Aesthetically sensitive critics perceived the need to overcome the negative extremes of each of the established poetic trends. Such critics, in particular, were M. L. Mikhailov and Lee. Grigoriev. It was not for nothing that L. Blok so stubbornly brought them together as late descendants of Pushkin, heirs of Pushkin's culture: “Here are people who are so similar in many ways, but belonged to hostile camps; by a strange coincidence, fate never pushed them together.
At the same time, such overcoming was hardly possible. In this sense, the fate of Y. Polonsky (1819-1898) is interesting. The poet occupied, as it were, a middle position between Nekrasov and Fet. Much unites him with Fet, primarily devotion to art. At the same time, art, nature and love were not absolutized by Polonsky. Moreover, Polonsky sympathized with Nekrasov and considered the civil, social, democratic orientation of his poetry to be in line with the spirit of the times and necessary. In the verses "Blessed embittered poet ...", arguing with the famous Nekrasov poem "Blessed is the gentle poet ...", Polonsky testified to the full power of "embittered" poetry, sympathy for her and even envy for her. Polonsky himself was neither a "mild" nor "embittered" poet, rather eclectically combining the motifs of this or that poetry and never reaching tragic power either in the top or in another poetic sphere, as Nekrasov did, on the one hand, or Fet, on the other. In this sense, being a comparatively smaller poet, not only in terms of the significance of his POETRY, but also in its secondary, Polonsky is interesting as an expression of the mass, as it were, reader's perception of the poetry of the "titans", about whom he wrote in the poem "Blessed is the embittered poet ..." (1872).
- His involuntary cry is our cry, His vices are ours, ours! He drinks with us from a common cup, As we are poisoned - and great. "How are we ...", but - "great."
And the poetic forms of Polonsky largely came from the mass democratic "folklore" form-song and urban romance.
Defining the various poetic tendencies of the era - "pure art" and democratic poetry - one must bear in mind that democratization in general is a process that captured all Russian poetry of that time in its most significant phenomena. Finally, such CONCEPTS as democracy and nationality, in the poetry of the 50s and 60s, also appear in rather complex relationships. So, even in relation to Nekrasov, with the indisputable and constant democratism of his poetry, one can speak of a complex movement - to mastering the people in its national epic meaning. In the end, this found expression in his poems of the early 60s.
Democracy often appears in poetry as raznochinstvo, philistinism. Actually, the poetic nationality in its connection with national, folk, especially peasant origins sometimes turns out to be quite elitist. It is hardly possible to talk about the nationality of such characteristic representatives of democratic art as D. Minaev, for example, or I. Goltz-Miller. At the same time, the formulation of the problem of the nationality of Count A. Tolstoy's creativity seems justified even to his democratic contemporaries. From this point of view, the Iskra poet N. Kurochkin contrasted A. K. Tolstoy with D. Minaev. He wrote in connection with Minaev: “Everything new, alive and fresh will not be born for us; our heir will be another, collective person, who has only recently been called to life and whom neither Mr. Minaev nor most of us, who live an artificial, theoretical and, so to speak, greenhouse-literary life, know ... this person is the people, to whom the best of us, of course, have always been sympathetic, but our sympathies almost always turned out to be fruitless.
By the beginning of the 00s, poetry as a whole sheaf entered a period of a certain decline, and the further, the more. Interest in poetry is once again weakening both in terms of the place that is given to it on the pages of magazines, and in terms of the nature of critical assessments. Many poets are silent for many years. Especially characteristic, perhaps, is the almost complete silence of such a "pure" lyricist as Fet. And it would be superficial to see the reason "for this only in Fet's sharp criticism on the pages of democratic publications, especially Russkoye Slovo and Iskra." Even more, perhaps, fierce attacks on Nekrasov on the pages of reactionary publications did not in the least weaken his poetic pressure. The crisis In poetry, it was by no means only "pure art" that captured it. In the second half of the 60s, democratic poetry was just as tangibly experiencing it. At the same time, poets who gravitated toward the epic even from the camp of "pure art" intensively create: thus, they return to creating ballads on a folk basis by A. K. Tolstoy.
But only the epic poetry of Nekrasov will reach a real flowering. In the 1960s, the peasant country that had awakened and started to move, which, however, had not yet lost the moral and aesthetic foundations that had developed under the conditions of patriarchal life, determined the possibility of a surprisingly organic fusion of the socio-analytical element with oral folk poetry, which we find in poetry Nekrasov of this time.
Author Polonsky Yakov Petrovich
Polonsky Yakov
Polonsky Yakov
Poems
Polonsky Yakov Petrovich
Poems
Yakov Petrovich Polonsky (1819 - 1898) - a wonderful lyricist, possessing to the highest degree what Belinsky called in an article about him "a pure element of poetry." His work reflected the history of all Russian classical poetry of the 19th century: Polonsky was a younger contemporary of Zhukovsky and an older contemporary of Blok.
The book includes selected poems of the poet.
sun and moon
Bad preacher
"The shadows of the night came and became..."
Moonlight
"Already above the spruce forest because of the prickly peaks..."
In the living room
Night in the mountains of Scotland
winter path
The story of the waves
"Oh, how good it is on the balcony, my dear! Look..."
"The ruin of the tower, the dwelling of the eagle..."
last conversation
recluse
Georgian night
After the holiday
Old sazandar
"Are not my passions..."
