History of creation
This work can be described as an intimate lyrical confession of the poet. The work “How often surrounded by a motley crowd...” is filled with bitterness and disappointment towards Lermontov’s contemporaries.
He wrote it in 1840 under the impression of a past masquerade. The event took place on New Year's Eve at the St. Petersburg Bolshoi Theater. The publication was dated: “January 1, 1840.” Therefore, the Emperor was offended by the written work, since he himself was present at this costume ball.
Genre, direction, size
Rod - lyrics. Genre: lyric poem. Literary movement – romanticism. The romantic trend in the world of Russian literature includes the conflict of the lyrical hero with society, which we can observe in the work. He contrasts his values with the usual views of a secular society that is alien to him. The hero does not accept the way of life of these people; he considers their main hobbies to be vulgarity and absolute debauchery. There is only room in their lives for entertainment, lies and coquetry.
There is also a “romantic dual world” in the poem “How often surrounded by a motley crowd...”. The hero recalls a carefree childhood, where he did not yet know about human meanness and anger, deception and betrayal. This is the ideal of Lermontov’s lyrical “I,” his desired world, which, alas, he can no longer get into. And because of this, “the melancholy is already pressing in my chest.” It is not without reason that he correlates his childhood memories with a “harmless” island in the sea and with the desert. Such an exotic landscape once again emphasizes the features of romanticism in Lermontov's poem and the inability to find oneself in these mysterious distant places.
The meter of the poem is iambic. Each foot consists of two vowels. The stress in each foot falls on the second vowel. This can be seen in the stressed vowels in the words of the first two lines. Stressed vowels are highlighted in bold:
How about
/ stop
/
build /
crowd
o
/ yu
o
/
circleWhen _
/ per
e
/before mno
/
th as if
/
as if
/ through
the dream
Brief Analysis
Before reading this analysis, we recommend that you familiarize yourself with the poem How often, surrounded by a motley crowd.
The history of creation - this poem was written under the impression of a costume ball, which was given in honor of the New Year holidays and which was attended by the emperor himself. That is why Nicholas the First perceived this work as an insult to himself personally.
The theme of the poem is an denunciation of secular society: soulless, cold and constantly hiding behind masks.
Composition – it can be conditionally divided into three parts. The first consists of two stanzas and describes a world alien to the poet, noisy and brilliant, but empty inside. The second part is a story about his bright dreams, when the past and the imaginary are more valuable to him than the present and the real. And in the third part, the lyrical hero challenges the people having fun.
Genre : lyric poem.
The poetic meter is a combination of iambic tetrameter and iambic hexameter.
Epithets - “motley crowd”, “soulless people”, “cold hands”, “an old dream”, “free bird”.
Metaphors - “I caress a dream”, “the village is smoking”, “yellow sheets are rustling”, “the noise of the crowd will scare away”.
Comparison - “like the first light of a young day behind a grove,” “like a fresh island, harmless among the seas.”
Composition
The poem “How often surrounded by a motley crowd...” is framed by a frame composition. It is formed thanks to the identical emotional coloring of the first and third parts, between which the second, which describes the hero’s childhood, is concentrated. The first and last are distinguished by the pathos of disappointment, melancholy and torment of Lermontov’s lyrical “I”. There is noise and feast all around, which the hero is already bored with; he no longer wants to be in this chaos and society. His only desire: “To boldly throw an iron verse in their eyes.”
These two parts are separated by a lyrical digression dedicated to memories of a carefree childhood, when the hero was still just a child. It’s as if he abstracts himself from the noisy hall for a minute, remembering the landscapes and smells dear to his heart. These memorable paintings seem to be the hero’s only outlet. But, unfortunately, he is forced to return back to the third part of the work, which is even more filled with anger and hatred towards others.
Analysis of the poem “How often surrounded by a motley crowd” (M. Yu. Lermontov)
Analysis of the poem “How often surrounded by a motley crowd” (M. Yu. Lermontov) takes us back to the distant 19th century, to the century of the life of one of the most remarkable poets of our country.
