What is a poem? This is a work that is located at the junction of two literary "worlds" - poetry and prose. Like prose, the poem has a narrative logic, a real story with a denouement and an epilogue. And as poetry, it conveys the depth of the subjective experiences of the hero. Many of the classics that everyone took in school were written in this genre.

Let's remember the poem Dead Souls"The pen of the Ukrainian classic - N.V. Gogol. Here, a wonderful large-scale idea resonates with the ability to find depth in a person.

Let us recall the poetry of the genius A. Pushkin - "Ruslan and Lyudmila". But besides them, there are many more interesting works.

History of the development of the genre

The poem grew out of the very first folklore songs, through which each nation passed on historical events and myths to its children. This is the well-known "Iliad" and "Odyssey", and "The Song of Roland" - a French epic. In Russian culture, the progenitor of all poems was the historical song - "The Tale of Igor's Campaign".

Then the poem stood out from such syncretic art, people began to supplement these epics, introduce new heroes. Over time, new ideas and new stories appeared. New authors came up with their own stories. Then new types appeared: the burlesque poem, the heroic-comics; the life and affirmation of the people ceased to be the main theme of the works.

So the genre developed, became deeper and more complex. The elements of the composition gradually formed. And now this direction in art is already a whole science.

Structure of a work of art

What do we know about the poem? The key feature is that the work has a clear interconnected structure.

All parts are interconnected, the hero somehow develops, passes tests. His thoughts, as well as feelings, are the focus of the narrator. And all the events around the hero, his speech - everything is conveyed by a certain poetic meter and chosen rhythm.

The elements of any work, including a poem, include dedications, epigraphs, chapters, epilogues. Speech, as well as in a story or short story, is represented by dialogues, monologues and the author's speech.

Poem. Genre Features

This genre of literature has been around for a long time. What is a poem? In translation - "create", "create". By genre - a lyrical large-scale poetic work that not only gives the reader pleasant experience from beautiful lines, but has both purpose and structure.

The creation of any work begins with a theme. So, the poem very well reveals both the theme and the character of the protagonist. And also the work has its own elements, a special author's style and the main idea.

The elements of the poem are:

• topic;
• form;
• structure;
• and rhythm.

Indeed, since this is a poetic genre, there must be a rhythm here; but as in a story, the plot must be respected. By choosing a topic, the poet indicates what the work is about. We will consider the poem "To whom it is good in Russia" and Gogol's famous story about Chichikov and his adventures. They both share a common theme.

The poem "Who is living well in Russia?" N. Nekrasova

The writer began his work in 1863. Two years after the abolition of serfdom, and continued to work for 14 years. But he never finished his main work.

The focus is on the road, symbolizing the choice of direction in life that everyone chooses in their lives.

N. Nekrasov sought to convey authentically both the problems of the people and the best features of a simple peasant. According to the plot, the dispute that began between ordinary workers dragged on, and seven heroes went to look for at least one of those who really lived better at that time.

The poet vividly depicted both fairs and haymaking - all these mass paintings serve as a vivid confirmation of the main idea that he wanted to convey:

The people are liberated, but are the people happy?

Characters in the main work of N. Nekrasov

Here is the basis of the plot of the poem "Who Lives Well..." - representatives of the people, peasant peasants, go along the Russian roads, and explore the problems of the same ordinary people.

The poet created many interesting characters, each of which is valuable as a unique literary image, and speaks on behalf of the peasants of the 19th century. This is Grigory Dobrosklonov, and Matryona Timofeevna, whom Nekrasov described with obvious gratitude to Russian women, and

Dobrosklonov is the main character who wants to act as a folk teacher and educator. Yermila, on the other hand, is a different image, he protects the peasants in his own way, going completely to his side.

Nikolai Gogol, "Dead Souls"

The theme of this poem echoes Nekrasov's theme. The road is also important here. The hero in the story is looking not only for money, but also for his own path.

Main character works - Chichikov. He comes to a small town with his grand plans: to earn a whole million. The hero meets with the landowners, learns their life. And the author, who leads the story, ridicules the stupid thoughts and absurd vices of the elite of that time.

Nikolai Gogol managed to convey well the social reality, the failure of the landowners as a class. And he also perfectly describes the portraits of the heroes, reflecting their personal qualities.

Foreign classical works

The most famous poems written in dark times Medieval Europe, are Alighieri's Divine Comedy and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Through the stories described by the talented poet Geoffrey Chaucer, we can learn about English history how different strata of society lived in this country.

After all, what is a poem - it is an epic that tells about bygone times and includes a large number of characters. D. Chaucer did an excellent job with this task. But, of course, this is an epic that is not intended for schoolchildren.

Modern views on the poem

So, it is clear that initially these were only epic works. And now? What is a poem? These are modern plot constructions, interesting images and non-trivial approach to reality. they can place the hero in a fictional world, convey his personal suffering; describe incredibly interesting adventurous adventures.

At the disposal of the modern author of poems is a great experience of previous generations and modern ideas, and a variety of techniques with which the plot is combined into a single whole. But in many cases the rhythm of the verse goes to the background, and even to the third plan, as an optional element.

Conclusion

Now let's clearly define what a poem is. This is almost always a lyrical-epic voluminous work in verse. But there is also an ironically constructed story, where the author ridicules the vices of a separate class, for example.

Poem

Poem

POEM (Greek poiein - “to create”, “creation”; in German theoretical literature, the term “P.” corresponds to the term “Epos” in its correlation with “Epik”, coinciding with the Russian “epos”) - a literary genre.

STATEMENT OF A QUESTION.- Usually P. is called a large epic poetic work belonging to a certain author, in contrast to the nameless "folk", "lyrical-epic" and "epic" songs and standing on the verge between songs and P. - a semi-nameless "epopee". However, the personal character of P. does not provide sufficient grounds for singling it out as an independent genre on this basis. Epic song, "P." (as a large epic poetic work of a certain author) and "epopee" are essentially varieties of the same genre, which we will later call the term "P.", since in Russian the term "epos" in its specific meaning (not as a genus poetry) is uncommon. The term "P." also serves to designate another genre - the so-called. "romantic" P., about which below. The genre of P. has a long history. Having arisen in its origins in a primitive tribal society, patrimony was firmly established and developed widely in the era of the formation of a slave-owning society, when elements of the tribal system still predominated, and then continued to exist throughout the entire era of slave ownership and feudalism. It was only under capitalist conditions that poetry lost its significance as the leading genre. Each of these periods created its own specific varieties of pictorial art. However, we can speak of pictorial art as a specific genre. It is necessary to define the poem specifically and historically on the basis of its typical features inherent in poetry in those social conditions that essentially created this genre, putting it forward as the main cast form and leading to a unique flourishing. The rudiments of genre before this and its development after that were only its prehistory or existence according to tradition, inevitably complicated by the new requirements of changing reality, requirements that eventually led to the death of the genre and to its overcoming by new genre forms.

