Symbolist poetry was a philosophy of intuitive creativity, the expression of vague feelings and subtle ideas through incoherent, unsystematic symbols. The so-called secret writing of the unspoken. The second most important symbolist category was the obligatory musicality of the verse.

The reader must independently decipher the poetry of Alexander Blok's allusions and take part in creativity, complementing the picture of fantasy or conditional reality of the poetic landscape, attitude or inexpressible experience of the creator.

One of Blok's hobbies was the philosophy of Vladimir Solovyov, from the ideal of the unity of which a symbol of the eternal feminine, or femininity, came into his work. The surrounding world of the beginning of the century, with its tragic contradictions and social catastrophes, seemed terrible to the poet, so even the central poetic cycle of this period was called.

Block. "The Stranger" (analysis)

As a result of leaving the "terrible" existence, the lyrical hero of the poem forms his own, beautiful and poetic world. If we take the poem that Blok wrote during this period - "The Stranger" - the analysis will show that conditionally it can be divided into two parts. Moreover, in the first, consisting of six quatrains, for some reason there will be everything that he did not like: wild and deaf hot air; dust and boredom, children's crying; noisy couples walking between ditches; creak, screech; lackeys and drunkards with red eyes.

A. Blok "Stranger" (analysis of the 1st part)

The poem was written in 1906. This period of life for Blok was difficult - starting with family troubles, ending with a break with symbolist poets. The time was also turbulent in terms of social upheavals. The poet did not leave the feeling of trouble, the contradictory tragedy of life, which gave rise to "deep darkness".

It was born as a result of aimless wanderings around the St. Petersburg environs and trips to Ozerki to the country. Sublimely solemn quatrains, where the heroine is beautiful in her mystery, are interspersed with quatrains-statements of a hero disappointed with life, who has unconscious anxiety in his soul. He believes that the world is dying, rolling into darkness, into the abyss, it needs to be saved. Iniquity and unbelief reigns in it.

The lyrical hero of the poem, in search of a way out, goes into revelry and drunkenness. Now he is his own friend and companion. Wine "humbles" and "stuns" him. The real world, where ditches, dust, wits and their squealing ladies, the meaninglessly twisting disk of the moon fades into the background when She enters the room at the “appointed” hour.

Block. "The Stranger" (analysis of the 2nd part)

The hero doubts the reality of what is happening. In the presence of symbols of obscurity: sleep and fog ("dream", the window is foggy). Her image of the hero is not able to cover the whole, entirely, details arise in the mind (the girl’s body covered with silks, a hat with a veil and feathers, a hand in rings, the second part also consists of six quatrains. The last is a result, a conclusion.

The mystery of this poem is that it is impossible to say for sure whether the Stranger is real or imaginary. Block analysis of his creation, decomposition into components of his wonderful magical world, probably would not approve. Yes, it won't do anything! Each reader must decide everything for himself.

Make a more detailed analysis? "The Stranger", Blok, as well as his other poems, hardly need it. It is better to read, to feel, to follow the poet's imagination, and to derive untold pleasure from the beauty and musicality of his fantasies!

"The Stranger" was written in a difficult period for the poet - when he himself was going through a difficult personal drama. His beloved, Lyubov Mendeleev, left him for his friend and fellow poet Andrei Bely. Blok was very upset by this and parting, perhaps this is partly why the poem is riddled with such sadness.

According to many researchers, the poet conveys the atmosphere of the outskirts of St. Petersburg, in addition, here you can find his impressions of trips to the dacha, where the poet visited more than once during this period, dull rural entertainment and local inhabitants.

Plot

So, the scene of action is a certain one, in which all the dirt and vulgarity of a big city seems to be deliberately concentrated. Here the air itself is heavy, it is difficult to breathe, the eyes of those around are empty, there are not people around, but grotesque creatures “with the eyes of rabbits”. This world is disharmonic, viscous and dreary, and being in it is devoid of any meaning.

