About the lyrics of A. I. Odoevsky

He was born for them, for those hopes,

Poetry and happiness...

In it the quiet flame of feeling has not died out:

He also retained the sparkle of his azure eyes,

And ringing children's laughter, and live speech,

And a proud faith in people and other life.

M. Y. Lermontov "In Memory of A. I. Odoevsky".

December 8 marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Alexander Ivanovich Odoyevsky (1802-1839), a poet of the Decembrist penal servitude, who went down in the history of Russian literature with his poem "Strings of prophetic fiery sounds..." - a response to Pushkin's famous "Message to Siberia".

A. I. Odoevsky belonged to an ancient family of appanage princes of Chernigov, he could have made a brilliant career, was a close friend of A. S. Griboyedov, the poets A. A. Bestuzhev, K. F. Ryleev. But since 1825, he has become an active member of the radical wing of the Northern Society of Decembrists. The day before the uprising, at a meeting with Ryleev, according to V. I. Shteyngeyl, he exclaimed: "Let's die! Oh, how well we will die!" On Senatskaya Square, Odoevsky commanded a platoon of the Moscow Life Guards Regiment, and successfully agitated others to join the rebels (see: Decembrists in the Memoirs of Contemporaries, Moscow, 1988). After the defeat of the uprising, he was sentenced to hard labor, and in 1832 he was transferred from the Chita prison to a settlement, having lost the opportunity to communicate with friends. Only in July 1837 was he enlisted as a private in the Caucasian Separate Corps, in November - in the Nizhny Novgorod Dragoon Regiment, where he met and became friends with Lermontov, visited Pyatigorsk and Zheleznovodsk. When he received the news of his father's death in 1839, he wrote: "It's over for me.<...> I feel that I don't belong to this world (Odoevsky A. I. Poly. sobr. poems and Letters, Moscow-L., 1934, pp. 331-332). Indeed, the poet soon dies of malaria. According to the memoirs of N. A. Zagoretsky, Odoevsky " attributed his bo-

page 3

tell me that the day before he had read Schiller in the original, in a draughty wind through the raised tent floors" (Ibid., p. 100).

Odoyevsky's poems are a vivid example of romantic poetry. It is full of" signal words "from the lexicon of Decembrist lyrics imbued with civic pathos:" the soul is a high desire"," bloody porphyry"," it's time to start the holy battle", etc.However, in this lexicon you can find a clear predilection of the poet for certain motives, symbolic images that determine the features of his poetics.

Odoevsky expressed his psychological sense of exile in many poems, but this inner state of his soul was due to the forced circumstances of his life. The poet suffers from the contrast of will and prison, conveying his desire to break free in the form of live colloquial speech in the poem "Morning":

Dawn is breaking, birds are chirping

Under the window of my dungeon;

As on freedom lyubo them!..

Will I go out into the fresh air -

I forgot how to breathe it.

The poet calls his soul a prisoner, and his complaints about the boredom of life rise to a philosophical generalization:

So many strong impressions

Another soul is missing!

A lifetime of moments passed in prison,

Both slow and heavy flight

My soul, not renewed

The emergence of new technologies

And days of prison in a series,

Without dreams of loved ones, put to sleep.

<...>

My life is monotonous.

Like the ocean's infinity.

The state of imprisonment evokes dark associations in the poet: "Motionless as the dead in the tombs..."; "And in the tomb he lay alive"; "And he broke into the world with his soul, but he broke out of the grave." The image of an unmarked grave is characteristic of Odoevsky's lyrics: "The merciless grave devoured them, And the inscriptions of the word were erased"; "Like shadows, faces disappear In you, vast tomb".

Only human memory is able to resist oblivion: "And only in memory, as on the slabs of the grave, Two names burn"; "We have

page 4

into their hearts (the hanged Decembrists. - A. B.) features are embedded, Like names in a tombstone"; " Do I not remember you? As long as I breathe, I will never forget you and the lost one"; " And I will remember through my sleep all the beauty of the world."

The dream motif persistently appears in many of Odoevsky's poems: "Honor his sacred dream, Like a wrestler's dream before the struggle"; "I did not have time to animate the heavenly dreams with a bold brush"; " But their mutually sweet dream (meeting with my mother. - A. B.) As soon as they dreamed <...> And before the dream was finished, he had already finished his life's journey"; "All the vital forces will tremble like strings"; " But their (feelings. - A. B.) embraced not yet eternal sleep, Another string will make a seasoned ring." Odoevsky's dream is both the embodiment of the maxim "life is a dream", and the euphemism of death - "eternal sleep", and a heavenly dream that opposes earthly vegetationism.

