Analysis of Zabolotsky's poem “Reading poetry. Summary of the lesson "N.A. Zabolotsky. Lyrics. The philosophical nature of the poet's lyrics. The theme of harmony with nature, love and death."

May 7 this year marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of N.A. Zabolotsky. His poems and especially poems are sometimes difficult to understand. But in the days of ecological disasters, mental confusion, loss of moral guidelines, there is probably no author in Russian poetry who is more necessary for us than Zabolotsky, with his sense of nature, teacher pathos, and desire for a global understanding of the world.

N. ZABOLOTSKY

Thought - Image - Music

The heart of poetry is in its content. The content of poetry depends on what the author has in his soul, on his poetic worldview and worldview. As an artist, the poet is obliged to remove their usual everyday masks from things and phenomena, to show the virginity of the world, its meaning, full of secrets. Habitual combinations of words, mechanical formulas of poetry, rhetoric and mentoring do poetry a disservice. Anyone who sees things and phenomena in their living image will find living unusual combinations of words.

All words are good, and almost all of them are good for a poet. Each individual word is not an artistic word. A word acquires its artistic appearance only in a certain combination with other words. What are these combinations?

First of all, it is a combination of meanings. The meanings of words form marriages and weddings. Merging together, the meanings of words transform each other and give rise to modifications of the meaning. Atoms of new meanings are formed into giant molecules, which, in turn, mold an artistic image. Combinations of images are controlled by poetic thought.

Just as the character of the future organism is predetermined in the microscopic body of the chromosome, the primary combinations of meanings determine the general appearance and meaning of a work of art. What way does the poet go - from the particular to the general or from the general to the particular? I think that none of these paths is suitable, because naked rationality is not capable of poetic feats. Neither the analytical nor the synthetic paths, taken separately, are suitable for the poet. The poet works with his whole being, unconsciously combining both of these methods.

But the meaning of a word is not the whole word. The word has sound. Sound is the second inalienable property of a word. The sound of each individual word has no artistic value. Artistic sound also appears only in combinations of words. Combinations that are difficult to pronounce, where words rub against each other, interfere with each other, push and step on one's feet, are of little use for poetry. Words should hug and caress each other, form living garlands and round dances, they should sing, trumpet and cry, they should call to each other, like lovers in the forest, wink at each other, give secret signs, make dates and duels. I don't know if it's possible to learn such a combination of words. Usually the poet gets them by itself, and partly the poet begins to notice them only after the poem is written.

The poet works with all his being at the same time: mind, heart, soul, muscles. It works with the whole organism, and the more coordinated this work is, the higher its quality will be. In order for thought to triumph, he embodies it in images. To make the language work, he draws from it all its musical power. Thought - Image - Music - this is the ideal trinity that the poet strives for.

SPRING IN THE FOREST

V.A. Zaitsev

Nikolai Alekseevich Zabolotsky (1903-1958) - an outstanding Russian poet, a man of difficult fate, who went through a difficult path of artistic search. His original and diverse work enriched Russian poetry, especially in the field of philosophical lyrics, and took a firm place in the poetic classics of the 20th century.

A penchant for writing poetry was discovered in the future poet as early as childhood and during his school years. But serious poetry studies took place at the beginning of the twenties, when Zabolotsky studied - first at Moscow University, and then at the Pedagogical Institute. A.I. Herzen in Petrograd. The “Autobiography” says about this period: “He wrote a lot, imitating Mayakovsky, then Blok, then Yesenin. I couldn't find my own voice.

Throughout the 20s. the poet passes the way of intensive spiritual searches and artistic experiment. From youthful poems of 1921 (“Sisyphus Christmas”, “Heavenly Seville”, “Heart-Wasteland”), bearing traces of the influences of diverse poetic schools - from symbolism to futurism, he comes to gain creative originality. By the middle of the decade, one after another, his original poems were being created, which subsequently compiled the first book.

At this time, N. Zabolotsky, together with young Leningrad poets of the “left” orientation (D. Kharms, A. Vvedensky, I. Bekhterev and others), organized the “Association of Real Art” (“Oberiu”), Zabolotsky took part in drawing up the program and declaration group, undoubtedly putting its own meaning into its very name: "Oberiu" - "The union of the only realistic art, and "y" is an embellishment that we allowed ourselves." Having entered the association, Zabolotsky most of all strove to maintain independence, elevating the "creative freedom of members of the community" as a basic principle.

