The dark-skinned youth wandered along the alleys. The image of Pushkin in the early works of Anna Akhmatova
*** “The dark-skinned youth wandered through the alleys”
Intuition is blind, reason lends it its eyes: even the Italian intellectual B. Croce, in whose teaching logical development was derived as the next step in the transformation of spirit from intuition, did not doubt its blindness. The philosopher was confident in the absolutely spiritual nature of social reality, interpreting the spiritual as a product of history associated with the will and deeds of people:
“Document and criticism, life and thought - these are the true sources of history, in other words, the elements of historical synthesis, and as such they do not precede history or synthesis like a reservoir to which the historian hurries with his bucket, but are embedded within history, within the synthesis, as those created by them and those who create them. The true meaning of historical knowledge cannot be comprehended unless we start from the principle that spirit itself is history, that at every single moment it both creates history and is created by it. That is, it carries the whole history and coincides with itself in it” (B. Croce. “Theory and History of Historiography.” P. 16).
We have freshness of words and feelings of simplicity
Losing is not like a painter losing his sight,
Or an actor - voice and movement,
And what about beauty for a beautiful woman?
But don't try to keep it for yourself
Given to you by heaven:
Convicted - and we know it ourselves -
We spend, not save.
Go alone and heal the blind,
To find out in a difficult hour of doubt
Students' malicious mockery
And the indifference of the crowd.
Life is the same story, but personal and on a small scale.
The awakening spirit makes an esthetician out of an obedient man in the street who knows that a person has a choice and therefore skillfully indulges in the joys of life. According to the instructions of reason and a sense of duty, awakened by the consciousness of responsibility for one’s life, an esthetician, according to the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855), can rise to an ethicist, and then to a religious person. Any new overcoming on the path of his spiritual development does not exclude experiences of despair and constant reflection on what is good and what is bad, until a person is convinced of his own imperfection and feels the need for an all-forgiving God.
“Let my path be terrible, let it be dangerous, / The path of melancholy is even more terrible...” admitted A. Akhmatova.
The aesthetic, undoubtedly, has every chance to grow to the fullness of the ethical and moral when it is ensured by the unity of the bodily, mental and spiritual spheres of human existence.
This is Anna Akhmatova from her earliest aesthetic experiences.
In Tsarskoe Selo
Horses are led along the alley,
The waves of combed manes are long.
O captivating city of mysteries,
I'm sad, having loved you.
It’s strange to remember: my soul was yearning,
She was suffocating in her death delirium.
And now I've become a toy,
Like my pink cockatoo friend.
The chest is not compressed in anticipation of pain,
If you want, look into the eyes.
I just don’t like the hour before sunset,
The wind from the sea and the word “go away.”
“I lived in Tsarskoye Selo from the age of two to sixteen. Of these, the family spent one winter (when sister Iya was born) in Kyiv (Institutskaya Street) and the other in Sevastopol (Sobornaya, Semyonov’s house). The main place in Tsarskoe Selo was the house of the merchant Elizaveta Ivanovna Shukhardina (Shirokaya, second house from the station, corner of Bezymyanny Lane). But the first year of the century, 1900, the family lived (winter) in Daudel’s house (corner of Srednyaya and Leontievskaya. There was measles and maybe even smallpox).”
(A. Akhmatova. “Pro domo sua”. pp. 216–217)
...And there is my marble double,
Prostrate under the old maple tree,
He gave his face to the lake waters,
He listens to green rustling sounds.
And the light rains wash
His dried wound...
Cold, white, wait,
I, too, will become marble.
“My first memories are of Tsarskoye Selo: the green, damp splendor of the parks, the pasture where my nanny took me, the hippodrome where little colorful horses galloped, the old train station and something else that was later included in the “Ode of Tsarskoye Selo.”
I learned to read using the alphabet of Leo Tolstoy. At the age of five, listening to the teacher teaching the older children, I also began to speak French.
I wrote my first poem when I was eleven years old. Poems began for me not with Pushkin and Lermontov, but with Derzhavin (“On the Birth of a Porphyry-Born Youth”) and Nekrasov (“Frost, Red Nose”). My mother knew these things by heart.
I studied at the Tsarskoye Selo women's gymnasium. At first it’s bad, then much better, but always reluctantly.”
(A. Akhmatova. “Pro domo sua”. P. 236)
The dark-skinned youth wandered through the alleys,
The lake shores were sad,
And we cherish the century
A barely audible rustle of footsteps.
Pine needles are thick and prickly
Covering low stumps...
Here was his cocked hat
And the disheveled volume Guys.
Biographers report:
“We know almost nothing about how Anna Gorenko’s life developed after her forced return to the sea itself. The whole five-year period - from August 1905 to April 1910 - is covered in a veil of fog, through which unrelated details are dimly visible. Judging by her letters to her husband older sister To Sergei von Stein, Anna tried to “kill herself.” But she didn’t tell him about what pushed her to do such a strange act considering her love of life. Poems could clarify the situation crisis years, but they... were destroyed. The long-term correspondence with Gumilyov, from 1906 to 1910, was also burned” (A. Marchenko. “Akhmatova: Life”).
It is known that in the house of Inna Erasmovna Gorenko, due to the impracticality of the mistress, everything was hastily, randomly, somehow: there were a lot of servants, there was little sense, the governesses were absent-minded, impudent, the children were left to their own devices. No order, no comfort, a terrifying mess.
The most frightening thing was death.
