The favorite time for early romance is the transition from day to night, from dusk to evening, from darkness of night to dawn. At such moments, a person feels that not everything is completed yet, that he himself is changing, that life is unpredictable, full of mystery, and that death, perhaps, is also just a transition of the soul to another, unknown state.
A favorite place where a romantic indulges in sorrowful thoughts about the frailty of the world is a cemetery. Here everything reminds of the past, of the separation that dominates people. Ho at the same time reminds gently, without breaking the heart. Monuments on the graves, twined with greenery, fanned by the coolness of the breeze, speak not only of losses, but also that suffering will pass in the same way that joy passes. And only the sad peace, spilled in nature, will remain.
The favorite hero of the romantic poet is the poet himself. Who, if not a “singer”, endowed with a special ear, is able to hear the voices of nature, understand the pain and joy of life, rise above the vanity, in order to embrace the whole world with one soul, merge with the whole Universe? his "cemetery" meditation in the twilight of the English pre-romantic Thomas Gray and Zhukovsky with him.
But at the same time, Zhukovsky deliberately makes his descriptions much less visible, but enhances their emotional mood.
The day is already turning pale, hiding behind the mountain;
Noisy herds crowd over the river;
A tired peasant with a slow foot
He goes, thinking, to his calm hut.
Here, almost every noun is "donated" by its adjective (epithet). The villager is tired. The foot is slow. Shalash is calm. That is, the reader's attention is shifted from the subject itself to its non-objective feature. Gray has it all. Ho Zhukovsky as if not enough; he adds two more words indicating the state: "thinking" and "turning pale." It would seem that the word turns pale is connected with the visual range. Ho imagine: if the day turns pale in the literal, objective sense, then it becomes brighter. And in the elegy something opposite is described: the onset of twilight. Therefore, the word pales here means something else: it fades, goes out, disappears. Maybe like life itself.
In the second stanza, this effect only intensifies. Visual images (albeit translated into an emotional plane) give way to sound ones. The more impenetrable the darkness becomes in the world about which the poet speaks, the more he is guided by sound. And the main artistic load in the second stanza falls not on epithets, but on sound writing:
In the foggy twilight the neighborhood disappears...
Silence everywhere; everywhere a dead dream;
Only occasionally, buzzing, the evening beetle flickers,
Only a dull ringing of horns is heard in the distance.
Extended, doubling sonorous "m", "nn", hissing "sh", "u", whistling "s", "h". The third line, "Only occasionally, buzzing, the evening beetle flickers" seems simply onomatopoeic. But at the same time, this line “works” with its sound writing to create a mood, and an alarming one at that, by no means as calm and peaceful as in the first stanza.
The elegy from stanza to stanza becomes more and more gloomy. At the end of the second stanza, like a signal bell, a word sounds, which in the genre of elegy plays the role of a certain stylistic password: “dull”. Sad means completely immersed in his sadness, merged with it, not knowing another mood, having lost hope. A dull sound is almost the same as a mournful sound, that is, a monophonic, dreary, wounding to the very heart.
The conditional (and again beloved by pre-romantics) landscape of the third stanza exacerbates this mood:
Only a wild owl, lurking under the ancient vault
That tower, complains, listened to by the moon,
On the outraged midnight arrival
Her silent dominion rest.
An ancient vault, a wild owl, a moon pouring its deathly pale light on all nature... If in the first stanza the villager's hut was called "calm", and nothing disturbed this tranquility, then in the third stanza the "peace" of the silent dominion of the tower is violated .
And finally, together with the poet, we are approaching the tragically intense center of the elegy. In it, the theme of death begins to sound more and more insistently. The author, seeking to enhance the heavy, gloomy mood, pumps up drama. The "sleep" of the dead is called "non-awakening". That is, even the thought of the coming resurrection (“awakening”) of the dead is not allowed. The fifth stanza, which is all built on a series of denials (neither ... nor ... nothing), is crowned with a rigid formula: "Nothing will call the deceased from the graves."
