Notre Dame
1.
Where did the Roman judge judge? foreign people-
The basilica stands, both joyful and first,
Like Adam once, spreading his nerves,
The light cross vault plays with its muscles.
2.
But a secret plan reveals itself from the outside!
Here the strength of the girth arches was taken care of,
So that the heavy weight of the wall does not crush,
And the ram is inactive on the daring arch.
3.
A spontaneous labyrinth, an incomprehensible forest,
Gothic souls are a rational abyss,
Egyptian power and Christianity timidity,
Next to the reed there is an oak tree, and everywhere the king is a plumb line.
- But the closer you look, the stronghold of Notre Dame,
I studied your monstrous ribs, -
The more often I thought: out of unkind heaviness
And someday I will create something beautiful.
(1912)
Questions and tasks for analyzing a poem
What images and associations from the world of culture are reflected in the poem? How are the features of Acmeism manifested in this poem?
Describing the ancient Christian cathedral, the poet uses the image of Adam, the first man, and historical associations. He sees and understands how complex the technical side of this architectural creation is, but this does not prevent him from seeing its unique beauty, which combines the features of past cultures.
Mandelstam likened poetry to architecture, believed that poetry fills spiritual world man, as architecture fills the emptiness of space, and testifies to the genius of the builder, reminds of eternity. For him, the poet is like an architect, the word is like a stone in the building of poetry; genius poetry, like architecture, recalls eternity.
Having met the revolution sympathetically, Mandelstam had difficulty accepting the post-revolutionary reality. In the 1920-1930s, the social element intensified in his poems; he openly opposed the suppression of individual freedom by an authoritarian state.
NOTRE DAME
Where the Roman judge judged a foreign people,
The basilica stands, and, joyful and first,
Like Adam once, spreading his nerves,
The light cross vault plays with its muscles.
But a secret plan reveals itself from the outside,
Here the strength of the girth arches was taken care of,
So that the heavy weight of the wall does not crush,
And the ram is inactive on the daring arch.
A spontaneous labyrinth, an incomprehensible forest,
Gothic souls are a rational abyss,
Egyptian power and Christianity timidity,
Next to the reed there is an oak tree, and everywhere the king is a plumb line.
But the closer you look, the stronghold of Notre Dame,
I studied your monstrous ribs
The more often I thought: out of unkind heaviness
And someday I will create something beautiful.
1912
The poem Notre Dame is "simple" because it clearly presents an enthusiastic description of the cathedral and then a conclusion as clear as a fable's moral - But the more carefully, stronghold of Notre Dame, I studied your monstrous ribs, the more often I thought: out of this unkind heaviness, I will someday create something beautiful.. That is: culture overcomes nature, establishing in it a harmonious balance of opposing forces.
An enthusiastic description of the cathedral - can we retell it right away? Maybe not - but not because it is very difficult, but because it assumes some prior knowledge in the reader. Which? Apparently it assumes that we 1) know that Notre Dame- this is a cathedral in Paris, and we imagine from pictures what it looks like, otherwise we will not understand anything; 2) that we remember from history that it stands on the island of the Seine where it was Roman settlement among someone else's of the Gallic people: otherwise we will not understand stanza I; 3) that we know from the history of art that Gothic is characterized by a cross vault supported by supporting arches, flying buttresses: otherwise we will not understand stanza II. For those who were not interested in the history of art, let us remind you. In such architecture, where there are no arches and vaults, the entire “evil weight” of the building presses only from top to bottom - as in a Greek temple. And when a vault and a dome appear in architecture, it not only presses down on the walls, but also pushes them sideways: if the walls don’t hold up, they will collapse in all directions at once. To prevent this from happening, in the Early Middle Ages they did it simply: they built the walls very thick - this was the Romanesque style. But it is difficult to make large windows in such walls; the temple was dark and ugly. Then, in the High Middle Ages, in the Gothic style, they began to make the dome not smooth, like an overturned cup, but with wedges, like a sewn skullcap. This was the cross vault: in it the entire weight of the dome went along the stone seams between these wedges, and the spaces between the seams did not put pressure, the walls under them could be made thinner and cut through with wide windows with colored glass. But where the stone seams with their increased weight rested against the walls, these parts of the walls had to be greatly strengthened: for this, additional supports were attached to them from the outside - girth arches, which with their bursting force pressed towards the bursting force of the vault and thereby supported the walls. From the outside, these girth arches around the building looked just like the ribs of a fish skeleton: hence the word ribs in stanza IV. And the stone seams between the dome wedges were called ribs: hence the word nerves in stanza I. I apologize for such a digression: all this was not an analysis, but the preliminary knowledge that the author assumes in the reader before any analysis. This is important for commentators: a commentary in a good publication should tell us, the readers, precisely that prior knowledge that we may not have.
