Analysis of Bryusov’s poem “The Coming Huns.” Abstract: Analysis of Bryusov’s poem “The Coming Huns” Literary direction and genre

Bryusov Valery Yakovlevich "The Coming Huns"

2. Date of creation.

3. Theme of the work.

The poet describes the invasion of the Huns - a nomadic conquering people.

Their huts near the walls of palaces, the fires they make from books, the riots they create in temples, their barbaric attitude towards mystery, faith, art.

4. The idea of ​​the work, the main idea.

Hidden in the image of the Huns is the image of workers and peasants, the author’s contemporaries, who are ready to destroy the centuries-old traditions of Russia and its culture for the sake of fulfilling their ambitious idea - revolution. Valery Bryusov, as we know, was not a supporter of revolutionary ideas, although he understood that changes in society could not be avoided. It is precisely this attitude of the poet to the revolution that we see in the poem “The Coming Huns.”

Despite the fact that the revolution is tantamount to a catastrophe, the poet considers these events to be natural, so all that remains for the wise men is to hide in caves and catacombs, and for the citizens to meet the revolutionaries: “But you, who destroy me,

I greet you with a welcome anthem."

5. Means of artistic expression.

Epithets: “cast iron tramp”, “intoxicated horde”, “decrepit body”, “flaming blood”.

Metaphors: “Where are you, the coming Huns, /Who are hanging over the world like a cloud!”

Comparisons: “You are innocent of everything, like children!”

Alliteration: combinations of sounds gr, gu are repeated to create a feeling of thunder, rumble.

Oxymoron: "slaves of the will."

6. Features of the genre, composition.

This poem belongs to the genre of civil lyric poetry.

The symbolist Bryusov put many symbols into this poem, referring to history.

The epigraph to the poem is taken from the poem “Nomads of Beauty” by Vyacheslav Ivanov, written in 1904.

The first four stanzas describe the actions of the Huns, the last three describe the fate of the sages and poets.

7. Poetic size.

Three-punch cutter.

Updated: 2017-11-02

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“The Coming Huns” Valery Bryusov

Trample their paradise, Attila.
Vyach. Ivanov

Where are you, future Huns,
What a cloud hanging over the world!
I hear your cast iron tramp
Through the not yet discovered Pamirs.

An intoxicated horde is upon us
Fall from the dark places -
Revive a decrepit body
A wave of flaming blood.

Place, slaves of freedom,
Huts near the palaces, as it used to be,
Rake up the merry field
On the site of the throne room.

Stack books like fires,
Dance in their joyful light,
You create abomination in the temple, -
You are innocent of everything, like children!

And we, sages and poets,
Keepers of secrets and faith,
Let's take away the lit lights,
In catacombs, in deserts, in caves.

And what, under the flying storm.
Under this storm of destruction,
Will save the playing Case
From our treasured creations?

Everything will perish without a trace, perhaps
What only we knew
But you, who will destroy me,
I greet you with a welcome anthem.

Analysis of Bryusov’s poem “The Coming Huns”

Valery Bryusov did not take revolutionary ideas seriously, although he understood that society needed change. However, the poet considered his path of development through wars and upheavals to be erroneous. The events of 1904-1905, when mass strikes swept across Russia, turning into a kind of dress rehearsal for the 1917 revolution, forced Bryusov to take a closer look at this social phenomenon, in which he saw a parallel with the fall of the Roman Empire. That's when it was born the poem "The Coming Huns", predicting the death of the mighty Russian state.

By “the coming Huns,” the author meant modern barbarians - workers and peasants who are ready to trample on the centuries-old traditions and culture of the Russian people for the sake of their crazy and ambitious ideas. Bryusov had no doubt at all that events would develop exactly according to this scenario, predicting: “Collapse upon us from the dark places like an intoxicated horde.” The only difference is that if earlier raids were carried out by foreigners, now the ruin of the country begins from within, and its initiators are people who were nourished and raised by the Russian land. However, this, according to the poet, will not stop the vandals from erecting huts near the palaces and destroying agricultural land in the throne rooms, thereby destroying everything that Russia was so proud of.

