Theme of the Motherland in Lermontov's lyrics (School essays). Theme of the Motherland in lyrics A

Pushkin's lyrics reflect the poet's feelings and moods in the period from 1814 to 1837. Creative path the poet's life lasted 23 years. The diversity of views on life, love, and on the poet and poetry has undergone changes. Even in Onegin a lot has been changed. Pushkin's views have evolved. There is no such evolution in Lermontov's lyrics. Lermontov writes from 1828 to 1841 - 11 years. During his lifetime, no more than 30 poems were published. Lermontov was very demanding and strict with himself. The themes of his lyrics are very diverse, and his mood is stable. Both Pushkin and Lermontov are exponents of the ideas of their era.

“Like any real one, and even more so great poet“Lermontov confessed his poetry, and by leafing through the volumes of his works, we can read the history of his soul and understand him as a poet and a person.” I. Andronikov.

Lermontov's creativity falls on a transitional period in the development of Russian society - from noble revolutionism to mixed-democratic thinking. Lermontov is the successor of Pushkin’s ideological and artistic traditions. They are both representatives of that direction of literature, which reflected reflections, doubts, and denials. These poets are the creators of the hero of their time, extra person(Onegin and Pechorin).

Lermontov's work is unusually original. The line separating Pushkin and Lermontov is December 14, 1825. Lermontov entered literature when revolutionary hopes were destroyed. Hence the originality of his lyrics - the joylessness of poetry, loneliness, the premonition of tragic death. However, faith in the people, in their powerful forces, largely helped the poet overcome these moods, and in his lyrics the theme of the poet and poetry, the theme of the homeland, nature was established; many of his works are bitter thoughts about fate younger generation era.

Patriotic lyrics occupy an important place in Lermontov's poetry. According to the poet, the attitude towards the homeland determines the position of both the person and the poet. Lermontov loved Russia passionately, loved it as much as best people of his time - Belinsky, Herzen, as later Chernyshevsky, Nekrasov, Dobrolyubov. Love for Russia was combined in him with hatred of the enemies of the Russian people, with a protest against tyranny, serfdom, and violence against the individual. Motifs of love for the homeland are found already in the poet’s early poems. The pain for the beloved homeland is heard in the poem “The Turk’s Complaints”:

Early life there is hard for people,

There, after success comes reproach,

There a man groans from slavery and chains!..

Friend! this region... my homeland!

In 1831, the poet wrote “Borodin’s Field”, on the same topic as the later “Borodino”. This poem is the first embodiment of the thoughts and feelings living in the soul of the patriotic poet. Written in 1837 by Lermontov, who had reached political maturity, “Borodino” became one of the readers’ favorite poems. The poem was written in connection with the twenty-year anniversary of the Battle of Borodino. It is written in the form of a conversation between a young soldier and a veteran who took part in the War of 1812. Essentially, “Borodino” is the story of an ordinary soldier about the Battle of Borodino, since only the first 7 lines belong to his interlocutor. The story is told epically, in the calm tone of a man proud of his heroic generation, but at the same time not prone to boasting and false phrases. Only occasionally does the hero-fighter’s speech sound solemn:

We'll go and break the wall,

Let's stand with our heads

For your homeland!

The true patriotism of the Russian people, without posturing, without boasting, is reflected in the poem. The mood of Russian soldiers before the battle is shown in four expressive lines.

The old people grumbled:

What about us? for winter apartments!

Don't the commanders dare?

Aliens tear up their uniforms

Oh Russian bayonets!

The image of the colonel is surrounded by an aura of high heroism. In his mouth are words that were repeated so many times by Soviet soldiers in 1941:

Guys! Isn't Moscow behind us?

We'll die near Moscow,

How our brothers died.

The image of the narrator himself also evokes sympathy: his story reflects those qualities that we still value in a Russian soldier: willingness to die for the homeland, courage, faith in victory, pride in Russian military art, pride in one’s generation. However, Borodin’s true hero is the Russian people, the “mighty, dashing tribe,” these are the ordinary soldiers who won victories in the war with the French. It is to the people that Lermontov sings glory in his poem, acting as a national poet.

The verse “Borodin” is unique; it sounds like colloquial speech and is written in iambic tetrameter. This is the first poem that Lermontov wanted to show to Pushkin and publish in Sovremennik.

Lermontov’s youthful poem “Two Giants,” which also artistically reflected the events of 1812, is imbued with a sense of pride for one’s people and one’s homeland. The “old Russian giant” is waiting for “another from distant alien countries” to join him. “Russian Knight” - “old Russian giant” - is calm, unperturbed, as if he knows the outcome of the struggle in advance, and is mighty like a hero. It is enough for him to “shake his head” for the daring newcomer to be defeated. The image of him is completed by a figurative detail: “in a cap of cast gold,” which likens the giant to the golden-domed Moscow Kremlin. “Giant” is the embodiment of the strength of all of Rus', but above all of Moscow, which did not surrender and did not submit to the French. The strength and courage of the “alien” is a manifestation of reckless audacity. The pride with which Lermontov writes about the victory of the “Russian giant” reveals his patriotism, love for military glory fatherland.

