Alexander Blok, "About Valor, About Feats, About Glory". History and analysis of the poem

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

The poet wrote his poem in 1908, the day before the next, new year. Blok wrote "On valor, on exploits, on glory" at the moment when his beloved wife went to his friend, Andrei Bely, also a poet. The poem is autobiographical. It entered the Retribution cycle.

Brief analysis of the poem

Alexander Alexandrovich was cunning and deceived the reader's expectations by writing the first line. After all, Blok does not write about exploits in this poem at all. It's about love experiences, and not about civic duty. It is the love letter that is the genre of the poem. In it, the lyrical hero speaks with his beloved, who left him for another man. He hopes to be heard. The hero is in despair, he even throws out the "cherished ring" - a symbol of fidelity. Night is the symbol of the unknown. For the first time in five years, he dedicated the block “On valor, feats, and glory” to his wife. Having finished the six-year cycle of love lyrics "Poems about the Beautiful Lady", he stopped making dedications to her. Then Lyubov Dmitrievna became his wife. However, as soon as she left, dedications to her resumed. With epithets, the poet described the loss of the meaning of life: “spinning like a cursed swarm”, and also “indamp night you left the house. And the words about how the hero called the lyrical heroine “like his youth” certainly indicate that the departed beloved meant a lot to him. Spiritual life ended with the departure of his beloved, now he lives on wine and passion that torment him. And his Beautiful Lady turned into a destroyer. It is not without reason that the blue color appears in the poem - in medieval times it meant treason.

The block “About valor, about exploits, about glory” concluded in a ring composition, wrote in iambic pentameter and used cross rhyme. At the end of the work, the hero nevertheless made a decision by removing the portrait from the table.

Block: love poems

The poet wrote a lot about love, with particular sadness. This is an important theme of his work, one of the main ones. "Poems about the Beautiful Lady" Alexander Alexandrovich wrote under the impression of falling in love with Mendeleev - his future wife. He endowed the earthly creature with unearthly qualities, seeing in her the feminine ideal that he invented for himself.

687 poems were dedicated to Lyubov Dmitrievna. After their wedding, the poet switches to other topics - civil. These were the cycles of "Yamba" and "Scary World", as well as "Retribution", into which love lyrics again broke through. The block “About valor, about feats, about glory” included it in this cycle. Alexander Alexandrovich always believed in the bright power of love and gave himself completely to it. However, his love was not only romantic. He also loved with all his heart Russia, his homeland.

Motherland in the poet's verses

Alexander Alexandrovich began to study Russia with legends, charms, folklore and scientific articles. Blok began writing poems about Russia in 1906. The first of them was written on September 24th. It was called "Rus". And it feels like the poet was inspired by legends. The block repeats the motives of Gogol and Pushkin, Lermontov and Nekrasov. But so far this is not the same Russia in which the poet lives. This is Russia, which he loves.

Followed by his cycle "Motherland". Blok does not separate himself from Russia, he experiences everything with her. He loves her any. Blok writes poems about Russia with no less love than poems about his Beautiful Lady, and maybe even more.

About the history of his country Blok wrote the cycle "On the Kulikovo Field". The poet longs for the revival of the country and speaks about this in his works.

Blok's homeland has the appearance not of a mother, as was customary, but of a wife. It was a new trend of the Symbolists, adopted from Vladimir Solovyov, who meant a lot to Alexander and was his inspiration at the beginning of his career.

Creative path

The poet has been influenced by literature since childhood. His aunts and mother, as well as his grandmother, were translators and writers. And having entered the Faculty of Law in 1898, he did not finish his studies there and transferred after three years of study to philology. Literature took over. From the age of five, Alexander composed poetry, but he began to write seriously only at eighteen. In 1906, Blok had already received recognition as a poet.

AlexanderAleksandrovich always admired Pushkin and considered him his greatest talent. His first university poems were written under the impression of the work of Alexander Sergeevich. And shortly before his death, in the winter of 1921, Blok read a speech dedicated to Pushkin "On the Appointment of a Poet." This was his last public performance. On August 7 of the same year, Alexander Blok died.