A century-old wolfhound rushes onto my shoulders to explain. Wek-wolfhound throws itself on my shoulders

“For the explosive valor of the coming centuries...” Osip Mandelstam

For the explosive valor of the coming centuries,
For the high tribe of people
I lost even the cup at the feast of my fathers,
And fun, and your honor.
The wolfhound century rushes onto my shoulders,
But I am not a wolf by blood,
You better stuff me like a hat into your sleeve
Hot fur coats of the Siberian steppes.

So as not to see a coward or a flimsy filth,
No bloody blood in the wheel,
So that the blue foxes shine all night
To me in its primeval beauty,

Take me into the night where the Yenisei flows
And the pine tree reaches the star,
Because I am not a wolf by blood
And only my equal will kill me.

Analysis of Mandelstam’s poem “For the explosive valor of the coming centuries...”

At the moment of completion October revolution Osip Mandelstam was already a fully accomplished poet, a highly valued master. WITH Soviet power His relationships were contradictory. He liked the idea of creating a new state. He expected the degeneration of society, human nature. If you carefully read the memoirs of Mandelstam's wife, you can understand that the poet was personally acquainted with many statesmen - Bukharin, Yezhov, Dzerzhinsky. Stalin’s resolution in the criminal case of Osip Emilievich is also noteworthy: “Isolate, but preserve.” However, some poems are imbued with rejection of the Bolshevik methods and hatred of them. Just remember “We live without feeling the country beneath us...” (1933). Because of this open ridicule of the “father of the people” and his associates, the poet was first arrested and then sent into exile.

“For the explosive valor of the coming centuries...” (1931-35) - a poem somewhat close in meaning to the above. The key motive is tragic fate a poet living in a terrible era. Mandelstam calls it “the wolfhound century.” A similar naming was found earlier in the poem “Century” (1922): “My century, my beast...”. The lyrical hero of the poem “For the explosive valor of the coming centuries...” contrasts himself with the surrounding reality. He does not want to see its terrible manifestations: “cowards”, “flimsy dirt”, “bloody bones in a wheel”. A possible way out is an escape from reality. For the lyrical hero, salvation lies in Siberian nature, so the request arises: “Take me into the night where the Yenisei flows.”

An important thought is repeated twice in the poem: “... I am not a wolf by my blood.” This dissociation is fundamental for Mandelstam. The years when the poem was written were extremely difficult times for Soviet residents. The party demanded complete submission. Some people were faced with a choice: either life or honor. Someone became a wolf, a traitor, someone refused to cooperate with the system. The lyrical hero clearly considers himself to be in the second category of people.

There is another important motive - the connection of times. The metaphor comes from Hamlet. In Shakespeare's tragedy there are lines about a broken chain of times (in alternative translations - a dislocated or loosened eyelid, a torn connecting thread of days). Mandelstam believes that the events of 1917 destroyed Russia's connection with the past. In the already mentioned poem “Century,” the lyrical hero is ready to sacrifice himself in order to restore broken ties. In the work “For the explosive valor of the coming centuries...” one can see the intention to accept suffering for the sake of the “high tribe of people” who are destined to live in the future.

The confrontation between the poet and the authorities, as often happens, ended in victory for the latter. In 1938, Mandelstam was arrested again. Osip Emilievich was sent to a prison camp Far East, and the sentence was not too harsh for those times - five years concentration camp for counter-revolutionary activities. On December 27, he died of typhus while in the Vladperpunkt transit camp (the territory of modern Vladivostok). The poet was not buried until the spring, like other deceased prisoners. He was then buried in mass grave, the location of which remains unknown to this day.

Maybe you don't need me.
Night; from the abyss of the world,
Like a shell without pearls
I am washed up on your shore.
O. Mandelstam

Osip Emilievich Mandelstam knew the true value of himself and his creativity, he believed that he would influence “Russian poetry, changing something in its structure and composition.” The poet never betrayed himself in anything. He preferred the position of a prophet and priest to the position of living together and among people, creating what his people needed.

I have been given a body - what should I do with it?
So one and so mine?
For the joy of quiet breathing and living
Who, tell me, should I thank?
I am a gardener, I am also a flower,
In the dungeon of the world I am not alone.

His reward for his talented poetry was persecution, poverty and, ultimately, death. But the truthful poems, paid at a high price, not published for decades, cruelly persecuted, survived... and have now entered our consciousness as high examples of human dignity, unbending will and genius.

In transparent Petropol we will die.
Where Proserpine rules over us.
We drink mortal air in every breath,
And every hour is our hour of death.

In St. Petersburg, Mandelstam began to write poetry; he returned here for a short time; he considered this city “his homeland.”

