The creative process of the poet Osip Emilievich Mandelstam is extremely ambiguous. It is divided into several stages, according to the structure and mood, which are radically different from each other. The poem "Insomnia. Homer. Tight sails" was written in early years his activities and is saturated with a certain romanticism.

"Insomnia ..." was written at the end of the summer of 1915. And it was published for the first time in the next publication of Mandelstam's collection "Stone". There are two versions of how this poem was created. The first and not very popular tells that Osip Emilievich in those years was interested in ancient literature and was an ardent admirer of ancient Greek authors.

Another, more popular, conveys the opinion of his close friends. They believed that the lyrics were inspired by Mandelstam's trip to Koktebel, to the house of his old friend, Maximilian Voloshin (the sisters Tsvetaeva and Alexei Tolstoy also rested there). There, Osip was shown a part of an old ship that could have been built in medieval times.

Genre, direction, size

The poem was written in iambic six-foot with the addition of pyrrhic. The rhyming is circular, where the feminine alternates with the masculine.

The direction in which the creative genius of Mandelstam developed is called "Acmeism". From the point of view of literary theory, it is correct to call this phenomenon a trend, since it is not as large and large-scale as, for example, realism or classicism. The acmeist poet prefers not abstract images-symbols, but rather specific and understandable artistic images, metaphors and allegories. He writes down to earth, without using zaum and complex philosophical concepts.

Genre - lyric poetry.

Composition

The novelty of a poem is determined by its construction. The three-stage composition reflects the path that the lyrical hero overcomes in his thoughts.

1. The first quatrain is the beginning of the plot. The hero is trying to fall asleep, and behold, a long list of Achaean ships in the hero's imagination turns into a "crane train", striving into the distance.
2. The author asks the question: where and why are they sailing? Trying to answer this question in the second quatrain, Mandelstam asks even more serious questions, recalling the plot of an ancient poem, where a bloody war broke out because of love, which claimed the lives of hundreds of heroes.
3. The poem ends with a line conveying the state of mind of the lyrical hero. The sea roars and roars. But, it is worth assuming (given that the work was written in Koktebel) that under these sounds of the night, dark sea, he finally falls asleep.

Images and symbols

All images and symbols are taken by the author from the ancient poem of Homer "Iliad". It deals with the dispute of the Olympian goddesses, who did not invite the goddess of discord to the feast. In a fit of revenge, she quarreled three women from the divine pantheon (Hera, Aphrodite and Athena), throwing one golden apple on the table, intended for the most beautiful of them. The ladies went to Paris (Trojan prince), the most beautiful young man on earth, so that he would judge them. Each offered her gift as a bribe, but Paris chose the offer of Aphrodite - the love of herself beautiful woman in the world, Helen, wife of the Achaean king. The man stole the chosen one, and then her husband, along with the troops of other rulers, went in search. The Achaeans could not stand the shame and declared war on Troy, which fell in the struggle, but very courageously resisted.

• List of ships- a long and monotonous enumeration, which the ancient Greek poet Homer added to his poem "Iliad". That is how many ships went to conquer Troy. The author considered them to fall asleep, because his heart is also bewitched by love, he cannot find peace in any way.
• Divine Foam is a reference to the appearance of Aphrodite, the goddess of love. She came ashore from the sea foam, which is in this case a symbol of love.
• Elena Troyanskaya- a woman, because of the love of which the troops of both sides perished. The Achaeans did not need land and power, they came at the call of their hearts.
• Contrasting the poetic voice of Homer and the sea necessary in order to show the futility of the efforts of the lyrical hero. Whatever he does, he will not forget his own yearning of the heart, because everything is driven by love. The sea in this case is a free element that returns the author to the present, to reality, where he is also tormented by a feeling.

Topics and issues

• Antique motifs. The poem begins with the lyrical hero's thoughts while listing the names of ancient Greek ships. This is the "Catalogue" mentioned in Homer's Iliad. In an ancient work, there is a detailed listing of each of the detachment of warriors heading for the Trojan War. Twenty-four-year-old Mandelstam, while writing poetry, studied at the Faculty of History and Philology of the Faculty of Philology at St. Petersburg University. Reading the list of ships from Homer's poem was considered an excellent remedy for insomnia. It is with this word that the poet begins his work.
• Theme of love. The hero suffers from the fact that he cannot sleep and begins to list the names. However, this does not help and, after reading the list to the middle, he begins to think. The main problem of the hero is as old as the world - love. The turmoil of the sea is like the turmoil in his heart. He does not know how to be, how to fall asleep and "whom to listen to."
• The problem of sacrifice of love. Mandelstam perceives feeling as a cult - it needs to be sacrificed, it is bloodthirsty in its frenzy. For his sake, the elements worry and destroy ships, for his sake wars are made, where the best of the best perish. Not everyone is ready to devote themselves to love, putting on its altar all the most precious things.

Meaning

The author recalls the Iliad, how the Kings, who were crowned with "divine foam", sailed to Troy in the hope of returning the beautiful Helen, who was abducted by Paris. Because of her, the Trojan War broke out. It turns out that the main reason bloodshed is not the conquest of lands, but love. So the lyrical hero is surprised how this force sweeps away everything in its path, how people give their lives for it for thousands of years.

In the third quatrain, he tries to understand this incomprehensible force, which turns out to be more powerful than both Homer and the sea. The author no longer understands what to listen to and whom to believe if everything falls before the mighty force of attraction of souls. He asks Homer, but he is silent, because everything was already expressed a long time ago, BC. Only the sea rustles as furiously and stubbornly as the heart of a man in love beats.

