“The terrible fate of father and son...” Mikhail Lermontov

The terrible fate of father and son
Live separately and die in separation,
And the lot of an alien exile to have
In the homeland with the name of a citizen!
But you accomplished your feat, my father,
You have suffered the desired end;
God grant that the end is as calm as yours
The one who was the cause of all your torment!
But you will forgive me! Am I to blame for this?
What people wanted to extinguish in my soul
Divine fire, from the very cradle
Burning within her, justified by the creator?
However, their desires were in vain:
We found no enmity in each other,
Even though both became victims of suffering!
It is not for me to judge whether you are guilty or not;
You are condemned by the light. But what is light?
A crowd of people, sometimes evil, sometimes supportive,
A collection of undeserved praise
And just as many mocking slander.
Far from him, the spirit of hell or heaven,
You forgot about the earth, just as you were forgotten by the earth;
You are happier than me, in front of you
Like the sea of ​​life - fatal eternity
It opened up with immeasurable depth.
Are you really not sorry at all now?
About days lost in anxiety and tears?
About gloomy, but together sweet days,
When you searched in your soul as in the desert,
Remnants of old feelings and old dreams?
Do you really not love me at all now?
Oh, if so, then I won’t level the sky
I am with this land, where I drag out my life;
Even if I don’t know bliss on her,
At least I do!

Analysis of Lermontov's poem “The Terrible Fate of Father and Son...”

In 1831, Lermontov wrote the elegy “The Terrible Fate of Father and Son...”. It was published much later - in 1872 it was first published by the historical and literary magazine “Russian Archive”. The poem is dedicated to a tragic event in the poet’s life - the death of his father, Yuri Petrovich. The work reflects the peculiarities of Lermontov’s relationship with him. The fact is that Mikhail Yuryevich’s mother died early - she was twenty-two years old. His grandmother, Elizaveta Alekseevna Arsenyeva, took charge of raising the future poet. She practically did not allow the father to see the boy. Lermontov wrote more than once about conflicts between adults in his early works of fiction. In particular, their discord is discussed in the play “Menschen und Leidenschaften”.

The poem reveals a connection not only with the death of Yuri Petrovich, but also with the will he left in January 1831. In it, he appears not at all the same as in the memoirs of his contemporaries - a loving husband, a caring father, separated from his son against his will. Through the elegy, Lermontov expresses the intense grief caused by the loss of his father. In addition, the poet regrets the years spent away from Yuri Petrovich. It is interesting that it was his father who was one of the first people to appreciate the writing talent of Mikhail Yuryevich, who saw in him a potential genius.

In the second part of the poem “The Terrible Fate of Father and Son...” there are discussions about the crowd and the hero opposed to it, which is typical for the romantic tradition in world literature. Here Lermontov’s relationship with his father is indicated not only by blood, but also by spirit: “You are condemned by the light. But what is light? According to Mikhail Yuryevich, he and his father became “victims of suffering”; they had to endure attacks from people, “sometimes evil, sometimes supportive.” Among the discussions about crowd cruelty, there is also room for biographical motives. The lyrical hero wants to experience his father's love again and reflects on his own loneliness.

The themes found in the elegy "The Terrible Fate of Father and Son..." will appear in the poem "Epitaph", dated 1832. In it, Lermontov again talks about persecution, suffering, and the strong spiritual connection between father and child. Despite the fact that a sufficient amount of time has passed since the death of Yuri Petrovich, the poet does not change his opinion or give any other assessments. He still misses him and wants to meet him someday.

How quickly time flies, and how many events happen in such a short period as just one month!

Here is February - it would seem that it only began yesterday, but March has already arrived. With bated breath, not only we, but if not the whole world, then certainly all of Europe, waited for the Normandy Four negotiations to end. We breathed a sigh of relief, and then a new word came out like a shot: “Debaltsevo.”

And again they survived. And again new challenges come.

But you still need to stop at least for a few hours, try to comprehend what happened recently that touched your soul especially strongly, made your heart beat faster, and remember what happened just as quickly, but many years ago - but not forgotten, no !