Anna's younger sister, sick four-year-old Rika, for whom she, seven years old, played the role of a little nanny, was sent by her parents to her aunt in Kyiv, where Rika died. The girl was taken away at night so that none of the kids would know anything, but Anna did not sleep and knew how “her mother broke her withered fingers in the semi-dark hallway.”
This terrible impression of childhood was repeated many times in subsequent years: in the summer of 1906, elder sister Inna died of transient consumption; after the death of the child, in 1920, elder brother Andrei poisoned himself with morphine; in 1922 she died from the same tuberculosis and younger sister And I. In 1930, immediately after the death of his mother, his younger brother Victor emigrated from the country.
Northern Elegies
5
(About the tenth years)
And no rosy childhood...
Freckles, and bears, and curls,
And kind aunts, and terrible uncles, and even
Friends among the river pebbles.
To myself from the very beginning
It seemed like someone's dream or delirium,
Or a reflection in someone else's mirror,
Without name, without flesh, without reason.
I already knew the list of crimes,
Which I must do.
And here I am, sleepwalking,
Entered life and scared life:
She spread out before me like a meadow,
Where Proserpina once walked.
In front of me, rootless, inept,
Unexpected doors opened
And people came out and shouted:
“She came on her own, she came on her own!”
And I looked at them in amazement
And I thought: “They are crazy!”
And the more they praised me,
Than me stronger people admired
It was all the more scary for me to live in the world
And the more I wanted to wake up,
And I knew that I would pay history
In prison, in the grave, in the madhouse,
Wherever you should wake up
Just like me, but the torture of happiness lasted.
“Sleepwalking” appears to be more than just a metaphor. A. Marchenko, in the biographical book “Akhmatova: A Life,” where the known, supposed and fictitious are confused and intertwined, describes attacks of sleepwalking to which the “wild girl” was subject to until she was 15 years old:
“She got up at night and walked away, unconscious, into the moonlight. Her father found her and brought her home in his arms. Andrei Antonovich loved good cigars, but did not accept cigarettes. This fatherly smell, the smell of an expensive cigar, has since been forever associated with moonlight. The old nanny kept telling the lady: the whole trouble is because they forgot to curtain the window in the room where the girl was sleeping. The window was curtained, but Anna secretly, waiting for the moon to rise, pulled back the curtains. She liked to follow the play of the moon’s rays with the things and objects of her bedroom” (A. Marchenko. “Akhmatova: Life”).
I pray to the window ray -
He is pale, thin, straight.
Today I have been silent since the morning,
And the heart is in half.
On my washstand
The copper has turned green.
But this is how the ray plays on him,
What fun to watch.
So innocent and simple
In the evening silence,
But this temple is empty
It's like a golden holiday
And consolation to me.
Anna Akhmatova's first collection of poems was published in 1912 in St. Petersburg under the publishing label “Poets Workshop”. N.S. Gumilyov paid 100 rubles for printing and took all three hundred copies from the printing house himself. The collection was called “Evening” and was accompanied by a foreword by M. A. Kuzmin. Criticism reacted favorably to him.
“In March 1914, the second book, “The Rosary,” was published. She was given approximately six weeks to live. At the beginning of May, the St. Petersburg season began to fade, everyone was gradually leaving. This time the separation from St. Petersburg turned out to be eternal. We returned not to St. Petersburg, but to Petrograd, from the 19th century we immediately found ourselves in the 20th. Everything became different, starting with the appearance of the city. It seemed like a small book love lyrics the aspiring author had to drown in world events. Time decreed otherwise.”
(A. Akhmatova. “Pro domo sua”. P. 238)
Reading Hamlet
Near the cemetery to the right, a wasteland was dusty,
And behind him the river turned blue.
You told me: “Well, go to the monastery
Or marry a fool..."
Princes always say this
But I remembered this speech,
Let it flow for a hundred centuries in a row
Ermine robe from the shoulders.
1909, Kyiv
In her graduating class at the gymnasium in Kyiv, Anna Gorenko was dressed out of shape in a rich chocolate-colored dress made of soft and expensive fabric, which fit her like a glove. For the needlework lesson, the young ladies were told to bring calico fabric for a nightgown. Anna took out a transparent cambric in a soft pink color. “This is indecent,” the teacher remarked. “To you, maybe, but not to me at all,” the student answered and remained uncertified in needlework.
And as if by mistake
I said: "You..."
The shadow of a smile lit up
Cute features.
From such reservations
Every eye will flash...
I love you like forty
Affectionate sisters.
In the late 1950s she recalled:
“On April 25, 1910, I married N.S. Gumilyov and returned after a five-year absence to Tsarskoe Selo (see the poem “First Return”).
Nikolai Stepanovich’s attitude towards my poems also needs to finally be clarified, because I still come across incorrect and absurd information in the (foreign) press. So, Strakhovsky writes that Gumilyov considered my poems simply “the pastime of the poet’s wife,” and ... (in America) that Gumilyov, having married me, began to teach me to write poetry, but soon the student surpassed ... etc. All this sheer nonsense! I wrote poems from the age of 11 completely independently of Nikolai Stepanovich, while they were bad, he, with his characteristic incorruptibility and directness, told me this. Then the following happened: I read (in the Bryullov Hall of the Russian Museum) the proof of “The Cypress Casket” (when I came to St. Petersburg at the beginning of 1910) and understood something about poetry. In September, Nikolai Stepanovich went to Africa for six months, and during this time I wrote what roughly became my book “Evening”. I, of course, read these poems to many new literary acquaintances. Makovsky took several to “Apollo”, etc. (see “Apollo”, 1911, No. 4, April). When Nikolai Stepanovich returned on March 25, he asked me if I wrote poetry - I read to him everything I had written, and about them he uttered those words that, apparently, he never refused (see his review of the collection "Arion"). At the same time, in parentheses and again in response to Di Sarra and Laffke, I remind you that I did not marry the head of Acmeism, but a young symbolist poet, the author of the book “Pearls” and reviews of poetry collections (“Letters on Russian Poetry”).”