Now this is enough to retell the poem in your own words in stanzas: (I, exposition) the cathedral on the site of the Roman judgment seat is beautiful and light, (II, the most “technical” stanza) but this lightness is the result of a dynamic balance of opposing forces, (III, the most pathetic stanza) everything in it amazes with contrasts, - (IV, conclusion) that’s how I would like to create beauty from resisting material. At the beginning of stanzas II and IV there is the word But, it singles them out as the main, thematically supporting ones; a compositional rhythm is obtained, alternating less and more important stanzas after one. I stanza – a look from the inside under light cross vault
; Stanza II – a look from the outside; III stanza - again from the inside; Stanza IV - again a studying look from the outside. Stanza I looks to the past, II–III to the present, IV to the future. This is the reader’s general idea of the poem as a whole, with which the analysis begins. And now, with this idea of the whole, let us trace the particulars that stand out against its background. The Gothic style is a system of opposing forces: accordingly, the style of a poem is a system of contrasts, antitheses. They are thickest - we noticed this - in stanza III. The brightest of them: Gothic souls, a mental abyss : an abyss is something irrational, but here even the abyss, it turns out, is rationally constructed by the human mind. Elemental labyrinth - something horizontal incomprehensible forest – something vertical: also a contrast. Elemental Labyrinth: The natural elements are organized into a human construct, intricate but deliberately confusing. The forest is a reminder of Baudelaire’s very popular sonnet “Correspondences” in the era of symbolism: nature - this is a temple in which a person passes through a forest of symbols looking at him, and in this forest sounds, smells and colors mix and match, drawing the soul into infinity. But this reminder is polemical: for the Symbolists, nature was a temple not made by hands; for Mandelstam, on the contrary, a man-made temple becomes nature. Further, Egyptian power and Christian timidity - also an antithesis: the Christian fear of God unexpectedly prompts the construction of buildings not humble and wretched, but mighty, like the Egyptian pyramids. An oak tree next to a reed - the same thought, but in a specific image. The subtext of this image contains the fables of La Fontaine and Krylov: in a storm the oak tree dies, and the reed bends, but survives; and behind it is another subtext with contrast, Pascal’s maxim: Man is just a reed, but a thinking reed, we remember her from Tyutchev’s line:
Please note: in this entire conversation I did not use evaluative expressions: good - bad. This is because I am a scientist, not a critic; my business is to describe, not to evaluate. How reader to me Of course, I like some things more, some less, but that’s my personal business. However, I would like to say about one line: it is not very successful. This is in stanza II: daring vault... ram . Why ram? Three movements are described here. Load weight the vault presses vertically downwards and to the sides on the walls; But impudent the vault is named rather because of its vertical tendency from bottom to top, towards the Gothic spire, piercing the sky(the expression of Mandelstam himself); and metaphorical
ram we imagine a log, not vertically, but horizontally hitting a wall or gate. Here these three differently directed images are shy and obscure each other. Until now, I have not gone beyond the boundaries of our poem - I talked about its composition, the system of contrasts, etc. It was pure analysis, analysis from the whole to the parts. But when I allowed myself to expand my field of vision a little - to include references to Baudelaire, La Fontaine, Pascal, Tyutchev - I introduced elements of interpretation: I talked about subtexts. Now I will allow myself to expand my field of vision a little in the other direction: to talk about the context into which this poem fits by Mandelstam and his contemporaries. The poem was published at the beginning of 1913 as an appendix to the declaration of the new literary direction- Acmeism, led by Gumilyov, Akhmatova and the forgotten Gorodetsky. Acmeism opposed itself to symbolism: the symbolists had a poetry of allusions, the acmeists had a poetry of precise words. They declared: poetry should write about our earthly world, and not about other worlds; this the world is beautiful, it is full of good things, and the poet, like Adam in paradise, must give names to all things. (This is why Adam is mentioned, seemingly unnecessarily, in stanza I of Notre Dame). Indeed, we can observe: Notre Dame is a poem about a temple, but it is not a religious poem. Mandelstam looks at the temple not through the eyes of a believer, but through the eyes of a master, a builder, for whom it does not matter what god he is building for, but only important is that his building lasts firmly and for a long time. This is emphasized in stanza I: Notre Dame is the heir of three cultures: Gallic (foreign people), and Christian. Culture is not part of religion, but religion is part of culture: a very important feature of worldview. And to this feeling, common to all Acmeists, Mandelstam adds his own: in his programmatic article “The Morning of Acmeism” he writes: “Acmeists share their love for the body and organization with the physiologically brilliant Middle Ages” - and then pronounces a panegyric to the Gothic cathedral precisely as a perfect organism .
