The theme of freedom and its philosophical resonance in the works of Russian poetry of the 19th century. The theme of freedom in Russian literature The theme of freedom in the lyrics of Russian poets

Human freedom, the protection of his spiritual autonomy is one of the most pressing topics in Russian literature. It is widely reflected in both poetry and prose. It sounded especially poignant in the romantic lyrics of the early 19th century.

Freedom can be considered on two levels: social and philosophical. The most profound and difficult is the second plan.

The theme of freedom is philosophically reflected in the poem “Anchar”. A philosophical symbolic landscape unfolds before us - a proud desert and an ancient, poisonous Anchar tree. It is mortally dangerous, living beings avoid it, and part of the eternal element lurks in it. But in the human world there is unfreedom, slavery, coercion, and the power of the strong over the weak. This is the root of evil. Slavery kills a person morally and physically. Thus, anchar becomes a symbol of unfreedom, the rule of violence and slavery.

The theme of freedom is considered somewhat differently by A. S. Pushkin in the poem “To the Sea.” The lyrical hero here turns to the free elements, entrusts his cherished thoughts to it. The soul of the creator and the state of the sea resemble each other in spontaneity, continuous movement, search, freedom. The first part of the poem is a romantic description of the raging sea, in the second part the poet turns to the sea, the theme of personality and fate, freedom and predestination, the theme of Napoleon arises.

It was in the life of the French emperor that these components merged. Napoleon was free in his actions and decisions. That is why he managed to achieve worldwide fame. At the same time, Napoleon’s character reminds the lyrical hero of the “indomitability, power, depth” of the sea. As a result, the lyrical hero leads readers to a feeling of rejection of the conditions under which a person’s personality is suppressed: “Where there is a drop of good, there is enlightenment or a tyrant on guard.”

Pushkin also fought for freedom in poems dedicated to the poet and poetry: “The Poet”, “The Poet and the Crowd”. It is the freedom of creative self-determination that is one of the main criteria of creativity.

Freedom is the ideal of aspiration for M. Yu. Lermontov. It is not for nothing that in the poem “I Go Out Alone on the Road” he states: “I am looking for freedom and peace.” The social atmosphere of those years suppressed the spiritual freedom of man. Therefore, M. Yu. Lermontov found his ideal in the elements of nature, far from secular vanity and lies. This is evidenced by the poem “Mtsyri”. The three days the hero spent in freedom are equated to a whole life: the feeling of the sharpness of existence and happiness permeates the entire poem. Only a free person, according to the poet, can be considered happy. He perceives even a fight with a mighty leopard as part of a free existence.

That is why the entire composition of the poem is built on an antithesis: a monastery and the free elements of nature. Dying, Mtsyri regrets the dull life of the old monk and asks to bury him on the side facing his homeland, towards nature. Fate and freedom are inseparable here.

The motives of the thirst for freedom are also present in M. Yu. Lermontov’s poem “The Turk’s Complaints” (1829). The poet wrote this poem when he was only 15 years old, but it is distinguished by a rare depth of knowledge of life. Here one hears the passionate pain, the bitterness of a person who observes a terrible picture of slavery, and, at the same time, a passionate protest, indignation against this lack of freedom. M. Yu. Lermontov always called, first of all, for spiritual freedom, the possibility of active independent action.

Thus, in the theme of freedom, two interconnected plans are distinguished: personal, spiritual and the plan associated with the existence of a person in society, the dependence of his actions on public opinion. The feeling of inner freedom allows you to create and pour out your heart. The main thing that the poets called for was to preserve and appreciate this greatest good, which allows you to feel the taste of life.

The theme of freedom occupies a special place in the lyrics of A. S. Pushkin. Freedom-loving motives were strong in Pushkin’s lyrics even before 1820, and they are equally characteristic of the mature period of his work. After all, it was not without reason that Pushkin, summing up his path, asserted in “Monument” that his main merit was that in his “cruel age” he glorified freedom. However, during the romantic period, the theme of freedom in Pushkin’s poetry was leading. Motifs of freedom are not only often found in romantic lyrics, but also permeate them through and through, giving it a very peculiar, unique appearance.

The favorite heroes of Pushkin's lyrics of the romantic era are always involved in freedom and long for it. These are Karageorgiy from the 1820 poem “The Daughters of Karageorgiy” (“thunderstorm of the moon, warrior of freedom”), Brutus in the poem “Dagger” (“... but Brutus rose up, freedom-loving”), Chaadaev from Pushkin’s epistle to him (“...we will revive freedom-loving hopes”), General Pushchin from a poem addressed to him (“And soon, soon the fighting among the slave people will cease, you will take the hammer in your hand and cry: freedom!”), and so on .

In the poems of the romantic period, Pushkin calls himself “a peace-loving friend of freedom” (“To Alekseeva”). He values ​​the free character of his lyre and gives it the name “free voice of the lyre” (“From a letter to Gnedich”). In the poem “Delvigu” he proclaims: “Freedom alone is my idol.” Pushkin regards the concept of freedom as one of the highest human values. In the 1823 poem “L. Pushkin” he exclaims: “Now you are a young man - and with a full soul you blossom for joys, for light, for freedom. What field is open to you..."

The motifs of freedom in Pushkin’s southern lyrics are not only thematically leading, but also stylistically constructive. To a large extent, they determine the special imagery of Pushkin’s poems of this time. In the natural world at that time, Pushkin was attracted mainly by the sea, ocean, thunderstorms, and all kinds of elements. That is why they are attracted to the fact that, when placed in a poetic context, they are naturally associated with freedom. In Pushkin’s poems, the thunderstorm is a “symbol of freedom” (“Who, the waves, stopped you...”), the ocean is free (“I greet you, free ocean...”), the sea is “your "the bad elements."

