Images of evil spirits have always disturbed the hearts of poets and writers. The power of good, embodied in God, had no other form. But the messenger of Hell bore all sorts of names: the Devil, and Satan, and Lucifer. This proved that evil has many faces, and a person should be on his guard, because he can succumb to temptation, and then the soul will go straight to hell.
However, in the romantic literature of the early 19th century, especially Russian, images of evil spirits they became not so much villains as tyrant-fighters, and, paradoxically, God himself became a tyrant. After all, it was he who demanded suffering from a person, forced him to blindly follow his will, sometimes sacrificing the most precious thing that he had.
Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov's poem "The Demon" was no exception. Per the basis of the plot the poet takes the well-known biblical legend about the spirit of evil cast down by God from heaven for rebellion against his power. The image of the Demon, who transgressed the laws of goodness and remained alone in the desert of the world that bored him, worried Lermontov all his life. Mikhail Yurievich worked on the poem for 12 years.
At the beginning of the work, the poet sympathized with his hero. The desire of the Demon to be limitless in feelings and actions, the challenge of the everyday life, the audacity of rebellion against divine settings were attractive to the young Lermontov. The demon is an unusual hero: he despises the limitations of human existence both in time and space. Once he "believed and loved", "knew neither malice nor doubt", but now "long outcast wandered in the wilderness of the world without shelter".
Flying over the valleys of luxurious Georgia, he sees the young princess Tamara dancing. At this moment, the Demon is experiencing an inexplicable excitement, because “A dumb soul filled his desert with a blessed sound” and "he again comprehended the shrine of love, goodness and beauty". But Tamara does not need his love, because she is waiting for her fiance - the brave Prince Sinodal.
All the heroes of the poem, except for the Demon, are closed in the space of their destiny. Tragic circumstances rule them, and resistance to them is futile. The brave prince hurries to the wedding feast and passes the chapel where he always brought "earnest prayer". Once "The daring bridegroom despised the custom of his ancestors", as soon as he crossed the border of the prescribed, death from "evil bullet Ossetian" overtook him. Maybe it's the Demon's revenge?
When creating his poem, Lermontov remembered an old legend he had heard in the Caucasus about the mountain spirit Guda, who fell in love with a beautiful Georgian woman. When the spirit of Good found out that Nino loves an earthly youth, unable to endure the pangs of jealousy, on the eve of the wedding, he covers the saklya of lovers with a huge snow avalanche. But Lermontov is not satisfied with the principle: “So don’t get it for anyone!” His Demon is really ready to transform for the sake of love: he is devoid of the energy of evil and the thirst for revenge, and there is no jealousy in him.
Love for Tamara for the Demon is an attempt to free himself from the cold contempt for the world, to which his rebellion against God doomed him. "Evil bored him" because he does not meet resistance in people who willingly use the prompts of the Devil. Demon "sowed evil without pleasure", he devoid of vain satisfaction from his power over insignificant people.
When Tamara mourns for her dead fiancé, the Demon
... To her bent headboard;
And his eyes looked at her with such love.
At that moment he was neither a guardian angel nor "hell with a terrible spirit". When Tamara decides to narrow her life down to the gloomy cell of a monastery, the Demon wants to give her back all the breadth of freedom and give her the space of eternity. He promises Tamara a paradise of omniscience, a paradise of freedom:
I will sink to the bottom of the sea
I will fly beyond the clouds
I will give you everything, everything earthly -
Love me!...
But the price of such freedom is too high - the rejection of everything insignificant earthly, that is, death. Therefore, Tamara wants to escape from "irresistible dream" evil spirit. An Angel comes to her aid, not believing in the transformation of the Demon, so he returns him to his former role as a villain. Thus, Heaven did not have enough faith in goodness, the consciousness of its power in the soul of Tamara and its possibility in the Demon. Tamara, on the other hand, turned out to be able not only to love the Demon, but also to take care of saving her soul. After her death "sinful soul" Tamara is washed by the tears of an angel, because she "Redeemed at a cruel price" the possibility of heaven being opened to her after all.
Tamara's death is the victory of love for the Demon, but he himself is not saved by this victory, because she is taken away by death, and the soul is taken by Heaven. Seeing how the soul of Tamara, "prayer drowned horror", seeks salvation on the chest of the Angel, the Demon is finally defeated:
And cursed Demon defeated
Dreams are crazy...
Lermontov saw the reason for the defeat of the Demon in the limited feelings of the Demon, including for Tamara, so he sympathizes with his hero, but also condemns him for arrogant bitterness against the world. "Eternal murmur of man" how his proud desire to stand on a par with nature is captured in Demon form. The divine world is more powerful than the world of personality - this is the position of the poet.
Criticism assessed the image of the Demon differently. The symbolic image was best revealed by V. Belinsky. He wrote that the Demon makes a person doubt the truth: “While the truth is only a ghost for you, a dream, you are the prey of the Demon, because you must know all the torture of doubt.”
Saklya- hut, dwelling of the Caucasian highlanders.
An analysis of the poem "Demon" is not the only work associated with Lermontov:
Lermontov sketches the first version of the "Demon" as a fifteen-year-old boy, in 1829. Since then, he has repeatedly returned to this poem, creating its various editions, in which the setting, action and plot details change, but the image of the protagonist retains its features.
