Formulate the idea for the work of Byron the Corsair. Analysis of Byron's poem "The Corsair"

“Corsair” - sea robber Conrad, an outcast and renegade. The guiding thread to the main idea of the poem is given by symbolic image the sea in the song of the pirates, which precedes the narrative in the form of a kind of prologue. This appeal to the sea is one of the constant lyrical motifs of Byron’s work. A. S. Pushkin, who called Byron “the singer of the sea,” likens English poet this “free element”:

Make noise, get excited by bad weather:
He was, O sea, your singer!
Your image was marked on it,
He was created by your spirit:
How powerful, deep and gloomy you are,
Like you, indomitable by nothing.
"To sea"

Byron. The last lifetime portrait (1824). Artist T. Phillips

The duality of his appearance is shaded by the images of two women in love with him; each of which seems to represent one of the hypostases of his personality. If the gentle meek Medora is the only subject true love The corsair personifies his craving for goodness and purity, while the ardent, proud Gulnar is the second, rebellious “I” of the Byronic hero. Following him, she follows the path of crime: love for Conrad pushes her to kill her husband.

Conrad's tragedy is that his fatal passions bring death not only to him, but to everyone associated with him. (The sinless, immaculate Medora also dies because of her gloomy lover: she is killed by anxiety for his life.) Marked by the seal of an ominous fate, Conrad sows death and destruction around himself. Conrad tries to find an excuse for himself: “Yes, I’m a criminal, like everyone else around me. About whom will I say otherwise, about whom?” The lifestyle imposed by a hostile world weighs heavily on him. After all, this freedom-loving rebel-individualist is by no means intended by nature for “dark deeds”:

He was created for good, but evil
It attracted him to himself, distorting him.
Everyone mocked and everyone betrayed;
Like the feeling of fallen dew
Under the arch of the grotto; and like this grotto,
It petrified in its turn,
Having gone through my earthly bondage...
Per. Yu. Petrova

A. Mitskevich together with some other critics, Byron was seen in “The Corsair” known resemblance with Napoleon. Individualistic pride, glorified by the author of the “Eastern poems”, was characteristic feature consciousness of that era. This is precisely what explains the significant influence that Byron’s “oriental poems” had on contemporary and subsequent literature.

“Corsair” is a typical example of the construction of a romantic poem. The plot is based on climactic episode from the life of a hero, deciding his fate; neither his past nor further development his life is not described.

The hero acts in an exotic setting:

Our free spirit takes its free flight
Over the joyful expanse of blue waters:
Wherever the winds blow foam, -
Our possessions, our home and shelter.
This is our kingdom, there are no borders...

The action in “Corsair” takes place on the islands of the Greek archipelago and in coastal Greece, which is under Turkish rule.

The hero is surrounded by mystery. His past is hidden not only from the eyes of the reader, no one knows about it acting person poems, except Conrad himself, but he keeps his secret.

And everyone can see what
Terrible peace has been given to his soul!
Look how it burns, pouring delirium into your heart,
Memories of hated years!
No, no one will ever see
So that man himself reveals all the secrets!

Love plays in Conrad's life fatal role. Having fallen in love with Medora, he forever remains faithful to her alone. With the death of Medora, all joy in life is lost for Conrad, he mysteriously disappears:

A series of days passes,
No Conrad, he disappeared forever,
And not a single hint announced
Where did he suffer, where did he bury the flour!

The image of Gulnara is also shrouded in gloomy romance. Once in her life she found out true love. Since then, she can no longer put up with the hateful life of a concubine and slave Seid; her rebellion against the vile reality takes effective forms: she brings justice to her tyrant Seid, kills him and forever abandons her homeland, where she can no longer return.

Both female images The poems - the meek Medora, who is all devotion and adoration, and the ardent Gulnar, capable of committing a crime for the sake of love - are contrasted with each other.

Conrad finds himself in various critical situations, and his character is revealed in action, in encounters with obstacles. In no other romantic poem Byron of this period, the hero is not as connected with his comrades as in The Corsair. But even in the circle of his like-minded people, Conrad remains lonely, for his loneliness is the result of a long-standing distrust of people.

Conrad is a fierce and unsociable hero, wild, controlled by his fate, a hurricane beating down on the world. They don’t know about him, where he comes from, where to strive. It is shrouded in mystery. For him there is no repentance, no despair, no atonement, what is perfect cannot be destroyed - the indelible cannot be erased; he will find peace only in the grave. He is not looking for paradise, he is looking for rest. To distract himself from himself, he rushes into action, into struggle; corsair, he declares war on society: he is chasing strong sensations. Whether death awaits him, he is ready to buy relief from boredom at any cost.

As Pushkin noted, contemporaries saw in this image a romantic image of the “husband of fate,” Napoleon, with whom Conrad had in common his unlimited power over the troops and constant happiness in battle.

In 1812-1816. Byron created a number of lyric-epic poems, known in the history of literature under the name “Eastern”: “Guyar”, “The Bride of Abydos”, “Corsair”, “Lara”, “The Siege of Corinth”, “Parisina”. Byron himself did not unite them into a single cycle, and the action of these poems did not always take place in the East: Byron uses ethnographically accurate oriental flavor to add special drama and freshness to an already known plot.