Rolling in a storm
Finnish coast
Gypsy song
Death of a baby
Bell
At Asgtasia
"My heart is a spring, my song is a wave..."
"Come to me, old lady..."
On the ship
nightingale love
"The shadow of an angel passed with the majesty of a queen..."
chilling night
On Lake Geneva
"The ship went towards the dark night ...".
"Two gloomy clouds over the mountains..."
Crazy
"Am I the first to depart from the world into eternity - are you..."
Madness of grief
"I'm reading a song book..."
White Night
old eagle
What if
"So that my song spills like a stream..."
Last breath
"Braiding your dark braids with a crown ..."
To the album K. Sh
"I hear my neighbor..."
F. I. Tyutchev
literary enemy
in vain
month in love
On the railway
"The dawn under the clouds rose and caught fire ..."
winter bride
polar ice
"Blessed is the embittered poet..."
Casimir the Great
From Bourdillion
"My mind was overwhelmed by longing..."
Night thought
In bad weather
blind pianist
"In the days when over the sleepy sea..."
Dissonance
In a lost paradise
In the cart of life
In memory of F. I. Tyutchev
Allegory
Letters to the Muse, Second Letter
On the Sunset
N. A. Griboedova
Tsar Maiden
Grave in the forest
A. S. Pushkin
"Loving ears of corn soft rustle..."
On the test
cold love
"From the cradle we are like children..."
(Hypothesis)
"It is tormented by a premonition of painful peace ..."
N. I. Loran
Eagle and dove
In the coniferous forest
In winter, in a carriage
On the fiftieth anniversary of A. A. Fet
grew up
"Childhood is tender, shy..."
"Heat - and everything is in languid peace ..."
"It's not that painful, that it's an eternally terrible secret.
Into the autumn darkness (Excerpt)
"Polonsky is here not without greetings..."
evening call, evening Bell
Shadows and dreams
"Here comes the night
To her doorstep..."
in the dark
Gray years
persistent
"If death were my mother..."
"And loving and angry from the cradle ...".
"I haven't seen everything yet..."
dreamer of the poem>
Notes
SUN AND MONTH
At night in a baby's cradle
The moon has cast its ray.
"Why does the Moon shine so?"
He asked me timidly.
On a day-to-day the sun is tired,
And the Lord said to him:
"Lie down, fall asleep, and follow you
Everything will fall asleep, everything will fall asleep."
And the Sun prayed to his brother:
"My brother, the golden moon,
You light a lantern - and at night
Go around the edge of the earth.
Who is praying there, who is crying,
Who prevents people from sleeping,
Explore everything - and in the morning
Come and let me know."
The sun sleeps, and the Moon walks,
Peace keeps the earth.
Tomorrow is early, early to my brother
The younger brother knocks.
Knock-knock-knock! - open doors.
"Sun, rise - rooks are flying,
The roosters have long crowed
And they call in the morning."
The sun will rise, the sun will ask:
"What, my dear, my brother,
How is God wearing you?
Why are you pale? What happened to you?"
And the month will begin its story,
Who behaves and how.
If the night was calm
The sun will rise merrily.
If not, it will rise in the fog,
The wind will blow, the rain will fall,
The nanny will not go out for a walk in the garden:
And the child will not lead.
BEDA Preacher
It was evening; in clothes wrinkled by the winds,
Blind Beda walked along the deserted path;
He leaned on the boy with his hand,
Stepping on the stones with bare feet,
And everything was deaf and wild around,
Only pine trees grew for centuries,
Only the rocks stuck out gray,
Shaggy and wet dressed in moss.
But the boy was tired; taste fresh berries
Or just a blind man he wanted to deceive:
"Old man!" he said, "I'm going to rest;
And you, if you want, start preaching:
Shepherds saw you from the heights...
Some old men are standing on the road...
Out wives with children! talk to them about god
Of a son crucified for our sins."
And the old man's face lit up instantly;
Like a key breaking through a layer of stone,
From his pale lips with a living wave
High speech flowed with inspiration
Without faith, there are no such speeches! ..
It seemed that heaven appeared to the blind man in glory;
A hand trembling towards the sky was raised,
And tears flowed from the extinct eyes.
But now the golden dawn has burned
And for a month a pale ray penetrated the mountains,
Night dampness blew in the gorge,
And now, preaching, the old man hears
The boy calls him, laughing and pushing:
"Enough! .. let's go! .. There is no one else!"
The old man fell silent sadly, his head drooping.
But only he fell silent - from edge to edge:
"Amen!" - he burst stones in response.
Deaf steppe - the road is far,
Around me the wind excites the field,
Fog in the distance - I'm sad involuntarily,
And a secret longing takes me.
No matter how the horses run, it seems to me lazy
They run. In the eyes of the same
All the steppe and the steppe, behind the cornfield again the cornfield.
Why, coachman, don't you sing songs?
And in response to me, my bearded driver:
We save a song about a rainy day.
What are you happy about? - Close to the house
A familiar pole flickers over the hillock.
And I see: towards the village,
The peasant yard is covered with straw,
Stacks are standing. - Familiar shack,
Is she alive, is she well since then?
Here is the covered courtyard. Peace, hello and dinner
He will find a coachman under his roof.
And I'm tired - I need peace for a long time;
But he is not there ... They change horses.
Well, well, live! Long is my road
Damp night - no hut, no fire
The coachman sings - anxiety in the soul again
I don't have a song about a rainy day.