For me, February is associated, first of all, with the name. Because none of the writers said such heartfelt, such bewitching words about February as Boris Leonidovich. In the coming year, the poet was remembered in connection with the round date - February 10 marked the 125th anniversary of his birth. As is usually the case, a whole series of publications, radio and television broadcasts, even special lectures appeared on the occasion of the anniversary - I’ll tell you about one of them in particular. But, as before, the religious content of his work of recent years, especially the novel “Doctor Zhivago”, if it was said at all, was somehow in passing, indistinctly, casually.

It is the Orthodox theme that is dominant both in the novel “Doctor Zhivago” and in his poetry of recent years

And yet it is precisely the Christian, precisely the Orthodox theme that is dominant both in his novel and in the poetry of his last years. Not even “theme” is the right word. His whole life, suffering, the rise of creativity - this is what made up poetry and prose at the end of the earthly life of the poet, who gave his soul to God and people.

Tell me, is this not so? Well, he himself wrote in the poem “Nobel Prize”:

I disappeared like an animal in a pen.
Somewhere there are people, will, light,
And behind me there is the sound of a chase,
I can't go outside.

Dark forest and the shore of a pond,
They ate a fallen log.
The path is cut off from everywhere.
Whatever happens, it doesn't matter.

What kind of dirty trick did I do?
Am I a murderer and a villain?
I made the whole world cry
Over the beauty of my land.

But even so, almost at the grave,
I believe the time will come -
The power of meanness and malice
The spirit of goodness will prevail.

Let's pay attention to the lines: “I made the whole world cry / Over the beauty of my land.” And to the last stanza of the verse.

P Why do our highbrow literary scholars write with such voluptuousness about the persecution and persecution of the poet and forget to talk about his standing, courageHow did he endure the trials that befell him? And further the main thing – what gave him the strength to withstand and ultimately win?

In fact, what should he have said: okay, if you consider me a traitor, even the “ruddy Komsomol leader” called me “a pig under an oak tree,” then I’m leaving my country.

And leave. At least to Paris, at least to Rome. And then to Stockholm, for the Nobel Prize, as Solzhenitsyn did. Get your million, buy a villa somewhere on Lake Geneva, or on the Cote d'Azur, like another Nobel laureate, Ivan Bunin. And write, and be nostalgic, and look at the azure water, at your crimson boots and white pants, which the well-known hero dreamed of.

No, he stays in his wooden house in Peredelkino, where every tree in his garden native; and behind the fence, where the field begins, it lies, too dear, familiar to every blade of grass; where, beyond the field, has stood for centuries the wondrous Church of the Transfiguration of the Lord, which is its destiny, its support.

He has known European languages ​​since childhood; he studied in Germany, in Marburg. There he was overtaken by his first love, which ended, as befits the fate of a poet, in a drama that scorched his heart and gave the world his first piercing poems, with the pressure of passion, with the strength that you are unlikely to find in other poets.

So he would have felt free in Europe - he knew the languages, he knew the customs, and he was trained in European morals.

But all this is foreign, and he needs his own, hard-won, Russian, intimate. What lies in the heart of Russia, in its Orthodox faith.

The faith of the poet and his sons, reverent love for the Motherland forever tied him to his native land

This is what tied him forever to his native land.

The poet's faith.

And his sons, reverent love for the Motherland.

Of course, in the years when the country is shaken by revolutions, when chaos reigns in the country and souls, faith is hidden deeply, lives unconsciously, but it torments, makes its way even in that poem, the line from which is included in the title of these notes:

... Write about February sobbingly
While the rumbling slush
In spring it burns black.

Please: slush rumbling, spring black.

This is what is happening both in the country and in the soul of the poet.

This was written in 1912, before the February Revolution. But the poet was born in February, and has a clear premonition of what will happen in this month.

Snow, a February blizzard, and a blizzard will haunt him all his life, until death.

If the early Pasternak is complex, his poetic speech is overloaded with assonance, alliteration, metaphors, and other literary beauties, then at the end of the road he falls, as he himself writes, “into unheard-of simplicity.” And, saying goodbye to the world, he will say his immortal words, again about February:

Chalk, chalk, all over the earth
To all limits
The candle was burning on the table
The candle was burning.

These are lines from “Winter Night,” included in “Poems from the Novel.”

