The main idea of ​​the story is the blue bird. Lesson of literary reading "M. Maeterlinck. "Blue Bird""

1 option.

The play "The Blue Bird" was written at a time when G. Maeterlinck from a symbolist to a "theater of death" came to a different vision of the world - a romantic one. And the meaning of the play is to show mankind the philosophical meaning of being, the beauty of today's life and its greatness. The heroes of Maeterlinck, the little children of the forester Tiltil and Mytil, set off on a journey in search of the Blue Bird, which should give them health and happiness. What makes them go in search, although they do not know exactly where to go? The fairy will be able to awaken in them both kindness and the desire to know the world. After all, they must definitely learn to see what is "not in sight."

And then it turns out that the whole world around, all objects have their own soul, their attitude towards people. Then the children go in search not by themselves, but in a circle of friends and enemies. Just as every person always walks in life. Their journey lies the Land of Remembrance and the Palace of Night, the gardens of Bliss and the Realm of the Future. Children learn that they should pray for the dead, because "praying means remembering." The sacrament of death is as great as the sacrament of birth. And above all this is the old Time, which is impossible to let someone into the Earth sooner or later. And each carries with it some kind of action - good or bad. This is precisely the meaning of his birth - bringing something to the world. Wherever the children were, everywhere they saw birds that seemed blue, but none were that blue bird. And only when the children returned home again, the most similar turtledove, which belonged to Tyltil, turned out to be the most similar. And it is no coincidence that the journey itself ends in the very forester's hut from where they set off. Only now she seems different, better, because the children returned differently.

So the main thing is the readiness to go on a campaign for the truth, the desire for change, the desire for the ideal. This, according to Maeterlinck, is the meaning of life to understand why you came into the world, which is the meaning that you live, because life is eternal.

Maurice Maeterlinck was the man who created the symbolist "theater".

Now we can talk about the search for happiness by the heroes of The Blue Bird. It is clear that this extravaganza was preceded by a complex creative and spiritual path, if it is replaced by the Unknown, i.e. invisible and unknown fatal forces whose intentions are secret, unknown. After all, it was Death, to which all the faces that only waited listened.

And so the reader and the theater are offered a work in which there is no sense of predictability, the characters of which do not wait, but act and change, first of all, their own spiritual world. Through then most actors are symbols of the spiritual activity of man, as such, the creative principle.

Thus, the Soul of Light goes in search of the Blue Bird of happiness of a family that no one would call prosperous, accompanied by the Souls of Fire, Water, Sugar and two creatures that have been accompanying a person on his path for a long time. The souls of children are not primitive and have learned a lot. The magic diamond helps children on their way. And that path is the most dangerous that a person goes through. This is the way of self-education. One by one the pictures change. From the impoverished woodcutter's hut we find ourselves in the luxurious chambers of the fairy, just to meet with the assets of the original people - fire, water, bread, sugar, the first native animals. First, as one should have expected, on the path of self-knowledge, we turn to our memories ... A terrible demonstration of the maternal fate of the poor for me completely removes the idyllic mood of the picture: seven dead children, one after another, go to the end.

Deepening further leads little people to horrors and dark impulses of the human psyche. The Bluebirds caught here cannot stand the light. The "forest" of personality did not go far from the "forest" of nature, which tried to condemn a person whom, nevertheless, he was unable to defeat. The opening of the cemetery's Diamond assures the boy and girl that there is no death.

Nevertheless, the light can also be eclipsed - there are different blessings behind the essence, and if the masks are torn off, they look like monsters. And only the joys of understanding, seeing, not being afraid, just like Mother's Love, are true. The most tragic symbols are probably in the blue palace, where they are waiting for life, everything is in it in advance, unborn children ...

And so we return to the woodcutter's hut, without finding the Blue Bird. And something similar was already only at the beginning of his wanderings. He will give it to a neighbor girl, but he will not keep the Bird of Happiness.

Maybe because happiness cannot be chosen or received as a gift. You have to follow him. In vain, Tiltil addresses the audience: We ask you very much: if one of you finds him, then let him bring it to us, we need it in order to become happy in the future ...

Option 2.

By the beginning of the 20th century, Maeterlinck went beyond symbolism and became one of the creators of the Belgian progressive romantic and realistic drama.1 In 1908, the writer created one of his central works, The Blue Bird. This extravaganza, which tells about the journey of the woodcutter's children, accompanied by the souls of objects and phenomena, in search of a bird that can bring happiness to people, is filled with symbols and allegories.

