Themes and motifs of Voznesensky’s modern poetry. Voznesensky's poetry: a brief description. Illness and death

Andrei Andreevich Voznesensky (1933-2010) - Russian poet. He was born in 1933 in Moscow. Already in his youth, he discovered an interest in fine arts and music and entered the Moscow Architectural Institute, from which he graduated in 1957. Voznesensky also showed interest in poetry early: at the age of fourteen, the teenager sent his poems to Pasternak, and the master praised them, saying that he had waited for a real poet to come to modern literature.

Voznesensky entered Russian poetry rapidly: his first poems were published in 1958, and the following year he wrote the poem “Masters.” In 1960, the first collections of poems appeared: “Parabola” and “Mosaic”, which brought fame to the author. Voznesensky’s success came at the peak of the nationwide popularity of poetry; his poetic style was striking in its novelty and attracted by its closeness to the traditions of Russian futurism, that is, its connection with the heritage of Mayakovsky, Pasternak and the poets of the early 20th century. Since 1961, Voznesensky’s poetry has received wide recognition throughout the world: the poet performs in the USA and gains popularity in Europe.

In 1964, Voznesensky published a collection of poems, Antiworlds, and soon, based on this collection, a song and poetry performance was staged at the Taganka Theater. It is interesting that it was then that a creative meeting between two masters of our culture took place: the poet and singer Vladimir Vysotsky appeared on the Taganka stage for the first time.

Connections with the theater subsequently strengthened even more: in 1980, Voznesensky wrote a poetic libretto, according to which the rock opera “Juno and Avos” was staged at the Lenin Komsomol Theater, which became an outstanding phenomenon of our culture. As a true poet, Voznesensky is always receptive to modernity, as evidenced by the collection of his poems “On the Virtual Wind” (1998).

Voznesensky's poetry combines the word and expressiveness of painting with architectural relief, so his poems have significant musical potential. For example, he skillfully described in verse the legend of the love of the artist Pirosmani: they merged the vastness of a sea of red roses and deep feelings. These poems were set to music by composer Raymond Pauls, and the song “A Million Scarlet Roses” was inspiredly performed by singer Alla Pugacheva.

A. A. Voznesensky was born in 1933. In the 50s of the 20th century, a fresh generation of poets entered literature, whose childhood was spent during the war, and whose youth happened in the post-war years. This replenishment of Russian poetry was formed in an atmosphere of rapid changes in life and the growing self-awareness of people. Together with poets of the older and middle generations, young authors tried to keenly grasp the demands of emerging life and literature and respond to them to the best of their ability. V. Sokolov and R. Rozhdestvensky, E. Yevtushenko and A. Voznesensky and many others, in their own themes and genres, images and intonations, addressing all kinds of artistic customs, tried to personify the qualities of the spiritual appearance of modern man, his tendency to intense reflection, creative search, proactive action.

The work of Andrei Voznesensky developed in a complex way. The poet’s extraordinary talent and his search for new possibilities of the poetic word immediately attracted the attention of readers and critics. His best works of the 50s, such as the poem “Masters” (1959), the poems “From a Siberian Notebook”, “Report from the Opening of a Hydroelectric Power Station”, convey the joy of work and the optimistic sense of life of a creative person. Voznesensky’s lyrical hero is full of thirst to act and create:

I'm from the student bench

I dream that the buildings

Step rocket

Soared into the universe!

However, sometimes at that time he lacked civic maturity and poetic simplicity. In the poems in the collections “Parabola” and “Mosaic” (1960), energetic intonations and rhythms, unexpected imagery and sound design sometimes turned into a passion for the formal side of the verse.

The poet Sergei Narovchatov, analyzing the book of Andrei Voznesensky “Master of Stained Glass,” traced the connection between its poetics and the art of stained glass. As you know, the connection between literature and fine arts is long-standing, but these days this “commonwealth of the muses” has become even stronger.

In A. Voznesensky's poems "The Grove", "The Beaver's Cry", "Evening Song" the idea is sharpened to the limit that by destroying the surrounding nature, people destroy and kill the best in themselves, putting their future on Earth in mortal danger.

In Voznesensky’s work, moral and ethical quests noticeably intensify. The poet himself feels the urgent need to update, first of all, the spiritual content of poetry. And the conclusion from these thoughts are the following lines about the life purpose of art:

There is a poet's highest goal -

Break the ice on the lid,

So that we can go warm up from the frost

And drink confession.

These impulses and aspirations were voiced in the books “Cello Oak Leaf” (1975) and “Stained Glass Master” (1976), “I Long for Sweet Foundations.” They also determined the appearance of other motifs, figurative strokes and details, for example, in the perception of nature. Hence - “Lovely groves of a shy homeland (the color of a tear or a harsh thread) ...”; “A dead pear tree, alone in the thicket, I will not disturb your beauty”; “Pine trees are blooming - candles of fire are hidden in the palms of future cones...”; "Fresh shavings are hanging from the bird cherry trees...". The poet admits to himself with some surprise: “It’s as if I see for the first time the lake of beauty of the Russian periphery.”

For the first time, Andrei Voznesensky's poems were published in Literaturnaya Gazeta. In the 70s, collections of poems were published: “Shadow of Sound”, “Look”, “Release the Bird”, “Temptation”, “Selected Lyrics”.

Voznesensky works on works of great poetic form; he wrote the poems “Lonjumeau”, “Oza”, “Ice69”, “Andrei Palisadov” and others. His poems naturally grow from his poems and rise among them, like trees among bushes. These poems are swift, the images do not get stuck on everyday life and scrupulous descriptiveness, they do not want to stall. Space is given in flight: “television centers beyond Mur are flying like a night cigarette.” The focus is on Time (with a capital T), epic Time:

I enter the poem

as they enter a new era.

This is how the poem Longjumeau begins.

The poet's reaction to the modern, vitally important is instantaneous, urgent, the ambulance and fire brigade of his words are round the clock and reliable. Painful, humane, piercing decisively and clearly characterizes the poet’s work.

All progress is reactionary,

if a person collapses.

Andrei Voznesensky also wrote articles on problems of literature and art, did a lot of painting, and some of his paintings are in museums.

In 1978, in New York, he was awarded the International Poets Forum Prize for outstanding achievements in poetry, and in the same year Andrei Voznesensky was awarded the USSR State Prize for the book “Stained Glass Master.”

Voznesensky's poems are filled with sound energy. The sounds flow freely, uninhibitedly and - most importantly - consciously. This is not a blind game of words, but a sustained youthful breakthrough towards meaning, towards essence...

Artistic quests in the early poetry of Andrei Andreevich Voznesensky

Introduction

Evgeny Yevtushenko, Andrei Voznesensky, Bella Akhmadulina, Robert Rozhdestvensky, Bulat Okudzhava... They began their literary journey in the atmosphere of Khrushchev’s “thaw”.

A. Voznesensky - poet of the 60s. Born in Moscow. The son of a Moscow hydraulic engineer. From the same yard as Andrei Tarkovsky. In 1957 he graduated from the Moscow Architectural Institute and celebrated this graduation with the following poems: “Farewell, architecture! Blaze wide, cowsheds in cupids, toilets in rococo!”

From that moment on, his life completely belonged to literary creativity. In 1958 his poems appear in periodicals, and starting with the poem “Masters” (1959), Voznesensky’s poetry quickly burst into the poetic space of our time, gaining recognition from millions of readers. “Your entry into literature is swift, stormy, I am glad that I lived to see it,” wrote Pasternak from the hospital.

His first poems were published in 1958 in the Literary Gazette and the collection Day of Russian Poetry. Already the first publications drew the attention of critics to a talented poet with a fresh voice, energetic intonations and rhythm, unexpected imagery and sound writing.

In 1960, the books Parabola and Mosaic were published in parallel in Moscow and Vladimir. They were received ambiguously by poets and critics. Thus, one of the key poems for this period, “Goya” (1957), caused reproaches for formalism. The end-to-end permeation with consonances and internal rhymes is clearly noticeable in the poet’s programmatic “Parabolic Ballad” (1958): “Fate, like a rocket, flies along a parabola / usually in the darkness and less often along a rainbow”; “They go to their truths, bravely in different ways, / a worm through a crack, a man along a parabola.”

Already in these relatively early poems, the originality of Voznesensky’s poetic manner was manifested - the sharpness of the vision of the world in its complexity and tragic contradictions, in rapid movement, “in figurative clots” (E. A. Evtushenko), the power of lyrical feeling, the expressive-romantic nature of images, metaphors , associations, as well as the conciseness and dynamism of the language, lexical and intonation breadth, freedom and variety of rhythms, rich instrumentation of the verse. In his work, the influence of the poetics of B. L. Pasternak and V. V. Mayakovsky, V. V. Khlebnikov and M. I. Tsvetaeva, other poets of the Silver Age, and a number of artists and architects of the 20th century is noticeable.

