Block cycle about a beautiful lady. Brief analysis: Blok, "Poems about a beautiful lady". “I enter dark temples…”
It is rare that a lyricist does not touch on the theme of "Lady Fair". Here is Alexander Blok, whose first collection of poetry was published in 1905, and called it “Poems about the Beautiful Lady”.
The idea to give such a name to the cycle was suggested to the author by the Russian poet Valery Yakovlevich Bryusov. Censorship did not have a hand in the collection of the poet; this happened thanks to the patronage of E.K. Medtner, the future well-known head of the Musaget publishing house, with whom the author later maintained friendly relations.
"Poems about the Beautiful Lady" consists of three sections, interconnected: "Stillness", "Crossroads", "Damage".
The first section, "Stillness", contains poems directly addressed to the Beautiful Lady. “Blok puts a deep philosophical meaning into the very concept of “immobility”, and in his poetic allegory it has many shades. The most undoubted of them expresses the idea of constancy, fidelity, chivalrous service to the Beautiful Lady. This section of the collection "selected the most lyrically strong, responsible, sharp-sounding poems."
Singing dream, blooming color,
Disappearing day, fading light.
Opening the window, I saw a lilac.
It was in the spring - on a departing day.
Flowers burst forth - and on the dark cornice
The shadows of the jubilant robes moved.
Anguish was suffocating, the soul was engaged,
I opened the window, trembling and trembling.
The second section of the collection, called "Crossroads", is of a different plan. The palette and rhythm change significantly, Petersburg appears in Blok's vision. Before us is his city. If "Stillness" is all about the rural, about the wonderful world of Nature, then "Crossroads" is about a certain turn that the author made. Already the starting poem "Deception", its name, will tell us a lot. The radiance of the lines is behind, the gravitas and outright audacity are ahead. Instead of pink dawns - factory burnt, red light rushes into the eyes.
Morning. Clouds. Smokes. Overturned tubs.
In the light streams, the blue dances merrily.
Red slingshots are placed along the streets.
Soldiers spank: one! two! once! two!
Section "Damage", the third in a row - a transitional plan. Ahead is a new collection of poems - "Unexpected Joy".
“In one of his later letters (in the spring of 1914), Blok uttered prophetic words for him, relating equally to his past, present and future, to his whole life, along which he walked “the path of truth:” ... art is where damage, loss, suffering, cold. This thought always guards ... ". The title of the final section of the book "Poems about the Beautiful Lady" - "Damage" - contains exactly this meaning, which was mentioned in Blok's letter.
« The present is around You, a living and beautiful Russian girl”- this is how Blok wrote to his bride, making comments on the collection about “The Beautiful Lady”. The release of this poetic work of Blok did not go unnoticed. One of the first critics of the poet was his friend Andrei Bely (there were no conflict situations between them at that time). " There are people here in Moscow who put you at the head of Russian poetry. You and Bryusov are the most important poets for Russia».
During his ascent to the literary Olympus, European culture experienced far from the best of times. A deep crisis arose in connection with disappointment about the former ideals that had already become a kind of public property. The death of the former social system seemed inevitable, so the question of revising the old, well-established moral values also seemed inevitable. As a result, symbolism appeared.
It represents one of the most striking literary movements in literature at the turn of the century. This direction can be called a kind of attempt by a human writer to get away from the contradictions in reality and plunge headlong into the maelstrom of eternal ideas and truths.
Block is just such a person. This is especially noticeable in "Poems about the Beautiful Lady." The collection was published in 1904. The collection in "Poems about the Beautiful Lady" consists of 129 small poems, each of which is rich in its own history. For the most part, dreams about an ideal sound here, an idea-dream that struck Blok with itself about some grandiose events. Actually, we can say that all the symbolism of the writer was concentrated in this collection. Subsequent works of the creator in the future partially change. Most often, they permeate the feeling of the need to establish a new relationship with reality, without any lofty ideals and dreams, as in the Poems of the Beautiful Lady. Blok himself spoke about this in his letter to S.M. Solovyov: “Something breaks in me, and a new one comes in a positive sense, and for me this is desirable, as when less often.”
Poems about the Beautiful Lady
"Poems about the Beautiful Lady", published in 1904, is the first collection of poetry by Alexander Blok. Subsequently, it will become a truly original, one-of-a-kind work of genius, of the same brilliant person. Experts call this collection a lyrical diary. This is quite logical and understandable, since the writer himself largely stated in verse some facts from his own biography. In the collection, he tells readers about his own experiences, feelings and thoughts. The very cycle of "Poems about the Beautiful Lady" is the central part of the collection. However, its features are difficult to understand without referring to those poems that make up the Ante Lucem section that opens the book. It means "in the dark" in Latin. Thus, the author, as it were, hints to the reader that his hero at this time is purely lyrical, who is alone and, naturally, suffers from this. His hero is literally in the dark. This is especially noticeable in the work "Let the moon shine - the night is dark ...". Here it is told about the renunciation of the protagonist from the outside world, his mental anguish:
“Let the moon shine - the night is dark.
Spring in my soul of love
Will not change the stormy bad weather.
The night has spread over me
And answers with a dead look
At the dim gaze of the sick soul,
Doused with sharp, sweet poison.
And in vain, passions hidden,
In the cold mist before dawn
I wander among the crowd
With only one cherished thought:
Let the moon shine - the night is dark.
