Poem "Insomnia, Homer, Tight Sails" Osip Emilievich Mandelstam. "Insomnia. Homer. Tight sails" O. Mandelstam Homer returns differently than when they sailed away

Creative process poet Osip Emilievich Mandelstam is extremely ambiguous. It is divided into several stages, according to structure and mood, which are radically different from each other. Poem “Insomnia. Homer. Tight Sails" was written in the early years of his activity and is imbued with a certain romanticism.

“Insomnia...” was written at the end of the summer of 1915. And it was published for the first time in the next publication of Mandelstam’s collection “Stone”. There are two versions of how this poem was created. The first and not very popular one tells that Osip Emilievich in those years was interested in ancient literature and was an ardent admirer of ancient Greek authors.

The other, more popular one, conveys the opinion of his close friends. They believed that the lyrics were inspired by Mandelstam’s trip to Koktebel, to the house of his old friend, Maximilian Voloshin (the Tsvetaeva sisters and Alexei Tolstoy also vacationed there). There Osip was shown part of an old ship that could have been built back in medieval times.

Genre, direction, size

The poem was written in iambic hexameter with the addition of pyrrhic. The rhyme is circular, where the feminine alternates with the masculine.

The direction within which Mandelstam’s creative genius developed is called “Acmeism.” From point of view literary theory, this phenomenon is correctly called a movement, since it is not as large and large-scale as, for example, realism or classicism. The Acmeist poet prefers not abstract symbolic images, but rather concrete and understandable artistic images, metaphors and allegories. He writes down to earth, without using abstruse and complex philosophical concepts.

Genre: lyric poem.

Composition

The novelty of the poem is determined by its construction. The three-stage composition reflects the path overcome by the lyrical hero in his reflections.

The first quatrain is the beginning of the plot. The hero is trying to sleep, and behold, a long list of Achaean ships in the hero’s imagination turns into a “crane train” rushing into the distance.
The author asks the question: where and why are they sailing? Trying to answer this question in the second quatrain, Mandelstam asks even more serious questions, recalling the plot of an ancient poem, where a bloody war broke out because of love, claiming the lives of hundreds of heroes.
The poem ends with a line that conveys the state of mind of the lyrical hero. The sea is noisy and thundering. But, it is worth assuming (considering that the work was written in Koktebel) that he finally falls asleep to these sounds of the night, dark sea.

Images and symbols

All images and symbols are taken by the author from Homer’s ancient poem “The Iliad”. It talks about a dispute between the Olympian goddesses, who did not invite the goddess of discord to the feast. In a fit of revenge, she quarreled three women from the divine pantheon (Hera, Aphrodite and Athena), throwing one Golden Apple, intended for the most beautiful of them. The ladies went to Paris (the Trojan prince), the most beautiful young man on earth, so that he would judge them. Each offered her gift as a bribe, but Paris chose Aphrodite’s offer - the love of the most beautiful woman in the world, Helen, the wife of the Achaean king. The man kidnapped his chosen one, and then her husband, along with the troops of other rulers, went in search. The Achaeans could not stand the shame and declared war on Troy, which fell in the struggle, but resisted very courageously.

List of ships- a long and monotonous list that the ancient Greek poet Homer added to his poem “The Iliad”. This is exactly how many ships went to conquer Troy. The author counted them in order to fall asleep, because his heart is also bewitched by love, he cannot find peace.
Divine foam- This is a reference to the appearance of Aphrodite, the goddess of love. She came ashore from the sea foam, which is in in this case symbol of love.
Helen of Troy- a woman for whose love troops of both sides were killed. The Achaeans did not need lands and power; they came at the call of their hearts.
Contrast between Homer's poetic voice and the sea necessary in order to show the futility of the efforts of the lyrical hero. Whatever he does, he cannot forget his own yearning of heart, because everything moves by love. The sea in this case is a free element, returning the author to the present time, to reality, where he is also tormented by feeling.

Topics and issues

Antique motifs. The poem begins with the thoughts of the lyrical hero while listing the names of ancient Greek ships. This is the "Catalog" mentioned in Homer's Iliad. The ancient work contains a detailed listing of each of the detachments of soldiers heading to the Trojan War. At the time of writing the poem, twenty-four-year-old Mandelstam was studying at the Faculty of History and Philology of the Faculty of Philology at St. Petersburg University. Reading a list of ships from Homer's poem was considered an excellent remedy for insomnia. It is with this word that the poet begins his work.
Theme of love. The hero suffers from the fact that he cannot sleep and begins to list the names. However, this does not help and, having read the list to the middle, he begins to think. The main problem of the hero is as old as the world - love. The disturbances of the sea are like disturbances in his heart. He doesn’t know what to do, how to fall asleep and “who to listen to.”
The problem of sacrifice of love. Mandelstam perceives feeling as a cult - it needs to make sacrifices, it is bloodthirsty in its fury. For his sake, the elements worry and destroy ships, for his sake wars are fought, where the best of the best perish. Not everyone is ready to devote themselves to love, putting all that is most precious on its altar.

Meaning

The author recalls the Iliad, how the Kings, who were crowned with “divine foam,” sailed to Troy in the hope of returning the beautiful Helen, who was kidnapped by Paris. Because of her, the Trojan War broke out. It turns out that the most important reason for bloodshed is not the conquest of lands, but love. So the lyrical hero is surprised how this force sweeps away everything in its path, how people have been giving their lives for it for thousands of years.

