Nekrasov (read by Andrey Belov) - reflections at the front entrance, lyrics and translation into Russian. Nikolai Nekrasov - Reflections at the front entrance: Verse
During the lesson you will learn interesting and important facts biographies of the poet N. A. Nekrasov, which influenced his work. Using the example of the poem “Reflections at the Front Entrance,” you will consider the topic of exposing serfdom in the works of N. A. Nekrasov. When working with the text of a poem, learn to pay attention to the features of the composition, ways to reveal central images and express the author’s civic position.
“It was a wounded heart. Once and for life,” Dostoevsky said about Nekrasov. - And this unclosed wound was the source of all his poetry, all this man’s passionate to the point of tormenting love for everything that suffers from violence, from the cruelty of an unbridled will that oppresses our Russian woman, our child in a Russian family, our commoner in the bitter so share it often.”
One of the most significant moments in Nekrasov’s biography was his participation in the reconstruction magazine "Contemporary". The founder of Sovremennik was A. S. Pushkin, who invited N. V. Gogol, P. A. Vyazemsky, V. F. Odoevsky and others to participate in the magazine.
After Pushkin’s death, the magazine fell into decline, and in 1847 it was taken over by N. A. Nekrasov and I. I. Panaev. Nekrasov attracted I.S. Turgenev, L.N. Tolstoy, I. A. Goncharov, A. I. Herzen, N. P. Ogarev, whose works were published in it; The magazine also published translations of works by Charles Dickens, J. Sand and other Western European writers.
The ideological leader of Sovremennik was the famous critic V. G. Belinsky, whose articles determined the magazine’s program: criticism of modern reality, propaganda of revolutionary democratic ideas, and the struggle for realistic art.
Communication with leading people in Sovremennik helped Nekrasov’s convictions to finally take shape. It was during this period that Nekrasov’s talent as a people’s poet, satirist, denouncer of those in power, and defender of the oppressed village was revealed.
One of the striking examples of Nekrasov’s civic lyricism was the poem “Reflections at the Front Entrance.”
The poem was written in 1858. It was first published abroad in the Kolokol newspaper in 1860 under the title “At the Main Entrance.” The author's name was not indicated. The newspaper "Bell" was the first Russian revolutionary newspaper published by A. I. Herzen in exile.
Rice. 2. Nekrasova Z.N. (the poet’s wife) ()
The testimony of Nekrasov’s wife about how this work was created has been preserved.
The windows of the poet’s apartment on Liteiny Prospekt in St. Petersburg looked at the entrance of the Minister of State Property M. N. Muravyov, in whose department the lands were located. Therefore, it is not at all surprising that delegations from peasants often came to the house of this minister. This is exactly the scene Nekrasov had a chance to observe.
This is how the poet’s wife recalls this incident: “It was deep autumn, the morning was cold and rainy. In all likelihood, the peasants wanted to submit some kind of petition and came to the house early in the morning. The doorman, sweeping the stairs, drove them away; They took cover behind the ledge of the entrance and shifted from foot to foot, hiding against the wall and getting wet in the rain. I went to Nekrasov and told him about the scene I had seen. He approached the window at the moment when the house janitors and the policeman were driving the peasants away, pushing them in the back. Nekrasov pursed his lips and nervously pinched his mustache; then he quickly moved away from the window and lay down again on the sofa. An hour later he read me the poem “At the Main Entrance.”
Thus, the theme of the poem is a satirical denunciation of the social structure of Russian society and the plight of the peasantry.
Satire (lat. satira) is a comic manifestation in art, which is a poetic denunciation of phenomena using various comic means: sarcasm, irony, hyperbole, grotesque, allegory, parody, etc.
Composition of the poem by N. A. Nekrasov “Reflections at the Main Entrance”
1. Front entrance(on special occasions and weekdays).
3. Owner of luxury chambers.
4. The peasant's share.
Analysis of the poem.
Part 1.
From the first lines of the poem, the poet's voice sounds angrily. The author uses his favorite satirical device - sarcasm.
Sarcasm (Greek sarkasmós, from sarkázo, literally - tearing meat), a type of comic, judgment containing destructive ridicule. The highest degree of irony.
Here is the front entrance. On special days,
Possessed by a servile illness,
The whole city is in some kind of fright
Drives up to the treasured doors;
Having written down your name and rank,
The guests are leaving for home,
So deeply pleased with ourselves
What do you think - that’s their calling!
Word " servile " is used here in a figurative sense.
Serf (disdainful) - a dependent, servile person, a servant, a henchman of someone.
On weekdays, a different kind of crowd appears at the entrance. These are petitioners of different kinds:
Projectors, place-seekers,
And an elderly man and a widow.
PROJECTOR (French, from projeter) is a mocking name for a person engaged in inventing various enterprises and speculations that are in reality impracticable or unprofitable.
“magnificent entrance” - “poor faces.”
Part 2.
Rice. 3. Delegation of peasants ()
Once I saw the men come here,
Village Russian people,
They prayed at the church and stood away,
Hanging their brown heads to their chests;
The doorman appeared. “Let it go,” they say
With an expression of hope and anguish.
