The poem is one of the genres. What is a poem. New explanatory and derivational dictionary of the Russian language, T. F. Efremova
What is a poem? This is a work that is located at the junction of two literary "worlds" - poetry and prose. Like prose, the poem has a narrative logic, a real story with a denouement and an epilogue. And as poetry, it conveys the depth of the subjective experiences of the hero. Many of the classics that everyone took in school were written in this genre.
Recall the poem "Dead Souls" by the Ukrainian classic - N.V. Gogol. Here, a wonderful large-scale idea echoes the ability to find depth in a person.
Let us recall the poetry of the genius A. Pushkin - "Ruslan and Lyudmila". But besides them, there are many more interesting works.
History of the development of the genre
The poem grew out of the very first folklore songs, through which each nation transmitted historical events and myths to their children. This is the well-known "Iliad" and "Odyssey", and "The Song of Roland" - a French epic. In Russian culture, the progenitor of all poems was the historical song - "The Tale of Igor's Campaign".
Then the poem stood out from such syncretic art, people began to supplement these epics, introduce new heroes. Over time, new ideas and new stories appeared. New authors came up with their own stories. Then new types appeared: the burlesque poem, the heroic-comics; the life and affirmation of the people ceased to be main theme works.
So the genre developed, became deeper and more complex. The elements of the composition gradually formed. And now this direction in art is already a whole science.
Structure of a work of art
What do we know about the poem? Key Feature- the work has a clear interconnected structure.
All parts are interconnected, the hero somehow develops, passes tests. His thoughts, as well as feelings, are the focus of the narrator. And all the events around the hero, his speech - everything is conveyed by a certain poetic meter and chosen rhythm.
The elements of any work, including a poem, include dedications, epigraphs, chapters, epilogues. Speech, as well as in a story or short story, is represented by dialogues, monologues and the author's speech.
Poem. Genre features
This genre of literature has been around for a long time. What is a poem? In translation - "create", "create". By genre - a lyrical large-scale poetic work, which not only gives the reader a pleasant impression of beautiful lines, but also has a purpose and structure.
The creation of any work begins with a theme. So, the poem very well reveals both the theme and the character of the protagonist. And also the work has its own elements, a special author's style and the main idea.
The elements of the poem are:
- topic;
- the form;
- structure;
- and rhythm.
Indeed, since this is a poetic genre, there must be a rhythm here; but as in a story, the plot must be respected. By choosing a topic, the poet indicates what the work is about. We will consider the poem "To whom it is good in Russia" and Gogol's famous story about Chichikov and his adventures. They both share a common theme.
The poem "Who is living well in Russia?" N. Nekrasova
The writer began his work in 1863. Two years after the abolition of serfdom, and continued to work for 14 years. But he never finished his main work.
The focus is on the road, symbolizing the choice of direction in life that everyone chooses in their lives.
N. Nekrasov sought to convey authentically both the problems of the people and the best features of a simple peasant. According to the plot, the dispute that began between ordinary workers dragged on, and seven heroes went to look for at least one of those who really lived better at that time.
The poet vividly depicted both fairs and haymaking - all these mass paintings serve as a vivid confirmation of the main idea that he wanted to convey:
The people are liberated, but are the people happy?
Characters in the main work of N. Nekrasov
Here is the basis of the plot of the poem "Who Lives Well..." - representatives of the people, peasant peasants, go along the Russian roads, and explore the problems of the same ordinary people.
The poet created many interesting characters, each of which is valuable as a unique literary image, and speaks on behalf of the peasants of the 19th century. This is Grigory Dobrosklonov, and Matryona Timofeevna, whom Nekrasov described with obvious gratitude to Russian women, and
Dobrosklonov is the main character who wants to act as a folk teacher and educator. Yermila, on the other hand, is a different image, he protects the peasants in his own way, going completely to his side.
Nikolai Gogol, "Dead Souls"
The theme of this poem echoes Nekrasov's theme. The road is also important here. The hero in the story is looking not only for money, but also for his own path.
The protagonist of the work is Chichikov. He comes to a small town with his grand plans: to earn a whole million. The hero meets with the landowners, learns their life. And the author, who leads the story, ridicules the stupid thoughts and absurd vices of the elite of that time.
