Blok greeted the revolution with enthusiasm and rapture. In the article “Intellectuals and Revolution,” published shortly after the October Revolution, Blok exclaimed: “What is planned? Remake everything... With your whole body, with your whole heart, with your whole mind - listen to the Revolution.”

In January 1918, Blok created the famous poem “The Twelve.” In it, with the greatest passion and enormous skill, he captured the image of a new, free, revolutionary homeland that was revealed to him in romantic snowstorms and fires. True to his original ideas about “Russia-Storm”, the poet understood and accepted the revolution as a spontaneous, unstoppable “world fire”, in the purifying fire of which the entire old world without remainder:

We are at the mercy of all bourgeoisie

Let's fan the world fire,

World fire in blood -

God bless!

The strong, bold, fresh image of the collapsed world that Blok found is truly magnificent:

The bourgeois stands there like a hungry dog,

Stands silent, like a question,

And the old world is like a rootless dog,

Stands behind him with his tail between his legs.

The revolution itself is shown in the poem in the generalized symbolic image of the universal wind, a blizzard bursting into the life of the average person:

Black evening.

White snow.

Wind, wind!

The man is not standing on his feet.

The heroes of the poem are twelve Red Guards. Nothing is said about each of them separately, but together they are a force that will destroy the world “to the ground.” These heroes do not fully understand what their goal is. At the beginning of their journey, Blok portrayed them as anarchists and destroyers. They are not organized at all, they only have “holy anger”. The Red Guards are driven by hatred, not love for people.

They have not yet acquired a new God for themselves, but have already lost faith in the old one. And here the author shows a senseless, unjustified murder. Only after this shock do the Red Guards understand their true purpose and realize their responsibility for the fate of the country.

However, until the very end, they go “without the name of a saint,” which means they do not understand and do not finally accept the ideals of the new life. And then Blok depicts the image of Christ, who leads the victorious march of the Red Guards with a red flag in his hands:

And invisible behind the blizzard,

And unharmed by a bullet

With a gentle tread above the storm,

Snow scattering of pearls,

In a white corolla of roses

Ahead is Jesus Christ.

In drawing Christ, Blok proceeded from his subjective ideas about early Christianity as a rebellious force that in its time crushed the old pagan world. For Blok, the image of Christ is the personification of a new universal and all-human religion, the purpose of this new faith is to serve the renewal of life.

In this sense, it seems to me, Christ appeared at the end of the poem, signifying the idea of ​​a new world, in the name of which the heroes of the poem take their revenge on the forces of the old world.

But the image of Christ still introduces a contradiction into the fiery revolutionary music of the poem. Blok perceived the revolution as a universal fire, which was supposed to bring with it the desired renewal. It is no coincidence that after 1918 he did not write anything significant until his death in 1921. Blok was disappointed that the revolution was not what he wanted to see in it. According to the poet himself, the reason for this was “socialist construction.”

The twentieth century was a difficult and dramatic period in the history of our state. At this time, the birth of a new state took place. This is a time of difficult trials and changes. The revolutionary events of 1917-1918 left their mark on the history of Russia. The revolution shook a huge country, it did not go unnoticed and affected everyone. Alexander Blok also did not remain indifferent. He expressed his attitude to revolutionary events in the poem “The Twelve.”

In parallel with the poem "" Blok worked on the poem "Scythians" and the article "Intellectuals and Revolution." These creative works also reflect the author’s attitude to the events of 1917-1918.

It is worth noting that Blok perceived the beginning of the revolution joyfully and enthusiastically. He called to listen to the voice of the revolution and follow it. The author saw something new and different in the revolution. Blok believed that now life in Russia would change. But later, we see how this delight goes away, the attitude towards the events changing. Blok tries to take an objective look at revolutionary events and give them a rating. The poem “The Twelve” became a reflection of the author’s objective thoughts about those events.

The revolution in the poem “The Twelve” is shown as a spontaneous and uncontrolled event. The author compares it to a blizzard and blizzard, to a blizzard that sweeps away everything in its path. For Blok, the revolution became an inevitable event. It contains all the discontent and hatred that in an instant broke free and is now sweeping across the expanses of a great country, sweeping away figures of “bourgeois vulgarity.”

The revolution breaks the old world of “ladies”, “bourgeois”, “vitiy”. She is merciless to them. In the lines of the poem we hear lines about the death of Russia. But that's not true. The old world is dying, and a new one is taking its place.

For Blok, the revolution has two sides: black and white. Everything that happened at that time was drenched in blood and violence, accompanied by robberies and murders. That is why throughout the entire work there is a struggle between “black evening” and “white snow”. Blok is trying to understand whether a revolution can really create something new or is it only capable of destruction.

