The last poem written by Pushkin in Boldin in October 1833 is the artistic result of his reflections on the personality of Peter I, on the "Petersburg" period of Russian history. Two themes “met” in the poem: the theme of Peter, “the miraculous builder,” and the theme of the “simple” (“little”) man, “an insignificant hero,” which worried the poet from the late 1820s. The story of the tragic fate of an ordinary resident of St. Petersburg, who suffered during the flood, became the plot basis for historical and philosophical generalizations related to the role of Peter in the modern history of Russia, with the fate of his offspring - St. Petersburg.
The Bronze Horseman is one of Pushkin's most perfect poetic works. The poem is written, like Eugene Onegin, in iambic tetrameter. Pay attention to the variety of its rhythms and intonations, amazing sound. The poet creates vivid visual and auditory images, using the richest rhythmic, intonation and sound possibilities of Russian verse (repetitions, caesuras, alliterations, assonances). Many fragments of the poem have become textbooks. We hear the festive polyphony of St. Petersburg life (“And the brilliance and noise and the talk of balls, / And at the hour of the feast, the bachelor / The hiss of foamy glasses / And the blue flame of punch”), we see Evgeny, confused and shocked (“He stopped. / Went back and turned back. / Looks ... walks ... still looks. / Here is the place where their house stands, / Here is a willow. There were gates here, / It was blown away, you can see. Where is the house?), We are deafened "as if by thunder - / Heavy-voiced galloping / On the shaken pavement. “In terms of sound figurativeness, the verse of The Bronze Horseman knows few rivals,” the poet V.Ya. Bryusov, a subtle researcher of Pushkin's poetry.
In a short poem (less than 500 verses), history and modernity, the hero's private life with historical life, reality with myth, are combined. The perfection of poetic forms and the innovative principles of the artistic embodiment of historical and modern material made The Bronze Horseman a unique work, a kind of "monument not made by hands" to Peter, Petersburg, the "Petersburg" period of Russian history.
Pushkin overcame the genre canons of the historical poem. Peter I does not appear in the poem as a historical character (he is an "idol" - a statue, a deified statue), nothing is said about the time of his reign. The Petrine era for Pushkin is a long period in the history of Russia, which did not end with the death of the reformer tsar. The poet refers not to the origins of this era, but to its results, that is, to the present. The high historical point from which Pushkin looked at Peter was the event of the recent past - the St. Petersburg flood on November 7, 1824, "a terrible time", about which, as the poet emphasized, "there is a fresh memory." This is a living, not yet “cooled down” history.
The flood, one of many that have hit the city since its founding, is the central event of the work. A tale of flood shapes the first semantic plan of the poem is historical. The documentary nature of the story is noted in the author's "Foreword" and in "Notes". In one of the episodes, the “late tsar,” the unnamed Alexander I, appears. For Pushkin, the flood is not just a vivid historical fact. He looked at it as a kind of final "document" of the era. This is, as it were, the "last tale" in her Petersburg "chronicle", begun by Peter's decision to found a city on the Neva. The flood is the historical basis of the plot and the source of one of the conflicts of the poem - the conflict between the city and the elements.
The second semantic plan of the poem is conditionally literary, fictional- given the subtitle: "Petersburg Tale". Eugene is the central character of this story. The faces of the rest of the inhabitants of St. Petersburg are indistinguishable. This is the "people" crowding the streets, drowning during the flood (the first part), and the cold, indifferent people of St. Petersburg in the second part. The real background of the story about the fate of Eugene was Petersburg: Senate Square, the streets and the outskirts, where Parasha's "ramshackle house" stood. Pay attention to. the fact that the action in the poem is transferred to the street: during the flood, Eugene found himself “on Petrova Square”, home, in his “desert corner”, he, distraught with grief, no longer returns, becoming an inhabitant of St. Petersburg streets. The Bronze Horseman is the first urban poem in Russian literature.
Historical and conditional-literary plans dominate in realistic storytelling(first and second parts).
Plays an important role the third semantic plan is legendary and mythological. It is given by the title of the poem - "The Bronze Horseman". This semantic plan interacts with the historical one in the introduction, sets off the plot narrative about the flood and the fate of Yevgeny, from time to time reminding of himself (primarily by the figure of the “idol on a bronze horse”), and dominates in the climax of the poem (the pursuit of Yevgeny by the Bronze Horseman). A mythological hero appears, a revived statue - the Bronze Horseman. In this episode, Petersburg seems to lose its real shape, turning into a conventional, mythological space.
The Bronze Horseman is an unusual literary image. It is a figurative interpretation of a sculptural composition that embodies the idea of its creator, the sculptor E. Falcone, but at the same time it is a grotesque, fantastic image, overcoming the border between the real (“believable”) and the mythological (“wonderful”). The Bronze Horseman, awakened by the words of Eugene, breaking off his pedestal, ceases to be only an "idol on a bronze horse", that is, a monument to Peter. He becomes the mythological embodiment of the "terrible king".
Since the founding of St. Petersburg, the real history of the city has been interpreted in various myths, legends and prophecies. The “City of Peter” appeared in them not as an ordinary city, but as the embodiment of mysterious, fatal forces. Depending on the assessment of the personality of the tsar and his reforms, these forces were understood as divine, good, endowing the Russian people with a city-paradise, or, on the contrary, as evil, demonic, and therefore anti-people.
