The third book that came out from the pen of Akhmatova was The White Flock.
"In 1916, on the eve of the release of The White Pack, Osip Mandelstam wrote in a review of the collection of poems" Almanac of Muses ":" In the last poems of Akhmatova, there was a turning point to hieratic importance, religious simplicity and solemnity: I would say, after the woman, it was the turn of the wife . Remember: "a humble, shabbyly dressed, but majestic wife." The voice of renunciation is growing stronger and stronger in Akhmatova's poetry, and at present her poetry is approaching becoming one of the symbols of Russia's greatness.
The White Flock was published in September 1917. In all the few, under the conditions of troubled times, reviews of the third book of the poet, its stylistic difference was noted from the first two.
A. L. Slonimsky saw in the poems that made up the "White Flock", "a new in-depth perception of the world", which, in his opinion, was associated with the predominance of the spiritual principle over the "sensual" in the third book, and, according to the critic, in " some kind of Pushkin's view from the side"45.
Another prominent critic, K. V. Mochulsky, believes that the "sharp turnaround in Akhmatov's work" is associated with the poet's close attention to the phenomena of Russian reality in 1914-1917: "The poet leaves far behind him a circle of intimate experiences, the comfort of a "dark blue room" , a ball of multi-colored silk of changeable moods, exquisite emotions and whimsical tunes. He becomes stricter, more severe and stronger. He goes out into the open sky - and from the salty wind and steppe air his voice grows and strengthens. Images of the Motherland appear in his poetic repertoire, it is given over to a deaf the rumble of war, a quiet whisper of prayer is heard. Artistic generalization in this book is brought to typical significance.
Referring to the symbolism of the title, one can see that the words "white" and "flock" will be its fundamental components. Let's consider them in turn.
Everyone knows that colors affect our thinking and feelings. They become symbols, serve as warning signals, make us happy, sad, shape our mentality and influence our speech.
White is the color of innocence and purity. White color symbolizes purity of thoughts, sincerity, youth, innocence, inexperience. A white waistcoat gives sophistication to the look, a white dress of the bride means innocence, white spots on a geographical map - ignorance and uncertainty. In advertising, the concept of cleanliness is often embodied in sparkling snow-white tiles. Doctors wear white coats. A person who is attracted to the white color strives for perfection, he is constantly in search of himself. White color is a symbol of creative, life-loving nature.
In Russia, white is a favorite color, it is the color of the "Holy Spirit". (He descends to earth in the form of a white dove). White color is ubiquitous in national clothes and ornaments. It is also marginal, (that is, it symbolizes the transition from one state to another: death and birth again, for a new life). The symbol of this is the white dress of the bride, and the white shroud of the deceased, and white snow.
But the white color has, in addition to the joyful, its sad side of meanings. White is also the color of death. No wonder such a season as winter is associated with death in nature. The ground is covered with white snow, like a shroud. Whereas spring is the birth of a new life.
The symbol "white" finds its direct reflection in the verses of the book. Firstly, white is the color of love for Akhmatova, the personification of a quiet family life in the "white house". When love becomes obsolete, the heroine leaves "the white house and the quiet garden."
"White", as the personification of inspiration, creativity, is reflected in the following lines:
I wanted to give her a dove
The one that is whiter than everyone in the dovecote,
But the bird itself flew
For my slender guest.
("Muse left on the road", 1915, p. 77).
The white dove - a symbol of inspiration - flies after the Muse, devoting herself to creativity.
"White" is also the color of memories, memories:
Like a white stone in the depths of a well,
There is one memory in me.
("Like a white stone in the depths of a well", 1916, p. 116).
Or:
And walk to the cemetery on memorial day
Yes, look at the white lilac of God.
(“It would be better for me to call ditties provocatively”, 1914, p. 118).
Salvation Day, paradise is also indicated in white by Akhmatova:
The gate dissolved into a white paradise,
Magdalena took her son.
("Where, high, is your gypsy child", 1914, p. 100).
The image of a bird (for example, a dove, a swallow, a cuckoo, a swan, a raven) is deeply symbolic. And this symbolism is used by Akhmatova. In her work, "bird" means many things: poetry, state of mind, God's messenger. A bird is always the personification of a free life, in cages we see a miserable likeness of birds, without seeing them soaring in the sky. It is the same in the fate of the poet: the true inner world is reflected in the poems created by a free creator. But it is precisely this, freedom, that is always lacking in life.
Birds rarely live alone, mostly in flocks, and a flock is something united, united, many-sided and many-voiced. If we recall the first two books ("Evening", "Rosary"), then the main symbols will be: firstly, a dot (since "evening" is the personification of the beginning or, conversely, the end, a certain reference point), secondly, line (rosary in the form of a "ruler"), thirdly, a circle (rosary-beads) and, fourthly, a spiral (synthesis of a line and a circle). That is, these are symbols of something limited or given by the trajectory of movement, space, or time, or all at the same time.
Looking at the symbolism of the title of the third book of poetry by Akhmatova, we will see that here the temporal and spatial layers are not limited by anything. There is an exit from the circle, separation from the starting point and the intended line.
Thus, the "white flock" is an image that testifies to a change in the space-time continuum, assessments, and views. He (the image) declares a position "above" everything and everyone, from a bird's eye view.
During the writing of the first two books, the author was included in the events of the surrounding reality, being with them in the same spatial dimension. In The White Flock, Akhmatova rises above reality and, like a bird, tries to cover with her gaze a vast space and most of the history of her country, she breaks out from the powerful shackles of earthly experiences.
The analysis of the symbolism of the title of the book and the search for intratextual associations will begin with the epigraph. It is taken from I. Annensky's poem "Sweetheart":
I burn and the road is bright at night.
At the heart of this poem is a plot that tells about the criminal deliverance from the fruit of extramarital love.
The line, which has become an epigraph, acquires a different, generalizing meaning in the context of The White Pack. Annensky shows the personal tragedy of a person, the grief of a particular woman; Akhmatova, on the other hand, has the drama of a huge country, in which, it seems to her, the "voice of a man" will never sound, and "only the wind of the Stone Age knocks on black gates."
"White Flock" is a collection of poems of various orientations: these are civil lyrics, and poems of love content; it also contains the theme of the poet and poetry.
The book opens with a poem on a civil theme, in which tragic notes are felt (an echo of the epigraph, but on a larger scale):
We thought: we are poor, we have nothing,
And how they began to lose one after another,
So what happened every day
Memorial day -
Started making songs
About the great bounty of God
Yes, about our former wealth.
("We thought: we are poor, we have nothing", 1915, p. 73).
An important substantive aspect of The White Pack was, as mentioned above, the change in the aesthetic consciousness of the poet. In practice, it influenced the evolution of the character of the lyrical heroine Akhmatova. Individual existence in the third book merges with the life of the people, rises to its consciousness. I'm not alone, not we - you and me, but we are all, we are a flock. (Compare: "Evening" - "my prayer"; "Rosary" - "my and your name"; "White Flock" - "our voices").
In The White Flock, it is polyphony, polyphony that becomes a characteristic feature of the poet's lyrical consciousness. The search for Akhmatova was of a religious nature. Save the soul, as it then seemed to her, is possible only by sharing the fate of many "beggars".
The theme of beggars appeared in Akhmatova's poetry in the last years before the First World War. The outside world sounded with the voices of the beggars, and the heroine of her poems herself put on the mask of a beggar for a while.
The book "The White Pack" "opens with a choral opening, demonstrating the calm triumph of the novelty of the acquired experience"47. "Every day is the days of the war, taking away new and new victims. And Akhmatova perceived the war as the greatest national grief. And in the time of trials, the choir of the poor turned into a choir of the poet's contemporaries, all people, regardless of social affiliation. "For Akhmatova in a new book the most important thing is the spiritual unity of the people in the face of a terrible enemy. What wealth is the poet talking about here? Obviously, least of all about the material. Poverty is the flip side of spiritual wealth."48 The choral "we" in The White Pack expresses, as it were, the people's point of view on what is happening around. In the composition of the entire book, the choir acts as an active character.
In the first poem there is also the motive of death, the theme of memory sounds.
The image of death is even brighter, with even greater force, in the poem "May Snow", which gives rise to the third section of the book; here the sounds of sobs are heard, the mood of sadness is felt:
A transparent veil falls
On fresh turf and imperceptibly melts.
Cruel, cold spring
Poured kidneys kills.
And the sight of early death is so terrible,
That I cannot look at God's world.
I have the sadness that King David
Royally bestowed millenniums.
("May Snow", 1916, p. 95).
The last lines of the poem, as well as the epigraph to it, refer us to the Holy Scriptures. There is an image of King David, famous for his chants to the Glory of God. The epigraph to the poem "May Snow" points to the following lines from the Psalter: "I am tired of my sighs: every night I wash my bed, with my tears I wet my bed" (Psalm. Psalm VI, 7). Here we meet the word "night" (as in the epigraph to the whole book).
Night is the time of day, at which, usually, he is left to himself, he is given time to think, if he is alone, to cry over his troubles, to rejoice in his successes. The night is also the time of committing secret atrocities.
In the context of Akhmatova's book, as already mentioned, grief takes on enormous proportions. But this grief is sacred, as it is predetermined by God as a punishment for sins. And, perhaps, at Akhmatova's night - that dark, terrible path that both the country and the heroine must go through, having received a blessing for that.
We see that the mood of the two epigraphs determines the main tone of the mood of the heroine and the book as a whole: sadness, grief, doom and predestination.
In the poem "May Snow" we meet one of the traditional interpretations of the meaning of white - this is the color of death. May is the time when nature is full of life, and suddenly and untimely falling white "transparent veil" dooms it to death.
White as a symbol of light, beauty, we meet in poems dedicated to love, memories of a loved one:
I will leave your white house and quiet garden.
May life be empty and bright.
I will glorify you, you in my poems,
As a woman could not glorify.
("I will leave your white house and quiet garden", 1913, p. 73).
Simultaneously with the love theme in this poem, the theme of the poet and poetry is heard.
But sometimes love comes into conflict with creativity. For Akhmatova, poetry, her poems are "white bird", "jolly bird", "white flock". Everything is for the beloved:
All to you: and a daily prayer,
And insomnia melting heat,
And my white flock of poems,
And my eyes are blue fire.
("I don't know if you're alive or dead", 1915, p. 110).
But the beloved does not share the interests of the heroine. He puts her before a choice: either love or creativity:
He was jealous, anxious and tender,
How God's sun loved me
And so that she does not sing about the former,
He killed my white bird.
He said, entering the room at sunset:
"Love me, laugh, write poetry!"
And I buried a merry bird
Behind a round well near an old alder tree.
("He was jealous, anxious and tender", 1914, p. 75).
In this poem, the motive of prohibition through permission sounds. Having buried the "merry bird" Akhmatova, most likely, hides for some time in the bowels of her soul the thirst to create, to write poetry.
She tests the hero (gives him freedom from the shackles of passion). He leaves, but comes back again:
I chose my share
To the friend of my heart:
I let loose
In his Annunciation.
Yes, the gray dove returned,
Beats its wings against the glass.
As from the brilliance of a wondrous riza
It became light in the upper room.
("I chose my share", 1915, p. 107).
The poet dresses his beloved in the plumage of a gray dove, an ordinary bird - Akhmatova does not idealize her beloved, he is an ordinary person.
In everyday life, the presence of birds in nature suggests that nothing disturbs its normal course. Birds sing - it means everything is fine, there is no trouble. When they fall silent, therefore, something has either already happened or will happen soon: trouble, tragedy. In this case, birds are an indicator of normal
flow of life. Akhmatova says:
Smells like burning. four weeks
Dry peat burns in swamps.
Even the birds didn't sing today
And the aspen no longer trembles.
("July 1914", 1914, p. 96).
Akhmatova's teacher in the brevity, simplicity and authenticity of the poetic word was A. S. Pushkin throughout her life. It was he who suggested to her the image of the Muse, which would be the embodiment of Akhmatov's consciousness. Through all her work passes the image of the Muse - a friend, sister, teacher and comforter. In Akhmatova's poems, the Muse is realistic, she often takes on a human form - "slender guest", "swarthy".
The image of a bird depends on the state of the poet's soul, on her desires and aspirations. But sometimes not always fair reality, discord with a loved one leaves an imprint on him. For example:
Am I talking to you
In the sharp cry of birds of prey,
I'm not looking into your eyes
From white matte pages.
("I see, I see a moonbow", 1914, p. 101).
Or:
So wounded crane
Others are calling: kurly, kurly!
When the spring fields
Both loose and warm...
("So wounded crane", 1915. p. 103).
Or:
That's why it's dark in the light,
That's why my friends
Like evening, sad birds,
About the never-before love is sung.
("I was born neither late nor early", 1913, p. 117).
Akhmatova's bird is also an indicator of the mood of the heroine, the state of her soul.
Akhmatova in this book does not deviate from the traditional interpretation of the image of a white bird as God's messenger, an angel with white wings:
The rays of dawn burn until midnight.
How good it is in my tight lock!
About the most tender, about always wonderful
God's birds are talking to me.
("The immortelle is dry and pink. Clouds", 1916, p. 94).
Or:
We don't remember where we got married
But this church sparkled
With that fierce radiance
What only angels can do
Bring in white wings.
("Let's be together, dear, together", 1915, p. 105).
Or:
The sky sows a fine rain
To the blooming lilac.
Outside the window the wings are blowing
White, White Spirits day.
("The sky sows a fine rain", 1916, p. 113).
For Akhmatova, God is the highest essence, an immovable hypostasis, to which everything is subject. And in the last verse of the book, soaring high above the earth, she proclaims this:
A. There are unique words,
Whoever said them - spent too much.
Only blue is inexhaustible
Heavenly, and the mercy of God.
("Oh, there are unique words." 1916. p. 120).
This is a philosophical poem. Having become one of the voices of the choir at the beginning of the book, by the end of her lyrical heroine Akhmatova unites with the whole universe.
