Philosophical problems of "Poems in prose" I. S.

It seemed to me that I was somewhere in Russia, in the wilderness, in a simple village house.
The room is large, low, with three windows: the walls are smeared with white paint; there is no furniture. There is a bare plain in front of the house; gradually lowering, she goes into the distance; the gray, monochromatic sky hangs over her like a canopy.
I'm not alone; ten people with me in the room. The people are all simple, simply dressed; they walk along and across, silently, as if stealthily. They avoid each other - and, however, constantly change anxious looks.
No one knows why he got into this house and what kind of people are with him? There is anxiety and despondency on all faces ... everyone in turn approaches the windows and carefully looks around, as if expecting something from outside.
Then again they begin to roam up and down. A small boy is spinning between us; from time to time he squeaks in a thin, monotonous voice: "Tyatenka, I'm afraid!" “I’m sick of this squeak in my heart — and I’m also starting to be afraid of ... what?” I don't know myself. Only I feel: a big, big trouble is coming and approaching.
But the boy is no, no - yes, he will squeak. Ah, how to get out of here! How stuffy! How languid! How hard!.. But it is impossible to leave.
This sky is like a shroud. And there is no wind ... The air has died, or what?
Suddenly the boy ran up to the window and cried out in the same plaintive voice:
— Look! look! the earth has collapsed!
- How? failed?!
- Exactly: before there was a plain in front of the house, and now it stands on top scary mountain! The sky has fallen, gone down, and from the very house descends an almost sheer, as if torn, black steep.
We are all crowded at the windows ... Horror freezes our hearts.
“Here it is… here it is!” my neighbor whispers.
And then, along the entire distant earthly edge, something stirred, some small, roundish tubercles began to rise and fall.
“This is the sea!” we all thought at the same moment. “It will flood us all now ... But how can it grow and rise up? On this steep?
And, however, it grows, grows enormously... These are no longer individual tubercles rushing about in the distance... One continuous monstrous wave embraces the entire circle of the sky.
She flies, flies at us! - She rushes like a frosty whirlwind, spinning in pitch darkness. Everything trembled around - and there, in this oncoming mass, there was crackling, and thunder, and a thousand-throated, iron bark ...
Ha! What a roar and howl! This earth howled with fear...
The end of her! End of everything!
The boy squeaked again ... I wanted to grab hold of my comrades, but we were already all crushed, buried, drowned, carried away by that black, icy, roaring wave like ink!
Darkness... eternal darkness!
Barely catching my breath, I woke up. March 1878
I.S. Turgenev. Favorites.
Classical Library "Contemporary".
Moscow: Sovremennik, 1979.

Whoever wants to write for all times must be brief, concise and limited to essentials: he must think to the point of avarice over every phrase and every word ...

Arthur Schopenhauer

Throughout creative way Turgenev sought to combine his philosophical and artistic searches, to combine poetry and prose. This is perfectly possible for the writer in his latest work- "Poems in prose". For five years (1877-1882) about eighty miniatures were written, varied in content and form, uniting questions of philosophy, morality, and aesthetics. Etudes real life are replaced by fantasies and dreams, living people act next to allegorical symbols. No matter what topic is touched upon in the poems, no matter what images and genres it is clothed in, the voice of the author is always clearly felt in them. Written at the end literary activity, "Poems in Prose" in a concentrated form express many years of philosophical thoughts of Turgenev, various facets of his spiritual appearance. AT the art world The writer was always opposed to each other by two voices: the pantheistic admiration for the beauty and perfection of natural life competed in Turgenev's mind with Schopenhauer's idea of ​​the world as a vale of suffering and senseless wanderings of a homeless person. Falling in love with earthly life with its impudent, fleeting beauty does not exclude tragic notes, thoughts about finiteness. human life. The consciousness of the limitations of being is overcome by a passionate desire to live, reaching a thirst for immortality and a bold hope that the human individuality will not disappear, and the beauty of the phenomenon, having reached fullness, will not fade away.

The dualism of Turgenev's worldview determines the internal polemical nature of the solution of a number of philosophical problems, which form the basis of "Poems in Prose": life and death; love as the highest form of being, within which the fusion of the heavenly and the earthly is possible; religious motives and interpretation of the image of Christ.

