Lyrical hero of the cycle “Scary World”

There is a fairly common idea of ​​Blok’s path as a straightforward and steady movement “forward and higher.” And, meanwhile, the poet himself testified that his “ascent” did not go in a straight line, but in a spiral and was accompanied by “deviations” and “returns,” which confirms the content of the third volume.

The volume opens with the cycle “A Scary World” (1910-1916). The theme of a “terrible world” runs through Blok’s work. It is often interpreted only as a topic of denunciation of “bourgeois reality.” But this is only the external, visible side of the “terrible world”. Its deeper essence is perhaps more important for the poet. A person living in a “terrible world” experiences its harmful effects. The elements, “demonic” moods, destructive passions take possession of a person. The lyrical hero also falls into the orbit of these dark forces. His soul tragically experiences the state of its own sinfulness, unbelief, emptiness, and mortal fatigue. There are no natural, healthy human feelings in this world. Love? There is none, there is only bitter passion, like wormwood, “low passion”, rebellion of “black blood” (“Humiliation”, “On the Islands”, “In a Restaurant”, “Black Blood”). The hero, who has lost his soul, appears before the reader in different guises. Then he is a Lermontov-Vrublev demon, suffering himself and bringing death to others.

Once upon a time, the poet imagined that the sky stretching above him was full of “angel wings” and the azure path led upward into “starry dreams” - but years and years passed, and this sky “hidden itself, curled up like a scroll,” according to the ancient legend, and a different sky appeared, covered with harsh clouds and threatening unheard-of troubles; the very environment surrounding the poet has become a trap, a trap where troubles, fears, and horrors await a person at every step. The chronicler of these disasters and horrors, of which a man of the early twentieth century was a witness and participant, is A.A. Block.

In the eyes of the poet, the “terrible world” was scary not only with obvious horrors, crimes, inhumanity, but also with hypocrisy, deceit, and duplicity; because he knew how to cover up his predatory being, his “dark deeds” with the most sublime words and “signs”. In the world that surrounded the poet, people often turned out to be werewolves and “doubles”; they wore masks, under which something dangerous, predatory, terrible could be discerned; all things and phenomena seemed to cast their shadow, and the poet, in everyday life itself, saw many incredible metamorphoses that made him suspect the very nature of human relationships, experiences, passions as deceptive and reversible - that is why the motif and theme in his lyrics acquire such significant significance masks, “tearing off masks”; In his poems, masks, “doubles”, werewolf images sweep by in a whirlwind.

Here the beautiful Stranger, as if descended from the heights of the stars, turns out to be a prostitute, the “snake paradise” turns into the hell of “bottomless boredom”, friends turn into enemies, traitors “in life and friendship”; here the devils are “pure as angels”, and the angels turn out to be “yesterday’s”, carnivorous predatory creatures, ready to plunge a “sharp French heel” into the heart at any moment - and, therefore, not only the earth, but also the sky is inhabited by “doubles” and masks.

In the surrounding world, where predatory passions and lusts play out, a person feels empty and lonely; he is surrounded by forces hostile to him, he is mortally sad, because in him everything that is best and truly human that is on earth is trampled upon, humiliated, polluted and which takes on some strange and ambiguous connotation, reminiscent of the unclean underside of a garment located at all the seams, yet which has not lost the gloss of its casual side.

The whole world seemed to be turning inside out before the poet’s eyes, and was it easy for him to guess what was hiding “under the mask”: a human smile or a clownish grin, “the hateful trembling of greedy lips”? Sometimes it seems: the poet himself is not sure where he stands, either on solid ground, or on a shaky and unreliable cover, above a failure, at the bottom of which there is death - and he himself does not know whether what is opening before him is true. glance, or is this just another game of deceitful masks and elusive shadows?

But for Blok, the “Scary World” - with its fears, temptations, obsessions - is not only what exists somewhere beyond the threshold of consciousness, but also what the poet sees in himself, in part of his own being.

The poet personifies this hostile principle, inherent in himself, in his inner world, in his many likenesses - and so the image of a “double” arises, the shadow of which haunts the poet and forces him to greedily and intently peer into himself, searching for that which is so hostile to him in the life around him.

The “double” is everything that opposes the poet - his shadow, his “not I”, which can - for the human being is mobile and “reversible” - become his “I”, take over the field of a person’s consciousness, displace him from life, as in Andersen’s fairy tale, where a shadow becomes a man, and a man becomes its pitiful and helpless shadow, and leaves him destitute and robbed, finding no shelter and having lost the meaning of his existence...

The “double” is usually subtle, like a shadow dimly visible in the twilight; it contains everything that is disgusting to the poet, everything that he seeks to displace from his inner life. But one day he makes an unexpected discovery, taking by surprise those thoughts and feelings that he barely

perceptible sensations, the existence of which I had never suspected before: there is in him that beginning that is alien and hostile to him; That’s why the theme of “doubleness” occupies such a significant place in Blok’s lyrics and why the city tells the poet such scary tales at every step. And the most dangerous and seductive fairy tale was that the poet often lost the idea of ​​where he is - real, genuine, not invented by himself, alien to any illusions, self-delusions, compromises, and where is his shadow, his “double” - everything that is hateful to him and that at the same time is rooted in him, in his most secret depths, curls around to penetrate his inner world; It was most difficult for the poet to fight this deception, for here some part of his own being entered into a conspiracy with dark forces hostile to him.

The poet saw that the “terrible world” was looking for - and sometimes finding - the most secret loopholes and cracks in order not only to enslave a person from the outside, to subjugate him to itself, but also to capture him from the inside, break his will to fight and resist, to completely absorb him and “ digest” him, turn him into his servant and guide - and for Blok this danger was all the more tangible and real since he himself was just a particle of that “terrible world” that caused him such invincible disgust? What if he himself is flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone? But this is precisely what was instilled in the poet by werewolves and “doubles”, each of whom sought to look like him, his exact copy.

“A Terrible World,” invading Blok’s lyrics without any veils or masks, introduced into it features and motifs that were unusually dark, harsh, and bitter; here a person’s life, the simplest and most ordinary, at the same time turns out to be unbearably painful, as if in some kind of painful delirium or obsession, and in vain a person tries to get away from them - they are everywhere and persistently pursuing him:

You jump up and run into the deserted streets,

But there is no one to help:

No matter where you turn, he looks into empty eyes

And spends the night.

There the wind above you will moan in the drafts

Until the pale morning;

The policeman, in order not to fall asleep, will drive away

A tramp from the fire...

The omnipotence of dark and predatory forces, striving to put their imprint, their “sign”, their mark on everything, gives rise to a feeling of despair and hopelessness in the poet, under the influence of which he states:

Live for at least another quarter of a century -

Everything will be like this. There is no outcome.

But these poems are not Blok’s most desperate, as evidenced by such a poem as “Voice from the Choir”: “Very unpleasant poems... But I had to say them. Difficult things must be overcome. There will be a clear day behind him..."