Came and became the shadows of the night
On guard at my door!
Boldly looks me straight in the eyes
The deep darkness of her eyes;
And snake beats in my face
Her hair, my careless
Hand crumpled ring.
Slow down, night! thick darkness
Cover the magical world of love!
You, time, with a decrepit hand
Stop your watch!
But the shadows of the night swayed
They stagger back.
Her downcast eyes
They already look and do not look;
In my hands the hand froze,
Bashfully on my chest
She covered her face...
O sun, sun! Wait a minute!
Dawn burning flame
Scattered sparks across the sky,
Through the radiant sea;
Calmed down along the coastal road
Bubenchikov's speech is discordant,
Drivers ringing song
Lost in the dense forest
Flickered in a transparent fog
And the noisy seagull disappeared.
Swinging white foam
At the gray stone, as in a cradle
Sleepy child. like pearls,
The dew of a refreshing drop
Hanging on chestnut leaves
And in every dewdrop trembles
Dawn burning flame.
MOONLIGHT
On a bench, in a transparent shade
Quietly whispering sheets
I hear - the night is coming, and - I hear
Roll call of roosters.
The stars are far away,
The clouds are illuminated
And trembling quietly pours
Magical light from the moon.
life's best moments
Hearts of hot dreams
fatal impressions
Evil, goodness and beauty;
All that is close, that is far,
Everything sad and funny
Everything that sleeps deep in the soul,
This moment is illuminated.
Why is the former happiness
I don't feel sorry now
Why was the joy
Desperate as sadness
Why was the sadness
So fresh and so bright?
Incomprehensible bliss!
Incomprehensible sadness!
Already over the spruce forest because of the prickly peaks
Shining golden evening clouds,
When I tore with a paddle a dense network of floating
Swamp grasses and water flowers.
Now surrounding us, then parting again,
The reeds rustled with dry leaves;
And our shuttle went, slowly swinging,
Between the swampy banks of a winding river.
From idle slander and malice of the secular mob
That evening, at last, we were far away
And boldly you could with the credulity of a child
Express yourself freely and easily.
So many secret tears trembled in him,
And the mess seemed to me captivating
Mourning clothes and light blond braids.
But my chest was involuntarily compressed with anguish,
I looked into the depths, where a thousand roots
Swamp grasses invisibly intertwined,
Like a thousand living green snakes.
And another world flashed before me
Not that beautiful world in which you lived;
And life seemed to me a harsh depth
With a surface that is light.
A heavy arch presses me,
The big chain on me rattles.
The wind will smell me,
Everything around me is on fire!
And leaning my head against the wall
I hear the sick in my sleep
When he sleeps with his eyes open
That there is a storm on the ground.
The flying wind outside the window,
stirring nettle leaves,
Thick cloud with rain
Bears to sleepy fields.
And god's stars don't want
Take a look into my dungeon;
Alone, playing on the wall,
Lightning flashes in the window.
And this ray is consoling to me,
When the swift fire
He breaks out of the clouds...
I'm waiting for God's thunder
Will break my chains
All doors will open wide
And overthrow the guards
My hopeless prison.
And I will go, I will go again
I'll go wandering in dense forests,
Wander along the steppe road,
Pushing around in noisy cities...
I will go, among living people,
Full of life and passion again
Forget the shame of my chains.
IN THE LIVING ROOM
In the living room my father was sitting at an open table,
Furrowing his brows, he kept a stern silence;
The old woman, somehow putting on a clumsy cap to one side,
Fortune telling on cards; he listened to her mumbling.
Two proud aunts sat on a lush sofa,
Two proud aunts followed me with their eyes
And, biting their lips, they looked into my face with mockery.
And in a dark corner, lowering blue eyes,
Not daring to pick them up, the blonde sat motionless.
A tear trembled on her pale cheeks,
A kerchief rose high on a hot chest.
NIGHT IN THE MOUNTAINS OF SCOTLAND
Are you sleeping my brother?
The night has grown cold;
Into the cold
silver glitter
Tops drowned
huge
Blue mountains.
And quiet and clear
And you can hear how with a rumble
Rolling into the abyss
Broken stone.
And you can see how he walks
Under the clouds
On the distant
naked cliff
Wild goat.
Are you sleeping my brother?
Thicker and thicker
Becomes the color of the midnight sky
Brighter and brighter
Planets are burning.
Glitters in the dark
Sword of Orion.
Get up brother!
Invisible lute
Air singing
Brought and carried away by a fresh breeze.
Get up brother!
reciprocal,
piercingly sharp
The sound of a copper horn
Thrice resounded in the mountains,
The eagles woke up on their nests.
Outside the window in the shadows flickers
Russian head.
You are not sleeping, my torment!
You're not sleeping, you bastard!
Come out to meet me!
Longing for a kiss
Young heart to the heart
I will take it with fire.
Don't be afraid if the stars
Too bright light:
I will dress you with a cloak
So they won't notice!
If the watchman calls us
Call yourself a soldier
If they ask who you were with
Tell me what's wrong with your brother!
Under the supervision of a pilgrim
After all, the prison will get bored;
And involuntarily
Tricks will teach!
WINTER WAY
The cold night looks dull
Under the matting of my wagon.
The field creaks under the skids,
Under the arc the bell rattles,
And the coachman drives the horses.