He put metaphor at the forefront, calling it the “motor of form.” Kataev called Voznesensky's poetry a "depot of metaphors."

His early meta- god's trunks." After Mayakovsky, there was no such metaphorical Niagara in Russian poetry.

Voznesensky had many opponents from his early youth, but no one could take away the fact that he created his own style, his own rhythm. He was especially good at unexpectedly shortened rhyming lines, sometimes stretching the rhythm, sometimes truncating it.

Voznesensky was one of the first poets of that generation who “opened a window to Europe” and America by giving poetry readings. From enthusiastic youthful notes: “Down with Raphael, long live Rubens!”, from playing with alliteration and rhymes, he moved to more sorrowful moods: “we, like appendicitis, have had our shame removed,” “all progress is reactionary if a person collapses.” There were biographical reasons for all this.

In 1963, at a meeting with the intelligentsia in the Kremlin, Khrushchev subjected Voznesensky to all sorts of insults, shouting at him: “Take your passport and get out, Mr. Voznesensky!” However, despite the temporary disgrace, Voznesensky’s poems continued to be published, and the circulation of his books grew to 200 thousand. Based on his poems, the plays “Anti-Worlds” were staged in 1964 by the Taganka Theater and “Avos” at the Lenin Komsomol Theater. Voznesensky was the first writer from the 60s to receive the State Prize (1978). Voznesensky is the author of many essays, where he talks about his meetings with Henry Moore, Picasso, Sartre and other major artists of the 20th century. Voznesensky is an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts.

The relevance of the research of the course work is justified by the fact that in the 50s of the 20th century a new generation of poets entered literature, whose childhood coincided with the war, and their youth occurred in the post-war years.

A. Voznesensky and many others, in their themes and genres, images and intonations, turning to various artistic traditions, sought to embody the features of the spiritual appearance of modern man, his craving for intense thought, creative search, and active action.

The purpose of the course work is to determine the vector of artistic quests of the early poetry of A. Voznesensky

Give a general description of the poetry of the “Thaw” period of the 60s

Determine the place of Voznesensky’s creativity in the 60s

Identify the main themes and problems of A. Voznesensky’s early poetry.

1. General characteristics of poetry of the “thaw” period of the 60s

poet Voznesensky artistic

The work of A. Voznesensky coincides in time with the period of the Khrushchev Thaw. The Khrushchev Thaw is an unofficial designation for the period in the history of the USSR after the death of I.V. Stalin (mid-1950s - mid-1960s). It was characterized in the internal political life of the USSR by the liberalization of the regime, the weakening of totalitarian power, the emergence of some freedom of speech, the relative democratization of political and social life, openness to the Western world, and greater freedom of creative activity. The name is associated with the tenure of the First Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee N. Khrushchev (1953-1964).

Despite all the conventionality of dividing history (including literary history) into decades, it appears quite clearly in reality itself, although, of course, the chronological boundaries of any stage identified in this way do not coincide with the boundaries of calendar decades. So in the 20th century, the 60s in life and literature did not begin on January 1, 1961, and did not end in the last days of 1970. This period is marked, on the one hand, by such events as the death of I.V. Stalin (March 1953) and the XX Congress of the CPSU (February 1956), and on the other hand, the displacement of N.S. Khrushchev in October 1964, with the trial of writers Y. Daniel and A. Sinyavkin (January 1966).

These years have not a digital, but a figurative definition, repeating the name of the story published by I. Ehrenburg in 1954 - the Thaw. As the aforementioned events of the second half of the 60s confirmed, it turned out to be accurate, although at the time it came into circulation, it was difficult for optimists to accept it, since it did not exclude doubts about the irreversibility of the changes that were taking shape in the country.

The mid-50s is a new starting point for the Khrushchev Thaw. The famous report by N.S. Khrushchev at a “closed” meeting of the 20th Party Congress on February 25, 1956, marked the beginning of the liberation of the consciousness of millions of people from the hypnosis of Stalin’s personality cult. The era was called the “Khrushchev Thaw,” which gave birth to the generation of the “sixties,” its contradictory ideology and dramatic fate. Unfortunately, neither the authorities nor the “sixties” came close to a genuine rethinking of Soviet history, political terror, the role of the generation of the 20s, and the essence of Stalinism. But in literature there were processes of renewal, revaluation of values and creative searches; the first few years of the “thaw” became a real “poetic boom”.

Poetry began to recognize the experience of literary movements and schools of the early twentieth century. This was facilitated by a moral atmosphere that gave rise to courage (say what you want), honesty (say what you think). Poets tried to connect to the interrupted historical experience. In this regard, the words “love”, “friendship”, “comradeship” and others again acquired their ideological value. Poets try to fight against the universalities introduced into literature: the abuse of slogan words, bureaucracy, praise and other attributes of a totalitarian system built on lies and fear.

The passion for poetry has become a sign of the times. Poems were loved then by people who, neither before nor later, were particularly interested in poetry or literature in general. For the first time in Russian history, poetry readings began to attract crowds of young people.

A youth environment was created, the password of which was knowledge of the poems of Pasternak, Mandelstam, Gumilyov. In 1958, a monument to Vladimir Mayakovsky was inaugurated in Moscow. After the official opening ceremony, at which the planned poets performed, began to read poems from the public, mostly young people. The participants of that memorable meeting began to gather at the monument regularly. Meetings at the monument to Mayakovsky during 1958-1961. increasingly acquired political overtones. The last of them took place in the fall of 1961, when several of the most active participants in the meetings were arrested on charges of anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda.

But the tradition of oral poetry did not end there. It continued with evenings at the Polytechnic Museum, and later at Luzhniki. Young poets - Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Andrei Voznesensky and Bella Akhmadulina - became real idols of the “thaw”, speaking from the poetic “stage”.

They were a group of actors with different roles who complemented each other perfectly. Yevtushenko was a poet-tribune, aimed at dialogue with each of those sitting in the hall. Voznesensky gave a broad vision of the world, making each listener involved in global problems. Akhmadulina introduced a note of mysterious intimacy. Considering creativity a sacrament, she seemed to commune her readers and admirers with this sacrament.

The authorities allowed Yevtushenko, Voznesensky, Akhmadulina, and Rozhdestvensky to speak in public, believing that such a phenomenon was necessary so that the people could “let off steam.” The authorities needed these poets, although they did not trust them in everything. It was these poets who were named in criticism. This was the title of S. Rassadin’s article, dedicated to those who were involved in literature during these years. They entered boldly and noisily, testifying with their pages that poetry, prose, criticism, and drama are being liberated from the lethargic state in which they were during the years of Stalinist totalitarianism.

From today's days it is clear that the spiritual renewal of society that began at that time was largely half-hearted and a compromise. The “sixties” strived, according to the self-critical admission of one of them, the critic V. Ognev, “to be honest within the limits of the possible.” They, defending positions that would later receive the name “socialism with a human face,” hoped to restore the seemingly lofty ideals of the revolution, to cleanse them of perversions and dogmas associated with the “cult of personality”, in a word - to test socialism - humanism. In light of the events of recent years, these romantic efforts may seem Sisyphean, or even completely naive.

Dementyev wrote (Granite of Verse) - “The people of the sixties actively supported a “return to Leninist norms,” hence the apologetics of V. Lenin (poems by A. Voznesensky and E. Yevtushenko, plays by M. Shatrov, prose by E. Yakovlev) as an opponent of Stalin and the romanticization of the Civil War (B. Okudzhava, Y. Trifonov, A. Mitta).

The people of the sixties are staunch internationalists and supporters of a world without borders. It is no coincidence that the cult figures for the sixties were revolutionaries in politics and art - V. Mayakovsky, Vs. Meyerhold, B. Brecht, E. Che Guevara, F. Castro, as well as writers E. Hemingway and E. M. Remarque.

On the other hand, modernist poetry began to play an important role among the “sixties”. For the first time in Russian history, poetry readings began to attract crowds of young people.

One of the symbols of the generation of the “thaw” era was Andrei Andreevich Voznesensky. He entered, or rather, burst into literature brightly and rapidly. Like Yevtushenko, Voznesensky became the leader of the poetic avant-garde of modern times. The collections of poems “Parabola”, “Mosaic”, “Terangular Pear”, “Anti-Worlds” published in the early 60s made it possible to say that an original poet had appeared, with his own world , its system of images, a new vision of problems. Voznesensky’s works immediately attracted attention with the freshness of their sound, the energy of their rhythm, their special metaphorically rich language, unexpected associations, the richness of poetic means, and genre diversity (elegy, ballad, lyrical monologue, dramatic poem, love confession, dialogue, landscape painting, satirical portrait, reportage).