Main Feature cycle of poems is a fusion of the individual and the universal. Lyrical hero even in the most secret thoughts, he acts as an exponent of the universal content. The miniatures reveal various facets of the spirit, which is characterized not only by the intense passion of love of life, but also by the thought turned to the universal plane of being. Hence the duality of the approach to the problem of life and death. On the one hand, Turgenev acts as the heir to Schopenhauer, asserting the homelessness and frailty of human existence. This makes it possible to talk about the catastrophism of the writer's consciousness, due to both the general world outlook and the peculiarities of life. recent years and approaching old age. On the other hand, Turgenev is not entirely satisfied with Schopenhauer's pessimism, according to which life is a manifestation of a dark and meaningless will.

Two facets of the problem are embodied in two groups of poems. The idea of ​​tragic loneliness and helplessness in the face of death is revealed in the poems “Old Woman”, “End of the World”, “Dog”, “Sea Voyage”, “Rival”. Turning directly to the analysis of these works, it is easy to trace the evolution of the problem and its filling with new nuances.

The thought of human insignificance becomes a through motif in the cycle and is developed with additional shades in each lyric-philosophical miniature.

The “old woman” in the fragment of the same name personifies fate and leads a person only to the grave.

The inevitability of death is the fate of man. The eternal horror of a person before death takes on a completely pessimistic character in this poem. Death becomes the only reality for the individual, taken outside of social ties, outside of his sociality. Man, acting here as a biological being, correlates himself with the universal world. In front of his face, he feels insignificant and accidental.

The tragic personification of death, its inevitability gives way to a pessimistic interpretation.

This mood of catastrophic existence finds its ultimate expression in the poem "The End of the World" with the subtitle "Dream".

The narrator imagines an unusual incident: the earth collapsed, the sea surrounded the surviving house on the circle, “it grows, grows enormously ... a continuous monstrous wave rushes like a frosty whirlwind, spinning in pitch darkness.” The end of the world is coming: "Darkness... darkness eternal!" The expectation of the end of the world is associated with Russia, the assembled people are horrified by the expectation of an impending catastrophe.

In such an interpretation of the problems of life and death, the individualistic mood of the lyrical hero, who feels like a weak and unfortunate renegade, he sees the whole in front of him and is afraid of it, has affected. Death is perceived as a cosmic catastrophe, in the face of which all values ​​lose their meaning. Death becomes the only absolute reality. The writer connects the psychology of horror and fear with the denial of a higher mind in the universe, deep essential forces.

The miniatures “Dog” and “Sea Voyage” develop the same theme of human helplessness and doom, but with new shades in the development of this motif.

In the poem “Dog”, man and animal turn out to be brothers in the face of death, final destruction. They unite common essence, the “quivering spark” of life and the fear of losing it. A person with self-awareness understands the tragic fate of all life on earth, and the dog is “mute, it is without words, it does not understand itself ...” But “one and the same life shyly clings to another.” The solidarity of a person with an animal, the readiness to sympathize with him, also doomed to death - this is what is new, which is introduced into the development of this theme of “human insignificance” by the fragment “Dog”.

In "Sea Voyage" there are two passengers on the ship: a man and a small monkey tied to one of the benches on the deck. In the ghostly hazy desert of the sea, in utter loneliness, they felt kinship and joy at meeting each other, some kind of calm: “immersed in the same unconscious thought, we were next to each other, like relatives.” Man and animal are united by a common essence - the will to live, which becomes painful due to the constant debilitating fear of the inevitability of final destruction.

In the miniature “Rival”, reflection on the frailty and transience of human existence is enriched with new strokes and shades. A deceased comrade-rival appeared to the narrator in the form of a ghost, as he once promised: “and suddenly it seemed to me that my rival was standing between the windows - and quietly shaking his head up and down sadly.” Without answering a single question, he disappears. The conclusion suggests itself about the mystery of life, its irrationality, inexhaustibility, which was also heard in the “Mysterious Tales”.

But Turgenev in "Poems in Prose" acts as a source of love of life, subtly feeling the beauty of life, able to overcome gloomy moods. Even where the author reflects on loneliness and old age, one can hear the cheerful voice of a person who does not want to accept the vicissitudes of fate.

About the thirst for life, about the awakening of a feeling of “suffocating joy” from the consciousness that you are alive, Turgenev says in the poem “Wa ..! Wah..!” The writer recalls in it his youth, when he was fond of Byron, imagined himself as Manfred and "cherished the thought of suicide." And then one day, having climbed high into the mountains, he decided to part with the “insignificant world” forever. But the cry of the baby, suddenly resounding in “this deserted wild height, where all life seemed to have died away long ago,” brought him back to life.

