Comprehensive analysis of the story a.

In poetry, Koltsov was revealed from within for the first time spiritual world the peasant, his deep and genuine humanity, trampled upon by serfdom. Thus, Koltsov’s work seemed to reveal with his own eyes what, after the poet’s death, Belinsky was still forced to prove and defend, saying: “Isn’t a man a man? - But what could be interesting about a rude, uneducated person? - Like what? “His soul, mind, heart, passions, inclinations - in a word, everything is the same as in an educated person.”

Having become the first poet of the peasant world in the history of Russian poetry, Koltsov thereby expanded the social boundaries of artistically depicted reality. His work was a new and significant step forward towards the further rapprochement of art with the people.

And before Koltsov there were poets who wrote about the peasant. Even in the first decades of the 19th century. - a very remarkable symptom - a number of so-called self-taught peasant poets appear (F. Slepushkin, E. Alipanov, M. Sukhanov, etc.). But in their poems, the nationality was, according to Belinsky’s definition, purely decorative (4, 160). Drawing idyllic pictures of “rural life”, they did not go further than rehashes of book poetry of that time.

Koltsov’s poetic creativity was directly related to the advanced trends of Russian social thought and literature of those years. Mastering folk song traditions and relying on the achievements of contemporary writers, Koltsov managed to find his own voice, his own methods of poetic mastery. It is not without reason that, speaking of Koltsov as an original artist of the word and defining his place among the poets of the 30s and early 40s, Belinsky argued that “after the name of Lermontov, the most brilliant poetic name in modern Russian poetry is the name of Koltsov” (4, 179 ). Later, Chernyshevsky would give the same high praise to Koltsov. Characterizing the post-Pushkin period in the development of Russian poetry, he wrote: “Koltsov and Lermontov appeared. All the old celebrities have faded in comparison to these new ones”; and for the progressive people of Chernyshevsky’s era this was indeed the case.

Koltsov’s creative image is inextricably linked with the peculiarities of his biography. It’s not enough to just see it special case, a personal drama of an artist forced to submit to unfavorable everyday circumstances. Koltsov’s bitter fate crystallized the general tragedy of the people’s life of his time.

From his adolescence, Koltsov knew the hardships of life. His father, a Voronezh tradesman, sought to raise his children in his own image and likeness. A rude and domineering man, he took the future poet from the second grade of the district school and turned him into his clerk. Throughout his short life, Koltsov was forced by the will of his father to engage in his commercial affairs.

The native nature of the Voronezh region became a real school for Koltsov. He spent most of the year on endless rides on horseback. The black earth steppe with its open spaces and villages taught the poet to think broadly and freely, to see the core, deep beginning in people. The steppe became truly the poetic cradle of Koltsov.

N.V. Stankevich played an important role in Koltsov’s biography. Possessing a highly developed aesthetic taste, he immediately grasped the original character of Koltso’s talent. Through Stankevich, acquaintances were made with V. A. Zhukovsky, V. F. Odoevsky, P. A. Vyazemsky and others. At one of Zhukovsky’s literary “Saturdays” in early 1836, Koltsov met with Pushkin.

It is difficult to overestimate the role of the democratic critic Belinsky in the fate of Koltsov. The meeting in 1831, and then the rapprochement and, finally, the closest friendship with him, which lasted until the last days of the poet, largely determined the meaning and content of the whole creative life Koltsova.

Belinsky for many years was the first reader, connoisseur and editor of Koltsov's works. He took part in the preparation for publication of the first collection of poems by Koltsov (1835). He was also the initiator and compiler of the subsequent publication of the poet’s works, already posthumous (1846), providing it with an extensive introduction “On the life and writings of Koltsov.” This is the first summary article about the activities of the poet-prasol and his first detailed biography.

Belinsky was not just a personal friend for Koltsov, but an ideological leader. They were brought together primarily by social and spiritual kinship. We have the right to consider both as predecessors of the galaxy of “new people” of the 1860s. Koltsov appeared in the world as if responding to Belinsky’s passionate calls for nationality in literature.

Delvig, Vyazemsky, and F. Glinka have a certain influence on the young poet. Koltsov highly appreciates Venevitinov’s work. In an eight-line poem dedicated to Venevitinov (1830), Koltsov expressed warm sympathy for the young poet in his secret longing for the “good” and “high.” Close to Koltsov and Ryleev. The lines of Koltsov’s poem “Earthly Happiness” (1830) are painted in those civil-patriotic tones that were characteristic of Ryleev’s “Thoughts”. Even the very nature of exposing social injustices, not to mention the direct use of intonation, rhythm and word usage, makes one recall some poems from the Volynsky Duma.

And yet, in the development of Koltsov the poet, the decisive role belongs to Pushkin.

The young Koltsov’s attraction to Pushkin’s poetry, to the deeply expressed in it, according to Belinsky, “the inner beauty of man and the humanity that cherishes the soul” (7, 339) was noticeably manifested in the poem “The Nightingale” (1831). By reproducing not only the theme, but also the sound side and the general stylistic and metrical structure of Pushkin’s poem “The Nightingale and the Rose,” the author apparently wanted to emphasize his dependence on the work of his beloved and great poet. However, the romance already reveals that Kol’tsov’s own soulful lyricism, that special musicality that will be characteristic of the poet’s mature mastery. It is not surprising that the poem “The Nightingale” was set to music by A. Glazunov, N. Rimsky-Korsakov, A. Rubinstein, A. Gurilev and many other composers. V.V. Stasov ranked it among the “astoundingly beautiful and poetic” romances.

Mastering Pushkin's poetry helps Koltsov to work more seriously and independently on the style of his works. Getting rid of romance phraseology, elegiac formulas that filled his early poems (“I was with her,” “Come to me,” 1829; “What are you for, tender heart...”, 1830, etc.), Koltsov strives for simplicity and clarity of poetic speech.

Koltsov’s artistic sympathies are extremely constant. This applies equally to the content and poetics of his works. If we exclude the first experiments, which bear the stamp of belated sentimentalism, and the poems “for the occasion,” then everything else clearly falls into two dissimilar parts. One is reflections on the eternal problems of human existence, the other is an image of the peasant soul. Genres are chosen accordingly - “thought” and song.

Turning to Koltsov’s philosophical themes may seem artificial. But it was precisely the spontaneous desire to touch upon the secrets to which the merchant-philistine circle was indifferent that pushed the prasol poet into the world of abstract ideas. Let us also not forget that in the conditions of the 30s. passion for philosophy, mainly German, took on the character of a hidden public protest: after all, thought is free, it cannot be banned!

There is no particular pretension to philosophy in Koltsov’s “thoughts.” They captivate not with the depth of penetration into the essence of fundamental ideological issues, not with their “intelligence,” but, on the contrary, with their spontaneity, even some kind of naivety. Here is the thought “Man” (1836). These are more likely emotions spilling out from the depths of the soul than a strict reasoning about the contradictory nature of human actions. In “The Kingdom of Thought” (1837) we encounter a purely artistic attempt to present one of the provisions widespread in German metaphysics about the existence of a certain absolute - the infinite spiritual fundamental principle of the universe.

The artist clearly suppressed the philosopher in Koltsov. “Dumas” now retain a more historical interest - as evidence of the intense intellectual quest of the author of “Mower”, as a kind of monument to the social and aesthetic life of the 1830s.

The top creative achievements Koltsov are the songs he created. Poems written in imitation of Russian folk songs appear in Russian poetry back in the 18th century. and became widespread in the first third of the 19th century. At this time, “Russian songs” by Merzlyakov, Delvig, N. Ibragimov, Shalikov, Glebov, Tsyganov, Obodovsky, Alexander Korsak and others were published and entered into the mass repertoire.

Merzlyakov, Delvig, Tsyganov and other immediate predecessors of Koltsov played an undoubted and positive role in the development of the genre of Russian book songs. Compared with the sentimentalist poets of the late 18th century. they achieved more significant results both in conveying the hero’s emotional experiences and in mastering the stylistic, intonation and rhythmic features of oral folk poetry. However, the work of even prominent masters of Russian song did not go further than external borrowing of motifs, images, and stylistic means already developed in folklore. And this could not but lead to artificiality and imitation, which is felt in the very language of the songs they composed. Some of them became popular, but their authors shunned the prose of people’s working life and spoke “only about feelings, and mostly tender and sad feelings.”

Exceptional penetration into the very depths of the folk spirit and folk psychology allowed Koltsov, as Belinsky said about him, to reveal in his songs “everything good and beautiful that, like an embryo, like a possibility, lives in the nature of the Russian peasant” (9, 532).

Koltsov revealed to Russian literature its real hero - a modest peasant on whose shoulders the whole of Russia rested. Not an invented, but a natural peasant has finally taken his rightful place in the gallery of poetic characters. It turned out that the soul of a simple person in a moral sense is not a dead desert, as was previously thought, that it is capable not only of vain, low passions, but also of sublime feelings. The serf peasant is shown by Koltsov not as a slave and an impersonal instrument of production, but as an ethically and aesthetically valuable individuality.

The lyrical hero of Koltsov’s poems was the forerunner of Turgenev’s peasants from “Notes of a Hunter.” Without him, the emergence of accusatory Nekrasov poetry would have been impossible.

The true nationalism of Koltsov’s creativity was most clearly manifested in his songs about peasant agricultural labor. The poet's innovation was reflected here primarily in his ability to express the people's point of view on work as a source of life, spiritual greatness, and joy. The hero of “The Plowman’s Song” (1831) “merrily” gets along with a harrow and a plow. In the poem “Harvest” (1835), the creaking of carts at harvest time is likened to music, and the stacks on the threshing floors are likened to princes.

The attitude towards work determines the physical and moral beauty that the Koltsovo peasants, for example, the hero of “Mower” (1836):

Do I have a shoulder -

Wider than grandfather;

Chest high -

My mother.

On my face

Paternal blood

Lit in milk

Red dawn.

Strength, dexterity, and passion for the very progress of the work (“Get itchy, shoulder! Swing, arm!”) reveal that “poetry of labor,” in which Gleb Uspensky saw one of the most characteristic features of Koltsov’s work. It is with difficulty that Koltsov’s lyrical hero connects the concepts of the ethical and the beautiful, thereby revealing the essential aspects of folk life and national self-awareness.

In most cases, the Koltsovo young men are seduced not so much by the practical result as by the process of labor itself, its inner beauty, the possibility of expressing one’s “I” in it. Hard physical labor, which was treated by the educated classes as pitiful and slavish - or, at best, aroused compassion for the plowman - under the pen of Koltsov the songwriter acquired a completely new property. It became that part of people's life where the latent craving of the farmer for spiritual activity found outlet. It is not the principle of immediate “benefit” that explains the peasant’s readiness to poeticize his everyday activities and the formidable forces of nature. Here the original artistic inclinations of the peasant soul made themselves felt.

Koltsov’s innovation is clearly revealed in those of his songs that tell about the difficult living conditions of the peasant. The poet was able to talk about the poor man with such emotional sorrow, with such sympathy, like none of his predecessors. Moreover, in a number of Koltsov’s poems on this topic, the trends that will be characteristic of the democratic poets of the 60s are already outlined. Particularly noteworthy in this regard are Koltsov’s songs “The Bitter Share” (1837), “The Thoughts of a Villager” (1837), “The Second Song of Likhach Kudryavich” (1837), “Crossroads” (1840), “The Poor Man’s Share” (1841), etc. The author’s lyrical voice, warmed by warmth and sincere sympathy for a disadvantaged person, is heard in the poem “Village Trouble” (1838), ending with the expressive lines:

Since then, with grief and need, I

I wander around strange corners,

I work for a day's work,

Then I wash myself with blood...

(p. 162)

At the same time, the poor man in Koltsovo’s songs not only complains and laments about his bitter fate. He knows how to give her a daring challenge and boldly meets any adversity. The hero of the poem “Treason of the Betrothed” (1838), shocked by what happened, sets off on the road:

Mourn grief, amuse yourself with life,

To recount the evil fate...

(p. 156)

Koltsov’s hero, being an exponent of the most essential features of the Russian character, is patient, persistent, and courageous. If misfortune befalls him, then, according to Belinsky, it is natural for him not to become dissolved in sadness, not to fall “under the burden of despair itself... and if he does fall, then calmly, with full consciousness of his fall, without resorting to false consolations, without seeking salvation in something he didn’t need in his best days” (9, 533). That is why, despite all the troubles and thunderstorms that await the lyrical hero Koltsov, the main tone of his poetry remains deeply optimistic and life-affirming:

And so that with grief at the feast

be with cheerful face;

To go to death -

Songs to be sung by the nightingale!

(p. 176)

It is characteristic that in these words from the poem “The Path” (1839), the Soviet poet Pavel Antokolsky saw the “central nerve” of Koltsov’s talent.

The theme of will - one of the primordial themes of folk poetry - occupied a prominent place in the work of the poet-prasol. The poem “Stenka Razin” (1838) is typical in this regard. It is in organic connection with Razin’s song folklore. Here is the appeal of the good fellow to the “Mother Volga” who fed and gave him drink, and the sweeping daring of the freedom-loving hero:

Make a fuss, bad weather,

Take a walk, Mother Volga!

Take my awesome thing

Mark a wave along the shore...

(p. 169)

The very choice of Razin’s theme to a certain extent characterizes both Koltsov’s social and aesthetic views.

According to Shchedrin, Koltsov’s merit lies in the fact that he was able to reveal in the Russian powerless peasant a person deeply aware of his dignity, to notice that “burning sense of personality” that “reveals all external barriers and, like a river overflowing its banks, drowns, destroys and carries with it everything it encounters along the way.”