And then, having developed the theme, the poet extends his gloomy conclusion to all people:
Death rages on everyone - the king, the favorite of glory,
The formidable is looking for everyone ... and will never find;
Almighty fates are unshakable charters:
And the path of greatness leads us to the grave!
Death is merciless. She equally indifferently takes away both the “Ashes of a tender heart that knew how to love”, destined “to be in a crown or soar with thoughts”, but bound by “squalor in chains” (that is, peasant poverty and lack of education), and the ashes of the one who was born “Fight the storm troubles, win fortune.
And then the poet's voice, which had just sounded accusatory, bitter, almost angry, suddenly softens. As if, having reached the limiting intensity, having approached the pole of despair, the poet's thought smoothly returns to a point of rest. It is not for nothing that this word, echoed in the first stanza of the poem (“your calm hut ...”) and rejected in the second (“peace of silent dominion ...”), again takes its rightful place in Zhukovsky’s poetic language:
And here they sleep peacefully under the canopy of the tomb -
And a modest monument, in a shelter of dense pines,
With a simple inscription and a simple carving,
The passer-by calls to breathe over their ashes.
Love on this stone preserved their memory,
Their summers, rushing to draw their names;
Around biblical morality depicted,
By which we must learn to die.
The poet speaks to himself. Just now he called the sleep of the dead - sound. That is, he said that death is omnipotent. And so he slowly and difficultly begins to come to terms with the idea of the inevitability of death. Moreover, he builds a poetic statement in such a way that it can be understood in two ways - as a reasoning about an untimely deceased friend-poet and as a reflection about himself, about his possible death:
And you, deceased friend, solitary singer,
And your hour will strike, the last, fatal;
And to your coffin, accompanied by a dream,
The sensitive will come to hear your lot.
At the beginning of the poem, from line to line, a feeling of hopelessness grows. Now it sounds sad, but not hopeless. Yes, death is omnipotent, but not omnipotent. Because there is a life-giving friendship that can keep the flame of a “tender soul”; friendship, for which "dead dust in a cold urn breathes" and which is akin to faith:
Here he left everything that was sinful in him,
With the hope that his savior, God, is alive.
The basis of this friendship, its heart root is sensitivity. That is the same sensitivity to which Karamzin dedicated his story. And there is something deeply symbolic in the fact that the origins of new Russian prose and new Russian poetry are two works - "Poor Liza" by Karamzin and "The Rural Cemetery" by Zhukovsky, which glorify the same ideal - the ideal of sensitivity.
By the way, from the point of view of mature European romanticism, this is far from being the main virtue. Impressibility - yes, inspiration - yes, conflict with the vulgar world of everyday life - yes, preference for the elements over peace - yes. But the soft sensitivity of romance, as a rule, is alien. But this is the peculiarity of Russian romanticism, that he (largely thanks to Zhukovsky) preferred not to abandon the highest achievements of the sentimental era, not to reach the last limit in solving romantic problems. And only two literary generations later, Mikhail Lermontov had to finish Zhukovsky's unfinished business, to go along the romantic road to its fatal outcome.
One of the authors of Russian elegies is Vasily Zhukovsky. Among the many elegies he wrote, a special place is occupied by the work "Rural Cemetery", created by the author in 1802. In it, the author seems to be at war with his soul. The lyrical hero, who in this poem is Zhukovsky himself, has a decadent mood. He is ready to come to terms with the fact that sooner or later everything ends in death, he is ready to give up, not to fight for what is dear.
This ballad is filled with the romance of rural life, which fascinated Zhukovsky. In this regard, the first lines of the poem are devoted to recreating the picture of the peaceful everyday life of English peasants who have finished their working day. Nature, and with it people, come to the silence, peace and tranquility of the evening.
But at the same time, the poet is sure that the evening will end, after the night a new day will come with its problems and worries. But there is a place in the world that is not affected by any of these human problems - the old rural cemetery. The only creature on it is the wise owl bird. The author admires the local silence and at the same time sadly regrets that it is no longer possible for people buried under the slabs to admire simple human joys, they cannot change the world and other people.