Pushkin’s last romantic poem “To the Sea” (1824) opens with the image of free elements. It is significant that this final and programmatic (as defined by M. Tsvetaeva, “the most romantic”) poem by Pushkin is dedicated to the theme of freedom. The opening words of the poem sound like a plot point, like an introduction to the most important thing:

Farewell, free elements!

For the last time before me

You're rolling blue waves

And you shine with proud beauty...

WITH this initial image of embodied freedom (the sea is free and it is also an element:

free and elemental - as if doubly free) in the poem everything is connected: words, thoughts, and poetic memories. In close connection with him, the images of Napoleon and Byron appear in the poem. The correlation of these images and these names with the image of the sea is not only external (both of them died near the sea). Although in different ways, both of them are correlated in Pushkin’s consciousness with the concept of freedom. In the poem “The motionless guard was dozing...” Pushkin characterized Napoleon precisely in this light: “The heir and murderer of rebellious liberty.” Byron relates to the concept of freedom in a different and especially close and direct way. For Pushkin, the author of the elegy “To the Sea,” Byron is, first of all, a singer of freedom and a man who died for freedom:

Disappeared, mourned by freedom,

Leaving the world your crown,

Make noise, get excited by bad weather:

He was, O sea, your singer.

Your image was marked on it,

He was created by your spirit:

How powerful, deep and gloomy you are,

Like you, we can’t tame anything...

However, Pushkin of the southern period not only glorifies freedom, but also doubts it, and is tormented by the problems that freedom poses for man, for people and nations. In the interpretation of the theme of freedom, Pushkin the romanticist is not unambiguous and one-dimensional. In a certain sense, we can say that in the formulation and solution of this theme as a whole, he acts not only as a romantic: he goes beyond the boundaries of narrowly romantic consciousness.

Pushkin’s formulation of the theme of freedom, if we take it comprehensively and in full, is acutely problematic in nature. In Pushkin’s coverage of this topic, everything is far from being as simple as it might seem at first, not very attentive glance, and even more so, not everything is completely resolved. In the poem “Demon,” Pushkin ranked the feeling of freedom among the “sublime” feelings. This is exactly how it has always been for him. At the same time, the word “freedom,” while evoking a strong impulse and high enthusiasm in Pushkin, no less caused him to have difficult thoughts. Freedom for him was both a sublime ideal and a deeply tragic problem.

The problematic nature of the theme of freedom, its internal tragedy, was most associated for Pushkin most of all with the gradually strengthening consciousness in him of the inability of the people and nations of his contemporary world not only to fight for freedom, but also to accept it. In fact, Pushkin’s poem “Gypsies” is largely devoted to this theme of a person’s internal unfreedom. You may also remember that in the message “V. L. Davydov" (1821), maintained mainly in a light and humorous tone, touching on the defeat of the revolution in Naples, Pushkin says without a shadow of a joke, with deep bitterness:

People want silence

And for a long time their yoke will not crack...

Pushkin's bitter thoughts about freedom, voiced in this poem, had a very specific justification - the events in Naples. However, very soon such thoughts will become for Pushkin not random, associated with one or another specific case, but permanent. They will become a kind of belief, not necessarily attached to one or another historical example. Thus, in the poem of 1822 “V. F. Raevsky" is essentially the same idea about freedom and lack of freedom of people, which also sounded in the message of "V. L. Davydov”, receives a clearly generalized interpretation.

I spoke in front of a cold crowd

The language of free truth,

But for the crowd insignificant and deaf

The noble voice of the heart is ridiculous.

Everywhere there is a yoke, an ax or a crown,

Everywhere there is a villain or a cowardly...

These are already poetic thoughts, and not just ethical feelings and observations, these are poetically expressed conclusions of experience: socio-historical, biographical and, no less, internal, spiritual. Pushkin's interpretation of the theme of freedom in its tragic turn is not limited to one or two poems. She outlines a special and fairly stable line in Pushkin’s lyrics, she finds new development in poetry.

This theme sounds with particular force in the 1823 poem “The Desert Sower of Freedom...”. The author himself wrote about this poem as follows: “...wrote the other day in imitation of the fable of the moderate democrat Jesus Christ (Come out, sower, sow your seeds)...” Pushkin’s recognition means most of all that his poem was written in style of the gospel parable, in the same serious and sublime tone. However, the thoughts in it sound not evangelical, but characteristically Pushkin:

Graze, peaceful peoples!

The cry of honor will not wake you up.

Why do the herds need the gifts of freedom?

They should be cut or trimmed.

Their inheritance from generation to generation

A yoke with rattles and a whip.

Perhaps never before has Pushkin’s poetic voice sounded so angry and so sad. However, it would be wrong to see any categorical conclusions in Pushkin’s thoughts and words. The ending of the poem is not about the author's decisions, but about painful questions. Pushkin's poem about the sower is not satire, but high drama. And in his painful doubts, Pushkin continues to love freedom and dream about it no less fervently than before. He writes freedom-loving poems in parallel to tragic poems about freedom. But this precisely characterizes the volume of Pushkin’s consciousness, this determines the problematic nature of Pushkin’s creativity and the acute drama in solving the topic.

In Pushkin, different approaches to the topic exist not so much in themselves, but in their contradictory unity and integrity. To understand the true meaning of Pushkin’s poems such as “The Desert Sower of Freedom...”, one must not forget about all his freedom-loving poems. Only in the context of all Pushkin’s lyrics about freedom do the opening words of “The Sower” become completely clear in their tragic and lofty thought:

Desert sower of freedom,

I left early, before the star;

With a clean and innocent hand

Into the enslaved reins

Threw a life-giving seed -

But I only lost time

“Liberty” (1817), “To Chaadaev” (1818), “Village” (1819), “Desert Sower of Freedom...” (1823), “To the Sea” (1824), “Anchar” (1828), “ (From Pindemonti)" (1836).