The poet's favorite metaphorical series is the strings of the soul, the strings of feelings, and the strings of poetry: "The strings of prophetic fiery sounds"; "And the living strings trembled in the hearts";"The murmur of strings".

Odoevsky's poetry is confessional. Whatever and whoever he wrote about, he was talking about himself. Thus, the poem on the death of D. V. Venevitinov "The Dying Artist" Odoevsky, according to A. E. Rosen, "as if he wrote for himself" (Rosen A. E. Notes of the Decembrist. Irkutsk, 1984, p. 367). It is even written in the first person: "And I did not have time to pour out the beauty and harmony of the world in a harmonious sound."

In a poem dedicated to the son of the Decembrist Rosen, the poet says "about my homelessness", in a poem dedicated to the exiled Decembrist P. P. Konovnitsyn, the poet, in fact, tells about his filial feelings: "To press the lips and hands of his Beloved mother to his lips - that was all his desires." The motif of orphanhood is autobiographical in the poet's lyrics: his beloved mother died when he was 18 years old. He dedicated to her the poem " You are no longer there, but I still breathe you...". The poet loved his father just as fervently:

All my life, the rest of my old strength,

Now I have merged the feeling into one,

In love with you, my gentle father...

I see your eyes everywhere,

I hear your voice everywhere.

Here again appear the motives of captivity, loneliness, orphanhood:

How motionless are the waves of mountains,

Hugged closely my review

An impenetrable edge!

Beyond them, a world full of life,

And here I am alone and sire,

I gave my whole life to a memory.

page 5

These motifs are also found in other poems:

How the clouds are carried by the autumn wind,

I'm running after you with my mind, -

And if I meet you, you'll feel a fervent throb in your chest,

Like a belated leaf on a branch.

I would like to - like the sky in the depths of the blue sea,

Look and look into your eyes,

Friendly speech, like the songs of a native,

In exile, I'd like to hear it!

But the light in space is a shooting star

You'll flash by, my dear, -

And again I can't see, and again I long,

An orphan with a tired soul...

It is not difficult to notice in this 1838 poem a roll call with Lermontov's images: "a leaf has come off the branch of my dear", "clouds of heaven, eternal wanderers", "as in the night of the falling star flame, I am not needed in the world". But the state of loneliness inherent in Lermontov was alien to Odoevsky, and he tried to overcome it-at least in his thoughts: "Swim softly above me, Swim, my non-flying friend!" he addresses his imaginary lover. In the" Elegy on the Death of Griboyedov, "whom Odoevsky greatly valued and loved, he mournfully exclaims:" He is both dead and buried; and I am in prison! Because of the walls in vain I tear my dreams..."

The poet can only hope to meet his relatives and friends in another world, in the existence of which the poet firmly believed: "As a cloud floats into another, beautiful world And melts, having shone through the evening dawn, So I will fly, melt all into the ether And wrap you in an air veil."

Romantic ambivalence in the poet's lyrics, leaving for the world of dreams was forced, as was his loneliness: "What a year, what a day, the connections are broken..."You know them I loved so much," he wrote bitterly of his departed friends.

Imprisonment and seclusion developed Odoevsky's religious feelings. Nikolai Pavlovich Ogarev, who met him in 1838, recalled him as a deeply religious person, a poet of "Christian thought, outside of any church" (Ogarev N. P. Izbr. prozv. Vol. 2. Moscow, 1956. p. 313). " I quietly sang the ways of the living god And with all my soul I thanked him, No matter how dark my road was, No matter how I lost the freshness of my young strength, " the poet himself testifies.

Odoevsky was comforted by his constant belief "in a different, beautiful world": "And everything that was here was so wild and discordant That on earth, merging into each other."

page 6

in a vague dream, Called an earthly life, it will merge into a sweet sound, into a heavenly clear ringing, Into the consonance of divine love."

Despite the fact that many of his poems are imbued with deep sadness, they are always enlightened by a religious feeling. It is not by chance that the motif of light in its various variations so often appears in Odoevsky's lyrics: light, enlightened, luminous, enlightened. Here are some examples of these usages: "And I will enlighten, and lift up my brow."; "from the light to the prison, the beloved voice reached"; "It shines without a shadow"; "And our enlightened people Will fight under the holy banner"; "The light of God"; "And the light in the eyes darkened"; "The light is the soul"; "Shone through sorrows"; "There was a reflection of the images that shone to me from heaven"; "In bright love".

