Revolutionary romantics

2. FEATURES OF STUDYING THE BALLAD OF VA ZHUKOVSKY "SVETLANA".
Ballad (from the French ballade - dance song) is a genre of lyrical-epic poetry: a narrative song or poem of a relatively small volume, with a dynamic development of the plot, the basis of which is an extraordinary event. Often in b. there is an element of the mysterious, fantastic, inexplicable, unspoken, even tragically insoluble. Origin b. associated with legends, folk legends, combine the features of a story and a song. The lyrical-epic genre is a genre that combines the features of the epic and lyrical genres of literature: the lyrical-epic work is a plot work, a narrative about the events, actions and experiences of the characters, written in poetic form. L.-e. well. - a historically established type of work of art, which is characterized by clearly expressed thoughts and feelings of the author-narrator, caused by the pictures of life, the characters and behavior of the characters. Ballad is a small lyric-epic form. The favorite genre of romantics is ballads with the poetics of the terrible at the core. The genre was transferred from the periphery to the center. This is a lyrical-epic genre (plot, increased lyricism, subjectivity, psychological motives). External laws of being: fate, fate. Two-dimensionality: opposition of the real world and the mystical (otherworldly) world. ancient genre. Folklore stories are often used. A characteristic feature of the ballad is to open time to eternity (to present it as cyclic). Events in the face of eternity and lyrical space, on the other hand, a specific era. Zhukovsky is the founder of the Russian romantic ballad. In his poetry, the characteristic features of this genre were fully manifested (reliance in the development of the plot on national legend, beliefs, etc.), the presence of fantasy, the unusual nature of events, incidents involving supernatural forces, the actions of which in a bizarre way merge with the facts of reality, the desire the author in understanding life to adhere to the views of the depicted time. All the names of the ballads are conditional and are related to the plot that develops in the ballad. The subtitle "Russian ballad" also emphasized the reworking of the medieval ballad in the national spirit. In "Russian ballads" Zhukovsky resurrects an old motif of folk historical and lyrical songs: a girl is waiting for a dear friend from the war. The plot of the separation of lovers is extraordinarily important, because folk morality lives in it, often taking on a naive-religious form. All ballads are united by a humane outlook common to the genre as a whole. In a literary ballad, any historical or legendary legend can become a plot, including a modern one (for example, Zhukovsky's "Night review" and Lermontov's "Airship"). Historical time and historical place of action in the ballad are conditional. Such events that took place, for example, in the Middle Ages, could be dated in a literary ballad and attributed to antiquity, to Greece or Rome, to modern Russia and, in general, to a fictional, unprecedented country. In fact , all action takes place outside of history and outside of a specific space. The time and space of the ballad is an eternity living according to a constant schedule: morning, afternoon, evening, night. Everything temporary, historically transient recedes into the background. In the same way, the space of the ballad is the whole world, the whole universe, which also has its own permanent places - mountains, hills, rivers, plains, sky, forests. Again, they are not tied to any one country. The action of the ballad unfolds in front of the entire universe, both in time and space. The man in the ballad is placed face to face with eternity, with all destiny. In such a comparison, the main role is played not by his social or material position, whether he is noble or not noble, rich or poor, but the fundamental properties and universal feelings. These include experiences of love, death, fear, hope, death, salvation. All people are dissatisfied, and from time to time a murmur is heard from their lips, everyone hopes for something, fears something, experiences fear from time to time, and everyone knows that sooner or later they will die.
In most of Zhukovsky's ballads, the hero, the heroine, or both characters are dissatisfied with fate and enter into an argument with her. The man in the ballad rejects his fate, and fate, becoming even more ferocious, overtakes him and appears in an even more terrible image. The best ballad by V. Zhukovsky is Svetlana (1813). In the plot, she is connected with Burger's "Lenora". It contains many "ballad horrors" characteristic of romanticism: a bride and a dead groom ride on dashing horses to the wedding. Svetlana's betrothed, pale and gloomy, is silent all the way, over the sleigh, whistling its wing, the “black crow” and “croaks: sadness” curls, etc. Events develop in an atmosphere of mystery and fatal forebodings. At the same time, there is a national flavor in the ballad. The action takes place at Christmas time. Girls tell fortunes, sing sing-along songs. The image of Svetlana is sustained in the spirit of patriarchal folk traditions. The heroine of Zhukovsky is superstitious, submissive to her fate, and she is rewarded for her obedience to providence, for her trust in life. Zhukovsky's poetry is a fusion of the most diverse moods. The feeling of grief coexists in her with a bright faith in the possibility of human happiness. For all its disorder, life, according to the poet, is beautiful, and therefore, "the good of the builder is the law." It has such sources of joy as love, the beauty of nature, which brighten up the hardships of social existence. Zhukovsky began with Russian ballads. They were dominated by a tone of melancholy love, enjoyment of sadness, which then spread to ancient and medieval ballads. Gradually, the theme of love gave way to moral, civil, moral motives, sustained, however, in a lyrical key.