The driving force of the revolution is the image of the twelve. These are ordinary soldiers who walk with confident steps along the streets of a revolutionary city. The block does not clearly refer to them. In the poem, they are first depicted as bandits (“cigarettes in their teeth, wearing a cap”), but then the author says that they are simple Russian guys who went to serve in the Red Army. Then again Block shows their dirty deeds. They pour out their anger and hatred on innocent people. The Twelve kill Katka without any doubt, just because she is now with someone else.

The image of the revolution in the poem “The Twelve” is inextricably linked with the image of Christ. Although the twelve are constantly trying to get rid of him, he still leads their “victorious” procession. Christ, as once upon a time, once again descended to earth to illuminate the right path for the lost.

In the poem “The Twelve,” Blok never assesses the events taking place. The revolution for the author became an inevitable event, but he was never able to understand its cruelty and inhumanity.

In the history of Russian culture at the beginning of the 20th century, the work of A. A. Blok, an artist who walked the path “among revolutions”, who sensitively grasped both the contradictions and the greatness of his era, is a phenomenon of enormous social and artistic significance. The whirlwind of the October Revolution, which in the blink of an eye deprived the country of statehood, identity, and cultural roots, was perceived by many representatives of the creative intelligentsia as an Apocalypse.

However, having rethought the revolutionary events after some time, part of the intelligentsia sincerely believed (or forced themselves to believe) in the possibility of transforming the world, its turn to a golden age. A. Blok was among those who recognized October 1917 and tried to understand it. O. Mandelstam in 1918 very accurately conveyed the atmosphere among Russians who accepted the revolution:

* Well, let's try: huge, clumsy,
* Creaky steering wheel.
* The earth is floating. Take heart, men...

Overcoming subjective idealistic ideas about the world and art in the course of his ideological and creative development, having experienced both bright hopes and tragic disappointments in his search for the truth of human relations, Blok came to realize the inextricable connection between the fate of the artist and the fate of his homeland, people, and revolution. According to M.A. Beketova, Blok “listened to that “music of the revolution”, to that noise from the fall of the old world that was constantly heard in his ears.” Blok expressed his attitude to the current events with utmost clarity in the article “Intellectuals and the Revolution”: “Redo everything. Arrange so that everything becomes new; so that our deceitful, dirty, boring, ugly life becomes a fair, clean, cheerful and beautiful life.” The article ended with the poet’s call: “With all your body, with all your heart, with all your mind - listen to the Revolution.”

The October events first inspired the poet: “Something has happened that no one can yet evaluate, because history has never known such proportions. It couldn’t have happened; it could only have happened in Russia.” It was this understanding of the global scale of the historically destined event that was reflected in the poem “The Twelve,” which became the poetic symbol of the revolution. Romantic inspiration and sober analysis, lyrical emotion and sometimes caustic sarcastic style of the poem are combined with truly global imagery and bold realistic symbolism.

Immediately after its appearance, the poem “The Twelve” caused the most fierce debate and contradictory interpretations. Some rejected it with contempt as “Bolshevik,” others saw in it and its heroes an evil parody of the Bolsheviks. However, Blok himself, in a note about “The Twelve,” wrote: “... those who see political poetry in the poem are either very blind to art, or possessed by great malice.” According to the poet, his poem was written “in a rush, with inspiration, harmoniously whole.” The poem “The Twelve” became the first poem about the revolution, inextricably linking its images with gospel motifs. It is no coincidence that the number “twelve” is repeatedly present in the poem: these are twelve chapters in the poem, and twelve months of the year, and the sacred number of the highest points of light and darkness (noon and midnight), and twelve people in a detachment, and twelve apostles.

It is characteristic that in the literature of the 20th century, the attention of writers is often paid to certain moments of the Gospel - the tragic period from Maundy Monday to Easter. Most often we see references to the crucifixion of Christ and the days of His passion. And yet, despite the similarity of the images taken, the authors reinterpret them in different ways. Blok has twelve Red Guards, rhythmically beating the “sovereign step” through the streets of Petrograd - these are the twelve apostles of the revolution. The twelve follow the path of Christ, go to Golgotha, doomed to death. The “bloody banner”, the color of Christ’s rags, flies over the heads of the Red Guards, who have turned into a symbol of sacrifice. At the same time, the apostles are the antipodes of the twelve, since

* And they go without the name of the saint
* All twelve - into the distance.
*Ready for anything
*No regrets.

The apostles of the revolution, unlike the apostles of Christianity, are confident that they do not need a guide from above. But

* Ahead with a bloody flag,
* And invisible behind the blizzard,
* And unharmed by a bullet,
* With a gentle tread above the storm,
* Snow scattering of pearls,
* In a white halo of roses
* Ahead is Jesus Christ.

