A poem by A.A. Blok "On the Railway" (Perception, interpretation, evaluation.). Analysis of the poem "on the railroad"

A poem by A.A. Blok "On railway” rich in artistic details that make the reader shudder. The cinematic plausibility with which each stanza is written visibly paints a tragic picture before us.

At this time, Blok was rereading Leo Tolstoy's Resurrection. The plot of the poem has an intertextual connection with the story of Nekhlyudov and Katyusha Maslova. Here you can see a reference to another, no less famous novel "Anna Karenina". However, it cannot be said that On the Railroad is a poetic imitation. The author uses new symbols, saturating them with the sound of the block.

The idea is based on a real case, witnessed by Blok. Passing by the railway station, he saw through the train window a poisoned teenage girl and local inhabitants standing at a distance and looking with petty curiosity. Blok saw everything from the inside. He couldn't help but respond with his heart.

As you know, the poet was very attentive and alien to indifference. Such a conclusion can be drawn from the memoirs of his contemporaries, from what was created by Blok, for example, such an article as "Irony", from his diaries and letters. The author always reacted sharply to any slightest change in the world order. His sensitive heart, having heard the music of the revolution, was incapable of pretending to be a mechanical engine.

For Blok, human life is the life of the whole country. In the poem "On the Railroad" one can clearly feel the identification of the existence of an individual and the fate of the entire Motherland.

Genre, direction, size

The genre of the poem "On the Railroad" is a lyrical work. It reflects the features of the symbolist direction.

First of all, it should be noted the ambiguity of each image that appears in the work, the musicality of the syllable and the philosophical sound of the central theme. At the end of this poem, a symbolist view of life's realities from the point of view of eternity is clearly seen. Musicality, expressed not only by poetic devices, but also concentrated in the internal energy of "On the Railroad", also makes this work related to symbolism.

The block uses an ambiguous poetic meter: the alternation of iambic five- and four-foot. "On the Railroad" consists of nine quatrains. The type of rhyme is also special, the first and third lines of the quatrains are dactyly rhymed. The second and fourth have a female clause. Thus, an internal rhythm is created, giving the poem a wave-like intonation sound.

Composition

The composition "On the railway" is circular. The poem begins with an image of a dead girl lying “under a mound, in an unmowed ditch,” and ends with a return to the same image. The block uses a cinematic technique, gradually moving the lens away from main character to show her fate, and then again returning to the figure of an unfortunate girl. It creates a sense of involvement in the reader in what is happening. Being a separate heroine becomes an impulse to think about the fate of the Motherland.

Ring composition allows Blok to create an image of infinity: the end is the beginning, and the beginning is the end. However, the last lines leave hope for getting rid of this fate. The dead heroine is described as if alive: “Do not approach her with questions, / You don’t care, but she is enough: / Love, dirt or wheels / She is crushed - everything hurts.” One gets the feeling that she can still hear the talk and bustle around, still sees the figures approaching her, still distinguishes the faces of curious onlookers. The dead man is written out, as if existing between the world of the earth and the heavens. This duality, that the flesh belongs to the earth, and the soul rushes to the sky, is shown as dead, but still a presence.

Images and symbols

Symbols are hidden in the poem, absorbing the essence of the era.

  • For example, in this quatrain: “The carriages walked in a familiar line, / They trembled and creaked; / The yellow and blue ones were silent; / In green they cried and sang ...” - the poet allegorically means social inequality and in general the polarity of the perception of Russian reality of that time by different classes. And at the same time, he notices a deaf indifference to the fate of a person, both higher and lower strata. Someone is hidden behind the mask of an aristocrat, someone behind the illusion of the breadth of one's own soul. In any case, everyone is the same in one thing: no one notices the human expectation, no one stretches out their hands. However, Blok does not reproach people, he only asks them to be more sensitive at least to her death, since they could not live. Blok wrote: “Heart, shed tears of pity for everything and remember that no one can be judged ...”
  • The unfortunate fate of the heroine can be viewed from a symbolist point of view. The image of a girl "in a colored scarf, thrown on braids" - personification of Russia. “Grand walk”, exciting expectations in the hopes that a miracle will happen right now - and life will become easier, and everything will change. It seems to me that Blok wanted to put a global meaning into this symbol - the eternal expectations of the Russian people for a better life.
  • In the fate of the girl, one can easily guess another symbol - the difficult fate of a Russian woman. Endless expectations of happiness, the keys to which are thrown deep into the water and eaten by fish long ago, according to the heroine of Nekrasov's poem.
  • Railroad image is the symbol of the path. People are rushing on a train, no one knows where, not noticing how the entire space of the country is plunging into mortal anguish. “Greedy looks” that the girl throws at the windows of the cars, hoping for a hearty response - an attempt to stop the train of that era and be saved by love.
  • Lyrical hero treats the girl with deep sympathy and compassion. First of all, he sees Russia in the face of the girl. One gets the feeling that he passes through himself all the pain of this unfortunate fate, realizing his helplessness before the tragedy.

