The pathos of Baratynsky's poetry. Search for the language of poetry of thought. Elegiac world poet: his themes and stylistic originality. The collection “Twilight” is the result of Baratynsky’s creative biography. The fate of his poetry is in posterity.

The pathos of Baratynsky's poetry

Poet Pushkin era, who was closely acquainted not only with Pushkin, but also with the poets of his circle, who often turned to the themes, motifs, and images of their work as “forms of time,” Evgeniy Abramovich Baratynsky (his last name is often written “Boratynsky”; 1800-1844) introduced into his poetry Lermontov's sentiments, acutely aware of the approaching era of social twilight. He contrasted the charm and illusions of the era of civil exaltation with the disappointment and lack of ideality of the era of timelessness.

In the middle of his life path and almost at the beginning of his creative development, he writes two poems - “Muse” and “My gift is poor and my voice is not loud...”. These are not just programmatic works or aesthetic manifestos, but original auto-monuments, an attempt to define oneself, one’s place in history and predict one’s destiny.

I am not blinded by my Muse:

They won't call her beautiful...

And further, throughout the entire 12th verse, almost every line is crowded with negative particles“not” and “neither”, soberly recording what the poet’s Muse does not have. But in this series of denials, the heroine’s face imperceptibly appears, something with which “the light is struck by a glimpse” - “her face with an uncommon expression.” And this definition contains the entire pathos of the poem - a focus on originality, not striking, but deeply hidden in the recesses of poetic thought.

Baratynsky aphoristically expressed the pathos of his poetry in the poem “Everything is a thought! Poor artist of words!..” Already the first line of the nine-line line is two exclamations expressing the stability of the main image of poetry, almost its world image, associated with the priority of the mental principle and conveying the state of the artist, its “priest.” Comparing himself with a sculptor, musician, artist, with all creators who gravitate towards sensual images, towards the plasticity of forms, the poet-thinker is afraid that he will not be able to cope with recreating the entire diversity of earthly life:

But before you, as before a naked sword,

Thought, sharp ray! earthly life fades.

Search for the language of poetry of thought, philosophical lyrics- this is how one can determine the direction of Baratynsky’s creative experiments. Inheriting the tradition of Russian wisdom, the discoveries of Venevitinov and Vyazemsky in the field of the metaphysical language of poetry, it was Baratynsky who managed to clothe thought in the flesh of feeling and poetic word, to make thought an experience.

Baratynsky's life is not rich in external events. He lived most of it with his family on the Muranovo estate near Moscow, proving himself to be a zealous owner and inventor in the field of architectural and engineering activities. But in his early youth there was an event in his life that would have been enough for the plot romantic poem or even drama. While studying in the privileged Corps of Pages, he and his friends, imitating Schiller’s “Robbers,” committed theft, were expelled and demoted to private. This was followed by service in Finland. This could not but affect the process of growing up of young Baratynsky: his pride was affected, and he experienced the humiliation of a soldier’s life.

Self-disclosure, confession, autobiography and even autopsychologism are nevertheless almost absent in his poetry of the Finnish period, where he formed as a poet. It is enough to read his rather voluminous elegy “Finland” to feel how in it the personal emotions, the singer’s “I”, the further, the more they plunge into the space of thoughts about the change of generations, about the abyss of years, about the moment and eternity, about the struggle with fate. The affirmation of personal freedom and independence in the flow of history, before the “law of annihilation” and “promised oblivion” - this is the sphere of reflection lyrical hero Elegies.

“Not eternal for times, I am eternal for myself...”, “The moment belongs to me, // As I belong to the moment!”, “I, inattentive, am quite rewarded // For sounds with sounds, and for dreams with dreams” - behind these opens with philosophical maxims special condition poet, which can be described as philosophical exaltation and auto-intellectualism. He interprets his exiled life not as the vicissitudes of fate, but as a philosophy of fate, as a variant of existential philosophy.

Revealing the thought process at the center of the elegy “Finland.” Both the topos itself and the image of the exile are nothing more than a frame for recreating the stages of development of philosophical reflection. And if the first three stanzas firmly hid the “I” of the lyrical hero, only occasionally reminding him of him with the possessive pronouns “my”, “me”, “me”, then in the final, fourth stanza the “I” breaks out into the open spaces of thoughts about time and fate, proclaiming his right to auto-intellectualism.

The world of Baratynsky's elegies

In the world of Baratynsky’s philosophical reflection, elegy rules the roost. Even Pushkin, having read the poem “Feasts,” written in Finnish solitude, gave a remarkable description of its author: “The singer of feasts and languid sadness.” If the first part of the characteristic is a reflection of the content, then the second is a fixation of the paradoxical combination of “daring revelry” and “heartfelt melancholy.” Sadness is an echo of the semantics of the elegy genre: “a song of sad content.” The definition of “languorous”, unusual at first glance, is devoid of any irony inherent in its subsequent semantics associated with the concept of mannerism and artificiality. "languid sadness" - transition state spirit, expressing spiritual yearning and duality of consciousness. It is no coincidence that the same Pushkin compared Baratynsky with Shakespeare’s Hamlet, thereby emphasizing the mood so characteristic of the poet and his inherent thinking constant process reflections.

Already the titles of many of Baratynsky’s elegies: “Grumbling”, “Separation”, “Despondency”, “Disbelief”, “Hopelessness”, “Confession”, “Justification”, “Waiting”, “Death”, “Grumbling” - are recorded certain state spirit. These verbal substantives convey the movement of thought and feeling expressed in a word-concept. Already in one of his early elegies, “Grumbling,” the poet admits: “Everything seems to be a mistake, I’m happy, // And fun doesn’t suit me.” And then the state of the “sick soul” was determined with psychological precision: “With longing I look at joy...”

Paradoxes of mood are a consequence of paradoxes of thought. Each elegy expands the space of intellectual reflection. And the “song of sad content” in the larger context of Baratynsky’s lyrics becomes history human feelings, a monologue about life, an elegy-thought. When you read the elegy “Skull”, you can’t help but feel that this is a monologue of a new Hamlet, a Russian Hamlet.

One of the most important philosophical themes of Baratynsky’s elegies is the theme of man’s struggle with fate. The fact that in Zhukovsky’s ballads was immersed in the atmosphere of extreme, fantastic situations and plots of world poetry, in Baratynsky’s elegies becomes a sign of modernity, the spirit of the times. “Hard fate”, “fate”, “fate”, “evil fate”, “blind fortune”, “lot”, “hard fate”, “fate’s wrath”, “all-seeing fate”, etc. — this entire palette of definitions is filled with the reflection of modern man. The existential subtext of this theme is also connected with the Hamletism of the poet, for whom, like for his other contemporary Lermontov, “the chain of times was broken.” Doubt in social values, in happiness and well-being is emphasized by the abundance of introductory words: “perhaps,” “seems,” “it seems,” “it seems,” conveying the illusory nature of reality. Another feature of the metaphysical style of Baratynsky’s lyrics is the abundance of words with the prefixes “without - demon” and “times - races”: barren, inactive, insensibility, hopelessness, desperation, joylessness, lifeless, silent, serene, restless and disbelief, separation, quarrel, parting , relaxation, disappointment, dispel, disperse, separate, etc. The incompleteness of feelings and spiritual being is recorded in words with the first prefix; the moment of mental discord, the collapse of spiritual and communicative connections is reflected in the second group of words. And in their totality, all these concept words convey the drama and tension of existence, the philosophy of existential choice and the state of spiritual and social timelessness.

The oneiric space of Baratynsky’s elegies is not a departure from life into the realm of sweet dreams, although in his program elegy, which has become a classic romance, “Disbelief,” the poet declares: “I sleep, it’s sweet for me to fall asleep...”, but fatigue and illness of the soul are the price for illusions . In the poem “The Road of Life” this dream philosophy is formulated most clearly:

Equipping for the road of life

Your sons, us madmen,

Golden dreams of good fortune

Gives the reserve known to us:

Us quickly years postal

From tavern to tavern,

And those traveling dreams

We pay for the runs of life.

