Today, Mandelstam's poems are already inextricably linked with all Russian poetry, the 20th century is unthinkable without the scratching, touching lyrics of a homeless poet who does not even have a grave. His tragic fate became a reflection of the fate of a whole generation, his poetry is an alarming echo of the bursting essence of the century.
In 1913, the first collection of Mandelstam's "Stone" was published. In Mandelstam's early poems there are neither loud sounds nor bright lights. There are no feelings here that do not fall under the shadow of contradiction:
Nothing needs to be said
Nothing should be taught
And sad and good
Dark animal soul...
("There's nothing to talk about...")
Mandelstam sought to make distant epochs the property of his own creativity, bringing together layers of different times. Homer's Greece and Imperial Rome, medieval Catholic Europe, Dickens's England, the French theater of the Classical era for the poet are not material for stylization, but special moments in the history of culture, which in some way intersect with modernity.
The poems of the First World War and the revolution (1916-1920) were compiled in a new collection - "Tristia" - "sorrow" (the name was given by the compiler of the book M. Kuzmin, by analogy with Ovid's "Sad Elegies"). Here you can feel the longing for the passing century, for the torn ties. And St. Petersburg - the crossroads of cultures - seems to be a dying, dying city, an ark on which they float away into oblivion:
Let us glorify, brothers, the twilight of freedom,
Great twilight year!
In the boiling night waters
The formidable forest is lowered.
You rise in deaf years, -
O sun, judge, people.
("Twilight of Freedom")
The tradition of Russian poetry demanded such an answer to political events that would go beyond just politics. Mandelstam says that the great revolutionary shift takes away the ability to navigate the world, because the sun is hidden by darkness. The question of emigration that arose before Mandelstam, as well as before other Russian writers, was resolved by him in favor of fidelity to the Russian misfortune. These motifs sound in the poems "Century", "January 1, 1924".
In the early 1920s, the poet seemed to be in a hurry to say the most important thing not only in poetry, but also in memoirs and autobiographical prose (“The Noise of Time”, “Egyptian Stamp”, “On Poetry”). In 1925, the cycle love lyrics dedicated to Olga Vaksel, in which passion struggles with guilt:
Life fell like lightning
Like an eyelash in a glass of water.
lied to the root,
I don't blame anyone...
("Life has fallen...")
In the early 30s, his poetry becomes the poetry of defiance, anger, indignation. And the point here is not only the systematic persecution to which Mandelstam himself was subjected. At this time, the forty-year-old poet already looks like a deep old man. What he has in common with other people is not only the commonality of the meager Soviet life, but also the feeling of impending disaster, the horror of lawlessness. The wanderer, who never knew how to stand up for himself, “a man of the era of the Moscow seamstress” (I immediately recall the overcoat of Akaky Akakievich) realizes that everything that happens to the country is a personal matter. And he creates poems imbued with the pathos of true citizenship:
For the explosive valor of the coming centuries,
For a high tribe of people, -
I lost the cup at the feast of the fathers,
And fun, and his honor.
A wolfhound age throws itself on my shoulders,
But I am not a wolf by my blood:
Stuff me better, like a hat, in a sleeve
Hot fur coat of the Siberian steppes...
("For thunderous prowess...")
In 1934, Mandelstam wrote poems that cost him his life. He openly challenges the all-powerful Stalin:
We live, not feeling the country under us,
Our speeches are not heard for ten steps,
And where is enough for half a conversation,
They will remember the Kremlin mountaineer there.
(“We live without smelling the country under us ...”)
In the midst of general silence, the poet dared to say something that no one dared even think to himself.
Mandelstam was arrested and exiled for five years to Cherdyn, and then to Voronezh. The sentence turned out to be mild enough: the executioners played with the poet, as with a half-strangled mouse. When he returned, anticipating a new trouble, few of his acquaintances dared to give him and his wife a hand and help in some way:
Where how scary we are with you,
Comrade, my big mouth!
Oh, how our tobacco crumbles,
Nutcracker, my friend, fool!
