Elegy e a Baratynsky. Poems of the elegy of famous Russian poets

Elegy (And cramped and stuffy...)

Nikolay Yazykov

And it's cramped and stuffy for me in the mountains -
In deep caves, in granite hollows;
I grew up in bright hills and plains
Used to wander, roam my eyes;
To me the vaults of heaven so high, high
They shone open - back and forth,
Along the edge of heaven so that the ridge stretches
Wooded hillocks, blue in the distance,
Long away; the chest breathes more freely there!
And mountains and mountains ... they press like that
My soul, severe: as if forced
They are the way to my homeland!

Elegy(Crush, crush, night wave...)

Mikhail Lermontov

Crush, crush, night wave,
And irrigate the shores in the foggy darkness with foam.
I am standing here near the sea on a rock;
I stand, thoughtful.
One; leaving the world, and alien to people,
And not wanting to believe anyone longing.
Near me are the fishermen's tents;
A hospitable fire shines between them,
The careless family sits around the light;
And, listening to the story of the old man,
He is preparing a smoky dinner for himself!
But I'm far from happy with their soul,
I remember the glitter of the deceitful capital,
Merry pernicious irretrievable swarm.
So what? - a tear runs from the eyelashes.
And my regret disturbs my chest,
The years of the lost are hourly;
And this look, thoughtful and clear -
I repeat, I repeat to my soul: forget it.
He is all in front of me: I repeat everything in vain! ..
Oh, if I was born in this place,
Where insidiousness does not live among people: -
How much I would have been borrowed by fate -
- Now she has no right to gratitude!
How pitiful is the one whose youth brought
An extra wrinkle for an old brow,
And taking away all sweet desires,
She gave one sad repentance;
Who felt like me - to feel suffering,
Who soon recognized the light - and with a terrible emptiness
How I left the shore of my native land
For voluntary exile!

Elegy(No, not to be what was before! ..)

Evgeny Baratynsky

No, not to be what was before!
What's in my happiness? My soul is dead!
"Hope, friend!" my friends told me. Is it too late to give me hope
When I am almost unable to wish?
I am burdened by their immodest fate,
And every day I am poorer in faith to them.
What is in the void of their incoherent speeches?
A long time ago I said goodbye to happiness,
Desirable to my blind soul!
Only after him with dull voluptuousness
I look into the distance of my past days.
So gentle friend, in insensible oblivion,
Still looking at the swell of blue waves,
On a wet path, where in the dark distance
Long gone departed friendly canoe.

Elegy(For a brief moment, joy captivates in life ...)

Evgeny Baratynsky

For a brief moment, joy captivates in life,
Days of happiness flash by invisibly;
As soon as they shine, they will disappear.
For a brief moment, I recognized love as a sweetness:
Oh dear friend, you are no longer with me!
He has already disappeared - instant bliss,
And I'm alone, and on a cramped chest
An annual longing for separation lies.

Where are you, where are you, charm love?
Hasn't eternity passed between us?
Has life been happiness to me for an hour?
Are there only desires left for me?
I had everything, suddenly lost everything;
As soon as the dream began, the dream disappeared.
One now dull embarrassment
It remains for me from my happiness!

Boris Pasternak

There were days: like knocked out skittles
They lay down in the snow for the twelfth day.
I saw moments of localism avoided,
There was every dusk around noon around me.

And in the wastelands of unintentional games
You were lost, your aiming eye.
Now the coming dumb paralysis
Your cruel refusal shook me.

Farewell. Let! I dedicate myself to a miracle.
Shuffle the days, I'll go for centuries.
Farewell. Let. Now I'll start from there
Holy dates to crush the ridge.

Elegy (The storm of the people is still silent...)

Nikolay Yazykov

The storm of the people is still silent,
The Russian mind is still bound,
And oppressed freedom
Conceals impulses of bold thoughts.
O! long chain age old
They will not fall from the ramen of the homeland,
Centuries pass ominously, -
And Russia will not wake up!

Elegy(The grove was dozing over the stream ..)

Evgeny Baratynsky

The grove dozed over the stream;
Silence fell on the hills;
Everything was dozing - but in vain sleep
I waited on a bed alone.
Sons of my sick soul,
Sons of the midnight vigil -
Around the obscure crowd
Vague visions flickered.
Everything is deceived, I thought,
What a fiery heart lived,
What delighted, what tormented,
And my youth withers!
Slave of the gloomy truth,
From now on with an idle soul,
Light swarm of live delights
I will be replaced by a cold thought
And the hearts of dead silence!
Then with a treacherous smile
Cupid suddenly appeared.
What are you sighing about, he said,
What are you sad about, ungrateful?
Forget sad dreams
I'm forever young - and I'm with you!
You are still a baby at heart;
You do not trust me? - Look at Chloe!

Elegy(The hour of goodbye is already near! ..)

