Friendly message- a poetic work written in the form of a letter or address to a person.

Anacreon- An ancient Greek poet who sang in his poems love, wine, friendship, and the joy of life. The light style of poetry in honor of Anacreon and his followers was called Anacreontics. The anacreontic motif of Pushkin’s early lyrics is accompanied by epicureanism

Epicureanism, epicureanism(named after the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus) – enjoyment of life, the ability to find harmony between the physical and spiritual in life.

Cross-cutting theme- what is discussed in a work of art, the subject of the image.

Evolution of the theme– development of a theme in a work of art.

Oh yeah– genre of lyric poetry; solemn, pathetic, glorifying work. Types of ode: laudatory, festive, lamentable.

Elegy- a genre of lyric poetry in which the poet’s sad thoughts, feelings and reflections are expressed in poetic form.

Pathos– (strong, passionate feeling) – emotional animation, passion that permeates the entire work as a whole; deep and historically truthful assessment of the characters portrayed, generated by their objective national significance; the author’s high enthusiasm for comprehending the essence of the life depicted.

Idyll– genre form of bucolic poetry; a small lyrical or epic work depicting an eternally beautiful nature, a peaceful, virtuous life in the lap of nature, sometimes in contrast with a restless and vicious person.

Freedom-loving lyrics– poetic works about will, spiritual freedom of the individual.

Sonnet- a lyric poem consisting of fourteen lines, divided into two quatrains (quatrains) and two tercets (terzettoes); in quatrains only two rhymes are repeated, in terzettos - two or three.

Epigraph- a short text (quote, saying, proverb), placed by the author before the text of the entire work of art or part of it.

Landscape (country, locality)– depiction of pictures of nature in a work of art.

Psychological landscape– transfer of state of mind lyrical hero through the state of nature

Social landscape- is inextricably linked with a person, helps to better understand the hardships of his daily life.

Sentimentalism- an artistic method in which everyday life becomes the center of the image common man, his personal emotional experiences, his feelings and moods.

Romanticism – literary direction, artistic method. It arose at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries.

Main features:

1. Doubt about the truth and expediency of modern civilization.

2. Appeal to eternal ideals (love, beauty) discord in reality, escape romantic hero to an ideal world.

3. Affirmation of the individual’s self-worth and uniqueness human soul

4. Portraying an exceptional hero in exceptional circumstances

5. The struggle against the rules of classicism for the freedom of creative expression of the writer, interest in folk art.

6. Colorful language.

Functions of artistic and expressive means (tropes):

Characteristics of an object or phenomenon;

Conveying an emotionally expressive assessment of the person depicted

“The History of Sir Charles Grandison” by Samuel Richardson, “Julia or the New Heloise” by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “The Sorrows of Young Werther” by Johann Wolfgang Goethe, “Dangerous Liaisons” by Choderlos de Laclos - all the most famous novels of the eighteenth century were written in epistolary form. The messages that made up the bizarre, sensitive plot were loving and friendly, ironic and passionate. Readers, and especially female readers, adored novels in letters - evidence of this in the literary passions of the Larins’ mother and daughter. And Natalya Pavlovna, who gave Count Nulin a fitting slap in the face, had read the fourth volume before meeting him

Sentimental novel:

The love of Eliza and Armand,

Or correspondence between two families.

Classic, ancient novel,

Perfectly long, long, long,

Moral and decorous,

No romantic ideas.

In the nineteenth century, the novel in letters began to decline. Pushkin's plan for an epistolary novel about the trial of Maria Schoning and Anna Garlin remained unfulfilled; only the beginning of the correspondence between the heroines was preserved. However, epistolary fragments are included in the context of the novels of Balzac, Stendhal, Musset, and Dickens. As a rule, the letters talk about turning points in the plot; let us remember Tatiana’s letter to Onegin and Onegin to Tatiana, Herman’s letters to Lisa in The Queen of Spades, Alexei’s correspondence with Akulina in The Young Lady-Peasant Woman.

In ancient times, a letter was an important event in the spiritual life of the one who wrote it and whoever receives it. The letter ideally had the sincerity of confession, and at the same time the message is characterized by a detachment, because the communication between the author and the addressee does not coincide in time and space.

However, in the history of Russian literature there is a strange phenomenon - “Correspondence from two corners.” The preface from the Alkonost publishing house says: “These letters, twelve in number, were written in the summer of 1920, when both friends lived together in the same room in a health resort for workers in science and literature in Moscow.”