During my student years, I was literally overwhelmed, like the ninth wave, by the poetry of Boris Leonidovich. Both Mayakovsky and Yesenin were pushed aside by this wave, Pushkin and Lermontov, Nekrasov seemed too schoolboy, but Boris Pasternak opened up in all his novelty, poetic power. The complexity of his language seemed state-of-the-art. I read and re-read, learned the poet’s lyrics by heart. The cycle of poems “Rupture” seemed especially impressive. I still remember every single one of these verses by heart.

And suddenly, in 1958, a cruel drama unfolds related to the novel Doctor Zhivago. Our favorite Russian literature teacher comes to our dorm for clarification. And he says something incomprehensible, not at all like at lectures, hesitates, barely finishes his educational conversation. It was at the Ural University, where I studied at the Faculty of Journalism. In Sverdlovsk, now Yekaterinburg.

Dejected, realizing that an unjust trial was taking place, we went to our rooms. I really wanted to read the novel. After all, he was crushed without reading, only from those passages quoted by the newspapers.

I managed to read the novel only two years later, in samizdat, underground. And much was revealed even then - most of all from his “Poems from the Novel.” They pierced me too.

But the true meaning of the novel was revealed to me later - that’s what I’m writing about.

At the beginning of these notes, I mentioned a lecture by a very educated, very well-read scientist who gave a lecture on Pasternak. This lecture was later posted on the Internet and received wide publicity. The lecturer found encrypted allegorical meanings in the names of the characters: Lara is Russia itself; a character in the novel named Komarovsky, an evil genius who pursues lovers - he is tailed and horned; Yuri Andreevich himself - “you yourself understand who,” the lecturer concluded, clearly hinting at the hero’s surname - Zhivago.

But this hint from the learned lecturer should be understood solely as his ignorance of what every Orthodox churchgoer knows. For the author of the novel had in mind the well-known Psalm 90, which our people call “ Live help", where the very first lines say: " He who is alive, with the help of the Most High, will dwell in the shelter of the Heavenly God.” That is, “who lives in help” (carrying God in his heart) “in shelter” (in the peace of the Lord) “will be established” (will be worthy of this world).

Psalm 90 was sewn into amulet and worn on oneself, believing that this holy prayer would protect and save a person from any misfortunes and troubles

, “Living help”, or, as people also said, “ help", they sewed it into amulet and carried it on themselves, believing that this holy prayer would protect and save a person from any misfortunes and troubles.

This means that the author of the novel, who lived directly opposite the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, in the apartment of his father, the famous artist Leonid Pasternak, and who went to church since childhood, knew “Living Help” as “Our Father” and did not mean at all what the scientist was hinting at lecturer, but “zhivago,” that is, “living,” “living in the help of the Most High.”

I dwell on this point in detail because it is one of the keys of the novel, which, alas, is deliberately (or out of ignorance of Orthodox church life) missed or misinterpreted by literary scholars.

Yuri Zhivago is not because winnerthat he is supposedly put by the author in the place of God himself, but because he lives in His help

Yuri Andreevich Zhivago, the main character of the novel, is not because winner, that he is supposedly put by the author in the place of God himself, and because he lives in His help, God gives him the strength to write those poems that complete the novel, are its integral part, an epilogue that explains the inner, spiritual life of the hero.

Let me remind you of the place in the novel for which Boris Leonidovich was executed by those who read and did not read the novel. But it was precisely the beginning of this episode that was quoted in 1958, when the poet was persecuted.

Finding himself captured by the Red partisans, Yuri Zhivago is ordered to lie down in a chain. He is forced to shoot - there is a battle going on. Zhivago shoots at a burnt tree that grows in the middle of a field, along which the whites are advancing. These whites are young men, almost boys. Yuri Andreevich is familiar with their faces because he himself was just like them, deliberately brave, standing tall, going into an attack across an open field against the enemy. They would rush forward, hiding in holes and behind hillocks, behind this burnt tree, but they walk, straightening up to their full height.

And the partisans' bullets mow down the attackers.

The telephone operator was killed next to the doctor. Shooting at a tree from the telephone operator's gun, Yuri Andreevich's gun gets into the crosshairs of Yuri Andreevich's gun, whom the doctor especially feels sorry for and whom he sympathizes with during the battle.

The doctor thinks he killed the young man.

The battle is over, the whites retreated. The doctor examines both the telephone operator and the young man.