In the work of the young poet one could feel a unique synthesis of lyricism and philosophy, liberation of feelings and thoughts of poetry. Voznesensky is one of the leaders of “pop” poetry of the 1960s, imbued with the spirit of innovation and emancipation of man from the power of outdated dogmas. Voznesensky defined the main themes of his poetry in “Parabolic Ballad”:

Sweeping away canons, forecasts, paragraphs,

Art, love and history rush -

Along a parabolic trajectory!

Voznesensky appeals mainly to intellectuals, “physicists and lyricists,” people of creative work, and attaches paramount importance not to social and moral-psychological issues, but to artistic means and forms of its comprehension and embodiment. From the very beginning, his favorite poetic means is hyperbolic metaphor, akin to the metaphors of Mayakovsky and Pasternak, and the main genres are lyrical monologue, ballad and dramatic poem, from which he builds books of poems and poems.

Already at the time of his early creativity, the poet had a serious stock of knowledge. Architecture and music, mathematics and strength of materials, history of painting and history of poetry. This is important to know: the poems were influenced by architecture, especially the Vladimir school, among whose images the poet spent his childhood. Later, Andrei Voznesensky became interested in Italian Baroque.

Voznesensky brings into his poetics, each time rethought anew, the living outlines of this year, month, day, moment.

Voznesensky’s poetics are characterized by a special rhythmic pattern, characterized by “relief” and “convexity”: at the climactic moments the poet does not enhance the sound, but, on the contrary, muffles it. At the same time, the few remaining emotional outbursts stand out and turn into shock points. His poems are always compositionally structured, “architectural”. .

Reality throws events, facts, names, dates at him. the poet, open to the impression of being, absorbs everything into himself, and his verse, like a seismograph, sensitively reacts to shocks in the social consciousness of his compatriots and contemporaries. Not everyone likes the frankly experimental poems of Andrei Voznesensky. His “isopes” were met with hostility by some; poems overloaded with inversions were difficult to perceive.

An important feature of his poetics is numerous internal rhymes and sound repetitions. First, a rhyming consonance arises, then it is picked up by numerous echoes within subsequent lines, endlessly multiplying and echoing other consonances.

In the books of Andrei Voznesensky, the sound energy of verse sparkles and splashes. The sounds flow easily, naturally. This is not a mindless game of words, as some critics seem, but a constant young breakthrough to meaning, to essence. Over the years, the acuteness of sound in the poetry of Andrei Voznesensky has become more and more acute in meaning. The language of his poetry is the language of modern man. In modern speech, the poet is looking for selected grain. But for successful selection, you need to winnow tons of chaff and discard the husks.

Everything was a success with the general public. The poet's humanism, citizenship, democracy, confession, temperament, emotionality, fusion of various social and speech styles, and complete dedication expanded the audience of his admirers and attracted everyone's attention.

Andrei Voznesensky is a gifted and original poet. He is characterized by a keen sense of modernity, intense lyricism, and a craving for polysemy of images, associations compressed like a steel spring, and unexpected, often grotesque, metaphors. He is unlike anyone else and sometimes even defiantly flaunts his originality. But he works seriously and a lot. Predominant attention to the form of verse does not exclude the presence of fairly stable themes in Voznesensky. Most of his poems are plot-based. Among the themes developed by the artist are problems of culture and civilization, matter and spirit (“world” and “anti-world”). .

2. The main themes and problems of the early poetry of A. Voznesensky

The poetic process of the 60s was a broad, complex, and ambiguous phenomenon. There was even an opinion about a crisis in the poetry of this time. The revitalization of literary life was greatly facilitated by the work of then-beginning poets - E. Yevtushenko, R. Rozhdestvensky, B. Akhmadulina, A. Voznesensky, who spoke with topical civic poems. It was from these poets that the term “pop poetry” originated.

Let us turn to the work of Andrei Voznesensky, and specifically to one of his most striking poems - “Live not in space, but in time...”. Voznesensky is an “urban” poet, but he sometimes got tired of “being” and turned to “eternal themes” and emotional experiences.

In fact, in this poem the author moves away from everyday themes that are so characteristic of his poems. Merging together two dimensions in a person’s life - temporal and spatial, he does not draw conclusions and does not impose a single solution for everyone. Voznesensky leaves the choice to the person, although he himself, of course, chooses a “temporary” life, which is measured not only by earthly life, but also by eternal life.

I'm from the student bench

I dream that the buildings

Step rocket

Soared into the universe!

The poems of his first two books are full of youthful expression. The author strives to convey in them the fierce pressure of the surrounding world. But already in the collection “Antiworlds” (1964), Voznesensky’s poetic style becomes more refined and rationalistic. Romantic expression seems to “freeze” into metaphors. Now the poet not so much participates in the events he talks about, but rather observes them from the outside, choosing unexpected and sharp comparisons for them .

There is a poet's highest goal -

Break the ice on the porch,

So that we can go warm up from the frost

And drink confession.

“Explaining why he does not regret the years devoted to architecture, Voznesensky wrote in the preface to the “Oak Leaf of the Cello”: “Any serious architect begins an examination of the project with a plan and a structural section. The facade is for the uninitiated, for onlookers. The plan is the constructive and emotional knot of a thing, indeed its nerve.”

I enter the poem

How we enter a new era.

This is how the poem Longjumeau begins.

All progress is reactionary,

If a person collapses.

Andrei Voznesensky also wrote articles on problems of literature and art, did a lot of painting, and some of his paintings are in museums.

According to Voznesensky, man is the builder of the time in which he lives:

... minute trees are entrusted to you,

own not the forests, but the clocks.

And here the poet says that time is above everything. And it is precisely this that protects humanity, its life from oblivion and destruction: “live under minute houses.” The idea is paradoxical, but very accurate, it seems to me.

Thus, we can say that the author clothes everything material, spatial, in a temporary fabric. Even the House is equated with time. These are two parallel lines that eventually intersect. Voznesensky even suggests replacing clothes with time, because it is more valuable than the most valuable furs:

and shoulders instead of sable for someone

wrap yourself up in a priceless moment...

Indeed, time is the best gift for any person, but, unfortunately, giving it is in the power of only higher powers, God.

It is worth noting that rhyme is not at all characteristic of Voznesensky’s poems. In this poem, he rhymed only the first and second stanzas - those that are devoted to the material side of human existence. The other two stanzas are not only not rhymed, but also constructed asymmetrically (five and two verses each). They are the same as time itself, as the poet says in the first verse of the third stanza: “What asymmetrical Time!”

The pathos of the poem “Live not in space, but in time...” is built on the opposition of time and space. And although the poet puts them at different poles of human life, one is impossible without the other. However, people cannot exist without them.

It is interesting that there is no specification in the poem - there is neither a lyrical hero, nor an appeal to someone personally. Everything is generalized, and at the same time applies to everyone.

Voznesensky proves that his life is not the same as the reader’s, but it is one to which the reader must certainly strive. And although this is not stated directly in the poem, it is felt. To become an artist, a person, you need to live “in time.” That is, while emphasizing the distance, Andrei Voznesensky simultaneously called for overcoming it.

And this real, alluring achievability of joining the world of art fascinates and seduces. After all, it is people like the poet who live in time for a long time, even after their bodily life.

Strange comparisons, very accurate and frightening, are given by the author in the penultimate stanza. It makes you shiver from the realization of the truth that:

The last minutes - in short,

The last parting is longer...

And there’s nothing you can do about it - that’s the way it is. The creation of an atmosphere of hopelessness in the stanza, but the possibility of changing everything, of choice, is emphasized by the repetition of the word “last”.

They die - in space,

They live in time.

And here the choice is up to everyone - where he wants to live, what kind of memory he wants to leave behind. This is probably one of the eternal, but so strangely expressed in a poem by a modern poet, question.

Analysis of early poetry collections. Features of poetics. The role of metaphor, paradox, irony in Voznesensky’s work.

One of the early poetry collections of Andrei Andreevich Voznesensky was called Achilles heart (1966). On its inside cover there was a picture of a cardiogram. It is difficult to imagine a better image to understand the poet. Achilles', i.e. unprotected, vulnerable, easily wounded, the heart reacts sharply to cruelty and injustice, insults and insults, responds to all sorrows and pains.

Voznesensky is a poet of the second half of the 20th century. This is clear from his poems. Moscow and California, the airport in New York and the stars above Mikhailovsky, I'm in Shushenskoye And When he wrote to Vyazemsky - such freedom of movement in time and space is characteristic of our contemporary people.

Time stress and passion - both in his language and in his verse. First of all, Voznesensky is a poet of sharp and intense thought. At the same time, professional knowledge of architecture and painting contributed to his interest in poetic form. Hence the harmonious architectonics of his poems, the precision of epithets, the musicality of sound writing:

* Illustrious Shadow!

*What is he shouting about annoyingly?

* plate - like a target,

* punched to the top ten ?

Reading Voznesensky is an art. Simply unraveling the poet's metaphors will not give the desired result. We must accept as our own his pain for a person, his hatred of meanness, philistinism, vulgarity, his angry warning about the possibility of a spiritual Hiroshima. But Voznesensky is not only indignant and hateful - he proclaims and asserts: All progress is reactionary if man collapses.

