Here front entrance. By special days,
Possessed by a servile illness,
The whole city with some fear
Drives up to the treasured doors;
Having written down your name and rank,
The guests are leaving for home,
So deeply pleased with ourselves
What do you think - that’s their calling!
And in common days this magnificent entrance
Poor faces besiege:
Projectors, place-seekers,
And an elderly man and a widow.
From him and to him you know in the morning
All the couriers are jumping around with papers.
Returning, another hums “tram-tram”,
And other petitioners cry.
Once I saw the men come here,
Village Russian people,
They prayed at the church and stood away,
Hanging their brown heads to their chests;
The doorman appeared. “Let it go,” they say
With an expression of hope and anguish.
He looked at the guests: they were ugly to look at!
Tanned faces and hands,
The Armenian boy is thin on his shoulders,
On a knapsack on their bent backs,
Cross on my neck and blood on my feet,
Shod in homemade bast shoes
(You know, they wandered for a long time
From some distant provinces).
Someone shouted to the doorman: “Drive!
Ours doesn’t like ragged rabble!”
And the door slammed. After standing,
The pilgrims untied their wallets,
But the doorman did not let me in, without taking a meager contribution,
And they went, scorched by the sun,
Repeating: “God judge him!”
Throwing up hopeless hands,
And while I could see them,
They walked with their heads uncovered...
And the owner of luxurious chambers
I was still in deep sleep...
You, who consider life enviable
The intoxication of shameless flattery,
Red tape, gluttony, gaming,
Wake up! There is also pleasure:
Turn them back! Their salvation lies in you!
But the happy are deaf to goodness...
The thunder of heaven does not frighten you,
And you hold earthly ones in your hands,
And these unknown people carry
Inexorable grief in the hearts.
Why do you need this crying sorrow?
What do you need these poor people?
Eternal holiday quickly running
Life doesn't let you wake up.
And why? Clickers' fun
You are calling for the people's good;
Without him you will live with glory
And you will die with glory!
More serene than an Arcadian idyll
The old days will set:
Under the captivating sky of Sicily,
In the fragrant tree shade,
Contemplating how the sun is purple
Plunges into the azure sea,
Stripes of his gold, -
Lulled by gentle singing
Mediterranean wave - like a child
You will fall asleep, surrounded by care
Dear and beloved family
(Waiting impatiently for your death);
They will bring your remains to us,
To honor with a funeral feast,
And you will go to your grave... hero,
Silently cursed by the fatherland,
Exalted by loud praise!..
However, why are we such a person?
Worrying for small people?
Shouldn't we take our anger out on them? -
Safer... Even more fun
Find some consolation in something...
It doesn’t matter what the man endures;
This is how providence guides us
Pointed out... but he’s used to it!
Behind the outpost, in a wretched tavern
The poor will drink everything down to the ruble
And they will go, begging along the road,
And they will groan... Motherland!
Name me such an abode,
I've never seen such an angle
Where would your sower and guardian be?
Where would a Russian man not moan?
He moans across the fields, along the roads,
He groans in prisons, in prisons,
In the mines, on an iron chain;
He groans under the barn, under the haystack,
Under a cart, spending the night in the steppe;
Moaning in his own poor house,
to the world God's sun not happy;
Moans in every remote town,
At the entrance of courts and chambers.
Go out to the Volga: whose groan is heard
Over the great Russian river?
We call this groan a song -
The barge haulers are walking with a towline!..
Volga! Volga!.. In spring, full of water
You're not flooding the fields like that,
Like the great sorrow of the people
Our land is overflowing, -
Where there are people, there is a groan... Oh, my heart!
What does your endless groan mean?
Will you wake up full of strength,
Or, fate obeying the law,
You have already done everything you could, -
Created a song like a groan
And spiritually rested forever?..
Analysis of the poem “Reflections at the Main Entrance” by Nekrasov
“Civil singer” Nekrasov became famous for his accusatory poems. The poet defended the principles of realism in his work. Very often his works were based on scenes and situations from real life. In 1858, Nekrasov wrote the poem “Reflection at the Main Entrance” after witnessing a doorman driving away a group of peasants from the entrance of an influential minister. The work has become a textbook. Starting from an everyday event that repeats itself every day throughout the country, the author unfolds a large-scale picture of general lawlessness.
The poem begins with a description of the front entrance, which on holidays is besieged by endless visitors, rushing to confirm their essentially servile position. Rotten government system made this stupid and humiliating custom the norm.
IN weekdays the owner is busy with work. Couriers and all kinds of petitioners flock to the entrance. Nekrasov emphasizes that the highest measure of justice is not the law, but the interests and desires of one person who imagines himself to be the deputy of God. The solution to the issue depends on the size of the applicant's bribe. The tragedy of Russia is that this situation is considered normal. Poor peasants who have done huge way, have no chance even to see the “lord”. Here the poet raises another problem that exists in our time. Worship of rank changes the psyche of the entire society. Possessing at least some minimal power allows a person to consider himself a “king” in his wretched corner. The doorman looks like a “minister” at the entrance. He himself decides who can be allowed to see the owner and drives the peasants away. Humiliated, “with their heads uncovered,” the poor petitioners set off on their way back.