Nikolai Gogol managed to convey well the social reality, the failure of the landowners as a class. And he also perfectly describes the portraits of the heroes, reflecting their personal qualities.
Foreign classical works
The most famous poems written in dark times Medieval Europe are Alighieri's "Divine Comedy" and Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales". Through the stories described by the talented poet Geoffrey Chaucer, we can learn about English history, how different sections of society lived in this country.
After all, what is a poem - it is an epic that tells about bygone times and includes a large number of characters. D. Chaucer did an excellent job with this task. But, of course, this is an epic that is not intended for schoolchildren.
Modern views on the poem
So, it is clear that initially these were only epic works. And now? What is a poem? These are modern plot constructions, interesting images and a non-trivial approach to reality. they can place the hero in a fictional world, convey his personal suffering; describe incredibly interesting adventurous adventures.
At the disposal of the modern author of poems is a great experience of previous generations and modern ideas, and a variety of techniques with which the plot is combined into a single whole. But in many cases the rhythm of the verse goes to the background, and even to the third plan, as an optional element.
Output
Now let's clearly define what a poem is. This is almost always a lyrical-epic voluminous work in verse. But there is also an ironically constructed story, where the author ridicules the vices of a separate class, for example.
A poem (Greek póiēma, from poieo - I do, I create) is a large poetic work with a narrative or lyrical plot. The poem is also called the ancient and medieval epic ("Mahabharata", "Ramayana", "Iliad", "Odyssey"). Many of its genre varieties are known: heroic, didactic, satirical, burlesque, romantic, lyric-dramatic. The poem is also called works on a world-historical theme (Virgil's Aeneid, Dante's Divine Comedy, L. di Camões' Lusiades, T. Tasso's Jerusalem Liberated, J. Milton's Paradise Lost, Voltaire's Henriad). , “Messiad” by F. G. Klopshtok, “Rossiyada” by M. M. Kheraskov, etc.). In the past, poems with a romantic plot (The Knight in the Panther's Skin by S. Rustaveli, Shahnameh by Ferdowsi, and Furious Roland by L. Aristo) were widely used in the past.
In the era of romanticism, the poems acquire a socio-philosophical and symbolic-philosophical character ("Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" by J. Byron, "The Bronze Horseman" by A. S. Pushkin, "Dzyady" by A. Mickiewicz, "The Demon" by M. Yu. Lermontov, " Germany, winter fairy tale "G. Heine). A romantic poem is characterized by the image of a hero with an unusual fate, but certainly reflecting some facets of the author's spiritual world. In the second half of the 19th century, despite the decline of the genre, some outstanding works appeared, for example, G. Longfellow's "Song of Hiawatha" translated by I. A. Bunin. The work is based on the legends of the Indian tribes about the semi-legendary leader, the wise and beloved Hiawatha. He lived in the 15th century, before the first settlers appeared on American lands.
The poem is about how
Hiawatha labored,
to make his people happy
so that he goes to goodness and truth ...
"Your strength is only in consent,
and impotence in discord.
Reconcile, O children!
Be brothers to one another."
The poem is a complex genre, often difficult to perceive. To be convinced of this, it is enough to read a few pages of Homer's Iliad, Dante's Divine Comedy or J. V. Goethe's Faust, try to answer the question about the essence of A. S. Pushkin's The Bronze Horseman or A. A. Blok.
The poem requires knowledge of the historical context, makes you think about the meaning of human life, about the meaning of history. Without this, it is impossible to comprehend in its entirety such well-known poems from the school bench as “Frost, Red Nose”, “Who Lives Well in Russia” by N. A. Nekrasov, “Vasily Terkin” by A. T. Tvardovsky and others.
What makes it possible to consider as poems many dissimilar works, sometimes having author's subtitles that do not correspond to this definition. So, “Faust” by I.V. Goethe is a tragedy, “The Bronze Horseman” by A.S. Pushkin is a Petersburg story, and “Vasily Terkin” by A.T. Tvardovsky is a book about a fighter. They are united by the breadth of coverage of the phenomena of reality, the significance of these phenomena and the magnitude of the problems. The developed narrative plan is combined in the poem with deep lyricism. A particularly complete interpenetration of the lyrical and epic principles is characteristic of the poem of the Soviet period (“Vladimir Ilyich Lenin” by V. V. Mayakovsky, “Vasily Terkin” by A. T. Tvardovsky, etc.).