And every evening in this place, terrifying with its ordinary vulgarity, she appears - no longer the Beautiful Lady of Blok's early lyrics, but a woman in whose heart there is obviously some secret, some kind of bitterness that makes her come here. This woman, wrapped in silk and exhaling the scent of perfume, is obvious to this gray world, she is a stranger in it.

The stranger walks through the mud without being soiled by it, and remains a kind of lofty ideal.

It is significant that the lyrical hero does not at all seek to dispel the mystery surrounding her, to approach her and ask her name, to find out what brought her here. Indeed, in this case, the romantic halo surrounding the mysterious stranger will also disappear, from a stranger she will turn into just an earthly woman, in whose life, perhaps, something happened. It is important for him precisely as, as an image showing that even in the most hopeless darkness there is light and beauty, as a sign of a mystical miracle that brings meaning and fills life with content.

Literary analysis

The poem is written in iambic pentameter with classical cross-alternation and feminine rhyme.
The whole work can be conditionally divided into two parts: in the first, an atmosphere of hopelessness reigns, the second is illuminated by the presence of the mysterious Stranger. At the same time, the antithesis of images is constantly

Anna BRYUKHANOVA

Getting ready to write

From dream to reality?

About A. Blok's poem "The Stranger"

1. Historical and bibliographic reference.

The poem "The Stranger" was written in Ozerki on April 24, 1906. It belongs to the cycle "City".

Blok was a representative of symbolism. This literary trend originated in the late 80s of the XIX century. The founder of this trend was Bryusov, and V. Solovyov's theory of eternal femininity was the philosophical beginning of symbolism. Symbolism has much in common with Romanticism. In symbolism, as in romanticism, the desire to escape from reality into the world of fiction and dreams, the eternal search for "infinity in the finite", the subordination of reason and will to feelings and moods dominates. In addition to Blok, Vyach. Ivanov, Z. Gippius, A. Bely, M. Voloshin and many other poets were symbolists.

The first serious collection of Blok's poems was "Poems about the Beautiful Lady", published in 1905. These verses had a real basis. From childhood, Blok was in love with a neighbor in the country, the daughter of the famous chemist Mendeleev, Lyubov Dmitrievna. The feeling that he felt for Mendeleeva was rethought in the spirit of Plato's teachings about the "World Soul", about the "affinity of souls", doomed to eternal search for each other, about "eternal femininity" as an imperishable and divine principle, which largely determined the character " Poems about the Beautiful Lady. In these verses, the hero was looking for his ideal, longed for unearthly love, and his beloved did not have a single real feature, she was an unearthly, sublime creature. A characteristic poem can be considered the poem "I foresee You."

In 1903 Blok married L.D. Mendeleev, and he had to combine the ideal features of the image of his beloved with a real woman. There was a conflict between lofty dreams and reality. The poet did not know how to combine the dream of a beloved, which had hitherto seemed mystical and unattainable, with everyday life. As a result, there was a decrease in the image of the beloved: he changed, acquired real features. This is evidenced by the poem "The Stranger". In this poem, the hero meets his beloved in a restaurant (a public place), she appears to him only in drunken dreams (and earlier he was intoxicated with love), she acquired real features (rings, veil). If earlier she was his Beautiful Lady, now she is just a stranger (an unknown woman). In the future, the image of the Beautiful Lady will lose its magical aura and she will become a real, corrupt woman.

2. Theme and idea of ​​the work.

The theme of this work is an evening in a restaurant where a regular meets an unfamiliar girl.

The idea is a meeting with his beloved, who appears before him in a new guise. With the help of wine, the lyrical hero tries to come to terms with reality. The world does not suit him, he was disappointed in his dreams and lost the meaning of life.

Word rows:

Summer season: a pernicious spirit, breaking pots, a bakery's pretzel, tried wits, among the ditches, a woman's squealing, the disk is twisted.

Evening at the restaurant: the only friend in the glass is reflected, the moisture is tart, the lackeys stick out sleepy, drunkards.

