Entrance"Poem without a Hero", analysis of Akhmatova's work. The artistic originality of Anna Akhmatova's "poem without a hero" Analysis of Akhmatova's poem "A poem without a hero"
The final solutions in thinking about her time, about the world and the person in it were found by Akhmatova in "A Poem without a Hero", which became for its author the result of life in poetry. The plot basis of its first part, the "Petersburg story" "The nine hundred and thirteenth year", was a real life drama: unable to withstand the betrayal of the woman he idolizes, the famous actress, charming and fickle O. A. Glebova-Sudeikin-na, he shot himself in love with her 22- summer poet and hussar Be. Knyazev.
Quite a trivial love drama, if not for its tragic outcome. But Akhmatova had no desire to write out interesting vicissitudes for any of her readers. She was struck by the deep - symbolic - meaning of what happened, as if by a bright beam of a spotlight that highlighted the essential features of the era. And the names mentioned above are never found in the poem: the place of real people is occupied by traditional characters of the theatrical masquerade.
An important circumstance for understanding the poem is that its characters do not live, but play life. Here everyone is wearing masks, everyone plays their role, in other words, they live an artificial life that lasts - but it only seems so - forever: "We only dream of the cock's cry, Outside the window the Neva smokes, The night is bottomless and lasts, lasts - Petersburg devilry" . However, one of the participants in this invented, funny and creepy game will have to pay for participation in it with his life.
The game of life continues outside the walls of the house, where a masquerade action takes place: "Everything is already in place, who is needed, The fifth act from the Summer Garden Blows ... The ghost of Tsushima hell is Right There."
Tragifarce, which is the plot basis of the "Petersburg story", belongs to its time. As the heroine of the poem belongs to him, the “Petersburg doll, the actor”, who “received friends in bed”: her alluring charm, the sensual principle embodied in her, sinful carelessness - all this attracted and had a destructive power, turned out to be the product of intoxication, so characteristic of St. Petersburg, which stood on the verge of destruction in 1913. Thus, the features of the “pre-war, prodigal and formidable” time are revealed in the poem, there is a feeling of invincibility, from which “along the legendary embankment, the real Twentieth Century was Approaching”.
With this new century, Akhmatova has her own difficult relationship, her own scores. His approach is given in the same tragic farce vein as the scenes of "midnight Hoffmann", only the city on the Neva now becomes the main character:
Christmas time was warmed by bonfires,
And carriages fell from the bridges,
And the whole mourning city floated
For an unknown destination
Along the Neva or against the current, -
Just away from your graves.
Akhmatova does not deny love to the city with which her whole life was connected: “I am inseparable from you, My shadow on your walls, My reflection in the canals, The sound of footsteps in the Hermitage halls, Where my friend wandered with me.” But it is here, in St. Petersburg, that the flow (more precisely, the ever-accelerating flight) of time is most tangible, the direction it is moving, what it brings with it, is most clearly tangible. After all, the tragedy of the "Dragoon Pierrot": "Who has little left to live, Who only asks God for death And who will be forever forgotten" - also belongs to time. As the fate of the author of the poem, full of drama, belongs to him. In both cases, the crisis nature of the era reveals itself, when the heyday turns into death, and ahead - “Is the vision of the Golden Age Or the black crime In the formidable chaos of ancient days? ".
Refusing to act as a judge, Akhmatova at the same time knows: "Retribution is coming anyway." The death of a young poet, who could not survive the betrayal of his beloved, is only the first act of the drama that was played out in the 20th century. in the realm of history. The fourteenth, and then the forty-first year showed its other scales. But it is no coincidence that the memory of the author of "A Poem Without a Hero" in besieged Leningrad returns to that "which has long been said goodbye."
"A poem without a hero" is plotless - it has an open ending: it is open to life. Its content is determined by the events of bygone years: “I sleep - I dream of our youth ...” But time itself is non-one-dimensional for the author of the poem: “As the future ripens in the past, So the past smolders in the future ...” That is why the poem “dreams about something what is going to happen to us…”, then an “incomprehensible rumble” was heard - the echoes of the steps of history, into which the life of the people and its poet fit without a trace.
“A Poem without a Hero” is the central work of Akhmatova, a triptych that has been subjected to the most diverse interpretations. And it seems that Akhmatova herself did not fully understand, or, in any case, preferred to hide from herself the secret meaning of this work that suddenly appeared to her.
Philologist Victor Zhirmunsky called the poem a symbolist dream come true. And in fact, the Symbolists somehow did not get along very well with a large form. The symbolist novel is, as a rule, a monstrous work because of the completely inadequate mixture of reality and the most unbridled fantasy; that is exactly what, say, Sologub's novel Navi's Enchantment is. Pasternak had to write Doctor Zhivago so that Russia would have an exemplary symbolist novel.
With the symbolist poem, too, things were not very good, perhaps because a really serious time distance was needed in order to discern the Silver Age and comprehend it. And with such a comprehension of the Russian Silver Age became "A Poem without a Hero", where it is directly said: "And the silver month is bright / Over the silver age it froze."
But, of course, the meaning of the poem is much more complicated and much more relevant for 1940 than an attempt to comprehend the year 1913. When in 1941 Akhmatova read the first part of the triptych to Tsvetaeva, she quipped: “You need to have great courage to write about Harlequins, Columbines and Pierrot in 1941.” Meanwhile, no special courage is required for this - one has only to think about what 1913 and 1940 have in common with each other. We will see with some horror - at least unexpectedly for ourselves - we will see that these years are pre-war, and Akhmatova's poem could with good reason called "Premonition" Patriotic War».
Akhmatova considered her poem clear enough: “The poem does not contain any third, seventh or twenty-ninth meanings. I won't change it or explain it. "Ezhe pisah - pisah"". Its meaning is indeed quite obvious, although it could not be revealed to the people of 1940, due to the fact that their own foreboding of the Patriotic War was not as clear and not as painful as that of Akhmatova.
I must say that Russian literature in 1914 did not feel anything special. Neither Mandelstam, nor, in particular, Pasternak, with his eternally joyful outlook, could have imagined that the world was on the verge of slaughter. And Akhmatova then wrote the famous prophetic poem "July 1914":
Smells like burning. four weeks
Dry peat burns in swamps.
Even the birds didn't sing today
And the aspen no longer trembles.
“... Only our land will not be divided
For your amusement adversary:
Mother of God white spread
Over great sorrows boards.
With the same sharpness she foresaw the catastrophe of 1941. And not only because in 1940 the Second World War was already in full swing (although it must be said that Akhmatova was one of the very few poets who immediately responded to the Second World War with mournful verses: “When an era is buried ...” and “Londoners”; she perceived these events as facts of a personal biography, since all of Europe was her home).
Akhmatova's painfully acute foreboding had another reason, which is not so easy to name aloud. Let us ask ourselves why Akhmatova alone was able to write the Requiem in 1937-1938? Why is all Russian poetry silent at this time? Yes, because go ahead and write a poem about repression from a humiliated, crushed state, from the state of a person who is constantly mocked.
And for Akhmatova, this lyrical pose is natural: she never seeks to be right, in this sense she is an Old Testament poet - for her, retribution has no moral reasons. “I am a lyric poet, I can wallow in a ditch,” as she jokingly said in Tashkent in 1943, when she was informed that a drunken Lugovskoy was lying in a ditch. Akhmatova could say about herself the words that struck Tsvetaeva: “I am a bad mother”; "Husband in the grave, son in prison, / Pray for me"; "This woman is sick, this woman is alone." Which of the Russian poets can say this about himself? Akhmatova can.
She lives with the original consciousness of sinfulness, and therefore being crushed in 1938 is a natural position for her. This constant consciousness of sinfulness and deserved retribution is always hovering over her lyrics, and it is this that allows her to feel that in 1941 there will come an absolute and universal retribution - a worldwide retribution for private sins.
For example, for Akhmatova, Mikhail Kuzmin, described in “A Poem Without a Hero”, was the personification of sinfulness. But why, not because of homosexuality, from which, by the way, he made beautiful poems? Apparently, Akhmatova did not accept anything else in Kuzmin - his clarity, his calm joy. She did not understand how one could sin so much, go through so many novels - and not be tormented by conscience for a second, write light, cheerful texts, just as easily and cheerfully surrender to new depravity.
The first part of the “Poem without a Hero”, which tells the story of the suicide of the lyricist Vsevolod Knyazev due to unhappy love, tells the same story as Akhmatova says in an old Silver Age poem: “We are all harlots here, harlots, / How sad we are together! » This is also a story about retribution. According to Gumilyov’s memoirs, Akhmatova tormented him every morning with a conversation about never-before betrayals, telling him: “Nikola, again that night I dreamed that I was unfaithful to you,” which he then mockingly told Irina Odoevtseva. And for Akhmatova, with her painful constant consciousness of her own guilt, Vsevolod Knyazev is also the personification of that particular sin, for which everyone will soon have to pay.
The horror of the sinfulness of the Silver Age is not only that everyone has affairs with everyone. Not only that Glebova-Sudeikina - "Confusion-Psyche" - easily and naturally cheats on her husband. Not only in the fact that Pallada Bogdanova-Belskaya, the most famous Petersburg libertine, becomes the muse of all salons and the heroine of all poets. The horror is that the Silver Age is a continuous game, it is a constant carnival in which there is nothing serious. And for this game comes the most serious and tragic retribution.