His ballads are original romantic works for the time of the poet's ­work. Our poet gave the Russian ballad, which was already known, artistic expressiveness and a new charm. He revived the poetic possibilities inherent in the old genre. His ballads are not only lyrical-epic works. Their sharp drama is plastic-musical; the movement of a man in a small space greatly interests the poet. Psychological analysis is outwardly expressive, the "inexpressible" is revealed in the "language of the body." And in this plasticity of movements, and in the music of poems imitating musical instruments and dances, there is a special lyricism of ballads. The lyrics are romantic, the philosophy of ballad names revealing human characters, relationships, destinies, the name acquires a symbolic meaning. In total, Zhukovsky wrote 39 ballads. The main theme is the theme of love, hopeless longing for happiness, sadness, religious moods. V. Zhukovsky has three types of ballads: 1. "Russians" - "Lyudmila", "Svetlana" (fortune-telling before Epiphany, the plot of the German ballad Lenora (German folklore)). 2. "Antique" - "Achilles", "Cassandra", "Ivikov Cranes", etc. Antique mythology in the ballad is an innovation. 3. "Medieval" - "Polycrates' ring", "Smalholm Castle", "Ivan's Evening". Zhukovsky created the first ballads in 1808 (the beginning of Zhukovsky's professional career as a writer, becoming co-editor of Vestnik Evropy) - the translated Lyudmila and the idea of the original Svetlana (the beginning of the "personal" genre). The ballad appears in Zhukovsky's work against the background of previous poetic discoveries. "Rural Cemetery" and "Evening" indicated the direction of development of the Russian elegy. In 1806, Zhukovsky's lyrical repertoire also included a complex of role-playing lyrics - with a defining love theme. Thus, there is an authorial context for the development of a new genre. If in the early 1800s the background of elegiac texts was moralistic poetry, inheriting the traditions of the 18th century, now elegy and love lyrics have become the background of the ballad. The heroes of the ballads clearly correlated with the lyrical hero of Zhukovsky. Turning to the ballad meant turning to a different type of lyrical narration. The epic potential of the ballad expanded Zhukovsky's poetic possibilities. But, on the other hand, the ballad can, in a certain respect, be brought closer to “role-playing lyrics” (through the features of the plot repertoire and character organization). Early ballads are mostly lyrical. The aesthetics of the ballads is the same as the aesthetics of "Evening"; they have the same motives, the same outlook, the same style, the same syllable, the same semantics, the same melody of the verse, the same "landscapes of the soul." True, they have a plot, which is not in the lyrics, but in them the plot is the most secondary matter, and they are the lyrics. The whole of Zhukovsky is a lyricist, and in this respect the Aeolian Harp is not much different from the Rural Cemetery. As most often happened with Zhukovsky, a new genre for him begins with a translation - from the burgher "Lenore", then - "Svetlana" (an artificial name, its phonetic appearance "rhymes" with Christmas time). The ballad poetics of the miraculous in Zhukovsky organically entered his aesthetic
consciousness. He tried to generalize his experience, to correlate it with the experience of others.
Mysterious, wonderful for the "Russian balladeer" - a means of activating the imagination, attention to what contains "some ambiguity", "brings the soul into greater tension." Unlike Chateaubriand, Zhukovsky is more sober in defining the mysterious, separating it from mystical secrets.
The problem of the mysterious for him is connected "not with the rejection of rationalistically ordered ideas about the world around a person, from its assessment in terms of traditional concepts, from the position of everyday consciousness."
Programmatic anti-rationalism is emphasized by highlighting the word “feeling”. But Zhukovsky does not limit sensory cognition only to the sphere of the mysterious. Moreover, he prefers clear feelings, "to which some clear complete idea is connected." All this allows us to speak about the special nature of the miraculous in Zhukovsky. For him, the mysterious, the miraculous is a poetic technique, a means of exciting strong feelings, influencing the imagination.
In the ballad world of Zhukovsky 1808-1814. - really "big miracles", but they exist in many ways as satellites of dreams, legends, myths. The attitude towards legendaryness is the most important feature of Zhukovsky's ballads. The remoteness of the action in time (antiquity, ancient Russia, the Middle Ages), the focus on fairy tales in stories about dead heroes are characteristic moments of the poetics of ballads. The revival of the obsolete, the narration of the "tale of great-grandfather's years" determines the position of the author, who looks at the miracles of his ballads with a smile, which he calls on readers to do as well.