Here the author’s sarcastic tone is replaced by a solemn and sad one. Next to simple Russian words, such as tanned faces, homemade bast shoes, bent backs, the poet uses words of solemn style: pilgrim, meager mite.
And they went, scorched by the sun,
Repeating: “God judge him!”
Throwing up hopeless hands,
And while I could see them,
They walked with their heads uncovered...
The peasants evoke sympathy and compassion among readers. However, for the inhabitants of the mansion this is just “ ragged rabble».
Why do you need this crying sorrow?
What do you need these poor people?
Eternal holiday quickly running
Life doesn't let you wake up.
In this part, the poet uses incentive sentences, trying to reach the cold heart of the ruler of human destinies:
Wake up! There is also pleasure:
Turn them back! their salvation lies in you!
The poet himself does not wait for an answer, because “the happy are deaf to good.” What outrages the author most is that the nobleman is completely undeservedly surrounded by an aura of glory and heroism:
Clickers' fun
You are calling for the people's good;
Without him you will live with glory
And you will die with glory!
And you will go to your grave... hero,
Silently cursed by the fatherland,
Exalted by loud praise!..
Part 4.
After describing all the benefits enjoyed by the nobles, in the fourth part the poet paints the life of the peasants in a deadly contrast. It is enough to compare 2 passages:
Thus, we see that the composition uses antithesis. It helps to enhance the tragic pathos of the poem and give greater power to the author's satire.
Carefully re-read the right fragment of the table, which describes the people's share. Have you noticed that the poetic rhythm resembles folk song? This special song rhythm is created thanks to unity of command (anaphora). The author also uses syntactic parallelism (the same syntactic construction stanzas, for example, the use of homogeneity).
Nekrasov’s poem ends with an appeal to the suffering people:
Oh, my heart!
What does your endless groan mean?
Will you wake up full of strength,
Or, fate obeying the law,
You have already done everything you could, -
Created a song like a groan
And spiritually rested forever?..
There is no answer to this question. But such a statement of the most important thing, decisive issue Russian life could not leave indifferent a person in whom a patriotic feeling lives. The poem achieved its goal: banned by censorship, it became known literally throughout Russia.
Contemporaries appreciated Nekrasov's courage. For example, D.I. Pisarev noted: “I respect Nekrasov as a poet for his ardent sympathy for suffering common man, behind " honestly“which he is always ready to put up for the poor and oppressed”
- Didactic materials on literature grade 7. Author - Korovina V.Ya. - 2008
- Homework on literature for grade 7 (Korovina). Author - Tishchenko O.A. - year 2012
- Literature lessons in 7th grade. Author - Kuteinikova N.E. - year 2009
- Textbook on literature 7th grade. Part 1. Author - Korovina V.Ya. - year 2012
- Textbook on literature 7th grade. Part 2. Author - Korovina V.Ya. - year 2009
- Textbook-reader on literature 7th grade. Authors: Ladygin M.B., Zaitseva O.N. - year 2012
- Textbook-reader on literature 7th grade. Part 1. Author - Kurdyumova T.F. - 2011
- Phonochrestomathy on literature for the 7th grade for Korovina’s textbook.
- FEB: Dictionary of literary terms. ()
- Dictionaries. Literary terms and concepts. ()
- N. A. Nekrasov. Reflections at the front entrance. ()
- Nekrasov N. A. Biography, life history, creativity. ()
- N. A. Nekrasov. Biography pages. ()
- Explanatory dictionary of the Russian language. ()
- Find examples of antithesis and sarcasm in the text of the poem. What role do they play in the work?
- Write out solemn vocabulary from the text. What purpose does she perform in the poem?
- What kind of personality did N.A. Nekrasov appear to you after getting acquainted with his work?
Here is the front entrance. On special days,
Possessed by a servile illness,
The whole city is in some kind of fright
Drives up to the treasured doors;
Having written down your name and rank,
The guests are leaving for home,
So deeply pleased with ourselves
What do you think - that’s their calling!
And on ordinary days this magnificent entrance
Poor faces besiege:
Projectors, place-seekers,
And an elderly man and a widow.
From him and to him you know in the morning
All the couriers are jumping around with papers.
Returning, another hums “tram-tram”,
And other petitioners cry.
Once I saw the men come here,
Village Russian people,
They prayed at the church and stood away,
Hanging their brown heads to their chests;
The doorman appeared. “Let it go,” they say
With an expression of hope and anguish.
He looked at the guests: they were ugly to look at!
Tanned faces and hands,
The Armenian boy is thin on his shoulders,
On a knapsack on their bent backs,
Cross on my neck and blood on my feet,
Shod in homemade bast shoes
(You know, they wandered for a long time
From some distant provinces).
Someone shouted to the doorman: “Drive!
Ours doesn’t like ragged rabble!”
And the door slammed. After standing,
The pilgrims untied their wallets,
But the doorman did not let me in, without taking a meager contribution,
And they went, scorched by the sun,
Repeating: “God judge him!”
Throwing up hopeless hands,
And while I could see them,
They walked with their heads uncovered...
