Thursday, March 28

The course of A. N. Pleshcheyev's poetry

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On December 4, 1825, the Russian poet Alexey Nikolaevich Pleshcheev was born in an old noble family. He became famous in the 1840s as the author of revolutionary hymns. He also wrote satirical stories in which he ridiculed officials and provincial landowners. The writer was also a member of the Petrashev circle and spent part of his life in exile. Later, Pleshcheev worked as a journalist and art critic in the publications “Domestic Notes” and “Northern Bulletin”. There he helped Anton Chekhov, Semyon Nadson, Vsevolod Garshin and other young writers to publish.

Pleshcheev entered the literary field as an eighteen-year-old boy. He was still an inexperienced singer, unfamiliar with life, but at the same time there was a passionate feeling of a young fighter in his poems, and the noble direction of the poet was clearly expressed. It was clear that the poet distinguishes good from evil quite accurately and, with the fervor of youth, calls society and strives to fight evil himself. The poet saw the evil prevailing in society, and other phenomena receded into the background for him. He touches on art only a little, and he does not give much more space to love, which usually plays such an important role in the poems of young poets.

But, singing love, he often reminds that there is something higher to which personal feeling must yield; he often speaks of separation as a necessity, and sometimes completely repels love in the name of a higher principle:

I cannot lie before you,

And the truth is scary for you…

Why the fruitless struggle

Do we torment ourselves every hour?

I don’t see God in idols,

You can’t bow your brow before them!

I’m destined to hate everything,

What slavishly you used to honor!

Edvard Munch “Parting”

Тhus, in the first years of his activity, the young poet is before us the exponent of only two moods: appeal and disappointment.

These two moods should prevail over all others, because they express the most important aspects of the mental work of every thinking person: dissatisfaction with the present and the desire for a better future, research and conclusion, analysis and synthesis. Pleshcheyev’s youth coincided with the era of the forties, with the era of awakening in the Russian society of intellectual interests. It was a time of learning, and the best representatives of society began to get acquainted with the results, with the fruits that Western Europe gave them, with the fervor of newcomers. The rare disharmony that occurred from the collision of European science and our homegrown lack of culture in that distant era could not go unnoticed and could not fail to evoke a response from the sensitive and sympathetic soul of the poet. As a bird put in a cage does not want to put up with captivity, in despair it beats against strong bars, seeing the expanse of fields and forests in the distance, which it lacks, pours out the anguish of its little heart in sonorous songs: so the poet, seeing how his reality does not correspond to the ideals that he has developed or perceived, expresses discontent, despair, anger, and hope in sounds. And since the “holy discontent” with the present and the desire for a better future belong to such feelings that will constantly excite human hearts, then the poetry of impulse and sorrow is as immortal as anything can escape death in this world. That is why Pleshcheyev’s lyrical poems are kindred and close to every living soul and have acquired eternal memory for the deceased poet, if only there can be something eternal in this world.

These were the main motives of Pleshcheyev’s poetry “in those days when all the impressions of being were so new”… The poet was little interested in nature, since he himself was still close to nature. He did not pay attention to the children, because he himself is still a child. There was still no place in his poems, as well as in his heart.

The life of a modern poet of society is also not drawn to us in his first poems, because he did not know life yet. And the song of impulse and sorrow were the results of clairvoyance of a sensitive heart, or inspired by the inspired voices of Western fighters of love and reason. And these voices inspired:

Knock harder, and alarm

You wake the sleepers from sleep!

This is the meaning of the deepest art;

And you march ahead!

K.P. Bryullov “A young girl’s dream before dawn”

But soon the poet learned that sleeping people can be woken up only when they need to wake up. This knowledge was not easy for the poet – he had to interrupt his poetic activity for several years.