The theme of freedom is one of the brightest, most intimate themes of Pushkin's lyrics. According to the 20th century critic-philosopher G.P. Fedotov, “freedom belongs to the main elements of Pushkin’s creativity and, of course, his spiritual being. Pushkin is unthinkable without freedom, and its meaning goes far beyond the poet’s political sentiments.” Freedom from cruel tyrannical power, from the vulgar self-confident crowd, from pettiness, greed, fear, envy lurking in the dark corners of the soul, freedom in the highest philosophical meaning occupies the thoughts of Pushkin the poet. It takes on different faces in different periods of his work, but one thing remains unchanged: the poet never ceases to feel the highest moral value of freedom. Without it, life is impossible, true creativity is impossible.

The motif of freedom first appears in the Lyceum poem "Licinia"(1815). Here, young Pushkin, analyzing ancient Roman history, saw in freedom a guarantee of the progress of society, and in “slavery” the source of the death of civilization.

The St. Petersburg period of 1817-1820 was the time of Pushkin’s closest contacts with freethinkers and leaders of pre-December societies. Their views, in particular constitutional-monarchical ideals, were undoubtedly reflected in the concept of freedom of the young Pushkin.

Oh yeah "Liberty"(1817) made a strong impression on his contemporaries and became a landmark in the evolution of Pushkin. It is surprising that the Arzamas resident Pushkin writes an ode - a genre rejected by Karamzinists and accepted in “Conversation...”. The point is not even in Pushkin’s independence in relation to the literary groups of that time, but rather in tradition: the ode “Liberty” was already in Russian literature and belonged to A.N. Radishchev (it is included in “Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow”). By naming his work the same way, Pushkin wanted to emphasize continuity and point out the significant differences in his political concept. Radishchev, as is known, justified the rebellion of the people against the tyrant. Pushkin's position is not so radical. This concept is based on the ideas of moderate liberalism. By the way, the idea of ​​a constitutional monarchy was already in the air. The next year, 1818, Alexander I himself would speak about this.

At the beginning of Pushkin’s famous ode, there is a rejection of the past poetic path, of the love theme: the poet drives away the “weak queen Cythera,” that is, the goddess of love and beauty Aphrodite, whose cult dominated on the Greek island of Cythera, or Kythera. In place of this charming image, the poet calls on the “thunderstorm of kings” - the proud singer of Freedom. Please note that the words Liberty, Fate, Power, etc. are written with capital letters - these are the foundations of political life, the most important concepts with the help of which the concept of freedom is formed. Away with the “wreath”, “pampered lyre” - attributes of the poetry of love and pleasures; harsh and bloody reality requires different images and intonations:

I want to sing Freedom to the world,

Smite vice on thrones.

A world divided into “tyrants” and “slaves” is an unrighteous world, freedom is violated in it. The young poet addresses the “slaves,” calling on them to “rise up,” that is, stand up and be filled with dignity. The main condition for freedom in society, Pushkin asserts in this poem, is observance of laws by both the king and the people:

Only there did not suffering fall over the royal head of the Peoples, Where the combination of powerful Laws was strong with holy liberty.

To prove this idea, Pushkin cites two arguments from French and Russian history. The execution of Louis XVI on January 21, 1793 during the Great French Revolution was, Pushkin believes, an act of violation of the law by the people. History took revenge on the French - a dictatorship came, and the “autocratic villain” Napoleon came to power. Pushkin's attitude towards Napoleon will change. 7 years later, in the poem “To the Sea,” Pushkin will write about Napoleon, who has already died, in a completely different way. But for now he does not spare angry and harsh assessments, which is understandable after the recent events of 1812: “you are a reproach to God on earth.”

The second episode is Russian: on the night of March 11-12, 1801, Paul I was killed in St. Petersburg, in the Mikhailovsky Castle. This murder was villainous, insidious, committed by the tsar’s entourage (there were persistent rumors that the tsar’s son, the future emperor Alexander I, knew about the impending murder and did not stop it). Regicide is not justified by Pushkin, but the fact is that the tyrant - the “crowned villain” - himself violated the law and was punished for it.

The ode contains the image of the poet (“singer”) himself, anxiously reflecting on the bloody event:

When on the gloomy Neva

The midnight star sparkles

And a carefree chapter

A restful sleep is burdensome,

The pensive singer looks

On menacingly sleeping in the midst of the fog

Desert monument to the tyrant,

A palace abandoned to oblivion...

The poem ends with an order to modern autocratic rulers: kings must obey the laws, and then the strength of their rule will be ensured by the freedom of peoples:

And freedom and peace will become the eternal guardians of the throne of the Peoples.

This poem by Pushkin could not be published and was circulated in lists, like another - "To Chaadaev"(1818). As already mentioned, P.Ya. Chaadaev had a strong influence on the formation of Pushkin’s liberal political views. Pushkin highly valued the intelligence and will of his older friend and considered him underestimated in his homeland. Later he would write about Chaadaev:

He would be Brutus in Rome,

in Athens Pericles,

And here he is a hussar officer. -

connecting the name of a friend with the figures of prominent tyrant fighters, legislators of antiquity, bitterly complaining about the unrealization of the high talents of Chaadaev the thinker “in the shackles of the royal service.”