In the third quatrain, he tries to understand this incomprehensible force, which turns out to be more powerful than both Homer and the sea. The author no longer understands what to listen to and who to believe if everything falls to mighty force attraction of souls. He asks Homer, but he is silent, because everything was said a long time ago, BC. Only the sea roars as furiously and stubbornly as the heart of a man in love beats.

Means of artistic expression

There are a lot of tropes in the poem on which the lyrical narrative is built. This is very characteristic of Acmeism, the movement to which Mandelstam belonged.

Metaphorical expressions and epithets such as “long brood” and “crane train” immediately take the reader to the hero’s thoughts and allow a deeper sense of the ancient Greek era that the author is thinking about. The ships seem to be compared to a flock of cranes rushing somewhere into the distance, where they literally sit “like a wedge” in foreign lands.

Rhetorical questions convey the hero’s thoughtfulness, his doubts, and anxiety. At the same moment, the element of the sea is very clearly manifested. For the author, she seems to be alive.

The adjective “black” simultaneously reminds us that the author was resting at that moment on the Crimean coast, and at the same time refers to eternity, the bottomlessness of sea waters. And they, like an endless stream of thoughts, rumble somewhere in the author’s head.

Summary of a literature lesson on the topic “Osip Emilievich Mandelstam. Life, creativity. Analysis of the poem “Insomnia. Homer. Tight sails..."

He appeared like a miracle.

To be a poet, meter, rhyme, image, even if you master them perfectly, are not enough, you need something else, innumerably more: your own, unique voice, your own, unshakable, attitude, your own destiny, not shared by anyone.

N. Struve

Purpose of the lesson: get acquainted with the life and work of the poet; develop students’ ability to understand a literary text, teach them how to work with text using the research method.

Equipment: laptop, multimedia presentation, handouts (poet by a poet), screen.

Lesson type: learning new material.

Comments:

Students prepare a report on the following topics:

1. “Facts” of biography (1891-1938);

2. The history of the creation of the poem “Insomnia. Homer. Tight sails..."

During the classes:

1. Organizational moment.

2. Statement of the topic and purpose of the lesson.

3. Studying new material.

How do you understand A. Akhmatova’s words?

O. Mandelstam is a unique personality with a unique destiny and a poetic gift. It can be compared to a miracle.

The student makes messages “Facts of the poet’s biography.”

Writing in notebooks.

Osip Mandelstam is one of the most mysterious Russian poets, whose contribution to the literature of the 20th century is invaluable. His early work dates back to the Silver Age.

So, Mandelstam’s life, like his works, is interesting, mysterious and contradictory at the same time. This poet was one of those people who cannot be indifferent to everything that happens around him. Mandelstam deeply feels what the true values are and where the truth is... The creative destiny of the poet is the search for a word that would fully express the poet’s inner state. One of best works Mandelstam is his poem “Insomnia. Homer Tight Sails...", which was written in 1916 in Crimea (reading the poem by a trained student).

Conversation with students:

What attracted you to this poem, what feelings did it evoke?

What images does it create?

Which lines reflect the main idea?

(the poem attracts with its calmness, mystery, grandeur. The author created images of the Achaeans from Homer’s Iliad, ships, the sea, the lyrical hero. the main idea in the line: all this is driven by love).

A report from a prepared student about known facts related to the history of the creation of the poem.

According to one version, Mandelstam was inspired to write this poem by a fragment of an ancient ship found by Maximilian Voloshin, with whom he was visiting in Koktebel. However, the theme of antiquity as a whole is characteristic of Mandelstam’s early poems. The poet's fascination with the ancient world is his desire for a standard of beauty and for the basis that gave birth to this beauty.

The theme of the sea, like the theme of antiquity in the poem, is not accidental, and is caused not only by the place of birth of the poem: Mandelstam first came to Koktebel in June 1915.

Many critics noted that Mandelstam preferred water to all elements. Moreover, his preference is not rapid streams falling from the sky or rushing through the mountains; he is attracted by calm and eternal movement: lowland rivers, lakes, but more often - the most grandiose form - the ocean, majestically rolling huge shafts. The theme of the sea is inextricably linked with the theme of antiquity: both are majestic, grandiose, calm, mysterious. It is a known fact that Mandelstam during this period of his life was in love with Marina Tsvetaeva, but she did not answer him.

What happens to the lyrical hero?

How does the poem convey the feeling?

(The lyrical hero is tormented by insomnia. On the shores of the Black Sea, he reads Homer, reflecting on the fact that both the Achaeans and Homer were inspired by love).

The mythological basis of the Trojan War was Menelaus' revenge for the abduction of his beautiful wife Helen. Helen, daughter of Zeus and the goddess of retribution Nemisis. The most beautiful of women, she evokes the envy of Aphrodite, the goddess of Beauty.

The very rumor about Helen's beauty can cause strife: all the Hellenic leaders and heroes woo her. Helen will bring pain and dishonor to her husband Menelaus, death to Paris, with whom she will run away, unable to resist the passion inspired by Aphrodite. The city that sheltered the fugitive - Troy - will be destroyed to the ground, most of Helen's suitors who went to the walls of Troy will die.

The Achaean army, ready to stone the queen, will stop before her beauty, and she will be returned home with honor to Sparta. Elena means torch, torch. This name is the focus of all the lines of the poem.

So, the pictures of bygone times come to life before us. The lyrical hero recreates in his imagination the ancient ships that set off to conquer Troy. Where is this said in the poem?