Evgeny Baratynsky

The hour of goodbye is near!
I will see you, my friend!
How my chest agitates
Longing vague expectation!
Native hut, native land,
From the shrouds of familiar oak forests,
Where innocent fun
Flew to us at your voice -
I will see them! priceless friend,
Why is the prophetic heart sad?
Well, a clear day is not fun
Souls for the awakened happiness!
With longing for joy, I look:
Her radiance is not for me!
And I hope in vain
I wake up in my exhausted soul.
Sorrow exhausted all feelings,
The spirit is sick with a gloomy dream;
Maybe it's too late, dear friend,
And joy visited me:
I don't quite enjoy
Her captivating smile;
Everything seems to me, I'm happy with a mistake,
And fun does not suit me!

elegiac poem

Yaroslav Smelyakov

Have you ever fallen in love
I'm just sad if not -
When you were almost twenty
Is she almost forty years old?

And if it was
You never forgot
How hastily she loved
And you loved without memory.

When did we stop
Seek their response
They silently let us go
Without going back.

And yesterday, gloomy, dry,
Entering a small hall
I am a hopeless old woman
I saw among the young women.

And suddenly, even though it's in the old style,
Amidst the bustle and beauty
I was stunned like thunder
Half-forgotten traits.

And going to you through the noise of the market,
Like a fading dawn
I bow gratefully
And I don't say anything

Only with pleasure and torment,
Forgetting sorrows and deeds,
I kiss the old hand
What was a white pen.

Elegy

Anton Delvig

When, soul, you asked
Die or love
When wishes and dreams
You were crowded to live,
When I didn't drink tears
From the cup of life, -
Why then, in a wreath of roses,
I did not go to the shadows!

Why are you drawn like this
In my memory
A single youth sign
You songs of yesteryear!
I bitterly dales and forests
And I forgot the cute look, -
Why are your voices
Saved my hearing!

Do not return happiness to me
At least it breathes in you!
With him in flashed antiquity
I forgave a long time ago.
Don't break it, I pray
You are the sleep of my soul
And the terrible words "I love"
Don't tell her!

Elegy

Nikolai Nekrasov

Let the changing fashion tell us
What is the theme of the old "suffering of the people"
And that poetry must forget it.
Don't believe me guys! she doesn't age.
Oh, if years could age her!
God's world would flourish!... Alas! while the nations
Dragging in poverty, submitting to scourges,
Like lean herds across mowed meadows,
Mourn their fate, the muse will serve them,
And in the world there is no stronger, more beautiful union! ...
To remind the crowd that the people are in poverty,
While she rejoices and sings,
To excite the attention of the mighty of the world to the people -
What better service could the lyre serve?...

I dedicated the lyre to my people.
Perhaps I will die unknown to him,
But I served him - and my heart is calm ...
Let not every warrior harm the enemy,
But everyone go to battle! And fate will decide the battle ...
I saw a red day: there is no slave in Russia!
And I shed sweet tears in tenderness ...
"It's enough to rejoice in a naive passion, -
Muse whispered to me. - It's time to go forward:
The people are liberated, but are the people happy?

Do I listen to the songs of the reapers over the golden harvest,
Is the old man walking slowly behind the plow,
Does it run through the meadow, playing and whistling,
Happy child with father's breakfast,
Do the sickles sparkle, do the scythes ring together -
I'm looking for answers to my secret questions
Boiling in the mind: "In recent years
Have you become more tolerable, peasant suffering?
And the long slavery that came to replace
Has freedom finally made a difference
In people's destinies? into the tunes of rural maidens?
Or is their discordant melody just as sorrowful? .. "

Evening is coming. Driven by dreams
Through the fields, through the meadows lined with haystacks,
Thoughtfully wandering in the cool semi-darkness,
And the song itself is composed in the mind,
Recent, secret thoughts, a living embodiment:
I call blessings on rural labors,
I promise curses to the people's enemy,
And I pray to a friend in heaven of power,
And my song is loud!.. It is echoed by valleys, fields,
And the echo of distant mountains sends her feedback,
And the forest responded... Nature listens to me,
But the one about whom I sing in the evening silence
To whom are the dreams of the poet dedicated,
Alas! he does not heed - and does not give an answer ...

Elegy (God knows, is it not in vain ...)

Nikolay Yazykov

God knows, did not wander in vain
I have been in foreign countries for many years!
My rainy day did not clear up,
I have no consolation.
Sad, tremulous and languid
Back to my father's house
I hasten like a bird to a secluded bush
Hurrying, clogged with rain.

By the mid-1820s, the crisis of the elegiac genre was already palpably evident. In the article "On the direction of our poetry, especially lyrical, in the last decade" (1824) V.K. Kuchelbecker strongly criticizes the isolation of the elegiac type of consciousness, its exclusive focus on oneself, on "one's sorrows and pleasures" and suggests turning to the genre of a public ode. However, the work of the leading poets of the era, Pushkin and Baratynsky, shows that the elegy genre has not yet exhausted all its potentialities. The search for new means of artistic expression, a radical revision of the outdated concept of personality leads these poets to acquire a new philosophy of the genre.

