History of creation
The poem “The Faded Fun of Crazy Years...” was written on the Boldino estate in 1830 , where Pushkin came to put his financial affairs in order before his upcoming marriage.
As fate would have it, the poet had to stay on the ancestral estate for almost three months due to the cholera epidemic raging in Russia. This time became the most fruitful period of Pushkin’s work and was called the “Boldino Autumn”.
The poem with the genre subtitle “Elegy” sums up the poet’s thoughts before the start of a new (family) life.
Pushkin did not obtain consent for marriage from N.N. Goncharova’s parents immediately, but only 2 years after the first unsuccessful attempt. One can call the premonition of tragedy discernible in the lines of “Elegy” prophetic.
According to Russian tradition, before the wedding, the newlyweds had to confess, and the event itself implied a rethinking of their own lives. The first part of the poem is repentance, the second is a premonition of future difficulties and timid hope for happiness in love.
“Elegy (The Faded Fun of Crazy Years)” by A. Pushkin
“Elegy (The Faded Fun of Crazy Years)” Alexander Pushkin
The faded joy of crazy years is heavy on me, like a vague hangover. But, like wine, the sadness of days gone by In my soul, the older it is, the stronger it is. My path is sad. Promises me work and grief
The troubled sea of the future.
But I don’t want, O friends, to die; I want to live so that I can think and suffer; And I know that I will have pleasures Between sorrows, worries and worries: Sometimes I will again become drunk with harmony, I will shed tears over fiction, And maybe, at my sad sunset, love will flash with a farewell smile.
Analysis of Pushkin’s poem “Elegy (Faded Fun of Crazy Years)”
The famous Boldino autumn of 1830, which played a very important role in the work of Alexander Pushkin, gave the world a huge number of literary works. These include the poem “Elegy,” written in a philosophical vein. In it, the author sums up the period of carefree youth and says goodbye to it on the threshold of entering a new life.
The trip to Boldino, where Pushkin was forced to stay for three long months due to cholera quarantine, was caused by the need to enter into inheritance rights to the estate. The poet, who had never burdened himself with resolving such issues, set out to put all his affairs in order. And this is not surprising, since after re-matching Natalya Goncharova, he still received a positive response and began to prepare for the wedding. However, the poet subjected a thorough revision not only to business papers, but also to his own soul, realizing that from now on his life was changing irrevocably. It was then that the lines were born that “the faded joy of the crazy years” left in the poet’s soul the bitterness of regret and the pain of loss. Pushkin understands that nightly carousing with friends and visiting gambling houses is now the lot of younger people who are still learning the joys of life. The poet prophesies a very sad future for himself . “My path is sad. The troubled sea promises me the work and grief of the future,” writes the author. What should make a person be in such a gloomy mood on the eve of his own wedding? The thing is that Pushkin’s financial affairs leave much to be desired, and he understands perfectly well that in order to provide a decent life for his family, he will have to work a lot. It was during this period that he carried on a stormy correspondence with his future mother-in-law, bargaining over the size of the dowry. But, in essence, he is trying to win not money, but his own freedom, which he is deprived of after marriage, even with a beloved woman. However, in the poet’s words there is still hope that he can be happy . “And I know, I will have pleasure in the midst of sorrows, worries and anxiety,” notes Pushkin. Indeed, like any normal person, he dreams of finding happiness in his family and hopes that in his life “love will flash with a farewell smile.” Thus, the poet renounces possible relationships with other women who have always been his muses, and expects to become an exemplary husband, realizing that marriage takes away from him a piece of the joy and inspiration that he drew from freedom.
Literary direction
The poem “The Faded Fun of Crazy Years...” is written in the genre of elegy, which is predominantly classified as a sentimental or romantic movement in literature.
Classical elegies (“sad songs”) were supposed to end on a pessimistic note. However, Pushkin’s “Elegy” has an unconventional ending: its final chord is hope for happiness, acceptance of one’s own decline, humility before the will of fate.
