I will never forget you Andrey Voznesensky. One of the best poems by Andrei Voznesensky “I will never forget you. Analysis of Voznesensky's poem "Saga"

“Saga” Andrei Voznesensky

You'll wake me up at dawn
you will go out barefoot.
You will never forget me.
You'll never see me.

Shielding you from a cold,
I’ll think: “God Almighty!
I will never forget you.
I'll never see you again."

This water is dammed with goosebumps,
this is the Admiralty and the Exchange
I'll never forget
and I'll never see it again.

They don’t blink, they tear from the wind
hopeless brown cherries.
Returning is a bad omen.
I'll never see you again.

Even if we return to earth
we are secondary, according to Hafiz,
We will, of course, warm up with you.
I'll never see you again.

And it will turn out to be so minimal
our misunderstanding with you
before future misunderstanding
two living ones with a lifeless void.

And it will swing to its meaningless heights
a couple of phrases from here:

"I will never forget you.
I'll never see you again."

Analysis of Voznesensky's poem "Saga"

Probably the most heartfelt song about tragic love was performed in the rock opera “Juno and Avos”. This is the romance “I will never forget you,” the poems for which were written by Andrei Andreevich Voznesensky in 1977. This poem describes the feelings of the heroes of the rock opera in the best possible way, but it speaks even more about the experiences of the poet himself.

It is known that for seven years Andrei Andreevich had an affair with actress Tatyana Lavrova. It was a forbidden feeling, since both lovers had legal spouses. The attraction was so strong that they could not resist it. But sooner or later in the relationship between a man and a woman there comes a moment when passion becomes destructive, brings more suffering than joy, and literally ruins life. Despite the fact that Voznesensky and Lavrova truly loved each other, they had to break up.

This is exactly what the work “Saga” is about. In it, the poet speaks in the first person. Talking about a difficult farewell, the poet describes in detail every step of the lyrical hero:
You'll wake me up at dawn
you will go out barefoot.

Each stanza, with the exception of the first and penultimate, ends with an epiphora - the phrase “I will never see you.” This constant repetition resembles prayer and increases the feeling of melancholy and hopelessness. The lyrical hero even exclaims: “God Almighty!”

Undoubtedly, it is very difficult for a hero to leave his beloved. He strives to protect her from pain, takes care of her health (“shielding you from a cold”), but cannot stay with her, despite the fact that this causes her no less suffering. For the last time he looks into the sweet eyes. Here the poet uses an unusual metaphor, comparing them to ripe berries:
They don’t blink, they tear from the wind
hopeless brown cherries.

The hero even tries to cheer up and convince himself that it’s better this way, that his eyes are watering not from unspoken pain, but from the wind. And that the return will not take place, because this is just a bad omen, and not a bitter fate.

Everything seems to remind the hero of his beloved. Even the rippled water looks like delicate skin on which goosebumps have appeared from a sudden chill:
This water is dammed with goosebumps,
this is the Admiralty and the Exchange...

This painful farewell, thanks to the imagery used in the poem, becomes like death:
Even if we return to earth
we are secondary, according to Gafiz...

This stanza, of course, talks about the idea of rebirth, mentioned in the works of the Persian poet Hafiz (Hafiz) Shirazi. In the next quatrain, the poet compares the omissions that once happened between lovers with the rejection of living souls of the “lifeless emptiness.” The author understands that these ordinary human difficulties are a trifle in the face of eternity and non-existence.

In addition, the last lines indicate death:
And it will swing to its meaningless heights
a couple of phrases that came from here...

That is, the hero’s feeling is so strong that his words addressed to his beloved even reach the sky, where souls are found after death. However, for the inhabitants of another world they will be meaningless. However, even if the souls of lovers meet in the next life, the hero is sure that they are not destined to recognize each other and be happy again.

The work “Saga” is written in anapaest poetic meter. The lines rhyme crosswise (abab). All lines have feminine endings.

Thanks to the mention of places familiar to the modern reader (“The Admiralty and the Exchange” on the banks of the Neva in St. Petersburg), picturesque comparisons and images (“water in the goosebumps of the dam”), this poem becomes close and understandable to everyone whose heart has been visited by love at least once. “Saga” is a very powerful work that can make any reader empathize with the characters.

The poem “You Wake Me Up at Dawn...” formed the basis of the rock opera “Juno and Avos,” for which Voznesensky wrote the libretto. This poem-song combines the past and the modern: the plot of the musical is based on the love story of a Russian count, carrying out an important state mission, Nikolai Rezanov and the daughter of the governor of San Francisco, Conchita. The poem itself is very modern in spirit. For example, the image of St. Petersburg is conveyed through the feelings of the lyrical hero, a contemporary of Voznesensky:

This water is dammed with goosebumps,

this is the Admiralty and the Exchange

I'll never forget

I'll never see again.

