In general, the poetry of Alexander Blok is perceived as an extremely frank and sincere lyrical confession, revealing the spiritual world of a person shocked by the socio-historical contradictions that have become extremely aggravated in his mind. / Binder...
Oh, my Russia! My wife!.. AA Blok The main part of the work of Alexander Blok belongs to the pre-revolutionary period, the time of complete discrediting of human feelings. Everything in this world is false and corrupt: friendship, love, and compassion... The only...
Alexander Blok entered the history of literature as an outstanding lyric poet. Having begun his poetic journey with a book of mystical poems about a beautiful Lady, Blok completed his twenty years of work in Russian literature with a curse on the old world in the poem "The Twelve"....
The lyrical hero of Blok is a constantly changing person, driven by a thirst for knowledge of the truth, surrendering fully to the feeling of love and beauty. In the poetry of Alexander Blok there is a lively, vivid character of the poet himself. The lyrical hero of Blok goes through everything that ...
It seems to me that the time is passing when, defining the originality of the poetics of Blok's work, one could limit oneself to putting forward the canonization of romance forms (Yu. N. Tynyanov) as the main and decisive sign of this originality, or to name Blok ...
A. Blok is a very subtle, complex and contradictory poet. His early poems are associated with the romantic worldview. A romantic hero is a creative person living in his own personal world, which has nothing to do with the one in which ordinary people live...
Alexander Alexandrovich Blok is a brilliant poet of the 20th century, one of the most prominent representatives of Russian symbolism. His poems fascinate with their swiftness, expressiveness, unusual brilliance. Anna Andreevna Akhmatova wrote: "Blok is not only the greatest European poet of the first quarter of the 20th century, but also a man-epoch." The main theme in the work of Alexander Alexandrovich Blok is the theme of the Motherland. Whatever he wrote about, it was all about Russia. The beginning of this theme sounds in the poems "Autumn Will" and "Rus". The feeling of spaciousness, infinity, embodied in the images of boundless forests and steppes, rivers, arises in Blok's poem. The same feeling of spaciousness is born in the images of the wind and the path. The lyrical hero feels involved in this poverty, and in these distances, and in this expanse: Will I sing about my luck, How I ruined my youth in hops... I will cry over the sadness of your fields, I will love your expanse forever... There are many of us - free, young, stately - Dies not loving ... Shelter you in the vast expanses! How to live and cry without you! In the poem "Rus", which was written in 1906, the main thing in the image of the Motherland is a mystery. Blok associates Russia with a mysterious beauty who believes in divination. The country rests in a slumber, retaining a bewitching mystery and fabulousness: So - I recognized in my slumber of the Country of my dear poverty, And in the rags of its tatters of the Soul I hide nakedness. In later works, Russia turns from Beloved into Wife: “O my Russia! My wife!" The word "wife" in Blok's lyrics has many meanings. “Wife” is a poetic ideal, that “Eternal Femininity” that will “save the world.” And also a woman - this is the wind, this is space. In this poem ("The river spread") Russia appears before us in the form of a steppe mare, which rushes through blood and dust: And the eternal battle! We only dream of peace Through blood and dust... The steppe mare flies, flies And crushes the feather grass... And there is no end! Miles flash by, steep... Stop! They go, go frightened clouds, Sunset in the blood! Sunset in blood! Blood flows from the heart! Cry, heart, cry... There is no rest! Steppe mare galloping! Here, for Blok, the Motherland is violent, chaotic, intoxicated. In the poem "Russia", Blok again confesses his love for his homeland. The poet's image of the Motherland seems to come to life in the form of a woman, strong and incredibly beautiful. This image is dynamic, it seems to bifurcate, passes, flows from one channel to another: first it is Russia, then a woman with “robber beauty” and an absurd fate, then again Russia, Motherland, open spaces - “forest and field”, and then again a woman - “patterned to the eyebrows”. Through the whole poem passes the motive of the road, longing, but with it the confidence that the long-suffering homeland of the poet has a future, pride in it. Only Blok can love such a Russia and confess to it: Again, as in the golden years, Three worn-out harnesses fray, And painted knitting needles get stuck In loose ruts... Russia, impoverished Russia, Your gray huts are for me, Your songs are windy, - Like tears first love! In Blok's later work, the theme of the homeland began to be associated with the spiritual and moral motive and image of Christ, and not only with the ideal of Eternal Femininity. Often these two images merge: I do not regret