E.B. Artemenko, S.G. Lazutin
The name of Alexei Vasilyevich Koltsov, an original Russian poet, one of the classics of Russian literature, is rightfully named next to the names of Pushkin and Lermontov. Characterizing Russian poetry in the first years of the post-Pushkin period, Chernyshevsky wrote: “Koltsov and Lermontov appeared. All the old celebrities have faded before these new ones.”
Alexey Vasilyevich was born, lived his whole life and died in Voronezh. His father was a prasol (cattle trader). Koltsov, traveling on his father’s business and directly communicating with the people, was imbued with deep respect and sympathy for him.
The main genre of his poetry was songs, where, according to Belinsky, Koltsov’s talent was expressed in all its fullness and strength.
Koltsov's songs are distinguished by nationality, originality, and realism.
According to Dobrolyubov, “Koltsov was the first to represent a real Russian person in his songs, real life our commoners, as it is, without inventing anything.”
The theme of labor occupies a central place in Koltsov’s poetry; it is not for nothing that he was called “the poet of agricultural labor” (G. Uspensky). Dedicated to this topic best works Koltsov “The Plowman’s Song”, “Mower”, “Harvest” and others.
Drawing bright pictures rural nature, Koltsov by no means idealized peasant life, as sentimentalist poets did, but truthfully spoke about the difficult peasant lot, inescapable poverty and need. This is evidenced by the names of many of his songs: “Bitter Share”, “Thought of a Villager”, “Grief”, “Crossroads”, “The Poor Man’s Share” and others.
Koltsov loved his people and knew their mentality and character well. Therefore, poor Koltsov is not only sad, but is ready to “stand up for himself in the face of trouble”:
And so that with grief at the feast
Be with a cheerful face;
To go to death -
Songs to be sung by the nightingale!
"Path"
In this regard, Belinsky wrote: “The sadness of the Russian soul has a special character... His sadness does not interfere with irony, sarcasm, wild joy, or revelry of youth: it is the sadness of a strong, powerful, indestructible soul.”
A singer of folk life, Koltsov painted it with the help of vernacular. “Koltsov’s songs are written in a special meter, close to the size of our folk songs, but much more correct. In them for the most part there is no rhyme, and if there is, it is most often through verse. Koltsov’s language is completely simple, folk,” wrote N.A. Dobrolyubov. Choosing the work and life of a peasant plowman as the main objects of his creativity, Koltsov uses the appropriate vocabulary: steppe, fields, arable land, mowing, harvest, grain, rye, oats, ear, sheaf, stacks, sickle, scythe, plow, plow, harrow , farmstead, village, hut, kuren, porch, barn, granary, threshing floor, mowers, miller, godfather, peasant, caftan, bast shoes, onuchi, porridge, lard, mash, horse, horse, cows, oxen.
The nationality of the poet's language was especially clearly manifested in the fact that he perfectly mastered the arsenal of artistic and linguistic means of Russian folklore. They organically entered language system his poetry.
Koltsov’s work is characterized by the use of an extensive, specifically folklore, lexical layer: the heroes of a number of his works are a young man and a girl, their parents, father and mother; the characters of his works live in a mansion, his betrothed sits in a small room, etc. Folklore combinations with constant epithets are very widely represented in the poet’s works: his fellow is kind or daring, the girl is red, his friend is dear, people are kind, his eyes are clear , eyebrows are black, head is violent, tears are flammable. A tall tower, stone chambers, a wide courtyard, planked gates, an open field, damp earth, a fast river, a blue sea, violent winds, dark clouds, etc.
Koltsov’s adjectives in these combinations, like folk poetry, often perform in short form: good fellow, young wife, clear eyes, oak tables, wide steppe.
With the same lexical content as in a folk song or a new one, but based on the model of folk songs, Koltsov also builds combinations with an appendix: mother-earth, earth-mother, Volga-mother, oak-grove-mother, fate-stepmother, soul- maiden, darling girlfriends, love-soul, wet nurse, etc.
Following folk poetry, Koltsov widely uses various synonymous combinations, borrowing them directly from folklore or creating them in the image and likeness of folklore combinations: sadness-melancholy, grief-need, sadness-sorrow, lament-suffer, dry-wither, sick-sad joy- fun, path-path, spell-telling, walking-drinking, etc. For example:
The sadness and melancholy fell heavy
On a twisted head...
Cheating on your betrothed
Since then, with grief and need, I
I wander around strange corners...
"Village Trouble"
Often in the poet’s work there are also tautological combinations: bitter grief, free will, winter, mind-mind, think a little thought, full and full.