The technique of combining tenses helps to understand more clearly main idea poems: love triumphs over time. Lyrical heroes forever connects the refrain “you will never forget me, you will never see me” - “I will never forget you, I will never see you.” It seems that these lines sound sad and hopeless, but their meaning is different: the words “never” in them have different meanings, that is, the phrase “I will never forget” has positive value, means “I will love you always.” The second “never” introduces a negative theme into the poem, which grows from stanza to stanza: we will never see each other, we will miss each other, if we meet in another life, everything will disappear into the “lifeless emptiness.”

Two “never” give rise to the antithesis “always - never” in the poem, in which the phrase “I will never forget” means that love is stronger than life’s circumstances, fate, and endless lifeless space. This idea is emphasized by the subtle word “already” in the third stanza, which serves to show how a fleeting meeting in the abyss of time becomes eternity. Voznesensky, with the skill of a painter, stops a moment of reality and captures it forever. For example, the heroine’s gesture:

Shielding you from a cold,

I’ll think: “God Almighty!” —

or the state of the water “in the dam’s shivers.” This metaphor is very capacious; it conveys the hero’s feelings, the morning frost, and despondency. The mood of sadness and thoughtfulness is expressed thanks to the measured rhythm of the poem and the poetic meter chosen by the poet - a song trimeter anapest with an additional unstressed syllable at the end of each line, as if as a resonance chord in a musical phrase. This song in the play “Juno and Avos” was performed for many years on the stage of the Lenin Komsomol Theater by artist Nikolai Karachentsov.

This sublimely tragic love story inspired Andrei Voznesensky to create the poem “Maybe” in 1970. Of course, both the poem and the opera are not documentary chronicles. As Andrei Voznesensky himself wrote, “the author is not so consumed by conceit and frivolity as to depict real persons based on scant information about them and insult them with approximateness. Their images, like their names, are only a capricious echo of known destinies...”

Alexander Marshall and Ariana - I will never forget you, 2010

Andrey Voznesensky "Saga"

You'll wake me up at dawn
you will go out barefoot.
You will never forget me.
You'll never see me.

Shielding you from a cold,
I’ll think: “God Almighty!
I will never forget you.
I'll never see you again."

This water is dammed with goosebumps,
this is the Admiralty and the Exchange
I'll never forget
and I'll never see it again.

They don’t blink, they tear from the wind
hopeless brown cherries.
Returning is a bad omen.
I'll never see you again.

Even if we return to earth
we are secondary, according to Hafiz,
We will, of course, warm up with you.
I'll never see you again.

And it will turn out to be so minimal
our misunderstanding with you
before future misunderstanding
two living ones with a lifeless void.

And it will swing to its meaningless heights
a couple of phrases from here:

"I will never forget you.
I'll never see you again."

"But here I must make a confession to Your Excellency about my private adventures. The beautiful Concepsia increased her politeness to me day by day, her various services, interesting in my position, and her sincerity, which I had looked at indifferently for a long time, began to imperceptibly fill the emptiness in my heart; We became closer every day in explanations, which finally ended with her giving me her hand."
Letter from N. Rezanov to N. Rumyantsev, June 17, 1806.

“Juno and Avos” is one of the most famous Russian rock operas by composer Alexei Rybnikov based on poems by poet Andrei Voznesensky. The premiere took place on July 9, 1981 on the stage of the Moscow Lenin Komsomol Theater (directed by Mark Zakharov, choreographed by Vladimir Vasiliev, artist Oleg Sheintsis), whose repertoire still includes the play. The title of the play uses the names of two sailing ships - “Juno” and “Avos” - on which the expedition of the Russian traveler, Count Nikolai Rezanov, sailed. The main roles were played by Nikolai Karachentsov (Count Rezanov), Elena Shanina (Conchita), Alexander Abdulov (Federico).

The plot is based on the romantic love story of Nikolai Rezanov and the daughter of the governor of San Francisco, Maria de la Concepcion, Marcella Arguello. Nikolai Petrovich Rezanov, chamberlain of His Majesty's court, one of the leaders of the first Russian round-the-world expedition, arrived in California in 1806 in order to replenish food supplies for the Russian colony in Alaska. The well-educated and well-mannered commander managed to charm the daughter of the commandant of the San Francisco fortress, the beautiful Concepcia de Arguello (Conchita). The engagement took place. The wedding was not predetermined, because an agreement was reached: the groom would return to St. Petersburg and ask for the petition of his emperor to the Pope for the desired marriage with a Catholic. Nikolai Petrovich himself promised Conchita and her parents that two years would be enough for this, after which he would return and they would find family happiness. However, on the way he became seriously ill and died in Krasnoyarsk at the age of 42. Conchita did not believe the information that reached her about the death of her groom. Only in 1842, the English traveler George Simpson, arriving in San Francisco, told her the exact details of his death. Believing in his death only thirty-five years later, she took a vow of silence, and a few years later took monastic vows at the Dominican monastery in Monterey, where she spent almost two decades and died in 1857.