The manifestation of light is a ray. Ray of Freedom: "The unfortunate victims who shed the holy ray For the salvation of the Russian people." Ray of hope: "The radiant round dance of the hopes that flashed has flown away"; "And they will light inspiration with their ray of high thoughts". Ray of heaven: "A joyful ray, born in heaven."

Odoevsky's favorite image is the flame. The prophecy "From a spark a flame will be kindled" immortalized his name in history. The image of the flame appears in this poem two more times: "And we will rekindle the flame of freedom", "Strings of prophetic fiery sounds". The semantic series: flame-fire-heat-sparks appears in Odoevsky repeatedly. This is "Heavenly fire"; "fire of imagination"; "the fire of unfulfilled desires". Fire (fire) and the flame at Odoevsky is nearby. For example, it is the fire of vengeance and the sacrificial flame: "As soon as the fire flares up in the depths of our hearts, Five victims stand before us; like a crown, a blue flame curls around your neck." The poet laments that "I did not pour out my soul into the pure flame of fire"; " Life passed without shocks, the fire went out without a flame." He develops the metaphor of the fire of hopes: "But from hopes, as from fire, only smoke and decay remain."

The image of a spark in Odoevsky's poetics carries a revolutionary pathos in his famous phrase:"A spark will ignite a flame." Before it was: "There is a sound in the silent lyre, like a spark in dark clouds; And a song unknown in the world, I will pour out in fiery words." He developed this image and then: "What sparkled in the soul, what crowded out of the soul-Everything was their fire! their beam gave me life."

Odoevsky often shares his favorite images-flame and light: "Peaceful light watched them and longed for their fire"; "Heavenly fire and light cherished images"; "Heat of feelings and light of thoughts".

Researchers have long drawn attention to the closeness of the poetics of Odoevsky and Lermontov: "The whole imaginative structure of Odoevsky's poems, which tends to symbolism and semantic diversity, diversity and novelty of metrics, was a harbinger of Lermontov's beginning in Russian romantic poetry <...> Odoevsky's elegies

page 7

the consonance of personal and civic experience that is characteristic of Lermontov's poetry is characteristic" (Short Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 5. Moscow, 1968, p. 395).

Some of Odoyevsky's images served, often in a reinterpreted form, as a source of inspiration for Lermontov. So, the poem "You know them, whom I loved so much" contains images that appeared in a completely different role in Lermontov's poem "Three Palm Trees":

So travelers go on a pilgrimage

Through an ocean of fire and sand,

And palm trees shade, the cold waters of the free land

They beckon them into the distance... just a sweet deception

Enchants them, but their strength is invigorating,

And then the caravan passes by,

Forgetting the heat of the burning grave.

Various correspondences, even verbatim ones, can be found by comparing Odoevsky's "Elegy" with Lermontov's "Duma". "Why are you sad, children of dreams... "- the beginning of Odoevsky's" Elegy". "I look sadly at our generation" - from Lermontov. We will give some examples, comparing the lines of poets: "Leaving no traces anywhere" - "We will pass over the world without noise and trace"; "Barely flickering, Barely touching the ground" - "We barely touched the cup of pleasure"; " Where the heart is scarce pleasure And sorrow with joy, the mixture Languishes like a funeral feast... And to the grave of life the burden, Like a gift without a goal, will be carried" - "And life already torments us, like a smooth path without a goal, like a feast at someone else's feast"; " And with an unaccountable foot, The Paths vzmetaya light dust, traces are not embedded in the border And not left in the hearts. Why do you look back On the path you have traveled? There are no bitter thoughts or consolations for you" - "And we hurry to the grave without happiness and without glory, Looking mockingly back"; " And our ashes, with the severity of a judge and citizen, will be insulted by a Descendant with a contemptuous verse, a bitter mockery..."

Unlike Lermontov, Odoevsky is characterized by historical optimism, a belief in the bright ideals of freedom, in the triumph of reason: his "Elegy" ends with the statement: "But from step to step of the century, a person is raised." This belief was combined in his poetry with the belief in "the beauty and harmony of eternal works, the Lord's works, coming to the highest goal." The imagery of Odoevsky's lyrics reflected his exalted nature and loving heart. His word born out of flame and light inspired Lermontov, was a source of comfort and hope.

In the poem" In Memory of A. I. Odoevsky " Lermontov created a deeply consonant, spiritually close to himself image of the romantic poet of high soul, which was A. I. Odoevsky.

Permanent link to this publication: