Analysis of the poem "Demon" (M. Lermontov)

The writing

Lermontov, of course, could not ignore the already existing tradition, but he was quite original both in the plot of his poem and in the interpretation of the main image. The Lermontov Demon combines huge internal forces and tragic impotence, the desire to overcome loneliness, to join the good and the unattainability of these aspirations. This is a rebellious Protestant who opposed himself not only to God, but also to people, to the whole world.

The rebellious, protesting ideas of Lermontov are directly manifested in the poem. Daemon - proud enemy heaven, "the king of knowledge and freedom." This is the embodiment of a rebellious rebellion against everything that binds the mind. He rejects the world

* Where there is no true happiness,
* Nor lasting beauty,
* Where there are only crimes and executions,
* Where petty passions only live,
* Where they do not know how without fear
* Neither hate nor love.

However, such a general denial means not only the strength of the Demon, but also its weakness. It is not given to him to see the earthly beauty from the height of the boundless cosmic expanses, he is not able to appreciate and understand the charm earthly nature:

* But, apart from cold envy,
* Nature's brilliance did not excite
* In the exile's barren chest
* No new feelings, no new forces;
* And all that he saw before him,
* He despised or hated.

The demon suffers in its arrogant seclusion and yearns for connections with the world and people. He was bored with "living for himself, bored with himself." Love for the earthly girl Tamara was to be for him the beginning of a way out of gloomy loneliness to people. But the search for harmony, “love, kindness and beauty” is fatally unattainable for the Demon:

* And cursed Demon defeated
* Dreams are crazy,
* And again he remained, arrogant,
* Alone, as before, in the universe,
* Without hope and love! ..

That exposure of individualistic consciousness, which was outlined in previous poems, is also present in The Demon. The "demonic", destructive principle is perceived by Lermontov as anti-humanistic. This problem, which deeply worried Lermontov, was developed by him both in dramaturgy (“Masquerade”) and in prose (“A Hero of Our Time”). In the poem it is difficult to distinguish the author's "voice", the direct author's position, which predetermines the complexity of the analysis of the work, its ambiguity. Not coincidentally, a number of questions. Placed by Lermontov in "The Demon", not finally resolved. For example: does the author see in his Demon an unconditional (albeit suffering) carrier of evil or only a rebellious victim of an “unjust sentence”? Was Tamara's soul "saved" for the sake of censorship, or was this motive an ideological and artistic inevitability for Lermontov? What is the meaning of the ending of the poem and the defeat of the Demon - conciliatory or not conciliatory? These unresolved issues testify to the complexity of the philosophical problems of the poem, to the dialectical combination of “good” and “evil” in the Demon, the thirst for the ideal and the loss of it, hostility to the world and attempts to reconcile with it, which ultimately reflects, to one degree or another, a tragic worldview. leading men of the era. Belinsky, for example, wrote in 1842: “The Demon” has become for me a fact of my life, I repeat it to others, I repeat to myself, it contains worlds of truths, feelings, beauty for me.

* “The richness of the philosophical and ethical content of the poem determines its artistic originality. The brightest example of romanticism, the poem "The Demon" is all built on antitheses. These are heroes opposing each other: God and Demon, Angel and Demon, Demon and Tamara; “these are the polar spheres: heaven and earth, life and death, ideal and reality; finally, these are contrasting social and ethical categories: freedom and tyranny, love and hatred, struggle and harmony, good and evil, affirmation and denial.

Powerful poetic fantasy, deep moral philosophical problems, pathos of denial and doubt, high lyricism, simplicity and plasticity of epic descriptions, even some mystery - all this made Lermontov's "Demon" one of the pinnacle phenomena in the history of the world romantic poem. The significance of The Demon is great not only in the history of Russian literature, but also in music (opera by A. G. Rubinshtein) and painting (paintings by M. A. Vrubel).

Other writings on this work

The image of the Demon in the poem of the same name by M.Yu. Lermontov Poem by M. Yu. Lermontov "Demon" Philosophical questions and their solution in M.Yu. Lermontov's poem "The Demon" Demon and Tamara in Lermontov's poem of the same name The rebellious nature of the Demon (based on the poem by M. Yu Lermontov "The Demon") Poem "Demon" The originality of one of the romantic poems of M.Yu. Lermontov ("Demon"). Comparison of Lermontov's poem "Mtsyri" and "Demon" Lermontov's work on the poem "Demon"

Lermontov sketches the first version of the "Demon" as a fifteen-year-old boy, in 1829. Since then, he has repeatedly returned to this poem, creating its various editions, in which the setting, action and plot details change, but the image of the protagonist retains its features.

In bourgeois literary criticism, the “Demon” was constantly put in connection with the tradition of works about the spirit of evil, richly represented in world literature (“Cain” and “Heaven and Earth” by Byron, “The Love of Angels” by the World, “Emak” by A. de Vigny, etc. .) But even comparative research led the researcher to the conclusion about the deep originality of the Russian poet. Understanding close connection Lermontov's creativity, including romantic, in contemporary poet Russian reality and national traditions Russian literature, which is the guiding principle for Soviet Lermontov studies, allows a new way to raise the question of the image of the Demon in Lermontov, as well as his romantic poetry in general. That romantic hero, which was first described by Pushkin in "Prisoner of the Caucasus" and in "Gypsies" and in which the author of these poems, according to him own words, depicted " distinctive features youth of the 19th century”, found a complete development in the romantic image of the Demon. In The Demon, Lermontov gave his understanding and his assessment of the individualist hero.