The expulsion of the peasants is replaced by a contrasting description of the serene life of the nobleman. He lives to his fullest pleasure, wallowing in all sorts of vices. No one can condemn the minister, since the law is in his hands. He is completely indifferent to other people and does not understand the importance of the people's welfare. A comfortable existence is overshadowed only by the author’s critical remark that loving family can't wait for his death.
From a specific situation, Nekrasov moves on to a large-scale description of Mother Rus', in which the great Russian groan never ceases. The people, by whose efforts all the wealth of Russia is created, and on whose shoulders its power rests, are exhausted under the weight of life. A multimillion-dollar groan merges into one “great sorrow” and becomes a song. The work ends rhetorical question author: is this song the final meaning of the life of the Russian people? Or in the distant future his suffering will stop, and the “endless groan” will finally cease.
Krinitsyn A.B.
Nekrasov most clearly and clearly formulates his attitude towards the people in “Reflections on the Front Entrance.” This is a kind of creative manifesto of Nekrasov. If we try to analyze the genre of this poem, we will be forced to admit that we have never encountered anything like this before. It is structured like a real indictment. This work oratory, and Nekrasov uses literally all the techniques of rhetoric (the art of eloquence). Its beginning is deliberately prosaic in its descriptive intonation: “Here is the front entrance...”, which refers us rather to the realistic genre of the essay. Moreover, this front entrance really existed and was visible to Nekrasov from the windows of his apartment, which also served as the editorial office of the Sovremennik magazine. But from the first lines it becomes clear that what is important to Nekrasov is not so much the entrance itself, but the people who come to him, who are portrayed sharply satirically:
Possessed by a servile illness,
The whole city is in some kind of fright
Drives up to the treasured doors;
Having written down your name and rank,
The guests are leaving for home,
So deeply pleased with ourselves
What do you think - that’s their calling!
Thus, Nekrasov makes a broad generalization: “the whole city” is “driving up to the cherished doors.” The front entrance appears before us as a symbol of the world of the rich and powerful, before whom the entire capital grovels servilely. By the way, the house and entrance described by Nekrasov belonged to Count Chernyshov, who earned notoriety in society for heading the investigative commission on the affairs of the Decembrists, and passed a strict guilty verdict on his relative, hoping to take possession of the property left after him. Hints that this person is odious (that is, hated by everyone) will later appear in the verse (“Silently cursed by the fatherland, exalted by loud praise”).
The poor part of the city is immediately depicted as an antithesis:
And on ordinary days this magnificent entrance
Poor faces besiege:
Projectors, place-seekers,
And an elderly man and a widow.
Next, Nekrasov goes on to describe a specific episode: “Once I saw it, the men came here, Russian village people...”. The last two epithets seem redundant at first glance: it is already clear that since they are men, that means they are from the Russian village. But thereby Nekrasov expands his generalization: it turns out that in the person of these men, everyone approaches the entrance with a plea for help and justice. peasant Russia. The appearance of the men and their behavior emphasize Christian traits: poverty, gentleness, humility, gentleness. They are called “pilgrims,” like wanderers to holy places, “tanned faces and hands” make one remember the hot sun of Jerusalem and the deserts, where the holy hermits retired (“And they went, scorched by the sun”). “The cross on the neck and the blood on the feet” speak of their martyrdom. Before approaching the entrance, they “prayed at the church.” They beg to be let in “with an expression of hope and anguish,” and when they are refused, they leave “with bareheaded", "repeating: "God judge him!" In the Christian understanding, under the guise of every beggar, Christ himself comes to a person and knocks on the door: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock: if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with Me.” (Rev. 3.20). Nekrasov thus wants to appeal to the Christian feelings of readers and awaken in their hearts pity for the unfortunate men.
In the second part, the poet sharply changes his tone and makes angry accusations against the “owner of luxurious chambers”:
You, who consider life enviable
The intoxication of shameless flattery,
Red tape, gluttony, gaming,
Wake up! There is also pleasure:
Turn them back! Their salvation lies in you!
But the happy are deaf to goodness...
To further shame the dignitary, the accusatory poet describes the pleasures and luxuries of his life, painting pictures of Sicily, a favorite medical resort in Europe at that time, where his “eternal holiday of fast running” life will come to an end:
More serene than an Arcadian idyll
The old days will set:
Under the captivating sky of Sicily,
In the fragrant tree shade,
Contemplating how the sun is purple
Plunges into the azure sea,
Stripes of his gold, -
Lulled by gentle singing
Mediterranean wave - like a child
You will fall asleep...
