Insomnia homer tight sails nilson analysis. And with a heavy roar comes to the headboard

Below there are no indications of echoes with other works by Mandelstam: such information is useful if it can clarify the content of the commented text, and redundant if there are no obscurities in it. The commentator did not look for answers to the questions “could the author have read this” and “whether the author was aware of ...”, believing that the commentary is evidence not of the author, but of the language. The following references to references between Mandelstam's text and writings by other authors are intended to help readers evaluate resources. poetic language and his capacity for self-reflection.

Commented text:

Insomnia. Homer. Tight sails.

I read the list of ships to the middle:

This long brood, this crane train,

That over Hellas once rose.

Like a crane wedge in foreign borders -

Divine foam on the heads of kings -

Where are you sailing? Whenever not Elena,

What is Troy to you alone, Achaean men?

Both the sea and Homer - everything is moved by love.

Who should I listen to? And here Homer is silent,

And the black sea, ornate, rustles

And with heavy roar approaches the headboard.

The commentator considers it his pleasant duty to express his gratitude to M. Bobrik, V. Brainin-Passek, A. Zholkovsky, O. Lekmanov, N. Mazur, N. Okhotin, O. Proskurin, E. Soshkin and M. Fedorova for their help in the work.

Materials for the commentary:

Insomnia – Along with the works of such authors as Sappho and Du Fu, Petrarch and Shakespeare, Heine and Mallarme, the commented text is included in an anthology of literature on insomnia (see: Acquainted with the Night: Insomnia Poems. N.Y., 1999; Schlaflos: Das Buch der hellen Naechte. Lengwil, 2002), however, it is difficult to form an idea of the Russian tradition in mastering this topic. It lacks, for example, the motives of anxiety that are obligatory for most Russian “poems composed during insomnia”: “Why are you disturbing me?” (Pushkin), “It disturbs me mercilessly” (Yazikov), “I will only close my eyelids - and my heart is alarmed” (Benediktov), “And I could not close at all / Alarmed eyes” (Ogarev), “Again in my soul anxiety and dreams” (Apukhtin), “Before them, the heart is again in alarm and on fire” (Fet), “And anxious insomnia away / You can’t drive away into the transparent night” (Block) and / or languor: “Hours of weary vigil” (Pushkin), “Planning night story! (Tyutchev), “How tiring and sleepy / Hours of my insomnia!” (Yazykov), “In the hour of languishing vigil” and “Why in the hours of languor” (Ap. Grigoriev), “And only you languish alone in silence” and “Mystery, eternal, formidable mystery torments / The mind weary of work” (Nadson), “And the sinful heart torments me with its / Unbearable injustice” (Fet), “Tomya and tender expectation” (Annensky). Mandelstam's text is closer to writings describing falling asleep - under the influence of sea rolling, the sound of the surf, fatigue from reading or counting imaginary identical objects; only Mandelstam uses not one, but all the named sleeping pills.

Insomnia. Homer – Freedom from external vision, acquired through sleep or blindness, is a condition for supervision: “I am sweetly lulled by my imagination, / And poetry awakens in me” (Pushkin), “O, surround yourself with darkness, poet, surround yourself with silence, / Be alone and blind, like Homer, and deaf, like Beethoven, / Strain your spiritual hearing and spiritual vision more strongly ”(A. K. Tolstoy).

Insomnia. Homer. tight sails - The nominative structure of the beginning (cf. in other nocturnes: “Whisper, timid breathing ...”, “Night, street, lamp, pharmacy ...”; see: Nilsson N. A. Osip Mandel'stam. Stockholm, 1974. P. 36) gives it the appearance of a finished construction, which increases its suitability as a material for quoting - reverently: “And there are no other signs bestowed from time immemorial, / it’s only worth repeating, recalling voices: / Night, street, lamp, pharmacy ... / Insomnia. Homer. Tight sails ”(Kovalev) or travesty:“ Insomnia. Harem. Tight bodies" (Gandelsman).

Insomnia. Homer. Tight sails ... a list of ships - Homer serves not only as a model of blessed freedom from external vision, but also as a means of immersion in a trance: occupying about a third of the volume of the 2nd song of the Iliad, the story of the Achaean commanders who brought their ships to Troy has a reputation as a tedious lecture: “This set of legends about the warriors of Agamemnon, sometimes just a list of them, it seems to us now rather boring ”(Annensky,“ What is poetry ?; see: Nilsson. Op. cit., 37–38). In the translation of Gnedich, the 2nd song of the Iliad is entitled “Dream. Boeotia, or the List of Ships" - in it Zeus tells the god of sleep: "Rushing, deceptive Dream, to the ships of the fleeting Achaeans."

read to the middle - Subsequently, Dante's voice will be heard here: "Insomnia, Homer, tight sails...“ / He lived the list of ships to the middle ”(Starchkov) and“ Earthly life, like a list of ships, / I barely read the middle ”(Kudinov).

Insomnia... crane - Wed. later: “When insomnia, birds are a proven company”, “there were birds before losing count” (Soshkin).

ships... like a crane – In the Iliad, warriors are likened to birds, including flying cranes (see: Terras V. Classical Motives in the Poetry of Osip Mandel'štam // Slavic and East European Journal. 1965 Vol. 10, no. 3. P. 258). The parallelism of ships and birds, which is absent in the Iliad in expanded form, is not uncommon in Russian poetry: “But in the fog there, like a flock of swans, / The ships carried by the waves turn white” (Batyushkov), “There are the ships of the brave Achaeans, / How line up merry swans, / They fly to death, as if to a feast "(Glinka)," Ships of the winged herd "(Shevyrev), "Chu, the guns have thundered! winged ships / The battle village was covered with a cloud, / The ship ran into the Neva - and now among the swells, / Swinging, it swims like a young swan "and" The ship floats like a thunder swan ..." (Pushkin), "The ship<…>stretches out a winged passage" (Küchelbecker), "When the village of ships, / Noisy with vast wings, / Rows of raging ramparts / With a high chest pushes / And flies to the native land" (Yazykov), "Fly, my winged ship" (A.K. Tolstoy), “As on spread wings, / A ship flew” (A. Maikov), “Winged ships turn white” (Merezhkovsky), “A ship flashed by, sailing away with the dawn<…>like a white swan, spreading its wings” (Bely), “About the Pier / Winged Ships” (Voloshin). And vice versa, a flight can be represented as a swimming: “A merry lark winds / And drowns in blue swells, / Scattering songs in the wind! / When an eagle soars above the heights of steep cliffs, / Spreading wide sails, / And across the steppe, through the abyss of waters / The village of cranes sails home ”(Venevitinov; in the original, in Goethe, there is no motive for swimming). If the army is like birds, then the reverse is also true: “And above - we are in formation / Or in a sharp wedge, / Like an army, / Across the sky / Flies / A regiment of cranes” (A. Maikov). The militarization of the air will increase the demand for this metaphor: “Above them, in the clouds, look, near, far, / Steel cranes soar - / These are our miracle planes!” (Poor), “And, built for battle, / They fly over you / In blue sky cranes. / You commanded: - Fly! - / And they are already far away ”(Barto),“ Who will take off and shoot down / This black plane?<…>And soared over the fields / Cranes after cranes, / And rushed to the attack: / “Well, damn, beware!” (Chukovsky). In a song from the 1970s, fallen warriors are reincarnated as flying cranes, and “there is a small gap in that formation - / Perhaps this is the place for me!” (Gamzatov, per. Grebneva) - a motif that in the centon era will unite with Mandelstam's ships: "there is a place for me in the list of ships" (Starikovsky).

Insomnia ... ships ... like a crane - The similarity in the pattern of movement and the shape of the hull, as well as the similarity (phonetic and morphological) of the very words "ships" and "cranes" made them members of quasi-folklore parallelism - from "She has ships in the sea, he has cranes in the sky" (Bestuzhev- Marlinsky, “Roman and Olga”) to “A crane flies across the sky, a ship sails across the sea” (Kim), as well as a rhyming pair, starting at the latest with Blok: “And in the blizzard sea sink / Ships. / And groaning over the southern sea / Cranes. In Mandelstam, this parallelism, reinforced by the figure of comparison, motivates the confusion of two soporific practices - reading a boring text and counting animals of the same species. Wed later: "Ship, crane, dream" (Lvovsky).

crane train - Perhaps the translation of the expression "Kranichzug" ("Zug der Kraniche"), found, for example, in Schiller ("Was ist's mit diesem Kranichzug?") And in the scene with Elena the Beautiful in "Faust" ("...gleich der Kraniche / Laut-heiser klingendem Zug"; cf.: Nilsson. Op. cit., 39).

crane ... into foreign borders - Cf .: “In the steppe the cranes were crying, / And the power of thought carried away / Abroad native land"(Fet). For Russian and Soviet authors, the image of flying cranes often accompanies reflections on the homeland and foreign land: “They will be visited by a minute guest / Crane, a nomadic hermit. / Oh, where then, orphaned, / Where will I be! To what countries, / To what alien limits / Will the bold sail proudly rush / My boat on galloping waves! (Davydov), “I shout to the ships, / I shout to the cranes. / - No thanks! I scream loudly. - / You swim yourself! / And fly yourself! / Only I don't want to go anywhere<…>I'm from here / Not at all / Nowhere / I don't want to! / I'll stay in Soviet country!" (Kharms), “Migratory birds fly / In the autumn distance blue, / They fly to hot countries, / And I stay with you. / And I stay with you, / Native country forever! / I don’t need the Turkish coast, / And I don’t need Africa ”(Isakovsky). The cry of cranes is an attribute of Russia: “Chu! cranes are pulling in the sky, / And their cry, like a roll call / Keeping the dream of their native land / The Lord's sentries ”(Nekrasov),“ About the homeland - the cry of cranes ”(T. Beck); having heard it in a foreign land, they remember their homeland: “They are flying close and sobbing louder, / As if they brought sad news to me ... / From what inhospitable land are you / Did you fly here for the night, cranes? .. / I know that a country where the sun is already without power, / Where the shroud is already waiting, getting cold, the earth / And where a dull wind howls in the bare forests, - / Either my native land, then my homeland ”(A. Zhemchuzhnikov). Since the movement of cranes “to foreign borders” is a movement to the south, and the Achaean ships are heading in the other direction and yet are likened to cranes, the commented text becomes similar to the popular in the modern era playing out an ancient plot in Central Russian scenery.