Lermontov used in The Demon, on the one hand, the biblical legend about the spirit of evil, overthrown from heaven for his rebellion against the supreme divine authority, and on the other, folklore Caucasian peoples, among which, as already mentioned, legends about a mountain spirit that swallowed a Georgian girl were widespread. This gives the plot of "The Demon" an allegorical character. But under the fantasy of the plot, there is a deep psychological, philosophical, social meaning.

If protest against the conditions that suppress human personality, left the pathos of romantic individualism, then in The Demon this is expressed with greater depth and strength.

The proud affirmation of a personality opposed to the negative world order sounds in the words of the Demon: "I am the king of knowledge and freedom." On this basis, the Demon develops that attitude to reality, which the poet defines with an expressive couplet:

And all that he saw before him
He despised or hated.

But Lermontov showed that one cannot dwell on contempt and hatred. Becoming an absolute denial, the Demon also rejected positive ideals. In his own words, he
All noble dishonored
And blasphemed everything beautiful.

This led the Demon to that painful state of inner emptiness, incorporeality, hopelessness, to loneliness in which we find him at the beginning of the poem. “The shrine of love, goodness and beauty”, which the Demon left again and, under the impression of the beautiful, opens to him in Tamara, is the Ideal of a beautiful free life worthy of a person. The plot of the plot is that the Demon acutely felt the captivity of the sharp Ideal and rushed towards him with all his being. This is the meaning of that attempt to "revive" the Demon, which is described in the poem in conventional biblical folklore images.
But development recognized these dreams as "insane" and cursed them. Lermontov, continuing the analysis of romantic individualism, with a deep psychological truth, hides the reasons for this failure. He shows how, in the development of experiences about the event, the noble social ideal is replaced by another - individualistic and egoistic, returning the Demon to its original position. Answering “temptation with full speeches” to Tamara’s pleas, “ evil spirit"forgets the ideal of" love, goodness and beauty ". The demon calls to escape from the world, from people. He invites Tamara to leave "the miserable light of his fate", suggests looking at the earth "without regret, without participation." The Demon puts one minute of his “unrecognized torment” above the “painful hardships, labors and troubles of the crowd of people ...” The Demon could not overcome his selfish individualism. This caused the death of Tamara and the defeat of the Demon:

And again he remained, arrogant,
Alone, as before, in the universe
Without hope and love!

The defeat of the Demon is proof not only of the futility, but also of the perniciousness of individualistic rebellion. The defeat of the Demon is the recognition of the insufficiency of one "negation" and the affirmation of the positive principles of life. Belinsky correctly saw in this the inner meaning of Lermontov's poem: “The demon,” the critic wrote, “denies for affirmation, destroys for creation; it makes a person doubt the reality of truth, as truth, beauty, as beauty, good, as good, but as this truth, this beauty, this good. He does not say that truth, beauty, goodness are signs generated by the diseased imagination of man; but he says that sometimes not everything is truth, beauty and goodness that is considered to be truth, beauty and goodness. To these words of the critic, one should add that the demon did not hold on to this position and that this characterization fully applies not to Lermontov's hero, but to Lermontov himself, who managed to rise above "demonic" denial.

Such an understanding of the ideological and social meaning of Lermontov's poem makes it possible to clarify its connection with the socio-political situation of the post-December period. Through a deep ideological and psychological analysis of the moods of those representatives of the generation of the 1930s who did not go further than individualistic protest, Lermontov romantically showed the futility of such sentiments and put forward the need for other ways of fighting for freedom before the progressive forces. If we take the "Demon" with modern Russian reality, it is not immediately revealed due to the conventionality of the plot of the poem, then in Lermontov's realistic novel about the hero of time, where the same socio-psychological phenomenon is depicted, this connection appears with complete clarity.

Overcoming romantic individualism, revealing the inferiority of "demonic" denial, confronted Lermontov with the problem of effective ways to fight for the freedom of the individual, the problem of a different hero.

Eyes wide open, bottomless, full of torment… Lips inflamed, parched from inner fire. A gaze full of despair and anger is fixed somewhere in front of him. This is the head of a proud thinker who has penetrated the secrets of the Universe and is indignant at the injustice reigning in the world. This is the head of a suffering exile, a lonely rebel, immersed in passionate thoughts and powerless in his indignation. Such is the Demon on one of Vrubel's drawings. This is precisely the Demon of Lermontov, the "powerful image", "mute and proud", which for so many years shone with the poet's "magically sweet beauty". In Lermontov's poem, God is depicted as the strongest of all tyrants in the world. And the Demon is the enemy of this tyrant. The most cruel accusation to the creator of the Universe is the Earth created by him:

Where there is no true happiness
No lasting beauty
Where there are only crimes and executions,
Where petty passions only live;
Where they do not know how without fear
Neither hate nor love.

This evil, unjust god is, as it were, the protagonist of the poem. He's somewhere backstage. But they constantly talk about him, they remember him, the Demon tells Tamara about him, although he does not address him directly, as the heroes of other Lermontov's works do. "You are guilty!" - the reproach thrown to God by the heroes of Lermontov's dramas, accusing the creator of the Universe of the crimes committed on Earth, since it was he who created the criminals.

