Blok's work is unique. It coincided with important historical events at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The fate of the country and the personal fate of the author merged into one. The rhythm of history is vividly reflected in the lyrics. There is an evolution of poetry: in place of light symbolism, realism comes with a heavy tread.

Blok can also be called a modernist, since one of the poet's missions was to translate into modern way culture of the past. Despite the beauty and spirituality of the poems, the author emphasized the echoes of longing, despair, loss and a sense of impending tragedy. Perhaps this gave Akhmatova a reason to call him "the tragic tenor of the era." But with all this, the poet has always remained a romantic.

The main themes of Blok's work:

1. the fate of the motherland and the fate of man in critical historical epochs;
2. revolution and the role of the intelligentsia in it;
3. true love and friendship;
4. fate and fate, fear and impending hopelessness;
5. the role of the poet and poetry in the life of society;
6. the inextricable link between man and nature;
7. religion and the universe.

The ability to convey the subtle nuances of the soul has found its embodiment in a variety of genres: poems and poems, dedications and songs, spells, romances, sketches and sketches, thoughts.

True human values ​​are revealed only in the indissoluble kinship with the "unity of the world." A wonderful future for mankind is feasible as a result of the harsh and daily work, readiness for a feat in the name of the prosperity of the Fatherland. This is the worldview of the poet, which he expressed in his work.

The image of the motherland

Russia is Blok's main lyrical theme, in which he found inspiration and strength for life. The homeland appears in the image of a mother, a lover, a bride and a wife.

The image of the Motherland has undergone a peculiar evolution. At first, he is mysterious, shrouded as if in a veil. The country is perceived through the prism of a beautiful dream: "extraordinary", "mysterious", "dense" and "sorcerous". In the poem "Russia" the fatherland appears as a "beggar", with gray huts. The author loves her with a tender and heartfelt love that has nothing to do with pity.

The poet accepted tormented Russia with all its plagues and tried to fall in love. He knew that it was still the same dear Motherland, only dressed in different clothes: dark and repulsive. Blok sincerely believed that sooner or later Russia would appear in bright robes of morality and dignity.

In the poem "To sin shamelessly, unprobably..." the line between love and hatred is very precisely outlined. The image of a soulless shopkeeper, accustomed to the deep sleep of the mind, is repulsive, and repentance in the church is hypocritical. At the end, a distinct “cry” of the author is heard that even such a Russia he will never stop loving, she will always be dear to his heart.

The poet sees Russia in motion. In the cycle “On the Kulikovo Field”, she appears in the majestic image of a “steppe mare”, rushing “at a gallop”. The path to the future of the country is not easy and painful.

A note of foresight sounds in the poem "On railway”, where Block draws a parallel hard fate motherland with a difficult and tragic female fate.

“How long will mothers grieve? // How long will the kite circle? - anger and pain sound in these lines. The kite and mother symbolize the fate of the people, over which the predatory wings of a bird hang.

The revolutionary flame lit up Blok's face and gradually scorched his most secret dreams. However, the passions in the heart of the poet did not cease to boil. They splashed out from under his pen and, like slaps in the face, fell upon the enemies of the fatherland.

Symbolism of Blok

Each poem of the poet stores hidden symbol to help you taste it. This is what connects the poet with the symbolists - a modernist movement dating back to the silver age of Russian poetry. At the very beginning of his career, Blok perceived the phenomena of the surrounding world as something otherworldly, unreal. Therefore, in his work there are many symbols that reveal new facets of the lyrical image. They were chosen rather intuitively. The lyrics are filled with nebula, mysticism, dreams and even magic.

Symbolism is individual. Multi-color scales of feelings “danced in a round dance” in it. The heart trembled like a stretched string, from admiration and worries for the lyrical hero. Being a symbolist, Blok felt some " tremors". It was a sign of fate. A mystical and intuitive view of the world pursued the poet everywhere. Alexander Alexandrovich felt that the country was on the eve of something terrible, global, something that would upend and cripple millions of lives. The revolution was coming.

Blok creates the symbolism of colors in his poetry. Red color is attractive and alluring, the color of passion, love and life. White and light is something pure, harmonious and perfect. The blue color symbolizes the starry sky, deep space, something high and unattainable. Black and purple are the colors of tragedy and death. Yellow color speaks of withering and smoldering.

Each symbol corresponds to a certain concept or phenomenon: the sea is life, people, historical movements and shocks. Red worm - fire. In the poem "Factory" a "black someone" appears. For a poet, this is a fatal force. The factory and He are the sinister image of the oppressor-destroyer.

Blok sought to express his feelings and emotions, and not just describe the world. He passed each poem through himself, through his soul, so the stanzas are saturated with his attitude, joys and anxieties, triumph and pain.

Love Theme

Love is like light wind, penetrates Blok's creations.

In the poem "About exploits, about valor, about glory ..." the master addresses his wife. She was the muse of Alexander Alexandrovich. In her, the poet saw the embodiment of his ideals. The block uses techniques to emphasize sharp contrast between the illusions of the lyrical hero and the true appearance of his beloved: this is achieved by contrasting gray and blue colors and replacing the appeal "You" with "you". The poet was forced to abandon this contrast and, in the final version of the text, change the intonation of the appeal to his heroine to a more restrained one. Such a desire to rise above the purely worldly perception of personal drama to its philosophical reflection characteristic of Blok's talent.

In Blok's life, another woman, a mother, occupied an important place. The poet trusted her with everything secret. In the poem "Friend, look how in the heavenly plain ..." Alexander Alexandrovich describes the feeling of sadness and loss. He is upset that Lyubov Mendeleev rejected his courtship. But the poet does not need sympathy. Blok is determined to survive the mental anguish. He forces himself to stop striving for cold moon and taste the taste of real life. After all, she is wonderful!

The image of a beautiful lady

Blok believed that mankind, mired in vulgarity and sins, could still be saved by the "Eternal Femininity". The poet found its embodiment in the image of the Beautiful Lady. It is saturated with sublimity, personifies goodness and beauty. Light radiates from him, illuminating the dark souls of people. It is possible to achieve the highest harmony with the surrounding world through love for an earthly woman. A sincere feeling changes us for the better: new horizons open up, the world becomes beautiful. We begin to feel the charm of every moment, to hear the pulse of life.

Many poets portrayed the image of the Beautiful Lady, but Blok has her own: merging of the Blessed Virgin and earthly woman. The image resembles the shining reflection of a lit candle and the image of an icon in a gold riza.

Each time, the Beautiful Lady appears in a new guise - the Queen of Heaven, the Soul of the World and a sensual girl - which delights the lyrical hero who agrees to be her slave in the service.

