Poetic image in poetry

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

Poetic art, like any other, consists of many components. What is the poem made of? Probably, anyone can remember from school literature lessons such basic components of poetry as meter or rhyme. In fact, rhyme and meter are only the external parameters of the work, so to speak, its "technical characteristics". They only help to express the innermost essence of the poem. A poet cannot do without technical skill, but no less important is what is called the "poetic image". This is an element of poetry, no longer associated with the form, but with the content of the poem.

Any piece of art embodies the thoughts and feelings of its creator. At the same time, the creator usually tries to express his thought, as if bypassing the usual words and expressions. This is especially true for poetry. No wonder Yunna Moritz wrote:

Poetry keeps its mouth shut.

The same poetess Yunna Moritz in the same poem "The Blue Beast" wrote that the goal of poetic art is "the nameto sing, but not to give out." By "name" here we mean the idea, the theme of the poem, its core, its basis. But the reader can find the "name" in the poem only by straining the imagination, since it is "hidden" from the reader's consciousness by expressive means This is partly the art of the poet, and one of the most important poetic means, subjugating the rest, is the so-called poetic image.

Etymology of the phenomenon

Most often, the thoughts and feelings of the creator are embodied in creativity with the help of images. In general, what is this - an image? Let's look at the etymology of this word. It came to Russian from Old Slavonic, where it meant "face" or "cheek". The word "image" is also used in Greek in the meaning of "icon", "image".

The essence of the phenomenon

Any artistic (including poetic) image chosen by the creator to express his thoughts is familiar to the average reader. This is usually some quite familiar object or phenomenon, for example, a natural phenomenon that we often observe. At the same time, the artist reveals this phenomenon in such a way that it suddenly opens up to the reader in a completely new light. Brilliant creations reveal in the familiar objects and phenomena around us what no one noticed in them. And then the object or phenomenon becomes the phenomenon under study.

A poetic image helps to create a detailed comparison, moreover, of such objects or phenomena, the similarities between which no one noticed. Or maybe,objects or phenomena are chosen outwardly similar to each other, but the creator finds unexpected points of contact.

The phenomenon under study on the example of M. Tsvetaeva's poem

An ingenious example of the brightest studied phenomenon is Marina Tsvetaeva's "The Poem of the Mountain". Well, it would seem, a mountain - any child knows what it is. However, for M. Tsvetaeva, the image of the mountain is just a means for the reader to understand what an unprecedented strength of passion the lyrical heroes experience. It is a passion the size of a tall mountain, the tops of which are directed to heaven:

Because we came into this world -

Celestials of Love

Having delved into the specifics of a complex concept, we will try to answer the question of which poetic images are most often found in poetry.

A studied phenomenon in folk art

We should probably start with the image of nature. It has become very widespread in the poems of various poets. Among the works in which the image of nature plays an important role are purely landscape lyrics, and philosophical, and love poems, for which nature is only a means to clarify, explain and most fully reveal the author's thought.

With landscape lyrics, probably, everything is clear - here nature acts as an object of worship, admiration, admiration. To deal with the role of nature in love lyrics, let us first turn to folk art. In the genre of folk lyrical song, such a poeticmeans as figurative parallelism. Its essence lies in comparing the state of a person, his thoughts, his feelings and experiences with the natural world. In folk songs constructed in this way, one stanza usually describes a certain natural phenomenon, the other - an identical state of the human soul:

Foggy red sun, foggy.

That you can't see the red sun in the mist.

Kruchinna red girl, sad;

No one knows her twist.

The poetic image of nature in professional poetry

Poets also resorted to comparing the state of mind of a lyrical hero with different states of nature.

I'm cold - you know?

I'm cold - do you hear?…

Forest road

In the walls, but without a roof.

And the sky is full of holes, And from the sky caplets…

I dropped my rake at the muddy ditch.

Cold drops

Flowing under the shirt, Cold fingers torment chamomile.

Chamomile said:

-Doesn't like… I know!

No fairies, no mermaids -

Forest road!

I can do anything, I don't think to cry, But I'm screaming again

Into this unsteady slush, To make the cry rise

Further, higher.