... almighty god,
you know about the future could,
why did he create me? -
addresses God with the same reproach and the heavenly rebel Azrael, the hero of a philosophical poem created simultaneously with the youthful editions of The Demon.
Lermontov loves understatement, he often speaks in hints, and the images of his poems become clearer when they are compared with each other. Such comparisons are especially helpful in revealing the complex and difficult to understand poem "The Demon".
Azrael, like the Demon, is an exile, "a strong being, but defeated." He is punished not for rebellion, but only for "instant murmuring". Azrael, as described in Lermontov's poem, was created before people and lived on some planet far from the Earth. He was bored there alone. He reproached God for this and was punished. Azrael told his tragic story to an earthly girl:
I survived my star;
She scattered like smoke
Shattered by the hand of the creator;
But certain death is on the edge,
Looking at dead world,
I lived alone, forgotten and sir.

The demon is punished not only for grumbling: he is punished for rebellion. And his punishment is more terrible, more sophisticated than the punishment of Azrael. The tyrant god, with his terrible curse, incinerated the soul of the Demon, made it cold, dead. He not only expelled him from paradise - he devastated his soul. But even this is not enough. The almighty despot made the Demon responsible for the evil of the world. By the will of God, the Demon “burns with a fatal seal” everything that it touches, harms all living things. God made the Demon and his comrades in rebellion evil, turned them into a weapon of evil. This is the terrible tragedy of the hero Lermontov:

Only God's curse
Fulfilled from the same day
Nature's hot embrace
Forever cool for me;
The space was blue in front of me,
I saw the wedding dress
Luminaries familiar to me for a long time:
They flowed in crowns of gold!
But what? former brother
Didn't recognize a single one.
Exiles like themselves
I began to call in desperation,
But words and faces and evil eyes,
Alas, I did not recognize myself.
And in fear I, flapping my wings,
Rushed - but where? What for?
I don't know - former friends
I've been rejected like Eden
The world has become deaf and dumb for me...

The love that flared up in the soul of the Demon meant a rebirth for him. The “inexplicable excitement” that he felt at the sight of dancing Tamara revived “his dumb soul desert”,
And again he comprehended the shrine
Love, kindness and beauty!

Dreams of past happiness, of the time when he "was not evil", woke up, the feeling spoke in him "in a native, understandable language." Returning to the past did not at all mean for him reconciliation with God and a return to serene bliss in paradise. He, an eternally searching thinker, was alien to such a thoughtless state, he did not need this paradise with carefree, calm angels, for whom there were no questions and everything was always clear. He wanted another. He wanted his soul to live, to respond to the impression of life and be able to communicate with another kindred soul, to experience great human feelings. Live! To live a full life - that's what rebirth meant for the Demon. Feeling love for one living being, he felt love for all living things, felt the need to do genuine, real good, admire the beauty of the world, everything returned to him that the “evil” god had deprived him of.
In early editions, the joy of the Demon, who felt the thrill of love in his heart, the young poet describes very naively, primitively, somehow childishly, but surprisingly simple and expressive:
That iron dream
Passed. He can love
And he really loves it!

The "Iron Dream" choked the Demon and was the result of God's curse, it was the punishment for the battle. Lermontov speaks things, and the poet conveys the strength of his hero's suffering with the image of a stone burned with a tear. Feeling for the first time “the anguish of love, its excitement”, a strong, proud Demon cries. A single, mean, heavy tear rolls from his eyes and falls on a stone:
Until now near that cell
Through the burnt stone is visible
Tears hot as a flame
Inhuman tear.

The image of a stone burnt by a tear appears in a poem written by a seventeen-year-old boy. The demon was the poet's companion for many years. He grows and matures with him. And Lermontov more than once compares his lyrical hero with the hero of his poem:
I'm not for angels and heaven
Created by the Almighty God;
But why do I live, suffering,
He knows more about it.

“Like my demon, I am an evil chosen one,” the poet says about himself. He himself is the same rebel as his Demon. The hero of the early editions of the poem is a sweet, touching young man. He wants to pour out his suffering soul to someone. Having fallen in love and feeling "goodness and beauty", the young Demon retires to the top of the mountains. He decided to abandon his beloved, not to meet with her, so as not to cause her suffering. He knows that his love will destroy this earthly girl, locked in a monastery; she will be severely punished both on earth and in heaven. The terrible punishments of "sinned" nuns have been told many times in works of literature, foreign and Russian. So, in the novel in verse "Marmion" by Walter Scott, it was described how, for love and an attempt to escape, a young beautiful nun girl was immured alive in the wall of the dungeon. A scene from this novel "Court in the Dungeon" was translated by Zhukovsky.
The young Demon, awakened in him, also shows the feeling of genuine goodness in helping people who get lost in the mountains during a snowstorm, blowing snow off the traveler's face "and looking for protection for him." Vrubel has a Young Demon. He, like Lermontov, was haunted by this "powerful image" for many years.
Vrubel's painting "Seated Demon" (1890) depicts a strong young man with long muscular arms, somehow surprisingly helplessly folded, and a completely childish, naive face. It seems that if he gets up, it will be a long, long, quickly grown, but not yet fully formed teenager. The physical power of the figure especially emphasizes the helplessness, the childish expression of the face with the lowered corners of the soft, slightly limp sad mouth and the childish expression of sad eyes, as if he had just cried. A young demon sits on top of a mountain and looks down into the valley where people live. The whole figure, look express the endless longing of loneliness. Lermontov has been working on The Demon since 1829. In the early versions of the poem, the action takes place in some indefinite country, somewhere on the seashore, in the mountains. From some hints, it can be assumed that this is Spain. After the first reference to the Caucasus, in 1838, Lermontov created new edition. The plot became more complicated due to the poet's acquaintance with the life and legends of the peoples of the Caucasus. The poem was enriched with bright, lively pictures of nature. Lermontov transferred the action to the Caucasus and described what he himself saw. His Demon now flies over the peaks of the Caucasus. Lermontov perfectly conveys different types movements: rolling, dancing, flying. And here we see how the Demon flies. The very instrumentation of the first two lines of the poem creates a feeling of smooth flight:
He flew over the sinful earth ...