The message “To Chaadaev” is remarkable for its inextricable unity of personal and public. The struggle for the freedom of the fatherland is felt like the “desire” of a young heart. This lyrical masterpiece of Pushkin is about insight; it is the depiction of the evolution of the young soul that determines the composition of the poem. In his stanzas, the motives of liberation from the “deception” of love, hope, “quiet” (poetic) glory, awakening to real, harsh life are consistently developed; the poet reflects on the time when young citizens heard the call of their homeland with “impatient souls.” Of course, this call is for help. And the young author calls on his “friend”, “comrade” to devote “the beautiful impulses of his soul” to his homeland. The nobility of this knightly impulse lies in the desire to help the suffering. It penetrates so deeply into the poet’s soul that for him the distinction between personal and universally significant, internal and external disappears; the “common” itself - the civic ideal - begins to be recognized as the deepest intimate feeling:

We wait with languid hope for the holy moment of freedom, Just as a young lover waits for the minute of a faithful meeting.

Love and freedom-loving impulse are equally all-encompassing feelings of the lyrical hero. The wisdom of this movement of the heart lies in the keen knowledge that youth is a guarantee against dishonor. Hence these temporary restrictions: “while we are burning with freedom,” “while our hearts are alive for honor.” It is in “impulses” that this young, impatient, beautiful soul manifests itself. Freedom is called here unusually - “the star of captivating happiness.” In Russian poetry of that time, love feelings, beauty, and quiet personal experiences were usually called captivating. And here this metaphor is an expression of the happiness of life without “autocracy,” understood as unlimited autocracy. “Young fun” disappeared “like a dream”, and Russia “will awaken from sleep.” The condition for the awakening of a country is the awakening of its young citizens. From “quiet” glory to heroic glory - this is the path of maturation, nobility, and insight:

Comrade, believe: she will rise,

Star of captivating happiness,

Russia will wake up from its sleep,

And on the ruins of autocracy

They will write our names!

Another freedom-loving poem by Pushkin from this time - "Village". A visit to Mikhailovsky, his mother’s Pskov estate, in the summer of 1819 allowed the young humanist poet to experience the true happiness of creativity and made him horrified by the cruelty of serfdom. The poem carries this contrast: the adversative conjunction “but” (“But a terrible thought here darkens the soul...”) separates the first, idyllic part of the poem from the second, accusatory part. At first glance, the village is “a haven of peace, work and inspiration.” Comfort is a necessary condition for peace for a person, and the young poet, who arrived from the capital, felt the village as a “corner” close to his heart. Rejoicing at this feeling, loving this place, Pushkin turns to Mikhailovsky as to a friend: “I greet you,” “I am yours.” The charming hero of the poem came to the village not for fun, laziness, or household chores, but for liberation from vanity, delusions, and for creative work.

Pushkin considered peace of mind to be a necessary condition for inspiration. And the poet found it in rural solitude. The description of the garden, meadow, two Mikhailovsky lakes, fields, pastures, barns (sheds for drying bread), and mills is done in an idyllic manner - everywhere there are “traces of contentment and labor.” This is genuine happiness, and therefore the poet does not notice how the days go by (“an invisible stream flows through my days // In the bosom of happiness and oblivion”). By this, the village sharply opposes the “vicious court” with the “Circes” (that is, sorceresses, enchantresses), the city where “delusions” reign. This clarification of consciousness under the influence of the “peaceful noise of oak trees”, “silence of fields” is especially joyful for a creator, poet, thinker.

Having freed himself from the “vain shackles” of unreal life, the hero finds the only bliss in the truth, and with a free soul he idolizes the “law” (remember the idea of ​​the ode “Liberty”). He is closed to the murmurs of the "unenlightened" crowd and hears the call of shy pleas for help; here envy of the fate of the “villain or fool” died.

Surprisingly, here, far from the city with its cultural life, in the countryside, in solitude, the thoughts of philosophers and writers become clearer (“oracles,” that is, Pushkin calls them predictors). Reading, however, is not at all a passive process for our hero: the “sleep of laziness” disappears, and the “ardor” for work is born. “Free idleness” surprisingly coexists with work, reading and reflection - it is even called “the friend of reflection.” The cherished Pushkin theme of freedom has been transformed here into yet another facet: freedom, “free idleness,” it turns out, can be found far from the light, close to nature, in the peace of solitude.

But before us is not only a thinker, before us is a true bearer and creator of moral values: he cannot help but notice the misfortune of others. The poet’s humane soul is “darkened” by the terrible thought of the misfortunes of mankind. Corvée, desecration of personality, debauchery - these vices of serfdom are fiercely branded by Pushkin in his uncensored poem. “Slavery” must be destroyed by the tsar - Pushkin is convinced of this; The peasant revolt was not recognized by him as a means of solving the bleeding Russian problem.

These three poems of 1817-1819 formed the most important part of Pushkin’s freedom-loving lyrics, had a powerful influence on the Decembrists, and were used by them as propaganda poems. Before us is lyric poetry, where the abstract concepts of “civil” poems of classicism with their rationalism and enlightenment organically merged with the impulses of the “soul” - this ensured their fame and the love of their contemporaries and descendants.

A new stage in Pushkin’s understanding of freedom is the period of southern exile. 1823 was a crisis year in Pushkin’s life: the exiled poet had to endure personal, philosophical, and political disappointment. At this time, Pushkin was impressed by the failures of European revolutions from Spain to the Danube. Pessimistic thoughts about the fate of political freedom are reflected in the poem “Desolate sower of freedom...”(1823). The epigraph to it is taken from the Gospel of Matthew (13:3) - “The sower went out to sow his seed.” Did this work bear fruit? Pushkin’s hero, the “sower,” feels the tragic uselessness of his efforts: it is pointless to throw “life-giving seed” “into the enslaved reins,” the result of efforts is only disappointment:

I only lost time, good thoughts and works...