Behind the mountains, forests, in the smoke of clouds
The cloudy ghost of the moon shines.
Howling lingering hungry wolves
It is distributed in the fog of dense forests.
I have strange dreams.
Everything seems to me: as if the bench is standing,
An old woman sits on a bench
Spinning yarn until midnight
He tells me my favorite fairy tales
Sings lullabies.
And I see in a dream how riding a wolf
I'm walking along the forest path
Fight with the sorcerer-king
To the country where the princess sits under lock and key,
languishing behind a strong wall.
There the glass palace is surrounded by gardens,
There the firebirds sing at night
And pecking golden fruit
There murmurs the key of living and the key of dead water
And you do not believe and believe the eyes.
And the cold night looks just as dull
Under the matting of my wagon,
The field creaks under the skids,
Under the arc the bell rattles,
And the coachman drives the horses.
THE STORY OF THE WAVES
I am by the sea, full of sadness,
Waiting for native sails.
Waves crashed violently
The skies were dark
And the waves told
About sea wonders.
Listen, listen: "Under the waves
There, among the granite rocks,
Where it grows, intertwining branches,
Pale pink coral;
Where piles of mother-of-pearl
With a shimmering moon
In the rays of the purple morning
Dimly glow at the bottom,
There, among the wonders of nature,
Brought by the current of water,
Rest from bad weather
She lay down on the sand.
Braids are blowing, blurring,
Wonderful sparkle of glass eyes.
Her chest, not sinking,
Raised high.
Thick sea grass threads
Network entangled over her
And hung like a fringe,
Dulling the glare of the rays.
Mountains high above her
Waves come and sound
But in vain there, in space,
Splashes, screams and groans are heard
Unawakened in our kingdom
Your maiden's sweet dream..."
That's what the waves said
About maritime wonders
“Blessed is the embittered poet” is a polemical poem expressing one of the views on the generation of the 19th century and the role of the poet in society. At school, it is studied in the 10th grade. We offer you to quickly and efficiently prepare for the lesson, using a brief analysis of “Blessed is the embittered poet” according to the plan.
Brief analysis
History of creation- the poem was written in 1872 as a response to the verse by N. A. Nekrasov "Blessed is the gentle poet."
Theme of the poem- the relationship of the poet and society, the role of poetic art in public life.
Composition- The poem by Y. Polonsky is a monologue-reasoning of a lyrical hero, which can be conditionally divided into two parts. In the first, the poet is in the center of attention, in the second - the poet and the generation of his contemporaries. The work is not divided into stanzas.
Genre- civic poetry.
Poetic size- iambic tetrameter, cross rhyme ABAB, in the last four lines rhyme ring ABBA.
Metaphors – "a moral cripple", "children of an embittered age", "suffering under the yoke of obvious contradictions", "in love - germs of ideas".
epithets – "embittered poet", "prophetic verse", "respectable husband", "involuntary cry".
Comparisons – “he shakes the darkness like a titan”, “he… like we are poisoned…”.
History of creation
Literature knows many examples of disputes between poets that developed on the basis of topical problems: the tasks of verbal creativity, its role in the development of society, and artistic features. This list is far from complete. In the first half of the 19th century, a controversy broke out between adherents of the Gogol and Pushkin trends. This was the impetus for the writing by N. Nekrasov of the program poem “Blessed is the Gentle Poet” in 1852. The history of the creation of the analyzed work is connected with these events.
Y. Polonsky did not belong to any direction, but he soon entered into a creative polemic with Nekrasov. In 1872, the poet wrote the polemical verse "Blessed is the Embittered Poet", based on the work of Nekrasov. There are two versions of Polonsky's poem. The first option was not accepted by all journals due to the acute characteristics of the generation. The poet noted that he had nothing against Nekrasov, and the controversy was directed at some of his views.
Subject
The analyzed work reveals the eternal problem of the poet and society, their relationship. The author shows that the poet's personality develops in a social environment, and if the master of the word is brought up in the midst of malice and bitterness, then he himself becomes embittered. Y. Polonsky observes this state of affairs with irony, and sometimes with contrition.
The lyrical hero of the poem is a representative of the "children of an embittered age". From the position of his generation, he characterizes the poet, trying to find the best features in him. The hero considers the poet blessed who became embittered, even if his morality was crippled. Such a master of words never stops, does not give up, he is constantly trying to find a way out. The lyrical hero considers him strong, therefore he compares him with a titan. An embittered poet does not obey his heart or other people, he is guided only by his mind. He does not even submit to the gods, and with his poems he is able to alarm even “solid men”.
The ideal poet, according to Y. Polonsky, incorruptible, does not like hypocrisy. Its strength is in denial and unshakable ideas born in love. The main reason why the people follow the “embittered poet” is that his cry and vices merge with the people. Together with the people, he drank poison from a common cup.
Composition
The poem is divided in meaning into two parts: in the first, the author creates the image of an "embittered poet", in the second, he supplements this characteristic with a description of the society in which this same poet lives. The first part is much larger than the second, both of them are closely intertwined and are a single whole. There is no formal division into couplets in the poem.