And life could whistle like a starling,
Eat a nut pie
Yes, you can't see it...
(“Where how scary we are with you ...”)
Soon after his return, Mandelstam was again arrested and sent to the Far East. No one knows for sure the circumstances of his death in 1938 (one of the versions is V. Shalamov's poignant story "Sherry Brandy"). The poet's widow, Nadezhda Yakovlevna Mandelstam, managed to preserve his legacy. And now the lyrics of Mandelstam, the disturbing music of his poems reach us louder and clearer:
And in a fist clutching a frayed
Year of birth - with a crowd and a herd
I whisper with a bloodless mouth:
- I was born on the night from the second to the third
January ninety one
Unreliable year - and centuries
Surround me with fire.
Maybe you don't need me.
Night; from the abyss of the world,
Like a shell without pearls
I have been cast ashore.
O. Mandelstam
Osip Emilievich Mandelstam knew the true value of himself and his work, he believed that he would influence "Russian poetry, changing something in its structure and composition." The poet never cheated on himself in anything. He preferred the positions of a prophet and a priest, living together and among people, creating what his people needed.
I've been given a body - what should I do with it.
So single and so mine?
For the quiet joy to breathe and live
Who, tell me, should I thank?
I am the gardener, I am the flower,
In the darkness of the world, I am not alone.
For talented poetry, he was rewarded with persecution, poverty and, in the end, death. But truthful, high-priced poems, unpublished for decades, severely persecuted, survived ... and now entered our consciousness as high examples of human dignity, unbending will and genius.
In the transparent Petropolis we will die.
Where Proserpina rules over us.
We drink mortal air in every breath,
And every hour we die.
In St. Petersburg, Mandelstam began to write poetry, he returned here for a short time, he considered this city “his homeland”.
I returned to my city, familiar to tears,
To veins, to children's swollen glands.
I'm back here - so swallow quickly
Fish oil from Leningrad river lanterns.
Mandelstam was a childishly open and joyful person, going towards people with a pure soul, who did not know how to lie and pretend. He never sold his talent, preferring freedom to satiety and comfort: well-being was not a condition for creativity for him. He did not seek misfortune, but he did not pursue happiness either.
Ah, heavy honeycombs and tender nets,
It is easier to lift a stone than your name repeat!
I have only one concern in the world:
Golden care, how to get rid of the burden of time.
Like dark water, I drink clouded air.
Time is plowed by the plow, and the rose was the earth.
The poet knew and was not indifferent to the price that had to be paid for the blessings of life and even for the happiness of living. Fate pretty much beat and ruffled him, repeatedly brought him to the last line, and only a happy accident saved the poet at a decisive moment.
December solemn shines over the Neva.
Twelve months sing about the hour of death.
No, not a Straw in a solemn atlas
Tastes a slow, agonizing rest.
According to Akhmatova, at the age of 42, Mandelstam “became heavy, turned gray, began to breathe badly - he gave the impression of an old man, but his eyes still shone. The lyrics got better and better. Prose too. Interestingly, the poet combined physical decrepitude with poetic and spiritual power.
Eyelashes are pricked, a tear has boiled in my chest.
I feel without fear that there will be and will be a thunderstorm.
Someone wonderful me something hurries to forget.
It's stuffy, and yet you want to live to death.
What gave strength to the poet? Creation. “Poetry is power,” he told Akhmatova. This is power over oneself, illnesses and weaknesses, over human
"A century-wolfhound throws itself on my shoulders..."
Maybe you don't need me.
Night; from the abyss of the world,
Like a shell without pearls
I have been cast ashore.
O. Mandelstam
Osip Emilievich Mandelstam knew the true value of himself and his work, he believed that he would influence "Russian poetry, changing something in its structure and composition." The poet never cheated on himself in anything. He preferred the positions of a prophet and a priest, living together and among people, creating what his people needed.
I've been given a body - what should I do with it.
So single and so mine?