(A. Akhmatova. “Pro domo sua”. P. 183–184)
First comeback
A burdensome shroud is laid on the ground,
The bells ring solemnly,
And again the spirit is confused and disturbed
The languid boredom of Tsarskoe Selo.
Five years have passed. Everything here is dead and silent,
It was as if the world had come to an end.
Like a forever exhausted topic,
The palace rests in a deathly sleep.
“Acmeism arose at the end of 1911, in the tenth year Gumilyov was still an orthodox symbolist. The break with the “tower” began, apparently, with Gumilyov’s printed review of “Cor Ardens” on the pages of “Apollo”. I wrote about everything that followed this many times elsewhere (article “The Fate of Acmeism”). V. Ivanov never forgave him for something in this review. When Nikolai Stepanovich read his poem at the Academy “ Prodigal Son”, Vyacheslav attacked him with almost obscene abuse. I remember how we returned to Tsarskoe, completely crushed by what had happened, and then Nikolai Stepanovich always looked at Vyacheslav Ivanov as an open enemy. It was more difficult with Bryusov. Nikolai Stepanovich hoped that he would support Acmeism, as can be seen from his letter to Bryusov. But how could a man who considered himself the pillar of Russian symbolism and one of its creators renounce it in the name of anything? Bryusov’s defeat of Acmeism followed in “Russian Thought,” where Gumilyov and Gorodetsky were even called gentlemen, that is, people who have nothing to do with literature.”
(A. Akhmatova. “Pro domo sua”. P. 184–185)
He loved…
He loved three things in the world:
Behind the evening singing, white peacocks
And erased maps of America.
I didn't like it when children cried
Didn't like raspberry tea
And female hysteria.
...And I was his wife.
“Since family replaces everything,” Fanny Girshevna Feldman, known to Soviet audiences under the stage name of Faina Georgievna Ranevskaya, assured many years later, “before you get one, you should think carefully about what is more important to you: everything or family.”
A Kiev letter from Anna Gorenko to her older sister’s husband, Sergei von Stein, has been preserved:
"Kyiv. February 2, 1907
Dear Sergei Vladimirovich... I decided to inform you about an event that should radically change my life... I am marrying a friend of my youth, Nikolai Stepanovich Gumilyov. He has loved me for 3 years now. And I believe that it is my destiny to be his wife. I don’t know if I love him, but it seems to me that I do... Don’t tell anyone about our marriage. We have not yet decided where or when this will happen. This is a secret, I didn’t even write anything to Valya” (Quoted from: A. Marchenko. “Akhmatova: A Life”).
However, Anna gave consent to marriage to “the young symbolist poet, author of the book “Pearls” and reviews of poetry collections” N. S. Gumilyov only at the end of November 1909, a few days after his duel with M. A. Voloshin on Chernaya River and after she received his letter.
IN " Notebooks" she noted:
“The letter (N. St. Gum.) that convinced me to agree to the wedding (1909). I remember exactly one phrase: “I realized that in the world I am only interested in what has to do with you...” For some reason this seemed convincing to me” (Quoted by: V. A. Chernykh. “Chronicle of the life and work of Anna Akhmatova". P. 54).
Arriving with M.A. Kuzmin and A.N. Tolstoy in Kyiv for a literary evening of the Apollo magazine, N.S. Gumilyov invited his love to the European Hotel to drink coffee. There, once again, he proposed to her and, inspired by the unexpected consent, spent all three days with Anna, after which he set off from Kiev on a previously planned trip to Africa - through Constantinople to Cairo, Djibouti, Dire Dawa and Harare.
Today I receive letters; didn't bring:
He forgot to write, or left;
Spring is like a trill of silver laughter,
Ships are rocking in the bay.
I didn't receive any letters today...
He was with me just recently,
So loving, affectionate and mine,
But it was white winter,
Now it’s spring, and the sadness of spring is poisonous,
He was with me just recently...
I hear: a light, tremulous bow,
As if in death pain, it beats, beats,
And I'm afraid that my heart will break,
I won’t finish writing these tender lines...
“Now it’s Makovsky’s turn. Now I read from Driver (p. 71) that they, the Makovskys, for some reason became my confidants, and against the will of Gumilyov, Sergei Konstantinovich published my poems in “Apollo” (1911). I will not allow the tragic shadow of the poet to be insulted with absurd and clownish chatter, and let those who published this nonsense be ashamed.