Genre
The genre of the work is civil lyrics, as the author reflects on an actual problem in the poem. The poetic size is iambic tetrameter. Ya. Polonsky uses the cross rhyme ABAB, and in the last lines - the ring rhyme. There are both male and female rhymes in the verse.
means of expression
Plays the main role metaphor: "a moral cripple", "children of an embittered age", "suffering under the yoke of obvious contradictions", "in love - germs of ideas". The picture is completed epithets: "embittered poet", "prophetic verse", "respectable husband", "involuntary cry".
comparisons there are only two in the text: “he, like a titan, shakes the darkness”, “he ... like we are poisoned ...”.
Expressive means emphasize the mood of the lyrical hero and the author. In some stanzas, an emotional background is created with the help of alliteration, for example, the consonants "s", "c": "Poison in the depths of his passions, salvation in the power of denial".
Poem Test
Analysis Rating
Average rating: 4.4. Total ratings received: 107.
No need to think that writers always fully belong to one or another direction or trend.
Polonsky was very scattered, rushing between Nekrasov and Turgenev. Judging by his recollections, since his student years he had a deep attachment to Fet, who lived in the apartment of Ap's parents. Grigorieva across the Moscow River, in the alley near the Spas in Nalivki. "Afonya and Apollo" were friends, and Polonsky was often invited to dine. This is where the mutual fascination took place with poems, conversations about Yazykov, Hein, Goethe and, alas, about Benediktov, whose fashion was soon killed by Belinsky. This critic of Polonsky also "electrified" with his hot article about Mochalov's performance in the role of Hamlet, the idol of the Moscow student youth, who experienced a kind of catharsis in the performances of Mochalov, who managed to show an active, acting Hamlet. But even here things did not go far. The poet did not have time to get acquainted with Belinsky himself: he moved to St. Petersburg.
It was difficult for Polonsky at the beginning of his work not to fall under the influence of Nekrasov, the idol of the era. Although there is, as Turgenev noted, in Polonsky's poem "Blessed is the Embittered Poet" (1872), there is some "awkward hesitation between irony and seriousness." In general, Polonsky bowed before Nekrasov's "power of denial", seeing in his love the germs of fruitful ideas that suggest a "way out of suffering." But Nekrasov himself is full of "obvious contradictions": "He drinks with us from a common cup, / Like us, poisoned and great." Polonsky was able to soberly comment on poetic parabolas in a letter to M.M. Stasyulevich, who refused to publish one of his poems in Vestnik Evropy: “There was a time when I deeply sympathized with Nekrasov and could not help but sympathize with him. Slavery or serfdom - game above, ignorance and darkness below - these were the objects of his denial.
Polonsky strongly opposes the persecution of Nekrasov, which began after his death. He recalls how he visited the dying great poet, how he taught “citizenship” on his bed, how he was steadfast in suffering - a “fighter”, not a “slave”. “And I believed him then, / As a prophetic singer of suffering and labor” (“About N.A. Nekrasov”).
But in the very poetic work of Polonsky, this fashionable "citizenship" was little manifested. It often turned into rhetoric (“To the album of K. Sh ...”). Among the chaos of modern life, Polonsky prefers "eternal truths", does not worship "metal", that is, the "Iron Age", as Boratynsky would say: "Chance does not create, does not think and does not love" ("Among Chaos"). He does not know who will change his life: "Inspired fanatic prophet / Or practical sage" ("Unknown"). He does not know where deliverance will come from: "from the church, from the Kremlin, from the city on the Neva or from the West", he does not care about this, there would be only deliverance ("From where ?!").
The first collection of poems by Polonsky "Gamma" was published in 1844, and Belinsky gave a review of it in the annual literature review. The critic noted the "pure element of poetry", but the absence of the author's view of life. And the next collection - "Poems of 1845" - the critic completely cut down. Later, he spoke harshly about Polonsky and Shchedrin (1869). The poet is called a "secondary", literary "eclectic" who does not have his own physiognomy. He is ruined by "unclear contemplation." Unformed suffering is characteristic of Polonsky: this is how he sympathetically depicts V.I. Zasulich in the poem “Prisoner” (“What is she to me! - Not a wife, not a lover”). But more he confessed his sympathies and memories of Fet and Tyutchev. One of them is a participant in the games of the gods of the universe, and sparks of divine fire sparkled in the other. The soul of Polonsky was especially thrilled by his meetings with Turgenev. In Lutovinovo he spent two summers with his family before the death of the writer. The pranks of youth were also remembered, when in 1855 here, in Lutovinovo, a satire on Chernyshevsky was composed under the name "School of Hospitality". Grigorovich, Botkin, Druzhinin and Turgenev himself took part in this farce, although at the same time some character traits of the owner of the estate were ridiculed in the farce.
A purely internal issue of Polonsky's growth, almost without any social significance, was his prose: sketches of old Tiflis, the story "The Marriage of Atuev" (about the fate of a nihilist, brought up on the ideas of the novel "What is to be done?" Chernyshevsky). The novel The Confessions of Sergei Chelygin, touted by Turgenev as Polonsky's "masterpiece", had some merit in depicting a bureaucratic system that destroys a pure soul. But Polonsky's prose was not included in great literature. The same can be said about the poems, with the exception of the charming "Grasshopper Musician" (1859) - a grotesque phantasmagoria in the spirit of the animal epic. What is the most valuable thing in Polonsky? - Lyrics, romances, reflections on the frailty of life, languid expectations of happiness without passionate breakdowns and pangs of love. Many verses were set to music by A. Rubinstein: “Night” (“Why do I love you, bright night?”), “Gypsy song” (“My fire is shining in the fog”), which became a folk song, music by P. Tchaikovsky. This poem, apparently, in some version existed back in the 40s, since Fet quotes it in his memoirs, speaking of his first meetings with Polonsky. Polonsky's poems were also set to music by A. Dargomyzhsky, P. Bulakhov, A. Grechaninov, S. Taneev. Polonsky's most outstanding are two or three dozen poems, some of which have already been listed. Let's point out a few more: “The Sun and the Moon” (“At Night in the Cradle of a Baby”), “Winter Way” (“A Cold Night Looks Dullly”), “Muse” (“Into the Fog and Cold Listening to the Knock”), “To the Demon” (“And I am a son of time”), “Bell” (“The blizzard subsided ... the path is illuminated”), “Last breath” (“Kiss me ...”), “Come to me, old woman”, “Outside the window in shadows flicker", etc.