That is why, despite the genre of the work, it can rightfully be considered realistic.
“Crazy years of faded fun...”, analysis of Pushkin’s poem
The poem “The Faded Fun of Crazy Years...” was written by Pushkin on September 8, 1830 in Boldino. Alexander Sergeevich gave it the genre name “Elegy”. At this time, the poet proposed his hand and heart to Natalya Goncharova for the second time and received consent. To put things in order before marriage, he went to his father’s estate. There Pushkin was forced to stay for three whole months due to a cholera epidemic. This was a very fruitful period in the poet’s life, which went down in history as the Boldino autumn.
The basis of the work “The Faded Fun of Crazy Years...” is Pushkin’s philosophical reflections on the end of bachelorhood and a new stage in life’s journey. “Elegy” consists of two parts, contrasting in meaning. In the first stanza, the poet regrets the past days of his stormy youth and realizes that now the “turbulent sea of the future” does not promise him anything good. The fact is that the financial affairs of the Pushkins and Goncharovs left much to be desired. The poet understood: he would have to work hard to provide for his family.
Fleeting youth causes sadness not only because it has passed. The older the poet gets, the more he realizes his mistakes and wasted time. The sadness about this is becoming more and more intense.
But the second stanza unexpectedly sounds optimistic. Despite the upcoming life “between sorrows, worries and worries,” the lyrical hero believes that pleasure, harmony and love still await him. The last two lines of the poem combine the sadness of the first part and the optimism of the second into a beautiful final chord: “love will flash with a farewell smile.”
A positive ending is not typical for a romantic elegy, but is traditional for Pushkin, who accepted life with all its troubles and joys. Any event could become a source of inspiration for the poet. To create, he needs changes in life, even suffering. Therefore, the hero proclaims: “I want to live so that I can think and suffer.”
The poem “Faded Fun in Crazy Years...” is a monologue of a lyrical hero who is completely identified with the author. It is written in the most convenient meter for philosophical lyrics - “slow” iambic pentameter with alternating female and male rhymes. Traditionally, in such poems, poets use stilted book vocabulary. Pushkin did not break tradition, using the following words in the text: “promises”, “past”, “friends”, “future”, “know”, “anxiety”. However, the poem is easy to read and understand.
Pushkin used the symbols of romantic poetry in a very original way: stormy sea, wine, hangover, sunset. Everything seems to be mixed up here. A comparison of fun with wine suggests itself, and in Pushkin it is a “vague hangover,” and even a “faded one,” although youth is usually associated with dawn, morning or afternoon. At the same time, sadness is compared to wine. The word “excited” is more suitable for the hero’s youth and past. And for the poet it correlates with the “coming sea.” But these inconsistencies echo the images of the second stanza and create a coherent impression. In the future, the poet will begin to revel not in the follies of youth, but in harmony. The sunset of life will be colored with love.
In the work “The Faded Fun of Crazy Years...” Pushkin could not do without his favorite technique - antithesis . Sadness here is contrasted with fun, death with life, pleasure with worries. The images in the first stanza have a mostly negative connotation, while in the second stanza they are filled with positivity.
The first part of “Elegy” is dedicated to the past and is static. Therefore, there is only one verb in it - “promises”. But there are many epithets: “crazy years”, “vague hangover”, “faded fun”, “turbulent sea”. In the second stanza, many verbs add liveliness and optimism to the author’s thoughts: “I don’t want to die,” “think,” “suffer,” “I know,” “they will,” “will shine.” Almost all the nouns in the poem are abstract: sadness, work, grief, love, fun, worries, fiction. This is due to the depth of philosophical generalization in the poet’s thoughts.
Like most of Pushkin’s poems, “The Faded Fun of Crazy Years...” is surprisingly musical. The vowels “o”, “u”, “e” predominate over the dull and hissing consonants, and their sequential alternation creates a beautiful, thoughtful rhythm.