In 1929, Zabolotsky's first book "Columns" was published, which included 22 poems from 1926-1928. It immediately attracted the attention of readers and critics, caused conflicting responses: on the one hand, serious positive reviews by N. Stepanov, M. Zenkevich and others, who noted the arrival of a new poet with their original vision of the world, on the other hand, rude, odd articles under characteristic titles: "System of cats", "System of girls", "Disintegration of consciousness".

What caused such a mixed reaction? In the poems of "Columns" a sharply individual and estranged perception of the contemporary reality was manifested by the author. The poet himself later wrote that the theme of his poems was deeply alien and hostile to him "the predatory life of all kinds of businessmen and entrepreneurs", "a satirical depiction of this life". A sharp anti-philistine orientation is felt in many poems of the book (“New Life”, “Ivanovs”, “Wedding”, “Bypass Canal”, “People's House”). In the depiction of the world of the philistines, there are features of absurdism, realistic concreteness is adjacent to hyperbolization and alogism of images.

The book was opened by the poem "Red Bavaria", in the title of which the characteristic realities of that time are recorded: that was the name of the famous beer bar on Nevsky. From the first lines, an extremely concrete, lively and plastic image of the situation of this institution arises:

In the wilderness of a bottle paradise, where palm trees have dried up for a long time, - playing under electricity, a window floated in a glass; it shone on the blades, then set down, became heavy; beer smoke curled over him ... But it is impossible to describe.

The author, to a certain extent, in accordance with the self-characterization given by him in the "Declaration" of the Oberiuts, appears here as "a poet of naked concrete figures, pushed close to the viewer's eyes." In the description of the pub and its regulars that unfolds further, internal tension, dynamics and increasing generalization are consistently growing. Together with the poet, we see how “in that bottle paradise / the sirens trembled on the edge / of the crooked stage”, how “the doors are turning on chains, / the people fall down the stairs, / the cardboard shirt crackles, / they dance with a bottle”, how “men everyone was shouting too, / they were swinging on the tables, / they were swinging on the ceilings / bedlam with flowers in half ... "The feeling of meaninglessness and absurdity of what is happening is growing stronger, from everyday specifics there is a general phantasmagoria that spills out onto the streets of the city:" Eyes fell, for sure weights, / the glass was broken - the night came out ... "And instead of the" wilderness of the bottle paradise "there is already standing in front of the reader" ... outside the window - in the wilderness of time ... Nevsky in brilliance and longing ... "Generalized judgments of this kind are found and in other verses: “And everywhere crazy delirium ...” (“White Night”).

The very nature of metaphors and comparisons speaks of the sharp rejection of the petty-bourgeois world: “... the groom, unbearably agile, / clings to the bride like a snake” (“New Life”), “in iron armor the samovar / makes noise like a house general” (“Ivanovs”), “Straight bald men / sit like a shot from a gun”, “a huge house, wagging its back, / flies into the space of being” (“Wedding”), “A lantern, bloodless, like a worm, / dangles like an arrow in the bushes” (“People's House ") and etc.

Speaking in 1936 in a discussion about formalism and forced to agree with the accusations of criticism against his experimental poems, Zabolotsky did not abandon what he had done at the beginning of his journey and emphasized: “The columns taught me to look closely at the outside world, aroused in me an interest in things , developed in me the ability to depict phenomena in a plastic way. I managed to find some secret of plastic images in them.”

The secrets of plastic representation were comprehended by the poet not for the sake of a purely artistic experiment, but in line with the development of life content, as well as the experience of literature and other related arts. In this regard, the bright miniature "Movement" (December 1927) is interesting, built on a clear contrast between the static-painterly first and dynamic second stanzas:

The driver sits as if on a throne, armor is made of cotton wool, and the beard, as on an icon, lies, jingling with coins.

And the poor horse waves its arms, then stretches out like a burbot, then again eight legs sparkle in its shiny belly.

The transformation of the horse into a fantastic animal with arms and twice the number of legs gives an impetus to the reader's imagination, in whose imagination the seemingly monumental and motionless picture comes to life. The fact that Zabolotsky was consistently looking for the most expressive artistic solutions in depicting movement is evidenced by the poem “Feast” written soon after (January 1928), where we find a dynamic sketch: “And the horse flows through the air, / conjures the body in a long circle / and cuts with sharp feet / shafts a flat prison.

