1891 - 1921. Collection "Stone".
Poems" Notre Dame " 1912 .
Biographical information.
Teacher's opening speech.
Osip Mandelstam is one of the most mysterious and most significant Russian poets of the 20th century. His early work belongs to the “Silver Age”, and later goes far beyond this time period.
O. Mandelstam was born on January 3 (15), 1891 in Warsaw in the family of a merchant of the first guild, Khatskel (Emil) Veniaminovich Mandelstam.
He spent his childhood in St. Petersburg, absorbed Russian culture with its “worldwide responsiveness,” and it became closer to him than Jewish culture, although he was born into a Jewish family. School years spent in the famous Tenishevsky School(humanitarian gymnasium).
In 1909, he visited France, Italy, and Germany for the first time, and there Mandelstam absorbed the spirit of European culture. In 1911 he returned to Russia and entered the Faculty of History and Philology of St. Petersburg University.
Mandelstam finds himself in a poetic environment, meets Symbolist poets, attends meetings on the V. Ivanov Tower, becomes close to N. Gumilyov, and performs in the famous cafe "Stray Dog".
The beginning of a creative journey. Break with symbolism.Mandelstam is an Acmeist.
Working with quotations. What conclusion can be drawn from O. Mandelstam’s statements about the duty of a poet, about the peculiarities of the poetics of early creativity?
Mandelstam begins his creative path as a student of the symbolists, but his entry into literature comes at a time when the crisis of symbolism is already obvious. The attraction to the tangible, material world led Mandelstam to Acmeism.
In his programmatic article “The Morning of Acmeism,” Mandelstam speaks out against symbolism with its denial of the three-dimensional world: “In order to build successfully, the first condition is sincere reverence for the three dimensions of space - to look at the world not as a burden and an unfortunate accident, but as God.” this palace. <...>You can build only in the name of “three dimensions,” since they are the conditions of all architecture. This is why an architect must be a good homebody, and the Symbolists were bad architects. To build means to fight emptiness, to hypnotize space. The good arrow of the Gothic bell tower is evil, because its whole purpose is to prick the sky, to reproach it for being empty.”
The poet also does not accept futurism with its disbelief in the real meaning of the word, with its word invention: “... discarding with contempt the spillikins of the futurists, for whom there is no higher pleasure than hooking a knitting needle difficult word, we introduce the Gothic into the relations of words, just as Sebastian Bach established it in music. What madman would agree to build if he does not believe in the reality of the material whose resistance he must overcome?<...>... Tyutchev’s stone, which “having rolled down from the mountain, lay down in the valley, torn down by itself or thrown down by a thinking hand” (see F. I. Tyutchev’s poem “Problem” - auto) - there is a word. The voice of matter in this unexpected fall sounds like articulate speech. This challenge can only be answered by architecture. The Acmeists reverently lift the mysterious Tyutchev stone and place it at the base of their building. The stone seemed to long for a different existence. He himself discovered the potential ability of dynamics hidden in him - as if he asked to be taken into the “cross vault” to participate in the joyful interaction of his own kind.”
A poet, according to Mandelstam, is a builder, an architect. Just as the material for a builder is stone, so for a poet it is the word. Stone is a rough, unprocessed material, but it has the potential to become part of the whole: a cross vault, a Gothic cathedral, a spire. We need to lift it, connect it with others, turn heaviness into dynamics, material into structure. The word is material, but words should not stand alone, they should “play with all their tints, in a “cheerful” roll call among themselves, like stones in cathedrals.” This analogy determined both the title of Mandelstam’s first collection (“Stone”) and the place that the theme of architecture occupies in the collection.
Poetics of the collection "Stone".
Analysis of the poem " Notre Dame" 1912.
Where did the Roman judge judge? foreign people,
There is a basilica - 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 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.
Questions to identify a general idea of the poem as a whole.
Frontal work.
1. What is this poem about? How does the lyrical hero perceive the cathedral? What is the conclusion of the poem?
2. Use the necessary comments to understand stanzas I and II.
3. Pay attention to the composition of the poem. How does poetic thought develop in a poem? What special do you see in the arrangement of the stanzas? Where is the lyrical hero, where does he look at the cathedral? What can you say about the time plan of the poem?
Questions for analyzing a poemin groups.