A striking feature of the folklore linguistic system, dating back to colloquial speech formations, are constructions in which the relationship between the whole and its part is expressed by the use of two names in one case form: cock - golden comb, deer - golden horns, shoe - bound heel, etc. Thus, in folklore, emphasis is achieved artistic attribute.
We find similar or similar constructions in Koltsov’s songs: steppe-grass, dawn-evening, bad weather-wind, wind-cold, cloud-storm, arc-rainbow, sadness-thought, love-longing, yard-porch, etc. d.
The poet’s use of appeals also goes back to the folk-linguistic tradition. Coming from folk song appeal to inanimate objects, natural phenomena Koltsov plays a significant role in the poeticization of the work of the Russian peasant and the nature surrounding him. Often a chain of such requests turns out to be structural basis a whole poetic picture, for example:
Get itchy, shoulder!
Swing your hand!
Smell it in your face
Wind since noon!..
Buzz, scythe,
Like a swarm of bees!
Mologney, braid,
Sparkle all around!
Make some noise, grass,
Podkoshonaya;
Bow down, flowers,
Head to the ground!..
"Mower"
In Koltsov’s songs we encounter stylistic devices characteristic of folklore. This and syntactic parallelism:
Make way, dark forests;
Separate, the rivers are fast;
You are dusty, little path;
Give me a message, my little bird
“Make way, dark forests...”
and positional repeat:
Forgive me now, father and mother,
Forgive me now, my dear friend,
Forgive me now, both the steppe and the forest,
Dear life, the whole wide world. "War Song"
suffixes of subjective assessment, mainly diminutive:
The sun comes out of the big forest,
We will plow the pashenka early with the sivka,
Let's prepare the seed for a holy cradle...
"The Plowman's Song"
A villager's reflection and two-prefix verbs, and verb forms with multiple suffixes:
Black cloud
frowned,
frowned,
What were you thinking...
"Harvest"
A fine fellow lived in his village,
I didn’t know anything, I didn’t know anything...
On Sunday, from morning to night,
He played songs in a round dance...
"Village Trouble"
The creative use of the language and style of Russian folklore gave Koltsov's poetry a vibrant originality. Belinsky wrote about Koltsov that “his best songs represent an amazing wealth of the most luxurious, most original images in highest degree Russian poetry. From this side, the language is as amazing as it is inimitable.” We unmistakably recognize Koltsov from one or two lines from his songs. Koltsov’s songs, deeply folk and at the same time uniquely original in their content, intonation, language and style, forever left the name of the Voronezh poet in Russian literature.
L-ra: Russian speech. – 1979. - No. 5. – P. 22-26.
Keywords: Alexey Koltsov, criticism of Koltsov’s work, Koltsov’s work, download criticism, download for free, Russian literature of the 19th century, download abstract, Koltsov’s poetry
"The poetics of early Yesenin is connected, first of all, with traditions folk art. Mine creative path the poet began by imitating folklore. In his autobiography, he recalled: “I began to write poetry, imitating ditties. The poems were accompanied by songs that I heard around me...”?
The poet's deep connection with folklore was uninterrupted throughout his life. He collected ditties, of which he had about four thousand. S. Yesenin’s mother was considered the best songwriter in the village, and his father also sang well. Grandfather Titov, who raised Yesenin, knew many songs by heart. Yesenin was familiar with the work of many Russian poets: Pushkin, Lermontov, Koltsov, Yazykov, Nikitin and others.
From childhood, the poet absorbed the everyday life of his native village: with songs, beliefs, ditties that he heard and which became the source of his creativity.
Already in his early poetry, S. A. Yesenin uses song and chat motifs, images of oral lyrics, which changed somewhat under the pen of the poet: new meaningful details appeared in the text, new depiction techniques appeared. Naturally, in his work, S. Yesenin was able to combine high poetry and living reality, folklore and individuality.
Yesenin usually set himself two tasks: firstly, he sought to preserve its original traditional spirit in the plot, and secondly, he made every effort to make his composition sound more original.
Yesenin uses elements of folk poetics when revealing the characters of the hero, when depicting various moods, external details of the portrait, when describing nature and to convey “color”. His poetry is of a folk song nature. What can the title of the poet’s first collection of poetry, “Radunitsa,” indicate? The title and content of the collection are associated with a cycle of spring folk songs, which were called “Radovitsky” or “Radonitsky vesnyaki”. They show the spring mischievous joy of young awakening life.
Studying the work of S. Yesenin, one can notice that the poet was also attracted to various love situations: inviting a bride on a date, betraying a sweetheart and the experiences of a young man caused by this event, thinking about a young girl about her sad fate, which is predicted for her by signs of nature, and so on.