The book "Columns" became a significant milestone not only in the work of Zabolotsky, but also in the poetry of that time, influencing the artistic searches of many poets. The sharpness of social and moral problems, the combination of plastic representation, odic pathos and grotesque satirical style gave the book its originality and determined the range of the author's artistic possibilities.

Much has been written about her. Researchers rightly connect Zabolotsky's artistic searches and the poetic world of "Stolbtsy" with the experience of Derzhavin and Khlebnikov, the painting of M. Chagall and P. Filonov, and finally, with the "carnival" element of F. Rabelais. The poet's work in his first book relied on this powerful cultural layer.

However, Zabolotsky was not limited to the theme of life and life of the city. In the poems “The Face of a Horse”, “In Our Dwellings” (1926), “Walk”, “The Signs of the Zodiac Dim” (1929) and others, which were not included in the first book, the theme of nature arises and receives an artistic and philosophical interpretation, which becomes the most important in poet's work in the next decade. Animals and natural phenomena are spiritualized in them:

The horse's face is more beautiful and smarter.
He hears the sound of leaves and stones.
Attentive! He knows the cry of an animal
And in the dilapidated grove the rumble of a nightingale.
And the horse stands like a knight on the clock,
The wind plays in light hair,
Eyes burn like two huge worlds
And the mane spreads like royal purple.

The poet sees all natural phenomena alive, bearing human features: “The river is a nondescript girl / Lurking among the grasses ...”; “Each little flower / Waves with a small hand”; finally, “And all nature laughs, / Dying every moment” (“Walk”).

It is in these works that the origins of natural philosophical themes in the lyrics and poems of Zabolotsky of the 30-50s, his reflections on the relationship between man and nature, the tragic contradictions of being, life and death, the problem of immortality.

The formation of philosophical and artistic views and concepts of Zabolotsky was influenced by the works and ideas of V. Vernadsky, N. Fedorov, especially K. Tsiolkovsky, with whom he was in active correspondence at that time. The thoughts of the scientist about the place of mankind in the Universe, of course, acutely worried the poet. In addition, his longstanding passion for the work of Goethe and Khlebnikov clearly affected his worldview. As Zabolotsky himself said: “At that time I was fond of Khlebnikov, and his lines:

I see freedom of horses And equality of cows... -

deeply affected me. The utopian idea of ​​liberating animals appealed to me.”

In the poems "The Triumph of Agriculture" (1929-1930), "The Crazy Wolf" (1931) and "Trees" (1933), the poet followed the path of intense socio-philosophical and artistic searches, in particular, he was inspired by the idea of ​​"emancipation" of animals, due to deep belief in the existence of reason in nature, in all living beings.

Projected on the conditions of collectivization unfolding in the country, embodied in the author's reflections and philosophical conversations of the characters in his disputed poems, this belief caused misunderstanding and sharp critical attacks. The poems were subjected to cruel scrutiny in the articles “Under the guise of foolishness”, “Foolish poetry and the poetry of millions”, etc.

Unfair assessments and the stubborn tone of criticism had a negative impact on the poet's work. He almost stopped writing and at one time was mainly engaged in translation activities. However, the desire to penetrate the secrets of life, the artistic and philosophical understanding of the world in its contradictions, reflections on man and nature continued to excite him, making up the content of many works, including completed in the 40s. the poem "Lodeinikov", fragments of which were written in 1932-1934. The hero, who wears autobiographical traits, is tormented by the contrast between the wise harmony of the life of nature and its sinister, bestial cruelty:

Lodeynikov listened. Over the garden there was a vague rustle of a thousand deaths. Nature, which turned into hell, did its business without fuss. The beetle ate grass, the beetle was pecked by a bird, the ferret drank the brain from a bird's head, and the terribly twisted faces of nocturnal creatures looked out from the grass. Nature's age-old winepress united death and being into a single club. But thought was powerless to unite its two mysteries.

("Lodeinikov in the garden", 1934)

Tragic notes are clearly heard in the understanding of natural and human existence: “Our waters shine on the abysses of torment, / forests rise on the abysses of grief!” (By the way, in the 1947 edition, these lines were altered and smoothed out almost to complete neutrality: “So this is what they are making noise in the darkness of the water, / What the forests are whispering about, sighing!” And the poet’s son N.N. Zabolotsky is certainly right, commenting on these poems in the early 1930s: “The poet’s perception of the social situation in the country was also indirectly reflected in the description of the “eternal winepress” of nature”).