The joint epistolary book of the poet and Pushkin scholar speaks very eloquently about the genre nature of the message: it is equally important for the writer and the reader, and quite often it is more significant for the author, since writing is not only a communicative action, but, above all, an act of self-knowledge.

In those historical periods when the epistolary novel flourished, its poetic analogue in the lyrics was a poetic message to a specific person or some conditional addressee. The messages of Nicolas Boileau and Voltaire in France, A. Pope and D. Milton in England, I.K. Gottscheda, K.M. Wieland and I.V. Goethe in Germany. In Russian poetry, the first messages belong to M.V. Lomonosov, G.R. Derzhavin and A.P. Sumarokov.

The message could be loving, friendly and satirical, but the genre specificity of the message is in the implied dialogical form with a real or imaginary interlocutor (“Conversation of a bookseller with a poet” by Pushkin, “Conversation with a financial inspector about poetry” by Mayakovsky, “Conversation with Komsomol member N. Dementiev” by Bagritsky ).

The listed examples force us to turn to the genesis of the poetic message. There are two sources of the genre: Christian and pagan - ancient. IN New Testament included 21 letters, of which the most authoritative are the letters of the Apostle Paul. The authors of other letters are unknown or suspected authors. From the letters of the Apostle Paul to the Romans and Corinthians, a tradition arose of searching for truth and justice, piety and love for one's neighbor in the epistols.

On the other hand, Quintus Horace Flaccus marked the completion of his creative career with the creation of two books of “Epistle” in hexameters (in 20 and between 19 and 14 BC). The first book includes twenty messages of a philosophical and satirical tone. The second book consists of three epistles, “To Augustus,” “To Florus,” and “To the Pisos.” In the message “To Augustus,” who expressed the desire to receive a letter from the most famous poet, who, as he understood, would immortalize his name, we are talking about archaic and modern poetry. In his second letter to the young poet Florus, Horace reflects on the transience of time and the role of the poet in preserving the memory of the past. But the message to the noble Pison brothers is especially significant. It entered the history of literature under the name “The Art of Poetry” (“Ars poetica”). In it, Horace formulated the goals and principles of lyric poetry, and it served as a model for many subsequent aesthetic manifestos. One of the most frequently discussed questions in friendly messages is about the purpose and purpose of art. In his letter “To the Pisons,” Horace examined the entire history of ancient poetry from Homer to the present.

Already from the messages of Horace it is clear that, despite the instructions to whom they are addressed, in essence these letters are without an address, since they are addressed to any interested reader and can become known to him. In the messages of Horace, and after him other poets, not private issues are discussed, but universal problems. The genre of message in lyrics is unique in its own way, because it visibly presents the individual and the universal. It is no coincidence that poems entitled “To the Reader” or “To the Poet” are common in lyric poetry, and sometimes in plural. The author of the lyrical message in these verses addresses everyone at once, sometimes thereby anticipating the subsequent text.

The late Roman poet Ausonius (IV century) wrote a cycle of poems “Household Poems” - about his ancestors and grandchildren. However, the intimacy of the topic is apparent. Most of the poems are written in the genre of messages. The cycle opens with a lengthy address “To the Reader,” in which Ausonius talks about his genealogy. And in the end it is emphasized:

Here I am, Ausonius; don't be arrogant

Good reader, accept these writings as work.

(Translation by M. Gasparov)

Despite the apparent specificity of the dates accompanying the messages, they, as a rule, are addressed not only to contemporaries, but also to future generations. The first European humanist, Francesco Petrarch, created Letters to Posterity, confident that his personality would be of interest to those who would live after him. But he reasoned in a similar way in poetry, and any author of epistles thinks similarly, believing that a poetic message will arouse general interest among his contemporaries, and most likely, among his descendants.

Here, it would seem, is an example of a purely private message, not even originally intended for publication. B.L. On February 22, 1957, Pasternak wrote to actress Anastasia Platonovna Zueva:

Excuse me. I regret.

I can not. I will not come.

But mentally - on the anniversary,

In the left seventh row.

I stand and rejoice and cry,

And I'm looking for the right words,

I shout anything for good luck,

And I applaud endlessly.