So Nekrasov unexpectedly resorts to the genre of idyll, which nothing foreshadowed in this poem, drawing a beautiful Mediterranean landscape. Romantic epithets appear: “captivating”, “affectionate”, “fragrant”, “purple”, “azure”. A special rhythm also corresponds to the content: Nekrasov combines masculine and dactylic rhymes[v], and sometimes additionally uses intonation shifts, dividing one sentence between two lines: “With stripes of his gold, - Lulled by the gentle singing - of the Mediterranean wave, - like a child, - You will fall asleep... ", rocking us on the waves of poetic melody, as if on the waves warm sea. However, this beauty is deadly for the rich - in literally words, because we're talking about about his death against the backdrop of such a beautiful scenery:
You will fall asleep... surrounded by care
Dear and beloved family
(Waiting impatiently for your death);
And you will go to your grave... hero,
Silently cursed by the fatherland,
Exalted by loud praise!..
Finally, the poet abandons the attention of the rich man and turns not to him, but to the readers, as if convinced that his heart still cannot be reached: “However, why are we bothering such a person for small people?” and takes on the tone corrupt journalist, accustomed to hiding the problems and ills of society and writing about them in a condescending and derogatory manner:
... Even more fun
Find some consolation in something...
It doesn’t matter what the man will endure:
This is how providence guides us
Pointed... but he's used to it!
Speaking on his own behalf, Nekrasov, in a mournful and sympathetic tone, paints the perspective of the true hardships and grievances of the men who left with nothing, which unfolds into an epic picture of popular suffering. The verse takes on a measured, stately, drawn-out movement folk song. The former melodious alternation of dactylic and masculine rhymes is replaced by an alternation of masculine and feminine ones, which is why the verse acquires firmness and, as it were, “fills with strength.” But this “power” is inseparable from unbearable suffering: the key motive and general intonation of the song is a groan:
… Motherland!
Name me such an abode,
I've never seen such an angle
Where would your sower and guardian be?
Where would a Russian man not moan?
He moans across the fields, along the roads,
He groans in prisons, in prisons,
In the mines, on an iron chain;
He groans under the barn, under the haystack,
Under a cart, spending the night in the steppe;
Moaning in his own poor house,
I am not happy with the light of God's sun;
Moans in every remote town,
At the entrance of courts and chambers.
The verb “moans” is heard again and again at the beginning of several lines (that is, it acts as an anaphor), moreover, its constituent sounds are repeated, “echoed” in neighboring words (“he groans ... along the prisons ... under the haystack”). One gets the feeling that the same mournful cry is incessantly heard in all corners of the country. The peasant, so humiliated and powerless, appears as a “sower and preserver,” the creative basis of life for the entire Russian land. He is spoken of in the singular, conventionally denoting the plurality - the entire Russian people (such a technique - singular instead of plural, it is also rhetorical and is called synecdoche). Finally, in Nekrasov’s lyrics, barge haulers become the living embodiment of people’s suffering, whose groan echoes over the entire Russian land, spilling over with “the great sorrow of the people.” Nekrasov turns to the Volga, making it at the same time a symbol of the Russian land, the Russian people's element and at the same time of people's suffering:
Go out to the Volga: whose groan is heard
Over the great Russian river?
Volga! Volga!.. In spring, full of water
You're not flooding the fields like that,
Like the great sorrow of the people
Our land is overflowing...
The word “moan” is repeated many times, to the point of exaggeration, and grows into a comprehensive concept: the groan is heard throughout the Volga - the “great Russian river”, characterizes the entire life of the Russian people. And the poet asks last question, which hangs in the air, about the meaning of this groan, about the fate of the Russian people, and, accordingly, all of Russia.
Where there are people, there is a groan... Oh, my heart!
What does your endless groan mean?
Will you wake up full of strength,
Or, fate obeying the law,
You have already done everything you could, -
Created a song like a groan
And spiritually rested forever?..
This question may seem rhetorical, may seem overly politicized (like a call for an immediate uprising), but from our time perspective we can only state that it really always remains relevant, that the amazing humility of the “patience of an amazing people”, the ability to endure unimaginable suffering in the very in fact, is its essential feature, which more than once turns out to be both saving and hindering the development of society and dooming it to apathy, decay and anarchy.
So, from the image of a certain front entrance, the poem expands to the breadth of the Volga expanses, all of Russia and its eternal questions. Now we can define the genre of this poem as a pamphlet. This is a magazine genre, a genre of political article - a bright, figurative presentation of one’s political position, characterized by its propaganda character and passionate rhetoric.
Another programmatic poem for Nekrasov was “ Railway" Many researchers consider it as a poem. If we compared “Reflections at the Front Entrance” with the pamphlet genre, then the designation of another magazine genre – feuilleton – could not be more applicable to “The Railway”.
A seemingly insignificant conversation on a train between a boy and his general father leads the poet to “think” about the role of the people in Russia and the attitude of the upper strata of society towards them.
Nekrasov did not choose the railway as a reason for controversy by chance. We were talking about one of the first railway lines - Nikolaevskaya, which connected Moscow and St. Petersburg. It became a real event in the life of Russia at that time. Nekrasov was not alone in dedicating poems to her. She was also sung in poetry by Fet, Polonsky, and Shevyrev. For example, Fet’s poem “On the Railway” was widely known at that time, where the poeticized image of the road was organically and originally combined with love theme. Swift driving was compared to a magical flight, transporting the lyrical hero into the atmosphere of a fairy tale.
