We analyze Lermontov's poem "Prayer" (1837). Prayer (I, mother of God, now with prayer)

However, for the most part, Lermontov no longer asks God for anything. In another “Prayer” (“I, the Mother of God, now with a prayer ...”), he does not even turn to God - the Creator of the world, but to the Mother of God, who was especially highly revered by the people as an intercessor for all sinners before the Supreme Judge. And he prays before the icon of the Mother of God not for himself, because his soul is devastated (“desert”), it can no longer be revived and it is pointless to pray for her, and because he does not hope for anything, but for the soul of the “innocent virgin”, only that born or standing on the threshold of independent life.

Several contrasts are deployed in the poem: the devastated “I” contrasts with the beautiful soul, before which the world opens; this world is hostile and “cold” to the lyrical “I” and the beautiful soul, and therefore the “innocent maiden” is “given” not to the cold earthly world, but to its “warm intercessor”. Here the experience of "I" is transferred to the fate of another person. He tells the poet that only the help, protection and care of the Mother of God can protect and save the “innocent maiden” from the “cold world”, that is, avoid that sad experience that fell to the lot of the lyrical “I”.

So, the poet prays that the whole fate of the “innocent virgin” from birth to the “hour of farewell” would pass under the care of the Virgin. From the point of view of Lermontov, only in this case a natural stay in the earthly world is provided for a person. Indirect evidence of such a natural order is the unusual use of epithets for Lermontov in their direct, objective or emotionally stable meanings: youth light, old age deceased, hour farewell, morning noisy, night voiceless, bed (of death) sad.

Topic: PRAYER IN RUSSIAN POETS' POETS.M.Yu. Lermontov "Prayer" (1837), "In a difficult moment of life ..." (1839)

Goals: introduce studentswith works, to help understand the high gospel truths, to develop the ability to analyze a literary text, to understand the connection between the author's worldview and his work.

During the classes

I . Introductory speech of the teacher

In previous lessons, we were convinced that almost every Russian poet turns in his work to the theme of God, faith, repentance.

- How do you think up why these images appear in works of art?

(A person tends to think about the structure of the world, about the meaning of life, about death; to look for answers to important philosophical questions).

And when a person comes to the understanding that there is a Creator of all things, he begins to seek communion with Him.

How does this communication take place? What is prayer?

The word "prayer" is formed from the verb "to pray" - to ask humbly, humbly and diligently ( Dal V.I. Explanatory dictionary of the living Great Russian language). Prayer is a person’s appeal to God, in which he praises and glorifies his greatness, thanks for the mercy shown, confesses and repents before him of his unworthiness, expresses personal needs and petitions ( Molotkov S.E. Practical Encyclopedia of the Orthodox Christian. Fundamentals of Church Life).

The need to "speak to God", to open up to him in one or another life situation, state of mind is inherent in almost all Russian poets. That is why we have a long and stable tradition of prayer lyrics.

Let us turn to the poems of Russian poets.

M.Yu. Lermontov

I, the mother of God, now with a prayer

Before your image, bright radiance,

Not about salvation, not before the battle,

Not with gratitude or repentance,

I do not pray for my desert soul,

For the soul of a wanderer in the rootless world;

But I want to give an innocent virgin

Warm intercessor of the cold world.

Surround with happiness a worthy soul;

Give her companions full of attention

Youth is bright, old age is deceased,

Peace of hope for a gentle heart.

Is the time of farewell approaching

In a noisy morning, in a silent night -

1837

History of creation

Lermontov introduced this poem into the text of the letterM.A. Lopukhina from 15.02.1838 titled "The Wanderer's Prayer": "At the end of my letter, I am sending you a poem that I found by chance in a pile of my travel papers and which I liked to some extent ...". The poem is built as a monologue of a lyrical hero - a plea for the happiness of a beloved woman, for her soul. Before us is a monologue filled with true Christian feeling. The text is based on the main Christian postulate - love for one's neighbor. The lyrical hero rejects the traditional forms of turning to God with a prayer for himself: he prays for his neighbor.

Analysis of the poem

What do you think of the lyrical hero of this poem?

(This is a lonely, “rootless wanderer”, with a “desert soul”, perhaps far from repentance)

What is the meaning of the word "wanderer" here?

(Of course, this is not a traveler, but a person who is looking for and has not yet found his place in the world)

- Which of Lermontov's heroes does he remind you of?

(Grigory Alexandrovich Pechorin - a hero of his time, an extra person in his own society)

Who is the hero of the poem praying for? How does his prayer change our perception of him?

(The beloved of the lyrical hero comes to the fore - pure and defenseless against the hostile forces of the "cold" soul world. A prayer for her reveals the best qualities of the lyrical hero himself - we see that he has not lost the ability to love and care for those who need participation Perhaps the hero considers himself unworthy of the help of the Mother of God, but for another he asks sincerely and with unshakable faith that his prayer will be heard)

Teacher's comment

"Prayer" comes close to popular Christian ideas about the "intercessor of the zealous Christian kind." It has been noted that Russian prayer is primarily a prayer to the Mother of God and only through her to Christ. The images and icons of the Mother of God are diverse, as if all the diverse people's grief and sorrow resorted to the heavenly intercessor. Prayer to the Mother of God - the simplest, children's, women's prayer.

What line do you think is the climax? Justify your opinion.

(The line "to the warm intercessor of the cold world» is the climax. These words are not accidental, but final, behind them stands the whole tragic philosophy of Lermontov. The image of the "cold world" is familiar to the reader from other poems of the poet. But as long as there is a “warm intercessor”, this “cold world” is not capable of destroying a person - you just need to wholeheartedly turn to the Mother of God for help)

- How do you see the connection of Lermontov's poem with Christianity and Orthodoxy?

