Russian poets of the second half of the 19th century. "Russian poetry of the second half of the 19th century"

Lecture 3. Life and poetry of Fet

PEDAGOGICAL UNIVERSITY

The study of Russian poetry of the second half of the XIX century
in class in 10th grade

Lecturer L.I. SOBOLEV

The proposed program can be used both in the 10th grade with an in-depth study of literature, and for work in regular classes.

Lecture plan for the course

Lecture 3. Life and poetry of Fet

The mystery of Fet's biography. Man and poet. History of collections. Nature in the world Feta. Fet metaphor. The musicality of his poetry. Poetic dimensions. Impressionism Fet.

Biography of Fet. Man and poet

At the beginning of 1835, a letter arrived from the Oryol landowner A.N. Shenshin. The letter is addressed to his son Afanasy Shenshin, but it is inscribed “Afanasy Fet” - this is how the boy should now be called. It was a disaster. “The transformation from a Russian pillar nobleman into a German commoner deprived Fet not only of social self-awareness, noble privileges, the right to be a landowner, the opportunity to inherit the Shenshin family estate. He was deprived of the right to call himself Russian; under the documents he had to sign: "Foreigner Afanasy Fet had a hand in this." But the most important thing was that he was deprived of the opportunity to explain his origin without shame: why is he the son of Shenshin; why is he a foreigner Fet, if he is the son of Shenshin; why is he Afanasyevich, born in Novoselki and baptized into Orthodoxy, if he is the son of Johann Peter Föth ”( Bukhshtab. S. 9).

Fet was born in 1820 in the Novoselki estate, which belonged to the retired captain Afanasy Neofitovich Shenshin. The poet's mother, Charlotte Elizaveta Becker, after Feth's first husband, was taken away by Shenshin from Darmstadt (in Germany, Charlotte left her husband, daughter Caroline and father Karl Becker). A.N. got married Shenshin and Charlotte (now Elizaveta Petrovna) according to the Orthodox rite only in 1822. I will not analyze all the existing versions of the origin of the poet (see. Bukhshtab. pp. 4-13) - what matters to me is the well-being of a boy, alone in a German boarding school (there was not a single Russian in the class), cut off from his family, from his home (he was not taken home even for summer holidays). In the book " early years my life”, published after the death of the poet, Fet (secret in his memoirs, silent about many things) tells how, once on Russian soil during a horseback ride, he “could not cope with the enthusiasm that boiled in his chest: he got off his horse and rushed kiss your native land" ( Fet. 1893. S. 101). And one more confession is important: “In quiet moments of complete carelessness, I seemed to feel the underwater rotation of flower spirals, trying to bring the flower to the surface” ( Fet. 1893, p. 115). This is how the poet began.

The catastrophe experienced by Fet in adolescence determined a lot in his life. After graduating from Moscow University (1844), the Hesse-Darmstadt subject Fet ( yo changed to e after the first journal publications) enters the service as a non-commissioned officer in the Order's cuirassier regiment - in military service, he expects to serve the hereditary nobility as soon as possible (in 1846 he was accepted into Russian citizenship); the right to it was given by the first chief officer rank, that is, the captain (in the cavalry). But after the decree of Nicholas I, only the first staff officer rank (major) gave such a right; many years of service lay ahead. In 1856, when Fet rose to the rank of guards headquarters captain, Alexander II issued a decree according to which only the highest headquarters officer rank (colonel) was given hereditary nobility. In June 1857, Fet retired on indefinite leave (see. chronicle) and has not returned to service since. In 1873, Fet filed a petition addressed to the king “for permission to take the legal name of my father Shenshin” ( chronicle. S. 170); the request has been granted. “If you ask: what are the names of all the suffering, all the sorrows of my life, I will answer: their name is Fet,” the poet wrote on January 10, 1874 to his wife (quoted from: Bukhshtab. S. 13).

Fet's worldview still causes controversy among researchers. Even B. Sadovskoy wrote in 1915 that “Fet was a convinced atheist”, and “when he talked about religion with the believer Polonsky, he sometimes brought the latter<…>to tears" ( IV. S. 153; Sadovskaya. 1916, p. 80). In 1924, a book by G.P. Blok, The Birth of a Poet. The Tale of Fet's Youth. The author cites the text of the “contract” concluded between the teacher of the Pogodin boarding school where Fet lived in 1838, Irinarkh Vvedensky, and a certain “Reichenbach”, who claimed that in twenty years he would remain an atheist. G.P. Block proves that “Reichenbach” is Fet ( G. Block. pp. 32–34). Such an understanding of Fetov's disbelief seems to other researchers too straightforward. Firstly, the very nickname “Reichenbach” (the name of the hero of the novel by N.A. Polevoy “Abbadonna”) raises Fet’s theomachism to “the legend of the proud angel of heaven Satan, who rebelled against God and was cast down from heaven”; connected with this is the motif of paradise lost by Fet ( Fet. 2. S. 390–391). Secondly, “one of the key images of his poetry (and what, if not poetry, could testify to the true faith of Fet?) was<…>"soul", directly called "immortal"" ( Ibid. S. 390). V. Shenshina claims that not only Fet (poet. - L.S.) was not an atheist, but “Shenshin was not an atheist either” (man. - L.S.), since he “was baptized, married and buried by the Russian Orthodox Church” ( Shenshin. S. 58).

“How little in the matter of the liberal arts I value reason in comparison with the unconscious instinct (inspiration), the springs of which are hidden to us<...>so in practical life I demand reasonable grounds, supported by experience” ( MV. Part 1. S. 40). "We<...>constantly sought in poetry the only refuge from all sorts of worldly sorrows, including civil ones ”(Preface to the III edition of“ Evening Lights ”- IN. S. 241). The question of Fet/Shenshin's wholeness/duality has a large and unequal literature. “There was something hard about him and, oddly enough, there was little poetry. But the mind and common sense were felt, ”recalled the eldest son of L. Tolstoy ( S.L. Tolstoy. S. 327). The emphasis here seems to be "common sense"; let's listen to B. Sadovsky: “Like Pushkin, Fet had that common sense which is given to a few paramount geniuses” ( Sadovskaya. 1990, p. 383). As Fet wrote Ya.P. Polonsky (December 27, 1890), “it is impossible to write your biography based on your poems, and even hint at the events of your life ...” ( Writers about literature. S. 470). This does not negate the thesis about the integrity of Fet, about the unity of his personality - and this integrity is expressed in the main values ​​\u200b\u200bthat are found in poetry, and in prose, and in the life of the poet - in love, nature and beauty. Here is a quote from a village essay (we are talking about the cultivation of flowers in a landowner's estate): “... You hear here the presence of a sense of beauty, without which life is reduced to feeding the hounds in a stuffy-stinking kennel” ( Stepanovka's life. S. 149).

“He said that poetry and reality have nothing in common with each other, that as a person he is one thing, and as a poet it is another,” wrote N.N. Strakhov ( Strakhov. S. 18). How can we explain this to our students? Let's listen to B.Ya. Bukhshtaba: “... He perceived his life as dreary and boring, but he believed that such was life in general. And before meeting Schopenhauer, and especially relying on his teachings, Fet did not get tired of repeating that life in general is base, meaningless, boring, that its main content is suffering, and there is only one mysterious, incomprehensible sphere of true life in this world of sorrow and boredom. , pure joy - the sphere of beauty, a special world ”( Bukhshtab. S. 59). In early letters to I.P. Borisov, a friend and neighbor (and in the future the husband of Nadya's sister), Fet speaks of the endless hardships of service and life in general: “... I can only compare my life with a dirty puddle, now it stinks. I have never been morally killed to such an extent. Just a living dead. My very sufferings are like the suffocation of someone buried alive” ( LM. S. 227). But similar complaints can be found in later letters - it is no coincidence that I.S. Turgenev wrote in 1870 that no one can compare with Fet in “the ability to mope” (p. I.P. Borisov on January 31, 1870). I will not undertake to expound the philosophical system of Schopenhauer - as you know, Fet not only read and honored this thinker, but also translated his main work (“The World as Will and Representation”); Fetu’s word: “The whole and everywhere true to himself Schopenhauer says that art and beauty leads us from the languishing world of endless desires to the weak-willed (here it is a positive epithet! - L.S.) the world of pure contemplation; watch the Sistine Madonna, listen to Beethoven, and read Shakespeare, not for the next place or any profit” (Letter to K.R., September 27, 1891. Quoted from: Bukhshtab. S. 46). And in the “Preface to the III edition of “Evening Lights”,” the poet spoke of the desire to “break through everyday ice, so that at least for a moment breathe in the clean and free air of poetry” ( IN. S. 238).

But where does poetry come from? “Of course, if I had never admired the heavy braid and the clean parting of thick female hair, then they would not have appeared in my poetry; but there is no need for each time my poem to be a literal scrap from the moment experienced, ”Fet wrote to Konstantin Romanov ( K.R. Correspondence. S. 282). “You should not think that my songs come from nowhere,” he writes to Ya.P. Polonsky - they are the same gifts of life as yours<…>Forty years ago, I was swinging with a girl, standing on a board, and her dress crackled in the wind, and forty years later she got into a poem ... ”(quoted from: Bukhshtab. S. 90). And here is from the article “On the poems of F. Tyutchev”: “Let the subject of the song be personal impressions: hatred, sadness, love, etc., but the further the poet moves them away from himself as an object, the more vigilantly he sees the shades of his own feelings, the purer will be his ideal” ( Fet. 2. S. 148).

This is true for the poet himself. In the summer of 1848, Fet met the daughter of a retired cavalry general, Maria Lazich (in the "Early Years ..." she is named Elena Larina). They fell in love, but Fet “clearly understood that marrying an officer who receives 300 rubles. from home, on a girl without a fortune, means thoughtlessly or in bad faith to take on an oath promise that you are not able to fulfill ”( Fet. 1893. S. 424). The lovers parted, and soon Lazich died. But memory of the heart(Fet's expression from a letter to Ya.P. Polonsky on August 12, 1888) turned out to be so strong that Fet wrote poems dedicated to Maria Lazich until his death. Here are a few titles: “Old letters”, “Alter ego”, “You have suffered, I am still suffering ...”, “For a long time I dreamed of your cries of sobs ...”, “No, I have not changed. To deep old age ... ".

In 1860, Fet buys the Stepanovka estate in the Mtsensk district and becomes a landowner - more precisely, a farmer, since he has no serfs. What prompted Fet to buy the estate and start farming? “Three years before the manifesto, the inactive and expensive city life began to bother me greatly,” Fet himself writes at the beginning of his first village essay ( Stepanovka's life. S. 59). In "Memoirs" the poet admits that "the belief in the impossibility of finding material support in literary activity<…>led me to the idea of ​​looking for some corner of my own for the summer” ( MV. Part 1. S. 314). A.E. Tarkhov, with reference to the letters of I.P. Borisov, mentions two more reasons - a devastating article about Fet's translations (Sovremennik. 1859. No. 6), “directed against all aesthetic principles” of the poet, and a change in the “air of life”, that is, the onset of the utilitarian era of the 1860s ( Fet. 2. S. 370). It is worth recalling the insightful remark of V.P. Botkin about the need for Fet to be “sedentary” now, when literature “does not represent what it used to represent, with its contemplative direction” ( MV. Part 1. S. 338–339). His opposition to modernity makes us remember another big loner who dug in his estate, as in a fortress - Leo Tolstoy. And for all the difference between the two farmers, their position is similar in one thing: they did not try to fit in with the times, they did not yield to it in their convictions. A special and important topic is the phenomenon of estate life; without him, we will not understand much in the life and work of L. Tolstoy, I. Turgenev, N. Nekrasov and Fet (and not only).

“Literary lining” (the expression of L. Tolstoy) was disgusting to both L. Tolstoy and Fet - it is no coincidence that they both seemed wild and alien in the literary circle: L. Tolstoy was called a “troglodyte” (see, for example, the letter of I.S. Turgenev to M.N. and V.P. Tolstoy on December 8/20, 1855), and Druzhinin in his diary noted the “antediluvian concepts” of Fet ( Druzhinin. S. 255). Meanwhile, the author of “War and Peace” admitted to Fet that he valued him in mind “above all acquaintances” and that the poet “in personal communication alone gives me that other bread, which, apart from unified man will be fed” (November 7, 1866. - Tolstoy. Correspondence. T. 1. S. 382). In the same letter, L. Tolstoy, mentioning the deeds “for the Zemstvo” and “for the household”, which they both do “as spontaneously and unfreely as ants dig a tussock”, asks about the main thing: “What do you do with thought, the very spring of your Fetova"? And just as the poet sent his poems to L. Tolstoy before any publication, so L. Tolstoy admitted that “his real letters” to Fet are his novel (May 10–20, 1866. - Tolstoy. Correspondence. T. 1. S. 376).