And the owner of luxurious chambers
I was still in deep sleep...
You, who consider life enviable
The intoxication of shameless flattery,
Red tape, gluttony, gaming,
Wake up! There is also pleasure:
Turn them back! their salvation lies in you!
But the happy are deaf to goodness...
The thunder of heaven does not frighten you,
And you hold earthly ones in your hands,
And these unknown people carry
Inexorable grief in the hearts.
Why do you need this crying sorrow?
What do you need these poor people?
Eternal holiday quickly running
Life doesn't let you wake up.
And why? Clickers3 fun
You are calling for the people's good;
Without him you will live with glory
And you will die with glory!
More serene than an Arcadian idyll4
The old days will set.
Under the captivating sky of Sicily,
In the fragrant tree shade,
Contemplating how the sun is purple
Plunges into the azure sea,
Stripes of his gold, -
Lulled by gentle singing
Mediterranean wave - like a child
You will fall asleep, surrounded by care
Dear and beloved family
(Waiting impatiently for your death);
They will bring your remains to us,
To honor with a funeral feast,
And you will go to your grave... hero,
Silently cursed by the fatherland,
Exalted by loud praise!..
However, why are we such a person?
Worrying for small people?
Shouldn't we take our anger out on them?
Safer... More fun
Find some consolation in something...
It doesn’t matter what the man will endure:
This is how providence guides us
Pointed... but he's used to it!
Behind the outpost, in a wretched tavern
The poor will drink everything down to the ruble
And they will go, begging along the road,
And they will groan... Native land!
Name me such an abode,
I've never seen such an angle
Where would your sower and guardian be?
Where would a Russian man not moan?
He moans across the fields, along the roads,
He groans in prisons, in prisons,
In the mines, on an iron chain;
He groans under the barn, under the haystack,
Under a cart, spending the night in the steppe;
Moaning in his own poor house,
I am not happy with the light of God's sun;
Moans in every remote town,
At the entrance of courts and chambers.
Go out to the Volga: whose groan is heard
Over the great Russian river?
We call this groan a song -
The barge haulers are walking with a towline!..
Volga! Volga!.. In spring, full of water
You're not flooding the fields like that,
Like the great sorrow of the people
Our land is overflowing, -
Where there are people, there is a groan... Oh, my heart!
What does your endless groan mean?
Will you wake up full of strength,
Or, fate obeying the law,
You have already done everything you could, -
Created a song like a groan
And spiritually rested forever?..
The poet describes the front entrance of a house belonging to an influential and wealthy nobleman. “On special days” many people come to see him.
Having written down your name and rank,
The guests are leaving for home,
So deeply pleased with ourselves
What do you think - that’s their calling!
They come to remind the powerful owner of the house about themselves.
On ordinary weekdays, the entrance is also in full swing with life: a crowd of ordinary people - “searchlighters, place-seekers, and an elderly man, and a widow,” couriers scurrying around with papers. Some petitioners leave there satisfied, while others leave with tears in their eyes.
One day the poet saw men, “village Russian people,” approach the entrance and ask the doorman to let them in. Looking around the guests, the doorman found them unsightly.
Tanned faces and hands,
The Armenian boy is thin on his shoulders,
On a knapsack on their bent backs,
Cross on my neck and blood on my feet,
Shod in homemade bast shoes
(You know, they wandered for a long time
From some distant provinces).
The doorman was ordered to drive the men away from the depths of the house - the owner “does not like ragged rabble.” The wanderers untied their wallets, but the doorman did not take the “meager contribution” and did not let them into the house. The men left, scorched by the sun, “throwing up their hands hopelessly,” and walked for a long time with their heads uncovered. “And the owner of the luxurious chambers” was sleeping soundly at that time.
The poet calls on the nobleman to wake up, leave “red tape, gluttony, gambling” and shameless flattery, which he considers his life, and accept the poor petitioners, because only in them is his salvation. “But the happy are deaf to good” - the thunders of heaven do not frighten the rich man, but earthly power in his hands.
The rich man doesn't care about the common people. His life is an eternal holiday that does not allow him to wake up and see the people's poverty and sorrow. And the nobleman doesn’t need this. And without worrying about the people's welfare, he will live and die “with glory.”
The poet ironically describes how the nobleman lives out his days “under the captivating sky of Sicily,” contemplating the magnificent sunsets over Mediterranean Sea, and then dies, surrounded by his family, impatiently awaiting his death.
They will bring your remains to us,
To honor with a funeral feast,
And you will go to your grave... hero,
Silently cursed by the fatherland,
Exalted by loud praise!...
However, such a significant person should not be disturbed “for small people.” On the contrary, it is better to “take your anger out” on them - it is both safe and fun. But the man will endure as usual, as “the providence guiding us” indicated to him. Having drunk their last kopecks “in a wretched tavern,” the men groan and return home, “begging along the way.”
The poet does not know a place where the Russian peasant, “the sower and the preserver,” does not moan. His groan is heard from everywhere - from fields and roads; from prisons, prisons and mines; from barns and poor houses; from the “entrance of courts and chambers”.