Meeting with a stranger: girlish camp, without satellites, breathing spirits and mists, they breathe ancient beliefs, an enchanted shore, secrets are entrusted to me, treasure in my soul, truth in wine.

Keywords:

the disk is meaninglessly twisted, I see the enchanted shore and the enchanted distance, the secrets are entrusted to me, the truth is in the wine.

an educated person (Latin), a contemporary of the hero (knowledge of the peculiarities of life in those years), rich (knows the life of restaurants).

The poem is a narration with elements of reasoning (“Is it just a dream of mine?”), The narration is conducted on behalf of the narrator, named (1st person, real features) and stylistically highlighted (description of a stranger).

3. Level analysis.

one). Having carried out a linguistic analysis of the text, we made the following conclusions: there are no violations in relation to the literary norm. The text is written in literary language.

There is a tautology in the text: "I see the enchanted coast and the enchanted distance"; anacoluf: "ostrich feathers bowed."

2). The text uses high vocabulary: camp, eyes; obsolete expressions: wringing bowlers; colloquial vocabulary: grimacing, sticking out; book vocabulary: monster (cruel man), moisture.

3). To characterize the images, contextual antonyms are used: a female screech - a child's screech, an enchanted shore - an enchanted distance.

4). We found various figurative expressive means in the text.

Metaphor:

the air is deaf, wringing pots, the disc is crooked (a decrease in the image), moisture is tart and mysterious, seized by silks, breathing spirits and mists, chained by closeness, deaf secrets, bottomless eyes, pierced by wine, bending souls, a monster (cruel man).

Avatar:

a corrupting spirit rules, accustomed to everything, its silks blow, its eyes bloom.

Comparison:

drunkards with rabbit eyes.

a corrupting spirit, a mysterious moisture, an enchanted distance, a foggy window, deaf secrets.

A combination of incongruous:

breathing spirits and mists, they breathe ancient beliefs, feathers sway in the brain.

and every evening.

Sound recording:

oarlocks creak, ancient beliefs (assonance) blow, a child's (female) screech is heard.

Painting:

gilded bakery pretzel.

dachas - a restaurant - a table where a stranger sits.

iambic tetrameter with pyrrhias.

4. Lyrical hero.

Traits of a lyrical hero:

an educated person (Latin), a frequenter of restaurants (every evening), a connoisseur of country life (a description of summer cottages), lonely (the only friend in my glass is reflected), disappointed in his dreams, can come to terms with reality and understand the meaning of life only through wine (whose - the sun is handed over), in love. When sober, he cannot reconcile his dreams with reality, but under drunken vapours, conventions disappear, the world changes and meaning appears.

Stranger:

has the features of both a real woman and a fabulous creature: rings, a hat with feathers, silks - reality; ancient beliefs, enchanted distance, breathing spirits and mists - an unearthly creature.

Stranger (1906)

The poem was written in a difficult period for Alexander Blok in his personal life, when his wife, L. D. Mendeleeva, began an affair with his friend, the poet Andrei Bely. It was born from wanderings around the St. Petersburg suburbs, and specifically - from the impressions of walking in the holiday village of Ozerki. Many real features and signs in the poem come from here: a restaurant, the dust of alleys, barriers.

The genre of the work is a story in verse. The plot is the meeting of the lyrical hero with the Stranger in a country restaurant. The main theme is the collision of dreams and reality.

The composition is based on the principle of opposition - antitheses. The dream is opposed to rough reality. Compositionally, the poem consists of two parts. One part (the first six stanzas) shows the reality of the vulgar world, the second part (the last seven stanzas) depicts the romantic ideal. These two worlds are incompatible for Blok. The world of his dreams is fragile and thin, devoid of real outlines. But this world is his only salvation and opportunity to remain himself. This world, inspired by the image of the Stranger, Alexander Blok gives to his readers.

