Analysis “The night shone.
They were lying... The night was shining. The garden was full of moonlight The poem was created under the impression of one musical evening with friends, the singing of T.A. Kuzminskaya-Bers (Tanya Bers, the main prototype of Natasha Rostova in War and Peace, was a wonderful musician and singer; in any case, readers “hear” echoes of her singing in some episodes of Tolstoy’s novel and in Fet’s poems). The poem is written in iambic hexameter, quatrains, with alternating female and male rhymes. Long lines, with an abundance of vocalisms (“You sang until dawn, exhausted from tears...”), sound drawn out, as if sung. The beginning is very expressive: “The night was shining” - this is an oxymoron (after all, the night is dark, black), and it is emphasized by inversion (the predicate is in front of the subject). This is an extraordinary night, festive, bright - not from
artificial lights
, but from the moon. Living room - continuation of the garden:
The night was shining. The garden was full of moonlight. were lying
Rays at our feet in a living room without lights.
The piano was all open, and the strings in it were trembling,
Just like our hearts are for your song. An open piano, trembling strings, open hearts - the metaphorical meaning of the words clearly displaces the nominative, the piano also has a soul, a heart. The lyrical “you” of the poem is, to use the expression of H.H. Strakhov, “transformed personality” (like the lyrical “I”). Life situation translated into a high, conventional, lyrical plane (the difference between the real situation and
art world
well conveys the humorous remark of Tolstoy, who read the text aloud: “Having reached the last line: “To love you, hug you and cry over you,” he made us all laugh: “These poems are beautiful,” he said, “but why does he want to hug Tanya? A married man..."). The lyrical heroine is the earthly embodiment of the Beauty of life, its high “sound”. “Sound” here is symbolic: it is important not just to live, but to live as on this night, to live “without making a sound,” and this already applies to the lyrical “I.” And the motive of suffering, tears, crying, sobbing sharpens the sense of life and beauty:
You sang until dawn, exhausted from tears,
That you alone are love, that there is no other love,
And I wanted to live so much, so that without making a sound,
And many years have passed, tedious and boring,
And in the silence of the night I hear your voice again,
And it blows, as then, in these sonorous sighs,
That you are alone - all life, that you are alone - love.
Time is psychologized: moments of true existence are highlighted, there are few of them, in contrast to the “languorous and boring” years. The connection between these moments is emphasized by anaphors, epiphoras and other types of repetitions.
Literature, and even its lyrical kind, cannot directly convey singing, music; it has a different “language”. But literature can convey exactly how music and singing affect the listener.
Composition
The poetry of Afanasy Afanasyevich Fet (Shenshin) is one of the recognized peaks of Russian poetry. Fet is one of the most widely read poets. In the personality of the poet, two absolutely different people: a hardened, hard-lived practitioner and an inspired, tireless singer of love and beauty. Fet's poetry is musical. Many of his poems are written in the tradition of romance. And the poem that will be discussed in this work is no exception. “The night was shining. The garden was full of moonlight. They were lying..." - a romance set to music, popular in the poet’s time. Thematically, Fet's lyrics are limited to the beauty of nature and feminine love, but themes in his works do not play a significant role. Fet's poems are collections of incredibly expressive images.
Poem “The night was shining, the garden was full of the moon. They were lying..." written about Tatyana Bers (married Kuzminskaya), sister of Sofia Andreevna Tolstoy. Fet one evening heard Tatyana Bers singing and told her: “When you sing, words fly on wings.” Admired by the inspired singing, the poet created his own poem, very lyrical, expressive and tender:
The night was shining, the garden was full of moonlight. The Rays lay at our feet in the living room without lights. The piano was all open, and the strings in it trembled, Just like our hearts behind your song.
This poem is distinguished by a surprisingly gentle rhythm and inspired, subtle and precise imagery. Fet's accuracy and attention to detail is his undoubted talent. This poem, like all of Fet’s poetry, is characterized by sound writing. Let's pay attention to the first stanza. Here, soft, iridescent and seemingly flowing “l”s predominate: “the night was shining,” “the garden was full of the moon,” “the rays lay...”, after which there is a transition to the peals of “r”: “the piano... is open.” , “strings..., trembled.” There is a transition from smoothness to an increase in emotional tension. The amazing ability to write with sounds is what gives Fet’s poems such a musical sound.
The poem is based on images of the night, the moon and the piano. Darkness, light and music are the basis of this work. The image of the singer and her voice come into the background. In this poem one can feel the unity of man with the world around him.