And on both of their chests he finds amulet in which Psalm 90 is sewn.

The red telephone operator has it half-decayed - apparently, the mother, who saved this prayer, took it from her mother, sewed it into her son’s amulet and hung it on her chest.

And the young man is a White Guard?

I will quote this fragment from the novel: “He unbuttoned the dead man’s overcoat and spread its flaps wide. On the lining, in calligraphic script, diligently and lovingly, probably a mother’s hand, was embroidered: Seryozha Rantsevich, the name and surname of the murdered man.

Through the armhole of Serezha's shirt, a cross, a medallion and some other flat gold case or tavlinka with a damaged lid, as if pressed in by a nail, fell out and hung outward on a chain. The case was half open. A folded piece of paper fell out of it. The doctor unfolded it and couldn’t believe his eyes. It was the same ninetieth psalm, but in printed form and in all its Slavic authenticity.”

From Pasternak’s letter to Khrushchev: “Leaving my homeland for me is tantamount to death. I am connected with Russia by birth, life, work"

Our “expert” in agriculture, literature and art, Khrushchev, in 1958, when Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize for the novel “Doctor Zhivago,” slammed his fist on the table and executed the poet precisely for these pages. He shouted that the author calls not to fight the enemy, but to shoot past. That he can leave the country whenever he pleases. In response, Pasternak wrote in a letter addressed to Khrushchev: “Leaving my homeland for me is tantamount to death. I am connected with Russia by birth, life, and work.”

The press quoted only the beginning of the chapter, from which it was impossible to understand the meaning of what was described. Moreover, it ends with the doctor and his assistant dressing Seryozha Rantsevich in the clothes of the murdered telephone operator, bringing him to the hospital as one of their own, nursing him to health and giving him the opportunity to escape. Saying goodbye, Seryozha says that when he moves to his own people, he will again fight the Reds.

This is where the chapter ends. But it is not difficult for us to understand what will happen next to Seryozha - of course, he will be killed.

Because a fratricidal war saves neither the Reds nor the Whites. Because both of them forgot God.

After all, the amulet with Psalm 90, which saved Seryozha from death, did not say anything to his soul - he did not understand anything from what happened.

Where could the party leader, who promised to show “the last priest” on TV, understand the theological essence of the novel, its hero, who takes suffering upon himself, says goodbye to his beloved, sending her to a foreign country, while he himself remains in his homeland, which is sick, which need to be treated.

And even today, as we see, not everyone understands the essence of Psalm 90 and why it is given in the novel.

But this essence is still very modern and relevant.

Doctor Zhivago dies in the novel. But his spirit cannot be killed, because he did not part with God, he remained in the help of the Most High.

And outside the window it’s winter, a snowstorm. We read those pages where Yuri Andreevich is young and full of strength. He drives along the alley where the one who will be his destiny is behind a glass window, in a room where a candle is burning on the table, where there will be a “crossing of fate.”

And he sees the flickering light of a flame through a frozen window, thawed where the candle burns.

And the emerging lines of the future fateful verse whisper:

“The candle was burning on the table, the candle was burning.”

And he thinks that the next lines will come by themselves, without any coercion. But they do not come at the time of his youth, but will come when he experiences both love and life “at the edge of the abyss.” And he will leave the world in this room.

And Lara, who illuminated his life with love, will come here to say the last “sorry.”

Yes, Love burns and does not burn out - that’s why Boris Leonidovich wanted to call his novel “The Candle Burned.”

That is why this poem fascinates everyone who reads it. Without even understanding the meaning, simply repeating: “The candle was burning on the table, the candle was burning.”

Surprisingly, our highbrow critics beat Boris Leonidovich most of all for this poem, calling it decadent and decadent.

“Chalk, chalk all over the earth, to all its limits” - namely, all over the earth, to all its edges - from limit to limit.

Yuri Andreevich walks to Moscow from the Urals. He sees Russia devastated by the civil war. Frozen corpses on stopped trains. Sees burned, empty villages and villages. He sees all the horror that the fratricidal war brought.

Isn’t this what is happening now in southeast Ukraine?

But here is the hero of the novel in Moscow. Who's the boss there now? Janitor Markel, who gives the son of the former owner a small room.

