Anna Akhmatova's lyrics, first of all, convey the experiences of a woman's heart, but at the same time, she is also patriotic and philosophical. All this suggests that Anna Akhmatova is one of the best poets of the 20th century. The poem “I learned to live simply, wisely...” was written in May 1912. At the same time, the first collection of the young poetess, “Evening,” was published, which was not only noticed, but also approved by poetry connoisseurs. This poem is very similar to a letter. The lyrical heroine is lonely, abandoned, but she is strong and courageous. She is looking for help and support in very simple things: “burdocks”, “bunches of yellow-red rowan”.
The lyrical heroine finds peace in her soul, thanks to the “fluffy cat”, “lake sawmill”, “stork cry”. Thus, peace can be found in nature, in faith (“look at the sky and pray to God”), in wisdom, and wisdom is growing up. The lyrical heroine feels like a guest on earth, realizing “life is perishable, perishable and beautiful.” Awareness of the perishability of existence, the transience of happiness - this is the highest meaning of life, according to the heroine. This gives the poem a deep meaning, which is expressed through simple and understandable details.
The first line states the heroine's creed:
- I learned to live simply and wisely...
Wisdom is in simplicity - says Anna Akhmatova. The entire poem is filled with sounds that pacify anxiety: “the burdocks are rustling,” “the fluffy cat is purring more endearingly,” “the cry of a stork that has flown to the roof cuts through the silence.” The technique of alliteration helps to create the world in which the heroine lives. The poem is written in iambic pentameter, and in the first stanza the stressed “and” draws attention: “learned”, “live”, “pray”, “wander”, “quench”, which creates a feeling of poignancy. The lyrical heroine strives for a simple and righteous life, and this is close to the author, Anna Akhmatova. The entire first stanza is one complex sentence, the main part of which is widespread and reinforced by gradation: “simple, wise.” The second stanza emphasizes this connection with the author of the poem: “I compose funny poems,” i.e. life-affirming. Here we use verbs of the imperfect form (“I add”, “I return”) in the present tense. And writing poetry is perceived as an incomplete process associated with this world. The melodiousness of the verse is achieved by inversion. In this stanza, the motif of autumn appears: the mountain ash “disappears”, and the epithet “perishable” evokes an association with Pushkin’s poem “ It's a sad time! The charm of the eyes...", which puts Akhmatova’s poem into the context of Russian philosophical lyrics. The rhyme is original and deep in meaning: “burdocks-verses,” connecting the low and the high and explaining that returning from the world of poetry is as natural as leaving it. The bright fire “on the tower of the lake sawmill” is like a beacon for those who have lost their way, and the cat and stork symbolize home, family, but the cry of the bird creates a feeling of anxiety, which becomes understandable at the end of the poem:
- And if you knock on my door,
- I don't think I'll even hear it.
The lyrical heroine, despite the last line, is waiting for this knock on the door, listening to the silence of the night, peering into the distant light. Thus, the entire poem is aimed at the wise skill of living without him, because living with him creates anxiety and sadness. The poem “I learned to live simply, wisely...” is one of the best in early lyrics Akhmatova. It is deep in content and perfect in form. The poetic language is laconic, devoid of pretentiousness and complex symbolism, and is focused on colloquial speech. This corresponded to the canons of Acmeism, to which the novice Akhmatova belonged. However, when Acmeism ceased to exist, she continued to “live simply, wisely” and compose poems “about perishable, perishable and beautiful life.” She was considered perfect. Her poems were read. Her hook-nosed, surprisingly harmonious profile evoked comparisons with ancient sculpture. In her later years she received an honorary doctorate from Oxford. Akhmatova's first poems are love lyrics. In them, love is not always bright; it often brings grief. More often than not, Akhmatova’s poems are psychological dramas with poignant plots based on tragic experiences. The lyrical heroine of Akhmatova is rejected and falls out of love. But he experiences this with dignity, with proud humility, without humiliating either himself or his beloved.
- In the fluffy muff, my hands were cold.
- I felt scared, I felt somehow vague.
- Oh how to get you back, quick weeks
- His love, airy and momentary!
The hero of Akhmatov's poetry is complex and multifaceted. He is a lover, a brother, a friend, appearing in various situations. Either a wall of misunderstanding arises between Akhmatova and her lover and he leaves her; then they separate because they cannot see each other; then she mourns her love and grieves; but he always loves Akhmatova.
- All for you: and daily prayer,
- And the melting heat of insomnia,
- And my poems are a white flock,
- And my eyes are blue fire.
But Akhmatova’s poetry is not only the confession of a female soul in love, it is also the confession of a person living with all the troubles and passions of the 20th century. In the works of the poetess there is another love - for her native land, for the Motherland, for Russia:
- I'm not with those who abandoned the earth
- To be torn apart by enemies,
- I don't listen to their rude flattery,
- I won’t give them my songs.
Anna Akhmatova lived a long and difficult life. Despite the fact that her husband was shot, and her son moved from prison to exile and back, despite all the persecution and poverty, her life was still happy, representing an entire era in the poetry of our country.
Akhmatova's lyrics from the period of her first books (" Evening", "Rosary", "White Flock")- almost exclusively love lyrics. Her innovation as an artist initially manifested itself precisely in this traditionally eternal, repeatedly and seemingly played out to the end theme. Sound and rhythmic richness (“and for centuries we have cherished the barely audible rustle of steps”). In this kind of art, in the lyrical miniature novel, in the poetry of “geysers,” Anna Akhmatova achieved great mastery. The tragedy of ten years is told in one brief event, one gesture, look, word (Art. “Confusion”). Often, Akhmatova’s miniatures were, in accordance with her favorite style, fundamentally unfinished. They looked not so much like a small novel in its, so to speak, traditional form, but rather like a randomly torn page from a novel, or even part of a page that has neither beginning nor end and forces the reader to figure out what happened between the characters before (“Do you want to know , how was it all?..”). book "Evening"- one of the most characteristic features of Akhmatova’s poetic manner has already been expressed in an obvious and consistent form. Akhmatova always preferred the “fragment” to a coherent, consistent and narrative story. It provided an excellent opportunity to saturate the poem with acute and intense psychologism; in addition, oddly enough, the fragment imparted a kind of documentary quality to what was being depicted: after all, what we are looking at is really either an excerpt from an accidentally overheard conversation, or a dropped note that was not intended for prying eyes. We thus accidentally peek into someone else's drama, as if contrary to the author's intentions. Often, Akhmatova’s poems resemble a fluent and “raw” entry in a diary (art. “He loved three things in the world”). Love theme occupies a central place in Akhmatova’s poetry. Early love lyrics are a kind of lyrical diary. However, the depiction of romantically exaggerated feelings is not typical of her poetry. Akhmatova speaks about simple human happiness and about earthly, ordinary sorrows: about separation, betrayal, loneliness, despair - about everything that is close to many, that everyone is able to experience and understand. Love in A. Akhmatova’s lyrics appears as a “fatal duel”; it is almost never depicted serenely, idyllically, but, on the contrary, in an extremely crisis expression: at the moment of breakup, separation, loss of feeling or the first violent blindness of passion. Usually her poems are the beginning of a drama or its climax. The lyrical heroine Akhmatova pays “with the torment of a living soul” for her love. The combination of lyricism and epicness brings the poetess’s poems closer to the genres of the novel, short story, drama, and lyrical diary. One of the secrets of her poetic gift lies in her ability to fully express the most intimate things in herself and the world around her. In Akhmatova’s poems, one is struck by the stringy intensity of experiences and the unmistakable accuracy of their sharp expression. This is where their strength lies. Amazing psychological persuasiveness is achieved by using a very succinct and laconic technique of eloquent detail (glove, ring, tulip in a buttonhole, etc.). While maintaining the high significance of the idea of love associated with symbolism, Akhmatova returns it to a living and real, not at all abstract, character. The soul comes to life “not for passion, not for fun, for earthly great love.” The personal (“your voice”) goes back to the general. The peculiarity of Akhmatova's love lyrics, full of innuendoes, hints, going into the distant depths of subtext, gives it true originality. The heroine of Akhmatov’s poems, most often speaking as if to herself in a state of impulse or semi-delirium, naturally does not consider it necessary, and indeed cannot, further explain and explain to us everything that is happening. Only the basic signals of feelings are transmitted, without decoding, without comments, hastily. Hence the impression of extreme intimacy, extreme frankness and heartfelt openness of these lyrics, which seems unexpected and paradoxical if we remember its simultaneous codedness and subjectivity. Akhmatova contains poems that are literally “made” from everyday life, from simple everyday life - right down to the green washstand on which a pale evening ray plays. The words spoken by Akhmatova in her old age are that poems “grow from rubbish”, that even a spot of mold on a damp wall, and burdocks, and nettles, and a damp fence, and a dandelion can become the subject of poetic inspiration and depiction. The most important thing in her craft - realism, the ability to see poetry in ordinary life - was already inherent in her talent by nature itself. Poems from the period 20-30 are more psychological. If in “Evening” and “Rosary” the feeling of love was depicted with the help of very few material details, now, without abandoning the use of an expressive subject touch, Akhmatova, for all her expressiveness, has become more flexible in directly depicting psychological content. In the lyrical heroine of Akhmatova’s poems, in the soul of the poetess herself, there constantly lived a burning, demanding dream of truly high love, undistorted in any way.