A distant, barely audible noise of wings seems to reach us, and in the distance the shadow of a flying Demon spread out in the ether flickers. The change in rhythm gives the impression that the Demon is approaching:
Since then the outcast has wandered
In the wilderness of a world without shelter...

A shadow flashing in the distance turns into a figure of a flying living being, still disfigured by the distance. The demon is getting closer. Sounds become more audible, louder, as if heavier. It is already possible to distinguish some somewhat buzzing sound of wings: “outcast” - “wandered”. And finally, the flying Demon is almost above us. This feeling is created by a short line:
And evil bored him.

Having rustled its wings above our head, the Demon moves away again. And now he is far away, in the sky:
And over the peaks of the Caucasus
The exile of paradise flew by...

The first part of the Demon's path is the Georgian Military Road to the Cross Pass, the most majestic and wild part of it. When you look from afar from below at the harsh rocky peak of Kazbek, covered with snow and ice, you feel for a moment a feeling of cold, homelessness, loneliness, like that, with whom the Demon did not part. Lermontov's poetic landscapes of the Caucasus have the nature of a documentary, like his drawings: "I hastily shot views of all the remarkable places that I visited." But in his drawings, Lermontov emphasized the severity of the treeless rocky mountains even more than reality, as if he were making illustrations for the poem, comparing these gray, bare rocks with the emptiness of the soul of his hero. But the action of the poem develops. And the Demon has already flown over the Cross Pass:
And in front of him is a different picture
Living colors blossomed...

This abrupt change of scenery is true. It amazes everyone who passes through Krestovaya Mountain:
Luxurious Georgia Valley
Carpet spread out in the distance.
And Lermontov, with the same skill with which he had just described the harsh and majestic landscape of the Caucasus Range to the Cross Pass, now paints “a luxurious, lush edge of the earth” - with rose bushes, nightingales, spreading plane trees entwined with ivy and “ringingly running streams” . Full life a magnificent picture of nature prepares us for something new, and we begin to involuntarily wait for events. Against the background of this fragrant land, the heroine of the poem appears for the first time. As the image of the Demon is complemented by the landscape of the rocky mountains, so the image of the young, full of life beauty of the Georgian Tamara becomes brighter in combination with the lush nature of her homeland. On the roof covered with carpets, among her friends, she spends her last day in home daughter of Prince Gudal Tamara. Tomorrow is her wedding. The heroes of Lermontov have bold and proud souls, greedy for all the impressions of life. They desire passionately, feel passionately, think passionately. And in the dance, the character of Tamara was revealed. This is not a serene dance. "Sad doubt" darkened the bright features of the young Georgian woman. Beauty combined in her with wealth inner life which attracted the Demon in her. Tamara is not just a beauty. This would not be enough for the Demon's love. He sensed a soul in her that could understand him. The thought that worried Tamara about the “fate of a slave” was a protest, a rebellion against this fate, and this rebellion was felt in her by the Demon. It was to her that he could promise to open "the abyss of proud knowledge." Only to a girl, in whose character traits of rebelliousness were laid, could the Demon address with the following words:
Leave the desire
And the miserable light of his fate;
The abyss of proud knowledge
In return, I will open it for you.

