A cloud in pants expressive means. The poem "Cloud in pants": analysis. "A cloud in pants", Mayakovsky. "Down with your religion"

"A cloud in pants"

Creativity V.V. Mayakovsky is thematically diverse. In the early period, it is permeated with love experiences. In his mature years, it is dominated by social problems.

Deserved fame was brought by V.V. Mayakovsky's poems "Cloud in Pants", "Flute-Spine", "War and Peace" and "Man". They vividly embodied the stylistic features of the poetics of V.V. Mayakovsky: an abundance of neologisms that are easily and naturally included in the text of the works (“mocking”, “surviving”, “loving”, “December”, etc.), exquisite metaphors (“bloody heart patch”, “heart - a cold piece of iron "). The titles of the poems themselves are also metaphorical: "A Cloud in Trousers", "Flute-Spine".

It is symbolic that the poem "A Cloud in Trousers" was originally called "The Thirteenth Apostle". This was an attempt to oppose it to traditional religious teaching. It is known that Christ had twelve disciples-apostles. The very word "apostle" means "messenger". According to legend, they were chosen by Christ himself and sent around the world to preach his teachings. The very name "The Thirteenth Apostle" explodes the established religious tradition, indicates that the work claims to be a socially significant fact of reality, and also emphasizes the confessional nature of the poem.

The apostles had great power. They were empowered to perform miracles in the name of Christ. By proclaiming himself the thirteenth apostle, the hero, in fact, declares to the world that he is taking on an important life mission. As can be seen from the further development of the storyline of the work, the mission is to expose the existing social vices and, with the greatest possible spiritual openness, show the world the power of human feelings.

The poem "A cloud in pants" is sometimes called the poet's manifesto. This is an emotionally charged piece. Its ideological meaning was defined by the author himself as four cries of "dine": down with your love, art, system, religion. The lyrical hero overthrows love based on the search for profit and comfort. He opposes the cutesy poetry for aesthetes that flooded the poetry salons of the time. The author believes that the bourgeois system is not historically progressive and will not bring happiness to mankind.

Compositionally, the poem is defined as a tetraptych: it has a small introduction and a four-part division. The desire to show the exclusivity and originality of the lyrical hero sounds in all chapters of the poem. One of them mentions a yellow jacket, in which "the soul is wrapped up from examinations." It is known that V.V. Mayakovsky in life liked to wear a yellow jacket. Having become acquainted with the poem, the reader understands that such a gesture is caused not only and not so much by the desire to stand out, but by an attempt to cover up something very vulnerable and painful in the soul behind the outer shell of a desperate challenge:

It's good when in a yellow jacket
the soul is wrapped up from inspections!

The landscape in the poem is either gothic or sublime (“In the glass, the gray raindrops fell off, the grimace was huge, as if the chimeras of Notre Dame Cathedral were howling”), then romantic (“What do I care about Faust, an extravaganza of rockets gliding with Mephistopheles in the heavenly parquet!”), then expressionistically shocking (“The muzzle of all pedestrians was sucked, and in the carriages an athlete was polished behind a fat athlete: people were caught, having eaten through and oozing through the cracks, lard flowed like a muddy river from the carriages, along with a sucked-up bun, the zhevot of old cutlets”),

The lyrical hero has a strongly preaching, prophetic beginning:

Where people's eyes break off stubby,
head of hungry hordes
in the crown of thorns revolutions
the sixteenth year is coming.

The mixture of styles, eras, cultural and historical realities is replaced in the poem as in a kaleidoscope. The plot is not a sequential development of events, but is built according to the associative principle: fragmentation, uncertainty, understatement - all these features most successfully reflect the nature of the rebellious and crisis era of the beginning of the century.

The lyrical hero of the poet is experiencing a love tragedy. The heroine's name is Maria. The plot of the poem gravitates toward biblical generalization, and such a religiously significant name for the heroine was not chosen by chance. The hero and the heroine are contrasting in everything: he is a huge, clumsy individualist, she is a fragile, little daughter of her society.