The historical development of the elegy genre convinces us that the elegy (like many other dynamic genres) is mobile in its ideological and aesthetic composition and, despite certain traditionalism, is still capable of internal restructuring, and often cardinal renewal own "face". In the work of individual poets, as a rule, we encounter completely individual versions of the elegy - original modifications of both genre varieties and the genre as a whole.

In the very general view A genre is a value type of a person's attitude to the world that is well-established in culture. So, probably, no one will confuse the elegiac state with the pathos of an angry invective, the features of an idyllic world with the tragedy of a ballad situation. The cultural picture of the world (of course, its individual fragment or some significant aspect) is pressed and polished in the philosophy of the genre, imprinted forever in its aesthetic structure.

Meanwhile, we must not forget that the concept of the genre is far from exhausted by the aspect of normative poetics. In the literature of modern times, the artist no longer thinks in terms of genre canons, more precisely, not within the strictly defined boundaries of certain canonical models, but in the free cultural and historical space of the generic "memory of genres" (the concept of M.M. Bakhtin), a wide field of aesthetic experiments is open before him genre synthesis.

The founder of one of the trends in Russian genre studies M.M. Bakhtin proposed to single out several aspects in the concept of genre: the aspect of sociological poetics (or the conventional relationship between the author and the reader), the genetic-evolutionary aspect (in this regard, we will cite only one Bakhtin quote: "Genre is a representative of creative memory in the process of literary development") and the aesthetic aspect itself. aspect (or architectonic form of the work). According to the fundamental conviction of the scientist, the "essential life of the work" (note that not the text itself, understood formalistically, but precisely the aesthetic object) is revealed in all its depth only in the process of subjective-personal understanding, as "an event of the dynamic-living relationship between the hero and the author", as meeting of at least two minds. It is this aesthetic-phenomenological approach to the nature of the lyrical genre that scientists oppose to the traditionally academic, basically positivist method of analysis.

The essential life of the lyrical genre is not limited to its canonical model. In the dynamic concept of the genre, which is more in line with the aesthetic realities of modern times, it is no longer normative poetics, but individual creative aesthetics that begins to occupy a leading place. Thus, along with the quite obvious and long-standing conventional (or communicative) and genetic-evolutionary (or culturological) aspects in the concept of the lyrical genre, another, perhaps the most important and fundamental, aspect manifests itself - the aesthetic-phenomenological one.

But it is one thing to theoretically recognize the historical variability of the genre, its dynamic nature, and another (and much more complicated) thing is to explain the very mechanism of this variability in the individual artistic practice of poets, in the concretely unfolding dynamics of the "essential life of the work." It may seem that the concept of genre synthesis provides an answer to the question posed. But according to this concept, the innovative process of genre formation at best appears as a skillful combination of various genre elements, and the process of combination itself is perceived as impersonal, in other words, without regard to the creative consciousness of the artist. At the same time, the process of innovative genre formation in the poetry of modern times should be understood as immanent in the artistic consciousness of the creator, which finds its adequate expression in the deployment of individual aesthetic experience, in a kind of genre phenomenology.

Let's continue the conversation about the genre of elegy in the poetry of Pushkin and Baratynsky. An analysis of the specific lyrical works of these authors will make it possible to clarify the very definition of the nature of the elegiac genre, since the idea of ​​an elegy as a “song of sad content” (V. G. Belinsky), which is widespread in the school environment, from our point of view, cannot withstand any serious criticism.

Let us turn to Pushkin's famous Boldino masterpiece "Crazy Years Faded Fun ...", which has the characteristic title "Elegy". Somewhat forcing the results of the study, we note that "elegy" is not only a genre designation, but also the theme of the poem, the object of Pushkin's phenomenology of the lyrical genre.

Crazy years faded fun

It's hard for me, like a vague hangover.

But like wine, the sadness of bygone days

In my soul, the older, the stronger.

My path is sad. Promises me labor and sorrow

The coming turbulent sea.

But I don't want, oh friends, to die;

I want to live in order to think and suffer;

And I know I will enjoy

Between sorrows, worries and anxiety:

Sometimes I'll get drunk again with harmony,

I will shed tears over fiction,

And maybe - at my sad sunset

Love will flash with a farewell smile (3.169).

The form of the poem is fourteen lines, made in 5-foot dramatic iambic paired rhyme. Graphically, the "Elegy" is divided by the poet himself into two parts - a sextine (or six-line) and an octave (eight-line), which vaguely resembles the structure of an "inverted" or "overturned" sonnet. The very analogy with the sonnet form, as we will try to show later, cannot be considered accidental. To some extent, the genesis of such a poetic composition in Pushkin finds the following explanation: in the almanac "Northern Flowers for 1829" Baratynsky publishes a fragment of the 36th elegy of A. Chenier "Under the storm of fate, dull, often I ..." - also a fourteen-line , only iambic 6-foot paired rhyming, with a characteristic syntactic articulation 6 + 8. The connection between Pushkin's text and Baratynsky's precedent text is noted in a special article by L.G. Frizman

But this connection (in addition to the elegy of A. Chenier) is also mediated by the dialectical development of poetic thought, characteristic of the genre structure of the sonnet.