At first, I really wrote very helpless poems, which Nikolai Stepanovich did not even think of hiding from me. He actually advised me to take up some other art form, such as dancing (“You’re so flexible”). In the fall of 1910, Gumilyov left for Addis Ababa. I was left alone in the Gumilevsky house (Boulevard, Georgievsky House), as always, I read a lot, often went to St. Petersburg (mainly to Valya Sreznevskaya, then Tyulpanova), visited my mother in Kiev, and went crazy about the “Cypress Casket” " The poems came in an even wave; there had been nothing like it before. I searched, found, lost. I felt (rather vaguely) that I was beginning to succeed. And then they started praising. Do you know how they knew how to praise at Parnassus of the Silver Age! To these frantic and shameless praises, I answered rather flirtatiously: “But my husband doesn’t like it.” This was remembered, inflated, finally, it ended up in someone’s memoirs, and half a century later, a nasty, evil gossip arose from this, pursuing a “noble goal” - to portray Gumilev as either a low envious person, or a person who understands nothing about poetry. The “tower” rejoiced.
On March 25, 1911 (Old Style Annunciation) Gumilyov returned from his trip to Africa (Addis Ababa). In our first conversation, he, among other things, asked me: “Have you written poetry?” Secretly rejoicing, I answered: “Yes.” He asked to read, listened to several poems and said: “You are a poet - you need to make a book.” Soon there were poems in “Apollo” (1911, No. 4, pp. ...).”
(A. Akhmatova. “Leaves from the diary.” P. 134–135)
Evening room
I speak now in those words
That they are born only once in the soul.
A bee is buzzing on a white chrysanthemum,
The old sachet smells so stuffy.
And a room where the windows are too narrow,
Keeps love and remembers the old days,
And above the bed there is an inscription in French
It reads: “Seigneur, ayez piti; de nous."
You are tales of old woeful notes,
My soul, don’t touch or look for...
I see brilliant Sevres figurines
The glossy cloaks faded.
The last ray, both yellow and heavy,
Frozen in a bouquet of bright dahlias,
And as if in a dream I hear the sound of a viola
And rare harpsichord chords.
“Everyone, especially abroad, wants Vyacheslav Ivanov to “discover” me. I don’t know who the father of this legend is. Maybe Piast, who visited the “tower” (see “Meetings”...)
But in fact it was like this: N.S. Gumilyov, after our return from Paris (in the summer of 1910), took me to Vyach. Ivanov, he actually asked me if I wrote poetry (the three of us were in the room), and I read: “And when they cursed each other...” (1909. Kiev notebook) and something else (I think, “They came and said "), and Vyacheslav said very indifferently and mockingly: “What dense romanticism!” I didn’t fully understand his irony then. In the fall, Nikolai Stepanovich, having managed to earn Ivanov’s eternal disfavor with his review of “Cor Ardens” (see “Apollo” No. ... and Ivanov’s letter to Gumilyov), left for six months in Africa, in Addis Ababa. Vyacheslav met me at the Rayevsky courses, where he gave lectures, and invited me to “Mondays” (no longer “Wednesdays”). There I actually read poems several times, and he really praised them, but then everyone already praised them (Tolstoy, Makovsky, Chulkov, etc.), they were accepted into “Apollo” and published, and the same Ivanov hypocritically sent me to Z. Gippius. Alexandra Nikolaevna Chebotarevskaya took me into the next room and said: “Don’t go to her. She is evil and will hurt you very much.” I answered: “I’m not going to go to her.” In addition, Vyacheslav Ivanovich really tried to persuade me to leave Gumilyov. I remember his words: “With this you will make him a man.” About how he t;te-;-t;te cried over the poems, then took him out to the “salon” and there he scolded quite caustically, I tell you so often and for a long time that it’s boring to write down.”
(A. Akhmatova. “Leaves from the diary”. P. 132–133)
She clasped her hands under a dark veil...
“Why are you pale today?”
- Because I am tartly sad
Got him drunk.
How can I forget? He came out staggering
The mouth twisted painfully...
I ran away without touching the railing,
I ran after him to the gate.
Gasping for breath, I shouted: “It’s a joke.
All that has gone before. If you leave, I’ll die.”
Smiled calmly and creepily
And he told me: “Don’t stand in the wind.”
Who does Anna Akhmatova's lyrical heroine address? To your husband, and before your groom - the youngest of the Gumilyov family? Or, as A. Marchenko suggests, to G.I. Chulkov, the hero-lover and theorist of mystical anarchism?.. The assumptions are confusing and unworthy of rumors about who hung Anna around the neck of Russian literature. Everything is wrong and wrong. A. A. Akhmatova addresses each reader personally, starting with the question “Why are you pale today?” and right up to the moment when through the mouth of his hero he answers: “Don’t stand in the wind.” And because of this, a million of her interlocutors have the opportunity to say something else or act in their life situation already under the impression of this “Don’t stand in the wind.”
From biographers with a philistine interest in details intimate life the understanding of aesthetic facts—monuments of the poet’s life and work—eludes. Such “researchers” are looking for something new on the “path of melancholy” and adhere to reasoning in the spirit of “Most likely, if we take out the inconsistencies and contradictions, the situation was something like this” or “We, of course, don’t know what they were talking about. But we can still guess what they could talk about” (A. Marchenko. “Akhmatova: A Life”). The desire to delve into the “dirty” from which poetry grows displaces the very possibility of thoughtful and serious study and analysis of the text, in which only the main thing can be realized: a dialogue is built between the contemporary and what wanted to be reflected in the author’s creativity. The emerging hypotheses, vivid comparisons with everyday circumstances, with what immediately catches the eye, rather testify to the predilections, inclinations and hidden addictions of the would-be scientist himself, when, believing that he is studying literature and a “poetic diet”, he actually discovers his own unconscious complexes and psychological “anchors”.