Polonsky's lyrical hero is entirely this-worldly man with his earthly sufferings, but a flawed man, a loser. He is deprived of love, friendship, not a single feeling flares up. Some smallest reason hinders, frightens him away. Likewise, sympathetic participation in someone else's grief is devoid of self-sacrifice, it only softens the pain. Selflessness instills indecision in the hero's soul, but also leaves him the freedom of choice, devoid of any selfishness. Polonsky's favorite motif is the night, the moon. Russian, Italian, Scottish landscapes emerge in the most general terms, remaining romantically indefinite and mysterious.
There is no complete sweetness in Polonsky's poems: there is too much rationality in them, they lack variability in the development of a given motive and tone. The exception, perhaps, is the "Song of the Gypsy". A cruel romance is hidden by the conventions of gypsy life. Feelings here are reminiscent of the very “sparks” that “extinguish on the fly”, a meeting “on the bridge” without witnesses, in the fog a meeting can easily be replaced by separation, and a “shawl with a border” tied around the chest - a symbol of union tomorrow can be untied by someone then another. Such is the fickle love of a gypsy.
Polonsky understood that childhood memories dear to his heart, naive ideas about nature, estate life, about gardens and parks with their shady alleys, smells of flowers and herbs - all this is doomed in the modern world. The ways of people's movement change dramatically, railways cross spaces, and forests, and birches, and bell towers, native roofs, people - everything appears in a different light and dimension, spinning in a frantic run (“On the railroad”: “Rushing, rushing the iron horse !"). This new vision of the world prepares the motives of the poetry of Apukhtin, Fofanov, Sluchevsky.
Polonsky was aware that time also changes the internal logic of things. If you follow it exactly, then it is easy to pass for a madman among people of ordinary consciousness. A lot of absurd and unreasonable things are going on in the surrounding history ("Crazy"), And this poem, even by its very name, prepares for the even more disharmonic "Crazy" Apukhtin, who did not leave the stage for a long time.
Polonsky does not have Fet's impressionistic details: he is very narrative in lyrics, his epithets have direct meanings, but he loves the rustle of reeds, the play of nightingale singing, bizarre clouds, the merging of a beam of dawn with the azure of waves in the morning dawn. Communication with nature healed his heart:
Smile at nature!
Believe the omen!
There is no end to the desire -
There is an end to suffering!
Alexey Konstantinovich Tolstoy
(1817-1875)
In "pure art" A.K. Tolstoy, like Polonsky, enters with his lyrics. But, unlike Polonsky, Tolstoy's large genre forms - the novel "Prince Silver", a dramatic trilogy, which includes the historical drama "Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich", are first-class works of Russian literature. And by temperament, Tolstoy is an extremely active writer who preached his own specific doctrine: the autocracy is doomed if it ceases to rely on the well-born boyars, it (the autocracy) has done a lot of evil in the past, let out a lot of blood, enslaved the people - power, the most absolute, is obliged to reckon with moral principles, otherwise it turns into tyranny.
Tolstoy was very critical of censorship arbitrariness, the policy of Muravyov-Veshatel, the reform of 1861, the civil execution of Chernyshevsky, sarcastic about high government bureaucrats and created a general satire on the state bureaucracy - "Popov's Dream" (1882). He sarcastically draws the change of pompadours on the Russian throne in the satire "The History of the Russian State from Gostomysl to Timashev" (1883), (Timashev was the Minister of the Interior under Alexander II). The refrain after each reign is the chronicle words with variations: "Our land is rich, / There is only no order in it." But brave and independent in relation to the authorities, Tolstoy did not share the beliefs of the "nihilists" (the satire "Sometimes a merry May"), with their atheism, the preaching of anarchy, "equality" - this "stupid invention of the 93rd year." Democratic journalism noted: “The main idea of Count. Tolstoy was to kick the hated modern progress ... ". He ridicules the projector's recipes for healing society (the satire "Pantelei the Healer", 1866). He taunted the Sovremennik party as best he could: “And their methods are dull, / And their teaching is dirty”:
And on these people
Emperor Panteley,
Don't be sorry sticks
Sukovaty.
Zealously calls on Tolstoy to resist the surging propaganda flow of the destroyers of everything cherished, everything beautiful (“Against the Current”, 1867).