what happened, I understood your height: Yes. You are my dear Galilee to Me, the unresurrected Christ. And let the other caress you, Let him multiply the wild rumor: The Son of Man does not know Where to bow his head. The image of Christ in the work of Blok, on the one hand, is lyrical, and on the other, epic, folk. Blok speaks of such a Christ in the poem “Motherland”: Once upon a time there, on a height, Grandfathers chopped down a hot log house And sang about their Christ. In the image of Christ, the news of which comes from dark Russia, there is no humility, he brings retribution And rusty, forest drops, Born in the wilderness and darkness, Carry frightened Russia The news of the burning Christ. The Motherland is presented in a completely different way in the poem "New America". If in the early work of Blok we see impoverished, poor Russia, now we see Russia, the cat was able to rise, gain the necessary power, stand on a par with the advanced states. The author seriously thought about what role the national industry can play in the "great birth" of Russia. “The future of Russia,” he wrote, “lies in the still barely touched forces of national and underground wealth.” In the last stanzas, the brilliant poet says that the fossil wealth of the motherland will help to renew it: Black coal is the underground messiah, Black coal is the king and groom here, But not terrible, bride, Russia, The voice of your stone songs! The coal groans, and the salt turns white, And the iron ore howls... Then, over the empty steppe, a new star lit up for me America! However, Blok is alien to the idealization of the image of the Motherland. During the period of patriotic upsurge, at the beginning of the war, when patriotic hymns sounded everywhere, the poet writes a poem that shocked everyone with its directness - “To sin shamelessly, unprobably ...” Terrible, ugly images paint pictures of a spiritually miserable life, a life of sin, drunkenness, hypocrisy and hypocrisy. These are temples with “spit on the floor”, icons in poor salaries. And the one who left a "copper penny" in the church will deceive someone for the same penny. The one who bowed will kick the “hungry dog” away from the door with his foot, will drink tea “under the lamp near the icon” and count money from the “pot-bellied chest of drawers”, and then will forget himself on downy featherbeds in a “heavy dream”. An ugly, scary picture: And under the lamp near the icon Drink tea, snapping off the bill, Then spit on the coupons, Having opened the chest of drawers, And on the downy feather beds In a heavy sleep to fall ... Yes, and such, my Russia, You are dearer to me than all the edges. Whatever the Motherland appears to us in the work of Blok - impoverished, wretched, rebellious or rich - in all the poet's poems we feel his love for Russia. He is ready to love what no one has forgiven before him. This is true love, love not “thanks” but “despite”, love not for something, but just like that. This is really love. And in this boundless love, Alexander Alexandrovich Blok became a great national poet, a symbolist poet, a poet whose name will remain on everyone’s lips for a long time, a poet who had the right to speak on behalf of a generation: “We are the children of the strange years of Russia.”
The theme of the motherland in the lyrics of A. A. Blok. The image of Russia in A. A. Blok is complex and multifaceted. He absorbed everything: both joy and sorrow, duality and inconsistency. Motherland is of great importance in the life of the people and each individual. The image of Russia in Blok's work over the years is filled with more and more significant content, becomes more concrete and realistic.
Love for one's country gives the poet a powerful creative impetus, it delights even with modest signs: "our Russian road, our Russian fogs, our rustling in oats ...". Russia may be poor, but there is no country dearer to her heart than Blok. The theme of the homeland sounds already in the early poems of the poet. In Autumn Will (1905), the image of the motherland is inseparable from native Russian nature. And even if this autumn landscape is plain, the poet exclaims:
Shelter you in the vast expanses!
How to live and cry without you!
The poem "Rus" was published in 1906, it is dedicated to Russia. In it, Russia is presented as something holy, sacred. She is ancient, bewitched, pagan:
Russia is surrounded by rivers
And surrounded by wilds,
With swamps and cranes,
And with the cloudy gaze of a sorcerer ...
The prayerful tone of the poem captivates the reader:
She is extraordinary in dreams.
I won't touch her clothes.
Lyrical hero thanks
Russia for the salvation of the soul:
I rocked a living soul,
Russia, you are in your expanses,
And behold - she did not stain
original purity.
The poet speaks of comprehending the secrets of the spirit of the Russian people, the spirit of Russia, in which she is alive.
The poet identifies the image of Russia with a woman. In the cycle of poems "On the Kulikovo Field" he exclaims:
Oh, my Russia! My wife!
Painfully, we have a long way to go!