By resorting to such allegories, the poet pursues the only goal - to show how low people can fall, intoxicated by the thirst for power. Bryusov understands that revolution in any of its manifestations is an evil that must be resisted. Otherwise, his homeland will turn into a barbaric country, where human life will be worth absolutely nothing. The author compares the bearers of revolutionary ideas to small children who are happy to dance around bonfires made from books and destroy churches. However, there is no one to resist this merciless force, because all the sages will simply be forced to hide from the vandals, taking “the lit lights into the catacombs, into the deserts, into the caves.” This is the fate of many civilizations that failed to discern their enemies and defend themselves against them in a timely manner. True, Bryusov sees a certain pattern in such a scenario of events. If society is not able to solve its problems on its own, then some external force always appears, sweeping away everything in its path. Therefore, the poet believes that there is no point in trying to change anything, much less resist the barbarians. “I greet you, who will destroy me, with a welcoming hymn,” the poet sums up.

The poem "The Coming Huns" was written during a period of social upheaval. It was created over almost a year and is a reflection of the current events. The poem finally took shape under the influence of the events of 1905. Bryusov saw the pressure with which workers and peasants organizing demonstrations, strikes and strikes were moving towards change.

The mature poet, who was 32 years old at the time of writing the poem, foresaw or foresaw that nothing could resist the efforts of this stream. On the other hand, it was impossible, having witnessed “Bloody Sunday,” not to renounce the actions of the old world in the name of the new.

The poem was completed in 1905 and published in 1906 in a collection, the title of which is translated from Greek as “Wreath.” The first publication took place in the journal “Questions of Life” No. 3 for 1905.

Literary direction and genre

The symbolist Bryusov filled the poem “The Coming Huns” with symbols and allegories, with new meaning. In modern life, Bryusov finds an analogue to the wild tribes of barbarians, Huns, and the sages of antiquity. Comparing the events of the fifth and twentieth centuries, Bryusov foresees the further course of history and declares it.

The poem belongs to the genre of civil lyrics, but it is not devoid of philosophical generalizations.

Theme, main idea and composition

The theme of the poem is future social upheaval. The Huns in the poem are not only a symbol of certain classes, that is, new people seizing power, but also a symbol of revolutionary changes that are never favorable for living generations.

The main idea: history teaches humanity nothing. Sages know about future events, poets foresee them, but no one can change anything. Therefore, social upheavals occur again and again. This is the path of human development that we need to come to terms with.

The poem consists of 7 quatrains. The first 4 are an appeal to the coming Huns. The lyrical hero invites them to commit a series of acts of vandalism, as if suggesting what can be done. All this has already been done in history. The last 3 stanzas are the fate of the sages and poets, to whom the lyrical hero counts himself, and their attitude to what is happening.

The epigraph to the poem is taken from the poem “Nomads of Beauty” by Vyacheslav Ivanov, written in 1904. Attila, the leader of the Huns, was already associated in the poem from the epigraph with a new brute force that sees beauty in emptiness.

Paths and images

The image in the title is a metaphorical epithet. Bryusov uses the obsolete participle future, that is, going, coming, expected in the future. The alliteration of the sounds gr - gu conveys the thunder and roar of approaching crowds of vandals.

The lyrical hero is not afraid of this crowd, he calls on the coming Huns, metaphorically comparing them with a cloud hanging over the world, and calling them trampling cast iron(epithet). The Pamirs, which had not yet been discovered by Europeans during the time of the Huns, become a collective symbol of areas of life from which innovators and destroyers suddenly emerge. They destroy what they have no idea about.

In the second stanza, all humanity is presented as a single organism. The body of the old civilization has become decrepit (metaphor), and drunk the horde (epithet) of the Huns pours into him “in a wave blazing blood" (epithet, metaphor), reviving the old civilization (metaphor).

This stanza can be understood in another way. Dark, unenlightened souls (metaphorical epithet dark conditions) are able to induce the old to stir up, to come to life, only by causing it pain, drawing blood, forcing it to fight.

The oxymoron of the third stanza “slaves of will” reveals the internal contradiction of all rebels, all conquerors. What will they do after conquering and destroying? They are incapable of creation; their most ingenious construction is a hut on the site of a destroyed palace. This is a symbol of the primitive that replaces the developed in all civilizations. Epithet cheerful field and the metaphor “cut up a cheerful field” is not about growing bread, but about a wild field - the habitat of nomads.

In this stanza, Bryusov foresaw the manifestation of the savage inclinations of the workers and peasants, who in 1917 used the vases of the Winter Palace as chamber pots (“in place of the throne room”).