This is a situation where the dumb try to take the floor at a plenary meeting at the Academy, where the blind judge Vrubel and Modigliani, and the deaf are considered experts in symphonic music. At the same time, everyone unanimously exudes aromas from the perfumer, tied with filial love to the cesspool. Unfortunately, many such “studies” appeared at the beginning of the 21st century, and they were designed for “the widest readership.” Just as the surrogates of art, enveloping, crowd out the originals, this market focus of near-literary products on circulation devalues the very subject of “research” - the personality of the poet, his work and, ultimately, literature. “Look, these people are the same as us, and maybe even worse,” inform the reader V. Nedoshivin, T. Kataeva, A. Marchenko, E. Murashkintseva and others like them, popularizers and guides to the confusion of their own collective efforts into the wilds of history. A. Marchenko “exposes”:
“Firmly convinced that the poet, like every person, has every right to hide what he, for one reason or another, would not want to make public property, Anna Andreevna deliberately concealed many, many details of her rather rich personal life. Let us leave for now the question of why Anna Andreevna, very frank in some cases, is secretive in others, no more sensitive, and let us concern ourselves with another problem: do we, readers in posterity, have the moral right to find out the truth? And doesn’t our desire to know about our favorite poet, if not everything, then as much as possible, look like elementary everyday curiosity? Of course, everyone is free to choose, but I personally think that we have, if only because Akhmatova herself in her Pushkin investigations does not take into account common taboos at all.”
(A. Marchenko. “Akhmatova: Life”).
It is not difficult to imagine how Benedetto Croce or Søren Kierkegaard would respond to such a biographer. It would be somewhat awkward to hear that; Anna Andreevna would have said, and Faina Georgievna, I think, would not have been at all shy in her expressions. “The poet,” Anna Andreevna concluded in 1957, “has a secret relationship with everything that he once composed, and they often contradict what the reader thinks about a particular poem” (A. Akhmatova. “Pro domo” sua". P. 166).
I'm bored of saving my whole life
From myself people
It's boring to click grace
On other people's friends!
1923
“Readers in posterity”, “foreign friends” and “zealots of literature from Marchenko” in order to “not at all take into account the common taboos” in the same Pushkin studies, they must first be able to rise to the aesthetic and ethical level that Anna set Akhmatova. The same applies to the work of “the most faithful friend of other people’s husbands”: in order to move on from the not always honest presentation biographical facts to speculation around aesthetic facts, the researcher himself needs to do known path“through the alleys of Tsarskoe Selo” is a path from a philistine, hypostatized understanding to aesthetic and ethical transformation and reflexive comprehension. Subject to moral integrity (when a person does not fall apart into the everyday set of “I say one thing, think another, do another”), unity of mental and spiritual life and a certain mental (physical) health, some stages of the path can be completed along with a story about how this was achieved to the poet: esthetician – ethicist – religious person. In this case, the experience of a literary text as a space of proper names will not be burdened with the incredible vulgarity of bourgeois connotations.
“Let my path be terrible, let it be dangerous...” A. Akhmatova said at the very beginning: “I don’t let anyone say a word (in my poems, of course). I speak on my own behalf, for myself, everything that is possible and what is not. Sometimes, in some sort of unconsciousness, I remember someone else’s phrase and turn it into poetry.”
The Silver Age of Russian poetry and philosophy in overcoming the formidable past and self-sufficiency in the inevitability of the present, all as one, from I. F. Annensky and A. A. Blok to A. A. Akhmatova and B. L. Pasternak, is the flourish of this ascent.
The door is half open
Linden trees blow sweetly...
Forgotten on the table
Whip and glove.
The circle from the lamp is yellow...
I listen to the rustling sounds.
Why did you leave?
I don't understand…
Joyful and clear
Tomorrow will be morning.
This life is beautiful
Heart, be wise.
You're completely tired
You beat quieter, louder...
You know, I read
That souls are immortal.
The work of A. Akhmatova is recognized as one of the most striking achievements of Russian literature of the 20th century. Covering more than half a century, it absorbed many themes, reflected and lyrically comprehended the path that the country has traveled during this time. At the same time, Akhmatova’s poems are an organic part of the literary process, developing those ideas and images that we find in the poems of her great predecessors. With her roots in the 19th century and being a successor to the traditions of A. Pushkin, M. Lermontov, F. Tyutchev, A. Fet, Akhmatova created her own, unlike anything else, lyrical world.
Already from the first collections, Akhmatova’s poetry is distinguished by such features as the clarity of the meanings of all words used in the works, simplicity of vision, and the filling of the works with ordinary things. She is characterized by colloquial poetic speech and laconic style, adopted from Pushkin, to whom Akhmatova turned from the very first steps of her work.
The Pushkin theme generally occupies a central position in her work. special place. On the one hand, Pushkin is a great poet for her, a mentor from whom she draws her inspiration, learns a humanistic, open attitude towards the world, a “Mozartian” sense of being. On the other hand, he is also a person, with his weaknesses, difficult fate And tragic death. Many of Akhmatova’s poems are addressed to Pushkin; his life and work are, in one way or another, a theme for them. If we talk about Pushkin’s spirit, his joyful, “revival” worldview, faith in humanistic ideals and the blessings of the world, then all of Akhmatova’s work is permeated with this spirit, even those works that thematically do not relate to Pushkin.