Insomnia. Homer. Tight sails.

I read the list of ships to the middle:

This long brood, this crane train,

That once rose above Hellas.

One gets the impression that the lyrical hero is rereading lines from the Iliad, where the list of ships becomes a symbol of the strength and power of the Hellenes.

What was the reason for the campaign of their troops against Troy?

(The beautiful Elena was kidnapped).

Like a crane's wedge into foreign borders -

On the heads of kings there is divine foam -

Where are you going?

What is Troy alone for you, Achaean men?

The pictures that arise in the imagination of the lyrical hero captivate him and make him think.

What is the meaning of life?

(in the end he comes to the conclusion that everything in life is subordinated to love).

Both the sea and Homer - everything moves with love.

Who should I listen to? And now Homer is silent,

And the Black Sea, swirling, makes noise

And with a heavy roar he approaches the headboard.

So, what brings out the best in a person? (only love makes you perform sometimes unexpected, but the most faithful actions and deeds).

(he calls the ships “a long brood, a crane train, and even more vividly what a comparison “crane wedge” is, but it also has implications real basis. In those distant times, when ships went on military campaigns, they really lined up in a wedge).

Let us pay attention to the epithet “tight sails”.

What is he pointing to?

(It indicates that the ships are ready to go to sea.)

Usually, movement in poetry is conveyed through a quick change of verbs, energetic words; Mandelstam has few verbs, most of the sentences are denominative, incomplete, which creates a feeling of slowness and duration. So, before us are ships, so to speak, in motionless motion, the poet created an image of frozen time - the past, forever remaining the present.

Who else does the poet remind you of?

(Kings with “divine foam” on their heads).

What does this mean?

(About their greatness and strength).

To whom are the kings compared here?

(To the Greek gods. One gets the feeling that the gods of Olympus approve of this trip to “foreign borders” for Helen).

What image does Mandelstam introduce in this poem?

(The image of the Black Sea, which “swirls and makes noise”, this image gives the poem brightness and a sense of the reality of what is happening.

Let's pay attention to the vocabulary.

Which one is most important in this poem?

(Nouns: sails, ships, foam, head, sea and there are abstract concepts - insomnia, love)

(They are necessary to understand the idea and theme of the poem).

The poem also contains rhetorical questions. They talk about the special state of the lyrical hero. What condition is it in? (A state of thoughtfulness, reflection, philosophizing).

Homer's "Iliad" becomes for the lyrical hero something mysterious, incomprehensible and beautiful at the same time.

What is the hero thinking about? (entries in notebooks).

About truth, about beauty, about the meaning of life, about the laws of the Universe. And most importantly, love is what awakens humanity to action, and this is where the continuity of generations is manifested.

So, summing up the lesson, I would like to say: “Both the sea and Homer - everything moves with love, you still need to surrender to this movement, submit to the universal law, just as the Achaeans submitted to fate when going to the walls of Troy. This is where the lyrical hero's insomnia comes from. Living life to the fullest, striving for beauty, loving is very difficult, it requires courage and mental strength.”

Conversation based on the analysis of the poem “Insomnia. Homer. Tight sails..."

Students record in their notebooks the features of O. Mandelstam’s poetry

What features of O. Mandelstam’s early poetry were able to be identified through the analysis of the poem “Insomnia...”?

(Understanding art as a connecting thread between generations, understanding life as a movement towards love, requiring courage and mental strength.)

Lesson summary

Reflection

What did we do in class today?

Have we achieved our goal?

How do you evaluate your work?

Teacher's final words

During the lesson, we tried to understand the poems of one of the most mysterious and most significant Russian poets of the 20th century - O. Mandelstam, to understand the features of his work of the early period, the universal significance of poetry; developed skills in analyzing literary texts.

The poem "Insomnia, Homer, Tight Sails" was written in 1915. This stage creative life Many literary scholars call the poet of the Silver Age the period of “Stone” (L. Ginzburg in the book “On Lyrics”). The creator of the word is associated with the builder who erects the building, and stone is his main tool. That is why the search for words and the meaning of life is key in understanding this poem.

Already from the first lines it becomes clear that philosophical thoughts are inspired by the work of the Greek storyteller, and the author gives a direct reference to part 2 of the Iliad. Reading this legendary work, plunging into its meaning, the poet is faced with the question of what is the meaning of life: “Both the sea and Homer are all driven by love. Who should I listen to? And so, Homer is silent...” The meaning of life is in love, which can be different: both to destroy everything around (as in the case of Elena) and to create. For the poet, the question of whether there is meaning in love remains open. And judging by the proposal about Homer’s silence, we can conclude that this problem is relevant at all times - from Hellas to the present day.

The sea is one of the key images of the poem. It symbolizes infinity, the interconnection of times. Already from the first lines, the reader is presented with the image of “tight sails of ships” that are ready to go to sea. Therefore, we can say that the poem begins with the image of the sea, and it ends with the same image. The ring composition of the poem is a compositional element that also indicates the cyclical nature of the problems raised in the work.

At the plot level, the author uses a ring composition: at the beginning of the work, the lyrical hero cannot sleep, images of Homer’s poem flash before him, then “the black sea... approaches the headboard.” These lines can be understood in two ways: the black sea is a dream that replaces insomnia, or thoughts and reflections that never give rest. But considering that the sea in the tradition of antiquity, as well as subsequently of the Silver Age, appears as something majestic and calm, it is more likely that sleep covers the lyrical hero. This story line connected with the lyrical hero himself. But there is another storyline in the poem - the line of the journey to Troy, this journey from life to death, this line also closes.

