When a poet is truly talented, his poetry is all-encompassing and it is very difficult to isolate the main themes of his work. So it is with the poetry of A. Blok. As a symbolist in his early work, he considers three themes: Life, Death, God. In one form or another, these themes are interpreted in different periods of creativity and appear either in the vague symbolic images of the cycle “Poems about a Beautiful Lady” or in the ironic lines of later poems. Typical symbolic images of the early Blok were a star, spring, fog, wind, darkness, shadows and dreams. All this, used in a metaphorical sense, became symbols with the help of which the poet learns the eternal secret of life. But after the blue mists of early creativity come romantic admiration for the purely earthly features of life. This is how the Stranger appears - the embodiment of Femininity, accessible not only to the Soul of the World, but also to a real woman.

It is interesting that A. Blok portrays Motherland as a woman. So in the poems “Rus”, “Russia”, “On the Kulikovo Field” we meet the image of Russia-Woman, Russia-Wife. His homeland is hope and joy for him. He believes in her resilience, just as he believes in the resilience and courage of a Russian woman, capable of loving recklessly, forgiving generously and enduring life’s trials with dignity. Thus, the theme of the Motherland is intertwined with the eternal themes of Life, Death, and God.

Blok also says a lot about love as the basis of being. The poet objects to the rude interference of any calculations in the poetry of love; love is an element, it is a storm. It is no coincidence that Blok conveyed it with these very images-symbols. The search for harmony in the poet’s life is associated with images of love. Problems of morality in society are solved through the search for unity with the world. Duality and the search for balance sometimes lead to sad conclusions: “That happiness was not needed, that this pipe dream was not enough for half a life.” However, a connection with the world has been found. And in the later poems of A. Blok the question of the meaning of existence, of Life, Death and God is again resolved. These themes are eternal, no matter in what images they appear in the work of A. Blok.

“After all, my theme, I now know it firmly, without any doubt, is a living, real theme; she is not only greater than me, she is greater than all of us and she is our universal theme... I consciously and irrevocably devote my life to this theme.”

Alexander Alexandrovich Blok completely, completely, immensely loved Russia, gave his soul to her as to the woman he loved. His life was forever intertwined with his Motherland, he sacrificed a piece of himself to her, and she healed his soul with her “healing space.”

Blok saw Russia as Gogol saw it - above the clouds and beautiful. She is Gogol's child, his creation. “She revealed herself to him in beauty and music, in the whistle of the wind and in the flight of the extravagant troika,” wrote A.A. Blok in the article “Gogol’s Child”. The poet sits in this same troika, in it he flies across the boundless fields, blurred and dirty paths of Russia. And on the way, Blok sees what squeezes his heart - the wretchedness and humiliation of the Fatherland.

And in the scraps of her rags

I hide my nakedness from my soul.

The poet's soul is naked, just like the country is naked. “This is the harmonious dance of Russia, which no longer has anything to lose; She gave her whole body to the world and now, freely throwing her hands to the wind, she went dancing throughout her aimless expanse,” Blok wrote in the article “Timelessness.” And it is precisely with aimless expanse that Russia heals man. You have to love her, “you have to travel around Russia,” Gogol wrote before his death.

I will cry over the sadness of your fields,

I will love your space forever...

Shelter you in the vast distances!

We both live and cry without you.

A.A. Blok created his own commandment of love: “If a Russian only loves Russia, he will love everything that is in Russia. Without the illnesses and suffering that have accumulated in her in such quantities and for which we ourselves are to blame, none of us would have felt compassion for her. And compassion is already the beginning of love...” Blok lived with love for Russia, and this gave him strength.

Blok's poetry contains a prophetic prediction and a sense of the fate of the Fatherland in the past. The poems “Scythians” and “On the Kulikovo Field” are of great importance. The poem “Rus” is imbued with magical and fairy-tale motifs. Before us appears the kind of Rus' that Gogol created, full of rituals and secrets. For Blok, Russia is a special country, doomed to endure horrors and humiliation, but still a semi-victor. Key to victory A.A. Blok saw in the revolution, in it, as he believed, high ideals. He viewed revolution as an element capable of changing the world. But this did not happen, and the poet’s dream dissipated like an obsession, leaving in his soul only a bitter sediment of hopes that did not come true.

“The Fatherland is life or death, happiness or death.” Living according to this principle for Blok is not fanaticism, but abolished complete devotion to Russia. The poet believed that the time would come when a ray of sun would fall on the country and it would sparkle with all the colors of the rainbow. Today, at the turn of the third millennium, only we can choose between life and death and thereby determine our destiny.

Already contemporaries noticed how often several key words were repeated in Blok’s lyrics. Thus, K.I. Chukovsky wrote that the favorite words of the early Blok were “mists” and “dreams.” The critic's observation corresponded to the professional "inclinations" of the poet. In Blok’s Notebooks there is the following entry: “Every poem is a veil, stretched on the edges of several words. These words shine like stars. Because of them the poem exists." The entire corpus of Blok's lyrics is characterized by a stable repetition of the most important images, verbal formulas and lyrical situations. They, these images and words, are endowed not only with dictionary meanings, but also with additional semantic energy, absorbing new semantic shades from the immediate verbal environment. But it is not only the context of a particular poem that determines the semantics of such signal words. The integral body of his lyrics turns out to be decisive for the formation of the meanings of individual words in Blok’s work.

You can, of course, read and somehow understand any individual poem by Blok. But the more of his poems we read, the richer the perception of each poem becomes, because each work emits a “charge” of its own meaning and at the same time is “charged” with the meaning of other poems. Thanks to the cross-cutting motifs, Blok's lyrics acquired a very high degree of unity. The poet himself wanted his readers to view his lyrics as a single work - as a three-volume novel in verse, which he called the “trilogy of incarnation.”

What is the reason for this position of the author of many beautiful lyric poems? First of all, with the fact that at the center of his lyrics is the very personality of modern man. It is the personality in its relationship with the whole world (social, natural, and “cosmic”) that forms the core of the problematics of Blok’s poetry. Before Blok, such problems were traditionally embodied in the genre of the novel. Let us remember that A.S. Pushkin used the phrase “novel in verse” as a genre designation for “Eugene Onegin.” Pushkin’s poetic novel has a clear, albeit unfinished plot, a multi-hero composition of characters, many extra-plot elements that allowed the author to freely “deviate” from narrative goals, “directly” address the reader, comment on the very process of creating the novel, etc.