In bourgeois literary criticism, the “Demon” was constantly put in connection with the tradition of works about the spirit of evil, richly represented in world literature (“Cain” and “Heaven and Earth” by Byron, “The Love of Angels” by the World, “Emak” by A. de Vigny, etc. .) But even comparative research led the researcher to the conclusion about the deep originality of the Russian poet. Understanding the close connection of Lermontov's creativity, including romantic, in contemporary Russian reality to the poet and with the national traditions of Russian literature, which is the guiding principle for Soviet Lermontov studies, allows a new way to raise the question of the image of the Demon in Lermontov, as well as of his romantic poetry in general. . That romantic hero, who was first depicted by Pushkin in The Prisoner of the Caucasus and in The Gypsies, and in which the author of these poems, in his own words, depicted “the distinctive features of the youth of the 19th century,” found complete development in the romantic image of the Demon. In The Demon, Lermontov gave his understanding and his assessment of the individualist hero.
Lermontov used in The Demon, on the one hand, the biblical legend about the spirit of evil, overthrown from heaven for his rebellion against the supreme divine power, and on the other hand, the folklore of the Caucasian peoples, among which, as already mentioned, legends about the mountain spirit were widespread. who swallowed a Georgian girl. This gives the plot of "The Demon" an allegorical character. But under the fantasy of the plot, a deep psychological, philosophical, social meaning is hidden here.
If the protest against the conditions that suppress the human personality left the pathos of romantic individualism, then in The Demon this is expressed with greater depth and strength.
The proud affirmation of a personality opposed to the negative world order sounds in the words of the Demon: "I am the king of knowledge and freedom." On this basis, the Demon develops that attitude towards reality, which the poet defines with an expressive couplet:
And all that he saw before him
He despised or hated.
But Lermontov showed that one cannot dwell on contempt and hatred. Becoming an absolute denial, the Demon also rejected positive ideals. In his own words, he
All noble dishonored
And blasphemed everything beautiful.
This led the Demon to that painful state of inner emptiness, incorporeality, hopelessness, to loneliness in which we find him at the beginning of the poem. “The shrine of love, goodness and beauty”, which the Demon left again and, under the impression of the beautiful, opens to him in Tamara, is the Ideal of a beautiful free life worthy of a person. The plot of the plot is that the Demon acutely felt the captivity of the sharp Ideal and rushed towards him with all his being. This is the meaning of that attempt to "revive" the Demon, which is described in the poem in conventional biblical folklore images.
But development recognized these dreams as "insane" and cursed them. Lermontov, continuing the analysis of romantic individualism, with deep psychological truth, hides the reasons for this failure. He shows how, in the development of experiences about the event, the noble social ideal is replaced by another - individualistic and egoistic, returning the Demon to its original position. Answering Tamara's entreaties with full speeches, the "evil spirit" forgets the ideal of "love, kindness and beauty." The demon calls to escape from the world, from people. He invites Tamara to leave "the miserable light of his fate", suggests looking at the earth "without regret, without participation." The Demon puts one minute of his “unrecognized torment” above the “painful hardships, labors and troubles of the human crowd ...” The Demon could not overcome his selfish individualism. This caused the death of Tamara and the defeat of the Demon:
And again he remained, arrogant,
Alone, as before, in the universe
Without hope and love!
The defeat of the Demon is proof not only of the futility, but also of the perniciousness of individualistic rebellion. The defeat of the Demon is the recognition of the insufficiency of one "negation" and the affirmation of the positive principles of life. Belinsky correctly saw in this the inner meaning of Lermontov's poem: “The demon,” the critic wrote, “denies for affirmation, destroys for creation; it makes a person doubt the reality of truth, as truth, beauty, as beauty, good, as good, but as this truth, this beauty, this good. He does not say that truth, beauty, goodness are signs generated by the diseased imagination of man; but he says that sometimes not everything is truth, beauty and goodness that is considered to be truth, beauty and goodness. To these words of the critic, one should add that the demon did not hold on to this position and that this characterization fully applies not to Lermontov's hero, but to Lermontov himself, who managed to rise above "demonic" denial.
Such an understanding of the ideological and social meaning of Lermontov's poem makes it possible to clarify its connection with the socio-political situation of the post-December period. Through a deep ideological and psychological analysis of the moods of those representatives of the generation of the 1930s who did not go further than individualistic protest, Lermontov romantically showed the futility of such sentiments and put forward the need for other ways of fighting for freedom before the progressive forces. If we take the "Demon" with modern Russian reality, it is not immediately revealed due to the conventionality of the plot of the poem, then in Lermontov's realistic novel about the hero of time, where the same socio-psychological phenomenon is depicted, this connection appears with complete clarity.
Overcoming romantic individualism, revealing the inferiority of "demonic" denial, confronted Lermontov with the problem of effective ways to fight for the freedom of the individual, the problem of a different hero.
