Purpose of the lesson: To analyze the poem by A.A. Blok “The Twelve”; reveal its artistic features, show its polemical nature, the psychologism of a work of art; to develop the ability of students to analyze, systematize what they read, draw conclusions, generalize, build their own statements; develop observation, understand the role of artistic detail; to promote the formation of a sense of civic duty to the country, an understanding of the social processes taking place in our turbulent times; instill interest in the real future of the country, native land.
Type of r o k a: lesson-research
Methodological techniques: analytical reading of the poem, the study of its individual chapters.
Equipment: a portrait of the writer, statements about the poem "The Twelve", a plan for analyzing a work of art, an exhibition of the poet's books.
During the classes
I. Opening speech of the teacher. (slides 1-4)
Having written the poem "The Twelve", Blok exclaimed: "Today I am a genius!" "Twelve" - whatever they are - is the best thing I've written. Because then I lived in modernity, ”the poet said. However, the first reading of the poem usually causes even bewilderment, raises many questions (sl. 5)
- Why is the poem called "The Twelve"?
- What is the meaning of its name?
- Who are the characters in the story?
Why Christ? What does this image mean in the poem?
What symbols are present in the work?
We will try to answer these questions by reading and analyzing the poem by A.A. Blok, which, both in the year of its creation, and now, 93 years later from the date of writing, has caused and still causes so many different diametrically opposed opinions.
In general, “The Twelve” is a paradoxical work. It was written in January 1918, that is, in hot pursuit. Two months after the October Revolution. It was very difficult for a contemporary to realize the significance of the event - "great things are seen at a distance." The poem surprised even Blok's contemporaries. According to V. Mayakovsky, "some read in this poem a satire on the revolution, others - the glory of it."
“This poem is undoubtedly Blok's highest achievement. At the core is a cry of despair for the dying past, but a cry of despair that rises to hope for the future, ”this is how L.D. Trotsky commented on the work.
Today, analyzing individual chapters and stanzas, we will play the role of researchers, get acquainted with the interpretation of two critics, with two views on the ideological content of A. Blok's poem, on the image of the revolution in it. To do this, we will divide into two groups. One group will represent the views of the researcher A.V. Ternovsky, and the other - S.V. Lomtev. In a polemical dispute, I hope we will correctly understand the ideological content of the work, we will catch the essence of the issues that have been worrying critics for such a long time.
It would seem that we are considering the events of bygone days, but with that distant time in our third millennium there is much in common. As in 1917-18, the fate of a great state is being decided today, because on the fourth of December your parents will have to fulfill their civic duty - to take part in the elections, to vote for the best representatives of the people. At that distant time, every citizen also faced the question: with whom to go into the future, stay in Russia or leave the Motherland, now we also have to make the right choice, which will affect the future of the country and, of course, your future.
A.A. Blok fulfilled his civic duty in 1918: he told about what worried him, overwhelmed him, what sounded and lived in him.
II. Work on the topic of the lesson.
We will analyze the work according to the plan that is on your desks (sl. 6)
1. Creative history of the creation of the poem.
And we will start with the creative history of the poem. It is interesting to know how the author himself noted this period in his notebook. (Student's message)(sl.7)
From the 56th notebook of A.A. Blok
"January 3 ... By the evening - a hurricane (the constant companion of coups)."
"January 8. All day "Twelve".
“January 11… No, not that time, not that music. – What music (if yellow)?”
“January 15… – My “Twelve” does not move. I'm cold. Is it a matter of
Lunacharsky or even in Lenin? This is the “end of the historical process”…”
“January 22 ... Yesenin called, talked about yesterday's “morning of Russia” in the Tenishevsky Hall. Newspapers and the crowd shouted at his address, A. Bely and mine: "traitors." The Cadets and the Merezhkovskys are terribly angry with me. The article is “sincere”, but “it is impossible” to “forgive”. Gentlemen, you never knew Russia and never loved it! The truth hurts your eyes."
“January 25 ... Thoughts, thoughts - and plans, so many that they interfere with starting on something firmly. And write your own (Jesus)."
“January 27 ... I am writing about the “Foremother” in the publishing house of the Sabashnikovs. "Twelve"".
“January 28… “Twelve””.
“January 29… Today I am a genius!”
“February 18… That Christ is coming before them is certain. The point is not “are they worthy of Him”, but the terrible thing is that He is with them, and there is no other yet, but there is a need for Another -? "I'm kind of exhausted."
Conclusion: (sl.8). From the creative history, we learned that for Blok himself during the period of its creation, a lot was unclear, in many ways the poet could not figure it out. However, doubts still did not interrupt work on the poem, moreover, it seems that it was in response to his own doubts about whether he understands everything as the time requires, Blok created The Twelve.
2. Genre and style composition of the poem "The Twelve".
Before proceeding with the analysis , let us first deal with the issues of genre, style and composition of the poem. (Student's message)
Conclusion: (sl.9) “Twelve” is an epic poem, it seems to be composed of separate sketches, pictures from life, quickly changing one another. The dynamism and randomness of the plot, the expressiveness of the episodes that make up the poem, convey the confusion that reigned both on the streets and in the minds. There are also lyrical motifs in the poem. The author is not the hero of the poem, his position is manifested indirectly in what and how he portrays; in the initial landscape painting, at the end of the poem. The composition, reflecting the elements of the revolution, determines the stylistic diversity of the poem. “Listen to the music of the revolution,” Blok called. This is the music in the poem.
Teacher: Blok's music is a metaphor, an expression of "spirit", the sound of life. This music is expressed in the rhythmic, lexical, genre originality of the poem. Traditional iambic and trochee are combined with different meters, sometimes with non-rhyming verses.
3. Why is the poem called "The Twelve"? What is the meaning of the title of the poem?
Quite naturally, the question arises, what is the meaning of the title of the poem? (Student's message). (sl.10)
Symbolic in the poem "The Twelve" is its title. This number, like different states of aggregation of the same substance, appears before the reader in a variety of guises. The first thing that catches your eye in connection with the number "twelve" is the twelve parts of the poem, each of which differs in rhythm, style and content from all previous and subsequent ones, and although the poem is a sequential presentation of events, each of the parts carries a completely independent semantic and emotional load. Also, the number "twelve" is midnight, a certain border, the border of completion and beginning, the death of the old and the birth of the new. The symbol of the cyclicity of all processes and the inevitability of change is also contained in the number of months in a year, which are also twelve. However, the most important symbol in the poem, directly related to its title, are the twelve Red Guards. The very first mention of their number makes the reader think about the meaning of this number. Something missionary reigns in all their actions, words, in their very existence:
... And they go without the name of a saint
All twelve away.
Ready for everything
Nothing to be sorry about.
These twelve marchers are subordinated to a single goal. They believe in the righteousness of the cause they serve. They, like crusaders, plant faith in a brighter future with "fire and sword."
Analytical reading of the chapters of the poem.
- Who, besides the twelve Red Guards, are the heroes of the poem? Let's read what characterization the author gives them, pay attention when reading what visual means help the author to describe them more vividly.
The characters are drawn concisely and expressively.
1. This is a figurative comparison:
An old lady like a chicken
Somehow rewound through the snowdrift.
(Vitya is a speaker, an eloquent person)
Chapter 24. Twelve heroes make up one squad:
In the teeth - a cigarette, a cap is crushed.
On the back you need an ace of diamonds!
Briefly and clearly - the prison cries for them, because the rhombus was sewn on the clothes of convicts.
5. Among them is Petka, the “poor killer”, who cheered up at the reminder of his comrades: “Keep control over yourself!” (ch.7)
5. Features of the plot of the poem "The Twelve". (sl.12)
The plot can be defined as two-layered - external, everyday: sketches from the streets of Petrograd, and internal: motivation, justification for the actions of the “twelve”. One of the centers of the poem is the end of the 6th chapter: the motive of revenge, murder merges with the motive of the slogans of the revolution:
What, Katya, are you glad? - No gu-gu!
Lie down, you carrion in the snow!
Revolutionary keep step!
The restless enemy does not sleep!
The motive of hatred is observed in seven chapters of the poem. Hatred also manifests itself as a holy feeling:
(ch.1) Malice, sad malice
Boiling in the chest...
Black malice, holy malice...
And how sacrilege sounds in the lines: (ch. 2)
Comrade, hold the rifle, don't be afraid!
Let's fire a bullet at Holy Russia -
To the condo room
Into the hut
Into the fat ass!
Eh, eh, no cross!
The second climax of the poem is chapter 11:
... They go without the name of a saint
All twelve away.
Ready for everything
Nothing to regret...
6. Images-symbols of the poem "The Twelve". (Collective work) (sl. 13)
Analytical reading of the poem.
To convey all the fragility, the tension of the mental state of the characters, all the experiences, to describe the current situation, images-symbols help. Let's find them together in the text.
a) - Wind, blizzard, snow - constant block motifs - 1 chapter;
b) - Symbols of color :
c) - The number "twelve"
d) - Rootless dog - a symbol of the old, obsolete world .
e) “Christ in the poem is the antithesis of “dog” as the embodiment of evil, the central “sign” of the old world. This is the brightest note of the poem, the traditional image of goodness and justice, ”critic Dolgopolov said about this image-symbol. And another researcher argued that “Blok introduced Christ not as an image of church tradition, but as a popular idea of God’s ingenuous truth, uncomplicated by the church and state. Blok did not at all "bless" the revolution with this borrowed attribute of the people's faith, but only asserted historical continuity. The revolution inherited the ethical faith of the people!”
7. How does Blok convey the “music of the revolution”? (Work in groups). (sl.14)
In the article “The Intelligentsia and the Revolution”, which we studied, A. Blok called on everyone to “listen to the music of the revolution”. What rhythms are heard in the poem? This is what we need to explore right now. Task for three groups: to determine which rhythms are heard in certain chapters:
8. Controversy around the poem "The Twelve". (sl.15)
Controversy (from French militant, hostile) - a dispute, explanation, clarification on any issue.