In the XVIII - early XIX century. In parallel, two groups of myths developed, mirroring each other. In some myths, Peter was presented as the “father of the Fatherland”, a deity who founded a certain intelligent cosmos, a “glorious city”, a “beloved country”, a stronghold of state and military power. These myths arose in poetry (including odes and epic poems by A.P. Sumarokov, V.K. Trediakovsky, G.R. Derzhavin) and were officially encouraged. In other myths that developed in folk tales and prophecies of schismatics, Peter was a product of Satan, a living Antichrist, and Petersburg, founded by him, was a “non-Russian” city, satanic chaos, doomed to inevitable disappearance. If the first, semi-official, poetic myths were myths about the miraculous foundation of the city, from which the "golden age" began in Russia, then the second, folk, myths about its destruction or desolation. “Petersburg to be empty”, “the city will burn and drown” - this is how the opponents of Peter answered those who saw in Petersburg the man-made “northern Rome”.
Pushkin created synthetic images of Peter and Petersburg. In them, both mutually exclusive mythological concepts complemented each other. The poetic myth about the founding of the city is developed in the introduction, oriented towards the literary tradition, and the myth about its destruction, flooding - in the first and second parts of the poem.
The originality of Pushkin's poem lies in the complex interaction of historical, conventional literary and legendary mythological semantic planes. In the introduction, the foundation of the city is shown in two plans. The first - legendary mythological: Peter appears here not as a historical character, but as a nameless hero of the legend. He- the founder and future builder of the city, fulfilling the will of nature itself. However, his “great thoughts” are historically concrete: the city is being created by the Russian tsar “for the evil of an arrogant neighbor”, so that Russia could “cut a window into Europe”. Historical semantic plan underlined with the words "a hundred years have passed." But these same words envelop the historical event in a mythological haze: in place of the story about how the “city was founded”, how it was built, there is a graphic pause, a “dash”. The emergence of the "young city" "from the darkness of the forests, from the swamp of blat" is like a miracle: the city was not built, but "ascended magnificently, proudly." The story about the city begins in 1803 (this year St. Petersburg turned a hundred years old). Third - conditionally literary- the semantic plan appears in the poem immediately after the historically reliable picture of "gloomy Petrograd" on the eve of the flood (the beginning of the first part). The author states that the name of the hero is conventional, hints at his “literary character” (in 1833 the first complete edition of the novel “Eugene Onegin” appeared),
Note that in the poem there is a change of semantic plans, and their overlap, intersection. Let us give several examples illustrating the interaction of historical and legendary-mythological planes. The poetic "report" on the violence of the elements is interrupted by a comparison of the city (its name is replaced by a mythopoetic "pseudonym") with a river deity (hereinafter, our italics - Auth.): “waters suddenly / Flowed into underground cellars, / Channels poured to the gratings, / And Petropolis surfaced like a Triton, / Immersed in water up to the waist».
The enraged Neva is compared now with a frenzied "beast", then with "thieves" climbing through the windows, then with a "villain" who burst into the village "with his ferocious gang." The story of the flood takes on a folklore-mythological coloring. The water element evokes in the poet stable associations with a riot, a villainous raid of robbers. In the second part, the story of the "brave trader" is interrupted by an ironic mention of the modern myth-maker - the graphomaniac poet Khvostov, who "already sang with immortal verses / The misfortune of the Nevsky banks."
There are many compositional and semantic parallels in the poem. Their basis is the relationship established between the fictional hero of the poem, the water element, the city and the sculptural composition - "an idol on a bronze horse." For example, a parallel to the “great thoughts” of the founder of the city (introduction) is the “excitement of various thoughts” by Eugene (part one). The legendary He thought about the city and state interests, Eugene - about the simple, worldly: "He will somehow arrange for himself / A humble and simple shelter / And he will calm Parasha in him." The dreams of Peter, "the miraculous builder", came true: the city was built, he himself became the "ruler of half the world." Eugene's dreams of a family and a home collapsed with the death of Parasha. In the first part, other parallels arise: between Peter and the "late tsar" (the legendary double of Peter "looked into the distance" - the tsar "in thought with mournful eyes / Looked at the evil disaster"); the tsar and the people (the sad tsar “said: “The elements of God / Kings cannot be co-ruled” - the people “see God's wrath and await execution”). The tsar is powerless against the elements, the dismayed townspeople feel abandoned to the mercy of fate: “Alas! everything perishes: shelter and food! / Where will you get it?
Eugene, sitting "on a marble beast" in the pose of Napoleon ("hands clasped in a cross"), is compared with the monument to Peter:
And turned his back on him
In the unshakable height
Over the perturbed Neva
Standing with outstretched hand
Idol on a bronze horse.
A compositional parallel to this scene is drawn in the second part: a year later, the insane Yevgeny again found himself on the same “empty square”, where waves splashed during the flood:
He found himself under the pillars
Big house. On the porch
With a raised paw, as if alive,
There were guard lions,
And right in the dark sky
Above the walled rock
Idol with outstretched hand
He sat on a bronze horse.
In the figurative system of the poem, two seemingly opposite principles coexist - the principle of similarity and the principle of contrast. Parallels and comparisons not only indicate the similarities that arise between different phenomena or situations, but also reveal unresolved (and unresolvable) contradictions between them. For example, Eugene, fleeing the elements on a marble lion, is a tragicomic "double" of the guardian of the city, "an idol on a bronze horse", standing "in an unshakable height." The parallel between them emphasizes the sharp contrast between the greatness of the “idol” raised above the city and the miserable position of Eugene. In the second scene, the “idol” himself becomes different: losing his grandeur (“He is terrible in the surrounding darkness!”), He looks like a prisoner, surrounded by “watch lions”, “above the fenced rock”. The "unshakable height" becomes "dark", and the "idol" in front of which Eugene stands, turns into a "proud idol".