In the poem “I Anticipate You”, the lyrical hero is tormented by doubts that the Beautiful Lady can turn into a vicious creature and there will be no trace of her spirituality. But he really wants to see her! Only she is able to save humanity from impending grief and show the way to a new, sinless life.

The poem "I enter dark temples merges into a single sound with the previous one. The quiet and solemn atmosphere of the church conveys the state of love and bliss, the expectations of the Beautiful Lady. The image of the unearthly gives rise to a sense of beauty, which is characteristic of an ordinary person.

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1. Poet A. A. Blok.
2. The main themes in Blok's work.
3. Love in the poet's poetry.

... A writer who believes in his vocation, no matter what size this writer may be, compares himself with his homeland, believing that he suffers from her illnesses, crucifies with her ...
A. A. Blok

A. A. Blok was born into a noble family of intellectuals. According to Blok, his father was a connoisseur of literature, a subtle stylist and a good musician. But he had a despotic character, which is why Blok's mother left her husband before the birth of her son.

Blok spent his childhood in an atmosphere of literary interests, which early aroused in him a craving for poetry. At the age of five, Blok began to write poetry. But a serious appeal to poetic creativity refers to the years when the poet graduated from the gymnasium.

Blok's lyrics are unique. With all the variety of topics and means of expression, it appears to the reader as a single whole, as a reflection of the "path" traveled by the poet. Blok himself pointed out this feature of his work. A. A. Blok went through a difficult creative way. From symbolist, romantic poems to an appeal to real revolutionary reality. Many contemporaries and even former friends Blok, having fled from revolutionary reality abroad, they shouted that the poet had sold himself to the Bolsheviks. But it wasn't. Blok suffered from the revolution, but he also managed to understand that the time for change was inevitable. The poet felt life very sensitively, showed interest in the fate of his native country and the Russian people.

Love for Blok is the main theme of creativity, be it love for a woman, for Russia. The early work of the poet is distinguished by religious dreams. Cycle "Poems about beautiful lady"full of anxiety, a sense of impending disaster. The poet longed for the ideal of a woman. Blok's poems are dedicated to his future wife, D. I. Mendeleeva. Here are the lines from the poem "I enter the dark temples ...":

I enter dark temples
I perform a poor ritual.
There I am waiting for the Beautiful Lady
In the flickering of red lamps.
In the shadow of a tall column
I tremble at the creak of doors.
And he looks into my face, illumined,
Only an image, only a dream about Her.

The poet's love for his future wife in "Poems about the Beautiful Lady" was combined with a passion for the philosophical ideas of V. S. Solovyov. The philosopher's teaching about the existence of the Great Femininity, the Soul of the World, turned out to be closest to the poet. Inextricably linked with the Great Feminine is the idea of ​​saving the world through its spiritual renewal. The philosopher's thought that love for the world is revealed through love for a woman evoked a special response from the poet.

In "Poems about the Beautiful Lady", the ideas of dual worlds, which are a combination of the spiritual and the material, were embodied through a system of symbols. The appearance of the heroine of this cycle is ambiguous. On the one hand, this is a very real woman:

She is slim and tall
Always haughty and harsh.
On the other hand, it is a mystical image.
The same applies to the hero.

Blok's story of earthly love is embodied in a romantic symbolic myth. "Earthly" (lyrical hero) is opposed to "heavenly" (Beautiful Lady), there is a desire for their reunion, due to which complete harmony should come.

But over time, Blok's poetic orientation changed. The poet understood that when hunger and devastation, struggle and death are around, it is impossible to go to “other worlds”. And then life in all its diversity burst into the work of the poet. The theme of the people and the intelligentsia appears in Blok's poetry. For example, in the poem "The Stranger" the collision of a beautiful dream with reality is shown:

And slowly, passing among the drunk,
Always without companions, alone,
Breathing in spirits and mists,
She sits by the window.

Blok wrote in his diary: “She is a kind of ideal of beauty, capable, perhaps, of recreating life, expelling everything ugly and bad from it.” Duality - the contact of the image-ideal and repulsive reality - is reflected in this poem. This is reflected even in the two-part composition of the work. The first part is filled with the expectation of a dream, perfect image Strangers:

And every evening the only friend
Reflected in my glass...

But the meeting place with the ideal is a tavern. And the author skillfully escalates the situation, preparing the reader for the appearance of the Stranger. The appearance of the Stranger in the second part of the poem temporarily transforms reality for the hero. In the poem "The Stranger" the image of the lyrical hero is surprisingly psychologically revealed. The change of his states is very important for Blok. Love for the motherland is clearly manifested in Blok's poetry. Blok's love for his native country clearly echoes a deep feeling for a woman:

Oh, my Russia! My wife! To pain
We have a long way to go!

Blok sought to continue the traditions of Russian classical literature, saw his task in serving the people. In the poem " autumn will»Lermontov's traditions are visible. M. Yu. Lermontov in his poem “Motherland” called love for the motherland “strange”, the poet was not “glory bought with blood”, but “the cold silence of the steppes”, “trembling lights of sad villages”. Such is the love of Blok:

I will cry over the sadness of your fields,
I will love your space forever ...

Blok's attitude to his homeland is more personal, intimate, like his love for a woman. No wonder in this poem Russia appears before the reader in the form of a woman:

And far, far away waving invitingly
Your patterned, your colored sleeve

In the poem "Rus" the homeland is a mystery. And the solution to the mystery is in the soul of the people. The motif of a terrible world was reflected in Blok's poetry. Most clearly, all the hopelessness of life is manifested in the well-known poem "Night, street, lamp, pharmacy ...":

Night, street, lamp, pharmacy,
A meaningless and dim light.
Live at least a quarter of a century -
Everything will be like this. There is no exit.
If you die, you start over again
And everything will repeat, as of old:
Night, icy ripples of the channel,
Pharmacy, street, lamp.

The fatal cycle of life, its hopelessness is surprisingly clearly and simply reflected in this poem.

Blok's poems are tragic in many ways. But tragic was the time that gave birth to them. But the essence of creativity, according to the poet himself, is in serving the future. In his last poem to Pushkin's House, Blok again speaks of this:

Skipping days of oppression
short term deception

The days to come were seen
Blue-pink mist.

To understand the poet's work, the image of his lyrical hero is in many ways important. After all, as we know, people reflect themselves in their works.