Tolstoy saw the welfare of the people, the unity of class interests only in the past, in Kievan and Novgorod Rus. He wrote a lot of historical ballads “with a trend”, glorifying the heroes - Ilya Muromets, Dobrynya Nikitich and Alyosha Popovich, pious princes - Vladimir the Baptist, crushers of all evil spirits, enterprising ushkuinists. Tolstoy revived the Ryley genre of thought, but with some correction: for him, the heroes are not direct tyrant-fighters, people's defenders, but righteous people who fight tyrants with their moral strength: Prince Mikhail Repnin, Vasily Shibanov. He took the plots for the most part from Karamzin’s “History ...”: Ivan the Terrible pierced Shibanov’s foot with a rod just because he, a servant of the traitor Andrei Kurbsky, who fled to Lithuania, brought a caustic message from his master to the formidable king.
Tolstoy saw the struggle of polar opposites in modern turmoil. Radicals and retrogrades, "Westernizers" and "Slavophiles" sharpened their demands. Tolstoy did not take the side of any of these parties. He needed freedom to express his personality, his beliefs and moods. He himself well expressed the ingenuity of his position: "Two camps are not a fighter, but only an occasional guest" (1867).
That freedom, which he so guarded for himself, prompted him to lyrical outpourings:
my bells,
steppe flowers,
What are you looking at me
Dark blue?
Tolstoy considered Bells to be one of his most successful works. On the same take-off, another masterpiece was written: “Singing the lark's song” (1858).
Contemporaries reproached Tolstoy for the salonism of his songs. But salonism cannot be reproached if a certain culture of feeling is associated with it, the elegance of poetic expression, for example, “In the midst of a noisy ball” (1856). Commentators have long established that “In the midst of a noisy ball” is connected by its main motive with Lermontov’s poem “From under a mysterious, cold half-mask”, and the verse “In the anxiety of worldly vanity” was inspired by Pushkin’s message to A.P. Kern - “I remember a wonderful moment” (“In the anxieties of noisy fuss”). “In the midst of a noisy ball” is not “butterfly” poetry, not from the realm of quirks and parquet-salon hobbies. Here is the music of love, its secrets, random and non-random in it. The finale: “Do I love you, I don’t know, / But it seems to me that I love you” is akin to the controversy that ends Pushkin’s message to Alina Osinova (“Confession”, 1826):
Oh, it's not hard to deceive me
I'm glad to be deceived!
Tolstoy found pure poetry in everyday life, in what his eyes saw. This "material limit" underlies the only mentioned masterpiece "Among the Noisy Ball". The poem arose as a result of the feelings that Tolstoy experienced at one of the St. Petersburg masquerades, where he met his future wife, Sophia Andreevna Miller. Such predestination, or Bunin's "grammar of love", was in the customs of the noble circle: Tatyana writes the cherished monogram O. yes E., and Kitty and Levin declare their love with the help of letters, and this feature in Anna Karenina is autobiographical: also , guessing the words by the initial letters, Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy declared his love with his Sofya Andreevna. The lyrical hero "Among the noisy ball" is also trying to unravel his "secret". And at the same time, the poem touches upon an eternal theme, non-classical: love is a common human property, everyone passes its test, the first torment of choice, and the lyrical ecstasy of feeling, and the “wonderful voice”, and the “thin frame”, ringing and sad laughter, the whole shift impressions:
I see sad eyes
I hear a cheerful speech.
No wonder L.N. liked this poem. Tolstoy.
Direct observation outweighs Tolstoy even when his poetic thought is in captivity of someone else's model. In the enthusiastic description of Ukraine: “You know the land where everything breathes in abundance”, entirely built on personal impressions, for the estate of Tolstoy Krasny Rog was located in the Chernihiv region, where the poet spent his childhood, and then lived for a long time, and died there, one can hear intonations "Minions" by Goethe.
Plastic picturesqueness, compositional harmony, which gave full sonority to each verse, imparted a special musicality to Tolstoy's lyrics. It is no coincidence that famous romances by Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Balakirev, Rubinstein, Mussorgsky, Cui, Taneyev, Rachmaninov were written on his texts. Here they found an inexhaustible source of inspiration. It is not for nothing that there is an opinion in criticism that the lyricist Tolstoy is better known for his sensitive singing than for his poems. But I don't think one interferes with the other.
Polonsky was well aware of Nekrasov's poem "Blessed is the gentle poet ...", written in 1852:
Blessed is the gentle poet,
In whom there is little bile, a lot of feeling:
He is so sincere hello
Friends of calm art;
He has sympathy in the crowd,
Like the murmur of waves, caresses the ear;
He is a stranger to self-doubt -
This torture of the creative spirit;
Loving carelessness and peace,
Disdainful of impudent satire,
He dominates the crowd
With his peaceful lyre.
Yakov Petrovich, in his poem written in 1872, develops the theme in a different way, outlined by the "saddener of the people's grief", and creates a generalized image of a poet-citizen:
Blessed is the embittered poet,
Even if he is a moral cripple,
Crowns to him, hello to him
Children of the embittered age.
He, like a titan, shakes the darkness,
Looking for a way out, then light,
He does not believe in people - the mind,
And the gods do not expect an answer.
With his prophetic verse
Disturbing the sleep of respectable men,
He himself suffers under the yoke
The contradictions are obvious.
With all the fervor of your heart
Loving, he can not stand the mask
And nothing bought
He does not ask for happiness in return.
…………………………..
His involuntary cry is our cry,
His vices are ours, ours!
He drinks with us from a common cup,
How poisoned we are - and great.