With the secret of the birth of Fet, the not entirely clear circumstances of his death “rhyme”. Here is how B. Sadovsky tells about her: “In the autumn of 1892, Fet moved from Vorobyovka to Moscow in early October. Upon arrival, he soon went to Khamovniki to visit S.A. Tolstoy, caught a cold and fell ill with bronchitis<…>On the morning of November 21st, the patient, who was on his feet as always, unexpectedly wished for champagne. To his wife's objection that the doctor would not allow this, Fet insisted that Marya Petrovna immediately go to the doctor for permission.<…>When Marya Petrovna left, Fet said to the secretary: "Come on, I'll dictate to you." - Letter? she asked. - “No”, and then, from his words, Ms. F. wrote on top of the sheet: “I do not understand the conscious increase in inevitable suffering. Volunteering towards the inevitable." He signed these lines with his own hand: November 21st. Fet (Shenshin).

On the table lay a steel cutting knife, in the form of a stiletto. Fet took it, but the alarmed Mrs. F. began to pull out the knife, and injured her hand. Then the patient began to run quickly through the rooms, pursued by Mrs. F. The latter rang with all her might, calling for help, but no one came. In the dining room, running up to the chiffonier where the table knives were kept, Fet tried in vain to open the door, then suddenly, breathing often, fell on a chair with the word "damn!". Then his eyes opened wide, as if seeing something terrible; The right hand moved to rise, as if for the sign of the cross, and immediately lowered. He died in full consciousness" ( Sadovskaya. 1916, pp. 80–81. See also the 5th edition of the almanac "Russian archive". M., 1994. S. 242–244).

Collections

The traditional view of Fet's first collection is “this is a typical youthful collection - a collection of rehashes”; here is the “traditional Byronism of the late 30s”, and “cold disappointment”, and the influence of all possible predecessors - Schiller and Goethe, Byron and Lermontov, Baratynsky and Kozlov, Zhukovsky and Benediktov ( Bukhshtab. S. 19; I draw the reader's attention to a forgotten but very important article: Shimkevich K. Benediktov, Nekrasov, Fet // Poetics. L., 1929. T. 5).

A serious analysis of the "Lyrical Pantheon" is contained in the comments on the first volume of the proposed complete collection of "Works and Letters" by Fet, undertaken by the Pushkin House and the Kursk Pedagogical Institute. V.A. Koshelev, the author of the commentary on the first collection, dwells on the meaning of the title of the book ( pantheon- and the temple, and the cemetery, and - according to Dahl - an anthology); at the same time, the connection of the title with the absence of the author's name is emphasized ( Fet. 2002, pp. 420–421). According to the commentator, the title reflects the cross-cutting idea of ​​feta collections - the inseparability of one's own lyrical compositions and translations; the deliberate ambiguity of the title (perhaps reflecting the “exorbitant vanity”, “ambition” of the debutant, “who decided to create a “temple” with the first attempts of his pen”) correlates with the ambiguity of the epigraph from Lamartine, in which one can see Fet’s author’s credo for all his creative years: lyre I would like to become like the “trembling of the wings of a marshmallow”, or “wave”, or “cooing doves” ( Ibid).

Another semantic implication of the title of the collection is obviously associated with “Fet’s attraction to anthological motifs” ( Ibid. S. 424). Anthological poetry, quite popular in the middle of the century (not only in the works of Fet, but, above all, in the works of A.N. Maikov and N.F. Shcherbina), sang beauty, regretted its loss (Fetova's "Greece" is characterized by the lines: “I am sad: the world of the gods, now orphaned, // The hand of ignorance brands oblivion”); the plasticity of the anthological poems demonstrated the skill of the poet. It is no coincidence that out of the four poems of the first book included in the collection of 1850, three are anthological.

“Already in the youth collection,” sums up V.A. Koshelev, - Fet fully presented those general attitudes that will become the basis of all his subsequent work: 1) an attitude towards “pure” poetry and “small” topics; 2) deliberately complicated lyrical imagery, opposed to prosaic "common sense"; 3) installation on the only “form” inherent in him to reveal this imagery, which determines the special structure of his poems; 4) the creation of a specifically "cyclical" way of lyrical narration<…>; 5) highlighting “translations” as a special department of one’s own poetic passions and including them “on an equal footing” in the composition of the collection” ( Ibid. S. 422). Precisely because the "Lyrical Pantheon" did not oppose the later work of the poet, Fet, unlike Nekrasov, never abandoned his first book and did not try to buy it up and destroy it.

In the collection of 1850 (“Poems by A. Fet”, Moscow), the principle of compiling a poetic book, characteristic of Fet, was found - not according to chronology, but according to genres, themes and cycles. Fet is a poet “without a path”; in a letter to K.R. (November 4, 1891), he admitted: “From the first years of clear self-consciousness, I did not change at all, and later reflections and reading only strengthened me in the initial feelings that passed from unconsciousness to consciousness” ( Writers about Literature. S. 115; see also Rosenblum. S. 115).

“Poems by A.A. Fet ”(St. Petersburg, 1856) came out during Fet’s closest approach to the Sovremennik circle. Fet's editor was I.S. Turgenev - this poses the most important textological problem for all publishers and researchers of Fet: the definition of the so-called "canonical" text of a particular poem.

The editors of the twenty-volume collection of Fet (so far only the first volume has been published) made the following decision: all poems are printed from lifetime collections; two editions (where they exist) are printed in parallel as part of the main text; options are in the comments. In the meantime, I offer the teacher the most important, in my opinion, form of assignment in the lesson: to compare two editions of the same text (see the options in the publications of the Poet's Library in the corresponding section; see also Questions and Assignments for this lecture).

The peculiarity of the 1863 collection ( Poems by A.A. Feta. Ch. 1–2. Moscow) lies in the fact that, firstly, it was published without an editor; secondly, it included translations from ancient and modern European poets; entered the book and a cycle of translations from Hafiz. The book of 1863 was, in fact, a farewell book - Fet did not fit into the non-poetic atmosphere of the 1860s and practically left literature. And the fate of this collection confirmed the untimeliness of Fet - 2400 copies were never sold until the end of the poet's life. M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin noted the “weak presence of consciousness” in the poet’s “half-childish worldview” ( Shchedrin. P. 383), D.I. Pisarev and V.A. Zaitsev practiced wit in every possible way about Fet, and Fet himself began to take care of the household.

Fet did not break down and did not reconcile with the spirit of the times. “If I have something in common with Horace and Schopenhauer, it is their boundless contempt for the intellectual mob at all levels and functions.<…>It would be insulting to me if the majority understood and loved my poems: this would only be proof that they are unchanged and bad ”(Letter to V.I. Stein, 1887. Quoted from: Bukhshtab. S. 51). But in the 1880s, interest in poetry began to revive, Fet wrote more and more, and from 1883 separate issues of Evening Lights began to appear. In 1891, the fourth was published, and the fifth was prepared, but did not come out during the life of the poet (for more details about these collections, see. IN, comments). Fet again has advisers - N.N. Strakhov and V.S. Solovyov. It is here, in the preface to the third edition of "Evening Lights", Fet sets out his views on poetry, on the relationship between the poet and society, poetry and life.

The poetic world of Fet

Following Zhukovsky and Tyutchev (for all the difference between their poetic declarations), Fet already in his early poems asserts ineffability God's world and the inner world of man in the word.

Oh, if without a word
It was possible to say the soul!

(“Like midges dawn ...”, 1844) *

* If the quotation contains the first line of the poem, only the year is indicated in brackets (in broken brackets - the dating of the editors of the publication); if other than the first lines are quoted, the opening line of the poem and the date are given in parentheses.

This motif will be preserved in later works.
How poor is our language! - I want and I can not, -
Do not pass it on to friend or foe,
What rages in the chest with a transparent wave.
(1887)

It is no coincidence that there are so many indefinite pronouns and adverbs in Fet's poems - they express dreams, dreams, daydreams lyrical hero - his most characteristic states.

I stood still for a long time
Looking into the distant stars,
Between those stars and me
Some connection was born.

I thought... I don't remember what I thought;
I listened to the mysterious choir
And the stars trembled softly
And I love the stars since then ...
(1843)

Next to words like: “some”, “somewhere”, “someone”, verbs with a negative particle are often found in Fet’s poems: “I won’t say anything”, “I won’t alarm”, “I won’t dare” (all this - from the poem “I won’t tell you anything ...”, 1885), “I don’t remember”, “I don’t know”, etc. Important impression(already contemporaries started talking about the "impressionism" of Fet's poetry). Like Zhukovsky, Fet not only depicts, but conveys the subjective state of the lyrical hero; the landscape is painted with his feeling, his not completely intelligible sensations determine the fragmentary, fragmentary nature of Fetov's poems.

A bonfire blazes with the bright sun in the forest,
And, shrinking, the juniper cracks;
Like drunken giants, a crowded choir,
Flushed, the spruce tree staggers...

In this poem of 1859, the words “flame”, “bright sun”, “warmed up”, “sparks”, and with the day - “sparsely”, “lazy”, “flickering”, “fog”, “turn black”; Of course, we are not talking about the traditional and generally understandable perception of nature, but about the subjective, often paradoxical feeling of the lyrical hero (the winter night is similarly depicted in the poem “On railway", 1860). At the same time, the reason for the poem, its theme are declared unimportant by Fet; Ya.P. Polonsky recalled: “Fet<…>used to say to me: “Why look for a plot for poetry; these plots are at every step - throw a woman's dress on a chair or look at two crows that perched on the fence, here are the plots for you ”( Polonsky. S. 424).

Apparently, with the transience of “separate spiritual movements, moods, shades of feelings” ( Bukhshtab. P. 76) is also connected with the “nonverb” of some of his poems (see about this: Gasparov). It is as if the poet refuses to try to express his feelings in words, to convey his feelings to another. This can only be done with sound - inspire to another soul what you feel yourself.

P.I. Tchaikovsky wrote about Fet: “Fet in his best moments goes beyond the limits indicated by poetry, and boldly takes a step into our area<…>This is not just a poet, but rather poet-musician, as if avoiding even such topics that are easily amenable to expression in a word ... ”( K.R. Correspondence. S. 52). Upon learning of this review, Fet wrote to his correspondent: “Tchaikovsky<...>as if he had spied on that artistic direction in which I was constantly drawn and about which the late Turgenev used to say that he expected me to write a poem in which the final couplet would have to be conveyed by silent movement of the lips.<...>I was always drawn from a certain area of ​​words to an indefinite area of ​​music ... ”( Ibid. S. 300). The musicality of Fet's poetry lies not only in the fact that many of his poems are set to music, and not only in the fact that in many of them music, singing is the main theme, but in the very structure of his poems.

This is primarily a sound recording.
Rye ripens under a hot field,
And from the field to the field
Whimsical wind blows
Golden overflows.
(1859)

And the sounds of a separate blow are changing;
The jets whisper so tenderly,
Like timid strings cooing guitars,
Singing calls of love.
(“Fragrant night, blessed night...”, 1887)

Musical rhythm is created not only by sound repetitions, but also by lexical ones.

No, do not wait for a passionate song,
These sounds are vague nonsense,
The languid ringing of the string;
But, full of dreary flour,
These sounds evoke
Sweet dreams.

They flew in a ringing swarm,
They flew and sang
In the bright sky.
Like a child I listen to them
What affected them - I do not know
And I don't need.

Late summer in the bedroom window
Quietly whispers a sad leaf,
Whispers not words;
But under the light noise of a birch
To the headboard, to the realm of dreams
The head droops.
(1858)

The words: “sounds”, “flown”, “whispers”, repeating, create the melody of the poem - in particular, by the fact that an internal rhyme appears. You can notice in Fet's poems and syntactic repetitions - most often in interrogative or exclamatory sentences.

The last sound fell silent in the deaf forest,
The last ray went out behind the mountain, -
Oh, how soon in the silence of the night,
Beautiful friend, will I see you?
Oh, soon baby speech
Will my expectation change in fear?
Oh, how soon to lie down on my chest
Will you hurry, all the thrill, all the desire?