Depicting a people with a “hidden thought of freedom”, Koltsov believes that the best share of working people has only “For the time being, fallen like a stone into the water,” and the important thing is that these hopes are fueled by faith in the powerful forces hidden within the people. In the poem “In Bad Weather, the Wind...” (1839), the poet calls on the people:

Get up - what strength do you have?

Flap your wings:

Maybe our joy

Lives just over the mountains!

(p. 178)

The lines of Koltsov’s famous song “So the soul is torn…” (1840) are also imbued with the demand for “another life.” The poet puts his ardent desire for freedom into the romantic “Duma of the Falcon” (1840), where the sublime dream of freedom of the poet himself merges with the aspirations of the enslaved masses:

Ile at the falcon

Wings are tied

Or the way for him

Are they all booked?

(p. 192)

It is not surprising that “The Falcon’s Thought” was perceived by many generations of progressive people as a song calling for the struggle for a life worthy of a person. Also noteworthy is the wide response that the poems of this song received in fiction: in the works of I. S. Turgenev, I. S. Nikitin, L. N. Trefolev, F. V. Gladkov and others.

The image of a brave and independent bird, akin to Gorky’s legendary Falcon, appears in a number of Koltsov’s poems. And he himself enters our consciousness as “the falcon of Russian poetry, whose free flight was “a call to the proud for freedom, for light.”

Koltsov often speaks of the awakening impulses for a better life among the people only in hints, but quite transparently in the context of the era. For example, in the song “I have a lot...” (1840):

But I know what

I'm looking for magic herbs;

But I know what it's about

I'm sad with myself...

(p. 207)

In some of the poet's songs, features of a certain limitation characteristic of the consciousness of the patriarchal peasantry appear. But - and this is the most important thing - despite all the doubts and rather complex ideological and moral quests of Koltsov, his best poems express a rather bold protest for that time against the “dirty” and “rude” reality of his time. Rising to the realization of the need to fight it, the poet calls in the “Message” dedicated to Belinsky (1839) to rebel in the name of the “triumph” of “new thought,” truth, reason and honor.

It can be said without exaggeration that at that time no one, except Lermontov, expressed hatred of feudal reality with such artistic force as Koltsov. Even tears, burning, poisonous tears of anger, despair, melancholy, here make Koltsov related to Lermontov. Opposing a life based on lawlessness and slavery, Koltsov states in “Reckoning with Life” (1840):

If God gave strength -

I would break you!

(p. 208)

But the parallel “Lermontov - Koltsov” requires a deeper consideration. Being contemporaries, both poets from different points of view (but similar in the main thing - rejection of contemporary social reality) reflected the contradictions of their bitter era.

Lermontov, more clearly than others, testified to the dissatisfaction of his generation with the Nicholas regime. His work focuses on depicting the darker sides of life. Skepticism, reflection destructive for the psyche, the poison of introspection - all these “internal diseases” struck the best part noble class during the years of the Nicholas reaction.

Koltsov, on the contrary, expressed in many works the healthy, powerful forces of the nation, the national spirit, which cannot be broken even by ultra-cruel political oppression. What, in fact, changed in the usual way of life of the multi-million masses of the peasantry due to the next changes on the Russian throne? Under Nicholas I, everything in the village remained the same as it was before: hopeless poverty, aggravated by the beginning of the stratification of the rural community, the growing power of the “golden treasury”.

Lermontov in “Duma” looks with sadness at his generation, the future is depicted by the author in the darkest colors (“...either empty, or dark...”). Koltsov sees it completely differently. Embodying the inexhaustible faith of the peasant worker in the ultimate happiness of man, this eternal folk optimism, Koltsov exclaims in “The Last Struggle” (1838):

Don't threaten me with trouble,

Do not call, fate, to battle:

I'm ready to fight with you

But you can't deal with me!

(p. 167)

Koltsov’s fiery lines sounded like a sharp dissonance against the background of the poetry of his era. New motives suddenly invade the lyrics of despair, despondency and melancholy. The light coloring of Koltsov’s poems is also born under the influence of their specific artistic form. The song poetics itself becomes unusually meaningful. No matter what sad things are said in the work, the rapidity of intonation, special chanting, and the originality of the melodic pattern seem to soften the drama.

The poem “Forest” (1837) is colored with high civic pathos and deep sorrow caused by the death of Pushkin. This, in the broadest sense of the word, political speech can safely be placed next to such an accusatory work as Lermontov’s “Death of a Poet.” It is enough to recall the comparisons in Koltsov’s poems of those gloomy years with “black autumn” and “silent night” or read, for example, into this stanza:

He went wild, fell silent...

Only in bad weather

Howling a complaint

For timelessness...

(p. 148)

To feel the courage of challenging the official government of Russia. The description of those base intrigues that were the immediate cause of the death of the great poet is noteworthy in its accuracy:

From heroic shoulders

They took off the head -

Not a big mountain

And with a straw...

(p. 149)

Family songs deserve special attention in Koltsov’s work. They reveal with great sincerity the inner world of a simple Russian woman, truthfully conveying her position in a patriarchal peasant environment. The realistic content also determined the artistic features of these songs, their close connection with folklore, in particular with family and everyday folk lyrics. This connection was manifested with particular force in Koltsov’s development of the theme of forced life with a “hateful” husband. The poet recreates a truly tragic image of a young peasant woman who was married off against her will. The heroine of the poem “Crazy, Without Reason...” (1839) gives a new and tragic shade to the traditional saying “if you live, you fall in love”:

Well, having grown old,

Reason, advise

And with you youth

Compare without calculation!

(p. 189)

Just as deeply moving, as Belinsky wrote, “the soul-tearing complaint of a tender female soul, condemned to hopeless suffering" (9, 535), is heard in the song "Oh, why me..." (1838):

Don't let the grass grow

After autumn;

Don't let the flowers bloom

In the winter in the snow!

(p. 158)

Koltsov’s family songs are characterized by their social orientation. Expressing the high ideals of folk morality, they contained a demand for the spiritual emancipation of man. The thirst for love, independence, and will was especially clearly manifested in the song “Flight” (1838), in which the right to mutual love and personal happiness was combined with the liberation aspirations of the enslaved people.

Koltsov's love lyrics are poetry of earthly joy, enthusiastic admiration for spiritual and physical beauty. The admiration of the beloved is also evoked by comparisons that are remarkable in their artistry in the song “The Last Kiss” (1838):

Let your face burn

Like dawn in the morning...

How beautiful is spring

You, my bride!

(pp. 159–160)

An amazingly beautiful and bright feeling is sung by Koltsov. The heroes of his songs love with all their hearts. On the most difficult days great love illuminates the lives of disadvantaged people, gives them strength in the fight against harsh reality. The boby from the song “The wind blows in the field...” (1838) is not afraid

The share is not human,

When he loves

She's young!

(p. 166)

It is no coincidence that Chernyshevsky called Koltsov’s collection of poems a book of “pure love,” a book in which “love is the source of strength and activity.”

Koltsov’s love songs stand out for their special sincere lyricism, deep sincerity, and sometimes amazingly vivid reproduction of intimate human feelings. Such works of the poet as “It’s Time for Love” (1837), “The Sadness of a Girl” (1840), “Separation” (1840), “I Won’t Tell Anyone...” (1840) were a truly new word in the love lyrics of those years. To this it must be added that, praising the spiritual beauty of people from the people, beauty desecrated and insulted in a serf-owning society, Koltsov was able to become a kind of spokesman for the liberation aspirations of his time.

The nationality of Koltsov’s poetry finds expression not only in a truthful display of real life, but also in the development of appropriate artistic means. Koltsov’s songs, Belinsky wrote, “represent an amazing wealth of the most luxurious, most original images of the highest degree of Russian poetry. From this side, his language is as amazing as it is inimitable” (9, 536).

Using aesthetic techniques that have long been established in oral tradition, the poet enriches them with his own inventions. He strives to develop a system of poetic means that would allow “ optimal mode» convey the general pathos of his work. Most consistent with these goals were the possibilities of a synthetic genre fusion - a semi-literary, semi-folklore “Russian song”. Symbols, rhythms, and special speech patterns outlined by the people acquired exceptional expressiveness under Koltsov’s pen.

One of the most striking manifestations of Koltsov’s skill is his ability to dramatize a lyrical theme. Penetrating deeply into folk characters, the poet shows the feelings and experiences of ordinary people through their external signs (face, movement, intonation, gesture), which introduces new poetic colors into Russian literature. This is, for example, the image of a girl’s internal state during her separation from her lover in the song “Separation” (1840). The girl’s deep emotion is conveyed here with utmost completeness:

Instantly the whole face burst into flames,

Covered with white snow...

(p. 199)

The heroine’s heartache was reflected in the very intermittency of her speech (“Don’t go, wait! Give me time...”), and in the understatement (“On you, the falcon is clear...”), and in the visible revelation of her spiritual grief (“The spirit was busy - the word froze...").

Sometimes the skill of a songwriter is manifested in extremely compressed portrait sketches. Thus, in the deeply intimate lyrical song “Don’t make noise, rye...” (1834), remembering his beloved “soul-maiden,” Koltsov focuses only on her eyes:

It was sweet for me

Look into her eyes;

In eyes full

Love thoughts!

(p. 112)

An exciting image, filled with deep feeling, clearly appears before us. In the stream of surging memories, thoughts, thoughts, the poet finds that essential, fundamental thing that is especially imprinted and has become the most precious.

The usual portrait is not given in the song “It’s Time for Love” (1837):

She stands there, thinking,

Fanned with the breath of enchantment...

(p. 145)

But we well imagine the youth and beauty of a girl through the external manifestation of her spiritual movement:

The white chest is worried,

What a deep river...

(ibid.)

Artistic originality Koltsov is revealed with particular force in his landscape painting. In his poems, nature is inseparable from people and their work, from everyday human worries, joys, sorrows and thoughts. According to Saltykov-Shchedrin, this is why “Koltsov is great, this is why his talent is powerful, that he never becomes attached to nature for nature’s sake, but everywhere he sees a person soaring above it.”

The pictures of his native land created by Koltsov are fresh and new. “The beautiful dawn caught fire in the sky” (“The Plowman’s Song”), and the ripening rye “Smiles at a merry day” (“Harvest”). In the poem “Why are you sleeping, peasant?..” (1839) Koltsov finds unique colors to describe late autumn:

After all, it’s already autumn in the yard

Looking through the spindle...

(p. 186)

And Russian village winter:

Winter follows her

He walks in a warm fur coat,

The path is covered with snow,

It crunches under the sleigh.

(ibid.)

Koltsov knows how to speak in his own way about the free Russian steppe. Reading the poem “Mower” (1836), it seems that you see its entire endless expanse, breathe in the smell of its herbs and flowers. For the Koltsovo mower, it is not only spacious, but also somehow especially joyful and bright:

Oh, my steppe,

The steppe is free,

You are wide, steppe,

Spread out...

(p. 123)

In the poem “Harvest” (1835), a slowly approaching cloud darkens, grows, “is armed with thunder, storm, fire, lightning,” and then, as if after a moment’s calm, it

Up in arms -

And expanded

And hit

And it spilled

A big tear...

(p. 114)

In this stanza, consisting almost entirely of verbs, the very rhythm and selection of sounds (primarily the sonorous consonants “r” and “l”) greatly contribute to the depiction of powerful rumbles of thunder and gushing rain. The “and” sound that precedes them gives verbs especially great dynamism, breadth, and strength.

One of the features of Koltsov’s poetic mastery is the accuracy, concreteness, almost visual palpability of the image with exceptional economy and laconicism of artistic means. Having organically accepted folk song speech, the poet developed his own style corresponding to the theme, his own imagery, his own special voice.

Koltsov strives for fresh and precise words (in the sense of conveying a certain psychological state), comparisons and metaphors, akin to the very spirit of folk songwriting. This feature of Koltsov’s realistic poetics is clearly manifested in the song “The Poor Man’s Share” (1841), where the author was able to simply and at the same time convey in a completely new way the bitterness of the experiences of a peasant farmer, hidden from the eyes of people:

From the soul sometimes

Joy will burst forth -

Evil mockery

He'll be poisoned in no time.

(p. 215)

Speech elements that come directly from folklore (“And you sit, look, Smiling; And in your soul you curse the bitter Share!”) are natural and artistically justified for the poet.

We see original mastery in the instrumentation, melody, metric and rhythm of Kol’tsov’s poems. Koltsov’s widely used pentasyllabic and iambic trimeter with dactylic endings, internal rhymes, repetitions and alliteration give his poems the semantic expressiveness and musicality noted above. And when you read, for example, the song “Don’t make noise, rye...”, you clearly see that even its very size is very suitable for the sad mood with which this poem is filled:

Heavier than the mountains

Darker than midnight

Lay on my heart

Black Duma!

(p. 112)

No less expressive is such a Koltsovo song as “The Last Kiss”. In its instrumentation, attention is drawn to the first and second lines, where the sounds “l”, “p” (“kiss, dove, caress”) are clearly heard, the third and fourth - with the sound “r” standing out in them (“Once again, hurry up, kiss me hot." Repetitions of words and internal rhymes are also found (“Don’t yearn, don’t grieve, don’t shed tears from your eyes”). All this gives the lyrical intonation of Koltsov’s songs a musicality that was so highly appreciated by M. Balakirev, who wrote his famous romance based on the words of this poem. According to C. A. Cui, the romance represents the most perfect example of merging music with text into one harmonic whole.

In general, it should be noted that Koltsov played an exceptional role in the development of national musical culture. His lines inspired the creation of wonderful works by such composers as Glinka, Varlamov, Gurilev, Dargomyzhsky, Balakirev, Rimsky-Korsakov, Mussorgsky, Rubinstein, Rachmaninov, Grechaninov, Glazunov and others.