One of the poems that are associated with the Pushkin theme in Akhmatova’s work is the poem “A dark-skinned youth wandered through the alleys...”. The poem is part of the cycle “In Tsarskoye Selo,” which is dedicated to the great poet. The name of the cycle is not accidental. The fact is that Akhmatova spent her early years in Tsarskoe Selo, where everything was connected with the name of Pushkin. Therefore, it is not surprising that Akhmatova experienced strong influence everything that was in one way or another connected with the name of the great poet.
In terms of theme, the poem refers to Pushkin’s lyceum years, to the time when he was just beginning his journey in literature. Before us appears the image of a “swarthy youth” who “wandered along the alleys” and “by the sad lake shores.” This is an ordinary person, with the same feelings as others, characteristic of adolescence - a time of dreams and hopes. The cocked hat turns out to be forgotten on a stump among the pines, and here lies the “disheveled volume of Guys.” And yet, it turns out that “for a century we have cherished the barely audible rustle of steps.” This opposition largely correlates with Akhmatov’s famous “Oh, if only they knew from what rubbish poetry grows, knowing no shame...”. A poet, in the understanding of Akhmatova (and Pushkin) is not someone who puts himself above other people, he is not an exceptional, demonic personality (like the romantics, whom Pushkin himself was skeptical about and constantly ridiculed their poetic images and techniques). This is a man. But this is a person who is destined to feel and realize more than others. And he shares his knowledge with people out of an abundance of spiritual strength, love for the world, and not at all out of a desire to rise above every “trembling creature.” A young man who forgets his cocked hat on a tree stump and is not too careful when reading books is too human and has nothing in common with the romantic poets of the Byronic sense or with the champions of pure art (whom Pushkin and Akhmatova were not very fond of). The poetic gift makes ordinary person completely different, capable of overcoming space and time (the theme of Pushkin’s prophet). In addition, a motif of continuity is felt in the poem - Akhmatova’s lyrical hero, as it were, takes up Pushkin’s baton, he feels an inextricable connection with the great poet, and a poet-youth, for whom all his glory, all his greatness is still ahead. It is at this point that the identification of the lyrical hero Akhmatova and the image of Pushkin occurs.
So, in the poem there is not only a thematic connection with the great Russian poet. Akhmatova perceives Pushkin’s humanism, his way of seeing the world and feeling people. This is also her understanding of the purpose of the poet and poetry, adopted from Pushkin and becoming an organic part of her poetic world.
The work of A. Akhmatova, continuing the best traditions of the Russian poetic school, was a new stage in the development of poetic creativity, which had an impact big influence on those who followed her.
“A dark-skinned youth wandered through the alleys...” A. Akhmatova
The dark-skinned youth wandered through the alleys,
The lake shores were sad,
And we cherish the century
A barely audible rustle of footsteps.Pine needles are thick and prickly
Covering low stumps...
Here was his cocked hat
And the disheveled volume Guys.
Analysis of Akhmatova’s poem “A dark-skinned youth wandered through the alleys...”
In March 1912, Akhmatova’s debut book was published, called “Evening” and published in a circulation of three hundred copies. The collection includes the cycle “In Tsarskoe Selo”. The present city of Pushkin is a place of extraordinary importance in the life of Anna Andreevna. Her family settled there in 1890 - Akhmatova was then about a year old. In her autobiography, the poetess admitted that her “first memories are from Tsarskoe Selo.” The old station, the “green, damp splendor of the parks,” the hippodrome with small horses, and the pasture where she went for walks with her nanny remained forever in Anna Andreevna’s memory.
The cycle “In Tsarskoe Selo” includes the poem “A dark-skinned youth wandered through the alleys...”, written in 1911 and dedicated to Pushkin, although his name is not mentioned. Alexander Sergeevich is a poet who had a strong influence on Akhmatova. In the twentieth century, she became the bearer of the tradition he laid down. Moreover, she remained faithful to her throughout creative path. There are also interesting coincidences in their biographies. Both lived and studied in Tsarskoe Selo, both experienced the disfavor of the authorities. If we count according to the new style, then both were born in June.
It is no coincidence that the poem mentions a period of a century. In 1911, when it was composed, it was exactly one hundred years since Pushkin entered the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum. Then the future great poet was only twelve years old - just adolescence. In 1830, he wrote a poetic passage about his student days, “At the beginning of my life, I remember school...”, containing the following lines:
[Among the youths] I am silent all day
Wandered around gloomily...
Akhmatova was clearly familiar with this text. It is not for nothing that in her work the dark-skinned youth wanders around, though not gloomy, but sad. However, in the first version of the poem “A dark-skinned youth wandered through the alleys...” instead of the verb “sad,” the adjective “deaf” was used. The reason for the replacement is simple - Anna Andreevna remembered that in Tsarskoe Selo there never were and could not be any “lake shores”.
“A dark-skinned youth wandered through the alleys...” is Akhmatova’s first work dedicated to Pushkin. The Pushkin theme in her work does not end there. In honor of Alexander Sergeevich, she named her Muse dark-skinned. With reference to his poem of the same name composed “The Tsarskoe Selo Statue” about the “Girl with a Jug” fountain, located on the territory of the Catherine Park.
The image of Pushkin in the early works of Anna Akhmatova
Using the example of the poem “A dark-skinned youth wandered through the alleys...”