For the quiet joy to breathe and live
Who, tell me, should I thank?
I am the gardener, I am the flower,
In the darkness of the world, I am not alone.
For talented poetry, he was rewarded with persecution, poverty and, in the end, death. But truthful, high-priced poems, unpublished for decades, severely persecuted, survived ... and now entered our consciousness as high examples of human dignity, unbending will and genius.
In the transparent Petropolis we will die.
Where Proserpina rules over us.
We drink mortal air in every breath,
And every hour we die.
In St. Petersburg, Mandelstam began to write poetry, he returned here for a short time, he considered this city “his homeland”.
I returned to my city, familiar to tears,
To veins, to children's swollen glands.
I'm back here - so swallow quickly
Fish oil from Leningrad river lanterns.
Mandelstam was a childishly open and joyful person, going towards people with a pure soul, who did not know how to lie and pretend. He never sold his talent, preferring freedom to satiety and comfort: well-being was not a condition for creativity for him. He did not seek misfortune, but he did not pursue happiness either.
Ah, heavy honeycombs and tender nets,
It is easier to lift a stone than to repeat your name!
I have only one concern in the world:
Golden care, how to get rid of the burden of time.
Like dark water, I drink clouded air.
Time is plowed by the plow, and the rose was the earth.
The poet knew and was not indifferent to the price that had to be paid for the blessings of life and even for the happiness of living. Fate pretty much beat and ruffled him, repeatedly led him to the last line, and only a happy accident saved the poet at a decisive moment.
December solemn shines over the Neva.
Twelve months sing about the hour of death.
No, not a Straw in a solemn atlas
Tastes a slow, agonizing rest.
According to Akhmatova, at the age of 42, Mandelstam “became heavy, turned gray, began to breathe badly - he gave the impression of an old man, but his eyes still shone. The lyrics got better and better. Prose too. Interestingly, the poet combined physical decrepitude with poetic and spiritual power.
Eyelashes are pricked, a tear has boiled in my chest.
I feel without fear that there will be and will be a thunderstorm.
Someone wonderful me something hurries to forget.
It's stuffy, and yet you want to live to death.
What gave strength to the poet? Creation. “Poetry is power,” he told Akhmatova. This power over oneself, illnesses and weaknesses, over human souls, over eternity gave strength to live and create, to be independent and reckless.
For the explosive valor of the coming centuries,
For the high tribe of people
I lost the cup at the feast of the fathers,
And fun and honor.
The age-wolfhound throws itself on my shoulders.
But I'm not a wolf by my blood,
Stuff me better, like a hat, in a sleeve
Hot fur coat of the Siberian steppes.
The poet sincerely tried to merge with time, to fit into the new reality, but he constantly felt its hostility. Over time, this discord became more and more tangible, and then deadly.
My age, my beast, who can
look into your pupils
And glue with his blood
Two centuries of vertebrae.
In life, Mandelstam was not a fighter and a fighter, he was aware of doubts and fear, but in poetry he was an invincible hero, overcoming all difficulties.
Chur! Do not ask, do not complain!
Hush! Don't whine! Is it for the raznochintsy
The dry trampled boots, so that I now betray them?
We will die like foot soldiers.
But let us not glorify theft, day labor, or lies!
Critics accused Mandelstam of being isolated from life and its problems, but he was very specific, and this was the worst thing for the authorities. This is how he wrote about the repressions of the 1930s:
Help, Lord, to live this night:
I'm afraid for life - for your slave,
Living in Petersburg is like sleeping in a coffin.
“Poems should be civil,” the poet believed. His poem “We live without feeling the country under us ...” was tantamount to suicide, because he wrote about the “earthly god”:
His thick fingers, like worms, are fat,
And the words, like pood weights, are true.
Cockroaches are laughing mustaches,
And his bootlegs shine.
They could not forgive such a poet, the authorities destroyed him, but poetry remained, survived and now speaks the truth about its creator.
Where there is more sky for me - there I am ready to wander,
And clear longing does not let me go
From the still young Voronezh hills
To the universal - clarifying in Tuscany.