May life bring happiness to people
Spring in my soul of love
Will not change the stormy bad weather. ”
Here Blok connects the state of mind of the protagonist with a dark night. The night has stretched out over him, and the same darkness reigns and rules in his soul. Loneliness is exacerbated by a person's isolation from real life, since the main character has a characteristic romantic attitude. Despite the fact that the author does not indicate any direct opposition of "I" or "we", he still indicates that the main character is somewhere among the people. Nevertheless, they live in a completely different way, unlike our main character, who cannot break with his loneliness in any way. His position is very strange: “Let life bring happiness to people,” but he does not say this about himself. Man himself is a creative person, he is trying to comprehend the secrets of the unearthly, the universe, and the best time for such reflections is night.
The poem both begins and ends with the same quatrain. The protagonist is convinced that the night will remain dark for him, although the moon is shining.
"The wind brought from afar ..."
As you might guess, the key works in the cycle of poems are "Poems about the Beautiful Lady", which are titled as such. They reflect the complexity of the love relationship between the writer himself and his future wife, Lyuba Mendeleeva. As in the first case, everything in the poem is far from unambiguous, unclear and indefinite. The only difference is that the poet is hinting at the approach of something good, something that can fill a person's life with meaning. This is clearly seen in the work "The wind brought from afar ...", although the image of a person remains unknown to the reader, we do not see the one that can fill life with meaning, but we understand that its imminent appearance is inevitable.The wind brought from afar
Songs of spring hint
Somewhere light and deep
The sky opened up.
In this bottomless azure
In the twilight of near spring
Weeping winter storms
There were starry dreams.
Timidly, darkly and deeply
My strings were crying.
The wind brought from afar
Sound songs are yours.
Here, Blok begins to show new patterns. In particular, the dark night, which, it would seem, should have been endless, is changing. Now the main character has a small "patch of the sky." This piece gradually increases, turning towards the end of the work into a "bottomless azure". In addition to the external appearance, the sound around also changes. If earlier there was only a quiet, soundless night, now the wind brings a hint to the main character of the song.
Before the appearance of the Beautiful Lady, the life of the protagonist is compared to winter. There is a hint that in the near future, winter should be replaced by spring, but it, as such, is not there yet. The hero feels only its harbingers, but he understands perfectly well that this spring is already close. This is also noticeable in the poem "Quiet evening shadows ...":
"Quiet evening shadows
In the blue lie the snows.
Hosts of discordant visions
Your ashes have been disturbed.
You sleep beyond the distant plain,
Sleeping in the snow...
Songs of your swan
Sounds seemed to me.
An anxious voice
Echoes in the cold snow...
Is it possible to resurrect?
Isn't the past dust?
No, from the Lord's house
Spirit full of immortality
Came out native and familiar
Song disturb my hearing.
Hosts of grave visions,
Sounds of live voices...
Quiet evening shadows
The blue touched the snows.
Conclusion
The collection "Poems about the Beautiful Lady" fully embodied the idea of a "double world" characteristic of most Symbolists. In such works there is a contrast between "earth" and "heaven", as well as the material and spiritual state of man. In the image of the Beautiful Lady, Blok embodies the Soul of the world, which in itself is a feminine nature. In general, for such a collection of poems, it is possible to name some lofty feelings, a regular break of a person with the current reality, as well as the holiness of unearthly ideals and a kind of cult of beauty.
If we identify all the verses in this collection, then we can say that everywhere the main character is an ordinary earthly creature who is languishing in anticipation of that same Beautiful Lady, and she, in turn, is something divine, unearthly ideal.
"Poems about the Beautiful Lady" is written in a refined and rather refined language. Each work in the collection is saturated with search, expectation of the ideal, harmony, beauty. Naturally, the main character in these works has a sharp rejection of everyday reality. He is trying to strive for excellence, waiting for positive changes and it seems that he is about to wait for them. The Beautiful Lady herself in the cycle is an unearthly creature that only remotely resembles a female appearance. In fact, this is the idea of a person, his dream, the hope that warms the soul of the protagonist, but at the same time causes a longing for the incomprehensible.
Introduction
Rest is useless. The road is steep.
The evening is wonderful. I knock on the gate.
Dolny knock is alien and strict,
You scatter pearls around.
Terem is high, and the dawn froze.
The red secret at the entrance lay down.
Who set fire to the tower at the dawn,
What did the Princess herself erect?
Each skate on a patterned carving
The red flame is thrown towards you.
The dome aspires to the azure heights.
The blue windows lit up with a blush.
All bells are ringing.
Filled with springless outfit.
Have you been waiting for me at sunset?
Terem lit? Did the gate open?
I went out. Slowly descended
On the ground the twilight of winter.
The past days were young
Came trustingly from the darkness...
They came and stood behind their shoulders,
And they sang with the wind about spring ...
And I walked silently,
Seeing eternity in the depths ..
Oh, the best days were alive!
Under your song from the depths
Twilight descended to earth
And dreams arose for eternity! ..
The wind brought from afar
Songs of spring hint
Somewhere light and deep
The sky opened up.
In this bottomless azure
In the twilight of near spring
Weeping winter storms
Starry dreams were flying.
Timidly, darkly and deeply
My strings were crying.
The wind brought from afar
Sound songs are yours.
Quiet evening shadows
In the blue lie the snows.
Hosts of discordant visions
Your ashes have been disturbed.
You sleep beyond the distant plain,
Sleeping in the snow...
Songs of your swan
Sounds seemed to me.
An anxious voice
Echoes in the cold snow...
Is it possible to resurrect?
Isn't the past dust?
No, from the Lord's house
Spirit full of immortality
Came out native and familiar
Song disturb my hearing.
Hosts of grave visions,
Sounds of live voices...
Quiet evening shadows
Blue touched the snow.
The soul is silent. In the cold sky
All the same stars burn for her.