A moonlit night and a garden are unthinkable without a piano and the singer’s voice. Just as in other conditions, the Tatyana Bers whom the poet admired would no longer exist. Fet's amazingly figurative poems fascinate with their play, their colors and precisely chosen words.
In Fet’s poem, nature coexists with feelings: “Love you, hug you and cry over you.” The quiet picture of the night garden gives way to a contrasting image - a storm in the poet’s soul: “The piano was all open...”. The poem is built on opposition. The “languorous and boring” life is contrasted with the “burning torment of the heart.” The purpose of life for a poet is in a single impulse of the soul. In this work, the impetus for the emotional storm was the singing of Tatyana Bers. In this poem, as in all his lyrics, Fet creates his own world - a world of love, beauty and contrast - quiet, clear nature with mental torment.
I would like to say that the poem “The night shone. The garden was full of the moon, They were lying..." amazes with its purity and penetration. His lines are permeated with the poet’s admiration, admiration and passion for his world, the world of creativity, and everything that contributes to the merging of creativity with reality, the birth of new poems. It seems to me that this poem cannot leave anyone indifferent; it can penetrate the heart and touch the most hidden strings in the soul.
Poem “The night was shining. The garden was full of moonlight. We were lying...", which we will analyze, was written in the second period of Fet’s work (1870s), when the life-affirming tendency disappears in the mood of his lyrical hero due to an acute sense of disharmony between the ideal idea of beauty and the influence of the earthly “crazy” world ( “Oh, don’t trust yourself to the noisy...”, 1874-1886).
The exact dating of the poem (August 2, 1877) is due to the fact that it reflects the real impression of T.A.’s singing. Kuzminskaya (sister of S.A. Tolstoy - the writer’s wife). Her voice seemed extraordinary and L.N. Tolstoy, and therefore became the prototypical basis for characterizing the central female image novel "War and Peace" (1863-1869). Natasha Rostova, having begun to “sing seriously,” makes even “expert judges” silently enjoy and “only want to hear” her again (“War and Peace.” Vol. 2, part 1, chapter 15).
Fet's poem “The night was shining. The garden was full of moonlight. They were lying..." includes many reliable details, allowing you to see the garden outside the windows, the living room, the piano, the figure of a singer singing all night, "until dawn, exhausted in tears," about love. The picture is complemented by psychological specifics:
And I wanted to live so much, so that without making a sound,
That you alone are love, that there is no other love,
This wonderful moment is remembered by the lyrical hero many years later. In Fet’s four-stanza poem, as in Pushkin’s message “K****,” two parts stand out. In the first, a memory is reproduced, in the second, the image of his beloved appears before the lyrical hero, he again hears a sonorous voice, evoking thoughts about life and a thirst for love. The palpability of the impression is given by the repetition of the characteristics of the experience that embraces it, as then, to the point of self-forgetfulness, dispelling languor and boredom.
Voice - image from Pushkin's poem(“A gentle voice sounded to me for a long time...” - stanza 2), however, for Fet, it concentrates not only a love experience, but also a feeling that is no less dear to his lyrical hero. His life is illuminated, in addition to feelings, by the desire for creativity, the perception of the revelations of art, which “is all revealed” (“The piano was all revealed...” - stanza 1) to man. The beginning of the poem “The night was shining. The garden was full of moonlight. They lay…”, the analysis of which interests us, points to another reminiscent source, especially important for solving this topic. In Pushkin’s unfinished work “Egyptian Nights” (1835), the improvisation of the hero, engulfed in a “wonderful fire” of inspiration, who suddenly felt “the approach of God,” also opens with the motif of radiance (“The palace shone. The chorus thundered/Singers...”). In Fet’s poem “The Night Shined,” the light of the moon, just like the sparkle of Pushkin’s “magnificent feast,” is overshadowed by the brilliance of the personality—the beauty of Cleopatra and the manifestations of the singer’s creative gift. He lifts listeners above reality, reveals to them the highest truth, which consists in the fact that “there is no end to life,” and its goal is the embodiment of the beautiful Plan, the Divine truth. The emotional tension of the lyrical hero, who again heard “these sonorous sighs,” is so great that he is ready to sob, cry, swear allegiance to the ideal (“only believe in the sobbing sounds”) and give all his strength to love.
The artistic creation turns out to be the central subject in the poem, and it is extremely difficult to describe it, since it left no material traces: the singing stopped at dawn. The strings trembled, the hearts beat (stanza 1), I wanted to live (stanza 2), but existence remained tedious and boring (stanza 3), the music “blows”, soars above him, inaccessible, like an ideal. One can only convey the sensations it evokes: it excites, causes emotional uplift, inner trembling, which is remembered for “many years.” Fate itself prevents the enjoyment of beauty from continuing; the day comes - the illusion dissipates (“You sang until dawn...” - stanza 2).