I returned to my city, familiar to tears,
To the veins, to the swollen glands of children.
I came back here, so swallow it quickly
Fish oil from Leningrad river lanterns.

Mandelstam was a childishly open and joyful person, going towards people with a pure soul, who did not know how to lie or pretend. He never traded his talent, preferring freedom to satiety and comfort: well-being was not a condition for creativity for him. He didn’t look for misfortune, but he didn’t chase happiness either.

Ah, heavy honeycombs and delicate networks,
It's easier to lift a stone than your name repeat!
I have only one concern left in the world:
Golden care, how to relieve the burden of time.
Like dark water, I drink clouded air.
Time was plowed by the plow, and the rose was earth.

The poet knew and was not indifferent to the price that had to be paid for the blessings of life and even for the happiness of living. Fate beat and tore him pretty hard, repeatedly brought him to the last line, and only a happy accident saved the poet at the decisive moment.

December solemnly shines over the Neva.
Twelve months have been singing about the hour of death.
No, not Straw in ceremonial satin
Tastes a slow, languid peace.

According to Akhmatova, at the age of 42, Mandelstam “became heavy, gray, began to breathe poorly - he gave the impression of an old man, but his eyes still shone. The poems kept getting better. Prose too.” The poet’s physical decrepitude was interestingly combined with poetic and spiritual power.

My eyelashes prickle, a tear wells up in my chest.
I feel without fear that there will be a thunderstorm.
Someone wonderful is trying to hurry me to forget something.
It’s stuffy, and yet I still want to live until I die.

What gave the poet strength? Creation. “Poetry is power,” he told Akhmatova. This power over oneself, illnesses and weaknesses, over human souls, over eternity gave strength to live and create, to be independent and reckless.

For the explosive valor of the coming centuries,
For the high tribe of people
I lost even the cup at the feast of my fathers,
And your fun and honor.
Vek-wolfhound rushes onto my shoulders.
But I am not a wolf by blood,
You better stuff me like a hat into your sleeve
Hot fur coats of the Siberian steppes.

The poet sincerely tried to merge with the times, to fit into the new reality, but he constantly felt its hostility. Over time, this discord became more and more noticeable, and then deadly.

My age, my beast, who can
Look into your pupils
And with his blood he will glue
Two centuries of vertebrae.

In life, Mandelstam was not a fighter or fighter; he was aware of doubts and fear, but in poetry he was an invincible hero, overcoming all difficulties.

Chur! Don't ask, don't complain!
Tsits! Don't whine! Is it for this reason that commoners
The dry boots trampled, so that I would now betray them?
We will die like foot soldiers.
But we will not glorify either robbery, day labor, or lies!

Critics accused Mandelstam of being out of touch with life and its problems, but he was very specific, and this was the worst thing for the authorities. This is how he wrote about the repressions of the 30s:

Help me, Lord, to get through this night:
I'm afraid for my life - for your slave,
Living in St. Petersburg is like sleeping in a coffin.

“Poems should be civil,” the poet believed. His poem “We live without feeling the country beneath us...” was tantamount to suicide, because about the “earthly god” he wrote:

His thick fingers are like worms, fat
And the words, like pound weights, are true.
The cockroaches are laughing,
And his boots shine.

They could not forgive the poet for this, the authorities destroyed him, but poetry remained, survived and now tells the truth about its creator.

Where there is more sky for me - there I am ready to wander,
And clear melancholy does not let me go
From the still young Voronezh hills
To the all-human ones - becoming clearer in Tuscany.