Before all the changes in Yesenin’s creative practice, a method was developed associated with the introduction of his own lyrical hero into a traditional plot scheme. This can be seen in the example of the poem “Under the wreath of forest daisies...” (1911). The material for it was a folk song, which talks about a girl who lost her ring and with it the hope of happiness:
I lost my ring
I lost my love.
And along this ring
I will cry day and night.
Yesenin outlined this event in the following way: he made the main character not a girl dreaming of marriage, but a village carpenter who is repairing a boat on the river bank and accidentally drops “the cutie’s ring into the jets of a foamy wave.” The ring is carried away by a pike, and after this incident it is learned that the girl he loves has found a new friend. Poet retelling folklore story, concretizes it, as a result of which new, author’s images arise:
My ring was not found
I went out of sadness to the meadow,
The river laughed after me:
The cutie has a new friend.
New images have been "revived" lyrical action, thereby giving it a “shade of reality.” This corresponded to the poet’s task at the first stage of his work with folklore. Subsequently, Yesenin began to adhere to other rules, creating works with an oral artistic basis. He began to strive to ensure that, without losing touch with the traditional text in his key points, “move away from it” in the selection of poetic images and details. IN in this case new poems appeared, only vaguely reminiscent of the original. An example is the poem “The reeds rustled over the backwater...” (1914). It echoes the famous folk song “I remember when I was still young.”
On a folklore basis, S. Yesenin also created a panoramic lyrical sketch, filling it with various figurative details collected from many folklore texts:
And at our gates
The korogod girls are dancing.
Oh, bathed, oh, bathed,
The korogod girls are dancing.
To whom is grief, to whom is sin,
And we have joy, and we have laughter.
Oh, bathed, oh, bathed,
And we have joy, and we have laughter.
("Lights are burning across the river", 1914-1916)
Enthusiastic intonation is characteristic of many of Yesenin’s works of folklore origin. In such a lyrical manner they wrote “It’s a dark night, I can’t sleep...”, “Play, play, little Talyanochka, raspberry furs...”, “The scarlet color of dawn is woven on the lake...”. Special character The attitude of the young poet, brought up in a family where fun, jokes, sayings, ditties were commonplace, played an influential role in his work.
A new round of development in the folklore creativity of S. Yesenin dates back to 1915-1916. The poet turns to new genres in his creative practice: family and everyday, comic, calendar, ritual songs, trying to convey their genre characteristics. S. Yesenin knew ritual poetry well. Both calendar and family rituals are reflected in his work. Widely showing folk life, the poet could not ignore this form of folk culture existing in Russian society. These are Maslenitsa rituals, St. Thomas Week, the magic of Ivan Kupala - they have firmly entered the poetic world of S. Yesenin:
Mother walked through the forest in Bathing Suit,
Barefoot, with pads, she wandered through the dew
I was born with songs in a grass blanket,
The spring dawns twisted me into a rainbow.
I grew to maturity, grandson of the Kupala night,
The dark witch prophesies happiness for me.
("Mother", 1912)
In 1918, a book was published of Yesenin’s collection of ditties, where he cites several works of his own composition. For example:
I was sitting on the sand
At the high bridge.
There is no better poem
Alexandra Blokova.
Bryusov dances along Tverskaya
Not a mouse, but a rat.
Uncle, uncle, I'm big
Soon I'll be bald.
(“I was sitting on the sand,” 1915-1917)
For some time S. Yesenin did not write in folk genres and only in 1924-1925. in his poetry, song and ditty motifs will “sound” again (“Song”, “Oh you, sleigh ...”, “Talyanka rash rings ...”).
Often Yesenin, using the rich experience of folk poetry, resorts to the technique of personification. The bird cherry tree is “sleeping in a white cape,” the willows are crying, the poplars are whispering, “the blizzard is crying like a gypsy violin,” “the spruce girls are sad,” “it’s like a pine tree is tied with a white scarf,” etc. But, in contrast from oral folk art, Yesenin “humanizes” the natural world. Sometimes two descriptions are parallel:
Green hairstyle,
Girlish breasts,
O thin birch tree,
Why did you look into the pond?
(“Green hairstyle…”, 1918)
This poem shows a young slender birch tree, which is so likened to a girl that we involuntarily find ourselves “captured by the feelings” caused by the separation of lovers. Such “humanization” is not typical of folklore.
It is worth noting that S. Yesenin often uses the symbolism of images. Some images are so beloved by the author that they run through all of his lyrics (birch, maple, bird cherry). Colors are also important in the author’s poetry.