The poem was written in 1914-1915, and echoes of the anti-war verses of this time sound in it:

Your body
I will cherish and love
like a soldier
shattered by war
unnecessary,
nobody's
saves his only leg.

The poem belittles the feeling of future changes. The final image of the sleeping Universe, likened to a giant guard dog, is symbolic. It seems that she is about to wake up from her sleep.

Analysis of Mayakovsky's poem "A Cloud in Pants"

The original title of the poem - "The Thirteenth Apostle" - was replaced by censorship. Mayakovsky said: “When I came to the censorship with this work, they asked me: “What do you want to go to hard labor?” I said that in no case, that this does not suit me in any way. Then they crossed out six pages to me, including the title. It's a question of where the title comes from. I was asked - how can I combine lyrics and a lot of rudeness. Then I said: “Well, I will be, if you like, like a madman, if you want, I will be the most gentle, not a man, but a cloud in my pants” ”1.

The first edition of the poem (1915) contained a large number of censored notes. In full, without cuts, the poem was published at the beginning of 1918 in Moscow with a preface by V. Mayakovsky: ““ A cloud in pants ”... I consider it a catechism of today's art: “Down with your love!”, “Down with your art!”, “Down with your system !”, “Down with your religion” - four cries of four parts.

Each part of the poem expresses a certain idea. But the poem itself cannot be strictly divided into chapters, in which four cries of "Down with!" are consistently expressed. The poem is not at all divided into compartments with its “Down!”, but is a holistic, passionate lyrical monologue, caused by the tragedy of unrequited love. The experiences of the lyrical hero capture different spheres of life, including those where loveless love, false art, criminal power dominate, Christian patience is preached. The movement of the lyrical plot of the poem is due to the hero's confession, which at times reaches high tragedy (the first publications of excerpts from The Cloud had the subtitle "tragedy").

The first part of the poem is about the tragic unrequited love of the poet. It contains an unprecedented strength of jealousy, pain, the hero's nerves rebelled: "like a patient from the bed, a nerve jumped", then the nerves "jump furiously, and already the legs give way under the nerves."

The author of the poem painfully asks: “Will there be love or not? Which one is big or tiny? The whole chapter is not a treatise on love, but the experiences of the poet spilled out. The chapter reflects the emotions of the lyrical hero: “Hello! Who is speaking? Mum? Mum! Your son is very sick! Mum! He has a heart of fire." The love of the lyrical hero of the poem was rejected (It was, it was in Odessa; “I’ll come at four,” said Maria like “here!”, / tormenting suede gloves, / said: “You know - / I’m getting married”), and this leads him to deny love-sweet-voiced chant, because true love is difficult, it is love-suffering.

His ideas about love are defiantly, polemically frank and shocking: “Maria! The poet sings sonnets to Tiana3, // and I am / all meat, all man - // I just ask your body, // as Christians ask - // "Our daily bread - / give us this day." For the lyrical hero, love is equivalent to life itself. Lyricism and rudeness outwardly contradict each other here, but from a psychological point of view, the hero's reaction is understandable: his rudeness is a reaction to the rejection of his love, it is a defensive reaction.

V. Kamensky, Mayakovsky's companion on a trip to Odessa, wrote about Maria that she was a completely extraordinary girl, she "combined the high qualities of a captivating appearance and intellectual aspiration for everything new, modern, revolutionary ..." "Excited, swept up by a whirlwind of love experiences, after the first dates with Maria, - says V. Kamensky, - he flew into our hotel with a sort of festive spring sea wind and enthusiastically repeated: “This is a girl, this is a girl!” ... Mayakovsky, who had not yet known love, for the first time I experienced this tremendous feeling, which I could not cope with. Covered by the "fire of love", he did not know at all what to do, what to do, where to go.

The unsatisfied, tragic feelings of the hero cannot coexist with cold vanity, with refined, refined literature. To express genuine and strong feelings, the street lacks words: "the street is writhing without a language - it has nothing to shout and talk with." Therefore, the author denies everything that was previously created in the field of art:

I'm over everything that's done

I put "nihil".

