To help a schoolchild. Pasternak's lyrics: main themes and features The most important artistic features of Parsnip's lyrics
Introduction.
§1. General situation.
Object research of this work is the work of Boris Leonidovich Pasternak, its subject- the poet's love lyrics.
Purpose of the study– identifying the evolution of the concept of love in the lyrics of B. Pasternak.
The following follows from the goal: tasks:
Determine the vital and creative origins of love themes in the poet’s lyrics.
Identify the evolution of the concept of love in the lyrics of B. Pasternak.
Determine the originality of the artistic embodiment of the concept of love in the poet’s lyrics.
The following were used in writing: methods:
Aspectual, allowing to identify the evolution of the topic.
Structural, showing the artistic specificity of the solution to the theme.
Relevance work is determined by the lack of knowledge of the material under study.
Practical significance work. The study can be used in literature classes at school.
Structure. The work consists of an introduction, two chapters and a conclusion. The introduction gives general provisions works and review of critical literature. The first chapter, “The Origins of Love Themes,” examines the biographical foundations of love lyrics and explores the creative origins of B. Pasternak’s poetics. The second chapter, “Love and Poetry,” highlights the mature and late periods of the poet’s love lyrics and analyzes the most revealing poems. Finally, conclusions are given for the two chapters.
§2. General review of critical literature.
When writing this study, we relied on existing literary sources. They can be divided by four main areas:
Biographical. The biography of the poet, her connection with creativity, was carried out by: Z. Maslennikova, G. Aign, V. Rybakov, L.A. Ozerov.
Philosophical. The philosophical aspect of B. Pasternak’s poetry was dealt with by: I. F. Ovchinnikov, G. Aign, V. Alfonsov.
Study of the artistic system of B. Pasternak's lyrics. Poetics was studied by: V. Alfonsov, Zholkovsky, I. Kunin, I. Kaplan, L. A. Ozerov, V. Nikitaeva, Gasparov, Baevsky, N. Shansky.
Methodical. The methods of teaching B. Pasternak's lyrics at school were carried out by: S. Strashnov, A.V. Ledenev, M.G. Pavlovets, T.V. Pavlovets.
V. Alfonsov’s work “The Poetry of Boris Pasternak” examines several areas: thematic, stylistic and linguistic features; this study covers almost all of the poet’s poetry collections. In the article “Pasternak’s Book of Books: about the book of poems “Sisters of My Life,” A. Zholkovsky touches on the themes and linguistic features of this collection. Article by Kunin I.F. “How to Read Pasternak's Early Poems” examines the style of the poems and their linguistic features. Article by I. Kaplan “Pearls of the poetry of B.L. Pasternak”, which examines the two best, in the opinion of the author of the work, poems “Hamlet” and “Date”.
We also used works that have a biographical direction. This is, for example, the book by Z. Maslennikova “Portrait of Boris Pasternak”, where the author describes his meetings and conversations with the poet.
G. Aign’s article “The Ordinariness of a Miracle” narrates the biography of the writer, and also describes meetings with Boris Leonidovich. In his article “From Philosophy to Poetry” N.F. Ovchinnikov touches on the biography of the writer, and also considers the philosophical aspect of B. Pasternak’s poetry.
In the article Strashnov S. “The appearance of mystery. Recommendations and methods for conducting lessons on the poet’s work are given for lessons on the works of B. Pasternak.
However, we did not find a complete picture of the evolution of the concept of love in the lyrics of B.L. Pasternak. Our research is an attempt to close this blind spot in Russian literary criticism.
Chapter 1. Origins of love themes.
§ 1. The origins of B. Pasternak's artistic system.
Boris Pasternak was born into a family of intellectuals. Father - academician of painting L. Pasternak. Mother is the famous pianist R.I. Kaufman. In his youth, Boris Leonidovich was faced with a choice of who to be, he could become a musician, an artist, a philosopher, but he would choose the path of a poet, the path on which, as he himself would later say, “lines with blood kill.” But Pasternak does not forget either philosophy, music, or painting - they are present in his poems. These priorities were determined in the leading movements of literature of the early 20th century - symbolism, oriented towards music, and futurism, which first arose in painting.
Pasternak entered poetry as a member of the futurist group “Centrifuge”, but was also greatly influenced by Blok and Bely. Hence its unusualness compared to both of them.
It is not without reason that Pasternak is called a romantic, although throughout his life he insisted on the realism of his creativity. The poet believed that realism is not a direction, but the very nature of the arts, and did not like romanticism with its craving for the superhuman, artificial, and not the natural human.
For Pasternak, the unity of the world is not only an idea or an aesthetic principle, but also the atmosphere of his works. The world, in the understanding and feeling of the poet, is alive, and it is perceived holistically, but it is transformed on the wave of feelings.
With an obvious desire to dissolve in life, the poet, nevertheless, does not accept commonplaces in spirit; everywhere, even in translations, he is a creator, he is an innovator, but not only in the means of expression, but also in the original image of the world - the world seen and first discovered by the power of love.
Darling - horror! When a poet loves.
The restless God falls in love
And chaos creeps into the light again,
Like in the time of fossils...
1917.
In love, the highest criterion is childishness. Childlike openness, freedom, ease, and not only in love, but also his very attitude towards the world is childishly direct.
In the article “The Ordinariness of a Miracle” G. Aign writes: “Boris Leonidovich, in my opinion, had a brilliant ability to be enchanted - to be enchanted at any moment: by a falling leaf, meeting a child while walking, gloomy rain, any interlocutor, as he himself said “all-everything” life, the universe, our own poetic worldview.”
We will try to give a general periodization of the poet’s work, choosing as its criterion the evolution of the artistic method.
The early period 1913 - 1930. It is characterized by the influence of symbolism and futurism.
Mature period 1930 - 1940. In this period, the realistic principle of seeing the world was only emerging.
Late period. Second half of the 40s - 1960. The works of this period are realistic.
The first collection of poems was published in 1913 "Twin in the Clouds". Critics received him skeptically; most poets reproached him for overcomplicating his images. And Pasternak himself, in a conversation with Zoya Maslennikova, says this about his collection: “If it were possible, I would destroy almost everything that I wrote before the year 40. And “Twin in the Clouds” is yellow-mouthed poetry, pompous and helpless. Only the then ignorance of poetry led to their being published."
Three years later, another collection was released, called "Over the Barriers". Its name can be considered a definition of the poet's method. This is both objective thematicism and painting that instantly depicts movement.
"Sister is my life" was the third book of poems by B. Pasternak, but the first to bring him undeniable recognition. The book was written in the summer of 1917, but published only in 1922. After its release, the poet began to be called a living classic. According to Zholkovsky, the cycle was named so because the title goes back to Pasternak’s favorite poem by Verlaine from the book “Wisdom” with a line that translates as: “Life is not beautiful, but still it is your sister.” The collection is dedicated to M.Yu. Lermontov, and not to his memory, but as a living person.
“My first movement, having endured it all: from the first blow to the last - arms wide open, so that all the joints cracked - a downpour: the whole sky plumb on your head, a downpour in a straight line, a downpour at an angle - through a draft, a dispute of light rays and rain - you are not at all than: once you hit it, a shower of light grows,” - this is M. Tsvetaeva’s impression of the collection “My Sister is My Life.”
The poet himself wrote in a letter to Aseev: “At one time I was seriously thinking about releasing her anonymously, she is better and taller than me.”
The cycle contains images that do not remain within the framework of flashing pictures, but develop and transform into multi-valued symbols. The poet strives to go beyond the shell of reality into the space of meaning.
Pasternak's early poems bear the influence of symbolism, but his later lyrics are freed from unnecessary obscurities. He avoids inventing new means of expression, prefers rare words, little-used grammatical forms, and neglected verse structures. The poet introduces into his poems the vocabulary of different professions, jargon, vernacular, and loves archaic and expressive vocabulary. Phraseologisms and various kinds of hyperbole occupy a prominent place in his language. In his early lyrics, Boris Leonidovich prefers symbols, oxymorons, secret writing, in his later poetry he prefers metaphors and epithets. This is due to the influence of symbolism in the early lyrics, and in the later poetry the poet comes to the realistic principle of depicting reality. Pasternak likes to violate syntactic correctness, this is due to the influence of futurism.
According to Pasternak, the ideal trope is based on similarity and contiguity; perfect love- this is love for a strange woman who becomes your sister; the ideal plot is a chain of coincidences.
About the cycle “My Sister My Life” Osip Mandelstam writes: “The book “My Sister My Life” seems to me to be a collection of wonderful breathing exercises: each time the voice is placed in a new way, each time the breathing apparatus is regulated differently.”
In early Pasternak, the sound organization of verse sometimes becomes dominant, which leads to a weakening of clarity. This is a feature of symbolism that serves to create a certain mood. In such cases, the poet relies on the imagination of the reader, who will instantly “fill in the rest.”
Pasternak is called an elite poet, very difficult to understand, and this is due to the influence of symbolism, futurism, sometimes even impressionism.
His works are designed for intelligent, deeply feeling readers.
§2. The early stage of B. Pasternak's lyrics.
All the love poems in the collection “My Sister is My Life” were dedicated to Elena Vinograd, whom he met in the summer of 1917. We will analyze the poem "Elena", the name of which is the name of the beloved.
It's raining. The lyrical hero reflects, bending over his sleeping lover. In this poem, the poet reflects the name of his beloved in numerous mythological and literary mirrors. It reminds the reader greek myth about Helen the Beautiful, because of whose beauty the Trojan War began, and about the second part of Faust, where Helen is a character, and at the same time there is a mention of Shakespeare’s heroines.
“Faust, perhaps, or Hamlet...”
In general, turning to already known book images is a symbolist technique, because they do not need to be fully revealed, the reader should already be prepared, a trail of certain associations is assigned to him.
Here Pasternak seems to tie together the numerous figurative lines of his book. And in other poems in this cycle, Pasternak turns to images of English literature. For example, to Desdemona and Ophelia in the poem “English Lessons”
Moreover, here they are symbols of purity, strength and love. These heroines are depicted not as cold and medieval English, but as lively, full of emotions, and somewhat close to Russian ones. They are connected to nature. “Through the willow, the willow burst into tears,” “Like stalks from the hayloft in a storm.”
What trophies did you go with?
With an armful of willows and celandine.
That is why in the poem “To Helen” the name of Ophelia is mentioned, a symbol of purity and love.
Meadow was friendly with manners
Faust, or maybe Hamlet
Ran around with chamomile
Stems flew over my legs.
At first, the meaning of the stanza is not at all clear, why “the meadow was friends with manners.” Complex compound rhyme allows you to rely not on external resemblance to the characters foreign literature, and their internal similarity - the authenticity of nature and the highest manifestations of genius. This is the friendship of the meadow with the “manner” with the plan, with the scope of feelings, the highest truthfulness.
The impression of walking through a high meadow, when the stems of flowers fly away with each step, is left aside.
We must not forget that this poem was written under the influence of symbolism, so it is very confusing and subjective. When describing his feelings, it is important for the poet what feelings arise in his readers.
Pasternak has the syntax, in the opinion of O. Mandelstam, of a “convinced interlocutor” who convincingly proves something. We see this syntax in this poem. He convinces us that love transforms, makes us live, inspires.
Does arum ask?
By the swamp of alms?
The nights breathe in vain
Putrid tropics.
Pasternak preferred not generic, but specific concepts, i.e. individual, so his poems are full of titles, and this again emphasizes individuality, and not something common. In our work we find the names of herbs and flowers, and this indicates a rapprochement with the spirit of nature, a desire for naturalness.
In the eighth quatrain we see a certain cold, marble, regal image.
I thought - Troy would be a century old for her,
Kissing the curve of bitter lips:
The eyelids were wondrous
Royal, plaster.
But in the very next stanza, this image collapses - she is alive, beautiful - this is proven by the definition of “pulsating temple” and the address itself:
Sleep, Queen of Sparta
It's still early, still damp.
It is full of tenderness, love, but still the beloved is a “queen”.
Grief is not a joke
Played out, tipsy.
It's scary to be alone with him.
Go crazy, can you handle it?
The verb “played out” is more applicable to the words “storm”, “blizzard”, “thunderstorm”. Those. grief becomes a kind of spontaneous phenomenon that one hero cannot cope with only together with her, he will overcome everything.
The alliteration of the sound [l] gives the poem some kind of melody, tenderness, and overflow.
Last two verses:
May fate decide
Whether mother or stepmother.
They can be explained thanks to the poem by M. Tsvetaeva, with whom the poet corresponded and whose work he highly valued, “My dear, what have I done to you.”
Not mother, but stepmother love:
Expect neither judgment nor mercy.
In our poem, the hero faces the question “What will love bring him, and what will it be like?” There is a feeling of some incompleteness here, because... the hero himself does not know what will happen next; he is only standing on the threshold into something unknown, but now he is overwhelmed with feelings for his beloved “queen.”
Next piece "Do not touch" also dedicated to Elena Vinograd and also included in the “Sister My Life” series.
The poem is very dynamic and resembles a certain picture, painted in different colors, this is conveyed by different iambic feet and a small use of predicate verbs.
The first quatrain tells about the meeting of the lyrical hero with his beloved, with his troubles and successes. The soul was not careful, it fell in love, and its features flashed in my head, as if in colors and spots.
“And memory is in the spots on the calves, and cheeks, and lips, and eyes.”
In the second quatrain, the poet compares his beloved with his successes and misfortunes. And here the white color appears, which is repeated several times further. White color is the color of purity that the beloved brings; in the same quatrain there is another “yellowed” light. Yellow is the color of illness and vulgarity.
That yellowed white light
With you - whiter whiter.
“Yellowed white light” is a pun; white light is the world surrounding the lyrical hero, i.e. "yellow" world. Moreover, the world is vulgar, painfully dirty. The poet specifically uses the definition “white” in order to emphasize the light, the purity that his beloved brings into his life, thanks to her everything becomes whiter.
In this poem, the sound writing is very bright, the alliteration of the sound [b] gives the work greater rhythm, and the alliteration [l] - musicality.
In the third quatrain, the same idea is repeated: love, the beloved cleanse, but not the world, but the “darkness” of the hero himself.
And my darkness, my friend, I swear
Somehow he will become
Whiter than nonsense, than a lampshade, Than a white bandage on the forehead!
The metaphor of “whiter than delirium” is very interesting. Delirium is words spoken unconsciously, that is, words - “cry of the soul.” In this poem, the image is objective, the world surrounding the lyrical hero is objective, which is associated with the influence of futurism.
Love transforms and purifies the hero and the whole world. His beloved is everything to him, thanks to her life becomes more beautiful.
In a poem "Sister is my life" the lyrical hero experiences admiration for the overflow of life, but he is not understood by the “people in key rings”, about whom life was shattered by the spring rain. “People in keychains” are people who live a gray, monotonous life, who do not see beauty and do not appreciate it. The image of the beloved is very important here in understanding the psychological state of the lyrical hero, for whom the last minutes in the train carriage, taking him to his beloved, become painful. He is looking forward to the meeting, and therefore the “train schedule” is “more grandiose than holy scripture.” The grandeur of reading the schedules is a hyperbole; it stems from the strong impressions that await the hero at the meeting place.
In the work there is an element of a portrait of a beloved - these are “lilac eyes”, the hero imagines his beloved during the rain, but suddenly a thunderstorm sparkles, which makes her eyes purple.
Whatever comes, barking, brake
On peaceful villagers in provincial wine...
“Barking, brake” is a personification that also allows us to understand the state of the hero, he is looking forward to the meeting, and the train stop is stalling for time.
She is not on this platform, “And the sun, setting, sympathizes with me.”
And on the third splash, the bell floats away
Full apology...
These personifications emphasize the connection of the hero, his state with nature, with the objective world, all of which he experiences with him.
Everything calms down and falls asleep, but the hero’s heart does not sleep, it yearns for its beloved.
Meanwhile, like a heart, splashing across the platforms
It pours out into the steppe like carriage doors.
The meter of this poem is amphibrachic tetrameter, which conveys the intermittency of breathing, and hence the tension of the hero. IN first four In the stanzas, the alliteration of the sounds [р] and [з] conveys the roar of thunder and thunderstorms, and the ringing conveys the movement of the train. In the last stanzas, where the hero is sad, the alliteration of the sound [l] conveys tenderness and melody.
Love, nature can awaken a hero, make him feel, worry, but they will never awaken “people in keychains” who are “grumpy and politely sting”; this oxymoron emphasizes the hypocrisy of insensitive people.
The poem gives a description of spring, its smell (it smells like raw mignonette), which also gives a certain mood, spring is the awakening of life, nature’s blossoming, as well as love.
Thus, in this collection, love for Pasternak is all of life with its joys and failures, the beloved is a queen who helps the hero to open up, she purifies everything around her with her feelings.
The collection “My Sister is My Life” was written under the influence of symbolism, therefore, when analyzing these poems, the sensations and feelings that the reader experiences when reading are important; the symbol is multi-valued, the works are subjective, everyone must feel and understand in their own way. For symbolists, intuition is important, something subconscious, hidden inside a person. Also in the poems of this period, the poet emphasizes the objectivity of the world - this is a feature of futurism.
You should also pay attention to the sound recording that plays huge role in the lyrics of B.L. Pasternak, because Every sound has its own symbol, every sound means something.
Poems included in the book "Themes and Variations", the collection was published in 1923, are adjacent to “Sister”, and some were written simultaneously with it, but represent a new stage, partly even polemical in relation to “Sister”.
“Themes and Variations” is more intense and dramatic in that it includes situations that have fallen away from the norm, this is enshrined in the very names of the cycles - “Illness”, “Break”. The revolutionary era here is felt in its fractures and cataclysms, the poet’s connection with it is objectively more complex, more contradictory than in “Sister”.
Marina Tsvetaeva, comparing these two books, wrote to Pasternak “Your book is a burn. This one was a downpour, and this one was a burn: it hurt me, and I didn’t blow.”
“Themes and Variations” is indeed Pasternak’s most expressive book. And this expressive beginning allows us to see the deep psychologism of the lyrics of this period.
Cycle "Break" in this regard, a new word in Pasternak's love lyrics. It is unusual in the very twist of the love theme - love is pain, illness. This vision of love is associated with a biographical aspect - the breakdown of relations with Elena Vinograd.
The cycle contains examples of extreme accuracy in revealing the psychological states of not only “him”, but also “her” - the offender - the beloved.
Disappointed? You thought - in peace to us
Parting for the swan requiem?
Calculated on the mountain, with dilated pupils
In tears I tried on their invincibility...
This cycle includes the poems: “Oh, lying angel”, “Oh, shame you are a burden to me”, “I will distract all thoughts from you”, “Disappointed...”.
In this cycle there is an alternation of poems of two kinds, different in tone and structural principles. At the beginning there are poems focused on the theme of the breakup itself (feelings of melancholy, resentment, reproaches), then a group of poems - love confessions, appeals addressed to the beloved.
Let's look at the very first poem of the cycle "Oh, lying angel". The work actually relates to the theme of rupture. The lyrical hero feels resentment, annoyance, melancholy. The poem is emotionally very intense, as evidenced by the large number of exclamation marks.
An appeal to a loved one is peculiar, which repeats this epithet twice: “Oh, lying angel,” - to some extent this appeal can be called an oxymoron. You can already see it psychological condition the lyrical hero, he still loves her and therefore calls her an angel, but at the same time he is perplexed, hence the definition of “lied.”
The next two lines again speak of both love and pain.
The last verse of the first stanza stands apart because it has no rhyme (the rhyme is single) and is written in amphibrachium trimeter, the rest in tetrameter.
“Oh grief, about grief in leprosy” - this line is the culmination. Leprosy is a bodily disease - physical pain, grief - mental pain, an internal state. Thus, for the hero, a breakup is the tragedy of his entire life; he experiences severe pain, both physical and spiritual. Perhaps that is why throughout the entire poem there are words of the same semantic group associated with illness. So, for example: “in leprosy”, “infected”, “eczema”, “body disease”. Hence the conclusion that love for the poet is pain, illness.
The next sexteme is a reproach to the beloved.
Oh, lying angel - no, not fatal
Suffering, like a heart, like a heart in eczema!
But why do you soul with a body disease?
Are you giving it as a parting gift? Why aimlessly?
You kiss like raindrops and like time,
Laughing, you kill, for everyone in front of everyone.
“Suffering, like a heart, like a heart in eczema” - again physical pain - eczema, “like a heart in eczema” - mental pain, and the noun “heart” in this verse is repeated twice, and at the end of the line there is an exclamation mark, which indicates the fact that it is much more painful from a breakup not for the body, but for the heart, that is, the mental pain is more severe.
Her kiss is compared to raindrops, as it is just as cold and fast. The beloved herself is compared to time, which cruelly “kills for everyone in front of everyone.” That is, the break for the hero is death, love is illness, pain, and the beloved herself is a cruel, lying angel.
The influence of symbolism is still visible here. Sound writing plays a big role - the alliteration of sounds [p] and [z], which convey tension, some kind of rumble. The poem does not have a clear image of the beloved, but there is a play with the meanings of words, secret writing, as well as a subjective transmission of feelings.
In general, unlike the futurists, in whose group he was a member, the poet’s innovation is not associated with the destruction of traditional meters, stanzas and the meaninglessness of words; on the contrary, Pasternak strives to find in the traditional poetic system those facets that had not been developed before him, strives to give old forms new content .
We said that in the cycle, in addition to the poems focused on the actual theme of the breakup, there is another group of poems - these are confessions and calls for a loved one and for life. They restore the world in its volume, plasticity, sound.
For comparison, let's take a poem "Brave this rain...» .
It is very different from the previous one in the mood itself, which is conveyed by a certain rhythmic energy. This is a multi-foot anapest, thanks to which the poem sounds somehow pulsating, sometimes measured, almost unison, then push after push, this can be seen in the elongated lines three and eight: “Beat off the rejoicing! Free! Catch them in this crazy bast shoe,” “And they were caressed by the rumbles of horns and the crackling of trees, hooves and claws,” that is, unevenly, in an increasing manner.
It is worth paying attention to the sound form of the work. The fact is that its rhythm is very energetic, but it cannot be called sharp, since the melody and smoothness are conveyed by the alliteration of the sound [l]. Addressing your beloved in a completely different tone than in the previous poem. There is no reproach or resentment here, only admiration that is conveyed big amount exclamation marks.
But still, due to the rhythm, the tension of the lyrical hero is conveyed, and the last verse: “Oh, to freedom! To freedom - like those!” - shows the hero’s desire to break free, free himself, get rid of pain.
Let's look at the last poem from the cycle “Rupture” “The trembling piano will lick the foam from its lips.”. In it, a large place is devoted to music, which becomes a theme, and here, at the thematic level, its harmonizing role is affirmed. The image of the piano is a personification, the piano is an animal, the piano is a person. It conveys some kind of tension, even chaos.
The trembling piano will lick the foam from its lips.
This nonsense will tear you down, knock you down.
You will say: - darling! - No, I scream, - no.
With music?! - But is it possible to be closer?
Than in the semi-darkness, chords like a diary,
Swords in the fireplace in sets, weather wise?
[1, art.86]
In these poems it is clear that music both divides and brings the characters together. With music, everyday explanations are inappropriate, but at the same time, music itself is imbued with the tension of life, this is indicated by the euphemism used by the poet, music is “delirium,” and it also resolves this tension.
The comparison “chords are like a diary” emphasizes the closeness of music and the inner world of a person. The state of the lyrical hero is also characterized by his action: “Throwing swords into the fireplace in sets depending on the weather.” The diary usually describes the whole life, the past. Chords are a diary, that is, music is life. This means that burning chords in the fireplace is a farewell to your past life.
O wondrous understanding, nod,
Nod and you will be amazed! - you are free.
The short adjective “free” refers to the heroine, but becomes a reference for the whole poem, which means the story of the characters’ relationship is “told” to the end.
The last quatrain of this poem as a whole is the final one for the entire cycle.
I do not hold. Go do some good
Go to others. Werther has already been written,
And these days the air smells of death:
Open the window to open the veins.
[1, art.86]
The first two verses are addressed to the beloved, the lyrical hero lets her go, recalling Werther’s tragic love, which once again proves the gap - death, love - illness and pain.
But the last two lines refer to Pasternak’s reality.
This is an example, according to V. Alfonsov, “... the invasion of the era, modernity into the subjective lyrical situation.” But this is not a transition from one topic to another - it is an expansion of a topic coming from within. “Going out into the general public,” Alfonsov believes, “is always a cure, in this case from a “body disease.”
Thus, at the end of this poem we see humility, the lyrical hero lets his beloved go.
Balance in the “Rupture” cycle is achieved by changing the tempo, alternating poems of two moods, different in tone.
In poems that focus on the theme of breakup, love is a disease, deception, the breakup itself is death, the beloved is a “lying angel.”
The second group is poems - love confessions, appeals, appeals to the beloved, they also feel great tension, pain in the soul of the hero - this is achieved through rhythm, punctuation marks, as well as tropes and figures. In the last quatrain of the cycle, the lyrical hero comes to humility and lets his beloved go.
If we talk about the collection “Themes and Variations” as a whole, it should be said that love is seen here as a disease, a disappointment.
This collection does not have the internal unity of “Sisters...”, but it is full of emotions, intensity of expressive feelings.
The collection still feels the influence of symbolism and futurism. This is a multidirectional book, but it conveys psychological characteristics very capaciously, accurately and vividly.
Chapter 2. Love and poetry.
§1. The mature period in the lyrics of B.L. Pasternak.
Seven years later, in 1930-1931, a collection was written "Second birth".
This book is very different from the previous ones; according to many researchers of B.L. Pasternak’s work, a realistic principle of vision of a new world is already outlined in this cycle. If the early lyrics carried the influence of symbolism, then the later ones are freed from these obscurities. The title of the collection speaks for itself: “Second Birth.”
The moral and psychological meaning of the theme of this book is not in replacing a lived life with some other one, but in resurrection for life after “exhaustion.” The poet discovers life here anew, in a new quality, and this means returning to life and looking it in the face.
The love lyrics of “Second Birth” are associated with a specific biographical fact. The fact is that at this time there was a big change in the poet’s personal life - the destruction of his family, which had formed in 1922, when the poet married the artist Evgenia Vladimirovna Lurie, and the beginning of a new one, with Zinaida Nikolaevna Neuhaus.
Anna Akhmatova said this about the love lyrics of this period and about the collection: “He persuades his wife not to be upset about the fact that he left her and all this is somehow uncertain...”.
For example, a poem "Don't worry, don't cry, don't work", dedicated to his ex-wife, in it the poet says that she is his friend and support and that their love was “mutual deception.”
The situation “with two women” in “The Second Birth” is transformed into an image of initially dramatic and eternally saving love.
And naturally, with the arrival of new love, a full-fledged word arises, but everything is about the same thing, only pronounced in a new way.
Consider the poem “My beauty, all the way” .
The general tone of this work is somehow confidential and conversational. The very appeal to your beloved resembles the beginning of a song.
My beauty, all the way,
Your whole essence is after my heart.
Everything about her, she herself, is beautiful and inspires the poet.
Everything is eager to become music,
And everyone asks for a rhyme.
The noun "rhyme" is found very often, let's follow it.
And the rhyme does not echo the lines,
And the wardrobe number,
Ticket for a place near the columns
In the afterlife hum, roots and womb.
Rhyme is compared to a “wardrobe number”; it is not just “repeating lines.” After all, theater begins with a wardrobe, and rhyme is a wardrobe number that opens the door to life, because theater is life.
Here the image of music appears: the epithet “afterlife hum” has a double meaning, perhaps it is the “hum” of the orchestra tuning the instruments, or it is the hum of the poem itself, since the verse rumbles and shimmers with the help of alliteration of sounds [р], [л], [ n]. Rhyme introduces something mysterious and beautiful.
The following stanzas:
And that love breathes in rhymes,
Why is it so hard to bear?
Before whom they frown
And they wrinkle the bridge of the nose.
And the rhyme does not echo the lines,
And the entrance and passage through the threshold
To hand over like a cloak after a plaque,
Illness is a heavy burden,
The disease of publicity and sin
Behind the loud plaque of verse.
The personification “love breathes in the rhymes” suggests that it is not the rhymes that make up poems about love, but they themselves are permeated with love, this feeling is in everything, the personification conveys the delight of the lyrical hero.
In the sextet the line “and rhyme does not echo the lines” is repeated again, that is, it is not poetry that dictates the choice of rhyme, but life itself. The idea of the third stanza is also repeated here, but this time the rhyme is not a number, but “entrance and passage beyond the threshold,” entrance into new life full of love, and beyond this threshold the same burdens and illnesses will remain. And in this stanza about everyday hardships, about pain, the sound coloring is replaced by the alliteration of sounds [w], [g], [k], [x], moreover, “a plaque - heavy” - this is the only case of paired dactylic rhyme in the poem, inhibiting the run-up of the verse, creating a rhythmic hitch. In general, the rhyme in the work is enveloping, that is, a certain expectation of rhyme appears before us, which gives the poem emotional tension.
Penultimate stanza:
My beauty, that's the whole point,
All to become yours, beauty,
Tightens your chest and pulls you on your way
And he wants to sing and likes it.
This quatrain shows us a new feeling that arose in the lyrical hero, his inspiration and desire to live. The repetition and emphasis of the noun “beauty”, as well as the placement of a dash before the verb “like”, emphasize the hero’s emotional delight, his admiration for his beloved.
The first and penultimate stanzas seem to create a ring composition, showing us the internal state of the lyrical hero, but Pasternak cannot end the poem like that. The word “like”, hanging separately, separated by a dash, cannot be the ending. This is just a run-up for the decisive word:
Polykleitos prayed to you.
Your laws have been made.
Your laws are in the distance of years.
You have known me for a long time.
Polykleitos is an ancient Greek sculptor, art theorist of the second half of the fifth century BC, it was he who created the digital law of ideal proportional relationships of the human body. Thus, through the use of the name Polykleitos, the poet asserts that his beloved is an ideal. Compare “like” and “prayed” - a decisive takeoff, a clear contrast. This stanza contains not delight or pathos, but some kind of clear, confident satisfaction - it is measured four times with a dot at the end of each line. Moreover, let us again pay attention to the sound writing, [z], [z] are ringing before us, and at the same time in this stanza there is no sound [p], which rumbled so much at the beginning of the poem and which gradually weakened. There is an element of impressionism in it, namely: in the work, in a moment, the whole life is shown.
The ending of this poem is simple and clear - the beloved is beautiful, the hero prays to her, she gives him inspiration, new life.
Consider the following poem from this collection “All around with mincing cotton wool.”
The first stanza is very metaphorical: the poet calls simple poplar fluff both “mincing cotton wool” and “poplar batting.” Moreover, “walking... batting of poplars” is a personification and in the same stanza the comparison “like a ghost of debauchery” - all these linguistic means convey a feeling of freedom, the flow of life, admiration for nature. The mood of this stanza is joyful. One feels some kind of delight in life itself.
In the following quatrains, the lyrical hero feels lonely without his beloved.
The most interesting is the following stanza:
You have become so much my life,
That everything that is not relevant is out,
And drink the headiness of fiction
It makes me sick like rotten fish.
The beloved is life, and everything that does not relate to her and their love is unimportant and even unnecessary, perhaps that is why there is a dash before the word “down.” The last two verses in this stanza are a rejection of fiction and mystery. Therefore, the vocabulary itself is somehow reduced here.
In the sixth and seventh quatrains, the poet again talks about the room, and in the early Pasternak we would not have found such lines:
In winter we will expand the living space,
I'll take my brother's room.
It should be noted that in the last two stanzas the verbs are used in the future tense, and we are already talking about winter. That is, the lyrical hero believes and hopes for the continuation of the relationship and that life with his beloved will be wonderful. And this room is a kind of symbol of their love, “in it the noise of the seals is muffled,” that is, there is nothing alien or unnecessary here, there is only peace and love.
The connection between the beloved and the future of the lyrical hero is also shown in the next poem "No one will be in the house". At the beginning of the poem, the lyrical hero is lonely, the feeling of loneliness is emphasized by the repetition of the pronoun “nobody”; in the second stanza it is generally highlighted by placing a dash, as well as by using the numeral “One” and writing it with a capital letter. The hero is surrounded only by snow and roofs outside the window.
The next two stanzas tell about a certain memory in which a feeling of guilt appears. The personifications “last year’s despondency will wrap me up”, “and the deeds of another winter... will prick me with hitherto unrelieved guilt”, “wood hunger will crush me” emphasize tension, and also convey feelings of melancholy and pain. The epithet “wood hunger” defines the nature of this pain, that is, it is the pain in which the soul grows cold and binds everything inside. And the next stanza begins with the adversative conjunction “but”.
With the arrival of the beloved, feelings of guilt, loneliness, and melancholy disappear, she brings revival. The poet compares it with the “future,” that is, again the lyrical hero future life connects only with her.
Last quatrain:
You'll show up at the door
In something white without quirks,
In something really from those matters,
From which flakes are made.
There is a feeling that the beloved is an angel, she is pure, bright and light, this is conveyed through the use of the adjective “white” and the noun “flakes”.
Thus, in this collection we see a departure from symbolism, there is little use of book images, fewer different nebulae, the vocabulary is generally used, often even reduced. The image of the beloved becomes more earthly and real.
In the collection “Second Birth”, love is a resurrection, the beloved helps to be reborn, to live in a new way.
The period from 1930-1950 was quite difficult for Pasternak. At this time, art is strongly influenced by ideology. A new culture emerges, praising new life. The poet observes pictures of repression and mass starvation. He survived the death of his friends, Georgian poets Paolo Yashvili and Titian Tabidze, the arrests and death of Mandelstam. They treat him with distrust. After the “Second Birth,” Pasternak’s poetry experienced a period of protracted crisis. Creativity moved into prose and translation: “Personal creativity is over, I went into translations.”
Since 1936, the poet has lived in Peredelkino, where he writes a collection "On the Early Trains" 1936-1944 This also includes a cycle of poems about the war.
In this collection we did not find poems of love lyrics, perhaps this is due to the poet’s desire not to reveal his intimate, and perhaps due to the situation of the country, as well as due to the turning point in his own soul.
§2. The late period in the lyrics of B.L. Pasternak.
Later, the researcher Alfonsov defined the work of B. Pasternak as follows: “The poems of the late Pasternak are sometimes emphasized, non-metaphorical, the image sometimes directly “repeats reality,” but behind the concrete there is still a symbolic, generalized... in the late Pasternak, phenomena and details often appear “bare”, without reflexes, former complex associations, but the principle of chance remains in force.”
In the early period, Pasternak was influenced by symbolism and futurism, therefore his early poems are characterized by oxymorons, games with the meanings of words, mysterious and bookish images, metaphorization, musicality, subjectivity, polysemy, as well as the objectivity of the world, violation of syntactic structures.
Further in the collection “The Second Birth” there is a tendency towards a realistic principle. He avoids using generic concepts, preferring specific, individual ones. His poems are full of precise titles. The poet goes towards simplicity. And this naturalness of style will go upward from cycle to cycle, from book to book.
Over the course of ten post-war years, Pasternak wrote a novel "Doctor Zhivago" 1946-1955
The fifties were a time of serious trials for the poet. His poetry and prose do not fit into the framework of the literary norms of that time.
This is a time of unceremonious dictates from the authorities on how to write, make films, stage plays and compose music.
During these same years, Pasternak was attacked by critics, but he wrote his novel.
In the second book, in the seventeenth part, poems by Yuri Zhivago are recorded. This does not mean that they were written specifically for the novel, but on the other hand, they were created in internal connection with the novel, in the atmosphere of work on this work, in a common spirit and direction with it. Therefore, it does not matter which of them arose in subordination to the plot provisions of the novel.
The work describes Yuri Andreevich’s work on a lyrical exposition of the legend of Yegor the Brave. The poems “Fairy Tale”, “Separation”, “Winter Night” are also associated with the plot of the novel. We will analyze the poem "Parting". It can be attributed to “Crying for Lara”, this work is connected with the plot of the novel, it refers to that place in “Doctor Zhivago”, when in the winter of the civil war, in someone else’s house, in the wilderness, in the Urals, Yura is left alone after Lara’s departure.
The lyrical hero is left alone, his beloved leaves him. Without her, the rooms are “chaos.” The room may be a mess, but it is not “chaos.” Baevsky notes that the late Pasternak has a complicated semantics of words. Using the noun "chaos" to show inner world the hero, his experiences, chaos not only in his room, but also in his head, in his soul - the chaos of feelings.
The lyrical hero is shocked and cannot understand whether this is true or a dream, “He is in memory or dreaming.” His feelings for her, his longing, their meeting are all compared to the sea. For example: “Melancholy is similar to the desert of the sea,”
She was so precious
He doesn't care,
How close the shores are to the sea
The entire surf line.
How the reeds flood
Excitement after the storm
Sank to the bottom of his soul
Its features and forms.
Why the sea? Perhaps because its surface is deserted and endless, and this emptiness emphasizes the loneliness of the hero. Or perhaps this correlates with the metaphor “sea of love”, perhaps his love is as endless, boundless, beautiful, full as the sea.
In the novel itself, Yuri says this about Lara: “My unforgettable beauty!<…>I will record your memory in a tender, tender, sad image.<…>This is how I will portray you. I will put your features on paper, as after a terrible storm that explodes the sea to the ground, traces of the strongest wave that has splashed farthest lie on the sand. In a broken, winding line, the sea throws pumice, cork, shells, algae, the lightest and most weightless thing it could lift from the bottom. This is the coastal border of the highest surf that endlessly stretches into the distance. So the storm of life brought you to me, my pride. That’s how I’ll portray you!” That is, this meaning, this metaphor is repeated in the novel itself. As in the poem in Doctor Zhivago, the idea that nature itself, fate itself, gave it to its hero is also emphasized.
The meter of the poem is iambic tetrameter.
In the ninth quatrain there are personifications: “Separation will eat them both up”, “Melancholy will devour the bones.” The phraseological unit “melancholy gnaws” is supplemented with the word “bones”. These abstract concepts are like predators who will kill lovers.
In the fourth quatrain the poet uses a play with the meaning of words:
When through the frost on the window
The light of God is not visible.
“The light of God is not visible,” because nothing is visible in the window or there is no light or relief in the soul, only pain and heaviness.
The automaticity of the action in the penultimate stanza also reveals the inner world of the lyrical hero - emptiness, fatigue, loneliness, and only after feeling the physical pain from pricking his finger with a needle, the hero began to cry, and clearly not from physical pain.
This poem no longer bears the influence of symbolism. Baevsky wrote that during this period language difficulties disappear, and that at first glance everything seems clear, but the semantics of words becomes more complicated and the literary, philosophical, historical, religious background of the works becomes more saturated.
The image of the beloved is humanized, it is more earthly than in the early lyrics; this image can be seen especially clearly in the poem by Yuri Zhivago "Date".
It should be said that the poem does not refer to a specific event in the novel. But it can be classified as “crying for Lara,” since after her departure, Yuri Andreevich writes several poems dedicated to his beloved.
The first stanza immediately begins with inversion and short lines that give this lyrical confession extraordinary dynamism.
The roads will be covered with snow,
The roof slopes will collapse.
I'll go stretch my legs:
You are standing outside the door.
This dynamism conveys to us the hero's excitement.
The poem is a memory, as evidenced by the last quatrain:
But who are we and where are we from?
When from all those years
There are rumors left
Are we not in the world?
The excitement of the heroine herself is conveyed through her action - chewing snow. The image of the beloved is conveyed through everyday objects.
One in an autumn coat.
Without a hat, without galoshes...
Water flows from the scarf
By the cuffs of the sleeves,
And drops of dewdrops
Sparkles in your hair.
And a strand of blond hair
Illuminated: face,
Headscarf and figure
And this is a coat.
Such great attention is paid to these objects because, firstly, they convey the excitement, feelings, state of the hero, and secondly, because all these objects belong to her, these are her “pieces” and it is not for nothing that the author further says:
And your whole appearance is harmonious
From one piece.
That is, all of her with her manners, clothes, hairstyle is dear to him and these details are very important for the hero, because they all make up her image. The verse “Snow on the eyelashes is wet” is a play on words, a complication of semantics, because snow cannot be dry. But there is a phraseological unit “wet eyes”, that is, the heroine is crying.
The situation due to which the heroes are not together is incomprehensible, but it is clear that they are hurt because they are not together.
As if with iron
Dipped in antimony
You were led by cutting
According to my heart.
For a while, it seems to the hero that they are alone and nothing surrounds them. For them, the main thing is their relationships, their feelings, and not the environment.
Trees and fences
They go into the distance, into the darkness.
And that's why it doesn't matter
That the world is cruel...
And that’s why it doubles
All this night in the snow,
And draw boundaries
Between us I can't.
It is impossible not to notice that snow is mentioned in almost every stanza, and the novel itself is built against the backdrop of snow. In his article “Watermark” Frank V.S. writes that Lara is an image of living water, that is, she gives inspiration and life to those around her, she is constantly in motion, she is pure. Let’s take, for example, a quote from the novel “They were sure that they would open the front door and a woman they knew so well would enter the house, completely wet and frozen<…>they were sure of this, that when they locked the door, a trace of this confidence remained around the corner of the house, on the street, in the form of a watermark of this woman or her image, which continued to appear to them around the corner.” And snow, according to the researcher, in the novel is a symbol of “untimely passing time.” And this date is a memory that has washed over the lyrical hero, which, on the one hand, is beautiful, and on the other, bitter.
The image of the beloved in these poems is earthly, there are no comparisons with Ophelia or Desdemona, with the mysterious Greek women, there is no mythologization of her. She is earthly with her feelings, with her thoughts.
Being a woman is a big step
Maddening heroism.
This is what Pasternak says in his poem “Explanation”. After all, love for a woman changes, inspires, makes you happy. She pushes you to do different things. He was pushed to write, for example, “Sister of My Life” and other wonderful works. Love makes you breathe and think in a new way.
In the poems included in the novel “Doctor Zhivago”, love is strong, earthly, but not all-conquering, it is to some extent hopeless. But this has more to do with the relationship between Yuri Zhivago and Lara. After all Main character never stayed with his beloved until the end.
The novel turned out to be unacceptable for publication in the USSR. In 1957 it was released in Italy, and on October 23, 1958. The author of Doctor Zhivago was awarded the Nobel Prize “For outstanding achievements in Soviet lyric poetry and in the traditional field of great Russian prose.”
In response to this, Pasternak was expelled from the Union of Soviet Writers and was subjected to gross public reproach. Shocked by the reaction of his compatriots, he had to refuse such a high award. Perhaps because of such a difficult situation in his latest collection "When it clears up" We found only one poem about love, and it was written before the Nobel Prize incident.
The poem is called "Untitled"
This is, perhaps, the final poem in B. Pasternak’s love lyrics.
The heroine is earthly, not mysterious, she is “touchy, quiet in everyday life.”
Comparison of the beloved with fire, burning, the image of her eyes - show the heroine alive, bright, ardent. The author emphasizes the simplicity and naturalness of his beloved in the depiction of how she sits, what she does, and how she speaks.
You are sitting with your feet on the ottoman,
Under you, tucking them cross-legged,
It's all the same in the light, in the dark,
You always talk like a child.
Dreaming, you lower the cord
A handful of beads rolled down on a dress.
Your appearance is too sad,
Your direct conversation is artless.
In the second stanza:
Look how transformed
Fire-skinned lampshade
Kennel, wall edge, window edge,
Our shadows and our figures.
The definition of “fire” prompts us to the aforementioned comparison of beloved – fire, then perhaps it was not the lampshade that transformed everything around, but their love. Moreover, not only the characters are transformed, but also the objects surrounding them - a window, an ottoman, a wall, a kennel, a lampshade. And the poet uses them because they relate to the fact that she is here. And that’s why all this is so expensive and is also being transformed.
The beloved’s feelings are compared to an ore deposit, that is, her love is deep, strong, and reliable.
Love changes people, but in this poem the hero is ready to change not only himself, but the whole world for the sake of love.
For you I am the whole world, all the words
I'll rename it if you want.
All his life the poet lived with one love. Love for women, for nature, for art, for the Motherland.
Alfonsov wrote in his work “The law of love, the law of unity of connection remains unshakable and all-pervasive in Pasternak’s poetry. This law, expressing the essence and miracle of creation, connects people with each other, man with nature, history with eternity.” .
Conclusion.
In our work, we identified the vital and creative origins of the love theme in the poet’s lyrics, determined the originality of the artistic embodiment of the concept of love, and also identified the evolution of B. Pasternak’s artistic method and the evolution of the concept of love.
Having made aspect and structural analyzes of some poems, we came to the following conclusions:
The poet's early collections bear the influence of symbolism and futurism, hence the mysterious image of a beloved who is as beautiful as a goddess, and love is a kind of divine, cosmic, mysterious feeling. At this time Pasternak was in love with Elena Vinograd, and all the poems of this period are dedicated to her. The relationship between a man and a woman is mystified. In the collection “Themes and Variations,” love is pain, illness. This is due to the breakup with Elena Vinograd. In the collection “Second Wind,” which outlines the realistic principle of depicting reality, love is inspiration, rebirth, an impetus for a new life. At this time, Pasternak is building a new relationship - his chosen one Zinaida Neuhaus.
Due to the difficult situation of the poet in the country, Boris Leonidovich withdraws into himself, goes into translations and does not write intimate poems, does not show off his soul and feelings.
In the poems included in the novel “Doctor Zhivago” and the collection “When it clears up,” we again see pure love, but more “earthly,” natural. And the image of the beloved itself is not mysterious, but more detailed, “alive.”