Koltsov enriched our poetry with unartificial Russian speech. Avoiding any deliberate “beauty,” he introduces into his poems ordinary words taken from the living folk language, giving them a special poetic flavor. According to Belinsky’s definition, Koltsov’s songs “boldly included bast shoes, and torn caftans, and disheveled beards, and old onuchi - and all this dirt turned into pure gold of poetry for him” (9, 534).

Using the colloquial speech of peasants, Koltsov carefully selects the most typical things in it, which helps him more clearly express the feelings and thoughts of the people, and truthfully show the life of common people. In “The Second Song of Likhach Kudryavich” (1837) we read:

Kaftanishka torn

You'll pull it over your shoulders,

Ruffle your beard

You'll pull your hat down,

You will become quiet

On someone else's shoulders...

(p. 153)

Koltsov is extremely characterized by the frequent use of diminutive speech forms, which are most consistent with the folk style:

The sadness and melancholy fell heavy

On a twisted head...

(p. 156)

Take my awesome thing...

(p. 169)

Proverbs and sayings, organically interspersed into the speech of his lyrical hero, are typical for Koltsov’s songs. For example, in “The Bitter Valley” (1837):

Without love, without happiness

I wander around the world:

I'll get rid of trouble -

I will meet with grief!

(p. 137)

The significance of Koltsov in the history of Russian literature is determined by his indissoluble connection with the people, which, according to Belinsky, found vivid expression in the poet’s artistic reproduction of peasant life and the character traits, mindset and feelings of ordinary Russian people. It was these most important aspects of Koltsov’s creativity that had the most fruitful impact on Russian poetry.

Based on the literary and aesthetic concept of Belinsky, the revolutionary democrats of the 60s. considered Koltsov’s poetic heritage in accordance with the new and increased demands put forward by the era for a comprehensive reflection of life in its essential manifestations.

In his first statements about Koltsov (1858), Dobrolyubov defines him as a poet who, by the very essence of his talent, was close to the people. At the same time, the critic directly and, perhaps, even overly categorically pointed out the insufficient connection between Koltsov’s works and socio-political issues. According to Dobrolyubov, “Koltsov lived the life of the people, understood its sorrows and joys, and knew how to express them. But his poetry lacks a comprehensive view; The simple class of the people appears in solitude from common interests...”

Dobrolyubov was able to highlight and highly appreciate that “real healthy” side of Koltsov’s poems, which, according to the critic, needed to be “continued and expanded.” Dobrolyubov emphasized the inextricable connection between advanced Russian poetry and Koltsovo traditions. Saltykov-Shchedrin also wrote about the significance of these traditions for Russian literature: “The entire number of modern writers who have devoted their work to the fruitful development of the phenomena of Russian life are a number of successors to Koltsov’s work.”

Koltsov’s artistic heritage was especially dear to N. A. Nekrasov. Speaking about Koltsov as a truly original poet, he put him on a par with our greatest poets - Pushkin, Lermontov, Zhukovsky, Krylov.

In Nekrasov’s work, the theme of labor introduced into poetry by Koltsov found a further continuation. Nekrasov gave her the political edge that Koltsov lacked. Nekrasov was undoubtedly close to the folk view of the physical and spiritual beauty of working people expressed in Koltsov’s songs.

Koltsov’s experience largely prepared Nekrasov’s appeal to folklore, to the living colloquial speech of peasants. Nekrasov, to some extent, can be considered a successor of Koltsov in the field of versification. Very indicative in this regard is the poem “Who Lives Well in Rus',” in which Koltsov’s predominantly iambic trimeter with dactylic endings is widely used.

The tradition of Koltsov is also noticeable in the work of the poet of the Nekrasov camp, I. S. Nikitin. Relying on the artistic experience of his predecessors and, above all, Koltsov, he turned directly to the life of the common people, drawing themes and images from it. In Nikitin’s poems (“Made noisy, went wild…”, “Song of the Bobyl”, “Inheritance”, “A rogue merchant was driving from the fair...”, “Get rid of melancholy...”, etc.) there is a clear orientation towards the folk song principle, which is so Koltsov is fully presented.

In line with Koltsov’s traditions, the work of the democratic poet I.Z. Surikov also develops. The influence of the author of “Mower” is felt in such well-known works as “Eh, you, share ...”, “Are you a head, little head ...”, “In the steppe”, etc. Surikov’s poem “In a green garden there is a nightingale ...” is a development of the poetic the motive of the female share, developed by Koltsov in his song “Oh, why me...”.

Traces of Koltsov’s influence are also noticeable in the works of songwriters S. F. Ryskin (1860–1895), E. A. Razorenov (1819–1891), N. A. Panov (1861–1906), and others. Problematics and poetics of Koltsov’s poems found further development in the creative practice of S. D. Drozhzhin: the theme of peasant labor reflected in his poems genetically goes back to “The Plowman’s Song” and “The Harvest.”

Koltsov had a particularly great and fruitful influence on the artistic development of Sergei Yesenin. In the poem “Oh, Rus', flap your wings...” the poet directly writes about himself as a follower of Koltsov. Lyrical motifs and images of the Russian songbook have a direct echo in the poems of M. Isakovsky, A. Tvardovsky, N. Rylenkov and others Soviet poets, whose work is deeply and organically connected with folk song.

An innovative artist, A. V. Koltsov managed to create such original, deeply national examples of democratic poetry that his name deservedly took one of the first places among the remarkable Russian poets.

11th grade student Anna Nosenko

The gift of creativity is given to a select few, nature's favorites, and it is not given to them equally. There are artists whose works can be given one or another character by the circumstances of their lives, on whose creative talent they have no influence: these are artists-geniuses.

They rule over circumstances and always sit deeper and further than the line drawn for them by fate, and, under the general external forms, characteristic of their age and their people, manifest ideas common to all centuries and all peoples. The creations of geniuses are eternal, like nature, because they are based on the laws of creativity, which are eternal and unshakable, like the laws of nature, and whose code is hidden in the depths of the creative soul, because in them the great idea of man and humanity is manifested, always understandable, always accessible to our human feeling.

We honor A.V. Koltsov as such a poet-genius

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The originality of Koltsov's poetry.

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A.V. Koltsov is the son of the Russian people, the genius of his work.
The nationality of Koltsov’s poetry:

a) fortitude and power of the Russian character in Koltsov’s poetry;

b) Koltsov’s originality;

c) poetry of agricultural labor;

d) Koltsov’s heroes are people of the soil;

e) “Khutorok” is a Russian ballad, “Khutorok” is a drama.

3) Writers about Koltsov. Koltsov and modernity.

The gift of creativity is given to a select few of nature's favorites, and it is not given to them equally. There are artists whose works can be given one or another character by the circumstances of their lives, on whose creative talent they have no influence: these are artists-geniuses.

They rule over circumstances and always sit deeper and further than the line drawn for them by fate, and, under the general external forms characteristic of their age and their people, they manifest ideas common to all centuries and all peoples. The creations of geniuses are eternal, like nature, because they are based on the laws of creativity, which are eternal and unshakable, like the laws of nature, and whose code is hidden in the depths of the creative soul, because in them the great idea of man and humanity is manifested, always understandable, always accessible to our human feeling.

We honor A.V. Koltsov as such a poet-genius. From this point of view we look at his talent; he has a small but true talent, a shallow and weak gift of creativity, but genuine and unstrained, and this is not entirely common, it does not happen very often. Koltsov A.V. belongs to the ranks of self-taught poets, with the only difference being that he has true talent.

Koltsov is a Voronezh tradesman, a prasol by trade. Having completed his education at the parish school, that is, having learned the primer and the four rules of arithmetic, he began to help his elderly father in small trade transactions. Reading Pushkin and Delvig for the first time revealed to him the world for which his soul yearned. Meanwhile, his household affairs went on as usual; the prose of life replaced poetic dreams; he could not completely indulge in either reading or fantasy. One satisfied sense of duty rewarded him and gave him strength to endure labors alien to his calling.

How was it possible for talent to mature here? How could free, energetic verse be developed? And nomadic life, and rural pictures, and love, and doubts alternately occupied and disturbed him; but not all the various sensations that support the life of a talent that has already matured, has already cultivated its strength, lay a burden on this inexperienced soul; she could not bury them within herself and did not find a form to give them external existence. These few data explain both the advantages and disadvantages, and the nature of Koltsov’s poems. A few of them were printed from a large notebook, not all of them were printed of equal value; but they are all curious, like the facts of his life.

WITH greatest strength, Koltsov’s talent was expressed in its entirety in Russian song. Early on he felt an unconscious desire to express his feelings in the style of Russian song, which so charmed him in the mouths of the common people. Apart from songs created by the people themselves and therefore called “folk”, before Koltsov we had no artistic folk songs, although many Russian poets tried their hand at this kind. Russian songs could only be created by a Russian person, the son of the people... In the songs, both the content and the form are purely Russian. Koltsov was born for the poetry he created. He was the son of the people in the full meaning of the word. The life among which he was brought up and grew up was the same peasant life, although somewhat higher than it. Koltsov grew up among the steppes and peasants. Not in words, but in deeds, he sympathized with the common people in their sorrows, joys and pleasures. He knew his life, his needs, grief and joy, the prose and poetry of his life - he knew them not by hearsay, not from books, not through study, but because he himself, both by nature and by his position, was completely Russian Human.

It was impossible to merge one’s life more closely with the life of the people, as Koltsov did by itself. He was pleased and touched by the rye, rustling with a ripe ear, and he looked at the alien field with the love of a peasant who looks at his field, watered by his own sweat. And therefore, his songs boldly included bast shoes, and torn caftans, and unkempt beards and old onuchi - and all this dirt turned into pure gold of poetry for him. The motive of many of his songs is either need and poverty, or the struggle for a penny, or lived happiness, or complaints about fate-stepmother. In one song, a peasant sits down at the table to think about how he can live alone; in the other, the peasant expressed his thoughts about what he should decide on - whether to live among strangers, or to quarrel with his old father at home, to tell fairy tales to the children, to get sick, to grow old. So, he says, even though it’s not the same, it could be so, but who will marry a beggar? “Where is my excess buried?” And this reflection resolves into sarcastic irony.

Wherever you look, our steppe is everywhere,

On the mountains there are forests, gardens, houses;

At the bottom of the sea there are piles of gold,

The clouds are coming - the outfit is coming!

But if where the matter is about the grief and despair of the Russian person, there Koltsov’s poetry reaches the lofty level, there it reveals a terrible power of expression, the amazing power of images.

Sadness fell - heavy melancholy

On the twisted head;

Death torment torments the soul,

The soul asks to leave the body...

And at the same time, what strength of spirit and will is there in despair:

On the night under a storm I saddled my horse,

Set off on a journey without a road -

Mourn grief, amuse yourself with life,

To recount the evil fate...

(“Betrayal of the betrothed”).

In the song “Oh, why me” there is a storm of despair of a strong male soul, powerfully relying on itself. Here is the sad cooing of a turtle dove, a deep, soul-rending complaint of a tender female soul, condemned to hopeless suffering...

The poet must be original, without knowing how, and if he must care about anything, it is not about originality, but about the truth of expression: originality will come by itself if there is genius in the poet’s talent. Koltsov possesses such originality to the highest degree.

Koltsov’s best songs represent an amazing wealth of the most luxurious, most original images in the highest degree of poetry. From this side, his language is as surprising as it is inimitable. Where, from whom, besides Koltsov, will we find such turns of phrase, expressions, images, with which, for example, two songs of Likhach Kudryavich are strewn, so to speak?

The white chest is worried,

What a deep river -

It won't throw sand out of the bottom.

There is fire in the face, fog in the eyes...

The steppe is darkening, the dawn is burning...

If Koltsov had only written such plays as “Advice of an Elder”, “Peasant Feast”, “Two Farewells”, “Tiff”, “Ring”, “Don’t Shimmy, You’re a Rye”, “Dare”, etc., - and then in it would be impossible not to recognize his talent as something ordinary. But what can we say about such plays as “Harvest”, “Mower”, “Bitter Share”, “Time for Love”, “The Last Kiss”, “The Wind Blows in the Field”, “Separation”, “The Sadness of a Girl”, “Duma” falcon"? - Such plays speak loudly for themselves, and whoever sees great talent in them, there is no need to waste words - they don’t talk about colors with the blind. As for the plays: “Forest”, “Oh, Why Me”, “Betrayal of the Betrothed”, “Flight”, “The Sun is Shining”, “Khutorok”, “Night” - these plays belong not only to Koltsov’s best plays, but also among the remarkable works of Russian poetry.

In general, we will say, in terms of energy of lyricism, only Lermontov is equal to Koltsov among our poets; in terms of complete originality, Koltsov can only be compared with Gogol.

At one time, Gleb Uspensky wrote about the main all-encompassing and all-pervasive beginning of life - about the power of the earth. In Uspensky, the concept of “power of the earth” is also revealed as a special nature of relations with nature, so that the word “earth” essentially turns out to be synonymous with the word “nature”. Such relationships are based on the special nature of labor - agricultural. As one of the main arguments, Uspensky cited Koltsov’s poetry as a poet of agricultural labor: “The poetry of agricultural labor - empty word. In Russian literature there is a writer who cannot be called anything other than a poet of agricultural labor - exclusively. This is Koltsov.”

It was the idea of such work that became the main idea of Koltsov’s poetry. Koltsov has a poem that perhaps most fully expresses this “idea” of agricultural labor. This is the “Plowman’s Song”, memorized and celebrated for many generations. “In all Russian literature there is hardly anything, even from afar, that resembles this song, making such a powerful impression on the soul,” wrote Saltykov-Shchedrin.

Well, trudge, Sivka,

Arable land, tithes,

Let's whiten the iron

Oh damp earth.

