In the works of A. S. Pushkin, there are often discussions about the meaning of life and the transience of time. “Elegy,” the analysis of which is offered to you by the Many-Wise Litrekon, is no exception. In this poem, the thoughtful reader will find reasons for thought.

A. S. Pushkin’s poem “Elegy” was published on September 8, 1830. The poet writes this work being already a middle-aged, experienced creator. The poem refers to the Boldino autumn, an important period in Pushkin's work.

Autobiographical features can be traced in “Elegy”. The poet sums up the past years of his life, draws the first conclusions and looks into the future.

Pushkin writes this poem while in Boldino, where he is leaving to resolve inheritance matters before marrying Natalya Goncharova. Shortly before leaving, the woman gave the poet his long-awaited consent. The stay at his father's estate was prolonged due to a cholera epidemic. For three months, Pushkin creates and rethinks his life before the fateful step - the wedding. Therefore, we can conclude that “Elegy” is dedicated to Natalya Goncharova.

Genre, direction, size

The genre of this poem is elegy. It refers to philosophical lyrics. Pushkin raises the problems of the transience of time and analyzes the mistakes of the past years.

The poetry of Alexander Sergeevich is divided into - early work, and - late period. This poem has romantic features: a sad mood, a nostalgic tone, proud resistance to adversity and the absence of bright horizons ahead. Fate is bleak, and the fight against it is life. For romanticism, this position is quite typical.

“Elegy” is written in iambic pentameter with paired rhyme.

Meaning of the name

The title of the poem is consistent with the genre. It determines a sad mood and upcoming reflection. Pushkin already in the title draws attention to the fact that the poem will be imbued with sadness.

Composition

Compositionally, the poem “Elegy” can be divided into two parts; it has a rather interesting structure. The peculiarity of the composition lies in the antithesis of death and life, the first and second stanzas:

  1. The first is filled with a sad mood and reasoning about the past. The poet recalls the crazy years of fun - youth. Memories become heavier every year, like wine, “the older, the stronger.” Pushkin calls his life path dull. The lyrical hero tries to look into the future. But it only brings melancholy. The hero feels despair because of the approaching grief. He sees death, and this thought weighs on him.
  2. The second part is built on contrast with the first. Antithesis: to die - to live. The lyrical hero does not want to die, he chooses life: “I want to live in order to think and suffer.” By suffering, the hero understands the poet’s hard work, dedication and criticism of society. But the world is diverse, so pleasure replaces suffering. Happiness for a poet is a rush of harmony that saves from despair. In the last lines the mood lyrical hero is improving. He hopes for mutual love and happiness.

Images and symbols

The main images in the poem “Elegy” reveal inner world by:

  1. “A vague hangover” expresses the state of impasse in which the lyrical hero finds himself. He is in a kind of transitional state - rethinking the meaning of life.
  2. The wine symbolizes the hero's sadness. It intoxicates and clouds the consciousness with fog.
  3. The image of the sea is the unknown, fear of the future.
  4. The image of the lyrical hero is very interesting and dynamic: at first he remembers his stormy but joyless youth, regrets and is sad about the past, but does not see any joy in the future. This is a melancholic person, overwhelmed by an attack of blues. But then he is transformed and accepts his cross. It’s not for nothing that he wants to “think and suffer,” because one is inextricably linked with the other. The hero, apparently, has experienced grief from his mind more than once, but now he hopes to know not only the torment of the prophet, but also the pleasure of love. The poem ends almost optimistically.