And now, having an idea about the plot, ideological content, heroes, symbols of the poem, let's get acquainted with two points of view on this really talented work.
1. The poem "The Twelve" as the crown of the "trilogy of incarnation" (p. 16-17):
Speech of the 1st group of students (speech attached):
2. The poem "The Twelve" as an image of the disastrous path of Russia (sl. 18-19).
Presentation of the II group of students (the presentations are attached).
9. Teacher (word 20):
This answer of Alexander Alexandrovich can be explained by the words of K.I. Chukovsky: “He died immediately after writing “The Twelve” and “Scythians”, because it was then that something happened to him that, in essence, was tantamount to death. He became dumb and deaf, that is, he heard and spoke like ordinary people, but that amazing ear with which he was able to listen to the music of the epochs, like no one else, left him forever. “The music is gone,” he wrote in his diary as early as 1918. Everything became silent for him, as in a grave. "And the poet dies because he has nothing to breathe." These lines from memoirs give us the opportunity to understand how difficult and sometimes tragic the life of a creator - a poet, artist, writer - who so subtly feels and understands the world around him, develops.
10. Behavior of the outcome of the lesson, grading.
So, in today's lesson, we examined the issues of genre, stylistic originality of the poem, analyzed individual episodes, argued about the content of the work, as a result of which everyone made some conclusion for themselves, but we will probably agree that the poem "The Twelve" helps understand the difficult situation in the country in the first weeks after the 1917 revolution.
Everyone worked well during the lesson. The knowledge gained, the ability to analyze, compare - everything will come in handy during the final certification.
Black evening.
White snow.
Wind, wind!
A person does not stand on his feet.
Wind, wind
In all God's world!
Curls the wind
White snow.
Under the snow is ice.
Slippery, hard
Every walker
Slides - oh, poor thing!
From building to building
The rope is stretched.
On the rope - a poster:
"All power to the Constituent Assembly!"
The old woman is killed - crying,
Never understand what it means
What is this poster for?
Such a huge patch?
How many footcloths would come out for the guys,
And everyone is undressed, undressed ...
An old lady like a chicken
Somehow rewound through the snowdrift.
- Oh, Mother Protector!
- Oh, the Bolsheviks will drive into the coffin!
The wind is biting!
The frost is not far behind!
And bourgeois at the crossroads
He hid his nose in the collar.
And who is this? - Long hair
And he says in a low voice:
- Traitors!
- Russia is dead! -
Must be a writer
Vitiya...
And there is the long-haired one -
Sideways - for a snowdrift ...
What is "unhappy now,
Comrade pop?
Do you remember how it used to be
Belly walked forward
And the cross shone
Belly on the people? ..
There is a lady in doodle
Turned up to the other:
We were crying, we were crying...
slipped
And - bam - stretched out!
Hey, hey!
Pull up!
The wind is cheerful
And angry and happy.
Twisting the hems
Passers-by mows,
Tears, crumples and wears
Large poster:
"All power to the Constituent Assembly"...
And delivers the words:
And we had a meeting...
...Here in this building...
... Discussed -
Resolved:
At time ten, at night twenty-five...
... And less - do not take from anyone ...
...Let's go to sleep...
Late evening.
The street is empty.
One tramp
stooping
Let the wind whistle...
Hey poor fellow!
Come -
Let's kiss...
Of bread!
What's ahead?
Come on!
Black, black sky.
Anger, sad anger
Boiling in the chest...
Black malice, holy malice...
Comrade! Look
In both!
The wind is blowing, the snow is falling.
Twelve people are coming.
Rifles black straps,
All around lights, lights, lights...
In the teeth a cigarette, a cap is crushed,
On the back you need an ace of diamonds!
Freedom, freedom
Eh, eh, no cross!
Tra-ta-ta!
Cold, comrade, cold!
- And Vanka and Katya are in a tavern ...
- She has Kerenki in her stocking!
- Vanyushka himself is now rich ...
- There was our Vanka, but he became a soldier!
- Well, Vanka, son of a bitch, bourgeois,
Mine, try, kiss!
Freedom, freedom
Eh, eh, no cross!
Katya and Vanka are busy -
What, what are you busy with?
Tra-ta-ta!
All around - lights, lights, lights ...
Shoulder - gun belts ...
Revolutionary keep step!
The restless enemy does not sleep!
Comrade, hold the rifle, don't be afraid!
Let's fire a bullet at Holy Russia -
In the condo
Into the hut
Into the fat ass!
Eh, eh, no cross!
How did our guys go?
To serve in the Red Guard -
To serve in the Red Guard -
Lay down your head!
Oh you, grief-bitter,
Sweet life!
torn coat,
Austrian gun!
We are on the mountain to all bourgeois
Let's fan the world fire
World fire in the blood -
God bless!
The snow is spinning, the reckless driver is screaming,
Vanka with Katya flies -
electric flashlight
On the shafts...
Ah, ah, fall!
He is in a soldier's overcoat
With a stupid face
Twists, twists a black mustache,
Yes, it spins
Yes, he jokes...
That's how Vanka he is broad-shouldered!
That's how Vanka he is eloquent!
Katka-fool hugs,
Is talking...
tilted her face,
Teeth sparkle...
Oh, you, Katya, my Katya,
Fat-faced...
On your neck, Katya,
The scar didn't heal from the knife.
Under your chest, Katya,
That scratch is fresh!
Eh, eh, dance!
Painful legs are good!
Walked in lace underwear -
Come on, come on!
She fornicated with officers -
Get lost, get lost!
Eh, eh, get lost!
My heart skipped a beat!
Do you remember, Katya, the officer -
He did not leave the knife ...
Al didn't remember, cholera?
Ali memory is not fresh?
Eh, eh, refresh
Sleep with you!
wore gray leggings,
Mignon ate chocolate,
I went for a walk with the junker -
Have you gone with a soldier now?
Eh, eh, sin!
It will be easier for the soul!
Again, galloping forward,
Flying, screaming, yelling scorcher ...
Stop, stop! Andrew, help!
Petruha, run from behind! ..
Fuck-tararah-tah-tah-tah-tah!
Snow dust rolled up to the sky! ..
Likhach - and with Vanka - ran off ...
One more time! Pull the trigger!..
Fuck it! You will know
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
How to walk with a strange girl! ..
Duck, scoundrel! Wait, stop
I'll deal with you tomorrow!
Where is Katya? - Dead, dead!
Shot head!
What, "Katka, glad? - No gu-gu ...
Lie down, you carrion, in the snow! ..
Revolutionary keep step!
The restless enemy does not sleep!
And twelve come again
Behind shoulders gun.
Only the poor killer
Can't see a face...
Everything is faster and faster
Slows down the step.
Wrapped a scarf around his neck -
No way to recover...
- What, comrade, are you not cheerful?
- What, my friend, dumbfounded?
- What, Petruha, hung his nose,
Or did you feel sorry for Katya?
- Oh, comrades, relatives,
I loved this girl...
The nights are black, intoxicated
With this girl spent ...
- Due to the remoteness of the trouble
In her fiery eyes
Because of the crimson springs
Near the right shoulder
I ruined, stupid,
I ruined in the heat of the moment ... ah!
- Look, bastard, started the hurdy-gurdy,
What are you, Petka, a woman, or what?
- That's right, the soul inside out
Thinking of turning it out? Please!
- Maintain your posture!
- Keep control over yourself!
- Not such a time now.
To babysit you!
The burden will be heavier
Us, dear comrade!
– And Petruha slows down
Hasty steps...
He tosses his head
He's happy again...
Eh, eh!
Having fun is not a sin!
Lock up the floors
Today there will be robberies!
Open cellars -
Walking now nakedness!
Oh you, woe-bitter!
Boredom is boring
Mortal!
I'm on time
I'll go, I'll go...
I'm already dark
I'll scratch, I'll scratch...
I'm seeds
I'll get it, I'll get it...
Already I am a knife
Stripe, stripe!
You fly, bourgeois, sparrow!
I'll drink blood
For a sweetheart
Chernobrovushka...
Rest, Lord, the soul of your servant...
Boring!
Can't hear the noise of the city
Silence over the Neva Tower
And there is no more policeman -
Walk, guys, without wine!
There is a bourgeois at the crossroads
And he hid his nose in his collar.
And next to it is pressed with hard wool
A lousy dog with his tail between his legs.
There is a bourgeois, like a hungry dog,
It stands silent, like a question.
And the old world, like a rootless dog,
Standing behind him with his tail between his legs.
Something blizzard broke out
Oh, blizzard, oh, blizzard!
Can't see each other at all
In four steps!
The snow curled like a funnel,
The snow has risen...
- Oh, what a blizzard, save!
- Petka! Hey, don't lie!
What saved you from
Golden iconostasis?
Unconscious you, right,
Judge, think sensibly -
Ali hands are not in the blood
Because of Katya's love?
– Take a revolutionary step!
The restless enemy is near!
Forward, forward, forward
Working people!
And they go without the name of a saint
All twelve are off.
Ready for everything
Nothing to be sorry...
Their rifles are steel
To the invisible enemy...
In the alleys are deaf,
Where one dusty blizzard ...
Yes, in downy snowdrifts -
Don't take off your boots...
It beats in the eyes
Red flag.
Is distributed
Measure step.
Here - wake up
Fierce enemy...
And the blizzard "dusts in their eyes
Days and nights
All the way...
Go-go,
Working people!
They walk into the distance with a mighty step ...
- Who else is there? Come out! -
It's the red flag wind
Played ahead...
Ahead is a cold snowdrift,
- Who is in the snowdrift - come out! ..
Only a beggar dog is hungry
Wandering behind...
- Get off you, mangy,
I'll tickle with a bayonet!
The old world is like a lousy dog
Fail - I'll beat you!
Shows his teeth - the wolf is hungry -
The tail is tucked in - does not lag behind -
A cold dog is a rootless dog...
- Hey, answer, who's coming?
Who is waving the red flag?