Bitter experience and life's hardships in the struggle for freedom lead to the fact that peoples ultimately exchange freedom for material stability. The romantic poet likens nations to “herds,” predicting the only possible future for them:

Graze, peaceful peoples! The cry of honor will not wake you up. Why do the herds need the gifts of freedom? They should be cut or trimmed. Their inheritance from generation to generation is a yoke with rattles and a whip.

The following year, 1824, Pushkin wrote a poem "To sea": the poet, deprived of freedom, turns to the “free elements”. The genre of the poem is an elegiac message to the sea. Usually messages are written to a friend, but the sea is a friend for Pushkin (“a mournful murmur like a friend”). The poet addresses the sea using “you”, he loved its “feedback”, heard its “calling noise” - as if not only the poet’s appeal to the sea, but also the response of the sea is heard in the poem.

The author loves the sea, because for him it is the embodiment of freedom, a “free element.” The sea will want it - and will preserve a small boat with a “humble sail”; it will want it - and will drown the “flock of ships”. The sea is capricious and gusty. In addition, the sea, according to Pushkin’s plan, was supposed to become for him, so to speak, a means of liberation - he wanted to escape from Odessa abroad by sea (we are languishing about this in the lines “with a cherished intention”).

The image of the sea in this message is truly beautiful: always free, in the brilliance of “proud beauty”, hiding a dangerous “abyss”, playing with its own forces... The names of two famous people of the era are associated with the sea - Napoleon, who died in 1821 on the island of St. Helena in the middle of the sea, and Byron, who died in 1824 for the freedom of Greece, on the seashore.

Byron’s characterization is surprisingly sharp and talented: the image of the sea is imprinted on him, the poet was created by the “spirit” of the sea:

Like you, powerful, deep and gloomy, Like you, indomitable by anything.

After the death of these two heroes, “the world was empty” for the author of the message. Actually, there is nowhere to go... The fate of the earth is the same everywhere:

Where there is a drop of good, there is enlightenment or a tyrant on guard.

It is characteristic that good is measured in “drops” (and in this way it is, as it were, connected with the sea), and bondage is identified with “land”. The romantic interpretation of enlightenment brings it closer to political bondage (the existence of a “tyrant”). The author of the poem “To the Sea,” writes A.A. Smirnov, “is hostile to everything domestic, closed, intimate, everyday, he strives to embrace the infinity of the distance, expand his vision to a universal scale, rise and triumph over the abyss of the universe, personified in the image of the ocean.” Everything that encroaches on individual freedom, be it “enlightenment” or “tyrant”, is assessed negatively, even enlightenment as distorting the original, natural freedom of man.

This poem is about freedom not so much of the elements as of man. With the power of his creative impulse, his imagination, a person can “transfer” the image of the sea, its noise “to forests, to silent deserts.” Grateful human memory is the form in which the sea now exists for the poet of freedom and love.

In 1828, Pushkin writes a poem "Anchar". Already the first stanza of the poem sets up a feeling of gloomy solemnity. Almost mystical horror sounds in these lines:

In the desert, stunted and stingy,

On the ground, hot in the heat,

Anchar, like a formidable sentry,

There is only one in the whole universe.

Hidden alliteration (repetition of consonants in words “stunted”, “on the soil”, “ancharu”, “sentinel”) here it embodies the enchanting, consciousness-enslaving power of heat and the very power of the anchar, as if its name permeates the sound structure of the stanza. This prepares the leading theme of the poem: the theme of the tragic power of evil, cruelty, destruction and death both in nature and in human society.

In the mythology of different nations, there are many legends about the so-called “world tree”, the roots of which go to the world of the dead, the trunk pierces the world of the living, and the crown and top are in the world of the gods. Divine energy circulates along this tree of life; it was created by the creator at the beginning of time, as the original axis of the universe, holding together all spheres of existence. But the mythological image of the world tree appears in Pushkin in its tragic form. Anchar in the desert - the only thing tree, he stands on the border of the world, “like a formidable sentinel,” he is “alone in the entire universe” (note how gradually the power of the anchar grows in Pushkin’s description!). But he is the “tree of death”; holding the world together, he only sows evil in it, destroys all living things. All living things run away from this “tree of death”: “Not even a bird flies to it, // And the tiger doesn’t come...” The hyperbole in the image of the anchar (“alone in the whole universe”) creates a majestic feeling of proud, self-contained loneliness, contempt for the environment. This feeling makes possible the symbolic likening of anchar to tyrannical power.

And so this tree of death turned out to be included in human relationships. One “man” needed the life of another to extract the poison:

But man is man

Sent to the anchor with an imperious glance,

And he obediently went on his way

And in the morning he returned with poison.

The entire inhumane essence of relations between people in society is shown by Pushkin’s famous construction with a caesura: “But man is man...” This pause demonstrates the horror of the situation when one can send another to death not even by force, but only with an “imperious gaze.” And this other, also a “man,” did not fight, did not resist, did not grumble, but, like water, “obediently flowed on his way” and carried out the order. The thing is that some of them are “lord”, “king” (the censored version is “prince”), and the other is “slave”; Having lost his freedom, he lost the power to resist evil. “An imperious gaze”, “ruler” - all these are signs of power, which is also, like anchar, both a product of nature (this time human) and a denial of it. War is a terrible means used by the authorities in the struggle for their dominance, and the arrows “obedient” to the king, imbued with anchar poison, carried death further, “to the neighbors in alien borders.” The evil of unfreedom tends to spread.