The majestic and “terrible” appearance of the monument in two scenes reveals the contradictions that objectively existed in Peter: the greatness of a statesman who cared for the good of Russia, and the cruelty, inhumanity of the autocrat, many of whose decrees, as Pushkin noted, were “written with a whip”. These contradictions are merged in the sculptural composition - the material "double" of Peter.
The poem is a living figurative organism that resists any unambiguous interpretations. All images of the poem are multi-valued images-symbols. The images of St. Petersburg, the Bronze Horseman, the Neva, “poor Eugene” have an independent meaning, but, unfolding in the poem, they enter into a complex interaction with each other. The seemingly “cramped” space of the small poem is expanding.
The poet explains history and modernity, creating a capacious symbolic picture of St. Petersburg. "Grad Petrov" is not only a historical stage on which both real and fictional events unfold. Petersburg is a symbol of the Petrine era, the "Petersburg" period of Russian history. The city in Pushkin's poem has many faces: it is both a "monument" to its founder, and a "monument" to the entire Peter the Great era, and an ordinary city in distress and busy with everyday bustle. The flood and the fate of Yevgeny are only part of St. Petersburg's history, one of the many stories suggested by the life of the city. For example, in the first part, a storyline is outlined, but not developed, connected with the unsuccessful attempts of the military governor-general of St. Petersburg Count M.A. Miloradovich and Adjutant General A.Kh. waters / The generals set off / To save him and the fearful / And the drowning people at home. This was written in the historical "news" about the St. Petersburg floods, compiled by V.N. Verkh, to which Pushkin refers in the Preface.
The Petersburg world appears in the poem as a kind of closed space. The city lives according to its own laws, drawn by its founder. It is, as it were, a new civilization, opposed to both wild nature and the old Russia. The “Moscow” period of its history, symbolized by “old Moscow” (“porphyry-bearing widow”), is a thing of the past.
Petersburg is full of sharp conflicts, insoluble contradictions. The majestic, but internally contradictory image of the city is created in the introduction. Pushkin emphasizes the duality of St. Petersburg: he "ascended magnificently, proudly", but "from the darkness of the forests, from the swamp of blat." This is a colossal city, under which there is a swampy swamp. Conceived by Peter as a spacious place for the coming "feast", it is cramped: along the banks of the Neva, "slender masses crowd." Petersburg is the "military capital", but parades and the thunder of cannon salutes make it so. This is a "stronghold" that no one storms, and the Fields of Mars - the fields of military glory - are "amusing".
The introduction is a panegyric to state Petersburg, the front door. But the more the poet talks about the magnificent beauty of the city, the more it seems that he is some kind of motionless, ghostly. “Ships in a crowd” “are striving for rich marinas”, but there are no people on the streets. The poet sees "sleeping masses / Deserted streets". The very air of the city is "immovable". “Running sleds along the wide Neva”, “and the glitter and noise and the sound of balls”, “the hiss of foamy glasses” - everything is beautiful, sonorous, but the faces of the inhabitants of the city are not visible. There is something unsettling hidden in the proud appearance of the “younger” capital. The word “I love” is repeated five times in the introduction. This is a declaration of love for Petersburg, but it is pronounced like a spell, a compulsion to love. It seems that the poet is trying with all his might to fall in love with the beautiful city, which evokes conflicting, disturbing feelings in it.
Anxiety sounds in the wish to the “city of Peter”: “Show off, city of Petrov, and stand / Unshakable, like Russia. / May he make peace with you / And the conquered elements...» The beauty of the city-stronghold is not eternal: it stands firmly, but can be destroyed by the elements. In the very comparison of the city with Russia, there is a dual meaning: there is both a recognition of Russia's inviolability and a feeling of the city's unsteadiness. For the first time, the image of the water element that has not been tamed to the end appears: it appears as a powerful living being. The element is defeated, but not “reconciled”. "Finnish Waves", it turns out, have not forgotten "the enmity and captivity of their old." A city founded "on the evil of an arrogant neighbor" itself can be disturbed by the "futile malice" of the elements.
The introduction outlines the main principle of the image of the city, implemented in two parts of the "Petersburg story" - contrast. In the first part, the appearance of St. Petersburg changes, as if mythological gilding is falling off it. The “golden skies” disappear, they are replaced by the “gloom of a rainy night” and “pale day”. This is no longer a magnificent “young city”, “beauty and wonder of the midnight countries”, but “gloomy Petrograd”. He is dominated by the "autumn cold", the howling wind, the "angry" rain. The city turns into a fortress besieged by the Neva. Please note: the Neva is also part of the city. He himself hid evil energy, which is released by the "violent nonsense" of the Finnish waves. The Neva, stopping its "sovereign course" in the granite banks, breaks free and destroys the "strict, slender appearance" of St. Petersburg. As if the city itself takes itself by storm, tearing its womb. Everything that was hidden behind the front facade of the “city of Peter” in the introduction is exposed, as unworthy of odic delights:
Trays under a wet veil,
Fragments of huts, logs, roofs,
thrifty commodity,
Relics of pale poverty,
Storm-blown bridges
A coffin from a blurry cemetery
Float through the streets!
People appear on the streets, “crowding in heaps” on the banks of the Neva, the tsar comes out onto the balcony of the Winter Palace, Yevgeny looks with fear at the raging waves, worrying about Parasha. The city has changed, filled with people, ceasing to be only a city-museum. The entire first part is a picture of a national disaster. Petersburg is besieged by officials, shopkeepers, poor inhabitants of huts. There is no rest for the dead. For the first time, the figure of an “idol on a bronze horse” appears. The living king is powerless to resist the "divine element." Unlike the imperturbable "idol", he is "sad", "confused".