The Author's personality emerges weakly, in contrast to “Pilgrimage...”. Most often, a fictitious narrator participates (on whose behalf it is spoken - a person disinterested in the events taking place and therefore impartial). The lyrical element is associated only with lyrical digressions depicting the beauties of the East. Each of the poems is dedicated to one of Byron’s close friends: “Guyar” - to Rogers, “Ab. Bride" - Holland. “Guyar” went through 13 editions.

All the poems are united by the type of romantic hero, free composition, open dramatic conflict, fatal passion that makes one devote his life either to revenge or to mysterious and enigmatic actions, some intriguing understatement and tension.

The general tone of the poems - sublimely tragic and poetic-lyrical - is determined by Byron's general plan, which is trying to philosophically comprehend the hero's conflict with reality. The heroes of all works are maximalists, they do not accept half measures, they defend the freedom of love and their personality to the last, choosing death if victory is unattainable. The death of a loved one leads to the death of the lover, if not physical, then spiritual. Both the past of the heroes and the ending of their destinies are mysterious. Compositionally, the poems are associated with the traditions of the ballad, which conveyed only the most intense moments in the development of the plot and did not recognize the sequential development of events.

In “The Corsair,” events develop sequentially, but the Author preserves secrets related to the characters’ past and does not give an unambiguous ending. This poem is the most significant in ideological and artistic terms, main character- a sea robber, a man who broke the law. But there is no passion for profit, for he lives harsh life hermit.

He was trusting, but people deceived him, he became embittered and disillusioned with everything, speaking out not only against people, but also against heaven.

The romantic Byron thinks strictly as a rationalist. The anti-God motive arises as a consequence of the conviction that there is no justice in the world created by God! A powerful and mysterious hero suffers and is alone. Repeatedly there is a confrontation between two images: a snake, which, being crushed, is not defeated and stings, and a worm, which can be crushed with impunity. The image of a snake is associated with Conrad. But he has one joy that binds him to life - Medora’s love. She is the embodiment of the ideal, only with her the heart can be tender. The world and soul of Medora are 2 poles that cannot be connected. Conrad's tragedy is that he recognizes only his will, his idea of the world. Speaking out against tyranny public opinion and the laws established by God, he in turn becomes a tyrant. However, Byron makes the hero think whether he has the right to take revenge on everyone for the evil of a few: the episode after the fight with Seid → in captivity and awaiting execution → here and remorse: “What seemed simple and light, suddenly became a crime on the soul.” – First awareness of the mistake. Secondly, when the slave of the Sultan who fell in love with him (a parallel with Lermontov’s “Prisoner of the Caucasus”), frees him, he returns home and sees the ship of the corsairs who are rushing to meet him: he never imagined that he could evoke love in the hearts of the pirates submissive to him.

The theme of individualism, the individual right of a person to decide what is good and what is evil, becomes more acute from poem to poem.

Eastern poems (1813-1816). The years 1811-1812 were the years of the rise of the radical democratic movement in England itself and the national liberation movements in Europe. The powerful protest of the masses during these years was reflected in Byron's satire and his political poems. However, from 1813 to 1816 in England and on the continent, reaction went on the offensive along all fronts. The three years from 1813 to 1816 were one of the darkest and most difficult in the entire new era. English history. The ruling elite of Great Britain was in a hurry to take advantage of the victory in the war on the continent in order to strangle all freedom-loving trends and aspirations. She abolished the Habeas Corpus Act, passed draconian laws prohibiting labor unions, etc.

The offensive of the internal and international reaction made a painful impression on Byron. He is going through a deep mental crisis. Motifs of gloomy despair appear in his works. However, the theme of the struggle against political and all other oppression not only does not disappear, but is even more intensified in his works of this period, which are usually called “oriental poems.” The following poems belong to this cycle: “Gyaur”, 1813; “The Bride of Abydos”, 1813; "Corsair", 1814; "Lara", 1814; "Siege of Corinth", 1816; "Parisina", 1816.

The hero of Byron's “oriental poems” is usually a renegade rebel who rejects all the rules of a proprietary society. This is a typical romantic hero; he is characterized by exceptional personal destiny, extraordinary passions, unbending will, tragic love, fatal hatred. Individualistic and anarchic freedom is his ideal. These heroes are best characterized by the words Belinsky said about Byron himself: “This is a human personality, indignant against the general and, in his proud rebellion, leaning on himself.” The celebration of individualistic rebellion was an expression of Byron's spiritual drama, the cause of which should be sought in the death of the liberating ideals of the revolution and the establishment of a dark Tory reaction. This Byronic individualism was subsequently assessed very negatively by the English poet's advanced contemporaries. For example, A. S. Pushkin in “Eugene Onegin” emphasized that individualism romantic hero-superman is in fact only shameful selfishness, which

Lord Byron by a lucky whim

Cloaked in sad romanticism

And hopeless selfishness.

Shelley, with his characteristic gentleness and tact, during his first meeting with Byron in Switzerland, pointed out to him the futility of individualistic rebellion, generated by the lack of perspective, the absence of clear political ideals. In his poem Julian and Maddaglio, in which he described his conversations with Byron, Shelley characterized Byron's anarchic and individualistic tendencies in the pre-Italian period as follows:

And it seemed to me that the eagle spirit had gone blind,

Looking at your own unbearable brilliance.