One of Pushkin's last poems from 1836 - "(From Pindemonti)". This poem, despite the indicated source (Italian poet Pindemonte, 1753-1828), is not a translation. This reference, according to Pushkinists, is a way to divert the attention of censors. Pushkin's poem is in many ways paradoxical and polemical. This polemic determines the two-part composition of the text. In the first part, the poet consistently rejects seemingly undoubted political values: parliamentarism (the right to “challenge taxes // Or prevent kings from fighting each other”), freedom of the press (“... I don’t care if the press is free // Fooling the boobies , or sensitive censorship // In magazine plans, the joker is constrained"). Hamlet's formula (“All this, you see, words words words...-") shows in the best possible way the illusory, unsteady nature of those soulless and godless ideals that often stand behind them. In contrast to these political freedoms, any form of political structure - both monarchy (“depend on the tsar”) and democracy (“depend on the people”) - Pushkin the artist praises “other, better... rights.” This is an exciting, fruitful freedom of creativity, an unaccountable, blissful existence, subject only to the laws of poetry and beauty:

To wander here and there at your whim, Marveling at the divine beauty of nature, and before the creations of art and inspiration, trembling joyfully in the raptures of tenderness. What happiness! that's right...

Indeed, such a free existence of an artist is immeasurably happier than the life of a citizen in a so-called politically free society.

This is how Pushkin’s political lyrics develop. The ideal of love of freedom in the poet’s work evolves from the traditional educational ideas of Fr. a just social order through the romantic rejection of any form of unfreedom and enslavement to a philosophical understanding of higher, spiritual freedom, which alone no tyrant can take away from a person. How important it is to remember that God gave man freedom and placed on him the responsibility for choosing between good and evil; This means that, deprived of freedom, a person is deprived of the opportunity to distinguish between these moral poles, loses the meaning of his existence, the ability to build relationships with people, and creative power. That is why the high ideal of freedom inspires Pushkin’s poetry throughout his life.

Test questions and assignments

1. Why was the theme of freedom so important for Pushkin?

2. How did communication with the Decembrists influence Pushkin’s political views in the early 1820s?

3. Whose tradition does Pushkin continue in his ode “Liberty”? Name the main motives and ideas of Pushkin's ode.

4. What is the significance of the motives of “youth”, the unity of personal and public in Pushkin’s message “To Chaadaev”?

5. How is the theme of freedom revealed in the poem “Village”, in its first and second parts? What political statements are made in this poem?

6. How do you understand the meaning of the epigraph to the poem “The Desert Sower of Freedom...”? How do Pushkin characterize the images of the sower and the people? What are the pessimistic motives in this poem?

7. What is the attitude of the lyrical hero of the poem “To the Sea” to the “free elements”, why? How does the image of the sea appear in the poem, what motives and ideas are associated with this image? How does the poem sound the motif of “natural” human freedom?

8. Read the poem “Anchar”. How many parts are there in a poem? What ideas does Pushkin associate with the “tree of poison”? Determine the meaning of artistic details, epithets in the description of anchar: greenery, roots, etc. What natural elements carry the poison of anchar? Why did people start spreading it too? What is the meaningful meaning of the antithesis “slave” - “king”?

9. What new motifs appear in the poem “(From Pindemonti)”?

Test essays

1. The theme of freedom in Pushkin’s poetry: the dynamics of the main motives and ideas.

In the work, it is important to avoid assessing the poet’s freedom-loving lyrics as something established and unchangeable once and for all. How Pushkin’s attitude to freedom changed from the Lyceum poem “Licinia”, the Decembrist “Liberty” and “Village” to the poems of the second half of the 1820s and 1830s - an analysis of this should become the basis of the work. What changes in the poet’s lyrical hero, in his idea of ​​the ideal of freedom, how do the poetic images and symbols that express this ideal change?

2. The idea of ​​the need for freedom - political, creative, moral - is in Pushkin’s lyrics.

Pushkin's understanding of freedom is multifaceted. This is political freethinking (“Licinia”, “Liberty”, “Village”, “Desert Sower of Freedom..."), and the poet’s creative freedom from the dictates of the crowd, the power of vulgarity, the rude demand for “use” (“Poet”, “To the Poet” “,” “The Poet and the Crowd”), and, finally, internal, spiritual freedom, which is most important, since it is the only thing that no one can take away from a person (“(From Pindemonti)”). How are the different “faces” of freedom depicted in Pushkin’s works? Is it by chance that the image of spiritual freedom appears already in the poet’s mature poems? The answer to the last question can become the conclusion of the essay.

3. Political declarations in Pushkin’s freedom-loving lyrics.

Pushkin's freedom-loving political lyrics: what ideal does it affirm? This is the liberation of the people from cruel serfdom (“Village”), and the equality of all classes before the law (“Liberty”), and an enlightened monarchical government that respects the law and strives for the good of the Fatherland. The ideal of the poet is the freedom-loving personality of a hero-citizen, whose bold political statements correspond to his entire life (“To Chaadaev”). Why does it become impossible to liberate a person (“Freedom is a desert sower...”), what makes a person a slave (“Anchar”)? The analysis of Pushkin's poetic statements about this will be the content of the work.

4. Problems of relations between power and people, power and man in Pushkin’s freedom-loving lyrics.

The problem of power is conceptualized by Pushkin in both political and moral aspects. Power and people - what is the source of their clashes? Power and personality - why is human individuality suppressed by the power of the ruler? Finding answers to this question will be the content of the work.