Understanding the instantaneousness of existence, the powerlessness of art, the unattainability of the ideal determines the tragic note in the mood of the lyrical hero. It is conveyed by the image of tears (the singer is exhausted in tears - stanza 2, the listeners cry over her, absorbing the “sobbing sounds” - stanzas 2,4). However, there is no hopelessness in the experience, since crying betrays the excitement that accompanies the intense life of the spirit. The tragedy is also removed by a philosophical assessment of what is happening, in contrast to material “goals” (“and there is no other goal” - stanza 4), which bring resentment, burning torment, immersion in the realm of beauty frees one from the omnipotence of fate, and introduces one to eternity. What makes this philosophical conclusion palpable is that in the context of the poem it appears as the result of reflection on a work of art being born before our eyes. A person is able to break through to the world of the ideal, to find true life, causing tears of delight.
The sound of the text reveals the organic nature of the assessment and emotional dominance. The conclusion appears at the peak of rising intonation: from the third line of the second stanza, the enumeration of the consequences of the artistic impression begins (four repetitions of the conjunction “and”). Thanks to him, the thirst for life and love awakens in the soul. Years have no power over her. She is reborn at the first sounds of a voice, again conquering the silence of the night. Music drowns out (even if the notes are quiet, like sighs) the thunder of fate’s decisions that bring resentment and torment:
And it blows, as then, in these sonorous sighs,
That you are alone - all life, that you are alone - love,
That there are no insults from fate and burning torment in the heart...
The conjunction “a” connects statements, showing that there is no end to rising intonation, just like life, despite obstacles and contradictions:
But there is no end to life, and there is no other goal,
As soon as you believe in the sobbing sounds...
In addition to the conjunctions at the beginning of the lines, four more “ands” appear in the middle, revealing the openness and incompleteness of the thought, which is a subjectively chosen fragment of a generalization.
At the end of the ascent, the motive of love, a feeling, appears and becomes a semantic result. It is addressed to the one who encourages the hearts of people to tremble and ascend, who makes magical transformations in the lyrical hero:
Youlove, hug and cry over you!
The meaning of the word is strengthened by repetition, exclamation, semantic emphasis - manifestations of feeling overwhelm the soul, which is expressed in a new string of signs.
Intonation means of expressiveness thus contribute to the manifestation of the most significant aspects in terms of content. The connection with the semantic content of the verse is also noticeable at the phonic level. The instrumentation of the poem complements the details that are important for creating an impression: “The piano was all open,” “the strings in it trembled,” “You sang until dawn,” the listeners were delighted with the “song” (in the original, “song”). Music sounds in the poem thanks to the assonances on “o” (night, moon, full - the words that form an internal rhyme in the first line are consonant with the male rhymes of stanzas 2-4, where the most meaningful words- love, you), “a” (female rhymes in stanzas 1-2), “u” (female rhymes in quatrains 3-4), continuous repetitions of “and” (rays, dawn, live, languid, resentment, life and, the main thing, the key word in quatrains 2 and 4 is to love), “e” (male rhyme of the first quatrain: lights - yours, sang, years, blows, double no, believe). Listen to these notes, which create the emotional atmosphere of the poem, by reading it aloud yourself, and be convinced of their non-semantic significance. Even if you don’t try to connect them with the content side, you can’t help but notice that music really “blows” (stanza 3) in them.
Thanks to the skill of the poet, who filled it with multi-footed, viscous lines of verse, the work is perceived as a love song. Its beauty is created by the phonic repetition of the combination of vowels with sonorant “l” and “n”, noticeable already in the first lines:
Siya la But whose. Moon would l P olon garden. Lying down whether
Louchi at on good legs for a visit Noah without exhaust her.
It sets the tone, its echoes can be heard in the future:
What are you doing on — lju wow, th O Not T lju bv And other...
…
You lju beat about nya t and p la hover over you.
…
And life And Not tko n tsa, and tse whether Not T other...
It is complemented by the fusion of vowels with semivowels; melodious combinations of sounds stand out against the contrasting background of vibrating, explosive, noisy consonants. You should not look for a direct relationship between the meaning and the sound of the text, but it is obvious that through musical means you can express what cannot be expressed in words. The emotional coloring of Fet’s poem “The Night Shined,” the analysis of which interests us, reveals the dominance of the lyrical hero’s desire for beauty, despite his inconsistency with the laws of the earthly world, finite, painful, dooming those who try to discern the radiance of the eternal behind them to resentment and burning torment ideal.