The poet's favorite colors are blue and light blue. These colors enhance the feeling of the immensity of the expanses of Russia, creating an atmosphere of the bright joy of existence (“blue falling into the river”, “blue evening, moonlit evening”).
The most important place in Yesenin’s work is occupied by epithets, comparisons and metaphors. They are used as a means of painting, they convey the variety of shades of nature, the richness of its colors, the external portrait features of the heroes (“fragrant bird cherry”, “the red moon was harnessed to our sleigh like a foal”, “in the darkness the damp moon, like a yellow raven... hovering above the ground " and etc.). Quite a lot important role in Yesenin's poetry, as in folk songs, repetitions play. They are used to express state of mind person to create a rhythmic pattern. S. Yesenin uses repetitions with rearrangement of words:
Trouble has befallen my soul,
Trouble befell my soul.
("Flowers", 1924)
The poetry of Sergei Yesenin is full of appeals. And often these are appeals to nature: "Lovely birch thickets!".
In the poem “Rus”, in the poems “Patterns”, “Mother’s Prayer” S. Yesenin spoke with pain about the people’s grief, about the sadness of the Russian village. And his feelings, his poems were consonant with ditties about the hated soldiery, about the fate of peasant boys in the war:
Take a walk warriors,
Last holidays for you.
The horses are harnessed
The chests are packed.?
Thus, folklore helped S. Yesenin become deeply national poet, reflect the national character of the worldview, convey the way of thinking of the people, their feelings and moods, as well as instill new images of the landscape of Russian nature into literary and song creativity. Folklore for Yesenin was a source of understanding of life, national character, customs and psychology of the Russian people.
Koltsov’s artistic originality is revealed with particular force in his landscape painting. In his poems, nature is inseparable from people and their work, from everyday human worries, joys, sorrows and thoughts.
According to Saltykov-Shchedrin, this is why “Koltsov is great, this is why his talent is powerful, that he never becomes attached to nature for nature’s sake, but everywhere he sees a person soaring above it.”
Paintings created by Koltsov native land fresh and new. “The beautiful dawn caught fire in the sky” (“The Plowman’s Song”), and the ripening rye “Smiles at a merry day” (“Harvest”). In the poem “Why are you sleeping, peasant?..” (1839) Koltsov finds unique colors to describe late autumn:
After all, it’s already autumn in the yard
Looking through the spindle...
— and Russian village winter:
Winter follows her
He walks in a warm fur coat,
The path is covered with snow,
It crunches under the sleigh.
Koltsov knows how to speak in his own way about the free Russian steppe. Reading the poem “Mower” (1836), it seems that you see its entire endless expanse, breathe in the smell of its herbs and flowers. For the Koltsovo mower, it is not only spacious, but also somehow especially joyful and bright:
Oh, my steppe,
The steppe is free,
You are wide, steppe,
Spread out...
In the poem “Harvest” (1835), a slowly approaching cloud darkens, grows, “is armed with thunder, storm, fire, lightning,” and then, as if after a moment’s calm, it
Up in arms -
And expanded
And hit
And it spilled
A big tear...
In this stanza, consisting almost entirely of verbs, the very rhythm and selection of sounds (primarily the sonorous consonants “r” and “l”) greatly contribute to the depiction of powerful rumbles of thunder and gushing rain. The “and” sound that precedes them gives verbs especially great dynamism, breadth, and strength.
One of the features of Koltsov’s poetic mastery is the accuracy, specificity, almost visual palpability of the image with exceptional economy and brevity artistic means. Having organically accepted folk song speech, the poet developed his own style corresponding to the theme, his own imagery, his own special voice.
Koltsov strives for fresh and precise words (in the sense of conveying a certain psychological state), comparisons and metaphors akin to the very spirit of folk song creativity. This feature of Koltsov’s realistic poetics is clearly manifested in the song “The Poor Man’s Share” (1841), where the author was able to simply and at the same time convey in a completely new way the bitterness of the experiences of a peasant farmer, hidden from the eyes of people:
From the soul sometimes
Joy will burst forth -
Evil mockery
He'll be poisoned in no time.
Speech elements that come directly from folklore (“And you sit, look, Smiling; And in your soul you curse the bitter Share!”) are natural and artistically justified for the poet.
We see original mastery in the instrumentation, melody, metric and rhythm of Kol’tsov’s poems. Koltsov’s widely used pentasyllabic and iambic trimeter with dactylic endings, internal rhymes, repetitions and alliteration give his poems the semantic expressiveness and musicality noted above.
And when you read, for example, the song “Don’t make noise, rye...”, you clearly see that even its very size is very suitable for the sad mood with which this poem is filled:
Heavier than the mountains
Darker than midnight
Lay on my heart
Black Duma!