Entire lines and even stanzas are often repeated - a ring composition is created (“Fantasy”, “Your luxurious wreath is fresh and fragrant ...”), the meaning of which is not exhausted, as it seems to me, by romance intonation; the poet, as it were, reveals, unfolds the moment, stops it, showing the enormous meaning of just one moment in the life of nature or man. So, in the poem “The night shone. The garden was full of moonlight. They lay ... ”repeats (“that you are alone - love”, “love you, hug and cry over you”) seem to express one thought: everything that has elapsed between two meetings, “many years, tedious and boring”, are not worth one moment of the fullness of life, the fullness caused by the singing of a woman (comparison of this poem with Pushkin's "I remember a wonderful moment ..." see: IN. pp. 575–576 - article: Blagoy D.D. The world is beauty. The same in the book: Blagoy D.D. The world is beauty. About "Evening Lights" by A. Fet. M., 1975. S. 64–65).

Fet is no less original in metrics; many of his discoveries will be picked up by the poets of the 20th century. One of the first Fet turns to vers libre.

H Most of all I like to glide across the bay
So - forgetting
Under the sonorous measure of the oar,
Soaked in effervescent foam, -
Yes, look, how many drove off
And there's a lot left
Can't you see the lightning?
(“I love a lot that is close to my heart...”, 1842)

Fet often has stanzas with alternating short and long lines, and for the first time in Russian poetry stanzas appear where a short verse precedes a long one.

The garden is in bloom
Evening on fire
So refreshing-joyful to me!
Here I stand
Here I go
Like a mysterious speech I'm waiting for.
This dawn
This spring
So incomprehensible, but so clear!
Is it full of happiness
Do I cry
You are my blessed secret.
(1884)

Fet alternates not only lines of various sizes, but also written in different sizes - anapaest and dactyl (“Only in the world there is that shady ...”, 1883), iambic and amphibrach (“For a long time there has been little joy in love ...”, 1891 ); one of the first Russian poets, he refers to the dolnik ("The candle burned. Portraits in the shade ...", 1862).

In the peculiarities of rhyming, the poet is just as bold an experimenter: he rhymes odd lines, leaving even ones without rhyme (“Like the clarity of a cloudless night ...”, 1862), rhymes even ones with unrhymed odd ones - the so-called “Heine’s verse” (“I stood motionless for a long time. ..", 1843), rhymes two adjacent verses, leaving the next pair without rhyme ("What are you, my dear, sitting thoughtfully ...", 1875), gives part of the stanzas with rhymes, part - without rhymes.

The gardens are silent. With dull eyes
With despondency in my soul I look around;
The last leaf is scattered underfoot,
The last radiant day has gone out.
Only you alone, arguing with common death,
Dark green poplar, not wilted
And, still trembling with sheets,
About spring days you babble to me as a friend ...
("Poplar", 1859; first edition)

Fet is no less bold, bold, unusual in the vocabulary of his poems, more precisely, in the phrases he uses: “the soul of dying violins”, “dreary mystery” (“The spring sky looks ...”, 1844), “melting violin” ( "Smile of languid boredom ...", 1844); “And there, behind the walls, like a light dream, / From the bright east, the days flew wider and wider ...” (“Sick”, 1855). This unusualness was keenly felt by contemporaries - for example, regarding the poem “Patterns on double glass ...” (1847), O. Senkovsky mockingly remarked: “... Frost draws patterns on glass, and the girl is smart, and Mr. Fet loves to contemplate fatigue<...>I don’t understand the connection between love and snow” (quoted from: Bukhshtab. S. 82).

Fet never recognized any goals for art, except for the glorification of beauty.

Only a song needs beauty
Beauty does not need songs.
(“I will only meet your smile ...”, 1873)

I'm bored forever talking about what is high, beautiful;
All these rumors only lead me to yawning...
Leaving the pedants, I run to talk with you, my friend;
I know that in these eyes, black and intelligent eyes,
More beautiful than in a few hundred folios,
I know that I drink the sweet life from these pink lips.
Only a bee recognizes hidden sweetness in a flower,
Only an artist senses a beautiful mark on everything.

Hence the stable theme of Fet's poetry: the special role of the poet, the great purpose of art - to sing and thereby preserve beauty. Fet's “Chosen Singer” is a servant of beauty, her priest; with the theme of the poet, Fet has the motif of flight, heights - “to rise with one wave into another life ...” (“To drive the living boat with one push ...”, 1887), “the soul<...>flies where the wing carries ... ”(“ Everything, everything that is mine that was before ... ”, 1887),“ ... by air way - And we will fly away to eternity ”(“ May Night ”, 1870). In the poem "To a Pseudopoet" (1866), Fet's program is expressed sharply, polemically and artistically consistently.

Shut up, hang your head
As if presented to a terrible judgment,
When by chance in front of you
Favorite Muses mentioned!

To the market! The stomach is screaming
There for the hundred-eyed blind man
More valuable than your penny mind
Mad whim of the singer.

There is a sale of painted rubbish,
In this musty square, -
But to the Muses, to their pure temple,
Selling slave, don't come near!

Dragging at the whim of the people
In the dirt, a low-worshiping verse,
You are the words of the proud freedom
Never got it with my heart.

Didn't ascend piously
You are in that fresh haze,
Where selflessly only freely
Free song and eagle.

The space of a true poet is a pure temple of the Muses, a “fresh haze” into which one can only “ascend”; he is free as an eagle (remember Pushkin's: "the poet's soul will start up like an awakened eagle"). Dictionary for a pseudo-poet: “market”, “stomach”, “penny mind”, “painted rubbish”, “dirt”, “low-browed verse”. The crowd, the people - "a blind man with a hundred eyes"; serving him will never be the lot of a true poet.

And one more expression is worth noting - "the crazy whim of the singer." Creativity, according to Fet, unconsciously, intuitively; the poet sharply formulated this in the article “On the Poems of F. Tyutchev” (1859): “Whoever is not able to throw himself from the seventh floor upside down with an unshakable belief that he will soar through the air, he is not a lyricist. But next to such audacity, a sense of proportion must burn inextinguishably in the poet's soul. Fet. 2. S. 156). As you can see, the audacity and madness of the lyric poet is still restrained not by thought, but by a sense of proportion. The unconsciousness of creativity is also spoken of in poetry.

... I don’t know myself what I will
Sing - but only the song matures.
(“I came to you with greetings ...”, 1843)

The epithet "mad" is often found in both poetry and Fet's prose - and always with a positive connotation. But the ecstasy of poetry does not exclude, according to Fet, but requires vigilance - “vigilance in relation to beauty” (“On the poems of F. Tyutchev”). And in Fet's love poems, the theme of beauty is the main one.

To whom the crown: the goddess of beauty
Or in the mirror of her image?
The poet is confused when you marvel
His rich imagination.
Not me, my friend, but God's world is rich,
In a speck of dust, he cherishes life and multiplies,
And that one of yours expresses a look,
That the poet cannot retell.
(1865)

In love, the poet finds the same fullness of the feeling of life as in nature and in art. But the feeling of love is depicted in Fet's poems in the same fragmentary, fragmentary, indefinite way as other states of the soul of the lyrical hero. A moment, a moment - this is the artistic time of Fet's love lyrics, and often these moments belong to memories, this is the past resurrected by the poet ("When my dreams are beyond the past days ...", 1844).

It’s not a pity for life with a weary breath, -
What is life and death?
What a pity for that fire
That shone over the whole universe,
And goes into the night, and cries, leaving.

Literature

Block G. The birth of a poet. The Tale of Fet's Youth. Based on unpublished material. L., 1924.

Bukhshtab B.Ya. A.A. Fet. Essay on life and creativity. L., 1990.

Afanasy Fet. Evening lights. M., 1979.

Gasparov M.L. Fet verbless // Gasparov M.L. Selected articles. M., 1995.

Druzhinin A.V. Tales. A diary. M., 1986.

Kozhinov V.V. On the secrets of the origin of Afanasy Fet // Problems of studying the life and work of A.A. Feta. Kursk, 1993, pp. 322–328.

K.R. Selected correspondence. SPb., 1999.

Chronicle of A.A. Feta // A.A. Fet. Traditions and problems of study. Kursk, 1985.

Lotman Yu.M. Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin. Biography of the writer. L., 1982.

Polonsky Ya.P. My student memories // Polonsky Ya.P. Cit.: V 2 t. M., 1986. T. 2.

Rosenblum L.M. A. Fet and the aesthetics of “pure art” // Questions of Literature. 2003. Issue. 2. S. 105–162.

Russian writers about literature: In 3 vols. L., 1939. T. 1.

Sadovskoy B. Konchina A.A. Feta // Sadovskoy B. Ice drift. Articles and notes. Pgr., 1916. The same: Historical Bulletin. 1915. April. pp. 147–156 (a photograph of the poet in a coffin is printed in the magazine) ( IV.)

Sadovskoy B. A.A. Fet // Sadovskoy B. Swan clicks. M., 1990. The same: Sadovskoy B. Russian stone. M., 1910.

Saltykov-Shchedrin M.E. Sobr. cit.: In 20 t. M., 1968. T. 5.

Strakhov N.N. A few words in memory of Fet // Fet A.A. Complete collection. op. SPb., 1912. T. 1.

Sukhikh I.N. Shenshin and Fet: life and poems // Fet Athanasius. Poems. St. Petersburg, 2001 (New "Poet's Library" a. Small series).

Tolstoy L.N. Correspondence with Russian writers: In 2 vols. M., 1978.

Tolstoy S.L. Essays of the past. M., 1956.

Fet in correspondence with I.P. Borisov // Literary thought. Issue. 1. Pgr., 1923 ( LM.)

Fet A. My Memoirs (1848–1889). Reprint reproduction of the 1890 edition. M., 1992. Ch. 1–2 ( MV.)

Fet A. The Life of Stepanovka, or the Lyrical Economy. M., 2001.

Fet A. Early years of my life. Reprint reproduction of the 1893 edition. M., 1992.

Fet A.A. Collected works and letters. Poems and Poems 1839–1863 SPb., 2002.

Fet A.A. Cit.: In 2 volumes. Introductory article and comments by A.E. Tarkhov. M., 1982.

Shenshina V. A.A. Fet-Shenshin. Poetic worldview. M., 1998 (The chapter "A. Fet as a metaphysical poet" is also published in the collection "A.A. Fet. Poet and thinker". M., 1999).

Questions and tasks for self-examination

• Read the story of A.P. Chekhov "In the estate". What do you think it has to do with the hero of our lecture? (After you try to answer on your own, see the article by I.N. Sukhikh - Dry. S. 27).
• Compare the early and late editions of the poem "Whisper, timid breathing ..." ( Fet. 2002. S. 198) or the poem "Fantasy" ( Ibid. P. 76), or the poem “Every feeling is more understandable to me at night, and every ...” ( Ibid. pp. 88–89).
• Disassemble the poem "Life flashed without a clear trace ...". How did Fet's closeness to Tyutchev's poetic world manifest itself in this poem?
• Which of the works on Fet listed in the list would you recommend to your students?

Test No. 1

For students of advanced training courses "Russian poetry of the second half of the 19th century at literature lessons in the 10th grade"

Dear students of advanced training courses!

Control work number 1 is a list of questions and tasks. This work is based on the materials of the first three lectures. Grade control work will be made according to the “pass/fail” system. In order for the work to be credited, it is necessary to correctly answer at least three questions.

Please complete this test and no later than November 15 send it to the Pedagogical University "First of September" at the address: 121165, Moscow, st. Kievskaya, 24.

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Tasks

1. Analyze Tyutchev's poem "Day and Night" - poetic size, vocabulary, syntax, composition of the poem; Formulate the main motives of this poem and its connection with other poems of the poet.

2. Analyze Fet's poem "At dawn, you don't wake her up ..." - poetic size, vocabulary, syntax, composition of the poem; Formulate the main motives of this poem and its connection with other poems of the poet.

3. As an assignment for the class, select two poems by two poets for comparison; specify in detail what you would like to receive as a result of the work.

4. As a task, select one poem by Tyutchev or Fet for analysis; give a parsing plan and indicate what you would like to get as a result of the work.

5. Choose two or three fragments from the most suitable, in your opinion, works about Tyutchev and Fet for literary presentation.