So, in the third book "The White Flock" Akhmatova uses the meanings of the words "white", "flock", "bird" both in the traditional sense, and adds meanings that are unique to her.
"The White Flock" is her poetry, her poems, feelings, moods, poured onto paper.
The white bird is a symbol of God, his messengers.
A bird is an indicator of the normal course of life on earth.
"White flock" is a sign of commonwealth, connection with others.
The "White Flock" is a height, a flight above the mortal earth, it is a craving for the Divine.
Collection "White Flock"
The third book that came out from the pen of A. Akhmatova was The White Flock.
In 1916, on the eve of the release of The White Pack, Osip Mandelstam wrote in a review of the collection of poems Almanac of Muses: “In the last poems of Akhmatova, there was a turning point to hieratic importance, religious simplicity and solemnity: I would say, after the woman, it was the turn of the wife. Remember: "a humble, shabbyly dressed, but majestic wife." The voice of renunciation is growing stronger and stronger in Akhmatova's poetry, and at present her poetry is approaching becoming one of the symbols of Russia's greatness.
The White Pack was published in September 1917. In all the few, under the conditions of troubled times, reviews of the third book of the poet, its stylistic difference from the first two was noted.
A. L. Slonimsky saw in the poems that made up the “White Flock”, “a new in-depth perception of the world”, which, in his opinion, was associated with the predominance of the spiritual principle over the “sensual” in the third book, and, according to the critic, in “ some kind of Pushkin's view from the outside.
Another prominent critic, K. V. Mochulsky, believes that “the sharp turning point in Akhmatov’s work” is associated with the poet’s close attention to the phenomena of Russian reality in 1914-1917: “The poet leaves far behind him a circle of intimate experiences, the comfort of a “dark blue room” , a ball of multi-colored silk of changeable moods, refined emotions and whimsical tunes. He becomes stricter, more severe and stronger. He goes out into the open sky - and from the salty wind and the steppe air his voice grows and grows stronger. Images of the Motherland appear in his poetic repertoire, the muffled rumble of war is heard, a quiet whisper of prayer is heard. Artistic generalization in this book is brought to typical significance.
The era of the "White Pack" marks a sharp turning point in Akhmatov's work, a huge rise to pathos, a deepening of poetic motifs and a complete mastery of form. The poet leaves far behind him a circle of intimate experiences, "the comfort of a dark blue room", a ball of multi-colored silk of changeable moods, exquisite emotions and whimsical tunes. He becomes stricter, more severe and stronger. He goes out into the open sky and from the salty wind and the steppe air grows and strengthens his voice. Images of the Motherland appear in his poetic repertoire, the muffled rumble of war is heard, a quiet whisper of prayer is heard.
After the feminine elegance of the "Rosary" - strict masculinity, mournful solemnity and prayerfulness of the "White Pack". Previously, poems habitually formed into a confession or a conversation with a sweetheart - now they take the form of reflection or prayer. Instead of "little things of a thoughtless life": flowers, birds, fans, perfumes, gloves - magnificent sayings of a high style. It is in The White Flock that the true poetic style is smelted and forged from the manner of the Rosary. The collection reflects the reflections of the heroine about creativity and creative gift, about love, which has always completely owned her. But the departed love no longer gives rise to despair and longing. On the contrary, out of grief and sadness, songs are born that bring relief from pain. The heroine experiences a quiet, bright sadness, she thinks hopefully about the future and draws strength from her loneliness. For the sake of her country, the heroine is ready to sacrifice a lot.
Turning to the symbolism of the title, one can notice that the words “white” and “flock” will be its core components. Let's consider them in turn.
Everyone knows that colors affect our thinking and feelings. They become symbols, serve as warning signals, make us happy, sad, shape our mentality and influence our speech. Color is one of the elementary and at the same time significant sensations. The world of color exists independently of us, we are accustomed to being in the world of color, and nature itself spontaneously offers man all models of color. This is what creates a clear and integral worldview in artists and writers. At the origins of culture, color was equivalent to a word, color and object were one
White is the color of innocence and purity. White color symbolizes purity of thoughts, sincerity, youth, innocence, inexperience. A white waistcoat gives sophistication to the look, a white dress of the bride means innocence, white spots on a geographical map - ignorance and uncertainty. Doctors wear white coats. A person who is attracted to the white color strives for perfection, he is constantly in search of himself. White color is a symbol of creative, life-loving nature.
In Russia, white is a favorite color, it is the color of the "Holy Spirit". (He descends to earth in the form of a white dove). White color is ubiquitous in national clothes and ornaments. It is also marginal, (that is, it symbolizes the transition from one state to another: death and birth again, for a new life). The symbol of this is the white dress of the bride, and the white shroud of the deceased, and white snow.
But the white color, in addition to the joyful, has its own sad side of meanings, since it is also the color of death. No wonder such a season as winter is associated with death in nature. The ground is covered with white snow, like a shroud. Whereas spring is the birth of a new life.
The symbol "white" finds its direct reflection in the verses of the book. Firstly, white is the color of love for A. Akhmatova, the personification of a quiet family life in the "white house". When love becomes obsolete, the heroine leaves "the white house and the quiet garden."
"White", as the personification of inspiration, creativity, is reflected in the following lines:
I wanted to give her a dove
The one that is whiter than everyone in the dovecote,
But the bird itself flew
For my slender guest.
(“Muse left on the road”, 1915).
The white dove - a symbol of inspiration - flies after the Muse, devoting herself to creativity.
"White" is also the color of memories, memories:
Like a white stone in the depths of a well,
There is one memory in me.
(“Like a white stone in the depths of a well”, 1916).
And walk to the cemetery on memorial day
Yes, look at the white lilac of God.
(“It would be better for me to call ditties provocatively”, 1914).
Salvation Day, paradise is also indicated in white by Akhmatova:
The gate dissolved into a white paradise,
Magdalena took her son.
(“Where, high, is your gypsy child”, 1914).
As for birds, they have always been symbols of the eternal, soul, spirit, divine manifestation, ascension to heaven, the ability to communicate with the gods or enter a higher state of consciousness, thought, imagination. The image of a bird (for example, a dove, a swallow, a cuckoo, a swan, a raven) is deeply symbolic. And this symbolism is used by A. Akhmatova. In her work, "bird" means a lot: poetry, state of mind, God's messenger. A bird is always the personification of a free life, in cages we see a miserable likeness of birds, without seeing them soaring in the sky. It is the same in the fate of the poet: the true inner world is reflected in the poems created by a free creator. But it is precisely this, freedom, that is always lacking in life. Birds rarely live alone, mostly in flocks, and a flock is something united, united, many-sided and many-voiced. If we recall the first two books (“Evening”, “Rosary”), then the main symbols will be the following: firstly, a dot (since “evening” is the personification of the beginning or, conversely, the end, a certain reference point); secondly, a line (a rosary in the form of a “ruler”); thirdly, a circle (rosary-beads) and, fourthly, a spiral (synthesis of a line and a circle). That is, these are symbols of something limited or given by the trajectory of movement, space, or time, or all at the same time. If you pay attention to the symbolism of the title of the third book of poems by A. Akhmatova, you can see that here the temporal and spatial layers are not limited by anything. There is an exit from the circle, separation from the starting point and the intended line.
Thus, the “white flock” is an image that indicates a change in the space-time continuum, assessments, and views. This image declares a position "above" everything and everyone, from a bird's eye view.
During the writing of the first two books, the author was included in the events of the surrounding reality, being with them in the same spatial dimension. In The White Flock, A. Akhmatova rises above reality and, like a bird, tries to cover with her gaze a vast space and most of the history of her country, she breaks out from the powerful shackles of earthly experiences.
The analysis of the symbolism of the title of the book and the search for intratextual associations will begin with the epigraph. It is taken from I. Annensky's poem "Sweetheart":
I burn and the road is bright at night.
At the heart of this poem is a plot that tells about the criminal deliverance from the fruit of extramarital love.
The line, which has become an epigraph, acquires a different, generalizing meaning in the context of The White Pack. I. Annensky shows the personal tragedy of a person, the grief of a particular woman; A. Akhmatova, on the other hand, has the drama of a vast country, in which, it seems to her, the “voice of a man” will never sound, and “only the wind of the Stone Age knocks on black gates.”
"White Flock" is a collection of poems of various orientations: these are civil lyrics, and poems of love content; it also contains the theme of the poet and poetry.
The book opens with a poem on a civil theme, in which tragic notes are felt (an echo of the epigraph, but on a larger scale):
We thought: we are poor, we have nothing,
And how they began to lose one after another,
So what happened every day
Memorial day -
Started making songs
About the great bounty of God
Yes, about our former wealth.
(“Thought: we are poor, we have nothing”, 1915).
An important substantive moment of The White Pack was, as mentioned above, the change in the aesthetic consciousness of the poet. In practice, it influenced the evolution of the character of the lyrical heroine A. Akhmatova. Individual existence in the third book merges with the life of the people, rises to its consciousness. I'm not alone, not we - you and me, but we are all, we are a flock. (Compare: "Evening" - "my prayer"; "Rosary" - "my and your name"; "White Flock" - "our voices").
In The White Flock, it is polyphony, polyphony that becomes a characteristic feature of the poet's lyrical consciousness. The search for A. Akhmatova was of a religious nature. Save the soul, as it then seemed to her, is possible only by sharing the fate of many "beggars".
The theme of beggars appeared in the poetry of A. Akhmatova in the last years before the First World War. The outside world sounded with the voices of the beggars, and the heroine of her poems herself put on the mask of a beggar for a while.
The book "The White Pack" "opens with a choral opening, demonstrating the calm triumph of the novelty of the acquired experience" . Every day is the days of war, taking away new and new victims. And the poetess perceived the war as the greatest national grief. And in a time of trials, the choir of beggars turned into a choir of the poet's contemporaries, all people, regardless of social affiliation. “For Akhmatova, the most important thing in the new book is the spiritual unity of the people in the face of a terrible enemy. What wealth is the poet talking about here? Obviously, least of all about the material. Poverty is the reverse side of spiritual wealth. The choral “we” in The White Pack expresses, as it were, the people's point of view on what is happening around. As part of the composition of the entire book, the choir acts as an active character.
In the first poem there is also the motive of death, the theme of memory sounds. The image of death is even brighter, with even greater force, in the poem "May Snow", which gives rise to the third section of the book; here the sounds of sobs are heard, the mood of sadness is felt:
A transparent veil falls
On fresh turf and imperceptibly melts.
Cruel, cold spring
Poured kidneys kills.
And the sight of early death is so terrible,
That I cannot look at God's world.
I have the sadness that King David
Royally bestowed millenniums.
("May Snow", 1916).
The last lines of the poem, as well as the epigraph to it, refer us to the Holy Scriptures. There is an image of King David, famous for his chants to the Glory of God. The epigraph to the poem “May Snow” points to the following lines from the Psalter: “I am tired of my sighs: every night I wash my bed, with my tears I wet my bed” (Psalm. Psalm VI, 7). Here we meet the word "night" (as in the epigraph to the entire book).
Night is the time of day, at which, usually, he is left to himself, he is given time to think, if he is alone, to cry over his troubles, to rejoice in his successes. The night is also the time of committing secret atrocities.
In the context of A. Akhmatova's book, as already mentioned, grief takes on enormous proportions. But this grief is sacred, as it is predetermined by God as a punishment for sins. And, perhaps, for A. Akhmatova, the night is that dark, terrible path that both the country and the heroine must go through, having received a blessing for that.
We see that the mood of the two epigraphs determines the main tone of the mood of the heroine and the book as a whole: sadness, grief, doom and predestination.
In the poem "May Snow" we meet one of the traditional interpretations of the meaning of white - this is the color of death. May is the time when nature is full of life, and a white "transparent veil" that suddenly and untimely fell out dooms it to death.
White as a symbol of light, beauty, we meet in poems dedicated to love, memories of a loved one:
I will leave your white house and quiet garden.
May life be empty and bright.
I will glorify you, you in my poems,
As a woman could not glorify.
(“I will leave your white house and quiet garden”, 1913).
Simultaneously with the love theme in this poem, the theme of the poet and poetry is heard. But sometimes love comes into conflict with creativity. For A. Akhmatova, poetry, her poems are “white bird”, “jolly bird”, “white flock”. Everything is for the beloved:
All to you: and a daily prayer,
And insomnia melting heat,
And my white flock of poems,
And my eyes are blue fire.
(“I don’t know if you are alive or dead”, 1915).
But the beloved does not share the interests of the heroine. He puts her before a choice: either love or creativity:
He was jealous, anxious and tender,
How God's sun loved me
And so that she does not sing about the former,
He killed my white bird.
He said, entering the room at sunset:
“Love me, laugh, write poetry!”
And I buried a merry bird
Behind a round well near an old alder tree.
(“He was jealous, anxious and tender”, 1914).
In this poem, the motive of prohibition through permission sounds. Having buried the “merry bird”, A. Akhmatova, most likely, hides for some time in the bowels of her soul the thirst to create, to write poetry.
She tests the hero (gives him freedom from the shackles of passion). He leaves, but comes back again:
I chose my share
To the friend of my heart:
I let loose
In his Annunciation.
Yes, the gray dove returned,
Beats its wings against the glass.
As from the brilliance of a wondrous riza
It became light in the upper room.
(“I chose my share”, 1915).
The poet dresses his beloved in the plumage of a gray dove, an ordinary bird - A. Akhmatova does not idealize her beloved, he is an ordinary person.
In everyday life, the presence of birds in nature suggests that nothing disturbs its normal course. Birds sing - it means everything is fine, there is no trouble. When they fall silent, therefore, something has either already happened or will happen soon: trouble, tragedy. In this case, birds are an indicator of the normal course of life. In A. Akhmatova it sounds like this:
Smells like burning. four weeks
Dry peat burns in swamps.
Even the birds didn't sing today
And the aspen no longer trembles.
("July 1914", 1914).