    • Themes

    The main theme of the poem is the theme of loneliness in the crowd, the tragic fate of a person who yearned for love and was met only by the cold of external space. The theme of human indifference, as a result of general blindness, is also woven into the outline of the plot. The inability to forget oneself and see one's neighbor, the inability to get out of the rushing wagon of life and just stop for a moment, look around, notice, listen, become sensitive. The closeness and individuality of each gives rise to an all-consuming icy void into which the whole country is immersed. Blok draws a parallel between the fate of a particular heroine and Russia, showing how lonely and dilapidated the Motherland seems to him, enduring so much pain and not finding a sensitive soul in its own expanses.

    Block also brings up the theme of an unfulfilled dream. The sound of "On the Railroad" is tragic precisely in this victory of life's realities over dreams.

    Problems

    The problems of "On the Railway" are multifaceted: here is the path of Russia, and the fate of a Russian woman, and the irresistibility of fate.

    There is not a single rhetorical question in the poem, however, the interrogative intonation is palpable in the subtext of the work. The poet reflects on the fate of his own country, trying to understand where and why everything is moving around. The feeling of external bustle and internal loneliness is created due to the station surroundings. The smallness of a person against the backdrop of a vast space, trains rushing somewhere, busy crowds of people. The problem of hopelessness and hopelessness is considered on the example of a single human destiny.

    Idea

    The main idea that Blok puts into his creation is also ambiguous. Each symbol carries more than one meaning.

    The main idea is understanding the path of the Motherland. The lyrical hero is not indifferent to what is happening. He is trying to urge people to be sensitive and careful. If we consider the fate of the heroine as a symbol of the fate of Russia, then we can say that the central idea of ​​this poem is to listen to an already dying country. This is a kind of premonition of the upcoming events of that era. What will be said in the article "Intelligentsia and Revolution" eight years later is already reflected in this work.

    What matters is that lyrical hero is also among those who swept past, and only the contemplation of death excites his whole being. In fact, all these artistic details (“decorative gait”, “gentle blush, cooler curl”, etc.) are recreated only in his imagination. Seeing the outcome of this sad story, he seems to scroll back to realize the mistake, to feel all the pain experienced by the main character.

    Means of artistic expression

    The means of artistic expression found in this poem are also multifaceted. Here are the epithets “smooth gaze”, “greedy eyes”, etc., and the comparison “as if alive”, and the antithesis “Yellow and blue were silent; / Wept and sang in green”.

    Blok also uses the sound-writing "The carriages walked in the usual line, trembled and creaked" in order to more accurately convey the station atmosphere.

    The anaphora in the sixth quatrain “Slid over her with a gentle smile / Slipped - and the train sped off into the distance ...” is necessary here for expressiveness and emphasizing the transience of what is happening. In the penultimate quatrain there is a rhetorical exclamation: “Yes, my heart has been taken out for a long time!”, which conveys the emotional intensity of the poem. In the same quatrain, Blok again uses the anaphora: “So many bows are given, / So many greedy looks are thrown”, which, first of all, creates an forcing intonation.

    Blok also often uses a dash in the middle of a line, thus creating a long caesura that focuses attention on what was said and becomes an impulse of internal tension: “I slipped and the train rushed off into the distance”, “You don’t care, but it’s enough for her”, “... Or wheels / It is crushed - everything hurts.