"A Poem without a Hero" is usually viewed in the same context as Akhmatov's Silver Age poems, but this is not entirely true: it should be considered together with other pre-war writings of her great peers, such as Pasternak and Mandelstam. At that time, Mandelstam was writing the oratorio "Poems about the Unknown Soldier", full of the same mysterious forebodings. These things are related not only by incomprehensibility, not only by a peculiar hallucinatory nature, but by the fact that they are imbued with a premonition of enormous sacrifices. Akhmatova writes:
As the future ripens in the past,
So in the future the past smolders -
Terrible holiday of dead leaves.
And here is Mandelstam:
Clarity is ash, vigilance is sycamore
A little red rushes to her house.
Of all the interpretations of this metaphor, it seems to me the most correct one: it's just the leaves falling to the ground in the same way that millions of lives, millions of corpses are dissolved in the earth.
In this context, there is also the largely unexplained Pasternak cycle of 1940, the so-called Peredelkino cycle. There is the famous poem "Waltz with Devilry", which, like in "Poem Without a Hero", describes a cheerful dance with sinister overtones:
The flow of blouses, the singing of doors,
The roar of the little ones, the laughter of mothers.
Dates, books, games, nougat,
Needles, rugs, jumps, runs.
Why, in 1940, two poets, in whom both substantive and formal parallels are very rare, suddenly simultaneously turn to the theme of the New Year's sinister carnival? This, I think, reflects the terrible and festive atmosphere of the Soviet 1940, which is unusually similar to the atmosphere of the pre-war 1913. Everyone participates in the same carnival, everyone wears masks, and everyone understands that this carnival is doomed, that soon they will have to pay for this universal lie and fun.
Bulgakov, who is at the same time writing the final version of The Master and Margarita, constantly has the theme of a terrible holiday, a demonic carnival. Everyone is aware of the terror, and they celebrate with tripled vigor, because the spectacle of universal death in a terrible way turns on this holiday. Like Akhmatova and Pasternak, the main theme here is the theater of terror, the theatricality of violence.
And according to Akhmatova, the retribution, as in 1913, is a military catastrophe. It is logical to ask: what did Knyazev and Glebova-Sudeikina do that was so terrible? Why is the whole world so severely punished for the usual adultery, for the usual bisexuality, for the usual love game? But the main idea of the “Poem Without a Hero” is that sin is always private, and retribution is universal: for many small private sins, there comes a retribution that is incommensurable with sin.
The universal sinfulness of 1940, when everyone is dancing and purposely ignoring the death, this terrible lining, will turn into retribution on a planetary scale. It is no coincidence that the second part of the poem, which is already closely leading to the events of the war, is called "Tails", that is, the shell, reverse, the wrong side of the festival, its terrible underground, the terrible retribution for the universal lie.
The very structure of the Poem Without a Hero suggests a triptych in a religious sense, and therefore redemption. In the first part of the triptych, in a historical digression, a terrible demonic dance of 1913 is drawn. In the second part, the theme of a gloomy expectation of retribution arises. And in the third part, written in Tashkent, the theme of redemption arises, because the war of 1941-1945 is such a feat and the revival of the national spirit that atones for the terrible sin of the universal lie of the 1930s. In this part of the poem, the hero appears:
Lowering your dry eyes
And wringing hands, Russia
Walking east ahead of me.
The hero is Russia, which has gone through a cleansing flame.
There are many decipherings of the name "Poems without a Hero". Lev Losev believed that PbG is the encrypted name of St. Petersburg, which is the main character. One can see a hint that the hero of the poem is invisible, a mysterious ghost. “From childhood, I was afraid of mummers,” because someone invisible was among the mummers. But it seems to me that the meaning of the name is very simple. “A poem without a hero” is a poem of an unheroic time, a poem of a time in which there is no hero, but only a terrible carnival of mummers.
And the hero redeems this tragedy with his appearance. Appearing in the third part of the poem, the Russian people become that hero who is not enough time. This terror, this terrible theatre, this neuroticization of society by nothing but a feat, except the appearance of a hero, cannot be atoned for.
And that is precisely why the "Poem without a Hero", whose heroine is on the other side of hell, nevertheless, in general, has such an optimistic sound. The terrible theatrical ghostly carnival was over, and the country saw its own face.
One of Akhmatova's most fundamental creations is the Poem without a Hero, which covers various periods of the poetess's life and tells about the fate of Akhmatova herself, who survived her creative youth in St. Petersburg, the besieged city and many hardships.
In the first part, the reader observes nostalgia and a journey into past eras. Akhmatova sees how “delusions are resurrected” and bursts of some kind of conversation, she meets “guests” who appear in masks and are shadows of the previous time.
Most likely, the poetess here, as it were, travels along the waves of memory and describes a situation where a person plunges deep into images, remembers people with whom he has communicated for a long time and some of which can no longer be seen on this earth. Therefore, the action takes on the features of a kind of carnival and phantasmagoria. This part ends with the call of a hero who is absent in the poem.
The theme of the availability/absence of the hero is continued by the second part, which describes communication with the editor, who is the only voice of reason in the entire poem and, as it were, returns the reader to the rational world. He asks how there can be a poem without a hero and Akhmatov, it would seem that it begins some kind of reasonable explanation, but then again it seems to return to a dream or some kind of daydream that is far from reality. And here the thoughts lead the poetess towards memories not of her own biography and 1913, but towards discussions about culture in general and previous eras.
In the final part, the poetess describes the evacuation from the city, the ruined country and the hardships of the war. Here the main theme becomes the motherland, the native country, with which the poetess also experienced all sorts of troubles. At the same time, here the poetess speaks of the coming time, but she sees no prospects and nothing worthy there, for the most part, Akhmatova’s appeal is directed to past eras, she “has come around with a distant echo” and she wanted to hear such an echo from previous times and her memories.
Of course, one should speculate who is the hero in this poem and whether there really can be a poem without a hero at all. In fact, the hero is present here to some extent, he can be his homeland, and St. Petersburg, and Akhmatova herself. Nevertheless, if we somehow generalize and try to look at the situation more globally, then the hero of this poem is undoubtedly the stream of consciousness that passes through people, times and countries.
Analysis of the poem A poem without a hero according to plan
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In A Poem Without a Hero, Akhmatova recalls the pre-revolutionary heyday of Russian poetry and the decadent carnival of the Silver Age: the private story of the suicide of a poet in love becomes a starting point for the tragic story of the “real twentieth century”.
comments: Valery Shubinsky
What is this book about?
The poem is dedicated to the peers of Anna Akhmatova - the people of the Silver Age (Akhmatova was one of the first to use this term). Like many other Akhmatov works of the 1930s and 60s, “A Poem without a Hero” is an attempt to rethink the cultural experience of the early 20th century, taking into account the subsequent fate of its bearers and in the context of three centuries of St. Petersburg history. The prototypes of many characters in the poem are close acquaintances of Akhmatova, the poem contains references to various (including quite intimate and unknown to the reader) circumstances of the author's biography. The private and the global-historical in it are intricately intertwined with each other.
Anna Akhmatova. 1940
RIA News"
When was it written?
Work on the poem began on December 27, 1940 in Leningrad and continued in Leningrad and Tashkent In the fall of 1941, Akhmatova was evacuated from Leningrad, first to Moscow, then to Chistopol, and from there to Tashkent. A collection of her poems was published in Tashkent. In the spring of 1944, the poetess returned to Leningrad. until 1943. The poem has since been revised several times. Although the last edition was completed in 1963, Akhmatova made changes and additions to the text until 1965. At the same time, a ballet libretto based on the plot of the poem was created (but remained unfinished).
On the spit of Vasilyevsky Island. From the album of Nikolai Matveev "St. Petersburg in 1912"
Small Konyushenny Bridge. From the album of Nikolai Matveev "St. Petersburg in 1912"
How is it written?
The poem is very complex in structure. Its first part, "1913", consists of three (or four - in different editions the rubrication varies) chapters and "interlude". They describe a kind of metaphorical carnival, culminating in the suicide of one of the characters - the "dragoon cornet" (aka Pierrot). The action takes place simultaneously in two times - 1940 and 1913. The second part, Tails, is a reflection on the genre and motives of the first. Finally, the poem ends with a lyrical epilogue. With the complexity of the structure, the whole poem is written in one size (“alarming” three-ict dolnik Dolnik with three strong supporting lobes in the foot. Dolnik itself denotes a poetic meter, in which the number of unstressed syllables between stressed ones is not constant, but fluctuates, creating a more refined and at the same time natural rhythmic pattern. based on anapaest and amphibrach) with rhyming aabssb. Only in the first initiation does the iambic pentameter appear, and in the epilogue a short choreic (referring to folklore) insertion appears. Poetic fragments are preceded by prose expositions.
Manuscript of "Poem without a Hero". 1940–1942 Leningrad - Tashkent
What influenced her?