Intimate experiences in the poem are correlated with great historical upheavals, private events are elevated to a cosmic scale. For example, in The Bronze Horseman, the space of a particular city - St. Petersburg is transformed into an endless, boundless space of the global flood, the "last cataclysm":
Siege! attack! evil waves,
Like thieves climbing through the windows. Chelny
With a running start, glass is smashed astern.
Trays under a wet veil,
Fragments of huts, logs, roofs,
Product of thrifty trade.
Relics of pale poverty,
Storm-blown bridges
A coffin from a blurry cemetery
Float through the streets!
People
Sees God's wrath and awaits execution.
The time and space of the poem are vast and boundless.
In the Divine Comedy, first through the circles of Hell, and then through Purgatory, the author of the poem is accompanied by the great Roman poet Virgil, who lived thirteen centuries earlier than Dante. And this does not prevent Dante and his guide from communicating in the same time and space of the Divine Comedy, from making contact with sinners and the righteous of all times and peoples. concrete, real time Dante himself coexists in the poem with a completely different type of time and space of the grandiose underworld.
The problems of the most general, eternal are touched upon in each poem: death and immortality, finite and eternal, their meeting and collision is the seed from which the poem arises.
The chapter "Death and the Warrior" is central in the poem "Vasily Terkin" by A. T. Tvardovsky. It is, as it were, a poem within a poem, just like the scene of the "collision" between Eugene and the monument to Peter I in Pushkin's The Bronze Horseman. The author of the poem looks at the world from a special point of view, which allows him, a person of a particular era, to look at the events of his time in such a way as to see in them something that can help highlight the essence of the era and artistically formulate this essence: Eugene and the galloping monument to Peter I, Vasily Terkin and Death.
Thus, unlike stories in verse, novels in verse, numerous imitation poems, and preliminary and laboratory poems (for example, Lermontov's early poems), a poem is always an artistic understanding of modernity in the context of ongoing time.
Multi-plot, often multi-heroic, compositional complexity, semantic richness of both the whole and individual episodes, symbolism, originality of language and rhythm, versatility - all this makes reading the poem as difficult as it is fascinating.
Greek poiema, from the Greek. poieo - I create), a large form of poetic work in the epic, lyric or lyric-epic genre. Poems from different eras are generally not the same in terms of their genre characteristics, but they have some common features: the subject of the image in them is, as a rule, a certain era, the author's judgments about which are given to the reader in the form of a story about significant events in the life of an individual, which is its typical representative (in epic and lyric-epic), or in the form of a description of one's own worldview (in lyrics); unlike poems, poems are characterized by a didactic message, since they directly (in the heroic and satirical types) or indirectly (in the lyrical type) proclaim or evaluate social ideals; they almost always have a plot, and even in lyrical poems thematically isolated fragments tend to cycle and turn into a single epic narrative.
Poems are the earliest surviving monuments of ancient writing. They were and are a kind of "encyclopedia", when referring to which you can learn about the gods, rulers and heroes, get acquainted with the initial stage of the history of the nation, as well as with its mythological background, comprehend the way of philosophizing peculiar to this people. These are the early examples of epic poems in many nats. literature: in India - the folk epic "Mahabharata" (not earlier than the 4th century BC) and "Ramayana" by Valmiki (not later than the 2nd century AD), in Greece - the "Iliad" and "Odyssey" by Homer (not later than the 8th century BC), in Rome - Virgil's Aeneid (1st century BC), in Iran - Firdousi's Shah-name (10-11th centuries), in Kyrgyzstan - the folk epic "Manas" (not later than the 15th century). These are epic poems, in which either various lines of a single plot associated with the figures of gods and heroes are mixed (as in Greece and Rome), or thematically isolated mythological lore, lyrical fragments, moral and philosophical reasoning, etc. (so in the East).