Could the magnificent Moscow Art Theater actress receive a more generous gift? Pasternak found more precise words of admiration in order to appreciate her incomparable gift as a characteristic old woman. But the meaning of the message outgrew the specific occasion. The poet left a portrait of the actress, which was preserved for decades; at the same time, he conveyed the essence of acting talent in relation to any great master:

Ostrovsky wrote for you in your dreams

And he anticipated you in roles,

Moscow has built its own world for you

Scammer, hanger-on, matchmaker.

Movement of the hand and forearm,

With a grimace, a sing-song speech

Zamoskvorechye Resurrected

Saints and sinners, old maids.

You are authenticity, you are charm,

You are the inspiration itself.

About this to everyone at a distance

Let my letter tell you.

The distance increases over the years, but the declaration of love for the talent remains.

The message never required a strictly fixed poetic form, because it could be a sonnet and stanzas, an ode and an epigram. The formal feature of the genre is only that it imitates writing to a greater or lesser extent. The authors of the messages soon abandoned the original poetic meter - hexameter.

A friendly message is created with the goal of finding a like-minded person and ally. That is why the importance of a friendly message in the literary process is so great - messages unite poets into communities, directions and schools. Friendly message addressed to to a loved one(Pushkin - Pushchin, Fet - Tyutchev, Tsvetaeva - Blok). But the message can be addressed to many close people at once. Pushkin writes in 1827 on the Lyceum anniversary:

God help you, my friends,

In the worries of life, royal service,

And at feasts of riotous friendship,

And in the sweet sacraments of love!

God help you, my friends,

And in storms and in everyday grief,

In a foreign land, in a deserted sea,

And in the dark abysses of the earth!

A friendly message is often associated, like this one, with a memorable date. Addressed to all former lyceum students, it nevertheless highlights some in the subtext. In a foreign land - there were diplomats A.M. Gorchakov and S.G. Lomonosov, in the deserted sea - sailor F.F. Matyushkin, and the last line is in honor of the exiled Decembrist I.I. Pushchina.

The message does not always express sympathy. A.S. Pushkin wages an unpleasant argument in his “Message to the Censor,” calling him “a gloomy guardian of the muses,” “a fool and a coward.” A.A. Fet in his message to the “Pseudo-poet” honors the mediocre poet for no reason:

Dragging at the whim of the people

In the mud, a lowly verse

You are the words of the proud freedom

I never understood it with my heart.

M.I. Tsvetaeva is not afraid to say offensive words to her ex-lover:

You, who loved me with falsehood

Truth - and the truth of lies,

Nowhere! - Abroad!

You, who loved me longer

Time. - Hands swing! -

You don't love me anymore:

The truth in five words.

The given example from Tsvetaeva’s poems forces us to make one clarification. It is sometimes difficult to draw the line between message and dedication. In both cases, there is an appeal, a dialogue or argument is being conducted, but in dedication the epistolary features are weakened.

A special style is inherent in official messages. The poet is faced with the task of making official praise sound as if it came from the soul. For this, in the ruler and nobleman it was important to show a person, a personality with its anxieties and concerns. The genre of ode was most suitable for this, but messages from V.A. were also often used. Zhukovsky, G.R. Derzhavin, N.M. Karamzin. The message is more advantageous than the ode, because the recognition of authority is more intimate, intimate, and humane.

Of the Russian poets of the last century, V.A. especially often turned to the genre of the message. Zhukovsky. Among its recipients are fellow poets and people in power. On the occasion of the birth of the Grand Duke, the future Emperor Alexander II, on April 17, 1818, the poet addresses his mother, the wife of the Grand Duke Nikolai Pavlovich (the future Emperor Nicholas I), with a message. It is characteristic that Zhukovsky, contrary to tradition, focused on the message, and not on the ode, as was customary. Another thing is also indicative: the appeal to his mother allowed Zhukovsky to focus on this event as a family event, and not a state one. Beginning his message “To the Empress Grand Duchess Alexandra Feodorovna on her birth in. book Alexander Nikolaevich,” the poet conveys the excitement that gripped him befitting the occasion, then pronounces praise to motherhood in a purely religious sense. In the tradition of Virgil’s IV eclogue, which was interpreted as a prediction of the birth of Christ, Zhukovsky proclaims:

Come into our world, baby, welcome guest!

The message ends with an edification in an educational spirit:

May he be a glorious participant!

Yes, on the high line he won’t forget

The holiest of titles: man.

Live for centuries in national greatness,

For the good of everyone - forget your own,

These are the rules of great kings for their grandson.

