Mikhail Leonovich Gasparov, providing the materials published today at our urgent request, recalled that they were not intended for publication, but were composed as an aid - consultation for a colleague: “There is no concept here, just careful reading.”
We believe that this publication will be of interest to a teacher who analyzes poems with his students - that is, most likely to every teacher.
These materials can be used in different ways. For example, invite students to independently answer some of the questions asked by the researcher and compare the results. Or introduce high school students to the article and ask them to think about how the observations made by the scientist affect the perception of the poem. Or just read the publication and, hopefully, enjoy it, because (to paraphrase the great poet) following the thought of a real scientist is “science is the most entertaining.”
M.L. GASPAROV
“Autumn” by A. Pushkin: careful reading
AUTUMN
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October has already arrived - the grove is already shaking off Now is my time: I don’t like spring; How fun it is to put sharp iron on your feet, Oh, summer is red! I would love you The days of late autumn are usually scolded, How to explain this? I like her, It's a sad time! charm of the eyes! |
And every autumn I bloom again; They lead the horse to me; in the open expanse, And I forget the world - and in sweet silence <Не вошло в окончательный вариант> Steel knights, gloomy sultans, And the thoughts in my head are agitated in courage, Floating. Where should we sail? <Не вошло в окончательный вариант> Hurray!.. where to go<е>swim...... [what] shores |
There are eleven stanzas in “Autumn”, not counting one discarded and one unfinished. Here are their contents:
1. Autumn in its concreteness, the present.
2. Autumn is through Contrast: spring and winter.
3. Autumn is through Contrast: winter.
4. Autumn is through Contrast: summer and winter.
5. Autumn is through Similarity: a child before dislike.
6. Autumn is through Similarity: maiden before death.
7. Autumn in general, always.
8. Me: my inner feelings.
9. Me: my external behavior.
10. Me: my creative experiences.
(10a. I: imagination).
11. Me: creating poetry.
(12. Me: choosing a topic.)
The last, 12th stanza ends at the initial words - where it comes to the content of the poems, the content of the created world. This is the justification for the subtitle "Excerpt". Both this and another stanza about the same thing (10a) were written and discarded: the epigraph remained a hint of them “Why doesn’t my mind enter into my slumber then? - Derzhavin". This should probably be understood: the world created by the poet is so great that it defies description.
The grouping of stanzas is partly emphasized by verse and stylistic features.
(1) Poetic size“Autumn” – iambic hexameter; in it the main feature of rhythm is the caesura: the more traditional masculine is felt as more solid, the more innovative feminine as more unsteady and smooth. Number of dactylic caesuras per stanza (including discarded 10a and unfinished 12):
Stanzas 1–7 – autumn: 1, 2, 2, 2, 4, 3, 4;
8th–12th stanzas – 2, 3, 3, (6), 3, (4).
In each thematic passage, the dactylic caesuras increase from beginning to end. The average number of lines with “romantic” dactylic caesuras is: autumn I – 1; contrast – 2; similarity – 3,5; autumn II– 4, I'm in front of the poems – 3,5; I'm over the poems– 4. The maximum of dactylic caesuras is in stanza 10a; Perhaps it seemed excessive to Pushkin, and that is partly why the stanza was discarded. Preparation of the rhythmic climax - in stanza 10, dactylic caesuras with internal rhyme: And it awakens... The soul is shy...(cf. in stanza 6, before the end of the first part of the poem - Sometimes I like it... The poor thing is leaning...). The climax is at the end of stanza 11, the beginning of the creation of poetry: The mass has moved and is cutting through the waves, dactylic caesura with an unstressed beginning of the second hemistich create a spectacular prolonged unstressed interval. (The fact that it marks a thematic milestone was pointed out by S.M. Bondi.)
(2) Persons. Autumn in the 1st stanza is presented impersonally, objectively; the only indication of the author is my neighbor. In stanzas-contrasts my goes into I(2), then in We(3), then in I And We(4). At the end of the contrasts, a second person appears - a rhetorical appeal you, summer(4); in similar stanzas it becomes more intimate (you,) reader(5) and You(5–6). Autumn in the 7th stanza is already entirely personally colored: Pleasant to me yours farewell beauty. The last stanzas, about myself, of course, contain everything I, but with two curious variations, at the beginning and at the end. In stanza 7, along with I there is a distance from the reader You: Please forgive me... In stanza 11 I is absent - thoughts, rhymes, pen, poetry and the ship exist as if by themselves. And in the stanza that began there are 12 instead I appears uniting with the reader We: the created world of poetry existed, as it were, first only for the poet, then by itself and, finally, for everyone.