Between the hero and the heroine of the poem "The Demon" there is some relationship of characters. The philosophical poem "Demon" is at the same time a psychological poem. It also has a huge social meaning. The hero of the poem bears the features of living people, the poet's contemporaries. The action of Lermontov's philosophical poems ("Azrael", "Demon") takes place somewhere in outer space: there, on separate planets, creatures similar to people live. His heavenly rebels have human feelings. And in their rebellion against the heavenly tyrant, a lot of the author's own anger against the earthly autocrat was invested. The poem "Demon" breathes the spirit of those years when it was created. It embodied everything by which they lived, what they thought, what they suffered the best people the time of Lermontov. It also contains the contradiction of this era. The progressive people of the 1930s passionately searched for the truth. They sharply criticized the surrounding autocratic-feudal reality, with its slavery, cruelty, despotism. But they didn't know where to find the truth. Lost in the realm of evil, they fought helplessly and protested, but did not see the way to the world of justice and felt infinitely alone.
Raised and brought up in a serf-owning country, they themselves were largely poisoned by its vices. Lermontov embodied the features of lonely sufferers-rebels in the image of the Demon. This is the hero of an intermediate era, when for advanced people the old understanding of the world has died, but there is no new one yet. This is a rebel without a positive program, a proud and brave rebel, outraged by the injustice of the laws of the universe, but not knowing what to oppose these laws. Like the hero of Lermontov's novel Pechorin, the hero of his poem is an egoist. The demon suffers from loneliness, yearns for life and people, and at the same time, this proud man despises people for their weakness. He puts one minute of his "unrecognized torment" above the "painful hardships, labors and troubles of the human crowd." Like Pechorin, the Demon cannot free himself from the evil that has poisoned him, and, like Pechorin, he is not guilty of this. But the Demon is also a symbolic image. For the poet himself and for his advanced contemporaries, the Demon was a symbol of the tricks of the old world, the collapse of the old concepts of good and evil. The poet embodied in him the spirit of criticism and revolutionary denial. “The spirit of criticism,” Herzen wrote, “is called not from hell, not from the planets, but from a person’s own chest, and he has nowhere to disappear. Wherever a person turns away from this spirit, the first thing that catches the eye is himself with his questions. The symbolic meaning of the image of the Demon was revealed by Belinsky. The demon, he wrote, “denies in order to affirm, destroys in order to create; it makes a person doubt the reality of truth as truth, beauty as beauty, good as good, but as this truth, this beauty, this good ... he is so terrible, because he is powerful, that he will hardly give birth to doubt in you that hitherto you have considered it an indisputable truth, as the ideal of the new truth already shows you from afar. And, while this new truth is only a phantom, a dream, an assumption, a hunch, a presentiment for you, until you have realized it, have not mastered it, you are the prey of this demon and must know all the torments of an unsatisfied desire, all the torture of doubt, all the suffering of a desolate existence. ". A few years after the death of Lermontov, Ogarev speaks of the Demon like this:

In the struggle he is fearless, his joy is rude,
From the dust he builds everything again and again,
And his hatred for what needs to be destroyed,
The soul is holy, as love is holy.

In the poem "The Demon", created by Lermontov for a decade, there are many contradictions. They were preserved in the last stages of work. Lermontov did not finish his work on the poem. At the end of the 30s, Lermontov departed from his Demon and in the poem "A Tale for Children" (1839-1840) called him "children's delirium." He wrote:

My young mind used to resent
A mighty image, among other visions,
Like a king, dumb and proud, he shone
Such magically sweet beauty,
What was scary ... and the soul longing
Shriveled - and this wild nonsense
Haunted my mind for many years.
But I, having parted with other dreams,
And got rid of him - with verses.

At the turn of the 40s, a new creative stage. He went from denial to affirmation, from the Demon to Mtsyri. In the image of Mtsyri, Lermontov most fully revealed himself, his own soul, which was well understood by his advanced contemporaries. Belinsky called Mtsyri Lermontov's favorite ideal, while Ogarev wrote that this was the poet's clearest and only ideal.
Lermontov did not finish work on "The Demon" and did not intend to print it. There is no authorized copy, much less an autograph of the poem in this edition. It is printed according to the list according to which it was printed in 1856 by A.I. Philosopher, married to a relative of Lermontov, A.T. Stolypin. A.I. Philosophers was the tutor of one of the Grand Dukes and published this edition of The Demon in Germany, in Karlsruhe, where at that moment the court of the heir was located. The book was published in a very small edition, especially for the courtiers. On the title page Philosopher's list says: "Demon". An oriental story composed by Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov on December 4, 1838 ... "There is also the date of the list:" September 13, 1841 ", which indicates that this list was made after Lermontov's death.

"Demon" (1838 September 8 days)

An authorized copy of this edition of the poem, donated by V.A. Lermontov, has been preserved. Lopukhina (by her husband Bakhmetyeva) and who was with her brother, A.A. Lopukhin, a friend of Lermontov, and his friend from Moscow University. The precious manuscript has come down to us. A large notebook made of fine thick paper is sewn with thick white thread, as Lermontov usually sewed his creative notebooks. It is kept in Leningrad, in the library named after Saltykov-Shchedrin. The cover is yellowed, torn and then glued by someone. Although the manuscript was rewritten in someone else's even handwriting, the cover was made by the poet himself. Above - large - the signature: "Demon". Below left small: "1838 September 8 days." The title is carefully printed and enclosed in an oval vignette. We also meet Lermontov's handwriting on one of the pages of the poem at the very end. The lines written by Lermontov in a notebook given to his beloved woman, among the pages soullessly written out by the clerk, acquire a special intimate meaning. They are perceived with excitement, as an inadvertently discovered foreign secret. The page, written by the hand of a clerk, ends with the verses:
Clouds elusive
Fibrous herds…

On the next page we see Lermontov's handwriting. The poet tries to write smoothly and beautifully, but, out of habit, as always, the lines written in his small, uneven handwriting rush up and bend down:
The hour of parting, the hour of goodbye -
They have neither joy nor sorrow;
They have no desire in the future
And don't feel sorry for the past.
On the day of agonizing misfortune
You only remember them;
Be to the earth without participation
And careless, like them.