Many images of the poem (Pierrot, Harlequin, Columbine) are borrowed from the Italian folk theater - commedia dell'arte, and Akhmatova has in mind the perception of these images in the culture of the Silver Age (for example, in Blok's Puppet Show, written in 1906). There are also hints of Meyerhold's theatrical experiments in the poem. A separate and very complex topic is the reflection in the poem of the work of Mikhail Kuzmin, from "Networks" (1905-1908), "Chimes of Love" (1906), "The Wonderful Life of Joseph Balsamo, Count of Cagliostro" (1919) to the poem "The Trout Breaks the Ice" (1927). The connection between the stanza and rhythm of "A Poem without a Hero" and one of the fragments of Kuzmin's poem - "The Second Impact" - was already noted by contemporaries (and this connection becomes the subject of reflection in "Reshka").
Horses are fighting, snoring in fright,
Kuzmin
Arcs are wrapped in blue ribbon,
Wolves, snow, bells, firing!
What about terrible as night, retribution?
Will your Carpathians waver?
Will honey freeze in the old horn?
Wedding candles float
Akhmatova
Kissing shoulders under the veil
The temple thunders: "Dove, come! .."
Mountains of Parma violets in April
And a date in the Maltese chapel,
Like poison in your chest.
At the same time, Blok, Meyerhold and Kuzmin are themselves easily recognizable characters in Akhmatov's poem, and their portrayal (especially of Kuzmin) is extremely subjective and biased.
In general, the search for echoes and borrowings in the "Poem Without a Hero" can continue for a very long time. Thus, the motive of "Leta-Neva" is present, as Roman Timenchik points out, in at least two poets - in Vsevolod Kurdyumov Vsevolod Valerianovich Kurdyumov (1892-1956), poet. He graduated from the Tenishev School, St. Petersburg and Munich University. He made his debut in 1912, despite the unfavorable reviews of Gumilyov and Bryusov, the next year he was accepted into the "Workshop of Poets", released several small-circulation collections. In 1922 he ended his poetic career, from the 1930s he wrote for the children's theater. (and it is in the poem of 1913) and Georgy Ivanov.
Speaking of theatrical influences, it is worth mentioning the plays Yuri Belyaev Yuri Dmitrievich Belyaev (1876-1917) - journalist, theater critic, playwright. He was in charge of the theater department in the St. Petersburg newspaper Rossiya, then moved to Novoye Vremya. He published several collections of critical articles and feuilletons. Since 1908, he began to write vaudeville plays for the theater, among his most notable works are "Confusion, or 1840", "Psysha", "Lady from Torzhok" and "Red Zucchini". "Confusion, or 1840" and "Psysha", in which she shone main character Akhmatov's poem Olga Afanasievna Glebova-Sudeikina Olga Afanasyevna Glebova-Sudeikina (1885-1945) - actress, translator. She played mainly the roles of the second and third plans. In 1905-1906 she was a member of the troupe of the Alexandrinsky Theater (for example, she played the role of Anya in Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard). She danced on the stage of the Foundry Theater and in the Stray Dog art cafe. In 1907, she married the artist Glebov, after a divorce from him, she became the common-law wife of the composer Arthur Lurie. In 1924 she emigrated, in France she translated French poetry into Russian, and was engaged in the manufacture of dolls and figurines. In A Poem Without a Hero, Akhmatova calls Glebova-Sudeikina "a friend of poets." . On June 7-8, 1958, Akhmatova makes a note: “Yesterday they brought me a play<«Путаница»>, which struck me with its squalor. I ask you not to count it among the sources of the poem ... You involuntarily remember the words Shileiko Vladimir Kazimirovich Shileiko (1891-1930) - orientalist, poet, translator. Even in his school years, he learned biblical Hebrew, ancient Greek and Latin, studied Assyriology at St. Petersburg University, translated Akkadian and Sumerian texts. He was close to the Acmeists and the "Workshop of Poets". Advised Gumilyov in his work on the translation of The Tale of Gilgamesh (he also made his own translation of the epic from the Akkadian original). In 1918 he married Anna Akhmatova. The relationship ended after five years. According to Anatoly Naiman, Akhmatova spoke of marriage with Shileiko as "a gloomy misunderstanding, but without a trace of rancor, rather cheerfully and with gratitude to her ex-husband." After the divorce, Shileiko married art critic Vera Andreeva. He died of tuberculosis before the age of 40. : "The field of coincidences is as huge as the field of imitations and borrowings." I even, God forgive me, confused it with another play by the same author "Psysha", which I also did not read. Hence the verse: “Are you, Confusion-Psyche…”
At the same time, the mention of the play "Psysha" cannot be accidental: it is dedicated to the fate of a serf actress Parasha Kovaleva-Zhemchugova Praskovya Ivanovna Kovaleva-Zhemchugova (1768-1803) - actress, singer. She was born in the family of a serf blacksmith of the Sheremetev family. At the age of 7 she was taken in by Princess Marfa Dolgorukova, from the age of 11 she began to play in the serf theater. She achieved great fame - in gratitude for the role of Eliana in Grétry's opera The Samnite Marriages, Catherine II awarded the actress with a diamond ring. In 1797, Kovaleva-Zhemchugova fell ill with tuberculosis and lost her voice. Nikolai Sheremetev gave her freedom and in 1801 married her. She died immediately after the birth of her first child. , who became Countess Sheremeteva. The “young mistress of the palace” (that is, the Fountain House, the Sheremetev Palace, in one of the wings of which Akhmatova lived in the 1920s and 40s) is also mentioned in Akhmatova’s poem. Undoubtedly, even without reading this play, Akhmatova knew about it and about its plot.
Have fun - so have fun
Anna Akhmatova
But how could it happen
Am I the only one alive?
Numerous epigraphs and footnotes are not accidental, referring (in different editions) to the most diverse authors - from Zhukovsky, Pushkin, Byron, Keats to Khlebnikov and Eliot. For Akhmatova at the end of her life, it was extremely important that, despite the apparent “archaism” of many elements of her poetics, she exists in the context of the modernist culture of the 20th century, and her works are designed to be read taking into account the experience of this culture. Therefore, for example, Akhmatova more than once or twice mentions Joyce and Kafka in different texts, hence her (in the late period) restrained and benevolent interest in the Futurists (former opponents) and even in the Oberiuts. Eliot, one of the reformers of the genre of the poem, for Akhmatova is, first of all, a peer, trying in the Four Quartets to comprehend, like herself, the experience of a generation in the face of history and eternity (“I was born in the same year as Charlie Chaplin, “Kreutzer Sonata” Tolstoy, the Eiffel Tower, and, I think, Eliot" - from the notes of 1957; in fact, Eliot was a year older than Akhmatova).
Another important line of influence is the Russian and European Hoffmaniada and the corresponding segment "Petersburg text" The totality of texts of Russian literature, in which the motives of St. Petersburg play an important role. The Petersburg text includes The Bronze Horseman and The Queen of Spades by Pushkin, Petersburg Tales by Gogol, Poor People, The Double, The Mistress, Notes from the Underground, Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, and "Teenager" Dostoevsky. The concept was introduced by linguist Vladimir Toporov in the early 1970s. (from Gogol to Andrei Bely). It is even possible to echo Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita, fragments of which (including the description of "Satan's ball") Akhmatova could hear in the author's reading (she read the entire manuscript of the novel while evacuated in Tashkent). Finally, there is no doubt a connection with symbolist aesthetics, which at one time Akhmatova and her friends rejected. Victor Zhirmunsky (who at one time wrote the article “Overcoming Symbolism” - about acmeists), according to Akhmatova, gave the following definition: “A poem without a hero” is a dream come true of the symbolists, this is what they preached in theory, but when they began to create , could never do."
Akhmatova herself indicates two more sources - Robert Browning Robert Browning (1812-1889), English poet and playwright. He was close to Dickens, Wordsworth, talked a lot with Tennyson. Among his most notable works are the play "Pippa Passes By" and the collection of poems "Dramatic Lyrics". Browning brought in English poetry genre of monologue-confession. In 1833 the poet visited Russia. Due to the poor health of his wife, the poetess Elizabeth Barrett, Moulton lived mainly in Italy. ("Dis aliter visum") and Paul Valery Paul Valéry (1871-1945) French poet and essayist. He was close to the circle of the poet Stefan Mallarmé, and began to publish poetry in the early 1890s. Fame brought him the poem "Young Park", published in 1917. Thanks to his journalism, he gained a reputation as an influential intellectual. In 1925 he was elected a member of the French Academy. During World War II, Valerie was a member of the National Committee of Writers, one of the centers of the anti-fascist resistance. ("Elsinore terraces parapet").