Beauty Dawn

It caught fire in the sky

From the big forest

The sun is coming out.

Koltsovsky's hero represents the entire labor process as a whole. What is this picture of labor itself in “The Ploughman’s Song”? Looks like plowing? Like sitting down? And threshing? All at once.

Because the plowman is both a sower and a harvester.

Fun I'm getting along

Harrow and plow,

I'm preparing the telecha,

I pour grains.

I look merrily

On the threshing floor, on the stacks,

I milk and winnow...

Well! Hurry, Sivka!

The plowman plows, but knows how he will sow. And he knows, without an abstract mind, how he will collect the sow, reap, and thresh. He walks through the arable land, but sees a threshing floor and stacks. He works on plowing, but thinks about rest. And not at the end of the furrow traversed, but at the end of all work:

Our sickle will shine here,

The braids will ring here;

The rest will be sweet

On heavy sheaves!

In “The Ploughman’s Song” there is not just the poetry of labor in general, it is the poetry of labor that is spiritualized, organic, of a universal, but not abstract nature, included in nature, almost in space.

Carrying a spiritual principle, the work itself is joyful and cheerful: “It’s fun in the arable land... I’m getting along merrily... I’m looking at it merrily...” This work is organically connected with nature, because spiritualized nature is also felt as an organism. The images here amaze with an almost childlike spontaneity - already in the twentieth century, Bunin talked about how Chekhov admired the definition: “The sea was big.” The epithet delighted sophisticated writers with its absolute artlessness and spontaneity. For Koltsov, such a “childish” epithet is completely natural:

Beauty Dawn

It caught fire in the sky

From the big forest

The sun is coming out.

This quiet song has a beneficial and life-giving effect on the soul; it makes you love both its creator and this whole crowd of workers about whom it speaks. One can feel how much strength and goodness is sown in this crowd, how many good opportunities it contains within itself!

All of Koltsov’s poems, for which the subject was the hard work of a peasant, breathe the same sad sympathy for the worker, the same love for nature. Take, for example, the song “Harvest.”

And from the mountain of heaven

The sun is looking,

Drank some water

The earth is full.

To the fields, gardens

On the green, rural people

Can't get enough of:

Rural people

God's Grace

Waited with trepidation

And prayer.

Koltsov has no landscapes. He has the whole earth, the whole world at once. Here, at one glance, everything is captured at once: fields and mountains, sun and clouds, thunderstorms and rainbows, “all directions of the white world” - a cosmic spectacle.

Everything lives in this holistic, not separate, not separately felt world. This picture is spiritualized, humanized. But there are no preconceived comparisons with the human world. This world lives on its own, not only animatedly, but also sincerely:

Black cloud

I frowned

What were you thinking?

As if I remembered

Your homeland...

And we believe this perception, because it is not only the author’s, but is enshrined in forms developed by the eternal folk consciousness of people who felt a kinship with this world, who felt themselves to be part of the cosmos. Their “cherished thoughts” awaken “along with spring,” along with nature. Therefore, although the poem is called “Harvest,” it is not only about the harvest, but about the entire agricultural cycle included in the natural cycle, for the work of people directly coincides with the “work” of nature and is part of it.

Everywhere the person is in the foreground; everywhere nature serves him, everywhere she pleases and calms him, but does not absorb or enslave him. This is precisely why Koltsov is great, and his talent is powerful, because he never becomes attached to nature for nature’s sake, but everywhere he sees a person soaring above it. Such a broad, reasonable understanding of man’s relationship with nature can be found almost in Koltsovo alone.

Koltsov's heroes are people of the soil. They are strengthened in work, in nature, in history. This is where their strength and power are determined. In the poem “Mower” the hero knows his ancestry:

Do I have a shoulder -

Wider than grandfather;

Chest high -

My mother.

On my face

Paternal blood

Lit in milk

Red dawn.

Mother, father, grandfather... But in fact, the pedigree of the same mower is much wider than his immediate family, his own family. That’s why Koltsov’s hero is deprived of names. In this poem it’s just Mower. The usual popular phrase “blood and milk” has become an image. The very heroism of Koltsov’s heroes is natural. But this is because they no longer work even in nature, but as if in nature itself. Such is the heroism of Kosar, manifested in work. The steppe itself, into which Mower goes and which he mows, is endless and without edge.

Koltsov has its own geography - almost the entire earth is its steppe:

Oh, my steppe,

The steppe is free,

You are wide, steppe,

Spread out,

To the Black Sea

Move forward!

But this scale is also the definition of a person who came to “visit” her, walking along her, almost like a fairy-tale hero:

Get itchy, shoulder!

Swing your hand!

Smell it in your face

Wind from noon!

Refresh, excite

The steppe is spacious!

Buzz, scythe,

Like a swarm of bees!

Mologney, braid,

Sparkle all around!

His beloved matches Kosar. Because it “matches”, it is good and significant. And it seems to be defined traditionally: “white face”, “scarlet dawn”.

The face is white -

Scarlet dawn,

Cheeks are full,

Eyes dark

Well done

Out of my mind.

Not only Kosar works in “Kosar” - the poetic language itself works powerfully and with inspiration. At the end of the work, everything is moderated, everything is returned to its real everyday framework:

I'll grab some kopecks,

I will outline the stacks;

The Cossack gives me

Fistfuls of money.

Household, but not everyday. And therefore, payment is still presented as “a handful of money,” as a “treasury,” and even as a “golden treasury.” Koltsov’s money is always poeticized: wealth, treasury. In "Kosar":

I return to the village -

Directly to the headman:

Didn't make me feel sorry

His poverty -

So I'll make you feel sorry

Golden treasury!...

Koltsov's songs express the elements of national folk life and folk national character, these are very synthetic songs where the epic is combined with the lyrics and often turns into drama. I really like the famous poem “Khutorok”. Koltsov himself called “Khutorok” a Russian ballad. Much here comes from the song and unites “Khutorok” with it:

Across the river, on the mountain,

The green forest is noisy;

Under the mountain, across the river,

The farm is worth it.

The landscape of Koltsov itself is extremely simple, not detailed, not written down. They don’t look at it, they don’t get used to it, they live in it.

And the heroes in “Khutorka” are songlike and unambiguous: just a “young widow” and a “fish”, a “merchant”, a “daring fellow” - contenders for her - rivals. “Khutorok” is essentially a “small opera” because it is based on a truly dramatic situation with the death of the heroes, although there is no story about this death itself, about the murder. It's not about the murder itself. It arises on the basis of a broader, very Russian, very national one. That is why Koltsov separates “Khutorok” from dramas and calls it a Russian ballad. There is one beginning, one element in this “Russian ballad”. This is a riot. Take a walk, no matter what. This word is here with each of them.

And the fisherman:

Take a walk, spend the night

He sailed to the farm.

And the young widow:

Tomorrow, my friend, with you

I'm happy to walk all day.

And the merchant:

And I came across a chance -

Walk in good health!

The word is not accidental. This is not fun at all, but precisely a party “by chance” of Russian people who fell into debauchery in spite of everything: agreement, weather, enemy. This is a revelry, going on under the banner of menacing fatal omens, taking place under the sign of death, a disastrous revelry.

The ballad “Khutorok”, “Khutorok” is a “drama”, this is also a song - a dashing song - an explosion. The music here is dance-like, almost without chant. That's why I like her. The songfulness is poured out in “Khutorka”.

Across the river, on the mountain...

Under the mountain, across the river...

This night is midnight...

I wanted to be there to visit...

Hug, kiss...

It is also expressed in proverbial and song formulas:

There is grief - don’t worry,

There is something to do - work

And I came across a chance -

Walk in good health!

And after the drama has taken place and has passed, the general musical song element continues to sound, lives even with ellipses, not only concluding, but also continuing, leading to infinity:

And since then in the village

No one lives;

Only one nightingale

Sings songs loudly...

Koltsov is great precisely because of his deep comprehension of all the smallest details of Russian common life, because of his sympathy for his instincts and aspirations, which permeate all his best poems.

In this respect, Russian literature does not present a personality equal to him.

Koltsov comes to our time in its urgent and acute problems: national consciousness in its connection with the historical, especially folk-historical tradition, the village as a world now experiencing a colossal restructuring, nature and man on a new basis reaching its global sense... - all this, and much more, appeals to Koltsov. And all this, one way or another, is already understood or guessed now by poets, many and different:

“...I am convinced of only one thing: as long as the Russian language is alive, Koltsov lives on a par with “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign” and “ Bronze Horseman»…»

(Pavel Antokolsky).

“Koltsov will always live, like Rus', like Yesenin, a poet, unthinkable without Koltsov.”

(Evgeny Vinokurov).

“...By 2068, the family poetic tree, the ancestor of which was Koltsov, will grow wider... Through Yesenin, they will also turn to Koltsov, for whom time works in this sense.”

(Vyacheslav Shoshin).

“All this - tears of melancholy and loneliness, and the feeling of Russian prowess, and prayerful delight in the beauty of nature, in front of the secrets of the worldview - everything was needed by the soul, everything was necessary. And I found all this in the poems of Alexei Koltsov.”

(Alexander Yashin).

Koltsov’s language is rich and figurative. His “Songs” have much in common with the poetics of this genre, and with the best songs of his predecessors - Yu.A. Neledinsky-Meletsky, A.F. Merzlyakova, F. Glinka, A. Delviga. Like them, Koltsov uses traditional themes(beauty native nature, unhappy love, glorification of the valor of the Russian man). The artistic features of Koltsov’s creativity are closely related to the style of Russian poetry of the 1810-1820s: these are traditional phrases (“crown of thorns”, “languid gaze”, “fatal loss”, “passionate smile”) and periphrases (“philomela voice” , “zephyr sways lazily in its groves”).

Proximity to folklore, which he studied, recording folk songs, proverbs and sayings - all this was also reflected in Koltsov’s poetic dictionary. “Blue sea”, “red maiden”, “arc-rainbow”, “full cup”, “bitter tears” (“combustible”), “violent winds”, “red dawn” are constant epithets in his poems.

But Koltsov himself creates his own epithets, and they seem to be taken from folk poetry:

Storms are terrible, thunderous,
The daring soul is not pleased.

“Longing for freedom”, 1839

Always watery and annoying
Stupid idle chatter.

"Autumn", 1828

But here is the original paraphrase “I don’t need red dust” (and it’s about money!) “Message from V.G.O”, 1829.

And how poetic and original Koltsov’s comparisons are:

Migratory nightingale
Youth has flown by
Wave in bad weather
Joy burst forth.

"Bitter Share", 1837

and contrasts:

He's rich, I'm without a house -
The whole world is my chambers!

"Terem", 1829

Koltsov’s poems are real folk speech:

Don't be born rich
And be born curly:
At the behest of the pike
Everything is ready for you.

“The first song of Likhach Kudryavich”, 1837

Admiring folk poetry, Koltsov did not imitate it, but developed and enriched it. His songs are not pastiche, but original works. It has been correctly noted that only songs created by the people themselves can compare with Koltsov’s songs in the richness of language and images.

Koltsov reworks folk proverbs and sayings in his own way; he handles them surprisingly freely, and under his pen they acquire a new meaning:

I'll get rid of trouble -
I will meet with grief.

"Bitter Share", 1837

Living a century is not a field
Walk behind the plow

In the golden time
The curls curl like hops;
With grief and sadness
The fair-haired ones split their hair.

“The second song of Likhach Kudryavich”, 1837

Everything is constant - just overseas,
And because we are not there.

"Consolation", 1830

I'm without a shirt
Born into the world!

"Mower", 1836

I'd like a little head
He took him to the beating.

"Song", 1830

They tore off the smile -
The radiance of the soul.

"The Silent Poet", 1836

Here's a popular saying:

...My horse is daring
Have you tripped more than once?
Or the cowardly hare
Is my path overrun?

“On the departure of D.A. Kashkina...", 1829

Words and expressions of lively colloquial speech play a big role in Koltsov’s poems (bad weather, didn’t need a penny, talk about people, the heart was in a twitch, a turn away from the gate, a little less, a little grief, unkind people, peeping eyes).

The popular phrase is “free will” - and we no longer notice that this is a tautology. Koltsov creates his own original phrases (he often resorts to repetitions and is not afraid of tautology): “Without talent - where is talent”, “fortunately - you will lose happiness”, “with bitter grief of tears”, “so tender and tender”.

And here is a peculiar rhyme:

Your burning, passionate kiss! -
Come again, kiss the sufferer!

“My friend, my dear angel...”, 1831

One of Koltsov’s favorite poetic devices is synonymous or antonymic repetition (“I’ll fall in love, I’ll look at you”; “Cover, dove, kiss, caress”; “Make way, disperse”).

Also V.G. Belinsky admired the peculiarity of verbal forms in Koltsov’s poetry (steppe - “spread out, moved forward”), emphasizing that the Russian language is unusually rich in expressing natural phenomena.

Koltsov introduced a new hero into poetry - the Russian peasant. These are not just conditional “villagers”, they already have proper names. This is not only Likhach Kudryavich, but also Pavel (“The Marriage of Pavel”), Grunyushka (“Mower”), Ivan Kuzmich (“Time of Love”), Kuzma (“Reflections of a Villager”). Koltsov showed all the versatility of the people's character - love of will, hard work, wisdom in life, the whole huge and diverse world of human feelings. The sincerity of the poet, the truthfulness of his heroes, the lyricism of his songs - all this made Koltsov a truly national poet. Surprisingly accurately noted V.G. Belinsky: “...it is impossible to imitate Koltsov: it is easier to become like him, an original poet, than to imitate him in some way. His poetry was born with him, and its secret died with him.”

