Analysis of Zabolotsky's poem. Artistic features in the works of the Zabolotsky late period
N.A. had a unique ability to speak about great things in simple words. Zabolotsky. The relationship between man and nature, internal and outer beauty, love is just a small list of topics that the poet reveals in his works. I am most interested in poems dedicated to creativity, telling about how masterpieces are born. The poet, as it were, lets readers into his workshop.
In the poem “Reading Poems,” both the master poet and the reader appear before us at the same time. ON THE. Zabolotsky has unique ability to take the place of another: a child, an old actress, a blind man. He is a master of disguise, and everywhere he is sincere and convincing, “a verse that is almost unlike a verse...”.
“Curious, funny and subtle,” begins N.A. Zabolotsky to reveal the theme of creativity. This is like a prelude to a conversation about something big and important, and gradually a portrait of a real master appears before us, who understands “the muttering of a cricket and a child,” can translate “human dreams” into words and
Eternally believes in the life-giving one,
The Russian language is full of intelligence.
His hero helps to understand the purpose of real, genuine art. ON THE. Zabolotsky clearly distinguishes between true poetry and “the nonsense of crumpled speech.” Recognizing the latter’s “well-known sophistication,” the author asks rhetorical questions:
But is it possible for human dreams
Sacrifice these amusements?
And is it possible to have a Russian word?
Turn the goldfinch into a chirp,
To make sense a living basis
Couldn't it sound through it?
The answers are clear, and yet the poet once again emphasizes in the next stanza that “poetry puts barriers ...”, it is intended
Not for those who, playing charades,
Puts on a sorcerer's cap.
The idea of the significance of the Russian word is very important, because it is the “living basis” of creativity. The poet draws attention to a person’s responsibility for what is said and written, this is especially necessary for those who have made the word their profession. It is valuable when it becomes not just material, but real poetry. In the last stanza exalted
The Russian language is full of intelligence.
Only a person who “lives real life” is capable of comprehending the “mind of language.”
The word “real” seems to me to be the main thing in this poem, although it appears only once. But he is being replaced contextual synonyms: perfection, “living basis”. Poetry is also real if it reflects “human dreams” and is not fun.
Great importance This poem contains metaphors that create images of living nature (“the muttering of a cricket and a child”), the creative process (“nonsense of speech”, “mind of language”). Thanks to personifications in the work, poetry comes to life: “puts barriers to our inventions,” recognizes true connoisseurs and those who put on the “sorcerer’s cap.”
Quite interesting syntactic structure poems. The presence of rhetorical questions, as well as an exclamatory word-sentence, indicates a change in the emotional background in it: from a calm narrative to reflection and, finally, a sensual explosion. It is interesting that, being a negation, “no” in this case affirms the thought expressed in rhetorical questions.
ON THE. Zabolotsky does not experiment with form: a classic quatrain with an alternating method of rhyming, a three-syllable anapest - all this makes the poem easy to read and understand.
The theme of creativity is not new in literature: the great A.S. Pushkin, and the controversial V.V. Mayakovsky touched on it more than once. ON THE. Zabolotsky is no exception; he gave this theme a new sound, introducing exceptional motifs peculiar only to him. The poet combined classics and modernity; it is not for nothing that the poem, written in 1948, is partly consonant with the lyrical miniature “Russian Language” by I.S. Turgenev, created at the end of the nineteenth century. A feeling of pride arises after reading such works.
The artistic techniques highlighted in the late lyrics of N. Zabolotsky are not too numerous and varied. The author, as a rule, tries to avoid excessive hyperbolization; multifaceted metaphors, etc. are not often used. At first sight, mature creativity the poet gravitates towards a certain primitiveness. However, it is precisely the simplicity and clarity of Zabolotsky’s poems that are his individual literary qualities. The poet attaches great importance to the semantic side of language. He is interested in the word as such, and specifically in the imagery of its meanings, its semantic content. An important role in Zabolotsky’s work is played by such an artistic device as antithesis. Indeed, the poet’s poems often contain the severity of confrontations between natural phenomena and phenomena human existence, philosophical concepts and worldviews. N. Zabolotsky is a searching and questioning creator, in whose hands poetic material experiences constant metamorphoses.
For example, the poem “On the Beauty of Human Faces” consists of two opposing parts. The first part is monumental and ponderous. Under the guise of some immovable block, the author veils poverty human soul. The lack of spiritual and emotional movement makes people “frosted”, unable to think, feel and sympathize:
Other cold, dead faces
Closed with bars, like a dungeon.
Others are like towers in which for a long time
Nobody lives and looks out the window.
In the second part, on the contrary, the “small hut”, which is “unpretentious, not rich,” symbolizes the inner content of a person. The “window” of this hut sends “spring breath” into the world. So it is with a person: if he is full inside, then light and beauty emanate from him. Such epithets as “spring day”, “jubilant songs”, “shining notes” change the mood of the poem, it becomes joyful, radiating goodness.
Thus, the antithesis of big (even huge) and small is the artistic device on which the entire poem is based. However, this does not mean that Zabolotsky does not use other techniques in it. On the contrary, the poem “On the Beauty of Human Faces” is very allegorical and allegorical. After all, every “tower”, “shack”, “hut” is an indication of this or that person, his character and inner world.
N. Zabolotsky uses apt comparisons. In the poem “On the Beauty of Human Faces” they can be observed in sufficient quantities: “like pitiful hovels”, “like lush portals”, “like a dungeon”, “like towers”, “like songs”. It is also unusual that the work is not divided into stanzas: the poem is one stanza of four quatrains. This is probably due to the fact that the entire poem is entirely concentrated on one main thought, it is based on one main idea.
Here it is worth remembering “ Ugly girl"Zabolotsky, in particular, a vivid comparison - “reminiscent of a frog.” In this poem, as in many others, one can distinguish a subtle allegory, a deep psychological analysis: “pure flame” as an image of the soul, a comparison of spiritual filling with a “vessel in which there is emptiness” or with “fire flickering in a vessel”:
I want to believe that this flame is pure,
Which burns in its depths,
He will overcome all his pain alone
And will melt the heaviest stone!
And even if her features are not good
And there is nothing to seduce her imagination, -
Infant grace of the soul
It already shows through in any of her movements.
Zabolotsky's characters and images become as deep as possible. They are more clearly expressed and clearly outlined by the poet compared to his early lyrics.
Parallelism as an artistic device is also characteristic of the late lyrics of N. Zabolotsky. For example, in the poem “The Thunderstorm is Coming” (1957) we see a vivid parallelism of natural phenomena with the state of mind and thoughts of the author himself.
The image of a cloud is peculiar and unique in the poem:
A frowning cloud is moving,
Covering half the sky in the distance,
Moving, huge and viscous,
With a lantern in a raised hand.
In these lines, the cloud is endowed with some special meaning; we can say that it becomes animated. The cloud moves like a searching or lost wanderer, like a formidable arbiter of destinies. In this context, this image is read not just as a natural phenomenon, but as something more.
The above-mentioned work is characterized by a special metaphorical nature:
Here it is - a cedar tree near our balcony.
Split in two by thunder,
He stands and the dead crown
Supports the dark sky.
Such a high level of metaphorization, undoubtedly, once again makes it possible to highlight the late lyrics of N. Zabolotsky as a special and unique phenomenon: the “dead crown” propping up the “dark horizon.”