Tracing the various motifs of Blok’s lyrics, such as “snake paradise”, “a legend in the making”, “peaceful happiness”, the play of shadows and “doubles”, all the horrors and temptations of the “terrible world”, all the frantic fascination with the poisons and deceptions of “wine, passions” , the destruction of the soul,” we see how the hero of Blok’s lyrics succumbs to these fears and deceptions, gives in to them - and how in the end he finds the strength and will to overcome them, to emerge from the struggle with them even more wise than he was before, having defended his human vocation; This is the victory of Blok as a person and an artist, who, despite all his doubts, deviations, and contradictions, did not lose the sense of the “right path” that shone before him even in that darkness, which he himself called “demonic.”

We have already noted Blok’s extreme inconsistency, reflected in the themes and motives of “dualism,” in the struggle between symbolist and realistic tendencies, and in many other ways; What, in the end, determined the victory of “good and light” in Blok’s work, the victory of the life principle and that “social person” whom the poet saw more clearly and undeniably in himself over the years?

First of all, because the passionate interest in reality, awakened by the revolution, faith in the simple working man, in his inner beauty, in his enormous strength, which was clearly evident in those days of 1905, which the poet himself called “the great time,” has already never left Blok, remained the unshakable and unchanging basis of the poet’s inner world; this determined the nature of creativity, its most significant and important features, which prevailed over others - confused and “accidental” (in the words of the poet himself).

Even though the world where the poet lived during the years of the revolution again turned out to be a terrible world, dominated by forces hostile to man, there was also something that distinguished this world in Blok’s eyes from the one doomed to destruction, as it was seen in former times - in the days of “crossroads” "and the collapse of past dreams and illusions.

To representatives of the “refined” intelligentsia, who imagined themselves to be the salt of the earth, Blok contrasted people of the people - men, workers, who

...the bright eyes of free Rus'

They shone strictly from their blackened faces...

It was here, and not among aesthetes and decadents, that the poet saw true beauty, not needing any makeup or embellishment - and if he spoke about the people, then with the greatest respect and even reverence, as the bearer of a certain, not always clear to himself, the unconditional truth and the creator of everything beautiful that is on earth; It was precisely among the people and in the people that Blok saw those qualities and aspirations that he valued above all else: unbreakable moral principles, a thirst for justice, unshakable courage, readiness for real work, for real, and not bookish and not imaginary. Faith in the people, in the common man, in his inner beauty and immeasurable power, and therefore in his great future, helped the poet to overcome the misfortunes of the “terrible world”, to contrast the pseudo-hero of decadent literature - the predator, the money-grubber, the “blond beast” - with the true hero, that who lifts the “faithful hammer” in the fight against dark and predatory forces, who is ready to tirelessly “follow a heavy plow in the fresh dew in the morning” and will never betray his high human name, duty, purpose.

This attitude towards workers, artisans, and working people is extremely characteristic of Blok; Almost never did he speak so respectfully, with such high pathos, about those people of art and literature who made up his environment and considered themselves the color of the nation.

The great irresistible power of his native country was heard by the poet in her “wind songs”, in the voice of her people, reminiscent of the greatness of people, only for the time being downtrodden and humiliated; that's why, it seemed to the poet, -

...the impossible is possible,

The long road is easy

When the road flashes in the distance

An instant glance from under a scarf,

When it rings with guarded melancholy

The coachman's dull song!

This is what Blok wrote in his poem “Russia” (1908), listening to this song, which sounded to him like hope and promise; in it the soul of the people was revealed to the poet - unyielding, proud, freedom-loving, thirsting for a fair and better share, which is its guarantee and harbinger.

Blok contrasted an ordinary, simple, and at the same time great and beautiful person with all the gloomy and misanthropic fabrications of decadent literature, with the painful fantasies of misanthropes and pessimists who attributed eternal cruelty, depravity and baseness to man; No, the person is not like that, - Blok objects to them, - he is “not Peredonov and not a rapist, not a libertine and not a villain... He acts terribly simply, and in this simplicity only the precious pearl of his spirit is reflected.”

The poet sees this “precious pearl” of the human spirit, human nobility, first of all, in an ordinary person, and next to this shining pearl everything else fades, all fabrications against a simple, and at the same time a great person seem insignificant; “he is not an angel, not a demon, but without him there is nothing truly beautiful on earth,” Blok argued in his article.

In his poem “Two Centuries” (1911), Alexander Alexandrovich characterizes the 19th and 20th centuries:

Nineteenth century, iron,

Truly a cruel age!

By you into the darkness of the night, starless

Careless abandoned man!

On the night of speculative concepts,

Materialistic small matters,

Powerless complaints and curses

Bloodless souls and weak bodies!

lyric block verse hero

This is how gloomy, dangerous and hopeless the poet sees the 19th century. The man of this century is permeated by cold, darkness, his body is weak, his soul is bloodless, his powerless complaints and curses are heard.

...The century is not of salons, but of living rooms,

Not Recamier, but I’ll just give...

The Age of Bourgeois Wealth

(Invisibly growing evil!).

Under the sign of equality and brotherhood

Dark things were brewing here...

That is, this is the age of hypocrisy and external false beauty, where dark deeds were born and “mature.”

Twentieth century... Even more homeless,

Even worse than life is darkness

(Even blacker and bigger

Shadow of Lucifer's wing).

Fires smoky sunset

(Prophecies about our day)

Comet menacing and tailed

A terrible ghost on high.

Here the lyrical hero feels the end of the world is close, and his mood becomes even more pessimistic.

Terrible images of humiliated, dispossessed, and tormented people gave rise to anger against the masters and rulers of the “terrible world,” which could find its outcome in a cleansing, incinerating and merciless thunderstorm:

To the impenetrable horror of life

Open quickly, open your eyes,

Until the great thunderstorm

I didn’t dare everything in your homeland...

The poet is captured by the pain of the people, tormented by all their torments, shares their hopes and aspirations, and this gives rise to the sharpness and depth of experiences and perceptions that echo in his “Iambics”, filled with enormous inner strength; they arise on the crest of high inspiration, which knows no barriers and flows out fully, widely, freely, with the naturalness of the very breath and the depth of a great, passionately intense feeling, as if embracing the entire expanse of the native land, absorbing all its beauty, all its proud and free soul :

Like summer, they rustle in the darkness,

Now straightening, now bending

All night under the secret wind the grains:

The time for flowering has begun...

In the flowering of these cereals, the poet glimpses another flowering, powerful and immortal, over which no “winter dreams”, no dark forces have power.

If reality once appeared to the poet as “fragments of worlds,” terrible in every image and vision, then awakened by the revolution and flaring up with enormous, all-consuming force, love for the Motherland and faith in the Russian people were a reliable antidote to horror and despair, which created a new and the solid foundation of the poet’s spiritual life determined the new character and new, unusually wide scale of his creativity, his searches and aspirations.

The pathos of Blok’s creativity consists in a complex, internally contradictory, sometimes joyful and solemn, sometimes unsatisfied and thirsty for quenching, a feeling of “unity with the world”, a unity that seems to have already been achieved and evokes a feeling of delight, an unprecedented fullness of all one’s vital forces, sometimes as if would be completely unattainable - and then aggravate the poet’s painful discord with the reality around him.