A. Akhmatova's teacher in the brevity, simplicity and authenticity of the poetic word was A. S. Pushkin throughout her life. It was he who suggested to her the image of the Muse, which would be the embodiment of Akhmatov's consciousness. Through all her work passes the image of the Muse - a friend, sister, teacher and comforter. In the poems of A. Akhmatova, the Muse is realistic, she often takes on a human form - “slender guest”, “dark-skinned”.
The image of a bird depends on the state of the poet's soul, on her desires and aspirations. But sometimes not always fair reality, discord with a loved one leaves an imprint on him. For example:
Am I talking to you
In the sharp cry of birds of prey,
I'm not looking into your eyes
From white matte pages.
(“I see, I see a moonbow”, 1914).
So wounded crane
Others are calling: kurly, kurly!
When the spring fields
Both loose and warm ...
(“So Wounded Crane”, 1915).
That's why it's dark in the light,
That's why my friends
Like evening, sad birds,
About the never-before love is sung.
(“I was born neither late nor early”, 1913).
A. Akhmatova's bird is also an indicator of the mood of the heroine, the state of her soul.
A. Akhmatova in this book does not deviate from the traditional interpretation of the image of a white bird as God's messenger, an angel with white wings:
The rays of dawn burn until midnight.
How good it is in my tight lock!
About the most tender, about always wonderful
God's birds are talking to me.
(“The immortelle is dry and pink. Clouds”, 1916).
We don't remember where we got married
But this church sparkled
With that fierce radiance
What only angels can do
Bring in white wings.
("Let's be together, dear, together", 1915).
For A. Akhmatova, God is the highest essence, an immovable hypostasis, to which everything is subject. And in the last verse of the book, soaring high above the earth, she proclaims this:
A. There are unique words,
Whoever said them - spent too much.
Only blue is inexhaustible
Heavenly, and the mercy of God.
(“Oh, there are unique words”, 1916).
This is a philosophical poem. Becoming one of the voices of the choir at the beginning of the book, by the end of her lyrical heroine A. Akhmatova unites with the entire universe.
So, in the third book "The White Flock" A. Akhmatova uses the meanings of the words "white", "flock", "bird" both in the traditional sense, and adds meanings that are unique to her.
"The White Flock" is her poetry, her poems, feelings, moods, poured onto paper. The white bird is a symbol of God, his messengers. A bird is an indicator of the normal course of life on earth.
"White flock" is a sign of commonwealth, connection with others.
The “White Flock” is a height, a flight above the mortal earth, it is a craving for the Divine.
Foreword
Sadness is the strongest thing on earth.A. Akhmatova
The creative fate of Anna Akhmatova developed in such a way that only five of her poetic books - "Evening" (1912), "Rosary" (1914), "White Flock" (1917), "Plantain" (1921) and "Anno Domini" (in two editions of 1921 and 1922-1923) were compiled by herself. Over the next two years, Akhmatov's poems occasionally appeared in periodicals, but in 1925, after the next Ideological Conference, at which, in the words of Anna Andreevna herself, she was sentenced to "civil death", they stopped publishing her. Only fifteen years later, in 1940, almost miraculously, a volume of selected works broke through to readers, and it was no longer Akhmatova who chose, but the compiler. True, Anna Andreevna still managed to include in this edition, as one of the sections, fragments from the handwritten "Reed", the sixth book of hers, which she compiled with her own hand in the late 30s. And yet, on the whole, the collection of 1940 with the impersonal title "From Six Books", like all the other lifetime favorites, including the famous "Running Time" (1965), did not express the author's will. According to legend, the initiator of this miracle was Stalin himself. Seeing that his daughter Svetlana was copying Akhmatova's poems into a notebook, he allegedly asked one of the people in his retinue why Akhmatova was not being published. Indeed, in the last pre-war year in the creative life of Akhmatova, there was a certain turning point for the better: in addition to the collection "From Six Books", there were also several publications in the magazine "Leningrad". Anna Andreevna believed in this legend, she even believed that she also owed Stalin her salvation, the fact that she was taken out of the besieged city in the fall of 1941 on a military plane. In fact, the decision to evacuate Akhmatova and Zoshchenko was signed by Alexander Fadeev and, apparently, at the insistent request of Alexei Tolstoy: the red count was a burned-out cynic, but he knew and loved Anna Andreevna and Nikolai Gumilyov from his youth and never forgot about it ... Tolstoy, it seems , contributed to the release of the Tashkent collection of Akhmatova in 1943, which, however, was not at all difficult for him, since this happened after the publication of her poem “Courage” in Pravda ... The fact that it was the author of “Peter the Great”, albeit not too much, but slightly defended Akhmatova, and this fact confirms: after his death in 1944, no one could help her, neither Nikolai Tikhonov, nor Konstantin Fedin, nor Alexei Surkov, despite all his considerable literary ranks ...
This edition includes the texts of the first five books of Anna Akhmatova, in the edition and in the order in which they first saw the light.
The first four collections - "Evening", "Rosary", "White Flock" and "Plantain" are published according to the first edition, "Anno Domini" - according to the second, more complete, Berlin one, printed in October 1922, but published with the note: 1923. All other texts follow in chronological order, without taking into account those subtle connections and links in which they exist in the author's "samizdat" plans: until her death, Anna Akhmatova continued to write poetry and put them into cycles and books, still hoping that will be able to reach its reader not only with the main poems, which invariably got stuck in the viscous mud of Soviet censorship, but also with books of poetry. Like many poets of the Silver Age, she was convinced that between lyrical plays, united only by the time of their writing, and the author's book of poems, there was a "devilish difference."
The first collection of Anna Akhmatova "Evening" was published at the very beginning of March 1912, in St. Petersburg, in the acmeist publishing house "Poets' Workshop". To publish 300 copies of this thin little book, Anna Akhmatova's husband, who is also the head of the publishing house, poet and critic Nikolai Stepanovich Gumilyov laid out one hundred rubles from his own pocket. The success of Vecher was preceded by the “triumphs” of the young Akhmatova on the tiny stage of the literary cabaret Stray Dog, the opening of which was timed by the founders to coincide with the farewell of 1911. The artist Yuri Annenkov, the author of several portraits of the young Akhmatova, recalling in his declining years the appearance of his model and her performance on the stage of the Intimate Theater (the official name of the Stray Dog: The Art Society of the Intimate Theater), wrote: “Anna Akhmatova, shy and an elegantly careless beauty, with her “uncurled bangs” that covered her forehead, and with a rare grace of half-movements and half-gestures, she read, almost singing, her early poems. I don’t remember anyone else who possessed such skill and such musical delicacy of reading…”.
Exactly two years after the publication of the first edition, namely in March 1914, The Rosary appeared on the shelves of bookstores in St. Petersburg, Akhmatova no longer had to publish this book at her own expense ... She withstood many reprints, including several pirated." One of these collections is dated 1919. Anna Andreevna valued this edition very much. Hunger, cold, devastation, but people still need poetry. Her poetry! Gumilyov, as it turned out, was right when he said, after reading the proofreading of the Rosary: “Maybe it will have to be sold in every small shop.” Marina Tsvetaeva rather calmly met the first Akhmatova collection, because her own first book was published two years earlier, except that she was surprised at the coincidence of the names: she has “Evening Album”, and Anna has “Evening”, but “Rosary” delighted her. She fell in love! And in poetry, and, in absentia, in Akhmatova, although I felt in her a strong rival:
Then, after the "Rosary", Tsvetaeva called Akhmatova "Anna of All Russia", she also owns two more poetic characteristics: "Muse of Lamentation", "Tsarskoye Selo Muse". And what is most surprising, Marina Ivanovna guessed that fate had written out for them, so different, one road trip:
You make me freeze the sun in the sky,
All the stars are in your hand.
"The Rosary" is Anna Akhmatova's most famous book, it was she who brought her fame, not just fame in a narrow circle of lovers of fine literature, but real fame. Meanwhile, Akhmatova herself, from her early books, loved The White Flock and Plantain much more than The Rosary ... And let the person to whom The White Flock and Plantain are dedicated - Boris Vasilyevich Anrep, as it turned out many, many years later, turned out to be unworthy of this great earthly love and the poem of the fate of Anna of All Russia was left without the main Hero, so what? Wars and tsars have passed, but the poems about the hopeless love of the most charming woman of “silver Petersburg” for the “dashing Yaroslavl”, who exchanged his native copses for the velvet greens of English lawns, did not pass, did not lose their original freshness ... In 1945, on the eve of another catastrophe, when In August of the following year, 1946, Anna Akhmatova was once again sentenced to “civil death” by the well-known decision of the Central Committee on the magazines Zvezda and Leningrad, after reading Mikhail Bulgakov’s novel The Master and Margarita in the manuscript, she wrote the following visionary verses:
And alone in the emptiness of the prison
We were given a travel guide.
In the situation of 1945, when, after several spring months of the national Victory Day, the authorities again and sharply began to “tighten the screws”, it was dangerous not only to read such poems aloud, but also to store them in the drawers of the desk, and Anna Andreevna, who never forgot anything, forgot or rather, she hid them so deeply in the basement of her memory that she could not find them for a whole decade, but after the 20th Congress she immediately remembered ... Friends called her a seer for a reason, she foresaw a lot in advance, in advance, and she sensed the approach of trouble long before her arrival, not one from the blows of fate did not take her by surprise; constantly living "on the edge of death", she was always ready for the worst. But her main books were lucky, they somehow managed to jump out from under the printing press on the eve of the next sharp turn - either in her own life or in the fate of the country.
Witnesses of Christ have tasted death,
And old gossips, and soldiers,
And the procurator of Rome - all passed
Where the arch once stood
Where the sea beat, where the cliff blackened, -
They were drunk in wine, inhaled with hot dust
And with the smell of sacred roses.Gold rusts and steel rots,
Marble crumbles - everything is ready for death.
Sadness is the strongest thing on earth
And more durable is the royal Word.
"Evening" appeared on the eve of the birth of the first and only son.
"Rosary" - on the eve of the First World War.
The "White Flock" - on the eve of the revolution, and literally on the eve: in mid-September 1917.
"Plantain" (April 1921) - on the eve of great grief: in the summer of 1921, Akhmatova learned about the suicide of her elder beloved brother Andrei, in August, first Blok and then Gumilyov passed away. Mikhail Zenkevich, who sought out Anna Andreevna that tragic winter in some strange frozen dwelling, was amazed at the change that had happened to her. That Anna, with whom he parted, leaving Petrograd in 1918, the one who lived and sang love in "Evening", "Rosary", "White Flock" and "Plantain", was no more; the book she wrote after the terrible August 1921 - Anno Domini - was a book of Sorrow. (In the first edition - St. Petersburg: "Petropolis", 1921 - the year of the end of the former and the beginning of a new life is indicated in Roman numerals already in the title of the collection: "Anno Domini MCMXXI" ("From the Nativity of Christ 1921.") Having read several new poems to a friend of his poetic youth and noticing that Zenkevich was amazed, she explained: "The last months I lived among deaths. Kolya died, my brother died and ... Blok. I don't know how I could survive all this."
In the first edition, the collection "Anno Domini" was released, as already mentioned, at the end of October, poems about the new mountain went in an even stream, publishing them in Russia, where the name of the executed Gumilyov was banned, became dangerous: the second, supplemented, edition had to be printed already in Berlin, which by 1922 had become the center of Russian emigration. Here it was still possible to save an epigraph from Gumilyov in the cycle "Voice of Memory", but even a simple mention of a meeting with Emperor Nicholas on a winter evening in the snowy Tsarskoe Selo had to be encrypted. In the now widely known poem "Meeting" (1919), the final quatrain - "And the gilded haiduk \ Stands motionless behind the sleigh, \ And the tsar looks around strangely \ With empty bright eyes" in the Berlin version looks like this:
But this is the only forced compromise. On the whole, Anno Domini is free from both copyright and Soviet censorship...
And a gilded haiduk
Stands motionless behind the sleigh.
And strangely you look around
Empty bright eyes.
In the year of her first civil death Anna Akhmatova was only thirty-six years old, about the earthly period that she still happened to live, she always spoke briefly and bitterly: after all. However, this other, substituted life (“they changed my life, it flowed in a different direction and in a different way ...”) was a life, and in it were love, and betrayal, and the torments of dumbness, and golden gifts of a late, but fruitful autumn, and even a test of glory. But this was a bitter, bitter glory, because all her best things were not printed in her homeland. They were brought secretly from Munich, Paris, New York, they were memorized from the voice, copied by hand and on a typewriter, bound and given to friends and loved ones. Akhmatova knew about this and still suffered ... Of all the fatal "non-meetings" your reader was her worst pain. The pain of this separation was not at all figurative, but literally tore her tormented heart, and she killed him. By a strange coincidence, March 5, 1966: on the day of the death of the main culprit of all her troubles - Joseph Stalin.
Alla Marchenko
Evening
I
Love
November 24, 1911
That snake, curled up in a ball,
At the very heart conjures
That whole days like a dove
Cooing on the white window,It will shine in the bright hoarfrost,
Feel like a left-handed man in a slumber ...
But faithfully and secretly leads
From joy and peace.Can cry so sweetly
In the prayer of a longing violin,
And it's scary to guess
In an unfamiliar smile.
Tsarskoye Selo
In Tsarskoye Selo
I
November 30, 1911
Horses are led along the alley,
The waves of combed manes are long.
O captivating city of mysteries,
I'm sad, loving you.Strange to remember! The soul yearned
Choking in death delirium,
Now I've become a toy
Like my pink cockatoo friend.The chest is not compressed with a premonition of pain,
If you want, look into my eyes
I do not like only the hour before sunset,
Wind from the sea and the word "go away."
Tsarskoye Selo
II
1911
... And there is my marble double,
Defeated under the old maple,He gave his face to the lake waters,
Heeds the rustle of green.And light rains wash
His clotted wound...
Cold, white, wait
I, too, will become a marble.
III
And the boy...
November 30, 1911
And the boy who plays the bagpipes
And the girl who weaves her wreath,
And two crossed paths in the forest,
And in the far field a distant light, -I see everything. I remember everything
Lovingly meekly in the heart of the shore,
Only one I never know
And I can't even remember anymore.I don't ask for wisdom or strength
Oh, just let me warm myself by the fire!