Many of Lermontov's poems have become a new phenomenon in Russian poetry, because they sound civil indignation and protest against the Nikolaev reality around him, which destroys the most talented. The poem “The Death of a Poet” is dedicated to the tragic death of Pushkin; the first part of it resembles an elegy, where the author mourns the death of a wondrous genius, who was the glory and pride of Russia. Lermontov knew well not only Pushkin’s work, but also the last, tragic few years of his life. That’s why he writes about his unequal struggle with the world, with high-ranking officials who knew “his free, bold gift,” and who condoned the murder of the great genius of Russian poetry. The author expressed pain, bitterness and hatred of the world in the second part of the poem.

High society, according to Lermontov, is “masks pulled together with decency,” and the poet often dreams of moving away from them into the wonderful past. “How often, surrounded by a motley crowd,” Lermontov recalls about his dear, native Tarkhanov places:

Native all places: high manor house

And a garden with a destroyed greenhouse

A green network of grass covers the sleeping pond

And beyond the pond the village is smoking - and they get up

In the distance there are fogs over the fields.

Once upon a time here the poet cried and loved, but he knows that it is impossible to live only by attachment to the “recent antiquity”! No matter how beautiful she is. The author is a fighter, he cannot be passive in life, fly away with his dreams into the past. His weapon is the poetic word, and using it, he wrote one of the most powerful political poems, “Farewell, Unwashed Russia.” It is imbued with hatred of the tsar, the gendarmes - the “blue uniforms”, and the bitterness of a patriot who reproaches the people for their obedience. So, Lermontov at the end of his life perceived Russia as “a country of slaves, a country of masters.” In Lermontov's lyrics, a true feeling of love for the fatherland is contrasted with official patriotism. He condemns official Russia. A large place in Lermontov’s poetry is also occupied by direct expression of love for the homeland. If the poem “Farewell, Unwashed Russia” sounds hatred, sarcasm, and satirical denunciation of the ruling classes, then in a number of other poems the poet expressed his love for true Russia, for Russia-the Fatherland. One of the best examples of the poet’s patriotic lyrics is the poem “Motherland”.

On March 18, 1841, Belinsky wrote to Botkin: “If his “Motherland” is published, then, Allah-Kerim, what a thing - Pushkin’s, that is, one of Pushkin’s best.”

The theme of the poem is determined by the title itself: “Motherland.” This is no longer Russia in “blue uniforms,” but the country of the Russian people, the fatherland of the poet. The poet calls his love “strange.”

I love the Fatherland, but with a strange love.

This love is not like the official patriotism of the ruling classes. It is composed of the poet’s ardent love for the Russian people and love for his native Russian nature. The poem recreates pictures of native nature: the cold silence of the steppes, “boundless swaying forests,” “sea-like” river floods. The native nature is majestic.

Next, the poet’s thought turns to the people: “I like to ride in a cart along a country road.” “The Country Road” leads us to the village, and the way of life of Russian people appears, a touching, sad image of the Russian village:

And, with a slow gaze piercing the shadow of the night,

Meet on the sides, sighing for an overnight stay,

Trembling lights of sad villages.

The life of the simple Russian people is close and understandable to the poet; everything connected with the life of the Russian peasant is dear:

With joy unknown to many,

I see a complete threshing floor

A hut covered with straw

Window with carved shutters.

The people appear before the eyes of the lyrical hero on weekdays and on holidays.

And on a holiday, on a dewy evening

Ready to watch until midnight

To dance with stomping and whistling

Under the talk of drunken men.

The vocabulary of the poem, at first literary and bookish (“reason”, “glory bought with blood”), in the last part is replaced by simple colloquial speech(“jumping in a cart”, “smoke of stubble”, “talk of drunken peasants”). Russian nature, first presented in its stern grandeur, then appears in the touching image of “four white birches.” Iambic hexameter and iambic pentameter are replaced by iambic tetrameter in the poem. The rhyme is also varied - alternating, encompassing and paired rhyme.

The image of the poet in “Motherland” is a deeply loving his homeland Russian progressive person of the 40th. Belinsky called “Motherland” Pushkin's poem, because Pushkin was the first to show what true realism means in poetry, and Lermontov in “Motherland” is a realist poet. This poem was highly appreciated by Dobrolyubov: “Lermontov had, of course, talent and knew how to comprehend the shortcomings early modern society, was also able to understand that salvation from this false path lies only in the people. The proof is his amazing poem “Motherland”, in which he becomes decisively above all the prejudices of patriotism and understands love for the Fatherland truly, sacredly and rationally. The poem “Motherland” speaks of the turn of Lermontov’s work towards revolutionary-democratic poetry.

1901-1907 develops into different directions, more often parallel than intersecting. All of them are manifested in different ways in the “Motherland” section, which includes 27 poems from 1907-1916. The most important role in it is played by the cycle “On the Kulikovo Field” (1908).

A. Blok considers the famous battle as a symbolic event, main meaning which is revealed through two multi-valued figurative series, representing opposite life principles. All five poems are permeated by a bright, holy, divine principle: “holy banner”, “bright banner”, “for a holy cause”, “bright wife”, “in clothes flowing with light”, “bright forever”, “bright thoughts”, “Illuminated by fires”, “that the princess is wearing a veil”, etc. It is opposed by a dark, nocturnal, ominous beginning: “the horde moved like a black cloud”, “burned by dark fire”, “and even the darkness - nocturnal and foreign”, “let it be night”, “on the night when Mamai”, “before the dark and sinister”, etc.