Eyes wide open, bottomless, full of torment… Lips inflamed, parched from inner fire. A gaze full of despair and anger is fixed somewhere in front of him. This is the head of a proud thinker who has penetrated the secrets of the Universe and is indignant at the injustice reigning in the world. This is the head of a suffering exile, a lonely rebel, immersed in passionate thoughts and powerless in his indignation. Such is the Demon on one of Vrubel's drawings. This is precisely the Demon of Lermontov, the "powerful image", "mute and proud", which for so many years shone with the poet's "magically sweet beauty". In Lermontov's poem, God is depicted as the strongest of all tyrants in the world. And the Demon is the enemy of this tyrant. The most cruel accusation to the creator of the Universe is the Earth created by him:
Where there is no true happiness
No lasting beauty
Where there are only crimes and executions,
Where petty passions only live;
Where they do not know how without fear
Neither hate nor love.
This evil, unjust god is, as it were, the protagonist of the poem. He's somewhere backstage. But they constantly talk about him, they remember him, the Demon tells Tamara about him, although he does not address him directly, as the heroes of other Lermontov's works do. "You are guilty!" - the reproach that the heroes of Lermontov's dramas throw at God, accusing the creator of the Universe of the crimes committed on Earth, since it was he who created the criminals.
... almighty god,
you could know about the future,
why did he create me? -
addresses God with the same reproach and the heavenly rebel Azrael, the hero of a philosophical poem created simultaneously with the youthful editions of The Demon.
Lermontov loves understatement, he often speaks in hints, and the images of his poems become clearer when they are compared with each other. Such comparisons are especially helpful in revealing the complex and difficult to understand poem "The Demon".
Azrael, like the Demon, is an exile, "a strong being, but defeated." He is punished not for rebellion, but only for "instant murmuring". Azrael, as described in Lermontov's poem, was created before people and lived on some planet far from the Earth. He was bored there alone. He reproached God for this and was punished. Azrael told his tragic story to an earthly girl:
I survived my star;
She scattered like smoke
Shattered by the hand of the creator;
But certain death is on the edge,
Looking at the lost world
I lived alone, forgotten and sir.
The demon is punished not only for grumbling: he is punished for rebellion. And his punishment is more terrible, more sophisticated than the punishment of Azrael. The tyrant god, with his terrible curse, incinerated the soul of the Demon, made it cold, dead. He not only expelled him from paradise - he devastated his soul. But even this is not enough. The almighty despot made the Demon responsible for the evil of the world. By the will of God, the Demon “burns with a fatal seal” everything that it touches, harms all living things. God made the Demon and his comrades in rebellion evil, turned them into a weapon of evil. This is the terrible tragedy of the hero Lermontov:
Only God's curse
Fulfilled from the same day
Nature's hot embrace
Forever cool for me;
The space was blue in front of me,
I saw the wedding dress
Luminaries familiar to me for a long time:
They flowed in crowns of gold!
But what? former brother
Didn't recognize a single one.
Exiles like themselves
I began to call in desperation,
But words and faces and evil eyes,
Alas, I did not recognize myself.
And in fear I, flapping my wings,
Rushed - but where? What for?
I don't know - former friends
I've been rejected like Eden
The world has become deaf and dumb for me...
The love that flared up in the soul of the Demon meant a rebirth for him. The “inexplicable excitement” that he felt at the sight of dancing Tamara revived “his dumb soul desert”,
And again he comprehended the shrine
Love, kindness and beauty!
Dreams of past happiness, of the time when he "was not evil", woke up, the feeling spoke in him "in a native, understandable language." Returning to the past did not at all mean for him reconciliation with God and a return to serene bliss in paradise. He, an eternally searching thinker, was alien to such a thoughtless state, he did not need this paradise with carefree, calm angels, for whom there were no questions and everything was always clear. He wanted another. He wanted his soul to live, to respond to the impression of life and be able to communicate with another kindred soul, to experience great human feelings. Live! To live a full life - that's what rebirth meant for the Demon. Feeling love for one living being, he felt love for all living things, felt the need to do genuine, real good, admire the beauty of the world, everything returned to him that the “evil” god had deprived him of.
In early editions, the joy of the Demon, who felt the thrill of love in his heart, the young poet describes very naively, primitively, somehow childishly, but surprisingly simply and expressively:
That iron dream
Passed. He can love
And he really loves it!
The "Iron Dream" choked the Demon and was the result of God's curse, it was the punishment for the battle. Lermontov speaks things, and the poet conveys the strength of his hero's suffering with the image of a stone burned with a tear. Feeling for the first time “the anguish of love, its excitement”, a strong, proud Demon cries. A single, mean, heavy tear rolls from his eyes and falls on a stone:
Until now near that cell
Through the burnt stone is visible
Tears hot as a flame
Inhuman tear.
The image of a stone burnt by a tear appears in a poem written by a seventeen-year-old boy. The demon was the poet's companion for many years. He grows and matures with him. And Lermontov more than once compares his lyrical hero with the hero of his poem:
I'm not for angels and heaven
Created by the Almighty God;
But why do I live, suffering,
He knows more about it.