To help students, dictionaries and excerpts from articles by literary scholars are offered.
4. How do the images of stanza III relate to each other? What opposing principles are present in the appearance of the cathedral? What unites dissimilar elements into a single harmonic structure? What other associations do you have in connection with the lines of stanza III?
5. How is the image of the cathedral connected with the content of the last stanza? What is unique about the sound of this stanza? What's her name phonetic system reveals the idea of the poem?
6. Analyze the context into which this poem fit by Mandelstam and his contemporaries.
Suggested answers.
1. What is this poem about? How does the lyrical hero perceive the cathedral? What is the conclusion of the poem?
This is a poem about a cathedral. The poet enthusiastically describes it: the lyrical hero sees the cathedral as light, joyful, beautiful, human-like, built on contradictions. The last stanza concludes: out of unkind heaviness, and someday I will create something beautiful.
2. Let's get the necessary comments to understandIAndIIstanzas.
Notre Dame is built on the Ile de la Cité in the center of Paris, where ancient Lutetia, a colony founded by Rome, was located: Roman settlement among someone else's Gallic people. Let us also recall that Rome is the capital of Catholicism, Notre Dame is a Catholic cathedral. In Roman, Catholic culture, Mandelstam at that time saw an example of man’s creative and active transformation of the world. It is no coincidence that many of the poems in the collection “Stone”, in which the poem was included, are related to the theme of Rome
Many elements of Notre Dame are associated with Gothic, a movement in architecture and art that originated in the 12th century and became widespread in medieval Europe. In 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 - it 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, flying buttresses, 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.
3. Let's pay attention to the composition of the poem. Where is the lyrical hero, where does he look at the cathedral? What can you say about the time plan of the poem? What special do you see in the arrangement of the stanzas?
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.
4. How do the images relate to each other?III stanzas? What opposing principles are present in the appearance of the cathedral? What unites dissimilar elements into a single harmonic structure? What other associations do you have in connection with the lines?IIIstanzas?
The Gothic style is a system of opposing forces: accordingly, the style of a poem is a system of contrasts and 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 contrast. Elemental Labyrinth: The natural elements are organized into a human construct, intricate but deliberately confusing. Here, according to some commentators, Mandelstam is referring to the floor decoration often used in Gothic cathedrals, symbolizing the path to Jerusalem. Further. Egyptian power and Christian timidity- also an antithesis: the Christian fear of God unexpectedly prompts us to build buildings not humble and wretched, but mighty, like Egyptian pyramids. An oak tree next to a reed- the same thought, but in a specific image.
An architectural structure is not a creation of nature, but its likeness, executed with absolute constructive precision. The cathedral is the creation of a man who, in accordance with a strict creative plan, a “secret plan,” managed to transform material (stone) into a work of art, into a complex structure that combines the rational and the incomprehensible, the powerful and the subtlest, which is emphasized by the compositional structure of the third stanza. All the heterogeneous elements that make up the cathedral are united by extreme precision and strict technical calculation (“and everywhere the king is a plumb line”).
In the subtext of the image with a reed next to an oak tree- fables of Lafontaine 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: ...and the thinking reed murmurs. And in the early poems of Mandelstam himself, a reed growing out of a swamp was a symbol of such important concepts as Christianity growing out of Judaism. Let's not digress too far, but you see how our perception is enriched in connection with the understanding of these particulars, i.e. subtext of the work.
5. How is the image of the cathedral related to the content of the last stanza? What is unique about the sound of this stanza? How does its phonetic structure reveal the idea of the poem?
In the depicted cathedral, the poet sees a universal model of creativity, including poetic creativity: just as a magnificent work of architecture emerges from a heavy uncut stone, so a poetic work is created from a “raw” word. The very sound of the last stanza conveys the emergence of the beautiful from the heaviness of the unkind, the overcoming of the material with creativity: the alliteration of the first three lines (t - r t - r // w - r - r // w - t - r) is replaced in the last line by an assonance with four accents A(a - o - a // e - a - o // o - a).