The hero treats the graves of ordinary people with special trepidation, calling those buried here pearls. But really, how many brilliant minds, talents, kind, fair people were and are among the common people.
During life, you should not evaluate a person only by the appearance and thickness of the wallet, but after death by the tombstone. The main thing is that after death, the memory of a person remains, that there are those who loved, remembered and wanted to come to the grave at least occasionally.
If you want to analyze a poem, then V. A. Zhukovsky considered the translation of the “Elegy written in a rural cemetery” by the English poet Thomas Gray to be the beginning of his poetic work. It was from this translation that a new and original phenomenon of Russian poetry was born - the poem "Rural Cemetery" (1802). Many reasons influenced the creation of this work: the study of Western European poetry, and the experience of the translator, and the literary tastes of the time, and the author's artistic preferences, and disputes about the appointment of a person that were conducted among the poet's friends.
Following Thomas Gray in the development of poetic thought, Zhukovsky introduces ideas and moods into his translation that express his own worldview. The picture of a modest rural cemetery, the description of which is based on the impression of the surroundings of the native village of the poet Mishensky, sets the author in an elegiac mood:
Under the roof of black pines and elms leaning,
Which around, hanging out, stand,
Here the forefathers of the village, in solitary graves,
Shut up forever, sleep soundly.
The poet focuses on reflections on the meaning of human life, on his relationship with the outside world. Before us is a skillfully organized flow of feelings and thoughts of a particular person. The elegy is a change of questions, as if spontaneously arising in the mind of the lyrical hero. The whole poem is a combination of philosophical and moral-psychological motifs, replacing each other, imbued with a sad mood and held together by the general idea of the transience of life and the vicissitudes of happiness. The reflecting hero states:
Death rages on everyone - the king, the favorite of glory,
The formidable is looking for everyone ... and will never find ...
Developing the idea of the equality of all before death, Zhukovsky draws attention to the social contradictions that exist in society. He gives his sympathy not to the “slaves of vanity”, not to the “confidants of fortune”, but to ordinary villagers, then the land was “sprinkled”. Convinced that all people are equal by nature, he mourns for these simple villagers who were born "to be in a crown or soar with thoughts", but died out in ignorance by blind chance:
Their fate burdened squalor with chains,
Their genius is mortified by severe need.
In affirming the ideal of the natural equality of people, the author is close to the French writer J.-J. Rousseau, whose work he met while still at the boarding school and, like many young people of that time, became very interested in his philosophy.
The originality of the poem "Rural Cemetery" lies in the poet's focus on the inner experiences of the individual, revealed in the organic fusion of nature and human feelings. The transfer of this state is greatly facilitated by the animation of nature: “the day is already turning pale”, “attention by the moon”, “the morning light is a quiet voice”, “under the dormant willow”, “the oak forests trembled”, “the day of youthful breathing”.
The original translation of the "Rural Cemetery" reveals the poetic individuality of the author, who was close to sentimentalism at the time of the creation of the poem. He achieves here an amazing melody and melodiousness of the verse, gives it a sincere intonation.
Recreating everyday life, the poet introduces everyday colloquial vocabulary: "hut", "beetle", "shepherd", "sickles", "hearth", "plow", "herd". But there are few such words in the elegy. The vocabulary here is predominantly sentimentalist philosophical and contemplative. The poem is dominated by words related to emotional experiences (“contempt”, “sorrows”, “sigh”, “tears”, “despondly”) and broad thoughts about life (“peace of silent dominion”, “death rages on everyone”, “ omnipotent fates). Sentimental epithets and comparisons, such as “dull ringing”, “tender heart”, “sweet voice”, “languid eyes”, “meek heart”, “sensitive soul”.
The vivid emotional and melodic expressiveness of the poem is achieved by the descriptive-lyrical structure of the phrase (“In the foggy dusk the neighborhood disappears ...”), often used by the anaphora (“Only occasionally buzz ... Only heard in the distance”), repetitions (“Everywhere is silence, everywhere is dead dream...”), appeals (“And you, the confidants of fortune”), questions (“Will death really be softened?”) And exclamations (“Oh, maybe under this grave!”).
So, not being a translation in the full sense of the word, "Rural Cemetery" becomes a work of Russian national literature. In the image of a young poet meditating in a rural cemetery, Zhukovsky enhances the features of dreaminess, melancholy, poetic spirituality, bringing this image much closer to his inner world and making it as close as possible to the Russian reader, brought up on the sentimental poems of Dmitriev, Kapnist, Karamzin.
The appearance of the “Rural Cemetery” on the pages of the Vestnik Evropy magazine published by Karamzin brought Zhukovsky fame. It became obvious that a talented poet appeared in Russian poetry. The apprenticeship for Zhukovsky was over. A new stage of his literary activity began.
Vasily Andreevich Zhukovsky
The day is already turning pale, hiding behind the mountain;
Noisy herds crowd over the river;
A tired peasant with a slow foot
He goes, thinking, to his calm hut.
In the foggy twilight, the neighborhood disappears...
Silence everywhere; everywhere a dead dream;
Only occasionally, buzzing, the evening beetle flickers,
Only a dull ringing of horns is heard in the distance.
Only a wild owl, lurking under the ancient vault
That tower, complains, listened to by the moon,
On the outraged midnight arrival
Her silent dominion rest.
Under the roof of black pines and elms leaning,
Which around, hanging out, stand,
Here the forefathers of the village, in solitary tombs
Forever shutting themselves up, they sleep in a deep sleep.
Dennitsa quiet voice, young day's breath,
Neither cock cries, nor sonorous rumble of horns,
Not an early swallow on the roof chirping -
Nothing will call the dead from the coffins.
On the smoky hearth crackling fire, sparkling,
They will not be entertained on winter evenings,
And the children are frisky, running out to meet them,
They will not greedily catch kisses.
How often their sickles reaped the golden field
And their plow conquered stubborn fields!
How often their ax trembled
And then their faces were sprinkled with earth!
Let the slaves humiliate their lot,
Laughing in blindness at their useful labors,
Let them listen with coldness of contempt
Lurking in the darkness of wretched deeds;
Death rages on everyone - the king, the favorite of glory,
The formidable is looking for everyone ... and will never find;
Almighty fates are unshakable charters:
And the path of greatness leads us to the grave!
And you, the confidants of fortune, are blinded,
Hurry to despise those sleeping here in vain
For the fact that their coffins are not luxurious and oblivious,
That flattery does not think of erecting altars to them.
In vain over the dead, decayed bones
Trophies are built, tombstones shine,
In vain the voice of honors thunders in front of the coffins -
Our fading ashes they will not inflame.
Will death be mitigated by woven praise
And return the irretrievable booty?
No sweeter than the dead sleep under a marble board;
The arrogant mausoleum only burdens them with dust.
Oh! maybe under this grave lurks
Ashes of a tender heart that knew how to love,
And the grave-worm nests in the dry head,
Born to be in a crown or soar with thoughts!
But the temple of enlightenment, erected over the centuries,
A gloomy fate for them was closed,
Their fate burdened squalor with chains,
Their genius is mortified by severe need.
How often a rare pearl, hidden in waves,
In the bottomless abyss shines with beauty;
How often the lily blooms alone
Losing your scent in the desert air.
Perhaps haughty Gampden is covered with this dust,
Defender of fellow citizens, tyranny is a brave enemy;
Or the blood of citizens, Cromwell is not purplish,
Or dumb Milton, without glory hidden in dust.
Keep the fatherland with a sovereign hand,
Fight a storm of troubles, despise fortune,
Pour the gifts of abundance on mortals like a river,
In tears of gratitude to read their deeds -
That did not give them rock; but together with crimes
With valor he laid a tight circle around them;
Run the paths of murder to fame, pleasure
And he forbade being cruel to the sufferers;
Conceal in your soul the voice of conscience and honor,
Blush of timidity to lose
And, servilely, on the altars of flattery
Dedicate the gifts of the heavenly muses to pride.