Koltsov's creative heritage is small - about 150 poems. But over 700 songs and romances were created based on his poems by such famous composers as M. Glinka, M. Mussorgsky, N. Rimsky-Korsakov, S. Rachmaninov. For some Koltsovo songs, music was written 20 to 30 times.

Questions about the work of A.V. Koltsova

In what genres did Koltsov’s poetry develop?
What genres brought him fame?
How do Koltsov’s songs differ from the “folk” songs of his literary predecessors (A.F. Merzlyakov, A.A. Delvig)?
Why is Koltsov called an original folk poet?
What poetic devices did Koltsov most often use in his lyrics?
Is it possible to agree with the opinion of V.G. Belinsky, that “it is impossible to imitate Koltsov”?
What is unique about the depiction of pictures of native nature in Koltsov’s poetry?
What new did Koltsov bring to Russian poetry? into poetic language?
Do you agree with the opinion of V.G. Belinsky, that the issues raised by Koltsov in “Dumas” are higher, more significant than their solution?
How do you understand the words of V.G. Belinsky about Koltsov: “...For him, living meant feeling and thinking, striving and learning”?

The creative activity of Alexei Vasilyevich Koltsov (1809–1842) is one of the most striking manifestations of what was happening in the 1830s. democratization of the ranks of writers, which, as Pushkin noted, was supposed to have “important consequences.”
In Koltsov’s poetry, for the first time, the spiritual world of the peasant was revealed from within, his deep and genuine humanity, trampled under foot by serfdom. Thus, Koltsov’s work seemed to reveal with his own eyes what, after the poet’s death, Belinsky was still forced to prove and defend, saying: “Isn’t a man a man? – But what could be interesting about a rude, uneducated person? - Like what? “His soul, mind, heart, passions, inclinations - in a word, everything is the same as in an educated person.”
Having become the first poet of the peasant world in the history of Russian poetry, Koltsov thereby expanded the social boundaries of artistically depicted reality. His work was a new and significant step forward towards the further rapprochement of art with the people.
And before Koltsov there were poets who wrote about the peasant. Even in the first decades of the 19th century. - a very remarkable symptom - a number of so-called self-taught peasant poets appear (F. Slepushkin, E. Alipanov, M. Sukhanov, etc.). But in their poems, the nationality was, according to Belinsky’s definition, purely decorative (4, 160). Drawing idyllic pictures of “rural life”, they did not go further than rehashes of book poetry of that time.
Koltsov’s poetic creativity was directly related to the advanced trends of Russian social thought and literature of those years. Mastering folk song traditions and relying on the achievements of contemporary writers, Koltsov managed to find his own voice, his own methods of poetic mastery. It is not without reason that, speaking about Koltsov as an original artist of the word and determining his place among the poets of the 30s - early 40s, Belinsky argued that “after the name of Lermontov, the most brilliant poetic name in modern Russian poetry is the name of Koltsov” (4, 179). Later, Chernyshevsky would give the same high praise to Koltsov. Characterizing the post-Pushkin period in the development of Russian poetry, he wrote: “Koltsov and Lermontov appeared. All the old celebrities have faded in comparison to these new ones”; and for the progressive people of Chernyshevsky’s era this was indeed the case.
Koltsov’s creative image is inextricably linked with the peculiarities of his biography. It is not enough to see in it only a special case, a personal drama of an artist forced to submit to unfavorable everyday circumstances. Koltsov’s bitter fate crystallized the general tragedy of the people’s life of his time.
From his adolescence, Koltsov knew the hardships of life. His father, a Voronezh tradesman, strove to raise his children in his own image and likeness. A rude and domineering man, he took the future poet from the second grade of the district school and turned him into his clerk. Throughout his short life, Koltsov was forced by the will of his father to engage in his commercial affairs.
The native nature of the Voronezh region became a real school for Koltsov. He spent most of the year on endless rides on horseback. The black earth steppe with its open spaces and villages taught the poet to think broadly and freely, to see the core, deep beginning in people. The steppe became truly the poetic cradle of Koltsov.
N.V. Stankevich played an important role in Koltsov’s biography. Possessing a highly developed aesthetic taste, he immediately grasped the original character of Koltso’s talent. Through Stankevich, acquaintances were made with V. A. Zhukovsky, V. F. Odoevsky, P. A. Vyazemsky and others. At one of Zhukovsky’s literary “Saturdays” in early 1836, Koltsov met with Pushkin.
It is difficult to overestimate the role of the critic of the democrat Belinsky in the fate of Koltsov. The meeting in 1831, and then the rapprochement and, finally, the closest friendship with him, which lasted until the last days of the poet, largely determined the meaning and content of Koltsov’s entire creative life.
Belinsky for many years was the first reader, connoisseur and editor of Koltsov's works. He took part in the preparation for publication of the first collection of poems by Koltsov (1835). He was also the initiator and compiler of the subsequent publication of the poet’s works, already posthumous (1846), providing it with an extensive introduction “On the life and writings of Koltsov.” This is the first summary article about the activities of the poet Prasol and his first detailed biography.
Belinsky was not just a personal friend for Koltsov, but an ideological leader. They were brought together primarily by social and spiritual kinship. We have the right to consider both as predecessors of the galaxy of “new people” of the 1860s. Koltsov appeared in the world as if responding to Belinsky’s passionate calls for nationality in literature.
Delvig, Vyazemsky, and F. Glinka have a certain influence on the young poet. Koltsov highly appreciates Venevitinov’s work. In an eight-line poem dedicated to Venevitinov (1830), Koltsov expressed warm sympathy for the young poet in his secret longing for the “good” and “high.” Close to Koltsov and Ryleev. The lines of Koltsov’s poem “Earthly Happiness” (1830) are painted in those civic patriotic tones that were characteristic of Ryleev’s “Thoughts”. Even the very nature of exposing social injustices, not to mention the direct use of intonation, rhythm and word usage, makes one recall some poems from the Volynsky Duma.
And yet, in the development of Koltsov as a poet, the decisive role belongs to Pushkin.
The young Koltsov’s attraction to Pushkin’s poetry, to the deeply expressed in it, according to Belinsky, “the inner beauty of man and the humanity that cherishes the soul” (7, 339) was noticeably manifested in the poem “The Nightingale” (1831). By reproducing not only the theme, but also the sound side and the general stylistic and metrical structure of Pushkin’s poem “The Nightingale and the Rose,” the author apparently wanted to emphasize his dependence on the work of his beloved and great poet. However, the romance already reveals that Kol’tsov’s own soulful lyricism, that special musicality that will be characteristic of the poet’s mature mastery. It is not surprising that the poem “The Nightingale” was set to music by A. Glazunov, N. Rimsky Korsakov, A. Rubinstein, A. Gurilev and many other composers. V.V. Stasov ranked it among the “astoundingly beautiful and poetic” romances.
Mastering Pushkin's poetry helps Koltsov to work more seriously and independently on the style of his works. Getting rid of romance phraseology, elegiac formulas that filled his early poems (“I was with her,” “Come to me,” 1829; “What are you for, tender heart...”, 1830, etc.), Koltsov strives for simplicity and clarity of poetic speech.
Koltsov’s artistic sympathies are extremely constant. This applies equally to the content and poetics of his works. If we exclude the first experiments, which bear the stamp of belated sentimentalism, and the poems “for the occasion,” then everything else clearly falls into two dissimilar parts. One is a reflection on the eternal problems of human existence, the other is an image of a peasant soul. The genres – “thought” and song – are chosen accordingly.
Turning to Koltsov’s philosophical themes may seem artificial. But it was precisely the spontaneous desire to touch upon the secrets to which the merchant-philistine circle was indifferent that pushed the poet Prasol into the world of abstract ideas. Let us also not forget that in the conditions of the 30s. passion for philosophy, mainly German, took on the character of a hidden public protest: after all, thought is free, it cannot be banned!
There is no particular pretension to philosophy in Koltsov’s “thoughts.” They captivate not with the depth of penetration into the essence of fundamental ideological issues, not with their “intelligence,” but, on the contrary, with their spontaneity, even some kind of naivety. Here is the thought “Man” (1836). These are more likely emotions spilling out from the depths of the soul than a strict reasoning about the contradictory nature of human actions. In “The Kingdom of Thought” (1837) we encounter a purely artistic attempt to present one of the provisions widespread in German metaphysics about the existence of a certain absolute - the infinite spiritual fundamental principle of the universe.
The artist clearly suppressed the philosopher in Koltsov. “Dumas” now retain a more historical interest - as evidence of the intense intellectual quest of the author of “Mower”, as a kind of monument to the social and aesthetic life of the 1830s.
The pinnacle of Koltsov’s creative achievements are the songs he created. Poems written in imitation of Russian folk songs appear in Russian poetry back in the 18th century. and became widespread in the first third of the 19th century. At this time, “Russian songs” by Merzlyakov, Delvig, N. Ibragimov, Shalikov, Glebov, Tsyganov, Obodovsky, Alexander Korsak and others were published and entered into the mass repertoire.
Merzlyakov, Delvig, Tsyganov and other immediate predecessors of Koltsov played an undoubted and positive role in the development of the genre of Russian book songs. Compared to the sentimentalist poets of the late 18th century. they achieved more significant results both in conveying the hero’s emotional experiences and in mastering the stylistic, intonation and rhythmic features of oral folk poetry. However, the work of even prominent masters of Russian song did not go further than external borrowing of motifs, images, and stylistic means already developed in folklore. And this could not but lead to artificiality and imitation, which is felt in the very language of the songs they composed. Some of them became popular, but their authors shunned the prose of people’s working life and spoke “only about feelings, and mostly tender and sad feelings.”
Exceptional penetration into the very depths of the folk spirit and folk psychology allowed Koltsov, as Belinsky said about him, to reveal in his songs “everything good and beautiful that, like an embryo, like a possibility, lives in the nature of the Russian peasant” (9, 532).
Koltsov revealed to Russian literature its true hero - a modest peasant on whose shoulders the whole of Russia rested. Not an invented, but a natural peasant finally took his rightful place in the gallery of poetic characters. It turned out that the soul of a simple person in a moral sense is not a dead desert, as was previously thought, that it is capable not only of vain, low passions, but also of sublime feelings. The serf peasant is shown by Koltsov not as a slave and an impersonal instrument of production, but as an ethically and aesthetically valuable individuality.
The lyrical hero of Koltsov’s poems was the forerunner of Turgenev’s peasants from “Notes of a Hunter.” Without him, the emergence of accusatory Nekrasov poetry would have been impossible.
The true nationalism of Koltsov’s creativity was most clearly manifested in his songs about peasant agricultural labor. The poet's innovation was reflected here primarily in his ability to express the people's point of view on work as a source of life, spiritual greatness, and joy. The hero of “The Plowman’s Song” (1831) “merrily” gets along with a harrow and a plow. In the poem “Harvest” (1835), the creaking of carts at harvest time is likened to music, and the stacks on the threshing floors are likened to princes.
The attitude towards work determines the physical and moral beauty that the Koltsovo peasants, for example, the hero of “Mower” (1836):
Do I have a shoulder -
Wider than grandfather;
Chest high -
My mother.
On my face
Paternal blood
Lit in milk
Red dawn.
Strength, dexterity, and passion for the very progress of the work (“Get itchy, shoulder! Swing, arm!”) reveal that “poetry of labor,” in which Gleb Uspensky saw one of the most characteristic features of Koltsov’s work. It is with difficulty that Koltsov’s lyrical hero connects the concepts of the ethical and the beautiful, thereby revealing the essential aspects of folk life and national self-awareness.
In most cases, the Koltsovo young men are seduced not so much by the practical result as by the process of labor itself, its inner beauty, the possibility of expressing one’s “I” in it. Hard physical labor, which was treated by the educated classes as pitiful and slavish - or, at best, aroused compassion for the plowman - under the pen of Koltsov the songwriter acquired a completely new property. It became that part of people's life where the latent craving of the farmer for spiritual activity found outlet. It is not the principle of immediate “benefit” that explains the peasant’s readiness to poeticize his everyday activities and the formidable forces of nature. Here the original artistic inclinations of the peasant soul made themselves felt.
Koltsov’s innovation is clearly revealed in those of his songs that tell about the difficult living conditions of the peasant. The poet was able to talk about the poor man with such emotional sorrow, with such sympathy, like none of his predecessors. Moreover, in a number of Koltsov’s poems on this topic, trends that will be characteristic of democratic poets of the 60s are already outlined. Particularly noteworthy in this regard are Koltsov’s songs “The Bitter Share” (1837), “The Thoughts of a Villager” (1837), “The Second Song of Likhach Kudryavich” (1837), “Crossroads” (1840), “The Poor Man’s Share” (1841), etc. The author’s lyrical voice, warmed by warmth and sincere sympathy for a disadvantaged person, is heard in the poem “Village Trouble” (1838), ending with the expressive lines:
Since then I have been waiting with grief
I wander around strange corners,
I work for a day's work,
Then I wash myself with blood...
(p. 162)
At the same time, the poor man in Koltsovo’s songs not only complains and laments about his bitter fate. He knows how to give her a daring challenge and boldly meets any adversity. The hero of the poem “Treason of the Betrothed” (1838), shocked by what happened, sets off on the road:
Mourn grief, amuse yourself with life,
To recount the evil fate...
(p. 156)
Koltsov’s hero, being an exponent of the most essential features of the Russian character, is patient, persistent, and courageous. If misfortune befalls him, then, according to Belinsky, it is natural for him not to become dissolved in sadness, not to fall “under the burden of despair itself... and if he does fall, then calmly, with full consciousness of his fall, without resorting to false consolations, without seeking salvation in what he didn't need in his better days"(9, 533). That is why, despite all the troubles and thunderstorms that await the lyrical hero Koltsov, the main tone of his poetry remains deeply optimistic and life-affirming:
And so that with grief at the feast
Be with a cheerful face;
To go to death -
Songs to be sung by the nightingale!
(p. 176)
It is characteristic that in these words from the poem “The Path” (1839), the Soviet poet Pavel Antokolsky saw the “central nerve” of Koltsov’s talent.
The theme of will - one of the primordial themes of folk poetry - occupied a prominent place in the work of the poet Prasol. The poem “Stenka Razin” (1838) is typical in this regard. It is in organic connection with Razin’s song folklore. Here is the appeal of the good fellow to the “Mother Volga” who fed and gave him drink, and the sweeping daring of the freedom-loving hero:
Make a fuss, bad weather,
Take a walk, Mother Volga!
Take my awesome thing
Mark a wave along the shore...
(p. 169)
The very choice of Razin’s theme to a certain extent characterizes both Koltsov’s social and aesthetic views.
According to Shchedrin, Koltsov’s merit lies in the fact that he was able to reveal in the Russian powerless peasant a person deeply aware of his dignity, to notice that “burning sense of personality” that “reveals all external barriers and, like a river overflowing its banks, drowns, destroys and carries with it everything it encounters along the way.”
Depicting the people with a “hidden thought of freedom,” Koltsov believes that the best share of working people only “For the time being, fell like a stone into the water,” and the important thing is that these hopes are fueled by faith in the powerful forces hidden within the people. In the poem “In Bad Weather, the Wind...” (1839), the poet calls on the people:
Get up - with all your strength
Flap your wings:
Maybe our joy
Lives just over the mountains!
(p. 178)
The lines of Koltsov’s famous song “So the soul is torn…” (1840) are also imbued with the demand for “another life.” The poet puts his ardent desire for freedom into the romantic “Duma of the Falcon” (1840), where the sublime dream of freedom of the poet himself merges with the aspirations of the enslaved masses:
Ile at the falcon
Wings are tied
Or the way for him
Are they all booked?
(p. 192)
It is not surprising that “The Falcon’s Thought” was perceived by many generations of progressive people as a song calling for the struggle for a life worthy of a person. Also noteworthy is the wide response that the verses of this song received in fiction: in the works of I. S. Turgenev, I. S. Nikitin, L. N. Trefolev, F. V. Gladkov and others.
The image of a brave and independent bird, akin to Gorky’s legendary Falcon, appears in a number of Koltsov’s poems. And he himself enters our consciousness as “the falcon of Russian poetry, whose free flight was “a call to the proud for freedom, for light.”
Koltsov often speaks of the awakening impulses for a better life among the people only in hints, but quite transparently in the context of the era. For example, in the song “I have a lot...” (1840):
But I know what
I'm looking for magic herbs;
But I know what it's about
I'm sad with myself...
(p. 207)
In some of the poet's songs, features of a certain limitation characteristic of the consciousness of the patriarchal peasantry appear. But - and this is the most important thing - despite all the doubts and rather complex ideological and moral quests of Koltsov, his best poems express a rather bold protest for that time against the “dirty” and “rude” reality of his time. Rising to the realization of the need to fight it, the poet calls in the “Message” dedicated to Belinsky (1839) to rebel in the name of the “triumph” of “new thought,” truth, reason and honor.
