Female images in the works of A. A. Blok
“Women’s faces” largely determined the direction of A. A. Blok’s lyrics, although this is far from the main motive of his work.
The poet's creative destiny has always been inextricably linked with his personal life. Throughout his life he carried a feeling of boundless love for L. D. Mendeleeva. It was she who inspired him to write those poems that were later included in the collection “Poems about a Beautiful Lady.” This was Blok's first collection of poetry. Despite the fact that she had a completely earthly prototype, the Beautiful Lady was deified by Blok and equated with a saint. She seems to be an ephemeral being, created from some higher substance, not from flesh. This is the ideal, the symbol of Eternal Femininity. The poet renounced reality, went into a world created by himself.
However, over time, Blok’s search for an ideal led him to a dead end. He moves away from his previous immersion in his world, where the Beautiful Lady rules. Parting with L. D. Mendeleeva played an important role in this. He continued to dedicate poems to her, but the image of the Beautiful Lady faded and was replaced by other “female faces.” They were still covered with a touch of youthful daydreaming.
This is the image of the Stranger from the poem of the same name. Her appearance is semi-real, shaded, she is removed from the surrounding reality, as if she does not belong to it. At the same time, the Stranger is quite real, her appearance involuntarily appears before the mind’s eye thanks to small details:
And ostrich feathers bowed
My brain is swinging,
And blue, bottomless eyes
They bloom on the far shore.
As before, Blok writes about a dream woman, inaccessible, distant. She either exists in reality, or is dreamed by the hero in a dream. The features of the former Beautiful Lady can be discerned in her, but this is no longer her.
Later, in Blok’s system of symbols, such symbols appear that were impossible to imagine when reading his early lyrics. For example, “spring bride” Solveig. This image appears in several poems from different periods: first as a symbol of something intoxicating, spring, sunny, then as salvation from despair. Sometimes Blok’s Solveig becomes indistinguishable from symbols of darkness and darkness. This multifaceted image of the spring girl, once it appeared, never left Blok.
Another interesting female image is found in the poem “On the Railroad.” This is no longer the Beautiful Lady, not the Stranger, not Solveig. This is a country girl. Her appearance is not very clear (Blok does not betray himself), we only know that she is young and beautiful. The reader has no idea who this girl is, where she is from, or how her life turned out. We only know one thing - she goes to meet passing trains.
She dreams of the life that rushes past her behind the windows of the cars. But on the train there are people of different destinies, happy and unhappy, rich and poor, they also have dreams, perhaps they also strive for something unattainable. But the girl doesn't think about it. She is lonely, she is waiting for a miracle that does not happen, and cannot happen: “So the useless youth rushed.” And this youth was cut short under the wheels of the train. A meaningless life, unnecessary beauty, unfulfilled dreams. The plot is new for Blok, but the sound of the lines is still the same as before.
As Blok's worldview changed, love for him from a sacred feeling turned into a “bitter passion.” Women's faces acquired new features:
Only lips with dried blood
On your icon there is gold
(Is this what we called love?)
Refracted by a crazy line.
Here, as before, the image is tragic. We are talking about a fallen woman, but she does not evoke either disgust or contempt. Bitterness, not typical of the young Blok, comes through in the lines, but the romantic perception of reality remains.
Speaking about “female faces”, one cannot fail to mention Russia. The poet treats her only as a woman. She is a living being. He speaks of her as a person:
And you are still the same - forest and field,
Yes, the board is patterned up to the eyebrows.
Blok addresses her as his inseparable “half”: “Oh, my Rus'! My wife!" And he loves her like a woman:
Russia, poor Russia,
I want your gray huts,
Your songs are windy to me -
Like the first tears of love.
Love for the Motherland inspired the poet all his life. Perhaps there are more poems dedicated to her or inspired by her than lyrics associated with images of ordinary women. Although the word “ordinary” here may not be entirely appropriate, because Blok’s women are always extraordinary, as if cut off from the earth.
There is a feature that always makes it possible to distinguish Blok’s women - this is unreality, nebula. All Blok’s female images are connected by one thing - the author’s attitude. He always writes about women reverently, with a touch of admiration. There are, of course, exceptions (Katka from the poem “The Twelve”). However, these exceptions are extremely rare.