- Look at it, it's dark!
- Who walks there at a quick pace,
Buried for all houses?
- Anyway, I'll get you,
Better surrender to me alive!
- Hey, comrade, it will be bad,
Come on, let's start shooting!
Fuck-tah-tah! - And only echo
Responds to houses...
Only a blizzard with a long laugh
Falling into the snow...
Fuck-tah-tah!
Fuck-tah-tah...
So they go with a sovereign step,
Behind is a hungry dog
Ahead - with a bloody flag,
And invisible behind the blizzard
And unharmed by a bullet
With a gentle step over the wind,
Snowy scattering of pearls,
In a white corolla of roses -
In front is Jesus Christ.
Black evening.
White snow.
Wind, wind!
A person does not stand on his feet.
Wind, wind -
In all God's world!
Curls the wind
White snow.
Ice under the snow.
Slippery, hard
Every walker
Slides - oh, poor thing!
From building to building
The rope is stretched.
On the rope - poster:
The old woman is killed - crying,
Never understand what it means
What is this poster for?
Such a huge patch?
How many footcloths would come out for the guys,
And everyone is undressed, undressed ...
An old lady like a chicken
Somehow rewound through the snowdrift.
- Oh, Mother Protector!
- Oh, the Bolsheviks will drive into the coffin!
The wind is biting!
The frost is not far behind!
And bourgeois at the crossroads
He hid his nose in the collar.
Who is this? - long hair
And he says in a low voice:
- Traitors!
- Russia is dead!
Must be a writer
Vitiya…
And there is the long-haired one -
Sideways and behind the snowdrift ...
What is not fun today
Comrade pop?
Do you remember how it used to be
Belly walked forward
And the cross shone
Belly for the people?
There is a lady in doodle
Turned up to the other:
We've been crying, crying...
slipped
And - bam - stretched out!
Hey, hey!
Pull up!
The wind is cheerful.
And angry and happy.
Twisting the hems
Passers-by mow.
Tears, crumples and wears
Large poster:
"All power to the Constituent Assembly!"
And delivers the words:
…And we had a meeting…
…Here in this building…
... Discussed -
Resolved:
For a while - ten, for the night - twenty-five ...
... And do not take less from anyone ...
…Let's go to sleep…
Late evening.
The street is empty.
One tramp
stooping
Let the wind whistle...
Hey poor fellow!
Come -
Let's kiss...
Of bread!
What's ahead?
Come on!
Black, black sky.
Anger, sad anger
Boiling in the chest...
Black malice, holy malice...
Comrade! Look
In both!
The wind is blowing, the snow is falling.
Twelve people are coming.
Rifles black straps
All around - lights, lights, lights ...
A cigarette in the teeth, a cap is crushed,
On the back you need an ace of diamonds!
Freedom, freedom
Eh, eh, no cross!
Tra-ta-ta!
Cold, comrades, cold!
And Vanka and Katya in the tavern...
- She has Kerenki in her stocking!
Vanyushka himself is now rich ...
- There was our Vanka, but he became a soldier!
Well, Vanka, son of a bitch, bourgeois,
Mine, try, kiss!
Freedom, freedom
Eh, eh, no cross!
Katya and Vanka are busy -
What, what are you busy with?
Tra-ta-ta!
All around - lights, lights, lights ...
Shoulder - gun belts ...
Revolutionary keep step!
The restless enemy does not sleep!
Comrade, hold the rifle, don't be afraid!
Let's fire a bullet at Holy Russia -
In the condo
Into the hut
Into the fat ass!
Eh, eh, no cross!
How did our guys go?
To serve in the Red Army -
To serve in the Red Army -
Lay down your head!
Oh you, grief-bitter,
Sweet life!
torn coat,
Austrian gun!
We are on the mountain to all bourgeois
Let's fan the world fire
World fire in the blood -
God bless!
The snow is spinning, the reckless driver is screaming,
Vanka with Katya flies -
electric flashlight
On the shafts…
Ah, ah, fall!
in a soldier's overcoat
With a stupid face
Twists, twists a black mustache,
Yes, it spins
Yes, he jokes...
So Vanka - he is broad-shouldered!
That's how Vanka is - he is eloquent!
Katka-fool hugs,
Is talking…
tilted her face,
Teeth sparkle...
Oh, you, Katya, my Katya,
Fat-faced…
On your neck, Katya,
The scar didn't heal from the knife.
Under your chest, Katya,
That scratch is fresh!
Eh, eh, dance!
Painful legs are good!
Walked in lace underwear -
Come on, come on!
She fornicated with officers -
Get lost, get lost!
Eh, eh, get lost!
My heart skipped a beat!
Do you remember, Katya, an officer -
He did not leave the knife ...
Al didn't remember, cholera?
Ali memory is not fresh?
Eh, eh, refresh
Sleep with you!
wore gray leggings,
Mignon ate chocolate.
I went for a walk with the cadet -
Have you gone with a soldier now?
Eh, eh, sin!
It will be easier for the soul!
... Again, galloping towards,
Flying, screaming, yelling scorcher ...
Stop, stop! Andrew, help!
Petruha, run from behind! ..
Fuck-tararah-tah-tah-tah-tah!
Snow dust rolled up to the sky! ..
Likhach - and with Vanka - ran away ...
One more time! Pull the trigger!..
Fuck it! You will know
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
How to walk with a strange girl! ..
Duck, scoundrel! Wait, stop
I'll deal with you tomorrow!
And where is Katya? - Dead, dead!
Shot head!
What, Katya, are you glad? - No gu-gu ...
Lie down, you carrion, in the snow!
Revolutionary keep step!
The restless enemy does not sleep!
And twelve come again
Behind him is a gun.
Only the poor killer
Can't see a face...
Everything is faster and faster
Slows down the step.
Wrapped a scarf around his neck -
It won't get better...
What, comrade, are you not cheerful?
- What, my friend, dumbfounded?
- What, Petruha, hung his nose,
Or did you feel sorry for Katya?
Oh, comrades, relatives,
I loved this girl...
The nights are black, intoxicated
With this girl spent ...
Due to the remoteness of the trouble
In her fiery eyes
Because of a crimson mole
Near the right shoulder
I ruined, stupid,
I ruined in the heat of the moment ... ah!
Look, bastard, started a hurdy-gurdy,
What are you, Petka, a woman, or what?
- True soul inside out
Thinking of turning it out? Please!
- Maintain your posture!
- Keep control over yourself!
Not such a time now
To babysit you!
The burden will be heavier
Us, dear comrade!
And Petruha slows down
Hasty steps...
He tosses his head
He cheered up again...
Eh, eh!
Having fun is not a sin!
Lock up the floors
Today there will be robberies!
Open cellars -
Walking now nakedness!
Oh you woe-bitter!
Boredom is boring
Mortal!
I'm on time
I'll go, I'll go...
I'm already dark
I'll scratch, I'll scratch...
I'm seeds
I'll get it, I'll get it...
Already I am a knife
Stripe, stripe!
You fly, bourgeois, like a little funnel!
I'll drink blood
For a sweetheart
Chernobrovushka…
Rest in peace, Lord, the soul of your servant ...
Can't hear the noise of the city
Silence over the Neva tower
And there is no more policeman -
Walk, guys, without wine!
There is a bourgeois at the crossroads
And he hid his nose in his collar.
And next to it is pressed with hard wool
A lousy dog with his tail between his legs.
There is a bourgeois, like a hungry dog,
It stands silent, like a question.
And the old world, like a rootless dog,
Standing behind him with his tail between his legs.
Something blizzard broke out
Oh, blizzard, oh, blizzard!
Can't see each other at all
In four steps!
The snow curled like a funnel,
The snow has risen...
Oh, what a blizzard, save!
- Petka! Hey, don't lie!
What saved you from
Golden iconostasis?
Unconscious you, right,
Judge, think sensibly -
Ali hands are not in the blood
Because of Katya's love?
- Take a revolutionary step!
The restless enemy is near!
Forward, forward, forward
Working people!
... And they go without the name of a saint
All twelve - away.
Ready for everything
Nothing to regret...
Their rifles are steel
To the invisible enemy...
In the alleys are deaf,
Where one dusty blizzard ...
Yes, in downy snowdrifts -
Don't take off your boots...
It beats in the eyes
Red flag.
Is distributed
Measure step.
Here - wake up
Fierce enemy...
And the blizzard dusts them in the eyes
Days and nights
All the way!…
Go-go,
Working people!
... They go far with a sovereign step ...
- Who else is there? Come out!
It's the red flag wind
Played ahead...
Ahead is a cold snowdrift.
- Who is in the snowdrift - come out!
Only a beggar dog is hungry
Wandering behind...
Get off you, mangy,
I'll tickle with a bayonet!
The old world is like a lousy dog
Fail - I'll beat you!
... Bares his teeth - the wolf is hungry -
The tail is tucked in - does not lag behind -
The dog is cold - the dog is rootless ...
- Hey, come on, who's coming?
Who's waving the red flag there?
- Look at it, eka darkness!
- Who walks there at a quick pace,
Buried for all houses?
Anyway, I'll get you
Better surrender to me alive!
- Hey, comrade, it will be bad,
Come on, let's start shooting!
Fuck-tah-tah! - And only an echo
Responds to houses...
Only a blizzard with a long laugh
Drenched in snow...
Fuck-tah-tah!
Fuck-tah-tah!
... So they go with a sovereign step -
Behind is a hungry dog.
Ahead - with a bloody flag,
And behind the blizzard is unknown,
And unharmed by a bullet
With a gentle step over the wind,
Snowy scattering of pearls,
In a white corolla of roses -
In front is Jesus Christ.
Analysis of the poem "The Twelve" by Blok
Many consider the poem "The Twelve" to be the main work in Blok's work. It was written by the poet at the beginning of 1918 and reflects his view of the Russian revolution.