No less expressive is such a Koltsovo song as “The Last Kiss”. In its instrumentation, attention is drawn to the first and second lines, where the sounds “l”, “p” (“kiss, dove, caress”) are clearly heard, the third and fourth - with the sound “r” standing out in them (“Once again, hurry up, kiss me hot."
Repetitions of words and internal rhymes are also found (“Don’t yearn, don’t grieve, don’t shed tears from your eyes”). All this gives the lyrical intonation of Koltsov’s songs a musicality, which was so highly appreciated by M. Balakirev, who wrote his own on the words of this poem famous romance. According to reviewsTs. A. Cui, the romance represents the most perfect example of the fusion of music with text into one harmonic whole.
In general, it should be noted that Koltsov played an exceptional role in the development of the domestic musical culture. His lines inspired the creation of wonderful works by such composers as Glinka, Varlamov, Gurilev, Dargomyzhsky, Balakirev, Rimsky-Korsakov, Mussorgsky, Rubinstein, Rachmaninov, Grechaninov, Glazunov and others.
Koltsov enriched our poetry with unartificial Russian speech. Avoiding any deliberate “beauty,” he introduces into his poems ordinary words, taken from the living folk language, giving them a special poetic flavor. According to Belinsky’s definition, Koltsov’s songs “boldly included bast shoes, and torn caftans, and disheveled beards, and old onuchi - and all this dirt turned into pure gold of poetry for him” (9, 534).
Using the colloquial speech of peasants, Koltsov carefully selects the most typical things in it, which helps him more clearly express the feelings and thoughts of the people, and truthfully show the life of common people. In “The Second Song of Likhach Kudryavich” (1837) we read:
Kaftanishka torn
You'll pull it over your shoulders,
Ruffle your beard
You'll pull your hat down,
You will become quiet
On someone else's shoulders...
Koltsov is extremely characterized by the frequent use of diminutives speech forms, which in to the greatest extent correspond to folk style:
The sadness and melancholy fell heavy
On a twisted head...
Take my awesome thing...
Proverbs and sayings, organically interspersed into the speech of his lyrical hero, are typical for Koltsov’s songs. For example, in “The Bitter Valley” (1837):
Without love, without happiness
I wander around the world:
I'll get rid of trouble -
I will meet with grief!
The significance of Koltsov in history Russian literature is determined by his indissoluble connection with the people, which, according to Belinsky, found bright expression in the poet’s artistic reproduction of peasant life and the character traits, mindset and feelings of ordinary Russian people. It was these most important aspects of Koltsov’s creativity that had the most fruitful impact on Russian poetry.
Based on the literary and aesthetic concept of Belinsky, revolutionary democrats 60s considered poetic heritage Koltsov in accordance with the new and increased demands put forward by the era for a comprehensive display of life in its essential manifestations.
In his first statements about Koltsov (1858), Dobrolyubov defines him as a poet who, by the very essence of his talent, was close to the people. At the same time, the critic directly and, perhaps, even overly categorically pointed out the insufficient connection between Koltsov’s works and socio-political issues.
According to Dobrolyubov, “Koltsov lived the life of the people, understood its sorrows and joys, and knew how to express them. But his poetry lacks a comprehensive view; The simple class of the people appears in solitude from common interests...”
Dobrolyubov was able to highlight and highly appreciate that “real healthy” side of Koltsov’s poems, which, according to the critic, needed to be “continued and expanded.” Dobrolyubov emphasized the inextricable connection between advanced Russian poetry and Koltsovo traditions. Saltykov-Shchedrin also wrote about the significance of these traditions for Russian literature: “The whole series modern writers who devoted their work to the fruitful development of the phenomena of Russian life, there are a number of successors to Koltsov’s work.”
Koltsov’s artistic heritage was especially dear to N. A. Nekrasov. Speaking about Koltsov as a truly original poet, he put him on a par with our greatest poets - Pushkin, Lermontov, Zhukovsky, Krylov.
In Nekrasov’s work, the theme of labor introduced into poetry by Koltsov found a further continuation. Nekrasov gave her the political edge that Koltsov lacked. Nekrasov was undoubtedly close to the folk view of the physical and spiritual beauty of working people expressed in Koltsov’s songs.
Koltsov’s experience largely prepared Nekrasov’s appeal to folklore, to the living colloquial speech of peasants. Nekrasov, to some extent, can be considered a successor of Koltsov in the field of versification. Very indicative in this regard is the poem “Who Lives Well in Rus',” in which Koltsov’s predominantly iambic trimeter with dactylic endings is widely used.