In the poem "Factory" we see the appeal of the symbolist poet to reality, to social topics. But reality correlates with symbolic philosophy, the lyrical hero's awareness of his place in life. Three images can be distinguished in the poem: a crowd of people gathered at the gate; a mystical character ("immobile someone, black someone") and a lyrical hero saying: "I see everything from my top...". This is typical for Blok's work: to see everything "from the top", but at the same time the poet himself acutely felt life in all its diversity and even in tragedy.

Contemporaries have already noticed how often several keywords. So, K.I. Chukovsky wrote that the favorite words of the early Blok were “fogs” and “dreams”. The critic's observation corresponded to the professional "inclinations" of the poet. AT " notebooks Blok has this entry: “Every poem is a veil stretched out on the points of several words. These words shine like stars. Because of them, the poem exists." The entire body of Blok's lyrics is characterized by a steady repetition of the most important images, verbal formulas and lyrical situations. They, these images and words, are endowed not only with dictionary meanings, but also with additional semantic energy, they absorb new semantic shades from the immediate verbal environment. But not only the context of a particular poem determines the semantics of such signal words. Decisive for the formation of values individual words in the work of Blok there is an integral body of his lyrics.

You can, of course, read and somehow understand any individual poem by Blok. But the more of his poems we read, the richer the perception of each poem becomes, because each work radiates a “charge” of its own meaning and at the same time is “charged” with the meaning of other poems. Thanks to cross-cutting motives, Blok's lyrics acquired a very a high degree unity. The poet himself wanted from his readers that his lyrics be considered as a single work - as a three-volume novel in verse, which he called the "trilogy of incarnation."

What is the reason for such a position of the author of many beautiful lyrical poems? First of all, with the fact that at the center of his lyrics is the personality itself modern man. It is the personality in its relationship with the whole world (both social, and natural, and "cosmic") that forms the core of the problems of Blok's poetry. Before Blok, such problems were traditionally embodied in the genre of the novel. Recall that A.S. Pushkin used the phrase “novel in verse” as a genre designation for “Eugene Onegin”. In Pushkin's poetic novel, there is a distinct, albeit incomplete, plot, a multi-heroic composition of characters, many extra-plot elements that allowed the author to freely "retreat" from narrative goals, "directly" address the reader, comment on the very process of creating a novel, etc.

In Blok's lyrical "novel" there is also a peculiar plot, but not an eventful one, but a lyrical one - connected with the movement of feelings and thoughts, with the unfolding sustainable system motives. If the content of Pushkin's novel is largely determined by the changing distance between the author and the hero, then in Blok's lyrical "novel" there is no such distance: Blok's personality became the hero of the "incarnation trilogy". That is why the category of “lyrical hero” is used in relation to him in literary criticism. For the first time, this term, which is now widely used in relation to the work of other lyricists, appeared in the works of the remarkable literary critic Yu.N. Tynyanov - in his articles on Blok's poetry.

The theoretical content of the category "lyrical hero" is the synthetic nature of the subject of a lyrical statement: in the pronominal form "I" the worldview and psychological qualities of the biographical "author" and various "role" manifestations of the hero inseparably merge. You can say it differently: the hero of Blok's lyrics can appear as a monk or a nameless warrior from the camp of Dmitry Donskoy, Hamlet or a visitor to a suburban restaurant, but each time they are the embodiment of one soul - one attitude, one way of thinking.

The introduction of the new term was due to the fact that Blok's "biggest lyrical theme", according to Tynyanov, was the very personality of the poet. That is why, with all the variety of thematic material that constitutes the "subject" background of Blok's "novel", the lyrical trilogy remains mono-centric from beginning to end. In this regard, the whole body of Blok's lyrics can be compared with such samples of prose monocentric novels as M.Yu. Lermontov's "A Hero of Our Time" and B.L. Pasternak's "Doctor Zhivago". For all three artists, the most important category artistic world there was a category of personality, and the plot and compositional features of their works are primarily subordinated to the task of revealing the world of personality.

What is the external composition of Blok's "novel in verse"? The poet divides it into three volumes, each of which has an ideological and aesthetic unity and corresponds to one of the three stages of "incarnation". "Incarnation" is a word from the theological lexicon: in the Christian tradition, it denotes the appearance of the Son of Man, the incarnation of God in human form. It is important that in the poetic consciousness of Blok, the image of Christ is associated with the idea of ​​a creative personality - an artist, an artist, who throughout his life serves to re-create the world on the basis of goodness and beauty, performing the feat of self-denial for the sake of realizing these ideals.

The path of such a person - the lyrical hero of the novel - became the basis of the plot of the trilogy. Within each of the three stages general movement- many private episodes and situations. In a prose novel, as a rule, a specific episode is the content of a chapter, in a lyrical novel by A. Blok, it is the content of a poetic cycle, i.e. several poems united by a common situation. For the "roman of the path" it is quite natural that the most common situation is the meeting - the meeting of the lyrical hero with other "characters", with a variety of facts and phenomena of the social or natural world. On the way of the hero there are real obstacles and deceptive mirages of "swamp lights", temptations and trials, mistakes and genuine discoveries; the path abounds with turns and crossroads, doubts and suffering. But the main thing is that each subsequent episode enriches the hero with spiritual experience and expands his horizons: as he moves, the space of the novel expands in concentric circles, so that at the end of the path the hero’s gaze embraces the space of all of Russia.

In addition to the external composition, determined by the division into books (volumes) and sections (cycles), Blok's trilogy is organized by a more complex internal composition - a system of motives, figurative, lexical and intonational repetitions that link individual poems and cycles into a single whole. The motive, in contrast to the theme, is a formal-content category: the motive in poetry serves as a compositional organization of many individual poems into a tangible lyrical whole (genetically, the term "motive" is associated with musical culture and was first used in musicology. First recorded in the Musical Dictionary (1703) by S. de Brossard).

Since there are no direct plot connections between the poems, the motif fills the compositional integrity of the poetic cycle or even the poet's entire lyrics. It is created by lyrical situations and images (metaphors, symbols, color designations) that repeat many times and vary from poem to poem. The associative dotted line drawn in the poet's lyrics thanks to these repetitions and variations performs a structure-forming function - it unites poems into a lyrical book (this role of the motive has become especially important in the poetry of the 20th century).

The central cycle of the first volume of Blok's lyrical trilogy - the first stage of the poet's journey - "Poems about the Beautiful Lady". It was these poems that until the end of his life remained for Blok the most beloved. As is known, they reflected love story young poet with his future wife L.D. Mendeleeva and passion for the philosophical ideas of V.S. Solovyov. In the philosopher's teaching about the Soul of the World, or the Eternal Femininity, Blok was attracted by the idea that it is through love that the elimination of egoism, the unity of man and the world, is possible. The meaning of love, according to Solovyov, is in the acquisition by a person of ideal integrity, which will bring a person closer to the highest good - "absolute solidarity", i.e. fusion of the earthly and the heavenly. Such a “high” love for the world is revealed to a person through love for an earthly woman, in which one must be able to see through her heavenly nature.