Poem 12 is the original poem. It is written in an innovative style. The language of the poem is as close as possible to the illiterate "soldier of the revolution". A highly educated person is perplexed by some fragments of the poem. The extreme cynicism and frankness of the "twelve apostles of the revolution" is a characteristic feature of the verse.
The plot is based on the detour of the Red Army patrol, consisting of twelve people. The people who represent the birth of a new world are cold-blooded criminals and murderers for whom nothing is sacred. They are driven by an extreme hatred of everything that symbolizes the old society. Until now, the true attitude of Blok to the created characters is not completely clear. In the memoirs and works of Soviet writers, the main characters were subjected to excessive idealization. The struggle for the construction of communism was associated only with bright and just ideas. For Blok's characters, one of the main goals is to "shoot a bullet at Holy Russia."
The poem is oversaturated with bloodthirsty sadistic slogans and phrases: “world fire in the blood”, “shot through the head”, “I will drink blood” and many others. etc. The speech of the main characters is replete with rudeness and curses.
The patrol itself looks like a completely pointless action. The Red Army soldiers do not have any specific goal. They, like vultures, want to find any excuse for robbery or murder.
With some kind of unhealthy persistence, Blok constantly introduces Christian images into the text of his work. The number of "heroes" is equal to the number of apostles. "Black malice" is equated with "holy malice". All the monstrous deeds of the revolutionaries are accompanied by the wish "God bless!". Finally, the main symbol of Christianity, Jesus Christ, becomes the leader of the blood-drunk gang of murderers and thugs. Blok himself claimed that he simply could not find a more significant figure for this role.
The poem "The Twelve" leaves behind ambiguous feelings. Only an incorrigible fighter for a general revolution or a mentally deranged person can consider it a work glorifying the birth of a new world. It does not fall under the category of “the harsh truth of life”, if only because “a stripe with a knife, a stripe” somehow does not combine with “God rest the soul of Thy servant.” There are opinions that Blok simply mocked the new system, but he himself did not confirm this. It is known that the poet had a desire to burn his poem.
Freidlin S.Ya.
Block exchanged hugs
Strangers on a wood ration
K.I. Chukovsky.
Twelve is a piercing thing, it seems, the only significant thing that appeared in the field of poetry for the revolution.
S.N. Bulgakov.
Your attention is mainly presented to the opinions of A. Blok's contemporaries about the poem (especially about the figure of Christ in the finale), in particular, representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church. Some believe that until the end the Christian ending of the poem will not be unraveled.
The poem "The Twelve" was written by Blok in January 1918, almost a year after the February Revolution and just two months after the October Revolution.
The poem was created in twenty days (January 8-28, 1918), according to the poet's own admission, written "in a fit of inspiration, harmoniously whole, in harmony with the elements."
The action of the poem takes place on the streets of revolutionary Petrograd in the first days of January 1918.
Having finished the poem in rough outline, immediately after the legendary final phrase "... in a white wreath of roses, ahead of Jesus Christ ...", Blok leaves an entry in his notebook of 1918, completely devoted to the period of creation of the poem "The Twelve": A terrible noise growing in me and around . Today I am a genius."
- "Twelve" - whatever they are - this is the best thing I wrote. Because then I lived in modernity ... - A. Blok. "Late Poems".
The appearance of the poem caused a storm of conflicting interpretations: some perceived it as a glorification of the revolution, others considered it a parody of the Bolsheviks.
According to V. Mayakovsky, some read in this poem a satire on the revolution, others - the glory of it.
Of Blok's contemporaries, she was not accepted: 3. N. Gippius, D. S. Merezhkovsky, N. S. Gumilev, I. A. Bunin, Vyach. Ivanov and others.
Among those who greeted the "Twelve" with hostility were V. Piast and A. Akhmatova, F. Sologub, who refused to participate in the evening of the circle of poets "Arzamas" only because the program was scheduled to read the poem "The Twelve".
Andrei Bely, V. E. Meyerhold, S. A. Yesenin accepted the poem with enthusiasm,
A. V. Lunacharsky and others.
M. A. Voloshin, S. N. Bulgakov, N. A. Berdyaev, P. B. Struve, M. A. Kuzmin,
O. E. Mandelstam and many others noted the inconsistency of the work.
Blok was very worried that his poem was perceived as a political agitation. Two years after the creation of the poem, he wrote: “That’s why I don’t renounce what was written then, because it was written in accordance with the elements: for example, during and after the end of The Twelve, for several days I physically felt, with hearing, a lot of noise around - the noise is continuous (probably the noise from the collapse of the old world). ... those who see political verses in the poem are either very blind to art, or sit up to their ears in political mud, or are obsessed with great malice - be they friends or enemies of my poem.
Z. Gippius:
A revolutionary sailor was placed in his (Blok's) apartment on Officerskaya Street, who bawled at night, drove girls and played the harmonica.
Zinaida Gippius, learning about this, remarked: "The block is suffering, one sailor has been attached to it ... it's a pity that not twelve ..."
Some famous writers did not shake hands with the poet.
Once, shortly before his death, Blok met Gippius on a tram.
- Zinaida Nikolaevna, will you give me a hand? Block asked.
Gippius saw sick sad eyes.
- Publicly no, humanly - yes! - and Gippius extended her hand to him, which Blok shook.
A.M. Gorky called the poem "The Twelve" one of the expressive examples of truly revolutionary-romantic literature, which "believes in tomorrow", in which "the radiance of the future shines through."
”
V.G. Korolenko believed that "Christ speaks of the Bolshevik sympathies of the author."
O. Mandelstam called the poem "a monumental dramatic ditty", which is "immortal, like folklore."
In the article “Alexander Blok Died,” Mayakovsky writes: “A.A. Blok approached our revolution honestly and enthusiastically in his famous poem The Twelve.
A.V. Lunacharsky: "... in the poem "The Twelve" Blok wanted to give an accurate image of a truly revolutionary force, fearlessly point out its violent, almost criminal forces, and at the same time bless him with the greatest blessing that he was capable of."
M.A. Voloshin: “The poem “The Twelve” is one of the finest artistic creations of revolutionary reality. Without betraying himself, or his methods, or forms, Blok wrote a deeply real and - surprisingly - lyrically objective thing. This Bloc, which lost its vote to the Bolsheviks - the Red Guards, remains the true Bloc of the "Beautiful Lady" and the "Snow Mask".
“…following instructive articles on the music of the revolution, Blok writes The Twelve. Killers and thugs are coming, people are all familiar - the collar of the shirt is turned away, the red star, the tip of the Nagant sticks out innocently. Go but style! style! - and in front of them is one in a special uniform, in a white corolla of roses; this is Jesus (through Y) Christ. They go, they sing about things that are also well known - who killed whom, but music! music! - and they sing again: "World fire in the blood, Lord, bless!" And all - and the fire, and Christ "very popular", in the manner of ditties.
I. Erenburg, 1918
“An extraordinary phenomenon - Blok, the quiet poet of the “lyre”, writes a loud, screaming and buzzing poem “The Twelve”, in which he studies with Mayakovsky. It's tragic, it almost brings tears. They say that this poem is good. I don’t know - I see that Blok is crucifying himself on the cross of the revolution, and I can only look at it with horror of reverence”
B.M. Eichenbaum, 1918
G. Ivanov claimed: “For the creation of the “Twelve”, Blok paid with his life. This is not a beautiful phrase, but the truth. Blok understood the mistake of the “Twelve” and was horrified by its irreparability. he died of the "Twelve" as others die of pneumonia or rupture of the heart."
Carried away by Katka, Blok completely forgot his original plan to “shoot at Holy Russia” and “shot” at Katka, so that the story with her, with Vanka, with the reckless drivers turned out to be the main content of The Twelve. Blok came to his senses only at the end of his "poem" and, in order to recover, carried anything he could: here again the "powerful step" and some kind of hungry dog - again a dog! - and pathological blasphemy: some kind of sweet Jesus, dancing (with a bloody flag, and at the same time in a white halo of roses) ahead of these cattle, robbers and murderers. Blok shouts: “Listen, listen to the music of the revolution!” and composes “The Twelve”, he takes a winter evening in St. Petersburg, now especially terrible, where people die from cold, from hunger, where you can’t go out even during the day for fear of being robbed and stripped naked, and says: look what’s going on there now a drunken, violent soldiery, but after all, in the end, all her deeds are holy by the rampant destruction of the former Russia and that Christ Himself goes ahead of her, that these are His apostles. After all, we are still arguing: are his yarygs, who killed the street girl, the essence of the apostles, or are they not quite?
I. Bunin. Memories.
The traditional problem associated with this poem is the interpretation of its finale: the appearance of Christ in front of a detachment of Red Guards wandering through a blizzard.
Blok himself wrote that he "reluctantly, reluctantly - had to put Christ." The artist Yu.P. Annenkov, who illustrated The Twelve, Blok explained his understanding of the image of Christ in the finale: “The most concrete thing I can say about Christ is a white spot ahead, white as snow, and it looms ahead, half-imagining - persistent; and there is a red flag. Christ with the flag - it's so and not so.
K. Chukovsky in the article "Alexander Blok as a Man and a Poet" recalls the episode: "Gumilyov said that the end of the poem "The Twelve" (the place where Christ appears) seems to him artificially glued, that the sudden appearance of Christ is a purely literary effect. Blok listened , as always, without changing his face, but at the end of the lecture he said thoughtfully and carefully, as if listening to something: “I don’t like the end of The Twelve either. I would like this ending to be different. When I finished, I myself was surprised: why Christ? But the more I looked, the more clearly I saw Christ. And then I wrote down at my place: unfortunately, Christ.
K. Chukovsky testifies that Blok always spoke about his poems as if they reflected someone else's will, which he could not disobey, as if they were not just poems, but a revelation from above ...
Almost a hundred years have passed since the writing of the poem, and literary scholars are still considering this issue and putting forward several conjectures. Jesus leads a detachment of Red Guards and leads them to a new world - the criminals have become saints. Other researchers believe that these are the apostles, marching in a revolutionary step under the leadership of Peter.
