Snow goes to white stars. Analysis of the poem by parsnip it snows

“In a moment that seemed to be the last in my life, more than ever before, I wanted to talk with God, praise the visible, catch and imprint it. “Lord,” I whispered, “I thank You that You put colors so thickly and made life and death such that Your language is majesty and music, that You made me an artist, that creativity is Your school, that all my life You prepared me for this night.” And I rejoiced and wept with happiness.

These lines were written by Boris Pasternak in 1952 after he experienced a severe myocardial infarction. This is a keen sense of the mortal breath of time, but at the same time the presence of some other dimension, where time disappears, sounds in the poem “It is snowing”.

We read and parse the known text in the project.

It's snowing

It's snowing, it's snowing.
To the white stars in the blizzard
Stretching geranium flowers
For the window frame.

It's snowing and everyone is confused
Everything takes flight, -
black stairs steps,
Crossroad turn.

It's snowing, it's snowing
As if not flakes are falling,
And in the patched coat
The sky descends to the ground.

Like a weirdo
From the top staircase
Sneak around playing hide and seek
The sky is coming down from the attic.

Because life doesn't wait.
Do not look back - and Christmas time.
Only a short interval
Look, there is a new year.

The snow is falling, thick, thick.
In step with him, those feet,
At the same pace, with that laziness
Or with the same speed

Maybe time passes?

Maybe year after year
Follow as it snows
Or like the words in a poem?

It's snowing, it's snowing
It's snowing and everyone is in turmoil:
whitewashed pedestrian,
surprised plants,
Crossroad turn.

Historical and biographical context

What did I do for a dirty trick,
Am I a killer and a villain?

Pasternak wrote these lines in connection with the persecution that hit him in 1958 after the writer was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for.

The Soviet government initially did not approve of Pasternak's candidacy. Having learned that the manuscript of the novel was abroad and its publication in Italian was being prepared, the authorities organized a campaign against the author. And in October 1958, the Swedish Academy awarded Pasternak an award with the wording "For outstanding achievements in modern lyric poetry and the continuation of the traditions of great Russian prose."

October 23, 1958, Reuters newsreel footage filmed at a dacha in Peredelkino. Boris Pasternak received news of his Nobel Prize

The Soviet press regarded the prestigious award as a payment for betrayal, that is, the publication of Doctor Zhivago abroad. Pressure and threats forced Pasternak to refuse the award. The Literaturnaya Gazeta wrote: “Awarding an award ... for a miserable, vicious work filled with hatred of socialism is a hostile political act directed against the Soviet state, against the Soviet system ... ". The "political and moral fall" of Pasternak was noted. Soon the "traitor" was stripped of the title of Soviet writer and expelled from the membership of the Writers' Union of the USSR.

In one of his poems, Pasternak writes:

I disappeared like an animal in a pen.
Somewhere people, will, light,
And after me the noise of the chase,
I have no way out.

All this undermined the writer both physically and mentally. A serious illness, persecution and humiliation - all the worst that happened to Pasternak happened in the 1950s: in May 1960, the seventy-year-old writer died of lung cancer in Peredelkino, near Moscow.

However, in all this suffocating atmosphere of trials, suffering and pain, in the late 1950s, Pasternak was preparing his last and most striking collection of poetry for publication.

Work

The poem "It's snowing" is included in Pasternak's last lyrical cycle "When it clears up", which includes 30 poems by the writer from 1956-1959 and was published in its entirety in Paris in 1959. The poem was first published in the literary and artistic publication "Literary Georgia" in 1957.

The whole cycle is preceded by an epigraph from the novel by the French writer Marcel Proust Time Regained ( fr. Le Temps retrouvé): "The book is a great cemetery, where on many slabs one can no longer read the faded names." The epigraph defines the entire content of the book as a memory of the past. At the same time, the title of the book, “When it clears up,” given by the author based on the poem of the same name, highlights the hope for changes in the future.

The theme of time was one of the most significant in Pasternak's work. In his works, he tries to convey an inexpressible sense of time and the involvement of all living things in eternity. The writer wants to show that each person belongs to both a specific time and eternity at the same time: “You are a hostage of eternity / Captured by time” .

Newsreels with Boris Pasternak, behind the scenes the author reads the poem “Night”

In matters of time, both memory and oblivion are equally important for Pasternak: “Losing in life is more necessary than gaining. The seed will not sprout unless it dies. One must live without getting tired, look ahead and feed on living reserves, which, together with memory, are produced by oblivion.