I'm cold... Winged or wingless,
The merry god will not visit me.
Tsarskoye Selo
Love conquers...
Autumn 1911
Love conquers deceitfully
In a simple unskillful chant.
Still so recently-strange
You were not gray and sad.And when she smiled
In your gardens, in your house, in the field,
Everywhere you seemed
That you are free and at will.You were bright, taken by her
And drinking her poison.
Because the stars were bigger
After all, the herbs smelled differently,
Autumn herbs.
Tsarskoye Selo
Shrugged her hands...
January 8, 1911
She clasped her hands under a dark veil...
"Why are you pale today? .."
- Because I am tart sadness
Got him drunk.How can I forget? He walked out, staggering
Mouth twisted painfully
I ran away without touching the railing
I followed him to the gate.Breathless, I shouted: "Joke
All that has gone before. If you leave, I'll die."
Smiled calmly and creepily
And he said to me: "Don't stand in the wind."
Kyiv
Memories of the sun...
January 30, 1911
yellow grass,
The wind blows with early snowflakes
Barely.Willow in the empty sky flattened
Fan through.
Maybe it's better that I didn't
Your wife.The memory of the sun in the heart is weakening,
What is it? - dark?
May be! Will have time to come during the night
Winter.
Kyiv
High in the sky…
Spring 1911
High in the sky a cloud was gray,
Like a squirrel's skin, spread out.
He told me: "It's not a pity that your body
It will melt in March, the fragile Snow Maiden!”In a fluffy muff, the hands grew cold,
I was scared, I was somehow vague,
Oh how to get you back, fast weeks
His love is airy and minute!I don't want bitterness or revenge
Let me die with the last white blizzard
Oh, I wondered about it on the eve of Epiphany,
I was his girlfriend in January.
Tsarskoye Selo
The door is half open...
February 17, 1911
The door is half open
Lindens blow sweetly ...
Forgotten on the table
Whip and glove.The circle from the lamp is yellow ...
I'm listening to the noise.
What did you leave?
I don't understand…Happy and clear
Tomorrow will be morning
This life is wonderful
Heart, be wise.You are quite tired
Beat quieter, deafer,
You know I read
that souls are immortal.
Tsarskoye Selo
Want to know…
October 21, 1910
…Do you want to know how it all was? -
Three in the dining room struck,
And, saying goodbye, holding on to the railing,
She seemed to say with difficulty:
"That's it, oh no, I forgot
I love you, I loved you
Already then!"
"Yes?!"
Kyiv
Song of the last meeting
September 29, 1911
So helplessly my chest went cold,
But my steps were light
I put on my right hand
Left hand glove.It seemed that many steps
And I knew there were only three!
Autumn whisper between the maples
He asked: “Die with me!I'm deceived, you hear, sad,
Changeable, evil fate.
I said, "Darling, dear!
And me too. "I'll die with you..."This is the song of the last meeting
I looked at the dark house
Candles burned in the bedroom
Indifferent yellow fire.
Tsarskoye Selo
Like a straw...
February 10, 1911
Like a straw, you drink my soul.
I know its taste is bitter and intoxicating,
But I will not break the torture with a plea,
Oh, my rest is many weeks.When you finish, say: it's not sad,
That my soul is not in the world,
I'm going down the road
Watch how the children play.Gooseberries bloom on the bushes,
And they carry bricks behind the fence,
Who is he! - My brother or lover,
I don't remember and I don't need to remember.How light is here and how homeless,
Resting a tired body...
And passers-by think vaguely:
That's right, just yesterday she was a widow.
Tsarskoye Selo
I went crazy...
March 18-19, 1911
I've lost my mind, oh strange boy
Wednesday at three o'clock!
Pricked ring finger
A ringing wasp for me.I accidentally pressed her
And she seemed to die
But the end of the poisoned sting
Was sharper than the spindle.Will I cry about you strange
Will your face smile at me?
Look! On the ring finger
So beautifully smooth ring.
I don't need my legs anymore...
<1911?>
I don't need my legs anymore
Let them turn into a fish tail!
I swim, and the coolness is joyful,
The distant bridge turns white.I do not need a humble soul,
Let it become smoke, light smoke,
Taking off over the black embankment,
It will be light blue.Watch how deep I dive
I hold on to the seaweed with my hand,
I do not repeat any words
And I will not be captivated by anyone's longing ...And you, my distant, really
Has he become pale and mournful?
What do I hear? For three whole weeks
You all whisper: “Poor, why ?!”
II
Deception
I
November 2, 1910
This morning is drunk with the spring sun
And on the terrace you can hear the smell of roses,
And the sky is brighter than blue faience.
Notebook covered in soft morocco,
I read elegies and stanzas in it,
Written by my grandmother.I see the road to the gate, and pedestals
They turn white clearly in the emerald turf,
Oh, the heart loves sweetly and blindly!
And exquisite flower beds delight,
And the sharp cry of a crow in the black sky,
And in the depths of the alley is the arch of the crypt.
Kyiv
II
January 1910
The sultry wind blows hot,
The sun burned my hands
Above me is an air vault,
Like blue glass.Immortals smell dry
In a scattered braid,
On the trunk of a gnarled spruce
Ant Highway.The pond is lazy silver,
Life is easy again
Who will dream of me today
In a light hammock net?
Kyiv
III
September 1910
Blue evening. The winds subsided,
The bright light is calling me home.
I wonder who is there? - Isn't it the groom?
Isn't this my fiancé?On the terrace the silhouette is familiar,
A quiet conversation can be heard.
Oh, such captivating languor
I didn't know until now.The poplars rustled anxiously,
Tender dreams visited them,
Blued steel skies
The stars are matte pale.I carry a bouquet of white lions,
For this, a secret fire is hidden in them,
Who, taking flowers from the hands of the timid,
Touches a warm hand.
Tsarskoye Selo
IV
Autumn 1910
I wrote the words
I didn't dare to say for a long time.
A dull headache
The body is strangely numb.The distant horn is silent,
In the heart all the same riddles
Light autumn snow
Lie down on the croquet ground.Leaves last to rustle!
Thoughts are the last to languish!
I didn't want to interfere
The one that should have fun.Forgive red lips
I am their cruel joke...
Oh you will come to us
Tomorrow on the first run.Candles are lit in the living room
During the day their shimmer is softer,
A whole bouquet will be brought
Roses from the greenhouse.
Tsarskoye Selo
I'm drunk with you...
1911
I'm having fun drunk with you
There is no sense in your stories;
Autumn early hung
The flags are yellow on the elms.Both of us are in a deceitful country
Wandered and bitterly repent
But why a strange smile
And frozen smile?We wanted stinging flour
Instead of serene happiness ...
I won't leave my friend
And careless and tender.
Paris
Husband whipped me...
Autumn 1911
Husband whipped me patterned
Double folded belt.
For you in the casement window
I sit with fire all night.It's dawning. And above the forge
Smoke rises.
Ah, with me, a sad prisoner,
You couldn't stay again.For you, I'm gloomy
I took a share of flour,
Or do you love a blonde
Or a redhead?How can I hide you, sonorous groans!
In the heart of a dark stuffy hops;
And the rays fall thin
On an unrumpled bed.
Heart to heart...
Spring 1911
Heart to heart is not riveted
If you want, leave.
Much happiness is in store
For those who are free on the way.I don't cry, I don't complain
I won't be happy!
Don't kiss me, I'm tired
Death will come to kiss.The days of sharp yearnings are lived
Together with the white winter ...
Why, why are you
Better than my chosen one.
song
March 11, 1911
I'm at sunrise
I sing about love
On my knees in the garden
Swan field.Rip and throw
(Let him forgive me)
I see the girl is barefoot
Weeping at the wattle fence.I'm at sunrise
I sing about love
On my knees in the garden
Swan field.
Tsarskoye Selo
I came here...
February 23, 1911
I came here, loafer
I don't care where I get bored!
On the hillock the mill slumbers,
Years can be silent here.Over dried dodder
The bee floats softly
I call the mermaid by the pond,
And the mermaid died.Dragged in rusty mud
The pond is wide and shallow.
Above the trembling aspen
The light moon shone.I see everything as new
Poplars smell damp.
I am silent. Shut up, ready
Become you again - the earth.
Tsarskoye Selo
white night
February 6, 1911
Ah, I didn't lock the door,
Didn't light the candles
You don't know how, tired,
I didn't dare lie down.Watch the stripes go out
In the sunset darkness needles,
Drunk on the sound of a voice
Similar to yours.And know that all is lost
That life is a damned hell!
Oh I was sure
What are you coming back.
Tsarskoye Selo
Under a canopy...
September 24, 1911
It's hot under the canopy of the dark barn,
I laugh, and in my heart I cry angrily,
An old friend mutters to me: “Don't croak!
We will not meet luck on the way!But I don't trust my old friend
He is funny, blind and miserable,
He measured his whole life with steps
Long and boring roads.
Tsarskoye Selo
Bury me wind...
December 1909
Bury, bury me, wind!
My relatives did not come
I need a wandering evening
And the breath of the quiet earth.I was free like you
But I wanted to live too much
You see, the wind, my corpse is cold,
And no one to lay down their hands.Close this black wound
Veil of evening darkness
And led the blue fog
I need to read the psalms.And so that it's easy for me, lonely,
Go to the last sleep
Proshumi high sedge
About spring, about my spring.
Kyiv
You believe...
Believe me, not a snake's sharp sting,
And my anguish drank my blood.
In a white field, I became a quiet girl,
The purpose of the lesson. give an idea of the personality of the poet; about the motives and moods of early lyrics.
Lesson equipment. reproductions of portraits of A. A. Akhmatova by Altman. Petrov-Vodkin, Annenkov. Modigliani and others; Akhmatova's favorite musical works: Beethoven's last three sonatas, music by Chopin, Shostakovich.
Methodological techniques. teacher's lecture, students' messages, commented reading.
Anna Andreevna Akhmatova (Gorenko) lived a long poetic life and in her later years did not like it when preference was given to her early lyrics. But in the framework of this lesson, we will talk about the early work of Akhmatova. He was an unusually talented, handsome, majestic, whole and modest person.
Here is how she writes about herself in her memoirs.
II. Commented reading of Akhmatova's autobiography "Briefly about myself".
III. Commentary reading of poems.
The glory of Akhmatova was already brought by the first collections of poems. The lyrics of the young Akhmatova received recognition on the “tower” of Vyach. Ivanova. In the preface to the first lyric collection Evening (1912), Kuzmin wrote about her ability to “understand and love things. in their incomprehensible connection with the experienced minutes”, and the “things” are highlighted with the accuracy and sharpness of the “dying” vision. Such, for example, is a poem from the first (Kiev) notebook of 1909:
(Read by a teacher or a pre-prepared student.)
I pray to the window beam -
He is pale, thin, straight.
Today I am silent in the morning
And the heart is cut in half.
At my washstand
The copper turned green.
But this is how the beam plays on him,
What fun to watch.
So innocent and simple
In the evening silence
But this temple is empty
It's like a golden holiday
And consolation to me.
Almost nothing is said about the state of mind, only "the heart is cut in half." The rest is miraculously clear without explanation. A simple household item, a washstand, is transformed by the play of a sunbeam and the imagination of the lyrical heroine into a “golden holiday” and even “consolation”. An ordinary detail becomes significant. A sonorous syllable, light rhythm, simple vocabulary set off, speak grief, the first word and last line seem to loop the composition of the poem, treat despair.
We read and comment on poems from the collection "Evening", prepared at home. We note the accuracy and subtlety of the transfer of the experiences of the lyrical heroine, the depth and richness of the poems with their small volume, the noble simplicity of the syllable, the ability to describe the character with one gesture, intonation, replica:
So helplessly my chest went cold,
But my steps were light.
I put on my right hand
Left hand glove.
("The Song of the Last Meeting", 1911)
Confusion, spiritual devastation, the experience of separation are conveyed by this involuntary irregularity.
B. M. Eikhenbaum saw in Akhmatova's early poems "something like a great novel." Indeed, there are heroes She and He, their psychological portraits, the history of relationships, plots of feelings. And invariably - the inseparability of feelings, separation, "non-meeting". In Akhmatova's lyrics there is a whole world of the female soul, passionate, tender and proud. The content of the heroine's life is love, all its shades - from a premonition of love to "white-hot passion."
Akhmatova is a recognized master of love lyrics, a connoisseur of the female soul, her hobbies, passions, experiences. Her first poems about love had a touch of melodrama (later she had a negative attitude to these first poetic experiments), but soon psychological overtones began to sound in her works, revealing the state of mind of the lyrical heroine through a description of her external behavior, through expressive, clear details (“Evening clock in front of the table.", "I learned to live simply, wisely.").
The pinnacle of Akhmatova's love lyrics is in her poems dedicated to Boris Anrep ("The evening light is wide and yellow.", "This meeting is not sung by anyone.", "It's simple, it's clear.", "The Tale of the Black Ring"). In them, she follows, above all, the Pushkin tradition. A deep, strong, but unrequited feeling reveals the spiritual height and nobility of the lyrical heroine.
The second collection of "Rosary"(1914) strengthened the success of Akhmatov's poetry. We read and comment on poems from this collection.
Here the "romance" develops, often intertwined with the urban theme. The hero of Akhmatova's lyrics is Petersburg, "a city beloved by bitter love." For acmeists, the northern capital is not only a theme, an image, but also a style-forming principle: the austerity of St. Petersburg, its “classicism” required an appropriate poetics.
The motive of misunderstanding, alienation deepens:
He talked about summer and
That being a poet to a woman is absurd.
As I remember the high royal house
And the Peter and Paul Fortress!
(“The last time we met then.”, 1914)
The depth of psychologism is achieved with the help of a detail highlighted by memory, which becomes a sign of a heightened feeling. The combination of the everyday details of the St. Petersburg landscape with the depth of emotions gives the poems an extraordinary artistic and psychological persuasiveness. Signs of St. Petersburg here - a sign of separation.