Before proceeding directly to the analysis of the symbols in Maeterlinck's play, one should pay attention to the Russian translation of its title. We know the extravaganza as the "Blue Bird", however, just from the point of view of the symbolism of color, such a name is incorrect. Here is what Alexander Blok writes about this: “It is not at all pedantry on my part to find fault with the word blue and convey the French word Bleu with the word blue; in French, bleu means both blue and blue, just like Blau in German; but the point is that behind Maeterlinck's fairy tale play lies a long literary tradition. Maeterlinck was very much concerned with the German Novalis; he translated it and, as it were, rediscovered it for the French, his name is closely connected with symbolism; Maeterlinck is one of those to whom we owe the establishment of a close literary connection between the early romantics of the beginning of the century and the symbolists of the end of the century. Novalis is an early romantic, one of those few in whom the beginning of romanticism can be observed in its pure form, not complicated by later stratifications; he has not yet departed from his original path - and his main work is an unfinished novel about blue flower. We have firmly established the custom of calling this magical fabulous flower precisely blue and not blue, so there is no reason to call Maeterlinck's bird blue and not blue. By calling it blue, we break with tradition; but after all, every word is traditional, it is ambiguous, symbolic, it has deep roots; the last secrets of our consciousness lie precisely in the roots of language; therefore, we, artists, need to be careful about the word; it is easy to tear apart the ear of a sensitive reader or a theatrical spectator, immediately imposing on him a number of false associations. Let's be true to the word blue throughout the text of the play; because the flower is blue, the sky is blue, the moonlight is blue, the magical realm - (blue or azure - in Turgenev) and the haze in which the whole Maeterlinck fairy tale and every fairy tale that speaks of the unattainable is wrapped - blue, not blue.

To begin with, it should be said that the play contains not only symbolic images, but also allegorical ones, which should not be confused. In the abstract, I will talk about both the first and the second.

We observe the first symbolic detail in the tale at the very beginning, even before the children woke up. The strength of the light mysteriously changes in the room: “The scene is immersed in darkness for some time, then gradually increasing light begins to break through the cracks in the shutters. The lamp on the table lights up by itself. This action symbolizes the concept of "seeing in the true light." In the light in which Tiltil and Mitil will see the world after the diamond on the cap turns. In the light in which any person can see the world, looking at it with a pure heart. In this scene, the familiar contradiction between blindness and sight comes out, passes from a deep philosophical subtext into a dramatic plot. It is this motif that runs through the whole work and is central. In this regard, the opinion of I. D. Shkunaeva is interesting. She writes that in Maeterlinck's play there are two various types transformations. One of them, close to fabulous, is the return of phenomena to themselves. Tiltil's magic diamond does not change the world, but brings the sign and the essence into conformity. To do this, you only need to “open your eyes”, because the sign undoubtedly expresses the essence, it is easily read by sighted eyes. The transformation of people, phenomena and objects is a consequence of Tiltil's open view of the world. Widespread folk expressions that have retained all their metaphorical figurativeness - "to see in the true light" and "to look at the world with open eyes" - became the basis of the dramatic action of this play. However, what is required in order for the eyes to really open and the world to appear as it is, and not as it seems to poor eyesight? Let's pay attention to the mechanism of action of the magic diamond. And here we find a symbol: the traditional touch magic wand to the subject became in Maeterlinck the touch of a diamond on the “special bump” on Tyltil’s head. The consciousness of the hero changes - and then the world around him is transformed according to the laws of a fairy tale.3 "A big diamond, it returns vision."

Also, the central symbols of the play can be called the images of the children themselves and their poor relatives. They were typical representatives of the Belgian, and indeed of European society. At the beginning of the play, in the fairy palace, Tiltil and Mitil dress up as characters from fairy tales popular among the people. It is precisely because of their commonness as a guarantee of universality that they turned out to be a symbol of humanity. Immediately it is necessary to say why Maeterlinck chose children as the main characters. Researcher L.G. Andreev believes that it could not be an accident that the children had to go in search of the blue bird, to seek happiness in the meaning of life. How can one not recall the simplicity praised by Maeterlinck, those advantages of a naive, direct worldview, about which he wrote many times, Tyltil and Mitil for Maeterlinck are not only children who have experienced extraordinary adventures, but also the key with which you can open the gates truths and gates of heaven.4