It can be said without exaggeration that at that time no one, except Lermontov, expressed hatred of feudal reality with such artistic force as Koltsov. Even tears, burning, poisonous tears of anger, despair, melancholy, here make Koltsov related to Lermontov. Opposing a life based on lawlessness and slavery, Koltsov states in “Reckoning with Life” (1840):
If God gave strength -
I would break you!
(p. 208)
But the parallel between “Lermontov and Koltsov” requires a deeper consideration. Being contemporaries, both poets from different points of view (but similar in the main thing - rejection of contemporary social reality) reflected the contradictions of their bitter era.
Lermontov, more clearly than others, testified to the dissatisfaction of his generation with the Nicholas regime. His work focuses on depicting the darker sides of life. Skepticism, reflection, destructive for the psyche, the poison of introspection - all these “internal illnesses” struck the best part of the noble class during the years of the Nicholas reaction.
Koltsov, on the contrary, expressed in many works the healthy, powerful forces of the nation, the national spirit, which cannot be broken even by ultra-cruel political oppression. What, in fact, changed in the usual way of life of the multi-million masses of the peasantry due to the next changes on the Russian throne? Under Nicholas I, everything in the village remained the same as it was before: hopeless poverty, aggravated by the beginning of the stratification of the rural community, the growing power of the “golden treasury”.
Lermontov in “Duma” looks with sadness at his generation, the future is depicted by the author in the darkest colors (“...either empty, or dark...”). Koltsov sees it completely differently. Embodying the inexhaustible faith of the peasant worker in the ultimate happiness of man, this eternal folk optimism, Koltsov exclaims in “The Last Struggle” (1838):
Don't threaten me with trouble,
Do not call, fate, to battle:
I'm ready to fight with you
But you can't deal with me!
(p. 167)
Koltsov’s fiery lines sounded like a sharp dissonance against the background of the poetry of his era. New motives suddenly invade the lyrics of despair, despondency and melancholy. The light coloring of Koltsov’s poems is also born under the influence of their specific artistic form. The song poetics itself becomes unusually meaningful. No matter what sad things are said in the work, the rapidity of intonation, special chanting, and the originality of the melodic pattern seem to soften the drama.
The poem “Forest” (1837) is colored with high civic pathos and deep sorrow caused by the death of Pushkin. This, in the broadest sense of the word, political speech can safely be placed next to such an accusatory work as Lermontov’s “Death of a Poet.” It is enough to recall the comparisons in Koltsov’s poems of those gloomy years with “black autumn” and “silent night” or read, for example, into this stanza:
He went wild, fell silent...
Only in bad weather
Howling a complaint
For timelessness...
(p. 148)
– to feel the courage of the challenge to the official government of Russia. The description of those base intrigues that were the immediate cause of the death of the great poet is noteworthy in its accuracy:
From heroic shoulders
They took off the head -
Not a big mountain
And with a straw...
(p. 149)
Family and everyday songs deserve special attention in Koltsov’s work. They reveal with great sincerity the inner world of a simple Russian woman, truthfully conveying her position in a patriarchal peasant environment. The realistic content also determined the artistic features of these songs, their close connection with folklore, in particular with family folk lyrics. This connection was manifested with particular force in Koltsov’s development of the theme of forced life with a “hateful” husband. The poet recreates a truly tragic image of a young peasant woman who was married off against her will. The heroine of the poem “Crazy, Without Reason...” (1839) gives a new and tragic shade to the traditional saying “if you live, you fall in love”:
Well, having grown old,
Reason, advise
And with you youth
Compare without calculation!
(p. 189)
Just as deeply moving, as Belinsky wrote, “the soul-tearing complaint of a tender female soul, condemned to hopeless suffering” (9, 535), is heard in the song “Oh, why me...” (1838):
Don't let the grass grow
After autumn;
Don't let the flowers bloom
In the winter in the snow!
(p. 158)
Koltsov’s family songs are characterized by their social orientation. Expressing the high ideals of folk morality, they contained a demand for the spiritual emancipation of man. The thirst for love, independence, and will was especially clearly manifested in the song “Flight” (1838), in which the right to mutual love and personal happiness was combined with the liberation aspirations of the enslaved people.
Koltsov’s love lyrics are poetry of earthly joy, enthusiastic admiration for spiritual and physical beauty. The admiration of the beloved is also evoked by comparisons that are remarkable in their artistry in the song “The Last Kiss” (1838):
Let your face burn
Like dawn in the morning...
How beautiful is spring
You, my bride!
(pp. 159–160)
An amazingly beautiful and bright feeling is sung by Koltsov. The heroes of his songs love with all their hearts. On the most difficult days, great love illuminates the lives of disadvantaged people and gives them strength in the fight against harsh reality. The boby from the song “The wind blows in the field...” (1838) is not afraid
The share is not human,
When he loves
She's young!
(p. 166)
It is no coincidence that Chernyshevsky called Koltsov’s collection of poems a book of “pure love,” a book in which “love is the source of strength and activity.”
Koltsov’s love songs stand out for their special sincere lyricism, deep sincerity, and sometimes amazingly vivid reproduction of intimate human feelings. Such works of the poet as “It’s Time for Love” (1837), “The Sadness of a Girl” (1840), “Separation” (1840), “I Won’t Tell Anyone...” (1840) were a truly new word in the love lyrics of those years. To this it must be added that, praising the spiritual beauty of people from the people, beauty desecrated and insulted in a serf-owning society, Koltsov was able to become a kind of spokesman for the liberation aspirations of his time.
The nationality of Koltsov’s poetry finds expression not only in a truthful display of real life, but also in the development of appropriate artistic means. Koltsov’s songs, Belinsky wrote, “represent an amazing wealth of the most luxurious, most original images of the highest degree of Russian poetry. From this side, his language is as amazing as it is inimitable” (9, 536).
Using aesthetic techniques that have long been established in oral tradition, the poet enriches them with his own inventions. He strives to develop a system of poetic means that would allow him to convey the general pathos of his work in an “optimal mode.” Most consistent with these goals were the possibilities of a synthetic genre fusion - a semi-literary, semi-folklore “Russian song”. Symbols, rhythms, and special speech patterns outlined by the people acquired exceptional expressiveness under Koltsov’s pen.
One of the most striking manifestations of Koltsov’s skill is his ability to dramatize a lyrical theme. Penetrating deeply into folk characters, the poet shows the feelings and experiences of ordinary people through their external signs (face, movement, intonation, gesture), which introduces new poetic colors into Russian literature. This is, for example, the image of a girl’s internal state during her separation from her lover in the song “Separation” (1840). The girl’s deep emotion is conveyed here with utmost completeness:
Instantly the whole face burst into flames,
Covered with white snow...
(p. 199)
The heroine’s heartache was reflected in the very intermittency of her speech (“Don’t go, wait! Give me time...”), and in the understatement (“On you, the falcon is clear...”), and in the visible revelation of her spiritual grief (“The spirit was busy - the word froze...").
Sometimes the skill of a songwriter is manifested in extremely compressed portrait sketches. Thus, in the deeply intimate lyrical song “Don’t make noise, rye...” (1834), remembering his beloved “soul maiden,” Koltsov focuses only on her eyes:
It was sweet for me
Look into her eyes;
In eyes full
Love thoughts!
(p. 112)
An exciting image, filled with deep feeling, clearly appears before us. In the stream of surging memories, thoughts, thoughts, the poet finds that essential, fundamental thing that is especially imprinted and has become the most precious.
The usual portrait is not given in the song “It’s Time for Love” (1837):
She stands there, thinking,
Fanned with the breath of enchantment...
(p. 145)
But we well imagine the youth and beauty of a girl through the external manifestation of her spiritual movement:
The white chest is worried,
What a deep river...
(ibid.)
Koltsov’s artistic originality is revealed with particular force in his landscape painting. In his poems, nature is inseparable from people and their work, from everyday human worries, joys, sorrows and thoughts. According to Saltykov Shchedrin, this is why “Koltsov is great, this is why his talent is powerful, that he never becomes attached to nature for nature’s sake, but everywhere he sees a person soaring above it.”
Paintings created by Koltsov native land fresh and new. “The beautiful dawn caught fire in the sky” (“The Plowman’s Song”), and the ripening rye “Smiles at a merry day” (“Harvest”). In the poem “Why are you sleeping, peasant?..” (1839) Koltsov finds unique colors to describe late autumn:
After all, it’s already autumn in the yard
Looking through the spindle...
(p. 186)
– and Russian village winter:
Winter follows her
He walks in a warm fur coat,
The path is covered with snow,
It crunches under the sleigh.
(ibid.)
Koltsov knows how to speak in his own way about the free Russian steppe. Reading the poem “Mower” (1836), it seems that you see its entire endless expanse, breathe in the smell of its herbs and flowers. For the Koltsovo mower, it is not only spacious, but also somehow especially joyful and bright:
Oh, my steppe,
The steppe is free,
You are wide, steppe,
Spread out...
(p. 123)
In the poem “Harvest” (1835), a slowly approaching cloud darkens, grows, “is armed with thunder, storm, fire, lightning,” and then, as if after a moment’s calm, it
Up in arms -
And expanded
And hit
And it spilled
A big tear...
(p. 114)
In this stanza, consisting almost entirely of verbs, the very rhythm and selection of sounds (primarily the sonorous consonants “r” and “l”) greatly contribute to the depiction of powerful rumbles of thunder and gushing rain. The “and” sound that precedes them gives verbs especially great dynamism, breadth, and strength.
One of the features of Koltsov’s poetic mastery is the accuracy, concreteness, almost visual palpability of the image with exceptional economy and laconicism of artistic means. Having organically adopted folk song speech, the poet developed his own style corresponding to the theme, his own imagery, his own special voice.
Koltsov strives for fresh and precise words (in the sense of conveying a certain psychological state), comparisons and metaphors, akin to the very spirit of folk songwriting. This feature of Koltsov’s realistic poetics is clearly manifested in the song “The Poor Man’s Share” (1841), where the author was able to simply and at the same time convey in a completely new way the bitterness of the experiences of a peasant bobyly, hidden from the eyes of people:
From the soul sometimes
Joy will burst forth -
Evil mockery
He'll be poisoned in no time.
(p. 215)
Speech elements that come directly from folklore (“And you sit, look, Smiling; And in your soul you curse the bitter Share!”) are natural and artistically justified for the poet.
We see original mastery in the instrumentation, melody, metric and rhythm of Kol’tsov’s poems. Koltsov’s widely used pentasyllabic and iambic trimeter with dactylic endings, internal rhymes, repetitions and alliteration give his poems the semantic expressiveness and musicality noted above. And when you read, for example, the song “Don’t make noise, rye...”, you clearly see that even its very size is very suitable for the sad mood with which this poem is filled:
Heavier than the mountains
Darker than midnight
Lay down on? heart
Black Duma!
(p. 112)
No less expressive is such a Koltsovo song as “The Last Kiss”. In its instrumentation, attention is drawn to the first and second lines, where the sounds “l”, “p” (“kiss, dove, caress”) are clearly heard, the third and fourth - with the sound “r” standing out in them (“Once again, hurry up, kiss me hot." Repetitions of words and internal rhymes are also found (“Don’t yearn, don’t grieve, don’t shed tears from your eyes”). All this gives the lyrical intonation of Koltsov’s songs a musicality that was so highly appreciated by M. Balakirev, who wrote his famous romance based on the words of this poem. According to C. A. Cui, the romance represents the most perfect example of merging music with text into one harmonic whole.
In general, it should be noted that Koltsov played an exceptional role in the development of national musical culture. His lines inspired the creation of wonderful works by such composers as Glinka, Varlamov, Gurilev, Dargomyzhsky, Balakirev, Rimsky Korsakov, Mussorgsky, Rubinstein, Rachmaninov, Grechaninov, Glazunov and others.
Koltsov enriched our poetry with unartificial Russian speech. Avoiding any deliberate “beauty,” he introduces into his poems ordinary words taken from the living folk language, giving them a special poetic flavor. According to Belinsky’s definition, Koltsov’s songs “boldly included bast shoes, and torn caftans, and disheveled beards, and old onuchi - and all this dirt turned into pure gold of poetry for him” (9, 534).
Using the colloquial speech of peasants, Koltsov carefully selects the most typical things in it, which helps him more clearly express the feelings and thoughts of the people, and truthfully show the life of common people. In “The Second Song of Likhach Kudryavich” (1837) we read:
Kaftanishka torn
You'll pull it over your shoulders,
Ruffle your beard
You'll pull your hat down,
You will become quiet
On someone else's shoulders...
(p. 153)
Koltsov is extremely characterized by the frequent use of diminutive speech forms, which are most consistent with the folk style:
Sadness fell, heavy melancholy
On a twisted head...
(p. 156)
Take my awesome thing...
(p. 169)
Proverbs and sayings, organically interspersed into the speech of his lyrical hero, are typical for Koltsov’s songs. For example, in “The Bitter Valley” (1837):
Without love, without happiness
I wander around the world:
I'll get rid of trouble -
I will meet with grief!
(p. 137)
The significance of Koltsov in the history of Russian literature is determined by his indissoluble connection with the people, which, according to Belinsky, found vivid expression in the poet’s artistic reproduction of peasant life and the character traits, mindset and feelings of ordinary Russian people. It was these most important aspects of Koltsov’s creativity that had the most fruitful impact on Russian poetry.
Based on the literary and aesthetic concept of Belinsky, the revolutionary democrats of the 60s. considered Koltsov’s poetic heritage in accordance with the new and increased demands put forward by the era for a comprehensive reflection of life in its essential manifestations.
In his first statements about Koltsov (1858), Dobrolyubov defines him as a poet who, by the very essence of his talent, was close to the people. At the same time, the critic directly and, perhaps, even overly categorically pointed out the insufficient connection between Koltsov’s works and socio-political issues. According to Dobrolyubov, “Koltsov lived the life of the people, understood its sorrows and joys, and knew how to express them. But his poetry lacks a comprehensive view; The simple class of the people appears in solitude from common interests...”
Dobrolyubov was able to highlight and highly appreciate that “real healthy” side of Koltsov’s poems, which, according to the critic, needed to be “continued and expanded.” Dobrolyubov emphasized the inextricable connection between advanced Russian poetry and Koltsovo traditions. Saltykov Shchedrin also wrote about the significance of these traditions for Russian literature: “The entire number of modern writers who have devoted their work to the fruitful development of the phenomena of Russian life are a number of successors to Koltsov’s work.”
Koltsov’s artistic heritage was especially dear to N. A. Nekrasov. Speaking about Koltsov as a truly original poet, he put him on a par with our greatest poets - Pushkin, Lermontov, Zhukovsky, Krylov.
In Nekrasov’s work, the theme of labor introduced into poetry by Koltsov found a further continuation. Nekrasov gave her the political edge that Koltsov lacked. Nekrasov was undoubtedly close to the folk view of the physical and spiritual beauty of working people expressed in Koltsov’s songs.
Koltsov’s experience largely prepared Nekrasov’s appeal to folklore, to the living colloquial speech of peasants. Nekrasov, to some extent, can be considered a successor to Koltsov in the field of versification. Very indicative in this regard is the poem “Who Lives Well in Rus',” in which Koltsov’s predominantly iambic trimeter with dactylic endings is widely used.
The tradition of Koltsov is also noticeable in the work of the poet of the Nekrasov camp, I. S. Nikitin. Relying on the artistic experience of his predecessors and, above all, Koltsov, he turned directly to the life of the common people, drawing themes and images from it. In Nikitin’s poems (“Made noisy, went wild...”, “The Bobyl’s Song”, “Inheritance”, “A crazy merchant was driving from the fair...”, “Get rid of melancholy...”, etc.) there is a clear focus on the folk song principle, which is so fully represented. at Koltsov's.
In line with Koltsov’s traditions, the work of the democrat poet I.Z. Surikov also develops. The influence of the author of “Mower” is felt in such well-known works as “Eh, you, share ...”, “Are you a head, little head ...”, “In the steppe”, etc. Surikov’s poem “In a green garden there is a nightingale ...” is a development of the poetic the motive of the female share, developed by Koltsov in his song “Oh, why me...”.
Traces of Koltsov’s influence are also noticeable in the works of songwriters S. F. Ryskin (1860–1895), E. A. Razorenov (1819–1891), N. A. Panov (1861–1906), etc. The problematics and poetics of Koltsov’s poems were found further development in the creative practice of S. D. Drozhzhin: the theme of peasant labor reflected in his poems genetically goes back to “The Plowman’s Song” and “The Harvest.”
Koltsov had a particularly great and fruitful influence on the artistic development of Sergei Yesenin. In the poem “Oh, Rus', flap your wings...” the poet directly writes about himself as a follower of Koltsov. The lyrical motifs and images of the Russian songbook have a direct echo in the poems of M. Isakovsky, A. Tvardovsky, N. Rylenkov and other Soviet poets, whose work is deeply and organically connected with folk song.
An innovative artist, A. V. Koltsov managed to create such original, deeply national examples of democratic poetry that his name deservedly took one of the first places among the remarkable Russian poets.