FROM THE HISTORY OF THE POEM.- The historical beginning of P. was laid by the so-called lyric-epic songs, which emerged from primitive syncretic art (see Syncretism, Song). The original lyric-epic songs have not come down to us. We can judge them only by the songs of peoples who much later retained a state close to the primitive, and later appeared on the historical stage. An example of lyrical-epic songs can be the songs of the North American Indians or Greek nomes and hymns, poorly preserved and complicated by later stratifications. In contrast to the former lyrical-epic songs, the songs of a later stage of historical development were already of a relatively pure epic character. From German songs of the VI-IX centuries. one accidentally recorded song about Hildebrand has come down to us. In the X-XI centuries. songs flourished in Scandinavia. Traces of these songs can be found in a much later (XIII century) recorded collection "Edda". This also includes Russian epics, Finnish runes, Serbian epic songs, etc. Of various kinds of songs, those of them were preserved longer than others, which were dedicated to especially major social events that left memories of themselves for a long time. They were further complicated by later events. Formally, the singers relied on the tradition of syncretic art and lyric-epic songs. From here they took rhythm.
In the further development of songs, we observe their cyclization, when in the process of transmission from generation to generation various songs were combined, caused by the same analogous fact (“natural cyclization”, in Veselovsky’s terminology), and when songs about the heroes of the distant past were complicated by songs about their descendants ("genealogical cyclization"). Finally, "sings" of songs appeared that were not directly connected with each other in any way, united by singers by random mixing of faces and episodes around the most significant social events and figures. At the heart of these cycles, which then developed into integral P., as established in Lately, usually one song lay, overgrown, swollen (“Anschwellung”, in Geisler's terminology) at the expense of others. The events around which cyclization was carried out were, for example, the campaign of the Hellenes against Troy (Greek epic), the great migration of peoples (German epic), the reflection of the Arabs who conquered Spain and threatened the French people (French epic), etc. This is how the Persian “Shah-Nameh”, the Greek “Iliad” and "Odyssey", German "Nibelungenlied", French "Song of Roland", Spanish "Poem of Side". In Russian literature, such cyclization was outlined in epics. Its development was hampered by the dominance of the church with its Christian dogma. Close to similar P. is "The Tale of Igor's Campaign".
So. arr. from the lyric-epic songs that emerged from syncretic art, through the epic songs of the retinue epic to the huge synthetic canvases of the so-called. The pre-history of the P. received the greatest completeness in Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, classic examples of this genre. Marx wrote about Homer's poems, explaining their enduring artistic power: “Why should the childhood of human society, where it developed most beautifully, have for us eternal charm as a never-repeated stage. There are ill-bred children and senilely intelligent children. Many of the ancient peoples belong to this category. The Greeks were normal children” (“Toward a Critique of Political Economy,” Introduction, published by the Marx and Engels Institute, 1930, p. 82).
The conditions that created the most vivid artistic reflections of the “childhood of human society” were the conditions that developed in ancient Greece, close to the tribal system, where class differentiation was still just emerging. The peculiar conditions of the social structure of ancient Greek society provided its members (or rather, the emerging class of “free citizens”) with broad political and ideological freedom and independence. Such freedom was later deprived of even representatives of the ruling classes of the feudal and especially capitalist structures, placed in strict dependence on things and relations that received independent force. For the ideology of the "childish" stage of the development of human society, reflected in the poems of Homer, the defining feature was the mythological understanding of reality. "Greek mythology was not only the arsenal of Greek art, but also its ground" (Marx, Toward a Critique of Political Economy, Introduction, ed. Marx and Engels Institute, 1930, p. 82). The mythology of the Hellenes, in contrast to the mythology of other ancient peoples, had a pronounced earthly, sensual character and was distinguished by its wide development. In addition, the mythology of Homeric times was the basis of consciousness, while in later periods it turned into a purely external accessory, mainly of rhetorical significance. These social and ideological features of ancient Greek society determined the main thing in its literary work - the broad social "folk" meaning of the people, the struggle to assert the strength and significance of the "people" as a whole and its individual representatives, its free and many-sided manifestation ("the people").
This defining feature of the Homeric P. caused a number of aspects of the Iliad and the Odyssey associated with these main features. The socially active society of ancient Greece also reflected in literature, first of all, great events that had state and national significance, for example, a war. At the same time, events (wars) were taken from the distant past, in the future, their significance grew even more: leaders turned into heroes, heroes into gods. The wide coverage of reality led to the inclusion of a large number of independently developed episodes in the framework of the main event. The Odyssey consists of from a whole string of such episodes. The literary connection between classical songs and squad songs also had an effect here. The integrity of the coverage of reality made it possible, along with attention to major events, to dwell in detail on individual trifles, since they were felt as necessary links in the chain of life relationships: details of the costume and furnishings, the process of cooking and the details of its use, etc., were included without any neglect in outline of the story. P.'s tendency to spread in breadth was expressed not only in relation to things and events, but also to characters and their characters. P. embraced a huge number of people: kings, commanders, heroes, reflecting the reality of ancient Greek society, act as active members of a free society along with a host of no less active gods, their patrons. Moreover, each of them, being a typical generalization of one or another group of society, is not just an impersonal cog in the system of the whole, but an independent, freely acting character. Although Agamemnon is the supreme ruler, the military leaders surrounding him are not just obedient subordinates, but leaders freely united around him, retaining their independence and forcing Agamemnon to carefully listen to themselves and reckon with themselves. The same relations are in the realm of the gods and in their mutual relations with people. Such a construction of a figurative system is one of the characteristic qualities of the classical poem, which contrasts sharply with the poems of a later time, most often devoted to the rhetorical praise of the valor, first of all, of one or a few historically specific individuals, and not of the “people” as a whole. The multicoloredness of the characters included in the poem was also enriched by the versatility of the characters of the most important of them. The main feature of truly epic characters is their versatility and at the same time integrity. Achilles is one of the brilliant examples of such versatility. Moreover, private, personal interests not only do not enter into a tragic conflict for the character with state and social requirements, but are integrally connected in a harmonious worldview, not without contradictions, of course, but always resolved: for example. Hector. Unlike the later epic - the bourgeois novel, which put the individual in the center of attention instead of social events - P.'s characters are less developed psychologically.
The breadth of coverage of reality in P., due to which the largest social events depicted in it, were complicated by separate independent episodes, however, did not lead to P.'s disintegration into separate parts, did not deprive it of the necessary artistic unity. The unity of action binds all the compositional elements of P. However, action in P. is peculiar. Its unity is determined not only by the conflicts of the characters, but also by the orientation towards the "nationwide" reproduction of the world. Hence the slowness of the action, the abundance of inhibitions created by episodes included in order to show different aspects of life, which are also necessary as a compositional emphasis on the significance of what is depicted. Characteristic for P. is the very type of development of the action: it is always determined by an objective, from the point of view of the author, course of events, always the result of circumstances determined by a necessity that lies outside the individual desires of the characters. The course of events unfolds without the visible participation of the author, like a cast from reality itself. The author disappears in the world he has reproduced: even direct assessments of him are given in the Iliad, for example. either Nestor or other heroes. In this way, compositional means achieve the monolithic nature of P. The content and form of P. have the character of great significance: the broad social meaning of P. serves as the basis for this, and the indicated structural features are the means of its expression; solemn seriousness is also emphasized by the high syllable of P. (metaphors, complex epithets, "Homeric comparisons", constant poetic formulas, etc.) and the slow intonation of hexameters. The epic grandeur of P. is its necessary quality.
Such are the features of filmmaking as a genre in its classical form. The main one is ideological meaning P. - approval of the "people"; other essential features: the theme is the largest social event, the characters are numerous and richly versatile heroes, the action is the need for its objective immutability, the assessment is epic greatness. This classical form of the poem is called an epic.
A number of these signs of P. can be outlined in an unexpanded form and in epic songs, as a result of cyclization to-rykh, Homer's poems were formed. The same signs - and already on the basis of the broadly social, "folk" meaning of P. - could be traced to the above-mentioned P. of other countries with the only difference that P.'s features have not found such a full and comprehensive expression anywhere as in Hellenes. P. eastern peoples, due to the much more abstract nature of their religious and mythological basis, were for example. largely symbolic or didactic in nature, which reduces their artistic value ("Ramayana", "Mahabharata"). Thus, by virtue of their expressiveness and brightness, the noted features of Homer's P. are typical of the P. genre in general.
Since the conditions for the formation of the ancient Greek P. in the further development of mankind could not be repeated, P. in its true form could not reappear in the literature. “Regarding some types of art, for example. epic, it is even recognized that it in its classical form, which constitutes the era of world history, can no longer be created ”(Marx, Towards a Critique of Political Economy, Introduction, ed. In-ta Marx and Engels, 1930, p. 80). But a number of circumstances of later history raised problems that were artistically resolved with an orientation towards P., often even with direct reliance on classical P. (even if indirectly, for example, through the Aeneid), at different times using them differently . New varieties of P. were created, in terms of their artistic merits, far from the classical models. Compared with the latter, they narrowed and became impoverished, which testified to the decline of the genre, although at the same time the very fact of their existence speaks of the great force of the genre's inertia. New genres were born and approved, at first retaining a number of formal features of P.
After a period of classical flourishing, the P. genre reappears in Virgil's Aeneid (20s BC). In the Aeneid, we can clearly observe, on the one hand, the loss of a number of signs of P., on the other hand, the preservation of the well-known features of the P. genre: a nationwide event in the center of attention (the emergence of Rome), a wide display of reality through a multitude of interwoven narration of independent episodes, the presence of the protagonist (Aeneas), participation in the action of a host of gods, etc. However, the Aeneid differs in essence from classical P.: its main ideological aspiration is to glorify one "hero" - the emperor Augustus - and his kind; the loss of the mythological integrity of the worldview led to the fact that the mythological material in P. received a conditional and rhetorical character; passive submission to fate deprived the heroes of that earthly strength and brightness, that vitality that they possessed in Homer; the refined elegance of the syllable of the Aeneid had the same meaning.
So. arr. the narrowing of the ideological attitude, the loss of the integrity of the worldview, the growth of a personal, subjective, pathetic and rhetorical beginning - these are the characteristic features of the path of P.'s fall, which was already reflected in the Aeneid. These tendencies were determined by the courtly-aristocratic character of the class that put forward this P., which developed under the conditions of the Roman Empire, in contrast to the broadly democratic basis of ancient Greek poems.
In the further development of literature, we observe a modification of the P. genre in the direction indicated by the Aeneid. The reason for this is not so much that the Aeneid, accepted by Christianity much more favorably than the Homeric poems, and interpreted by him in his own way, was widely distributed in the era of strengthening power. christian church. The reason for the degradation of P. is in the loss in the further development of class society of that free worldview, which, although in a “childish”, mythological form, nevertheless provided the basis for a broadly social (“folk”) knowledge of reality, including, in the first turn, poetic.
But the history of the fall of P. did not go evenly. In the further development of P., with all the variety of features of each individual work of this genre and with all their large number, it is possible to outline the main varieties of P.: a religious-feudal poem (Dante, “The Divine Comedy”), a secular-feudal knightly poem (Ariosto, “Furious Roland ”, Torquatto Tasso, “Jerusalem Liberated”), heroic-bourgeois poem (Camoens, “Lusiades”, Milton, “Paradise Lost” and “Paradise Regained”, Voltaire, “Henriade”, Klopstock, “Messiad”), parodic burlesque petty-bourgeois P. and in response to it - the bourgeois "heroic-comic" P. (Scarron, "Virgil in Disguise", Vas. Maikov, "Elisha, or an irritated Bacchus", Osipov, "Virgil's Aeneid, turned inside out", Kotlyarevsky, "Turned Aeneid”), romantic noble-bourgeois poetry (Byron, Don Juan, Childe Harold, etc., Pushkin, southern poems, Lermontov, Mtsyri, Demon). The latter are already a completely original, independent genre. Later, there is a revival of interest in P. in revolutionary bourgeois and generally anti-feudal literature: a satirical-realistic, sometimes downright revolutionary-democratic poem (Heine, "Germany", Nekrasov, "Who Lives Well in Russia"), and finally we observe traces of critical assimilation P. as a genre in Soviet literature (Mayakovsky, "150.000.000", V. Kamensky, "Iv. Bolotnikov" and many others).
Row characteristic features distinguishes each of the indicated varieties of P., each of the named stages of its history.
Feud. Middle Ages in his poetic creativity transferred the question of the fate of the people, mankind from reality to the plan of Christian mysticism. The defining moment of religious-feudal P. is not the affirmation of the "people" in its "earthly" life, but the affirmation of Christian morality. Instead of a major social and political event, Dante's Divine Comedy is based on the ethical tales of Christianity. Hence the allegorical character of P., hence her didacticism. However, through its allegorical form, the living reality of feudal Florence breaks through, contrasted with bourgeois Florence. Real life, real characters, in a huge variety of data in the "Divine Comedy", give it unfading strength. The proximity of the Divine Comedy to the poem lies in the interpretation of the main question from the point of view of the ruling class of feudal society that put forward it, the question of the salvation of the soul; this interpretation has been developed in application to the diverse aspects of reality, embracing it entirely (in the system of a given worldview); The poem has a rich system of characters. In addition to this, a number of private elements bring together with the ancient poem "The Divine Comedy" - the general composition, the motive of wandering, a number of plot situations. A broad interpretation of the general problems of the life of society (class), although given in the religious and moral plan, puts the "Divine Comedy" above the "Aeneid", a poem essentially rhetorical. For all that, the Divine Comedy, in comparison with classical P., is depleted in the loss of a democratic basis, a religious and ethical tendency, and an allegorical form. The feudal-secular poem is immeasurably more distant from classical poetry than even Dante's poem. Knightly adventures, erotic adventures, all sorts of miracles, by no means taken seriously - this, in essence, is the content of not only the epic of Boiardo, Ariosto's Furious Roland and Rinaldo of Torquatto Tasso, but also his Gofredo, only renamed, no more, to "Jerusalem Delivered". Delivering aesthetic pleasure to aristocratic secular chivalry is their main purpose. Nothing from the folk basis, no really socially significant events (the story of the conquest of Jerusalem by Gottfried of Bouillon is just an external frame), no majestic folk heroes. In essence, feudal-secular romance is rather the embryonic form of the novel, with its interest in private, personal life, with its characters from an ordinary, by no means heroic environment. Only the form remained of the poem - adventurous adventures unfold against an external background of social events that has purely official significance. The presence of a poetic composition for the purpose of decorating the gods of Olympus has the same deeply official significance. The definite decline of feudal culture, the emergence of bourgeois tendencies, in the first place - the emergence of interest in a private person and his personal life, killed the poem, retaining only elements of its external appearance. In the era of the growth and strengthening of the political self-consciousness of the bourgeoisie, in the period of its struggle for state power, the poem again received wide development. The heroic bourgeois poem, in its typical patterns, was closest to Virgil's Aeneid. It arose in direct imitation of the Aeneid on the part of the genre. Among the heroic bourgeois poems we find works that directly sang the conquest of the class, such as Vasco de Gama's first voyage in the Lusiades by Camões. A number of heroic bourgeois P. still retained the medieval form of religious works: Milton's Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained, and Klopstock's Messiah. The most typical example of a bourgeois heroic poem is Voltaire's Henriade, which sings in the person of Henry IV the bourgeois ideal of an enlightened monarch, just as Virgil sang the emperor Augustus. Following Virgil, in order to glorify the hero, an event of national significance is taken, shown in the activities of a number of high-ranking persons. A large number of slowly developing episodes establish an idealized, rhetorically praised protagonist. Conditional idealization is facilitated by mythological mechanics, a high style, and Alexandrian verse. The missing sincere pathos of social greatness is made up for by didacticism and lyrical lamentations. So. arr. heroic bourgeois P. turns out to be very far from classical P.. Instead of an epic assertion of a free heroic people, the bourgeois poem pompously praised the stilted quasi-hero. The realistic elements in the heroic bourgeois P. were suppressed by conditional pathos. But in a number of these formal signs, the bourgeois heroic P. sought, through Virgil, to imitate the Greek. poems. K. Marx was ironic about this: “Capitalist production is hostile to certain branches of spiritual production, such as art and poetry. Without understanding this, one can come to the invention of the French of the 18th century, already ridiculed by Lessing: since we have gone further than the ancients in mechanics, etc., why should we not create an epic? And here comes the Henriad instead of the Iliad" ("The Theory of Surplus Value", vol. I, Sotsekgiz, M., 1931, p. 247). In Russian literature, the heroic bourgeois P. is very close to Kheraskov's Rossiada, which arose in a different - feudal-noble - class environment. The petty-bourgeois philistine strata, antagonistic towards the ruling class, experiencing the delights of bourgeois heroism on their own backs, parodied the conditional solemnity of the bourgeois heroic poem. This is how the burlesque scenes of the 17th-18th centuries arose: The Judgment of Paris, Jolly Ovid by Dassussy, Scarron's Aeneid, Osipov's Virgil's Aeneid Turned Inside Out, Kotlyarevsky's Aeneid Turned Over (Ukrainian) and others. Characteristic is a realistic retelling of a conditionally sublime plot (see Burlesque). In response to the petty-bourgeois parody of P., representatives of classicism acted like this. called “heroic-comic” P., where they countered the desire to belittle the “high” with the art of sublimely interpreting the comic plot: Boileau’s Nala, Pop’s The Stolen Curl, Maykov’s Elisha. In the history of Russian literature, Maikov's poem, however, did not differ in its social purpose from Osipov's poem - both of them were forms of a fierce struggle against the feudal nobility and its ideology. But in Western literature, these varieties of parodic P. had a marked specific meaning. In burlesque and "heroic-comic" P., the main feature and, at the same time, the main vice of bourgeois P. was revealed - its conditional heroism, its rhetoric. Genuine epic greatness, solely generated by the affirmation of the broad social interests of the people, even in the limited sense of ancient free citizenship, was inaccessible to the bourgeoisie with its individualism, particularism, egoism. Genre P. in the literary life of the era of capitalism has lost its former significance. The name P. began to designate a new form of a large epic poetic work, essentially a new genre. As applied to this new genre, the term "P." was especially persistently used in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. In the conditions of the collapse of feudalism, the advanced part of the feudal nobility, marching towards capitalism, sharply raised the question of the individual, his liberation from the oppressive pressure of feudal forms. With a clear understanding of the full gravity of this pressure, there was still no clear idea of ​​the paths of positive life creativity, they were drawn romantically indefinitely. This contradiction was experienced extremely sharply. It found its expression in such literary works as Byron's "Childe Harold", "Gypsies", etc. the southern poems of Pushkin, "Mtsyri" and "Demon" by Lermontov, the poems of Baratynsky, Podolinsky, Kozlov, etc. These works, which grew up under the conditions of the collapse of feudalism, are essentially very far from P. They are rather something close to its opposite and are characterized by signs characteristic of Ch. arr. novel. From the epic greatness of the classical P. as their main mood, just like from the genuine novel with its objectively given content, the romantic. P. is distinguished by its defining mood - sharply emphasized lyricism. The basis of romantic P. is the assertion of individual freedom. The theme is the events of personal intimate life, ch. arr. love, developed on one central character, shown rather one-sidedly in his only inner life, along the line of his main conflict. Lyrical emphasis also affects the organization of language and verse. Due to the alienness of P. of all these features, it is possible to bring these works closer to the genre of P. only in the sense that here and there the main questions of life are posed, which completely determine all events, all the behavior of the hero and therefore are given by the author in an underlined - epic or lyrical - significance. Hence such a common feature as a large poetic narrative form, although the large form of romantic P. is of a completely different scale compared to classical P..
Later, in the literature of capitalism, the poem as any significant genre form disappears, and the novel is firmly established. However, poetic epic works also exist at this time, but in terms of their genre features, these works are more likely stories in verse (“Sasha” by Nekrasov and others).
Only the growth of peasant revolutionary democracy again brings to life P. Nekrasov’s “Who in Russia should live well” - a brilliant example of such a new P. Nekrasov gives a vivid picture of the life of the most important classes and strata of Russian reality of his time (peasantry, nobility, etc.). He shows this reality in a number of independent, but plot-related episodes. The connection is established through the main characters, representing the epic generalization of the people, the peasantry. The characters and their destinies are shown in their social conditioning. The main meaning of P. is in the approval of the people, their significance, their right to life. The pathos of folk heroism, hidden by the forms of the most difficult everyday life, distinguishes this P. Its originality lies in its deep realism. Nothing moralistic, religious, conventional, pompously solemn.
The poetic form, realistic in its texture, emphasizes the significance of the theme. This realism is especially keenly felt in comparison with the romantic and bourgeois-heroic P. of the recent past. Nekrasov's poem is critical P. The poet's critical attitude gave P. a satirical character. Despite all its originality, this poem is much closer to the classical than other varieties of poetry, which more or less testified to the degradation of the genre.
Proletarian, socialist literature revealed much deeper and more vividly the heroism of the genuine masses of the people, their formation, their struggle for the only communist way of life that provides a truly free and harmonious life, but the literary movement as a genre is a historical phenomenon, and one cannot speak of its revival. Critical assimilation of P., however, is possible and necessary. The literary genre has the value of material for critical study not only in literature. Let's mention for example the movie "Chapaev". Interesting in terms of genre are the poems of Mayakovsky (“The Poem about Lenin”, “Good”), Kamensky (“Razin”, “Bolotnikov”), and others. The critical assimilation of classical poetry in its most striking historical examples is one of the important tasks of Soviet literature. , permission to-roy should provide significant assistance in the formation of new genres of proletarian literature.