(In Lermontov's "Prayer" there is that "extraordinary lyricism", which, according to Gogol, "comes from our church songs and canons." And indeed: in the akathists to the Mother of God"Unexpected Joy" and"Sovereign" speaks of the "Warm Intercessor and Helper of the Christian race"; in the akathist Three-Handed, it is sung that she warms "our cold hearts")

- How do you understand the last lines of the poem?

(“Prayer” is a masterpiece of Lermontov’s love lyrics. Such reverent love breathes in the verses that they can rightfully be called a hymn to purity, tenderness, spiritual beauty. How touching, childlike, the last prayer of the lyrical hero escaped:

You perceive went to the sad bed

The best angel of a beautiful soul.

Are angels better or worse? But Lermontov asks for the very best, fearing that the angel will turn out to be unworthy of his beloved)

« Prayer"

In a difficult moment of life

Does sadness linger in the heart,

One wonderful prayer

I repeat by heart.

There is a grace

In harmony with the words of the living,

From the soul as a burden rolls down,

Doubt is far away

And believe and cry

And it's so easy, so easy...

1839

And breathes incomprehensible,

Holy beauty in them.

History of creation

"Prayer" of 1839 is dedicated to Maria Alekseevna Shcherbatova. One contemporary of the poet recalled that once in her presence Lermontov complained to Maria Alekseevna that he was sad. Shcherbatova asked if he ever prayed? He said he forgot all the prayers.“Have you forgotten everything they say itva, - exclaimed Princess Shcherbatova, -can't be!" Alexandra Osipovna Smirnova said to the princess: "Teach him to read at least the Mother of God." Shcherbatova immediately read Lermontov's Mother of God. By the end of the evening, the poet wrote a poem "Prayer" ("In a difficult moment of life ..."), which he presented to her.

Analysis of the poem

- What is the mood of this poem? Does it seem sad, sad, dreary?

- Why is the “difficult moment of life”, when sadness oppresses the heart, completely dissolves, why do doubts dissipate and it becomes easy on the soul?

- What does the lyrical hero “cry” about during prayer?

(The main words in this poem - "wonderful prayer", "power of grace", "holy charm" - are associated with faith, with Christian tradition.

A person who turns to the Lord with a prayer begins to realize his sins and his weakness, tears of repentance purify his soul.

When a person trusts God, entrusts his fate into His Hands, he will feel protected, he will no longer have to worry about anything, because the Lord will arrange everything in the best way for the benefit of everyone)

- What words seem to you the climax?

(We will pay special attention to the word “graceful.” Grace is the divine power, with the help of which the salvation of man is accomplished, the power of grace is the power that brings man the hope of salvation. Word"gracious" as if marks the climax in the lyrical composition of the poem, marks the transition from darkness to light. The power of the impact of prayer remains a mystery to the poet himself: "there is a grace-filled power in the consonance of living words, and an incomprehensible, holy charm breathes in them", because prayer is the unity of the soul with God, which cannot always be expressed in words)

What feelings and experiences does this poem evoke in the reader? Why is this happening?

(The poet wants us to experience (co-experience) with him this movement of the soul from sadness and longing to hope and faith, because this state of mind is close to everyone who has experienced the power of prayer)

D/Z

“Prayer” (“I, the Mother of God, now with a prayer ...”; 1837). In Lermontov, despite the feeling of “charmlessness” and the fact that at times he did not find in himself faith in the achievability of the positive values ​​​​of life and even in these very positive values ​​\u200b\u200bwhich are embraced by the word “happiness”, nevertheless, in the depths of his soul he always warmed and there lived faith in love, in friendship, in the high destiny of man on earth, in freedom, rights and dignity of the individual. This belief found expression in religious and philosophical ideals.

Life at times seemed to Lermontov full, overflowing, promising happiness, enjoyment of beauty and other gifts. Lermontov wrote about such minutes in the poem “When the yellowing field is agitated ...”:

Then the anxiety of my soul humbles itself,
Then the wrinkles on the forehead diverge, -
And I can comprehend happiness on earth,
And in the sky I see God...

The presence of God is felt not by reason, but by feeling. Therefore, it is always mysterious. The upper world reveals itself either as beauty or as a special inner life. It affects emotionally and on the emotional sphere of a person. So, the sounds in the “wonderful” “Prayer” (“In a difficult moment of life ...”) are incomprehensible, but they have the “power of grace”, healing a sick soul, bringing peace into it and relieving suffering. However, such moments in the life and work of Lermontov are rare. For the most part, Lermontov no longer asks God for anything.

In the “Prayer” (“I, the Mother of God, now with a prayer ...”), he does not even turn to God - the Creator of the world, but to the Mother of God, who was especially highly revered by the people as an intercessor for all sinners before the highest strict, severe, just and merciful Judge. And he prays before the icon of the Mother of God not for himself, because his soul is devastated (“desert”) by the cold world, it has no faith in happiness, there is no hope for it, it can no longer be revived and it is pointless to pray for it. He prays for the soul of the "innocent virgin", who has just been born into the world and is standing on the threshold of earthly life.