“Like my demon, I am an evil chosen one,” the poet says about himself. He himself is the same rebel as his Demon. The hero of the early editions of the poem is a sweet, touching young man. He wants to pour out his suffering soul to someone. Having fallen in love and feeling "goodness and beauty", the young Demon retires to the top of the mountains. He decided to abandon his beloved, not to meet with her, so as not to cause her suffering. He knows that his love will destroy this earthly girl, locked in a monastery; she will be severely punished both on earth and in heaven. The terrible punishments of "sinned" nuns have been told many times in works of literature, foreign and Russian. So, in the novel in verse "Marmion" by Walter Scott, it was described how, for love and an attempt to escape, a young beautiful nun girl was immured alive in the wall of the dungeon. A scene from this novel "Court in the Dungeon" was translated by Zhukovsky.
The young Demon, awakened in him, also shows the feeling of genuine goodness in helping people who get lost in the mountains during a snowstorm, blowing snow off the traveler's face "and looking for protection for him." Vrubel has a Young Demon. He, like Lermontov, was haunted by this "powerful image" for many years.
Vrubel's painting "Seated Demon" (1890) depicts a strong young man with long muscular arms, somehow surprisingly helplessly folded, and a completely childish, naive face. It seems that if he gets up, it will be a long, long, quickly grown, but not yet fully formed teenager. The physical strength of the figure especially emphasizes the helplessness, the childish expression of the face with the lowered corners of the soft, slightly limp sad mouth and the childish expression of sad eyes, as if he had just cried. A young demon sits on top of a mountain and looks down into the valley where people live. The whole figure, look express the endless longing of loneliness. Lermontov has been working on The Demon since 1829. In the early versions of the poem, the action takes place in some indefinite country, somewhere on the seashore, in the mountains. From some hints, it can be assumed that this is Spain. After the first reference to the Caucasus, in 1838, Lermontov created a new edition. The plot became more complicated due to the poet's acquaintance with the life and legends of the peoples of the Caucasus. The poem was enriched with bright, lively pictures of nature. Lermontov transferred the action to the Caucasus and described what he himself saw. His Demon now flies over the peaks of the Caucasus. Lermontov perfectly conveys different types of movement: rolling, dancing, flying. And here we see how the Demon flies. The very instrumentation of the first two lines of the poem creates a feeling of smooth flight:
He flew over the sinful earth ...
A distant, barely audible noise of wings seems to reach us, and in the distance the shadow of a flying Demon spread out in the ether flickers. The change in rhythm gives the impression that the Demon is approaching:
Since then the outcast has wandered
In the wilderness of a world without shelter...
A shadow flashing in the distance turns into a figure of a flying living being, still disfigured by the distance. The demon is getting closer. Sounds become more audible, louder, as if heavier. It is already possible to distinguish some somewhat buzzing sound of wings: “outcast” - “wandered”. And finally, the flying Demon is almost above us. This feeling is created by a short line:
And evil bored him.
Having rustled its wings above our head, the Demon moves away again. And now he is far away, in the sky:
And over the peaks of the Caucasus
The exile of paradise flew by...
The first part of the Demon's path is the Georgian Military Road to the Cross Pass, the most majestic and wild part of it. When you look from below at the harsh rocky peak of Kazbek, covered with snow and ice, for a moment you are seized by a feeling of cold, homelessness, loneliness, similar to the one that the Demon did not part with. Lermontov's poetic landscapes of the Caucasus have the nature of a documentary, like his drawings: "I hastily shot views of all the remarkable places that I visited." But in his drawings, Lermontov emphasized the severity of the treeless rocky mountains even more than reality, as if he were making illustrations for the poem, comparing these gray, bare rocks with the emptiness of the soul of his hero. But the action of the poem develops. And the Demon has already flown over the Cross Pass:
And in front of him is a different picture
Living colors blossomed...
This abrupt change of scenery is true. It amazes everyone who passes through Krestovaya Mountain:
Luxurious Georgia Valley
Carpet spread out in the distance.
And Lermontov, with the same skill with which he had just described the harsh and majestic landscape of the Caucasus Range to the Cross Pass, now draws “a luxurious, lush edge of the earth” - with rose bushes, nightingales, spreading plane trees entwined with ivy and “ringingly running streams” . Full of life, a luxurious picture of nature prepares us for something new, and we begin to involuntarily wait for events. Against the background of this fragrant land, the heroine of the poem appears for the first time. As the image of the Demon is complemented by the landscape of the rocky mountains, so the image of the young, full of life beauty of the Georgian Tamara becomes brighter in combination with the lush nature of her homeland. On the roof covered with carpets, among her friends, the daughter of Prince Gudala Tamara spends her last day in her home. Tomorrow is her wedding. The heroes of Lermontov have bold and proud souls, greedy for all the impressions of life. They desire passionately, feel passionately, think passionately. And in the dance, the character of Tamara was revealed. This is not a serene dance. "Sad doubt" darkened the bright features of the young Georgian woman. Beauty combined in her with the richness of her inner life, which attracted the Demon in her. Tamara is not just a beauty. This would not be enough for the Demon's love. He sensed a soul in her that could understand him. The thought that worried Tamara about the “fate of a slave” was a protest, a rebellion against this fate, and this rebellion was felt in her by the Demon. It was to her that he could promise to open "the abyss of proud knowledge." Only to a girl, in whose character traits of rebelliousness were laid, could the Demon address with the following words:
Leave the desire
And the miserable light of his fate;
The abyss of proud knowledge
In return, I will open it for you.