(3) Style. Attention is directed to him by the climactic line of stanza 8: ...organism...unnecessary prosaicism. This encourages us to listen for stylistic anomalies in other stanzas as well. There are no prosaisms in the 1st stanza. They appear only in contrasting stanzas. In the 2nd colloquial prosaism - stench, dirt– and bookish – in the presence of the moon. In the 3rd - only conversational: sour(instead of miss). In 4th weakened conversational yes dust, yes mosquitoes and bookish mental abilities. After this, the declared “prosaism” (bookish) in stanza 8 is the only one: of course, it emphasizes the thematic overlap of this stanza with the “contrasting” stanzas 2–4. Instead, stylistic anomalies become different. The switching point is in the 6th stanza: semantic shift She does not hear the gaping of the grave abyss, visual image pharynx combined with auditory hears. And then, just as in the first half of the poem three stanzas were marked by prosaisms, so in the second half three are marked by tautologies. At 9 loudly... the frozen valley is ringing; in the 10th in sweet silence I am sweetly lulled to sleep, and the lulled soul seeks, as in a dream, to pour out; at 11 the motionless ship slumbers in the motionless moisture. (In the fragment 12th - Floating. Where should we sail?- not a tautology, but also a repetition of a word.) Tautology can be a sign of both colloquial and poetic style; here the context encourages us to see in it a poetic style, contrasting with the initial prose.
So we see that verse and stylistic signs help to highlight the main thematic parts of the work: “autumn” and “I”, “autumn itself” and “contrasts to autumn”.
<Художественный мир стихотворения>
Now you can move on to reviewing the artistic world of the poem stanza by stanza.
<1-я строфа. Осень в ее конкретности, теперешняя>
Autumn in the 1st stanza, as said, is concrete, present. A specific month is named - October– and verb actions are listed: less often in the past tense (stepped, breathed, froze, fell asleep), twice as often in the present (shakes, freezes, runs murmuring, hurries, suffers, wakes up). The perceptibility of time is emphasized by hysterosis (an artistic technique of anticipation. – Ed.) the grove shakes leaves from its naked branches, word naked used in the approximate sense of “exposing.” The sensation of space is ordered: the shaken sheets are vertical; the road and the stream are a horizontal line; pond – horizontal plane; departing fields are an even wider horizontal plane. The stanza began groves(perception through vision), ends oak forests(perceived through hearing). Images of movement alternate with images of rest and at the same time intensify: shakes off - breathed - (freezes) - runs - (froze) - hurries to wild fun. At the end of the stanza, this tension of movement and rest finds expression in a new dimension - in sound. This increase in the dynamics of meaning is contrasted by the increase in peace in the rhythm: in the first half of the stanza there are two words with a dactylic ending, in the second - five.
The movement of attention in the 1st stanza is from natural phenomena to cultural phenomena. The grove is only nature; the road is a trace of culture that has become part of nature; a mill is already a culture, but a pond with it is a help to culture in summer and part of nature in winter; the neighbor-hunter is a culture that consumes nature; mentioned without apparent need winter unite the hunter and the mill into a cultural whole. Half of the stanza is about nature, half is about the neighbor. This introduces the main theme of the poem: nature, autumn, as an approach and incentive to culture, I. Here the culture is still consumer, in the stanzas about I she will become creative. Start ...the grove shakes off refers as to the subtext of “October 19, 1825”, the forest drops its crimson headdress; and then in stanzas about I will appear a forgotten fireplace... and I’m in front of it..., referring to blaze, fireplace, in my deserted cell.
<2–4-я строфы. Контраст>
In contrasting stanzas 2–4, the seasons are seen as both part of nature and part of culture. Spring is the heaviness of nature in man: I’m sick, my blood is fermenting, my feelings and mind are cramped with sadness; next to this thaw, stench, dirt mentioned more briefly. Summer is the heaviness of nature around a person: heat, dust, mosquitoes, thirst(consonant verb we suffer calculatedly echoes suffer in winter); next to this mental abilities mentioned only briefly. Winter is the tedium of society with its amusements: sleighs, skates, pancakes and wine: if spring and summer are heavy with an excess of bad things, then winter, on the contrary (paradoxically), is heavy with an excess of good things. Here is the most tangible literary subtext in the poem: “The First Snow” by Vyazemsky.
<Уподобительные 5–6-я строфы>
In the simile stanzas 5–6 (the middle of the poem!), paradoxical logic reaches its climax. This is emphasized: how to explain this? The basis implies a natural ethical feeling: “an undeservedly unloved child evokes sympathy,” “a maid doomed to illness and death evokes sympathy.” But instead evokes sympathy said first attracts to itself(this is also ethics), then I (and you) like it(this is already aesthetics). Admiring morbidity is a feature of the new, romantic theme; in the poem it is most frank here. The paradox is shrouded in romantic vagueness: autumn is sweet at first when seen beauty, then only understood a lot of good things and finally inexpressible I found something in her. In the literary subtext here is Pushkin's own elegy Alas, why does she shine... She is noticeably fading... (1820) and, more distantly, the consumptive muse of Delorme–Sainte-Beuve from Pushkin’s review of 1831. Transition from child To maiden– with strengthening: what is unloved can be corrected, what is doomed is irreparable, there are transient relationships, here is an existential essence. Along the way, a hint was thrown that child And Virgo may be one and the same person: halfway between their images the poet calls himself a lover is not vain, although technically he is a lover of autumn here.