6. Make a commentary summary of one of the articles about Tyutchev (Turgenev, Nekrasov, Vl. Solovyov, or others).

Introduction……………………………………………………….……….......…....3

1. Development of poetry in the second half of the 19th century…………...…………….….5

2. The main motives of the lyrics in the work of A. A. Fet .................................................. 6

2.1 Fet's poetry is nature itself, looking like a mirror through the human soul .............................................. ............................................8

2.2 Aesthetic views of Fet .............................................. .............10

3. Creativity of F. I. Tyutchev .............................................. ...................................12

Introduction

“Poetry is dark, inexpressible in verse,” wrote I.A. Bunin, a great representative of Russian literature of the 20th century. Indeed, poetry calls "a higher truth" - it tells about the events of spiritual life. "Can you tell your soul?" So, poetry in literature is a special kind, the art of the word, where the poet expresses thoughts, feelings, moods. The second half of the 19th century in Russia was the heyday of lyric poetry, although not for long: already in the 60s and 70s, interest in lyrics was falling (until almost the end of the century). But this short flowering was very fruitful.

Numerous collections of poems are published; the attention of critics is riveted to new poetic works. It was also interesting that poetry for the first time split into two currents: democratic and lyrical. The source of this split is in disputes about Pushkin's heritage. Fet and other supporters of "pure art" referred to Pushkin's lines: "not for worldly excitement ... we were born ...". Topicality, publicism were not accepted by poets, representatives of the second current. The very term "poetry of pure art" is rather arbitrary. So, the poets-lyricists immerse themselves in nature, and not in history, but the subject of their poetry has always been reality itself in the utmost fullness and richness of every moment. The man in their lyrics is wide open to any manifestation of "omnipotent nature", every moment of his existence, he, in the words of I.A. Bunin, "participates in the earth itself, all that sensual, material, from which the world is created."
In their poems one cannot find pictures of social reality, just as there is no direct reflection of their contemporary ideological problems. Fet, Tyutchev, A. K. Tolstoy do not seek to portray life with its everyday worries, troubles and losses. Their poetic task is to give life under special angle vision, where it was beauty, the direct realization of the ideal.
Life in the 21st century is viewed from a different angle. What tasks in relation to the poetry of the 19th century should be set for modern readers?

Let's formulate the main ones:
Get to know the life and work of poets
Show the features of poetry as a kind of literature
Reveal the originality of the lyrics of the represented poets

The development of poetry in the second half of the 19th century

The poems that were created by Russian authors in the 50s were subject to sharp criticism - they were all compared with the legacy of Alexander Sergeevich, and, according to many critics, they were much much "weaker" than them. During this period, poetry began to gradually supplant prose. Such talented prose writers as Tolstoy, Turgenev and Dostoevsky appeared in the literary field. It should be noted that it was Tolstoy who was one of the most categorical critics of the new Russian poets: he ignored the work of Tyutchev, openly called Polonsky, Maikov and Fet "untalented".

Maybe Lev Nikolaevich was really right, and we should not perceive the poetry of the post-Pushkin era as a literary heritage? Then why do many of us associate the 19th century not only with the works of Lermontov and Pushkin, but also with the brilliant poems of Fet, Nekrasov, Pleshcheev, Koltsov, Polonsky, A. Tolstoy?

Moreover, if we consider Russian poetry from such a radical position, then poets - silversmiths - Akhmatova, Blok, Bely, Mayakovsky, Tsvetaeva automatically fall into the category of "mediocrity" who have not reached the level of Pushkin. Therefore, we see that such an opinion is devoid of all logical grounds, and it is categorically impossible to be guided by it.

Many of the talented Russian lyricists (F.I. Tyutchev, A.A. Fet, N.A. Nekrasov, A.K. Tolstoy, A.N. Maikov) began their journey in the late 1830s - early 1840s . It was a time very unfavorable for lyricists and for poetry. After the death of Pushkin and Lermontov, A.I. Herzen, "Russian poetry has become numb". The muteness of Russian poetry was explained different reasons. The main one was the one about which V.G. Belinsky in the article "A Look at Russian Literature of 1843": "After Pushkin and Lermontov, it is difficult to be not only remarkable, but also some kind of poet." An important role was played by another circumstance: prose takes possession of the minds of readers. Readers were waiting for short stories and novels, and the editors of magazines, responding to the "spirit" of the era, willingly provided pages of prose, publishing almost no lyric poems.

In the 1850s poets, it would seem, overcame the indifference of readers. It was in this decade that the first collection of F.I. Tyutchev, who attracted everyone's attention: readers finally recognized the brilliant poet who began his creative way back in the 1820s. Two years later, in 1856, a collection of Nekrasov's poems was published, almost instantly sold out. But interest in the poetic word soon fades away, and new books by A.K. Tolstoy, A.N. Maykova, Ya.P. Polonsky, F.I. Tyutcheva, A.A. Fet attract the attention of critics and a few lovers of poetry.

Meanwhile, Russian poetry of the second half of the 19th century lived a very intense life. The originality of aesthetic positions, a special understanding of the purpose of the poet and poetry breed Russian lyricists into different "camps" (according to A.K. Tolstoy). This is “civil poetry”, the purpose of which is “to remind the crowd that the people are in poverty” (N.A. Nekrasov), and “pure poetry”, designed to sing the “ideal side” of life. F. Tyutchev, A. Fet, Ap. Maykova, A.K. Tolstoy, Ya. Polonsky, Ap. Grigoriev. Civic poetry was represented by Nekrasov. Endless discussions between supporters of the two “camps”, mutual accusations of pseudo-poetry or indifference to the life of society explain a lot in the atmosphere of the era. But, defending the correctness of only their aesthetic ideas, poets from different “camps” often turned out to be close in their poetic vision of the world, close to the values ​​that they sang. The work of each talented poet served one lofty goal - the affirmation of the ideal of beauty, goodness and truth. All of them, to use Nekrasov's expression, "preached love", understanding it in different ways, but equally seeing in it the highest purpose of man. In addition, the work of every true poet, of course, could not fit into the Procrustean bed of straightforward schemes. So, A.K. Tolstoy, who declared his belonging to the poets of "pure" art, in epics, epigrams and satirical poems, managed to speak very sharply about the problems of contemporary life. ON THE. Nekrasov - deeply and subtly reflected the "internal, mysterious movements of the soul", which the supporters of "pure" art considered one of the main subjects of poetry.

Although the poets of the second half of the 19th century could not overcome the indifference of readers to the lyrics and make them wait anxiously for their poetry collections (as, for example, the new novels of I. Turgenev, I. Goncharov, F. Dostoevsky, L. Tolstoy were expected), however, they made them sing their poems. Already in the 1860s. M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin said that Fet's romances "are sung by almost all of Russia." But Russia sang not only Feta. The amazing musicality of the works of Russian lyricists attracted the attention of outstanding composers: P.I. Tchaikovsky, N.A. Rimsky-Korsakov, M.P. Mussorgsky, S.I. Taneeva, S.V. Rachmaninov, who created musical masterpieces that the Russian people remembered and loved. Among the most famous, popular ones are “Song of a Gypsy” (“My fire in the fog shines”), “The Recluse”, “Challenge” by Ya.P. Polonsky, “Oh, at least you speak with me”, “Two guitars, ringing ...” A. Grigoriev, “In the midst of a noisy ball”, “That was in early spring ...” A.K. Tolstoy, "Pedlars" N.A. Nekrasov and many, many other poems by Russian poets of the second half of the 19th century.

Time, erasing the acuteness of disputes about the appointment of the poet and poetry, found that for the next generations both "pure" lyricists and "civilian" poets turn out to be equally significant. Reading their works now, we understand: those images that seemed to contemporaries "lyrical audacity" are a gradual but clear emergence of poetic ideas that are preparing the flowering of Russian lyrics of the Silver Age. One of these ideas is the dream of “ascending” love, love that transforms both man and the world. But the Nekrasov tradition became no less significant for the poets of the Silver Age - his “cry”, according to K. Balmont, the cry that “there are prisons and hospitals, attics and basements”, that “at this very minute, when we are with you breathe, there are people who are suffocating.” Acute awareness of the imperfection of the world, Nekrasov's "hostile word of denial" organically combined in the lyrics of V. Bryusov and F. Sologub, A. Blok and A. Bely with longing for the Unspeakable, for the ideal, giving rise not to the desire to get away from the imperfect world, but to transform it according to Ideal.

Russian poets of the beginning of the 19th century - from Zhukovsky and Batyushkov to Pushkin and Lermontov - created a new poetic language in which it was possible to express the most complex experiences, the deepest thoughts about the universe. They introduced into Russian poetry the image of a lyrical hero who both resembles and does not resemble the poet himself. The poets of the first half of the 19th century revised the usual system of genres. They preferred a love elegy, a romantic ballad, to "high", solemn odes; re-instilled in native literature a taste for folk culture, for Russian songs and fairy tales; embodied in their work the contradictory consciousness and the tragic experience of a contemporary person, a Russian European. They mastered the experience of world romanticism - and gradually outgrew it in many ways.

But this often happens in literature: having barely reached the artistic pinnacle, Russian poetry began to decline sharply. It happened shortly after the death of Pushkin, and then Baratynsky and Lermontov. That is, in the early 1840s. The poets of the older generation somehow got tired of the hectic literary life at the same time, switched off from active process. And many young lyric poets of the 1840s, who remained in the public eye, seem to have forgotten how to write. The highest skill, mastery of verse technique, which in Pushkin's time was considered the norm, something taken for granted, was lost overnight by most poets.

At the very beginning of the 19th century, Russian literature learned to portray the human character in its individuality and uniqueness. In the 1820s and 1830s, Russian writers began to associate the fate of their heroes with a specific historical era, with those everyday, financial circumstances on which human behavior often depends. And now they began to look at the human personality through the prism of social relations, to explain the actions of the heroes by the influence of the "environment", they took them out of economic and political reasons.

Readers of the 1840s and 1860s were waiting for just such social writings. And this inner aimlessness, lack of content bled the poetic form. When "original" poetry is in a state of crisis, painfully searching for new ideas and new forms of self-expression, the genre of parody usually flourishes. That is, a comic reproduction of the peculiarities of the manner of a particular writer, poet.

In the late 1840s, Alexei Konstantinovich Tolstoy (1817-1875) and his cousins Alexey Mikhailovich (1821-1908) and Vladimir Mikhailovich (1830-1884) Zhemchuzhnikovs invented... a poet. (Sometimes the third brother, Alexander Mikhailovich, joined the joint parody work.) They began to write poetry on behalf of the never-existing graphomaniac Kozma Prutkov, and in these poems they parodied bureaucracy in all its manifestations.

Because Prutkov came up with a "state" biography, turned him into an official, director of the Assay Chamber. The fourth of the Zhemchuzhnikov brothers, Lev Mikhailovich, painted a portrait of Prutkov, combining in it the martinet features of a bureaucrat and the mask of a romantic poet. Such is the literary guise of Kozma Prutkov, false romantic and bureaucratic at the same time:

In the guise of Kozma Prutkov, the incompatible was united - the late romantic image of a "strange", wild poet, "who is naked," and an official, "whose tailcoat is on."

But if the "creativity" of Kozma Prutkov was only a parody and nothing more, it would have died along with its era. But it remained in the reader's everyday life, Prutkov's works have been reprinted for a century and a half. So they have outgrown the boundaries of the genre! In Prutkov's "creativity" the fashionable motifs of Russian poetry of the 1840s and 1850s are indeed summed up and melted down. some of his aphorisms have entered our everyday life, having lost their mocking meaning: There is something very alive in the literary personality of Prutkov. And therefore, not "Prutkov's" parodies of individual (for the most part - rightly forgotten) poets, but precisely his image itself forever entered the history of Russian literature.

Russian drama of the 19th century.

At the beginning of the 19th century, Shakhovskoy, Khmelnitsky, Zagoskin became imitators of light French drama and comedy, and the Dollmaker was a representative of the stilted patriotic drama. Griboedov's comedy Woe from Wit, later Gogol's Inspector General, Marriage, become the basis of Russian everyday drama. After Gogol, even in vaudeville (D. Lensky, F. Koni, Sollogub, Karatygin), the desire to get closer to life is noticeable.