The fourth stanza contains an anachronism. The Huns did not burn the books (papyri) of antiquity, not understanding either their value or their danger for certain ideas. And the Huns had no ideas other than the idea of ​​will. The first Christians burned books, and they also destroyed ancient statues and pagan temples. The reason for the vandalism was a mismatch of ideas.

Bryusov foresees the actions of the Bolsheviks, destroying the circulation of objectionable books. This is what the fascists did, the emergence of which Bryusov could not have guessed. But he foresaw the logic of history, as well as the fact that the godlessness of the 20th century. will lead to the desecration of temples.

The last line of the fourth stanza justifies the Huns. The lyrical hero compares them to innocent children.

The next three stanzas clarify this condescending attitude of the lyrical hero towards the barbarians. The sages and poets with whom the lyrical hero associates himself move away from the problem and eliminate themselves. These people, symbolizing the wisdom of the ages, simply hide, taking away what they possess and what the Huns do not: secrets and lights (knowledge), faith.

When hordes of nomads are coming, “a flying storm, a thunderstorm of destruction” (metaphors), one can only hide, preserving the values ​​of civilization, “cherished creations.” The question of the lyrical hero is what part of these values ​​will be preserved. The question is not idle: most of the works of ancient culture disappeared without a trace, were destroyed or destroyed. Even less remains of other ancient civilizations.

Playing Chance (with a capital C, it is very important), and not logic or reason, decides the fate, the future of humanity.

In the last stanza, the lyrical hero comes to terms with the possible destruction completely, without a trace, of all the values ​​of his culture. But he rejoices at the arrival of the formidable future Huns. Why? Because, like a sage and a poet, the lyrical hero understands the logic of history and does not oppose it.

Meter and rhyme

The poem is written in a dolman with three stresses on each line. Cross rhyme. Women's rhymes.

Valery Bryusov wrote the poem “The Coming Huns” for almost a year and finished it on August 10, 1905.
In “The Coming Huns” - the most detailed and fully revealing of his attitude to the revolution and understanding of its meaning. Sweep away, break, destroy, destroy - this is the main meaning of the revolution, as Bryusov saw it. What will happen next, what concrete world will emerge from the ruins of the past, how it will actually be built - all this seemed to Bryusov in a very abstract form.
In Bryusov, during the years of the first Russian revolution, faith in the supreme unity of human culture was shaken. He had to almost physically feel that he and his contemporaries and literary associates were standing on the border of two cultures - one dying, the other emerging and, for now, dark and alien. It was that feeling of historical cataclysm that dictated to him “The Coming Huns” - poems about the death of culture and the wild renewal of the world. Since then, this feeling has not left Bryusov.
Speaking about the “coming Huns,” he speaks of those barbarians whose invasion Herzen foresaw. At the same time, it also sounds like a premonition of the events that followed soon after. One of the stanzas begins like this:

Stack books like fires,
Dance in their joyful light,
You create abomination in the temple,
You are innocent of everything, like children!
And we, sages and poets,
Keepers of secrets and faith,
Let's take away the lit lights
In catacombs, in deserts, in caves.

In other words, he foresaw a spiritual underground that would save culture when the “coming Huns” laid down the old “books as bonfires.”
Bryusov's most sincere and probably most powerful poem, "The Coming Huns," perfectly demonstrates the ideology of the Silver Age.

Where are you, future Huns,
What cloud hangs over the world?
I hear your cast iron tramp
Along the not yet discovered Pamirs.

And the poem ends like this:

Perhaps it will disappear without a trace
What only we knew.
But you, who will destroy me,
I greet you with a welcome anthem!

What a suicidal hymn, what a complex man, many readers of that time thought enthusiastically. But Bryusov is a man, although talented, not at all complex, but on the contrary, primitive and even with a primitive cunning, so that the Huns will take into account his anthem. And the Huns, having appeared, really took this hymn into account and spared Bryusov himself and even slightly exalted him.

Valery Yakovlevich Bryusov, an extraordinary man, encyclopedically educated, stood at the origins of symbolism.

Brief description of creativity

In his youth, having received an excellent historical education, he could not imagine himself without writing poetry. He positioned himself as no more and no less than a genius. He really did a lot to loosen the field of art that had become ossified after Nekrasov, and created new forms of versification.