Divine foam on the heads of kings - "Phrase<...>evokes productive ancient associations - the kings of a tribal society, their arrogance, strife, the birth of Aphrodite from the foam, pagan polytheism, the proximity of the gods to people "( Polyakova S. Osip Mandelstam. Ann Arbor, 1992. C. 28). Wed. See also: “We are bursts of rye foam / Over the paleness of the seas. / Leave earthly captivity, / Sit among the kings! (Vyach. Ivanov; see: Lekmanov O. Notes on the topic “Mandelstam and Vyacheslav Ivanov” // “Own” and “foreign” word in a literary text. Tver, 1999. S. 199).

Where are you sailing? - Wed: “The mass has moved and cuts through the waves. / Floats. Where are we going to sail?”, Here the fleet is likened to birds: “And a flock of ships is sinking”, and creative state- sleep (Pushkin); “All the swell is like the sea. I, as if in reality, / I’m sailing somewhere in the distance on a ship<…>Where am I sailing? (Ogarev).

crane wedge... Where are you sailing? - Wed: "Where are you rushing, winged villages?" (A. Odoevsky).

Where are you sailing? Whenever Elena – The similarity with Lermontov’s “His knees slide in dust and blood” (cf. the roll call of the endings of poems and half-verses: “... you are Elena” / “... blood - knees”) will appear in the centone: “Where are you swimming when not Elena? / Wherever you look, her hem is everywhere, / Her knees slide in dust and blood” (Eremenko).

long... Like a crane wedge... Elena – In Dante, the shadows of those condemned for debauchery, including Helen, Achilles and Paris, move “like cranes<…>long string" ("come i gru<…>lunga riga"; compare: Nilsson. Op. cit., 39). Lozinsky, translating this passage, will remember Mandelstam: "Like a crane wedge flies south."

If it were not for Helena, What is Troy to you alone, Achaean men? - Cf .: “No, it is impossible to condemn that the Troy sons and the Achaeans / Warfare for such a wife and troubles endure for such a long time” (“Iliad”, trans. Gnedich; see: Terras. Op. cit., 258).

Homer... crane... sea - Cf.: “The shafts of the iambic seas are sad, / And the nomadic flocks of cranes, / And the palm tree, about which Odysseus / Told the embarrassed Navzikaya” (Gumilyov).

foam... Elena... sea - Cf .: “And now Elena is born<…>Whiter than sea foam" (Merezhkovsky).

ships... foam... Elena... sea - Wed: “You are pale and beautiful, like foam<…>You and death, you and the life of ships. / Oh Elena, Elena, Elena, / You are the beautiful foam of the seas ”(Balmont; see: Markov V. Kommentar zu den Dichtungen von K. D. Bal’mont. Koeln, 1988. S. 195).

Both the sea and Homer – Russian authors following Byron (“By the deep sea, and music in its roar”; translated by Batyushkov: “And there is harmony in this dialect of the shafts”) declare art to be co-natural sea element: “To me, in wonderful harmonies, overflows / The roar of rolling swells was composed” (A. Maikov), “There is melodiousness in the sea waves, / Harmony in spontaneous disputes” (Tyutchev); hence the likening of poems to waves with an imitation of the rhythm of the surf - from “What to swim in the sea, then read Dante: / His poems are firm and full, / Like the sea elastic waves!" (Shevyrev) to “I was born and raised in the Baltic swamps, near / gray zinc waves, always coming in twos, / and from here - all rhymes” (Brodsky). In Mandelstam, this declaration is reduced to an equation, the probative power of which is provided by the sound similarity of its members: "sea" and "Homer". This "almost anagram" ( Nilsson. Op. cit., 41), inspired, perhaps, by Pushkin’s phrase “What is the sea of Zhukovsky - and what is its Homer” (see: Ronen O. Poetics of Osip Mandelstam. St. Petersburg., 2002. C. 25), will be expanded into a hexametric palindrome "The sea is mighty - in tune with it, I will answer noisily with Homer" (Avaliani). Pasternak will use a punning way of proving the thesis about the co-nature of poetry to the sea, and also on Pushkin’s material: ““ To the sea ” was: the sea + Pushkin’s love for him<…>poet + sea, two elements, which are so unforgettable - Boris Pasternak: "The element of the free element / With the free element of the verse" ... ”(Tsvetaeva,“ My Pushkin ”; cf .:“ Goodbye, free element! ”And“... the verses will flow freely"). The association "Pushkin - sea - poetry" (reflected in the call to "throw" him "from the steamer of modernity") dates back at the latest to Merezhkovsky, who argued that the poet and the hero "are born from the same element. The symbol of this element in nature for Pushkin is the sea. The sea is like the soul of a poet and a hero” (“Pushkin”); here and soon at Rozanov's ("On the Pushkin Academy") Pushkin is close to Homer.

Like a crane wedge... everything moves - Wed. afterwards: “like a crane wedge when he takes / a course to the south. Like everything moving forward” (Brodsky).

everything is driven by love - An idea that goes back, in particular, to Dante (see: Nilsson. Op. cit., 42); in a similar verbal form, compare: “Only love holds and moves life” (Turgenev, “Sparrow”).

And the sea... with love – Hidden roll call “and the sea is amore” (cf.: Lachmann R. Gedaechnis und Literatur. Frankfurt am Main, 1990. S. 400)?

divine foam... And the sea, and Homer... love... listen - Cf .: "What a charm<…>in this eavesdropping of Anadyomene born from the foam of the sea, for she is a symbol of Homer's poetry ”(Zhukovsky about his work on the translation of the Odyssey”). Wed also "The Sea" by Vyazemsky, where the sea element appears as the cradle of the "charm of the world" and eternal source poetry.

Homer is silent“So the counselor Virgil leaves Dante.

read to the middle ... Homer is silent - Cf .: “For the Bible, yawning, I sleep” (Derzhavin), “And I yawned over Virgil” (Pushkin), “They beat the dawn ... from my hands / The old Dante falls out, / On the lips the verse begun / The unread one subsided” ( Pushkin).

I read the list of ships to the middle ... the black sea - "Black Ponte" is mentioned in the "Iliad" (translated by Gnedich; see: Taranovsky K. Essays on Mandel'stam. Cambridge M.A.; London, 1976. P. 147) is roughly in the middle of the "list of ships" (see: Lifshits G. polysemantic word in poetic speech. M., 2002. S. 169).

is silent, And the black sea ... makes noise - Cf .: "Everything is silent / Only the Black Sea makes noise" (Pushkin; see: Taranovsky. Op. cit., 147; cf. Lachmann. Op. cit., 401) and “And the Black Sea is noisy without stopping” (Lermontov; see: Taranovsky. Op. cit., 147).

the sea... ornate – The idea of the “speaking of the sea” as a hymn to the creator of the universe (murmur maris, a frequent turnover in Latin poetry; suggested by Cicero as an exemplary one) was adopted by the new European literature: Chateaubriand, Lamartine, Byron, Hugo, Batyushkov, Vyazemsky, Baratynsky, Pushkin and others (See: // New Literary Review. 2004. No. 66. P. 128–129).

ornate, noisy - Cf .: “What are you making noise about, folk vitii?” (Pushkin).

And with a heavy roar - Cf .: "And with a heavy roar fell" (Pushkin).

Insomnia... foam... sea... noise... roar - Cf .: “I heard the roar of the deep sea, / And into the quiet area of visions and dreams / The foam of roaring shafts burst” (Tyutchev).

sea... love... headboard - Wed. afterwards: “And he will follow my shadow - how? with love? / Not! rather, its tendency of water to move will entail it. / But it will return to you, like a great surf to the head, / like a leader Dante, yielding to destruction ”(Brodsky).

