literature. Scientific and not thin
Alexei Nikolaevich (11/15/1840, Bolkhov, Oryol province - 08/17/1893, St. Petersburg), poet, prose writer. From an old noble family. In 1852-1859. studied at the St. Petersburg School of Jurisprudence, after graduating from which he entered the service of the Ministry of Justice. In 1862 he left St. Petersburg for the Pavlodar family estate in the Oryol province. In 1863-1865. senior official for special assignments under the Oryol governor. From 1865 until the end of his life he lived in St. Petersburg, giving up his career as an official and remaining nominally assigned to the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
A.'s first publication was the poem Epaminondas (1854), dedicated to the memory of Admiral V. A. Kornilov. Poems A. published in the magazines "Contemporary" (cycle "Village Essays"), "Iskra", "Beep" and "Time". Appreciated they were given by A. A. Fet, I. S. Turgenev and N. A. Nekrasov. In 1862, wanting to preserve creative freedom and not taking a democratic direction in Russian. literature, A. decided not to print his works. The break, during which the poetic work did not stop, lasted more than 20 years (only in 1872-1873, several poems by A. appeared in The Citizen). Since 1884, Mr.. A. again episodically published poetic and sometimes prose works in the "Bulletin of Europe", "Russian Thought", "Russian Review". His first collection Poems appeared in print in 1886 and was reprinted with minor additions during the author's lifetime in 1891 and 1893.
Among the themes of A.'s lyrics, religion occupied a special place. searches and doubts inherent in A. from his youth until the end of his life. They were first expressed in the poem " God's world"(1856), where the 16-year-old poet with amazing power showed the futility and meaninglessness of human life on earth -" an empty life, a straight and distant path, / A dusty road - God's sad world. On the tragic loneliness of Christ in an indifferently hostile world, A. wrote in the poem "Prayer for the Chalice" (1868). In the poem "Requiem" (late 60s), he depicted the insignificance of man in front of the great mystery of God's Providence and prayed for eternal peace to his neighbor.
The most complete religion. A.'s views are expressed in the poem "A Year in the Monastery" (1883), first published in "Russian Thought" (1885. No. 1). The poem reflected A.'s childhood memories of trips to Optina empty. and impressions from visiting the Valaam monastery in 1866. The plot outline of the poem: a young man, weak-willed, brought up in a secular society, because of unsuccessful love, runs away under the roof of the “abode of peace, death and oblivion” - to the monastery. During the year, a struggle goes on in the soul of a young man; abrupt transitions from humility and self-condemnation to almost blasphemy lead the hero to a serious illness, but only 5 lines of a letter from his beloved are enough to make the final decision - to flee from the monastery. Thus, according to A., in the monastery cell there is no salvation from worldly temptations, carnal love, secular emptiness, longing and doubts. All this must be patiently endured in the earthly world by a person who does not have a strong and deep faith.
In prose, A. used the epistolary and diary form, as in poetry, gravitating towards lyrical narration in the first person. In the stories "The Archive of Countess D**" and "The Diary of Pavlik Dolsky" he showed the emptiness of secular life and the artificiality of the values accepted in the highest society. The story "Between death and life" is devoted to the religious and moral understanding of death. Both in poetry and in prose, A. depicted complex emotional experiences, among which the choice between faith and unbelief was important for characterizing the lyrical hero.
Arch.: RGALI. F. 1002; IRLI. F. 355.
Lit .: Volynsky A. Literary notes // Sev. vestn. 1891. No. 11; he is. Singer of love // Volynsky A. Struggle for idealism. St. Petersburg, 1900; Pertsov P. Twilight of poetry // Books of the week. 1895. No. 4; Petrov N.I. The main motives of Apukhtin's poetry. K., 1898; Zhirkevich A.V. Poet by the Grace of God // IV. 1906. No. 11; Tchaikovsky M. A. N. Apukhtin // Apukhtin A. N. Works. St. Petersburg, 19127; Ermilova E. V. Lyrics of “timelessness”: (End of the century) // Kozhinov V. A book about Russian lyric poetry 19th century M., 1978. S. 269-277; Maslovsky V.I. A. N. Apukhtin // Russian writers, 1800-1917. T. 1. S. 98-100.
M. V. Otradin
A. N. Apukhtin
A. N. Apukhtin. complete collection Poems Poet's Library. Big series. Third edition. L., Soviet writer, 1991 Introductory article by M. V. Otradin Compilation, preparation of the text and notes by R. A. Shatseva “Apukhtin is not “forgotten” mainly due to the musical interpretation of Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov, Arensky, Gliere,” wrote the musicologist V V. Yakovlev. (Yakovlev V. V. P. I. Tchaikovsky and A. N. Apukhtin // P. I. Tchaikovsky and Russian Literature. Izhevsk, 1980. P. 19.) He had grounds for such a conclusion. The general reader knows Apukhtin primarily as the author of poems that have become popular romances: "Crazy nights, sleepless nights ...", "A couple of bays", "Broken vase", "Astram". Apukhtin's works set to music seem to overshadow everything else that he wrote. The right to represent all of Apukhtin's work was won by his romances during the lifetime of the poet. It is no coincidence that in a poem dedicated to the memory of Apukhtin, it was enough for his contemporary poet K. K. Sluchevsky to name two popular romances to make it clear who they are talking about: "A Pair of Bays" or "Crazy Nights" - Bright songs of the midnight hours - - Songs are just like us, unreasonable With trembling, with trembling of sick voices! .. But Apukhtin's creative heritage is not limited to his romances. It is quite wide and varied. Apukhtin himself, as one of his friends testified, did not like "the seating of writers in cages, with a certain label attached to each one once and for all." (Zhirkevich A.V. A poet by the grace of God // "Historical Bulletin". 1906, No 11. S. 489.) A.N. Apukhtin was born on November 15, 1840 in the city of Volkhov, Oryol province. The childhood years of the poet passed in the Kaluga province, in the family estate of his father - the village of Pavlodar. The poet's first biographer, his friend Modest Tchaikovsky, wrote: "Aleksei Nikolaevich's poetic gift had an effect very early; at first he expressed himself in a passion for reading and for poetry, mainly, and his amazing memory was revealed ... Until the age of ten, he already knew Pushkin and Lermontov and, Simultaneously with their poems, he recited his own. (Tchaikovsky Modest. Aleksey Nikolaevich Apukhtin // A. N. Apukhtin. Works: 7th ed. St. Petersburg, 1912. P. VII.) Both the poet’s father, Nikolai Fedorovich, and mother, Marya Andreevna (nee Zhelyabuzhskaya) belonged to ancient noble families. Therefore, Apukhtin was able to enter (it was 1852) in a closed educational institution - the St. Petersburg School of Law, where judicial officials and personnel for the Ministry of Justice were trained. The discipline at the school was almost military. This is explained by the fact that in 1849 (when the legal scholar V. A. Golovinsky, one of the active members of the Petrashevsky circle, was arrested), the school fell into disgrace. The newly appointed director A.P. Yazykov began his activities in this post with the implementation of the reform: "... almost the entire civilian staff of educators was replaced by guards and army officers." (Meshchersky V.P. My memories. St. Petersburg, 1897. Part 1. (1850-1865). P. 6.) According to the testimony of the same memoirist, in 1853 Nicholas I visited the school and was satisfied with the new order . At the school, young Apukhtin gained recognition among students and teachers as the editor of the handwritten "School Bulletin" and a talented poet, in whom they saw nothing less than "the future Pushkin." (Gerard V.N. Tchaikovsky at the School of Law // Memoirs by P.I. Tchaikovsky. L., 1980. S. 27.) In 1854, Apukhtin's first poem "Epaminondas" dedicated to the memory of Admiral V. A. Kornilov. V. P. Meshchersky, Apukhtin's classmate at the school, said in his memoirs that this poem was written at the personal request of the director of the school. If this was the case, then this is obviously the only case when Apukhtin wrote something to order. Apukhtin's classmate at the School of Law was also P. I. Tchaikovsky, with whom they became very friends. Remembering the years spent at the school, Apukhtin wrote in a poem "P. Tchaikovsky": You remember how, huddled in the "music", Forgetting the school and the world. We dreamed of ideal glory... Art was our idol. And life for us was covered with dreams. Later, Tchaikovsky created several well-known musical works based on the words of Apukhtin: “Does the day reign, is the silence of the night ...”, “No response, no word, no greetings ...”, “Crazy nights ...”, “Forget it like that soon...". Preparing at the school for the activities of a jurist, Apukhtin considered the main business of his life literary creativity . In one of his letters, sixteen-year-old Apukhtin says about himself: "... I love poetry; I know the best Russian poets by heart; I study Schiller and all the remarkable French writers. I don't know English, but I hope to make up for this shortcoming when I leave from school." (Letter to P. A. Valuev dated February 14, 1856 // Manuscript Department of the Institute of Russian Literature of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. F. 93. Op. 3. No 28.) Apukhtin's fame goes beyond the school. In 1856, an entry appeared in the diary of the critic A. V. Druzhinin: "Tolstoy introduced me to a boy - the poet Apukhtin, from the School of Law." (L. N. Tolstoy in the memoirs of contemporaries. M., 1978. Vol. 1. P. 71.) Much is already expected from the young poet. Perhaps the most confident that the expectations are not in vain, I. S. Turgenev. “... Bringing Apukhtin to meet Panaev,” writes A. Ya. his poems will gain the same fame as Pushkin and Lermontov. (I. S. Turgenev in the memoirs of his contemporaries. M., 1983. Vol. 1. S. 114.) Even if the memoirist exaggerated somewhat, Turgenev undoubtedly looked at Apukhtin as a rising star. In the year of graduating from college (1859), Apukhtin experienced a severe shock: his mother died. M. Tchaikovsky wrote: "All family and friendly relations, all the heartfelt hobbies of his life after the death of Marya Andreevna were only fragments of the temple of this filial love." (Tchaikovsky M. Decree. op. C. VI.) Oh, where would your spirit, invisible to us, Now be happy or vital, Hear my verse, my beloved work: I tore them from my heart! And if you're not... Oh, God! To whom should we go? I'm a stranger here... And now you are dearer to me than everyone In a dark and dumb grave, - wrote Apukhtin in "Dedication" to "Country Essays" (1859). The image of the mother, which occupies a special position in Apukhtin's poems, is associated with the idea of absolute kindness and unchanging love. In the early poems of Apukhtin, social motives sound more clearly than in his mature work. This applies, in particular, to poems about St. Petersburg. In the disclosure of this topic, Apukhtin relies on the experience of his predecessors. First of all, on the experience of Apollon Grigoriev, in whose verses the northern capital appears as a "giant, sick with rot and debauchery" ("City", 1845 or 1846). In Apukhta's "Petersburg Night" there are the following lines: Glorious city, rich city, I will not be seduced by you. .. Let them look at you from the height of an inaccessible Star, They only see your criminal, Your obdurate depravity. Coinciding with A. Grigoriev in the general assessment of the cold and state-owned Petersburg, Apukhtin seeks to reveal the essence of this image through his plots: about the "unfortunate victim of calculation", a girl who marries a rich man in order to save her family, about a "poor worker of art", about a peasant with an ax that is "like a beast hungry" and "like a beast merciless". In 1859, on the recommendation of I. S. Turgenev, the Sovremennik published a cycle of Apukhtin's poems, Village Essays. “To appear in Sovremennik meant immediately to become a celebrity. For young men of twenty years of age, nothing could be more pleasant than to get into such lucky ones,” wrote K. Sluchevsky later. (Almanac "Dennitsa". St. Petersburg, 1900, p. 200.) The poems came at the right time: they reflected the moods that were close to many then - it was a time of expectations, a time of preparation for reforms. May you, Russia, be overcome by adversity, May you be a despondent country... No, I do not believe that the song of freedom These fields are not given! ("Songs") The voice of the young poet was noticed. Reflections on the native country road, on the "ripening field", on the "songs of the fatherland" were imbued with an ardent and sincere lyrical feeling. The poems expressed sympathy for the suffering people and, naturally, corresponded to the mood of the democratic reader. It is no coincidence that when published in Sovremennik, "Village Essays" suffered greatly from censorship distortions. Brothers! Be ready, Do not be embarrassed - the hour is near: The harsh term will end, The fetters that have decayed on you will fall from your shoulders! - this stanza from the poem "Village" was published without the last two lines. In some poems, entire stanzas have been omitted. But there was in Apukhtin's Village Essays, in particular in the poem "Songs", a certain amount of head, forced optimism. This was felt and parodied by N. A. Dobrolyubov: I have known you for a long time, the songs of the mournful Russia of the vast, my homeland! But now, all of a sudden, sounds, joyfully inviting, Full of delight, I hear from the fields! and so on. T. 2. P. 