CONCLUSIONS.- P. is one of the most significant genres of narrative literature. P. is the main genre of the narrative kind of pre-capitalist literature, the place of which under capitalism is occupied by the novel. The classic form of the poem is the epic. Its most striking example is ancient Greek P. In the further development of literature, P. degrades, receiving in the process of degradation a number of peculiar species differences. An essentially independent genre, but an intermediate genre, is romantic poetry. Critical assimilation of the most significant aspects of classical poetry is observed only in revolutionary democratic literature and Ch. arr. in proletarian, socialist literature. The main features of classical P.: the affirmation of the people through the most important social events of his life, the affirmation of a full-fledged human personality in the unity of his public and personal interests, the reflection of broad social reality in the “objective” laws of its development, the affirmation of a person’s struggle with the conditions of social and natural reality that oppose him. , resulting from this heroic grandeur as the main tone of P. This determines a number of particular formal features of P., up to the signs of composition and language: the presence of a large number of independently developed episodes, attention to detail, a complex conglomerate of characters freely connected into a single whole by a common uniting them action, a whole system of techniques of high style and solemn intonation. Bibliography:
Marx K., Towards a Critique of Political Economy, Introduction, IMEL, 1930; His own, Theory of surplus value, vol. I, Sotsekgiz, M., 1931; Boileau N., L'art poetique, P., 1674; Hegel G. F. W., Vorlesungen uber die astethik, Bde I-III, Samtliche Werke, Bde XII-XIV, Lpz., 1924; Humboldt, uber Goethes Herman u. Dorothea, 1799; Schlegel Fr., Jugendschriften; Carriere M., Das Wesen und die Formen der Poesie, Lpz., 1854; Oesterley H., Die Dichtkunst und ihre Gattungen, Lpz., 1870; Methner J., Poesie und Prosa, ihre Arten und Formen, Halle, 1888; Furtmuller K., Die Theorie des Epos bei den Brudern Schlegel, den Klassikern und W. v. Humboldt, Progr., Wien, 1903; Heusler A., ​​Lied und Epos in germanischen Sagendichtungen, Dortmund, 1905; Lehmann R., Poetik, Munchen, 1919; Hirt E., Das Formgesetz der epischen, dramatischen und lyrischen Dichtung, Lpz., 1923; Ermatinger E., Das dichterische Kunstwerk, Lpz., 1923; Weber, Die epische Dichtung, T. I-III, 1921-1922; His own, Geschichte der epischen und idyllischen Dichtung von der Reformation bis zur Gegenwart, 1924; Petersen J., Zur Lehre v. d. Dichtungsgattungen, on Sat. "August Sauer Festschrift", Stuttg., 1925; Wiegand J., Epos, in book. Reallexikon der deutschen Literaturgeschichte, hrsg. v. P. Merker u. W. Stammler, Bd I, Berlin, 1926; Steckner H., Epos, Theorie, ibid., Bd IV, Berlin, 1931 (literature given); Aristotle, Poetics, introduction and preface by N. Novosadsky, L., 1927; Boileau, Poetic Art, Translation Edited by P. S. Kogan, 1914; Lessing G. E., Laocoön, or on the boundaries of painting and poetry, ed. M. Livshits, with entry. Art. V. Griba, (L.), 1933; Two bishops of Alexander Sumarokov. The first one proposes about the Russian language, and the second about poetry. Printed at the Imperial Academy of Sciences in 1784. in Saint Petersburg; Ostolopov N., Dictionary of ancient and new poetry, part 2, St. Petersburg, 1821; Veselovsky, Al-dr. N., Three chapters from historical poetics, Sobr. sochin., v. I, St. Petersburg, 1913; Tiander K., Essay on the evolution of epic creativity, "Issues of the theory and psychology of creativity", vol. I, ed. 2, Kharkov, 1911; His own, Folk epic creativity and poet-artist, ibid., vol. II, no. I, St. Petersburg, 1909; Sakulin P. N., Fundamentals of classical poetics, in the book. "History of new Russian literature of the era of classicism", M., 1918; Zhirmunsky V., Byron and Pushkin, L., 1924; Heroic Poem, ed. Tomashevsky, entry. Art. Desnitsky, Leningrad, 1933; Bogoyavlensky L., Poem, " Literary Encyclopedia”, vol. II, ed. L. D. Frenkel, Moscow, 1925; Friche V. M., Poem, “Encyclop. dictionary" br. Pomegranate, vol. XXXIII, 1914. Genres, Poetics, Literary Theory and Bibliography to the Writers and Literary Monuments Named in the Article.