However, by the time the “eastern poems” appeared, this contradiction between them was not so striking. Much more important then (1813-1816) was something else: a passionate call to action, to struggle, which Byron, through the mouth of his frantic heroes, proclaimed as the main meaning of existence. The most remarkable feature of the “Eastern poems” is the spirit of action, struggle, daring, contempt for all apathy embodied in them, the thirst for battle, which awakened distrustful people from their cowardly slumber, raised the tired, and ignited their hearts for heroic deeds. Contemporaries were deeply concerned about the destruction of treasures scattered throughout the “eastern poems.” human strength and talents in the conditions of bourgeois civilization; Thus, one of the heroes of the “eastern poems” is sad about his “unspent gigantic powers,” and another hero, Conrad, was born with a heart capable of “great good,” but he was not given the opportunity to create this good. Selim is painfully burdened by inaction; In his youth, Lara dreamed of “goodness,” etc.

The heroes of Byron's poems act as judges and avengers for violated human dignity; they strive to break the shackles forcibly imposed on man by their contemporaries social order. In their stormy monologues one can feel the reflection of the anger that was latently brewing in those years among the people and which the poet was able to sensitively capture and express in the images of his artistic works.

The triumph of reaction gave rise to sentiments of cowardice and renegadeism. Reactionary romantics sang “obedience to providence,” shamelessly glorified the bloody war, and threatened “heavenly punishment” for those who grumble about their fate; In their work, the motives of lack of will, apathy, and mysticism sounded more and more strongly. A mood of depression has infected many the best people era. To the weak-willed, faceless heroes of the reactionary romantics, Byron contrasted the powerful passions, the gigantic characters of his heroes, who strive to subjugate circumstances, and if they fail, then they proudly die in an unequal struggle, but do not make any compromise with their conscience, do not make any the slightest concession to the hated world of executioners and tyrants. Their lonely protest is futile, and from the very beginning this casts a tragic shade on their entire appearance. But, on the other hand, their incessant desire for action, for struggle, gives them an irresistible charm, captivates and excites them. “The whole world,” wrote Belinsky, “listened with hidden excitement to the thunderous peals of Byron’s gloomy lyre. In Paris it was translated and printed even faster than in England itself.”

The composition and style of “oriental poems” are very characteristic of the art of romanticism. It is unknown where these poems take place. It unfolds against the backdrop of lush, exotic nature: descriptions are given of the endless blue sea, wild coastal cliffs, fabulously beautiful mountain valleys. However, it would be in vain to look in them for images of the landscapes of any particular country, as was the case, for example, in Childe Harold. “The action in Lara takes place on the Moon,” Byron wrote on this occasion to his publisher Murray, advising him to refrain from any comments about the relief of the area described in this poem. Each of the “oriental poems” is a short poetic story, the center of the plot of which is the fate of one romantic hero. All attention is aimed at revealing the inner world of this hero, showing the depth of his stormy and powerful passions. Compared to Childe Harold, the poems of 1813-1816 are distinguished by their plot completeness; the main character is not only a connecting link between the individual parts of the poem, but represents its main interest and subject. But there are no large folk scenes, political assessments of current events, or a collective image ordinary people from the people. The protest sounding in these poems is romantically abstract.

The construction of the plot is characterized by fragmentation, a heap of random details; there are many omissions and significant hints everywhere. You can guess the motives driving the hero’s actions, but often you cannot understand who he is, where he came from, what awaits him in the future. The action usually begins with some moment snatched from the middle or even the end of the story, and only gradually does it become clear what happened earlier.

Before all other “oriental poems”, “The Gyaur” (1813) saw the light. The plot of this poem boils down to the following: The giaur confesses to a monk on his deathbed. His incoherent story is the delirium of a dying man, these are some fragments of phrases, the last painful flash of consciousness. Only with with great difficulty you can catch the thread of his thoughts. Gyaur passionately loved Leila, she reciprocated his feelings. Joy and light filled Gyaur’s entire being. But Leila’s jealous and treacherous husband Hassan tracked her down and villainously killed her. The giaur took terrible revenge on the tyrant and executioner of Leila. Hassan died a painful death at his hands.

However, revenge did not bring Gyaur either satisfaction or peace. His troubled spirit is tormented by a secret illness. He seeks to defend his personal dignity from the attacks of some gloomy, dark world, which is personified in the poem by the mysterious and hostile background surrounding the hero. Giaour's character is revealed in the struggle and in the tragic contradictions of his soul: he fiercely resists the mysterious forces that threaten him; despair does not weaken his desire for action, for battle:

I'm vegetating like a slug

In a damp dungeon underground

Sweeter than dead melancholy

With her fruitless dream.

The giaour is tormented by the thought that his “rich feelings” are wasted on meaningless things. His monologue sounds like an accusation against society, which made him an unfortunate renegade and humiliated him.

The hero of the poem "Corsair" is the leader of the pirates - fearless people who have violated the despotic law of a proprietary society, for they cannot live among “lustful slaves” and

Ambitious, thirsty for pleasure,

Whose sleep is not sound, whose laughter is not joyful...

They prefer to lead a free life on a desert island, far from the bondage of big cities:

Our whole life is a seething battle

And the joy of changing fate...