Around about gold or about bread
The noisy people are screaming...
She is silent - and heeds the cries,
And sees distant worlds
But alone two-faced
Prepares wonderful gifts
Prepares gifts for his gods
And, anointed, in silence,
Tirelessly hearing catches
The distant call of another soul...
So-white birds over the ocean
Inseparable hearts
Sounds like a call behind the fog
Understandable to them only to the end.
You depart into the scarlet dusk,
In endless circles.
I heard a small echo
distant steps.
Are you near or far
Lost in the sky?
Wait or not a sudden meeting
In this resounding silence?
Sounds stronger in silence
distant steps,
Are you closing, burning,
Endless circles?
On a cold day, on an autumn day
I will return there again
Remember this breath of spring,
See the previous image.
I will come - and I will not cry,
Remembering, I will not burn.
Meeting with a song at random
New autumn dawn.
Evil time laws
The mournful spirit was lulled.
Past howl, past moans
Do not hear - I went out.
The very fire is blind eyes
Do not burn the dream of the past.
The day itself is darker than the night
Sleepy in soul.
So - dispersed in the hours of dawn.
A. B.
All earthly dreams fly away,
Alien countries are getting closer.
Countries are cold, dumb,
And without love, and without spring.
There - far away, opening the apples,
Visions of family and friends
Pass into new dungeons
And look indifferently at them.
There - the mother of the son does not recognize,
Passionate hearts go out...
It's hopelessly fading away
My wandering is endless...
And suddenly, on the eve of imprisonment,
I hear footsteps...
You are alone - in the distance,
Close the last circles...
In the hours before sunset
Among the ancient trees
I love fake colors
Your eyes and your words.
Farewell, the night shadow is coming
The night is short, like a spring dream,
But I know tomorrow is a new day
And a new law for you.
Not nonsense, not a forest ghost,
But the old man did not know the fairies
With such unfaithful eyes,
With such a changeable soul!
All being and being according to
In great, unceasing silence.
Look there sympathetically, indifferently, -
I don't care - the universe is in me.
I feel and I believe and I know
You can't seduce a seer with sympathy.
I contain myself abundantly
All those fires that you burn.
But there is no more weakness or strength
Past, future - in me.
All being and existence is frozen
In great, unchanging silence.
I'm here at the end, full of insight
I've crossed the line.
I'm just waiting for a conditional vision
To fly off into another void.
Someone whispers and laughs
Through the azure mist.
Only I will be sad in silence
Again laughter from lovely countries!
Again a whisper - and in whispers
Someone's caress, as in a dream,
In someone's feminine breath,
It can be seen, forever joy to me!
Whisper, laugh, baby
Sweet image, gentle dream;
You are unearthly, apparently, by force
Endowed and covered.
White night red month
Floats in the blue.
Wandering ghostly-beautiful,
Reflected in the Neva.
I see and dream
The fulfillment of secret thoughts.
Is there good in you?
Red moon, quiet noise?
The heavenly mind is not measurable,
Azure is hidden from minds.
Only occasionally do seraphim bring
Sacred dream to the chosen ones of the worlds.
And the Russian Venus seemed to me,
Wrapped in a heavy tunic
Passionless in purity, joyless without measure,
In facial features - a calm dream.
She came down to earth not for the first time,
But around her crowd for the first time
The heroes are not the same, and the knights are different ...
And the gleam of her deep eyes is strange...
They sound, they rejoice,
Never getting tired
They celebrate victory
They are blessed forever.
Who will keep track of the surrounding ringing,
Who will feel at least a brief moment
My endless in the secret bosom,
My harmonic language?
Let my freedom be alien to everyone,
Let me be a stranger to everyone, in my garden
Nature rages and rages.
I am an accomplice in everything!
Lonely, I come to you
Bewitched by the fires of love.
You guess. - Don't call me -
I myself have been cheating for a long time.
From the heavy burden of years
I was saved by one divination,
And again I tell fortunes over you,
But the answer is unclear and confused.
Divination-filled days
I cherish the years - do not call ...
Soon the lights will go out
Enchanted dark love?
And the heavy dream of worldly consciousness
You shake off, longing and loving.
Vl. Solovyov
I anticipate you. Years pass by
All in the guise of one I foresee You.
The whole horizon is on fire - and unbearably clear,
And silently I wait, yearning and loving.
The whole horizon is on fire, and the appearance is near,
But I'm afraid: you will change your appearance,
And daringly arouse suspicion,
Replacing the usual features at the end.
Oh, how I fall - both sadly and lowly,
Not having overcome deadly dreams!
How clear is the horizon! And radiance is near.
But I'm afraid: you will change your appearance.
And it's too late to wish
Everything has passed: both happiness and sorrow.
Vl. Solovyov
Don't get angry and forgive. You bloom alone
Yes, and I can not return
These golden dreams, this deep faith...
My way is hopeless.
Blooming with a dreamy thought, you are blessed a lot,
You are strong with azure.
I have a different life and a different road,
And the soul is not up to sleep.
Believe - more unhappy than my young worship
Not in the vast country,
Where your mysterious genius breathed and loved,
Indifferent towards me.
Behind the fog, behind the forests
Light up - disappear
I'm driving through wet fields -
Again from afar flashes.
So wandering lights
Late at night across the river
Over sad meadows
We meet with you.
But at night there is no answer,
You will go into the river reeds,
Taking away the source of light
Again from a distance you beckon.
In the inactivity of the young, in pre-dawn laziness
The soul soared up, and found the Star there.
The evening was foggy, the shadows lay softly.
Evening Star waited silently.
Unperturbed, on the dark steps
You entered, and, Silent, surfaced.