The poem is dominated by nominal parts of speech (about 70% of all words), 20% are verbs. Using nouns and adjectives, the author creates an almost motionless, majestic picture. The poet uses the verbs in the first stanza in the past tense, the image of Hellas is the past, long past. All other verbs in the work are in the present tense, this emphasizes the continuity of tenses.

Imagery and expressiveness in the work is achieved by the presence of metaphors: ships are compared to cranes. In this technique there is also an element of personification, so Mandelstam revives before us the picture of ancient Hellas, the picture of the destruction of life because of love. This personified picture does not help the lyrical hero answer the question: why love, such a creative feeling, becomes the cause of destruction.

Analysis 2

"Insomnia. Homer. Tight sails." Doesn't remind you of anything? "Night. Street. Flashlight. Pharmacy". This is how Blok’s poem “The Twelve” begins. Chopped, minted phrases. Like Mandelstam, Blok also belongs to the poets of the Silver Age. It was probably fashionable to write in this style back then. Blok has insomnia, and Mandelstam too.

All poets turn to the theme of love sooner or later. Especially when she's unhappy. Yes, Mandelstam couldn’t sleep in Koktebel. There he rested with his friend Maximilian Voloshin. By chance or not, he saw the wreck of an ancient ship. And for some reason he immediately remembered Homer, thoughts about the eternal - about a woman, about love.

Mandelstam likes the era of antiquity. She is mysterious, enigmatic, unique. He considers her the standard of beauty. Besides that, he likes water. This element is also mysterious and unique. In particular, the ocean, sending huge waves onto the shores.

The poem is divided into 3 semantic parts. Written in iambic, each line rhymes.

Where did Homer suddenly come from? The author studied at the university, at the Faculty of History and Philology. True, he didn’t finish his studies, he quit. There he studied Homer's Iliad in the original. There was a long list of ships that went to conquer Troy. It was a proven remedy for insomnia. This is where the line about the list of ships being read to the middle came from. Then, apparently, he fell asleep.

The poem is written in the first person. Now the poet cannot sleep, and uses the well-known “sleeping pill.” No, he doesn’t count sheep, but reads a list of ships. But this doesn’t help me sleep either. The thought “runs away” to the Trojan War. The poet comes to an interesting conclusion that the opponents fought not for Troy, but for the beautiful Helen.

In the last quatrain he concludes that everything in the world is driven by love for a woman. Because of them, wars begin and end.

To make the poem brighter and more expressive, Mandelstam uses metaphors. “Everything is moved by love.” There are also epithets “tight sails”, “divine foam”. As a comparison, we can cite the line “like a crane’s wedge.”

Why did the Hellenes go to Troy? The son of the local king kidnapped the beautiful Helen. The culprit of the war, indirectly, is a woman. Well, how can you not save her? What is a sense of life? In a woman, and, therefore, in love. Here, “both Homer and the sea—everything is moved by love.” It is she who awakens all the best qualities in people. Because of love, the greatest feats and the most reckless actions are performed.

The poet compares ships to a crane wedge. But in those days, ships did not line up in a line, but walked along the sea in a wedge. And the cranes also fly in the sky like a wedge. Here is an exact comparison of "tight sails". This means that the sails on the masts are tensioned as needed. The ships are ready for a long voyage.

You need to sleep, but the poet philosophizes and reflects. And asks rhetorical questions to which there are no answers. Homer’s “Iliad” very much “hooked” Mandelstam. And if he has insomnia almost every night, then he probably learned the list of sails by heart. Why can't you sleep? Unrequited love for Marina Tsvetaeva. Not without a woman.

Analysis of the poem Insomnia. Homer. Tight sails according to plan

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« Insomnia. Homer. Tight sails...»
Materials for the comment

The materials were discussed and published in corrected form. Their current edition is expanded and, I would like to think, not the last.

Insomnia. Homer. Tight sails.
I read the list of ships halfway through:
This long brood, this crane train,
That once rose above Hellas.

Like a crane's wedge into foreign borders -
On the heads of kings there is divine foam -
Where are you sailing? Whenever Elena

What is Troy alone for you, Achaean men?

Both the sea and Homer - everything is moved by love.
Who should I listen to? And now Homer is silent,
And the black sea, swirling, makes noise
And with a heavy roar he approaches the headboard.

1915

Below there are no indications of overlaps with other works of Mandelstam: such information is useful if it can clarify the content of the commented text, and redundant if there is no darkness in it. The commentator did not look for answers to the questions “could the author have read this” and “did the author realize...”, believing that the commentary is evidence not about the author, but about the language. The following indications of the overlap between Mandelstam's text and the works of other authors are intended to help readers evaluate the resources of poetic language and its ability for self-reflection.

The commentator considers it his pleasant duty to express gratitude to V. Besprozvanny, M. Bobrik, V. Brainin-Passek, A. Zholkovsky, O. Lekmanov, N. Mazur, N. Okhotin, O. Proskurin, V. Rubtsov, E. Soshkin and M Fedorova for assistance in the work.