The corsair, their brave and wise leader, is the same rebel and renegade as the Gyaur. On the island of pirates, everyone respects and fears him. He is harsh and domineering. The crews of the pirate brigs are obedient to the wave of his hand, the enemies tremble at his very name. But he is terribly lonely, he has no friends, a fatal secret weighs on him, no one knows anything about his past. Only from two or three hints thrown in passing, one can conclude that Conrad in his youth, like other heroes of “oriental poems,” passionately longed to “do good”:

He was completely different before the fight

He didn’t invite people and the sky with him.

Deceived, we avoid more and more,

From a young age he already despised people.

And choosing anger as the crown of his joys,

He began to take out the evil of a few on everyone.

As in the fate of Gyaur, love plays a fatal role in Conrad’s life. Having fallen in love with Medora, he forever remains faithful to her alone. With the death of Medora, all joy in life is lost for Conrad, he mysteriously disappears. No one knows what Conrad's end was.

The hero of “The Corsair” seems to be constantly immersed in his inner world, he admires his suffering, his pride and jealously guards his loneliness, not allowing anyone to disturb his thoughts; This reflects the individualism of the hero, standing, as it were, above other people whom he despises for their insignificance and weakness of spirit. Thus, he is unable to appreciate the sacrificial love of the beautiful Gulnara, who saved him from prison at the risk of his life. The image of Gulnara is also shrouded in gloomy romance. Once in her life she knew true love. Since then, she can no longer put up with the hateful life of a concubine and slave Seid; her rebellion against the vile reality takes effective forms: she brings justice to her tyrant Seid, kills him and forever abandons her homeland, where she can no longer return.

Conrad has in common with Giaour and other heroes of “oriental poems” a powerful fortitude. However, his undaunted, fiery nature, despite its inherent features of individualism, is still more diverse and complex than the characters of the heroes of other poems; there is room in it not only for “anger”, but also for compassion.

The poem "The Corsair" is a masterpiece of English poetry. Passionate Power romantic dream combines it with comparative simplicity artistic development Topics; the formidable heroic energy of the verse in “The Corsair” is combined with its subtlest musicality; the poetry of the landscapes - with depth in depicting the psychology of the hero.

The fragmentation of “oriental poems”, the rapid dynamics in the development of action, lyrical descriptions unprecedentedly bright and bold feelings, contrasted with the dullness and dullness of the philistine world - all this required new genre and stylistic forms. Having used English rhymed pentameter for most of his “oriental poems,” Byron imbued it with new linguistic and stylistic techniques that allowed him to achieve the greatest expressiveness for depicting action, the hero’s moods, descriptions of nature, and shades of people’s emotional experiences. He freely addresses questions to the reader, widely uses exclamatory sentences, builds his plots not in a strict logical order (as was customary among classical poets), but in accordance with the character and mood of the hero. Regarding the composition of “oriental poems,” Pushkin wrote in the article “On Olin’s tragedy “The Corsair” (1828): “Byron cared little about the plans of his works or did not even think about them at all. A few scenes, loosely connected with each other, were sufficient for him for this abyss of thoughts, feelings and pictures.”

It should also be noted the evolution of Byron's hero: if Childe Harold - the first romantic character of the English poet - does not go beyond a passive protest against the world of injustice and evil, then for the rebels of the “eastern poems” the whole meaning of life lies in action, in struggle. They respond to the injustices committed by the “lawless law” of a “civilized” society with fearless confrontation, but the futility of their lonely struggle gives rise to their “proud and furious despair.” This was well explained by Belinsky, who wrote that the reason for Byron’s spiritual drama was his lack of clear political ideals and understanding of the laws of social development.

Lyrics of 1815. Around 1815, Byron created a wonderful lyrical cycle called “Jewish Melodies.” Here, as in the “oriental poems,” there are moods of gloomy despair. This is the poem “My Soul is Gloomy,” translated into Russian by Lermontov. Regarding this poem, Belinsky wrote: “Jewish Melody” and “Into the Album” also express the inner world of the poet’s soul. This is the pain of the heart, the heavy sighs of the chest, these are gravestone inscriptions on the monuments of lost joys.”

Byron's love lyrics of 1813-1817 are distinguished by their extraordinary richness and diversity: nobility, tenderness, showing the inner beauty of a free human personality and deep humanity constitute its distinctive features. This is lyricism, devoid of any mysticism, false fantasy, asceticism, or religiosity. We can say in the words of Belinsky that in Byron’s lyrics “there is heaven, but the earth is always permeated with it.”

Byron creates his ideal of love in the collection “Jewish Melodies.” The heroine of his lyric poems is not a ghostly image of the morbid fantasy of Coleridge or the late Southey, but a girl beautiful with her earthly beauty:

She comes in all her glory -

Light as the night of her country.

The entire depth of the heavens and all the stars

In her eyes are contained,

Like the sun in the morning dew,

But only softened by darkness...

And this look, and the color bows,

AND light laughter like a sea splash,

Everything about it speaks of peace.

She keeps peace in her soul

And if happiness gives,

That very generous hand.