Several contrasts are deployed in the poem: the devastated "I" contrasts with the beautiful soul, before which the world opens; to the lyrical "I" and the beautiful soul, this world is hostile and "cold" for them. Therefore, the "innocent virgin", doomed to live in a cold earthly world, is "given" to his "warm intercessor". Here the experience of "I" is transferred to the fate of another person. He tells the poet that only the help, care, protection and care of the Mother of God can protect and save the “innocent maiden” from the “cold world”, that is, avoid that sad experience that fell to the lot of the lyrical “I”. This means that once the lyrical "I" also had a beautiful soul, filled with goodness and love, that every human soul was gifted and illuminated by heavenly Divine light from birth, but, being on earth and being unprotected and deprived of help, it inevitably loses the best properties under the pressure of the "cold" world. “Handing over” a “worthy soul” to the Mother of God, Lermontov asks that the fate of the “innocent virgin” be happy and protected from the cradle to death. Here are noteworthy those signs that, according to the poet, make a person happy: an attentive environment, youth, a calm old age, a gentle heart and the fulfillment of desires. In the last stanza, even death is depicted in harmonious colors filled with beauty:

Is the time of farewell approaching
In a noisy morning, in a silent night,
You perceive went to the sad bed
The best angel of a beautiful soul.

So, the poet prays that the whole fate of the "innocent virgin" from birth to the "hour of farewell" passed under the good supervision of the Virgin. From Lermontov's point of view, only in this case a person is provided with a natural and calm stay in the earthly world. Indirect evidence of such a natural order is the unusual use of epithets for Lermontov in their direct, objective or emotionally stable meanings: bright youth, calm old age, farewell hour, noisy morning, silent night, sad (death) bed.

Previously, Lermontov wrote in The Fatalist, “there were wise people who thought that the heavenly bodies were taking part” in their affairs; “The confidence that the whole sky with its countless inhabitants is looking at them with participation, although mute, but unchanged,” gave them extraordinary willpower. The misfortune of modern man is that he only occasionally feels the good influence of heaven on his destiny. Throughout his life, he is mostly left to himself and thrown into a cold world. Only in rare moments does he feel the presence of God and can appreciate the justice of God. Therefore, much more often Lermontov turns to the tragic life experience of a person.

There are three poems in the creative heritage of M.Yu. Lermontov with the same name - “Prayer”. Prayer is usually called a penetrating appeal of a person to God. This is a time-honored tradition of Christianity. Prayers that believers read in churches and at home were created in ancient times by Christian ascetics, later recognized as holy people, the fathers of the church. Of course, each person can turn to God with a prayer, finding in his heart, in his soul the necessary words that are not pronounced in front of other people, and even more so do not appear in print. But in the literature there are examples of how prayer becomes a special genre of poetry, preserving the main features of Orthodox prayer. Usually such poems are written by deeply religious poets, such as I.S. Nikitin, A.K. Tolstoy, K. R. (Konstantin Romanov). According to contemporaries, Mikhail Yurievich was not one of them. And yet he wrote verses-prayers, dedicating them to different people.

A.I. Klyunder. Portrait of M.Yu. Lermontov. 1838.
The first and least known of them was written in 1829, when Lermontov was only 15 years old. And, perhaps, it is worth noting that during the life of the poet it was not printed.

Don't blame me omnipotent
And don't punish me, please
Because the darkness of the earth is grave
With her passions I love;
For something that rarely enters the soul
Your living speeches stream,
For wandering in delusion
My mind is far from you;
For being the lava of inspiration
It bubbles on my chest;
For what wild excitement
Darken the glass of my eyes;
For the fact that the earthly world is small for me,
Well, I'm afraid to penetrate you,
And often the sound of sinful songs
God, I'm not praying to you.

But extinguish this wonderful flame,
all-burning fire,
Turn my heart to stone
Stop the hungry look;
From the terrible thirst for singing
Let me be free, creator
Then on the narrow path of salvation
I will contact you again.
<1829>

The young poet in the first part of the poem-prayer, listing his sins, turns to the all-powerful God with a prayer for mercy. In the first place in the list of requests is the love of life, with its passions, desires, temptations. The second and third sins are interconnected and opposed to the first: loving earthly passions, a person forgets about the soul, rarely turns to God. It is creativity that makes him forget about God. The poet is identified with a volcano, and poems, songs are lava, escaping, pouring out of his mouth, perhaps even against his will. This is an element that a person cannot fight against.

The second part of the prayer begins with the union "but", that is, it is opposed to the first.

The poet is not able to give up creativity on his own, only the Lord, by his will, can extinguish this “wonderful flame”, “all-burning fire”, turn the heart into stone, stop the eternally “hungry look”. Everything that the Creator has invested in the poet, only he can take away if he wishes.

Lopukhina V.A. (in the marriage of Bakhmetev). Watercolor by M. Yu. Lermontov. 1835-1838 years.

I, the mother of God, now with a prayer
Before your image, bright radiance,
Not about salvation, not before the battle,
Not with gratitude or repentance,
I do not pray for my desert soul,
For the soul of a wanderer in the light of the rootless;
But I want to give an innocent virgin
Warm intercessor of the cold world.
Surround with happiness a worthy soul;
Give her companions full of attention
Youth is bright, old age is deceased,
Peace of hope for a gentle heart.
Is the time of farewell approaching
In a noisy morning, in a silent night,
You perceive went to the sad bed
The best angel of a beautiful soul.
<1837>

Apparently, this poem is dedicated to V.A. Lopukhina (1815-1851). It was included in the text of a letter to M.A. Lopukhina (dated February 15, 1838) entitled “The Wanderer’s Prayer”: “At the end of my letter, I am sending you a poem that I found by chance in a pile of my travel papers and which I I liked that degree because I forgot it - but this does not prove anything at all.