Literary encyclopedia. - In 11 tons; M .: publishing house of the Communist Academy, Soviet Encyclopedia, Fiction. Edited by V. M. Friche, A. V. Lunacharsky. 1929-1939 .

Poem

(Greek poiema, from Greek poieo - I create), a large form of poetic work in epic, lyric or lyric-epic kind. Poems from different eras are generally not the same in terms of their genre features, but they have some common features: the subject of their depiction is, as a rule, a certain era, the author's judgments about which are given to the reader in the form of a story about significant events in the life of an individual, which is its typical representative (in epic and lyric-epic), or in the form of a description of one's own worldview (in lyrics); Unlike poems, the poems are characterized by a didactic message, since they directly (in the heroic and satirical types) or indirectly (in the lyrical type) proclaim or evaluate social ideals; they almost always have a plot, and even in lyrical poems thematically isolated fragments tend to cycle and turn into a single epic narrative.
Poems are the earliest surviving monuments of ancient writing. They were and are a kind of "encyclopedias", when referring to which you can learn about the gods, rulers and heroes, get acquainted with the initial stage of the history of the nation, as well as with its mythological background, comprehend the way of philosophizing characteristic of this people. These are the early examples of epic poems in many nats. literatures: in India - the folk epic " Mahabharata"(not earlier than the 4th century BC) and" Ramayana» Valmiki (no later than the 2nd century AD), in Greece - the Iliad and the Odyssey Homer(no later than the 8th century BC), in Rome - "Aeneid" Virgil(1st century BC), in Iran - “ Shah name» Ferdowsi(10-11 centuries), in Kyrgyzstan - the folk epic " Manas"(no later than the 15th century). These are epic poems in which either various lines a single plot associated with the figures of gods and heroes (as in Greece and Rome), or an important historical narrative is framed by thematically isolated mythological legends, lyrical fragments, moral and philosophical reasoning, etc. (as in the East).
In ancient Europe, the genre series of mythological and heroic poems was supplemented by samples of parodic satirical (anonymous "Batrachomyomachia", not earlier than the 5th century BC) and didactic ("Works and Days" by Hesiod, 8-7th centuries BC). e.) poetic epic. These genre forms developed in the Middle Ages, during the Renaissance and later: the heroic epic poem turned into a heroic "song" with a minimum number of characters and storylines (" Beowulf», « Song of Roland», « Song of the Nibelungs»); its composition was reflected in imitative historical poems (in Africa by F. Petrarch, in "Jerusalem Liberated" by T. Tasso); the magical plot of the mythological epic was replaced by the lightweight magic plot of the poetic chivalric romance(his influence will be felt in the Renaissance epic poems - in "Furious Orlando" by L. Ariosto and in The Fairy Queen Spencer); traditions of the didactic epic were preserved in allegorical poems (in the "Divine Comedy" Dante, in "Triumphs" by F. Petrarch); finally, in modern times, classicist poets were guided by the parody-satirical epic, in the manner burlesque who created heroic and comic poems (“Naloy” by N. bualo).
In the era romanticism with his cult lyrics new poems appeared - lyrical-epic ("Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" by J. G. Byron, the poem "Ezersky" and the "novel in verse" "Eugene Onegin" by A. S. Pushkin, "Demon" M. Yu. Lermontov). In them, the epic narrative was interrupted by various detailed landscape descriptions, lyrical digressions from the plot outline in the form of author's reasoning.
In Russian literature beginning. 20th century there has been a tendency to turn the lyric-epic poem into a lyrical one. Already in the poem by A.A. Blok"The Twelve" are distinguishable chapters lyrical-epic (with the author's narration and dialogues of characters) - and lyrical (in them the author imitates the song types of urban folklore). Early poems by V.V. Mayakovsky(for example, "A cloud in pants") also hide the epic plot behind the alternation of diverse and dark lyrical statements. This trend will manifest itself especially clearly later, in the poem by A.A. Akhmatova"Requiem".

Literature and language. Modern illustrated encyclopedia. - M.: Rosman. Under the editorship of prof. Gorkina A.P. 2006 .

