Onegin's “blues” in “a collection of motley chapters. Vyacheslav Koshelev Veliky Novgorod How the heroes of Russian literature fought the blues

Evgeny Onegin, the main character of the novel of the same name in the verses of A. S. Pushkin, is portrayed as a young rake, meeting the criteria of society, dandy not only in clothes, but also in his lifestyle. But secular society does not suit Onegin; it outrages his critical mind.
Before “Eugene Onegin,” the confrontation between man and society was shown by A. S. Griboyedov in his comedy “Woe from Wit.” The main character of this work, Chatsky, like Onegin, is dissatisfied with the society in which he lives. But, unlike Onegin, Chatsky is trying to change something in Famus society, criticizing it. Although Chatsky’s educational ideas turned out to be unfruitful, the hero of the comedy still acts (in a word). Onegin, although he despises the world, still lives according to its laws, does not try to change anything, but is indifferently bored.
The author shows Evgeny Onegin in different settings - in the theater, in the office, at the ball, describes him as “a fun and luxurious child.” But Pushkin is not limited to external description, he gives the reader the inner world of Onegin. The hero's soul has its own conflicts, complexes, and paradoxes. The author evaluates Evgeny Onegin ambiguously: “Was my Eugene happy?” No, “...the feelings in him cooled down early,” “...he finally stopped loving / And the scolding, and the saber, and the lead...” and “... nothing touched him.” These are symptoms of mental illness. Which one? Pushkin calls it “Russian melancholy,” similar to “English spleen.” This state is the dominant character of Onegin.
Pushkin wrote to Pletnev: “Hey, look, the blues are worse than cholera.” Cholera attacks the body, and melancholy kills the soul. There is no joy, harmony, or grace in Onegin's soul. What is the cause of this disease of the soul? Ap. Grigoriev, in the article “A Look at Russian Literature since the Death of Pushkin,” expresses the opinion that Onegin’s melancholy is associated with his innate, natural criticism inherent in Russian common sense. The critic argues that Eugene's criticism and, consequently, his melancholy comes from his talent, and not from embitterment and skepticism, like Childe Harold.
Belinsky believed that an “embarrassed mind” is “a sign of a higher nature” and a sign that Onegin is morally superior to those around him. He recognized himself in the “selfish and dry soul” while reading the novel, and suffered from this striking similarity.
The friendship of Onegin and Lensky shows that Evgeny is not soulless. He is not a demon, not a parody, not a “fashionable fad,” but an ordinary person, a “good fellow,” of which there are many in the world.
Onegin does not know what he needs, but he knows for sure that he is not satisfied with what the mediocre crowd is happy with.
Evgeny indulges in melancholy and yawning. It is interesting that Lermontov’s Pechorin, a character in the work “A Hero of Our Time,” who, like Chatsky and Onegin, rejects society, unlike Onegin, tries to take his share of joy from fate. These two heroes have different life paths, but the result is the same - melancholy, melancholy and boredom. Both novels, Eugene Onegin and A Hero of Our Time, have an open ending, like life itself.
Pisarev in his article “Bazarov” wrote that Onegin “took too much from life too early, he ate too much of everything.” The critic claims that Eugene “bears a beautiful disappointment” in the triumph of reason and educational ideas, with the help of which it is impossible to change anything in society.
Onegin's blues are not a pose, but a voluntary heavy cross. Evgeniy carries it everywhere: in St. Petersburg, in the village, while traveling around Russia. Everywhere he is haunted by melancholy, he is burdened by life. He returns from a trip to St. Petersburg, where he meets Tatyana again, and everything changes for him. He repents of the fact that he did not understand, did not love Tatyana (“... how I was mistaken, how I was punished”) and that he kills his friend Lensky in a duel (“... a bloody shadow appeared to him every day”). A thirst for love and understanding awakens in Onegin’s soul. Falling in love with Tatiana cures Onegin of his critical mind.

Evgeny Onegin, the main character of the novel of the same name in the verses of A. S. Pushkin, is portrayed as a young rake, meeting the criteria of society, dandy not only in clothes, but also in his lifestyle. But secular society does not suit Onegin; it outrages his critical mind.