“As a student,” writes A.P. Shan-Girey, “he was passionately in love ... with a young, sweet, smart as day, and in the full sense of the delightful V.A. Lopukhina; she was an ardent, enthusiastic, poetic and eminently sympathetic nature ... Lermontov's feeling for her was unconscious, but true and strong, and he almost retained it until his death ... "

The poem is built as a monologue of a lyrical hero. His prayer for the happiness of the woman he loves sounds. Undoubtedly, this is a masterpiece of Lermontov's love lyrics. The poems are permeated with a reverent feeling of tenderness, light and purity.

M.Yu. Lermontov. "Prayer".

Slide video.
1. Words. Mikhail Yurievich Lermontov (1814-1841);
2. Music. Alexander Egorovich Varlamov (1801-1848);
3. Painting. Vasily Grigorievich Perov (1833-1882); 12 of his paintings are shown.
4. Execution. Oleg Evgenievich Pogudin.

Shertle. Lithograph by M.A. Shcherbatova.

In a difficult moment of life,
Does sadness cramp in the heart;
One wonderful prayer
I repeat by heart.

There is a grace
In harmony with the words of the living
And breathes incomprehensible,
Holy beauty in them.

From the soul as a burden rolls down,
Doubt is far away
And believe and cry
And it's so easy, easy...
<1839>

According to A.O. Smirnova, it was written for Princess Maria Alexandrovna Shcherbatova (nee Shterich), whom Lermontov was infatuated with in 1839-1841: “Mashenka told him to pray when he was sad. He promised her and wrote these poems.” Shcherbatova Maria Alekseevna (c. 1820 - 1879), princess; in her first marriage she was with Prince M.A. Shcherbatov, in the second - with I.S. Lutkovsky. Lermontov was fascinated by her in 1839-1840. A young widow, beautiful and educated, Shcherbatova led a secular lifestyle in St. Petersburg, but she preferred the Karamzins' salon to balls, where, apparently, she met Lermontov. She highly appreciated his poetry. The rivalry in the courtship of Lermontov and E. Barant for Shcherbatova is considered one of the possible reasons for the duel between them. The poem was submitted for publication after Lermontov's death by Shcherbatova herself.

M.Yu. Lermontov. "Prayer"

Music video for M. I. Glinka's romance "In a difficult moment of life ..." performed by Alexander and Elena Mikhailovs. The video contains portraits of M.Yu. Lermontov and his 4 paintings ("Self-portrait", "On Mount Zion", "View of Pyatigorsk", "Tiflis"). At the end of the clip, a portrait of M.I. Glinka by I.E. Repin is shown.

It’s even a little strange that these are Lermontov’s creations: no bitterness, no irony, no sarcasm. They have a soft lyrical intonation. And the soul-wrenching lines about the innermost - prayerful impulse, when in moments of weakness or disbelief in one's own strength, he turns to the Creator.

Complete collection and description: 1839 Lermontov's prayer for the spiritual life of a believer.

The author's legacy is still under the scrutiny of many lovers of poetry, as, probably, a sample of lyrics with the seal of light and light, almost airy sadness, filled with the feelings of the young poet about various problems of the human soul. Most often, of course, about loneliness and exile, about unrequited love, about the Motherland, and so on.

However, one should not forget about the poems of M.Yu. Lermontov, belonging to the section of spiritual lyrics. Such texts are, for example, three works with the same name - "Prayer" (1829, 1837, 1839).

It would seem that these poems should have something in common that unites them (except, of course, the titles), but I believe that these texts are an indicator of the dynamic growth of the poetic soul, its continuous development, which lasted for ten years, from 1829 to 1839.

The ideological views of Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov are changing, and therefore the themes of his reflections, the themes of his poems are also changing. The soul of the poet aspires to new heights, new horizons that have not been explored and not accepted by him are opening up for her, and the world around is filled with a feeling of sweet hope, which, according to Lermontov, for some reason quickly collapses and disappears, leaving the lyrical hero of his poems with a broken trough life where no one can help him.

In such situations, the age-old loneliness approaching the throat is especially acute, inexorably squeezing a person in its iron vise, and the poet's poems reflect this oppressed state of a lonely wanderer, weighed down by the burden of eternal wandering and misunderstanding among his own kind.

A young fifteen-year-old poet, feeling guilty in disobeying God's commandments, in violating His commandments, in a fit of passionate desire to speak out and relieve his rebellious unrecognized soul, immediately reveals all his cards, trying not to hide anything:

And don't punish me, please

Because the darkness of the earth is grave

With her passions I love;

In this prayer of his there is not that humility before God, which is characteristic of many prayers (primarily as a genre of religious literature).

Lermontov's "Prayer" is an ardent and impulsive challenge to God, an appeal by a young poet to the Supreme Judge, it is a confession of a rabid rebel and a bold chanter who prefers earthly passions to heavenly blessings bestowed on man.

The poet is not yet ready to give up the world in which he is now, from the brightness and brilliance of shop windows and balls, but he already perfectly understands the crampedness of that island on which his lost mind and dead heart roam.

But Lermontov is not ready to exchange it for a calm, God-fearing life filled with humility and meekness. No, for him life is a stream of passions, it is a struggle and rebellion, it is endless "wild unrest" that fills his soul.

To some extent, the world of Lermontov, like the world of George Byron, is a combination of demonic and divine principles, this is their eternal struggle and simultaneous presence nearby (in 1829 Lermontov begins to work on his "Demon", work continues until 1839 ). And, in the words of Lermontov himself, “... this demon lives in me while I also live ...”, until the poet deals with him in a completely wonderful and understandable way - with his poems.