In conclusion, the poet draws a parallelism between a tree split in two and his own state of mind. However, this is not only parallelism, it is also an allegorical statement of the author, expressing the duality of his worldview:
Sing me a song, tree of sorrows!
I, like you, burst into heights,
But only lightning greeted me
And they were burned with fire on the fly.
Why is it split in two,
I, like you, did not die at the porch,
And in my soul there is still the same fierce hunger,
And love and songs to the end!
Of particular importance for the work of N. Zabolotsky is the philosophical understanding of nature, the close relationship between nature and man, as well as their mutual alienation. In the poem “I am not looking for harmony in nature...” (1947), the poet sees nature as a huge “world of contradictions” filled with “fruitless play” and “useless” hard work.
The poem is filled with personifying metaphors: “blind night”, “the wind will fall silent”, “in the anxious half-sleep of exhaustion”, “the darkened water will calm down”. Here there is such an artistic device as comparison. The author compares nature with a “crazy but loving” mother who does not see herself in this world without her son, who is not complete without him:
So, falling asleep on my bed,
Crazy but loving mother
Concealed within itself high world children,
To see the sun with my son.
IN this work One can distinguish an implicit antithesis, the opposition of good and evil:
And at this hour sad nature
Lying around, sighing heavily,
And she doesn’t like wild freedom,
Where evil is inseparable from good.
When tired of the violent movement,
From useless hard work,
In an anxious half-sleep of exhaustion
When a huge world of contradictions
Satiated with fruitless play, -
Like a prototype of human pain
From the abyss of waters rises before me.
The poet's lyrics are distinguished by the contrast of the images depicted. For example, in the poem “Somewhere in a field near Magadan...” (1956) an unbearable feeling of sadness and depression is created from the terrible contrast of a frozen, windy, inhospitable land and a huge, endless bright sky. The stars in this poem symbolize not only freedom, but also the process of liberation itself. While old people are not yet separated from reality, from their earthly affairs, the stars do not look at them. But in death they unite with nature, with the whole world, gaining freedom:
The guards will no longer catch up with them,
The camp convoy will not overtake,
Only some constellations of Magadan
They will sparkle, standing above your head.
The camp theme, closely intertwined with the theme of human suffering, is reflected in this poem. The grief of two “unhappy Russian” old men, whose souls “burned out,” is depicted against the backdrop of the “wonderful mystery of the universe.”
The cycle " last love“as a “large work” consisting of separate parts, each of which complements and determines the next one, has an epic beginning. Here we can note the author’s desire to reproduce the “fluid” process of reality. A consistent sequence of events in the story of “last love” and the presence of a common frame are outlined.
The poem “The Juniper Bush” (1957) is distinguished by a special melody formed by a certain sound set:
Juniper bush, juniper bush,
The cooling babble of changeable lips,
Light babbling, barely giving off resin,
Pierced me with a deadly needle!
This stanza is also notable for the presence of epithets in it: “changeable lips”, “light babble”, “deadly needle”. They create a feeling of a certain dynamics: anxious, uncertain and, at the same time, impetuous and decisive.
From the very beginning of the poem, the reader expects some kind of misfortune, which is facilitated by a very original epithet - “metallic crunch”, creating a tone of internal discord and external omen:
I saw a juniper bush in a dream,
I heard a metallic crunch in the distance,
I heard the ringing of amethyst berries,
And in my sleep, in silence, I liked him.
The constant play of sibilant and hard consonants with soft and sonorous consonants creates a feeling of duality in the poem. The reader is immersed together with the lyrical hero in a strange phantasmagoria, bordering between sleep and reality. And, as Zablotsky often uses in his work, the author’s main idea is contained in the last stanza. And here the dynamics give way to contemplation and, ultimately, forgiveness and letting go:
In the golden skies outside my window
The clouds float by one after another,
My garden, which has flown around, is lifeless and empty...
May God forgive you, juniper bush!
Zabolotsky, as mentioned above, is a master in the field of comparisons and allegory. In the last stanza we see a “flying garden” that has lost any life in its depths. The soul of the lyrical hero, just like this garden, is empty, and the reason for it all is the juniper bush - an ambiguously readable and brightest image this poem.
The poem “Old Age” (1956) concludes the cycle “Last Love”. This is a kind of story, a kind of epic narrative in verse. It is in him that the maturity and the calmness to which the author has come is so keenly felt. Contemplation and comprehension are what come to the fore in comparison with his early lyrics:
Simple, quiet, gray-haired,
He is with a stick, she is with an umbrella, -
They have golden leaves
They look, walking until dark.
Their speech is already laconic,
Every look is clear without words,
But their souls are bright and even
They talk about a lot.
In the vague darkness of existence
Their destiny was not noticeable,
And the life-giving light of suffering
It burned slowly above them.
Most of all, these lines highlight the contrast between the “vague darkness of existence” and the “life-giving light.” In this regard, we can also talk about the so-called “cosmic” parallelism, which to one degree or another permeates the author’s late lyrics. In a short poem, Zabolotsky manages to combine an all-encompassing, panoramic vision of the world with a given, one might say private, situation.
Thus we see that late lyrics N. Zabolotsky, on the one hand, is an incredibly deep phenomenon from a philosophical point of view, on the other hand, it is quite simple in terms of its artistic essence, or rather, in terms of the variety of artistic techniques and methods. The poet uses numerous epithets; the frequency of use of simile epithets and similes is high; metaphors are a little less common. It can be noted that Zabolotsky’s poems often contain appeals and questions (usually rhetorical), which bring the author’s vision closer to the reader’s perception. In general, Zabolotsky’s poetry avoids anything complex and confusing; he practically does not exaggerate what is depicted, and does not engage in the so-called “weaving of words.” The poet's punctuation is quite expressive. Zabolotsky often brings the main idea of the work to the very end, concluding it in the last stanza, thus summing up the above. It should be noted that Zabolotsky’s poetics was and remains unique, and continues to influence the creativity and thinking of many poets and people associated, in one way or another, with the word.
The poem "Forest Lake" (I, 198) is a true masterpiece, a pearl of N. Zabolotsky's lyrics. The poem was written in 1938. The exposition of the poem gives us the opportunity to see the natural world, in which the law of mutual destruction, war of all with all, reigns.
Through the battles of trees and wolf battles, Where insects drink sap from plants, Where stems rage and flowers groan, Where nature rules over predatory creatures, I made my way to you and froze at the entrance, Parting the dry bushes with my hands.This face of nature, revealed to man, is a variation of those ideas that were characteristic of early creativity Zabolotsky. Let us recall at least the lines from the poem “Lodeinikov”:
The beetle ate the grass, the bird pecked the beetle, the ferret drank the brain from the bird's head, and the distorted faces of the night creatures looked out of the grass with fear.It is interesting that in the passage we are analyzing, “the riot of stems,” and “the groan of flowers,” and “battles of trees,” and “wolf fights” seem to obscure the seemingly completely innocent line about how “insects drink the juice from the plant.” But this line is “innocent” only at first glance. The images of food and drink in the early Zabolotsky are always clearly associated with death, and the quote from the poem “Lodeinikov” shows us that the mutual chain of devouring poisons the visible beauty and harmony of nature, in which evil and good are inseparable from each other.