With you he can begin this science.

It is worth remembering that the genre of lyrical message has acquired special meaning during the Great Patriotic War. Poems by K. Simonov, A. Surkov, S. Gudzenko and other front-line poets convincingly prove the inextricable connection of this genre with life circumstances. Letter from the front, letter to the front - most important event in the life of the military generation, which naturally became embodied in poetry.

The genre of the lyrical message is associated with certain etiquette and customs. Gradually it became impoverished due to the general loss of epistolary culture. However, to show that he did not disappear altogether, let us quote Gottfried Benn’s poem “March. Letter to Meran":

Not too soon, not now

So that I come, so that I can get here in time

Confusion of the heart and delight of the skin, -

Put off flowering for a moment.

Almonds, tulips, roses - wait,

Don't open your petals!

It's not time yet, the sun is not at its zenith,

No, wait, have mercy, -

I'm not ready for flowering yet.

Ah, this path - there is no need to bloom yet,

From afar - you can't see it yet

To that distance where there is calm consolation

Almost turns into grace.

(Translation by V. Toporov)

An example from the lyrics of the greatest lyric poet of the twentieth century, G. Benn, reveals new properties of the message - it becomes more conventional, associative, and allegorical.

The genre of the message has somewhat unexpectedly revived in postmodernism. Poets who gravitate toward postmodernism freely use the styles and genres of their predecessors, quote and paraphrase their lines, including them in the context of their own work, where they are easily recognizable, but their semantic and aesthetic significance is questioned. The predilection of postmodernists for the experience of the most distant predecessors and their appeal to half-forgotten genres is also known. An ancient genre, revived in modern times, is perceived by the reader as a kind of quotation. In this regard, many poets can be found turning to the genre of the message, although its very appearance is changing, becoming more stylized according to ancient examples than spontaneous.

The initiator was I.A. Brodsky, “Letters to a Roman Friend” (1972) became a real sensation. The demonstrative retroness was unusual for the genre of the message, although fictitious addressees of the past were more than once encountered in the poetic messages of I.V. Goethe, A.S. Pushkin and other classics.

The inclination of the poets and their readers of those years to all kinds of allusions could be satisfied - the projection from the past to the present was obvious. The poem was about exiles persecuted by the regime and its loyal high-ranking servants. But the poet was not counting on a superficial perception, but a deep one: in “Letters to a Roman Friend” we were talking about cardinal issues of human existence outside of time and space. The main idea of ​​the “Letters”:

If you happen to be born in the Empire,

It’s better to live in a remote province by the sea.

“Letters to a Roman Friend” is about the bliss of absolute loneliness, when it is adequate to nature itself.

Brodsky brought the historical message back into use. The message “Odysseus to Telemachus”, written at the same time, carries within itself the tragedy of time, the essence of which is that the past long ago loses its heroic meaning, loses the contours of reality, individual existence, like a wave, is absorbed by the sea of ​​all-human existence.

Brodsky has another - earlier - message, the name of which is almost a tautology - “Message to Poems”, which in a paradoxical form express the originality of the genre of the message: in the first place is the self-analysis of the writer, to a certain extent ignoring the perception of the addressee.

Conceptualist poets, who bombarded each other with letters in the 70s and 80s, approached the revival of messages differently.

One of the attitudes of the poets T. Kibirov, L. Rubinshtein, D. Prigov, D. Bykov, different, but who came out of the semi-underground to the forefront in the early nineties, was the focus on documentary, specificity, and authenticity. Hence the abundance of accurate and distorted quotes and the authenticity of names. A certain collectivity entered into poetry, combining conciliarity with a production meeting, and in the intervals between meetings, naturally, they communicated through messages. There are quite a few of them - unaddressed or, on the contrary, addressed as precisely as possible, where an epigraph appeared instead of an index. Let us recall a fragment from the most quoted message “L.S. Rubinstein" by Timur Kibirov:

Everything passes. Everything is of course.

The smoke is ominous. Wolf's Moat.

Like Chernenko, fleetingly

and absurd, like Khrushchev,

like Ilyich fruitlessly, Leva,

And like Krupskaya, it’s scary!

The foundations are falling apart.

Shit is spreading.

The advantages and disadvantages of such messages are their burning topicality. They were as relevant as the editorial in Pravda, which they tirelessly mocked. Having gone official, the authors of recent sarcastic epistles were somewhat at a loss: the problem was a thing of the past. It remains to be seen that a new generation of critics will be recruited who will parody the former parodists.