-Love you! Do you know?

Love you, do you hear?!

In this poem by M. I. Tsvetaeva, the feeling of homelessness that we all feel in the cold rainy season is mixed with the bitterness of deep longing for a beloved, but not loving person. It becomes not even very clear whythe lyrical heroine is cold, or rather, why she is colder: from the weather or the perceived dislike. And this only enhances the impression.

The image of poetry. Blessing or curse?

Another vivid image created by the luminaries of the word is the poetic image of poetry. Yes, the poetic art itself was often sung by its servants. Let's briefly touch on this phenomenon.

The image of poetry in the poems of A. S. Pushkin, M. Yu. Lermontov and others is certainly associated with the lyrical hero (the prototype of which is usually the poet himself), his gift, destiny and fate. Usually poems that reveal the image of poetry belong to philosophical lyrics. Often, poets in such poems ask about one question: a blessing or a curse is the heavenly gift given to them. The image of poetry helps to reveal the chosenness of its servant: the poet is a prophet, a servant of God, called by Him to be a constant irritant for society in order not to let this society wallow in indifference. It is significant that the image of the prophet is used in the poems of both Pushkin and Lermontov to express the chosenness of the poet. This is another example of a skillfully presented image in poetic speech.

The image of poetry as a terrible art, constantly demanding the blood of its servant, is revealed to the maximum in Nikolai Gumilyov's poem "The Magic Violin", dedicated to Valery Bryusov:

We must forever sing and cry to these strings, ringing strings, Always mustbeat, twist a mad bow, And under the sun, and under the blizzard, under the whitening surf, And when the west burns, and when the east burns.

You will get tired and slow down, and the singing will stop for a moment, And you won't be able to scream, move and breathe, -

Immediately rabid wolves in a bloodthirsty frenzy

They will grab their teeth in the throat, stand with their paws on the chest.

You will understand then how viciously laughed everything that sang, A belated but powerful fright will look into the eyes.

And the dreary cold of death will envelop the body like a cloth, And the bride will cry, and the friend will think.

In general, the verses of different poets, revealing the image of poetry and the poet, are similar in their design.

The image of the motherland on the example of the lyrics of A. A. Blok

Another extremely important image for understanding Russian poetry is the image of the motherland. It is inextricably linked with the image of nature, because love for the motherland most often begins with love for the native nature. However, along with poems glorifying the "simple beauty" of Russian nature and through this Russia itself, there are quite a few poems in which the image of the motherland plays an independent and dominant role. To illustrate what has been said, I would like to dwell on the lyrics of Alexander Alexandrovich Blok.

For this poet, the poetic image of the motherland has become one of the central images of his lyrics. The very attitude of the poet to his native country is unusual: for him she is a living person, and not just any person, but a beloved woman, whose mysterya poet in love and tries over and over again to unravel in his poems. In the textbook cycle "On the Kulikovo Field", the images of the beloved woman and the native country practically merge into one:

Oh, my Russia! My wife! Painfully

We have a long way to go!

The poet is rooting for his native country with all his heart and at the same time, realizing that she will have to endure many more sorrows, he is confident in her bright future (excerpt from the poem "Russia":

I can't feel sorry for you, And I carefully carry my cross…

Whatever sorcerer you want

Give me the rogue beauty!

Let him lure and deceive, -

You won't disappear, you won't perish, And only care will cloud

Your beautiful features…

Blok's poems are the brightest examples of revealing the image of the motherland in poetry. They are unique in that, with their intimate sincerity, they make you remember not so much about civil, but about love lyrics. Block treats his native country exactly as his beloved woman.

Conclusion

Maxim Shvets in his book "Technology of Russian versification" defines poetry as "figurative literary and artistic speech". It follows from this that the studied phenomenon in poetic speech is extremely important. If rhyme and size streamline poetic speech, organize its form, then images are the flesh and blood of a poem, they reveal to the reader the inner essence of the narrative, its content, meaning, mystery. Not a rhyme, not a size, buta poetic image from words forms a poem and makes real art.