At the same time, these twelve are a symbolic designation of mass. It is no coincidence that only two of them, Andryukha and Petrukha, have names, vulgarized names of the apostles Andrew the First-Called, who, according to legend, predicted the coming of Christianity to Rus', and Peter, the first Christian bishop (the name Peter is also the stone on which Christ founded His Church) . For Blok, Peter is a murderer. But Jesus also spent all his days with criminals, publicans and harlots. And the thief was the first to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. The twelve Red Guards have faith, just like that robber, but they themselves do not yet know what they believe in. Well, the Lord leads those who do not follow him of their own free will. Any faith is a blessing. And in this sense, Petrukha’s repentance (or rather, an attempt at repentance) for the murder of Katka is also symbolic.

New apostles are coming new era, stepping over the blood, and quite easily: Katka’s killer, admonished by his comrades, “throws up his head, he’s cheerful again.” Walking Katka becomes a symbol of atoning sacrifice; the name Ekaterina, translated from Greek, means “pure.” Katka appears on stage in the second chapter only to perish in the sixth along with Holy Russia at the hands of unbelievers. Katerina symbolizes Russia for Blok. According to the author, she is the most positive image poems. Like Katerina from “The Thunderstorm” by A. Ostrovsky, like Maslova from “Resurrection” by L. Tolstoy, Blok’s heroine lives in sin and, nevertheless, remains holy, like Rus', plunged into a bloody battle between the past and the future. Blok’s future is correlated with the covenants of Christ, an exponent of purity, holiness, and tragic suffering in the name of a better humanity. On the ruins of the old world, which is compared to a rootless dog (the dog is a symbol of the Antichrist), a new world must be built, based on equality, brotherhood and freedom. The element of revolution, according to the poet, should culminate in a complete transformation of personality.

All the images of the poem are complex and contradictory, and their inconsistency is not only a reflection of the objective contradictions of revolutionary reality, which distinguished Blok’s attitude towards the revolution long before it happened. The poet both passionately awaited the revolution and feared it. His fear was not generated by cowardice, it was the fear of a prophet who was preparing himself in advance for sacrificial death. Blok was always characterized by a feeling of deepest self-denial in the name of an ideal, the name of which changed, but the content remained the same. He decided to say scary words: the fire of revolution will be cleansing for the people, but for the intelligentsia it will be destructive.

The poem gives a brilliant sketch of the initial stage of the revolution, capturing its main conflicts and contradictions. “The Twelve” is a poem of contrasts. Before us is a confrontation between two worlds, two social and moral systems: twelve Red Guards - “a lady in karakul”, a bourgeois, “comrade priest”; black - white: “Black evening. White snow"; satire - heroics: the old world and the sovereign stride of the Red Guards; mundane and everyday - romantic and sublime: the tavern and tavern adventures of Vanka and Katka and the image of Christ “in a white crown of roses”; unbelief is holiness.

Twelve heroes, unlike those around them, called to fulfill a certain destiny, walk through the bustle of the city, where nothing seems to be accidental. The rhythm of their steps reflects the path of all of Russia, moving towards death with disastrous persistence.

Each chapter of the poem is almost biblically parable-like: the world appears in a state of end-beginning, it contains signs and features of the Apocalypse, indicated in the Revelation of John the Theologian. Black evening, black sky overhead, absence of the sun, anxiety that permeated everyone, disharmony, lack of coordination, triumphant anger - black, holy.

Drawing the appearance of the old, “terrible world,” Blok achieves a huge generalization:


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The theme of revolution in Blok’s poem “The Twelve” is key. The poet wrote his essay a year after the February events of 1917 and a few months after the October revolution. The text in form resembles a folk song, ditties, and sayings, but the author filled the traditional composition with a new philosophical meaning, reflecting his own vision of the terrible events that he witnessed.

Nature symbols

The main image depicted in the work is the wind, which sweeps away everything in its path. It is with the description of the snow blizzard and blizzard that the poet begins his narrative. in which the black colors of the approaching night and the white colors of the snow are mixed, personifies the rebellious storm that flared up not only in the city, but also in the souls of people. The theme of revolution in Blok’s poem “The Twelve” is presented at the beginning in images of nature, and the author chooses the most dramatic elements: wind, snowstorm, cloudy sky.

Real images

In addition, he resorted to material images, depicting posters and flags with revolutionary slogans that fluttered in Petrograd as a sign of serious political changes. At the same time, the poet emphasizes the temporality and futility of this vanity: ordinary people, like the poor old woman, who does not understand what is happening, are rushing around next to these posters.