Today, Mandelstam’s poems are already inextricably linked with all Russian poetry; the 20th century is unthinkable without the scratching, touching lyrics of a homeless poet who does not even have a grave. His tragic fate became a reflection of the fate of an entire generation, his poetry is a disturbing echo of the bursting essence of the century.
In 1913, Mandelstam’s first collection “Stone” was published. In Mandelstam's early poems there are no loud sounds or bright light. There are no feelings here that are not shadowed by contradiction:
There's no need to talk about anything
Nothing should be taught
And sad and so good
Dark animal soul...
(“No need to talk about anything...")
Mandelstam sought to make distant eras the property of his own creativity, bringing together layers of different times. Homeric Greece and Imperial Rome, medieval Catholic Europe, Dickens's England, the French theater of the classic era is not material for the poet for stylization, but special moments in the history of culture, which in some way intersect with modernity.
Poems of the First World War and Revolution (1916-1920) made up a new collection - “Tristia” - “sadness” (the name was given by the compiler of the book M. Kuzmin by analogy with Ovid’s “Sad Elegies”). Here you can feel the longing for the passing century, for the breaking ties. And St. Petersburg - a crossroads of cultures - seems like a passing, dying city, an ark on which they float into oblivion:
Let us glorify, brothers, the twilight of freedom,
Great twilight year!
Into the boiling night waters
The formidable forest of snares has been lowered.
You rise in the dark years, -
Oh, sun, judge, people.
("Twilight of Freedom")
The tradition of Russian poetry demanded a response to political events that would go beyond just politics. Mandelstam says that the great revolutionary shift takes away the ability to navigate the world, because the sun is hidden in darkness. The question of emigration, which confronted Mandelstam, as well as other Russian writers, was resolved by him in favor of loyalty to the Russian misfortune. These motives are heard in the poems “Century”, “January 1, 1924”.
In the early 20s, the poet seemed to be in a hurry to say the most important thing not only in poetry, but also in memoir-autobiographical prose (“The Noise of Time,” “Egyptian Stamp,” “About Poetry”). In 1925, the cycle was born love lyrics, dedicated to Olga Vaksel, in which passion struggles with guilt:
Life fell like lightning,
Like an eyelash in a glass of water.
Lying on the vine,
I don't blame anyone...
(“Life has fallen...”)
In the early 30s, his poetry became poetry of challenge, anger, and indignation. And this is not only a matter of systematic persecution to which Mandelstam himself was subjected. At this time, the forty-year-old poet already looks like a very old man. What he has in common with other people is not only the commonality of the meager Soviet life, but also the feeling of impending disaster, the horror of lawlessness. A wanderer who never knew how to stand up for himself, “a man of the era of the Moscow seamstress” (Akaky Akakievich’s overcoat immediately comes to mind) realizes that everything that happens to the country is a personal issue. And he creates poems imbued with the pathos of true citizenship:
For the explosive valor of the coming centuries,
For the high tribe of people, -
I lost even the cup at the feast of my fathers,
And fun, and your honor.
The wolfhound century rushes onto my shoulders,
But I am not a wolf by blood:
You better stuff me like a hat into your sleeve
Hot fur coat of the Siberian steppes...
(“For explosive valor...”)
In 1934, Mandelstam wrote poetry that cost him his life. He openly challenges the all-powerful Stalin:
We live without feeling the country beneath us,
Our speeches are not heard ten steps away,
And where is enough for half a conversation,
The Kremlin highlander will be remembered there.
(“We live without feeling the country beneath us...”)
Amidst the general silence, the poet dared to say something that no one dared even think to himself.
Mandelstam was arrested and exiled for five years to Cherdyn, and then to Voronezh. The sentence turned out to be quite lenient: the executioners played with the poet like a half-strangled mouse. When he returned, anticipating a new misfortune, few of his acquaintances dared to give him and his wife a hand and help with something:
How scared you and I are,
Comrade, my big mouth!
Oh, how our tobacco crumbles,
Nutcracker, my friend, fool!
And life could whistle like a starling,
Eat some nut pie
Yes, apparently, there’s no way...
(“How scared you and I are...")
Soon after his return, Mandelstam was arrested again and sent to the Far East. No one knows exactly the circumstances of his death in 1938 (one version is V. Shalamov’s poignant story “Sherry Brandy”). The poet's widow, Nadezhda Yakovlevna Mandelstam, managed to preserve his legacy. And now Mandelstam’s lyrics, the disturbing music of his poems comes to us louder and clearer:
And clutching the worn-out fist
Year of birth - with a crowd and a crowd
I whisper with a bloodless mouth:
- I was born on the night from the second to the third
January at ninety-one
Unreliable year - and century
They surround me with fire.

Composition

Maybe you don't need me.
Night; from the abyss of the world,
Like a shell without pearls
I am washed up on your shore.
O. Mandelstam

In transparent Petropol we will die.
Where Proserpine rules over us.
We drink mortal air in every breath,
And every hour is our hour of death.

In St. Petersburg, Mandelstam began to write poetry; he returned here for a short time; he considered this city “his homeland.”

I returned to my city, familiar to tears,
To the veins, to the swollen glands of children.
I came back here, so swallow it quickly
Fish oil from Leningrad river lanterns.

Ah, heavy honeycombs and delicate networks,
It's easier to lift a stone than to repeat your name!
I have only one concern left in the world:
Golden care, how to relieve the burden of time.
Like dark water, I drink clouded air.
Time was plowed by the plow, and the rose was earth.

December solemnly shines over the Neva.
Twelve months have been singing about the hour of death.
No, not Straw in ceremonial satin
Tastes a slow, languid peace.

According to Akhmatova, Mandelstam at the age of 42 “became heavy, gray, began to breathe poorly - he gave the impression of an old man, but his eyes still shone. The poems kept getting better. Prose too.” The poet’s physical decrepitude was interestingly combined with poetic and spiritual power.