Insomnia... love... headboard - Wed: “Holy joys flew off as friends - / Their swarm played you in a dream in the morning circle; / And the angel of charm, your relatives, with love / Invisibly clung to your headboard ”(Zhukovsky),“ The guardian Genius is love / In the joy of separation he is given: / Will I fall asleep? leans against the headboard / And sweetens the sad dream "(Batyushkov), "They fall asleep - with prayer, with love / My ghost in their happy dream / Flies to their own headboard" (Kyukhelbeker), "I cry like a child, leaning against the headboard, / I’m rushing around the bed of sleep, tormented by love ”(Davydov),“ And before morning the dream is desired / I closed my tired eyes<…>He bowed to her headboard; / And his gaze with such love, / Looked at her so sadly ”(Lermontov),“ Then these sounds, with participation, with love, / The beauty whispers, leaning against the headboard ... / She fell asleep ... ”(Benedictov), “I am waiting for the hour of the night to come. / Did he break through? Leaning against the headboard / With a tormented, aching head, / I dream of the past with delight and love ”(Rostopchina), “Some sounds are rushing / And cling to my headboard. / They are full of languid separation, / They tremble with unprecedented love ”(Fet),“ In bed I cried, leaning against the headboard; / And the heart was full of forgiveness, / But still not people, - endless love/ I loved God and myself as one” (Merezhkovsky).

Insomnia... sea... love... headboard - Cf .: “Here the prince falls asleep in anxiety and grief, / His sleep sweetly cradles the dark sea ... / The prince dreams: quietly to his headboard / An angel bowed and whispers with love” (Apukhtin).

1915 – Parallelism of the Trojan and the First World War (see: Dutli R. Meine Zeit, mein Tier: Osip Mandelstam. Zuerich, 2003. S. 128) clarifies the understanding of love as a source of universal movement: this source is eternal.

"Insomnia. Homer. Tight sails” is an example of the use of ancient culture to reflect on the eternal moral and philosophical category of love. The poem is studied in the 11th grade. We invite you to familiarize yourself with brief analysis"Insomnia. Homer. Tight sails "according to plan.

Brief analysis

History of creation- the work was created in 1915, when the poet was in Koktebel. It was first published in the second edition of the debut collection "Stone" (1916).

Theme of the poem- Trojan War; power of love.

Composition- The poem is a monologue-meditation on the stated topics. In terms of meaning, it is divided into three parts: a story about insomnia, which forced him to turn to Homer, an appeal to "Achaean men", reflections on love.

Genre- elegy.

Poetic size- written in iambic six-foot, ring ABBA rhyme.

Metaphors – “this long brood, this crane train”, “everything is moved by love”, “the sea ... with a heavy roar comes to the headboard”.

epithets – "tight sails", "divine foam", "black sea",

Comparison – "like a crane wedge ... where are you swimming."

History of creation

It is known that Osip Mandelstam was a student of the Faculty of History and Philology of the Romano-Germanic Department. He never graduated from the university, he did not receive a diploma, but this period of his life left an imprint on the poet's work. The Iliad was studied by philology students in in full. Reading the list of ships they considered a proven cure for insomnia. This fact found a place in the analyzed poem.

As a student, Mandelstam devoted himself to poetry. His creations were noticed by older brothers in pen. In 1915, the young poet stayed in Koktebel at the house of Maximilian Voloshin. Here the work “Insomnia. Homer. Tight sails. Close acquaintances of the poet claimed that he was inspired to write poetry by the fragment of an old ship he saw in Koktebel.

Topic

Ancient literature influenced the work of poets different eras. O. Mandelstam, with the help of her, is trying to reveal the eternal philosophical theme love. In the center of the author's attention is the Trojan War.

The lines of the poem are written in the first person. Thus, the reader can follow the train of thought lyrical hero directly. In the first stanza, the hero admits that he could not sleep, so he began to read the list of ships. He reached the middle, and then this process was interrupted by thoughts about the causes of the war. The lyrical hero believes that the "Achaean men" fought not for Troy, but for Helen.

Composition

The poem is a monologue-meditation of the lyrical hero. In terms of meaning, it is divided into three parts: a story about insomnia, which forced him to turn to Homer, an appeal to "Achaean men", reflections on love. The work consists of three quatrains, which corresponds to the semantic organization of the text.

Genre

means of expression

In order to reveal the topic and show his attitude to the problem posed, O. Mandelstam uses expressive means. The text has metaphors- “this long brood, this crane train”, “everything moves with love”, “the sea ... with a heavy roar comes to the headboard”; epithets- "tight sails", "divine foam", "black sea"; comparison- "like a crane wedge ... where are you swimming."

The poem was written in August 1915 in Koktebel. Included in the second edition of Mandelstam's first collection "Stone" in 1916 (the first edition was published in 1913).

Mandelstam arrived in Koktebel at the very end of June 1915 and spent the rest of the summer in the Poet's House. At the same time, the sisters Tsvetaeva, Sofia Parnok, Alexei Tolstoy and his wife Natalia Krandievskaya lived there at that time. The owner of the House, Maximilian Voloshin, was in Paris at that time.

Theme, main idea and composition

The formal theme of the poem is the reflections of the lyrical hero while reading the so-called List, or Catalog, of ships (νεῶν κατάλογος). We are talking about the "Iliad" of Homer, Canto II, verses 494 to 759: they give a detailed account of each detachment of the Achaean Greeks, which was sent to the Trojan War on a separate ship. This formal theme is connected with the formal status of 24-year-old Osip Mandelstam: at the time of writing the poem, he is a student of the Romano-Germanic department of the Faculty of History and Philology of St. Petersburg University (enrolled on September 10, 1911 and enrolled until 1917). Formally, the poet did not finish the course and did not receive a diploma; did not have higher education.

A detailed textual acquaintance with the Iliad, then, as now, was part of compulsory program philological faculty. And reading the List of ships among students of philology from time immemorial was considered the best remedy precisely from insomnia, with the name of which the poet begins his poem. So, there is an informal problem (the lyrical hero suffers from insomnia) and a recipe for the informal use of the List (as a sleeping pill). However, in this sense, there is no help from the List ...

What is the informal status of 24-year-old Osip Mandelstam? In the circle of connoisseurs, as the author of "Stone", he is unconditionally and indisputably recognized as the Master. Max Voloshin himself invited him to live in the House of the Poet - on this poetic Olympus Silver Age! The discrepancy between the formal status of the lyrical hero and the informal, formal and informal attitude to ancient culture, in general to cultural heritage This is the real theme of this poem. Having sounded in the first edition of "The Stone" ("... And swims like a young dolphin Through the gray abysses of the world"), now, starting from the second edition, it finds new confirmation in this summer poem 1915, powerful and irrefutable, like the sound of the Black Sea surf.

It would seem that the main idea of this poem ("Both the sea and Homer - everything is moved by love") is far from new. Already in the first century of our era, the apostle Paul believed that he summed up everything that was said in world literature on this topic in his famous passage about love (First Epistle to the Corinthians, chapter 13, verses 1-13). The novelty of this thought (and the poem as a whole) is determined by the path of the search for the lyrical hero, reflected in the composition of this lyrical meditation, which is composed of three quatrains.

The first quatrain - exposition and tie lyrical plot: the lyrical hero, tormented by insomnia, is trying to enter the measured rhythm of Homer's narrative. However, in the imagination of the modern reader, the “long brood” of Achaean ships turns into a “crane train”, exciting both in epic scope and in the uncertainty of the goal: the cranes fly south, fleeing the cold - what are the Homeric Achaeans fleeing from or where are they heading to?

The search for an answer to this question is devoted to the second quatrain (the development of a lyrical plot). The answer is given in a peculiar way - in the form of two rhetorical questions. Wedging “into foreign borders” (“like a crane wedge”), the Achaeans obey the order of their kings, whose word is indisputable (after all, they have divine foam on their heads, they are “anointed”). The goal of the kings themselves is known to us, their choice of Troy (according to Homer) is determined not so much by the strategic location of this important port of the Aegean Sea (at the very entrance to the Sea of Marmara), but by the jealousy of the Spartan king Menelaus (it was from him that the Trojan Paris kidnapped his lawful wife, Helen the Fairest ) and the insult inflicted on Hellas.

The third quatrain - an unexpected climax and denouement - begins with an informal, pagan understanding of love: we would not expect it from a lyrical hero who formally belongs to the Judeo-Christian culture. It turns out that both Homer and the sea element yield and submit to a more powerful element - the elemental force of carnal love. There is something to experience culture shock: “Who should I listen to?” As for Homer, he does not pretend to be listened to(in the authoritarian sense of the word). Homer we heard and heard- but he only conveyed to us (even by his own hexameter) the voice of the ebb and flow of the sea wave, which, on the contrary, has the confidence of a vitiated orator. And here, in the penultimate line of Mandelstam’s poem, one cannot help but hear and hear the echo with the poem of Nekrasov, who seems to be not close to him (“There is noise in the capitals, whirls are thundering ...”), and not only with the first line of this poem, but in general with the created them in a single way (the infinite element of the field for Nekrasov - the element of the sea for Mandelstam).

Literary direction and genre

The very name of the collection "Stone" is considered an anagram of the word "acme", from which the name of the literary direction of acmeism is derived, Mandelstam is one of his generally recognized "pillars", the author of not only one of his formal prose manifestos, but also informal - poetic, one of which and is this poem.

The choice of genre - a lyrical elegy-meditation on the irresistibility of the sea element - refers to the ancient root of European lyrics - the elegies of Archilochus.