Talking about humanism lyric poems Byron, one must first of all keep in mind the spirit of love of freedom and struggle with which they are filled. Byron fought not only against political oppression, but also advocated liberation from the shackles of feudal-bourgeois morality, way of life and thinking. Not only in “The Bards” and in “Harold” the poet protested against despotic oppression and the triumph of tyranny, but also in lyrical poems - such pearls of his poetry as “Imitation of Catullus”, “To the Album”, “The Athenian Woman”, “To Thirza” , “I’ll make up my mind”, “On the question of the beginning of love”, “Imitation of the Portuguese”, “Separation”, “Oh, if there, beyond the heavens”, “You cried”, “Stanzas to Augusta”, etc., he expressed liberating ideals of his time. Deep sincerity, purity and freshness of feeling, thirst for freedom, high and genuine humanity of lyrical poems awakened the consciousness of society, set it in opposition to the hypocritical customs and mores implanted by the church during the period of reaction.

The collection “Jewish Melodies” provides an artistic summary of the contemporary poet’s struggle of the English people. democratic freedoms. The biblical stories developed by the author of the cycle serve as a conventional form, a tribute to the national revolutionary traditions coming from Milton, Burns, Blake and others. For example, in some poems Byron resorts to the technique of a revolutionary rethinking of the dogmas of religion:

Tyrants are falsely honored here

God given kings...

It’s interesting that the theme of individual heroism is addressed in a new way in this cycle. The poem “You have ended the path of life” tells about a hero who deliberately sacrificed his life for the good of the fatherland. The poet emphasizes that the hero’s name is immortal in the minds of the people:

While your people are free,

He can't forget you.

You have fallen, but your blood flows

Not on the ground, but in our veins.

Inhale the powerful courage

Your feat should be in our chest.

Thus, there is a noticeable desire to overcome the individualism of the romantic hero.

Childe Harold's relationship with the society he despised already carried within itself the seeds of a conflict that became the basis of European novel XIX century. This conflict between the individual and society is much greater degree will receive certainty in the works created after the first two songs of “Childe Harold”, in the cycle of so-called “oriental poems” (1813-1816). In this poetic cycle, consisting of six poems (“The Giaour”, “Corsair”, “Lara”, “The Bride of Abydos”, “Parisina”, “The Siege of Corinth”), the final formation of the Byronic hero takes place in his complex relationship with the world and himself. myself. The place of “oriental poems” in creative biography poet and at the same time in the history of romanticism is determined by the fact that here for the first time a new romantic concept of personality is clearly formulated, which arose as a result of a rethinking of Enlightenment views on man.

Summarizing the internal experience of his generation, Byron coined European literature a very special psychological problem. It is characteristic in this sense that contemporary poet criticism perceived him not only as a singer of freedom, but also as an artist who looked into the innermost depths of the human soul. Thus, V. G. Belinsky, in a review of the translation of “The Prisoner of Chillon” made by V. A. Zhukovsky, speaks of “the terrible, underground torments of despair, drawn with the lightning brush of the tyrannical poet of England.” A. S. Pushkin, speaking about the same “Prisoner of Chillon” and “The Siege of Corinth,” noted as one of the main advantages of these works “the touching development of the human heart.”

Of course, we can talk about Byron’s psychologism only with certain reservations. Inner world Byron reveals the contemporary man with the help of a kind of romantic symbolism.

But this romantic language was close to the worldview of its readers. He corresponded to that idea of the bottomless mysterious incomprehensible human soul, which developed among people at the beginning of the 19th century under the influence of shifts that took place in the public consciousness of that time, so rich in “surprises” and “secrets.” (These include the Napoleonic epic and the personality of Napoleon himself, around which legends began to take shape already during his lifetime.)

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"ORIENTAL POEMS" (2).

Section 12. GEORGE NOEL GORDON BYRON. - “ORIENTAL POEMS”.

Unlike its predecessors - XVIII writers centuries, the romantics who replaced them considered man an irrational being. It is this idea, polemically opposed to the Enlightenment teaching about the reasonable and rational nature of man, that becomes the organizing principle of Byron’s “Eastern poems.”

All figurative system poems, their composition, language, style, arrangement of characters are subordinated to the task of recreating the character of their main character. Byron radically transforms traditional genre forms classic poem, destroying its inherent logical sequence of presentation of events. Completely obeying the will of the author, all the components of the plot, its beginning, continuation, end, often change places. (So, the poem “Gyaur” actually begins from the end.) A similar principle of construction (which M. Yu. Lermontov used in his poem “Mtsyri”) informs the work special form a lyrical flow, whose movement is not constrained by any obstacles. The same desire to reproduce the stormy and passionate nature of a rebel and rebel, ready to throw off any shackles imposed on him by society, determines other features of Byron's poetic manner. The rapid, as if gasping rhythm of the narrative, its excited tonality, the variety of lyrical shades, etc. - all these features are common features"Eastern Poems" The image of their main character is also characterized by the same uniformity. A lonely wanderer, carrying through life his mysterious sorrow and proud dream of freedom, he appears in various poems under different names, but his character remains unchanged. Famous saying A. S. Pushkin about the uniformity of Byron's heroes (“Byron... created himself a second time... In the end, he comprehended, created and described a single character (namely his own), everything except some satirical antics... he attributed to... a gloomy, powerful person, so mysteriously captivating”) refers primarily to “oriental poems”. Therefore, in order to get an idea of this entire cycle, it is enough to turn to one of the works included in it, namely the poem “The Corsair” (1814), where the Byronic conflict of an extraordinary individual and a society hostile to him is presented in particularly complete and direct expression.