The composition of the sonnet, this highly dramatic and dialectical genre, is probably the most perfect form of embodiment of poetic thought. Pushkin's appeal to this genre (in its classical version) took place relatively late in the Boldin autumn of 1830 (by the way, at the same time he also wrote the poem "Elegy"). "Sonnet" ("Severe Dante did not despise the sonnet ..."), "To the Poet" and "Madonna" - these are three classic examples of Pushkin's sonnet. Moreover, it is significant that in all three cases the poet deviates from the formal canon - he violates the order of alternation of rhymes in quatrains, freely varying the cross and inclusive types of rhyme, or practices continuous rhyme in quatrains and terzets. In the sonnet "Madonna" the poet allows even greater liberties - the transfer from the second quatrain to the neighboring sextine, as well as the repetition, at least twice, of the same lexemes. All this gave rise to the poet P.P. Buturlin - a remarkable Russian sonnetist - to declare, perhaps too categorically, that "Pushkin's sonnets are not sonnets."

It is even more significant that long before the Boldino autumn of 1830, Pushkin turned to the form of a fourteen-line, syntactically imitating the stanza of a sonnet. R. O. Yakobson was the first to draw attention to this verse form, i.e., a holistic combination of fourteen iambic verses with seven differently arranged rhymes. The researcher singled out a number of such poems from Pushkin: "Muse" (1821), "I will soon be silent ..." (1821), "From a letter to Vyazemsky" (1825), "I witnessed your golden spring ..." ( 1825), "Elegy" (1830), "No, I do not value rebellious pleasure..." (1830?). Moreover, he even ranked the fourteen-line form among the "favorite compositional units" of Pushkin the poet. It seems that such a convergence of forms - a fourteen-line free rhyme and a sonnet - is explained not so much by their direct genetic connection as by an internal typological relationship.

Returning to Pushkin's poem "Elegy", it should be especially noted that, in terms of form, departing from the established canon, in terms of content, Pushkin observes the dialectic of the development of the lyrical theme inherent in the sonnet, relatively speaking, its tripartite nature (thesis-antithesis-synthesis), which is confirmed by syntactic scheme 4 + 4 + 6 (it is interesting that the graphic division of the verse in two, i.e. 6 + 8, enters into a relationship of complementarity with its triple syntactic-semantic articulation). At the same time, it is noteworthy that each of the three selected compositional parts contains an internal contradiction, which is harmoniously resolved by the poet.

Thus, the first two couplets, separated by an opposing union but, model the temporal transition from the past to the present - the very process of transforming a difficult spiritual experience into "bright sadness." The third couplet introduces the theme of the future (the coming turbulent sea), which is still portrayed fatally and unequivocally as labor and grief, in contrast to the faded fun of past years. But the following couplet, by the way, again introduced by an adversarial conjunction, gives a completely new treatment of the already stated theme of foresight of fate. The poet decides to oppose the immutable fate of reality, the tragic thought of death, with a categorical imperative: "But, O friends, I do not want to die; / I want to live in order to think and suffer."

Note that this couplet falls exactly in the middle of the entire lyrical composition. It differs sharply from the previous ones in grammatical terms. Modal constructions mark the introduction of a different reality - the reality of a poetic dream that overcomes the tragic laws of the earthly material world. Pushkin will beautifully say about this in another Boldino poem: "The darkness of low truths is dearer to me / The deceit that elevates us" (3, 189). The special strong-willed determination of the lyrical subject is emphasized by the tautological internal rhyme that falls on the male caesuras of the first half-lines of the rhyming verses in pairs: But I don’t want ... - I want to live ... It is important to note that complete sound identity (or tautological rhyme) turns into Pushkin essential semantic contrast for the entire poem. The following circumstance also seems to be specifically Pushkinian: elegiac meditation, mastering existential problems, does not accidentally unfold in the narrow framework of a solitary consciousness, but it is surprising that, starting from the 7th line, it enters a wide world of friendly communication, suggesting an installation for dialogue (in this regard, it is indicative figure of addressing the other).

The last six-verse opens with an introductory construction and I know. The semantics of the verb does not point to the rational nature of knowledge, but to a holistic comprehension of being, a wise knowledge of life itself. The poet hopefully directs his gaze to the future, faith helps him to discover the yet undiscovered facets of being, its rich, truly inexhaustible potentials of meaning. Structurally, the indicated six-verse represents a single syntactic whole. In semantic terms, this is a concretization of the theme begun by the previous couplet, unexpectedly opening up to the mind of the poet the possibility of a harmonious transformation of life by the power of a creative dream. As required by the genre canon of the sonnet, the final six-line also incorporates the theme of the previous quatrains (cf.: "Between sorrows, worries and anxieties", "sad for my sunset"), including it in the newly formed fruitful synthesis. Despite the tragic awareness of the inevitability of the hour of death, life, according to Pushkin, is fraught with unshakable good, inexhaustible potentials of pleasure, the ever-released miracle of catharsis.