In a message to “Bogdanovich”, comprehending the ways modern poetry, his place in it, with aphoristic precision within one verse and one sentence, Baratynsky formulates his creative credo: “What I think, I write.” The space of thought in Baratynsky’s elegies is a complex of philosophical themes, existential problems, and metaphysical language. But the main thing is that all this is merged into unity, welded together by the power of poetic feeling.

Here is just one example - the poem “Separation”. The octave as a musical octave, the three sentences as a philosophical triad, record the process of development of feeling and thought. The title and the first word of the elegy, the noun and the verb as links in one chain through the prefix “raz - ras” recreate the situation of separation. And this situation already contains the drama and tension of a break with the past, with illusions, a collision of life and the moment, charm and disappointment. The first link is only a link in a common chain, where the rupture of feelings and the state of separation, the philosophy of separation, are not speculative abstractions, but a painful recreation of the deep connection between past and present, happiness and unhappiness, love and its loss. Each word-concept of the first sentence is not just repeated, but also strengthened through tautological, anaphoric devices: for a moment - for a short moment, I will not listen to the words of love - I will not breathe the breath of love. Disgusting negative constructions of the second sentence (I had everything - I suddenly lost everything, a dream began - the dream disappeared) intensify these repetitions and give them existential meaning. The last sentence is like a groan and a requiem for the lost (the eightfold “o” and double “u” alliteratively emphasize this state) - the final link in the chain of separation, each stage-period of which does not separate, but connects in memory, in the reflection of those who are parting, but not yet separated.

A thought that has become an experience—this is how one can define the originality of Baratynsky’s poetic reflection. The poet's elegies recreate the very process of development of thought, its fluidity and variability. “Separation,” like many other works of Baratynsky, has two editions: 1820 and 1827. In the first edition, the text was twice as long (16 verses) and riddled with questions that hindered the development of feelings and thoughts. Leaving the last quatrain almost unchanged, the poet discarded the initial 12 verses, replacing them with an equally capacious quatrain. The two quatrains came together as a single whole, concentrating the atmosphere of separation and its experience. Baratynsky's texts live in time, visually conveying the mobility of the poet's thoughts, his poetic maturation.

Analysis of the collection “Twilight” by Baratynsky

Two lifetime collections of Baratynsky’s poems, 1827 and 1835. not only the milestones of his creative biography, but also the stages of his formation as a poet-thinker. The genre principle is being replaced by a tendency to designate the internal connection of poems, highlighting unique “thematic clusters,” which made it possible to create a “correct list of impressions.” Here, as the researcher notes, “for the first time, artistic techniques were used that were more purposefully used by Baratynsky in Twilight.”

The very title of this last and final collection of 1842 is deeply conceptual. Unlike romantic tradition“evenings” and “nights”, focused on the special symbolism of the time of day, the state of transition and spiritual insight; for Baratynsky, “twilight” is not so much a chronotopic concept as a spiritual and mental state. As in “Poems of Mikhail Lermontov” (it is curious that both collections contain 26 works), at the center of Baratynsky’s collection is the image of an era of timelessness, a kind of twilight of the era.

The fate of the poet and man in the era of the Iron Age (it is this image that opens the collection “The Age Walks Its Iron Path”) determines the thoughts of the author of “Twilight.” Already in the dedication to the collection, the poem “To Prince Pyotr Andreevich Vyazemsky,” the question of life and fate becomes decisive. “Where are you thrown by fate...”, “What does Providence give you?”, “To distract harsh fate from you // I want formidable blows...” - such concentration existential motives doesn't seem random.

The image of all-seeing fate, which received its culminating development in the elegy “Confession” (“We make hasty vows, // Funny, perhaps, to all-seeing fate”), in “Twilight” is no longer only an image of private life, but also a socio-philosophical state. The philosophy of modern life gives rise to a special figurative concentration of words and concepts with the semantics of lifelessness, meaninglessness, sterility: “silent wilderness”, “deserted land”, “barren wilds”, “meaningless eternity”, “lifeless dream”, “the crown of an empty day”, “ ...skinny earth // In the wide bald spots of powerlessness,” “there is no coming harvest,” “soul-dead cold.” Each poem in the collection is a link in this general poetic picture of a “decrepit world.”

The poet (and the initial poem has the symbolic title “The Last Poet”) in this world is deprived of response, feedback. The image of the “ear of the world” absorbs the whole palette of muteness and deafness, unresponsiveness. “But that verb will not find a response // That passionate earthly things have passed”, “But there are no marketplaces for our thought, // But there is no forum for our thought!..” - these poetic aphorisms recreate the state of tragic loneliness of the poet and man. “I spent my days knocking on people’s hearts<...>No answer!" - the poet states at the end of his life’s journey.

The poem “Glass”, combining the memory of bacchanalian songs, “noisy brethren” and the state of loneliness, “lonely rapture”, forms the image of a “prophet in the silent desert”. And this prophet is not Pushkin’s, to whom “God’s voice” is addressed, “Burn the hearts of people with the verb,” but Lermontov’s, who also lives in the desert, is thrown with stones and hears after him the voice of the crowd: “Fool, he wanted to assure us, // That God says it lips!

The silent desert is a socio-philosophical topos that conveys loneliness, muteness (and according to the Explanatory Dictionary of Living Great Russian language" IN AND. Dahl, completely devoid of speech), reflects the tragedy of the severance of human connections and communicative relationships. In this topos of silence and loneliness, the motif of melancholy becomes the lemotive. “Anguished souls”, “languishing with melancholy”, “cry of great anguish” - not just psychological states, but also substantial concepts that form the existential picture of the world.

“The Last Poet” - “The Little One” - “Glass” - “Autumn” - “Rhyme” - these clearly nominated texts, created in different years, acquired an internal connection in the collection. Occupying positions 2, 8, 13, 24, and 26 in the book of “chants,” they strengthen philosophical and poetic reflection primarily with the image of time. “The century marches on its iron path”, “The winter of the decrepit world shines”, “The cry of warring peoples”, “The thunder of war and the cry of passions”, “Fatal transience”, “Oh meaningless eternity!”, “Vulgar life impressions”, “In the silent desert”, “Winter is coming, and the skinny earth // In the wide bald spots of powerlessness”, “But in it there is no coming harvest for you!” - each of these characteristics and all of them together create a picture of an epoch-making twilight. It is no coincidence that in “The Last Poet,” which essentially opens the collection, and in “Rhyme,” which crowns it, the image of the golden age of antiquity appears as the antithesis of the Iron Age and at the same time its destruction is recreated.

The world of twilight in Baratynsky’s book is existential: in it there is a struggle with fate (“On a stormy day, an oppressive hour // The chest will lift a mighty sigh...”), self-determination (“Where, friend of peace and freedom, // Neither to fortune, nor to fashion, // I have no need for rumors...", life position(“Now my thought is not compressed // And my dreams are free...”), aesthetic credo (“All thought is thought! Poor artist of words!..”). It is anthropological: behind the fate of the last Poet, the Little One, the sweet-voiced youth, the artist-thinker, the poor old man, the sculptor, Alquiades, Achilles, the history of human passions is revealed and the original image of the hero-antihero of our time is formed. A poet who did not bow his “proud head”, “a spiritual fighter, a son of the font of new days”, like Achilles, a sweet-voiced youth full of spring forebodings, a sculptor who directed his flame and flight towards the creation of beauty - each of these heroes opens up the space of thought opposing soul-dead "coldness". And yet, one of the programmatic and central poems of the collection, “The Little One,” reflects the tragedy of modern man’s tossing and turning, his lack of embodiment in the world around him.

Like Lermontov’s Demon, the Little One “from the tribe of spirits”, endowed with wings, like him he rushes between heaven and earth. But Lermontov’s titanic hero is replaced by a “poor spirit,” an “insignificant spirit,” which is “small and bad.” Just like Lermontov, Baratynsky humanized his anti-hero: in his “winged sigh”, “sad cry”, “languishing melancholy”, he revealed the power of time and fate over the world of human existence.