The third part shows Petersburg after the flood. But the urban contradictions have not only not been removed, but have become even more intensified. Peace and tranquility are fraught with a threat, the possibility of a new conflict with the elements (“But the victory is full of triumph, / The waves were still seething viciously, / As if a fire smoldered under them"). The Petersburg outskirts, where Eugene rushed, resembles a "battlefield" - "a terrible view", but the next morning "everything went back to the old order." The city again became cold and indifferent to people. This is a city of officials, prudent merchants, "evil children" throwing stones at the insane Yevgeny, coachmen whipping him with whips. But it is still a "sovereign" city - an "idol on a bronze horse" hovers over it.
The line of realistic depiction of St. Petersburg and the "little" man is developed in the "Petersburg stories" by N.V. Gogol, in the works of F.M. Dostoevsky. The mythological version of the Petersburg theme was taken up by both Gogol and Dostoevsky, but especially by the Symbolists of the early 20th century. - Andrei Bely in the novel "Petersburg" and D.S. Merezhkovsky in the novel "Peter and Alexei".
Petersburg is a huge "man-made" monument to Peter I. The contradictions of the city reflect the contradictions of its founder. The poet considered Peter an exceptional person: a true hero of history, a builder, an eternal "worker" on the throne (see Stanzas, 1826). Peter, Pushkin emphasized, is an integral figure in which two opposite principles are combined - spontaneous revolutionary and despotic: "Peter I is at the same time Robespierre and Napoleon, the Revolution Incarnate."
Peter appears in the poem in his mythological "reflections" and material incarnations. He is in the legend about the founding of St. Petersburg, in the monument, in the urban environment - in the “huge masses of slender” palaces and towers, in the granite of the Neva banks, in bridges, in the “warlike liveliness” of the “amusing Fields of Mars”, in the Admiralty needle, as if piercing the sky. Petersburg is, as it were, the materialized will and deed of Peter, turned into stone and cast iron, cast in bronze.
The images of the statues are impressive images of Pushkin's poetry. They were created in the poems “Memories in Tsarskoye Selo” (1814), “To the Bust of the Conqueror” (1829), “Tsarskoye Selo Statue” (1830), “To the Artist” (1836), and the images of statues that come to life, destroying people, are in tragedy "The Stone Guest" (1830) and "The Tale of the Golden Cockerel" (1834). The two material "faces" of Peter I in Pushkin's poem are his statue, "an idol on a bronze horse," and the revived statue, the Bronze Horseman.
To understand these Pushkin images, it is necessary to take into account the idea of the sculptor, embodied in the very monument to Peter. The monument is a complex sculptural composition. Its main meaning is given by the unity of the horse and the rider, each of which has an independent meaning. The author of the monument wanted to show "the personality of the creator, legislator, benefactor of his country." “My king does not hold any rod,” Etienne-Maurice Falconet noted in a letter to D. Diderot, “he stretches out his beneficent hand over the country he is touring. He rises to the top of the rock that serves him as a pedestal - this is the emblem of the difficulties he has overcome.
This understanding of the role of Peter partly coincides with Pushkin's: the poet saw in Peter a "powerful lord of fate" who managed to subjugate the elemental power of Russia. But his interpretation of Peter and Russia is richer and more significant than the sculptural allegory. What is given in the sculpture in the form of a statement sounds like a rhetorical question in Pushkin, which does not have an unequivocal answer: “Are you right above the abyss, / At a height, with an iron bridle / Russia reared up?”. Pay attention to the difference in the intonations of the author's speech, addressed in turn to the "idol" - Peter and to the "bronze horse" - the symbol of Russia. “He is terrible in the surrounding darkness! / What a thought on the forehead! What power is hidden in it!” - the poet recognizes the will and creative genius of Peter, which turned into the cruel power of the "iron bridle" that reared Russia. “And what a fire in this horse! / Where are you galloping, proud horse, / And where will you lower your hooves? - the exclamation is replaced by a question in which the poet's thought is addressed not to the country curbed by Peter, but to the riddle of Russian history and to modern Russia. She continues her run, and not only the elements of nature, but also popular riots disturb Peter's "eternal sleep".
The bronze Peter in Pushkin's poem is a symbol of the state will, the energy of power liberated from the human principle. Even in the poem "Hero" (1830), Pushkin called: "Leave your heart to the hero! What will / He be without him? Tyrant...". "The idol on a bronze horse" - "the pure embodiment of autocratic power" (V.Ya. Bryusov) - is devoid of a heart. He is a “wonderful builder”, at the wave of his hand Petersburg “ascended”. But the brainchild of Peter is a miracle created not for man. A window to Europe was opened by the autocrat. The future Petersburg was conceived by him as a city-state, a symbol of autocratic power, alienated from the people. Peter created a "cold" city, uncomfortable for the Russian people, elevated above it.