In the lyrics of Zabolotsky in the mid-30s. more than once social motives arise (the poems "Farewell", "North", "Gori Symphony", published then in the central press). But still the main focus of his poetry is philosophical. In the poem “Thinking about death yesterday...” (1936), overcoming the “unbearable anguish of separation” from nature, the poet hears the singing of evening herbs, “and the speech of water, and the dead cry of stone.” In this lively sound, he catches and distinguishes the voices of his favorite poets (Pushkin, Khlebnikov) and completely dissolves himself in the world around him: “... I myself was not a child of nature, / but her thought! But her unsteady mind!

The poems “Thinking about death yesterday...”, “Immortality” (later called “Metamorphoses”) testify to the poet’s close attention to the eternal questions of life, which acutely worried the classics of Russian poetry: Pushkin, Tyutchev, Baratynsky. In them he tries to solve the problem of personal immortality:

How everything changes! What used to be a bird -
Now lies a written page;
Thought was once a mere flower;
The poem walked like a slow bull;
And what was me, then, perhaps,
Again grows and the world of plants multiplies.
("Metamorphoses")

In The Second Book (1937), the poetry of thought triumphed. Significant changes have taken place in Zabolotsky's poetics, although the secret of "plastic images" he found back in "Columns" was here clearly and very expressively embodied, for example, in such impressive paintings of the poem "North":

Where are the people with icy beards,
Putting a conical three-piece on his head,
They sit in sledges and long poles
They let out an icy spirit from their mouths;
Where are the horses, like mammoths in shafts,
They run rumbling; where the smoke is on the roofs,
Like a statue frightening the eye...

Despite the seemingly favorable external circumstances of Zabolotsky's life and work (the release of the book, the high appreciation of his translation of "The Knight in the Panther's Skin" by S. Rustaveli, the beginning of work on poetic transcriptions of "The Tale of Igor's Campaign" and other creative plans), trouble lay in wait for him. In March 1938, he was illegally arrested by the NKVD, and after a severe interrogation that lasted four days, and detention in a prison psychiatric hospital, he received a five-year term of corrective labor.

From the end of 1938 to the beginning of 1946, Zabolotsky stayed in the camps of the Far East, Altai Territory, Kazakhstan, worked in the most difficult conditions at logging, blasting, railway construction, and only thanks to a happy coincidence he was able to get a job as a draftsman in a design bureau, which saved him life.

It was a decade of enforced silence. From 1937 to 1946, Zabolotsky wrote only two poems that develop the theme of the relationship between man and nature (“Forest Lake” and “Nightingale”). In the last year of the Great Patriotic War and the first post-war period, he resumed work on a literary translation of The Tale of Igor's Campaign, which played an important role in his return to his own poetic work.

The post-war lyrics of Zabolotsky are marked by the expansion of the thematic and genre range, the deepening and development of socio-psychological, moral, humanistic and aesthetic motives. Already in the first verses of 1946: "Morning", "Blind", "Thunderstorm", "Beethoven" and others - the opened horizons of a new life seemed to open up and at the same time the experience of severe trials affected.

The poem "In this birch grove" (1946), all permeated with the rays of the morning sun, carries a charge of high tragedy, unrelenting pain of personal and national disasters and losses. The tragic humanism of these lines, their suffering harmony and universal sound are paid for by the torments that the poet himself experienced from arbitrariness and lawlessness:

In this birch grove,
Far from suffering and troubles,
Where pink fluctuates
unblinking morning light
Where a transparent avalanche
Leaves are pouring from high branches, -
Sing to me, oriole, a desert song,
The song of my life.

These poems are about the life and fate of a person who endured everything, but not a broken and unbelieving person, about the dangerous, approaching, perhaps, the last line of the paths of mankind, about the tragic complexity of time passing through the human heart and soul. They contain the bitter life experience of the poet himself, an echo of the past war and a warning about the possible death of all life on the planet, devastated by an atomic whirlwind, global catastrophes (“... Atoms shudder, / Throwing houses like a white whirlwind ... You fly over cliffs, / You fly over the ruins of death... And a deadly cloud stretches / Above your head”).

Before us is a visionary, comprehensively meaningful universal catastrophe and the defenselessness of everything living on earth in front of formidable, chaotic, forces beyond the control of man. And yet these lines carry light, purification, catharsis, leaving a ray of hope in the human heart: "Beyond the great rivers / The sun will rise ... And then in my torn heart / Your voice will sing."