Frost and night over the snowy distance,
And it’s cozy and warm here,
And your appearance is tender before me
And a childishly pure brow.
Full of embarrassment and courage,
With you, meek seraphim,
We are through the wilds and ravines
We fly on a fiery snake.
He showers golden sparks
On the illuminated snows,
And we dream of other places,
Others dream of shores.
And, dipped in moonlit silver,
The trees are flying past you,
Below us with a cast-iron roar
Bridges instantly rattle.
The general public perceived the railway as a symbol of progress and Russia’s entry into new Age, V European space. Therefore, the boy’s question about who created it became fundamental and was perceived as a dispute about what social class in Russia is the leading engine of progress. The general names the chief manager of communications, Count Kleinmichel, as the builder of the road. According to the poet, the road owes its existence primarily not to ministers, not to German designers, who did not hire merchants and contractors, but to hired laborers from among the peasants, who did the most difficult and labor-intensive task - laying an embankment through the marshy swamps. Although the general’s wealthy family plays at being a nationality (the boy Vanya is dressed in a coachman’s jacket), they have no idea about the people and their life.
The poet enters into the conversation, offering the general “at moonlight» tell Vanya the “truth” about the construction of the road and its builders. He knows with what labor and sacrifice each mile of the embankment was achieved. He begins his story solemnly and enticingly, like a fairy tale:
There is a king in the world: this king is merciless,
Hunger is its name.
But then the fairy tale turns into a terrible reality. Tsar Famine, setting the whole world in motion, drove countless “crowds of people” to build the road. Disenfranchised quitrent peasants, forced to pay tribute to the landowner and feed their families, were hired for pennies, toiled at backbreaking work, without any conditions for it, and died in the thousands. Dobrolyubov, in one article in Sovremennik, pointed out that such practices were universal at that time, that both the newest Volga-Don road and the roads that were built simultaneously with it were strewn with the bones of peasants who died during the construction. He cited the confession of one of the contractors:
“Yes, on my Borisovskaya road... this happened bad place that out of 700 workers, half died. No, there’s nothing you can do about it if they start dying. As they walked along the road from St. Petersburg to Moscow, they buried more than six thousand tea.” Nekrasov artistically processes this plot.
The path is straight: the embankments are narrow,
Columns, rails, bridges.
And on the sides all the bones are Russian...
The soft melodiousness of the verse and the gentleness of the tone make the story, oddly enough, even more creepy. Folklore vocabulary shows that the poet is describing it as if on behalf of the peasants themselves. Taking care of the “entertaining” nature of the story for a child, Nekrasov continues to preserve the fairy-tale flavor, unexpectedly resorting to the romantic genre of the ballad.
Chu! menacing exclamations were heard!
Stomping and gnashing of teeth;
A shadow ran across the frosty glass...
What's there? Crowd of the dead!
Exclamation-interjection “Chu!” - a direct reference to Zhukovsky’s ballads, where it was his favorite means of awakening the reader’s attention and imagination. As we remember, the appearance of the dead in the dead of midnight was one of the most common plot elements of the ballad. The ghosts of the murdered flew to the crime scene or visited the killer in his home, punishing him with eternal fear and pangs of conscience, as retribution from above for his crime. Nekrasov uses romantic genre for new purposes, investing in it social meaning. The death of the peasants appears as a real murder, which is much more terrible than any crime in the ballad, since we are talking about not just one, but thousands of people killed. The shadows of dead peasants appear in the romantic moonlight, throwing with their appearance a terrible accusation against the unwitting culprit of their death - upper class society, serenely enjoying the fruits of their labors and rolling in comfort along the rails, under which lie the bones of many builders. However, the ghosts of the peasants who appear are devoid of any magical-demonic flavor. Their singing immediately dispels the ballad nightmare: the folk labor song of the prosaic content:
... "On this moonlit night
We love to see your work!
We struggled under the heat, under the cold,
With an ever-bent back,
They lived in dugouts, fought hunger,
They were cold and wet, and suffered from scurvy.
It is through the mouths of the workers that the truth that the narrator decided to tell Vanya is spoken. They came not to take revenge, not to curse the offenders, not to fill their hearts with horror (they are meek and almost holy in their gentleness), but only to remind themselves:
Brothers! You are reaping our benefits!
We are destined to rot in the earth...
Do you all remember us poor people kindly?
Or have you forgotten a long time ago?..”
Such an appeal to travelers as “brothers” is tantamount to a request to remember them in prayer, which is the duty of every Christian to deceased ancestors and benefactors, so that they can receive forgiveness of past sins and be reborn for eternal life. This parallel is also confirmed by the fact that the deceased men are further recognized as righteous - “God’s warriors”, “peaceful children of labor”. The poet calls on the boy to take an example from them and cultivate in himself one of the main Christian virtues - work.
This noble habit of work
It would be a good idea for us to adopt...
Bless the work of the people
And learn to respect a man.