And a shaky dream in predawn laziness
She transferred herself to the stellar paths.
And the night passed in a fog of dreams.
And timid youth with dreams without number.
And dawn is coming. And the shadows flee.
And, Yasnaya, You flowed with the sun.
Today you walked alone
I have not seen your miracles.
There, above your high mountain,
The jagged stretched forest.
And this forest, tightly closed,
And these mountain paths
They prevented me from merging with the unknown,
Bloom with your azure.
Heeding the call of a troubled life,
Secretly splashing in me
Thoughts false and minute
I will not give up even in a dream.
I'm waiting for a wave - a passing wave
To the radiant depth.
I watch a little, bending my knees,
Meek in sight, quiet in heart,
Drifting shadows
Fussy affairs of the world
Among visions, dreams,
Voices of other worlds.
Transparent, unknown shadows
They swim to You, and You swim with them,
In the arms of azure dreams,
Incomprehensible to us - You give Yourself.
Before You they turn blue without borders
Seas, fields, and mountains, and forests,
Birds call to each other in the free heights,
The fog rises, the skies turn red.
And here, below, in the dust, in humiliation,
Seeing for a moment immortal features,
Unknown slave, filled with inspiration,
Sings you. You don't know him
You will not distinguish him in the crowd of people,
Don't reward him with a smile
When he looks after him, not free,
Having tasted for a moment of Your immortality.
I'm waiting for a call, looking for an answer,
The sky is numb, the earth is silent,
Behind the yellow field - somewhere far away -
For a moment, my call woke up.
I wait - and a new thrill embraces.
The sky is getting brighter, the silence is deafening...
The night secret will be destroyed by the word...
Have mercy, God, night souls!
I woke up for a moment behind a cornfield, somewhere,
A distant echo is my call.
I'm still waiting for a call, looking for an answer,
But the silence of the earth lasts strangely.
Alexander Alexandrovich Blok
Poems about a beautiful lady
Introduction
(1901-1902)
Rest is useless. The road is steep.
The evening is wonderful. I knock on the gate.
Dolny knock is alien and strict,
You scatter pearls around.
Terem is high, and the dawn froze.
The red secret at the entrance lay down.
Who set fire to the tower at the dawn,
What did the Princess herself erect?
Each skate on a patterned carving
The red flame is thrown towards you.
The dome aspires to the azure heights.
The blue windows lit up with a blush.
All bells are ringing.
Filled with springless outfit.
Have you been waiting for me at sunset?
Terem lit? Did the gate open?
I went out. Slowly descended
On the ground the twilight of winter.
The past days were young
Came trustingly from the darkness...
They came and stood behind their shoulders,
And they sang with the wind about spring ...
And I walked silently,
Seeing eternity in the depths...
Oh, the best days were alive!
Under your song from the depths
Twilight descended to earth
And dreams arose for eternity! ..
The wind brought from afar
Songs of spring hint
Somewhere light and deep
The sky opened up.
In this bottomless azure
In the twilight of near spring
Weeping winter storms
There were starry dreams.
Timidly, darkly and deeply
My strings were crying.
The wind brought from afar
Sound songs are yours.
Quiet evening shadows
In the blue lie the snows.
Hosts of discordant visions
Your ashes have been disturbed.
You sleep beyond the distant plain,
Sleeping in the snow...
Songs of your swan
Sounds seemed to me.
An anxious voice
Echoes in the cold snow...
Is it possible to resurrect?
Isn't the past dust?
No, from the Lord's house
Spirit full of immortality
Came out native and familiar
Song disturb my hearing.
Hosts of grave visions,
Sounds of live voices...
Quiet evening shadows
Blue touched the snow.
The soul is silent. In the cold sky
All the same stars burn for her.
Around about gold or about bread
The noisy people are shouting...
She is silent - and heeds the cries,
And sees distant worlds
But alone two-faced
Prepares wonderful gifts
Prepares gifts for his gods
And, anointed, in silence,
Tirelessly hearing catches
The distant call of another soul...
So - white birds over the ocean
Inseparable hearts
Sounds like a call behind the fog
Understandable to them only to the end.
You depart into the scarlet dusk,
In endless circles.
I heard a small echo
distant steps.
Are you near or far
Lost in the sky?
Wait or not a sudden meeting
In this resounding silence?
Sounds stronger in silence
distant steps,
Are you closing, burning,
Endless circles?
O. M. Solovieva
At night gloomy and wild -
Son of the bottomless depth -
Wandering ghost pale-faced
In the fields of my country
And the fields in the great darkness
Alien, cold and dark.
Only sometimes, hearing God,
Daughter of the blessed side
From the birthplace
Chasing ghostly dreams
And a lot flickers in the fields
Pure virgins of spring.
Towards spring blossom
The islands are green.
Only one song left unfinished
Forgotten words...
The soul in aspiration was late,
The guy froze in a vague way,
Didn't know a secret
Some dreams I didn't understand...
And now - in envious embarrassment
Looks - the snow has melted,
And rivers discordant flow
Finds its shores.
On a cold day, on an autumn day
I will return there again
Remember this breath of spring,
See the previous image.
I will come and I won't cry
Remembering, I will not burn.
Meeting with a song at random
New autumn dawn.
Evil time laws
The mournful spirit was lulled.
Past howl, past moans
You will not hear - I went out.
The very fire is blind eyes
Do not burn the dream of the past.
The day itself is darker than the night
Sleepy in soul.
So, they parted ways at dawn.
All earthly dreams fly away,
Alien countries are getting closer.
Countries are cold, dumb,
And without love, and without spring.