Konstantin Somov. Harlequin and lady. 1921 State Russian Museum
Fragments of the poem were published in the magazine "Leningrad" Literary magazine published twice a month in Leningrad from 1940 to 1946. In addition to Akhmatova, Mikhail Zoshchenko, Nikolai Tikhonov, Olga Berggolts, Lev Pumpyansky published in it. It was closed by a resolution of the Central Committee "On the magazines Zvezda and Leningrad" - because of the provision of "its own pages for Zoshchenko's vulgar and slanderous speeches, for Akhmatova's empty and apolitical poems." (1944, No. 10/11 - the finale of the "Epilogue", which dealt with the war, its disasters, refugees, "revenge" on the enemy), and in the "Leningrad Almanac" for 1945 (an excerpt from the first, "the main » parts). Naturally, since 1946, after Zhdanov decree Decree of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks on the magazines "Zvezda" and "Leningrad" of August 14, 1946. Because of him, the composition of the editorial board of Zvezda was changed, the Leningrad magazine was closed, and Akhmatova and Zoshchenko, who were published there, were expelled from the Writers' Union. On August 15 and 16, Andrei Zhdanov, Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, made a report on Zoshchenko (whose stories were “poisoned with the poison of zoological hostility to the Soviet system”) and Akhmatova (“poetry of an enraged lady rushing between a boudoir and a prayer room”), the text of the report was then published in Pravda. publications have ceased. But in 1957, the previously published fragment of the Epilogue was reprinted in the Anthology of Russian Soviet Poetry, and a year later - in Akhmatova's book Poems. Another fragment appears in 1959 in the Moscow magazine (No. 7).
Since the mid-1950s, the poem has been on the lists. The first complete publication of one of the intermediate editions (without the knowledge of the author) is in the almanac "Airways" (No. 1, New York, 1960). Another edition is in the second issue of the same almanac in 1961. In 1962, Akhmatova attempted to publish the poem in the Novy Mir magazine. In 1965, the first part of the poem was published in the book The Run of Time. The final edition of the poem (with censored exceptions) was published in full in the book Selected (M.; L., 1974). Since 1987, publishers have been striving to print the poem in the author's version, but many textual problems have arisen.
How was it received?
The reaction of the first listeners of the poem was, according to Akhmatova, rather restrained: “Strictly, oddly enough, my contemporaries judged her, and X. Abram Efros Abram Markovich Efros (1888-1954) - art critic, poet, translator. He translated into Russian "Song of Solomon", texts by Dante, Petrarch, Michelangelo. In 1922 he published a collection of poems "Erotic Sonnets". He acted as an essayist and art critic - his collection of critical articles about artists "Profiles" (1930) is known. He was a co-author of Nikolai Punin, the common-law husband of Akhmatova. He worked at the Tretyakov Gallery, organized exhibitions. In 1937 he was sent into exile in Nizhny Novgorod On his return he taught art history. . — V. Sh.), when he said that I was settling some old scores with the era (10s) and people who either no longer exist or who cannot answer me. For those who do not know some of the "Petersburg circumstances", the poem will be incomprehensible and uninteresting. Others, especially women, believed that "A Poem without a Hero" was a betrayal of some former "ideal" and, even worse, an exposure of my old poems, "Beads" A collection of poems by Akhmatova, published in 1914 by the publishing house "Hyperborey". which they "love so much". Marina Tsvetaeva reacted very coldly to fragments of the poem read to her in June 1941: “You need to have great courage to write about Harlequins, Columbines and Pierrot in 41.” According to Akhmatova, Tsvetaeva saw in the poem "World of Art" stylization" - "ie. that is, what she, perhaps, fought in exile as with old-fashioned rubbish. As Akhmatova later noted, “for the first time, instead of a stream of molasses, I met the sincere indignation of readers.”
Enthusiastic reviews of the poem during this period come primarily from readers of a different generation and social experience, including from foreigners - a Pole Józef Czapski Jozef Marian Franciszek Czapski (1896-1993) was a Polish painter and writer. He studied in St. Petersburg, was close to the poetic symbolist circle of Zinaida Gippius. Participated in the First World War. After the revolution, he went to Poland, where he studied painting. In 1939 he was drafted into the Polish army and fought against the USSR, was taken prisoner, was transferred to a camp, but released two years later. In 1942 he met Akhmatova in Tashkent. After the end of the war, he lived in France, participated in the publication of the emigrant magazines "Culture" and "Continent". Wrote several memoirs about the Gulag. and Briton of Russian origin Isaiah Berlin (both played an important role in Akhmatova's life). Berlin described the poem as "a requiem across Europe". In the final version of the poem, he himself becomes her character.
Probably the first detailed printed response to the poem was the article Boris Filippov (Philistinsky) Boris Andreevich Filippov (real name - Filistinsky; 1905-1991) - literary critic, publicist, editor. He graduated from the Leningrad Oriental Institute: he specialized in Mongolian studies, studied Buddhism and Hinduism. In 1927 he was arrested for participating in the religious and philosophical circle of Sergei Askoldov. He was arrested again in 1936, after five years in the camps he settled in Novgorod. During the war, he voluntarily offered cooperation to the German occupiers. According to some reports, he participated in the executions of the inhabitants of Novgorod. He went to the West along with the retreating German troops. In 1950 he moved to the USA, collaborated with the Voice of America radio station, and taught Russian literature. Together with Gleb Struve, he prepared editions of the collected works of Akhmatova, Pasternak, Gumilyov, Mandelstam. in the second issue of "Airways": "... The hero of the poem, the only one who has been embodied to the end, is the era itself, the time of the disintegration of individuals, their depersonalization, but in itself - the era is very bright and characteristic.<…>Six times, five times, at least three times rhymes and assonances Repetition of the same vowel sounds. - female rhymes - girdled, compressed in the iron embrace of male rhymes. A clear tread and an iron rhythm, tact, and images replace each other, repeat, intersect - everything is permeated with the drafts of the era.
Marina Tsvetaeva. Around 1941. Tsvetaeva, with a common love for Akhmatova's poetry, reacted coldly to fragments of "Poem Without a Hero"
Joseph Chapsky. 1950 Polish writer and artist Czapski left an enthusiastic response about "Poem without a Hero"
During the thaw, the poem, which is still being worked on, is in the spotlight, widely diverging in the lists. In 1963, Akhmatova writes: “Time worked on the “Poem without a Hero”. Something amazing has happened in the last 20 years, that is, we are witnessing a complete renaissance of the 1910s.<…>The post-Stalinist youth and foreign Slavic scholars are equally full of interest in the pre-revolutionary years.<…>I say all this in connection with my poem, because, remaining a historical poem, it is very close to the modern reader ... ”The high marks of Akhmatova’s peers also belong to this time:“ a masterpiece of historical painting ”(Chukovsky),“ a tragedy of conscience ”(Shklovsky) .
Since the 1970s (from the book Victor Zhirmunsky Viktor Maksimovich Zhirmunsky (1891-1971) - linguist and literary critic. He taught at Petersburg University, and after the revolution - at Leningrad University. In 1933, 1935 and 1941 he was arrested, during the campaign against "cosmopolitanism" he was fired from Leningrad State University, returned to the university in 1956. Zhirmunsky is a specialist in German and English literature, a researcher of Akhmatova's work. Studied dialects of Yiddish and German. "The Creativity of Anna Akhmatova", 1973), the poem becomes the subject of in-depth study and analysis. A huge role here was played by the articles of Roman Timenchik and the commentary prepared by him for the 1989 edition of Poems Without a Hero. Natalia Kraineva worked with difficult questions of textual criticism of the poem, compiling a set of all manuscripts of the poem with commentary and analysis (2009). New articles about the "Poem without a Hero" appear constantly.
Anna Akhmatova. Late 1930s
Is the poem based on a true story?
The prototype of the "dragoon cornet" who commits suicide at the end of the first part was a young officer Vsevolod Gavrilovich Knyazev (1891-1913). Knyazev wrote poetry and in 1909 brought them to the editorial office of the magazine "Apollo" A magazine about art, published in St. Petersburg from 1909 to 1917. The initiator of the creation was Sergei Makovsky. The publication attracted symbolists and acmeists: Nikolai Gumilyov, Mikhail Kuzmin, Sergey Auslender collaborated with the magazine, Mstislav Dobuzhinsky designed the covers. . Soon began his stormy romance with Mikhail Kuzmin. Under his patronage, Knyazev's poems were published in 1910 in "A new magazine for everyone" Literary and art magazine published in St. Petersburg from 1908 to 1916. Akhmatova, Gumilyov, Blok, Balmont were published in the magazine. With the arrival of the art critic Sergei Isakov in 1914, the publication moved away from literature and became one of the centers of left-wing art. .
Kuzmin intended to publish his poems dedicated to Knyazev, and his reciprocal dedications in a separate book called "An Example for Lovers." Kuzmin's friend, the artist Sergey Yuryevich Sudeikin, was supposed to design the book. In 1912, Knyazev served in the Irkutsk Hussar Regiment stationed in Riga, and in the summer, during his visit to St. Petersburg, he stayed with the Sudeikins. He began an affair with the artist's wife, actress Olga Afanasievna Sudeikina (1885-1945), nee Glebova. At the same time, relations with Kuzmin continued: in September, Kuzmin and Knyazev make a joint trip to Mitau City in Latvia. Modern name- Jelgava. , however, at the end of the month, apparently, there is a gap. The affair with Sudeikina continued until the end of the year. The last poems dedicated to her are dated January 1913. Knyazev shot himself (for an unknown reason) on March 29, 1913 in Riga, survived, but died on April 5 in the hospital.
Golden age vision
Anna Akhmatova
Or black crime
In the terrible chaos of old days?
Although Knyazev’s relatives considered Sudeikina the culprit of the death of their son (Vsevolod’s mother at his funeral directly told her: “God will punish those who made him suffer”), there are other assumptions. As Roman Timenchik points out, “the biographer of O. A. Glebova-Sudeikina, the French researcher E. Mock-Beaker, gives the following version of suicide: Knyazev was required to marry a girl from the same Riga family, her relatives insisted on this, complaining to the regimental authorities. Knyazev considered this a dishonor for himself and committed suicide.