In the post-war years, Zabolotsky wrote such wonderful poems as “Blind”, “I am not looking for harmony in nature”, “Remembrance”, “Farewell to friends”. The latter is dedicated to the memory of A. Vvedensky, D. Kharms, N. Oleinikov and other comrades in the Oberiu group, who became in the 30s. victims of Stalin's repressions. Zabolotsky's poems are marked by impressive poetic concreteness, plasticity and picturesqueness of the image and, at the same time, by a deep social and philosophical understanding of the problems of life and being, nature and art.

Signs of humanism that are not characteristic of the official doctrine - pity, mercy, compassion - are clearly visible in one of the first post-war poems by Zabolotsky "The Blind One". Against the background of the “dazzling day” rising to the sky, the lilacs blooming wildly in the spring gardens, the poet’s attention is riveted to the old man “with his face upturned to the sky”, whose whole life is “like a big habitual wound” and who, alas, will never open “half-dead eyes ". A deeply personal perception of someone else's misfortune is inseparable from philosophical reflection, giving rise to the lines:

And I'm afraid to think
That somewhere at the edge of nature
I'm just as blind
With a face upturned to the sky.
Only in the darkness of the soul
I watch spring waters,
I'm talking to them
Only in my bitter heart.

Sincere sympathy for people walking "through thousands of troubles", the desire to share their grief and anxieties brought to life a whole gallery of poems ("Passerby", "Loser", "In the Cinema", "Ugly Girl", "Old Actress", "Where- then in a field near Magadan”, “Death of a doctor”, etc.). Their heroes are very different, but with all the variety of human characters and the author's attitude towards them, two motives prevail here, absorbing the author's concept of humanism: "Infinitely human patience / If love does not go out in the heart" and "Human strength / There is no limit ... »

In the work of Zabolotsky in the 50s, along with the lyrics of nature and philosophical reflections, the genres of a poetic story and a portrait built on the plot are intensively developed - from those written back in 1953-1954. poems "Loser", "In the Cinema" to those created in the last year of his life - "General's Cottage", "Iron Old Woman".

In a kind of poetic portrait "Ugly Girl" (1955), Zabolotsky poses a philosophical and aesthetic problem - about the essence of beauty. Drawing the image of an “ugly girl”, a “poor ugly girl”, in whose heart lives “another's joy just like her own”, the author, with all the logic of poetic thought, leads the reader to the conclusion that “what is beauty”:

And even if her features are not good And she has nothing to seduce the imagination, - The infantile grace of the soul Already shows through in any of her movements.

And if so, what is beauty And why do people deify it?

Is she a vessel in which there is emptiness, Or a fire flickering in a vessel?

The beauty and charm of this poem, revealing the “pure flame” that burns in the depths of the soul of an “ugly girl”, is that Zabolotsky was able to show and poetically affirm the true spiritual beauty of a person - something that was a constant subject of his thoughts throughout the 50s gg. (“Portrait”, “Poet”, “On the beauty of human faces”, “Old actress”, etc.).

The social, moral, and aesthetic motives intensively developed in Zabolotsky's later work did not supplant his most important philosophical theme of man and nature. It is important to emphasize that now the poet has taken a clear position in relation to everything connected with the invasion of nature, its transformation, etc.: “Man and nature are a unity, and only a complete fool can speak seriously about some kind of conquest of nature and dualist. How can I, a man, conquer nature if I myself am nothing but her mind, her thought? In our everyday life, this expression "the conquest of nature" exists only as a working term inherited from the language of savages. That is why in his work of the second half of the 50s. the unity of man and nature is revealed with special depth. This idea runs through the entire figurative structure of Zabolotsky's poems.

Thus, the poem “Gombori Forest” (1957), written on the basis of impressions from a trip to Georgia, is distinguished by its vivid picturesqueness and musicality of images. Here are “cinnabar with ocher on the leaves”, and “maple in illumination and beech in the glow”, and bushes similar to “harps and trumpets”, etc. The poetic fabric itself, epithets and comparisons are marked by increased expressiveness, a riot of colors and associations from the sphere of art (“There are bloody veins in the cornelian grove / The bush bulged ...”; “... the oak raged like Rembrandt in the Hermitage, / And the maple, like Murillo, soared on wings”), and at the same time, this plastic and pictorial depiction is inseparable from the artist’s intent thought, imbued with a lyrical sense of belonging to nature:

I became the nervous system of plants,
I became the reflection of stone rocks,
And the experience of my autumn observations
I wished to give back to humanity.