123--125.) Nevertheless, the leaders of Sovremennik associate with Apukhtin great expectations . In a note on the publication of the journal for 1860, signed by Nekrasov and Panaev, it is said that "the best works of Russian literature" will continue to be published in it, and Apukhtin was named among such writers as Ostrovsky, Saltykov-Shchedrin, Turgenev, Nekrasov, Polonsky. No small honor! It seemed that a few years after his debut in Sovremennik, Apukhtin would become a well-known or even famous poet. But in life everything happened differently. After graduating from college in 1859, Apukhtin decided to serve in the Ministry of Justice. He showed no particular zeal in the service. According to one of his contemporaries, Apukhtin was one of the sixteen employees of the ministry who signed a petition in 1861 in defense of university students arrested for political reasons. (K. Arseniev. From distant memories // Voice of the Past. 1913, No 1. P. 161-162.) This was not a heroic, but a civil act, since the time of the reforms that had begun was marked by "suspicion, a tendency to grab first, then investigate." (Ibid., p. 169.) In the early 1860s, Apukhtin was published in various journals. Most often in the "Iskra". But cooperation in "Contemporary" is terminated. In a feuilleton devoted to the results of 1860, the caustic New Poet (I. I. Panaev) hastened to declare about unfulfilled hopes regarding Apukhtin. ([Panaev I. I.] At the turn of the old and new years. Dreams and visions of the New Poet // "Whistle". M., 1982. P. 200.) And Dobrolyubov in June 1861 wrote to N. G. Chernyshevsky from Italy : "I know that, returning to St. Petersburg, I will continue ... to instruct Sluchevsky and Apukhtin on the path of truth, in whose dissoluteness I am sure." (Dobrolyubov N. A. Sobr. soch.: In nine volumes. M., 1964. Vol. 9. P. 473.) Apukhtin, in turn, is aware of his disagreement with radical "deniers". In 1862, in the journal of the Dostoevsky brothers "Time", he published a program poem "Modern Vitiyam", in which he declares his special position "among the oppressive and obedient": It is unbearable - to live in denial ... I want to believe in something, Something to love with all your heart! Apukhtin thinks of his path to truth, the "promised land" as a path-feat, a path-suffering. But the poet imagines this path not in the specific forms of today's life, but as a service to the timeless, eternal ideal "under the burden of the cross" ("Modern Orbits"). Apukhtin in the turbulent times of the 1860s did not join either the left or the right. In these years, he published less and less often, writes little, ceases, as he put it, "to saddle Pegasus." The turbulent era of the 60s touched him little, as a poet he almost "did not notice" it. The critic A. M. Skabichevsky, perhaps with excessive categoricalness, wrote about it this way: “We have before us a kind of phenomenon in the form of a man of the 60s, for whom these 60s, as it were, did not exist at all and who, being in them, managed in some fantastic way to live outside of them. (Skabichevsky A. M. Soch. Spb., 1903. Vol. 2. P. 500.) Apukhtin wanted to stay away from the social and literary struggle, outside of literary parties and trends. "... No force will force me to enter the arena, cluttered with meanness, denunciations and ... seminarians!" - he wrote in a letter to P.I. Tchaikovsky in 1865. (Tchaikovsky M. Life of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. M., 1900. Vol. 1. S. 242.) Apukhtin preferred to remain outside the groupings and found himself outside of literature. He liked to call himself an "amateur" in literature. In the humorous poem "Amateur" he, imitating Pushkin's "My Genealogy", wrote: What do I care about the Russian Parnassus? I am an unknown dilettante! To earn money by literary labor seemed to him an insulting business. About his poem "A Year in a Monastery" (1883), after its publication, he said that it was "dishonored by the printing press." As a contemporary of Apukhtin testifies, "to the question of one of the Grand Dukes why he does not publish his works, he replied:" It would be all the same, Your Highness, to assign his daughters to the buff theater "". (Stolypin A. Oysters and Poems in the Study (From Literary Memoirs) // Capital and Estate. 1914, No 10, p. 8.) Such an attitude towards literary work in the second half of the 19th century was already an obvious anachronism. For all that, literary creativity has always remained the main business of Apukhtin's life. He was a very exacting, professionally skilled writer. Already the early works of Apukhtin amazed readers with their virtuoso mastery of verse and outstanding poetic mastery. And after the death of the poet, S. A. Vengerov wrote that there was refinement in his poems, but refinement was "natural, unconstrained." (Vengerov S. A. N. Apukhtin // New encyclopedic Dictionary. Spb., . T. 3. S. 246.) Apukhtin's poems never seem heavy, labored. This is not only evidence of talent, but also a consequence of hard professional work. For all Apukhtin's statements about his amateurism, he had his own thoughtful creative principles, his own authorities, his own aesthetic position. In literature, for Apukhtin there were two highest authorities: Pushkin and Leo Tolstoy. He spoke about this repeatedly. "Pushkin," wrote M. I. Tchaikovsky, "a poet, playwright, novelist, and human being, was equally the lofty ideal of his entire life." (Tchaikovsky M. Alexei Nikolaevich Apukhtin. S. XIV.) A person who did not understand and did not accept Pushkin was a stranger to Apukhtin. Apukhtin's detachment from "today's" life should not be exaggerated. He had a sensitive ear and was able to react quickly and sharply to the events of the day. All this was clearly manifested in his humorous works, many of which were written in the 60s. A contemporary who knew Apukhtin from a young age testified: "Comic in him was in full swing, his wit was always brilliant, always accurate, always elegant and artistic." ("Citizen", 1893, Aug. 21, p. 3.) An example is the "Epigram", which says that Timashev (at that time the Minister of Internal Affairs, an amateur sculptor) "sculpts good, but ministries ridiculous." In the mid-1860s, the poet served for some time in Orel as an official for special assignments under the governor. In the March 1865 Russian Word book, Apukhtin read D. I. Pisarev's article "A Walk in the Gardens of Russian Literature", in which the critic several times spoke extremely sharply about Pushkin, calling him "an outdated idol" and his ideas "useless" . Apukhtin took these judgments of the critic as a personal attack: on March 15 and 17, he gave two public lectures in Orel on the topic "On the Life and Works of Pushkin", in which he sharply argued with Pisarev's article and his concept. (See the report on the lectures in the Oryol Gubernskiye Vedomosti (1865, April 18).) Apukhtin's sharp speeches against socially active democratic art date back to this time. But this did not mean that he betrayed the humanistic ideals of his youth, when the "Village Essays" were created. In 1864 he worked on the poem "The Village of Kolotovka". The written parts of the poem are marked by an ardent feeling of love for the "poor field", sympathy for the "destitute brothers". “Of all the works of Apukhtin of the period of maturity,” a modern researcher noted, “these passages from the poem “The Village of Kolotovka” are closest to Nekrasov.” (Kovarsky N. A. A. N. Apukhtin // Apukhtin A. N. Poems. L., 1961. S. 48.) But sharp statements and categorical declarations of democratic criticism, including articles by D. I. Pisarev, those who overthrew Pushkin evidently angered and frightened Apukhtin. This prevented him from understanding the true meaning of the powerful democratic movement of the 60s. In the spring of 1865, Apukhtin returned from Orel to St. Petersburg. Since then, he relatively rarely leaves the capital: a trip to the Holy Mountains to the grave of Pushkin, to the island of Valaam together with P. I. Tchaikovsky, several trips around the country - to the Oryol province, to Moscow, Revel, Kyiv and several trips abroad - - Germany, France, Italy. In the 1860s, Apukhtin was known in St. Petersburg - a frequenter of some secular salons, an avid theatergoer, a participant in amateur performances, who won recognition in the roles of Molchalin and Famusov, a brilliant storyteller, an author of impromptu, but they hardly know Apukhtin the poet. Apukhtin was not yet thirty when he fell ill with a serious illness - obesity, which could not be cured. In the 1970s, Apukhtin still published little, writing only for himself and his closest friends. But his poems are becoming more and more widespread: they are rewritten, composers compose romances to the words of Apukhtin, his works are regularly included in the collections "Reader-Reciter", they are read from the stage. So, having written in the poem "P. Tchaikovsky" (1877) "And I, ending the journey as an "unrecognized" poet," Apukhtin was not accurate. By the end of the 70s he was already a literary celebrity. In the 1980s, Apukhtin was regularly published in various periodicals. (B. M. Markevich wrote on March 15, 1884 to M. N. Katkov: “Apukhtin, who had stubbornly refused to publish his poems for almost twenty years, came to me yesterday and announced that his financial circumstances made him need to change this solution..." (Manuscript Department of the Institute of Russian Literature of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. 4758/XXIV b. 155).) His first collection was published in 1886 with a circulation of 3,000 copies. The collection went through three lifetime and seven posthumous editions. But even at the time of his highest popularity, Apukhtin keeps aloof from literary life. True, he participates in several literary collections published for charitable purposes: in favor of the victims of crop failure in the Samara region ("Skladchina", 1874), in the collection "Brotherly to help the affected families of Bosnia and Herzegovina" (1876) and in the publication prepared by the Committee Society for the benefit of needy writers and scientists (1884). The only event for which Apukhtin voluntarily and willingly changed his rule of keeping aloof from literary affairs was the opening of a monument to Pushkin in Moscow. M. I. Tchaikovsky wrote: "Very scrupulous in all sorts of talk about money - he fusses, travels, asks to collect the amount for the monument to Pushkin and adds 400 rubles to his collections from his own, in his own words, "limited funds" -- 100 rubles". (Tchaikovsky M. Alexei Nikolaevich Apukhtin. S. XV.) And one of the most bitter days in Apukhtin's life - this can be judged from his letters and the memoirs of people close to him - the day of the opening of the monument (1880), to which he was not invited . Far from literary disputes, Apukhtin evaluates current literature very critically. “For me,” he wrote in the already mentioned letter to P. I. Tchaikovsky, “in modern Russian literature there is only one sacred name: Leo Tolstoy.” (Tchaikovsky M. Life of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. P. 242.) Apukhtin perceived Tolstoy's rejection of literary creativity, his "transformation from an artist into a preacher" as his personal grief. In 1891, Apukhtin wrote a letter to Tolstoy asking him to return to artistic creativity. “The sermon will disappear,” Apukhtin wrote, “but those great immortal creations that you renounce will remain. In spite of you, they will console and morally improve people for a long time, they will help people live.” ("Literary heritage". M., 1939. V. 37/38, part 2. S. 442.) But Apukhtin did not receive an answer from Yasnaya Polyana. In a letter to A.V. Zhirkevich, he wrote about Tolstoy in January 1891: "Without a doubt, he is right in many respects, denouncing the deceit modern life". And further, bearing in mind the silence of Tolstoy the artist: "I want to cry when I think how many great works we are deprived of ...". (Museum of L. N. Tolstoy. Fund of A. V. Zhirkevich (A. V Zh. No 61391).) Two years before his death, another serious illness struck Apukhtin: he fell ill with dropsy. A. F. Koni wrote in his memoirs: " Last time in real life I saw Apukhtin a year before his death, on a hot and stuffy summer day in his city apartment. He was sitting with his legs tucked under him, on a vast ottoman, in a light silk Chinese robe, widely cut around his plump neck - he sat, reminiscent of the traditional figure of the Buddha. But there was no contemplative Buddhist calmness on his face. It was pale, the eyes looked sad. From the whole situation there was a chill of loneliness, and it seemed that death had already touched the soul of the thoughtful poet with the tip of its wing. 309.) Judging by the testimonies of relatives, last days his were excruciating. He could not lie down. Day and night he sat in his chair, hardly moving. He dozed, and when he woke up, "immediately, without saying anything else, he began to recite Pushkin, and only Pushkin." (Zhirkevich A. Poet by the Grace of God // Historical Bulletin. 1906, No 11. P. 504.) Apukhtin died on August 17, 1893. Three days later, in a letter to V. L. Davydov from Klin, P. I. Tchaikovsky wrote: “At the moment I write this, Lelya (as the poet was called in the circle of relatives.