Other characters of the extravaganza are also symbolic. Among all, it is worth highlighting the cat. Tiletta symbolizes evil, betrayal, hypocrisy. An insidious and dangerous enemy for children - such is her unexpected essence, her mysterious idea. The cat is friends with the Night: both of them guard the secrets of life. She is short with death; her old friends are Misfortunes. It is she who, in secret from the soul of Light, leads children into the forest to be torn to pieces by trees and animals. And here's what is important: children do not see the Cat in the "true light", they do not see it the way they see their other companions. Mytil loves Tiletta and protects her from Tilo's attacks. The cat is the only traveler whose soul, free under the rays of the diamond, did not fit in with its visible appearance. Bread, Fire, Milk, Sugar, Water and the Dog did not contain anything alien, they were direct proof of the identity of appearance and essence. The idea did not contradict the phenomenon, it only revealed and developed its invisible (“silent”) possibilities. So Bread symbolizes cowardice, conciliation. It has negative petty-bourgeois qualities. Sugar is sweet, compliments given to him do not come from pure heart, his manner of communicating is theatrical. Perhaps it symbolizes people from high society, close to power, trying in every possible way to please the rulers, just to "sit" in a good position. However, both Bread and Sugar have positive features. They selflessly accompany children. Moreover, Bread also carries a cage, and Sugar breaks off his candy fingers and gives them to Mytyl, who so rarely eats sweets in ordinary life. The dog embodies exclusively positive aspects of character. He is devoted, ready to go to his death, saving children. However, the owners do not fully understand this. They constantly make remarks to the dog, drive away even when he tries to tell them the truth about the betrayal of the cat. And in the forest, Tyltil even agreed to the offer of trees to tie Tilo.

Worth paying Special attention on the central character of the play - the Soul of Light. Note that in The Blue Bird among the travelers there is only one Soul of Light - an allegorical image. But the Soul of Light is an exception. This is not just a companion of children, it is their "leader"; it in her figure personifies the symbol of light - the guide of the blind. The remaining allegorical characters of the play are encountered by children on their way to the Blue Bird: each of them in a naively naked form carries his own morality - or rather, his part of the general morality - each presents his own special concrete lesson. Meetings with these characters form the stages of spiritual and spiritual education of children: Night and Time, Bliss, the fattest of which symbolize wealth, property, greed, and Joy, symbolizing the everyday life of ordinary people. honest people, Ghosts and Diseases teach Tiltil and Mitil either in the form of direct verbal edification, or by their own silent example, or by creating instructive situations for children from which everyday lessons can be learned. children from stage to stage of their journey. Its task is to unwind the tangle of events passing from one time to another, changing space. But the role of a guide is also to inspire hope, not to let faith fade away.

Special mention should be made of the role of time in extravaganza, of its symbolism. Face to face, we meet with him in one of the last pictures of the extravaganza, however, even earlier it kept reminding us of itself. However, not only in the distant Kingdom of the Future, but also in the first scene of the play - in the lumberjack's hut - personified time already appears before us: "beautiful ladies" dancing to the sounds of lovely music are the "free" and "visible" hours of Tyltil's Life .

Sleep and dreaming are the external, objective, and internal, subjective time of the "journey" of children. In a dream, with the help of memory and imagination, the quality of time as a special category of reality is symbolically recreated - the unity and continuity of its flow. The fact that the present contains both the past and the future, and that its "composition" is the composition" of the personality itself, Maeterlinck writes a lot in his philosophical studies of the beginning of the century. The dialectical interconnection of the three sides of time is carried out in the bodily, mental and spiritual being of a person: Meterliik seeks to prove this idea both on the pages of his philosophical prose and with the help of the poetic images and symbols of the Blue Bird.6

Finally, it should be said about the main symbol of the extravaganza - about the Blue Bird itself. The play says that the heroes need the blue bird "in order to become happy in the future"... Here the symbol of the bird intersects with the image of time, with the Kingdom of the future. Alexander Blok expresses an interesting version of why the bird has become a symbol of happiness. “The bird always flies away, you can’t catch it. What else flies like a bird? Happiness flies. The bird is a symbol of happiness; and happiness, as you know, has long been out of the question; adults talk about business, about arranging life on a positive basis; but they never talk about happiness, miracles, and similar things; it is even rather indecent; because happiness flies like a bird; and it is unpleasant for adults to chase the constantly flying Bird and try to pour salt on its tail. Another matter - to the child; children can play with it; Seriousness and decency are not asked of them, after all.”7 One can immediately conclude that children also symbolize hope for future happiness. Although they did not find the bird during the journey, and the turtledove flew away at the end, they do not despair and are going to continue searching for the blue bird, that is, happiness.

The heroes of the philosophical play-tale "The Blue Bird" are images-symbols that embody the forces that dominate the earth. This is a person, plants, animals, the elements of Light, Fire and Water, Soul, Bread, Milk, Hours - all that the human world consists of. It turns out that a person lives on earth, not noticing anyone and nothing around, except for people like himself. It seems to her that only he is endowed with a soul, and all the secrets of the world are solved by him. But it's not. With the help of a magic stone that opens true vision, Tiltil and Mitil, the heroes of the play, see the world as it really is - spiritualized, beautiful (and sometimes scary), full of secrets still unknown to mankind. In this world, the past, present and future are close and interpenetrate each other: Tiltil and Mitil meet both their long-dead relatives and their unborn brother. It turns out that a person is responsible not only for himself, but also for all his ancestors and descendants, because his whole family is a single whole, one endless line.