In essence, the poet always remained faithful to his Beautiful Lady; her features, albeit changed beyond recognition, are visible in all the “female faces” of Blok. A woman always loved one woman, who was the inspiration for his best poems.
Alexander Alexandrovich Blok is one of the most exquisite poets of Russian classical literature. Having become fascinated by Vladimir Solovyov’s philosophy of “two worlds” in his youth, the poet temporarily becomes a mystic and senses harbingers of the end of the world in the world around him. And Blok feels the coming revolution as unfolding chaos. He sees salvation in the divine beginning of the “World Soul” or “Eternal Femininity”.
During this period, the mysterious and magical cycle of “Poems about a Beautiful Lady” appears. The lyrical heroine of the cycle merged the features of a mysterious stranger and a specific woman, Lyubov Dmitrievna Mendeleeva, with whom Blok was passionately in love, who later became his wife.
The image of a Beautiful Lady in the lyrics of A. Blok
(369 words) A beautiful lady plays an important role in the lyrics of Alexander Blok. This is a cross-cutting image that runs through dozens of poems and is a semantic dominant in the poet’s work. Understanding it will provide the reader with the most complete understanding of the author's lyrics.
The main feature of a beautiful lady is mystery. A woman is deprived of a detailed and accurate portrait; she is always inaccessible and shrouded in a haze of mystery. She passes by, but never turns around, which makes the woman truly desirable. Her image is devoid of specifics: either she sits in a restaurant and barely noticeably fills the room with her charm, or she walks on the street and sings in a church choir. She is always a girl or a woman, and she has no other name - only her belonging to the weaker sex is emphasized. It is not without reason that the heroine has only a blurred portrait, expressed in hints, because her task is to reflect femininity, the universal feminine principle, which in itself attracts men. His heart does not belong to one muse, but to the entire female sex as a whole, and each reader has an individual image of a beautiful lady - his own ideal. This is where all the attractiveness of Blok’s love lyrics is hidden - it is not about his woman, but about the one that excites your imagination.
The image of the lady is contrasted with the vanity and vulgarity of the surrounding world, which the author subtly noticed. For example, in the poem “The Stranger,” the heroine comes to a restaurant that is packed to capacity. There people are drunk and disgusting, there the routine turns gray and the melancholy turns black, but SHE walks between the tables. Her elastic silks “breathe with ancient beliefs,” her blue eyes bloom, and she herself breathes not only perfumes, but also mists. Her graceful image contrasts with the philistine and ugly world where the lyrical hero lives. She, mysterious and distant, is always “on the far shore,” always alone. He cannot reach her, grab her narrow wrist in the rings of the bracelets. It is distant and illusory, like an ideal for which one can only yearn. This makes the symbolist Blok similar to his predecessors - the romantic poets.
Finally, a beautiful lady is always a stranger.
The hero sees her for the first time and does not even know her name. It is precisely this kind of vision that is easiest to love madly and blindly, because it is so beautiful from afar, so mysterious from a distance. In her image you can imagine anything. This is precisely what distinguishes Blok’s poetry: he loves what he knows least. His ideal is unreal, because it crumbles after meeting him. Thus, this image characterizes the entire symbolist movement, which was far from reality, which glorified the sphere of the subconscious and imaginary world. Interesting? Save it on your wall!
The image of a beautiful lady in Blok’s work, essay, text for essay
The image of the Beautiful Lady is very important for Alexander Blok; he even named one of his most famous cycles that way. This image is constantly found in his poems. She is always, logically, beautiful - in an amazing dress, slender, graceful, mysterious... As if she really is an image, an ideal. The hero thinks about her, she inspires him, but he does not always dare to talk to her. The heroine is opposed to the rest of the world. There may be dirt, evil, vanity around her, but nothing can pollute her. On the contrary, it is she who makes the world a better place with her presence, giving light to everyone. No “earthly” low thought concerns the Lady, does not denigrate her.
His poems about a Lady in a restaurant “in the evenings” are known, where she is left against ordinary revelers. The heroine maintains dignity and sedateness in any situation... It seems to me that only her light saves the poet, hope for at least fleeting happiness... Otherwise, he would not be able to live in such a terrible world as he saw it.
Female images in the lyrics of A.A. Blok.