Paths and images

In this, as in many (especially early) poems by Mandelstam, the epithet is the king and god of the lyrical plot, it is the epithets that convey both the logic of action in the Homeric era and the way the lyrical hero cognizes it.

tight sails immediately, from the first verse, fill the entire poem with wind and storm. Long brood, train crane- metaphorical epithets create a comparison of the Achaean ships with crane flock. Immediately, literally through the line, the obsessive repetition of the epithet - crane wedge in strangers boundaries: this wedged beyond the Trojans, an inhuman, inexorable, elemental force - apparently with the same serious with a roar, like the sea - to the head (headboard) of the lyrical hero, powerless in its thought.

At the same time, the sea black(with a small letter, because we are not talking about a description of the Crimean coast of the Black Sea, but about eternity), but one of the main attributes of the sea element, foam, becomes divine an attribute of the ancient kings, indulging in the elements of war and the sea, love and jealousy, resentment and revenge - freely and thoughtlessly, out of reflex, because they do not have "culture" as an experience of reflection (neither Homer nor Archilochus were born yet).

Size and rhyme

The poem is written in iambic six-foot with pyrrhic. Mandelstam does not imitate the hexameter (a six-foot dactyl in Russian versification), emphasizing the fusion of Homeric images with his own culture. ring rhyme, feminine rhyme alternates with male.

1891 - 1921 years. Collection "Stone".

"Insomnia. Homer. Tight sails" 1915.

Analysis of the poem "Insomnia. Homer. Tight sails ...".1915.

Mandelstam affirms in his poems the unity of cultural layers. According to the memoirs of A. Akhmatova, when asked what acmeism is, the poet answered: "Longing for world culture." It is no coincidence that images and motifs of Homer and Racine, Pushkin and Dickens, Gothic and Empire, antiquity and classicism are organically woven into his poems, which are inextricably linked with modernity.

Like a crane wedge in foreign borders -

On the heads of the kings divine foam -

Both the sea and Homer - everything is moved by love.

Questions to identify general idea about the poem as a whole.

Front work.

1. What attracted this poem, what feelings did it evoke? What images are created? Which lines represent the main idea?

2. What is the history of this poem?

3. What happens to the lyrical hero? How does the poem convey the feeling of insomnia?

Questions for the analysis of the poem in groups.

To help students are offered dictionaries, excerpts from articles by literary critics.

The image of the ships.

1. Why do we see the image of ships best?

2. What kind of ships: moving or stationary? Pay attention to verbs, sentence types, verse size.

3. Pay attention to the tense of the verbs in the first two stanzas, to the adverb associated with the concept of time. What did you notice?

Images of the Achaeans and Helen.

4. What is the role of the word crane? What associations do you have with this word?

5. The image of Elena is the focus of all the threads of the poem. What do we know about this image?

6. Why is there a word in the poem Elena rhymes with the combination ? How do you understand this line?

Images of the sea and Homer.

7. What associations do you have in connection with a couple of words: and sea and homer united by the union and and word all(sea+Homer=everything)?

8. What do you think, in what sense is the word used by the poet listen?

9. What image of the sea is created in the poem? What is the general emotional tone of the epithets? How does the poet emphasize the fatefulness of the choice of a lyrical hero with the help of sound writing?

Suggested answers.

1. What attracted this poem, what feelings did it evoke? What images are created? Which lines represent the main idea?

The poem attracts with calmness, mystery, grandeur. Images of the Achaeans from Homer's Iliad, ships, the sea, and a lyrical hero are created. The main idea in the line: everything moves love.

2. Let us draw on well-known facts related to the history of the creation of this poem.

According to one version, Mandelstam was inspired to this poem by a fragment of an ancient ship found by Maximilian Voloshin, with whom he was visiting in Koktebel. However, the themes of antiquity as a whole are characteristic of Mandelstam's early poems. The poet's fascination with the ancient world is his desire for the standard of beauty and for the basis that gave rise to this beauty.

The theme of the sea, like the theme of antiquity in the poem, is not accidental, and is caused not only by the birthplace of the poem: Mandelstam first came to Koktebel in June 1915. Many critics noted that Mandelstam prefers water to all elements. However, his preference is not swift streams falling from the sky or rushing over the mountains; he is attracted by calm and eternal movement: flat rivers, lakes, but more often - the most grandiose form - the ocean, majestically rolling huge shafts. The theme of the sea is inextricably linked with the theme of antiquity: both are majestic, grandiose, calm, mysterious.

It is known that O. Mandelstam was in love with M. Tsvetaeva during this period of his life, but she did not reciprocate.

3. What happens to the lyrical hero? How does the poem convey the feeling of insomnia?

The lyrical hero is tormented by insomnia. On the Black Sea coast, he reads Homer, reflects on the fact that both the Achaeans and Homer were inspired by love. Homer - the past - is silent. And the sea, whose divine foam was on the heads of the kings, makes noise, approaches the head of the lyrical hero. And it is driven by love, linking the past with the present.

The feeling of insomnia is beautifully conveyed by the action: "I read the list of ships ...". The poet refers to the second song of the "Iliad" by Homer "The Dream of Boeotia, or the list of ships", dedicated to the departure of the ships to the siege of Troy. The list of Greek ships marching on Troy from Homer's Iliad contains 1186 ship names with commanders' names and descriptions on 366 lines. The infinity of the combat list of ships creates a feeling of the infinity of this night.

Work on the image of the ships.

1. Why do we see the image of ships best?

The image of ships: an epithet helps to see them tight sails, comparison with a crane train, crane wedge. A visual image appears.

2. What kind of ships do you see, moving or stationary? Pay attention to verbs, sentence types, verse size.

Ships move very fast, with the wind: tight sails. The speed of movement is emphasized by a comparison with cranes: ships fly, a metaphor once rose over Hellas enhances the image of movement-flight. It seems that the ships do not move on the sea, but above the ground.

Let's try to re-read the lines in which the image of the ships is created. Usually, movement is conveyed with the help of a quick change of verbs, energetic words, a large number of consonants in which the voice predominates (sonorous, voiced, requiring strong articulation), energetic rhythm. Mandelstam has no swiftness in the movement of ships. On the contrary, there is a feeling of slowness, duration. There are very few verbs, most sentences are denominative or incomplete. Yes, and the existing verbs as a result of inversion lose their power: they are placed at the end of the sentence.

The poem is written in iambic six-foot. This is the longest of the iambic lines used in Russian versification - the Alexandrian verse. Thanks to the intonation of meditation, contemplation, this size has long been used in philosophical and meditative lyrics, as well as in such a genre as elegy. Such a relaxed rhythm, devoid of poetic smoothness, creates a feeling of free prose conversation - calm thinking aloud. To convey the movement, a more energetic meter would be required: a “marching” odic stanza and the iambic tetrameter associated with it. There is a contradiction between sound and vision.

3. Pay attention to the tense of the verbs in the first two stanzas, to the adverb associated with the concept of time. What did you notice?

The first stanza is the past tense verbs. Once upon a time reinforces the meaning of the past tense - so long ago that it is no longer possible to find out exact time developments. The second stanza is present tense: swim.

Conclusion

So, in front of us are ships, if I may say so, in motionless motion, the poet created an image of frozen time - the past, forever remaining present. In the reality of culture, time does not coincide with astronomical time. It can stop, repeat, intersect with another. Art can transcend time. Culture is a connecting principle in history, it ensures the continuity and continuity of the development of human civilization.

Work on the image of the Achaeans and Helen.

4. Have you noticed that the word crane used twice. What role is assigned to him? What associations do you have with this word?

Autumn. School of cranes. Long, graceful, elongated outlines. Smooth span of extended wings. Light sadness. A soul-shattering murmur. The cry of cranes is associated with crying (hence the numerous legends and traditions, including those in ancient mythology, connecting cranes with mourners at funerals, the souls of the dead).

Gradually and smoothly, the poet's thoughts from the list of ships pass to the targets, the Achaeans. And this leads to the idea that the reason that moves the huge army is love: “If it were not for Elena, / What is Troy to you alone, Achaean men?”

This is very reminiscent of the impact of Homer's list of ships on listeners: the list of ships leads them to philosophical reflections on life; Mandelstam too.

5. The image of Elena is the focus of all the threads of the poem. What do we know about this image?

Elena is a dual image. One could say about it in the words of Blok: beauty is terrible. It brings both joy and sorrow to all who see it.

Her origin is divine: Elena's father is Zeus himself, her mother is the goddess of retribution Nemesis. Elena emerges from the egg, Leda finds her and brings her up. By birth, Elena is destined to be a punishment of fate. The most beautiful of women, she arouses the envy of Aphrodite, the goddess of beauty, and at the same time is her strongest weapon. The very rumor of Helen's beauty can cause strife: all the Hellenic leaders and heroes woo her. To prevent a clash, they take an oath to protect the honor of whoever becomes Elena's spouse.

Elena will bring pain and dishonor to her husband Menelaus, death to Paris, with whom she will run away, unable to resist the passion inspired by Aphrodite. The city that sheltered the fugitive - Troy - will be destroyed to the ground. Most of the suitors of Helen, who went to the walls of Troy, will die.