Lermontov is not only one of the most amazing and famous poets. His work is particularly gloomy and permeated with loneliness. The lyrical hero of his works is always lonely and alien to the noisy crowd. This happened with the poet, who was invited to the New Year's ball on January 1, 1840.
Let's imagine a picture of a ball, where people are having fun and rejoicing, making noise. And in the midst of this fun, Lermontov feels especially lonely. At that moment, he was so struck by the facelessness of the huge crowd that the poem “How often, surrounded by a motley crowd...” almost burst out as a cry. It was immediately published in Otechestvennye zapiski.
Nicholas I and his family were also present at the ball. Naturally, he accepted the accusatory lines of the daring writer addressed to himself, which greatly spoiled his attitude towards the poet. But along with a barrage of criticism, Lermontov’s poem also received laudatory reviews. For many in the literary community, it became clear that the star of another talented poet was shining on the literary horizon.
The theme of the loneliness of the lyrical hero in a faceless crowd runs through all of Lermontov’s work. His second theme was boundless love for the Fatherland. It would seem that these are completely unrelated topics, but nevertheless, in this poem they are, one way or another, consonant. The poet loves his country, but his soul does not accept the false society hidden behind masks. Exposing the masquerade is the idea of this work. Lermontov subtly felt the pretense and artificiality of feelings, and in this he saw the main problem and tragedy of modern secular society.
Antithesis becomes the main artistic device in the poem. The composition is based on the opposition of the lyrical hero to the motley crowd. Conventionally, it can be divided into three parts.
The first part conveys a festive atmosphere, but it does not carry any positive motives. The poet speaks sharply about the gathered crowd, tears off their masks, showing their true faces. In every line one can read the lyrical hero’s disdain for soulless images.
In the first line, the crowd appears as a motley variety. Motley means different, mixing different ages, statuses and personalities. But she is perceived by the lyrical hero, “as if through a dream.” This shows his alienation and loneliness.
The music and, in general, everything he hears is unpleasant for the lyrical hero. We understand this thanks to the epithet “wild whisper” and the noise of music. The word “noise” has a negative connotation, and the music is just noise, not playing. It seems that she is fake too.
The epithets “images of soulless people”, “intrepid hands” of beauties and the metaphor “decent masks pulled together” create a picture of a dead society, without a soul, but with an outwardly decent shell. And already here, in the first part, the lyrical hero’s opposition to this arises. It is in the epithets “cold hands”, “outwardly plunging”, “an ancient dream”, “holy sounds”. He, too, succumbs to the general theater of unnaturalness and puts on a mask of involvement in the general fun. But in his soul he “caresses a dream.” Just one verb conveys his state of mind, but how strongly it contrasts with the unpleasant sounds of the ball. In his dreams the sounds are holy. They do not make noise, do not irritate and, perhaps, are heard only by the lyrical hero.
“Holy Sounds” takes the author into the distant past, and the reader into the second part of the poem. It sharply contrasts in meaning and even poetic size from the first part. The poet immerses us in his memories of his distant childhood, where everything is sweet to him, even “a garden with a destroyed greenhouse.” And everything in this past breathes life. That’s why there are so many personifications in this part: “sleeping pond”, “mists rise in the distance”, “the evening ray is looking”. Oxymorons in which there is no contradiction are also wonderful. Thus, “to be forgotten by memory” contrasts today and yesterday, present and past. The lyrical hero wants to forget everything that is happening now, and memory returns him to that real life. Her memory holds. Another oxymoron “to recent times” is used by the poet to show not just a time period, but also to give it meaning. Antiquity means the happy moments experienced by the hero.
The poet repeats the epithet “free bird” twice, placing emphasis on this. His past is associated with freedom, which he does not feel at the moment of reflection.