But Zhivago accepts everything with amazing calm. He is saved again by a woman – Markel’s youngest daughter. She somehow tries to improve the doctor’s miserable life. He leaves her too to systematize his notes and poems, realizing that the hour of death is not far off. His brother, whom he accidentally meets on the street of Moscow, puts him in a separate room - the same one in Kamergersky, where the candle burned on the table. And here Zhivago feels calm, there is no turmoil in his soul.

How can one not remember the dying Pushkin, who said: “I want to die as a Christian.”

Yuri Zhivago does not receive communion before his death, does not confess. The time is different, and the hero is different. Just like Pasternak himself.

But spiritually he is akin to Pushkin.

This is proof of this.

I will cite the instructions of Saint Silouan of Athos, which will explain a lot:

St. Silouan of Athos: “The Lord loves people, but sends sorrows so that people recognize their weakness and humble themselves, and for their humility they receive the Holy Spirit.”

“The Lord loves people, but sends sorrows so that people recognize their weakness and humble themselves, and for their humility they receive the Holy Spirit, and with the Holy Spirit everything is fine.”

This is exactly what happened with Yuri Zhivago and with Boris Leonidovich himself. Only Zhivago dies from the crush of people, barely getting out of the tram onto the street, and the poet himself dies in his Peredelkino house.

The second compelling evidence is “Poems from the Novel,” which crowns both the main work of his life and the poet’s life itself.

Please note that Peredelkino, with which the poet’s fate is connected, comes from the word “redistribution” .

Under the pine trees, on the poet’s grave there is a tombstone. There is such a familiar and recognizable profile on the stele. But there is no cross. This was done by our experts in literature and art, who know everything, including about the private life of Boris Leonidovich.

“He didn’t go to church!” - they exclaim.

All spirit the novel “Doctor Zhivago” suggests that this is written by a man who has taken root in Russia as its son, as an Orthodox Christian, who did not abandon his homeland, even when he was thrown mud at him

​ Maybe. But the poems, especially his poems from the novel, “The Garden of Gethsemane”, “The Christmas Star”, “On Strastnaya”, the whole cycle New Testament, so you can call it all spirit of the novel “Doctor Zhivago” they clearly say that this is written by a man who took root in Russia as her son, as an Orthodox Christian who did not abandon his homeland, even when he was thrown into the mud and trampled into it.

"Poems from the Novel" opens. It became widely known thanks to Vladimir Vysotsky, who played the main character in Yuri Lyubimov’s play and began the performance at the Taganka Theater by going on stage with a guitar and performing these poems to music he himself composed.

Bold, innovative, talented.

I saw this performance. I remembered Vysotsky, I remembered the poem. And the lines of the last stanza unexpectedly revealed a new meaning to me:

But the order of actions has been thought out,
And the end of the road is inevitable.
I am alone, everything is drowning in pharisaism.
Living life is not a field to cross.

The poem was written in 1946, but its meaning directly correlates with the experiences before the death of the poet .

Yes, “everything is drowning in pharisaism” – It is precisely said about the terrible sea of ​​lies and scoundrels in which not only Hamlet found himself, but also the poet himself. But why then comes such a familiar, forgotten proverb, with which the poem ends? Couldn't he have come up with some brilliant poetic line?

Because from the window of the Peredelkino dacha you could see field, which is needed was to move, to come to the Church of the Transfiguration of the Lord.

And let us also remember that field from the novel along which the White Guard youths walked in a scattered chain. And let’s remember Seryozha Rantsevich. And Doctor Zhivago, who finds Psalm 90 in both the red and the white’s chests.

Yes, that’s exactly what you need, you just need to cross the field of life in order to come to the One who will save you and give you eternal life.

And if earlier from the window of his dacha Boris Leonidovich looked and saw across the field the ancient Church of the Transfiguration of the Lord, then today, years later, I imagined that he was looking at a new marvelous Temple, personifying modern Russia.

And I see how the poet crosses himself and enters under the arches of the Temple, in which Love lives, and “the image of the world, revealed in words, and creativity, and miracles,” lives, as it is said in his brilliant poem “August” about the transformation of the soul, living in “the help of the Most High.”

Captivating images! Hardly
In the history of any country
Have you ever seen anything more beautiful?
Their names should not be forgotten.
N. Nekrasov

Nikolai Alekseevich Nekrasov is called the singer of the female part. Many of his works are devoted to this topic. The best among them, in my opinion, is the poem “Russian Women”.