Means of artistic expression

There are a lot of tropes in the poem on which the lyrical narrative is built. This is very characteristic of acmeism, the movement to which Mandelstam belonged.

Metaphorical expressions, epithets, such as “long brood”, “crane train” immediately take the reader to the hero’s thoughts, allow you to deeply feel the ancient Greek era that the author is thinking about. The ships seem to be compared with a flock of cranes rushing somewhere far away, where they literally sit "like a wedge" in foreign lands.

Rhetorical questions convey the thoughtfulness of the hero, his doubts, anxiety. At the same moment, the element of the sea is very clearly manifested. For the author, it is like a living thing.

The adjective "black" at the same time reminds us that the author was resting at that moment on the Crimean coast, and at the same time refers to eternity, bottomlessness sea ​​waters. And they, like an endless stream of thoughts, rumble somewhere in the author's head.

Interesting? Save it on your wall!

Synopsis of a literature lesson on the topic “Osip Emilievich Mandelstam. Life, creativity. Analysis of the poem "Insomnia. Homer. Tight sails ... "

He appeared like a miracle.

To be a poet, meter, rhyme, image, even if you master them perfectly, are insufficient, you need something else, innumerably more: your own, unique, voice, your own, unshakable, attitude, your own, unshared fate.

N. Struve

The purpose of the lesson: to get acquainted with the life and work of the poet; to develop in students the ability to understand a literary text, to teach how to work with text using the research method.

Equipment: laptop, multimedia presentation, handout (poet's poem), screen.

Type of lesson: learning new material.

Comments:

Students prepare a report on the topics:

1. "Facts" of the biography (1891-1938);

2. The history of the creation of the poem “Insomnia. Homer. Tight sails ... ".

During the classes:

1. Organizational moment.

2. Communication of the topic and purpose of the lesson.

3. Learning new material.

How do you understand the words of A. Akhmatova?

O. Mandelstam is a unique personality with a unique destiny and poetic gift. It can be compared to a miracle.

The student makes reports "Facts of the biography of the poet."

Writing in notebooks.

Osip Mandelstam is one of the most mysterious Russian poets, whose contribution to the literature of the 20th century is invaluable. His early work dates back to the Silver Age.

So, the life of Mandelstam, like his works, is interesting, mysterious and contradictory at the same time. This poet was one of those people who cannot be indifferent to everything that is happening around. Mandelstam deeply feels what the true values ​​are and where the truth is... The poet's creative destiny is the search for a word that would fully express the inner state of the poet. One of the best works Mandelstam is his poem “Insomnia. Homer Tight sails ... ", which was written in 1916 in the Crimea (reading a poem by a trained student).

Interview with students:

What attracted this poem, what feelings did it evoke?

What images does it create?

Which lines represent the main idea?

(the poem attracts with calmness, mystery, grandeur. The author created images of the Achaeans from Homer's Iliad, ships, the sea, a lyrical hero. the main idea in the line: all this is driven by love).

The message of the prepared student about the known facts related to the history of the creation of the poem.

According to one version, Mandelstam was inspired to this poem by a fragment of an ancient ship found by Maximilian Voloshin, with whom he was visiting in Koktebel. However, the themes of antiquity as a whole are characteristic of Mandelstam's early poems. The poet's fascination with the ancient world is his desire for the standard of beauty and for the basis that gave rise to this beauty.

The theme of the sea, like the theme of antiquity in the poem, is not accidental, and is caused not only by the place of birth of the poem: Mandelstam was in Koktebel for the first time in June 1915.

Many critics noted that Mandelstam preferred water to all elements. At the same time, his preference is not swift streams falling from heaven or rushing over mountains; he is attracted by calm and eternal movement: flat rivers, lakes, but more often - the most grandiose form - the ocean, majestically rolling huge shafts. The theme of the sea is inextricably linked with the theme of antiquity: both are majestic, grandiose, calm, mysterious. It is a known fact that Mandelstam was in love with Marina Tsvetaeva during this period of his life, but she did not answer him.

What happens to the lyrical hero?

How is the feeling conveyed in the poem?

(The lyrical hero is tormented by insomnia. On the Black Sea coast, he reads Homer, reflecting on the fact that both the Achaeans and Homer were inspired by love).

The mythological basis of the Trojan War was the revenge of Menelaus for the kidnapping of his wife, the beautiful Helen. Helena, daughter of Zeus and the goddess of retribution Nemesis. The most beautiful of women, she arouses the envy of Aphrodite, the goddess of Beauty.

The very rumor of Helen's beauty can cause strife: all the Hellenic leaders and heroes woo her. Elena will bring pain and dishonor to her husband Menelaus, death to Paris, with whom she will run away, unable to resist the passion inspired by Aphrodite. The city that sheltered the fugitive - Troy - will be destroyed to the ground, most of Elena's suitors, who went to the walls of Troy, will die.

The Achaean army, ready to stone the queen, will stop before her beauty, and they will return her with honor to her home, to Sparta. Elena means a torch, a torch. This name is the focus of all the lines of the poem.

So, before us the pictures of bygone times come to life. The lyrical hero recreates in his imagination the ancient ships that set off to conquer Troy. Where is it said in the poem?

Insomnia. Homer. Tight sails.

I read the list of ships to the middle:

This long brood, this crane train,

That over Hellas once rose.

One gets the impression that the lyrical hero is rereading the lines from the Iliad, where the list of ships becomes a symbol of the strength and power of the Hellenes.