The second part is filled with incredibly beautiful images. The picture of serene village life seems to be expanding before us. Beauty is conveyed by metaphors: “a green network of grass covers the sleeping pond”, “the village is smoking”.
Memories fill the soul of the lyrical hero with a “strange melancholy,” but this melancholy is sweet and pleasant:
I think about her, I cry and love
Tears and love - this is what the past of the lyrical hero is connected with. But aren’t these the main components of life? Are these true emotions? Reality carries nothing but bitter disappointment:
So the omnipotent lord of the wondrous kingdom -
I sat alone for long hours,
And their memory is still alive
Under a storm of painful doubts and passions,
Like a fresh island, harmless among the seas
Blooms in their damp desert.
The poet indulges in a dream, wanting to stay in it forever, breaking away from bitter reality.
The third part mercilessly pulls the lyrical hero out of his memories, returning him to the unsightly today. After this, it becomes especially painful to accept this imperfect world, and the poet throws “iron verse into their eyes.”
In the third part, the mood of the poem changes dramatically. The lines sound defiant and loud, undisguised contempt for the crowd. The lyrical hero does not hide his feelings, but bitterness and anger seethe in him. He even “drenches” his verse, and doesn’t just endow it with these emotions. As if having come to his senses, he adds indignation at the end. He calls his dream “an uninvited guest.” And indeed, she has no place among these soulless people.
The New Year's masquerade is very symbolic in the poem. This is not just a fact of Lermontov’s biography. This is a kind of symbol of the entire secular society contemporary to the poet. And the purpose of his poem was the desire to open people’s eyes to themselves, to bring confusion into their imagined idyll and gaiety. But the poet nevertheless chose the laconic “January 1st” as the epigraph for the poem, which specifically indicated the people hidden behind masks of duplicity. The tragedy of the lyrical hero is that he opposes himself to reality, and it is no longer possible to return to his past. These are just his dreams. And this torments him, does not allow his suffering soul to calm down.
Images and symbols
The images and symbols of the poem “How often surrounded by a motley crowd...” give the work a deep subtext. Thus, with the help of colorful masks, society tries to hide its vices, secrets, and all the bile of morals. But the hero deftly notices this and denounces it in his internal monologue.
- The image of a bird in works of Russian literature often symbolizes freedom and independence. So the hero wants to fly up like a “free bird” and fly away into the world of childhood, where he was surrounded only by goodness and beauty.
- The image of the lyrical hero sets the dynamics of the poem. He appears before readers as a rebel, an opponent of the secular society in which he has to live. He admits his rejection of him and at the same time realizes his powerlessness to fight him. He can only exist in a world of lies, where “soulless people” cannot do without “tightened masks,” closing themselves off from real life.
Analysis of the poem January 1 (“How often, surrounded by a motley crowd”)
On December 31, 1839, a New Year's masquerade ball was held in the white-columned hall of the Noble Assembly on Mikhailovskaya Square in St. Petersburg, which was attended by high society and Nicholas 1 with members of his family.
Mikhail Lermontov was also at this ball. Subsequently, I. S. Turgenev recalled: “At the ball of the Noble Assembly they did not give him peace, they constantly pestered him, took him by the hands; one mask was replaced by another, and he almost did not move from his place and silently listened to their squeaks, turning his gloomy eyes on them one by one. It seemed to me then that I caught on his face the beautiful expression of poetic creativity.” Lermontov deliberately emphasized that the poem “How often, surrounded by a motley crowd ...” was written in connection with this ball: instead of the epigraph, the date was set - “January 1”.
The poet depicted in his work high society, which he despised, and openly expressed his attitude towards it. The main theme of the poem is an exposure of life’s “masquerade” and the cold soullessness of secular society. The work has a ring composition. It begins and ends with a description of the high society. In the middle, the lyrical hero is transported to childhood - he plunges into the natural world of harmony. The work is characterized by a combination of two contrasting genres - elegy and satire.