Insomnia – Along with the works of such authors as Sappho and Du Fu, Petrarch and Shakespeare, Heine and Mallarmé, the commented text is included in anthologies of literature about insomnia (see: AcquaintedwiththeNight: InsomniaPoems. N. Y., 1999; Schlaflos: DasBuchderhellenNä chte. Lengwil, 2002 ), however, it is difficult to form an idea of the Russian tradition in the development of this topic. It lacks, for example, the motifs of anxiety that are obligatory for most Russian “poems composed during insomnia”: “Why are you disturbing me?” (Pushkin), “I am worried mercilessly” (Yazykov), “I only close my lids - and my heart is alarmed” (Benediktov), “And I could not close / Anxious eyes at all” (Ogarev), “Again in my soul there are worries and dreams” (Apukhtin), “Before them, the heart is again in anxiety and on fire” (Fet), “And anxious insomnia / Can’t be driven away into a transparent night” (Blok) and/or languor: “Hours of languid vigil” (Pushkin), “Anxious night story! (Tyutchev), “How tiresome and sleepy / My insomniac hours!” (Yazykov), “In the hour of languid vigil” and “Why in the hours of languor” (Ap. Grigoriev), “And only you languish alone in silence” and “The mystery, the eternal, formidable mystery torments / The mind tired of work” (Nadson), “And my sinful heart torments me with its unbearable injustice” (Fet), “Tomy and tender waiting” (Annensky). Mandelstam's text is closer to works that describe falling into sleep - under the influence of sea motion, the sound of the surf, fatigue from reading or counting imaginary identical objects; only Mandelstam uses not one, but all of the named sleeping pills.

Insomnia. Homer – Freedom from external vision, gained through sleep or blindness, is a condition for supervision: “I am sweetly lulled to sleep by my imagination, / And poetry awakens in me” (Pushkin), “ O “Surround yourself with darkness, poet, surround yourself with silence, / Be lonely and blind, like Homer, and deaf, like Beethoven, / Strain your spiritual hearing and spiritual vision” (A.K. Tolstoy).

Insomnia. Homer. Tight sails – Nominative structure of the beginning (cf. in other nocturnes: “Whisper, timid breathing...”, “Night, street, lantern, pharmacy...”; see:Nilsson N. A. Osip Mandel’š there. Stockholm, 1974. P. 36 ) gives it the appearance of a completed construction, which increases its suitability as material for quotation - reverent: “And there are no other signs granted from time to time, / it’s only worth repeating, remembering the voices: / Night, street, lantern, pharmacy... / Insomnia. Homer. Tight sails" (Kovalev) or travesty: "Insomnia. Harem. Tight bodies" (Gandelsman).

Insomnia. Homer. Tight sails... list of ships – Homer serves not only as an example of grace-filled freedom from external sight, but also as a means of immersion in a trance: occupying about a third of the volume of the 2nd song of the Iliad, the story of the Achaean commanders who brought their ships to Troy has a reputation as a tedious lecture: “This collection of legends about Agamemnon’s warriors, sometimes just a list of them, now seems quite boring to us” (Annensky; see:Nilsson. Op. cit., 37–38 ). In Gnedich’s translation, the 2nd canto of the Iliad is entitled “Dream. Boeotia, or List of Ships" - in it Zeus tells the god of sleep : “Rushing, deceptive Dream, towards the fast-flying ships of the Achaeans”.

read to the middle – Subsequently, Dante’s voice will be heard here:““Insomnia, Homer, tight sails...” / He lived through the list of ships until the middle” ( Strochkov ) and “Earthly life is like a list of ships, / I read barely halfway through” (Kudinov).

Insomnia... crane-like – Wed. subsequently: “When there is insomnia, birds are a proven company,” “there were birds until I lost count” (Soshkin).

ships... like a crane – In the Iliad, warriors are likened to birds, including flying cranes (cm.:TerrasV. ClassicalMotivesinthePoetryofOsipMandel’š tam// SlavicandEastEuropeanJournal. 1965. Vol. 10, no. 3.P. 258 ). The parallelism of ships and birds, absent in expanded form in the Iliad, is not uncommon among Russian authors: “But in the fog there, like a flock of swans, / The ships carried by the waves turn white” (Batyushkov), “There are the ships of the brave Achaeans, / Like formations of cheerful swans, / They fly to their destruction, as if to a feast” (Glinka), “A herd of winged ships” (Shevyrev), “Choo, the guns burst out! winged ships / The battle village was covered with a cloud, / The ship ran into the Neva - and now, among the swells, / Swinging, it floats like a young swan” and “The ship floats like a thunder swan...” (Pushkin), “Ship<…>the winged course will spread out" (Kuchelbecker), "When a village of ships, / Noisy with its vast wings, / The rows of raging waves / pushes apart with its high chest / And flies to its native land" (Yazykov), "The fleet approached like a village of swans" (Bestuzhev-Marlinsky) , “Only, in the distance, the ocean dweller, / Like a seagull, its bird of water, / Having developed a sail like a large wing, / With the stormy elements in a tedious dispute, / A fishing boat is rocking in the sea” (Boratynsky),“Fly, my winged ship” (A.K. Tolstoy), “As on outstretched wings, / Flew ship" (A. Maikov), "Winged turn white ships" (Merezhkovsky),“A ship flashed, sailing away at dawn<…>like a white swan, spreading its wings” (Bely), “About the pier / of winged ships” (Voloshin). And vice versa, flight can appear as swimming: “The cheerful lark curls / And drowns in the blue swells, / Scattering songs in the wind! / When an eagle soars above the heights of steep rocks, / Spreading wide sails, / And across the steppe, through the abyss of water, / A village of cranes sails to their homeland” (Venevitinov; in the original, in Goethe, there is no motive for swimming). If an army is like birds, then the opposite is also true: “And above - in formation / Or in a sharp wedge, / Like an army, / Across the whole sky / A regiment flies / cranes" (A. Maikov). The militarization of the air will increase the demand for this metaphor.: “Above them, in the clouds, look, close, far, / Steel cranes are flying, - / Those are ours miracle planes! (Poor),“And, lined up for battle, / Cranes fly over you / In the blue sky. / You commanded: - Fly! – / And they are already far away” (Barto), “Who will fly up and shoot down / This black plane?<…>And they took off over the fields / Cranes after cranes, / And rushed to attack: / “Well, damned one, beware!” (Chukovsky). In a popular song, fallen warriors are reincarnated as flying cranes, and “there is a small gap in that formation - / Perhaps this is the place for me!” (Gamzatov, trans. Grebnev) - a motif that in the centon era will be combined with Mandelstam’s ships: “in the list of ships / there is a place for me” (Starikovsky).