What was the reason for the campaign of their troops against Troy?

(The beautiful Elena was kidnapped).

Like a crane wedge in foreign borders -

Divine foam on the heads of kings -

Where are you sailing?

What is Troy to you alone, Achaean men?

The pictures that arose in the imagination of the lyrical hero captivate him and lead to reflection.

What is the meaning of life?

(in the end, he comes to the conclusion that everything in life is subordinated to love).

Both the sea and Homer - everything is moved by love.

Who should I listen to? And here Homer is silent,

And the Black Sea, ornate, makes noise

And with a heavy roar, he approaches the headboard.

So, what can bring out the best in a person? (only love makes sometimes unexpected, but the most correct actions and deeds).

(He calls the ships “a long brood, a crane train, and even brighter what a comparison is a “crane wedge”, but it also has a real basis. Ships in those distant times, when they went on military campaigns, really lined up in a wedge).

Pay attention to the epithet " tight sails».

What is he pointing to?

(He indicates that the ships are ready to go to sea).

Usually, movement in poetry is conveyed with the help of a quick change of verbs, energetic words, Mandelstam has few verbs, most of the sentences are nominal, incomplete, which creates a feeling of slowness, duration. So, in front of us are ships, if I may say so, in motionless motion, the poet created an image of frozen time - the past, forever remaining present.

Who else does the poet remind of?

(Kings, on whose heads "divine foam").

What does it say?

(About their greatness and strength).

To whom are kings likened here?

(To the Greek gods. One gets the feeling that the gods of Olympus approve of this trip to the “foreign frontiers” beyond Helen).

What image does Mandelstam introduce in this poem?

(The image of the Black Sea, which “ornate, makes noise”, this image gives the poem brightness and a sense of the reality of what is happening.

Let's pay attention to vocabulary.

What is the most in this poem?

(Nouns: sails, ships, foam, head, sea and there are abstract concepts - insomnia, love)

(They are necessary for understanding the idea and theme of the poem).

The poem also contains rhetorical questions. They talk about the special state of the lyrical hero. What state is he in? (A state of thoughtfulness, reflection, philosophizing).

Homer's "Iliad" becomes for the lyrical hero something mysterious, incomprehensible and beautiful at the same time.

What is the hero thinking about? (notebook entries).

About truth, about beauty, about the meaning of life, about the laws of the Universe. And most importantly - love - that's what awakens humanity to action, this is where the continuity of generations is manifested.

So, summing up the lesson, I would like to say: “Both the sea and Homer - everything is moved by love, you still need to surrender to this movement, obey the universal law, as the Achaeans obeyed fate, going to the walls of Troy. This is where the insomnia of the lyrical hero comes from. Live full life, to strive for beauty, to love is very difficult, it requires courage and spiritual strength.

Conversation based on the results of the analysis of the poem “Insomnia. Homer. Tight sails ... ".

Students record in notebooks the features of O. Mandelstam's poetry

What features of the early poetry of O. Mandelstam were revealed by analyzing the poem "Insomnia ..."?

(Understanding art as a connecting thread between generations, understanding life as a movement towards love, requiring courage and spiritual strength.)

Lesson summary

Reflection

What did we do in class today?

Have we achieved our goal?

How do you rate your work?

Final word of the teacher

At the lesson, we tried to understand the verses of one of the most mysterious and most significant Russian poets of the 20th century - O. Mandelstam, to understand the features of his work of the early period, the universal significance of poetry; developed the skills and abilities of literary text analysis.

The poem "Insomnia, Homer, tight sails" was written in 1915. This stage creative life many literary critics call the poet of the Silver Age the period of the “Stone” (L. Ginzburg in the book “On Lyrics”). The creator of the word is associated with the builder who erects the building, and the stone is his main tool of labor. That is why the search for the word and the meaning of life is key in understanding this poem.

Already from the first lines it becomes clear that philosophical thoughts are inspired by the work of the Greek storyteller, and the author gives a direct reference to the 2nd part of the Iliad. Reading this legendary work, plunging into its meaning, the poet is faced with the question of what is the meaning of life: “Both the sea and Homer are all driven by love. Who should I listen to? And now, Homer is silent ... ". The meaning of life is in love, which can be different: how to destroy everything around (as in the case of Elena), and how to create. For the poet, the question of whether there is a meaning in love remains open. And judging by the sentence about Homer's silence, we can conclude that this problem is relevant at all times - from Hellas to the present day.

The sea is one of the key images of the poem. It symbolizes infinity, the relationship of times. Already from the first lines, the reader is presented with the image of "tight sails of ships" that are ready to go to sea. Therefore, we can say that the poem begins with the image of the sea, and it ends in the same way. The ring composition of the poem is a compositional element, which also indicates the cyclic nature of the problems raised in the work.

At the plot level, the author uses a ring composition: at the beginning of the work, the lyrical hero cannot fall asleep, images of Homer's poem flash before him, then "the black sea ... approaches the headboard." These lines can be understood in two ways: the black sea is a dream that replaces insomnia, or thoughts and thoughts that never give rest. But given that the sea in the tradition of antiquity, as well as subsequently the Silver Age, appears as something majestic and calm, it is more likely that the dream covers the lyrical hero. This story line associated with the lyrical hero himself. But there is another story line in the poem - the line of the journey to Troy, this journey from life to death, this line also closes.

The poem is dominated by nominal parts of speech (about 70% of all words), 20% - verbs. Using nouns and adjectives, the author creates an almost motionless majestic picture. The poet uses the verbs in the first stanza in the past tense, the image of Hellas is the past, long gone. All other verbs in the work are in the present tense, this emphasizes the continuity of tenses.