Between the hero and the heroine of the poem "The Demon" there is some relationship of characters. The philosophical poem "Demon" is at the same time a psychological poem. It also has a huge social meaning. The hero of the poem bears the features of living people, the poet's contemporaries. The action of Lermontov's philosophical poems ("Azrael", "Demon") takes place somewhere in outer space: there, on separate planets, creatures similar to people live. His heavenly rebels have human feelings. And in their rebellion against the heavenly tyrant, a lot of the author's own anger against the earthly autocrat was invested. The poem "Demon" breathes the spirit of those years when it was created. It embodied everything that they lived, thought about, what the best people of Lermontov's time suffered from. It also contains the contradiction of this era. The progressive people of the 1930s passionately searched for the truth. They sharply criticized the surrounding autocratic-feudal reality, with its slavery, cruelty, despotism. But they didn't know where to find the truth. Lost in the realm of evil, they fought helplessly and protested, but did not see the way to the world of justice and felt infinitely alone.
Raised and brought up in a serf-owning country, they themselves were largely poisoned by its vices. Lermontov embodied the features of lonely sufferers-rebels in the image of the Demon. This is the hero of an intermediate era, when for advanced people the old understanding of the world has died, but there is no new one yet. This is a rebel without a positive program, a proud and brave rebel, outraged by the injustice of the laws of the universe, but not knowing what to oppose these laws. Like the hero of Lermontov's novel Pechorin, the hero of his poem is an egoist. The demon suffers from loneliness, yearns for life and people, and at the same time, this proud man despises people for their weakness. He puts one minute of his "unrecognized torment" above the "painful hardships, labors and troubles of the human crowd." Like Pechorin, the Demon cannot free himself from the evil that has poisoned him, and, like Pechorin, he is not guilty of this. But the Demon is also a symbolic image. For the poet himself and for his advanced contemporaries, the Demon was a symbol of the tricks of the old world, the collapse of the old concepts of good and evil. The poet embodied in him the spirit of criticism and revolutionary denial. “The spirit of criticism,” Herzen wrote, “is called not from hell, not from the planets, but from a person’s own chest, and he has nowhere to disappear. Wherever a person turns away from this spirit, the first thing that catches the eye is himself with his questions. The symbolic meaning of the image of the Demon was revealed by Belinsky. The demon, he wrote, “denies in order to affirm, destroys in order to create; it makes a person doubt the reality of truth as truth, beauty as beauty, good as good, but as this truth, this beauty, this good ... he is so terrible, because he is powerful, that he will hardly give birth to doubt in you that hitherto you have considered it an indisputable truth, as the ideal of the new truth already shows you from afar. And, while this new truth is only a phantom, a dream, an assumption, a hunch, a presentiment for you, until you have realized it, have not mastered it, you are the prey of this demon and must know all the torments of an unsatisfied desire, all the torture of doubt, all the sufferings of a desolate existence. ". A few years after the death of Lermontov, Ogarev speaks of the Demon like this:
In the struggle he is fearless, his joy is rude,
From the dust he builds everything again and again,
And his hatred for what needs to be destroyed,
The soul is holy, as love is holy.
In the poem "The Demon", created by Lermontov for a decade, there are many contradictions. They were preserved in the last stages of work. Lermontov did not finish his work on the poem. At the end of the 30s, Lermontov departed from his Demon and in the poem "A Tale for Children" (1839-1840) called him "children's delirium." He wrote:
My young mind used to resent
A mighty image, among other visions,
Like a king, dumb and proud, he shone
Such magically sweet beauty,
What was scary ... and the soul longing
Shriveled - and this wild nonsense
Haunted my mind for many years.
But I, having parted with other dreams,
And got rid of him - with verses.
At the turn of the 40s, a new creative stage began for the poet. He went from denial to affirmation, from the Demon to Mtsyri. In the image of Mtsyri, Lermontov most fully revealed himself, his own soul, which was well understood by his advanced contemporaries. Belinsky called Mtsyri Lermontov's favorite ideal, while Ogarev wrote that this was the poet's clearest and only ideal.
Lermontov did not finish work on "The Demon" and did not intend to print it. There is no authorized copy, much less an autograph of the poem in this edition. It is printed according to the list according to which it was printed in 1856 by A.I. Philosopher, married to a relative of Lermontov, A.T. Stolypin. A.I. Philosophers was the tutor of one of the Grand Dukes and published this edition of The Demon in Germany, in Karlsruhe, where at that moment the court of the heir was located. The book was published in a very small edition, especially for the courtiers. On the title page of Filosofov's list it is written: "Demon". An oriental story composed by Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov on December 4, 1838 ... "There is also the date of the list:" September 13, 1841 ", which indicates that this list was made after Lermontov's death.