The railway is interpreted as a symbol way of the cross of the Russian people (“The Russian people have endured enough, / They have endured this railway too - / They will endure everything that the Lord sends!”) and at the same time as a symbol historical path Russia (comparable to symbolic meaning with the motif of the road and the image of Rus'-troika in “ Dead souls"Gogol): “He will endure everything - and he will pave a wide, clear / chest path for himself.” However, the tragedy of reality does not allow Nekrasov to be a naive optimist. Abandoning high pathos, he concludes with sober bitterness:
It’s just a pity to live in this wonderful time
You won't have to - neither me nor you.
For Vanya, like the heroine of Zhukovsky’s ballad “Svetlana,” everything he hears seems like an “amazing dream,” into which he imperceptibly plunges during the story. According to the famous expert on Nekrasov’s work, Nikolai Skatov, “the picture of the amazing dream that Vanya saw is, first of all, a poetic picture. A liberating convention - a dream that makes it possible to see many things that you cannot see in ordinary life - is a motif widely used in literature. For Nekrasov, sleep ceases to be just a conditional motive. Sleep in Nekrasov's poem- an amazing phenomenon in which realistic images are boldly and unusually combined with a kind of poetic impressionism; what happens happens precisely in a dream, or rather, not even in a dream, but in an atmosphere of strange half-asleep. The narrator always tells something, something the disturbed child’s imagination sees, and what Vanya saw is much more Furthermore what was told to him."
However, the second part of the poem returns us to harsh reality. A mocking general, recently returned from Europe, perceives the people as a “wild crowd of drunkards,” “barbarians” who “do not create, but destroy masters,” like the tribes of barbarians who destroyed the cultural wealth of the Roman Empire. At the same time he quotes famous poem Pushkin’s “The Poet and the Crowd,” although it distorts the meaning of the quote: “Or is Apollo Belvedere Worse than a stove pot for you? Here are your people - these thermal baths and baths, a miracle of art - they have stolen everything! "The general replaces the concept of the people with the concept of the crowd, borrowed from Pushkin’s poem “The Poet and the Crowd” (although Pushkin did not mean by the crowd a people who cannot read, but precisely a wide layer of the educated reading public who do not understand true art, like the general depicted). He thus finds himself in the camp of supporters of “pure art,” which included Druzhinin, Polonsky, Tyutchev and Fet. This is a deadly polemical technique: Nekrasov portrays his eternal opponents in a satirical form, without directly objecting to anything: they would hardly want to hear their position distorted by a half-educated general. So, for Nekrasov, the people - moral ideal, creator-worker; for the general - a barbarian destroyer, who does not have access to the highest inspiration of the creative mind. Speaking about creation, Nekrasov means production material goods, general – scientific and artistic creativity, creation cultural values.
If we ignore the general’s rude tone, then we can recognize some truth in his words: the destructive element also lurks in the people and comes out if they fall into anarchy. And Pushkin, to whom the general refers, was horrified by the “Russian rebellion, senseless and merciless.” Let us remember how many cultural values were destroyed in Russia during the revolution of 1917 and the one that followed it civil war. Nekrasov, on the contrary, called on the people to rise up against their oppressors (although not as clearly as they tried to present it in Soviet years, rather, he is talking about the people’s ability to defend their rights and not allow themselves to be exploited for nothing), he did not know what terrible “genie” he wanted to “let out of the bottle.”
the last part The poems are openly satirical, sharply different in tone from the previous ones. In response to the general’s request to show the child the “bright side” of road construction, the poet paints a picture of the completion folk works already at sunlight, which in in this case sets a completely different genre for the story. If, with the magical “moonlight”, the highest, ideal essence people as the engine of progress and the moral standard for all other Russian classes, then in the sunlight they appear to our eyes by no means “ bright sides» folk life. The workers turned out to be deceived: not only were they not paid anything for their truly hard labor, but they were also cruelly shortchanged, so that “Every contractor owes a stay, absentee days have become a penny!” Illiterate peasants cannot check the false calculation and look helpless, like children. Nekrasov bitterly conveys their uneducated, almost meaningless speech: ““Maybe there is a surplus here now, but screw you!..” - they waved their hand....” A deceiving contractor arrives, “fat, stocky, red as copper.” The poet tried to give him repulsive features: “The merchant wipes the sweat from his face and says, with his arms akimbo, picturesque: “Okay... well... well done!.. well done!..” He behaves like a king and a universal benefactor: “With God , now go home - congratulations! (Hats off - if I say!) I put out a barrel of wine to the workers And - I give the arrears...” And the people naively rejoice at the forgiveness of fictitious debts, are not indignant at the blatant fleecing and, due to their weakness for wine, buy “generous gift”: “The people unharnessed the horses - and the merchant’s property With a shout of “Hurray” they rushed along the road...” So - stupidly gullible and naive, not those who know prices to themselves and their work, unable to stand up for themselves - the people appear in the epilogue. This is his real condition. It cries out for correction. According to the poet, the people need to be helped if they cannot do it themselves.
Here is the front entrance. On special days,
Possessed by a servile illness,
The whole city is in some kind of fright
Drives up to the treasured doors;
Having written down your name and rank,
The guests are leaving for home,
So deeply pleased with ourselves
What do you think - that’s their calling!
