“EVERYTHING IS QUIET - A GLOSS IS COMING TO THE CAUCASUS ... »
The darkness of night lies on the hills of Georgia;
Aragva makes noise in front of me.
I feel sad and light; my sadness is light;
My sadness is full of you,
By you, by you alone ...
my despondency
Nothing torments, nothing worries,
That it cannot help but love.
Everyone knows this wonderful poem well, one of Pushkin’s best poems. But not everyone knows or remembers that these poems, published for the first time by Pushkin himself, were entitled “Excerpt” by him. Having published them twice under this title, the poet definitely pointed out their compositional incompleteness, the fact that they either remained unfinished, or represented an extract, an excerpt from a larger written or unwritten work. Pushkin specialists, as well as his attentive readers, also know that the poems “On the Hills of Georgia” are indeed part of a larger whole, that in the manuscript they (in addition to a number of variants) have a continuation. Individual, scattered lines of this continuation were cited several times by commentators on Pushkin; Valery Bryusov, in his edition of Pushkin in 1920, published them, as he put it, “in a coherent form”:
I have only memories
Gone forgotten ...
days of many years.
Where are you, my friends, priceless creatures?
Some are far away, others are no longer in the world.
I'm still yours, I love you again
And without hopes and without desires,
Without dark jealousy ...
My love is pure
And the tenderness of virgin dreams.
As we can see, there is no great “coherence” in these verses. Although in individual lines something Pushkin shines, but in general - the rhyme is not observed (“I love” rhymes with “love”), and there is no obligatory alternation of long six-foot verses with short tetrameter ones, and the meaning is not perfect everywhere (“days many years").
However, until now it was unknown that in fact Pushkin completed this continuation, that in the same draft manuscript from which incoherent passages are extracted, upon careful reading one can read, in addition to the eight verses printed by Pushkin, two more stanzas - eight verses, completely finished and complete. For publication, Pushkin took only half of these four stanzas - an “excerpt”.
The draft of this poem was written in a large bound notebook (or rather, a book), filled mainly with material from 1829-30. (PD, No. 841) . This is a typical Pushkin draft - a precious document in which all stages of the creative process are recorded, its entire sequence, all gradual layers are preserved, just as a cut through a tree trunk preserves the entire growth history of a tree.
This feature of Pushkin’s manuscripts, reflecting the originality of the poet’s work on poetry, has already been drawn attention more than once. Rarely did he sit down at the table to write down poems that had already been invented, at least in general terms, formed in his head, like most poets. For the most part, Pushkin created with a pen in his hands; he wrote down on paper almost all the moments of his creative work: a whole verse, parts of a verse, individual words, sometimes in complete disorder, hastily, in excitement, crossing out one thing and replacing it with another, returning again to the first, crossing it out again and restoring it again ... What another poet does not reach on paper - an unclear thought, a word that will probably be rejected - Pushkin scribbled on paper, immediately crossing out, sometimes without even having time to write the words to the end.
In his draft, sometimes we find a clearly and firmly written verse, two or three verses - this is a recording of what has already been invented, formed in the mind. This is where Pushkin’s work usually begins; this is the first thing written down on a piece of paper. And then there is a feverish, rapid recording of the images that appear in the head, snatches of poetry, epithets ... The pen clearly cannot keep up with the thought, the words cannot
are added, the verse is not finished, the line replaces the taken-for-granted word. Very often, Pushkin writes only the beginning and end of a verse, leaving empty space for the middle, which he will come up with later, and now he is in a hurry to record the new thoughts, words, rhythms, images that are floating in:
Where is the capricious tyranny
Changed the conversations too
Stories, songs of the naughty
Then the second verse turned out:
Changed bottles, conversations.
(“Are you burning, our lamp”)
Adeji gathered noisily
To the old man's sakla.
("Tazit")
She's wearing a golden trireme
Sometimes it floats
In final form:
Young Cyprida floats.