Admiration for the luxurious southern landscapes did not cancel the long-standing and persistent passions of the poet, who wrote about himself: “I was brought up by harsh nature ...” Back in 1947, in the poem “I touched the leaves of eucalyptus”, inspired by Georgian impressions, he not accidentally connects his sympathies, pain and sadness with other visions much more dear to the heart:

But in the furious splendor of nature
I dreamed of Moscow groves,
Where the blue sky is paler
Plants are more modest and simpler.

In the late poems of the poet, the autumn landscapes of the homeland are often seen by him in expressive-romantic tones, realized in images marked by plasticity, dynamism, sharp psychologism: leaves moving” (“Autumn landscapes”). But, perhaps, he manages to convey the “charm of the Russian landscape” with special force, breaking through the dense veil of everyday life and seeing and depicting this “realm of fog and darkness” in a new way, which is actually full of special beauty and secret charm.

The poem "September" (1957) is an example of the animation of a landscape. Comparisons, epithets, personifications - all components of the poetic structure serve to solve this artistic problem. The dialectic of the development of the image-experience is interesting (correlation between the motives of bad weather and the sun, withering and flourishing, the transition of associations from the sphere of nature to the human world and vice versa). A ray of sun breaking through the rain clouds illuminated the hazel bush and evoked a whole stream of associations and thoughts in the poet:

It means that the distance is not forever curtained by Clouds and, therefore, not in vain,
Like a girl, having flared up, the hazel shone at the end of September.
Now, painter, grab brush after brush, and on the canvas
Golden as fire and garnet Draw this girl to me.
Draw, like a tree, an unsteady young princess in a crown
With a restlessly sliding smile On a tear-stained young face.

Subtle spiritualization of the landscape, calm, thoughtful intonation, agitation and together restraint of tone, colorfulness and softness of the picture create the charm of these poems.

Noticing the details with pinpoint accuracy, capturing the moments of the life of nature, the poet recreates her lively and whole image in its constant, fluid variability. In this sense, the poem "Evening on the Oka" is characteristic:

And the clearer the details of the Objects around become,
All the more immense are the distances of river meadows, backwaters and bends.
The whole world is on fire, transparent and spiritual, Now it is truly good,
And you, rejoicing, recognize many wonders In his living features.

Zabolotsky was able to subtly convey the spirituality of the natural world, to reveal the harmony of man with it. In his late lyrics, he moved towards a new and original synthesis of philosophical reflection and plastic image, poetic scale and microanalysis, comprehending and artistically capturing the connection between modernity, history, and “eternal” themes. Among them, the theme of love occupies a special place in his later work.

In 1956-1957. the poet creates the lyrical cycle "Last Love", consisting of 10 poems. They unfold a dramatic story of the relationship of already elderly people, whose feelings have passed difficult tests.

Deeply personal love experiences are invariably projected in these verses onto the life of the surrounding nature. In the closest merging with it, the poet sees what is happening in his own heart. And therefore, already in the first poem, the “thistle bouquet” carries the reflections of the universe: “These stars with sharp ends, / These sprays of the northern dawn / ... This is also an image of the universe ...” (emphasis added. - V.Z.) . And at the same time, this is the most concrete, plastic and spiritualized image of the departing feeling, the inevitable parting with the beloved woman: “... Where are the bunches of flowers, blood-headed, / Directly embedded in my heart”; “And a wedge-shaped thorn stretched / In my chest, and for the last time / The sad and beautiful shines on me / The look of her inextinguishable eyes.”

And in other poems of the cycle, along with a direct, immediate expression of love (“Confession”, “You swore - to the grave ...”), it also arises and is reflected - in the landscape paintings themselves, the living details of the surrounding nature, in which the poet sees "a whole world of jubilation and grief" ("Sea walk"). One of the most impressive and expressive poems in this regard is The Juniper Bush (1957):

I saw a juniper bush in a dream
I heard a metallic crunch in the distance,
I heard a ringing of amethyst berries,
And in a dream, in silence, I liked him.
I smelled a slight smell of resin through my sleep.
Bending these low trunks,
I noticed in the darkness of tree branches
Slightly living likeness of your smile.