The poem has three semantic parts. The first part gives a picture of a high society ball. In the second, the poet takes the reader into the bright world of his memories. In the third part, the lyrical hero returns to a world alien to him, which causes a storm of indignation and mental pain in him. The first two six-line lines represent one complex sentence with two subordinate clauses: How often, surrounded by a motley crowd... I caress in my soul an ancient dream, Holy sounds of lost years. Re-reading two common subordinate clauses, the reader clearly feels a heap of images, flashing colorful figures and masks. Such emotional sensations, created by complex syntactic construction, bring the reader closer to the lyrical hero. The hero is bored among the “motley crowd”, “the wild whisper of rehearsed speeches”, among “soulless people” and “the decency of pulled masks.” The women at this ball, although beautiful, are very similar to puppets. The lyrical hero is disgusted by their flirtatiousness, gestures rehearsed in front of the mirror, “long-intrepid” hands that know neither excitement nor embarrassment. These city beauties know their worth and are confident that no one can resist their charms. But the hero is bored among them.
Everyone present at the ball put on masquerade masks as if to hide their soullessness and other vices. In this crowd, the lyrical hero feels alien and lonely. To distract himself from the unpleasant noise and shine, he is mentally carried away to the cherished world of dreams - to his childhood. The second part of the poem immerses the reader in a special atmosphere: And I see myself as a child, and all around are my native places: a tall manor house And a garden with a destroyed greenhouse... My native places are Tarkhany, where Lermontov spent his childhood. There is a clear contrast between the soulless world of high society and living nature: I enter a dark alley; The evening ray peeks through the bushes, and the yellow leaves rustle under timid steps. The soul of the lyrical hero reaches out to naturalness and sincerity - to what has long been forgotten in the “high society”. For Lermontov, his home and childhood are symbols of the “ideal world” (it is shown in the works “Motherland”, “Mtsyri”, “Will”). But the “ideal world” exists only in memories, and the hero, “in memory of recent antiquity,” flies as a “free bird.” The poet painted a romantic landscape. There are all the romantic attributes here: a sleeping pond, haze, fog, a dark alley. A poetic atmosphere of mystery and Divine presence has been created.
It is at such a moment that the lyrical hero turns to the theme of love. He talks either about his dream, or about his dream. For him, the image of a beautiful girl is the embodiment of purity and tenderness: With eyes full of azure fire, With a pink smile, like the first glow of a young day Behind the grove. These eyes and pink smile are a complete contrast to the masks of soulless people at the ball. Only in this world is the lyrical hero happy - here he feels harmony. It turns out that the soul of the lyrical hero belongs to the ideal world, and he is forced to live in the real world - among the “motley crowd”. His tragedy is the tragedy of all romantic heroes. It lies in the fact that the hero is doomed to eternal wandering between these two worlds. The pictures of childhood in comparison with the pictures of the ball are so beautiful that when the lyrical hero again finds himself among the crowd that he hates, he can no longer endure this suffocating atmosphere, and he has a desire to throw an angry challenge to the kingdom of masks: Oh, how I want to confuse their gaiety And boldly throw an iron verse into their eyes, drenched in bitterness and anger. Expressive means of language help the poet reveal the ideological content of the poem. It is entirely built on antithesis (opposition). The poet depicts two worlds using sharp contrasts. Everything in the poem is contrasting - sounds, colors. The world of bustle is depicted with the words motley, flashing, masks - here brightness and brilliance are mixed into one faceless mass. Drawing an ideal world, the poet uses a completely different palette - azure, green grass, radiance, a pink smile, yellow leaves. The sound tone in these worlds is also different. The festival of masks is accompanied by the noise of music, dancing, “wild whispers: - all this is very disharmonious. The sounds of an ideal world form a quiet melody - this is silence, the rustling of leaves, the cry of a person.