The playwright makes children his heroes, because their consciousness is still flexible, they are most receptive to the secrets of the world, close to nature. They know how to sincerely love and rejoice, they have not yet been touched by the misfortune and vices that appear in the play in the images of Fat Beatitudes (for example, the Bliss of Being Rich, the Bliss of Doing Nothing, etc.)

The cosmogonic created by Maeterlinck unites all the forces and laws of the earth: from night horrors and wars to the brightest essence of the earth - Maternal love, Justice, Joy to Understand; children get to their ancestors and descendants, to the underworld of the Night and to the tops of the world, meet the Souls of plants and animals. They learn that there are a large number of forces in the world that help them, or vice versa - offended by people and seeking revenge on them (such as the souls of those trees and animals that a person destroys).

Maeterlinck gives an optimistic picture of the future in the play: those children who expect their birth in the Kingdom of the Future will soon bring beautiful machines, flowers and fruits to the earth, overcome diseases, injustice and even death itself. However, even those who live on earth have a very important task: Tiltil and Mitil must find the Blue Bird - the bird of happiness - and bring it to earth. For this they know the world. But this world and the souls that inhabit it are within the people themselves. The action of the play begins and ends in the children's home. The journey into themselves took place in a dream, but, waking up, Tiltil and Mitil do not forget everything that happened to them, and now they look at the world around them in a new way: as the Soul of Light foresaw, their view of things has changed, and now it seems to them that only they woke up, and the rest of the people are sleeping, not seeing all the beauty and grace of the world.

“Inspires” in the play the world, the world surrounding a person, Maeterlinck shows that people need to “wake up”, look around and see all the beauty of the earth, the value human love and kindness, the need to live in peace with your neighbors on earth and to know the world without destroying it.

"Creating a fantasy world for yourself,
we are closer to the truth than by staying
in a reality accessible to our senses.
M. Maeterlinck "Essay on Immortality"

At the beginning of the last century, lovers of belles-lettres and inquisitive seekers of an alternative to the spiritual poverty of everyday life enriched themselves, including in generous scatterings of unsurpassed works by the remarkable playwright, writer and poet Maurice Maeterlinck. In my bookcase four volumes of the lifetime pre-revolutionary edition of this famous writer, who was rightfully given the nickname Happy, have been preserved.

A hundred years have passed. What has changed in our understanding of the values ​​of human life?

“To be wise,” said Maeterlinck, “is first of all to learn to be happy.” Some of his treatises were bluntly called a guide to happy life. "There is no happiness in happiness itself if it does not help us to think of something else and understand in some way the mystical joy that the universe experiences because it exists."

Maurice Maeterlinck was born on August 29, 1862 into a wealthy bourgeois family. His father was a wealthy notary, his mother was the daughter of an equally wealthy lawyer. The boy was initially destined for a parental path: to become more skilled in law and to strengthen family wealth, parental capital with his life. Understandable, from the point of view of common sense and age-old life experience, life guidelines. Everything else that is lacking in painstakingly making money and expanding business connections will add to the spiritual experience of the official religion.

Maurice graduated from a Jesuit college, in other words, received a religious education. At the insistence of his parents, he entered the university in hometown Ghent (Belgium). In 1885 he graduated Faculty of Law and obtained the right to practice law. Considering the patronage of relatives, their developed connections, a worthy position, it would not have been difficult for him to become an equally successful lawyer, which is undoubtedly richer, more influential, and more powerful. However, a fragile fantasy of a different higher happiness (not material), a vague feeling of the great mystery of life, inaccessible to material eyes, tore him from the digestible and understandable bourgeois way of life and threw him to unknown heights, whose peaks were hidden in frightening darkness.

In 1888, the first poetry collection was published, published at the expense of family funds, which was not particularly noticed by anyone. But now, a year later, the play "Princess Malene" on the one hand - unexpectedly, on the other - quite understandably and naturally, is highly appreciated by the influential French writer and critic Octave Mirbeau. Here is a quote from that fateful review: “I don’t know where Maeterlinck comes from and who he is .... I only know that I do not know a person more unknown than he. I also know that he created a masterpiece... an amazing, pure, eternal masterpiece. In a word, Maeterlinck gave us a brilliant work of our day, extremely wonderful and at the same time naive, not inferior in his good qualities ... than everything that is beautiful in Shakespeare. This work is called “Princess Malene”.

Although it was clearly not supposed to compete with Shakespeare, Maeterlinck would say a completely new word in dramaturgy, and perhaps this hidden genius potential was caught by Mirbeau. Because "Princess Malene" is just a test of strength: a kind of processing German fairy tale with complicating elements of Shakespeare's Hamlet. Most importantly, this review served as a starting point that radically changed the life of the author: he parted with jurisprudence and devoted himself entirely to literature.