He turned to himself with confessions in which one can hear long-accumulated bitterness:

...entering a huge world,

You are looking for unity in vain... -

and the futility of the search for “unity with the world,” without which a person cannot find his true place in life, fulfill his duty and purpose, gives rise to the tragedy of Blok’s experiences, that unbearable bitterness that is mixed with his poems; but in both cases, whether these searches are futile or not, it is they that determine the nature of the poet’s experiences - and his thirst for “unity with the world” remained unchanged, seemingly already quenched, then burning with renewed vigor.

The peculiarity of Blok’s lyrical and philosophical concept lies in the fact that it strives to embrace the entire intelligible space, all times of a person’s existence, to resolve the fundamental issues of his existence, which determines the very nature of the depiction of temporary and spatially limited phenomena and states in Blok’s lyrics, where the personal, the transitory and concrete is invariably associated with the world, all-human, enduring.

Real life at every step - and completely mercilessly - shattered the poet's youthful illusions; he saw more and more clearly: it is not so easy to reject real life, which confronts him with everyday horror, persistently bursting into the realm of his dreams and visions, not allowing him to forget for a minute - and his lyrics become as if a harbinger of universal and inevitable death, as the only way out of the darkness of “everyday life.”

As before, the poet calls his reader to go to where the “other world” is visible, but his very idea of ​​the “other world” has changed significantly over the years; if at first the “other world” seemed to the poet in a purely ideal - in the spirit of Plato’s teachings - and ethereal image, as something completely “external” and alien to earthly life, specifically sensory perception, then later the “other world” became completely different for him: this there was a world of the future, a world where oppression, need, and inequality would disappear, the very thought of which aroused indignation in the poet, which he called revolutionary.

So the vaguely romantic and naively dreamy feeling of “unity with the world” was subsequently replaced by another - and much more mature one, caused by the understanding that the fulfillment of one’s aspirations can be achieved not apart from people, not in solitary and inactive contemplation, but only together with people, with the people, in labor and struggle; the poet himself, in his lyrics, challenged past dreams, fantasies, ideas that to feel the fullness of existence, first love, a light-feathered cloud, an azure path leading to heavenly heights is quite enough; no, this is too easy and clearly a deceptive path - just like oblivion in the storm of “gypsy passions”.

The poet translates his thoughts and feelings into a broad philosophical plane that includes thoughts about the purpose and meaning of all life:

“An out-of-tune violin always disrupts the harmony of the whole; her shrill howl bursts like an annoying note into the harmonious music of the world orchestra. And there are people in the world who remain serious and tragically sorrowful when everything around them flies in a whirlwind of madness; they look through the clouds and say: there is spring there, there is dawn there.”

Blok called such people artists - but, of course, not only in the professional sense of the word, but in a much broader sense; an artist, Blok explains, is one “who listens to the world orchestra and echoes it without being false.” Blok called such a person a tuned violin and angrily attacked everything small, insignificant, limited that is the mediastinum between a person and the world.

The poet taught one of his correspondents the struggle between “the old, neurasthenic, proud, narrow, decadent - with the new - healthy, courageous, who finally felt that the world is immeasurably larger and more beautiful than each of us...” (1913).

In such a struggle, associated with “self-condemnation” of everything “old” and “narrow” in oneself, the poet argued, a “new man” is born - and, perhaps, it is in these words, written on a random occasion, that he most fully and definitely The nature of the views that Blok developed in his years of maturity was reflected in the great and new things that he felt in himself and affirmed in his work - with all his inherent strength, passion and determination.

The poet said in his prophetically inspired poems:

...overflowed

A creative cup of delight,

And everything is no longer mine, but ours,

And the connection with the world was established...

These poems are permeated with the light that poured as if from the “communist distance” and illuminated them, giving them amazing depth and beauty, integral to the inner beauty and nobility of their creator.

“Scary world! It’s too small for the heart!” (According to the lyrics of A. Blok.)

Alexander Blok is one of the most tragic figures in the history of Russian culture. His personal fate and his work reflected the fate of Russia and the Russian intelligentsia at the turn of the century. A tragic attitude and identification of personal fate with the fate of the homeland are, perhaps, the two main features of his poetic appearance. They determine the character of the lyrical hero of Blok’s poetry, including the hero of his love lyrics. The theme of love is one of the leading ones in A. Blok’s work; it gives the poet the opportunity to most fully and sincerely express his emotional experiences, relationships with a scary world for him, with people, and his worldview. Love for Blok is a complex, ambiguous feeling, perceived differently by him in different periods of his short life.

At the beginning of his work, Blok did not know and did not want to know the real world; he, as a symbolist, denied it.

That is why the poet loved the love of a seraphim not a woman, but a goddess who brings light into a dark life. The meaning of his existence is almost slavish service to the incomprehensible, unattainable Beautiful Lady. He doesn’t even see her eyes, her face: “She is slim and tall, always arrogant and stern.” Although the poet suspects, even knows, that She is not at all Radiant and not a goddess, He needs She just like that:

How deceitful you are and how white you are!

I like white lies...

In Blok's early lyrics, the theme of love merges with the theme of melancholy, loneliness, and the unattainability of happiness. She is accompanied by anticipation and anticipation of some changes:

I enter dark temples,

I perform a poor ritual.

There I am waiting for the Beautiful Lady

In the flickering of red lamps.

Reality presses on the lyrical hero, and he seeks in love not just happiness, but a separation from the earthly world and a transition to another bright world:

And then, rising above decay,

You will open the Radiant Face.

And, free from earthly captivity,

I will pour my whole life into my last cry.

This is how young Blok wrote, not noticing his surroundings, not knowing people, intuitively fencing himself off from the terrible world with his unearthly love.

The rise of the liberation movement brought the poet out of his state of contemplation and forced him to look closely at the events of life around him. The nature of Blok’s creativity begins to change greatly. Instead of temples there are taverns, an image

The radiant goddess disintegrates from a collision with reality. The lyrical hero says goodbye to his past:

Don't dream about tenderness, about fame,

Everything is over, youth is gone!

Your face in its simple frame

I removed it from the table with my own hand.

Now the poet is surrounded by ordinary men and women with their earthly love and its earthly manifestations. “I forgot you,” he admits, turning to the Beautiful Lady, but this is not entirely true. In fact, love for her remains, but takes on an even more tragic character, since a terrible world, an inexorable reality breaks into the fate of people, their relationships, their lives, give rise to deep despair.

However, the heroines of Blok’s poems are real women, often by no means ideal:

From the crystal mist

From an unprecedented dream

Someone's image, someone's strange...

(In the restaurant office over a bottle of wine.)

As before, as in “Poems about a Beautiful Lady,” everything connected with the image of the beloved is vague. But now she is surrounded not by joyfully pouring light, but by a blizzard and blizzard, gypsy songs and dances, “a misty cry from distant violins.” This terrible world imposes its own laws and orders:

And the monist strummed, the gypsy danced

And she screamed at the dawn about love.