Go out to the Volga: whose groan is heard
Over the great Russian river?
We call this groan a song -
The barge haulers are walking with a towline!...
The poet compares the people's grief, with which “our land is overflowing,” with the spring flood of the mighty Volga. He asks: what does this endless groan mean? Will the people wake up “full of strength”? Or he has already done everything he could - “created a song like a groan.”
“REFLECTIONS AT THE FRONT ENTRANCE” Nikolay Nekrasov
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Here is the front entrance. On special days, Possessed by a servile illness, The whole city with some kind of fear Drives up to the cherished doors; Having written down their name and title1, the guests leave for home, So deeply satisfied with themselves, What do you think - this is their calling! And on ordinary days, this magnificent entrance is besieged by wretched faces: Projectors, place-seekers, And an elderly man, and a widow. From him and to him you know in the morning All the couriers are jumping with papers. Returning, some sing “tram-tram”, And other petitioners cry. Once I saw, the men came here, Russian village people, prayed at the church and stood in the distance, hanging their brown heads to their chests; The doorman appeared. “Allow me,” they say with an expression of hope and torment. He looked at the guests: they were ugly to look at! Tanned faces and hands, A thin Armenian boy on his shoulders, A knapsack on his bent backs, A cross on his neck and blood on his feet, Shod in homemade bast shoes (You know, they wandered for a long time From some distant provinces). Someone shouted to the doorman: “Drive away! Ours doesn’t like ragged rabble!” And the door slammed. After standing, the pilgrims untied their purses, but the porter did not let him in, not taking a meager contribution, and they went, scorched by the sun, repeating: “God judge him!”, spreading their arms hopelessly, and, as long as I could see them, they walked with their heads uncovered... And the owner of the luxurious chambers was still in a deep sleep... You, who consider life to be enviable, the intoxication of shameless flattery, red tape, gluttony, gambling, Wake up! There is still pleasure: Turn them back! their salvation lies in you! But the happy are deaf to good... Heavenly thunders do not frighten you, But you hold earthly ones in your hands, And these unknown people carry inexorable grief in their hearts. What is this crying sorrow to you, what is this poor people to you? An eternal holiday, quickly running Life does not allow you to wake up. And why? Clickers3 You call the people's good fun; Without it you will live with glory and you will die with glory! More serene than the Arcadian idyll4 The old days will set. Under the captivating sky of Sicily, In the fragrant shade of trees, Contemplating how the purple sun plunges into the azure sea, Its stripes of gold, Lulled by the gentle singing of the Mediterranean wave, Like a child You will fall asleep, surrounded by the care of your dear and beloved family (Waiting impatiently for your death) ; They will bring your remains to us, To honor you with a funeral funeral feast, And you will go to your grave... a hero, Silently cursed by your fatherland, Exalted by loud praise!.. However, why are we bothering such a person for small people? Shouldn't we take our anger out on them? - It's safer... It's even more fun to find consolation in something. .. It doesn’t matter what the man endures: So the providence guiding us Indicated... but he’s used to it! Behind the outpost, in a wretched tavern, the poor people will drink up to the ruble, And they will go, begging along the road, And they will groan... Native land! Name me such a monastery, I have never seen such a corner, Where would your sower and guardian be, Where would the Russian peasant not groan? He groans through the fields, along the roads, He groans through prisons, through prisons, In mines, on an iron chain; He groans under a barn, under a haystack, Under a cart, spending the night in the steppe; Moans in his own poor house, The light of God's sun is not happy; Moans in every remote town, At the entrance of courts and chambers. Go out to the Volga: whose groan is heard Over the great Russian river? We call this groan a song - The barge haulers are walking along the towline!.. Volga! Volga!.. In the spring of abundant water You do not flood the fields like our land is overflowing with the great sorrow of the people, - Where the people are, there is a groan... Oh, my heart! What does your endless groan mean? Will you wake up, full of strength, Or, obeying the law of fate, You have already done everything you could, - Created a song like a groan, And spiritually rested forever?... 1858 Notes The poem, according to Panaeva’s memoirs, “was written by Nekrasov, when he was in the blues. He then lay on the sofa all day, ate almost nothing and did not accept anyone with him. [...] The next morning I got up early and, going to the window, became interested in the peasants sitting on the steps of the front entrance stairs in the house where the Minister of State Property lived (M. N. Muravyov - V. Korovin). It was deep autumn, the morning was cold and rainy. In all likelihood, the peasants wanted to submit some kind of petition and came to the house early in the morning. The porter, sweeping the street, drove them away; They took cover behind the ledge of the entrance and shifted from foot to foot, pressing against the wall and getting wet in the rain. I went to Nekrasov and told him about the scene I had seen. He approached the window at the moment when the house janitors and the policeman were driving the peasants away, pushing them in the back. Nekrasov pursed his lips and nervously pinched his mustache; then he quickly moved away from the window and lay down again on the sofa. About two hours later he read me the poem “At the Main Entrance.” Nekrasov completely reworked real life material, introducing themes of universal evil, biblical associations, motives of the highest court and retribution. All this gave the poem a generalized symbolic meaning. The idea of “salvation among the people” is combined with thoughts about the tragic fate of the people. Many motifs of the poem go back to the “satirical ode” by G. R. Derzhavin “The Nobleman,” and the theme of “moaning” finds a correspondence in Pushkin’s poem “The House in Kolomna” (“sad singing” is interpreted as an expression of the Russian national character). For five years, the poem could not appear in the Russian censored press and went from hand to hand in lists. In 1860, it was published by Herzen in Kolokol without the author’s signature, with the note: “We very rarely publish poems, but there is no way not to include this kind of poem.” The final lines (from the verse: “Name such a monastery for me...”) became a student song. 1. Having written down your name and rank... - B holidays In the front houses that belonged to nobles and major officials, special books were displayed in which visitors who were not admitted in person were signed. Back 2. Pilgrim - wanderer, traveler. Back 3. Clicker - this is how the philistine circle contemptuously called writers who stood up for the people's interests. Back 4. The Arcadian idyll is here: a carefree, happy life in the lap of nature. Back
Krinitsyn A.B.
