The elegy was written on a ship when Pushkin sailed from Kerch to Gurzuf with the Raevsky family. This is the period of Pushkin's southern exile. Raevsky took the ill poet with him on his journey so that he could improve his health. The ship sailed on a calm sea on an August night, but Pushkin deliberately exaggerates the colors in his elegy, describing the raging ocean.
Literary direction, genre
"The daylight went out" is one of the best examples of Pushkin's romantic lyrics. Pushkin is passionately interested in the work of Byron, in the subtitle of the elegy he calls "Imitation of Byron." It echoes some of the motifs of Childe Harold's farewell song. But his own impressions and emotions, the inner world of Pushkin's lyrical hero are not like a cold and impassive farewell to Childe Harold's homeland. Pushkin uses a reminiscence from a Russian folk song: "How the fog fell on the blue sea."
The genre of the poem "The daylight went out" is a philosophical elegy. The lyrical hero says goodbye to the sad shores of the foggy homeland. He complains about early youth (Pushkin is 21 years old), separation from friends and "young traitors". As a romantic, Pushkin somewhat exaggerates his own suffering, he is disappointed that he was deceived in his hopes.
Theme, main idea and composition
The theme of the elegy is philosophical sad reflections associated with the forced departure from the homeland. Pushkin says that the lyrical hero "fled", but this is a tribute to the tradition of romanticism. Pushkin was a real exile.
The elegy can be conditionally divided into three parts. They are separated by a refrain (repeat) of two lines: "Noise, noise, obedient sail, Wave under me, gloomy ocean."
The first part consists of only two lines. This is an introduction, creating a romantic setting. The lines combine solemnity (daylight) and song motifs.
The second part describes the state of the lyrical hero, hoping for happiness in the magical southern distant lands and crying about the abandoned homeland and everything connected with it: love, suffering, desires, deceived hopes.
The third part contrasts the uncertainty of the future, which in the second part is associated with hope, and sad memories of the past and the foggy homeland. There the lyrical hero fell in love for the first time, became a poet, knew sorrows and sufferings, his youth passed there. The poet regrets the separation from friends and women.
The result of the poem is only one and a half lines before the refrain. This is the main idea of the poem: the life of the lyrical hero has changed, but he also accepts the previous one. life experience, and future unknown life. The love of the lyrical hero has not faded away, that is, a person always has a personal core that is not subject to changes in time or circumstances.
The obedient sail (this is how Pushkin solemnly calls the sail) and the gloomy ocean (in fact, the quiet Black Sea) are symbols of life circumstances on which a person depends, but cannot influence them himself. The lyrical hero comes to terms with the inevitable, with the natural laws of nature, with the passage of time and the loss of youth, accepting all these phenomena, albeit with a slight sadness.
Size and rhyme
The elegy is written in multi-foot iambic. The feminine and masculine rhyme alternates. There are cross and ring rhymes. Variegated iambic and inconstant rhyme bring the narrative closer to live colloquial speech, make Pushkin's poetic reflections universal to all mankind.
Paths and images
The elegy combines clarity and simplicity of thought and an elevated style, which Pushkin achieves by using obsolete words, Old Slavonicisms: sail, limits, shores, youth, cold, confidantes, gold.
The sublime syllable is created by paraphrases: the daylight (the sun), the confidantes of vicious delusions, the pets of pleasures.
Pushkin's epithets are accurate and capacious, there are many metaphorical epithets: an obedient sail, a gloomy ocean, a distant shore, a midday land, magical lands, a familiar dream, sad shores, a foggy homeland, lost youth, light-winged joy, a cold heart, a golden spring.
Traditional epithets, combined with original ones, make speech close to folk: the sea is blue, evening fog, crazy love, distant limits. Such epithets are often in the inversion position.
There are metaphors that give the narrative liveliness: a dream flies, a ship flies, youth has faded.
- "The Captain's Daughter", a summary of the chapters of Pushkin's story
- "Boris Godunov", analysis of the tragedy by Alexander Pushkin
- "Gypsies", analysis of the poem by Alexander Pushkin
POEM “THE DAYLIGHT WAS OUT…” (1820)
Genre: elegy (romantic).