"Poems about the Beautiful Lady" is fundamentally multifaceted. To the extent that they talk about real feelings and convey the story of "earthly" love, these are works of intimate lyrics. But "earthly" experiences and episodes personal biography in Blok's lyrical cycle, they are not important in themselves - they are used by the poet as material for inspired transformation. It is important not so much to see and hear as to see and hear; not so much to tell, but to tell about the “unsaid”. “The way of perception” of the world and the corresponding way of symbolization in Blok’s poetry of this time is a way of general, universal analogies and world “correspondences,” notes the well-known researcher L.A. Kolobaeva.

What are these analogies, what is the symbolist "cipher" early lyrics Blok? Let us recall what a symbol is for the poets of the Blok generation. This is a special type of image: it is aimed not at recreating the phenomenon in its material concreteness, but at conveying ideal spiritual principles. The components of such an image are alienated from living conditions life, the links between them are weakened or omitted. The symbolic image includes an element of mystery: this mystery cannot be solved logically, but can be involved in intimate experience in order to intuitively penetrate the world of "higher beings", to touch the world of the deity. The symbol is not just polysemantic: it includes two orders of meanings, on an equal footing testifies to the real and the super-real.

The plot of "Poems about the Beautiful Lady" is the plot of waiting for the Meeting with her beloved. This Meeting will transform the world and the hero, will connect the earth with the sky. The participants in this plot are “he” and “she”. The drama of the waiting situation is in the opposition of the earthly and the heavenly, in the notorious inequality of the lyrical hero and the Beautiful Lady. In their relationship, the atmosphere of medieval chivalry is revived: the object of love of the lyrical hero is elevated to an unattainable height, the hero's behavior is determined by the ritual of selfless service. “He” is a knight in love, a humble monk, a schemer ready for self-denial. “She” is silent, invisible and inaudible; the ethereal center of faith, hope and love of the lyrical hero.

The poet widely uses adjectives with the semantics of indeterminacy and verbs with the semantics of impersonality or passive contemplation: "unknown shadows", "otherworldly visions", "incomprehensible mystery"; “the evening will move forward”, “everything will be known”, “I am waiting”, “I am watching”, “I am guessing”, “I am directing my gaze”, etc. Literary critics often call the first volume of Blok's lyrics a "poetic prayer book": there is no event dynamics in it, the hero freezes in a kneeling position, he "waits in silence", "longing and loving"; the rituality of what is happening is supported by figurative signs of religious service - references to lamps, candles, a church fence - as well as the dominance of white, scarlet and gold colors in the pictorial palette.

The main section of "Poems about the Beautiful Lady" was in the first edition (in the form of a lyric collection) called "Stillness". However, the external inactivity of the lyrical hero is compensated by a dramatic change in his moods: bright hopes are replaced by doubts, the expectation of love is complicated by the fear of its collapse, moods of incompatibility of the earthly and heavenly are growing. In the textbook poem “I Anticipate You...”, along with impatient expectation, there is an important motif of fear of the Meeting. At the moment of incarnation, the Beautiful Lady can turn into a sinful creature, and her descent into the world can turn out to be a fall:

The whole horizon is on fire, and the appearance is near.
But I'm afraid: you will change your appearance.
And daringly arouse suspicion,
Replacing the usual features at the end.

Particularly tense is the cycle “Crossroads”, which concludes the first volume. The bright emotional atmosphere of loving expectation gives way to moods of dissatisfaction with oneself, self-irony, motives of “fears”, “laughter”, and anxieties. Signs of "everyday life" fall into the field of view of the hero: the life of the urban poor, human grief ("Factory", "From newspapers", etc.). "Crossroads" anticipate important changes in the fate of the lyrical hero.

These changes are clearly manifested in the second volume of the lyrical trilogy. If the first volume of lyrics was determined by the motives of waiting for the Meeting and high service, then new stage The lyrical plot is associated primarily with motives, immersion in the elements of life, or, using the formula of Blok himself, "rebellion of purple worlds." The consciousness of the lyrical hero is now turned to unimagined life. She appears to him in the elements of nature (cycle "Bubbles of the Earth"), urban civilization (cycle "City") and earthly love ("Snow Mask"). Ultimately, a series of meetings of the hero with the elements leads him to a meeting with the world of reality. The very idea of ​​the hero about the essence of the world is changing. The overall picture of life is dramatically complicated: life appears in disharmony, it is a world of many people, dramatic events, struggle. Most important of all, however, is that in the field of view of the hero now is the national and public life countries.

The second volume of lyrics, corresponding to the second period of the poet's work, is the most complex in terms of the structure of motives and the variety of intonations (tragic and ironic, romantic and "farce"). The element is the key symbol of the second volume of the lyrics. This symbol in the mind of the poet is close to what he called "music" - it is associated with a sense of the deep creative essence of being. Music in Blok's view resides in nature, in love feeling, in the soul of the people and in the soul individual person. Proximity to the elements of nature and folk life provides a person with the authenticity and strength of his feelings. However, rapprochement with diverse elements becomes for the hero not only a guarantee of a full life, but also a serious moral test.

The element does not exist outside of earthly incarnations. The extreme embodiments of the "earthly" beginning in the poet's lyrics are the characters of folk demonology from the cycle "Bubbles of the Earth" (devils, sorcerers, witches, mermaids), both attracting and frightening. Among the "rusty swamps" the former impulses upwards gradually disappear, towards gold and azure: "Love this eternity of swamps: / Their power will never run out." Passive dissolution in the elements can turn into self-contained skepticism, oblivion of the ideal.

The appearance of the heroine of the love lyrics also changes - the Beautiful Lady is supplanted by the Stranger, an irresistibly attractive "this-worldly" woman, shocking and charming at the same time. In the famous poem "The Stranger" (1906), "low" reality (a disharmonious picture of the suburbs, a company of cheap restaurant regulars) is contrasted with the "high" dream of the lyrical hero (the captivating image of the Stranger). However, the situation is not limited to the traditional romantic conflict of "dreams and reality." The fact is that the Stranger is at the same time the embodiment of high beauty, a reminder of the "heavenly" ideal preserved in the hero's soul, and the product of the "terrible world" of reality, a woman from the world of drunkards "with the eyes of rabbits." The image turns out to be two-faced, it is built on the combination of the incompatible, on the “blasphemous” combination of the beautiful and the repulsive.