Imagery and expressiveness in the work is achieved by the presence of metaphors: ships are compared with cranes. In this technique, there is also an element of personification, so Mandelstam revives before us the picture of ancient Hellas, the picture of the destruction of life because of love. This personified picture never helps. lyrical hero answer the question: why love - such a creative feeling, becomes the cause of destruction.

Analysis 2

"Insomnia. Homer. Tight sails. Doesn't it remind you of anything? "Night. The outside. Flashlight. Pharmacy". This is how Blok's poem "The Twelve" begins. Chopped, minted phrases. Like Mandelstam, Blok also belongs to the poets Silver Age. Probably, then it was fashionable to write in this style. Blok has insomnia, and so does Mandelstam.

Sooner or later, all poets turn to the theme of love. Especially when she's unhappy. Yes, Mandelstam could not sleep well in Koktebel. There he rested with his friend Maximilian Voloshin. Accidentally or not, he saw a fragment of an ancient ship. And right away, for some reason, he remembered Homer, reflections on the eternal - about a woman, about love.

Mandelstam likes the era of antiquity. It is mysterious, enigmatic, unique. He considers her the standard of beauty. In addition, he likes water. This element is also mysterious, unique. In particular, the ocean, which sends huge waves to the shores.

The poem is divided into 3 semantic parts. Written in iambic, the line rhymes through the line.

Where did Homer suddenly come from? The author studied at the university, at the Faculty of History and Philology. True, he didn’t finish his studies, he quit. There he studied Homer's Iliad in the original. There was published a long list of ships that went to conquer Troy. It was a proven remedy for insomnia. That's where the line about the list of ships, read to the middle, was born. Then, apparently, he still fell asleep.

The poem is written in the first person. Here the poet cannot fall asleep, and uses the well-known "sleeping pills". No, he does not count sheep, but reads the list of ships. But it doesn't help me sleep. Thought "runs away" to the Trojan War. The poet comes to an interesting conclusion that the opponents fought not for Troy, but for the beautiful Helen.

It is in the last quatrain that he concludes that everything in the world is driven by love for a woman. They start and end wars.

To make the poem brighter, more expressive, Mandelstam uses metaphors. "Everything is driven by love." There are also epithets "tight sails", "divine foam". As a comparison, you can give the line "like a crane wedge."

Why did the Hellenes go to Troy? The beautiful Helen was kidnapped by the son of the king there. The culprit of the war, indirectly, is a woman. So why not save her? What is the sense of life? In a woman, and, therefore, in love. Here "both Homer and the sea - everything is moved by love." It is she who awakens everything in people best qualities. Because of love, the greatest feats and the most reckless deeds are accomplished.

The poet compares ships with a crane wedge. But in those days, the ships did not line up in a line, but went through the sea in a wedge. And the cranes also fly in the sky like a wedge. Here's an accurate "tight sails" comparison. This means that the sails on the masts are stretched as they should. The ships are ready for a long voyage.

It is necessary to sleep, and the poet philosophizes, reflects. And asks rhetorical questions that have no answers. Homer's "Iliad" very much "hooked" Mandelstam. And if insomnia almost every night, then, probably, he learned the list of sails by heart. Why don't you sleep? Unrequited love for Marina Tsvetaeva. There was no woman.

Analysis of the poem Insomnia. Homer. Tight sails according to plan

Perhaps you will be interested

• Analysis of the poem Listen to Yesenin's filthy heart

  The contradictory nature of Yesenin's personality will be clear if one studies his work in more or less detail. In his various hypostases, the poet shows the facets of the inner world, which are conditionally graded from a devout wanderer

• Analysis of Tyutchev's poem Last Love

  The poem was written by the accomplished and mature Fyodor Tyutchev in the first half of the 19th century, on the border of 1852-1854, and entered the cycle called "Denisevsky", according to critics, the most famous and lyrically drunk.

• Analysis of Pushkin's poem Pushchin Grade 6

  Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin had many friends at the time when he studied at the Lyceum. But Pushchin was closest to him. There was a very close and sincere relationship between them. They also had a lot in common.

• Analysis of the poem Sonnet to the form of Bryusov

  The Sonnet to a Form is an excellent example of the work of the Symbolists. Although at the time of creation Valery Bryusov was very young, his great talent can be traced in the poem.

• Analysis of the poem The Sun by Andrei Bely

O. Mandelstam - Insomnia. Homer. Tight sails.

Insomnia. Homer. Tight sails.
I read the list of ships to the middle:
This long brood, this crane train,
That over Hellas once rose.

Like a crane wedge in foreign borders, -
Divine foam on the heads of kings, -
Where are you sailing? Whenever not Elena,
What is Troy to you alone, Achaean men?

Both the sea and Homer - everything is moved by love.
Who should I listen to? And here Homer is silent,
And the black sea, ornate, rustles
And with a heavy roar, he approaches the headboard.
Translation of the song
There is no translation. You can You can add it!
If you find an error in the name

Read by Sergei Yursky

YURSKY, SERGEY YURIEVICH, (b. 1935), actor, director, writer, poet, screenwriter. National artist Russian Federation.