As you know, in his young years Pushkin wrote many romantic elegies. “The Faded Fun of Crazy Years...” is rightfully considered the pinnacle among the works of this genre.
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Based on the work: “Crazy years of faded fun...”
According to the writer: Pushkin Alexander Sergeevich
Image system
In the first stanza of the poem, Pushkin uses anacreontic images (wine, a severe hangover).
Beginning his creative career, the poet paid a generous tribute to feast motifs. But the young time of fun has passed - its comprehension weighs heavily on the hero.
When describing new feelings and thoughts that visited him on the eve of serious life changes, Pushkin uses large-scale spontaneous images: “the coming rough sea”, “sad sunset”.
Thus, everything temporary and human gives way to the eternal, cosmic.
Analysis of the poem “Elegy” by Pushkin A.S.
This short lyric poem, a masterpiece of Pushkin's lyricism, consists of two interconnected parts. The first repeats “point by point” all the traditional accusations that a poet writing an elegy makes against life. The faded joy of crazy years is heavy on me, like a vague hangover. But, like wine, the sadness of days gone by In my soul, the older it is, the stronger it is. My path is sad. The troubled sea promises me the work and grief of the coming one.
First, the poet’s gaze turns to the past: “The faded joy of crazy years...” It disappoints him, but the further away in time it burns his heart, the more strongly it burns him. The present is also terrible: “My path is sad.” (We have already said that the word “despondency” serves as a kind of stylistic key to the “sad” genre of elegy.) And the future seems completely bleak: “The toil and grief of the coming troubled sea promises me.” The comparisons are also fundamentally more than traditional: Pushkin plays on images familiar to the poetic language of that era, comparing fun with wine, grief with a hangover, life’s sorrows with a stormy sea.
The only thing that should alert an attentive, experienced reader is the combination of different figurative series, an overabundance of metaphors, their “running into” each other. Thus, the fun that the poet compares with a hangover would be more logical to compare with wine. And the “sadness of days gone by,” which he compares to wine, on the contrary, would be more logical to compare with a hangover. In addition, the fun is called “faded,” and this would seem to suggest a comparison of bygone youth with dawn or a bright sunny day. Accordingly, it would be more natural to compare a sad future with a sunset. Instead, it is compared with the sea, which generally appears in a series of comparisons contrary to all formal logic. Is the theme of the sea connected with the theme of the feast, with the images of wine and hangover? Of course not. But the fact of the matter is that formal logic does not work in poetry, the usual semantic connections often “do not work,” and instead of them, other, more complex ones arise: poetic ones.
And so we move from the first part to the second, which opens with the adversative conjunction but - and point by point refutes the hopelessness of the thinking of the first part:
But I don’t want, O friends, to die; I want to live so that I can think and suffer; And I know, I will have pleasures Between sorrows, worries and worries: Sometimes I will again become drunk with harmony, I will shed tears over fiction, And maybe, at my sad sunset, love will flash with a farewell smile.
Something impossible happens here for an ordinary “song of sad content” (as V. G. Belinsky defined elegy). A “normal” elegy writer speaks of the unimaginable severity of suffering. And Pushkin accepts life in all its manifestations. And he’s not just ready to accept a gloomy future as something inevitable. He wants to live precisely in order to “think and suffer.” That is, suffering from a reason for denying the world becomes a reason for its affirmation! Now pay attention to what images he uses and how exquisitely he connects them with the metaphors on which the figurative series of the first part was built.
“I don’t want... to die...” - the first line of the second part “picks up” and completes the metaphor only outlined in the first line of the first part: “faded joy.” Here it is, the decline of life, its extinction: death is approaching.