Before “Eugene Onegin,” the confrontation between man and society was shown by A. S. Griboedov in his comedy “Woe from Wit.” The main character of this work, Chatsky, like Onegin, is dissatisfied with the society in which he lives. But, unlike Onegin, Chatsky is trying to change something in Famus society, criticizing it. Although Chatsky’s educational ideas turned out to be unfruitful, the hero of the comedy still acts (in a word). Onegin, although he despises the world, still lives according to its laws, does not try to change anything, but is indifferently bored.

The author shows Evgeny Onegin in different settings - in the theater, in the office, at the ball, describes him as “a fun and luxurious child.” But Pushkin is not limited to external description, he gives the reader the inner world of Onegin. The hero's soul has its own conflicts, complexes, and paradoxes. The author evaluates Evgeny Onegin ambiguously: “Was my Eugene happy?” No, “...the feelings in him cooled down early,” “...he finally stopped loving / And the abuse, and the saber, and the lead...” and “... nothing touched him.” These are symptoms of mental illness. Which one? Pushkin calls it “Russian melancholy,” similar to “English spleen.” This state is the dominant character of Onegin.

Pushkin wrote to Pletnev: “Hey, look, the blues are worse than cholera.” Cholera attacks the body, and melancholy kills the soul. There is no joy, harmony, or grace in Onegin's soul. What is the cause of this disease of the soul? Ap. Grigoriev, in the article “A Look at Russian Literature since the Death of Pushkin,” expresses the opinion that Onegin’s melancholy is associated with his innate, natural criticism inherent in Russian common sense. The critic argues that Eugene's criticism and, consequently, his melancholy comes from his talent, and not from embitterment and skepticism, like Childe Harold.

Belinsky believed that an “embarrassed mind” is “a sign of a higher nature” and a sign that Onegin is morally superior to those around him. He recognized himself in the “selfish and dry soul” while reading the novel, and suffered from this striking similarity.

The friendship of Onegin and Lensky shows that Evgeny is not soulless. He is not a demon, not a parody, not a “fashionable fad,” but an ordinary person, a “good fellow,” of which there are many in the world.

Onegin does not know what he needs, but he knows for sure that he is not satisfied with what the mediocre crowd is happy with.

Evgeny indulges in melancholy and yawning. It is interesting that Lermontov’s Pechorin, a character in the work “A Hero of Our Time,” who, like Chatsky and Onegin, rejects society, unlike Onegin, tries to take his share of joy from fate. These two heroes have different life paths, but the result is the same - melancholy, melancholy and boredom. Both novels, Eugene Onegin and A Hero of Our Time, have an open ending, like life itself.

Pisarev in his article “Bazarov” wrote that Onegin “took too much from life too early, he ate too much of everything.” The critic claims that Eugene “bears a beautiful disappointment” in the triumph of reason and educational ideas, with the help of which it is impossible to change anything in society.

Onegin's blues are not a pose, but a voluntary heavy cross. Evgeniy carries it everywhere: in St. Petersburg, in the village, while traveling around Russia. Everywhere he is haunted by melancholy, he is burdened by life. He returns from a trip to St. Petersburg, where he meets Tatyana again, and everything changes for him. He repents that he did not understand, did not love Tatyana (“... how wrong I was, how I was punished”) and that he kills his friend Lensky in a duel (“... a bloody shadow appeared to him every day”). A thirst for love and understanding awakens in Onegin’s soul. Falling in love with Tatiana cures Onegin of his critical mind.

Vyacheslav KOSHELEV
Velikiy Novgorod

Blues

Blues as a literary term?! Why not! How many cases in Russian literature are we to come across of the melancholy, and of the most varied interpretations!