Two conflicting pictures were painted here by the artist. Dead rocks and stones, harsh cold, black clubs of night shadows and terrible silence - this is the realm of death. The low hut, the quivering light, the young mother and the cry of the child personify life. In the struggle between life and death, life wins. With the awakening of love for life in a person, romantic dreams disappear: “Byron, Manfred, dreams of suicide, my pride and my greatness, where have you all gone? ..”

The crying of the baby entered the fight against death and defeated it, saved the man and brought him back to life: “O hot cry of human, newly born life, you saved me, you cured me!”

One of the forms of overcoming the meaninglessness of life is love, which is included in the cycle as one of the core topics.

For the writer, love is a very real, earthly feeling, but with great power. It suddenly flies on a person and completely absorbs him. Before this powerful elemental force love man is helpless and defenseless.

Love as a great, irresistible feeling, as a source of joy and suffering is depicted by Turgenev in the poem "Rose". The loving being here is a woman, to whom the author does not give a name or a biography. He calls her simply - She, thereby giving the whole poem a generalized meaning. Love swept over her suddenly. Turgenev conveys the depth and complexity of the experiences of a person who is in the grip of love with the help of two images of nature: a sudden gusty downpour that rushed over a wide plain, and a young, slightly blossoming, but already with crumpled and soiled rose petals, thrown into a burning fireplace. The first personifies an unexpected and violent manifestation of feelings, the second - the destructive power of love, which in its flame burns a person.

One of the clearly expressed interests of Turgenev are religious motives, concentrated mainly around the problem of the relationship between heavenly truth and human truth and the interpretation of the image of Christ.

Sometimes in the stories of heroes, Christ takes on a real shape. Lukerya from Living Relics tells her wonderful dream when Christ appeared to her.

The image of Christ was created by Turgenev in the poem of the same name. Initially, it had the subtitle "Dream", but was later removed by the author. The dream turned into a vision.

The idea of ​​simplicity, the ordinariness of Christ is the main one in the poem. Christ is a man, he is the same as all people.

Written at the end of Turgenev's life and being his original poetic testament, "Poems in Prose" vividly characterize the personality, worldview and creativity famous artist the words.

(present ed., vol. 1, pp. 53, 458). Turgenev also knew many Russian works on the same topic: “The Last Day” by A. V. Timofeev (1835); the excerpt “Poems about the flood” (1827-1832), which was attributed to the Decembrist A.I. Odoevsky, and the gloomy poem “The Triumph of Death” (1834) by V.S. water element; formidable picture floods and deaths in the inexorable abyss in the story of V. F. Odoevsky “The Mock of a Dead Man” (Russian Nights, 1844), etc. Perhaps the tradition that developed in our country in the 19th century to interpret the flood as political retribution, dating back to “ Bronze Horseman” Pushkin and to the second part of Goethe’s Faust, prompted commentators on Turgenev’s “End of the World” to interpret this poem as an allegorical image. Even more important for a similar understanding of the “End of the World” were the lines placed by Herzen in “The Bell” (November 1, 1861): “Listen, the darkness does not interfere with listening: from all sides of our vast homeland, from the Don and the Urals, from Volga and Dnieper, a groan grows, a murmur rises; this is the initial roar of the sea wave, which boils, fraught with storms, after a terrible tiring calm. In accordance with this tradition, P. N. Sakulin also explained Turgenev's poem in prose (see: Sakulin, With. 91; compare: Shatalov, With. 25-27; Bobrov E. A. Little things from the history of Russian literature. The theme of the flood, - Russian Philological Bulletin, 1908, No. 1-2, p. 282-286). However, understanding the "end of the world" as a political allegory is unhistorical and completely implausible. In the last years of his life, Turgenev especially protested against this kind of arbitrary and far-fetched interpretation of his works. L. Nelidova (In memory of Turgenev. - BE, 1909, No. 9, p. 221), arguing that Turgenev “resolutely rejected everything mystical”, reported with some surprise that “at the same time, he willingly and spoke a lot about ... doomsday.<... >he told how he imagined the doomsday. I remembered these conversations when I read two prose poems on this subject. It should also be recalled that in the poem in the prose "Drozd" (I) waves are mentioned that take away human life, and that even earlier in the prologue to "Spring Waters" a picture of water is given, sea ​​element- hostile

and inexorable in relation to a person (see: current ed., vol. 8, pp. 255-256).