Hiding from worldly pernicious turmoil,
Without fear and hope, in this valley of life,
Knowing no sorrow, knowing no pleasure,
They walked carelessly along their path.
And here they sleep peacefully under the canopy of the tomb -
And a modest monument, in a shelter of dense pines,
With a simple inscription and a simple carving,
The passer-by calls to breathe over their ashes.
Love on this stone preserved their memory,
Their summers, rushing to draw their names;
Around biblical morality depicted,
By which we must learn to die.
And who parted with this life without grief?
Who betrayed his own ashes to oblivion?
Who in his last hour was not captivated by this world
And did you not look back languidly?
Oh! gentle soul, leaving nature,
He hopes to leave his flame to his friends;
And the eyes are dim, fading forever,
Still strive for them with the last tear;
Their heart hears a sweet voice in our grave;
Our gravestone is animated for them;
For them, our dead ashes breathe in a cold urn,
Still ignited by the fire of love for them.
And you, deceased friend, solitary singer,
And your hour will strike, the last, fatal;
And to your coffin, accompanied by a dream,
The sensitive will come to hear your lot.
Perhaps a peasant with respectable gray hair
This is how a stranger will talk about you:
“He often met me here in the morning,
When he hurried to the hill to warn the dawn.
There at noon he sat under a dormant willow,
She raised her shaggy root from the ground;
There often, in careless, silent sorrow,
He lay, thinking, over the bright river;
Often in the evening, wandering among the bushes, -
When we walked from the field and in the grove of the nightingale
He whistled the vespers, with languid eyes he
Dejectedly followed the quiet dawn.
Mournful, gloomy, head bowed,
He often went to the oak forest to shed tears,
Like a wanderer, homeland, friends, deprived of everything,
To whom nothing can please the soul.
The dawn rose - but he did not appear with the dawn,
He did not come to the willow, nor to the hill, nor to the forest;
Again the dawn rose - he did not meet anywhere;
My gaze searched for him - searched - did not find.
In the morning we hear the singing of the grave ...
The unfortunate is carried to the grave.
Come closer, read the simple tombstone,
What is the memory of a good tear to bless.
Here the young men untimely concealed the ashes,
What glory, happiness, he did not know in this world.
But the muses did not turn their faces away from him,
And melancholy stamp was on it.
He was meek in heart, sensitive in soul -
The creator has put a reward on the sensitive.
He gave the unfortunate - than he could - with a tear;
As a reward from the creator, he received a friend.
Passerby, pray over this grave;
He found shelter in her from all earthly anxieties;
Here he left everything that was sinful in him,
With the hope that his savior-god is alive.
The poem "Rural Cemetery" by Vasily Zhukovsky has a very rich and unusual history. Its first version was created in 1801, and is a Russian-language translation of the work of the same name by the English poet Thomas Gray. It is worth noting that Zhukovsky himself was fond of translations from his youth and found a special charm in romanticism. However, the poem "Rural Cemetery" was the author's first literary experiment, the results of which he agreed to publish.
In 1839, Vasily Zhukovsky traveled around England and visited a rural cemetery near Windsor. What was the astonishment of the poet when he learned that it was to this necropolis that the poem was dedicated at one time. Then the poet had an idea to make a new translation, supplementing it with his own impressions. Thus, the second version of The Country Cemetery was written and published in the summer of 1839.
This poem is filled with the romance of rural life, which Zhukovsky sincerely admires. Therefore, the first lines of the work are devoted to describing the peaceful life of the English peasants, whose working day has just ended. Thomas Grey, and together with him Vasily Zhukovsky snatch that moment from life when “the late bell heralds the end of the departed day. The shepherds drive their flocks from the meadows, the plowmen return home. The surrounding world is in a state where the hustle and bustle of the day is replaced by the coolness and silence of a spring evening. “The surroundings are already turning pale, little by little lost in darkness, and the air is filled with solemn silence,” the poet notes, admiring this state of calm and peace that nature itself gives him.