Alexey Nikolaevich Pleshcheev did not have a great poetic talent, but his poetry will take a prominent place among the works of our “poetae minores”. If Pleshcheyev’s poems do not shine with the art of decoration, but their material is the purest poetic gold, and the shortcomings of their form are completely redeemed by the nobility of the content. Indeed, while most of our minor poets depict in their works the moods of personal, private life, sometimes even moods of a not particularly exalted nature, Pleshcheyev chose as his specialty the depiction of moods of a social nature arising under the influence of love for one’s neighbor and passion for social ideals.

Ogarev is closest to Pleshcheyev by nature and by the nature of his poetic activity. Some of the poems of the first seem at times to be an imitation of Ogarev. As, for example, Pleshcheyev’s poem “Reflection” (“Days of sorrow and anxiety, days of bitter doubt”) Ogarevskoye recalls – “We entered life with a wonderful hope.” The very fate of both poets has much in common: both were subjected to political adversity; one was unhappy in family life, the other was greatly affected by the loss of his beloved wife. But there is also a significant difference in the conditions of the development of the poetic talents of both. Ogarev lived under the oppression of the social conditions of his era. His song was suppressed by the surrounding darkness, in which no break was foreseen. For that, Ogarev was a strong personality who boldly stood up against the social conditions that were modern to him. On the contrary, Pleshcheyev began his poetic activity when the dawn of liberation was already dawning; he saw and sang the sunrise of freedom, which dispersed the darkness of the pre-reform era. But as a person, Pleshcheev was weaker than Ogarev. Therefore , in the dull tone of Ogarev ‘s poetry , darker notes are heard: these are the moans of the soul suffocating in the atmosphere of the life surrounding it, and if good notes sometimes flash in Ogarev’s poems, they only testify to the steadfastness and vitality of his nature. On the contrary, Pleshcheyev’s poetry is more cheerful, more cheerful: this is rather festive, triumphant poetry than dull, and if there are sad elements in it, then their source lies in the very personality of the poet, who has not endured severe trials and unequal battles. Although the poet saw the victory, he was too tired of the difficulty of achieving it to sing it with a full voice. This fatigue, the strain that sounds in Pleshcheyev’s poetry sometimes in the midst of the most solemn hymns, gave a certain part of critics a reason even to call all of Pleshcheyev’s poetry “liberal whining”, a nickname so unsuitable to the cheerful poems of Alexei Nikolaevich.

The best poems of Pleshcheyev should be recognized as those in which his public mood was reflected. Pleshcheyev cannot be considered a political poet in the generally accepted sense of the word, as were, for example, Dante, Hugo, Barbier… It is impossible to find his political ideals in Pleshcheyev’s poems; it is not clear from them what he invites to fight, which system seems to him the most just, who are his friends, who are his enemies. In its best political anthem: “Forward! without fear and doubt,” Pleshcheyev draws the future program of his activities in this way:

Priests of sin and lies we will

The verb of truth is to punish,

And we will wake the sleepers from sleep

And we will lead the army to battle!

Don’t make yourself an idol

Neither on earth nor in heaven;

For all the gifts and blessings of the world

We will not fall to the dust before him!..

Proclaim love learning

We will be poor, rich,

And we will endure persecution for him,

Forgiving the mad executioners!

Blessed is he who lives in a bloody struggle,

In the cares of heavy exhausted;

Like a lazy and crafty slave,

I didn’t bury my talent in the ground!

Let us be a guiding star

The holy truth is burning;

Gerard Segers “Christ and the Penitents”

Under such a program, without hesitation, any sincere public figure can subscribe, without distinction of directions and views. But if Pleshcheyev’s public anthems lack the certainty of political sympathies, but they are distinguished by an extraordinary integrity and fidelity of mood. When reading such poems as the hymn just quoted, “Dream”, “To the Poet” (“Who did not suffer holy suffering”), “He suffered a lot in life, a lot”, and others, their best strings sound in the soul – disinterested love for one’s neighbor, selfless willingness to fight for the best ideals striving for truth and justice, cheerful expectation of the upcoming works – in short, everything for which we love youth, in the name of which we so willingly forgive her mistakes and delusions. When reading such poems by Pleshcheyev, the heart lights up, and the thought is transferred to the former young time, which always seems to be the best because it is no longer there. And in the fact that Pleshcheyev was able to reflect this young feeling in his poems, he was able to set precisely these noble properties of the human soul, one should see his most important poetic merit.