Themes, issues and mood

The themes and issues of the poem “Elegy” are very significant and interesting even for the modern reader:

  • The main theme of the poem “Elegy” is summing up life’s results. The hero evaluates the past and future, but comes to the conclusion that the coming day gives grounds for hope for the best.
  • The theme of the past and future also occupies an important place in the text, because the entire poem is built on the contrast between death (melancholy, despondency) and life (hope, love).
  • Another theme is the loneliness of the lyrical hero. He feels like an insignificant drop in a huge sea of ​​​​events, but still he believes in the possibility of love and pleasure, and this belief fuels his love for life.
  • Pushkin raises the problem of the transience of time. Youth gives way to a mature period, when a person begins to analyze his actions and becomes upset in some ways, but this helps to avoid mistakes in the future.
  • The problem of love for life is also reflected in Pushkin’s “Elegy”. Despite suffering and loss, a person must love life, including for the evil that it causes.
  • The problem of finding the meaning of life is the main one in “Elegy”. You need to live in order to “think and suffer,” and in the abyss of sorrows to find pleasure and a quiet haven of love. In a word, the meaning of existence is the struggle with fate and oneself.
  • The mood represents a transition from sad to joyful: after sad reflections on the past, the author expresses hope for a change in life in the future.

the main idea

A.S. Pushkin put a special meaning into “Elegy”. When searching for the truth of life, one should be sincere to oneself, accept misdeeds and improve oneself. At the moment of feeling the uselessness of your existence, it is worth remembering that this moment is transitional. Sadness will be replaced by joy and a desire to develop will appear, you just need to love life and accept it in all its diversity.

The main idea of ​​Pushkin’s “Elegy” is that, even despite past grievances and losses, one must hope for the best and expect not only suffering, but also pleasure from the future. What does Pushkin teach? Of course, optimism and love of life, which help to overcome any obstacles.

Means of expression

An important part of creating a poetic text is the use of tropes. Pushkin uses artistic media in the poem “Elegy”, namely:

  1. epithets (crazy years, troubled sea, sad sunset);
  2. antithesis - contrasts death and the desire to live, sadness and joy;
  3. comparisons (like a vague hangover).
  4. sound writing. “The troubled sea promises me the work and grief of the future” - for example, in this sentence the author condenses hard and sharp sounds and combinations of sounds (“gr”, “mor”, “tr”, “gor”) in order to reflect the heaviness of the path at the level of sound and gloomy forebodings.
  5. the poet addresses the reader: “O friends,” calling for attention to the raised problem of existence and the transience of time.

Thus, Pushkin emphasizes the existence of fate and life changes, which can both sadden and delight. Every heaviness is replaced by lightness, minor by major.

The poem was written in the famous era, which influenced the poet’s creative rise. In one of his letters, the poet admitted that in the fall it was unusually easy for him to write. But not only the golden season had such an impact on his mood and creativity, but also his upcoming marriage to Natalya Nikolaevna Goncharova.

The poem is written in the genre of philosophical lyrics. This is an elegy, and, despite the sadness for a lost youth, it is filled with a love of life. The poet looks forward. He is inspired by the upcoming change in life, but sad notes about his lost youth no, no, and they affect his impressionable soul. These sad notes are a kind of hangover after a fun night (youth) and influenced the creation of the work. The “turbulent sea” metaphor makes it clear to the reader that the poet does not expect a calm life. He realizes that married life is continuous waves, changes in mood in relationships, joy and anxiety, worries about tomorrow, the payment for which will be pleasure in love.

In the elegy “Crazy Years, Faded Fun,” the poet used antitheses—sadness-fun, life-death, pleasures-cares. These contrasts further emphasize the author's mood. In a letter to Delvig, Pushkin wrote: “I’ll tell you a secret that I wrote in Boldin, as I haven’t written for a long time.” Creative upsurge testifies to spiritual upliftment, which is closely connected with his love for Natalya Nikolaevna. Love is known to be a powerful stimulus for inspiration and creativity.

According to composition, the poem is divided into 2 parts. The first part is filled with sadness for the departed teenage years. It conveys the realization that the time has come for responsibility for those around him.

But, despite the upcoming “works and grief,” the poet is full of life and energy. He realizes that not only “works” await him ahead, but also joy. He is ready to “think and suffer.”

Noteworthy is the absence of verbs in the first part. More precisely, in this part there is only 1 verb - promises, that is, foreshadows.