* What else is extremely important to him?

* Russia, beloved,

*no joke about this.

* All your pains - they pierced me with pain.

* I am your capillary

* vessel,

* It hurts me when -

* you're in pain, Russia.

A feeling of deep compassion and a desire to help inspired the poet to create a poem From a Tashkent report , written as a response to the famous earthquake of 1966. The unusual images with which he recreates this tragedy no longer seem strange or paradoxical. Voznesensky stands up for high spiritual values, for a noble, selfless, and integral person.

He is the author of poetry collections Triangular pear (1962), Antiworlds (1964), Shadow of Sound (1970), Oak leaf cello (1975), Stained glass master (1976), Moat (1987), Axiom of self-discovery (1990), etc. Voznesensky is the creator of the video genre, which arose at the intersection of poetry and painting.

The theme is the fate of the masters in the poem “Masters”.

One of the central themes of Voznesensky's poetry is the fate of the masters. This topic began in the poem “Masters,” which talks about the builders of the “Seditious Temple.”

Poem "Masters"

Your hammer is not a column and

hewn statues -

knocked the crowns off their foreheads

and shook the thrones.

A. Voznesensky

Andrei Voznesensky literally burst into poetry in the sixties. He was characterized by youthful enthusiasm, surprise and admiration for this beautiful world in which he was destined to live and create.

Poem Masters immediately promoted Voznesensky to the category of popular and extraordinary authors. There was so much youthful passion and poetic energy in the work, its rhythm was so rapid, and its painting was striking and unexpected, that people immediately started talking and arguing about the poet.

Bells, horns...

Ring, ring...

Artists

Of all times!..

Your hammer is not a column

And hewed statues -

Knocked crowns off their foreheads

And shook the thrones.

This poem is imbued with the idea of the immortality of true art. Nothing has power over him, not even merciless time.

Original artist -

Always a tribune.

There is a spirit of revolution in it

And forever - rebellion.

They built you into walls.

They were burned at the stake.

Monks are ants

They danced on fires.

Art was resurrected

From executions and from torture

And it beat like a hammer,

O stones of the Moabites.

For the plot, Voznesensky takes the dramatic legend about the masters who built the miracle temple - the Intercession Cathedral, popularly known as St. Basil's Cathedral, and about the blinding of the masters so that they would not create an even better temple anywhere.

There were seven of them brave,

There were seven of them strong,

Probably from the blue sea

Or from the north,

Where is Ladoga, meadows,

Where is the rainbow - arc.

They laid the masonry

Along the white shores

So that they soar like a rainbow.

Seven different cities.

The poem is written in sonorous, vivid language. The rhythm changes from chapter to chapter iron grinding and clarity in the first chapter to the reckless buffoonish song in the second and third.

Curls - shavings,

Hands on planes.

Furious Russians

Red shirts...

Coldness, laughter, the clatter of horses and the sonorous barking of dogs.

We worked like devils, but today - drink, go for a walk?

The poet seemed to connect two times. With youthful enthusiasm, he fearlessly describes the distant past, does not try to stylize his language as ancient Russian speech, but speaks in a language familiar to him and his readers.

And the temple was burning in half the sky,

Like a slogan for riots,

Like the flame of anger

Seditious temple!

The authorities always see a threat and sedition in creativity, trying to strangle the creator. But it is impossible to kill art; it will exist as long as people live.

Cities should not be, should not be, should not be!

Patterned towers cannot float in the fog.

There will be no sun, no arable land, no pine trees!

Neither white nor blue - not to be, not to be.

And the rapist will come out to destroy - to kill...

There will be cities!

Above the vastness of the universe

In the forests of gold

Voznesensky,

I will raise them!

Thus, a connection between times was realized. The poet feels like the heir of his fathers and grandfathers, a continuer of their ideas:

I'm from the same team

That there are seven masters.

Rage in the artels,

Twenty centuries!

I am a thousand-armed -

with your hands,

I am a thousand-eyed -

with your eyes.

I'm implementing

in glass and metal,

didn't dream...

The theme of creativity and craftsmanship is always relevant at all times. In addition, the poem raises the question of power and the creator. They are always at odds with each other. Voznesensky's poems are full of sound energy. The sounds flow easily, naturally and - most importantly - meaningfully. This is not a thoughtless game of words, but a constant young breakthrough to meaning, to essence...

Conclusion

In this work, the vector of artistic quests of A. Voznesensky’s early poetry was determined, and the main themes and problems of A. Voznesensky’s early poetry were identified.

In Voznesensky’s work, moral and ethical quests noticeably intensify. The poet himself feels the urgent need to update, first of all, the spiritual content of poetry.

In the course work, the main directions of creativity of the sixties poets, and in particular A. Voznesensky, were identified and analyzed using the method of analysis. This is a theme of creativity and craftsmanship, as well as philosophical themes: life and death, justice and injustice, power and burden, morality and immorality and other topics relevant to modern man. That is why Voznesensky’s poetry will be relevant at all times. V. Sokolov and R. Rozhdestvensky, E. Yevtushenko and A. Voznesensky and many others, in their own themes and genres, images and intonations, addressing all kinds of artistic customs, tried to personify the qualities of the spiritual appearance of modern man, his tendency to intense reflection, creative search, proactive action.

The prospect of this study is that the creativity and especially the deep meaning embedded in the poems of not only A. Voznesensky, but also many other poets of the sixties is not fully studied, therefore the study of the work of poets of this period will also be relevant at all times.

Bibliography

1. Agenosov A., Ankudinov K. Modern Russian poets: Directory. - M.: Megatron, 2007

2. Journal of criticism and literary criticism, 2011

Mikhailov A. A. Selected works: in 2 volumes / Mikhailov A. A. M., 2006 - T. 2. - P. 440-447

Oskotsky V.D. Evtushenko E. A//Russian writers of the 20th century: Biographical Dictionary - M., 2010.- P.254

Rassadin St.. The time of poems and the time of poets // Arion No. 4. 199

6. Voznesensky Andrey Andreevich Literary forum knigostock [Electronic resource] View topic - knigostock.com

7. Poetry of the second half of the 20th century: A.A. Voznesensky » Essays on literature, Unified State Examination in literature 2013, Theory of literature, Analysis of works [Electronic resource] 5litra.ru

Novikov V.. In plain text (Poetry and prose of Andrei Voznesensky) // V. Novikov. Dialogue. M.: Sovremennik, 2006

Resin O.P. “If words hurt...” Book about the poet - M., 2008- P.301

Skorino L.. Afterword // Voznesensky A. Achilles' heart. M.: Fiction, 2006.

Stanzas of the century. Anthology of Russian poetry. Comp. E. Yevtushenko. Minsk-Moscow, "Polifact", 2009. I didn't get much here either.