Many poems of the cycle “When it clears up” were written after the refusal to publish the novel “Doctor Zhivago” in the USSR, so the author reflected in them a tense hope for the coming changes and the onset of a renewed time. “When it clears up” is both a spiritual biography of the author and a characteristic of time. Pasternak deliberately “plays” with time here - he breaks the chronology of some poems, changes the rhythm of the temporal sequence and events to show that he is interested not only in the current cyclic time, but in Time in its entire duration.

In "When it clears up" Pasternak reflects on the main themes of world literature of the twentieth century: about the past and about memory. The poems are simultaneously turned to the past and directed to the future. It is no coincidence that Pasternak is so interested in the period of the Christmas holidays and the New Year. In the poem "Winter Holidays", the finite time - the future and the past - are transitory concepts that, according to the author, should strive towards eternity - the meaning of all existence and the goal of all life:

The future is not enough
Little old, little new.
It is necessary that the Christmas tree
Eternity in the middle of the room has become.

Many poems of the cycle are devoted to the themes of eternity and time, eternity and life, in which the main character is the phenomena of nature, covering everything that exists: both objects, and man, and history, and the universe itself. Nature is able to act, psychological states are inherent in it. Inspiring nature, Pasternak inscribes in it a person experiencing the same feelings and thoughts.

Sergei Nikitin performs a song based on Boris Pasternak's poems "It's snowing"

“It is snowing” is a poem where the poet also resorts to personification. Snowfall and everything around - heroes, objects and phenomena - have one life rhythm. In general, the "snow", "winter", Christmas theme runs through all of Pasternak's poetry. In “When it clears up”, in addition to the poem “It is snowing”, two more texts are dedicated to her: “First snow” and “After the blizzard”, together with which “It is snowing” makes up a kind of triptych, united by the motif of fleeting time. In the poem "It is snowing" the steps of time are clearly audible. The repeated refrain "it's snowing" only reinforces this state of swiftness and movement. Having experienced suffering, the writer begins to hear this bell of the passing, lived time more sharply. There is something terrible, formidable in this sound, something that a person is powerless over, something that he cannot influence.

However, through all this inexorable time, where "life does not wait," a completely different dimension peeps through, another world where time is removed. The hero hears someone approaching, but not something fatal, fatal: in this continuous movement of snow, he feels that Christmas is approaching. The pain seems to flow into a completely opposite feeling. “It is snowing” can be compared with Blok’s “Twelve” (to which, by the way, Pasternak devotes the poem “Wind” in his cycle), where, according to one of the interpretations of the poem, the “overwind” presence of the Savior is especially felt both outside this world and in German He is above the elements and above nature, He is cognizable and unknowable at the same time.

Pasternak succeeded in conveying the feeling of elusive time, imperceptible approach to the “turn”, behind which a renewed life begins, a different being. It is no coincidence that the poet mentions here Christmas and Christmas time, when one can most acutely feel the movement of life and the fleeting run of time.

But even those who listen to a very popular song performed by Sergei Nikitin hardly pay attention to the fact that in verses time flows not from New Year to Christmas, but from Christmas to New Year:

Because life doesn't wait.
Do not look back - and Christmas time.
Only a short interval
Look, there is a new year.

And these are no longer the religious verses of Doctor Zhivago, when they can be attributed to the hero of the novel, this is Boris Pasternak himself, openly living in 1957 in the context of the church calendar.

The poem "It's snowing" was written in 1957. It can be conditionally divided into two large parts: a landscape sketch and the author's philosophical reflections on the meaning of life, on its transience. The title defines the theme of the poem. In addition, the phrase “it is snowing” plays the role of a dynamic repetition, thanks to which the poet conveys how heavy flakes of snow fall to the ground. Repeating verbs convey the dynamics of flight, snow blizzard. The second part of the poem is the reflections of the lyrical hero about the meaning of life, its transience, finiteness. Life passes as quickly as fluffy snowflakes outside the window. This idea is emphasized with the help of rhetorical questions:

Or with the same speed

Maybe time passes?

Maybe year after year

Follow as it snows

Or like the words in a poem?

The last stanza echoes both the first and second parts of the poem. Repeating words take on new meaning. "Crossroads turn" is a turn of fate, what awaits tomorrow. And the “whitewashed pedestrian” is not just a person covered with snow flakes, but a gray-haired, lonely wanderer who has lived his life.