<7-я строфа. Осень вообще, всегдашняя>
After such preparation, the second stanza about autumn finally becomes possible - emotional and evaluative. In stanza 1 there was a specific autumn, the present one - in stanza 7 - this is autumn in general, always. There the picture was built on verbs - here on nouns, going in a list, and the only verb I love... as if brought forward out of brackets. There the picture came to life from beginning to end (the appearance of a neighbor, and suffer in the winter), here she becomes more and more objective and colder (literally and figuratively). The paradox is emphasized in the very first exclamation It's a sad time! charm of the eyes!(alliteration!); then, weaker, in combination lush... withering; and, almost imperceptibly, in V scarlet and gold clad forests. Crimson (porphyry) and gold are the colors of royal clothing, the revelation of the word lush; but the crimson is also a consumptive blush, about which it was said in the previous stanza: the color of the face is still purple(an unusual word for complexion; in the Academic Dictionary there were two of its meanings - “scarlet, purple” and “reddish-blue”. After the previous stanza, the logic of the paradox is already clear: “I appreciate the beauty of autumn, because we won’t be able to admire it for long”; hence the metaphor with a hint of personification: farewell beauty
The movement of attention in stanza 7, as in stanza 1, begins with the trees, but goes up, not down. Instead of specific October here at the beginning generalized it's time(from her beauty), then equally generalized nature; and finally multiple forests less specific than grove, and metaphorical crimson and gold- how leaves. To begin with, the moment is taken earlier: the branches are not yet naked, but dressed in bright leaves and called canopy, for the end - apparently later: not only the first frosts (from which the pond is already frozen etc.), and distant gray winter threats. But there is no temporary transition here; rather, it is a timeless coexistence. In between - the wind (noise and freshness), the sky (clouds) and the sun (opposed to the previous darkness as a carrier of light, and in subsequent frosts - as a carrier of heat). At the beginning of the poem there was the autumn of the earth, now, in the middle, there is the autumn of the sky: the theme of nature seems to rise, leading to the theme of creativity. Here, for the first time, color appears in the depiction of nature; until now it was a colorless drawing. Metaphorically, color was mentioned in stanza 4, Oh, summer is red!, for the blush of the face - in stanza 6 and finally here.
<8-я строфа. Я: мои внутренние ощущения>
From the already comprehended central paradox comes the thought of stanza 8: “just as the beauty of a maiden is miles before death and the beauty of autumn before winter, so the poet blooms before winter.” I'm blooming- a metaphor from the natural world, therefore, what is meant primarily is physical health, and mental health only as its consequence: this is emphasized by the ending word organism with comment. In the face of mortal cold the roads become noticeable habits of being, three needs of the body: sleep, hunger and carnal desires (blood plays) with their harmony (in succession... in succession). They are accompanied by emotions that flow from each other: love of life, lightness, joy, happiness. The verbs that describe it become more and more dynamic: sleep flies off blood plays, desires boiling, generalization – I'm full of life again. This again characteristic: the natural world is cyclical in its cycle of extinction and renewal, hence - again... again... succession... succession... again.
All these sequences are inserted into a non-random frame: at the beginning it is said that all this healthy my health, and in the end - that there is a conversation about all this unnecessary, that is, useless prosaism. This is another step in the approach from the natural world, where the main thing is benefit, to the creative world, where there is no benefit and should not be (theme of “The Poet and the Crowd”, 1828). At the word useful named Russian cold- this is a reference to another subtext - the poem “Winter. What should I do in the village?..” (1829), ending storms of the north are not harmful to the Russian rose, like a Russian maiden fresh in the dust of snow!; and before that, there was a neighbor, and hunting, and even attempts at creativity. This epithet Russian- an additional contrast between the natural world and the creative world, in which - as can be seen from the omitted stanzas 10a and 12 - everything is non-Russian: knights, sultans, corsairs, giants, Moldavia, Scotland, Normandy, with only one exception: you, my ladies(in the subtext - the metamorphoses of Pushkin's Muse, described in the beginning of Chapter VIII of Onegin).
<9-я строфа. Я: мое внешнее поведение>
Stanza 9 – turning point: it is made of two halves, separated by an inconspicuous But(unnoticeable, because the compositional octave line is not after the 4th, but after the 6th verse). The first half is white day, breadth, dynamics; second half – evening and night, corner by the fireplace, concentration. The first completes the story about the natural world, the second begins the story about the creative world. In the natural world, the poet’s state led to the feeling I'm full of life again: here it is full boils over and finds expression in a horse race in the open expanse. Such a leap already occurred in the 1st stanza; but there it was a purposeful action, a neighbor’s hunt, and here it is an action without a goal, only a discharge of vital forces - we again have before us the opposition of practical usefulness and creative self-purpose. In the description of the race there is a remarkable rapid narrowing of space: in the field of view - everything comes first open expanse, then only a horse with a rider (look from the side!), waving its mane, then only horse hooves hitting the ice. (The word flashing at the end dol narrower than expanse, and is additionally neutralized by consonance with the word ice.) This narrowing is accompanied by the release of shine and sound (and, apparently, a double sound: a ringing sound scattered across the valley, and a crackling sound remaining under the hoof). The sound was still only in the 1st stanza (barking), and the shine is only in the 3rd stanza (mirror of rivers; humbly shining beauty in the 5th stanza obviously does not count).