M. Voloshin believed that the revolutionaries were persecuting Christ in order to kill him, and he did not save the detachment, but tried to hide from him.| “The red flag in the hands of Christ? There is no blasphemous ambiguity in this. The bloody flag is the new cross of Christ, the symbol of his current crucifixions.”
V. Shklovsky: "Twelve" is an ironic thing. It was not even written in a ditty style, it was made in a “criminal” style. Blok went from coupletists and street dialect. And, having finished the thing, attributed Christ to it.
I. Odoevtseva recalled the reaction of Nikolai Gumilyov: “Bloc should now write the anti-" Twelve ". Many still cannot forgive him for his “Twelve”. And I understand them. Of course it's brilliant. There is no dispute. But so much the worse, that is ingenious. The temptation of small sim. Devilish temptation." By writing “The Twelve”, (Blok) served the “cause of the Antichrist” - he crucified Christ a second time and once again shot the Sovereign.
M. Prishvin: “Finally, I understood why Christ is ahead in The Twelve, it was he, only Blok, who had the right to say so: it was he, Blok, who took upon himself all the sin of the deed, and thus, merging with Christ, could send He is ahead of the killers: this is Golgotha - to stand in front and take their sin upon yourself. But is it true that this is Christ, and not Blok himself, swirling in a whirlwind of feelings, soaring up to God.
Y. Aikhenwald
This last (revolution) is artificially drawn into the plot. Indeed, does not the fact that Petka, jealous of Vanka, kill Katya, is not completely apart from the social, or at least only the political revolution? The event depicted by Blok could have taken place in any other epoch, and the clash between Petka and Vanka over Katka is neither revolutionary nor counter-revolutionary in its psychological essence, and does not weave its bloody thread into the fabric of modern history. that's how politics came about. In itself, our poet has a duality. On the one hand, he seems to lament that we have "freedom without a cross"; he finds to the face, or, better to say, to the back of his twelve "ace of diamonds"; he hears on the streets of the city, in the midst of a snowstorm that does not leave Blok even here, the words of women: "and we had a meeting ... in this building ... we discussed ... decided ... for a time of ten, for the night - twenty five"; and many other touches make one think that the writer gave not so much a poem as a satire - a caustic satire on the Russian revolution, on its vulgarized slogans, on its attitude towards the "bourgeois", "priests", towards the "conscious" and "unconscious". On the other hand, Blok seriously, apparently sacrificing artistry, personifies the "old world" and spoke of him as if he "stands" behind the "bourgeois" "silently like a question" (by the way: the question is not at all silent, - he is rather insistent , noisy, loud, until he is satisfied, until he is answered) - yes, this is how the "old world" stands, "like a rootless dog, tail between its legs" (by the way: the "old world" can least be compared with the "rootless" being; he gives birth, he is old, and precisely in this is his strength that behind him is a long series of generations, an impressive gallery of ancestors). And the very name "Twelve", and not at least "Thirteen" (this dozen would be more appropriate here than usual) and not some other number symbolically hints that the poet has in mind some sacred precedent: although all twelve go into the distance " without the name of a saint", we involuntarily, or rather - at the will of the author, there is a memory of the twelve apostles. And that such a rapprochement is not an arbitrary trick on the part of the blasphemous reader, but is assumed by the writer himself, is evident from the unexpected ending of the poem:
So they go with a sovereign step -
Behind a hungry dog
Ahead - with a bloody flag,
And invisible behind the blizzard
And unharmed by a bullet
With a gentle step over the wind,
Snowy scattering of pearls,
In a white corolla of roses -
In front is Jesus Christ.
This cannot be taken for irony. In addition to the tone, the final chord of the poem, Christ with a red flag, with a bloody flag, should also be taken by us not as a mockery, but seriously, because the long-familiar and cherished lyrical notes of Alexander Blok are heard here - gentle pearls of snow, snowy white blizzard, breath heavenly divinity in the midst of an earthly blizzard. The twelve heroes of the poem, gathered into one robbery gang, are drawn as dark and drunken savages - what is there in common between them and the twelve from the Gospel? And is it appropriate for them to be crusaders (however, they are without a cross ...) in the struggle for a new world? So Blok failed to convince his readers that at the head of the twelve, the leader of the Red Guards, is Christ with a red flag. The name of Christ is taken in vain.
The supporters of Russian Orthodox thought were most radical towards the poem. Here is the opinion of some of them.
About the demonic nature of the Red Guard patrol and their leader, Fr. Pavel Florensky, based on the theological and liturgical analysis:
“The poem “The Twelve” is the limit and completion of Blok’s demonism. The parodic nature of the poem is immediately obvious: here the struggle with the Church is symbolized by the number 12. Twelve Red Army soldiers, led by “Jesus Christ”, parody the apostles even with their names: Vanka - “student, his own beloved ", Andryukha - the First-Called and Petrukha - the First Supreme. The priest ("and there and the long-haired one") and the iconostasis ("from which the golden iconostasis saved you"), that is, that and that, without whom and what cannot be accomplished liturgy".
P. Florensky believed that Blok turned onto the path of replacing the “ideal of the Madonna” with the ideal of “Sodom”.
He drew attention to the changes in the name Jesus - in Blok he is "Jesus". The detachment is headed by the Antichrist, who is also omnipotent, invulnerable "and invisible behind the blizzard." Therefore, at the end of the poem is not the image of Christ, but the image of the Antichrist. The proof is a blizzard, the rampant elements in the poem.
Comrade, hold the rifle, don't be afraid!
Let's fire a bullet at Holy Russia -
In the condo
Into the hut.
Into the fat ass!
Eh, eh, no cross!
About these lines I.A. Ilyin wrote:
"I involuntarily recall that painful and shameful day when in Russian literature were said about Orthodox Russia ... cursed, hard labor words."
“The Twelve's "God bless!" - the unconscious desire of sinners to "intercede for themselves" before Christ. “Prayer is a call for help,” writes I. Ilyin, “directed to the One Who calls me to himself through my suffering ... Suffering awakens the spirit of a person, leads him, forms and shapes, purifies and ennobles, it is like a “visit of God ”... “for in the last and deepest dimension, the Divine principle itself suffers in us, with us and about us.”
M. Dunaev "Faith in the crucible of doubt."
The dirty story about the murder of the prostitute Katya by the jealous suitor Petka, one of the “twelve”, is specially introduced into the general element. For what? So that music can make peace with the world?
All this element is pulled together in a rod way:
The wind is blowing, the snow is falling.
Twelve people are coming.
Who are they?
... And they go without the name of a saint
All twelve - away.
Ready for everything
Nothing to regret...
But ahead of them is Christ. And these twelve are apostles? And Christ comes not with the Cross, but with the "bloody flag". And they have "steel rifles". And after all, these rifles - shot at Christ (yes, He is "unharmed from a bullet"). There are too many things left unexplained.
In the poem ... the devils say clearly and without hesitation:
Eh, eh, get lost!
My heart skipped a beat!
Eh, eh, refresh
Sleep with you!
Eh, eh, sin!
It will be easier for the soul!
Lock up the floors
Today there will be robberies!
This is only a translation into Smerdyakov's language of Ivano-Karamazov's "everything is allowed." ... The character of the charming vision, the parody of the face that appears at the end of the poem “Jesus” (let us note the destruction of the saving name) extremely convincingly proves the state of fear, longing and unreasonable anxiety “rewarded” with such a vision. This "Jesus Christ" appears as the resolution of a monstrous fear, the growth of which is expressed by a nine-fold shout at the ghost and shots, met with a long laughter of a blizzard. Fear, melancholy and anxiety are an essential sign of insomnia, indicated by patristic literature.
Block couldn't help but feel it. Isn't that why he once answered the question about Christ in the poem: "I have a compilative Christ." Compilation - from darkness and light?…
“In The Twelve, Blok pierced the future with his clairvoyant gaze with a force unprecedented in him before. Now, four years of the revolution have passed, all of it, with all its crazy dreams, with all its violence, horror and blood, lies crushed and dying, and all of it, as in a marvelous crystal, is included in the poem "The Twelve". The poet, who all his life sang to us about the descent into darkness, about the anguish and hopelessness of the Russian, sinful night, finally announced the news, which could not be more joyful: Russia will be saved; twelve thieves who did not know what they were doing will be forgiven. With a piercing gaze, he penetrated into the abyss of darkness and there he saw not the devil, but Christ, leading through the torment of robbers the one in which the bloody veil is lowered over her eyes. To love like Blok loved Russia could only be an angel who fell to earth, whose heart was too heavy from
A. Tolstoy.
The poem remained unsolved and will always remain so, giving rise to new interpretations in the reader.
And, perhaps, the lack of a clear answer is the secret of the "Twelve".
The poem was written by Alexander Blok in early 1918. It reflected the position of the author in relation to the October Revolution of 1917.
"The Twelve" is a poem about revolutionary Petrograd, a poem about blood, dirt, crime, human fall. This is on one level. And in the other - about the revolution, about the good news of human liberation coming into the world through blood-stained people.
The snowstorm of the revolution begins from the very first lines of the poem; and from its very first lines, the black sky and white snow are, as it were, symbols of that duality that takes place in the world, that is happening in every soul.
black evening,
White snow.
Wind, wind!
No one stands on their feet...
Thus, two inner motifs pass through the whole poem, intertwining. Black evening - blood, dirt, crime; white snow is the new truth that comes into the world through the same people. And if the poet had limited himself to only one topic, if he had drawn only one “black” shell of the revolution or only its “white” essence, he would have been enthusiastically received in one or another of those camps into which Russia has now split. But a poet, a true poet, is equally far from both bright praise and dark blasphemy; he gives dual, intertwined truth in one picture. The contrast of the two colors emphasizes the uncompromising confrontation between the warring forces.