Having pushed the bronze Peter and the poor St. Petersburg official Yevgeny into conflict in the poem, Pushkin emphasized that state power and man are separated by an abyss. Equalizing all estates with one "club", pacifying the human element of Russia with an "iron bridle", Peter wanted to turn it into a submissive and pliable material. Eugene was to become the embodiment of the autocrat's dream of a man-puppet, deprived of historical memory, who forgot both "native traditions" and his "nickname" (that is, surname, family), which "in times past" "perhaps shone / And under the pen of Karamzin / It sounded in native legends. In part, the goal was achieved: Pushkin's hero is a product and victim of St. Petersburg "civilization", one of countless officials without a "nickname" who "serve somewhere", without thinking about the meaning of their service, dream of "petty-bourgeois happiness": a good place , home, family, well-being. In the sketches of the unfinished poem Yezersky (1832), which many researchers compare with The Bronze Horseman, Pushkin gave a detailed description of his hero, a descendant of a noble family, who turned into an ordinary St. Petersburg official. In The Bronze Horseman, the story about the genealogy and everyday life of Yevgeny is extremely laconic: the poet emphasized the generalized meaning of the fate of the hero of the "Petersburg story".
But Eugene, even in his modest desires that separate him from the domineering Peter, is not humiliated by Pushkin. The hero of the poem - a prisoner of the city and the "Petersburg" period of Russian history - is not only a reproach to Peter and the city he created, a symbol of Russia, numb from the angry look of the "terrible Tsar". Eugene is the antipode of the "idol on a bronze horse." He has something that the bronze Peter is deprived of: heart and soul. He is able to dream, grieve, "fear" for the fate of his beloved, to languish from torment. The deep meaning of the poem is that Eugene is compared not with Peter the man, but precisely with Peter's "idol", with a statue. Pushkin found his "unit of measurement" of unbridled, but metal-bound power - humanity. Measured by this measure, the "idol" and the hero draw closer. “Insignificant” in comparison with the real Peter, “poor Eugene”, compared with a dead statue, turns out to be next to the “miraculous builder”.
The hero of the "Petersburg story", having become a madman, has lost social certainty. Evgeny, who went mad, "dragged out his unfortunate age / Neither beast nor man, / Neither this nor that, nor a dweller of the world, / Nor a dead ghost ...". He wanders around St. Petersburg, not noticing the humiliation and malice of people, deafened by the "noise of inner anxiety." Pay attention to this remark of the poet, because it is the “noise” in Yevgeny’s soul, which coincided with the noise of the natural elements (“It was gloomy: / It was raining, the wind howled sadly”) awakens in the madman what for Pushkin was the main sign of a person - memory : “Evgeny jumped up; remembered vividly / He is a past horror. It is the memory of the flood that he experienced brings him to the Senate Square, where he meets the "idol on a bronze horse" for the second time.
This climactic episode of the poem, which ended with the Bronze Horseman chasing the "poor fool", is especially important for understanding the meaning of the whole work. Beginning with V. G. Belinsky, it has been interpreted differently by researchers. Often in the words of Eugene, addressed to the bronze Peter (“Good, miraculous builder! - / He whispered, trembling angrily, - / Already to you! ..”), they see a rebellion, an uprising against the “ruler of the semi-world” (sometimes analogies were made between this episode and the uprising of the Decembrists). In this case, the question inevitably arises: who is the winner - statehood, embodied in the "proud idol", or humanity, embodied in Eugene?
However, it is hardly possible to consider the words of Eugene, who, having whispered them, “suddenly headlong / Set off to run”, a riot or an uprising. The words of the insane hero are caused by the memory awakened in him: “Eugene shuddered. The thoughts have cleared up / There are terrible thoughts in him. This is not only a memory of the horror of last year's flood, but above all historical memory, seemingly etched in it by Peter's "civilization". Only then did Eugene recognize "and the lions, and the square, and the One, / Who stood motionless / In the darkness with a copper head, / The one whose fateful will / Under the sea, the city was founded." Again, as in the introduction, the legendary "double" of Peter appears - He. The statue comes to life, what is happening loses its real features, a realistic narrative becomes a mythological story.
Like a fairy-tale, mythological hero (see, for example, “The Tale of the Dead Princess and the Seven Bogatyrs”, 1833), the unintelligent Eugene “comes to life”: “The eyes turned into a mist, / A flame ran through the heart, / The blood boiled.” He turns into a Man in his generic essence (note: the hero in this fragment is never named Eugene). He, "terrible king", the personification of power, and Human, having a heart and endowed with memory, inspired by the demonic power of the elements (“as possessed by black power”), came together in a tragic confrontation. In the whisper of the awakened Man, a threat and a promise of retribution are heard, for which the revived statue, "instantly burning with rage," punishes the "poor madman." The "realistic" explanation of this episode impoverishes its meaning: everything that happened turns out to be the fruit of the sick imagination of the insane Yevgeny.
In the chase scene, the second reincarnation of the “idol on a bronze horse” takes place - He turns into Rider of the Copper. A mechanical creature gallops behind Man, which has become a pure embodiment of power, punishing even for a timid threat and a reminder of retribution:
And illuminated by the pale moon,
Stretch out your hand above
Behind him rushes the Bronze Horseman
On a galloping horse.
The conflict is transferred to the mythological space, which emphasizes its philosophical significance. This conflict is fundamentally unsolvable; there can be no winner or loser in it. “All night”, “everywhere” behind the “poor madman” “The Bronze Horseman / With a heavy stomping galloped”, but the “heavy-voiced galloping” does not end with anything. A senseless and fruitless pursuit, reminiscent of "running in place", has a deep philosophical meaning. The contradictions between a person and power cannot be resolved or disappear: a person and power are always tragically connected with each other.Such a conclusion can be drawn from Pushkin's poetic "research" of one of the episodes of the "Petersburg" period of Russian history. The first stone in its foundation was laid by Peter I, the “powerful ruler of fate”, who built St. Petersburg and new Russia, but failed to pull a person with an “iron bridle”. Power is powerless against "human, too human" - the heart, memory and elements of the human soul. Any "idol" is only a dead statue, which a Human can crush or, at least, force to break away in unrighteous and impotent anger.