These poems surprisingly combine the ultimate realistic concreteness of visible, audible, perceived by all senses signs and details of an ordinary, seemingly natural phenomenon and a special fragility, variability, impressionism of visions, impressions, memories. And the juniper bush that the poet dreamed of in a dream becomes a capacious and multidimensional image-personification that has absorbed the old joy and today's pain of outgoing love, the elusive image of a beloved woman:

juniper bush, juniper bush,
The cooling babble of changeable lips,
Light babble, barely reeking of pitch,
Pierced me with a deadly needle!

In the final poems of the cycle (“Meeting”, “Old Age”), the dramatic life conflict is resolved, and the painful experiences are replaced by a feeling of enlightenment and peace. The “life-giving light of suffering” and the “distant weak light” of happiness flickering with rare lightning flashes are inextinguishable in memory, but, most importantly, all the hardest is behind: “And only their souls, like candles, / Stream the last warmth.”

The late period of Zabolotsky's work is marked by intense creative searches. In 1958, turning to historical themes, he created a kind of poem-cycle "Rubruk in Mongolia", based on a real fact undertaken by a French monk in the 13th century. travel through the expanses of what was then Russia, the Volga steppes and Siberia to the land of the Mongols. In the realistic pictures of life and everyday life of the Asian Middle Ages, recreated by the power of the poet's creative imagination, in the very poetics of the work, a peculiar meeting of modernity and the distant historical past takes place. When creating the poem, the poet’s son notes, “Zabolotsky was guided not only by Rubruk’s carefully studied notes, but also by his own memories of movements and life in the Far East, in the Altai Territory, and Kazakhstan. The ability of the poet to simultaneously feel himself in different time periods is the most amazing thing in the poetic cycle about Rubruk.

In the last year of his life, Zabolotsky wrote many lyrical poems, including "Green Ray", "Swallow", "Grows near Moscow", "At sunset", "Do not let your soul be lazy ...". He translates an extensive (about 5 thousand lines) cycle of Serbian epic tales and negotiates with a publishing house to translate the German folk epic "The Nibelungenlied". He also plans to work on a large philosophical and historical trilogy ... But these creative ideas were no longer destined to come true.

With all the diversity of Zabolotsky's work, the unity and integrity of his artistic world should be emphasized. Artistic and philosophical understanding of the contradictions of life, deep reflections on man and nature in their interaction and unity, a kind of poetic embodiment of modernity, history, "eternal" themes form the basis of this integrity.

Zabolotsky's work is basically deeply realistic. But this does not deprive him of a constant desire for artistic synthesis, for combining the means of realism and romance, a complex associative, conditionally fantastic, expressive and metaphorical style, which openly manifested itself in the early period and was preserved in the depths of later poems and poems.

Highlighting in the classical heritage of Zabolotsky “first of all, realism in the broadest sense of the word”, A. Makedonov emphasized: “This realism includes both a wealth of forms and methods of lifelikeness, up to what Pushkin called “the Flemish school of motley rubbish”, and a wealth of forms grotesque, hyperbolic, fabulous, conditional, symbolic reproduction of reality, and the main thing in all these forms is the desire for the deepest and most generalizing, multi-valued penetration into it, in its entirety, the diversity of spiritual and sensual forms of being. This largely determines the originality of Zabolotsky's poetics and style.

In the program article "Thought-Image-Music" (1957), summarizing the experience of his creative life, emphasizing that "the heart of poetry is in its content", that "the poet works with all his being", Zabolotsky formulates the key concepts of his integral poetic system in this way : "Thought - Image - Music - this is the ideal triplicity to which the poet strives." This desired harmony is embodied in many of his poems.

In the work of Zabolotsky, there is undoubtedly an update and development of the traditions of Russian poetic classics, and especially the philosophical lyrics of the 18th-19th centuries. (Derzhavin, Baratynsky, Tyutchev). On the other hand, from the very beginning of his creative activity, Zabolotsky actively mastered the experience of the poets of the 20th century. (Khlebnikov, Mandelstam, Pasternak and others).

Regarding the passion for painting and music, which was clearly reflected not only in the very poetic fabric of his works, but also in the direct mention in them of the names of a number of artists and musicians (“Beethoven”, “Portrait”, “Bolero”, etc.), the poet’s son wrote in the memoirs “On the Father and Our Life”: “Father always treated painting with great interest. His penchant for such artists as Filonov, Brueghel, Rousseau, Chagall is well known. In the same memoirs, Beethoven, Mozart, Liszt, Schubert, Wagner, Ravel, Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, Shostakovich are named among Zabolotsky's favorite composers.