GEORGE NOEL GORDON BYRON. - “Corsair”.

The hero of "Corsair" - the sea robber Conrad, by the very nature of his activities, is an outcast and a renegade. His way of life is a direct challenge not only to the prevailing moral norms, but also to the system of prevailing state laws, the violation of which turns Conrad into a “professional” criminal. The reasons for this acute conflict between the hero and the entire civilized world, beyond which Conrad retreated, are gradually revealed in the course of the plot development of the poem. A guiding thread to her ideological plan already gives a symbolic image of the sea, appearing in the song of the pirates, which precedes the narrative in the form of a kind of prologue. This appeal to the sea is one of the constant lyrical motifs of Byron's work. A. S. Pushkin, who called Byron “the singer of the sea,” likens the English poet to this “free element”:

Make noise, get excited by bad weather:

He was, oh mors, your singer!

Your image was marked on it,

He was created by your spirit:

How powerful, deep and gloomy you are.

Like you, indomitable by nothing.

("To sea")

The entire content of the poem is nothing more than the development and justification of its metaphorical opening. The soul of Conrad, a pirate sailing the sea, is also the sea. Stormy, indomitable, free, resisting any attempts to enslave, it does not fit into any unambiguous rationalistic formulas. Good and evil, generosity and cruelty, rebellious impulses and longing for harmony exist in her in indissoluble unity. A man of powerful unbridled passions, Conrad is equally capable of murder and heroic self-sacrifice (during the fire of the seraglio belonging to his enemy, Pasha Seid, Conrad saves the latter’s wives). The duality of his appearance is shaded by the images of two women in love with him, each of whom, as it were, represents one of the hypostases of his personality. If the gentle meek Medora, the object of the Corsair’s only true love, personifies his craving for goodness and purity, then the ardent, proud Gulnar is the second rebellious “I” of the Byronic hero. Following him, she follows the path of crime: love for Conrad pushes her to kill her husband. Conrad's tragedy lies precisely in the fact that his fatal passions bring death not only to him, but also to everyone who is in one way or another connected with him. (After all, the sinless, immaculate Medora dies because of her gloomy lover: she is killed by anxiety for his life.) Marked by the seal of an ominous fate, Conrad sows death and destruction around himself. This is one of the sources of his grief and the still not very clear, barely outlined, mental discord, the basis of which is (as will show further creativity Byron) consciousness of his unity with the criminal world, complicity in its atrocities. In this poem, Conrad is still trying to find an excuse for himself: “Yes, I am a criminal, like everyone else around me. About whom will I say otherwise, about whom?” And yet his way of life, as if imposed on him by a hostile world, to some extent burdens him. After all, this freedom-loving rebel-individualist is by no means intended by nature for “dark deeds”:

He was created for good, but evil

It attracted him to himself, distorting him.

Everyone mocked and everyone betrayed;

Like the feeling of fallen dew

Under the arch of the grotto; and like this grotto,

It petrified in its turn,

Having gone through my earthly bondage... Trans. Yu. Petrova

Like other heroes of “oriental poems,” Conrad in the distant past was pure, trusting and loving. Slightly lifting the veil of mystery that shrouds the backstory of his hero, the poet reports that the gloomy lot he has chosen is the result of persecution by a soulless and evil society, which persecutes everything that is bright, free and original. In Byron's worldview there still remains something of the Rousseauian belief that “everything comes out pure from the hands of the creator, everything spoils in the hands of man.” But, refracted through the poet’s romantic worldview, this educational symbol of faith largely changed its ideological and aesthetic nature. Placing responsibility for the destructive activities of the Corsair on a corrupt and insignificant society, Byron at the same time poetizes his personality and the state of mind in which he finds himself. As a true romantic, the author of “The Corsair” finds a special “nightly” “demonic” beauty in this confused consciousness, in the chaotic impulses of the human heart. Its source, like Milton's Satan, is a proud thirst for freedom - in spite of everything and at any cost. It was this angry protest against the enslavement of the individual and the enslaving power of bourgeois relations that determined enormous power artistic impact of Byronic poems on readers late XIX century. At the same time, the most insightful of them saw in Byron's apology for individualistic self-will and the potential danger contained in it. Thus, A. S. Pushkin, who admired Byron’s love of freedom, but condemned him for poetizing individualism, saw behind the gloomy “pride” of Byron’s heroes the “hopeless egoism” hidden in them (“Lord Byron, by a whim of a successful one, clothed himself in dull romanticism and hopeless egoism”),

In the poem “Gypsies,” the great Russian poet put into the mouth of one of its characters, an old gypsy, words that sound like a sentence not only to Aleko, but also to the Byronic hero as a literary and psychological category: “You only want freedom for yourself.” These words contain an extremely precise indication of the most vulnerable place in Byron's concept of personality. With all the justice of such an assessment, one cannot help but see that this most dubious side of Byronic characters arose on a very real historical basis. It is no coincidence that A. Mickiewicz, together with some critics of Byron, saw in The Corsair a certain resemblance to Napoleon." Individualistic pride, glorified by the author of the "Eastern poems", was a feature of epochal consciousness in its romantic, exaggeratedly bright expression. This ability to penetrate into the spirit of the era and explains the significance of the influence that “oriental poems” had on modern and subsequent literature, as well as on the development of the poet himself.