And then the clerk continues to diligently rewrite the poem. But at the end, Lermontov's hand appears again. Below the line, following the poem, he writes a dedication. In this edition of The Demon, the progressive content of the poem is most fully and clearly expressed. The difference between the two editions is very noticeable in the second part of the poem and is especially pronounced in the finale. Their comparison has great interest for the reader. Making a list of "Demon" on the basis of two lists of different editions, Belinsky called them lists "with big differences" and during the correspondence preferred this edition, citing variants of the second at the end. Being under the impression of The Demon, Belinsky wrote to V.P. Botkin in March 1842 about Lermontov’s work: “... the content extracted from the bottom of the deepest and most powerful nature, a gigantic swing, demonic flight - a proud enmity with the sky - all this makes us think that we have lost a poet in Lerm[ontov], who content would have stepped further than Pushkin. In connection with “Masquerade”, “Boyar Orsha” and “Demon”, Belinsky said: “... this is a satanic smile on life, distorting infantile lips, this is “proud enmity with heaven”, this is the contempt of fate and a premonition of its inevitability. All this is childish, but terribly strong and sweeping. Lion nature! Terrible and powerful spirit! Do you know why I took it into my head to rant about Lermontov? I just finished rewriting his "Demon" yesterday, from two lists, with great differences - and even more in them this childish, immature and colossal creation.
“A proud enmity with the sky” is a quote from this edition of “The Demon”.
“The Demon” has become a fact of my life, I repeat it to others, I repeat to myself, in it for me are the worlds of truths, feelings, beauties,” Belinsky wrote in the same letter, having just finished rewriting the poem in this edition.

images evil spirits always troubled the hearts of poets and writers. The power of good, embodied in God, had no other form. But the messenger of Hell bore all sorts of names: the Devil, and Satan, and Lucifer. This proved that evil has many faces, and a person should be on his guard, because he can succumb to temptation, and then the soul will go straight to hell.

However, in the romantic literature of the early 19th century, especially Russian, images of evil spirits they became not so much villains as tyrant-fighters, and, paradoxically, God himself became a tyrant. After all, it was he who demanded suffering from a person, forced him to blindly follow his will, sometimes sacrificing the most precious thing that he had.

Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov's poem "The Demon" was no exception. Behind the basis of the plot the poet takes the well-known biblical legend about the spirit of evil cast down by God from heaven for rebellion against his power. The image of the Demon, who transgressed the laws of goodness and remained alone in the desert of the world that bored him, worried Lermontov all his life. Mikhail Yurievich worked on the poem for 12 years.

At the beginning of the work, the poet sympathized with his hero. The desire of the Demon to be limitless in feelings and actions, the challenge of the everyday life, the audacity of rebellion against divine settings were attractive to the young Lermontov. The demon is an unusual hero: he despises the limitations of human existence both in time and space. Once he "believed and loved", "knew neither malice nor doubt", but now "long outcast wandered in the wilderness of the world without shelter".

Flying over the valleys of luxurious Georgia, he sees the young princess Tamara dancing. At this moment, the Demon is experiencing an inexplicable excitement, because “A dumb soul filled his desert with a blessed sound” and "he again comprehended the shrine of love, goodness and beauty". But Tamara does not need his love, because she is waiting for her fiance - the brave Prince Sinodal.

All the heroes of the poem, except for the Demon, are closed in the space of their destiny. Tragic circumstances rule them, and resistance to them is futile. The brave prince hurries to the wedding feast and passes the chapel where he always brought "earnest prayer". Once "The daring bridegroom despised the custom of his ancestors", as soon as he crossed the border of the prescribed, death from "evil bullet Ossetian" overtook him. Maybe it's the Demon's revenge?

When creating his poem, Lermontov remembered an old legend he had heard in the Caucasus about the mountain spirit Guda, who fell in love with a beautiful Georgian woman. When the spirit of Good found out that Nino loves an earthly youth, unable to endure the pangs of jealousy, on the eve of the wedding, he covers the saklya of lovers with a huge snow avalanche. But Lermontov is not satisfied with the principle: “So don’t get it for anyone!” His Demon is really ready to transform for the sake of love: he is devoid of the energy of evil and the thirst for revenge, and there is no jealousy in him.

Love for Tamara for the Demon is an attempt to free himself from the cold contempt for the world, to which his rebellion against God doomed him. "Evil bored him" because he does not meet resistance in people who willingly use the prompts of the Devil. Daemon "sowed evil without pleasure", is he devoid of vain satisfaction from his power over insignificant people.

When Tamara mourns for her dead fiancé, the Demon

... To her bent headboard;
And his eyes looked at her with such love.

At that moment he was neither a guardian angel nor "hell with a terrible spirit". When Tamara decides to narrow her life down to the gloomy cell of a monastery, the Demon wants to give her back all the breadth of freedom and give her the space of eternity. He promises Tamara a paradise of omniscience, a paradise of freedom:

I will sink to the bottom of the sea
I will fly beyond the clouds
I will give you everything, everything earthly -
Love me!...

But the price of such freedom is too high - the rejection of everything insignificant earthly, that is, death. Therefore, Tamara wants to escape from "irresistible dream" evil spirit. An Angel comes to her aid, not believing in the transformation of the Demon, so he returns him to his former role as a villain. Thus, Heaven did not have enough faith in goodness, the consciousness of its power in the soul of Tamara and its possibility in the Demon. Tamara, on the other hand, turned out to be able not only to love the Demon, but also to take care of saving her soul. After her death "sinful soul" Tamara is washed by the tears of an angel, because she "Redeemed at a cruel price" the possibility of heaven being opened to her after all.

Tamara's death is the victory of love for the Demon, but he himself is not saved by this victory, because she is taken away by death, and the soul is taken by Heaven. Seeing how the soul of Tamara, "prayer drowned horror", seeks salvation on the chest of the Angel, the Demon is finally defeated:

And cursed Demon defeated
Dreams are crazy...