Love in the poems of this period appears as a dirty, imposed burden. The poet sees only humiliation in earthly manifestations of feelings. Kisses and hugs seem to him something heavy and base, so “it’s hard to breathe from hugs.” The relationship between a man and a woman is full of some kind of drunken delirium and hypocrisy. But the lyrical hero, like others, is doomed to this meaningless love. It has become a duty, because in this world there is no real strong feeling:

I honor the ritual: easy to fill

Bear cavity on the fly,

And, hugging the thin figure, deceive,

And rush into the snow and darkness.

The poet himself obeys the rules of this game with feelings, with the human heart. He does not, as before, expect unearthly happiness from Radiant; he is cold and calculating. And therefore I am glad that such love is fleeting:

Yes, there is a sad delight

The fact is that love will pass like snow.

Oh, is it really necessary to swear?

In ancient fidelity forever?

The heroes of Blok's poems are sometimes doomed to cruelty towards their beloved. That is why the theme of human love in this world of evil and suffering sounds very gloomy and full of tragedy:

I'm doomed in the distant darkness of the bedroom,

Where she sleeps and breathes hotly,

Leaning over her lovingly and sadly

Stick your ring into the white shoulder!

It is difficult for a poet to understand the vileness and absurdity of such relationships. This lifestyle weighs on him. And Blok thinks:

How the past night shone,

What does the real one call?

Everything is just a continuation of the ball,

Transition from light to darkness.

But even now, depicting the meaninglessness and ugliness of love, turned into suffering, impossible in this terrible world, Blok wants to see something bright and joyful in it. In a dream or in a drunken delirium, a gentle image appears to him, light as a bird and beautiful as a star:

From the depths of an unprecedented dream

Splashed, blinded, shone

Before me is a wonderful wife!

In the evening clink of a fragile glass,

In a drunken fog, meeting for a moment

With the only one who despised affection,

I experienced rejoicing for the first time!

I drowned my eyes in her eyes!

I let out a passionate cry for the first time!

The poet even meets his beautiful, half-airy Stranger every time in a tavern. Therefore, he claims, as creepy as it may be, that “the truth is in wine.” This is a bitter confirmation of the cries of “drunk monsters,” but in that terrible world, all the best and brightest things come precisely in moments of being stunned by wine.

Everything connected with the Stranger, who personifies love and beauty, lives a special mysterious life: “the spirits sighed, the eyelashes dozed off, the silks whispered anxiously.” She herself is “an enchanted shore and an enchanted distance,” “a star, a dream.”

And this memory of the unearthly, the beautiful and the sublime is even more depressing. The baseness of relations between people emerges even more sharply, Blok’s accusing questions sound more shrill: “Did we call this love? Is this destined between people?” People have forgotten how to love, they do not know how to express their feelings sincerely and beautifully, they are too far from each other, they do not have mutual understanding. People do not look for their happiness, and when it eludes, never reaching a person, they cry helplessly and stun themselves with wine:

I'm nailed to the tavern counter:

I've been drunk for a long time. I don't care.

There's my happiness - at three

Gone into the silver smoke...

Sometimes the heroes of Blok’s poem want strong feelings and rush in search of them, but all in vain. In this life, in this terrible world, all feelings are corrupt, everything is a game. And the person who starts the game against the rules can only obey them or leave. A person turns out to be powerless, love crushes him:

With love, mud or wheels

She is crushed - everything hurts.

And the terrible world around us, which has shackled everyone, is to blame for everything. Only a few rebel against him and die. A terrible world has penetrated into the strongest and purest human feeling - love. That’s why Blok’s love lyrics are so pessimistic and contain an accusation against this world:

Scary world! It's too close for the heart!

It contains the delirium of your kisses,

The dark rustle of gypsy songs,

Hasty flight of comets!

Blok could not give in to these feelings. Loving a woman in a scary world is dirty. Therefore, Blok turns all the strength of his soul, all his ability to love deeply, to self-forgetfulness, to tears, to Russia. The theme of love in Blok’s lyrics, in my opinion, is transformed into the theme of the homeland. Love for Russia is enlightened, it is full of hope and faith in happiness. In her, in this love, the lyrical hero finds a way out of the terrible world. Blok likes to repeat that all his work is about Russia. It is no coincidence that these two themes, the theme of love and the theme of the homeland, merge so harmoniously in his lyrics. Russia is the poet’s main love, it is she who is “like the first tears of love,” the poet dreams of seeing her happy. Therefore, even in the most difficult years of his life, although the terrible world burdened this holy feeling, Blok retained his love for Russia, with which “the impossible is possible,” which will never be lost and will never perish.

Bibliography

To prepare this work, materials were used from the site http://www.coolsoch.ru/

The poems in the collection “Night Hours” (1911) are also imbued with an anxious expectation of the “unknown” and a feeling of tragically growing tension in the world. Included in the collected works of the poet, published by the symbolist publishing house "Musaget" in 1911-1912, in the form of the final third volume, they were the pinnacle of Blok's lyrics. Here are captured the results of the path he traveled, which, as the poet A. Bely wrote on June 6, 1911, led “to the birth of a “social” man, an artist who courageously faces the world.” During the years of public reaction, when, according to contemporary N. Ya. Mandelstam, a significant part of the intelligentsia was characterized by “self-indulgence, a lack of criteria and a thirst for happiness that never left anyone,” the poet’s position stood out sharply for its “moralism,” which, as he wrote in review of “Night Hours” by Nikolai Gumilyov, “gives Blok’s poetry the impression of some special... Schiller-like humanity.”

In his speech “On the Current State of Symbolism” (1910), polemicizing with some new literary movements (primarily Acmeism), Blok said: “...They offer us: sing, have fun and call to life, but our faces are burned and disfigured by the purple twilight” (an image that expressed the vague and contradictory atmosphere of the era of revolution and the reaction that replaced it).

“A terrible world,” as one of the poet’s most important cycles is called, is not only the surrounding “objective” reality, reflected in the famous poems “On the Railroad,” “Late Autumn from the Harbor,” etc. Blok’s lyrics are dominated by the “landscape” of modern souls, mercilessly truthful, largely confessional-tinged. Bryusov wrote that Blok “with fearless sincerity draws the content of his poems from the depths of his soul.” The poet himself subsequently noted with obvious sympathy the “deep thought” of a writer close to him, Apollo Grigoriev: “If... ideals are undermined and yet the soul is unable to come to terms with the untruths of life... then the only way out for the poet’s muse will be a mercilessly ironic execution, turning on himself, since this untruth has become ingrained into his own nature...”

The very expression “terrible world” first appears in “personal songs” (no matter how conventional their separation in Blok’s lyrics from “objective” ones):

Scary world! It's too close for the heart!
It contains the delirium of your kisses,
The dark wraith of gypsy songs,
Hasty flight of comets!
("Black Raven in the Snowy Twilight...")

The poem “On the Islands” begins with a picture of a love meeting full of poetry:

Newly snow-covered columns,
Elagin bridge and two lights.
And the voice of a woman in love.
And the crunch of sand and the snoring of a horse.