But it turns out that in this most inert and terrible nature, a certain special area stands out, living according to laws different from the laws of “predatory nature”. This is a forest lake. It is interesting to trace all the metamorphoses of this image that we encounter in the poem. So, at its very beginning, the lake is “a crystal bowl in the darkness of the forest.” Further, the image of the lake is transformed, and before us is a chaste bride “in a crown of water lilies, in a headdress of sedges, in a dry necklace of plant pipes.” It is interesting that near the lake the very laws of life of “predatory nature” change:
But it’s strange how quiet and important it is all around! Where does such grandeur come from in the slums? Why is the horde of birds not raging, But sleeping, lulled by a sweet sleep?(I, 198)Further transformation of the image of the forest lake proceeds in two semantic directions. Firstly, the “crystal bowl” turns into a font, along the edges of which pine trees stand like candles, “closing in rows from edge to edge.” Secondly, the reader is consistently presented with a comparison of the lake with the eye of a sick person:
So the eye of the sick person in boundless anguish At the first radiance of the evening star, No longer sympathizing with the sick body, Burns, directed towards the night sky.(I, 199)If we think about this comparison, the first thing we pay attention to is the hidden identification of the sick body of man with the “sick body” of nature, and only the eye, which carries a spiritual principle, anticipates another life, a life connected not with the earth, and with the sky. This eye is the lake. Consequently, the law of life of the “forest lake” is different from the law of life of the “sick” nature surrounding it, and this law is spiritual in nature, which longs for healing. The last stanza of the poem (“And crowds of animals and wild beasts, // Sticking their horned faces through the fir trees, // To the source of truth, to their font // Stooped to drink from the life-giving water”) gives us hope that the evil that lies in the depths of nature , can be overcome and healed. Stunning in its power and metaphorical audacity, the line about animals who, “sticking their horned faces through the fir trees,” bow down to the life-giving water, also shows us that between the lake and the rest of nature there is some kind of metaphysical barrier that needs to be overcome. This barrier exists because two spaces - the space of nature, stagnant in evil, and the space of the lake, which unites Truth, Goodness and Beauty, are so different from each other that they are separated by a picket fence of fir trees. You need to break through it, overcome this barrier.
It is interesting that in the poem "Beethoven" we encounter a similar semantic formula. The breakthrough to “world space” is described by Zabolotsky:
With oak trumpets and a lake of melodies You overcame the discordant hurricane, And you shouted in the face of nature itself, Sticking your lion's face through the organ.(I, 198)Characteristic of this poem is also the vocabulary of light, which permeates the entire space of this text. The “crystal bowl” only “glimmered” at the beginning of this poem, and then the lake “in the quiet evening fire” “lies in the depths, motionless shining,” “a bottomless bowl of clear water // shone and thought with a separate thought.”
Without exaggeration, this indomitable stream of light pours on the reader from a variety of poems late Zabolotsky. In the poem “The Nightingale” nature is likened to a “shining Temple”, “shining rain bursts upon happy flowers” in the poem “Thunderstorm”, “glitters with lunar silver // the frozen world of trees and plants” in the poem “Dawn has not yet risen over the village”, “ the pink, unblinking morning light sways" in the poem "In this birch grove." These examples can go on and on. There was a return of Zabolotsky to the traditional metaphysics of light, which transforms, enlightens, and enlivens matter. Zabolotsky's poetic thought in the poem "Forest Lake" is close to the theological understanding of Baptism. Baptism is a new birth of a person, a spiritual birth. Nature, which will fall to the lake as to a font, must also be born again.
Read also other articles about the life and work of N. Zabolotsky.
In this poem by Zabolotsky, a meeting of life and death occurs as a meeting of the lyrical hero, the Passerby, with a monument. The poem “Passerby” by Zabolotsky is one of the highest and generally recognized achievements of the poet; it has already received considerable attention both in the literature about Zabolotsky and in general literature about the problems of poetics.
The work has a clear lyrical plot - an external one, which can be presented as a kind of plot, in prose, and an internal one, in a moving interweaving of two tragic human destinies- a young pilot who died in the war, and Passerby. The personal fate of the Passerby is expressed in the text and deeply shines through the seemingly random quick sketch, colored by the author’s restrained experience. And in this plot one of the main themes of the entire Zabolotsky is revealed - the theme of death and immortality, the path to immortality, which includes a number of more specific and different topics- the memory of the war, the invisible roll call of the disasters of war and the “thousand troubles” of the Passerby, the continuation of the life of a person who went through these troubles. And all the themes are combined in a single lyrical event - an experience - the story of a meeting and conversation between two souls.
The conversation is included in the course of the external plot, a story about how someone, not named in any way and not directly characterized in any way, walked at night, on foot, from somewhere to somewhere and passed through a cemetery along the way. The description-story moves like a travel record on the go, in a mental diary, in a strict temporal order - in a certain chronotope, although with some field of its uncertainty. The result is a poem-road, with some delay along the way, a poem in which everyday authenticity unexpectedly turns into a fairy-tale conversation, and then returns again to the original everyday reality. In this reality there is a clear starting point, with a most precisely defined chronotope. It is also given in motion.
The journey begins with a road, the traveler's journey begins with walking along the railway sleepers, even with some geographical reference. At some station, from where the previous train “to Nara station” had already left. Nara station is a geographical reality, one of the railway stations near Moscow. According to E.V. Zabolotskaya, it was about the poet’s repeated walking journey from Dorokhov station, not far from Nara station, to his home in Peredelkino, across the bridge mentioned in the poem, and the cemetery mentioned in the poem, along a road that in some places resembles an alley like in a poem.
But for the reader to perceive and empathize with the poem, what is important is not the geographical accuracy of this reality, but rather the accuracy, the imaginary accuracy of the description of a certain journey. In this, the poetics of “Passerby” continues the traditions of narrative and sketch lyrics of the 30s and wartime. The original reality is still clouded, and the “essay beginning” plays the role of only an external, albeit necessary, shell. The main theme is woven into a knot of multi-valued themes, a symphony, including a night landscape, an everyday incident, the impressions of a pedestrian at night, a contrasting transition from an everyday picture of a railway station to a picture of a cemetery, where, as if for the first time, a pedestrian encounters a monument to a pilot, and life, current life with her everyday life encounters death and the memory of life. And in this meeting a special experience is born, “unexpectedly instantaneous, soul-piercing peace,” even “wonderful.” For in him anxieties fall silent, anxieties are overcome, and somehow life continues, and spring buds live, and the dead pilot himself, as if alive, talks with a living soul, and after death his youth continues to live.
This special experience is not just a feeling of fear or humiliation before death, and not the denial of the physical in the name of a higher hierarchy of the spiritual (as Yu. Lotman believes), but the discovery of higher spirituality in the physical - the physical Passerby, the physical monument of the pilot, bodily spring buds, live conversation living and dead, finite and infinite, instantaneous and eternal, rest and movement, the bodily palace of the universe. Therefore, the image is also connected spring nature, spring wilderness, contrasting and fused with the image of the cemetery. An even more profound, hidden theme of the personality and fate of the Passerby himself, filled with mental anxiety, with his “thousands of troubles” is also included.
The internal movement of the poem, its internal plot represents the hidden movement of the Passerby’s experiences. His short journey, a road meeting, a conversation with an invisible pilot grows into a symbol of a big and difficult human life, walking through “thousands of troubles.” And during the short journey from Nara station, although troubles do not completely leave him, the strength that overcomes them is revealed. The remarkable final image of the poem merges the movement of all its themes and subthemes; A person’s grief and worries seem to be separated from himself, they turn only into “dogs” that run after him.
The image of the Passer-by disintegrates into “three essences,” as Lotman writes, but in this “disintegration” a new integrity arises and is revived, the main essence, the “living soul,” is freed. And it seems that, contrary to the opinion of Y. Lotman, the hierarchy of three “tiers” in which the soul is located “at the level of the trees” is not visible here; but there is a diverse unity of man with himself, with nature, with other people, combining and overcoming the opposition of life and death itself, spring and cemetery, personality
and a monument.
One of Zabolotsky's miracles occurs. A double miracle, echoing the miracle of “I was killed near Rzhev...” and other transformations of the dead into the living and vice versa, but with an additional miracle, inherent only in Zabolotsky’s poetry. The resurrection of the dead occurs and at the same time the separation of the living soul from the body, and both continue to live as if separately and materially, merging in this separation into one moving “I”, although also separated from the author’s “I”, but expressing precisely him, his integrity.
In deployment poetic event the movement of an everyday picture, a landscape, a reflection, a symbolic fairy-tale conversation, a flow of heterogeneous and different-scale object details (“treukh”, “bag”, “sleeper”, “moon”, “barn”, etc.) are combined - their roll calls. And in this flow, naturally, from within, unexpected and even paradoxical comparisons arise, starting with the comparison of pine trees with a crowd of souls and ending with the comparison of a person’s worries with dogs running after him. These are very specific metaphors for Zabolotsky, in which certain experiences and mental states seem to be separated from a person and re-materialized. And all this movement of heterogeneous, but connected by mutual echoes, reflections of flows and objects is combined in a single image of the Passerby, who, on the one hand, is impersonal, and on the other, is endowed with visible material signs (“triukh”, “soldier’s bag”), and several details and hints convey his complex inner life, closed from us. And this unknown is the hidden soil of the lyricism of the episode, outwardly descriptive, small, everyday - and fabulous, somewhat mysterious, dark. But nevertheless, and even precisely because of this, it enlightens the soul.
The movement of intonation combines the utmost simplicity, strict organization, and compressed precision of classical verse with multi-layeredness, the boldness of transitions of individual associations, and shifts in the meanings of words. poetic language XX century. Varied, but simply listed subject details in chronological order. And suddenly, suddenly and imperceptibly, unexpected metaphors arise in this “protocol”, leading immediately far, far beyond the limits of what is described, and unexpected strange meetings - but while maintaining the same outwardly calm intonation, and in the last stanza - the intonation of a note and a final message . This creates a special effect of reality and concreteness of a person’s meeting with infinity.
Accordingly, the entire sound organization represents another variant of the combination of harmonic diversity and dominant sound complexes, emphasizing the movement of meaning and experience. Three unequal, but equivalent in rank of meaning, main parts of the poem and their additional subdivisions are distinguished. The first part, correctly highlighted by Y. Lotman, is four stanzas in length, and is more specifically descriptive in nature; comparisons appear at the end of the third stanza, where there is a transition from an ordinary everyday journey to a meeting with a cemetery, and this comparison already represents a typical personification for Zabolotsky and prepares the appearance in the second part of the poem of the central motif of the soul in the cemetery. The first 10 lines of the first part are additionally distinguished as a whole by the fact that they represent a sequential description of the movement of the Passerby, at approximately the same tempo. These 10 lines are also distinguished by their sound organization. The fourth stanza of the first part clearly differs from the previous ones by the appearance of the central image of the poem, but is connected with them by the predominance of descriptive and specific details. This combination especially distinguishes this stanza as a turning point in the entire movement of intonation. The second part is presented in three stanzas, which describe not so much objects as the impact of the monument to the pilot and the entire cemetery on the “living human soul.” And the impression is formulated as a commentary on the invisibly present “I” - both the Passerby and the author. Accordingly, a broadly generalizing and elevating metaphor arises - “the dark palace of the universe,” along with a deepening psychological characteristics a special state of soul, “unexpectedly instantaneous”, concentration of time in it. Sound wave at the same time it decreases somewhat; after the fourth stanza, stressed vowels alternate more harmoniously, but with the constant participation of [y].
The soul is endowed with the signs of a living personality, falling silent with a lowered gaze, a living interlocutor with a revived pilot. Thus, their mutual transformation takes place in the penultimate stanza of the poem. The visible monument (the word emphasizes the solemnity of the moment and the significance of the pilot’s feat) turns into a living invisible young man, and his conversation with a living soul seems to materialize, and a new concrete descriptive detail-metaphor arises, turning into personification - a talking monument with a dead propeller, itself cemetery nature quietly participates in this conversation, and its sound is marked by an increased concentration of [w] and [h], [j], [l], [m], and the participation of “kidneys” in the conversation, their slight rustling introduces the motif of hope, spring , resurrection in the “dark chamber”.
The final stanza, four lines in total, introduces independent part, for it completes the conversation of the soul in the cemetery and contrasts with it; at the same time, it returns to the original image of the moving Pedestrian and his “anxiety”, echoes the first stanza, as correctly noted by Yu. Lotman. The image of “a thousand troubles” lifts the image of the Traveler walking through them, but the image of “dogs” recalls the ongoing harsh everyday reality. The comparison can be interpreted in two ways - both as the Traveler overcoming his grief and troubles, and as (according to E.V. Zabolotskaya) a reminder of their persistent persistence. It is distinguished by the indicated end-to-end rhyme on [e], the predominance of [e] and [o] among stressed vowels, and in the composition of consonants by the maximum concentration of [n + n’], high frequencies[l] and [j], which harmonizes with the change in mood when entering the cemetery.
Apparently, this ambiguity creates the necessary lyrical field of meaning and openness to different possibilities. The combination in this stanza of continuation, return and development of the main motive of the fate of the Passerby is expressed, accentuated by the structure and sound composition, its relationship with the first stanza and the entire course of the poem. The ending words of two lines of the first quatrain and the rhyme associated with them are repeated, which highlights their semantic significance and creates a connection between the beginning and end of the poem. But they are repeated with changes in cases and in the reverse order. Keywords- “road”, “grief”, “anxiety” - are fastened by rhyme and other sound connections, consonant and assonant with sound system the entire poem. The rhyme “bad - after” is associated with another system of rhymes, assonances, consonances running through the entire poem, the “subdominant” of its musical structure.
On the other hand, the last stanza includes these repeated meanings and sounds in a completely new complex, both semantic and sound, which is emphasized by the different rhyming of other lines of the quatrain. Construction on the principle of “incomplete ring” gives the entire structure of the poem elements of spirality and dissymmetry. Which also expresses and accentuates, through the means of verse, the process of passers-by overcoming his grief, anxieties, troubles, and the sobriety of consciousness of them - and the lyrical “I” - that grief and anxieties still remain, although they turn only into dogs running after them.
So, another version of conversational and meditative intonation. Characteristic, in particular, with clear organization is the absence of those numerous repetitions that we observed in other versions of the lyrics, with similar thematic motifs and mournful and thoughtful intonations. The expressive elements here are more subordinated to the movement of leisurely description, reflection, followed by a more direct lyrical commentary, concentrated in the final comparison, aphoristically combining psychological and subject specificity, the main elements of the intonation of the poem as a whole. The enormity of human grief, anxiety, thousands of troubles and the restraint of talking about them expresses the peculiarities creative personality and the fate of Zabolotsky. And the whole movement is concentrated in the images of two souls - the pilot, reminiscent of the enormous sorrows and troubles of the war, and the Passer-by, with his “thousands of troubles.” The communication of these two souls, with both experienced and ongoing troubles, reveals a human community that transcends the boundaries of death and life in a special spiritual event. A new opportunity for the development of realistic lyrical symbolism also opens up.