Insomnia... ships... like a crane – The similarity in the pattern of movement and the shape of the body, as well as the similarity (phonetic and morphological) of the words “ships” and “cranes” themselves made them members of folklore ("Flood for ships, sand for cranes") and quasi-folklore parallelism - from “She has ships at sea, he has cranes in the sky” (Bestuzhev-Marlinsky) to “A crane flies across the sky, a ship goes across the sea” (Kim). In Mandelstam, this parallelism, reinforced by the figure of comparison, motivates the mixture of two soporific practices - reading a boring text and counting animals of the same species. Wed. subsequently: “Ship, crane, dream” (Lvovsky).

crane train – Perhaps the translation of the expression “ Kranichzug" "), found, for example, in Schiller (" Wasist’ smitdiesemKranichzug ?”) and in the scene with Helen the Beautiful in “Faust” (“... gleichderKraniche / Laut-heiserklingendemZug"; compare: Nilsson. Op. cit., 39 ).

crane... into foreign borders – Wed: “In the steppe the cranes cried, / And the power of thought carried / Beyond the borders of the native land” (Fet). In Russian and Soviet authors, the image of flying cranes often accompanies reflections on the homeland and foreign lands: “The Crane, the nomadic hermit, will visit them as a guest for a moment. / Oh, where then, orphaned one, / Where will I be! To what countries, / To what alien borders / Will my bold sail proudly rush / My canoe along the galloping waves! (Davydov), “I shout to the ships, / I shout to the cranes. / - No thanks! – I scream loudly. – / You swim for yourself! / And fly for yourself! / But I don’t want to go anywhere<…>I’m from here / At all / Nowhere / I don’t want to go! / I will stay in the Soviet Country! (Kharms), “Migratory birds fly / In the blue autumn distance, / They fly to hot countries, / And I stay with you. / And I remain with you, / My native country forever! / I don’t need the Turkish coast, / And I don’t need Africa” (Isakovsky). The cry of cranes is an attribute of Russia: “Choo! cranes are pulling in the sky, / And their cry is like a roll call / Keeping the sleep of the native land / The Lord's sentinels" (Nekrasov), "About the homeland - the cry of the cranes" (T. Beck); Having heard it in a foreign land, they remember their homeland: “Now they are flying close and sobbing louder and louder, / As if they brought sad news to me... / From what inhospitable land did you / Fly here for the night, cranes?.. / I know that a country where the sun is already without strength, / Where the shroud is already waiting, the cold earth / And where the sad wind howls in the bare forests - / Either my native land, then my fatherland” (A. Zhemchuzhnikov). Since the movement of the cranes “to foreign borders” is a movement to the south, and the Achaean ships are heading in the other direction and are still likened to cranes, the commented text takes on similarities with the enactment of an ancient plot in Central Russian scenery, popular in the modern era.

On the heads of kings there is divine foam - "Phrase<...>evokes productive ancient associations - the kings of the tribal society, their arrogance, strife, the birth of Aphrodite from the foam, pagan polytheism, the closeness of the gods to people" ( Polyakova S. Osip Mandelstam. AnnArbor, 1992. C. 28 ). C R. also: “We are splashes of red foam / Above the pallor of the seas. / Leave earthly captivity, / Sit among kings!” (Vyach. Ivanov; see: Lekmanov O. Notes on the topic “Mandelshtam and Vyacheslav Ivanov” // “Own” and “alien” words in a literary text. Tver, 1999. P. 199).

Where are you sailing? – Wed: “The community has moved and is cutting through the waves. / Floats. Where should we sail?”, here the fleet is likened to birds: “And a flock of ships are sinking,” and the creative state is like sleep (Pushkin); “Everything swells like the sea. I’m definitely in reality / I’m sailing somewhere in the distance on a ship<…>Where am I going?" (Ogarev).

crane wedge... Where are you sailing? - Wed: “Where are you rushing, winged villages?” (A. Odoevsky).

Where are you sailing? Whenever Elena – The similarity with Lermontov’s “In dust and blood his knees glide” (cf. the roll call of the endings of verses and hemistiches: “... you are Elena” / “... blood - knees”) appears in the centone: “Where are you sailing when wouldn't it be Elena? / Wherever you look, her hem is everywhere, / Her knees slide in dust and blood” (Eremenko).

long... Like a crane's wedge... Elena – In Dante, the shadows of those convicted of debauchery, including Helen, Achilles and Paris, move “like cranes”<…>a long line" (" comeigru <…> lungariga"; compare: Nilsson. Op. cit., 39 ). Lozinsky, translating this passage, will remember Mandelstam: “Like a crane’s wedge flies to the south.”