6. And inconclusionLet's look at the context into which this poem fit 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 Gumilev, Akhmatova and Gorodetsky, forgotten today. Acmeism opposed itself to symbolism: the symbolists had the poetry of allusions, the acmeists had the 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). And indeed, we can notice: 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), Roman (judge), and Christian. Culture is not part of religion, but religion is part of culture: a very important feature of a 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.” In his poem he glorifies NotreDame as the organization of material through the labors of a builder. We see how the poem Notre Dame fit into the context of the literary struggle of Acmeism with symbolism in 1913, it is a hymn to an organization: culture.
Conclusion.
Thus, Mandelstam the architect weaves signs of past cultures into a single design. Mandelstam’s poems contain speech modern man, but a person living in a cultural space formed by numerous eras.
Homework:
Students read the collection "Stone". Complete written tasks C3, C4. Learn by heart one of your favorite poems.
Examples of homework:
In what images of the poem "Notre Dame" is the lyrical hero's idea of the cathedral embodied?
God created Adam, and man the creator created Notre Dame in honor of Our Lady of Paris. The cathedral is like a man: “joyful” (happy with life), “flexing his muscles.” It is as complex and mysterious as God's creation. He is the unity of opposites: powerful and subtle (“Egyptian power and Christianity’s timidity, with a reed next to it is an oak tree”), rational and incomprehensible (“an elemental labyrinth, an incomprehensible forest, a Gothic soul’s rational abyss”). This work of art is the result of the labor of the human mind, the embodiment of a “secret plan.” The cathedral was made with absolute structural precision, verified, technically calculated: “and everywhere there is a plumb line.”
Just as God created the world - the Universe, so over the centuries man has been arranging his world - the Earth, “out of evil heaviness” creating beauty for the joy of himself and future generations. The poet looks at the cathedral through the eyes of a master, glorifying the organization of the material through the labors of the builder. The motive of creativity sounds. The sight of Notre Dama inspires the lyrical hero to create a beautiful work of art - poetic - from raw words.
Petrov Anatoly. 11Ya.
In which works of Russian poets does the theme of “beautiful” arise and what makes them similar to O. Mandelstam’s poem? " Notre Dame"?
Beauty can inspire. As Mandelstam writes about Notre Dame, so A.S. Pushkin writes about Bronze Horseman V poem of the same name. He admires the pride and strength of the ruler immortalized in the monument:
What a thought on the brow!
What power is hidden in it!
......................................
O mighty lord of fate!
For Pushkin, the monument is a symbol of the greatness of St. Petersburg, built by Peter I:
From the darkness of the swamps, from the swamps of blat
He ascended magnificently and proudly.
St. Petersburg, the pearl of Russia, has been inspiring more than one generation of people to create beauty.
Pushkin also writes that a person can be a beautiful source of vitality. In the poem "I Remember wonderful moment“he says that it is the “genius of pure beauty”, the “fleeting vision” that can revive and heal the soul suffering in captivity:
And the heart beats in ecstasy,
And for him they rose again
And deity and inspiration,
And life, and tears, and love.
A person lives while he contemplates, experiences the beautiful, and creates it; This is the happiness of a person.
Schultz Ksenia. 11 I.
Becomes a student at the Sorbonne, studying French literature at a prestigious European university. Along the way, the young poet travels a lot and gets acquainted with the sights of the country. One of the deepest and indelible impressions on him is made by the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, to which in 1912 Mandelstam dedicated his poem "".
Inner world 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 weren’t for it. "the strength of the girth arches was taken care of". 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 the king 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 someday 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" you can “build” a real literary masterpiece, which even centuries later will be admired by grateful descendants.
"Notre Dame" Osip Mandelstam
Where the Roman judge judged a foreign people,
There is a basilica - 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.
Analysis of Mandelstam's poem "Notre Dame"
In 1908, Osip Mandelstam became a student at the Sorbonne, studying French literature at a prestigious European university. Along the way, the young poet travels a lot and gets acquainted with the sights of the country. One of the deepest and indelible impressions on him is made by the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, to which in 1912 Mandelstam dedicated his 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 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 of the 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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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; light cross vault a compositional rhythm is obtained, alternating less and more important stanzas after one. I stanza – a look from the inside under
; 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 Elemental labyrinth: an abyss is something irrational, but here even the abyss, it turns out, is rationally constructed by the human mind. incomprehensible forest- something horizontal – 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 (foreign people), Roman (judge), 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 now let’s 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;
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