In ancient Europe, the genre series of mythological and heroic poems was supplemented by samples of parodic satirical (anonymous "Batrachomyomachia", not earlier than the 5th century BC) and didactic ("Works and Days" by Hesiod, 8-7th centuries BC). e.) poetic epic. These genre forms developed in the Middle Ages, during the Renaissance and later: the heroic epic poem turned into a heroic "song" with a minimum number of characters and storylines ("Beowulf", "Song of Roland", "Song of the Nibelungs"); its composition was reflected in imitative historical poems (in Africa by F. Petrarch, in Jerusalem Liberated by T. Tasso); the magical plot of the mythological epic was replaced by the lightened magic plot of the poetic chivalric novel (its influence will also be felt in the Renaissance epic poems - in L. Ariosto's Furious Orlando and Spencer's The Faerie Queene); the traditions of the didactic epic were preserved in allegorical poems (in the Divine Comedy by Dante, in the Triumphs by F. Petrarch); finally, in modern times, classicist poets were guided by the parodic-satirical epic, in the manner of burlesque creating iroikomic poems (“Naloy” by N. Boileau).
In the era of romanticism with its cult of lyrics, new poems appeared - lyrical-epic ("Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" by J. G. Byron, the poem "Ezersky" and "novel in verse" "Eugene Onegin" by A. S. Pushkin, "Demon" M. Yu. Lermontov). In them, the epic narrative was interrupted by various detailed landscape descriptions, lyrical digressions from the plot outline in the form of author's reasoning.
In Russian literature beginning. 20th century there has been a tendency to turn the lyric-epic poem into a lyrical one. Already in A. A. Blok’s poem “The Twelve”, lyrical-epic chapters (with the author’s narration and dialogues of characters) and lyrical chapters (in which the author imitates the song types of urban folklore) are distinguishable. The early poems of V. V. Mayakovsky (for example, "A Cloud in Pants") also hide the epic plot behind an alternation of diverse and dark lyrical statements. This trend will manifest itself especially clearly later, in A. A. Akhmatova's poem "Requiem".
poem it in the modern sense, any large or medium-sized poetic work. Initially, the term was applied to the mythological heroic and didactic epic (Homer, Hesiod), but antiquity already knew the heroic poem (“The War of Mice and Frogs”), from which later burlesque and satirical poems originate. By analogy, "The Tale of Igor's Campaign" is often reckoned with the poem, which is not poetic and unique in terms of genre. Knightly novels, which arose as poetry, were not considered poems and subsequently even opposed to them as works of insufficient seriousness. However, the related "The Knight in the Panther's Skin" (12th century) by Shota Rustaveli entered the history of world literature as a poem. Varieties of medieval poems had their own genre names. In France, heroic poetic works (there are about a hundred of them in the records of the 11-14th centuries, some exceed Homer's in volume) were called chansons de geste (see) - songs about deeds; the largest - later (13-14 centuries) were influenced by courtly literature. At the turn of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance arose a poem with a title, which at that time simply meant a happy ending, - Dante's "Comedy", called by his enthusiastic fans "Divine". However, from the Renaissance to classicism, the ancient poem served as a model for poets - not so much the Iliad, but rather the Aeneid (1st century BC) by Virgil, who supposedly streamlined and improved Homer's poetics.
An indispensable requirement was the observance of the external structure of the poem, up to the appeal to the muse and the statement about the subject of chanting in the beginning. Renaissance poems based on wild fairy-tale fiction - “Roland in Love” (1506) by M.M. Boyardo and “Furious Roland” by L. Aristo (the turn of the 15th-16th centuries) continuing this plot - were considered by contemporaries and later theorists to be novels. In the 17th century, the most original poem was Paradise Lost (1667) by J. Milton, written in blank verse. In the 18th century, a poem was created according to the ancient model, transformed according to the classic understanding; innovation beyond a certain measure was often condemned. "Henriad" (1728) Voltaire V.K. Trediakovsky assessed extremely severely in view of the implausible combination of fictitious actions of the famous historical figure, Henry IV (represented as a philosopher king, an enlightened monarch), and documentary information about him. Russian poets of the 18th century, who considered the epic poem to be the highest genre (in the West, tragedy was often preferred to it), repeatedly, but unsuccessfully, tried to glorify Peter I in this genre. M.M. Kheraskov, who wrote several poems on other themes; The heavy-weight "Rossiyada" (1779), which contained allusions to the recent war with Turkey - about the capture of Kazan by Ivan the Terrible, was considered the reference. The iroikokomicheskaya poem (“Elisha, or the Irritated Bacchus” by V.I. Maikov, 1771) was also unofficially recognized. Many Russians were fascinated by Voltaire's frivolous ironic poem The Virgin of Orleans (1735), published in 1755. Without her influence, Pushkin's Gavriiliada (1821) would not have appeared. Pushkin's poem "Ruslan and Ludmila" (1820) was oriented towards several traditions, most notably the Aristo tradition.