These figurative rows are a kind of coordinate axis of the entire cycle. The lyrical hero, Rus', is at the intersection of these principles and elements. Hence the struggle at different levels: military-national and personal, the struggle against evil externally and within oneself, the struggle with varying success:

Let it be night. Let's get home. Let's illuminate the steppe distance with fires.

(“The river is spread out. Flows, lazily sad...”) Bright thoughts rise In my torn heart, And bright thoughts fall, Burned by dark fire.

(“Again with the age-old melancholy...”)

However, the presence of opposite principles in the cycle, the antithesis used as the main artistic device, do not indicate the duality of these principles, which is inherent in the work of the Symbolists. “On the Kulikovo Field” is distinguished by Christian hierarchy, the subordination of the system of images, the value scale to the source of light - God (hence the non-random symbolism that was discussed). The thoughts of the heroes are addressed to the Creator in different ways at the most critical moments:

So that it is not in vain to fight with the Tatars, to lie down dead for a holy cause!

(“We, my friend, stood over the steppe at midnight...”) Now your hour has come. - Pray!

(“Again on the Kulikovo field...”)

The divine principle, present in all five poems, as a value-based and structurally determining principle, is never questioned, much less discredited, as it was before June 1908 and many times after it.

This cycle is not so characteristic of the poet’s work and is related to another unconscious feeling - melancholy. She, one of the key images in A. Blok’s lyrics, is the product of two elements: natural and human (“The river has spread out. // Flows, lazily sad...”). Natural melancholy and sadness exist as a given, as the ancestral home of the Russian person. An Asian principle is peculiarly grafted onto this melancholy: “Our path is an arrow of the ancient Tatar will // Pierced into our chest.” And as a result - the boundlessness, vastness, eternity of Russian melancholy.

In this context, it has become a tradition to cite the words of A. Pushkin “There is no happiness in the world, but there is peace and will” as an expression of the ideal that precedes Blok’s melancholy-will. I think there is no basis for such statements. In terms of continuing the passage “It’s time, my friend, it’s time! The heart asks for peace...” A. Pushkin quite definitely said: “Oh, how soon will I transfer my penates to the village - fields, garden, peasants, books; poetic works - family, love, etc. - religion, death” (Pushkin A. Complete collected works: In 10 volumes - T. 3- - M., 1957). That is, this ideal does not coincide in any way with the Asian one from “On the Kulikovo Field”: Pushkin’s will is “tied” to the main “cults” that underlie the traditional national worldview - land, family, people, religion, death.

Blok’s attitude to the Asian path, to melancholy-will is usually interpreted as unconscious and contradictory. This approach is generated primarily by the ascertaining characteristics of the cycle, which do not express the author’s assessments. In the fourth poem, where the poet’s position is naked, the following is said about the influence of the Tatar will - at the level of the individual and the eternal level: “Wild passions are unleashed // Under the yoke of the flawed moon”; “And bright thoughts fall, // Burnt by dark fire.” It is clear that this influence cannot be called positive.

The solution offered in this situation is indicative: Appear, my wondrous wonder! Teach me to be bright!

At first glance, the “wonderful wonder” is not Tyutchev’s: “I believe, my God! Come to the aid of my unbelief!...” (“Our Century”). However, if we take the “wonderful wonder” in the context of the “bright” figurative series of the cycle, ending with the final thought of the fifth poem: “Now your hour has come. “Pray!”, then it will become clear: before us is a rare case when the positions of A. Blok and F. Tyutchev coincide.

Of course, it is impossible not to notice: what F. Tyutchev exists as a nature, for A. Blok it is the most difficult volitional decision, which at the level of feeling and thought has a serious counterweight. This determines the further development of the theme of the Motherland in the poet’s work. The Christian vertical to one degree or another determined the direction of the poems “There is a brightened edge of the sky...” (1910), “Dreams” (1912), “I did not betray the white banner...” (1914), “Those born in the age of deaf. ..” (1914), “Wild Wind” (1916). The Asian vertical, ending with “The Twelve” and “Scythians,” gave rise to works that have become iconic.

In the poem “Russia” (1908) three equal parts can be distinguished. The first sets the tone in the depiction of the Motherland, which will become predominant, often the only one in subsequent works of the cycle: “And the painted knitting needles get stuck // Into loose ruts,” “poor Russia,” “gray huts.” Here there is a subtle lyrical note (“Your songs are like the wind to me, // Like the first tears of love”), which is difficult to evaluate unambiguously, because such an attitude of the hero towards his homeland is adjacent to the confession: “I don’t know how to feel sorry for you...”. If this is love, then it is not traditional Russian, where pity and love are feelings of at least the same root.

In the second part, direct characteristics of Russia appear: “robber beauty”, “beautiful features”. The question arises: is such a neighborhood, such a significant series, an accident or a pattern? The oxymoronic phrase “robber beauty” gives reason to assume that this series is a pattern.

It also contains an explanation for the inability to regret: “You will not be lost, you will not perish...”. Blok’s faith rests on two “pillars,” the first of which is “an instant glance from under a scarf.” With a high degree of accuracy, we can assume that we are talking about a gaze that plunges into a whirlpool of carnal passions.