This image of glitter is important because it is the only one that ties through the head But two halves of the 9th stanza. A horse in a wide expanse is nature, a fireplace in a cramped cell is culture. The picture of nature narrowed to the shine of a horse's hoof; the transition from nature to culture is achieved through darkening, the day is fading, and the fireplace forgotten; the picture of culture begins with the sparkle of fire in this hearth. Further, the narrowing of space continues, but with complications. Fire in the fireplace sometimes the bright light shines, sometimes it smolders slowly, narrowing the illuminated space; it's the same rhythm of life succession... succession..., as in stanza 8. I read in front of him, the field of vision narrows further, only the head with the book remains in it. Or I harbor long thoughts in my soul, is this further narrowing or expansion? For doom you don't even need a book, soul everything is inside a person, from the point of view of the outside world it is a narrowing; but the soul itself contains the whole world, and from the point of view of the inner, creative world this is an expansion; it is underlined by the word long. This interaction between the inner and outer world becomes the theme of the next stanza.
<10-я строфа. Я: мои творческие переживания>
Stanza 10 begins with the movement of going inward: and forget the world, I go into silence, into sleep. But then there is a counter movement, and poetry awakens in me, from dream to reality: verb awakens means revival, movement, opening, i.e. ultimately expansion. Both movements, into and out of sleep, occur under the common canopy (in a common environment) of the imagination. Caught between these movements the soul is embarrassed by lyrical excitement, from this trembles and from this sounds– the culmination of tension! There are no words in this sound yet; the words will be in stanza 11. Having reached this maximum tension, the soul seeks to pour out free manifestation(isn’t it prosaic?), with an outward movement, as if over the edge, as between the 8th and 9th stanzas. But then again there is an oncoming movement, an invisible swarm of guests is coming towards me- where? It turns out that from me themselves, they old[,] the fruits of my dreams. What is this dream of the one mentioned above identical with? soul or with imagination? The meaning of the word is rather imaginative: it is probably generated by the soul, and then, having been generated, it acquires independent existence, lulls and oppresses the soul, etc. It turns out to be a paradox: it is not the soul that is the seat of the imagination, but the imagination that is the seat of the soul. In this case, an explanation suggests itself: maybe imagination is the creative world, already created and existing next to the real one, and the current act of autumn creativity is just adding new elements to it or ordering those that are already in it?
<Строфа 10а. Я: воображение>
Those already in it are listed in the discarded stanza 10a. These are the images that inhabit poetry, there are fifteen of them: fourteen fantastic in 5 lines and one realistic - young ladies! – in 3 lines. Fantastic images are contrasted with each other in various respects. Knights are opposed to sultans, just as the West is opposed to the East; knights to monks, as secular things to spiritual ones; sultans to Arab kings, as whites to blacks; monks (chernetsy) are probably also associated with black. (The dwarfs among them are still unclear: either they are fairy-tale creatures, or real, albeit exotic, jesters; in any case, the associations with “Ruslan and Lyudmila” are undoubted.) The eastern series continues in boldikhanakh; after the white and black rulers, they are yellow. The western row continues at Greek women with rosary; After secular and spiritual heroes, they combine both qualities. Greek women are contrasted with corsairs as feminine to masculine and passive to active; at the same time, they together close the Western series with the Eastern, combining Western Christianity with Eastern exoticism. (We assume that in corsairs Byronic associations predominate; if they are dominated by memories of Turkish corsairs of the 16th century, then the ratios will change.) The Western series continues one more step Spaniards in epanches(a rare word referring to a new subtext - “The Stone Guest”), this introduces two new dimensions: temporary ( in epanchas- this is a later time than steel knights in armor) and “internecine” ( in epanchas they are no longer at war with the East, but duels with each other over the ladies). The series intermediate between West and East continues Jews, they are similar Greek women with rosary according to this function, and are opposed to them by faith (and to corsairs - by non-military nature). The eastern row itself does not continue; in its place appear heroes And giants and introduce new relationships: giants - pure, ahistorical fabulousness (this makes sense dwarfs three lines above: therefore, they are also fabulous), and the heroes for the first time introduce, in addition to the West and East, a hint of the Russian theme. Finally, in the last line of the large list princesses prisoners may be victims of both eastern sultans (etc.), and fairy-tale giants, and countess the title echoes the princesses, but can already belong not only to the exotic, but also to modernity - this is a transition to a contrasting image that balances this entire list: to my young ladies. Three whole lines are dedicated to them, they are sharply highlighted by the address You..., their portrait is drawn with gradual approximation and enlargement: general appearance, face, eyes; their image is double, they are both literary heroines and memories of real love: Pushkin was famous as the discoverer of the image county ladies, but this was already in the years of his creative maturity, and the words darlings of my golden dawn refer to his early youth.