Born in Moscow in the family of a scientist. In 1957 he graduated from the Moscow Architectural Institute.
He published his first poems in 1958. In 1960, the first two collections of his poems and poems were published: “Parabola” in Moscow and “Mosaic” in Vladimir. This was followed by “40 lyrical digressions from the poem “Triangular Pear” (1962), “Antiworlds” (1964), “Achilles’ Heart” (1966), “Shadow of Sound” (1970), “Look” (1972), “Release the Bird! "(1974), "Oak cello leaf" (1975), "Stained glass master" (1976), "Temptation" (1979), "Unaccountable" (1981), "Foremen of the spirit" (1984), "Ditch" (1987 ), "Axiom of Self-Search" (1990), "Russia, Poesia" (1991) and others.
Voznesensky is one of the leaders of “pop” poetry of the 1960s, imbued with the spirit of innovation and emancipation of man from the power of outdated dogmas. Voznesensky defined the main themes of his poetry in “Parabolic Ballad”:
Sweeping away canons, forecasts, paragraphs,
Art, love and history rush
Along a parabolic trajectory!
Voznesensky appeals mainly to intellectuals, “physicists and lyricists,” people of creative work, and attaches paramount importance not to social and moral-psychological issues, but to artistic means and forms of its comprehension and embodiment. From the very beginning, his favorite poetic means is hyperbolic metaphor, akin to the metaphors of Mayakovsky and Pasternak, and the main genres are lyrical monologue, ballad and dramatic poem, from which he builds books of poems and poems.
Voznesensky began to create his poetic universe with the poem “Masters,” which talks not only about the seven ancient Russian fellows who built the “seditious temple,” but also about “artists of all times.” The poet then said about himself:
I'm from the same team
That there are seven masters.
Rage in the arteries
Twenty centuries!
Among the “artists of all times,” Voznesensky is especially close to architects, sculptors, painters (Michelangelo, Rublev, Rubens, Goya, Filonov, Chagall) and poets, whose work is somewhat akin to fine art (Dante, Mayakovsky, Pasternak, Khlebnikov, Lorca) . Expressive figurativeness is also characteristic of Voznesensky’s own poetry, but the architectural vision of the world (“architects into poets”) is especially clearly reflected in it. Quite early, from the collection “40 lyrical digressions from the poem “Triangular Pear,” he began to introduce his lyrical prose into poetry books: small notes, articles, sketches, essays. In the book “Ditch,” a rather large “extension” was formed from them, which included extensive essays “O”, “I am fourteen years old”, “Foremen of the Spirit”.
Voznesensky was one of the first to sense the urgent need for “silence.” Silence is necessary for the poet to communicate with nature, for love, for internal concentration and reflection on life, to gain a sense of harmony; it is an alternative, a counterbalance to the centrifugal movement of the century, its scientific and technological progress and disharmony. The love poem “Oz” is also associated with such silence. The theme of femininity in general is widely represented in Voznesensky’s poetry: “Wedding”, “Autumn”, “You are sitting pregnant, pale...”, “Beating a woman”, “Confrontation of eyes”, “Elena Sergeevna”, “Ophelia’s Song”, “Beating a woman ", "Merlin Monroe's Monologue", "Ice-69", "Maybe!"
The theme of the Great Patriotic War is one of the most important in Voznesensky’s work. Associated with it are “The Ballad of 1941,” later entitled “The Ballad of the Kerch Quarry,” “Goya,” “An Unknown Requiem in Two Steps, with an Epilogue,” “Doctor Autumn” and other works. The poem "Ditch" is dedicated to the trial of grave diggers who extracted gold and other precious things from the burial of 12 thousand civilians, mainly Jews, shot during the war by the Nazis near Simferopol. The poet considers the crime of greedy people against the sacred memory of the victims of war as the greatest sin, leading to the disintegration of the connection of times, to the severing of spiritual and moral ties between people, generations, eras.
The theme of decay runs through all of Voznesensky’s work, but over time its meaning changes significantly: if in the early period, in the 60s, the poet spoke about the collapse of old, outdated forms of life and art, which interfered with the birth and establishment of a new one, then in 1980s first half of 90s we are already talking about the disintegration of existential, life-building spiritual and moral values (“Rhapsody of Decay”).
Voznesensky considers poetry and art ("Poetarch"), the ascetic activity of Russian intellectuals "foremen of the spirit" and the revival of Christian values to be an antidote to lack of spirituality and barbarism. Neo-Christian motifs in his work become very significant, starting with the poem “Andrei Polisadov” (1979), which tells about the life of a clergyman of the poet’s great-great-grandfather. Voznesensky's work is deeply dramatic, spectacular, theatrical and scenic in its spirit and artistic structure. Based on his works, Yu. Lyubimov staged the play "Antiworlds" at the Taganka Theater, R. Grinberg staged the stage compositions "Parabola" and "Mosaic" at the Ivanovo Youth Theater, A. Rybnikov wrote the rock opera "Juno and Avos", and M Zakharov staged it at the Theater. Lenin Komsomol; R. Shchedrin "Poetry", A. Nilayev oratorio "Masters", V. Yarushin rock oratorio "Masters".
Voznesensky experiments a lot in the field of artistic form, especially in recent years, creating “videos” in which poems are combined with drawings, photographs, font compositions, the text is arranged in a certain form, for example in the shape of a cross (the “Crucifixion” cycle). According to the author, such visual poetry should connect visual perception with the spiritual.

Poetry by N. Rubtsov.

Nikolai Mikhailovich Rubtsov (1936-1971) was born on January 3, 1936 in the village of Yemetsk, Arkhangelsk Region. His childhood was not the best: at the age of 6 he lost his mother and was forced to be raised in orphanages. As soon as the poet grows up, he begins to study at the forestry technical school in Totma. From the age of 16, Nikolai begins to wander around the country. He was both a librarian and a fireman on a fishing boat, and served in the Northern Fleet. Despite such different types of work, fate still brings him to literature. And from 1962 to 1969 Rubtsov studied at the Literary Institute. Gorky.

From the moment he began his studies, he began to publish his poetic works.

Rubtsov's poetry is complex, but at the same time subtly developed, it is rhythmically and lexically diverse, and it is attractive for its sharpness of perception and freshness. His poetry can be compared with the artistic vision of the early V.V. Mayakovsky. Most of the poems are filled with philosophical meaning, which makes one remember the lyrics of F.I. Tyutchev, he does not forget about folklore imagery - a distinctive feature of S.A.’s poetics. Yesenina.

Like any poet, all of Rubtsov’s poems can be divided into several themes.

The most favorite theme in poetry is the theme of nature (more poems are dedicated to it).

Each of his poems reflects some specific knowledge. He is very sensitive to nature. In nature he finds a reflection of eternity.

Rubtsov writes about what worries him, but for the reader he writes about the most important thing - about what delights and horrifies. For the author, poetry is a service of spontaneity, a kind of outlet for the truth. It is possible to come to the truth only if you have the enormous spontaneity that was characteristic of the author.

All his lyrics are marked by melody and melodiousness.

Its main symbol is the star, which expresses the mystery of humanity and acts as a symbol of the universe. He even connects the fate of entire humanity with this symbol:

No, I won’t be happy - what are you doing! -
Lonely wandering star.

The soul of a person is directly connected in his works with a star, which monitors his every action:

Star of the fields in the icy darkness,
Stopping, he looks into the wormwood.
The clock has already rung twelve,
And sleep enveloped my homeland...

The star is the whole Earth, all of humanity:

The star of the fields burns without fading,
For all the anxious inhabitants of the earth,
Touching with your welcoming ray
All the cities that rose in the distance.

All the phenomena shown, from an aesthetic point of view, show harmonious unity and evoke unique feelings. In the poems one can hear notes of tenderness, excited joy, which is replaced by quiet sadness.

The poet tries to follow mythological ancient images in his poetry. However, in his poetry the traditional image of a star is transformed - it is colored with a warm feeling of love for the Motherland.

The star appears in most of his texts.

With Rubtsov, any “object” turns into a subject, that is, into something that is capable of conducting a dialogue with the lyrical hero. His word is expressed by his condition. The poet writes about nature only if he sees “souls” and “language” in it. The basis of sound images in his poetry is animation, the unity of the sounds of nature and the sounds of human speech. Nature is capable of expressing human actions - suffering, rejoicing, sadness, indignation and even revenge. Each image, endowed with certain qualities, means something: a tree is a person, leaves are a dress, being late is separation. With the understanding of this symbolic meaning comes genuine aesthetic pleasure in the masterpiece of Rubtsov's lyrics.

In relation to society, the author does not deviate from his position. He also examines it with the help of symbols. People and their emotional experiences are compared to the sun, month and star. We have already observed her mythological image earlier. Heavenly bodies are associated with happiness and purity:

The evening light began to fade,
And the midnight star rose high.
Bright, morning dawn, yes, brothers,
Engaged in
From under the dawn the red sun rolls out...

The sun is a symbol of beauty and happiness, respectively, the sunset appears in the image of death:

It's like the sun
Red over the snow
Huge,
Gone forever...

Every person dreams that there will be no sad and negative moments in his life, and that the environment around him will only bring moral satisfaction. Let's try to turn to the poetic work “Autumn Moon”. Apparently, the moon is a symbol of that very hope for which more than half of society lives:

So why, showing participation,
Meanwhile the moon was passing
And it shone in the darkness of bad weather,
Like a reflection of spring happiness,
Is she unchangeable in beauty?

In the language of his poetry, various themes are observed: Motherland, life and death, and many others. In his work, Rubtsov focuses on highlighting central conflicts. All of his themes are of a certain value and importance, since they are a component of the poet’s lyric language, expressing the main aspiration of his talent. The theme of the soul is an exception, since this direction is the central theme in Rubtsov’s poetry. This is the “theme of themes,” because the poet comprehends any other theme precisely through it, through the unique originality of the spiritual, moral life of the lyrical hero. As he himself noted in a letter to one poet: “All themes of the soul are eternal themes, they are forever fresh and generally interesting. Your poems lack the main thing: your own, original view of the world, that is, the theme of the soul.” This idea greatly worried the poet, as evidenced by the fact that it not only finds its emotional and figurative embodiment, but was also expressed in a completely rare declarative and journalistic form for the poet:

What to write about -
It’s not our will.
You alone

the world will not be glorified.
You took the theme of the field
and the theme of the sea,
and the theme of mountains -
another poet will take it.

(“What to write about”)

The meaning of these lines is that life and art are inseparable.