After another two centuries, a symbolic act of reunion of lovers took place. On October 28, 2000, in Krasnoyarsk, at the supposed burial place of N.P. Rezanov at the Trinity Cemetery, a memorial service and the opening of a monument took place. The monument is a white cross, on one side of which is written “Nikolai Petrovich Rezanov. 1764-1807. I will never forget you,” and on the other - “Maria Concepcion de Arguello. 1791-1857. I'll never see you again." Sheriff of Monterey (California, USA) Harry Brown attended the funeral service. The sheriff scattered earth from Conchita's grave on Rezanov's grave, and in return took earth from Rezanov's grave to scatter it on the grave of Concepcia de Arguello.

This sublimely tragic love story inspired Andrei Voznesensky to create the poem “Avos” in 1970, which later served as the basis for the libretto of a rock opera. According to the poet’s recollections, he began writing “Maybe” in Vancouver, when he was “swallowing... flattering pages about Rezanov from J. Lensen’s thick volume, following the fate of our brave compatriot.” In addition, Rezanov’s travel diary, which was also used by Voznesensky, has been preserved and partially published. Of course, both the poem and the opera are not documentary chronicles. As Andrei Voznesensky himself wrote, “the author is not so consumed by conceit and frivolity as to depict real persons based on scant information about them and insult them with approximateness. Their images, like their names, are only a capricious echo of known destinies...”

For the theatrical production, naturally, many arias and scenes had to be added. The poet also included in the libretto of the opera the poem “Saga” (“You will wake me up at dawn...”), written by him in 1977. Since the term “rock opera” was prohibited at that time (as was rock music in general), the authors wrote under the title of the work: “modern opera”.

One of the 2006 reviews of the Lenkom Theater performance “Juno and Avos”:
"Juno and Avos is a cult performance not only for Lenkom, but also for theater in Moscow for many decades. It was born in 1981 and since then has been running for more than twenty years with constant sold-outs. Everything about it The performance is impeccably combined: acting, set design, color, light, rhythm. It is still fresh and multi-valued, smart and unusually catchy, the words and thoughts, the music and dance, the stage effects, the design of the mise-en-scène, the plasticity of gestures, the elegance of the costumes - everything. merged into an organic unity. The love story of the Russian traveler, chamberlain, Count Nikolai Petrovich Rezanov and the young beauty Conchita, the daughter of the Spanish governor of San Francisco, seems to have been created for a musical performance. The production by Mark Zakharov, combining the poem by Andrei Voznesensky and the musical work of the composer Alexei Rybnikov. a stage composition with its inherent poetic convention, metaphor, and polyphony. Along with this, in “Juno and Avos,” like in no other performance by Zakharov, the theme of eternal Russia sounds with its frantic, unique lyricism. The performance seems to be filled with a strong, deep and living breath, in the wonderful romantic atmosphere of which a beautiful love story is played out before the audience." (

This is truly a wonderful performance - one of best productions Mark Zakharova. Now other actors are involved in it, but its popularity among viewers still does not wane.

"Juno and Avos", starring: Nikolai Karachentsov, Elena Shanina.

The romance “I will never forget you” gained over time independent life, - outside the performance and its plot. He became known throughout the country primarily thanks to the Meridian trio.   

The singer Zhanna Rozhdestvenskaya, whose unique voice sounded in many film hits of that time, often sang this romance at her concerts. Among the performers were Alexander Marshal, Pavel Smeyan, the duet "Smash" and many others... December 2013. The finale of the second season of the project "The Voice". Sung by Gela Guralia. The first words sound: “You will wake me up at dawn...”. Unlike the theatrical version, Gela’s is a monologue in which all the pain of a man parting with his beloved is concentrated, and he has a presentiment (knowing?) that this is forever. I forget that this is a stage, around which there is a crowded hall, television cameras, a jury... I just feel this pain, and at the same time, enormous this man. Not only the one on whose behalf the artist sings, but also himself - Gela Guralia. Every note is carefully sung, every word is just as carefully and thoughtfully spoken. Perhaps Gela does not connect his performance specifically with the love story of Count Rezanov and Conchita, but when he sings “Braining you from a cold...”, I see how the commander, trying to be courageous, carefully covers the bride with his cloak. “Without blinking, hopeless brown cherries are tearing up from the wind,” and I really feel the piercing wind, I see melancholy and despair in brown eyes his bride... It’s impossible not to empathize with this monologue. Only those who are not endowed with this ability at all - empathy - can remain indifferent.

As I already said, the romance “I will never forget you” was sung by many wonderful artists, and the voice of Nikolai Karachentsov will forever remain in my memory... But my heart skips a beat only when I hear Gela Guralia sing this saga. What a blessing that the romance was included in his concert repertoire. Each time it sounds differently, awakening new emotions and feelings, but one thing remains unchanged - the joy of contact with what is called the highest art. “I don’t do anything extra. I try to convey the meaning of the song with my voice, sound - this is the most important thing,” Gela once said. The romance “I will never forget you” serves as a clear example and confirmation of this.

Eagle. Video: Alena P.

And this is my favorite (to date) “version”:

Ivanovo. Video: Elena Khlebnikova.

"There is no price for love -
There's only one life,
There is only one life..."

Thank you, Gela!

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