The fifth line of the second part picks up the metaphor of the feast of life, the image of wine as a symbol of pleasure: “Sometimes I’ll get drunk again with harmony.” Only now it is not that stormy “wine of joy”, which inevitably entails the bitterness of a “vague hangover”. Now this quiet, pure, light pleasure of harmony, which since antiquity has been compared to divine nectar, is called the “drink of the gods.” And the last two verses -
And maybe - at my sad sunset, love will flash with a farewell smile, -
Lyrical hero
The lyrical hero in the poem is quite comparable to the image of the author. It is safe to say that Pushkin writes these lines in the first person.
His confessions are deeply personal and confessional. The genius of the poet is manifested in the fact that almost every reader who has crossed the threshold of thirty years can read “Elegy” as a poem about himself.
Thus, revealing his own innermost spiritual experiences, Pushkin speaks about universal humanity and becomes close to everyone who touches his work.
Means of expression
To fully disclose the topic and convey the idea to the reader, the author uses means of expression. They also help convey the inner state of the lyrical hero. metaphors in the poem : “changeable fashion speaks”, “God’s world would flourish”, laquo;questions boiling in the mind”, personifications : “weep over their fate, the muse will serve them”, “the Muse whispered to me”. The monologue is supplemented with epithets - “naive passion”, “slow old man”, “golden harvest”, “secret questions”, “peasant suffering”, “cool twilight” and a comparison - “they drag themselves in poverty... like lean herds”. The oxymoron ” allows you to convey the mixed feelings of the lyrical “I” . The set of artistic means embodied both traditional associations and individual author’s ones.
Plot
The plot of the poem is an appeal to oneself or one of one's closest friends.
The poet talks about the weight of his memories, like wine, gaining strength and strength over the years. He anticipates work and grief ahead, but still expresses the hope that in the time remaining to him, the muse, the poet’s main comforter, will not abandon him.
The poem “The faded joy of crazy years...” can be called prophetic.
Pushkin looks into the future with a calm and clear gaze, anticipating sadness, need and possible death. But he does not renounce his chosen path and is ready to accept everything that is in store for him.
What is the meaning of the title of the poem
The word “elegy” implies the author’s deep reflection on eternal questions. Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin addresses the problem of the author and his work. What will remain after his death? Will descendants remember him? Will happiness and recognition await him in the future? It is precisely these questions that “Elegy” is literally permeated through and through.
The author uses the entire set of aphorisms and other literary devices characteristic of him to reveal such a topic. He is not afraid to reveal his experiences to the reader, which is why the poem is read in one breath. We worry about Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin with all our soul and body. This shows us that the poem was written by a real master of words!
Artistic originality of the work
The sound design of the first stanza sets a gloomy mood. The poet uses assonances “u”, “s”, “o”, alliteration with “l” and “r”, creating the effect of swaying on the waves.
It seems as if the poet is sailing along the steep waves of a dark, agitated sea and does not see land on the horizon.
But the music of the second stanza sounds like resistance:
But I don’t want, O friends, to die; I want to live so that I can think and suffer;
Energy and determination are felt in these lines; they are pronounced loudly, confidently and firmly. This is how the author expresses confidence that man is not a weak-willed toy in the hands of fate.
Syntactically, the text can be perceived as a large two-part sentence, the first part of which lists the poet’s everyday sorrows, and the second – the thoughts and actions that he is ready to oppose to them.
Formally, the poem is composed of 5 sentences, complicated by homogeneous members and comparative phrases.
Pushkin uses high book vocabulary (“past”, “future”, “about others”), paying debt to the ancient genre of elegy and emphasizing the importance of the problem raised in the poem.
The general meaning of the work
Based on the above, we can highlight the main idea of the poem: the search for truth, if carried out honestly, always ends in some significant spiritual acquisition. You just need to be sincere with yourself in order to be able to accept God's gift.
The poem is thoroughly imbued with a state of sadness, but this is not hopelessness, but a stage of internal rebirth. That's what "Elegy" is all about. Pushkin wrote the poem precisely at that moment when he himself was at an internal spiritual turning point. It is worth reading when you are visited by thoughts about the uselessness of existence, that part of your life has been wasted, in vain.