But the second part of the elegy is filled with verbs. She foreshadows actions: “I want, to die, to live, to think, to suffer, to get drunk, to get drunk, to shine.” The abundance of verbs changes the mood of the second stanza of the poem.

Speaking about the analysis of this work, one cannot help but recall the Old Slavonicisms and pompous words inherent in secular poetry. For example, “I know the past, the past, the future.” The symbols originally used by the poet bring this poem closer to romanticism: stormy sea, wine, hangover, sunset.

Analysis of the poem by A. S. Pushkin “The faded joy of crazy years...”

A. S. Pushkin’s poem “The faded joy of crazy years...” shocked me. I can express my feelings using the words of the great Russian literary critic V.G. Belinsky: “... to what inner enlightenment the spirit of Pushkin rose.”

TOWhen I read “Elegy,” pictures arose in my imagination of how Pushkin sums up his life. The poem is imbued with a mood of bitterness, despondency, mental turmoil, gloomy forebodings that left an indelible trace of sadness in the soul of the hero. Fortunately, it changes towards the end of the work, and after some rather gloomy lines, the poet has the thought of a wise and enlightened acceptance of life.

The theme of the poem is a focused search for a path. Since “Elegy” is written in iambic pentameter - a meter that, unlike iambic tetrameter, has greater smoothness, a kind of slow flow, it can be classified as philosophical lyricism. And the genre is a romantic elegy.

Based on the theme and genre of this work, I can say that this poem is deeply personal. Hence its unusual construction. Two stanzas form a semantic contrast: The first discusses drama life path, the second sounds like the apotheosis of creative self-realization, the high purpose of the poet. We can easily identify the lyrical hero with the author himself.
In the first lines (“crazy years of faded fun / it’s heavy on me, like a vague hangover”). The poet says that he is no longer young. Looking back, he sees the path traveled behind him, which is far from flawless: past fun, from which his soul is heavy.
However, at the same time, the soul is filled with longing for the days gone by; it is intensified by a feeling of anxiety and uncertainty about the future, in which one sees “labor and grief.” But it also means movement and a full creative life. “Labor and grief” is perceived by an ordinary person as hard rock, but for a poet it is ups and downs. Work is creativity, grief is impressions, significant events that bring inspiration. And the poet, despite the years that have passed, believes and awaits “the coming troubled sea.”
After lines that are rather gloomy in meaning, which seem to beat out the rhythm of a funeral march, suddenly a light takeoff of a wounded bird:

But I don’t want, O friends, to die;
I want to live so that I can think and suffer;

The poet will die when he stops thinking, even if blood runs through his body and his heart beats. The movement of thought is true life, development, and therefore the desire for perfection. Thought is responsible for the mind, and suffering is responsible for feelings. “Suffering” is also the ability to be compassionate.
A tired person is burdened by the past and sees the future in the fog. But the poet, the creator confidently predicts that “there will be pleasures among sorrows, worries and anxiety.” What will these earthly joys of the poet lead to? They bestow new creative fruits:

Sometimes I’ll get drunk again with harmony,
I will shed tears over the fiction...

Harmony is probably the integrity of Pushkin’s works, their impeccable form. Or this is the very moment of creation of works, a moment of all-consuming inspiration... The fiction and tears of the poet are the result of inspiration, this is the work itself:

And maybe my sunset will be sad
Love will flash with a farewell smile.

When the muse of inspiration comes to him, maybe (the poet doubts, but hopes) he will love and be loved again. One of the poet’s main aspirations, the crown of his work, is love, which, like the muse, is a life companion. And this love is the last.

