Samuel Yakovlevich Marshak is widely known as the author of remarkable children's poetic stories and poetic translations. Kids, and sometimes adults, also laugh with pleasure at a man scattered from Basseinaya Street. Or, seeing passers-by overweight, they immediately quote: “The lady checked in her luggage ...” And with what excitement we read Stevenson’s romantic ballad, translated by Marshak, about heather honey and the brave Scottish people! The feat of her heroes fell into memory for a long time, and his echoes were not forgotten over time. However, the poet also has original, stunningly beautiful lyrical poems.
Spring mood
One of them is called shortly - "Lily of the valley". This is an amazingly gentle landscape sketch on the theme of spring awakening of nature. A poem was written in 1949, and for the first time it was published in the cycle "From the lyrical notebook", which was part of the collection "Poems. 1948 - 1951 ".
The second name of the work is given by its first line: “The forest blackens ...” Simple, uncomplicated, it turned out to be deeply sincere and excited with Marshak. The last stanza makes a special impression: "The forest languishes early in the spring / And all the happy longing / And all his fragrance / He gave to the bitter flower." What is “happy longing”, why is lily of the valley “bitter”? Let's try to figure it out.
Oxymoron
Among the artistic pathways (visual and expressive means of the language), in addition to the widely used metaphors, epithets, poets are loved by oxymorons. This is a combination in the figurative space of the product of concepts and phenomena, which in real life are quite far from each other. In fact, what is “happy longing”? The same as Pushkin’s “I am sad and easy / My sadness is light ...”
In the explanatory dictionaries, longing is defined as a feeling of negatively colored, difficult state of mind, full of despondency, anxiety, depression, general poor health. Happiness is an emotion radically opposite. This is bliss, the highest form of contentment with life. But then what is “happy longing”, how to decipher the expression? This is a clear example of oxymoron. Thanks to its use, Marshak manages to express and express joyfully the anticipation of the nature of spring awakening, flowering, filling with life-giving juices. The poet paints a picture of farewell to the forest with a cold outfit of winter. He is all naked, black, unsightly gloomy. But this is only the first, cursory impression. In fact, with every twig, every knot, the forest is full of anticipation of gentle sunny days, warm showers, bird's hubbub and how it will be decorated with fresh, sticky, fragrant young foliage. But still to come! The forest is looking forward to the moment and its triumph - this is what “happy longing” is in our poem. And now he admires the blossoming lily of the valley, and is ready to give him those vitality, the awakening of which he feels within himself, so that the flower becomes even more beautiful, reaches out to the light even faster, blossoms even more magnificent.
From word to image
As you can see, the meaning of the word "longing" can not always be interpreted in a straightforward manner. Depending on the semantic field, on lexical compatibility, the word form can take on additional meaning. It was with this phenomenon that we met in the lyrical sketch of Marshak's “Lily of the Valley”. The forest is yearning, but its "sadness is light." He knows, anticipates that the hour and his triumphs are approaching, that this moment is just around the corner. In fact, the happy longing of the forest is a reflection of the state of mind of all nature in early spring, of every living creature. And Marshak’s nature is living, endowed with its own spirituality and form of being.
Theme and idea of the work
"Lily of the Valley" is a philosophical poem. Forest landscape - a kind of reason for the poet to reflect on the origins of beauty, the birth of a high work of art. His creator is Life, true to its laws, changeable in a constant, materializing movement of Time in a fragile beautiful lily of the valley. The flower has absorbed that charm and a bouquet of aromas that will very soon fill the whole forest and become part of it. In the meantime, he - one for all - loudly and solemnly sings the anthem to Spring and Life!