Blok’s lyrical “novel” also has a unique plot, but not an event-based one, but a lyrical one - associated with the movement of feelings and thoughts, with the unfolding of a stable system of motives. If the content of Pushkin’s novel is largely determined by the changing distance between the author and the hero, then in Blok’s lyrical “novel” there is no such distance: Blok’s personality became the hero of the “trilogy of incarnation.” That is why the category of “lyrical hero” is used in relation to him in literary criticism. For the first time this term, today widely used in relation to the work of other lyricists, appeared in the works of the remarkable literary critic Yu.N. Tynyanov - in his articles on Blok’s poetry.

The theoretical content of the category “lyrical hero” is the synthetic nature of the subject of a lyrical utterance: in the pronominal form “I” the worldview and psychological qualities of the biographical “author” and various “role” manifestations of the hero are inseparably merged. We can say this differently: the hero of Blok’s lyrics may appear as a monk or a nameless warrior from the camp of Dmitry Donskoy, Hamlet or a visitor to a suburban restaurant, but each time these are the embodiments of one soul - one attitude, one way of thinking.

The introduction of the new term was caused by the fact that Blok’s “biggest lyrical theme,” according to Tynyanov, was the poet’s very personality. That is why, with all the variety of thematic material that makes up the “subject” background of Blok’s “novel,” the lyrical trilogy remains monocentric from beginning to end. In this regard, the entire body of Blok’s lyrics can be compared with such examples of prose monocentric novels as “Hero of Our Time” by M.Yu. Lermontov and “Doctor Zhivago” by B.L. Pasternak. For all three artists, the most important category of the artistic world was the category of personality, and the plot and compositional features of their works are primarily subordinated to the task of revealing the world of personality.

What is the external composition of Blok’s “novel in verse”? The poet divides it into three volumes, each of which has ideological and aesthetic unity and corresponds to one of the three stages of “incarnation.” “Incarnation” is a word from the theological lexicon: in the Christian tradition it means the appearance of the Son of Man, the incarnation of God in human form. It is important that in Blok’s poetic consciousness the image of Christ is associated with the idea of ​​a creative personality - an artist, an artist, who with his whole life serves the re-creation of the world on the basis of goodness and beauty, performing the feat of self-denial for the sake of realizing these ideals.

The path of such a person - the lyrical hero of the novel - became the basis of the plot of the trilogy. Within each of the three stages of the general movement there are many particular episodes and situations. In a prose novel, as a rule, a specific episode constitutes the content of a chapter; in a lyrical novel by A. Blok, the content of a poetic cycle, i.e. several poems, united by the commonality of the situation. For a “novel of the path” it is quite natural that the most common situation is a meeting - a meeting of the lyrical hero with other “characters”, with various facts and phenomena of the social or natural world. On the hero’s path there are real obstacles and deceptive mirages of “swamp lights”, temptations and trials, mistakes and genuine discoveries; the path is replete with turns and crossroads, doubts and suffering. But the main thing is that each subsequent episode enriches the hero with spiritual experience and expands his horizons: as he moves, the space of the novel expands in concentric circles, so that at the end of the journey the hero’s gaze embraces the space of all of Russia.

In addition to the external composition, determined by the division into books (volumes) and sections (cycles), Blok’s trilogy is also organized by a more complex internal composition - a system of motifs, figurative, lexical and intonation repetitions that connect individual poems and cycles into a single whole. Motif, in contrast to theme, is a formal-substantive category: motive in poetry serves as a compositional organization of many individual poems into a tangible lyrical whole (genetically, the term “motif” is associated with musical culture and was initially used in musicology. First recorded in the “Musical Dictionary” ( 1703) S. de Brossard).

Since there are no direct plot connections between the poems, the motif complements the compositional integrity of the poetic cycle or even the poet’s entire lyrics. It is created by lyrical situations and images (metaphors, symbols, color designations) that are repeated many times and vary from poem to poem. The associative dotted line, drawn in the poet’s lyrics thanks to these repetitions and variations, performs a structure-forming function - it unites the poems into a lyrical book (this role of the motive became especially important in the poetry of the 20th century).

The central cycle of the first volume of Blok’s lyrical trilogy - the first stage of the poet’s path - “Poems about the Beautiful Lady.” It was these poems that remained Blok’s most beloved until the end of his life. As is known, they reflected the love affair of the young poet with his future wife L.D. Mendeleeva and his passion for the philosophical ideas of V.S. Solovyov. In the philosopher's teaching about the Soul of the World, or Eternal Femininity, Blok was attracted by the idea that it is through love that the elimination of egoism and the unity of man and the world are possible. The meaning of love, according to Solovyov, is the acquisition by a person of ideal integrity, which will bring a person closer to the highest good - “absolute solidarity”, i.e. the fusion of earthly and heavenly. Such “high” love for the world is revealed to a person through love for an earthly woman, in which one must be able to discern her heavenly nature.

“Poems about a Beautiful Lady” are fundamentally multifaceted. To the extent that they talk about real feelings and convey the story of “earthly” love, these are works of intimate lyrics. But “earthly” experiences and episodes of personal biography in Blok’s lyrical cycle are not important in themselves - they are used by the poet as material for inspired transformation. It is important not so much to see and hear as to see and hear; not so much to tell as to tell about the “unsaid”. The “way of perception” of the world and the corresponding way of symbolization in Blok’s poetry of this time is a method of universal, universal analogies and world “correspondences,” notes the famous researcher L.A. Kolobaeva.

What are these analogies, what is the symbolist “cipher” of Blok’s early lyrics? Let us remember what a symbol is for the poets of Blok’s generation. This is a special type of image: it is aimed not at recreating a phenomenon in its material concreteness, but at conveying ideal spiritual principles. The components of such an image are alienated from everyday living conditions, the connections between them are weakened or omitted. The symbolic image includes an element of mystery: this mystery cannot be logically solved, but can be drawn into an intimate experience in order to intuitively penetrate the world of “higher essences”, to touch the world of the deity. The symbol is not just polysemantic: it includes two orders of meanings, and testifies on an equal basis to the real and the superreal.

The plot of “Poems about a Beautiful Lady” is the plot of waiting for a Meeting with your beloved. This Meeting will transform the world and the hero, connecting the earth with the sky. The participants in this plot are “he” and “she”. The drama of the waiting situation lies in the contrast between the earthly and the heavenly, in the obvious inequality of the lyrical hero and the Beautiful Lady. In their relationship, the atmosphere of medieval chivalry is revived: the object of the lyrical hero’s love is elevated to an unattainable height, the hero’s behavior is determined by the ritual of selfless service. “He” is a knight in love, a humble monk, a schema-monk ready for self-denial. “She” is silent, invisible and inaudible; the ethereal focus of faith, hope and love of the lyrical hero.