Theme of the poet and poetry Throughout her life, Akhmatova’s work had to refute the idea that “it is absurd for a woman to be a poet. She didn’t want to be just a woman whose existence is limited only by love experiences (“No, prince, I’m not that one...”). The muse is not only a friend, but also a rival; love and poetry dominate the heroine’s soul alternately: either the Muse takes away the “golden ring” - a gift from her lover, or love interferes with the manifestation of the poetic gift (And - I cannot fly, // But since childhood I have been winged). The relationship between the heroine and her Muse is far from rosy. “The muse left along the road,” writes Akhmatova: the earthly world is too wretched for her, it seems like a grave where there is nothing to breathe. Sometimes the Muse loses her cheerful disposition, her strength. While waiting for the heavenly guest, “life seems to hang by a thread,” and honors, freedom, and youth are forgotten. The muse is insomnia and the voice of conscience, whose burden the heroine is forced to bear all her life; it is a painful fever and a burden, but, unfortunately, it does not appear too often. The poet's gift is his wealth given by God, but the poet is doomed not to accumulate it, but to squander it. The poet's task is thankless, but noble. Like Christ, the poet goes through the world alone to do his good work. And he is doomed to recognize “the students’ malicious mockery and the indifference of the crowd.” Sometimes the poetess perceives her gift as a tragic mark of fate, predicting disasters and death for loved ones (“I called death for my dear ones...”).
Features of poems about the Motherland gradual Akhmatova’s lyrics, initially chamber, intimate and confessional, acquired a high civil sound. I couldn’t help but think about my homeland, which was engulfed by terrible events. Already during the First World War, which the poetess perceived as a national tragedy, her work included the motives of self-sacrifice and love for the Motherland. In the poems of the collection " White flock" where Akhmatova first addressed the topic of the Motherland, one feels the proximity of an inevitable catastrophe, a premonition of tragedy in the life of Russia. The poetess immediately determined the main thing for herself - to be together with her country on all its paths and crossroads (“I had a voice. He called comfortingly ...”). Russia has always remained the only abode for the poetess. To remain faithful to the Motherland is what Akhmatova saw as her main civic duty. Together with her country, she experienced all the disasters that befell Russia (“Prayer”). Feature Sat " Podorozhny k" - war and revolution are interpreted in it not in historical and philosophical terms, but in personal and poetic terms. The civil poems of this book, related to the problem of moral and life choices, are far from accepting the revolution, but at the same time they lack political hatred. In one of her poems in 1922, Akhmatova wrote: “I am not with those who abandoned the earth to be torn apart by enemies.” The fate of an exile seemed to her not only unworthy, but also pathetic. She preferred, remaining in her homeland, to accept the blows of fate with her. Together with her country, she experienced all the disasters that befell Russia. Akhmatova’s poems during the Second World War are a unique formula of angry, militant patriotism (A cycle of poems about the Leningrad Siege: it formulates its task: In order to mourn you, my life is saved).
Introduction
Theoretical foundations for the study of religious and philosophical motifs in the lyrics of A.A. Akhmatova
1 Motive as a structural and semantic unit of the poetic world
2 The main motives of A.A.’s lyrics Akhmatova: review of creativity
Religious and philosophical foundations of A.A.’s creativity Akhmatova
1 Solving eternal problems human existence in the lyrics of A.A. Akhmatova: motives of memory, life and death
2 Christian motives of lyrics by A.A. Akhmatova
Conclusion
Introduction
The relevance of research. The work of A. A. Akhmatova occupies a special place in Russian and world culture of the 20th century. Today we can say with confidence that the poet’s works remain a fact of the spiritual life of the era, retain their aesthetic value, and reveal inexhaustible moral and philosophical potential. She is an artist in relation to whom, in the last third of the 20th century, one can note widespread reader interest and a special activity of research thought. Currently, Akhmatova studies have achieved significant success in developing the problem of the unity and integrity of Akhmatova’s work, in the study of the poet’s ideological style, the peculiarities of poetics, in revealing the love, historical, and psychological problems of her lyrics.
However, issues of the artistic embodiment of religious feeling and worldview still remain on the periphery of the attention of most researchers. Even the most cursory review of the literature about Akhmatova leads to the following conclusion: the presence of philosophical and religious motives in her work is recognized as an axiom, but the vast majority of researchers limit themselves to only stating this fact. At the same time, Akhmatova’s poetry, rich in philosophical generalizations and created taking into account various religious and philosophical theories, has both undeniable artistic value and undoubted historical and cultural significance. The most promising, in our opinion, within the framework of the above topics is motive analysis. Being the smallest textual unit, a motif makes it possible to directly comprehend the structure and semantic “fields” work of art.
This determines and confirms the relevance of the choice of topic for our research: “Philosophical and religious motives of A. A. Akhmatova’s lyrics.”
Thus, the object of this work is the work of A. A. Akhmatova (texts of poems from various collections “The Rosary”, “White Flock”, “Evening”, “Plantain”, “Anno Domini”, the poem “Requiem”, etc.) .
The subject of the study is the philosophical and religious motives of the lyrics of different periods.
The purpose of the undertaken research is to identify and analyze the main motives of the lyrics, revealing the philosophical and religious worldview of A. A. Akhmatova.
The set goal determined the solution of the following interrelated tasks:
conduct a general overview of the work of A. A. Akhmatova, identify the main trends and techniques;
analyze the leading philosophical motives: the motive of memory, life and death;
identify and characterize the fundamental religious motives of A. A. Akhmatova’s lyrics.
The theoretical basis for this work is based on the works of scientists: I. V. Silantyev, B. V. Tomashevsky, Yu. I. Levin, who are involved in the development of the theory of motive, as well as the works of E. S. Dobin, L. G. Kikhney, V. V. Dementyev, V. V. Musatov, A. I. Pavlovsky, whose focus is on various aspects of the creative activity of A. A. Akhmatova.
Methodological basis of the study: the work used biographical and comparative-historical methods with elements of a systematic and holistic analysis of a literary work.
The practical significance of the work lies in the possibility of using the research data and the theoretical conclusions obtained as a result of it for an in-depth study of Russian literature (the study of the work of A. A. Akhmatova) at school and university.
Research structure. The work consists of an introduction, two chapters, each of which to one degree or another reveals the essence of the problem, a conclusion and a list of sources used.
1 Theoretical foundations for the study of religious and philosophical motifs in the lyrics of A. A. Akhmatova
religious lyrics by Akhmatova
1.1 Motif as a structural and semantic unit of a work
In the 90s of the 20th century, interest in issues of poetics deepened significantly, among which not least the problem of isolating and identifying motive as an independent literary category. Despite the active study of the latter, there are still no stable criteria in defining the concept of “motive”.
To begin with, we note that motive [from the Latin moveo - “I move”] is a term transferred to literary studies from music, where it denotes a group of several notes, rhythmically designed. By analogy with this, in literary criticism the term “motive” begins to be used to designate the minimal component of a work of art.