The chaos of events, the chaos of a blizzard, the chaos of the disturbed elements, through which fragments of passing faces, positions, actions, absurd in their fragmentation, but connected by a common flight through the wind and snow, are visible. The poet paints a picture of revolutionary Petrograd. Here is a huge poster “All power to the Constituent Assembly!”, And a “cheerless comrade priest”, and an old woman who “doesn’t understand what it means, what such a poster, such a huge rag”, and a “lady in karakul” mourning Russia , and angrily hissing "writer, vitia" ... And all this is so petty, so far from the great things that are happening in the world, so miserable that "malice" against all this can be considered "holy malice":
Anger, sad anger
Boiling in the chest...
Black malice, holy malice...
Comrade! Look
In both!
And against this background, under the overhanging black sky, under the falling white snow, “twelve people are walking ...” The poet does not poeticize them at all. Against. “A cigarette in the teeth, a cap is crushed, an ace of diamonds should be on the back!” And their former comrade Vanka - "in a soldier's overcoat, with a stupid face" - flies with a fat-faced Katya on a scorcher, "an electric flashlight on shafts ..."
And this “Red Guard” Petrukha, who had already raised the knife on Katya (“Your neck, Katya, the scar has not healed from the knife. Under your chest, Katya, that scratch is fresh!”), This Petrukha, who had already laid down the officer (“not he left the knife!”), this comrade of his, threatening with reprisal to a possible rival: “Well, Vanka, son of a bitch, bourgeois, mine, try, kiss!”. And this fat-faced Katya herself, who “ate Mignon’s chocolate, went for a walk with the cadet, now went with the soldier ...” And these Petrukha comrades, without hesitation, shooting Vanka and Katya, who were speeding in a reckless car: “One more time! Pull the trigger! Fuck it!”
The death of Katya is not forgiven to Petrukha. "Oh, bitter grief, boring, mortal boredom!" And let not remorse, but a new malice lies on his soul, - “I’ll slash, slash with a knife! You fly, bourgeois, sparrow! I’ll drink blood for a sweetheart, a black-browed one! ” But the oppression cannot be removed from the soul: "God rest the soul of your servant ... Boring!"
Black is not forgiven, black is not justified - it is covered with that highest truth that is in the minds of the twelve. They feel the strength and scope of that world whirlwind, of which they are grains of sand. They sense and understand what the “writer, vitia”, and the philistine in astrakhan fur, and “comrade priest”, and all the spiritually fallen “intelligentsia” angrily deny. And for the truth, "our guys went to serve in the Red Guard, lay down their heads in a riot!" For this truth they kill and die.
Encouraging each other, the twelve do not resort to dreams, they seek consolation only in the inevitability of even greater hardships (“It will be harder for us, dear comrade!”). Readiness for any torment is their moral strength, which gives the author the right to call their very malice a saint.
… And they go without the name of a saint
All twelve are off.
Ready for everything
Nothing to regret...
But what instills in them determination and irreversibility, readiness for everything and lack of pity? What if there is no hope, no faith? The heroes of "The Twelve" on their painful path are supported not by a dream of the future, but by a continuous feeling of the enemy: "The restless enemy does not sleep!", "The restless enemy is close", "Their steel rifles against the invisible enemy ...", "Here - the fierce enemy will wake up ... » Who is this enemy?
Do not be “bourgeois” - he is pathetic, they only take revenge on him along the way, when he turns up under the arm: “... you fly, bourgeois, like a little sparrow! I'll drink blood for a sweetheart, a black-browed one.
And not even the “old world”, embodied in the image of the “lousy dog”, for which the heroes of Blok feel something like squeamish contempt: “Get off you, mangy, I will tickle with a bayonet! The old world, like a lousy dog, fail - I’ll beat you!”
No, in the "fierce enemy" there is clearly something universal, commensurate with the scale of revolutionary violence: "... let's fan the world fire, the world fire in the blood ...", "Let's fire a bullet at Holy Russia! .." For twelve, the continuous feeling of a powerful enemy justifies their distrust and armament, their attitude to life. What drives these people constantly requires the enemy and will constantly call him out of obscurity as needed. That is why, by the end of the poem, anxiety and fear for the future are only growing!
This is the main sign of the “new world”, which, as was commonly believed, Blok’s heroes enter: universal and continuous armament against everything and everyone, readiness to meet the enemy in any “deaf alley” and fight him until complete destruction ... And no hint of that "fair, pure, cheerful and wonderful life", which Blok called the natural goal of the revolution.
In the article “Intelligentsia and Revolution,” Blok wrote that a revolution is a popular element that has broken free. “She is like nature. Woe to those who think to find in the revolution only the fulfillment of their dreams, no matter how lofty and noble they may be. Revolution, like a menacing whirlwind, like a snowstorm, always brings something new, something unexpected; she cruelly deceives many; she easily maims the worthy in her whirlpool; she often brings the unworthy to land unharmed; but this is its particulars, it does not change either the general direction of the stream, or that formidable and deafening roar that the stream emits. This rumble is always about the great anyway.
The image of Christ organically grows out of the structure of the poem, the interaction of epic and lyrical motifs and becomes a symbol of the tragic transformation of the “Russian order of the soul” in the revolutionary era and his way of the cross after October.
The twelve apostles of the new world do not see Christ (he is “invisible behind the blizzard”), they call out to him, ask him to appear, but he does not appear, and in irritation they shoot where his shadow appears.
Shots are heard - the blizzard answers them with laughter. Laughter swirls in this poem of Blok like a snowstorm, blows up snowdrifts, throws aside everyone who prevents the Red Guards from going “by sovereign step”, laughter is heard over the corpse of Katya and over the grief-stricken Petrukha.
In "The Twelve" the poet and the elements for the first time converge one on one and face to face. Everything interferes in these scenes: both “holy malice”, and “black malice”, “black evening” and “white snow”, Katya’s blood and Petrukha’s tears, the printed step of the Red Guards and the “gentle tread” of Christ. The street is resounding with cries, the bickering of the twelve, the cries of an old woman, the howling of a homeless dog. Blizzard hoots after twelve. But the hero goes ahead in silence. The Red Guards - with rifles, he - "in a white halo of roses." The snow over which this “ghost” of Blok moves is dazzlingly clean. There are no traces of blood on it, although a "bloody flag" flutters over the hero himself.
Incompatibility, incompatibility - and at the same time a fatal connection.
Blok introduces the complexity and inconsistency of his own attitude towards Christ into the poem. For official criticism, the heroes of the poem are undoubtedly “apostles of the new faith” and “people of the future”; for Blok, there was too much old and familiar in these people, which partly explains the appearance of the “former” Christ ahead of the twelve.
The question remained unresolved: who are they - really the bearers of the new, in whom their very endless malice towards the world is “holy” and fruitful, or is it just another variation of the “Russian rebellion, senseless and merciless”, which must inevitably end in the damned “eternal peace” ”, witnessed by the figure of Christ? The possibility of this and many other interpretations lies in the very artistic nature of the poem.
Bykova N. G
Lyrics by A. A. Blok
One of the main features of romantic art, including symbolism, is the aspiration to high spiritual, moral, social and aesthetic ideals and the perception of reality, with all its contradictions, virtues and imperfections, in the light of these ideals. For Alexander Blok, from the very beginning to the end of his career, the romantic ideals of Eternal Femininity and Christ meant a lot. Of course, over time, the content of these ideals in Blok's work did not remain unchanged, just as the poet's attitude towards them, especially towards Christ, did not remain unchanged.
Speaking in letters to Andrei Bely about Her, Blok had in mind the Soul of the World, Eternal Femininity, which in his poems appeared as a Beautiful Lady. Her image in the lyrics of the young poet symbolized the inseparability of his love for the beauty of an earthly woman and the beauty of the Eternal Femininity, marked the harmony of nature and culture, sensual and spiritual perception of the world. Blok remained faithful to the ideal of the Beautiful Lady until the end of his days, her reflections and echoes are felt in the images of Columbine, the Stranger, the Snow Maiden, Faina, Carmen, Izora, Katya from The Twelve and, of course, Russia, Russia.
The feeling of historical change, which Blok was so looking forward to in the revolutionary year of 1905, gave rise to new themes in his work. In his poetry, the language of the street was heard, the melodies of the city outskirts, everyday life rustled.
In the lyrical preface to the collection "Earth in the Snow" Blok crosses out the ascending path of his poetry, the inexorable logic of his three books released: "Poems about the Beautiful Lady" - an early morning dawn ... "Unexpected joy" - the first burning and sorrowful delights, the first pages of the book of life ... And here is the "Earth in the snow." The fruit of sorrowful delights, a cup of bitter wine, when a madman loses his way, won't you show him the way? I do not accept - go your own ways. I myself know the countries of the world, the sounds of the heart, forest paths, deaf ravines, the lights in the huts of my homeland, the bright eyes of my companion. But fate won't win either. For at the end of the path, full of falls, contradictions, sorrowful delights and unnecessary longing, one eternal and boundless plain spreads out - the original homeland, perhaps Russia itself ... "
Thus, in the lyrical images of Blok's prose, the main theme of his poems arises - "the theme of Russia."
The bloc is at the center of a turning point, a pan-European political crisis that ultimately led to the First World War and an inter-revolutionary reaction in Russia. Russia, “having escaped from one revolution, eagerly looks into the eyes of another…”
Burning years!
Is there madness in you, is there any hope?
From the days of war, from the days of freedom –
There is a bloody glow in the faces.
The theme of the motherland, Russia captures Blok entirely. The feeling of the motherland as a living being merges with the super-feeling of burning love. The personal tragedy of loneliness rises to the level of the tragedy of the people. “There is no gap between the personal and the general in the poetic sense of the world,” says the poet.
Blok differs from his predecessors in that he approaches the fate of Russia not as a thinker, with an abstract idea, but as a poet, with intimate love. They were written in the ferocious time of hobbies, but they bear the stamp of objectivism, beautiful calmness and aestheticism of truth. They are also imbued with modern horrors, but remained in the sphere and atmosphere of ideological balance and smart tact.