Poem

POEM- the word is Greek and is fraught with an ancient meaning - “creation, creation” - and not only because it tells about the affairs, “creations” of people, but also because it itself is a “song action”, “song processing”, their union. Hence the application of the name "poem" to epic vaults, sings; hence its closeness in meaning to the epic, closeness to identity. But still, there is a difference. The difference is that the term "poem" has evolved, while the term "epopee" has frozen in its meaning of a collection of bylevy - folk - songs. The term "poem" enters literature as a kind of artistic verbal creativity and, together with literature, goes through a number of eras. Alexandrian scholars establish the features of the poem, theorize it and make it literary, i.e. reproducible form. They produce their work on the Iliad and the Odyssey, which become the models of the poem. In the era of Augustus in Rome, Virgil, under their influence and under the influence of the unsuccessful attempts of his predecessors, writes the Roman poem "Aeneid", which, despite the elegant verse and many beautiful details, is on the whole more scholarly than free-poetic creation. The features of an artificial heroic poem are as follows: 1) the poem is based on an important event of national or state significance (for Virgil - the foundation of the state in Latium), 2) a descriptive element is widely introduced (for Virgil, a description of a storm, night, Eneev's shield), 3) touching is introduced into the image of a person (in Virgil - Dido's love for Aeneas), 4) a miraculous is introduced into the event: dreams, oracles(predictions to Aeneas), the direct participation of higher beings, the personification of abstract concepts, 5) the personal beliefs and convictions of the poet are expressed, 6) allusions to modernity are introduced (in the "Aeneid" of the game of contemporary Rome to Virgil). These are the features in the content; the features in the form were as follows: 1) the poem begins with an introduction, which indicates the content of the poem (Arma virumque cano in the Aeneid); and the calling of the Muse (Muse, remind me. En. 1. 8); 2) the poem, having unity, grouping the content around one major event, is diversified by episodes, i.e. such introductory events, which, themselves constituting a whole, are adjacent to the main event of the poem, often as obstacles that slow down its movement; 3) the beginning of the poem for the most part introduces the reader into the middle of the event: in medias res (in the "Aeneid" Aeneas is presented in the 7th year of travel); 4) previous events are learned from the stories on behalf of the hero (in the Aeneid, Aeneas tells Dido about the destruction of Troy).

These features of the poem became laws for the writers of subsequent epochs and, mainly, of the 16th and 18th centuries, who subsequently received the name of false classics for their blind imitation of predominantly Roman models. Among them it is necessary to name: Liberated Jerusalem - Torquato Tasso, Franciada - Ronear, Lusiada - Camões, Henriada - Voltaire, "Peter the Great" - Lomonosov, Rossiada - Kheraskov. Along with the heroic poem, the ancients knew a poem of another kind - feogonic - the deeds of the gods, cosmogonic - depicting the universe (Deeds and Days - Hesiod, On the Nature of Things - Lucretia). And in imitation of them, Christian writers in the 14th, 17th and 18th centuries create a religious poem. These are: The Divine Comedy - Dante, Paradise Lost - Milton, Messiah - Klopstock. For a more complete disclosure of the term, it is necessary to indicate that the poem, as a poem, is also known to the Hindu epic (Ramayana, Magabharata), and, as mythical-historical, it appears at the end of the 10th and beginning of the 11th century AD. and among the Persians, where Abdul-Kasim-Mansur-Firdussi creates the Shah-Nameh (royal book) in 60,000 couplets, where he connected the actual history of Persia before the overthrow of the Sassanids by the Arabs with legends about primitive antiquity, depicting in it the fate of the people by a number of important events. In Western Europe, along with the pseudo-classical poem, the romantic poem was born and developed, which arose from the legends of the Middle Ages. The main content of the poem of this kind were scenes from knightly life, depicting mainly religious feelings, feelings of honor and love. There is no strict unity in them: adventures are diverse, intricately intertwined with each other (“Furious Roland” by Ariosto).

From these foundations, from the interaction of pseudo-classical and romantic poems, a new poem grows in the early 19th century in the form of a poem by Byron and his imitators. The poem now takes the form of either a short or widespread poetic story about events from the personal life of a fictional person, not subject to any of the usual rules of the poem, with numerous digressions of a lyrical nature, with the focus on the heart life of the hero. Soon the poem loses its romantic character and, in connection with a general change in literary theoretical attitudes, acquires a new meaning of the lyrical-epic poem, as a special type of work of art, the classicism of which is reflected in the complete justification of the work by its correspondence folk features(spirit of the people) and the requirements of artistry.

In this form, the poem has been widely circulated. In Russian literature, Pushkin, Lermontov, Maikov ("Fool"), Tolstoy A.K. and a number of other less prominent poets can be named as authors of poems of this kind. Approaching more and more with other types of epic creativity, in Nekrasov's poetry the poem becomes a purely realistic work (the poems "Sasha", "Who Lives Well in Russia", "Peasant Children", etc.), rather like a story in verse, than a pseudo-classical or romantic poem. At the same time, the external form of the poem also changes in a peculiar way. The hexameter of classical and pseudo-classical poems is freely replaced by other meters. The meters of Dante and Ariosto in this case supported the determination of the poets of the new time to free themselves from the grip of the classical form. A stanza is introduced into the poem and a number of poems appear written in octaves, sonnets, rondos, triplets (Pushkin, V. Ivanov, Igor Severyanin, Iv. Rukavishnikov). Fofanov (The Dressmaker) tries to give a realistic poem, but unsuccessfully. The symbolists (Bryusov, Konevsky, Balmont) think with great pleasure in the term "poem" of their experiments with a poetic story. This movement also affects the frequent translations of Western European samples of the poem (starting with the poems of Edgar Allan Poe). Recently, the poem has found a new source of revival in the social themes of the time. An example of this kind of poem can be called "The Twelve" - ​​A. Blok, poems by Mayakovsky, Sergei Gorodetsky. Obviously, the heroic era of the revolutionary struggle finds in the poem elements and forms that reflect it most clearly. Thus, the poem, having originated in Greece, has gone through a number of changes, but through all the centuries it has carried its main feature of an epic work that characterizes the moments of a bright rise and self-determination of a nation or personality.

Dictionary of literary terms

POEM (Greek poiema, from Greek poieo - I create), a large form of poetic work in epic, lyric or lyric-epic kind. Poems from different eras and among different peoples, in general, are not the same in terms of their genre characteristics, however, they have some common features: the subject of the image in them is, as a rule, a certain era, certain events, certain experiences of a single person. Unlike poems, in a poem directly (in heroic and satirical types) or indirectly
(in a lyrical type) public ideals are proclaimed or evaluated; they almost always have a plot, and even in lyrical poems, thematically isolated fragments are combined into a single epic narrative.
Poems are the earliest surviving monuments of ancient writing. They were and are a kind of "encyclopedias", when referring to which you can learn about the gods, rulers and heroes, get acquainted with the initial stage of the history of the nation, as well as with its mythological background, comprehend the way of philosophizing characteristic of this people. These are the early examples of epic poems in many national literatures: in India - the folk epic "Mahabharata" and "Ramayana", in Greece - "Iliad" and "Odyssey" by Homer, in Rome - "Aeneid" by Virgil.
In Russian literature of the early 20th century, there was a tendency to turn the lyric-epic poem into a purely lyrical poem. Already in the poem by A. A. Blok "The Twelve" both lyrical-epic and lyrical motifs clearly appear. The early poems of V. V. Mayakovsky (“A Cloud in Pants”) also hide an epic plot behind an alternation of different types of lyrical statements. This trend will manifest itself especially clearly later, in A. A. Akhmatova's poem "Requiem".

VARIETIES OF THE POEM GENRE

EPIC POEM is one of the oldest types of epic works. Ever since antiquity, this type of poem has focused on depicting heroic events, most often taken from the distant past. These events were usually significant, epoch-making, influencing the course of national and general history. Examples of the genre include: Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, The Song of Roland, The Song of the Nibelungs, Ariosto's Furious Roland, Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered, and others. The epic genre has almost always been a heroic genre. For his loftiness and citizenship, many writers and poets recognized him as the crown of poetry.
The protagonist in an epic poem is always a historical person. As a rule, he is an example of decency, a model of a person with high moral qualities.
The events in which the hero of the epic poem is involved, according to unwritten rules, should have a national, universal significance. But the artistic depiction of events and characters in the epic poem is only in the general form should be related to historical facts and persons.
Classicism, which dominated fiction for many centuries, did not set itself the task of reflecting the true history and characters of real, historical persons. The appeal to the past was determined solely by the need to comprehend the present. Starting from a specific historical fact, event, person, the poet gave him a new life.
Russian classicism has always adhered to this view of the features of the heroic poem, although it has somewhat transformed it. V domestic literature 18-19 centuries, there were two views on the question of the relationship in the poem of historical and artistic. Their spokesmen were the authors of the first epic poems Trediakovsky ("Tilemakhida") and Lomonosov ("Peter the Great"). These poems put Russian poets in front of the need to choose one of two ways in working on a poem. The type of Lomonosov's poem, despite its incompleteness, was clear. It was a heroic poem about one of the most important events in Russian history, a poem in which the author strove to reproduce historical truth.
The type of Trediakovsky's poem, despite its completeness, was much less clear, except for the metrical form, where the poet proposed a Russified hexameter. Trediakovsky attached secondary importance to historical truth. He defended the idea of ​​reflecting in the poem "fabulous or ironic times", focusing on the epics of Homer, which, according to Trediakovsky, were not and could not be created in the hot pursuit of events.
Russian poets of the 19th century followed the path of Lomonosov, not Trediakovsky. ("Dimitriada" by Sumarokov and "Liberated Moscow" by Maikov, as well as Kheraskov's poems "Chesme Battle" and "Rossiada").