COMPOSITION AND PLOT
Part 1
The hero strives through the stormy elements to the distant shore to the "magic lands" with the hope of happiness:
The soul boils and freezes;
A familiar dream flies around me.
Part 2
The poet flees from his father's land, with which he is connected with suffering:
Where early in the storms faded
My lost youth
At home, the poet leaves love, suffering, desires, deceived hopes (romantic images). The lyrical hero does not blame anyone for his losses, he tries to forget everything bad, but "the former heart wounds, // Deep wounds of love, nothing has healed"
IDEA AND THEMATIC CONTENT
⦁ Theme: The Flight of the Romantic Hero.
⦁ Idea: a person is unable to stop time, to resist the natural course of events; life changes, and you need to accept both previous experience and an unknown future.
ARTISTIC MEANS
⦁ Metaphorical epithets: an obedient sail, a gloomy ocean, a distant shore, a land of midday magical lands, a dream
familiar, to the sad shores.
⦁ Paraphrases: daylight (the sun), confidantes of vicious delusions (girlfriends, lovers of the poet), pets of pleasures
(fleeting friends).
⦁ Refrain: "Noise, noise, obedient sail, / / Worry under me, gloomy ocean."
To analyze this poem, it is important to know the history of its creation and recall some facts from the life of Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin.
The elegy “The daylight went out ...” was written by a young poet (he was barely 21 years old). Two years after graduating from the Lyceum were full of various events for Pushkin: his poetic fame grew rapidly, but the clouds also thickened.
His numerous epigrams and sharp political works (ode "Liberty", poem "Village") attracted the attention of the government - the issue of Pushkin's imprisonment in the Peter and Paul Fortress was discussed.
Only thanks to the efforts of the poet's friends - N. M. Karamzin, P. Ya. Chaadaev and others - was it possible to mitigate his fate: on May 6, 1820, Pushkin was sent into exile to the south. On the way, he became seriously ill, but, fortunately, General N. N. Raevsky obtained permission to take the poet with him to the sea for treatment.
Traveling with the Raevsky family, Pushkin called the happiest time in his life. The poet was fascinated by the Crimea, happy friendship with people who surrounded him with care and love. He saw the sea for the first time. The elegy “The daylight went out ...” was written on the night of August 19, 1820 on board a sailing ship sailing to Gurzuf.
In the poem, the poet looks back and bitterly admits that he wasted a lot of spiritual strength. There is, of course, much youthful exaggeration in his confessions; he claims that "early in the storms withered" his "lost youth."
But Pushkin follows fashion in this - young people of that time liked to be "chilled" and "disappointed" (Byron, the English romantic poet who mastered the minds and hearts of young people, is largely to blame). However, Pushkin's elegy is not only a tribute to Byron's passion.
It captures the transition from carefree youth to maturity. This poem is significant, first of all, because the poet for the first time uses a technique that will later become one of distinguishing features all his work. Just as on that southern night, returning to the experience and summing up some results, Pushkin will always honestly and sincerely analyze his thoughts and actions.
The poem “The daylight went out ...” is called an elegy. An elegy is a poetic work, the content of which is reflections with a touch of slight sadness.
The work begins with a short introduction; it introduces the reader into the environment in which the thoughts and memories of the lyrical hero will take place:
The light of day has gone out;
Fog fell on the blue evening sea.
The main motive of the first part is the expectation of a meeting with "magic lands", where everything promises happiness to the lyrical hero. It is still unknown what direction the thoughts of a lonely dreamer will take, but the reader is already in a solemn mood with vocabulary unusual for everyday use.
There is another expressive feature on which attention stops - the epithet gloomy (ocean). This feature is not only a transition to the second part - it leaves an impression on the entire poem and determines its elegiac mood.
The second part is a complete contrast with the first (a typical device for a romantic work). The author devotes it to the theme of sorrowful memories of fruitlessly wasted forces, of the collapse of hopes. The lyrical hero tells what feelings he has:
And I feel: tears were born in my eyes again;
The soul boils and freezes ...
He recalls the "crazy love of yesteryear"
"Desires and hopes are a lingering deceit."
