Wait for me and I will come back.
Just wait a lot
Wait for sadness
yellow rain,
Wait for the snow to come
Wait when it's hot
Wait when others are not expected
Forgetting yesterday.
Wait when from distant places
Letters will not come
Wait until you get bored
To all who are waiting together.

Wait for me and I will come back,
don't wish well
To everyone who knows by heart
It's time to forget.
Let the son and mother believe
That there is no me
Let friends get tired of waiting
They sit by the fire
Drink bitter wine
For the soul...
Wait. And along with them
Don't rush to drink.

Wait for me and I will come back,
All deaths out of spite.
Who did not wait for me, let him
He will say: - Lucky.
Do not understand those who did not wait for them,
Like in the middle of a fire
Waiting for your
You saved me
How I survived, we will know
Only you and I -
You just knew how to wait
Like no one else.

Analysis of the poem "Wait for me and I will return" Simonov

K. Simonov saw the war with his own eyes as a war correspondent back in 1939 at Khalkhin Gol. Soon after, he goes to the front of the Finnish campaign. The poet and writer had a tragic experience of harsh military reality. After the German attack, he waited for demobilization and in the summer of 1941 wrote the poem "Wait for me and I will return."

The work is addressed to a real person - Simonov's beloved V. Serova. The woman was a widow and at first resolutely rejected the writer's advances. The outbreak of war changed her attitude. The value of life and the chance of death have increased many times over.

Simonov initially hid his relationship with Serova and did not want to publish the poem, considering it deeply intimate. Only in December 1941, at the insistence of his colleagues, did he allow his work to be published.

Konstantin Simonov was rightfully considered one of the best Soviet writers who worked during the most terrible war. His works carry the bitter truth about cruelty and death. At the same time, the writer never forgot about the inner world of a person, about how it changes in wartime conditions.

“Wait for me and I will return” is a very touching poem that has great power of influence on the human soul. For many soldiers of the Red Army, it has become a real anthem, a solemn oath to a loved one. Millions of people broke up with each other. Already the first days of the war showed that for many, farewell was the last. The man was not sure whether he would be alive in a week, a day, an hour. The official ideology rejected faith in God, so the only hope and faith was the memory of those who are waiting in the rear.

The author turns to his beloved woman with a fervent plea that she wait for him no matter what. The words sound very harsh: “Let the son and mother believe that there is no me.” Simonov is ready to forgive friends who get tired of waiting for him. But the hope of a loved one should not disappear. This is a sacred talisman that protects a person's life and gives him deliverance from all dangers.

The poem is written in the usual colloquial language in the form of a monologue of a lyrical hero. The refrain “wait for me” gives it special sincerity and expressiveness. To some extent, the work can be considered a prayer in its emotional coloring.

There are many cases of suicides of people who learned about the betrayal of their beloved women in the rear. This shows how important it was for a person to believe that someone was waiting for them. Simonov's poem personifies the main hope of the Soviet soldier, allowing him not to lose optimism and the ability to love.

Exactly 75 years ago, on January 14, 1942, Konstantin Simonov's poem "Wait for me" was published on the pages of the Pravda newspaper.

"Wait for me" was written in July 1941, at Lev Kassil's dacha in Peredelkino. Konstantin Simonov sends the written poem to Valentina Serova, because the famous lines are dedicated to her.

- You know, Kostya, the verses are good, but they look like a spell... Don't print it now... now is not the time to print it yet... "- says Lev Kassil.

But the poet nevertheless shows the poems to the editor of the Krasnaya Zvezda, David Ortenberg. He says: "These verses are not for a military newspaper. There is nothing to inflame the soul of a soldier ...".

For the first time, Konstantin Simonov reads "Wait for me" in October, on the Northern Front, to his comrade, photographer Grigory Zelma. For him, he rewrites a poem from a notebook, puts the date: October 13, 1941, Murmansk.

-I thought that these poems were my own business... But then, a few months later, when I had to be in the far north and when blizzards and bad weather sometimes forced me to sit for days somewhere in a dugout... I had to read poetry to all kinds of people . And a variety of people dozens of times, by the light of an oil lamp or a hand-held flashlight, copied the poem “Wait for me” on a piece of paper, which, as it seemed to me before, I wrote only for one person - recalled Simonov.