The poet widely uses adjectives with the semantics of uncertainty and verbs with the semantics of impersonality or passive contemplation: “unknown shadows”, “unearthly visions”, “incomprehensible mystery”; “the evening will come”, “everything will be known”, “I’m waiting”, “I’m watching”, “I’m guessing”, “I’m directing my gaze”, etc. Literary scholars often call the first volume of Blok’s lyrics a “poetic prayer book”: there is no event dynamics in it, the hero freezes in a kneeling position, he “wait silently,” “yearning and loving”; the rituality of what is happening is supported by figurative signs of religious service - mentions of lamps, candles, church fences - as well as the dominance of white, scarlet and gold colors in the pictorial palette.

The main section of “Poems about a Beautiful Lady” was called “Stillness” in the first edition (in the form of a lyrical collection). However, the external inactivity of the lyrical hero is compensated by a dramatic change in his moods: bright hopes are replaced by doubts, the expectation of love is complicated by the fear of its collapse, and the mood of incompatibility between the earthly and heavenly grows. In the textbook poem “I Anticipate You...”, along with impatient anticipation, there is an important motive of fear of the Meeting. At the moment of incarnation, the Beautiful Lady can turn into a sinful creature, and her descent into the world can turn out to be a fall:

The entire horizon is on fire, and the appearance is near.
But I’m scared: You will change your appearance.
And you will arouse impudent suspicion,
Changing the usual features at the end.

The final first volume of the “Crossroads” cycle is marked with particular tension. The bright emotional atmosphere of loving expectation gives way to moods of dissatisfaction with oneself, self-irony, motives of “fears”, “laughter”, and anxieties. The hero’s field of view includes signs of “everyday life”: the life of the urban poor, human grief (“Factory”, “From the Newspapers”, etc.). “Crossroads” anticipate important changes in the fate of the lyrical hero.

These changes clearly manifested themselves in the second volume of the lyrical trilogy. If the first volume of lyrics was determined by the motives of expectation of the Meeting and high service, then the new stage of the lyrical plot is associated primarily with the motives of immersion in the elements of life, or, using the formula of Blok himself, “the rebellion of the purple worlds.” The consciousness of the lyrical hero is now turned to an unimagined life. She appears to him in the elements of nature (the “Earth Bubbles” cycle), urban civilization (the “City” cycle) and earthly love (“Snow Mask”). Ultimately, a series of encounters between the hero and the elements leads him to a meeting with the world of reality. The hero’s very idea of ​​the essence of the world changes. The overall picture of life becomes sharply more complicated: life appears in disharmony, it is a world of many people, dramatic events, and struggle. Most importantly, however, the hero’s focus is now on the national and social life of the country.

The second volume of lyrics, corresponding to the second period of the poet’s work, is the most complex in the structure of motives and the variety of intonations (tragic and ironic, romantic and “farcical”). The element is a key symbol of the second volume of lyrics. This symbol in the poet’s mind is close to what he called “music” - it is associated with the feeling of the deep creative essence of existence. Music, in Blok’s view, resides in nature, in the feeling of love, in the soul of the people and in the soul of the individual. Proximity to the elements of nature and folk life provides a person with the authenticity and strength of his feelings. However, getting closer to the diverse elements becomes for the hero not only the key to a fulfilling life, but also a very serious moral test.

The element does not exist outside of earthly incarnations. The extreme embodiments of the “earthly” principle in the poet’s lyrics are the characters of folk demonology from the cycle “Bubbles of the Earth” (imps, sorcerers, witches, mermaids), who are both attractive and frightening. Among the “rusty swamps”, the former impulses upward, towards gold and azure, gradually disappear: “Love this eternity of the swamps: / Their power will never dry out.” Passive dissolution in the elements can turn into self-sufficient skepticism and oblivion of the ideal.

The appearance of the heroine of love lyrics also changes - the Beautiful Lady is supplanted by the Stranger, an irresistibly attractive “this-worldly” woman, shocking and at the same time charming. The famous poem “The Stranger” (1906) contrasts the “low” reality (the disharmonious picture of the suburbs, a group of regulars at a cheap restaurant) and the “high” dream of the lyrical hero (the captivating image of the Stranger). However, the situation is not limited to the traditional romantic conflict of “dreams and reality.” The fact is that the Stranger is at the same time the embodiment of high beauty, a reminder of the “heavenly” ideal preserved in the hero’s soul, and the product of the “terrible world” of reality, a woman from the world of drunkards “with the eyes of rabbits.” The image turns out to be two-faced, it is built on the combination of the incompatible, on the “blasphemous” combination of the beautiful and the repulsive.

According to L.A. Kolobaeva, “the two-dimensionality is now different than in “Poems about a Beautiful Lady.” There, the figurative movement is aimed at seeing a miracle in the visible, earthly, human, in love, something infinite, divine, from “things” to rise “upward”, to the sky... Now the duality of the image is not mystically elevating, but, on the contrary, debunking, bitterly sobering, ironic.” And yet, the emotional result of the poem is not in complaints about the illusory nature of beauty, but in the affirmation of its mystery. The salvation of the lyrical hero is that he remembers - remembers the existence of unconditional love (“There is a treasure in my soul, / And the key is entrusted only to me!”).

From now on, Blok’s poems are often constructed as a confession that through the “abominations” of the day being experienced, the memory of an ideal breaks through - either with reproach and regret, or with pain and hope. “Trampling on shrines,” Blok’s lyrical hero longs to believe; rushing into the whirlwind of love betrayals, she yearns for her only love.

The new attitude of the lyrical hero entailed changes in poetics: the intensity of oxymoronic combinations sharply increases, special attention is paid to the musical expressiveness of the verse, metaphors consistently develop into independent lyrical themes (one of the most characteristic examples of such “weaving” of metaphors is the poem “Snow Ovary”). This is how Vyach spoke about one of the cycles of the second volume (“Snow Mask”). I. Ivanov is the largest theorist among the symbolists of the 1900s: “In my opinion, this is the apogee of our lyricism approaching the element of music... The sound, rhythm, and assonances are captivating; Intoxicating, intoxicating movement, the intoxication of a blizzard... Wonderful melancholy and wonderful melodious power!

However, the world of elements is capable of overwhelming the lyrical hero and interrupting his movement. Blok feels the need to look for some new ways. In the diversity of the elements, choice is necessary. “Doesn’t it mean to understand everything and love everything - even hostile, even that which requires renunciation of what is most dear to oneself - doesn’t it mean to understand nothing and love nothing? “- he writes in 1908. A need arises to rise above spontaneity. The final section of the second volume of the trilogy was the cycle “Free Thoughts,” which marks a decisive transition to a sober and clear attitude towards the world. What does the lyrical hero take away from the experience of joining the elements? The main thing is the courageous idea of ​​confronting a terrible world, the idea of ​​duty. From the “antithesis” of unbelief and subjectivity, the hero returns to faith, but his faith in the ideal beginning of life is filled with new meanings compared to the early lyrics.