Quite real picture general destruction, given in the "End of the World", however, does not exclude the creative influence on Turgenev of contemporary literature. Shortly before the creation of this work, Turgenev undoubtedly became aware of Louise Ackermann's Poésies philosophiques, which became widely known after an article about this book in the Revue des Deux Mondes (1874, t. III, 15 mai, pp. 241-262). Among the poems of L. Ackerman, the large poem “The Flood” (“Le Déluge”) with an epigraph from the epilogue to “ terrible year" V. Hugo: "Do you think that I tide and I am the flood." Ackerman: “We wanted light, but the waves of the flood will create darkness. We dreamed of harmony, but chaos comes. And in this tide of hatred and wild fury, the happiest will be those who are swallowed up by the waves.

Almost at the same time that Turgenev was creating The End of the World, A. A. Fet wrote the poem Never (published in the magazine Ogonyok, 1879, No. 9), in which the death of the earth is presented:

I understood everything: the earth has long cooled down
And died..............
Where to go, where there is no one to hug,
Where is time lost in space?
Come back, death, hurry up to accept
The last life is a fatal burden,
And you, frozen corpse of the earth, fly,
Carrying my corpse along the eternal path.

Fet sent this poem in manuscript to L. N. Tolstoy, and they argued among themselves for a long time, discussing it in all its details. L. Tolstoy, by the way, claimed that his family read “Never” with interest, because they anxiously followed the newspapers for the sudden outbreak of autumn 1878 in the Astrakhan province. plague epidemic. A. Fet, in a letter to L. N. Tolstoy dated February 3, 1879, compared his poem “Never” with Byron’s “Darkness” (Tolstoy L. N. Correspondence with Russian writers. In 2 vols. M., 1978. T. 2, p. 45).

Jan 22 2016

Whoever wants to write for all times must be brief, concise and limited to essentials: he must think to the point of avarice over every phrase and every word ... Arthur Schopenhauer Throughout his career, Turgenev sought to combine his philosophical and artistic searches, to combine poetry and prose. This is perfectly possible for the writer in his latest work - “Poems in Prose”. For five years (1877-1882) about eighty miniatures were written, varied in content and form, uniting questions of philosophy, morality, and aesthetics. Etudes of real life are replaced by fantasies and dreams, living people act next to allegorical symbols.

No matter what topic is touched upon in the poems, no matter what images and genres it is clothed in, the voice of the author is always clearly felt in them. Written at the end of his literary activity, "Poems in Prose" in a concentrated form express Turgenev's many years of philosophical reflections, various facets of his spiritual appearance. In the writer's artistic world, two voices always opposed each other: the pantheistic admiration for the beauty and perfection of natural life competed in Turgenev's mind with Schopenhauer's idea of ​​the world as a vale of suffering and senseless wanderings of a homeless person. Falling in love with the earthly, with its impudent, fleeting beauty, does not exclude tragic notes, thoughts about the finiteness of human life. Consciousness of the limitations of being is overcome by a passionate desire to live, reaching a thirst for immortality and a bold hope that the human individuality will not disappear, and the phenomenon, having reached fullness, will not fade away.

The dualism of Turgenev's world outlook determines the internal polemical nature of solving a number of philosophical problems that form the basis of "Poems in Prose": life and death; love as the highest form of being, within which the fusion of the heavenly and the earthly is possible; religious motives and interpretation of Christ. The main feature of the cycle of poems is the fusion of the individual and the universal. The lyrical hero, even in the most secret thoughts, acts as an exponent of the universal content.

The miniatures reveal various facets of the spirit, which is characterized not only by the intense passion of love of life, but also by the thought turned to the universal plane of being. Hence the duality of the approach to the problem of life and death. On the one hand, Turgenev acts as the heir to Schopenhauer, asserting the homelessness and frailty of human existence.

This makes it possible to talk about the catastrophism of the writer's consciousness, due to both the general worldview, and the peculiarities of life in recent years and the approach of old age. On the other hand, Turgenev is not entirely satisfied with Schopenhauer's pessimism, according to which life is a manifestation of a dark and meaningless will. Two facets of the problem are embodied in two groups of poems.

The idea of ​​tragic loneliness and helplessness in the face of death is revealed in the poems “Old Woman”, “End of the World”, “Dog”, “Sea Voyage”, “Rival”. Turning directly to the analysis of these works, it is easy to trace the evolution of the problem and its filling with new nuances. The thought of human insignificance becomes a through motif in the cycle and is developed with additional shades in each lyric-philosophical miniature. The “old woman” in the fragment of the same name personifies fate and leads a person only to the grave.