Nekrasov most clearly and clearly formulates his attitude towards the people in “Reflections on the Front Entrance.” This is a kind of creative manifesto of Nekrasov. If we try to analyze the genre of this poem, we will be forced to admit that we have never encountered anything like this before. It is structured like a real indictment. This is a work of oratory, and Nekrasov uses literally all the techniques of rhetoric (the art of eloquence). Its beginning is deliberately prosaic in its descriptive intonation: “Here is the front entrance...”, which refers us rather to the realistic genre of the essay. Moreover, this front entrance really existed and was visible to Nekrasov from the windows of his apartment, which also served as the editorial office of the Sovremennik magazine. But from the first lines it becomes clear that what is important to Nekrasov is not so much the entrance itself, but the people who come to him, who are portrayed sharply satirically:
Possessed by a servile illness,
The whole city is in some kind of fright
Drives up to the treasured doors;
Having written down your name and rank,
The guests are leaving for home,
So deeply pleased with ourselves
What do you think - that’s their calling!
Thus, Nekrasov makes a broad generalization: “the whole city” is “driving up to the cherished doors.” The front entrance appears before us as a symbol of the world of the rich and powerful, before whom the entire capital grovels servilely. By the way, the house and entrance described by Nekrasov belonged to Count Chernyshov, who earned notoriety in society for heading the investigative commission on the affairs of the Decembrists, and passed a strict guilty verdict on his relative, hoping to take possession of the property left after him. Hints that this person is odious (that is, hated by everyone) will later appear in the verse (“Silently cursed by the fatherland, exalted by loud praise”).
The poor part of the city is immediately depicted as an antithesis:
And on ordinary days this magnificent entrance
Poor faces besiege:
Projectors, place-seekers,
And an elderly man and a widow.
Next, Nekrasov goes on to describe a specific episode: “Once I saw it, the men came here, Russian village people...”. The last two epithets seem redundant at first glance: it is already clear that since they are men, that means they are from the Russian village. But in this way, Nekrasov expands his generalization: it turns out that in the person of these men, the whole of peasant Russia approaches the entrance with a plea for help and justice. The appearance of the men and their behavior emphasize Christian traits: poverty, gentleness, humility, gentleness. They are called “pilgrims,” like wanderers to holy places, “tanned faces and hands” make one remember the hot sun of Jerusalem and the deserts, where the holy hermits retired (“And they went, scorched by the sun”). “The cross on the neck and the blood on the feet” speak of their martyrdom. Before approaching the entrance, they “prayed at the church.” They beg to be let in “with an expression of hope and anguish,” and when they are refused, they leave “with their heads uncovered,” “repeating: “God judge him!” In the Christian understanding, under the guise of every beggar, Christ himself comes to a person and knocks on the door: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock: if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with Me.” (Rev. 3.20). Nekrasov thus wants to appeal to the Christian feelings of readers and awaken in their hearts pity for the unfortunate men.
In the second part, the poet sharply changes his tone and makes angry accusations against the “owner of luxurious chambers”:
You, who consider life enviable
The intoxication of shameless flattery,
Red tape, gluttony, gaming,
Wake up! There is also pleasure:
Turn them back! their salvation lies in you!
But the happy are deaf to goodness...
To further shame the dignitary, the accusatory poet describes the pleasures and luxuries of his life, painting pictures of Sicily, a favorite medical resort in Europe at that time, where his “eternal holiday of fast running” life will come to an end:
More serene than an Arcadian idyll
The old days will set:
Under the captivating sky of Sicily,
In the fragrant tree shade,
Contemplating how the sun is purple
Plunges into the azure sea,
Stripes of his gold, -
Lulled by gentle singing
Mediterranean wave - like a child
You will fall asleep...