The Achaean army, ready to stone the queen, will stop before her beauty, and she will be returned home, to Sparta, with honor and triumph.

Elena means torch, light.

This name is the focus of all the lines of the poem. The purpose of the movement, generating and stopping it. The beginning of life and death, which is manifested in combinations a long brood is a crane train. Let's turn to Dahl's dictionary. Train - several joint carts traveling along the same track; solemn, ceremonial ride or procession. The dictionary gives two examples of the most common word combinations in the second meaning: wedding train - funeral train. And all meanings are realized by Mandelstam. This is where Mandelstam's comparison of ships with cranes comes from.

6. Why is the word in the poem Elena rhymes with the combination divine foam on the heads of kings? How do you understand this line?

Divine foam and Elena are not rhymed by chance.

Let's turn to Dahl's dictionary. Divine - characteristic of God, emanating from Him; Like him, high, excellent, beautiful, incomparable, unattainable. It turns out that the foam is divinely beautiful, it is light and melting, more beautiful than the earthly crown as much as the path to Elena is more significant than the path to the riches of Ilion.

Conclusion

The path to Troy is the path to non-existence and, at the same time, a movement towards beauty, caused by love, a movement that is the fullness of being, life itself and, at the same time, death. Achaean men, wise, majestic, strong, proud, are crowned with divine foam for the kingdom. And this kingdom is eternity.

Work on the images of Homer and the sea.

7. What associations do you have in connection with a couple of words: and the sea and Homer united by the union and and word all?

In stanza III, the main idea of the poem is expressed. Here, for the first time in the poem, the union appears and in an amplifying sense. It strengthens the connection, practically puts an equal sign between the two concepts: sea, Homer and unites them with the word all.

In the XVII-XVIII centuries, the word Homer was written Omir or Omer. The words are made up of the same letters, we have an anagram in front of us. In poetry, the purpose of such a technique is to create a non-existent outside given text connection between the meanings of words.

Impersonal and personality

nature and man

life and art

chaos and mind

element and culture

shapelessness and form

eternity and the moment stopped by man etc.

Conclusion

We can say that these are opposite concepts that make up a single whole.

Strict formula: , it would seem, should close the poem. But here new question: Who should I listen to? And we return to reality, to the lyrical hero.

8. In what sense do you think the poet uses the word listen?

Do as the speaker is commanded. The fate of the lyrical hero depends on this.

The sea is formidable, ornate, in perpetual motion, black, heavy roar - inevitability, formidable force, perhaps even hostility. This is the general emotional tone.

Assonance on about. This vowel sound is considered "dark, booming, formidable." ( BUT - warm, light - it was in the words Elena, divine foam) . Emotional tone is combined with sound writing.

Conclusion

And now, when a formidable force, whatever its name - elements, fate, fate - is coming close to the headboard lyrical hero (unprotected hero) the poem is completed. Little to sum up: And the sea, and Homer - everything is driven by love, you still need to surrender to this movement, obey the universal law, as the Achaeans obeyed fate, setting off for the walls of Troy. This is where the insomnia of the lyrical hero comes from. To live a full life, to strive for beauty, to love is very difficult, it requires courage and spiritual strength.

Conclusion.Features of the poetics of early Mandelstam:

architecture,
attitude to the word as a building material (the word is a stone),
understanding of art as a connecting thread between generations,
motives of creation, creativity, life-affirmation.

Homework:

Students read the collection "Stone". Perform written assignments C3, C4. Learn one of your favorite poems by heart.

Examples of homework:

With what images of the poem “Insomnia. Homer. Tight sails ... ”is the idea of \u200b\u200bthe lyrical hero about life connected?

In Mandelstam's poem, a series of images pass before us: a lyrical hero, Homer, the sea. The lyrical hero suffers from insomnia, he faces a difficult life choice. He reflects on life and therefore reads Homer's poem "Iliad", its second chapter, which contains a list of Achaean ships (more than a thousand names and titles) striving for Troy in order to fulfill their promise and return Helen, abducted by Paris, to her lawful spouse Menelaus. The Achaeans, who fulfilled their duty, dared to oppose fate, the gods, showed courage, defended their human dignity at the cost of their lives, are crowned with "divine" foam for eternity. The Iliad and its creator Homer are immortal, thanks to art, according to Mandelstam, the connection of generations is carried out. The lyrical hero pays tribute to the Achaean men and mourns their tragic fate: “this long brood, this crane train” (in mythology, weeping cranes at funerals or the souls of the dead, which was also reflected in Gamzatov’s poem “Cranes”).

The line "Both the sea and Homer - everything is moved by love" contrasts and at the same time unites the images of Homer and the sea. And if Homer here is the personification of art, ancient culture, the feat of past generations, then the sea is nature, of which man is also a component, real life lyrical hero. Homer is silent. Now the lyrical hero is faced with a choice: what to do. And it is not easy to make it: “And the black sea, ornate, makes noise // And with a heavy roar it approaches the headboard.”

Shchegoleva Tatiana. 11I. 2009

veykova.ru

History of creation

The poem was written in August 1915 in Koktebel. Included in the second edition of Mandelstam's first collection "Stone" in 1916 (the first edition was published in 1913).

Theme, main idea and composition

A detailed textual acquaintance with the Iliad, then, as now, was part of the compulsory program of the Faculty of Philology. And reading the List of Ships among students of philology has long been considered the best remedy for insomnia, with the name of which the poet begins his poem. So, there is an informal problem (the lyrical hero suffers from insomnia) and a recipe for the informal use of the List (as a sleeping pill). However, in this sense, there is no help from the List ...

What is the informal status of 24-year-old Osip Mandelstam? In the circle of connoisseurs, as the author of "Stone", he is unconditionally and indisputably recognized as the Master. Max Voloshin himself invited him to live in the Poet's House - on this poetic Olympus of the Silver Age! The discrepancy between the formal status of the lyrical hero and the informal, formal and informal attitude to ancient culture, in general to the cultural heritage - this is the true theme of this poem. Having sounded in the first edition of "Stone" ("... And swims like a young dolphin Through the gray abysses of the world"), now, starting from the second edition, it finds a new confirmation in this summer poem of 1915, powerful and irrefutable, like the noise of the Black Sea surf.

The first quatrain is an exposition and the beginning of a lyrical plot: the lyrical hero, tormented by insomnia, is trying to enter into the measured rhythm of Homer's narrative. However, in the imagination of the modern reader, the “long brood” of Achaean ships turns into a “crane train”, exciting both in epic scope and in the uncertainty of the goal: the cranes fly south, fleeing the cold - what are the Homeric Achaeans fleeing from or where are they heading to?

Literary direction and genre

The choice of genre - a lyrical elegy-meditation on the irresistibility of the sea element - refers to the ancient root of European lyrics - the elegies of Archilochus.

Paths and images

goldlit.ru

Insomnia. Homer. Tight sails.
I read the list of ships to the middle:
This long brood, this crane train,
That over Hellas once rose.
Like a crane wedge in foreign borders -
Divine foam on the heads of kings -
Where are you sailing? Whenever not Elena,
That you have only one Troy, Achaean men!
Both the sea and Homer - everything is moved by love.
Who should I listen to? And here Homer is silent,
And the black sea, ornate, rustles
And with a heavy roar, he approaches the headboard.
.

This poem was published in the second edition of The Stone (1916) and dated by the poet to 1915. Like many of Mandelstam's poems, it does not have a title, but it may be the first word - "Insomnia". This allows us to attribute this poem to the genre of "poems written during insomnia", interesting examples which can be found in the literature of many countries. As for Russian literature, the first poem that comes to mind is Pushkin's "Poems composed during insomnia." But in modern Mandelstam, especially post-symbolist poetry, almost every significant poet has either one poem (Akhmatova, 1912; Andrei Bely, 1921; Pasternak, 1953), or a whole cycle of poems (Annensky, 1904; Vyacheslav Ivanov, 1911; M. Tsvetaeva, 1923) called "Insomnia" or "Insomnia". Mandelstam's poem is unlike any of them; following this tradition, it nevertheless has its own unique features.

We feel it from the very first line. It contains three nouns, each of which is an independent sentence. Such verbless sentences can also be found in Russian poetry of the 19th century (the most famous example is, of course, Fet's poem “Whisper. Timid breathing."), but in post-symbolist poetry such sentences are so common that one can speak of /65/
stylistic device (Block: “Night, street, lantern ...”; Pasternak: “Clouds. Stars. And from the side - a path and Aleko”; Akhmatova: “Twenty-first. Night. Monday // Outlines of the capital in the mist”)1.

There are such examples in Mandelstam's verses of 1913-1914. The poem "Cinema" begins with the following lines: "Cinema. Three benches // Sentimental fever. ”, and another poem -“ ″Ice cream! ″ The sun. Air biscuit. // Transparent glass with ice water.