Ostrovsky gave a number of remarkable historical chronicles and everyday comedies. After him, Russian drama stood on solid ground;

The viewer of the play focuses on the three Prozorov sisters: Olga, Masha and Irina. Three heroines from different characters habits, but they are all equally brought up, educated. Their life is an expectation of change, a single dream: “To Moscow!” But nothing changes. The sisters remain in the provincial town. In place of a dream comes regret about the lost youth, the ability to dream and hope, and the realization that nothing will change. Some critics called the play "Three Sisters" the apogee of Chekhov's pessimism. Opposition reality (present) - dreams, illusions (future). The opposition to work is idleness. Opposition past - future.

Late 19th - early 20th century.

The literature of the second half of the 19th century is divided into the 60s (1855-1868) and the 70s (1868-1880). Historical events: Crimean War, the reform of 1861, the organization "Land and Freedom". There is a division of writers into: 1. Democratic (Chernyshevsky, Levitov), ​​2. Liberal (Leskov, Tolstoy). In dramaturgy: Democrats (Saltykov-Shchedrin, Sukhovo-Kobylin) Liberals (Sologub, Tolstoy). In poetry: Democrats (Nekrasov, Kurochkin, Goltz-Miller - Nekrasov school) Liberals (Poets of pure art)

Magazines: "Contemporary", " Russian word”, “Time”, “Epoch”. The main direction is realism. Psychological - drew on inner world and intellectual life of man. Sociological - did not pay attention to the intellectual level, but turned to the environment where a person lives). Enlightenment - displays the image of a freedom fighter.

1. Literature of the 60s. A new hero comes: a thinking raznochinets, whose word does not disagree with the deed. The hero of the noble society is being replaced by people fighting for happiness. New conflicts between liberal nobles and revolutionary democrats. New in the subject of literature: the life of the masses, revolutionaries-raznochintsev, peasants. Introduction to political issues. New in genres: epic cycle (short stories, essays), folk and political novel.2. Literature of the 70s. Realism takes on a satirical form (Saltykov-Shchedrin "The History of a City") A philosophical novel (Dostoevsky) family novel is created. Populist poets (as populism develops during these years) Alkhin, Surikov.3. 20th century. The new hero is a revolutionary worker. (Gorky's "Mother", and not Tolstoy's "Sunday", the new hero is the image of the people, their living conditions. Genre - social novel). The novel is replaced by short stories and essays. New genres appear: classical realism (Tolstoy, Mamin-Sibiryak), philosophical realism (Chekhov). The revolution of 1917, many left Russia (recreation after the suppression of the revolution), they are replaced by: Bunin, Kuprin. Modernism arises (poets of the Silver Age belong to this direction). Poetry was characterized by: mysticism, a crisis of faith, spirituality of conscience. Poetry is connected with Russian folklore, song, Bible.

Modernism and Avant-garde.

Modernism (culturally, not chronologically) turns out to be not the end of the 19th, but the beginning of the 20th century, a cultural era that replaces realism and fundamentally polemicizes with it. Accordingly, cultural historians speak of the modern era, the modern style, and so on. The birth and flourishing of modernism falls on the 1890-1910s.

The goal of modernism is to substantiate the principles of a new art that meets modernity. Modernists, following the decadents, understand modernity as a time when the basic moral and artistic values ​​have lost their former meaning, and therefore art must be built on new principles, new ways must be sought. Modernists are guided by urban, urban culture instead of rural culture, they try to use the principles of modern science in their work, but, on the other hand, they often talk about the exhaustion of the rationalistic approach to reality, characteristic of realism, and sing of the irrationality of being, the abyss of consciousness, spontaneous impulse.

The modernist range of interests and complex of motives is well represented by Andrey Bely's poem "The First Date" (1921), in which he recalls the beginning of the century, the times of his youth.

Avant-garde - extreme avant-garde artists no longer understand art as an artistic activity, but as a direct action, a direct way of influencing the public, a provocation of the reader-spectator.

Avant-gardists perceive as their opponents not only realist writers, but also modernists, from their point of view, too dependent on the old traditions. The beginning of the Russian avant-garde falls on the 1910s.

Decadence is a threshold and an integral part of some modernist trends in a state of crisis, fall. The avant-garde is their front line. Only at the end of the 20th century did a new global aesthetic concept appear - postmodernism. Decadence, modernism, avant-garde are philosophical and cultural concepts related to different kinds of art. Throughout the twentieth century, they were embodied in specific directions, schools and artistic methods.

Silver Age.

The Silver Age - the appearance of a large number of poets who preached a new, different from the old ideals, aesthetics. The name "Silver Age" is given by analogy with the "Golden Age" (the first half of the 19th century), the term was introduced by Nikolai Otsup. The Silver Age ran from 1892 to 1921. Symbolism. A new literary trend - symbolism - was the product of a deep crisis that engulfed European culture at the end of the 19th century. The crisis manifested itself in the revision of moral values, the loss of faith in the power of the scientific subconscious. Russian symbolism was born in the years of the collapse of Populism and the wide spread of pessimistic sentiments. All this led to the fact that the literature of the "Silver Age" does not raise topical social issues, but global philosophical ones. The chronological framework of Russian symbolism - 1890s - 1910. The formation of symbolism in Russia was influenced by two literary traditions:

Patriotic - the poetry of Fet, Tyutchev, Dostoevsky's prose;

French symbolism - the poetry of Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud, Charles Baudelaire. The symbolism was not uniform. Schools and trends stood out in it: "senior" and "junior" symbolists.

Petersburg Symbolists: D. S. Merezhkovsky, Z. Gippius, F. Sologub, N. Minsky. In the work of the St. Petersburg Symbolists, at first, decadent moods and motives of disappointment prevailed. Therefore, their work is sometimes called decadent. Moscow Symbolists: V. Bryusov, K. Balmont. The "senior" symbolists perceived symbolism in an aesthetic sense. According to Bryusov and Balmont, the poet is, first of all, the creator of purely personal and purely artistic values.

Acmeism stood out from symbolism and opposed it. Acmeists proclaimed materiality, objectivity of themes and images, the accuracy of the word (from the standpoint of "art for art's sake"). The founders of acmeism were Nikolai Gumilyov and Sergey Gorodetsky. Gumilyov's wife Anna Akhmatova, as well as Osip Mandelstam, Mikhail Zenkevich, Georgy Ivanov and others joined the movement.

Futurism was the first avant-garde trend in Russian literature. Assigning itself the role of a prototype of the art of the future, futurism as the main program put forward the idea of ​​destroying cultural stereotypes and instead offered an apology for technology. The founders of Russian futurism are considered members of the St. Petersburg group "Gilea". "Gilea" was the most influential, but not the only association of futurists: there were also ego-futurists headed by Igor Severyanin, the groups "Centrifuga" and "Mezzanine of Poetry".

Imagists stated that the purpose of creativity is to create an image. The main expressive means of the Imagists is a metaphor, often metaphorical chains that compare various elements of two images - direct and figurative. The founders of Imagism are Anatoly Mariengof, Vadim Shershenevich and Sergei Yesenin. Rurik Ivnev and Nikolai Erdman also joined Imagism.

Alexander Alexandrovich Blok (November 16, 1880, St. Petersburg, the Russian Empire- August 7, 1921) - Russian symbolist poet.

He began in the spirit of symbolism (“Poems about beautiful lady”, 1904), the feeling of the crisis of which was proclaimed in the drama “Balaganchik” (1906). Blok's lyrics, close to music in their "spontaneity", were formed under the influence of the romance. Through the deepening of social tendencies (cycle "City", 1904-1908), religious interest (cycle "Snow Mask", Publishing House "Ory", St. Petersburg 1907), understanding of the "terrible world" (cycle of the same name tragedy of modern man (the play "The Rose and the Cross", 1912-1913) came to the idea of ​​the inevitability of "retribution" (the cycle of the same name 1907-1913; the cycle "Yamba", 1907-1914; the poem "Retribution", 1910-1921). The main themes of poetry were resolved in the Motherland cycle (1907-1916).

The paradoxical combination of the mystical and the mundane, the detached and the everyday is generally characteristic of Blok's entire work as a whole. Particularly characteristic in this regard is the classic juxtaposition of the foggy silhouette of the “Stranger” and “drunkards with rabbit eyes,” which has become a textbook. Blok tried to comprehend the revolution not only in journalism, but also, which is especially significant, in his poem “The Twelve” (1918), unlike all previous works. "Twelve" is an ironic thing. It is not even written in a ditty style, it is made in a “thieves” style. The style of a street couplet.

In February 1919 Blok was arrested by the Extraordinary Commission. He was suspected of participating in an anti-Soviet conspiracy. A day later, after two long interrogations, Blok was nevertheless released, since Lunacharsky stood up for him. However, even these one and a half days of prison broke him. After the surge of January 1918, when the Scythians and The Twelve were created at once, Blok completely stopped writing poetry. The last cry of despair was the speech read by Blok in February 1921 at an evening dedicated to the memory of Pushkin. Blok's poetic works have been translated into many languages ​​of the world.

Symbolism, as a phenomenon in literature and art, first appeared in France in the last quarter XIX century. By the end of the century, it had spread to most of Europe. But after France, it is in Russia that symbolism is realized as the most large-scale, significant and original phenomenon in culture. Many representatives of Russian symbolism bring new features to this trend, often having nothing in common with their French predecessors. Symbolism becomes the first significant modernist movement in Russia; simultaneously with the emergence of symbolism in Russia, the Silver Age of Russian literature begins; in this era, all new poetic schools and individual innovations in literature are, at least in part, under the influence of symbolism - even outwardly hostile trends (futurists, "Forge", etc.) largely use symbolist material and begin with the negation of symbolism. But in Russian symbolism there was no unity of concepts, there was no single school, no single style; even among the symbolism rich in originals in France you will not find such a variety and such dissimilar examples. In addition to the search for new literary perspectives in form and subject matter, perhaps the only thing that united Russian symbolists was distrust of the ordinary word, the desire to express themselves through allegories and symbols. “A thought spoken is a lie” - a verse by the Russian poet Fyodor Tyutchev, the forerunner of Russian symbolism. The older generation

Russian symbolism declares itself in the first half of the 1890s. Several publications are usually cited as the starting points of his story; first of all, these are: “On the causes of the decline ...”, the literary-critical work of D. Merezhkovsky and the almanacs “Russian Symbolists”, published at his own expense by student Valery Bryusov in 1894. These three pamphlets (the last book was published in 1895) were created by two authors (often acting as translators within the framework of this publication): Valery Bryusov (as the editor-in-chief and author of manifestations and under the masks of several pseudonyms) and his student friend - A.L. Miropolsky.

Thus, Merezhkovsky and his wife, Zinaida Gippius, were at the origins of symbolism in St. Petersburg, Valery Bryusov - in Moscow. But the most radical and striking representative of the early St. Petersburg symbolism was Alexander Dobrolyubov, whose "decadent way of life" in his student years served to create one of the most important biographical legends of the Silver Age. In Moscow, "Russian Symbolists" are published at their own expense and are met with a "cold reception" from critics; St. Petersburg was more fortunate with modernist publications - already at the end of the century there were “Northern Herald”, “World of Art” ... However, Dobrolyubov and his friend and fellow student at the gymnasium, V.V. Gippius, also published the first cycles of poems at their own expense; come to Moscow and get acquainted with Bryusov. Bryusov did not have a high opinion of the art of Dobrolyubov's versification, but Alexander's personality made a strong impression on him, which left a mark on his future fate. Already in the first years of the twentieth century, being the editor of the most significant symbolist publishing house Scorpio, which appeared in Moscow, Bryusov published Dobrolyubov's poems. By his own, later confession, at an early stage of his work, Bryusov received the greatest influence of all his contemporaries from Alexander Dobrolyubov and Ivan Konevsky (a young poet whose work was highly appreciated by Bryusov; he died at the twenty-fourth year of his life).