The tradition of Koltsov is also noticeable in the work of the poet of the Nekrasov camp, I. S. Nikitin. Relying on artistic experience his predecessors and, above all, Koltsov, he turned directly to the life of the common people, drawing themes and images from it. In Nikitin’s poems (“Made noisy, went on a walk...”, “Song of the Bobyl,” “Inheritance,” “A rogue merchant was driving from the fair...”, “Get rid of it, melancholy...”, etc.) there is a clear focus on folk -song beginning, which is so fully presented in Koltsov.
In line with Koltsov’s traditions, the work of the democratic poet I.Z. Surikov also develops. The influence of the author of “Mower” is felt in such well-known works as “Eh, you, share ...”, “Are you a head, little head ...”, “In the steppe”, etc. Surikov’s poem “In a green garden there is a nightingale. .." is a development poetic motive female share, developed by Koltsov in his song “Oh, why me...”.
Traces of Koltsov’s influence are also noticeable in the works of songwriters S. F. Ryskin (1860-1895), E. A. Razorenov (1819-1891), N. A. Panov (1861-1906) and others. Problematics and poetics of Koltsov’s poems found further development in the creative practice of S. D. Drozhzhin: the theme of peasant labor reflected in his poems genetically goes back to “The Plowman’s Song” and “The Harvest.”
Koltsov had a particularly great and fruitful influence on the artistic development of Sergei Yesenin. In the poem “Oh, Rus', flap your wings...” the poet directly writes about himself as a follower of Koltsov. Lyrical motives and the images of the Russian songbook have a direct echo in the poems of M. Isakovsky, A. Tvardovsky, N. Rylenkov and others Soviet poets, whose work is deeply and organically connected with folk song.
An artist of an innovative nature, A.V. Koltsov managed to create such original, deeply national examples of democratic poetry that his name deservedly took one of the first places among the remarkable Russian poets.
History of Russian literature: in 4 volumes / Edited by N.I. Prutskov and others - L., 1980-1983.
Was right. The best of what Koltsov wrote has forever entered the treasury of our national artistic culture. These are song poems about rustling rye, about a plowman who rode out into the field in the light of dawn, about a nightingale singing about love, hopes and sadness, poems about steppe grass withering autumn time, about the young man’s curls curled with hops, about bitter grief, sown somewhere and grown somewhere, but so familiar to the poor man. However, Koltsov is interesting to us not only for his well-known poems that have become songs, but, for example, for the following lines:
Boring and joyless
I spent a century of youth:
In vain pursuits
I have not seen red days;
Lived in the steppes with cows,
Sadness walked in the meadows,
Through the fields with a horse
One grieved.
Koltsov’s life and everyday life are full of interest for us. He attracts even with his imitative poems. The poet sought mastery from Pushkin, for whom he felt such a reverent feeling that he admitted to V.G. Belinsky: “If literature has given me anything, it is this: I saw Pushkin...” (letter dated March 25, 1841).
Gifted by nature with a vivid imagination and intelligence, Koltsov followed his calling as an artist, overcoming many obstacles. The poet did not meet with understanding in his own family, did not immediately realize the lies of the advice of those of the capital’s writers who wanted to make him an official poet: on the gold leaf of loyal poetry - such as the poem about the royal family “Hurray!” - they put the stigma of real poetry.
In Voronezh, Koltsov had friends who appreciated his talent and helped him with books and advice. They supported the young man's faith in himself. And after some time she gave him friendship with Belinsky. The critic’s instructions helped the poet a lot, but even before meeting him, Koltsov understood who he should look up to in poetry, what to make the subject of creativity: natural sensitivity and a direct sense of beauty had an impact. “And the steppe enchanted me again,” the poet wrote to Belinsky (July 15, 1836). “Again” - as in early youth.
A born lyricist, Koltsov wrote a lot and passionately about love. He has a song “If I meet you...”. It talks about a happy time of love: Koltsov loved a serf girl who lived in her father’s house; love turned out to be so short. By her father's order, her beloved was taken far to the steppe, to the Don. She died early. Koltsov bitterly experienced the loss... Trouble was still ahead, but for now the poet wrote with delight:
If I meet you or see you, what a thrill, what a fire will spill in my chest.
The feeling resulted in words of passionate confession:
If you look, soul, I am burning and trembling, and I stand insensitive and dumb before you! If you say something to me, in response to your speeches, in response to your greetings, I can’t find out what to say.
Such a system poetic speech could be truly found only through the experience of an uncontrollable emotional impulse:
And for your kisses, And for living delights On earth people have no expression!
The poet also finds such words;
Virgo is the joy of the soul, This is life - we live! I don’t want another Life in my life!