The collection “Twilight” is a wonderful experience of philosophical lyrics, truly the swan song of Russian romanticism. The “sharp ray” of thought reveals the substantial problems of existence and time, but clothes them in the flesh of deep, dramatic experiences. The two “Autumns” of Pushkin and Baratynsky are deeply, genetically interconnected. The same question latently sounds in them: “Where should we sail?”

Search for a new world as a way out spiritual crisis clearly visible in latest poems Baratynsky: “For Sowing the Forest”, “Pyroscape”, “To the Italian Uncle”, imbued with hopes of seeing “Earthly Elysium”. But fate played a cruel joke on the poet: after seeing Italy, Naples, with which the popular saying “See Naples and die” was associated, June 29, 1844 E.A. Baratynsky died suddenly in Naples.

“Poetry of mysterious sorrows” - this is how the poet himself, in one of his final poems “For Sowing the Forest,” outlined the spirit of his work. But its pathos lies in the search for new ways of lyricism, in the formation of the language of poetry of thought. And this baton will be picked up not only by his closest contemporary and relative F.I. Tyutchev, but also the entire direction of Russian philosophical poetry XX century - from A. Blok to I. Brodsky.

// / Analysis of Baratynsky’s poem “Muse”

Most poets and writers are sure that the talent to compose poems, to compose them into beautiful, melodic quatrains is not the ability of the author, but the inspiration of the muse that visits most talented people. Baratynsky also shared this opinion.

For literary creators of the nineteenth century, the role of muses was played by the women they loved and admired. And, on creative path Baratynsky also had such wonderful people who breathed into his new ideas.

However, in 1829, the poet decided to create a poetic work, which he dedicated to a real muse - capricious and fastidious. After all, most often, the impulses to write poetry were emotional, unexpected, and impetuous.

In his work, the author says that his muse is not struck by external attractiveness. However, for Baratynsky appearance didn't mean anything, didn't matter. His muse is devoid of natural harmony and grace. She does not wear fashionable hats and does not gather crowds of fans behind her.

In addition, Baratynsky writes that his inspiration does not have any special gifts or talents. It is simple, it can even cause disappointment among others. But for a poet, his muse is the best. Looking at her briefly, he is amazed by her calm speeches and unusual facial expression.

This is exactly how he describes and evaluates his mythical muse. Baratynsky is not trying to reach Pushkin's level. He understands that he is far from fashionable and famous literary trends. And yet, he hopes that the reader will express his praise for his work.

Alexey MASHEVSKY

Baratynsky's questions

Evgeny Abramovich Baratynsky(1800–1844) - a wonderful poet, the creator of Russian metaphysical lyrics - unfortunately, remains in the minds of readers just one of the writers of Pushkin’s circle. Neither his contemporaries nor his immediate descendants understood him. Even the magnificent Brockhaus and Efron encyclopedia of the early twentieth century reported about Baratynsky: “As a poet, he almost completely does not succumb to the inspired impulse of creativity; as a thinker, he is deprived of a definite, fully and firmly established worldview; These properties of his poetry are the reason why it does not make a strong impression, despite the undoubted merits of the external form and often the depth of content.”

Contained in public, somewhat reserved, polite and friendly, Baratynsky bore little resemblance to a demonic poet or a romantic genius. His biography also seemed ordinary: service, marriage, household chores on the estate, occasional participation in public life. A typical review by P.A. Pletnyova: “Zhukovsky, Baratynsky and people like them are too ironed, too sharpened, too varnished. Their lives and relationships coincide in general shape with everyone’s lives and relationships.” In his youth, however, he was persecuted, but not for political beliefs, but for an offense that should have been kept silent in polite society (in the page corps with friends, playing at robbers, he stole a snuff box with money from the father of a classmate). He had to pay for his youthful stupidity with the greatest disgrace: expulsion from the corps and six years of military service in Finland. True, even here the poet did not experience any hardships or torment, except moral ones, in everyday life he was completely settled, his bosses patronized him, and he had friends who shared his literary interests.

Baratynsky began as one of the poets of the school of harmonic precision. In his early elegies we will find all the constituent elements of this system, key formulas, signal words, the connection of the theme with its genre resolution. Here, for example, is the elegy “Finland” from 1820. Let us list some generally accepted poetic expressions: “wonderfully captivates the eye”, “in the mirror of smooth waters”, “skalda’s voice”, “wild wind”, “solemn cries”, “in deep silence”, “mysterious greetings”, “windy tribe”. This could have been written by Batyushkov, and young Pushkin, and Vyazemsky, and Zhukovsky. A general gloomy “pre-romantic” mood reigns in the poem, smoothed out towards the end by the usual, for example, for Zhukovsky, exit into bright sadness, quiet contentment: “I, inattentive, am quite rewarded // For sounds with sounds, and for dreams with dreams.”

However, there is already a difference here. For Zhukovsky, the motivation for such an exit was the general position of an elegiac poet. This is the model of an inspired singer, a friend of peaceful pleasures, which the poet will, varying, realize in his various works. In Baratynsky, the motivation for such an epilogue is a painful thought process that develops against the background of a description of the harsh nature of Finland. Moreover, thinking about the meaning of human existence is quite intense and dramatic in nature, although it is covered with an external mask of dispassion. We begin to sense this dynamic as we read the lines:

Oh, everything will disappear in its own way into the abyss of years!
There is one law for everyone - the law of destruction,
I hear a mysterious greeting in everything
Promised oblivion!

The last line is unexpected against the background of the usual harmonic formulas. “Oblivion” is a more than elegiac word, almost a cliche. The same can be said about the epithet “promised”. But this is separate. But together they are great. Baratynsky, like Batyushkov, is remarkably able to take into account the semantic connotation of a word. Here a kind of semantic explosion occurs, so that the shock wave from it, spreading, also captures the adjacent lines:

But I, in obscurity, love life for life,
I, carefree at heart,
Will I tremble before fate?
Not eternal for times, I am eternal for myself:
Is it not just imagination
Is the thunderstorm telling them something?
The moment belongs to me
How I belong in an instant!

He's clearly reasoning. There is no pre-understood position here, which the author is in a hurry to elegantly present to us; here a process of reflection is unfolding, which corresponds to the diversity of the verse and the aphorism of the statements, even slight skepticism about the experiences just demonstrated: “Isn’t it only the imagination // Their thunderstorm says something ?

That's why last lines look like a philosophical discovery, some kind of breakthrough:

What are the needs of past or future tribes?
It is not for them that I strum silent strings;
I, inattentive, am quite rewarded
For sounds are sounds, and for dreams are dreams.

The most interesting thing is that this is an almost literal repetition of the phrase cited in the VII letter of the ancient Greek philosopher Seneca to his friend Lucilius: “... when asked why he was so diligently engaged in art that would reach only a few, he answered: “That’s enough for me and few, enough for me and one, enough for me and none.”

Even stronger specified properties Baratynsky are manifested in his early love elegies. It is no coincidence that Lydia Ginzburg likens one of them (“Confession”) to “an extremely abbreviated analytical novel.” Young Pushkin and Baratynsky simultaneously moved toward psychological elegy. Among them, through the summary signs of Batyushkov’s style, traits of psychological concreteness began to appear. At the center of the poem was an “individualized” lyrical event. Wherein personal characteristics led to different “coloring” of the poems.

Pushkin jokingly wrote to Alexander Bestuzhev: “Baratynsky is a charm and a miracle; “Recognition” is perfection. After him I will not print my elegies...” And there was something to be surprised about.

The standard elegiac theme was complaints about changed feelings (not of the melancholic poet, but of his beloved), about separation from a loved one, about general disappointment in life. With Baratynsky, everything is extremely concrete and unusual: the hero himself has fallen out of love, and his coldness is illogical; betrayal, if it can be called betrayal, is not provoked by new romantic aspirations; moreover, the poet yearns for his former passionate emotion, but cannot revive it:

In vain I brought to mind
And your sweet image, and your former dreams:
My memories are lifeless
I took vows, but I gave them beyond my strength.