Song one

Pirates are feasting on the island. Their kingdom is “above the foamy, endless wave.” Their joy is a storm, a fight. They do not know fear, they are bored with death, because among pirates death is quick, “souls instantly break ties with us,” as the pirate song says. The leader of the pirates is Conrad.

He is stingy in speech - he only knows the order,
The hand is strong, the eye is sharp and keen;
He doesn't give their feasts any fun.

Conrad behaves like a righteous man - he abstains from luxurious food, “the enemy of the sensual - he is harsh and simple.” Conrad enjoys unquestioned authority among the pirates; not a single person dares not only to challenge the orders of the Corsair, but also to disturb him without a good reason.

In the distance, pirates notice a ship. It soon becomes clear that this is their pirate brig flying a blood-red flag. Those who arrived brought joyful news. The Corsair's longtime spy, the Greek, writes that an excellent opportunity has arisen to rob the Turkish Pasha's fleet. After reading the Greek's message, Conrad decides to immediately set off. He orders his weapons to be checked and prepared for battle. No one dares argue with the Leader.

He is secretly separated from everyone,
His sigh and laughter are a wonder,
And the name "Conrad" turns into chalk

The tan of anyone who is fierce and brave.
Lord of souls, most skillful strategist,
He, terrifying, delights those
He who is terrible - those who praise him...
The brilliance of skill - luck - success -
And, domineering, he is strong in the lack of will of all.
He dictates - and the feats of their hands

Everyone around him honors him as one of his merits.

Conrad was not always a merciless pirate. In the past lies the reason for his current anger at the whole world.

He was wise, but the world considered him stupid

And he spoiled it with his training;
I was too proud to drag out my life, humbled,
And too strong to fall into the mud before the strong...
Inspiring fear, slandered from a young age,
I became a friend to Anger, but not to Humility...
He had hatred - but for those hearts
Where is hatred mixed with servility?
Him, standing far away from everyone,

And friendship and contempt bypassed:
Marveling at him, they feared his deeds,
But no one dared to humiliate him.

However, Conrad is subject to one sincere passion - Love. Conrad happily and mutually loves Medora, does not pay attention to the beautiful captives, of which there are many on the island of pirates. Now, before a dangerous campaign, Conrad is going to say goodbye to his beloved and goes to her castle. Approaching Medora's room, Conrad hears the sounds of a sad song. The girl sings about her love for him, about love that knows no rest, because lovers must constantly part, and Medora lives in eternal fear for Conrad’s life. Medora dreams of the day when “peace will lead us into a peaceful home.” Medora wonders why her gentle lover is so cruel to people. Conrad announces to Medora that he “must go on a short journey again.” Medora is upset, she invites Conrad to at least share with her the festive meal that she was preparing, hoping that he will come to her. But Conrad can't stay. He hears the cannon signal: it’s time to move. Conrad leaves, “touching his forehead with a kiss.” Left alone, Medora gives free rein to tears.

Conrad returns to the ship. “A true leader would sooner die suddenly than lose his honor because of a woman’s torment.” He again becomes a decisive commander, gives orders, orders that his comrades wait for them back for the victory feast in three days. Conrad unfolds the nautical charts, checking them, looks through the telescope, and notices the Turkish galley fleet. He is unperturbed; he calmly calls on his comrades to begin the massacre.

Song two

“I organized a feast in honor of Seyid Pasha’s future victories.” He intends to defeat the pirates and capture sea robbers, and then divide the rich booty among his people. A lot of Muslims gathered under the banner of Seid. A dervish, a fugitive from a pirate ship, is brought to Seyid Pasha. This is Conrad in disguise. Seid Pasha begins to interrogate him. But the dervish seems to be stalling for time. “I am a worthless spy: my eyes were fixed only on escape,” he declares. According to the dervish, the pirates are stupid and careless: after all, the guards overslept - the dervish’s flight, which means the pasha’s “invincible fleet” will also oversleep. Seyid Pasha orders to feed the dervish, but he does not eat anything, explaining that this is his vow, that if he begins to taste the joys of life, the Prophet will “block his path to Mecca.” However, from the outside it seems that “for those who were condemned to fasting and labor for so long, he behaved strangely.” At this moment, the pirates attack the Turks, take them by surprise and put them to flight. Conrad sheds his dervish robes and appears as “a horseman rushing through the smoke,” “like Afrit, the demon of evil.” Conrad fights heroically, the Pasha himself retreats, forgetting about his harem. Conrad forbids offending women: “We were born to kill and perish, but we must always spare the gentle sex!” Conrad himself takes away the decoration of the pasha's harem, Gulnar. Seyid Pasha sees that there are few pirates. He is ashamed that such a small detachment managed to break his will, and he gives the order to attack. There are many more Muslims, and soon the pirate detachment is almost completely killed, only a few manage to escape. Conrad is captured.

Gulnar is hidden by Conrad in safe place. She wonders why “the robber, covered in blood, seemed more tender to her than Seid in love.” She understands that Seid was saving only himself, and the unknown pirate took care first of all about weak women. Seyid Pasha decides to execute Konrad with a painful execution - impale him and imprison him until the morning. Conrad is “defeated, alone, but the will managed to breathe courage into his chest.” Shackled, the prisoner behaves with dignity.