In the late period, we did not find very many poems about love, perhaps this is due to the poet’s desire not to show his personal, intimate things in public.
And yet, thanks to the work we have done, we can draw another important conclusion: love for a poet is his whole life.
Everything in Pasternak’s poems was “dictated by feeling”, it was from his pure soul and open heart.
Literature.
Text.
Pasternak B. Poems and poems. Translations./ Comp. Entry Art., and approx. L.A. Ozerova - M.: Pravda, 1990. – 544 p.
Collected works in five volumes. Volume 3 “Doctor Zhivago” - M.: Khud. Literature, 1990.
Research.
Alfonsov V. Poetry of B. Pasternak. Monograph – L.: Sov. Pis., 1990 – 368 p.
Baevsky V.S. History of Russian poetry: 1730-1980. – Smolensk: Rusich., 1994. – 302 p.
Gasparov M. L. Essay on the history of Russian verse. Metrics, rhythm, rhyme, stanza. – M.: Fortuna Limited., 2000. – 352 p.
Maslennikova Zoya. Portrait of Boris Pasternak. – M.: Sov. Ross., 1990 – 288 p.
Articles.
Aign G. Ordinary miracle // Friendship of Peoples - 1993. - No. 12 - p. 186.
Zholkovsky. Pasternak's book of books: about the book of poems “My Sister is My Life.” // Zvezda - 1997. - No. 12 - p. 193.
Kaplan I. Pearls of poetry B.L. Pasternak “Hamlet” and “Date”. // Literature – 2000. - No. 21 – p. 14 – 15.
Nikitaeva V.I. image of the world in the word “revealed”. // Russian Literature - 1997. - No. 4 - p. 63.
Ovchinnikov I.F. From philosophy to poetry. // Questions of Philosophy - 1990. - No. 4 - p. 7-22.
Rybakov V. Candle in the wind. // Family and school - 1990. - No. 2 - pp. 45-47.
Strashnov S. Revealed secrets. To lessons on the works of B. Pasternak // Literature at school - 2000. - No. 1 - p. 80-84.
Shansky N.M. Among the poetic lines. // Russian language at school - 1989. - No. 6 - pp. 60-64.
Teaching aids.
A book for students and teachers. Boris Pasternak. – M.: Olimp., 1996.
School program. Poetry silver age./ Auth. - comp. A.V. Ledenev. - 5th edition - M.: Bustard., 2002.
School program. B.L.Pasternak. Doctor Zhivago./ Author - comp.
M.G. Pavlovets., T.V. Pavlovets. – 5th edition. – M.: Bustard., 2003.
Boris Leonidovich Pasternak is one of the greatest poets who made an irreplaceable contribution to Russian poetry of the Soviet era and world poetry of the 20th century. His poetry is complex and simple, refined and accessible, emotional and restrained. It amazes with its richness of sounds and associations.Long-familiar objects and phenomena appear before us from an unexpected side. The poetic world is so bright and original that one cannot remain indifferent to it. Pasternak's poetry is a reflection of the personality of the poet who grew up in a family famous artist. From his first steps in poetry, Boris Pasternak discovered a special style, a special structure of artistic means and techniques. The most ordinary picture is sometimes drawn from a completely unexpected visual angle.
The first publications of his poems date back to 1913. Next year, the poet’s first collection, “Twin in the Clouds,” will be published. But Pasternak was critical of his early work and subsequently thoroughly revised a number of poems. In them he often misses the unimportant, interrupts, breaks logical connections, leaving the reader to guess about them. Sometimes he does not even name the subject of his narration, giving it many definitions, using a predicate without a subject. This is how, for example, his poem “In Memory of the Demon” was constructed.
It must be said that Pasternak, in general, tends to view poetry as hard work that requires complete dedication:
Don't sleep, don't sleep, work,
Don't interrupt your work.
Don't sleep, fight drowsiness,
Like a pilot, like a star.
Don't sleep, don't sleep, artist,
Don't give in to sleep.
You are a hostage to time
Captured by eternity.
Already in the first years of his work, Pasternak showed those special sides of his talent that were fully revealed in the poeticization of the prose of life, philosophical reflections on the meaning of love and creativity:
February. Get some ink and cry!
Write about February sobbingly,
While the rumbling slush
In spring it burns black.
Boris Pasternak introduced rare words and expressions into his poems. The less often the word was used, the better it was for the poet. In order to understand the essence of the images he created, you need to have a good understanding of the meaning of such words. And Pasternak treated their choice with great attention. He wanted to avoid cliches; he was repulsed by “worn out” poetic expressions. Therefore, in his poems we can find outdated words, rare geographical names, specific names of philosophers, poets, scientists, and literary characters.
The originality of Pasternak’s poetic style lies in its unusual syntax. The poet breaks the usual norms. They seem to be ordinary words, but their arrangement in the stanza is unusual, and therefore the poem requires us to read carefully:
In a suburb where no one can go
Never set foot, only sorcerers and blizzards
I set foot in the demon-possessed district,
Where and how the dead sleep in the snow...
But what expressiveness does such syntax give to a poetic text! The poem is about a traveler who gets lost in a suburb, about a blizzard that aggravates the hopelessness of the path. The traveler’s state of mind is conveyed by ordinary words, but the very feeling of anxiety and confusion sounds in the unusual rhythm of the poem, which gives it a unique syntax.
Pasternak's associations are also original. They are unusual, but that is precisely why they are truly fresh. They help the described image to reveal itself exactly as he sees it. The poem “Old Park” says that “the croaking flocks of nines scatter from the trees.” And then we find the following lines:
Contractions intensify with brutal pain,
The wind grows stronger and goes wild,
And nine rooks fly,
Black nines of clubs.
The imagery of this poem is deeper than it might seem at first glance. The poet uses a three-term comparison here: rooks - nines of clubs - airplanes. The fact is that the poem was written in 1941, when German planes flew in nines, and their formation reminded the poet of nines of clubs and rooks. The originality of Pasternak's lyrics lies in the complex associative series. Here, for example, are the precise and at the same time complex, extraordinary strokes that convey the feeling of warm air in a coniferous forest:
The rays flowed. The beetles flowed with the ebb tide,
The glass of dragonflies scurried across the cheeks.
The forest was full of painstaking shimmer,
Like being under a watchmaker's tongs.
Pasternak's poetry is the poetry of roads and unfolding spaces. This is how Pasternak defines poetry in the book “My Sister is Life.”
This is a cool whistle,
This is the clicking of crushed ice floes,
This is the leaf-chilling night,
This is a duel between two nightingales.
This is a sweet spoiled pea.
These are the tears of the universe in the shoulder blades,
This is from consoles and flutes -
Figaro Falls like hail onto the garden bed.
All. what nights are so important to find
On deep bathed bottoms,
And bring the star to the cage
On trembling wet palms...
“The Definition of Poetry”
In Pasternak's poems you always feel not feigned, but deeply natural, even spontaneous lyrical pressure, impetuosity, dynamism. They have the ability to sink into the soul, get stuck in the corners of memory. Pasternak’s landscape exists on equal terms with man. For him, natural phenomena are like living beings: the rain lingers at the threshold, a thunderstorm, threatening, breaks through the gate. Sometimes the rain itself writes poetry for the poet:
The shoots of the shower are dirty in clusters
And for a long, long time, until dawn
They sprinkle their acrostic poems from the roofs.
Blowing bubbles in rhyme.
In Pasternak’s poems, the Urals (“On a Steamboat,” “Ural for the First Time”), the North, and the poet’s native places near Moscow with their lilies of the valley and pines, violent thunderstorms and swifts appear before us with pristine purity. Subsequently, in books such as “On the Early Trains”, “When It Goes Wild,” strings of landscapes will invade the poet’s poems, expressing his delight in the natural world.
Throughout his life (especially in his mature and late years), Boris Pasternak was extremely strict with himself, demanding and sometimes unjustifiably harsh in his car characteristics. This is understandable. The poet always worked, thought, created. When we now read and reread his poems and poems written before 1940, we find in them a lot of fresh, bright, beautiful things.
Pasternak's early poems retain clear traces of symbolism: an abundance of nebulae, detachment from time, a general tonality reminiscent of early Blok, Sologub, or Bely:
The day cannot rise in the efforts of the luminaries,
Do not remove the Epiphany veils from the earth.
But, like the earth, the experienced one is exhausted,
But, like snow, I fell to the dust of days.
These lines are the original version of the poem “Winter Night,” radically revised in 1928:
The day cannot be corrected by the mouths of the lights,
Do not lift the shadows of Epiphany veils.
It's winter on earth, and the smoke of the fires is powerless
Straighten the houses that lay flat.
Everything is different here. True, the poet is still busy here with “extraneous wit,” but the step has been taken, and it is an important step.
Over time, Pasternak's poetry becomes more transparent and clear. The new style is felt in such major works of his as “Nine Hundred and Fifth”, “Lieutenant Schmidt”, “Spektorsky”. Achieving simplicity and naturalness of the verse, he creates things of rare power. His verse seems to have been purified, acquiring a minted clarity. What has happened with the artist, evolution was a natural path that sought to get to the very essence of everything.
I want to reach everything
To the very essence.
At work, looking for a way,
In heartbreak.
To the essence of the past days.
Until their reason,
To the foundations, to the roots,
To the core.
The artist believed that the image should not distance what is being depicted, but, on the contrary, bring it closer, not take it to the side, but force one to focus on it:
In the ice there is a river and a frozen volcano,
And across, onto bare ice,
Like a mirror on a mirror glass,
A black firmament has been set.
The inspired objectivity of the “prose of a close grain” (“Anne Akhmatova”), introduced into the poetic fabric, the desire in one’s art to “be alive” (“Being famous is ugly...”), historical truth, supported by dynamic pictures of nature - all this testifies about Pasternak’s desire to move away from schools marked by “unnecessary mannerisms.”
Being famous is not nice.
This is not what lifts you up.
No need to create an archive,
Shake over manuscripts.
And should not a single slice
Don't give up on your face
But to be alive, alive and only,
Alive and only until the end.
The world of B. Pasternak's poetry was expanding all the time, and it is difficult to imagine the extent and form of further expansion if the poet had lived for more years and continued the best that was contained in his last book, “When it clears up.”
Nature, peace, hiding place of the universe,
I will serve you for a long time.
Embraced by an intimate trembling
, I stand in tears of happiness.
However, the subjunctive mood “if” is inappropriate and unproductive. We have a complete destiny before us. Throughout his life, the poet went through several creative cycles, made several turns up the spiral of comprehension of society, nature, and the spiritual world of the individual. Recognition of B. Pasternak’s great talent was the award to him in 1958 Nobel Prize.
The legacy of Boris Pasternak is legitimately included in the treasury of Russian and world culture of the 20th century. It has won the love and recognition of the most demanding and strict connoisseurs of poetry. Knowledge of this heritage becomes an urgent necessity, delightful reading and a reason for thinking about the fundamental questions of human existence.
Features of B. Pasternak's lyrics
He was awarded some kind of eternal action.
With that generosity and vigilance of the luminary,
And all the earth was his inheritance,
And he shared it with everyone.
A. A. Akhmatova
Boris Leonidovich Pasternak is a bright, mysterious genius. He knew how to rediscover the world, saw the unusual in the ordinary: in the movement of a cloud - girlish features, in the bend of a woman's shoulders - signs of passion, in passion - love, in love - the movement of life. I could hear the pulse of eternity in the movement of life in order to come to the inner harmony of the soul through the chaos of existence.