Then strange one-act plays come out: "Unbidden", "Blind", "Seven Princesses" - as the starting position of a demanding person who, with the priceless gift of life, freezes at the closed mysterious doors. The hero seeks and does not find happiness.

"Unbidden" - waiting in inaction and ignorance for the miracle of true life, while it dies without being born

"Blind" - the metaphor of overwhelming death is expressed in a group of blind people lost in a dark unknown forest; here again ignorance, vanity, inability to get out of stupefying traditions Everyday life, in which there is an abyss of petty pleasures and pleasures, but there is no main one - a charming complicity with Higher powers that surround and permeate the font of earthly humanity.

"Seven Princesses" - the prince is destined to awaken from the deadly denouement of sleep (according to current concepts, awakening is superimposed on sleep, and this is what kind of awakening it is: draining vitality? bringing vitality?) seven princesses. The prince, not for a moment late, saves everyone except his beloved. Why?… Doom prevails over us… How can we break through the wall behind which there is a sea of ​​invisible joy that opens our eyes and brings meaning to our every thought, movement? The knowledge that is needed no less than the air we breathe comes too late, running out vitality when our soul has long been suffocated in the cloaca of vices, and only occasionally visits a fading body.

The next iconic drama is Peleas and Melisande. By outward signs this is a story of passion that transgressed civil laws, that rejected the burden of conventions, coupled with the tradition of living accepted in real life. However, in the symbolic conception, this is a drama of true lovers who, in search of the embodiment of true love, in search of perfection (burning social creativity ... with anguish, with the wheezing of driven horses) - destroy themselves. A story of love at first sight, when there is a sudden, complementary, exchange of inexpressible ordinary words, the secrets of life and death - they are trapped in Eternity, remaining on an imperfect earth.

Meanwhile, Maurice meets beautiful woman: strong-willed educated lady, singer and actress. For twenty-three years, she will become his companion, earthly guardian angel, secretary and impresario. The couple moved to Paris and plunged into the higher theatrical life. At this time, Maeterlinck wrote metaphysical essays and treatises, which later compiled collections: Treasure of the Humble, Wisdom and Destiny. The third treatise "The Life of Bees" stands apart - it opens a new branch in the work of the innovative playwright: the search for analogies of intricate human problems in the ideal life of animals and plants (together - in nature without human ego).

The mind of a writer (a guide in the world of the unknown), enlightened by metaphysical research, balanced family life makes adjustments to spiritual research. The play "Monna Vanna" raises the theme of a person's protest against the omnipotence of fate, fate. There are already developments included in the essay, which, with saving beacons, orients the path in the unknown ...

In the treatise “Wisdom and Destiny” there are statements explaining the author himself: “It would be necessary that from time to time someone, especially favored by fate, rewarded with brilliant, envious, superhuman happiness, would come and simply announce to us: I have received everything what you invoke in desires every day. I have wealth, health, youth, fame, power and love. Now I can call myself happy, but not because of the gifts that fate has bestowed on me, but because these blessings have taught me to look beyond happiness. It is appropriate to add that if some of the goods and qualities that are called worldly happiness came as a gift, and they had enough wisdom not to take such happiness at face value, then why should others, whom fate does not tempt with wealth, glory, or power, spend precious time and effort to achieve wealth, glory, and power ... Go ahead for the Blue Bird!

The play "The Blue Bird" had tsarist Russia a huge success, as well as all over the world. And still does not leave the stage.

According to Maeterlinck, the Blue Bird is a symbol of happiness that people are looking for everywhere in distant countries and distant lands, in the past and in the future, calling on dark and light forces, not noticing that this happiness is next to them, under their hand, in their own house that in fact you don’t need to look for happiness - you need to be able to see it, because it is everywhere and everywhere like sunlight.

Acquaintance of an inexperienced reader with the original source - the play "The Blue Bird" - leads to well-known confusion: one hundred pages of small text, many unusual characters (68 out of 12 collective!), An unusual art form that requires special knowledge (after all, plays are not read, but watched , preferably from the screen). However, reading the original eliminates a number of imposed opinions and interpretations and makes it possible to get in touch with the author's world from hand to hand.

The peculiarity of the construction of the play, what is extravaganza, exposition, plot, ups and downs, remark, monologue, dialogue - educational program will take fifteen minutes. And then ... further immersion in a fantastic, and at the same time real, world of happiness seekers.