Refined craftsmanship coincides in verses about Russia with all the richness of creative experience and reaches true classicism. Love, torment, wisdom, all the complexity of the feelings of the modern lyricist are combined in them with a majestic spiritual genealogy lost through the ages.
The image of the motherland in Russian literature was usually associated with the image of the mother. Blok connects it with the image of a young beauty, a bride, a wife, thereby giving it a deeply intimate, loving character (“Your tears of the wind are like tears of the first love!”), And at the same time - with the eternal and imperishable beauty of the Beautiful Lady, World Soul, world harmony. In Blok's image of the motherland - a woman full of strength and passion, endowed with "robber beauty", - the intimate and personal is inseparable from the universal, the sensual from the spiritual, the national from the universal, the natural from cultural traditions, the high from the everyday. In the light of the romantic ideal, the homeland appears not only poetic, spiritualized, beautiful, incorruptible, but also impoverished - with gray huts, sloppy roads, cautious melancholy, the dull song of the coachman. The feeling of the living imperishable beauty of the motherland helps Blok to believe in her future, that she will overcome all the hardships and obstacles on her difficult path.
In the small cycle "On the Kulikovo Field" (1908), consisting of five poems, Blok reaches the heights of Russian classics. Rising above the conventions of schools and trends, Blok's genius reaches its climax.
The river spread out. Flowing, sad lazily
And washes the shore.
Over the meager clay of the yellow cliff
Haystacks are sad in the steppe.
Calm admiration of the breadth of native nature is changed by an outburst of expression of blood unity with Russia at an acute dramatic moment:
Oh, my Russia! My wife! To pain
We have a long way to go!
I'm not the first warrior, not the last
The homeland will be sick for a long time.
Remember well for early lunch
Dear friend, bright wife!
Blok draws analogies between the two most important moments in Russian history: the events on the Kulikovo field and the complex socio-political and revolutionary situation of the early 20th century.
Again over the Kulikov field
The darkness has risen and dispersed,
And, like a harsh cloud,
The coming day is clouded.
He hopes that the hard path in the darkness, “in boundless anguish”, will be fearlessly passed: “Let's rush. We will illuminate the steppe distance with fires. Reason and spirituality will fight everything that makes life dirty, vulgar, hopeless. “But I recognize you, the beginning of high and rebellious days!” Only in restlessness and movement towards good does the author see the meaning of existence: “The heart cannot live in peace ...” Blok often emphasizes that the price of victory is blood. Blood accompanies light. "Sunset in blood!" Sounds like a call to action:
And eternal battle! Rest only in our dreams
Through blood and dust...
Flying, flying steppe mare
And crushes the feather grass ...
For Gogol, Russia is a troika rushing into the distance, for Blok it is a “steppe mare” and the same troika. In the notes to the poem “I am nailed to the tavern counter ...” Blok writes about this image: “Do you hear the gasping rut of the troika? This is Russia flying to who knows where - into the blue-blue abyss ... Do you see her starry eyes - with a prayer addressed to us: "Love me, love my beauty! .." Who will make his way towards the flying troika along secret and wise paths, a meek word he will stop the lathered horses, with a bold hand he will overturn the demonic driver ... "
The poem "Russia" (1908) sounds like a declaration of love to a poor, but beautiful Motherland. The purity and authenticity of the people's strength nourish hope:
And the impossible is possible
The road is long and easy...
All the poems of the mature Blok are written on behalf of the son of the "terrible years of Russia", who has a distinct historical memory and a heightened foreboding of the future.
From low poor villages
Do not count, do not measure with an eye,
And shines on the darkened day
Bonfire in a distant meadow.
The poet wrote that “the Russian artist is once again faced with the relentless question of usefulness. It was put not by us, but by the Russian public, in whose ranks artists of all camps are gradually returning. To the artist's eternal concern for form and content is added a new concern for duty, for what is proper and what is not due in art. Blok also addresses the problem of art and life in poetic practice, polemically arguing that life is higher than art:
…I would like to,
To make you fall in love with a simple man,
Who loves earth and sky
More than rhymed and unrhymed
Talk about earth and sky.
The solution to this most complex issue is inseparable for Blok from the problem of the nationality of art, because it is in folk art that usefulness and beauty coincide (for example, in work songs, inextricably linked with the rhythm of labor). Thus, raising questions about the benefits of art, about the duty of the artist, Blok ultimately comes to the conclusion that the duty of the modern artist is to strive for that peak, “on which sworn enemies miraculously shake hands with each other: beauty and utility.”
In Blok, as it were, the strength of great Russian literature is expiring. Behind Blok is the path of her suffering, on which everything was: the art of pure craftsmanship, and preaching, and satire, the desire for salvation in realism and flying away from it, attempts to know the depths of fear and the depths of holiness, and even daring experiments with disputes with the Gospel, rewriting Gospels. All this demanded such tension and such a return that Russian literature approached Blok, as if having tried everything - notes of delight were still heard in it, but a different kind of music already took over.
The transition from the 19th century to the 20th - from the "iron" age, as Blok called it, to an even more iron age for the poet is the same as the transition from the sunlit side to the unlit side. Blok creates as if in an eclipse atmosphere.
Twentieth century ... Even crazier
Even worse than life is darkness
(Even blacker and bigger
Shadow of Lucifer's wing).
Blok's lyrics are the artistic foundation and the first discovery of the idea that later became the basis of the post-October revolutionary literature in reality, and not declaratively, because in this lyrics the revolution was really expressed as a state of mind. Therefore, Blok's line in Soviet literature is not a political, but primarily a poetic, artistic acceptance of the October Revolution, and not in its slogans and declarations, but in its essence. In the spring of 1918, Blok wrote that “it’s time to stop missing the completely original Russian structure of the soul that opens up new horizons. He is confused and dark sometimes; but behind this darkness and confusion, if you bother to look into them, you will discover new ways to look at human life.
Lednev A. V
Poem "Twelve"
Blok's final work is one of the most difficult, if not the most difficult, work among those included in the school literature curriculum. Talking about the artistic features of the poem, and especially its interpretation, requires independent thinking, a thorough analysis of the text, reliance on knowledge of the poet's lyrics and, most importantly, an understanding of the symbolist nature of the style of The Twelve. Although the literature exam presupposes a certain degree of certainty in judgments, we would recommend a different modality of assessments in relation to the poem "The Twelve" - assumption, assumption, comparison of possibilities. In the case of Blok's poem, the lack of unambiguity is preferable to peremptory sentences - it better corresponds to the essence of symbolist poetics.
The author of The Twelve himself refused to attempt a rational-logical explanation of his work. Blok’s most clear statement about the meaning of the final image is a reference to “self-evidence”, to the fact that “it seemed so”: “I just stated the fact: if you peer into the blizzard pillars along this path, you will see“ Jesus Christ ”(diary entry from February 25, 1918). The quoting of the name is characteristic - an indication of its conventionality, approximation. In this regard, it is not surprising that Blok was subjectively extremely dissatisfied with this image, he claimed that he himself sometimes "deeply hates" "this feminine ghost." There were extremely cryptic phrases in his comments. Here, for example, is a wish to the illustrator of the poem Yu. Annenkov regarding the cover of the book: “If thick snow had breathed from the upper left corner of the“ murder of Katya ”and Christ through it, this would have been an exhaustive cover.”
Much in the poem is stunningly unexpected, "accidentally" (remember the title of one of Blok's lyrical collections "Unexpected Joy"). So, the most traditional image in Christian culture is presented in it in an unconventional way - not plot-motivated, moreover, in direct contradiction with tradition and logic: Christ appears almost as the leader of murderers and rapists who reject the morality of the “golden iconostasis” (“on the back of b you need an ace of diamonds"). Yes, and the images of other characters and the very space of the poem lose their unambiguity where everything merges, where the blizzard "hit in the eyes" "days and nights without a break." The dispersion of certainty is noticeable at different levels of the text: the position of the nameless observer is mysterious (it is not clear who “sees” and from where he “looks”). Even the most optically concrete from the point of view of logic - the target (literally: the target for the shots of an armed patrol) mockingly returns the echo of their shooting to the shooters: "Only a blizzard with long laughter / Fills in the snow ...".
The reader of "The Twelve" must experience a sharp mixture and shift of feelings: the "flickering" meaning of the poem does not obey the laws of linear logic. This is, perhaps, one of the main properties of meaning generation in the poem. Let us turn to the testimony of the most sensitive contemporaries of the poet. An interesting assessment of V. B. Shklovsky, who does not agree that the poem "The Twelve" is associated with the adoption of the Revolution by the Blok: "The Twelve" is an ironic thing. I take here the concept of "irony" not as a "mockery", but as a method of simultaneous perception of two contradictory phenomena or as a simultaneous assignment of one and the same phenomenon to two semantic series. Shklovsky is talking here about the combination in one work of two "truths", versions, understandings of what is happening. And here is how the literary critic defines the stylistic “mechanism” of the poem: “It was not even written in a ditty style, it was made in a “criminal” style ... An unexpected end with Christ illuminates the whole thing anew. You understand the number twelve. But the thing remains dual and designed for this.
Shklovsky's remark about the deliberateness of the "thieves", "defiant" style is especially interesting. Let us recall that the clash of the repulsive, the shocking with the romantically sublime is the main compositional device of Blok's famous Stranger.
The assessment of another contemporary of Blok, the subtle poet and critic M. A. Voloshin, is meaningful: “... It is surprising that absolutely everyone who conveyed the contents of the poem to me before its text fell into my hands said that it depicts twelve Red Guards in the form of apostles, and at their head is Jesus Christ. When I once had to ... assert that Christ does not at all go at the head of the twelve Red Guards, but, on the contrary, is pursued by them, then a cry arose against me ... Did no one ... take the trouble to read its meaning?