I do not pray for my desert soul,

For the soul of a wanderer in the rootless world;

For the one who is unlikely to ever be with him, but her image is noble and still able to revive the poet's faded love feelings, able to stir up a fading and petrified heart, tired of life, exile, loneliness and misunderstanding.

This poem, apparently, was addressed to Varvara Alexandrovna Lopukhina, whom the poet loved until the end of her life, but the girl's family was against her marriage to Lermontov. The love that appeared so unexpectedly remained in Lermontov's heart until the very last years of his life.

In his "Prayer" Lermontov no longer refers to Christ, as was usually the case, but to the Mother of God, the Mother of God, who is the intercessor of all mankind in the face of Her Son.

Lermontov, tormented by demonic thoughts, is still afraid to ask for himself, but he puts all his love, all his faith into the image of the only Beautiful Lady, for whom he prays to the Mother of God. He does not even dare to put his person on a par with the "innocent virgin", because he is only "a rootless wanderer with a desert soul."

His prayer is the prayer of a truly loving person who wishes only happiness for the object of his love, who, for the sake of her freedom, is not going to bind her in his arms. Despite mutual love, the hearts of the two lovers were never destined to be together, and Lermontov, filled with the highest feeling, hands the girl into the hands of the Mother of God with the hope of her intercession and protection.

In this prayer, the poet is driven not by the desire to justify himself, not by the desire to lay out to himself everything indecent, for which he could then execute himself, but by an inescapable, strong and eternal feeling of love.

According to contemporaries, M.A. Shcherbatova ordered the poet to pray when he had longing in his soul. Lermontov promised to fulfill the covenant of his beloved and in 1839 wrote the poem "Prayer" ("In a difficult moment of life ...").

Unlike the two previous texts, it seems to me that this “Prayer” is imbued with precisely that bright sadness and sadness, however, a bright light of hope flashes in it, which does not fade away as usual, but continues to illuminate the dark demonic jungle of Lermontov’s soul. For the poet, all doubts already disappear, he seems to be cleared of all the burden that has weighed on him all his life, he is freed from inner shackles, gaining spiritual freedom, which is more expensive than anything:

And believe and cry

And it's so easy, so easy...

Burdened with thoughts, tied to earthly passions, the poet's soul finally breaks out of this vicious circle, returning, even if only for a minute, to the Creator.

This “Prayer” expresses the very lightness inherent in some of Lermontov’s poems: it does not contain the young man’s lengthy and heavy reflections on loneliness and exile.

No, it is filled with amazing spiritual energy, capable of melting the soul of anyone, capable of reviving any living dead, whose heart and mind have long refused to feel.

If in the first "Prayer" (1829) the poet acts as a self-justifying rebel, incapable of humility and meekness, ready to live for the sake of his own truth, which is fundamentally different from God's precepts, then his last "Prayer" (1839) is the finest example of spiritual lyrics, in which every word breathes "incomprehensible holy charm", full of lightness and humility.

And the “Prayer” of 1837 acts as a kind of transitional stage between these two polar poles of the poetic soul, in which high feelings, such as love, gradually begin to revive.

Lermontov's "Prayers" is an example of the striking and rapid development of the poetic soul from source to peak, from self-justification and rebellion to boundless love and lightness.

Church of St. Basil the Great

I, the mother of God, now with a prayer

Before your image, bright radiance,

Not about salvation, not before the battle,

Not with gratitude, or repentance,

For the soul of a wanderer in the light of the rootless;

But I want to give an innocent virgin

Warm intercessor of the cold world.

Give her companions full of attention

Youth is bright, old age is deceased,

Peace of hope for a gentle heart.

In a noisy morning, in a silent night,

You perceive went to the sad bed

The best angel of a beautiful soul.

In a difficult moment of life

Does sadness linger in the heart:

One wonderful prayer

I repeat by heart.

In harmony with the words of the living,

And breathes incomprehensible,

Holy beauty in them.

And believe and cry

And so easy, so easy.

©2007-2017 Church of St. Basil the Great (on Gorka) the city of Pskov. Contacts

Analysis of Lermontov's poem "Prayer"

“Here they are talking about him, an atheist, and I will show you ... the poems that he brought me yesterday,” said his grandmother, E. A. Arsenyeva, about Lermontov’s poem “Prayer” (“In a difficult moment of life ...”). Of course, these words sounded with pride, because her grandson was indeed often accused of godlessness and a frivolous attitude to life. But outwardly frivolous, Lermontov was still inclined to reflect on the meaning of life and spiritual search. An analysis of Lermontov's poem "Prayer" will help to verify this.

History of creation

"Prayer" was created by Lermontov in 1839, already in the last period of his work. The reason for writing was a conversation with M. A. Shcherbatova, whom the poet was courting at that time. According to the memoirs of contemporaries, she advised him to pray when he had anguish in his heart, saying that nothing helps like a sincere prayer to God. Lermontov apparently followed her advice. It is difficult to say whether it was easy for a person who publicly declares his skepticism and unbelief, the creator of the beautiful "Demon" to turn to God from a pure heart. However, the "Prayer" was soon born, which can be called an example of the most beautiful Christian lyrics. The poem immediately gained immense popularity, and is still considered one of the most famous in Lermontov's poetic heritage. And in 1855, his words were set to music by the composer M. Glinka, so the romance arose.