Mandelstam Osip Emilievich - poet, prose writer, essayist.
Osip Emilievich Mandelstam (1891, Warsaw - 1938, Vladivostok, transit camp), Russian poet, prose writer. Relations with parents were very alienated, loneliness, "homelessness" - this is how Mandelstam presented his childhood in his autobiographical prose "The Noise of Time" (1925). For Mandelstam's social self-awareness, it was important to classify himself as a commoner, a keen sense of injustice that exists in society.
Mandelstam's attitude to Soviet power since the late 1920s ranges from sharp rejection and denunciation to repentance before the new reality and glorification of I.V. Stalin. Most famous example denunciations - the anti-Stalinist poem "We live, not feeling the country under us ..." (1933) and the autobiographical "The Fourth Prose". The most famous attempt to take power is the poem "If I took coal for the highest praise ...", which was assigned the name "". In mid-May 1934, Mandelstam was arrested and exiled to the city of Cherdyn in the Northern Urals. He was accused of writing and reading anti-Soviet poems. From July 1934 to May 1937 he lived in Voronezh, where he created the cycle of poems "Voronezh Notebooks", in which the emphasis on lexical vernacular and colloquial intonations is combined with complex metaphors and sound play. The main theme is history and a person's place in it ("Poems about the unknown soldier"). In mid-May 1937 he returned to Moscow, but he was forbidden to live in the capital. He lived near Moscow, in Savelovo, where he wrote his last poems, then in Kalinin (now Tver). In early March 1938, Mandelstam was arrested in the Samatikha sanatorium near Moscow. A month later, he was sentenced to 5 years in camps for counter-revolutionary activities. He died of exhaustion in a transit camp in Vladivostok.

« Insomnia. Homer. Tight sails...»
Materials for the commentary

The materials were discussed and published in corrected form . Their current edition is extended and, I would like to think, not the last.

Insomnia. Homer. Tight sails.
I read the list of ships to the middle:
This long brood, this crane train,
That over Hellas once rose.

Like a crane wedge in foreign borders -
Divine foam on the heads of kings -
Where are you sailing? Whenever not Elena,

What is Troy to you alone, Achaean men?

Both the sea and Homer - everything is moved by love.
Who should I listen to? And here Homer is silent,
And the black sea, ornate, rustles
And with a heavy roar, he approaches the headboard.

1915

Below are no indications of echoes with other works by Mandelstam: such information is useful if it can clarify the content of the commented text, and redundant if there are no obscurities in it. The commentator did not look for answers to the questions “could the author have read this” and “whether the author was aware of ...”, believing that the commentary is evidence not of the author, but of the language. The indications given below of the echoes of Mandelstam's text with the works of other authors are intended to help readers appreciate the resources of poetic language and its capacity for self-reflection.

The commentator considers it his pleasant duty to express gratitude to V. Bezprozvanny, M. Bobrik, V. Brainin-Passek, A. Zholkovsky, O. Lekmanov, N. Mazur, N. Okhotin, O. Proskurin, V. Rubtsov, E. Soshkin and M Fedorova for help in the work.

Insomnia – Along with the works of such authors as Sappho and Du Fu, Petrarch and Shakespeare, Heine and Mallarme, the commented text is included in an anthology of literature on insomnia (see: AquaintedwiththeNight: InsomniaPoems. N. Y., 1999; Schlaflos: DasBuchderhellenNa chte. Lengwil, 2002 ), however, it is difficult to form an idea of ​​the Russian tradition in mastering this topic. It lacks, for example, the motives of anxiety that are obligatory for most Russian “poems composed during insomnia”: “Why are you disturbing me?” (Pushkin), “It disturbs me mercilessly” (Yazikov), “I will only close my eyelids - and my heart is alarmed” (Benediktov), ​​“And I could not close at all / Alarmed eyes” (Ogarev), “Again in my soul anxiety and dreams” (Apukhtin), “Before them, the heart is again in alarm and on fire” (Fet), “And anxious insomnia away / You can’t drive away into the transparent night” (Block) and / or languor: “Hours of weary vigil” (Pushkin), “Planning night story! (Tyutchev), “How tiring and sleepy / Hours of my insomnia!” (Yazykov), “In the hour of languishing vigil” and “Why in the hours of languor” (Ap. Grigoriev), “And only you languish alone in silence” and “Mystery, eternal, formidable mystery torments / The mind weary of work” (Nadson), “And the sinful heart torments me with its / Unbearable injustice” (Fet), “Tomya and tender expectation” (Annensky). Mandelstam's text is closer to writings describing falling asleep - under the influence of sea rolling, the sound of the surf, fatigue from reading or counting imaginary identical objects; only Mandelstam uses not one, but all the named sleeping pills.

Insomnia. Homer – Freedom from external vision, acquired through sleep or blindness, is a condition for supervision: “I am sweetly lulled by my imagination, / And poetry awakens in me” (Pushkin), “ O , surround yourself with darkness, poet, surround yourself with silence, / Be lonely and blind, like Homer, and deaf, like Beethoven, / Strain your spiritual hearing and spiritual vision more strongly ”(A. K. Tolstoy).

Insomnia. Homer. tight sails - The nominative structure of the beginning (cf. in other nocturnes: “Whisper, timid breathing ...”, “Night, street, lamp, pharmacy ...”; see:Nilsson N. A. Osip mandel’š tam. Stockholm, 1974. P. 36 ) gives it the appearance of a finished construction, which increases its suitability as a material for quoting - reverently: “And there are no other signs bestowed from time immemorial, / it’s only worth repeating, recalling voices: / Night, street, lamp, pharmacy ... / Insomnia. Homer. Tight sails ”(Kovalev) or travesty:“ Insomnia. Harem. Tight bodies" (Gandelsman).