But it soon turns out that love has also been “disfigured”, a true feeling has been replaced by a “rite”, reduced almost to automatism, cold calculation:

...With the constancy of the geometer
I count every time without words
Bridges, chapel, harshness of the wind,
Desertion of low islands.

And in the poem “Humiliation,” a bold metaphor (the scaffold, the procession to execution) mercilessly characterizes scenes of “venal” love, enhanced by expressive sound writing that reaches high drama: “Yellow Winter Sunset Outside the window... the condemned will be led to execution at such a Sunset... Only lips with dried blood / on your Golden icon / did we call it love? / refracted by a crazy line?

(1909 – 1916)

Is in your innermost melodies
Fatal news of death.
There is a curse of sacred covenants,
There is a desecration of happiness.
And such a compelling force
What am I ready to repeat after rumors,
It's like you brought down angels,
Seducing with its beauty...
And when you laugh at faith,
Suddenly it lights up above you
That dim, purple-gray
And I once saw a circle.
Evil or good? - All of you are not from here.
Wise things they say about you:
For others, you are both a Muse and a miracle.
For me you are torment and hell.
I don't know why at dawn,
At an hour when there was no more strength,
I didn’t die, but I noticed your face
And asked for your consolations?
I wanted us to be enemies
So why did you give me
Meadow with flowers and firmament with stars -
All the curse of your beauty?
And more insidious than the northern night,
And more intoxicating than golden ai,
And gypsy love in short
Your caresses were terrible...

And there was a fatal joy
In the trampling of cherished shrines,
And maddening delight to the heart -
This bitter passion is like wormwood!

* * *

Under the monotonous noise and ringing,
Under the city bustle
I'm leaving, idle at heart,
Into the blizzard, into the darkness and into the void.
I break the thread of consciousness
And I forget what and how...
All around - snow, trams, buildings,
And ahead there are lights and darkness.
What if I'm spellbound
The thread of consciousness that has been cut off,
I will return home humiliated, -
Can you forgive me?
You, who knows the distant goal
Guiding beacon,
Will you forgive me my snowstorms,
My delirium, poetry and darkness?
Or you can do better: without forgiving,
Wake up my bells
So that the night thaw
Didn’t she take you away from your homeland?

* * *

On these yellow days between houses
We meet only for a moment.
You burn me with your eyes
And you hide in a dark dead end...
But the eyes are a silent fire
It’s not for nothing that you shower me,
And it’s not for nothing that I secretly bow
Before you, silent lie!
The winter nights will perhaps be abandoned
Us to a crazy and devilish ball,
And it will finally destroy me
Your striking, your gaze, your dagger!

* * *

From the crystal mist
From an unprecedented dream
Someone's image, someone's strange...
(In the restaurant office
For a bottle of wine).
The screech of a gypsy chant
Came from the distant halls,
Distant violins scream misty...
The wind enters, the maiden enters
Into the depths of the streaked mirrors.
Eye to eye - and searing blue
There was space.
Magdalene! Magdalene!
The wind blows from the desert,
Fanning fire.
Your narrow glass and the blizzard
Behind the blank glass of the window -
Life is only half!
But behind the blizzard is the sun of the south
Scorched country!
The solution to all torment,
All blasphemy and praise,
All the snaking smiles
All pleading movements, -
Break life like my glass!
So that on the bed of a long night
Not enough passionate strength!
So that in the desert scream of violins
Frightened eyes
The mortal twilight has extinguished.

Double

Once upon a time in the October fog
I wandered, remembering the chant.
(Oh, a moment of unselling kisses!
Oh, the caresses of unbought maidens!)
And now - in an impenetrable fog
A forgotten chant appeared.
And I began to dream about my youth,
And you, as if alive, and you...
And I began to be carried away by the dream
From wind, rain, darkness...
(This is how you dream about early youth.
And you, will you come back?)
Suddenly I see - from the foggy night,
Staggering, he approaches me
An aging youth (strange,
Did I dream about him in a dream?)
Coming out of the foggy night
And he comes right up to me.
And he whispers: “I’m tired of staggering,
Breathe through the dank fog,
Reflect in other people's mirrors
And kiss strangers' women..."
And it began to seem strange to me,
That I will meet him again...
Suddenly he smiled impudently,
And there is no one near me...
This sad image is familiar,
And somewhere I saw him...
Perhaps himself
I met you on a mirror surface?

October 1909

Song of Hell

The day has burned out on the sphere of that earth,
Where I looked for ways and shorter days.
There a purple twilight fell.
I'm not there.

The path of the underground night
I slide down the ledge of slippery rocks.
The familiar Hell looks into empty eyes.
I was thrown into a bright ball on earth,
And in the wild dance of masks and guises
I forgot love and lost friendship.
Where is my companion? - Oh, where are you, Beatrice? -
I walk alone, having lost the right path,
In underground circles, as custom dictates,
To drown among horrors and darkness.
The stream carries corpses of friends and women,
Here and there a pleading glance or chest will flash;
A cry of mercy, or a gentle cry - sparingly
It comes out of your mouth; words died here;
Here it is pulled together senselessly and stupidly
A ring of iron pain in the head;
And I, who once sang tenderly, -
An outcast who has lost his rights!
Everyone is heading towards the hopeless abyss,
And I will follow. But here, in a breakthrough of rocks,
Above the foam of the snow-white stream,
There is an endless hall in front of me.
Network of cacti and roses fragrance,
Scraps of darkness in the depths of the mirrors;
Distant mornings vague flicker
The defeated idol is slightly gilded;
And the stuffy breath chokes.

This room reminded me of a terrible world,
Where I wandered blind, like in a wild fairy tale,
And where the last feast found me.
There are gaping masks thrown there;
There is a wife seduced by an old man,
And the insolent light found them in vile caresses...
But the window frame got red
Under the morning cold kiss,
And the silence turns strangely pink.
At this hour we are spending the night in the blessed land,
Only here our earthly deception is powerless,
And I see, we are excited by a premonition,
Deep into the mirror through the morning fog.
Towards me, from the web of darkness,
A young man comes out. The camp will be tightened;
The color of a withered rose in the buttonhole of a tailcoat
Paler than the lips on the face of a dead man;
On the finger is a sign of a mysterious marriage -
The ring's sharp amethyst shines;
And I look with incomprehensible excitement
In the features of his faded face
And I ask in a slightly intelligible voice:
“Tell me why you should languish
And wander in circles of no return?”
Subtle features were in confusion,
The burnt mouth swallows air greedily,
And a voice speaks from the void:

“Find out: I am devoted to merciless torment
For being on a woeful land
Under the heavy yoke of joyless passion.
As soon as our city disappears into the darkness,
We are tormented by a wave of crazy chanting,
With the stamp of crime on his forehead,
Like a fallen, humiliated maiden,
I am looking for oblivion in the joys of wine...
And the hour of punishing wrath struck:
From the depths of an unprecedented dream
Splashed, blinded, shone
Before me is a wonderful wife!
In the evening clink of a fragile glass,
In a drunken fog, meeting for a moment
With the only one who despised affection,
I experienced rejoicing for the first time!
I drowned my eyes in her eyes!
I let out a passionate cry for the first time!
So this moment came, unexpectedly quickly.
And the darkness was deaf. And the long evening was misty.
And the meteors appeared strangely in the sky.
And there was this amethyst in the blood.
And I drank blood from the fragrant shoulders,
And the drink was stuffy and resinous...