-- M.O.) Apukhtin is being buried!!! Although his death is not unexpected, everything is terrifying and painful. "(Tchaikovsky P.I. Letters to relatives. M., 1955. P. 548.) Apukhtin's highest success did not happen by chance in the 1880s. Apukhtin's work turned out to be in tune with the mood of readers of the 1880s Many of his earlier poems were perceived as "today's" The 1880s remained in our history as an era of "timelessness": well Alexander III, the crisis of populism, disagreements in the democratic environment and - as a result - a sharp decline in social activity. With all the differences in the public positions of the poets of the 1880s (A. A. Fet, K. K. Sluchevsky, P. F. Yakubovich, I. Z. Surikov, S. Ya. Nadson, N. M. Minsky, A. A. Golenishchev-Kutuzov, D. N. Tsertelev, K. M. Fofanov) a sense of the crisis of the era was common to all of them. Each of them, including Apukhtin, created his own image of the era of "timelessness". But the common thing was that today's life was perceived as flawed, "deaf", hostile to the ideal. Apukhtin's contemporaries called this decade "spiritual midnight" (Sluchevsky), "night of life" (Nadson). S. A. Andreevsky wrote about that time: Look around: these even days, This time, colorless in appearance, - After all, they consume you, They sing a memorial service over you! Apukhtin gave an accurate diagnosis of the soul of the hero of the time, a soul stricken with skepticism, atrophy of the will, longing: And there is no warm place in you for faith, And there is no strength in you for unbelief. ("Holiday holiday") Such a soul does not have enough strength (“who arranged it so that the will is weak”) to adequately resist the hostile world, so that this confrontation, a clash with concrete historical and “fatal” forces, could acquire a tragic meaning and height. The hero of the eighties is ready for defeat in advance. This type of consciousness, this position in life was very accurately revealed by Apukhtin. Alexander Blok in the preface to the poem "Retribution" said about the 80s: "deaf ... Apukhta years." (Alexander Blok. Collected works: In 8 vols. M.; L., 1960. Vol. 3. S. 300.) Something in Apukhtin himself, in his talent, was organically close to the era of "timelessness". Even in his youth (1858), Apukhtin wrote a letter to Turgenev. The letter has not survived. In his response, Turgenev called him "dull." It was filled with complaints about life: not sure of his talent, environment weighs. Turgenev advised the young poet to think less "about his sufferings and joys" and "not indulge in the opinion of sadness." “... If you are now,” the letter of September 29 (October 11), 1858, said, “despair and be sad, what would you do if you were 18 years old in 1838, when everything is ahead it was so dark - and so it remains dark? Now you have no time and nothing to grieve for ... "(I. S. Turgenev. Complete collection of works and letters: In 28 vols. M .; L., 1961 Letters, vol. 3, pp. 238-239.) But some fundamental properties of Apukhtin's soul prevented him from following the advice of the famous writer. The motif of melancholy, spiritual fatigue, disappointment that arose even in youthful poems did not stop in his work and sounded especially strong in the 80s. In thinking about Apukhtin as the original "eighties", the judgment expressed by Vladimir Solovyov in an article about another poet of "timelessness" - A. A. Golenishchev-Kutuzov, can help. “For a real poet,” we read in this article, “the final character and meaning of his works depend not on personal accidents and not on his own desires, but on the general involuntary impact on him of objective reality from that side to which he, by nature, especially susceptible." (Soloviev V.S. Literary criticism. M., 1990. P. 76.) Having "fallen out" of the 60s, Apukhtin organically entered the life of the 80s: the moods of these years matured in him ahead of time, but precisely in the era " timelessness" they became relevant, were perceived by many as "their own". The thematic repertoire of Apukhtin's poetry is relatively small: "fatal" unrequited love, nostalgia for the past, the loneliness of a person in the world of "treason, passions and evil", mystery human soul. Apukhtin is not afraid of familiar, even banal topics. That which concerns everyone, which is repeated in almost every fate, cannot depreciate in aesthetic terms either. Some life story may seem like a quote from a familiar poem: ... isn't it true, all this has long been sung by others And we have known for a long time. ("Yesterday at the window we sat in silence...") But in every life everything happens anew, and art must be able to convey the unique in the familiar and banal, because this familiar lives again and disturbs: But I was excited by an impossible dream, I anxiously searched for something in the past, Forgotten dreams asked ... We can talk about several types of poetic works characteristic of Apukhtin: elegiac poems, romances, poems written with a clear focus on recitation, and poems that gravitate towards a large form - a psychological novel and a poem. With all the diversity and even inconsistency of the features that mark Apukhta's elegiac poems, one can see in them a feature that unites these works with the deep tradition of the genre. Starting from specific, sometimes "momentary" experiences and observations (the night noise of the sea, the rustle autumn leaves , the light of a falling star), poetic thought soars up and easily goes to the heights of motives that are universal in their meaning: the inevitable extinction of feelings under the pressure of time, the power of a ruthless fate, the inevitability of death. In the best things, Apukhtin (this was the experience of previous poetry, primarily Pushkin) managed to achieve not only an organic and balanced combination of "momentary" and "eternal", but also an accurate disclosure of the emotional world, the psychology of the hero. The poem "Night in Monplaisir" is built on the deployment of a comparison: the "rebellious excitement" of the sea and the mysterious life of the human heart, what Fet called "dark delirium of the soul." Like Fet, Apukhtin seeks to convey not a feeling, but its inception, when it is not yet clear whether it is closer to grief or to joy. In Fet's poem "Night. No city noise is heard ..." it is said: ... Faith and hope Chest opened, maybe love? What is it? Near loss? Or joy? No, you can't explain... What Fet gives as flashing forebodings, Apukhtin's is the result of meditation: ...Water boils and foams like an unbalanced mass... Isn't it sometimes in the heart... Suddenly, an unexpected excitement arises: Why is all this shine, where does this noise come from? What is the meaning of these stormy thoughts Irresistible striving? Didn't the cherished flame of love flare up, Is it a harbinger of near bad weather, Is it a memory of lost happiness Or a reproach awakened in a sleepy conscience? Who can know? But the mind understands That we have such a depth in our hearts, Where even thought does not penetrate... Apukhtin willingly uses poeticisms in his poems, sometimes he introduces into the text whole blocks of images consecrated by tradition. In this sense, he was no exception among the poets of the 80s, such as: S. Andreevsky, A. Golenishchev-Kutuzov, D. Tsertelev, N. Minsky. These poets, like Apukhtin, "considered the poetic language, the system of poetic tropes, as if inherited, not subject to revision and renewal." (Kovarsky N.A. Decree. op. P. 41.) Such a general poetic language in poems, the plot of which implied the individualization of the hero, psychological or event specificity, could be perceived as overly neutral, leveled. So, in the poem "P. Tchaikovsky" ("Do you remember how, huddled in the" musical "...") Apukhtin refers to a loved one with whom he was friends for many years, whose life he knew in dramatic details and psychological details . But Apukhtin translates his thoughts about Tchaikovsky's life into the generalized language of poetic tradition: Your dreams have come true. Despising the beaten path, You persistently forged a new path for yourself, You took glory in battle and greedily drank From this poisonous cup... Judging by the letter of P. I. Tchaikovsky, this Apukhta poem excited him, made him "shed many tears." (Tchaikovsky P. I. Letters to relatives. M., 1940. Vol. 1. P. 339.) Tchaikovsky easily deciphered what was hidden behind the chain of poetic commonplaces: “the beaten path”, “poisonous bowl”, and in the following lines there are also "severe rock" and "thorny thorns". But for the reader, not a metaphorical, allegorical, but a concrete, real plan of these images remains unclear. Apukhtin's success in using such a general poetic language is associated with topics that do not imply sharp individualization. portrayed hero: "Spark", "Minutes of happiness", "Delirium". Quite often, Apukhtin's poetry, traditional images coexist with contrasting strokes, colloquial turns of speech. The combination of such elements of different styles is one of the main distinguishing features of Apukhtin's artistic system. (See: Kozhinov V. A book about Russian lyric poetry of the 19th century. M., 1978. S. 269--277.) Those eyes that others are looking for them did not know, That they beg for pity, Eyes sad, tired, dry, Like winter lights in the huts! ("In the theatre") The comparison with which the poem ends turns out to be so vivid and memorable because it appears against the background of traditional, familiar images. One of the constant motives of Apukhtin - and other poets of those years - is suffering. He began to write about constant and inescapable suffering in his youth. I suffered so much, I hid so many tears in the darkness of the silent nights, I endured so much grievances in silence, heavy and vain; I'm so exhausted, stunned By all life, wild and discordant... ("What grief awaits me?", 1859) The motive, personally so close to Apukhtin, fell at the wrong time in the 60s. Immersion in one's own suffering was not encouraged at that time; one expected poems about the suffering of "others", socially humiliated, offended. And with Apukhtin, suffering usually has not a concrete social, but an existential meaning. “Man,” wrote P. Pertsov, “appears in Apukhtin’s poems not as a member of society, not as a representative of humanity, but exclusively as a separate unit, called to life by elemental force, perplexed and trembling in the midst of a mass of surging unrest, almost always suffering and perishing just as causelessly and aimlessly as it appeared. (Pertsov P. Philosophical currents of Russian poetry. St. Petersburg, 1899, p. 350.) If we remove the excessive categoricalness from this conclusion and do not extend it to all of Apukhtin's work, then in essence it will be fair. The most detailed description of suffering as the inevitable fate of man is given in Apukhta's "Requiem". Human life appears in this poem as a chain of inexplicable, fatal injustices: "love has changed," friendship - "changed that one too", envy, slander came, "friends disappeared, brothers turned away." Apukhtin speaks of the day when "curses stirred for the first time" in the hero. This line refers to Nekrasov's famous poem "Am I going at night ...". The stirring curses in Nekrasov's hero are a sign of the need that has arisen in him to think socially about life, to understand who in this world, in this society is to blame for the suffering of people. (B.O. Korman wrote about this in the book: Nekrasov's Lyrics. Izhevsk, 1978.) In the Apukhta poem, the words about moving curses are lamentation about the unjust and cruel world order: it is generally about the fate of man on earth. But there is no Lermontov scale and passion in Apukhtin's protest. Therefore, his conflict with unfair world- not a riot, but a complaint. True, although with excessive harshness, Andrey Bely said about this: "... Lermontov's fiery longing degenerated into Apukhtin's dull grumbling." (Bely Andrey. Green Meadow. M., 1910. S. 186.) But in Apukhtin's treatment of the theme of suffering, far from everything was reduced to "grunting" and complaints. Once V. Shulyatikov reproachfully wrote about the poets of the 80s, that they, turning to "damned questions", "with the ease of magicians turn social antitheses into psychological ones." (Shulyatikov V. Stages of the newest lyrics // From the history of the latest Russian literature. M., 1910. P. 231.) The critic gave this conclusion a narrow evaluative meaning. The feature he noticed was indeed inherent in the poetry of those years, but did not always testify to its inferiority. So, if the scale of the "psychological antitheses" chosen by Apukhtin corresponded to the structure of feelings and experiences modern man- he achieved significant artistic results. One example is the poem "Niobe": You, the gods, are omnipotent over our fate, We cannot fight with you; You beat us with a stone, an arrow, Diseases or thunders... But if in trouble, in stupid humiliation We have preserved the strength of the soul, But if we, having fallen, curse you, - Have you really won then? At this stage of development, the plot of the poem can be defined as the tragic stoicism of the heroine in the face of fatal force (recall "Two Voices" by F. I. Tyutchev). Psychological persuasiveness in the further development of the plot is achieved precisely because Apukhtin shows not only, in the words of Apollon Grigoriev, the "inexorable greatness of the struggle" of the heroine, who, after the death of seven sons, did not bow before the goddess, but also her weakness, fear, despair, immeasurable suffering, which a man cannot endure: the merciless Latona also killed the daughters of Niobe: Niobe stands silent, pale, Her tears flow in streams ... And a miracle! They look: she turns to stone With her hands raised to the sky. One of the most famous works Apukhtin - "Crazy". In Russian literature (from Pushkin to Chekhov), the hero's madness was motivated in different ways - most often by a collision with fatal forces or social causes. In Apukhtin, the explanation is translated into a psychological, or rather naturalistic, plane: it is not fate, not a cruel life that is to blame, but bad heredity. (See about this: Gromov P. A. Blok. His Predecessors and Contemporaries. M .; L., 1966. P. 47.) But still ... for what? What is our crime? That my grandfather was ill, that my father was ill, That this ghost frightened me from childhood, - So what of this? I could, finally. Do not receive a cursed inheritance!.. Suffering in the artistic world of Apukhtin is a sign of living