What are the prospects for the message genre? I think they are the most optimistic. The spread of literature through the Internet will bring to life new messages with a cosmic address. The universe is waiting! If we make serious predictions, then since there are new means of communication, there will be messages. There is a hypothesis that the genre, which began on birch bark and papyrus, will certainly use the fax.

Genre of the message in the lyrics of A.S. Pushkin

The genre of the message has been known since antiquity (Quintus, Horace, Ovid).

In ancient Russian literature, the epistle genre was used to address figures on political or social issues.

In Russian poetry early XIX century, a friendly message was a very common genre (messages by V.A. Zhukovsky, N.M. Karamzin, I.I. Dmitriev, K.N. Batyushkov, A.S. Pushkin, A.A. Fet). Its popularity was largely due to the low level of canonization of the genre, its fundamental instability, and freedom of expression. A friendly message resembles a casual conversation, often a conversation “as equals.” The addressee could be very different: a real person close to the author, a person with whom the author was not personally acquainted, an imaginary person.

The formal genre feature of a message is that it imitates a letter to a greater or lesser extent, that is, the main feature of this genre is an appeal to a specific person, as well as the presence of such elements as wishes, requests, exhortations. The authors of the messages soon abandoned the original poetic meter - hexameter. A friendly message is created with the goal of finding a like-minded person and ally.

Pushkin attaches special importance to the genre of the message, since it opens the path of freedom for the poet. In this genre, literary influences and traditions are the least active. And therefore, it was here that it was easiest for Pushkin to follow his own path. Pushkin's message is not only a free genre, but also the most lyrical: it is full of sincere confessions - confessions of the soul. One of the examples of such confessions can be considered the letter “To Chaadaev”.

Pushkin would turn to Chaadaev more than once with friendly messages: in 1821 - “In a country where I have forgotten the anxieties of previous years.”, in 1824 - “Why cold doubts.”

The years of imprisonment flew by;

Not long, peaceful friends,

We can see shelter of solitude

And Tsarskoye Selo fields.

Separation awaits us at the doorstep,

The distant noise is calling us,

And everyone looks at the road

With the excitement of proud, young thoughts.

Another, hiding his mind under a shako,

Already in warlike attire

He waved his hussar saber -

In the Epiphany morning cool

Beautifully freezing at the parade,

And he goes to the guard to warm himself;

Another, born to be a nobleman,

Not honor, but loving honors,

At the noble rogue's in the hallway

He sees himself as a submissive rogue;

Only me, obedient to fate in everything,

Happy laziness, faithful son,

Careless at heart, indifferent,

I quietly dozed off alone.

Clerks and lancers are equal to me,

The laws are equal, shako,

I'm not trying to be a captain

And I’m not crawling into an assessor;

Friends! a little indulgence -

Leave me the red cap

Bye for his sins

I wouldn't trade it for a bump,

While it is possible for the lazy,

Without fear of terrible troubles,

Still with a careless hand

In July, open your vest.

Someday looking at this secret piece of paper,

Once written by me,

Fly away to the Lyceum corner for a while

An all-powerful, sweet dream.

Do you remember the quick minutes of the first days,

Peaceful bondage, six years of union,

Sorrows, joys, dreams of your soul,

The quarrels of friendship and the sweetness of reconciliation, -

What happened and will not happen again.

And with quiet tears of melancholy

Do you remember your first love?

My friend, she has passed. but with first friends

Your union was not concluded by a playful dream;

Before terrible times, before terrible destinies,

Oh dear, he is eternal!

*To the album Pushchin(1817) – was not published during Pushkin’s lifetime. Written shortly before graduation from the Lyceum. (see about I.I. Pushchin).

The genre of the message has been known since antiquity (Quintus, Horace, Ovid).
In ancient Russian literature, the epistle genre was used to address figures on political or social issues.
In Russian poetry of the early 19th century, a friendly message was a very common genre (epistles by V.A. Zhukovsky, N.M. Karamzin, I.I. Dmitriev, K.N. Batyushkov, A.S. Pushkin, A.A. Fet) . Its popularity was largely due to the low level of canonization of the genre, its fundamental instability, and freedom of expression. A friendly message resembles a casual conversation, often a conversation “as equals.” The addressee could be very different: a real person close to the author, a person with whom the author was not personally acquainted, an imaginary person.
The formal genre feature of a message is that it imitates a letter to a greater or lesser extent, that is, the main feature of this genre is an appeal to a specific person, as well as the presence of such elements as wishes, requests, exhortations. The authors of the messages soon abandoned the original poetic meter - hexameter. A friendly message is created with the goal of finding a like-minded person and ally.