High and holy is their unforgettable feat!
They are like guardian angels
Were a constant support
To the exiles in the days of suffering.

The poet admires the feat of the wives of the Decembrists, who voluntarily followed their husbands. There were one hundred and twenty-three of them, but Nekrasov described only the first two, for whom it was almost the most difficult: they “paved the way for others” - these are Ekaterina Trubetskaya and Maria Volkonskaya.
The poem is compositionally divided into two parts. In the first, the poet talks about the difficult journey of Princess Trubetskoy to Siberia and her heroic opposition to the Irkutsk governor. The poem begins with a description of Trubetskoy's trip to Siberia. In the memories that come to her on the road alone, in half sleep, she pictures the past: a brilliant social life, the fun of balls, where she delights everyone with her beauty; marriage, a trip abroad to Italy... The dream is interrupted by a harsh, terrible truth - the sad shackle of a party of exiles. There is a severe contrast between the memories of the past, full of bliss and carelessness, and the harsh, impoverished, “God-forgotten side.”

The rainbow dreams have disappeared.
There is a row of paintings in front of her
Godforgotten side:
Stern gentleman
And a pathetic working man
With my head down...

Nekrasov subtly and deeply shows how this picture of the terrible “kingdom of beggars and slaves” helps Trubetskoy, filled with “naive horror,” to understand that the luxurious, idle life that she led before is completely divorced from the life of the robbed people - to understand justice and the noble goal of the cause in the name of which the Decembrists fought. The poet endows his heroines not only with the traits of courage and noble dedication, but also shows their ardent sympathy for the people. Everything the heroine has seen and experienced prepares her for a meeting with the Irkutsk governor. Trubetskoy rejects the admonitions of the governor, who is trying to dissuade her from going to hard labor:

Your head is gray
And you are still a child!
Our rights seem to you
Rights - no joke.
No! I don't value them
Take them quickly!
Where is the renunciation? I'll sign it!
And lively - horses!..

The princess responds to the false accusation against her husband with a hot rebuke, full of the pathos of patriotism and civic maturity:

Not a pathetic slave
I am a woman, a wife!
Let my fate be bitter -
I will be faithful to her!
Oh, if only he forgot me
For a woman different
There would be enough strength in my soul
Don't be his slave!
But I know: love for the Motherland -
My rival
And if necessary, again
I would forgive him!..

This is an exciting dramatic scene in which the heroic character of the Russian woman is revealed. Memories of Nicholas I evoke hatred and contempt in Trubetskoy:

Damn the dark house
Where is the first quadrille:
I danced... That hand
It still burns my hand...

Nekrasov shows the princess not as a highly virtuous and meek-hearted woman, but as one who sharply protests against the lies and hypocrisy existing in high society. The courage, heroism and fortitude of this fragile woman broke the old warrior-governor, he exclaims:

I'll get you there in three days...

Having finished work on the first part of the poem, Nekrasov began the second - “Princess Volkonskaya”, using facts from the princess’s notes. The poet creates at the same time a captivating and heroic, selfless and noble image of a Russian woman. At the beginning of the poem, he shows Volkonskaya as a young and beautiful girl - the “queen of the ball”, who captivated the youth with the “blue fire” of her eyes. He talks about her marriage to Sergei Volkonsky, whom she hardly knew and spent only the first weeks of their life together. Sergei did not dare to initiate his young wife into the conspiracy; she began to guess about it only at the last moment, when her husband burned incriminating documents in front of her. The misfortune suffered showed Volkonskaya’s inner strength of character. Having learned about the tragic fate of her husband, she was not at a loss:

Let the trouble be great
I haven't lost everything in the world.
Siberia is so terrible, Siberia is far away.
But people also live in Siberia?..

The meeting with her husband in the fortress casemate finally strengthened her and gave her new strength. However, Nekrasov shows that it was not love for her husband alone that forced Volkonskaya to make her decision: her husband became for her a patriotic hero, a fighter for the honor and freedom of the Fatherland.