Zabolotsky proved to be an excellent master of poetic translation. His poetic adaptations of The Tale of Igor's Campaign and The Knight in the Panther's Skin by S. Rustaveli, translations from Georgian classical and modern poetry, from Ukrainian, Hungarian, German, Italian poets became exemplary.

Life and career of N.A. Zabolotsky in his own way reflected the tragic fate of Russian literature and Russian writers in the 20th century. Having organically absorbed huge layers of domestic and world culture, Zabolotsky inherited and developed the achievements of Russian poetry, in particular and especially philosophical lyrics - from classicism and realism to modernism. He combined in his work the best traditions of literature and art of the past with the most daring innovation characteristic of our century, rightfully taking his place among his classic poets.

L-ra: Russian literature. - 1997. - No. 2. - S. 38-46.

Keywords: Nikolai Zabolotsky, criticism of the work of Nikolai Zabolotsky, criticism of the poetry of Nikolai Zabolotsky, analysis of the work of Nikolai Zabolotsky, download criticism, download analysis, free download, Russian literature of the 20th century

The unique ability to speak about the great in simple words was inherent in N.A. Zabolotsky. The relationship between man and nature, inner and outer beauty, love - this is just a small list of topics that the poet reveals in his works. I am most interested in poems dedicated to creativity, telling how masterpieces are born. The poet, as it were, lets readers into his workshop.

In the poem "Reading poetry" we see both the master poet and the reader at the same time. ON THE. Zabolotsky has a unique

The ability to take the place of another: a child, an old actress, a blind man. He is a master of reincarnation, and everywhere he is sincere and convincing "a verse that almost does not look like a verse ...".

“Curious, funny and subtle,” begins N.A. Zabolotsky to reveal the theme of creativity. This is like a prelude to a conversation about something big and important, and gradually a portrait of a real master appears before us, who understands “the muttering of a cricket and a child”, can embody “human dreams” and

Forever believes in the life-giving,

Full of reason Russian language.

His hero helps to understand the purpose of real, genuine art. ON THE. Zabolotsky

Clearly separates true poetry and the "nonsense of crumpled speech." Recognizing for the latter "a certain sophistication", the author asks rhetorical questions:

But is it possible human dreams

To sacrifice these amusements?

And is it possible the Russian word

Turn into a chirping carduelis,

To make sense a living foundation

Couldn't you sound through it?

The answers are clear, and yet the poet in the next stanza once again emphasizes that "poetry puts up barriers ...", it is intended

Not for those who, playing charades,

Puts on a sorcerer's cap.

The idea of ​​the significance of the Russian word is very important, because it is the “living basis” of creativity. The poet draws attention to the responsibility of a person for what is said and written, this is especially necessary for those who have made the word their profession. It is valuable when it becomes not just material, but real poetry. In the last stanza exalted

Full of reason Russian language.

To comprehend the "reason of language" is only capable of a person who "lives real life."

The word "real" seems to me the main thing in this poem, although it sounds only once. But it is replaced by contextual synonyms: perfection, "living basis". Poetry is also real if it reflects "human dreams", and is not fun.

Of great importance in this poem are metaphors that create images of wildlife (“mumbling of a cricket and a child”), the creative process (“nonsense of speech”, “reason of language”). Thanks to the personifications in the work, poetry comes to life: “puts barriers to our inventions”, recognizes true connoisseurs and those who put on the “sorcerer's cap”.

The syntactic structure of the poem is quite interesting. The presence of rhetorical questions, as well as an exclamatory word-sentence, indicates a change in the emotional background in it: from a calm narrative to reflection and, finally, a sensual explosion. It is interesting that, being a negation, “no” in this case affirms the thought that was voiced in rhetorical questions.

ON THE. Zabolotsky does not experiment with form: a classic quatrain with an alternating rhyming method, a three-syllable anapaest - all this makes the poem easy to read and understand.

The theme of creativity is not new in literature: the great A.S. Pushkin, and the controversial V.V. Mayakovsky touched on it more than once. ON THE. Zabolotsky is no exception, he gave this topic a new sound, introducing exceptional motives peculiar only to him. The poet combined classics and modernity; it is not for nothing that the poem written in 1948 is partly in tune with the lyrical miniature "Russian Language" by I.S. Turgenev, created at the end of the nineteenth century. A sense of pride arises after reading such works.