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The poem "On the Railroad" was included in the cycle "Motherland". The work reveals the tragedy of fate and the suicide of a young woman. The action takes place on a small deaf station, the author does not indicate the name of the county or province.

To understand the fate of the heroine, it is enough to know that this is the wilderness. This fact allows you to feel more deeply the loneliness and joylessness of a young woman who dreamed of happiness. Trains, probably, stop extremely rarely, "pass by the usual line." The reader understands that the platform is deserted, by the fact that only one of them and the gendarme standing next to him are visible from the windows. From the poem it becomes clear that she went out onto the platform more than once, caught a lot of glances of people looking out of the windows, but only once noticed the smile of a hussar leaning on red velvet

Many people passing by saw the woman, but few paid attention to the lone figure standing on the platform. These imaginary meetings occupied a huge place in the life of a single woman. The words about passing youth with its empty dreams make you think about the speed and irrevocableness of time, about unfulfilled hopes. Dreams of finding their happiness stumbled upon the indifference and coldness of those around them. Millions of empty eyes from the carriages looked at her, many bows were given, but all to no avail.

The author asks not to ask her about anything. But questions arise by themselves. The reader will find the answers after a careful reading of the poem, when there is a clear idea of ​​the reason for the suicide. We are talking about a woman meeting not a specific person from the train, but about the expectation of wonderful changes for the better. Constant arrivals at the station and unjustified hopes give the reader the opportunity to feel the hopelessness of the position of the young heroine.

Constantly passing trains symbolize life passing by. Longing road torn her heart. The inability to change anything, and prompted a beautiful woman to commit suicide.

"On the railroad" Alexander Blok

Maria Pavlovna Ivanova

Under the embankment, in the unmowed ditch,
Lies and looks, as if alive,
In a colored scarf, thrown on braids,
Beautiful and young.

It happened that she walked with a dignified gait
To the noise and whistle behind the nearby forest.
Bypassing the whole long platform,
Waited, worried, under a canopy.

Three bright eyes oncoming -
Delicate blush, cooler curl:
Perhaps one of the travelers
Take a closer look out the windows...

The carriages were moving along the usual line,
They trembled and creaked;
Silent yellow and blue;
In green wept and sang.

Get up sleepy behind the glass
And cast an even glance
Platform, garden with faded bushes,
Her, the gendarme next to her ...

Only once a hussar, with a careless hand
Leaning on scarlet velvet,
Slipped over her with a gentle smile,
Slipped - and the train rushed off into the distance.

So rushed useless youth,
In empty dreams, exhausted ...
Longing road, iron
Whistle, breaking the heart ...

Yes, the heart has been taken out for a long time!
So many bows have been given
So many greedy glances thrown
Into the deserted eyes of the wagons...

Don't approach her with questions
You don't care, but it's enough for her:
Love, dirt or wheels
She's crushed - everything hurts.

Analysis of Blok's poem "On the Railroad"

Alexander Blok's poem "On the Railway", written in 1910, is part of the Odina cycle and is one of the illustrations of pre-revolutionary Russia. The plot, according to the author himself, is inspired by the works of Leo Tolstoy. In particular, "Anna Karenina" and "Sunday", the main characters of which die, unable to survive their own shame and having lost faith in love.

The picture, which Alexander Blok masterfully recreated in his work, is majestic and sad. On the railway embankment lies a young beautiful woman, “as if alive”, but from the first lines it is clear that she died. And, not by chance, but threw herself under the wheels of a passing train. What made her commit this terrible and senseless act? Alexander Blok does not give an answer to this question, believing that if no one needed his heroine during her lifetime, then after her death, it makes no sense to look for motivation for suicide. The author only states a fait accompli and talks about the fate of the one who died in the prime of life.

Who she was is difficult to understand. Whether a noble noblewoman, or a commoner. Perhaps she belonged to a fairly large caste of ladies of easy virtue. However, the fact that a beautiful and young woman regularly came to the railway and followed the train with her eyes, looking for a familiar face in respectable cars, says a lot. It is likely that, like Tolstoy's Katenka Maslova, she was seduced by a man who subsequently left her and left. But the heroine of the poem “on the railroad” until the last moment believed in a miracle and hoped that her lover would return and take her away with him.