None of the poets before A.. A. Blok addressed Russia in this way. Blok compares Russia with a woman, a wife, with whom he will have to go a long way, full of hardships, disappointments and losses. "On the Kulikovo field" - a premonition of coming storms, tragedies. The poet sees the entire path of the country - "from the field of Kulikov" to the present day. Blok attaches exceptional importance to the Battle of Kulikovo as a historical event. He calls it "a symbolic event in Russian history", which is "destined to return" and the solution of which lies ahead.
A number of symbols convey to us the experiences of the lyrical hero, full of anxiety, inner strength and energy:
And there is no end! Miles are flashing, steep ...
Stop!
Frightened clouds are coming,
Sunset in blood!
The image of Russia is multifaceted: “I heard your voice with a prophetic heart / In the cries of swans”, “Your face is not made by hands”. The image of Russia is also identified with the image of the Mother of God.
Blok's images have a deep inner content, and the symbols take on new meanings:
Again with age-old longing
Feathers bent down to the ground.
Again over the foggy river
You call me from afar...
A lot of anxiety, heavy forebodings. The phrases “secular melancholy”, “mighty melancholy” are repeatedly encountered. No matter how the poet described the present of his homeland, he always believed in its future. In the fifth poem of the cycle "On the Kulikovo Field", the lyrical hero foresees "the beginning of lofty and rebellious days." Anxiety, anxiety is underlined by the words "as it used to be." The last stanza sounds like a warning:
The heart cannot live in peace,
Suddenly the clouds have gathered.
The armor is heavy, as before the battle.
Now your time has come. - Pray!
A. A. Blok expressed love for the Motherland, for the people in the poem “Russia”, dated 1908. This work combines a realistic beginning and romantic elation: Russia, impoverished Russia,
I have your gray huts,
Your songs are windy for me -
Like the first tears of love!
The real image of Russia is devoid of bright colors:
Again, as in the golden years,
Three worn out harnesses fray,
And painted knitting needles get stuck In loose ruts...
(But the poet believes in his homeland, he admires her:
Let him lure and deceive, -
You won't disappear, you won't die
And only care will cloud
Your beautiful features...
And again, Blok compares Russia with a female image:
Well? one concern more -
With one tear the river is noisier,
And you are still the same - forest, yes field,
Yes, patterned to the eyebrows ...
With a few words, the poet paints a vivid, familiar image.
In the fate and work of A. A. Blok, Russia is a very special topic. It was Russia that became the poet's happiness and pain, hope and consolation. According to V. M. Zhirmunsky, "Blok differed from his predecessors in that he approached the fate of Russia not as a thinker - with an abstract idea, but as a poet - with intimate love." Russia in the work of A. A. Blok appears as an element, as a country of still unknown energy and strength. It leads to the "eternal battle", points the way forward, into the future.
The evolution of the theme of the motherland in the poetry of A. Blok
Alexander Alexandrovich Blok is a brilliant poet of the 20th century, one of the most prominent representatives of Russian symbolism. His poems fascinate with their swiftness, expressiveness, unusual brilliance. Anna Andreevna Akhmatova wrote: "Blok is not only the greatest European poet of the first quarter of the 20th century, but also a man-epoch."
The main theme in the work of Alexander Alexandrovich Blok is the theme of the Motherland. Whatever he wrote about, it was all about Russia. The beginning of this theme sounds in the poems "Autumn Will" and "Rus". The feeling of spaciousness, infinity, embodied in the images of boundless forests and steppes, rivers, arises in Blok's poem. The same feeling of spaciousness is born in the images of the wind and the path. The lyrical hero feels himself involved in this poverty, and in these distances, and in this expanse:
I will cry over the sadness of your fields, I will love your expanse forever ... Many of us - free, young, stately - Dies not loving ... Shelter you in the vast expanses! How to live and cry without you! In the poem "Rus", which was written in 1906, the main thing in the image of the Motherland is a mystery. Blok associates Russia with a mysterious beauty who believes in divination.
The country rests in a slumber, retaining a bewitching mystery and fabulousness:
And in the patches of her rags
In later works, Russia turns from Beloved into Wife: “O my Russia! My wife!" The word "wife" in Blok's lyrics has many meanings. “Wife” is a poetic ideal, that “Eternal Femininity” that will “save the world.” And also a woman. - this is the wind, this is space. In this poem (“The river spreads”), Russia appears before us in the form of a steppe mare, which rushes through blood and dust:
And eternal battle! Rest only in our dreams
Through blood and dust...
Flying, flying steppe mare
And crushes the feather grass ...
Stop!