The dialectics of the development of lyrical thought that we have traced, which is characteristic of the sonnet, is also confirmed in the philosophy of the elegiac genre, primarily in the description of mixed sensations. It would be a profound mistake to believe that the elegy is limited only by the emotion of sadness and the content corresponding to this emotion. In the Discourse on Elegy published in the journal Son of the Fatherland for 1814 (author Malt-Bren), we read: in the quotation, the author's italics. -O.Z.), as it seems, was invented in imitation of the double Lydian flute, which was played in front of the troops alternately in two tones: in major and in minor. The majestic size of the hexameter and the lively movement of the pentameter were, so to speak, the image of a two-tone Lydian flute and, like it, delighted the ear with a mixture of strength and lightness, liveliness and calmness. Pushkin, apparently, was familiar with the content of this reasoning.

Similar remarks can be found in the aesthetic works of Herder, as well as in A.I. Galich, a student of German philosophers and, as you know, Pushkin's lyceum teacher. "An elegy," A.I. Galich wrote, "like a melancholy (hereinafter in the quote, italics is ours. -O.Z.) or cheerful singing, aroused by recollection, relates its poetry to past or past suffering states of the soul, which have now cooled to the point that we can already imagine them in our thoughts without feeling distant shocks and, for example, although with tears still in our eyes, but with a smile blooming on our lips, sing the blessings that we are deprived of. In the program elegy "Melancholia" N. M. Karamzin gave the following definition of the emotional and aesthetic nature of the elegiac state:

Oh melancholy! gentle overflow

From grief and longing to the joys of pleasure!

There is no fun yet, and there is no longer torment;

Despair has passed ... But, having drained the tears,

You still do not dare to look joyfully at the world

And your mother, Sorrow, you have a look.

In the light of all the above, Pushkin's phenomenology of the elegiac genre becomes understandable. In his poem, the poet reproduces with amazing accuracy, sometimes reaching emblematic expression, the genre face of the elegy: a bizarre combination of tears that have not yet dried up in the eyes and a smile already blooming on the lips. The very transitivity of the elegiac state, the mixed nature of the feelings of the lyrical subject, is emphasized in Pushkin by the grammatical form of the future tense, promising a desired, but in many ways still inaccessible perspective, and it can also be an introductory turn ("And maybe - in my sad sunset / Love will flash with a farewell smile" ), which indicates the instability of the acquired harmony, the fragility of the poetic dream itself.

Thus, the phenomenological image of the elegy, which is drawn in the creative mind of Pushkin, is finally clarified. Through the mutual efforts of the two genres - the philosophy of the elegy and the compositional structure of the sonnet - the poet achieves an amazing sense of the harmony of contradictions, "an ambiguous apotheosis of being."

The noted aesthetic effect of Pushkin's "Elegy" is especially evident against the background of Baratynsky's poem "From A. Chenier":

Under the storm of fate, sad, often I,

Boring with the painful bondage of being,

Carry my yoke losing strength,

I look with joy at a near grave,

I greet her, I love her peace,

And shake off the chains, I pray to myself.

But soon the imaginary determination is forgotten

And my soul is open to languid weakness:

The grave is terrible to me; and neighbors, friends,

My future and my youth

And promises in the chest of the hidden muse -

Everything seductively binds the bonds of life,

And I'm looking far, no matter how strict my lot is,

I live and live in poverty a helpful excuse.

Baratynsky's elegiac meditation is clearly divided into two parts, the boundary between which is the opposing union but in the 7th line. The development of poetic thought goes from thesis to antithesis, which is emphasized by a system of lexical-semantic oppositions: thus, despondency and boredom from the painful bondage of being, stimulating the determination of the lyrical subject (albeit imaginary) to commit suicide, is opposed to the languid weakness of the soul and the seductiveness of life itself with its future hopes and memories of youth. If in the first part the yoke of being turns out to be unbearable, and the image of chains is strongly associated with a feeling of bondage, then in the second part the chains of fate, oppressing and enslaving, are replaced by the bonds of life, which, on the contrary, hold individual being together. The role of synthesis in Baratynsky's poetic composition is played by the last couplet, it sums up what was stated in the two previous parts: echoes of the recent tragedy are still audible (cf.: "no matter how severe my lot is"), but the force of life takes its toll. The final summary incorporates a worthy result of both the first and second reflections, which is confirmed by the finally found formula "live and live in poverty."