Means of artistic expression
The language of the poem is decorated:
- epithets (“crazy years of faded fun”, “severe hangover”),
- metaphors (“the coming troubled sea”, old age and matured like a “sad sunset”),
- comparison (“but, like wine, the days gone by in my soul, the older, the stronger”).
In addition, the text contains the reification “I’ll get drunk with harmony,” in which the abstract noun “harmony” is represented as a life-giving drink.
personification “love will flash with a farewell smile” adds brightness to the poem The gentle smile of love illuminates the elegy with a gentle sunny glow.
Analysis of the poem by A.S. Pushkin’s “Elegy” (“The Faded Fun of Crazy Years”)
"Elegy" was created immediately after "Demons", in the fall of 1830. When published, Pushkin gave this poem the genre
subtitle “Elegy”. As you know, in his youth the poet preferred this genre. However, it was the analyzed poem that became the pinnacle of it.
Composition
. The poem consists of two stanzas that form a semantic contrast: the first deals with the drama of life’s path, the second sounds the pathos of life’s activity and personal will.
theme is picked up and developed
. as in “Demons” - a concentrated search for a path. The poem begins with a reassessment of the past, which left an indelible trace of sadness in the hero’s soul. Thoughts about the future seem to leave no room for hope:
My path is sad. Promises me work and grief
The troubled sea of the future.
But in the second stanza, such a pessimistic and passive worldview is replaced by the opposite. After rather gloomy lines that seem to beat out the rhythm of a funeral march, suddenly a light takeoff follows:
But I don’t want, O friends, to die;
I want to live so that I can think and suffer;
And I know I will have pleasures
Between sorrows, worries and worries:
The soul of the lyrical hero is filled with longing for days gone by; it is intensified by a feeling of anxiety and uncertainty about the future, in which one sees “labor and grief.” But it also means movement and a full life, in which “there will be pleasures among sorrows, worries and worries.” They bestow new creative fruits and - “maybe” - love:
Sometimes I’ll get drunk again with harmony,
I will shed tears over the fiction,
And maybe - for my sad sunset
Love will flash with a farewell smile.
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My attitude
Since my youth is still ahead, it is difficult for me to understand the sadness with which Pushkin regrets the past. But I think that everyone has something to be sad about and something to be ashamed of.
In order not to grieve over wasted years, you need to be attentive to yourself from childhood. You should not waste time on trifles, offend people around, deceive, or commit other stupid and evil acts. Then, on the threshold of maturity, the soul will not hurt so much.
The second part of the poem is close to me. Pushkin confirms my favorite idea that every age has its own joys. For a poet, this is, first of all, creativity and, of course, love. I would like all people to be able to rejoice, despite difficulties, and to maintain faith in the good.
Pushkin, “Elegy”: year of writing
The history of creation is very interesting. The poem “Elegy” dates back to the famous period of the Boldino Autumn. Pushkin at that time spent a lot of time thinking about life. The lyrical work is written in a philosophical vein and touches upon the innermost questions of existence, which the poet must have asked himself. He seeks the truth outside and inside himself, his search is marked as an alarming melody of life passing by. The poet overestimates its significance, recognizes new ways of returning to joys and hope. We must not forget that this poem was created after the famous December uprising that occurred in 1825. The year the Elegy was written was 1830. By this time, Alexander Sergeevich had already said goodbye to lofty youthful dreams and impulses, and became able to soberly assess the surrounding reality.
What does it teach
The poem “The faded fun of crazy years...” teaches us to appreciate every moment of life, filling the world around us with creativity, love, and creation.
To avoid having to cry bitterly over what you have done, it is better to be a kind, honest and sensitive person from the very beginning. Then you won’t have to call your youth “crazy”, and memories of the past – “severe hangover”.
It's hard to live without making mistakes. Pushkin reminds us how important it is to repent in time and start a new life full of high goals.