Of all the forms of art, Mayakovsky turns to poetry: it is too detached from real life and from the real language spoken by the street, the people. The poet exaggerates this gap:

corpses of dead words decompose.

For Mayakovsky, the soul of the people is important, and not its appearance (“We are from soot in smallpox. I know that the sun would dim when it saw our souls with golden placers”). The third chapter is devoted to the theme of poetry:

And from cigarette smoke / liquor glass

the drunken face of the Severyanin was drawn out.

How dare you be called a poet

And, gray, tweet like a quail.

Today / it is necessary / with brass knuckles / to cut the world in the skull.

The lyrical hero declares his break with previous poets, with "pure poetry":

From you, who were soaked in love,

From which / a century a tear shed,

I will leave, / the sun with a monocle

I'll put it in a wide-open eye.

Another “down with” the poem is “down with your system”, your “heroes”: the “iron Bismarck”, the billionaire Rothschild and the idol of many generations - Napoleon. “I’ll lead you on Napoleon’s chain like a pug,” says the author.

The theme of the collapse of the old world runs through the entire third chapter. In revolution, Mayakovsky sees a way to put an end to this hated system and calls for revolution - for this bloody, tragic and festive action, which should burn out the vulgarity and dullness of life:

Go! / Mondays and Tuesdays

let's paint with blood for the holidays!

Let the earth under the knives remember

who wanted to vulgarize!

Earth, / fattened like a mistress,

who fell in love with Rothschild!

So that the flags flutter in the heat of firing,

like every decent holiday -

lift up, lampposts,

bloody carcasses of meadowsweet.

The author of the poem sees the coming future, where there will be no loveless love, refined bourgeois poetry, bourgeois order and the religion of patience. And he himself sees himself as the “thirteenth apostle”, “precursor” and herald of the new world, calling for purification from colorless life:

I, ridiculed by today's tribe,

like a long dirty joke,

I see time going through the mountains,

which no one sees.

Where people's eyes break off stubby,

head of the hungry hordes,

in the crown of thorns revolutions

the sixteenth year is coming.

And I am his forerunner!

The hero seeks to melt away his unsatisfied pain, he seems to rise to a new height in his personal experiences, trying to save the future from the humiliations that have befallen him. And he sees how his grief and the grief of many will end - "the sixteenth year."

The hero goes through a painful path of ups and downs in the poem. This became possible because his heart is full of the deepest personal experiences. In the fourth chapter of the poem, the hopeless longing for the beloved returns. "Maria! Maria! Maria!" - the name sounds hysterically like a refrain, in it - "a born word, equal in majesty to God." Inconsistent and endless prayers, confessions - there is no answer from Mary. And a daring rebellion against the Almighty begins - "half-educated, tiny god." Rebellion against the imperfection of earthly relationships and feelings:

Why didn't you think

to be pain-free

kiss, kiss, kiss?!

The lyrical hero of the poem is "a handsome twenty-two-year-old." With the maximalism of a young man entering the life, the dream is expressed in the poem of a time devoid of suffering, of a future existence, where "millions of huge pure loves" will triumph. The theme of personal, unsurmounted shocks develops into a glorification of future happiness.

The author is disappointed in the moral force of religion. The revolution, according to Mayakovsky, should bring not only social liberation, but also moral purification. The anti-religious pathos of the poem was sharply defiant, repelling some and attracting others. For example, M. Gorky "was struck in the poem by the God-fighting stream." “He quoted verses from “A Cloud in Pants” and said that he had never read such a conversation with God ... and that, by God, Mayakovsky flew in great”4.

I thought you were an almighty god

and you are a half-educated, tiny god.

You see, I bend down, / because of the top

I take out a shoe knife.

Winged scoundrels! / Hug in paradise!

Ruffle your feathers in a frightened shake!

I will open you, smelling of incense

from here to Alaska!

Hey you! Sky! / Hats off! I'm coming!

The universe is sleeping

put on paw

with pincer stars huge ear.