Fyodor Sologub (Fyodor Kuzmich Teternikov) created his own special poetic world and innovative prose independently from all modernist groups - apart, but in such a way that it is impossible not to notice. The novel "Heavy Dreams" was written by Sologub back in the 1880s, the first verses are marked 1878. Until the 1890s he worked as a teacher in the provinces, since 1892 he settled in St. Petersburg. Since the 1890s, a circle of friends has been gathering in the writer's house, often bringing together authors from different cities and warring publications. Already in the twentieth century, Sologub became the author of one of the most famous Russian novels of this era - The Little Demon (1907), introducing the terrible teacher Peredonov into the circle of Russian literary characters; and even later in Russia he is declared the “king of poets” ... But perhaps the most readable, most sonorous and musical poems at an early stage of Russian symbolism were the works of Konstantin Balmont. Already at the end of the nineteenth century, K. Balmont most clearly declares the “search for correspondences” characteristic of the Symbolists between sound, meaning and color (such ideas and experiments are known from Baudelaire and Rimbaud, and later from many Russian poets - Bryusov, Blok, Kuzmin, Khlebnikov and etc). For Balmont, as for example, for Verlaine, this search consists primarily in creating a sound-semantic fabric of the text - music that gives rise to meaning. Balmont’s passion for sound writing, colorful adjectives that displace verbs, leads to the creation of almost “meaningless”, according to ill-wishers, texts, but this interesting phenomenon in poetry leads over time to the emergence of new poetic concepts (sound writing, zaum, melodeclamation); Balmont is a very fruitful author - more than thirty books of poems, translations (W. Blake, E. Poe, Indian poetry, etc.), numerous articles.

I am the sophistication of Russian slow speech,

Before me are other poets - forerunners,

I first discovered in this speech deviations,

Perepevnye, angry, gentle ringing.

K. Balmont

younger generation

In Russia, junior symbolists are mainly called writers who published their first publications in the 1900s. Among them were really very young authors, like Sergei Solovyov, A. Bely, A. Blok, Ellis, and very respectable people, like the director of the gymnasium I. Annensky, scientist Vyacheslav Ivanov, musician and composer M. Kuzmin. In the first years of the century, representatives of the young generation of symbolists create a romantically colored circle, where the skill of future classics matures, which became known as the "Argonauts" or Argonautism.

In St. Petersburg at the beginning of the century, the “tower” of Vyach is most of all suitable for the title of “center of symbolism”. Ivanov, - the famous apartment on the corner of Tavricheskaya Street, among the inhabitants of which at different times were - Andrei Bely, M. Kuzmin, V. Khlebnikov, A. R. Mintslov, visited - A. Blok, N. Berdyaev, A. V. Lunacharsky , A. Akhmatova, "world of art" and spiritualists, anarchists and philosophers ... The famous and mysterious apartment: legends tell about it, researchers study meetings of secret communities that took place here (Hafizites, theosophists, etc.), gendarmes organized searches and surveillance here, in this For the first time, most of the famous poets of the era publicly read their poems in the apartment, for several years three completely unique writers lived here at the same time, whose works often present fascinating riddles for commentators and offer readers unexpected language models - this is the unchanged "Diotima" of the salon, Ivanov's wife, L D. Zinoviev-Annibal, composer Kuzmin (author of romances at first, later - novels and poetry books), and - of course, the owner. The owner of the apartment himself, the author of the book "Dionysus and Dionysianism", was called the "Russian Nietzsche". With the undoubted significance and depth of influence in culture, Vyach. Ivanov remains "a semi-familiar continent"; this is partly due to his long stays abroad, and partly to the complexity of his poetic texts, which, in addition, require rare erudition from the reader.

In Moscow in the 1900s, the editorial office of the Scorpion publishing house, where Valery Bryusov became the permanent editor-in-chief, was without hesitation called the authoritative center of symbolism. This publishing house prepared issues of the most famous symbolist periodical - "Scales". Among the permanent employees of the Libra were Andrey Bely, K. Balmont, Jurgis Baltrushaitis; other authors regularly collaborated - Fedor Sologub, A. Remizov, M. Voloshin, A. Blok, etc., many translations from the literature of Western modernism were published. There is an opinion that the history of "Scorpion" is the history of Russian symbolism, but this is probably an exaggeration.

Imagism is a literary trend in Russian poetry of the 20th century, whose representatives stated that the purpose of creativity is to create an image. The main expressive means of the Imagists is a metaphor, often metaphorical chains that compare various elements of two images - direct and figurative. The creative practice of the Imagists is characterized by outrageous, anarchist motives. The style and general behavior of Imagism was influenced by Russian Futurism. The connection of the term and concept of "Imagism" with Anglo-American Imagism is debatable.

Followers

The followers of Imagism, or "junior Imagists", included the poetess Nadezhda Volpin, also known as a translator and memoirist (mother of Alexander Yesenin-Volpin, mathematician and dissident).

In 1993-1995, there was a group of meloimagists who developed the poetry of images in Moscow, which included Lyudmila Vagurina, Anatoly Kudryavitsky, Sergei Neshcheretov and Ira Novitskaya.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Acmeism (from the Greek άκμη - “highest degree, peak, flowering, flowering time”) is a literary movement that opposes symbolism and arose at the beginning of the 20th century in Russia. Acmeists proclaimed materiality, objectivity of themes and images, the accuracy of the word.

The formation of acmeism is closely connected with the activities of the "Workshop of Poets", the central figure of which was the organizer of acmeism N. S. Gumilyov.

Contemporaries gave the term other interpretations: Vladimir Pyast saw its origins in the pseudonym of Anna Akhmatova, which sounds like “akmatus” in Latin, some pointed to its connection with the Greek “akme” - “point”.

The term "acmeism" was proposed in 1912 by N. Gumilyov and S. M. Gorodetsky: in their opinion, symbolism in crisis is being replaced by a direction that generalizes the experience of predecessors and leads the poet to new heights of creative achievements.

The name for the literary movement, according to A. Bely, was chosen in the heat of controversy and was not entirely justified: Vyacheslav Ivanov jokingly spoke about "Acmeism" and "Adamism", Nikolai Gumilyov picked up accidentally thrown words and dubbed the group of poets close to him Acmeists .

The gifted and ambitious organizer of acmeism dreamed of creating a "direction of directions" - a literary movement that reflects the appearance of all contemporary Russian poetry.

Acmeism in the works of writers

Acmeism was established in the theoretical works and artistic practice of N. S. Gumilyov (article "The Heritage of Symbolism and Acmeism" 1913), S. M. Gorodetsky ("Some Trends in Modern Russian Poetry" 1913), O. E. Mandelstam (article "Morning Acmeism”, published in 1919), A. A. Akhmatova, M. A. Zenkevich, G. V. Ivanov, E. Yu. Kuzmina-Karavaeva and others. Acmeists united in the "Poets' Workshop" group (1911-1914, resumed in 1920-1922), adjoined the "Apollo" magazine. In 1912-1913. published the journal "Hyperborea" (editor M. L. Lozinsky, 10 issues were published), almanacs "Workshops of Poets".

Russian futurism is one of the directions of the Russian avant-garde; a term used to refer to a group of Russian poets, writers and artists who adopted the provisions of the manifesto of Tommaso Filippo Marinetti. Futurism in literature

cubofuturism

Main article: Cubofuturism

The Cubo-Futurist poets included Velimir Khlebnikov, Elena Guro, David and Nikolai Burliuk, Vasily Kamensky, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Alexei Kruchenykh, Benedict Livshits.

egofuturism

Main article: Egofuturism

In addition to the general futuristic writing, egofuturism is characterized by the cultivation of refined sensations, the use of new foreign words, and ostentatious selfishness. Igor Severyanin was the leader of the movement, Georgy Ivanov, Rurik Ivnev, Vadim Shershenevich and Vasilisk Gnedov, who stylistically approached Cubo-Futurism, also joined ego-futurism.

"Mezzanine of Poetry"

A poetic association created in 1913 by Moscow ego-futurists. It included Vadim Shershenevich, Rurik Ivnev (M. Kovalev), L. Zak (pseudonyms - Khrisanf and M. Rossyansky), Sergei Tretyakov, Konstantin Bolshakov, Boris Lavrenev and whole line other young poets.

The ideological inspirer of the group, as well as its most energetic member, was Vadim Shershenevich. The Mezzanine of Poetry was considered in literary circles as a moderate wing of Futurism.

The association broke up at the end of 1913. Three almanacs were published under the label "Mezzanine of Poetry": "Vernissage", "Feast during the Plague", "Crematorium of Sanity" and several collections.

"Centrifuge"

A Moscow futurist group formed in January 1914 from the left wing of poets previously associated with the Lyrika publishing house.

The main members of the group are Sergei Bobrov, Nikolai Aseev, Boris Pasternak.

The main feature in the theory and artistic practice of the group members was that when building lyrical work the focus of attention shifted from the word as such to intonation-rhythmic and syntactic structures. Futuristic experimentation and reliance on tradition organically combined in their work.

Books under the Centrifuge brand continued to be published until 1922.

realistic prose.

In the 18th century, Russian literature was dominated by the ideology and aesthetics of classicism. But in the second half of the 18th century, during the Pugachev era and in the first years after it, there was a feeling of an approaching catastrophe. The foundations of Russian statehood were shaken. After the Pugachev uprising, part of the Russian noble society turned out to be receptive to the new literary direction "sentimentalism". This direction recognized that the basis of human nature is not reason, but feeling. One of the representatives of that era was the remarkable writer A. Kuprin. Kuprin is a great storyteller, remarkable for the naturalness and flexibility of his intonations. He willingly turns to historical anecdotes and legends, takes a ready-made canvas, coloring it with scatterings of his rich language. This is how the short stories The Shadow of Napoleon (192B), Four Beggars (1929), Hero, Leander and the Shepherd (1929), Tsar's Guest from Narovchat (1933) were born. Kuprin dedicates to his youth the largest and most significant émigré thing - Juncker's novel (1928-1932).

The military theme, so widely represented in the work of pre-revolutionary Kuprin, ends with a novel about the Junker years at the Alexander School. Time has smoothed out gloomy memories, and, moving on to the Junkers, you find yourself in a completely different world, full of light and poetry, where Alexandrov, cheerful in his limitations, reigns. A sense of unbridled, chronic nostalgia is permeated with Kuprin's last major work, Janet's story (1932-1933). The literary heritage of the late Kuprin is much weaker than his pre-October work. The first thing that catches your eye when you get acquainted with Kuprin's works of the 90s is their unequal value. Next to sketches, essays, sketches, in which, however, you feel genuine, as if life impressions have not cooled down, stories, there is a noticeable attraction to the stamp, traditional melodrama. A little time will pass, and Kuprin will sharply ridicule his own literary clichés. In Kuprin's prose of the second half of the 1990s, Moloch stands out as a passionate, direct indictment of capitalism. The story was not only a stage in the ideological development of the writer, but also an important stage in his artistic evolution. It was already in many respects real Kuprin's prose with its generous language without excess. Thus begins the rapid creative flowering of Kuprin, who created at the turn of two centuries almost all of his most significant works. There are works that put forward the writer in the first ranks of Russian literature. Army ensign (1897), Olesya (1898) and then, already at the beginning of the 20th century, In the circus (1901), Horse thieves (1903), white poodle(1903) and the story Duel (1905).

Speaking about Russian art of the 19th century, experts often call it literary-centric. Indeed, Russian literature largely determined the themes and problems, the general dynamics of the development of both music and the fine arts of its time. Therefore, many paintings by Russian painters seem to be illustrations for novels and stories, and musical works are built on detailed literary programs.

This also affected the fact that all outstanding literary critics undertook to evaluate both musical and pictorial works, to formulate their requirements for them.

This, of course, primarily applies to prose, but the poetry of the 19th century also had a strong influence on the development of national art. Whether this is good or bad is another question, but for a full-fledged study of Russian poetry and its integration into the general context of Russian art, it is undoubtedly very convenient.

Thus, the main genres of Russian musical art of the 19th century were romance and opera - vocal works based on a poetic text.

Painting, in turn, most often depicted pictures of Russian nature in different times year, which directly corresponds with the natural lyrics of Russian poets different directions. No less popular were everyday scenes "from the life of the people", just as clearly echoing the poetry of the democratic direction. However, this is so obvious that it does not need proof.

Therefore, the simplest move is to illustrate the studied poems by listening to romances on their words and demonstrating reproductions. At the same time, it is best if the poems of one poet accompany the romances of one composer and the paintings of one painter. This will allow, along with the study of the work of each poet, to get an additional idea of ​​​​two more masters of Russian culture, which is impossible to do when using the illustrations of many authors. So, for the poetry of F. Glinka, you can pick up the graphics and paintings of F. Tolstoy and the romances of Verstovsky or Napravnik, in the poetry of Polonsky - choirs to his poems by S. Taneyev and landscape painting by Savrasov, etc.