Poem “The night was shining. The garden was full of moonlight. They were lying..." - one of the lyrical masterpieces of A. A. Fet. Created on August 2, 1877, it was inspired by the singing of T. A. Kuzminskaya (sister of Sofia Andreevna Tolstoy), who described this episode in her memoirs. The work opens a whole cycle of poems in the collection “Evening Lights,” which Fet called “Melodies.” Of course, this is not accidental. The poem is truly written in a romance-song vein, and is unusually musical. The poet believed that beauty - the main idea of lyricism - is expressed not in lines, not in refined words, but above all “sounds subtle.” So, one of the most important characteristics poetry must have melody.
The musicality of this work is achieved through repetitions at different levels. poetic text. Thus, in the lyrical syntax there are anaphors (And...And..., What...What...) parallel constructions within the stanza ("That you are alone - all life, that you are alone - love; And there is no end to life, and there is no other goal" .... ). Fet compares words that are similar in sound composition - “sonorous sighs” - giving the poem additional semantic and emotional “overtones”. The phonetic techniques of assonance (repetition of the sounds [a], [o]), alliteration (repetition of the sound [r] in the line “The piano was all open and the strings in it were trembling”) are used here.
The composition of the poem also contributes to its melody. In this lyrical monologue, the author uses the ring technique. In the line “Love you, hug you and cry over you,” which frames the work, Fet expresses the main feelings of the hero: delight and admiration for the power of vocal art.
Of course, the musicality of the poem is dictated by its theme. After all, this work is not only about love and nature, it is, first of all, about wonderful singing, about a voice that gives rise to many vivid experiences:
The night was shining. The garden was full of moonlight. were lying
Rays at our feet in a living room without lights.
The piano was all open, and the strings in it were trembling,
Just like our hearts follow your song.
You sang until dawn, exhausted in tears,
That you alone are love, that there is no other love,
And I wanted to live so much, so that without making a sound,
That you alone are love, that there is no other love,
Fet does not depict a specific landscape or interior, but everything comes together in perfect harmony. The poet creates a holistic, dynamic picture in which visual, auditory, tactile, and sensory impressions are immediately presented. Generalization and combination of images of nature, love, music help the poet express the fullness of the joy of perceiving life.
The poem is autobiographical. His lyrical hero- Fet himself.
This work tells how the poet experiences two meetings with his beloved, between which there is a long separation. But Fet does not paint a single stroke of the portrait of the woman he loves, does not trace all the changes in their relationship and his condition. He captures only the trembling feeling that covers him under the impression of her singing:
And many years have passed, tedious and boring,
And in the silence of the night I hear your voice again,
And it blows, as then, in these sonorous sighs,
That you are alone - all life, that you are alone - love.
The feeling itself is also difficult to describe in words. The lyrical hero conveys the uniqueness, depth and complexity of his experiences with the help of “global” metaphors in the last line.
This poem once again convinces us that only art can truly ennoble a person, cleanse the soul, liberate and enrich it. Enjoying a beautiful work, be it music, painting, poetry, we forget about all our problems and failures, and are distracted from the bustle of everyday life. Human soul everything opens up to beauty, dissolves in it and thus gains strength to live on: to believe, to hope, to love. Fet writes about this in the last stanza. The singer’s magical voice frees the lyrical hero from “the grievances of fate and the burning torment of the heart,” presenting new horizons:
But there is no end to life, and there is no other goal,
As soon as you believe in the sobbing sounds,
Love you, hug you and cry over you!
Speaking about the lyrical character of the poem, the author involuntarily touched upon the theme of the creator and his mission. The singer's voice, which awakens a whole range of feelings in the hero, sounds so delightful because the heroine devotes herself passionately to her occupation and is herself fascinated by the magic of music. At the moment of singing the song, it must have seemed to her that there was nothing more important in the world than these wonderful sounds than the feelings put into the work. To forget about everything except creativity is the part of a true creator: a poet, an artist, a musician. This is also mentioned in the work.
Poem “The night was shining. The garden was full of moonlight. They lay..." amazes with the variety of themes, the depth and brightness of the images, the extraordinary melody, as well as its idea, which, in my opinion, lies in the author’s amazing desire to convey the beauty of art and the world in an all-encompassing way.
Afanasy Afanasyevich Fet is a wonderful lyricist, perhaps one of the last romantics in the galaxy of Russian writers of the “golden age”, a man of an amazing tragic fate.