One of the fundamental poems of the second volume is “Oh, spring without end and without edge...”. It develops one of the most important motifs of Blok’s lyrics - “both disgust from life and mad love for it.” Life reveals itself to the lyrical hero in all its ugliness (“the languor of slave labor,” “wells of earthly cities,” “crying,” “failure”). And yet the hero’s reaction to all manifestations of disharmony is far from unambiguous rejection. “I accept” - this is the volitional decision of the lyrical hero. But this is not passive resignation to the inevitable: the hero appears in the guise of a warrior, he is ready to confront the imperfections of the world.

How does the lyrical hero emerge from the trials of the elements? It is characteristic of him to boldly experience life, not to renounce anything, to experience all the tension of passions - in the name of the fullness of knowledge of life, to accept it as it is - in conjunction with the “beautiful” and “terrible” principles, but to wage an eternal battle for its perfection. The lyrical hero now “courageously faces the world.” “At the end of the road,” as the poet wrote in the preface to the collection “Earth in the Snow,” for him “one eternal and endless plain stretches out - the original homeland, perhaps Russia itself.”

The third volume of the “novel in verse” synthesizes and rethinks the most important motifs of the first two parts of the trilogy. It opens with the cycle “Scary World”. The leading motive of the cycle is the death of the world of modern urban civilization. A laconic, expressive image of this civilization is represented by the famous poem “Night, street, lantern, pharmacy...”. The lyrical hero also falls into the orbit of these forces of spiritual death: he tragically experiences his own sinfulness, a feeling of mortal fatigue grows in his soul. Even love now is a painful feeling; it does not relieve loneliness, but only exacerbates it. That is why the lyrical hero realizes how sinful the search for personal happiness is. Happiness in a “terrible world” is fraught with spiritual callousness and moral deafness. The hero’s feeling of hopelessness acquires an all-encompassing, cosmic character:

Worlds are flying. The years fly by. Empty

The Universe looks at us with dark eyes.

And you, soul, tired, deaf,

How many times are you talking about happiness?

An image of enormous generalizing power is created in the poem “Voice from the Choir” that concludes the entire cycle. Here is an apocalyptic prophecy about the coming triumph of evil:

And the last century, the most terrible of all,

You and I will see.

The whole sky will hide the vile sin,

Laughter will freeze on all lips,

The melancholy of nothingness...

Here is how the poet himself comments on these lines: “Very unpleasant poems... It would be better for these words to remain unspoken. But I had to say them. Difficult things must be overcome. And behind it there will be a clear day.”

The pole of the “terrible world” evokes in the minds of the lyrical hero the thought of impending retribution - this thought develops in two small cycles “Retribution” and “Iambics”. Retribution, according to Blok, overtakes a person for betraying the ideal, for losing the memory of the absolute. This retribution is primarily a judgment of one’s own conscience.

The logical development of the plot of the lyrical hero’s journey is an appeal to new, unconditional values ​​- the values ​​of people’s life, the Motherland. The theme of Russia is the most important theme of Blok's poetry. At one of the performances, where the poet read a variety of his poems, he was asked to read poems about Russia. “It’s all about Russia,” Blok replied. However, this theme is embodied most fully and deeply in the “Motherland” cycle.

Before this most important cycle in the “trilogy of incarnation,” Blok places the lyrical poem “The Nightingale Garden.” The poem recreates the situation of a decisive crossroads in the plot of the lyrical novel. It is organized by an irreconcilable conflict, the outcome of which cannot but be tragic. The composition is based on the opposition of two principles of existence, two possible paths of the lyrical hero. One of them is daily labor on a rocky shore, the tedious monotony of existence with its “heat,” boredom, and deprivation. The other is a “garden” of happiness, love, art, enticing with music:

Curses do not reach life

To this walled garden...

The poet does not try to find a reconciliation between “music” and “necessity,” feeling and duty; they are separated in the poem with emphasized severity. However, both of life’s “shores” represent undoubted values ​​for the lyrical hero: between them he wanders (from the “rocky path” he turns into the nightingale’s garden, but from there he hears the inviting sound of the sea, “the distant growl of the surf”). What is the reason for the hero’s departure from the nightingale garden? It is not at all that he is disappointed with the “sweet song” of love. The hero does not judge this enchanting force, which leads away from the “empty” path of monotonous labor, with an ascetic court and does not deprive him of the right to exist.

Returning from the circle of the nightingale garden is not an ideal act and not a triumph of the hero’s “best” qualities over the “worst”. This is a tragic, ascetic way out, associated with the loss of real values ​​(freedom, personal happiness, beauty). The lyrical hero cannot be satisfied with his decision, just as he could not find spiritual harmony if he remained in the “garden”. His fate is tragic: each of the worlds necessary and dear to him has its own “truth,” but the truth is incomplete, one-sided. Therefore, not only does the garden, enclosed by a “high and long fence,” give rise to a feeling of orphanhood in the hero’s soul, but also returning to the rocky shore does not relieve him of his melancholy loneliness.

And yet the choice is made in favor of severe duty. This is a feat of self-denial that determines the future fate of the hero and allows us to understand a lot in the creative evolution of the author. Blok most clearly defined the meaning of his path and the logic of the lyrical trilogy in one of his letters to Andrei Bely: “... this is my path, now that it has been passed, I am firmly convinced that this is due and that all the poems together are the “trilogy of incarnation” ( from a moment of too bright light - through the necessary swampy forest - to despair, curses, “retribution” and... - to the birth of a “social” man, an artist, courageously facing the world... who received the right to study forms... to peer into the contours of “good and evil” - at the cost of losing part of the soul.”

Coming out of The Nightingale Garden, the lyrical hero of the trilogy parts with the “sweet song” of love (the most important love theme up to now gives way to a new supreme value - the theme of the homeland). Immediately following the poem in the third volume of the “lyrical novel” is the cycle “Motherland” - the pinnacle of the “trilogy of incarnation”. In poems about Russia, the leading role belongs to the motives of the historical destinies of the country: the semantic core of Blok’s patriotic lyrics is the cycle “On the Kulikovo Field”. The Battle of Kulikovo in the poet’s perception is a symbolic event that is destined to return. That is why the vocabulary with the semantics of return and repetition is so important in these verses: “The swans screamed behind Nepryadvaya, / And again, again they scream...”; “Again with age-old melancholy / The feather grass bent down to the ground”; “Again over the Kulikovo field / The haze rose and spread out...” Thus, the threads connecting history with modernity are exposed.