Pushkin the Lyceum student uses various genres: from ode to romance, elegy and fairy tale. But the most favorite genre of A.S. Pushkin’s early lyceum period is a friendly message (“To Natalya” is the poet’s first poem, “To a friend the poet” is the first printed work). Many of Pushkin’s messages take Batyushkov’s “My Penates” as a model. These include numerous messages to poets, teachers and friends. In addresses to friends (“Kuchelbecker”) the theme of the Lyceum arises, which is also found in the poet’s later poems.
Pushkin attaches special importance to the genre of the message, since it opens the path of freedom for the poet. In this genre, literary influences and traditions are the least active. And therefore, it was here that it was easiest for Pushkin to follow his own path. Pushkin's message is not only a free genre, but also the most lyrical: it is full of sincere confessions - confessions of the soul. One of the examples of such confessions can be considered the message

This event (deportation to the Belarusian regiment as punishment for writing political fables), which sadly reflected on all subsequent military career Denis Davydov, nevertheless, played a huge role in the development of his poetic talent. In the regiment, Davydov meets A.P. Burtsov, a not particularly educated man (who could not even read Davydov’s messages). This meeting in itself is insignificant. But in Burtsov, Davydov was able to see the features of a “real hussar”, a kind of “model” of freedom-loving, carefree and brave hussars. The birth of Davydov’s original verse was associated with the poeticization of this “model.” From now on, Davydov finds his own poetic theme and the genre that allows him to reflect it most fully and vividly - friendly message.

Reached an unprecedented peak in poetry late XVIII- the beginning of the 19th century, this genre contributed primarily to the aggravation of interest in the individual, in his spiritual world. The genre of the message allowed itself a plot, usually not characteristic of lyric poetry, and was thus a kind of predecessor of a poetic story and even a novel in verse. The palette of the message was enriched with everyday details, and the addressee himself gradually acquired specific real features. A friendly message - the discovery of a new world in literature. It created completely new type the hero is a free man, not caring about rank and wealth, living far from noisy cities.

The messages of Denis Davydov are inextricably linked with the main trend in the development of this genre and at the same time introduce “features of an unforgettable style” into this genre. Show the life of a Russian warrior, find poetry in his everyday activities, reveal him spiritual world, the richness of his nature and in Everyday life, and in the smoke of battles, to show a man at war, to find a role model for young warriors - Davydov succeeded in all this in his “hussar” messages. Davydov is “a poet at heart,” V.G., one of the first critics of his poetic works, correctly noted. Belinsky, “for him life was poetry, and poetry was life; he poeticized everything he touched.”

“Terrible punch glasses”, “carts and dolmans” - the entire deliberately poor environment of hussars’ everyday life is filled with life under Davydov’s pen.

The hero of Denis Davydov is not just a hard-charging young man, a dashing rider and a restless reveler. The hussar feast, where “daring fun” and “brotherly self-will” reign, in Davydov’s poetry contrasts with those secular celebrations, “where frankness is in shackles, where body and soul are under pressure.” It is no coincidence that in his “Hussar Confession” (1832) Denis Davydov will say:

I feel stuffy at feasts without will and plowing.

Give me a gypsy choir! Give me argument and laughter,

And there's a column of smoke from the pipe puff!

I'm running through the age of the gathering, where life is in one's legs,

Where favors are conveyed by weight...

And I rush to my hussar family...

Rejoice, merry crowd,

In living and fraternal self-will!

And this desire for will and independence, freedom and self-will of the hero Davydov, for whom “rank for the parade” and “George for the advice” are the real machinations of Fortune, made him in the eyes of many generations the ideal of a true freedom-loving, desperate, courageous and dashing hussar.

Denis Davydov had no equal in creating out-of-the-way messages and “Bahic” songs. He was so original that it was impossible to imitate him. True, it should be noted that Davydov’s military-love lyrics caused several attempts. So, K.N. tried himself in this area. Batyushkov, writing his own: “The hussar leaning on his saber,” but Pushkin, who loved his poetry so much, reacted negatively to this poem: “Zirlich-manirlich. There is no point in arguing with D. Davydov.”