<11-я строфа. Я: создание стихов>
Stanza 11 begins again with an alternation of movements from outside and outside, but twice as fast - in space, not stanzas, but half-strophes. Three AND... were in a row in stanza 7, the most static; now they appear in the most dynamic stanza, worry... run... flow. Thoughts stir in courage- This long thoughts from stanza 9, given in lyrical excitement stanzas 10. Rhymes run towards them- first, in stanza 10, from me to me there was a crowd of non-verbal images, now a swarm of consonant words that formed them. Fingers to pen, pen to paper- reciprocal movement outward, material objects move, move. Poems will flow– they will be followed by a movement that is no longer material, but materializing. So...- a direct description of creativity is supplemented by a description through similarity, as in stanzas 5-6, but four times faster - in the space of not two stanzas, but one half-strophe. There, material nature was explained by comparison with man; Here human creativity is explained by a comparison with a material ship. The transition from inaction to action in stanzas 9–10 occurred smoothly, here it occurs instantly, through an exclamation but chu!.(Actually, choo! means not “look”, but “listen”: the visible picture of the ship is commented on with a word relating to the internally audible sound of the poems being composed.) The most remarkable thing in this stanza is the complete absence of a pronoun I: it was in each of the seven previous stanzas, but here, at the turning point, it disappears, the materializing creative world already exists by itself. (At the beginning of the next stanza it is said about him where should we sail?) - in that We the ship of creativity (and on it the heroes - the fruits of my dreams?), both poet and reader.
<12-я строфа. Я: выбор темы>
The unfinished and discarded beginning of stanza 12 is the choice of route, that is, the scenery for the poem being composed. All of them are exotic and romantic: first, the Caucasus and Moldova, tested by Pushkin, then, further to the west, untouched Scotland, Normandy (with snow, i.e., probably not a French region, but the land of the Normans, Norway), Switzerland. Scotland is reminiscent of Walter Scott, Switzerland - most likely of Byron's "Childe Harold", "Manfred" and "The Prisoner of Chillon" rather than of Rousseau and Karamzin. It is curious that most of the named countries are mountainous; however, both Florida and the pyramids (with a drawing) are present in the sketches. Foreign words colossal And landscape emphasize exoticism. Can we expect that this second wave of exoticism would, like the first, in stanza 10a, be interrupted by images similar to Russian young ladies? Unlikely: a ship against a Russian background is impossible. The path of inspiration from autumn Russia to the big world is outlined and left to the reader’s imagination. A curious rethinking of the epigraph: in Derzhavin Why doesn’t my mind then enter into my slumber? opened the ending of “The Life of Zvanskaya” with reflections on history (and then - the frailty of everything earthly and the eternity of the poet), in Pushkin it opens up not to history, but to geography (and then to what?).
Dictionary of nouns
being (habits), world/manifestation
swarm (of guests) / bulk
half a year, (whole) century, days, day, minute / time + (annual) times
shores
color, crimson, gold // noise, silence // stench
nature / heaven, sun ray, moon / expanse, valley
moisture, waves // fire, light // dirt, dust
spring + thaw
summer / heat, drought,
winter, frost, snow, snow, ice+ river mirror
autumn, October,
forests, oak groves, canopy, grove, branches, leaves / fields4, retreating fields, meadows / stream / rocks, (eternal) snow / landscape
wind cold(wind), breathing, haze, cold
road / sleigh run // ship, sails
horse, mane, hoof / dogs barking, bear, den / mosquitoes, flies
hunting / winter / mill, pond
holidays, fun / iron (skates)
resident (den) / neighbor, acquaintances, guests / sailors, reader
knights, monks, corsairs, kings, princesses, countesses, sultans, boldhans / dwarfs, giants / heroes / Greek women, Spaniards, Jews
under sable, in epanchas // pancakes, wine, ice cream // stoves, fireplaces, glass // pen, paper, rosary
family / lover / child / maiden, young ladies / Armids / old woman (winter),
body / legs, hand, fingers, heart, shoulders, head, temples, face, mouth, eyes / blood
life, dawn (youth), health, sleep, hunger, desires, withering, [consumptive] death, (grave) abyss - pharynx
soul, spiritual abilities, habits
mind, thought4, thoughts, imagination, dream, its fruits
feelings, (lyrical) excitement, melancholy, anxiety (holidays), anger, murmur, threats (winter), courage / poor thing / love (for habits), favorites
(to know) honor/beauty, charm
poetry, verses, rhymes, prosaism
No other season of the year is represented as widely and vividly in Pushkin’s works as autumn.