And on ordinary days this magnificent entrance
Poor faces besiege:
Projectors, place-seekers,
And an elderly man and a widow.
From him and to him you know in the morning
All the couriers are jumping around with papers.
Returning, another hums “tram-tram”,
And other petitioners cry.
Once I saw the men come here,
Village Russian people,
They prayed at the church and stood away,
Hanging their brown heads to their chests;
The doorman appeared. “Allow me,” they say
With an expression of hope and anguish.
He looked at the guests: they were ugly to look at!
Tanned faces and hands,
The Armenian boy is thin on his shoulders,
On a knapsack on their bent backs,
Cross on my neck and blood on my feet,
Shod in homemade bast shoes
(You know, they wandered for a long time
From some distant provinces).
Someone shouted to the doorman: “Drive!
Ours doesn’t like ragged rabble!”
And the door slammed. After standing,
The pilgrims untied their wallets,
But the doorman did not let me in, without taking a meager contribution,
And they went, scorched by the sun,
Repeating: “God judge him!”
Throwing up hopeless hands,
And while I could see them,
They walked with their heads uncovered...
And the owner of luxurious chambers
I was still in deep sleep...
You, who consider life enviable
The intoxication of shameless flattery,
Red tape, gluttony, gaming,
Wake up! There is also pleasure:
Turn them back! Their salvation lies in you!
But the happy are deaf to goodness...
The thunder of heaven does not frighten you,
And you hold earthly ones in your hands,
And these unknown people carry
Inexorable grief in the hearts.
Why do you need this crying sorrow?
What do you need these poor people?
Eternal holiday quickly running
Life doesn't let you wake up.
And why? Clickers3 fun
You are calling for the people's good;
Without him you will live with glory
And you will die with glory!
More serene than an Arcadian idyll4
The old days will set.
Under the captivating sky of Sicily,
In the fragrant tree shade,
Contemplating how the sun is purple
Plunges into the azure sea,
Stripes of his gold, -
Lulled by gentle singing
Mediterranean wave - like a child
You will fall asleep, surrounded by care
Dear and beloved family
(Waiting impatiently for your death);
They will bring your remains to us,
To honor with a funeral feast,
And you will go to your grave... hero,
Silently cursed by the fatherland,
Exalted by loud praise!..
However, why are we such a person?
Worrying for small people?
Shouldn't we take our anger out on them?
Safer... Even more fun
Find some consolation in something...
It doesn’t matter what the man will endure:
This is how providence guides us
Pointed out... but he’s used to it!
Behind the outpost, in a wretched tavern
The poor will drink everything down to the ruble
And they will go, begging along the road,
And they will groan... Native land!
Name me such an abode,
I've never seen such an angle
Where would your sower and guardian be?
Where would a Russian man not moan?
He moans across the fields, along the roads,
He groans in prisons, in prisons,
In the mines, on an iron chain;
He groans under the barn, under the haystack,
Under a cart, spending the night in the steppe;
Moaning in his own poor house,
I am not happy with the light of God's sun;
Moans in every remote town,
At the entrance of courts and chambers.
Go out to the Volga: whose groan is heard
Over the great Russian river?
We call this groan a song -
The barge haulers are walking with a towline!..
Volga! Volga!.. In spring, full of water
You're not flooding the fields like that,
Like the great sorrow of the people
Our land is overflowing, -
Where there are people, there is a groan... Oh, my heart!
What does your endless groan mean?
Will you wake up full of strength,
Or, fate obeying the law,
You have already done everything you could, -
Created a song like a groan
And spiritually rested forever?..
Reflections at the front entrance.
Reflections at the front entrance. Nekrasov. Listen
Analysis of Nekrasov’s poem “Reflections at the Main Entrance”
History of creation
The poem “Reflections at the Main Entrance” was written by Nekrasov in 1858. From Panaeva’s memoirs it is known that on one of the rainy days autumn days Nekrasov saw from the window how, from the entrance in which the Minister of State Property lived, a janitor and a policeman were driving away the peasants, pushing them in the back. A couple of hours later the poem was ready. The genre scene, which became the basis of the poem, was supplemented with satire and generalizations.
For five years, the poem could not appear in the Russian censored press and went from hand to hand in lists. In 1860, it was published by Herzen in Kolokol without the author’s signature, with the note: “We very rarely publish poems, but there is no way not to include this kind of poem.” The final lines (from the verse: “Name such a monastery for me...”) became a student song.
Literary direction, genre
The poem realistically describes the illness of the entire Russian society. The nobility is lazy and indifferent, the rest are subservient to her, and the peasants are powerless and submissive. The genre scene at the front entrance is a reason to think about the fate of the Russian people and Russian society. This is an example of civil poetry.
Theme, main idea and composition, plot
Nekrasov's poem is plot-based. It can be roughly divided into 3 parts.
The first part is a description of an ordinary day in the life of the entrance. On special days, people come to visit an important person or simply leave their name in a book. On weekdays, the poor, the “old man and the widow,” come. Not all applicants receive what they ask for.