(“We spent the evening at the dacha”)
Sometimes only one word is outlined in a verse - rhyme, and the rest is filled in later.
In luxurious peace
golden.
Such a sketch, after processing, turns into poetry:
In luxurious gloomy peace
Among seductive wonders
Under the shadow of purple veils
The golden bed shines.
("Egyptian Nights")
Piling up word upon word, crossing out, making insertions, writing between the lines, and at random, and on the side, Pushkin makes from his draft a whole network of lines that are difficult to understand, a web in which the reader of his manuscripts becomes entangled, and at the same time creates a most precious document, - if we know how to decipher it correctly and accurately.
The most important thing to look for in such a draft is the sequence in which it was written - which words and phrases came first, which ones after, what was crossed out and replaced with, etc.
If we can find this sequence, we can accurately trace all the stages of the process of creating a poem, the changes of thoughts, the flow of associations, etc.
But Pushkin’s drafts make it possible to go further: they reflect the pace of work, its changes, and to a certain extent even the state of mind of the creator. Nervous, quick scribbling of words - unfinished, illegible, with missing letters, with typos, when the hand does not keep up with the thought - this is on the one hand, and on the other - stops, delays are clearly visible - the poet, thoughtfully, traces the outlines of the letters with a pen a second time , corrects the loops at “v”, the tails at “s” and “b”, draws in the margins of the draft ...
These drawings, which are dotted with Pushkin's manuscripts, if studied in connection with the text surrounding them, serve as excellent illustrations - not of one or another of Pushkin's works, but of the process of creating these works. Sometimes these drawings really illustrate the text, sometimes they apparently have nothing to do with it and excite us with mysterious associations ... Sometimes these drawings have a special, original character: in the draft of the unfinished poem “When the Lord of Assyria” (“Judith”), writing the verses:
The Satrap flowed to the mountain gorges
And he sees their narrow gates
Locked by the rebellious:
A thunderstorm threatens the heights,
Pushkin corrects the last verse; instead he writes:
A wall, like a patterned belt.
The height is girded
And then he draws something like a wriggling wide ribbon on the side, as if using a drawing to check the accuracy of his comparison.
And the drawings in the margins, and the type of manuscript, and the nature of the handwriting (sometimes extremely expressive) - all this provides excellent material for studying the deepest, most intimate aspects of “creative history,” if only we could always understand it properly.
Meanwhile, this study is not only interesting for an inquisitive reader, not only instructive for a novice poet, but also has serious scientific significance. Here lies the key to understanding, to a scientific explanation of that special state characteristic of the poet at the moment of creativity, which Pushkin called “inspiration.”
It must be borne in mind that in the mouth of Pushkin this word was not at all a mystical concept, nor an allegorical or metaphorical expression like “muse”, “Phoebus”, “lyre” ... No, Pushkin gives the word “inspiration” a very precise, almost physiological meaning. This is a special state that comes over the poet from time to time: “the disposition of the soul towards the lively acceptance of impressions and the understanding of concepts, and consequently the explanation of them” (“ Excerpts from letters, thoughts, and comments»);
“a blessed state of mind when dreams are clearly depicted before you, and you find living, unexpected words to embody your visions, when poetry falls easily under your pen, and sonorous rhymes run towards a harmonious thought ... » (« Egyptian nights»).
...
And the thoughts in my head are agitated in courage,
And light rhymes run towards them,
And fingers ask for pen, pen for paper,
A minute - and the poems will flow freely ...
("Autumn")
This state, as described by Pushkin, is accompanied by a number of purely external, physiological manifestations, and is preceded by a special painless sensation - embarrassment, anxiety, excitement ...
...
And a serious fiery illness
My head was full.
Wonderful dreams were born in her ...
(“Conversation between a bookseller and a poet”)
And poetry awakens in me:
The soul is embarrassed by lyrical excitement,
It trembles and sounds and searches, as in a dream,
To finally pour out with free manifestation ...