In the poems of the later period, Pleshcheyev’s cheerful mood is mixed with a sense of personal fatigue and exhaustion. But even in the most difficult moments of grief, he did not lose hope for a better future. So, even at those moments when it seemed to him that his “young summers had disappeared without a trace” and that instead of them the soul had found…

…only a pathetic lack of self-confidence

Yes, the conviction of the futility of the struggle,

Yes, the thought that not a single true aspiration

One should expect no mercy from fate.

he still concludes his elegy with the words:

And though I do not see a pleasant dawn –

Even involuntarily, the gaze looks hopefully into the distance.

Pleshcheev in such “days of sorrow and anxiety” did not think about betraying his banner, did not find that “the conviction of the futility of the struggle” gives him the right to throw everything and bury his talent “like a lazy and crafty slave,” but he prayed fervently:

Oh my God, restore

My fallen spirit, my sad spirit;

I crave faith and love,

For new battles, I crave strength.

And then falling into despondency, then resurrecting again in spirit, Pleshcheev, like a lark who sang the dawn of the liberation era, saw the sunrise and merged his voice with the “universal gospel of victorious sun rays.” These victorious hymns of Pleshcheyev: “You worked, poor people, without knowing rest”, “It was time for your sons” and “Before the old hut”, despite its solemnity, despite the confidence that…

We are not afraid of a new enemy either,

And the fatherland will cope with him…

Look! the darkness is already thinning,

The light penetrates everywhere,

And, shuddering, feels evil,

That his triumph had passed.

M.V. Kopyev “Prayer”

This, however, always happens with nervous people when, after a long wait and a long struggle, they finally get what they want. It is not so much joy that is felt, as fatigue from the labors and trials endured, previously not noticed due to the rise of nerves.

In the early years of the liberation era, Pleshcheyev took a lively part in the denunciations of the literature of that time. His prose works published in the fifties and sixties and some of his poems are devoted to this activity. However, in these works of his, Pleshcheyev did not show sufficient talent. His verses could be applied to him himself, that “not everyone is given the holy right of reproof.” Dobrolyubov, in one of his critical articles, quite rightly ridiculed the Pleshcheyev heroes, eaten up by the environment: what kind of heroes are they if the environment could have them? Moreover, Pleshcheyev’s denunciations were directed against such almost spontaneous conditions of public life that the very instrument of denunciation – a short story or a pretty poem – being unable to shake public injustice, gave the impression of insignificant and ridiculous. An example is a small poem describing a palace abandoned by its owner.

This poem ends with this stanza:

The house stands bleakly – and on the porch slabs,

Trembling under his rags, the poor man lay down to sleep

And thinks: “When it would be in the chambers of the forgotten

They gave me at least a small corner from the cold!”

However, all these denunciations, which seem fruitless and boring to us, were liked and successful at one time: each epoch has its own oddities, and although now, of course, no one remembers Pleshcheyev’s prose stories and does not read his accusatory poems reprinted in the “Collection of Poems”, however, in the history of Pleshcheyev’s poetic activity it is necessary mention them as well.

The public mood of Pleshcheyev’s poetry was especially graced by his poems devoted to descriptions of love and nature. We are so spoiled by the luxurious descriptions of female beauty in Maikov and Polonsky, the pictures of nature in Tyutchev and Fet, and, finally, the most sublime moods of love in Fet, that, of course, we would not read all this in the poems of Pleshcheyev, who has neither successful epithets nor musical dimensions, if love and nature did not they appeared in Pleshcheyev’s poems in a very special, noble light. In fact, no matter how exalted, no matter how abstract and disinterested love is sometimes in Fet’s poems, yet with him a woman is always considered as a possible source of pleasure, even if only of an aesthetic and moral nature. Perhaps such feelings of Fet would have been inaccessible to Pleshcheyev, but on the other hand, he looked at a woman mainly as a friend, a wife, as a faithful companion of working life, who would help encourage the poet, go hand in hand with him throughout his life, and would not be limited only to what would adorn his poetic leisure.

