandelstam joined the Acmeists. In this connection, the tonality and content of his lyrics change. During this period of creativity, Mandelstam was characterized by the desire to depict a three-dimensional world. This three-dimensionality is understood by the writer in various meanings, including as an architectural proportion and its material. Reality was conceived by Mandelstam architectonically, in the form of finished structures. At this time, the theme of the poems, figurative style and color change significantly, but the methodological basis remains the same. A characteristic feature of the poetics of this time is the objectivity and materiality of the depicted. The poet is inclined to endow objects with tangible heaviness, weight. Great importance was given to the texture of the thing, its density and material. The poet reflects on the philosophical essence of stone, clay, wood, apple, bread. By endowing objects with weight, Mandelstam tries to find a philosophical and mystical meaning in the stone [Ginzburg, 1972, p. 309].

The poems of that time are characterized by the severity of the choice of words and slow rhythm, which gives solemnity to the sound. In parallel with this theme, architectural imagery is presented. However, Mandelstam does not just use architectural images, he also shares his impression through a chain of associative details. This implies such a feature of his poetics as associativity, as well as the impressionism of writing. Thanks to associative thinking, with the help of a number of objects, names, various signs, a chain of connections created by the imagination, the poet manages to skillfully combine images of world culture and life phenomena.

The associativity of Mandelstam, his poetics of linkages was historically prepared. Being a student of the Symbolists, the poet casts sensitivity into the background, but at the same time he retains the peculiarity of the word to evoke unnamed representations, associations. Associativity is the most important element of the symbolist poetic heritage [Ginzburg, 1972: p. 314].

The poet reflects on time, on the victory of high over low, of light over darkness, of life over death. The value of his poems is philosophical and cultural-historical content. Mandelstam believes in the possibility of knowing inexplicable, irrational facts, seeks to reveal the theme of the cosmos, while trying to find out what role a person plays in it. In Mandelstam's poetry there are many different references to world culture. His poems enter into a dialogue not only with literary works, but also have iconographic, historical, musical, biographical, mythological overtones.

The poet's poems are saturated with images of ancient mythology. Antiquity serves as a background and performs a seemingly nominative function, emphasizing the historical accuracy of the descriptions. However, having compared the meaningful rows, the poet makes a philosophical generalization: “life, events are driven by love.” O. Mandelstam borrows traditional symbols from antiquity, enriching their content with new meanings.

Mandelstam combined the usual things and everyday objects with ancient monuments and works of European culture. The poet himself called the ancient art and culture of the Renaissance "a blessed legacy." Osip Emilievich explains this feature of his work with “longing for world culture”. The poet's poems with numerous historical and literary images and reminiscences give rise to a feeling of the poet's living and organic involvement in the great works of mankind, on the one hand, and on the other hand, they give rise to a sense of an internal connection between historical events and modernity.

In his article “Word and Culture” (1922), the poet expresses the idea that a new world can be started only if everything high and beautiful ancient is preserved, in the continuity and recognizable repetition of life on the scale of human history. Nothing disappears without a trace, the past is able to be reborn in new eras and in a new way. Mandelstam realized and felt this living connection of times in such a way that the paintings he created are both witnesses and participants in what was happening.

“In poetry, Mandelstam rose above the path prepared for his generation and above his own destiny, becoming not just a harbinger or an intermediate link, but a promise of endless joyful surprise for everyone who, striving to comprehend the essence of his poetry, is ready to follow its bizarre patterns,” writes Omri Romain [Ronen, 1991, p. 5].

“Poetry is a special way of artistic cognition, cognition of things in their unique aspects, generalized and at the same time singular, thus inaccessible to scientific and logical cognition. This originality, the singularity of the concept for the lyrical poetry of modern times is even more obligatory than the emphasized individuality of the author or hero. That is why a poetic word is always a word transformed by the context (the forms of this transformation are diverse), qualitatively different from its prosaic counterpart” [Ginzburg, 1972, p. 316].

For Mandelstam, poetry and prose are two interrelated types of speech that complement each other. That is why the same semantic principles operate in prose as in poetry. The writer's prose is remarkable for its amazing metaphor.

Metaphor is always a combination of ideas that form a completely new and indecomposable semantic unity. For Mandelstam clutches, this is not necessary. Most important for him are the changes in meanings caused by the presence of words in the context of the work, where they interact at a distance, syntactically without even touching [Ginzburg, 1972, p. 316].

In this case, keywords, which are symbolic in nature, are of particular importance. Mandelstam's images have specific connections, which are quite stable and often move from one poem to another. Mandelstam did it naturally, he was so captured by a single complex of his poetic thought, which was carried out in poems, in prose, in articles, in conversations, freely passing from one form to another, and he himself did not notice its limits.

The mechanism of the structure of the artistic image in the prose of O. Mandelstam is difficult to determine indisputably, because the artist’s texts are a kind of “hybrid”, “transitional” forms between prose and poetry, arising and functioning simultaneously according to the laws of both lyrics and epic, and in the limit - “avoiding” any laws. This is explained by Mandelstam's belief in the power of poetic linkages so characteristic of his system, in the dynamics of the context - some realities are unknown to the reader, decisive poetic associations are lost along with them, but the context - he is convinced - will prompt others, similar in their main orientation to the lost ones. This applies to individual poetic images of Mandelstam, and sometimes to poems that are entirely built on a plot hidden from the reader.

Mandelstam was not a writer of large forms, he did not write long poems or short stories. But in fact, all of his work is one whole, one big form; his unique vision of the world, or, as they say now, his genuine, self-created model of the world.

Many of his themes and images are repeated in his poetry and prose. An example of such repetition is his poem "Concert at the Station". A realistic description of the station concerts in Pavlovsk is found in The Noise of Time (chapter "Music in Pavlovsk").

It goes without saying that contexts and subtexts may coincide in the case of quotations and reminiscences from one's own work. This often happens with Mandelstam both in poetry and in prose.

All poets have their favorite themes, their favorite images, and even their favorite words.

All these recurring themes and images create "internal cycles" in the work of this poet, cycles that cannot be fit into an exact chronological framework.

Moreover, such recurring themes may be characteristic of several contemporary poets, regardless of the so-called "poetic schools" and even of historical periods.

Portal for the student. Self-training

Other essays on the topic:

Bibliography

Tutoring

RELATED ARTICLES