According to L.A. Kolobaeva, “the two-dimensionality is now different than in “Poems about the Beautiful Lady”. There, the figurative movement is aimed at seeing a miracle in the visible, earthly, human, in love, something infinite, divine, from “things” to rise “up”, to the sky ... Now the duality of the image is not mystically elevating, but, on the contrary, debunking, bitterly sobering, ironic. And yet the emotional result of the poem is not in lamenting the illusory nature of beauty, but in asserting its secret. The salvation of the lyrical hero - in what he remembers - remembers the existence of unconditional love ("In my soul lies a treasure, / And the key is entrusted only to me!").

From now on, Blok's poems are often built as a confession that through the "abominations" of the day he is experiencing, the memory of the ideal breaks through - either with reproach and regret, or with pain and hope. "Treading on the shrines", Blok's lyrical hero yearns to believe; throwing himself into a whirlwind of love betrayals, he longs for the only love.

The new attitude of the lyrical hero led to changes in poetics: the intensity of oxymoron combinations sharply increases, Special attention given to the musical expressiveness of the verse, metaphors consistently develop into independent lyrical themes (one of the most characteristic examples of such "weaving" of metaphors is the poem "Snow Ovary"). Here is how Vyach. I. Ivanov - major theorist among the symbolists of the 1900s: “In my opinion, this is the apogee of the approach of our lyrics to the elements of music... Sound, rhythm, assonances are captivating; A delightful, intoxicating movement, the hops of a blizzard ... Marvelous longing and marvelous melodious power!

However, the world of elements is able to captivate the lyrical hero, to interrupt his movement. Blok feels the need to look for some new ways. In the very diversity of the elements, a choice is needed. “Doesn't it mean to understand everything and love everything - even hostile, even that which requires the renunciation of what is most dear to oneself - doesn't it mean to understand nothing and not to love anything? ”- he writes in 1908. There is a need to rise above spontaneity. The final section of the second volume of the trilogy was the cycle "Free Thoughts", which marks the decisive transition to a sober and clear attitude towards the world. What does the lyrical hero take out of the experience of familiarizing himself with the elements? The main thing is the courageous idea of ​​confronting the terrible world, the idea of ​​duty. From the "antithesis" of unbelief and subjectivity, the hero returns to faith, but his faith in the ideal beginning of life is filled with new meanings compared to the early lyrics.

One of the fundamental poems of the second volume is "Oh, spring without end and without edge ...". It develops one of the most important motives of Blok's lyrics - "both disgust from life, and crazy love for it." Life opens up to the lyrical hero in all its ugliness (“languishing slave labor”, “wells of earthly cities”, “weeping”, “failure”). And yet the reaction of the hero to all manifestations of disharmony is far from unambiguous rejection. “I accept” - this is the strong-willed decision of the lyrical hero. But this is not passive humility in the face of inevitability: the hero appears in the guise of a warrior, he is ready to confront the imperfection of the world.

How does the lyrical hero come out of the tests by the elements? He tends to boldly cognize life, not to renounce anything, to experience all the tension of passions - in the name of the fullness of the knowledge of life, to accept it as it is - in conjunction of "beautiful" and "terrible" began, but to wage an eternal battle for its perfection. Lyrical hero now "faces the world courageously." “At the end of the road,” as the poet wrote in the preface to the collection “Earth in the Snow,” for him “one eternal and boundless plain spreads out - the original homeland, perhaps Russia itself.”

In the third volume of the "novel in verse" the most important motifs of the first two parts of the trilogy are synthesized and rethought. It opens with the Scary World cycle. The leading motif of the cycle is the necrosis of the world of modern urban civilization. A laconic expressive image of this civilization is represented by the famous poem "Night, street, lamp, pharmacy ...". The lyrical hero also falls into the orbit of these forces of spiritual death: he tragically experiences his own sinfulness, a feeling of mortal fatigue grows in his soul. Even love now is a painful feeling, it does not relieve loneliness, but only exacerbates it. That is why the lyrical hero is aware of how sinful the search for personal happiness. happiness in scary world» fraught mental callousness, moral deafness. The feeling of hopelessness acquires an all-encompassing, cosmic character in the hero:

The worlds are flying. The years are flying by. empty

The universe looks at us with the darkness of its eyes.

And you, soul, tired, deaf,

How often are you talking about happiness?

The image of a huge generalizing power is created in the poem "Voice from the Choir" that concludes the entire cycle. Here is an apocalyptic prophecy about the coming triumph of evil:

And the last century, worse than all,

We will see you and me.

The whole sky will hide the heinous sin,

Laughter will freeze on all lips,

The longing of nothingness...

Here is how the poet himself comments on these lines: “Very unpleasant verses ... It would be better for these words to remain unsaid. But I had to say them. Difficult to overcome. And after him will be a clear day.

The pole of the "terrible world" evokes in the mind of the lyrical hero the thought of the coming retribution - this thought develops in two small cycles "Retribution" and "Yamba". Retribution, according to Blok, overtakes a person for betraying the ideal, for losing the memory of the absolute. This retribution is, first of all, the judgment of one's own conscience.

The logical development of the plot of the path of the lyrical hero is an appeal to new, unconditional values ​​- the values ​​of the people's life, the Motherland. The theme of Russia is the most important theme of Blok's poetry. At one of the performances, where the poet read a variety of his poems, he was asked to read poems about Russia. “It's all about Russia,” Blok replied. However, this theme is most fully and deeply embodied in the Motherland cycle.

Before this most important cycle in the "trilogy of incarnation" Blok places lyric poem"Nightingale Garden". The poem recreates the situation of a decisive crossroads in the plot of a lyrical novel. It is organized by an irreconcilable conflict, the outcome of which cannot but be tragic. The composition is built on the opposition of two principles of being, two possible paths of the lyrical hero. One of them is everyday work on a rocky shore, the agonizing monotony of existence with its "heat", boredom, deprivation. The other is a music-enticing "garden" of happiness, love, art:

Curses do not reach life

In this walled garden...

The poet does not try to find a reconciliation between "music" and "necessity", feelings and duty; they are separated with marked severity in the poem. However, both vital “shores” are undoubted values ​​for the lyrical hero: he wanders between them (from the “stony path” he turns into the nightingale garden, but from there he hears the inviting sound of the sea, “the distant growl of the surf”). What is the reason for the departure of the hero from the nightingale garden? It's not that he's disappointed." sweet song» love. This bewitching power, leading away from the "empty" path of monotonous labor, the hero does not judge with an ascetic court and does not deprive him of the right to exist.