It is this “superpower” of any of our obligations, any of our dreams, any confidence that becomes the theme of the poem. In it, two elements are brought into conflict: the powerful potency of the analytical mind, capable of understanding, foreseeing and calling by name every deviation of the heart, and an indignant feeling of amazement at the infidelity and rashness of one’s own nature. I understand everything - but I cannot accept this understanding of mine. I can’t accept it, but I realize that there will be nowhere to escape:

I am sad, but the sadness will pass, signifying
Fate has a complete victory over me.
Who knows? I will merge with the crowd with my opinion;
A girlfriend without love - who knows? - I will choose.

Interrupting the sequentially unfolding utterance are the questions “Who knows?” they are very good here, it is in them that the emotional tension accumulates. He is supported by his intonation, which simultaneously models difficult thinking and a painful explanation with his former beloved: “And news will come to you, but do not envy us...” The everydayness of intonation, the artlessness of expression, the absence of strong means - all this brings out this text beyond the elegiac conventions. The illusion of the immediacy of the statement here is complete; it’s as if we are dealing not with a poem, but with life reality. As always, in the finale from a personal situation, Baratynsky turns to an exit to a general topic - the topic of guilt-free guilt:

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

I.L. Almi, analyzing how the concretization of the poetic situation occurs in Baratynsky’s poems, spoke about his characteristic reception incomplete contrast, which consists in the fact that “the poet contrasts concepts that do not contain direct and complete opposite(“excitement” - “love”).” The reason for such a strange contrast was the differentiation of the usual elegiac motifs, which was noticed by Irina Semenko. The poet destroys harmonic formulas through epithets that “rethink” the defined word. What we have before us is not the creation of unified emotional lexical complexes, as was the case in Batyushkov’s poetry, not the suggestive “streams” of Zhukovsky - we have before us a very precise, masterly analytical work of finding more and more new semantic shades in established, familiar concepts. This work, by its very nature, is partly destructive and disharmonious. There is a kind of “slipping” from the traditional, well-worn poetic “surface”. Hence the feeling of instability, unreliability of the words themselves, which develop into sharpened statements. These verses do not bring peace, they torment, but they do it secretly. Baratynsky has no trace of the demonstrative neologisms of Yazykov, although the latter also destroyed the traditional elegiac form in this way.

In Baratynsky's poetry of the 30s, new features gradually begin to appear. He willingly turns to archaisms, to the experience of poets of a different, non-Karamzin tradition, making his poems more rhetorical, solemn and mournful. Pushkin always closely followed its development. The extent to which their mutual influence was great and the hidden creative dispute was intense can be demonstrated by the example of Pushkin’s “Again I visited...” and Baratynsky’s “Desolation.” The latter was written in 1832 and published in the first issue of “Library for Reading” for 1835. In the early autumn of 1835, Pushkin was in Mikhailovsky, where he created his “Again I Visited...”.

The very first line of the poem is like a replica of the beginning of “Desolation” (“I visited you, captivating canopy...”). In general, Pushkin’s work can be read as a clear antithesis to Baratynsky. The latter, turning to the past (the reason for writing was the poet’s trip to his homeland - to the Maru estate), does not recognize the changed world of his childhood. He is completely overwhelmed by memories and sadness about the departed. That is why he turns mentally to his deceased father, whose shadow he dreams of meeting where he will inherit the “non-urgent spring”. In Pushkin, on the contrary, the emphasis is on the future. The world in which the poet lived has hardly changed: everything is recognizable. Life is only gradually, gradually renewed by the “growing up” of a young, unfamiliar tribe. And Pushkin, turning to his grandson, does not expect a meeting in Elysia, but dreams of being resurrected in his memory. It is interesting that in Baratynsky’s poem the signs of autumn are noticeable, while in Pushkin it is more likely to be summer.

In general, the verses coincide in many ways, for example, in listing visible changes or, on the contrary, familiar signs. But the difference is huge in the form itself. Baratynsky archaizes his verse: “a captivating canopy,” “an economic shelter,” pillars that lie “in the dust.” For the 30s of the 19th century, these formulas are already a relic of the old elegiac tradition. But its archaization is connected with the theme of the poem, which is mainly nostalgic. It is she who gives sad majesty to the poet’s statements. These already “decrepit” words are precious as a memory of a past life, values ​​leaving the world. Pushkin, on the contrary, proselyizes his verse to the utmost. He even refuses rhymes in order to make it completely closer to natural speech, to “talking to oneself.” That is, at the level of form, it seems to direct the verse into the future.

The end of the 20s - the beginning of the 30s was the time of crisis of the school of harmonic precision, when, through the efforts of the epigones, the elegiac formulas of Zhukovsky-Batyushkov-Baratynsky-Pushkin became publicly accessible and did not express anything. It was necessary to look for a way out of this situation. Pushkin, starting from the experience of his romantic poems, came to substantive accuracy, to the “naked word,” discovering a new realistic method. The Romantics tried to replace the genre unity of previous poetry with the unity of the personality behind this or that work - the “lyrical hero”.

Baratynsky seemed to be groping for a way to “objectify” the elegy itself, turning it into a universal form of conversation about the fate of the world and humanity. This led him to the creation of a special metaphysical poetry filled with high pathos. Only a few of his contemporaries realized the essence of the revolution made by the poet. ON THE. Melgunov wrote in 1838: “Baratynsky is primarily an elegiac poet, but in his second period he elevated personal sadness to the general level, philosophical significance, became the elegiac poet of modern humanity.”

As M.N. later recalled. Longinov, Baratynsky’s book “Twilight” (1842) “gave the impression of a ghost appearing among surprised and perplexed faces who could not give themselves an account of what kind of shadow it was and what it wanted from its offspring.” It is interesting that Baratynsky himself, as if anticipating this phrase, in the poem “Always in purple and gold...” will say: “You are more voluptuous, you are more corporeal // Living, brilliant shadow!” That's how it really happened.

“Twilight” became the first complete book of poems in Russian poetry. Not a collection of individual works grouped according to genre principles, but rather a book with a single semantic field, a single author’s view of the world, a single lexical and intonation outline. Initially, Baratynsky intended to title his essay “Dreams” winter night”, but then settled on the shorter and more expressive title “Twilight”. Understanding the unusual nature of the book himself, he wrote to Pletnev: “... although almost all the plays have already been published, collected together, they should more vividly express the general direction, the general tone of the poet.” At the same time, Baratynsky was, of course, guided by Western European writers (in particular, Barbier, Hugo - the latter had a poetic cycle called “Songs of Twilight”), but he went further than them in decisively overcoming the genre homogeneity of works united in a single semantic series.

The book is wonderfully designed in terms of composition. We can say that each subsequent poem follows from the previous one, introducing more and more new shades into an exciting, very deep conversation about the fate of human spirituality in a new era. The meaning of creativity, the search for truth, connection with others, criteria of authenticity, the possibility of realizing a gift, ways of understanding the world - all this becomes a single, branching stream of topics, subjected to close analysis and at the same time emotionally experienced. Moreover, the intellectual process does not unfold linearly. We are constantly faced with reflection on the thoughts expressed, constant returns to one or another motive at a new level. Finally, they will all come together in the grandiose poem “Autumn,” in which Baratynsky seems to try to break through the fatal circle of loneliness and doom that closes a person. This attempt will not lead to any positive statements, on the contrary - the finale of the play will be saturated with hopeless melancholy and bitterness, but paradoxically it will turn out that it is precisely the honest statement of the most disappointing truths (with which the spirit cannot and will never be reconciled) that looks like ethical , at least an aesthetic victory.

