And the pine tree reaches the trail to the star. Fine and expressive means of speech. Towards the Transfiguration

Poetics Mandelstam It is beautiful in that frozen words and sentences, under the influence of his pen, turn into living and enchanting visual images filled with music. It was said about him that in his poetry the “concert descents of Chopin’s mazurkas” and “Mozart’s curtained parks”, “Schubert’s musical vineyard” and “low-growing bushes of Beethoven’s sonatas”, Handel’s “turtles” and “Bach’s militant pages” come to life, and violin musicians the orchestra became entangled with “branches, roots and bows.”

Graceful combinations of sounds and consonances are woven into an elegant and subtle melody that shimmers invisibly in the air. Mandelstam is characterized by a cult of creative impulse and an amazing style of writing. “I alone write from my voice,” the poet said about himself. It was the visual images that initially appeared in Mandelstam’s head, and he began to silently pronounce them. The movement of the lips gave birth to a spontaneous metric, overgrown with clusters of words. Many of Mandelstam's poems were written "from the voice."

Joseph Emilievich Mandelstam was born on January 15, 1891 in Warsaw into a Jewish family of a merchant, glove maker, Emilia Mandelstam, and a musician, Flora Werblowska. In 1897, the Mandelstam family moved to St. Petersburg, where little Osip was sent to the Russian forge of “cultural personnel” of the early twentieth century - the Tenishev School. After graduating from college in 1908, the young man went to study at the Sorbonne, where he actively studied French poetry - Villon, Baudelaire, Verlaine. There he met and became friends with Nikolai Gumilyov. At the same time, Osip attended lectures at the University of Heidelberg. Coming to St. Petersburg, he attended lectures on versification in the famous “tower” by Vyacheslav Ivanov. However, the Mandelstam family gradually began to go bankrupt, and in 1911 they had to leave their studies in Europe and enter St. Petersburg University. At that time, there was an admission quota for Jews, so they had to be baptized by a Methodist pastor. On September 10, 1911, Osip Mandelstam became a student in the Romance-Germanic department of the Faculty of History and Philology of St. Petersburg University. However, he was not a diligent student: he missed a lot, took breaks from his studies, and without completing the course, he left the university in 1917.

At this time, Mandelstam was interested in something other than the study of history, and its name was Poetry. Gumilyov, who returned to St. Petersburg, constantly invited the young man to visit, where in 1911 he met Anna Akhmatova. Friendship with the poetic couple became “one of the main successes” in the life of the young poet, according to his memoirs. Later he met other poets: Marina Tsvetaeva. In 1912, Mandelstam joined the Acmeist group and regularly attended meetings of the Workshop of Poets.

The first known publication took place in 1910 in the magazine Apollo, when the aspiring poet was 19 years old. Later he was published in the magazines "Hyperborea", "New Satyricon" and others. Mandelstam's debut book of poems was published in 1913. "Stone", then reprinted in 1916 and 1922. Mandelstam was at the center of the cultural and poetic life of those years, regularly visited the haven of the creative bohemia of those years, the art cafe "Stray Dog", communicated with many poets and writers. However, the beautiful and mysterious flair of that era of “timelessness” was soon to dissipate with the outbreak of the First World War, and then with the advent of the October Revolution. After it, Mandelstam’s life was unpredictable: he could no longer feel safe. There were periods when he lived on the rise: at the beginning of the revolutionary era, he worked in newspapers, in the People's Commissariat for Education, traveled around the country, published articles, and spoke poetry. In 1919, in the Kiev cafe "H.L.A.M" he met his future wife, a young artist, Nadezhda Yakovlevna Khazina, with whom he married in 1922. At the same time, a second book of poems was published "Tristia"(“Sorrowful Elegies”) (1922), which included works from the time of the First World War and the Revolution. In 1923 - “The Second Book”, dedicated to his wife. These poems reflect the anxiety of this anxious and unstable time, when the civil war raged, and the poet and his wife wandered around the cities of Russia, Ukraine, Georgia, and his successes were replaced by failures: hunger, poverty, arrests.

To earn a living, Mandelstam was engaged in literary translations. He did not abandon poetry either; moreover, he began to try himself in prose. “The Noise of Time” was published in 1923, “The Egyptian Stamp” in 1927, and a collection of articles “On Poetry” in 1928. At the same time, in 1928, the collection “Poems” was released, which became the last lifetime collection of poetry. Difficult years lay ahead for the writer. At first, Mandelstam was saved by the intercession of Nikolai Bukharin. The politician advocated Mandelstam’s business trip to the Caucasus (Armenia, Sukhum, Tiflis), but “Travel to Armenia,” published in 1933 based on the trip, was met with devastating articles in Literary Gazette, Pravda and Zvezda.