Those who would like to understand the relationship between poetry and fine arts in more detail should refer to the books of V. Alfonsov "Words and Colors" (M.; L., 1966) and K. Pigarev "Russian Literature and art"(M., 1972), articles in the collections "Interaction and synthesis of arts" (L., 1978), "Literature and painting" (L., 1982).

It will be very good if the students themselves can be involved in the selection of music and reproductions: this will teach them to navigate the world of art on their own, to be creative in its interpretation. Even in cases where the choice of students does not seem quite successful to the teacher, it is worth bringing it to the judgment of the class team and jointly decide what is not entirely accurate in this choice and why. Thus, lessons and extracurricular activities in literature can become a genuine introduction to the national Russian culture as a whole.

One cannot ignore such an area of ​​direct contact between the arts as the portrayal of poets by contemporary artists. It is the artistic images-versions that make it possible to capture the personality of the writers in their aesthetic, artistic incarnation, which is valuable in itself for real portrait painters. D. Merezhkovsky brilliantly demonstrates how a masterful portrait can become a starting point for understanding creativity in his article about Fofanov. Therefore, we can recommend the teacher to use in his work portraits of Russian poets reproduced in the volumes of the Poet's Library series: A. Koltsov by K. Gorbunov (1838), K. Pavlova and A. Khomyakov by E. Dmitriev-Mamonov, portraits by little-known graphic artists and painters, friendly caricatures of contemporaries.

Photo portraits of poets, illustrations for their works, autographs can become no less interesting and practically useful. These materials are usually reproduced to the extent necessary for the work in publications of the Poet's Library, collected works and editions of selected works of poets, a description of which is given at the end of this publication.

Below is an abbreviated article by V. Gusev on the Russian romance; We also recommend that you refer to the book by V. Vasina-Grossman “Music and the Poetic Word” (M., 1972), the collection of articles “Poetry and Music” (M., 1993) and the recent article by M. Petrovsky “Riding to the Island of Love”, or What is a Russian romance” (Questions of Literature. 1984. No. 5), as well as an invaluable practical reference book “Russian Poetry in Russian Music” (M., 1966), which lists almost all vocal works based on poems by Russian poets of the 19th century , grouped by the authors of the texts, indicating the corresponding musical editions.

From the article "Songs and romances of Russian poets"

<…>The first half of the 19th century, in terms of the variety of types of vocal lyrics, the abundance of works and the richness of their ideological and artistic content, can be considered the heyday of Russian everyday romance and song. It was at this time that the main song fund was created, which to a large extent determined the nature of the Russian national musical and poetic culture and left its mark on the musical and poetic life of Russian society.

In the second half of the 19th century, significant changes took place in Russian vocal lyrics - they affect both its ideological content, the correlation of genres, and stylistic visual musical and poetic means.

The process of democratization of Russian culture, the flowering of realism and the deepening of nationality in different types The arts also had a beneficial effect on the development of songwriting. The thoughtful study of the folklore tradition by poets and composers and a more independent, free handling of it led to the fact that the so-called "Russian song", which is distinguished by deliberate folklore stylization, ceased to satisfy both the artists themselves and the critics and the public.

Folk poetic traditions, as if newly discovered and organically assimilated by the entire advanced Russian artistic culture, gave it a pronounced national character, no matter what topics it touched on, no matter what material it took, no matter what means of reflecting reality it used. The need for a special genre of "Russian song" in these conditions has disappeared. Having played its positive role in the formation of national art, it gave way to other types of song lyrics, characterized by no less, if not greater, national originality. Deprived of signs of external, formal folklore, vocal lyrics not only do not lose, but, on the contrary, develop best traditions folk songs, enriching them with the experience acquired by Russian "book poetry". It is characteristic that even poets, who are closest in their manner to folk poetry, overcome the conventions of the “Russian song” genre and refuse the term itself, preferring the name “song” to it, or even do without the latter. The stylistic features of folk poetry are creatively assimilated, processed, and receive a pronounced individualized refraction in the artistic method of each more or less major poet.

The desire to overcome the conventions of the “Russian song”, to abandon its musical and poetic clichés, gives rise in the aesthetic consciousness of outstanding poets, composers, and especially critics of the second half of the 19th century, a kind of reaction to the genre as a whole, even to the best works of this genre created in the first half of the century. The very nationality of many “Russian songs” is being questioned, and they are not always given a fair assessment. One Koltsov avoids the harsh judgment of new generations, although enthusiastic assessments are being replaced by an objective analysis of both the strengths and weaknesses of his poetry. The revolutionary-democratic criticism of the 1950s and 1960s takes a step forward in this respect in comparison with Belinsky. Already Herzen, highly appreciating Koltsov's poetry, comparing his significance for Russian poetry with Shevchenko's significance for Ukrainian poetry, prefers the latter. Ogarev, as if commenting on his friend's remark, defines the meaning of Koltsov's poetry as a reflection of "the people's strength, which has not yet matured to the point." The limitations of Koltsov's nationality become especially clear to Dobrolyubov: "His (Koltsov. - V. G.) poetry lacks a comprehensive view, the simple class of the people appears in his solitude from common interests." Elsewhere, like Herzen, comparing Koltsov with Shevchenko, Dobrolyubov wrote that the Russian poet "with his mindset and even his aspirations sometimes moves away from the people." The “Russian songs” of Merzlyakov, Delvig, Tsyganov receive an even harsher assessment under the pen of revolutionary-democratic criticism - they are recognized as pseudo-folk. The same thing happens in the field of music criticism. From the point of view of Stasov and his followers, the "Russian song" cultivated by Alyabyev, Varlamov and Gurilev is seen as artificial, imitative, pseudo-folk. In his monograph on Glinka, V.V. Stasov, advocating for a truly national and democratic art, gave a general negative assessment of folklore stylizations and borrowings that were fashionable in various types of Russian art of the first half of the 19th century: “In the 30s, we had, as it is known that there is a lot of talk about nationality in art ... Nationality was then accepted in the most limited sense, and therefore it was then thought that in order to impart a national character to his work, the artist must insert into it, as into a new frame, what already exists among the people, created his immediate creative instinct. They wanted and demanded the impossible: an amalgam of old materials with new art; they forgot that the old materials corresponded to their specific time and that the new art, having already worked out its forms, also needs new materials. This statement by Stasov has a fundamental character. It helps to understand the inconsistency of a fairly common simplistic idea about the requirements for the art of an outstanding democratic critic. When they talk about his propaganda of folklore, about his struggle for national identity and the nationality of art, they usually forget that Stasov always opposed the consumer attitude to folklore, against its passive, mechanical assimilation, against stylization, against external, naturalistic folklore. This statement also explains Stasov's sharply negative attitude towards the "Russian song": even about the "Nightingale" by Delvig and Alyabyev, he spoke ironically, putting it among the "worthless" Russian "musical compositions of our then amateurs." He considered all composers of the pre-Glinka period "amateurs" and believed that their experiences "were completely insignificant, weak, colorless and mediocre." Stasov ignored the song work of these composers, and his follower A.N. Serov contemptuously dubbed the entire style of "Russian song" - "Varlamovism", considering its characteristic features "vulgarity" and "sweetness".

The exaggeration and injustice of such reviews is now obvious, but they should be taken into account in order to understand that the rejection of the “Russian song” genre in the second half of the 19th century was dictated by a progressive desire for the development of realism and for a higher level of nationality. This should explain the fact that Nekrasov, and even Nikitin and Surikov, do not so much follow the tradition of the "Russian song", but combine an interest in folk life and genuine folklore with the study of the experience of Russian classical poetry. It is no coincidence that songs in the exact sense of the word now, even more often than in the first half of the 19th century, are not those poems that are to some extent still guided by the traditions of the “Russian song”, but those that the poets themselves did not prophesy " song future. Even I. N. Rozanov noticed that among Nekrasov’s poems, his propaganda-civil lyrics, plot poems, excerpts from poems, and not actually “songs” gained popularity in everyday life. The same thing happened with Nikitin’s works - it was not his “songs” that firmly entered the oral repertoire (of which only “The Bobylya’s Song” really became a song), but such poems as “A deep hole was dug with a spade ...”, “I rode from fairs ukhar-merchant…”, “Time moves slowly…”. Surikov is no exception - written in the traditional style "Song" ("In the green garden of a nightingale ...") turned out to be much less popular than the poems "In the steppe", "I grew up an orphan ...", "Rowan", "The execution of Stenka Razin" ; in these poems, the connection with folklore is undeniable, but it acquires the character of a free interpretation of a folk poetic plot or image. Indicative in this regard is the poem "In the Steppe", inspired by the well-known drawn-out folk song about the Mozdok steppe. It is curious that this poem, having turned into a song, ousted the traditional song from the folk repertoire. True, the people at the same time abandoned the plot frame of the song, introduced by the poet.

If the observed phenomenon is so characteristic of poets directly connected with the folklore tradition, then it is not surprising that it can also be traced in the work of other poets of the second half of the 19th century. Most of them no longer write poetry in the style of the "Russian song"; in those cases when some poets paid tribute to this genre, as a rule, it is not their “Russian songs” that acquire song life, but other poems - as, for example, by A. Tolstoy or May. The most popular songs of the second half of the 19th century no longer resemble the genre of the “Russian song” in their type.

True, at the end of the 19th century, the genre of “Russian song” seemed to be reborn in the work of Drozhzhin, Ozhegov, Panov, Kondratiev, Ivin and other poets, who were grouped mainly in the “Moscow Comradely Circle of Writers from the People”, “Literary and Musical Circle. Surikov" and in various similar provincial associations. But of the numerous works written in the manner of Koltsovo and Surikov's lyrics and filling the collections and song books published by these circles and especially by the enterprising Ozhegov, only a very few acquired a truly song life, and even fewer entered the oral repertoire of the masses.

The song popularity of the works of Surikov poets is often exaggerated by researchers of their work. Sometimes simply incorrect information is reported, which migrates from authoritative publications to various articles and comments in collections. So, in the academic “History of Russian Literature” we read: “Surikovites are songwriters par excellence. Their best poems, akin to the style of peasant lyrics, sometimes firmly entered into popular use. These are the songs “Do not scold me, dear ...” by A. E. Razorenova, “I lost my ringlet ...” by M. I. Ozhegova and others. But in reality, the popular song “Do not scold me, dear ...” was created by Razorenov long before the Surikov circle arose, and even before Surikov himself began to write poetry, namely, in the 40s or early 50s years; none of the poems of Razorenov-Surikov, written in the second half of the 19th century, became a song. As for the song "I lost my ringlet ...", Ozhegov is not at all its author - he only processed the song known to him. It is characteristic that other songs of Ozhegov himself (excluding "Between the steep banks ...") did not gain such popularity as this adaptation of his old song.

Drozhzhin was a very prolific poet, and his literary activity continued for more than half a century, many of his poems were set to music, some were popularized from the stage by the singer N. Plevitskaya. But it is noteworthy that actually 3-4 of his poems, mainly from the early period of his work, became songs. Even more problematic is the song fate of the poems of other Surikov poets and poets close to them. From the poems of Panov, who wrote a large number of"songs", two or three came into oral use. Several dozens of “Russian songs” were published in Kondratiev’s collection “Under the noise of oak forests”, but none of them was sung (in the urban environment, his other poems gained some fame: one was written in the style of “cruel romance”, the other - “gypsy song”) . No matter how Ozhegov promoted the poems of I. Ivin, A. Egorov, I. Vdovin, S. Lyutov, N. Prokofiev, N. Libina and others in his songbooks, they did not penetrate into the oral repertoire.

The Surikov poets not only did not move forward compared to their teacher, who creatively accepted folklore traditions, but, in fact, took a step back - to the “Russian song” of the first half of the 19th century. They failed to breathe life into this genre, the possibilities of which were already exhausted by their predecessors.

The most characteristic type of vocal lyrics of the second half of the 19th - early 20th century is the freedom-loving revolutionary song in its various genre varieties: propaganda, hymn, satirical, mourning march. Created by poetic representatives of various generations and trends in the liberation struggle of the Russian people—revolutionary democracy, revolutionary populism, and the proletariat—these songs from the underground, from illegal circles and organizations, were distributed through prisons and exiles, penetrated the masses, sounded at demonstrations and rallies, during strikes, strikes and barricade fights.