In this article, we will try to analyze the pressing issues that Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin reveals in his work. Also below will be indicated the history of the creation of a bronze monument built in honor of the poem, and its summary. "The Bronze Horseman" today is not only the pride of Russia, but, oddly enough, to this day is on the list of the best works of world literature.
Problems touched upon by Pushkin in his work
The world-famous poem "The Bronze Horseman", written by Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin in 1833, carries the main problem of the 20th century - the relationship between people and the state. The questions that he reveals in his work affect the power and the person.
What life circumstances prompted Alexander Sergeevich to write this work
The brilliant idea to write this poem came to Pushkin only after he became an absentee witness of the St. Petersburg flood on November 7, 1824. This flood was perceived by mankind as a kind of collapse and a step towards the abyss. The emotions that overwhelmed Petersburg in those moments could not but leave their imprint in the imagination of Alexander Sergeevich, and even then a brilliant idea flashed through his head to write a work dedicated to the event. But, ironically, the poem was written only nine years later. After the work gained popularity, the world learned its summary. "The Bronze Horseman", according to many connoisseurs and admirers of the poet's work, is considered one of his best creations.
Parsing the work into parts
To begin with, it is necessary to determine in the famous poem at least the exposition, plot, climax, denouement, and only then describe the summary. "The Bronze Horseman" includes an exposition part, in which the main character Evgeny appears, as well as the glorification of the "great thoughts" of Peter the Great and the city of Petrov. The plot can be safely attributed to the description of the flood, the climax is the news of the death of the bride, but the denouement, in turn, is the madness and death of Eugene.
Summary of the poem "The Bronze Horseman", A.S. Pushkin
"Bronze Horseman". Summary ”- it would be great if this kind of book existed and benefited all teenagers in the modern world. But, unfortunately, they do not exist, and in the 21st century, all school material of this kind should be processed by children in the shortest possible time on their own. That is why, to simplify this task, we propose to smoothly move on to a brief description of the plot of the poem "The Bronze Horseman". A summary of the chapters will not be indicated in this section, below we will analyze the main events that occurred in the poem. So, let's begin. At the beginning of the poem, Pushkin tells readers about Peter, who stands on the banks of the Neva and dreams of building a city that will certainly serve the people in the future as a window to the desired Europe. A hundred years later, this idea was destined to come true, and now a beautiful city has risen in the place of the void. Further, the work is about a petty official named Eugene, who returns home every day and tries to sleep, thinking about his current situation, because once his family did not need help, because the noble family of officials had a good profit, but now it’s the other way around . In addition, his thoughts are constantly filled with his beloved, whose name is Parasha, he dreams of marrying her as soon as possible and building a strong inseparable family.
Sweet dreams make him fall asleep, and closer to the morning his sleep is disturbed by the raging Neva, which is out of control, soon all of St. Petersburg was flooded. Many people died, Pushkin compares the river flows with soldiers who destroyed everything in their path. Soon the river returns to its banks, and Eugene gets a chance to swim across to the other side of the city, to his beloved. He runs to the boatman and asks him for help. Once on the other side, a petty official cannot recognize the former places, now they look like ruins and resemble a battlefield strewn with human bodies. Eugene, forgetting about everything, hurries to the house of his beloved, but does not find it, realizing that his bride is not alive. The official loses his mind, tormenting himself with wild laughter. The next day, when nature returned to its former state, all the people seemed to have forgotten what had happened, and only Eugene could not breathe calmly. Over the next years, he will constantly hear the sound of the storm, he will become a hermit. Only once, waking up early in the morning, he remembers everything that has happened to him lately, and goes out into the street, where he sees a house with monuments at the entrance. Walking a little near them, the poor fellow noticed anger on the muzzle of one of the marble lions and rushed to run away, hearing the incredible stomp of horses behind him. After that, he hid from the incomprehensible noise in his ears for a long time, rushing around the city from side to side. After a while, passers-by saw him take off his cap, thus asking for forgiveness in front of the formidable monument. A little later, he was found dead on a small island and immediately "buried for God's sake."
Monument "The Bronze Horseman"
Below we will focus on the description of the monument of world significance. The work, which is discussed in this article, is famous all over the world not only for its genius, simplicity, and some kind of philosophy of life. In addition, the Bronze Horseman is not at all a summary. It, oddly enough, is an integral part of St. Petersburg. This is a monument that was erected in the center of the city and is dedicated to the considered poem and Peter the Great. Outwardly, the bronze block looks like a rock with a bewitching rider. The place where the memorial monument is located was chosen on the occasion of the fact that the Senate is located nearby - a symbol of all tsarist Russia. The author of this masterpiece is Etienne-Maurice Falcone, a porcelain factory worker who, against the wishes of Catherine II, decided to install his work of art near the Neva. Falcone received a rather modest fee for the work done, other secular sculptors at that time asked twice as much. In the process of work, the sculptor received many different proposals for the future monument, but Etienne-Maurice was persistent and eventually erected what he had previously conceived. Here is what he wrote to I. I. Betsky about this: “Could you imagine that the sculptor chosen to create such a significant monument was deprived of the ability to think, and that someone else’s head, and not his own, controlled the movements of his hands?”
Having analyzed the summary of the "Bronze Horseman" and familiarized himself with the history of the monument, I propose to talk about something interesting. It turns out that in addition to the fact that the poem was used for sculptural art, the Russian composer R. M. Glier, taking advantage of the events in the work of Alexander Sergeevich, created his own ballet of the same name, a fragment of which became the St. Petersburg anthem.