The second component of the faith of the hero-author is the “dull song of the coachman,” ringing with “prison melancholy.” It is clear that the key is the last part of the image, generated by the well-known “left” tradition, implying “liberation” pathos in this melancholy. Thus, Blok, ignoring the essence of Russia, creates a myth that is realized in different ways in “Carmen”, “The Twelve”, “Scythians” and other works, in particular, in the poem “My Russia, my life, shall we suffer together? .." (1910).

Already in the first stanza, the predatory and dangerous motif receives a natural, only now state continuation: My Russia, my life, shall we suffer together? Tsar, yes Siberia, yes Ermak, yes prison!

There is no need to guess about the essence of Russian statehood in such a context...

The theme of love for the Motherland in this poem takes on a new and unexpected sound:

Eh, isn’t it time to separate, to repent... What does a free heart need your darkness for?

The position of the hero is the position of a person who is not only forced to toil with Russia, due to circumstances living in his homeland and thinking about separation from it, but also acts in relation to his homeland as a judge.

Using a ring composition, A. Blok introduces antitheses into the first and last stanzas (the free heart and spirit of the hero are contrasted with the darkness and sleepy haze of Russia), which predetermine and explain the harsh verdict on the fatherland in the second stanza.

It begins: “Did you know? Or did you believe in God? // What will you hear from your songs?” - these are rhetorical questions that aggravate the hopelessness of assessments, including hidden sarcasm. The hopelessness is also reinforced by the lines where direct characteristics of Russia are given: “She did something strange, but Merya decided // Gates, roads, and milestones,” and a stanza built on the principle of discrediting, crossing out what has been done:

You cut down boats and cities along the rivers, But you didn’t reach the Constantinople shrines... Sokolov, you released swans into the steppe - A black haze rushed out of the steppe...

Among the images that illustrate, to one degree or another, the author’s vision of history, we note the “double” one that precedes “Scythians”: “red glow” - “sleepy haze”.

The poem “New America” (1913) is of interest primarily because it contains a rare fundamental confession: “I can’t see your face,” which partly explains the author’s position in “Rus”, “Russia” and other named and unnamed works. The natural surroundings perception of the country (“beyond the snow, forests, steppes”) prevents us from understanding the main thing - the essence, the spirit of Russia; what is called “face” in the poem. And if the question of the second stanza: “Is there only a terrible expanse before our eyes, // An incomprehensible expanse without end?” - carries internal dissatisfaction with such an emotional-spatial vision of Russia, then the explanation that follows helps to understand why the “face” of the Motherland is inaccessible.

It is inaccessible, first of all, because there is no faith in Orthodox Russia, in “pious” Rus'. In “New America”, “Sin shamelessly, unstoppably...” and some other poems, the image of “Holy Russia” from “The Twelve” is already presented in a dismantled form - “a shady, hut-like, fat-assed one.” And one thing is clear: in relation to her, the author is in solidarity with the twelve Red Guards. True, so far we are not talking about “shooting” at “Holy Rus'”.

In “New America,” Blok the two-worlder is again one-dimensional, one-linear. Through the “attributes” of faith: “voice of prayer”, “ringing of bells”, “crosses” - the hero sees something else that is decisive for him, which is only “hinted at”:

No, not an old face and not a lean one Under a Moscow colored handkerchief!<...>Whispering, quiet speeches, Your flushed cheeks...

This is how the constant desire to see Carmen in Russia, the willingness to believe in Russia-Carmen, is realized.

Constancy is also manifested in another way: in N. Nekrasov (whose perception of the homeland was clearly in tune with the poet), Russia, as is well known, is “both wretched and abundant...”, while in Ablok’s “New America” it is only “poor Finnish...” ." This “left” color blindness - the ability to see only one side of a multifaceted phenomenon - is found in the writer’s work more than once: in “Russia”, “ Autumn day", "Retribution", "The Twelve" and other works.

E. Etkind, commenting on the poet’s article “Without God, without Inspiration,” asks the question: “Where did Blok get such a ferociously elaborate syllable?” And a little later he answers it himself, referring to the testimony of a memoirist and biographer about the poet’s mental illness, which was accompanied by “causeless outbursts of rage” (Etkind E. The crisis of symbolism and acmeism // Etkind E. There, inside. About Russian poetry of the 20th century. - St. Petersburg, 1995).

It is noteworthy that the one-sided characteristics of Russia and the misrepresentation of its spiritual essence did not raise any objections from any well-known blockologist. Moreover, many, like G. Fedotov, “wanted to enrich through Blok<...>knowledge about Russia" (Fedotov G. On the Kulikovo field // "Literary studies", 1989, No. 4). Here, for example, is how V. Orlov, who devoted his entire life to studying his work, “enriched” himself with the help of the poet: “This is that historical, “Byzantine” Russia, which is called holy in the language of the Katkovs and Leontyevs, the Pobedonostsevs and Stolypins, the Menshikovs and Purish - Keviches, “the country of slaves, the country of masters,” where everything seemed to be put in place once and for all: God on the icon, the king on the throne, the priest on the pulpit, the landowner on the land, the moneybags in the factory, the policeman at the post. Here they shook their fat bellies and took care of their property, judged and sued, took bribes and doped them with vodka, raped and flogged, and in the gymnasiums they taught that Pushkin adored the Tsar and revered his superiors” (Orlov V. Gamayun. - M., 1981).