The poems are based on the opposition of two worlds. The lyrical hero appears here as a nameless warrior of Dmitry Donskoy’s army. Thus, the hero’s personal fate is identified with the fate of the Motherland; he is ready to die for it. But the hope for a victorious and bright future is also palpable in the verses: “Let it be night. Let's get home. Let’s illuminate the steppe distance with bonfires.”

Another famous example of Blok’s patriotic lyrics - the poem “Russia” - begins with the same adverb “again”. This lexical detail deserves comment. The lyrical hero of the trilogy has already come a long way - from unformed premonitions of grandiose achievements - to a clear understanding of his duty, from anticipation of a meeting with the Beautiful Lady - to a real meeting with the “beautiful and furious” world of folk life. But the very image of the homeland in the perception of the lyrical hero is reminiscent of previous incarnations of his ideal. “Beggar Russia” is endowed with human traits in the poem. The details of the lyrical landscape “flow” into portrait details: “And you are still the same - a forest and a field, / Yes, a patterned cloth up to the eyebrows.” The portrait strokes of the appearance of Rus' are expressive in another poem of the cycle - “New America”: “Whispering, quiet speeches, / Your flushed cheeks...”.

For the lyrical hero, love for the Motherland is not so much a filial feeling as an intimate feeling. Therefore, the images of Rus' and Wife in Blok’s lyrics are very close. In the appearance of Russia, the memory of the Beautiful Lady comes to life, although this connection is not logically revealed. The prehistory of the lyrical “I” is included in the structure of poems about the Motherland, and these poems themselves retrospectively enrich Blok’s early love lyrics and confirm the poet’s idea that all his poems are about Russia. “...Two loves - for the only woman and for the only country on earth, the Motherland - two highest divine calls of life, two main human needs, which, according to Blok, have a common nature... Both love are dramatic, in each has its own inevitable suffering, its own “cross,” and the poet “carefully” carries it throughout his life...” emphasizes L. A. Kolobaeva.

The most important motive of poems about the Motherland is the motive of the path (“To the point of pain / The long path is clear to us!”). At the end of the lyrical trilogy, this is the common “way of the cross” for the hero and his country. To summarize the results of the trilogy, we will use the formula of one of the greatest blockologists - D.E. Maksimov: “The path of Blok appears... as a kind of ascent, in which the “abstract” becomes “more concrete”, the unclear - clearer, the solitary merges with the national, timeless, the eternal - with the historical, the active is born in the passive.”

1. Poet A. A. Blok.
2. The main themes in Blok’s work.
3. Love in the poet’s poetry.

...A writer who believes in his calling, no matter what the size of this writer, compares himself with his homeland, believing that he suffers from its diseases, is crucified with it...
A. A. Blok

A. A. Blok was born into a noble intellectual family. According to Blok, his father was a connoisseur of literature, a subtle stylist and a good musician. But he had a despotic character, which is why Blok’s mother left her husband before the birth of her son.

Blok spent his childhood in an atmosphere of literary interests, which early awakened in him a craving for poetry. At the age of five, Blok began writing poetry. But a serious turn to poetic creativity dates back to the years when the poet graduated from high school.

Blok's lyrics are unique. With all the variety of themes and means of expression, it appears before the reader as a single whole, as a reflection of the “path” traveled by the poet. Blok himself pointed out this feature of his work. A. A. Blok went through a difficult creative path. From symbolist, romantic poems - to an appeal to real revolutionary reality. Many contemporaries and even former friends of Blok, having fled from revolutionary reality abroad, shouted that the poet had sold out to the Bolsheviks. But that was not the case. The bloc suffered from the revolution, but was also able to understand that the time of change was inevitable. The poet felt life very sensitively and showed interest in the fate of his native country and the Russian people.

For Blok, love is the main theme of his creativity, be it love for a woman or for Russia. The poet's early work is distinguished by religious dreams. The cycle of “Poems about a Beautiful Lady” is filled with anxiety and a feeling of an approaching catastrophe. The poet yearned for the ideal woman. Blok's poems are dedicated to his future wife, D. I. Mendeleeva. Here are the lines from the poem “I enter dark temples...”:

I enter dark temples,
I perform a poor ritual.
There I am waiting for the Beautiful Lady
In the flickering red lamps.
In the shadow of a tall column
I'm shaking from the creaking of the doors.
And he looks into my face, illuminated,
Only an image, only a dream about Her.

The poet’s love for his future wife in “Poems about a Beautiful Lady” was combined with a passion for the philosophical ideas of V. S. Solovyov. The philosopher's teaching about the existence of the Great Feminine, the Soul of the World, turned out to be closest to the poet. Inextricably linked with the Great Feminine is the idea of ​​saving the world through its spiritual renewal. The poet was especially struck by the philosopher’s idea that love for the world is revealed through love for a woman.

In “Poems about a Beautiful Lady,” the ideas of dual worlds, which are a combination of the spiritual and the material, are embodied through a system of symbols. The appearance of the heroine of this cycle is ambiguous. On the one hand, this is a very real woman:

She is slim and tall
Always arrogant and harsh.
On the other hand, this is a mystical image.
The same applies to the hero.

Blok's story of earthly love is embodied in a romantic symbolic myth. “Earthly” (lyrical hero) is contrasted with “heavenly” (Beautiful Lady), there is a desire for their reunion, thanks to which complete harmony should come.

But over time, Blok’s poetic orientation changed. The poet understood that when there is hunger and devastation, struggle and death all around, one cannot go to “other worlds.” And then life burst into the poet’s work in all its diversity. The theme of the people and the intelligentsia appears in Blok's poetry. For example, the poem “Stranger” shows the collision of a beautiful dream with reality:

And slowly, walking between the drunken,
Always without companions, alone,
Breathing spirits and mists,
She sits by the window.

Blok wrote in his diary: “She is a certain ideal of beauty, capable, perhaps, of re-creating life, of expelling from it everything ugly and bad.” Duality - the contact between an ideal image and a repulsive reality - is reflected in this poem. This was even reflected in the two-part composition of the work. The first part is filled with anticipation of a dream, an ideal image of the Stranger:

And every evening my only friend
Reflected in my glass...

But the meeting place with the ideal is the tavern. And the author skillfully escalates the situation, preparing the reader for the appearance of the Stranger. The appearance of the Stranger in the second part of the poem temporarily transforms reality for the hero. The poem “Stranger” reveals the image of the lyrical hero in a surprisingly psychological way. The change in his states is very important for Blok. Love for the homeland is clearly manifested in Blok’s poetry. Blok’s love for his native country clearly echoes his deep feeling for a woman:

Oh, my Rus'! My wife! To the point of pain
We have a long way to go!