The second part is dedicated to the “owner of luxury chambers.” It begins with the appeal of the observer - the lyrical hero. Negative characteristic The nobles end with a call to wake up and turn back the petitioners. The following describes the supposed life and death of the nobleman.
The third part is the generalization and construction of this specific case to typical. There is no place on our native land where the Russian peasant, the sower and guardian of this land, does not suffer. All classes are in a state of spiritual sleep: both the people and the owners of luxurious palaces. There is a way out for the people - to wake up.
The topic of reflection is the fate of the Russian people, the breadwinner - the Russian peasantry. The main idea is that the people will never make their way to the main entrances of the masters; these are residents of different non-overlapping worlds. The only way out for the people - to find strength to awaken.
Meter and rhyme
The poem is written in multi-foot anapest with a disordered alternation of trimeter and tetrameter. Female and male rhymes alternate, the types of rhyme also change: ring, cross and adjacent. The ending of the poem became a student song.
Paths and images
The poem begins with metonymy combined with metaphor. The city is obsessed with the servile disease, that is, the inhabitants of the city servile, like slaves, before the nobleman. At the beginning of the poem, the petitioners are dryly listed. Special attention The narrator devotes time to describing the men and uses epithets: ugly, tanned faces and hands, thin Armenian, bent backs, meager contribution. Expression " Let's go, they're burning with the sun"has become an aphorism. A piercing detail evokes compassion: the peasants who were driven away walk with their heads uncovered, showing respect.
The nobleman is described using stilted metaphors. He holds earthly thunders in his hands, but heavenly ones do not fear him. His life is an eternal holiday. Sweet epithets of romantic poets describe heavenly life nobles: serene Arcadian idyll, captivating Sicily sky, fragrant tree shade, purple sun, azure sea. The end of the nobleman's life is described with irony and even sarcasm. The hero will be silently cursed by his homeland, his dear and beloved family eagerly awaits his death.
The third part uses metonymy again. Lyrical hero addresses his native land, that is, all its inhabitants. He opens up the life of a groaning people to all classes. Verb moans repeats like a refrain. The song of the people is like a groan (comparison).
After addressing the Russian soil, Nekrasov turns to the Volga. He compares the people's grief with the overflowing waters of the Russian river. In this part, Nekrasov again uses epithets Spring is full of water, people are cordial, the groan is endless. The last appeal is a question to the people: will they wake up, or will their spiritual sleep last forever, according to the natural course of things? For the realist Nekrasov, this question is not rhetorical. There is always a choice, reality is unpredictable.
Here is the front entrance. On special days,
Possessed by a servile illness,
The whole city is in some kind of fright
Drives up to the treasured doors;
Having written down your name and rank,
The guests are leaving for home,
So deeply pleased with ourselves
What do you think - that’s their calling!
And on ordinary days this magnificent entrance
Poor faces besiege:
Projectors, place-seekers,
And an elderly man and a widow.
From him and to him you know in the morning
All the couriers are jumping around with papers.
Returning, another hums “tram-tram”,
And other petitioners cry.
Once I saw the men come here,
Village Russian people,
They prayed at the church and stood away,
Hanging their brown heads to their chests;
The doorman appeared. “Let it go,” they say
With an expression of hope and anguish.
He looked at the guests: they were ugly to look at!
Tanned faces and hands,
The Armenian boy is thin on his shoulders,
On a knapsack on their bent backs,
Cross on my neck and blood on my feet,
Shod in homemade bast shoes
(You know, they wandered for a long time
From some distant provinces).
Someone shouted to the doorman: “Drive!
Ours doesn’t like ragged rabble!”
And the door slammed. After standing,
The pilgrims untied their koshels,
But the doorman did not let me in, without taking a meager contribution,
And they went, scorched by the sun,
Repeating: “God judge him!”
Throwing up hopeless hands,
And while I could see them,
They walked with their heads uncovered...
And the owner of luxurious chambers
I was still in deep sleep...
You, who consider life enviable
The intoxication of shameless flattery,
Red tape, gluttony, gaming,
Wake up! There is also pleasure:
Turn them back! their salvation lies in you!
But the happy are deaf to goodness...
The thunder of heaven does not frighten you,
And you hold earthly ones in your hands,
And these unknown people carry
Inexorable grief in the hearts.
Why do you need this crying sorrow?
What do you need these poor people?
Eternal holiday quickly running
Life doesn't let you wake up.
And why? Clickers' fun
You are calling for the people's good;
Without him you will live with glory
And you will die with glory!
More serene than an Arcadian idyll
The old days will set.
Under the captivating sky of Sicily,
In the fragrant tree shade,
Contemplating how the sun is purple
Plunges into the azure sea,
Stripes of his gold, -
Lulled by gentle singing
Mediterranean wave - like a child
You will fall asleep, surrounded by care
Dear and beloved family
(Waiting impatiently for your death);
They will bring your remains to us,
To honor with a funeral feast,
And you will go to your grave... hero,
Silently cursed by the fatherland,
Exalted by loud praise!..
However, why are we such a person?