Adherents of classicism did not agree to consider it a poem. The poet left his subsequent poems without a genre subtitle or called stories. The widely spread romantic poem, the founder of the blind, J. Byron, became lyrical-epic, the plot in it is sharply weakened, as in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1809-18). Partly on the model of Byron's "Don Juan" (1818-23), it was started and called a novel in verse "Eugene Onegin" (1823-31). Such a genre definition was then an oxymoron, synthesizing the “low”, almost non-legitimized novel and the highest genre of the poem; the novel was introduced into high literature. VG Belinsky preferred to call "Eugene Onegin" a poem. After M.Yu. Lermontov, a romantic poem is the lot of epigones. I.S. Turgenev in his early poems paid tribute to both romanticism and the “natural school”. N.A. Nekrasov radically updated the poetic narrative: he “prosaicized” it, introduced a folk peasant theme, and at the end of his life he wrote a unique peasant epic poem “Who should live well in Russia” (1863-77). He is also the creator of the first Russian lyrical plotless poems Silence (1857) and Knight for an Hour (1860). The lyricization of poems also took place in the West. S. T. Coleridge first included his "The Tale of the Old Sailor" in the collection "Lyrical Ballads" (1798), but then finalized it as a poem. In American literature, the lyricization of poems took place in the work of W. Whitman, although already "The Raven" (1845) by E. A. Po, in fact, is a small lyric poem. This genre reaches its peak in Russian silver age, is also used later: “By the Right of Memory” (1969) by A.T. Tvardovsky, “Requiem” (1935-40) by A.A. Akhmatova consist of cycles of lyrical poems that form an epic poem in spirit.
The word "poem" retained a connotation of solemnity, "highness". When N.V. Gogol applied it to satirical prose, it was partly ironic, partly an indication of a majestic idea. F. M. Dostoevsky also loved this word, also using it both ironically and seriously (the poem about the Grand Inquisitor in The Brothers Karamazov). Soviet writers N.F. Pogodin, A.S. Makarenko and others included the word "poem" in an extra-genre meaning in the titles of their works in order to "enhance" their sound.
The word poem comes from Greek poiema, from poieo, which means - I do, I create.
Poem!
poem ( other Greek Ποίημα) is a poetic genre. A large epic poetic work belonging to a particular author, a large poetic form. Can be heroic, romantic, critical, satirical, etc.
A poem is a work of narrative or lyrical content written in verse. Also called a poem are works created on the basis of folk tales, legends, epic stories. The epic is considered to be the classical form of the poem. In Greek, a poem is a creation.
Having arisen in a primitive tribal society in the form of songs, the poem was firmly established and developed widely in subsequent eras. But soon the poem lost its significance as a leading genre.
Poems from different eras have some common features: the subject of their depiction is a certain era, judgments about which are given to the reader in the form of a story about significant events in the life of an individual (in epic and lyric epic) or in the form of a description of the worldview (in lyrics).
Unlike poems, poems are characterized by a message, since they proclaim or evaluate social ideals. Poems almost always have a plot, and even in lyrical poems, individual fragments tend to turn into a single narrative.
Poems are the earliest surviving monuments of ancient writing. They were and are a kind of "encyclopedia" of the past.
Early examples of epic poems: in India - the folk epic "Mahabharata" (not earlier than the 4th century BC), in Greece - the "Iliad" and "Odyssey" by Homer (not later than the 8th century BC), in Rome - Virgil's "Aeneid" (1st century BC), etc.