Insomnia. Homer. Tight sails ... a list of ships - Homer serves not only as a model of blessed freedom from external vision, but also as a means of immersion in a trance: occupying about a third of the volume of the 2nd song of the Iliad, the story of the Achaean commanders who brought their ships to Troy has a reputation as a tedious lecture: “This set of legends about the warriors of Agamemnon, sometimes just a list of them, it seems to us now rather boring ”(Annensky; see:Nilsson. Op. cit., 37–38 ). In the translation of Gnedich, the 2nd song of the Iliad is entitled “Dream. Boeotia, or the List of ships "- in it Zeus tells the god of sleep : "Rushing, deceptive Dream, to the ships of the fleeting Achaeans".

read to the middle - Subsequently, Dante's voice will be heard here:““Insomnia, Homer, tight sails ...” / He lived the list of ships to the middle” ( Strochkov ) and “Earthly life, like a list of ships, / I barely read to the middle” (Kudinov).

Insomnia... crane - Wed. later: “When insomnia, birds are a proven company”, “there were birds before losing count” (Soshkin).

ships... like a crane – In the Iliad, warriors are likened to birds, including flying cranes (cm.:TerrasV. classicalMotivesinthePoetryofOsipmandel's tam// SlavicandEastEuropeanJournal. 1965 Vol. 10 no. 3. P. 258 ). The parallelism of ships and birds, which is absent in the expanded form in the Iliad, is not uncommon among Russian authors: “But in the fog there, like a flock of swans, / The ships carried by the waves turn white” (Batyushkov), “There are the ships of the brave Achaeans, / How line up merry swans, / They fly to death, as if to a feast ”(Glinka),“ Winged Herd Ships ”(Shevyrev), “Chu, the guns have thundered! winged ships / The battle village was covered with a cloud, / The ship ran into the Neva - and now among the swells, / Swinging, it swims like a young swan "and" The ship floats like a thunder swan ..." (Pushkin), "The ship<…>the winged passage will stretch" (Küchelbecker), "When the village of ships, / Noisy with vast wings, / Rows of raging shafts / Pushes apart with high breasts / And flies to the land of the native" (Yazykov), "The fleet approached like a village of swans" (Bestuzhev-Marlinsky) , “Only, in the distance, a dweller of the ocean, / Like a seagull, its waters are a bird, / Having developed a sail like a big wing, / With a stormy element in a languid dispute, / A fishing boat sways in the sea” (Boratynsky),“Fly, my winged ship” (A. K. Tolstoy), “As on spread wings, / I flew ship "(A. Maikov)," Winged turn white ships "(Merezhkovsky),“The ship flashed, sailing away with the dawn<…>like a white swan spreading its wings” (Bely), “About the Pier / Winged Ships” (Voloshin). And vice versa, a flight can be represented as a swimming: “A merry lark winds / And drowns in blue swells, / Scattering songs in the wind! / When an eagle soars above the heights of steep rocks, / Spreading wide sails, / And across the steppe, through the abyss of waters / The village of cranes sails home ”(Venevitinov; in the original, in Goethe, there is no motive for swimming). If the army is like birds, then the reverse is also true: “And above - we are in formation / Or with a sharp wedge, / Like an army, / Through the whole sky / Flies / Regiment cranes” (A. Maykov). The militarization of the air will increase the demand for this metaphor.: “Above them, in the clouds, look, near, far, / Steel cranes soar, - / That is our wonder planes! (Poor),“And, lined up for battle, / They fly over you / Cranes in the blue sky. / You commanded: - Fly! - / And they are already far away ”(Barto),“ Who will take off and shoot down / This black plane?<…>And soared over the fields / Cranes after cranes, / And rushed to the attack: / “Well, damn, beware!” (Chukovsky). In a popular song, fallen warriors are reincarnated as flying cranes, and “there is a small gap in that formation - / Perhaps this is the place for me!” (Gamzatov, per. Grebneva) - a motif that in the centon era will unite with Mandelstam's ships: "there is a place for me in the list of ships" (Starikovsky).

Insomnia ... ships ... like a crane - The similarity in the pattern of movement and the shape of the hull, as well as the similarity (phonetic and morphological) of the very words "ships" and "cranes" made them members of the folklore ("Flood to the ships, sand to the cranes") and quasi-folklore parallelism - from “She has ships in the sea, he has cranes in the sky” (Bestuzhev-Marlinsky) to “A crane flies through the sky, a ship goes through the sea” (Kim). In Mandelstam, this parallelism, reinforced by the figure of comparison, motivates the confusion of two soporific practices - reading a boring text and counting animals of the same species. Wed later: "Ship, crane, dream" (Lvovsky).

crane train - Perhaps the translation of the expression " Kraniczug" ("ZugderKraniche ”), found, for example, in Schiller (“ Wasist'smitdiesemKranichzug ?”) and in the scene with Elena the Beautiful in Faust (“... gleichderKraniche / Laut-heiserklingendemZug"; compare: Nilsson. Op. cit., 39 ).