“The Beginning of the End” begins after the desperate Mandelstam wrote in 1933 the anti-Stalin epigram “We live without feeling the country beneath us...”, which he reads out to the public. Among them is someone who denounces the poet. The act, called “suicide” by B. Pasternak, leads to the arrest and exile of the poet and his wife to Cherdyn (Perm region), where Mandelstam, brought to an extreme degree of emotional exhaustion, is thrown out of the window, but is rescued in time. Only thanks to Nadezhda Mandelstam’s desperate attempts to achieve justice and her numerous letters to various authorities, the spouses are allowed to choose a place to settle. The Mandelstams choose Voronezh.

The Voronezh years of the couple are joyless: poverty is their constant friend, Osip Emilievich cannot find a job and feels unnecessary in a new hostile world. Rare earnings in the local newspaper, theater and the feasible help of loyal friends, including Akhmatova, allow him to somehow put up with hardships. Mandelstam writes a lot in Voronezh, but no one intends to publish it. "Voronezh Notebooks", published after his death, are one of the peaks of his poetic creativity.

However, representatives of the Soviet Union of Writers had a different opinion on this matter. In one of the statements, the poems of the great poet were called “obscene and slanderous.” Mandelstam, unexpectedly released to Moscow in 1937, was again arrested and sent to hard work in a camp in the Far East. There, the poet’s health, shaken by mental trauma, finally deteriorated, and on December 27, 1938, he died of typhus in the Second River camp in Vladivostok.

Buried in a mass grave, forgotten and deprived of all literary merits, he seems to have foreseen his fate back in 1921:

When I fall to die under a fence in some hole,
And there will be nowhere for the soul to escape from the cast-iron cold -
I will politely leave quietly. I'll blend in with the shadows imperceptibly.
And the dogs will take pity on me, kissing me under the dilapidated fence.
There will be no procession. Violets will not decorate me,
And the maidens will not scatter flowers over the black grave...

In her will, Nadezhda Yakovlevna Mandelstam actually denied Soviet Russia any right to publish Mandelstam’s poems. This refusal sounded like a curse on the Soviet state. Only with the beginning of perestroika did Mandelstam gradually begin to be published.

"Evening Moscow" offers a selection of beautiful poems by a wonderful poet:

***
I was given a body - what should I do with it?
So one and so mine?

For the joy of quiet breathing and living
Who, tell me, should I thank?

I am a gardener, I am also a flower,
In the dungeon of the world I am not alone.

Eternity has already fallen on the glass
My breath, my warmth.

A pattern will be imprinted on it,
Unrecognizable recently.

Let the dregs of the moment flow down -
The cute pattern cannot be crossed out.
<1909>

***
Thin decay is thinning -
purple tapestry,

To us - to the waters and forests -
The skies are falling.

Hesitant hand
These brought out the clouds.

And the sad one meets the gaze
Their pattern is blurred.

Dissatisfied, I stand and remain quiet,
I, the creator of my worlds, -

Where the skies are artificial
And the crystal dew sleeps.
<1909>

***
On pale blue enamel,
What is conceivable in April,
Birch trees raised their branches
And it was getting dark unnoticed.

The pattern is sharp and small,
A thin mesh froze,
Like on a porcelain plate
The drawing, drawn accurately, -

When his artist is cute
Displays on the glassy solid,
In the consciousness of momentary power,
In the oblivion of sad death.
<1909>

***
Unspeakable sadness
She opened two huge eyes,
Flower woke up vase
And she threw out her crystal.

The whole room is drunk
Exhaustion is a sweet medicine!
Such a small kingdom
So much was consumed by sleep.

A little red wine
A little sunny May -
And, breaking a thin biscuit,
The thinnest fingers are white.
<1909>

***
Silentium
She hasn't been born yet
She is both music and words.
And therefore all living things
Unbreakable connection.

Seas of breasts breathe calmly,
But the day is bright like crazy.
And pale lilac foam
In a cloudy azure vessel.

May my lips find
Initial muteness -
Like a crystal note
That she was pure from birth!

Remain foam, Aphrodite,
And return the word to music,
And be ashamed of your heart,
Merged from the fundamental principle of life!
< 1910>

***
Don't ask: you know
That tenderness is unaccountable,
And what do you call
My trepidation is all the same;

And why confession?
When irrevocably
My existence
Have you decided?

Give me your hand. What are passions?
Dancing snakes!
And the mystery of their power -
Killer magnet!