For the explosive valor of the coming centuries,
For a high tribe of people -
I lost the cup at the feast of the fathers,
And fun, and his honor.
A wolfhound age throws itself on my shoulders,
But I am not a wolf by my blood:
Stuff me better, like a hat, in a sleeve
Hot fur coat of the Siberian steppes.
So as not to see a coward or a flimsy filth,
No bloody bones in the wheel;
So that blue foxes shine all night
Me in my primeval beauty.
Take me to the night where the Yenisei flows
And the pine reaches the star
Because I'm not a wolf by my blood
And only an equal will kill me.
Analysis of the poem "For the explosive valor of the coming centuries" by Mandelstam
O.E. Mandelstam, who initially accepted the events in Russia in 1917 as a grandiose experiment in the name of the happiness of the people, by 1930 found himself in a state of deep spiritual crisis caused by the persecution and persecution of the poet.
Written in 1931, the poem "For the thundering valor of the coming centuries ..." is an example of Mandelstam's civil lyrics, dedicated to the theme of a little man who has fallen into the merciless red wheel of history ("No bloody bones in the wheel"), but has not lost his dignity.
The image of a lyrical hero
The lyrical hero of the poem is original: the reader does not know who he is addressing in the work (“take away”, “shove”), therefore the poem acquires a prayerful intonation. The lyrical subject becomes a way of expressing the main idea: resigning himself to the inevitability of fate, the fight against the "age-wolfhound", he seeks to escape from cruel reality, while recognizing his invincibility ("Because I am not a wolf by my blood
And only an equal will kill me")
Basic images
The acmeism of O.E. Mandelstam is based on the concept of a cultural and historical thing, on the ability to depict various historical eras. In the poem “For the explosive valor of the coming centuries…”, the cap in the sleeve of a fur coat, blue foxes, the Yenisei, pine trees, a wheel and a star became the symbols of the materiality of Mandelstam’s poetics. Using these images, the poet conveys the contrast of the world that surrounds the lyrical hero (“flimsy dirt” and “primitive” beauty of nature). The author emphasizes how much the lyrical subject differs from the surrounding reality - he is “not a wolf by his blood”, he is not broken and did not become a traitor. In his nobility is concentrated inner strength.
sound recording
Features are also present at the phonic level. Firstly, this is an alliteration for the sound “sh” in the first stanza: “lost”, “bowl”, “hat”, “fur coat”. The reader gets the impression that the poetic text is dissonant, pronounced in one continuous stream of speech. This enhances the emotional coloring of the poem. Secondly, the hissing sound "s" and "c" is the basis of alliteration in the second stanza. The sound writing in this passage emphasizes the differences between the noble, pure landscapes of nature and the mutilated human society, in which there is no place for beauty and dignity.
rhythm
The rhythmic organization of the text is strict. The poetic size of the anapaest, in accordance with the literary tradition, emphasizes the severity of the inner experiences of the lyrical hero. Cross-rhyming and masculine rhyme reinforce the overall impression of the narrative's monotony.
Thus, the poem by O.E. Mandelstam is the embodiment of the theme of the fate of man against the backdrop of historical events. Going back to the times, finding its continuation with and with, this idea of the inner strength of man is also realized in the work of Mandelstam.
"A century-wolfhound throws itself on my shoulders..."
Maybe you don't need me.
Night; from the abyss of the world,
Like a shell without pearls
I have been cast ashore.
O. Mandelstam
Osip Emilievich Mandelstam knew the true value of himself and his work, he believed that he would influence "Russian poetry, changing something in its structure and composition." The poet never cheated on himself in anything. He preferred the positions of a prophet and a priest, living together and among people, creating what his people needed.
I've been given a body - what should I do with it.
So single and so mine?
For the quiet joy to breathe and live
Who, tell me, should I thank?
I am the gardener, I am the flower,
In the darkness of the world, I am not alone.