Denis Davydov wrote from inspiration and wherever he had to - in hospitals, during duty, and even in the squadron stables. And even though critics noted in his works “carelessness in finishing” (A. Bestuzhev-Marlinsky), but accuracy, brightness, accuracy, precision of expression, complete sincerity of feeling - these features distinguish Davydov’s poetry, and his “hussarism”, and his elegies.

“Your mighty verse will not die,

Memorably alive,

Amazing, ebullient

And warlike-flying

And wildly daring"

This is how N.M. addresses Davydov. Languages.

The originality of Davydov’s poetry is, first of all, his style, “quick, picturesque, sudden” (A.A. Bestuzhev-Marlinsky):

...this is not the time to go for a walk!

To the horses, brother, and your foot in the stirrup,

Saber out and cut!”

"To Burtsov", 1804

Denis Davydov’s transition from one rhythm to another is just as quick and unexpected:

The horse is boiling under its rider,

The saber whistles, the enemy falls...

The battle fell silent, and in the evening

The ladle moves again.

"Song of the Old Hussar", 1817

It was, of course, difficult for the 19th century reader, brought up on the poetry of sentimentalists, to immediately understand and accept the new lyrical hero - the dashing hussar, and the language itself - the language of “despicable”, everyday life; colloquialisms that so easily entered Davydov’s poetic language (“he dies cursing” - and this is about a tragic hero; “they tore his throat”, etc.)

The language of Denis Davydov differed sharply from the poetic language of the two largest poets of that time, V.A. Zhukovsky and K.N. Batyushkov, who entered the literary field together with D. Davydov. Davydov’s poetry ran counter to the principles of harmony established by the poetry of Zhukovsky and Batyushkov, and the external effect of the works of the hussar poet, as already noted by critics, often consisted precisely in the disharmony of words and expressions standing next to them: “And Dibich frightened people with his beauty,” “And they were baptized.” witches, and the devils are sick"; “Give me the golden tub.”

Using this technique, Denis Davydov creates one of his best poems, “Poetic Woman” (1816):

What is she? - Rush, confusion,

And coldness and delight,

Both rebuff and passion

Laughter and tears, devil and god,

The heat of midday summer

Hurricane beauty...

And researchers rightfully consider these verbal and intonation contrasts to be the discovery of Denis Davydov.

Be, hussar, drunk and well-fed!..

In peaceful days, do not be discouraged

And rock and roll in battles!

Life flies: don’t be embarrassed,

Don't sleep on her flight...

"Hussar Feast", 1804

Davydov transfers these techniques to his other, later works.

Already in the early messages addressed to Burtsov, Davydov managed to create a vivid, specific and at the same time generalized image of a “dashing hussar” - “a bully and a bully”, a brave grunt on a “bug horse”, despising sycophancy and flattery, cowardice and faint-heartedness. Next to him was a “poet-hero”, a poet-warrior to match the “dashing hussar”, and he was so bright and autobiographical that for many generations of readers he was inseparable from D. Davydov himself. In numerous messages addressed to him, we see the same image of the “singer-hero” with stable portrait features (“black-moustached fellow”, “mustache”, “Borodinsky bearded man”, “black-curly fighter with a white curl on his forehead”, “with curly hair, dark beard”, etc.).

But the “dashing hussar” and the “hero-poet” are united not only by personal courage, honesty and sincerity, they are ardent patriots:

I'm damn happy for you

Our mother Russia!

And may they, in peacetime, be like real hussars:

...Everything is dead

They drink and, bowing their foreheads,

They fall asleep like a charm.

But as soon as the day passes,

Each one flutters across the field:

The shako is brutally askew,

Mentik plays with whirlwinds.

"Song of the Old Hussar", 1817

But if the time of trial comes:

But if the enemy is fierce

He dares to resist us,

My first duty, my sacred duty -

To rise again for the homeland;

Your friend will appear in the field,

Another saber will flash,

Or he will return in laurels,

Or he will fall dead on his laurels!

"Elegy IV", 1816

The patriotic theme of the fight against the enemy, the struggle for the liberation of the homeland is sharply emphasized in the “hussar” poems of Denis Davydov; and they go beyond the narrow framework of purely intimate lyrics, thereby expanding the meaning and significance of “hussarism”.