("Autumn")
“So, for you there is no,” Charsky asks the improviser, “neither labor, nor cooling, nor this anxiety that precedes inspiration.” ... » (« Egyptian nights").
The same “Egyptian Nights” vividly depicts the appearance of a man overwhelmed by inspiration: “His face turned terribly pale, he trembled as if in a fever, his eyes sparkled with a wonderful fire, he raised his black hair with his hand, wiped his high brow, covered with drops of sweat. ... " Pushkin was already familiar with this state in his early youth:
When visions change
In front of you in the magical darkness
And a quick chill of inspiration
Vlasa rises on his forehead.
(“Zhukovsky”, 1818)
The description of this phenomenon, made so many times and so accurately, of course, could not be just a literary device: here, undoubtedly, is a genuine fact, evidence of a real experience, extremely interesting for physiologists and psychologists. And a careful study of the poet’s scribbled and crossed out drafts (carefully preserved by Pushkin) could greatly help the understanding of this phenomenon, the understanding of the very “mechanics of inspiration” - in Pushkin’s expression.
We do not yet know how to decipher them with all scientific completeness; we are only looking for new (always interesting) options in them. The most we can do is to arrange these options in time, to establish the sequence of creation of the work. And looking at Pushkin’s draft, we not so much understand as vaguely feel in it, as in motionless, frozen lava, traces of a violent creative eruption. Reading the illegible words and lines, following consistently in the footsteps of the poet’s work, we involuntarily become infected with his excitement. Those who worked on Pushkin’s drafts (directly or from photographs) are well aware of this excitement, this special kind of pleasure - “following the thoughts of a great man ... ».
The work of a textual critic is often presented as some kind of dry pedantry, pettiness (truth, for some it takes on such a character!), but in essence this work is the farthest from pettiness and dryness: in it the researcher tries to penetrate into the workshop of a genius, to spy on his creative work.
Analyzing Pushkin's manuscript, we cannot always understand the motives for all the changes in the text, all this not only creative, but also mercilessly destructive work of the poet, who in the process of creation destroyed the most beautiful, from our point of view, places - individual words, poems and even whole large pieces . To look for these motives, to justify the changes made by the poet, considering each new version to be unconditionally better than the previous one - and to try to prove this (as researchers often do) - would be wrong and even more unconvincing since Pushkin himself very often returned to old, previously rejected options. Every time we must note the changes that a new version brings to the semantic content, composition, rhythm, sound harmony of a poem - and only in some cases can we, with all caution, guess what exactly prompted the poet to choose this one from several excellent possibilities.
Let us now return to the poem we are examining, “Everything is quiet - the darkness of the night is coming to the Caucasus” (this is how it begins in the manuscript).
Above the verses in the autograph there is a hasty inscription - the date of writing them is “May 15”. This is undoubtedly May 15, 1829.
At this time, Pushkin, who had just proposed to Natalya Nikolaevna Goncharova and received an indefinite answer from her mother - half refusal, half agreement - was making his “trip to Arzrum”. On May 15 he was in Georgievsk. E. G. Veidenbaum successfully juxtaposed the poem
Everything is quiet, the darkness of the night is falling over the Caucasus.
The stars are rising above me
with that place in “Travel to Arzrum”, where Pushkin talks about his trip from Georgievsk to Hot Waters (May 15). “Here I found a big change,” says Pushkin and describes the landscaped boulevard, clean paths, green benches, regular flower beds, etc. “I felt sorry for their former, wild state; I felt sorry for the steep stone paths, bushes and unfenced abysses over which I used to climb. I sadly left the water and went back to Georgievsk. It was soon night. The clear sky was dotted with millions of stars. I was driving along the shore of Podkumka. A. R. used to sit here with me.<аевский), прислушиваясь к мелодии вод. Величавый Бешту чернее и чернее рисовался в отдалении, окруженный горами, своими вассалами и, наконец, исчез во мраке... »
Full of these impressions, memories of his life in the Caucasus nine years ago, Pushkin on the same day writes a poem in which the same motive of memories of the former love that flared up again in him sounds (see the crossed out words of the draft: “I am young again and is yours ... »).