The poet’s life can hardly be called happy: he suffered from litigation, marriage to an unloved woman and sincere, pure, beautiful love- unfortunately, Afanasy Afanasyevich was unable to accept her, and therefore until the end of his days he reproached himself, tormented himself - and poured out his soul on paper, “wrote sobbingly” about love. Each of his love poems is a bare string, a heart turned inside out before the reader, ardent, passionate, guilty... For this ardor and honesty in last years in life he will receive a whole tub of slander, hatred and contempt from critics. However, in the souls of his contemporaries and descendants, he will still remain an incredibly sensual person who gave the world a touching love story.
One of the most sincere and moving poems by A.A. Feta becomes “The night shone. The garden was full of moonlight. They were lying..." This is a later work of the poet, which is often mistakenly interpreted, suggesting that it is dedicated to Tatyana Kuzminskaya, who became the prototype of Natasha Rostova in the novel by L.N. Tolstoy "War and Peace". Despite the fact that literary scholars have reason to believe so, there are too many inaccuracies in this version, which are completely absent in another, less well-known version of the story of the creation of the poem, according to which its addressee is Maria Lazic, the poet’s only love.
Few people know that absolutely all love lyrics The poet is dedicated to this particular girl, who desperately loved Afanasy Afanasyevich and was even ready to be his cohabitant, lover - just so as not to part with him.
Alas, the poet was not satisfied with marrying a dowryless woman. He could not give up material well-being for the sake of the best feeling in his life. When Lazic dies tragically, Fet will understand that he missed his happiness. Despite the fact that there is still debate about whether her death was an accident or suicide, the poet unequivocally decided: it was he who was to blame for Mary’s tragedy. He won't forgive himself for this. That is why the motif of fire and tears appears so often in his poems - symbols of his eternal guilt.
Thematically, the poem “The Night Shined...” is deeply intimate and loving. It reflected all the poet’s experiences. However, despite the tragic history of its creation, its mood is still positive and inspiring. In the last lines, permeated with light sadness, you somehow read between the lines, no, you feel hope for a reunion with your beloved; her bright image accompanies the lyrical hero all his life, becoming like his guardian angel. No wonder the poem creates a sensual, unearthly, divine image a beautiful girl who once played the piano for the hero... The work is dominated by the idea of the immortality of love and the human soul, so the lyrical hero hopes to meet his beloved beyond the earthly world.
In terms of plot, “The Night Shined...” is close to Pushkin’s “I Remember a Wonderful Moment...”: it also reveals the motif of love-memory, reviving all the best feelings in the hero’s soul. The poem begins with an exposition, which is a landscape sketch, and continues with a picture of a night date, during which the lovers enjoy each other. The heroine plays the piano, as if pouring out her soul, and her lover at this very second feels especially keenly his affection for the girl, realizing the depth of his feelings for her.
Many years pass, and now the image of his beloved is reborn in the hero’s soul, he thanks her for her tenderness, for her sensuality, and regrets that his dreams remain only dreams...
The ring composition gives the poem special touchingness and semantic depth. The lines “Love you, hug you and cry over you” frame the characters’ love story, organically weaving the motive of their separation into the plot.
The poem is written in quatrains, iambic hexameter with alternating male and female rhymes, with cross rhyme. Despite its apparent simplicity, the lyricism of the work is achieved through complex work with the means of artistic expression. Among the tropes, the most significant are the personifications observed in almost every stanza (except the last): rays lay at the feet, the strings of the piano trembled, the night shone; and epithets (languorous years, sonorous sighs, sobbing sounds). The second and fourth stanzas are compositionally parallel to each other, which helps to strengthen the poetic picture, to increase a hundredfold that pleasantly painful feeling of the bitterness of lost love.
Stylistic figures are presented no less diversely. Thus, it is characterized by anaphora (third stanza), gradation (to love, hug, cry), and inversion.
But the main appeal of the work is provided by the use of alliteration and assonance. It is these techniques of poetic phonetics that create the unique melody and melodiousness of the lines.
In the first two lines, the sounds “l” and “o” are repeated, creating a feeling of silence, tenderness, and softness. The second half of the first quatrain is distinguished by the abundance of the “r” sound, which helps to convey the excitement, the uneven heartbeat of two excited lovers.
This impeccable elegy is difficult to attribute to any literary direction, however, many literary scholars are inclined to think that this is a romantic work.
The amazing property of Feta the poet is that he is able to abstract himself from external vanity. Despite life's troubles, he finds delight in memories and poetry. Despite the fact that in “The Night Shined...” the words “cry” and “tears” are repeatedly repeated, it reflects only the positive, wonderful feelings of the poet. One gets the feeling that he does not want to return to reality - only to live in beautiful dreams that protect him from the problems and difficulties of the real world.