The plot of the first part of the poem only remotely resembles this story. "Hussar Cornet" commits suicide on the threshold of "Columbine", which "returned home ... not alone", probably from the New Year's carnival. Thus, the action is referred not to March-April, but to January 1913. At the same time, the connection of the poem with the “princely” plot is obvious and Akhmatova has repeatedly confirmed it.
However, there were other versions. For example, Filippov, to the surprise of Akhmatova, read the initials “V. TO." as "Vasily Komarovsky". In fact, the life of a poet Vasily Komarovsky Vasily Alekseevich Komarovsky (1881-1914) - poet. He studied at St. Petersburg University, lived abroad for a long time, where he was treated for epilepsy. He was close to the Acmeists. Komarovsky's poems were first published in the Apollo magazine in 1911, and in 1913 the first book of poems was published. According to Nikolai Punin, the poet died with the outbreak of the First World War from "paralysis of the heart in a fit of violent insanity." , a Tsarskoye Selo acquaintance of Gumilyov and Akhmatova, broke off under dramatic circumstances, but had nothing to do with the plot of "A Poem without a Hero".
Vsevolod Knyazev. Knyazev became the prototype of the "dragoon cornet" committing suicide
Konstantin Somov. Portrait of Mikhail Kuzmin. 1909 State Tretyakov Gallery. Kuzmin's work was strongly reflected in the "Poem without a Hero"
Why did Akhmatova turn to long history suicide?
Knyazev's suicide was among the high-profile suicidal stories that shocked Russian literature on the eve and during the First World War: they committed suicide Victor Hoffman Victor Viktorovich Hoffman (1884-1911) - poet, literary critic, translator. He grew up in Moscow, was friends with Vladislav Khodasevich at the gymnasium. Published articles in the newspapers "Russian Leaf", "Moskvich", "Rul". In 1905 he published the first book of poems, in 1909 - the second. In 1911 he went on a trip abroad and shot himself with a revolver in Paris. (August 13, 1911), Nadezhda Lvova Nadezhda Grigorievna Lvova (1891-1913) - poetess. While still studying at the gymnasium, together with Ilya Ehrenburg and Nikolai Bukharin, she participated in the underground Bolshevik organization. In 1911, she began to publish poetry in the Russian Thought magazine. She met Valery Bryusov, with whom she began an affair. In 1913, Lvova published her first book of poems. In the same year, the poetess, being depressed due to a deadlocked romance with Bryusov, shot herself. (December 7, 1913), Ivan Ignatiev Ivan Vasilyevich Ignatiev (real name - Kazansky; 1892-1914) - poet. He began to study poetry in 1911, largely due to his acquaintance with Igor Severyanin. Ignatiev founded his publishing house "Petersburg Herald", which became the center of St. Petersburg ego-futurism. In this publishing house, Ignatiev published three books of his poems. In 1914, on the second day after the wedding, Ignatiev stabbed himself with a razor. (Kazan) (February 2, 1914), Bozhidar Bozhidar (real name - Bogdan Petrovich Gordeev; 1894-1914) - poet. He lived in Kharkov, was a member of the futuristic group "Centrifuga". In 1914, he became a co-founder of the Liren publishing house, in which he published his first and only book of poems, Tambourine. After the outbreak of World War I, he hanged himself in a forest near Kharkov. (Bogdan Gordeev) (September 7, 1914), Muni Samuil Viktorovich Kissin (pseudonym - Muni; 1885-1916) - poet. He began to print poetry in 1906 and was close friends with Vladislav Khodasevich. In 1909, Kissin married Bryusov's younger sister Lidia. With the outbreak of World War I, he was drafted into the army - in 1916, in a fit of depression, he shot himself with a revolver. (Samuel Kissin) (April 4, 1916). All these tragic episodes left their mark on culture (remember, for example, essays about Nadya Lvova and Muni in Khodasevich's Necropolis). Knyazev's suicide was also "mythologized" - evidence of this, for example, is a poem by Georgy Ivanov, written in 1926:
January day. On the banks of the Neva
The wind is rushing, destroying the wind.
Where is Olga Sudeikina, alas,
Akhmatova, Pallas, Salome?
All who shone in the thirteenth year -
Only ghosts on Petersburg ice.
Again the nightingales will whistle in the poplars,
And at sunset, in Pavlovsk or in Tsarskoye,
Another lady in sables will pass,
Another lover in a hussar mentik,
But Vsevolod Knyazev they
They will not remember in the shade dear to him.
There is no direct evidence of Akhmatova's acquaintance with this poem, published in Ivanov's book "Roses" (1931), but her very presence as the heroine of the metaplot (along with Sudeikina, as well as Salome Andronikova Salome Nikolaevna Andronikova (real name - Andronikashvili; 1888-1982) - philanthropist, model. Born in Tiflis, in 1906 she married the merchant Pavel Andreev and moved to St. Petersburg. She organized a literary salon there, talked with Akhmatova, Mandelstam, Sergei Prokofiev, Arthur Lurie. In 1917 she moved to the Crimea, then to Tiflis to her parents - there, together with the poets Sergei Gorodetsky and Sergei Rafalovich, she published the magazine "Orion". Since 1920 she lived in Paris, married the lawyer Alexander Galpern. In exile Andronikov long time financially supported the Tsvetaeva family. Together with her husband she lived in New York, then in London - there in 1965 she met with Akhmatova. , sung by Mandelstam, and the "fatal woman" of pre-war St. Petersburg Pallada Bogdanova-Belskaya Pallada Olympovna Bogdanova-Belskaya (1885-1968) - poetess. She graduated from the drama studio of Nikolai Evreinov, was a regular at the Stray Dog art cafe. In 1915 she published a collection of poems "Amulets". It is known about her relationship with the Social Revolutionary and terrorist Yegor Sozonov, poets Vsevolod Knyazev, Leonid Kannegiser. The first husband of the poetess was the Socialist-Revolutionary Sergei Bogdanov, the second - the sculptor Gleb Deryuzhinsky, the third - the art critic Vitaly Gross. ) is very typical.
A year after Ivanov, in the introduction to the poem "The Trout Breaks the Ice" (published in the book of the same name in 1929 - Akhmatova, according to Lidia Chukovskaya, re-read it in the fall of 1940), Kuzmin brings out the ghosts of his dead friends:
Drowned artist
Stomping with a heel,
Behind him is a hussar boy
With a shot through the temple ...
"The Drowned Artist" Nikolai Sapunov Nikolai Nikolaevich Sapunov (1880-1912) - painter, theater designer. He studied at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture under Konstantin Korovin, Valentin Serov and Isaac Levitan. He was a member of the art associations "Scarlet Rose", "Blue Rose" and "World of Art". From the early 1900s he worked on scenery for performances by the Moscow Art Theater, the Hermitage Theatre, the Bolshoi Theatre, and the Alexandrinsky Theatre. As an artist, he collaborated with the Libra magazine, worked on the interior of the Stray Dog art cafe. Died while on a boat trip. , one of those who painted cabaret "Homeless dog" , also connected with the plot of the poem (he drowned on June 27, 1912 in Terioki in front of Kuzmin).
Akhmatova herself explains the appeal to the plot as follows:
“The first sprout ... which I hid from myself for decades is, of course, Pushkin’s note: “Only the first lover makes ... an impression on a woman, like the first killed in the war ...” Vsevolod was not the first killed and was never my lover, but his suicide was so much like another catastrophe... that they were forever merged for me. The second picture, snatched by the searchlight of memory from the darkness of the past, is Olga and I after the funeral of Blok, looking for the grave of Vsevolod at the Smolensk cemetery (1913). "It's somewhere near the wall," Olga said, but they couldn't find it. For some reason, I remember this moment forever. By "another catastrophe" is meant the suicide of Mikhail Lindeberg (1891-1911), who was in love with Akhmatova. The later story serves as a mask for the earlier one, which is personally close to the author - a typical example of the mirror image of Akhmatov's world.
Another undoubtedly important circumstance necessary for understanding the poem is the long-term friendship between Akhmatova and Olga Sudeikina. This friendship was very emotionally filled: in particular, there was rivalry in it because of the composer Arthur Lurie, who was the object of Akhmatova's love and Sudeikina's long-term life partner. “Columbine of the 10s”, “one of my twins” becomes a symbol of the time - while the characterization that Akhmatova gives her is as bright as it is unreliable in details:
The house of the motley comedy wagon,
Peeling cupids
They guard the Venus altar.
Songbirds did not put in a cage,
You cleaned the bedroom like a gazebo
Village girl next door
The cheerful stapler does not recognize.
Glebova was the daughter of an official of the Mining Department and by no means a "village girl"; her recent ancestors were peasants, but not Pskov (“staples”), but Yaroslavl. The fascination with "songbirds" dates back to the later years of the actress's life (who emigrated in 1924 and died in Paris); this stanza appeared only in later editions written after Sudeikina's death.