Currently theoretical study motive is an extensive network of concepts and approaches, let us outline the main ones.
Semantic theory (A. N. Veselovsky, O. M. Freidenberg, which is characterized by the position of motive as an indecomposable and stable unit of narration. A. N. Veselovsky by motive means “a formula that figuratively answered at first the public questions that “nature everywhere placed before man, either consolidating especially vivid, seemingly important or repeated impressions of reality.”
2. The morphological concept (V. Ya Propp, B. I. Yarkho) studies the motive through its constituent elements, components of the logical-grammatical structure of the statement - a set of subjects, objects and predicates, expressed in certain plot variations.
Dichotomous concept (A. I. Beletsky, A. Dundes, B. N. Putilov, E. M. Meletinsky).
According to dichotomous ideas about motive, its nature is dualistic and is revealed in two correlated principles:
) a generalized invariant of the motive, taken in abstraction from its specific plot expressions;
) a set of variants of a motive expressed in plots (allomotivs).
A motive, according to A.I. Beletsky, is “a simple sentence of an explanatory nature, which once gave all the content to a myth, a figurative explanation of phenomena incomprehensible to the primitive mind.”
A. I. Beletsky distinguishes two levels of implementation of the motive in the plot narrative - “schematic motive”, which correlates with the invariant plot scheme, and “real motive”, which is an element of the plot of the work.
B. N. Putilov associates two interrelated meanings with the concept of motive:
) scheme, formula, plot unit in the form of some elementary generalization;
) the unit itself in the form of a specific text embodiment.
B. N. Putilov uses the term “motive” itself in the meaning of “motifemes” - as an invariant scheme that generalizes the essence of a number of allomotives.
The researcher identifies certain functions of the motif in the system of epic narration:
) constructive (the motive is included in the components of the plot);
) dynamic (the motive acts as an organized moment of plot movement);
) semantic (the motif carries its own meanings that determine the content of the plot);
) producing (the motive produces new meanings and shades of meaning - due to the inherent abilities for change, variation, transformation).
The main thesis of E.M. Meletinsky’s concept is that “the structure of a motive can be likened to the structure of a sentence (judgment).” The motive is considered as a one-act microplot, the basis of which is action. The action in the motive is a predicate on which the actant arguments (agent, patient, etc.) depend.
Thematic concept (B.V. Tomashevsky, V.B. Shklovsky).
Researchers define motive exclusively through the category of theme, noting that the concept of theme is a concept that unites the material of the work. The whole work can have a theme, and at the same time, each part of the work has its own theme. By decomposing the work into thematic parts in this way, one can reach the non-decomposable parts.
“The theme of an indecomposable part of a work is called a motive. In essence, every sentence has its own motive."
Motif in the theory of intertext (B. M. Gasparov, Yu. K. Shcheglov).
According to this concept, “motifs represent meanings and connect texts into a single semantic space.” In addition, intertextual analysis is characterized by a combination of the concepts of motive and leitmotif: a leitmotif is a semantic repetition within the text of a work, and a motive is a semantic repetition outside the text of a work. Intertext does not accept the boundaries of the text at all, so the motive in this case is interpreted extremely broadly: it is almost any semantic repetition in the text.
To summarize the review of theoretical judgments of literary scholars and folklorists about the motif as a significant structural unit of a work, the following points should be highlighted:
repeatability of the motif (in this case, repetition is understood as not a lexical, but a functional-semantic repetition);
traditionality, i.e. the stability of the motif in folklore and literary tradition (a motif is “a traditional, recurring element of folklore and literary storytelling”);
the presence of a semantic invariant of the motive and its variants.
In this case, it seems productive to distinguish between two meanings of the term. Firstly, the motive is the smallest structural unit of the text, focused mainly on plot and narrative. This interpretation of the motive has been well studied, especially on the material of historically early literature. Significant scientific results have been achieved here. Secondly, the motive, as the semantically most significant verbal unit of the text, focused primarily on the individual author’s concept, is widely used in the analysis of literature from the period of individual creativity.
The distinction between the two meanings of the term is due to the specifics of literary genera. The “narrative motive” is mainly represented in epic and partly in dramatic works, which is associated with the leading principle of plot and narration (in the broad sense) in these types of literature. Here the motif serves as the “building” unit of the plot. In the lyrics, the second meaning of the motive seems to be the leading one, since the plot connections here are weakened and the semantic significance of verbal units and their connections comes to the fore. However, one cannot deny the presence of both types of motive in all types of literature of the period of individual author’s creativity, where the choice of motive units is determined primarily by the author’s concept.
As part of the ongoing research, we consider it important to dwell on the specifics of the motive in a poetic text.
The specificity of the motive in the lyrics is determined by the characteristics of the lyrical text and the lyrical event, which is portrayed by the author not as an external objectified “event of an incident,” but as an internal subjectivized “event of experience.” Therefore, in a lyrical work, a motive is, first of all, a repeating complex of feelings and ideas. But individual motives in lyric poetry are much more independent than in epic and drama, where they are subordinated to the development of action. “The task of a lyrical work is to compare individual motifs and verbal images, giving the impression of an artistic construction of thought.”
Undoubtedly, in lyric poetry it is not the object that is primary, but the subject of the utterance and its relationship to the outside world. An amazing property of lyricism is the desire and ability to approach the general through the particular, and through the everyday and ordinary - to the eternal and universal. Another paradoxical property of lyrics is the combination of the desire for extreme brevity and conciseness with the desire for “a certain descriptiveness, communicative design, artistic identification and expression for everyone.” In addition, at the center of the lyric poem there is a lyrical subject, “accumulating the flow of the lyrical plot in his inner world.” The semantic organization of the world of lyrical texts is also reflected in the units of this world - motives. Placing the lyrical “I” at the center of the semantic structure reorients everything in the lyrical text (including motives) towards the relationship to this lyrical subject. The motifs are one way or another grouped around this center and, without generally losing their autonomous significance, are inextricably linked with the lyrical “I” of the text.
Specific features of a motive in a lyrical text are the semantic tension of units representing a given motive, as well as special variability, which can be not only lexical, but also semantic. The lyrical motif, highlighted in a set of texts, is lexically expressed only in some of them, while in the rest the main idea of the poem, related motifs, main and secondary images, and the subtext of the poem can refer to this motif.
We emphasize that the lyrical motif can be identified exclusively within the context - a cycle of poems or the totality of the author’s entire work. It is impossible to identify a motif in a particular poem without taking into account the manifestation of variants of the same motif in other texts. This is also due to the properties of lyrics as a type of literature - a small volume of lyrical text, the absence of a dynamic plot. Related to this is the need to study lyrical motifs in the system.
The specificity of the motive in lyric poetry is connected not only with the characteristics of the latter as a type of literature, but also due to the special properties of poetic language characteristic of lyric poetry.
Thus, a motive is a stable, repeating structural and semantic unit (B. N. Putilov); a semantically rich component of the work, related to the theme, idea, but not identical to them (V. E. Khalizev); a semantic (substantive) element essential for understanding the author’s concept.
2 The main motives of A. A. Akhmatova’s lyrics: an overview of creativity
The work of Anna Andreevna Akhmatova is a unique phenomenon. Combining soulful lyricism and epic scope, incorporating the best classical traditions, it acquired the versatility and emotional persuasiveness that glorified Akhmatova’s name throughout the world. Therefore, it is quite possible to agree with K. Paustovsky, who said that “Anna Akhmatova is a whole era in the poetry of our country.”
The work of A. A. Akhmatova occurred in the first half of the 20th century, in the era of wars and revolutions, a period of radical change not only in the worldview of the people inhabiting our country, but also in the very foundations of life. Spiritually coming out of silver age Russian poetry, Akhmatova, together with the country, survived the revolutionary hard times, mass repressions of the 30s, and the war years.
All these stages life path found their reflection in Akhmatova’s work, influencing not only the themes, aesthetics and motives of the poems, but also philosophy, the way of seeing and feeling the world.