“Elegy” is in the form of a monologue. It is addressed to “friends” - to those who understand and share the thoughts of the lyrical hero.
The poem is a lyrical meditation. It is written in the classical genre of elegy, and the tone and intonation correspond to this: elegy translated from Greek means “lamentable song.” This genre has been widespread in Russian poetry since the 18th century: Sumarokov, Zhukovsky, and later Lermontov and Nekrasov turned to it. But Nekrasov’s elegy is civil, Pushkin’s is philosophical. In classicism, this genre, one of the “high” ones, obliged the use of pompous words and Old Church Slavonicisms.
Pushkin, in turn, did not neglect this tradition, and used it in his work Old Church Slavonic words, forms and phrases, and the abundance of such vocabulary does not in any way deprive the poem of its lightness, grace and intelligibility.

Past = future,
old = older,
promises = portends (promises),
future = future,
“the coming troubled sea” - a metaphor from the canon of a funeral church service:

The sea of ​​life, raised in vain by adversity and storm...

But Pushkin strives from this sea not to"quiet haven" but again in the element of feelings and experiences.
Others = friends
I know = I know
worries = worries.

Sometimes - a word that is never used in colloquial speech, but it can often be found in Pushkin:

... O wives of the North, between you
She appears sometimes
("Portrait")

Sometimes an eastern talker
I spilled my notebooks here
(“In the coolness of the sweet fountains...”)

It should be noted that if you group words from the text by parts of speech, then you can directly follow the progress of thought and changes in mood using them.
Nouns are almost only abstract:
fun - sadness - work - grief - the future - pleasures - worries - worries - harmony - fiction - sunset - love.
There is only one verb in the first column, since this is an exposition, it is static, it is dominated by definitions:
crazy - hard - vague - past - older - stronger - sad - worried.
But the second column is full of contrasting actions that convey the movement of the soul:
die - live - think - suffer - get drunk - get drunk - shine.
And if you listen only to the rhymes, the hop motif comes to the fore:
fun - hangover,
I'll get drunk - I'll get drunk - there's even echoes of an orgy here.
At the sound level, the text is surprisingly smooth and melodious. Vowels and consonants alternate sequentially, sonorant sounds predominate over hissing sounds. Melody is generally inherent in Pushkin's poetry.

Despite the somewhat dull style of writing the poem “Elegy,” it is filled with life-affirming meaning. In it, Pushkin addresses not only his contemporaries, but also future generations with the message that life is beautiful, even if it only contains sorrows, trials and labor.

In my opinion, the lines of the analyzed elegy reflect one of the main poetic traditions of A. S. Pushkin, which was creatively developed not only by Lermontov, but by all classical Russian poetry.

Crazy years of faded fun
It's hard for me, like a vague hangover.
But like wine - the sadness of days gone by
In my soul, the older, the stronger.
My path is sad. Promises me work and grief
The troubled sea of ​​the future.

But I don’t want, O friends, to die;

And I know I will have pleasures
Between sorrows, worries and worries:
Sometimes I’ll get drunk again with harmony,
I will shed tears over the fiction,
And maybe - at my sad sunset
Love will flash with a farewell smile.