"Demon" (1838 September 8 days)
An authorized copy of this edition of the poem, donated by V.A. Lermontov, has been preserved. Lopukhina (by her husband Bakhmetyeva) and who was with her brother, A.A. Lopukhin, a friend of Lermontov, and his friend from Moscow University. The precious manuscript has come down to us. A large notebook made of fine thick paper is sewn with white thick threads, as Lermontov usually sewed his creative notebooks. It is kept in Leningrad, in the library named after Saltykov-Shchedrin. The cover is yellowed, torn and then glued by someone. Although the manuscript was rewritten in someone else's even handwriting, the cover was made by the poet himself. Above - large - the signature: "Demon". Below left small: "1838 September 8 days." The title is carefully printed and enclosed in an oval vignette. We also meet Lermontov's handwriting on one of the pages of the poem at the very end. The lines written by Lermontov in the notebook he gave to his beloved woman, among the pages soullessly written out by the clerk, acquire a special intimate meaning. They are perceived with excitement, as an inadvertently discovered foreign secret. The page, written by the hand of a clerk, ends with the verses:
Clouds elusive
Fibrous herds…
On the next page we see Lermontov's handwriting. The poet tries to write evenly and beautifully, but, out of habit, as always, the lines written in his small, uneven handwriting rush up and bend down:
The hour of parting, the hour of goodbye -
They have neither joy nor sorrow;
They have no desire in the future
And don't feel sorry for the past.
On the day of agonizing misfortune
You only remember them;
Be to the earth without participation
And careless, like them.
And then the clerk continues to diligently rewrite the poem. But at the end, Lermontov's hand appears again. Below the line, following the poem, he writes a dedication. In this edition of The Demon, the progressive content of the poem is most fully and clearly expressed. The difference between the two editions is very noticeable in the second part of the poem and is especially pronounced in the finale. Their comparison is of great interest to the reader. Making a list of "Demon" on the basis of two lists of different editions, Belinsky called them lists "with big differences" and during the correspondence preferred this edition, citing variants of the second at the end. Being under the impression of The Demon, Belinsky wrote to V.P. Botkin in March 1842 about Lermontov’s work: “... the content extracted from the bottom of the deepest and most powerful nature, a gigantic swing, demonic flight - a proud enmity with the sky - all this makes us think that we have lost a poet in Lerm[ontov], who content would have stepped further than Pushkin. In connection with “Masquerade”, “Boyar Orsha” and “Demon”, Belinsky said: “... this is a satanic smile on life, distorting infantile lips, this is “proud enmity with heaven”, this is the contempt of fate and a premonition of its inevitability. All this is childish, but terribly strong and sweeping. Lion nature! Terrible and powerful spirit! Do you know why I took it into my head to rant about Lermontov? I just finished rewriting his "Demon" yesterday, from two lists, with great differences - and even more so in them this childish, immature and colossal creation.
“A proud enmity with the sky” is a quote from this edition of “The Demon”.
“The Demon” has become a fact of my life, I repeat it to others, I repeat to myself, in it for me are the worlds of truths, feelings, beauties,” Belinsky wrote in the same letter, having just finished rewriting the poem in this edition.
In 1839, Lermontov finished writing the poem "The Demon". A brief summary of this work, as well as its analysis are presented in the article. Today, this creation of the great Russian poet is included in the compulsory school curriculum and is known throughout the world. Let us first describe the main events that Lermontov depicted in the poem "The Demon".
"Sad Demon" flies over the Earth. He surveys the central Caucasus from a cosmic height, its wonderful world: high mountains, stormy rivers. But nothing attracts the Demon. He feels nothing but contempt for everything. The demon is tired of immortality, eternal loneliness and unlimited power that he has over the earth. The landscape under his wing changed. Now he sees Georgia, its lush valleys. However, they do not impress him either. Suddenly, a festive animation, which he noticed in the possessions of a certain noble feudal lord, attracted his attention. The fact is that Prince Gudal betrothed his only daughter. A festive celebration is being prepared in his estate.
The demon admires Tamara
Relatives have already gathered. The wine flows like water. The groom should arrive in the evening. The young princess Tamara marries the young ruler of Sinodal. In the meantime, servants are laying out ancient carpets. The bride, according to custom, must perform a dance with a tambourine on a roof covered with carpets even before the appearance of her groom.
Here the girl begins to dance. It is impossible to imagine anything more beautiful than this dance. She is so good that the Demon himself admired Tamara.
Tamara's thoughts
Various thoughts are circling in the head of the young princess. She leaves her father's house, where she did not know anything was denied. It is not known what awaits the girl in a foreign land. She is satisfied with the choice of the groom. He is in love, rich, handsome and young - everything that is necessary for happiness. And the girl drives away doubts, giving herself to the dance.
The demon kills the girl's fiancé
The next important event continues his poem "Demon" Lermontov. A summary of the episode associated with it is as follows. The demon is no longer able to take his eyes off the beautiful Tamara. He is captivated by her beauty. And he acts like a real tyrant. The robbers, at the behest of the Demon, attack the princess' fiancé. Sinodal is wounded, but gallops to the bride's house on a faithful horse. Upon reaching, the groom falls dead.
Tamara goes to the monastery
The prince is heartbroken, the guests are crying, Tamara is sobbing in her bed. Suddenly, the girl hears a pleasant, unusual voice comforting her and promising to send magical dreams. Being in the world of dreams, the girl sees a beautiful young man. She realizes in the morning that the evil one is tempting her. The princess asks to be sent to a monastery, where she hopes to find salvation. The father does not immediately agree to this. He threatens to curse, but eventually gives up.