"February. Get ink and cry. ”, “Winter”, “Winter Sky”, “Snowstorm”, “First Snow”, “After the Blizzard” ... This series can be continued over and over again. All poems belong to the remarkable poet, Nobel Prize winner Boris Leonidovich Pasternak. They are united by the theme of winter. Why winter? I think the author loved this season, it was akin to his character, his fate.

M. Tsvetaeva wrote about Pasternak: “His chest is filled with nature to the limit ... It seems that with the first breath he inhaled, drew it all in - and suddenly choked on it and for the rest of his life with each new verse exhales it, but never exhales. "

Most of Boris Leonidovich's later poems on the theme of nature are dedicated to winter. The poem "It's snowing" is one of them. It was written in the year one thousand nine hundred and fifty-seven and is included in the collection called "When it clears up."

What is this lyric about?

I think it's about the transience of human life:

Maybe year after year

Follow as it snows

Or like the words in a poem?

“It is snowing” is the name of the poem, and with these words it begins:

It's snowing, it's snowing...

This phrase runs like a refrain through the entire work: it is repeated in every stanza, except for the fourth and fifth, and in the last it sounds three times. Thanks to the personifications “it is snowing”, “the sky is coming down”, the unity of the lyrical hero with the world around him, their emotional and psychological equality is emphasized. Everything that the lyrical hero sees is shrouded in a white veil. His gaze moves from top to bottom, from object to object.

“White stars”, “geranium flowers”, “window binding”, “black staircase steps”, “crossroad turn”, “firmament” – everything comes into view through the falling snow. Gradually, the snowfall intensifies: “white stars” turn into flakes, and in the sixth stanza - “the snow is thick, thick.”

Everything merges into a single whole, an illusion of movement, circulation is created. The lyrical hero becomes an integral part of this magical, bewitching, fabulous action. And we, without suspecting it, plunge into this world and, picked up by snowflakes, find ourselves in a cycle.

The feeling of movement in the poem is created through the use of present tense verbs (“stretch”, “let off”, “goes off”, “passes”). A special role is played by the verb "goes", which is used ten times in the text.

Of interest is the lexical and stylistic structure of the lyrical work, which is diverse. Anaphora "it's snowing" gives poetic speech a smoother, melodious sound. The parallelism of the lines "it's snowing" - "life does not wait" emphasizes the ideological intent of the verse.

The book vocabulary “footsteps”, “in confusion”, “ground”, “salop”, “steps” harmoniously coexists with the commonly used “hide and seek”, “turn”, “stairwell” and help to paint a magical picture of a winter day. Comparisons also add fabulousness: “... as if ... in a patched coat”, “as if with the appearance of an eccentric”.

Experiences, feelings of the lyrical hero are reflected not only by the speech system, but also by the sound organization of the verse. For example, it rhymes both ending lines and any words inside “thick” - “same”, “goes” - “turn”. This is one of the features of Pasternak's verse. A peculiar sound likening of words that are nearby is also characteristic. Alternating encircling and cross rhymes give a special sound.

The lyrical hero plays a special role in this poem. He deeply feels, but is not carried away by his feelings and experiences. Seeing the beauty surrounding it, we also comprehend the meaning of the universe, and this is where I see the charm of B.L. Pasternak.

"It's snowing" B. Pasternak

"It's snowing" Boris Pasternak

It's snowing, it's snowing.
To the white stars in the blizzard
Stretching geranium flowers
For the window frame.

It's snowing and everything is in turmoil
Everything takes flight,
black stairs steps,
Crossroad turn.

It's snowing, it's snowing
As if not flakes are falling,
And in the patched coat
The sky descends to the ground.

Like a weirdo
Sneak around playing hide and seek
The sky is coming down from the attic.

Because life doesn't wait.
Do not look back - and Christmas time.
Only a short interval
Look, there is a new year.

The snow is falling, thick, thick.
In step with him, those feet,
At the same pace, with that laziness
Or with the same speed
Maybe time passes?

Maybe year after year
Follow as it snows
Or like the words in a poem?

It's snowing, it's snowing
It's snowing and everything is in turmoil:
whitewashed pedestrian,
surprised plants,
Crossroad turn.

Analysis of Pasternak's poem "It's snowing"

Boris Pasternak considered himself a futurist for a long time, believing that in any work of paramount importance is not the content, but the form and way of presenting his thoughts. However, the poet gradually abandoned these views, and his later poems are filled with a deep philosophy of life, through the prism of which he examines various phenomena, looking for some regularity in them.

