Russian poet Alexander Aleksandrovich Blok (1880-1921) left a rather extensive creative legacy. However, not so many central themes are singled out in his work. The poet wrote about love - for a woman and for his homeland. In the later works of Blok, these two themes are practically united into one, and Russia in his poems appears before the reader as the same Beautiful Lady from earlier works. In this text you can find a complete analysis of the poem of the Russia Bloc. Among Blok’s poems about Russia there are such masterpieces as the Kulikovo Field cycle, Russia (You are unusual in a dream ...), Russia (Again, as in the golden years ...).
A brief outline of the analysis of the poem of the Bloc "Russia"
- History of the work
- The stanza of the poem, its size, type of rhyme
- Means of artistic expression. Syntactic and lexical features of the poem
- Theme, idea of a poem. Motives and symbols. Features of the composition
The poem "Russia": the story of creation
In 1906, Alexander Blok graduated from St. Petersburg University. Researchers consider this moment the beginning of his professional, mature work. From 1907 to 1916, Blok worked on the Homeland cycle, the main idea of which is the expression of a bright feeling of love for his country. The poet really loved Russia, disappointed in the 20s. XX century in the revolution that happened, he did not leave the country, like other representatives of the Russian intelligentsia.
The Rodina cycle also includes the poem Russia, written in the fall of 1908. Compared to other verses in the cycle, this work has gained the greatest popularity among readers.
Skeleton of a poem: by what means is a masterpiece created?
So, the verse of the Russia Bloc. The analysis of the poem involves the coverage of its technical features.
There are six stanzas in the poem, each of which represents a quatrain, except for the final one (it consists of six lines). The work is written by four-foot iamba. The poet uses a cross-rhyme according to the following pattern: AbAb (uppercase means feminine rhyme and lowercase male).
We continue the analysis of the poem of the Russia Bloc. The artistic means used by the poet is an extremely important part of the analysis, as it allows you to find out what language means helped the author to express his thoughts and feelings.
Expressive means, lexical and syntactic features
In his poem, the block resorts to the use of epithets (colorful definitions): "golden years", "impoverished Russia", "robber beauty", "beautiful features", "longing cautious."
The poet uses metaphors (trails based on hidden comparisons): “care will cloud”, “the song rings”. Throughout the poem, Russia compares with a woman. However, comparisons are used in the poem not only at the macro level, but also at the micro level: “like the years of gold”, “like the first tears of love”. The fifth stanza uses a hidden comparison of Russia with the river and worries with a tear. For almost the entire length of the text, the Block resorts to inversion (permutation of words). The first stanza contains elements of sound recording based on alliteration - the repetition of consonants.
We continue the analysis of the poem of the Russia Bloc. The poet uses various expressive means, including syntactic ones. Among them are homogeneous members of the sentence (“you will not disappear, you will not perish”; “lure and deceive”; “forest, yes field, / Yes boards patterned to eyebrows ...”; “gray huts” and “wind songs”). Also used is the repetition of words (see the second stanza: the repetition of the words “Russia”, “yours”; also see the fifth: “with one care” - “with one tear”). The homogeneous parts of a complex sentence contribute to the appearance of anaphora (the same beginning of lines) in the final stanza ("when" - "when").
The poet uses colloquial vocabulary: "you will disappear", "Bole." Used in moderation, it gives the reader a feeling of deep fusion with the country, its antiquity, its people.
O my Russia! My wife! To the pain ...
The theme of the work of the Bloc is the fate of his native country. The poet compares her with the fate of a woman.
This fate cannot be unambiguously characterized. On the one hand, the poet hints at her tragedy: his heroine will give herself to the sorcerer, who will "lure and deceive her."
And only care will cloud
Your beautiful features ...
But, barely hinting at this tragedy, the poet immediately notes life-affirming:
Well? One concern more -
With one tear the river is noisier
And you are the same - the forest, but the field,
Yes circuit boards to the eyebrows ...
His heroine, Russia, will never "disappear" and "will not perish," no matter to which sorcerer she gives her "robber beauty." Tests make her only stronger, richer and more beautiful:
The river is noisier with one tear
The poem is literally drunk with the love and admiration that the lyrical hero experiences in relation to his homeland. This is not a detached contemplative love of nature and not a hot patriotic feeling. No, it is unlikely that these verses can be compared with the civic or landscape lyrics of other poets. Rather, they resemble the Block itself - its poems dedicated to the Beautiful Lady. Love for Russia here is love for a woman. The poet's feeling is saturated with love charm, enthusiastic admiration and timid awe. The block speaks about this directly in the second stanza:
Your wind songs to me -
Like tears the first love!
Let us compare this attitude to the country with the first poem from the Kulikovo Field cycle, where the lyrical hero exclaims:
O my Russia! My wife!