5. The meaning of poetic metaphors and symbols in Pushkin’s poems about freedom.

Pushkin's creative thinking is the ability to find bright, visible images to express the most complex abstract ideas. Symbols of freedom in his lyrics- star, muse (“Freedom's proud singer”), sea, ship, eagle, wind, heaven; bondage is often expressed in the images of chains, bars, fortresses, dungeons, earthly captivity, etc. The poetic allegories (metaphors) in the freedom-loving lyrics of the poet are bizarre and unexpected. Find them in poetry, comprehend their artistic significance for the development of Pushkin’s understanding of freedom,- all this is included in the tasks of the work.

Creative tasks

1. Compare the poems “Village” and “Anchar”. What is the meaningful meaning of the two-part form of the works? What is common and different in the ideological sense of the first two parts of the poems? What common ideas are heard in the second parts of the two poems?

2. Analyze the landscape in Pushkin’s poem “Village”. What is the role of definitions and color vocabulary in describing nature? Is the image of nature connected with the idea of ​​freedom?

3. Analyze the phonetic structure of the first six stanzas in the poem “To the Sea”. Do they contain assonance, alliteration, and other sound repetitions? If so, what is their substantive meaning?

4. Expand the list of Pushkin’s freedom-loving lyrics. What motives and ideas are heard in other poems on the theme of freedom?

In my cruel age I glorified Freedom...

A. Pushkin

Pushkin's lyrics are always a confession, intimate and secret confessions in which his personality and the richness of his inner world are revealed. With the help of Pushkin’s priceless poetic heritage, we strive to understand and purify the soul, to comprehend the depths of our own personality.

The theme of freedom has always been the leading one in Pushkin’s work, especially in the romantic period, but the very concept of “freedom” was constantly expanding, going through its own path of development.

In his early works, freedom for Pushkin is, first of all, political independence, freedom of the people, “holy freedom” (poems “Village”, “To Chaadaev”, “Licinius”, “Dagger”):

While we are burning with freedom, While our hearts are alive for honor, My friend, let us dedicate our Souls to beautiful impulses to the fatherland!

The poet hopes that a “beautiful Dawn” will rise over his fatherland! "Enlightened freedom." However, the freedom of a country is unthinkable without the emancipation of its citizens, without their internal growth, awakening “from sleep,” spiritual maturation, i.e., liberation of the Personality. The motif of personal freedom is heard in the poems “Bird”, “Desert Sower of Freedom...”, “Village”. Pushkin can discern many signs of a truly free person, who becomes independent from other people’s opinions (“don’t listen to the grumbling of the unenlightened crowd”), from false idols (“a villain or a fool in unjust greatness”), brings goodness and mercy to the world (“with participation in responding to the shy prayer"). Free and independent people are contrasted with human “herds”, to whom the feeling of freedom is inaccessible due to their limitations and ignorance:

Why do the herds need the gifts of freedom? They should be cut or trimmed. Their inheritance from generation to generation. A yoke with rattles and a whip.

The symbol and ideal of absolute freedom for Pushkin is the sea. In the poem “To the Sea”, a poetic image of the water element is combined with reflections on personal fate and the fate of the “rulers of thoughts” - Napoleon and Byron. And if here the French emperor is “the heir and murderer of rebellious freedom,” then the great poet is a singer, “mourned by freedom.” The sea here symbolizes not only the power of the elemental forces of nature, but also the rebellious freedom of the Personality.

In the poem "From Pindemonti" Pushkin states that

Other, better rights are dear to me; I need a different, better freedom...

Here he speaks of the freedom of a creative person to follow “the free path where a free mind leads,”

Do not give a report to anyone, only serve and please yourself...

However, while “pleasing” himself, the great poet never encroaches on someone else’s independence, even if he is connected with the person by the strongest bonds of love: Material from the site

I loved you: love, perhaps, has not yet completely died out in my soul; But don't let it bother you anymore; I don't want to sadden you with anything...

The freedom-loving lyrics of the “mysterious singer” of freedom will always excite our hearts, since freedom and independence for Pushkin have always been the highest ideal of human life (“God, don’t let me go crazy...”, “It’s time, my friend, it’s time.. .”, “I erected a monument to myself not made by hands...”). Pushkin hoped that his thoughts would find a lively response in the hearts of not only his contemporaries, but also his descendants:

And for a long time I will be so kind to the people, That I awakened good feelings with my lyre, That in my cruel age I glorified freedom And called on mercy for the fallen.

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On this page there is material on the following topics:

• the theme of freedom in Pushkin's lyrics summary
• Pushkin and freedom, independence
• epigraph to the theme of love and freedom in Pushkin's lyrics
• outline for an essay on the theme of freedom in Pushkin's lyrics
• Pushkin from Pindemonti analysis

Many generations of literary scholars have studied the theme of freedom in Pushkin’s lyrics. Let's start our reasoning with a general interpretation of the lyrics.

At its core, it represents a secondary subjective reality. Lyrics are an emotional and colorful retelling by a person of certain events through the prism of his feelings, emotions, and impressions.

In this case, his lyrics, dedicated to the theme of freedom, can not only mobilize, they become a banner. And indeed it is! Whose poems do you think the Decembrists recited?

Freedom has been familiar to Alexander Sergeevich since childhood

The theme of freedom was close to Pushkin, based on his very essence. This is a unique person who became a poet by the will of God, who himself breathed this freedom, who created solely by inspiration, who in his entire short life did not violate a single principle of his!

The theme of freedom in Pushkin’s lyrics at the initial stage of his work sounded in accordance with the style that the poet followed at that time - romanticism. Let us note that internal freedom as a character trait deeply corresponded to his personality. The love of freedom of the future classic was formed in childhood: the unloved son in the family, he was left to his own devices. At the same time, his mother trained his sister, and his father trained his brother. A miracle happened, because of which all of Russia must bow deeply to Arina Rodionovna, the nanny of the little genius: the boy’s natural interest in folk tales and epics gradually grew into a commitment to art, into an inner need to create...