At the beginning of 1839, Afanasy Fet, a first-year student in the literature department of Moscow University, at the request of his father, moved from M.P.’s boarding house. Pogodin went to the house on Malaya Polyanka - to his friend, also a student, Apollon Grigoriev. This house, outwardly quiet and tidy, but internally saturated with “inveterate dogmatism,” and the Grigoriev family, consisting, in addition to the enthusiastic Apollo, of a father, a good-natured, poorly educated official, and a hysterical mother (a former serf), became for the poet “the true cradle of his mental creativity." For six years, the poet lived side by side with Apollo, “on the neighboring mezzanine,” in the mezzanine of this old Moscow house. It is no coincidence that he devoted many pages of his memoirs to this house and its inhabitants.

Sometimes the young friends were somewhat tired, depressed and embarrassed by the spirit of old Moscow conservatism that hovered over their abode. Poems, to which both were partial, became some salvation from the inevitable melancholy and sadness.

“There were times,” recalls Fet, “when my inspiration embodied the dreary emptiness of life that we experienced together. Sitting at the same table during the long winter evenings, we learned to understand each other in half a word, and fragmentary words, devoid of any meaning for an outsider, brought us with them a whole picture and a familiar feeling associated with them.

Have mercy, brother,” Apollo exclaimed, “what is this stove worth, this table with a burnt candle, these frozen windows! After all, it’s from melancholy that you need to disappear!

And then my poem “Don’t grumble, my purring cat...” appeared... which delighted Grigoriev for a long time. He was sensitive to this, like an Aeolian harp.

I remember how much I admired his little poem “The cat sings, his eyes squinting...”, over which he simply exclaimed: “My God, what a lucky cat and what an unfortunate boy!”

There are at least three “oddities” in this memoir that are alarming. Firstly, the chronology here is somehow very messed up. It seems that it dates back to the winter of 1839 - the time of Fet’s settlement with the Grigorievs. About later events - transfer to the second year, “summer in Novosyolki”, love for “Elena B.” and receiving three hundred rubles from her for the publication of the “Lyrical Pantheon” - the poet tells on the following pages (and his “Early Years...” are arranged in the chronological sequence of the events described). In addition, following the above episode there is a fragment about the short-lived passion of friends (“they howled with rapture while reading”) with a book of poems by V.G. Benediktov, and Benediktov’s collection is described as literary news (the bookseller characterizes it: “This one will be purer than Pushkin”). The collection of Benediktov's poems was actually published during Pushkin's lifetime - in 1835. In 1836, his second edition appeared, and in 1838 a second book of poems was published... At the same time, none of the poems quoted by Fet appeared in the “Lyrical Pantheon” (1840) - it seems precisely because In 1840 they had not yet been written... The second of these poems was first published in 1842 in “Moskvityanin”; the first - only in “Poems” of 1850. When could the conversation described by Fet about his poems take place?

Secondly, the first of the poems indicated by Fet appeared in the collection of 1850 as part of a small lyrical cycle entitled “Handra”. The cycle contains three poems; “Don’t grumble, my purring cat...” - the second (the first is “Bad weather - autumn - you smoke...”, the third - “My friend! I’m sick today...”). Then Fet (or maybe Turgenev, who edited Fet) liquidated this cycle. In the author’s later collection of poems, the first of the three poems in the cycle ended up (in a modified form) in the “Autumn” section, the second (half shortened) in the “Miscellaneous Poems” section, and the third was not included in the main collection at all. How can we explain this “destruction” of a rather bright cycle? Maybe because the text under the title “Blues” appeared in the “Lyrical Pantheon” - a large poetic argument in octaves, beginning with the verse “When on the gray, cloudy horizon...”? In this poem, the state of the poetic “blues” was described in very detail and detail - meanwhile, Fet never thought of reprinting it after 1840...

Finally, in two poems that, according to Fet, attracted the special attention of his friend, the cat becomes an indispensable, formative detail of the poetics. The cat is a bright and not free from “demonism” animal of Russian fairy tales and beliefs: a witch most often “turns around” as a cat; the cat with his green, glowing in the dark eyes in the legends of Ural gold miners is the keeper of enchanted treasures... Or the “scientist cat”, familiar from Pushkin’s “Ruslan and Lyudmila” and recorded in many folklore versions: “... and there is an oak tree where a cat walks, goes up - sings songs, and goes down - tells fairy tales.” In Fet’s poems, the cat often acts as a kind of “prediction”, “foreknowledge”:

Mother! look from the window -
You know, yesterday it was not for nothing that there was a cat
I washed my nose...