But don't curse strange stories
About how the incomprehensible dream lasted...
From the abysses of the night and the foggy abysses
The death knell came to us;
A tongue of fire flew up, whistling, above us,
To burn away the uselessness of interrupted times!
And - closed in immeasurable chains -
Some kind of whirlwind carried us into the underworld!
Shackled forever by dull dreams,
It is given to her to smell the pain and remember the feast,
When, like night, to her satin shoulders
The yearning vampire bows!
But my destiny - can I not call it terrible?
Barely cold and sick dawn
Will fill Hell with an indifferent radiance,
From hall to hall I go to fulfill my covenant,
Driven by the melancholy of beginningless passion, -
So have compassion and remember, my poet:
I am doomed in the distant darkness of the bedroom,
Where she sleeps and breathes hotly,
Leaning over her lovingly and sadly,
Stick your ring into the white shoulder!”

* * *

Late autumn from the harbor
From the snow-covered ground
On the intended voyage
Heavy ships are coming.
In the black sky it means
A crane above the water
And one lantern is swinging
On the snowy shore.
And the sailor, not accepted on board,
Walks staggering through the snowstorm.
Everything is lost, everything is drunk!
Enough - I can’t take it anymore...
And the shore of an empty harbor
The first light snow has already begun...
In the purest, most tender shroud
Do you sleep well, sailor?

On islands

Newly snow-covered columns,
Elagin bridge and two lights.
And the voice of a woman in love.
And the crunch of sand and the snoring of a horse.
Two shadows merged in a kiss
They fly near the cavity of the sleigh.
But without hiding or being jealous,
I am with this new one - with the captive - with her.
Yes, there is a sad delight
The fact that love will pass like snow.
Oh, is it really necessary to swear?
In ancient fidelity forever?
No, I'm not the first to caress
And in my strict clarity
I don’t play at submission anymore
And I don’t demand kingdoms from her.

No, with the constancy of geometer
I count every time without words
Bridges, chapel, harshness of the wind,
Desertion of low islands.
I honor the ritual: easy to fill
Bear cavity on the fly,
And, hugging the thin figure, dissembling,
And rush into the snow and darkness,
And remember narrow shoes,
Falling in love with cold furs...
After all, my chest is in a duel
Will not meet the groom's sword...
After all, with a candle in ancient anxiety
Her mother is not waiting for her at the door...
After all, the poor husband behind the thick shutter
She won't be jealous...
How the past night shone,
What does the real one call?
Everything is just a continuation of the ball,
Transition from light to darkness...

* * *

Gray twilight has fallen
In spring the city looks pale.
The car sang in the distance
Blow the victory horn.
Look through the pale window
Pressing tightly against the glass...
Look. You changed a long time ago
Irrevocably.

* * *

Peaceful happiness is over,
Don't tease, belated comfort.
Everywhere these aching notes
They guard and call you into the desert.
Life is deserted, homeless, bottomless,
Yes, I believed it since then
How he sang to me like a siren in love
That motor that flew through the night.

* * *

The spicy spirit of March was in the lunar circle,
The sand crunched under the melted snow.
My city melted away in a wet blizzard,
Sobbed, in love, at someone's feet.
You pressed yourself more and more superstitiously,
And it seemed to me - through the snoring of the horse -
Hungarian dance in the heavenly mob
It rings and cries, teasing me.
And the crazy wind, rushing over the distance, -
He wanted to burn out my soul,
Throwing your veil in my face
And singing about the old days...
And suddenly - you, distant, stranger,
She said with lightning in her eyes:
That is the soul, embarking on the last path,
Cries madly about past dreams.

Chapel on Krestovsky Island

At the restaurant

I will never forget (he was, or wasn’t,
This evening): by the fire of dawn
The pale sky is burned and parted,
And at the yellow dawn - lanterns.
I was sitting by the window in a crowded room.
Somewhere the bows were singing about love.
I sent you a black rose in a glass
Golden as the sky, ah.
You looked. I greeted with embarrassment and impudence
He looked arrogant and bowed.
Turning to the gentleman, deliberately sharply
You said: “And this one is in love.”
And now the strings struck something in response,
The bows sang frantically...
But you were with me with all the contempt of youth,
A slightly noticeable shaking of the hand...
You rushed with the movement of a frightened bird,
You passed as if my dream was light...
And the spirits sighed, the eyelashes fell asleep,
The silks whispered anxiously.
But from the depths of the mirrors you threw me glances
And, throwing, she shouted: “Catch!...”
And the monist strummed, the gypsy danced
And she screamed at the dawn about love.

Daemon

Hold me tighter and closer
I didn’t live - I wandered among strangers...
Oh, my dream! I see something new
In the delirium of your kisses!
In your frenzied languor
The melancholy of an unprecedented spring
Burns for me with a distant ray
And the song of the zurna stretches out.
To the smoky purple mountains
I brought it to the beam and to the sound
Tired lips and eyes
And the lashes of broken hands.
And in a mountain sunset fire,
In the spills of blue wings,
With you, with the dream of Tamara,
I, the heavenly one, am forever without strength...
And I dream - in a distant village,
On the slope of the immortal mountain,
They sadly splashed into our sky
Unnecessary folds of the veil...
There he dances and cries,
Dust swirls and moans...
Let the groom gallop - he won’t finish!
The Chechen bullet is true.

* * *

A man burned there.

How hard it is to walk among people
And pretend not to die
And about the game of tragic passions
Tell the story to those who have not yet lived.
And, peering into my nightmare,
Finding order in a discordant whirlwind of feelings,
So that through the pale glow of art
Learned life's disastrous fire!

* * *

I'm wasting my life.
My crazy, deaf one:
Today I soberly celebrate,
And tomorrow I cry and sing.
But what if death awaits?
But if behind my back
He - with an immense hand
Covering a mirror - is it worth it?...
A mirror light will flash into your eyes,
And in horror, closing my eyes,
I'll retreat into that area of ​​the night
From where there is no return...

* * *

Hours and days and years go by.
I want to shake off some dream,
Look into the faces of people, nature,
Dispel the twilight of time...
There's someone waving, teasing with light
(So ​​on a winter night, on the porch
Someone's shadow will look like a silhouette,
And the face will quickly hide).
Here's the sword. He was. But he is not needed.
Who weakened my hand? -
I remember: a small row of pearls
One night, under the moon,
Sick, plaintive cold,
And the snowy surface of the sea...
From under the eyelashes sparkling horror -
Ancient horror (let me understand)…
Words? - They weren’t there. - What happened? -
Neither dream nor reality. Far away, far away
It rang, went out, went away
And separated from the earth...
And it died. And the lips sang.
Hours or years have passed...
(Only the telegraph rang
There are wires in the black sky...)
And suddenly (how memorable, familiar!)
Clearly, from afar
A voice rang out: Ecce homo!
The sword fell out. My hand trembled...
And bandaged with stuffy silk
(So ​​that blood does not come from the black veins),
I was cheerful and obedient
Disarmed - served.
But the time has come. Remembering
I remembered: No, I am not a servant.
So fall, colored sling!
Flood, blood, and stain the snow!