Returning from the circle of the nightingale garden is not an ideal act and not a triumph of the “best” qualities of the hero over the “worst”. This is a tragic, selfless exit associated with the loss real values(freedom, personal happiness, beauty). The lyrical hero cannot be satisfied with his decision, just as he could not find spiritual harmony if he stayed in the "garden". His fate is tragic: each of the necessary, dear to him worlds has its own "truth", but the truth is incomplete, one-sided. Therefore, not only the garden enclosed by a “high and long fence” gives rise to a feeling of orphanhood in the hero’s soul, but also returning to the rocky shore does not relieve him of dreary loneliness.

And yet the choice is made in favor of severe debt. This is a feat of self-denial that determines further fate hero and allowing a lot to understand in creative evolution author. Blok most clearly defined the meaning of his path and the logic of the lyrical trilogy in one of his letters to Andrei Bely: “... this is my path, now that it has been passed, I am firmly convinced that this is due and that all the poems together are the “trilogy of incarnation” ( from a moment too bright light- through the necessary swampy forest - to despair, curses, "retribution" and ... - to the birth of a "public" person, an artist who courageously looks into the face of the world ... who has received the right to study forms ... peer into the contours of "good and evil "- at the cost of losing part of the soul."

Coming out of The Nightingale Garden, the lyrical hero of the trilogy parted with the "sweet song" of love (the most important love theme so far gives way to a new supreme value - the theme of the motherland). Immediately after the poem in the third volume of the "lyrical novel" - the cycle "Motherland" - the pinnacle of the "trilogy of incarnation". In poems about Russia, the leading role belongs to the motives of the country's historical destinies: the semantic core of Blok's patriotic lyrics is the cycle "On the Kulikovo Field". The battle of Kulikovo in the perception of the poet is a symbolic event that is destined to return. Therefore, vocabulary with the semantics of return, repetition is so important in these verses: “The swans screamed for Nepryadva, / And again, again they scream ...”; “Again with age-old anguish / Feathers stooped to the ground”; “Again over the Kulikov field / The haze rose and dispersed ...”. Thus, the threads connecting history with modernity are exposed.

Poems are built on the opposition of two worlds. The lyrical hero appears here as a nameless warrior of Dmitry Donskoy's army. Thus, the personal fate of the hero is identified with the fate of the Motherland, he is ready to die for it. But in the verses, the hope for a victorious and bright future is also tangible: “Let the night. Let's go home. Illuminate with bonfires / Steppe distance.

Another famous example of Blok's patriotic lyrics - the poem "Russia" - begins with the same adverb "again". This lexical particularity deserves a comment. The lyrical hero of the trilogy has already come a long way - from unformed premonitions of grandiose accomplishments - to a clear understanding of his duty, from waiting for a meeting with the Beautiful Lady - to a real meeting with the "beautiful and furious" world of folk life. But the very image of the motherland in the perception of the lyrical hero recalls the previous incarnations of his ideal. "Poor Russia" is endowed in a poem human features. The details of the lyrical landscape "flow" into portrait details: "But you are still the same - a forest and a field, / Yes, patterned cloth to the eyebrows." The portrait strokes of the image of Russia are expressive in another poem of the cycle - "New America": "Whispering, quiet speeches / Your flushed cheeks ...".

For the lyrical hero, love for the Motherland is not so much a filial as an intimate feeling. Therefore, the images of Russia and the Wife in Blok's lyrics are very close. In the appearance of Russia, the memory of the Beautiful Lady comes to life, although this connection is not logically revealed. The prehistory of the lyrical "I" is included in the structure of poems about the Motherland, and these poems themselves retrospectively enrich the early love lyrics Blok, confirm the poet's idea that all his poems are about Russia. “... Two loves - to the only woman and to the only country on earth, the Motherland - the two highest divine calls of life, the two main human needs, which, according to Blok, have common nature... Both loves are dramatic, each has its own inevitable suffering, its own “cross”, and the poet “carefully” carries it through his whole life ... ”stresses L. A. Kolobaeva.

The most important motif of poems about the Motherland is the motif of the path (“To the point of pain / The long way is clear to us!”). In the finale of the lyrical trilogy, this is the “cross” path common to the hero and his country. To sum up the trilogy, let's use the formula of one of the largest block experts - D.E. Maksimov: “The path of the Block appears ... as a kind of ascent, in which the “abstract” becomes “more concrete”, the obscure becomes clearer, the solitary merges with the public, the timeless, the eternal - with the historical, in the passive the active is born.

A. Blok was born on November 28 (16), 1880 in the family of a law professor and the daughter of the rector of the University of St. Petersburg. Since the parents separated, from the age of three, Blok lived and was brought up by his father's parents, who belonged to the "cream" of the St. Petersburg intelligentsia. The constant rotation in the bohemian environment formed Blok's special worldview, which manifested itself in the future in his literature. Blok began composing at the age of five (!) years, so it is not surprising that poetic expression became the norm of his life.

In 1903, Blok married Lyubov Mendeleeva, daughter of the great Russian chemist D.I. Mendeleev. In the same year, the first collection of poems by the poet was published, written under the impression of first love and the first months of happy life. family life. At the initial stage of Blok's work he had big influence Pushkin and Vl. Solovyov. Blok experimented at that time with poetic rhythm, inventing more and more new forms. For him, the sound and music of the verse were paramount in poetry.

The first collection of Blok's poems "Poems about a Beautiful Lady", 1904, represented the poet's Platonic idealism, the realization of divine wisdom in the image of the world soul in a female guise.

In Blok's next poetry collections, City, 1908, and Snow Mask, 1907, the author concentrated on a religious theme, and his muse of their mystical lady turned into an unfamiliar courtesan.

Blok's later poems are a mixture of the author's hopes and despair about the future of Russia. In the unfinished "Retribution", 1910-1921, the collapse of the author's illusions about the new Bolshevik regime was manifested. It is worth noting that Blok was optimistic about the October Revolution of 1917, placing great hopes on the new government. However, the subsequent actions of the Bolsheviks were so contrary to what Blok assumed and what they themselves promised, that the poet could not help but despair from his own self-deception. Nevertheless, he continued to believe in the exceptional role of Russia in the history of mankind. This opinion was confirmed by the works "Motherland" and "Scythians". In "Scythians" Blok used gypsy folklore, leaps of rhythms, sharp transitions from the intensity of passions to quiet melancholy. He seems to warn the West that if he takes up arms against Russia, then in the future this will lead to a response from Russia, united with the militant East, that this will lead to Chaos.