Briefly:

Koltsov- unlike anyone else, an important figure. Innovative poetry. Songs. Moreover, if Delvig’s songs = “the life of the people from the master’s window,” then Koltsov’s (self-taught) songs = simply the people themselves. People's poet. He managed to look at the life of a peasant from the inside.

Despite the lack of education, he goes to lit. arena and becomes along with Pushkin’s galaxy. Belinsky about Koltsov: “to call him a genius is too much, but to call him a talent is too little, he is a brilliant talent.” Koltsov is called the forerunner of Nekrasov. However, Koltsov has no socially grotesque motives, the main thing is the joy of peasant labor, the unity of peasants with nature, jubilant moods, albeit a “bitter fate.”

Merezhkovsky wrote that Koltsov wrote the best about Pushkin’s death. Poem "Forest". Autumn depletes the strength of the hero of the forest.

Alexey Koltsov (1809-1842)

Song, peasant poetry by Koltsov.

Self-taught, has reached heights in self-education.

"Mower" (1836)

“Oh, on an unfortunate day, at a mediocre hour, without a shirt, I was born into the world.”

This poem is about a mower who wooed Grunushka, but her father is greedy and only looks at money. And so he goes around the country to make his fortune.

"The Plowman's Song"(1831) - poetry of labor, spiritualized, organic. The truth of peasant life. “Ugly for me, God! Bread is my wealth!”

"Bitter Share"(1837) - comparison of a person’s life with an oak tree that used to stand on a mountain, but now rots under the mountain. “I’m completely spent, the joy has flown by.”

"Forest"(1837) - in memory of Pushkin. Response to his death. For Koltsov, Pushkin is the last Russian hero. He complains about the deterioration of speech, high style, that everything is gone with Pushkin.

"Stenka Razin"- the song of a young man who is not afraid of either blizzards or forests, but only that the girl he loves lives in the mansion. He wants to take her away, but she is afraid of the Last Judgment.

"Parting"(at the dawn of foggy youth) - about separation from my beloved. And about the hope of a new meeting.

Belinsky: “This is a genius talent.” He very accurately defined its significance.

Belinsky says that Koltsov appeared at that very time in Russian literature, when it was seething with new talents of new kinds. Poet-prasol (from the people). He was not at all proud of his talent. He carried within himself all the elements of the Russian spirit, especially - terrible strength in suffering and pleasure, the ability to madly indulge in both sadness and joy.

He was born for the poetry he created. He was the son of the people in the full meaning of the word. Koltsov grew up among the steppes and peasants, and he described this life in his work.

Long, very long:

In the 20-40s, Russian song lyrics continued to develop. Among songwriters in the 20s, the songs of A. A. Delvig were very popular. Poems and songs on folk themes A.V. Koltsov represent the most striking phenomenon in the general process of development of Russian poetry. Koltsov, as a poet, first of all went through the school of creative practice from the songwriters of the first generation. It is possible that even the very desire to write songs arose in him under their influence. In the poet's lyrical heritage there are works that have features of imitation. But the strength of his own talent and its life sources allowed Koltsov to find his own voice in his work and in many ways to be ahead of all the songwriters of his time. Unlike them, Koltsov in his work followed not only modern literary and song traditions, but also the style of folk songs that were well known to him and the living folk language. He strove in his work to depict the real life of the people, their work, everyday life and poetry, so it was much broader in theme and more realistic. Koltsov’s songs, which is especially important, were also characterized by a new internal mood, which was deeply different from the traditional sentimental “dejection” of modern Russian songs. They contained cheerful, optimistic calls for overcoming any adversity in life. Koltsov’s works, expressing folk social optimism, were very close to the folk songs themselves, in which even in the motifs of “sadness and melancholy” the hopelessness of life’s grief was never felt.

Koltsov’s songs were not only meaningful and lyrical. According to the poet himself, songs for him were, first of all, what was “sung.” Koltsov tried to sing his songs more than once. About one such case, he wrote to V. G. Belinsky: “The steppes again enchanted me; the devil knows to what oblivion I admired it. How good it seemed! And I sang with delight: “It’s time for love”... The original size of the verse created by Koltsov was very close to the rhythmic structure of folk songs.

Koltsov’s poetry differed not only from the songs of other songwriters, but even from the work of amateur peasant poets - Slepushkin, Alipanov, Sukhanov. If Koltsov sought to portray a genuine folk life, then for them the life of the people was only a “rural theme”, which they developed in the most “well-intentioned” way: the peasants in their songs often had the appearance of cheerful, submissive and happy “peasants” who lived peacefully side by side with a kind and caring landowner . Such conventionality and implausibility of the depiction of folk life was noted by Belinsky, who, in a review of Slepushkin’s poems, ironically wrote that the peasants in them “are somehow similar to the shepherdesses and shepherdesses of Messrs. Florian and Panaev, or to those peasants and peasant women who dance in divertissements on the theater stage."

The people in Koltsov’s songs were depicted in the fullness of their lives - not only in work and everyday life, but also in moments of concentrated reflection on their lives. Koltsov in his songs always emphasized the character of the hero, his vitality, faith in the future:

How long will I be

Let's live at home,

My youth

To ruin for nothing?

How long will I be

Sit under the window

On the road into the distance

Watch day and night?

("The Falcon's Thought")

In songs about folk poverty, homelessness in life, orphanhood (“Orphan”, “The Thought of a Villager”, “In Bad Weather the Wind”, “The Sun is Shining”, “The Poor Man’s Share”), the bitter lot of the poor man was depicted using images of trouble and grief borrowed from folk poetry , evil fate. But Koltsov’s depiction of the peasant’s “evil lot” was combined with the motives of courageously and stubbornly overcoming it. This is especially evident in Koltsov’s songs “Village Trouble” (motives of the struggle of the poor man with the rich man), “Duma of the Falcon” (the passionate impulse of the hero to better life), “To go to destruction - to sing songs like a nightingale” (valiant prowess, helping to heroically overcome any grief) and in others.

Koltsov’s thoughtful penetration into people’s life allowed him to see the main thing in it and highlight the most essential. In this regard, the leading theme of his songwriting - the theme of labor - deserves special attention. Koltsov saw the strong love of the peasants for the “mother raw earth” and purely peasant labor interests and hopes associated with agricultural labor. He reflected all this with great artistic force both in the poem “Mower” and in a kind of trilogy - “The Plowman’s Song”, “Harvest” and “Peasant Feast”, dedicated to peasant labor. In these works, Koltsov showed not only the poetry of peasant labor, but also that concentrated, majestic “ritualism” that was so characteristic of peasant life.

G. Uspensky was deeply right when, calling Koltsov “the poet of agricultural labor,” he wrote: “No one, not excluding Pushkin himself, touched such poetic strings of the people’s soul, the people’s worldview, brought up exclusively in the conditions of agricultural labor.”

Along with these themes, songs on family, everyday and love themes also occupied a large place in Koltsov’s work. Koltsov's family, everyday and love songs were artistically most closely related to folk songs. They were brought closer to them by traditional song images: “girl” and “well done,” “husband” and “wife”; artistic techniques repeated in a number of songs.