DESCRIPTIVE POEMS originate from the ancient poems of Hesiod and Virgil. These poems became widespread in the 18th century. The main theme of this type of poems is mainly pictures of nature.
The descriptive poem has a rich tradition in Western European literatures of all eras and is becoming one of the leading genres of sentimentalism. It made it possible to capture diverse variants of feelings and experiences, the ability of a person to respond to the smallest changes in nature, which has always been an indicator of the spiritual value of a person.
In Russian literature, however, the descriptive poem did not become the leading genre, since sentimentalism was most fully expressed in prose and landscape lyrics. The function of a descriptive poem was largely taken over by prose genres - landscape sketches and descriptive studies ("Walk", "Village" by Karamzin, landscape sketches in "Letters of a Russian Traveler").
Descriptive poetry includes a whole range of themes and motifs: society and solitude, urban and rural life, virtue, charity, friendship, love, feelings of nature. These motifs, varying in all works, become an identification mark of the psychological appearance of a modern sensitive person.
Nature is perceived not as a decorative background, but as a person's ability to feel part of the natural world of nature. “The feeling evoked by the landscape is not nature in itself, but the reaction of a person who is able to perceive it in his own way” comes to the fore. The ability to capture the subtlest reactions of a person to the outside world attracted sentimentalists to the genre of a descriptive poem.
Descriptive poems surviving to early XIX centuries were the forerunners of the "romantic" poem by Byron, Pushkin, Lermontov and other great poets.

DIDACTIC POEM adjoins descriptive poems and most often it is a treatise poem (an example is the “Poetic Art” of Boileau, XVII century).
Already in the early stages of antiquity great importance was given not only entertaining, but also the didactic function of poetry. The artistic structure and style of didactic poetry go back to the heroic epic. The main meters were originally dactylic hexameter, later elegiac distich. Due to genre specificity, the range of topics in didactic poetry was unusually wide and covered various scientific disciplines, philosophy, and ethics. Other examples of didactic poetry include the works of Hesiod "Theogony" - an epic poem about the history of the origin of the world and the gods - and "Works and Days" - a poetic narrative about agriculture, containing a significant didactic element.
In the 6th century BC didactic poems by Phocylides and Theognis appeared; philosophers such as Xenophanes, Parmenides, Empedocles expounded their teachings in poetic form. In the 5th century, not poetry, but prose, took the leading place in didactic literature. A new rise in didactic poetry began during the Hellenistic period, when it seemed tempting to use the art form to present scientific ideas. The choice of material was determined not so much by the depth of the author's knowledge in a particular field of knowledge, but by his desire to tell in as much detail as possible about little-studied problems: Arat (the didactic poem "Phenomena", containing information about astronomy), Nicander
(2 small didactic poems about remedies for poisons). Examples of didactic poetry are poems about the structure of the earth by Dionysius Periegetes, about fishing - by Oppian, about astrology - by Dorotheus of Sidon.
Even before their acquaintance with Greek didactic poetry, the Romans had their own didactic works (for example, treatises on agriculture), but they were early influenced by the artistic means of Greek didactic poetry. Latin translations of Hellenistic authors appeared (Ennius, Cicero). The largest original works are the philosophical poem "On the Nature of Things" by Lucretius Cara, which is an exposition of the materialistic teachings of Epicurus, and the epic poem "Georgics" by Virgil, in which he, given the disastrous state of Italian agriculture due to civil war, poeticizes the peasant way of life and praises the work of the farmer. Based on the model of Hellenistic poetry, Ovid's poem Fasti was written - a poetic story about ancient rites and legends included in the Roman calendar - and its variations on an erotic theme, containing an element of didactics. Didactic poetry was also used to spread the Christian creed: Commodian ("Instructions to pagans and Christians"). The genre of didactic poetry existed until modern times. In Byzantium, for better memorization, many study guides were written in verse.
(Dictionary of antiquity)

ROMANTIC POEM

Romantic writers in their works poeticized such states of the soul as love and friendship, as melancholy unrequited love and disappointment in life, going into loneliness, etc. With all this, they expanded and enriched the poetic perception of the inner world of a person, finding appropriate artistic forms for this.
The sphere of romanticism is “the whole inner, intimate life of a person, that mysterious soil of the soul and heart, from where all indefinite aspirations for the better and the sublime rise, trying to find satisfaction in the ideals created by fantasy,” Belinsky wrote.
The authors, carried away by the current that had arisen, created new literary genres that gave scope for the expression of personal moods (lyric-epic poem, ballad, etc.). The compositional originality of their works was expressed in a quick and unexpected change of pictures, in lyrical digressions, in the reticence in the narration, in the mysteriousness of the images that intrigue readers.
Russian romanticism was influenced by various currents of Western European romanticism. But its emergence in Russia is the fruit of national social development. V. A. Zhukovsky is rightly called the founder of Russian romanticism. His poetry struck contemporaries with its novelty and unusualness (the poems "Svetlana", "The Twelve Sleeping Virgins").
He continued the romantic direction in the poetry of A.S. Pushkin. In 1820, the poem "Ruslan and Lyudmila" was published, on which Pushkin worked for three years. The poem is a synthesis of the poet's early poetic searches. With his poem, Pushkin entered into creative competition with Zhukovsky as the author of magically romantic poems written in a mystical spirit.
Pushkin's interest in history increased in connection with the publication in 1818 of the first eight volumes of Karamzin's History of the Russian State. The collection "Ancient Russian Poems" by Kirsha Danilov and collections of fairy tales also served as material for Pushkin's poem. Later, he added to the poem, written in 1828, the famous prologue "At the seashore, a green oak", giving a poetic code of Russian fairy tale motifs. "Ruslan and Lyudmila" is a new step in the development of the genre of the poem, notable for the new, romantic image of a person.
Travel to the Caucasus and the Crimea left a deep mark on Pushkin's work. At this time, he got acquainted with the poetry of Byron and the "oriental stories" of the famous Englishman serve as a model for Pushkin's "southern poems" ("The Prisoner of the Caucasus", "The Robber Brothers", "The Fountain of Bakhchisaray", "Gypsies", 1820 - 1824). At the same time, Pushkin compresses and clarifies the narrative, enhances the concreteness of the landscape and everyday sketches, complicates the psychology of the hero, makes him more purposeful.
V. A. Zhukovsky’s translation of the “Prisoner of Chillon” (1820) and Pushkin’s “southern poems” open the way for numerous followers: “prisoners”, “harem passions”, “robbers”, etc. are multiplying. However, the most peculiar poets of Pushkin’s time find their own genre moves: I. I. Kozlov (“Chernets”, 1824) chooses a lyric-confessional version with a symbolic sound, K. F. Ryleev (“Voinarovsky”, 1824) politicizes the Byronic canon, etc.
Against this background, Lermontov's later poems "The Demon" and "Mtsyri" miraculously look, which are saturated with Caucasian folklore, and which can be put on a par with The Bronze Horseman. But Lermontov began with simple-hearted imitations of Byron and Pushkin. His “Song about Tsar Ivan Vasilievich...” (1838) closes the Byronic plot in the forms of Russian folklore (epics, historical songs, lamentations, buffoons).
The Russian poets - romantics can also be attributed - Konstantin Nikolayevich Batyushkov (1787 - 1855). His main work is considered the romantic poem "The Dying Tass". This poem can be called an elegy, but the theme raised in it is too global for an elegy, as it contains many historical details. This elegy was created in 1817. Torquato Tasso was Batyushkov's favorite poet. Batyushkov considered this elegy his best work, the epigraph to the elegy was taken from the last act of Tasso's tragedy "King Torisimondo".

The ballad is one of the varieties of the romantic poem. In Russian literature, the emergence of this genre is associated with the tradition of sentimentalism and romanticism of the late 18th - early 19th centuries. The first Russian ballad is considered to be "Gromval" by G.P. Kamenev, but the ballad gains special popularity thanks to V.A. Zhukovsky. "Balladnik" (jokingly nicknamed Batyushkov) made the best ballads of Goethe, Schiller, Walter-Scott and other authors available to the Russian reader. The "ballad" tradition does not fade throughout the entire 19th century. Ballads were written by Pushkin ("The Song of the Prophetic Oleg", "The Drowned Man", "Demons"), Lermontov ("Airship", "Mermaid"), A. Tolstoy.
After realism became the main current in Russian literature, the ballad as a poetic form fell into decline. Only fans of "pure art" (A. Tolstoy) and symbolists (Bryusov) continued to use this genre. In modern Russian literature, one can note the revival of the ballad genre by updating its subject matter (ballads by N. Tikhonov, S. Yesenin). These authors drew plots for their works from the events of the recent past - the civil war.

PHILOSOPHICAL POEM

Philosophical poem is a genre of philosophical literature. The earliest examples of this genre include the poems of Parmenides and Empedocles. Presumably, early Orphic poems can also be attributed to them.
In the 18th century, A. Pope's philosophical poems "Experiments on Morals" and "Experience on Man" were very popular.
In the 19th century, Austrian romantic poet Nikolaus Lenau and French philosopher and political economist Pierre Leroux wrote philosophical poems. The philosophical poem "Queen Mab" (1813), the first significant poetic work of P.B. Shelley. Philosophical poems also include poems written by Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802), grandfather of Charles Darwin. Among the philosophical poems created in the 19th century by Russian poets, M. Yu. Lermontov's poem "The Demon" stands out.