life. Existence saturated with passions (“Who arranged it so that passions are powerful?”) dooms a person to suffering. But the absence of passions and, consequently, suffering is a sign of dead, mechanistic life. Our breasts are beating evenly, Lonely evenings... What kind of sky, what kind of people, What a boring time!? ("Look how dull and barren...") In the description of a numb, exhausted life, Apukhtin has the image of a "living dead". He met in Russian poetry before. But it is not the coincidence that is indicative, but the difference in the interpretation of the image. So, if Polezhaev’s “living dead” is a hero, “cursed by the irritated sky,” who opposes everything earthly with demonic power, then Apukhtin’s is a man who has lost his earthly feelings: the ability to love and suffer. And again I will wander like a living dead... I don't know what will be true, what will be a dream! ("On the New Year") What is opposed in the poetic world of Apukhtin, what can resist the cruelty of life, in which a person is doomed to "doubts, betrayals, suffering"? First of all, memory. Perhaps we can talk about a special type of Apukhta elegies - elegy-memories ("Oh God, how good a cool summer evening ...", "Over a bunch of letters", "Forgive me, forgive me!", "When in a rebellious soul .. .") For the Apukhta lyrical hero, the main thing in life - happiness, joy, mutual love - is usually in the past. The most expensive, close is what has already gone, what has been pushed aside by time. An event or experience, having become the past, separated by a temporal distance, becomes clearer and dearer to Apukhtin's hero. So, the lyrical hero of the poem "Music thundered ...", only being far from "her", looking back, so to speak, at their meeting, which is already in the past, he understood (as Mr. NN, the hero of Turgenev's "Asia") the main thing: O , then I understood everything, I fell deeply in love, I wanted to talk, but you were far away ... Apukhtin's hero is very sensitive to the burden of time: "I have not survived a year, but dozens of years" ("For the New Year"). But memory is not subject to time, and art in this is its main ally. This is directly stated in the poem "To Poetry": We will remember our youth, And the feasts of golden antiquity, And the dreams of disinterested freedom, And the sincere dreams of love. Sing with mighty, unheard-of power, Resurrect, resurrect again All that was holy and sweet to us, All that life smiled for us! One of Apukhtin's main complaints about modern life - he judges it, as a rule, not in social, but in moral terms - it underestimates or even vulgarizes high art. An example of this is the operetta "Little Faust", in which Goethe's heroine turned out to be a cocotte: Our age is like this. - He doesn't care. That thousands of people sobbed over you, That once with your beauty The whole region was comforted and warmed. ("To Gretchen") But the hopes for a moral revival are also connected with art. Of all the arts, theater has the greatest impact. About this - the poem "In Memory of Martynov". The art of the great artist was capable of awakening souls, as Gogol said, "crushed by the bark of their earthliness." (Letter to G. I. Vysotsky dated June 26, 1827 // Gogol N. V. Complete collection of works [L.], 1940. Vol. 10. P. 98.) All your spectators: and a warrior, With a bold chest Who worked miracles at races and races, And a fat bureaucrat with a hardened soul In petty intrigues and ranks, And a boy, and an old man ... and even our ladies, So indifferent to the fatherland and to you, So fond of the screech of French fashionable drama, So impudently flattering themselves - they all understood how hard and insulting a person suffers in their native land, And each of them suddenly became so ashamed of his happy life! But modern man is so immersed in the vain interests of the day that even great art can revive his soul only for "one moment": Of course, tomorrow, still soulless, They will begin to crush all relatives and strangers. But at least for a moment you, obedient to a genius, Found the remnants of the heart in them! The world of theater was close and dear to Apukhtin. Apukhtin, a passionate theatergoer, was described by memoirists. (See in particular: P. V. Bykov. Silhouettes of the Distant Past. M .; L., 1930.) In these memoirs, he appears not only as an attentive, qualified spectator, but also as a person who reacts very emotionally to the performance, capable of literally burst into tears at the performance that shook him. Friendship with actors, participation in amateur performances - all this could not but be reflected in his work. The theater is a constant theme of Apukhtin, a number of his poems are devoted to it: "In the theater" ("Often, bored with mediocre playing ..."), "M-me Volnis", "We played on stage with you ...", "I had fun yesterday on the noisy stage ...", "Actors", "In the theater" ("Abandoned by you, alone in the soulless crowd ..."), "Public (During the performance of Rossi)". In addressing this topic, Apukhtin uses the traditional comparison: life is a theater. The motif of acting, masks, theatrical play unites Apukhtin's poetry and prose. The poem "Actors" is built on likening life to a theater. But not to the theater, where, as Blok would later say, “walking truth” will make everyone “sick and light” (“Balagan”), but to the theater as an act of acting, when behind external festivity they hide the miserable and immoral essence of life. The point for Apukhtin is not only that the mask, the playing of some role, is a sign of hypocrisy and insincerity. For the writer, another meaning of the motive is no less important: a man in a mask does not live his own, someone else's life. Here we went silently and trembling, But we recover soon And with a sense of the role we speak, Stealthily looking at the prompter. ("Actors") The lyrical hero of Apukhtin is tormented most of all by one thing - the mystery of love. AT lyrical world Apukhtina is main question life. It is not for nothing that the well-known critic of the turn of the century, A. L. Volynsky, called his article about Apukhtin "The Singer of Love." (Volynsky A. Singer of Love // Struggle for Idealism. St. Petersburg, 1900. P. 329.) Apukhtin's love is mysterious, spontaneous and disharmonious. She deprived me of faith And ignited inspiration, Gave me happiness without measure And tears, tears without number. ("Love") Very often, Apukhtin's love is - in Tyutchev's language - "a fatal duel." More precisely, Apukhtin reveals in great detail, psychologically convincingly, the relationship that can be called a completed duel, because one of the two (more often "he", less often "she") turned out to be the defeated, subordinate, dependent: Not called, love will enter your quiet house, Fill your days with bliss and tears And make you a hero and ... a slave. ("When in the arms of corrupt fading...") Apukhtin willingly traces the development of feelings, when dependence on another person turns into a loss of will, slavish submission. But even in these painful and humiliating relations for an outsider's eye, Apukhtin's hero can and does find joy. Here is an expression of this feeling, surprising in its capacity and persuasiveness (this time we are talking about a woman): She will give the last penny, To be your slave, maid, Or faithful dog yours - Diana, whom you caress and beat! ("Letter") Perhaps the most significant thing is that even such love in the world of Apukhtin cannot humiliate a person. Love with him is always a sign of a living soul, a soul raised above the ordinary. In Apukhtin's poetry, as later in Blok's, "only a lover has the right to be called a man" ("When you stand in my way..."). The hero of Apukhtin, like Chekhov's Ranevskaya, is always "below love", is in its power, defenseless against the feeling of love, and this is the necessary measure of his humanity. The hero of Apukhtin cannot win or get rid of such a feeling: "The disease is incurable." One of his poems begins with the words: "I defeated her, fatal love," and ends like this: Against my will, against your will You are with me everywhere and always! This is love-passion, if we recall the well-known classification of Stendhal. A feeling that lives, as it were, independently of a person, of his will, a moral feeling. Such love is meant by the hero of the story "The Diary of Pavlik Dolsky" when he says: "If there really was a kingdom of love, what a strange and cruel kingdom it would be! What laws would it be governed by, and could there be any laws for such capricious queen? In the poem "A Year in the Monastery" (1883), the outline of actions and experiences, traditional for the Apukhta heroes, is outlined with a dotted line: short happiness mutual love, then the "offensive petty discord", his slavish dependence on her, his attempt to free himself from this feeling, to find the meaning of life in religion, the futility of this attempt, the flight from the monastery at the first call of the adored woman - on the eve of monastic vows. At one time, S. A. Vengerov called this poem "the apotheosis of impotence." (Vengerov S. op. cit. p. 246.) It seems that this is a one-sided assessment; the hero's dependence on "worldly" life, his earthly love is evidence of the unquenched forces of the soul. A. L. Volynsky rightly remarked: "As a poet of love, Apukhtin is simpler, sincere and sincere than many other poets of our time." (Volynsky A. Decree. op. P. 329.) In his best things, he knew how to say about love - including disastrous, devastating love - simply and strongly: Do not knock on my sleepless night, Do not wake up love buried, Your image is alien to me and your language is mute, I am lying in a coffin, I have calmed down completely ... ("Memories of the Past") Apukhta's hero is aware of the selfish, even evil beginning in love - in love, which is akin to hatred - but it is all the more valuable because his love can rise, rise (through torment and suffering) to love-worship, morally enlightened love: Sometimes an evil thought Creeping up in silence, Snake tongue whispers to me: "How ridiculous you are with your deep participation! You will die, as you lived, a lonely wanderer, After all, this happiness is someone else's, not yours!" This thought is bitter to me, but I drive it away And I rejoice that someone else's happiness is dearer to me than my happiness, twice as expensive! ("Two hearts loving and longing for an answer...") Love is the main, key theme of Apukhta's romances. Apukhtin lives in the minds of the general reader primarily as the author of romances. P. I. Tchaikovsky, Ts. A. Cui, R. M. Glier, F. A. Zaikin, A. S. Arensky, A. A. Olenin, S. V. Rakhmaninov, A. V. Shcherbachev - dozens composers wrote music to the words of Apukhtin. Romance as a special literary genre was established in our literature by Pushkin and Baratynsky. In the middle of the last century, A. A. Fet, Ya. P. Polonsky and A. K. Tolstoy addressed him especially often. The romance element is very noticeable in Apukhtin's poetry. Romance is a genre well known to everyone, but still little studied. In his nature there is a contradiction, a riddle. The romance, including the Apukhta one, is usually filled with traditional poetic vocabulary, "poeticisms", which were more than once turns in the course. What in other verses would be perceived as an unacceptable banality, as an obvious weakness, is accepted as the norm in the romance. In romance, the word not only carries its lexical or figurative meaning, but is also a support for emotion, the music of feelings, which appears, as it were, on top of words. The romance uses "a ready-made, in its own way, universally valid language of passions and emotions." (Ginzburg L. Ya. About lyrics. L., 1974. P. 238.) Easily recognizable images, familiar romance vocabulary instantly set us up for a certain system of emotions and experiences. Trembling and languishing in the cold of life, I thought that there was no love in a tired heart, And suddenly I smelled the warmth and sun of May Your unexpected greetings. ("In the cold of life, shivering and languishing...") A romance is always naive, or rather, as if naive. "Naivete," wrote one of the critics of the Apukhtin era, "is poetry in itself." (Andreevsky S. A. Literary essays. St. Petersburg, 1902, p. 438.) Romance expects the reader to be ready to trust his emotions. Otherwise, the romance may seem "bare", the ironically tuned consciousness "does not hear" the music of the romance. An example of this is the opinion of the critic M. A. Protopopov, who wrote that he sees nothing but nonsense in Apukhtin's famous romance "Crazy Nights ..." ("in this set of consonances"). (Protopopov M. A. Amateur writer // "Russian wealth". 