“There are three eras in memories,” Akhmatova said in one of her poems. Perhaps this is an accident, but her creative destiny also falls into three stages, three biographical circles.
The beginning of the first (1912) - the publication of the collections “Evening” and “Rosary Beads”. Akhmatova’s work of this period is connected with Acmeism, and later the poet (Akhmatova did not recognize the definition of “poetess” in relation to herself) did not renounce her connection with Acmeism. The lyrics of the first books are filled exclusively with love motives. Her innovation as an artist initially manifested itself in this traditional theme. Love is given in extreme moments of crisis - rise and fall, breakup and meeting, recognition and refusal (“As simple courtesy commands...”, “An unprecedented autumn built a high dome...”).
As researchers note, Akhmatova’s lyrics of this period are characterized by “romance”; each book of her poems is like a lyrical novel, going back to the traditions of Russian realistic prose.
In this type of art, in the lyrical miniature novel, Anna Akhmatova achieved great mastery. The tragedy of ten years could be told by her in one short event (for example, the poem “As simple courtesy commands...”). Often, Akhmatova’s miniatures were, in accordance with her favorite style, unfinished and looked not so much like a small novel, but like a randomly torn page from a novel, or even part of a page that has neither beginning nor end and forces the reader to figure out what happened between heroes before.
Researchers note that Akhmatova always preferred a “fragment” to a coherent, sequential story, as it made it possible to saturate the poem with psychologism, intimacy and frankness. In addition, the fragment imparted a kind of documentary quality to what was being depicted: what appeared before the reader was either an excerpt from an accidentally overheard conversation or a dropped note that was not intended for prying eyes.
Let us note that already from the first collections (“Evening”, “Rosary”) Akhmatova’s poetry is distinguished by such features as the clarity of the meanings of all words used in the works, simplicity of vision, objectivity of the verse, and the filling of the works with ordinary things. She is characterized by conversational poetic speech, the gravity of the poem towards a sketch or short story with a laconic style adopted from Pushkin, to whom Akhmatova turned from the very first steps of her work.
Starting from the third collection of poems (“The White Flock”), Akhmatova’s poetics included new images and motifs. In it she went beyond personal experiences, and themes emerged in her poems modern life, biblical motifs and historical associations. In Akhmatova’s works, “wet spring ivy”, the dull blue color of the sky, “the cries of cranes and black fields”, autumn narrow roads, reapers working in the fields, drizzling rain, “noisy lindens and elms”, black crosses appeared. And along with these details of the landscape came a feeling of the native country, the Motherland, tender declarations of love to the “sweet land” appeared. The author was able to hear and convey in poetry the feelings of the people and his involvement in them. This was the beginning new topic in Akhmatova’s work - civil themes.
The lyrics of this period acquire greater philosophical depth, are filled with universal human content, and reflect the author’s involvement in everything that happens around him. Her main poetic sensations of those years were the feeling of social instability and the approach of disaster. And therefore it is not surprising that the notes of horror felt here led to a search for salvation in religion, and cruel self-torture led to the idea of the artist’s moral responsibilities to society. Civil motives are organically included in the poet’s work; their presence follows from Akhmatova’s idea of the high purpose of poetry (adopted from Pushkin). Poetry is not only the sweet gift of song, but also the “decree of heaven,” heavy cross, which must be carried with dignity. And therefore the poet is always doomed to be in the thick of life, in the center of events, no matter how tragic they may be.
The theme of Russia is asserting itself more and more powerfully (“You know, I’m languishing in captivity”). For Akhmatova, Russia was often associated with Tsarskoe Selo, where “a dark-skinned youth wandered through the alleys,” where everything was permeated with the spirit of Pushkin’s poetry. Her Russia is also St. Petersburg - a city of culture and sovereign greatness. We emphasize that the theme of the Motherland and its interpretation during the First World War differed from the “jingoistic views” of many poets. Akhmatova understood that war is murder, death, a great evil. Her poetry is anti-war, pacifist in nature, based on a Christian basis (“Consolation”, “Prayer”).
Give me the bitter years of illness,
Choking, insomnia, fever,
Take away both the child and the friend,
And the mysterious gift of song -
So I pray at your liturgy
After so many tedious days,
So that the cloud is over dark Russia
Became a cloud in the glory of the rays.
The third period of Akhmatova’s work is characterized by an organic fusion of two principles - lyrical and civic. This is a period of synthesis, the acquisition of a higher “spiritual vision”. The clearest example Such a synthesis is the poem “Requiem”, in which the fate of a woman poet and the entire multi-million people merged together.
No, and not under an alien sky,
And not under the protection of alien wings -
I was then with my people,
Where my people, unfortunately, were...
Akhmatova worked on this work for five years (1935-1940). The main impetus for the creation of the work and its content were mass repressions in the country, as well as events personal life.
In 1921, her husband, poet Nikolai Gumilyov, was shot by the Cheka, allegedly for participating in a counter-revolutionary conspiracy. In the thirties, Akhmatova’s son Lev was arrested on false charges, and her second husband N. Punin was also under arrest. "IN terrible years“I spent seventeen months in prison lines in Leningrad after the Yezhovshchina,” recalls Akhmatova in the preface to Requiem.
From the first lines, the author emphasizes that the poem touches not only her personal misfortune, but also concerns the nation’s grief (“It was not in vain that we suffered together...”). Some of the verses included in the poem are structured like a folk lament (“They took you away at dawn...”).
In the poem “The Crucifixion,” the author connects the story of God’s Son with the fate of his own. As a result, a parallel arises between the torment in Soviet dungeons and the ascent of Christ to Golgotha. Moreover, not only the suffering of the son, but also of everyone who was innocently convicted and executed, is elevated to the rank of torture on the cross. This theme sounds especially clearly in the “Epilogue”:
And I’m not praying for myself alone,
And about everyone who stood there with me...
In the 1940s - during the Great Patriotic War- Akhmatova’s poems were heard on the radio. “Oath”, “Courage” are imbued with the confidence that “no one will force us to submit”, that “we will protect you, Russian speech, great Russian word". Akhmatova’s poems, collected in the final collection “The Running of Time,” are elegiac, imbued with a philosophical attitude to life, wise and majestic. They became poetry of rethinking and farewell to the past.
So, the work of Anna Andreevna Akhmatova can be conditionally divided into three periods, both according to thematic and motivic content, and according to the peculiarities of the worldview. Evolving from intimate lyrical poetry through civil poetry to poetry in which both lyricism and civic consciousness were fused together, Akhmatova discovered for herself and the reader not only new themes and motives, but also a new philosophy, a sense of unity of her personal destiny with the destiny of the people.
2 Religious and philosophical foundations of the work of A. A. Akhmatova
1 The solution to the eternal problems of human existence in the lyrics of A. A. Akhmatova: motives of memory, life and death
Anna Andreevna Akhmatova is an artist of a truly philosophical bent, since it is philosophical motives that form the ideological and meaningful core of all her poetry. Whatever topic the poetess touches on, whatever form she uses to create her poetic images, everything bears the imprint of the author’s deep thoughts.
However, attention is drawn to the fact that the term “philosophical” in relation to Akhmatova’s poetry is introduced by literary scholars very carefully. Thus, analyzing the category of memory, E. S. Dobin notes: “Memory has become, I would say, a philosophical value for Akhmatova. If only this word had not been devalued by critics who sometimes see “philosophy” in the most simple maxim.” At the same time, the scientific world persistently supports the idea of the undoubted importance of studying this lyrical layer. A. I. Pavlovsky states in this regard: “They haven’t written seriously about the philosophical side of Akhmatova’s lyrics... Meanwhile, it is of undoubted interest." At the same time, only Akhmatova’s late poetry is often declared philosophical, excluding the thought-forming factors of the earlier period. This is the position of V. Ozerov. “But, paying tribute to these truly new and heartfelt poems,” the critic emphasized, “it is impossible to single out or, even more so, contrast them with the late philosophical lyrics of A. Akhmatova.”
All of the above indicates that the designated layer of A. Akhmatova’s lyrics still remains a “blank spot” in Akhmatova studies, therefore we consider it necessary to dwell on the analysis of the main philosophical motives of the poetess.