The poem as a whole turns into an expanded metaphor-symbol of the path of man and his soul, the paths of life, the paths of death, the ways of expanding the human personality, its collectivity, the ways of combining the life of an individual with all life on earth, with the “souls” of pine trees, people’s conversations, rustling kidney Realistic symbolism grows from the completeness of an accurate psychological and objective description and associative connections of a lyrical event.
From the point of view of the history of the fate of lyrical genres, the poem “Passerby” by Zabolotsky became a new example of the fusion of narrative lyrics and the lyrics of another person in such a way that this other, as if independent from the lyrical “I”, the lyrical hero - Pedestrian, becomes only a pseudonym for the lyrical “I” " The separation of oneself from oneself, which is characteristic of Zabolotsky’s lyrics of the 30s, now reaches the transformation of a certain one’s own psychological state, experiences into some special personality. There is also a materialization of a phenomenon that lifts a person above his “I” and allows him to double himself in a single lyrical statement. This doubling continues through Zabolotsky’s entire work until his last poem 1958, in which he called: “don’t let your soul be lazy,” he spoke to his soul as to a special multifaceted personality - both a slave and a queen. In “The Passer-by,” the “I” not only doubles, but also triples, for the Passer-by is the same “I,” but as a “he.” There is also an image of himself in the third person in another poem by Zabolotsky of these years - “April was approaching the middle...” (1948), but there “I” also refers to itself directly as “I”.
Thus, in “The Passerby” and a number of other poems by Zabolotsky of these years, another new type of lyric poem is formed, which is difficult to directly compare with any examples of Russian and world lyricism, despite such an emphasized connection with the classical tradition. With some convention, one can compare it with the tradition of meditative elegy, those varieties where reflection is associated with memory and elements of narrative, as in Pushkin’s “Again I visited...”, or description in the present tense, as in Pushkin’s “When I am pensive outside the city I’m wandering...” (also, by the way, with the cemetery motif), or with the tradition of plot-psychological lyrics, in particular with Lermontov’s poem “In midday heat, in the valley of Dagestan...", with its motif of the dual existence of man in different images of himself. And with the traditions of plot-psychological lyrics of the 30s, its experience of combining everyday concreteness and symbolism, classical organization and bold metaphor. But here they are even more unified and multi-component, with greater detail of specific descriptive and, as it were, sketchy elements. And in comparison with the other main direction of the lyrics of this time, which we saw in Tvardovsky’s poem, here, as in Zabolotsky’s lyrics of the 30s, a more generalization, philosophical and symbolic, was revealed - the problems of time and personal fate are expressed in more indirect form. Both the image of the Passerby and the entire lyrical plot contain an element of mystery, multifaceted reticence.
Almost simultaneously with “Passerby,” Zabolotsky created a number of poems with a more direct depiction of the flow of surrounding life—nature, society. But what the poetics of “The Passerby” had in common was the combination of objective and psychological specificity with the breadth and depth of generalizing thought; precision and balance of the word with its bold associativity, metaphor, symbolism; highly organized verse, sometimes even strictly regulated, with internal energy and the freedom of his movement; his melodies and paintings are with restraint; constant correlation of the “I”, often seemingly invisible, with some objective situation and a large flow of being, often with another person; multi-composition, diversity and integrity of the “I” itself.
Passerby - N.A. Zabolotsky(analysis of poetic text)
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PASSERBY Filled with mental anxiety It's too late. To Nara Station Turning towards the bridge, There's a pilot at the edge of the alley And in the dark chamber of the universe That wondrous peace, before which, And in the light rustling of the kidneys And the body wanders along the road, |
The poem “Passerby” presents certain difficulties not only for literary analysis, but also for simple reader understanding, although even the first acquaintance with the text is enough to feel that before us is one of the poetic masterpieces of the late Zabolotsky. It may seem incomprehensible to the reader how the “passerby” and the “invisible young pilot” are related to each other and why the “passerby”, who appeared before us at the beginning of the poem in a distinctly everyday appearance (“in a cloak, with a soldier’s bag”), is unexpectedly contrasted at the end to the killed pilot as a “body”:
And the body wanders along the road...
The preliminary work that should precede the analysis of the text of this poem is the reconstruction of the general contours of the world model according to Zabolotsky. This system, reconstructed on the basis of other texts of the poet, which are the context for this poem, in relation to the analyzed poem will act as language, and the poem in relation to it - as text.
Zabolotsky experienced a long and complex evolution that embraced his entire work and is still far from fully explored. It is all the more noticeable that some fundamental ideas of his artistic system turned out to be extremely stable. First of all, it should be noted the high modeling role of the opposition “top - bottom” in Zabolotsky’s poetry. In this case, “top” always turns out to be synonymous with the concept of “distance,” and “bottom” is synonymous with the concept of “closeness.” Therefore, any movement is ultimately a movement up or down. Movement, in fact, is organized by only one - the vertical axis. Thus, in the poem “Dream,” the author finds himself in a dream “in a voiceless area.” The world around him is first characterized distant(“I sailed away, I wandered far away...”) and distant(very strange). But then it turns out that this distant world is located endlessly high:
Bridges in the immeasurable heights
They hung over the gorges of failures.
The earth is far below:
The boy and I went to the lake,
He threw the fishing rod down somewhere
And something that flew from the earth
Without haste, he pushed it away with his hand.
This vertical axis simultaneously organizes the ethical space: for Zabolotsky, evil is invariably located below. Thus, in “Cranes,” the moral coloring of the “top-bottom” axis is extremely exposed: evil comes from below, and salvation from it is an upward impulse:
Black gaping barrel
It rose from the bushes towards
…………………………………
And, echoing the sorrowful sob,
The cranes rushed into the heights.
…………………………………
Only where the stars move,
To atone for one's own evil
Nature returned to them again
What death took with it:
Proud spirit, high aspiration,
An unyielding will to fight...
The combination of high and distant and the opposite characteristic of “bottom” make “up” the direction of expanding space: the higher, the more limitless the space - the lower, the tighter. The end point of the “bottom” combines all the space that has disappeared. It follows from this that movement is possible only at the top and the opposition “top - bottom” becomes a structural invariant of not only the antithesis “good - evil”, but also “movement - immobility”. Death - cessation of movement - is a downward movement:
And the leader in a metal shirt
Slowly sank to the bottom...
In "The Snowman" the usual for the art of the 20th century. spatial diagram: atomic bomb as death above- destroyed. Hero - " big Foot" - brought up, and atomic death comes from below, and, dying, the hero will fall down.
They say that somewhere in the Himalayas,
Above temples and monasteries,
He lives, unknown to the world,
Primitive breeder of animals.
…………………………………
There are catacombs hidden in the mountains,
He doesn't even know what under him 1
Atomic bombs are piled up
Loyal to their masters.
Will never reveal their secrets
This Himalayan troglodyte,
Even if, like an asteroid,
All blazing into the abyss will fly.