Having written the poem, Koltsov returned to it more than once, changing individual words, removed entire lines, added new ones, but the movement of feeling running through the entire poem was found from the very beginning, in the first edition...
Koltsov’s life was full of that same sadness that filled him to the brim folk life. In the letter of the poet V.G. Belinsky dated September 28, 1839, there is one remarkable judgment that very accurately characterizes the vital soil of Koltsov’s emotional experiences: “... the whole reason is dryness, this timelessness of our region, present and future hunger. Everywhere you look there are sad faces; fields, burnt steppes bring despondency and sadness to the soul, and the soul is unable to think or think anything.”
The feeling of people's joys and sorrows as his own allowed Koltsov to unusually artistically reproduce peasant life.
In the poem “Harvest,” the poet looks at everything through the eyes of a farmer: the rain that fell on the earth, exhausted by the heat of the sun, is a great joy for Koltsov. Deep satisfaction, even jubilation, is heard in the lines:
The earth has drunk its fill of water;
To the fields, gardens To the green
Rural people
They won't see enough.
Only a person who took the concerns and thoughts of the common people to heart could write like this.
With Koltsov, plowmen, mowers, harvesters, and cheerful, daring workers came to poetry. The poetry of peasant work rises to true apotheosis. The tone of the verse is the fullness of the joyful feeling of labor:
Let's bleach the iron on the damp earth...
Already in his very first poetic experiments, Koltsov asked complex questions about the structure of the universe, about the limitlessness visible world, about understanding the secrets of nature, about the purpose of man on earth. Nature appeared to the poet’s eyes in all the splendor of its beauty, surprising with its harmony, as if by the deliberate connection of its links. A feeling of surprise and delight at the world dictated the poet’s simple-minded lines:
Clouds carry water, Water feeds the earth, The earth bears fruit; The abyss of stars in the sky, the abyss of life in the world; Sometimes dark, sometimes bright Wonderful nature...
The poet's poems surprise us with the art with which they are composed; I am amazed by the unmistakably found relationship, the connection of the parts. Koltsov gives the presentation of his thoughts strict consistency and order. The song “I have a lot...” has five stanzas, and the first four begin the same way:
I have a lot
Pearls and furs,
Precious clothes
Multi-colored cows.
I have a lot
For feasts - silver,
For conversations of red words,
For fun - wine!
The owner of fabulous wealth has a mansion, fields, forests, many villages, people, acquaintances. We are waiting: will this speech end somehow? And then the stanza ends, short, strong, - it immediately makes the whole song one complete whole:
But I know what I’m looking for in magical herbs; But I know what I'm sad about with myself...
The poem depicted the drama of human fate: there is power given by wealth, but it is powerless before love. The relationship between the parts of the poem, the sequence and order in the development of thought came entirely from the general plan. In the mastery of composition - in the strict simplicity of the structure of the poem, in the clarity and thoughtfulness of dividing the work into parts - one can see the poet of Pushkin's time.
The poet's poems are alien to both excess and lack of imagery. The poem “The Forester's House” is indicative in this regard. It tells about a house lost in the forest: its gates are locked. Who lives here? Fisherman? A robber now saving his soul through prayer?
Forest elder with his wife,
With a young third daughter.
He has lived here for a long time,
The royal forest is on guard.
The gate is locked because of my daughter.
The forester is afraid for her:
To the stone chambers
The rich merchant did not take away;
So that the district boyar
I wouldn't cling to a young woman
An untidy dodder,
So as not to make her miserable.
There is a wonderful understatement in the poem. She leaves room to the imagination. What is clear is that the remote region conceals the possibility of human drama. The artistic measure was observed - the poet made our imagination work: this would not have happened if he had told us more about the forester and his daughter.
Each type and genre of poetry has its own style system, outside of which they do not exist. This becomes obvious when it comes to Koltsov’s poems, which became romances. The poet's romance songs are characterized by intensity in the expression of feelings - without this property there is no romance. The author followed the stylistic tradition of the genre. An example of a song he created, which became a popular romance, is “Separation” (“Nazaré of Foggy Youth...”):
What are you before her, May morning, You, green oak mother, Steppe grass - silk brocade, Dawn - evening, night - sorceress!
The poet could not imagine his lyrics without folklore, just as millions of people could not imagine their lives without it. Songs, proverbs, parables, fairy tales - it was a whole artistic world, a world of habitual life comparisons, likenings, poetic associations that became part of everyday life, language, customs and rituals. Like many other songs by Koltsov, “Oh, why did they hand me over by force...” in a significant part repeats folklore. Undoubtedly, the poet heard them singing in Voronezh:
Ah, if only there were no frosts on the flowers, And in winter the flowers would bloom; Oh, if I weren’t sad, I wouldn’t be grieving about anything.