Blok's last work was his most controversial and mysterious poem "The Twelve", 1920, in which the author used polyphony of rhythms, hard, even rude language, so that the reader could imagine what was written on paper: a detachment of 12 soldiers of the Red The army is coming through the city, sweeping away everything in its path and carrying Christ in front of him.

Alexander Blok died on August 7, 1921 in St. Petersburg, abandoned by many friends of his youth and deprived of his last illusions about the new government.

The main themes of creativity. Motherland Theme. Blok defined Russia in two ways - sometimes as "poor" and "beautiful" Russia, then as " New America":" He could not, and did not want to combine these two principles, he palpably opposed them to each other as hostile, asserting in this opposition the romance of his work. "Blok created a special image of the Motherland. This is the image of a beautiful Woman, beloved bride. Her face bright, “bright forever”, she preserves the original purity of the poet’s soul.This is a woman with beautiful features, “robber beauty”, tied in a “patterned kerchief to the eyebrows”.

Theme of love. In the work of A. Blok, this topic is one of the most important. In the first book of the poet - "Poems about the Beautiful Lady", published in 1903 - a romantic interpretation of love is given as a feeling that in an incomprehensible way helps to connect the ideal world with the real world. The love in "Poems of the Beautiful Lady" is not directed towards any particular object. The object of love is the Eternal Wife, the Virgin of the Rainbow Gates, this is the embodiment of the ideal essence of the female soul. Therefore, love here is an impulse, an expectation, an unknown.

City theme. One of the leading topics lyrical creativity The poet is an urban theme - an octopus city that takes hostages, absorbing personalities, individualities, even the physical bodies of its inhabitants. The city of Blok is not the real Petersburg, although the reader can easily recognize the northern capital in his poems. It is rather a "landscape of the soul" of a lyrical hero. The mention of the city is already found here - in poems of the late 90s of the XIX century. The city is opposed to the natural life of nature, and the advantage in this comparison is clearly not on the side of the first. Early Blok is a true romantic, he is attracted by everything beautiful and sublime. The lyrical hero still clearly separates himself from the noisy, bustling city, physically he is a part of it, but spiritually he is the opposite. If in his early works Blok clearly separates himself - the lyrical hero - from the rest of the inhabitants of St. Petersburg, now (1903) the poet is no longer a romantic loner, not an individualist, he subtly feels the misfortunes and misfortunes of the city, its inhabitants, cannot turn a blind eye to them and continue to describe the unreal, fairy worlds seeking in them their own peace and personal happiness. For example, the poem "Stranger" is filled with details of urban life; reading it, we not only see pictures of St. Petersburg life, but also clearly hear drunken shouts, children's crying, women's screeching, the creaking of an oarlock. Describing the streets, back streets, taverns of St. Petersburg, Blok shows the tragedy of the Russian people of the early 20th century, the fate of the inhabitants native to the poet cities.

Lyrical heroine. A beautiful lady at Blok - symbolic meaning refined, beautiful, spiritual essence of the world. Speaking in letters to Andrei Bely about Her, the poet had in mind the Soul of the World, Eternal Femininity, which in his poems appeared in the form of a Beautiful Lady. Her image in the lyrics of the young poet symbolized the inseparability of his love for the beauty of an earthly woman and the beauty of the Eternal Femininity, marked the harmony of nature and culture, sensual and spiritual perception of the world. In the poems of this poet there are no specific images of either a woman or a lyrical hero. There are no concrete actions of him, and his experiences are elusive. All images only create a specific situation. The lyrical hero, in his desire to find moral support, is ready to believe any deception. The Beautiful Lady becomes such a welcome deception for him. This can be seen in all of Blok's poems, including "The Stranger".

The work of Alexander Blok, the great poet of the early 20th century, is one of the most remarkable phenomena in Russian poetry. By the power of talent, passion for defending one's views and positions, by the depth of penetration into life, by the desire to answer the biggest and pressing issues modernity, in terms of the significance of innovative discoveries that have become an invaluable asset to Russian poetry, Blok is one of those figures of our art who make up his pride and glory.

First of all, Blok's poetry is that all the phenomena of the surrounding world and all the events of history, all the legends of the centuries, people's grief, dreams of the future - everything that became the subject of experiences and food for thought, Blok translated into the language of lyrics and, above all, perceived as lyrics. Even Russia itself was for him a “lyrical magnitude”, and this “magnitude” was so huge that it did not immediately fit into the framework of his work.

It is also extremely important that a large patriotic theme, the theme of the Motherland and its destinies, enters Blok's lyrics at the same time as the theme of the revolution, captivating the poet to the most hidden depths of his soul and giving rise to a system of completely new feelings, experiences, aspirations that arose as if during lightning discharges, in their dazzling light, - and the theme of the Motherland becomes the main and most important in Blok's work. One of his most "remarkable poems, written during the days of the 1905 revolution and inspired by it, is" Autumn Will ". In this poem, which will be followed by a huge in its own way internal meaning and the artistic perfection of the cycle “Motherland”, those experiences and thoughts of the poet, which gave his lyrics new and extraordinarily important features, were deeply affected.

All the same, the same, and at the same time a completely different beauty native land(this is a motive) was revealed to the poet in the most inconspicuous for the “foreign gaze” plain, which does not strike any bright colors, not with colorful colors, calm and monotonous, but irresistibly attractive in the eyes of a Russian person, as the poet acutely felt and conveyed in his poem:

I go out on the road, open to the eyes,

The wind bends the elastic bushes,

The broken stone lay down on the slopes,

Yellow clay meager layers.

Autumn roamed in the wet valleys,

She laid bare the cemeteries of the earth,

But thick mountain ash in passing villages

The red color will dawn from afar ...

It would seem that everything is monotonous, familiar, has long been familiar in these “wet valleys”, but in them the poet saw something new, unexpected and as if echoing the rebellious, young, perky that he felt in himself; in the severity and even scarcity of the open space that opened before him, he recognized his own, dear, close, grabbing his heart - and could not help but respond to the red color of the mountain ash, reddening in front of him, calling somewhere and pleasing with new promises that the poet had not heard before. That's why he is experiencing such an unprecedented rise internal forces, the charm and beauty of the fields and slopes of his native land arose before him in a new way:

Here it is, my fun, dancing

And ringing, ringing, missing in the bushes!

And far, far away waving invitingly

Your patterned, your colored sleeve.

Before him there are real forests, fields, slopes, he is attracted by the path that disappears in the distance. It is about this that the poet speaks in his “Autumn Will” with some kind of inspired joy, bright sadness and extraordinary breadth, as if accommodating the entire native expanse:

Will I sing about my luck

How I ruined my youth in hops ...

I will cry over the sadness of my fields,

I will love your space forever ...