In November 1941, Konstantin Simonov read "Wait for me" to artillerymen on the Rybachy Peninsula, cut off from the rest of the front. Then - to naval scouts, who take him on a raid on the rear of the Germans.

On December 9, 1941, he was asked to call on the radio and read poetry. Simonov recalled that he was late for that broadcast, and the announcer was already reading the third of the four poems collected for this program, all that remained was to read "Wait for me." Konstantin Simonov showed the announcer with gestures that he would read it himself, "the only thing left for the announcer was to announce that the author would read the poem."

- The poem "Wait for me" has no special story. I just went to war, and the woman I loved was in the rear. And I wrote her a letter in verse ... - writes Konstantin Mikhailovich to the reader in 1969.

At the end of December 1941, the editor of Pravda, Pyotr Pospelov, asked Konstantin Simonov if there were any poems, but Simonov replied that they were not for the newspaper, especially Pravda. But Pospelov insists, and Simonov gives him "Wait for me."

January 9, 1942 Simonov returns from Feodosia. He was immediately sent to Mozhaisk, and in Pravda on the evening of January 13 they put him in the issue "Wait for me."

The author does not know about it. Only after returning from Mozhaisk does he see the headline in Pravda for January 14 on the third page: "Wait for me." Such a title is hard to miss: it is the largest on the page, although the verses take up the least space.

Millions of soldiers survived, and their loved ones did not lose hope thanks to this poem, perhaps the most famous and popular.

- I don't like to write letters. As a result of this, in short free minutes on various fronts, I wrote a book of lyrical poems, which are nothing more than a collection of unsent letters to the woman I love. This was my inner need ... But it soon became clear that people at the front really wanted to hear poetry, and it was poems about love - the poet spoke.

"Wait for me"

Wait for me and I will come back.

Just wait a lot

Wait for sadness

yellow rain,

Wait for the snow to come

Wait when it's hot

Wait when others are not expected

Forgetting yesterday.

Wait when from distant places

Letters will not come

Wait until you get bored

To all who are waiting together.

Wait for me and I will come back,

don't wish well

To everyone who knows by heart

It's time to forget.

Let the son and mother believe

That there is no me

Let friends get tired of waiting

They sit by the fire

Drink bitter wine

In memory of the soul ... Wait.

And along with them

Don't rush to drink.

Wait for me and I will come back,

All deaths out of spite.

Who did not wait for me, let him

He will say: - Lucky.

Do not understand those who did not wait for them,

Like in the middle of a fire

Waiting for your

You saved me

How I survived, we will know

Only you and I -

You just knew how to wait

Like no one else.

Konstantin Simonov, 1941

For reference:

Konstantin Mikhailovich Simonov came to the assembly point immediately after Molotov's speech. By that time, he had taken military correspondent courses at the Frunze Academy, where they taught tactics, topography, and shooting for four weeks.

The poet was appointed to the newspaper "Battle Banner". Having left for the front, he does not find his editorial office. Wanderings under the bombardments, among the rushing refugees, crush at the crossings, spending the night in the villages, where only old people remained. On July 12, near Mogilev, Simonov and two more military correspondents ended up in the location of the 388th regiment of the 172nd rifle division, commanded by Semyon Kutepov. His fighters skillfully, without panic, held back the German tanks in their direction. Simonov brings to Moscow a report about these people who have risen to their deaths. Only after the war did he find out that Kutepov and his regiment died in the same July of the 41st. The circumstances are still unknown. Simonov's report is printed by Izvestia.

Since the end of the summer of 1941, Simonov has been a war correspondent for Krasnaya Zvezda. In 1942, he was awarded the rank of senior battalion commissar, in 1943 - the rank of lieutenant colonel, and after the war - colonel. By order of the Armed Forces of the Western Front No.: 482 dated: May 03, 1942, he was awarded the Order of the Red Banner. Most of his military correspondence was published in the Red Star. As a war correspondent, he visited all fronts, passed through the lands of Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Poland and Germany, and witnessed the last battles for Berlin.