I do not question the existence of Blok’s Russia in reality, but I doubt the productivity of such a view, such an artistic method. The poet himself rightly wrote about the possibility and necessity of a different approach in October 1911: “We again need the whole soul, everything worldly, the whole person... Let’s return to psychology... Back to the soul, not only to “man”, but also to the whole person - with spirit, soul and body, with everyday things - three times like this" (BlokA.

Diary. - M., 1989). Unfortunately, this principle in relation to Russia is most often not observed by Blok: in his mature lyrics the spirit, the soul of the fatherland is practically absent.

N. Nekrasov (who, according to the generally accepted and fair opinion, was in tune with the poet in understanding many issues) in the brilliant poem “Silence” has lines that convey a state of mind that is clearly inaccessible to A. Blok, the author of the third volume of lyrics:

Come in! Christ will lay his hands and, by the will of the saint, will remove the shackles from the soul, the torment from the heart, And the ulcers from the sick conscience... I listened... I was touched as a child... And for a long time I wept and beat against the old slabs with my forehead, So that I would forgive, so that interceded.

In the poem “To sin shamelessly, unstoppably...” (1914), A. Blok, in his depiction of the Motherland, follows a well-trodden rut, on which he is sadly predictable (once again the Fatherland appears in the form of a “dark kingdom”). It is surprising that the poet psychologically unconvincingly combines two incompatible human types in the lyrical hero.

The social limitations of the author’s vision of man and Russia are clearly manifested in this case. Thus, the hero - a representative of the “dark kingdom” - is deprived by ABlok of any healthy principles. If he does a good deed (donates money to the temple), then the poet immediately crosses out this deed: “And when he returns home, measure // For the same penny someone.” The schematism and one-sidedness in the depiction of life here and further in the text is manifested to the utmost degree: And under the lamp by the icon Drink tea, snapping away the bill, Then salivate over the coupons, Open the pot-bellied chest of drawers, And fall on the feather beds in a heavy sleep...

Similar stereotypes in the depiction of “old” Russia will be reflected in “The Twelve,” “The Intelligentsia and the Revolution.”

However, in the first part of the poem, it seems, it is not about the “Wild Ones”, but about their judges - intellectuals, for “to walk by the side in God's temple", "Secretly to the spit-stained floor // Hot touch with forehead" - this is the behavior of a person cut off from his religious and national roots. The facts from the two parts, relatively speaking, “intellectual” and “philistine”, also fit poorly: on the one hand, “losing count of the nights and days”, “difficult head from drunkenness”, on the other - albeit with sarcasm, but it’s all about about work. That is, in order for “slobbery coupons” to appear, you need to work.

It was this combination of pain, pity, love for the Motherland and misunderstanding, rejection of its essence, spiritual purpose that determined the pathos of “Kite” (1916) - the poem that concludes the “Motherland” section. Blok gives a negative meaning to the mother’s covenant to “carry the cross.” Therefore, the answer to the question that crowns the work does not raise any doubts in him: the deliverance of man, of Russia, from misfortunes, from the “kite” is possible only on the path of disobedience, crossing the cross.

When this soon happened, Blok, as follows from all that was said, was ready to exclaim: “Black malice, holy malice,” “Eh, eh, without a cross...”.

Moscow, Moscow! I love you like a son! Like a Russian -
strong, fiery and tender.
I.Yu. Lermontov

The theme of the Motherland is one of the leading themes in creativity. The homeland is the poet’s positive ideal, which is why the poet’s desire to glorify it is so great, no matter what it is. In the poet’s poems, the Motherland appears in different ways: on the one hand, for him Russia is his Motherland, where he was born and raised. Lermontov loved and glorified this kind of Russia. On the other hand, he saw Russia as a country ruled by rude, cruel power, suppressing all human aspirations, and most importantly, people's will. This dual understanding of Russia is reflected in Lermontov’s poems.

“I love the Fatherland, but with a strange love. My reason will not defeat her, nor glory bought with blood, nor peace full of proud trust,” Lermontov wrote in.

In the poem “When the Yellowing Field is Worried,” Lermontov reflects on his “ strange love"to the Motherland. Lermontov subtly feels the beauty of his native nature and unity with it. In communication with the nature of his native land, the poet feels spiritual closeness with the Motherland. The poet’s feeling is manifested in his love for simple Russian landscapes, for “a couple of whitening birches.” Native spaces calm the poet, connecting with nature, the poet feels happy:

Then the anxiety of my soul is humbled,
Then the wrinkles on the forehead disperse, -
And I can comprehend happiness on earth,
And in the sky I see God...

Nature gives the poet peace of mind and warmth of the heart.

The poet continues to express his “strange love” for the Motherland in the poem “Motherland.” Slavishly submissive Russia is not yet the Motherland. The homeland for Lermontov is “the cold silence of the steppes,” “its boundless swaying forests,” it is the people, ordinary Russian people with their joys and sorrows.

With joy unknown to many,
I see a complete threshing floor
A hut covered with straw
Window with carved shutters.