Humiliation

In the black branches of naked trees
Yellow winter sunset outside the window.
(To the scaffold for the execution of the condemned
They will take you to such a sunset).
Red damask of faded sofas,
Dusty curtain tassels...
In this room, in the clink of glasses,
Merchant, sharper, student, officer...
These naked magazine drawings
Not a human hand touched...
And the scoundrel's hand pressed
This dirty call button...
Chu! The soft carpets rang
Spurs, laughter muffled by the doors...
Is this house really a home?
Is this how it is destined between people?
Am I happy about today's meeting?
Why are you as white as a board?
What's in your bare shoulders
Hitting a huge cold sunset?
Only lips with dried blood
On your icon there is gold
(Is this what we called love?)
Refracted by a crazy line...
In a yellow, winter, huge sunset
The bed has sunk (so luxurious!)...
It’s still hard to breathe from hugs,
But you whistle again and again...

He is not cheerful - your whistle is sepulchral...
Chu! again - the muttering of spurs...
Like a snake, heavy, well-fed and dusty,
Your train is crawling from the chairs onto the carpet...
You are brave! So be more fearless!
I am not your husband, not your fiancé, not your friend!
So stick it in, my angel of yesterday,
In the heart - a sharp French heel!

Aviator

The flyer was released.
Swinging its two blades,
Like a sea monster in the water,
Slipped into the air currents.
Its screws sing like strings...
Look: the unflinching pilot
Towards the blind sun above the podium
Spurs on its propeller flight...
Already in the heights unattainable
The copper of the engine shines...
There, barely audible and invisible,
The propeller continues to sing...
Then the eye searches in vain:
You won't find a trace in the sky:
With binoculars raised high,
Only the air is as clear as water...
And here, in the fluctuating heat,
In the smoking haze over the meadow,
Hangars, people, everything earthly -
As if pressed to the ground...
But again in the golden mist
It’s like an unearthly chord...
It's close, the moment of applause
And a pathetic world record!

Lower and lower the descent is spiral-shaped,
Twisting more and more steeply than the blades,
And suddenly... ridiculous, ugly
A break in the monotony...
And the beast with silent propellers
Hanging at a scary angle...
Search with faded eyes
Supports in the air... empty!
It's late: on the grass of the plain
Wing crumpled arch...
In the tangle of wires of the machine
A hand is deader than a lever...
Why were you in the sky, brave one,
For your first and last time?
So that the secular and corrupt lioness
Raise my violet eyes to you?
Or the delight of self-forgetfulness
You have tasted the destructive
Madly hungry for the fall
And stopped the screws yourself?
Or poisoned your brain, unfortunate one
The coming wars are a terrible sight:
Night flyer, in the stormy darkness
Earth-bearing dynamite?

* * *

Having fun at a riotous feast,
I returned home late;
The night quietly wanders around the apartment,
Keeping my cozy corner.
All faces, all grievances merged
One face, one spot;
And the night wind sings through the window
The tunes of a sleepy dirge...
Only my seducer does not sleep;
He flatteringly whispers: “Here is your monastery.
Forget about the temporary, the vulgar
And in songs you lie sacredly about the past.”

Dance of Death

1

How hard it is for a dead man among people
Pretend to be alive and passionate!
But we have to, we have to get involved in society,
Hiding the clang of bones for a career...
The living are sleeping. A dead man rises from the grave
And he goes to the bank, and to the court, to the Senate...
The whiter the night, the blacker the anger,
And the feathers creak triumphantly.
The dead man works all day on his report.
The presence ends. And so -
He whispers, wagging his backside,
A dirty joke for the senator...
It's already evening. The light rain splashed with mud
Passers-by, and houses, and other nonsense...
And a dead man - to another disgrace
The grinding taxi carries.
The hall is crowded and full of columns
The dead man is in a hurry. He is wearing an elegant tailcoat.
They give him a supportive smile
The mistress is a fool and the husband is a fool.
He was exhausted from a day of official boredom,
But the clanging of bones is drowned out by the music...
He shakes his friend's hands tightly -
He must seem alive, alive!
Only at the column will he meet his eyes
With a friend - she, like him, is dead.
Behind their conventionally secular speeches
You hear the real words:

“Tired friend, I feel strange in this room.” -
"Weary friend, the grave is cold." -
“It’s already midnight.” - “Yes, but you didn’t invite
To the waltz NN. She's in love with you..."
And there - NN is already looking with a passionate gaze
Him, him - with excitement in his blood...
In her face, girlishly beautiful,
The senseless delight of living love...
He whispers insignificant words to her,
Captivating words for the living,
And he watches how the shoulders turn pink,
How his head leaned on his shoulder...
And the sharp poison of habitual secular anger
With unearthly anger he lavishes...
“How smart he is! He’s so in love with me!”
There is an unearthly, strange ringing in her ears:
Then bones clang on bones.

2

Night, street, lantern, pharmacy,
Pointless and dim light.
Live for at least another quarter of a century -
Everything will be like this. There is no outcome.
If you die, you'll start over again
And everything will repeat itself as before:
Night, icy ripples of the channel,
Pharmacy, street, lamp.

3

Empty street. One fire in the window.
The Jewish pharmacist groans in his sleep.
And in front of the cabinet with the inscription Venena,
Economically bending his creaking knees,
A skeleton, wrapped in a cloak up to the eyes,
He is looking for something, grinning with his black mouth...
I found it... But inadvertently I tinkled something,
And the skull turned... The pharmacist grunted,
He stood up and fell on the other side...
Meanwhile, the guest is a treasured bottle
Pushes from under his cloak to two noseless women
On the street, under a white street lamp.

October 1912

4

Old, old dream. Out of the darkness
The lanterns are running - where?
There is only black water,
There is oblivion forever.
A shadow slides around the corner
Another one crawled up to her.
The cloak is open, the chest is white,
Scarlet color in the buttonhole of the tailcoat.
The second shadow is a slender armored man,
Or the bride from the crown?
Helmet and feathers. No face.
The stillness of a dead man.
The bell rings at the gate,
The lock clicks dully.
Crossing the threshold
Prostitute and libertine...
The chilling wind howls,
Empty, quiet and dark.
The window upstairs is on fire.
Doesn't matter.
The water is black like lead.
There is oblivion in her forever.
Third ghost. Where are you going,
Are you sliding from shadow to shadow?