Theme and idea of ​​the poem

The description of the verse "Prayer" may look like this: it depicts the collision of a lyrical hero with a harsh and difficult world. He is going through a difficult period of life and is in turmoil. The poem belongs to philosophical lyrics, and already from the first lines it sets a range of problems:

"In a difficult moment of life

Is there sadness in the heart ...

The verb "crowded", used here by the poet, conveys a feeling of hopelessness, a narrow space from which it is not so easy to get out. And immediately, in the next two lines, the author offers his solution:

"One wonderful prayer

I repeat by heart"

As you can see, this decision becomes an appeal to God, the search for consolation and protection from him. It is not mentioned which particular prayer was chosen by the lyrical hero, and this is not so important - thanks to understatement, everyone can present their favorite lines here. Another thing is more important - the inexplicable charm of this prayer, and Lermontov describes it in the next quatrain.

And breathes incomprehensible,

Holy charm in them "

The repetition of familiar words calms, gives "fertile strength", which is what is said in the last four lines:

“From the soul like a burden rolls down,

And believe and cry

And so easy, easy…”

Thus, we are presented with a picture of spiritual quest and peace found in prayer. The soul is cleansed by tears of repentance and an outburst of sincere faith, this is where, according to the poet, salvation from doubts and troubles. Lermontov does not repent, does not list his sins and does not ask for intercession. No, he finds peace when he repeats the simplest prayer, and he shares this deep prayerful feeling with the reader.

We can say that in the poem "Prayer" Lermontov reaches his creative heights and reveals himself as a mature writer. Here one can see a turn towards spirituality and traditional values, and at the same time a departure from the already familiar ideas of loneliness, incomprehensibility and demonism. In the future, the poet more than once refers to the theme of religion and folk origins, which allows us to speak of this poem precisely as a key moment in creativity, and not as a one-time phenomenon.

Artistic media

In Lermontov's poem "Prayer", the analysis of artistic means is no less important for understanding his idea than the consideration of the text itself. What methods does the author use?

First of all, we note that despite the small volume of the poem (three quatrains), it contains a large number of tropes. These are epithets: “a difficult moment of life”, “wonderful prayer”, “incomprehensible, holy charm”, “gracious power”, and metaphors: “an incomprehensible, holy charm breathes in them” and comparisons “from the soul like a burden will roll down”. All of them serve the same purpose: to convey the sublime, upbeat mood in which the lyrical hero is, to express the depth of his experiences and set the reader himself in an elevated mood. Let us pay attention to the fact that many words belong to a high layer of vocabulary (“burden”, “graceful”), which indicates the religious and philosophical orientation of the work. Lermontov also uses specific poetic phonetics, using assonances. The vowel “y” is repeated in the poem (13 repetitions in the first quatrain): “In a difficult moment of life”, “One wonderful prayer”, which creates a special, slow sound, reminiscent of unhurried, drawn-out reading in churches. It also conveys the melodiousness of the speech of the prayer itself, as if pouring anew from the lips of the hero. In subsequent quatrains, the emphasis shifts to other vowels, "a" and "e", which symbolizes a certain rise, upward direction. For this, various stylistic figures are used, such as repetitions: “so easy, easy”, syntactic parallelism: “I believe and cry, / And it’s so easy ...”.

The poem is written in iambic four-foot and three-foot iambic, the rhyme is cross, precise, alternately masculine and feminine.

The meaning of the poem in the work of Lermontov

So, the analysis of the poem "Prayer" shows its artistic originality and emphasizes the universality of the lyrical hero for all readers: it is not for nothing that the romance to the words of Lermontov was equally successful both in high-society salons and among the common people. The importance of this work for Lermontov's work as a whole is undeniable. For many years it remains the pinnacle of Russian Orthodox lyrics, and only in the 20th century. A. Blok and S. Yesenin manage to reach the same heights in depicting religious feelings.

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Consonance of living words

About the poem by M.Yu. Lermontov 1839 "Prayer"

There is such inner self-confidence that a person can do anything.

He can almost instantly write such verses that descendants will repeat them for several centuries. (K.G. Paustovsky. “River Floods” [from the cycle “Little Tales”])

“From his silence for us, like prayers memorized from childhood. We have become so accustomed to them that we almost do not understand them. Words act in addition to meaning,” wrote “M.Yu. Lermontov. Poet of Superhumanity” by D.S. Merezhkovsky. One cannot but agree with him. And, echoing Lermontov, we can say about his poems in his own words:

There are speeches - meaning

Dark or insignificant

But they don't care

And yet, despite the impossibility of comprehending with the mind “a word born from flame and light”, we read it over and over again, listen to the “sounds of wonderful songs” of Lermontov, to the “consonance of living words”.

One of the three poems by Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov, named the same - "Prayer" (1839), is associated with the name of Princess Maria Alekseevna Shcherbatova.

In the memoirs of the poet's cousin, Akim Pavlovich Shan-Giray, about Maria Alekseevna and the poet's love story for this woman, one can read the following: “In the winter of 1839, Lermontov was very interested in Princess Shcherbatova (the play “On social chains” belongs to her). I never happened to see her, I only know that she was a young widow, but I heard from him that she was such that I can’t tell in a fairy tale or describe with a pen.

Alexandra Osipovna Smirnova-Rosset, addressee of many poems by A.S. Pushkin, recalled under what circumstances Lermontov wrote “Prayer”: “Mashenka (M.A. Shcherbatova. - S.Sh.) told him to pray when he was sad. He promised her and wrote these verses:

In a difficult moment of life

Does sadness linger in the heart:

One wonderful prayer

I repeat by heart.

There is a grace

In consonance with the words of the living,

And breathes incomprehensible,

Holy beauty in them.