I quietly whispered: “I understand everything.
I love you more than before...”
"What to do? And I will live in hard labor
(Until I get bored with life)”
“You’re alive, you’re healthy, so why bother?
(After all, hard labor will not separate us?)
“So that’s what you are like!” - Sergei said...

Even the husband is surprised by the young woman’s dedication. Having endured a difficult struggle with her family, Volkonskaya writes to the Tsar about her decision to follow her husband. In Nikolai’s “elegant” and hypocritical answer, she read the severity of her future life, the lack of hope of return. Despite this, Volkonskaya decides to go. With great emotional pain, she leaves her son and says goodbye to her family:

I don't know how I managed to resist.
What have I suffered... God!..
The mother was called from near Kyiv,
And the brothers came too;
My father ordered me to “reason” with him.
They convinced, they asked,
But the Lord himself strengthened my will,
Their speeches did not break her.

Maria Volkonskaya shows “courageous patience” throughout her difficult journey. Before her on the road there pass cruel and ugly pictures of oppression and poverty of the people. She also hears the “bitter groans” of mothers and wives seeing off recruits for indefinite military service, swearing at stations, sees how, “raising his fists over the coachman’s back, the courier frantically rushes” and how the landowner with his retinue poisons a hare in the peasant fields. These travel impressions fill Volkonskaya with even greater indignation against the despotic government. This is no longer the former dreamily cheerful, secular girl spoiled by success, but a patriotic woman, tempered by trials, wise by sorrowful events. When meeting her husband, she kisses his chains as a sign of gratitude and thereby blessing the feat and dedication of the participants in the uprising.

He suffered a lot, and he knew how to suffer!..
Involuntarily I bowed before him
Knees - and before hugging your husband.
She put shackles to her lips!..

Nekrasov tells about this clearly, without any pretense, with pathos and pride for the Motherland, which has such sons and daughters. Everyone who turns to the poem for the first time experiences the same feelings of proud admiration as the author who created this work. Wonderful time, wonderful people! We have something to be proud of in our history, we have someone to follow as an example of high citizenship.

The poem “Memory” is the first poem of Nikolai Gumilyov’s “real” book “Pillar of Fire”. This name "Pillar of Fire" contains many meanings; wandering, following God's will, fate, miracle, participation in the creation of the “Heavenly Jerusalem” (i.e., the desire for holiness, transformation), punishment for those who transgressed the Divine Law and protection of the righteous (the book was written in the post-revolutionary years, when a new state was created and the persecution of the church began), an unshakable foundation on which to establish itself.

Compositionally, the introduction is one of the most striking places in the book, and according to the author’s plan, the first poem in this collection was the poem “Memory.” It was written in 1919. Initially the poet called it “Soul”. After reading it, you understand that the name is not accidental: turning to the depths of his subconscious, the poet assumes the possibility of his existence in his body of different souls that replaced one another (or different incarnations of his soul - not a material value that largely determines fate and the entire path of life poet). But upon a more careful reading, the reader realizes that the poet has one soul, it goes through certain stages of development, corresponding to various stages of the author’s creative and life path. Therefore, N.S. Gumilyov’s change of title of the poem to “Memory” seems even more strange. Memory, like the soul, is a spiritual value. But how are they interconnected? The soul accumulates in memory life events and spiritual experiences, and memory preserves in its storerooms the entire evolution of the poet’s soul, and it is impossible to realize which of these values ​​is more important for a person. If we consider the title of the poem, we can understand that the poet gives preference to memory. Thanks to the device of personification, memory becomes the main character of the poem. It is memory that leads the poet’s “horse of life” by the bridle, and tells the saga of his past.

You tell me about the ones before
They lived in this body before me.

The author renounces his past. Today his condition is the only truth, only now, at this moment he is real. The three previous stages of his soul's development are so far from his new position. In fact, this poem is an analysis of the poet’s entire past life. And the author, like many other poets, in his poem recalls his past and does not accept naivety in his youth and maximalism in his youth.

His first hero (the beginning of Gumilyov’s spiritual development) is “ugly and thin, loving only the darkness of the groves.” This “witchcraft child” has strong romantic motives, but its romanticism is mystical: the epithet “witchcraft” emphasizes the unusualness and mystery of the image. He remembers the child himself as a “fallen leaf” torn from his roots, no matter what, capable of turning words into deeds: “with a word he stopped the rain” (from the memoirs of N. Gumilyov’s mother, such an incident actually took place). This fantastic ability makes the author similar to sorcerers and healers (people who know how to communicate with nature and poetry). Finishing this part, Nikolai Stepanovich once again disowns himself - the child:

Memory, memory, you won't find a sign
You can't convince the world that it was me.