However, the poet knows that the night will pass, and the new day will come into its own again, bringing new problems, worries and impressions. However, there is such a corner that all this fuss does not touch. This place is an old rural cemetery where the only living creature is an owl. The peace of this wise bird can only be disturbed by "accidentally going to her coffin dwelling." The poet compares ancient graves with cells, the doors to which are forever closed behind the departed. They have found eternal peace, which the living lack so much, but the other side of the coin is that people resting under heavy slabs are no longer able to change anything in such a fickle and unpredictable world. “From the roof of a straw trill, neither a rooster’s trumpet, nor a revocable horn, nothing will lift them more from their poor bed,” the poet emphasizes.
He regrets that the dead are no longer available to the simple and familiar joys of life, they cannot enjoy the beauty of nature and the tranquility of a warm spring evening. However, they have something more - eternity, in which they are equal before each other. In the world of the living, there are people who remember their titles and titles, still admire their wealth or condemn poverty. However, before the highest court, all this does not matter, because here they are judged not by status in society and well-being, but by thoughts and actions. To the graves of ordinary people deprived of their position in society, the author feels special favor, noting: “Oh! how many pure, beautiful pearls are hidden in the dark, unknown depths of the ocean! Indeed, in life people should not be judged by their appearance or speeches, and after death - by luxurious tombstones. And this is confirmed by the inscription on one of the monuments, which reads: "The young man is buried here, unknown to happiness and glory." But old-timers still remember his cordial kindness and responsiveness. And this is precisely what is important, because someday a passer-by will stop near the grave of each of us, deciding to ask whose ashes rest here. The only question is what the stone will tell him and those who will be able to keep the memory of us.
Analysis of the poem
1. The history of the creation of the work.
2. Characteristics of the work of the lyrical genre (type of lyrics, artistic method, genre).
3. Analysis of the content of the work (analysis of the plot, characterization of the lyrical hero, motives and tone).
4. Features of the composition of the work.
5. Analysis of the means of artistic expression and versification (presence of tropes and stylistic figures, rhythm, meter, rhyme, stanza).
6. The meaning of the poem for the entire work of the poet.
The original version of the poem "Rural Cemetery" was created by V.A. Zhukovsky in 1801, then the work was finalized at the request of N.M. Karamzin, who was the poet's publisher. In the summer of 1802, while in Mishenskoye, the author practically rewrote the elegy. And in 1802 it was published in the journal "Bulletin of Europe". The work is dedicated to the poet's friend, Andrei Turgenev.
This poem was a free translation of the elegy of the English sentimentalist poet Thomas Gray. But at the same time, it was an original and program work not only for the work of V.A. Zhukovsky, but also for all Russian poetry. Gray's elegy "Rural Cemetery" was known in Russian translations as early as the 18th century. Simultaneously with Zhukovsky, P.I. worked on its translation. Golenishchev-Kutuzov. However, all these arrangements did not make the work the property of Russian literature. And only a poem by V.A. Zhukovsky, as V. Solovyov accurately noted, began to "be considered the beginning of truly human poetry in Russia." He even dedicated his poem to this elegy, called "The Motherland of Russian Poetry":
It was not for nothing that you appeared at the rural cemetery,
O sweet genius of my native land!
Though a rainbow of dreams, even a young passion with heat
Captivated after you - but the first best gift
That sadness will remain that in the old cemetery
God inspired you in autumn sometimes.
It is characteristic that in 1839 V.A. Zhukovsky again returned to work on the elegy and this time he used hexameter, abandoning rhymes. And this new translation was very close to the original:
The late bell announces the end of the departed day,
With a quiet bleating, a weary herd wanders across the field;
The plowman, who has fallen asleep, returns home at a slow pace.
The world yielding to silence and me ...