1896, No 2. P. 59.) Crazy nights, sleepless nights, Incoherent speeches, tired eyes ... Nights, illuminated by the last fire, Late autumn flowers . The critic saw the weakness of the poem in the fact that each reader "invested a meaning appropriate to the circumstances" into these generalized formulas. There. P. 59. () The critic felt the genre nature of the work, but did not accept the "conditions of the game", did not recognize the aesthetic significance of the genre. A. L. Volynsky saw the merits of this Apukhta poem precisely in what caused Protopopov’s ridicule: “Every line lives here ... Nothing definite, and, however, the whole past rises before one’s eyes in one foggy, exciting and exciting image.” (Volynsky A. L. Decree. op. P. 331.) Romance is "music" that arises above the ordinary, in spite of it. Romance is democratic because it implies the feelings of every person. It turns out to be "fit" to everyone who hears it. Music in a romance for Apukhtin is the most adequate expression of this feeling. Emotional structure romance turned out to be very close to him. M. I. Tchaikovsky writes about this - with a slight shade of condescension of a professional to an amateur. Apukhtin, in his words, "like most amateurs, listened with equal pleasure to the truly beautiful and stereotypically vulgar. Glinka's romances and gypsy songs equally evoked emotion and delight in him." (Tchaikovsky M. Alexei Nikolaevich Apukhtin. S. XVIII.) Confirmation that the memoirist and biographer was accurate is Apukhtin’s own confession, made in a letter to P. I. Tchaikovsky (1880s): “I ... spend nights at the gypsies ... when Tanya sings "Parting up, she said:" Do not forget me in a foreign land "", - I roar at the top of my lungs ...". (Cited by: A. N. Apukhtin. Poems. L., 1961 (Poet's Library, BS, comment.). S. 343.) Unlike poems built on colloquial intonations, with an easily perceptible declamatory beginning, in melodious verse prevails in romances. Repetitions, intonational symmetry, cadence, emphases - Apukhtin uses the most diverse means to make the music of feeling easily audible and recognizable. “I love,” said Apukhtin, “so that the music of the verse is fully sustained, the melody makes itself felt.” (See: V. L. Bykov. Silhouettes of the distant past. L., 1930, p. 113.) The romance has not only a special atmosphere, its own system of emotions, but also its own system of values. Love has absolute meaning and absolute value here. Romance sometimes gives a psychological explanation of feelings and actions or refers to a fatal fate, but usually does not resort to social motivations. As the researcher of this genre accurately put it, in the romance "they don't like it, because they don't like it." (Petrovsky M. "Riding to the Island of Love", or What is Russian Romance // "Questions of Literature". 1984, No 5. P. 72.) The "philosophy" of the romance is very close to Apukhtin. The image of love, falling into a romantic atmosphere, loses part of its individuality as a unique feeling of this particular person, but wins in the strength of emotion, the intensity of feeling: I was exhausted by a bleak dream, I hate the memory of the past, I am in my past, as if imprisoned Under supervision the evil jailer... ...But under your gaze the chain breaks, And I am all illuminated by you, Like a steppe unexpectedly dressed in flowers, Like mist, silvered by the moon. ("A joyless dream wearied me out of life...") Apukhtin's romances are filled with turns of the type: "with insane longing", "blind passion", "languishing soul", "crazy ardor". But inserted into a renewed context, otherwise instrumented, these nomadic images come to life again. Here is what Yu. N. Tynyanov wrote about Blok, who was also not afraid of such platitudes: “He prefers traditional, even erased images (“walking truths”), since they contain the old emotionality; slightly renewed, it is stronger and deeper than emotionality of the new image, because novelty usually diverts attention from emotionality towards objectivity. (Tynyanov Yu. N. Poetics. History of Literature. Kino. M., 1977. P. 121.) Apukhtin's romance experience, as Yu. N. Tynyanov noted, was useful to Blok: don't curse me! My train flies like a gypsy song, Like those days of no return. ("You were all brighter, truer and more charming...") In these Blok lines, both the intonation and the character of emotions are Apukhtinian. The Romance word is used for a simple but not primitive feeling. For example, when L. S. Mizinova needed to tell A. P. Chekhov about her feelings, she used the lines of the Apukhta romance: Will my days be clear, dull, Will I soon perish, ruining my life, - I know one thing: that to the very grave Thoughts, feelings, and songs, and forces - Everything is for you! (*) ("Does the day reign, is the silence of the night ...)(* Chekhov A.P. Complete collection of works and letters: In 30 vols. M., 1979. Letters. T. 7. S. 646.) In a poem dedicated to the memory of Apukhtin, K. K. Sluchevsky wrote, referring to his romances: There is something infinitely good in you ... The happiness that has flown away sings in you ... ("A Pair of Bays" or "Crazy Nights"...) Here it would be appropriate to cite an episode from the memoirs of the writer B. A. Lazarevsky. The hero of this episode is Leo Tolstoy, who generally had a negative attitude towards Apukhtin's poetry. It takes place in 1903, in the Yasnaya Polyana house of Tolstoy, during his illness. Evening. Tolstoy's daughters, Maria Lvovna and Alexandra Lvovna, play the guitars and sing the romance "Crazy Nights...". Lazarevsky writes: “The office door silently opened, and someone took Lev Nikolaevich out on an armchair. He bowed his head and, apparently, listened ... Still, I’m flying to you with a greedy memory ... It was the most beautiful place. When they finished singing , Lev Nikolaevich raised his head and said: "How good, how good! .."". (Lazarevsky B. A. In Yasnaya Polyana // L. N. Tolstoy in the memoirs of contemporaries. M., 1978. Vol. 2. S. 312--313.) Had this episode happened during Apukhtin’s lifetime and he found out about him, I think it would be one of the happiest moments of his life. On a number of Apukhtin's poems, one can trace how the use of a detailed plot, narrative intonation, the inclusion of everyday and psychological details translate a poem with a romance theme into another genre. Thus, the poem "Letter" (1882) is a lyrical monologue of a woman, addressed to a man whom she loves and with whom she was forced to part - a purely romance basis. But the "excess" of plot details, the abundance of details in the transfer of the heroine's experiences make the poem close to a psychological novella. The heroine Apukhtina tells in her letter about a meeting with a former rival, about a conversation during which they talked "about various nonsense", but thought about something completely different (Chekhov's psychological situation): And we did not dare to name a name that is dear to both of us. An awkward silence suddenly ensued... A few years later, An Answer to a Letter (1885) was written. The two poems were united by a common plot, built on the obvious correlation of the "day" and "night" parts of the letters. The plot poem retains romance rudiments: for example, the poet does not clarify (you don’t expect this in a romance, “fate” is in charge there) why the characters broke up, although they love each other. In the 1970s and especially in the 1980s, Apukhtin's more and more frequent use of long-form poems testified to the poet's growing interest in socio-historical motifs. The romantic, chamber world, with all its attractive power, begins to be perceived by the poet as cramped, insufficient. A good example is the cycle of poems "About Gypsies". Gypsy life is a traditional romance theme. Let us recall Apollon Grigoriev, Fet, Polonsky, from the poets of the 20th century - Blok. "To the gypsy camp, to the native steppe," wrote Apollon Grigoriev ("Meeting"). Apukhtin, it would seem, is in the mainstream of tradition: the gypsy world and with him is, first of all, the world strong feelings and passions. They have the strength of the sultry desert And the free expanse of the steppes, And the restless flame of passion Sometimes splashes from the eyes ... ("Oh gypsies") The feeling of liberation experienced by a person who has come into contact with this world is deceitful, "for a moment", but this feeling is strong and hot. Here we can recall Tolstoy's Fyodor Protasov with his famous remark: "This is the steppe, this is the tenth century, this is not freedom, but will ..." But Apukhtin also introduces genre, everyday motifs into the plot of the cycle "On Gypsies". Such a plot cannot be kept within the framework and intonations of the romance: Our light gave them little light, He only dressed them with silk; Greed is their only idol, And poverty is their eternal destiny. High (steppe, passion, freedom) and low (self-interest, immersion in the petty cares of the day) are seen in the same world, in the same people. Their life is described with an inner conviction that "there is no dirt in the truth." These words, spoken by Apukhtin in the poem "To Count L. N. Tolstoy", express the criterion that the poet followed in his most mature works and based on which, in particular, he highly valued the realistic art of the author of "War and Peace" and " Anna Karenina". Apukhtin's poems are often built as a monologue intended for recitation: "Recollection", "Memorable night", "Poisoned happiness", "Before the operation", "Crazy". As a rule, the basis of the plot of the work is an unusual psychological situation that causes tension, "nervousness" of the monologue. So, in "Late Revenge" - it's like a speech of a dead husband, addressed to a living wife: Do you remember how many times you promised me loyalty, And I prayed you for the truth only one? But with lies you poisoned my life like a poison, All the secrets of the past were told to me by the grave, And your whole soul is open before me. We find a whole cascade of declamatory effects in the poem "Crazy". Sharp psychological changes in the hero's speech are motivated by changes in the patient's state of health: the speech of the kind "king" ("Sit down, I'm glad to see you. Throw away all fear And you can keep yourself free") is replaced by the memories of the hero, who understands what happened to him ("and we lived so friendly with you, good"), and at the end - sharp remarks of an angry "ruler" ("Drive them into the neck of everyone, I need to be alone ..."). The declamatory effect is carefully prepared by the author: refrains, a combination of variegated verses, a change in intonation - everything works for the task. The monologue should captivate, move or even stun the listener. It is known that Apukhtin himself read his poems superbly. Particular attention is paid to the endings in his poems. Often a poem or stanza ends with a pointe - a bright final thought, presented in an aphoristic form: I don’t dare to bless her And I can’t curse. ("Love") That the torments of jealousy and insane quarrels, torments, seem to Me happiness before the horror of parting. ("I'm writing to you again, but these bitter lines...") The declamatory beginning is also decisive in the poem "Venice". The poem is written in octaves (classic stanza by Boccaccio, Ariosto, Tasso). Masterfully using the narrative possibilities of the octave, Apukhtin fills the story with interesting everyday and psychological details. Here are the last two representatives of the old Venetian family: Your visit is dear to us; we are old, deaf And we will not captivate you with the tenderness of our face, But rejoice in the fact that we have been recognized: After all, my sister and I are the last Mikyali. The story is laced with gentle humour. The requirements of the poetic tradition in the construction of such a stanza do not constrain Apukhtin. For example, with what ease he fulfills the condition according to which the last two lines of the octave (code) must give a new, or even unexpected, turn of the theme. The old woman tells about the portrait of one of the representatives of their family: She was from the Morosini family ... Look at her shoulders, how slender. The smile of an angel, the eyes of a goddess, And, although the rumor is merciless, - like a shrine, Teresa did not touch. No one would have hinted at her about love, But then the king, unfortunately, turned up. At first glance, the poetic world of Apukhtin may seem intimate, intimate. But an attentive reader will notice that his poems capture the spiritual and spiritual experience of a man, although far from social struggle, but who did not lose interest in the "damned" questions of the age, that is, questions about the meaning of life, about the causes of human suffering, about higher justice. The poet's growing interest in these issues over the years expanded the boundaries of his poetic world. In the late 1970s and 1980s, Apukhtin felt more and more clearly the attraction to a large poetic form. There is a noticeable desire to find "a way out of lyrical solitude" (Blok). One example is fragments of the dramatic scenes "Prince Tauride". A closer interest in inner world hero leads to the creation of works close to the psychological novel ("On the eve", "With a courier train", "Before the operation"). In these works, the influence of Russian psychological prose, especially the novel, was very beneficial for Apukhtin. Huge psychological stress is inherent in the very situation, which is dedicated to the poem "With a courier train" (early 1870s). Many years ago, he and she - who loved each other - were forced to part. Now fate gives them the opportunity to connect, start all over again. She is on the train to him, he is waiting for her at the station. The hero's internal monologue is intertwined with the author's narration, the story about the heroes' past smoothly turns into the heroine's internal monologue. The author managed to reveal the characters from the inside. We understand their state of intense expectation, understand the confusion of feelings that they experience during the meeting. Therefore, as a psychologically motivated result, we accept the author's conclusion: And they realized that their dreams are pitiful, That under the mists of autumn bad weather They are faded and late flowers - They will not return again for the sun and for happiness! The plot of a number of poems by Apukhtin becomes a sharp breakdown in the psychological state of the hero. For such plots, prose was usually taken. “Extremely interesting,” wrote K. Arseniev, “is Mr. Apukhtin’s attempts to introduce into poetry psychological analysis, to draw in a few stanzas or on several pages one of those complex mental states over which modern fiction stops with special love. 237.) During his lifetime, Apukhtin did not publish any of his prose works, although he read them - and with great success - in various salons. In the late 80s, Apukhtin conceived and began to write a novel dedicated to a very important stage in history - the transition from the epoch of Nicholas to the period of reforms.The fate of the main characters is drawn on the hair dryer of great