Pushkin repeated more than once that autumn is his favorite season. In the fall, he wrote best and most of all, he was struck by “inspiration,” a special state, “a blissful state of mind, when dreams are clearly depicted before you, and you find living, unexpected words to embody your visions, when poems easily fall under your pen, and sonorous rhymes run towards harmonious thought” (“Egyptian Nights”).
Why is autumn so dear to the poet?
Pushkin in his poem “Autumn” speaks about his attitude towards this time of year:
The days of late autumn are usually scolded,
But I love her, dear reader...
In this poem, with wonderful descriptions of autumn nature, the poet wants to infect the reader with his special love for this time of year, and in the last lines of this unfinished passage he shows with extraordinary conviction and poetry how inspiration is born in his soul, how his poetic creations appear:
It's a sad time! charm of the eyes!
I am pleased with your farewell beauty -
I love the lush decay of nature,
Forests dressed in scarlet and gold,
In their canopy there is noise and fresh breath,
And the skies are covered with wavy darkness.
And a rare ray of sunshine, and the first frosts,
And distant threats of gray winter...
...And the thoughts in my head are agitated in courage,
And light rhymes run towards them,
And fingers ask for pen, pen for paper,
A minute - and the poems will flow freely.
(“Autumn”, 1833)
The poet knows how to find poetic features in the withering of autumn nature: the yellowing foliage of the trees turns crimson and gold in his eyes. This is a loving perception of it by a person who really loves and knows how to notice the poetic features of autumn. It is not without reason that the French writer Prosper Merimee noted that “poetry blossoms in Pushkin from the most sober prose.”
We find many descriptions of autumn nature in the novel “Eugene Onegin”. The passage “The sky was already breathing in autumn,” familiar from childhood, introduces us to late autumn in the village. In this passage there is a traveler racing at full speed on a horse, afraid of a wolf, and a shepherd working during the summer harvest, and a village girl singing at a spinning wheel, and boys skating on a frozen river.
The sky was already breathing in autumn,
The sun shone less often,
The day was getting shorter
Mysterious forest canopy
With a sad noise she stripped herself,
Fog lay over the fields,
Noisy caravan of geese
Stretched to the south: approaching
Quite a boring time;
It was already November outside the yard.
(Chapter IV, stanza XL)
Another passage from the famous novel is imbued with a different mood. It also talks about autumn, but there is no direct, simple depiction of pictures of nature and images of people closely related to the life of nature. In this passage, nature itself is poetically humanized, allegorically presented in the image of a living creature.
...Golden autumn has come,
Nature is tremulous, pale,
Like a sacrifice, luxuriously decorated...
(Chapter VII, stanza XXIX)
Indeed, in the fall A.S. Pushkin experienced an extraordinary surge of strength. The Boldino autumn of 1830 was marked by an extraordinary rise and scope of the poet’s creative genius. In the history of all world literature, it is impossible to give another example when in three months a writer would create such a number of beautiful works. In this famous “Boldino autumn”, Pushkin completed chapters VIII and IX of the novel “Eugene Onegin”, wrote “Belkin’s Tales”, four “little tragedies” (“The Miserly Knight”, “Mozart and Salieri”, “The Stone Guest”, “The Feast of time of plague"), "The History of the Village of Goryukhino", "The Tale of the Priest and His Worker Balda" about 30 poems (including such as "Demons", "Elegy", "Prank", "My Genealogy"), several critical articles and notes. The works of one “Boldino autumn” could immortalize the name of the poet.
Pushkin lived in Boldin that autumn for about three months. Here he summarized the thoughts and plans of previous years and outlined new themes, especially in prose.
The poet would visit Boldin two more times (in 1833 and 1834), also in the fall. And these visits left a noticeable mark on his work. But the famous “Boldino autumn” of 1830 remained unique in the poet’s creative life.
"Autumn" Alexander Pushkin
I
October has already arrived - the grove is already shaking off
The last leaves from their naked branches;
The autumn chill has blown in - the road is freezing.
The stream still runs babbling behind the mill,
But the pond was already frozen; my neighbor is in a hurry
To the departing fields with my desire,
And the winter ones suffer from mad fun,
And the barking of dogs wakes up the sleeping oak forests.II
Now is my time: I don’t like spring;
The thaw is boring to me; stench, dirt - in the spring I am sick;
The blood is fermenting; feelings and mind are constrained by melancholy.
I'm happier in the harsh winter
I love her snow; in the presence of the moon
How easy the running of a sleigh with a friend is fast and free,
When under the sable, warm and fresh,
She shakes your hand, glowing and trembling!III
How fun it is to put sharp iron on your feet,
Slide along the mirror of standing, smooth rivers!
And the brilliant worries of the winter holidays?..
But you also need to know honor; six months of snow and snow,
After all, this is finally true for the inhabitant of the den,
The bear will get bored. You can't take a whole century
We'll ride in a sleigh with the young Armids
Or sour by the stoves behind double glass.IV
Oh, summer is red! I would love you
If only it weren't for the heat, the dust, the mosquitoes, and the flies.