Elegy V.A. Zhukovsky we can attribute to meditative lyrics. At the same time, it is imbued with philosophical reflections, psychologism, and landscapes.
The whole work is permeated with a single mood of light sadness, generated by the thoughts of the lyrical hero about the fragility and transience of life. The poem opens with a modest rural landscape. All nature seems to calm down, sinking into a dream: “the day turns pale”, “In the foggy twilight the neighborhood disappears”, “silence is everywhere”. And this dream of nature precedes philosophical reflection on another dream - eternal. The landscape smoothly turns into a lyrical meditation on the frailty of human existence. The whole development of the elegy is a change of questions that arise in the soul of the lyrical hero. Reflections on human destinies are built on comparison, on the reception of antithesis. “The confidants of fortune”, filled with proud contempt for ordinary people, are contrasted in the elegy with modest and peaceful workers, “forefathers of the village”. It is on the side of the last sympathy of the lyrical hero. Revealing the unshakable neighborhood of life and non-existence, he brings us to a simple conclusion: in the face of death, everyone is equal - both the humble peasant and the "king, the favorite of glory." He speaks bitterly about people whose lives were cut short by an absurd and tragic fate:
Oh! Maybe under this grave lurks
Ashes of a tender heart that knew how to love.
And the grave-worm nests in the dry head,
Born to be in a crown or soar with thoughts!
In the poem by V.A. Zhukovsky skillfully creates a sense of the acuteness of loss. In the third part of the elegy, the image of an untimely deceased young poet, accustomed to meeting the dawn on a high hill, arises. This image of the dawn in this case is symbolic - it echoes the birth of talent. But the threefold repetition of this image conveys the growing psychological tension in the poem, creates a premonition of trouble. Numerous verbs and the repeated use of dashes by the author give special dynamism and drama to the work.
The dawn rose - but he did not appear with the dawn,
He did not come to the willow, nor to the hill, nor to the forest;
Again the dawn rose - he did not meet anywhere;
My gaze searched for him - searched - did not find.
The epitaph on the poet's grave is a kind of culmination of the author's reflections:
Passerby, pray over this grave;
He found shelter in her from all earthly anxieties,
Here he left everything that was sinful in him,
With the hope that his Savior-God is alive.
The originality of this philosophical and psychological poem lies in the focus on the inner experiences of the lyrical hero, revealed in the organic fusion of the world of nature and the world of human feelings.
Compositionally, the elegy is divided into three parts. The first part is a peaceful rural landscape. The second part is reflections at the rural cemetery. The third part is thoughts about the young poet, "the solitary singer".
The size of the piece is iambic six-foot. Quatrains (quatrains) are united by a cross rhyme. The poet uses a variety of means of artistic expression: personification (“the day is already turning pale”, “under the dormant willow”, “oak groves trembled”), epithets (“golden field”, “dull ringing”, “sweet voice”, “gentle heart”, “ timid modesty"), anaphora ("Only occasionally, buzzing, the evening beetle flashes, Only a dull ringing of horns is heard in the distance"), rhetorical questions ("And who parted with this life without grief?"), exclamations ("And the path of greatness to the grave is leading us!"). In the elegy, we encounter Church Slavonic vocabulary, high-style words (“Daylight”, “kiss”, “votshe”, “fingers”), abstract-logical phraseological units (“Gifts of abundance on mortals to pour a river”, “Flee the paths of murder”) . All these are traces of classicist influences on the work of V.A. Zhukovsky. The elegy is saturated with alliterations (“a tired peasant with a slow foot”, “Only occasionally, buzzing, the evening beetle flickers”, “is death softened by weaving praise”) and assonances (“In the bottomless abyss shines with beauty”).
"Rural Cemetery" was enthusiastically received by readers and immediately put V.A. Zhukovsky among the best Russian poets. As critics noted, the image of the young singer, the bearer of humanistic ideals, suffering from the disharmony of the reality surrounding him and foreseeing his own death, then becomes the leading lyrical hero of V.A. Zhukovsky.