Pushkin's creativity is inexhaustible, it is possible different approaches to him, including the approach to reading and understanding Pushkin through Akhmatova’s research materials (or “studies”, as the poetess herself called them). True, Akhmatova did not immediately begin to seriously study Pushkin’s work. Trying to find answers to many questions that interested her, she turned to Pushkin all her life, as if she were comparing her poems with him. Pushkin was the highest spiritual and poetic authority for her. Thanks to this “apprenticeship” with Pushkin, Akhmatova’s poetry is close and understandable to a wide range of readers. The researcher said very accurately about Akhmatova’s poetry Silver Age N. Bannikov: “Each word was weighed and chosen with extraordinary rigor and parsimony, each stanza emphatically embodied the taken subject, evoking many associations in the reader. In three or four quatrains, a narrative, a certain plot, was often outlined as if on a dotted line; behind every detail the reader felt not only state of mind heroines in this moment, but also guessed what preceded this state and what would be predetermined by it” 1. And in this she is a worthy student of Pushkin.
The image of Pushkin accompanied Akhmatova throughout her entire life. creative life. When studying Akhmatova’s work in the 11th grade, we always talk about the poem “A dark-skinned youth wandered through the alleys...”. It is with this poem that the conversation begins about Pushkin’s tradition and the culture of the poetic word, and about Pushkin’s Muse, which, according to her, is now her Muse (for example, the 1915 poem “The Muse went along the road...”: “And there were dark legs // Sprayed with coarse dew...").
We propose to consider one of the options for analyzing this poem.
This is the first printed poem addressed to Pushkin that has reached us. It concludes the cycle “In Tsarskoe Selo”. It is preceded by two poems: “They lead horses along the alley...” and “... And there is my marble double...”. All parts of the triptych are inextricably linked with each other in that they are an emotional response to childhood memories spent in Tsarskoe Selo. And since the name of Pushkin is an integral part of the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum, Tsarskoye Selo Park and Tsarskoye Selo in general, perhaps this explains why the poem about the “swarthy youth” was placed last. According to the recollections of Sreznevskaya, Akhmatova’s friend, they very often talked about Pushkin, recited his poems by heart, walking along the paths of Tsarskoye Selo Park.
On the lake shores,
And we cherish the century
A barely audible rustle of footsteps.
The spruce needles are thick and prickly
Covering low stumps...
Here was his cocked hat
And the torn volume Guys.
(September 24, 1911 Tsarskoye Selo) 2
Before us is an early text included in her first book, “Evening” (1912). However, starting from the second collection (“Rosary”, 1914), Akhmatova replaces the word “oil” with “pines”, and the word “torn” with “disheveled”. Of course, this did not happen by chance, since almost every word besides the direct lexical meaning has figurative - poetic and philosophical. Much later (in 1958) Akhmatova replaced the word “deaf” with the word “sad,” and she had her reasons for this. You can read about this from L.K. Chukovskaya, who quotes the words of Anna Andreevna in “Notes about Anna Akhmatova” 3:
“—“A dark-skinned youth wandered through the alleys // At the lake’s remote shores.” What ignorance! What stupidity!..
- ...In the little book from 1958 there is “At the Sad Lake Shores.”
— But the collection of the 61st is the last.
“We should take not the last option, but the best.”
Analyzing this work, we will rely on the last option, since the choice of the author is always important to us. Perhaps this is the peculiarity of Akhmatova’s poetics, that is, the sadness is not sad, but the sadness of youth, poetic sadness. After correction, the poem acquired the right to a new reading.
As you know, even the most transparent poems have a riddle, a “secret,” as Akhmatova herself said. According to Mallarmé, any poem is a rebus. The same thing happens with “The Dark Youth.” In this poem, pure and transparent in content, there is another layer that can be identified at the level of poetics.
The poem was written in 1911. Exactly one hundred years ago, Pushkin was brought to Tsarskoye Selo to enter the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum.
And we cherish the century...
This line suggests that it is with this event, that is, with the opening of the Lyceum and the appearance of Pushkin in Tsarskoe Selo, that the poem can be associated. At first glance, we are talking about Pushkin the Youth:
The dark-skinned youth wandered through the alleys,
The lake shores were sad.
In the memoirs of Pushkin’s lyceum friend Ivan Ivanovich Pushchin, we read: “Alexander Pushkin! - a lively boy, curly-haired, quick-eyed, appears...” 4 And here is what E. A. Maimin writes in the book “Pushkin. Life and creativity”: “In his messages of 1815... Pushkin sings of joy, wine, fun - and this sounds in his poems not as a tribute to literary tradition, but as an expression of the personal, as a lyrical confession, as an expression of the seething and overflowing youth fullness of life” 5.
From Akhmatova: “... the boy wandered... sad.” As we remember, the word “sad” first appears in the 1958 collection. Akhmatova, who always gives precise characteristics to objects and persons, could not allow inaccuracy in the description of Pushkin the youth. Pushkin, of course, had reasons to be sad, but this is so unusual, so uncharacteristic for Pushkin the youth. For example, in “Eugene Onegin” (chapter 8) Pushkin recalls his lyceum years like this:
My student cell
Suddenly it dawned on me: the muse is in her
Opened a feast of young ideas,
Singing children's fun...
“Wandered... sad” - this is how Pushkin appears to us at a later age. There is a time shift in the poem. Within one or two lines, Pushkin is both a youth and a mature husband.
The last two lines also confirm this idea: Pushkin is depicted in this poem in different periods time, that is, youth and young men.
Here was his cocked hat
And the disheveled volume Guys.