And the serpent's disturbing dance
Not daring to stop
I contemplate the gloss
Maiden's cheeks.
<1911>

***
I shiver from the cold -
I want to go numb!
And gold dances in the sky -
Orders me to sing.

Tomish, anxious musician,
Love, remember and cry,
And, thrown from a dim planet,
Pick up the easy ball!

So she's real
Connection with the mysterious world!
What aching melancholy,
What a disaster!

What if, having flinched wrongly,
Always flickering
With your rusty pin
Will the star get me?
<1912>

***
No, not the moon, but a light dial
Shines on me - and what is my fault,
What faint stars do I feel the milkiness?

And Batyushkova’s arrogance disgusts me:
What time is it, he was asked here,
And he answered the curious: eternity!
<1912>

***
Bach
Here the parishioners are children of the dust
And boards instead of images,
Where is the chalk - Sebastian Bach
Only numbers appear in the psalms.

Tall debater, really?
Playing my chorale to my grandchildren,
Support of the spirit indeed
Did you look for proof?

What's the sound? Sixteenths,
Organa polysyllabic cry -
Just your grumbling, nothing more,
Oh, intractable old man!

And a Lutheran preacher
On his black pulpit
With yours, angry interlocutor,
The sound of your speeches interferes.
<1913>

***
"Ice cream!" Sun. Airy sponge cake.
A transparent glass with ice water.
And into the world of chocolate with a ruddy dawn,
To the milky Alps, dreams fly.

But, clinking the spoon, it’s touching to look -
And in a cramped gazebo, among the dusty acacias,
Accept favorably from the bakery graces
In an intricate cup there is fragile food...

The barrel organ's friend will suddenly appear
The wandering glacier's motley cover -
And the boy looks with greedy attention
The chest is full in the wonderful cold.

And the gods do not know what he will take:
Diamond cream or stuffed waffle?
But it will quickly disappear under a thin splinter,
Sparkling in the sun, divine ice.
<1914>

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

Like a crane's wedge into foreign borders, -
On the heads of kings there is divine foam, -
Where are you going? Whenever Elena
What is Troy alone for you, Achaean men?

Both the sea and Homer - everything moves with love.
Who should I listen to? And now Homer is silent,
And the black sea, swirling, makes noise
And with a heavy roar he approaches the headboard.
<1915>

***
I don't know since when
This song has begun -
Isn't there a thief rustling along it?
Is the mosquito prince ringing?

I would like about nothing
Talk again
Rustle with a match, with your shoulder
To stir up the night, to wake up;

Scatter a haystack at the table,
A cap of air that languishes;
Rip, tear the bag,
In which cumin is sewn.

To the pink blood connection,
These dry herbs are ringing,
The stolen item was found
A century later, a hayloft, a dream.
<1922>

***
I returned to my city, familiar to tears,
To the veins, to the swollen glands of children.

You're back here, so swallow it quickly
Fish oil of Leningrad river lanterns,

Find out soon the December day,
Where the yolk is mixed with the ominous tar.

Petersburg! I don't want to die yet!
You have my phone numbers.

Petersburg! I still have addresses
By which I will find the voices of the dead.

I live on the black stairs, and to my temple
A bell torn out with meat hits me,

And all night long I wait for my dear guests,
Moving the shackles of the door chains.

<декабрь 1930>

***
For the explosive valor of the coming centuries,
For the high tribe of people
I lost even the cup at the feast of my fathers,
And fun, and your honor.
The wolfhound century rushes onto my shoulders,
But I am not a wolf by blood,
You better stuff me like a hat into your sleeve
Hot fur coats of the Siberian steppes.

So as not to see a coward or a flimsy filth,
No bloody blood in the wheel,
So that the blue foxes shine all night
To me in its primeval beauty,

Take me into the night where the Yenisei flows
And the pine tree reaches the star,
Because I am not a wolf by blood
And only my equal will kill me.

<март 1931>

***
Oh how we love to be hypocrites
And we forget easily
The fact that we are closer to death in childhood,
Than in our mature years.

More insults are being pulled from the saucer
Sleepy child
And I have no one to sulk at
And I am alone on all paths.