The problem that Baratynsky posed and tried to solve for himself in “Twilight” was at the same time completely personal and at the same time universal (from the point of view of the future, from the point of view of the coming new era). Hence such an amazing fusion of elegiac tone with odic pathos in his poems. The fact is that his thought - “naked thought” (“All thought is thought! Poor artist of words!”) - is at the individual level an expression of the cold of the Iron Age (“naked sword”, from which “earthly life turns pale”). There is a loss of “sensibility,” by which the poet understands a different way of communicating with the world besides the “vanity of research.” But then there is no response from the world (so the Sculptor from the poem of the same name will not remove the last cover from Galatea until she herself won't look at him). Thus, the problem is grace, which makes possible the union of the sensory with the spiritual. The point is the highest favor of the world towards you, which is revealed not in the analytical movement of thought, but in intuitive comprehension (like a meeting, a touch). But there is a trap here too. Grace, precisely in its highest fusion with understanding, with thought pursuing the truth, takes us beyond the boundaries of earthly existence and art.

The book opens with an appeal to Prince Vyazemsky, in whom Baratynsky sees his brother in spirit, his companion. It turns out that Twilight is, in fact, not only dedicated to, but also addressed to, this single reader. In that “reasonable sleep” that Baratynsky talks about and which he created for himself through some effort (there is already a tragic moment here, because, although the removal from the light happened voluntarily, complete loneliness makes you feel buried alive: “as if in a coffin”) , - so, in this strange sleep-wakefulness of the soul, he does not care about fashion or rumors. The poet does not seek any sympathy from the public. For collections early XIX century this was not typical. The reader was seen as a friend, an interlocutor of the author, and the tone of address to him was confidential.

Vyazemsky is called “the star of a disparate galaxy.” This refers to the circle of Pushkin–Zhukovsky–Batyushkov. We will meet again in the book with the image of a star in “Autumn”, where she, transformed into some kind of tragically lonely metaphysical creature, will die in front of the very public that Baratynsky pointedly ignores, dying, unnoticed by anyone. It is interesting that behind the outwardly very traditional, very simple initiation an important theme begins to emerge: how in a chaotic, black, empty space one “star” can find and identify another, what connection now connects them. No, it turns out, not even communication (the poet lazily pays tribute to his distant counterpart in postal prose), but only memory - like a constantly flickering beacon in the soul, the thought of the presence of someone else in this world capable of feeling and understanding in a similar way.

One of the first fundamental poems in the collection is “The Last Poet.” At first you might think that we are faced with the usual romantic contrast between a sublime poet and a thoughtless crowd mired in baseness. However, the entire structure of the poem, while outwardly repeating such a scheme, actually refutes it. The world surrounding the last poet looks not so much low as scary: “The century marches on its iron path...” The poet himself is unexpectedly shown not at all majestic, but rather holy fool, sweet, completely unnecessary. “Sings, simple-minded,” Baratynsky says about him. To the people of this world mired in practicality, he can only address useless and somewhat pitiful words:

And why don't we surrender
To your smiling dreams?
Let us submit with a cheerful heart
I think to the timid, not to them!
Believe sweet beliefs
the hair caressing you
And gratifying revelations
Compassionate heavens!

Naturally, “severe laughter is his answer.” Baratynsky states a contradictory and tragic situation. The point is not that everyone is so bad and now does not want to sacrifice practical benefits for the sake of dreams and sounds, the point is that the sources that previously fed these dreams and sounds with living content have now dried up. The human spirit seems to have outlived itself and no longer “hears” what nature, which has remained unchanged, still “hears.” Therefore, the depths of the sea accept the last poet, henceforth becoming his replacement - the only “sounding element.” But the spirit, as something forgotten and incomprehensible, still lives in a person as an echo, a shadow. This is why something freezes in us when we move away “from the noisy waves” with their vague call.

It should be noted that the image of the last poet, devoted to the “grace of passions,” does not coincide with the image of the author of “Twilight,” although he enters into complex interaction. The hidden spring of Baratynsky’s book was precisely the tragic realization that he himself entirely belongs to this cold, rational world, whose lifeless skeleton “silvered and gilded” knowledge. He himself is not able to “indulge in his smiling dreams,” he himself is just a “poor artist of words” who has fallen into the slavery of thought. And at the same time, he is a renegade of a generation devoted to “industrial concerns”, because he sees what others do not see - his own inferiority. He is a child of a doomed world, but unlike the others, he is devoid of peace and complacency.

The last poet (a true poet - according to Baratynsky's concepts) now looks like an anachronism. It is necessary, but impossible. This feeling of the present inferiority of what constituted the essence of man’s past existence is enshrined in the poem “Prejudice! he’s a wreck...” It sounds almost like a complaint, almost a plea:

Restrain your youthful strength!
Do not disturb him for days;
But a decent grave,
When he falls asleep, give it to his ancestor.

At the same time, the meaning here deepens: it is no one’s fault that this happened. After all, there is a time to live and a time to die. If we are now only capable of worrying about daily needs and do not hear the calling voices of nature, well, so be it, apparently. We shouldn’t just extol our “progressiveness” and humiliate what we are no longer able to understand. This semi-conciliatory position, however, would later turn out to be emotionally unacceptable for Baratynsky. It turns out that the matter is not simply a matter of replacing the old with the new, but of dangerous degradation. Already in “Signs” this theme will sound loudly:

Until man of nature tortured
Crucible, scales and measure,
But as a child I listened to the broadcasts of nature,
I caught her signs with faith;

As long as he loved nature, she
She answered him with love:
He is full of friendly concern,
I found a language for him.
.......................................................
But, despising feeling, he trusted his mind;
I got lost in the hustle and bustle of research...
And the heart of nature closed to him,
And there are no prophecies on earth.

Here again we are not talking about a simple opposition of feeling to naked reason. Here we are talking about a tragic choice between faith and exact knowledge, a choice that seemed to lead to the “drying out” of one of the original human properties, a breakdown in communication with nature. And now some signs, important and prophetic events are simply incomprehensible to man; he lives in a world in which he sees and understands only one half of it, while the other remains dangerously invisible and unnoticeable. But it exists and will definitely intervene in the fate of the human race.

The short poem that follows “Signs,” “Always in purple and gold...”, which at first glance is in no way connected with the previous one, at first causes bewilderment, it seems just a portrait, a sketch. And indeed, in the copy of the poet’s wife, Anastasia Lvovna, it was entitled with the mysterious initials S.F.T. But it is interesting that Baratynsky himself called his translation of these eight lines into French “Le Crepuscule” - that is, “Twilight”. This means that we are talking about content directly related to the main themes of the book:

Always in purple and gold,
In the beauty of undying passions,
You don't sigh for loss
Some of your youth.
And you are more charming than young graces!
And your sunset is more magnificent than the day!
You are more voluptuous, you are more physical
Alive, brilliant shadow!

A very specific circumstance could have excited him here: someone, apparently, after all she, not regretting the loss (and here it is wonderfully, half desperately, half contemptuously said - some kind her youth), continues to remain courageously passionate and brilliant. The poet himself dreamed of such a human experience of calm, but at the same time living acceptance of fate. But if you shift the angle of view, interpreting the statement in terms of opposition to Baratynsky’s “unmodern,” seemingly “outdated,” “shadow” literary position to those romantic-progressive aspirations that were reflected in the work of his critics of his contemporaries, then one can understand that the author is saying About Me. Its not worrying about some kind the Muse of youth (in this sense, as if becoming a shadow) is more corporeal and livelier than the meager Kamen of modern scribblers. But there is one more twist: the entire previous culture, the entire complex of previous ideas, which are now perceived as prejudices. This is how the theme of the previous poems is picked up and developed.

It is interesting that even in the epigram “Alas! The creator of not the first forces!..”, the next in the collection, Baratynsky touches, however, in passing, in anecdotal refraction, the question of the mind that claims to be the sovereign ruler of the world. The person who takes the place of the Creator is very similar to a mad fisherman on the throne:

Naples was outraged by the fisherman,
And, having accepted power, how wise king,
For twelve days he ruled the city;
But what? - unusual mind
Tired of crowned thoughts,
Left him at thirteen.

Here the theme of weakness and incompleteness arises, which will immediately be grandly developed in the poem “The Little One.”

The last line of this poem is amazing: “O meaningless eternity!” These are Baratynsky’s semantic shifts that form his “metaphysical vocabulary.” This is said as if the poet himself experienced the meaninglessness of eternity. What gives him the right to make such statements? Who it brat?