In a poem dedicated to Alexander Blok, there is a story about meeting him in a St. Petersburg apartment:
But the conversation will be remembered
Smoky afternoon, Sunday
In a gray and high house
At the sea gates of the Neva.
The images of the hero and the city are inextricably merged, covered with a gentle haze of enthusiastic and respectful memories.
IV. Message-report of the student "Portraits of Akhmatova"
V. Reading and analysis of poems from the collection "White Pack"(Poems read by students.)
The war of 1914 resonated directly or indirectly in many of Akhmatova's poems (motives of her husband-warrior, battle, separation). Already in The Rosary, and especially in the third collection, The White Flock (1917), the style of the poetess changes. “The voice of renunciation grows stronger and stronger in Akhmatova’s poems,” wrote O. E. Mandelstam: motives of detachment, humility, renunciation of the world, high, solemnly slow speech, classicism, more and more often the name of the Lord:
The transition to late lyrics, included in a broad historical context, is being prepared, and philosophical reflections become more noticeable. The theme of the poet and poetry, its purpose is determined. In the poem "Solitude" (1914), the image of a heroine close to Lermontov's "Prophet" appears:
So many stones are thrown at me
None of them are scary anymore.
The lyrical heroine does not complain, does not grumble, but calmly and courageously accepts the mission entrusted to her. The divine gift allows you to see the world from above: the dawn, and the last ray of the sun, and the winds of the northern seas. The image of the Muse arises, created with the help of synecdoche:
And not the page I added -
Divinely calm and light,
A swarthy hand will add the Muses.
(Reference: synecdoche is a special case of metonymy, when a part denotes a whole) .
In the poem of 1915, the theme of the poet's destiny deepens, goes back to Pushkin's tradition:
We freshness of words and feelings of simplicity
Lose not only that the painter - vision
Or an actor - voice and movement,
And for a beautiful woman - beauty?
But don't try to keep for yourself
Given to you by heaven:
Convicted - and we know it ourselves -
We squander, not hoard.
Go alone and heal the blind
To know in the dark hour of doubt
The pupils' malevolent mockery
And the indifference of the crowd.
It is with the Pushkin tradition that Akhmatova’s characteristic scale of poetic thought, the harmonic accuracy of the verse, the variety of lyrical themes, the ability to reveal the universal significance of a unique spiritual movement, to correlate a sense of history with a sense of modernity are connected.
Supplementary material for the teacher.
This is the most characteristic poem from the book "Evening". in which conflicts of difficult relationships between a man and a woman are presented in a variety of ways. In this case, a woman, seized with sudden compassion and sharp pity, admits her guilt before the one she makes suffer. The conversation is conducted with an invisible interlocutor - obviously, with his own conscience, since this interlocutor knows about the pallor of the heroine, covering her face with both a veil and her hands. The answer to the question: “Why are you pale today?” and is the story of the end of the last meeting with "him". There is no name, nor - yet - other "identifying" signs of the hero, the reader must be satisfied only with the fact that this is a very well-known heroine and an important person for her. The whole conversation is omitted, its content is concentrated in one metaphor." I am a tart sadness / Drunk him drunk. She “drank” him with sadness, but now she is suffering, guilty of this, able to worry about another, repent of the harm done to him. The metaphor develops into a hidden comparison: the drunk "drunken" "came out staggering", but this is not a decrease in the hero, because he is only like a drunk, knocked out of balance.
The poet, after his departure, sees what the heroine cannot see - his facial expressions: “The mouth twisted painfully”, - as the inner interlocutor saw her hidden pallor. Another interpretation is just as admissible: at first, a pained expression appeared on her face, then he left, staggering, but everything was confused in the perception of the confused heroine, she tells herself, recalls what happened (“How can I forget?”), Without controlling the flow of her own memory, highlighting the most intense external moments of the event. It is impossible to convey directly the gamut of feelings that gripped her, therefore, it is only about the act caused by them. “I ran away without touching the railing,” / I ran after him to the gate. The repetition of a verb in such a capacious poem of three quatrains, where Akhmatova even saves on pronouns, emphasizes the strength of the internal turning point that has taken place in the heroine. "Not touching the railing", that is, swiftly, without any caution, did not think about himself - this is an acmeistically accurate, psychologically rich inner detail. Here the poet, seeing this detail of the heroine's behavior, is already clearly separated from her, who is hardly capable of fixing such particulars in her mind.
In the third stanza there is one more, in fact, already the fourth indication of the swiftness of this run: “Suffocating, I shouted. ". Only a scream escapes from his tight throat. And at the end of the first verse of the last stanza, the word “joke” hangs, separated from the end of the phrase by a strong poetic transfer, thereby sharply highlighted. It is clear that all the previous ones were serious, that the heroine was embarrassed, did not think she was trying to refute the previously spoken cruel words. In this context, there is nothing funny about the word "joke"; on the contrary, the heroine herself immediately, inconsistently, proceeds to extremely serious words: “Joke / Everything that happened. If you leave, I'll die" (again, verbal economy, even "If you..." is omitted). At this point, she believes in what she says. But he, as we guess, having just listened to much more than anything else, no longer believes, he only nobly portrays calmness, which is reflected on his face in the form of a terrible mask (again his facial expressions): “He smiled calmly and terribly” (Akhmatova’s favorite syntactic device - oxymoron, combination of incongruous). He will not return, but he still loves the woman who brought him such grief, takes care of her, asks her, excited, to leave the yard: “And he said to me:“ Do not stand in the wind.
The pronoun "me" here seems to be twice superfluous. The hero has no one else to turn to, and the scheme of the 3-foot anapaest does not imply a word with an accent in this place. But the more important it is. This monosyllabic word delays the pace and rhythm of speech, draws attention to itself: so he told me, so to me, despite the fact that I am like that. Thanks to the finest nuances, we think out a lot, understand what is not directly said. Real art presupposes just such a perception.
2. Civil and patriotic lyrics.
In 1917, shortly before the October coup, when the decaying Russian army was already a weak defense for Petrograd and the German invasion of the capital was expected, Akhmatova wrote a poem that opened with the words:
When in anguish of suicide
The people of the German guests were waiting
And the high spirit of Byzantium
He flew away from the Russian church,
When the Neva capital,
Forgetting your greatness
Like a drunken harlot
Didn't know who was taking it.
These subordinate clauses, drawn out for two stanzas, were replaced by the lapidary main: “I had a voice,” correlating with everything previously said. The people seemed to be ready for national self-destruction. The second stanza reflected the governmental leapfrog of the last years of the empire and the times of the February Revolution. "The spirit of Byzantium" is a concept that is especially important for the poets of the Silver Age, followers of Vl.S. Solovyov, including A.A. Blok. Russia was perceived as the "capital" of Orthodoxy, the successor of Byzantium, and the loss of "Byzantium" as the cause of the coming world catastrophe. “I had a voice” - it is said as if it were a divine revelation. But this, obviously, is both an inner voice reflecting the heroine's struggle with herself, and an imaginary voice of a friend who left her homeland. The call of the “voice” to leave Russia forever, his promises to wash the blood from her hands (staying in Russia, she seemed to become involved in everything that threatens the country), free from shame, even give a new name and with it the oblivion of misfortunes (“I am a new I’ll cover with a name / Pain of defeats and insults”) in a newspaper publication of 1918, the poem ended, there was no answer to the “voice”. In Plantain, the second stanza was removed (the reader would now put the Bolsheviks in the place of the Germans, which was no longer safe for the author in the year of Gumilyov’s execution), but a clear answer appeared - the stanza “But indifferent and calm. ". The choice has been decisively made. The voice, previously, perhaps, divinely inspired, utters, it turns out, an "unworthy" speech that defiles the "sorrowful spirit." Akhmatova accepts her share as a great test sent from above. All the same epithet “calmly” in this case means the appearance of indifference and calmness, this is a sign of the extraordinary self-control of a lonely but courageous woman.
In the 1940 edition, the first stanza was also removed. About the "German guests", expected in 1917, have long been forgotten, but the experiences experienced have increased many times over (1940 is the year the "Requiem" was completed). The poem in this version began with the words “I had a voice. He called comfortingly. ” and consisted not of four or five, but of three stanzas. The more energetic the ending now sounded, the sharper the contrast between the consoling voice and the lofty mournful spirit.
“I’m not with those who threw the earth / To be torn to pieces by enemies,” Akhmatova unequivocally declares in a 1922 poem (the book “Anno Domini”), sustained in a high style (Old Slavic “I won’t heed”, “songs ... I won’t give” in the meaning of "I will not dedicate poetry", the words "torment", "exile", etc.). In 1917, “a deaf and sinful land” was mentioned, but here those who remained are ruining “the remnant of youth” “in the deaf haze of a fire.” Not only those who left and those who remained are opposed. “Those who abandoned the earth” (first stanza) and “exiles” (second stanza) are different people, and the author’s attitude towards them is different. There is no sympathy for the first. "But the exile is eternally pitiful to me, / Like a prisoner, like a sick person." Specifically, they mean, one might assume, writers and philosophers expelled from Soviet Russia in 1922 as a hostile element. However, the fate of those who remained, pitying those who were expelled (“Your road is dark, wanderer, / Someone else’s bread smells of wormwood”), is no better: “We have not rejected a single blow / We have not deflected from ourselves.” The political protest against the expulsion of the color of the Russian intelligentsia is combined with the majestic acceptance of one's own lot. Historically, "every hour" of martyrdom will be justified. The morphological neologism in the final phrase “there are no people in the world without tears”, an oxymoron combination of traits of arrogance and simplicity characteristic of “us”, proclaimed by a solemn oratorical speech, does not at all look like a tribute to formal sophistication and does not contradict the strict form of stanzas, isolated quatrains of neutral, the most common in Russian poetry of the 4-foot amba with the usual cross-rhyming, precise, rhyming consonances that do not hold attention to themselves.
1. Source. Egorova N.V. Lesson developments in Russian literature of the twentieth century: grade 11, first half of the year. - 4th ed. revised and additional - M. VAKO, 2005. - 368 p. - (To help the school teacher). (return)
2. Vyach. Ivanov - Vyacheslav Ivanovich Ivanov (February 16, 1866 - July 16, 1949); Russian symbolist poet, philosopher, translator, playwright, literary critic, Doctor of Philology, ideologist of Dionysianism. A bright representative of the "Silver Age". (return)
3. Mikhail Alekseevich Kuzmin (October 6 (18), 1872, Yaroslavl - March 1, 1936, Leningrad) - Russian poet of the Silver Age, translator, prose writer, composer.
He graduated from the 8th St. Petersburg gymnasium, after which he studied at the conservatory for several years with N.A. Rimsky-Korsakov and A.K. Lyadov. Subsequently, M. Kuzmin acted as the author and performer of musical works for his texts.
He made his debut in 1905 in the semi-amateur Green Collection of Poems and Prose, after which Kuzmin's work aroused the interest of V.Ya. creativity. (return)
4. Collection "Rosary" - the second collection of Anna Akhmatova "Rosary" was released in May 1914, before the start of the First World War. From the moment it appeared in 1914 until 1923, the Rosary was reprinted 9 times - a rare success for a young poet.
“In March 1914, the second book, The Rosary, was published. She was given about six weeks to live. In early May, the St. Petersburg season began to fade, everyone gradually dispersed. This time, parting with St. Petersburg turned out to be eternal. , from the 19th century immediately fell into the 20th, everything became different, starting with the appearance of the city. It seemed that a small book of love lyrics by a novice author should have been drowned in world events. Time decreed otherwise. " Anna Akhmatova, Briefly about myself. Read Sat. "Rosary" on the site "Literature for Schoolchildren". (return)
5. Collection "White Flock" - the book "White Flock" was published in September 1917 by the publishing house "Hyperborey" with a circulation of 2000 copies (Date of creation: 1909–1912). The collection is dedicated to Boris Vasilievich Anrep (1883, St. Petersburg - June 7, 1969, London; Russian muralist, writer of the Silver Age, lived most of his life in Great Britain).
The collection was created in a difficult time - both for the poetess and for Russia (1917). Akhmatova herself says about him: "Readers and criticism are unfair to this book." (return)
The third book that came out from the pen of Akhmatova was The White Flock.
"In 1916, on the eve of the release of The White Pack, Osip Mandelstam wrote in a review of the collection of poems" Almanac of Muses ":" In the last poems of Akhmatova, there was a turning point to hieratic importance, religious simplicity and solemnity: I would say, after the woman, it was the turn of the wife . Remember: "a humble, shabbyly dressed, but majestic wife." The voice of renunciation is growing stronger and stronger in Akhmatova's poetry, and at present her poetry is approaching becoming one of the symbols of Russia's greatness.
The White Flock was published in September 1917. In all the few, under the conditions of troubled times, reviews of the third book of the poet, its stylistic difference was noted from the first two.
A. L. Slonimsky saw in the poems that made up the "White Flock", "a new in-depth perception of the world", which, in his opinion, was associated with the predominance of the spiritual principle over the "sensual" in the third book, and, according to the critic, in " some kind of Pushkin's view from the side"45.
Another prominent critic, K. V. Mochulsky, believes that the "sharp turnaround in Akhmatov's work" is associated with the poet's close attention to the phenomena of Russian reality in 1914-1917: "The poet leaves far behind him a circle of intimate experiences, the comfort of a "dark blue room" , a ball of multi-colored silk of changeable moods, exquisite emotions and whimsical tunes. He becomes stricter, more severe and stronger. He goes out into the open sky - and from the salty wind and steppe air his voice grows and strengthens. Images of the Motherland appear in his poetic repertoire, it is given over to a deaf the rumble of war, a quiet whisper of prayer is heard. Artistic generalization in this book is brought to typical significance.
Referring to the symbolism of the title, one can see that the words "white" and "flock" will be its fundamental components. Let's consider them in turn.
Everyone knows that colors affect our thinking and feelings. They become symbols, serve as warning signals, make us happy, sad, shape our mentality and influence our speech.