The poem begins with a description of a spring evening. However, the fresh breath of spring is not felt at all - the poet calls the spring air pernicious. The first part is full of prosaic details. This is alley dust, and the boredom of country cottages, and the bakery's pretzel, and the tried wits who "among the ditches walk with the ladies." The author uses rude vocabulary (sleepy lackeys stick out), depicts unpleasant sounds (children's crying; female screeching; oarlocks creaking). Vulgarity infects everything around with its pernicious spirit. And even the traditionally poetic image of the moon appears here in a distorted form:

And in the sky, accustomed to everything,

The disk is pointlessly twisted.

In this part, the author deliberately piles hard-to-pronounce consonants. For example: “In the evenings over restaurants, / The hot air is wild and deaf”: pvchrm ndstrnm grch vzdh dk glh. And instead of the assonances (repetition of vowel sounds) typical of Blok’s poetry on a-o-e, which give melodiousness to the verse, we hear deaf alliterations (repetition of consonant sounds) and assonances on and (hot air is wild and muffled; female squeal; the disk is twisted), that cut the ear.

In this world, instead of the sun, “a bakery pretzel is golden”, and love is replaced by ladies walking with “tried wits” (who probably repeat the same jokes every day). "Tested wits" walk with the ladies not just anywhere, but "among the ditches." The image of the restaurant is also symbolic - it is the embodiment of vulgarity. The author depicts not just an evening restaurant, but a space where “hot air is wild and deaf”, where “spring and pernicious spirit” rules the general gloom. Here boredom, drunkenness and monotonous fun took on the character of a repetitive and meaningless rotation. About the whirling of life in this automatic wheel says the phrase: "And every evening." This phrase is repeated three times, as well as the union and - this achieves the feeling of a vicious circle (And the drunken spring and pernicious spirit rules the shouts; And a child's cry is heard; And a woman's screech is heard). All verbs are used in the present tense. This world is disgusting and terrible. Literally in everything, the lyrical hero feels a repulsive disharmony of sounds and smells, colors and feelings. He finds consolation in wine:

And every evening the only friend In my glass is reflected And moisture tart and mysterious,

Like me, humble and stunned.

The intoxication motif is repeated several times: "rabbit-eyed drunkards" shout "Invinoveritas!" - "Truth in wine!" (lat.). The stranger walks “between the drunks”, the lyrical hero himself speaks of “tart and mysterious moisture”. But intoxication is also an immersion in the world of dreams.

This disgusting world is opposed by the Stranger, who appears "every evening, at the appointed hour" in the second part of the poem. Alliterations - a repetition, a rough heap of consonant sounds in the description of a dirty street - are replaced by a repetition of vowel sounds - assonances (Breathing in spirits and mists, / She sits at the window. / And breathe ancient beliefs / Her elastic silks). The hissers convey the rustle of silk. Assonances and alliterations create a feeling of airiness of the female image.

The stranger is devoid of realistic features, she is all shrouded in mystery. This image is fenced off from the dirt and vulgarity of reality by the elevated perception of the lyrical hero. The stranger is the ideal of femininity and beauty, a symbol of what the lyrical hero lacks so much - love, beauty, spirituality.

The mysterious Stranger "always without companions, alone." The loneliness of the heroes not only distinguishes them from the general crowd, but also attracts them to each other:

And chained by a strange closeness,

I look behind the dark veil

And I see the enchanted shore And the enchanted distance.

“The Enchanted Shore” is a symbol of a harmonious, but unattainable world. It seems that here he is, nearby, but it is worth stretching out your hand - and he disappears.

And ostrich feathers bowed in my brain sway,

And bottomless blue eyes Blossom on the far shore.

The poet uses the word eyes, which has gone out of wide use, giving the image of the Stranger an elevation. Her bottomless blue eyes (the blue color in Blok means starry, high, unattainable) are contrasted with the rabbit eyes of drunkards.