So, children, as a symbol of purity and purity, from a simple working family, on the night before Christmas, suddenly wake up, awakened by the noise of fun from the house of the rich, which is opposite. The poor people themselves have joys - the cat cried. Suddenly, a fairy resembling the Russian Baba Yaga appears and tells the children to go in search of happiness. “You have to be brave to see the hidden,” she irritably admonishes and gives magic items, which allow you to see the very hidden, if the magical gaze is not developed. There is no ability to see, but not to look. By engaging magical power(putting on a magical green cap and turning a wonderful diamond) little hero as if falling into another world: all objects, the furnishings of the hut, fire, water, a cat, a dog come to life. They all have a soul that vaguely resembles a material form: fire - a swift athlete in a red tights; water - a flexible girl with loose flowing hair; sugar - a sugary type in extravagant clothes; the flame of the lamp is a radiant peerless beauty in a transparent sparkling tunic, etc. And the souls of people are completely different from appearance. So an unpleasant decrepit sorceress becomes a beautiful and sweet fairy.

Children, accompanied by chosen Souls, go on a journey through fairy-tale worlds. There are many of them: the Land of Memories, the Palace of Night, the Forest, the Cemetery, the Gardens of Bliss, the Kingdom of the Future - and in each unusual detachment fairy creatures led by two boys, he seems to find the Blue Bird or something similar to it, some alternative to happiness, an interpretation, his own interpretation - all this is easy to take for truth, if not for the Soul of Light, hiding its face behind a shining robe, and quite competently summarizing one or another version of happiness. She knows a lot, and leads, suggests. Avoids a direct answer. At the request to open completely, to show his face, he wraps himself more tightly in sunny clothes.

In the Land of Memories, memories of the dear and close to the heart, of joyful moments turn out to be happiness.

In the Palace of the Night, saturated with many-sided Evil, sometimes indistinguishable from good, there are dreams.

In the Forest - in life in nature, away from the ever-busy civilization.

At the Cemetery - in death, bringing blissful calm, relieving from the burden of earthly worries, hardships and hardships.

In the Gardens of Bliss - in pleasures, pleasures.

In the Kingdom of the Future - in the future, which will solve all problems and harmonize earthly life with the great mystery of eternal life.

Having visited all the fairy-tale worlds, children receive the most important life lesson that no real school will teach. Firstly, the very task of catching and caged the Blue Bird, symbolizing complete happiness, turns into an understanding of what happiness is and how to achieve it, and how to distinguish genuine from fake. Secondly, meeting with the Spirits of Darkness and confronting them convincingly shows that the horrors can be overcome. The succession of Bliss shows illusory and destructive consequences. Meeting with Misfortunes strengthens the forces and convinces that they are amenable to taming.

In addition to the most valuable life lesson children learn the highest truth: “There is neither death nor oblivion; in the boundless ocean of being, the past, present, future are connected by thousands of threads. The law according to which life in the world should be built is unselfishness. Only by changing the setting in your inner world(having reset) to disinterestedness, and a guarantee of happiness is obtained.

Thus purified (equally unclouded childish) and expanded consciousness, which returns to a person the extinguished vision (to look and see) and becomes the basis for victory over Doom, over the growing, like a cancerous tumor, the many-sided Evil.

The children made a fabulous journey as if in a dream. The mother, who came to wake them up, listens in bewilderment to the boys' story about this wonderful campaign. He sends his father for a doctor. But then a neighbor comes in, who suddenly seems very similar to the same fairy that sent the boys after the Blue Bird. She says that her granddaughter is very ill: nerves ... The mother persuades her son to give her a tame turtledove, which suddenly becomes very similar to the Blue Bird. The boy gives the cage with the bird and - unexpectedly! - sees the situation at home with new eyes, and an unusually joyful feeling grows in him.

There is a knock, and the old neighbor, who looks very much like a fairy, enters again, and is extremely beautiful girl with a turtledove pressed to her chest, very similar to the Soul of Light, and the turtledove is exactly that Blue Bird, for which they went to distant lands. The girl is beaming - she has recovered! The boy tries to explain to her how to take care of the dove, but the Bird flies away ... The wonderful granddaughter is crying - young hero promises her to catch Bird...

With the help of a magical green cap with a magic diamond, another world was opened up to the heroes, completely different from the real one, and with the help of a gesture of altruism, a true vision of the world was also opened, as it turned out, spiritualized and full of secrets, where everything and everything is inextricably linked and in response each other, responsible for the ancestors and for the descendants.

“Maeterlinck,” Alexander Blok noted in his time and who has become timeless, like any genuine word and action, “gives an optimistic picture of the future in the play: those children who expect their birth in the Kingdom of the Future will soon bring beautiful machines, flowers and fruits to the earth will conquer disease, injustice, and even death itself. However, even those who live on earth have a very important task: Tiltil and Mitil must find the Blue Bird - the bird of happiness - and bring it to earth. For this they know the world. But this world and the souls that inhabit it are within the people themselves. The action of the play begins and ends in the children's home. The journey into themselves took place in a dream, but, waking up, Tiltil and Mitil do not forget everything that happened to them, and now they look at the world around them in a new way: as the Soul of Light foresaw, their view of things has changed, and now it seems to them that only they woke up, and the rest of the people are sleeping, not seeing all the beauty and grace of the world.