If not for Helen, What is Troy alone for you, Achaean men? – Wed: “ No, it is impossible to condemn that the sons of Troy and the Achaeans / For such a wife they endured such long troubles.”(“Iliad”, trans. Gnedich; see: Terras . Op . cit ., 258 ).

Homer... crane... sea – Wed: “The swells of the iambic seas are sad, / And the wandering flocks of cranes, / And the palm tree about which Odysseus / Told the embarrassed Nausicaa” (Gumilyov).

foam... Elena... sea – Wed: “And then Elena is born<…>Whiter than sea foam" (Merezhkovsky).

ships... foam... Elena... sea – Wed: “You are pale and beautiful, like foam<…>You and death, you and the life of ships. / O Elena, Elena, Elena, / You are the beautiful foam of the seas” (Balmont; see:MarkovV. CommentaryzudenDichtungenvonK. D. Bal’mont. Ko ln, 1988. S. 195 ).

Both the sea and Homer – Russian authors following Byron (“ By the deep sea, and music in its roar "; lane Batyushkova: “And there is harmony in this talk of the waves”) declare art to be co-natural with the sea elements: “I have a wonderful harmonious overflow / The roar of rolling swells formed” (A. Maikov), “There is melodiousness in sea waves, / Harmony in spontaneous disputes” (Tyutchev); hence the likening of poems to waves with an imitation of the rhythm of the surf - from “What to swim in the sea, then read Dante: / His poems are solid and full, / Like elastic waves of the sea!” (Shevyrev) to “I was born and raised in the Baltic swamps, next to / gray zinc waves that always came in twos, / and from here all the rhymes” (Brodsky). In Mandelstam, this declaration is reduced to an equation, the evidential power of which is ensured by the sound similarity of its members: “sea” and “Homer”. This "almost an anagram" (Nilsson. Op. cit., 41 ), perhaps inspired by Pushkin’s phrase “What is Zhukovsky’s sea - and what is his Homer” (see: Ronen O.Poetics of Osip Mandelstam. St. Petersburg, 2002. C. 25 ), will be expanded into a hexametric palindrome “The sea is mighty - I will answer Homer in its noisy tone” (Avaliani). Pasternak will use a punning way of proving the thesis about the naturalness of poetry to the sea, also using Pushkin’s material: ““To the sea” was: the sea + Pushkin’s love for it<…>poet + sea, two elements that are so unforgettable - Boris Pasternak: „ The element of free element / With the free element of verse“…"(Tsvetaeva; cf.: "Farewell, free element!" and "...poems will flow freely"). The association “Pushkin - sea - poetry” (reflected in the call to “throw” him “from the Steamboat of modernity”) dates back at the latest to Merezhkovsky, who argued that the poet and the hero “are born from the same element. The symbol of this element in nature for Pushkin is the sea. The sea is like the soul of a poet and hero” (“Pushkin”); here and soon in Rozanov (“About Pushkin Academy”) Pushkin is close to Homer.

Like a crane's wedge... everything moves – Wed. subsequently: “like a crane’s wedge when it takes / a course to the south. Like everything moving forward” (Brodsky).

everything moves with love – An idea that goes back, in particular, to Dante (see: Nilsson. Op. cit., 42 ); in a similar verbal design cf.: “Only love holds and moves life” (Turgenev).

And the sea... with love – Hidden roll call “and the sea – amore" (cf.: LachmannR. Gedä chtnisundLiterature. FrankfurtamMain, 1990. S. 400 )?

divine foam... And the sea, and Homer... with love... listen – Wed: “What a charm<…> in this eavesdropping on Anadyomene, born from the foam of the sea, for she is a symbol of Homeric poetry" ( Zhukovsky about his work on the translation of the Odyssey). Wed. also “The Sea” by Vyazemsky, where the sea element appears as the cradle of the “enchantress of the world” and the eternal source of poetry.

Homer is silent - So counselor Virgil leaves Dante.

read to the middle... Homer is silent – Wed: “Over the Bible, yawning, I sleep” (Derzhavin), “And I yawned over Virgil” (Pushkin), “They beat Zorya... from my hands / The old Dante falls out, / On my lips the verse I started / Has died away half-read” ( Pushkin),“I closed the Iliad and sat by the window” (Gumilyov).

Insomnia. Homer... Homer is silent – Compare: “QuandoquebonusdormitatHomerus” (Horace).

I read the list of ships halfway through... the black sea – “Black Pont” is mentioned in “The Iliad” (translated by Gnedich; cm .: Taranovsky K. Essays on Mandel’štam. Cambridge MA; London, 1976. P. 147 ) approximately in the middle of the “list of ships” (see: Lifshits G. Polysemantic word in poetic speech. M., 2002. P. 169).

is silent, And the black sea... is noisy – Wed: “Everything is silent / Only the Black Sea is noisy” (Pushkin; see:Taranovsky. Op. cit., 147 ; compare: Lachmann. Op. cit., 401 ) And “And the Black Sea makes noise without stopping” (Lermontov; see:Taranovsky. Op. cit., 147 ).

sea... ornate – The idea of the “speak of the sea” as a hymn to the creator of the universe ( murmurmaris , a frequent turn of phrase in Latin poetry; proposed as a model by Cicero) was adopted by new European literature: Chateaubriand, Lamartine, Byron, Hugo, Batyushkov, Vyazemsky, Boratynsky, Pushkin, etc. (see: [Mazur N. Subtext versustopos] // New Literary Review. 2004. No. 66. pp. 128–129 ).

florid, makes noise - Wed: “What are you making a fuss about, people’s leaders?” (Pushkin).