Why Mandelstam (unlike his comrades) was so attracted to the Middle Ages - we will not be distracted by this. But let us note: “organism” and “organization” are not identical concepts, they are opposite: the first belongs to nature, the second to culture. In his article, Mandelstam glorifies the Gothic cathedral as a natural organism; in his poem he glorifies Notre Dame as the organization of material through the labors of a builder. This is a contradiction.
But let’s now look at the second poem, written 25 years later, and there will be no contradiction. Notre Dame was a hymn to organization, to culture overcoming nature;
the second poem is a hymn to the organism, to the culture growing out of nature. It is complex, it invites us not to analysis but to interpretation: to solve it like a crossword puzzle.
Where the Roman judge judged a foreign people,
"Notre Dame" Osip Mandelstam
Like Adam once, spreading his nerves,
There is a basilica - and, joyful and first,The light cross vault plays with its muscles.
Here the strength of the girth arches was taken care of,
So that the heavy weight of the wall does not crush,
And the ram is inactive on the daring arch.A spontaneous labyrinth, an incomprehensible forest,
Gothic souls are a rational abyss,
Egyptian power and Christianity timidity,
Next to the reed there is an oak tree, and everywhere the king is a plumb line.But the closer you look, the stronghold of Notre Dame,
But a secret plan reveals itself from the outside:
The more often I thought: out of unkind heaviness
And someday I will create something beautiful.
I studied your monstrous ribs
Analysis of Mandelstam's poem "Notre Dame"
The inner world of this poet is very changeable and unpredictable. Therefore, when starting to read his poems, it is sometimes very difficult to imagine what their ending will be. The work “Notre Dame” in this case is no exception. Shocked by the grandeur and beauty of the cathedral, the author notes that “spreading out the nerves, the light cross vault plays with its muscles.” Grandeur and grace, monumentality and airiness coexist perfectly in this building. This combination excites the imagination of Osip Mandelstam, in which a feeling of fear fights with a feeling of admiration. The cathedral itself consists of exactly the same contradictions, the powerful dome of which would have collapsed long ago if it had not been “taken care of by the force of the girth arches.” The design, thought out to the smallest detail, looks so dizzying that the poet never tires of admiring the cathedral and gradually not only becomes imbued with its spirit, but also understands why this building is rightfully considered one of the most beautiful in the world.
Studying the cathedral from the inside, the author comes to an amazing discovery, noting that here “the souls of the Gothic rational abyss, Egyptian power and Christian timidity” are organically intertwined here. The fragility of the reed in the temple is adjacent to the massiveness of the oak, and at the same time, “everywhere there is a plumb line.”
The poet sincerely admires the skill of the ancient architects, although he understands perfectly well that it took a huge amount of time and effort to build such a cathedral. At the same time, the building materials, which are not distinguished by modernity and sophistication, look as if the temple was assembled from airy fluff. This mystery haunts Mandelstam, who, exploring the farthest corners of the cathedral, still cannot find the answer to his question: how exactly could such an architectural masterpiece be created from stone, wood and glass? Addressing the cathedral, the poet notes: “I studied your monstrous ribs.” Moreover, he did this with special attention, trying to comprehend the secret of “Notre Dame”. However, the conclusions that the poet made lie not on a material, but on a philosophical plane. “Out of unkind heaviness, I will one day create something beautiful...”, the author notes, implying that words are the same building material as stone. Rough and rough. But if a person has a gift, then even with the help of such “material” one can “build” a real literary masterpiece, which grateful descendants will admire even centuries later.
The work dates back to the early period of Mandelstam’s work. It was published in 1913 along with the manifesto of a new direction in poetry - Acmeism. In contrast to the symbolists, who wrote about fictitious other worlds, the Acmeists believed that poets should write about beautiful earthly things, to which the poet should give names, like Adam in paradise (therefore, his mention in the first stanza of the poem is not accidental).