For talented poetry, he was rewarded with persecution, poverty and, in the end, death. But truthful, high-priced poems, unpublished for decades, severely persecuted, survived ... and now entered our consciousness as high examples of human dignity, unbending will and genius.
In the transparent Petropolis we will die.
Where Proserpina rules over us.
We drink mortal air in every breath,
And every hour we die.
In St. Petersburg, Mandelstam began to write poetry, he returned here for a short time, he considered this city “his homeland”.
I returned to my city, familiar to tears,
To veins, to children's swollen glands.
I'm back here - so swallow quickly
Fish oil from Leningrad river lanterns.
Mandelstam was a childishly open and joyful person, going towards people with a pure soul, who did not know how to lie and pretend. He never sold his talent, preferring freedom to satiety and comfort: well-being was not a condition for creativity for him. He did not seek misfortune, but he did not pursue happiness either.
Ah, heavy honeycombs and tender nets,
It is easier to lift a stone than to repeat your name!
I have only one concern in the world:
Golden care, how to get rid of the burden of time.
Like dark water, I drink clouded air.
Time is plowed by the plow, and the rose was the earth.
The poet knew and was not indifferent to the price that had to be paid for the blessings of life and even for the happiness of living. Fate pretty much beat and ruffled him, repeatedly brought him to the last line, and only a happy accident saved the poet at a decisive moment.
December solemn shines over the Neva.
Twelve months sing about the hour of death.
No, not a Straw in a solemn atlas
Tastes a slow, agonizing rest.
According to Akhmatova, at the age of 42, Mandelstam “became heavy, turned gray, began to breathe badly - he gave the impression of an old man, but his eyes still shone. The lyrics got better and better. Prose too. Interestingly, the poet combined physical decrepitude with poetic and spiritual power.
Eyelashes are pricked, a tear has boiled in my chest.
I feel without fear that there will be and will be a thunderstorm.
Someone wonderful me something hurries to forget.
It's stuffy, and yet you want to live to death.
What gave strength to the poet? Creation. “Poetry is power,” he told Akhmatova. This power over oneself, illnesses and weaknesses, over human souls, over eternity gave strength to live and create, to be independent and reckless.
For the explosive valor of the coming centuries,
For the high tribe of people
I lost the cup at the feast of the fathers,
And fun and honor.
The age-wolfhound throws itself on my shoulders.
But I'm not a wolf by my blood,
Stuff me better, like a hat, in a sleeve
Hot fur coat of the Siberian steppes.
The poet sincerely tried to merge with time, fit into the new reality, but constantly felt its hostility. Over time, this discord became more and more tangible, and then deadly.
My age, my beast, who can
look into your pupils
And glue with his blood
Two centuries of vertebrae.
In life, Mandelstam was not a fighter and a fighter, he was aware of doubts and fear, but in poetry he was an invincible hero, overcoming all difficulties.
Chur! Do not ask, do not complain!
Hush! Don't whine! Is it for the raznochintsy
The dry trampled boots, so that I now betray them?
We will die like foot soldiers.
But let us not glorify theft, day labor, or lies!
Critics accused Mandelstam of being isolated from life and its problems, but he was very specific, and this was the worst thing for the authorities. This is how he wrote about the repressions of the 1930s:
Help, Lord, to live this night:
I'm afraid for life - for your slave,
Living in Petersburg is like sleeping in a coffin.
“Poems should be civil,” the poet believed. His poem “We live without feeling the country under us ...” was tantamount to suicide, because he wrote about the “earthly god”:
His thick fingers, like worms, are fat,
And the words, like pood weights, are true.
Cockroaches are laughing mustaches,
And his bootlegs shine.
They could not forgive such a poet, the authorities destroyed him, but poetry remained, survived and now speaks the truth about its creator.
Where there is more sky for me - there I am ready to wander,
And clear longing does not let me go
From the still young Voronezh hills
To the universal - clarifying in Tuscany.
Bibliography
For the preparation of this article, materials from the Internet from the public domain were used.