A poet whose work is polysemantic and multifaceted, “a talent of exceptional originality,” as M. Gorky said about him. Poetry was for Pasternak a loophole into another world, where he could rise above the drabness of everyday life. The originality of his work lay in the fact that he sought to capture time in his poems: both the moment and eternity (“In one moment to see eternity...”) The themes and motifs of his works are varied. Pasternak sought to reflect all spheres of life in his poems. Many of his works are permeated with sadness, melancholy and hopelessness. This happened, first of all, due to the persecution that befell him Soviet authority. It was very important for the poet to have freedom of creativity and freedom of speech.
Everything in Pasternak’s lyrics is permeated with feeling, everything comes from a pure soul and an open heart.
How nice those quiet exits were!
The feather grass sighs, the ants rustle,
And a mosquito cry floats.
“July Thunderstorm”, “After the Rain”, “Echo”, “Swifts” he catches the slightest rustle. The divine beauty of the world fascinates him, the regularity of phenomena conquers, giving birth to poems in which a thunderstorm, “in peals, in silver,” garden air, a ray of sun, poplars, the splendor of birches, groves, the trill of a nightingale, the starry surface, the flight of swifts, the earth are fused together “from the sky to the ravine”:
Thunderstorm at the gates! Outside!
Transforming and going crazy
She runs along the gallery.
On the stairs. And onto the porch.
Step, step, step. Bandage!
All five mirrors have a face
Everything is so familiar, but it is seen, heard and felt somehow differently, as if the secret was told by the poet’s soul, a reverent, loving soul. Pasternak’s nature is not just humanized, it lives, lives its own life:
Horrible! - He will drip and listen,
Is he all alone in the world?
Crumples a branch in the window like lace,
“The Weeping Garden”, being a witness to the experiences of the lyrical hero, at the same time becomes his equal interlocutor:
Not a sound. And there are no spies.
Fights for the old - slides
On the roof, behind the gutter and through.
Rolling down from the cup onto the cup,
Slipped on two - and both
A huge drop of agate,
Hanging, sparkling, timid.
Let the wind blowing through the meadowsweet
That little bit is tormented and crushed.
Whole, not crushed - there are two more of them
After reading these lines, we understand that Pasternak is convinced that true love cannot be “destroyed! it is impossible to separate loving hearts:
And I’m in front of the miracle of women’s hands,
Backs and shoulders and necks
And so with the affection of servants
I have been in awe all my life.
And if separation overtakes the lyrical hero, then he, suffering, is happy with memories of love.
I live with your card, with the one that laughs,
Whose wrist joints are cracking,
The one who breaks her fingers and doesn’t want to give up,
Where they visit, and visit, and are sad.
Bitter thoughts about the fate of the poet, born of the thirties, are heard in Pasternak’s poem “To Boris Pilnyak”:
Pasternak overcomes the fear of danger, he craves activity, he wants to be not a witness to events, but a participant in them, to “break out of the thicket of half-dreams and half-deeds,” to give people the opportunity to see again “the blue and the sun, the peace and quiet,” to regain the lost faith in the joy of life. But the lines “sS-fo view- kill, rush through the throat and kill.” You can stay alive by betraying yourself, turning yourself into a slave, but then “art ends”... Is it possible?! The thought of such a fate is unbearable for Pasternak. To feel time, to be a man of the era - such is his understanding of his poetic purpose.
Historical events taking place in the country excite him, causing a feeling of anxiety and melancholy. We do not find a description of events in B. Pasternak’s poems, but we understand how excruciatingly painful it is for his lyrical hero:
Oh, hunted angel - no, not fatal
Suffering, like a heart, like a heart in eczema!
But why do you soul with a body disease?
Are you giving it as a parting gift? Why aimlessly?
You kiss like raindrops and like time,
The poet could not come to terms with the fact that time kills a person, since he believed that “time exists for man.”
However, it (time) also wounded Boris Leonidovich Pasternak himself: they tried to accuse him of hatred and contempt for the common man, of being anti-national in the novel “Doctor Zhivago”.
It is amazing with what courage and with what sincerity the poet conveys his feelings in the poem “Nobel Prize”:
Somewhere there are people, will, light,
And behind me there is the sound of a chase,
I have no way out.
At first it seems that the poet feels driven into a corner. Reading the poem further, you understand: he not only asks a question:
What kind of dirty trick did I do?
Me, the murderer and the villain?
but he gives the answer quite convincingly and worthy:
Over the beauty of my land.
“The time will come - the spirit of good will overcome the power of meanness and malice.”
“... the whole earth was his inheritance, and he shared it with everyone.”
Music
The house rose like a tower.
Along the narrow coal stairs
The piano was carried by two strong men,
Like a bell on a bell tower.
They were dragging up the piano
Over the vastness of the city sea,
Like a tablet with commandments
On a stone plateau.
And there's an instrument in the living room,
And the city is in whistling, noise, din,
Like underwater at the bottom of legends,
Below remained underfoot.
Sixth floor tenant
I looked at the ground from the balcony,
As if holding it in your hands
And ruling over it legally.
Back inside he started playing
Not someone else's play
But my own thought, chorale,
The hum of the mass, the rustle of the forest.
The boom of improvisations carried
Boulevard in the rain, the sound of wheels,
The life of the streets, the fate of loners.
So at night, by candlelight, in return
The simple naivety of the past,
Chopin wrote down his dream
On the black cutting of the music stand.
Or, ahead of the world
For generations four,
On the roofs of city apartments
The flight of the Valkyries thundered like a thunderstorm.
Or conservatory hall
With hellish roar and shaking
Tchaikovsky shocked me to tears
The fate of Paolo and Francesco.
Features of the late lyrics of Boris Pasternak
In many studies related in one way or another to Pasternak’s work, I have come across the judgment that the poet’s “early” work is complex, while his “later” work is simpler; The “early” Pasternak was looking for himself, the “late” one found himself; In his early work there is a lot that is incomprehensible, deliberately complicated, but later it is filled with “unheard-of simplicity.”
Creative path writers, poets, artists goes through several stages. And this is not always the path from simple to complex, from superficial
to the deep or vice versa.
“Late” Pasternak (“On Early Trains” - “When It Goes Wild”) is Pasternak who found new means of creating expression. If in early creativity imagery was largely created through the use of individual linguistic means, then in the late period the poet uses general linguistic units to a greater extent.
The stanza of the verses is very diverse: a stanza can include from four (which is most typical, up to ten verses. The originality of the stanzas lies not only in the number, but also in the combinations of long and shortened verses. United by a common thought, the stanza is not necessarily complete and sometimes has syntactic and semantic the duration is as follows. For example, I noticed this in the poems “Waltz with Devilry,” “Spring Again,” “Christmas Star.” The size of the stanzas and their combinations are different here: in “Waltz with Devilry” - -6-8-6- 7-10 verses. The most interesting thing is that it is extremely difficult to trace the connection between the size of the stanzas and the theme of the poem. It is also difficult to derive any pattern in correlating the size of the stanza with the syntactic structure of the sentences filling it. For example, the second part of the poem “Waltz with Devilry” is an octave consisting of two sentences, each of which is “situated” on four verses:
Magnificence beyond strength
Ink, and sickles, and whitewash,
Blue, crimson and gold
Lions and dancers, lionesses and dandies.
The fluttering of blouses, the singing of doors,
The roar of toddlers, the laughter of mothers,
Dates, books, games, nougat,
Needles, tricks, jumps, runs.
This passage provides an example of one of the features of the late Pasternak's syntax: the use of a long chain of one-part sentences. Here the author uses an interesting stylistic device: a combination of polyunion and non-union in one stanza. The entire stanza imitates the rhythm of a waltz (the musical meter is “three quarters”), and if in the first half of the stanza (due to the polyunion) the tempo is calm, then in the second – non-union – half of the stanza the “waltzing” accelerates, reaching a maximum in the last two verses. In the third stanza:
In this ominous sweet taiga
People and things are on an equal footing.
This boron is a delicious candied fruit
The hats are selling like hot cakes.
Stifling from delicacies. Christmas tree in sweat
He drinks the darkness with glue and varnish, -
The first and fourth sentences are two-part, the second is indefinitely personal, the third is impersonal.
The syntax of late Pasternak is characterized by enumeration constructions homogeneous members offers. The latter have an external resemblance to the mentioned names. For example:
Here he is with extreme secrecy
The bend has gone beyond the streets,
Lifting up stone cubes
Blocks lying on top of each other,
Posters, niches, roofs, chimneys,
Hotels, theaters, clubs,
Boulevards, squares, clumps of linden trees,
Courtyards, gates, rooms,
Entrances, stairs, apartments,
Where all passions are played
In the name of remaking the world.
("Drive").
In my opinion, this example of sustained non-union is similar to the technique of enumeration used by the poet to create expression. Externally, a multifunctional technique is internally subject to one pattern: the combination of things of different orders in one row.
The boom of improvisations carried
Night, flames, thunder of fire barrels,
Boulevard under the rain the sound of wheels,
The life of the streets, the fate of loners.
(" Music").
Various concepts combined in one row create a multifaceted picture of reality, activate different types perception.
A similar effect of increasing expression and semantic diversity is observed not only when using (stringing together) dissimilar concepts in one row, but also with the appearance of anaphora, which is one of the leading stylistic figures in Pasternak’s late lyrics. For example:
All the thoughts of centuries, all dreams, all worlds,
The whole future of galleries and museums,
All the pranks of fairies, all the deeds of sorcerers,
All the Christmas trees in the world, all the dreams of children.
(“Christmas Star”).
In the poetry of the “late” Pasternak one also encounters the use of isolations, introductory and inserted constructions, which is so characteristic of early lyric poetry:
When your feet, Jesus,
Lean on your knees,
Maybe I'm learning to hug
Cross tetrahedral beam
And, losing my senses, I rush to the body,
Preparing you for burial.
(“Magdalene I”).
The syntactic construction can be complicated by an extended comparison or metaphor:
The sun goes down and the drunkard
From afar, for transparent purposes
Reaching through the window
With bread and a glass of cognac.
(" Winter holidays").
This is a typical stanza for Pasternak. The metaphorical nature in it is distributed unevenly. In the first sentence - The sun is setting - designation of reality, in the second - an expanded metaphor. The result of this trope organization is a cumbersome syntactic construction. The first sentence is a designation of the object of metaphorization; it sets the theme of the metaphor.
But neither the stanza nor the syntax are self-sufficient in Pasternak, which is confirmed by the lack of patterns in the construction of stanzas and sentences.
The central theme that runs through all of B. Pasternak’s work is the real world of objects, phenomena, feelings, and surrounding reality. The poet was not an outside observer of this world. He thought of the world and himself as a single whole. The author's “I” is the most active part of this indissoluble whole. Therefore, in Pasternak’s work, internal experiences are often given through an external picture of the world, and the landscape-objective world - through subjective perception. These are interdependent types of expression of the author’s “I”. Hence the personification so characteristic of Pasternak’s work, which permeates most metaphors and comparisons.
The “early” Pasternak was reproached for the complexity of metaphors and syntax; in late creativity the complexity is primarily semantic.
Pasternak's poetry has not become simpler, but has become more filigree. In such poems, when attention is not hampered by multi-stage paths, it is important not to miss the metaphors that are “hidden” behind the outwardly familiar language.
In the lyrics of the late period, phraseological units, colloquial everyday vocabulary and colloquial syntax are often found. This is especially typical for the cycle “On Early Trains,” with which, according to researchers, the “new,” “simple” Pasternak began.