He had many followers and students who were significantly ahead of him in creativity. These include such poets who have reached truly the highest heights, such as Alexander Blok and Andrei Bely. That is, the students bypassed their teacher. As a writer, he is interesting from a historical perspective, from which a huge legacy remains, which literary scholars are studying. For the common reader there are only a few works, for example, “The Coming Huns” (Bryusov), an analysis of the poem that will be done below. Bryusov is a symbolist who at times deliberately obscured the meaning of the work, complicating it with its multifaceted nature.

Who are the Huns

From Asia to Europe came the invasion of wild nomadic tribes - the Huns. The name of their leader Attila inspired fear and horror, because the savages destroyed everything in their path. In 451, on the Catalaunian fields in Gaul, eternal enemies stood side by side - Roman centurions and Germans - to stop the destruction of their culture and protect their lives. A bloody battle took place, and the Huns rolled back. In history, their name has become a household name. These are barbarians for whom there are no values, who are only capable of destruction.

They come from nowhere and go nowhere. The poem begins with a metaphorical question-exclamation “Where are these Huns!” Who did the author mean by them? The Russian people, who, when they rise, do not know how to restrain their strength and power, who will crush the entire aesthetic culture, He compares them with a cloud that is still hanging, but has not rained blood on the ground, so it must be assumed that the poet is waiting for blood from the future. With fear mixed with curiosity, he seems to be looking into the abyss, from where he hears the cast-iron stomping, a wonderful epithet chosen by the author, which determines the severity of the invasion and disasters that the coming Huns will bring (Bryusov, analysis of the poem).

Stanza two

Just as he himself once exchanged traditional poetic forms for symbolism, so now Bryusov proposes that the barbarians collapse on everyone, crush them. This is a drunken crowd lost in wine. For what? But we need to shake up the decrepit, ossified world of everyday life, and refresh it.

How? Only blood, which will cover everything in a flaming wave. The coming Huns can give an apocalyptic picture of the destruction that is necessary, in the poet’s opinion. continues in the third stanza and the next stanza).

Stanzas three and four

He invites the slaves to destroy the palaces and sow a field in place of the throne rooms. Then, as a continuation, you should burn books and joyfully dance around the fires.

They don’t need temples either - they should be trashed too. They don’t know what they are doing, so the coming Huns (Bryusov, analysis of the poem shows this) must be forgiven, gospel motives can be heard in this.

In their actions, he sees delight in the process of destroying the past and creating a new, natural, or rather, simplest one. This is a sign of revolutionary times. Such will be the impact of historical change.

What to do? The age-old question

People shouldn't fight them. We must hide at the turn of change along with our cultural achievements. Will anything cherished be preserved under the flying storm? This is a matter of Chance, which plays, creating chaos, and nothing more. This is how we must act when the coming Huns come. Bryusov (the analysis gives this conclusion) will say that he welcomes everyone. Let everyone and him be destroyed, but he is ready to accept everything and forgive everything. The poem is extremely exalted and filled with pathos. This is emphasized by verbs in the imperative mood. Behind them lies both fear and misunderstanding of what seas of blood will mean when brother goes against brother. How ugly death, death and destruction really are. Hymns of welcome are inappropriate here. Valery Bryusov did not understand this. “The Coming Huns” - analysis of the poem leads to rather gloomy conclusions, in the light of what we know today: civil war, re-enslavement of the peasantry into collective farms, mass repressions and executions. This is a terrible part of our history. In the meantime, in 1905, the poet glorifies the onset of a new world, and these are the coming Huns (Bryusov, the analysis says, will not see the terrible consequences of the 17th year.)

What size is used?

The brilliantly erudite experimental poet did not use conventional poetic forms. He chose something exotic from his piggy bank - a three-strike dolnik. In schematic notation, the first stanza looks like this:

U_ _U_ _U_
_U _ _U _ _U _

U_ _U_ _U_
_ _U_ _U _ _U_

This concludes the analysis of the verse “The Coming Huns.” Bryusov used metaphors, epithets, definitions, but they are characterized in the text.

For schoolchildren

If homework is assigned, then you can make the following heading: “The Coming Huns” (Bryusov) analysis according to plan:

• Size (dolnik).
• Paths (metaphors, epithets, definitions).
• Phonetics (combination of vowels and consonants, their repetition, oxymorons that create alarm bells).
• Genre (message, anthem).