The poem received its greatest completeness in Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, classic examples of this genre - epics. They reflected big events, and the integrity of the coverage of reality made it possible to dwell on trifles and create a complex system of characters. The epic poems affirmed a broad folk meaning, the struggle for the strength and significance of the people.
Since the conditions for the formation of ancient Greek poems could not be repeated, poems in their original form could not reappear - the poem degrades, receiving a number of differences.
In ancient Europe, parodic-satiric (anonymous "Batrachomyomachia", not earlier than the 5th century BC) and didactic ("Works and Days" by Hesiod, 8-7th centuries BC) poems appeared. They developed in the Middle Ages, during the Renaissance and later. The heroic epic poem turned into a heroic "song" with a minimum number of characters and storylines ("Beowulf", "Song of Roland", "Song of the Nibelungs").
Its composition was reflected in imitative historical poems (in Africa by F. Petrarch, in Jerusalem Liberated by T. Tasso). The plot of the mythological epic was replaced by a lightweight plot of a chivalric poem (its influence is felt in Furious Orlando by L. Ariosto and in Spencer's The Faerie Queene). The traditions of the didactic epic were preserved in allegorical poems (in the Divine Comedy by Dante, in the Triumphs by F. Petrarch). In modern times, the classicist poets were guided by the parodic-satirical epic, creating heroic and comic poems (“Naloy” by N. Boileau).
Poem! The poem is often called a novel in verse.
The heyday of the genre of the poem occurs in the era of romanticism, when major poets various countries are turning to the creation of the poem. The poems acquire a socio-philosophical or symbolic-philosophical character ("Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" by J. Byron, "The Bronze Horseman" by A. S. Pushkin, "The Demon" by M. Yu. Lermontov, "Germany, a Winter Tale" by G. Heine).
In Russian literature of the early 20th century, a tendency arose to turn the lyric-epic poem into a lyrical one. The most intimate experiences are correlated with historical upheavals (“A Cloud in Pants” by V. V. Mayakovsky, “The Twelve” by A. A. Blok, “First Date” by A. Bely). In A. A. Akhmatova's poem "Requiem", the epic plot is hidden behind the alternation of lyrical statements.
In Soviet poetry, there were various genre varieties of the poem: reviving the heroic principle (“Good!” Mayakovsky, “Vasily Terkin” by A. T. Tvardovsky), lyric-psychological poems (“About This” by V. V. Mayakovsky, “Anna Snegina” A. Yesenina), philosophical, historical, etc.
The poem as a lyrical and monumental genre that allows you to combine the epic of the heart and "music", the "element" of world upheavals, innermost feelings and historical events, remains a productive genre of world poetry, although in modern world few authors of this genre.
Other articles in this section:
- Language systems of communication! Languages as the main factor in the system of knowledge development!
- Traditions. What is tradition? Tradition in the dialectical development of society.
- Space and time. Laws of space. Open space. Motion. The space of worlds.
- Evolution and co-evolution. Evolution and co-evolution in the system of modern knowledge. Principles of evolution and co-evolution. Biological evolution and co-evolution of living nature.
- Synergetics and laws of nature. Synergetics as a science. Synergetics as a scientific approach and method. Universal theory of evolution - synergetics.
- May or may not! A kaleidoscope of events and actions through the prism is impossible and possible!
- World of Religion! Religion as a form of human consciousness in the awareness of the surrounding world!
- Art - Art! Art is a skill that can cause admiration!
- Realism! Realism in art! Realistic art!
- Abstract art! Abstraction in art! Abstract painting! Abstractionism!
- Unofficial art! Unofficial art of the USSR!
- Thrash - Thrash! Trash in art! Thrash in creativity! Trash in Literature! Cinema trash! Cyberthrash! Thrash metal! Telethrash!
- Painting! Painting is art! Painting is the art of the artist! Canons of painting. Painting masters.
- Vernissage - "vernissage" - the grand opening of an art exhibition!
- Metaphorical realism in painting. The concept of "metaphorical realism" in painting.
- The cost of paintings by contemporary artists. How buy a painting?