Blok sought to continue the traditions of Russian classical literature and saw his task as serving the people. In the poem “Autumn Will” Lermontov's traditions are visible. M. Yu. Lermontov in his poem “Motherland” called love for the fatherland “strange”; the poet’s path was not “glory bought with blood”, but “the cold silence of the steppes”, “the trembling lights of sad villages”. The same is the love of Blok:

I will cry over the sadness of your fields,
I will love your space forever...

Blok's attitude towards his homeland is more personal, intimate, like his love for a woman. It is not for nothing that in this poem Rus' appears before the reader in the form of a woman:

And far, far away it waves invitingly
Your patterned, your colored sleeve

In the poem “Rus,” the homeland is a mystery. And the solution to the mystery lies in the soul of the people. The motif of a terrible world is reflected in Blok’s poetry. The hopelessness of life is most clearly manifested in the well-known poem “Night, street, lantern, pharmacy...”:

Night, street, lantern, pharmacy,
Pointless and dim light.
Live for at least another quarter of a century -
Everything will be like this. There is no outcome.
If you die, you'll start over again,
And everything will repeat itself as before:
Night, icy ripples of the channel,
Pharmacy, street, lamp.

The fatal cycle of life, its hopelessness are surprisingly clearly and simply reflected in this poem.

Blok's poems are tragic in many ways. But the time that gave birth to them was tragic. But the essence of creativity, according to the poet himself, is in serving the future. In his last poem, “To Pushkin’s House,” Blok speaks about this again:

Skipping the days of oppression
A short-term deception

We saw the days to come
Blue-pink fog.

To understand the poet’s work, the image of his lyrical hero is in many ways important. After all, as we know, people reflect themselves in their works.

In the poem “Factory” we see the symbolist poet’s appeal to reality, to social themes. But reality correlates with symbolic philosophy, the lyrical hero’s awareness of his place in life. Three images can be distinguished in the poem: a crowd of people gathered at the gate; a mystical character (“motionless someone, black someone”) and a lyrical hero who says: “I see everything from my top...”. This is typical of Blok’s work: to see everything “from the top,” but at the same time the poet himself acutely felt life in all its diversity and even in its tragedy.

Features of creativity
“He said: “I have been writing poetry since childhood, but in my entire life I have not written a single poem while sitting at my desk. You wander somewhere - in a field, in a forest or in the hustle and bustle of a city... And suddenly a lyrical wave surges... And poetry flows line after line... And memory retains everything, to the last point. But sometimes, so as not to forget, you write it down on scraps of paper as you go. One day there was no piece of paper in my pocket - I had to write down sudden verses on a starched cuff. “Don’t write poetry when there is no call from the soul - that’s my rule.” (Karpov, 1991, p. 309.)

Characteristics of Blok's creativity

The first volume of Blok’s poems (1898-1903) included three cycles:

“Ante lucem” is the threshold of a future difficult path. The general romantic mood of the cycle also predetermined the antinomian attitude of the young Blok to life. On the one hand, there are motives of gloomy disappointment, which seem so unnatural for a nineteen-year-old boy. On the other hand, there is a craving for life, acceptance of it and awareness of the high mission of the poet, his future triumph.

“Poems about a Beautiful Lady” is the central cycle of the first volume. This is that “moment of too bright light” about which Blok wrote to A. Bely. This cycle reflected the young poet’s love for his future wife L. D. Mendeleeva and his passion for the philosophical ideas of Vl. Solovyova. What was closest to him at that time was the philosopher’s teaching about the existence of the Soul of the World, or the Eternal Feminine, which can reconcile “earth” and “heaven” and save the world, which is on the verge of disaster, through its spiritual renewal. The philosopher's idea that love for the world itself is revealed through love for a woman received a lively response from the romantic poet. Solovyov’s ideas about “two worlds”, the combination of the material and the spiritual, were embodied in the cycle through a diverse system of symbols. The heroine's appearance is multifaceted. On the one hand, this is a very real, “earthly” woman. The hero sees her “every day from afar.” On the other hand, in front is the heavenly, mystical image of the “Virgin”, “Dawn”, etc. The same can be said about the hero of the cycle. To enhance the mystical impression, Blok generously uses epithets, such as “ghostly”, “unknown shadows” or “unknown sounds”, etc. Thus, the story of earthly, very real love is transformed into a romantic-symbolic mystical-philosophical myth. It has its own plot and its own plot. The basis of the plot is the opposition of the “earthly” to the “heavenly” and at the same time the desire for their connection, “meeting”, as a result of which the transformation of the world, complete harmony, should occur. However, the lyrical plot complicates and dramatizes the plot. From poem to poem there is a change in the hero’s mood: bright hopes - and doubts about them, expectation of love - and fear of its collapse, faith in the immutability of the Virgin’s appearance - and the assumption that it can be distorted.

“Crossroads” is a cycle that concludes the first volume, which is characterized by dramatic tension. The theme of the Beautiful Lady continues to be heard in this cycle, but something new also arises here: a qualitatively different connection with “everyday life,” attention to the human hero, social issues. “Crossroads” outlines the possibility of future changes in the poet’s work, which will clearly manifest themselves in the second volume.

The lyrics of the second volume (1904-1908) reflected significant changes in Blok’s worldview. The social upsurge, which at that time embraced the broadest strata of the Russian people, had a decisive influence on Blok. He moves away from the mysticism of Vl. Solovyov, from the hoped-for ideal of world harmony, but not because this ideal became untenable for the poet. He forever remained for him the “thesis” from which his path began. But the events of the surrounding life powerfully invade the poet’s consciousness, requiring their own understanding. He perceives them as a dynamic principle, an “element” that comes into conflict with the “unperturbed” Soul of the World, as an “antithesis” opposing the “thesis”, and plunges into the complex and contradictory world of human passions, suffering, and struggle.

“Bubbles of the Earth” is a kind of prologue to the second volume. The poet unexpectedly and polemically turns to the image of “low-lying” nature, recognizes the regularity of the existence of this elemental world and the right of its inhabitants to honor “their field Christ.”

“Miscellaneous Poems” and “City” - these two cycles expand the coverage of the phenomena of reality. The poet plunges into the anxious, acutely conflicted world of everyday life, feeling himself involved in everything that happens. These are the events of the revolution, which he perceived, like other symbolists, as a manifestation of the people’s destructive element, as the struggle of people of a new formation against the hated kingdom of social lawlessness, violence and vulgarity. It is characteristic that the lyrical hero, despite all his solidarity with those who come to the defense of the oppressed, does not consider himself worthy to be in their ranks. In these cycles, one of the main problems for the Bloc begins to emerge - the people and the intelligentsia. In addition to motives associated with revolutionary events, these cycles reflect many other aspects of the diverse and endlessly changing Russian life. But poems where the poet develops a “wide-ranging” image of his homeland and emphasizes his inextricable connection with it acquire special significance. Blok’s hero is not a random passer-by, but one of the sons of Russia, walking a “familiar” path and participating in the bitter fate of those who “die without loving,” but who strive to merge with their homeland. The image of the fatherland is revealed differently in the poem “Rus” (1906). Rus' is a mystery - here is the initial and final summary, emphasized by the ring composition of the poem. At first it seems that the mystery of Rus' stems from “legends of antiquity.” But the solution to the mystery lies in the “living soul” of the people, which has not tarnished its “original purity” in the vastness of Russia. To comprehend it, one must live one life with the people.