On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the birth of the poet, writer and military journalist Konstantin Simonov, the Russian Military Historical Society opened a graffiti portrait of him on Marksistskaya Street in Moscow.

In September 2016, in Novosibirsk, the Chairman of the RVIO, the Minister of Culture of the Russian Federation Vladimir Medinsky opened the sculptural composition "To the Mothers and Wives of the Defenders of the Fatherland". The lines of the legendary poem are carved in the upper part of the monument.

- A huge role in providing the front with everything necessary was played by women who worked in factories and factories, in fields and hospitals, raised children, cared for the sick and the elderly. In their name, our grandfathers fought -said at the opening ceremony Vladimir Medinsky.

Photo from open sources.

Today Simonov would have turned a hundred years old. He died a few epochs ago, in August 1979. He did not become a long-liver: the overstrain of the war years, which he suffered in subsequent years, also affected. Undoubtedly, he was not only one of the most beloved Russian Soviet writers among the people, but perhaps the most prolific.

Simonov's literary heritage is enormous. Poems, fiction, drama, journalism, several volumes of diaries, without which it is impossible to get an idea of ​​the Great Patriotic War. But among the many volumes of Simonov, one poem will never be lost. The same. It has brought a special shade of meaning and feeling into our lives.

Simonov wrote it at the beginning of the war, when he was stunned by the first battles, the first defeats, tragic encirclements, retreats. The son and stepson of an officer, he did not separate himself from the army. Simonov was often asked: how did these lines appear to him? He once replied in a letter to a reader: “The poem Wait for Me has no special story. I just went to war, and the woman I loved was in the rear. And I wrote her a letter in verse…” The woman is Valentina Serova, a famous actress, widow of a pilot, Hero of the Soviet Union, future wife of Simonov. The poem really appeared as a cure for separation, but Simonov did not write it in the army.

In July 1941, having briefly returned from the front, the poet spent the night at the Peredelkino dacha of the writer Lev Kassil. He was burned by the first battles in Belarus. All his life he dreamed of these fights. The darkest days of the war were going on, it was difficult to tame despair. The poem was written in one sitting.

Simonov did not intend to publish "Wait for me": it seemed too intimate. Sometimes I read these poems to friends, the poem went around the fronts, rewritten, sometimes on tissue paper, with errors ... The poem sounded on the radio. It first became legendary, and then - printed. The publication did not take place anywhere, but in the main newspaper of the entire USSR - in Pravda, on January 14, 1942, and after Pravda it was reprinted by dozens of newspapers. He was known by heart by millions of people - an unprecedented case.

War is not only battles and campaigns, not only the music of hatred, not only the death of friends and the overcrowding of hospitals. It is also parting with your home, separation from your loved ones. Poems and songs about love were valued at the front above patriotic appeals. “Wait for me” is one of the most famous Russian poems of the 20th century. How many tears were shed over it... And how many did it save from despondency, from black thoughts? Simonov's poems convincingly inspired that love and loyalty are stronger than war:

Wait for me and I will come back.

Just wait a lot

Wait for sadness

yellow rain,

Wait for the snow to come

Wait when it's hot

Wait when others are not expected

Forgetting yesterday.

Wait when from distant places

Letters will not come

Wait until you get bored

To all who are waiting together.

The poem stirred up the country, became a hymn of expectation. It has the power of healing. The wounded whispered the lines of this poem like a prayer - and it helped! The actresses read "Wait for me" to the fighters. Wives and brides copied each other's prayer lines. Since then, wherever Simonov spoke - until the last days, he was invariably asked to read "Wait for me." Such a melody, such a cohesion of words and feelings - this is strength.

But one can also understand the poet's mother, Alexandra Leonidovna Obolenskaya. She was offended by her son's main poem. In 1942, he was found by his mother’s letter: “Without waiting for an answer to my letters, I am sending an answer to the poem “Wait” placed on 19/1-42 in Pravda, in particular, on the line, especially hitting my heart with your stubborn silence:

Let the son and mother forget ...

Of course you can slander

For son and mother

Teach others how to wait

And how to save you.

So that I wait, you did not ask

And did not teach how to wait,

But I waited with all my strength,

As soon as a mother can

And in the depths of my soul

You must be aware:

They, my friend, are not good,

Your words about mother.