There - far away, opening the pupils,
Visions of family and friends
Pass into new dungeons
And look indifferently at them.
There - the mother of the son does not recognize,
Passionate hearts go out...
There hopelessly fading away
My wandering is endless...
And suddenly, on the eve of imprisonment,
I hear footsteps...
You are alone - in the distance,
Close the last circles...
In the hours before sunset
Among the ancient trees
I love fake colors
Your eyes and your words.
Farewell, the night shadow is coming
The night is short, like a spring dream,
But I know tomorrow is a new day
And a new law for you.
Not nonsense, not a forest ghost,
But the old man did not know the fairies
With such unfaithful eyes,
With such a changeable soul!
All being and being according to
In great, unceasing silence.
Look there sympathetically, indifferently, -
I don't care - the universe is in me.
I feel and I believe and I know
You can't seduce a seer with sympathy.
I contain myself abundantly
All those fires that you burn.
But there is no more weakness or strength
Past, future - in me.
All being and existence is frozen
In great, unchanging silence.
I'm here at the end, full of insight
I've crossed the line.
I'm just waiting for a conditional vision
To fly off into another void.
Someone whispers and laughs
Through the azure mist.
Only I will be sad in silence
Again laughter from lovely countries!
Again a whisper - and in whispers
Someone's caress, as in a dream,
In someone's feminine breath,
It can be seen, forever joy to me!
Whisper, laugh, baby
Sweet image, gentle dream;
You are unearthly, apparently, by force
Endowed and covered.
White night red month
Floats in the blue.
Wandering ghostly-beautiful,
Reflected in the Neva.
I see and dream
Fulfillment of secret thoughts.
Is there good in you?
Red moon, quiet noise?
The heavenly mind is not measurable,
Azure is hidden from minds.
Only occasionally do seraphim bring
Sacred dream to the chosen ones of the worlds.
And the Russian Venus seemed to me,
Wrapped in a heavy tunic
Passionless in purity, joyless without measure,
In the features of the face - a calm dream.
She came down to earth not for the first time,
But around her crowd for the first time
The heroes are not the same, and the knights are different ...
And the gleam of her deep eyes is strange...
They sound, they rejoice,
Never getting tired
They celebrate victory
They are blessed forever.
Who will keep track of the surrounding ringing,
Who will feel at least a brief moment
My endless in the secret bosom,
My harmonic language?
Let my freedom be alien to everyone,
Let me be a stranger to everyone in my garden
Ringing and rampaging nature
I am an accomplice to her in everything!
Lonely, I come to you
Bewitched by the fires of love.
You guess. - Don't call me -
I myself have been cheating for a long time.
From the heavy burden of years
I was saved by one divination,
And again I tell fortunes over you,
But the answer is unclear and confused.
Divination-filled days
I cherish the years - do not call ...
Soon the lights will go out
Enchanted dark love?
And the heavy dream of worldly consciousness
You will shake off, yearning and loving.
Vl. Solovyov
I anticipate you. Years pass by
All in the guise of one I foresee You.
The whole horizon is on fire - and unbearably clear,
And silently I wait, yearning and loving.
The whole horizon is on fire, and the appearance is near,
But I'm afraid: you will change your appearance,
And daringly arouse suspicion,
Replacing the usual features at the end.
Oh, how I fall - both sadly and lowly,
Not having overcome deadly dreams!
How clear is the horizon! And radiance is near.
But I'm afraid: you will change your appearance.
... and it's too late to wish
Everything has passed: both happiness and sorrow.
Vl. Solovyov
Don't get angry and forgive. You bloom alone
Yes, and I can not return
These golden dreams, this deep faith...
My way is hopeless.
Blooming with a dreamy thought, you are blessed a lot,
You are strong with azure.
I have a different life and a different road,
And the soul is not up to sleep.
Believe - more unhappy than my young worship
Not in the vast country,
Where your mysterious genius breathed and loved,
Indifferent towards me.
D.M. Magomedov
The extreme importance of the biographical series for understanding not only the fate, but also Blok's work was noticed in the articles by B. Eikhenbaum and Y. Tynyanov, written in the year of the poet's death. Both critics astutely noted that in 1921 Russia mourned not only the poet, but also the person, despite the fact that very few of the reading public knew Blok personally. In both articles, there is a thought, especially clearly formulated by Tynyanov: “Blok is the biggest lyrical theme of Blok. This theme attracts as the theme of the novel is still a new, unborn (or not conscious) formation. This lyrical hero is being talked about now.” Later researchers of Blok's work focused on the category of the lyrical hero. I would like to single out Tynyanov's idea of Blok's poetry as a novel of an as yet unborn or not conscious formation and understand how the idea of autobiographicalism of Blok's work is connected with the specifics of novel poetics.
In general terms, the connection between the novel and biography was aphoristically defined by O. Mandelstam in the article “The End of the Novel”: “The measure of a novel is a human biography or a system of biographies.” But is this definition applicable to lyrical creativity, where each poem is only a point fragment of personal biographical experience, which is given a universal human meaning?
The step taken by Russian lyric poetry at the turn of the century from a single poem to an integral "book of poetry" radically transforms the genre tradition: individual fragments are now included in the unifying macroplot of the collection. This macroplot is often, though not always, nothing more than a lyrical diary or a variant of a biographical narrative. As applied to Blok's work, this is so obvious that it allowed D.E. Maksimov to call the "myth of the path" a universal "integrator" of his lyrics. But the myth about the path can be realized in a variety of plot versions and correlate differently with life event empiricism. What happens to the so-called biography in Blok's lyrics?