But the miracle did not happen, and soon the figure of a young woman, constantly meeting trains on a railway platform, became an integral part of the dull provincial landscape. Travelers in soft carriages, carrying them to a much more attractive life, coldly and indifferently glided over the mysterious stranger with their eyes, and she aroused absolutely no interest in them, just like the gardens, forests and meadows flying past the window, as well as the imposing figure of a policeman. who was on duty at the station.

One can only guess how many hours, secretly full of hope and excitement, the heroine of the poem spent on the railway. However, no one cared about her at all. Thousands of people carried multi-colored wagons into the distance, and only once did the gallant hussar give the beauty a “tender smile”, meaning nothing and as ephemeral as a woman’s dreams. It should be borne in mind that the collective image of the heroine of Alexander Blok's poem "On the Railroad" is quite typical for the beginning of the 20th century. Cardinal changes in society gave women freedom, but not all of them were able to properly dispose of this priceless gift. Among the representatives of the weaker sex who could not overcome public contempt and were forced to be doomed to a life full of dirt, pain and suffering, the heroine of this poem certainly belongs. Realizing the hopelessness of the situation, the woman decides to commit suicide, hoping in such a simple way to immediately get rid of all the problems. However, according to the poet, it is not so important who or what killed a young woman in her prime - a train, unhappy love, or prejudice. The only important thing is that she is dead, and this death is one of thousands of victims for the sake of public opinion, which puts a woman on a much lower level than a man, and does not forgive her even the most insignificant mistakes, forcing her to atone for them with her own life.

A. Blok's poem "On the Railroad" begins with a description of the death of the heroine - a young woman. The author returns us to her death at the end of the work. The composition of the verse is thus circular, closed.

On the railway
Maria Pavlovna Ivanova
Under the embankment, in the unmowed ditch,
Lies and looks, as if alive,
In a colored scarf, thrown on braids,
Beautiful and young.

It happened that she walked with a dignified gait
To the noise and whistle behind the nearby forest.
Bypassing the whole long platform,
I waited, worried, under a canopy ...

In the poem "On the Railroad" you can find many other symbols. The railroad is a symbol of the path - fate. Depicting continuous rows of passenger cars, Blok sets the theme of the road, life path person. People are constantly moving from car to car, someone is lucky, someone suffers the bitterness of defeat. People's lives are in constant motion. Train, locomotive, station - a symbol of a stage or moment of the journey. But the path, the road is also the harbingers of the outcome, to which each person moves, as if to a precipice. Maybe the poet perceived this outcome as death old Russia and the birth of a new one, which all the people were looking forward to. The railway is a sign of a terrible world, ruthless to people.
In most of the poem, the poet writes about the past, but it is inextricably linked with the present.
The color scheme of the poem is also interesting. The color of Blok's poetry is a means of expressing an emotional assessment, an attitude towards images. In terms of color, the first and last quatrains contain practically no colors, they are colorless. In the past, in another world - a different flavor. Here are the “bright eyes” (lights) of the oncoming train, and the gentle, lively blush on the cheeks of this girl, and the multi-colored cars (apparently, the division into classes), Blue is the color of the sky, sublime is cars for the rich, yellow is bright, cutting eyes the color of warmth and at the same time of illness is the middle class, and green is the color of grass, proximity to the ground - third-class carriages. It is noteworthy that the view from the platform is completely different than the view from behind the windows of the cars. From within, the world is seen in faded, colorless tones. The only bright, sharp color in the car is scarlet. It can symbolize the blood, irritation, aggression and cruelty of these people. Forest trees grow outside, behind the forest there is a long platform, on it is a canopy. The color scheme is not muted, but quite calm. Green color trees, apparently a blue uniform of a gendarme and, most likely, a wooden platform. Block deliberately does not give "color" definitions to some words, giving the reader the opportunity to imagine this picture in his own imagination.
In the poem, the author uses the technique of reverse narration, that is, he begins with the death of the heroine, the tragedy, gradually revealing the previous events.