It was precisely this beginning of the creative development of the poet’s soul that could lead him to the second stage. Believing that his exceptional abilities should be rewarded according to their merit, the second Nikolenka considered himself the king of nature, thirsting for greatness, glory, honors and power (“It was he who wanted to become god and king” - a hyperbole ridiculing the vanity and selfishness of the hero, and the technique of inversion separates Gumilyov - the present from Gumilyov - the past), for whom life is a friend, the world is a rug under his feet. His confidence comes from courage and bravery. Indeed, the call of exotic freedom, the wind from the south carried the poet with him, and he walked around the world, conquering countries and continents. It was this hero who announced to the whole world that he was a poet, apparently afraid that his silent house would go unnoticed:

He hung a poet's sign
Above the doors to my silent house.

The epithet “silent” emphasizes the thoughtfulness and search for truth of Gumilyov, a contemporary. Fame allows Gumilev to travel freely and not worry about his own name. Now he can be what he always wanted.

The third “soul” is the soul of a hero, a traveler, a “shooter” shooting “arrows” from a “quiver” (a collection of poems published in December 1915). The metaphor “chosen by freedom” emphasizes his moral strength, exclusivity and ability to be free. It is he who is capable of causing admiration and admiration; he is the true embodiment of the strength, valor and courage of real heroes. Gumilyov does not believe that the one for whom “the waters sang so loudly and the clouds were envious” was able to exchange the highest value of life - freedom for the bloody battles of war. But he is a hero, and a hero may not accept the “sacred long-awaited battle” with his enemies. He is not afraid of “the pangs of hunger and thirst, anxious sleep, the endless journey,” and he was awarded for his fearlessness. Having gone through a long journey of wandering around the world, searching for the true self, the poet gained mental strength and strength to immerse himself in himself. Not only the wisdom of his past life is revealed to him, but also his prophetic abilities. His stubbornness is aimed at creating a “temple that rises in the darkness.” He cares about the glory of his father - God, both in heaven and on earth. These lines sound like a prayer:

I was jealous of the glory of the Father
As in heaven and on earth.

In his heart lives a passionate desire to fight for a new faith, “New Jerusalem in the fields of his native country.” It’s surprising that the author calls the Bolshevik power that way. It is rather an apocalypse - a terrible judgment that will one day fall from heaven. The world will disappear, and the sky will be illuminated by the “milky way” of dazzling planets flashing like a garden in the sky. And although Gumilyov renounced the image of the “witch child” and the “God and Tsar”, in fact he is no less great than his past incarnations (although he does not admit this). His present-day greatness has been achieved through suffering; it has gone through the torments of his entire life’s journey. The Milky Way - the garden of the planets - is also found in another poem in this collection. In “The Lost Tram,” Gumilyov’s thought breaks out into eternity, into the astral space of the “zoological garden of the planets,” into otherness.

In the poem “Memory”, the lyrical hero (the new Nikolai Gumilyov) seems to soar to the sky, from where the truth is revealed to him: a traveler hiding his face - a monk, a monk, a wanderer, and here the gift of a seer allows the poet to see in the wanderer the whole past that history has absorbed humanity's past of faith, which makes him akin to John the Theologian, who predicted the end of the world in the apocalypse. Only he (Gumilev) sees a different ending: his own death. After reading the poem, you feel the tragedy of the soul, the poet’s fear of losing himself or getting lost in time and being erased from the memory of mankind, leaving no trace on earth. Therefore, the dream of the ability to shed skin like a snake sounds like a spell, but the snake will remain a snake in any guise, and Gumilyov’s soul is saddened by the premonition of imminent death. But the poem contains the theme of the rebirth of the soul, hope for resurrection, which is conveyed through the ring composition of the poem. Comparing a person with a snake, both at the beginning and at the end of the poem, makes it possible to understand that, having achieved perfection, a person has no reason to live and no one will save the soul from death, because... along with physical death comes the death of the soul, which is dear to him here and now.