Her view of the world was unique and quite consistent. As an Acmeist, in her early period she was opposed to the dissolution of the living, thing-corporeal and material world in those mystical categories that were characteristic of the symbolists. Akhmatova recognized the world as really and objectively existing. For her it was specific and multi-colored; it had to be transferred into the lines of poetry, while trying to be accurate and truthful. Therefore, she considered literally everything that constitutes suitable for artistic depiction. daily life and surrounds a person: a midnight vault, a tiny blade of grass, a chamomile or a burdock. The same is true of feeling - any of human emotions can be artistically explored, enshrined in words and passed on to future centuries. The power and might of art seemed enormous to her and hardly even foreseeable. Akhmatova loved to convey this surprise to the reader when she had the opportunity to once again be convinced of the fantastic incorruptibility of human culture, especially such a fragile and imperishable material as the word.
Of course, most of the early love lyrics are deeply intimate. However, it already outlines trends of immersion and deepening into the world of reflection on the foundations of human existence. We first hear them in the poem “I learned to live simply, wisely...”:
I learned to live simply and wisely,
Look at the sky and pray to God,
And wander for a long time before evening,
To tire out unnecessary anxiety.
The lyrical heroine reflects on the perishability and transience of life. In this poem, Akhmatova uses the technique of description inner world hero through surrounding nature. The tenderly purring fluffy cat and the fire that lit up the sawmill tower reflect the heroine’s clear and “wise” worldview, and the signs of autumn (a drooping bunch of rowan berries, rustling burdocks) reflect a light melancholy and sadness associated with the awareness of the perishability of all things. The whole poem is like an answer to the question: how should a person live? You can even derive a formula: nature, faith and solitude.
The poem “Everything is plundered, betrayed, sold” can be called a turning point in the work of A. A. Akhmatova. It testifies to the author’s final transition from the psychology of a love “novel in verse” to philosophical and civic motives. The personal pain and tragedy of A. Akhmatova’s wounded soul merges with the fate of the entire Russian people. Seeing the bitterness and injustice of the era, the author tries to show a way out, a path to the revival of spirituality. This is how the motives of faith in immortality and the highest justice, the motive of Christian forgiveness, as well as hope for a bright and wonderful future, for the eternal renewal of life and the victory of spirit and beauty over weakness, death and cruelty appear.
In a later period of creativity, A. Akhmatova placed the idea of the need for harmony between the world and man, society and man, man and time at the center of her artistic worldview. At the same time, the poetess “does not abstract from objective reality, but reaches a new level of artistic representation, concentrates the action, layers on it dialogues with her opponents, monologues-appeals to the world, time, people.”
More and more often, A. Akhmatova thinks about the problems of our time. The tragedy of modernity, according to the poetess, lies in the interrupted connection of times, in the oblivion of the previous era:
When an era is buried
The funeral psalm does not sound,
Nettle, thistle
It has to be decorated...
And the son will not recognize his mother,
And the grandson will turn away in anguish.
Under these conditions, the poet’s task is not only to state the fatal break in times, but also to glue “the vertebrae of two centuries with his own blood.”
Akhmatova’s basis for the connection between the past and the present is memory, not only as something in a person that allows him to be correlated with history, but also as a deeply moral principle, opposed to oblivion, unconsciousness and chaos. Thus, the motif of memory becomes a kind of prism through which the key ideas and images of her poetry are refracted.
It is not for nothing that this word appears in the titles of many poems: “The memory of the sun in the heart is weakening...”; "Voice of Memory"; “You are heavy, love memory...”; “I will take this day out of your memory...”; "In Memory of a Friend"; “And in memory, as if in a patterned arrangement...”; “And in the black memory, rummaging, you will find...”; "Memory Cellar"
Let us emphasize that in Akhmatova’s poetry the semantics of “memory” covers a wide semantic space, all manifestations of memory: from memory as an individual, “psychophysiological” gift, to memory as a historical and moral category. It is no coincidence that K. Chukovsky, Yu. Levin, V. Toporov considered the memory motif fundamental to Akhmatova’s work.
In early lyric poetry, memory is realized as a natural, organic property of human consciousness, allowing the poet to artistically capture the world (“I see everything. I remember everything”), to embody the past as a lasting and emotionally experienced being - in the present. Its “mechanisms” serve as the plot framework for “lyrical short stories.”
In the late Akhmatova, the motif of memory becomes the semantic basis that holds together both disparate episodes of one human destiny and episodes of the destiny of a people, which reunites the broken connection of times, that is, serves the purpose of “gathering” the world together.
Let us characterize the main trends in the implementation of the memory motif in the poems of A. A. Akhmatova.
In the poem “A dark-skinned youth wandered through the alleys,” the poetess talks about Pushkin and his time, with the motif of memory being the meaning-forming concept. For Akhmatova, memory is what resists decay, death, and oblivion. Memory is synonymous with fidelity.
In the poem “It’s getting dark, and in the dark blue sky...” memory acts as a catalyst for the joys of life.
And if hard way I will have to,
Here's a light load that I can handle
Take with you so that in old age, in illness,
Perhaps in poverty - to remember
The sunset is frantic, and the fullness
Spiritual strength, and the charm of a sweet life.
The poem is marked 1914-1916. At that time, Akhmatova was not even thirty years old. What would be stored in memory seemed like a light comforting burden. I wanted the memory to turn out to be only a beneficial side. Only the keeper of the cloudless, joyful things that can be gleaned from existence. Memory - faithful companion, the “guardian angel” of existence.
But memory is not only a keeper. She discovers things in a new way, reevaluates. Memory is the wise sister of life, sharing its burden.
Like a white stone in the depths of a well,
One memory lies within me.
I cannot and do not want to fight:
It is fun and it is suffering.
And the poet values this duality. In the distance of time, sadness is cleared, and I want to preserve it: “So that wondrous sorrows may live forever, you have been turned into my memory.”
Memory becomes a comforter for all those who mourn and a kind of “law of preservation of phenomena,” but only phenomena that have been experienced and passed through feeling.
It's like everything I have inside of me
I fought all my life, I got my life
Separate and embodied in these
Blind walls, into this black garden...
E. S. Dobin called Akhmatova’s category of memory “an analogue of the folk fairytale “living water”. This is the gift of returning life to phenomena, events, feelings that have become a thing of the past.
Memory is conceptualized by Akhmatova as a kind of generalizing figurative category. This is the continuous life of the soul. It can be called the spontaneously creative side of the spirit, every minute reviving the past. But besides this, memory also has a second side - a dramatic one. It turns out that the burden of memory is not so light. And it includes not only “the fullness of spiritual strength and the charm of a sweet life.” According to Akhmatova, memory is diverse and quite often traces of the past remain like scars from wounds.
Oh, who would have told me then,
That I inherit all this:
Felitsa, swan, bridges,
And all the Chinese ideas,
Palace through galleries
And linden trees of wondrous beauty.
And even your own shadow,
All distorted with fear,
And a penitential shirt,
And sepulchral lilacs.
However, it is even more tragic when “the iron curtain of changing times fell and blocked the path to the life-giving memory of the past.”
And once we wake up, we see that we forgot
Even the path to that house is secluded,
And, choking with shame and anger,
We run there, but (as happens in a dream)
Everything is different there: people, things, walls,
And no one knows us - we are strangers.
We didn't get there...
For Akhmatova, here memory is a mirror of existence, illuminating the tragic side of the irreversible course of life, but at the same time, losses enhance the sense of the values of what has been experienced, the immortal values.
Thus, memory becomes, as it were, a through thread of existence. It projects endless connections with time and environment. A continuous line connects the stages of human ascent and descent. What is gained and lost, what is achieved and what disappears is recorded. E. S. Dobin notes that “Akhmatova’s memory is not a tape of frames that simply capture pieces of the past. This is a synthetic activity of the soul, analyzing, comparing, evaluating, which is equally located in the sphere of feelings and in the sphere of thoughts. Memory is an accumulator of experience and experiences."
It is worth noting that the motive of memory, being the leading one in the creative concept of A. A. Akhmatova, is nevertheless close to such eternal categories as life, death, love, I and the world, I and we.