Features of Mayakovsky's poetics

V. Mayakovsky's poem "A Cloud in Pants" (as well as his other works) is characterized by hyperbolism, originality, planetary comparisons and metaphors. Their excess sometimes creates difficulties for perception. M. Tsvetaeva, for example, who loved Mayakovsky's poetry, believed that “it is unbearable to read Mayakovsky for a long time because of purely physical waste. After Mayakovsky, you need to eat a lot and for a long time.

K.I. drew attention to the difficulty of reading and understanding Mayakovsky. Chukovsky: “The images of Mayakovsky surprise, amaze. But in art, this is dangerous: in order to constantly amaze the reader, no talent is enough. In one poem by Mayakovsky we read that the poet licks a red-hot brazier, in another that he swallows a burning cobblestone, then he takes his spine out of his back and plays it like a flute. It's stunning. But when, on other pages, he pulls out his living nerves and makes a butterfly net out of them, when he makes himself a monocle out of the sun, we almost cease to be surprised. And when he then dresses the cloud in his pants (the poem "The Cloud in Pants"), he asks us:

Here, / you want, / from the right eye / take out

a whole flowering grove?!

the reader doesn't care anymore: if you want - take it out, if you don't want - no. You won't get past the reader. He's numb."5 In his extravagance, Mayakovsky is sometimes monotonous, and therefore few people love his poetry.

But now, after the stormy disputes about Mayakovsky that have recently died down, the attempts of some critics to throw Mayakovsky himself off the ship of modernity, it is hardly worth proving that Mayakovsky is a unique, original poet. This is a poet of the street and at the same time the most subtle, easily vulnerable lyricist. At one time (in 1921) K.I. Chukovsky wrote an article about the poetry of A. Akhmatova and V. Mayakovsky - the “quiet” poetry of one and the “loud” poetry of another poet. It is quite obvious that the verses of these poets are not similar, even polar opposites. Who does K.I. prefer? Chukovsky? The critic not only contrasts the poems of the two poets, but also brings them closer, because they are united by the presence of poetry in them: “I, to my surprise, equally love both Akhmatov and Mayakovsky, for me they are both mine. For me there is no question: Akhmatova or Mayakovsky? I like both that cultured, quiet, old Russia, which Akhmatova embodies, and that plebeian, stormy, square, drum-bravura, which Mayakovsky embodies. For me, these two elements do not exclude, but complement one another, they are both equally necessary.

Consider one of the sensational works of V.V. Mayakovsky 1915 "A cloud in pants". An analysis of this poem reveals a protest against the art, system, ideology and morality of bourgeois society. From experiences because of Maria Alexandrovna Denisova, his reproach begins with a society alien to him, in which there is no true love. The poet denounces all the falsity of the system that has developed in the country and, aggressively ironic, declares: “Mayakovsky is“ a cloud in his pants ”. The analysis of each of the parts will be marked by a specific phrase of the poet.

"Down with your love"

The theme of betrayal is fully disclosed in the poem "A Cloud in Pants". helps to understand how this betrayal spreads from the situation with Mary to all other aspects of life: he sees a different life, she opens her rotten grin to him, and he does not want to live in a world where everyone pleases the other for the sake of surroundings.

It is quite noticeable that Mayakovsky in his poems is always diverse and generous with various new derivative words that he creates from simple and familiar expressions. The figurativeness and ambiguity of words help to create a colorful picture in the imagination, enlivened by the mind of the reader.

So, for example, in a triptych a word of a similar structure is used: I scoff - this word expresses aggression towards the reader himself: a representative of the bourgeois standing.

"Down with your art"

In the second part, Mayakovsky overthrows the idols of art that were popular during his work on the poem "A Cloud in Pants". The analysis of the ideas in this part reveals to the reader that true art is born with pain, that each person is capable of becoming the main creator in his life. The author comes up with interesting complex adjectives: “scream-lipped” and “golden-mouthed”. Mayakovsky's word "newborn" also consists of two simple words "new" and "give birth", it is close in its meaning to the verb "renew" and means action.