It would be nice to sleep, otherwise they fill life with horrors and vices, misunderstandings, thoughtlessness, presented as a new law of life. Life, eating itself, on the eve of the biblical Apocalypse, which no longer seems to be an age-old parable.

Is it because they are looking for an illusory happiness that does not exist, instead of looking deep into themselves: to find, develop and rely on selfless life values which will lead to the shore of the great Eternity, accompanying this whole path with an unthinkable enthusiastic feeling of happiness to live in accordance with and according to the rules of the highest truth.

Biography

Maurice Maeterlinck was born on August 29, 1862 in Ghent, the son of a wealthy lawyer. Since childhood, he was interested in literature and poetry, but his parents insisted on a legal education. Having received a law degree in 1885, Maurice goes to Paris to improve his law. Six months spent in Paris, he devotes entirely to literature.
Returning to Ghent, Maeterlinck works as a lawyer and continues his studies in literature. He began to publish in Parisian publications, receiving laudatory reviews from critics. The play-tale "Princess Malene" was considered a masterpiece by the influential French critic Mirbeau, and he compared its author with Shakespeare. Inspired by praise, Maeterlinck leaves the practice of law and devotes himself entirely to literature.
Prone to metaphor and symbolism, Maeterlinck writes mostly fairy tales and plays, where the characters speak little, in short, meaningful phrases, where much remains in the subtext. He is especially good at plays for puppets - unlike live actors, puppets can play a symbol, convey the archetype of his characters.
In 1895, Maurice met Georgette Leblanc, an actress and singer, who becomes his companion, secretary and impresario, protects him from strangers. In 1896 they leave for Paris. During these years, Maeterlinck wrote metaphysical essays and treatises, which were included in the collections Treasure of the Humble, Wisdom and Fate, and The Life of Bees, which draws an analogy between the activity of a bee and human behavior.
The playwright's most popular play, The Blue Bird, was first staged by Stanislavsky in Moscow in 1908; subsequently, she was successfully presented on the stages of London, New York, Paris, gaining popularity not only for her fabulous fantasy, but also for her allegoricalness.
In 1911, Maeterlinck was awarded the Nobel Prize "for his many-sided literary activity, especially for dramatic works, marked by a wealth of imagination and poetic fantasy."
During the First World War, Maeterlinck tried to enlist in the Belgian Civil Guard, but was not accepted due to his age. During this time, his relationship with Leblanc soured, and they separated after the war. In 1919 he married Rene Daon, an actress who played in The Blue Bird.
In the last years of his life, Maeterlinck wrote more articles than plays; from 1927 to 1942, 12 volumes of his writings were published, the most interesting of which is The Life of Termites, an allegorical condemnation of communism and totalitarianism.
Maeterlinck died on May 6 (according to some sources - May 5), 1949 from a heart attack.