Poem Bronze Horseman was written in 1833, but during the life of Pushkin it was never published, since the emperor forbade it. There is an opinion that the Bronze Horseman was supposed to be only the beginning of a long work conceived by Pushkin, but there is no exact evidence in this regard.
This poem is very similar to Poltava, its main themes are Russia and Peter the Great. However, it is deeper, more expressive. Pushkin actively uses such literary devices as hyperbole and the grotesque (the revived statue is a vivid example of this). The poem is filled with typical Petersburg symbols: statues of lions, a monument to Peter, rain and wind in the autumn city, floods on the Neva...
Here, more than in other poems, bright emotional vocabulary is used, thanks to which the reader understands what exactly is happening in the souls of the unfortunate heroes.
Images in the poem "The Bronze Horseman"
The introduction to the poem tells about Emperor Peter: he built St. Petersburg without thinking about ordinary people, without thinking that life in a city in a swamp could be dangerous... But for the emperor, the greatness of Russia was more important.
The protagonist of the poem- a young man named Eugene, an official. He wants a little: just to live his ordinary life in peace ... He has a bride - Parasha, a simple girl. But happiness does not come true: they become victims of the St. Petersburg flood of 1824. The bride dies, and Yevgeny himself manages to escape by climbing onto one of the St. Petersburg lions. But, although he survived, after the death of the bride, Eugene goes crazy.
His madness is caused by the realization of his own powerlessness before the elements that happened in St. Petersburg. He begins to get angry at the emperor, who allowed such troubles in the city of his name. And thus angers Peter: one fine night, when he approaches the monument to the emperor, he imagines that the Bronze Horseman (the equestrian statue of Peter the Great on Senate Square) leaves his pedestal and chases him all night through the streets of St. Petersburg. After such a shock, Eugene can not stand it - the shock turned out to be too strong, in the end the poor fellow died.
In this poem, Pushkin compares two truths: the truth of Eugene, a private person, and the truth of Peter - the state. In fact, the whole poem is their unequal conflict. On the one hand, it is impossible to make an unambiguous conclusion about who is right: both pursue their own interests, both positions have the right to exist. However, the fact that in the end Yevgeny still surrenders (dies) allows us to understand that, according to Pushkin himself, Peter is right. The greatness of the empire is more important than the tragedy of small people. A private person is obliged to submit to the will of the emperor.
Interestingly, in addition to Peter, Alexander the First also appears in the poem. He looks at the flood from the palace balcony and understands: the kings cannot cope with God's element. Thus, Pushkin builds a hierarchy: the emperor is higher than the common man, but God is higher than the emperor.
The poem "The Bronze Horseman" is a story about the tragic fate of a simple inhabitant of St. Petersburg, who lost his beloved girl during the flood, and with her - all the dreams and hopes for a future life.
In The Bronze Horseman, Pushkin raises the theme of the "little man" and the theme of the role of Peter I in the fate of Russia. The main conflict of the work is the confrontation between personality and power. For a general acquaintance with the work, we suggest reading the online summary of The Bronze Horseman, made by an experienced teacher of literature.
main characters
Evgeniy- a poor official who dreams of a family, a calm, measured life. He goes crazy, unable to come to terms with the death of his girlfriend during the flood.
Peter I- the image of the monument to the tsar that comes to life in the imagination of Eugene.
Other characters
Parasha- Beloved Eugene, who dies during a flood in St. Petersburg.
Foreword
Introduction
Peter I once stood on the deserted banks of the Neva, thinking about the time when a city would be founded here:
“Nature here is destined for us
Cut a window to Europe."
After a hundred years, in a place where before there was nothing but the "darkness of forests" and swampy swamps, "a young city ascended magnificently, proudly." "Young City" eclipsed the beauty, wealth and power of Moscow itself. The author confesses his love for the city, "Peter's creation", and believes that created by the will of the ruler, it will stand "unshakable like Russia" for many centuries, and the defeated element of the Finnish waves will forget about its former greatness and will not disturb "Peter's eternal sleep" .
The narrator begins a story about a difficult time, the memory of which is still fresh.
Part one
Late on a rainy evening in November, a hero named Eugene returned home from his guests.
"Our hero
Lives in Kolomna; serves somewhere
It shy of the noble and does not grieve
Not about the deceased relatives,
Not about the forgotten antiquity.
Heavy thoughts about poverty, about his life, in which he still has to earn "independence and honor", do not let him fall asleep. In addition, due to bad weather, the water in the Neva was rising and, most likely, had already washed away the bridges - now Yevgeny will not be able to see his beloved girl Parasha, who lives “near the bay”, on the other side for several days. Eugene dreamed about life with Parasha, about their joint future, and finally fell asleep.
The next day was terrible.
The Neva swelled and roared,
And suddenly, like a wild beast,
Rushed to the city."
The squares turned into lakes, and "streets flowed into them like wide rivers." Water destroyed houses and carried away people, fragments of dwellings, bridges - everything that was on the way.
On a marble lion near one of the new rich houses of the city, Eugene sat motionless amid the general chaos. He did not see or hear either the wind or the rain beating on his face - he was worried about the fate of his beloved. The young man in despair looked intently to where, “like mountains, waves rose from the indignant depth, a storm howled, debris rushed” - to where Parasha lived with her mother. It seemed to the hero that he saw both the unpainted fence and their dilapidated shack.
Eugene sat, unable to move. There was water everywhere around him, and in front of him was an “idol on a bronze horse” facing him with his back. The monument to Peter I towered over the raging Neva.