So, the samples of Pushkin's and Baratynsky's elegies examined by us convince us that the elegy genre in its historical development reveals extraordinary dynamism, docking with various topics, starting with love and ending with philosophical and metaphysical. Being subjected to a significant transformation, changing almost beyond recognition (if we proceed from the canonical ideas about the genre), the elegy in all its individual modifications still remains a single genre. Here is what Yu.N. Tynyanov: “It is impossible to imagine a genre as a static system, if only because the very consciousness of a genre arises as a result of a collision with a traditional genre (i.e., the sensation of a change - at least partial - of the traditional genre by a “new” one that takes its place). here it is that the new phenomenon replaces the old, takes its place and, not being a "development" of the old, is at the same time its substitute. When this "replacement" does not exist, the genre as such disappears, disintegrates "http://www. eunnet.net/proceedings/?base=mag/0011(03_06-1999)&xsln=showArticle.xslt&id=a01&doc=../content.jsp - ref15#ref15.

At the same time, here's what is remarkable: renewing everything in new and new forms, in other words, constantly "shifting", the elegy presupposes something stable and unchanging. This is what M.M. Bakhtin called "memory of the genre". Figuratively, this could be represented as follows: there is no genre proper in the structure of the work under study, but there is a “shadow” that this genre casts. No matter how unrecognizable the genre face of this or that work may seem to us, the “memory of the genre” still remains in it: it forms the stable background of the genre tradition, against which emerging structural and content innovations are more clearly shaded.

And one more very important consideration. The mechanism of genre dynamics in modern poetry is the phenomenologization of genre consciousness. The life of the genre takes place in the creative mind of the poet. This, in fact, is the reason for the constant "displacement" of the genre in the process of its existence (what V.N. Turbin called "the reversibility of the genre - its ability to turn into other genres, the ability to be born, grow stronger, assert itself, and then die, preventing others from living "). The history of Pushkin's elegy eloquently testifies that the task worthy of a modern poet is not the reproduction of stable canonical models, not a slavish imitation of classical models (all this would look like more or less successful stylization at best), but the search for an individual authorial genre, revealing it. unique phenomenological experience.

The first poetic experiments of E. Baratynsky date back to 1818 (in 1819 they appear in print) - a friendly message, album poems, madrigals. But the originality of the already early Baratynsky manifested itself with particular force in the elegy (“He excels in this kind,” A. Pushkin wrote in 1827). Elegy is the genre that brought Baratynsky early, high-profile and well-deserved success. So, on January 2, 1822, Pushkin wrote to P.A. Vyazemsky: “What is Baratynsky like? Admit that he will surpass both Guys and Batyushkov if he continues to walk, as he has walked so far - after all, he is 23 years old! (Baratynsky was twenty-second, and Pushkin himself was not even 23 years old!) Or on September 1, 1822, in a letter to the same P.A. Vyazemsky: “I’m sorry that you don’t fully appreciate the charming talent of Baratynsky. He is more than an imitator of imitators, he is full of true elegiac poetry."

Elegies of Baratynsky differed sharply from the elegies of his predecessors: this penchant for deep reflection, the habit of constantly analyzing and exploring one's feelings is a new word in the development of the elegy genre. Pushkin was perhaps the first to appreciate this: “Baratynsky belongs to the number of our excellent poets. He is original with us, because he thinks. He would be original everywhere, because he thinks in his own way, correctly and independently, while he feels strongly and deeply. Baratynsky's elegies are psychological elegies. And this, as it were, determined his place in Russian poetry. Baratynsky is a lyric poet, a poet of thought, a philosopher - and this is the originality of his elegies.

Baratynsky's traditional elegiac themes are not given in the traditional elegiac tone (disillusionment, longing for a fading youth, doubt, suffering). Baratynsky introduced something new both in the content and in the structure of the elegiac genre. The main thing for him is the movement of the soul, the psychology of experiences.

If for some poets elegiac and tragic motifs are intertwined, then for Baratynsky love is an illusion:

Don't tempt me unnecessarily
The return of your tenderness:
Alien to the disappointed
All the delusions of the old days!
I don't believe in assurances
I don't believe in love
And I can't surrender again
Once changed dreams!
Do not multiply my blind longing,
Do not start a word about the former
And, a caring friend, sick
Do not disturb him in his slumber!
I sleep, sleep is sweet to me;
Forget old dreams
In my soul there is one excitement,
And you will not awaken love.

"Reassurance", 1821

For Baratynsky, love is an unfulfilled dream, something that will never come ("I don't believe in love"). And this is not distrust of the beloved woman, but disbelief in love itself (love is a dream). In his elegy, Baratynsky gives almost all the meanings of the word “dream” (and in Russian poetry of the 19th century, “dream” and “dream” are almost synonymous): drowsiness, dreaming, emphasizing, “sleep is sweet to me.” And this “sweet dream”, having absorbed the past, is able to replace the present for the lyrical hero. Baratynsky resorts to one of his favorite poetic devices - the negative particle “not”: “I can’t”, “I don’t believe”, “I don’t believe” - the hero says about himself. “Do not tempt”, “do not multiply”, “do not start”, “do not disturb” - he addresses the heroine. And the very word "love" is accompanied by the same particle "not":

In my soul there is one excitement,
And you will not awaken love.