IN early period creativity, the use of colloquial and everyday vocabulary in a poetic context against the general background of cross-style and book vocabulary enhanced expressiveness and surprise of perception; in the later cycles, the use of colloquial and everyday vocabulary is determined thematically, most often to recreate the realities of the situation or the speech characteristics of the hero.
Phraseological phrases used by Pasternak in his late lyrics can be divided into two groups: changed and unchanged. Both groups include phraseological units of different stylistic layers.
Modified phraseological units according to Shansky
| Phraseologisms with updated semantics and unchanged lexical and grammatical composition |
She secretly suspects that winter is full of miracles in the sieve at the extreme dacha... |
| Phraseologisms with preserved main features of semantics and structure and updated lexical and grammatical side |
Separation will eat them both, Melancholy will devour the bones. I would live in it this year to the fullest. |
| Phraseologisms given as a free combination of words |
You reach out to him from the ground, Like in the days when you haven’t yet been summed up on it. |
| Individual arts. Turns of phrase created according to the model of existing phraseological units. |
And the fire of sunset did not cool down, Just as the evening of death hastily nailed it to the wall of the Manege. |
| Merger of two phraseological units |
Once in the twilight of Tiflis I raised my foot in the winter... |
| Combining semantically similar phraseological units in one context |
Suddenly the enthusiasm and noise of the game, the tramp of the round dance, falling into tartarar, disappeared as if into water... |
Pasternak individualizes phraseological units as much as possible, which is expressed in a significant change in their lexico-grammatical and syntactic structure in accordance with certain artistic goals.
“When it clears up” - a book of poems as a whole
The book of poems “When it clears up” (1956-1959) completes the work of B.L. Pasternak. The more important and interesting is its linguistic understanding in terms of the work of the poet, his predecessors and contemporaries.
In connection with the problem posed, I will be interested in two factors: the compositional orderliness and thematic unity of the book, as well as the unity of the poetic world and its artistic system.
In November 1957, B. Pasternak determined the order of the poems and added an epigraph. This is direct evidence that the poet viewed the book as an independent organism. The poet himself pointed out the organizing role of the three poems: this is the initial credo poem “In everything I want to achieve...”; then the culminating “When it clears up...”, the title of which is used to name the entire book, reflecting a turning point in the life of both the poet and the country, and in which the worldview of the late Pasternak is revealed; the final one is “The Only Days,” in which the theme of time, one of Pasternak’s main ones, is dominant. In the first poem, all the themes of the book are pulled together into one nerve knot; it is connected figuratively, lexically with each of the poems in the book.
The sequence of all other poems is also significant. In the complex multi-level composition of the book, there is an obvious symmetrical division into such combinations of verses, in each of which any part of the dual unity “creativity - time” is actualized. In the center are 6 poems, united by the theme “creativity”: “Grass and Stones”, “Night”, “Wind”, “Road”, “In the Hospital”, “Music”. These 6 poems are framed by landscape cycles: non-winter and winter. They, in turn, are surrounded by poems where the future is brought to the fore in the theme of time, and the last 9, the theme of which is formulated by the poet himself: “I think, despite the familiarity of everything that continues to stand before our eyes and that we continue to hear and read, there is nothing more of this, it has already passed and happened, a huge, unprecedented period that cost unheard of forces has ended and passed. An immeasurably large, currently empty and unoccupied place has been freed up for something new and not yet experienced...”
Each of these cycles has an internal structure, internal dynamics of themes and images. And this whole complex structure obviously reflects a certain real sequence of biographical events.
Two principles seem to us to be the main ones that organize Pasternak’s poetic world and the figurative and linguistic system of the book. Both of them are indirectly formulated by the poet. The first principle is the bifurcation of a phenomenon, image, word; the second principle is connection, bringing together different, distant, dissimilar things.
A phenomenon, event, thing, object bifurcates. They can have contrasting, sometimes mutually exclusive properties. Time moves non-stop ( Maybe year after year follows like snow falls, or like words in a poem), and even a moment can stretch to eternity ( And the day lasts longer than a century). Space, like time, is limitless and infinite ( This is how they look into eternity from the inside In the flickering crowns of insomnia, Saints, schema-monks, kings...), but it is also enclosed within certain boundaries, frames, and has a form.
The image bifurcates either visually or verbally: the same thing is called twice, as if dividing, and to achieve this effect the trope can be duplicated, either expressively or stylistically.
A word or phrase is bifurcated, used in two or more meanings at the same time.
The word form is bifurcated, which can simultaneously have two grammatical meanings.
The second principle is manifested in “convergence”:
Phenomena of reality separated in everyday consciousness (which underlies the construction of tropes)
Language phenomena separated in everyday consciousness (prose and poetic speech; various stylistic layers)
Poetic phenomena divorced in everyday consciousness.
I. Man and the world in Pasternak’s paths are brought together not only traditionally, but also in a special way: personified phenomena, like people, wear clothes, experience the same physical or psychological state as a person; Moreover, this may be a condition that the phenomenon itself usually causes in a person. Phenomena enter into human relationships not only with each other, but also with a person, sometimes starting a direct dialogue with him, evaluating a person, and this can be a mutual assessment, and a person feels the state of nature from the inside. The ethereal materializes, takes shape, or becomes unsteady and viscous. Poems also materialize, acquiring the status of a natural phenomenon or structure. The rapprochement is especially acute if it is based on a feature that is not inherent in the object, but is initially attributed to it and then only serves as a basis for comparison.
II. The rapprochement of prose and poetry in Pasternak is mutual: “His poetry is directed towards prose, just as prose is towards poetry” (Likhachev)
The utmost intensity of feeling in prose comes from the lyrics, the reliability of details, the simplicity of syntactic structures comes from narrative prose.
The rapprochement with prose is manifested, in particular, in the fact that lyrical verse freely includes colloquial vocabulary, vernacular, obsolete or regional words. All these reduced layers do not contrast with bookish, poetic or highly expressive vocabulary, but “are placed in one general layer of lyrical utterance,” with a clear predominance of “not high” vocabulary.
Behind the simplicity and “intelligibility” lie the most skillful language “errors” that seem to have gone unnoticed by the poet. However, the fact that they literally permeate the poems indicates that for Pasternak they were a conscious device. These are “mistakes” associated primarily with a violation of the usual compatibility.
Violation of semantic compatibility is most constant in cases of replacement of a dependent word with a phraseologically related meaning of another word, and the substitute word is freely selected from words of the same semantic series with the one being replaced, and from other series. There is also such a construction of a homogeneous series when, with a word with a phraseologically related meaning, one dependent word meets the norm, the other violates it.
Violation of syntactic compatibility is most consistently associated with the omission of a dependent noun or the placement of a dependent noun with a word that usually does not have such control.
III. The convergence of traditional and non-traditional poetic phenomena can be traced through examples of poetic images and ways of connecting words in a poetic line. Pasternak also continued the tradition of constructing a poetic line based on the usual or associative connection of words. However, an asemantic connection also becomes active, which can be considered as figurative: each of the words in the line, not connected by a seme with the others, “works” on the image.
Thus, the unity of the book grows from its compositional integrity, from the unity of the principles considered. It is also based on the unity of the actual visual techniques. Literary studies have noted the kinship of Pasternak's poetics with the plastic arts: sculpture, architecture, painting. Pasternak’s creative workshop is a dyehouse; the laws of perspective are reflected in the movement; the point of movement, the direction of which is usually oblique, at an angle, is precisely indicated. Visual detail is drawn: a separate gnarled maple branch bows, one acorn dangles on a branch, one bird chirps at a branch, rings of yarn crawl and curl. Recording a fact and detail is significant. The visual picture also includes theatrical associations: scenery, costumes, poses.
In contrast to the way the world is presented, the lyrical hero is not visually represented, his presence is conveyed through an assessment of events, situations, landscape, expressed by the prevailing vocabulary of high intensity, particles, conjunctions, introductory constructions with modal-evaluative meanings, syntactic elements indicating causal event connections. “The kingdom of metonymy, awakened to independent existence,” Jacobson called Pasternak’s poetry. And we find an essential explanation of the metonymic structure of the image of the lyrical hero from Pasternak himself: Never, never, even in moments of the most gift-giving, unmemorable happiness, the highest and most exciting things left them: the pleasure of the overall sculpting of the world, the sense of responsibility they themselves had for the whole picture, the feeling of belonging to the beauty of the whole spectacle, to the whole universe. ("Doctor Zhivago").
Brief biographical information.
February 10, 1890 - birth into the family of the artist L. O. Pasternak. Mother – pianist R.I. Kaufman. In childhood - music lessons, acquaintance with the composer Scriabin.
1909 – admission to the Faculty of History and Philosophy of Moscow University.
1908-1909 - takes part in the poetry group of the poet and artist Yu. P. Anisimov. During these years, there was serious communication with circles that were grouped around the Musaget publishing house.
1912 spring – a trip for one semester to Germany, to the University of Marburg to study philosophy with Professor Hermann Cohen.
1913 – graduation from Moscow University.
1913 - in the almanac of the Lyrics group, Pasternak’s poems were published for the first time.
1914 – the first collection “Twin in the Clouds”, with a foreword by Aseev.
Pre-revolutionary – participates in the futuristic group “Centrifuge”.
1917 – the second collection “Over Barriers” was published.
1922 - the collection that brought Pasternak fame is published - “My Sister is Life.”
20s – friendship with Mayakovsky, Aseev, partly thanks to this relationship with the literary association “LEF”.
1916-1922 – collection “Themes and Variations”.
1925-26 - poem “Nine hundred and fifth year.”
1929-27 - poem “Lieutenant Schmidt”.
1925 – the first collection of prose “Childhood Grommets”.
1930 – autobiographical prose “Safety Certificate”.
1932 – a book of poems “Second Birth” is published
1934 - Pasternak’s speech at the first All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers, after which the time for Pasternak’s long publication follows. The poet is engaged in translations of Shakespeare, Goethe, Schiller, Kleist, Rilke, Verlaine.
1945 – collection “On Early Trains”.
February 1946 - the first mention of the novel.
August 3, 1946 - Pasternak reading the first chapter of the novel at his dacha in Peredelkino.
1954 – 10 poems from the novel “Doctor Zhivago” were published in the magazine “Znamya”.
End of 1955 – the latest changes have been made to the text of the novel “Doctor Zhivago”.
1957 – the novel “Doctor Zhivago” was published in Italy.
1957 – creation of autobiographical prose “People and Positions”.
1956-1959 – creation of the latest collection “When it clears up.”
October 23, 1958 – the decision of the Nobel Committee to award Pasternak the Nobel Prize;
the writer's refusal to receive a prize due to bullying in the country.
1987 - the writer was posthumously reinstated in the Writers' Union of the USSR.
1988 – the novel “Doctor Zhivago” was published in our country for the first time in the magazine “New World”.
Introduction
The 19th century sought order, harmony, and perfection in the world, even in the person of Lermontov, who started a “personal lawsuit” with God, even in the person of Tyutchev, who carried his soul in the elysium day and night, looking at the world from the heights of God. To comprehend the perfection of the world - what a task! In the 20th century, everything seems to be the other way around... The boundaries have been shifted. Order... Who invented it? The mind moves off the usual, well-worn rails; I wanted to turn it over, turn everything upside down. Knowledge gives strength. We are strong. Where are the limits of our strength? Who has the right to name this limit? And how terrible it is to get caught in this wave. And how can you avoid falling into it if you are born again? And you can re-fashion your perfection... How could you live without it? Where would we be without him? The world is beautiful!