At night, Gulnar makes her way to Conrad. She thanks him for saving her. It is not in her power to save the life of the noble pirate, but she promises, with the help of female charms, to influence Seid Pasha and delay the execution for at least a day. Conrad tells Gulnar about his Medora, about their mutual love, about the fact that he is not afraid of death, but is afraid of causing grief to his beloved. He asks Gulnar if she loves Seyid Pasha. Ta answers negatively: “He will come, he will go - I don’t need him anyway, he is close, but not in the heart, but on the outside... And I am a slave, I am afraid of a different fate, which is worse than slavery - to become his wife.” Before leaving, Gulnar clings to Conrad's shackles, cries, her tears, like diamonds, remain on the iron of the chains.

The pirates, who miraculously survived, come to Medora and tell the girl that Conrad is in captivity. Medora takes the blow with restraint, without tears or screams.

There was in her, meek, this grace -
Tolerate, soften, hope and wait.

Having learned the details of Conrad's captivity, Medora collapses. Conrad's friends rush to take care of her, and then tell Anselmo, who remained on the island in Conrad's place, about what happened. Anselmo decides to go rescue Conrad from captivity, and if he is already killed, to avenge him.

Gulnar tries to soften the pasha, persuade him, convince him that if he does not execute Conrad, he will only win. He will find out where the pirates' countless treasures are and take possession of them. But Pasha is adamant. He is not interested in treasures: “His hour of torment is incomparable with wealth! The Corsair is in chains, and I have power over him.” Pasha agrees to postpone the execution for a day, but only so that he will have more time to come up with a more sophisticated execution. He humiliates Gulnar, suspecting that she stands up for the captured pirate for a reason (he saw Conrad carrying Gulnar in his arms from the battlefield):

Hey, two-faced woman! Hear:
He is not the only one mortal. And the only word is -
And you...

Gulnar understands that she is just a thing in the hands of her master, that Seyid Pasha does not love her. But she herself now knows what love is, and for the sake of her beloved she will stop at nothing. At midnight, having bribed the guard, she comes to the Corsair, persuades him to kill the pasha (for which she brings him a knife) and escape together. Conrad again refuses - his weapon is a sword, not a knife, he is not used to attacking from around the corner at night. In addition, Conrad understands that, in principle, he deserved to be executed because he sinned a lot. Conrad calls on Gulnar to be happy, to leave him, and not to darken her life with murder. Gulnar calls the pasha the source of evil, a damned tyrant, and explains that her well-being in the pasha’s palace is illusory: “The old man’s lust saves my life, when he gets tired of women’s charms, the sea will accept the bag with me as a gift.” The girl does not want to live without Conrad, so she decides to kill the hated pasha herself. If she fails to do this, then in the morning she will die along with Conrad on the scaffold. Gulnar leaves. Conrad notices that the door to his dungeon is not locked. Picking up the shackles so as not to ring, Conrad walks through the night palace. He sees Gulnar and hopes that she did not decide to kill. The girl turns around, and the Corsair sees “on her forehead - one unwashed, forgotten stain - a bloody trail, familiar from a young age - the mark of murder, a trace of crime.” Conrad had seen many murders in his life, but none of them touched his soul as much as this one. It seems to him that “a trail of blood, a criminal stream, has washed away the beauty from the dark women’s cheeks.” Gulnar announces to Conrad that a ship is waiting for him, that she has gathered a detachment of loyal people ready to ensure the safety of her and her beloved. Through a secret passage, Gulnar takes Conrad to the seashore. While swimming, Gulnar notices that “his empty, icy gaze is like a sentence.” Gulnar cries, insists that God will not forgive her, but Conrad must forgive, because she committed a crime for his sake, thereby abandoning both a calm earthly life and heavenly paradise. But Conrad does not blame her, he rather reproaches himself. A ship flying a blood-red flag is sailing towards them. This is Anselmo and his comrades rushing to the rescue of their leader. Having lamented a little that the operation to free him failed (because Konrad had already been freed by Gulnar), everyone happily set off on their way back. If Gulnar had told about how she saved the Corsair, the pirates would have chosen her as queen, but she is silent. Conrad is full of “hostility to deeds, sympathy to tears.” He knows that Heaven will punish Gulnar, but he himself feels sorry for the girl. Conrad hugs his savior and kisses her. He knows that even Medora, “whose soul is pure, would forgive the paired lips - here Weakness stole a kiss, here Love gave away her breath.”

The ship approaches the island. Conrad is surprised: he sees no light in Medora's window. He goes up to every room and sees that his beloved is dead. Conrad understands that this is heaven's punishment for his sins. The only creature he loved in the world is now separated from him forever. Medora, of course, will go to heaven, but Conrad, who sinned a lot, will not go to heaven. The corsair is shocked. He cannot say a word, he just sobs alone.

In the morning, Anselmo enters Medora's room. Ho The leader disappeared. They searched for him, but did not find him on the entire island. Since then there has been no news about Conrad, no one knew whether he was alive or “buried with grief.” A monument was erected to Medora, but not to Conrad (since he may be alive). His glory lives on for centuries.

He was one virtue -
And endowed with a thousand vices...