Akhmatova mentions two poems dedicated to Sudeikina, which contain a reference to the “princely” history. The first is "Voice of Memory", written in 1913 on fresh footsteps, and in fact there are quite transparent lines in it:
Or that you see at your knees,
Who left your captivity for your white death?
The second is "You prophesy, bitter ..." (1921). The heroine appears here as a fatal and suffering seductress:
... not one bee
Ruddy smile seduced
And the butterfly confused more than one.
The shadow of Knyazev himself can be seen in the line: "... Is it a sweet reproach to the dead."
When leaving abroad, Sudeikina left Akhmatova her personal archive. Probably, it was in him that Akhmatova "in the last Leningrad winter" found "letters and poems that I have not yet read" - that is, one can assume the letters and poems of Knyazev, which prompted her to start working on the poem.
Olga Glebova-Sudeikina. 1921 The prototype of one of the main characters of Akhmatov's poem
Why does Akhmatova attribute the action to New Year's Eve?
Here Akhmatova, perhaps, refers to her own poem "We are all thugs here, harlots ...", which is dated January 1, 1913 and is dedicated to the celebration of the New Year in "stray dog" One of the centers of cultural life in St. Petersburg in the 1910s. The art cafe was opened by theater director Boris Pronin on December 31, 1911. It often hosted poetic and musical evenings, theatrical performances, lectures. Akhmatova, Gumilyov, Mandelstam, Mayakovsky, Khlebnikov, Meyerhold were regulars at the Stray Dog. The official reason for the closure was a violation of Prohibition. . In a completely different language and other techniques, this poem recreates the same atmosphere of a brilliant and disastrous "carnival".
We are all thugs here, harlots,
How sad we are together!
Flowers and birds on the walls
They languish on the clouds.Oh, how my heart yearns!
Am I waiting for the hour of death?
And the one that's dancing now
It will definitely go to hell.
The guests are celebrating New Year(1913 or 1914), but the author is also on the eve of the New (1941) year. And here is another reference to Kuzma's "Trout", which begins with the arrival of guests from the past, and ends with the New Year's celebration.
The emblem of the art cafe "Stray Dog" by Mstislav Dobuzhinsky. 1912
In Stray Dog. 1912 "Stray Dog" - one of the centers of the cultural life of St. Petersburg in the first half of the 1910s
Sergei Sudeikin. Sketch of costumes for the performance in the cabaret "Stray Dog". 1912
Which text of "Poem Without a Hero" is final and correct?
The poem exists in several editions - according to various estimates, from four to nine. At the same time, intermediate editions went on the lists, fragments of them were printed in the USSR, the full text - abroad. In the course of the work, many stanzas appeared and were discarded that were not included in the final version. Some fragments from the printed texts are not in the manuscripts at all. Sometimes the stanzas were separated from the poem and became independent poems ("Petersburg in 1913").
In the first part of the poem, different versions of the text of the 1960s, which claim to be final, differ in the division into chapters: “Lyrical digression” between the second and third chapters becomes in a number of variants an independent third chapter, and the third chapter becomes the fourth.
The greatest textological problems arise with the second part of Tails. In the author's "final" text of 1963, there are 21 stanzas, and the ninth and half of the tenth stanzas are replaced by dots. The author’s note reads: “the omitted stanzas are an imitation of Pushkin” (that is, the same bills in). However, there is good reason to believe that the stanzas are omitted for reasons of self-censorship, since they are present in the original manuscripts. For the Soviet press, they were really inconvenient, and, no less important, they are essential for understanding other fragments of the poem:
And my "Seventh" is with me,
Half dead and dumb
Her mouth is closed and open,
Like the mouth of a tragic mask
But it's covered in black paint.
And stuffed with dry earth.The enemy tortured: "Come on, tell me,"
But not a word, not a moan, not a cry
Do not hear her enemy.
<...>
In the discarded (but saved in the comments) version of the final, another “Seventh” is mentioned - “the famous Leningrad girl”, Shostakovich symphony Symphony No. 7 Shostakovich wrote in 1941. The premiere took place in the spring of 1942 in Kuibyshev, where the composer was evacuated from besieged Leningrad. In Leningrad itself, it was first performed on August 9, the performance was broadcast on the radio and loudspeakers - the uplifting symphony made a tremendous impression on the inhabitants of the besieged city and became a symbol of Leningrad resistance. . This can be interpreted as follows: Akhmatova, with bitter sarcasm, contrasts the fate of her own "Seventh Book", which had to remain unpublished for many years, and the glory of the symphony.
After the 15th stanza of Akhmatova, the stanza "15a" is inscribed, which now, in later editions, has a number. Even more problems arise with three stanzas, in Soviet time clearly politically "impassable". In the collected works of 1998, one of them is printed as 11, two - as 24-25. As a result, "Reshka" ends like this:
Blue clenched lips,
Crazed Hecubes
And Kassandra from Chukhloma,
We will thunder in a silent chorus,
We are crowned with shame:
"On the other side of hell we are" -
instead of the usual:
Blue clenched lips,
And your ambiguous glory
Twenty years lying in a ditch
I won't serve that way yet
We'll still feast with you,
And with my royal kiss
I will reward your evil midnight.
However, Natalia Kraineva, in her 2009 reconstruction, places all three stanzas after the restored tenth. All this, of course, affects the interpretation and understanding of the poem. The "unsteadiness" of the text, which is constantly expanding, capturing ever new topics (in drafts, for example, Amedeo Modigliani is mentioned, with whom in 1911 he also played a significant role in Akhmatova's life), makes any interpretation conditional and inconclusive.
Drawing by Amedeo Modigliani "Nude with a lit candle", in which he portrayed Akhmatova. 1911
Drawing by Amedeo Modigliani "Nude", in which he portrayed Akhmatova. 1911
Who are the addressees of the dedications of the "Poem Without a Hero"?
The poem has several dedications. In some editions, the first dedication is preceded by "V. TO." or the completely unambiguous “Vs. TO." - that is, Vsevolod Knyazev. The fact that "A Poem without a Hero" is dedicated to the real prototype of its conditional "hero" seems quite logical: after all, the second dedication (1945) obviously refers to another prototype - Olga Glebova-Sudeikina. But the date "December 27, 1940" under the dedication indicates a different, hidden addressee: this is the second anniversary of Mandelstam's death. The “dark eyelashes of Antinous” can also point to him (many, including Akhmatova, recalled the lush eyelashes of the young Mandelstam).
... and since I didn’t have enough paper,
I'm writing on your draft...
with which the initiation begins may serve as a key. Undoubtedly, Akhmatova could have the manuscripts of both Knyazev (as part of the Sudeikina archive) and Mandelstam, but she hardly used them in this way. Obviously, we are talking about the fact that Akhmatova picks up someone else's plan, develops some kind of someone else's motives.
Mandelstam owns one of the epigraphs to the third chapter of the first part (“In St. Petersburg we will meet again ...” - the first line of the 1920 poem). Starting the poem with the appearance of guests from the past, Akhmatova also kept in mind the motives of the poem “I returned to my city ...”: “And all night long I wait for dear guests, / Move the shackles of door chains ...”
The addressee of the third initiation is more clear. This is an English philosopher of Russian-Jewish origin Isaiah Berlin Isaiah Berlin (1909-1997), English philosopher and translator. He spent his childhood in Riga and Petrograd, after the revolution the Berlin family emigrated to Great Britain. During World War II, he served as secretary of the British Embassy in the USSR, at which time he met Akhmatova and Pasternak. After the war he taught philosophy at Oxford University. He was interested in the figures of Herzen, Bakunin, Belinsky. It was Berlin's articles about Herzen that inspired Tom Stoppard to write the dramatic trilogy "Coast of Utopia". (1909-1997). In 1945 he was in the USSR as a diplomat and met with Akhmatova at the Fountain House. The impressions of this short meeting had a huge impact on Akhmatova's later work. For her, Berlin was both a failed great love and a messenger from another world in which her life could have passed, in a sense, a guest from a parallel space. By her meeting with Berlin (allegedly arousing Stalin's particular indignation), Akhmatova explained not only the disgrace that fell on her in 1946, but also partly began in the same year. cold war. This is how the lines should be understood:
He won't be my sweet husband
But we deserve it
What will embarrass the Twentieth Century.
Berlin (to whom Akhmatova read the first part of A Poem Without a Hero in an early edition) eventually becomes her character himself.
Osip Mandelstam. 1910s. One of the possible recipients of "Poem without a Hero"
Isaiah Berlin. Destination of the third initiation
Photo by Ramsey & Muspratt
Does it matter that the action takes place in 1913?
Undoubtedly, the pan-European semantics of 1913 is also important as last year Belle Epoque Great era. — Fr. Denotes a period European history between the last decade of the 19th century and the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. , a prosperous and refined period at the turn of the century, preceding the advent of the "real Twentieth Century". Let's not forget that in the USSR the year 1913 was traditionally used as a starting point for demonstrating economic and educational successes. Before us is the beginning of the last stable year of old Russia and old Europe on the eve of great upheavals. This is the year of the flourishing of refined early modernist culture and the year of approaching terrible forebodings. AT next year the first World War who drew a line and made a prosperous past irrevocable. For Akhmatova, 1913 is the heyday of acmeism, the beginning of fame (which peaked in the first months of 1914, after the release of The Rosary) and a crisis in relations with Gumilyov.