"Down with your system"

The study of the work "A Cloud in Pants", its analysis gives the reader a clear idea of ​​​​Mayakovsky's negative attitude towards the political system that developed during the heyday of his poetic activity. In the third part, the following words became appropriate: “weepy”, “fell in love”, “cursed”. The word “things” coined by him characterizes belonging to things. Instead of the word “break”, Mayakovsky uses “break through”, because it has an emphasis on a more appropriate action, meaning not only “break”, but also “break a hole in something”.

"Down with your religion"

In the fourth part of the work, there are almost no complex author's words. The poet wanted to convey a specific meaning to the reader: he calls Mary to love and, rejected, angers God, wanting to cut him. For Mayakovsky, religion is false: God does not save, but only teases people with his idleness and laziness. Here the author has become more important not the idea of ​​revolution, which he calls for in the previous parts of the poem, but his pain, his passion and experiences, expressed concretely and dynamically, like a scream after a blow. Semantic and lexical analysis points to all these conclusions regarding the poem. “A Cloud in Pants” is a truly valuable work for history, which vividly and intelligibly expresses the revolutionary mood of that time.

The first chapter of the poem "A Cloud in Pants" tells how the beloved did not come to the lyrical hero. He suffers and suffers against the backdrop of an uncomfortable December landscape. Thanks to extravagant vocabulary and a cascade of bizarre metaphors, the poet was the most successful in conveying the power of human suffering, their impetuous dynamics. After all, real grief and despair are never subtly beautiful, as in sentimental novels of the eighteenth century. This is a cry, a howl, an unbridled intensity of emotions, only occasionally interrupted by bouts of silent despair.

With the help of capacious artistic details, V. Mayakovsky creates generalized portraits of characters. The lyrical hero is a "wiry hulk". From the outside, he looks courageous and calm (“bronze”, “heart - a cold piece of iron”). In fact, his soul painfully asks for love and affection.

At night I want my ringing

Hide in soft

In the feminine

He confesses to grief.

Only a very talented writer can speak so poetically and at the same time frankly about the intimate. All the inhuman pain of loneliness is embodied in these metaphorical lines. The lyrical hero feels that he has been betrayed, without even knowing it for sure. He is hurt and helpless. Suffering from unrequited love is intensified by the agonizing expectation of the chosen one. The impatience of the lyrical hero vividly and expressively conveys the progressive series of numerals:

"I'll be there at four," Maria said.

Expressive in this regard are the verbs (“groaning”, “writhing”, “hunching in the window”).

V. Mayakovsky does not write: "It was a December evening." He narrates thus:

Here comes the evening

Into the night terror

Away from the windows

December.

And this gloomy description exaggerates even more. The sound composition of the selected words is interesting: almost all of them have hissing consonants. They are associated with the sound of rain and wind and convey the state of bad weather. Thus, the reader guesses what is happening outside the window, long before V. Mayakovsky directly writes about it:

Gray raindrops in the glass

fell out,

The grimace was huge,

Like howling chimeras

Notre Dame Cathedral.

Notre Dame Cathedral is a majestic religious building in the heart of Paris. There are many religious motifs in the poem, framing the confessional monologue of the "thirteenth apostle". But in this case, the mention of the cathedral not only enhances the theomachistic sound of the poem, but also works as an aesthetically successful pictorial and expressive means. The cathedral itself has a complex and interesting architectural solution. On one of its tiers, the chimeras, or gargoyles mentioned by V. Mayakovsky, rise eerily. Their greedily and predatory open wolf mouths remind of heavenly punishment. And the Gothic architectural style itself, in which the famous Notre Dame is made, calls for severe asceticism and patience.

To recall the gloomy atmosphere of the Middle Ages, no less harsh lines make:

The twelfth hour has fallen

Like the head of the executed from the chopping block.

The lyrical hero, having lost his beloved, feels himself on the verge of life and death. He seeks sympathy from the rain, but the gray raindrops only howl in response, "as if the chimeras of Notre Dame Cathedral are howling." Poetic comparison only enhances the depth of the suffering of the lyrical hero, gives them a universal scale. Metaphors (“the mouth will soon be torn with a scream”) and comparisons (“like a sick person jumped out of bed”) emphasize the physical nature of this unbearable pain - the pain of a broken heart. The picture of jumping frenzied nerves is expressively complemented by the interior of the room (“the doors suddenly banged, as if the hotel was not getting a tooth on the tooth”).