Voloshin calls the poem "beautiful" and singles out the following features as the most important:
– the poem is related to the cycle of poems “Snow Mask” (“the same symphonic fullness of constantly changing rhythms, the same wine and love frenzy, the same blind human heart that has lost its way among snowy whirlwinds…”);
- the main idea of the poem is expressed by the line “All twelve go without the name of a saint into the distance” (emphasized by M. A. Voloshin);
- there is no evidence of the "apostolic rank" of the Red Guards in the poem, except for the number itself, "what kind of apostles are these who go out to hunt their Christ?";
- conclusion: “Now it is used as a Bolshevik work, it can just as well be used as a pamphlet against Bolshevism, distorting and emphasizing its other sides. But its artistic value, fortunately, is on the other side of these temporary fluctuations in the political exchange.
Finally, let us give a generalizing judgment of the connoisseur of Blok's work V. M. Zhirmunsky: “... The poem "The Twelve" only provides a consistent completion of the most essential elements of Blok's work. With political, party programs, militant ideas, etc., it ... has no points of contact; its problem is not political, but religious and moral, and to a large extent individual…”.
Zhirmunsky accurately points to the closest connection of the poem with Blok's lyrical trilogy, to the fact that it completes the entire "novel in verse." Blok's poem really brings together his most important motifs: a terrible world, a raging element, and finally, hopes for a mystical transformation of life. However, the author refuses to bring these motives "to a common denominator", to reconcile the contrasting beginnings, he sharply collides "low" and "high", "reality" and "dream".
This principled attitude towards stylistic disharmony for Blok was interpreted by many of the poet's contemporaries as an artistic failure or as a vulgar desire of the singer of the Beautiful Lady to "serve" the political regime. The most severe review belonged to Ivan Bunin, who called the poem "a set of poems, sometimes tragic, sometimes dancing, but in general claiming to be something highly Russian, folk ...". According to Bunin, “something completely popular, inept, beyond measure vulgar” came out. The sharpness of Bunin's assessment is connected, among other things, with the accepted as an axiom (and erroneous) opinion about the "glorification" of the Revolution by the Bloc. But in another, Bunin is right - right in essence, and not in the form of the statement: he correctly noted the extreme disharmony of The Twelve.
Bunin was far from the first of those who accused Blok of blasphemous desecration of the ideal, of buffoonery and "booze". Similar was the reaction of the Young Symbolists close to Blok to his first play, The Puppet Show. Leaving aside the analysis of the content of the play, we only recall that its leading "puppet" characters were Pierrot, unhappy in love, his happy rival Harlequin and beloved Piero Colombina. The central event of the play unfolds against the backdrop of a snowstorm: Harlequin takes Columbine away on a sleigh, but she falls off the sleigh into the snow, turning out to be a “cardboard” bride. When in the finale the Author, who appeared on the stage, tries to join the hands of the lovers (Pierrot and Columbine), the scenery rises, the Author runs away, and Pierrot, left all alone, begins to sing a plaintive song about his unfaithful bride.
The leading stylistic beginning of Blok's dramaturgy is irony: thanks to this, everything is called into question, nothing can be taken literally. The realized metaphor of the fall of the ideal is persistently used by Blok in another play - "The Stranger", where the image of the "fallen star" turns out to be the main one.
The only event of the poem "The Twelve" - the murder of Katya - takes place in the central sixth chapter. “Late evening” is approaching midnight, visitors to the “taverns” are leaving for their homes. It is at this chronological border, when “twelve” on the dial is about to turn into “zero”, the semantics of the numeral placed in the title acquires symbolic ambiguity. Symbolically ambiguous is the scene of the murder, performed in the manner of a puppet “animation”, and the “portrait” descriptions that precede it (“Twisting, twisting a black mustache, / Yes, twisting, / Yes, joking ...”; “She threw back her face, / Teeth sparkle with pearls ...”). The deliberately primitive figures and mechanical gestures of the characters are reminiscent of the techniques of Blok's dramaturgy, and what is happening itself (Katka's fall into the snow) clearly "rhymes" with the situation of "Balaganchik".
The “holy malice” of the armed mob turns out to be inseparable from the malice of the “black” and inevitably leads to “mortal boredom” (recall that this motif in Blok’s lyrics is associated with images of the “terrible world” and characterizes spiritual degradation, the loss of the ideal). The final image of the "invisible" Christ is not only ambiguous, but also deliberately illogical, created by a combination of contradictory characteristics. Therefore, it cannot be rationally deciphered. This is by no means a canonical Christ: his very figure is ghostly, barely distinguishable against the background of "snowy placers".
This ghost is feminized: “gentle tread”, “white halo of roses” are signs of what Blok himself called “feminine susceptibility” and manifestations of artistry, artistic nature (in Blok’s 1918 entry there is such a direct comparison: “Jesus is an artist” ). The semantics of the color details of the image is also ambiguous. The “bloody flag” evokes associations not so much with the color of the revolutionary banners, but with the blood shed in the central episode of the poem. The “White Corolla of Roses” can be interpreted as a detail of the allegorical image of the Madonna (such is the medieval artistic tradition), but at the same time it can be interpreted differently: as belonging to a funeral or as a symbol of oblivion, departure, and ultimately death.
In any case, the appearance of Christ in the final stanza of the poem is in no way motivated by the preceding text, and has nothing to do with the inner appearance of the characters in the poem. This is the only but decisive sign of the presence of the author, this is Blok's lyrical-subjective assessment of everything that happens. The revolutionary element is served by Blok in the illumination of two incompatible truths. On the one hand, this is the truth of the external emancipation of the social lower classes: it is in the inevitability of social retribution for the former lack of freedom. On the other hand, this is the truth of spiritual (and therefore associated with a personal, individual beginning) liberation from the humiliating power of the low-bodily in man, from biological instincts, from fighting reflexes.
The bearer of this truth is absent from the scene until the last appearance. And only it, with an unexpected retrospective light, re-illuminates the vulgar, poster-like figures of characters and creates a multi-layered semantic perspective. The “amusing”, conditional scenery disappears, and only one image-symbol remains, the image-semantic “funnel”, which draws in the meanings of the former Blok figurative signs of the ideal – the Beautiful Lady, the Stranger and, most importantly, the most lyrical hero of the Blok trilogy. Such is the open end of Blok's lyrical creativity.
“They”, the characters of the poem, remain sinners on the windswept earth, “he” is above them and independent of them, above the blizzard, chaos and history. Earth and sky, "lower" and "higher" remain separated. The semantic outcome of the poem is the tragically comprehended absence of a fixed outcome.
In accordance with this pathos of tragic disunity - the composition and style of the poem. Let's briefly name the most important. Although the poem is an epic genre, the lyrical principles of compositional organization dominate in The Twelve, the same principles that are characteristic of Blok's lyrics. In a diary entry, Blok called his work "a series of poems under a common title," that is, he brought The Twelve closer to the lyrical cycle. Although the poem contains elements of chronological and spatial specifics (winter 1918, St. Petersburg), they are subject to a large-scale author's vision: time counts into epochs, and the space of the city correlates with the vast expanse of space.
Separate chapters correlate with each other as diverse episodes or lyrical situations, which are interconnected by a system of "musical" leitmotifs. The most important of them is the motive of the path (the word “go” is the most frequent in the poem). It is this motif of linear movement that becomes the organizing core of the poem. The motifs of the snow element, “black malice” and “mortal boredom” are contrasting with it, breaking the linear progression of the procession, giving the motif of the path a semantic ambiguity.
The same principle of contrast, disharmony is in the composition of the characters of the poem. Members of the patrol - the lower classes of society, squalor. In their depiction, Blok uses a minimum of pointed, expressive details. The same principle of “portraiting” prevails in the depiction of Vanka and Katya, hated by the walking patrol, in short descriptions of peripheral characters (“old woman”, “bourgeois”, “writer-vitia”, “lady in karakul”). The extreme case of contrast is the “hungry dog” and “Jesus Christ” rhymed in the last, most important stanza.
The only event of the poem - the murder of the innocent Katya - is placed by the author in the very center of the poem and is presented as a spontaneous act (“there is no crime”, because there are no moral standards for murderers, they are “children of nature”, the embodiment of deep “base” elements). Everything else in the poem is extremely diverse in scale and diverse in character: jerky remarks, scattered pictures of winter urban life, threats and complaints, exclamations and questions, ditties and urban romance. The author presents all this motley and discordant material without comment. His position is in the nature of the artistic refraction of the material that comes into view, in the very principles of editing episodes. These are the principles of dissonance, deliberate (almost grotesque) sharpening. The dynamics of the poem is in the sharpness of sharp stylistic clashes.
The principle of surprise, color or rhythmic contrast, failure, displacement is already stated in the first stanza:
Black evening.
White snow.
Wind, wind!
A person does not stand on his feet.
Wind, wind –
In all God's world!
The first three verses are a two-foot trochee. This meter in the fourth verse is unexpectedly replaced by a three-foot anapaest, followed again by a two-foot choreic verse, followed by a three-foot dolnik. Such alternations of poetic meters, and in some places the rejection of poetic meter, are the general rhythmic principle of the poem. Raesh verse is also used, organized by rhyme:
The old woman is killed - crying,
Never understand what it means
What is this poster for?
Such a huge patch?
How many footcloths would come out for the guys,
And everyone is undressed, undressed ...
The poem is polyrhythmic and polyphonic. Autonomous, almost independent poems are combined into an artistic whole, each of which has its own intonation, size, theme: cries, calls, verse-poster, verse-prayer, ditty. Many verses break off in mid-sentence. The repeated pause plays a very important role in the poem: it creates the feeling of a huge space saturated with thunderous air:
Freedom, freedom
Eh, eh, no cross!
Tra-ta-ta!
Cold, comrades, cold!
– And Vanka and Katya are in a tavern ...
The dynamics of the poem is born from the spirit of the sharpest collisions and contradictions. The verse itself is subject to the law of contrasting combinations: short, chopped lines are suddenly replaced by a stretched phrase. The vocabulary of the poem is distinguished by defiant topicality: political and thieves jargon, a mixture of high and low, an underlined rejection of literary refinement and intelligence.
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