And indeed “it’s not for nothing” that the omen associated with the cat came true...

This, however, is from a late poem (dated December 9, 1887) - in the texts of the 1840s, the cat also appears as a bright sign of village “homeliness,” symbolizing a kind of “estate” idyll. Inside this idyll, along with the “samovar”, “porcelain cups”, “cap and glasses” of the old woman and the “curious eyes” of the estate beauty, the poet invariably notices

On the table close to the window
A basket with a patterned stocking,
And a frisky cat across the floor
Jumping after a nimble ball...
(“Village”, 1842)

Something similar was encountered in Pushkin’s ideas: his cat also looks like a “home” predictor:

A cutesy cat sitting on the stove,
Purring, he washed the snout with his paw:
That was an undoubted sign to her,
That the guests are coming.

Among Pushkin’s drawings, a cat is often found - also a symbol of “domesticity”: fat, purebred, drawn sitting and certainly “from behind”, with a long tail hanging down - it personifies calmness and a kind of greatness. With this calmness and impressiveness, the cat of Pushkin’s drawings is often contrasted with a person (as in the famous caricature of Degilly: the cat sitting on the window turned away from the overly restless man who was left without pants...). He also, by the way, personifies the special “freedom” of the animal, which, unlike humans, does not need “pants” to go anywhere.

This representation also reflects another feature of the cat, which “walks on its own” and in this sense turns out to be a specific image of free will, not tied to any prohibitions. This feature of Fetov’s cat was noticed, judging by the above fragment of memoirs, by Ap. Grigoriev in the poem “The Cat Sings, His Eyes Squinting...” (1842):

The cat sings, eyes narrowed,
The boy is dozing on the carpet,
There's a storm playing outside,
The wind whistles in the yard.

“It’s enough for you to lie here,
Hide your toys and get up!
Come to me to say goodbye
And go to sleep.”

The boy stood up. And the cat's eyes
He drove and kept singing;
Snow is falling in clumps on the windows,
The storm is whistling at the gate.

Grigoriev, it seems, perceived the poetic comparison of “lucky cat” and “unhappy boy” too keenly - precisely because he, like his friend, experienced some strange feeling of “unfreedom” from the conventions of human society, which gave rise to a certain internal fracture, detached experience of the most natural things. It was this perception that gave rise to that feeling of melancholy, which became a vivid subject of the poetic constructions of early Fet. Precisely “early”: in his subsequent work, Fet tried to free himself from just this strange feeling. And from now on I never wrote poems dedicated to the feeling of blues.

The poetic image of the Russian melancholy went back to Pushkin’s Onegin. V.V. Nabokov, commenting on Pushkin’s novel in verse, insisted that the melancholy in “Onegin” is “an image borrowed from books, but brilliantly rethought by the great poet, for whom life and books were one, and placed by this poet in a whole series of compositional situations , lyrical reincarnations, brilliant tomfoolery, literary parodies and so on,” that, accordingly, this feeling cannot be represented as a “sociological and historical phenomenon” that is in any way indicative of Russian life.

The word “blues,” which became widespread in Russian culture precisely after Pushkin’s novel, comes from the Greek medical term hypochondria (hypochondria) and literally translates as “a disease under the cartilage” (“under the stomach”), causing despondency and melancholy. The English spleen (literally translated as “spleen”) means approximately the same thing - a kind of “disease of the spleen” that causes similar phenomena. In Pushkin’s text it is presented in a very unique way: “Illness<...>similar to the English spleen, in short: Russian blues...” But for some reason, the disease (“disease”), designated by the Greek term, is called “Russian” and, in general, is separated from “spleen”. In the draft version, it was characterized as “a bad imitation of Spleen.”

Nabokov again explained this significant difference by purely literary reasons. “Handra (“chondria”) and spleen (“hypo-”) illustrate a clear division of verbal labor between two nations, both of which are known for their love of boredom: the English took the first part of the word, and the Russians the second. Of course, hypochondria<...>is not special to any place or time. Spleen in England and boredom in France became fashionable in the middle of the 17th century, and over the next century, French innkeepers begged spleen-stricken Englishmen not to commit suicide in their establishments, and the inhabitants of the Swiss mountains not to rush into their abysses; general, but much easier boredom (ennui) did not lead to such extreme measures.<...>By 1820, boredom was already a proven cliche in characterization, and Pushkin could play with it to his heart’s content, two steps away from parody, transferring Western European templates to untouched Russian soil. French literature of the 18th and early 19th centuries is replete with restless, spleen-stricken young heroes. This was a convenient technique: it did not allow the hero to sit still. Byron gave him a new charm by pouring a little demonic blood into the veins of Rene, Adolf, Oberman and their fellow sufferers.” The commentator goes on to cite dozens of examples from French and English literature that demonstrate this internal feeling of “the blues” (spleen, boredom, ennui), so characteristic of characters in Western novels. For them, “there were four main remedies, four options for behavior: 1) bore everyone terribly; 2) commit suicide; 3) join some solid religious society; 4) quietly resign yourself.”

It is significant that for Pushkin’s Onegin the only possible “medicine” is the latter. His “yearning laziness”, which arose from an elementary physiological feeling: “I'm tired of it!” - does not disappear even after a sharp change in lifestyle (Onegin in the village even outwardly lives completely differently than in St. Petersburg) and cannot be completed by arbitrary death. The reference to Onegin’s “strangeness” is provided with a precise epithet: inimitable. That is, it does not depend on the “English fashion of being bored,” but presupposes a different, deeper behavioral model. For the Russian hero Onegin, as well as for the future heroes of Dostoevsky, the fulfillment of a certain moral task is more important than all the possible torments of the blues - more important is “resolving the thought.” That is, to determine with one’s own life and destiny the causes of its appearance, and therefore the methods of recovery from this “disease”... This is, in fact, Fet’s poetic task.

However, the “blues” presented by Fet is somewhat different from the feeling recorded by Pushkin. The subject of his poetic depiction is not a “global”, but a “short” feeling that arises “from time to time” under the influence of weather or some other external sign. Most often, this sign becomes a rainy autumn.

When on the gray, cloudy sky
The autumn wind whips up the clouds
And heavy rain hits the glass of my windows
It's knocking dully, there's a flying whirlwind in the field
Drives a yellow leaf and spreads it out
There's a crackling fire in the fireplace in front of me, -
Then I myself am autumn time:
I'm tormented by an unbearable blues...

This is how Fetov’s first “Handra” begins - from the “Lyrical Pantheon”. The poem is written in octaves and this would seem to resemble Pushkin’s “Autumn” (“October has already arrived...”). But “Autumn” was published later (in 1841) - Fet clearly comes from some other literary source.

The very feeling of “the blues” as some kind of temporary, transitory state separates Fet’s lyrical self-expression from Pushkin’s: before us is not an “illness,” but only a mysterious, mysterious state of the soul, which the poet seeks to “guess” and “express in words.” The exposition of the image has traditional, stable motifs: autumn rain, reminiscent of human tears (“He doesn’t know tears - boring rain!”); the wind and even a “whirlwind” that tears off a hat, and a burning “fireplace” that personifies a poetic feeling:

Well, this is exactly the holy fire of art:
You are closer - it burns, if you move away - it does not warm!

All this is aggravated by a feeling of loneliness, which quite naturally gives rise to demonological visions:

One one! Well, really, absolute hell!
At least the devil appeared to me in the fireplace:
There is a lot of poetry in it....

The ubiquitous devil in Russian demonology is a kind of generalized image of an evil spirit that takes possession of a person when he gets carried away with something irrational and loses his head. Getting rid of the “burden of the head” is depicted by Fet literally:

I want to go trudging around in the rain;
Let the hat whirl around in an open field.
He tore it off... carried it away... and circles. So what?
After all, the head remains. - Involuntarily
You will sigh about your chained head, -
She is not a king, but a prisoner - and nothing more!
And you think: where can I get some herbs?
To take the burden of your head off your shoulders?

Liberation from the “head” gives rise to a gravitation towards the “devil”, which in this state is more desirable than a noisy “masquerade”, “a mixture of clothes and faces” and even a meeting with “beautiful Alina”. The “devil” in a state of “the blues” becomes the true creator of some special poetry:

...Better by the fireplace
I'll fall asleep - and damn me a cloud of fables
Introducing...

Young Fet cannot yet determine the essence of this special poetry of “fables”, but he feels that it is the “blues”, a feeling so difficult in external manifestation, that becomes its fertile soil. We find something similar in the “estate” poetry of Pushkin’s time. Thus, the famous representative of “estate poetry”, Tver landowner A.M. Bakunin began his poem “Handra” as follows:

Come, melancholy, my powerful genius,
Delight of a worn-out soul,
And darkness blacker than midnight
Inspire me with a lamentable song!.. 10

Instead of the common poetic desire to get rid of the blues (disease!), a motive arises for invoking the blues as fertile soil for poetic creativity. We find something similar in P.A. Vyazemsky. In “Northern Flowers for 1832,” compiled with the participation of Pushkin, his poem “Spleen” was published, with an unexpected subtitle - “Song” 11. The main content of this “hymn” to melancholy is the same motive of unexpected “love” for this state:

I don't want and I can't
I'll entertain my blues:
I cherish my blues,
Like loving your sister.

In a strange way, the blues, without ceasing to feel like a disease, and a painful and unpleasant disease at that (“The heart’s languid care, // Nameless sadness!”), acquires a new quality, turning out to be the closest “relative” of love, its vice versa: “Look: the blues loves everything, // And love always mopes.” Both feelings are “children of mystery and humility”, “victims of a sweet illness”; both equally prove to be sources of poetic inspiration. And “the blues,” on the one hand, promises unpleasant, even painful, sensations, on the other hand, it is a necessary prerequisite for the emergence of poetic images and therefore remains desirable for the poet. And even gives birth to a “hymn”...

The images born of the blues are, however, very specific. In “Northern Flowers...” this song was published in close proximity to Vyazemsky’s poem under the equally characteristic title “Tosca” 12. The poet dedicated this poem to his young fan V.I. Bukharina and even wrote it as if on her behalf. The young maiden, plunging into “melancholy,” experiences unexpected sensations:

Entwined with an invisible hand,
From the stuffiness of noisy materiality
I'm longing for the space of another existence
And I no longer touch the ground.

This “other being” separates the true person (“the life of the soul”) from how this person appears to others, from “what is not ours in us.” And it is precisely this “other being” that arises in a state of melancholy (“melancholy”) that turns out to be true life, in which sleep is quite naturally confused with reality:

At that hour I seem to live alone
And I see only dreams in reality.

And the “dreams” themselves turn out to be similar to Fetov’s “fables”, represented by the devil from the fireplace. Vyazemsky himself points out the existence of this “devil” in the final verse: “And before me is still the same, the same shadow.”

More than thirty years later, already in his eighties, Vyazemsky again returned to the theme of the blues: two of his later lyrical cycles - “The Blues” (1863) and “The Blues with Glimpses” (1876) 13 - were dedicated to this feeling. But in these cycles a “different” Vyazemsky appeared, about which the elderly poet himself remarked with bitterness: “The one you knew // That Vyazemsky no longer exists.”

Vyazemsky’s late poetic melancholy is fundamentally different from the one he once sang in his “song.” It is associated with a slow, languid wait for the desired death: the poet, who “has experienced a lot, and many” and “has lost interest in the beautiful with a tired soul,” finds himself permanently, chronically immersed in a painful state of mind:

I got bored, bored, looked closely,
In languid melancholy I drag out a vulgar life;
I would like to leave everywhere
And I don’t want to come anywhere.
Life is a burden, but death in sight is no consolation.
Problems sugary dry resolution
And death, and death does not promise me
For life - retribution in the afterlife...

The poet’s lyrical feeling here is even deeper than “Onegin’s” - it does not imply an outcome even in death. And here there is no longer any “other being”, no “devil” that can be called upon to embody poetic dreams...

In the lyrical cycle of the young Fet “Handra”, which appeared in the collection of 1850 (which he prepared for publication together with Ap. Grigoriev at the end of 1847), it is the devil that is the organizing motive. All three poems included in the cycle represent a poetic analysis of the complex and strange feeling of spiritual emptiness - the feeling of “devilry” that gives rise to unusual visions and unexpected comparisons. In terms of events, nothing happens here, and the subject of artistic reflection is precisely this nothing happening.

The first poem of the cycle is dedicated to the autumn blues: “Bad weather - autumn - you smoke...”; in the second - obvious signs of winter (“stove”, “an unobtrusive blizzard played out in the chimney”); in the third there are no signs of any specific season at all - just bad weather (“It’s bad weather outside, // It’s dangerous to walk outside...”). This very “bad weather” creates a “double illness”: its other side is the mental disorder corresponding to the “bad weather”. The reflections of the lyrical hero, according to “bad weather,” are transferred to a closed space, and a certain “devil” settles inside this limited space:

And now - why is it in the corner,
Behind the wide curtain,
There, there's the one who looks like a rogue,
With a black goat's face?

“Devil” appears in each of the three parts of the cycle. In the first part he is not personified: only the result of his “activity” is comprehended:

Gets into the patient's head
It's all so damn crazy!

In the second, the role of this “devil” is played by the “purring cat”, who appears in the first stanza, which is also repeated at the end:

Don't grumble, my purring cat,
In a motionless half-asleep;
It's dark and wild without you
On our side.

In the third part, the “devil” appears with his traditional “black goat face.” In addition, there is also a motive for the “constant” appearance of this creature:

Really, it’s boring, sad to see
Every day the same thing.

The permanent “devilry” gives rise to very bizarre images:

Exactly in the next room
Teaching someone the alphabet....

This “ABC” is compared with a phantasmagorical, painful, difficult to imagine picture, overturning the “ABC” truths themselves:

Or - who knows? somewhere,
In the office or in the hall,
Rats dance with squeaks and squeals
In a badly locked piano.

A kind of inverted world arises, in which even the usual poetic values ​​acquire a kind of “reverse sign”. Here is an ordinary lyrical comparison: me and her - and the high feeling of love:

Inadvertently at a neighbor's
I told her three words
About the beautiful, about the lofty -

and an unusual lyrical “conclusion”:

Boredom to death!

This frightening “unusuality” precisely creates a special poetry of “the blues”, different from traditional “songs of love” or “poetry of reality”. On the contrary, Fet’s lyrical hero asks her to take him away from the “detached” reality: “...is there a fairy tale, is there a lullaby?” And these “songs” and “fairy tales” themselves are needed precisely in order to escape from the usual everyday relationships into some other, albeit “frightening”, world. However, “fear” in this world is in some special way associated with the same “love”:

So that the song softens
What in a fairy tale will disturb;
So that the heart is at least frightened,
Since it cannot love.

All three poems of the early cycle, probably written at different times, are indeed very unified and holistic in their mood and general idea. They are brought together precisely by the blues, a feeling that organizes the poetic world in a special way in its “inverted” guise and at the same time introduces the opportunity to comprehend those features of the “alien, transcendental element” of human existence, the reflection of which Fet very early realized as his poetic task. Ultimately, these phantasmagoria of the “human self” make it possible to somehow reflect what “cannot be expressed in words.”

In this sense, the poeticization of the uncomfortable and at the same time attractive feeling of the blues was a kind of poetic “study” for Fet, a necessary stage in his artistic development. Depression, like the poetry of “visions,” became for him a specific school of verbal creativity. But, in fact, this poetry of “visions” can be reconstructed without the blues... Such reconstruction is the basis of all his poetic innovation.