Blok’s work occurred at the beginning of the twentieth century - a time of great changes and many tragic events in the life of the country. But perhaps only such an era could nurture such a great poet as A.A. Block. In his work, Blok addressed various topics, but the poet’s love lyrics are perhaps the most striking. It is important to note that Blok has his own, different, perception of love, for he always strives for the ideal. This was especially evident in the cycle “Poems about a Beautiful Lady,” which was written in the early period of the poet’s work. These works were created after Blok’s meeting with L.D. Mendeleeva. Here the author creates an image of an ideal, unattainable woman. In the cycle, two main themes can be distinguished: the expectation of the Beautiful Lady, who is about to appear: I enter dark temples, I perform a poor ritual. There I am waiting for the Beautiful Lady in the flickering red lamps. The second theme that is revealed in this cycle is the fear of meeting the heroine: I have a feeling about you. Years pass by - I still foresee you in one form. The whole horizon is on fire - and unbearably clear, And I wait silently, yearning and loving. The whole horizon is on fire and the appearance is near, But I’m afraid: you will change your appearance, And arouse daring suspicion, By changing the usual features in the end. The ideal of eternal femininity is not just an object of veneration for the lyrical hero. The Beautiful Lady captivated him with her extraordinary beauty, unearthly charm, so much so that the character becomes a slave to his own feelings: defeated by your passions, weak under the yoke. Sometimes - a servant; sometimes - cute; And forever - a slave. To achieve the ideal, according to Blok, is still impossible in real life, so the lyrical hero can only be with the Beautiful Lady in a dream: This voice is yours, and to its incomprehensible sound I will give my life and grief, Even in a dream I press your former sweet hand to lips... Already in a later period of his life, the poet still turned to love lyrics. His poem “Stranger” is interesting. Here Blok portrays the image of a woman in a new way. The lyrical work is built on the opposition of two worlds. The poem begins with a description of the everyday and vulgar life that ordinary people lead: In the evenings above the restaurants, the hot air is wild and deaf, And the spring and pernicious spirit rules the shouts of drunken people. It is precisely this rough, vulgar and immoral environment that the mysterious stranger contrasts: And slowly, walking among the drunken, Always without companions, alone, Breathing in spirits and mists, She sits down by the window. However, now the emergence of an ideal is simply impossible. The author says “no” to the sublime, incomprehensible and mysterious: You’re right, drunken monster! I know: the truth is in the wine. Blok’s poem “About valor, about exploits, about glory...” talks about tragic love. The lyrical hero cannot forget the beloved who left him: I called you, but you didn’t look back, I shed tears, but you didn’t condescend. You sadly wrapped yourself in a blue cloak, You left the house on a damp night. For Blok, love is an amazing, wonderful feeling, full of suffering, heartache and happiness at the same time.
Essay The image of a beautiful lady in Blok’s works
For many figures of Russian literature, a woman appears as a beautiful phenomenon, filled with mysterious attractiveness and immeasurable love. Blok represented the same woman.
For the writer-poet Blok, a woman was something inspiring. For him there was nothing more beautiful than a woman; he considered a woman as the greatest creation of God, ever created by him. But the image of a woman was not always the same as it is presented in his last works. Many tragic events occurred in his life, as a result of which he changed his views on many things, including a woman as a phenomenon, but she also remained for him a heavenly and beautiful theme.
In his works, Blok extolled her as a beautiful creature that requires care and love. Through his poems, he literally deified the sacred image to which he was faithful, which is why many of his readers of that time were also faithful to this image, proclaiming it the ideal of femininity and chastity, as a result of which many girls tried to adhere to it.
So there were people who disagreed with his opinion and tried in every possible way to refute it, for supposedly utopian images. He tried his best to dissuade critics, saying that this was just an image that, in his opinion, they should adhere to. But, despite this, he continued to be criticized for his creativity and utopian images. But inspired by this very image, he continued his work, despite the reproaches of those around him. For this he gained respect among many of his contemporaries.
Trying to proclaim his created image as something lofty, he tried to convey to his readers the idea of respecting women, practically idolizing them for who they are, because, in his opinion, women are beautiful.
This idea reached many people perfectly, many did not reach it, and many generally tried their best to refute this idea, but one way or another Blok created a stunning image that directly conveys all the beauty of the female sex and tries to create in readers some single image, which they will stick. This is my opinion and it does not claim exclusivity or uniqueness, which is why it can be refuted.
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