I'm from a tribe of spirits
But not a resident of the Empyrean,
And, barely to the clouds
Having flown, I fall, weakening.
What do i do? I am small and bad;
I know: paradise is beyond their waves,
And I rush, a winged sigh,
Between earth and heaven.

It turns out that it’s just a “winged sigh.” What kind of creature is this that cannot be completely in this world, immersed in its materiality, thingness, and on the other hand, is not able to become a pure spirit, to go beyond the clouds? “Poor spirit! Insignificant spirit! - this is a person endowed with natural earthly needs, but unable to live only by them, since there is also a soul that carries him upward. Imperceptibly, his author's features penetrate into the image drawn by the poet. The runt, it turns out, “revived on earth... the echo of the harps of heaven,” which he, however, himself “faintly hears.” Before us is a creator stuck between earth and sky, between the divinely gifted ability to see more than others, and the need to follow his weak human nature. It is here that the tragedy lies in the very ability to see and understand the suffering of the “earthly settlers.” Oh, if only it were possible not to see, not to understand!

This is how Baratynsky responds to the romantic problematic of the poet and the crowd. His hero is not a priest, not a prophet, elevated above the world, but a half-baked one. He is not opposed to the rest of humanity, he only embodies in the most acute form the contradiction inherent in everyone. Even this emphasis is rather bitter and offensive. After all, it does not give him strength, but only condemns him to greater suffering. And really, why should he care about the prophets, when, firstly, no one hears him anyway, and secondly, he sees the world “as if in darkness,” that is, he does not really understand ordinary, everyday life.

The last lines are “Your luxury is a burden to me, // O meaningless eternity!” - as a reproach, as a regret, as a refusal addressed to the world, to God: why am I being seduced by the barely audible sound of heavenly harps, it would be better to abandon this “hearing”, to completely return to the “low” earthly world! Baratynsky seems to know that the time is coming when spirituality will become so difficult and unbearable for a person that he himself will want to renounce it.

This is the most painful topic of our time. After all, if you try to define in one word the content of the lives of most modern people, you will get the following: “Don’t think!” This is not just their stupidity, laziness and delusion. The world has lost its integrity, and now creativity, the search for goodness, beauty, any moral act - everything becomes the result of single painful efforts, often meaningless or simply incompatible with the capabilities of the individual. Therefore, she herself human nature unbearable for humans. The highest creation looks like just a mistake of the Creator, an evil mockery, because, in need of the heavenly world, the world of fantasy and dreams, brat immersed in the vale of the earthly world, living according to completely different laws.

The next poem - “Alcibiades” - looks like the antithesis of the previous one. Here the image of an individual is drawn, trying to be, in the aspirations of his fantasy, completely autonomous from worldly court, from worldly care. This is self-sufficient beauty, aesthetics, aware of its irreducibility and self-sufficient value:

He was deaf and blind; he, looking not in copper, but in the future,
I thought: would a laurel wreath suit him??

It is no coincidence that the next two poems are written in the same meter as “Alcibiades,” namely hexameter. “Ropota” speaks in an ironic form about how life, not giving a damn about all our theories of the absoluteness and sovereignty of creativity, invades the most subtle spiritual matters. Imagine that a fly landed on the forehead of Alcibiades, who was admiring himself. What kind of autonomy is there?

You are from a peaceful dreamer, a neg European pet,
You are creating a wild Scythian, greedy for the death of the enemy.

The poem “To the Sage” has a conclusion. Firstly, life and fantasy cannot be separated: “Life is given for excitement: life and excitement are one.” Secondly, art is not a response to the challenge of everyday life, not a breakthrough into some higher sphere, but just a distracting rattle:

The one who has escaped the general turmoil and care
He invents for himself: a lyre, a palette, a chisel;
Mira is an ignoramus, a baby, as if he senses his law,
The first groan forces you to rock your cradle!

In essence, it - art - is in no way distinguishable from other vital human activities. It, just like any other form of activity, only distracts, only fills life, creating the illusion of its meaningful experience. In the light of such statements, it becomes clear that those sad circumstances (of the modern disdainful attitude towards feeling, art, occult science), which were discussed in “The Last Poet” or “Signs”, are not random twists, not someone’s evil intent or thoughtlessness. The futility of betting on a spiritual search follows from a scrupulous analysis of human existence. We can say that it is the spirit itself, in its intellectual aspiration, that comes to the denial of its own exclusivity, to the denial of any hierarchy - and, therefore, the meaning of life. Thus, the choice made by humanity in favor of “industrial concerns” turns out to be justified. However, perhaps it is precisely the intellectual nature of our search for answers. Perhaps thought must inevitably come to self-denial, to self-exposure?

Baratynsky immerses us in a field of wavering conclusions. His emotion constantly rebels against the efforts of the intellect to find a solution, or more precisely, against the result of these searches. This flickering of meaning allows even the most ordinary poems, seemingly tied to a specific situation, to be perceived as allegories. The epigram that follows the poem “To the Sage” “Felida with every winter...” from this point of view is not only a caricature of Elizaveta Mikhailovna Khitrovo, famous for her love of décolleté, but also a picture of a “coffin” thought, inclined to tear off veil after veil from existence. The last “robe” removed from the world, according to the poet, marks the transition to non-existence.

The poem “Glass” is quite clearly connected with the previous ones. Both creativity and oblivion are lonely:

Now talk to me,
Wayward stream!
Preach with enthusiasm
Or the poison of existence...
.............................
O glass of solitude!
Not strengthened by you
Vulgar life impressions,
Like a circular bowl;
More fertile, nobler,
You will awaken with wondrous strength
Revelations of the Underworld
Or heavenly dreams.

Yes, in solitary meditation we go beyond the ordinary, but where? The prophet finds “high light” in the “silent desert.” However, with whom can we share this light in the desert and in whose response can we catch evidence of its true source? It is interesting that in the context of this play revelations(that is, something true, deep) is shared with a lonely thinker underworld, A heaven- only dreams(hence, something ephemeral, subjective).

The theme of the unspeakability of one’s innermost and most sorrowful insights, which will later unfold in “Autumn,” appears for the first time in the next poem in the collection - “There were storms, bad weather...”. If in youth there is an expression of both our suffering and joy, then precisely when sympathy, consolation and understanding are most dear to us, in old age it is impossible to express our destructive experience: “You will not put a white hair on your voice // With a black thought!” This means that relying even on a dream, even on one’s own lonely fantasy, is illusory. They cannot be expressed.

At this point, Baratynsky's book reaches a certain emotional limit. A breakdown occurs. Followed by the poem “What are you doing, days! The vale world of phenomena...” is the apotheosis of the meaninglessness and pain of existence. It’s not only people, dreams, feelings that change, you change yourself, your very split being, your very flesh:

No wonder you were tossing and seething,
Development in a hurry,
You accomplished your feat before your body,
Crazy soul!

And a close circle of sublunar impressions
Closed long ago,
Under the influence of recurring dreams
You are dozing, and it

Looks senselessly morning will rise,
Without need the night changes
As the night's barren evening fades into darkness,
The crown of an empty day!

The soul itself becomes a tired captive of a dull, meaningless body, which continues to prolong the inertia of the time of existence closed by a cycle. The soul has already understood everything, has been everywhere, looked beyond the boundaries of the world, and its closest “comrade”, “friend”, “lover” - the body (after all, what else could be closer!) - is all in one place, deaf, gone in its senseless humility, does not respond to her pain and torment. The pronoun is especially expressive here it, highlighted by its location at the end of the line. Exactly it- as something impersonally alive, inhuman.