historical events: Crimean War , the fall of Sevastopol. It was a time of reassessment of values, which is why there are so many disputes in the novel: about Westernizers and Slavophiles, about the liberation of the peasants, about the reforms that were coming to Russia. And in his first, remaining unfinished, prose work, Apukhtin does not look like a novice novelist. In the chapters from the novel, storylines are skillfully outlined, accurate, psychologically convincing characteristics of some characters are given. It's not just the breadth of the author's talent - the novel feels the experience of Russian psychological prose of the 19th century, above all - Tolstoy's. Apukhtin's extraordinary talent as a prose writer manifested itself in two of his stories and in a story that he managed to complete. In prose, Apukhtin - his poetic experience clearly affected here - tends to narrate in the first person: hence the epistolary form ("Countess D ** Archive", 1890), diary ("Pavlik Dolsky's Diary", 1891), the hero's internal monologue ( "Between life and death", 1892). Narration in the first person is a sign of increased interest in the inner world of the hero, his psychology. Apukhtin's success as a prose writer is undoubtedly due to the fact that by this time he had already written several large poems with detailed plots. Most of the heroes of Apukhtin's prose works are people of "light". The writer knew the life of people of this circle firsthand: he was his man in the secular living rooms of St. Petersburg (by the way, Apukhtin's look is insightful and sober, and the humor inherent in his prose protects him from moralizing and didacticism). No wonder Mikhail Bulgakov admired Apukhtin's prose. In one of his letters, the author of The Master and Margarita spoke of him thus: "Apukhtin is a thin, soft, ironic prose writer... what a cultured writer." (See: Chudakova M. Library of M. Bulgakov and his circle of reading // Meetings with a book. M., 1979. P. 245) One of the most fruitful attempts of Apukhtin to create an objective image of a modern person, a hero of the eighties, was prosecutor's papers" (1888). The work is built as an internal monologue (or diary) and a suicide letter addressed to the prosecutor. Like many other works of Apukhtin ("Crazy", "Before the operation", "A year in the monastery"), this poem is like a dramatic monologue, designed for acting, for auditory perception. The abundance of prose, colloquial intonation, frequent transfers from line to line, the astronomical construction of the poem - the poet uses a variety of means to ensure that the text is perceived by the reader as a lively, excited speech of the hero. The hero of the poem "From the Prosecutor's Papers" is in many ways close to the lyrical "I" of the author himself. Indirect confirmation of this is a detail that in everyday terms seems completely implausible: the hero writes his suicide letter to the prosecutor in verse ("I do not write for publication, And it's better to end my days in verse ..."), and he speaks of his suicide notes as if they were poetry. ("Let my last verse, like me, an unnecessary bean, Remain without a rhyme ..."). But at the same time, the desire to look at such a hero objectively, to identify in him features due to time, the general structure of life, historical and social reasons, is clearly noticeable. The poem has a documentary basis. The well-known lawyer A.F. Koni, conversations with whom directly influenced the emergence of the idea of the work, wrote in his memoirs: "Apukhtin was very interested in the statistical data I cited and the content of the suicide letters of suicides." (Koni A.F. Decree op. P. 306.) Russian writers - Apukhtin's contemporaries - showed what reasons can lead a person in the second half of the 19th century to suicide: disappointment in the social struggle, disbelief in one's own strengths (Turgenev), proud willfulness of a man who has lost faith in universal moral values (Dostoevsky), unwillingness, impossibility of a person with a great conscience to adapt to the norms of an unjust, cruel life (Garshin). Turning to the topical, "newspaper" topic, Apukhtin tried to reveal from the inside the consciousness of a person who "can no longer endure life." What made his hero load a gun and retire to a hotel room? Loss of interest in life? unhappy love? disappointment in people? mental illness? And that, and another, and the third. Apukhtin did not seek to give an unambiguous answer to this question. "If there were any clearly defined cause, then the epidemic character of the disease, to which I wanted to draw attention, would be completely eliminated," he said. (Zhirkevich A. V. Poet by the Grace of God // "Historical Bulletin". 1906, No 11. P. 498.) Let us recall the famous Nekrasov poem "Morning". There is the same motive: "someone committed suicide." We do not know who he is, the Nekrasov hero, and why he decided to shoot himself. But the whole structure of the succinctly described metropolitan life is such ("they brought someone to the shameful square", "the prostitute hurries home", the officers go out of town - "there will be a duel", "the janitor beats the thief") that the reader understands: in this city people must inevitably shoot themselves. Neither love nor memory of the past - the values that in the Apukhta world give meaning to life and help endure suffering - no longer have power over the hero of the poem. But a minute before the fatal shot, an image of a desired, idyllic life in its content arises in his mind: "a distant old house", "linden wide alley", wife, children, "quiet conversation", "Beethoven sonata". This recollection is not exhausted by everyday content, its meaning cannot be explained by its attractive power. The meaning of the remembrance is clarified only by taking into account the long-standing elegiac tradition. The image of such a harmonious existence was dreamed of by many heroes of Russian literature, who did not coincide with either the "Iron Age" or Petersburg life. For example, Ilya Ilyich Oblomov dreamed of such a corner, freed from passions, filled with music and a feeling of mutual sympathy for all its inhabitants. The consciousness of the hero of the poem "From the Prosecutor's Papers" is not closed in on itself. He is able to notice the pain and suffering of others, sometimes very distant people. Here the whistle of a locomotive flew to the hotel room, a train arrived in the capital. The hero of the poem thinks about those who arrived: Who is coming to us with this train? What kind of guests? The workers, of course, are poor people... From distant villages they bring here Health, vivacity, young strength And they will leave everything here. .. Behind these reflections, life experience is guessed, which can be correlated with the essays by F. Reshetnikov ("To earn money") and I. Kushchevsky ("To St. Petersburg! To the honey river Neva!"), which describe the difficult fate of people who came to capital in search of happiness. Thus, in spite of Apukhtin's repeated statements about his striving to serve only "eternal ideals", the logic of his own creativity more and more often led him to the "damned" questions of modern life. It goes without saying that Apukhtin's desire for epic objectivity in depicting the hero did not exclude the lyrical beginning from his plot things. In the most tense moments of the plot (the story is often told in the first person), the speech of the hero or the author begins to be restructured in accordance with the norms of lyrical genres. So, in the final part of the poem "Venice", the story of two representatives of an ancient family turns into an elegiac meditation about a city that has outlived its glory, about the mysterious nature of the human heart: Is the heart really destined to strive, Until it stops beating?.. How can a lyrical insert be defined and the excerpt "Oh, cornflowers, cornflowers" from the poem "Crazy", which was widely circulated as an urban romance. And in the poem "From the Prosecutor's Papers", the hero's thoughts, conveyed in colloquial intonation, are torn apart by a romance wave, consisting of several stanzas, which are perceived as independent lyric poem: Oh, where is she now? In what distant country does her calm brow flaunt? Where are you, my formidable scourge that punished so cruelly, Where are you, my bright ray, caressed so warmly? The stylistic and intonational heterogeneity of Apukhtin's plot things led to the fact that composers often took only separate parts of the poet's texts for their musical works, isolating relatively independent lyrical motifs. But in this genre heterogeneity, in the combination of the epic and lyrical beginnings, there is the originality and attractiveness of Apukhtin's narrative poems and poems. The fates of the heroes of many of Apukhtin's poems (such as: "In wretched rags, motionless and dead...", "The Old Gypsy", "A Year in the Monastery", "From the Prosecutor's Papers") are more clearly read in the context of his entire work, in the context Russian literature of the second half of the 19th century. In this case, much in these destinies, if not completely clarified, then significantly specified. We begin to see them not as exclusive, but as a general meaning. Inferiority, imbalance, morbidity of the heroes of these works in the mind of the reader are somehow associated with the social ailments of society, the moral atmosphere of Russian life in those years. Some kind of sick craze, Infection of the moral plague - Hovering over us, and catching, and disturbing Enslaved minds ... - it is said in the poem "From the papers of the prosecutor." The peculiarity of many of Apukhtin's works of the 80s is that now he comprehends the character of the hero in his specific socio-historical conditionality. The fate of a person is included in the flow of time. And in conclusion, one common property poetic works of Apukhtin: they, as a rule, are designed for a direct emotional reaction, for empathy, this is poetry of feelings that are recognizable and close to everyone. In one poem, Apukhtin admitted that the true "minutes of happiness" for him are when a ray of participation suddenly flashes In other people's attentive eyes. Time - almost a hundred years that have passed since the death of Apukhtin - has confirmed that his poetry has the right to the attention of a discerning reader.
Poems by A.N. Apukhtin. St. Petersburg, printing house F.S. Sushchinsky, 1886, 218, IV pages. In semi-coloured Moroccan binding of the era with gold stamping on the spine. Waxed, under "marble", endpapers. The paperback covers have been retained. Circulation 3000 copies. A copy on thick vellum paper. Format: 26x18 cm. The first lifetime edition of the author's poems. Rare in this form!
Bibliographic description:
1. The Kilgour collection of Russian literature 1750-1920. Harvard-Cambrige, 1959, No. 44 - a heavily stabbed copy!
2. Books and manuscripts in the collection of M.S. Lesman. Annotated directory. Moscow, 1989, No. 104.
3. Library of Russian poetry I.N. Rozanov. Bibliographic description. Moscow, 1975, No. 252.
4. Mezier A.V. Russian literature from the 11th to the 19th centuries inclusive. SPb., 1899 - missing!
5. Smirnov-Sokolsky N.P. "My Library", Moscow, 1969 - missing!
Crazy nights, sleepless nights
Speech incoherent, tired eyes ...
Nights lit by the last fire,
Autumn dead flowers belated!
Even if time is a merciless hand
It showed me what was false in you,
Nevertheless, I fly to you with a greedy memory,
Looking for the impossible in the past...
With an insinuating whisper you drown out
The sounds are daytime, unbearable, noisy...
On a quiet night you drive away my sleep,
Sleepless nights, crazy nights!
Apukhtin, Alexey Nikolaevich(1840-1893) - famous Russian poet and prose writer, author of inimitable romances. The childhood of Alexei Nikolaevich, who was born on November 15, 1840, passed in the family estate of Pavlodar, Kaluga province. His parents belonged to old noble families, he received an excellent education at home. From childhood, he was connected by the closest friendship with his mother, Maria Andreevna, nee Zhelyabuzhskaya, "a woman of wonderful mind, gifted with a warm, pretty heart and the most delicate elegant taste." The first biographer, a friend of the poet, Modest Ilyich Tchaikovsky, wrote: “The poetic gift of Alexei Nikolaevich had an effect very early. At first, he expressed himself in a passion for reading and poetry, mainly, and his amazing memory was revealed. In 1852, Apukhtin entered a closed educational institution - the St. Petersburg School of Law. P. I. Tchaikovsky became his fellow student and friend. In a poem dedicated to Pyotr Ilyich, the poet wrote:
Do you remember how, huddled in the "musical"
Forgetting the school and the world,
We dreamed of perfect glory...
Art was our idol.
The young man studied brilliantly and showed brilliant abilities, he knew by heart many poems by A.S. Pushkin and M.Yu. Lermontov, tried to compose himself. Apukhtin was the literary star of the school - the editor of the student newspaper and a poet whose talent aroused awe among classmates. It was presented by I.S. Turgenev and A.A. Fetu, who patronized him. With the assistance of the director of the school A.P. Yazykov in the newspaper "Russian invalid" on November 6, 1854, the first published poem by Apukhtin "Epaminondas", dedicated to the memory of V.A. Kornilov. In 1857, on the recommendation of I. S. Turgenev, Apukhtin’s cycle of poems “Village Essays” was published in Sovremennik. After graduating from college, he decided to serve in the Ministry of Justice. He showed no particular zeal for service. In the 60s. his poems are published in various magazines. Collaboration with Sovremennik is terminated due to a divergence of views with the radical editorial staff of the journal. In a poetic appeal to "modern revivals", Apukhtin exclaims:
I'm tired of your soulless phrases,
From words trembling with hatred!