In the poem: “Do you remember the drooping willows”, the beloved woman tells the story of her love to the poet like this:

We loved a lot with you,

But there were few bright hours

Given to us by a harsh fate.

We have learned the yoke of bondage,

The whole weight of everyday chains,

Our heart is sick with pain;

But we hid the pain from people.

In the sanctuary of our suffering

They didn ‘t let the crowd break in,-

And silently, without tears and sobs,

We were walking along a thorny path.

It is quite natural that if you expect such sacrifices from your beloved woman, you consider her capable of such a life, then you crave to become better and cleaner yourself. Therefore, when Pleshcheyev’s “dormant power of the spirit responded to the call of love,” he cared first of all,

So that my soul was

Your soul is worthy of a clear,

To the hearts of passionate devotion

You couldn’t be ashamed!

One should not, however, think that the predominance of abstract interests in Pleshcheyev’s love made him unable to understand the grace of femininity and that playful tenderness that best brightens up everyday life. His poems: “Good night! – you said”, “Yes, I love you, lovely creature” and “Winter Skating” prove very clearly how the poet was able to understand and appreciate female affection.

Marcus Stone “Lovers’ Quarrel”

Just as in love Pleshcheyev instilled a social element in a woman and made a friend of his life a participant in his political aspirations, so in nature the poet found only an interpretation and reflection of the same social aspirations. The sun, breaking through the immaculate clouds to caress the “sinful earth”, is a symbol of love and forgiveness for the poet; a bird flies from foreign lands to comfort a poor wretch with its song; a pine forest, nodding, stretches its branches, as if blessing a young fighter for the truth for hard work, on the path of the saint; finally, the poet himself came to nature so that, like the fabulous Mikula Selyaninovich:

So that I can shake myself off

And lies and laziness are shackled

And with a pure heart, with a new strength

He set off briskly on his way again…

Despite his constant willingness to go to battle with the untruth, the poet does not look at all like a stern warrior in a shaggy helmet: he appears first as an enthusiastic, dreamy young man, then a tired, meek husband and, finally, a good-natured, kindly grandfather. This softness of Pleshcheyev’s character was especially clearly reflected in his poems for children. Very few poets know how to write for children, and Pleshcheyev should be counted among these few.

His poems for children are not only entertaining, simple, imbued with the most humane feelings and, moreover, alien to any moral teaching, which is especially important for children, but above all, they are really poetic and touching. How graceful, for example, is his poem “Tomorrow”, which tells the story of a naughty boy who postponed lessons for tomorrow to run around in the garden among nature. When he finally returned to his mother:

The reprimand froze involuntarily

On her lips. She

He says to himself: “Tomorrow

I’ll scold the naughty one!

And today I’ll kiss you…”

And kisses endlessly,

And he can ‘t bring his eyes together

From a tanned face…

Frederick Morgan “Mother’s Love”

In conclusion, it is necessary to say a few words about Pleshcheyev’s translated poems. Pleshcheev drew a lot from foreign literature. His accusatory poems are largely borrowed from modern German poets, who experienced the influence of reaction almost simultaneously with the Russians. In some of Pleshcheyev’s original poems, one can trace the influence of Gerveg, Lips, Prutz, Schultz. Therefore, it is not surprising that Pleshcheyev also very willingly translated the poems of these poets. At the same time, it must be said that he

he had an extraordinary talent for choosing the best and most valuable for his translations, and Pleshcheyev’s translations from foreign poets represent an excellent anthology of German and English poetry of the present century. Of the larger translations of Pleshcheyev, we note as particularly successful – translations of Heine’s Ratcliffe (the translation was made in such melodic verses that Cui wrote his opera on his text) and Baer’s Struensee.

 

Author of the article: Varvara Kartushina

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