In such songs, Koltsov used folk song stylistic and compositional means: symbolism - “The Ring”, “Dear Little Ring”, “The Sadness of a Girl”; lyrical appeals to the forces of nature - “Don’t sing, nightingale”, “Don’t make noise, rye”; lyrical monologue - “Oh, why did they hand me over by force”, “I won’t tell anyone”; metaphorical comparisons - “Youth flew by like a flying nightingale”; folk poetic epithets - “ardent wax”, “pure gold”, “damp earth”, “soul-maiden”, “violent winds”, “brown curls”. But Koltsov always used these means in a very original way. For example, often turning to the form of a lyrical monologue, he often departed from the traditional style of folk songs, making them especially psychologically rich.

The significant lyrical emotionality in Koltsov’s songs and even the expressiveness of the feelings expressed in them brought some songs closer to oral urban romances.

It is possible that some of Koltsov’s songs - “Your black eyes ruined me”, “I won’t tell anyone”, “I loved him” and others - were created under the influence of the style of urban romance. In turn, Koltsov’s songs and romances became for a long time artistic models for many authors of songs and romances of the second half of the 19th century.

Koltsov’s talented, original creativity has become the property of every literate Russian person. Koltsov's works were published throughout the 19th century and later. They were published by public educational libraries, given as supplements to magazines, and placed in anthologies and reading books. Koltsov's songs were published in huge editions and by publishing houses of popular literature. Many of Koltsov's songs were set to music.

The popularity of Koltsov’s songs back in the first half of the 19th century in Saratov was noted by N. G. Chernyshevsky, who in his autobiographical excerpts from “A Tale within a Tale” wrote about how he, as a child, in 1845-1846, was riding with his comrades from the mountains , occupied himself between jokes and games with “singing Lermontov, Koltso and common folk songs.”

All the themes of the Koltsovo songs, which penetrated the folk song repertoire, were very close in content to folk lyrical songs. Koltsov, with great poetic power, expressed the people’s deep thoughts about the severity of life (“I will sit at the table”), the desire to overcome all life’s obstacles (“I will saddle a horse”) and the bitter awareness of the power of “evil fate” (“A Nightingale that Flies”).

Very close to this group of Koltsov’s poems is the famous “Duma of the Falcon,” which may also have been popular in song, although its variants have not been found. The song “I’ll Ride a Horse” had a different fate, which was constantly published in songbooks and was widely known in popular prints (the popular prints usually illustrated the following lines: “I’ll rush, I’ll fly lighter than a falcon, I’ll catch up, I’ll bring back my youth,” while an old man on a horse was depicted ). Set to music by a number of composers, the song was included in the repertoire of many singers. In 1886 it was included in Wessel's collection of folk songs. There is no doubt that its song distribution among the people was much greater in pre-revolutionary times. This is evidenced by its wide popularity in Soviet era. Remarkable, for example, are the versions of the song “I’ll Ride a Horse,” recorded in the Tula region.

Vissarion Belinsky "On the life and writings of Koltsov"

Biography of Koltsov. Born in Voronezh, father is a tradesman. He was capable, at the age of 10 he was sent to the Voronezh district school, “he began to become addicted to reading.” Then the father took his son from school to help him in trade - a clash with dirty reality. I fell in love with the steppe passionately.

“Many of Koltsov’s plays resonate with the impressions that the steppe gave him: “Mower”, “Grave”, “Traveler”, “Overnight of the Chumakov”, “Flower”, “Time of Love” and others. In almost all of his poems, in which the steppe is not plays no role, there is something steppe, broad, sweeping both in color and tone. Reading them, you involuntarily remember that their author is a son of the steppe, that the steppe raised him and nurtured him, and therefore the craft of prasol was not only unpleasant for him. , but he also liked it: it introduced him to the steppe and gave him the opportunity not to part with it for the whole summer."

Until the age of 17 I was engaged in reading, etc. Fell in love with a maid, parents opposed and separated the lovers. Koltsov came down with a fever. “Having recovered from his illness and having borrowed some money from his relatives and friends, he rushed like crazy into the steppe to investigate about the unfortunate woman. As far as he could, he traveled far himself, sending people loyal to him even further for money. We don’t know how long these searches lasted; their only result was the news that the unfortunate victim of a barbarian calculation, having found herself in the Don steppes, in a Cossack village, soon withered away and died in the anguish of separation and in the throes of cruel treatment."

- “Be that as it may, Koltsov’s poetic vocation was decided and recognized by himself. The direct striving of his nature overcame all obstacles. He was a poet by vocation, by nature - and the obstacles could not cool, but only give his poetic aspiration more great energy.

Prasol, riding a horse, driving cattle from one field to another, knee-deep in blood, present during the cutting, or, better said, during the slaughter of cattle; a clerk standing at the market next to carts of lard - and dreaming of love, of friendship, of the inner poetic movements of the soul, of nature, of the fate of man, of the mysteries of life and death, tormented by the sorrows of a torn heart and mental doubts, and at the same time at the same time, an active member of reality, among which he is placed, a smart and lively Russian merchant, who sells, buys, scolds and makes friends with God knows who, bargains from a penny and uses all the springs of petty trading, which he inwardly disgusts as abominations: what a picture “What a fate, what a man!”

On business he travels to Moscow and St. Petersburg. Meets writers.

In Voronezh, Koltsov writes: “Bright moments visited him less and less often.” “You prophetically guessed my situation (he wrote in 1840, to St. Petersburg, to a friend); For a long time now, I’ve had this sad realization in my soul that I won’t be happy for a long time in Voronezh. I’ve been living in it for a long time and I look out there like an animal. My circle is small, my world is dirty, it is bitter for me to live in it, and I don’t know how I haven’t been lost in it long ago. Any good power invisibly supports me from falling. And if I don’t change myself, I’ll soon fall; it is inevitable, like two and two are four. Although I denied myself many things, and partly, living in this filth, I cut myself off from it, but still not completely, I still did not get out of it.”

After another trip to St. Petersburg: “Upon returning home, Koltsov found, as usual, all affairs in decline and disorder, thanks to his old age’s wisdom and experience, and began to arrange them. His father received him coldly and barely agreed to give him one thousand rubles a year out of seven thousand , which the house had to bring, in anticipation of which Koltsov had to live and work without a penny in his pocket - he, to whom alone the whole family owed their well-being..."

- “The last letter we received from Koltsov was dated February 27, 1842. In the summer we wrote to him, but there was no answer; and in the fall we received news from Voronezh, from people unknown to us, about his death... "

- “born for life, he was filled with extraordinary strength both to enjoy it and to fight against it; and living for him meant feeling and thinking, striving and cognizing. Love and sympathy were the main elements of his nature. He was too smart to to be an idealist in love, and was created too delicately and nobly to be materialistic in it. Rough sensuality could captivate him, but not for long, and he knew how to renounce it, not so much by willpower, but by natural aversion to everything coarse and base. He never was and could never be a gentle lover, content with the adoration of his ideal, because for such a funny role he was too smart and too gifted with life and passion."

- “Koltsov’s poems can be divided into three categories. The first includes plays written in the correct meter, mainly iambic and trochee. Most of them belong to his first experiments, and in them he was an imitator of the poets he liked most. These are the plays: “The Orphan ", "To a peer", "Little brother", "Overnight of the Chumakov", "Traveler", "Beauty", "Sister", "Come to me", "Disbelief", "It is not for me to listen to the magic chanting", "Vengeance", “Sigh at Venevitinov’s grave”, “To the Gaidar River”, “What do I mean”, “Consolation”, “I was with her”, “First love”, “To her”, “To her”, “Naiad”, “To N.”, “Nightingale”, “To a Friend”, “Frenzy”, “Poet and Nanny”, “A. P. Serebryansky." In these poems one can see something similar to talent and even originality; some of them are even very good. At least from them it is clear that Koltsov could have improved to a certain extent in this kind of poetry; but not otherwise, by working out a verse with difficulty and effort and remaining an imitator, with only a certain shade of originality.

Correct verse was not his property, and no matter how [he] developed it, he would never have been able to compare in it with our sonorous poets, even mediocre. But here Koltsov’s strong, independent talent is visible: he did not stop at this dubious success, but, driven by his instinct alone, he soon found his the real road. Since 1831, he decisively turned to Russian songs, and if he sometimes wrote in the correct meter, then without any claims to special success, without any desire to imitate or compete with other poets. He especially loved using this meter, often without rhyme, with which he did not get along well, to express feelings and thoughts that were directly related to his life. These are (with the exception of the plays: “Flower”, “Poor Ghost”, “To Comrade”) the plays: “The Last Struggle”, “To the Darling”, “Reconciliation”, “The World of Music”, “Don’t Spill the Magic Sounds”, “To * **", "Cry of Suffering", "Star", "For the New Year 1842". Plays: “Eyes, blue eyes”, “Tiff”, “Good people, tell me”, “Tower”, “A garden is blooming over the Don”, “Advice of an old man”, “Eyes”, “Forester’s house”, “Marriage” Pavel" - constitute a transition from Koltsov's imitative experiments to his real kind - Russian song."

- “Koltsov was born for the poetry that he created. He was the son of the people in the full meaning of the word. The life among which he was brought up and grew up was the same peasant life, although somewhat higher than it. Koltsov grew up among the steppes and peasants. He not for a phrase, not for a catchphrase, not with imagination, not with a dream, but with soul, heart, blood, he loved Russian nature and everything good and beautiful that, like an embryo, like a possibility, lives in the nature of the Russian peasant. Not in words, but in reality. In fact, he sympathized with the common people in their sorrows, joys and pleasures. He knew their way of life, their needs, grief and joy, the prose and poetry of their life - he knew them firsthand, not from books, not through study, but because he himself. , both by nature and by his position, was a completely Russian man. He bore in himself all the elements of the Russian spirit, especially terrible strength in suffering and pleasure, the ability to madly indulge in both sadness and joy and instead of falling under the burden of himself. despair, the ability to find in him some kind of violent, daring, sweeping rapture, and if he already falls, then calmly, with full consciousness of his fall, without resorting to false consolations, without seeking salvation in what he did not need in his better days. In one of his songs he complains that he has no will,

So that in the wrong direction

Look at people;

So that sometimes in the face of trouble

Stand up for yourself;

Under the fatal thunderstorm

Don't take a step back;

And so that with grief, at a feast,

Be with a cheerful face;

To go to death -

The nightingale sings songs.

No, there could not but be such a will in him, who in such powerful images could express his longing for such a will... It was impossible to merge his life more closely with the life of the people, as Koltsov did by itself. He was pleased and touched by the rye, rustling with a ripe ear, and he looked at someone else's field with the love of a peasant who looks at his own field, watered by his own sweat. Koltsov was not a farmer, but the harvest was a bright holiday for him: read his “Plowman’s Song” and “Harvest.” There is so much sympathy for peasant life in his “Peasant Feast” and in the song “Why are you sleeping, little man”:

Why are you sleeping, man!

After all, summer has already passed,

After all, autumn is already in the yard

He looks through the spinning wheel;

Winter follows her

He walks in a warm fur coat,

The path is covered with snow,

It crunches under the sleigh.

All the neighbors are on them

They bring and sell bread,

Collecting the treasury

They drink the mash by the ladle.

Koltsov knew and loved peasant life as it really is, without decorating or poetizing it. He found the poetry of this life in this life itself, and not in rhetoric, not in poetry, not in a dream, not even in his fantasy, which gave him only images to express the content already given to him by reality. And therefore, his songs boldly included bast shoes, and torn caftans, and disheveled beards, and old onuchi - and all this dirt turned into pure gold of poetry for him. Love plays a large, but far from exclusive role in his songs: no, they included others, perhaps even more so. common elements, which make up Russian common life. The motive of many of his songs is either need and poverty, or the struggle for a penny, or lived happiness, or complaints about fate-stepmother. "

- “Almost all of Koltsov’s songs are written in the correct meter; but you won’t suddenly notice this, and if you notice, it will not be without surprise. Dactylic endings of iambics and trochees and half-rhyme instead of rhyme, and often a complete absence of rhyme, like the consonance of a word, but instead there is always a rhyme meaning or a whole speech, a whole corresponding phrase - all this brings the size of Koltsov’s songs closer to the size of folk songs. Koltsov did not have a clear concept of versification and was guided only by his hearing. And therefore, without any effort and even completely unconsciously, he was able to skillfully disguise the correct size of his songs. , so you don’t even suspect him of them. Moreover, he gave his verse such originality that the very dimensions seem completely original. And in this respect, as in everything else, it is impossible to imitate Koltsov: it is easier to become just like him, original. poet, rather than imitate him in some way. His poetry was born with him, and its secret died with him."

- “The special advantage of Koltsov’s thoughts lies in their purely Russian, folk language. Koltsov did not resort to this style out of coquetry of talent, but out of necessity. In his thoughts, Koltsov is a Russian commoner, who has become so above his class that he can only see another, higher sphere life, but not so much as to master it and completely renounce his former sphere. And therefore, of necessity, he speaks in its concepts and in its language about the sphere of other, higher concepts he saw in the distance; but for this reason he is sincere and true in his thoughts; naivety, which is their main advantage. Although Koltsov’s songs would be understandable and accessible to our common people, they would still be much more meaningful to them. high school poetry, and therefore feelings and concepts, rather than the poetry of folk songs - and therefore would be very useful for his moral and aesthetic education. In exactly the same way, Koltsov’s thoughts, presented in purely Russian images and style and representing the first highest stage of the common Russian person in the pursuit of moral and ideal development, would be very useful for selected natures among the common people.

Koltsov’s mystical direction, which he discovered in his thoughts, could not have continued for long if he had remained alive. This simple, clear and courageous mind could not swim for long in the mists of vague ideas. Proof of this is his excellent thought “Isn’t it time for us to leave,” written by him less than a year before his death. It shows a decisive exit from the mists of mysticism and a sharp turn towards simple contemplations of common sense."

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