As a rule, these songs were created by the participants in the revolutionary movement themselves, who were not professional poets, or by people who combined literary activity with participation in the liberation struggle: A. Pleshcheev (“Forward! Without fear and doubt ...”), P. Lavrov (“Let's renounce from the old world…”, M. Mikhailov (“Bravely, friends! Do not lose…”), L. Palmin (“Do not cry over the corpses of the fallen soldiers…”), G. Machtet (“Tormented by severe bondage…”), V. Tan-Bogoraz (“We dug our own grave ...”), L. Radin (“Boldly, comrades, in step ...”), G. Krzhizhanovsky (“Rage, tyrants ...”), N. Rivkin (“The sea groaned in fury ...”) and others. The authors of the melodies of these songs, as a rule, also turned out to be non-professional composers (A. Rashevskaya, N. and P. Peskov), sometimes the poets themselves (L. Radin, N. Rivkin), very rarely well-known musical figures (P. Sokalsky), most often the authors of the music remained unknown.

The repertoire of freedom fighters included, acquiring in oral performance the features of revolutionary songwriting, and poems by poets who were far from the liberation struggle, but objectively reflected in some of their works the aspirations of its participants or caught the public mood of their era. Therefore, the poems of A. K. Tolstoy (“Kolodniki”), Y. Polonsky (“What is she to me ...”), I. Nikitin (“Time moves slowly ...), I. Nikitin (“Time moves slowly ...), right up to V. Bryusov’s “The Mason”, and even some works by conservative authors: “There is a cliff on the Volga ...” by A. A. Navrotsky, “It’s my strip, stripes ...” by V. V. Krestovsky, “Open the window, open ...” You. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko.

A remarkable feature that distinguishes the revolutionary songs of the second half of the 19th - early 19th centuries is that they were truly widespread, often sung in versions that differed from the author's edition, they themselves became a model for similar anonymous songs, were included in the process of collective songwriting, - in a word, folklorized. Another characteristic feature of them is choral, most often polyphonic performance without accompaniment (“Russian song”, as a rule, by its very content assumed solo performance; in the first half of the 19th century, only drinking, student and some “free songs” were performed by the choir).

The latter circumstance allows in the vocal lyrics of the second half of the 19th century to draw a clearer line between the song in the proper sense of the word and the romance, oriented towards solo performance and musical accompaniment on some instrument.

But even in the romance art itself, a noticeable evolution has taken place since the middle of the 19th century. As the researcher notes, “the area of ​​the “professional” and “everyday” romance is also sharply demarcated, and their ratio changes significantly.” Indeed, in the 18th century and in the first half of the 19th century, all romance art was, in fact, accessible to any music lover and easily entered home life, especially among the noble intelligentsia. Only some of Glinka's romances can be considered the first examples of a "professional" romance, requiring great technical skill from the singer and special training. The situation is completely different in the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Everyday romance is now becoming mainly the lot of minor composers. Among the authors of everyday romance to the words of Russian contemporary poets are N. Ya. Afanasyev, P. P. Bulakhov, K. P. Vilboa, K. Yu. A. Lishina, V. N. Paskhalova, V. T. Sokolova. The historian of Russian music N.V. Findeizen writes: “Some of the works of these romancers ... sometimes enjoyed enviable, albeit cheap popularity ...” Everyday romance in the proper sense of the word is smaller in ideological and psychological content and is often marked by the seal of formal epigonism in relation to the masters of everyday life. romance of the first half of the 19th century. This, of course, does not mean that in the mass of mediocre works of the named genre there were not at all those that, in their artistry, would approach the everyday romance of the first half of the 19th century.

Very popular everyday romances of the second half of the 19th - early 20th centuries were Apukhtin's "A Pair of Bays", V. Krestovsky's "Under the Fragrant Branch of the Lilac", P. Kozlov's "You Forgot", "It was a long time ago ... I don't remember when it was ... ” S. Safonov, “Letter” by A. Mazurkevich, “Under the impression of Chekhov's Seagull” by E. Bulanina, “Nocturne” by Z. Bukharova. They have long entered into oral use.

The best everyday romances of the period under review are some of the most accessible romances by major composers to music lovers. It is noteworthy that with the music of composers of the second half of the 19th century, poems of poets of the first half of the century also enter everyday life. Such, in particular, are many of Balakirev's romances to texts by Pushkin, Lermontov, Koltsov. It is curious, for example, that the raznochintsy of the 60s fell in love with Balakirev's romance to the words of Lermontov "Selim's Song" - it is no coincidence that "the lady in mourning" from Chernyshevsky's novel "What is to be done?" sings it. Some of Dargomyzhsky's romances to the words of poets of the middle of the 19th century - N. Pavlov (“She of sinless dreams ...”), Yu. Zhadovskaya (“You will soon forget me ...”), F. Miller (“I don’t care ...”) gained song popularity. . Nekrasov-Mussorgsky's "Calistrat" ​​and "I came to you with greetings ..." by Fet-Balakirev became widely known. Many of Tchaikovsky's romances to the words of the poets of the second half of the 19th century became especially famous: “Oh, sing that song, dear ...” (Pleshcheev), “I would like in a single word ...” (Mei), “Crazy nights, sleepless nights ...” (Apukhtin ), “At dawn, don’t wake her up ...” (Fet), “In the midst of a noisy ball ...” (A. K. Tolstoy), “I opened the window ...” (K. R.), “We were sitting with you by the sleeping river ... "(D. Ratgauz).

Many of the poems of the poets of the second half of the 19th - early 20th centuries became remarkable phenomena of Russian vocal lyrics, where a complete fusion of text and music was achieved. This applies to the work of such poets as A. K. Tolstoy, Pleshcheev, Maikov, Fet, Polonsky, Apukhtin, Mei. The poems of some poets generally still live only as romances (Golenishchev-Kutuzov, Rostopchina, Minsky, Ratgauz, K. R.). Together with the music of the greatest composers, the poems of these poets have firmly entered the consciousness of the Russian intelligentsia, and as the cultural level of the masses rises, they become the property of an ever wider circle of working people. Therefore, evaluating the contribution of Russian poetry to national culture, it is impossible to confine ourselves to the heritage of the classics, but it is necessary to take into account the best examples of everyday romance - first of all, those works that are included in the repertoire of popular vocalists and constantly sound from the stage of concert halls and on the radio, and also penetrate into the modern mass art amateur performance.

If we turn to the poets whose poems were especially often and willingly used by the greatest Russian composers and whose texts were used to create classical romances, it is easy to see that, with a few exceptions, the choice of names is not accidental. Despite the fact that each composer's personal preferences and tastes could play a big role (for example, Mussorgsky's passion for the poetry of Golenishchev-Kutuzov), nevertheless, the circle of poets, on whose texts a particularly large number of romances were written, is represented by very specific names. In the work of any of these poets, one can find many poems that have been repeatedly set to music in a variety of ways. creative method composers. And even the fact that excellent music was written to such poems by Glinka or Tchaikovsky, whose romances have already gained fame, did not stop either their contemporaries or composers of the subsequent era, right up to our time. There are poems on which literally dozens of romances have been written. Of the poets of the first half of the 19th century, Zhukovsky, Pushkin, Lermontov and Koltsov were especially happy in this respect. Romances based on the texts of the first Russian romanticist were created over the course of a whole century - from the first experiments of his friend composer A. A. Pleshcheev to the works of Ippolitov-Ivanov. In the 19th century alone, more than one hundred and seventy Pushkin's romances were set to music. The poem “Do not sing, beauty, with me ...”, despite the fact that it still lives primarily with the music of Glinka, created in 1828, after that many other composers addressed (among them there are such names as Balakirev, Rimsky -Korsakov, Rachmaninov). The poem "The Singer" has been set to music by more than fifteen composers of the 19th century. In the 19th - early 20th centuries, a huge number of romances were created based on more than seventy poems by Lermontov. His “Prayer” (“In a difficult moment of life ...”) was set to music by more than thirty composers. Over twenty romances exist on the words of "Cossack lullaby" and poems: "Do I hear your voice ...", "No, I do not love you so ardently ...". Perhaps the first place among Russian poets in this regard belongs to Koltsov - about seven hundred romances and songs were created on his texts by more than three hundred composers! As we see, specific gravity poets of the first half of the 19th century in Russian vocal lyrics approximately coincides with their significance in the history of poetry - romances of primary poets clearly predominate (the only exception is Baratynsky, on whose words relatively few romances have been written).

When we turn to the second half of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, here the picture, at first glance, suddenly changes: poets, whose role in the history of poetry seems modest, are often preferred by composers to larger poets, and in the romance repertoire they hardly occupy no greater place than the luminaries of Russian poetry. It is curious that while about sixty texts from the poetic heritage of Nekrasov attracted the attention of composers, more than seventy texts from Maikov and Polonsky were set to music. More than ninety poems by Fet, over fifty poems by Pleshcheev and Ratgauz, over forty poems by Nadson, and the same number by Apukhtin became romances. Perhaps the picture for the poetry of the beginning of the 20th century is especially paradoxical: a kind of “record” belongs to Balmont - more than one hundred and fifty of his poems have been set to music (for some twenty years, almost as many as in a century by Pushkin, and more than by Lermontov , Tyutchev, Nekrasov). Moreover, among the composers who created romances to his words, we meet Rachmaninov, Taneyev, S. Prokofiev, Grechaninov, Gliere, Ippolitov-Ivanov, Stravinsky, Myaskovsky ... Blok is significantly inferior in this respect - about fifty romances were written to his texts. Bryusov could also envy Balmont in this respect. Other poets noticeably "lag behind" both Blok and Bryusov - even A. Akhmatova, V. Ivanov, D. Merezhkovsky, F. Sologub, whose texts were nevertheless repeatedly set to music. However, many famous poets of the early 20th century could be proud that at least one or two of their poems were set to music by the greatest composers of that time.

What attracted musicians to the poetry of the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries? Of course, a categorical and monosyllabic answer to this question is hardly possible, equally applicable to the work of all poets. But, taking into account the features and possibilities of vocal music, as well as the creative tasks that the composers set themselves when creating romances, it should be noted that they preferred those verses where the inner psychological state of the lyrical hero is most directly expressed, especially such where the poet's experience turns out to be incomplete, not expressed to the end, which made it possible to reveal it by musical means. The poetry of allusions, omissions, containing deep lyrical overtones, represented the greatest creative scope for the composer's imagination. Not the last role was played by some stylistic features of the creative manner of such poets as Fet, A. Tolstoy, May, Polonsky - the development of the theme and the compositional structure of the poem, reminiscent of the structure of a musical work, the saturation of the text with repetitions, exclamations, semantic pauses, the melodiousness of the language, the smoothness of the rhythm , flexible speech intonation. Some of these poets consciously followed musical laws in their work. So, Fet proceeded from the theoretical principle formulated by him: "Poetry and music are not only related, but inseparable ... All centuries-old poetic works ... in essence ... songs." It is no coincidence that Fet called one of the cycles “Melodies”. The poet admitted: “I was always drawn from a certain area of ​​​​words to an indefinite area of ​​​​music, into which I went, as far as my strength was enough.”

Much for understanding the fate of Russian poetry in music is given by the statements of the composers themselves. Tchaikovsky clearly formulated in one of his letters that "the main thing in vocal music is the truthfulness of the reproduction of feelings and moods ...". The great composer thought a lot about the peculiarities of Russian versification and the intonational structure of Russian poetry, he searched in poetry for a variety of rhythms, stanzas and rhymes that create the most favorable opportunities for the musical expression of the lyrical content of poetry. Tchaikovsky was attracted by the type of melodious intonation-expressive verse, and he himself called Fet's poetry as a model in this regard. The composer wrote about him: “We can rather say that Fet, in his best moments, goes beyond the limits indicated by poetry, and boldly takes a step into our field ... This is not just a poet, but rather a poet-musician, as if avoiding even such topics that easy to put into words." Tchaikovsky also highly appreciated the poetry of A. K. Tolstoy: “Tolstoy is an inexhaustible source for texts to music; this is one of my favorite poets.

It was the manner of expressing feelings, moods and thoughts inherent in the poetry of Fet and A. K. Tolstoy, as well as Pleshcheev, Mey, Polonsky, Apukhtin and poets close to them, and the nature of the intonation of the verse that provided the best opportunities for setting their poems to music. Therefore, not only in Tchaikovsky, but also in the romance work of other major composers of the second half of the 19th century, along with the classical masters of Russian poetry, the poems of these poets occupy a central place.