As can be seen from the above examples, such verbless sentences are used mainly in order to most colorfully and accurately describe the environment (landscape, city, interior) or (like Akhmatova) give an idea of the date and time. The nouns are semantically linked, each giving a new detail, making up the picture piece by piece, step by step. Mandelstam's poem "Kinematograf" belongs to this type, but the poem "Ice-cream!.." is slightly different from it, and we do not immediately get a clear picture. Between the cry "Ice cream" (used in a colloquial form, literally conveying the exclamation of a street vendor: "Ice cream!") And the word "biscuit", which are combined with each other, is the word "sun". Connects the words in the line by the meaning of the adjective "air", which, having an obvious connection with the "sun", refers in this case to the word "biscuit". It takes some time to tie these parts together, and then we will see a picture of a sunny St. Petersburg day seen through the eyes of a child.

In the poem "Insomnia ..." the description of time and the environment is much more complicated. The poet does not compose a picture sequentially, but in great leaps. There are such large semantic gaps between words that it is difficult to pick up associations connecting poetic images from the first time. What do the words "insomnia" and "Homer" have in common! It is much easier, of course, to link the words "Homer" and "sails"; and only in the second line does it become clear the relationship between these three keywords from which the poem is based. To get rid of insomnia, the poet reads Homer, or rather the "List of ships" of Hellas. This is a rather difficult reading before going to bed, and at the same time, reading the list of ships is ironic: people usually count sheep to fall asleep, but the poet counts Homeric ships.

The third line adds two comparisons characterizing the list of ships; both are original and unexpected. /66/

In the words "this long brood" we meet the obsolete "this": usual for poetry of the XVIII century, at a later time it became archaic. On the other hand, the word "brood" has completely different stylistic features and is usually used in relation to certain birds ("duck brood", "chicken brood"). "Long" in combination with the word "brood" also gives the impression of something unusual, since last word usually denote chicks that have strayed, for example, under the wing of their mother.

The ships sail to Troy and are therefore compared to a long line of birds floating on the water; probably the reader's first association is with a family of ducks! We see that such a definition also has an ironic connotation. Here, there is a stylistic discrepancy between the archaic, poetic word “this” and the simple, compared to the previous, word “brood”, but, on the other hand, there is also a connection between these incongruous, at first glance, words: the sublime poetic turnover is followed by more “ down to earth" and simple. We cannot say exactly what the poet wanted to draw our attention to.

In 1915, when Mandelstam wrote this poem, there was a discussion in the literature about Homer's list of ships. Two years earlier, Apollon magazine published Annensky's posthumous essay "What is Poetry?". One of the provisions of the article: poetry should inspire rather than assert certain facts. (As proof, Annensky cites Homer's List of Ships.) modern point vision, a long enumeration of unfamiliar names is tiring (and this is one of the reasons why the poet in Mandelstam's poem chooses just such a reading at night). But, on the other hand, in the "List" some kind of magical charm sounds. This list can be used as an illustration of Verlaine's lines "de la musique avant toute chose". The names themselves no longer mean anything to the modern reader, but their unusual sounding gives free rein to the imagination and restores the picture of the historical event: the sound of glory, and the gleam of golden armor and purple sails with the noise of the dark Aegean waves?

The word "brood", also having additional value, is a type of reetymologization. “Bring out / lead” means “grow up”, “nurture”, “educate”; another meaning of the word "lead", "lead" /67/
etc., so here, as far as I understand, there is a play on words. Then the whole line has a rhythm different from the first two. Here, iambic six-foot is used, which is unusual for modern Russian poetry. Associated with Alexandrian verse and Russian hexameter, in this poem it is directly related to Homer and classical poetry. In the first two lines, the usual male caesura ("Homer", "ships"), In the third and fourth, it changes to dactylic ("brood", "Helladom"), In other words, as soon as the poet's thought switches from insomnia to reflections on the Iliad ”, the rhythm of the verse itself changes: not only the dactylic caesura, but also the repeated “this” (in unstressed positions), and internal rhyme ("long" - "crane") - all this gives the line a special meaning and expressiveness.

Another description characterizing the list of ships is "this train is a crane." The associations associated with the floating birds in the previous comparison develop further, and, which is typical for Mandelstam, the poetic images "rise" from the earth to the sky: the ships are now compared to a wedge of cranes heading for Troy. The “crane” metaphor is, of course, popular and not new, as Victor Terras notes, it was used even in the Iliad3. An example of this can be found in the Third Song: “Three sons rush, with a voice, with a cry, like birds: / Such is the cry of cranes under the high sky, / If, having avoided both winter storms and endless rains, / With a cry of flocks fly through the fast flow of the Ocean…” (translated by N. Gnedich). There are similar lines in the Second Song, this time about the Achaeans: “Their tribes, like innumerable flocks of migratory birds, // In the green Asian meadow, under the wide-flowing Caistra, // Curl hither and thither and have fun with the flapping of wings, // With a cry they sit down opposite those who are seated and announce the meadow, - / So the tribes of the Argives, from their ships and from the tabernacles, / Noisily rushed to the meadow of Scamandria; (translated by N. Gnedich). In these two comparisons, emphasis is placed on the cries of cranes. There is something similar in Dante’s “Hell”: “Like a crane wedge flies south // With a dull song in the height of the mountain, // So before me, groaning, the circle was rushing // Shadows ...” (translated by M. Lozinsky). We find the same in Goethe.

Mandelstam's comparison, however, is unusual in that no one, I'm sure, has yet applied it to ships.
Like the first description of the list of ships, the second - "This train is a crane" - surprises with the combination of words of different stylistic levels. Archaic appears again /68/
and the poetic “this”, followed by the word “train”, in addition to its usual meaning, also has the meaning of “procession” (Blok: “I’m looking at your royal train”) or vehicles following one after another: usually these are wagons, sleighs etc. ("wedding train"). The use of this word with the definition "crane" is rather unusual, on the other hand, the word "train", which evokes more solemn associations, is better combined with the poetic "this". Now it seems that the poet has discarded the ironic intonations that were present in the previous lines; there is a seriousness that culminates in the next three questions. This impression arises from the predominance of [a] in stressed and unstressed syllables.

In the next stanza, we meet another comparison relating to a string of ships. This time it is quite familiar: "crane wedge". Here it is no longer the comparison that is unusual, but the orchestration of sounds. In the third line of the first stanza, we have already noted the internal rhyme: "long - crane." It repeats and develops further: "crane wedge". This sound repetition is similar to the following one: “alien frontiers”. In addition, all the stresses on [and], [y] are repeated three times in the same positions ([zhu], [chu], [ru]), [g] is repeated three times. Such orchestration seems to imitate the cries of cranes and the noise of their wings and gives rhythm to the entire line, enhancing the feeling of flight. Emphasizing the cry of the cranes, Mandelstam resorts to the old poetic tradition, but at the same time enriches it and introduces his own changes.

In the second line, a phrase appears that destroys the prevailing idea of \u200b\u200bflight and returns us to the people on their way to Troy: "Divine foam is on the heads of the kings." The kings are, no doubt, those who are on board the ships indicated in the list, but the meaning of the words "divine foam" is not so clear. It may simply mean foam - the ships sailed at such a high speed that the sea one flew on board, falling on people. Or, connecting this phrase with the previous comparison about the flight of cranes, should we understand that there were clouds on the heads of the kings?

The definition of "divine" is reminiscent of Mandelstam's poem "Silentium", which refers to the birth of the goddess Aphrodite. Since the goddess of love was born from sea foam, the foam can be called "divine". So it is connected with the secret of love, and this phrase precedes the statement that everything, including the sea, is moved by love. /69/

Then follows the question relating to the ships and people sailing to Troy: "Where are you sailing?" The question seems irrelevant, since it is clear that the kings have a clear idea where they are going. In fact, only a geographical goal is clear, behind which another, more abstract and more important one can be seen. The next sentence (no verb) puts everything in its place. This is the main point in the poem. Now we begin to understand what the poet wanted to say.

Paradoxical as it may seem, the answer to the question is contained in the question: “If it were not for Elena, / What is Troy to you alone, Achaean men?”. It was love that prompted the "Achaean men" to gather a fleet and go to Troy. This idea is then repeated by the author in a generalized form in the first line of the third quatrain: "Both the sea and Homer - everything is moved by love." As an answer to the second question from the previous quatrain, we get a short and simple conclusion: "everything is driven by love." But there are two more words here, mysterious and thought-provoking: "sea" and "Homer." What do they mean? Meanwhile, the words go well together. Not only semantically - in the two previous quatrains they were already used together - but also in sound. Both words contain similar sounds: "Homer" is an almost complete anagram of the word "sea".

The idea that Homer is driven by love can be understood in different ways. If we judge Homer as a poet, then all poetry is moved by love, and love is not just individual person but also love in a more abstract sense. "Homer" may also be a metonymy for the historical events described in the Odyssey and the Iliad. Main driving force stories are love, passion, human emotions. This is pretty clear, but how can we say that the sea is moved by love? At first glance, it seems that the word "sea" is connected in meaning with the word "Homer" and with the associations caused by this name. Playing an important role in the Iliad, the word "sea" is consonant with the name "Homer" and is a metonymy for him.

As the poem progresses, the difficult task becomes simple. "Sea" seems to have its own meaning. It assumes, for example, that everything in the universe is moved and guided by love. By the way, this is a common poetic place. Of course, there is no such thing in the Iliad, but, as Victor Terras notes5, this idea is clearly expressed in Hesiod's Theogony: in the earth's underlying bowels /70/
deep, / And among all the eternal gods, the most beautiful is Eros. // Sweet-smelling - all gods and earthly people have it // Conquers the soul in the chest and deprives everyone of reasoning*”6.