Of course, this is an unfair line - “Let the son and mother forget ...” This is what happens with poets: next to autobiographical motives, introduced ones that are not related to his personal family appear. Simonov had to exaggerate, emphasize the invisible connection between two lovers - and motherly love had to be sacrificed. To sharpen the image! And Alexandra Leonidovna forgave her son - soon they were already discussing Simonov's new poems and plays in letters in a friendly way.

Simonov reads poetry to soldiers and officers. Photo: godliteratury.ru

... Prayer for love and fidelity. Probably, there is no poem in the history of Russian poetry that was so often repeated in difficult times. It helped millions of people who knew by heart the lines that Simonov at first considered too personal, not suitable for publication ...

It is impossible to forget how he read "Wait for me" from the stage in the late seventies, shortly before his death. Aged, haggard "a knight of the Soviet image", he did not resort to theatrical intonations, did not raise his voice. And the huge hall listened to every word ... The war brought us so many losses, so many separations, so much expectation that such a poem could not fail to appear. Simonov managed to recreate in verse both the state dimension of the war, and the army, and - human, personal.

And the poems influenced the fate of the war, the fate of people. Simonov wrote many years later: “I remember the camp of our prisoners of war near Leipzig. What happened! Furious cries: ours, ours! Minutes, and we were surrounded by a crowd of thousands. It is impossible to forget these faces of suffering, exhausted people. I climbed up the steps of the porch. I had to say in this camp the first words that came from the Motherland ... I feel my throat is dry. I can't say a word. I slowly look around at the vast sea of ​​people standing around. And finally I say. What he said, I can't remember right now. Then I read "Wait for me." I burst into tears myself. And everyone around is also standing and crying ... So it was.

That's right - that's how it was. It is time to remember this on the day of the centenary of the poet.

The poem "Wait for me, and I will return ..." was written by K. Simonov in 1941. It is dedicated to the poet's beloved woman - actress Valentina Serova. It is interesting that the author himself did not intend to publish this poem: it seemed to him too chamber, intimate, devoid of civil content. “I thought that these verses were my own business,” then K. Simonov said. - But then, a few months later, when I had to be in the far north and when snowstorms and bad weather sometimes forced me to sit for days somewhere in a dugout or in a log house covered with snow, during these hours, in order to pass the time, I had to read to all kinds of people poems. And a variety of people dozens of times, by the light of a kerosene oil lamp or a hand torch, copied on a piece of paper the poem “Wait for me”, which, as it seemed to me before, I wrote only for one person. It was this very fact that people rewrote this poem, that it reached their hearts, that made me publish it in the newspaper six months later.

However, the story of the poem does not end there. It was not accepted in the "Red Star", and Simonov took it for granted. Pravda editor P.N. Pospelov, the poet considered it necessary to warn in advance that "these poems are not for the newspaper." However, in 1942 it was published in the Pravda newspaper. Later, the poem was included in the lyrical cycle "With you and without you."

The poem was very popular during the Great Patriotic War. As soon as it appeared in Pravda, thousands of fighters immediately copied it into their notebooks. Thousands of soldiers in their letters home spoke about the most important thing, how they lived, what they thought about.

However, many critics did not like the cycle "With You and Without You". As arguments, the thoughts were expressed that in the poet’s poems “the idea of ​​revolution is imperceptible”, “the cult of war, the cult of a soldier is peeping somewhere”, on a number of lines “there is a seal of obvious haste”, the word “wait” “from persistent becomes intrusive and ceases to work in a semantic sense. Moreover, there was a rumor that Stalin expressed the idea that these poems should be published in two copies - "one for her, the other for the author."

According to its genre, the work is a love message, an appeal to the beloved “of an incantatory character”. We can attribute it to intimate lyrics. There are also elements that give the work the character of a confession. However, the poem also contains civic motives - the hero's fulfillment of his duty, his belief in victory.