White is the color of innocence and purity. White color symbolizes purity of thoughts, sincerity, youth, innocence, inexperience. A white waistcoat gives sophistication to the look, a white dress of the bride means innocence, white spots on a geographical map - ignorance and uncertainty. In advertising, the concept of cleanliness is often embodied in sparkling snow-white tiles. Doctors wear white coats. A person who is attracted to the white color strives for perfection, he is constantly in search of himself. White color is a symbol of creative, life-loving nature.
In Russia, white is a favorite color, it is the color of the "Holy Spirit". (He descends to earth in the form of a white dove). White color is ubiquitous in national clothes and ornaments. It is also marginal, (that is, it symbolizes the transition from one state to another: death and birth again, for a new life). The symbol of this is the white dress of the bride, and the white shroud of the deceased, and white snow.
But the white color has, in addition to the joyful, its sad side of meanings. White is also the color of death. No wonder such a season as winter is associated with death in nature. The ground is covered with white snow, like a shroud. Whereas spring is the birth of a new life.
The symbol "white" finds its direct reflection in the verses of the book. Firstly, white is the color of love for Akhmatova, the personification of a quiet family life in the "white house". When love becomes obsolete, the heroine leaves "the white house and the quiet garden."
"White", as the personification of inspiration, creativity, is reflected in the following lines:
I wanted to give her a dove
The one that is whiter than everyone in the dovecote,
But the bird itself flew
For my slender guest.
("Muse left on the road", 1915, p. 77).
The white dove - a symbol of inspiration - flies after the Muse, devoting herself to creativity.
"White" is also the color of memories, memories:
Like a white stone in the depths of a well,
There is one memory in me.
("Like a white stone in the depths of a well", 1916, p. 116).
Or:
And walk to the cemetery on memorial day
Yes, look at the white lilac of God.
(“It would be better for me to call ditties provocatively”, 1914, p. 118).
Salvation Day, paradise is also indicated in white by Akhmatova:
The gate dissolved into a white paradise,
Magdalena took her son.
("Where, high, is your gypsy child", 1914, p. 100).
The image of a bird (for example, a dove, a swallow, a cuckoo, a swan, a raven) is deeply symbolic. And this symbolism is used by Akhmatova. In her work, "bird" means many things: poetry, state of mind, God's messenger. A bird is always the personification of a free life, in cages we see a miserable likeness of birds, without seeing them soaring in the sky. It is the same in the fate of the poet: the true inner world is reflected in the poems created by a free creator. But it is precisely this, freedom, that is always lacking in life.
Birds rarely live alone, mostly in flocks, and a flock is something united, united, many-sided and many-voiced. If we recall the first two books ("Evening", "Rosary"), then the main symbols will be: firstly, a dot (since "evening" is the personification of the beginning or, conversely, the end, a certain reference point), secondly, line (rosary in the form of a "ruler"), thirdly, a circle (rosary-beads) and, fourthly, a spiral (synthesis of a line and a circle). That is, these are symbols of something limited or given by the trajectory of movement, space, or time, or all at the same time.
Looking at the symbolism of the title of the third book of poetry by Akhmatova, we will see that here the temporal and spatial layers are not limited by anything. There is an exit from the circle, separation from the starting point and the intended line.
Thus, the "white flock" is an image that testifies to a change in the space-time continuum, assessments, and views. He (the image) declares a position "above" everything and everyone, from a bird's eye view.
During the writing of the first two books, the author was included in the events of the surrounding reality, being with them in the same spatial dimension. In The White Flock, Akhmatova rises above reality and, like a bird, tries to cover with her gaze a vast space and most of the history of her country, she breaks out from the powerful shackles of earthly experiences.
The analysis of the symbolism of the title of the book and the search for intratextual associations will begin with the epigraph. It is taken from I. Annensky's poem "Sweetheart":
I burn and the road is bright at night.
At the heart of this poem is a plot that tells about the criminal deliverance from the fruit of extramarital love.
The line, which has become an epigraph, acquires a different, generalizing meaning in the context of The White Pack. Annensky shows the personal tragedy of a person, the grief of a particular woman; Akhmatova, on the other hand, has the drama of a huge country, in which, it seems to her, the "voice of a man" will never sound, and "only the wind of the Stone Age knocks on black gates."
"White Flock" is a collection of poems of various orientations: these are civil lyrics, and poems of love content; it also contains the theme of the poet and poetry.
The book opens with a poem on a civil theme, in which tragic notes are felt (an echo of the epigraph, but on a larger scale):
We thought: we are poor, we have nothing,
And how they began to lose one after another,
So what happened every day
Memorial day -
Started making songs
About the great bounty of God
Yes, about our former wealth.
("We thought: we are poor, we have nothing", 1915, p. 73).
An important substantive aspect of The White Pack was, as mentioned above, the change in the aesthetic consciousness of the poet. In practice, it influenced the evolution of the character of the lyrical heroine Akhmatova. Individual existence in the third book merges with the life of the people, rises to its consciousness. I'm not alone, not we - you and me, but we are all, we are a flock. (Compare: "Evening" - "my prayer"; "Rosary" - "my and your name"; "White Flock" - "our voices").
In The White Flock, it is polyphony, polyphony that becomes a characteristic feature of the poet's lyrical consciousness. The search for Akhmatova was of a religious nature. Save the soul, as it then seemed to her, is possible only by sharing the fate of many "beggars".
The theme of beggars appeared in Akhmatova's poetry in the last years before the First World War. The outside world sounded with the voices of the beggars, and the heroine of her poems herself put on the mask of a beggar for a while.
The book "The White Pack" "opens with a choral opening, demonstrating the calm triumph of the novelty of the acquired experience"47. "Every day is the days of the war, taking away new and new victims. And Akhmatova perceived the war as the greatest national grief. And in the time of trials, the choir of the poor turned into a choir of the poet's contemporaries, all people, regardless of social affiliation. "For Akhmatova in a new book the most important thing is the spiritual unity of the people in the face of a terrible enemy. What wealth is the poet talking about here? Obviously, least of all about the material. Poverty is the flip side of spiritual wealth."48 The choral "we" in The White Pack expresses, as it were, the people's point of view on what is happening around. In the composition of the entire book, the choir acts as an active character.
In the first poem there is also the motive of death, the theme of memory sounds.
The image of death is even brighter, with even greater force, in the poem "May Snow", which gives rise to the third section of the book; here the sounds of sobs are heard, the mood of sadness is felt:
A transparent veil falls
On fresh turf and imperceptibly melts.
Cruel, cold spring
Poured kidneys kills.
And the sight of early death is so terrible,
That I cannot look at God's world.
I have the sadness that King David
Royally bestowed millenniums.
("May Snow", 1916, p. 95).
The last lines of the poem, as well as the epigraph to it, refer us to the Holy Scriptures. There is an image of King David, famous for his chants to the Glory of God. The epigraph to the poem "May Snow" points to the following lines from the Psalter: "I am tired of my sighs: every night I wash my bed, with my tears I wet my bed" (Psalm. Psalm VI, 7). Here we meet the word "night" (as in the epigraph to the whole book).
Night is the time of day, at which, usually, he is left to himself, he is given time to think, if he is alone, to cry over his troubles, to rejoice in his successes. The night is also the time of committing secret atrocities.
In the context of Akhmatova's book, as already mentioned, grief takes on enormous proportions. But this grief is sacred, as it is predetermined by God as a punishment for sins. And, perhaps, at Akhmatova's night - that dark, terrible path that both the country and the heroine must go through, having received a blessing for that.
We see that the mood of the two epigraphs determines the main tone of the mood of the heroine and the book as a whole: sadness, grief, doom and predestination.
In the poem "May Snow" we meet one of the traditional interpretations of the meaning of white - this is the color of death. May is the time when nature is full of life, and suddenly and untimely falling white "transparent veil" dooms it to death.
White as a symbol of light, beauty, we meet in poems dedicated to love, memories of a loved one:
I will leave your white house and quiet garden.
May life be empty and bright.
I will glorify you, you in my poems,
As a woman could not glorify.
("I will leave your white house and quiet garden", 1913, p. 73).
Simultaneously with the love theme in this poem, the theme of the poet and poetry is heard.
But sometimes love comes into conflict with creativity. For Akhmatova, poetry, her poems are "white bird", "jolly bird", "white flock". Everything is for the beloved:
All to you: and a daily prayer,
And insomnia melting heat,
And my white flock of poems,
And my eyes are blue fire.
("I don't know if you're alive or dead", 1915, p. 110).
But the beloved does not share the interests of the heroine. He puts her before a choice: either love or creativity:
He was jealous, anxious and tender,
How God's sun loved me
And so that she does not sing about the former,
He killed my white bird.
He said, entering the room at sunset:
"Love me, laugh, write poetry!"
And I buried a merry bird
Behind a round well near an old alder tree.
("He was jealous, anxious and tender", 1914, p. 75).
In this poem, the motive of prohibition through permission sounds. Having buried the "merry bird" Akhmatova, most likely, hides for some time in the bowels of her soul the thirst to create, to write poetry.
She tests the hero (gives him freedom from the shackles of passion). He leaves, but comes back again:
I chose my share
To the friend of my heart:
I let loose
In his Annunciation.
Yes, the gray dove returned,
Beats its wings against the glass.
As from the brilliance of a wondrous riza
It became light in the upper room.
("I chose my share", 1915, p. 107).
The poet dresses his beloved in the plumage of a gray dove, an ordinary bird - Akhmatova does not idealize her beloved, he is an ordinary person.
In everyday life, the presence of birds in nature suggests that nothing disturbs its normal course. Birds sing - it means everything is fine, there is no trouble. When they fall silent, therefore, something has either already happened or will happen soon: trouble, tragedy. In this case, birds are an indicator of normal
flow of life. Akhmatova says:
Smells like burning. four weeks
Dry peat burns in swamps.
Even the birds didn't sing today
And the aspen no longer trembles.
("July 1914", 1914, p. 96).
Akhmatova's teacher in the brevity, simplicity and authenticity of the poetic word was A. S. Pushkin throughout her life. It was he who suggested to her the image of the Muse, which would be the embodiment of Akhmatov's consciousness. Through all her work passes the image of the Muse - a friend, sister, teacher and comforter. In Akhmatova's poems, the Muse is realistic, she often takes on a human form - "slender guest", "swarthy".
The image of a bird depends on the state of the poet's soul, on her desires and aspirations. But sometimes not always fair reality, discord with a loved one leaves an imprint on him. For example:
Am I talking to you
In the sharp cry of birds of prey,
I'm not looking into your eyes
From white matte pages.
("I see, I see a moonbow", 1914, p. 101).
Or:
So wounded crane
Others are calling: kurly, kurly!
When the spring fields
Both loose and warm.
("So wounded crane", 1915. p. 103).
Or:
That's why it's dark in the light,
That's why my friends
Like evening, sad birds,
About the never-before love is sung.
("I was born neither late nor early", 1913, p. 117).
Akhmatova's bird is also an indicator of the mood of the heroine, the state of her soul.
Akhmatova in this book does not deviate from the traditional interpretation of the image of a white bird as God's messenger, an angel with white wings:
The rays of dawn burn until midnight.
How good it is in my tight lock!
About the most tender, about always wonderful
God's birds are talking to me.
("The immortelle is dry and pink. Clouds", 1916, p. 94).
Or:
We don't remember where we got married
But this church sparkled
With that fierce radiance
What only angels can do
Bring in white wings.
("Let's be together, dear, together", 1915, p. 105).
Or:
The sky sows a fine rain
To the blooming lilac.
Outside the window the wings are blowing
White, White Spirits day.
("The sky sows a fine rain", 1916, p. 113).
For Akhmatova, God is the highest essence, an immovable hypostasis, to which everything is subject. And in the last verse of the book, soaring high above the earth, she proclaims this:
A. There are unique words,
Whoever said them - spent too much.
Only blue is inexhaustible
Heavenly, and the mercy of God.
("Oh, there are unique words." 1916. p. 120).
This is a philosophical poem. Having become one of the voices of the choir at the beginning of the book, by the end of her lyrical heroine Akhmatova unites with the whole universe.
So, in the third book "The White Flock" Akhmatova uses the meanings of the words "white", "flock", "bird" both in the traditional sense, and adds meanings that are unique to her.
"The White Flock" is her poetry, her poems, feelings, moods, poured onto paper.
The white bird is a symbol of God, his messengers.
A bird is an indicator of the normal course of life on earth.
"White flock" is a sign of commonwealth, connection with others.
The "White Flock" is a height, a flight above the mortal earth, it is a craving for the Divine.
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the history of the creation of a poem from the book white flock prayer
kemine kydrasheva Pupil (116), voted 1 year ago
analysis plan
1 author title year of writing
2 theme genre
3 composition
4 main images and motifs
5 means of artistic expression
6 vocabulary
7 syntax
Prayer
Give me bitter years of sickness
Breathlessness, insomnia, fever,
Take away both the child and the friend,
And a mysterious song gift -
So I pray for Your liturgy
After so many agonizing days
To cloud over dark Russia
Became a cloud in the glory of rays.
Elena Fedorova Thinker (9025) 1 year ago
1. The poem Prayer was included in Anna Akhmatova's collection "White Flock", published in September 1917. With the outbreak of World War I, Akhmatova severely limited her public life. At this time, she suffers from tuberculosis, a disease that did not let her go for a long time. An in-depth reading of the classics (A.S. Pushkin and others) affects her poetic manner, the sharply paradoxical style of cursory psychological sketches gives way to neoclassical solemn intonations. Insightful criticism guesses in her collection The White Flock the growing "sense of personal life as a national, historical life." The White Flock came out with a circulation of 2000 copies. Its volume is much larger than previous books - there were 83 poems in four sections of the collection; the fifth section was the poem "By the Sea". 65 poems of the book have been printed previously. Many critics noted the new features of Akhmatova's poetry, the strengthening of the Pushkin principle in it. O. Mandelstam wrote in an article in 1916: “The voice of renunciation is growing stronger and stronger in Akhmatova’s poems, and at present her poetry is close to becoming one of the symbols of the greatness of Russia”
2. Motherland has never been an abstract concept for Akhmatova. The blood connection with her was felt with heightened sharpness at the most difficult time - for the country and its poet. Perhaps for the first time this was realized with the outbreak of the First World War, when history entered the fate of Akhmatova, as well as the fate of her fellow citizens.