Pasternak, by the will of his word, connects the chaotic world of the city, the planet, the Universe. The world is chaotic because it is developing and at the same time being destroyed. Pasternak's poetry connects the fragments. She is the stream of seams that prevent the ice floes from spreading. His poetry does not flow, but flies in jerks, like blood from the arteries, but behind all this one can feel the rhythm of the universe, its pulse. The closer you hear this rhythm, the clearer it is, the more intoxicated you are with the world around you and with yourself. The energy of the world is pointed at you, you absorb it and transform it into the energy of words.
Pasternak – a synthesis of the 19th and 20th centuries. Its forest boundaries, enchanted thickets, sleeping distances, the darkness of the night are not the monumentality of Mayakovsky and not the weaponization of the masses. It's detail and detail. The fraction of drops and thin icicles cannot be compared with a giant column, with the iron of trains. Pasternak’s detailed world is not the fragility of Fetov’s world, where the smell of roses spreads in the “gentle breath of grass and flowers,” and whispers of the delight of a date are heard in the azure night. Pushkin's faded joy and Lermontov's alienness to everything are canceled out by Pasternak's crazy clicking of birds, a raging, stupefied ravine, a splash of a wave, a flap of a wing, a conversation about everything.
The purpose of my work is to consider the features of Pasternak’s late lyrics, find differences between the periods of the poet’s work, and also describe in detail the stylistic and thematic aspects of his last cycle of poems, “When it clears up.”
Brief Analysis poems "Music"
Few have read Pasternak’s poems, because he is considered a “difficult” poet. However, I will try to analyze one of the poet’s later poems - “Music”.
Pasternak's world is initially musical; it is known that his first vocation is music, he wanted to devote his life to it as a child, and, obviously, if it were not for Pasternak’s categorical demand for the absolute, some of Scriabin’s arrogance towards the young musician, the poet’s fate could have been different. 15 years of his life devoted to music and writing not only objectively presuppose the musicality of his further work, but are constantly present in Pasternak’s poetry and prose. Based on his musical themes in poetry, one can see in a separate line and trace the changes in his poetic images and ideas. For this reason alone, music is not an independent theme of creativity, it is consonant with love, suffering, it marks the ups and downs of creativity, the state of inspiration; Pasternak’s music voices steps in cultural space and time.
“Music” is one of those poems that only fully reveals itself to a thoughtful and knowledgeable reader. Of course, just take and see what the words “chorale” (a musical play in the form of a religious polyphonic chant), “mass” (a choral work based on a text) mean Catholic worship), “improvisation” (creating music at the time of performance). But you need to read a lot, be familiar with serious music, love it - in a word, be an educated person in order to understand the last stanzas of the poem. Only if you know that "Ride of the Valkyries" is an episode from the musical drama of Richard Wagner, one of the world's greatest composers, will you understand what it is about: "ahead of the world by four generations." Only if you have heard Wagner’s music, you will find its echo in two lines: “The flight of the Valkyries thundered across the roofs of city apartments,” where it is no coincidence that the poet collected so many solid “GKs” and so many rolling “Rs.” If you know that, inspired by reading Dante, Tchaikovsky wrote a symphonic fantasy “Francesca da Rimini” on the theme of an episode from “Inferno” - “The Divine Comedy”, you will be able to grasp in the word infernal not only the meaning of “very strong”, but also direct meaning of this adjective: "hell's roar and crack" is "the roar and crack of hell."
This poem is amazingly constructed. At first there is no music - there is only a piano, an inanimate object (and the fact that it is carried and dragged only confirms its “objectivity, cumbersomeness”). However, comparisons give us a feeling of some kind of mysterious power contained in it: they carry it “like a bell to a bell tower” (Lermontov immediately comes to mind “... like a bell on a veche tower”); they drag him along like “a tablet with commandments,” that is, like a slab of those on which, according to legend, the laws given to people by God were written... But now the piano is raised up; both the city and its noise remained below (“like underwater at the bottom of legends”). The first 3 stanzas are over. In the next stanza the musician appears. And although he is named simply and casually: “tenant of the sixth floor,” it is under his hands that the piano will sound, come to life, and cease to be a dead object. But pay attention to the fact that the pianist does not start playing right away. The game is preceded by a moment of silence, contemplation, and a look from above at the ground. These reflections on the earth and the power of music should make clear a very unusual combination: “play your own thought” (its unexpectedness is emphasized by the fact that it comes after the quite ordinary “play a piece”). Thought, music embraces and contains everything - the life of the spirit and the life of nature. Nara becomes the strength and power of sounds. “The roll of improvisation” is again an unusual combination, but it evokes another, familiar one – a roll of thunder. Music absorbs everything: sounds, colors, light, darkness, the whole world and every person. Look how a new series of homogeneous terms - very specific words (night, flame) - unexpectedly ends with two nouns of a completely different series, with a completely different meaning: “the life of the streets, the fate of single people.”
But the man sitting at the piano is not alone. The last three stanzas are about this. They push the boundaries of time and space. Chopin, Wagner, Tchaikovsky – the world of music is huge and immortal.
“Music” is a poem that is a perfect example of the clarity and simplicity that B. Pasternak strived for. The sounds of the piano are the “roar of improvisation.”
For Pasternak, the ability to improvise is a necessary sign of a musician, which is probably explained by the time when he developed ideas about creativity, then - in music, a little later, in his youth, among the futurists, at meetings of a poetry circle, when Pasternak, sitting at the piano, musical improvisation commented on the newcomer.
The idea of the poem “Music” is similar to that heard in the poem “Improvisation” of 1915 - the world is in sounds, but now these are clear sounds rushing over the city.
In my opinion, the meaning of musical images is not only that the world sounds like music. Is this a sign of disharmony or harmony human life, fate - may you rest in peace. For Pasternak, this music is something like an absolute criterion of universal coherence. And the one who feels this music of life as his own or, while performing it, improvises, acts as a co-creator.
Music for Pasternak is also the incessant sound of time passing without stopping, like the sound of a bell - the longest musical sound, it’s not for nothing that the poem compares the piano to a bell:
The piano was carried by two strong men,
Like a bell on a bell tower.
I defined the meter in which the poem was written as a 4-foot iambic with a pyrrhic in place of the 2nd and 3rd feet. Moreover, the rhyme is precise, male-female, cross, which is very typical for the “late” Pasternak.
And I would like to finish my analysis with the words of Pasternak himself: “We drag everyday life into prose for the sake of poetry. We involve prose in poetry for the sake of Music."
Bibliography
1. J. “Russian language at school”, M., “Enlightenment”, 1990.
2. E. “Who is who”, volume 2, “Enlightenment”, 1990.
3. J. “Russian language at school”, M., “Enlightenment”, 1993.
4. E. “One Hundred Great Poets of Russia”, M., “Drofa”, 2004.
5. Book of poems by Pasternak “When it clears up”, R., 1992.
6. M. Meshcheryakova “Literature in diagrams and tables”, M., “Iris”, 2004.
Conclusion
“The gift of eternal youth”, “individual”, “lonely”, “ardent”, “strange”, “spirit of youth”, “contemplator”, “seeker”, “culture”, “talent”, “in its own way”, “ subordinated to art”, “detached from everyday life”, “poems and speech”, “intuitive understanding of life” - the dominant words characterizing Pasternak’s personality, taken from many responses about the poet scattered in the press, containing, like a code, his fate.
There are always many reasons for any truly talented artist to be incomprehensible. In the case of Pasternak, the question of understanding his poems and his prose has some kind of fatal aftertaste. The question of the perception of B.L.’s creativity Pasternak for the reader of the twentieth century, like any question about the perception of art by an individual, in my opinion, in its “broadest foundations” is connected with the question of mentality, freedom, and the horizons of our consciousness. There is no doubt that these elements, which largely determine the perception of art and its direction, change over time, are intricately transformed in the individual consciousness, interacting with the ability to perceive beauty given from nature, from ancestors, and circumstances, details, signs, the spirit of reality.
I would like to conclude my work with the words of Chukovskaya: “I said that poets are very similar to their poems. For example, Boris Leonidovich. When you hear him speak, you understand the perfect naturalness of his poetry. They are a natural extension of his thought and speech.”
Municipal educational institution
"Secondary school No. 99"
Abstract on the topic
“The late lyrics of B.L. Pasternak"
Work completed:
Nekrasova Ekaterina,
student of 11th grade "A".
Checked:
Romanova Elena Nikolaevna,
literature teacher
Kemerovo
1. Introduction………………………………………………………...3 pages.
2.Features of Pasternak’s late lyrics………………………….....4-7 pp.
3. “When it clears up” - a cycle of poems as a single whole…………..8-11 pp.
4. Brief analysis of the poem “Music”……………………....12-13 pp.
5. Brief biographical summary………………………………….14-16 pp.
6. Conclusion……………………………………………………...17 p.
7. List of references……………………………….18 pages.
8. Review……………………………………………………………19 p.
Review
What are the features of the poetry of B. L. Pasternak? D. S. Likhachev wrote: “Pasternak’s words are well known: “Being famous is ugly.” This meant that poetry, the creativity of the poet, was separated from the human poet. Only poems should be famous and “famous”. In the same way, the manuscripts of poems are separated from the poems themselves. There is no need to fuss over manuscripts or store them. Pasternak exists in poetry, and only in poetry: in poetic poetry or prose poetry. Pasternak’s poetry is... that world that again and again returns him to real reality, newly understood and increased in its meaning for him.” The poem “In everything I want to achieve...”, in my opinion, expresses Pasternak’s creative and life credo.
I want to reach everything
To the very essence.
At work, looking for a way,
In heartbreak.
The hero wants to get “to the essence of the past days,” to their cause, so that all the time he “grabs the thread” of events and destinies. He wants to “live, think, feel, love, / Make discoveries,” understanding their causes and consequences. Then, perhaps, he would have been able to deduce some pattern of what was happening.
I would plant poems like a garden.
With all the trembling of my veins
The linden trees would bloom in them in a row,
Single file, to the back of the head.
I would bring the breath of roses into poetry,
Breath of mint
Meadows, sedge, hayfields,
Thunderstorms rumble.
He cites the example of Chopin, who managed to put the life of “farm farms, parks, groves, graves” into his sketches.
Pasternak is a poet of associations. Already in the early poems (1910s), the main features inherent in Pasternak’s poetic vision of the world appear - a world where everything is so intertwined and interconnected that any object can absorb the signs of another, and events and feelings are conveyed using a seemingly random set unexpected associations, permeated with emotional tension, with the help of which they merge:
And the more random, the more true
Poems are composed out loud.
Pasternak's discovery is that he captures a world in which the beauty of God's plan is embodied, a world that was given to him “for eternal envy,” a world that must somehow be embraced and embodied.
The image of the surrounding world and the method of its transmission find their most complete embodiment on the pages of the third book of poems, “My Sister is Life,” dedicated to the summer of 1917, between two revolutions. This book is a kind of lyrical diary, where behind the poems on the themes of love, nature and creativity there are almost no concrete signs of historical time.
But the poet himself claimed that in this book he “expressed everything that can be learned about the most unprecedented and elusive revolution.” As the poet believed, the revolution should not be described by a historical chronicle in poetic form - it should be conveyed in lyrics by reproducing the lives of people and nature, engulfed in events on a universal scale.
According to Pasternak, the poet’s task is to capture a moment that is comparable to eternity, into which eternity is projected. The poet must depict the inexhaustibility of the moment:
There will be no one in the house
Except at dusk.
One Winter day in the through opening
Undrawn curtains.
Only white wet lumps
A quick glimpse of moss,
Only roofs, snow, and, except
Roofs and snow, no one.