However, Zabolotsky’s concept of movement often becomes more complicated due to the complication of the concept of “bottom”. The fact is that for a number of Zabolotsky’s poems, “bottom” as the antithesis of “top - space - movement” is not the end point of descent. The departure into the depths associated with death, located below the usual horizon, in the poetic world of Zabolotsky is unexpectedly characterized by features reminiscent of some properties of the “top”. “Top” is characterized by the absence of frozen forms - movement here is interpreted as metamorphosis, transformation, and the possibilities of combinations are not provided for in advance:
I remember the appearance well
All these bodies floating from space:
Interweaving of trusses and convex slabs
And the wildness of the primitive decoration.
There's not a trace of subtlety visible there,
The art of form is clearly not held in high esteem there...
("Dream")
This re-decomposition of earthly forms is at the same time the joining of forms to a more general space life. But the same applies to the underground, posthumous path human body. In addressing his dead friends, the poet says:
You are in a country where there are no ready-made forms,
Where everything is separated, mixed, broken,
Where instead of the sky there is only a grave mound...
("Farewell to Friends")
Thus, the fixed opposition to “top” is earth's surface- domestic space of everyday life. Above and below it, movement is possible. But this movement is understood specifically. Mechanical movement of unchanging bodies in space is equated to immobility; mobility is transformation.
In this regard, a new significant opposition is put forward in Zabolotsky’s work: immobility is equated not only with mechanical movement, but also with any uniquely predetermined, completely determined movement. Such a movement is perceived as slavery, and freedom is opposed to it - the possibility of unpredictability (in terms of modern science, this opposition of the text could be presented as the antinomy “redundancy - information”). Lack of freedom of choice is a feature of the material world. It is opposed by the free world of thought. This interpretation of this opposition, characteristic of the entire early and significant part of Zabolotsky’s late poems, determined his attribution of nature to the lower, motionless and slave world. This world is full of melancholy and lack of freedom and is opposed to the world of thought, culture, technology and creativity, which gives choice and freedom to establish laws where nature dictates only slavish execution.
And the sage leaves, thoughtful,
And he lives like an unsociable person,
And nature, instantly bored,
Like a prison stands over him
("Snakes").
Animals have no name.
Who told them to be called?
Uniform suffering -
Their invisible destiny.
…………………………………
All nature smiled
Like a high prison
("Walk").
The same images of nature are preserved in the works of the late Zabolotsky. Culture, consciousness - all types of spirituality are involved in the “top”, and the animal, non-creative principle constitutes the “bottom” of the universe. The spatial solution of the poem “Jackals” is interesting in this regard. The poem is inspired by the real landscape of the southern coast of Crimea and, at the level of the reality described by the poet, gives a given spatial location - the sanatorium is located at the bottom, by the sea, and the jackals howl upstairs, in the mountains. However, the artist’s spatial model conflicts with this picture and makes adjustments to it. The sanatorium belongs to the world of culture - it is similar to the electric ship in another poem of the Crimean cycle, about which it is said:
Giant swan, white genius,
An electric ship stopped at the roadstead.
He got up over the vertical abyss
In triple consonance of octaves,
Scraps of a musical storm
From the windows generously scattered.
He was shaking all over from this storm,
He and the sea were in the same vein,
But I gravitated towards architecture,
Raising the antenna on his shoulder.
He was at sea a phenomenon of meaning…
("On a raid")
Therefore, the sanatorium located by the sea is called “high” (the electric ship is “above the vertical abyss”), while the jackals, although they are in the mountains, are placed in bottom top:
Only there at the top, along the ravines…
The lights don't go out all night.
But, having placed the jackals in ravines (a spatial oxymoron!), Zabolotsky supplies them with “doubles” - the quintessence of the base animal essence, placed even deeper:
And the animals along the edge of the stream
They run cowardly into the reeds,
Where in the stone holes deep
Their doubles are going crazy.
Thinking invariably appears in Zabolotsky’s lyrics as the vertical ascent of liberated nature:
And I wandered alive over the fields,
Entered the forest without fear,
And the thoughts of the dead transparent pillars
Around me they rose to the skies.
And Pushkin’s voice was heard above the foliage,
And Khlebnikov’s birds sang by the water.
…………………………………
And all existences, all peoples
Preserved the imperishable being,
And I myself was not a child of nature,
But her thought! But her unsteady mind!
(“Yesterday, thinking about death...”)
True, in the future Zabolotsky also experienced a certain evolution. The poet understood the danger of inflexible, inert, completely determined thought, which is fraught with much fewer possibilities than the roughest and most material nature. In “The Confrontation of Mars,” Zabolotsky first appears about the threat of dogma, frozen thought, and “reason” is characterized without the usual positive emotional connotation for this image:
A spirit full of reason and will,
Devoid of heart and soul...
It is no coincidence that the poet’s usual spatial arrangement of concepts changes dramatically in the poem: evil moves upward, and this, together with a negative assessment of the mind, makes the text unique in Zabolotsky’s work:
Bloody Mars from the blue abyss
He looked at us carefully.
And the shadow of evil consciousness
Contorted vague features,
It's like an animal-like spirit
I looked at the earth from above.
All forms of immobility: material (in nature and human life), mental (in his mind) - creativity is opposed. Creativity frees the world from the slavery of predestination and creates freedom of possibilities that seemed incredible. In this regard, a special concept of harmony arises. According to Zabolotsky, harmony is not the ideal correspondence of ready-made forms, but the creation of new and better correspondences. Therefore, harmony is always the creation of human genius. In this sense, the poem “I am not looking for harmony in nature...” is Zabolotsky’s poetic declaration. It is no coincidence that he placed it first (breaking the chronological order) in a collection of poems from 1932–1958. Human creativity is a continuation of the creative forces of nature, their peak (in nature there is also greater and lesser spirituality; the lake in “Forest Lake” is more brilliant than the “slum” that surrounds it; it “burns, directed towards the night sky”, “Bottomless bowl of clear water” / She shone and thought with a separate thought."
Thus, the main axis “top - bottom” is realized in texts through a number of variant oppositions.
This is the general system of Zabolotsky’s “poetic world”. However artistic text- not a copy of the system: it consists of significant fulfillments and significant non-fulfillments of its requirements. Let us consider in this regard the poem that interests us.
The first operation of semantic analysis is text segmentation, followed by a comparison of segments at different levels (or segments different levels) in order to identify differential features that are carriers of meaning.
Segmentation of the text in this case is not difficult: the poem is divided into stanzas, which, as a rule, are also sentences. Against this background, the second stanza, consisting of three sentences, and the fifth and sixth stanzas, which together form one sentence, stand out (later we will see the significance of this fact). The smallest segment at the composition level is the verse, which also turns out to be a syntagm throughout the text. The largest division of the text is its division into two parts. The boundary of the segments passes through the middle of the text (stanzas 1–4 and 5–8) and is determined intuitively - by content: at the first careful reading it is not difficult to see that the beginning of the poem has an emphatically everyday content, while after the verse “And in the dark chamber of the universe” the description gives way to reasoning. Further analysis should confirm or refute this reader’s feeling and thereby justify or reject the proposed nature of the division of the text. If you count material-concrete and abstract nouns in the first and second halves of the text, you get expressive numbers:
Moreover, in each case there will exist, constituting the core of the group, a certain number of primordial real or primordial abstract nouns. Lexemes that receive such a meaning in a given context are cyclized around them. Thus, words with the meaning of landscape in the first half will have a real meaning, and in the second - an abstract one. “Body” and “dogs” in the last stanza will receive semantics opposite to real ones.