It is no coincidence that the appeal to the genre of prayer where the fate of the motherland is at stake.
“Prayer is a request for the impossible: “Heal my soul, the king of heaven, / With the icy peace of dislike.” The prayerful mood, sometimes reaching ecstasy, is endowed with a symbolic function; it marks the intensity of the experience, erasing, in its aura, the boundary between "here" and "there". The attributes of faith bring the earthly, human drama closer to a legend, a parable, and what at first seems ordinary, gets a supernatural measure.
Akhmatova's collections: "Rosary" and "White Flock"
b) individualism of speech
c) main motives
a) What is the reason for the division of the book into four parts
b) Composition and content of the first movement
c) The movement of the soul of the lyrical heroine in the second part
d) Philosophical motives in the third part
e) the theme of memory in the fourth part
III. "White Flock" - a sense of personal life as a national life,
1. Historical publications and symbolism of the name
2. "Chorus" - beginnings and main themes
Conclusion. Similarities and differences between the two collections
Bibliography
A. A. Akhmatova is currently considered as a poet of that period of the twentieth century, which, starting from 1905, covers two world wars, revolution, civil war, Stalin's purge, cold war, thaw. She was able to create her own understanding of this period through the prism of the significance of her own fate and the fate of people close to her, who embodied certain aspects of the general situation.
Not everyone knows that for decades Akhmatova waged a titanic and doomed struggle to convey to her readers the "royal word", to stop being in their eyes only the author of "The Gray-Eyed King" and "mixed gloves." In her first books, she sought to express a new understanding of history and the man in it. Akhmatova entered literature immediately as a mature poet. She did not have to go through the school of literary apprenticeship, which took place before the eyes of readers, although many great poets did not escape this fate.
But, despite this, Akhmatova's creative path was long and difficult. It is divided into periods, one of which is early work, which includes the collections "Evening", "Rosary" and "White Flock" - a transitional book.
Within the early period of creativity, the worldview growth of the poet's consciousness takes place. Akhmatova perceives the reality around her in a new way. From intimate, sensual experiences, she comes to the solution of moral global issues.
In this work, I will consider two books by Akhmatova, published between 1914 and 1917, namely: The Rosary and The White Flock.
The choice of the topic of my work, especially the chapters related to the definition of the symbolism of the title of a poetic book, is not accidental. This problem has been little studied. A relatively small number of works are devoted to her, in which researchers approach the analysis of A. Akhmatova's books in various aspects.
There is no work devoted to a holistic analysis of collections, including an analysis of the symbolism of the titles of A. Akhmatova's books, which, in my opinion, is important, since Akhmatova, when creating a book, always paid special attention to its title.
Thus, the purpose of my work is to study books, as well as the importance of the title of the book in the work of A. Akhmatova. As a result of this, I will get a very vivid and multifaceted idea of the spiritual and biographical experience of the author, the circle of mind, personal fate, and the creative evolution of the poet.
As a result, I have the following tasks:
1. analyze two collections of Akhmatova;
2. identify the main similarities and differences between books;
3. reveal in the abstract such topical issues as the theme of memory and nationality;
4. emphasize religious motives, "intimacy" and "choral" beginnings in these collections;
5. compare the opinions of different critics on one of the issues, compare them and draw a conclusion from this;
6. get acquainted with the theory of the title, analyze the titles of these books from the point of view of reflecting all possible associations in them and trace the dynamics of the formation of the poet's worldview.
§one. "Rosary" - intimate experiences of the heroine
1. Features of the collection "Rosary"
Akhmatova's second book of poems was an extraordinary success. Her publication in the publishing house "Hyperborey" in 1914 made the name of Akhmatova known all over Russia. The first edition came out in a considerable circulation for that time - 1000 copies. The main part of the first edition of the Rosary contains 52 poems, 28 of which were previously published. Until 1923, the book was reprinted eight times. Many verses of the Rosary have been translated into foreign languages. Press reviews were numerous and mostly favorable. Akhmatova herself singled out an article (Russian Thought. - 1915. - No. 7) by Nikolai Vasilyevich Nedobrovo, a critic and poet with whom she was well acquainted. The poem “You have not been separated from me for a whole year ...” in the “White Pack” is addressed to Nedobrovo.
The epigraph is from E. Boratynsky's poem "Justification".
Like most young poets, Anna Akhmatova often has words: pain, longing, death. This so natural and therefore beautiful youthful pessimism has so far been the property of "pen trials" and, it seems, in Akhmatova's poems for the first time got its place in poetry.
In it, a number of hitherto mute existences find their voice - women who are in love, cunning, dreaming and enthusiastic finally speak their authentic and at the same time artistically convincing language. That connection with the world, which was mentioned above and which is the lot of every true poet, Akhmatova is almost achieved, because she knows the joy of contemplating the outside and knows how to convey this joy to us.
Here I turn to the most significant thing in Akhmatova's poetry, to her style: she almost never explains, she shows. This is also achieved by the choice of images, very thoughtful and original, but most importantly - their detailed development.
Epithets that determine the value of an object (such as: beautiful, ugly, happy, unhappy, etc.) are rare. This value is inspired by the description of the image and the relationship of the images. Akhmatova has many tricks for this. To name a few: a comparison of an adjective that specifies color with an adjective that specifies shape:
... And densely dark green ivy
Curled the high window.
... There is a crimson sun
Above the shaggy gray smoke ...
repetition in two adjacent lines, doubling our attention to the image:
...Tell me how they kiss you,
Tell me how you kiss.
... In the snowy branches of black jackdaws,
Shelter for black jackdaws.
turning an adjective into a noun:
... The orchestra is playing cheerfully ...
There are a lot of color definitions in Akhmatova's poems, and most often for yellow and gray, which are still the rarest in poetry. And, perhaps, as confirmation of the non-randomness of this taste of hers, most of the epithets emphasize the poverty and dimness of the subject: “a worn rug, worn-out heels, a faded flag,” etc. Akhmatova, in order to fall in love with the world, you need to see it sweet and simple.
Akhmatova's rhythm is a powerful aid to her style. Pauses help her to highlight the most necessary words in a line, and in the whole book there is not a single example of an accent on an unstressed word, or, conversely, a word, in the sense of a stressed word, without stress. If anyone takes the trouble to look at the collection of any modern poet from this point of view, he will be convinced that usually the situation is different. The rhythm of Akhmatova is characterized by weakness and shortness of breath. The four-line stanza, and she wrote almost the entire book, is too long for her. Its periods are most often closed with two lines, sometimes three, sometimes even one. The causal connection with which she tries to replace the rhythmic unity of the stanza, for the most part, does not achieve its goal.
The verse became firmer, the content of each line denser, the choice of words chastely stingy, and, best of all, the dispersion of thought disappeared.
But for all its limitations, Akhmatova's poetic talent is undoubtedly rare. Her deep sincerity and truthfulness, refinement of images, insinuating persuasiveness of rhythms and melodious sonority of verse put her in one of the first places in "intimate" poetry.
Almost avoiding word formation, which in our time is so often unsuccessful, Akhmatova is able to speak in such a way that long-familiar words sound new and sharp.
The chill of moonlight and gentle, soft femininity emanates from Akhmatova's poems. And she herself says: "You breathe the sun, I breathe the moon." Indeed, she breathes the moon, and moon dreams tell us her dreams of love, silvered with rays, and their motive is simple, unskillful.
In her poems there is no sunshine, no brightness, but they strangely attract to themselves, beckon with some incomprehensible reticence and timid anxiety.
Almost always Akhmatova sings about him, about the one, about the one whose name is "Beloved". For him, for the Beloved, she saves her smile:
I have one smile.
So. Slightly visible movement of the lips.
For you, I save it ... -
For her beloved, her longing is not even longing, but sadness, “astringent sadness”, sometimes gentle and quiet.
She is afraid of betrayal, loss and repetition, “after all, there are so many sorrows in
What is close, the time is near,
What will he measure for everyone
My white shoe.
Love and sadness, and dreams, everything is woven by Akhmatova with the simplest earthly images, and perhaps this is where her charm lies.
“I… in this gray, everyday dress with worn-out heels,” she says of herself. Her poetry is in everyday dress, and yet she is beautiful, for Akhmatova is a poet.
Her poems are filled with earthly drink, and it is a pity that the simplicity of the earthly often brings them closer to the deliberately primitive.
The feeling of happiness in the heroine is caused by objects breaking through the shutter and, maybe. Carrying death with them, but the feeling of joy from communicating with the awakening, resurgent nature is stronger than death.
The heroine of The Rosary finds true happiness in liberation from the burden of things, the tightness of stuffy rooms, in gaining complete freedom and independence.
Many other verses from the book "Rosary" indicate that the search for Akhmatova was of a religious nature. N.V. Nedobrovo noted this in his article about Akhmatova: “The religious path is so defined in the Gospel of Luke (ch. 17, p. 33): Yu" 1 .
Concluding the conversation about the features of the "Rosary", we can conclude that already in this collection there is a crisis of the individualistic consciousness of the poet and an attempt is made to go beyond the consciousness of one person, to the world in which the poet finds his circle, however, also limited, and partially illusory , created by creative imagination, based on the above literary traditions. The very method of “disguising” the heroine as a beggar is connected, on the one hand, with the ever-increasing gap between the facts of the poet’s real biography and their reflection in poetry, and, on the other hand, with the author’s certain desire to close this gap.
Here one can trace the religious and philosophical orientation of Akhmatova's work.
Rosaries are beads strung on a thread or braid. Being an indispensable attribute of a religious cult, the rosary helps the believer keep count of prayers and kneeling. The rosary has a different shape: they can be in the form of beads (that is, the beads are strung on a thread whose end and beginning are connected), and they can simply be a “ruler”.
Before us are two possible meanings of the symbol "rosary":
1. linearity, (that is, the consistent development of events, feelings, the gradual growth of consciousness, creative skill);
2. symbol of a circle (movement in a closed space, cyclicity of time).
The meaning of linearity, an increase (and for Akhmatova this is precisely growth) of the strength of feelings, consciousness, approaching in its volume to moral universals, is reflected in the composition and general content of the four parts of the book "Rosary".
But still, we cannot ignore the interpretation of the "rosary" as a circle, analyzing the symbolism of the title of this book, since we must use all possible variants of meanings.
Let's try to connect a line and a circle together. The movement of the line in a circle without connecting the beginning and end will give us the so-called spiral. Direction forward in a spiral implies a return back for a certain period (repetition of the passed element for a certain period of time).
Thus, it is possible that Akhmatova's author's worldview did not develop in a straight line, but, in conjunction with a circle, in a spiral. Let's see if this is so, having considered the four parts of the book, namely: we will determine according to what principles the division into parts took place, what motives, images, themes are leading in each of the parts, whether they change throughout the book, which in connection with this is seen author's position.
Let's start the analysis of the internal content of the book with an epigraph taken from E. Baratynsky's poem "Justification":
Forgive me forever! but know that the two guilty,
Not one, there are names
In my poems, in love stories.
These lines already at the beginning of the book declare a lot, namely: that in the "Rosary" it will no longer be about the individual experiences of the lyrical heroine, not about her suffering and prayers ("my prayer", "I"), but about feelings, experiences, responsibility of two people (“you and me”, “our names”), that is, in the epigraph, the theme of love is immediately declared as one of the dominant ones in this book. The phrase "in the legends of love" in the "Rosary" introduces the themes of time and memory.
So, let's determine by what principle the book was divided into parts. In our opinion, on the basis of logical development, enlargement of images, motives and themes already stated in the first book, as well as in connection with the gradual transition from the personal to the more general (from feelings of confusion, unhappiness in love, dissatisfaction with oneself through the theme of memory (one of the most important for the entire work of Akhmatova) to a premonition of an impending catastrophe).
Consider the composition and content of the first part.
The thematic dominant of this part will be love poems (17 poems). Moreover, they are about love without reciprocity, which makes you suffer, leads to separation, it is a “tombstone” that presses on the heart. Such love does not inspire, it is difficult to write:
Don't like, don't want to watch?
Oh, how damned beautiful you are!
And I can't fly
And from childhood she was winged.
("Confusion", 2, 1913, p. 45).
Feelings have become obsolete, but the memory of the first tender days is dear. The heroine not only caused pain and suffering herself, but they did the same to her. She's not the only one to blame. N. Nedobrovo caught this change in the consciousness of the heroine, seeing in the poetry of the "Rosary" "a lyrical soul rather harsh than too soft, rather cruel than tearful, and clearly dominating rather than oppressed." And indeed it is:
When happiness is pennies
You will live with a dear friend
And for the weary soul
Everything will immediately become disgusting -
On my solemn night
Do not come. I know you.
And how could I help you
I don't heal from happiness.
(“I do not ask for your love”, 1914, p. 47).
The heroine passes judgment on herself and her lover: we cannot be together, because we are different. It is only related that both can love and love:
Let's not drink from the same glass
We are neither water nor red wine,
We don't kiss early in the morning
And in the evening we will not look out the window.
You breathe the sun, I breathe the moon
But we live by love alone.
(“Let's not drink from one glass”, 1913, p. 52).
And this love breath, the story of the feelings of two people will remain in memory thanks to the verses:
In your poems my breath blows.
Oh, there is a fire that dare not
Touch neither oblivion nor fear.
(“Let's not drink from the same glass”, 1913, pp. 52-53).
The poem “We are all harlots here, harlots”, in the first part of the Rosary, gives rise to the development of the theme of guilt, sinfulness, vanity of life:
Oh, how my heart yearns!
Am I waiting for the hour of death?