HISTORICAL POEM

Historical poem - lyric-epic folklore works about specific historical events, processes and historical figures. The historical specificity of the content is an important basis for separating historical poems into a separate group, which, according to structural features, is a combination of various genres associated with history.
Homer can be considered the ancestor of the historical poem. His panoramic works "Odyssey" and "Iliad" are among the most important and for a long time the only sources of information about the period that followed the Mycenaean era in Greek history.
In Russian literature, the most famous historical poems include the poem by A.S. Pushkin "Poltava", B. And Bessonov's poem "The Khazars", T. G. Shevchenko's poem "Gamalia".
Of the poets Soviet period working in the genre of a historical poem, Sergei Yesenin, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Nikolai Aseev, Boris Pasternak, Dmitry Kedrin and Konstantin Simonov can be noted. The search and success of the genre in the post-war decades are associated with the names of Nikolai Zabolotsky, Pavel Antokolsky, Vasily Fedorov, Sergei Narovchatov and other poets whose works are known far beyond the borders of Russia.

In addition to the above types of poems, one can also distinguish poems: lyrical - psychological ("Anna Snegina"), heroic ("Vasily Terkin"), moral and social, satirical, comic, playful and others.

Structure and plot construction of a work of art

In the classic version, in any work of art(including in the poem) the following parts are distinguished:
- prologue
- exposition
- string
- development
- climax
- epilogue
Let's consider separately each of these structural parts.

1. PROLOGUE
The beginning is more than half of everything.
Aristotle
Prologue - the introductory (initial) part of a literary-artistic, literary-critical, journalistic work, which anticipates the general meaning or main motives of the work. In the prologue, the events that precede the main content can be summarized.
In narrative genres (novel, story, poem, story, etc.), the prologue is always a kind of background story, and in literary criticism, journalism and other documentary genres, it can be perceived as a preface. It must be remembered that the main function of the prologue is to convey events that prepare the main action.

A prologue is needed if:

1. The author wants to start the story in a calm tone, gradually, and then make a sharp transition to the dramatic events that will happen next. In this case, several phrases are inserted into the prologue, hinting at the climax, but, of course, not revealing it.

2. The author wants to give a complete panorama of previous events - what actions and when were committed by the main character before and what came of it. This type of prologue allows you to conduct a leisurely sequential narrative with a detailed presentation of the exposition.
In this case, a maximum time gap between the prologue and the main narrative is allowed, a gap that serves as a pause, and the exposition becomes minimal and serves only those events that give impetus to action, and not the entire work.

It must be remembered that:

The prologue should not be the first episode of the narrative, forcibly cut off from it.
- the events of the prologue should not duplicate the events of the opening episode. These events should generate intrigue precisely in combination with it.
- the mistake is to create an intriguing prologue that is not connected with the beginning, neither time, nor place, nor heroes, nor idea. The connection between the prologue and the beginning of the narrative may be explicit, it may be hidden, but it must be mandatory.

2. EXPOSURE

An exposition is an image of the arrangement of characters and circumstances before the main action that should take place in a poem or other epic work. Accuracy in determining characters and circumstances is what constitutes the main advantage of the exposition.

Exposure functions:

Determine the place and time of the described events,
- introduce the actors,
- show the circumstances that will be the prerequisites for the conflict.

Exposure volume

According to the classical scheme, about 20% of the total volume of the work is allocated for the exposition and the plot. But in fact, the volume of the exposition depends entirely on the author's intention. If the plot develops rapidly, sometimes a couple of lines are enough to introduce the reader to the essence of the matter, but if the plot of the work is dragged out, then the introduction takes up a much larger volume.
Recently, the requirements for exposure, unfortunately, have changed somewhat. Many modern editors require that the exposition begins with a dynamic and exciting scene that involves the main character.

Types of exposure

There are many ways to display. However, ultimately, all of them can be subdivided into two main, fundamentally different kind- direct and indirect exposure.

In the case of direct exposure, the introduction of the reader into the course of the matter takes place, as they say, head-on and with complete frankness.

A striking example of direct exposure is the protagonist's monologue, from which the work begins.

Indirect exposition is formed gradually, consisting of a lot of accumulating information. The viewer receives them in a veiled form, they are given as if by accident, unintentionally.

One of the tasks of the exposition is to prepare the appearance of the main character (or characters).
In the overwhelming majority of cases, there is no main character in the first episode, and this is due to the following considerations.
The fact is that with the advent of the protagonist, the tension of the narration intensifies, it becomes more intense, impetuous. Opportunities for any detailed explanation, if not disappear, then, in any case, sharply decrease. This is what forces the author to postpone the introduction of the main character. The character should grab the reader's attention right away. And here the most reliable way is to introduce the hero when the reader has already become interested in him from the stories of other characters and is now eager to learn more.
Thus, the exposition outlines the main character in general terms, whether he is good or bad. But in no case should the author reveal his image to the end.
The exposition of the work prepares the plot, with which it is inextricably linked, because.
realizes the conflict possibilities inherent and tangibly developed in the exposition.

3. TIE

Who did not fasten the first button correctly,
won't close properly anymore.
Goethe.
The plot is an image of emerging contradictions that begin the development of events in the work. This is the point at which the story begins to move. In other words, the plot is an important event where a certain task is set before the hero, which he must or is forced to complete. What kind of event it will be depends on the genre of the work. This may be the discovery of a corpse, the kidnapping of a hero, a message that the Earth is about to fly into some celestial body, etc.
In the plot, the author presents the key idea and begins to develop intrigue.
Most often, the tie is banal. It is very, very difficult to come up with something original - all the plots have already been invented before us. Every genre has its own clichés and clichés. The task of the author is to make an original intrigue out of a standard situation.
There can be several ties - as many as the author has set up plot lines. These strings can be scattered throughout the text, but they must all develop, not hang in the air and end with a denouement.

4. First paragraph (first verse)

You have to grab the reader by the throat in the first paragraph,
in the second - squeeze it tighter and keep it against the wall
to the last line.

Paul O Neil. American writer.

5. Development of the plot

The beginning of the development of the plot is usually given by the plot. In the development of events, connections and contradictions between people reproduced by the author are revealed, various features of human characters are revealed, the history of the formation and growth of characters is transmitted.
Usually, events that take place in a work of art from the beginning to the climax are placed in the middle of the work. Exactly what the author wants to say with his poem, story, story. Here the development of storylines takes place, there is a gradual increase in the conflict and the technique of creating internal tension is used.
The easiest way to create internal tension is the so-called creation of anxiety. The hero finds himself in a dangerous situation, and then the author either brings the danger closer or delays it.

Voltage injection techniques:

1. Deceived expectation
The narrative is structured in such a way that the reader is quite sure that some event is about to happen, while the author unexpectedly (but justifiably) turns the action in a different direction, and instead of the expected event, another event occurs.

3. Recognition
The character seeks to learn something (which is usually already known to the reader). If fate depends essentially on recognition actor, then dramatic tension can arise due to this.

Along with the main storyline, in almost every work there are secondary lines, the so-called "subplots". There are more of them in novels, but in a poem or story there may be no subplots. Subplots are used to more fully reveal the theme and character of the protagonist.

The construction of subplots also obeys certain laws, namely:

Each subplot must have a beginning, middle and end.

Subplots should be merged with storylines. The subplot should move the main plot forward, and if it does not, then it is not needed.

There should not be many subplots (1-2 in a poem or story, no more than 4 in a novel).

6. Climax

The Latin word "culmen" means in translation the top, the highest point. In any work, the culmination is the episode in which the highest tension is reached, that is, the most emotionally affecting moment, to which the logic of constructing a story, poem, novel leads. There may be several climaxes throughout a large work. Then one of them is the main one (it is sometimes called central or general), and the rest are “local”.

7. Decoupling. The final. Epilogue

The denouement resolves the depicted conflict or leads to an understanding of certain possibilities for its resolution. This is the point at the end of the sentence, the event that should finally clarify everything and after which the work can be completed.
The denouement of any story must prove the main idea that the author sought to convey to the reader when he began to write it. There is no need to unnecessarily delay the ending, but rushing it is also not the point. If some questions remain unanswered in the work, the reader will feel deceived. On the other hand, if there are too many minor details in the work, and it is too long, then most likely the reader will soon get tired of trailing after the author's ranting, and he will leave it at the first opportunity.

The ending is the end of the story, the final scene. It can be tragic or happy - it all depends on what the author wanted to say in his work. The finale can be "open": yes, the hero received an important lesson, went through a difficult life situation, changed in some ways, but this is not the end, life goes on, and it is not clear how it will all end in the end.
It is good if the reader will have something to think about after he reads the last sentence.
The finale must necessarily carry a semantic load. The villains should get what they deserve, the sufferers should be rewarded. Those who have erred must pay for their mistakes and see the light, or else remain in ignorance. Each of the characters has changed, made some important conclusions for themselves, which the author wants to present as the main idea of ​​his work. In fables, morality is usually derived in such cases, but in poems, stories or novels, the author's thought should be conveyed to the reader more subtly, unobtrusively.
For the final scene, it is best to choose some important moment in the life of the hero. For example, the story should end with a wedding, recovery, achievement of a certain goal.
The ending can be anything, depending on how the author resolves the conflict: happy, tragic, or ambiguous. In any case, it is worth emphasizing that after everything that happened, the heroes revised their views on love and friendship, on the world around them.
The author resorts to the epilogue when he believes that the denouement of the work has not yet fully explained the direction of the further development of the people depicted and their destinies. In the epilogue, the author strives to make the author's judgment over the depicted especially tangible.