Most clearly in the late work of the poetess, the motif of death is revealed, one way or another present in many of her poems: funerals, graves, suicides, the death of the gray-eyed king, the dying of nature, the burial of an entire era.
Akhmatova interprets death in the Christian and Pushkin traditions. In Christian ones - as a natural act of being, in Pushkin's - as the final act of creativity. For Akhmatova, creativity is a feeling of unity with the creators of the past and present, with Russia, with its history and the fate of the people. Therefore, in the poem “Late Response,” dedicated to Marina Tsvetaeva, it reads:
We are with you today, Marina,
We walk through the capital at midnight,
And behind us there are millions of them,
And there is no more silent procession,
And all around there are death knells
Yes Moscow wild moans
Blizzards, our trace.
In some of Akhmatova’s works dedicated to the motif of death, the image of a staircase appears:
As if there wasn't a grave ahead
And the mysterious staircase takes off.
This is how the theme of immortality is outlined in the poetess’s works. This motif appears in poems about victory and is further strengthened. Indicative, for example, is the poem “And the room in which I am sick,” ending with the lines:
My soul will take off to meet the sun,
And the mortal will destroy the dream.
In later poems, the motif of immortality is revealed in poems about music:
And the listener then in his immortality
Suddenly he begins to believe unconditionally.
But this motive is revealed especially clearly in a poem about one’s own painful state at the end of life:
The disease languishes in bed for three months,
And I don’t seem to be afraid of death.
A random guest in this terrible body
As if in a dream, I seem to myself.
It is worth noting that in Akhmatova’s later lyrics the most consistent motif is farewell to the entire past, not even to life, but precisely to the past: “I have given up on the black past...”. In the poem “At the Smolensk Cemetery” she seems to sum up the past era. The main thing here is the feeling of the great divide that lies between two centuries: past and present. Akhmatova sees herself standing on this shore, on the shore of life, not death:
This is where it all ended: dinners at Danon's,
Intrigues and ranks, ballet, current account...
These lines talk about an imaginary human existence, limited by an empty, fleeting minute. This one phrase captures the essence of the imaginary, not the real human life. This “life,” Akhmatova argues, is equal to death. True life appears in her, as a rule, when a sense of the history of the country and people enters the poem.
One of best works period of the 1950s-60s is the poem “Seaside Sonnet”, in which, according to researchers, “the classical transparency of form, “lightness”, felt in the verbal texture almost physically, testifies to conquered suffering, to the comprehension of the highest harmony of natural and human existence ".
“Seaside Sonnet” is a work about death, in which Akhmatova sums up her life. The lyrical heroine perceives death without a tragic strain: not as a deliverance from the unbearable torments of life (cf. “Requiem”), but as a “call of eternity”, an “easy road”, reminiscent of one of the most dear places on earth to her - “an alley near Tsarskoye Selo pond" and . The proximity of death (“Everything here will outlive me, / Everything, even the old birdhouses”) creates in her a special existential mood, in which the world - in its most everyday manifestations - is perceived as a “God-given palace”, and every moment lived as a gift.
To summarize, we consider it important to note that Akhmatova’s lyrics can undoubtedly be considered philosophical. The poetess is not characterized by a listing of well-known truths, but by a craving for deep, effective knowledge of the human essence and the universe. In her work, “scattered grains of material and spiritual are fused, different-sized phenomena are built together, in unity and consonance.” The motive of memory, being cross-cutting, meaning-forming, as well as the motives of life and death allow Akhmatova to “go far beyond the directly visible horizon and embrace vast expanses of experiences, looking into the unknown lands of feelings and thoughts.”
2 Christian motives of A. A. Akhmatova’s lyrics: motives of repentance and forgiveness
When studying the work of A. A. Akhmatova, in addition to her philosophical view of reality, it is necessary to take into account her religiosity, faith in God, which, as characteristic feature her worldview, many researchers noted: both the poet’s contemporaries and literary scholars of later times. Thus, V. N. Sokolov in the article “The Tale of Akhmatova,” identifying the sources of her creativity, names the Holy Scripture as the first of them, and in the introductory article to the anthology “Anna Akhmatova: Pro et contra” S. A. Kovalenko writes: “Religiously “The philosophical motives of Akhmatova’s work, as if in a mirror, are reflected in her fate,” she “through generations accepted spiritual experience, the idea of sacrifice and atonement.” And the critic K. Chukovsky directly calls Akhmatova “the last and only poet of Orthodoxy.”
Akhmatova, with all the originality of her personal religious experience, not only recognized the existence of God, but recognized herself as an Orthodox Christian, which was reflected both in the figurative and ideological structure of her poetry and in her life position . The high ideals of Christianity helped her to withstand trials as a person, just a living person. It was precisely the period of trials, which actually lasted almost her entire creative life, that revealed the following feature of her poetry - the constant struggle and at the same time the coexistence of the principles of “earthly” and “heavenly”, and also formed a special type of heroine - a believing woman who did not renounce the world, but lives with all the fullness of earthly life, with all its joys, sorrows and sins.
Thus, the religiosity of A. A. Akhmatova is an indisputable fact, and we consider it necessary to isolate and analyze the main Christian motives of her work.
Religious ontology in Akhmatova’s early works is not expressed directly, it is only implied. First of all, it is worth noting that the figurative “background” of many Akhmatova’s poems is saturated with Orthodox Christian symbolism and church paraphernalia. Here are the images Orthodox churches(Isakievsky, Jerusalem, Kazan, Sofia, etc.). For example, in the poem “I began to dream less often, thank God” the lines: “here everything is stronger from Jonah / the Lavra bell towers in the distance.” It's about about the Kiev Holy Trinity Monastery near the Kiev Pechersk Lavra. We find a mention of another Kyiv shrine in the poem “The gates are wide open...”: “And the dry gilding is dark / Of the unbreakable concave wall.” These lines speak of the famous mosaic gold-colored image of Our Lady Oranta on the altar of St. Sophia Cathedral, which was believed to have miraculous powers.
The passage of time in many poems is calculated in Orthodox dates. Most often these are great holidays - Christmas, Epiphany, Easter, Annunciation, Ascension. For example: “Everything promised it to me: / The edge of the sky, dim and red, / And a sweet dream at Christmas...” ; “I wondered about him on the eve of Epiphany...”; “...In a week Easter will come”, “Your palms are burning, / Easter ringing in your ears...” ; “I myself chose the share / For the friend of my heart: / I set him free / On the Annunciation ...” ; “Your month is May, your holiday is Ascension,” etc.
Akhmatova also often turns to to the names of saints, miracle workers, mostly Orthodox: to St. Evdokia: “Dry lips are tightly closed. / The flame of three thousand candles is hot. / So Princess Evdokia lay / On the fragrant sapphire brocade...” ; to Saint Yegory (George the Victorious): “...May Saint Yegory protect / Your father”; to the Holy Great Martyr Sophia; to the Venerable Seraphim of Sarov and to the Venerable Anna Kashinskaya.
K.I. Chukovsky noted that “church names and objects never serve as her main themes; she only mentions them in passing, but they have so permeated her spiritual life that through them she lyrically expresses a wide variety of feelings.”
In addition, Orthodox Christian motifs in Akhmatova’s work often represent elements of another system, “embedded” by the author in his texts and participating in the creation of a new lyrical situation. These may be fragments of religious dogma, ritual, myth, rooted in the popular (folklore, everyday) consciousness, or there may be allusions to one or another church text. Let us give several examples of quotations from the Holy Scriptures that exist in Akhmatova’s texts.
The lines of the poem “Song”: “There will be a stone instead of bread / An evil reward for me” is a poetic reinterpretation of the following words of Christ: “Which of you father, when his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone?” . The motif of “stone instead of bread” is traditional in Russian literature (M. Yu. Lermontov’s poem “The Beggar”).