Finally, the beloved returns, “sharp, like “here!”. Informing the lyrical hero about her impending marriage, all of her embodies a challenge, rejection. He remains outwardly calm. But his immense grief is expressed by metaphors (“you are the Gioconda that needs to be stolen”) and comparisons (“Pompeii died when Vesuvius was teased”), which are based on an appeal to known cultural and historical facts. "Mona Lisa" ("La Gioconda") - a painting by the Italian artist Raphael, an unsurpassed ideal of mystery and femininity.

Terrible and tragic is the scene depicted in K. Bryullov's painting "The Last Day of Pompeii", in which the mighty volcano Vesuvius overthrows its fatal lava flows on the unfortunate city.

The contrast of big and small, used at the beginning of the chapter, is replaced in this scene by the opposition of external peace and internal, spiritual storm.

At the end of the chapter, the lyrical hero tells his mother that he has a "fire of the heart." Further, this metaphor becomes expanded, and a picture of extinguishing this fire flashes before our eyes. This technique is intended to express a touch of light irony with which the lyrical hero refers to his suffering. Indeed, is it worth it to worry so much about a lover who has exchanged a pure sincere feeling for a profitable marriage.

The course of artistic time plays an important role in the first chapter of the poem. Its course is successfully conveyed by expressive metaphors. Each of them is deeply thought out by the author: the evening is leaving, midnight is rushing about with a knife, and the night “thinns and thins around the room, a heavy eye cannot stretch out of the mud.” These fragmentary descriptions convey the change in the state of mind of the lyrical hero. At first he is anxious, then he is indignant and suffers, and then his eyes begin to droop from fatigue.

Artistic time and space in the poem are interconnected. Excruciatingly slow in time for a lyrical hero, the expectation is aggravated by a closed artistic space.

Mayakovsky paid a special place in the poem "A Cloud in Pants", which we are analyzing, to the theme of betrayal, which begins with Mary and stretches through other areas: he sees life quite differently, she smiles with her rotten grin, and he does not want to stay there at all where everyone is only interested in the surroundings.

It is striking that Mayakovsky's poems are full of variety and he generously uses expressions and words that become new to the reader, although they are made from ordinary statements that everyone knows. Color is created thanks to vivid images and double meanings that come to life under the thought of readers. If we consider the triptych used in the poem, we can find the word "mocking", which expresses aggression towards the one who reads, and this is none other than a representative of the bourgeoisie.

"Down with your art"

Let's continue the analysis of the poem "A Cloud in Pants", namely the second part. First, the author wants to overthrow those who have become idols in art and who were extolled at the time when Mayakovsky wrote the poem. To overthrow these empty idols, the poet explains that only pain can give rise to true art, and that everyone can start creating and see themselves as the main creator.

Mayakovsky here operates with interesting complex adjectives; Or take, for example, "newborn": here the author compiled it from two others, bringing it closer in meaning to renewal and calling for action.

"Down with your system"

It is no secret that Mayakovsky spoke negatively about the political system, which just took shape in the prime of the author as a poet. It is very appropriate that with such words as: "swear", "fall out of love", "thing" the poet emphasizes one or another side of the weakness and stupidity of the regime. For example, you can think about belonging to things or about the verb "break through", with which Mayakovsky emphasizes decisive action, perseverance and speed.

"Down with your religion"

The fourth part is practically free from such difficult newly formed words, because the poet here simply conveys the specifics: no matter how he calls to love Mary, she rejects him, and then the poet is angry with God. He believes that one cannot rely on religion, given its venality, laziness, deceit and other vices.

Although Mayakovsky, and this is clearly seen in the analysis of the poem "A Cloud in Pants", introduces a revolutionary idea, it is clear that thoughts about pain, passion and experiences are concrete and dynamic. They also received a lot of attention. Of course, the poem analyzed by us has become the property of Russian literature; she magnificently and intelligibly expressed the revolutionary moods of the Mayakovsky era.