The image of Russia fills the hero with forces:
And the impossible is possible
The road is long easy
When will flash in the distance road
Instant gaze from under the scarf
When ringing with melancholy melancholy
Thumb driver's song! ..
In the same way, in one of the poems of the Kulikovo Field cycle, the hero is inspired by the image of a woman, his Eternal Wife.
Comparison with other works of the poet involves a plan of analysis. The poem of Alexander Blok "Russia", along with the cycle "Kulikovo Field" and other poems, expresses a bright feeling of love for the motherland, close to a passionate love for a woman.
But still, in different verses of the Bloc, the image of the Motherland is refracted in different ways. One of the most famous works of the poet is the poem "Russia". Fairy-tale heroes live here in their native country. Description of the expanses of the Motherland brings the poem closer to ancient epic tales:
Russia is surrounded by rivers
And surrounded by wilds,
With swamps and cranes
And with the muddy gaze of the sorcerer.
In a later poem "Russia", a peasant woman in a headscarf and an ordinary Russian coachman take the place of fairy-tale characters. But the fabulous elements do not disappear for good:
What sorcerer do you want
Give the robber beauty!
Three bird, who invented you?
The first two stanzas are a kind of exposition of a poem, a description of the poet’s beloved country and feelings. The main idea of the work and its culmination is concentrated in the following three stanzas. The final six-letter plays the role of catharsic (i.e. enlightening) completion.
In the first stanza, Blok draws a picture in the reader’s imagination that echoes Russian landscape painting (Savrasova, Vasilyeva, etc.). This is the image of a poor, dirty Homeland. An unattractive, it would seem, image, but he is deeply sympathetic to the author - and his sympathy is also communicated to the reader.
Again, as in the golden years,
Three erased fluttering harnesses,
And painted knitting needles
In the relaxed ruts ...
The connection here is observed, however, not only with painting. There is a leitmotif in N.V. Gogol’s poem "Dead Souls" - a road that is naturally identified throughout the poem with the image of the Motherland. The first volume of "Dead Souls" ends with the author's lyrical digression, full of deep poetry and love for his native land. The image of Russia in this retreat is the image of the “three-bird”, which majestically sweeps, leaving other countries far behind. It is not surprising that Blok at the very beginning of his poem about Russia recalls precisely the road, bad, dirty, but crossing the whole country. Researchers have repeatedly noted this connection between the beginning of Blok’s poem and the digression about Gogol’s “three birds”.
The poem has a symmetrical structure: it begins with a description of the road and also ends:
And the impossible is possible
The road is long easy
It can be said that the whole poem is only a traveler’s reflection. In this sense, one can draw parallels with the lyrics of both Pushkin and Nekrasov.
Three times of Russia
The road symbolizes renewal. And although the subject of the image in the poem becomes "impoverished Russia," the poet reflects on its future.
The poem intersects all three times of the Russian language: the present (the moment of road reflection captured by the author in the poem), the past (mention of the golden years in the first stanza) and the future (through the tragic recklessness of the native land, transmitted here in the image of a woman in love and surrendering, - to the next exaltation of Russia, obliged by this exaltation to its own recklessness).
Perhaps the poet, reflecting on the future of his country, foresaw the trials ahead of her, because the poem was written between two Russian revolutions! In any case, the poet, until his death, believed that no trials could shake the strength and inner beauty of his Russia.
The lines of the last stanza are ambiguous. On the one hand, the poet writes about the strength inspired by his native land (see above), but on the other, in these lines he expresses hope for the renewal of Russia. Renovation, which so far, in a poor wagon, on a dirty, bad road, seems unlikely.
An analysis of the poem of the Bloc "Russia" involves considering the text from the point of view of its symbolism, because Alexander Aleksandrovich Blok is the leading representative of the "younger symbolists" (one of the branches of Russian symbolism - the literary direction of the late XIX - early XX centuries). A characteristic feature of symbolism is the use of various kinds of symbolism, understatement, hints, etc. In the poem "Russia" the role of the symbol is played by the road.
The motive of liberty in the poem "Russia"
The desire for freedom is a characteristic feature of the Russian people, and, therefore, of Russia, which has left its mark on the centuries-old oppression of serfdom. Therefore, the motives of rebellion, freedom, liberty are present in many works of Russian authors about their native country.
Alexander Block is no exception. It deals with the topic of liberty in the poem "Russia". Indeed, the beauty of his Russia is “robbery”, and the song of his coachman rings with “cautious longing”.
Conclusion
We made an analysis of the poem "Russia" by Alexander Alexandrovich Blok.
A large poet has a whole complex of expressive means that he uses that works to express his thoughts. Alexander Blok is a very large poet, the greatest creator. Every technical nuance and artistic detail, every metaphor and any comparison is another small touch in the portrait of a passionately beloved ... no, not a woman - country. Homeland.