And with a heavy roar – Wed: “And fell with a heavy roar” (Pushkin).

Insomnia... foam... sea... noisy... roaring –C R.: “I heard the roar of the depths of the sea, / And the foam of roaring waves burst into the quiet region of visions and dreams” (Tyutchev).

sea... love... to the headboard – Wed. subsequently: « And he will follow my shadow - how? with love? / No! it will most likely be caused by the tendency of water to move. / But it will return to you like a great surf to your head, /like a counselor Dante, yielding to destruction” (Brodsky).

Insomnia... love... to the headboard – Wed: “The holy joys flew away as friends - / Their swarm played around you in the morning sleep; / And the angel of beauty, your relatives, with love / Invisibly clung to your headboard” (Zhukovsky), “My Guardian Genius - with love / He was given the joy of separation: / Will I fall asleep? will cling to the headboard / And will sweeten the sad dream” (Batyushkov), “They will fall asleep - with prayer, with love / My ghost in their happy dream / will fly to his native headboard” (Kuchelbecker), “I cry like a child, clinging to the headboard, / I rush around the bed of sleep, tormented by love” (Davydov), “And before the morning the desired sleep / I closed my tired eyes<…>He leaned towards her head; / And his gaze with such love, / He looked at her so sadly” (Lermontov), “Then these sounds, with compassion, with love, / The beauty whispers, leaning towards headboard... / Fell asleep..."(Benediktov), "I'm waiting for the hour of the night to come soon. / Did he break through? Clinging to the headboard / Exhausted, with a sore head, / I dream of the past with delight and love” (Rostopchina), “Some sounds rush around / And cling to my headboard. / They are full of languid separation, / They tremble with unprecedented love” (Fet), “In bed I cried, leaning against the headboard; / And my heart was full of forgiveness, / But still not people, - with endless love / I loved God and myself as one” (Merezhkovsky).

Insomnia... sea... love... to the headboard – Wed: “Here the prince falls asleep in anxiety and grief, / His sleep is sweetly lulled by the dark sea... / The prince dreams: quietly at his head / An angel bends over and whispers with love" (Apukhtin).

1915 – Parallelism between the Trojan War and the First World War(cm.: DutliR. MeineZeit, meinTier: OsipMandelstam. Zü rich, 2003. S. 128 ) clarifies the understanding of love as the source of universal movement: this source- eternal.

"Insomnia. Homer. Tight Sails" is an example of using ancient culture to reflect on the eternal moral and philosophical category of love. The poem is studied in 11th grade. We invite you to familiarize yourself with brief analysis"Insomnia. Homer. Tight sails" according to plan.

Brief Analysis

History of creation– the work was created in 1915, when the poet was in Koktebel. It was first published in the second edition of the debut collection “Stone” (1916).

Theme of the poem– Trojan War; power of love.

Composition– The poem is a monologue-reflection on the stated topics. In terms of meaning, it is divided into three parts: a story about insomnia, which forced him to turn to Homer, an appeal to "Achaean men", reflections on love.

Genre- elegy.

Poetic size– written in iambic hexameter, ring rhyme ABBA.

Metaphors – “this long brood, this crane train”, “everything moves with love”, “the sea... approaches the head with a heavy roar”.

Epithets – “tight sails”, “divine foam”, “black sea”,

Comparison – “like a crane’s wedge... where are you swimming.”

History of creation

It is known that Osip Mandelstam was a student of the Faculty of History and Philology of the Romance-Germanic Department. He never graduated from the university, did not receive a diploma, but this period of his life left an imprint on the poet’s work. Philology students studied the Iliad in full. They considered reading a list of ships a proven cure for insomnia. This fact also found a place in the analyzed poem.

As a student, Mandelstam devoted himself to poetry. His creations were noticed by his older brothers-in-arms. In 1915, the young poet stayed in Koktebel in the house of Maximilian Voloshin. This is where the work “Insomnia” was created. Homer. Tight sails." Close friends of the poet claimed that he was inspired to write poetry by the wreck of an ancient ship he saw in Koktebel.

Subject

Ancient literature influenced the work of poets of different eras. O. Mandelstam, with the help of it, tries to reveal the eternal philosophical theme love. The author's focus is on the Trojan War.

The lines of the poem are written in the first person. Thus, the reader can follow the lyrical hero’s train of thought directly. In the first stanza, the hero admits that he could not sleep, so he began to read the list of ships. He reached the middle, and then this process was interrupted by thoughts about the causes of the war. The lyrical hero believes that the “Achaean men” fought not for Troy, but for Helen.

Composition

The poem is a monologue-meditation of the lyrical hero. In terms of meaning, it is divided into three parts: a story about insomnia, which forced him to turn to Homer, an appeal to the “Achaean men,” and reflections on love. The work consists of three quatrains, which corresponds to the semantic organization of the text.

Genre

Means of expression

In order to reveal the topic and show his attitude to the problem posed, O. Mandelstam uses means of expressiveness. The text contains metaphors- “this long brood, this crane train”, “everything moves with love”, “the sea... approaches the head with a heavy roar”; epithets- “tight sails”, “divine foam”, “black sea”; comparison- “like a crane’s wedge... where are you swimming.”

Poem test

Rating Analysis

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