We find the same idea in one of the "ancient poems" by Leconte de Lisle, a French parnassian. His long poem "Helen" describes the events leading up to Helen's abduction and the start of the Trojan War. In this poem, great emphasis is also placed on the theme of love; as general conclusion a long monologue is given, proving the power of love, the power of Eros, as the ruler of all mankind - thoughts that are also found in Hesiod:

Toi, par qui la terre féconde
Gemit sous un tourment cruel,
Eros, dominateur du ciel,
Eros, Eros, dompteur du monde.

The classical idea also developed in the principle of divine love, which moves the universe, presented in the Platonic idea of perfection in love and Aristotle's idea of an "immovable engine" (Mandelstam's "moves" is clearly reflected in classical philosophy); in the form of a carefully designed hierarchy, this principle was also presented in the medieval religious idea: “The binding ties of the whole system is love, is it the lowest kind of love that moves the stone to set it on Right place or is it a naturally inspired love for God in the human soul. In the last three lines of Dante's "Paradise", the poet reaches the highest circle, where divine love is revealed to him, driving the universe and from that moment directing his own thoughts and will:
Here the high spirit took off; But passion and will already strove for me, As if the wheel is given an even course. Love that moves the sun and luminaries**.

Mandelstam's "everything is driven by love" can be perceived as an aphorism that completes the story of Elena. But the poem does not end there, as it could. It takes a new turn. A completely unexpected question follows: “Whom should I listen to?”. It is unexpected, since so far we have been talking about the fact that both "Homer" and "the sea" are driven by the same force. Is there any difference in who /71/
of them to listen to the poet? Obviously, there is a difference, and the poet tells us about his choice: he listens to the voice not of "Homer" and not of the "sea" from the poem, but the sound of the real roaring Black Sea.
Again, as in the case of the flying cranes, the image of the sea is created by the orchestration of sounds in percussive position. Again, the male caesura changes to dactylic, [o] prevails in the lines, especially in the last ones, then there is a spectacular alternation [h] - [w] - [x]. All this gives special significance to the last lines.

What is the meaning here? If until now everything was clear enough: the poet, suffering from insomnia, chooses Homer as a reading for the night. The book evokes a number of associations and images centered on love. After a while, he puts the book aside and listens to the sound of the sea roaring around him. What does this sea mean? Is this a metaphor for a dream, a poet's slumber?

The sea was also the focus of attention in the previous stanzas. It was the sea of Homer, and the first line in the third quatrain unites them. Now, in the last two lines, the sea has a different meaning. This is no longer a sea with divine foam, but the gloomy Black Sea: "the sea is black." Terrace says that this is a “typical Homeric” image and cites similar lines from the Iliad about the Achaeans: “... and into the assembly square // The people rushed again, from their ships and from the tabernacle, // With a cry: like the waves of an unsilent sea , // Huge crashing into the shore, they thunder; and responds to Pontus them" *** 8.

But this image seems to have a broader meaning: both concrete and metaphorical. This "black sea" may actually be the Black Sea, and therefore it may contain memories of the Crimea and Voloshin's Koktebel. Marina Tsvetaeva, quoting this poem, even wrote: “The Black Sea”9. And Mandelstam’s poem “Not believing Sunday’s miracle…”, which refers to the Crimea and which was probably partially written there, draws us “those hills… // Where Russia breaks off // Above the black and deaf sea.”

The image of the sea can also mean the Neva River, which has played an important role in Mandelstam's poetry since 1916. She is mentioned not only in neutral expressions, such as "on the banks of the Neva" or "Neva wave", but also with adjectives that convey the feelings of the poet: "heavy Neva" and even "above the black Neva". Image of the sea, /72/
appearing in the room is also present in other poems with references to the Neva, namely in two poems called "Straw". They also refer to "poems composed during insomnia": "When, Straw, you do not sleep in a huge bedroom ...". In the first poem - a picture of a snowy December:

December solemnly streams its breath,
As if there is a heavy Neva in the room.

In the second, in similar lines, "as if" turns into a "materialized metaphor":

In a huge room heavy Neva,
And blue blood flowing from granite.

As in the poem "Insomnia ..." the image of water is used to create an atmosphere of something cold, heavy. In the first of the poems there are also slightly solemn intonations. This is "December solemn", which is compared with the Neva; "solemn" looks like a parallel to the word "ornate" in our poem. In the second poem, there is no longer such solemnity and heaviness is emphasized: the "breath" of December disappears, and instead the image of granite with the adjective "heavy" appears.
In other words, it is important here that the “black sea” in the poem does not have any biographical subtext and connection with certain geographical names, whether it be the Black Sea or the Neva. But this hardly brings clarity to the understanding of the meaning of the poem. It is clear that a metaphor is being used here. But what does she mean? "Homer" is something definite and understandable, we would like the "sea" to also have a specific meaning. However, the point here is - a typical Mandelstam's trick - that the poet compares a noun that has a specific meaning with a word that can be interpreted in different ways.

At first, the sea was associated with Homer, and this meant that there was something in common between them. Then the poet makes a choice between them, bearing in mind the existing difference. What opposition are we facing here? Homer describes historical events that happened a very long time ago. Reading the Iliad, the poet is transported from the present (insomnia) into the past. When he puts the book aside (“and here Homer is silent”), he returns to the present again. The sea here is not only the Sea of Homer, but the real sea, which in this moment rumbles around the poet. /73/

So we can understand the sea as a symbol of the present, embracing the life of the poet, his feelings. The poem is dated 1915. The passions and emotions of the people act as the driving force of history, once again plunging humanity into a long, bloody war. Regimental lists sent to the battlefield or lists of dead soldiers and officers are common things for that time: perhaps they are the ones that the poet associates with the list of ships of Hellas. The image of the sea in the room takes on a hint of danger, forcing us to recall Annensky's poem "The Black Sea", in which (in contrast to the well-known Pushkin's poem“To the sea”), they symbolize not a revolution, but death (“No! You are not a symbol of rebellion, // You are a feasting cup for death”)10. The verb "to ornate", characteristic of the rhetoric of the 18th century, also gives the impression of a classical tragedy.
This is one of the options for interpreting the last lines. But there are others. The sea, like Homer, which has already been noted, is “moved by love,” and this poem is undoubtedly about love. But Mandelstam's love lyrics are much different from similar poems by other poets. The personal feelings of a poet rarely lie on the surface, they are combined and intertwined with other topics, such as poetry and history, as in our case. The "something" that fits on someone's headboard could be an image that suggests love: for example, a lover approaching a beloved's bed. The Iliad by Homer told the poet about love, and when he puts the book down, they whisper the same thing to him sea waves. As we can see, this topic interests the poet, he cannot drown out the menacing and at the same time eloquent voice of the sea that fills the room; the sea, so close to the head of the poet that it threatens to swallow him.

Another interpretation of these lines is possible. In many poems, Mandelstam compares nature with poetry, art and culture, likes to oppose or bring them together. “Nature is the same Rome and is reflected in it,” one poem says, and in another - “There are orioles in the forests ...” - nature is compared with Homer's poetics. The poem "Insomnia ..." also refers to such verses, although here we are not dealing with all of nature, but with a part of it. The meaning is the following: should the author listen to the voice of poetry speaking about love, war, death, or the voice of Nature, the voice of Life itself, speaking about the same?
I give various readings to show that the question of understanding these images remains open. This "openness of the subject" is part of the obscurity of the entire poem, leaving the reader to think. It starts from the very first line; when the meaning of this line becomes clear, the plot and the idea of the poem become more or less clear. But final lines introduce a new turn, which was actually necessary after the conclusion: "Both the sea and Homer - everything is driven by love." Despite the fact that these words, a kind of aphoristic conclusion (by the way, not particularly original), the poem could end, its last lines are such that again make the meaning vague, and we are given the right to reflect on what the author had in mind. However, there is no need to choose only one of the given interpretations. I think they are all here.

yasko.livejournal.com

O. Mandelstam - Insomnia. Homer. Tight sails.

Insomnia. Homer. Tight sails.
I read the list of ships to the middle:
This long brood, this crane train,
That over Hellas once rose.

Like a crane wedge in foreign borders, -
Divine foam on the heads of kings, -
Where are you sailing? Whenever not Elena,
What is Troy to you alone, Achaean men?

Both the sea and Homer - everything is moved by love.
Who should I listen to? And here Homer is silent,
And the black sea, ornate, rustles
And with a heavy roar, he approaches the headboard.
Translation of the song
There is no translation. You can You can add it!
If you find an error in the name

read by Sergey Yursky

YURSKY, SERGEY YURIEVICH, (b. 1935), actor, director, writer, poet, screenwriter. People's Artist of the Russian Federation.