It has long been noticed that in his "love" elegies, Baratynsky was never a "singer of love":

We drink sweet poison in love;
But we drink all the poison in it,
And we pay for a short joy
To her the joylessness of long days.
The fire of love is a life-giving fire,
Everyone is talking, but what do we see?
Devastating, destructive
He is the soul embraced by him.

This is the beginning Baratynsky's elegy "Love"(1824). The poet expresses the same disbelief in the power of love in this poem with such an ambiguous title. The elegy is built on a kind of antithesis: “joy is short”, but “poison is sweet”. Fire lives and destroys the soul, love is bliss and suffering, but it happens only in "blooming youth" (and even then in "golden dreams").

The lyrical hero of Baratynsky does not fully surrender to the feeling that has gripped him. He cannot love selflessly. And elegy "Recognition"(1823) is not a declaration of love, but a declaration of cooling feelings:

Do not demand feigned tenderness from me,
I will not hide the sadness of my heart.
You're right, it no longer has a beautiful fire
My original love.
In vain I reminded myself
And your sweet image, and former dreams:
My memories are lifeless
I swore an oath, but I gave them beyond my strength.

The poem is dominated by the antithesis of the past (love - "beautiful fire") - the present (hearts "sad cold"). The old feeling is gone

And my flame, gradually weakening,
He himself went out in my soul.

It is impossible to repeat what has been experienced, and if the past is not forgotten (“my memories are lifeless”), then soon these dreams will disappear forever (“I was in vain bringing to my memory”). Love cannot be returned (“I will forget again: it will completely intoxicate / Only our first love”). Fate is also to blame for this (“but in the storms of life I had fun with my soul” - a kind of poetic paradox of Baratynsky). The poet draws various shades of this feeling, all the stages of cooling experienced by the lyrical hero: the “cute image” is replaced by “feigned tenderness”, forced oaths:

But in the storms of life I had fun with my soul,
You already lived as an unfaithful shadow in it.
And finally, indifferently cruel:
Goodbye! We walked along the same road for a long time;
I have chosen a new path, choose a new path;
Sorrow barren mind pacify
And do not enter, I pray, into a vain judgment with me.

The deepening of the psychological content and the interspersing of realistic details are characteristic of Baratynsky's elegy:

Who knows? opinion I merge with the crowd;
Girlfriend, without love - who knows? - I will choose.
For a thoughtful marriage, I will give her a hand
And in the temple I will stand next to her.

Again, love is a “dream”, “dreams”, and the future bride is devoted, “perhaps to the best dreams.”

And again the negative particle “not”: “I will not hide”, “I am not captivated”, “I will not love”, “I will not forget”; the same appeal to the heroine: “do not demand”, “do not envy”, “do not join”. And what awaits the lyrical hero in his "considered" marriage:

There will be no exchange of secret thoughts between us,
We will not give free rein to spiritual whims,
We are not hearts under war crowns -
We will join our lots.

The poet ends the elegy with a quatrain, which in itself constitutes a whole poem, it is so aphoristic, beautiful and deep:

We have no power in ourselves
And, in our young years,
We make hasty vows
Funny, maybe all-seeing fate.

But in these four lines there is a mockery of one's own severity - only fate is given to put everything in its place.

Deep lyricism, psychological content, analysis of emotional experiences, the desire to break out of the genre framework, originality drew the attention of readers to this elegy. Pushkin wrote to A. Bestuzhev (January 12, 1824): “Recognition” is perfection. After him I will not print my elegies.

Man and "all-seeing fate", mental isolation and misunderstanding, man and the search for truth, the mysteries of being - all these eternal themes, touched upon by Baratynsky in his early elegies, will be further reflected in his later work. An in-depth analysis of feelings - all the ups and downs, all the nuances of emotional experiences (love, faith, betrayal), this deep psychologism will lead to the creation of Baratynsky's philosophical lyrics.

Psychodiachronology: Psychohistory of Russian Literature from Romanticism to the Present Day Smirnov Igor Pavlovich

6. Pushkin and Baratynsky: "Despondency", "Elegy" / "Elegy"

6. Pushkin and Baratynsky: "Despondency", "Elegy" / "Elegy"

6.1. In the poem "Fun of Crazy Years Faded..." (1830), Pushkin intertextually synthesizes two elegies by Baratynsky (both written in 1821):

A cheerful noise dispels the sadness of the feasts.

Yesterday, behind a circular bowl,

Among the regimental brothers, drowning your mind in it,

I wanted to resurrect my soul.

The midnight mist lay on the hills;

The tents dozed over the lake,

Only we did not know sleep - and a foamy glass

They drained it with wild joy.

But what? I wanted to live outside myself in vain:

We praised wine and Bacchus,

But I joylessly sang joy with my friends:

Their enthusiasm was foreign to me.

You can't buy what the heart doesn't give you.