Let's try, looking at the manuscript, to restore in general terms the sequence of creation of this poem. Judging by the appearance of the autograph, the first stanza (four verses) had already been invented; it is written down in a finished form in a firm, clear hand:
“Everything is quiet - the shadow of the night has fallen on the Caucasus
The stars twinkle above me -
I feel sad and light - my sadness is light
Then Pushkin changed the first two verses: in the first, “the shadow of the night has fallen” was first replaced with the words “the darkness of the night has descended,” and then corrected - “the darkness of the night is coming”; in the second, instead of “flickering,” it says “rising.”
Here is the transcription of this stanza:
The last two verses remained unchanged, and in the same form they were included in the greatly changed printed edition.
In their contrasting construction: “I’m sad - and easy ... » « ... my sadness is bright” - Pushkin found a laconic poetic formula that gives the main lyrical theme, developed in the subsequent lines of the poem.
The second stanza (like everything else) was composed entirely during writing. In the autograph she looks completely exhausted. Here is its transcription:
| [ | O e | ] | [ | ] |
[favorite] [many]
[And a lot] [in the world] [has changed]
Where are you, [familiar] creatures?
priceless
Others [and how many]
[Others] far [many] [no] -
There are no others in the world -
This stanza apparently began like this:
Many days have passed, many are gone
And a lot has changed in the world
With the word “many” repeated three times.
“Many days” were replaced by the words “long days,” but in the second verse, instead of “And much in the world has changed,” it was written “And much, much has changed.”
Then, restoring again “Many days have passed ... ", Pushkin completely remade the rest:
I have only memories
Gone forgotten ...
days of many years
etc.
Meanwhile, it is easy to see that this verse represents the missing fourth verse of the unfinished third stanza. Although Pushkin crossed it out, he apparently later returned to it and added to it. Indeed, putting it in its place, we get a completely complete quatrain:
Days passed by. Hidden away for many years.
Where are you, priceless creatures?
Some are far away, others are no longer in the world ...
I have only memories.
So, the disassembled draft gives us not scattered and unfinished “sketches of a continuation,” but traces of a great work that culminated in the creation of four completely completed and completed stanzas, of which the third has been crossed out. I'll list them in a row:
Everything is quiet. Night darkness is coming to the Caucasus.
The stars are rising above me.
I feel sad and light. My sadness is light;
My sadness is full of you.
By you, by you alone. my despondency
Nothing torments, nothing worries,
And the heart burns and loves again - that’s why
That it cannot help but love,
[Days passed by. Hidden away for many years.
Where are you, priceless creatures?
Some are far away, there are no others in the world -
I have only memories.]
I am still yours, I love you again.
And without hopes and without desires,
Like a sacrificial flame, my love is pure
And the tenderness of virgin dreams.
Can these four stanzas be considered a whole, complete poem? I think not. It was not for nothing that Pushkin crossed out the third stanza, and the transition from it to the fourth sounds somewhat forced. It may be more correct to consider these stanzas as a kind of “blank”, material for the poem. Of these, as stated above, Pushkin published the first two under the title “Excerpt.” One can make a rather probable, as it seems to me, assumption about why he did not print the ending of the poem. The groom-Pushkin, who had just won Natalya Nikolaevna’s hand, probably did not want to publish poems written at the height of his matchmaking and talking about love for some other woman (“I am yours as before, I love you again”). In the printed first two stanzas, this motif - a new return of the old feeling (“And the heart burns and loves again”) - is so unnoticeable that commentators who did not know the “continuation of the passage” (and Pushkin’s contemporaries, his acquaintances) often attributed these verses to to Goncharova herself.
It is also possible that the same considerations (fears of some specific applications) forced Pushkin to change the first two verses and move the scene of action to Georgia -
The darkness of night lies on the hills of Georgia.
Aragva makes noise in front of me ...