Before turning to the analysis of "Poems about the Beautiful Lady", we note that Blok, in fact, continuously creates autobiographical versions of both documentary and fictional types. He wrote a number of autobiographies - for a university personal file, for a biographical dictionary of Russian writers, for Russian Literature of the 20th Century, edited by S.A. Vengerov, for the collection "First Literary Steps" compiled by F.F. Fidler, etc. All these texts build life events in the usual, generally significant sense of the word: the family is mentioned, childhood, education, literary debut, socially significant connections, published books are mentioned. But at the same time, Blok created autobiographical versions of a completely different order. We are talking about an esoteric, sacred series of events that are significant only for the initiates or even exclusively for the poet himself (his remark in a letter to his wife is very characteristic: doesn't know about it. You don't want to know either.") This second row is an autobiographical myth, equally defining the "poetics" of Blok's life behavior, and the development of the plot of his "lyrical trilogy", and a number of plot moves in dramas (the "Song of Destiny" is especially significant). In the "middle of life" (1910), Blok tried to create a text that would combine both series of biographical events, empirical and esoteric: we are talking about the poem "Retribution", which remained unfinished.
It is interesting to begin the analysis of the interaction between the empirical and sacred biographical sequences in "Poems about the Beautiful Lady" almost from the end. In 1918, preparing a reprint of his first collection, Blok decided to accompany it with a detailed autobiographical commentary, similar to Dante's New Life. But the month-to-month, outwardly very detailed commentary he started is striking in its factual inaccuracy. L.D. Blok stated in her memoirs: “Sasha mixed everything up, almost everything is not in its place, not on its date.” The confusion is by no means a consequence of Blok's forgetfulness: he had notebooks and a youthful diary at his disposal, and it was not at all difficult to restore the true order of events. But the point is precisely that two series of biographical events have points of intersection, but develop relatively independently. The text of the collection contains both of these rows, which gives rise to two variants of its interpretation. Some readers see in these poems love and landscape lyrics with an annoying "mystified" complication in the spirit of the philosophy of Vl. Solovyov.
The second group of readers sees the “code” with which you can decipher the “Poems about the Beautiful Lady”, namely in the teachings of Vl. Solovyov about Eternal Femininity, about Sophia, the Soul of the World in earthly captivity. Indeed, the starting point for the formation of the plot of the lyrical trilogy is precisely here, in Blok's personal conviction in the earthly incarnation of Sophia and in his own calling for her liberation from the captivity of earthly evil. However, no matter how one regards the “Solovievian” or “realistic” reading of the plot of “Poems about the Beautiful Lady”, it is clear that ... Blok’s poems do not fit into any of them. And even a "combination" of both approaches does little to understand the living concreteness of a poetic text.
Let's look, for example, at the beginning of the poem "Introduction", which opens the cycle "Poems about the Beautiful Lady":
Rest is useless. The road is steep.
The evening is wonderful. I knock on the gate.
Dolny knock is alien and strict,
You scatter pearls around.
Terem is high, and the dawn froze.
The red secret at the entrance lay down.
Let us ask ourselves: why does the heroine of the poem “scatter pearls”? Why is she in the dungeon? Why in this, and in many other poems of the collection, does she appear only at sunset and in the sky?
The poem "In inaction as a child, in pre-dawn laziness ...", depicting the hero's meeting with "Her", creates an even stranger picture of her appearance:
Unperturbed, You entered the dark steps and, Quiet, You surfaced.
Whoever the heroine of the cycle is - Eternal Femininity or Lyubov Dmitrievna Mendeleeva, it is hardly possible to clearly explain why she "emerges". Random slip of the tongue, poetic license? But this verb, as well as related to it "swim" and "ascend", are repeated in other poems:
Transparent, unknown shadows
They swim to You, and You swim with them.
I do not see you, and for a long time there is no God.
But I believe you will rise and flare up
scarlet dusk,
Closing the secret circle, in motion belatedly.
You are in a white blizzard, in a snowy moan
Again the sorceress surfaced ...
It is just as difficult to understand which heroine can appear in front of the hero in the same way as in the poem "Beyond the fog, behind the forests ...":
Behind the fog, behind the forests It will light up - it will disappear,
I'm driving through wet fields -
Again from afar flashes.
And it is completely inexplicable why in the poem “She grew beyond the distant mountains ...” it is said about the heroine: “And, wet cereal, she ascended to him,” and in the finale: “She flows in a row of other luminaries.” Or why in the poem “Perform a secret prayer...” it says: “You will penetrate Her features, // You will comprehend - this is how God wants // Her extraordinary eye.” It is this “extraordinary eye” of the heroine that is most incomprehensible here.
There can be a lot of such “naive”, but quite legitimate questions: why, for example, the heroine “closes circles”, why the motives of “two-facedness” are associated with her (“But I’m scared, you will change the appearance of You ...”), “divinations ”, and none of them can be given a convincing answer based on the usual readings of Blok’s early lyrics. True, it is possible to refuse to address such issues altogether, to point out that symbolist poems are not amenable to rational comprehension, that the orientation towards “mysteriousness” and “darkness” is one of the foundations of their poetics. But, having abandoned the rational-logical reading, we cannot refuse to comprehend the artistic logic of the poem. Otherwise, one would have to assume that Blok's early lyrics are a certain set of subjective images arbitrarily united around the idea of Eternal Femininity. But not a single serious reader of Blok will agree with such an assumption.