Russia with its unsolved secrets is close and dear to Lermontov. The poet’s love also remained unsolved. The poet calls his love strange, also because in loving, he suffers, suffers and mourns together with the Motherland and the people. Therefore, Lermontov’s Russia is not only landscape sketches, native lands dear to the heart. Lermontov’s homeland is “...unwashed Russia, a country of slaves, a country of masters,...blue uniforms, and...a people devoted to them.” He was always worried about the fate of Russia, so it was painful for the poet to realize that his Motherland was mired in inhumanity, cruelty and misunderstanding. The poet does not want to see Russia - the country of “slaves and masters”, does not accept it, that’s why he says: “”

The happiness and glory of the Fatherland, faith in its liberation - this is what Mikhail Yuryevich dreamed of. “Go into the fire for the honor of the Fatherland, for convictions, for love!” - the poet calls. The famous is imbued with such a patriotic mood.

The poet loved and respected the Russian people; he understood that it was ordinary Russian men who saved Russia during the War of 1812. They were always ready to die for their Motherland:

Guys! Isn’t Moscow behind us?
We'll die near Moscow,
How our brothers died!

The soldier leading the story is not alone, he speaks on behalf of everyone. At the same time, he constantly emphasizes the general patriotic spirit and general attitude to war as a serious military duty:

And we promised to die
And they kept the oath of allegiance
We are at the Battle of Borodino.

The poet clearly shares the patriotic feeling of the hero of his poem. But, unfortunately, he does not see their continuation in his current generation. The generation of Lermontov's contemporaries does not need anything, does not strive for anything. They care only about their personal good, and they are of little interest in improving the life of Russia. Therefore, the poem contrasts the “present time” and the past. The old soldier says: “Yes, there were people in our time, not like the current tribe...” In these words, the poet’s reproach to his generation, which both hates and loves “by chance, without sacrificing anything to either anger or love,” Modern generation incapable of feats, lost contact with the people. Simple and natural relationships between Russian soldiers in war are opposed to the immoral laws by which the “current tribe” lives.

The fate of his generation is one of the most important issues, which worries Lermontov. This generation lives in an era of “timelessness”, the main feature of which was the absence of social ideals. The oppressive atmosphere reigning in Russia at the end of the 20s of the 19th century is described by the poet in. In the country, a gifted person cannot develop his talents, because in an atmosphere of fear, suspicion, and denunciation, only nonentities live well, and a smart, strong man feels the emptiness and purposelessness of his existence:

And it seems stuffy in the homeland,
And the heart is heavy and the soul is sad...
Knowing neither love nor sweet friendship...

The poet's love for Russia is real, demanding, deep. He is far from tender, he does not forgive her shortcomings. The poet's ambivalent attitude towards his homeland is evident in every line of his works. This is “poor and abundant” Russia - his beloved homeland, but at times pain and anger break out at human long-suffering, slavish humility, which the poet cannot and does not want to accept, understand, or explain.

An important place in Lermontov's lyrics occupies homeland theme. Lermontov passionately loved his homeland, but sharply denounced despotism, serfdom, and the police regime that continued to exist in Russia even at the beginning of the 1840s. Let's take the poem as an example "Farewell, unwashed Russia..." (1841):

Goodbye, unwashed Russia,

Country of slaves, country of masters,

And you, blue uniforms,

And you, their devoted people.

Perhaps behind the wall of the Caucasus

I'll hide from your pashas,

From their all-seeing eye,

From their all-hearing ears.

The poet contrasts Russia with “blue uniforms” (the uniform of the gendarmes), suffering from despotism and slavery free Caucasus.

Lermontov dedicated the ballad “Borodino” to the heroic past of the country.

And in the poem “How often, surrounded by a motley crowd...” the poet writes about his “small homeland”, about his childhood in the lap of nature on the Tarkhany estate (“all native places”).

The theme of nature is also present in the poem “Motherland” (1841) - the poet’s lyrical reflection on his native country.

The poem can be roughly divided into three parts.

In the first lines of the work, the poet talks about his “strange” love for the fatherland:

I love my fatherland, but with a strange love!

My reason will not defeat her.

Nor glory bought with blood,

Nor the peace full of proud trust,

Nor the dark old treasured legends

No joyful dreams stir within me.

As we see, the poet doesn't consider it important in his love for his homeland nor the military glory of Russia(“glory bought with blood”), nor the majestic calm autocratic state (“peace full of proud trust”), not even the legendary past of the Russian people(“treasured legends of dark antiquity”).

The poet’s “strange” love for his fatherland is, first of all, love for Russian nature, for the common people, which is what is said in the subsequent lines of “Motherland”.

In the second part poems the poet paints a picturesque picture native land. He depicts Russia from a bird's eye view: its majestic expanses, endless steppes and forests open up before the reader. The poet reflects:

But I love - for what, I don’t know myself -

Its steppes are coldly silent,

Her boundless forests sway,

The floods of its rivers are like seas.

A characteristic of Lermontov's poetry arises image of the path. Sounds wandering motif, correlated with motive of peace:

On a country road I like to ride in a cart

And, with a slow gaze piercing the shadow of the night,

Meet on the sides, sighing for an overnight stay,

Trembling lights of sad villages...