So Nekrasov unexpectedly resorts to the genre of idyll, which nothing foreshadowed in this poem, drawing a beautiful Mediterranean landscape. Romantic epithets appear: “captivating”, “affectionate”, “fragrant”, “purple”, “azure”. A special rhythm also corresponds to the content: Nekrasov combines masculine and dactylic rhymes[v], and sometimes additionally uses intonation shifts, dividing one sentence between two lines: “With the stripes of his gold, - Lulled by the gentle singing - of the Mediterranean wave, - like a child, - You will fall asleep... ", rocking us on the waves of poetic melody, as if on the waves of a warm sea. However, this beauty is deadly for the rich man - in the literal sense of the word, because we're talking about about his death against the backdrop of such a beautiful scenery:
You will fall asleep... surrounded by care
Dear and beloved family
(Waiting impatiently for your death);
And you will go to your grave... hero,
Silently cursed by the fatherland,
Exalted by loud praise!..
Finally, the poet abandons the attention of the rich man and turns not to him, but to the readers, as if convinced that his heart still cannot be reached: “However, why are we bothering such a person for small people?” and takes on the tone of a corrupt journalist, accustomed to hiding the problems and ills of society and writing about them in a condescending and derogatory manner:
... Even more fun
Find some consolation in something...
It doesn’t matter what the man will endure:
This is how providence guides us
Pointed... but he's used to it!
Speaking on his own behalf, Nekrasov, in a mournful and sympathetic tone, paints the perspective of the true hardships and grievances of the men who left with nothing, which unfolds into an epic picture of popular suffering. The verse takes on the measured, stately movement of a drawn-out folk song. The former melodious alternation of dactylic and masculine rhymes is replaced by an alternation of masculine and feminine ones, which is why the verse acquires firmness and, as it were, “fills with strength.” But this “power” is inseparable from unbearable suffering: the key motive and general intonation of the song is a groan:
… Motherland!
Name me such an abode,
I've never seen such an angle
Where would your sower and guardian be?
Where would a Russian man not moan?
He moans across the fields, along the roads,
He groans in prisons, in prisons,
In the mines, on an iron chain;
He groans under the barn, under the haystack,
Under a cart, spending the night in the steppe;
Moaning in his own poor house,
I am not happy with the light of God's sun;
Moans in every remote town,
At the entrance of courts and chambers.
The verb “moans” sounds again and again at the beginning of several lines (that is, it acts as an anaphor), moreover, its constituent sounds are repeated, “echoed” in neighboring words (“he groans ... along the prisons ... under the haystack”). One gets the feeling that the same mournful cry is incessantly heard in all corners of the country. The peasant, so humiliated and powerless, appears as a “sower and preserver,” the creative basis of life for the entire Russian land. It is spoken of in the singular, which conventionally denotes the plurality - the entire Russian people (this technique - singular instead of plural - is also rhetorical and is called synecdoche). Finally, in Nekrasov’s lyrics, barge haulers become the living embodiment of people’s suffering, whose groan echoes over the entire Russian land, spilling over with “the great sorrow of the people.” Nekrasov turns to the Volga, making it at the same time a symbol of the Russian land, the Russian people's element and at the same time of people's suffering:
Go out to the Volga: whose groan is heard
Over the great Russian river?
Volga! Volga!.. In spring, full of water
You're not flooding the fields like that,
Like the great sorrow of the people
Our land is overflowing...
The word “moan” is repeated many times, to the point of exaggeration, and grows into a comprehensive concept: the groan is heard throughout the Volga - the “great Russian river”, characterizes the entire life of the Russian people. And the poet asks the last question, which hangs in the air, about the meaning of this groan, about the fate of the Russian people, and, accordingly, all of Russia.
Where there are people, there is a groan... Oh, my heart!
What does your endless groan mean?
Will you wake up full of strength,
Or, fate obeying the law,
You have already done everything you could, -
Created a song like a groan
And spiritually rested forever?..
This question may seem rhetorical, may seem overly politicized (like a call for an immediate uprising), but from our time perspective we can only state that it really always remains relevant, that the amazing humility of the “patience of an amazing people”, the ability to endure unimaginable suffering in the very in fact, is its essential feature, which more than once turns out to be both saving and hindering the development of society and dooming it to apathy, decay and anarchy.
So, from the image of a certain front entrance, the poem expands to the breadth of the Volga expanses, all of Russia and its eternal questions. Now we can define the genre of this poem as a pamphlet. This is a magazine genre, a genre of political article - a bright, imaginative presentation of one’s political position, distinguished by its propaganda character and passionate rhetoric.
Another programmatic poem for Nekrasov was “ Railway" Many researchers consider it as a poem. If we compared “Reflections at the Front Entrance” with the pamphlet genre, then the designation of another magazine genre – feuilleton – could not be more applicable to “The Railway”.
A seemingly insignificant conversation on a train between a boy and his general father leads the poet to “think” about the role of the people in Russia and the attitude of the upper strata of society towards them.
Nekrasov did not choose the railway as a reason for controversy by chance. We were talking about one of the first railway lines - Nikolaevskaya, which connected Moscow and St. Petersburg. It became a real event in the life of Russia at that time. Nekrasov was not alone in dedicating poems to her. She was also sung in poetry by Fet, Polonsky, and Shevyrev. For example, Fet’s poem “On the Railroad” was widely known at that time, where the poeticized image of the road was organically and originally combined with a love theme. The rapid ride was compared to a magical flight carrying lyrical hero into the atmosphere of a fairy tale.