Part two
Finally, the water began to recede. Eugene, "still dying in hope, fear and longing," having hired a carrier, sails to his beloved. Coming ashore, the hero runs to the house where Parasha lived, he does not believe his eyes, walks again and again around the place where the girl lived, and does not find her at home - he is washed away by the Neva. “Full of gloomy care”, Eugene speaks loudly to himself, and then laughs.
The next day came, the Neva calmed down, the city returned to its former life. Residents went to work, trade resumed.
Only Eugene could not bear the death of his beloved, his "confused mind" could not stand the shock. Busy with gloomy thoughts, he wandered around the city without returning home. So a week passed, then a month. The young man slept where he could, fed on alms. Sometimes, children threw stones after him, he was whipped by coachmen when, not understanding the road, he almost fell under the wheels of wagons. Inner anxiety was eating him up.
And so he is his unhappy age
Dragged, neither beast nor man,
Neither this nor that, nor the inhabitant of the world,
Not a dead ghost…”
Once, at the end of summer, while spending the night near the Neva pier, Eugene was agitated by the advancing bad weather. It was raining, the wind was howling, the Neva was seething. Remembering the horror of the flood he had experienced, the hero began to roam the streets. With fear, he suddenly stopped - he found himself near the house where he was fleeing from the raging river on the night of Parasha's death. On the porch of a large new house, statues of lions were still sitting, and nearby stood Peter on a bronze horse. Eugene recognized the place where the “flood played”, and the lions, and the one “by whose will the city was founded by the fateful sea”. It is Petra who considers the culprit of his grief.
Clenching his teeth, clenching his fingers, trembling from overflowing anger, he looked into Peter's eyes and whispered with a threat: “You already! ..” And suddenly he rushed away: it seemed to the hero that the king’s face flared up with anger and the horseman began to turn in his direction. All night long Eugene fled from the imaginary pursuit of Peter - wherever he turned, everywhere he heard the clatter of horse hooves of the revived "bronze horseman".
Since then, whenever Eugene found himself near the monument, he humbly lowered his eyes, took off his cap and pressed his hand to his heart, "as if pacifying his torment."
The hero could not survive the loss and recover. The dead "madman" Yevgeny was found in the spring at the threshold of a dilapidated shack, which the flood brought to a deserted island near the seaside. Here, on the island, he was buried.
Conclusion
Telling the story of Yevgeny, the author brings us to the conclusion that the contradictions between the authorities and small people do not disappear and are not resolved - they are always tragically interconnected. Pushkin for the first time in Russian literature showed the insolubility between state interests and the interests of the common man. That is why the images of the main characters in the image of the author are ambiguous: we see Peter - a reformer and Peter the autocrat, Eugene - a petty official and a rebel who was indignant at the actions of the tsar himself.
After reading the retelling of The Bronze Horseman, the reader is ready to perceive the unique Pushkin images and language of the poem.
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Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin is an outstanding Russian poet, a classic of the Golden Age. His famous "The Bronze Horseman", an analysis of which will be offered below, is a remarkable work of literature.
It is dedicated to Peter the Great and his main creation - the city on the Neva, St. Petersburg. The analysis of the poem "The Bronze Horseman" is always very difficult, because not everyone has an unambiguous attitude towards the great reformer and his offspring. A. Pushkin is a master of poetic form, and that is why it was not difficult for him to portray history in this particular form.
"The Bronze Horseman": analysis of the poem
The poem was written in 1833. By that time, the opinion of the author himself about the transformations of the great tsar-builder had changed, because it was Peter the Great who was the hero in the Battle of Poltava. The poem initially did not pass the cruel censorship of Nicholas 1, but after that it was allowed for publication.
The focus is on two heroes - a young man named Eugene and the Bronze Horseman himself. This poem is easy to read, which allows you to quickly make an analysis. The Bronze Horseman is the one whom the young man blames for his misfortune (after a severe flood, the hero runs to the house of his beloved girl and sees that this natural disaster has also affected his fate - Parasha is no more).
What is said in the first part of this poetic story? It tells about the beautiful autumn St. Petersburg. A young and hardworking Eugene lives there, who is very worried and upset by his fate. He has a girlfriend - Parasha, whom he did not see for many days and missed her very much. It was a normal day, Eugene was walking home from work and thinking about Parasha. At night, a severe flood begins, after which he learns that his beloved is no more. After this incident, the hero ceases to "live": he leaves work, leaves the apartment, lives on the pier. One autumn day, for some unknown reason, he goes to the Bronze Horseman.
The Bronze Horseman (an analysis of the poem of the same name by the great Russian classic A. Pushkin always makes everyone think) majestically rises on Senate Square. Pushkin uses personification techniques to show the connection between the hero and the monument. It begins to seem to Eugene that after his accusations, Peter the Great himself is chasing him (Eugene hears the sound of rushing hooves). The author himself calls his hero a "madman", and majestically characterizes the Bronze Horseman: "... he is full of great thoughts."
The poem "The Bronze Horseman", the analysis and detailed analysis of which will help to plunge into the atmosphere described by A. Pushkin, is a great work. This became possible thanks to an amazing sense of style and words, precise techniques and competent coordination of words. The use of Slavicisms gives the work a real Russian character and emphasizes precisely the Russian nature of Eugene (brow, cold), while for Peter Pushkin uses a completely different stylistic coloring of the words - “the ruler of half the world”. The poem "The Bronze Horseman" has become symbolic for the city on the Neva. It was after the publication of this poem, addressing St. Petersburg, they began to say: “Show off, city of Petrov ...”