The inevitability of death is the fate of man. The eternal horror of a person before death takes on a completely pessimistic character in this poem. Death becomes the only reality for the individual, taken outside of social ties, outside of his sociality. , acting here as a biological being, correlates itself with the universal world. In front of his face, he feels insignificant and accidental.

The tragic personification of death, its inevitability gives way to a pessimistic interpretation. This mood of catastrophic existence finds its ultimate expression in "The End of the World" with the subtitle "Dream". The narrator imagines an unusual incident: the earth collapsed, the sea surrounded the surviving house on the circle, “it grows, grows enormously ... a continuous monstrous wave rushes like a frosty whirlwind, spinning in pitch darkness.” The end of the world is coming: “Darkness… darkness eternal!

” The expectation of the end of the world is associated with Russia, the assembled people are horrified by the expectation of an impending catastrophe. In such an interpretation of the problems of life and death, the individualistic mood of the lyric, which feels like a weak and unfortunate renegade, he sees the whole in front of him and is afraid of it, has affected. Death is perceived as a cosmic catastrophe, in the face of which all values ​​lose their meaning. Death becomes the only absolute reality.

The psychology of horror and fear is associated with the denial of the higher mind in the universe, the deepest essential forces. The miniatures “Dog” and “Sea Voyage” develop the same theme of human helplessness and doom, but with new shades in the development of this motif. In the poem “Dog”, man and animal turn out to be brothers in the face of death, final destruction. They are united by a common essence, the “quivering light” of life and the fear of losing it. A person with self-awareness understands the tragic fate of all life on earth, and the dog is "mute, it is without words, it does not understand itself ..." But "one and the same life shyly presses against another."

The solidarity of a person with an animal, the readiness to sympathize with him, also doomed to death - this is what is new, which is introduced into the development of this theme of “human insignificance” by the fragment “Dog”. In "Sea Voyage" there are two passengers on the ship: a man and a small monkey tied to one of the benches on the deck. In the ghostly hazy desert of the sea, in utter loneliness, they felt kinship and joy

Dream It seemed to me that I was somewhere in Russia, in the wilderness, in a simple village house.

The room is large, low, with three windows; the walls are smeared with white paint; there is no furniture. There is a bare plain in front of the house; gradually lowering, she goes into the distance; the gray, monochromatic sky hangs over her like a canopy.

I'm not alone; ten people with me in the room. People are all simple, simply dressed; they walk along and across, silently, as if stealthily. They avoid each other - and, however, constantly change anxious looks.

No one knows: why did he get into this house and what kind of people are with him? There is anxiety and despondency on all faces ... everyone in turn approaches the windows and carefully looks around, as if expecting something from outside.

Then again they begin to roam up and down. A small boy is spinning between us; from time to time he squeaks in a thin, monotonous voice: "Tyatenka, I'm afraid!" - I feel sick at heart from this squeak - and I, too, begin to be afraid of ... what? I don't know myself. Only I feel: a big, big trouble is coming and approaching.

But the boy no, no - yes, he will squeak. Ah, how to get out of here! How stuffy! How languid! How hard!.. But it is impossible to leave.

This sky is like a shroud. And there is no wind ... The air has died, or what?

Suddenly the boy went up to the window and cried out in the same plaintive voice:

Look! look! the earth has collapsed!

How? failed?!

Exactly: before there was a plain in front of the house, but now it stands on the top of a terrible mountain! The sky has fallen, gone down, and from the very house descends an almost sheer, as if torn, black steep.

We are all crowded at the windows ... Horror freezes our hearts.

Here it is.... here it is! my neighbor whispers.

And then, along the entire distant earthly edge, something stirred, some small roundish tubercles began to rise and fall.

“This is the sea!” we all thought at the same moment. “It will flood you all now .... But how can it grow and rise up? On this steep?” And, however, it grows, grows enormously... These are no longer individual tubercles rushing about in the distance... One continuous monstrous wave embraces the entire circle of the sky.

She flies, flies at us! It rushes like a frosty whirlwind, spinning with pitch darkness. Everything trembled around - and there, in this oncoming mass, there was crackling, and thunder, and a thousand-throated, iron bark ...

Ha! What a roar and howl! This earth howled from the guard...

The end of her! End of everything!

The boy squeaked again ... I wanted to grab hold of my comrades, but we were already all crushed, buried, drowned, carried away by that black, icy, roaring ink walker!

Darkness... eternal darkness!

Barely catching my breath, I woke up.