Who comes to the carnival in "Poem Without a Hero"?
Most of the faceless participants in the mystical and demonic carnival wear masks filled with cultural meanings: Faust, Don Juan (“eternal” images that do not need commentary), Jokanaan (John the Baptist, but in this case, first of all, the image from Oscar Wilde’s Salome) , Dapertutto (a character in Hoffmann's story "Adventures on the Eve of New Year's Eve", but also the pseudonym of Vsevolod Meyerhold, who is directly mentioned in the poem - and was shot in that same 1940). Next to these characters, either sublimely monumental or exposing the mask wearer's extraordinary erudition and exquisite taste, there appear more "common" images that entered the mass culture of early modernism - Glan (Hamsun's hero) and Wilde's Dorian Gray. These masks look paler and go to the “most modest”.
Gradually, however, more specific characters emerge from the masks. Here is the first one:
The tail was hidden under the coat tails ...
How chrome and elegant he is ...
However
I hope the Lord of Darkness
Don't you dare enter here?
Is it a mask, a skull, a face?
Expression of mournful pain
That only Goya dared to convey.
Common darling and mocker -
Before him is the most stinking sinner -
Grace incarnate...
The fact that Kuzmin is hiding behind this "satanic" mask is confirmed by the characterization given to him in the final edition of Tails:
Do not fight off the motley junk,
This is the old freak Cagliostro -
The most graceful Satan himself,
Who does not cry with me over the dead,
Who does not know what conscience means
And why does it exist.
As already mentioned, Kuzmin is the author of the biography Cagliostro Alessandro Cagliostro (real name - Giuseppe Balsamo; 1743-1795) - Italian mystic, adventurer. He forged documents, made drugs, sold fake cards with treasures. In 1777 he came to London under the guise of a magician, astrologer and healer. He told me that he owns the secret of the philosopher's stone and the secret of eternal life. After the Londoners saw through the fraudster, Cagliostro left for Russia. In St. Petersburg, he communicated with the court nobility, in particular with Prince Potemkin, - he was engaged in hypnosis, "cast out demons." Catherine II portrayed him in her own play "Deceiver". After a stay in Russia, Cagliostro traveled around Europe for a long time, eventually settling in Rome, where he was sentenced to life imprisonment. . It is known that he reacted to the news of the death of Knyazev with outward calmness that shocked many. At the same time, in Akhmatov's poem, the relationship of the "cornet" with "Cagliostro" is not mentioned in any way, and therefore it is not clear what responsibility he bears for the death of the young man.
Akhmatova's dislike for Kuzmin was primarily of a literary nature. The author of "Networks" had a great influence on the formation of acmeism (let's not forget that he is the author of the preface to Akhmatova's first book, "Evening"), but he refused to join the group of acmeists and later spoke of it rather ironically. In the 1920s, Kuzmin's circle (which included Yuri Yurkun Yuri Ivanovich Yurkun (real name - Jozas Yurkunas; 1895-1938) - writer, artist. At the age of 17, he met the poet Mikhail Kuzmin, with whom he began a long-term romance. With the support of Kuzmin, he published his first novel, Swedish Gloves. Entered into artistic group"Thirteen". In 1921, Yurkun began a relationship with Olga Hildebrandt-Arbenina, whom he later married - for a long time they lived together with Kuzmin. Back in 1918, Yurkun was involved in the case of the murder of Uritsky, in 1931 the GPU tried to involve him as an informant, in 1938 Yurkun was arrested and shot. , Anna Radlova Anna Dmitrievna Radlova (maiden name - Darmolatova; 1891-1949) - poetess and translator. In 1914 she married the theater director Sergei Radlov. She began to print poetry in 1916 and was close to Kuzmin's poetic circle. She organized her own literary salon in Petrograd. Since 1922 she has been translating texts by Shakespeare, Balzac, Maupassant for the theatre. In 1926, she divorced Radlov and married engineer Kornely Pokrovsky, while all three lived together (in 1938 Pokrovsky committed suicide). During the war, the Radlovs were evacuated to Pyatigorsk, the Germans transported the couple to Berlin, and by the end of the war they ended up in France. The USSR invited them to return, upon their return they were arrested and sent to a camp. , partly Konstantin Vaginov) was perceived by Akhmatova as unfriendly. Highly appreciating Kuzmin's poetry, Akhmatova, in conversations with Lidia Chukovskaya, described him as an "unfriendly, vindictive" person. “Salon” Kuzmin, according to Akhmatova, “had a very bad influence on young people: they took him for the pinnacle of thought and art, but in fact it was a depravity of thought, because everything was recognized as a toy, they laughed at everything or scoffed at everything.” Kuzmin's attitude towards privacy, intimacy, emotional spontaneity, a mixture of lyricism and the grotesque was alien to Akhmatova's worldview and creative search in later years.
As for Kuzmin's "indifference" to the tragedy of his young friend, it is refuted by the very appearance of the image of Knyazev in poems written 14 years after his death. The worldly bias of Akhmatova is obvious here.
As a "demonic" figure, Blok also appears in "A Poem Without a Hero", but this is demonism of a different kind - sublime, courageous and aristocratic. The “Demon” Block is one of the main characters, since he is Colombina’s lover, and it is out of jealousy for him that the cornet Pierrot commits suicide. At the same time, there is no evidence of a close relationship between Blok and Glebova-Sudeikina, and, on the contrary, rumor groundlessly attributed such a relationship with the greatest poet of the era of Akhmatova herself. Blok's description (in the second chapter) consists essentially of quotations only and is designed for instant recognition:
The demon himself with Tamara's smile,
But such spells lurk
In this terrible smoky face -
Flesh that almost became spirit
And an antique curl above the ear -
Everything is mysterious in the alien.
This is him in a crowded room
Sent that black rose in a glass
Or was it all a dream?
With a dead heart and dead eyes
Did he meet with the Commander,
Into that cursed house that you sneaked into?
Finally, the third "poetic" character is much more difficult to identify:
Striped is dressed up with a verst, -
Painted colorfully and rudely -
You…
the same age as the Mamvrian oak,
The century-old interlocutor of the moon.
Do not deceive feigned groans,
You write iron laws
Hammurabi, Lycurgi, Salons
You must learn.
The creature is of a strange disposition.
He does not expect gout and fame
Hastily seated him
In jubilee lush chairs,
And it carries along the flowering heather,
Through the deserts their triumph.
Akhmatova in her notebooks initially explains that this is "something like the young Mayakovsky", then she prefers to see in this character "a poet in general, a Poet with a capital letter". Nevertheless, the very image of the poet, dressed up as a jester, “painted colorfully and roughly”, is a clear reference to the everyday rituals of the Russian avant-garde on the eve of the First World War. The relationship of acmeists with futurists "Gilei" Literary and artistic association of futurists, which existed in the 1910s. Its organizers were Velimir Khlebnikov and David Burliuk. The group released the almanacs "Slap in the face of public taste" and "Judges' cage", "Dead Moon" and many others. In 1913, Gilea joined the Union of Youth, together with which it organized the Budetlyanin Theater. were relations of hostility and rivalry. But to Khlebnikov, whose line appears in the poem as an epigraph, the acmeists were generally loyal and even benevolent. This cannot be said about Mayakovsky, whose poems Gumilyov, paying tribute to his talent, called "anti-poetry." Mayakovsky's public statements about acmeists, including Akhmatova, are mercilessly rude. However, it was in the late 1930s that Akhmatova could learn from Brikov about Mayakovsky's true attitude to her poetry (suffice it to say that he knew many of Akhmatova's poems by heart). Her own attitude towards the personality and work of Mayakovsky was probably already interested in the 1910s, but in the late 1930s (when Mayakovsky was declared "the best and most talented poet of the Soviet era") she was not averse to emphasizing this interest. In her case, this was one of the very few psychologically possible points of contact with officialdom. A monument to these sentiments is the poem "Mayakovsky in 1913":
Everything you touched seemed
Not the same as before
What you destroyed was destroyed
There was a sentence in every word.
It can be assumed that the young Mayakovsky for Akhmatova embodied the type of poet who addresses the most profound and serious topics, speaks on behalf of "languageless" contemporaries (the role that Akhmatova herself tried on in "Requiem"), has the will and power over the world - the antipode of the irresponsible dandy poet (this type was embodied by Kuzmin). Gradually, however, the image of "the same age Mamvrian oak The tree under which, according to the Bible, God appeared to Abraham. It is believed that the oak has survived to this day, it is located on the territory of the Russian monastery of the Holy Trinity in Hebron. "dispersed with the few real memories that Akhmatova could have about Mayakovsky.