Symbolism

Symbolism (fr. Symbolisme) is one of the largest trends in art (in literature, music and painting), which arose in France in the 1870s and 80s. and the most developed turn of XIX and XX centuries, primarily in France itself, Belgium and Russia. The Symbolists radically changed not only different kinds art, but also the attitude towards it. Their experimental nature, desire for innovation, cosmopolitanism and a wide range of influences have become a model for most contemporary art movements. Symbolists used symbolism, understatement, hints, mystery, mystery.
The term "symbolism" in art was first coined by the French poet Jean Moréas in the manifesto of the same name - "Le Symbolisme" - published on September 18, 1886 in the newspaper "Le Figaro". By that time, there was another, already stable term "decadentism", which was scornfully called the new forms in the poetry of their criticism. "Symbolism" was the first theoretical attempt by the decadents themselves, so no sharp distinctions, let alone aesthetic confrontation, were established between decadence and symbolism. However, it should be noted that in Russia in the 1890s, after the first Russian decadent writings, these terms began to be contrasted: they saw ideals and spirituality in symbolism and, accordingly, manifested it in this way, and in decadence - lack of will, immorality and passion only external form. In their works, the Symbolists tried to reflect the life of every soul - full of experiences, obscure, vague moods, subtle feelings, fleeting impressions. Symbolist poets were innovators of poetic verse, filling it with new, bright and expressive images, and sometimes, trying to achieve an original form, they went into a senseless play on words and sounds considered by their critics. Roughly speaking, we can say that symbolism distinguishes between two worlds: the world of things and the world of ideas. The symbol becomes symbol connecting these worlds in the sense it generates. Every symbol has two sides - the signified and the signifier. This second side is turned to the unreal world. Art is the key to the mystery.
The concept and image of the Mystery, the mysterious, the mystical, is manifested both in romanticism and in symbolism. However, romanticism, as a rule, proceeds from the fact that “the knowledge of the world is the knowledge of oneself, for man is the greatest mystery, the source of analogies for the Universe” (Novalis). Symbolists have a different understanding of the world: in their opinion, true Being, “true-existing” or Mystery, is an absolute, objective principle, to which both Beauty and the world Spirit belong. Unlike other trends in art that use elements of their characteristic symbolism, symbolism considers the expression of "unattainable", sometimes mystical, Ideas, images of Eternity and Beauty, the goal and content of its art, and the symbol, fixed in the element of artistic speech and based in its image into a polysemantic poetic word - the main, and sometimes the only possible artistic means.
The most striking change introduced by symbolism concerns the form of the artistic embodiment of its poetics. In the context of symbolism, a work of any kind of art begins to play precisely with poetic meanings, poetry becomes a form of thinking. Prose and drama begin to sound like poetry, the visual arts paint its images, and with music, the connection of poetry becomes simply all-encompassing. Poetic images-symbols, as if rising above reality, giving a poetic associative array, are embodied by symbolist poets in a sound-written, musical form, and the sound of the poem itself is no less, if not more important for expressing the meaning of a symbol. Summarizing, we can say that the method of symbolism involves the embodiment of the main ideas of the work in the many-valued and many-sided associative aesthetics of symbols, i.e. such images, the meaning of which is comprehensible through their direct expression by a unit of artistic (poetic, musical, pictorial, dramatic) speech, as well as through its certain properties (the sound of a poetic word, the color scheme of a pictorial image, the interval and rhythmic features of a musical motive, timbre colors etc.). The main content of a symbolic work is the eternal Ideas expressed in the figurativeness of symbols, i.e. generalized ideas about a person and his life, the highest Meaning, comprehended only in a symbol, as well as Beauty embodied in it.

Analysis of the play "The Blue Bird".

"Blue Bird" analysis of the work will help prepare for the lesson and tell what the "Blue Bird" teaches.

"Blue bird" analysis

Year of writing — 1908

Type of literature- drama.

Genre- extravaganza, which means a theatrical or circus performance of fabulous content, requiring magnificent staging and stage effects.

"Blue Bird" what does it teach? The Blue Bird by Maurice Maeterlinck teaches us to cherish what we have, to see and find happiness next to us and appreciate it.

Idea"Be brave to see the hidden."

main characters: Tiltil and Mytil, Soul of Light, Fairy Berilyun, sick girl, Souls of things and animals

Conflict- the struggle of the forces of good and evil, light and darkness, overcoming all obstacles by the heroes.

Composition "Blue bird"

• exposition- In the lumberjack's hut;
• tie— Appearance of the fairy Berilyuna, Miraculous transformations of objects. Children go on a journey for the Blue Bird.
• Action development: Land of Memories; Kingdom of the Night; Forest; Gardens of Bliss; Kingdom of the future;
• climax— Farewell
• denouement- Awakening

Real and fantastic in the work "The Blue Bird"

In the plot of the play, two layers are intertwined - real and fantastic. Real life in the family of a lumberjack, the situation in their poor but not miserable hut, the time when the action takes place is the night before Christmas. The Christmas motif - the expectation of a miracle and the birth of a person - also gets a real embodiment. After a fantastic journey in a dream, the children woke up wise and happy, because the miracle of the birth of a soul in them was fulfilled. Let us recall: at the beginning of the play, Tyltil, when asked by the fairy Berilyuna why he does not want to part with his turtledove, answers: “Because she is mine.” Now, after a long search, trials, difficulties and hardships that have fallen to their lot on this difficult path, he is ready to immediately and disinterestedly give it away. Mercy and love for one's neighbor are the conditions for this miracle.

The fantastic plot plan, in addition to the journey, contains characters who share their daily existence with children, and now come to life. These are Bread, Milk, Water, Cat and Dog. Their fabulousness is emphasized by traditional characters and descriptions of costumes. However, they also symbolize the forces of good and evil. The dog acts as the faithful Sancho Panza. Bread, depending on the circumstances, helps or harms children. The cat is the embodiment of betrayal and deceit, personifies the demonic forces hostile to man, together with the Night she guards the secrets of Genesis. Taking advantage of the gullibility of the children, the Cat leads them into the forest to be killed by trees and animals suffering from "the cruelty and amazing injustice of man." In such an allegorical form, the author claims that nature is reluctant to reveal the secrets of Being, and a person can do this only through harmonious interaction with her.