In the “Song of the Song” the Gospel quote sounds in the general context of reflections on the path and purpose of the poet, here - not only the chosen one, but also God’s servant, in the simplicity of his heart fulfilling “everything commanded” and not demanding any special gratitude or bribe for his work. Lines of the poem: “I only sow. Collect / Others will come. What! / And the reapers’ jubilant army / Bless, O God!” In the Gospel we read: “He who reaps receives his reward and receives fruit unto eternal life, so that both he who sows and he who reaps will rejoice together.” And in this case, the saying is true: “one sows, and another reaps.”
Let us characterize another component of Akhmatova’s religious worldview. Researchers emphasize that “the transcendental principles of existence in Akhmatova’s poems fit into the folk-Orthodox world model.” This is where the motifs of heaven and hell, the mercy of God and the temptations of Satan appear. Let’s compare: “On the threshold of the white paradise / Gasping, he shouted: “I’m waiting...”; "In the city of the paradise key..."; “...Even if there are naked red devils, / Even if there is a vat of fetid tar...” ; “And the one who is dancing now will certainly be in hell.” At the same time, “the binary opposition of “heaven” and “hell” as ontological categories turns into a moral and ethical confrontation between the proper and the improper, the divine and the demonic, the holy and the sinful.”
Also, one of the leading ones in A. Akhmatova’s lyrics can be considered the motive of repentance and forgiveness. It is important to note that “repentance” and “forgiveness” are religious concepts, they are inextricably linked and are a condition for each other. Just as it is impossible to repent before God without forgiving your neighbor, so it is impossible to forgive your neighbor without repentance.
The motif of repentance and forgiveness permeates the entire ideological and thematic fabric of Akhmatova’s works, but most clearly it is revealed in love lyrics. If we consider love lyrics Akhmatova, through the prism of repentance and forgiveness, one can see that earthly love appears as passion, temptation and, in some way, even sin: “Love conquers deceitfully / With a simple, unskillful tune”; “Will I deceive him, will I deceive him? - Don't know!" / I live on earth only by lies.” The peculiarity of such love relationships is the desire to conquer, “tame,” “torture,” and enslave. Here are the lines that characterize the lyrical heroine: “Forgive me, my cheerful boy / My tortured owlet”; “I’m free. Everything is fun for me,” but most often this is a constant trait of a lover: “You ordered me: enough, / Go kill your love! / And now I’m melting, I’m weak-willed”; “Tame and wingless / I live in your house.” He encroaches on the freedom of the lyrical heroine, on her creativity and even forbids to pray, in connection with which in Akhmatova’s poetry the image of a dungeon, a prison appears: “You forbid singing and smiling, / But you forbade praying long ago,” and the heroine appears as a “sad prisoner.”
The lyrical heroine acutely senses this discrepancy, but still sometimes succumbs to passion, love-temptation, and immediately resists it with her whole being. She feels that God is leaving this relationship; her lover is trying to outshine God and is trying to take His place. Thus, in the poem “By the Sea” she gives away her baptismal cross for just the news of her lover. This is where the source of the tragedy of love originates, and that feeling, which is considered the most beautiful on earth, turns into poison, sin, endless torment, “damned hops”...
The antithesis of earthly sinful love is evangelical love, love for God. This love never leaves the heart of the lyrical heroine, it is pure and beautiful. Conscience and memory of God lead the heroine to repentance, she brings repentance - like a cry from the depths of the soul: “God! God! God! / How gravely I have sinned before you! " ; “We have shirts of repentance. / We should go and howl with a candle”; “I press a smooth cross to my heart: / God, restore peace to my soul!” . Akhmatova’s lyrics are filled with such impulses, and this is precisely repentance - with its hope in God’s mercy, in forgiveness.
This feeling of repentance is consonant with the same feeling of forgiveness:
I forgive everyone
And at the resurrection of Christ
I kiss those who betrayed me on the forehead,
And the one who did not betray - in the mouth.
With such an attitude towards life, the fear of earthly misfortunes disappears from the heart. In her losses, Akhmatova feels God, and is ready to be obedient to His will; this is where the epiphany begins: “Be submissive to you, / Yes, you’ve gone crazy! / I am submissive to the Lord’s will alone!” . In addition, she perfectly understands the futility of these experiences:
Why are you sad as if it were yesterday...
We have neither tomorrow nor today.
The invisible mountain collapsed
The commandment of the Lord has been fulfilled.
But, what is most surprising, in separations, deprivations, troubles, adversities, Akhmatova, seeing the will of the Lord, fully accepts and thanks God for these losses:
We thought: we are beggars, we have nothing,
And how they began to lose one after another,
So that became every day
On a memorial day, -
We started composing songs
About the great generosity of God
Yes about our former wealth.
Through loss and hardship, she finds freedom and joy. Thus, the motive of repentance and forgiveness permeates all of Akhmatova’s lyrics and forms the basis of the poet’s worldview.
The sacrament of confession is closely related to these concepts - the lyrical heroine receives absolution, which is the most important emotional event for her. The blurring of the line between the rite of communion and poetry, as well as the special, sacred register of the word, led to the appearance in poetics of a confessional tone, genre-style formulas of prayerful repentance, and a vow. O. E. Fomenko emphasizes that “the stylistic essence of the “prayer” poems is in a direct appeal to God as the transcendental principle of being, which paradoxically connects with the religious and ethical absolute that resides in the soul of the heroine. Therefore, addresses to the Lord turn out to be introspective addresses to oneself, full of introspection and criticism addressed to oneself.”
Akhmatov's heroine often utters words of prayer to God. V.V. Vinogradov, in particular, noted that “the words “beg” and “prayer” become the favorite words of the lyrical heroine, and therefore of the poetess herself.” In early work, prayer is a request for love and inspiration, that is, everyday. For now, her goal is not to strive for heaven, but to improve her earthly life. The heroine asks to save her from difficult, difficult everyday circumstances; asks for the improvement of the poetic gift (“Song of the Song”, “I prayed so: “Quench””), for union with a loved one for earthly happiness, “earthly kingdom” (“By the very sea”, “God, we will reign wisely” ).
We also see the image of a prayerful appeal to God in order to restore inner peace, repose the soul of the deceased, etc.: in poems such as “We walked silently around the house”, “Fear, sorting through things in the dark”, in “Poem without a hero” : “May God forgive you!”
In her later work, Akhmatova sets and develops the motif of prayer for Russia. One of the forms of prayer in such conditions is prayer-crying. Let us remember the poem “Lamentation”. This is the mournful cry of the Russian people, called “God-bearers,” at the sight of the desecration of shrines.
External defeat, poverty, exile - this, in fact, is the lot of a Christian on earth. But courage and calmness in enduring sorrows is a feature of holiness, that is, the spiritual victory of good over evil, promised by Christ.
The innermost essence of prayer for Russia lies in readiness for any trials and sacrifices, in accepting the cross and crucifixion together with the native country: “So that the cloud over dark Russia / Becomes a cloud in the glory of the rays.”
If you look through Akhmatova’s poems in a row, written in the 30s-50s, then the first thing that catches your eye is their tragic, moreover, mournful tone. The atmosphere of the collapse of personal and general existence in the era of terror, tragic situations that signify the undermining of the most important ethical values, the very foundations of life, as well as the way of personal response to them, are embodied in a system of motives that, it would seem, do not directly express the religious beliefs of the author, but in essence their fit into the Christian world model. The theme of “last times”, the approach of the Antichrist, the end of the world and the Last Judgment, which essentially go back to apocalyptic motives, clearly makes itself known.
Epigraphs from the Apocalypse are added to the poem “The Way of All the Earth” (“And the Angel swore to the living that there would be no more time”), the poem “To Londoners”. The Requiem cycle is filled with apocalyptic imagery (“The Death Stars stood above us...”); “And a huge star is threatened with imminent death.” Compare: “Before this grief the mountains bend, / The great river does not flow...” and in the Apocalypse: “And the kings of the earth, and the nobles, and the rich, and the leaders of thousands, and the strong, and every slave, and every free man hid in caves and the ravines of the mountains, and they say to the mountains and the stones: Fall on us and hide us from the face of Him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb; for the great day of His wrath has come, and who can stand?; “The angel poured out his cup into the great river Euphrates, and the water in it dried up, so that the way for the kings would be ready from the rising of the sun.”