Publisher of Vestnik Evropy M.M. Stasyulevich, to whom Polonsky offered the poem, refused to print it, apparently out of fear of acquiring a reputation as an editor who encouraged poetry of a revolutionary and journalistic sound. In a letter to Polonsky, Mikhail Matveyevich, who knew the character of the poet well, frankly admitted: “The kindest Yakov Petrovich, if it weren’t for you yourself who gave me these poems, you wouldn’t believe that they are yours. This is not at all like you: you do not know how to get angry and swear, but here you have both. Finally, the blind will see to whom you are addressing these stanzas: this is a person, after all. In a response letter dated February 23, 1872, Yakov Petrovich objected: “When I wrote my poems, I had in mind not Nekrasov at all, but Truth, the truth that Nekrasov did not guess when he wrote his poems: “Blessed is the gentle poet.” .. To him to turn my poems - and only to him - it would be decent, if it were fair. But this is unfair, and therefore indecent. The fact is that in the 19th century European society sympathizes not with the mild, but with the embittered - and my poems are nothing but a poetic formula expressing this fact. Why is it so? What is the reason that the deeper, bolder and more comprehensive the denial, the more enthusiastic sympathy we have, and why positive ideals, no matter how large and brilliant they may be, do not stir our minds with sweet delight?
It's not my business to decide - it's a matter of criticism (if any). I myself half sympathize with the deniers, I myself cannot free myself from their influence, and I find that this has its own great, legitimate reason that determines our development ...
Do you know, let me tell you by the way, why my wanderings around the editorial offices take place? You probably think that this is due to the weakness of my character. On the contrary, because I have too much of it. In no way can I apply myself to something or to someone - to write in one tone, to connect my thought. I am completely unable to please anyone, no editorial office will print everything that I take it into my head to write - each one certainly wants, so to speak, to strain me. Can the personality or characteristics of the writer be preserved? Hardly. Destroy the bad sides of the face, smooth out the angularities, erase the shadows - and there will be no face.
This letter from Polonsky goes beyond the poet's private message to the publisher. In it, the author reflects on the creative behavior of the writer in general and on his character in particular. Polonsky could not trade on trifles, he did not tolerate the split personality of the creator and preferred to send his works to different editions, instead of correcting them to please this or that editor or publisher. He understood the main thing in literary (however, not only in literary) creativity: the main thing is to remain oneself. Time will do the rest.
Polonsky explained his creative position to the editor-publisher of Vestnik Evropy quite convincingly, but the cautious Stasyulevich refused to publish the poem.
It is believed that the original version of Polonsky's poem, sent to Stasyulevich, was sharper and more tendentious. It clearly sounded anti-Nekrasov's motives.
Blessed is the embittered poet, Even if he is a moral cripple, He is so sincere greetings Sick children of a sick age! Who considers his artistic work a vain amusement, Who himself does not believe in human judgment, But greedily pursues glory - Who keeps an expensive supply of bile as the best gift of suffering, Who, like children, frightens us With cold laughter of denial ...
Scold the one we scold, And if you are invulnerable, Like God - we don’t want to deal with such deities ...
Obviously, the correspondence with Stasyulevich forced Polonsky to rework his poem, smoothing out some of the "sharp corners" and softening the controversial places. For the first time it saw the light two years later in the literary collection "Skladchina", published in St. Petersburg in 1874 in favor of the victims of famine in the Samara province.
Turgenev, who did not favor Nekrasov at all, assessed Polonsky's poem, echoing Nekrasov's "muse of revenge and sadness", very restrainedly. In a letter to the author of the poem from Paris dated March 2 (14), 1872, he wrote: “By the habit that has been established between us, to be frank, I will tell you that the poem “Blessed is the embittered poet” sent by you does not quite please me, although it bears the stamp of your virtuosity. It somehow awkwardly oscillates between irony and seriousness - it is either displeasedly evil, or not quite enthusiastic - and makes an impression at the same time both obscure and tense.
Polonsky wrote to Turgenev in 1873 with a hint of envy towards the “citizen poet”: “Of all the two-legged creatures that I have met on earth, positively I do not know anyone happier than Nekrasov. Everything was given to him - fame, money, love, work, and freedom. Polonsky himself had nothing but inner freedom and love. And what about fame? She, as you know, is a capricious lady - not everyone is given into the hands.
“They will say that I am gloomy,” he wrote in his diary, “but I have neither love of money nor voluptuousness - a living person must have at least some passion ...”
But, oddly enough, a trail of bad "fame", or rather, outright gossip, trailed him all over St. Petersburg. People who knew well the poet's good character, his sober lifestyle, could not believe in these gossip, but could one hide from evil tongues somewhere? Polonsky himself admitted: “Since I went to one doctor, it seems to Krasilnikov, he asks me: was I in such and such a hospital?
Never been in any hospital.
Never?
Never!
Strange - some Polonsky lay there for a short time, who called himself a poet, rioted, sent servants for vodka and threatened in all newspapers to print a denunciation or libel on the hospital authorities if they constrained his arbitrariness.
Here is another confession of Polonsky: “My colleague, a member of the Committee of Lovers, once rode in a stagecoach to Pargolovo. The stagecoach talked about Russian poets:
All drunkards, - said one of the passengers.
And Polonsky? another asked.
I’ve been drunk since morning without waking up,” the same passenger said affirmatively. Yakov Petrovich took such gossip to heart, but his real fame, the glory of a deeply original Russian poet, became stronger and wider over the years.