“Physiological” despair immediately finds confirmation in the social, public hopelessness of a person’s situation. The next poem, “Cotterie,” which means “circle of conspirators,” marks the group of Shevyrev and Pogodin. Only nonentities come together to fraternize here, in this world, as if sticking together for mutual defense, for common benefit. Baratynsky sharply contrasts himself with this circle. He is a lonely fighter - spiritual fighter. What follows, however, is a reflection - the poem “Achilles”. How strong, invulnerable, wealthy is this hero of our days? What helps him in the corroding doubt, how can he even consider himself right when left alone with the roaring and howling chaos? This is a question directly addressed to modern man. Because now to be human means to be a hero, to be responsible for everything. After all, now the truth or falsity of a path, the aesthetic value of any work of art, the ethical purity of an action can only be justified by your conscience, your inner feeling, your vision. Brought up on the demand for so-called objectivity, we look for confirmation of our feelings and assessments in others - and do not find them. This is inevitable, because there are no more common values ​​for individualistic consciousness. Meanwhile, the problem, directly according to Kierkegaard, is in absolute subjectivity, that is, in the connection that, bypassing the level of the objective, directly connects the subject with the Absolute. Such a connection, however, cannot be proven; it exists and has meaning only in faith. Hence the final lines of Baratynsky:

Know that you suffer over yourself
You gave complete freedom,
And one fifth of it
You are unharmed if you
I became a living believer!

Having found an expression for his thought, Baratynsky tries to develop it, deepen it, and examine it from different angles. Well, okay, let there nevertheless be a person who is capable of becoming such a believing, lonely spiritual fighter. Is his position unshakable? How does the world react to it? Does anything change in its amorphous structure? It turns out not. Even the boldest insights of the human spirit are shrouded in a duckweed of banality. The world “masters” the spiritual fighter, the “products” of his life activity, digests them in “magazine polemics”. The poem “First the thought is embodied...” is about this.

It is with the uselessness of spiritual occult knowledge that the following poem is connected: “Even as a patriarch, I am not ancient; My // Head was not anointed with the mysterious oil: // The laying on of unconsecrated hands is mediocre!” Nothing here in this world can be changed by thought, creative search, or art. Another blessing is the opportunity to simply live, to simply blossom in the rosy days of youth. Here again the theme of golden thoughtlessness, the worry-free happiness of ignorance, arises. It is on him that the poet blesses the “maiden of beauty.” But what about those who are no longer capable of thoughtlessness? In general, what is the reason for the torment of the sage and the artist? In the very calling to fantasy, to a dream, which forces you to give a “gigantic appearance” to everyday circumstances, to the worries of the valley, to constantly foresee what, firstly, perhaps will pass you by, and secondly, in reality it turns out to be only “frightening” ghost." In the end, every day immersed in mud life circumstances, we quietly carry out our petty, torturous work. Finding yourself face to face with a test is not at all the same as frightening yourself in advance at its appearance, especially the appearance that inspired fantasy can give it. In the poem “The crowd welcomes an anxious day, but is afraid...” Baratynsky brilliantly constructs an antithesis: those who do not think are afraid of the dream into which their thoughts carry them away (“light-winged dreams” are dangerous for them, since in the absence of spiritual training it is easy to get confused, to get out of the automatism of existence, lose stable guidelines and find yourself face to face with the “night” chaos), but those who think are afraid of the automatism of life’s affairs (“daytime” vanities), which turn off consciousness. Both of them behave naively: the source of their fears is not in the objective state of affairs, but in their own weakness - the inability to courageously withstand the test. In fact, as Baratynsky seems to say, it is necessary to merge these two abilities: to live directly and to think freely. The path of salvation is in reflection, which is not afraid of itself.

It's amazing how a poet can subordinate the entire figurative structure poems. The abstractions themselves acquire a concrete sensual expression from him:

Feel the indignant darkness -
Will disappear, merge with the void
A ghost that frightens you
And your horror will smile at the delusion of feelings.
.....................................................................
Cheerful family man, habitual guest at the feast
Intangible authorities!

The major sound of the poem “An anxious day for the crowd...” is reinforced by the new one - “Hello, sweet-voiced youth!..”. Its inconsistency, however, can only be understood in comparison with the two subsequent ones - “What are these sounds? In passing...” and “Everything is a thought and a thought! Poor artist of words!..”

Drawing the image of an inspired old man (essentially a Homeric image), Baratynsky contrasts him with a young, successful man. The point is not that one of them is a genuine poet, and the other is a momentary darling of success. And the fact is that the old singer, who has gone far in his experience, has already crossed the boundaries of art: the spirit in its utmost authenticity, as it were, breaks out of the earthly forms of spirituality, outgrows the boundaries of expression. Words, signs, techniques simply fetter him and become ridiculous. Work is already underway at such displacements that have almost no this-worldly equivalent. Therefore, the idle listener gets the feeling that the old artist is addressing too banal themes that have already been heard many times:

These joys and sorrows -
Musical hidden secrets
They have been expressing them for a long time!

However, there are no new topics. The truth is expressed anew each time, but it is the same truth. Only in youth (due to a lack of understanding and an excess of attention to one’s own person) does it seem that you are discovering some hitherto unknown worlds: “Happy and glorious in the morning, // Who is your equal, my boy? // Only a living lark...” This is not a condemnation, on the contrary, rather admiration for the ability, without really understanding anything, to surrender to the flow of impressions and feelings. Only under this condition the boundaries of the spirit and its expression coincide; later this will be impossible. The young singer is somewhat reminiscent of the Last Poet, only endowed here with a happy fate. The conclusion follows, a desperate recognition of the inability to be such a direct exponent of the pure joy of being:

Everything is a thought and a thought! Poor artist!
O her priest! there is no oblivion for you;
Everything is here, and here is the person and the light,
And death, and life, and truth without cover.

This is not about precision of expression. It’s not about who sees the truth deeper. Perhaps he is not just a darling of inspiration, but an impartial researcher (that is, precisely the legitimate child of the Iron Age of Reason). The point is that only those who are connected with the subject of their activity can enjoy existence. sensually, directly:

Incisor, organ, brush! happy is he who is attracted
To them sensually, without going beyond them!
There is hops for him at this worldly festival!
But before you, as before a naked sword,
Thought, sharp ray! earthly life fades.

The quiet poem “Sculptor” is a further development of this theme. There is, after all, a mystery in the striking dichotomy of our relations with the world. Why, in fact, should thought and desire be a fatal obstacle to the fullness of being-possession? Because the point is in the “reciprocal gaze”, in the grace of love that the world itself experiences for you, located outside the subject-object relationship. Thought and reflection objectify the object to which your being strives. This separates him from you:

In sweet-foggy care
Not an hour, not a day, not a year will pass,
And with the predicted, with the desired
The last cover will not fall,
As long as I understand the passion
Under the caress of the insinuating incisor,
Galatea's answering gaze
It won’t captivate you with desire,
To the victory of the bliss of the sage.

That is, the secret of an aesthetic breakthrough is one way or another hidden not in intellectual (even more broadly - purely spiritual) effort, but in bodily-mental-spiritual bliss, mined caress insinuating"incisor". As always, Baratynsky creates here a surprisingly precise and capacious semantic complex. This is again the motive of “Autumn”: until you are loved, it is useless to wait for a genuine relationship. But there are no means to fall in love, or rather, they are not under your control.

Baratynsky achieves some kind of transcendental power and concentration in the poem “Autumn.” It is huge - 160 lines. And despite this, the poet manages to maintain unprecedented lyrical tension throughout. Here he is primarily helped by a special mournful and solemn intonation, reminiscent of odic intonation. In addition, there is a strange contradiction, as if “built in” into the fabric of the play: each of the stanzas represents a complete statement, moreover, it seems that the poem could break off at any place, because the thought has already been completed, the sad conclusion has been summed up, but in At the same time, the topic continues to develop, the statement cannot end. The poet's emotion does not allow him to interrupt his reflection at a disappointing conclusion. The feeling does not agree with the arguments of reason and forces the latter to dive deeper and deeper into the study of the problem, the center of which is the fate of a person in this world, the inconsolable experience of experiencing one’s fate.

The first six stanzas describe the picture of the coming autumn: the sun is growing cold, the frost scatters frost on the ground, the villagers are harvesting in the fields. Meanwhile, a latent “deepening” of the topic is already taking place here; we begin to feel, as it were, a “second bottom.” “Swinging, will howl grove” - the poet, turning to nature, suddenly finds such a piercing note:

Farewell, farewell, heavenly light!
Farewell, farewell, beauty of nature!
The forest is full of magical whispers,
Golden-scaled waters!