5

The rich man is angry and happy again,
The poor man is humiliated again.
From the roofs of stone masses
The moon looks pale,
Sends silence
Sets off coolness
Stone plumbs,
The blackness of the awnings...
It would all be in vain
If there were no king,
To uphold the laws.
Just don't look for a palace,
good-natured face,
Golden crown.
He is from distant wastelands
In the light of rare lanterns
Appears.
The neck is twisted with a scarf,
Under the leaky visor
Smiles.

* * *

Worlds are flying. The years fly by. Empty
The Universe looks at us with dark eyes.
And you, soul, tired, deaf,
You keep talking about happiness - how many times?
What is happiness? Evening coolness
In a darkening garden, in the wilderness?
Or dark, vicious pleasures
Wine, passions, destruction of the soul?
What is happiness? A short moment and cramped,
Oblivion, sleep and rest from worries...
You wake up - crazy again, unknown
And a heart-grabbing flight...
He sighed and looked - the danger had passed...
But at this very moment - another push!
Launched somewhere, haphazardly,
The top is flying, buzzing, hurrying!
And, clinging to the sliding, sharp edge,
And always listening to the buzzing ringing, -
Are we going crazy in the change of motley
Invented reasons, spaces, times...
When is the end? An annoying sound
He won’t have the strength to listen without rest...
How scary everything is! How wild! - Give me a hand,
Comrade, friend! Let's forget again.

* * *

A night without her, whose name is

Bright name: Lenora.

Edgar Poe

It was an autumn evening. To the sound of glass rain
It was the same me who was solving a painful question,
When in my office, huge and foggy,
The gentleman came in. Behind him is a shaggy dog.
The guest tiredly sat down on the chair by the fire,
And the dog lay down on the carpet at his feet.
The guest politely said: “Is it really not enough for you yet?
It’s time to humble yourself before the Genius of Fate, sir.”
“But in old age there is a return of both youth and heat...” -
So I began... but he insistently interrupted:
“She is still the same: Linor of mad Edgar.
No refund. - More? Now I’ve said everything.”
And it’s strange: life was a delight, a storm, a hell,
And here - in the evening hour - alone with a stranger -
Under this businesslike, long-calm gaze,
She presented herself much simpler to me...
That gentleman left. But the dog is always with me.
In a bitter hour a kind gaze will look at me,
And he puts his hard paw on his knee,
It’s as if he’s saying: It’s time to come to terms, sir.

* * *

There is a game: enter carefully,
To lull people's attention;
And find prey with your eyes;
And keep an eye on her unnoticed.
No matter how insensitive and rude
The person being watched is
He will feel the gaze
At least in the corners of barely trembling lips.
And the other one will immediately understand:
His shoulders trembled, his hand shook;
Turns around - and there is nothing;
Meanwhile, anxiety is growing.
That’s why the invisible gaze is scary,
That he cannot be caught;
You feel it, but you can’t understand it
Whose eyes are watching you?
Not self-interest, not love, not revenge;
So - a game, like a game for children:
And in every meeting of people
These secret detectives exist.
Sometimes you yourself won’t understand,
Why does this happen sometimes?
That you will come to people with yourself,
And when you leave people, you won’t be yourself.
There is a bad eye and a good eye,
But it would be better not to follow anyone:
There is too much in each of us
Unknown, playing forces...

Oh, melancholy! In a thousand years
We cannot measure souls:
We will hear the flight of all the planets,
Thunderclaps in silence...
In the meantime, we live in the unknown
And we don’t know our own strengths,
And, like children playing with fire,
We burn ourselves and others...

A. A. Blok, with all the impressionability inherent in his poetic consciousness, experienced all the changes in the socio-political life of the country. The February Revolution gave the poet fresh strength and hope for a new, bright future for Russia, which was reflected in the poems of that period. But the period of reaction that followed this, according to Blok, “hid the face of life from us, which had awakened for many, perhaps, years.”

The poet in his work has already moved away from the search for the World Soul - an ideal present in almost every poem by Blok the Symbolist, but his hopes for finding a new meaning in life were not justified. The surrounding reality frightens the poet with the vulgarity of bourgeois life, but he cannot find a worthy opposition to it, tormented by insoluble contradictions. It was during this period that he created a cycle of poems called “Scary World.” The lyrical hero of this cycle wanders in the darkness, no longer experiencing any desires. He experienced everything: “the yoke of joyless passion” and “dark, vicious pleasures / Wine, passions, destruction of the soul.”

Life becomes “torment”, and he himself becomes a “dead man”, walking in circles of Dante’s hell: How hard it is for a dead man to pretend to be alive and passionate among people!..

Blok understood that a person who succumbed to the temptation of this world is sinful, his soul, having lost his dream, is devastated. He compares himself to a sailor who was not accepted on board, just like this sailor, the poet, “goes staggering through a snowstorm,” having lost the main meaning of his life.

The loss of spiritual values, and, as a consequence of this, the meaninglessness of existence depresses Blok.

There is no beauty and harmony in the “terrible world”. Its inhabitants do not know the joy of pure love; they glorify “bitter passion like wormwood”, “low passion”, “trampling on cherished shrines”.

Like the first man, burning divinely, I want to return You forever to the blue shore of paradise, killing all the lies and destroying the poison...

But you are calling me! Your poisonous gaze Another prophesies paradise! - I give in, knowing that your snake paradise is a hell of bottomless boredom. The lyrical hero of the poems is endowed with a sensitive soul that perceives all the diversity of life, he is smart and insightful, but the inability to share the wealth of his inner world with anyone depresses him. Realizing the hopelessness of his existence, Blok makes the heroes of his poems either an “aging young man,” or a “dead man,” or a demon bringing death.

How hard it is to walk among people and pretend to be undead...

In the “terrible world,” even pictures of nature are repulsive: there is “a large disk, Flooding everything in nature with an unbearable yellowness.” The always mysterious moonlight, which has turned into “unbearable yellowness,” is one of the indicators of the poet’s tragic worldview, his disgust for everything around him. Nature seems hostile to the lyrical hero:

There's a month like a finger above the roofs of the masses

Makes a grimace at me...

In the cycle “The Life of My Friend” Blok reveals the depths of his despair. It is his life that is full of “petty worries,” and at the bottom of his soul, “joyless and black, there is unbelief and sadness.” A fictitious “buddy” helps Blok look at himself from the outside and express what is hurting his soul. “The meaninglessness of all things, the joylessness of comfort” - this is the lot of those for whom “bright thoughts” remain a “vague memory.”

The lyrical hero of the “Scary World” cycle is lonely, like the poet himself. The world described by Blok evokes melancholy and a feeling of hopelessness. “Dead men”, “skeletons”, “noseless women”, “dance of death” - the abundance of such gloomy images involuntarily makes you think about death. Death runs like a refrain throughout the entire cycle, leading to the idea that it is impossible to live in a “terrible world.” Spiritual death inevitably leads to physical death. A meaningless existence is contrary to human nature. The poet’s tragedy in the poems of this period is limitless, but already in the “Iambic” cycle we see how Blok’s worldview changes, having acquired new strength to fight evil: Oh, I want to live madly:

All that exists is to perpetuate,

The impersonal - to humanize,

Unfulfilled - make it happen!