It is characteristic that the image of the path is deprived Here romantic coloring; we're talking about country road, about those encountered by the traveler poor, sad villages.

Finally, in the last part poem arises rural landscape. It opens before the reader picture of a rural holiday.

Free iambic(mostly penta- and hexameter), conveying the poet’s majestic thoughts about his homeland, is replaced by a conversationally casual iambic tetrameter:

I love the smoke of burnt stubble,

A convoy spending the night in the steppe

And on a hill in the middle of a yellow field

A couple of white birches.

With joy unknown to many,

I see a complete threshing floor

A hut covered with straw

Window with carved shutters;

And on a holiday, on a dewy evening,

Ready to watch until midnight

To dance with stomping and whistling

Under the talk of drunken men.

The last fragment of "Motherland" reminds us Pushkin's poems from Onegin's Travels: “I need other pictures...” It is not for nothing that Belinsky wrote about Lermontov’s “Motherland” that this work is “one of Pushkin’s best.” In his poem, Lermontov clearly acts not as a romantic poet, but as "poet of reality"

The work sounds like Pushkin optimistic. There is no stamp of despondency, hopelessness, or sorrow in it. A somewhat sad mood when contemplating native spaces does not contradict the bright, life-affirming pathos works .

N.A. Dobrolyubov wrote that in the poem “Motherland” Lermontov “understands love for the fatherland truly, sacredly and rationally.”

“The Prophet”: the result of reflections on the fate of the poet

Poem "Prophet" (1841) completes in the works of Lermontov theme of the poet and poetry. In his work, Lermontov clearly builds on Pushkin’s “The Prophet” (1826). He begins the story from the moment at which Pushkin ended his work: the hero acquired a prophetic gift and received a command from God to serve people. The fate of Lermontov's prophet turned out to be sad:

Since the Eternal Judge

He gave me the omniscience of a prophet,

I read in people's eyes

Pages of malice and vice.

They did not understand the prophet; they “threw stones madly” at him. Only nature, which does not know human sins, listens to him:

And the stars listen to me

Joyfully playing with rays.

At the same time, the “noisy hail” greets the prophet with ridicule and insults.

Various and myself the appearance of Pushkin and Lermontov's prophets. Pushkin emphasizes that his hero acquires supernatural qualities; at the moment of the beginning of the ministry he appears in glory and fully armored with the Word of God. Lermontov, not forgetting about the “omniscience” of the prophet, notes at the same time his human weakness, external squalor: he is thin, pale, dressed in rags.

Pushkin's poem is designed in a high style; it is saturated with Slavicisms. Lermontov combines in his poem words and expressions of high style(“Eternal Judge”, “omniscience of the prophet”, “covenant of the Eternal”) With spoken language (“Look, children, at him...”).

Thus, theme of the poet's tragic fate, planned back in early works Lermontov (“No, I’m not Byron, I’m different...”) and who reached the pinnacle in “The Death of a Poet,” finds her own in “The Prophet.” artistic completion.

Questions and tasks

1. Name the years of Lermontov’s life. Tell us about the poet’s childhood, about his studies in Moscow. Name a few early poems. What work of the poet brought him wide fame? Tell us about Lermontov's first exile in the Caucasus. What works did he write during this exile? Where did the poet live during the period between the two exiles? What prose work was he working on at this time? What lyrical and lyric epic works did he write then? In what year was the poet sent into second Caucasian exile? List the works created by the poet in recent years his life. Under what circumstances did Lermontov die? What can you say about the poet’s character, about his worldview?

2. In what era did Lermontov’s creativity flourish? Briefly describe this time. What trends of the era were reflected in Lermontov’s work?

3. What contributed to the formation of Lermontov’s romantic worldview? Determine the most important facets of the poet’s romantic ideal.

4. Describe the lyrical hero of Lermontov’s poetry in his evolution. Why is Lermontov often called the “poet of thought”?

5. What are the main genres of Lermontov’s poetry? How do the genres of lyrical reflection and oratorical thought differ from traditional elegy and ode? What can you say about the ballad genre in Lermontov's poetry? How does Lermontov transform the genre of his message?

6. What is a poetic symbol? Give examples of images-symbols in Lermontov’s poems.

7. Name the main motives of Lermontov’s poetry. How do they relate to each other?

8. What themes and motifs are present in Lermontov’s early works? What variations of the freedom motif can be heard in the poet’s early lyrics? Give examples. How do the motifs of struggle and peace correlate in the works of early Lermontov? Analyze the poems “Sail”, “Angel”. What sound does it take on? early lyrics poet's motive of love?

9. Analyze the poem “The Death of a Poet.” Tell us about the circumstances of its writing. How does this work correlate the images of the Poet, his murderer, as well as “the arrogant descendants of famous fathers known for their meanness”?

10. Analyze the poems “When the yellowing field is agitated...” and “I, the Mother of God, now with prayer...” Which motifs in these works are similar, and which ones sound different?

11. Analyze the ballad “Borodino”. Why did L.N. Tolstoy call this work of Lermontov the “grain” of the novel “War and Peace”?

12. Analyze the poem “Duma”. What is the attitude of the poet himself towards the generation of the 1830s? What does he reproach his contemporaries for, what does he denounce them for? How does the poet think about the fate of his peers?