A.S. Pushkin wrote this poem in 1830. It was in Boldino, and it was then that he was under the influence of such literary genre like realism. Consequently, the predominant mood in his poems, precisely at that period of his life, is concern, melancholy, and sadness. In a word, at the end of his short but prolific life, A.S. Pushkin became a realist.
The poem "Elegy" consists of two stanzas and, oddly enough, these two stanzas constitute the semantic contrast of this work. In the first lines:
Crazy years of faded fun
It’s hard for me, like a vague hangover - the poet talks about how he is no longer as young as it would seem. Looking back, he sees the past fun, from which his soul is heavy, not easy.
Despite everything, the soul is filled with longing for the days gone by, it is intensified by a feeling of excitement and an illusory future, in which one sees “work and sorrow.” "Labor and Sorrow" for A.S. Pushkin is his work, and grief is inspiring events and impressions. And the poet, despite the difficult years that have passed, believes and awaits “the coming troubled sea.”
For a poet, to live means to think, if he stops thinking, then he will die:
But I don’t want, O friends, to die;
I want to live so that I can think and suffer;
Thoughts are responsible for the mind, and suffering is responsible for feelings.
An ordinary person lives in illusions and sees the future in the fog. And the poet is the complete opposite of an ordinary person, that is, he, like a prophet, accurately predicts that “there will be pleasures among sorrows, worries and worries...”
These earthly, human joys of the poet give new creative opportunities:
Sometimes I’ll get drunk again with harmony,
I will shed tears over the fiction...
Most likely, A.S. Pushkin calls harmony the moment of inspiration when he can create. And fiction and tears are the very work he is working on.
"And maybe my sunset will be sad
Love will flash with a farewell smile."
This quote creates the image of his “muse of inspiration.” He is impatiently waiting for her, and hopes that she will come to him, and he will love and be loved again.
The poet's dominant goal is love, which, like the muse, is a life partner.
"Elegy" is a monologue in form. It is addressed to “friends” - that is, to like-minded people, to those who can understand it without any distortion.
This poem is written in the genre of elegy. This can be understood from the sad and melancholy intonation and tone, so that the soul immediately becomes uneasy, even heavy.
Elegy A.S. Pushkin-philosophical. The genre of elegy belongs to classicism, therefore, this poem should be saturated with Old Slavonicisms.
A.S. Pushkin did not violate this tradition and used Old Slavonicisms, forms and phrases in his work:
Past-past;
Older, older;
Coming-future, coming;
Etc.
The poem "Elegy" is dominant in its genre.

Crazy years of faded fun
It's hard for me, like a vague hangover.
But like wine - the sadness of days gone by
In my soul, the older, the stronger.
My path is sad. Promises me work and grief
The troubled sea of ​​the future.

But I don’t want, O friends, to die;
I want to live so that I can think and suffer;
And I know I will have pleasures
Between sorrows, worries and worries:
Sometimes I’ll get drunk again with harmony,
I will shed tears over the fiction,
And maybe - at my sad sunset
Love will flash with a farewell smile.

Date of creation: 1830

Analysis of Pushkin’s poem “Elegy (The faded joy of crazy years...)”

The famous Boldino autumn of 1830, which played a very important role in the work of Alexander Pushkin, gave the world a huge amount literary works. These include the poem “Elegy,” written in a philosophical vein. In it, the author sums up the period of carefree youth and says goodbye to it on the threshold of entering a new life.

The trip to Boldino, where Pushkin was forced to stay for three long months due to cholera quarantine, was caused by the need to enter into inheritance rights to the estate. The poet, who had never burdened himself with resolving such issues, set out to put all his affairs in order. And this is not surprising, since after re-matching Natalya Goncharova, he still received a positive response and began to prepare for the wedding. However, the poet subjected a thorough revision not only to business papers, but also to his own soul, realizing that from now on his life was changing irrevocably. It was then that the lines were born that “the faded joy of the crazy years” left in the poet’s soul the bitterness of regret and the pain of loss. Pushkin understands that nightly carousing with friends and visiting gambling houses is now the lot of younger people who are still learning the joys of life. The poet prophesies a very sad future for himself. “My path is sad. The troubled sea promises me the work and grief of the future,” writes the author. What should make a person be in such a gloomy mood on the eve of his own wedding?

The thing is that Pushkin’s financial affairs leave much to be desired, and he understands perfectly well that in order to provide a decent life for his family, he will have to work a lot. It was during this period that he carried on a stormy correspondence with his future mother-in-law, bargaining over the size of the dowry. But, in essence, he is trying to win not money, but his own freedom, which he is deprived of after marriage, even with a beloved woman. However, in the poet’s words there is still hope that he can be happy. “And I know, I will have pleasure in the midst of sorrows, worries and anxiety,” notes Pushkin. Indeed, like any normal person, he dreams of finding happiness in his family and hopes that in his life “love will flash with a farewell smile.” Thus, the poet renounces possible relationships with other women who have always been his muses, and expects to become an exemplary husband, realizing that marriage takes away from him a piece of the joy and inspiration that he drew from freedom.