The world of Rubtsov's lyrics is quite original, and it is far from easy to interpret it, although it looks absolutely clear and trustingly open to the mind and feeling of the reader. As for the external style, it can be called classic. The internal content seems contradictory and painfully dramatic. “The External Side of Rubtsov” is quite understandable to many, due to the fact that the language is harmonious, the meaning is ordered, and the emotionality is conventional. “Inner Rubtsov” is available only to a true connoisseur of poetry. Just as the kernel is hidden under the shell of a nut, so under the thematic cross-section of the poetics of Rubtsov’s verse hides the hidden semantics of the linguistic substance of the subtext. As a rule, the poet does not strive to decorate the language with smooth and understandable lines, does not look for various metaphors or sonorous, capricious rhymes. As if afraid of the tawdry, outwardly linguistic splendor, poetic thought seeks and finds modesty and simplicity, but not at all a rustic linguistic-aesthetic form.

Avlinsky

It has long been noted that the poems of a true poet benefit when they are collected together.

Let's imagine the impossible. An unknown author, about twenty years ago, brought to the editor a poem that began with the following lines:

The stands rushed to the starts like a herd,
In the center are horses buried in the crust.
Do you think, Vasya, we are betting on them?
They, the mares, bet on us.
The black amble put on me.
Apples one by one - oh my...
He knows how to sniff out a stable.
I take all the finishes, and the win is hers.
The king thinks he rules.
People think they are.
Nature and the groves have their bets on us.
And we - drive!..

In general, he knows how to make people read and listen to his poems. You can, say, call the poem “August,” but with such a title, not everyone will notice it in a newspaper page. But call it “Zarev”, a word no one understands, and the reader’s eye will certainly catch on to it. And in a special footnote it can be explained that this is the same “August”, only the outdated name is from the pagan calendar. Do you want to challenge the aesthetic significance of such a technique? Please, but the poet has somehow achieved his goal: his work has been read, and the main thing, in the end, is what it left in your heart.

Some believe that Andrei Voznesensky is a rational, cold poet. One of the experienced critics even tried to explain its popularity by the fact that readers, they say, like to solve all sorts of word puzzles (after all, an intellectual activity!). In my opinion, this explanation is naive. True, among the poet’s works there are poems of very different temperatures and the polysyllabic metaphorical nature of thinking (what S. Narovchatov called “unbridled fantasy”) does not always correspond to the scale of experiences.

But in order to understand his work in detail, let’s start with everything in order. Somehow, Voznesensky cannot complain about the inattention of criticism. It seems that, starting from his first steps in poetry, he was closely watched, encouraged in his successes and caught in his mistakes, taught and mentored, scolded and extolled to the skies. But, apparently, this is the case when the abundance of articles written about the poet does not indicate the depth of his study. After all, until now, his most significant poems and poems, as a rule, receive only contradictory assessments, which sometimes may seem like they belong to different works. The poem “Oza” received, for example, directly opposite reviews from S. Rassadin (they consider this work to be completely artificial) and A. Marchenko (who dedicated a real critical panegyric to him). Both reviews were published on the pages of the journal “Questions of Literature”, accompanied by a short introductory note, in which the editors promised to return to the discussion of the poem in the future and express their own, presumably more objective, opinion about it. But that promise was probably forgotten in the rush of other magazine business.

In recent articles about Voznesensky, both apologetic and negative lines of criticism are also preserved. The best in this multitude of materials, in my opinion, remains S. Narovchatov’s small article “Frank Conversation”, although it still - even if just a little - lacked the author’s kindness.

Almost all polemicists writing about Voznesensky, despite many differences, agree on at least one thing: that this artist is completely unique and unlike any of his peers. This, of course, should be considered a valuable quality if the poet maintains strong ties with the spiritual life of the people, with the best traditions of Russian poetry. But it is precisely on this point that the greatest number of contradictory opinions have been expressed about Voznesensky. A remarkable description of Voznesensky’s artistic style was given by his literary colleague Yevtushenko: “The world appears in Voznesensky’s poems as it can only be presented in rapid motion - blurry flickering, chaotically displaced. It is filled with bright spots of color that catch your eye and immediately disappear, faces that are caught for a second like a spotlight.” However, according to Yevtushenko, at such speeds the poet “has no time to feel,” and further he expresses a wish that he slow down the pace. On the contrary, one physicist (and physicists also got involved in the debate about Voznesensky) even gave the poet credit for allegedly decisively breaking with classical traditions, demonstrating purely modern, high-speed methods of imaginative thinking. However, despite the novelty of the poetic form, Voznesensky still did not start from scratch, but creatively took advantage of the achievements of older poets - Vl. Mayakovsky and N. Aseev, and in some ways - V. Khlebnikov and M. Tsvetaeva. And, despite his own cocky declarations (“There are few of us. There are maybe four of us”... etc.), he is united with his poetic generation by strong spiritual ties. A. Urban rightly noted back in 1962, in particular, that “... Tsybin and Voznesensky have a lot in common in their search for artistic expression.” Another observation of the critic is also true: “Predilection for certain topics, major rhythms, variegation and riot of colors reflect the well-known properties of the character of the lyrical hero. In essence, this general quality, with few exceptions, is inherent in all poetic youth. This is a community of poets of approximately the same generation.”

In Voznesensky's first books, cheerful energy is really in full swing. He admires the brilliant creations of world art, but even here there are no untouchable authorities for him. He is partial to rich, carnal colors, and his youthful love of life dictates to him the cocky slogan: “Down with Raphael! Long live Rubens! He finds reasons to admire life anywhere. He depicts with delight the colorful bustle of Georgian bazaars. I spied a scene in a Siberian village - women, hot after a bath, throwing themselves naked into the snow. And fiery comparisons are immediately born: “These shoulders, these backs are on the spot, like metal thrown back in a blast furnace!” On a city street I saw a stand with watermelons - a new artistic joy. Life is so charming that even the bands of police caps do not look menacing at all - they resemble juicy slices of watermelon. “We are against the dim. We are accustomed to bread - whether a Tula samovar or a TU-104,” the poet explains his sense of life. It is characteristic that in these joyful declarations, personifying the fullness of being, images from the world of science and technology arise quite naturally; they are fully included in the life affirmation of the urban poet; their artistic development does not present any difficulties for him. This feature, from the very first steps, distinguishes Voznesensky’s poems from the early lyrics of Tsybin and other poets of the rural tradition. However, both in the outbursts of youthful patriotism and in the optimistic faith in life, both named artists follow parallel paths. They also have something in common in their lyrical themes. But, perhaps, it is precisely in similar plots that different life experiences are especially evident, and the different makeup of their talents comes out more clearly.

At the Georgian bazaar, Voznesensky sees, first of all, a magnificent combination of colors. A bright crowd of people, generous gifts of nature - this is a wonderful subject for an artist! “Long live the master who will write them out!” - the author exclaims, and the poem sounds like a general hymn to creativity, beauty and abundance of life. Tsybin has a deeper knowledge of folk life and, painting his colorful Central Asian “Fair,” he carefully details and outlines the psychology of the individual characters in the picture. Another time he talks about how Zarina-Svet Petrovna was betrothed, he writes out in detail the portraits of the old groom - the “chief accountant” and the father of the bride. For him, let’s say, it is not indifferent to how the latter, while overeating at a wedding, “wiped a herring on his pants.” Here, in every line there is a specific, living character.

In Voznesensky's works, as a rule, less colorful people act - their images approach symbols, they are direct exponents of certain ideas. It is not a stupid young girl who is marrying him, but “youth” itself, devoid of any characteristic features - the author gives only one touching, poignant detail: “... you are trembling, as if a glass is on the edge of the table.” But this detail creates the necessary lyrical atmosphere: it instills pity for the absurdly mistaken youth, disgust for the ongoing wedding deal. Everything unimportant is removed from the text, there are no halftones, and the main details are unusually enlarged and brought to the fore. The painting is very unique, unusual - with its sharpness of leading color tones, contrasting solutions, it is akin to a poster, and with its intense spirituality - it is akin to an ancient Russian icon. (In general, Voznesensky has a great sense of our ancient art. It’s not for nothing that his idol is Rublev, and an extensive poem is dedicated to the builders of St. Basil’s Cathedral).

This stylistic manner, of course, has its costs, but there are also undeniable advantages: greater nakedness and sharpness of thought - what is often called “intellectualism of form” (A. Urban). You can accept or not accept this style, but it is important to understand it correctly and not demand from the artist what he deliberately refused for the sake of successfully solving other problems. A lyricist par excellence, he apparently does not know how to sculpt real characters, but he is a special lyricist - unusually bright, loud. And although cheerful enthusiasm was the predominant mood of his first books, the poet’s heightened interest in the struggle between good and evil, in the tragic knots of life, was already felt in them.