The young poet elevates freedom to the principle of creativity

At the stage of early creativity, the theme of freedom in Pushkin’s lyrics sounded in the context of the romantic, pro-Byron style, which he initially followed. Thus, in the poem “The Poet,” the measure of freedom for the author is the “free mind” of the poet (i.e., what is now called freedom of creativity). According to the young poet, the ideal creator of poetry lives solely by his feelings and is absolutely autonomous in relation to society.

In the poems dedicated to N. Ya. Plyuskova, the theme of freedom in Pushkin’s lyrics is identified with the moral principle: do not grovel before the “earthly gods” and do not wave the “censer of flattery.” That is, according to a graduate of the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum, freedom of creativity initially does not accept anyone’s instructions on what to write about and how to write.

The need for freedom of the victorious people

Byron's initial understanding of freedom by the poet could not be final. The reason is the dynamism of the era.

Alexander Sergeevich absorbed in his youth the patriotic enthusiasm of the Russian people that accompanied their victory over the French conqueror. The best intellectuals have already realized what productive potential of the Russian peasantry is not used in its development because of slavery. That is why the evolution of the theme of freedom in Pushkin’s lyrics can be traced. Against the backdrop of the titanic action of the war, the smug arrogance of the conquerors, the heroism of not only professional Russian officers, but also thousands and thousands of peasants, Byron's freedom now seemed unconvincing to the classics. After all, it was the desire of hundreds and hundreds of thousands of Russian people that lifted the club of the people's war and brought down the Invincible Armada on the heads.

The poet comes to understand the impossibility of finding reality outside of society, changing only himself.

Ode “Liberty” - evidence of Pushkin’s service to social freedom

Essentially speaking, the theme of freedom in Pushkin’s lyrics, which shifted to social accents, first publicly appeared in the ode “Liberty.” Its author no longer demonstrates an aristocratic, but a deeply popular civic position, which states that both serfs and nobles are equal before God.

Alexander Sergeevich dreamed that there would be no slavery on Russian land. This act of justice, according to the poet, should be accomplished by educated people, knightly fulfilling the mission of serving the Fatherland...

A minted syllable appears. The poet makes an appeal directly to his like-minded people (people with the worldview of the Decembrists).

Pushkin - author of the Decembrist anthem

The previously melancholy-sounding theme of freedom and slavery in Pushkin's lyrics - romance - acquires a political overtone. It can not be in any other way. He was deeply impressed by his meeting with Pestel, his acquaintance with Pushchin, the Turgenev brothers, and Muravyov. Now he is sure: the entire way of life of society must be changed. Alexander Sergeevich, like his Decembrist friends, felt the obvious dissonance in the fact that the victorious soldier, returning home, again became a serf slave. He is inexorably, step by step, line by line, approaching realism...

He was tasked with preparing the publication of the society's political magazine, which the poet coped with. The classic outlined the ideological positions of the Decembrists in the poems “Village” and “To Chaadaev”.

And now in the poem “Village” something new, concrete, realistic appears in the poet’s creative style... Alexander Sergeevich clearly shows who really needs the most help from the advanced aristocracy and intelligentsia: the deprived peasant, who is formally equated with agricultural property, working in Russian earth. The theme of freedom and slavery in Pushkin's lyrics turns into abstract, extremely specific, realistic poetic forms. How figuratively and succinctly the poet speaks about the antagonism between tyrant landowners and completely powerless serfs: “Mean slavery trudges along the reins of an inexorable owner!”

The poem “To Chaadaev” is considered the anthem of the Decembrists.

There is both a call for replacing the monarchy and faith in the future of Russia, “rising from its sleep.” The poem had a tremendous influence on the minds of young people. It spread throughout Russia by rewriting. By order of Emperor Nicholas I, the troublemaker poet was exiled. It is obvious that in addition to the two mentioned above, Pushkin wrote a number of pro-Dekabist works. However, they remained unknown, having sunk into oblivion: by order of the emperor, they were removed from the investigation and burned.

The Decembrists saved Pushkin from repression

According to the memoirs of the classic himself, he was saved from execution in the same party with five of the same executed Decembrists only by his absence on December 13-14, 1825 in St. Petersburg. Otherwise, according to his personal confession to Emperor Nicholas I, he would also be on Senate Square...

Did this happen by chance? Hardly. The Decembrists knew that if they failed, they would face reprisals. And they saved their Banner. And this Banner was Alexander Sergeevich.

The poem “Monument” is Pushkin’s evidence of service to freedom

Information about how the theme of freedom develops further in Pushkin’s lyrics is scant. The poet's creativity is under threat. Now, to publish any of his works, a personal visa from Nicholas I or the chief of gendarmes Benckendorff is required. Fate also saved him from exile, although, according to the recollections of his contemporaries, he wanted to share the fate of his exiled friends. The fiery lines that he managed to convey “into the depths of the Siberian ores” have survived to this day, testifying to the poet’s unbroken faith in the Decembrist ideals of freedom.

In the poem "Monument" the theme of freedom in Pushkin's lyrics finds its logical conclusion. Poet No. 1 in the state could traditionally afford to write such a work.

The beginning of such a literary tradition was once laid by the ancient Roman poet Quintus Horace Flaccus. Like him, Pushkin measures his immortality with the power of the Motherland, the empire. Like Horace, Alexander Sergeevich emphasizes that his work also served Freedom, an incorruptible human value.