Rock is vicious towards us, jealously vicious,

One sadness, one despondency

A dull person is capable of feeling.

No, not to be what was before!

What's in my happiness? My soul is dead!

"Hope, friend!" my friends told me:

Is it too late to give me hope

When I am almost unable to wish?

I am burdened by their immodest fate,

And every day I am poorer in faith to them.

What is in the void of their incoherent speeches?

A long time ago I said goodbye to happiness,

Desirable to my blind soul!

Only after him with dull voluptuousness

I look along my past days.

So gentle friend, in insensible oblivion,

Still looking at the swell of blue waves,

On a wet path, where in the dark distance

The friendly boat that had departed had long since disappeared.

Crazy years faded fun

It's hard for me, like a vague hangover.

But, like wine - the sadness of bygone days

In my soul, the older, the stronger.

My path is sad. Promises me labor and sorrow

The coming turbulent sea.

But I don't want, oh friends, to die;

I want to live in order to think and suffer,

And I know I will enjoy

Between sorrows, worries and anxiety:

Sometimes I'll get drunk again with harmony,

I will shed tears over fiction,

And maybe - at my sad sunset

Love will shine with a farewell smile.

From “Despondency” by Baratynsky, Pushkin assimilates the theme of intoxication, which does not bring joy to the lyrical subject: “feasts happy noise", "... foamy glass C fun violently drained”, “But I joylessly sang joy with my friends”? "extinct fun It’s hard for me, like a vague hangover” (Pushkin dates the posttext to the situation (hangover) that should come after the one that Baratynsky had in mind); "over the cup<…>in it drowning your mind» ? « Crazy years<…>fun"; " Despondency one Sad able to feel? "My way dull».

Pushkin’s Elegy intersects with Baratynsky’s Elegy, depicting a lyrical subject sadly recalling the past: “with dull voluptuousness I look along my past days» ? "sorrow past days” (cf. the intertextual rhyme “poorer / my / days” // “days / stronger”) and metaphorizing life as a sea route: “... tender friend<…>looks at the ripples of the blue waves, Wet path» ? "My path sad. Promises me the work and grief of the Coming rough sea».

6.2. Elegies in general and Baratynsky's elegies in particular report, as already mentioned, the irreparability of any absence (for Baratynsky, "joy" and "happiness" are irreplaceable). In Pushkin's Elegy, the subject is not completely alienated from values, not plunged into despair, they are available to him, but either as a fictional world (“I will shed tears over fiction”; cf. above about sublimation and the castration complex), or as an object of short-term possession ( “... at my sad sunset Love will flash with a farewell smile”), Pushkin complicates the genre of elegy, turning it from a purely lamentation into an ambiguous apotheosis of being, so that the elegiac lack of value is eliminated, but at the same time does not degenerate into the stable possession of a desired object.

6.3. Baratynsky, for his part, did not shy away (especially in his later work) from a reciprocal rivalry with Pushkin. We will only very briefly touch on one of the cases of such counter poetic competition (this intertextual reaction to the opponent's intertextual action can be called imitatio aemulationis).

Baratynsky's "Babe" (1835) reproduces the organization of Pushkin's "Demons". Both poems consist of seven stanzas, each of which has eight lines, both are written in four-foot trochaic; however, in "The Nedonoska" the alternation of masculine and feminine endings is reversed in relation to the rhyme sequence in "Demons". Lexico-motif coincidences with "Demons" are especially noticeable in the penultimate stanza of "Babe": " The clouds are rolling clouds are winding<…> Rushing swarm after swarm of demons boundless height, With a plaintive squeal and a howl Tearing my heart "? "Planning in longing, I rushing about in the fields of heaven <ср.: „бесы“. - I.S.> above me and in front of me Limitless - close sorrows! AT cloud I hide myself, and in it I'm rushing Alien to the earthly land, The terrible voice of human sorrows The voice of the storm<= эквивалент „визга“ и „воя“. - I.S.> drowning out. In terms of the syntactic arrangement of these passages, let us pay attention to the relative repetition in the second and sixth verses by Baratynsky (“... I am rushing about” / “I am rushing about, alien ...”), which transforms the complete anaphorism of the first and fifth lines by Pushkin (“Clouds are rushing” / “ Demons rush in).

For all that, in The Possessed, the indefinability of the world is given as a temporary, just-onset state of it; Baratynsky, on the other hand, depicts reality from the point of view of some intermediate being who never had the opportunity to comprehend anything, to partake of anything: “I am from a tribe of spirits<ср.: „Вижу: perfume gathered ... ">, But not an inhabitant of the Empyrean, And, barely up to the clouds Having risen, I will fall, weakening<…>Will I turn to heaven, Will I look back at the earth - Terrible, black here and there<…>I see the world as in darkness; Harp heavenly echo I can hardly hear ... ". Baratynsky's tendency to transcend the pretext is that he speaks lyrically from a position from which the world turns out to be absolutely unknowable (and not just hie et nunc, as in Pushkin).