Lermontov saw the reason for the defeat of the Demon in the limited feelings of the Demon, including for Tamara, so he sympathizes with his hero, but also condemns him for arrogant bitterness against the world. "Eternal murmur of man" how his proud desire to stand on a par with nature is captured in Demon form. Divine world mightier than the world personality - such is the position of the poet.

Criticism assessed the image of the Demon differently. The symbolic image was best revealed by V. Belinsky. He wrote that the Demon makes a person doubt the truth: “While the truth is only a ghost for you, a dream, you are the prey of the Demon, because you must know all the torture of doubt.”

Saklya- hut, dwelling of the Caucasian highlanders.

Analysis of the poem "Demon" - not single essay associated with Lermontov:

ARTISTIC ANALYSIS OF THE POEM "DEMON"

The presentation was made by the teacher of Russian language and literature Ovchinnikova O.V.

(for grade 10)

CRITICIAN V. G. BELINSKY ABOUT THE POEM:

"... the luxury of paintings, the richness of poetic animation, excellent poetry, the loftiness of thoughts, the charming charm of images."

The main theme of all Lermontov's work is

subject personality in relation to society. Central hero - a proud, freedom-loving, rebellious and protesting personality, striving for action, for struggle.

But in the conditions of the social reality of the 30s, such a person does not find a sphere of application for his powerful forces, and therefore is doomed to loneliness.

The history of the creation of the poem

Lermontov described what he himself saw. His Demon now flies over the peaks of the Caucasus.

The beginning of the poem creates a feeling of smooth flight:

He flew over the sinful earth ...

WHAT IS THE HERO OF THE POEM?

In The Demon, Lermontov gave his understanding and his assessment of the individualist hero .

Plot of the Poem

Lermontov used in "Demon" biblical legend about the spirit of evil, cast down from heaven for his rebellion against the supreme divine authority, and folklore of the Caucasian peoples, among which there were widespread legends about a mountain spirit that swallowed a Georgian girl.

But under the fantasy of the plot here hides a deep psychological, philosophical and social meaning.

THE WAY OF ABSOLUTE NEGATION

What led the Demon to a painful state of inner emptiness, to loneliness, in which we see him at the beginning of the poem?

"Sanctuary of love, goodness and beauty"

Who is the Ideal for the Demon worthy of a man beautiful free life?

What is the plot twist?

The demon keenly felt the fascination of the Ideal (Tamara) and rushed towards him with all his being.

This is the meaning of the attempt to "revive" the Demon, which is described in conventional biblical folklore images.

FIND LINES IN THE TEXT THAT ILLUSTRATE THIS ATTEMPT OF "REBIRTH"

WHAT caused the death of Tamara and the defeat of the Demon?

And again he remained, arrogant,

Alone, as before, in the universe

Without hope and love!

inner meaning poems by M. Yu. Lermontov

« The demon denies to affirm, destroys to create... He does not say that truth, beauty, goodness are signs generated by a sick imagination of a person; but says that sometimes not everything is truth, beauty and goodness that is considered to be truth, beauty and goodness »

V. G. Belinsky

OTHER WAYS TO FIGHT FOR FREEDOM ARE NEEDED

Through a deep ideological and psychological analysis of the moods of those representatives of the generation of the 1930s who did not go further than individualistic protest, Lermontov romantically showed the futility of such sentiments and put forward the need for other ways of fighting for freedom before the progressive forces.

THE IMAGE OF GOD IN A POEM

In Lermontov's poem, God is depicted as the strongest tyrant of the world. And the Demon is the enemy of this tyrant. The most cruel accusation to the creator of the Universe is the Earth created by him.

LOOK IN THE TEXT FOR PROOF OF THIS ACCUSATION

AS AN ACTOR OF A POEM

This evil, unjust God is somewhere behind the scenes. But they constantly talk about him, remember him, the Demon tells Tamara about him, although he does not address him directly.

FIND IN THE TEXT AN EXAMPLE THAT ILLUSTRATES THE DEMON'S STORY.

The language of the poem

emotional, rich in epithets, metaphors, comparisons, contrasts and exaggerations.

FIND EXAMPLES OF TRAILS IN THE TEXT. WRITE THEM OUT.

The beat CHANGES and the Demon approaches:

Since then the outcast has wandered

In the wilderness of a world without shelter...

The shadow turns into a figure of a flying living being. The demon is getting closer.

It is already possible to distinguish some whirring sound of wings : "open well enny" - "blue well gave."

WHAT PHONETIC RECEPTION DOES LERMONTOV USE?

NATURE IN A POEM

The first part of the Demon's path is the Georgian Military Road to the Cross Pass, the most majestic and wild part of it. Here is the harsh rocky peak of Kazbek, covered with snow and ice. There is a feeling of cold, homelessness, loneliness, similar to the one that the Demon did not part with.

NATURE IN A POEM

But here is the Demon behind the Cross Pass:

And in front of him is a different picture

Living colors blossomed...

Full of life, a luxurious picture of nature prepares us for something new ...

Against the background of this fragrant land, the heroine of the poem appears for the first time.

Young Georgian Tamara

What attracted the Demon in her?

Philosophical And psychological poem

The demon is a rebel without a positive program, a proud rebel, outraged by the injustice of the laws of the universe, but not knowing what to oppose these laws.

This is an egoist. He suffers from loneliness, yearns for life and for people, and at the same time, this proud man despises people for their weakness.