Lyceum students wore triangular hats in the first years of study at the lyceum. You can read about this from I. I. Pushchin in “Notes about Pushkin”: “On holidays - a uniform... white trousers, a white vest, a white tie, boots, a triangular hat - to church and for a walk” 6. Thus, we see that behind the line “Here lay his cocked hat,” the image of Pushkin the lyceum student clearly emerges, that is, a youth (see Dahl: “A youth is a child from 7 to 15 years old”), a youth just beginning to make his first steps in Russian poetry.
And know, my lot has fallen, I choose the lyre,
Let the whole world judge me as it wishes,
Be angry, shout, scold, but I am still a poet.
(“To a Poet Friend”, 1814)
In the very next line - “And the disheveled volume of the Guys” - Pushkin is already a young man, his reputation as a poet begins to be established. Interests change. In their senior year, many lyceum students (perhaps due to age) become interested in poetry. Guys 7. Let us turn for confirmation of this idea to B.V. Tomashevsky’s monograph “Pushkin”: “In the poems of 1814-1815 we will not find any traces indicating a close acquaintance with the poetry of Parni: neither phraseological nor plot parallels. Pushkin came to Guys later, during the period of his passion for the genre of elegies. But by that time he was already out of the age of student imitation” 8.
Let's assume that Guys Pushkin became interested in poetry at about 17-18 years old. But this is no longer a youth, but a young man. It is unlikely that a lyceum graduate can be called a youth.
As we see, in Akhmatova’s poem, even initially, the time frame was expanded. The eight-line poem contains almost the entire life of Pushkin. Thus, the poem has a ring composition, since it begins and ends with the same thought: to show Pushkin the youth, Pushkin the youth, Pushkin at the zenith of his glory.
The poem is imbued with love for the first poet Russia. Akhmatova sees and hears him even a hundred years later.
Here was his cocked hat...
And we cherish the century...
Only the most precious things can be “cherished,” and Akhmatova, as a poet, understood that Pushkin was everything for Russia.
It is interesting that the verb “cherish” no longer appears in any of Akhmatova’s poems. She used it only in relation to Pushkin. It can be considered the leitmotif of Akhmatova’s entire Pushkiniana.
And we cherish the century
A barely audible rustle of footsteps.
Pine needles are thick and prickly
Covering low stumps...
The above lines reveal another theme - this is the theme of autumn, since pine needles can only fall in the fall (and autumn, of course, is associated with Pushkin’s autumn, that is, with the theme of creativity: Pushkin at the zenith of his glory). In the fall he usually felt good and wrote a lot. For example, in P. Milyukov’s historical and biographical essay “Living Pushkin”: “The restlessness of his spirit is expressed in his desire to really escape “somewhere”. He constantly wanders between St. Petersburg and Moscow... and in the fall he tries to retire to the village for a quiet creative work" 9 . And in a letter to Pletnev dated August 31, 1830, we read the following: “My wedding is postponed... Autumn is approaching: this is my favorite time... the time for literary works...”
Pine needles are thick and prickly
Laying...
The pine sheds its needles, and in late autumn they, knocked down by raindrops, fall “thickly”. The verb “covered” and the adverb “thickly” show that there are a lot of pine needles on the ground, this is only possible in the fall. The next line suggests the same thoughts.
Barely audible w ny w elest w agov.
Behind these combinations you can hear the rustling of leaves and the sound of rain.
A certain stereotype of combining certain words with each other has developed in our minds. Thus, the word “rustle” is in no way associated with the word “steps”.
Here, most likely, the word “leaves” should be used (in extreme cases, “paper”), but we are satisfied with the first option, since it is this combination - “rustle of steps” - that makes us more sensitive to words. Yes and alliteration “ w” suggests the same thing.
Autumn is the best time to create. Pushkin specially went to the village in the fall to be alone, concentrate and write “novel after novel, poem after poem!” And I already feel that the madness is upon me - I’m composing even in a stroller...” (September 19, 1833).
And we cherish the century
A barely audible rustle of footsteps.
Thanks to her poetic gift and picturesque language, Akhmatova expressed universal worship and love for the first poet Russia. These lines combine the main themes: memory, admiration for artistic talent - and the theme of creativity (through the theme of autumn).
In an open and understandable poem at first glance, behind the apparent simplicity and straightforwardness, multi-layeredness and diversity were revealed; layer is superimposed on layer, and in this Akhmatova is a worthy follower of Pushkin and a worthy representative of her poetic time - the emerging Acmeism.
When talking about Pushkin, about his work, about his secret writing, it is necessary to talk about Anna Akhmatova, her poetry and prose and the secrets of her work.
Notes
1 Bannikov N. Anna Akhmatova // Anna Akhmatova. Poems. M.: Soviet Russia, 1977. P. 11.
2 Akhmatova A. Collection cit.: In 6 vols. M.: Ellis Luck, 2000-2002. T. 1. P. 77.
3 Chukovskaya L.K. Notes about Anna Akhmatova: In 3 volumes. M.: Soglasie, 1997. T. 3. P. 166.
4 Pushchin I. I. Notes about Pushkin. M.: Children's literature, 1984. P. 16.
6 Pushchin I. I. Decree. Op. pp. 25-26.
7 Guys Evariste de Forges (1753-1814) was a French freethinking poet whose poems were of a distinctly erotic nature.
8 Tomashevsky B.V. Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin. M.-L., 1926. P. 108.
9 Milyukov P. N. Living Pushkin. M.: Ellis Luck, 1997. P. 164.
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