Worrying for small people?
Shouldn't we take our anger out on them?
Safer... More fun
Find some consolation in something...
It doesn’t matter what the man will endure:
This is how providence guides us
Pointed... but he's used to it!
Behind the outpost, in a wretched tavern
The poor will drink everything down to the ruble
And they will go, begging along the road,
And they will groan... Native land!
Name me such an abode,
I've never seen such an angle
Where would your sower and guardian be?
Where would a Russian man not moan?
He moans across the fields, along the roads,
He groans in prisons, in prisons,
In the mines, on an iron chain;
He groans under the barn, under the haystack,
Under a cart, spending the night in the steppe;
Moaning in his own poor house,
I am not happy with the light of God's sun;
Moans in every remote town,
At the entrance of courts and chambers.
Go out to the Volga: whose groan is heard
Over the great Russian river?
We call this groan a song -
The barge haulers are walking with a towline!..
Volga! Volga!.. In spring, full of water
You're not flooding the fields like that,
Like the great sorrow of the people
Our land is overflowing, -
Where there are people, there is a groan... Oh, my heart!
What does your endless groan mean?
Will you wake up full of strength,
Or, fate obeying the law,
You have already done everything you could, -
Created a song like a groan
And spiritually rested forever?..
Nikolai Nekrasov, 1858
Here is the front entrance. On special days,
Possessed by a servile illness,
The whole city is in some kind of fright
Drives up to the treasured doors;
Having written down your name and rank,
The guests are leaving for home,
So deeply pleased with ourselves
What do you think - that’s their calling!
And on ordinary days this magnificent entrance
Poor faces besiege:
Projectors, place-seekers,
And an elderly man and a widow.
From him and to him you know in the morning
All the couriers are jumping around with papers.
Returning, another hums “tram-tram”,
And other petitioners cry.
Once I saw the men come here,
Village Russian people,
They prayed at the church and stood away,
Hanging their brown heads to their chests;
The doorman appeared. “Let it go,” they say
With an expression of hope and anguish.
He looked at the guests: they were ugly to look at!
Tanned faces and hands,
The Armenian boy is thin on his shoulders,
On a knapsack on their bent backs,
Cross on my neck and blood on my feet,
Shod in homemade bast shoes
(You know, they wandered for a long time
From some distant provinces).
Someone shouted to the doorman: “Drive!
Ours doesn’t like ragged rabble!”
And the door slammed. After standing,
The pilgrims untied their wallets,
But the doorman did not let me in, without taking a meager contribution,
And they went, scorched by the sun,
Repeating: “God judge him!”
Throwing up hopeless hands,
And while I could see them,
They walked with their heads uncovered...
And the owner of luxurious chambers
I was still in deep sleep...
You, who consider life enviable
The intoxication of shameless flattery,
Red tape, gluttony, gaming,
Wake up! There is also pleasure:
Turn them back! their salvation lies in you!
But the happy are deaf to goodness...
The thunder of heaven does not frighten you,
And you hold earthly ones in your hands,
And these unknown people carry
Inexorable grief in the hearts.
Why do you need this crying sorrow?
What do you need these poor people?
Eternal holiday quickly running
Life doesn't let you wake up.
And why? Clickers' fun
You are calling for the people's good;
Without him you will live with glory
And you will die with glory!
More serene than an Arcadian idyll
The old days will set.
Under the captivating sky of Sicily,
In the fragrant tree shade,
Contemplating how the sun is purple
Plunges into the azure sea,
Stripes of his gold, -
Lulled by gentle singing
Mediterranean wave - like a child
You will fall asleep, surrounded by care
Dear and beloved family
(Waiting impatiently for your death);
They will bring your remains to us,
To honor with a funeral feast,
And you will go to your grave... hero,
Silently cursed by the fatherland,
Exalted by loud praise!..
However, why are we such a person?
Worrying for small people?
Shouldn't we take our anger out on them?
Safer... More fun
Find some consolation in something...
It doesn’t matter what the man will endure:
This is how providence guides us
Pointed... but he's used to it!
Behind the outpost, in a wretched tavern
The poor will drink everything down to the ruble
And they will go, begging along the road,
And they will groan... Native land!
Name me such an abode,
I've never seen such an angle
Where would your sower and guardian be?
Where would a Russian man not moan?
He moans across the fields, along the roads,
He groans in prisons, in prisons,
In the mines, on an iron chain;
He groans under the barn, under the haystack,
Under a cart, spending the night in the steppe;
Moaning in his own poor house,
I am not happy with the light of God's sun;
Moans in every remote town,
At the entrance of courts and chambers.
Go out to the Volga: whose groan is heard
Over the great Russian river?
We call this groan a song -
The barge haulers are walking with a towline!..
Volga! Volga!.. In spring, full of water
You're not flooding the fields like that,
Like the great sorrow of the people
Our land is overflowing, -
Where there are people, there is a groan... Oh, my heart!
What does your endless groan mean?
Will you wake up full of strength,
Or, fate obeying the law,
You have already done everything you could, -
Created a song like a groan
And spiritually rested forever?..