A.A. Blok, according to people who knew him well, had a colossal moral impact on those around him. “You are more than a man and more than a poet, you are not carrying your own, human burden,” E. Karavaeva wrote to him. M. Tsvetaeva devoted more than twenty poems to Blok, called him "solid conscience." These two assessments, perhaps, contain the main thing in Blok as a person.
A. Blok always very subtly felt the pulse of his country, his people, took to heart all the changes in the life of society. After a lyrical diary addressed to the Beautiful Lady, in poetic world the poet includes new themes, new images. The landscape is changing: instead of mountain heights and radiant horizons - a swamp ligature or a city with its terrible ulcers. If earlier for the block there were only his personal experiences and his Heavenly Virgin, now he sees next to him people, tormented by need, lost in the labyrinth of a stone city, crushed by the hopelessness and hopelessness of poverty and lack of rights.
One after another, poems appear in which the poet expresses sympathy for the oppressed and condemns the indifference of the “well-fed”. In 1910, he wrote the famous poem "On the Railroad".
When you read this poem, you immediately remember Nekrasov's lines about the unbearably difficult fate of a Russian woman. The theme and idea of ​​the poem "Troika" are especially close. It seems to me that the plots and even the compositional organization of these works have something in common. Alexander Blok, as it were, picks up on a topic deeply and comprehensively studied by Nikolai Nekrasov more than half a century ago, and shows that little has changed in the fate of a Russian woman. She is still powerless and oppressed, lonely and unhappy. She has no future. Youth passes, exhausted in "empty dreams." In dreams of a decent life, of a faithful and attentive friend, of happy family about peace and prosperity. But a woman from the people cannot escape from the iron paws of need and overwork.
Compare with Nekrasov:
And why are you running so fast
Behind the troika who rushed after?
On you, akimbo beautifully,
A passing cornet looked in.
And here is Block:
Only once a hussar, with a careless hand
Leaning on scarlet velvet,
He glided over her with a gentle smile ...
Slipped - and the train rushed off into the distance.
Blok’s poem is more tragic: the girl threw herself under the wheels of a steam locomotive, driven to despair by “longing for the road, iron”:
Under the embankment, in the unmowed ditch,
Lies and looks, as if alive,
In a colored scarf, thrown on braids,
Beautiful and young...
The worst thing is that none of those around him attached special significance to what happened. “The carriages went in the usual line”, the unfortunate one was “looked around with an even look” and, I think, after a few minutes they forgot about what they saw. Indifference, heartlessness struck society. This society is sick, morally sick. The poem literally screams about it:
Don't approach her with questions
You don't care, but it's enough for her:
Love, sadness or wheels
She is crushed - everything hurts.
The poem is written in realistic traditions. A through image of the road passes through the whole work. The railway is not just a symbol of a difficult path, but also of hopelessness, the “cast iron” of existence and the deadness of the soul. The theme of "death on the way" appears in the poem from the first stanza and goes beyond the scope of the work.
The iambic pentameter alternates with the tetrameter one, creating some kind of monotonous and mournful rhythm, gradually turning into a monotonous clatter of wheels. The train in the dark turns into a terrible three-eyed monster (personification). The poet skillfully uses the synecdoche: "yellow and blue were silent, in green wept and sang." By the color of the wagons, we learn about their passengers. The rich people traveled in yellow and blue, and the common people in green.
The epithets correspond to the author's mood ("faded bushes", "habitual" line, "sloppy" hand). Vivid metaphors amaze with accuracy and originality (“desert eyes of carriages”, “iron” melancholy). Blok also draws in this poem a generalized image of autocratic Russia. This is a gendarme standing like an idol by the victim lying in the ditch.
After creating the poem "On the Railroad", Blok increasingly writes poems that are plot scenes about the fate of people ruined, tortured, crushed by circumstances, harsh reality. Everything deepens in the poet's work, the gap between dream and reality, the dull prose of life surrounds him with an ever tighter ring. The poet is not left with a premonition of an impending catastrophe, a feeling of the inevitable death of the old world. One of the main themes in Blok's lyrics is the theme of retribution - retribution to society, which fettered, froze, enslaved a person who threw under the wheels of his iron indifference young, young, strong people. After the poem "On the Railroad" he writes:
Nineteenth century, iron,
Truly a cruel age!
By you into the darkness of the night without stars.
Careless abandoned man!
****
Twentieth century ... even more homeless
Even worse than life is darkness.
(Even blacker and bigger
Shadow of Lucifer's wing) (From the poem "Retribution")