The answer to these questions, oddly enough, can be found if you forget about Eternal Femininity and L.D. for a while. Mendeleeva, and once again think about the meaning of the repeatedly described “vertical” composition of the cycle, i.e. simply that the heroine is usually on high, and the hero below, that she “emerges” or “rises” invariably in the evening twilight, at dawn, that she is a “lamp”, “source of light”, “white”, “Sunset, Mysterious Maiden. And, returning to our first question (why She “scatters pearls”), recall Fet’s poem “The wise need the word of light ...”:
I don't know: in the life of the local Duma, are the feelings right, are the feelings right?
Why is the month of spring showered with pearls on the grass?
So, “scattering pearls” is a metaphor already known to Russian lyrics, denoting moonlight reflected in dew drops. Familiar with Russian lyrics of the 19th century. and another "strange" Blok metaphor: "Her extraordinary eye." Its source is Y. Polonsky's poem "The Tsar Maiden", which had a huge impact on the figurative system of "Poems about the Beautiful Lady". The moon in this poem is called "wet eye". The poem "Beyond the fog, behind the forests ..." contains undoubted allusions to Pushkin's "road", "winter" poems ("I'm going through wet fields" - "I'm going, I'm going in an open field"):
Through the wavy mists the moon makes its way,
On the sad glades She pours a sad light.
So wandering lights late at night across the river
Over sad meadows We meet with You.
If we assume that all these coincidences are not accidental and that the central image of the "Poems about the Beautiful Lady" is the Moon, not named, but seen through periphrastic descriptions, then many of the "mysteries" of the cycle will clear up by themselves. It is noteworthy that the “moon” (“month”) in the text of “Poems about the Beautiful Lady” is directly named only 6 times. It seems that the Moon, as the main sacred object, is tabooed, encrypted. Moreover, in the poems that were not included in the main text of the first volume of the lyrical trilogy, there are a lot of direct names for the Moon.
With this reading, many poems will look like “riddle poems” (the term of M.L. Gasparov), which instantly clear up as soon as the keyword is named:
Sign of a true miracle
In the hour of midnight darkness -
Hazy darkness and a pile of stones,
You burn like a diamond in them.
Born in the dead of night
Companion to the pale earth,
Clothed in the fabric of the earth,
You were silver in the distance.
But, without multiplying examples, we note that not all poems in the collection are easily read as encrypted "landscape" sketches, and She is far from always identified with the sensual image of the Moon. So, the poems still seem inexplicable, where She is called the “Princess” in the chamber, “wet cereal”, which refers to her “Temple”, “throne”, which refers to divination, divination, duality or two-facedness, about the kingdom of the dead. But all these poems become clearer as soon as we move from the sensual image of the Moon to the polysemantic lunar myth. Blok, of course, could have known at least the ancient versions of the myth about the Moon, partly from the gymnasium course, but to the greatest extent - from university lectures, primarily F.F. Zelinsky. Blok did not deny the influence of philological studies on his poetic work. So, on December 16, 1902, he wrote to his bride about how Greek philosophy helps him: “Will this surprise you? Strange as it may seem, not only Greek philosophy (especially from the time of Christ), but also any "real" book that deals with the eternal, is now understandable and close to me. I can already find Your image there.” Retrospectively, in 1918, in an unfinished autocommentary to "Poems about the Beautiful Lady", Blok stated: "Philology also influences my perception."
It is well known, for example, that Selene (Hecate) in Greek mythology patronizes love charms, divination and witchcraft. The connection of the Moon with the goddess of fertility (Demeter, Ceres) and her daughter, Queen Hades Persephone (Proserpina) explains both the symbolism of cereals and the motifs of the kingdom of the dead in the "Poems about the Beautiful Lady". The motif of "closing circles" sounds for the first time... in the Homeric hymn "To Selene":
Selena-goddess In the evening on the day of the full moon.
Making your great circle,
She is brightest at this time,
having increased, it shines ... (Translated by V. Veresaeva)
The answer to the question about the nearest and probable source of this information, in addition to academic studies, is quite simple to answer: in the most concentrated form, the presentation of all the listed modifications of the Moon symbol is contained in the beginning of the eleventh book of Apuleius' novel "Metamorphoses, or the Golden Ass", which opens with the hero's prayer to the Moon and her response to him. Let me remind you that Blok owned a review of a fragment of this novel about Cupid and Psyche. From this fragment it becomes clear how not accidental in the early lyrics of Blok such naming of the heroine as “Mistress of the Universe”, “Russian Venus”, “blue queen of the earth”, “queen of star armies”, “You holding the sea and land”. Compare: “Mistress of heaven, be you Ceres, the fertile mother of cereals<...>; be you the Venus of heaven, that by the birth of Cupid at the very beginning of the centuries, two different sexes connected<...>, be the sister of Phoebus<...>; be Proserpina, with nightly howls of terror, that in a three-faced way you subdue the onslaught of evil spirits and rule over underground forces. The goddess, answering the hero, also lists her names-attributes: “Mother of nature, mistress of all the elements, the original creation of time is the highest of the deities, the mistress of the souls of the dead, the first among the celestials, a single image of all gods and goddesses, whose wave the azure vault is subject to heaven, healing breaths of the sea, deplorable silence of the underworld.