crane ... into foreign borders - Cf .: “In the steppe the cranes screamed, / And the power of thought carried away / Abroad native land"(Fet). For Russian and Soviet authors, the image of flying cranes often accompanies reflections on the homeland and foreign land: “They will be visited by a minute / Crane, a nomadic hermit. / Oh, where then, orphaned, / Where will I be! To what countries, / To what alien limits / Will the bold sail proudly rush / My boat on galloping waves! (Davydov), “I shout to the ships, / I shout to the cranes. / - No thanks! I scream loudly. - / You swim yourself! / And fly yourself! / Only I don't want to go anywhere<…>I'm from here / Not at all / Nowhere / I don't want to! / I will stay in the Soviet Land!” (Kharms), “Migratory birds fly / In the autumn distance blue, / They fly to hot countries, / And I stay with you. / And I stay with you, / Native country forever! / I don’t need the Turkish coast, / And I don’t need Africa ”(Isakovsky). The cry of cranes is an attribute of Russia: “Chu! cranes are pulling in the sky, / And their cry, like a roll call / Keeping the dream of their native land / The Lord's sentries ”(Nekrasov),“ About the homeland - the cry of cranes ”(T. Beck); having heard it in a foreign land, they remember their homeland: “They are flying close and sobbing louder, / As if they brought me sad news ... / From what inhospitable land are you / Did you fly here for the night, cranes? .. / I know that a country where the sun is already without power, / Where the shroud is already waiting, getting cold, the earth / And where a dull wind howls in the bare forests, - / Either my native land, then my homeland ”(A. Zhemchuzhnikov). Since the movement of cranes “to foreign borders” is a movement to the south, and the Achaean ships are heading in the other direction and yet are likened to cranes, the commented text becomes similar to the popular in the modern era playing out an ancient plot in Central Russian scenery.

Divine foam on the heads of kings - "Phrase<...>evokes productive ancient associations - the kings of a tribal society, their arrogance, strife, the birth of Aphrodite from the foam, pagan polytheism, the proximity of the gods to people "( Polyakova S. Osip Mandelstam. AnnArbor, 1992. C. 28 ). C R. See also: “We are bursts of rye foam / Over the paleness of the seas. / Leave earthly captivity, / Sit among the kings! (Vyach. Ivanov; see: Lekmanov O. Notes on the topic “Mandelstam and Vyacheslav Ivanov” // “Own” and “foreign” word in artistic text. Tver, 1999. S. 199).

Where are you sailing? - Wed: “The mass has moved and cuts through the waves. / Floats. Where are we to sail?”, here the fleet is likened to birds: “And a flock of ships sinks”, and the creative state is like a dream (Pushkin); “All the swell is like the sea. I, as if in reality, / I’m sailing somewhere in the distance on a ship<…>Where am I sailing?" (Ogarev).

crane wedge... Where are you sailing? - Wed: "Where are you rushing, winged villages?" (A. Odoevsky).

Where are you sailing? Whenever Elena – The similarity with Lermontov’s “His knees slide in dust and blood” (cf. the roll call of the endings of poems and half-verses: “... you are Elena” / “... blood - knees”) will appear in the centone: “Where are you swimming when not Elena? / Wherever you look, her hem is everywhere, / Her knees slide in dust and blood” (Eremenko).

long... Like a crane wedge... Elena – In Dante, the shadows of those condemned for debauchery, including Helen, Achilles and Paris, move “like cranes<…>long string" (" comeigru <…> lungariga"; compare: Nilsson. Op. cit., 39 ). Lozinsky, translating this passage, will remember Mandelstam: "Like a crane wedge flies south."

If it were not for Helena, What is Troy to you alone, Achaean men? - Wed: " No, it is impossible to condemn that the Troy sons and the Achaeans / Swearing for such a wife and troubles endure for such a long time ”(“Iliad”, trans. Gnedich; see: Terras . Op . cit ., 258 ).

Homer... crane... sea - Cf.: “The shafts of the iambic seas are sad, / And the nomadic flocks of cranes, / And the palm tree, about which Odysseus / Told the embarrassed Navzikaya” (Gumilyov).

foam... Elena... sea - Cf .: “And now Elena is born<…>Whiter than sea foam" (Merezhkovsky).

ships... foam... Elena... sea - Wed: “You are pale and beautiful, like foam<…>You and death, you and the life of ships. / Oh Elena, Elena, Elena, / You are the beautiful foam of the seas ”(Balmont; see:MarkovV. CommentszudenDichtungenvonK. D. Bal'mont. Ko ln, 1988. S. 195 ).

Both the sea and Homer - Russian authors following Byron (" By the deep sea, and music in its roar »; per. Batyushkova: “And there is harmony in this dialect of the shafts”) declare art to be congenial to the sea element: “I have overflows in wonderful harmonies / The roar of rolling swells was composed” (A. Maikov), “There is melodiousness in sea ​​waves, / Harmony in spontaneous disputes ”(Tyutchev); hence the likening of poems to waves with an imitation of the rhythm of the surf - from “What to swim in the sea, then read Dante: / His poems are firm and full, / Like elastic waves of the sea!” (Shevyrev) to “I was born and raised in the Baltic swamps, near / gray zinc waves, always coming in twos, / and from here - all rhymes” (Brodsky). In Mandelstam, this declaration is reduced to an equation, the probative power of which is provided by the sound similarity of its members: "sea" and "Homer". This "almost anagram" (Nilsson. Op. cit., 41 ), inspired, perhaps, by Pushkin’s phrase “What is the sea of ​​Zhukovsky - and what is its Homer” (see: Ronen O.Poetics of Osip Mandelstam. SPb., 2002. C. 25 ), will be expanded into a hexametric palindrome "The sea is mighty - in tune with it, I will answer noisily with Homer" (Avaliani). Pasternak will use a punning way of proving the thesis about the co-nature of poetry to the sea, and also on Pushkin’s material: ““ To the sea ” was: the sea + Pushkin’s love for him<…>poet + sea, two elements, which are so unforgettable - Boris Pasternak: „ The element of the free element / With the free element of the verse“..."(Tsvetaeva; compare: "Farewell, free element!" and "... poetry will flow freely"). The association "Pushkin - the sea - poetry" (which was also reflected in the call to "throw" him "from the steamer of modernity") dates back at the latest to Merezhkovsky, who argued that the poet and the hero "are born from the same element. The symbol of this element in nature for Pushkin is the sea. The sea is like the soul of a poet and a hero” (“Pushkin”); here and soon at Rozanov's ("On the Pushkin Academy") Pushkin is close to Homer.