The feeling that scorches the heart of the poet and his work, invariably mixed with every thought, every experience, is, in addition to love for the Motherland, and love for the mother (motive). Mother, in the feat of whose son the radiance of the sun itself is seen, and let this feat cost the son of his whole life - the heart of the mother is overwhelmed with “golden joy”, for the filial light defeated the surrounding darkness, reigns over her:

The son did not forget his own mother:

The son returned to die.

His lyrics became stronger than himself. This is most clearly expressed in his poems about love (motive). No matter how much he kept saying that the women we love were cardboard, he, against his will, saw stars in them, felt alien distances in them, and - no matter how much he himself laughed at it - every woman in his love poems combined for him with clouds, sunsets, dawns, each opened gaps in the Other, that's why he creates his first cycle - “Poems about the Beautiful Lady”. The Beautiful Lady is the embodiment of eternal femininity, the eternal ideal of beauty. The lyrical hero is a servant of the Beautiful Lady, waiting for the coming transformation of life.

Hopes for the advent of "eternal femininity" testify to Blok's dissatisfaction with reality:

I anticipate you. Years pass by...

The beautiful Lady, one and unchanging in her perfection, in her wondrous charm, at the same time constantly changes her features and appears before her knight and servant either “Virgin, Dawn”, then “Wife clothed in the sun”, and this is what the poet calls to her. in the expectation of times foretold in ancient and sacred books:

To you, whose Twilight was so bright,

Raise the heavenly arches

All descending vault.

Love itself collects ideal, heavenly features in the eyes of the poet, and in his beloved he sees not an ordinary earthly girl, but the hypostasis of a deity. In the verses about the Beautiful Lady, the poet sings of her and endows her with all the attributes of divinity - such as immortality, infinity, omnipotence, incomprehensible to earthly man wisdom, - the poet sees all this in his Beautiful Lady, who now “goes to earth in an incorruptible body”.

Even when the lyrics of Blok spoke, it would seem, only about the private, intimate, personal, because in it, through the personal, the unique, the great, the world breaks through. “Unity with the world” - this motive, common to all of Blok's lyrics, is extremely important for understanding the meaning of Blok's works, his work, even going beyond the immediate response to this or that event.

The poet, explored many areas of human relations and experiences, experienced the whole cycle of feelings, passions, aspirations, matured and tempered in trials and struggles - all this makes up the content of that “novel in verse”, which is Blok’s lyrics, taken as a whole:

I bless everything that was

I was not looking for a better share.

O heart, how much you loved!

Oh mind, how you burned!

Let both happiness and torment

They laid their bitter trail

But in a passionate storm, in a long boredom -

I have not lost the old light ...

23. Poems "Stranger", "In the restaurant"

Among other poets of the Silver Age, Blok stands out for the significance of the evolution that took place in his lyrics. love theme. From the sublime dream of a beloved, which seemed mystical and unattainable, he comes to the perception of the image of a real woman. If earlier she was a Beautiful Lady, now this image is losing its magical aura and becomes real - a stranger, a corrupt woman. Consider this evolution on the example of two of his poems: The Stranger and In the Restaurant. In the poem Stranger, the lyrical hero meets his beloved in a restaurant, she appears to him in drunken dreams, her image has acquired real features (rings, veil). For the first time he meets a woman in a new guise for him. He is not happy with the world in which she appeared: the dust of the lane, the tried wits, among the ditches. And even the moon is no longer a romantic symbol, and only the disk is meaninglessly twisted. Only with the help of wine does the lyrical hero try to come to terms with reality, although he has long been disappointed in his dreams and has lost the meaning of life. But the image of the stranger has not yet completely lost its mystery. Even her real features (girlish figure, hand in rings) do not sharply contrast with her foggy, vague image (breathing in spirits and mists, she sits down by the window). Under mourning feathers, behind dark veil her face is not visible. Many mysteries to be solved permeate the poem. What is the enchanted coast and the enchanted distance? There is no direct answer, since this symbol is ambiguous. It is likely that this is some kind of dividing line between the real world and surreal, between vulgarity and beauty, spirituality and lack of spirituality, good and evil. The sharp opposition of the two worlds finds expression on several levels: vocabulary: high style (stand, eyes) with low style (grimacing, sticking out, drunkards with rabbit eyes); sound organization (at the beginning of the combination of consonants pvchrm, ndrstm, etc., and then alliteration on l, m, n (Is it just a dream of me?) The disharmony of the first part opposes the harmony of the second. And only the size of the iambic tetrameter remains the same, gives dimension and at the same time dynamism.The lyrical hero is lonely (And every evening the only friend / / Reflected in my glass +) The world built on his fantasies and changed with the advent of the Stranger was born only by drunken dreams of beauty. But the path along which the ideal of beauty moves at Blok, comes to an end. The path was not easy: from transcendental heights to the darkness and life of earthly life. The heroine of the poem In the restaurant, going down the stairs, on this way she finally loses the mystery of her unearthly beauty, finally, features are formed not only of the earth, but even a mundane woman. From an object of worship and adoration, she became a subject of sale. However, the stranger is shown with sympathy and participation. There is a love duel lasting a fraction of a second, but this love is perhaps equal in strength to a feeling. developing for a long time. The poem opens with the doubt of the lyrical hero, as it was already in the Stranger: Was he or was he not this evening? And then a landscape touch: Petersburg dawn, yellow lanterns on yellow. The northern sky, giving birth to despair, increasing the fatigue of a romantic living in a terrible world, speaks of the inevitable sadness and dissatisfaction with real life, as in the Stranger. The lyrical hero is just one of a long line of annoying fans. This is evidenced by the phrase: And this one is in love. But she distinguishes him from the crowd of admirers, outstanding, daring to be impudent to hide embarrassment. But, despite this, their meeting is not so much happiness, luck, but unfortunate misunderstanding: he is handsome, smart, educated, romantic, but this further alienates them from each other. There is an abyss between them: she is a woman for entertainment, and he is not the master of her circle. There can be nothing serious between them, it can only be bought for an hour. The drama of relations intensifies (they thundered, they sang frantically) and, finally, it will end: the eyes, reflected in the mirrors, vulgarly shout: Catch! Mirrors, reflecting and splitting the image of a new stranger, scatter her beauty, uniqueness perishes, the mystery disappears. All this happens to the appropriate music: a monist-dancing gypsy strums, who does not sing, but squeals about love. This orgy of sounds is addressed to the yellow dawn, so the circle closes. It casts its reflection on the sinful life of people. Beauty is ruined. Desecrated, destroyed, dissolved in the yellow world of the yellow city.