As a subjective poet with a powerful imagination, Voznesensky is not outwardly very dependent on the impressions of the surrounding life. Like many of his peers, he took up the historical topic and began searching for genealogical “roots.” However, he did not turn to the immediate past, which directly or indirectly (through family legends) is within the reach of personal experience. He shook up the hoary antiquity - the era of Grozny - and created a bright, enchanting poem about the builders of the Intercession Cathedral. However, the poet did not set himself the task of reproducing the legendary event in its exact everyday details (this task was brilliantly accomplished two decades earlier by D. Kedrin). For the poet, history is only a spectacular background against which he unfolds the formidable carnival of his conventionally generalized drama, sharpening the irreconcilable conflict between “artists of all ages” and the anti-people, tyrannical glamor. Outwardly, in its conventional coloring, Voznesensky’s work, dedicated to antiquity, turned out to be burningly relevant with the essence of a moral conflict. By its very scale and freedom-loving pathos, it turned out to be in tune with our menacing times. The poem “The Master” is strong with intense tragedy and undoubted affirmation of life. And although the poet plunges his heroes into darkness, which is “voiceless, like a face without eyes,” although he speaks of the terrible execution of architects, still optimistic sweats take precedence over gloomy ones in his poem. And we believe the promises of the lyrical hero to continue the glorious deeds of our ancestors, to realize their dreams into creating beautiful cities of the future.

Subsequently, Voznesensky noticeably moved away from his youthful optimism. Over the years, he became more and more deeply aware that pain, suffering, and injustice were not only the lot of our predecessors, just as cruel tyranny had not yet receded into the realm of legend with the era of Ivan the Terrible. At the same time, poems are being written about Russian antiquity, which also had a lot of ugliness and social oppression. Other works are also being born - about the difficult legacy we have received from the past, about that dark and base thing that has not yet been overcome, not overcome in our everyday life. All this varied lyrical scattering of poems is united under a single “roof” - the poet calls the new book “Forty Digressions from the Poem “Triangular Pear”.

Seven years ago, when this book first appeared, I wrote an article in which I spoke rather harshly about the author’s civic position. However, I mention this, of course, not in order to repent of a long-standing sin. Many of the reproaches made to the poet at that time I could repeat now, although with the distance of time the strengths of the work have become more obvious to me. This is a book of scary and gloomy, sometimes phantasmagoric images. Here are the beating legs of a beaten woman, “like white spotlights,” and the severed head of the royal mistress, “like a turnip with red tops,” and the poet himself, cut into seventeen parts by the photographic lenses of American spies. The author is too shocked by the horrors he sees, is in too much of a hurry to captivate the reader with them, without even having time to thoroughly understand them. Where did his indomitable energy, his seemingly insatiable thirst for life go? They were replaced by completely different moods. The predominant tone in the book is insulted humanity, melancholy, despondency.

The scary pictures from “The Triangular Pear” still seem rather modest and restrained compared to that rampant of dark fantasy, with that string of nightmares that the author unfolded in his subsequent books. In “Sketch for a Poem”, for example, he draws in detail, down to naturalistic details, the suicide of our young contemporary - the beloved of the lyrical hero. A piercing monologue is put into her mouth, but the motives for suicide (and, consequently, the character of the heroine!) still remain not fully clarified (for example, general dissatisfaction with life, the fatal “triangle” in love, probably a special vulnerability of the soul). Is he an honest person or just weak, noble or capable of countless compromises with his conscience? One has to guess about this, since the poet avoids the necessary artistic explanations. What then does he consider necessary to tell the reader? In a nutshell it can be expressed this way: she suffered. Yes, the heroine, without a doubt, suffered deeply - the words of her monologue are red-hot with genuine pain - and this, apparently, is quite enough to win the poet’s exclusive attention. And for him it no longer matters how objectively weighty the motives that prompted a woman to give up her life are (since she died, that means they’re weighty!), just as it doesn’t matter that the fate of an unknown Muscovite strikingly resembles the tragic fate of an overseas movie star, whose dying monologue is placed in “Forty Digressions” ...". Meanwhile, in “The Monologue of Marilyn Monroe,” the drama of suicide was much more meaningful and clearer. It was quite a social drama. From the heroine's abrupt remarks and cries emerged the fate of a fashionable Western actress, forced to exploit her beauty and talent for the sake of a dissolute society. Her desperate cry “Unbearable!”, repeated many times in the poem, remains in the reader’s ears. The severity of the experience is reinforced here by the plastic depiction of difficult, humiliating scenes for the heroine. The poem sounds like an irresistible indictment of the social system that brought man to death.

But what devastated and made the heroine of “Sketch” completely disillusioned with life? Vague hints that “the innocent are guilty” tell the reader little, just like touching advice to a loved one to be “more attentive” with the next “lover.” In the second chapter, in the passage from which the “Sketch” is composed, the nightmare of the fluidity of all things is reproduced - a sleepy nightmare that shows the difficult mental state of the hero, but again does little to clarify the tragic situation itself:

Squares spread into ellipses.
The nickel-plated headboards are leaking,
like boiled pasta.
The prison bars are hanging down,
like pretzels or aiguillettes...

The poet does not want to stop this general disintegration in a timely manner - this is chaos that is not being fought, triumphant chaos. The poet, with passion and rare ingenuity, adds new details to the image. For what? Obviously, the whole picture is a cyclopeanally developed metaphor, a visual embodiment of the tragic formula: “Everything flows. Everything changes. One thing leads to another." This is how thoughts about the irreversibility of existence, the frailty of everything that exists, and the impossibility of returning what has been lost are transformed in the consciousness of the fallen hero. However, even in this seemingly surreal image, a living spark of humanity flickers and beats tragically. A new nightmare dream of the hero (or is it the author himself?) - the elevator cage collapses on his head. A cell for pain is a danger signal necessary for every living organism. However, would it be worth living if your whole life consisted of one endless torture? In “Sick Ballad,” the cry “It hurts!” becomes for Voznesensky almost a knightly motto, with which he is going to rush into battle with world evil. If loss of sensitivity means death, then the sensation of pain already means life. But this truth vacillates in the poet’s poems somewhere on the verge of turning into its opposite: to live means to continuously feel pain, to suffer. This gave Vl a reason. Turbine calls Voznesensky the organizer of the Glavbol poetic trust. A caustic definition, but, alas, one cannot deny its accuracy!

It seems that this feature has acquired a peculiar refraction from the growing interest in various deformities of the world. If he draws a despot, then he certainly must be one who will send chills down your spine. With the head of an executed man in his hand. (“The eyes flash across the face like a skidding motorcycle.”) If he depicts a love drama, then it will certainly be something painful and exceptional. A tenth grader and a teacher, an old father-in-law and a young daughter-in-law. Even... a man and a tree. Yes, in “The Ballad of the Apple Tree,” wanting to exalt the miracle of the birth of a new life, the poet used very naturalistic images, and this not so much humanized the apple tree as brought a man down from a height. After all, it is mainly along the biological line that the person (the hero of the poem, a young pilot) and the apple tree, whose body is heavy with human seed and which is “buried to the waist, screams and calls for the departing plane,” come together.

But, of course, it is not such mistakes that determine the main thing in Voznesensky’s complex poetry, otherwise few people would love and know it in our country. The extraordinary, sometimes garish brightness of his colors most often, of course, does not interfere, but on the contrary, contributes to the lyrical expressiveness of the images. The poet strives at any cost to attract the reader to the main pain points of time, to show the multiplicity of human suffering in today's world and thereby contribute to their elimination. He does not speak in verse - he shouts into a huge megaphone, he shows not drawings or paintings, but huge poster panels. Like a shipwrecked man, he builds a high fire on the shore and runs along the sea edge, waving his arms: finally, notice! Note! "SOS!" "SOS!" And we must give him justice: this position has all the advantages over the poetry of truisms and cloudless well-being. However, the point is not only to point out (multiplying) the existing deformities, but also to force a person to fight them, to mobilize his will. And in this, the poet often turns out to be weak or relies too much on the spiritual equipment of the reader.

To understand the tasks that Andrei Voznesensky poses for art, his thoughts in “Dialogue of Jerry, San Francisco Poet” are typical. This poem seems somewhat long (it is all built on questions and answers - with naked logical sequence), but it ends with a strong, energetic quatrain, obviously expressing the author’s creative credo:

Not included in the answers
fates and tears.
There is truth in the question.
Poets - questions.

The undeniable privilege of genuine art is to pose the most pressing questions of reality to its contemporaries. However, to see the tasks of poetry only in this is as one-sided and narrow as equating life with the sensation of pain.

Voznesensky, of course, is not writing about a Soviet poet, but in the West, progressive aesthetic thought has long come to the conclusion that “... art was invented and created precisely to help unravel what is confused...” Quoted words belong, by the way, to the famous Sainte-Beuve - the world heard them exactly one hundred and thirty years ago. “You can accumulate, against your will, many observations, condensed to the concentration of poison,” wrote the French essayist, “but in order to obtain paints suitable for art, they must be diluted and dissolved. These are the colors you must present to the public, but keep the poison for yourself. Your worldview may be dark and murderous, but art should never be like that.” Of course, we are not obliged to follow every turn of Sainte-Beuve’s thoughts, but we cannot help but share the humanistic pathos of his thoughts about art. Contemporaries of the tragic and beautiful 20th century, heirs of Pushkin and Belinsky, we, of course, also will not come to terms with the fact that poetry sometimes wants to relinquish its civil rank as a teacher of life. However, apparently, Voznesensky himself felt the moral insufficiency of his artistic formula, which is why he shielded himself from criticism with the figure of the American Jerry.