Like a crane wedge... everything moves - Wed. afterwards: “like a crane wedge when he takes / a course to the south. Like everything moving forward” (Brodsky).

everything is driven by love - An idea that goes back, in particular, to Dante (see: Nilsson. Op. cit., 42 ); in a similar wording, cf.: “Only love holds and moves life” (Turgenev).

And the sea... with love - Hidden roll call "and the sea - amore" (cf.: LachmannR. Geda chtnisundliterature. FrankfurtamMain, 1990. S. 400 )?

divine foam... And the sea, and Homer... love... listen - Cf .: "What a charm<…> in this eavesdropping of Anadyomene born from the foam of the sea, for she is a symbol of Homeric poetry" ( Zhukovsky about his work on the translation of the Odyssey). Wed also "The Sea" by Vyazemsky, where the sea element appears as the cradle of the "charm of the world" and the eternal source of poetry.

Homer is silent “So the counselor Virgil leaves Dante.

read to the middle ... Homer is silent - Cf .: “For the Bible, yawning, I sleep” (Derzhavin), “And I yawned over Virgil” (Pushkin), “They beat the dawn ... from my hands / The old Dante falls out, / On the lips the verse begun / The unread one subsided” ( Pushkin),“I closed the Iliad and sat by the window” (Gumilyov).

Insomnia. Homer... Homer is silent - Compare: "QuandoquebonusdormitatHomerus" (Horace).

I read the list of ships to the middle ... the black sea - "Black Ponte" is mentioned in the "Iliad" (translated by Gnedich; cm .: Taranovsky K. Essays on Mandel'stam. Cambridge M.A.; London, 1976. P. 147 ) is roughly in the middle of the "list of ships" (see: Lifshits G. Polysemantic word in poetic speech. M., 2002. S. 169).

is silent, And the black sea ... makes noise - Cf .: "Everything is silent / Only the Black Sea makes noise" (Pushkin; see:Taranovsky. Op. cit., 147 ; compare: Lachmann. Op. cit., 401 ) and “And the Black Sea is noisy without ceasing” (Lermontov; see:Taranovsky. Op. cit., 147 ).

the sea... ornate - The idea of ​​\u200b\u200bthe "talk of the sea" as a hymn to the creator of the universe ( murmurmaris , a frequent turnover in Latin poetry; proposed by Cicero as an exemplary one) was adopted by the new European literature: Chateaubriand, Lamartine, Byron, Hugo, Batyushkov, Vyazemsky, Boratynsky, Pushkin and others (see: [Mazur N. Subtext versustopos] // New Literary Review. 2004. No. 66. P. 128–129 ).

ornate, noisy - Cf .: “What are you making noise about, folk vitii?” (Pushkin).

And with a heavy roar - Cf .: "And with a heavy roar fell" (Pushkin).

Insomnia... foam... sea... noise... roar – C R.: “I heard the roar of the deep sea, / And into the quiet area of ​​​​visions and dreams / The foam of roaring shafts burst” (Tyutchev).

sea... love... to the headboard – Wed afterwards: « And he will follow my shadow - how? with love? / Not! rather, its tendency of water to move will entail it. / But it will return to you, like a great surf to the head, /like a leader Dante, yielding to destruction ”(Brodsky).

Insomnia... love... to the headboard - Wed: “Holy joys flew off as friends - / Their swarm played you in a dream in the morning circle; / And the angel of charm, your relatives, with love / Invisibly clung to your headboard" (Zhukovsky), "The guardian Genius is my love / In joy he is given separation: / Will I fall asleep? clings to the headboard / And sweetens the sad dream "(Batyushkov), "They fall asleep - with prayer, with love / My ghost in their happy dream / Flies to their own headboard" (Kyukhelbeker), "I cry like a child, leaning against the headboard, / I’m rushing around the bed of sleep, tormented by love ”(Davydov),“ And before morning the dream is desired / I closed my tired eyes<…>Bent over her headboard; / And his gaze with such love, / Looked at her so sadly ”(Lermontov),“ Then these sounds, with participation, with love, / The beauty whispers, leaning towards headboard ... / Fell asleep ..."(Benedictov)," I'm waiting for the hour of the night to come sooner. / Did he break through? Leaning against the headboard / With a tormented, sore head, / I dream of the past with delight and love" (Rostopchina), "Some sounds are rushing around / And cling to my headboard. / They are full of languid separation, / They tremble with unprecedented love ”(Fet), “In bed I cried, leaning against the headboard; / And my heart was full of forgiveness, / But still not people, - with infinite love / I loved God and myself as one ”(Merezhkovsky).

Insomnia... sea... love... to the head - Compare: “Here the prince falls asleep in anxiety and grief, / His sleep sweetly cradles the dark sea ... / The prince dreams: quietly to his headboard / The angel bowed and whispers with love" (Apukhtin).

1915 – Parallelism of the Trojan War and the First World War(cm.: DutliR. meineZeit, meinTier: OsipMandelstam. Zrich, 2003. S. 128 ) clarifies the understanding of love as a source of universal movement: this source- eternal.