PECHORIN AND DEMON

Like Pechorin, the Demon cannot free himself from the evil that has poisoned him, and, like Pechorin, he is not guilty of this. For the poet himself and for his advanced contemporaries, the Demon was a symbol of the breaking of the old world, the collapse of the old concepts of good and evil.

The poet embodied in him the spirit of criticism and revolutionary denial.

"WILD DREAM"

He did not finish his work on the poem and did not intend to print it.

In the late 30s, Lermontov departed from his Demon in the poem "A Tale for Children" (1839-1840) called it "wild nonsense":

… and this wild nonsense

Haunted my mind for many years.

But I, having parted with other dreams,

And got rid of him - with verses.

"Demon" (1838 September 8 days)

A precious manuscript has come down to us . A large notebook made of fine thick paper is sewn with white thick threads, as Lermontov usually sewed his creative notebooks.

It is stored in Leningrad, in the library named after Saltykov-Shchedrin .

Although the manuscript was rewritten in someone else's even handwriting, the cover was made by the poet himself. Above - large - the signature: "Demon". Below left small: "1838 September 8 days." The title is carefully printed and enclosed in an oval vignette.

"Demon" (1829 - 1839) is one of the most mysterious and controversial works of the poet. The complexity of the analysis lies, in particular, in the fact that in the poem there are several plans for the perception and interpretation of the text: cosmic, including the relationship of the Demon to God and the universe, philosophical, psychological, but, of course, not everyday. Many European poets turned to the legend of a fallen angel who fought against God: suffice it to recall Satan in Milton's Paradise Lost, Lucifer in Byron's Cain, Mephistopheles in Goethe's Faust. Lermontov, of course, could not ignore the already existing tradition, but he was quite original both in the plot of his poem and in the interpretation of the main image. Lermontov's Demon combines enormous inner strength and tragic impotence, the desire to overcome loneliness, to join the good and the unattainability of these aspirations. This is a rebellious Protestant who opposed himself not only to God, but also to people, to the whole world. The rebellious, protesting ideas of Lermontov are directly manifested in the poem. The demon is a proud enemy of heaven, "the king of knowledge and freedom." This is the embodiment of a rebellious rebellion against everything that binds the mind. He rejects the world, * Where there is neither true happiness, * Nor lasting beauty, * Where there are only crimes and executions, * Where petty passions only live, * Where they do not know how to live without fear * Neither hate nor love. However, such a general denial means not only the strength of the Demon, but also its weakness. It is not given to him to see earthly beauty from the height of boundless cosmic expanses, he is not able to appreciate and understand the charm of earthly nature: * But, except for cold envy, * Nature did not excite the brilliance * In the chest of the barren exile * No new feelings, no new forces; * And everything that he saw before him, * He despised or hated. The demon suffers in its arrogant seclusion and yearns for connections with the world and people. He was bored with "living for himself, bored with himself." Love for the earthly girl Tamara was to be for him the beginning of a way out of gloomy loneliness to people. But the search for harmony, "love, goodness and beauty" is fatally unattainable for the Demon: * And the defeated Demon cursed * His crazy dreams, * And again he remained, arrogant, * Alone, as before, in the universe, * Without hope and love! .. That exposure of the individualistic consciousness, which was outlined in the previous poems, is also present in the "Demon". The "demonic", destructive principle is perceived by Lermontov as anti-humanistic. This problem, which deeply worried Lermontov, was developed by him both in dramaturgy (“Masquerade”) and in prose (“A Hero of Our Time”). In the poem it is difficult to distinguish the author's "voice", the direct author's position, which predetermines the complexity of the analysis of the work, its ambiguity. Not coincidentally, a number of questions. Placed by Lermontov in "The Demon", not finally resolved. For example: does the author see in his Demon an unconditional (albeit suffering) carrier of evil or only a rebellious victim of an “unjust sentence”? Was Tamara's soul "saved" for the sake of censorship, or was this motive an ideological and artistic inevitability for Lermontov? What is the meaning of the ending of the poem and the defeat of the Demon - conciliatory or not conciliatory? These unresolved issues testify to the complexity of the philosophical problems of the poem, to the dialectical combination of “good” and “evil” in the Demon, the thirst for the ideal and the loss of it, hostility to the world and attempts to reconcile with it, which ultimately reflects, to one degree or another, a tragic worldview. leading men of the era. Belinsky, for example, wrote in 1842: “The Demon” has become for me a fact of my life, I repeat it to others, I repeat to myself, it contains worlds of truths, feelings, beauty for me. * “The richness of the philosophical and ethical content of the poem also determines its artistic originality. The brightest example of romanticism, the poem "The Demon" is all built on antitheses. These are heroes opposing each other: God and Demon, Angel and Demon, Demon and Tamara; “these are the polar spheres: heaven and earth, life and death, ideal and reality; finally, these are contrasting social and ethical categories: freedom and tyranny, love and hatred, struggle and harmony, good and evil, affirmation and denial. Powerful poetic fantasy, deep moral and philosophical problems, pathos of denial and doubt, high lyricism, simplicity and plasticity of epic descriptions, even some mystery - all this made Lermontov's "Demon" one of the pinnacle phenomena in the history of the world romantic poem. The significance of The Demon is great not only in the history of Russian literature, but also in music (opera by A. G. Rubinshtein) and painting (paintings by M. A. Vrubel).