I find myself wanting to objectively understand Voznesensky’s talented and powerful poetry, arguing with him more than noting his indisputable achievements. Why is this? Why in general, whether loving or not loving him, wondering at him, do they constantly argue with him? Perhaps the originality of his poetics makes us see both his advantages and disadvantages as if through a strong magnifying glass - they are strikingly striking and therefore become a reason for heated discussions? To the vivid expressiveness of the visual images we must add the extremely complex musical and rhythmic organization of the poems, rich in sound associations; Let us recall, for example, such a favorite means as highlighting one leading concept, a word, as the musical leitmotif of the work: “I want silence, silence... Are my nerves burned or something? Silence... so that the shadow from the pine tree, tickling us, moves, cooling us like a prank, along the back, to the little toe of the foot, silence..."

The sophistication of Voznesensky’s poetic ear is also manifested in the ability to collide and bring together words that are very different in meaning, if they have a similar sound, while the author extracts the most unexpected artistic effects.

The standard-bearer of pain and the intercessor of all those who suffer, Voznesensky shows a keen interest in those who are the culprits of human troubles, in various carriers of evil. The negative hero was defined in his lyrics quite a long time ago, from the very first books. We are not talking about negative characters in general (there were quite a few of these in Voznesensky’s poems over the years: this is a scumbag who beats a woman, and a criminal “daughter-in-law” who sent his own son to Kolyma, and a dissolute general’s wife, and her cynical friend-driver, and all sorts of other freaks). We are talking about the main enemy - the moral antipode of the lyrical hero. Such an opponent, it seems to me, first appeared in Voznesensky’s poem “Guest at the Fire.” This is, in general, a pathetic little man, similar to that bourgeois “slug” who inspires inexhaustible hatred in Vladimir Sokolov. However, it has some distinctive features that are unique to it. Not only is he dressed in a modern suit and has adopted outwardly intelligent manners, he knows how to imitate an intense spiritual life. He is not even stupid, he reads popular brochures and uses scientific terminology. However, he needs the heights of knowledge only in order to more picturesquely drape his moral emptiness. And although his speech sounds self-condemnation - “I’m scum!”, this is just a rhetorical device, ultimately designed for sympathy. After all, according to his logic, the entire human race consists of similar “scum.” By the way, he willingly speaks on behalf of the generation, tries to characterize his time (“the age of atomic decay”), and claims to have a certain philosophy.

There is nothing like this in the lyrics of Voznesensky’s peers. Tsybinsky Senka leads a thoughtless, amoeba-like existence and is quite happy with it. “Kalym life” and easy victories over the village girls, and he is quite happy. The “careless slug” Vl. was not far from him. Sokolov, grown into his own house with ficus trees and mired in hoarding. Outwardly, Voznesensky's hero differs sharply from his literary counterparts. He seems to be depressed by the decline of morals, he seems to be grieving in his soul - but what, they say, should he do? “C'est la vie”!.. And he willingly justifies moral uncleanliness, takes the point of view of a convinced scumbag - laughs at everything pure and sublime:

We are an extra generation.
We are masks without a face.
In love we know bras and never hearts.
Aging women taught us love,
Hence the bitterness of the gall and the emptiness in the blood.
In the era of isotopes.
Reactors, plastics I, a man, am trampled,
I'm scum. And you are talking about Mars...

So, the preaching of shameless cynicism is written out strongly and energetically. Perhaps, none of the scum denounced by other poets has yet come forward with such an open program of vulgarity, with its detailed “theoretical” justification. Before us, of course, is not the “pop-eared” Senka and not the polished snob Sokolov, but, so to speak, a “bastard” by vocation and conviction. To be sure, the poet also made him a Jehovah’s Witness, that is, a political enemy. However, it was possible not to burn an additional mark on the hero’s forehead: the face of the hostile idea was already quite clearly defined. And even though the positive heroine of the poem - a certain Lyalka - behaves quite hysterically, even though she can’t counter the outpourings of a vulgar person with anything other than feverish slaps in the face (and then bursts into tears), Voznesensky nevertheless managed the main thing - to accurately capture the way of thinking of a modern cynic, to grasp the characteristic features of his demagoguery. This poet, like few of his peers, already in his early youth was able to recognize the activity of a hostile intellect and show an alien philosophy of life. In the future, the delusional ideas of the Jehovah's Witness will find a response both in the ominous cawing of the raven from the poem "Uzzah" and in the reasoning of a certain experimenter (from the same place), representing a further stage of moral decline. Now this is no longer a specific person, but simply a personified idea. We don't even see his appearance. But the vague demagoguery of the Jehovah's Witness has acquired a completely scientific appearance, and his maxims sound almost aphoristic: “What is poetry for? There will be robots. The psyche is a combination of amino acids”... This is how an intellectual barbarian, armed with the latest word of science, formulates his thoughts. "I have an idea! If you cut the globe along the equator... True, half of humanity will die, but the second will taste the joy of the experiment.” Who is this? An evil schizophrenic who has achieved unprecedented power? His figure is fantastic, but didn’t the 20th century provide numerous examples of rabid maniacs at the head of states?

The poet intensifies the ominous colors, the darkness in his poem thickens, chaos breaks out: “The pages of history were shuffled like cards in a deck, the industrial revolution was followed by Batu’s invasion.” But this chaos is socially significant, artistically determined: after all, in essence, the same idea is expressed here as in Vinokurov’s poem, which recalled that the ashes of Auschwitz appeared in the world much later than the assurances of the Jacobins that “the era of evil in the world has ended.” The poems of both poets are directed against carelessness, turning a blind eye to real danger, only Voznesensky writes in his characteristic eccentric, fantastic vein. After all, the main horror, in his opinion, is that “nobody noticed this,” that everything went on as usual - “people continued to walk in a purposeful chain,” that is, they remained indifferent to the catastrophic shuffling of history.

The story of apocalyptic horrors and the sinister figure of the experimenter is only a small part of the poem "Uzza", and it is loosely connected with other chapters. By the way, Voznesensky, who generally likes to emphasize in the titles of his works their incompleteness and sketchiness (“Sketch for a poem”, “Forty digressions from a poem”, “Lament for two unborn poems”, etc.), did not hesitate here in defining the genre . However, a poem (even a modern one), from our point of view, is still a kind of narrative whole, and not isolated, albeit brilliant, particulars. And if we recognize “Ozu” as a poem, we will be forced to note that it is uncoordinated, drawn out, that some links of the lyrical plot (necessary in the course of the narrative) fell out of it for some unknown reason, and others have many unnecessary variations. In short, in a general assessment of “Oza” one would have to agree with Narovchatov: “It really looks like a literary puzzle, which even professional writers need a lot of effort to decipher.” But if we perceive “Ozu” as a book of lyrical poems, far from equal in strength and not equally complete (there are still many “sketches”), it is undoubtedly interesting and meaningful, and some poems achieve magnificent acuity of thought. But if so, is it in the name?

The poet is consistent. What he hates and denies in others inspires him to hate in himself. This moral composure, this ultimately triumphant uncompromising sense of justice is pleasing - they are seen as the key to the further creative movement of the author of “Oza”... But it seems that I have already expressed almost everything that prompted me to take up this article, and it’s time to summarize some results (I, however, deliberately did not touch here on Voznesensky’s recent efforts to create experimental poems “for the eyes only” as opposed to “reader poetry” - is it worth seriously examining what the author himself is inclined to consider “ordinary jokes”?).

When I try to determine why Voznesensky’s poetry is close to me, why I love it, despite many disagreements with the author, the image of a young scientist invariably comes to mind, no, not a physicist, but rather a biologist working with the most dangerous varieties of bacteriological poisons. He selflessly tests the effects of various vaccines on himself: is it any wonder that he himself sometimes becomes infected with the diseases he fights against? As fate would have it, Andrei Voznesensky turned out to be one of the most talented exposers of the ideology of the capitalist anti-world in our civic poetry. But in terms of his personality and talent, he is far from Juvenal. Lyrically absorbing the screaming contradictions and dissonances of the nuclear age, the poet experiences them as the vicissitudes of a “global menacing drama” (Ya. Smelyakov), but does not always accurately feel its class accents. In a painful search for truth (and the lyric poet is obliged to personally suffer through other people's destinies and tears).

Keywords: Andrei Voznesensky, criticism of the works of Andrei Voznesensky, criticism of the works of Andrei Voznesensky, analysis of the poetry of Andrei Voznesensky, download criticism, download for free, Russian literature of the 20th century.

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