The poem is built in the form of a monologue of a lyrical hero, a fighter, addressed to his beloved woman. The monologue of the lyrical hero is here colloquial. Each stanza of the poem has a ring composition. The key words here are "wait for me". Each stanza begins with these lines (and in the first stanza they pass as a refrain), so they sound like a spell here. And the stanzas end with the same request addressed to the beloved: “Wait until you get tired of Everyone who is waiting together”, “Wait. And do not rush to drink with them at the same time.

The researchers noted the characteristic features of the poetic style of K. Simonov. “If we talk about such his best poems as “Wait for me ...”, “If your house is dear to you ...”, “Do you remember, Alyosha, the roads of the Smolensk region ...”, then they are not built as a simple, ordinary, calm conversation with the reader . In each of them, the theme seizes the poet as a single feeling, passion, and this theme-passion determines the structure and sound of the verse.<…>Simonov's poetic conversation is distinguished by open frankness.

The first stanza is a story about the difficult life of the heroine, the poet's favorite. "Yellow rains" bring sadness, time seems endless, winter is replaced by summer, blizzard - heat. Meanwhile, "others" are no longer expected, letters do not come. We see how much spiritual strength, patience, courage and faith this ability to wait for a fighter from the front requires.

The second stanza deepens and develops the motives of the previous one. It is the climax in the development of the theme of expectation.

The test of separation can not stand "friends", relatives - "son and mother", drinking "for the mention of the soul." But this test is within the power of a beloved and loving woman. She must not believe in the death of her beloved, she must endure all the trials. And her love, faith can work wonders. Here we see the opposition of faith, love of the heroine and unbelief, oblivion of all those around.

In the third stanza, the waiting situation ends. All tension, the climax of the second stanza, is resolved here into a light chord:

Wait for me and I will come back,

All deaths out of spite.

Who did not wait for me, let him say: - Lucky.

Do not understand those who did not wait for them,

As in the midst of a fire, You saved me with Your expectation.

How I survived, we will know Only you and I, -

You just knew how to wait

Like no one else.

Here, as if, this expectation, this ability of the heroine is summed up:

You just knew how to wait

Wait for me and I will come back.
Just wait a lot
Wait for sadness
yellow rain,
Wait for the snow to come
Wait when it's hot
Wait when others are not expected
Forgetting yesterday.
Wait when from distant places
Letters will not come
Wait until you get bored
To all who are waiting together.

Wait for me and I will come back,
don't wish well
To everyone who knows by heart
It's time to forget.
Let the son and mother believe
That there is no me
Let friends get tired of waiting
They sit by the fire
Drink bitter wine
For the soul...
Wait. And along with them
Don't rush to drink.

Wait for me and I will come back,
All deaths out of spite.
Who did not wait for me, let him
He will say: - Lucky.
Do not understand those who did not wait for them,
Like in the middle of a fire
Waiting for your
You saved me
How I survived, we will know
Only you and I -
You just knew how to wait
Like no one else.

1941;

It is believed that this is one of Simonov's best poems, dedicated to the actress Valentina Serova, the future wife of the poet (later, after the war, after the divorce from Serova, this dedication will be removed by Simonov ...). The poem was written in August 1941 in Peredelkino, when Simonov returned from the front to the editorial office (from the very beginning of the war he was at the front as a correspondent for the Red Star). Before that, in July 1941, Simonov was on the Buinichsky field near Mogilev. witnessed a massive enemy tank attack, which he wrote about in the novel The Living and the Dead and the diary Different Days of the War.
A wonderful poem, but here's the thing, exactly twenty years before the writing of this poem, in August 1921, the poet Nikolai Gumilyov was shot somewhere near St. Petersburg .... The autograph of the poem attributed to Nikolai Gumilyov has been preserved in the archive of Anna Akhmatova, which I will allow myself to quote in full:

Wait for me. I will not be back -
it is beyond power.
If you couldn't before...
It means he didn't love.
But tell me why then
what a year
I ask the Almighty
to keep you.
Are you waiting for me? I will not be back,
- I can not. Sorry,
that there was only sadness
on my way.
May be
among the white rocks
and holy graves
I will find
who was looking for, who loved me?
Wait for me. I will not be back!

Such is the story. Gumilyov's line “Wait for me. I won’t come back…” is an order of magnitude stronger than Simonov’s, who, having distorted it, borrowed it (together with the poetic meter)…