Frost and night over the snowy distance,
And it’s cozy and warm here,
And your appearance is tender before me
And a childishly pure brow.
Full of embarrassment and courage,
With you, meek seraphim,
We are through the wilds and ravines
We fly on a fiery snake.
He showers golden sparks
On the illuminated snows,
And we dream of other places,
Others dream of shores.
And, dipped in moonlit silver,
The trees are flying past you,
Below us with a cast-iron roar
Bridges instantly rattle.
The general public perceived the railway as a symbol of progress and Russia’s entry into new Age, into the European space. Therefore, the boy’s question about who created it became fundamental and was perceived as a dispute about which social class in Russia is the leading engine of progress. The general names the chief manager of communications, Count Kleinmichel, as the builder of the road. According to the poet, the road owes its existence primarily not to ministers, not to German designers, who did not hire merchants and contractors, but to hired laborers from among the peasants, who did the most difficult and labor-intensive task - laying an embankment through the marshy swamps. Although the general’s wealthy family plays at being a nationality (the boy Vanya is dressed in a coachman’s jacket), they have no idea about the people and their life.
The poet enters into the conversation, inviting the general “in the moonlight” to tell Vanya the “truth” about the construction of the road and its builders. He knows with what labor and sacrifice each mile of the embankment was achieved. He begins his story solemnly and enticingly, like a fairy tale:
There is a king in the world: this king is merciless,
Hunger is its name.
But then the fairy tale turns into a terrible reality. Tsar Famine, setting the whole world in motion, drove countless “crowds of people” to build the road. Disenfranchised quitrent peasants, forced to pay tribute to the landowner and feed their families, were hired for pennies, toiled at backbreaking work, without any conditions for it, and died in the thousands. Dobrolyubov, in one article in Sovremennik, pointed out that such practices were universal at that time, that both the newest Volga-Don road and the roads that were built simultaneously with it were strewn with the bones of peasants who died during the construction. He cited the confession of one of the contractors:
“Yes, on the Borisovskaya road... I had such an unfortunate situation that half of the 700 workers died. No, there’s nothing you can do about it if they start dying. As they walked along the road from St. Petersburg to Moscow, they buried more than six thousand tea.” Nekrasov artistically processes this plot.
The path is straight: the embankments are narrow,
Columns, rails, bridges.
And on the sides all the bones are Russian...
The soft melodiousness of the verse and the gentleness of the tone make the story, oddly enough, even more creepy. Folklore vocabulary shows that the poet is describing it as if on behalf of the peasants themselves. Taking care of the “entertaining” nature of the story for a child, Nekrasov continues to preserve the fairy-tale flavor, unexpectedly resorting to the romantic genre of the ballad.
Chu! menacing exclamations were heard!
Stomping and gnashing of teeth;
A shadow ran across the frosty glass...
What's there? Crowd of the dead!
Exclamation-interjection “Chu!” - a direct reference to Zhukovsky’s ballads, where it was his favorite means of awakening the reader’s attention and imagination. As we remember, the appearance of the dead in the dead of midnight was one of the most common plot elements of the ballad. The ghosts of the murdered flew to the crime scene or visited the killer in his home, punishing him with eternal fear and pangs of conscience, as retribution from above for his crime. Nekrasov uses the romantic genre for new purposes, investing it with social meaning. The death of the peasants appears as a real murder, which is much more terrible than any crime in the ballad, since we are talking about not just one, but thousands of people killed. The shadows of dead peasants appear in the romantic moonlight, throwing with their appearance a terrible accusation against the unwitting culprit of their death - upper class society, serenely enjoying the fruits of their labors and rolling in comfort along the rails, under which lie the bones of many builders. However, the ghosts of the peasants who appear are devoid of any magical-demonic flavor. Their singing immediately dispels the ballad nightmare: a folk labor song of the most prosaic content sounds:
... "On this moonlit night
We love to see your work!
We struggled under the heat, under the cold,
With an ever-bent back,
They lived in dugouts, fought hunger,
They were cold and wet, and suffered from scurvy.
It is through the mouths of the workers that the truth that the narrator decided to tell Vanya is spoken. They came not to take revenge, not to curse the offenders, not to fill their hearts with horror (they are meek and almost holy in their gentleness), but only to remind themselves:
Brothers! You are reaping our benefits!
We are destined to rot in the earth...
Do you all remember us poor people kindly?
Or have you forgotten a long time ago?..”
Such an appeal to travelers as “brothers” is tantamount to a request to remember them in prayer, which is the duty of every Christian to deceased ancestors and benefactors, so that they can receive forgiveness of past sins and be reborn for eternal life. This parallel is also confirmed by the fact that the deceased men are further recognized as righteous - “God’s warriors”, “peaceful children of labor”. The poet calls on the boy to take an example from them and cultivate in himself one of the main Christian virtues - work.
This noble habit of work
It would be a good idea for us to adopt...