And the one that's dancing now
It will definitely go to hell.
(“We are all harlots here, harlots,” 1912, p. 54).
In the second part of the Rosary, the feelings of two lovers are replaced by the loneliness of the heroine. The lyrical heroine again blames herself for all the troubles and misunderstandings. How many times does this banal sound: "I'm sorry!" from her mouth:
Forgive me, funny boy
That I brought you death. - ...
As if hoarding omens
My dislike. Sorry!
Why did you take vows
Forgive me, funny boy
My tortured owlet!…
(“High vaults of the church”, 1913, p. 56).
Thus, the heroine tries to repeat the movement of her own soul. She defends herself from upcoming feelings, tries to lead a religious lifestyle that promises her calm and stability:
I learned to live simply, wisely,
Look up to the sky and pray to God
And wander long before evening,
To allay unnecessary anxiety.
She even suggests that if the hero knocks on her door, she probably won't hear it:
And if you knock on my door,
I don't think I can even hear.
(“I have learned to live simply, wisely”, 1912, p. 58).
But right there, in the poem "Insomnia", she cannot fall asleep, listening to distant steps, in the hope that they may belong to Him:
Somewhere cats meow plaintively,
I catch the sound of footsteps...
("Insomnia", 1912, p. 59).
We see that throwing occurs in the soul of the heroine, there is again a mess, chaos. She tries to return to what has already been experienced again, but the general forward movement of consciousness is still felt.
In the second part, two poems (“Voice of Memory” and “Everything is the same here, the same as before”) are devoted to the theme of memory. Akhmatova recalls both Tsarskoye Selo, where anxiety reigns, and the Florentine gardens, where the spirit of death wafts and, “prophesying the imminent bad weather,” “smoke creeps low.”
In the third part of the book "Rosary" there is a new round of the "spiral".
Step back: the heroine again does not consider herself the only one guilty. In the first poem of this part, “Pray for the poor, for the lost,” philosophical motives appear: the heroine asks why God punished her day after day and hour after hour? In search of an answer, the heroine looks through her life. Although she does not fully justify herself for her guilt, she finds her own guilt insufficient to explain the punishment. The reason that the lyrical heroine, in the end, names is of a completely different order: “Or was it an angel who pointed out to me a light invisible to us?”
The heroine, however, considers herself an unfairly accused victim. But instead of rebellion, there is more passive resistance: sorrow, questioning. She submits to divine punishment, finding something good in him.
And a new step in the “turn of the spiral” is the change in the view of the heroine Akhmatova on the past. He becomes somewhat detached, from somewhere above, from that height, when there is sobriety, objectivity of assessment. She opposes herself to others ("we" - "you"):
I won't drink wine with you
Because you are a naughty boy.
I know - you have
With anyone to kiss under the moonlight.
And we have peace and quiet,
And we have bright eyes
There is no order to raise.
(“I will not drink wine with you”, 1913, p. 65).
The heroine leaves her lover in worldly life, wishes happiness with a new girlfriend, good luck, honor, wants to protect him from experiences:
You don't know that I'm crying
I'm losing count for days.
(“You will live without knowing hardship”, 1915, p. 66).
She frees him from mutual responsibility and ranks herself among the crowd of God's wanderers praying for human sins:
Many of us are homeless
Our strength is
What is for us, blind and dark,
The light of God's house.
And for us, bowed down,
Ours to God's throne
(“You will live without knowing the hardship”, 1915, pp. 66 - 67).
Beloved Akhmatova retains in herself only as a piece of memory, for the abandonment of which she prays from the "prophecies" "from old books":
So that in a languid string
You didn't seem like a stranger.
(“Dying, I yearn for immortality”, 1912, p. 63).
The main theme of the fourth part of the "Rosary" is the theme of memory.
The heroine returns to the abandoned past, visits her favorite places: Tsarskoe Selo, where the "willow, mermaid tree" stands in her way; Petersburg, where "a stifling and harsh wind sweeps away the cinders from black pipes"; Venice. She also expects a meeting with her beloved. But this is more like a collision that weighs everyone down:
And eyes that looked dull
Didn't take me off my ring.
Not a single muscle moved
Oh, I know: his consolation -
It is intense and passionate to know
That he doesn't need anything
That I have nothing to refuse him.
(“Guest”, 1914, p. 71).
Akhmatova also comes to visit the poet (the poem “I came to visit the poet” with a dedication to Alexander Blok), a conversation with whom, she thinks, will be remembered for a long time, she will not forget the depth of his eyes.
The last poem of the fourth part and the book "Rosary" is a three-line. It is very significant, as it is, as it were, a transitional bridge to the book The White Pack (1917). And lines
In the canals of the river Neva the lights tremble.
Tragic autumn decorations are scarce.
(“Will you forgive me these November days”, 1913, p. 72)
as if prophesying about impending changes, the transformation of the usual course of life.
Thus, having examined the four parts of the book "Rosary", we saw that the experiences, thoughts of the heroine do not flow in a limited direct channel, but develop in a spiral. There are fluctuations, repetitions of the same movement, throwing. And, consequently, the formation of the image of the heroine, the author's position can be seen only by examining the book as a whole, and not by individual verses.
What is the spiral movement in this book?
“I prayed so: Satisfy ...” A. Akhmatova
“I prayed so: Satisfy ...” Anna Akhmatova
I prayed like this: "Slake
Deaf thirst for singing!
But there is no earthly from the earth
And there was no release.
Like smoke from a victim that couldn't
Soar to the throne of Power and Glory,
But only creeps at the feet,
Prayer kissing grass, -
So I, the Lord, prostrate myself:
Will the fire of heaven touch
My closed eyelashes
And the dumbness of my wonderful?
Analysis of Akhmatova's poem "I so prayed: Satisfy ..."
In 1917, the publishing house "Hyperborey" published the third collection of Akhmatova, called "White Pack". It was released at a difficult time for Russia. According to the poetess herself, there was no way to send the book to Moscow, so the entire first edition was sold in Petrograd. In addition, there was a massive closure of newspapers and magazines. Naturally, the collection failed to collect any significant press. Subsequently, some critics and readers forgot about the circumstances that accompanied the release of The White Pack, and considered the book less successful than The Rosary (1914). Akhmatova considered such an attitude to be fundamentally wrong.
The main themes of the collection are creativity and love. Gone feelings no longer become a reason for suffering and despair for the lyrical heroine. Sorrow breeds songs that can heal pain. In the "White Flock" the mood of quiet light sadness dominates. The lyrical heroine leaves no hope for a better future, loneliness becomes a source of strength for her. The motive of the motherland is touched upon in the book. In particular, it is about sacrifice. For the sake of the well-being of Russia, the lyrical heroine is ready to give up "both a child, and a friend, and a mysterious song gift."
“I prayed like this:“ Satisfy ... ”- a poem from the collection“ White Flock ”, written in 1913. According to the fair remark of the famous literary critic Eikhenbaum, Anna Andreevna often offers readers not a lyrical emotion in a solitary expression, but a record or a narrative about what happened. There is also a form of a letter or an appeal to a certain silent interlocutor. In the poem "I so prayed:" Satisfy ... "" Akhmatova even draws up her own words of the lyrical heroine in the form of a quote, providing her with an explanation.
In the work under consideration, Anna Andreevna reveals the theme of the poet and poetry. A creative gift for her is not only a source of joy. Sometimes it turns into a real torture, becomes a source of suffering. Then you want to renounce him, but liberation is not possible, because the “thirst for singing” is an integral part of the lyrical heroine. In some way, the development of the theme of the poet and poetry by Akhmatova is close to the attitude of the Russian classics to this issue. As an example, Pushkin and his famous poem The Prophet come to mind first.
Listen to Akhmatova's poem The White Flock
Themes of neighboring essays
Picture for composition analysis of the poem The White Flock
Sadness is the strongest thing on earth.
A. Akhmatova
The creative fate of Anna Akhmatova developed in such a way that only five of her poetic books - "Evening" (1912), "Rosary" (1914), "White Flock" (1917), "Plantain" (1921) and "Anno Domini" (in two editions of 1921 and 1922-1923) were compiled by herself. Over the next two years, Akhmatov's poems occasionally appeared in periodicals, but in 1925, after the next Ideological Conference, at which, in the words of Anna Andreevna herself, she was sentenced to "civil death", they stopped publishing her. Only fifteen years later, in 1940, almost miraculously, a volume of selected works broke through to readers, and it was no longer Akhmatova who chose, but the compiler. True, Anna Andreevna still managed to include in this edition, as one of the sections, fragments from the handwritten "Reed", the sixth book of hers, which she compiled with her own hand in the late 30s. And yet, on the whole, the collection of 1940 with the impersonal title "From Six Books", like all the other lifetime favorites, including the famous "Running Time" (1965), did not express the author's will. According to legend, the initiator of this miracle was Stalin himself. Seeing that his daughter Svetlana was copying Akhmatova's poems into a notebook, he allegedly asked one of the people in his retinue why Akhmatova was not being published. Indeed, in the last pre-war year in the creative life of Akhmatova, there was a certain turning point for the better: in addition to the collection "From Six Books", there were also several publications in the magazine "Leningrad". Anna Andreevna believed in this legend, she even believed that she also owed Stalin her salvation, the fact that she was taken out of the besieged city in the fall of 1941 on a military plane. In fact, the decision to evacuate Akhmatova and Zoshchenko was signed by Alexander Fadeev and, apparently, at the insistent request of Alexei Tolstoy: the red count was a burned-out cynic, but he knew and loved Anna Andreevna and Nikolai Gumilyov from his youth and never forgot about it ... Tolstoy, it seems , contributed to the release of the Tashkent collection of Akhmatova in 1943, which, however, was not at all difficult for him, since this happened after the publication of her poem “Courage” in Pravda ... The fact that it was the author of “Peter the Great”, albeit not too much, but slightly defended Akhmatova, and this fact confirms: after his death in 1944, no one could help her, neither Nikolai Tikhonov, nor Konstantin Fedin, nor Alexei Surkov, despite all his considerable literary ranks ...
This edition includes the texts of the first five books of Anna Akhmatova, in the edition and in the order in which they first saw the light.
The first four collections - "Evening", "Rosary", "White Flock" and "Plantain" are published according to the first edition, "Anno Domini" - according to the second, more complete, Berlin one, printed in October 1922, but published with the note: 1923. All other texts follow in chronological order, without taking into account those subtle connections and links in which they exist in the author's "samizdat" plans: until her death, Anna Akhmatova continued to write poetry and put them into cycles and books, still hoping that will be able to reach its reader not only with the main poems, which invariably got stuck in the viscous mud of Soviet censorship, but also with books of poetry. Like many poets of the Silver Age, she was convinced that between lyrical plays, united only by the time of their writing, and the author's book of poems, there was a "devilish difference."
The first collection of Anna Akhmatova "Evening" was published at the very beginning of March 1912, in St. Petersburg, in the acmeist publishing house "Poets' Workshop". To publish 300 copies of this thin little book, Anna Akhmatova's husband, who is also the head of the publishing house, poet and critic Nikolai Stepanovich Gumilyov laid out one hundred rubles from his own pocket. The success of Vecher was preceded by the “triumphs” of the young Akhmatova on the tiny stage of the literary cabaret Stray Dog, the opening of which was timed by the founders to coincide with the farewell of 1911. The artist Yuri Annenkov, the author of several portraits of the young Akhmatova, recalling in his declining years the appearance of his model and her performance on the stage of the Intimate Theater (the official name of the Stray Dog: The Art Society of the Intimate Theater), wrote: “Anna Akhmatova, shy and an elegantly careless beauty, with her “uncurled bangs” that covered her forehead, and with a rare grace of half-movements and half-gestures, she read, almost singing, her early poems. I don’t remember anyone else who possessed such skill and such musical delicacy of reading…”.
Exactly two years after the publication of the first edition, namely in March 1914, The Rosary appeared on the shelves of bookstores in St. Petersburg, Akhmatova no longer had to publish this book at her own expense ... She withstood many reprints, including several pirated." One of these collections is dated 1919. Anna Andreevna valued this edition very much. Hunger, cold, devastation, but people still need poetry. Her poetry! Gumilyov, as it turned out, was right when he said, after reading the proofreading of the Rosary: “Maybe it will have to be sold in every small shop.” Marina Tsvetaeva rather calmly met the first Akhmatova collection, because her own first book was published two years earlier, except that she was surprised at the coincidence of the names: she has “Evening Album”, and Anna has “Evening”, but “Rosary” delighted her. She fell in love! And in poetry, and, in absentia, in Akhmatova, although I felt in her a strong rival:
You make me freeze the sun in the sky,
All the stars are in your hand.
Then, after the "Rosary", Tsvetaeva called Akhmatova "Anna of All Russia", she also owns two more poetic characteristics: "Muse of Lamentation", "Tsarskoye Selo Muse". And what is most surprising, Marina Ivanovna guessed that fate had written out for them, so different, one road trip:
And alone in the emptiness of the prison
We were given a travel guide.
"The Rosary" is Anna Akhmatova's most famous book, it was she who brought her fame, not just fame in a narrow circle of lovers of fine literature, but real fame. Meanwhile, Akhmatova herself, from her early books, loved The White Flock and Plantain much more than The Rosary ... And let the person to whom The White Flock and Plantain are dedicated - Boris Vasilyevich Anrep, as it turned out many, many years later, turned out to be unworthy of this great earthly love and the poem of the fate of Anna of All Russia was left without the main Hero, so what? Wars and tsars have passed, but the poems about the hopeless love of the most charming woman of "silver Petersburg" for the "dashing Yaroslavl", who exchanged his native copses for the velvet greens of English lawns, did not pass, did not lose their original freshness ... In 1945, on the eve of another catastrophe, when in August of the following 1946, Anna Akhmatova, by the well-known decree of the Central Committee on the magazines Zvezda and Leningrad, was once again sentenced to "civil death", she, having read Mikhail Bulgakov's novel The Master and Margarita in the manuscript, wrote such visionary verses.