However, we will not insist on this - it is possible that Pushkin’s motives for these changes were purely artistic.
Carefully examining the manuscript being analyzed, you can notice new amendments on it, made later in pencil. These amendments are only three lines: two horizontal and one
vertical - indicate Pushkin’s desire to extract from the four stanzas a completely different version of the poem, more intimate, perhaps, than the printed one, and sharply different from it. These amendments - small, but radical - are as follows: Pushkin crossed out “the stars are rising” in the second verse and emphasized (i.e., restored what was previously crossed out) “the stars are twinkling.” And then - and this is the main thing - he completely crossed out the second stanza, that is, the one that he later published - “By you, by you alone ... " Thus, after this amendment, only the first and fourth stanzas remained uncrossed out (the third had been crossed out in ink even earlier, and although after that Pushkin added the last verse to it, there is no trace in the manuscript that he restored the entire stanza).
If we had not had the printed text by Pushkin himself and his two white autographs, then the only, final edition of this poem would have been the eight verses resulting from combining the first and fourth stanzas of the draft. And now these poems, without, of course, canceling the well-known printed edition, represent a new version of the famous poem given by Pushkin himself (and not at all arbitrarily arranged by the editor), a completely finished version, significantly different from the poem “On the Hills of Georgia” and, perhaps, not inferior to him in artistic terms:
Everything is quiet - the darkness of the night is falling on the Caucasus.
The stars twinkle above me.
I feel sad and light, my sadness is light.
My sadness is full of you.
I'm still yours, I love you again -
And without hopes and without desires,
On the previous sheet of the same notebook (fol. 103) Pushkin wrote down a sketch:
And I feel this soul
(nrzb.) hour
Worthy of your love
*[Why not always]*
Clean, sad and calm
It has been suggested that this sketch is a continuation of the poem “On the Hills of Georgia ... "This is very likely. So the passage should look like this:
And I feel the soul in this ( nrzb.) hour
Your love, I deserve you
Why not always
Purely sad and calm ...
V. V. Vinogradov in his book “On the Language of Fiction”<М., 1959, с. 338-339) привел это место из «Новых страниц Пушкина» для иллюстрации своего положения о том, что вопрос о текстологической ценности автографов, рукописей по сравнению с прижизненным печатным текстом у нас мало «освещен с разных сторон в широкой исторической перспективе». При этом он пишет: «Вникая в эти стихи, С. М. Бонди приходит к выводу, что Пушкин после напечатания «Отрывка» создал новую редакцию этого произведения». Это - недоразумение. Я, очевидно, неясно выразился, и В. В. Виноградов неправильно понял мои слова. Я, конечно, имел в виду, что этот новый текст создан был Пушкиным еще до напечатания стихотворения «На холмах Грузии», что он вовсе не является «последней волей автора» и, как сказано у меня, «не отменяет известной печатной редакции».
The darkness of night lies on the hills of Georgia;
Aragva makes noise in front of me. I feel sad and light; my sadness is light;
My sadness is full of you, you, you alone... Nothing torments or disturbs my despondency, And my heart burns and loves again - because it cannot help but love.
“On the Hills of Georgia” is a lyric poem written in the genre of elegy. The meter of the verse is iambic with cross rhyme. The description of nature serves the author as a way to express the feelings of the lyrical hero and reflections on the topic of love. The author narrates only his thoughts, without coloring them emotionally. There is only one metaphor in the verse - “the heart is on fire”, but it is so familiar that it is not even perceived as a metaphor.
During the period of writing the poem, Pushkin had a desire to abandon the idea of getting married and never return to Moscow. However, his feelings for Natalya Goncharova turned out to be so strong that in 1830 the poet again proposed to Natalya Goncharova and this time received consent. It is curious that after marriage, Pushkin did not devote a single lyric poem to Natalya Goncharova.
Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin’s poem “The darkness of the night lies on the hills of Georgia” is written in iambic. It combines iambic pentameter and hexameter. The rhyming in the poem is cross, with alternating male and female rhymes. This gives the work consistency; the speech flows slowly and measuredly, as if showing objects one after another, continuously and smoothly. The work was written in 1829 during a long trip to the Caucasus. Pushkin visited the site of the fighting, which was interesting to him because the poet was worried about the fate of the Decembrists. It is interesting that during this period he was in love with Natalya Goncharova, which means he wrote about his love for her. Natalya rejected the love of the young poet, but this did not mean that Pushkin could not admire his chosen one. The young poet shows his experiences by conveying a picture of nature. Darkness covers the world, calm comes to the poet's soul. He is not going to violently oppose the choice of his chosen one, but he cannot forget about her. Therefore, the calmness of nature exactly reflects his mood.
We bring to your attention the text of the poem by A.S. Pushkin:
The darkness of night lies on the hills of Georgia;
Aragva makes noise in front of me.
I feel sad and light; my sadness is light;
My sadness is full of you,
By you, by you alone... My despondency
Nothing torments, nothing worries,
And the heart burns and loves again - because
That it cannot help but love.
You can also listen to the text of the poem “The darkness of the night lies on the hills of Georgia” (read by Oleg Pogudin):
The darkness of night lies on the hills of Georgia;
Aragva makes noise in front of me.
I feel sad and light; my sadness is light;
My sadness is full of you,
By you, by you alone... My despondency
Nothing torments, nothing worries,
And the heart burns and loves again - because
That it cannot help but love.
29-year-old Alexander Pushkin, upset by the refusal of the first beauty of Moscow, Natalya Goncharova, leaves for the Caucasus, where he writes these poems. Pushkin was in Tbilisi, or as it was commonly called then - Tiflis, for two weeks - from May 27 to June 10, 1829. He was noticed not only at receptions, but also committed actions unacceptable for his position - wandered through the bazaars, played with boys, went to sulfur baths and (oh, horror!) bought pears here in this square and ate them unwashed. Tbilisi had already been turned into a garrison city for the army of the Russian Empire, which intended to capture not only the Caucasus, but also to conquer Persia and Turkey. Of course, according to Russian tradition, most of the streets of houses being built in the modern areas of Sololaki and Mtatsminda were named after generals and high tsarist officials. And the lover and rejected poet was looking for an opportunity to escape from his sadness. Only. And again, according to Russian tradition, the best distraction is to go to war.
One can have different views on Pushkin’s literary talent, but the fact that he was a propagandist of the wars of conquest of the Russian Empire is beyond doubt. When Pushkin returned from the Caucasus, Thaddeus Bulgarin wrote in his newspaper “Northern Bee”: “Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin returned to the local Capital from Arzrum. He was in the brilliant field of victories and triumphs of the Russian army, enjoying the spectacle, curious for everyone, especially for the Russian. Many admirers of his Muse hope that he will enrich our Literature with some work inspired under the shadow of military tents, in view of the inaccessible mountains and strongholds on which the mighty hand of the Erivan hero planted Russian banners.”
During the trip, Pushkin enjoyed the full attention of the Erivan hero - General Paskevich, who, during the poet’s farewell visit, on July 21, 1829 in Erzurum, presented him with a Turkish saber, and Pushkin in response dedicated to him the lines in the poem “Borodin Anniversary”:
"The mighty avenger of evil grievances
Who conquered the peaks of the Taurus
Before whom did Erivan humble herself?
To whom the Suvorov Lavra
The wreath was woven with triple abuse.
Pushkin was called a poet of the army, in our opinion - a propagandist. There was no television then, no radio, newspapers were published rarely, and the only way to glorify the conquests was to write laudatory poems. However, Paskevich turned out to be the most sincere after the death of the poet, writing a letter to Nicholas I, which contains the following lines: “It’s a pity for Pushkin, as a writer, at a time when his talent was maturing; but he was a bad man.” It’s also a Russian tradition to exalt and humiliate, at the same time... a propo...