Bless the work of the people
And learn to respect a man.
The railway is interpreted as a symbol way of the cross Russian people (“The Russian people have endured enough, / They have endured this railway road too - / They will endure everything that God sends!”) and at the same time as a symbol of the historical path of Russia (comparable to the symbolic meaning with the motif of the road and the image of Rus'-troika in “ Dead souls"Gogol): “He will endure everything - and he will pave a wide, clear / chest path for himself.” However, the tragedy of reality does not allow Nekrasov to be a naive optimist. Abandoning high pathos, he concludes with sober bitterness:
It’s just a pity to live in this wonderful time
You won't have to - neither me nor you.
For Vanya, like the heroine of Zhukovsky’s ballad “Svetlana,” everything he hears seems like an “amazing dream,” into which he imperceptibly plunges during the story. According to the famous expert on Nekrasov’s work, Nikolai Skatov, “the picture of the amazing dream that Vanya saw is, first of all, a poetic picture. A liberating convention is a dream that makes it possible to see a lot that you won’t see in ordinary life, is a motif widely used in literature. For Nekrasov, sleep ceases to be just a conditional motive. The dream in Nekrasov’s poem is an amazing phenomenon, in which realistic images are boldly and unusually combined with a kind of poetic impressionism; what happens happens precisely in a dream, or rather, not even in a dream, but in an atmosphere of strange half-asleep. The narrator always tells something, the child’s disturbed imagination sees something, and what Vanya saw is much more than what he was told.”
However, the second part of the poem returns us to harsh reality. A mocking general, recently returned from Europe, perceives the people as “a wild crowd of drunkards,” “barbarians” who “do not create, but destroy masters,” like the tribes of barbarians who destroyed the cultural wealth of the Roman Empire. At the same time, he quotes Pushkin’s famous poem “The Poet and the Crowd,” although he distorts the meaning of the quote: “Or is Apollo Belvedere Worse than a stove pot for you? Here are your people - these thermal baths and baths, a miracle of art - they have stolen everything!" The general thus replaces the concept of the people with the concept of the crowd, borrowed from Pushkin’s poem “The Poet and the Crowd” (although Pushkin did not mean by the crowd a people who cannot read, and just a wide layer of the educated reading public, not versed in true art, like the depicted general). He thus finds himself in the camp of supporters of “pure art,” which included Druzhinin, Polonsky, Tyutchev and Fet. This is a deadly polemical device: Nekrasov depicts his eternal opponents in a satirical form, without directly opposing anything to them: it is unlikely that they would want to hear their position distorted by a half-educated general. So, for Nekrasov, the people are a moral ideal, a creative worker; for a general, they are a barbarian destroyer, to whom higher inspiration is inaccessible creative mind. Speaking about creation, Nekrasov means the production of material goods, the general - scientific and artistic creativity, creation of cultural values.
If we ignore the general’s rude tone, then we can recognize some truth in his words: the destructive element also lurks in the people and comes out if they fall into anarchy. And Pushkin, to whom the general refers, was horrified by the “Russian rebellion, senseless and merciless.” Let us remember how many cultural values were destroyed in Russia during the revolution of 1917 and the one that followed it civil war. Nekrasov, on the contrary, called on the people to rise up against their oppressors (although not as clearly as they tried to present it in Soviet years, rather, he is talking about the people’s ability to defend their rights and not allow themselves to be exploited for nothing), he did not know what terrible “genie” he wanted to “let out of the bottle.”
the last part The poems are openly satirical, sharply different in tone from the previous ones. In response to the general’s request to show the child the “bright side” of road construction, the poet paints a picture of the completion of the people’s labors in sunlight, which in this case sets a completely different genre for the story. If in the magical “moonlight” the highest, ideal essence of the people was revealed to us as an engine of progress and a moral standard for all other Russian classes, then in the sunlight it is not the “bright sides” of people’s life that appear to our eyes. The workers turned out to be deceived: not only were they not paid anything for their truly hard labor, but they were also cruelly shortchanged, so that “Every contractor owes a stay, absentee days have become a penny!” Illiterate peasants cannot check the false calculation and look helpless, like children. Nekrasov bitterly conveys their uneducated, almost meaningless speech: ““Maybe there is a surplus here now, but screw you!..” - they waved their hand....” A deceiving contractor arrives, “fat, stocky, red as copper.” The poet tried to give him repulsive features: “The merchant wipes the sweat from his face and says, with his arms akimbo, picturesque: “Okay... well... well done!.. well done!..” He behaves like a king and a universal benefactor: “With God , now go home - congratulations! (Hats off - if I say!) I put out a barrel of wine to the workers And - I give the arrears...” And the people naively rejoice at the forgiveness of fictitious debts, are not indignant at the blatant fleecing and, due to their weakness for wine, buy “generous gift”: “The people harnessed the horses - and the merchant raced along the road with a shout of “Hurray...” This is how the people appear in the epilogue - stupidly gullible and naive, not knowing the value of themselves and their work, unable to stand up for themselves ". This is his real state. It calls for correction. According to the poet, the people need to be helped if they cannot do this themselves.