The folklore image takes on a new meaning in Koltsov:
Do not grow grass after autumn; Don't let flowers bloom in the snow in winter!
The poet also borrowed from the people the image of ships sailing from across the sea with gold - and gold is poured onto the floor, rather than help a ruined person.
Composition
The poetry of A. V. Koltsov seems to be unexpected for the 30s of the 19th century, but at the same time it is natural, as it testifies to the process of democratization of Russian culture. Koltsov was brought up in a provincial (Voronezh) philistine environment, received no education and was self-taught in the literal and precise sense of the word, that is, he studied himself, all his life, without which, of course, he could not have become a real poet.
Koltsov’s path into literature was unusual; both the content and form of his poems were unusual for that time. With Koltsov, the people entered Russian literature - not only as an object of study, depiction, admiration, etc., but as a subject, as a creator, a creator of aesthetic values. It is no coincidence that the Russian revolutionary democrats greeted him so highly and so highly valued the meaning and significance of Koltsov’s poems. Belinsky believed that “after the name of Lermontov, the most brilliant poetic name in modern Russian poetry is the name of Koltsov.” Koltsov’s work reflected that passion philosophical issues, which was characteristic of the poetry of the 30s. His “thoughts” express the young poet’s deep reflections on the meaning human life, the secrets with which the history of mankind is full. But Koltsov’s talent was fully demonstrated in his songs.
Nowhere and never do Koltsov sound notes of sentimental pity or lordly condescension. His heroes, aware of their right to a reasonable and bright life, are depicted as people capable of deep thinking and deep feelings, eager for a wide and free space of life. These Tendencies are also manifested in Koltsov’s development of family and everyday motifs traditional for oral folk art. His songs are imbued with the poetry of earthly love, joy, happiness, contrasted with the dullness of prosaic everyday life. There is nothing in common here with the traditions of “light poetry” of Batyushkov and his followers with the elements of bookishness and some “secondary” feelings that sometimes appear in them. Koltsov’s characters reveal true sincerity, soulful beauty, freshness and spontaneity in the expression of intimate experiences.
The close connection of Koltsov’s work with the world of oral folk art is undeniable, but in folklore he uses not the “letter”, but the “spirit”, does not imitate one or another folklore genre, but creatively develops and enriches the best traditions folk poetry. Pushkin and Lermontov followed the same path.
Koltsov's works are not stylization or imitation. The poet is organically close to the poetics of folklore, which freely and naturally becomes a style-forming factor in his poetry, giving it the features of true originality and uniqueness. The same applies to the originality of Koltsov’s verse. Using the rhythmic features of folk songs, he creates his own, Koltsovsky verse - without rhymes, as usual in folklore, but based primarily on literary meters.
Koltsov’s work is an important and necessary link in the history of Russian literature. Democratism, poeticization of peasant labor, the enormous power of life affirmation, deep sympathy for the people in their joys and sorrows, remarkable songcraft - all this determined the important role that the poet played in the history of Russian culture. His works, his very personality, acquired great importance for Belinsky, being clear evidence of the enormous spiritual forces hidden within the people. Koltsov’s work gave the great critic a reason and basis to develop important historical, literary and theoretical judgments about nationality, the relationship between folklore and literature, about the positive beginning in Russian poetry, about Russian national character and about a new type of democratic writer (see his article “On the life and writings of Koltsov,” 1845).
Koltsov’s creative experience was very important for Nekrasov. Direct Impact Koltsov was experienced by the democratic poets I. S. Nikitin, I. S. Surikov, and already in the 20th century - S. Yesenin.
Koltsov's poetry had beneficial influence on many poets fraternal peoples, in particular on the outstanding Belarusian poets Yakub Kolas and Yanka Kupala. Koltsov was also connected with Ukrainian literature. He himself wrote poetry in Ukrainian and was familiar with E. Grebenka. Shevchenko treated the first Russian poet who emerged from the people with exceptional attention. This attention was reflected in Shevchenko's letters, diary, poetry and prose. There are many things that bring Koltsov and Shevchenko together: the themes of the works, and figurative system. The focus on the simple democratic reader affected not only ideological content, but also on the artistic originality of their poetry. Franko and Grabovsky highly valued the work of the wonderful Russian poet. On Ukrainian language his works were translated by B. Grinchiko, M. Staritsky and others.
Chernyshevsky, speaking about a new period in the development of Russian literature, headed by Gogol and Belinsky, noted: “Probably, Koltsov would have become third in this row if he had lived longer or circumstances had allowed his mind to develop earlier” (3, 765).