From the soul as a burden rolls down,

And believe and cry

And so easy, so easy. ”

About the deep religious feeling of Maria Shcherbatova in the poem “On secular chains. ” we read:

And following strictly

Sad homeland example,

In hope of God

She keeps the faith of a child.

It is also well known that it was with M.A. Shcherbatova is connected with the history of the conflict between Lermontov and the son of the French envoy Ernest Barant. The formal reason for the subsequent duel was that in February 1840, at a ball at the Countess Laval, Maria Shcherbatova preferred a Russian poet to a Frenchman. There are other versions of the quarrel, including Lermontov's epigram, which Barant took personally, although it was written back in the cadet school and addressed to a completely different person.

“On February 18, early in the morning on the Pargolovskaya road, beyond the Black River, not far from the place where Pushkin shot with Dantes” (I.L. Andronikov. “The Fate of Lermontov”), a duel took place that ended bloodlessly. The duel first took place on swords, and then on pistols, and Barant shot at Lermontov, but missed, while Lermontov shot into the air.

Despite the subsequent reconciliation, the poet was brought to court-martial and eventually transferred to the Tenginsky infantry regiment in the army in the Caucasus, to the “Groznaya fortress” (now Grozny), under Chechen bullets. Truly - the "speaking name" of the city, which has repeatedly played and continues to play a fatal role in Russian history right up to the present day! Truly - the "speaking name" of the river, near which Pushkin and Lermontov fought with the French! Black River!

Lermontov paid a high price for his poetry, for his love for the young widow. As you know, it was this exile of his that eventually ended in a duel with Martynov and the death of the poet. Therefore, we can say with confidence that his “Prayer” is one of those poems about which B.L. Pasternak said this:

When the feeling dictates the line

It sends a slave to the stage,

And this is where the art ends.

And the soil and fate breathe.

And here the art really “ends”, grammatical, stylistic and other conventions end. This applies not only to the poem "Prayer". We agree that the phrase “a word born from flame and light” is grammatically “vulnerable” not only from the point of view of Kraevsky. According to the memoirs of I.I. Panaev, Lermontov tried to find a grammatically perfect analogue of the word “flame” - and did not find a replacement. She, this replacement, apparently, simply does not exist.

From the point of view of the current punctuation rules, the first stanza of the “Prayer” is not entirely flawless either. Indeed, it is much more logical to put commas at the end of the first and second lines. Then the second line becomes a subordinate clause, and the poem becomes grammatically and syntactically flawless. But the punctuation in Lermontov's poems, both in this and in other works, for example, in The Prophet (1841), differs from the current norm. Colons sometimes stand where it is now customary to put a dash, and vice versa.

In general, close observation of the punctuation marks in the "Prayer" leads to curious conclusions. The exposition (the first two lines) is “faced” with a colon to the remaining ten lines, and the climactic last two lines are preceded by a dash. Thus, the poem acquires an amazing harmony. The colon, open into the poetic space of the middle eight lines, "responds" to the dash - a kind of "echo" - before the last two lines. It is time to recall the "mirror" - a favorite compositional principle, which is found in many of Pushkin's works, including poetry.

A special conversation is about the ellipsis that completes the poem. These three dots after the twelfth line give the entire "Prayer" a sense of inexhaustibility, infinity. In part, the creation of this effect is facilitated by three unions in the last two lines: “And I believe, and weep, / And so easily, easily. “This poem is like a ring, even a Mobius strip, forcing you to return to the first line again and again, repeat these “living” words again and again - from first to last, “like a child’s prayer” (D.S. Merezhkovsky).

What is prayer?

Some kind of sacred text, spoken aloud or to oneself words that are incomprehensible to the uninitiated? A ritual spell, a sacrament, a set of words that have remained unchanged for centuries, sometimes obsolete, out of use?

Or is it a state of request that cannot be imagined or described if one has never experienced it?

This word - prayer - has been part of our speech for a very long time. He has a common Slavic root. It was formed according to the “Etymological Dictionary of the Russian Language” by N.M. Shansky and T.A. Bobrova, using the suffix -tv-(a) from the verb to pray. In the same way, other words are formed from the corresponding verbs: flock, battle, harvest, oath, catch (obsolete). The state of petition, prayer is one of the most personal, intimate for each of us.

In the first chapter of the novel “A Hero of Our Time” this state is described magnificently! Remember: “Everything was quiet in heaven and on earth, as in the heart of a person at the moment of morning prayer. ”

In the 1839 poem itself, which is discussed in this article, there is another definition of what prayer is, striking in accuracy and depth: “the consonance of the words of the living.”

The consonance, the concordant sound of each word is a powerful chord of the human soul, turned to God, where each word is not just in its place, but is unique, inimitable and eternal. Where the meaning of words is absorbed and captured not by reason, the boundaries of which are set by the “limits of nature”, but by the whole spiritual essence of a person who, in prayer, is given the opportunity to come into contact with immortality and even to some extent comprehend it. The greatest composers of our time tried to capture and convey the polyphony of this truly musical work in their works.

To Lermontov's "Prayer", as to his other poetic masterpieces, the famous formula of a perfect literary work given by A.S. Pushkin in "Eugene Onegin": "the union of magical sounds, feelings and thoughts."

I don’t know why, but when reading Lermontov’s “Prayer”, I always remember the Lord’s Prayer, because it is this prayer that lips habitually whisper in “a difficult minute of life”.

In prayer, in any true literary masterpiece, the word is alive. It is alive, because it was born and expelled by the energy of the highest frequency and purity - the energy of the heart.