The theme of the transience of life is a key one in Pasternak's work; he touches on it in many of his works, among which is the poem "It's snowing", written in 1957. The early Moscow snowfall aroused very contradictory feelings in the poet, he compares it with a magical flight, in which not only people, but also inanimate objects - stairs, crossroads, pavements - are launched. “Geranium flowers reach for the window frame” - with this phrase, the parsnip emphasizes that even indoor plants, accustomed to warmth, are happy with the snowfall, which symbolizes the cleansing of the earth, which will soon be dressed in a luxurious white robe.

The transformation of the world for the poet is not an ordinary and familiar phenomenon, but something sublime and inaccessible to human understanding. Therefore, Pasternak compares snowfall with the meeting of heaven and earth, inspiring both of these concepts. Thus, the author presents the firmament as an eccentric who "descends to the ground in a patched straw." At the same time, the poet keenly feels the transience of time, noting that “you won’t look back - Christmas time. Only a short interval, you look, there is a new year. Despite the fact that snowfall gives a feeling of celebration and joy, the author sees in this phenomenon the reverse side of the coin, which indicates that minutes of life run away with every snowflake. Therefore, it is precisely in winter that Pasternak feels especially keenly that the present becomes the past in an instant, and no one can change this.

That is why, along with a sense of joy and freedom, snowfall causes a feeling of confusion in the poet. He conveys it through the images of a snow-whitened pedestrian, "surprised plants" and the turn of the intersection, which is literally changing before our eyes. But a few weeks will pass, the snow will melt and the world will take its usual shape, and the magic of winter will remain only in memory, which is a very fragile and unreliable repository of our feelings and experiences. And this is what frightens Pasternak, who is not ready to get used to the idea that he will never see another snowfall, but the world will not change from this, and time will not slow down.

"It's snowing", analysis of Pasternak's poem

The poem "It's snowing", included in the last collection of B. Pasternak "When it clears up", was created in 1957, a difficult period in the poet's life. Increased pressure from the authorities after the publication of the novel "Doctor Zhivago" abroad broke Pasternak's physical condition.

The title of the poem states it topic- snowfall. However, apart from landscape sketch winter snowfall, the poem contains philosophical reflections about the transience of life, so it can rightly be attributed to landscape-philosophical lyrics . To the center of the piece Pasternak places the problem of time and man during this time .

Pasternak perceives the Moscow snowfall as a magical flight, carrying people, sidewalks, intersections and stairs along with it. The poet masterfully conveys the atmosphere of a winter day, personifying snowfall with a living creature: "in a patched coat the firmament descends to earth". The wonderful transformation of the world, bewitching with its beauty, giving a feeling of celebration, is compared with the meeting of heaven and earth. Snowfall unites these two different worlds into one.

But at the same time with a joyful feeling, the poet and lyrical hero feels confusion in his soul - after all, with each snowflake, the precious time allotted to us runs away, and the present instantly becomes the past, experienced. Confusion is transmitted through "surprised plants". walking through life "whitewashed pedestrian"(snow or lived years?) and "crossroad turn". which is perceived as a twist of fate, where a person has a choice of life path. Snowfall makes the lyrical hero look at everyday things in a different way, understand and feel the Time. Conjugating the idea of Time and such a natural phenomenon as snowfall, the poet reveals the main secret of time- the relativity of its flow: “with that laziness or with the same speed?”. The eternal, continuous movement of snow created by dynamic repeat"It's snowing". becomes a symbol of time, which cannot be stopped even for a moment.

Pasternak in an incomprehensible way harmoniously combines transience with eternity in the poem: there are specific temporary indicators ( "short interval". Christmas time. New Year), and there is the perpetual motion of time - "Maybe time passes, Maybe year after year". Seeing life in detail and at the same time grasping the general plan, the poet conjugates the concrete ( geranium flowers, stairs) and infinite ( the sky, the passage of time). Boldly mixing life and being, Pasternak through simple, ordinary things goes to the level of the Universe, the level of eternity.

interesting sound organization of the verse. The poem consists of 8 stanzas with a different number of lines: the first five stanzas are quatrains, the sixth and eighth stanzas are lengthened by one line, the seventh stanza, on the contrary, is shortened to three lines. Such a construction focuses on the thoughts of the lyrical hero about life and time. To create the work, Pasternak used trochee tetrameter and combination of different types rhymes – coverage(in the first, third, fourth and fifth stanzas) and cross(in the second stanza). Alliteration sounds s, g, b, t convey the flight of snowflakes. Assonance sounds o, a, e gives the work an amazing melody and musicality.