In the summer of 1866, Alexei Nikolaevich visited Valaam. He came here with his close friend Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. Friends make study trips, get acquainted with the nature of the island with interest, make notes - one on sheets of music paper, the other in a poetic diary. In 1883, the poet wrote the poem "A Year in the Monastery". The plot of the poem was an incident from monastic life: a young man Cyril runs away from a rich parental home. The harsh life of the Valaam elders, beauty wildlife the young man's imagination is staggering, burning with love for God and, desiring the salvation of his soul, he remains in the monastery and indulges in feats of fasting and prayer. “A Year in the Monastery” was the poet’s favorite brainchild: “You can’t imagine,” he wrote to Kartsov on March 2, 1885, “with what special feeling I began to leaf through the manuscript of this quasi-poem, which I cannot stop loving ... Not only every chapter of it has been experienced me, but the description of each chapter has its own story.
I've been living in a monastery for two weeks now
In the midst of silence and deep stillness.
Our monastery is built on the mountain
And surrounded by a high fence.
From the tower in the summer the view is wonderful, they say,
To distant forests, lakes and villages;
Between the cells scattered - a garden,
Where many flowers and rare plants
/Our monastery was famous for flowers for a long time/.
In the spring it is heaven on earth; but now
Everything is covered with deep snow,
Everything seems to me a white desert,
And only the domes of churches
Shine gold on it.
To the right of the gate, near the cathedral,
Barely visible through the trees
My cell huddles in two windows,
There is little bait in it for a vain look:
Plank bed covered with carpet,
Two leather chairs, an oak table between the windows
And a shelf of church books over the table;
In the icon case is the face of Christ, on it is a crown of thorns.
Monastic life without storms and without passions
It seems to me like a carefree dream.
I do not hear secular phrases, hardened speeches
With their eternal lies and eternal slander,
I do not see vulgar, evil faces ...
One thing confuses the lack of faith.
But God help me
His love has no measure
And mercy knows no bounds!
In 1865 Apukhtin wrote to P.I. Tchaikovsky: "No force will force me to enter the arena, cluttered with meanness, denunciations and ... seminarians!" The poet remains aloof from the social and literary struggle, outside of literary parties and trends. Having a negative attitude to the extremes of nihilism, and to the demagogy of the ruling elite, and to the obsession of the Slavophiles, the poet in his work focuses on genuine spiritual values. He liked to call himself an amateur in literature, while literary creativity was the main business of his life, and the virtuosity and ease of his poems were not only evidence of talent, but also the result of hard work. In the mid 60s. Apukhtin served for some time as an official for special assignments under the Oryol governor, then returned to St. Petersburg. During this period, Apukhtin is known in St. Petersburg - a frequenter of secular salons, an avid theatergoer who won recognition in the roles of Molchalin and Famusov, a brilliant storyteller, author of impromptu - but Apukhtin the poet is almost unknown. In the 70s. he still publishes little, writing only for himself and his closest friends. But his poems are becoming more and more widespread: they are rewritten, read from the stage, composers write romances to Apukhtin's words. By the end of the 70s, he becomes a literary celebrity. Apukhtin's first collection of poems, with a circulation of three thousand copies, was published in 1886; during the life of the author, it was reprinted three times: 1886, 1891 and 1893. The sixth, posthumous edition appeared in 1907. But even at the time of the highest popularity, the poet keeps aloof from literary life. True, he takes part in literary collections published for charitable purposes. Willingly participates in the collection of donations for the monument to Pushkin. A. Zhirkevich recalls that in the last days of his life, Apukhtin, waking up, “immediately, without saying anything else, began to recite Pushkin, and only Pushkin alone.” In the early 90s, prose works were written - “The Unfinished Story”, “The Archive of Countess D.” (1890), "The Diary of Pavlik Dolsky" (1891), a fantasy story "Between Death and Life" (1892), published posthumously. Apukhtin's prose was highly appreciated by M.A. Bulgakov. The thematic range of Apukhtin's poetry is relatively small: "fatal unrequited love", nostalgia for the past, the loneliness of a person in the world of "treason, passions and evil", the mystery of the human soul. Lyrical hero Apukhtin is most concerned about the mystery of love - mysterious, spontaneous, disharmonious. This is most often an unrequited fatal passion, from the captivity of which it is impossible to escape:
I forgot everything, I breathe only her,
All my life I gave her power,
I dare not bless her
And I can't curse her.
For him, as for Blok later, "only a lover has the right to be called a man." A. A. Volynsky rightly remarked: “As a poet of love, Apukhtin is simpler, sincere and sincere than many other poets.” Apukhtin's lyrics unfold the antitheses of the thirst for life and the desire for death, love and disappointment in it, faith and disbelief. The poet psychologically accurately depicts the emotional world of his characters. One of the constant motifs of Apukhtin's lyrics is suffering:
I have suffered so much, I have so many tears
Thid in the darkness of silent nights,
I endured so much silently
Resentment heavy and vain.
I'm so jaded, deafened
All my life wild and discordant ...
Experiences entail "eternal" questions: about the fate of a person, about death:
Who so arranged that the will is weak?
Here he is, look, lying without breathing ... God!
Why was he born and raised? These doubts, betrayals, suffering -
God, why did he endure them?
Mature Apukhtin is an irresistible wit, a memoir storyteller, a master of impromptu. The poetic works of Alexei Nikolaevich are designed for a direct emotional reaction, he depicts feelings that are recognizable and close to everyone. In one of the poems, the poet admits that he is experiencing true moments of happiness when
Suddenly a ray of fate flashes
In other people's attentive eyes.
Romances brought him the greatest fame. Using all the traditions of a love, gypsy romance, he introduced a lot of his own artistic temperament into this genre. Many romances were set to music by P. Tchaikovsky and other famous composers (“To forget so soon”, “Does the Day Reign”, “Crazy Nights”, “A Pair of Bays”, etc.). It is characteristic that for A.A. Blok, Apukhtin's romances have become a poetic symbol of an entire era from the usual signs of everyday culture of the end of the century: "Gypsy, Apukhtin years":
A pair of bay harnessed to the dawn,
Skinny, hungry and sad looking
You are always wandering at a small trot,
Your coachman is always in a hurry somewhere.
Once upon a time you were trotters,
And you had dashing coachmen,
Your mistress has grown old with you,
A pair of bays!
Your hostess in the old days
She had many owners herself,
Experienced in the house attracted from fashion,
More gentle drove crazy.
Melted in the arms of a happy lover,
Sometimes the capital of others melted away;
Often you could stand in the stable,
A pair of bays!
A Greek from Odessa and a Jew from Warsaw,
A young cornet and a gray-haired general -
Everyone was looking for love and fun in her.
And fell asleep on her chest.
Where are they, in what new goddess
Looking now for their ideals?
You, only you, are faithful to her to this day,
A pair of bays!
That's why, harnessing to the dawn
And starving for days
You are advancing at a small trot
And make people laugh.
Old age, like the night, threatens you and her,
The voice of the crowd ceased to return,
And only the whip sometimes caresses you,
A pair of bays!
Quiet foggy morning in the capital
Drogs crawl slowly along the street,
In a pine coffin the remains of a harlot
A couple of bays are barely being carried.
Who escorts her to the cemetery?
She has no friends, no family...
A few ragged beggars,
A pair of bays, a pair of bays! ..
Analysis of the work of one of the poets (optional).
Poetry 1880-1890s
Poetic twenty years of the 80-90s. most often called poetic "timelessness". In the 80s. no major poetic names appeared. The brightest representatives of this period – S.Ya. Nadson, K.K. Sluchevsky, K.M. Fofanov, A.N. Apukhtin, A.A. honorary title"Russian Minor Poets". But “minor” does not mean “second-rate”. The poetry of this period paved the way for the poetic renaissance of the early 20th century. The poets of the eighties reflected the drama of the change of poetic epochs, the "break" of artistic consciousness (from the classics to modernism, from the "golden" age of Russian poetry to the "Silver Age" (N.A. Otsup, N. Gumilyov's like-minded person in the "Workshop of Poets".)
Poetic symbols that reflected the spiritual atmosphere of “timelessness”: in Fofanov’s work, this is the image of “withered leaves”, which suddenly come to life, like the resurrected dead, saturated with the borrowed delight of a spring alien to them (“Dried Leaves”, 1896); in Apukhtin's lyrics, these are asters, "late guests of the faded summer"; flowers blooming on the eve of autumn nature, touched by the first glassy cold (“Astram”, 1860s). This is an expressive image of the "winter flower" in the poetry of K.K. Sluchevsky, ("The flower created by Mephistopheles").
The "great dispute" between the two currents, "civil" and "pure" poetry, for these poets was no longer relevant. They did not unite in schools, they did not issue manifestos. The unfinished, open nature of the artistic searches of the “children of the night” (D.S. Merezhkovsky) does not give grounds to deny this period a certain integrity.
In historical and literary science, there were attempts to give it clear terminological characteristics - "decadence", "pre-symbolism", "neo-romanticism".
The authors of the textbook “History of Russian. lit. 19th century" (Part 3) ed. V.I. Korovina (eg, S.V. Sapozhkov) believe that the attempt of Z.G. Mints to describe the literary process of the late 19th century with the term “neo-romanticism” deserves the greatest confidence. (Mints Z.G. “New Romantics” (to the problem of Russian pre-symbolism) .// Tynyanovsky collection of RIGA, 1988.)
Typological features of this phenomenon:
1) Refusal of full everyday plausibility, strengthening of the artistic convention of the text, interest in folklore and literary legend;
2) The search for a universal picture of being based on global antinomies (the purpose and aimlessness of existence), life and death, me and the world, etc.
3) the attraction of style, on the one hand, to increased emotionality, expressiveness, and, on the other hand, the desire for "prosaic", for naturalistic "pettiness" of the description. Very often, both tendencies coexisted in the style of one poet, creating an effect of dissonance.
Poetry of the 80s and 90s conditionally can be divided into 3 groups:
1.S.Ya.Nadson and "mournful poets"
2. Poets of "aesthetic" orientation (Andreevsky, A. Apukhtin, Fofanov, M. Lokhvitskaya, Sluchevsky and others.
3. Poets of pre-modernist orientation (Vl. Solovyov, D. Merezhkovsky, N. Minsky).
Born into an old noble family in the city of Bolkhov, Oryol province. In 1859 he graduated from the St. Petersburg School of Law. Served in the Ministry of Justice. From childhood, he showed brilliant abilities, he first appeared in print at the age of 14.
Aleksey Nikolaevich Apukhtin began to publish in the 1950s, but the first collection of his Poems appeared only in 1886. The book was opened with the poem "A Year in the Monastery", representing the hero's diary entries, which reflected the characteristic circle of the main themes and motives of Apukhtin's lyrics.
The hero of the poem, a secular person infected with pessimism, flees from the "world of lies, betrayal and deceit" under the "humble roof" of the monastery. But life in deep silence, "without storms and without passions" soon bored him. In vain he tries to expel from his heart the image of his beloved, who gave him so much bitterness and suffering - more and more "waves of memories and passions rage" in him. Finally, on the eve of the tonsure, the hero says goodbye forever "to a quiet, humble abode", going towards the storms of life. The poem is devoid of a complex dramatic development of the plot, it is a long chain of thoughts of the hero, his conversation with himself.
The theme of the poems of the first collection is in many ways akin to the painful thoughts that underlie the poem "A Year in the Monastery". Melancholy, the torments of unrequited feelings, "mad groaning of love", memories of lost happiness, the tragedy of disappointment, the melancholy of "tedious days", pessimistic moods - such is the content of Apukhtin's poetry.
Previously, the poet gravitated toward elegy and romance lyrics. The widely known romances Crazy Nights, Sleepless Nights, Pair of Bays, Broken Vase, etc. Apukhtin attracted the attention of composers, including P.I. Tchaikovsky, who had been friends with the poet for many years.