Mandelstam Osip Emilievich - poet, prose writer, essayist.
Osip Emilievich Mandelstam (1891, Warsaw - 1938, Vladivostok, transit camp), Russian poet, prose writer. Relations with parents were very alienated, loneliness, "homelessness" - this is how Mandelstam presented his childhood in his autobiographical prose "The Noise of Time" (1925). For Mandelstam's social self-awareness, it was important to classify himself as a commoner, a keen sense of injustice that exists in society.
The attitude of Mandelstam to the Soviet government since the late 1920s. ranges from sharp rejection and denunciation to repentance before the new reality and glorification of I.V. Stalin. The most famous example of denunciation is the anti-Stalinist poem “We live without feeling the country under us ...” (1933) and the autobiographical “Fourth Prose”. The most famous attempt to take power is the poem "If I took coal for the highest praise ...", which was assigned the name "". In mid-May 1934, Mandelstam was arrested and exiled to the city of Cherdyn in the Northern Urals. He was accused of writing and reading anti-Soviet poems. From July 1934 to May 1937 he lived in Voronezh, where he created the cycle of poems "Voronezh Notebooks", in which the emphasis on lexical vernacular and colloquial intonations is combined with complex metaphors and sound play. The main theme is history and a person's place in it ("Poems about the unknown soldier"). In mid-May 1937 he returned to Moscow, but he was forbidden to live in the capital. He lived near Moscow, in Savelovo, where he wrote his last verses, then - in Kalinin (now Tver). In early March 1938, Mandelstam was arrested in the Samatikha sanatorium near Moscow. A month later, he was sentenced to 5 years in camps for counter-revolutionary activities. He died of exhaustion in a transit camp in Vladivostok.

Synopsis of a literature lesson on the topic “Osip Emilievich Mandelstam. Life, creativity. Analysis of the poem "Insomnia. Homer. Tight sails ... "

He appeared like a miracle.

To be a poet, meter, rhyme, image, even if you master them perfectly, are insufficient, you need something else, innumerably more: your own, unique, voice, your own, unshakable, attitude, your own, unshared fate.

N. Struve

The purpose of the lesson: to get acquainted with the life and work of the poet; to develop in students the ability to understand a literary text, to teach how to work with text using the research method.

Equipment: laptop, multimedia presentation, Handout(poet's poem), screen.

Type of lesson: learning new material.

Comments:

Students prepare a report on the topics:

1. "Facts" of the biography (1891-1938);

2. The history of the creation of the poem “Insomnia. Homer. Tight sails ... ".

During the classes:

1. Organizational moment.

2. Communication of the topic and purpose of the lesson.

3. Learning new material.

How do you understand the words of A. Akhmatova?

O. Mandelstam is a unique personality with a unique destiny and poetic gift. It can be compared to a miracle.

The student makes reports "Facts of the biography of the poet."

Writing in notebooks.

Osip Mandelstam is one of the most mysterious Russian poets, whose contribution to the literature of the 20th century is invaluable. His early work dates back to the Silver Age.

So, the life of Mandelstam, like his works, is interesting, mysterious and contradictory at the same time. This poet was one of those people who cannot be indifferent to everything that is happening around. Mandelstam deeply feels what true values and where is the truth... The creative fate of the poet is the search for a word that would fully express internal state poet. One of the best works Mandelstam is his poem “Insomnia. Homer Tight sails ... ", which was written in 1916 in the Crimea (reading a poem by a trained student).

Interview with students:

What attracted this poem, what feelings did it evoke?

What images does it create?

Which lines represent the main idea?

(the poem attracts with calmness, mystery, grandeur. The author created images of the Achaeans from Homer's Iliad, ships, the sea, a lyrical hero. The main idea in the line: all this is driven by love).

The message of the prepared student about the known facts related to the history of the creation of the poem.

The theme of the sea, like the theme of antiquity in the poem, is not accidental, and is caused not only by the place of birth of the poem: Mandelstam was in Koktebel for the first time in June 1915.

Many critics noted that Mandelstam preferred water to all elements. At the same time, his preference is not swift streams falling from heaven or rushing over mountains; he is attracted by calm and eternal movement: flat rivers, lakes, but more often - the most grandiose form - the ocean, majestically rolling huge shafts. The theme of the sea is inextricably linked with the theme of antiquity: both are majestic, grandiose, calm, mysterious. It is a known fact that Mandelstam was in love with Marina Tsvetaeva during this period of his life, but she did not answer him.

What happens to the lyrical hero?

How is the feeling conveyed in the poem?

(The lyrical hero is tormented by insomnia. On the Black Sea coast, he reads Homer, reflecting on the fact that both the Achaeans and Homer were inspired by love).

The mythological basis of the Trojan War was the revenge of Menelaus for the kidnapping of his wife beautiful Elena. Helena, daughter of Zeus and the goddess of retribution Nemesis. The most beautiful of women, she arouses the envy of Aphrodite, the goddess of Beauty.

The very rumor of Helen's beauty can cause strife: all the Hellenic leaders and heroes woo her. Elena will bring pain and dishonor to her husband Menelaus, death to Paris, with whom she will run away, unable to resist the passion inspired by Aphrodite. The city that sheltered the fugitive - Troy - will be destroyed to the ground, most of Elena's suitors, who went to the walls of Troy, will die.

The Achaean army, ready to stone the queen, will stop before her beauty, and they will return her with honor to her home, to Sparta. Elena means a torch, a torch. This name is the focus of all the lines of the poem.

So, before us the pictures of bygone times come to life. The lyrical hero recreates in his imagination the ancient ships that set off to conquer Troy. Where is it said in the poem?

Insomnia. Homer. Tight sails.

I read the list of ships to the middle:

This long brood, this crane train,

That over Hellas once rose.

One gets the impression that the lyrical hero is rereading the lines from the Iliad, where the list of ships becomes a symbol of the strength and power of the Hellenes.

What was the reason for the campaign of their troops against Troy?

(The beautiful Elena was kidnapped).

Like a crane wedge in foreign borders -

Divine foam on the heads of kings -

Where are you sailing?

What is Troy to you alone, Achaean men?

The pictures that arose in the imagination of the lyrical hero captivate him and lead to reflection.

What is the meaning of life?

(in the end, he comes to the conclusion that everything in life is subordinated to love).

Both the sea and Homer - everything is moved by love.

Who should I listen to? And here Homer is silent,

And the Black Sea, ornate, makes noise

And with a heavy roar, he approaches the headboard.

So, what can bring out the best in a person? (only love makes sometimes unexpected, but the most correct actions and deeds).

(He calls the ships “a long brood, a crane train, and even brighter what a comparison is a “crane wedge”, but it also has a real basis. Ships in those distant times, when they went on military campaigns, really lined up in a wedge).

Let's pay attention to the epithet "tight sails".

What is he pointing to?

(He indicates that the ships are ready to go to sea).

Usually, movement in poetry is conveyed with the help of a quick change of verbs, energetic words, Mandelstam has few verbs, most of the sentences are nominal, incomplete, which creates a feeling of slowness, duration. So, in front of us are ships, if I may say so, in motionless motion, the poet created an image of frozen time - the past, forever remaining present.

Who else does the poet remind of?

(Kings, on whose heads "divine foam").

What does it say?

(About their greatness and strength).

To whom are kings likened here?

(To the Greek gods. One gets the feeling that the gods of Olympus approve of this trip to the “foreign frontiers” beyond Helen).

What image does Mandelstam introduce in this poem?

(The image of the Black Sea, which “ornate, makes noise”, this image gives the poem brightness and a sense of the reality of what is happening.

Let's pay attention to vocabulary.

What is the most in this poem?

(Nouns: sails, ships, foam, head, sea and there are abstract concepts - insomnia, love)

(They are necessary for understanding the idea and theme of the poem).

There are also rhetorical questions in the poem. They talk about special condition lyrical hero. What state is he in? (A state of thoughtfulness, reflection, philosophizing).

Homer's "Iliad" becomes for the lyrical hero something mysterious, incomprehensible and beautiful at the same time.

What is the hero thinking about? (notebook entries).

About truth, about beauty, about the meaning of life, about the laws of the universe. And most importantly - love - that's what awakens humanity to action, this is where the continuity of generations is manifested.

So, summing up the lesson, I would like to say: “Both the sea and Homer - everything is moved by love, you still need to surrender to this movement, obey the universal law, as the Achaeans obeyed fate, going to the walls of Troy. This is where the insomnia of the lyrical hero comes from. To live a full life, to strive for beauty, to love is very difficult, it requires courage and spiritual strength.

Conversation based on the results of the analysis of the poem “Insomnia. Homer. Tight sails ... ".

Students record in notebooks the features of O. Mandelstam's poetry

What features early poetry Was it possible to identify O. Mandelstam by analyzing the poem "Insomnia ..."?

(Understanding art as a connecting thread between generations, understanding life as a movement towards love, requiring courage and spiritual strength.)

Lesson summary

Reflection

What did we do in class today?

Have we achieved our goal?

How do you rate your work?

Final word of the teacher

At the lesson, we tried to understand the verses of one of the most mysterious and most significant Russian poets of the 20th century - O. Mandelstam, to understand the features of his work of the early period, the universal significance of poetry; developed the skills and abilities of literary text analysis.

Portal for the student. Self-training

Brief analysis

History of creation

Topic

Composition

Genre

means of expression

Theme, main idea and composition

Literary direction and genre

Paths and images

Size and rhyme

History of creation

Theme, main idea and composition

Literary direction and genre

Paths and images

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