But I don’t want to fall asleep like a fish,
In the deep swoon of the waters,
And free choice is dear to me
My sufferings and worries.
<февраль 1932>

Paths: Comparison is a figurative expression in which one phenomenon, object, or person is likened to another. Comparisons are expressed in different ways: in the instrumental case (“goes away in smoke”); various conjunctions (as if, exactly, as if, etc.) lexically (using the words similar, similar)

Periphrasis is a descriptive phrase. An expression that descriptively conveys the meaning of another expression or word. City on the Neva (instead of St. Petersburg) An oxymoron is a trope that consists of combining words that name mutually exclusive concepts. Dead Souls (N.V. Gogol); look, it’s fun for her to be sad (A.A. Akhmatova)

Epithet An artistic definition that paints a picture or conveys an attitude towards what is being described is called an epithet (from the Greek epiton - application): mirror surface. Epithets are most often adjectives, but often nouns also act as epithets (“sorceress-winter”); adverbs (“stands alone”). In folk poetry there are constant epithets: the sun is red, the wind is violent.

In the 2016/17 academic year at the Alcora Creative Workshop we will study the means of artistic expression that are used in poetry, and we will even conduct a new educational competition series on this topic under the general name TRAILS.

TROP is a word or expression used figuratively to create an artistic image and achieve greater expressiveness.

Tropes include such artistic devices as epithet, comparison, personification, metaphor, metonymy, sometimes they include hyperbole and litotes and a number of other expressive means. No work of art is complete without tropes. A poetic word is polysemantic; the poet creates images, playing with meanings and combinations of words, using the environment of the word in the text and its sound - all this constitutes the artistic possibilities of the word, which is the only tool of the poet or writer.

When creating TROP, the word is ALWAYS USED IN A FIGUREABLE MEANING.

Let's get acquainted with the most famous types of trails.

1. EPITHET

An epithet is one of the tropes, which is an artistic, figurative DEFINITION.
An epithet can be:

Adjectives:
gentle face (S. Yesenin);
these poor villages, this meager nature... (F. Tyutchev);
transparent maiden (A. Blok);

Participles:
abandoned land (S. Yesenin);
frantic dragon (A. Blok);
shining takeoff (M. Tsvetaeva);

Nouns, sometimes together with their surrounding context:
Here he is, a leader without squads (M. Tsvetaeva);
My youth! My little dove is dark! (M. Tsvetaeva).

Any epithet reflects the uniqueness of the author’s perception of the world, therefore it necessarily expresses some kind of assessment and has a subjective meaning: a wooden shelf is not an epithet, since there is no artistic definition here, a wooden face is an epithet expressing the speaker’s impression of the interlocutor’s facial expression, that is, creating an image .

In a work of art, an epithet can perform various functions:
- figuratively characterize the object: shining eyes, diamond eyes;
- create an atmosphere, mood: gloomy morning;
- convey the attitude of the author (storyteller, lyrical hero) to the subject being characterized: “Where will our prankster ride?” (A. Pushkin);
- combine all previous functions (as happens in most cases of using an epithet).

2. COMPARISON

Simile is an artistic technique (trope) in which an image is created by comparing one object with another.

Comparison differs from other artistic comparisons, for example, likenings, in that it always has a strict formal sign: a comparative construction or turnover with comparative conjunctions AS, AS, WORD, EXACTLY, AS AS IF and the like. Expressions like HE WAS LIKE... cannot be considered a comparison as a trope.

“And slender reapers with short hems, LIKE FLAGS ON A HOLIDAY, fly with the wind” (A. Akhmatova)

“Thus, the images of changeable fantasies, running LIKE CLOUDS IN THE SKY, petrified, live for centuries in a sharpened and completed phrase.” (V. Bryusov)

3. PERSONALIZATION

Personification is an artistic technique (trope) in which HUMAN PROPERTIES are given to an inanimate object, phenomenon or concept.

Personification can be used narrowly, in one line, in a small fragment, but it can be a technique on which the entire work is built (“You are my abandoned land” by S. Yesenin, “Mother and the evening killed by the Germans”, “The violin and a little nervously” by V. Mayakovsky, etc.). Personification is considered one of the types of metaphor (see below).

The task of personification is to correlate the depicted object with a person, to make it closer to the reader, to figuratively comprehend the inner essence of the object, hidden from everyday life. Personification is one of the oldest figurative means of art.

4. HYPERBOLE

Hyperbole (exaggeration) is a technique in which an image is created through artistic exaggeration. Hyperbole is not always included in the set of tropes, but by the nature of the use of the word in a figurative meaning to create an image, hyperbole is very close to tropes.