The theme of revolution in Blok’s poem “The Twelve” is ambiguous. On the one hand, the author accepts the element of the people and, with his poetic flair, listens, as it were, to the music of rebellion. But on the other hand, he is horrified by the undivided revelry of passions and lawlessness, symbolized by the black belts of rifles, to which the author constantly draws attention.

Heroes

But at the center of the story, of course, there are people - twelve Red Guards who serve in the city. They feel like masters in this new world and believe that everything is allowed to them. The culmination and apogee of this revelry was the murder of his former lover Katka by one of them.

The theme of revolution in Blok’s poem “The Twelve” is manifested primarily through specific human destinies. At first, the killer, a young guy, sincerely regrets what he did: he talks about his love for the girl and is angry with himself for his jealousy. Thus, the author wanted to show that conscience still remained in people, despite all the horrors of wartime. However, the worst thing is that his comrades shame him, claiming that time justifies any lawlessness. Thus, the poet sensitively grasped the new trend of his time, when many were gripped by a feeling of permissiveness.

About the old world

The image of this former order occupies an important place in the work. The theme of revolution in Blok’s poem “The Twelve” summary which is the subject of this review, is characterized by ambiguity in the interpretation of these events, which makes this work unique in Russian literature.

On the one hand, the poet shows that all the power of the people’s element fell upon him with all its might, preparing to finally destroy what had been accumulated over centuries of previous history. On the other hand, the narrator, observing from the side the rampant national disaster, expresses serious concern about what the consequences of such careless handling of his own past might be. And although he listens to the music of this rebellious spirit, nevertheless, the entire composition is permeated with a spirit of anxiety for the future. That is why the theme of revolution in Blok’s poem “The Twelve” took on an ambiguous sound. Briefly, this idea can be expressed as follows: the essence of the events taking place was not so much the confrontation between estates and classes, but rather the struggle between good and evil in the souls of people.

This confrontation is observed, first of all, among those who began the struggle for freedom and ended with robberies and murders. The poet hopes that the bright beginning will ultimately triumph, but the poem itself remains essentially open and leaves room for reflection. Such a contradictory interpretation of events led to the fact that when the Bolsheviks came to power, the work was banned.

It is difficult to speak unambiguously about the revolution in Blok’s poem “The Twelve”: the author seems to both accept it and at the same time fear that people have lost their moral guideline in life.

(341 words) The poem “12” describes the collision of two worlds: old and new. One is destroyed, cold, hopeless, the second is impetuous, aggressive, drugged. The location is Petrograd. It is no longer a majestic capital, but a black, windswept, lifeless city. Devastation, poverty and cruelty are everywhere. Because of the hopelessness of their situation, people cease to be people, which the author emphasizes by drawing analogies “an old woman - a chicken”, “a bourgeois dog”. The past suffers an unconditional defeat, its representatives no longer fight for power, now their only goal is survival. The future is merciless, it is ready to burn everything to the ground and destroy anyone who gets in its way. The new world is merciless not only to enemies, but also to comrades. This is clearly visible in the episode of Katya’s murder: the culprit is depressed by what happened, but his comrades, instead of supporting them, express disapproval of such sentimentality, demonstrating another feature of revolutionary thinking - it is not the person who is important, but the idea.

The whole poem is permeated with contrasts. The block constantly emphasizes the world divide: black and white dominate the color scheme. The reader sees either an unhappy old woman and a writer crushed by the coup, or a detachment of twelve inspired by the changes. The attitude towards the revolution is also contrasting. At first we see representatives of the old world - they are embittered, depressed, disappointed. All these people live with a feeling of catastrophe; the phrases “Russia is lost”, “We will be destroyed”, “We have cried and cried”, “Traitors”, etc. are constantly heard. But we also see another view - the attitude of the representatives of the new world, who have finally become masters of life, they celebrate victory and revel in power. For them, the revolution is a blessing that forever changed their lives; only thanks to the new government they ascended to the very top of the social hierarchy.

So what is the attitude towards revolution in the poem? I think to answer this question it’s worth taking a closer look at the image of the wind. It’s with him that it all begins - “Wind, wind - Throughout God’s world!” Analysis of these opening lines prompts the attentive reader to the idea that the wind is a kind of metaphor for revolution, a symbol of spontaneous changes that overcome any obstacles and affect everyone without exception. Understanding this is the key to understanding the attitude towards the events of 1917 in the poem. Just as one cannot have an unambiguous attitude towards the wind and its strength, one cannot also judge the revolution one-sidedly. Just like the wind, it is only an external factor that affects people differently. The wind knocks some people off their feet, while others are pushed to move on.

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