Finally, the motives of the Princess in the tower go back not only to well-known Russian fairy tales, but also to the Gnostic version of the myth of Sophia-Wisdom, imprisoned in the body of an earthly woman - Helen, the companion of Simon the Magician (Magician). In the presentation of F.F. Zelinsky, this plot is part of the myth of Elena of Sparta. Compare: “The wisdom of God descended from heaven to earth; Wisdom was embodied in the form of a mortal; Wisdom was taken captive by the dark forces; Wisdom in the form of Helen caused the Trojan War; Wisdom, captive, awaits its release, and the one who releases it will become a god. It is known that F.F. Zelinsky was one of Blok's most revered professors at the Faculty of History and Philology of St. Petersburg University. But even if this plot was not presented at his lectures, Blok could read the article “Elena the Beautiful” in the journal “Questions of Life” (1905, No. 12), in which he himself collaborated. The wooden tower (terem), in which Elena was located, radiates light simultaneously from all windows, since she is the Moon: such an identification is generated by the consonance of the words Elena - Selena. The ancients also identified Helen with Astarte, called her a sorceress, revered her temple in Sparta as a source of miracles (later these motifs were reflected in Blok's drama The Song of Fate). The Russian folklore version of the plot about Princess Elena the Beautiful in the tower retains some signs of connection with the myth of the Moon: remember that Elena, sitting in the tower, hits the groom who has jumped to her with a ring, which causes a star to light up in his forehead.
From all that has been said, it is clear that the connection of the central female image of the "Poems about the Beautiful Lady" with the lunar myth does not at all cancel the possibility of reading this cycle through the Soloviev myth of Sophia. Moreover, the influence of Gnostic mythology on Solovyov's philosophical lyrics is a generally recognized fact. Sophia among the Gnostics is also associated with the symbol of the moon. The most complex figurative structure of the "Poems about the Beautiful Lady" lies precisely in this unique for Russian poetry multi-layered meanings and readings, where not a single layer destroys the previous or subsequent one, but only contributes to its further deepening and branching. This is the true symbol as the principle of the poetic reconstruction of the world.
Perhaps the most sensitive reader of Blok's early poems was Andrei Bely, who immediately guessed the connection between Blok's heroine and the Moon. In one of his first letters to Blok (dated January 6, 1903), reflecting on the phrase of Vl. Solovyov “The soul of the world is a dual being”, Bely pointed out the possibility of a twofold interpretation of Eternal Femininity: “Incarnating Christ, She is Sophia, the Radiant Virgin; without incarnating Christ - the lunar Virgin, Astarte, the fiery Whore, Babylon. In his later memoirs about Blok, he again returns to their youthful correspondence and claims that the central image of the “Poems about the Beautiful Lady” is twofold: “Astarte, the Moon is forever trying to obscure Her.” Speaking about the motives of the second volume of the lyrical trilogy, Bely astutely pointed out the meaning of the leitmotif of a twisted, flawed, dead, grimacing month ("Third - the month above - / Twisted his mouth"; .P.).
The structure of the first edition of "Poems about a Beautiful Lady" deserves rethinking, where the cycles are grouped thematically and called "Stillness", "Crossroads" and "Damage". The names of the last two cycles in this context take on additional meanings associated with lunar symbolism (let us explain that the crossroads is a place for divination, fortune-telling). But even the later recycling of the verses according to the chronological principle allows us to see how the themes of spring, summer and winter do not coincide with the details of writing, but their periodicity associated with the lunar cycle is undoubted.
However, this unity of "biographical", "lunar", "sacred-mystical" plans did not last long. The disintegration of the single cosmos of "Poems about the Beautiful Lady" into many autonomous worlds in "Crossroads" (in the main text of the first volume), as has been repeatedly noted, begins with the happy completion of the first phase of Blok's romance with his future wife on November 7, 1902, with her consent become his bride. It is from this moment that the inner world of the first volume is imbued with an atmosphere of anxiety, trouble, duality. Let us point out, for example, the “strange” poem “Voice”, written on behalf of the heroine, who calls herself the “queen of the stellar hosts” and reproaches the hero for treason, or, rather, that he mistook another for her:
You are in a dream. my hugs
I do not give you in the night.
I am the queen of the stars,
Not for you my rays.
You are deceived by the unknown:
For sacred dreams
Impossible incorporeal
Reveal your traits.
Go even deeper
Into the darkness of your spirit:
You will understand that I am more beautiful
Your ghosts.
In other poems, a modern disharmonious city breaks into the habitual natural, almost timeless world of meetings between the hero and the heroine, and the plot of the “mystical novel” itself is sharply desacralized: all possible symbolic readings are cut off, except for the earthly, biographical one:
When I was walking along the road at dusk, I noticed a red light in the window. A pink girl stood on the doorstep And told me that I was handsome and tall.
This is my whole story, good people.
I don't need anything more from you
I never dreamed of a miracle -
And you calm down - and forget about it.
How to explain this discrepancy between a happy ending in life and a sense of drama and even disastrous events in the world? The psychological reasons for the collapse of the former world were formulated by Z.G. Mintz: “Blok, “old-fashioned” honest, terrified of any “mystical quackery”, could not identify the girl with whom he was connected for life by “frosty kisses”, and the Gnostic “Virgin of the Rainbow Gates”, which happened to be considered a “world mystery” , the end of world history<...>. There was, in fact, no way out. The "romantic" needs of the individual, the mystical ideal and reality, outwardly, it would seem, merged, in reality, it was after November 7, 1902 that they entered into a tragic contradiction for Blok and his bride. The very first day of the “accomplishment” of many years of exalted dreams was the beginning of the death of the myth of the personal embodiment of the world mystery.”
From that moment on, Blok's "Poems about the Beautiful Lady" lose all resemblance to Dante's sonnets to Beatrice or Petrarch's sonnets to Laura: not one of such mystical novels in world literature could end with a real union of heroes in the material world.
In order for the “novel in verse” to be continued, multidirectional searches were needed, a sharp transformation of the main autobiographical myth about the Soul of the world, the openness of external reality, which more and more stubbornly penetrates not only into the events of personal life, but also into the artistic space of Blok’s creativity.
L-ra: Russian literature. - 1997. - No. 2. - S. 32-38.