“My love, like an apostle in time, I will destroy roads over a THOUSAND THOUSANDS..” (V. Mayakovsky)

"And the pine tree reaches the STARS." (O. Mandelstam)

The technique opposite to hyperbole in content is LITOTA (simplicity) - artistic understatement. Litota is also the definition of a concept or object by negating the opposite: “he’s not stupid” instead of “he’s smart”, “it’s well written” instead of “it’s well written”

"Your Pomeranian is a lovely Pomeranian, NO MORE THAN A THIMBLE! I stroked him all over; like silken fur!" (A. Griboyedov)

“And walking importantly, in decorous calm, the horse is led by the bridle by a man in big boots, in a short sheepskin coat, in big mittens... AND HIMSELF!” (A. Nekrasov)

Hyperbole and litotes allow the author to show the reader in an exaggerated form the most characteristic features of the depicted object. Often hyperbole and litotes are used by the author in an ironic way, revealing not just characteristic, but negative, from the author’s point of view, aspects of the subject.

5. METAPHOR

Metaphor (transfer) is a type of so-called complex trope, a speech turn in which the properties of one phenomenon (object, concept) are transferred to another. A metaphor contains a hidden comparison, a figurative likening of phenomena using the figurative meaning of words; what the object is compared to is only implied by the author. No wonder Aristotle said that “to compose good metaphors means to notice similarities.”

“I don’t feel sorry for the years wasted in vain, I don’t feel sorry for the SOUL OF THE LILAC FLOWER. A RED ROWAN BIRE BURNING IN THE GARDEN, but it can’t warm anyone.” (S. Yesenin)

"(...) The sleepy firmament disappeared, and again the WHOLE FROZY WORLD WAS DRESSED WITH THE BLUE SILK OF THE SKY, PERFORMED BY THE BLACK AND DESTRUCTIVE TRUNK OF THE WEAPON." (M. Bulgakov)

6. METONYMY

Metonymy (rename) - a type of trope: a figurative designation of an object according to one of its characteristics, for example: drink two cups of coffee; joyful whisper; the bucket spilled.

"Here the lordship is wild, without feeling, without law, APPROACHED to itself by a violent vine
And labor, and property, and the time of the FARMER..." (A. Pushkin)

"Here you WILL MEET SIDE BARDODS, the only ones, worn with extraordinary and amazing art under a tie (...) Here YOU WILL MEET a wonderful MUSTACHE, not depicted by any pen, no brush (...) Here you will MEET LADIES' SLEEVES on Nevsky Prospekt! (. ..) Here you will MEET the only SMILE, a smile at the height of art, sometimes such that you can melt with pleasure (...)" (N. Gogol)

“I read APULEY willingly (instead of: Apuleius’s book “The Golden Ass”), but did not read Cicero.” (A. Pushkin)

" Giray sat with downcast eyes, AMBER smoked in his mouth (instead of “amber pipe”) (A. Pushkin)

7. SYNECDOCHE

SynEcdoche (correlation, literally “co-understanding”) is a trope, a type of metonymy, a stylistic device in which the name of the general is transferred to the particular. Less often - on the contrary, from the particular to the general.

“The whole school poured out onto the street”; "Russia lost to Wales: 0-3",

The expressiveness of speech in an excerpt from A.T. Tvardovsky’s poem “Vasily Terkin” is built on the use of synecdoche: “To the east, through everyday life and soot // From one deaf prison // Europe goes home // The down of a feather bed over it like a blizzard // And at the Russian soldier //French brother, British brother // Pole brother and everything in a row // With friendship as if guilty // But they look with heart..." - here the generalized name Europe is used instead of the name of the peoples inhabiting European countries ; The singular number of the nouns "soldier", "French brother" and others replaces their plural. Synecdoche enhances the expression of speech and gives it a deep generalizing meaning.

“And it was heard until dawn how the Frenchman rejoiced” (M. Lermontov) - the word “Frenchman” is used as the name of the whole - “French” (a singular noun is used instead of a plural noun)

"All flags will visit us (instead of “ships” (A. Pushkin).

Definitions of some tropes are controversial among literary scholars because the boundaries between them are blurred. Thus, metaphor, in essence, is almost indistinguishable from hyperbole (exaggeration), from synecdoche, from simple comparison or personification and likening. In all cases there is a transfer of meaning from one word to another.

There is no generally accepted classification of tropes. An approximate set of the most famous tropes includes such techniques for creating expressive means as:

Epithet
Comparison
Personification
Metaphor
Metonymy
Synecdoche
Hyperbola
Litotes
Allegory
Irony
Pun
Pathos
Sarcasm
Periphrase
Dysphemism
Euphemism

We will talk about some of them in more detail during the process of participating in individual competitions of the educational series “Paths”, but for now let’s just remember the new term:

TROP (turnover) is a rhetorical figure, word or expression used in a figurative meaning in order to enhance the imagery of language and the artistic expressiveness of speech. Tropes, in addition to poetry, are widely used in literary prose works, in oratory and in everyday speech.