The poem describes the delight of contemplating the majestic building of Notre Dame Cathedral. But analysis of the poem "Notre Dame" is impossible without knowledge of some facts from history and architecture. The cathedral was built on the island of Cité, where Lutetia, a Roman settlement among the Gauls (“foreign people”), was located during the Roman Empire. During the construction of the cathedral, an innovative achievement of the Gothic style was used - a cross vault, which was strengthened from the outside with girth arches. Outwardly, they resemble a fish skeleton (“monstrous ribs”). The cathedral is the successor of three cultures - Gallic, Roman and Christian.
Analysis of the poem "Notre Dame" is simple. The poem is built on contrasts: the “joyful and light” cross vault, as seen inside the room, of course, has a “heavy mass.” But since the outer arches support the vault and walls, the vault ram is not involved. In the third stanza there are even more antitheses. The most outstanding of them is about the Gothic soul that created the unconscious, which is called the rational abyss. The abyss is something spontaneous, beyond reason, but it turns out that it was rationally thought out by man. The timidity of Christians before God, however, made it possible to create a temple that was not inferior in grandeur to Egyptian pyramids. The poem glorifies the creation of man, dedicated to God, but main theme is not a religious one, but the theme of organizing material through the work of architects and builders (“everywhere the king is a plumb line”).
The lyrical hero’s admiration for the grandiose structure leads to the conclusion that just as from stone one can create such a light, skyward building, full of light and beauty, and from ordinary words you can create beautiful poetic works, similar to the best examples of architecture. Poems should also impress with their lightness and grace, no matter how long and difficult the process of creating them is for the poet.
The work of Osip Mandelstam is a bright and at the same time tragic page in the history of Russian literature. During his lifetime the poet was called “the face Silver Age"for his creative courage, determination and uncompromisingness. Mandelstam did not shy away from reading anti-Stalin poems aloud to the general public in the terrible 30s, for which he found his death in a Far Eastern labor camp.
Analysis of the poem "Notre Dame"
In his poem, the author describes Notre Dame Cathedral, but not from the side that people are used to seeing it. The image of the cathedral in the work takes the form of a challenge that a man threw to God himself. The cathedral is an element created by human hands, frozen for many centuries. The author describes the Gothic style of Notre Dame as a phenomenon that captures the human spirit.
But along with admiration for the structure, the question arises in his mind about why the cathedral was created, what goals did the church pursue when initiating the construction of Notre Dame? In the toga, the author comes to the conclusion that the weight of the cathedral is unkind, it oppresses a person, kills his soul, reminding him of the insignificance of human existence.
"Insomnia. Homer. Tight sails..."
This work is deservedly one of the most remarkable in Mandelstam’s poetry. The author in his poem refers to Homer’s poem “The Iliad” without distorting storyline ancient Greek work. The lyrical hero evokes in his imagination the ancient times of the Trojan War.
Before his eyes, from the depths of history, powerful sailing ships emerge, on which are Greek heroes, accompanied mythical gods. Such illusions prompt the hero to think about the great power of love, because of which the war between the Trojans and the Greeks arose. The hero understands that true love is driving force in the history of mankind: in the name of love they compose songs and poems, undertake feats of arms, and incite military confrontations.
The poem is filled with philosophical meaning, real world it is associated with the world of fantasy, but paradoxically they represent a single whole.
Analysis of the poem “For explosive valor...”
In his work, the author writes about the fate of an intelligent, noble man, whom the Soviet state and Stalin’s totalitarian machine drove into hellish conditions of existence. Mandelstam compares the Bolsheviks and their admirers with “flimsy filth” who do not know what the concept of honor and nobility is.
Very boldly for his time, the poet describes all the horrors of collectivization and violent ideological propaganda. A noble person in this state has only two options: either become a cog in the system and actively support it, or voluntarily fall into the “black hole” of labor camps.
Analysis of the poem “I returned to my city...”
In the first lines of the poem “I returned to my city...”, the author describes all the majesty and beauty St. Petersburg, in which he spent his childhood and youth. Mandelstam dreams of a quick return to his homeland in order to once again come into contact with the royal city. However, before him stands Leningrad in the mid-30s with its dirty streets and residents who, without losing their nobility, nevertheless turned into poor, frightened people, thanks to the efforts of Stalin’s power.
The author describes all the horrors of the totalitarian regime: the door locks here are open around the clock for guests from the NKVD, people talk here in a half-whisper to avoid possible denunciations. In the poem, the poet primarily addressed not his city, not Soviet power, and to descendants, so that they realize the tragedy of the terrible times for Russia.
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