Literature:

1. Veselovsky A.N. Historical poetics, L., 1940;
2. Sokolov A.N., Essays on the history of the Russian poem, M., 1956
3. G. L. Abramovich. Introduction to Literary Studies.
4. Prose page materials. RU. Copyright Contest - K2
5. Forum Prosims ("Shy").

A poem (Greek póiēma, from poieo - I do, I create) is a large poetic work with a narrative or lyrical plot. The poem is also called the ancient and medieval epic ("Mahabharata", "Ramayana", "Iliad", "Odyssey"). Many of its genre varieties are known: heroic, didactic, satirical, burlesque, romantic, lyric-dramatic. The poem is also called works on a world-historical theme (Virgil's Aeneid, Dante's Divine Comedy, L. di Camões' Lusiades, T. Tasso's Jerusalem Liberated, J. Milton's Paradise Lost, Voltaire's Henriad). , “Messiad” by F. G. Klopshtok, “Rossiyada” by M. M. Kheraskov, etc.). In the past, poems with a romantic plot (The Knight in the Panther's Skin by S. Rustaveli, Shahnameh by Ferdowsi, and Furious Roland by L. Aristo) were widely used in the past.

In the era of romanticism, the poems acquire a socio-philosophical and symbolic-philosophical character ("Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" by J. Byron, "The Bronze Horseman" by A. S. Pushkin, "Dzyady" by A. Mickiewicz, "The Demon" by M. Yu. Lermontov, " Germany, winter fairy tale "G. Heine). A romantic poem is characterized by the image of a hero with an unusual fate, but certainly reflecting some facets of the author's spiritual world. In the second half of the 19th century, despite the decline of the genre, separate outstanding works appeared, for example, G. Longfellow's "Song of Hiawatha" translated by I. A. Bunin. The work is based on the legends of the Indian tribes about the semi-legendary leader, the wise and beloved Hiawatha. He lived in the 15th century, before the first settlers appeared on American lands.

The poem is about how

Hiawatha labored,
to make his people happy
so that he goes to goodness and truth ...
"Your strength is only in consent,
and impotence in discord.
Reconcile, O children!
Be brothers to one another."

The poem is a complex genre, often difficult to perceive. To be convinced of this, it is enough to read a few pages of Homer's Iliad, Dante's Divine Comedy or J. V. Goethe's Faust, try to answer the question about the essence of A. S. Pushkin's The Bronze Horseman or A. A. Blok.

The poem requires knowledge of the historical context, makes you think about the meaning of human life, about the meaning of history. Without this, it is impossible to comprehend in its entirety such well-known poems from the school bench as “Frost, Red Nose”, “Who Lives Well in Russia” by N. A. Nekrasov, “Vasily Terkin” by A. T. Tvardovsky and others.

What makes it possible to consider as poems many dissimilar works, sometimes having author's subtitles that do not correspond to this definition. So, “Faust” by I.V. Goethe is a tragedy, “The Bronze Horseman” by A.S. Pushkin is a Petersburg story, and “Vasily Terkin” by A.T. Tvardovsky is a book about a fighter. They are united by the breadth of coverage of the phenomena of reality, the significance of these phenomena and the magnitude of the problems. The developed narrative plan is combined in the poem with deep lyricism. A particularly complete interpenetration of the lyrical and epic principles is characteristic of the poem of the Soviet period (“Vladimir Ilyich Lenin” by V. V. Mayakovsky, “Vasily Terkin” by A. T. Tvardovsky, etc.).

Intimate experiences in the poem are correlated with great historical upheavals, private events are elevated to a cosmic scale. For example, in The Bronze Horseman, the space of a particular city - St. Petersburg is transformed into an endless, boundless space of the global flood, the "last cataclysm":

Siege! attack! evil waves,
Like thieves climbing through the windows. Chelny
With a running start, glass is smashed astern.
Trays under a wet veil,
Fragments of huts, logs, roofs,
Product of thrifty trade.
Relics of pale poverty,
Storm-blown bridges
A coffin from a blurry cemetery
Float through the streets!
People
Sees God's wrath and awaits execution.

The time and space of the poem are vast and boundless.

In the Divine Comedy, first through the circles of Hell, and then through Purgatory, the author of the poem is accompanied by the great Roman poet Virgil, who lived thirteen centuries earlier than Dante. And this does not prevent Dante and his guide from communicating in the same time and space of the Divine Comedy, from making contact with sinners and the righteous of all times and peoples. concrete, real time Dante himself coexists in the poem with a completely different type of time and space of the grandiose underworld.

The problems of the most general, eternal are touched upon in each poem: death and immortality, finite and eternal, their meeting and collision is the seed from which the poem arises.

The chapter "Death and the Warrior" is central in the poem "Vasily Terkin" by A. T. Tvardovsky. It is, as it were, a poem within a poem, just like the scene of the "collision" between Eugene and the monument to Peter I in Pushkin's The Bronze Horseman. The author of the poem looks at the world from a special point of view, which allows him, a person of a particular era, to look at the events of his time in such a way as to see in them something that can help highlight the essence of the era and artistically formulate this essence: Eugene and the galloping monument to Peter I, Vasily Terkin and Death.

Thus, unlike novels in verse, novels in verse, numerous imitation poems, and preliminary and laboratory poems (for example, Lermontov's early poems), a poem is always an artistic interpretation of modernity in the context of ongoing time.

Multi-plot, often multi-heroic, compositional complexity, semantic richness of both the whole and individual episodes, symbolism, originality of language and rhythm, versatility - all this makes reading the poem as difficult as it is fascinating.

Greek poiema, from the Greek. poieo - I create), a large form of poetic work in the epic, lyric or lyric-epic genre. Poems from different eras are generally not the same in terms of their genre characteristics, but they have some common features: the subject of their depiction is, as a rule, a certain era, the author's judgments about which are given to the reader in the form of a story about significant events in the life of an individual, which is its typical representative (in epic and lyric-epic), or in the form of a description of one's own worldview (in lyrics); unlike poems, poems are characterized by a didactic message, since they directly (in the heroic and satirical types) or indirectly (in the lyrical type) proclaim or evaluate social ideals; they almost always have a plot, and even in lyrical poems thematically isolated fragments tend to cycle and turn into a single epic narrative.

Poems are the earliest surviving monuments of ancient writing. They were and are a kind of "encyclopedias", when referring to which you can learn about the gods, rulers and heroes, get acquainted with the initial stage of the history of the nation, as well as with its mythological background, comprehend the way of philosophizing peculiar to this people. These are the early examples of epic poems in many nats. literature: in India - the folk epic "Mahabharata" (not earlier than the 4th century BC) and "Ramayana" by Valmiki (not later than the 2nd century AD), in Greece - the "Iliad" and "Odyssey" by Homer (not later than the 8th century BC), in Rome - Virgil's Aeneid (1st century BC), in Iran - Firdousi's Shah-name (10-11th centuries), in Kyrgyzstan - the folk epic "Manas" (not later than the 15th century). These are epic poems in which either various lines of a single plot associated with the figures of gods and heroes are mixed (as in Greece and Rome), or thematically isolated mythological legends, lyrical fragments, moral and philosophical reasoning, etc. are framed by an important historical narrative. (so in the East).

In ancient Europe, the genre series of mythological and heroic poems was supplemented by samples of parodic satirical (anonymous "Batrachomyomachia", not earlier than the 5th century BC) and didactic ("Works and Days" by Hesiod, 8-7th centuries BC). e.) poetic epic. These genre forms developed in the Middle Ages, during the Renaissance and later: the heroic epic poem turned into a heroic "song" with a minimum number of characters and storylines ("Beowulf", "The Song of Roland", "The Song of the Nibelungs"); its composition was reflected in imitative historical poems (in Africa by F. Petrarch, in Jerusalem Liberated by T. Tasso); the magical plot of the mythological epic was replaced by the lightened magic plot of the poetic chivalric novel (its influence will be felt in the Renaissance epic poems - in Furious Orlando by L. Ariosto and in Spencer's The Faerie Queene); the traditions of the didactic epic were preserved in allegorical poems (in the Divine Comedy by Dante, in the Triumphs by F. Petrarch); finally, in modern times, classicist poets were guided by the parodic-satirical epic, in the manner of burlesque creating iroikomic poems (“Naloy” by N. Boileau).

In the era of romanticism with its cult of lyrics, new poems appeared - lyrical-epic ("Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" by J. G. Byron, the poem "Ezersky" and "novel in verse" "Eugene Onegin" by A. S. Pushkin, "Demon" M. Yu. Lermontov). In them, the epic narrative was interrupted by various detailed landscape descriptions, lyrical digressions from the plot outline in the form of author's reasoning.

In Russian literature beginning. 20th century there has been a tendency to turn the lyric-epic poem into a lyrical one. Already in A. A. Blok’s poem “The Twelve”, lyrical-epic chapters (with the author’s narration and dialogues of characters) and lyrical chapters (in which the author imitates the song types of urban folklore) are distinguishable. The early poems of V. V. Mayakovsky (for example, "A Cloud in Pants") also hide the epic plot behind an alternation of diverse and dark lyrical statements. This trend will manifest itself especially clearly later, in A. A. Akhmatova's poem "Requiem".