Behind this external difference lies a deeper one: the first half of the poem takes us into an extremely concrete space. This space, firstly, is so specific geographically that it can only be perceived as an image of one single and precisely defined place on the surface of the earth. Even the first publisher of the poem, N. L. Stepanov, made an accurate observation: “The Peredelkino cemetery is shown to the extreme in “Passerby”.” 2 . Since it was apparently essential for the poet that this feature of the description be clear to the reader who was not familiar with the Peredelkino landscape, he introduced a proper name into the geography of this part of the text:
It's too late. To Nara Station
The penultimate squad has left...
The reader may not know where the Nara station is located, just as he may not know why Pushkin, in his message to V.L. Davydov, calls M.F. Orlov “a shaved recruit of Hymen,” who is “ready to fit the measure.” But just as in Pushkin’s poem he cannot help but feel an intimate hint, understandable to a narrow, almost conspiratorial circle, and, therefore, unmistakably perceive the text’s emphasis on intimacy, the unique uniqueness of the atmosphere in which the poem lives, so in Zabolotsky’s text the geographical uniqueness becomes clear to the reader the place where the poet took him. He does not know where Nara is and has no personal associations with her. But he knows very well personal experience, what is the feeling of geographical uniqueness associated for each person with one place or another. And the introduction of a proper name into the text - the name of a small and little-known station - conveys this attitude towards spatial uniqueness.
Spatial concreteness is complemented by material concreteness: we have already given quantitative indicators of the concreteness of names, but the accumulation of a sign of materiality in meanings is even more significant individual words, extending to poetry in general. “Treukh”, “soldier’s bag”, “sleepers”, “heap of ribbons” are not only material in their meaning, but also introduce a semantic sign of a poor, ordinary, unostentatious life. And everyday things in the historically established hierarchy of our ideas are more substantial than festive ones.
It is interesting that the meaning of materiality is created where the word itself may or may not have this attribute. The “moon” is placed between the “edge of the barn” and the “roofs” and is thereby introduced into the context of things from the same real and meager world. “Spring wilderness” is ambivalent in relation to the opposition “concrete - abstract” - it can take on any meaning. But in this context, they are influenced by the material environment (“bridge”, “monument”, “heap of ribbons”, etc.) and the fact that the relationship between the details of the landscape, endowed with signs of a specific location, is introduced into the text. “To the bridge” we need collapse from the railway, the pilot's grave " at the edge alleys." Only “pine trees”, equated to “a crowd of souls”, fall out of common system this part of the text.
No less specific is the time of this same part. We do not know what time it is by the clock (although we can easily calculate it), but we know that it is a certain time, a time with a sign of accuracy. This is the time between the movement of the moon from behind the roof of the barn to the position above the roofs (the reader is assumed, of course, to know where to stand for this - the point of view is fixed by the intimacy of this only world that the author is building), between the penultimate and last trains to Nary (closer to the penultimate one; the reader is assumed to know when this train leaves). In the world of suburbia, the concepts of train and counting time are synonymous.
If the author had said that the “last team” had left, then the meaning of the statement could have been extremely specific and metaphorically abstract, even to the point of introducing the semantics of hopelessness and irrevocable loss. "Penultimate train" can only mean a specific time.
Against the background of such a semantic organization of the first half of the poem, the universal-spatial and universal-temporal nature of the second part becomes sharply significant. The action takes place here “in the dark chamber of the universe”, characters: “a living human soul”, “an invisible young pilot”, “a body” wandering “along the road”. There are no mentions of eternity and duration of time, no pictures of space or the universe (the mention of the “chamber of the universe” is the only case, and it occurs at the border of parts in order to “include” the reader in a new system; there are no further images of this type in the text) - the characteristic of time and space in this part of the text is represented at the level of expression by a significant zero. But it is precisely this, against the backdrop of the first part, that gives the text the character of inexpressible universality.
But the comparison sharply highlights the sign of upward direction of two juxtaposed worlds.
The first half of the poem, introducing us to the world of everyday objects, also introduces everyday dimensions. Only two points are brought up: the moon and the pine trees. However, their nature is different. The moon, as we have already said, is “tied” to the everyday landscape and is included in the “space of things.” “Pines” are characterized differently: their height is not indicated, but they are raised upward - at least, it is said about them that they “lean.” But another comparison is even more significant:
...pine trees leaning towards the churchyard 3
,
They stand like a collection of souls.
It turns them off from the material world and at the same time from the entire connection of objects in this half of the poem.
The second half takes us into a world of other dimensions in contrast. “Chamber” introduces the image of a building directed upward. The metaphor “chamber of the universe” creates additional semantics 4 , roughly it can be represented as a combination of the meanings of construction, horizontal organization by floors (semantics of “building”) with the optional sign of narrowing, sharpening, “tower” at the top and universality, universality, which includes everything. The epithet “dark” introduces an element of obscurity, incomprehensibility of this construction, which in its universality unites thought and thing, top and bottom.
All further names are hierarchically organized relative to the floors of this building, and this hierarchy both separates them and connects them. “Rest” “rises” (the semantics of verticality and movement in this verb are significant) “ above... foliage." The “living human soul” in relation to this peace receives a sign of lower hierarchy - it “falls silent with a lowered gaze.” This characteristic also has the meaning of humiliation and indicates a connection with the world of bodily human forms. The expression “living human soul” can be understood as a synonym for “living person” (“soul” in this case is perceived not as an antonym of “body”, but as its metonymy) 5 . However, later this frozen phraseological unit is included in a number of oppositions: in the antithesis of “the invisible young pilot”, what was lost in the stable phrase is activated lexical meaning the word “living”, and in contrast to “body” in the last stanza the word “soul” is similarly activated.
The fusion of human heroism with moving nature (it is important that these are trees - a layer of nature that rises above the everyday world and is always more animated in Zabolotsky; cf.: “Read, trees, the poems of Hesiod...”) creates a level that rises above the world of things and graves animation, in which contacts (“talks about something”) between a living person, nature and previous generations are possible.
The last stanza is interestingly revealed in comparison with the first. Plot-wise, it brings us back to the passerby. This highlights the metamorphosis of the image - a single passer-by, who is “filled with spiritual anxiety”, in the end breaks up into three entities: the soul talks in the leaves of the trees with the deceased young pilot, “the body wanders along the road”, and “his grief and worries” run behind him after him. Moreover, all three entities are located on three different tiers in the hierarchy of the “hall of the universe”, along the “top-bottom” axis. The “soul” is located in this picture at the level of trees - the middle zone of animate nature, the “body” is combined with the everyday world, and the “anxiety” that runs after “like dogs” constitutes the lowest level of physicality, reminiscent of the raging doubles of jackals. Accordingly, the system of verbs is hierarchical: “soul” talks, “body wanders,” “anxiety runs ... after.”
This seems to contradict the pattern essential to other texts, according to which the lower, the more motionless the world. But here an antithesis of the horizontal axis, specific to this text, arises - the axis of everyday movement, the preoccupation with qualitative immobility and the axis vertical movement- spirituality, peace and understanding during the internal Transformation.