Depicting the artistic space of the earthly world, Lermontov shows us a close circle of faceless figures - a “motley crowd” that monotonously revolves around the lyrical hero “with the noise of music and dancing.” Here, cramped conditions and lack of freedom reign - “masks pulled down with decency.” But the space of the imaginary world is limitless. Here is the endless sky (“I fly as a free, free bird”), and endless expanses (fields, ponds, fogs), and endless depths (a dark alley leading into the mysterious unknown). The poem has a complex, confusing meter (sometimes iambic hexameter, sometimes iambic tetrameter). There is also a combination of paired rhyme and ring rhyme. All this together, as well as complex syntactic structures, convey the painful, disharmonious state of the lyrical hero.
Themes and mood and issues
The theme of the poem can be supplemented by the Many-Wise Litrecon if you write to him in the comments about the need for changes.
- The main theme of the work “How often surrounded by a motley crowd...” is primarily what it describes, namely the falsity of a secular society
, immersed in base entertainment and forgetting about real life. - The theme of sweat and crowds
runs through the poem as a leitmotif. The reader is faced with a demonstration of the soulless and cold secular society that surrounds the lyrical hero. Lermontov often raises the topic of the lost generation, for example, it clearly appears in the poem “Duma,” which also exposes the vices of his contemporaries.
The lines of the work are permeated with the pathos of the struggle of the lyrical “I” with human callousness and hypocrisy. The mood of the poem is colored by notes of disappointment and sadness of the hero in the current generation.
The main problem is the impoverishment of human values. This is what the lyrical hero is annoyed with; it is difficult for him to accept it.
main idea
The main idea of the poem “How often surrounded by a motley crowd...” is revealed in the contrast between the main character and the crowd, his values and the views of secular society. The author points out that those around them only pretend to feel, but their souls are empty. He regrets the lost ideals of childhood, when he was surrounded by truly sincere people, and not masks.
Thus, the meaning of the poem “How often surrounded by a motley crowd...” frames both the conflict and the main problem of the work: it is hostile towards secular society because it opposes its ideals (in the best traditions of romanticism). Unfortunately, the issue of confrontation between the values of a highly moral hero and the soulless worldview of people remains open to this day.
Means of expression
As we see, it is not often possible to change a world that is rotten like a long-forgotten apple. Or rather, unfortunately, this is impossible to do. A person can only accept this fact and isolate himself from the external radiations of a vulgar society. But we only analyzed the generation of Mikhail Yuryevich. And, fortunately, our era still has a chance to gain prudence and honor, to become the cause not of bitter tears, but of joy and jubilation. Finally, let’s look at the paths in the poem “How often surrounded by a motley crowd...”.
- Epithets
in the work help the reader to better feel the image of a dead society: “a motley crowd”, “soulless people”, “trepid hands”. All this creates an atmosphere of pretense and lies. - The oxymoron
“wild whisper” exposes the scarcity and vulgarity of the main hobbies of this society, in which gossip, conspiracies and boring, seemingly rote conversations reign. - The extended metaphor
“an iron verse, drenched in bitterness and anger...” turns Lermontov’s poem into an emotional recognition, confession. The work appears before readers as the result of the poet’s bitter tears, his struggle and disappointment.
Author: Polina Boriskina
Means of artistic expression
In this work, Lermontov did not skimp on the means of artistic expression. It contains:
- Epithets - cold (hands), city (beauties), ancient (dream), saints (sounds), free (bird), tall (house), abandoned (greenhouse), dark (alley), yellow (sheets), timid (steps), first radiance, long hours, crowds of people;
- Metaphors - motley (crowd). Wild (whisper), hardened (speeches), careless courage, dead (years), sleeping (pond), evening (ray), azure (fire), wondrous (kingdom); pink (smile) young (day), fresh (island), wet (desert);
- Metonymy - soulless (images), decently pulled together (masks), fearless (hands), caressing (dream), the village is smoking, fogs are rising, blooming (island), iron (verse), drenched (verse).