Frightened clouds are coming,
Sunset in blood!
Sunset in blood! Blood flows from the heart!
Cry, heart, cry...
Rushing jump!
In the poem "Russia", Blok again confesses his love for his homeland. The poet's image of the Motherland seems to come to life in the form of a woman, strong and incredibly beautiful. This image is dynamic, it seems to bifurcate, passes, flows from one channel to another: first it is Russia, then a woman with “robber beauty” and an absurd fate, then again Russia, Motherland, open spaces - “forest and field”, and then again a woman - “patterned to the eyebrows”. Through the whole poem passes the motive of the road, longing, but with it the confidence that the long-suffering homeland of the poet has a future, pride in it. Only Blok can love such a Russia and confess to her:
Again, as in the golden years,
Three worn out harnesses fray,
And painted knitting needles
In loose ruts...
I have your gray huts,
Your songs are windy for me, -
Like the first tears of love!
In Blok's later work, the theme of the homeland began to be associated with the spiritual and moral motive and image of Christ, and not only with the ideal of Eternal Femininity. Often these two images merge:
I understand your height:
Yes. You are native Galilee
And let the other caress you
Let him multiply the wild rumor:
The Son of Man does not know
Where to lay his head.
The image of Christ in the work of Blok, on the one hand, is lyrical, and on the other, epic, folk. Blok speaks of such a Christ in the poem "Motherland":
Grandfathers chopped down a hot log house
In the image of Christ, the news of which comes from dark Russia, there is no humility, he brings retribution
Bear frightened Russia
The message of the burning Christ.
"New America". If in the early work of Blok we see impoverished, poor Russia, now we see a Russia that was able to rise, gain the necessary power, and stand on a par with the advanced states. The author seriously thought about what role the national industry can play in the "great birth" of Russia. “The future of Russia,” he wrote, “lies in the still barely touched forces of national and underground wealth.” In the last stanzas, the brilliant poet says that the fossil wealth of the motherland will help to renew it:
Black coal - underground messiah,
Black coal - here is the king and groom,
The coal groans and the salt turns white
And iron ore howls...
However, Blok is alien to the idealization of the image of the Motherland. During the period of patriotic upsurge, at the beginning of the war, when patriotic hymns sounded everywhere, the poet writes a poem that shocked everyone with its directness - “To sin shamelessly, unprobably ...” Terrible, ugly images paint pictures of a spiritually miserable life, a life of sin, drunkenness, hypocrisy and hypocrisy. These are temples with “spit on the floor”, icons in poor salaries. And the one who left a "copper penny" in the church will deceive someone for the same penny. The one who bowed will kick the “hungry dog” away from the door with his foot, will drink tea “under the lamp near the icon” and count money from the “pot-bellied chest of drawers”, and then will forget himself on downy featherbeds in a “heavy dream”. Ugly, scary picture:
And under the lamp near the icon
Drinking tea, snapping off the bill,
Then flip the coupons
Pot-bellied opening the chest of drawers,
And on downy feather beds
Yes, and such, my Russia,
You are dearer to me than all the edges.
nobody. This is true love, love not “thanks” but “despite”, love not for something, but just like that. This is really love. And in this boundless love, Alexander Alexandrovich Blok became a great national poet, a symbolist poet, a poet whose name will remain on everyone’s lips for a long time, a poet who had the right to speak on behalf of a generation: “We are the children of the strange years of Russia.”
The theme of the Motherland acquires a special sound in the work of A. Blok. After all, he worked in that era when the fate of Russia was being decided (the Russo-Japanese War, the Revolution of 1905, the First World War, the February and October Revolutions, the Civil War). Being a great patriot, the poet could not help thinking about his country, could not help but capture its changing face and his thoughts about it.
In early poetry, the theme of Russia does not yet become distinct and large-scale, although the author has repeatedly turned to Russian landscapes, folklore images and creations of his native culture:
All the trees stand as if in radiance.
At night it blows cold from the earth;
In the morning the white church in the distance
And close, and clear outline.
Beginning in 1905, the poet's patriotic feeling intensified in a special way. The theme of the Motherland becomes an independent motive.
In 1906, Blok wrote a poem called by her ancient name - "Rus" . The poet depicts here a fabulous, reserved country with its sorcerers, demons. Blok introduces folk art and peasant beliefs into his poem - the property of the Motherland. The homeland appears in these poems as "dense", "sorcerous", "resting in mystery". This state of hers seems beautiful to the poet:
You are extraordinary even in a dream.