Immersing himself in the elements of everyday life, Blok also creates a number of poems, which researchers of his work call the “attic cycle.” The lyrical hero of the cycle is a representative of the urban lower classes, one of the many “humiliated and insulted,” an inhabitant of city basements and attics. The titles and beginnings of the poems, and to an even greater extent, the details of the situation surrounding the hero seem unexpected in the mouth of the singer of the Beautiful Lady. But what is surprising is that the lyrical hero is perceived as the author’s “I.” And this is not an acting technique of the poet playing the corresponding role. This reveals an essential feature of Blok’s lyricism, which he not only recognized, but also actively defended. The self-disclosure of Blok’s lyrical hero in a number of cases occurs through the “dissolution of himself” in other people’s “I”, through his “co-expansion” with these other people’s “I”, thanks to which the acquisition of oneself occurs.

Poem "Twelve"

Poem "Scythians"

“Snow Mask” and “Faina” - these cycles reflect Blok’s sudden feeling for the actress N. N. Volokhova. The elements of nature and everyday life are now replaced by the elements of intoxicating, sizzling passion. Surrendering to his feelings, the hero of “Snow Mask,” “overtaken by a blizzard,” plunges into “snow whirlwinds,” into “snowy darkness of eyes,” revels in these “snow hops,” and in the name of love is ready to burn “on a snowy bonfire.” Symbols of wind and blizzard will run through all of Blok’s poetry right up to the poem “The Twelve,” marking the elemental, dynamic side of life. The heroine of the cycle is almost devoid of specific signs, her features are romantically conventional. In the “Faina” cycle, the image of the heroine is enriched with new properties. She is not only the embodiment of the “element of the soul,” but also an expression of the element of people’s life. However, the artist emerges from the world of the elements, “raging purple worlds,” as Blok himself defines the period of “antithesis,” reflected in the second volume, not so much with losses as with gains. Now “behind my shoulders is everything “mine” and everything “not mine”, equally great...” (Blok to Bely)

“Free Thoughts” is the final cycle of the second volume, which reflects the poet’s new worldview. It is here that words are heard that foreshadow the transition to the third, final stage of his “incarnation.”

The third volume is the final, highest stage of the path traveled by the poet. The “thesis” of the first volume and the “antithesis” of the second volume are replaced by “synthesis”. Synthesis is a new, higher level of understanding of reality, rejecting the previous ones and at the same time combining some of their features in a new way.

"Scary world." The theme of a “terrible world” is a cross-cutting theme in Blok’s work. It is present in the first and especially in the second volume. It is often interpreted only as a theme of denunciation of “bourgeois reality.” But there is another, deeper essence of it, perhaps even more important for the poet. A person living in a “terrible world” experiences its harmful effects. At the same time, moral values ​​also suffer. The elements, “demonic” moods, destructive passions take possession of a person. The lyrical hero himself falls into the orbit of these dark forces. His soul tragically experiences the state of its own sinfulness, unbelief, emptiness, and mortal fatigue. There are no natural, healthy human feelings here. There is no love either. There is “bitter passion like wormwood”, “low passion”, rebellion of “black blood”. The hero, who has lost his soul, appears before us in different guises.

“The Life of My Friend” is based on the technique of “doubleness.” This is the story of a man who, “in the quiet madness” of meaningless and joyless everyday life, squandered the treasures of his soul. The tragic attitude and “sullenness” characteristic of most of the poems in the cycle find their extreme expression in those of them where the laws of the “terrible world” acquire cosmic proportions. “Very unpleasant verses. It would be better if these words remained unsaid. But I had to say them. Difficult things must be overcome. And behind it there will be a clear day.” (Block)

"Retribution" and "Iambics". The word “retribution” is usually understood as punishment for a certain crime. Moreover, the punishment comes from the outside, from someone. Retribution, according to Blok, is, first of all, a person’s condemnation of himself, the judgment of his own conscience. The main guilt of the hero is betrayal of the once sacred vows, high love, betrayal of human destiny. And the consequence of this is retribution: spiritual emptiness, weariness of life, resigned expectation of death. If in “Retribution” a person who has allowed himself to be exposed to the destructive poisons of the “terrible world” is subject to retribution, then in “Iambics” retribution is no longer threatened by an individual person, but by the “terrible world” as a whole. The semantic and rhythmic basis of the cycle was the “angry iambic”.

"Italian Poems" (1909). In this cycle, Blok defines the position of “pure art” as a “creative lie.” “In the light shuttle of art” one can “sail away from the boredom of the world,” but true art is “a burden on the shoulders,” a duty, a feat. Another question that deeply concerns the poet and which he posed in the cycle is about the relationship between civilization and culture. In modern civilization, the poet sees a spiritless, and therefore destructive, beginning. True culture, according to Blok, is inextricably linked with the “elements”, i.e. with the life of the people.

The section “Miscellaneous Poems” contains poems that are “different” in content. Several of them are devoted to the theme of “poet and poetry.”

“Harps and Violins” - the name of this cycle is associated with Blok’s concept of music as the inner essence of the world, its organizing force. “The soul of a real person is the most complex and most melodious musical instrument. There are out-of-tune violins and tuned violins. An out-of-tune violin always disrupts the harmony of the whole; her shrill howl bursts like an annoying note into the harmonious music of the world orchestra. An artist is the one who listens to the world orchestra and echoes it without being out of tune” (Blok). If violins can be out of tune and in tune, then for Blok the harp is a symbol of music that always sounds in unison with the “world orchestra.” The thematic range of the cycle is very wide. A person’s loyalty or infidelity to the “spirit of music” can be expressed in a wide variety of manifestations: from the high rise of the soul to its subordination to the “dark elements”, fall, capitulation to the “terrible world”. Therefore, many poems in the cycle seem to be in opposition to each other.