The poet says that he himself broke with the noisy fuss
Petersburg and a life that did not satisfy him:
Seeker of new experiences
I fled you, fatherly land;
I fled you, pets of pleasure,
Minute youth minute friends ...
And although in reality this was not at all the case (Pushkin was expelled from the capital), the main thing for the poet is that for him new life which gave him the opportunity to reflect on his past.
The third part of the elegy (only two lines) returns the lyrical hero to the present - love, despite the separation, continues to live in his heart:
But the old heart wounds
Deep wounds of love, nothing healed ...
The first part talks about the present, the second about the past, and the third about the present again. All parts are connected by repeating lines:
Noise, noise, obedient sail,
Wave under me, sullen ocean.
Reception of repetition gives harmony to the poem. The theme of the sea, which permeates the entire poem, is significant. "Ocean" is a symbol of life with its endless worries, joys and anxieties.
As in many other works, Pushkin uses one of his favorite techniques - a direct appeal to an imaginary interlocutor.
First, the lyrical hero turns to the sea (this is repeated three times), then to "minute friends" and throughout the poem - to himself and to his memories.
To create an atmosphere of elation and solemnity, to show that we are talking about something important and significant, the author introduces archaisms into the text: (eyes; intoxicated with memory; shores; cold heart; paternal edges; lost youth). At the same time, the language of the elegy is simple, accurate and close to ordinary colloquial speech.
The author uses expressive epithets that reveal concepts to us from a new, unexpected side (tedious deceit; formidable whim of deceptive seas; foggy homeland; gentle muses; light-winged joy), as well as a complex epithet (seeker of new impressions).
The metaphors in this poem are understandable and simple, but at the same time fresh, first found by the poet (a dream flies; youth has faded).
The poem is written in unequal iambic. This size makes it possible to convey the rapid movement of the author's thoughts.
The poem "The daylight went out" is Pushkin's first elegy. In it, he not only imitates Byron, as he himself points out in a note: reading the verse “The daylight went out” by Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin should also be a rethinking of Batyushkov’s elegies of the late period. This must certainly be explained in class, where students will also learn that this work was written in 1820, when a beautiful sea breeze inspired such romantic lines to the poet while he was sailing from Kerch to Gurzuf with his friends Raevsky.
If you download the poem or just read it carefully online, it will become obvious that its main theme is farewell to the motherland, and the farewell is forced. The lyrical hero of the work is a real exile who leaves a lot in his homeland, but still hopes to become happy in the unknown places where he goes. This poem does not pretend to teach how to properly relate to separation from places dear to the heart, but nevertheless a certain lesson can be drawn from it.
In the text of Pushkin's poem "The daylight went out" a thoughtfully sad mood is clearly traced. Without a doubt, this is a typical example of the literature of the romantic genre, but without Byron's cynicism. The hero is fully prepared to accept the future, to the fact that it can be joyful.
The light of day has gone out;
Fog fell on the blue evening sea.
I see a distant shore
Lands of noon magical land;
With excitement and longing I strive there,
Drunk with memories...
And I feel: tears were born in my eyes again;
The soul boils and freezes;
A familiar dream flies around me;
I remembered the crazy love of the past,
And everything that I suffered, and everything that is dear to my heart,
Desires and hopes tedious deception ...
Noise, noise, obedient sail,
Wave under me, sullen ocean.
Fly, ship, carry me to the distant limits
At the terrible whim of the deceptive seas,
But not to the sad shores
My foggy homeland
Countries where the flame of passions
For the first time feelings flared up
Where gentle muses secretly smiled at me,
Where early in the storms faded
My lost youth
Where the light-winged one changed my joy
And betrayed her cold heart with suffering.
Seeker of new experiences
I fled you, fatherly land;
I fled you, pets of pleasure,
Minute youth minute friends;
And you, confidantes of vicious delusions,
To which without love I sacrificed myself,
Peace, glory, freedom and soul,
And you are forgotten by me, young traitors,
Secret friends of my golden spring,
And you are forgotten by me...
But the old heart wounds
Deep wounds of love, nothing healed ...
Noise, noise, obedient sail,
Worry under me, gloomy ocean...