The Stranger is a transformed image of the Beautiful Lady. This is an ordinary visitor to a country restaurant or a "vague vision" of a lyrical hero. This image symbolizes the duality of the consciousness of the lyrical hero. He really wants to get away from the hated reality, but it does not disappear anywhere - and it is in this world that the Stranger comes. This brings tragic notes to the image of the lyrical hero. Spirits and mists, the bottomless blue eyes of the Stranger and the distant shore are just dreams, momentary intoxication, but the true meaning of life is revealed to the lyrical hero precisely in these moments.

The poem "The Stranger" was written by A.A. Block in 1906. It was included in the cycle "The flute sang on the bridge." It was a difficult, difficult period in the life of the poet, many of his poems are permeated with a sharp tragic feeling of a turning point. Difficulties were also present in his personal life: Blok's wife, Lyubov Dmitrievna Mendeleeva, had an affair with his friend, the poet Andrei Bely. It was in this atmosphere of a "torn dream" that Blok's "The Stranger" was born.
The genre of the work is a story in verse. The plot is a meeting with a Stranger in a country restaurant. The main theme is the collision of dreams and reality. Blok himself wrote about this in his article “On the Current State of Russian Symbolism”: “So, it happened: my own magical world became the arena of my personal actions, my “anatomical theater”, or booth, where I myself play a role along with my amazing dolls ...<…>In other words, I have already made my own life an art ... Life has become an art, I cast spells, and finally, what I (personally) call "Stranger": beauty doll, blue ghost, earth wonder.<…>Stranger. This is not just a lady in a black dress with ostrich feathers on her hat. It is a diabolical fusion of many worlds, predominantly blue and purple. If I had Vrubel's means, I would have created a Demon; but everyone does what is assigned to him. Thus, the Beautiful Lady from the first poems of the poet is transformed here into the image of her "demonic double", the doll.
Note that in this work the poet uses motifs, images, and situations that are stable in symbolism. This is the motif of the evening, the sun, romantic intoxication. The very situation of meeting with the Stranger was already present in the works of V.Ya. Bryusov. However, with Blok, all stable symbolist motifs and situations are transformed and acquire a new, often opposite, meaning.
The composition of the poem is based on the principle of antithesis. The dream is opposed to rough reality. The first part is an emphatically grotesque picture of philistine life. The poem opens with a description of a spring evening. However, the lyrical hero does not feel the fresh breath of spring:

In the evenings above the restaurants
Hot air is wild and deaf
And rules drunken shouts
Spring and pernicious spirit.

The image of the restaurant here is also symbolic. This is the embodiment of vulgarity, the everyday world surrounding the hero. And the poet presents this world to us visibly, audibly, tangibly concretely. In this description, not only the attitude of the lyrical hero is conveyed, but also the specific details of the reality contemporary to the poet. Blok's friend, Yevgeny Pavlovich Ivanov, recalled that, being with him in Ozerki (a summer cottage near St. Petersburg), he saw the signboards of the bakery, the ditch shown by the poet, listened to the cries of boats on the lake. And indeed, we see ditches and barriers, inhale "lane dust", feel the hot, stale spring air, hear drunken shouts, the creak of oarlocks, "children's crying", "female squealing". The details of the landscape are also defiantly reduced in Blok: the moon looks indifferently at what is happening:

And in the sky accustomed to everything
The disk is pointlessly twisted.

Instead of the sun, the “bakery pretzel” is golden, love is replaced by the walks of ladies with “tried wits”. In everything there is a repulsive disharmony - sounds, smells, colors and forms, sensations and feelings. All these expressive details clearly characterize the lyrical hero, conveying his attitude, his rejection of the ugly, prosaic reality.
There are two persistent motifs in the poem. One of them is the motive of intoxication. Ask "drunken shouts" in the restaurant, "drunkards with rabbit eyes", shouting "In vino veritas!". Blok's stranger walks "among the drunks." The lyrical hero himself speaks of “tart and mysterious moisture”:

And every evening the only friend
Reflected in my glass
And moisture tart and mysterious
Like me, humble and deaf.

However, his intoxication is also his immersion in the world of dreams, romance, love:

And all the souls of my bend
The tart wine pierced.