The special expressiveness of the work is achieved due to the variety of visual means. metaphors (to the white stars in the blizzard), comparisons (like a freak), personifications (the sky descends), epithets (bleached pedestrian, surprised plants, patched coat).

The poem is saturated figures of poetic speech. Refrain"it's snowing" conveys the fall of heavy flakes, emphasizing the dynamism and infinity of snowfall. Rhetorical questions in the sixth and seventh stanzas, reinforced anaphora"may be". emphasize the main idea of the poem about the transience of time. Pasternak also uses such stylistic devices as inversion ("It's snowing, thick, thick") and antithesis (white snow - black stairs steps).

Pasternak was able to convey a sense of elusive time, an imperceptible approach to the turn of life, after which another life, another being begins. On the bend "crossroads" the poet calls to think about his direction in the movement of life, to appreciate every moment lived in the fleeting run of time.

Poem by B.L. Pasternak "It's snowing" (perception, interpretation, evaluation)

Boris Leonidovich Pasternak is rightly called one of the most significant poets of the twentieth century. He is a great master of the word and a philosopher in poetry.
Philosophy as a whole is inherent in the writers of this ambiguous century, but Pasternak's work is distinguished by a special depth of thought and feeling, a subtle and accurate analysis of the human soul. The motives for global reflection on the meaning of being and the role of man in it can be traced in many of his works. They are especially clearly visible in the last collection of selected poems, which never saw the light of day during the author's lifetime. And one of the most important poems in this book is "It's snowing."

When reading the work for the first time, the fact that it is strangely similar to a children's counting rhyme immediately catches your eye:

It's snowing, it's snowing

To the white stars in the blizzard

Stretching geranium flowers

For the window frame.

Repetitions, a clear and jerky rhythm of the poem, at first set us up for frivolity, lightness. And the first picture that we see is a picture of winter, snow falling outside the window. I must say that the description of winter and snowfall is quite common in Pasternak's work.

Turning to the composition and poetic size of the work, it is worth noting that they also create the impression of a children's rhyme. The meter is torn, the ring rhyme alternates with cross, the composition itself looks chaotic, indefinite. But it should be noted that in the course of the work the stanzas become longer and the tension, the dynamics of the text increases. This compositional choice is not accidental. The intention of the author is revealed gradually. At first it seems to us that we are talking about ordinary things - snowfall outside the window, stairs, crossroads ... But reading further, we begin to wonder if the poet's idea is so simple?

It's snowing, it's snowing

As if not flakes are falling,

And in the patched coat

The sky descends to the ground.

An extended metaphor in which the sky is compared with a certain man "in a patched coat" evokes biblical motifs that are not uncommon in Pasternak's poems. At this moment, the presence of something high, not quite earthly, begins to be felt ... One feels the anticipation of something mystical. Here's what we see next:

Like a weirdo

From the top staircase

Sneak around playing hide and seek

The sky is coming down from the attic.

The discrepancy between the great and the everyday is immediately striking: the abstract sky, embodied in the image of an “eccentric”, “playing hide and seek” with himself. There is a pronounced contrast. I must say that the whole work is built on contrast. Big and small, simple and great, everyday and unusual, finally, even black and white (white snow and black stairs) coexist side by side in this amazing poem.

The color painting is very eloquent: black and white, the colors are disturbing and mystical. Involuntarily, a sublimely tragic mood is created. What did the author really want to tell us by describing this picture? The following lines give us a clue:

Because life doesn't wait.

Do not look back, and - Christmas time.

Only a short interval

Look, there is a new year.

The snow is falling, thick, thick.

In step with him, those feet,

At the same pace, with that laziness

Or with the same speed

Maybe time passes?

The fatalism of the poet is clearly felt in these lines. He likens human life to a thick stream of snowflakes, where each one is one of us:

It's snowing, it's snowing

It's snowing and everyone is in turmoil...

Just like snowflakes, we inevitably fall down, to aging and dying, and are unable to change or slow down our flight. And our life is like a back staircase, and no one knows what awaits him on the next step, around the corner of the intersection. Our life is a mixture of the simple and the great, the absurd and almost divine.

And now the “whitewashed (whether for years or snow) pedestrian” is approaching the turn of the intersection. What's next? Who knows. Only "surprised plants" are looking at us. Nature is the great and silent observer in Pasternak's work.

But oddly enough, the poet's fatalism turns into the theme of hope, the theme of the continuity of life, because "it's snowing." And this means that everything will last, everything will repeat itself, there will be new years, new people and snowflakes ...

Listen to Pasternak's poem It's snowing