Tamara's murder
And here is Tamara in the monastery. However, the girl did not feel better. She realizes that she has fallen in love with the tempter. Tamara wants to pray to the saints, but instead she bows before the evil one. The demon realizes that physical intimacy with him will kill the girl. He decides at some point to abandon his insidious plan. However, the Demon no longer has power over himself. He penetrates at night in his beautiful winged form into her cell.
Tamara does not recognize in him the young man who appeared to her in her dreams. She is afraid, but the Demon opens her soul to the princess, tells the girl passionate speeches, so similar to the words of an ordinary man, when the fire of desires boils in him. Tamara asks the Demon to swear that he is not deceiving her. And he does it. What does he cost?! Their lips meet in a passionate kiss. Passing by the door of the cell, the watchman hears strange sounds, and then a faint death cry, which the princess emits.
The end of the poem
Gudal was told about the death of his daughter. He is going to bury her in the family highland cemetery, where his ancestors erected a small hill. The girl is dressed up. Her appearance is beautiful. The sadness of death is not on him. A smile appeared on Tamara's lips. Wise Gudal did everything right. For a long time, he himself, his yard and estate were washed off the face of the earth. And the cemetery and the temple remained unharmed. Nature made the grave of the Demon's beloved inaccessible to man and time.
This concludes his poem "The Demon" Lermontov. The summary conveys only the main events. Let's move on to the analysis of the work.
The specifics of the analysis of the poem "Demon"
The poem "Demon", which Lermontov created from 1829 to 1839, is one of the most controversial and mysterious works of the poet. It is not easy to analyze it. This is due to the fact that there are several plans for the interpretation and perception of the text created by Lermontov ("Demon").
The summary describes only the event outline. Meanwhile, there are several plans in the poem: cosmic, which includes relations to God and the universe of the Demon, psychological, philosophical, but, of course, not everyday. This should be taken into account in the analysis. To conduct it, one should refer to the original work, the author of which is Lermontov ("Demon"). A summary will help you remember the plot of the poem, knowledge of which is necessary for analysis.
The image of the Demon created by Lermontov
Many poets turned to the legend of a fallen angel who fought against God. Suffice it to recall Lucifer from Byron's Cain, Satan portrayed by Milton in Paradise Lost, Mephistopheles in Goethe's famous Faust. Of course, Lermontov could not ignore the tradition that existed at that time. However, he interpreted this myth in an original way.
Very ambiguously portrayed the main character Lermontov ("Demon"). The chapter summaries point out this ambiguity but omit the details. Meanwhile, the image of Lermontov's Demon turned out to be very contradictory. It combines tragic impotence and enormous inner strength, the desire to partake of the good, to overcome the loneliness and incomprehensibility of such aspirations. The demon is a rebellious Protestant who opposed himself not only to God, but also to people, to the whole world.
The protesting, rebellious ideas of Lermontov appear directly in the poem. The demon is a proud enemy of heaven. He is "the king of knowledge and freedom." The demon is the embodiment of a rebellious uprising of power against that which binds the mind. This hero rejects the world. He says that there is neither lasting beauty nor true happiness in him. Here there are only executions and crimes, only petty passions live. People do not know how to love or hate without fear.
Such a general denial, however, means not only the strength of this hero, but at the same time his weakness. It is not given to the demon to see earthly beauty from the height of cosmic boundless expanses. He cannot understand and appreciate the beauty of nature. Lermontov notes that the brilliance of nature did not arouse, except for cold envy, neither new strength nor new feelings in his chest. Everything that the Demon saw before him, he either hated or despised.
Demon's love for Tamara
In his haughty solitude, the protagonist suffers. He yearns for connections with people and the world. The demon was bored with living solely for itself. For him, love for Tamara, an earthly girl, was supposed to mean the beginning of a way out of gloomy loneliness for people. However, the search for "love, kindness and beauty", harmony in the world for the Demon is fatally unattainable. And he cursed his crazy dreams, remained again arrogant, alone in the universe, as before, without love.
Unmasking the Individualistic Consciousness
Lermontov's poem "The Demon", a summary of which we have described, is a work in which individualistic consciousness is exposed. Such a cure is present in the previous poems of this author. In this destructive, demonic beginning is perceived by Lermontov as anti-humanistic. This problem, which deeply worried the poet, was also developed by him in prose ("A Hero of Our Time") and dramaturgy ("Masquerade").
The voice of the author in the poem
It is difficult to single out the voice of the author in the poem, his direct position, which predetermines the ambiguity of the work, the complexity of its analysis. By no means does M. Yu. Lermontov ("The Demon") strive for unambiguous assessments. The summary that you just read may have prompted you to a number of questions, the answer to which is not obvious. And this is not accidental, because the author does not answer them in the work. For example, does Lermontov see in his hero an unconditional bearer (albeit suffering) of evil, or only a rebellious victim of the divine "unjust judgment"? Was Tamara's soul saved for the sake of censorship? Perhaps for Lermontov this motive was just an ideological and artistic inevitability. Does the defeat of the Demon and the finale of the poem have a conciliatory or, on the contrary, non-conciliatory meaning?