In the 80s, Apukhtin began to gravitate towards narrative poetic genres - a diary, confession, letter, monologue, which made it possible to increase the emotional intensity of the characters' experiences and dramatize their story about themselves. Appeal to the narrative in verse, to a kind of verse novel, gave Apukhtin the opportunity to bring into his poetry a lively intonation. colloquial speech and more freely introduce into it the intonation of live colloquial speech and more freely introduce everyday vocabulary into it.
Lyrics A. abounded with stereotyped poetic phrases and images. “Misty distances”, “heavenly smiles”, “golden dreams”, “azure sky”, “bright eyes”, etc. poured into his poems in a wide stream. The appeal to the narrative form helped the poet overcome the attraction to someone else's imagery. Apukhtin was not a pioneer in the field of poetic narration, but he introduced new moods into it and a new psychological revelation of the man of his time. The monologues-confessions created by him ("Crazy", "From the papers of the prosecutor", "Before the operation") quickly entered the pop repertoire. In the preface to A.'s Poems, published in 1961, N. Kovarsky rightly writes that A. was characterized by the desire to “bring poetry and prose together. Verse A. under the influence of this relationship undoubtedly wins. The vocabulary becomes simpler, "poeticisms" are less common, the verse becomes freer, absorbs much more colloquial elements than before, both in the dictionary and in the syntax.
(Choose your own quotes.)
Teplyashin AndreyWe will begin the analysis of the works of I.A. Bunin from a modest part of the writer's artistic heritage, namely, from his so-called "travel poems". I must say that the craving for wandering, for the knowledge of the world around him was highly inherent in Bunin. As such, the author's travels are reflected in the cycle "Shadow of a Bird" (1907-1911) and travel diaries "Many Waters" (1910-1911). They were published already in emigration in the late 20s - early 30s.
The eastern route of these travels is noteworthy. Thus, Bunin's journey to Turkey and other Middle Eastern countries fits very organically into the tradition of pilgrimage Christian texts, dating back to Abbot Daniel - he is considered the founder of the genre of ancient Russian "journeys". Gradually, this genre, under the influence of secular tendencies in culture and with the development of narrative forms, lost its sacredness, maybe even some kind of ecstasy, and turned into an ordinary exotic essay, in which visits to sacred places are rather dryly mentioned. The influence of the Gospel is weakening, the authors more often turn to the Apocrypha, and not to the canonical books of the New Testament. This idea was expressed by the first reviewer of the "Shadow of a Bird" historian P.M. Bitsilli: “It is remarkable how little the Gospel influenced the entire subsequent culture of Christian humanity - proof of how Hellas irrevocably died: after all, the entire history of Christian art, both Western and Eastern, is connected much more with the Apocrypha than with canonical books New Testament" 1. Bunin's journey is romantic, the Gospel is present in it as folklore reminiscences. The Christian theme in the narrative is not the soloist, it is background, it exists on a par with the impressionistic landscape or, for example, the still life of the city bazaar. According to Bitsilli, Bunin wandered in the footsteps of Christ, but "he did not find Christ"2.
In general, The Shadow of the Bird does not stand out from the general direction of the art of the Silver Age, which was looking for its ancestral home - the Golden Age. The literature of this period is represented by a number of "travel poems", the focus of which is not geographical, not spatial, but temporal - the route of these travels lies in the past.
“Bely is looking for the seeds of world development in the North African countries as an antithesis to the Hellenic-Roman genesis. Balmont's Mexican notes breathe neo-romanticism. Rozanov seeks to sum up and is inclined to discover new, destructive trends - the cheap Americanization of culture he noticed in essays on Italy.
So, the cycle "Shadow of a Bird" sounds in tune with the philosophy of the Silver Age. Bunin refers to bygone centuries, trying with the help of imagination to recreate the historical atmosphere.
Christian and pagan motifs are present in the very title of the cycle. After all, its original name is "Fields of the Dead." That's what it's called and city cemetery in the vicinity of Istanbul - the lifeless remains of the past. And the field of the dead is in the book of the prophet Ezekiel in chapter 37 - but here the bones of the dead, by the will of God, come to life.
Of course, pagan motifs prevail in The Shadow of the Bird. Mostly, they are expressed in a colorful, exotic display that attacks the reader's sensory perception, enslaves his imagination.
“Then I stand on the bow and look either at the sharp iron chest, roughly cutting the water, or at the lying bowsprit mast, slowly but stubbornly climbing into the blue slope of the sky.”
“Water is falling apart in glassy waves.”
"The voluptuous somnambulistic murmur of toads," etc.
Journey to the East left a deep mark on Bunin's soul, oriental images and symbols will repeatedly appear in the author's subsequent works. In the cycle “Dark Alleys”, in the title story, the main character is dark-haired, black-browed, resembling an elderly gypsy4, while the last stories of the cycle (“Spring in Judea”, “Accommodation”) directly draw portraits of oriental beauties, “as if they had come from the biblical Song of Songs”5 . These portraits are also accompanied by oriental elements of clothing, interior, landscape, especially Moscow in Clean Monday: “A strange city! - I said to myself, thinking about Okhotny Ryad, about Iverskaya, about St. Basil the Blessed. - Basil the Blessed and Spas-on-Bora, Italian cathedrals - and something Kyrgyz in the tips of the towers on the Kremlin walls ... "6. “Again, it was enough for me that at first I was sitting closely with her in a flying and rolling sled ..., then I entered with her into the crowded hall of the restaurant to the march from Aida, I eat and drink next to her ..., I look at her lips whom I kissed an hour ago - yes, I kissed, I said to myself, looking at them with enthusiastic gratitude, at the dark fluff above them ... thinking: "Moscow, Astrakhan, Persia, India!" "Good! Below are wild men, and here are pancakes with champagne and the Virgin of Three Hands. Three hands! After all, this is India! You are a gentleman, you cannot understand all this Moscow the way I do.
It may be questioned how legitimate it is to attribute the Dark Alleys cycle to the period of the Silver Age, because most of the short stories were written by Bunin in exile shortly before the start of World War II. But, if we remember the general tone of the art of the Silver Age - a look into the past, and this look is not a simple artistic stylization, it is purposefully turned to the past, in which this or that author is looking for answers to pressing questions - then we will see that "Dark Alleys ' correspond to this tone. In "Dark Alleys" the writer, as it were, peers into the irretrievably lost Russian past, tries to restore it, to recall the smallest details. Many stories, such as "Clean Monday", "Late Hour", are oversaturated with signs of everyday life and time.
Before we consider in detail the stories of the cycle, we will quote I. Ilyin's words regarding “Dark Alleys” and other late works of Bunin: “Bunin's art is essentially pre-spiritual. Nothing but the "primitive grammar of love" and "dark alleys of sin" should be sought from him.
Indeed, in "Dark Alleys" Bunin thinks a lot about the secrets of love, love and its manifestations are almost the key theme of the cycle. Love in Bunin appears as the highest embodiment and manifestation of life, the meaning, purpose, content of human existence on earth. And in each story there is a struggle between two types of perception of love - material, where love appears as a blind, animal energy that takes possession of the whole being of a person and deprives him of his mind (“Kavkaz”, “Rus”, “Natalie”); and spiritual - where love regenerates the heroes of stories, turns their faces into faces ("Clean Monday"). And in short stories, where the spiritual is subordinate to the material, there the spiritual languishes, perishes. And submission to spiritual goals does not destroy the material, but on the contrary, gives it freshness, brightness, purity, sublimity.
But from whatever point of view Bunin would not write about love - Christian or pagan, he directs the narrative according to a certain pattern. So, for example, love collisions are clearly divided into 3 parts: a man's desire for a woman - intimacy with a woman - a tragic ending (the death of a man, the death of a woman, the impossibility of a man and a woman to be together for reasons beyond their control or in connection with the peculiarities of understanding love by the characters )ten. The tragic ending is due to several factors. Despite the fact that Bunin's works are not autobiographical, they contain the seal of the writer's fate - as we know, Bunin did not immediately find happiness in his personal life - he was married several times before he found a faithful companion. Secondly, tragic endings are a consequence philosophical views Bunin. This is a writer who “sings of the great value of suffering”11. In one of his poems, Bunin directly calls suffering a "source of joy"12. “This is already a formal cult of the “suffering” beginning”13. Here it is impossible not to draw an analogy with Buddhism, which asserts that our whole life is suffering. According to the Buddhists, suffering is the result of a person's desires, his passions. And the passionate attitude to life, the search for new and new impressions leads Bunin's heroes to suffering14. Only Bunin is not looking for ways to get rid of suffering, he even finds some kind of rapture in them. The thing is that Bunin has a highly developed doctrine of the All-Being: “Birth is by no means my beginning. My beginning is in that incomprehensible darkness for me, in which I was from conception to birth, and in my father, in mother, in grandfathers, great-grandfathers, ancestors, because they are also me, only in a slightly different form, where, however, much was repeated almost to the point of identity... In due time, someone should and will feel like me: Indian karma is not sophistication at all, but physiology”15. This feeling of complete involvement in being, the feeling in oneself of the entire previous history of mankind and the expectation of a future reincarnation make Bunin sensually, passionately experience the world, absorb everything into himself more and more new impressions. And for the sake of this constant search, Bunin had to put up with the inevitability of suffering.
As a tragic force that interferes with the happiness of people, the outside world acts, or ends the life of one of loving people, or in every possible way preventing them from being together16. It can be concluded that in the works of Bunin, love appears as an end-to-end love meeting that has no further prospects. Of course, such a view of the mystery of life is far from Christian. The woman here is first and foremost a lover, her role as wife, mother is either hushed up or brought to the background17. So, according to Bunin, love is just a happy short-term meeting, most often in the form of a premarital affair or adultery. Bunin does not speak about such Christian institutions as marriage, motherhood, matrimony.
So, after a breakup, one or two of the lovers are left with only memories. According to Bunin, memory is an immaterial, spiritual, psychological and at the same time material, biological connection with the foundations of being. Every moment of life leaves an imprint on the human Self, these imprints do not die, they connect a person with the One All-Being19, in which the material and the spiritual merge. Thus, memory destroys not only time, but also space, it becomes the equivalent of eternity, infinity, unity20. Hence Bunin's distrust of rationalism and his preference for intuition and direct knowledge. Therefore, Bunin's favorite heroes are not those that carry the wisdom of the mind, but those that carry the primitive wisdom of instincts in themselves.
So, the central idea of Bunin's works is complete inclusion in being. This involvement is far from being Christian, as it presupposes the surrender of the soul to the full power of passions, feelings, desires. Primary among these passions is love. But love is not in the high Christian sense, but in the pagan one, Bunin's love is Eros. Submission to his will leads the heroes inevitably to suffering, a tragic ending.
But one cannot deny Christian motives in Bunin's works. They exist, but they do not carry the moral, theological, religious overtones that they have in Christianity itself. Christianity in Bunin is most often the background against which the action of this or that work unfolds, a kind of artistic device to give an exotic flavor.
Bibliography.
Bicilli P. Ivan Bunin. "Shadow of a bird" // Modern notes. No. 47.
Bunin I.A. Leads and stories. L., 1985.
Gromov-Collie A.V. "Travel Poems" by I.A. Bunin (Problematics, genre, poetics) // I.A. Bunin and Russian Literature of the 20th Century: Based on the Materials of the International Scientific Conference. M., 1995.
Maltsev Yu.V. Ivan Bunin. 1870-1953. Sowing, 1994.
Prascheruk N.V. The artistic world of I.A. Bunin: the language of space. Yekaterinburg, 1999.
Sigov V.K. The national character and the fate of Russia in the work of I.A. Bunina // I.A. Bunin and Russian Literature of the 20th Century: Based on the Materials of the International Scientific Conference.
Shulyatikov V.M. Stages of the newest lyrics: Nadson, Apukhtin, Vl. Solovyov, Merezhkovsky, Minsky, Golenishchev-Kutuzov, Bunin // I.A. Bunin: pro et contra: Personality and creativity of Ivan Bunin in the assessment of Russian and foreign thinkers and researchers: Anthology. St. Petersburg, 2001.