And, finally, the last image that appears during the carnival is the “guest from the future”, that is, Isaiah Berlin.
and pictured World of Art "World of Art" - an art association of the late 1890s, as well as a magazine of the same name, published in St. Petersburg from 1898 to 1904. The journal was headed by Sergei Diaghilev and Alexandre Benois. The publication and association went down in history as the pioneers of modernism and symbolism in Russian art. , and the dark, demonic, disturbing city of Dostoevsky, Gogol, Blok, Bely. In the early lyrics of Akhmatova, these two images are superimposed on each other. "The Dark City by the Terrible River" is simultaneously brilliant, slender and cruel. In the "Poem without a Hero" the slender face of St. Petersburg is almost absent. Petersburg in the poem is “sworn by Queen Avdotya, / Dostoevsky and possessed” (referring to the legendary prophecy of Evdokia Lopukhina, Peter’s first wife, “Petersburg be empty”). The exquisitely demonic carnival is just one of the manifestations of the "dark" essence of St. Petersburg, but its participants do not seem to be aware of this. It is very important that the text of the poem (in the "Lyrical digression" / third chapter) includes the image of another city - the common people "Peter", but it is not opposed to aesthetic Petersburg: they have a common "curse" and a common fate.In most editions, the poem ends with the scene of the author's evacuation (with a crowd of other refugees) "to the east" in 1941. But in "Poems" (1958), the line "all of Russia went east" was followed by:
... And to meet herself,
Steadfastly in a formidable battle,
Like from a mirror in reality
Hurricane from the Urals, Altai
Loyal, young
Russia was on its way to save Moscow.
Boris Filippov notes that these lines did not disappear by chance: “Russia, as if waking up from its St. Petersburg dream, went to save its primordial, condo, pallet-national Moscow.<…>But Akhmatova removed this ending. The arguments of Filippov (Filistinsky), a former active collaborator who stained himself with blood, on this subject look somewhat ambiguous, but his interpretation of these lines (and the rejection of them) cannot be denied persuasiveness. The motive of opposing Petersburg and Moscow, which appeared in the poem, then disappears.
Not on the blue Carpathian heights...
He is on your doorstep!
Across.
May God forgive you!
(How many deaths went to the poet,
Silly boy: he chose this one, -
First, he did not tolerate insults,
He did not know at what threshold
It costs and what road
A view will open before him...)
At the same time, there is a bitter prophecy in this death: the entire “carnival” world will survive the last days; starts new life, which poses serious challenges to a person, testing him with the last tests. Understanding the culture of the beginning of the century, from which Akhmatova emerged, taking into account the experience of subsequent years, in her later work (for example, in the "Northern Elegies") becomes a cross-cutting theme. This is the theme of a parallel fate, a possible, unfulfilled life. If in other works a prosperous, but internally meaningless alternative arises (say, life in exile), then in the “Poem without a Hero” another, terrible image appears:
And behind the barbed wire
In the heart of the dense taiga -
I don't know what year
Became a handful of camp dust,
Became a fairy tale from a terrible one,
My doppelgänger is being interrogated.
And then he leaves the interrogation.
To two messengers of the Noseless Maiden
Destined to protect him.
And I hear even from here -
Isn't that a miracle! —
Sounds of your voice:I paid for you
Chistogan,
Exactly ten years went
Under the gun
Neither left nor right
Didn't look
And behind me is a bad glory
Rustle.
Another tragic alternative is death in a besieged city. Akhmatova looks at her "carnival" youth not only with her own eyes, but also with the eyes of these "twins". All of them had to pay for the captivating frivolity of the “beautiful era”.
“Twelve” by Blok and “Frost, Red Nose” by Nekrasov.
"A Poem without a Hero" is an attempt to create a modernist "anti-Negin" poem. The conventionality and dottedness of the plot, the abundance of reminiscences and quotations (including from oneself), prosaic remarks similar to theatrical ones, internal reflection of an almost postmodern nature (a conversation with an imaginary editor about the content of the poem), chronological jumps, and finally, the mobility of a constantly changing text - all this makes "A Poem without a Hero" a unique work of its kind.
The search for Akhmatova reveals an unexpected similarity with the search in the field of the large form of such authors as extremely distant from her as Nikolai Zabolotsky and Alexander Vvedensky. Vvedensky’s “Four Descriptions” (1934), where one of the four “dying (dying)” is a suicidal aesthete from 1911 (and the other dies at the front three years later), echoes Akhmatova’s poem and thematically.
Modernist boldness in the field of composition and text structure is combined in Akhmatova with her characteristic language, in which live conversational intonation alternates with emphatically “archaic” romantic poetisms Poetic word or expression. . However, in the context of the poem, these poeticisms are perceived as a “magnificent quotation” and become part of a game that is amazing in its boldness and complexity.
bibliography
- Akhmatova A. A. A poem without a hero. Prose about the poem. Materials of the ballet libretto / Prod. N. I. Krainova. St. Petersburg: Mir, 2009.
- Akhmatova A. A. A poem without a hero: [Collection] / Introduction. Art. R. D. Timenchik. Moscow: MPI Publishing House, 1989.
- Verblovskaya I. S. Beloved by bitter love. Petersburg Anna Akhmatova. St. Petersburg: Journal "Neva", 2003.
- Zhirmunsky V. M. Creativity of Anna Akhmatova. L.: Nauka, 1973.
- Luknitsky P. K. Acumiana. Meetings with Anna Akhmatova: In 2 volumes. Paris: YMCA-Press, 1991.
- Kikhney L. G., Temirshina O. R. “A poem without a hero” by Akhmatova and the poetics of postmodernism // Bulletin of Moscow University. Series 9. Philology. 2002. No. 3. C. 53–62.
- Timenchik R. D. Anna Akhmatova in the 1960s: In 2 vols. M.; Jerusalem: Bridges of Culture / Gesharim, 2014.
- Timenchik R.D. Portrait of the lord of darkness in the "Poem without a Hero" // New Literary Review. 2001. No. 52. S. 200–205.
- Timenchik R. D., Toporov V. N., Tsivyan T. V. Akhmatova and Kuzmin // Russian Literature. 1978 Vol. VI. no. 3. P. 213–303.
- Timenchik R. D. Riga episode in Anna Akhmatova's "Poem without a Hero" // Daugava. 1984. No. 2. S. 113–121.
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All bibliography
Starting the analysis of Akhmatova's work "A Poem without a Hero", one cannot ignore the interpretation given by the author himself. A triptych is a work of three parts. Three dedications, and at the same time, at the very beginning, Akhmatova gives a personal “justification for this thing”: the memory of those who died in the besieged Leningrad. And then he explains that the poem should be taken as it is, without trying to find a secret meaning.
But after such a long preface, the text just gives the impression of a riddle and a rebus. The introduction, even before the first part, is written in different years: the pre-war and besieged northern capital, Tashkent during the war years, the first spring after the Victory ... The scattered fragments are connected by the fact that they are all memories, the author's view through the years.
The poetic meter of the poem is closer to the anapaest, although the changing size of the lines, the omission of stressed positions in some places make it more like an accent verse. The same applies to the method of rhyming: two consecutive lines with the same ending are underlined by the third, which is repeated in the sixth line. This creates the impression of haste, quick conversation, "hurrying after a fleeing thought." And the fact that sometimes the number of lines with the same rhyme increases to four enhances the effect.
The main theme of the first part is phantasmagoria, the heroes are a swarm of images, otherworldly creatures, fictional characters. The action takes place in 1913, and echoing the "devil's dozen" dates, the presence of evil spirits shines through all the lines. “Without a face and a name”, “possessed city”, “ghost”, “demon”, “goat-legged” - this whole part of the poem is sprinkled with similar names, therefore, after reading it leaves a feeling of confusion, delirium of an inflamed consciousness.
The second part surprises with the words “disgruntled editor” quoted. He voices exactly those thoughts about the poem that come to the mind of the reader. And this normality, "sober thinking" seems alien in the text. But the lyrical heroine begins her explanations and again plunges into the carousel of semi-real images. The actors are the era of both romanticism and the twentieth century; the ghosts of the great ones are called to life: Shelley, Shakespeare, Sophocles, Cagliostro, El Greco. This abundance of names makes us look at the second part of the poem as an attempt by the author to comprehend the past - not his own, but a whole layer of history - through the work of people.
An unexpected remark - “The howl in the chimney subsides, the distant sounds of Requiem are heard, some kind of deaf groans. These are millions of sleeping women raving in their sleep” – makes you literally stumble, break out of the enveloping haze of words. And the word "rave" again reinforces the feeling that the poem is an incoherent, fragmentary confession of a lyrical heroine, without composition and meaning.
The beginning of the third part (epilogue) is sobering: the action takes place in besieged Leningrad. "The city is in ruins... fires are burning out... heavy guns are groaning." Reality breaks into the narrative from all over, and although it remains hasty and expressive, it no longer tells about ghosts. Camp dust, interrogation, denunciation, revolver. Siberia, the Urals, the exile and punishment of the children of a great country. The final lines of the poem: “Having lowered her dry eyes, and wringing her hands, Russia went east before me” amaze with their strength and a sense of the ubiquitous tragedy. After these words, the irony of the name begins to emerge: in “A Poem without a Hero” the heroine is the Motherland, history, era. And she - the one that was familiar to the lyrical heroine, whom she recalls in the first parts - is no longer there.
The huge gaping hole where the broken old had been was not filled with the new. Akhmatova did not see the prospect (and who saw it in those turbulent years?), although the poem was completed in 1962.
Twenty-two years (according to other sources - twenty-five years) this work was created, and Anna Andreevna herself became the hero, then Petersburg, to which a separate dedication was written, then the nineteenth century. But in the end, all these "heroes" are fused into a single character - a great country, of which only memories remain.