The relationship between the two parts creates a complex semantic structure: the inner essence of a person is cognized by being identified with the hierarchy of natural principles.
However, the system of other textual contrasts introduces changes into this general scheme, superimposing on it detailed semantic oppositions that are opposite or simply do not coincide with it. Thus, entering into the general spatial “language” of Zabolotsky’s poetry, the concrete world appears as lower. However, in the tradition of Russian poetry of the 19th century, with which the poem clearly correlates, there is, in particular, another semantic structure: the concrete, living, synthetic, warm, intimate is opposed to the abstract as analytical, cold, inanimate and distant. In this regard, the correlation of the “passerby” in the first and last stanzas will be decidedly different. In the first stanza, the synthetic nature and integrity of the image will be highlighted. State of mind and appearance- such is the differential pair that arises from the comparison of the first two verses of the first stanza; the place and time of movement are activated by the comparison of the last two. However, their unity will be revealed first, and separation, the decomposition of the whole into substances, will be revealed at the end. But in the light of the classification traditional for Russian poetry, which we talked about above, it is the first that will seem valuable and poetic.
While filling the text with details, Zabolotsky does not accompany them with evaluative epithets. It has deep meaning. Let's give this example: at the dawn of Soviet cinematography, one of the founders of the theory of film editing, L.V. Kuleshov, made an experiment that gained worldwide fame: having filmed a close-up of the indifferent face of film actor Mozzhukhin, he edited it with another frame, which successively turned out to be a plate of soup, a coffin and a playing child . The editing effect - then still unknown, but now a well-studied phenomenon - manifested itself in the fact that for the audience Mozzhukhin’s face began to change, consistently expressing hunger, grief or paternal joy. An empirically indisputable fact - the immutability of a face - is not recorded by the senses of observers. Getting into different systems connections, the same text becomes unequal to itself.
Without fixing his attitude to the image of the first stanza, Zabolotsky left the possibility of including it both in the system of “his” artistic language and in the traditional type of connections. Depending on this, the value characteristic of the episode will change to the exact opposite. But it is precisely this hesitation, the possibility of double meaning, that distinguishes a text from a system. The system excludes the intimate experience of the image of the “passerby” from the first stanza - the text allows it. And the entire concrete world, within the text, oscillates between assessing it as inferior and as sweet. It is significant that in the last two stanzas the positive world of spirituality receives signs of concreteness: endowing movement and thought with sound characteristics “light rustling” and “slow noise” (with a clear element of onomatopoeia) is perceived as introducing a material element. At the same time, turning the “passerby” into a “body”, Zabolotsky introduces abstraction into the “lower” world, activating the possibility of understanding the text in the light of the “anti-system”. This poetics of double interpretation of the text also explains the appearance of oxymoronic combinations or the fundamental ambiguity of the plot, which creates the possibility of further interpretation.
Against the background of these basic semantic organizations, more specific ones function.
If we consider the text as a certain sequence of episodes, considering a stanza to be an episode, then the relationship of the plot segment to the subsequent (except for the last stanza) and the preceding (except for the first) form a chain of “montage effects”, the sequence of the plot.
The first stanza introduces a character called "he". No clarification is given in the text (“passerby” is named only in the title, and this definition structurally exists as an extra-textual one, related to the poetic text, but not included in it). IN equally The emotional anxieties with which he is filled are not named either.
Anxiety is the same integral property of a character as a three-piece suit and a soldier’s bag. This character corresponds to a specific environment and time, the emphasized materiality of which we have already spoken about. Starting from the third stanza, the hero moves into some new space - the “spring wilderness”. The fourth stanza begins with the introduction of a new name, which over the next three stanzas displaces the first hero (he even stops being mentioned). This new character - the “pilot”, replacing the first hero, differs from him in many ways. First of all, it is not named by a pronoun. But something else is also significant: the image of the pilot differs from the first hero in its oxymoronic duality. The pilot buried in the ground and the “dead propeller”, which become the plot center of these stanzas, are fraught with two principles: flight and graves. The oxymoronic nature of character construction is further developed by a system of verbs. The verbs characterizing “him” are verbs of motion. Spatial movement is combined with mental anxiety. The pilot is characterized by a combination of movement and immobility: over his grave “rises... peace.” The passerby’s meeting with the pilot is twofold: it is “he” passing by the grave, and the meeting of “his” soul with peace. At the same time, peace is given a sign of the beginning of movement - it “gets up”, and the living soul - the end of it, calmness, it “falls silent”. At first “he” was “filled with spiritual anxiety,” now before the peace that stood over the grave,
Worried and always in a hurry,
Silent with lowered gaze
Living human soul.
In the next stanza the movement is transferred to the young pilot. These are the mysterious “light rustling of buds” and “slow noise of branches.” Both characteristics are pointedly excluded from the world of direct everyday experience: the rustling of buds is the sound of their blossoming (“micro-sound”), and the noise of branches is given the epithet not of sound, but of movement. In this “strange” world, a meeting of two souls takes place, while the newly appeared “he,” having turned into a “body,” continues to move. But changes have also occurred with “him” - his humiliation has increased: “he” at first “walks along the sleepers” - now he “walks”. The “railroad”, “sleepers” have turned into a generalized road of life - he does not walk along them, but “through thousands of troubles.” He was filled with mental anxiety - now
...his grief and anxiety
They run after him like dogs.
Considered in this way, the poem receives additional meanings: for “him” it is the plot of initiation into a high order of life, for the “pilot” - the immortality of the redemptive feat of personal death, spiritualizing the world around him.
But what has been said does not exhaust the numerous supermeanings created by the structure of a poetic text. Thus, in the fifth stanza the antithesis of sleep (“sleepy foliage”) and peace arises. Having almost no meaning outside of this context, it is performed here deep meaning: sleep is a state of nature whose stillness is not inspired by thought, peace is the fusion of thought and nature. It is no coincidence that “peace” is located above"sleep":
Above this sleepy foliage
That unexpectedly instant one rises,
Soul-piercing peace.
One could point out that “instant” here does not mean “very fast”, but - in the antithesis of the time of the first two stanzas - without a temporal attribute. Or else: the third, fifth and sixth stanzas end with verses containing the word “soul” (occurs only at the ends of stanzas). However, each time it takes on a new meaning.
We do not consider sublexical levels of the text, although this significantly impoverishes the analysis. From observations of syntax, we only note that the disunity of the material world and the unity of the spiritual world are expressed in the antithesis of short sentences (the second stanza consists of three sentences) and long ones (the fifth and sixth are one).
Only the poetic structure of the text makes it possible to concentrate such a complex and rich semantic system. At the same time, one can be convinced of the practical inexhaustibility of the poetic text: the most Full description a system provides only an approximation, and the intersection of various systems creates not a final interpretation, but a field of interpretation within which individual interpretations lie. The ideal of poetic analysis is not in finding some eternal only possible interpretation, but in determining the realm of truth, the realm of possible interpretations of a given text from the perspective of a given reader. And Zabolotsky’s “Passerby” will still reveal its new sides to new readers - bearers of new systems of consciousness.
4 If you specify a list of all possible phraseological combinations of the words “palace” and “universe” in a language, then the combined meanings will give the semantics of the metaphor. Since the rules of compatibility will each time be determined by the semantic structure of a given text (or type of text), and the number of possible phraseological units will also vary depending on a number of reasons, the possibility of semantic movement, necessary for art, arises.
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