I won't touch your clothes.
I doze - and behind the slumber is a mystery,
And in secret - you will rest, Russia.
Russia is surrounded by rivers
And surrounded by wilds,
With swamps and cranes,
And with the cloudy eyes of a sorcerer...
But behind this fabulous beauty, Blok sees sad pictures: peasant "fragile housing", "a whirlwind in bare rods", the poverty of people's life. While these social motives sound timid. But soon, in 1908, they develop and are embodied in a poem. "Russia" :
Russia, impoverished Russia,
I have your gray huts,
Your songs are windy for me, -
Like the first tears of love!
Blok returns here to the Lermontov tradition. It is not difficult to catch in the opening lines of the work a roll call with Lermontov's "Motherland". Both poets paint pictures that open while driving along a Russian country road. Here the Gogol figurative world begins to come to life; associations arise with the moving troika and the sorcerer-sorcerer who killed the beauty in "Terrible Revenge" (in Blok, the sorcerer is also ready to lure and deceive). Nekrasov’s motifs are also resurrected: Blok connects the image of Russia with a beautiful peasant woman (“When the road flashes in the distance / An instant glance from under a scarf”), and in the final lines one can hear the “muffled song of the coachman”, ringing with “guarded melancholy”. The poet is convinced of a better future for the Motherland and its people, who have preserved their living soul and are able to endure everything, resist, not perish. This assimilation of classical themes and images and their transformation within one poem makes it a real masterpiece of Blok's lyrics.
The described poem was included in the Blok cycle "Motherland" (1907–1916), one of the most important in the third book of his lyrics. The patriotic theme sounded broad and spacious here. The cycle begins with a gospel motif: the poet overshadows his Fatherland with the name of Christ. Poem “In the thick grass you will disappear with your head ...” develops folklore images of previous works and sets the reader up for the perception of "songs of distant villages" and the sounds of the coachman's bell. The image of the beloved becomes fused with the image of the Motherland, and the hero himself is filled with a thirst for achievement.
Blok's love for his homeland is a deeply intimate experience. Therefore, referring to his country, the poet speaks of heartfelt pain at the sight of "low poor villages" and, in violation of the accepted custom to associate the image of the native land with the mother, merges it with the image of the wife:
Oh my poor country
What do you mean to the heart?
Oh my poor wife
What are you crying about?
The theme of the struggle for the future of Russia sounded sharp in verse "On the Kulikovo field" (1908). Turning to the history of the Russian people, Blok put modern meaning into the events of the past. The Battle of Kulikovo seemed to him a symbolic event in Russian history, which is "destined to return":
The heart cannot live in peace,
Suddenly the clouds have gathered.
The armor is heavy, as before the battle.
Now your time has come. – Pray!
The lyrical hero of this cycle is the nameless ancient Russian warrior Dmitry Donskoy. He is a patriot of his native country, a fighter for its freedom, ready to lay down his head "for a holy cause."
Blok boldly compares the past, present and future of his native land. The basis of the power of Russia, according to the poet, is movement, restlessness, impulse (“and the eternal battle! We only dream of peace ...”).
Let the night Let's go home. Illuminate the steppe distance with bonfires
And eternal battle! Rest only in our dreams. Through blood and dust...
But I recognize you, the beginning of High and rebellious days!
That is why a bright, dynamic image of a “steppe mare” appears in the verses, again reminding of the Gogol poem, completed by the picture of a flying bird - a troika.
The poems of the Motherland cycle, reflecting the events of the outbreak of the World War, are also full of high meaning. In them one can hear the harbinger of the coming tragic fate of Russia ( "The Petrograd sky was cloudy with rain..." ). The poet calls himself and his contemporaries "children of the strange years of Russia", who will convey to their descendants their nightmarish experience of "withering" years. The poet clearly sees the poverty and poverty of the villages, engulfed in the fire of rebellions and wars, a complex, sometimes paradoxical combination of European beginnings and Asiaticism, the "tearful" beauty of their native land.
Yes, we are Scythians! Yes, we are Asians!
This Asian beginning in a collision with European culture was to give rise to the revolution that the poet foresaw. And his tender confession to the Motherland sounds more and more clearly:
Yes, and such, my Russia,
You are dearer to me than all the edges.
For Blok, Russia has always remained multifaceted and mysterious. "Russia - Sphinx".
When, at one of the poetry evenings, a listener asked Blok, who had finished his speech, to read poems about Russia, he replied: "It's all about Russia."