“Carmen” - this cycle reflects the “gypsy element”, love, music, art, “sadness and joy”. On the one hand, it vividly resembles “The Snow Mask” and “Faina” due to the similar circumstances of its creation (the cycle is dedicated to the opera singer L.A. Delmas) and the cross-cutting theme of all-consuming spontaneous love. And the poet himself admitted that in March 1914 he “surrendered himself to the elements no less blindly than in January 1907,” when “Snow Mask” was written. However, “Carmen” is not a repetition of what has been done. The hymn of spontaneous love sounds here already on a new turn of the spiral of Blok’s path. The poet's image of Carmen is multifaceted and synthetic. Carmen is both the heroine of Bizet’s opera and a modern woman. She is both an independent, freedom-loving Spanish gypsy, and a Slavic woman, whom the hero is doomed to “wait by the fence until the sunset of a hot day” under the “filling cry of a crane.” The spontaneous principle is expressed in it in its most varied manifestations - from the element of burning passion, the element of nature and space - to the creative element of “music”, which gives hope for future enlightenment. This is how the heroine of the cycle is close to the lyrical hero. “Carmen” - Blok’s last cycle about love - is not only connected with the “Harps and Violins” that preceded it, but is a kind of transition to the poem “The Nightingale Garden”, which was Blok’s new step in searching for the meaning of life and man’s place in it.

"Motherland". Leaving the vicious circle of the “nightingale’s garden,” the poet enters a wide and harsh world that contains that genuine and lofty truth, which he strove to comprehend throughout his entire creative career. This is how the “Motherland” cycle arose, perhaps the pinnacle cycle not only of the third volume, but of all of Blok’s poetry. The theme of the homeland, Russia, is a cross-cutting Blok theme. At one of his last performances, where the poet read a variety of his poems, he was asked to read poems about Russia. “It’s all about Russia,” Blok answered and did not bend his heart, because the topic of Russia was truly comprehensive for him. However, he most purposefully turned to the embodiment of this theme during the period of reaction. “Motherland” for Blok is such a broad concept that he considered it possible to include in the cycle both purely intimate poems and poems directly related to the problems of the “terrible world.” But the semantic core of the cycle consists of poems dedicated directly to Russia.

“What the Wind Sings About” is a short cycle full of sad, elegiac reflections. “By completing the composition of the third volume with this twilight - with rare gaps - finale, Blok, apparently, sought to ensure that ... the internal movement in the book did not stretch into a straightforward and steeply ascending line suspicious of this straightforwardness” (D. E. Maksimov).

Poem "Twelve"

The poem “The Twelve” is not formally included in Blok’s “trilogy”, but, connected with it by many threads, it became a new and highest stage of his creative path. “...The poem was written in that exceptional and always short time when a passing revolutionary cyclone creates a storm in all seas - nature, life and art.” It was this “storm in all the seas” that found its condensed expression in the poem. All its action unfolds against the backdrop of wild natural elements. But the basis of the content of this work is the “storm” in the sea of ​​life. When constructing the plot of the poem, Blok widely uses the technique of contrast.

Poem "Scythians"

In this poem, Blok contrasts the “civilized” West and revolutionary Rus' and, on behalf of the revolutionary “Scythian” Russia, calls on the peoples of Europe to put an end to the “horrors of war” and sheathe the “old sword.” The poem ends with a call for unity.

Characteristics of Blok’s creativity, features of Blok’s poetry, General characteristics of Blok’s creativity, block general characteristics of creativity, the essence of Blok’s creativity, features of the cycle of poems about a beautiful lady

The new stage of Blok’s creativity is associated with the years of preparation and achievements of the first Russian revolution. At this time, the collection “Poems about a Beautiful Lady” (1904) was published, poems were created, later included in the books “Unexpected Joy” (1907) and “Snow Mask” (1907), a trilogy of lyrical dramas (“Balaganchik”, “King in the Square” ", "Stranger" - 1906). The poet's work in the field of criticism and literary translation begins, literary connections arise, mainly in the symbolist environment (Vyach. Ivanov, D. Merezhkovsky, Z. Gippius - in St. Petersburg; A. Bely, V. Bryusov - in Moscow). Blok's name is becoming famous.

In 1903-1906. Blok turns to social poetry more and more often. He consciously leaves the world of lyrical isolation to where “many” live and suffer. The content of his works becomes reality, “everyday life” (although sometimes interpreted through the prism of mysticism). In this “everyday life,” Blok increasingly persistently highlights the world of people humiliated by poverty and injustice.

In the poem “Factory” (1903), the theme of people’s suffering comes to the fore (previously it was only glimpsed through images of urban “devilry” - “A black man was running around the city...”, 1903). Now the world turns out to be divided not into “heaven” and “earth”, but into those who, hidden behind the yellow windows, force people to “bend their weary backs”, and into the poor people.

Intonations of sympathy for the “poor” are clearly heard in the work. In the poem “From the Newspapers” (1903), the social theme is even more noticeably combined with vivid sympathy for the suffering. Here the image of a victim of social evil is drawn - a mother who could not endure poverty and humiliation and “lay down on the rails herself.” Here, for the first time, Blok appears on the theme of the kindness of “little people,” characteristic of the democratic tradition.

In the poems “The Last Day”, “Deception”, “Legend” (1904), the social theme turns into another side - a story about the humiliation and death of a woman in the cruel world of a bourgeois city.

These works are very important for Blok. In them, the feminine principle appears not as “high”, heavenly, but as “fallen” on the “sorrowful earth” and suffering on earth. Blok’s high ideal now becomes inseparable from reality, modernity, and social conflicts.

Works on social themes created during the days of the revolution occupy a significant place in the collection “Unexpected Joy”. They end with the so-called “attic cycle” (1906), recreating - in direct connection with Dostoevsky’s “Poor People” - already quite realistic pictures of the hungry and cold life of the inhabitants of the “attics”.

Poems, in which the dominant motives of protest, “rebellion” and the struggle for a new world, were also initially painted in mystical tones (“Is everything calm among the people?..”, 1903), from which Blok gradually freed himself (“We were going on an attack. Straight to the chest...", 1905; "Rising from the darkness of the cellars...", 1904, etc.). In the literature about Blok, it was repeatedly noted that the poet most clearly perceived in the revolution its destructive (“Meeting”, 1905), nature-like, spontaneous side (“Fire”, 1906). But the more important the experience of the first Russian revolution became for Blok, the man and the artist, the more complex and diverse its poetic reflections turned out to be.

Blok, like other symbolists, is characterized by the idea that the hoped-for popular revolution is the victory of new people and that in the wonderful world of the future there is no place for his lyrical hero and people close to him in socio-psychological makeup.

They are far away
They swim merrily.
Just us with you,
That's right, they won't take it!

Civil lyric poetry was an important step in the artist’s understanding of the world, and the new perception was reflected not only in poems with a revolutionary theme, but also in a change in the poet’s general position.

History of Russian literature: in 4 volumes / Edited by N.I. Prutskov and others - L., 1980-1983.