The poem "Demon" by Lermontov, a summary of the chapters of which was presented above, can prompt the reader to all these questions. They talk about the complexity of the philosophical problems of this work, that the Demon dialectically combines good and evil, hostility to the world and the desire to reconcile with it, the thirst for the ideal and its loss. The poem reflects the tragic attitude of the poet. For example, in 1842 Belinsky wrote that "Demon" became a fact of life for him. He found in it worlds of beauty, feelings, truth.
"Demon" - an example of a romantic poem
The artistic originality of the poem also determines the richness of its philosophical and ethical content. This is a vivid example of romanticism, built on antitheses. Heroes oppose each other: Demon and God, Demon and Angel, Demon and Tamara. The polar spheres form the basis of the poem: earth and sky, death and life, reality and ideal. Finally, ethical and social categories are contrasted: tyranny and freedom, hatred and love, harmony and struggle, evil and good, denial and affirmation.
The meaning of the work
Of great importance is the poem created by Lermontov ("Demon"). The summary and analysis presented in this article may have given you this idea. After all, deep problems, powerful poetic fantasy, pathos of doubt and denial, high lyricism, plasticity and simplicity of epic descriptions, a certain mystery - all this should lead and has led to the fact that Lermontov's "Demon" is rightfully considered one of the top creations in the history of the romantic poem. . The significance of the work is great not only in the history of Russian literature, but also in painting (Vrubel's paintings) and music (Rubinstein's opera, in which its summary is taken as the basis).
"Demon" - a story? Lermontov defined this work as a poem. And rightly so, because it is written in verse. The story is a prose genre. These two concepts should not be confused.
The characterization of Peter on the share of the protagonist was greatly tested: he was blind in the mind of the people, and he was guilty step by step to come to the understanding of his value and necessity in this world. it’s easy for you to work with one-liners, but when you appear in yoga life, bring you chimalo
receiving whilin: to know a friend, a close person. in fact, petro wants to know his place in life, but on the back of his hand he needs to accept the fact of hair blindness. For a long time, you can’t make peace with them, who are not like everyone else, so don’t sip the light. wine is guilty to come to the understanding of what Volodya is great
talent, and want to raise him to a high level. it’s rich in why reach the point of sprya, having poured in uncle Maxim, which is a vigadu for nephews of new trials. mi bachimo, as if from a distrustful and unscrupulous young man, peter step by step, you become a strong person, loving life. if you stop regretting
to yourself and start to go wild on the chest, the results do not flicker on yourself: and the axis of peter is already a blind musician. a short story tells about those, like a new one's family is settled, especially happy. Characteristics of evelіna was wise and kind, a girl, born not by vices. upon first acquaintance
you can remember її innocence and calmness, with which she marveled at the sonorous speech. by the age of Peter, she is affectionate and penetrating. not without reason in one of the children and youthful rocks of the blind bachelor in the vіdrad and in the quiet. Evelina - the first and only friend of Peter, the year of Yogo Kokhan. їхні stosunki harmonіnі, with an hour
stench only mіtsnіshayut. evelina forever took the bіl of peter like her vlasny. the moment when she realized that she was blind, remembering her for the rest of her life: she was crying over this furnishing so dumb lad (at that time unknowingly) was a close relative or friend. characteristic uncle maxim
uncle maxim bov v_dstavnym viyskovim. svikliy to the order of discipline, if you want to grow up with your nephew and impress a person in yourself, if you would not be afraid of any emotional experiences and hardships. the uncle takes an active part in Peter's wife, tries to bring his sister, which is important
do not despise the child, but learn how to live in our difficult world. uncle, in no way pity the lad, we ourselves do not give any drive to doubt that we can become happy. for yoga initiative, young people come to the houses, among them cadets and students - everything for a happy future
peter. with Uncle Maxim himself, young petro is virushaya in the most important way for the sense of life. the groom of the young wines, having awakened in little Peter's love to music, building a little beauty of melodies and sounds. yukhim sighed at the girl, as she inspired yoma at mutuality, to that yogo music is filled with the right
feelings and beauty. this constant sound and bewitch the little Peter, stun him to the bigati to the school and hear the stable boy's voice. Yukhim - Peter's first music teacher. in the yoga school itself, the boy learned to understand and appreciate the right science. Anna Mikhailivna, like a mother, she jumped away
your child with warmth and respect. realizing that the child was blind, she grieved for a long time, she did not know anything for the sake of it. with a stretch of strength, love and encouragement everywhere, make Peter feel better, bestow on him every need, encourage him in disgrace. the main thought of the story "sleepy musician" is hardly
there is another such tver that will give the flooring a strong life-affirming rush, like a “blind musician”. the heroes are described thoroughly: they are endowed with live rice, individual traits of character. the main hero is guilty of being tested blind and loving life in order to become great
musician. such a rank, richly faceted and significant, is the story of "a blind musician." a short zmіst allows you to understand more clearly, the thoughts of a blind, yogo light-gazer. the enemy is being created, that having consecrated the Korolenko to this tver, we blind the whole world. one