You, ruining all your spiritual abilities,
You torture us; like the fields we suffer from drought;
Just to get something to drink and refresh yourself -
We have no other thought, and it’s a pity for the old woman’s winter,
And, having seen her off with pancakes and wine,
We are celebrating her funeral with ice cream and ice.V
The days of late autumn are usually scolded,
But she’s sweet to me, dear reader,
Quiet beauty, shining humbly.
So unloved child in the family
It attracts me to itself. To tell you frankly,
Of the annual times, I am glad only for her,
There is a lot of good in her; a lover is not vain,
I found something in her like a wayward dream.VI
How to explain this? I like her,
Like you probably are a consumptive maiden
Sometimes I like it. Condemned to death
The poor thing bows down without a murmur, without anger.
A smile is visible on faded lips;
She does not hear the gaping of the grave abyss;
The color of his face is still purple.
She is still alive today, gone tomorrow.VII
It's a sad time! charm of the eyes!
I am pleased with your farewell beauty -
I love the lush decay of nature,
Forests dressed in scarlet and gold,
In their canopy there is noise and fresh breath,
And the skies are covered with wavy darkness,
And a rare ray of sunshine, and the first frosts,
And distant gray winter threats.VIII
And every autumn I bloom again;
The Russian cold is good for my health;
I feel love again for the habits of life:
One by one sleep flies away, one by one hunger comes;
The blood plays easily and joyfully in the heart,
Desires are boiling - I’m happy, young again,
I'm full of life again - that's my body
(Please forgive me the unnecessary prosaicism).IX
They lead the horse to me; in the open expanse,
Waving his mane, he carries the rider,
And loudly under his shining hoof
The frozen valley rings and the ice cracks.
But the short day goes out, and in the forgotten fireplace
The fire is burning again - then the bright light is pouring,
It smolders slowly - and I read in front of it
Or I harbor long thoughts in my soul.X
And I forget the world - and in sweet silence
I'm sweetly lulled to sleep by my imagination,
And poetry awakens in me:
The soul is embarrassed by lyrical excitement,
It trembles and sounds and searches, as in a dream,
To finally pour out with free manifestation -
And then an invisible swarm of guests comes towards me,
Old acquaintances, fruits of my dreams.XI
And the thoughts in my head are agitated in courage,
And light rhymes run towards them,
And fingers ask for pen, pen for paper,
A minute - and the poems will flow freely.
So the ship slumbers motionless in the motionless moisture,
But chu! - the sailors suddenly rush and crawl
Up, down - and the sails are inflated, the winds are full;
The mass has moved and is cutting through the waves.XII
Floating. Where should we sail?
. . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . .
Analysis of Pushkin's poem "Autumn"
In the broad autumn theme of Pushkin’s legacy, a special place is given to the unfinished work of 1833. In it, the deep connection between seasonal changes in nature and the rise of creative forces, colored by personal experiences, receives poetic justification.
The opening stanza opens with a landscape sketch, the specificity of which is indicated by the lexeme “October”, which begins the text. The hero-observer carefully records the natural changes caused by the breath of “autumn cold”: leaf fall is ending, the pond is covered with ice, the road is freezing, but the water in the stream has not yet frozen. The enumeration of the exact details of the surrounding space ends with a hunting scene, organized by the neighbor of the lyrical “I”.
Having parted with the role of the contemplator, in the three subsequent stanzas the subject of speech confidently declares his preferences. Seasonal changes are associated with the peculiarities of well-being. Spring melancholy and mental restlessness are replaced by persistent thirst and the desire to freshen up, generated by the summer stuffiness and abundance of insects. In a kind of ranking of the seasons, winter occupies a good position. The narrator enjoys the cheerful memories of winter fun, but is not satisfied with the duration of the cold weather. The author's irony increases at the end of the third stanza: to depict boredom, the verb “sour” is chosen, typical of colloquial speech. The enthusiastic description of a horse ride in the company of a frivolous friend, presented in the previous episode, receives a playful reappraisal.
Confidently informing the reader about the positive emotions that the arrival of autumn evokes, the lyrical subject explains his position with the help of two comparative turns. The quiet, humble beauty of the autumn season resonates in the soul. The latter is similar to the sympathy that is evoked by a child ignored by his parents or a terminally ill maiden.
The textbook lines glorifying the attractive power of the “dull time” are deliberately devoid of precise detail of the landscape. The bright picture, generously colored with royal shades of gold and crimson, is complicated by a dramatic premonition of the end, the inevitable withering. The natural background stimulates the physical and mental strength of the hero.
Dynamic daytime activities are contrasted with a calm evening environment. The gradual awakening of poetry corresponds to a special detached state, when the mind yields to the power of imagination. The beginning of the creative process is likened to the departure of a sailboat. The ambiguous open ending is also associated with the metaphor of the creative path as a voyage, a journey into the vast world of fantasy.