13.What theme unites the poems “Poet” and “There are speeches - meaning...”? Give a brief analysis of these works. What, according to Lermontov, should a real poet be? What influence does the poetic word have on a person?

14. Consider the poem “How often, surrounded by a motley crowd...” What are its genre and compositional features? How is the poet's ideal expressed here? In what words does the theme of the poet and poetry sound?

15. Why did Belinsky consider the poems “Both Boring and Sad” and “Testaments” to be Lermontov’s most pessimistic poems? Give them a brief overview.

16. What is the special mystery of the poem “Dream”? Analyze its composition. What forces allow the lyrical hero and his beloved to see each other in separation?

17. What is unique about the poem “No, it’s not you that I love so passionately...”? love letter? How did the “romantic dual world” manifest itself here? Who, according to researchers, does the poet call “the friend of his young days”?

18. Analyze the poem “Cliff”. Why did B.M. Eikhenbaum call this work a “small ballad”? What image-symbols do we find here and how can they be interpreted?

19. Analyze the poem “I go out alone on the road.” Why is this poem called one of the final poems in Lermontov’s poetry? What kind of symbolic images are found here? Give their interpretation.

20. Name Lermontov’s works that can be attributed to the theme of the homeland. What facets of this theme are revealed in Lermontov’s lyrics? Why does Lermontov talk about his “strange” love for his homeland in the poem “Motherland”? What does he mean here? What is the main thing in the poet’s love for his fatherland? What images confirm this? Why did Belinsky call “Motherland” Lermontov’s “Pushkin” work? What lines from “Eugene Onegin” echo the third part of “Motherland”? How did N.A. Dobrolyubov define Lermontov’s understanding of love for the fatherland?

21. Describe the poem “The Prophet” as the result of Lermontov’s thoughts about the fate of the poet. Compare Lermontov’s poem with Pushkin’s “Prophet”. What is unique about the two works?

22. Make an outline and prepare oral communication on the topic: “The main motives of Lermontov’s lyrics.”

The theme of the homeland in the lyrics of A. Blok.

The theme of the Motherland for Blok is one of important topics his creativity. He devoted his life to this topic. He was considered the singer of the Beautiful Lady, and the poet wrote many poems about Russia, loved her with all his heart, thought about her fate, about her future.
How does it reveal itself to us? How does the poet reveal himself in his patriotic lyrics?
In 1906, A. Blok wrote the poem “Rus”.
You read the first three lines of this poem and it seems that it is about the woman you love:
You are extraordinary even in your dreams.
I won't touch your clothes.
I doze - and behind the doze there is a secret...

No, this is not about a woman - this is about Russia. This is the dream of the hero of the poem, where his Motherland stands before him, his Rus' in all its beauty of lakes, lakes, mountains. This is an amazing country that the poet loves for everything: for traditions, for ancient legends, for songs, even for poverty, where “in the flaps of its rags” the hero hides the nakedness of his soul.

Rus' for a poet is unsolved mystery spirit of the people, Rus' is the great Russian people, resting in mystery:
I doze - and behind the doze there is a secret,
And Rus' rests in secret.
She is extraordinary in dreams too...

In 1908, the poet wrote the cycle “On the Kulikovo Field” - these are five poems dedicated to Russia, its historical past and future times that concern the poet.
Already the first stanzas are the pain and pride of the poet, whom Rus' perceives as a woman, a wife:

Oh, my Rus'! My wife! To the point of pain
We have a long way to go!
Our path is an arrow of the ancient Tatar will
Pierced us through the chest.

Probably no one has addressed Russia this way. Blok compares Rus' to a woman, a wife, with whom he has to go a long way, full of hardships, disappointments and losses:

And eternal battle! We only dream of peace
Through blood and dust...
The steppe mare flies, flies

In the verses “On the Kulikovo Field” there is a premonition of coming storms and tragedies. The poet sees the entire path of the country - “from the Kulikov field” to modern days. Block attaches great value Battle of Kulikovo as important event history.

The image of Russia is multifaceted: “I heard Your voice with my prophetic heart, In the cries of swans,” “Your face is not made by hands.” The image of Rus' is also compared with the image of the Mother of God.

A. Blok expressed his love for the Motherland, for the people of A, in the poem “Russia,” also written in 1908. This work combines the present, the real and something dreamy, very lyrical, as in the songs: Russia, poor Russia, Your gray huts are to me, Your wind songs are to me - Like the first tears of love!

The poet writes about Russia and reveals the Image of Christ, which, on the one hand, is lyrical in nature, and on the other - epic, folk. Blok speaks about such a Christ in the poem “Motherland”:
Once upon a time there, on top,
Grandfathers chopped down a hot frame
And they sang about their Christ.
In the image of Christ, the news of which comes from dark Russia, there is no humility; he bears retribution:
And rusty forest drops,
Born in the wilderness and darkness,
Carrying frightened Russia
The news of the burning Christ.
The image of Christ in the poem “The Twelve” is also about Russia, with which, in Blok’s opinion, Christ was close even in revolutionary days.
You can give many examples from other poems about Russia - it is different, our Motherland, in Blok’s work, but it is always warmed by the poet’s love, his loyalty, pride, hope.