This feature of the ballad world of Zhukovsky, “ballad optimism”, was precisely defined by G.A. Gukovsky: “But Zhukovsky's ballad is precisely the dream of the soul, and the dream is not real, but arbitrary; it is like a terrible dream, told by an awakened person who has shaken off a nightmare <...> over all the horror sounds the triumphant voice of a poet, a man-creator who conquered horror with his work, because he himself created it, mastered it.
The most beloved, most sincere ballad, as Zhukovsky himself noted, was the ballad "Svetlana", written by Zhukovsky in 1811. After its appearance, Zhukovsky became "Svetlana's singer" for many readers. The ballad became a particularly significant fact in his own life. He not only remembers Svetlana, but also perceives her as if real, dedicates poems to her, conducts friendly, sincere conversations with her:
Dear friend, be calm
Your path is safe here:
The heart is your guardian!
Everything is given by fate in it:
It will be here for you
Luckily the leader
("Svetlana")
The ballad "Svetlana" by Zhukovsky, in comparison with his own "Lyudmila", is more folk. Folk elements in it are both more visible and more organic. They are by no means reduced only to the rhythmic structure of the ballad, and its choreic folk-song verse. In "Svetlana" the general atmosphere of the nationality is felt; it contains features of folk life, folk rituals; slightly stylized, but folk in
based on the warehouse of speech and the form of expression of feelings. The feeling of the atmosphere of the nationality arises from the very first verses of the ballad:
Once a Epiphany Eve
The girls guessed:
Shoe behind the gate
Taking it off their feet, they threw it;
The snow was ground; under the window
Listened; fed
Counted chicken grains;
Burning wax was drowned;
In a bowl of clean water
They put a golden ring,
Earrings are emerald;
Spread out white boards,
And they sang in tune over the thicket
The songs are submissive.
The ballad "Svetlana" is romantic not only due to folk items, but also in other ways. It has a characteristic romantic landscape - evening, night, cemetery - a plot based on the mysterious and terrible (German romantics loved such plots), romantic motifs of graves, resurrecting dead, etc. All this looks somewhat conventional and bookish, but not at all like
bookish was perceived by readers. The conditionally bookish, in a sense, fairy-tale world is warmed by the author's faith in the truth of the imaginary and love for the heroine, the author's unchanging and heartfelt sympathy for her. It is they who communicate to the heroine herself, and to everything connected with her, all the features of living life. A fairy tale, a fairy tale told by the author, by the power of his love becomes, as it were, genuine, becomes more real than everyday reality itself. High, inner truth and warm lyricism of a kind fairy tale - these are the main feelings that the ballad "Svetlana" evokes in the reader. The ballad is rich in symbols of Russian folklore. For example, a raven is a messenger of death, a hut that gives a reference to Baba Yaga, whose dwelling is located on the border of the world of the living and the dead. The dove in the ballad symbolizes the Holy Spirit, who, like an angel, saves Svetlana from the darkness of hell. The crowing of a rooster dispels the spell of night darkness, announcing the dawn - everything returns to normal.
In "Svetlana" and in some other ballads, Zhukovsky's faith in the good appears not only in a fabulous, but also partly in a religious form, but the essence of this faith is not in religiosity alone, but even more in Zhukovsky's deep humanity.
At the end of the ballad, words with an undoubtedly religious and didactic coloring sound:
Here are my ballads:
"The best friend to us in this life
Faith in providence.
The blessing of the maker of the law:
Here misfortune is a false dream;
Happiness is an awakening."
The poem reflects both Zhukovsky's religious consciousness and his deep optimism, which is based on a strong desire for good and joy for a person. Zhukovsky has religious optimism and, no less than that, kind, human optimism. The latter makes Zhukovsky close and dear to our modern reader.
If in “Svetlana”, with its general poetic-light coloring, the scary in the plot is almost not felt - the scary was softened by a warehouse of light narration and light style - then in such ballads as “Warwick”, “Adelstan”, “Smalholm Castle”,
the poetics of the terrible is in many respects defining and stylistic.
The poetics of the terrible is also a sign of romanticism, although it is by no means obligatory for all its currents and varieties. German romanticism clearly gravitated towards the depiction of the terrible and asserted the right to such a depiction in its aesthetics. In this respect, Zhukovsky, unlike most other Russian romantics, was undeniably influenced by German romantic thought.
No one surpassed Zhukovsky in this genre, he remained a ballad poet, speaking wonderful, ­fantastic, terrifying and beautiful images in a graceful musical language great truths about human morality. Speaking about the poetic systemic nature of V.A. Zhukovsky's ballads, it is necessary to note not only common motives, ideas, but also the means of creating poetic mood magic. Emotional impact for a ballad player is more important than any thoughts and morality. Showing the hero in a state of passion, an extreme situation, the poet pumps up the mood. The music of the ballad arises, creating a unity of mood due to the sound image. This is the sound sequence in Zhukovsky's ballad system, conveying the dominant mood and creating an expressive, figurative basis of feeling.