Vyazemsky P.A. Poems. L., 1958. S. 231–232.

Right there. pp. 232–233.

Vyazemsky P.A. Selected Poems. M.–L., 1935. pp. 323–324, 369–376.

Aug 02 2016

“RUSSIAN BLIND” Eugene Onegin, the main character of the novel of the same name in the verses of A. S. Pushkin, is portrayed as a young rake, meeting the criteria of the world, dandy not only in clothes, but also in his lifestyle. But secular society does not suit Onegin; it outrages his critical mind. Before “Eugene Onegin,” the confrontation between man and society was shown by A. S. Griboedov in his “Woe from Wit.” The main character of this work, Chatsky, like Onegin, is dissatisfied with the society in which he lives. But, unlike Onegin, Chatsky is trying to change something in Famus society, criticizing it. Although Chatsky’s educational ideas are all so ch. ru 2001 2005 turned out to be unfruitful, the hero of the comedy still acts (in a word). Onegin, although he despises the world, still lives according to its laws, does not try to change anything, but is indifferently bored.

The author shows Evgeny Onegin in different settings in the theater, in the office, at the ball, describes him as “a fun and luxurious child.” But Pushkin is not limited to external description, he gives the reader the inner world of Onegin. The soul has its own conflicts, complexes, paradoxes. evaluates Eugene Onegin ambiguously: “Was my Eugene happy?” No, “...the feelings in him cooled down early,” “...

He finally fell out of love / And scolding, and saber, and lead...” and “... nothing touched him.” These are symptoms of mental illness. Which one? Pushkin calls it “Russian melancholy,” similar to “English spleen.”

This state is the dominant character of Onegin. Pushkin wrote to Pletnev: “Hey, look, the blues are worse than cholera.” Cholera attacks the body, and melancholy kills the soul. There is no joy, harmony, or grace in Onegin's soul.

What is the cause of this disease of the soul? Ap. Grigoriev, in the article “A Look at Russian Literature since the Death of Pushkin,” expresses the opinion that Onegin’s melancholy is associated with his innate, natural criticism inherent in Russian common sense. The critic argues that Eugene's criticism and, consequently, his melancholy comes from his talent, and not from embitterment and skepticism, like Childe Harold. Belinsky believed that an “embarrassed mind” is “a sign of a higher nature” and a sign that Onegin is morally superior to those around him.

He recognized himself in a “selfish and dry soul” while reading, and suffered from this striking similarity. Onegin and Lensky shows that Eugene is not soulless. He is not a demon, not a parody, not a “fashionable fad,” but an ordinary, “good fellow,” of which there are many in the world. Onegin does not know what he needs, but he knows for sure that he is not satisfied with what the mediocre crowd is happy with.

Evgeny indulges in melancholy and yawning. It is interesting that Lermontov, a character in the work “Hero of Our Time,” who, like Chatsky and Onegin, rejects society, unlike Onegin, tries to take his share of joy from fate. These two heroes have different life paths, but the result is the same melancholy, melancholy and boredom.

Both novels, “Eugene Onegin” and “A Hero of Our Time,” have an open ending, like life itself. Pisarev in the article “Bazarov” wrote that Onegin “took too much and too early from life, he ate too much of everything.” The critic claims that Eugene “bears a beautiful disappointment” in the triumph of reason and educational ideas, with the help of which it is impossible to change anything in society. Onegin's blues are not a pose, but a voluntary heavy cross. Evgeniy carries it everywhere: in St. Petersburg, in the village, while traveling around Russia.

Everywhere he is haunted by melancholy, he is burdened by life. He returns from a trip to St. Petersburg, where he meets Tatyana again, and everything changes for him. He repents that he did not understand, did not love Tatyana (“... how wrong I was, how I was punished”) and that he kills his friend Lensky in a duel (“... a bloody shadow appeared to him every day”).

A thirst for love and understanding awakens in Onegin’s soul. Falling in love with Tatiana cures Onegin of his critical mind.