Another stable motif of "The Stranger" is the motif of the evening. The poem opens with a description of an evening restaurant, an evening landscape. Further, the anaphora (“And every evening ...”) is repeated three times: in the everyday, vulgar picture of the walks of the ladies and their local gentlemen, in the description of the sensations of the lyrical hero (his intoxication), in the description of the Stranger.
The second part of the poem opens with the appearance of the Stranger:

And every evening at the appointed hour
(Is it just my dream?)
Maiden's camp, seized by silks,
In the foggy window moves.

The story turns into a romantic one here. “Breathing in spirits and mists”, the Beautiful Stranger appears as if from a land of dreams, ancient legends:

And breathe ancient beliefs
Her elastic silks
And a hat with mourning feathers
And in the rings a narrow hand ...

Ancient legends and fairy tales come to life again in the soul of the hero. And it doesn’t matter to him whether this metamorphosis takes place in reality or in a dream: he goes into an “enchanted distance” from the surrounding vulgar reality, from everything that offended his aesthetic sense. Plunging into the world of dreams, he discovers a different reality:

Deaf secrets are entrusted to me,
Someone's sun has been handed to me,
And all the souls of my bend
The tart wine pierced.
And ostrich feathers bowed
In my brain they sway
And blue eyes, bottomless,
bloom on this shore.

Spirits and mists, bottomless blue eyes, a distant shore - all these details make up a holistic, unified image of the world of dreams and poetry. And even if this image is only a dream, a vision, a momentary intoxication, but the true meaning of life is revealed to the hero precisely in these moments. This is what he says at the end of the poem: "I know - the truth is in wine."
What is behind the image of the Stranger at Blok? As we noted above, the interpretation of this image in literary criticism is different: The Stranger is a transformed image of the Beautiful Lady; this is an ordinary visitor to a country restaurant, a "fallen star"; this is a "vague vision" of a lyrical hero. The image of this heroine symbolizes the duality of the hero's consciousness, creates a motif of duality. He moves away from the rough, vulgar reality, but the world around him does not disappear anywhere, he continues to exist, it is into him that the Stranger comes. All this deprives the image of the lyrical hero of the integrity necessary for a harmonious, happy life, gives this image tragic notes.
As we have already noted, the composition of the work is based on the principle of antithesis. The first part (the first six stanzas) is a description of reality. The second part - (the last seven stanzas) - the departure of the lyrical hero into the world of dreams and fairy tales. These two worlds are incompatible with Blok. A. Ternovsky accurately noted this: “His hopes, his ideas about the true and beautiful are incompatible with reality. The world born of his fantasy is devoid of concrete outlines, fragile and unsteady. But this is his "treasure" - the only salvation from the carrion of the environment, the opportunity to remain himself, to remain alive. And this world, inspired by the image of the Stranger, the poet gives to readers. The poem is written in iambic tetrameter, quatrains, rhyming is cross. The poet uses various means of artistic expression: epithets (“enchanted shore”, “tart wine”, “bottomless blue eyes”), metaphor (“bottomless blue eyes Bloom on this shore”, “And all the souls of my bend were pierced by tart wine”), inversion (“In the foggy window moves”), alliteration (“In the evenings over restaurants Hot air is wild and deaf”), assonance (“Breathing in spirits and fogs”).
Researchers compared Blok's Stranger with Gogol's heroine from the story "Nevsky Prospekt". In Gogol, the panel beauty drives the unfortunate artist crazy, appearing before him in the form of an unearthly vision. Blok, on the other hand, considers this plot from a different perspective: illusion triumphs over the vulgarity and monotony of life. Subsequently, the poet develops this theme in the lyrical drama "The Stranger". However, in this play, Blok already asserts a bitterly ironic attitude to the situation: his poet is doomed to eternal longing for a beautiful ideal.

1. Blok A. On the current state of Russian symbolism. Electronic version. www.readr.ru

2. Materials for the analysis of A. Blok's poem "The Stranger". Electronic version. www.osvita.ua