“Your living speeches are a stream” - this is how the fifteen-year-old Lermontov writes about God's word revealed in prayer in a poem of 1829, which is also called “Prayer”.

And another word is graceful, that is, according to Dahl, “full of will and power received from above”, giving “happiness, bliss, goodness, goodness”.

It is also filled with “holy charm”, it “breathes” with it. It breathes with harmony that sounds in the soul of a poet, in the soul of a reader who is sensitive to the word.

It is impossible to understand, to explain harmony. Harmony understood, harmony explained, ceases to be harmony. This is its unusualness, strangeness: “I love my homeland, but with a strange love! // My mind will not defeat her” (“Motherland”). But in a different capacity, it does not exist, it becomes the lot of the craft, it becomes a good handicraft.

From forty-four words “Prayers” (including conjunctions and prepositions) - 15–14–15 – are similar to the finest, openwork construction. Metaphors “is sadness crowded in the heart”, “and an incomprehensible holy charm breathes in them”; epithets “wonderful prayer”, “consonance of living words”, “holy charm”; the comparison “from the soul like a burden will roll off” form the figurative basis on which this unique poetic creation is “built”. The text of the poem is not oversaturated, not fed up with them; each of them is the only possible and necessary one.

There are three reflexive verbs in the “Prayer”, but if in the first stanza the intransitive verb “presses” closes the action within the spiritual world of the lyrical hero, then the last two impersonal verbs - “believe” and “weep” - exist in the poetic space of the “Prayer”, as it were autonomously, independent of anyone. It’s just “believing and crying // And it’s so easy, easy…”. This miraculous state was bestowed on the lyrical hero of the prayer by the grace-filled power of the One to whom the prayer is addressed, Who finally made it possible for the poet to hear these “wonderful” lines.

It is also interesting to observe how the sound range changes (especially for vowels) from the beginning to the end of the poem. The eight vowels of the first line are distinguished by the fact that all of them are characterized by some “tension” associated with a high degree of language elevation. These are acoustically the least sonorous, “narrow” vowel sounds. These sounds are distributed along the line as follows: [and] - [y] - [y] - [and] - [and] - [y] - [y] - [y].

But the closer to the end of the poem, the more “sonorous”, “wide” the vowels become. This is especially true for the fifth and seventh lines, where the sound [a] “reigns”. And this, of course, is not accidental. The adverb “easy”, repeated twice in the last line, very accurately conveys the feeling of lightness, flight, freedom from the narrow earthly framework that owns the lyrical hero. From the crampedness (“is sadness crowded in the heart”) of everyday worries, from everyday life, prayer raises the lyrical hero to the heights of free, creative being. The burden of earthly worries (according to Dahl, “bearing, burden - heaviness, burden, burden, burden; load, everything that oppresses, crushes, burdens”), everything that aggravates, oppresses, burdens - it rolls down. Not by a wave of a magic wand, not instantly, but gradually, so that you feel how every moment you breathe easier and easier, with every tear you free yourself from “crampedness in the heart” - “both believing and crying”.

Of course, precise rhyme, dactylic in odd lines, also contributes to the creation of this poetic miracle; and the fact that Lermontov breaks the poem into stanzas; and cross-rhyming, perhaps the most common in Russian versification; and iambic trimeter; and many other colors of the poetic palette, which are so rich in Russian versification.

The echo of Kholermontov's "Prayer" is clearly felt in the verses of poets of subsequent eras. On March 27, 1931, Osip Mandelstam writes:

Lived Alexander Gertsevich,

He chimed in Schubert,

Like a pure diamond.

And relish, from morning to evening,

One sonata eternal

He repeated by heart.

Rhythm, the motif of the poem of 1839 set the theme for one of the most famous poetic creations of Osip Emilievich Mandelstam, which some literary critics consider a parody (?!) of Lermontov's "Prayer". But it seems to me that what brings these works together is not at all that one parodies the other, but the closeness of the state of mind of both poets, their musical theme. By the way, V. Veidle very accurately said this (see notes to the first volume of O.E. Mandelstam’s four-volume book - pp. 492-493): “The state of mind of the poet in those years, if it sometimes passed from despair to rest from him and from rest back to despair, it was nevertheless determined more constantly by another feeling: aching, persistent, like a toothache, longing, which, however, did not exclude either a smile, or pity, or good-natured mockery, and which was best expressed in one poem, written “on occasion”, unpretentious, comic, but whose internal melody is piercing (emphasis mine. - S.Sh.) and, for me at least, irresistible.” Of course, we are talking about the poem “Once upon a time Alexander Gertsevich. ”

In the story “River Spills” K.G. Paustovsky about the state in which immortal poems are written, such as “Prayer”, it is said this way: “He (poet. - S.Sh.) can contain in his mind all the thoughts and dreams of the world in order to distribute them to the first comers and never regret it for a minute.

He can see and hear magical things where no one notices them. ”

And then, after many years, sometimes centuries, we recognize these verses and, without teaching, we begin to remember them with spiritual memory, “repeating” them, passed from mouth to mouth, “by heart”.

Of course, we knew them before, we knew them by genetic memory, and therefore we correctly guessed when we heard them for the first time. Therefore, we repeat them as a “children's prayer”, in which the Word of God and the Word of the Poet are inseparable from each other.

And the Poet, the Poet from God, was absolutely right when, shortly before his death, he wrote that “God speaks through his mouth,” through the mouth of a prophet. And what of the fact that people do not always listen and hear their prophets, and sometimes they throw “stones” at them!