The poem in octaves “Autumn” by A. S. Pushkin was written in the fall of 1833 during the poet’s second visit to the village. Boldino, upon returning from the Urals.
Both in prose and in poetry, A. S. Pushkin repeatedly wrote that autumn is his favorite time of year, the time of his inspiration, creative growth and literary works.
It was not without reason that the poet was happy about autumn and considered it the time of his heyday: A. S. Pushkin’s second autumn on the Boldino estate, lasting a month and a half, turned out to be no less fruitful and rich in works than the first, epochal, Boldino autumn of 1830.
The most famous passage is “Sad time! The charm of the eyes!”, which is the VII octave of the poem “Autumn,” belongs to the landscape lyrics of A. S. Pushkin. The lines of the passage present a complete picture, realistically accurately conveying the awakening of poetry in the soul of the poet inspired by his favorite time.
The verse size of the passage is iambic hexameter; stanza of a poem is an octave.
It's a sad time! charm of the eyes!
The work “Autumn,” and in particular the excerpt, was not published during the author’s lifetime; it was first published by V. A. Zhukovsky in the posthumous collection of works by A. S. Pushkin in 1841.
We bring to your attention the text of the poem in full:
October has already arrived - the grove is already shaking off
The last leaves from their naked branches;
The autumn chill has blown in - the road is freezing.
The stream still runs babbling behind the mill,
But the pond was already frozen; my neighbor is in a hurry
To the departing fields with my desire,
And the winter ones suffer from mad fun,
And the barking of dogs wakes up the sleeping oak forests.
Now is my time: I don’t like spring;
The thaw is boring to me; stench, dirt - in the spring I’m sick;
The blood is fermenting; feelings and mind are constrained by melancholy.
I'm happier in the harsh winter
I love her snow; in the presence of the moon
How easy the running of a sleigh with a friend is fast and free,
When under the sable, warm and fresh,
She shakes your hand, glowing and trembling!
How fun it is to put sharp iron on your feet,
Slide along the mirror of standing, smooth rivers!
And the brilliant worries of the winter holidays?..
But you also need to know honor; six months of snow and snow,
After all, this is finally true for the inhabitant of the den,
The bear will get bored. You can't take a whole century
We'll ride in a sleigh with the young Armids
Or sour by the stoves behind double glass.
Oh, summer is red! I would love you
If only it weren't for the heat, the dust, the mosquitoes, and the flies.
You, ruining all your spiritual abilities,
You torture us; like the fields we suffer from drought;
Just to get something to drink and refresh yourself -
We have no other thought, and it’s a pity for the old woman’s winter,
And, having seen her off with pancakes and wine,
We are celebrating her funeral with ice cream and ice.
The days of late autumn are usually scolded,
But she’s sweet to me, dear reader,
Quiet beauty, shining humbly.
So unloved child in the family
It attracts me to itself. To tell you frankly,
Of the annual times, I am glad only for her,
There is a lot of good in her; a lover is not vain,
I found something in her like a wayward dream.
How to explain this? I like her,
Like you probably are a consumptive maiden
Sometimes I like it. Condemned to death
The poor thing bows down without a murmur, without anger.
A smile is visible on faded lips;
She does not hear the gaping of the grave abyss;
The color of his face is still purple.
She is still alive today, gone tomorrow.
It's a sad time! charm of the eyes!
I am pleased with your farewell beauty -
I love the lush decay of nature,
Forests dressed in scarlet and gold,
In their canopy there is noise and fresh breath,
And the skies are covered with wavy darkness,
And a rare ray of sunshine, and the first frosts,
And distant gray winter threats.
And every autumn I bloom again;
The Russian cold is good for my health;
I feel love again for the habits of life:
One by one sleep flies away, one by one hunger comes;
The blood plays easily and joyfully in the heart,
Desires are boiling - I’m happy, young again,
I’m full of life again - that’s my body
(Please forgive me the unnecessary prosaicism).
They lead the horse to me; in the open expanse,
Waving his mane, he carries the rider,
And loudly under his shining hoof
The frozen valley rings and the ice cracks.
But the short day goes out, and in the forgotten fireplace
The fire is burning again - then the bright light is pouring,
It smolders slowly - and I read in front of it
Or I harbor long thoughts in my soul.
And I forget the world - and in sweet silence
I'm sweetly lulled to sleep by my imagination,
And poetry awakens in me:
The soul is embarrassed by lyrical excitement,
It trembles and sounds and searches, as in a dream,
To finally pour out with free manifestation -
And then an invisible swarm of guests comes towards me,
Old acquaintances, fruits of my dreams.
And the thoughts in my head are agitated in courage,
And light rhymes run towards them,
And fingers ask for pen, pen for paper,
A minute - and the poems will flow freely.
So the ship slumbers motionless in the motionless moisture,
But chu! - the sailors suddenly rush and crawl
Up, down - and the sails are inflated, the winds are full;
The mass has moved and is cutting through the waves.
Floating. Where should we sail? . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