Thus, religious motifs in the works of A. A. Akhmatova are built into a certain hierarchical system. There are motives that directly contain religious semantics - at the plot or figurative-lexical level, and there are also derivative ones, as if mediated by religious consciousness. For example, in the poems “In the Kiev Temple of the Wisdom of God...” or “Your spirit is darkened by arrogance...” religious existence is expressed directly - in the motive of prayer, in church attributes, in lexemes such as “sinful”, “godless”. And, for example, in the poem “Everything is taken away: both strength and love...” the motive of conscience cannot be called purely religious, but it is conditioned by the author’s religious self-awareness, namely his ideas about sin and religious repentance. Therefore, one cannot but agree with the opinion of researcher M. S. Rudenko that faith “deepens and expands creative possibilities, helps to create a unique figurative and symbolic structure of poetic speech.”
Conclusion
Anna Akhmatova is one of the great creators of Russian poetry. Akhmatova’s arsenal of artistic creativity included ancient myths, folklore, history, and the philosophy of many times and peoples, and the Bible. Her poetry is literally permeated with philosophical and religious motives.
During the study we came to the following conclusions:
A. A. Akhmatova’s worldview is most fully manifested at the level of the motivic organization of the text. Due to the generic characteristics of the lyrics, it is the motive that accommodates such principles of the author’s consciousness as worldview and faith.
There are many different approaches to explaining the category of motive in literary criticism. In this work, we rely on a comprehensive definition proposed by I. V. Silantiev: “A motif is a) an aesthetically significant narrative unit, b) intertextual in its functioning, c) invariant in its belonging to the language of the narrative tradition and variable in its event realizations ". In a lyrical work, a motive is, first of all, a repeating complex of feelings and ideas.
3. The work of A. A. Akhmatova can be conditionally divided into three periods, both according to thematic and motivic content, and according to the characteristics of the worldview. Evolving from intimate lyrical poetry through civil poetry to poetry in which both lyricism and civic consciousness were fused together, Akhmatova discovered for herself and the reader not only new themes and motives, but also a new philosophy, a sense of unity of her personal destiny with the destiny of the people.
4. One of the leading trends in the work of A. A. Akhmatova can be considered the tendency to immerse and deepen into the world of thinking about the foundations of human existence. This is how the motives of faith in immortality and the highest justice, the motive of Christian forgiveness, as well as hope for a bright and wonderful future, for the eternal renewal of life and the victory of spirit and beauty over weakness, death and cruelty appear. True life appears in Akhmatova, as a rule, when a sense of the history of the country and people enters the poem. Death is interpreted in Christian and Pushkin traditions. In Christian ones - as a natural act of being, in Pushkin's - as the final act of creativity. In addition, the poetess emphasizes that only in the face of death is a person able to understand the value of life.
The fundamental motive of A. A. Akhmatova’s philosophical lyrics is the motive of memory, covering a wide semantic space: from memory as an individual, psychophysiological gift, to memory as a historical and moral category. Memory is a platform for connecting the past and the present, it is something that can resist oblivion, unconsciousness and chaos. It is memory that becomes the through thread of existence for Akhmatova. It projects endless connections with time and environment. A continuous line connects the stages of human ascent and descent. What is gained and lost, what is achieved and what disappears is recorded.
The poetry of A. A. Akhmatova organically included not only a philosophical attitude to the problems of existence, but also Orthodox self-awareness. Her poems are full of Orthodox Christian symbolism and church paraphernalia: we encounter images of churches, references to Orthodox holidays and saints, creating a special flavor, a context of spirituality, and there are also numerous reminiscences from the Holy Scriptures. Focused on spiritual and religious national traditions and many elements of the genre system of Akhmatova’s poetry. Such genres of her lyrics as confession, sermon, prediction, etc. filled with strong biblical content. She especially often turned to the genre of prayer.
The leading motive can be considered the motive of repentance and forgiveness. Akhmatova sincerely believes that all fallen and sinful, but suffering and repentant people will find the understanding and forgiveness of Christ. Her lyrical heroine “yearns for immortality” and “believes in it, knowing that “souls are immortal.”
Thus, the above-mentioned trends and motives of the lyrics, refracted through the prism of individual poetic thinking, combined with Anna Akhmatova’s inherent emotional anguish, fracture, and sometimes refined aestheticism, give an idea of the uniqueness of the poet’s creative personality, the depth of his feelings and experiences, conveying the aspirations and suffering of an entire people and reflecting the specifics of the historical era.
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Anna Akhmatova did not like being called a poetess; she preferred the word “poet”. I consider Akhmatova precisely a Poet, a Poet with capital letters. Akhmatova's lyricism underwent changes as she grew older, but certain themes appear in her poems throughout creative path poet.
The lyrics of Anna Akhmatova's initial period are love lyrics. The lyrical heroine of her poems experiences various stages of love relationships. The mental state of Akhmatov’s heroine is not reproduced in poems this moment. It appears in poetry as something that has already been experienced, at the moment when the heroine is able to evaluate what happened with her “cool head.” Akhmatov's heroine does not just talk about what happened, she evaluates what happened after some time, meaningfully. And of course, he draws conclusions. It is in these conclusions that we, the readers, feel a special philosophy of life that emerged as a result of love experiences. So, in the poem “I learned to live simply, wisely...” we see the ending of a love story. A woman abandoned by her loved one talks about how she was able to survive this drama. She learned to “live simply and wisely,” turned to God and found consolation and peace in him: “Look at the sky and pray to God.” She managed, through efforts on her own will and feelings, in a clearly not joyful time of year - autumn (here there is a parallel between “autumn is the cold season” and “autumn is the period of cooling of love feelings”) to compose “cheerful poems” about how life is beautiful .
In order to calm down after a love drama, the heroine developed a special life strategy, a unique philosophy: learn to notice simple things, see the beauty of nature, appreciate it, reflect, turning to the Creator, about the eternal. The lyrical heroine almost achieved her goal:
And if you knock on my door, It seems to me that I won’t even hear.
Any events that happened in the life of the lyrical heroine are experienced, evaluated and perceived philosophically by her. I think it simply cannot be otherwise - from any event in life a person must learn some lesson, which should become part of his philosophy of life.
The ways of understanding oneself, the world, one’s native land, and people are diverse. Akhmatova comprehended existence thanks at first to an intuitive feeling, and in a later period of her work thanks to the feeling of her blood belonging to her native country.
In the poem “Native Land,” she wrote about the land in the literal sense of the word, but gave it a deep philosophical meaning:
Yes, for us it’s dirt on our galoshes. Yes, for us it’s a crunch in the teeth,
And we grind, and knead, and crumble that one who is not involved in anything. But we lie down in it and become it. That's why we call it so freely - ours.
The native land, the point of support for Akhmatova, has always remained the place with which many bright moments in her life are connected. This place is St. Petersburg.
Akhmatova connected her entire life with St. Petersburg, with Tsarskoe Selo. With all her heart she forever became attached to the city, about which she once said:
Was a blessed cradle
Dark city by the menacing river
And the solemn wedding bed,
Over which they held wreaths
Your young seraphim, -
A city loved with bitter love.
During the difficult years of separation from the city for her, caused by the war and evacuation, she wrote:
Separation) I am not here, imaginary: I am separated from you...
In Akhmatova’s poems we encounter signs of the city: bridges, cast-iron fences, tower spiers, the Summer Garden - and all of them are certainly connected with something cherished for her. Each of these features of the city’s appearance is a detail of its fate. The connection that arises between the lyrical heroine and the city can well be called intimate - St. Petersburg is both a witness and participant in her fate:
He talked about summer and how
That being a poet for a woman is absurd. How I remember, the tall royal house And the Peter and Paul Fortress!
In this case, the signs of the city remain in the heroine’s memory as a sign of separation.
Akhmatova very often confesses her love for this city in her poems. For her, St. Petersburg is the center of the greatness of the entire country, the embodiment of man-made beauty.
But we won’t exchange for anything the lush, Granite city of glory and misfortune, Wide rivers, shining moons, Sunless gloomy gardens And the muse’s barely audible voice.