Let us note, by the way, how the exorbitant length of the word “golden-scaled” forces us to pronounce it drawlingly, emphasizing all the vowels. This gives the line special expressiveness, as if enhancing the status of everything the poet is talking about. And at the same time the hissing ones work: “ox sheb nogo whisper tanya”, “gold Czech Uchichaty". It was as if the foliage really whispered.

Having ended the fifth stanza with a blissful picture of the contentment of the efficient “farmer,” Baratynsky suddenly, in the sixth, seems to take a step to the side. The topic has been announced. There follows a direct appeal, a bitter question:

And you, when you enter the autumn of days,
Oratai of the life field,
And before you in all goodness
The earthly share appears;
When you have the reins of life,
Rewarding the work of existence,
Getting ready to serve their fruits
And the dear harvest will sing,
And you collect it in the grains of thoughts,
Having reached the fullness of human destinies, -

Are you as rich as a farmer?

Admire and be proud of him who has risen!
Count your gains!..
Alas! to dreams, passions, worldly works
The contempt you accumulated,
A caustic, irresistible shame
Soul of your deceptions and insults!

That's what it turns out to be! This is the harvest we have accumulated! At the end of life, collecting his experience into the “grains of thoughts” - a truly dear, golden experience, paid for by all disbeliefs, pains, passions - a person discovers the bitterest truth:

You, once a friend of all hobbies,
A fiery seeker of sympathy,
The king of brilliant mists - and suddenly
Contemplator of barren wilds,
Alone with melancholy, which is a mortal groan
Barely strangled by your pride.

This truth is so disappointing, so hopeless, so unbearable that it cannot be conveyed to anyone. This is the horror: you cannot convey your deep, hard-won experience to anyone. Firstly, it is destructive, and “windy youth” would “shudder with its bones” in the midst of its amusements if it were able to perceive it. Secondly, “the taste is the same in everyone,” and no one is eager to join such bitter truths. “Sit down alone and perform a funeral feast // According to the earthly joys of your soul!” - says the poet. The truth makes you lonely.

What's next? What to do with this “gift of experience” that turned out to be grave? Either in the “last whirlwind” of thoughts the soul will finally freeze, be destroyed during life, killed “in its mocking triumph” by cynical skepticism, or another option is possible:

Or, shaking off visions of the earth
A burst of life-giving grief,
Seeing her limit from afar,
Blooming shore behind the black haze,
The land of retribution, evangelizing dreams
Trusting the feeling renewed
And the existence of rebellious voices,
In the great hymn to the reconciled,
Hearing like the harps that are in tune
The Most High One was not understood by you, -

Before a justified providence you prostrate yourself

You will fall with grateful humility...

The solemnity of the syllable here in Baratynsky seems to merge with the gasping of the excited voice, it seems that another minute - and we will break through somewhere, grateful tears will flow. Of course, he writes about such hope, about such justification, which they no longer dared to hope for. However, whatever insight bestows upon you,

Know that you are forever within yourself
You can’t convey the earthly sound
And the light children of everyday vanity
You can’t dedicate yourself to your science;
Know, mountain or valley, she
It was not given to us on earth for the earth.

In his final disbelief, in despair, a person may come to God, but he will not convey to anyone this truth revealed to him. People are deaf not only to the scary and disappointing, they are generally deaf. They stopped hearing because the era lost any system of communication between one and the other, because the Universe disintegrated, and now even the howl of a falling star “does not strike the ear of the world.” Landmarks (and we are talking primarily about faith, opposed torture of nature- remember “Signs”) are lost. Now it is not clear what is above, what is below, what is important, what is not. Each phenomenon is isolated, and the attention of the crowd can be accidentally attracted to it only by “a vulgar voice, a broadcaster of general thoughts.”

But this also makes spiritual discoveries meaningless, which remain in you, which there is no one to convey. The soul is, as it were, sealed within itself. The last stanzas of “Autumn” reach a kind of Shakespearean tragedy:

Winter is coming and the earth is thin
In wide bald patches of powerlessness,
And the joyfully shining fields
Golden classes of abundance,
With death there is life, wealth with poverty -
All images of the ex-year
They will be equal under the snow veil,
Covering them monotonously, -
This is the light before you from now on,
But there is no future harvest in it for you!

The snow covers everything, all hopes, all hopes. And these are not Baratynsky’s personal hopes. It is said about humanity, about the human race. But it is said in such a way, with such expressiveness, that (here again we are dealing with the mystery of art) one does not want to believe in the correctness of the conclusions about meaninglessness and futility. I.L. Almi wrote about this: “The general results of Baratynsky’s thoughts are hopeless. But the results are contradicted by the very fact of the tireless movement of thought, daring to follow more and more new circles of this intellectual hell.”

As if confirming this point of view, the poet places after “Autumn” a small poem “Blessed is he who proclaimed the holy!..”, which talks about the value of negative experience. Both destructive thought and vice find their place in the world continuum. We should not judge hastily: “Thus, one hint of it sometimes initiates us into the wild meaning of vice.”

The last, final poem of “Twilight” is “Rhyme”. Here Baratynsky reveals another disappointing sign of the accomplished spiritual catastrophe. It turns out that now the poet is doomed to a humiliating stay in the dark about his very creative search. Indeed, earlier, when culture was the property of the “greedy for the delights of the Musikian” people, when the “pet of the muses” sang “on the hundred squares of recent Greek cities,” the enthusiasm or disapproval of the listeners told him about the significance of what was created (for example, it is known that the Athenians awarded Sophocles victory 24 times in tragic competitions). Then

He knew who he was; he could know
What a mighty god rules
With his solemn verb.

But now, when culture ceases to be unified, when most of the population is outside it (now we call this situation mass culture), what can serve as a guide for the singer?

And now who is holding our lyres?
Asks them for a friendly secret?
................................................
The poet does not know between us,
His flight is high or not!
The judge and the defendant himself
Let him say: the singer's heat
A funny illness or a supreme gift?
Solve an unsolvable issue!

The situation is truly terrible. It turns out that now the work of a genius and a graphomaniac are indistinguishable. There is no other judge than the poet himself, but how can you know from within yourself whether illness or inspiration is controlling you? Baratynsky understands that subjective satisfaction with what has been done is not enough. You need to find something that would connect you with others, if not living, then living. And he finds such a messenger, a messenger:

Among lifeless sleep,
In the midst of the deathly cold of light
With your poet's caress
You rhyme! you make me happy alone.
Like the dove of the ark,
One for him, from his native shore,
You bring a living branch;
One with divine impulse
Make him happy with your review
And you recognize his dreams!

What does he call rhyme, who responds? Previous high culture, she gives “guidelines” to the spiritual search, she tells you whether you are going the right way.

Baratynsky was the first to understand the consequences of the spread of individualistic consciousness, fragmenting society, separating one person from another, displacing the majority of people from the cultural space. He was the first to discover those enduring values ​​that, like Ariadne’s thread, can help those seeking a way out of the labyrinth.

Notes

Of course, he did not keep his promise; moreover, he directly used the psychological framework of Baratynsky’s elegy in his poem dedicated to the memory of Riznich - “Under the blue sky of his native country...”.

Almi I.L. Elegies E.A. Baratynsky 1818–1824. (On the question of the evolution of the genre) // Questions of the history of Russian literature. Scientific notes of Leningrad State Pedagogical Institute named after. A.I. Herzen. L., 1961. T. 219. P. 42.

7 “The development of poetic thought in “Autumn,” writes I.L. in his article. Almi, - reflects the dynamics of the mental process, - this is what turns a topic as old as the world into an individual, unique artistic discovery” ( Almi I.L. Collection by E.A. Baratynsky “Twilight” as a lyrical unity // Questions of literature. Method. Style. Poetics. Vol. 8. Vladimir, 1973. P. 48).